Crosblog

Four hours talking about breasts. How can this be anything but awesome?

Today was "Breastfeeding for Couples" class day, as the Calvacade Of Things Humanity Has Been Doing For Millenia But We Apparently Need A Class For continues. When signing up, the crazy redhead said "I'd be fine going by myself," with no further explanation. I wasn't sure if she was saying "I actually don't want your dumb ass along for this," or "You're coming, but I'm letting you think this is optional." I erred on the side of full participation.

They did their best to make it appear complicated, however. Do you hold your baby in a cradle position, a cross-cradle (which sounds like a pro wrestling move), or the football hold, which sounds like something a guy came up with, and they went ahead and put it in the class to make the guys feel included.

Which, by the way, is something childbirth related things go way overboard with. I've been to somewhere between three and six hundred and twelve different childbirth related functions, and everyone has as a key component an excessively perky health care related professional talking about how "Dad is just so important in this process," using pretty much the same tone of voice I use with my puppy to try and get him to chew on a rubber bone instead of the TV remote. Was this level of patronization really needed to get dad to lend a freaking hand? Look, I get it, in this particular production, she's Diddy, I'm Farnsworth. It's OK, can we move on? Dad trying to act like an equal player in childbirth is like the punter claiming he did as much to earn the Super Bowl ring as the starting running back.

Obviously, the running back would be better at the football grip.

There is some surprise among the expectant parents that the kid will need to be fed as many as twelve times in a day. Although, to be fair, each meal is only a couple of ounces. I understand a lot of small meals is supposed to be better for you anyway. There is also a demonstration of the proper way for a baby to suckle, conducted by two coeds wearing nothing but thongs.

(Ed. note - this probably didn't happen. He zoned out a couple times.)

We did have dolls to practice with, which resembled a real baby only in basic shape, and got to practice burping the baby, as well as, for lack of a better word, installing the baby in the proper feeding position. There was also a lengthy discussion of what the baby's diaper is supposed to look like, post-feeding, if you get my meaning. I am told, and this is a direct quote, "A breast-fed baby's poop smells sweet."

Just what I need. A firstborn who thinks their stuff don't stink. Maybe if babies didn't think their poop was so wonderful, maybe they wouldn't make so much of it.

Trust me. I'm an expert. Took a class and everything.

And I'm just so important to the process!

Man uses frozen turkey as a weapon to help foil a carjacker.

Reached for comment, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was quoted as saying "you're welcome."

State-run media in China gives a big thumbs down to the new Guns 'n Roses album.

According to them, it needed a collaboration with T-Pain or Justin Timberlake.

According to the GenderAnalyzer, this blog is 55% female. ("Although it's quite gender neutral.")

I can't help but wonder if a few months of "we're having a baby" posts had an effect. If so, the GenderAnalyzer is sadly behind the times. I blame the media's treatment of Sarah Palin.

Tip - Geosciblog.

Al Qaeda #2 uses racially demeaning term to describe Barack Obama, Colin Powell, and Condoleeza Rice.

America reacts by taking offense at Al Qaeda #2 using racially demaning term to describe Barack Obama.

In other news, it's not true that I got my job by putting on my best suit and putting out for my boss.

You see, it wasn't my best suit.

Denial is becoming less and less possible, as time goes on. A while back, we purchased various baby related items, which we promptly got to work stacking in our living room. This enabled the denial to largely continue, since with my wife's shopping habits being what they are, a large stack of boxes anywhere in our house isn't really that unusual.

This week, however my brother-in-law came down to help us put stuff together. And by "help us," I mean actually put the stuff together pretty much all by himself, because if there's one thing child care experts agree on, it's that no child should ever be asked to sleep in anything I build. It actually voids the warranty on many products.

So now we have a crib, changing table, and various other baby-related devices that one cannot avoid seeing whenever walking through the house, which means wherever we go, we now see tangible proof that either 1.) a baby is coming very soon,or 2.) we like to collect baby furniture.

Since there isn't much investment value in baby furniture, the only possible conclusion...

...say it with me...

...holy crap, we're having a baby!

"You're confusing reality with porn again," Sam to Dean on Supernatural.

And waiting until January 15 for more episodes blows.

Koshka talks for the camera.



She's like that pretty much all the time.

Canadian court holds that obese passengers have the right to purchase two seats for the price of one.

Operating under the perfectly logical idea that our firstborn is an appropriate forum for competition, the crazy redhead has set up a pregnancy pool for guessing birthday, sex, and weight. "Who's the father?" is not one of the questions.

TNA Wrestling has invited Gov. Sarah Palin to make an appearance at their next pay-per-view to join the "Beautiful People" team of Angelina Love and Velvet Sky. (That would be these two. Believe it or not, they're actually decent wrestlers.) TNA has promised to donate $50,000 to Palin's favorite charity if she appears, so if she doesn't show, it's obviously because she shares the traditional Republican disdain for the less fortunate.

Jesse Ventura got a lot of crap for refereeing a WWE show while Governor of Minnesota, but the difference between that and TNA is people actually watch the WWE.

A continuing series.

Today was "childbirth class," which I'm pretty sure did not exist 100 years ago, and therefore makes me wonder exactly how in the hell we made it this far as a species without someone to take up a perfectly good Saturday teaching us about how babies are born, when that time could have been better spent any one of a number of ways:

1. Sleeping

2. Watching college football

3. Continuing to live in denial about how much needs to be done before the baby gets here.

All perfectly valid lifestyle choices, says I.

Anyways, the class is full, mostly of first-time parents, which means I may very well not be the most clueless person in the room. (Spouse: Not bloody likely) There are questions. Somebody asks about the usefulness of Prenatal Yoga. The instructor says it's good "if you want your vagina to return to its original shape." Some guy asks where these classes are held.

No, it wasn't me.

They tread carefully around the different choices parents make, such as what degree of painkillers to use. Some people have moral and ethical objections to certain medical procedures. As for us, the wife and I are the opposite of Christian Scientists - we believe that medicine and science are gifts from God, and to not take full advantage of whatever benefits they offer would be sacrilege, much like worshipping a graven image or watching Cinemax.

They give dad things to do, all right - you have to be able to tell real labor from stuff that isn't real labor. This is, I think, the real purpose of the class - here's a list of stuff that Isn't Worth Bothering the Medical Professionals About - so quit fricking calling us. Once you get to the hospital, there are lots of things dad can do to make him feel involved, such as cutting the umbilical cord. One father really didn't see what the big deal was about cutting the cord, despite his wife repeatedly telling him that it would mean a lot to her if he did it.

No, it wasn't me.

There are restrictions on what you can and can't do in the delivery room. You cannot, apparently, film the delivery any more, a rule which I'm sure had a very interesting origin the hospital's legal department won't allow us to hear. It's kind of frustrating - the hospital won't let me film the delivery, the spouse wouldn't let me film the conception - I don't even know why we have a video camera.

But having had this class - I can now say I'm ready - go ahead, ask me what a Braxton-Hicks contraction is!*

* Ed. Note - Do not ask him what a Braxton-Hicks contraction is. He wasn't paying attention during that part of the class, but if his wife finds out, he'll get in trouble. Give him a couple of days to Google it.

We got a Flip Video recorder a week or so ago, and this thing is on the short list of most awesome toys ever created. It is, if not idiot-proof, severely idiot-resistant, in terms of how little one actually has to do to record something.

The purpose for getting it was to make it easy for family members to peek in on the baby, once he/she debuts. I figured I'd test all this stuff out on the dogs, and of course, they took this as a cue to quit doing anything cute until after dark or when I wasn't holding the stupid thing.

I did finally get to record my first ever YouTube video, of Smutyan playing a bit of Keeshond Soccer, his second favorite game, after annoying Otchki.

Brian Nichols found guilty on all 54 counts.

It was one more month of this damned Chambliss-Martin campaign.

Normally, when we suffer through the calvacade of lies that are political ads, we can feel better knowing that everyone is suffering through similar interruptions. But no, everyone else is done, and gets to go back to not giving a crap about how their elected officials are stealing their money.

But no, not us. We have to listen to one more month of ads.

"Saxby Chambliss supported the George Bush economic plan. Which, of course, relies heavily on selling newborns into slavery."

"Don't you think that setting nuns on fire should be a felony? Jim Martin voted to make it punishable by no more than a $100 fine."

I can't wait.

Obama's got this. I'm going to bed.

Congratulations and best wishes to Obama and his supporters.

As I write this, I am fairly confident that my preferred candidate is going to lose the Presidential election. (He's currently ahead in the electoral count 8-3, but I'm not optimistic about that holding up.) This is unfortunate, but in the grand scheme of things, not really that big a deal. We forget this during election seasons. Most candidates for most offices are decent people who genuinely want to do right by their constituents, but they just happen to have different ideas about how to go about it. Unfortunately, the people who run campaigns, (not necessarily the candidates themselves) have decided that a message like "my opponent is an honorable man who regrettably did not consider the possibility that his tax plan would slow the growth of key industry in this area," doesn't sell. So instead we have to hear that John McCain turned into an ogre sometime in early 2008, Barack Obama is planning to have the workers seize the means of production, Sarah Palin is a pregnancy-faking secessionist, and Joe Biden is a nutbar who promises that if you elect him, you will soon see a global crisis of staggering proportions.

OK, there might be something to that last one.

Political campaigns have decided they can't win unless they can successfully portray their opponent as a severe threat to the very nature of the republic. "Vote for me or the US is doomed!" echoes from every campaign. This is nonsense, for one very simple reason.

America rocks. America rocks hard.

Over the past couple centuries, we've built a country capable of surviving pretty much anything - certainly anything either of the two jokers running for President can throw at us. No one media has a monopoly on information - no matter what your perspective is, you have the means to reach the people you want to persuade. Should our new President stick his foot in it, people will hear about it, and four years later, we will have another election, and if something needs fixing, we'll fix it.

But the bottom line, the doom and gloom predictions were always spin. If you absolutely had to use it during the campaign, that's one thing, but from Wednesday on, it's time to remember that neither of these guys was a fraction as bad as their opponents made them out to me.

OK, Biden really is that big of a douche, but other than that - it's all spin.

...well, I've felt better. But I've felt worse too.

I'm not saying the election is over. It could actually be close enough to go either way. And hey, Dawn Summers make a lot of good points both ways here. (Granted, a guy who's spent most of his fantasy football season with J.T. Flipping O'Sullivan as his quarterback might not want to put too much stock in Dawn Summers prognostications, but since she is promising that Chinese Democracy is coming out, I'm feeling better about life in general.)

But facts are facts, and the fact is, most likely, some time late Tuesday night, news personalities will call the election for Obama. And they will likely even actually be right about that. Don't get me wrong, go out, vote, electrify your McCain-Palin sign so the punk kids can't steal it, but the process of dealing can be a lengthy and difficult one, and there's no reason not to get a head start on it. Besides, if we're being honest - I'm not sure I even want McCain to win. Not in the "I think the other guy would make a better President," because I don't - but more in the "I think this particular piece of satire is going to prove really accurate" sense.

Whoever wins is going to have to run things for the next four years. Should it be McCain, his first obstacle will be, no matter how he wins, his election will be illegitimate. Obama was leading in the polls going in, so if McCain wins, it has to be because they stole it somehow. Either that or the only reason people voted for McCain was because they were racist. It's going to become part of McCain's name should he get elected - President John "Elected By Racists" McCain. Plus he won't get anything past Congress anyways. Not that gridlock bothers me too much - a government that isn't doing anything is going to have a harder time screwing things up.

My point is - McCain can't win. The election? Sure, he can win that - but long term, the phrase "Pyrrhic victory" springs to mind.

So Obama wins, which means if you didn't support him, you need to prepare for the world to come. I figure there will be a few rule changes:

1. Apparently it's perfectly OK to buy an election, and "I'm more likely to win if I flat-out buy the thing" is a perfectly ethical excuse. Don't worry, Obama supporters have too much integrity to gripe about it if you try it yourself.

2. During Obama's term of office, his children will grow into young women, and a decision will have to be made as to whether to allow them to grow up in relative privacy, or to lurk about them like vultures, waiting for the opportunity to use them to further your own partisan advantage. The person who gets to decide which route we take is Bristol Palin.

3. Remember when Ayers or Wright would come up in conversation, and Obama supporters would decry the use of sideshow issues to distract America from talking about real issues? This was all a way of offering a tear-filled apology to former Senator George Allen for the whole "macaca" thing. If they could do it all over again, George, they totally would.

4. Speaking of Ayers, once Obama wins, can we finally go ahead and admit that when Obama first met him, he thought he was really cool? An impressionable young liberal out to change the world gets to meet someone who actually, literally fought The Man, and he thought that was wicked sweet! He more or less grew out of it, but he felt the same way about Ayers in the 90's that I felt about Eazy-E a few years earlier, and for largely the same reasons. Of course, I had the semi-excuse of being a sheltered 16 year old idiot, but hey, people do dumb things when they're crazy kids in their early 30's.

Anyways, I'm still going to get up early and vote, and if you hadn't done so yet, you should do the same. Because after all, you can't complain if you don't vote.

Of course, complaining is going to lose some of its cachet - since I think a lot of the folks who used to say "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" are going to figure out how ridiculous that phrase actually is, and that dissent, many times, is just some guy being a jackass.