2005-12-06
Public Service AnnouncementI have somehow lost the use of my Hotmail account. So if you need to contact me, please use the following email address: dgudy@yahoo.com.
2005-05-20
OuchRead this, then please explain to me why the British voted again for that brown-nosing, war-mongering Blair guy. Sure, cynically speaking, Galloway is just another politician when it comes down to it but I just can't help feeling some grim satisfaction about an anti-war politician totally smoking a US Senate committee. Where do I vote for this guy?
2005-05-03
In Better Than Here NewsWe've captured some cute pictures of Maja over the last few weeks, and once she'll leave me with sufficient energy for an evening for me to size them down and actually post them, you'll get a nice little Maja fix. Until then, I heartily recommend you read through this. But for the love of all that's good and holy, please put away the cat and beverage, and swallow whatever food remains in your mouth. Your keyboard will be grateful for this little gesture of precaution. Once you've stopped laughing and your mind has finished boggling, browse through the rest of his site at leisure.
2005-04-05
To the Aliens Watching This PlanetIf you're reading this, just about now would be a good time to land on this rock in full force. Please! I'm fucking sick of the fact that ten of the eleven minutes of any major news segment on TV (with sports and weather taking up the remaining four) being devoted to the non-news of nothing interesting continuing to happen with respect to the death of the latest leader of the papist sect of one of the major religious cults around here. I mean, this was an 84 year old guy who had been suffering from major illnesses for quite some time, so his death is hardly a suprise and has in fact been foreseeable for days and weeks. Besides, we're talking a man here who presumably never got laid in his whole sorry life but still couldn't stop making a fool of himself by sprouting bullshit in various ill-conceived attempts to advise other people about their sex lives, which should theoretically decrease the respect anyone sane would otherwise have had for him, and with that his general importance. OK, so he was the leader of the major sect of that religious cult mistakenly called Christianity which claims around a billion followers, so yes, the odd special perpetuating the various legends surrounding his life is probably in order. But interrupting a perfectly entertaining movie - a reasonably rare event on TV as it is - to bring us the "hot news" of his death followed by a 90 minute special and absolutely no continuation of said movie, then occupying all the major news broadcasts for days with empty, boring tripe about what exactly has been happening in and around the Vatican that day (i.e. mostly nothing) is a tad excessive. So cut it out and bring on the alien invasion already!
2005-03-17
Clever Little GirlInfluenced by how my father has always viewed children, I have for a very long time been of the opinion that babies and children are easily the most wildly underestimated group of people in Western society. Heck, I find the term "infantilize" mildly offensive because children are in my experience often naïve, frequently childish, but rarely "infantile" in the way that term is often used. (And if they are, it is almost always because parents or other people with influence overthem are pushing them in that direction so the children conform to their skewed view of what a child should be like.) Now consider the following situation as it presents itself in our entrance hall, and how the cutest baby ever to munch on a piece of apple before she really should has dealt with it and in the process totally surprised her parents: We've got a big mirror in our entrance hall, and dangling on a spring directly before that mirror, in a height so that Maja can easily grab it while perched on my arms, is a wooden toy raven. We have over the past weeks introduced her to the mirror, and she has been intently looking at her own and my or my wife's mirror images whenever the chance presented itself. The fact that I could hold her in my arms while at the same time being clearly visible in that wodden frame has always somewhat confused her, and only recently has she stopped becoming fussy in front of the mirror. Whenever she sees the raven she will first stare at it, then follow the spring with her eyes up to where it is fastened as if to make sure that the raven still has that strange bouncy thing going that no other toy of hers can do. She'll grab one of its legs, pull it down as far as she can reach, and shake it around in wild abandon while watching herself in the mirror. Then, she'll let it go. This would normally have spelled the end of her dealings with this toy, because it would swing up and down far too quickly and with far tool large an amplitude for her to follow with her eyes. Three days ago, something in that little brain of hers must have clicked, because after letting the raven go, she would watch its reflection in the mirror instead, which due to the greater distance and consequentially smaller viewing angle would allow her to follow the bouncing figure with her eyes. So far, so mostly unremarkable. What completely got me was that she would then switch to watching her own reflection and then use exclusively her reflection and that of the bouncing raven to move her arm and hands to stop the movement of the raven and allow her to grab it again. Only after this was accomplished would she look directly at the raven again. Now, research tell us that human children will be able to identify themselves in a mirror (mirror self recognition, MSR) at the age of 18 to 24 months, and Maja is barely five and a half months old. Also, this is clearly not full MSR, as she will still try to grab at the mirror when we hold her sufficiently close to it (categorized as social instead of self-directed behaviour by those who know rather more about such things than I do), and she has of yet not used the mirror in relation to herself in any other way. But equally clearly she has made a mental connection between herself and the bouncing raven on one side and the reflections of herself and the toy on the other side that allowed her to catch the raven using exclusively the view through the mirror. Puzzle me this, folks.
