Things that amuse me, Vol. 11

Here's another selection of items that have been amusing me since the last time I posted a collection of these:

1. Within moments of telling us, with great emphasis, that the baby's head circumference is in the 97% percentile, my son E-'s doctor casually asked, while further inspecting him, if we thought he most resembles me.

2. I find the prompts alongside pages at Dictionary.com asking, "How many words do you actually know?" kind of insulting, or at least condescending. I don't need these kinds of belittling challenges-- I'll take my lucrative ad-ignoring eyeballs elsewhere, like a real book, maybe. THOSE don't judge me. Usually.

3. The kids are getting too smart... after my wife J- had a "candy for dinner" night while I was out of town last summer, they all declared it a success and she told them we could do it once a year. Five months later, a mere four days into January, my 7-year-old son D- said, out of the blue, "Hey, since it's a new year now....... can we have candy for dinner again tomorrow night?!?"

4. The other day, my now-5-year-old daughter M- pretty much hit the nail on the head in disgustedly describing a clown as, "Some weird guy... with a big red nose, and a really white face..."

Things that amuse me, Vol. 9

Here's another selection of items that have been amusing me these days:

1. Only a kid* can be taken just as seriously with chocolate smeared all over his face as he is any other day and time.

2. Much like a dog chasing a car until it slams on the brakes, every time I succeed in swatting a fly with my bare hands, I immediately regret even attempting it. And yet, there I am again swinging away the next time.

3. My wife --who shudders at the mere thought of an insect** going about its life far underground, much less anywhere inside her house or immediate one-mile area-- so craves the attention of a cat that, when faced with what I'll call my Dismayed Reaction to her observation of fleas and ticks on the stray cat she and our kids had been frequently petting for a few days, she shrugged them off and casually explained, "You just need to wash your hands..."

4. My two older children, D- (7-year-old son) and M- (4-year-old daughter), have lately alternated between 1) experimenting with the power of demanding privacy in the bathroom/when changing; and 2) loudly offering each other audiences before their porcelain throne/mooning each other at will.

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* Or possibly Hitler.

** Even a firefly!

Important Question: If I didn't notice a sparkle, can it still be a vampire?

This is the kind of urgent question that cannot wait until it's not the middle of the night to ask of The Internet.

This evening, close to midnight, we were shocked to discover an intruder in the house that may be either a bat or some kind of darting swift or swallow. It didn't stop panickedly swooping toward my indefensibles long enough for me to get a good look at it before finding a safe enough nook in which to plot its revenge.*

So, after several fruitless hours of searching, the question I have for you all is this:

Which one of us will wake up with this thing on our face?

It's kind of important that we know this as soon as possible. Please share your educated hypothesis** in the comments.

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* And J- couldn't see much from under the blanket, where she was, quote, "Protecting the baby."

** Additionally, I suppose, you could answer by telling us who will never wake up after this thing was on our faces?

Huggy Bear's House of Coffee

Looking for a sordid tale of titillation at a Washington coffeehouse? Head on over to HotDads, to see my latest post with this great group bloggers of which I'm lucky to be a part.

If it doesn't make you want coffee with an unhealthy urgency, then I guarantee twice your money back.

Proof I didn't kill my children

[...or, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Screams"]

Well, my computer decided to break down Thursday, and in fact it's still out of commission until I can find my Windows CD, so here you get Friday's promised picture post on Monday.

Here's a short summary of the trip home in (representative) pictures.

We had a little drive across Maine and New Hampshire, stopped to see Nanna and Poppa in Rhode Island, got in jammies, and we'll surely be there in no time, right? Why not celebrate by doing our best Sean Connery impressions?

It's all laughs and smiles until someone gets cranky:

For those trapped in a five-point harness, this is a good stress-reducing position to assume for at least 40% of the time, to keep your circulation going so you can get maximum screaming power from what meager foodstuffs you're likely to be offered.

