The Scientific Method

This weekend the J-Fob family drove to Portland to visit our friends the Architect family and FoxyJ's sister, SkyeJ. We had a great visit with everyone and now the kids and I are home while Foxy is spending another night in Portland so she can get back in Jeopardy's contestant pool tomorrow morning. And on top of all the fun we had, the trip provided an opportunity for me to exercise the science muscles I've not used in the ten years or so since I've taken a science class. As you'll see, my grasp of scientific inquiry is astounding. Observe:

Question. It is a well-known fact that car travel with all four members of the J-Fob family is stressful, even nerve-wracking. Why is this?

Background research. I've noticed that long drives by myself are very peaceful, so obviously it is not driving itself that induces jaw-clenching anxiety. Just about every one of the long car trips I've taken with my wife and kids over the last few years, though, has led to headaches and vows never to do it again.

Hypothesis. It must be one of the other members of the J-Fob family--either FoxyJ, S-Boogie, or Little Dude--who is the cause of so much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Experiment. As a control, all four of us drove to Portland together. We left on Friday at 3:30pm and arrived at 9:40pm. For the math-challenged, that is more than six (6) hours for what should be a three (3)-hour drive. Most of it was spent listening to S-Boogie scream "GO FASTER!" or "MAKE LITTLE DUDE STOP SCREAMING!"

The next step in the experiment was to systematically remove each of the suspected troublemakers from a similar trip and compare results. As the first test, I drove home this afternoon with S-Boogie and Little Dude, leaving FoxyJ behind with her sister. We left at 1:35pm and arrived at 4:25PM. That's a little less than the expected three (3) hours, much less than the previous trip's six (6) hours. Most of this time was spent enjoying the scenery while S-Boogie played quietly by herself or napped, and Little Dude did the same.

At this point I decided that the results were conclusive enough that I didn't need to proceed with more testing.

Conclusion. It is clear that the member of the J-Fob family who makes car trips stressful is FoxyJ. In the future we will either leave her home or send her by plane, train, or post. It may seem cruel to thus exclude our wife and mother, but she is a logical woman and I'm sure will agree with the conclusiveness of this experiment, and that her sacrifice is for the greater good of the family. I am also fully confident that future trips will prove the repeatability of this experiment, as S-Boogie and Little Dude will continue to be the pleasantest of little angels without their mother in the car.

I hate to think where we'd be without science.

Hipocrisy is the Greatest Luxury

Last night FoxyJ and I watched Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, a documentary about a group of refugees from Sierra Leone's brutal civil war of the nineties who started a band, bringing music to refugee camps in Guinea until the war ended in 2002 and they became leaders in bringing the refugees home. The story is meant to be one of hope, showing how these people used music to help them and their fellow refugees recover from the horrors they'd lived through, but as much as I enjoyed the movie and especially the music, I had a hard time getting past the horrors to the hope. It's hard to listen to a man tell how rebel soldiers forced him to beat his child to death and then cut off his hand, to see the fear in his eyes at the prospect of returning to the country he once called home, and not be left with the same sense of despair and helplessness that I've felt after watching every other film I've seen about the atrocities that happen in countries throughout Africa.

Earlier this week we watched In the Heat of the Night, and while I enjoyed the story and the acting--Sidney Poitier is amazing--I felt a similar sense of helplessness, though in this case not so much despair as anger at people whose racism leads them to treat human beings so inhumanely. Toward the beginning of the film the camera rests for a moment on a little statue of the Virgin Mary on a policeman's dashboard, and I was reminded of Crash, another film about racism that combined all those feelings of helplessness, despair, and anger and magnified them. As it turns out, I'm not the only person who has made the connection between the two movies--a review FoxyJ stumbled upon talked about how both movies are meant to make middle-class white people (read: me) feel good about themselves for not being racist.

A couple weeks ago I spent a while digging through the archives of a blog called Stuff White People Like. I laughed quite a bit as I read the satirical observations of white yuppies, as the particular brand of white yuppie parodied here, who loves diversity and gay people and the environment, is very much your typical Seattleite. The more I read, though, the more uncomfortable I became; the parodies started sounding less like parodies and more like accurate descriptions of me. I am the white guy who recycles because it's a way I can save the Earth without actually having to do much. I am the white guy who loves "conscious" hip-hop because it so vitally addresses the problems of a community I don't belong to. I am a living parody of educated, middle-class white people. I'm not very comfortable with this realization.

I'm in the midst of reading Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama's memoir about missing the chance to get to know his father and the resultant disconnect with his Kenyan roots. I feel a connection--and at the same time feel like I have no right to claim such a connection--to the teenaged Obama who felt as much like an outsider among the few other black students at his high school in Hawai'i as among the Asian, Polynesian, and white majority. I had a similar experience when I went to college and related neither to the white students that surrounded me nor to the other students from Hawai'i. In the former case it was my own pride in my island upbringing that prevented me from acknowledging that mainland white culture was not that different from my own; in the latter it was the color of my skin that betrayed me--despite the fact that I'd never lived anywhere but Hawai'i, I felt like an imposter claiming the islands as my home.