2005-03-06
Bend over and take it like a man!Recently, two unfortunate aspects of German law got combined in a somewhat surprising way, and the result of this combination was a message that was loud, clear, and utterly injust. Now, injustice in German law is nothing new, really, as witnessed by the fact that approximately half of my state pension will be subject to income tax twice, once when I'm paying a significant part of my fully taxed income into the pension fund, the other time when the pension gets paid out to me. Both these instances of injustice enrage me beyond words, but the first one even more than the second, because it would have been significantly easier for our justice system to do something about it. It didn't, and now we're stuck with that message, and the message is: Got a penis, pal? Well, you're fucked. The first of those aspects causing said injustice is the fact that German family law as precticed is incredibly sexist. The bias is pro-women and hence little talked about. I don't want to go into too much detail here, so suffice it to say that Kramer vs. Kramer is a scenario that is every bit as plausible in Germany as it is in the USA or, say, the UK. Large parts of German family law automatically assume that mom knows best, and furthermore, that mothers will always, unfailingly, and unselfishly do the best for their children without regard to personal gain, while men are suspect of having the tendency to fuck and run, shirking their duties wherever they can. This tendency has gotten vastly better over the last few decades, but it's still there, and it's every bit as fallacious now as it was thirty years ago. Aspect number two is that while German data protection law is very strict, it is still frequently violated and, more pertinent to the discussion at hand, often used against those whose private data it purports to protect, namely, the average citizen. This, too, deserves a rant all to itself, but not now. When those two aspects got combined a few weeks ago in a ruling of the highest court in Germany as well as the passing of a new law, DNA paternity tests were ruled illegal in Germany unless the child's mother consents to said test. Now, it should be immediately obvious why that is bad news for husbands who suspect their wives of having cuckolded them. (Two possible scenarios that have become impossible: husband suspects faithful wife of having cuckolded him, has a paternity test done, finds the child is his, and can put his irrational fears to rest; (ex-)husband suspects his (ex-)wife of milking him through child support payments, has a paternity test done, and finds the child isn't his. If it can be shown that his (ex-)wife knew this, she could even conceivably be tried for fraud.) And with even the Ministry of Family, Youth, etc. talking about more than 10 percent of all children in Germany being raised by a father who thinks he's the biological father but really isn't, those scenarios are rather more plausible than one would perhaps think at first. This isn't all there is to it, though. A father in Germany who wants to contest his parentage of a child through a court faces incredibly high obstacles when trying to actually file a case. German family courts routinely ask for substantial evidence supporting such a case before they even consider taking the matter in hand. This is a good thing in principle to avoid frivolous cases, but the standard for such admissible evidence is unreasonably high: Showing that it is unlikely that he is the father is not enough, neither is actually catching his wife in bed with a lover (though that may be enough for a divorce filing), as long as he also had sex with his wife during the period in question. The father basically has to demonstrate beforehand that he can not possibly be the biological father of the child, e.g. because he was out of country during the time when the child was conceived. A DNA paternity test would probably have been sufficiently substantial evidence to start a court case contesting the man's parentage of the child, but by having been declared illegal unless the woman agrees to it, that road has been more or less closed, especially as the wife's lack of consent to such a test is very specifically ruled not to be sufficient evidence for such a case! The reasoning behind that law and court ruling is worth looking into as well. For one thing, the fact that child support payments can be substantial, and that the mother could therefore have potentially selfish reasons to deny a DNA paternity test because it might cut her out of a substantial part of her income has been completely dismissed. Also, the reason why exactly these tests will be illegal is said to be data protection interests of the