For those trapped in a relatively comfortable booster seat with a mere shoulder belt (who would never, ever, ever deliberately arm and then set off a Toddler Bomb), this would be the ideal posture-- furious concentration on something else almost as loud and annoying, piped directly into your ear holes:

If the option to get out of the car more than the doctor-recommended 14 times an hour is firmly withheld from you, you must be sure to stretch often and look as bored as possible while doing so:

In between reps, if no other activity is offered to you, just pretend to read until that ability spontaneously manifests itself:

Once you're again done with that, don't be surprised if your traveling companions/jailers playfully attempt to assuage their guilt by forging evidence that everyone has been having a really great time and no international anti-torture laws were being broken:

Console yourself that once the sun goes down, the toddler vampires have free reign, and they make pathetic wandering parents their playthings, biting their heads off like so many Winnie-the-Pooh animal crackers.

Also, only then is the portable DVD player allowed to return to its rightful throne on the front armrest, ruling as a benevolent Pixar-spewing overlord, appointed for life by acclamation.

And all will once again be right with the world, until those mutinous parents, who hate anything that makes children smile, pull the stupid car into the stupid garage and ruin all the fun.

IL to ME Odyssey: New York through Maine

Here is the final set of my observations on our car trip from Chicagoland to visit family in Northern Maine, part of the series of posts: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio & Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire & Maine.

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NEW YORK
Distance Traveled: 407 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 3

Since we took on New York in the early afternoon, everything was pretty well just dandy, so I have nothing memorable to report. This time.

The last time I went through New York was when we moved out here, and let me tell you: do NOT sleep in a hotel a few miles from the western border in Buffalo and then accidentally take the moving truck through the EZ-Pass lane on your way out of state the next morning if you don't have an EZ-Pass transponder. Those people will gladly spend $100 over the course of months making sure you satisfy the 42-cent debt you'll have incurred.*

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MASSACHUSETTS
Distance Traveled: 170 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 2

WARNING: If you live in Boston, or you love someone who lives there, you may want to skip this section altogether and mosey on down to good ol' New Hampshire.

• We had the good fortune to arrive in Boston** with perfect timing to take my wife's very good friend up on her longstanding offer to let us stay with her and her husband just outside Boston proper. We were so glad this worked out as well as it did, though despite numerous warnings against it, my 5-year-old son D- managed to quickly co-produce, direct, and edit --with his much-loved Corduroy bear-- the latest installment in the long-running reality show, "Where the F*** Did Corduroy Go??"

But just when he thought he was finally free, he got stuffed into an airless box and mailed on up to Maine. I'd love to see his happy-go-lucky spin on that chapter in the storybook.

• If you ask anyone who knows me, or who has walked past me on the street sometime within a few weeks after I've left Massachusetts, I hate the city of Boston with a passion that burns hotter than herpes in Hell. Don't get me wrong, I know good people who've lived in Boston, I was happy for the Red Sox when they finally won it all, but I dread and regret my every visit to their (generally) rude, horribly organized, urine-soaked burg.

Before you think I've judged Bostonians and their city too quickly, you must know that over the course of 9 years, I've passed through their airport dozens of times (and spent two nights in it, in fact...); I've made use of their bus station and both of their train stations, several hotels, and a hospital; I've walked along many streets of the city and surrounding towns, taken educational tours, and even spent nights in actual residents' houses on more than one occasion.

So, again, while some of the people (including my brother and brother-in-law) who live or have lived there may be very nice, competent, capable people, and while there may be a few good things there or from there, overall, I think this city represents some kind of horrific disease that must be contained. I pity the future of our country and its standing in the world if this is our city foreigners see first. Eight years of Bush/Cheney/Co. would have quite a battle on its hands in the contest for Worst Face to Show Potential Terrorists Still on the Fence.

If forced to say something pleasant about Boston at large, I suppose I could scrounge up the following items:

1. We have thus far been some of the lucky few not yet crushed to death under falling chunks of the shoddily constructed boondoggle that is the famed Big Dig tunnel.