I like to think it is my own experience as an outsider--whether for my race or my sexual orientation--that leads me to feel a sense of connection to the victims of racism and to the residents of a continent recovering from centuries of European colonization and American slavery. The fact that I like to think this reveals just how ridiculous I am. I have a nice home, food, and nearly two master's degrees. Technically I believe my family's income is below the poverty line, but that's by choice, not by necessity. I am not a victim of anything. I have never been discriminated against for my race or my orientation. I live in a country where I can reasonably assume that rebels are not going to come to my village and kill or mutilate me. No matter how much hip-hop I listen to or books about racial identity I read or documentaries about Africa I see, I will not know what it is to be oppressed.

What then should I do? Should I stop trying to understand because I will never succeed, because even if I did that wouldn't solve anyone's problems? I don't think so. I can't solve the problems of the world, but I can't ignore them either. I'd like to end here on something pithy like "Perhaps trying to understand is all I can do," but honestly that feels like a cop-out. An excuse for the privileged intellectual elite to feel smug about recognizing that people everywhere are suffering, but not really do anything about it that would require more effort than buying a "Save Darfur" t-shirt.

I remain in the comfort of my perceived helplessness because anything beyond that is overwhelming.

My Constant Fear

That just as I've gotten comfortable on the toilet and gotten into my book, the four-year-old will bang on the door--or just open it--and say, "I need to go potty."

Fascinating Manhood

Yesterday while my wife was at work and I was busy preparing a nice warm meal for her to come home to, the microwave stopped working. None of the buttons I pressed did a thing! Now, I know a lot of boys might panic at such a predicament, knowing how important it is to have dinner ready before their woman comes home. Some househusbands would go straight to the phone and call a repairwoman out to fix the microwave, thinking this is the best way to avoid adding any complication to their wife's already-stressful workday. I, however, know better. Where others see calamity, I saw opportunity--an opportunity to reaffirm my complete and utter dependence on my woman, and for her to reaffirm her womanliness.

When my wife got home from work I put on my best pouty face and said in a childlike whine, "Honey, I broke the microwave." I was sure to bat my eyelashes and look as cute as I could in my little apron when I said this.

My wife smiled and shook her head. "It's probably just the outlet, sweetie."

"If you say so," I said with hunched shoulders and an ever-so-slightly tilted head. "You know I don't understand those kinds of things--I'm just a boy."

She sighed. "I'm exhausted right now. I'll take a look at it tomorrow. Where's my dinner?"

I quickly dished up the broccoli cheese soup and the potatoes I'd baked in the oven, then stood by the table and watched my sweetcake enjoy the meal.

I was a little worried we'd have to buy a new microwave, as I know finances stress my honey out--I don't bother with such things myself, as I just have to ask for a blank check when I need something--but of course my silly concerns were unfounded. This morning while I was out running my little errands, my good wife fixed everything. Flipped the breaker or some such gobbledy-gook.

The important thing is that my wife knows I need her, and that's why she loves me. This Celestial Love is what makes our marriage so great!

Sadly,

no one asked me yesterday about the huge pressure bandage on my forehead. I was ready with a story about how I had this huge zit, and then when I popped it...

But alas.



Innocent Child: Daddy, where do lame jokes go when they die before they're told?

Daddy: (Patting child on the head) The Fobcave, honey. They go to the Fobcave.

Mr. Fob the Humbly Glorious

At FoxyJ's insistence, I've taken a Myers Briggs personality test. And then I took another. Both say I'm an INFJ, extremely strong on the N (intuitive), fairly strong on the I (introverted) and J (judging), and just barely F (feeling). It's apparently a rare combination--about 1% of the population. I'm flattered by the comparison made between this personality type (called "Confidant" or "Counselor") and people like Gandhi, MLK Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Goodall, and most of all Shirley Temple, but I'm suspicious that this is describing not so much who I am as who I'd like to think I am. Take for example this description:

Beneath the quiet exterior, INFJs hold deep convictions about the weightier matters of life. Those who are activists -- INFJs gravitate toward such a role -- are there for the cause, not for personal glory or political power.

Actually, to be honest, I'm quite fond of personal glory. Not that I know what to do with it when I have it, but that doesn't mean it's not, like, one of the chief motivators behind everything I do.

But then again, who am I to question the authority of a 75-question online personality test? I obviously don't care about personal glory, if that's what the test says. So go on, tell me how wonderful I am for being so unconcerned with what people think of me. I know that's what you're thinking.

My Band's Album

So Few People Can Handle It by Paleolithic-Style Diet. And the cover art here. (I haven't actually made the cover, presumably because I'm hesitant to violate copyright laws so blatantly, but more so because I'm feeling lazy.)

Via Cricket and Edgy:

The first random article on wikipedia.org is your band name.
The last part of the last quote here is your album title
The third picture here is your album cover art.