For some inexplicable reason, the other day I found myself thinking about the 1994 season of MTV's The Real World—the one with Pedro and Puck. If you didn't watch that show, then this observation may not mean anything to you, but it occurred to me that if a person were going to pick his nose and then use the same finger to scoop up and eat some communal condiment, peanut butter may be among the more sanitary choices. Most or all of the peanut butter that actually touched the booger-y finger will have come up on the finger, and the high viscosity of the peanut butter means that there will have been very little opportunity for the germs to spread into the rest of the jar.

It's still gross, of course.

If I had to come up with one word to describe my experience of reading this book it would be "dirty." And I don't mean that in the sense of "erotic" or "immoral" or "forbidden"—though perhaps I should mention that there are several scenes that could easily be described as perverse. But, no, I literally mean it as "covered in filth." China Miéville has created a setting—the city of New Crobuzon—that is squalid and grimy. His vision of urban life in this fantastic world is bleak and alienating. New Crobuzon is full of downtrodden poor, corrupt politicians, self-serving criminals, all grubbing in the muck of their environment. Reading Perdido Street Station I felt like I was crawling through sewage much of the time.

Nonetheless, it was compelling. Despite the setting and the prose that was, at times, overblown and almost cheesy, I had trouble putting this book down.

But perhaps I should back up a bit and explain the book some. I had a hard time getting my arms around Perdido Street Station at first—the entry is a little jarring and there weren't the usual genre pointers to help me get my bearings. To give you a little start there, Perdido Street Station is part horror and part fantasy, set in a world where magic mixes with steampunk technology. It's weird. Of course I mean "weird" in the way we normally use the word these days, but also in the older sense, the kind that invokes that eerie feeling you get where you know something is wrong, but can't quite figure out what. The story centers around a brilliant but sloppy scientist named Isaac, who, at the beginning of the book, is approached by a half-man, half-bird creature that has lost its wings and wants to fly again. About the first third to half of the book is spent showing you the city and its denizens, and setting up the action that explodes in the rest of the book. You meet Isaac's part-insect artist girlfriend, Lin, and several of his friends and associates—things move a little slowly, but everything steadily and kind of creepily builds before terror explodes into the plot about halfway through. The climax and the action leading to it is harrowing, and the eventual resolution is well done, even if it also leaves a taste like ashes in your mouth.

I think my problem with this book is its negativity, its darkness. Mind you, I'm not looking for sunshine and rainbows in my fiction—I loved Glen Cook's Black Company novels, for example—but Miéville's story is willfully, even oppressively dark, like he's throwing it in your face. Reading a bit about him, I learned that he's in Michael Moorcock's philosophical camp of fantasy writers, disdaining the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien for comforting his readers instead of challenging them. Yet, for all that reading this book made me want to take a shower, I didn't find it challenging, exactly. It didn't present any new ideas or push me to see familiar things in new ways. Rather, it reminded me of a high school kid from the suburbs with piercings, painted nails, and all-black clothes, rebellious for rebellion's sake.

Still, don't get me wrong, it's a well-crafted story. It took a little while, but I did connect with the characters, and the bittersweet ending definitely affected me. I think I'd even say I liked it. This sounds like pretty thin praise, I suppose, but given how unpleasant the setting was, I think the fact that I'd say I liked it at all speaks to how good it was. If you like your fantasy dark, I'd say this book very well may be for you.

Started: 2009-05-12 | Finished: 2009-05-22

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Jason had kind of a rough weekend. I'm not sure exactly why since it was a fun weekend. It could have been that all the extra stimulation had him feeling overtired—Saturday he played with a bunch of his friends in the morning and then got to visit a new house when we went to have dinner with our friends that evening. Or perhaps he's getting a new tooth. Maybe he was just in a bad mood. It's hard to say, but whatever the reason he was extra fussy, and it really started wearing on me after the first day.

There are a lot of times I find myself getting frustrated, even angry, or just feeling completely exhausted. Like I often do when I'm not enjoying my current situation, those times get me into a "wait it out" frame of mind, where I keep telling myself that it'll be over eventually. It's a pretty natural reaction, I think, and in some ways it's useful—it helps me keep going when I need to get through a tough spot. It's when you do it too much that it can be problematic.

I realized last night after Jason went to bed that one day I will put him down after holding him, carrying him, cuddling him, and that will be the last time I ever do it. I probably won't know it when it happens. In fact, it's likely that it'll seem so ordinary that I won't even be able to remember exactly the last time I do it. I thought about that for a while and this deep sense of sadness came over me, and it kind of surprised me because I didn't used to think that I'd be sentimental in that way. I obviously want him to grow up and I'm really curious to know what sort of man he'll be, but I'm also going to miss being able to rock him to sleep, to run my fingers through his hair as he rests his head against my shoulder, to feel him cling to me with his arms and legs as I carry him. So what I'm trying to do now is slow things down for myself and really savor the experience of taking care of my baby, because it really won't last very long.

