Thinking The Lions

(UPDATED!) Announcing The Stupid Pineapple Blogfest!

2012-01-27T05:03:00.007-12:00

UPDATED: Heather Arundel (blogs at My Demon Spirits, is a great writer) has a great idea. +1 point for her already.

Her idea: in addition to extra numbers for all the other stuff, you get extra numbers for tweeting & Retweeting about the Stupid Pineapple Blogfest.
But you MUST mention @whyihatepeople in the tweet or retweet, so that I can track them.

You may or may not have heard that author Patrick Dilloway, a/k/a Grumpy Bulldog, got a book deal.

Over on his blog today, Grumpy complains about how as a Big Shot Author with a Million Dollar Book Contract, he has to actually relate to people and interact with them in hopes that they will buy his book and justify his publisher providing him with one of the castles that Nicolas Cage lost to foreclosure. This, in turn, legally obligates Grumpy to be nice to you and me, and to take part in as many blogfests as the Internet can throw at him.

Which is how I came up with the idea for The Stupid Pineapple Blogfest!

Now, I've never run a blogfest before, so I don't know what really to do. Whatever I do, I expect that Michael Offutt, Pagel Hater, will immediately point out to me what I did wrong and then expect me to pay him for that, so you can rest assured that one way or the other, this will end up being a colossal mess.

But... a colossal mess that will get you a free book and $10 to Amazon.

The BOOK is one of MY books -- whichever one you choose, from this list, and $10 on a gift card to Amazon, all just for participating... and winning.

Here's what you have to do:

1. Leave a comment saying you're going to enter.

2. On Friday, February 3, 2012, post, on your Blog, a post on the following topic:

"This Stupid Pineapple is..."

That's it. It can be a post, an essay, a poem, a picture, even, if you are daring and so inclined, a karate-ballet demonstration featuring several black belts.

(That last one would almost certainly win.)

Then, on Saturday, the 4th, I'll go read all the posts of people who left a comment here saying they were going to enter, and I'll post links to them, and I will assign a panel of distinguished judges made up of:

A. Me.
B. Mr Bunches
C. Mr F

To determine who wins, based on the following exacting criteria:

1. You have to enter by commenting and posting something.
2. I will assign a number to each entry, in the order in which you posted your comment.
3. I will have Random.org pick a number.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE EXACTING CRITERIA!

4. If I really like your post, I will give it not one, but two numbers. Or more.
5. And if you link back to my blog in your post, I will give it a third number.
6. And I will give your post an extra number for each person who comments on YOUR post at YOUR blog.

So, to recap:

The total number of numbers will begin at "the number of people who enter." Let's say four people enter. Each person gets assigned a number:

1, 2, 3, 4

But if I like your post, and you were #1, you'll be #1, and 5, with the total numbers being 1-5.

If you link to "Thinking The Lions" in your entry, you get another number, so you'll be, say, 1, 5, and 6, with entries 1-6, so you'll have, what, a 99% chance of winning or something?

Then, if you get a bunch of people to comment on your post, each comment is another number. So someone who gets 83,000,000 comments on his blog, like Michael Offutt, you'll get even more opportunities.

I know it's a complex system, but what did you expect? It was thought up by a Stupid Pineapple.

A tiny stegosaurus recognizes the aerobic benefits of taking the stairs but still is not entirely sanguine about the whole thing.

2012-01-27T04:18:00.002-12:00

I Don't Want Another Gosh Darn Question, I Want Answers...! (Middle)

2012-01-26T10:58:00.002-12:00

Is it right to follow the rules? Should there even be rules in the first place? If one makes their own rules should they be hard to follow? If it’s too hard to follow then should they be changed? Or should people just live life without worrying about any rules?

These are some questions that I have been asking myself lately. I don’t have any answers for any of them and with each new day I have a new question. And let me tell you it is really not easy going through each day attempting to live life with numerous questions running through your head.

I wake up in the morning and I think to myself ‘maybe today will be the day that I meet someone’ or maybe today will be the day that I get that big break and get a job that actually pays enough so I can have health insurance as well as be able to pay for all of my bills and not have to get a second job.’ Or ‘maybe today will be different.’ But none of these so called days are any different than the previous day.

I set rules for myself to make sure that I don’t lose anything or to make sure that I get what I want without hurting the ones that I care about. But I am thinking that maybe without these “rules” my life will flow into something better.

