Kermit Gosnell, and the opportunists that followed. For Shame, Pennsylvania. You’ll come to regret this day.

Islamic extremism or global warming? Which is the fundamemtal struggle of our time?

To me, neither. Abortion hands down. Since I see a living breathing baby and not just a fetus, I see two million of the most innocent being murdered in America alone every year. Nothing else even blitches the scale.
Posted by Todd Levari at January 25, 2007 1:15 PM

and

I partially agree Todd. 30 million post R v W at last count, right? A big part of the reason why Social Security and America’s version of the nanny state is also going out of business. You can’t fund a pension system without a large enough work force to sustain it.
Posted by sbvft contributor – Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust at January 25, 2007 1:32 PM

Pro-life advocates are some of the biggest hypocrites alive today. Almost everyone I know who claims to be pro-life has no kids of their own, adopted or biological. That’s called “hypocrisy”, and its an especially ugly hypocrisy given that there are thousands, literally thousands of children in the US who are in foster care and orphanages, waiting for someone to adopt them. When they reach 18, many are put out on the streets, too old to be wards of the state, but with few resources and no network to speak of to ensure self-sufficiency. The stats are even worse for older children, who are the least likely to be adopted.

My former friend Byl, who claims to be pro-life, has three children of his own. He hasn’t adopted any children, infants or otherwise. Christine Flowers, occasional Daily News columnist, is also admantly pro-life: 40-something years old, and no biological children or adopted children. It’s easy to preach what you don’t practice.

Right, “only a mom” has any sense of responsibility or devotion to the family. “Only a mom” knows what it’s like to have children who depend on you for everything from daily meals to moral guidance to help with homework. We fathers have nothing to do with our families: why, if you took away the paycheck we contribute, what else do we offer, other than nothing? We don’t have any involvement with our kids, other than providing half their chromosomes. And since we’re not moms, none of us dads have any idea of how “fear of one’s own death has nothing to do with one’s own life.”

Here’s a secret: the only reason most men stay married is a steady supply of pussy. A good twenty-five years or so of steady sex, over and over and over again, with the same person over and over and over again, that never gets boring or routine. The conversation is pretty fucking scintilating too. It has nothing to do with commitment, with raising a family, with being responsible, with love, with leadership or morals or anything like that. And so we dads NEVER think about the impact our own death would have on our loved ones, BECAUSE IT WOULDN’T HAVE ANY IMPACT AT ALL. That’s what Guigar is essentially saying.

Clearly, fathers don’t matter: that’s why there’s no crisis in the African American community of fatherless children, right? That’s why kids with an absent or uninvolved father do so well. That’s why there are no efforts made at the federal, state, and local levels to encourage father involvement, since “only a mom knows” how important a parent is for the kids.

As a parent, I totally agree with Brag Guigar, that only moms understand these things. My kid is the least of my worries. Why, I don’t even know his name.
Right? Right?

[And on we go from slow simmer to full boil.]

“Only a mom knows.” What. A. Crock. Of. Shit.

Look, I know Guigar doesn’t really believe this: what I object to is the virtually instinctive assumption of fatherly neglect, which is so ingrained in society that lines like “only a mother knows” flow from the pen like so much piss into a urinal, or like kicking your knee when the doctor hits it with that little mallet.

I am SO FUCKING TIRED of fathers getting short shrift when it comes to issues of family, and I was already SO FUCKING TIRED OF IT even before I became one, thanks to a three year stint working in a fatherhood research center.

Frankly, the role of fathers in the US has been systematically discounted, disrespected, and ignored for decades: from divorce courts that, in many states, still consider maternal custody as the definition of “best interests of the child” to child support enforcement that treats fathers as deadbeats until proven otherwise, to television programming that persistently portrays fathers as dopes, out of touch with their kids, and incompetent, dads are regularly represented as well-meaning morons at best and a step above criminals at worst.

Parenting, whether married, divorced, or never-married, is a TEAM EFFORT. I speak to my ex, who I really REALLY dislike, at least four times a week about our son, what issues he’s having, what he’s up to, how his development is coming, and what things to focus on when he visits me. And you know what? I bury all that animosity six feet under when we talk, so the conversation will be constructive, because it’s not about us, it’s about him Our boy matters more than our petty and not-so-petty disagreements. It’s hard fucking work. A lot of people aren’t able to manage it, and that is no slur on them.

