Classic quotes, Vol. 21

Here are some recent quotes from my wife J-, my 5-year-old son D-, my now-3-year-old daughter M-, and me:

D- (excitedly, as I mix salsa and sour cream): Are we having chimps and dip?!?

M- (looking at Winnie-the-Pooh clock, trying desperately to become the world's first 3-year-old to either carry a tune or remember actual song lyrics): Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh... silly nilly willy, stuffed with stuff! Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh... he fluffs himself! ... Silly old bear.

Me (to J-, pulling what we'll call "a Dan", in fairness): "In a few minutes"? "In a few minutes"??? What's "a few minutes" mean by this point? Once you get past 60, they're called "hours", so you know.

M- (with a gentle, warning tone as I begin to finish off the last piddling bit of Goldfish crackers, only once she's had plenty of them): Save some for other people, Dad...

D- (referring to his sister's lollipop stick that missed the garbage can): Oh, yeah, I stepped on that before, but I pulled it back off my foot.

Service with a smile

Here's another teaser for my latest post over at Hot Dads, where I'm an ashamedly infrequent contributor.

While you're over there, be sure to check out some of the other contributors' (including a few LiteralDan readers) posts-- you'll be glad you did.

For my American readers, shouldn't you be filing your taxes right now instead of reading blogs? Or shouldn't you at least be in a panic, quadruple-checking that you already did so?

Important Question: Jesus Claus?

The latest Important Question is a straightforward but timely one, though not nearly as important as the last one.

For those readers who are religious*, I respectfully ask the following:

Do you find that as your kids mature, the inevitable revelations about Santa Claus undermine or strengthen your teachings about God/Allah/Yahweh, even if you didn't take much of a part in this particular cultural/quasi-religious tradition?

This occurs to me every year, but I've never been in a situation where I could ask it with any hope of getting a thoughtful answer. I've just never imagined a way to teach a child about God and Santa/the Easter Bunny without setting up a significant crisis around age 8-10 or even earlier.

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In case the above question is too deep for you, answer this question instead: Who would win in a fight, Jesus or Santa Claus? (And I don't mean a wimpy South-Park-style fight, I mean a genuine, few-holds-barred brawl.)

Ground rules: No reindeer, no hitting below the belt, and no resurrections.

Keep in mind that while Jesus of course has some notable powers and one heck of a tag-team partner, Santa clearly has supersonic speed, incredible stamina, and the ability to change his shape and size at will.

The comment board is now open-- discuss either question, or both, at will!

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* I myself come from Catholic stock, mostly Irish immigrants, but I've only ever attended church for weddings, christenings, and the occasional funeral/communion/confirmation.

Takin' care of business

As I reluctantly sat there in the grimy bathroom of a greasy spoon liquefying my insides (resting comfortably on my nest of toilet paper lining), I prayed for the sweet release of death to come only after the immediate banishment of Papa John* and his minions to the deepest circle of hell.

Through my confused haze of rage, agony, and relief, I somehow managed to detect a poorly tuned radio station's attempt to bludgeon me with the melodious strains of Bachman-Turner Overdrive's landmark hit, Takin' Care of Business.

As my business took care of me itself, I couldn't help but realize that this song was made to be played in 30-second snippets at the absolute longest. It has a clear message to communicate, it's catchy, and it's said pretty much all it has to say in about half that time.

To sit and actually listen to the entire song in one sitting, so to speak, is torture enough, but to have it coming in and out --crystal clear one minute, fading quietly into mild static the next-- is like forcing someone to work next to an unshowered, incontinent, alcoholic hobo at the Customer Service station of Wal-Mart the entire week after Christmas.**

Just when it seems that 35 additional iterations of the refrain is all that those many commercials and movies have been sparing you these past few decades, the radio signal comes back clear as day so they can do a quick 10 more before it fades back to lie in wait ominously.

If I tried to work as many hours of overtime as these guys claim they have, I'd have been converted to a salaried position before the single was even released. But I guess, "Takin' care of business / And continuing to work until everything is done enough for my boss, regardless of the number of hours worked vs. dollars paid, and without concern for the long-term effects on employee morale or efficiency / Work out!" doesn't make for such catchy lyrics.