I am not saying that I have a bad life by any means but to me all that I do is work and when payday comes around twice a month both of my paychecks go to bills or student loan payments and I am left with nothing to bring me joy. It also leaves me with a sense of ‘I do not want to work every day and not be able to go to a movie that I want to see because if I do I will not be able to pay my phone bill’ and ‘now I have to get a second job because now that my health insurance will be deducting money from my paychecks I need to work another job in order to pay my bills which now leads me to zero personal time to spend how I want to.’

I don’t want to have these thoughts anymore. I want to live a life where one job is enough. Where if I want to go to a movie I won’t have to budget three months out in order to see if I can spend that $10 dollars to go and have a little fun.

When does life get too much for one person to handle? Why are there so many questions and no answers? But then that would make life normal, right?

I'm not gonna be able to sleep until I find out what THIS is all about. (My Daily Walk)

2012-01-26T08:49:00.004-12:00

Today, I cut through the Overture Center because I wanted to walk through the Museum of Modern Art, and I saw this:

Up closer, the sign says:

Why?

What will happen?

How far can it be moved? What constitutes removal of the table? What happens if it's removed on the 29th?

The whole thing makes me curious. And, to be honest, I was sorely tempted to remove the table. You can't see a sign like that and not want to test it out.

A tiny stegosaurus decides that maybe, tomorrow, he will start that beard, but not today.

2012-01-26T02:00:00.000-12:00

What Mr Bunches is watching 2 (Life With Unicorns)

2012-01-25T11:42:00.002-12:00

He is watching the intro to 20th Century Fox movies.

Just the intro.

This:

Over and over, he's watching that. For about thirty minutes. He calls it "20."

A tiny stegosaurus wonders if he, personally, is any safer, and also, whether there will be cookies inside.

2012-01-25T02:13:00.003-12:00

I bet some people are earbidextrous (I Get Paid For Doing This)

2012-01-24T02:40:00.004-12:00

Off to the right there is a picture of roughly 57% of my face, showing off my new headset for my telephone.

I got my new headset last week as part of a technological upgrade that also included "replacing the printer that broke back in November", and it was necessary because for about the past six months or so I'd been using speaker phone for almost every conversation, for several good valid reasons that I have even though every single person in the world objects to someone using a speaker phone.

Except me. I do not object to you using a speaker phone. I don't object to you using a headset, a speaker phone, a can attached to a string, your hands cupped together, or any other method you want to use if I can hear you.

That's me. I'm easygoing. But nobody else is. Everyone else in my life treats every single departure from "talking into a phone in the classic style" as though it were a personal affront to their dignity and/or possibly enmeshing them into a complex of sin that will get them banished.

So when I put on my headphone to talk on the cellphone in the car, I get this:

Me: "So as I was saying..."

Everyone I Ever Talked To Using The Headset: "What?"

Me: [Shouting] "So as I was saying..."

Everyone I Ever Talked To Using The Headset: "What? And why are you shouting? Are you on a headset? Why?"

To verify that it was simply the headset they were somehow objecting to, I once did a test. I was talking to a friend on the phone, and I was using the phone as a phone qua phone. But I spoke as quietly as I could and held the phone away from my mouth and had the radio on in the background.

My friend paid no attention. I then plugged in the headset and answered a question of his and he said "Did you put on a headphone? What'd you say?"

Speaker phones are worse: Put someone on a speakerphone and the conversation consists entirely of:

($) the person saying repeatedly "Am I on a speakerphone?" and

(7) the person asking why you're shouting at them.

So I upgraded to an office headset, not out of any deference to all the people in the world who wish that we could still have those kind of phones that hang on the wall and you hold one piece up to your ear and shout into the other "Give me Brentwood 355!" and wait for the other person to say "Ahoy!" but because if I talk on a speakerphone all day long I go hoarse, which interferes with my ability to tell Sweetie stories about my day when I get home. (Me: "So then the guy said, 'Am I on a speakerphone?' ")

The thing was, when I got the headset, I did not know that I was left-eared.

Seriously, I am.

And you probably are, too.

Well, not maybe left-eared, but you probably are one-or-the-other eared, and you may not even know it.

The headset -- which took me an astounding 48 minutes to set up, which at my hourly rate means that it cost my firm $212 in gross income to have me work on this and therefore we'd have been better off hiring someone to put the headset in and teach me how to use it -- was set up initially to be right-eared, and hang on my right side.

