Of alphas and omegas...

Been away from the blog for a couple of weeks as I found myself in a quandary.

How can I wax poetic as it were about my life as my grandmother painfully ebbs ever closer to the end of hers? Is it fair for me to write of the joy I feel every time I touch Wendy Lu's blooming belly, knowing that our child is only at the beginning of the journey when this woman that I love and admire so much is at the end of hers? Is it right? Fuck, I don't even know.

But I do know that I can't not share in this miracle I'm not only a witness to, but a full on participant in. And I believe my grandmother would not only want me to, but if she had it her way...she'd be right here with us. I only hope she knows that she is.

After visiting the doctor last night and laying eyes on my child for only the second time, I simply have to write about it.

Wendy Lu rightly chided me for gently probing for any tidbit of information I could gleam from our Ukrainian/Russian speaking doctor as to the gender question...curiosity got the better of me. Thankfully said doctor held to her end of the bargain, and even though she let on that she believes she spotted the sex...didn't let me in on the secret.

I'll hold up my end of the arrangement and not prod further to know what's in store. As the best news we could have hoped for and received is that both mother and baby are both coming along wonderfully. Seeing the relief in my bride's eyes as test results all point to what I've always suspected...she's as healthy as a horse...warms me in parts of my heart I honestly had no idea even existed before this endeavor. Why didn't anyone ever tell me this could feel so damn good? Nah, that's not fair.

Even after friends over the years have droned on and on about how much having a baby changes the way you view this world, of how you look at 'love' I've got to confess...I wasn't prepared for the way that this kid makes me feel.

I've never cared for someone like this. I've never felt more for anyone or anything than I do for this child I've never seen without the aid of science, for a child I've never actually touched or smelled or heard outside of a fetal heart monitor. This kid's got me. I'm ALL the way in.

I'd move heaven and earth for him or her. This is not to be taken lightly dear reader, for as much as I love my family and my wife...this is something that simply goes beyond that. The kid needs me in a way that no one ever has and truth be told...I need the kid even more. The question now becomes, how do I not let the little bugger find this information out in the coming months and years? Because if this were to reach those ever growing ears and be processed by that budding little brain, if this child were to recognize that I'm at his or her beck and call...wouldn't you abuse such power? Wouldn't anyone? Hell, I know I would.

Maybe you know it already from my pats, my rubs and my voice booming from outside that warm place you currently hang your tiny hat...but I'm your dad and I love you.

sit and listen.

Pollsters hate our freedom

These latest poll numbers for U.S. President George W. Bush (35 percent approval in a CBS/AP survey released on Wednesday) appear to be the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel this chief executive has sent us careening down in a drunk with power stupor. This guy's numbers are dropping faster than the prom queen's dress after the big dance…he’s now actually encroaching on Nixon’s Watergate-era figure of 27 percent. Let's review:

Valerie Plame is outed as a CIA agent by top level officials in the Bush administration; with the investigation into where this trail leads still ongoing, but already including an indictment for Vice President Dick Cheney’s top advisor “Scooter” Libby…wait…Scooter? You have to love these rich white boy network nicknames, they’re just this close to being homoerotic. Scooter is like what a gay Hell’s Angel would call his bitch…anyway, Plame is exposed after her husband writes an op-ed piece denouncing some of the farcical WMD claims that served as justification for us to invade a sovereign fucking nation that had done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to us.

Ah, Iraq in the autumn…we’re at more than 2,030 deaths since operation ‘Kill the brown people’ began and we’re still no closer to “Giving them their freedom” as Bush likes to say or getting the hell out of there. And what’s more, the Iraqis now hate us. Can you really blame ‘em? More than 2,000 Americans are dead, but how many tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have we wiped out with the precision of SHOCK & AWE? It’s not a video game as CNN led us to believe in the first Gulf War, and killing innocent women and children is shocking alright.

Maybe those that want to drop buildings on us do it just because they “hate our freedom” as George would have you believe. It couldn’t have anything to do with our government’s policies, right? Nah. Hell, I hate our freedom sometimes…how many more seasons of Survivor are we going to heap on an unsuspecting planet?

Since George has apparently not yet been fellated by an intern, and the Empire…oops, I mean the Republicans…still control the congress, it’s looking more and more like we’ll have to try to continue to keep this Texas twit from completely wrecking the place for at least the next 12 months before the democrats can give him the send off he so justly deserves.