Anyway, you'll be happy to know I've survived my ordeal so far, although the song is still firmly stuck in my head.

Just be glad you caught that instead of the other thing.

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* It can't be a coincidence that "Papa" John's last name is Schnatter. As in, "Oh my God, where's your Schnatter?!? I just finished lunch at Papa John's!"

** Having logged thousands of unhappy hours shopping at Wal-Mart in my lifetime***, I feel qualified to offer the following skit starring Clem, my generic hillbilly voice:

"Yeah, I got this here shotgun fer Christmas, but ever' time I try to shoot it, it won't DO nothin', no matter WHAT I's pointin' it at. I'm pretty sure Santa bought it here, wink-wink, so y'all need to take it back an' gimme one thut works when I go like this. ... Whoa, thar she is!! Nevermine, I guess. ... I s'pose you gotta go call somebody to have that looked at, huh?"

*** There are extremely few alternatives in Presque Isle, Maine, but now that we moved back out to Chicago, my personal visit count has likely stopped forever.

Next up: Aquaman, The Czech Republic

This just goes to show you that stupid people exist in all countries of the world, and frivilous lawsuits are one of America's last remaining exports:

Batman's Latest Archenemy: Batman, Turkey

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The mayor of Batman, a small oil-producing town in Turkey, has filed suit against The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros., the studio behind the record-shattering blockbuster, looking for a cut in the film's royalties in exchange for using the city's name without permission.

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As the article points out, where have these people been for the past 70 years? I'm pretty sure no one's confusing Batman movies with travelogues for Turkey, and furthermore, I bet that town has made at least millions in tourism dollars from college students alone diverting their backpacking trips just to go through there and snatch up whatever they can get their hands on to take back home.

So that includes more than a few street signs and a couple giant Welcome billboards... is that such a high price to pay for having one of the coolest city names in the world?

Captcha the memories

Just a thought on something I've noticed in commenting at some of your blogs and elsewhere:

When I begin typing various letters in those CAPTCHA boxes*, Firefox helpfully suggests to me some of the past strings I've typed, and I can't help but wonder how much such completely useless information my computer has saved up in various nooks and crannies.

But then, how much do I have myself? And more importantly, which of us has more?

Regardless, I suppose saving the entries in CAPTCHA fields isn't always useless. Recently it helped me remember that one time I was asked to type out xgvzd before commenting somewhere, and that other time I had to type xftwp... what heady, groundbreaking times those were!

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* I got rid of mine a couple weeks ago, to stop annoying everyone, and I haven't yet had to deal with any spam comments at all.

Clutteropolis

You know you need to start shaping up in the housecleaning department when a 4-year-old who's as oblivious and messy as any other comes into the kitchen, where you've just loaded the dishwasher before clearing and wiping the counter (and everything!), and he suspiciously asks, "Why's it so clean in here??!"

Let me clarify that his threatened tone seemed to indicate this was somehow a well-established sign that we would be dropping him off at the orphanage later that afternoon.

You might be thinking, "But Dan, I thought you rode the OCD dragon, and thus would have a spotlessly clean house for us to be jealous of?" Well, I assure you that my current roommates douse themselves in dragon repellent daily, so I am easily outmatched versus the controlled amount of the Demon Power I allow to seep through the pressure valve. This is not a force to be easily unleashed and recaged, before you suggest that I let it out to play for a week or so and then go back onto a strict maintenance system.

When living alone or otherwise having complete control over a space, I just keep things in balance by reminding myself frequently that perfection is not possible-- my ideal living area would look pretty unremarkably normal to the untrained eye. I don't like to Clean with a capital C because things can get out of hand for me easily, so I prefer to just live neatly so I don't really ever have to clean.

Moving is not helpful for this, and neither is living with people who just aren't wired this way. Not only do we have stacks of junk and half-filled boxes distributed throughout our house, dating back to just over a year ago when we moved here, but we've actually moved backwards by adding to the collection.

