BOOKS: Just Under the Wire

Wouldn't you know it? Young Master Sam chose this week to come down with one of his inconvenient ailments. This time it was a fairly innocuous low-grade fever that mainly just made him C-R-A-B-B-Y. Mostly at night of course. This despite the fact that I kept pointing out exemplary sick children in literature, such as Tiny Tim and Little Nell, who bore their maladies bravely so as not to be a burden. Sam didn't buy it and had a few choice things to say about Dickens. Well, he didn't say them, of course, but I could tell he was thinking them.

Since we're getting to be old hands at this sick baby thing, we knew that nothing was in jeopardy... except my completing my fifty books for the year. The tears are still drying on my face from the final one, but I'll get to that later. First...

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (#49)
Remember back in the heady days when Fametracker had discussion boards? The books boards kicked serious ass, and I was a hardcore regular. Another frequent poster, Hazel Motes (Hazel, if you're reading this, howdy!), whose opinions I grew to respect deeply, posted more than once that Pale Fire was one of his all-time favourite books. I made a mental note and committed myself to finding and reading it someday.

Which I did. And if ever a book blew my mind while at the same time making me feel like I've lost my academic mojo (read: become a bit of a dummy), it was this one.

It's hard to describe Pale Fire. It's not a novel, per se, though it is fictional. The first section is a previously unpublished 999-line poem by a reclusive genius poet named John Shade. The remainder of the book is a footnoted commentary on the poem by Dr. Charles Kinbote, Shade's "self-styled Boswell," who has taken on the task of applying his academic acumen (he's a botanist) to analyzing this work after Shade's death.

It took me a little while to wrap my head around this approach to storytelling, but I got into it. At first, it seemed like the story was merely comprised of revealing Kinbote's arrogance and ignorance, along with his over-identification with and adoration of Shade. Amusing as all this was (who doesn't like to read snarky commentary on academic hypocrisy?), I was at a bit of a loss as to what all the hype was about (and Pale Fire has been hyped greatly, including one critic calling it "one of the great works of art of this century").

As I made my way through the footnotes, however, the real story appeared. It's an intricate, suspenseful, dark -- though still funny -- story about academic envy and political intrigue. And I can see how the hype is deserved.

My one complaint about Pale Fire is that I came across it too late in my life. My smartypants undergrad self would have eaten it up with a spoon. As it was, while I enjoyed this book immensely, its experimental narrative and postmodern circling around its themes made me a bit impatient at times. I've become a linear thinker, I fear. Probably due to hardening of the arteries.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (#50)
This is a novel about opera and kidnapping, as unlikely a pairing of subjects as you could expect to find. But such is the glory of fiction: here they are.

The story begins on the evening of a private performance by celebrated soprano Roxanne Coss on the occasion of the birthday of wealthy Japanese businessman Mr. Hosokawa. The setting: the vice presidential palace in a fictional third-world country. While Roxane's final note is still quivering in the air, the lights go out. When they come back on, the men and women present realize there's been a coup and they're all hostages to a paramilitary group with an outrageous list of demands.

When I say that this is a novel about opera, what I really mean is that it's a novel about music. Reading this book reminded me of a term I learned a few years ago: synesthesia.

Synesthesia is an involuntary joining in which the real information of one sense is accompanied by a perception in another sense. (I got that definition here, where you can also go to do some tricks that replicate the synesthetic experience.) In other words, a synesthetic individual might be able to see a particular colour when they hear different sounds, or to smell a certain scent when they see certain colours. Fascinating, huh? Who would have guessed that such a thing was possible without the necessity of consuming cheap acid?

The way that Patchett writes about music is almost like synesthesia. Throughout Bel Canto, listening to beautiful music is like falling, like diving, like eating, like swimming, like sex, like breathing. Amidst this bounty of metaphors and similes is Patchett's clear conviction that music is the one true and beautiful thing we have to cling to.

When I say this is a novel about kidnapping, what I really mean is that it's a novel about the complex relationships that form between kidnappers and hostages. There's another term that comes into play here: Stockholm syndrome. It's used to describe the relationship a hostage can build with their kidnapper.

Bel Canto could be a textbook on Stockholm syndrome. As the weeks and months pass, the line between captors and hostages blurs and, within the vice presidential palace, they build an unlikely Eden.

But it's not a textbook. It's a gorgeously written, unabashedly told love story... actually, two love stories... and in the end, three love stories, all of which won over even a poseur cynic like me. As the novel progressed, I found myself a victim of Stockholm syndrome, identifying with the captors and, like the captors and hostages alike, finding myself wishing for an unlikely ending: that all these characters would be allowed to live the rest of their days in the idyll they'd created.

I won't give away the ending, but suffice to say, while it rung slightly improbable to me, it was unexpected and lovely and strangely, sadly uplifting.

It's been a long while since I read a book that made me wish it went on and on forever. What an inspiring way to end this year.

BOOKS: So Long, Fiction. We Hardly Knew Ye.

Is fiction dead? And if so, where should I send flowers?

Literary media, like the make-or-break-an-author’s-reputation New York Times Book Review, have cut back on reviews of novels in favour of non-fiction coverage. Globally, fiction sales are down. Publishers and agents returning from the Frankfurt Book Fair reported that Canadian fiction, despite its stellar international reputation, wasn’t generating the heat it used to. Even J.K. Rowling was in a slump, with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth book in her wizard series, not flying off the shelves as quickly as in the past.

After reading this, I went to Amazon (I know, I know, very scientific) and looked at their bestsellers for the past few years. Here they are:

2005

1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
2. YOU: The Owner's Manual : An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet Oz
3. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
4. Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
5. Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

2004

1. My Life by Bill Clinton
2. Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry by John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi
3. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

2003

1. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
2. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
3. The South Beach Diet by Arthur Agatston, M.D.

2002

1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
2. Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! by Michael Moore
3. The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

Well, yup, I guess based on these titles, it looks like non-fiction is flying off the shelves at an increasing rate.

But can I tell you my theory, based on my incredibly scientific random sampling (I'm all about the science today, have you noticed?) of the three people I know who claim to read non-fiction almost exclusively? I bet two-thirds of the people who bought these books never finished them... if they even started them. (Not you, of course. You're the exception.) A LOT of these titles have "gift book for dad" and "unread coffee table fodder" written all over them. And I'll go even further and extrapolate that two-thirds of ALL non-fiction titles don't get finished.