2. I'd say I enjoy surprises, so having to guess 3 or 4 times, at 50mph, which split in the web of underground roadways we want to take --when the GPS navigator didn't indicate (before losing contact with the satellites, not unlike what would happen before "the good part" in a horror movie) any such choices for many miles-- provides potentially hours of spontaneous urban exploring fun. I'm pretty sure, though, that the Boston contacts at the GPS map companies just haven't told headquarters what really goes on in these tunnels, and no one has the guts to venture in to check on it.

3. If foreign armies were to choose Boston as their point of entry for an invasion, provided they were traveling only by road, we would have literally months to prepare the defense of our capital, with the front likely centered somewhere as close as Brookline. Actually, we could probably just build a 20-foot-thick, 50-foot-high wall around the entire metropolitan area. Using only union labor. Imported from New Jersey. On foot.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE
Distance Traveled: 18 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 0

Nothing much to say here, given the short distance, except I'm happy to report that crossing the New Hampshire-Maine border bridge is much less stressful when you're not totally delirious from driving compulsively the 1400 miles from Chicago to Presque Isle all at once, as I did when I moved out there almost 6 years ago.

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MAINE
Distance Traveled: 345 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 2

• I gotta say, under these circumstances, driving the normally pleasant state of Maine is an absolutely soul-crushing experience. Not anything to do with the state itself, per se, it's just that moving through so many states so quickly and then hitting the southern border of your destination state in the afternoon, only to spend another 6 hours in the car, can be a bit much to ask of us long-haul travelers trying to get past all the lobsters, rustic sweaters, and salty sea air up to the calm, comforting expanses of potato fields, black flies, and that only-slightly-ornery air of self-sufficiency.

• We arrived. With no major injuries for any of us, self-inflicted or otherwise. Family was happy to see us, we were happy to see them, and we were doubly happy to spend only about 1 hour total in the car over the next two weeks.

I'll post a few pictures from the trip tomorrow, rather than make this post any longer. Longer than the above plus these two footnotes, of course... enjoy!

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* Each stamp on the redundant notices they sent me exceeded the original debt, as did each minute of the time I spent on the phone trying to square away my options for avoiding the sizable penalties they automatically tacked on. What's best is I had to mail them a CHECK for 25 cents, and then mail them a SECOND check a couple weeks later for 17 cents when they realized they had quoted me the car toll instead of the truck toll.

** Note that I said "arrive in Boston" with perfect timing, not "make it across the city to our friend's house"... It was unfashionably late.

IL to ME Odyssey: Indiana, Ohio & Pennsylvania

Here are more of my observations on our car trip from Chicagoland to visit family in Northern Maine, part of the series of posts: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio & Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.

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INDIANA
Distance Traveled: 154 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 2

• Indiana's most noteworthy form of welcome to weary travelers of I-90 is the stench of a sewage treatment plant for at least the first 20 miles. What could be more likely to invite us to get to better know our neighbors to the east? Perhaps a series of spike strips across all inbound lanes?

Or maybe a high-pitched noise broadcast across all channels and through the air, counteracted only for locals by special government-issued noise-canceling earbuds worn at all times? Seems like something those stinky old spiteful Indianans would do.

• The rest stop in Portage, Indiana amused me by having the Girls of Playboy pinball machine in the entry to their game room, right next to the children's claw game filled with Dora and Minnie Mouse dolls. I guess this just means Indiana is fun for the whole family!

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OHIO
Distance Traveled: 245 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 3

• As you can see, we got a lot better about bathroom breaks, thanks largely in part to threats and bribery. It figures, though, since the pricey Ohio Turnpike (more than half our journey through the state on I-80/I-90) is unbelievably clean, well-lit, and lavishly appointed. It makes me wish I could meet all my bodily needs for the entire trip during only those 2 of 22 hours.

• After stopping at a gas station for our final bathroom break (since I-90 splits off the Turnpike proper, it figures), we decided begrudgingly to give up for the day with less than a third of the trip covered after the first day, in about 9 hours. That's right-- only 9 hours, and only 430 miles or so.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Distance Traveled: 40 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 0

I can't tell you how happy I was to start out the day knocking down a whole state without a single bathroom break, or, at least, I won't tell you. Even though we were just clipping the corner of an otherwise large state, I'll still just quietly treasure it as my own secret little joy in this cold world.

