Classic quotes, Vol. 34

Here's a selection of quotes from the past few months, from my 4-year-old daughter M-, my 7-year-old son D-, and my infant son E-:

M- (excitedly, pointing to a Bud Light truck parked near us at the gas station): Daddy, I see the waaater botttttle truuuuuuck!

D- (drawled slyly, while doing his homework, as if idly asking about the weather, or some other not-remotely-related topic): Hey Dad, what's forrrrrrty-three plus thirty-six?

M- (using her Important Announcement voice at the dinner table): This hot dog BUN is too hot! (asked if she's sure) ...No... the thing that's inside it. (asked, "You mean the hot dog??") Yeah, the hot dog.

E- (whenever he deliberately pushes or drops things off his high chair, with the detached tone of an innocent bystander): Uh-oh.

M- (very matter-of-factly, about a song she made up): It's a very long song... I can't sing all the words in ONE day...

Me (after our shared laughter at my wife apparently stopped by quite so funny): No, no, I'm not being mean-- I'm laughing WITH you, as we both laugh at you!

M- (very excited, and distinctly unfazed, regarding the corpse of an unfortunate mouse, victim of our cats): We should save it, and when it turns to bones, I can study them! Because when I grow up, I want to be a vegetarian, and help animals!!

Amusing searches, Vol. 6

Here are more of the most amusing searches that brought people here during these past few months that have been so devoid of new posts.

(All search strings are reprinted exactly as they were entered, and the search text links to the post at which the visitor arrived.)

• is it ok that daughter buys annivarsary card on behalf of husband - Is it okay for you that they do this? Of course. Is it okay for the two of them? ...Ask her. Seems kinda sad to me, but man, Hallmark must love her commitment to their products even to the point of this nonsense. (Also, for my own future reference, does she get a good deal on these "annivarsary" cards from the Irregular bin at the dollar store?)

• curing a belligerent horse (Jonesboro, AR) - Poetic concerns aside as to whether a supposedly belligerent horse needs "curing", I'll say that while I appreciate the particular struggles of horse trainers, I'm not sure why one in search of an answer to a professional question would stop to click on a search result titled "Screw curing cancer, we've got robot ladies now!"

• do not babysit (Virginia Beach, VA) - Okay, okay, I can take the hint... Clearly you've just perused my selection of bad parenting, lack of shame, screaming, self-righteousness, and sarcasm posts.

• literaldan.blogspot.com screw-curing-cancer-weve-got-robot - Since this (and many, many other searches, for some reason) came from Mountain View, California, I think it's fair to assume that the top brass of Google is intensely interested in how exactly I've managed to take over the Internet without actually making any money or getting on TV yet. That, or they're thinking of offering me a job in their vaunted Nitpicking, Irreverence, or Procrastination departments.

• barefoot inebriated woman (Warren, OH) - If that's what you're looking for, then allow me to point you, happily, over to your fellow Ohioan. You won't be sorry!

• amusing a 3 year old (Bristol, VT) - I'll give you a hint-- it must involve rhyming wordplay and, more importantly, bodily functions in some way. Preferably graphically so. Just picture the humor of a 30-year-old man, and then aim a little higher brow.

Welcome to Chicago!

I just wanted to post a quick note wishing everyone traveling by train, plane, or automobile to Chicago for the 2009 BlogHer Convention a safe trip, and a warm welcome to our fair city.

Apologies in advance for the various odors in the subway. Not that there's really a good time of year for that, but the middle of summer would definitely not be in contention. Try to stick to the L tracks whenever possible.

Those of you from landlocked locations will notice that we have what appears to be some kind of magical ocean spanning as far as the eye can see, and those of you from coastal locations will notice that said magical ocean does NOT have wound- and eyeball-burning salt lurking in the water.

We're more than willing to use our magic skills to desalinate YOUR oceans, too, as long as you all can pay in advance however many billions it would take us to buy back our stupid parking meters.

If you don't see me around this weekend but want to, just leave me a comment or send me an e-mail, and we can figure something out.

To everyone else reading who couldn't care less about all this, sorry, but at least you haven't had to hear about it much until now, right? I don't get out much anymore, so this is pretty noteworthy for me. I'll try to keep any ensuing babbling to a minimum. Babble babble babble.

