The Walking Dead S6 E11: Knots Untie

Does it seem like The Walking Dead is getting a dry sense of humor in its old age? I am amused by all the wordplay on Jesus’ name (“Jesus is waiting outside,” “Jesus says this,” “Jesus says that,” etc.). I also thought it was funny when the camera captured him from the chest up in an off-white shirt that could pass for a biblical tunic. All that was missing was backlighting him so he could look like he had a halo.

I also thought it was funny when most of the cast saw Rick and Michonne emerging from the same bedroom for the first time. I’m sure people were happy for them but it was a “cat’s out of the bag” moment. It was sweet for Rick to be concerned with what Carl thought but of course he supports the relationship because Michonne has been a mother figure to him for several seasons.

Also funny: Abraham’s question to Glenn that “When you were pouring the Bisquick, were you trying to make pancakes?” That will be a new euphemism to add to our culture’s repertoire on pregnancy. I don’t know what’s going on with Abraham but he seems either at peace or wistful or something. Is he attracted to Sasha? And what about Glenn and Maggie’s baby? Glenn seemed a little unsure after getting the ultrasound. Is he having doubts after Abraham made comments about how it may be crazy to bring a kid into that world?

Meanwhile, master negotiator Maggie makes a deal with the Hilltop gang for half their food in exchange for killing Negan. I’m sure the upcoming raid will be some kind of disaster that will kill some people but I eagerly await the entertainment as it seems like it will almost be like a spy caper. These days, I am just seeking amusement from this show.

Any theories on what Carol has been doing lately? Baking a casserole? Sleeping off a concussion? Scaring little kids? Stabbing attackers in the face? Having a pissing contest with Morgan? All of the above?

The Paperwork Begins

It feels good, now that we are adoption class graduates, to get a thick manila envelope full of paperwork to fill out. Its heft makes me feel like we're doing something substantial and productive.

There's a long questionnaire that Steve and I are supposed to fill out separately. It was all stuff like what activities we like to do together and apart, our views on religion, what we will do for childcare, etc. There was also what we like best about our spouse, what we dislike, how we complement each other and a few other things that feel like we're playing The Newlywed Game. Some other questions will require some thought, like what behaviors you couldn't accept from your child and what you expect from a child. I guess I want a child who is well adjusted and will not murder anybody.

I don't mind paperwork and I'll write essays until the cows come home. We also have to write an autobiography. I already have about 2,800 words since I had some time to kill on the plane and then Steve was away so I just started writing. The people at the agency said they wanted more than a paragraph but I hope I haven't written too much because I'd feel like a pompous jackass, droning on about a life that isn't all that interesting. I tried to make the autobiography entertaining because I'm sure they're a slog for the agency to read through so I might as well give them a laugh.

There's some other info they need, like our income and debt. I just hope our credit card debt isn't too shameful. Maybe they'll get a laugh out of the extra sheet we attach to list all our cards.

We'll also have to take a few field trips. They need us to get a clean bill of health from a doctor and we also have to get fingerprinted at the police station for a background check, so that will be fun.

I don't mind all this paperwork but I can't wait until it's over and the real fun can begin.

Let's all take up a collection for Kanye West's debt

The revelation that Kanye West is $53 million in debt is alarming but let’s not panic. Let’s form some breakout groups all over this great nation and brainstorm some ideas to bail out this man, who has released multiple number one albums and performed on lucrative tours and also married into a family so wealthy they make the 1% look like that migrant mother in the Dorothea Lange Depression photo. 

We can at least breathe a sigh of relief because Kanye notes he still has enough money to “buy furs and houses” for his family. However, he still just doesn’t have enough money to “bring more beautiful ideas to the world.” As we all know, the only way to make great art is by throwing money at artists. Once enough cash has accumulated in a bank account, voila — art!

Don’t believe me? Then name me one decent work of art that ever happened for free or at low cost, without a $1 billion infusion of cash from Facebook.

