Eli wanted to go outside and swing this morning so Stephen said he would take him while I showered. I helped Eli get dressed as Stephen was doing the same. As I handed Eli his shirt he said, “Wow! Mom, I love my FBI shirt!” Then as he was putting on his shorts he followed that up with, “I love this outfit!” As he met Stephen at the back door he said, “Dad, I look better than you!” To which Stephen replied grumpily, “Hey!”
I had forgotten that babies came this small.
I had forgotten that a teaspoon of spit up is equivalent in volume to a gallon of any normal liquid.
I had forgotten the wheezy noises when sleeping.
I had forgotten to keep the diaper off for as short a time as possible.
I had forgotten the smell of a newborn’s head, like rain on hot pavement.
I had forgotten how, when they go truly high-order, a baby cries so hard and so loud that her lower lip trembles and adds vibrato to her cries.
I had forgotten that nibbled baby toes are delicious.
I had forgotten the soft “huh-huh-huh … aaah!” sigh when babies fall asleep.
I had forgotten that sleeping for a total of eight hours but with a thirty-minute awake period every three hours is like shattering a window and then repairing it with Elmer’s glue.
I had forgotten that Dr. Harvey Karp is a genius.
I had forgotten the feel of a newborn baby curled like a comma, body pressed against mine, breath hot on my neck, in that midnight hour when we are the only two people in the world.
What you need is more cuteness in your life. So I give you photos of my kids.
Aren’t you lucky?
Stephen took this photo. It absolutely cracks me up because this is a pretty standard look for Eli but very hard to capture on film.
I know we post a lot of sleeping Liza but truthfully she’s just not awake all that much. I think she looks like she’s doing the samba in her sleep here.
And for a laugh, here is a photo my jam-packed freezer. I have eight frozen 9×13 dinners and three crockpot roasts in there thanks to Joy. I ran to the grocery yesterday to get some milk and bread and bought Stephen a couple of things to take to work for lunch forgetting the state of the freezer. When I got home with them, I almost couldn’t get them in there.
When is it appropriate to phone some one you don’t know? When is it appropriate to phone someone you do know?
I was always taught that before 8 am, unless you are phoning with Important News, it is rude. Likewise with after 8 pm. Now if you are a teenager and you need advice on what to wear the next day for pictures, obviously you can phone a good friend after 8 pm. If you need help with your unruly three year old, obviously before 8 am is ok to phone grandma. Say you’ve had a super bad day and need to let of some steam? Phoning your significant other after 8 pm is cool.
What if you see a used truck by the side of the road and you think you might like to learn more about it? Do you call the phone number stenciled on the window at 6:15 am? No, you do not. You restrain yourself until after 8 am. What if you see a listing for a truck on the internet? Do you phone three times after 8 pm? No, you do not. You jot the phone number down and and call after 8 am.
Do people not think? Is the prospect of a good deal on a truck so overwhelming to them that they can’t contain themselves to decent hours? Suffice it to say, if I’m calling your house between 8 pm and 8 am, I’m probably having a baby or maybe I want to know about that nifty car you have for sale.
New born babies sleep a lot. 18-20 hours a day, a lot. You would think that with Liza sleeping like the proverbial lion queen, Eli would relax and enjoy some focused mommy/daddy time. You would be wrong in that thinking. Eli has been fairly whiny for a while now. I’m guessing it’s a new baby thing. I’m praying it’ll be over soon.
The sad part is he’s actually gotten more attention over the past couple of weeks than usual. Someone has to swing him on the new play set. There’s a great opportunity for either Stephen or me to talk with him, or as we’ve been doing the past two days, sing 14 choruses of “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly.” This morning I helped him build a fort under the piano and piano bench with a blanket. He can hang out there and play with Casey the Kinderbot or snuzzle his blanket. We even moved his couch in there. It’s an awesome fort and I totally wish I could fit.
The other behavioral issue we are dealing with is his inability to listen and follow directions. He used to follow directions so well. He was eager to please and wanted to do the things we asked of him. I don’t know if this is related to his new sister or to being three. I’m guessing it’s a three thing. Yesterday at Target when I put him in the buggy, I asked him to remember to keep his mouth off of the cart. (This doesn’t sound like a request I should have to make, I know, but with Eli it is a necessity.) While we were standing in the checkout line, I saw him lean over and deliberately lick the metal part of the cart. I was so aggravated I told him he had lost his computer time for the day. And then there is the incessant (Yes, incessant, sometimes I say things as many as 20-30 times a day.) repeating of instructions.
