returns

Okay, so there's this Batman movie. It has gotten some press. You may have heard of it.

And I so am frustrated with Heath Ledger for spoiling the plan. Christopher Nolan has expressed in interviews that he imagined the thing as a trilogy. And the ambiguous ending of Ledger's character, together with the otherwise-unjustified appearance of the Scarecrow at the beginning of the film, suggests strongly that Ledger was meant to appear in the third film. How dare he succumb to that Olson twin's death-dealing? Grr.

And does anybody else feel like the film was still an origin story? The first movie was clearly an origin story, but this year's model still felt like it spent all but its last few seconds setting up the situation that the director really wants, with Batman all cool and underground and forced into hiding and stuff. Batman was always cooler when he was a loner, hated by the law enforcement establishment (except Gordon, usually), instead of the Super-Friend heroic public figure we get in most of his eras.

Maybe the third film will have him finally set in a world, instead of setting up one. And to me, the world the third film will inhabit (if it keeps moving in the same direction) is awfully similar to the emotional situation for the original "Dark Knight Returns" graphic novel by Frank Miller, minus the futuristic setting.

Sorry for the fanboy post. Just trying to write something rather than nothing.

Breakfast today was English muffin with Promise and syrup, coffee, and a bowl of generic honey nut cheerios, generic grape-nuts, rejected Alpha-Bits and way too much milk (which is probably why the four-year-old rejected the Alpha-Bits).

travellin' through

I finally watched "Transamerica" tonight, and my wife is right. That is just my sort of movie. Humane, cynical about humanity but generous towards humans, and funny little moments about how little we know ourselves and each other.

I have too many commitment issues to get a tattoo; I can hardly imagine what it would be like to desire gender reassignment surgery. Yet the film raises all sorts of useful questions about who we really are, who we pretend to be, the lies we tell one another and ourselves. And the way that most of us just want somebody to see us for once. To pay enough attention to get us. And yet we keep cutting ourselves off from those who might be able to get to know us that well. Because it's dangerous to be close. It's hazardous to let somebody in--because you never know if you can trust them.

And sometimes the most open people in the world can be the most guarded. I think of a Pedro Almodovar movie where the lead character talks about how drag queens are the most natural people in the world because they have constructed their entire nature from scratch. This is not an exact quote.

Anybody interested in constructing some new reality?

Lunch today was Perkins--coffee and this biscuits and sausage gravy platter from a special menu that emphasizes breakfast all day, as if that were not the whole reason I go to Perkins in the first place. Along with all the fatty things, I ordered my scrambled eggs made with Egg Beaters. A drop in the bucket. And did I mention the best condiment of all: really slow service. They seem to have forgotten my order altogether, and the whole rest of the party was almost finished with their meal before I got mine. And it tasted so good because of the embarassment and hunger. Mmm.

Old-Timers

Last Wednesday:

"Hello"
"Hello, how are you?"
"I'm fine, and you?"
"Is your [report] done?"
"Yes, actually."
"Do you want the news now or later?"
"Well, now."

And then my life changed. My father has a diagnosis. It's not good. It's pretty far along, but we have no idea how it will progress from here. His sister was diagnosed with the same disease and was dead three years later.

I'm still in shock. My work is suffering. I want to go home. I want to quit my job. I want to start an oral history project about him while he can still share stories.

I'm feeling guilty about not being nearer. And about not being closer. I'm feeling guilty about burdening people with my family's health issues. I'm feeling guilty about my work and my family and about not knowing how much to share with people, because my parents don't seem to be telling people. I feel guilty about not knowing how to communicate with my family.

And I'm afraid that it's hereditary. That I'll get it. That my kids will get it.

Okay. Deep breath. Start over. My father has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Stage 5 of a possible 7. Mom claims he is responding well to medication. I don't know what else to say at this point. Help me, Lord.

Lunch today was a recipe we tried for the first time earlier this weekend: refrigerator homestyle biscuits rolled flat, then filled with ground turkey and fat-free cheese, with a dash of salt. Fold over, fork the edges closed, and bake. Basically a diet empanada. Yum. Also, unfilled biscuits (made for the toddlers) with butter and honey. Water, and the dregs of the Starbucks ground coffee we received in a Christmas gift.

Why omit Ovid?

Why didn't they tell me about this? All these years I've been reading my Edith Hamilton, reading my Bullfinch, reading my secondary sources. And then at a library book sale I pick up a well-worn copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in the Horace Gregory translation.

And the heavens open, and I am a mythologist again.

I mean, seriously, I used to think of myself as a somewhat educated fellow. I read the required Homer (including the boring Telemachus parts) and the extracurricular Homer (beautiful bloody battle bits, though repetitive). I read me some Aeneid and some Divine Comedy and some Milton. My best friend in college was a Classics major. But nothing has been as much breezy fun or as diversely educational as this strange, comprehensive poem that would serve so well as a beginning mythology text.

Everything you need is there. Why don't teachers use this version to teach Perseus? Why don't museum curators print selections beside ancient illustrations? This is so well written, so readable, such an education in pacing and transition control... Are people so afraid of primary texts that they would rather read badly written Cliff's Notes than actual good, terse, muscular writing? (Don't answer that.)

Or do Gregory's oddly VH1-ish introduction and oddly located chapter summaries scare people away?

