The King of Kong

"The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" is a documentary about one man's recent quest to break the 20+ year old record score for Donkey Kong. It's a well-made, unsettling movie, which made me never want to be the best in the world at anything. The people in the competitive classic video gaming game are deceitful (of others or themselves), paranoid, manipulative, and/or obsessive. This may be true of the elites in any field - business, politics, sport, art - but in an arena that seems to comprise about 75 people in the world, and for the rest of us just represents memories of well-spent quarters (if ill-spent time), it's a little disturbing.

Sour puss

When eating tart fruits (eg, apples, peaches), Owen occasionally makes an awesome sour face. The spoonful goes in, then a couple of moments later, the mouth puckers, the eyes screw shut, and the eyebrows raise. It lasts less than a second, but it's absolutely hilarious.

It doesn't happen with every spoonful, and he's clearly not repulsed, as the mouth and eyes open back up, indicating readiness for more. There is no gagging - green beans, I'm looking in your direction - so it's OK for me to laugh at his shock.

Unfortunately, I've not been able to photograph this phenomenon, primarily because it is intermittent and short-lived. But also, when Owen sees the camera, he is enthralled to the point of not noticing any tartness, or sometimes to the point of not eating. (In fact, Owen is fascinated with all things electronic. Camera, cell phone, Blackberry, remote control, phone handset, laptop - no matter the package, he can sense a circuit board, and is drawn to it.)

Work Blues and Partly Digested Food

I haven’t gotten to spend as much time as I like with O this week, giving me a bit of the work blues. It’s my week to be responsible for my nemesis – capsule endoscopy.

It’s a nifty procedure. Just swallow a camera the size and shape of a big vitamin, wear a recorder, and 8 hours later download photos of the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and colon. Very useful for examining the small intestine that can’t be reached with other kinds of endoscopy, but a huge pain to interpret. Each study has 8 hours of recording time, generating 57,600 images which must all be looked at. Unfortunately, there’s no helpful computer program to make the reading easier (by marking the abnormalities for me). And the software has the not-so-useful characteristic of occasionally corrupting the findings, resulting in getting to re-read the entire study. This happened to me today for the first time, but I won’t repeat the string of swear words and grumbling that erupted when I realized I would now be reading the study again. The capsule images are turned into a video, so it’s like watching a trip through the GI tract, but not as funny as when it happens on the Simpsons or Futurama, and not as cool as when it gets shown on a science show. There’s always a few people who don’t follow the prep instructions, so I get to look at their partly digested food. There’s also a bit of a seasick factor when watching the images as the capsule really bounces around in the stomach. Oh well, I finished my 8 studies for the week and now don’t have to read them again for a few months. Hmm, writing about Owen is more fun…

Standin'

Owen pulled up to standing today. He was sitting in his crib and managed to pull himself up. Then he did it with his activity table. Yesterday, he apparently spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to pull to standing. Nanny Carla described a look of very intense concentration during the effort (I suspect it’s similar to Travis’s look when he’s reading the Economist).

Toothy goodness

Owen has a tooth. I discovered this last week (or maybe the week before) because he bit me. It’s small, and razor sharp. When he wants to give something a good chew, he finds a stationary object and rubs his gums back and forth on it, like a dog shaking a chew toy. He does the same motion for toys he can pick up – moving his head rather than the toy.
In other tooth news, O is fascinated when I brush my teeth. I draw the same scrutiny and look of intense concentration that his ‘Old McDonald’s Farm’ book gets (his current favorite). Hopefully he’ll enjoy us brushing his tiny tooth – not sure when this is supposed to start, so I guess I’ll have to read up on it.