Hey, Mairt! Hey, Mairt! A CAT skid steer with a hydraulic breaker attachment is tearing up my neighbor's driveway. It's worthy of a press release.

Altman I went to the VDSA convention in 1999 and saw Robert Altman speak on a panel with a number of other distinguished filmmakers, as well as Brett Ratner. The topic was DVD technology. How would it change distribution and marketing? Would it change filmmaking?

Brett Ratner said yes, he'd happily shoot more footage even if it wasn't going to make the final cut of the film since he could include it on DVD. Outtakes were cool. Fans liked them, and DVDs could hold more material, offer more special features.

Werner Herzog recoiled from him visibly but said nothing.

Altman spoke up. He thought the whole thing a terrible idea, said he'd never include outtakes. Why show the viewer scenes that didn't work out? It was a violation of his trust with his actors to show them not at their best.

The moderator asked Altman about his next film, which he had announced only recently as Dr. T and the Women.

"It's about a pussy-whipped gynecologist," he said. Next question.

I also met Bruce Campbell at the conference--he remarked upon my "funny little name"--but Altman stood out as the zombie-fighter that year.

angry and mean Via Salon.

A judge sentenced James Barker to life in prison for killing four Iraqi civilians and raping one of them, a fourteen-year-old girl.

If I were you I wouldn't bother with the reader forum on that story, which is no doubt parsing whether the Iraqi rape victim is a woman or a girl. What's the point of that argument? American soldiers who are American citizens and American defenders of an American country (ostensibly) live in a culture in which 14 is girlhood. And when you get to the point where soldiers are planning murder, that's not a military objective, let alone a military objective worth or not worth defending as a mindful citizen.

But really I felt sorry for those men, as much as for their victims. I mean, these guys killed a family in cold blood. Whenever that happens, whether its Andrea Yates or Lashaun Harris or a bunch of guys in Iraq, you have to ask why. Why the fuck would somebody do something like that? If we know why, can we stop it from happening again to another group of people?

People snap when they're in hell.

Barker said, "To live there, to survive there, I became angry and mean."

If you are an American voter, you and I are responsible for that. When we go out to the farm--or when the elderly congregants are using the parking lot of Baldo's church-affiliated preschool (which is actually populated with hippie families)--and I see Bush for President stickers and am sometimes flipped off by someone driving with one, I think to myself, "I've got to talk to that person, but that person is flipping me off. How the fuck can we change any of this?"

I've never been in the military and my family's tradition of service is pretty half-assed (my father, for one, enlisted early to avoid Vietnam and pushed pencils on an Air Force base in Izmir, Turkey, for a few years; my grandfathers were Army Corps of Engineers) but I have been crazy. I don't want any more crazy people, anywhere. I don't want people living on the brink of panic minute by minute by minute anywhere, because that unravels everything and can make a person monstrous.

catch my disease ec-ze-ma (n): an inflammatory condition of the skin characterized by redness, itching, and oozing vesicular lesions which become scaly, crusted, or hardened.

See also atopic dermatitis.

And just so you know, the cause of atopic dermatitis is not known. It is likely caused by both genetic (runs in the family) and environmental factors. People with this disease often have other atopic conditions, like hay fever and asthma.

In other fucking words, he is not contagious.

During fall pollen season in particular, we do not leave the house without being asked if Baldo is contagious. By the paint-store clerk. By the checker at Target. By other parents at the library.

And now our preschool director, who already has in her office a document listing all my son's known allergies and medical conditions, is asking for a statement from his fourth dermatologist indicating that Baldo is not contagious. What would Child Care Licensing say if they saw an itchy, rashy child in her school? Well, maybe you could point to that document and say, "It's eczema"? Nope, apparently that's not enough. It's not enough to have a release from Baldo's pediatrician stating that he's current on his immunizations (as the law requires) and has had his hearing and vision checked and is otherwise suitable for group care? It's fucking eczema. Stubborn, miserable, and not-contagious eczema. We have been dealing with it since he was six weeks old. It makes simple things difficult: dressing, bathing, sleeping. We've done acupuncture, NAET, UV therapy, a rainbow of topical steroids, elimination diets, neem oil, various moisturizers. None of it has worked. So back we go to the doctor today to ask for Singulair, possibly Silvadene, and Protopic, the tacrolimus cream somewhat arguably linked to an increased rate of lymphoma. And as I put Protopic all over my kid, I'm sure I'll be thinking about our family history of multiple cancers--by which I mean that individuals in our family have multiple cancers (my mom just got her third diagnosis--kidney this time)--and my sister, who died of cancer when she was 11.