Even in just the month or so since I last wrote, he's changed so much. He's been crawling now for about two months, so that's not exactly new, but lately he's been getting tantalizingly close to walking. He pulls himself to a stand easily now and has been standing freely more often and for longer durations. He's been feeding himself finger foods for a while now, but lately he's actually been getting good at getting it into his mouth. His babbling has seemed to be getting more purposeful, and in the past week or two we've been able to get him to imitate the sounds we make. I even think he's starting to use one of the signs we've been teaching him—it's hard to tell, though, if he's really signing or just playing with his own hands. Every day he gets a little more active, a little more inquisitive, a little more fun—he's just growing up so fast. I wonder what I'll remember about this time when I'm looking back on it from way down the road. But then, that's part of why I'm writing this, isn't it?

If you're at all like me, you have occasionally pondered the cultural significance of things like video games, movies, bands, and other pop culture phenomena. You may have even thought about writing down these ideas you've had, perhaps in a blog or book. If you're like me, well, reading this book may make you despair a little, since Chuck Klosterman does so much better a job with this sort of thinking and writing than I do.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is a collection of essays delving into such topics as what paying the video game The Sims tells us about ourselves, or the impact of MTV's The Real World on the personalities of young people today, or why Billy Joel is important despite the fact that he's not cool. It's sharp, funny, and, for the most part, spot-on in its analysis of American pop culture. The only drawback may be that Klosterman's touchstones are not universal—people below a certain age range were too young to be aware of these things when they happened, and people above that age range likely didn't care. So, if you're not between the ages of about 25 and 40, this book may completely miss you. If you are close to my age, though, I'd say this book is probably worth checking out.

Started: 2009-02-13 | Finished: 2009-03-02

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After finishing my second series by Dan Simmons, I seem to be noticing a pattern. The first book has an interesting premise, is tightly plotted, and seems to be going somewhere good, but ultimately the series ends up being kind of disappointing. That was true of the Hyperion series, and I think it's even more true of Ilium and Olympos.

This duology is set a few thousand years in the future, when some humans have engineered themselves into god-like beings, others are living a life of ease and ignorance, and there are sentient robots living among the asteroids and gas giants of the outer solar system. There are a number of intertwining storylines—one involving a 20th-century classics scholar who is resurrected by what appear to be Greek gods who task him with observing their recreation of the Trojan war, another involving a group of the post-civilized humans on Earth questioning their existence, and a third involving a group of robots from Jupiter setting out on a mission to find out what's going on back on Earth and Mars. It sounds confusing, and it kind of is, but it starts off really well. And it's really smart when it starts, too, with both oblique and explicit references to literature from the Iliad to Shakespeare to Proust to Nabokov.

Unfortunately, the second book doesn't deliver on the promise of the first. It's just kind of all over the place—a bunch of stuff happens, but it all feels unfocused and scattered, like Simmons had loaded a bunch of ideas into a shotgun and let it spray. Every chapter ends in a cliffhanger, only to leave you to go back to a different plotline. It got kind of aggravating after a while, and the resolution left a lot to be desired.

I think that this is probably worth reading for the first book, but try not to let your hopes ride too high as you go into the second.

Started: 2009-03-13 | Finished: 2009-04-03

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It seems like usually when an author continues to write story after story set in the same world, things get stale after a while. Steven Brust appears to be an exception to that rule, though. I've read ten of his Vlad Taltos books, two of the Khaavren Romances, and now this one, and the more I read about Dragaera, the more I want to read.

Unlike most of the rest of Brust's novels set in this world, Brokedown Palace isn't set in the Empire—the focus is on one of the Eastern Kingdoms. (Familiar readers will recognize the setting as Vlad Taltos's ancestral homeland.) The tone is also markedly different from both of the other series. The original series is told in a straightforward, sometimes sarcastic voice. The Khaavren books are modeled after Dumas. This one reads more like a fairy tale—in fact, it appears to be explicitly modeled after a certain oral tradition, which I can only assume is Hungarian as that is Brust's background. As fables go, I found this one to be quite well-written—tight, well-paced, and with a really nice overall structure. I was reminded a little bit of Tolkien's Silmarillion, except this was more fun to read.

The only thing that detracted from the experience for me was the title, which was taken from a Grateful Dead song and is shared with a movie that starred Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale, neither of which have anything to do with this book. But, anyway, overall I have to say I very much enjoyed this one.

