2011 is a Deployment Year, which means about half of my year is going to suck. The good news is, the best way for me to deal with all that suck is to write about it.

It’s nearly eleven o’clock, and I’m still in my pajamas, so it feels like a lazy Saturday morning, but I’ve actually gotten some quite significant things done: I played catch with Sean, and I finally hacked my WordPress install into compliance. (I use the word ‘hacked’ in an ever-so-loose way; any minor accomplishment that has anything to do with website stuff feels to me like a major hack.)

Anyway, I use 1&1 as my web host, and they’re mostly fine, but they do some quirky things, or, rather, don’t do them. I’ve had issues with some of the backend software stuff that I don’t really understand (PHP, MYSQL, stuff like that), and 1&1 basically leaves us poor users to figure it out ourselves.

So, for anyone else out there on 1&1 who can’t figure out why the WordPress automatic update feature gets hung up on the downloading blahblahblah.zip screen, read this.

It’s a fairly simple fix that involves adding a line of text to your .htaccess file. I did it and it fixed the update problem for WordPress, and a problem I was having updating my Google sitemaps plugin.

Via Out of Control

Here’s something great.

A while ago, I was listening to Fresh Air and heard a remarkable interview with James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem.

And I sort of fell in love with him.

In the interview, he presents the most down-to-earth philosophy of making music I think I’ve ever heard. I almost hate to use this word, but it sounded authentic. It sounded real. Sans bullshit. So I immediately went out in search of his latest record, ‘This Is Happening.’ I didn’t want to download it. I wanted to own the physical disc, which is a quirk of mine, or perhaps my generation, but I wanted to hold it in my hand, even if it was destined to slide into the computer and get ripped to iTunes, like everything else. When I’m buying music that I hope will have substance, I want that substance to be more than 0s and 1s on a hard drive. (And, yes, I know that a cd is just 0s and 1s on a compact disc, but a cd also has artwork and a nice little booklet, most of the time.)

I quickly fell in love with ‘This Is Happening,’ from the way the opener—’Dance Yrself Clean’—begins with a long and quiet intro that forces you to turn the volume up only to blast you in the face with a great synth riff at three minutes in, to the self-aware ‘You Wanted a Hit’ and ‘Pow Pow,’ to the sad and melodic and great closer ‘Home.’

In fact, if I could really nail it down, why I was so impressed by what Mr. Murphy had to say, I’d say that the way he talked about music reminded me of the way David Foster Wallace talked about writing. There just are not enough artists out there who are able to transcend the hype. Artists are almost always one of two things: cripplingly unconfident and embarrassed to talk about what they do in a knowing and interesting way, or embarrassingly over-condident in what they do so that they sound like douche bags when they talk about what they do, and come across as boring and self-involved (like those DVD ‘making-of’ featurettes that consist of everyone yammering on about how great the director is).

And perhaps the best part of it all is, he’s been saying all over the place that LCD Soundsystem is done. As a band that puts out albums every couple years and tours and does loads of interviews, it’s done. ‘This Is Happening’ is a great album, and it’s really satisfying when somebody bows out gracefully, rather than pushing their rockstar cred to its absolute breaking point (Tom Petty, anyone?).

So there you go. Favorite discovery of a band in maybe 10 years.

I’ve been complaining a lot about feeling creatively ‘wiped out’—that is, having no energy or ambition to make something. It felt like everything was going to the son, the wife, the house, the garden. I know: completely self-indulgent. It was a feeling, and feelings have a reality-distorting gravitational pull that can be difficult to escape, like a black hole’s.

And then the other day Danielle and I were having a recurring conversation that snapped me awake, so to speak. She wanted to know if I had a ‘roadmap’ (I think that’s the word she used) for how I was going to handle the application process for my MFA. I admitted I had none. I had set it aside as an impossibility. I had a whole list of excuses: Sean is too demanding. When on earth am I going to find time to go to class? to do the reading? to do the writing? The program at Old Dominion University (the only one in the area) is a three-year program. We’re only guaranteed to be here through 2012!

