1. Daddy loves you.
2. Could you please lower your voice?  You’re being kind of loud.
3. You are so smart, you can be anything you want to be.
4. I asked you before–lower your voice!
5. Great job!
6. I don’t care if your brother hit you, that is no excuse to hit him back.
7. Zip your lips.  Zip it.  Zip!  It!
8. That’s it.  No TV.  No Computer.  No Anything.  Go to your room–now!  I mean it–GO!  Yes, I am talking to you, and I want you in your room this instant. Not the stairs.  Not the bathroom.  Your room.  IN Your room.  Not near your room-IN IT!  NOW!!  If you value your life, you’ll go NOOOOOWWWW!!
9. As God is my witness, if you don’t lower yor voice, you will not live to see another day.
10. Good night Sweetie.  Daddy loves you.

Since I spend a lot of time at the pool in the Summer, I had received a few comments from my family regarding a mole on my back that “looked weird”, so I went to the Doc to ask him what he thought.  Turns out there’s no problem, but he did give me these valuable mole tips that will perhaps benefit you some day.  And they are as simple as “A, B, C, D”:

• A:  Is the mole assymetrical?
• B: Are their boundaries (eg, is it distinct from your regular luscious skin)?
• C: Is the mole the same color all the way across?
• D: Is the diameter no larger than a pencil eraser?

If your answer to all (4) of these questions is “Yes”, then go go back to the pool.  If not…well–it was nice knowing you!

As a middle-aged Dad worried about his job, the economy, the dwindling value of his 401K, and paying for his kid’s college tuition, there’s nothing that concerns to me more than the upcoming Zombie Plague that threatens to destroy all mankind.  Which is why WORLD WAR Z, An Oral History of the Zombie War, is such a valuable resource.  You get to hear testimonies from everyone involved, in the U.S., Tel Aviv, China, India, Khazikstan.  You learn about the initial denial that anyone was infected,  and Israel’s controversial decision to wall the city in to protect its inhabitants.  This is basically a book about denial, about not wanting to face facts, about summoning the personal and political will to do what has to be done.  There is heroism, there is abundant stupidity, there is best of human nature and the worst.  Is it actually quite an intresting and thought-provoking book, especially given that we lost 3/4 of the world’s population during the 15-year zombie war.

Also, I did not know that zombies could walk the ocean floor.

4 Stars.  I would especially recommend the audio version of this book.

When I was a wee lad majoring in English, we had three “Great Books” classes we were required to take.  These were books chosen by scholars as being the most representative, over time, of literature during that particular time period.  We read Beowulf (without Angelina Jolie), we read Jane Austen, we read William Blake’s SONGS OF INNOCENCE OF EXPERIENCE, we read Charles Dickens (which, I am ashamed to say, I kind of skimmed), and stuff like that.  And while a lot of these books were interesting, and worthy of discussion and writing papers about, I would be hard pressed to call them “great books”.

Meaning, while I enjoyed them, and would probably point them out to others as representative of the “great” literature, I didn’t they were great books in the way I just finished BEL CANTO by Ann Patchett and cried and cried and told my wife “This was a great book.  It’s one of the top 10 books I’ve ever read” is great. (Note: other Top 10 Brad books:  DUANE’S DEPRESSED by Larry McMurtry, A SON OF THE CIRCUS by John Irving,  A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez).  Because while “great” books are usually great for a reason (they crystalize the thoughts of an era, they deal with classic themes, etc.), I will say almost none of those kinds of “great” books really connected with me emotionally.

Not that every book has to make you sob little a little girly man.  I love foreign detective novels, and Haruku Murakami novels, David Foster Wallace intellectual-thons, and they are full of interesting insights into life and the human condition and the nature of the Universe, and they make you think, and that’s “great.”  But these other books I think are so great, to me, do something for me that is a rare and beautiful thing:  they give you profound insight into the mysteries of the human condition.

I also just finished Dennis Lehane’s SHUTTER ISLAND, which is about a Federal Marshall trying to find an escaped mental patient on an island prison for the criminally insane.  That was great, too.  I guess it all depends on the issues that are important to you.  After all, some people think those Oprah books are “great”.  Which is, I guess, why we have classically “great” books - something everyone can agree on, though perhaps not as moving and personally meaningful to you as something that hits your personal buttons.

Anyway, Brad recommends these two “great”-ish books.  As Dr. Steve Brule says:  “Check it out!”

Some people asked me why I haven’t been posting to the blog lately.  Did I mention…it’s Summer!

Taking our annual trip to the East Coast to see my folks.  This iteration incudes two days in Maine.  As of Day 5 of this 10 -day extravaganza, we have petted goats, sat for an hour in a Customs line lsitening to songs from the 60’s, ate way too much ice cream, played glow-in-the-dark put-put golf, turned around ten times trying to find the hidden entrance to a game preserve, petted a donkey, watched an antique car show while reliving our drunken youth, had a July 4 red-white-and-blue breakfast, rode the oldest carousel in Connecticut on its 94th birthday (complete with free birthday cake), and “bonded” as a family through innumerable jokes, arguments, and hissy fights.  And there’s still 5 days to go!