Here’s a short list of the kinds of things I’ve told him today or yesterday:
I’m not kidding, that’s a real list of things I’ve said. It gets old. I feel like the meanest person in the universe. I feel like with this particular behavior pattern, there is no end in site. I try to stay positive, both with my instructions to him and my own mental attitude. I try to remind myself that these battles are more easily fought now. I also try to remind myself that it’ll all be different next week. And at least Liza is sleeping through it all.
About his seminal book Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury now says it isn’t about government censorship at all. What’s it about? How television has replaced reading.
Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.
“Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,†Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.†He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.
Misty’s two-second response to this was, “He’s trying to be relevant again.” I can’t disagree with her.
Arguing badly is, like many skills, something that you can master only through practice. Thanks to the gigantic argument that is the Internet, more and more people have honed their ability to pile up logical inconsistencies until they’ve built a towering masterpiece of misdirection and ill-thought-out conclusions.
What if you don’t have time to practice arguing badly, though? What can be done? Sure, there are big lists of logical fallacies with Latin names like ad hominem tu quoque and argumentum ad misericordiam. But those lists aren’t what you’d call a field guide. It’s no good in the heat of argument trying to decide between an appeal to force and special pleading. Besides, constructing good bad arguments can take more effort than it’s worth.
That’s why I’ve compiled this handy-dandy list of arguments and tell-tales. Many of these are taken from discussions of TV shows, comics, and books, so they’re especially applicable to arguments on the Internet.
Prefacing your statements with one of these will help signal to others that you are a person who knows how to argue badly and who may be trolling.
1. “I know this is an unpopular opinion, but…” This is a great way to begin. It says, “Here’s what I think. Please don’t hit me!” It’s the verbal equivalent of a smilie. More generous people will rush to reassure you that they would never attack you just because your opinion is unpopular. This is especially effective when combined with an opinion that isn’t really unpopular at all, or a purported statement of fact masquerading as an opinion.
2. “This is just my opinion…” A weaker form of the above. Also useful for preempting attacks. How can someone attack you for what you said? It’s just your opinion!
3. “I’m sorry, but…” As dfan pointed out in comments, and Confluence expanded on, this is a fine variant of “This is just my opinion…” with overtones of “This is not really an opinion at all.” For best results, combine with a fact that isn’t really a fact.
4. “I was just…” Pretending to restate what you said earlier while actually putting a better spin on it is so easy, even a child can do it! In fact, my toddler does it all the time. “Take that out of your mouth,” I’ll say, and he’ll reply, “I was just holding it to my lips.” Someone called you on your bad argument? Pretend you were claiming something else entirely.
5. “It’s obvious that…” (See also “Clearly…” and “Everybody knows…”) Use this when you have a hole in your argument big enough to fly a 777 through. If you want, you can use it as a variation on “I was just” by saying something like, “Clearly I wasn’t going to put that in my mouth.” Ideally, though, use it to paper over rough spots in your bad argument.
6. “You’re just saying that because…” Follow this one up with an attack on your opponent or a non sequitur and you’ve got bad argument gold. “You’re just saying that because you used to wet your bed.”
7. “What you people don’t understand is…” This opening salvo really only works in your first message. Ideally you’ve never posted anything to the blog or bulletin board or (God help you) Usenet group before you say this. That’s because saying “you people” or “you folks” in your first message is an excellent way of indicating that you’re a troll, that your argument is flawed, and that any point you have will either be extremely simple (and already discussed at length) or dead wrong. In fact, using “you people” or “you folks” at any point in the argument is a great way to signal that you’re going to be arguing sloppily.
8. “It goes without saying…” A lovely way of driving home that your point is obvious, and that your opponent is an idiot because he or she won’t think of this point. If your point is especially non-obvious or, ideally, flat-out wrong, all the better. “It goes without saying that pigs can fly.”
Signifying that you know how to argue badly is a fine start, but eventually you’ll have to deliver the goods in the form of a bad argument. The following one-sentence statements are tiny gems of poor thinking. You can pad them out into longer paragraphs, but they’ll do just as well on their own.
