When it comes to breakfast, I will always choose savory over sweet. This usually means I opt for bacon and eggs instead of pancakes and waffles, but the real solution is to put eggs on the pancakes and waffles, and by “eggs” I mean “caviar.”

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Since September, Nick Cave has been thoughtfully answering fan's questions through his site The Red Hand Files. To answer the latest query, Cave shared his thoughts on death and how he and his wife Susie were mourning their son Arthur who died in 2015.

Cynthia of Shelburne Falls, Vermont wrote that she had lost her father, sister, and first love over the past few years and said she communicated with them in her dreams. She wrote that it was helping her. She asked if Cave and his wife were communicating with Arthur in a similar way.

Here's how he responded:

Dear Cynthia,

This is a very beautiful question and I am grateful that you have asked it. It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.

I feel the presence of my son, all around, but he may not be there. I hear him talk to me, parent me, guide me, though he may not be there. He visits Susie in her sleep regularly, speaks to her, comforts her, but he may not be there. Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake. These spirits are ideas, essentially. They are our stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity. Like ideas, these spirits speak of possibility. Follow your ideas, because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed.

With love, Nick.

-- yes, lovely, right in the feels --

(Spin)

image via Uncut

Gradio is a simple radio player app for Linux. It lets you browse, search and listen to radio stations without needing to use a browser or enter a stream URL.

This post, Gradio Lets You Listen to Radio Stations on the Linux Desktop, was written by Joey-Elijah Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

(photo via croco_duck)

mymodernmet:

Lifestyle photographer Grace Chon recently turned the camera on her 10-month-old baby Jasper and their 7-year-old rescue dog Zoey, putting them side-by-side in the some of the most adorable portraits ever.

I’m officiating a friend’s wedding ceremony this weekend, and it’s really hard to go from writing a wedding ceremony to writing a baby blog because, in case you haven’t read the latest neuroscience-based academic journals, it utilizes two separate parts of your brain.

Fig. 1 (Below)

 

So instead of writing a post on an entirely different topic, I took the outline I wrote for my friend’s wedding ceremony and wrote a Baby Ceremony, which is exactly like a wedding ceremony, but instead of doing it at a wedding, you perform it as you’re giving birth.  The template is below.

*          *          *

WEDDING  BABY CEREMONY BREAKDOWN

Processional:

Processional of expectant mother to local hospital/birthing center (music/screaming optional).

Greeting/Introduction:

Hello and welcome to one of the most beautiful, poignant days of your life during which you will probably poop in the delivery room in front of everybody while also blowing out all the blood vessels in your face.  Congratulations!   It will be a day filled with an unbelievable amount of tenderness and serenity and love and also (heads up) what will feel like an infinite waterfall of blood.  I cannot even explain to you how much blood.    But also tenderness.   And a placenta.  Placenderness.  And joy and happiness and hope for the future, and then they’re going to hand you disposable underpants and a box of tissues, so don’t bother blow-drying your hair for photos.  Thank you for coming!

First Reading:  

A reading from What to Expect When You’re Expecting, page 362.  Chapter 15, Verse 1: “I think I just lost my mucus plug, should I call my doctor?”

Song:  

The Orchestra plays “Baby Mine” from the Dumbo soundtrack, while anyone who has seen the movie weeps uncontrollably.

Exchange of Vows:

I, (woman giving birth), take you (horrifically painful unborn baby), to be my biological child, my reason for constant worry, and the person for whom I may have horrifically unreasonable expectations.   In the presence of our family and friends, I offer you my solemn vow to be a loving parent,  in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, in very bad, and in “Please tell me you’re kidding.”  I promise to love you unconditionally, to support you in your goals, and to stare at you while you sleep, panicked that someday, something will happen to you.  I promise to attempt to cut your fingernails, to teach you to love and care for everyone else on the planet, and (if possible) to help you pay for college.

I (horrifically-painful unborn baby) take you (woman giving birth) to be my biological mother, my everything in the entire world, my person at whom I will someday roll my eyes because you buy all your clothes at TJ Maxx and cannot figure out how to work a computer.  I take you as the person from whom I will beg for candy, for money, for attention.  In the presence of our family and friends, I offer you my solemn vow to be either horrifically clingy or painfully distant, to be completely dependent for years before becoming embarrassed by all aspects of your personality, to dress in ways you find unacceptable, and never to fully appreciate anything you do in my best interest.  I promise to embarrass you and be embarrassed by you, to never completely understand why you love me as much as you do, and to eventually, reluctantly, friend you on Facebook.

Second Reading:

A reading from the BabyCenter Message Boards (Seven-Month-Old Infant sick on processed Sweet Potatoes Anyone else???) with a response from the comments section (Could be an allergy!  Maybe stop with the processed foods?)