If I ever teach a mythology class, this will be a significant chunk of the curriculum. I'll probably have to throw in some other cultures to be more politically correct. But Ovid is a pretty ideal Dead White Male.

This nerd says check it out.

Breakfast today was homemade monkey bread made by a very intense four-year-old. Torn-up raw refrigerator biscuits in a loaf pan with melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon poured over the top, then baked for much longer than I expected. Lunch was much less interesting.

Crimes in Social Science

I'm enjoying slogging through Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect. It seeks to reveal how normal people do evil, with special attention to the author's own famous study: The Stanford Prison Experiment. Thirty some year later, the guy finally gets around to writing a book about it. Makes me feel more hopeful about my own procrastination.

Anyway, a passage on conformity experiments brought back my own brief days as a social scientist. For the eighth grade science fair, my scientifically superior friend WBL suggested that we replicate a famous (but not yet to me) experiment by Solomon Asch, where subjects are asked to compare the length of lines with each other, and answer which lines were the same length. The trick was that confederates of the experimenter would be taking aloud the same test at the same time, and they would conspire to answer certain predetermined questions incorrectly. The experiment would be to see how often subjects would bow to peer pressure and give the wrong answer.

Quite often, as it turned out, both for Asch and for ourselves. But I have always felt queasy about the way we did the experiment. To begin with, our "confederates" were our friends--people known to be honors students near the top of the class. And nothing was anonymous. And for some reason we didn't always use lines, but sometimes used questions that people genuinely might not know the correct answer to. And perhaps most egregiously, we failed to debrief our test subjects so that they would know what was going on. How do you suppose these friends and acquaintances of ours felt after they suspected that they had been had?

It was fun to participate in a social science experiment, and we did establish that peer pressure is indeed strong. But I fear that the exercise largely functioned as a chance for us honors student nerds to feel superior to the people we invited into our experiment. And to exert power over others with the one form of superiority that we had: test-taking skills. These people would be justified in never trusting me again.

I felt queasy at the time about this (though perhaps not as queasy as when I was buying and selling people's souls in high school). But I never spoke up or stopped the experiment. I just did a poor job at presenting it at the science fair, because I felt guilty. And reading Zimbardo's book, I feel like I was living inside Milgram's famous electric shock experiment--I was willing to cause possible harm to my peers for the sake of a silly experiment. And I did nothing to get out or stop it.

I am very suspicious of using power over people. But sometimes I do it. And it makes me sick. This is why I am not a social scientist--a weak stomach.

Lunch today was forgettable, but supper was interesting: instant rice, frozen broccoli from a nuke-in bag, chow mein noodles, and leftover generic spaghettios. I am trying to be supportive of a loved one's restricted diet. Eating without fat is remarkably difficult, though.

clique track

On "Grey's Anatomy," there has been until recently a shameful neglect of Dr. Miranda Bailey. Finally she is getting a chance to lead again. Her leadership provides me some assertiveness training reinforcement from time to time.

Well, Shonda Rhimes (sister of LeAnn and Busta) is already doing her predictable deflation-of-any-character-who-shows-any-strength-whatsoever thing on Dr. Bailey, and tonight's episode provided me with some food for thought.

First, an old high-school friend showed up to provide a heaping helping of what some call cake. (By the way, Lesley, write your book already. Yes, boys can understand the concept, though probably not immediately and probably never perfectly. In my seven years as a recovering cakeboy, I would claim I have been less cruel to women than before I learned the vocabulary. Sometimes still cruel, of course, but less cruel than before.) And Bailey demonstrated just how powerful an old but life-defining adolescent relationship can remain long after you were supposed to be an adult.

So far, all good, messy, life-situation defining fun.

But then Bailey starts to complain to the local recovering cakeboy (McDreamy), which I approve, and she talks as if the most defeating characteristic of her high school life was wearing a band uniform, and I cannot approve of this one bit.

Why does suddenly membership in the band connote lasting shame into adulthood in our culture? Is this the influence of the "American Pie" movies? Is it really so damaging to think of oneself as a former band geek? I've seen this many places, and it is getting to be an awfully unfair cliche.

My wife claims that this shame varies from school to school, or from region to region. But I would claim that band members should have fewer lasting effects from high school geekitude than other kinds of high school geeks.

Yes, at the time I was occasionally ashamed of my membership in the band rather than in other, more prestigious, high school cliques. In high school, I felt like a geek for enjoying the band so much. But in retrospect, the band was a relatively healthy community that instilled self-respect and leadership ability and plenty of friends and support for its members. And the ability to play an instrument is something to enjoy later in life, not be ashamed of.

(Maybe doing a pronounced "glide stride" during the parade at my son's music class was something to be embarrassed about. I don't know. Other people seemed to be laughing at me.)

And at least I wasn't in the orchestra.

Lunch today was red beans and rice from a cheap mix. With lots of saltines, extra spices, and water. And then I cooked a whole 'nother meal for supper to cover up the smell, due to lingering trauma from an unfortunate olfactory incident during my wife's pregnancy.

autumn

Today the leaves have faded a bit. The other day they were yellow like banana peels. Today they are more like Post Toasties.

I made a point of walking a bit extra on my way to work. I parked in my usual place, but chose to walk all the way around the block instead of going directly in the door. And I enjoyed the weather.

It's a wellness thing.

For breakfast today my toddler Grant and I made muffins and cornbread. They tasted so good because they were made with pedagogy.