So there.

How's that for taking a bold yet completely tenuous stance?

I guess if we're measuring a book's "success" based on "sales" and all that, then non-fiction is the winner. But I think that speculating about fiction's demise based on bestseller lists and new releases is taking too narrow a view. Most of the fiction lovers I know read widely across genres and time periods. They tend to rely on libraries and used bookstores for their fix. They're also ardent re-readers. All of these factors make tracking their reading habits nigh impossible.

It's understandable that publishers have to respond to market forces to stay in business; however, publishers also need to have a decent backlist of time-honoured strong sellers to support the risks they take with their new frontlisted books. And I think it's reasonable to speculate that, since non-fiction tends to be more faddish than fiction, it's poorer backlist fodder. (Do you think anyone's going to be reading Freakonomics in ten years? Or The South Beach Diet? And much as I loved the premise, I didn't even get to the halfway point of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Is anyone still talking about it? Though, to argue against myself for a second, hopefully The Nanny Diaries isn't going to become a time-honoured classic, either.)

I hope that publishers agree with this reasoning and continue to publish and support the novelists and short-story writers who may, ostensibly, be their bread and butter.

Speaking of bread and butter, want to know the bestselling books of all time? The Bible, as everyone knows, tops the list. But number two: Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls. Not surprising, actually. I have a copy of Valley of the Dolls, as well as, until recently, five bibles. They just seem to accumulate of their own accord, like safety pins and Catholics.

Summary: Fiction may be dead, but you can't go wrong getting into the bible biz.

BOOKS: A Somewhat Dated and Highly Subjective Real Book Lover's Guide to the Ten Best Books of 2005

It's the end of the year, which means it's "best of" list time. Amazon has theirs. Salon has theirs. And The New York Times, of course, has theirs. To illustrate that I can make a list alongside the best of them, I decided to compile mine.

Unlike the big boys' lists, however, mine won't be full of fancy-pants new releases and current bestsellers, for a couple of reasons. First: hardcover books? What honest-to-god book lover in their right mind buys hardcover at full retail price? Puh-lease. (And for some unfathomable reason, I'm still not on publishers' mailing lists for comps. Don't they know who I am?) And second, who has time for new releases when you're just trying to keep up with the tottering stacks of "must read next" books that have been accumulating since 1992?

So instead I offer you this:

A Somewhat Dated and Highly Subjective Real Book Lover's Guide to the Ten Best Books of 2005

Vanity Fair - I bet if they came out with top ten lists back in 1848, this would have been near the top. As it is, it probably tops my list as the best book I (re-)read this year. Still so catty and funny and accessible. I heart Thackeray big-time.

The Roaring Girl - I'm so glad I finally cleaned and purged my bookshelves because, if I hadn't, I never would have rediscovered this amazing collection of short stories by Canadian Greg Hollingshead, one of the best writers you've never heard of.

Good Omens - Funniest new book I read this year, hands down. I'm chagrined it took me so long to get to it.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - This was a re-read. And I may have to read it again in 2006.

A Complicated Kindness - A dark horse! I was not expecting this book to be poignant and funny and deceptively simple, despite the fact that the book jacket kept promising it would be.

Paris Stories - Because I am both a slowpoke and a dumdum, it took me until this year to finally discover Mavis Gallant. Fortunately, Gallant seems to be wonderfully prolific, so I look forward to a long and beautiful relationship.

The Great Gatsby - To think, this book used to bug the bejeebus out of me. Thank goodness I smartened up.

The Remains of the Day - Yes, the ending did force me to wake my dog so that I'd have someone to hug, but it was still an amazing read. I need to approach this one again, now that I can lose (or at any rate fully embrace) my sense of dread.

The Little House box set - Envisioning these stories from the perspective of Laura's parents breathed fresh -- if somewhat terrifying -- life into them. "Good old days," my foot.

Right Ho, Jeeves - I will say this as many times as it needs to be said: you simply cannot go wrong with Bertie and Jeeves.

Books that I could have lived without but stubbornly read anyway because I get That Way once I've started a book: Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Christopher Moore's Fluke, and -- this is going to shock you -- Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul 2. (Were you shocked?)

Ah, well. You can't always kick a goal.

MAGAZINES: All the Best Photos of 2005?

TIME magazine recently came out with its Best Photos of 2005 (viewable here in a gorgeous slideshow). The collection is dominated by images from the various natural and man-made disasters that plagued this year: the aftermath of the southeast Asian tsunami, the riots in Paris, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the earthquake along the Pakistan-India border, the war in Iraq, the bombings in London, and the ethnic warfare in the Sudan.

I know these were devastating global events. I know it's important that they were documented for posterity. And I feel grateful that we live in an age where access to such imagery is so easy, because I believe images are the most efficient, effective way to create empathy.

But a tiny (and no doubt selfish) part of me is sad that these are the only images selected to define 2005. Was there no joy or beauty worth remembering?

Edited to add: MSNBC's The Year in Pictures includes some equally bleak images, as well as some uplifting (and, dare I say, even funny) ones. Overall, I give this selection props for showing greater range, even if some of the dark ones -- such as the American soldier comforting the dying Iraqi child -- made me cry. Thanks to Em for the link.

BOOKS: What'd You Get? What'd You Get?

The New York Times' Joe Queenan had this to say in his pre-Christmas plea for no more books as gifts:

I am sure I am not alone when I state that cavalierly foisting unsolicited reading material upon book lovers is like buying underwear for people you hardly know. Bibliophiles are ceaselessly engaged in the mental reconfiguration of a Platonic reading list that will occupy them for the next 35 years: First, I'll get to "Buddenbrooks," then "The Man Without Qualities," then "The Decline of the West," and finally "Finnegans Wake." But I'll never get to "Finnegans Wake" if I keep stopping to read books like "The Frontier World of Doc Holliday."

Grumpy! I think I tend to fare better at Christmas than Joe, though, and this year was no exception.

Our wonderful housemate, The Don, whom I rarely write about here because he is very mysterious in a cheerful sort of way, gave me a lovely, lovely gift certificate. Yay!

Rusty gave me a fabulous gift bag full of books. Several were from my wishlist and, of these, all were books I was planning to make it a priority to read early in the new year: Runaway by Alice Munro, The Darling by Russell Banks, and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Woohoo!

