Tucked away in the Eastern cusp of Costa Rica's central valley, is the only known habitat of the rare and beautiful Costa Rican Gorilla Bug. Local legend says they were created on a windy night when a thunderstorm fought for attention in the sky with the full moon, and they sprouted up from a sugarcane field the next morning. Who knows? What science does know is that they always come in pairs, they are some kind of mammal, and they have a strange psionic attack that enslaves whatever household they are living in.
And yes, Dr. Girlfriend and I happen to be the lucky residents of said household, but it's not a bad deal. As it turns out, their inability to move around really works in our favor for now. But upon doing a little research I found out that he's little critters are actually only in their larval stage right now. And one day, they eventually grow into beautiful Tica / Gringo hybrids that will be able to rob men of their hearts with either a smile or a quick flick of the katana. It's amazing thinking of that, because in this stage when they're only little Gorilla Bugs, all they pretty much do is cry, fart, eat, and engage in low impact biological warfare.
I guess what ranks them amongst the more kick ass wildlife is the fact that their cheeks are really kissable and they can perform an amazing array of sounds that try as I may, I cannot duplicate. They also smell really nice ( when not committing the aforementioned low-impact biological warfare). And that's my story and I'm sticking to it!!!
In all truth, I am reeling from an incident Tuesday night where my son and I were gleefully eating peanuts together and I somehow managed to rip off an old filling and half of my molar along with it. I can't have anything done about it, because of work, until Saturday. So senor dentista gave me a prescription for what is apparently the Costa Rican version of pure morphine until then. So I would just count on my posts for the week being just a little bit on the daffy side...
Even though this isn't my first rodeo as far as being a father, I have to say that I feel like an absolute rookie again. Both Kera and Rhiannon have decided to share a very specific trait with her father, they are completely nocturnal. This is no exaggeration. They literally sleep all day and then wake up every 15 minutes during the night to either cry or just check out their surroundings. They are still less than three weeks old, so there is still a lot of "shakedown" time for them to adjust to gravity and general living in a three-dimensional world.
Since the birth of my first boy, Joshua, in 1999; I have always insisted on taking the night shift with all my children from the time they are infants. This has always had the double advantage of giving their mother the opportunity to sleep, and for me to bond one-on-one with my child. Both of my first two children are boys, and have very alpha male personalities tempered by a sharp wit and the ability to make anyone laugh. But now I look down on these two little rosebuds in their pink Minnie Mouse blankets and wonder what these little girls are going to be like.
Of course I am not going to cancel "Zeppelin Night" or "Kung Fu Movie Night" just because they are girls. Both of my sons grew up on the classics, both musically and cinematically during the the first few months of their lives. And I take a certain pride in knowing that my son is the only kid in his middle school who knows of, and listens to The Doors. But I also know with a certain dread that one day I'm going to be sitting in front of my computer monitor watching Strawberry Shortcake or My Little Pony for the 50th time.... And they're almost 3 weeks old, and all I can bring myself to play for them is Enya, Fleetwood Mac, the occasional Beatles track, and some Simon and Garfunkel.
Kera (Left) and Rhiannon (Right)
And instead of one little face to get lost in, there are two. Being identical twins, we were very lucky that they had at least unique enough ears to tell them apart. Both of them, strangely enough, have pointed ears like little fairy folk. We are not sure if this is a trait that will eventually go away, but it is adorable as all get out.
Kera
's left ear has a point that goes straight up like Spock, and Rhiannon's points more towards the back. So at least the mortal fear of confusing one with the other has been abated for now. I can imagine all kinds of mischief a child with my blood could get into if they had an identical twin to work off of...
So tonight on the night shift with their father, they're enjoying Enya's "The Celts" again because they seem to like that better than anything else right now. We'll see as time goes by if they are ready for the harder stuff, but for now I have to completely re-write my playbook as a father. It seems like having little boys for so long has left me a bit unprepared.
This is easily been one of the most eventful three weeks of my entire life with many new chapters beginning and ending, and quite a few that will always be ongoing. I hope that the story of your lives can be as delightfully intricate and twisty/turny as mine has been. And if not, know that I will always structure this blog in a way to show you how it can be. Each of our lives is a story, a book that we first cracked open when we became aware of ourselves as infants and toddlers. You have the main characters, the guest appearances, and all the supporting characters around you, and how the story ends is completely up to you and fate.
So my mother flew in at the end of last month, and she stayed until just about a week ago. After five years of being by myself and not seeing any family, I put all of my attention into her visit and the miraculous thing that happened while she was here. And even though it's only been about three weeks, the world is a little bit of a different place after that short time span. Let's review, shall we?
1.) Identical twin princesses, and future destroyers of men's hearts were born to yours truly!