child: genetic samples for a paternity tests can be used to, and by their nature in fact do, reveal personal information about the child, so by German data protection law, the child has to consent to the test. As long as the child is unable to consent, e.g. because the child is too young, that decision will be made be those who have custody. So far so good. In any but the most severe cases (e.g. life-and-death decisions or other situations with severe risk of harm to the child, organ donation after a child's death), consent by just one custodian is enough. Notwithstanding the fact that every child has the right to know who their parents are, a DNA paternity test has been judged such a severe danger to the good of the children that consent from both parents is necessary. After there was an uproar of protest from father support organisations and family councelors/psychologists, some verbiage issued forth from the Family Ministry about how they promised to think about lowering the legal barriers for DNA paternity tests in the future, e.g. by making it easier to contest parentage in court and to get through such means a court order for a test. That sure would be nice, and it would also go a long way in placating me and others, but I'm definitely not holding my breath.
2005-02-09
More Linky Goodness
I've stumbled upon this several times over the last few days and decided that it's far too good not to pass on to y'all. We definitely need more people like that.
In completely different news, I'll be on a business trip to Warsaw, Poland for the next few days, visiting a prospective new customer of ours. Why my boss keeps on choosing me for such jobs when I'm notoriously bad at anything sales/acquisiton/customer relations related is rather beyond me, but we'll see how it pans out...
2005-02-08
Vintage Porn
My, my, the old Romans sure were a pervy bunch.
The had rather explicit frescos adorning their bath houses, like say, this painting of a hot MMF threesome or that one of a nice bit of cunnilingus. And rather unsurprisingly, the house containing those frescos, identified as the only known building from those times that people are reasonably sure was a whore house, is one of the highlights of the guided tours through Pompeji.
But it gets better than those tasteful attempts at interior decoration. The National Archaeological Musuem in Naples, Italy has a whole collection of antique stuff ranging from tasteful nudity to explicit depictions of Pan getting it on with a goat. They also seem to have had a healthy attraction to the penis, especially to the big, gigantic or humongous specimens, if some of those statues are anything to go by. I would dearly love to know, though, what they used these" for - probably oil lamps (what an absolutely kinky idea - ouch!), because I don't think the old Romans were in the habit of smoking...
Hot stuff. (via boingboing).
This post was brought to you by my ongoing inability to write more than two paragraphs full of semi-coherent verbiage.
2005-01-19
Random Ramblings
What happens when for the first time you lend your car, which has served you well for nigh on five years and 90.000 miles, to your wife, who has always been apprehensive about driving your car for fear of getting into a car crash with it? Right, she has a crash. Fortunately, both she and the other driver are OK with nothing more serious than a minor bruise here and there. Unfortunately, with repair costs of EUR 3.500 versus a remaining value of EUR 2.200, my car has been totalled in the process, which means that we're in the market for a new car ASAP.
Our car mechanic knows a few people and phoned around, and it looks like we'll be the new owners of a two year old Ford Focus by the end of the week. Because of that, I have been browsing both the German and US web sites of Ford and have found a few surprising or at least noteworthy differences between those two sites.
For one thing, Ford US isn't shy about mentioning all the different manufacturers like Volvo, Jaguar, or Mazda, that belong to it. There's not a peep about that on the German Ford site. Also, the naming of the different models is far saner on the US site than on the German site. Around here, different trim levels go by nice-sounding but meaningless names like "Ghia" or "Ambiente" with the latter being the entry level "four seats, four wheels, and a steering wheel" package, and the former being the top of the line "air conditioning, electric everything but the kitchen sink" model. Ford US handles this distinction using equally meaningless two or three letter combinations which by virtue of being reminiscent of other manufacturer's similar schemes gives you at least a pasing chance if guessing at what you may get with each one.
