Hereditary Misanthropy

My son's sandcastle is in ruins -- Constantinople after the Fourth Crusade. His "friends" succeeded the sack, deaf to his wails for mercy.

I can only look on with apathetic anticipation, knowing that eventually the tide would have done -- wholly apathetic itself -- what his peers' malice accelerated.

I shouldn't allow the symbolism to move me this way. But that doesn't stop me. My son is back at the house now, demanding another encore of some animated distraction or another.

I'm busy down at the beach, rebuilding the noble crenellations and mighty parapets of his sandcastle by twilight, as the tide tiptoes closer.

Fun Friday Poetry

On my last tax return, in the field where the IRS asked me to list my current occupation, I filled in "Steamboat Co-captain". The previous year it was "Freelance Breast-Density Analyst", and the year before that it was "Licensed Poet".

To be honest, though, I'm a lousy poet, and most everything I come up with is based on various rhymes for "Nantucket". A very good friend of mine, on the other hand, has a bard's soul in spades. Writing as "Jefferson T." and inspired by the film For Liberty, this poetic prose was sent to me titled For Wyatt:

The End is coming. We don't know exactly when it will be, but one thing is for certain: We will not forget what you did.

As for our children, they will be starving. They will have no shoes, but they will know Prudence. They will know hardship. And they will know Fortitude. To our children, we will confess our sins, without saying a word. And they will know Temperance.

And we will tell them about The Revolution. And they will know success. And they will know Justice.

And the next generation will carve your name into the trees. And they will know why.

My thanks to Jefferson T. for the contribution.

Seattle Boy Makes a Wish, Superpowered Blogger Cries Like a Woman

I got a significant amount of flak for my rail against Cormac McCarthy's The Road last month. As an active misanthrope with pessimistic proclivities, the fledgling joy I find in life comes from those bright, unexpected moments -- your favorite song on the radio just as you start the car, clear sunny skies on your day off, a toddler cracking up at his own reflection. Those moments simply didn't exist in McCarthy's world.

Thankfully they do in ours:

Thursday was shaping up to be just another school day for 13-year-old Erik Martin, but then something extraordinary happened: Spider-Man called.

Spider-Man happens to be one of the few people who knows that Erik, too, has a secret identity — he's Electron Boy, a superhero who fights the powers of evil with light.

And Spider-Man needed Erik's help.

Erik, who is living with liver cancer, has always wanted to be a superhero. On Thursday, the regional chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted him that wish with an elaborate event that involved hundreds of volunteers in Bellevue and Seattle.[...]

Pulling off a wish like this one required a big story, and a lot of heart. And so, with a note of panic in his voice, Spider-Man explained the dilemma: "Dr. Dark" and "Blackout Boy" had imprisoned the Seattle Sounders [soccer team] in a locker room at Qwest Field. Only Electron Boy could free them.

Erik got into his red-and-blue superhero costume, and called on the powers of Moonshine Maid, who owns a DeLorean sports car. For good measure, more than 20 motorcycle officers from the Bellevue Police Department and King County and Snohomish sheriff's offices escorted Electron Boy to Seattle.

"They shut down 405 — they shut down I-90," marveled Moonshine Maid, aka Misty Peterson. "I thought it would just be me, in the car."

At Qwest Field, Electron Boy was directed by frantic fans to the Sounders locker room, where the entire team was shouting for help behind jammed doors. With a little help from Lightning Lad, the alter ego of local actor Rob Burgess, Erik opened the door with his lightning rod. The Sounders cheered.[...]

Electron Boy seemed a little dazed by his powers. Out on Qwest Field, the Sounders gave Erik a hero's congratulations, posed for pictures and gave him a jersey and autographed ball.

Everyone was startled when, overhead, the Jumbotron crackled to life.

"Electron Boy, I am Dr. Dark and this is Blackout Boy," sneered an evil voice, as the villain — Edgar Hansen, and his sidekick Jake Anderson, both of Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" — taunted the young superhero. "We are here to take over Seattle and make it dark!"

On the Jumbotron, a video showed a Puget Sound Electric employee Jim Hutchinson trapped in the top of his bucket truck in front of PSE's Bellevue headquarters. Only Electron Boy could save him.[...]

More than 250 PSE employees gathered outside the company's headquarters and cheered as Electron Boy freed the trapped worker. "It was so loud, people in office buildings were looking out the window," said Make-A-Wish communications director Jeannette Tarcha.

But Dr. Dark and Blackout Boy were still at large. Electron Boy got a tip that the evil duo were at the Space Needle, where they had disabled the elevator and trapped people on the observation deck. Racing back to Seattle, Electron Boy stepped out of the DeLorean to a cheering crowd of dozens of admirers, and confronted his nemesis.

"How did you find us, Electron Boy?" Dr. Dark demanded.

Erik wordlessly leapt at Dr. Dark with his lightning rod, freezing the villain. Then he unlocked the elevator and freed the people trapped upstairs.[...]