Kanye’s disciples have raised $4,000 or so through online fundraising so that’s a start but it’s not enough. I want to see you all drop your petty financial concerns like paying your mortgage or student loans or putting food on the table for your kids and join me. Here are my thoughts:

• You know swear jars, where people pay money after using profanity? Well, let’s establish ego jars for Kanye West, except we’ll be the ones who pay. Every time he tweets that he’s a genius, we’ll all give him a quarter. We could also have self-pity jars, so whenever he complains that even though he’s won multiple Grammy awards in the last decade he’s never won the Grammy he really wants, or complains that nobody respects him despite the nearly unanimous critical acclaim for each of his albums, that’s another quarter from the public.

• Kanye and Kim just had another child, if I remember my tabloids correctly. I hope they’re taking advantage of the range of tax deductions related to children. I also hope when they go into H&R Block to get their taxes done, they remember to deduct their mortgage interest. You’d be surprised at how far this can go.

• Don’t sample anything in your music. It’s too expensive to get clearance and pay out publishing royalties. Just record your albums with kazoos. Rerecord all your old albums with no samples and all the sampled artists will have to pay back whatever you paid them.

• Maybe don’t do things like hire an orchestra to propose to your wife? 

I want to see five ideas for Kanye debt relief from each of you by EOB today. We’ll pay off his creditors in no time.

The Walking Dead S6 E10: The Next World

I’m assuming that tremor I felt at 9:59 p.m. last night was the reaction from Walking Dead fandom to Rick and Michonne hooking up. I’m fine with this. The relationship happened organically, with Michonne bonding with Carl a few seasons back and getting closer to Rick. She will be a good, calming influence on him as she is more measured and cautious whereas he can get swept up in emotion.

This latest episode telegraphed this development, with Michonne casually walking out of the shower in Rick and Carl’s presence and then the two talking at the end of the day like an old married couple. I loved Michonne’s “Oh, so you had a day” after Rick told her about the toothpaste that ended up at the bottom of a lake.

This was an easygoing episode after the chaos last week. After a time jump, Carl is dealing well with the trauma of losing an eye. If the show had prolonged his recovery, it would have been too much of a rehash of when he got shot back at the farm. Denise is in a relationship with Tara (and thanks to my Ohio in-laws, I did already know that pop is what we call soda).

I kind of liked the buddy comedy thing with Rick and Darryl because the show could use some humor sometimes to leaven the grim progression of the zombies. I don’t know why they don’t use more music because CDs will still work in cars and if they have electricity at home. They might as well make use of whatever small pleasures they still have. This is also a reminder that you might want to keep your physical media in case of an apocalypse.

The introduction of pretty-eyed Jesus was fun and intriguing. It was kind of a sly joke that a guy with that nickname could miraculously escape from being tied up and all that.

That whole thing with Deanna’s son putting her out of her misery was kind of touching. You can’t very well have zombie mom wandering around out there killing people.

Must I care about all this?

Does it seem to anyone else like we are living in some kind of age that we’re almost expected to have some kind of response to every single pop culture thing that happens? That we not only have to have an opinion on everything but that it has to be so totally extreme? I can’t do it. I know this will sound pretty rich coming from someone who has shared many, many opinions on trivial nonsense for many, many years, but I just can’t summon a hot take on everything.

Take the recent example of Lady Gaga singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl. It was a good performance but I didn’t need to read a 1,000-word exegesis of it, labeling it a watershed moment for … I guess sparkly red pantsuits (I await the two-volume set on Whitney Houston’s two-minute, 15-second Super Bowl national anthem). Lady Gaga’s song was fine. It was “The Star-Spangled Banner” and she sang it. When it was over, the game started. That’s pretty much my feeling.

From the same Super Bowl, take Cam Newton’s attitude after losing. I can see either side of this: That someone who mugs for the camera when he wins shouldn’t duck the camera when he loses or that people are allowed to be upset when they lose a big game. But I just can’t summon up any fire for either position.