And the one book that wasn't on my wishlist would definitely have been on it if I'd thought of it: Jean Shepherd's A Christmas Story, the memoir upon which the movie of the same name (which I've seen and loved dozens of times) is based. (Did you know these memoirs were published in serial form by Playboy back in the 1950s? Neither did I!) I think this book may trump the book I was planning to finish the year with.

Rusty, whose inability to endure suspense usually leads him to foist at least one unwrapped gift on me days before Christmas, was true to form this year. Some time around mid-December, he cleverly "hid" a book on our shelves, a la purloined letter, for me to find. Not knowing there was a game afoot, however, I didn't look. After 90 or so unbearable seconds, Rusty busted out with, "What's that on top of that pile of books?" What, indeed! It was The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories and, without having read it, I think I can say it may be one of the finest collections of short stories ever to grace the printed page. Well, if you like Christmas.

Edited by Alberto Manguel, this collection includes stories by Alice Munro, John Cheever, Mavis Gallant, Vladimir Nabakov, Murial Spark, and Truman Capote, whose short story "A Christmas Memory" is what led to this volume reaching my hands.

A little backstory:

Almost two years ago, Rusty and I went to Cuba for a couple of weeks for some much-needed R&R. The fact that we chose Cuba is integral to the story, because Cuba, having pretty much no American tourism, does not cater to English speakers. Which means no English bookstores. Which means you'd bloody well better make sure you've brought enough reading material with you. Rusty had not. And it was this crucial error that led to him actually, out of sheer desperation, reading Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, which I'd just finished and was raving about. My edition also contained some other short stories, finishing with the simple but hugely affecting story "A Christmas Memory."

Rusty -- who is 100 percent all man, I assure you -- will not mind me telling you that this story made him a bit choked up. Which is good because I probably would otherwise have divorced him on the grounds that he's a coldhearted jerk. The story also led him to speculate that there's a short-story anthology niche waiting to be filled: literary Christmas stories for grown-ups.

Given that Rusty has tagged himself the ideas man in our relationship, my job was to do the legwork and track down the other stories needed to flesh out the collection. Those bastards at Penguin beat me to the punch. What pies don't they have their greedy flippers in?

At any rate, Rusty doesn't hold a grudge, so when he saw this book, knowing my great love both of Christmas and of short stories, he got it just for me. Awww...

And elsewhere in the "Awww... shucks" department, I got the online equivalent of a luscious mandarin in the toe of my stocking: a nomination for a Best of Blogs Award, in the Best Book or Literary Blog category. What a smashing way to end the year.

So thanks, Tamara! My head just grew two sizes. Rusty would like to have a word with you. Thanks also to fellow writer and book-blogger Anita for giving me her insider's scoop about the awards.

Apparently nominations close on January 3rd, 2006 (um, hint?). And I swear this is the last you'll hear me pimping this. Unless I make the finals. Heh.

ETC: Eat Till It Hurts

It's late on Christmas evening. Tryptophan is still sluggishly circulating through our brains, and the thought of eating more turkey is a bit overwhelming. But we will. Believe it or not, we'll probably snarf a "goodnight sandwich" before bed. And a "good-morning sandwich" for breakfast. And so on.

But what to do when sandwiches start to lose their appeal and you've still barely scraped the carcass of your holiday beast? That's where Christmas in a Pan comes in.

By popular demand (okay, only one person actually demanded it), I asked Rusty for his recipe for his trademarked dish, Christmas in a Pan. Bear in mind that this is a man who eschews maps, instruction manuals, and cookbooks, so all directions are approximate. Rusty, however, assures me that not only is this the best way to use up Christmas dinner leftovers, it's also nigh idiot-proof.

So here it is, in Rusty's own words.

Christmas in a Pan

Serves: Fewer than you'd think, because people tend to gorge themselves on this dish

Christmas in a Pan is better than Christmas dinner because you don’t have to think -- or even use a knife -- while you eat. You just eat until it hurts.

When you make Christmas dinner, try and make sure you have extra dressing, mashed potatoes, corn, and gravy. How much? I have no idea. Basically, look at the pan you will use (it should be about 4-5 inches deep), and then figure how much leftover food you are going to need to fill it.

Take the pan and add the gravy, turkey, and corn. I heat this mixture gently over a burner so that it is easier to mix. As far as consistency goes, you're aiming for a sort of medium-thick slurry. This is the bottom layer of CiaP.

Turn off the heat at this point and add a layer of roughly an inch or so of dressing. Then an inch or two layer of mashed potatoes.

Cover the pan with tinfoil and pop it in the oven. It takes a while to bake all this at about 350 degrees F. You have to keep checking on it.

Once it’s hot all the way through, pull off the tinfoil and thoroughly butter the surface. Then butter it some more. We’re talking dangerous amounts of butter here, people. At this point you can pop it back in the oven for a final 20 minutes to crisp it up. (Leave the tinfoil off.) You can also add some French-fried onion chips for that extra bit of flavour. It’s up to you.

Speaking of flavour, cranberry sauce is pretty good with this. Even if you don't usually like cranberry sauce, the sweetness cuts through the savoriness.

There you go, folks. Speaking from experience, I warn you: STOP EATING BEFORE YOU FEEL FULL. If you start to feel full, then it's already too late. May God have mercy on your soul.

Happy Holidays!

A joyous season to you all.

No, I'm not signing off till the new year. For one thing, I have my final two books to log. And for another thing, in case you hadn't guessed it, I've got busy fingers that like to type.

So next week, if you're spending quality time with the family and things start to get to you -- and you're worried another visit to the eggnog trough might appear unseemly -- head on over to Mama Doppelganger's, where things may be dysfunctional, but from a nice, safe arm's length.

Till then, happy winter-mas.

BOOKS: Me and My Little Brain

When I was younger, my favourite characters in books were resourceful, precocious, entrepreneurial kids.* This is not terribly surprising, as I was something of a resourceful, precocious, entrepreneurial kid myself. To wit:

• The lemonade concession I ran on our front lawn for an entire weekend when I was six. I suspect that I could've sold more than the two glasses my mom bought if our farm hadn't been on a dead-end road. The experts are right: location IS everything.
• The insect festival I planned when I was eight. It was going to be huge. Exotic bugs would be featured -- WHILE STILL ALIVE -- in elaborate terrariums that simulated their natural habitats. I would provide informative tours through the exhibit. There would be insect-themed games and novelties for the kids. People would come from miles around. Notwithstanding the fact that our road had not yet managed to become a throughway, my plans were curtailed when the only insects I could source were a Monarch butterfly and a ladybug. (There were spiders aplenty, but I don't like spiders.)
• The Junior Mafia I was going to organize when I was around 10 or 12. I'm fuzzy on the origins of this idea, but I believe it had something to do with schoolyard retribution for wrongs committed against my younger sister. Most people would've just told off the wrong-doer, but I really felt the need to have organized power behind me to protect the family honour. If I recall correctly, my empire was going to be founded on counterfeiting. I'm not sure when I was planning to add drugs and prostitutes to the mix. Maybe junior high.

