Hello Kitty followed me from Japan.

I’m really enjoying the new kick horn section that the band Chicago is using.

Never fear: I’ll soon move on to other obsessions.

I’ve got football fever, and it’s expressing itself in meme mashups.

They play their best music while running away.

My uncorrected eyesight is terrible. I started wearing glasses in second grade and contacts in third grade. My optometrist had me wear rigid contacts in the mistaken hope that it would keep my eyes from continuing to degenerate. At this point I am nearsighted enough to need nearly eleven diopters of correction. Without my glasses the world looks like something Monet painted while staggeringly drunk.

In all the time I’ve been wearing glasses and contacts, no one has ever suggested that I should go without them. No one has said, “You should let your genetics have their way.” Sadly, that’s a common attitude towards mental illnesses and the like. Today’s example is fantasy author Robin Hobb, whose view is “You have to be who you genetically are.”

To be blunt, that is a stupid, damaging view. It minimizes real problems, discourages people from getting help, and adds external disapproval to an already large reservoir of internal anguish. For instance, look at the third comment on her post. “Do I panic and put my daughter on Ritalin to avoid a similar path? I am not going to do that.”

Hobb expresses a number of problematic views in her post. She buys into the romantic myth of artistic temperament including depression and bipolar behavior. She’s not comfortable with people taking drugs long-term to fix brain chemistry imbalances. As an aside, she dismisses ADHD, placing Ritalin on the level of chugging cans of Red Bull to stay awake. She’s even peddling “don’t meddle in God’s domain!” in new genetic clothes.

Mental illnesses are real, and it doesn’t help when people dismiss them by saying that they’re just fine and dandy. Being depressed is not the same as depression. Being scatter-brained is not the same as ADHD. Depending on artificial aids for the rest of your life is not a sign of failure, and to claim otherwise is to do real and lasting harm.

Consider Type I diabetes. It’s likely got a strong genetic component, and you have to monitor your blood sugar levels and administer insulin for the rest of your life. Should we expect diabetics to do without insulin, then, in order to be who they genetically are?

Look, mental illness isn’t something you can think yourself through. You can’t will yourself better any more than I can will my eyes to work normally. Just because you can’t necessarily see the effects of a mental illness doesn’t mean the illness doesn’t exist. It’s nice that Robin Hobb has been able to live with the minor mental quirks her genetics have provided to her. But shame on her for deciding that everyone else should then be able to get by without treatment.

As you can tell, the fever today isn’t slowing her down much.

Back in the US once more. Can’t talk. Tired and busy. I have a desk full of work. Eli has Kinder Egg toys. Liza has a fever. Misty has her hands full. More later.

Misty and I are in England! We’re taking a nearly two-week vacation in the UK, driving around with friends and being amazed at how old everything is. We’re mainly relieved to be done with packing. It took a while for us to turn our pants into trousers and our underwear into pants.

If someone wants to swing by our house in a week or so and refill the automatic dog food dispenser for Eli and Liza, that’d be keen.

Almost ten years ago we had Christopher Walken dancing through the Los Angeles Marriott for Fatboy Slim and Spike Jonze.

Now we have Hugh Jackman dancing through a Rio de Janeiro hotel for Lipton Ice Tea.

I guess there’s just something about hotels and dancing movie stars.

Last Thursday we celebrated Eli completing kindergarten.

Some schools treat this as a full-blown graduation with caps and gowns and all kinds of formality. I am not down with that; I appreciate marking Eli’s transition from kindergarten to grade school, but it’s not really a graduation. Fortunately, Eli’s school didn’t do that. Instead, after everyone got their certificate, they went outside to have sponge races!

His class divided into two teams. Each team had a bucket full of water at one end of a stretch of ground and an empty bucket at the other. They had to transfer the water from the full bucket to the empty one using sponges. The first team to fill their bucket won.

Eli’s team didn’t win, but he didn’t care. He got to run a lot and get very wet.

You know, I kind of wish they’d done this at my doctoral graduation.