The Exchange of the Diapers:

(Mother speaks) I give you this diaper as a symbol that I will always be there to take care of you, even when it is disgusting and it is 3 in the morning and I do not feel like doing it.   As I fasten it over your buttocks, I commit to your care with all my heart. I ask you to wear this diaper for at least an hour-and-a-half, after which you will inevitably soil it beyond recognition and I will throw it in the wastebasket while you scream for no reason.

(Child speaks)  I give you this diaper as a symbol that I will be there to take care of you when you are old and infirm or, if I’m not there, that I will at least pay to put you in a really good place where the nurses love you and sneak you extra cookies and let you watch Jeopardy or old “Real World” marathons or whatever it is you’ll want to watch when you’re old.  As I place this diaper in your hands, I remind you that eventually I may have to fasten it over your buttocks and, oh god, that’s going to be so gross for both of us, but know that I love you even when I’m bitching about having to do it.

Third Reading:

Another reading from What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Chapter 20, Section 8: “Wait, What IS Bacterial Vaginosis?”

The Unlighting of the Unity Candle:

Mother and child take the flame and disperse it onto two smaller candles to signify that they are no longer one entity.

Closing Words:

From “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo: You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. 

Declaration of Birth:  

By the power vested in me by the state of New Jersey, I now pronounce you mother and child.

You may now smother your child with kisses until he/she is old enough to physically and emotionally push you away.

Good luck with everything.

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If you enjoyed the post, follow me on Facebook or on Twitter or follow the blog by signing up for e-mail notifications in your sidebar and it’ll let you know when I put up new posts.  If you don’t want to do any of those things, but you’d like to meet up in the grocery store and high-five each other and then immediately run in opposite directions, awesome!  You are my kind of person.  Meet me at Trader Joe’s in five minutes.  

1) After doing some home renovation work late into the evening, my husband had inadvertently left both our garage door and our back door open when he came to bed.

2) There have been a string of burglaries in our neighborhood, often involving somebody kicking in the back door of a house.

3) If the cops are patrolling your neighborhood alleys looking for burglars and they see your garage door and back door open, they might interpret that as a sign that there could be a robbery in progress at your residence. Legal precedent calls this “totality of circumstances”. Just leaving your back door open might not be suspicious, especially if you lock the screen door and, thus, imply that you meant to do that. But combine an open back door with the open garage, an unlocked screen door, the time of night, and the string of burglaries, and cops start to decide that they can’t just shrug their shoulders and walk away. This will end up being important.

4) Turns out, when there is a window unit and a fan on in our bedroom, we can’t hear people yelling something like, for instance, “Police!”, through our back screen door. Or, at any rate, I might hear it, but will not register properly what is being said.

4a) My neighbor and his roommate were not out yelling for their dog at 4:00 in the morning. Also, there are two Minneapolis police officers whose voices sound strikingly like those of my neighbor and his roommate. Small world.

5) If you don’t answer the door at 4:00 in the morning and the cops have a totality of circumstances that lead them to believe a robbery may be in progress, they then have probable cause to enter your house.

6) Upon waking up to strangers and flashlights in the hallway six feet from our bed, my husband’s response is to charge at said intruders while screaming. (It is also worth noting that he is not a pajama kind of guy.) He will later explain his train of thought as, “Strangers! Pregnant wife! Attack!”

7) Confirming previous suspicions, we can now be fairly confident that we benefit from the sort of class and race biases that prevent a man from being shot or tased when he runs screaming, naked, at a cop in the dark at 4:00 in the morning. It probably also doesn’t hurt that there seems to be a correlation between the time it takes to trip and fall into the wall and the time it takes to register that the intruder in your hallway is dressed like a cop and you maybe shouldn’t hit him. Later, I will lie awake for at least an hour, thinking about the many, many ways this situation could have gone poorly and about the strange brew of privilege and circumstance, training and luck, that, instead, made this something I will laugh about.

In conclusion: I think we are pretty good to go on the whole “remember to shut the door at night” thing.

Special thanks to Minneapolis Police Department Sgt. William Powell for answering my questions about probable cause and the likelihood of being prosecuted for assaulting an officer. Photo: Chris Barrie.

A collection of evidence suggesting that the people who take stock photographs have absolutely no idea what the process of science looks like, beyond a vague understanding that it probably involves white coats (and also beakers full of liquid).

Europe's fourth-largest airline said the ban was aimed at keeping crews "artless and well-groomed with makeup in pastel tones", reports Ayla Jean Yackley; Turkey's move toward a more conservative brand of Islam has secularists concerned. [Reuters]