By the way, in case you ever take a similar trip, please make sure you (like us this time) follow I-90 instead of I-80 when they split in Ohio, Especially if it's any time within a few hours before sundown. Otherwise, you'll just have to describe to us all how tender is the face of God, either from beyond the grave or having been blessed to narrowly escape it.

Let's all tell Congress it's okay to earmark a little something extra for PDOT (I've decided they must call it this if it's not already) to upgrade this road, perhaps at the very minimum by adding some reflectors on the lane lines, and maybe some new reflective paint. Or, they could issue everyone night vision goggles at the border. Which is cheaper?

Alert: Do not allow this child to babysit

To help keep your families safe, I feel compelled as a responsible parent and citizen to advise you to never let this unassuming, violent soon-to-be-felon (shown here eating the graham-cracker-legs off a still-breathing craft-project-person she made, playing Dr. Frankenstein solely to satisfy her cannibalistic urges), babysit your children.

If you do, your baby may end up like this one:


To be honest, though, they HAD to have been expecting this to happen when they attached the doll's head with heavy-duty elastic cord in addition to the standard pseudo-spinal arrangement.

Or was she set up?!?*

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* She wasn't.

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 8

Once again, I'm here to demonstrate the importance of saying exactly what you mean, and nothing more. Just as I am the noble hero of literalism, picking apart your statements at will to reveal the messages you didn't know you were sending, there is a dark side to this power, and those who practice it do not show mercy even to fat, lazy, spoiled, Depressed nations.

My example this time comes from our hard-working United States Congress, doing its best as always to provide a steady, paternalistic hand guiding the feisty sled dogs of capitalism, while those dogs do their best to distract that hand with giant sacks of cash.

Paper industry starts using oil to get billions in alternative-fuel credits

Before you decide this sounds boring, let me sum it up for you, to innocently feed your disbelief and rage while you're trying to decide how you're going to make it through these next few years with both the shirt on your back and an absence of Chinese capitalist Communists laughing while they repossess Mt. Rushmore:

A few years ago, Congress passed a law meant to promote decreased use of fossil fuels. The language of this bill was so poorly chosen that at this most ideal of times, we all are now on the hook for many billions of dollars in unplanned-for expenses paying crafty companies to start mixing diesel fuel in with the renewable fuel they've traditionally created from their industrial waste.

So we have a single bright spot in a generally toxic industrial process, the usage of a waste product as fuel in place of more damaging alternatives, and these giant companies, hemorrhaging money for too long, snuff it out with a shower of diesel fuel injected into the process to qualify them as "mixing a taxable fuel with an alternative fuel."

The result for us, the taxpayers? International Paper, for example, will get "probably close to a billion a year of cash" from the IRS encouraging them to "keep mixing alternative fuels with the diesel fuel", and the manageable $61 million projected by Congress for extending this right-minded credit three months could instead "cost as much as $2 billion." The likely total payout to the top ten paper companies alone for this year is $8 billion.*

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"The money to be gained from exploiting the tax credit so dwarfs the money to be made in making paper ... [that] the ultimate result of the credit will likely be to push paper prices down as mills churn at full capacity in order to grab as much money from the IRS as it can."

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So at least you can get a few reams of paper way cheaper than before, for drafting all those letters to your Congresspeople. Just call me Mr. Sunshine-- I'll always find the bright side even if I have to make it myself! Maybe they can use all the extra paper to print up some more currency-- doesn't that always fix things whenever money is tight?

Remember this heartwarming story of poor word choice** as you hunker down with your industrious neighbors to help patch this sinking ship, making daily sacrifices just to get by, gladly exchanging a pay cut for a non-binding implied desire not to fire you in the immediate future.

At least SOMEONE'S making some money, right?*** That's gotta trickle down somehow... or do I need to go buy the latest edition of this classic 1983 economics textbook?

