Intentionally Random...

So, I am in this community of adult Lego fans, and so I have an unnaturally large knowledge of the Lego company, its products, markets and goals. I also think about Lego way more than Valerie would like. That said, one of the things about the Lego company is that they would really like to promote non-violent play. It is also one reason parents choose Lego, and other construction toys--to let their kids have imaginative building play, rather than playing "cops and robbers" (i.e., "kill your friends") or the newest blast-em video game.

They couldn't be more wrong about Lego.

Don't get me wrong. While I was growing up, Lego did a fantastic job of keeping things ambiguously harmonious. I collect space sets, and the "guns" were shaped like megaphones, or space lasers. Sure they could be guns, but they could be rocket propulsion or cutting tools, and thats mostly how I played them. The Minifigs were red and blue (Russia v. USA??), but they all had that perma-smile on, so they weren't really enemies. As the toy industry pressured, Lego came out with more realistic weapons: swords, spears, pikes, rifles, pistols. They also came out with more dramatic characters--soldiers, criminals, sherrifs. They were supposed to be "historical" and not relevant to current violence. They don't make modern weapons! Ok, so that theory makes no real sense, but they were trying.

What they failed to realize is the inherent violence in their basic toy. It is a construction toy. You build spaceships, or buildings, or cars with the bricks, and you are free to use your imagination how ever you would like to build amazing things. Its just too bad that is not how kids use construction toys. They build something -- anything, and the inherant nature of the Lego bricks makes it EASY TO DESTROY.

Lego is not used so much as a construction toy, as a destruction toy. Its a safe one, too. No one is going to yell at you for tearing apart a Lego set. (Unlike tearing apart your new computer... which I might add, I put back togther perfectly, Mom!) No value is lost by destroying your own Lego spaceship. Its easy to put back together, most of the time. Actually, most of the time you don't care, because you only built it to destroy it.

I hear all kinds of stories about how friends of mine built and played with Lego. Some people would build a ship and then toss it down the stairs. Then they rebuilt it to see if they could make it more survivable. I would have space battles (ok, eventually the "exploring for space rocks" theme wore off, and the mercenaries started muscling in, so the "scientists" had to defend themselves, no?) and I would break the models apart slowly with each hit. I watch my daughter play with Lego, and she is constantly ripping the models apart. Then I build them again, and she rips them apart. Especially the figures. There is something perversely satifying about ripping off the little mini-figures' heads. I got her a Lego set with a new type of 1 piece posable figure and she turned to me and asked, "Daddy, how do you get the head off?"

As an adult Lego enthusiast (ALE vs the previously horrible acronym AFOL for adult fan of Lego. Who makes an acronym that is depentant on the word "of" anyway!) I found myself immersed in building. I would analyze a building and try to recreate it out of Lego. I have never taken any of these creations apart, except to strengthen weak contruction techniques. But I found myself to be unsatisfied. It was only until I started playing BrickWars! that I realized what I was missing. The destruction.

And destruction is violence, to be sure. When you destroy a building you take something away. Maybe its land and shelter from people who were using it before. Maybe its history and culture, but its something. Our culture loves destructive violence. Look at how obsessed the news media was of Hurricane Rita. Do you think it was because were were concerned for the poor rural residents of Southwest Louisiana? No. We wanted to see another city get destroyed. It looked like Houston instead of New Orleans. When Hurricane Katrina whipped through, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi barely got a mention. Not becuase they had less suffering people than N'awlins, but becuase the destruction and devastation was far more dramatic!

We love destruction. We love watching buildings and bridges get destroyed. Granted, it shakes you up when it comes by surprise (like planes smashing into them!), but we still want to watch. We love watching war movies, where ships smash each other to bits. Some people love it so much, they go out and do it themselves. They pick up high powered rifles and start picking people off at the gas stations.

So what does Lego give us as a toy? Only the most destructive power there is in a toy. You aren't destroying weird aliens on a screen. You are destoying real things. Things that you built yourself. And you love it. But then, you respect it. If you don't remember how to rebuild your creation, you feel a very real loss. (As I did when my daughter took my newest spaceship, and well, it found those mercenaries again!) So does Lego have a good lesson about destruction? Yes. It can teach you moderation in destruction. It can teach you that if you throw your toy down the stairs, you might not have it any more, but in a safe way, in a way that means you still have something left.

But make no mistake (to quote our violent president),

Lego is a violent toy.