Then there was the Grammys and am I supposed to be completely outraged about who won or who lost or Taylor Swift saying something about Kanye West or whatever grabbed headlines?

Oh God, I can’t care enough even to finish this entry. Sometimes I think we were better off when only a certain amount of commentary fit on a printed page so only the most cogent stuff made it in. Now the space is unlimited online and so are the scorching hot takes about whatever stupid bullshit we’ll forget about in 20 minutes.

The Walking Dead S6 E9: No Way Out

Happy Valentine’s Day from The Walking Dead! Steve and I cozied up and enjoyed our holiday by watching Rick’s heart break after seeing his girlfriend torn to pieces along with her children.

Wow, that was fun. The opening to the back nine of season 6 was completely ridiculous but highly enjoyable. It’s insane to see superhero Darryl blowing up Neegan’s soldiers with a bazooka and setting the lake on fire to destroy the zombies (why don’t they use a controlled burn more often?) but it sure was satisfying. I loved how that opening explosion punctured the ponderousness of Neegan’s ringleader’s speech because otherwise, it was too close to a retread of the other times the group got captured by some psychos.

The deaths of Jessie and her kids were rough, what with the (sadly necessary) axe amputation but the scene was also kind of detached since they shot it in that underwater, effects-laden way. I heard Andrew Lincoln say he was disgusted by the deaths in the script so I figured something like this would happen. Still, I could have sworn Judith would die this episode. The show certainly telegraphed it, with the close-up of the child’s face and her being spirited away by the usually incompetent Father Gabriel.

I had also heard some spoilers before that Carl would lose an eye. The parallels with his injury at Hershel’s farm are obvious. There was some nice character work by Michonne, who was panicked for the first time ever after Carl got shot. I loved the quick kiss she gave the injured teen on the forehead. It very effective and built nicely on the bond the two have had for a few seasons.

Leave it to Carol to save the day by shooting that mortally wounded Wolf and asking questions later. All that business gave Dr. Denise more to do and I’m warming to her. I wasn’t really following all the chatter between Carol and Morgan and the two interchangeable women, however. I also have no idea what Enid is doing and have no clue why Glenn is just pausing in the middle of a crisis to chat with her. Talking with a shellshocked person is what nearly got him killed last time.

In the end, I loved the scene of Rick leading the all-hands-on-deck charge to take back Alexandria. I also really loved the quick cuts between all the characters slashing their way through the zombies.

So it was sort of ridiculous but I’d much rather see The Walking Dead in action hero mode than more philosophical discussions.

Mentionable

Adoption class can be very serious and intense at times. There are so many heavy issues to discuss. That’s why at our last class, in addition to the delightful — just delightful! — video about the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome, there was some welcome levity when we had a brief discussion of adopted boys who wear their mother’s underwear.

This was one of the things we had to decide if we could handle in an adopted child on the checklist they gave us. The checklist had quite a range, by the way, everything from a kid with a lisp to a kid with AIDS. When we saw “boy wears mother’s underwear,” we laughed and figured we could handle it. We figured that there’s a zero percent chance of that happening because Steve and I don’t have any bras or lacy camisoles in our drawers, just boring old utilitarian men’s underpants. In class, they asked us who would be OK with a kid who wore lingerie and we raised our hands and made a joke that, hey, if a kid in the foster system is showing a proclivity for this, bring him to our house. We’ll deal with it somehow. (Oh God, our weird sense of humor is going to get us in trouble as we go through this process. I know we’ll make some oddball joke during the homestudy and the caseworker will narrow her eyes and start scribbling on her clipboard. But anyway.)

As funny as this seems to us, in class they told us that the cross-dressing actually made some parents disrupt the adoption before it could be finalized. Of all the horrible conditions we read on that checklist that a child could have (like “starts fires”), it seems odd that women’s underwear was an issue. But I guess that’s why all this stuff was on the checklist: Because a parent had an issue with it before.