Don't even get me started on my failed attempts to set up a laboratory in an empty annex of our cow barn. (A simple Tesla coil... is that too much to hope for?) Or my home-made robots, which never quite lived up to my plans. (Probably for the best. My plans were not in the public's best interest.)

When I wasn't labouring under extremely powerful delusions, I was devouring novels about kids who took on ambitious projects and succeeded where I, perhaps, had not. These were my Dale Carnegies and my Donald Trumps.

Harriet of Harriet the Spy was, of course, my idol. Not only was she precocious and resourceful, she also lived in New York. You just can't compete with that. Harriet is still cooler than I'll ever hope to be. She was also a spy, which inspired me to start my own spy route. Problem: Harriet's world had a dense population and neat things like fire escapes and dumbwaiters. Mine had cows and hay elevators.

Another enterprising New Yorker was Claudia of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. After one too many familial slights, Claudia convinces her brother Jamie to run away from home with her. They hatch a plan, pool their resources, and camp out at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the week. (If this plot sounds familiar but you know you've never read this book, it's because Wes Anderson lifted it for The Royal Tenenbaums.)

I ran away from home once. Unfortunately, my timing was bad. I left right after lunch, and since my mom never expected to see us between lunch and dinner, no one noticed I was gone. Then it started to rain. Returning home from running away without anyone ever knowing you were gone is one of the most deflating human experiences imaginable.

Despite the fact that he's a boy, I also liked Henry Reed of Henry Reed, Inc., possibly because he faced the same challenges that I did in having to hatch all his schemes from his grandparents' home in the country. Training a dog to hunt for truffles, dousing for oil... Henry was a confident big thinker, and I have a lot of respect for that.

I also adored E. Nesbit's Bastable clan, whose antics are narrated by young Oswald Bastable in novels like The Wouldbegoods. Not only are they brave, resourceful, and charming, they're also generous (to a fault). Most of their misadventures centre around their attempts to help others. Remember the Homer Simpson quote, "What this scheme needs is an even zanier scheme"? That pretty much applies to the Bastables.

So when my friend N.C., knowing of my fondness for kids' books about smart go-getters, mentioned that I must have loved The Great Brain books, my flabber was more than a little gasted. I had never even heard of this Great Brain. Such is my arrogance as it pertains to children's literature, I was half-convinced that N.C. was wrong: such books never existed. Fortunately (for me), I kept my big smartypants mouth shut until after I did some searching (if you take "did some searching" to mean "went to Amazon and typed 'Great Brain' in the search field").

The Great Brain, More Adventures of the Great Brain and Me and My Little Brain by John D. Fitzgerald (#48)
The great brain in question belongs to Tom D. Fitzgerald, who is, by his own reckoning, smarter than every kid -- and almost every grown-up -- in town. Tom's escapades are told to us by his admiring younger brother, John (which is also the author's name, so I'm assuming this is a sort of quasi-fictional memoir).

As Homer Simpson would also say, Tom is S-M-R-T. Whether he's tracking down lost kids in a mine shaft, teaching the new kid in town how to fight to prove his mettle, or getting his father and brothers un-lost during a camping trip, Tom's smartitude is matched only by his bravery.

But I suspect that, as a kid, I would have hated him. Not because he's cocky and sure of his own intelligence. So were Harriet and Claudia and Henry. As I understood it, a solid appreciation for one's own abilities was a useful thing to have; humility just slowed you down. So I would've been cool even with the fact that it's Tom who nicknames himself The Great Brain.

No, the problem with Tom is that he's tricksy. If he uses his great brain to help you out, you'd better have one hand on your wallet. Actually, you'd best just keep your hand on your wallet at all times, because Tom has what I'd call a fluid conception of the principles of ownership. Not only is he amenable to tricking you out of your material goods, he's also not above blackmail.

Harriet and Claudia and Henry would be scandalized. And the honourable Oswald would have been outraged.

Coming to The Great Brain as an adult, I was somewhat less prone to moral outrage. Fitzgerald's storytelling is wonderful, and he breathes life and colour into turn-of-the-century Salt Lake City, where the stories take place.

These stories also have heart. In the third book, Me and My Little Brain, John finds himself an only child after Tom goes to boarding school. He initially attempts to fill Tom's scheming shoes with his own not-unclever machinations, but is swiftly caught and given the smackdown by his parents. When an interloper enters John's world in the form of a diabolical four-year-old orphan, John is initially plagued by the satanic youngster, but the plot twists and turns (I'm not going to tell you how), requiring John to use his own "little brain" to save the day in an extremely satisfying resolution that actually made me a little teary.


*But I loathe precocious children in movies. Don't ask me why. I've dubbed this irrational condition McCulkin Syndrome.

ETC: Happy Solstice-mas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Am I the only person who can't hear this poem without thinking of Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School?

BOOKS: This Just In: Cats in Literature Maligned Yet Again

Says Puck, indignant tabby aged 14 and a half, "Now they're just being insulting on purpose."

ETC: What I Didn't Do Over My Winter Holidays

Well, I had big plans this weekend to write a post about recommended holiday reads, but wouldn't you know it? The goldanged holidays got in the way. So instead of blogging my little heart out whilst reclining in the game-show-esque strobe-lit glare that is this year's Christmas tree lighting scheme (thanks, Rusty!), I spent Saturday busily writing, addressing and stamping our Christmas cards and packaging up boxes of goodies for our families.

So that's done. Yee-haw!