You are

So, I have beome a real Patriots fan lately. I really enjoy watrching them play. I remember being a kid, and there weren't too many Patriots fans when I was growing up. I am guessing it was because they mostly sucked. Breifly, when I was in junior-high, I remember people chanting "squish the fish" because the Pats were going to play the Dolphins for a chance at the super-bowl. Well, they got to the Super-bowl, if I remember, but they were crushed by the bears. Then they went back to sucking, as far as I can tell.

Well, I wasn't really a sports person growing up. I wasn't very athletic, and quite a bit of that was from physical laziness. But at some point, I discovered that you could just _watch_ sports on TV. I am not sure if it was the first March Madness that I saw or the Red Sox World Series bid in 1896, but somewhere around there I became an occasional sports fan. Maybe its because I don't respond well to lots of pressure--and there is a lot of pressure being a sports fan in New England.

Last year, the Red Sox were in another World Series bid, and they were serious about it. I can't remember the last time they were contenders two years in a row. Now they are working on thier third. Anyway, we all know they did win, but before they did, every-one was talking about "the curse." No World Seies win in 86 years, they must be cursed. It seemed the curse was an important part of the game! People were even saying it would be worse to be a Red Sox fan if the curse were broken! I think its ridiculous, but it goes with being a fan in New England.

See, we expect dissapointment. Its what I grew up with in my sports world. As a result, I always seemed to be rooting for the underdog. I went to college, and it turned out Rensselaer had a decent hockey team. So, I became a hockey fan. But still, RPI was an academic school, so while the sports teams were good, they were never great. My sports angst continued, and I thought (like the Red Sox fans afraid of losing the curse) that it was more fun that way. I remember RPI beating Harvard (the perennial league leader) in a crazy blowout. The emotions in the stands were absolutely nuts. It was a great high!

Then I went to Atlanta, where my girlfreind was going to Georgia Tech. The sport changed to football, but the angst was the same. Tech has a fairly decent team at times, but the school just doesn't put football at its highest priority (and thats how it should be in college) so the team wasn't exactly a powerhouse.

Anyway, I married that girl, and she said she wanted to go to Graduate School, and she picked the University of Michigan. Oh my goodness, it was a sports experience that neither of us understood. We said we would never be real Michignan fans (it was grad school, not our alma maters!), but watching winning teams kind of grew on us. We got season tickets for football and hockey (we shared them with some friends--we did study some of the time!) and proceeded to wonder if they would ever lose.

In Michigan, I experienced something that in all my time in New England I had never understood. Its better to win. The angst of being the underdog isn't all it is craxked up to be. No, better to go to a game expecting a win. Sure, you still loose sometimes. But the team always plays hard, and if they loose, its because some other team played a great game. Your team is still great. No, being that Red Sox fan of the past is like being bipolar. Yea, the highs are amazing, but they have medicine for you for a reason.

This is what the Patriots are bringning to New England, and I don't think anyone here can believe it. They talk about how hard it is to keep winning in the NFL of today. Well, maybe the Patriots players all come from places like UofM. Where winning is what you expect.

When my first daughter was born I had all these magnificent thoughts about what it was like to be a new dad. It was inspiring in a religious way to be able to care for such a small person. They are so helpless, and you are so all-powerful to them. I likened it, in my mind, to how god cares for his creation.

Fast-forward 4 and a half years, and I wonder if my daughter is sometimes possessed by a demon. I guess its only fair, my parents thought the same of me. Of course, I regularly told them that I was having conversations with god, conveinently at a time when Excorsist and Damion were making the rounds. I know my daughter isn't a demon, she's just trying to push her boundaries a little, but boy can she drive me batty some days.

Anyway, so now I have kid number 2. And the thoughts are much less grandiose. For instance, yesterday, I was watching Kyla smile in her sleep. I thought, oh how cute, she must be having a pleasant dream. Then she began to crap her pants. So, I think, "Why is it that a smile is so close to a poopy-face?" Is it because its so nice to get that poop out that we decided that a poopy-face would universally stand for "I feel good?" I know its not genetic, 'cause I am pretty sure Chimpanzees consider a smile a very aggressive angry act. (Maybe they are often constipated?)

Anyway, this is my thought. Hopefully, the thoughts about poop will subside in 3-4 years after #2 is potty trained.

News of the month: I had a kid. Ok, so she's my second, I still thing she's the bees knees. Umm... Don't know where that came from, but ther ya go. 

Ok, I guess its time I started to write a blog. Its way past jumping on the bandwagon with blogging, here--more like I am trying to catch up. To less technologically inclined people, I might add. Val and Jim say its because I like doing everything the hard way. That only applies to computers I think, cause otherwise I am quite lazy.

Anyway, I think its because I haven't cared enough. Oh well. We'll see if this stays empty for years before I post again.

-Alfred