I don’t think I’d even care if it were possible that our kid could get his hands on women’s underwear. I’d probably tell him not to wear something lacy at gym class where people could see since I wouldn’t want him to get made fun of, but I don’t think I’d make a huge deal out of it (I imagine it could backfire if you react to this sort of thing wrong). Of course, I could see mothers getting upset about this because all their unmentionables would be disappearing.

Anyway, in class, they said the reason some boys like to wear their mothers’ undies is that they are soft and satiny, like the edge of a blanket, and it’s comforting to a kid with sensory issues. I had never thought of that before. I guess it’s adults who sexualize this stuff and to kids, it may just be fabric.

All that made me think of the idea some people have that if their kids play with toys meant for the other gender, it will affect their development and they’ll grow up gay or whatever. I never played with dolls or My Little Pony or anything as a kid. My brother and I both played with GI Joes and Transformers and the traditional male toys and I married a man and he married a woman. Other straight or gay kids may have played with dolls. It just shows me that sometimes there’s not much correlation with gender stuff and how you grow up. That toy may just be a toy and that bra may just be a bra.

Oprah Loves Bread

She. Loves. Bread.

She LOVES bread!

The face of Oprah Winfrey appears on our TV screen, hovering over our heads like some kind of disembodied spiritual leader giving instructions for life to the receptive masses. In the middle of conversation, I stop talking and can only stare at the TV. If I had been carrying dinner plates, I would have dropped them. If I had been drinking something, I would have spit it out.

For Oprah is speaking and all forms of life in our home come to a halt. Dressed in luminous shades of wheat and rye, she speaks of her affinity for carbs in tones that command her subjects to heed her call. She seems somehow bigger than the 50-inch screen, as if the frame will shatter if her personality tries to squeeze into it too many times.

For have you heard? Weight Watchers will let you eat as much glutiny bread as you want. If it’s good enough for Oprah, it’s surely good enough for us peons.

We cannot overstate the magnificence of her visage or the grandiosity of her pronouncement. She speaks and the world turns. If I hadn’t enjoyed sandwiches or garlic bread before, I would certainly be convinced by the power of Oprah, mowing down palm trees like a hurricane.

Oprah loves bread. And now we all do.

Yeah, I got an iPhone

Pat me on the back, won't you? This fits into my long-range plans of getting updated technology at least five years after its introduction. The smart phone was a long time in coming and Steve spurred me into getting it (and did all the talking at the store because I have no idea what I am doing and have zero desire to learn any more about networks or data plans or whatever).

So the next time you text me, the message will come up in blue or whatever color it is so you’ll know I joined the upper caste of iPhone users, having ascended from the untouchables with plain old phones that didn’t do too much. The old phone never bothered me but I guess it was time to move on. I am grateful to have a real (well, not real but you know what I mean) keyboard.

You’ll be excited to know my texts also won’t be in all broken and abbreviated English, since I would lose patience with the numeric keyboard and all my messages were C U later and stuff. Now that I have a better keyboard to work with, I am much more vigilant with punctuation and capitalization with texts. The one thing I don’t like with the phone is that the punctuation marks are on the number screen. It’s awkward to toggle to the numbers just to get a period and toggle right back to the alphabet screen. The period and comma should stay with the letters. Boy, I should be a special advisor at Apple.

I’m also on Instagram but I haven’t posted much. I am working on some kind of theme for any photos I take so you’ll see that when I come up with it.

I like being able to check my email on the go and all the apps and games. But the thing is, I don’t use the iPhone any more than I did with the AT&T whateverphone I had. I just leave it on the table at home and forget about it. Maybe I’ll explore more and use the thing more and I’m sure it will come in handy when I’m traveling. But for now, I guess I’m still not much of a phone person. I’m lucky to be able to do my web browsing at work so there’s not much left to look at when I’m home. It’s a nice phone but it hasn’t changed my life or blown my mind or anything.

