Hiatus

Frequent readers may have noticed that they are reading this blog considerably less frequently. This may be at least partially attributable to the fact that I haven't posted anything on this blog for 11 1/2 months. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. I started a new job at a major technology firm. I will not mention the name of our firm, because my opinions certainly don't represent the opinions of the company at large. Plus, more importantly, the company founders now own supersonic killing machines.
2. The crushing time burden of child rearing and a two and a half hour daily commute have forced me to make some careful decisions about how to spend my time. The point is, if I had time to write a blog, I would use that time to have sex.

It seemed that I would never blog again. But then a blessing from heaven was visited upon us! In the form of shit water!

It seems that one of the previous tenants of our lovely historic home was an amateur plumber, in the same sense that wandering around with one's zipper down makes you an amateur stripper. When a real plumber finally tore out our kitchen ceiling to figure out why it was raining poo in our kitchen, we found that the sewage lines had been connected together not with epoxy and pvc joints, but with moxy and dreams.

FYI: Shit squishes right through moxy and dreams.

Anyway, the shit water is gone, but our house is now a cratered wasteland while contractors tear holes in our walls, identify yet more problems, and never return again. Because of this, Heather and I have adjusted to living in squalor, freeing up lots of extra time. And the stress of living in a nightmarish pooscape has rendered me impotent, so back to the blog!

Anyway, a lot has happened since we last checked in. Let me fill you in -

1. Logan is now mostly potty trained (see a future posting for details).
2. I got new glasses.
3. The world almost ended, but at the last minute everyone decided to vote for Barack instead.

I'll be covering these and other topics in great detail in the coming weeks, but for this blog posting, I thought I'd cover some (real) questions from you, the readers, that I've callously ignored for months.

Amy writes:

Love your blog! Just found it as I try to sleep train my second child, now 13 months, for the 10th time.

Quick question- did your wife ever nurse during the night or did it all stop cold turkey?

Last night was the second night. Alec screamed for over 2 hours again when he woke up a midnight to be fed and was denied. One determined bugger.

Dear Amy,

The 10th time, huh? That's the spirit! Remember my parenting creed: Never give up! No matter how demoralizing and self-defeating your endlessly exhausting uphill battle is! After all, it's not like there's any way out of the next 18 years! (Unless... criss-cross?)

Now, I can give Amy a whole lot of advice about what to do, but I have faith that by midnight tonight all these issues will be resolved. How do I know? Because Amy's post is from over 5 months ago. By now, Amy's son is now 18 months old, and either Alec has grown out of his sleep problems or Amy has taken her own life. Either way, she is in a better place now.

Which illustrates my other parenting creed: You can spell "I got much needed rest" without "ignore". Do not listen to the woes of other parents! No matter what problem you are having with your child, the moment you explain it to another parent, you will find out that they have it far, far worse:

You: Little Billy has been such a picky eater lately.
Other parent: I know what you mean! Sarah won't eat anything but boiled unicorn meat and my liver.
You: But at least she's sleeping through the night.
Other parent: I said she sleeps through a night, not the night. She has slept a total of 8 hours in the last 4 years.
You: Billy's eczema -
Other parent: Is nowhere near as bad as Sarah's leprosy.

Et cetera. This obviously sucks, because you are losing the parental whine-off that is the primary mode of social interaction amongst our nation's thirty-somethings. But much worse is the inevitable moment where the other parent tells you that Sarah was such an angel for the first two years - the real trouble started right after she started acting exactly the way your child acts now.

It is for this reason that my wife and I have cut off all contact with the outside world.

Anyway, on the off chance that Amy is still alive, I'll try to answer her question. First, Heather and I had it a lot easier, because we sleep trained Logan when he was only 5 months old. It becomes a lot more difficult when your kid is old enough to climb out of the crib, scream that you never loved him, get a tattoo, and all the other more sophisticated emotional manipulations available to an older child. I think with a much older kid you start getting into territory where talking about it with your kid starts to have some value (unless you're a Southern Baptist - then just keep beating the kid with the Bible until he's old enough to have children of his own).

Conclusion: don't have children. If you must have children, sleep train them early - at conception, if possible.

Rachel writes:

As a pediatrician, can I request that your next post be about the urgent need to vaccinate your kids? the morons on the discussion boards are working hard to make the world a more dangerous place for the rest of us.

Dear Rachel,

OOOOH BOY! Here we go! Here's another liberal elite vaccinazi who wants to take away my right to foolishly endanger my child. I've been scanning the popular centers of anti-vaccination debate, and there are several compelling anti-vaccination arguments out there:

Argument 1: I just don't want to put my child through that.

I absolutely agree. As I've said before, babies and small children know exactly what's best for them, and you should never, ever question their judgment. That's why when we go down to the grocery store to pick up more breakfast ice cream and adult diapers for our severely burned 8 year old, we always let him sit right up front behind the wheel.

Argument 2: Vaccines are full of toxins - I don't want that in my child's body.

Fact: Vaccines are full of things like aluminum and other metals. Sure, there's no evidence at all that these particular metals in these concentrations are dangerous, but come on - THEY'RE FUCKING METALS, PEOPLE!