The most interesting difference though, is in the completely different model lineup: The two smallest Ford EU models, the Small Car class Ka and Fiesta, simply don't exist on the US site, where the lineup only starts with the Golf/Compact Class Focus. Which gets me wondering wether there really isn't a market over on that side of the Pond for those small, nimble city cars with their low fuel consumption.
On a completely different note, Maja is showing the first signs that the joy of teething may not be too far off: she's fiercely chewing on her small fists from time to time, and she loved chewing on the fridge-cooled teething ring on Saturday, when nothing else would console her. Of course, her colicky evenings have not stopped happening, which gives me horror visions of the two of us running out of both hands and sanity while trying to stroke and comfort all the different parts of our lovely baby daughter that may be hurting at any given moment. But then, she lights up the room with that radiant, irresistible, as yet toothless, baby smile of hers, and all is forgiven and forgotten.
And we may need that wonderful ablity of hers to make us forget everything around us in the coming days - we just got a phone call from the in-laws: my wife's uncle has ceased suffering an hour ago. He will be sorely missed, but while I'm sad, I'm also glad that he didn't have to suffer for long. Rest in peace, S.
2005-01-04
Death Approaching
While Maja is still and will be the new center of our lives, and I would like nothing more than to regale you with tales and pictures of her devastating cuteness, there are other, sadder things going on around casa Gudy which need mentioning. And I'm not talking about the terrible flooding in South-East Asia and how the stories and pictures of that destruction and of lives lost, and very rarely found again, combined with the hormone overdose resulting from being surrounded by that much cuteness all day have brought me to tears more than once.
No, things are happening much, much closer to home.
Almost four years ago on my birthday, my wife's favourite aunt lost her fight against leukemia and died after one and a half years of suffering. The whole family was badly shaken by that early death of what had seemed a healthy woman only two years previously, and everyone had hoped that the next death in the family would be at least two decades in the future.
When the in-laws together with a few other aunts and uncles of my wife made a holiday trip to Italy last September, S - the brother of the above-mentioned aunt - complained about persistent pain in his shoulders for which no-one seems to have found a cure or even a cause yet. When he went for another thorough check-up, some of his blood values looked unhealthy, and after much unnecessary back and forth between doctors and hospitals, he was finally diagnosed with an aggressively growing liver tumor.
Chemotherapy was scheduled and begun. But S's condition declined so rapidly, that it was soon called off, and the cancer, which had been found to have metastasized all over his body in the mean time, was pronounced uncurable.
When we came to visit S and his wife over the Christmas holidays, I was shocked. S had always been a strong, burly guy with a ready laugh, a pronounced beer belly, and a full, round face. The man who greeted us from out of his armchair when we arrived was gaunt, weak, had a hard time walking and talking, and looked twenty years older than when I had last seen him. I hardly recognized the jovial S in that husk of a man.
When we called S's son, my wife's favourite cousin, today to wish him a happy birthday, he informed us with a tear-choked voice that the pastor had been there and had prayed with S, who hadn't been in a church for decades, and that he probably won't live much longer. With my birthday next week, I have the odd feeling that for our family, the first half of January will soon come to be associated with the death of another loved one.
And let's not even begin talking about what all this is doing to the mental state of the remaining two siblings, among them my slightly hypochondriac father-in-law...
2004-12-31
Happy 2005!
Yeah, I know it's a sorry excuse for a blog post, but Maja has not only changed our lives, but also radically changed our scheduling priorities, so there's almost no time for blogging right now, as other, more important things like eating, showering, sleeping, or even reading (when we're lucky) continuously preempt the blogging urge.
Anyway, we wish everyone a happy, healthy 2005, may it be better than 2004 in all respects, private and public.
2004-12-09
Who's your daddy?
Sorry for the lack of updates, folks, but there are a few things that daddyhood does to your life, and a complete makeover in how you spend your time is certainly one of them. An important subset of those scheduling changes pertain to your sleeping habits, and so it wasn't - and still isn't - uncommon to find us in a state not too dissimilar to this.