Adventures in Taxation

I remember when doing my taxes was easy. Before I owned a house, I would just sit down with a pen and my W2 and fill in that little book they would give you. Life was uncomplicated and the taxes didn’t take that long.

It got harder after we bought a house and had to itemize our mortgage interest. Plus, in Delaware, last year’s refund is considered income so you have to report that. Plus, we have to file in two states. I tried to do my taxes myself and I just couldn’t. We started going to an accountant. It was particularly fun the year when we were considered married federally and in Delaware but not in Pennsylvania. They didn’t know what to do with us at first.

Forget doing our own taxes now. It took two hours to get them done the other night. I had to leave in the middle to go home and get some settlement documents for our new house. They were closing H&R Block when we were leaving.

As it turns out, owning a rental property is more complicated than I thought. There were all kinds of questions that I never thought of. I documented all the rental income and repair costs and everything else, but they still needed the value of the Elsmere house since the house has lost value (although the value is climbing from its nadir), so technically my rental income is a loss on paper.

I smiled and nodded. This is why we pay to have someone do all this. I think I’m good at managing money and debt but when it comes to writing off losses and mortgage points, I am a drooling idiot. I just know that the tenants pay me to live in the house and I pay the mortgage and taxes on it.

At least it’s done and we will get our refund early. We always file early just so we can get an answer, especially since this year there were so many questions. Wait til when we have a baby and they have to figure out the taxes for a couple who work in a different state than where they live, own a rental property and just adopted. They will pull down the shades and put out the “closed” sign when they see us coming. 

The Biggest Engineering Project in Human History

After three years, the road construction on Route 202 in Chester County is finally coming to an end late this summer! Yay! Just one more miserable winter, spring and summer of sitting in exhaust fumes while I choke on my own howling, useless rage! It’s very exciting that I only have to get through upwards of six months of watching a paved median strip, which is big enough to fit two lanes of traffic plus two shoulders, sit unused as work happens sporadically!

Apparently, widening the 2.5-mile stretch from four lanes to six has been one of the biggest engineering projects in human history, since it’s cost $63 million and has been happening since 2013 (that’s what PennDOT says but it really seems like it started earlier). Here is a partial list of events that have lasted as long (and in some cases wrapped up earlier) than the apparently monumental task of widening 13,200 GD feet of highway:

The Korean War (1950-1953)

Construction of the Empire State Building (1930-1931)

Vatican Council II (1962-1965)

Construction of World Trade Center 1 (1968-1970)

Construction of World Trade Center 2 (1969-1971)

The filming of Gone With the Wind (1939)

The Glorious Revolution (1688-1689)

Construction of the CN Tower (1973-1976)

Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

The creation of the Mona Lisa (1503-1506)

The Dunkirk evacuation (1940)

Construction of the Eiffel Tower (1887-1889)

Apollo 11 (1969)

The Allied invasion of Normandy (1944)

But I guess I’ll just be patient, or at least celebrate the third anniversary of first starting to be patient as four lanes merge painfully into two like me trying to shove my thighs into skinny jeans. Oh, I guess I’ll be positive about the crippling traffic that turns a 25-mile interstate drive into an hour-long ordeal due to the fact that most of the shortsighted (over)development around 202 consists of cul-de-sacs and streets that go nowhere so there are no viable alternative roads. Perhaps I can pat myself on the head and say “You’ll get there!” with a condescending smirk. Or while traffic is backed up for miles, I can slap on a dimwitted smile, get out of my car on the median strip that sits unused and do a jig while singing a song with the chorus “It’s fine!”

Meanwhile the red of the brake lights ahead burns my eyes with its unholy glow and my dreams are filled with being crushed by huge stone sculptures of “202” falling on me.

I am going mad. Can you tell I’m going mad? I am definitely going mad.