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* $8 billion! Before all these corporate bailouts and emergency loans, that used to be an awful lot of money.

** I say "poor word choice" only assuming no Senators from paper-producing states were involved in writing this bill.

** For my readers abroad, rest assured that, as you can see, even the economic elite of America are determined to help dig a way out of the hole we've dug you all, by any means necessary.

Thanks a lot, Ben Affleck

You want a formidible challenge? Try writing an amusing blog post about your kids while watching a movie like (the fantastic) Gone Baby Gone.

I'll tell you something else-- you'll never be so happy that your 2-year-old woke up in the middle of the night crying out for a hug. Be prepared for her groggy confusion and suspicion at your eagerness.

Also, be ready to feel like an ogre --and not the lovable Shrek kind-- for knowing you'll be sticking to your guns on No Dessert the next day, consoling yourself only with the fact that you have to do it to keep the kids off the crack pipe. Or something like that.

I'm not that easily manipulated, Affleck.*

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* It's well-known that both Afflecks are firmly in the pocket of Big Toddler and Big Cookie.

Dalai Lama to wreak havoc, world is warned

Urgent Notice from the Chinese Government:
The People's Republic of China humbly wishes to make the world aware of a potentially serious though unpredictable epidemic of mayhem threatening to sweep all nations of the Earth:

The so-called Dalai Lama, seen here yanking an opponent's beard to move his face into optimal head-butting range (his devastating finishing move of choice), has secretly been training the most deadly non-violent army the world has ever seen, according to reliable sources inside the Chinese government.

Anyone encountering this disarming renegade, who should be thought of as not unlike an Evil Batman, is encouraged to quickly shave his beard, if any, strike a defensive judo crouch, and prepare to absorb a vicious full-body assault.

Do not be dissuaded by any devious entreaties of peace, friendship, or primal enlightenment. Respond to any moment of weakness with a judicious blend of blows to the face, neck, and torso.

Capture of this sinister vigilante will be met with a reward up to and including the eternal gratitude of the P.R.C. government and the future true Dalai Lama. In lieu of gratitude, reward may be payable in U.S. dollars, toilet paper, or forgiveness of debts already held.

END TRANSMISSION

Now we get down to Real Problems

You know, while I may live right next to the city where our new president ended up settling, I can't say I fully identified with him personally until I saw this picture:

"Backstage at the rally, Obama tries to calm a young supporter whose brother had taken his pretzel goldfish."*

I didn't get to see an After picture for confirmation, but I imagine him using his Dramatic Speech voice to full effect and settling this dispute within minutes.

I have to wonder if he'd be willing to lend me his services now and then in extreme emergencies, if for no other reason than as payback for all those dozens of dollars I gave him.

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* I'm sure Pepperidge Farm would not be very happy to see their trademark genericized like this. I think we need to get out there and determine whether this was actually a Goldfish cracker or merely a regular cracker that happened to be vaguely fish shaped. If the latter, they get to start handing out lawsuits.

At long last, Pt. 2

I've never done long multi-part posts like this before (unless you count the saga of how I nearly lost an eye), but it became clear it was definitely called for this time.

You may want to read Part 1 of my experience at the election day Obama rally in Grant Park before continuing.

...

Once inside the Parallel Party Someone's Mom Organized For The Uninvited Nerds, we found that to keep the mob from storming the inexplicably opaque* fences of the Cool People's Party, at least 10 Jumbotrons were set up around the rest of the park, with the primary one alone allowing probably 60,000 people to soak in CNN's commercials** and ridiculous gimmicks for hours before and after Obama's actual speech (on a closed-circuit feed).

So we had to satisfy ourselves with watching TV while standing alongside a whole bunch of other very happy voters. Since it was immediately evident that all of these many, many spectators were exceedingly peaceful and well-mannered, this prospect wasn't as undesirable as it might have been under other circumstances. I had known for months that I wanted to be out Amongst The People for this night, no matter the outcome, and I got exactly what I came for.