Maja still doesn't sleep through the nights (that one night a few weeks ago must have been a fluke), and although my lovely wife shoulders most of that burden (after all, she's the one with the milk-giving boobs, and Maja steadfastly refuses to suckle on anything that isn't either one of mommy's nipples or one of either daddy's or mommy's pinkies - pacifiers are right out (yeah!), and so are bottles (boo!)), I'm still short on sleep.
This is more or less normal, or so others have assured us, as are her colics. She's passing more gas in a day than I do in a week, or so it sometimes seems, and since all the trapped air in her belly hurts quite a bit, she also cries a lot. But there is one other thing we have to deal with, which isn't quite so normal, I would think.
Back when Maja was born, the first thing the doctor did when Maja aired her cute but to the world at large was to stick an electric sound into it to more reliably measure her heartbeat. This was all fine, and seemed a sensible if somewhat unnecessary measure at the time, things went rather smoothly after all, but has given us an unexpected amount of grief. The little hole from the sound somehow must have gotten infected, and unnoticed by everyone a small abscess formed in her butt, indicated by nothing but a rather persistent violet spot and a small hole that just wouldn't close.
Then things got ugly. Over the whole area - 1.5 cm wide and 2 cm long - the skin broke up leaving a gaping, seeping wound of raw flesh behind, which is only now finally closing up. As you can imagine, this caused our baby daughter no small amount of pain and made every diaper change of the last six weeks an ordeal that more than once left all three of us crying.
But then, there are moments like this, which make all this more than worth it.
Apropos of nothing in particular, there are statistics saying that up to one in three or four children are believed to have been fathered by someone other than the then husband of their mother, without said husband having the slightest idea. This sure can't be the case with Maja (not that I have ever had reason to suspect anything in that direction) because one look at her is all anyone has ever needed to firmly establish my fatherhood. She is, in short, the spitting image of her dad at the same age. This is evident when comparing me with her, even if she doesn't even particularly look like herself in this picture.
2004-10-13
Pictures!
I proudly present by popular demand the first pictures of the little joy. I haven't yet gotten around to preparing the latest bunch of pictures, so you'll have to make do with those we took at the hospital.
The first one was taken only a few hours after Maja was born, and is the second picture of her, ever. (The first one was made by one of the nurses for the congratulations card they make for each newborn, but the lighting was crap, and the picture was blurry and pixellated.)
Number two shows both ladies of Casa Gudy after one of the first breast feeding sessions. Both are quite obviously both content and totally pooped, which is just about what you could hope for under the circumstances, after all, this is new territory for absolutely everyone involved.
The third picture is one of the best images of the Sleeping Maja we have made until today. She's already showing off her typical sleeping position here. If our daughter isn't protesting against something or other, this is how you will most likely find her when you're looking into the crib.
One of my favourite pictures of her shows her in my arms after the first time I changed her diapers. I admit that she's looking a bit sceptical, but everyone assured me I did everything right, and she was soon asleep, so I tend to believe it, too. You can also see how tiny she actually is. She's so small that none of the clothes they had at the hospital would fit her, but she doesn't have much of a fashion sense, yet, so there were no complaints.
(For the statistically inclined: after just one week, she has already surpassed her birth weight by 100g ( about 3.5 ounces). OTOH, she's demanding to be fed every two hours at day, so that weight gain is being paid for by my wife having sore breasts. Oh well, I guess you just can't have evereything at once.)
2004-10-06
Public Service Announcement
Just the bare essentials for now, before I drop off to sleep:
Little Maja was born at 6:30 a.m. today, measuring 46 cm and weighing in at just under 2.5 kg.
The parents are happy, the girl doesn't know quite yet what to make of the rather drastic change in scenery, my wife is sore in the tender parts, and everyone is healthy and incredibly tired.
Pictures and the complete story when and if I find the time and energy.
Good night, everyone.
2004-10-05
And so it begins
My wife just called from the hospital where she had what she thought was a routine check.
The cervix is 2 cm open. There are slight contractions. There will be no contraction inhibitors this time.
I'll drive home in two hours, call some friends, grab the camera and a bite to eat, and go to the hospital.
Wish us luck!
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