jakit

Lucia Marin Horvath

Little Luce was born on Tuesday, February 9th; three weeks early and two days after her mother's birthday.

Weighing 6.7 pounds, she entered the world quickly, but intensely, and has since wisely decided to just snooze her days away.

Unlike Julian, who came crashing-in on the heels of a fortuitously-timed bender, Lucia's birth brings with it no crazy story. Instead, she's generously provided me with an opportunity to reflect upon what Erika and I have been through in our quest to form a family.

To be honest, there were many moments over the last few years in which I wondered if we would ever get to this point.

It was back in 2006 when I received the test-results that felt, upon first impression, worse than a death sentence; a big goose egg on the sperm count. It appeared as if I would never be able to have children of my own.

Eventually, further tests would reveal the cause of this deficiency. It turns out that I carried a single cystic-fibrosis gene; not enough to give me the disease to such an extent that I would succumb to it, but enough to give me several of its nasty conditions. Primarily, in this context, I was born without a vas deferens.

This meant that my boys could swim; they just couldn't get out of the damn pool.

Thankfully, due to mega-super-hyper-advanced technology (and a lot of money, mostly provided by fabulous relatives,) we were able to do what would have been impossible only fifteen years ago.

Having become rather Luddite-ish lately, this has presented me with a sort-of existentialist conundrum. Still, I'll trade esoteric ideals for awesome little kids any day of the week.

And so, I will always be eternally grateful to the brilliant scientists and doctors who gave me what I was, apparently, not supposed to have- a beautiful, precious and most-fantastic little family.

Kudos, of course, to my heroic wife for doing her share of the family-creation, as well ;)

Green Police

I didn't watch the superbowl and I haven't seen any of the ads except this one, which I happened to come across on the internets.

I find it rather clever.

It manages to make fun of the extreme moralizing that occurs in the green movement while, at the same time, still acknowledging the movement's overall wisdom.

For people who believe that it is smart to live sustainably, this ad is a gentle poke in the ribs and a humorous reminder that it is still possible for one to have fun in life, even while trying to do the right thing.

The nutcase teabaggers, on the other hand, see this ad as an accurate forecasting of our future, when the American populace will be tyrannically ruled by a big-brother-style government forcing us all to behave like good liberals.

Which is bizarre, really, because the green movement has occurred thus far, and for the most part, outside of government power; despite the dominant authorities, not because of them.

The American government has never pushed people into buying organic, buying local, living sustainably, etc... quite to the contrary. Our farm bill, for instance, still helps enormous agribusinesses producing unhealthy food while, simultaneously, hurting the local farmers.

No, the green movement has grown because of word-of-mouth and other grass-roots methods of communication. The power it has is only the power of knowledge and the ability, at the worst, to make something taboo and/or shameful.

It is a possibility, however, that corporations and their government stooges could learn to hijack the green movement in their favor (much like they manipulate the desire to be safe in order to justify wars fought for resources) while still subverting it, but since the movement is, by definition, anti-corporation and pro-small and local government, I'd be very surprised to see this happen.

In other words, although this Audi ad is clever and fun, it's still just corporate bullshit.

So the bears are packed with cocaine?

The saga of the missing bears just keeps getting bigger.

Amazingly.

We're talking front page of the Oakland Tribune and three television news stories bigger.

Yeah.

Fer real.

I won't provide all the relevant links here, since they're already on the missing bears page, but I will connect you to the comments from a blog entry about the bears on SFist because they perfectly capture the story's appeal.

However, even though it's fun to watch all this happen, it is also slightly disturbing.

Last night, as I stood in front of Catos Alehouse and watched my buddy Chris get interviewed by Channel 7 News, I couldn't help but ponder our strange society. I mean, this is a guy who has composed music for, and acted in, several local independent films (all done brilliantly, I might add) and, yet, his first significant press is coming because he lost a couple of toys?

Yeeesh.

Perhaps, out of all this, more people will come to appreciate his music.

And, on that note, if these bears do get found, the story will only get bigger still.

C'mon bears! Come home!