And then on Saturday night, a bunch of our closest friends dropped by for an impromptu holiday fete that at some indeterminate point degenerated into an impromptu holiday piss-up, over the course of which I learned two things:

1. Young Master Sam can sleep through anything, including thumping house music so loud it actually makes the bed vibrate and drunken friends who peep in on him to admire his slumbering preciousness.
2. There is such a thing as a "contact hangover." I myself did not drink, unless you count half a shot of orange Stoli mixed with mango juice (aka "the wuss-tini"), but as Rusty put it, "I got to toasting their health, and they got to toasting my health," and next thing you know it's 5:30 am and the cabs are lining up down the block as you scrape the last of the revellers off the porch. A mere four hours later, we were awoken by the dovelike cooing with which Sam signals that he's up and ready to commence his morning ablutions. I looked over at Rusty, who looked like -- how shall I say this gently? -- death served up on a platter with an apple in its mouth. Given the festive spirit(s) that had overtaken him the night before, that made sense, and I'll be honest, I felt the virtuous glee of the abstainer in witnessing the suffering of the overindulger. Then I realized that my own head was throbbing, that my mouth was dry, and that tiny elves had inserted themselves beneath my eyelids while I slept and scrubbed my corneas with equally tiny Brillo pads.

Where's the justice, I ask you.

And then I cleverly (or so I thought) got out of participating in the Sunday-morning coffee run by offering to stay home and change Sam's good-morning diaper. Unbeknownst to me, his morning poo delivery had arrived two hours earlier than scheduled. And that experience was so emotionally exhausting and psychically draining that Sam and I retreated back to the bed and waited for the universe to become a kinder place or for the coffee to arrive, whichever came first.

We bailed on taking showers, despite being covered with party mank. (That's always a strangely liberating feeling, isn't it? That moment you consider showering and then say, "Fuck it! Today I macerate in my own feculence!") Instead, we donned a fresh layer of deodorant, rammed hats on our greasy melons, strapped Sam into the stroller using the patented five-point harness system (we might be bad parents, but we're crafty enough to hide it from the outside world), and hit the streets and the neighbourhood shops to play a few rounds of Hit the Slumming Weekend Yuppie Crowds (Who Take Up All the Residents-Only Parking) with the Stroller While Pretending to Be Sorry.

Good times.

After we got home and scraped the blood off the front of the stroller, Sam napped while Rusty and I ate KFC (don't worry, I'm told by reliable sources that it's vegetarian-friendly) and I proceeded to gorge myself on half a pound of chocolate-covered almonds. Apparently, the (vegetarian-friendly) chicken and the nuts were too much protein for my anemic post-party state, so now I'm lying here nursing a bellyache and not writing about books.

So how was your weekend?

ETC: Something Goofy This Way Comes

Sam senses a presence. [Cue the theme from Jaws.]

Do you sense it, too?

OH MY GOD, IT'S THE DOG.

You'd think Sam would be used to Dobbs by now, since they've been roommates for almost eight months. But no, his face still lights up with idiot glee when Dobbs comes within face-whapping-with-the-tail distance.

One thing I can tell you: if I ever see Sam make this facial expression when he's a teenager, I'm searching his room for drugs.

BOOKS: He's Super! Thanks for Asking.

Carson Kressley, the queerest of the queer eyes, has written a children's book. It's called You're Different and That's Super.*

I think it's about unicorns.





*Customers who viewed this book also viewed The Boy Who Cried Fabulous.

BOOKS: Read It Again... for the Very First Time

When I ruthlessly cleaned my shelves a couple of months back, I made a small stack of books that, not only had I not read, I had forgotten I even owned. These included:

John O'Hara's collection of three novellas, Sermons and Soda-Water. (If you've never read John O'Hara, I forgive you. But only temporarily. If you still haven't read him in six months, there's going to be trouble. Start with Appointment in Samarra or BUtterfield 8, and work from there.)

Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood, which I've been meaning to read for years. The Disappearance of My Memory is more like it.

Stephen Jay Gould's I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History, which I picked up shortly after Carol Shields passed away. I read a lovely tribute to Shields in the paper, and it talked about how her graciousness and curiosity about the world remained with her till the end. To illustrate the latter, the eulogy mentioned that Shields was in the middle of reading a book of Gould's essays. It didn't name which one, so I picked up this one based on the title, which sounded interesting (as opposed to the title of his book Ontogeny and Phylogeny, which frightened me). I'm not the best reader of non-fiction, alas, so I still have to get to this.

There are a handful more, but you get the idea: good books that are long overdue in receiving my attention and respect. But what's much more shameful are the books I picked up from my shelves and knew right away that I'd read... but couldn't remember a single thing about them. Such was The Roaring Girl.

The Roaring Girl by Greg Hollingshead (#47)
What makes my literary amnesia more embarrassing is that this collection of short stories won the Governor General's Award when it came out in 1995, so it merits remembering, right? But what makes me feel really stupid is that these stories are so goddamned great. What else could have been going through my head the first time I read these that would have driven all memory of them from my brain?

1996... 1996... 1996...

Oh. Er. Yes. That year happened to mark the height of Vancouver's underground party scene. Suddenly everything makes much more sense. Well, you're only young once, and at the time it sure seemed like I had a lot of spare brain cells kicking around. Those grow back, right?

The up side to all this is that I got to enjoy these stories afresh. And hey, if this is what getting old is like, sweet! If I can look forward to reading nothing but Jane Austen novels over and over without them ever going stale, sign me up.

Hollingshead's stories parry back and forth over the line between urban disillusionment and suburban angst. The settings and characters are all vastly different, but what these tales all share is Hollingshead's amazing ear for dialogue, as well as his sly knack for mixing sadness with dark (and sometimes not-so-dark) humour.

There's an Alice Munro-esque air about this collection, and I say that as a compliment, not to detract from Hollingshead's fresh, distinctive storytelling gifts.

I did a little digging to see what Hollingshead has published since The Roaring Girl and was gratified to learn that he's been somewhat prolific. I may have to give his latest novel, Bedlam, a go. If I don't forget.

BOOKS: We Cats May Be Cryptic, but We're Not Morons

(Today's book review is provided by guest blogger Puck, age 14-and-a-1/2.)

From time to time, I can't help paying attention to the books that the large hyoo-mans read to the small hyoo-man.

Not normally, as I find most of them puerile beyond all belief. The one about the rabbit who does nothing but say goodnight in tedious detail to every object in the room? You've got to be kidding me. And the one about the cat who wears that ridiculous hat and proceeds to cut a swathe of destruction through the house? Well, that's just plain insulting.

But my ears perked up (well, one ear, anyway) when I heard the biggest hyoo-man start to read about a cat named Mog and what I'm assuming was Mog's first Christmas. Great, I thought to myself, how will cats' intelligence or ethics be maligned in this no-doubt intellectually stultifying tome?