More pictures of this Americana experience by clicking here.

Now I’m not normally  prayin man, but prayer may be the way to go!

For reasons as yet unknown even to myself, I have been making a habit out of listening to Stephen King novels as audiobooks.  I can count the number of actual “book” books of SK I have read on one hand - CARRIE, when I was a teenager, and a recent short story in ESQUIRE.  So far I’ve “read” CELL, which was terrific, DUMA KEY, which had some terrific parts mixed in with some not so terrific parts, and I am almost finished listening to DESPERATION.

Now as much as I am sympathetic to SK’s claims of his books being “literature”, I’d have to say that I may have some issues with this.  If you interpret “literature” as being “writing that gives you a deeper understanding of the human condition and moves you to understand your greater place in the Universe”, then I’d have to say “No.”  However, if you were to define literature as “making you wonder how you would survive in a world full of zombies, demons and psychopaths and how you would protect your family from the undead as you shudder with disgust”, well, then, “Yes”, of course.

I prefer to think of SK as more like a three-chord rock and roll song.  Yes, you know the chords.  Yes, you know what is coming.  Yes, you’ve heard bit all before, many, many times.  On the other hand, you LIKE those chords, you LIKE what’s coming, and when it DOES come you kind of wish it would never end.  And what you listen for (because what else is there to listen for, since you’ve experienced in a gazillion-something times?) are the subtle touches that make it interesting and new again.

In the case of DESPERATION, the interesting parts are:

• A Norman Mailer-esque tough-guy writer who gets all the best lines and the most interesting backstory
• A lot of information about drug addiction and alcoholism, of which I recently learned SK himself has quite a lot of experience
• A young kid that talks to God and believes that the fight against the demon is a fight for God, stuff I don’t necessarily believe in but that makes the book very compelling  and emotional
• A totally creeped-out super-tall super cruel super clever bad guy inhabiting a tall town Sheriff, and
• Creepy spiders that work together to spell out words for the bad guy

Is it as good as CELL, my favorite so far?  Nope.  Is it scary?  It sure is!  Does it make me cry?  At one point, it certainly did.  Does it contain the meaning of life?  No, but it certainly is a page-turner!

Next up - THE STAND.  After some rock and roll.

Having been trained by the Spouse, who talks to students for hours every day, to brush after every meal (even, or shall we say, especially at work, and don’t even get me started on the weird stares you get from #2-goers while you’re doing something healthy and hygenic), and be aware of your “freshness” when close-talking with your fellow man, I must sing the praises of the new Colgate 360 toothbrush, which has this sexy new gizmo on the back of the brush that actually scrapes the yucky gunk off your gums, cheeks and tongue while you’re doing your standard toothbrushing, leaving you “kissable” fresh (providing, of cours, you have a willing partner with their own Colgate 360).  All hail dental technology!

Don’t think I’m going out on a limb to here if I say there’s a lot of free-floating anxiety around here (and everywhere). You’ve got the high fuel costs (glad we got rid of the full-size SUV!), the high grocery costs (skip the capers this week), the firings and layoffs (I know several people, of varying levels of education and experience, who have been looking for work for some time, some with families and kids), the weird weather (glad Al Gore wasn’t right about that!), sudden, untimely deaths (two so far, and the year’s only half over), an unending war in Iraq, the second unsuccessful M. Knight Shamaylan film…

The best solution I’ve found for all this stress, 80-90% of which istotally out of my control, is to look for the elusive “silver lining”, which in my case includes:

• Exercise, for your body and your family and to take your mind off that stuff you have no control over
• Being grateful every day that my children, wife, family and friends are in good health and able to bug me in the ways I have become accustomed to
• Time with these same family and friends, who (hopefully) will be the ones to stick around you when things (God forbid) aren’t going so great
• Thinking about “the big picture”, which may not be good for you per se, but is better for the world, such as more realistic gas and food consumption, more involvement in your local community involvement since it’s more expensive to go farther away, energy savings to save money and the environment, increased requirements for recycling, more home gardens and local produce, etc.
• The feeling, on good days, that the rest of the American people are also getting the idea that the past eight years were a bad, bad idea and we need a significant change to get things back on track
• Always keeping your mind open and increasing your “skill set” so you’re be more valuable to the place you work for (and to keep your brain from atrophying)
• And, it can’t be stressed enough, keeping an optimistic, positive outlook, and working hard to maintain an attitude that people enjoy being around, rather than grumbling and complaining and whining all the time (not that I’ve ever met anyone like that…)

Good luck to everyone during this rough patch!