Their names are Kera Rain and Rhiannon Moon Gipson, and even in their 2 week post birth semi-larval stage, they are two of the most beautiful creatures to ever inhabit this planet. I'm sure this sounds like the typical bias that any father has for his little girls, but a simple click on the picture to the right will settle the argument. Here Kera is giving a big smile and a high five to her sister over their ability to completely wrap their daddy around their tiny little fingers in just a few days. I am so unbelievably screwed when they start wanting ponies... This is one of the main reasons my Mom came down here in the first place, and it was great that she should be here in that tiny little window that they could've been born.
The author's fiancée, Patricia Meza (soon to be) Gipson.
Their mother, my fiancée and partner in crime, has been considered on many occasions to be one of the most beautiful women in Latin America throughout her short modeling career. And she melted my heart like a blowtorch to butter from the first day I laid eyes on her to this very moment. And even though Rhiannon required a C-section to come out, Patricia handled the birth of these twin girls with the same strength and elegance that I have grown to love in her. And just two short weeks later, she still gets up at 5AM everyday to walk to the bakery and tend to the now four kids in the house along with me. She's absolutely amazing and has that rare trait of being just as beautiful on the inside as she s on the outside!
It was hard saying goodbye to my Mom when she lest, but now she knows that Costa Rica isn't a "third world hellhole" that her lesser educated friends insisted that it was. I miss her terribly, but now have a feeling of wholeness and that my lifestyle is somewhat more validated. Now she can go back to the rest of the family and say that I wasn't running from anything in as much as I was running towards something else. But this is just my personal life, what about the rest of the world? Well that brings us to...
2.) President Obama shows his birth certificate and then shoots Osama bin Laden in the face and throws him in the ocean
(supposedly, maybe)
When I was about 11 in the early 1980's, the most popular show on TV was WWF Professional Wrestling. I honestly didn't get into it as much as my other siblings, but once in a while when bored I'd take a gander and chuckle at the mock fights both in and out of the ring. There would be a wrestler from the then USSR along with his Iranian tag team partner spouting anti-American rhetoric (amazingly sometimes in a southern accent) with the inferred threat of a foreign takeover of wrestling. If you had an IQ above room temperature, this was comedy gold. If you were one of a few who could to suspend their disbelief to enjoy the show, you got the comedy AND the drama (I could never do that). But a few took it as gospel, some in my own household. Either way, it was fake,it wasn't modern gladiatorial combat, it was just a show. Even though it would end up saving all of humanity (more on that later).
This is how I have come to view the American political process from about 1992 to now. The actors are the partisan talking heads and the legislative politicians. When one is the "bad guy" the other is clearly the "good guy". Republicans are the right wing Fascists, and Democrats are the evil Communists. The American public is so convinced that there is actually a difference between the two, the nation is pretty much polarized. Nothing is getting done. At this point in time, I blame the ideologues on the right more than the ones on the left, because it almost always seems like the dirtiest tricks come from their camp. One of which was the notion that Barack Obama was not actually even a US citizen. Despite the release of several forms of his birth certificate and easily referenced newspaper clippings, this dead horse was beaten into the ground so much, it looked like a fossil from the Pleistocene Era.
So after three years of whining that culminated in Donald Trump going on national TV and claiming to have proof to the contrary, his actual long form birth certificate from the State of Hawaii was released to the public. It was the end of the controversy for those with reality based doubts, and those not wanting to come to our reality are saying that it's a weird forgery. To those non-Americans who are reading this, I just want to say that we don't spend much money on education over there and leave it at that...
And then we find out that our President (who I like sometimes) sent in a SEAL team to Pakistan for the purpose of shooting Osama bin Laden in the face. Not capture him, even though he probably had one or two pieces of knowledge that could have made this War on Terror™ end a little quicker. The purpose of the daring raid into some guy's house in a country we aren't at war with, was to shoot him in the face. And supposedly we did. Then instead of bringing his carcass to the US where he could be mounted and stuffed with bacon in his mouth and a tattoo of Mohamed on his ass, they throw him in the ocean? I call shenanigans, but like with wrestling in the 80's, I am trying to suspend my disbelief as much as possible. If it's a lie, but it prevents me from having to say "President Palin" with a straight face in a few years, I guess I can go along with it...
3.) The season premier of Doctor Who officially knocks Star Trek out of it's top spot of my all time favorite Science Fiction series...
Star Trek and Doctor Who have always been my two favorite sci-fi shows, but with more years of solid story telling, fewer episodes degenerating into soap opera dialogue, and more themes that are culturally relevant, Doctor Who has come out victorious. I was first hooked when I was a kid and stayed up late to watch the Tom Baker incarnation come on PBS at around 11PM. I had to keep the volume down because the opening theme song scared the shit out of my little brother for some reason, but it never interfered with my enjoyment of it. I've watched every episode of the new "reboot" of the series that started in 2005 with
Christopher Eccleston's interpretation multiple times.
