So, we finally got Archie neutered. I’m very sad about this — he’s nine years old, and we resisted the procedure for nearly a decade, despite serious coersion from a number of vets, because our previous dog died during the procedure. But Archie has prostate disease, and this was alleged to be the best way to fix it.

He’s back and alive, but he’s depressed and seems slightly frail. It’s weird, he’s been graying for awhile, but he never looked old to me. Now he does. Although he’s bounced back a little since we brought him home, something has clearly changed — he seems gaunt and spent. I can’t help feeling guilty, because I know that on some level, I’ve failed his trust.

The vet didn’t make the process very easy. The twins’ medical costs and daycare tuition have left us teetering on the edge financial peril, and even a $300 procedure like neutering is considerable for us. Some of our things were sold online to raise the money. And yet when we expressed this to the vet, all we got was disdain. D.C. is a difficult city for normal people to live in. As it becomes richer and more elite, there is a definite change of attitude towards the middle class, and I can’t say I enjoy being on the receiving end of it.

But that’s a tangent for another post. My fingers are crossed that Archie recovers and spends enough years with us that the girls remember him. That’s the goal.

Last week (or was it the week before?), I posted about the appearance of the first issue of the Restaurant Fuel ‘zine on ebay. That lead me to begin seeking out online evidence of some of my other undertakings, including Hub City Records, the micro indie label Tina and I ran together from about 1997 - 2000 or thereabouts. Not a long time, only five releases or so, but it intensely dominated our lives.

I’ve found a number of the bands we put out on MySpace, evil though it is. It’s interesting to note that the Boyish Charms are still together. Most of the other bands we worked with, however, have either broken up, or have only a semi-active status.

In some ways, I find myself really missing the indiepop scene of the mid-to-late 1990’s. The popfests, trips to Fez in New York, not to mention taking two trips with Winterbrief. Those were great times, and although I think it’s better now that Tina and I are producing our own work, rather than publishing the work of other people, I do miss being part of that community.

Listening to some of our old records, I’m surprised by how much I still like them. I’d like to figure out some way to get them back in print online, but I suspect it may involve securing permission from the various artists involved. That may be too much trouble, but I really wish more people could hear these records. Some are still available online from various vendors, I even found a seven-inch single for sale on a Japanese music site. That was a nice surprise.

Resurrecting the Hub City catalog is probably a longshot, but I’d hate for these songs to just die. I may pursue this after my writing projects are all finished.

An old favorite, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, re-discovered on YouTube:

I still love this song. Let’s party like it’s 1991.

Jenny Toomey writes about how net neutrality benefits musicians. Yet another constituency has a big stake in keeping the telecoms greedy paws off the internet.

Read her op-ed here.

I received a rejection slip today for my comic book, “The Alberic Heresies,” a mere three days after the publisher received the submission. Given the truckloads of submissions they receive every day, I imagine they simply sent me the rejection slip without having actually read the comic — at least, that’s what my ego hopes. My mind, on the other hand believes they just didn’t like it.

The rejection contained the usual stuff, acknowledging my time and effort, but explaining somewhat sadly that my book just wasn’t strong enough for the competitive marketplace. I never expected them to publish us from an unsolicited submission, anyway — I knew it was a longshot. But the reality of the rejection has gotten me thinking about how books like ours do get published and the amount of face-to-face marketing, glad-handing and constant self promotion required to get people pay attention to you, where your pitch ceases to be unsolicited and dumped in the slush pile. Unfortunately, I know I’m not the guy who can walk up to someone at a convention and make a good impression, nor can I sidle up to a publisher in a bar and confidently order him a round of drinks and slowly booze myself into his good graces. I just don’t have it in me to kiss ass to build relationships with people I probably wouldn’t even like under ordinary circumstances, and who I’m certain wouldn’t like me, even if I was buying a round. And that’s my problem in a nut shell.

Wow, I just finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. It’s one of those books that uncannily creates a narrator whose voice is so compelling that you question whether or not he/she is really fictional. In this case, it’s a 15-year-old autistic boy named Christopher, who sets out to find the murderer of a neighborhood dog, a quest that has very personal ramifications.

I once read that the Dude in The Big Liebowski was created to be an unlikely detective, a man incapable of understanding the complexities of the mystery he was trying to solve. Christopher, I must say, is considerably less equipped than the Dude.

I don’t want to get into too much detail about the plot of the book, because there are a lot of surprises and twists, and if I even hint about them, I’ll ruin it. But I will say that I now know much more about autism than I ever thought I would, and Haddon’s deft use of language really gets across the confusion autistics feel when confronted with a world they simply aren’t capable of understanding. Simple things, like finding a new place, take on a tremendous mathematical complexity for Christopher. Yet, there are times when he is surprisingly normal, at least in his feelings and his reactions, but he doesn’t know how to interpret his feelings.

To sum things up, I’m glad to say that the hype about this book is true — it really is a fantastic read, and not what I expected.

I’m not much of a sports fan, yet I’m at a loss to explain why I find the World Cup compelling. I’ve been watching along with some people at work (full disclosure: we have a TV in the office that’s fully wired for cable), and I’ve found the clash of nations on the soccer pitch to be exciting and enjoyable. I was seriously invested in the USA/Ghana match today, only to despair at the stunning incompetence of the US players. Now I’m watching Croatia take out Australia.