So you want a doctor's note? First I'm going to throw my shoe at you.

say my name We came home from a visit to the farm to find that a real backhoe is digging a real trench in our neighbor's yard, and now there's a really big hole! Baldo wanted to measure its depth. The evacuation created two large mounds of dirt, which were deposited in the bed of a triaxle dump truck and driven away!

So we're in the front yard a lot.

The front yard isn't terribly exciting for me--I pull weeds--but I stay in a state of pin-drop hyperawareness anyway because my son summons me every 4.8 seconds, even if I'm a few feet away: "Hey, Mairt!"

He's reduced me to a single syllable. Mairt. Not Marrit, or Marit if you want to be all Norwegian about it. Mairt. Said in a voice that, even compared to other four-year-olds, is particularly piping. And I don't know if this is a developmental phase or something, but every single sentence begins with HEY, MAIRT! and it's like being defibrillated. HEY, MAIRT! I'm eating my yogurt. Or HEY, MAIRT! That truck says Sparklett's. (Yes, he read the back of a Sparlett's truck today, the name spelled out in sequins; I'm now fully convinced he's an evil overlord sent to rule us all and my job is keeping humanity safe from his designs.)

Worst is when I'm driving and he's yelling my name at that little-kid frequency, that pitch that induces involuntary physical reactions in mothers. I'll be merging in highway traffic with HEY, MAIRT! HEY, MAIRT! piercing my brain and making me relactate. We're hardwired to respond when our children are calling us. But mine is at the age when he wants more attention than he really needs, most of the time, and it's not really a crisis that I didn't see the articulated dump truck on the offramp while I was preventing our fiery doom.

Now I just need my central nervous system to get the memo because I'm in a constant state of startlement. I'm kind of surprised that I can attain a state of startlement on my meds.

My father also reduces my name to one syllable, but for him it's "Murt." Texas.

gonna plotz now The Boy? Reading The Essential Calvin and Hobbes.

"Is this tiger real?" he asks.

"Absolutely," I say.

Wal-Mart: Suck It Wal-Mart goes in at Northcross Mall, via Austinist.

Bitch, that's MY neighborhood.

Am I supposed to be thankful for a brick-front "urban" Wal-Mart that sells hardwood floors and boutique cheese? I'm strangely not. I'm going to lock the doors and shut my ears to the backseat tantrums whenever I have to drive past that thing, and I'm going to the small businesses on the other side of the street. When I need cheap stuff (which is often) I can buy it at a thrift store that benefits my community.

He's big on Texas! Because less pressing matters call me--such as breakfast and folding laundry--I will sum up my feelings about the election by slapping my forehead and grumbling out the accursed name of Rick Perry.

There. Done.

vote Baldo and I have voted. Actually, it's more like I voted and he ate a box of Nerds from the election judges.

My neighborhood is a mix of crusty old retired coots and parvenu DINKs, with us and a few other families mixed in, so there's rarely another kid at the polls with us. Baldo cleans up on candy. He capers around and reads all the signs (the coots loved that--especially when he did the "qualified" card) and stands behind me at the machine making all sorts of remarks.

He told everyone his grandmother is an election judge, too.

I found it really interesting that Michael Moore advocates bringing your broom to the polls to symbolize your disgust with the status quo; disgusted as I am, how would a person take a broom and a four-year-old and possibly a purse to a squinchy little room full of elderly people? Sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

Don't turn your back on the fast ones in particular. Why raising children is like fighting zombies. Really.

Gee, Officer Baldo.

We like it when our friends become successful Congratulations to my friends The Biscuit Brothers, who took home a Lone Star Emmy for the "Style" episode from the show's first season. That's one of my favorite episodes. I love the Kraftwerk jokes.

Elsewhere in the world Tracey and Amy had a baby, and they named it Mamapop. I like it. Perhaps there will be Kraftwerk jokes? Soon. Soon.

Halloween, daylight savings: suck it Earlier in the day I was nearly lulled to sleep by the hum of the highway while driving down Mopac; it hit me: I'm really fucking tired. I'm dragging on the wall like Harry Dean Stanton pretty much all the time.

It's not I have a newborn tired, nor is it the transcendent mental and physical exhaustion of I have a baby with reflux, but it's tired. Daylight savings tired. Halloween tired. Everybody up at 5:30 tired.

I guess that's why my son just fell asleep in a beanbag while pretending to be a kitten. He never does that. This shit is weird. Can it stop, please? It's just weird. I mean, I can't even enjoy it because I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.