When school ended in June, we were blessed with the arrival of everything that would normally fill a classroom serving 15 special-needs pre-teenagers and the two adults teaching them, plus all the many assorted things that had been disappearing from our house over the course of 9 months.

And the blindsiding left hook to go along with that uppercut is the puppy that followed the other stuff home-- crap from retiring teachers desperate to lighten their own loads* at the expense of anyone naive** enough to do it for them.

A minor sample of the kind of thing we're left with, in addition to the usual boxes of unnecessary toys, old magazines, and if-I-knew-what-was-in-them-I'd-be-obligated-to-put-it-all-away, is as follows:

• Boxes with 20 copies of the same questionably-useful books.
• An assortment of 30-year-old Tupperware bowls with no lids.
• Bags of old coffee mugs/potted plants (mold is a plant, right?).
• Milk crates filled with three-hole punches and other desk junk, inexplicably including four (yes, four) staplers of various shapes and sizes (always advisable with a toddler in the house).
• Half a box of "ladies" shaving cream samples, for the hairier children in school.
• A bunch of stupid signs and posters with cartoon characters trying to teach me things I already know.

All I can say is at least as far as this goes, I'm glad school has started again, because I've finally gotten most of this stuff out of the house now. However, the resulting empty boxes combined with our usual piles still blew the phone repairman's mind yesterday when I insisted to him that we had been living in this very same apartment with a working phone for over a year, give or take a couple of his company's screwups.

All I can say, upon reflection, is that somebody really needs to straighten things up around here. Whatever happened to my live-in maid service?


* Don't think for a second that I blame them for this, nor that J- won't be doing the same thing someday.

** Whenever the universe calls for naivete, you must know that we will be there. You can sleep soundly tonight and all nights hence, knowing that we will always answer this call and stumble foolishly into harm's way.

Teach a man to fish...

As I sit here typing a blog post while D- happily vacuums, I'm starting to think that Cinderella's stepmother was onto something. Cindy just had a bad attitude-- she wasn't a team player. Let's all do our best to investigate and rewrite that history for the stepmother's sake-- just because Cinderella got to become queen doesn't mean we should all have only one side of the story.

I mean, what became of all those loyal talking animals of hers? I doubt she would let them cramp her style once she had some human friends (and slaves). I'm sure there's some horrible dirt to be dug here, worth at least one Lifetime Original Movie and a big fat check.

Anyway, welcome back from Tangent Land...

Now that D-'s got vacuuming down, I just need to teach M- better broom-handling skills, and then we can all move on to mopping, scrubbing, and dusting.

It's the least they can do after waking me up (in tag-team fashion) this morning at 5:45 (hence this scattershot, sub-par post). On the bright side, I got to say goodbye to J-, I suppose. Still, I have a headache in my temples that is certainly not being assuaged by the sound of a plastic hammer banging a scrap of wood-- D- has finished vacuuming and moved on to simple home repairs.

Hmmmm... maybe I could stop handing him "pretend nails" on demand for him to "make magic with this wood" and instead hand him my drill, level, real nails, and all these pictures I'm supposed to hang. On second thought, I don't want them all hung 4 feet off the floor, giving him a step stool wouldn't be safe, and if I felt like helping him, I'd probably be doing it myself in the first place.

I'm a bad, bad, lazy person. But whaddya gonna do?

Aww, you're no fun anymore

One of the problems with being a dad trying to teach children not to lie is that you can't pull any fun pranks on April Fools' Day. D- had tremendous moral conflicts with the mere concept of "tricks" on Halloween, so I knew April Fools' pranks were just Right Out.

Quoth he, quite righteously, on that Hallowed eve, "It's not nice to trick people!" And this was just when I was trying to vaguely explain the concept of the alternative to treating, not after he was the victim of some cruel hoax. The ultimate hoax, of course, would have been to tell him that we had all made up the concept of Halloween, and who was he to think he could just walk up to strangers' houses and get free candy? I can't help but wonder what kind of face that brand of betrayal would create.

