Baby birds are disgusting looking creatures. Hairless pink wretches, blind and featherless, with amputated wings for arms and thick blue veins running impossibly close to their thin skin. They’re not through yet, some exposed embryonic stage that should be kept under wraps, under their shell for a few more weeks at the very least. Impossible to survive. Destined…
Author: greenplacebo@mac.com
SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO LIE. A LOT.
Yes, I realize this is not an earth-shattering revelation. We all lie, all the time. Big ones, as well as the countless little “innocent” lies, little fibs to make other people feel better or ourselves look better, to spare feelings or create false positive ones. “Oh, you don’t look your age at all, wow have you lost weight, no, I…
THEIR MADDENING, FRAGRANT IMAGINATION
Nothing is more pressing or vivid for a child than their imagination. A palpable organ of myth, always twisting and filling their daily life with change and magic. Perhaps it’s something we have lost, not just something that only children possess. It seems a natural effervescence to life that children are more connected to, closer to the vine and to…
JEFF GARCIA SYNDROME
I came to realize fairly quickly that no matter how hard I tried and wanted to, I was not going to be as good at taking care of kids as a woman would be. At least not naturally. Not to say there aren’t some shitty stay-at-home Moms. There certainly are, I see them dialing it in, or living their…
DON’T WANNA
The human will is an awesome thing. Not ‘awesome’ like we throw it around now, for things so banal as a good cup of coffee or a properly framed selfie. Awesome in the true, world-altering sense. Straddling base instinct and our own, heralded consciousness, our will has allowed us to do fantastic things, both glorious and horrible. What…
FESTIVAL OF ANNOYANCE
The girls are trying their very best to annoy the crap out of each other and, not coincidentally, me. The long summer is waning, soon to come to a gracious close, and in a few ways it couldn’t come quickly enough. It’s been fun, but the time has come to speak of other things, to other people. I…
THE FART WARS HAVE BEGUN
We all know how horrible and long wars can be. They worst ones go on and on, often in volleying series of an endless match. We relish fighting someone else and will do it interminably. Always a Crusade somewhere between the believers and the infidels. The Capitalists vs. the Communists, the Protestants vs. the Catholics, the French vs. the English.…
LITTLE CRUSHES
“Daddy, I am in love with Joel,” 6 year-old Sophie pronounced on that drive home from school, mixed in with the voluminous barrage of other things she had said before that. So well mixed that I missed it. I had been rapid firing my non-responses to her eternal diatribe with serial ‘uh-huh’ and ‘wow’ and ‘that’s great honey’-s. I try,…
OH YEAH I FORGOT YOU WERE AN ADULT
“You know why I love stuffed animals so much?” I’ve been dying to know the answer as to why the worlds biggest fan and consumer of stuffed animals is the way she is. Why she has hundreds, maybe a thousand, in a sprawling pile we are constantly trying to winnow away to no avail. She knows each one by name,…
THE END OF A NEON ERA
All eras come to an end, all eras are arbitrary. Like lines on a map, eons and eras are measured by whoever is measuring them and described by whoever gets to write the book. Many of them are silly, like our neon green van era. When we had Lilah and felt like a “real family” our cars suddenly felt tiny.…