I have one friend who actually stayed with his wife (who he’s hated for years) after she got pregnant by another man, because he won’t leave his kids. In fact, he even cares for the one that isn’t his, because “it’s not the baby’s fault my wife’s a jerk”.

Another friend, Mark, not only married my other friend Lucy after her partner of 15 years knocked her up and ran off, he adopted the baby as his own.

My brother is highly involved with his first child, despite the efforts made by his psycho ex, who has tried to game the legal system into preventing visits, who has told her son lies about his father, and who has gone out of her way to be nothing less than a total bitch.

A guy down at the bar drives the same distance, 8-10 hours, in the opposite direction as me to see his daughter: poor son of a bitch gets a weekend a month, a fucking weekend a month with his three-year-old, not even a fraction of what I get, and still he persists. The list goes on.

Fact of the matter is, I don’t know any fathers who don’t go out of their way for their kids: we are all dedicated to them (although sometimes the women in our lives go out of their way to prevent us from seeing our kids, but you don’t see a lot of that in the news, do you?).

Anyone wondering why you haven’t seen too many tour diaries up here since 2003? It’s because for all intents and purposes I quit pursuing a career as a performing musician because I have a responsibility to my son. You know, the one who lives 800 miles away because his mom decided I wasn’t the guy for her.

Anyone wonder why I bought a vehicle (and not just any vehicle, a minivan, freakin’ dork central), when I got by just fine with a bike for the past 5 years? It’s because I have a son to pick up and drop off. Has my ex bought a vehicle? No. Does she even know how to drive? No. But “only a mom” knows that awesome sense of responsibility, according to Guigar.

Anyone wonder why I bitch about money occasionally? It’s because 30% of my paycheck goes into an international money order straight to Montreal to support my kid. I could pay less, but I don’t because I am responsible for his well-being, and couldn’t live with myself if he had to want for food, clothes, or school.

I’m not asking for a fucking gold medal for living up to my responsibilities, and neither is any other father. What I’m demanding is that writers, journalists, and cartoonists stop purveying the damaging myth that fathers are somehow less involved with their children than mothers are: it’s not true, it’s offensive, and it denigrates the very real efforts we make on our children’s behalf.

And it’s all the more important that I rant about this outdated meme today, which Chris points out is the 34th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

“Only a Mom knows”. Give me a break.

Sigh: Photobucket sure loads slow. To be honest, I’ve been sitting on my ass in front of my computer since about 3:00 PM today, with a quick break for pho with my mom. We had a half day from work, office party and all that, but I feel so uncomfortable at those things, I hightailed it out of there after an hour or so.

I coulda grabbed my bike and went for a ride: the weather is really nice today, and in about a half hour, I’m going out to get a few miles in, but man have I been lazy.

On the other hand, i spent a lot of that sitting around time playing mandolin, which I’m trying to teach myself.

Pretzels and mustard




The Boot and Saddle, now defunct.




More pretzel fun











Almost forgot, dumbass dad.

Here are some shots, courtesy Christina. Not many animal shots, because the lighting was super dim.

Sam likes Sponge Bob almost as much as he likes Thomas the Tank Engine

Cousin Elliott, maybe not such a fan…

The kids have devil eyes, just like their dads.

Yes, just like you, I also have trouble believing that someone with a dogface like mine could ever produce such a cute kid.

As regular readers know, because my ex doesn’t drive, she has largely depended on her parents to get Sam down here to me. And surprise surprise, her parents, who don’t like me, can only manage to do this every other month: go figure. On the other hand, I worked in restaurants for years (check the sidebar article Scabby’s Rest for some of that slice of life), and I know that as a restaurant manager, my ex has scheduling problems getting him down here more frequently. So I tolerate it for the time being even though I don’t like it.

The two-and-a-half month period since his last visit (two weeks at the end of August and Labor Day Weekend) is more than twice as long as usual. Because of money and holiday issues, we agreed that this year I could have Sam for one week for Thanksgiving and two weeks in December, including Christmas. The catch was that I would have to skip October to allow her to save up time and money. I would get him on November 16th.

The wait was harder than I expected. Way harder.