He must have gotten over his misgivings by now, however, because he pulled a belated April Fools' trick on me this morning: as M- was trying to stand up on the tiny cardboard box from our cordless phone (she seems to be obsessed with climbing on things for a better view, possibly due to a shortness complex), he of course warned her that she shouldn't do this, because she could get hurt. When the box inevitably tumbled sideways from her fidgeting, she fell to the floor (still on her feet), and he said as sternly as it sounds, "See, that's what happens!"

I almost choked on the irony of her receiving such a message from this particular messenger.

Kamikaze baby

I realize the hypocritical folly in shouting at a toddler to stop screaming at every little thing, but you know, sometimes I just can't stop myself. Man, that baby's got lungs. It's like living with a two-foot-tall fire truck siren.

Here are a few dialogue samples:

D-: M-, don't take that toy away from me!
M-: Aaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!
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Me: M-, get down off that stair...
M-: Aaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!
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J-: M-, put down that knife!
M-: Aaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!! (stab)
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M-: Hun-gee!
Me: M-, are you hungry?
M-: Nohhh!!
Me: Well, why did you say "hungry" then?
M-: Aaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!

Okay, so one of those is made up, but if you heard her scream, you wouldn't think it was far behind.

Five years later.

It may seem as unbelievable to you as it does to me, but it has been five years since the U.S. invaded Iraq. Whatever you may think of that and everything that goes with it, today didn't seem like a day to post about something else.

Let's just hope everyone involved on every side can suddenly grow up and figure this all out, so both Americans (and other nations' troops) and Iraqis can get out of harms' way as soon as possible.

Here's hoping five things, one for each year: 1) the non-Iraqi extremists and troublemakers leave the country soon; 2) the people can pick up the pieces of their lives shortly after; 3) an independent and genuine government comes to power, without undue influence of self-interested Americans and their massive permanent military bases; 4) the full truth is eventually revealed about why and how our troops were sent there; and 5) all those responsible for crimes against our nation, its ideals, and humanity at large will be held accountable and punished like any common felon.

And most of all, here's to the nearly 4,000 American soldiers, hundreds of "coalition" soldiers, and the tragically uncounted hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives, as well as all those injured, as a result of this horrifically unplanned invasion.

Let's do better in the future, for ourselves, our children, and all the people who share this world with us.

Beware the dentist in March!

On this day, the Ides of March, I believe we should all be as idle as possible, out of respect for the opportunity to have an excuse to be more idle than usual.

To this end, M- found a travel See'n'Say at the bottom of the toy box and she has since chosen to spend the entire day laying on her stomach on a blanket, pushing the button over and over again. Since M- is unavailable for anything as strenuous as playing, that leaves D- no choice but to race a Matchbox car back and forth across our coffee table as many times as he can before I go insane from the repetitive noises filling our house.

Meanwhile, J- is napping to get over her ordeal at the dentist's office, leaving me to suffer alone. Don't tell the kids, who think that going to the dentist is Very Fun, but even though J- is slavishly devoted to our very friendly dentist, her horrible childhood experiences with bitter old tooth-torturers in rural Maine still make it hard for her to smile and not clench the armrests while he pokes her mouthful of denial-related cavities. Poor J-.

Only one more filling to go!

A breath of fresh hypocrisy

For Christmas, M- got a toothbrush that plays music for 2 minutes, to serve as a reminder for how long one should brush (though with only three tooth-tips so far, 2 minutes would seem to be beyond overkill). The brush has a sticker on it that says "For better sound and a better planet -- turn off the water while you brush!"

Very subtly on the back of the package, it also says "Batteries included! Contains two AAA or R03 size non-replaceable batteries", and in case that wasn't bad enough, they add "Brush head is not replaceable." So the water-saving tip hardly evens things out. But at least all the ocean life living off the East Pacific Garbage Patch will have sparkling white teeth...

Beyond the environmental damage, though, these things cost $15, so your choices are to either spend $90 annually on toothbrushes (or a lot more, considering how quickly you'd get sick of hearing the same song, which plays louder the harder the kid brushes), or you could spend $10 on toothbrushes and $5 more on one stopwatch.

(Thanks to Amazon for the product image.)