J-, on the other hand, apparently got some kind of alien larvae threatening to Cesaerean itself right out of her abdomen, as was the diagnosis issued by the esteemed Doctor We-Don't-Want-To-Leave-So-We'll-Just-Play-It-By-Ear-While-Basking-In-The-Extra-Space-A-Sudden-Unexplained-Vaguely-Stomach-Related-Illness-Helpfully-Provides-In-A-Crowd.

These guys got all dressed up for nothing.

I haven't mentioned how miraculously warm it was that night, but it was over 70 degrees for three straight days, which is about 40 degrees higher than a typical November in Chicago. Clearly, it was a sign that God wants Barack Obama to be president.

This warmth was amped up at least 10 degrees in the thick of that many walking space heaters, and I'm sure the oxygen content of the air within the crowd was about half the dose required for sustaining life. Hence J-'s alien larvae decided to take evasive action by cutting power to her ears, sense of balance, and (almost) her consciousness.

It was at this point I decided to let J- lead us in a little conga line back through the crowd, issuing promises of copious vomit to anyone unwilling to make way quickly enough. I left her on a strangely unused filthy stage far from any of the Jumbotrons, and then made my way back into the madness to find some water.

Not just any water, mind you --after all, we were alongside one of the largest sources of fresh water in the world-- but rather the most expensive water I could find. Nothing's too good for my precious, and how else does one measure quality but by expense?

Luckily, I was in amongst a large, captive pool of consumers, so I felt sure I could count on Connie's Pizza to provide me with nothing but the best. After waiting out the 350 people ahead of me, I was relieved though unsurprised to find a bottle of water (not unlike the two I had confiscated at the gate) going for a patriotic $3, and knowing this stuff thus must be far better than any beverage I'd previously ingested, I readily threw down my money for a $5 slice of pizza while I was at it (since the mysteriously ill lady had decided greasy cheese would be an invaluable assistant in getting back on her feet).

...

After saluting the noble folks at Connie's (look for their Delivery Maseratis in a neighborhood near you), I again waded through a rainbow blur of human skin, dropped off the food, refolded J-'s death shroud, and headed out to find us a new base of operations. As I walked all over this sprawling park, I found several previously unnoticed McCain-sized rallies around each bend, in a layout I couldn't even begin to map out. If only the Secret Service would release some of the photos they must have been taking from their lonely helicopters up there in that restricted airspace, I could feel vindicated in my opinion of the crowd estimates.

...

Once again, you can read part 1 here, and look for part 3 tomorrow and part 4 after that.

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* Why can't I at least watch through the short chain-link fence, under the watchful eye of security forces?? Those flimsy little fences weren't protecting ANYone.

** I can't have been the only one looking for my DVR remote to obliterate those commercials. I'd almost forgotten what an irritating experience they provide.

At long last, Pt. 1

Well, by now I've sat here and read most every article I could find related to the election and all its tangents, and after much procrastination, I'm faced with finally writing about my experience at the Obama rally in Grant Park (Chicago) on Election Day, as requested by many of you.
                                                  ...
Let me start off by saying that we did not rate tickets to the gated kingdom that was the area around the stage at the rally. I apparently missed the initial announcement that tickets were available for the asking (which probably lasted about 15 minutes), and instead I got an e-mail out of the blue from the Democratic Party the next day. I clicked the link when I saw it a few hours later, and I was immediately informed that I was on the waiting list.*

This was of course due to the fact that they offered tickets to only 32,000 people and a single guest each. Based on the fact that hundreds of thousands of people showed up to the park and the surrounding area**, I think you can tell the deck was stacked against me from the start.

So it was with a mixture of glee and disappointment that we made our way down to Grant Park that evening, alongside the expected anxiety with all those votes still to be counted.

Our 10-mile train trip in from the suburbs went flawlessly, with the relative lack of company due to our being considered very late to the party by arriving a mere 2 hours before the scheduled admission time. Our trip home was much more crowded and chaotic, though to the CTA's credit, it was still remarkably smooth.

