Control Option Command

There’s been radio silence here for a while now, interestingly not because I haven’t had anything to share with you from my regular rambling repertoire of reprehensibly reckless recommendations. In fact I have quite a few posts I’ll be happy to perpetrate quite shortly.

No the cause of my negligence is that I’ve acquired a new affliction. Symptoms are pretty serious and include terrible insomnia, severe anxiety, sudden bursts of emotions and reoccurring nausea.

It’s a chronic condition, and only rarely does anyone get rid of it in their lifetime, and in those cases it’s always resulting in terrible depression (well… except in cases of people that are already severely suffering from disturbing mental issues).

I’ve already spent a fortune on different necessities to treat the condition in the proper manner and I can clearly see I’m not going to get rich in this lifetime.

The name of this curious syndrome? Let me present: Mathilde Trømborg Jacobsen.

That’s right. I’ve been fatherized, daddyfied and papa’ed and holy crap has my life ever changed. Firstly I’ve never been so much in love, and secondly I’ve never been quite so fucking tired before. (This from a man with chronic periodical insomnia. Not the kind you brag about. The kind that hurts.)

It’s been said countless times before, and it will be repeated to the end of time; Having a child is a crazy, lovely, terrifying, messed up experience. That part about it being a treasured and beautiful experience for the father to attend the birth? Bullshit! We will be there; but do not be fooled, prospective mothers, we are there for your sake. There isn’t one of us that doesn’t secretly yearn for the days when the mans role during child birth was to nervously smoke a lot of cigarettes in the waiting room.

Mathilde, being a daughter of mine, entered the world explosively and wreaking havoc and mayhem to all that beheld her. And, well… A hundred years ago I would be a single parent. Then again; A hundred years ago I’d be wearing my trousers pulled up to my nipples, probably worrying about the potato harvest and speaking in a weird staccato. The point is; It was dramatic. Very dramatic. ¹ But both lovely mother and lovely daughter are now doing well.

So we’ve established that I do love my sweet little imp, but boy does she ever scare the crap out of me some times. On the subway this morning after spending about 4 the last 48 hours asleep I had to distract myself and get an outlet, so these tweets what was I came up with:

• I’m sure I’m losing followers Like I’m spending money with all this spam, but so be it. The torture of parents by infants needs a voice.

---

• FACT: an infants screams are designed by evolution to drive (grown-up) people completely bonkers. Much like the stench of corpses.

---

• FACT: Depriving someone of sleep is a well known form or torture (or “enhanced interrogation” for you yanks).

---

• FACT: The result of the two latter excrutiating experiences combined is far, far greater than the sum of their parts.

---

• FACT: Infants have no wish to cause you harm. It is simply in their nature. Much like that frog-riding scorpion. This does not help.

---

• FACT: Much like a camel can retain impressive amounts of water an infant can save up to three times its own weight in poop in its body.

---

• FACT: Infants live by and enforce Murphys extended law. This is why they will strike exactly when you are about to enter REM sleep.

---

• But she really loves me. I shouldn’t have made her so mad. It’s all my fault really.

Well. It says it all I guess. Still:

She is my sweet little princess (think Leia, not Cinderella), and I vow to spend my life protecting and supporting her, and make sure she has somewhere she can feel safe, no matter how crappy of a human she may turn out to become. “It’s bullshit to say that my life now has meaning”. It already seemed very meaningful to me, but it’s very much true that my life now has a slightly different focus, and yes, another meaning entirely. That, my friends, is all.

Time has always been subject of scrutiny and discourse, philosophy and theory, science and fiction. The very concept of time is frequently disputed as at best a faulty system to explain the sequencing of entropy and extropy based on certain recurring natural phenomenae; and at worst an imaginary crutch for our lack of ability to comprehend the world in more than three dimensions.

There is little controversy however concerning the fact that we perceive time as a real and measurable phenomenon. Artifacts from the Palaeolithic suggest that the moon was used to calculate time as early as 12,000, and possibly even 30,000 BCE. A multitude of different systems have been devised to measure, calculate and conceptualize time. The study of devices and systems to measure time is called Horology, and is a field broad enough to warrant museums, libraries and doctorates.
The act of arranging past events in ordered sequences is referred to as Chronology, while the conceptualizing of ordering and arranging future events is referred to as any one of planning, predicting, anticipating, divining, foretelling or hoping.

As a means of bringing some measure of order to the art of organizing future anticipated events several systems were devised to facilitate this process. These systems are known as calendars, and are typically agreed on as the official system for such measurements in a given society. That is; The sequence of days, weeks, months and years as well as the occurrence of any holidays or annually reoccurring events are predetermined by the official calendar.

In the western world the Gregorian calendar, decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, is the by far most common calendar in use. With a predetermined discrepancy of only 1 second per year, and one day every four years, the calendar divides the progression of time neatly into days, weeks, months and years; corresponding to the rotation of the earth on it’s own axis, cycles of the moon and the earths orbit of the sun.

The discrepancies mentioned means that there is, predictably, some few discrepancies in the amount of seconds in a year and the days of a month (although always the same month). However the remaining larger units of time, and their progression are static and as such even more of a central focus around which to organize, conceptualize and express measurement of time.

Take the week; A repeating cyclical pattern consisting of 7 days. It always start with the same day (sunday or monday according to region) and progresses from one day to the next until the week has come full circle, and thus starts again. If on a tuesday you inquire about when a certain event will occur, and you get the reply that it will occur the coming friday; You may safely assume that wednesday and thursday will pass between now (still, for the sake of argument: tuesday) and when said event is likely to happen.

…

And that is why I haven’t finished your project yet.