Respect my Au-THOR-a-tie!

I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that after much watching and wonderment on my part, my Technorati Authority rating has gone up to 68,* which apparently puts me within the top 97,000 blogs out of many millions, and surely entitles me to some kind of cash prize, secret club membership, or that many virgins awaiting me in the afterlife. Or maybe I'm confusing several different brochures I've been handed recently.

What I can say for sure is that while I may be no Dooce or Sneeze or Black Hockey Jesus or even Brittany the Barefoot Foodie, I'm pretty happy with dropping below six digits.

Of course I must acknowledge that this is not so much a reflection on me or anything I've done, but instead it's an indication of how many of you kind people have linked to me in a forgettable drunken haze or whatever other extenuating circumstances explain it. So thanks for that, whatever the cause.

Having as short an attention span as I have, though, and as well-developed a sense of entitlement as I do, I'd now like to double this figure within, oh, say the next week or two. Anybody know any of those crafty spamming folks who so efficiently create and abandon junk blogs every day? If so, could you ask them to link to me before abandoning their pages? I just might be able to become virtually more popular than Dooce, and then wouldn't some people not existing solely on the Internet be mildly impressed THEN?

The cake under that icing is that once the systems get cleaned up and my artificially inflated rating begins plummeting, I have reason to believe I will receive several billion dollars from the federal government, to help cushion the blow for me and to feed their hope that I won't wipe out my entire blogroll and start a chain reaction that will bring down the egos of the entire blogosphere.

If anyone is deserving of that kind of power, grandeur, and unrestrained discretion, it is undeniably yours truly. After all, I can almost see Canada from my house.

---

* I'm gunning for you, Kevin.

The one-eyed monster

For those of you who are new, who may have missed the earlier posts, or who just want to amuse themselves again at my expense should read my accounts of my 1-year-old daughter's attempt to blind me before continuing with this post.

Having had some time to think this all over, aided by TerriRainer's continuously referring to me as One-Eyed Dan for the past several weeks, and after becoming sick of seeing the old Draft post I had filled with unused one-liners and other tidbits from those two posts, I've decided to close the book on this traumatizing chapter of my life in one explosion of randomness.

I have come to believe that this assault was not an accident but rather a well-disguised act of revenge for my not having a bottomless supply of Goldfish crackers, about which M- had protested and threatened about a week before the attack. See me ignorantly passing along her blatant warning at the end of this post of quotes from our house.

Further supporting this theory is the fact that the assailant may be starting to feel her Sicilian blood. She comes from a people with a documented history of serving their revenge as cold as gelato, with all-natural marinara, shall we say.* Due to my side of the family, she also comes from a people known for drunken brawling, but guess which is the bigger threat in the long run?

In my time spent pondering the implications of all this, I've decided that I should probably wear an eyepatch over my remaining eye as a preventative measure. And actually, for the sake of the continuing recovery of my tender injured eye, I think I'll just go all-out and wear two.

Another quandary is that, as the world's newest Cyclops, would my arch-nemesis be Odysseus or Magneto? Or both? "Damn you, you sheep-stealing evil mutant mastermind!!" Nah.

I think that choice is decided by the fact that Odysseus has long since passed over the River Styx**-- I'm forced to go with Magneto. This means that from now on, I'll officially be lying in wait for the chance to sucker punch Sir Ian McKellan right in the throat.

Until that blessed day, however, I'll have to continue running through wistful montages in my head-- things I've seen with two eyes; my unblemished face while looking at stuff; me laughing at something undetermined with two good eyes (montages always include laughing scenes); me staring blankly at a computer for much of the day, blinking occasionally without an eye-injury-related care in the world; and so on.

The caption for all these montages would boil down to something like this (be sure to use your happy memory voice): "Remember all those times I looked at stuff and was able to more accurately judge its approximate distance from my face by using the impressions from more than one eye to create a composite image with reliable scale in proportion to said distance? Those were good times."

I was a fool to not see that back then. I was also a fool to not see the frisbee D- threw at my face the other day.

* That sounds disgusting, and yet it makes me hungry nonetheless.
** Domo ari-ga-to, Mis-ter Ro-bot-o.***
*** You're welcome. Now go enjoy the rest of your day irritating people with the awe-inspiring genius of Mr. Dennis DeYoung.