I didn't have to wait long for the answer.

One day Mog woke up and nothing was right in her house.

Fair enough. We've all been there. For me, it started five years ago when the hyoo-mans brought that big, stupid, shaggy asshole into our house, so I can relate.

Everybody was busy.
Debbie was busy.
Nicky was busy.
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas were busy.

Yeah, well. That can be annoying, granted. But if they're all stupid enough to be busy when they could just as easily choose to, say, lie on the heat register, that's their nevermind.

And there were too many people in the house.
There was a jolly uncle
...and two aunts on tippy-toe.

I gotta sympathize with Mog there. Not much pisses me off more than a houseful of peo-- wait a minute. What the christ? "Two aunts on tippy-toe"? What kind of freaky-deaky shit is that?

Mog thought, "I don't like it here."
She went and sat outside on the window-sill.
There was nothing to do and no one to play with, so after a while she went back to sleep.

See, here's where Mog starts to go wrong. Sure, going back to sleep is always an option I like to explore, but if she's already outside on the window-sill, why not play a few rounds of a little game I like to call I'd Like to Go Outside, No Wait a Sec, I'd Like to Come Inside, No Actually I Think I Want to Go Outside Again. Even if your heart isn't 100 percent into the game, it's important training to remind the hyoo-mans that relentless scratching on the windowpane is their cue to open the door. Make sure not to hurry to the door too quickly when it opens. You have your dignity to maintain. In fact, it's never a bad idea to stop halfway across the threshold and attend to an itch on your back, just to remind the hyoo-mans of whose timetable we're all on.

Suddenly she woke up.
She saw something.
It was a tree.
It was a tree walking.

Mog thought, "Trees don't walk. Trees should stay in one place. Once trees start walking about anything might happen."

She ran up the side of the house in case the tree should come and get her.

This is where the story totally falls apart. I've met some stupid cats in my time. In fact, I live with a dim-witted specimen who breathes new life into the expression "dumber than a sack of hair," and even she knows better than to run in terror from what's obviously just a stupid Christmas tree.

Here's what's wrong with Christmas trees:

Needles everywhere that stick to your fur and prick your feet... check.
Weird-tasting water in dish at the base... check.
Getting in trouble when you climb them... check.

But to my knowledge a Christmas tree has never gone on a murderous feline-targeted rampage. Though maybe one has. I don't know. I don't read the papers.

Now, I'm on to you hyoo-mans and your penchant for telling stories through the "naive gaze" of animals, aliens, and Faulknerian idiot man-children. I get that it helps you see afresh all the hypocrisy and weirdness in the world. You've even given it a fancy name: Russian formalism. Fine, sure, whatever. Do what you've got to do to reconcile yourself to your tiny place in your meaningless universe. Just leave us cats out of it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go lick the butter dish.

Author photo by hyoo-man #2

ETC: Overheard in Vancouver

The setting: Two teenaged boys sitting in a bus shelter, looking at a shelter ad for Shakira's new album, Oral Fixation, Vol. 2.

Teen 1: Oral fixation? That's stupid. What the fuck's that?
Teen 2: It means BLOWJOBS, man.
Teen 1: Ohhhh... cool!

ETC: The Whoville Guide to the Holidays

If you're looking to pick up some Penguin books or schwag ("Future reader" bib, anyone?), either as holiday gifts for others or as post-holiday survival incentives for yourself, apparently the publisher is offering its Friends and Family discount to the general public through till January 2, 2006.

Visit the Penguin Group to order. When checking out, enter the promotional code "friend3" to receive 15% off your total. (I'm not sure if this offer extends outside the U.S. Does anyone know?)

Thanks to the anonymous poster who brought this to my attention!

I kind of feel like I have to mention that, long posts about holiday shopping aside, I'm really not the grabby shopaholic I sometimes make myself sound like. Don't get me wrong: I love nice things, but I can usually content myself with window shopping or looking at catalogues or pictures on the internet.

I'm trying to become a minimalist, but Rusty doesn't feel comfortable unless there are piles of crap everywhere, so we compromise in that he lets me busy myself by making his piles of crap look tidy and presentable. I do have a penchant for buying shelves, baskets, and hooks for the storage and presentation of said piles of crap. After books, this is probably my greatest shopping weakness. (Ah, if only the Container Store would come to Canada.)

Where Rusty and I do agree is that, for us, the holidays are not about gifts. Oh, we love to give gifts, yes. We're not Grinchy that way. We have a long list of family members and other loved ones for whom we love to pick out things that we hope they adore. It's just a way of saying, "Hey, we took the time to think of just you for a bit, because we think you're pretty awesome." But we're not big on giving each other piles of gifts. It's just not how we roll.

We tend to view things like books and music and clothes as necessities, so we get those for ourselves all year round. So they're out as gifts. And what's left after you've ruled out books and music and clothes? Not much. At least not for us. We are a simple people.

For us, the holidays are about the tree, the food, and the people. Each year, we pick out the biggest tree that will fit in our house, and we mack it out with our rather impressive collection of ornaments. We stuff the fridge with so much food you'd think there's no way we could get through it all. (We do.) There's candy and chocolate spilling from every cupboard. We book off the week between Christmas and New Year's, and we announce to all and sundry that we're having the longest open-house drop-in party ever. Rusty makes his famous mulled cider. I make real hot chocolate... and oh, look! There's the Bailey's Irish Cream! Don't mind if I do.

Really, we're a lot like the Whos down in Whoville. And if you don't think those little buggers were drunk most of the time, you haven't paid enough attention to that cartoon.

Rusty cooks up a Christmas feast the likes of which you've rarely seen, with the centrepiece being a turkey of cartoonlike proportions. Stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, brussels sprouts (I know, but it's a tradition), biscuits... Rusty brings it all together with masterfully precise timing. I make the cranberry sauce.

For days after Christmas, the leftovers are slowly consumed in the form of turkey sandwiches, Rusty's magnificent turkey soup, and the piece de resistence, a decadent casserole Rusty calls "Christmas in a Pan".

Surprisingly often, it snows here in Vancouver during Christmas week. Fuelled by turkey sandwiches and booze-infused chocolate drinks, we go on middle-of-the-night walks with Dobbs. He loves the snow, even though the unusual quality of his coat causes snow to cling to his leg hair in increasingly larger snowballs until it looks like someone has glue-gunned dozens of white pompoms to his legs. We run into other late-night snowy-walk-lovers and we always stop and chat. (Vancouverites, a naturally gregarious lot, get even more gregarious any time the weather surprises us by doing something other than rain.) Passersby admire Dobbs's pompoms.

