Babies (With Pictures)

Well, I've been home for a few days now, and I've spent a good deal of that time playing with my niece...so, I've been thinking about babies.

It's really sad: it's so feminizing for a guy to say they've been thinking about babies. I really can't imagine myself hanging out with the boys and saying "let's talk about babies for a while, aren't they so cute!" Oh well, I guess I'll have to find some other avenue to project my masculinity.

Anyway, back to the main point, we really have a clear division of labor as far as babies are concerned. For example: on Sunday my whole family gathered together. In one room all the women gathered together, cooing and prodding my niece. In the other room all the guys gathered together, and had testosterone time.

In the woman's room they all took turns spewing adjectives about the baby. And of course to do this, they all raised their voices a few registers (because as everyone knows, babies only communicate in frequencies dogs can't even hear).

In the man's room the guys talked about manly things like shaving, video games, and not asking for directions.

I'm not quite sure why it's not cool for guys to like babies. They're so crazy and small. Babies are really lucky that for some reason tiny equates to cute. Their hands are amazing (they're like real person hands but fat and smaller (disclaimer: babies are real people...sorta)).

Baby feet are just silly-cute. Clothing designers caught on to the cuteness of baby feet are and they've made all sorts of ridiculous furry things to put on them. Babies got bunny shoes, ladybug shoes, shoe shoes, little paw shoes....I really think the majority of creative people in this world work for the baby-clothing design firms.

Another cool thing about babies: their expressions. Only a newborn can set a room in motion with a smile.

What gets me is that I find babies really cute, but if I ever try to describe them it's hard to justify their cuteness. The smallness is cute, but let's look at the rest of them......

1) They're bald: that's not attractive by any standard. My little niece has such fine hair that wherever she lays down she goes bald. Also, she has cradle cap so the top of her head needs to be scrubbed...which results in a look remarkably similar to the traditional horseshoe shape of male pattern baldness... somehow she pulls this off.

2) They're fat: I don't get this. Fatness is a bad thing, everyone talks about how it's disgusting, but with babies, the fatter they are the cuter they are.

3) They can't talk and they cry all the time: When regular people cry their face crumbles. They really can't look attractive.... they got snot on their face, it gets all puffy and red....but baby tears are cute. They inspire us to gush and reach out to them with love. When an adult cries you expect them to leave the room.

As for talking, they just can't do that. They just sit there and coo and gargle and blow bubbles that glide down their face. I find this cute, but I for the life of me can't figure out why.

4) They can't control their bowels: Okay, so their poo doesn't stink yet, but it's still disgusting. They poop so often, it's like they're rabbits or ferrets or something. An adult with the bowel frequency and control of a newborn would (justifiably) have no friends.

So, these are the major complaints I have about babies. I would complain about how they require feeding every 3 hours, day and night, but I've never had to wake up to feed a baby in the middle of the night so I don't feel qualified to make this complaint.

I guess the real amazing thing is that with all these faults babies are still wonderful. They're so peaceful, helpless (the perfect underdog), they're so trusting, they smell fresh (usually)...I guess we're lucky that all these qualities are enough to tip the scale and ensure the perpetuation of our species.

Oh, I almost forgot, a really great thing about babies is getting to play with them. You can take their hands and put them in funny poses (my niece plays an awesome air guitar). You can talk to them like they're a regular person and they don't interrupt (my niece has had quite a few lectures on topics ranging from the economy to pirates). You can sing them ridiculous songs and make up lyrics as you go without fear of looking stupid (a frustrating thing about this is that sometimes the song is quite good and the imparitiality of the baby means your genius goes unappreciated).

But when it all comes down to it, I think one of the best things about babies is how they bring a person's soul to the surface. When a baby is around you see the sorta love a person has, what they're capable of. I mean, we all sorta hold back when we love, probably cause we're afraid to get hurt. But when you have a baby around you can love as intensely as you want and you'll always feel rewarded and safe. It's sorta like taking a car to a closed track and flooring it to see what's under the hood. Babies let you really explore how deeply and purely you can love. I think this is why so many people love having babies...it changes them because they get to experience (often for the first time) the intensity of love that is the standard (standard here meaning our self-imposed maximum capacity to love) by which we should love everyone else.