Editor's Note: Notice that I went through this whole post of tidbits without once mentioning pirates. It's just too obvious, and you know how I hate obvious humor.

Copy Editor's Note: Editor's Notes don't count as part of a post.

May I have your attention, please?

Or, How do I let them know that because of the unfreezing process, I have no inner monologue?*

Just to forewarn those of you who haven't spent much time with children, you definitely need to be aware before you do so that anything you do or say can and will be used against you in the form of a public announcement.

To illustrate this with an inconsequential anecdote, yesterday evening J- and I were dividing and conquering at the store, and when we saw each other again we walked parallel for a few aisles until we got to a clear one we could meet in, which happened to be the "Wine and Spirits" aisle. I made some little joke about how J- must be there shopping from her own personal list for a perfect Mother's Day, and then D- all but shouted to us, two feet away, "What's ALcoHOL??"

Before I could even address this complicated question (for at least the fifth time so far), M- seconded him by shouting at the top of her lungs, which would be unbelievably powerful for a person thrice her size, "ALCOHOL!!!"

I have easily five thousand more examples, many of situations that were actually awkward, unlike this one, and that's factoring in that my kids are both pretty good in this respect, compared to other ones I've heard and J-'s reports from the various schools she's worked in. Little kids will ask, or repeat, absolutely anything that's on their mind, at any time, regardless of who can hear them. Volume control is developed pretty late in childhood.

I've tried to express to D- why it's not nice to talk about people when they are in your presence, even if you're saying something nice or (the best you can usually hope for) innocuous, but I haven't had too much luck so far, based on his behavior just this morning while the landlord and some "worker guys" were here fixing our windows. Beyond the nice and innocuous things, it seems pretty self-explanatory why you shouldn't ask or say something rude about somebody when they can hear you, but D- taught us long ago that the understanding of "rudeness" is developed some time after volume control.

Let me give you a quick rundown:
• "Why does that man have no hair?"
• "How come that lady's skin is all... crinkly??"
• (in a public bathroom) "What was that sound?"
• (re: more than one landlord) "Why is him in our house?"
• (re: our current landlord) "Why does him have no socks on?"
• (re: our former landlord, a Northern Maine potato farmer) "Why does him have dirt all over him?" and "Why doesn't he take his shoes off?"
• "I smell something baaaad."

And of course there's the ever-popular, "I don't like him."

Given time, I'm sure I'll remember at least a few dozen more quotes I've thus far almost completely repressed. How about you? Have you all got any good ones?


* A great quote from the original Austin Powers.

Developments at our house, Vol. 4

These are some developments at our house in recent days:

1. J- discovered a forgotten Easter egg full of jelly beans in her coat pocket more than a week after the event, much to her giddy pleasure.

2. I determined the reason no one makes wine from oranges: because fermented orange juice is disgusting. Just check my fridge.

And my sink. And my shirt.

3. D- has amped up his habit of calling out made-up words and then asking me what they mean. I cannot explain this habit, and I can barely stand it, given his straight-faced insistence on getting an explanation. He's definitely my kid.

4. I found out how creepy it can be when your 1-year-old wakes up quietly and remembers she has a singing pig ("Five Little Piggies") in the corner of her crib. The disembodied adult voice inexplicably wafting in from the baby's room at nap time is extremely disconcerting.

5. I learned that when you tickle a baby while she's drinking, she will spit milk all over, just like a real person. I couldn't resist! It was worth it.

6. I'm wondering if I'm manly enough all on my own to pull off wearing a Utilikilt. The answer, of course, is no. The next question is, do I care? They're just so convenient.

7. M- found out that as delicious as oyster crackers may be, and as fun as it is to share with everyone, Daddy does not find them yummy when they are shoved up his nostril while he is closing his eyes for just 5 seconds at 7 o'clock in the morning.

8. Expanding on this knowledge gained yesterday, this morning M- tried to stick a Cheerio into the Wii disc slot instead ('Cheerio' being the singular form of 'Cheerios', rather than a British greeting, which would be far less damaging to the hardware) . As a show of good faith, she then spent about 2 minutes afterwards cementing the new lesson by pointing at the slot and repeating, "No. No. No."