We walked a few blocks from the L stop to the park, and had we worried about where we needed to go, we had only to join the sizable throng of latecomers still inexorably marching down the streets like it was free sample day at the cookie factory.

Impressive as we were, bending the normal flow of traffic to our will, we were but a tiny stream disappearing into the sea of human flesh already assembled in the park.

As we tried to join the party, we were of course briefly stopped by "Security" and quickly stripped of the most threatening of our contraband. That's right-- whoever thought they could get within a block of our future president with a fully loaded water bottle must have been drinking too much of something other than water before showing up.

Speaking of which, my later observations determined that giant jugs of vodka were totally cool with these guys. Also okay: portable furniture, 25-foot telescoping flagpoles, large knives (probably), and airhorns.

Basically, the golden rule seemed to be that anything cited as disallowed in the public invitations was actually encouraged, and other common-sense, life-sustaining items not mentioned therein would be fished out of your colon, if necessary.
                                                  ...
It seemed like a good idea to break this up into multiple posts, so look for part 2 tomorrow, part 3 the next day, and part 4 after that.

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* As if people were going to be refusing these tickets-- way to get my already-generally-high hopes up higher against my better judgment, Democratic Party of Illinois. 

** I say there were much more than the 240,000 estimate I keep hearing, since I think it discounts a lot of people gathering right across the street and elsewhere in the area, as well as comings and goings over the course of many, many hours.

Keep friends close and let enemies pummel you

Okay, so maybe my 4-year-old son D- won't become an arch-villain after all, or at least not a good one. Observe this conversation from yesterday morning:

D-: Ow! Owww... Oww! Ow!!

Me: Hey!

M-: Sor-ree!!

Me: Why were you just standing there letting her hit you?*

D-: Because I was trying to tell her something!

Me: But why would you just keep standing there if she was hitting you?

D-: Because I was just waiting for her to stop hitting me, so I could tell her something... I wanted her to stop hitting me so we could talk.

Don't let him fool you... Gandhi, he ain't.

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* Please note, Child Protective Services, that I asked with an inflection suggesting he should have moved out of the way and protested the treatment, not that he should have violently escalated the situation, at least under these circumstances. Considering the burgeoning fearsomeness (and penchant for eye-gouging) of his 20-month-old opponent, I would never urge him to step into that lion's den.

My son the Arch-Villain

Ladies and gentlemen, in the interest of all our safety, I feel compelled to inform you that I have reason to believe my 4-year-old son may in fact be the next in a long line of supervillains. And not necessarily one of the campy kinds.

Just look at this ferocious face he was making in the picture for this recent post:
If I hadn't otherwise suspected his secret identity, I'm pretty sure my suspicions would have been raised by his frequent claims to being an evil figure, whether specific or not. He has been Captain Hook (a LOT) and "black Spider-Man (I've never been clear where he found out about Venom), but generally he just declares himself (in a comically deep and menacing voice) to be "a BAAAAAD guyyyyy!" or sometimes "a BAD [insert random but dramatic action word] guy!"

While he also does the same thing with much more mundane figures, such as "I'm a crane guy!", "I'm a cooker guy!", or "I'm a garbage man!", he definitely tends more towards the dastardly side.

On top of that, at many a breakfast time, when asked what he'd like to eat, he seems to begin wildly threatening people with something called "pain-cakes".

Finally, to settle any remaining dispute, I recently found this behind the couch, and to quote Dave Barry, I swear I am not making this up:
I'm assuming the green rope, at least, is made largely of Kryptonite.

Poor bastard never stood a chance.

Parenthood is...

...Finding out that trying to take a quick shower by yourself means someone will poop on the floor.


Editor's Note: I'm thinking I could make this a feature, like the comic Love Is. If you haven't seen it, "it's about two naked 8-year-olds who are married."

P.S. I squish you

The other day, J- left me a nice note before heading off to work at the crack of dawn (in response to an even better note I had left her, thereby granting me the clear edge here), and while it was, as I said, nice, as we approach five years of marriage and 10 years of knowing each other, we're past the stage of saving every little scrap of everything in a shoe box somewhere.

