IT'S THE 90S! from Everything Is Terrible! on Vimeo.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Discipline
Well, my best friend warned me of this. He said that my kids would turn on me. (He predicted this when kids strike the teens, however, and it's happening NOW.)
I am not prepared for this. Neither is my wife. No one is, I have learned. We all need more schooling on parenting. Why is it always considered to be a seat of the pants, trial and error enterprise? Why do we all just shrug and "do our best" when we can?
I want to get a degree in fatherhood. I want to learn from someone who's really good at it. Instead, I take time out of my free time to watch movies, work on the pirate ship, sleep...when The Most Important facet of my life, parenting, is neglected.
I know that every situation is full of variables, and I am aware that no two kids are the same, let alone parallel households. None of that should serve as an excuse, however.
I listened to a great TED talk in which a father set up cameras throughout his home to document how his child acquired vocabulary. It was a very intricate study over the course of a year. I wish there were MANY more such studies on EVERY aspect of child rearing. Sometimes I wish I were always on camera, always accountable, for it might make me a better parent. (I've had too many embarrassing outbursts in these 8 years, already, and I regret them all.)
How can I attend to my calling, parenting, when life is so cluttered with everything incidental? How can I find reliable resources, not some quack cashing in on anxious parents?
Right now my kids are needing discipline, and I liberally apply it, but I think it is not done well. A friend of mine never raises his voice (when he and family visit) and yet his kids are shiny-well-behaved. I want to know his secret.
I want all the secrets of parenting....NOW.
I am not prepared for this. Neither is my wife. No one is, I have learned. We all need more schooling on parenting. Why is it always considered to be a seat of the pants, trial and error enterprise? Why do we all just shrug and "do our best" when we can?
I want to get a degree in fatherhood. I want to learn from someone who's really good at it. Instead, I take time out of my free time to watch movies, work on the pirate ship, sleep...when The Most Important facet of my life, parenting, is neglected.
I know that every situation is full of variables, and I am aware that no two kids are the same, let alone parallel households. None of that should serve as an excuse, however.
I listened to a great TED talk in which a father set up cameras throughout his home to document how his child acquired vocabulary. It was a very intricate study over the course of a year. I wish there were MANY more such studies on EVERY aspect of child rearing. Sometimes I wish I were always on camera, always accountable, for it might make me a better parent. (I've had too many embarrassing outbursts in these 8 years, already, and I regret them all.)
How can I attend to my calling, parenting, when life is so cluttered with everything incidental? How can I find reliable resources, not some quack cashing in on anxious parents?
Right now my kids are needing discipline, and I liberally apply it, but I think it is not done well. A friend of mine never raises his voice (when he and family visit) and yet his kids are shiny-well-behaved. I want to know his secret.
I want all the secrets of parenting....NOW.
Monday, September 19, 2011
It's talk like a pirate day!!
So, you should check out the other blog I keep: PirateShipPlayground.
Meanwhile, here's some jokes I shared with me students:
- What kind of ships do pirates have trouble with?
- What do you get when you cross a pirate with a zucchinni?
- What do you say when a pirate sloop runs aground?
- Why does it take pirates so long to learn the alphabet?
- A pirate walks into a bar wearing a paper towel on his head. He sits down at the bar and orders some dirty rum. The bartender asks, "Why are you wearing a paper towel?" The pirate replies...
Ohhhhhhh, it's one of my favorite holidays, indeed. Everyone should get worked up over it. Years ago, I pointed readers to the best primer online for talking pirate, but just in case ye missed it:
Answers:
- Relationships
- A Squash-buckler
- Ship out of luck
- Because they can spend years at C
- "Arrrr...." says the pirate, "I've got a Bounty on me head!"
Enjoy!
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Darius Rucker
We were fortunate to be able to attend the State Fair concert Tuesday night performed by Darius Rucker. If anyone is unfamiliar, he's a country-western singer. I would offer, he's a great country-western singer. More than that, he's a great song writer.
People know him as the former front man for Hootie and the Blowfish. They also know him as "that black country singer."
That's what bothers me. Sure, it's novel that he crossed over from pop/blues to country. Sure, he's the only African-American since Charley Pride to make the c/w charts....but that's what's so bothersome.
I get tired of people giving him mention as the black guy who sings country.
My point is simple: Darius Rucker is a great musician in his own right, by his own skill, regardless of his background or race. I like his singing, sure, but his lyrics (that is, that he writes) are outstanding...yes commercial, but still, outstanding!
People know him as the former front man for Hootie and the Blowfish. They also know him as "that black country singer."
That's what bothers me. Sure, it's novel that he crossed over from pop/blues to country. Sure, he's the only African-American since Charley Pride to make the c/w charts....but that's what's so bothersome.
I get tired of people giving him mention as the black guy who sings country.
My point is simple: Darius Rucker is a great musician in his own right, by his own skill, regardless of his background or race. I like his singing, sure, but his lyrics (that is, that he writes) are outstanding...yes commercial, but still, outstanding!
Friday, September 09, 2011
Too many pictures?
I have been divided on this for some time: can one take too many pictures?
I grew up in the days when one had to make quite an investment to purchase and develop film. (Developing pictures took a week, postage, patience...). In those days, I think people took pictures more mindful of the result, more attentive to the content. I have never been a photographer, but I was always frugal in my photography, snapping what I considered meaningful photos. (There was, I must admit, a period in my youth when I shot everything! I developed rolls of film from my little Kodak Instamatic yielding nothing much, just lots of cute girls spotted on my vacation, etc.)