Well, that's what I've been thinking about. My niece is pretty awesome. She's very cute, and she's so well behaved. She hasn't cried once since she's been here. Also, she's got some awesome clothes. She really can rock the ladybug sleepers...not many people can.

I guess this wasn't a very masculine post. I probably better go have a manly talk with someone. Anyone want to talk about explosives?

p.s. I didn't proofread this, sorry for all the mistakes.



Picture 1: Mommy and happy baby. Summer loves to rock the headband.



Here's Nick. I've known him since I was 6. He's really good with babies, but it looks really strange when he holds Summer cause he's kind of enormous...and she's pretty small.







Here is the picture where she looks like a little pink Sith Lord...very scary.



Here's Summer with Uncle Tim.

English

Today I am going to ramble about English a little bit.

Okay, first off, here are some crazy words.

Omphaloskepsis: this fancy word means "to contemplate one's navel."

So, if you're ever thinking about your navel, now you got a word for it.

Other fun words are:

Pulveratricious: this word means covered in dust.

widdiful: someone who deserves hanging.

nudiustertian: the day before yesterday.

limerance: an attempt to study love scientifically

Oh, and here is a really long word. It was the longest word in the first Oxford English Dictionary:

floccinaucinihilipilification: to judge that something has no value.

This is actually a sorta funny word. It was originally a joke, but it caught on. Some person took 4 words in Latin that meant nothing. The first word "flocci" this word comes from flouccus which means a tuft of lambs hair (which was used to mean nothing). "Nauci" means worthless. Nihil means "nothing." "Pili" means hair, which is also abstracted to mean little or nothing.

Some person took all these latin words that meant worthless and nothing and then strung them together, and then they placed the suffix "ification" at the end to make it a noun describing the act of making something worthless.

I dare you to use that word in a sentence.

Speaking of words, here is a complaint: the words data and media.

Today I read something where the person wrote "the data are private."

That just sounds stupid to me. Now, I realize that data is plural and datum is singular, but the meaning of the word "data" has changed over the years.

The problem is that data is rarely used as singular because data is such a nebulous term. What would be the smallest unit of data (which we would call "datum"). It's hard to say. A bit? A byte? A kilobyte?

I think it would be best to classify data as a collective or mass noun. I recently read online that some people have a problem with this; they think that data can't be a collective noun because collective nouns are always singular. And, while this is true, I don't think we use the word datum frequently enough (or with enough clarity) to split the word making the plural verb form necessary. Basically, what we'd be doing is making a hideous sentence like "the data are confidential" correct so we could make room for a word we don't even use: datum. I don't think it's worth it, and luckily, most grammar guides agree with me.

You can say "the data are saved," but if you do you should lose your friends. That is just so pretentious sounding, and I can only imagine the kind of person who would say that would be someone you wouldn't want to talk to.

Well, that's my rant for today. I hope you all have a wonderful day.

Oh, and another cool thing: many people know that there is a tendency to get sad during the wintertime when the sun is hidden and it's sorta gloomy. Well, there is a name for that problem; it's called "seasonal affective disorder." The cool thing is that the acronym for this is S.A.D. Isn't that a cool name? I appreciate diagnosticians with a sense of humor.

Anyway, that's all I got. I might get driving today to go to CA to see my niece, Summer. She's supposed to be the bee's knees. I can't wait to meet her.

American Graffiti

Last night I couldn't sleep so I decided to watch American Graffiti. It's a DVD that I found under a bunch of junk as I was cleaning out the apartment yesterday (yeah, I spent over 8 hours cleaning the apartment; I figure I'm the only one that lives here right now so I might as well make it clean).