On further reflection, I can only hope this doesn't mean she had already shoved one in there undetected. I'll have to plug it in and eject the game to clear out any detritus.

9. I have found, after more occasions than even I would ordinarily have guessed, that nobody (so far) appreciates being compared to Jabba the Hutt in any way, even when it has nothing to do with his weight problem, and no matter how apt the comparison may be.

To each his own, I suppose.

Note: Here are the other volumes.

Merry Eastermas

There's just nothing better to recognize the death and resurrection of your favorite savior than purchasing and consuming the very finest hard liquors available at what are quite simply the best prices in town, if the Easter Sale flyer I received from a local liquor store this week is any indication.

This just begs one multi-part question, for me-- since even winos deserve Easter excitement, I wonder if bourbon shots would leak out of those plastic Easter eggs, and if so, how big of a market would there be for watertight eggs intended for imbibing such spirits for the Lord? And if this market was to be capitalized, would there be a marked enough decrease in church attendance on Easter morning to warrant a much-sought condemnation from the Pope?

At our house, we'll leave this question rhetorical and stick with the candy in baskets. But then, I would posit that eating five eggs' worth of jelly beans at once could leave you in much the same state as taking an equal portion of booze. M-, for one, is definitely already drunk on the power of eagerly calling out "meh-whoa!" to get a mini marshmallow placed in her hand. Her judgment clouded, she decided this morning to steal D-'s egg of marshmallows and run to the other room to devour them as quickly as possible.

Even Ms. Chubbycheeks was clearly at maximum capacity by the time we found where she had gone to. But by the look on her face, she felt it was worth it. Luckily the Easter Bunny left the rest of the marshmallow bag in the cabinet...

One parting note; D- has already nailed down the spirit of Easter, and by extension Christmas-- he told M- she should climb back down off the stairs, as Daddy was demanding, because, "You should not do naughty things on Easter!" As an aside to my dad and me, as much as to continue his mentoring of his sister, he added, "You only do good things, so you can get stuff." I asked if that was what it was all about, and he confirmed that yes, yes it is.

So there you have it. Take that, Hokey Pokey!

How much snow for Cancun?

What does today, the official first day of spring, hold for beautiful Chicagoland, Illinois?
The daytime looks relatively promising: "Partly Sunny - Hi 38°F"
But then for the evening, we're back to business as usual: "Heavy Snow (Chance for Measurable Precipitation 90%) - Lo 31°F"

Can't we get a meeting with whoever decides these things (I know some people have an easy answer to this, of course) and reset the seasons so we actually get a White Christmas and an agreeable Spring?

Does anyone wonder why so many people feel compelled to go away to Florida and beyond for so-called Spring Break? Think of all the girls who could be going wild north of the Mason-Dixon line! What about us cheap bastards? Are we to just be left behind in the mucky chill (at best) to be depressed by the fact that by the time the weather gets any better our break will be long over?

Lucky for me, I no longer have this dilemma, as I no longer have anything resembling a "Spring Break"...

Sigh.

The great and holy St. Padraig's Day

It's on days like today that I reflect upon what a crazy life I've led since I last walked the hallowed halls of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Fall of 2003. Marriage, two kids, two cross-country moves... who knows what's next? I just know that college is another world quite far away from this one:

For the scholars in the aptly named Champaign, IL, today is the unwelcome end to the St. Patrick's Day Weekend, which traditionally begins, at the latest, the Thursday preceding the day itself and ends on whichever is later of the day itself or the end of the weekend, which may or may not extend several days into the week.

Other notable events around these parts are that the city of Chicago dyed the river a slightly different shade of green than usual, a bunch of people marched in the street Saturday afternoon for reasons unclear, and lots of UIUC alums spent the weekend reliving their college days.

I've always felt a special connection to St. Patrick's Day, since it's my middle name. I always hated it for some reason (probably to do with my brothers' declarations, as with so many other things, that it should be a source of shame), and it was nice to have a day celebrating it. Unfortunately, since I'm not religious and not much of a drinker, there's little left to do on the day except try to remember to wear a green shirt, or something.

Celebration accomplished!

Shrug.