Then David Tennant smacked his interpretation right out of the park for three seasons. In fact he did so well and I was so sorry to see him leave, I was almost sure that I wouldn't be able to watch it again with a different Doctor and like it as much. But lo and behold, Matt Smith is absolutely incredible as well. The two part season premiere that consisted of "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon" were some of the best science fiction and silliness to be mixed up on TV!
Don't get me wrong, I'm still a die hard Trekker, and I can't thank JJ Abrams enough for saving the franchise from Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, but the consistent quality (how many Star Trek episodes were written by Douglas Adams? Good day sir..) and the ability to make me actually think, has finally put Doctor Who in the lead. But I guess this isn't really world changing unless you came to the same conclusion...
4.) 6.0 magnitude earthquake hits Costa Rica
On Friday the 13th, after a long shift on my 9-5, I was woken up from a particularly delicious nap to my entire house shaking. I was the only one in the house at the time, and the electricity went out, but that was the extent of the damage. Even at the epicenter, a 6.0 here is pretty much just a free amusement park ride. There aren't any buildings big enough to topple and kill people, and I don't think there's ever been a tsunami here...
5.) Apocalypse thwarted by the spirit of an 80's era professional wrestler...
May 21st, last Saturday, was the day predicted in the Bible code to be the beginning of the End Times™. The "Rapture" was to be when all of the best behaved right wing Christian fundamentalists were to be zapped into Jesus' loving arms and scooped away to heaven while all of the rest of us were to suffer the end of the world and our eventual booting into the Lake of Fire™. On May 20th, pro wrestler and unwitting savior of earth, Randy "The Macho Man" Savage suffered a heart attack while driving and died in the subsequent crash.
As it turns out, "The Macho Man" was actually an enlightened spiritual being who had actually achieved a state of perfect enlightenment around 1984 through steroid and cocaine abuse coupled with repeated blows to the head. Though he did not have the mental or linguistic faculties to properly explain what had happened to him, it was very well documented for those who only need look...
And the "beat goes on" indeed, Randy....
Even though he could only describe it as "Macho Madness", his enlightenment stayed with him all of his days and continued for those critical moments right after his physical death. Instead of simply crossing over into the next incarnation or afterlife, he became an avatar due to his inadvertent spiritual perfection. He looked down at his newly rejuvenated spiritual body and how it reflected his old one in it's physical prime, and spent the next few hours high five-ing the archangels, Buddha, Bruce Lee, Scatman Crothers and Sinatra. He was looking forward to appearing in visions and being called upon as a spirit guide by the young and the wise.
But then he learned what Jesus was planning the next day and was horrified. He was going to kill 99.9999% of the Earth's population and only keep the most uptight and boring of it's members. And why? Wasn't Jehovah supposed to be beyond the whole divine punishment thing? Didn't he give his word at the end of the Great Flood to never smite humanity ever again? He beseech-ed Jehovah in his garage while the Almighty was working on his 1977 Harley Davidson Shovelhead in preparation for a big celestial charity poker run with Krishna, Zeus, and Odin. When God heard of Jesus' plans, he was upset, but didn't sound surprised. Jesus had apparently been watching alot of Fox News in the last few months and was probably under the impression that humanity really needed to be wiped out for the greater good.
But Jehovahalso indicated that he couldn't get involved because of his bad back and a restraining order put out on him by Gaia, the Earth Mother. So God offered Randy a beer and told him that nothing could be done. Humanity was doomed and Heaven was about to be filled to capacity with the likes of Kirk Cameron and Pat Robertson. All the bars will have to be shut down, and all of the female angels will have to start wearing clothes. "I guess all the night jams with Hendrix, Lennon, and Mozart will have to be called off too", the Lord depressingly mused...
But "The Macho Man" wasn't hearing it. And as Jesus walked down the steps of paradise to the world below to begin with the great earthquake, he was knocked out by a divine "Flying Elbow Smash" to the top of the head. Savage had somehow climbed to the highest precipice in Heaven and dropped down on him from it's stunning height. When he came to, Randy "The Macho Man" Savage was standing over him with an index finger in his face.
"You ain't exterminatin' no whole human race, ya crazy hippie!! Not while "The Macho Man" is around to hand out free smackdowns....you see THIS?!?" Savage flexed his bicep right infront of the Messiah's face, inches from his nose. "THIS is what you get when you play with fire and talk about smiting all those little wrestling fans down there, now I better not catch you coming down here to hurt these people again!!"
Still groggy, The Lamb of God reluctantly agreed to never interfere with human events on such a scale again. He was to "stick to making little kids less scared at night and giving hope to the weak" as Savage put it with the occasional "rescuing a kitty", though he didn't go into any more detail than that. He helped Jesus back up to his feet, shook his hand and gave him a "bro hug". And together they walked up the gates to Paradise where Jimi Hendrix was already tuning his guitar and Billie Holiday was going over the lyrics of John Lennon's newest ballad he had written for her.