Watching CNN International the other night, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at a new CNN/USA Today poll that shows 65 percent of Americans would right now vote for a democratic challenger (ANY democrat) for president. Great…but, uhm…here’s a bit of breaking news for those of you in the red states…we’re not having another presidential election for 3 years. Remember last year when we had primaries, and debates, and Bush smeared a Vietnam War hero even though he did everything he could to avoid serving his country? Yeah, it coming back to you now? Remember how it all came down to one state and a relative handful of voters again? Uh huh, see that was your chance. THAT was the election.

i wouldn't like me if i met me.

Marlboro man

Walking the dog last night for her final bladder respite, I found myself wondering why in the hell I continue to smoke (even as little as I do) when I have every reason in the world to drop the filthy fucking habit entirely.

For the record, I’m down to one cigarette a day on said walk, the only exception coming on Sunday nights at the veritable football frenzy at a local pub when I allow myself the ‘luxury’ of choking down as many as I would like to accompany the two bolshoi pints of lager I indulge in on this little evening of sensory overload…and it’s really nice.

But here’s the thing: my grandmother on my mom’s side has lung cancer. This saint of a woman who, along with my grandfather, played such an important part in who I am and how I got here, gave up the cancer convention a lifetime ago. But because of the years (decades?) that she did indulge, she was stricken…and it tears me up just like it does the rest of our family. If this thing can take out the family matriarch, what chance do we (me and the other family smokers) stand?

Now, if this was the only incentive to quit, and it is a strong reason to spur one on to dump the damn things, great...but it’s not my lone motive. I’m going to be a dad. Hell, I’m already someone’s dad! He or she just has yet to make the grand entrance from my wife’s womb. And as scary as that notion of fatherhood can be and is, it’s also without question, the greatest thing I’ve ever been a part of. Well I mean, my wife Wendy Lu, she’s doing all the work of actually growing the baby, but I put it in there, I talk to it, I pat the budding Buddha belly and I’m counting the days until we meet face to face…that’s got to count for something, right?

For the record, I don’t smoke around Wendy Lu. No way, no how, no sir. I actually find myself reacting violently if someone at one of Kiev’s eateries has the audacity to light up even in the remote vicinity of my bride’s ballooning belly and baby to be. But the thing is, I want to be here awhile. I want to make certain that I not only watch this kid grow up, but also that I'm a very active participant in all the trouble he or she is going to get into.

I actually gave the damn things up a couple of months before making the jump across the pond. They were just too damned expensive anymore. Hell, in Denver circa 2003 I was dropping nearly 3 bucks per pack. But after walking by kiosk after kiosk day after day hocking the deadly wares for 4 hryvnia, the equivalent of 80 cents, well…my cheapness and my craving won out.

It’s an interesting smoking culture because unlike the States, everybody still lights up. There are a handful of non-smoking restaurants and that’s helped, but enough with the excuses. It’s not the money or the culture or the restaurants or the beer…it’s just that I like to smoke sometimes. Those little things we like to do, those that get us into trouble, those are the ones that turn out to be the hardest to put down. But…

That baby, my wife, and the lessons I’m still learning from my grandmother…that’s got to count for something, right?

what have we done with innocence?

BOOM!

Missing the NFL as much as I do on the wrong side of the Atlantic for American football, this new Madden NFL 2006 for the Playstation Portable (PSP) has made a long two weeks, with the Falcons bye week this past Sunday, all the more bearable.

To put it mildly…this thing has put all my other PSP titles out of their misery and made me fall in the love with the mighty mite handheld all over again. While it may not quite match the visual prowess of the Playstation 2 version, it’s Madden on the go, go, go. Whenever and wherever you want to smack helmets with your hated rivals, it’s on baby!

As painful as it can be to only get whatever the hell game SKY Sports chooses to show on the illegal satellite hookup at the Ukrainian variant of the local "sports bar" (damn I miss me some NFL Sunday Ticket) this little thing is like morphine to soothe my pigskin pain.

Tight controls, the exact same audio as its big brother on the PS2 and passing and punting in my pocket will make this long Kiev winter just that much nicer.

let me teach you how to dance.

Wait...Viktor Yanukovych?

On Monday of this week, soundly defeated presidential candidate and former PM of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych actually called for fair elections come spring 2006 in the parliamentary race.

Look, I know outside of Ukraine most Westerners maybe knew of Chornobyl when you mentioned the country to them. I understand…I used to be one of those folks. But, from what I've seen and heard, the rest of the planet discovered the breadbasket of the former USSR a year ago during our Orange Revolution.

Ukrainians became recognized the world over for their little citrus uprising and it meant something.