I spoke to Sam as much as always on the phone during September and October, but as any parent of a young child knows, it’s no substitute for face-to-face time, especially when your kid is too young to understand the whole concept of “talking on the telephone”. It wasn’t enough, and I missed him so much it was like poison ivy scabs that itch and itch, but you can’t stop scratching until you get these bleeding little sores up and down your calves, and even then you can’t bear the burn. By the middle of October, when I was on my own, I was always at a low simmer. When I rode my bicycle to work, I held imaginary arguments with my ex under my breath, sometimes erupting loudly with “You fucking BITCH, I fucking hate what you’ve fucking done to me”, before burying it all for the next eight hours at work. I don’t mean to suggest I was losing my mind: I was just really angry, and I was fully conscious of my emotional state even as I acted out. This continues today by the way: I must look like a crazy person riding my bike, yelling at an invisible opponent. On the phone one night, I made some needlessly snide remarks, and my ex told me that if I had something to say to her, I should call after Sam went to bed, and she’d be happy to have it out with me.

The meltdown itself came on a rainy October night: When I rode out to my friends Wendy’s place for dinner with her and Rick, it wasn’t yet raining, and it looked like the storm might actually never arrive. It wouldn’t be the first time the weatherman was wrong. The minute I walked in the door the sky burst open, and the storm that would last the next eight hours began to soak the yard. But who cared? Wendy made lamb and we drank some good red wine while watching Olbermann. Around 10:00, I had to call my ex to discuss the particulars of Sam’s visit, and as I rode out into the rain, the conversation veered into things I wanted to say to her.

I suppose I’m lucky. It could have turned into a really huge fight. But as I went on, things went off the rails, and the words began pouring out of my mouth like the rain from the clouds, which was beginning to get heavier. “I don’t think you really understand,” I began. “I don’t think you understand what it’s like to be in my shoes.

“Look, I know it’s hard for you, and that you have him 24/7 and it’s exhausting. I try to understand that it’s hard for you too, but when you give him to me, that’s all I get of him. A measly week or so every other month. How would you like it if the tables were turned?” By this time, I began to get a lump in my throat, and my eyes welled up, as I steered the bike with one hand through the rain. My words were streaming together in between gulps of air.

“And then you have the nerve, the nerve to say that he visits every month, because a couple of days from a two-week visit scheduled at the end of the month flow to the next, when you know that’s not what a monthly visit is.

“You’ve made all the decisions so far, and I haven’t gotten anything, and you act like I should be grateful for my every other month and not to complain to you, but you’re the reason things are as they are! This is all the result of your decisions!

“And you know how much I love him, you know how much it kills me because I tell you over and over. And you say I’m a potential kidnapper, because I get depressed when he leaves? You hold the reins to the whole fucking thing and I’m just fucking scared that anything I say is going to make you mad at me and you’re going to take him away forever and then what the fuck am I going to do?”

By this time the rain was literally pouring out of the sky like water from a pail, thunder and lightning were crashing, and a fucking car drove by and splashed me with dirty puddle water. I was soaked to the skin as I blubbered helplessly by the side of the road on the 59th Street Bridge. “I don’t know what to do… I don’t… I.. Look, I gotta go. I can’t deal with this shit right now. I can’t even talk.” I hung up the phone and barreled into the night, a soaking pathetic wretch.

Honestly, all this needs to be complete is some steel guitars and a fiddle. It’s that fucking pathetic.

Since then, I will add, we’ve had serious discussions about how custody arrangements are going to have to change, and things do seem to be a little less fraught with stress; however, the former is a subject for future posts, and the latter is the kind of rash speculation I’m not willing to tempt.

So with this two month gap in mind, I was really looking forward to seeing Sam. My GOD! The degree to which my son has grown in terms of his mental development and his communication skills is nothing short of remarkable. For one thing, he talks now, which is something he never did before. Babble and a few words was all anyone’s received since day one, but not anymore. Now he speaks in complete sentences, fully able to express himself. And he’s also figured out choice. It’s funny, one of the ways you can get a young child to do what you want is to make your preference the second of two choices. “Do you want the candy or the carrot?” Nine times out of ten, a kid of a certain age will say “carrot” simply because it’s the second choice. Sam’s outgrown that stage.

But most importantly, his new language skills give him new ways to say “No”, and when Sam says “No”, he means it. “I don’t eat chicken.” “I don’t want stories.” “NO.” The kid is as stubborn as he is good-natured, and gets at least the threat of a timeout every day. This isn’t to say he’s a brat: most of the time, Sam is really cooperative, and enjoys helping.