So when I finally was able to make my first phone call (a test call to myself in which I called myself on my cell phone and then picked up my cell phone to see if I could hear myself in the headset [I asked me: 'Do you have me on a headset?']) I had the headset on my right ear and

It.

Drove.

Me.

Nuts.

I couldn't get used to it. I kept picking at it and moving it and taking it off and putting it on and in general behaving as though I needed one of those cone-shaped things around my neck to keep me from pawing at it.

Finally, another lawyer in my office noticed, and showed me how I could switch it to be left-eared, just like I apparently am. I didn't know you could be ear-ed, but then, there you go. Live and learn.

A tiny stegosaurus wonders what goes into "non-dairy" creamer and decides to make a joke about that at the meeting.

2012-01-24T02:37:00.000-12:00

A tiny stegosaurus tries to overcome a lifetime of put-downs by proving his self-worth in a game of Dance, Dance Revolution.

2012-01-23T01:20:00.003-12:00

A tiny stegosaurus uses $20 to buy a large Diet Pepsi, a bottle of water, and some pretzel bites before the Saturday night 9:35 showing of "Haywire."

2012-01-22T00:49:00.005-12:00

Important developments in the world of Mr F and Mr Bunches (Life With Unicorns)

2012-01-21T01:35:00.004-12:00

Mr F can now say another whole word, and it's one of the most important words in the entire universe:

And in related news, here is Mr Bunches' Wild Kingdom:

Most people think butterflies are silent. Mr Bunches knows better.

Sick Leave...Please? "Middle"

2012-01-19T17:49:00.002-12:00

So I am sitting at my computer wondering just what I wanted to write about this week and nothing was coming to mind. I mean I don’t live a boring life or anything but at the same time I do. But then I thought that this was just a fluke because I have been sick the past three days and so maybe my mind is too clogged up with mucous and all of that good stuff. And then I thought well since I am on that note of me being sick I thought that I would tell you how the last three days have gone for me since I have been sick.

To start I don’t have and have not taken any cold medicine because I just have not been able to stop and get some. I mean I could have stopped on my way to or from work but then I would always forget because like I said earlier I am sick and when I am sick I do not function well. But I was at work Tuesday and one of my coworkers knew that I was sick and told me that she had some cold medicine in her bag and offered me some. And of course me being the sickly human being that I was, took the offer and hoped for the best.

It was as if I could see myself taking the medicine and then cooking this amazing meal for the patients at the hospital and then someone would recognize my amazing cooking skills and then I would get nominated employee of the month because I took such pride in making sure that my food was the best for these patients. And then I would become employee of the month because everyone would see just how dedicated I was to my work and then I would be put up to win an award for top chef on the food network and then I would win that. Then after I won that I would be offered a slot on the food network for my own show titled “Food is the best Medicine” (Funny right since I work in a hospital). And all of that wouldn’t have been possible unless I took that cold medicine.

But that did not happen. What happened was my coworker only had these orange zest tablets that dissolve in water that I would have to drink. So I took a bottle of water and put the two tablets and inside and watched as the magic unfolded. After the fizzing stopped I opened the cap and took a drink and it wasn’t a sip I took a gulp of this medicine magic. OH DEAR LORD!!!! An explosion of nasty orange zest gross sewer water erupted inside my mouth and I immediately spit it out, it went all over my coworker and the wall behind her. She screamed and I ran to the trash can and vomited. Then after my head was pulled out of the trash can where only the dark side has been and my coworker innocently suggests;

“Maybe you should try and drink it with orange juice?”

Well I, of course, being dumb and sick (a deadly combination) walked over to the refrigerator and got some orange juice and poured the medicine that I had in with some of it and took another drink. At first it wasn’t so bad it was sitting a little better. My coworker looked at me and said;

“There that seems to be sitting better.”

But then I could feel the orange juice medicine mixture coming back up and I ran over to my trash can (yes I have now names this my trash can because I vomited in it once and now twice. I looked at my coworker and she had a sad innocent helpless and disgusted look on her face.

“I don’t think that I want to drink this anymore.” I told her as I threw the medicine away on top of my throw up and covered the can. After cleaning up my sprayed spit/medicine off the wall and floor I had to clean out the trash can. So safely speaking I did not create a phenomenal meal for the patients (it was just delightful, like always) and I did not get nominated for employee of the month and I did not become employee of the month and I didn’t not win top chef and I do not have my own show on the food network.