These are the traditions we want to share with young Master Sam. So this year he'll be hanging up his stocking on the mantle alongside ours and waiting to see what little treats Mister Claus brings him. And he'll be getting lovely hardcover editions of East of Eden and To Kill a Mockingbird -- the novels that contain his namesakes -- inscribed with much love from his mom and dad on his first Christmas. And that's all he'll be getting. Other than our absolute fawning love and adoration. And really, that's no more than he deserves.

This is what revives us when we're feeling tired and sodden, what restores our souls when it's been grey and drizzling outside for 23 straight days, what keeps us chugging along somewhat happily and sanely when the daylight disappears at 3:30 pm. My wish for everyone is that, no matter what holiday they celebrate, they find a formula that does the same for them.

MAGAZINES: Smack Your Child to Make Her Sleep

Presumably after reading my pitiful screed against parenting books, the Baco-Vegetarian sent me the link to this helpful article:

Is your toddler a fussy eater? Then starve him for 24 hours and he will soon eat anything. Your baby won’t sleep through the night? Simple: smack her until she stops crying.

Golly, and I thought Ferber was a tough cookie. Fortunately, for good common sense advice, you can always ask Moxie.

WEB: What Classic Movie Are You?

Ha!

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Yeah. That's pretty much me in a nutshell.

(Ups to Jagosaurus for the link)

ETC: Help Me Settle a Question

Would it be considered child abuse to put this photo on our Christmas cards this year?

All I Want for Christmas Is a Good Night's Sleep...

...A good night's sleep,
A good night's sleep.
Gee, if I could only have a good night's sleep,
Then I could wish you merry Christmas!

In my next life, I'm going to come back as a millionaire.

Well, actually, first I'm going to come back, then I'm going to write a know-it-all parenting book, and THEN I'm going to be a millionaire.

Seriously, this parenting-book racket is huge. Even I -- who am totally on to the fact that it's a racket -- have invested some serious currency in it. At one point a couple of months ago, I was going to pile all my books into a stack, then have Rusty stand young Master Sam next to it and take a picture to post here. You know, so you could see how big he is... expressed in parenting-book units. I don't know why I didn't do that. Probably too busy reading parenting books, I reckon.

For those of you who don't have kids, this is how the publishing industry sucker-punches you:

They know that, no matter what you're doing with your baby at any given moment, as a first-time parent you're secretly convinced you should be doing the opposite. Is your baby sleeping? Then you're concerned they're not getting enough stimulation. Or that they're developing flat head syndrome. If you're reading to them, you're fretting to yourself that maybe they should be getting more tummy time.* If they're happily playing by themselves, you worry that you're not giving them enough "quality time." If you're in the house all day, are they getting enough socialization? If you're out of the house, are they getting too much stimulation? Are they eating enough? Or too much?

And then there's sleep (though, when I write my bestselling book, I'm going to do what the pros do and use the terms "sleep issues" and "sleep solutions").

Which brings me to my point: here at Casa Doppelganger, we are experiencing "sleep issues." Fortunately, there's a wealth of literature purporting to offer us guaranteed "sleep solutions." Unfortunately, most of this literature directly contradicts itself.

Let me tell you something: these sleep experts are a bitchy, back-bitey crew. They rarely mention their opponents by name, but will snidely comment on the other camp's techniques using that camp's specialized jargon (in quotation marks, of course). This is meant to create a feeling of solidarity among their readers, and thus discourage bandwagon-hopping. (We first-timers are a fickle, edgy lot.)

Let me give you an oversimplified tour of the baby-sleep-theory arena.

Over here in this corner, you've got Dr. Sears, proponent of something called "attachment parenting," which recommends "the five Bs": "babywearing," "bedsharing," "breastfeeding," and two others that I forget. Um, boondoggling? Butterchurning? No... those don't sound right. Anyway, opponents of Dr. Sears consider attachment parenting nothing but hippie, pinko, overly permissive parenting that breeds spoiled monsters.

And over here in the opposite corner, you've got Dr. Ferber, for whom the term "Ferberizing" was coined. Ferberizing is not, as you might have guessed, a deviant sexual practice involving stuffed toys and a vacuum cleaner, though I can totally see how you got there. It involves letting your child cry in his crib until he learns to "self soothe" and fall asleep on his own. This doesn't sit well with the Dr. Sears folks, who consider this approach -- commonly known as "CIO" or "crying it out" -- tantamount to child abuse. They would advocate that you "parent" your child to sleep in the "family bed" where you all "co-sleep" together.

The problem with these approaches is that they're too polarized. One skews hippie, the other type A. But what about people like me, type A hippies? What the hell are we supposed to do?

Oh, and don't even get me started on the advice of the well-meaning know-it-all non-experts you run into in your day-to-day life, who conclude their theories with a confident, "Well, that's how I was raised, and I turned out okay." No offence, but no, you didn't. Don't take it personally, but you're not okay. Frankly, I don't know anyone who is. If I did, I'd just call their mom and ask what she did.

And I'm certainly not saying I turned out well, either. I'm a raging insomniac. Fortunately, now I know whom to blame. Though I have a feeling that if I go home and ask my mom if she attachment parented me or Ferberized me, she'd just look puzzled, smile kindly, and ask if she could fix me a fried bologna sandwich.

What REALLY gets my goat is that it's not enough for these so-called sleep experts to make you feel like an incompetent boob: they also love to tell you the horrific long-term psychological damage you're doing to your child if you don't follow their teachings. According to the Ferberites, if you don't "sleep-train" your child, you're setting her up for a life of poor workplace performance, depression, and reliance on pharmaceutical sleep aids. No one wants that, right? But if the Searsians are to be believed, Ferberizing your child will leave him with a virtually untreatable psychiatric treatment known as "reactive attachment disorder"... essentially a sociopath but minus the violent tendencies.

Fun, huh?

How I long to go back to my third trimester of pregnancy, when I'd read a few baby books but didn't yet have a baby. I knew everything then.

*For the uninitiated, "tummy time" is a concept that was invented by childcare experts for the sole and exclusive purpose of driving new mothers absolutely nuts.