Started: 2009-03-09 | Finished: 2009-03-12

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It's been four weeks since my last update and things have been pretty hectic. I've been putting in a lot of hours at work, and Jason hasn't been a very happy camper when I've been home. Between teething and ear infections and colds and everything, he's had kind of a rough few weeks. It's seemed that way to me, at least—he's been pretty fussy. Plus, with his newfound mobility, he's also gained new reasons to be frustrated—namely, that I won't let him do whatever he wants. Like when he wants to investigate the electrical outlets, for example, or when he wants to pull lamps down onto his head. And with that new frustration, he's figured out how to throw temper tantrums.

At times this whole parenting thing can be really trying. Sometimes I feel like I want to tear my hair out, others, I just feel really tired. So it's nice to be able to capture those bright moments, to be able to play them back and relive the bliss that the good times bring. Which brings me to the main point of this post: a video.

Jason's favorite toy is the little phone-shaped rattle that's part of his music table. He carries it around with him as he explores the living room, managing to push it on top of the stuff he's climbing on, or under the couch. A couple of weeks ago I was playing with him and showed him how I could make the rattle jump by slapping it with my hand. It was, as you can see, a big hit.

Lately, Jason has become somewhat single-minded in pursuit of a particular goal: harassing the dog. Up until just a few weeks ago, he had paid almost no attention to the dog at all. Of course, for the first little while, he didn't pay much attention to anything. Then he was mostly interested in me or Juliette or his own hands and feet. Later, his toys. Now, it's the dog. As soon as he becomes aware of Cooper, Jason immediately lunges, trying to get two tiny fistsful of dog hair. As you might imagine, Cooper is not terribly fond of this, so he has been learning how to anticipate Jason's notice and run away.

Mind you, as soon as it's Jason's  feeding time, you can be sure that Cooper has taken up station under the high chair, hoping that something will fall. Last night I let him eat the remains of one of Jason's teething biscuits and he was over the moon.

Anyway, with Jason's newfound mobility, Cooper has a bit more to worry about. He seems to be taking it well, though.

I'd have thought that my next blog entry would have been about Jason's swimming lessons, which started the Saturday before last. And, to be sure, they were a whole lot of fun for all of us. But while I've been procrastinating about writing, Jason seems to have turned another big developmental corner and has become an almost entirely new baby. In the past two weeks, he's figured out how to scoot himself from one place to another, how to pick himself up on his hands and knees, and he's tantalizingly close to learning how to crawl for real. He's also figured out how to sit up on his own. He almost never does sit up, though, because he's constantly on the move.

It's amazing the personality changes that have come with his newfound mobility. I guess Jason's always been curious and into exploring, but now that he can actually get around a bit, he more or less constantly wants to be checking things out and pulling himself around. What's astonishing is how obvious that desire is—he really wants things all of a sudden. Unfortunately, he still hasn't quite figured out crawling, which means that he's nearly constantly frustrated. If we pick him up, he squirms to turn around and see out, or even to get out of our arms. But when we put him down, he rapidly gets upset at his inability to get his arms and legs coordinated. He gets this really intense look on his face when he's trying to crawl and you can tell that he's really focusing and trying to figure it out. What's more, you can see that he knows how close he is, which is all the more frustrating for him.

What's even harder is that Jason has no way of expressing what it is he wants, so things have gotten a little more challenging. Too, he's so interested in all the stuff around him that feedings and sleeping have gotten more difficult again. On the other hand, it seems like his language skills are also starting to develop. He's been responding to his name for a couple of months now, I think, but we noticed that lately he seems to be understanding more of the words and signs we've been using. The other day I asked him if he wanted some milk, along with the sign, and he immediately (even a little franticly) turned and looked at Juliette. His babbling is also including a lot more sounds than it used to.

When I think about how fast this is all happening, it just blows my mind. I mean, it's only been a few weeks since he wasn't even able to turn himself over. I feel like I can hardly keep up—no sooner do I get used to one thing than it's different again. But, man, it's so cool to see it happening.

We've managed to more or less get Jason on a sleep schedule. It seems to be working pretty well—he gets a bath at 7:30 every night, then Juliette reads to him and puts him in his pajamas, then she puts him down at 8. He usually falls asleep in less time than it takes her to walk from his room to the living room. It's great because we get some time in the evenings to catch up on chores and spend some time together, and he sleeps right through the night. He does wake up earlier than we'd like most days—usually around 5:30—but Juliette is up by then on the weekdays anyway and he actually sleeps later than that often enough that I'm hoping the early rising is something he'll grow out of.

The one problem, though, is that it's often hard to get him to wait until 7:30 to start his bedtime routine. Especially if he hasn't had a late nap, or if the nap he did have was short, Jason starts getting tired around 6:30. Usually that means he's fussy, though lately we have been able to keep him entertained enough to distract him. If he's really tired, though, sometimes we get a scene like this:

I'm pretty sure that the fact that we're laughing in the video means we are terrible people.