I've always heard about this movie but I never knew anything about it other than that it was directed by George Lucas and that Harrison Ford was in it (and I only know this because of a comment Lucas made about casting Ford as Han Solo).

For those who haven't seen it, the movie is basically a film set in the post World War II financial boom; it's about the social scene among young folks (film was supposed to set in 1962).

I know the film was supposed to be nostalgic, but for me it was sort of depressing.

Why was it depressing?

Well, because everyone was so good to each other back then and I wish it was that way now (if this movie is to believed....and this movie was praised for its realism so imagine it's at least somewhat accurate).

Here are the things that stuck out in my mind:

1) The main activity in the movie is picking up girls with nice cars. The film takes place in Modesto, California. What happens is young guys in tricked out cars drive up to girls (who are either in a car or walking along the sidewalk) and say something like "Hey Babe! Wanna go for a ride?"

When I first saw them do this my thought was "Oh no! Don't get into the car! I didn't know this was a slasher film! She's gonna get killed! Don't trust him! Run! Run!"

But, she smiles, gets in the car, and they spend a pleasant evening together.

2) The main tough guy in the film is John Milner. He's got "the fastest car in the valley." He is feared and respected, but he's harmless. He gets tricked into taking care of an early adolescent girl for the evening, and rather than dropping her off anywhere and going on his way, he makes the best of things and tries to give her an enjoyable evening. He puts up with her prattle and even gives her a keepsake to remember him by. He was totally justified in dropping her off the moment she got annoying, but he put up with it.

If I had compare a film from my generation with Graffiti, the best match would probably be The Fast and the Furious. John's character is basically the character Vin Diesel played. Now, imagine a lighthearted trick where a pretty girl doesn't want to spend time with Vin Diesel so she tricks Vin into taking care of her little sister for the night (trusting a strange man). Then imagine Vin trying to make the most out of getting duped. The modern revision would have him throwing the girl out the window, chasing down that previous girl, and shooting her tires or something.

3) Central locations. In Chino Hills people don't hang out (or the cops break them up....groups bring trouble, drugs, and in general, tomfoolery).

Well, in this movie (and many others that depict a similar time) they have a central diner (usually a person's name is the title....like "Stan's" or "Mel's"). People goes to the diner and they see all their friends there because that's where everyone goes to hang out. Then, together, they decide to go see a movie at the drive-in or go drive up to the mountains or something.

I see the diner location hang out in a lot of films and I'm beginning to believe they might have actually existed...and that seems cool. If the movies are to be believed (always a risky proposition) people would gather together and there wasn't much posturing or bickering...just a lot of people looking for a good time.

I think part of why this sort of social networking was possible was that people drew together because they were disconnected. By this I mean that today we have social networking sites and cell phones. We can reach a friend anywhere in the country in seconds and plan something. Back then they had the land line in their homes (which parents might monitor) and that's it....so they had a social gathering spot. This sort of gathering is way better than instant messaging, texting, or writing on someone's Facebook wall. This was people gathering together face to face to have/plan a good time...and they had to do this cause there was no other way. So, now (counter intuitively) , all the technology that connects us in a way divides us. It makes it possible to settle for inferior forms of communication.

Well, I'm tired of typing. These were just some thoughts I had this morning. I realize that the early 60s weren't as wonderful as they were in this film. There were definitely bad things about this time that weren't depicted: i.e. racism, The Cold War, The Vietnam War (3 years into it in 1962), but overall it seems like America was generally optimistic; times were tough but we believed in America and our ability to pull through....nothing like the cynicism rampant today.

Honestly, it seems like the 60s was a big party, and my generation got stuck with the hangover.

But hey, we got the iPhone.

Today

Hello everyone,

Today has been a pretty productive day. I woke up and began my day by studying the GRE. I have a GRE study book and I went through the verbal section today. The vocabulary section is so much fun.

After studying I went to get a haircut. I haven't had one in a while and my hair was getting pretty long. Some people said they preferred it long, but it's not very comfortable....so now it's comfortable.