ETC: Sick of Being Sick

I have a crappy cold, and therefore my mucus-encased brain is incapable of coming up with clever and/or funny and/or insightful things to say today. But if you've been coming here regularly for a while, you know better than to expect those things, anyway.

If you can't get enough of my complaining, I continue in this vein over at the Bored Housewives Network. Plus there's a really big picture of a nasal bulb.

ETC: Everything's Coming Up Penguins

Thanks to Jenny for her thoughtful email reminding me about this charming news story. I'd actually posted a link to it a couple of weeks ago, but it was late on a Sunday, so I think it got lost under the fanfare that traditionally greets my Monday-morning post. Heh.

Rushing to evacuate her home as a forest fire lapped at the edges of this high-desert town in May 2000, Kathryn Gursky took with her just one book, a British edition of "The World of Pooh," by A. A. Milne, bought when she and her husband were vacationing in Dorset some 11 years earlier.

When she returned to Los Alamos after the fire, Ms. Gursky, a 49-year-old former librarian, found that the rest of her 2,300-volume personal library had burned, along with her house and everything in it

Thousands of scorched tree trunks still range up the hillside across the street from Ms. Gursky's new home here, but inside the house, her library is well on the way to recovery. In September, Ms. Gursky received a birthday gift from her husband that earned her the envy of her book-loving friends: the complete collection of the Penguin Classics Library, 1,082 books sold only by Amazon.com for nearly $8,000.

Doesn't that just warm your cockles? Much as I love Rusty, and much as I know he returns the sentiment, I can barely get the dude to look at my Amazon wishlist. If he gave me the entire Penguin library (FYI: it's not eligible for Free Super Saver Shipping), my reaction would probably be to give him the ol' stinkeye and ask him what he did wrong.

Speaking of penguins, I finally saw The March of the Penguins last night. I know every single other person in the entire world saw it when it came out last spring, but since I'm destined not to see a new release till 2009, I'm now considering DVD releases to be an official big deal.

If you (a) haven't seen the movie, and (b) don't know shit about penguins, spoilers follow.

The March of the Penguins depicts the lives of Emperor penguins during their mating season, as well as how they raise their young. And holy crap, who knew how hard it is being a penguin? Probably because they always look so dapper and well put together, none of the rest of us chumps in the animal kingdom ever realized that a penguin's life is fraught with peril.

Here's a partial list of all the things that can go wrong just during the breeding season:

• You get lost on the long march to the landlocked breeding grounds. You starve and you die.
• You manage to successfully find a mate and create an egg, which must always remain on top of a parent's feet to protect it from the icy ground, which will freeze the egg in minutes. You screw up while transferring the egg to your mate. It freezes and dies. Game over till next year.
• As a female penguin, half-starved from the effort of laying your egg, you leave the egg on your mate's feet and head off to the ocean, seventy miles away, to eat. You dive into the ocean, where you are promptly snapped up by a leopard seal and you die. Oh, and your chick, who will be waiting for you to regurgitate food for it? It also dies.
• As a male penguin, you're stuck with this egg on your feet and no food for miles. For more than a hundred days. You starve and you die. Or, suffering temperatures as low as -80, you freeze and you die. Or the 100 mph winds that kick up during a storm knock you ass over teakettle. You survive. Your egg dies.

But let's take the positive view and say mama, papa and baby make it through all this and have a delightful reunion. A happy ending? Ha, you wish. Your baby can still be taken by a rogue storm or an evil predatory bird. And you haven't even taught it to swim in the seal-infested ocean yet.

(Look at that happy little guy to the right. He just has no idea.)

This movie really put being a parent into perspective for me. Half-starving? I do remember this one night when I was about eight months pregnant and I woke up really hungry, but I had a hard time rolling my huge belly out of bed so I woke up Rusty and asked him to make me some toast. At the time, I thought I was starving to death, but in retrospect I probably wasn't.

And much as I love to complain about Sam's two-hour awake window between naps -- which basically gives me enough time to take care of my ablutions, his ablutions, a lightning-fast mocha run, and aaaaalmost-but-not-quite-enough time to use the bathroom -- at least my little dude isn't sitting on my feet for three straight months. But that's probably only because the idea hasn't occurred to him.

Also, right now we're dealing with some teething issues, which is bothersome, yes. But at least I don't have to lose sleep worrying about some dickhead bird snatching Sam away from me the minute after I've squeezed the Baby Tylenol down his throat.

The worst thing is that these poor penguins don't even have a choice in the matter. They get these biological urges and they're helpless to control them. The lady penguin can't say to the gentleman penguin, "Look, I really like you and I'm interested in seeing where this relationship is going, but I'm not a hundred percent sure I want to have kids, so you should know that about me up front. Let's skip the next couple of breeding seasons and see where we're at in a couple of years, okay?" And the gentleman penguin can't reply, "I totally understand. With all the evil on the planet today, what with the predatory seals and birds and this fucking freezing wind, this is no world to bring a baby into. And while I can't actually count, per se, I think we may have a penguin overpopulation problem. Either that or I'm just seeing the same guys over and over. I can't tell. We all look alike to me."

On the other hand, penguins don't buy piles of parenting books that lie on their bookshelves unread and persecute them with guilt. So they win there.

The other thing this movie made me realize is that I hate nature. Oh, I like the pretty, fluffy, sun-dappled parts. And snowflakes. And the majestic bits also rock in their own way. But the life-is-nasty-brutish-and-short bits? Nuh-uh. Those bits make me cry.

And then invariably somebody tells me condescendingly, "Well, you know, Doppelganger, life is nasty, brutish and short." I KNOW THAT, ASSHOLE. THAT'S WHY I'M CRYNG. Frankly, I'm suspicious of anyone who doesn't get upset when they ponder life's brutishness. Spending a breeding season with the penguins would fix their clock good, I reckon.

One last thing: the narration in this movie drove me batshit bonkers. Morgan Freeman, you seem like such a nice man, and I know that as America's black Tom Hanks you're obligated to create a family-friendly vibe, but kee-rist. If I'm forced to see visuals of horribly frozen dead eggs and predatory birds killing cute little Pokemon-esque penguin chicks, and if I'm made to listen to the heartbreaking crying of a mother penguin when her chick dies, I'm not really buying what you're selling when you tell me elsewhere that old penguins just "fade away" or "disappear into the whiteness". Please kick the writer in the kneecaps for me. No, harder than that. Thank you.