That being said, I want to clearly state for the record that I would in no way ever deliberately defile or deface a love note from my wife in any way, no matter the size or lyricism of it, except in the rare case that I could do so in a way that was absolutely, unquestionably hilarious. That opportunity has, fortunately or unfortunately, not yet arisen.

However, after her note lies upside down on the counter all afternoon, I think I can be held blameless for later accidentally using it to squash a tiny bug walking across our counter. Our counter! Of all the disrespect for the insect kingdom to show me... my counter! In my own home!! No, I am not redirecting the focus here.

Do you have any idea how many bugs I have respectfully let walk, fly, or crawl out of my sight, probably to be squashed by someone else later that day? But this little guy just strolled along my primary food-prep surface (and you know he was defecating all the way) careless as you please, insulting my intelligence by trying to blend in with the little specks in the pattern on the counter, figuring for some unknown reason that I don't have the peripheral vision of a... an owl? Something with incredible, godlike peripheral vision, anyway.

So, yeah, I grabbed the note and poinked that f***er-- no big deal, right? Tell that to the O in love.

But you know what? Since my wife is first finding out about this right now along with you, let me just take the opportunity to point out here that right amongst a handful of other things at the core of our relationship is her hatred of bugs and my sworn duty to protect her from them. So I'd say that disgusting smear of life's essential gooey parts is a flourish that only a truly loving husband could think to provide, and thus I converted what had been a mere note into a unique declaration and symbol of our love. Before throwing it in the garbage.

I may need to re-spin this.

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Editor's Note: Yes, I'm aware that "life's essential gooey parts" could be completely misread, but since it's also a great name for a band, I'm leaving it in.

Book Review: I Went Walking

As a blogger with most of the word literary in my name, I think we can all agree I'm a logical choice to review books for the masses not so terminologically blessed. Whether or not you defy me by not readily agreeing with my assertion, a presumably large number of book publishers and authors' representatives do agree.

After recently becoming inundated with review copies of books*, I decided it was time to stop ignoring my cultural mandate. To this end, I figured I would begin by offering the world some unsolicited but obviously very welcome reviews.

Thus, I offer you my inaugural book review here at LiteralDan: Sue Williams' I Went Walking:

Now, if you're like me, you can't help but be struck by how horrendously grotesque the drawing of that child on the cover is, and you're too terrified to open the book itself.

I'm sure it's a very nice story.

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* One copy** is enough to validate this statement-- every flood has to start with a trickle, right?

** It was not this book... I'm still preparing to read the one I was sent. It's only been a month: it's still good, it's still good!

Corporate intelligence: Hydrogenate this!

By this point in the campaign by the nation's sanctimonious (myself included), I think we're all aware of how toxic partially hydrogenated oils are. Semi-solidity at room temperature is not a natural state for most liquids, and does not make for a friendly substance in your body.

However, because it's cheaper than similar natural substances and because it help keep food from turning into a science project* that even the uninitiated can recognize as an unhealthy thing to put in one's body, the country's mom-and-pop food producers pump it into most everything we eat.

This tide has been slowly turning for a few years, as corporations try to respond to what vocal demand there is while still making sure to increase profits enough to not be considered "stagnant" (dun-dun-dunnnnn!).

However, this effect clearly does not extend to product lines aimed at the poor and/or desperate, such as vending machine and convenience store foods or generic store brands. The only exhibit you need is this jar of generic peanut butter we unwillingly purchased, which contains as its third ingredient the elusive Fully Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil:
What's more, they go on to specify in parentheses the vegetables whose oils they are fully hydrogenating, beginning with the startlingly named Rapeseed. Now, if you were trying to convince someone to buy your product versus another, you'd use the happier-named Canola breed. But when you know you've got your target market right where you want them, you have no need for artifice, and you just do the cheaper, easier thing and let them know exactly what you're giving them.

Mmmmm... nothing like some good old hydrogenated rape to keep you going through the afternoon!


* A fact that of course indicates even filthy mold spores can't find much nutrition in these alleged food substances.