Goodbye Spidey?

A while back, I talked about how I was a rock star, facetiously of course. I think I mentioned how my guitar was modified to look like Spider-Man's mask. Well, I think I also mentioned that I'd put a picture up some day. Well, now is a good time as any because I have decided to get a new pickguard. I kinda want to play a guitar that looks like an adult owns it. I still think it's cool, but you know. Have to get the pickguard custom made though, because the guitar is long since discontinued. Gonna go matte black, which I think will look nice with the the dark blue of the guitar. I saw the exact scheme on another guitar and liked it.

Well, anyway, here it is. Spidey, as he looks today.

Obligatory Shout Out

An old friend is really trying this blogging thing, and now that he's moved to Blogger from LiveJournal, I'm giving him a shout out here, and linky to the right. Check him out, give him support, make him feel loved because even though he's the Sarcasodrummer 2000, he's still hella awesome.

http://khillock.blogspot.com/

Okay, Less Cryptic This Time...Sorta.

I'm gonna be a father.

The reason for the general crypticness was it was really early then. It's still really early, actually. The Queen is only 8 weeks pregnant, so we can't even hear The Heir's heartbeat or anything yet. But we (well, she) had her first appointment today, and it seems like so far so good. Lots of "homework" to do, though. Forms and such.

We're leaning towards natural birth, or at the very least having a midwife attend Jessie at a hospital. I'm nearly infamous of my distaste for hospitals, and we watched a movie yesterday called "The Business of Being Born." Watch it if you are thinking about, going to have, or have had, children. Seriously. I already had my suspicions about "modern birthing techniques" especially the rationale of "why be in pain if you don't have to?" but there are some very scary things brought up about how, and why, certain things are done. The pitocin/epidural vicious circle issue for one, and the alarming amount of planned cesarean sections at this point in time.

Jessie's worried about the pain of labor of course, and I can't blame her. But I also think she's selling herself short. Our midwife (who is a guy...do you ever hear feminists complain about that?) seems to be wonderful and suggested a technique called Hypnobabies, which he thinks would work for her wonderfully. So I'm excited about that. But even without that sort of technique, I think she could "handle" the pain. Think about it. This race has been around for a pretty long time. Women have been doing pretty darn good. And what about all those countries without access to our so called modern birthing techniques? Some of the statistics brought up in the movie were eye opening. So yeah, given my distrust and distaste of hospitals in general, I'm supporting her in her original desire for natural childbirth, and acting sort of as a crutch for when she falters. Plus, our midwife told us they do have the ability to prescribe and administer a certain painkiller, so that also helped assuage her a bit as well.

Well, anyway, I'll keep you posted as we hear stuff and everything. Maybe Jessie will revitalize her blog as a pregnancy journal of sorts, that might be an idea for her, I don't know. Oh, and I am accepting handouts. I'm not shy about that. At all.

Our midwife put our due date (which of course has that two week pre/post window) at October 21st. I'll be finding a countdown clock in the near future and putting it up.

Two Out of Three Usually Isn't Bad

So, my friends and I have this long running gag about the cable TV channel AMC. American Movie Classics. The joke being that at least two of the three are right. The American, and the Movie.

See, years ago, they really did show a lot of classics. But then Ted Turner, who owned the rights to a lot of those movies, saw another cash cow, and another network was created which had exclusive rights to a lot of the old movies deemed classics: TCM, Turner Classic Movies. AMC had to start filling in the programming gaps with gems like Predator 2. It's gotten better lately, to be fair, but let's say that there was some really stretches on the "Classics" part of their title.

So last week, while Jessie and I were in Vegas, I found myself flipping channels while Jessie either got ready or was napping (I forget which), and I came across AMC. And once again, it was two out of three.

Except this time, it was a different two out of three.

The movie they were running was Das Boot.

A movie, to be sure, and very much a classic. But Das Boot is about as American as Canadian Bacon (The food, not the movie, which was directed by Michael Moore before he became such a polarizing figure). Great movie. But it's from Germany (technically West Germany).

What's next? Seven Samarai?