Huhm, maybe I should pick up a copy of FIFA World Cup 2006 on eBay and see if I find video game soccer to be as fun to play as the real thing is to watch?

I watched the pilot episode of “The X-Files” in my dorm room at the University of Maryland the first night it aired, way back in the fall of 1993. I stayed in specifically to watch “The Adventures of Brisco County Junior” which debuted that same distant Friday night. I was a big fan of Bruce Campbell, in no small part due “Army of Darkness,” which I’d dragged some of my college buddies to see the year before, so “Brisco County” was a must see. I watched “The X-Files” simply because it was scifi and on, too. I was moderately impressed by “Brisco County,” but “The X-Files” failed to do anything for me. My initial thought was that the acting was bad, Duchovny clearly didn’t believe in Mulder, and the writers were throwing a lot of alien abduction cliches around because they didn’t know anything about real science fiction. Also, most of the actors were clearly Canadian, which I’ve always found jarring, particularly when Canadians are employed to play American characters. You tend to be pretty good at spotting Canadians when one complete side of your family hails from Buffalo, New York.

However, despite my earlier reservations, I came around to watching “The X-Files” regularly. There was a lot of hype at the time, and I started to “get” what Chris Carter and company were trying to do. In some ways, I think I just submitted and drank the kool aid. The forces in favor of everyone in America watching “The X-Files” were too great to fend off. Ultimately, I would get burned out on the show and by the ninth season, I only really watched the finale. The more convoluted and directionless the mythology became, the more tedious it was to watch.

Recently, I picked up the new “Mythology Collection” DVD’s that only contain episodes relating to the alien abduction story arc. The downside is that these sets don’t include some of the classic standalone episodes, but they do allow you to get a sense of the overall story. Having watched the first set of DVD’s, I find myself at a loss to describe just how disjointed and poorly written this show was. It’s like my years of being an “X-Files” fan were erased, and my initial impression of the show has taken root. A lot of this is probably due to the fact that it hasn’t aged well — in an era with programs like “Battlestar Galactica” and “Lost,” “The X-Files” seems weak and cheap by comparison. Some of its genuine contributions to television — including movie-level cinematography and an ongoing storyline, have been supplanted by newer shows. And moments that moved and excited me back in the mid-1990’s now seem underwhelming. There are so many basic storytelling problems — even in individual episodes — and Duchovny spends so much time hamming it up and phoning it in, that I find it hard to get through the DVD’s.

I can’t attribute all of the problems I have with the show to age, as I’ve also been watching “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” and although there are some rough patches, the two shows are probably better than I remember them. “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” in particular is as great as it was ten years ago and is clearly the progenitor of “Battlestar Galactica.”

Ultimately, I think “The X-Files” failings must be placed at the feet of Chris Carter. Although he came up with a great concept with “The X-Files,” the execution of much of the show was done rather shoddily. Looking back at “Millennium,” Carter’s other major show, I see similar issues. Largest of which is that the police procedural stuff isn’t handled very convincingly. Granted, I hate cop shows, but “Law and Order,” and especially “The Wire,” feel a lot more real to me in regard to the nuances of detective work than “The X-Files.” Dare I say that the police elements of “The X-Files” are genre cliches taken from a lifetime of watching television and not the result of years of painstaking research?

Granted, how much research could Chris Carter and company put into crashed alien spacecraft, UFO abductions, and shapechanging supersoldiers? But the least he could have done is read some literary science fiction and lift from the greats. Instead, he lifts from B-movies and bad television.

Sadly, I must betray my own nostalgia and admit that “The X-Files,” for all the good it did television as a whole, sucks. Big time. There, I said it. Flame away.

Tina and I haven’t stopped podcasting, although several weeks have passed since our last show. We recorded a program last week, but we both agreed that it was not up to par with our past efforts. There will be more in the future, we just want to make sure we produce good material and not just post a show for the sake of it.

In other podcast-related news, I’d like to note that episode 106 was downloaded 755 times this month. This is much, much bigger than our last show, which only received 150 downloads in June. I’m wracking my brain trying to figure out why 106 has been so popular — if anyone out there has an explanation, please let us know in the comments.

Last night, Tina and I rocked the girls to sleep as we always do. Once Rachel stopped fighting, I glanced over to see that Anya was sitting up on Tina’s lap and giggling in my direction. She does this when she wants to get your attention. After awhile, the giggling was continuous, as she smiled and batted her eyes at me, squealing in delight whenever I looked over.

“Well,” Tina said, “it looks like someone wants Daddy.”

So I got up and put Rachel down in her crib. Anya looked up at me and spread out her arms. I picked her up, and went back to my chair, listening to her coo. She rested her head on my shoulder and after a few more smiles, almost immediately went to sleep.

Even now, 10 months after their birth, the fact that I’m their father still amazes me. It’s moments like these when I worry that I can live up to the tremendous responsibility. I know I’ve made my share of mistakes, I just hope I don’t make too many more.