Corruption (in the form of one very portly dirty official from Donetsk) had been defeated. Justice won out, Viktor Yushchenko was declared the rightful winner on an unprecedented third ballot (being that the first two were complete shite) and all was right with the world.

Hell, we couldn't even get the right guy in there in the good ole U.S. of A. Pretty damned impressive for what could be (and is in many circles) called a backwater, Eastern European banana republic.

Fast forward nearly a year and the Yushchenko presidency has had its fair share of problems.

None bigger than the split between the revolution’s heart, Yushchenko, and its belly fire and mouth in the form of the spitfire loved by the West….Yulia Tymoshenko.

Problems? Yes. But progress at the same time.

Progress that has seen Ukraine’s citizens finally begin to enjoy the emergence of an ever growing middle class that has so long eluded this country; not to mention a truly free media that can now ask the hard questions and not fear being beheaded and left to rot in the forest for simply speaking the truth.

But when it comes to that same truth, Yanukovych wouldn’t know it if it walked right up to him and kissed him square on the mouth.

When he actually has the balls to say "In the spring of 2006 we must elect a parliament capable of saving us from the coming catastrophe. What is needed for that is to spare the country falsifications - the basic construction material of this past year's drama," I’ve just got to run screaming "BULLSHIT!!!" from Mount Hoverla to Luhansk, from Crimea to Chernihiv.

This is the same man who nearly pulled the wool over the entire country’s eyes and found his way into the big chair (with more than a little help from Mr. Putin next door, of course).

The really scary thing is impatience around the country is giving this guy and his Regions Party ground in the polls.

i got a heart full of black.

A NEW HOPE?

Title apologies to George Lucas as I give my best imitation of an opening crawl from a tike's memory of the summer of 1977.



After having lived and worked in Kiev, Ukraine for the past two and a half years both teaching and as a journalist on someone else's nickel, when the word came this very crisp November morning of the city's latest English language newspaper casualty...I actually wasn't all that surprised.

And to tell you the God's honest truth, I was more than a little relieved.

How much is your time worth? Scratch that...moreover, how much is your opinion worth? How much does what you believe in cost?

Mine actually came relatively cheaply. Although for Ukraine, maybe it was considered a heftier sum...it wasn't enough. How in the hell could it ever be?

When one voluntarily (the 'one' referenced being ME in this case) chooses to continue to accept his paycheck over speaking what he believes to be the truth...EVEN IF IT AIN'T...how much is enough to sell that right down the Goddamned river. Said river being the Dnipro in this case.

So why do it? Convenience? The ease of rolling out of bed and writing in my pajamas did have a nice feel to it, I gotta admit. And how about only popping in to the paper's office twice a month to collect said phat ex-pat paycheck. Oh yeah, convenient. But there's got to be more than that.

Did I just get fucking lazy? Bingo.

Understanding that laziness in this sense is not what Americans 'traditionally' define as such. No, I'm not talking about eating on the couch watching your damned 'stories' in the afternoon while downing a box of fucking ho-hos actually hearing yourself get fatter over the deafening silence that has become your little red, white and blah life.

No...it's a different kind of lazy. I work damned hard. Every damned day. Anyone who writes can and will tell you to a man...IT'S HARD. Sure sometimes it flows, but more often than not, particulalry when you're writing about something that you couldn't possibly care any fucking less about, it can be a grind. It was the very days of grain prices and rolled steel indexes that would drive one to drink. Ah, but the political side of life...to turn a phrase on a savory conflict or the inevitable destructive collisions. Now that was simply pure bliss.

But as to my laziness...why in the hell did I come here in the first place? What am I doing in the former Soviet Union, and why in the name of all that is Russian Orthodox and holy am I still in Ukraine? Because I couldn't do lazy anymore.

I simply couldn't take anymore of the boxed up, buttoned down, fast food, finger lickin' good American notion of what S-U-C-C-E-S-S meant. Comfort at the cost of caring, of giving a damn and not merely wandering THROUGH this life instead of engaging IN it...no thanks.

Not to mention that I'd finally found a woman who was more than ready to break out of the culture too. That fine young lass would go on to become my blushing (well...okay, not really) bride and continues to this day serve as a reminder of the who that brought me to this particular spot in Ukraine's capital. She continues to drive me. Even when I forget that she has that oh so incredible ability to do so. And this cannot be underestimated.

But as to the why? I've allowed myself to forget. Comfort tends to have that effect on some people, most certainly on this 'people'.

I can't do that anymore. And here's to the hoping that putting it out there for the world to call me on...I won't.

-cmmc

all your dreams can conceive.