We don't let our son put any metals in his body. Please donate liberally to defray the costs of his hospitalization for the sudden onset of life-threatening Postassium, Sodium, Calcium, Iron and Zinc deficiencies. We believe that he developed this disorder as a result of standing near a vaccinated child.

Argument 3: Vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent.

Except for the fact that it isn't, this is ABSOLUTELY TRUE. Consider the leading causes of death amongst children cited by the Global Health Council:

1. severe infection (sepsis or pneumonia, tetanus and diarrhea)
2. birth asphyxia
3. complications of prematurity and low birth weight
4. congenital conditions
5. (Honorable mentions: malaria and measles. Keep it up, guys, you'll make the top 4 soon!)

SEE?! Right at the top of the list - Death By Vaccination. And if you actually read the list above and point out that pneumonia, tetanus and measles are all preventable with vaccinations, that means you don't love your baby.

Of course, these are the causes of death worldwide. In the United States, disease is not a leading cause of death amongst small children (and not because of vaccinations - Jesus loves us more, that's all). In the U.S., your 0-5 year-old child is most likely to be killed in a car accident. Which is why anti-vaccination parents never allow their children near cars or streets. These hyper-rational statisticians are unwilling to tolerate the vanishingly small danger of vaccination-related complications - there's no way they'd let their children near vastly more dangerous things like cars, stairs, bathtubs, toys, or water.

Besides, even if you did take the risks of life-threatening diseases seriously, most of the time there's no need to worry. If you're concerned, consult the many highly trained medical experts that are available 24/7 on our nations message boards. Consider the following real exchange from the mothering.com "I'm Not Vaccinating" board (edited for space - follow the link for the amazing full text):

momtoafireteam:

Today my 2 year old (totally unvaxed) fell at the park and cut her chin open. It was a very clean, neat, flat laceration about ----- that long. I took her to the ER because I could see white fat in the bottom of the wound and I know that means a Doc visit!! lol.

Editorial comment from John: "lol"? What the fuck is that?
"That's when I noticed that Timmy wasn't breathing!! ROTFL."
Anyway, continuing...

Dr askes if she is vaxxed and when I say no he gets very upset. I realize I REALLY don't feel comfortable doing that and I deny it. Upon discharge, instead of discussing with me the care of the flipping wound we are there for, he seriously spends 10 minutes telling me what to look for for tetanus. And how she can die (again) and how serious tetanus is (again) and how the US is relatively tetanus free because of vaccinations. Again.

Should I go on Monday and do the tetanus? Can anyone give me any input here?

peainthepod:

The wound bled copiously, right? And you could see the bottom, meaning it was entirely exposed to air? And your baby doesn't have any circulatory problems that you know of?

Not a tetanus risk IMO. I wouldn't worry one bit.

See? peainthepod, who has obviously attended Harvard Medical School, was able to dispense expert medical advice instantly! In fact, peainthepod must be even smarter than a real doctor, because a real doctor would insist on actually seeing the patient before making any kind of diagnosis, which is just plain lazy.

Argument 4: Vaccines cause autism

This is my favorite one, because there's undeniable proof!

See what I did there? I provided a link to a journal article, from The Lancet. And in pdf format no less, so you know that it's legitimate. I provided it with no context, so now you have to choose - do you slog through this unreadably dry medical journal article, or do you just take my word that it proves what I claim it proves? You're a busy person with a child - every second you spend reading this is a second that little Jana is unattended, wondering if the stapler works as well on your glasses as it does on paper.

Even if you do attempt to plow through it, you're probably unused to reading medical journal articles, so you're unlikely to notice that it refers to a ridiculously small sample size (12), and that if it establishes anything, it's that there may be a link between autism and the disease the vaccine is meant to prevent, not the vaccine itself. You certainly wouldn't have time to notice that the controversial claim of a link between the vaccine and autism comes in a purely speculative section that's unrelated to the actual research they did.

Uh oh! Hear that piercing scream? Jana must have decided to make staple earrings. Run in there and save her! You've used up your few minutes of computer time for the day, and you'll be busy the rest of the afternoon trying to staunch the flow of blood! LOL! Now you'll never have time to do the internet research that proves that this article has been wide-ly dis-cred-it-ed. You might never learn that there's evidence that Dr. Wakefield accepted payments from an anti-vaccination advocacy group to reach these particular conclusions, and that he had filed patent applications for his own measles vaccine that would only be marketable once the standard vaccine had been discredited. Too bad you'll never have time to learn that!

(Tip for anyone who is reading this that hates my guts for belittling their viewpoint: Is it becoming clear that you shouldn't trust someone's opinions just because they have some lousy journal publications?)

Argument 5: Vaccinations don't work.

<ring> <ring> Hey, boss? Look, I know I said I'd be in early this morning to prepare for that board presentation, but it looks like I've caught that diptheria that's going around. <fake cough> I'm not sure what it is - my wife thinks it could be the smallpox. <fake sound of pustules forming> But it could be polio too - it's primary transmission route is fecal to oral, and you know how I loves me some rusty trombone. <fake sound of withering limb>

Can You Solve The Case? How did Encyclopedia Brown know that Bugs Meany was lying to middle management? (Hint: Encyclopedia is a regular on the glory hole circuit, so he knows that Bugs really does love rusty trombone - he's not lying about that).