Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dad

As a man, I value my alone time; as an academic, solitude is integral to my scholarship; and as a writer, you can’t be in here right now, I’m closing the door and putting a 25lb kettlebell in front of it, I’ll be out in a couple hours, bye!  There’s a Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on which Jerry Seinfeld jokes his first words weren’t “mama” or “dada;’ rather, they were, “leave me alone!” I’ve never agreed with another human being more.  When I say, “I want to be left alone,” it’s a cry for help, and the help I need is for you to get lost. It’s a miracle I ever found a partner who understands. Thankfully, my wife values the work I produce in my alone time, so she's as understanding as a person can be when i tell her to scram. My isolation solution has been hampered considerably by the addition of baby. My baby is a brand new person who requires constant attention; more than that, she’s reliant on my wife and me to teach her everything. Since she would not exist on thi...

My baby got all these medieval ailments.  So far she’s had croup AND hand, foot and mouth diseases -Trixie’s a real Renaissance woman!   Obviously it’s hard on us when she’s sick because it requires a great deal of extra work. Our lives, which we've grown accustomed to being run by the tyrannical rule of a baby, are now subject to the dictatorial whims of millions of microscopic germs. Their rule is marked by torrents of tears and floods of diarrhea. If she's really sick or running a fever, to free ourselves from the rule of these despotic, scatological germs we have to seek the help of medical institutions.  Doctors, nurses and insurance companie s allegedly exist for the sake of public welfare despite the fact that dealing with them usually makes me want to blow my brains out.  When Trixie was diagnosed with croup, our pediatrician, who we really like, prescribed exactly three (3) doses of the steroid Trixie needed. Not one drop more, not one drop less. She ...

Have you ever been around someone who constantly belittles themselves and beats themselves up for the way they act or the way they acted in the past?  Have you ever noticed these people who beat the shit out of themselves all the time aren’t even any good at it? First and foremost, they’re usually beating themselves up for transgressions or ‘flaws’ which, in all honestly, are rarely even one of the Top 10 Biggest Problems This Person has. My mom, for example, a World Champion of Beating the Shit Out of Herself, was recently visiting and she was mercilessly self-critical as she thought back to when she was 19 and she started smoking cigarettes so the people she met while studying abroad in Spain would like her.  Not only is this reason for starting smoking - to be thought of as cool or to be liked - the reason every person in the history of cigarettes started smoking, my mom also quit smoking 28 years ago. In other words, this decision from 40+ years ago which my mom is hold...

A huge plank of current Republican political ideology is the idea government should be run like a business.  Let’s call it USA, Inc. The philosophy is that areas of fiscal waste should be tightened, businesses should be allowed to thrive, our defense should be strong and our international posture should be aggressive. These are corporate virtues, these are right-wing American virtues. Thinking of a government this way has led to decades of US economic and military dominance.  But amidst all this growth, a basic aspect of corporate structure has been omitted from USA, Inc. and as a result, morale among its employees is very low. We’re angry. We’re mistrustful. We’re worried about the future. It feels like nobody’s looking after We The People. USA, Inc.  doesn’t need tough leadership and a swift kick in the ass to solve these issues of morale. We’re already doing great in terms of performance and productivity, which a firm hand encourages. We now need someone in gove...