I also respect those who by faith and tradition do not like their photos to be taken. See Aniconism. I think we need to be considerate of people who, for whatever reason, do not want captured on film, whether it is just vanity or because they are wanted by authorities. I am also worried whenever my children are photographed, knowing there are (literally) hundreds of their pictures on the Internet now. I fear stalkers, pedophiles, etc.
All that said, my wife is a shutterbug! She takes photography classes. She has a photo-a-day website. She has thousands of pics on facebook, etc. She probably has many gigabytes of photos on her hard drive. When people attend parties at our place, they are surprised if there are not pictures being taken constantly.
On the bright side, there are no gaps in the chronicle of our lives. Everything even remotely significant seems to be immortalized in (digital) film. Whether it's a new Lego castle some kid built or graduating from college, it's all there. Kyle back from the war-Snap. Disney on ice-Snap. Even my kids are in on the act. Chicken lays a big egg-Snap. Chicken poo looks like Italy-Snap.
Our eldest has had so many pictures taken, so many scrapbook pages made of him...he uses these to recollect days gone by. The others have not been forsaken, but they are surely not so thoroughly documented as the eldest.
This, then, leads me to the question I'm wrestling with. When Jax reviews these pictures, how much of what he rattles off is truly memory, and how much of it is reconsititued by pictures he's looking at? Is it memory or is it "photographic memory," pardon the twist on the phrase. I wonder sometimes if making it easy to "remember" by capturing everything in digital images might somehow make it harder to really forge memories.
It's the same information retrieval question I was working on a month or more back. In this era of electronic memory and information, how much content is going to find some traction, some stick, in our true meatspace memory? If it's so easy to access every cake, candle, and present ever received, why would one go to the labor of really remembering it, when it can just be retrieved on a file and reviewed.
I like fond memories and special pictures. I am not so partial to what I am considering an over-documentation of life.
Hmmmm.
I grew up in the days when one had to make quite an investment to purchase and develop film. (Developing pictures took a week, postage, patience...). In those days, I think people took pictures more mindful of the result, more attentive to the content. I have never been a photographer, but I was always frugal in my photography, snapping what I considered meaningful photos. (There was, I must admit, a period in my youth when I shot everything! I developed rolls of film from my little Kodak Instamatic yielding nothing much, just lots of cute girls spotted on my vacation, etc.)
I also respect those who by faith and tradition do not like their photos to be taken. See Aniconism. I think we need to be considerate of people who, for whatever reason, do not want captured on film, whether it is just vanity or because they are wanted by authorities. I am also worried whenever my children are photographed, knowing there are (literally) hundreds of their pictures on the Internet now. I fear stalkers, pedophiles, etc.
All that said, my wife is a shutterbug! She takes photography classes. She has a photo-a-day website. She has thousands of pics on facebook, etc. She probably has many gigabytes of photos on her hard drive. When people attend parties at our place, they are surprised if there are not pictures being taken constantly.
On the bright side, there are no gaps in the chronicle of our lives. Everything even remotely significant seems to be immortalized in (digital) film. Whether it's a new Lego castle some kid built or graduating from college, it's all there. Kyle back from the war-Snap. Disney on ice-Snap. Even my kids are in on the act. Chicken lays a big egg-Snap. Chicken poo looks like Italy-Snap.
Our eldest has had so many pictures taken, so many scrapbook pages made of him...he uses these to recollect days gone by. The others have not been forsaken, but they are surely not so thoroughly documented as the eldest.
This, then, leads me to the question I'm wrestling with. When Jax reviews these pictures, how much of what he rattles off is truly memory, and how much of it is reconsititued by pictures he's looking at? Is it memory or is it "photographic memory," pardon the twist on the phrase. I wonder sometimes if making it easy to "remember" by capturing everything in digital images might somehow make it harder to really forge memories.
It's the same information retrieval question I was working on a month or more back. In this era of electronic memory and information, how much content is going to find some traction, some stick, in our true meatspace memory? If it's so easy to access every cake, candle, and present ever received, why would one go to the labor of really remembering it, when it can just be retrieved on a file and reviewed.
I like fond memories and special pictures. I am not so partial to what I am considering an over-documentation of life.
Hmmmm.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Slideshow experiment
- miss you two smore-eating fools
- camp out fire pit
- too many cameras dilute memories
- ever get tired of hot dogs
- birthday cake seems out of place outdoors
- candid
- we're watching animals, they're watching us at the zoo
- beware of the wallaby
- wrestling leads to carpet burns
- Darth brooks
- hit me with a noodle again, I dare you
- masks...we wear masks
- a bandanna makes the man
- in this picture, he's only 4 (now 8)
- before Afghanistan
- face-off
- I miss that house in Andover
Nothing meaty is coming of this, but here's the experiment: fire up your digital photos in random slide show mode and caption/comment on them. Mine are on a 5 second rotation right now for this venture. It's a good free-writing exercise, and after completed, one would mine the list for something worthy of elaboration.
In this case, I think my general thoughts on cameras (#3) might merit further study (but not now).
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Some jokes from my students...
Why did the farmer bury all his money?
So his soil would be rich.
What did one wall say to the other?
Meet you at the corner.
What do you call lice on a bald man?
Homeless.
What do you call a dead parrot?
a polygon
So his soil would be rich.
What did one wall say to the other?
Meet you at the corner.
What do you call lice on a bald man?
Homeless.
What do you call a dead parrot?
a polygon
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