There was a time when I thought I'd be one of those parents who would never miss an opportunity to expose my children to all the new and exciting things this world has to offer. To quote that overplayed Creed song: "Welcome to this world, I'll show you everything. With eyes wide open. Repeat."
What I never really took into account was that such an all encompassing approach to parenting is basically impossible. You can't show your children EVERYTHING. Hell, I haven't even seen EVERYTHING, so how the hell can I reasonably expect to show my children EVERYTHING.
But, even more basic than that, I'm learning that children don't necessarily WANT to see EVERYTHING. I always thought I'd be able to sit down with my son and read "Green Eggs and Ham," with him paying rapt attention. That's simply not the case. NOTHING holds his rapt attention, except for those times when he's somewhat constipated and is dedicated to the serious task of trying to push a small continent worth of crap into his diaper. During such episodes, it looks like he's really thinking things through, but then the frantic grunting starts, and I realize it was all just an illusion.
Just keeping him entertained is enough of a chore by itself, and it's made all the more difficult because I never know what the hell is going to entertain him at any given time. One moment, he'll smile and laugh if I whistle, the next moment, whistling annoys him to tears. How can I even consider the possibility of showing him EVERYTHING, when I just tried showing him a new toy, and the result was startled crying. The point is, I can't show him EVERYTHING because there's a good chance he might not LIKE EVERYTHING.
Besides, just showing him SOME THINGS is monumentally exhausting. By the time I've spent four hours with the boy, I seriously need a nap. You can't show a child ANYTHING when you're unconscious with sleep.
I've basically reached the somewhat disheartening conclusion that each day is just an improvisational act, and tomorrow's show will only resemble today's show in a precious few details. For some reason, I thought, as a parent, I'd have more control, when in fact I have none at all. It's all just an elaborate and perpetually improvised balancing act to get through to the next day. And I have no idea what life lessons, if any, the boy will process as he sleeps at night.
On a perhaps unrelated note, I managed to hang the final few pieces of sheetrock in the basement tonight. And, as Navin R. Johnson once declared, upon seeing his name in the phone book: "Things are going to start happening to me now!" Next week, the sheetrock finishing guy is coming in, since I decided that mudding and taping sheetrock is a job best left to the professionals. Also next week, a carpenter is coming in to install all the doors; once the sheetrock is done, and we've completed all the painting, the carpenter will return to install the floor molding. Once that's complete, the carpet arrives and will require installation by an appropriate professional. In other words, much money will leave my possession in the coming weeks. Just doing my part to help improve this damaged economy of ours'.
I stood in the basement tonight, and it occurred to me that the boy will likely have no recollection of what the basement looked like for the first months of his life; all the sheetrock pieces, all the dust, all the tools, the buckets of joint compound -- that will all have been mentally processed, I'm sure, but ultimately forgotten. What he'll remember, what he'll grow up in, is the finished basement; the carpet he'll learn to walk on, the walls he'll learn to draw on, the whole basement world that he'll just remember as always having been finished.
That ungrateful little bastard. . .
I'll admit it, when I first heard of the concept of the Google Street View project years ago, it struck me as ludicrous. Build a searchable database of 360 degree image views of every street in the world? Stop smoking crack, Google!
And then they went and did it, which just goes to show what you can accomplish on crack.
Okay, they haven't actually gotten every single street in the world photographed and archived, but what they have done is pretty damned impressive. While they may not have the street corner where my childhood home in Harmony, Minn. on file. . . yet, they sure do have my current house on file, which was kind of disconcerting to discover. I thought, "I live in a nothing little corner of this city, there's no way they. . . holy shit, there it is."
It's not just the fact I found myself looking at my house on Google maps, it's the level of detail you can discern. The fake tombstones in front of the steps indicate it's Halloween--or we're really spooky goth people--and the tarp covering the dirt pile in front of the new driveway dates the image back to Halloween, 2007. I found that realization pinged my nostalia area of the brain, as I realized that was the year we camped in Yellowstone, poured the driveway extension, and we weren't even married yet. It was also the year I made a lot of money from Google, ironically.
But, I wasn't really hit with nostalgia until I did a Google Street View tour of my old stomping grounds in Tokyo. I pulled up the street address of the apartment complex where I lived in 1992 - 1993 and:
I was 17-years-old again, a rural Minnesota boy in over my head in a city of 20 million people. Man, that took me back. It being Tokyo, of course, a lot of things had changed, so my virtual walking tour wasn't EXACTLY like I remembered, but it was pretty damned close.
The 7-11 on the corner that opened the same week I moved there:
The Fuji-san bridge over the train tracks, so named because on the rare days there isn't smog, Mt. Fuji is perfectly framed in the distance:
I've literally spent hours "walking" around in Tokyo, and I haven't even gotten to Kamakura yet, which could kill an entire weekend.
The thing about so many news Web sites now attaching comment engines to most of their articles (what James Lileks accurately described as "a slime trail of ignorant comments), I feel far less ambition to conduct the kind of fiskings I so enjoyed in years past.
I mean, sure, I could still take Nick Coleman's mind-drool columns behind the literary woodshed and administer the old smackdowns of yesterday, but then I read a comment that basically says "Nick you're an idiot who can't write," and I think "You know, that sums it up perfectly. I have nothing to add."
The Internet has evolved and passed me by, I fear. Alas.
It seems everyone who has an opinion and the ability to type somewhat coherently has an opinion about the iPad. And, seeing as I always have an opinion AND the ability to type more than coherently, here's my two cents.
The iPad: it's cool, but ultimately it's just another gadget that's going to further dilute an already diluted IT savvy marketplace.
People who love technological innovation will make a seamless transition to the iPad, and that number of people is no doubt in the millions, so Apple will once again swim in a Scrooge McDuck money bin full of cash.
But, really, people who have grown to love computers, will continue to prefer computers; and people who have grown to love Blackberries and other PDAs, will continue to prefer those gadgets; and people who have grown to love iPods, Zunes, Droids, etc., will continue to prefer those gadgets.
And newspapers, magazines and other legacy media will continue to scream "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!!!" and continue to lose their audiences.
For all its hype, the iPad will not save any particular industry segment, although I have no doubt many news media organizations will flock to the iPad, only to get financially burned, yet again, by the rapidly evolving world of technological innovation it has failed to understand and adapt to time and time and time again.
The bottom line. . . the line at the bottom. . . is consumers who have grown accustomed to a world of readily accessible and free data and information, will not acquiesce to any new online model that says "Pay Here." Granted, the digital world has gotten considerably more choked with data and information that's gotten increasingly more difficult to navigate, but given the choice between jumping digital hurdles for free, or paying to avoid the hurdles, the vast majority of online users will opt to jump through digital hurdles to access free content.
The iPad is just another digital distraction; something the media will fawn over but, ultimately, it will be just another in a long line of digital gadgetry that has a loyal following, but has a tough time gaining converts from other digital gadgetry. And the digital marketplace will continue to become even more diluted and confusing.
And, I guarantee you: someone, SOMEWHERE, will figure out how to craft spam for the iPad. That's as certain as death and taxes.