Actually, I haven't seen a lot of the people who read this blog in a long time and I haven't taken a picture of myself in a long time.... so I'll include a picture at the end of this post that I took right before I went to get my haircut (the smirk was accidental....and I realize my hair still wasn't very long, but it was very long for someone who usually takes clippers to their head every 2 weeks).

Anyway, I had a sorta funny experience while getting my haircut.

This is what happened:

The lady who cut my hair was the same ladywho cut my hair last time. My first and only haircut at her salon was 4 months ago and she didn't remember me. As she put that plastic hair sheet thingy around my neck she started her smalltalk.

Now, I don't know if all hair stylists have a small-talk course as part of their beauty school training, but it would make sense if they did cause they all say the same things. And the funny thing is no matter how you respond they seem to go to the next already memorized question without addressing your response. I guess this is for the best cause I'd much rather have them focusing on their job rather than entertaining me with their facility at spinning an interesting web of dialogue.

Anyway, after a minute or so of having the exact same conversation as last time I started playing around a bit. Cause, you see, every question was the same as last time, and last time after I'd answered a question I'd always ended my response with, "well, that's me, how about you?" I guess people often do that cause she had memorized answers for those questions too (you can tell they were memorized cause they were too concise and she said them with no expression...like someone does when they're reciting).

Well, my memory for dialogue is pretty good when I want it to be, and I had even more incentive to remember what she'd said because I thought it was odd that she'd memorized her answers... I tend to remember odd things.

So, I decided to have some fun with this and see if I could re-create our last conversation. I just needed to play my part the same as last time.

She was, of course, on top of her game and she started our conversation the same way she did 4 months ago. She said, "So, what do you do for fun?"

I responded as before, "Well, for fun I study, and for work I go on long bike rides."

So far so good, that was exactly what I'd said last time. She continued on with her memorized questioning and said "oh that's nice so are you in school?"

Now, at this point I knew we were doing pretty well and that our conversation has been almost word for word identical with our last one. I was pretty excited at how well we were doing and I kept it going. I responded as before and said I was about to graduate (not true anymore, but necessary to duplicate our last conversation). She said the same thing as before once again "oh, that's nice, so what do you study?"

She's good! I responded the same as before and told her I study Philosophy.

At this point I got sorta bored of the game and decided to try branching out. Instead of recreating our old conversation I decided it would be better to try predicting the conversation. As I mentioned earlier I had responded to all her questions with questions...and I still remembered her answers....so our conversation went like this:

(me to her) "so what do you do for fun?"
She started to answer but I said, "No let me guess, you like to hike, go for bike rides with your husband, and on Wednesdays you go dancing at the place down on the corner."

She took a step back and looked at me shocked. I not only said what her answer was last time, but I did it in the same order. She knew I had had this conversation with her before and she laughed. That was the first genuine thing she'd done the entire time.... the first action that wasn't scripted. Now we were finally getting somewhere. She said, "We've had this conversation before?"

I told her we had. She said "well, what else do you remember?"

I might have sounded creepy, but I just spewed all the details I could remember. I told her she had 4 kids....that as of 4 months ago the oldest was 7, that she had been cutting hair for 14 years, and that her favorite musician was Bryan Adams, and that the rest of our conversation 4 months ago was her telling me about a Bryan Adams concert she'd gone to when she was younger.

(the whole scene was very much like a scene from one of my favorite movies: Groundhog Day...I guess it's the closest I'll ever get).

It's a good thing she was an older lady because I think that freed me from her suspecting me of hitting on her.

After I responded I noticed that I had pretty much gone through all the questions on her smalltalk list. So, she just got quiet and finished cutting my hair. The whole thing was pretty strange.

I guess I'm just bad at first impressions.

I guess I'm even worse at second first impressions.

Anyway, that's my haircut story. She'll probably remember me next time.

Hope you all have a great day.

P.S. Oh, and here's the pre-haircut almost hippie picture: