machination.org

Me: I don’t like this timeline man. Not a new thought, but I tried to make peace with it and find sources of optimism or outcomes to hope for and angle towards and fuck fuck fuck.

Friend: Yup. 110%.

A good trick is not being too high on being present, when one is lucky enough to experience that, to not capitalize on what you might notice.

I don’t think I’ve learned that trick yet.

This morning The Childe held me to account on things I had promised to repair and he reminded me of a litany of things in the backlog that were not yet, or successfully, repaired.

He was sad and frustrated (I hadn’t yet fixed the loose, frayed thread from a not that made up a stuffed sea turtles nostril). I’ve done that now.

He wasn’t yet jaded by any of my missed deliveries. There was new hope in the form of more requests: could I cut the tag from yet another stuffy when he got home from school? Yes. (As he reenlists or gets new stuffys he’s be interested in stripping them of their tags of late.)

But then there was the toy police car, whose wheel had come off its axle (and since also lost its flashers). It was disappeared, I had hoped he had forgotten.

Then there is the blue plastic old American-style toy steam engine (if it were real, it might’ve burned wood rather than coal). Could I make another (6th or 7th) attempt to glue the cow-catcher back on? Could we try another glue? I don’t know.

There’s a helicopter which has lost a rotor blade (multiple glueings for it failed too) and a another half-dozen items that may or may not be stowed in corners by my desk or a drawer in the kitchen with some hope of resurrection or disappeared.

It is time for a reckoning, not so much with The Childe, but with myself in communicating to him the outputs of the functions of time and use: the consequences of quality of material and construction and of consideration during play, and the natural or designed end to all things. The impact of which is only mitigated by our choices, expectations, and our gratitude when noticing all we are getting what we wanted or maybe more … yeah … this isn’t all going to fly with a kindergartener. I barely have learned them truly, maybe.

I received gratitude in the form of a hug (and a kiss! on my arm!) when I affirmed his new and refreshed requests that had the most immediate of deadlines (today).

I want a good rock and roll radio station (or whatever is closest to that these days, I’m pretty ecumenical myself—just not looking for top 40 pop) that has news on the hour. I’m not sure this exists. (If it does, I’d love to hear about it and stream it.)

I have a memory of WETA FM (serving the Washington, DC area) playing classical (it still does) and having NPR news at the top of the hour. I’m not certain that is still their format. I’m looking for structure of that impression, though, with musical taste more like WEXT (out of New York’s Capital Region and also a public radio station, but with no news programming).

If I won the lottery, I’d go after a radio station license (FM, LPFM, hell AM) just to achieve this. (And I think I’d enjoy finding some real DJs—no alorithms—to blow my mind and widen others' minds too.) I’d definitely add some jazz too, if it were “my” station.

I haven’t been to a punk show in a while, let alone one at 9:30 in the morning. It was of course, all ages—and my Childe’s school Spring Pre-K/Kindergarten concert.

I continue to abhor military violence.

I can still understand how, by the rules the United States and Israel play by, Iran’s direct attack is entirely “fair.” With state violence, “fair” only illustrates how fucking insane the game is. Each side and their powerful are responsible for their own actions, but those who write the rules and effectively own the board or who have weighted the dice have more overall responsibility.

I think it is stupid, as are nearly all of the previous events that are justified by the previous event, and so on, and generally, previous military violence in human history. I leave some room for truly having to stop overwhelming occupation and attempts at it, but not uncritically, and not without a jaundiced eye to opportunities missed before and during such stages of conflict.

These cruxes in conflict remind me that it often seems nearly all those with the power of militaries at their hand do not care about human life, no matter the rhetoric of defense. If it seems that they genuinely do to some degree, it is too easy to find their parochial limits. These petty constraints resulting in classes of those worthwhile and those not are an ironic product of playing god.

Speaking of gods, the cynicism of these wars vociferously supported by the arch-conservatives of some of our world’s major religions belies their supposed faith in the expectation to be judged and have their swords beat into plowshares.

We do not need anyone’s god to do that, if we wanted.

This fatalism is not faith, it is the worst cynicism.

In the Natural History Museum we made a pitstop at the rest room for my sake. Someone was using an air blower to dry their hands as we entered. The Childe hates these. The sound is overwhelming for him.

He clamped his hands over his ears and said, “Daddy, don’t use that!” I replied that I would not if I had paper towels to dry my hands, reinforcing that I also had to wash my hands after using the bathroom, just as he does.

Standing at the urinal he disappeared from my peripheral vision and my general sense of immediacy. “Childe, where are you!?”

“Getting paper towels! Here, I got you some!”

I finish. Zip up. Turn around—and he is right there, proffering a long tail of toilet paper he had ripped out of the stall down the way. There are no paper towels.

I use the toilet paper, daintily, after the lightest touch of water at the sink. 

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Leaving the Natural History Museum and walking on the Mall, enjoying a breezy 70 degrees and a warm sun in that so-called “extra” hour thanks to the recent Daylight Saving Time change. The Childe was on my shoulders. Soon games of “Steal Dad’s Hat” and “Daddy Robot Driver” were to break out.

Before that, there was a moment of introspection for us both as we surveyed the lengthening shadows from the Castle in front of over to the berm of the hill where the Washington Monument is launched.

The Childe said, “Daddy, you look like a statue.” He was speaking of the shadow we cast. And I can’t really put more into it or explain it more, but I found something touching in the implication for the Childe made by the shadow of his father being something as set in stone as a statue.

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Driving home from the Mall, we passed by a church. Well, we pass many, but this one is bright white with more of a dome—slightly more peculiar in its shape than the other dozen churches of brick, rectangles with steeples.

The Childe asked “What is that building, daddy?”

We haven’t had the “god” or religion conversation yet, despite my upbringing and my mother’s attempt to infuse hints of Christ into my son’s life.

I said “It’s a church,” and hoping not to have to explain it more.

The most memorable thing the concept of God ever managed to do for me as a child was create a massive terror of my almost certain doom that I’m still trying to shake off.

The Childe, without more of an explanation, attempted to fill in the blanks. “Oh, so you mean, is it is a place where people who do not have a home have to go to?” I know I and his mother have explained to him that some of the people around us are unhoused. This breaks my heart - unhoused people, especially children — and that my kid is grappling with that being a thing and what happens to them.

“No, that’s not it. There are groups of people who believe in certain stories and some of them get together in buildings that like that.” (The group of people I was apart of did not have a building like that.)

The Childe thought for a moment, and said, “Oh, do you mean like the Polar Express?”

The kid believes in Santa still, so that’d be an appropriate analogy too, but he picked-up on my skepticism of other peoples beliefs so he plugged in a story he both knows and knows is make believe (but represents something “real.") Exactly, Childe. Like the Polar Express.

Christmas is the only time my wife lets me pipe jazz over the household Sonos without objection. I make a playlist and sneak in some things that aren’t on swinging Xmas streams—sometimes tracks that aren’t at all seasonal.

Or I let SomaFM do it for me—they love to play.

The spookiest thing about my son’s Halloween costume—a monster truck—is the carbon footprint of both the imagined thing, and the construction of the costume itself (so much plastic—but we are re-using a cousin’s costume, so there’s that).

It is, literally, an electric powered thing with a battery pack to light-up the headlights and simulate engine revving noises.

We’ll have fun tonight tearing up and down the sidewalks tongiht during this seemingly (and increasingly) rare reprieve where the weather is appropriately seasonal.

Happy Halloween and welcome to Samhain!

Maybe someday I will again travel solo (and not for work). As it stands, it’s before dawn in Seattle. I am “awake” with my very East Coast time-zoned toddler watching the nth episode of Super Kitties. This has been true for a while already this morning. And sure, I’m still grateful if bleary-eyed.

I believe in truth and reconciliation, full accountability of each and every one of those with power or who exercise violence, and in a zero state solution.

Maybe someday we’ll learn.

On what little patch of Earth will be left that we hope to sustain.

The LEGO bricks are still on the floor this morning. This is a compliance failure and an enforcement failure. I fetched the child’s first yogurt of the morning and issued a warning.

“LEGO that doesn’t get picked up gets sucked up into the vacuum cleaner!” It just happens. I’m not trying to do it. I just can’t guarantee that if you don’t put your LEGO back that we can get all of your LEGO back. That’s your job, son.

A gasp and then a shrug of denial. Quick, change the subject! “Daddy, can I watch some TV?”

I snag the Apple TV remote, waking the device, and notice that Disney+ is already launched. “How about some Bluey?”

The child accedes and the episode already queued up is entitled “Housework.” Karma.

As with all Bluey episodes, whether or not the episode is substantially focused on the topic in the title is kind of beside the point. To oversimplify: Bluey and Bingo are asked to participate in housecleaning—see, child, they have to do it too—and ultimately distract their parents with their silly walks which they then teach their parents. (And ultimately everyone does their fair share of housework. I try not to compare that to us.)

And then I see it, the crucial evidence: a knobby plastic brick in the vacuum cleaner Bluey’s Dad is running! (Rewind. Freeze frame.) There, kid. Consequences are everywhere.

A solemn nod. And then he dove back into his own LEGO pile.

It is time to go to school.

I will pick up the LEGO today when I do all the housecleaning by myself on my island of solitude and LEGO and who the hell knows what else is underfoot?

I have forgotten, if I ever knew, about how coffee rings form. And Google sucks.

Nearly every morning I pour myself a cup of coffee. Hot, iced, whatever — into a clean vessel, a mug or glass, often straight from the dishwasher having been run the night before. Every time (or every time I think to look) there is instantly a small ring puddle, a footprint of the vessel, on the counter.

I did not spill.

I am not including times when I spill, those times when there’s a splash that hits the counter or when I miss more closely and some hits the rim and flows down the side. You can see it when it happens, and there’s other trace evidence — spatter, traces of rivulet. You might even hear unexpected sounds of unexpected impacts if you’re otherwise attentive in a quiet setting.

I’m supposing some minor mystery of science on which much has been said. One that I am sure I was taught about by Mr. Hall in my 8th Grade Science class (mostly a physics class, where, if nothing else it seemed everything was fair game for a Newtonian force vector diagram).

Off to Google.

The Google results are shit.

The only thing close to an appropriate result is a Quora thread, where someone asks the same thing I am asking and everyone seems to suggest he actually spilled and didn’t know it. Or there was a hairline fracture in his mug. I know I didn’t spill. And I use a wide variety of vessels, none (let alone all) have a hairline fracture. Pigfucker Quora trolls are gaslighting this poor man and me.

There’s some seemingly bullshit answer about condensation, but water from the air would condense on the outside when I have a cold drink. Not coffee. And not with a hot drink in a cold room.

There are a lot of other interesting articles, adjacent but still seemingly irrelevant, about the actual nature of the coffee ring itself: how it’s thicker at the edges and capillary flow and evaporation being the cause. Fine. Many of them specifically suppose one spilled their coffee or describe the effect on the inside of a coffee mug. (Some allege an impact on flavor and enjoyment? I did not check to see if these web sites also had guidance on which crystal to deploy next to my coffee maker or to pair with my eggs.)

Many of these articles seem to appear around the same time as each other because some scientific paper on capillary flow came out or something (I don’t know, I didn’t go that far down the rabbit hole). They have headlines like, “Ever wonder why spilled coffee dries to leave a ring?”

NO! I don’t spill my goddam coffee. I’m wondering how the coffee got there in the first fucking place and I don’t wonder about the actual nature of the ring left behind I always intuited it was something like a capillary effect without so many words Jesus fucking Christ.

Breathe.

I don’t know, maybe I spilled my coffee.

Far up the river, 22 years ago, daydreaming and looking out the window “that’s not how you land at Albany,” or a thought to that effect.

Well that is not where it landed.

I will not forget that, and all the hell that ensued that day and for decades to come. It isn’t over.