Danielle picked off my excuses one by one, pegged them for exactly what they were: stealth procrastination. Sean will be pre-school-age by next fall. I can make time to do the work. Babysitters. We can do a shore tour in Norfolk. All of my roadblocks had easy detours, if my eyes had just been open to them.

So I unshelved the Kaplan GRE study guides I bought six months ago when this conversation first came up, pulled up the ODU MFA website, and started organizing.

The whole thing is rather daunting, especially on mornings like this when I’m tired and Sean, like a predator who can smell fear, seems to sense it. But we need to do this. It cements my usefulness in the post-daddying future.

Cuteness meter asplode.

For one thing, I find myself answering the following question a lot, lately:

“What’s that, Daddy?”

“Daddy, what’s that?”

But a lot of other stuff has been going on, too. Like potty training. And getting used to Danielle being on sea duty, again.

And putting Sean back in bed—over and over and over again.

It’s this last part that I’m finding most difficult to deal with. By the end of the day, my Patience Meter is about at empty, so following the experts’ advice (don’t talk to him, don’t make eye contact, just take him back to bed) is hard to follow.

How can this be fun for Sean? He’s gotten out of bed nine times since I started writing this blog post. Ten. Seriously: what kind of satisfaction does he get from this little game? And when I eventually lose my temper? How is that incentive for him to continue?

Eleven.

It must be some perverse quirk (twelve) of the toddler psyche. Somehow, it’s a game (thirteen). A game he’s very good at, and I’m very bad at (fourteen).

(Fifteen.)

It must have some kind of point system (sixteen).

Make it out of my room: 1 pt.
Make it down the hall: 2 pts.
Make it (seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, 21, 22, 23) into Mum and Dad’s room: 5 pts.
Jump up on Mum and Dad’s bed: 10 pts.
Make it downstairs: 50 pts. (24)
Make Dad shout: a million pts. (25)
(26, 27, 28)
Cry and make Dad come back and tell me he’s sorry: win.
(29, 30, 31, 32)

I earn points on (33) a different scale: (34) Every time I successfully put (35) him back in bed without speaking or shouting or making eye contact, I score (36). The number of points I score increases as the game goes on because the difficulty of the one maneuver I have at my disposal also increases with time, according to some algorithm I don’t have the (37) mathematical wherewithal to (38) work out.

I win when he goes to sleep. That’s worth (39) infinite points.

Sean just scored 50 points by making it downstairs (40). I figure my (41) successful retrieval was worth (42) about (43) a hundred thousand points, based on my level of irritation, right now.

He’s now bringing different things out of his room (44) every time: his blanket, his giant stuffed duck, his water bottle, his blanket and his stuffed duck (45). In his mind, that must be worth something. Perhaps I should assign point values to the various (46) things he could bring with him with each successive escape….but, really, who’s keeping score? (47)

The incredible part is, after almost 50 returns to his bed, he has the balls to ask me if he can watch TV. Astonishing.

48, 49, 50, and…

I win.

UPDATE: 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57… (I’m still winning, though).

Gustave takes his time pulling you into the story, but by 150 pages in things are zinging right along. His writing is wonderful throughout the book, but you don’t really come to appreciate it until you’re fully invested in the characters.

One point of caution: I found the story to be almost ‘ho-hum’ at certain points. There are too many Emma Bovary’s in our culture, now: Carmella Soprano, Betty Friedan, the desperate housewives, that one woman in that movie you saw. But I’m glad I didn’t stop! It’s worth it to read to the end, to watch the tragedy unfold in such exquisite detail.

But this is perhaps the reason to read the book: it’s a blueprint. You read it, and it takes you back to another century, when things were supposedly simpler, and you discover characters experiencing the same human elations and sufferings that we experience today.

There was no ‘simpler time.’ People are the same everywhere, and always have been.

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