Seattle City Councilwoman Sally Bagshaw stepped forward with a key to the city and a proclamation that Thursday was Electron Boy Day. Afterward, Erik posed for the TV cameras, flexed his muscles and spent some time astride a Bellevue police motorcycle.[...]

Watching her son run across the plaza in front of the Space Needle, mom Judy Martin said Erik goes to school when he's able, but is often too tired. "He hasn't had this much energy in a long time," she said. "They called it the power of the wish, and they're right."

Like any good superhero, Electron Boy kept his innermost thoughts to himself. But he did have one important thing to say:

"This is the best day of my life."

From the Seattle Times here. Cormac McCarthy's powers are no match for Erik.

Also, "Scottéric Bastiat" Was Already Taken

Judging by the way several people -- upon making my personal acquaintance -- mispronounce the name of this blog, a bit of appellative exposition is in order.

The name "Scotticus Finch" is a barely-creative take on Atticus Finch, the protagonist in Harper Lee's 1960 masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird. Finch was peerlessly portrayed in the 1962 film version by Gregory Peck, a performance that netted Peck an Oscar and (forty years later) cemented Finch as the greatest hero in 100 years of American cinema (edging out such icons as Superman, Indiana Jones, and James Bond).

Today, writing a progressive character who fights against racist ignorami is just lazy. In 1962, it was contemporary. In Mockingbird, Finch, a southern lawyer, represents a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. The book is written from the perspective of Finch's young daughter, so some of the lessons aren't exactly groundbreaking -- "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." -- but Finch was a practical idealist, a crack-shot pacifist, an eternally-patient single parent, and an anti-authoritarian agent of the state. We don't get heroes like that every day.

Finch on democracy: "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

Bastiat himself couldn't have said it better.

Incidentally, today would have been Peck's 94^th birthday.

It's a Wiggly Sack of Potatoes! It's a Smelly Plush Doll! It's... It's... Okay, it's my Kid in a Costume

Granted, so far it's all just playing dress-up, but the seeds are officially sown. I wonder if this is how Gandhi felt the first time he saw Gandhi Jr in a dhoti, or when Rollie Fingers first saw his boy sporting a dirty junior-high mustache.



On a superpower-related note, I can't help but notice that several of the millions of daily visitors to ScotticusFinch have neglected to vote on the last two polls (left sidebar). How can I be expected to advance the science of personal opinions unless you people participate? If you have already voted, go to your neighbor's cubicle while she's at lunch and vote again*. My bloated self-esteem could be at stake.

If you want to suggest a more click-worthy poll, please do so in the comments.

*See what I mean about being devoted to science?

"I Knew Ward Cleaver. Ward Cleaver was a Friend of Mine. You, Sir, are no Ward Cleaver."

Thank the gods I have crimefighting.

There was a time, after floundering through my twenties from job to job and struggling to find much success at anything, that I embraced the comforting idea that I had been born to be a father. It was my calling, I decided. Protecting, nurturing, and caring for my son would – I was certain – come as naturally to me as drafting did to Frank Lloyd Wright. Just as Ted Williams was a hitter, I would be a father.

The sentiment explained my restlessness at work, since I had no more business pushing pencils than Julia Child had digging ditches, right? I gripped the idea and let it pull me through the workweeks like a rescue rope in a flooded river. I had purpose now; meaning, and motivation.

Reality has been rudely unaccommodating of my expectations. I may be Gretzky in my mind, but fatherhood is more oil painting than ice hockey.

Now, I love my son, and fiercely. I stare at him in my wife’s arms and I know that I would charge the Maginot Line armed with sparklers if that’s what it took to protect him. But that is where he is happiest: in her arms; and the feeling is fairly mutual. I’m frustrated faster than I should be; I’m stymied by his fussing; I’m bored by his squirming. Desperately I want to live up to Heathcliff Huxtable, but each successive evening proves me more Al Bundy. Of course I will never give up, and I’m certain a competent fatherhood will settle in on me just as it has on other men for thousands of years. Still, it would have been nice to be a natural.

So, as I said, thank the gods I have crimefighting. Without that clear and fulfilling calling, I might be left to wonder what the hell I’m here for after all...

Maternity Malcontent. Or, Neonatal Nefariousness

Despite checking in under my secret identity, I'm beginning to suspect my archenemy Red Leader is orchestrating the staff here at the hospital. My infrequent sleep is constantly interrupted, and they have been withholding food since day one. The few foot-massages my wife has had time to offer me seem to always be a second priority at best, and my morale is suffering.

Still, the boy is gaining strength. Many of the world's greatest superheroes did not develop powers until puberty, so hope is not lost. And things could always be worse.

Scotticus: TNG

Wyatt was born yesterday at 20:24. So far there is no sign of him being superpowered, and to be honest I have my doubts that he could even overcome a low-level henchman at this stage.

For years I swore no son of mine would ever grow up to be a sidekick, but... perhaps I've been rash. I look into his face and I know that I will still love him even if he never develops the crimefighting moxie to carry his own storyline.

But by the gods, if some supercycle-riding gadgeteer ever tries to put Wyatt in a sidecar, he'll have a whole new nemesis on his hands.