On Tuesday night, Sam was watching one of his Thomas the Tank Engine videos while I made dinner. These dvds offer about 5 episodes of the series, and Sam was in the middle of watching something involving Thomas, Sir Toppham Hatt, and a visiting engine named Stepney when I told him, “After this story, we’re taking a break and eating dinner.” But when I turned off the tube, he looked at me, narrowed his eyes and said, “No. I don’t eat chicken soup. I don’t eat dinner.”

“Oh yeah? You asked for soup, and now you say you won’t eat it? Oh no. We don’t play that game here. Now you go eat your soup, and we can watch Thomas afterwards.”

“No,” he repeated. “I don’t eat soup.”

“Mister… I’m counting to three, and if you don’t go to the table, you’re getting a time out. Do you want that?”

“No. NO SOUP.”

“One…

“Two… you are riding for a fall buddy,” I said as he glared at me from the sofa.

“Three!” And I picked him up, carried him up the stairs, sat him down in his room, and shut the door. Rule of thumb is a minute per year of age, so I gave him about two and a half minutes before I opened the door. He had a big grin on his face.

“Are you ready to come down and eat dinner?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows, turned away from me, and said “NO!” to the wall.

“Fine, have it your way. Enjoy some more time out,” I said, shutting the door again. He began to wail and scream, and I went downstairs loudly to let him know I was serious. I came up a couple of minutes later, and again received a big fat sullen “NO.” for my troubles.

By this time I was beginning to grow more concerned about Sam eating dinner than winning a battle of wills with a two-year old, and unlike our Glorious President Who Rivals Even The Sun Itself In The Sheer Glory Of His Radiant Majesty And Wisdom, I changed my strategy. OK, so what if I’m generally opposed to kids eating dinner in front of the TV? If I meet him halfway, he’ll at least scarf down the soup.

“Sam, I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “We’ll set up your table in front of the tv, and you can watch Thomas while you eat your soup. Would you like that?” He glared at me again.

“No. NO SOUP!” he shouted, and turned back to face the wall.

“Ok, now you’re just being dumb for the sake of being stubborn,” I said. “C’mere.” I stood him up and looked him in the face. “I’m offering you a win-win situation: you get your dinner AND you get to see Thomas. You DO want to watch your Thomas movie, right?”

Sam’s face grew troubled. You could see the gears turning in his head: he really wanted to watch his Thomas video, but he also really didn’t want to bend to my demands. His lip began to tremble and he was struggling for the words.

“C’mon buddy, Thomas is right downstairs, we’ll heat up your soup…” His faced screwed up like he was about to betray his best friend to the Thought Police, and his eyes welled up with tears, as he said in one big sobby gulp, “NO! I don’t LIKE Thomas! I DON’T LIKE THOMAS!”

“What?!? Oh come on now, even I don’t believe that one.” I picked Sam up and started heading down the stairs as he kicked and screamed “No Thomas! No Thomas!” I sat him on the sofa to more howls of anger. “No Thomas! No Thomas!” he yelled as I turned on the TV and pressed start.

“No Thomas! NO THOMAS! NO…,” he shrieked. “No… uh… Oooh… Thomas! That’s Thomas!” he said, beaming and pointing as the little blue train sped along a trestle. I went to the kitchen and stuck the soup in the microwave for a minute, before bringing it to him in the living room. Sam sat at his table and munched his soup, his eyes glued to the set.

I put these two stories together because they illustrate a trait I share with my boy: pigheadedness.

His mom (or rather, his grandparents) really can’t do anything to make me go away: she’s consigned to spend the next 15 years (and probably the rest of her life) dealing with me and my mercurial moods. Like the bluesman says, “I can’t be satisfied.” And Sam is clearly the type of person who wants things his way, and who’s willing to fight tooth and nail to get what he wants (even if Thomas trumps all).

In the meantime, here are some photos to tide you over.

That’s the lovely Christina behind him, as well as my brother’s youngest son Elliott, with his mom Dreya.

Sam was so excited when the Iraqis voted, he STILL insists on making me pull his purple finger. “Smells like Democracy!” he says..

I don’t even know what to add here. “Meeting of the Minds”? “Mini-me”? “Vee haf vays uf makink you talk, Fraulein”?