9. “There are far more important things to worry about.” Pow! Knockout punch! The beauty of this argument is that it is irrefutably true. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs got together with the Kübler-Ross model of grief to create a leaderboard of tragedy and loss. Worried about how your kid is doing in school? Worry that your kid is on drugs! Saddened by Katrina? Think of the people who died in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. Pull this argument out when people are discussing pop culture such as movies or comic books with any seriousness. Who cares that, carried to its logical conclusion, the argument means you should never worry about anything except the hypothetical #1 important worry of all time?
10. “If you don’t like it, don’t read/see/buy it!” This argument reduces all discussion of right and wrong to a matter of exposure. If you can avoid seeing the offensive material, then clearly the wrongness of it seeps away. Think of it as the Kitty Genovese approach to media criticism. It sounds reasonable enough that you can apply the argument even in situations where it’s not a reasonable response.
11. “If you don’t like it, you write your own book/get your own show/fix it!” Mostly useful in discussion of media. This shifts the burden of fixing problems onto the people being hurt. It’s like walking up to someone’s car, bashing in their headlights, and saying, “If you don’t like not being able to drive when it’s dark, you should fix your headlights!” There are times in an argument when you want to say, “SHUT UP!” This is a graceful way of saying just that.
12. “You’re just arguing from emotion.” As Teresa Nielsen Hayden pointed out in comments, this is a great ad hominem attack that doesn’t take much effort. In fact, putting in too much effort can undermine your bad argument. “You’re arguing from emotion, not reason, and here’s why” can be a valid argument when you back it up with explanation. So whatever you do, do not explain why the person is arguing from emotion how that invalidates their argument. Everyone knows that if you show any emotion, you can’t be right!
13. “Let’s stop being PC.” A beautiful apologia for being a jerk. This is an argument full of emotional resonance. Everyone hates political correctness, right? Hell yeah they do. Sure, stripped of the easily-mocked excesses sometimes seen in the 1990s, “politically correct” means “civil and inclusive.” But civility and inclusiveness are for sissies. “Let’s stop being PC” gives you a straw man to punch on before you turn to whaling on others with impunity.
14. “My girlfriend/wife/black friend/gay friend doesn’t have a problem with that!” (Alternately, “I’m black/gay/a woman and that didn’t bother me!”) By trotting out one person and applying their opinion to an entire group of people, you can negate arguments in a flash. This is useful mostly for arguments involving racism, sexism, and the like.
15. “You don’t really feel that way/think that.” When you’re having trouble attacking someone’s argument, attack their inner feelings. To have a truly good discussion, everyone must assume that others are arguing in good faith, and that they’re not, say, arguing just to argue. By moving the discussion to what someone feels and thinks you’re signalling that you don’t think your opponent is arguing in good faith. Even better, you’ve escaped having to have facts to back you up.
16. “You’re censoring me!” Like political correctness, everyone hates censorship, right? So claiming that you’re being censored, when really it’s that your ideas are being challenged, is a great way to bring others to your side. You’ll have to ignore that censorship only works a) when your opponent has the power to censor by banning or blocking your creative output, and thus b) is really the province of governing bodies and their deputies. For variation, you can claim something is a “free speech issue” when really it isn’t.
17. “You know who else thought like you do? Hitler.” You know, I think I’ll end this post right here.
I haven’t reported on this in a while, mostly because it’s been several good days followed by several not so good days for weeks on end. Lots of folks predicted that Eli would regress in the potty arena due to Liza’s arrival. Fortunately, that hasn’t been the case as far as we can tell. Mostly he just wants his binky all the time. We had weaned him of it during the day but lately he’s taken to crawling up on his bed and vegging out with it and the notorious space blankey.
Today, however, was a milestone on the potty front. We decided to go out to lunch (getting ready for this outing deserves a post all its own) and as is our routine, we had him try to potty before we left. We waited at the restaurant and didn’t get seated for about 15 minutes, and then our food took another 15-20 minutes. Eli did especially well during this wait considering how hungry he was. But the highlight was that, while we were hanging out at the table waiting on our food, drawing on the place mats and watching Liza’s eyelids twitch with her little milky dreams, Eli asked to go to the potty. Stephen took him and he went in the bathroom at a restaurant.
I decided that was nothing to do to top that, so we went home and took a nap.