The next day I woke up to find that the cough drop that I went to bed with still in my mouth was now stuck to my nostril. Yep I kid you not. I had to use water to get it off without ripping any part of my skin. It was as gross as it sounds. And that is just how my day started.

The rest of the day was average except when I was turning the fryers off at work I put my oven mitt in the fryer as I turned it off. Why I did that, I do not know. I do not remember doing it and let me tell you my manager asked me about it the next day and I told her that I had no recollection of doing it and she started laughing because the glove was fried. Delicious right?

And then there was today. Now today I forgot my brain at my house but all day today I would have to blow my nose and as I did my nose would start to bleed. And not just bleed but it was almost like a gush of blood that would flood out of my nose. Sorry I will not spare any of the details. I would have to sit by my trash can. Yes the same trash can that I threw up in twice not two days earlier and sit there and bloody up tissue after tissue making all of my coworkers really want to sit and chat with me. But the bleeding stopped and I am now here writing all of my yummy details for you all to read and enjoy while holding toilet paper up to my nose trying to prevent blood from getting on my computer. Yep the day in the life of Middle. Fun, adventurous and almost a little too much.

My Generically-Titled Autism Post (Formerly Autism Works)

2012-01-19T11:37:00.002-12:00

Sweetie showed this to me, and I had to wait until I got home from work to watch it.

Neither Mr F nor Mr Bunches is as far along the autism spectrum as this girl:

But Mr F is pretty close.

That dad waited 10 years to meet his daughter. Mr Bunches this year began being more able to express himself and we know what his personality is like now.

We're still waiting to meet Mr F.

But this made me cry with hope.

I know exactly what that dad means when he says you could see the intelligence in her. When I look at Mr F's eyes, I can tell how smart he is. He's just looking for a way to show it.

My office is okay; maybe I could get them to Pimp My Garage?

2012-01-19T11:00:00.001-12:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Contest Factory for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

If you hate your office (or cubicle), why not at least make it pay for you?

I’m not one of those people who hates his office; I’m actually pretty fond of mine, other than the old credenza-bookcase-y thing that I swiped from another lawyer’s office when he left; I needed more shelf space for files and so I took it but other than the fact that it has a top, it’s more or less useless to me as the drawers are too small and/or weird-shaped to put anything in, and the middle, where there’s a cupboard, had a door fall off. (I use that space to hold my lunch, and a ball that the boys like to play with on Sundays.)(Professional!)

But the point is, my office is where I spend 50 hours a week or so, so I’ve made sure I like it: it’s got a nice desk, an okay chair, pictures and toys and books and stuff. But I know I’m lucky: not many people get a great office like mine, with a great view of the alley behind the building where they can watch underemployed actors at the local community theater hanging out in costume and smoking. (I said I like my office, not the view.)

If you hate your office, or cubicle, or temporary workspace (does anyone get that joke anymore?), then the Pimp My Cube contest is for you.

The Pimp My Cube Contest wants to see your pathetic, messy, disorganized, leaky, moldy, cluttered, badly-furnished, whatever work space, and they’re giving away $1,200 in prizes to people who have poor work conditions like that.

What you have to do is take a video showing why your work place is terrible – the funnier the better – and submit it by uploading so that the people at the Contest Factory can take a look at it. Film your office, your clutter, your grungy co-workers, your trash, and give it a commentary, and then, once it’s uploaded, tell your friends and family and coworkers to vote your office the worst ever.

The Contest Factory Pimp My Cube Sweepstakes will judge the videos based on votes and points and video quality and compelling storylines, giving away three prize packages:

o New high end computer system
o New Desk, Chair and Decorations
o New Entertainment Package with high end stereo, espresso machine etc.

The uploading is easy, and the contest goes until the end of January, and since it’s just beginning there’s no videos yet so you’ve got a excellent chance of winning. And, people who don’t make the top three can win a second-prize $200 gift card chosen by random drawing.

So before January 31, go to the PMC site, register, upload your video, and get your buddies to vote on your video.

Thursday Scramble: Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World! (NSFW)

2012-01-19T03:49:00.001-12:00

This is actually chapter 23; to begin the story at the beginning, click here. Or, to download the entire story in book form for free, click here.

WARNING: This scene is graphic!

Rachel, after awakening from her zombie state, fell in love with Bridget, who through the magic of a time warp, gave birth to their daughter Harper. Now, having been disintegrated by Harper to save her from the Bubbles, Rachel has been captured by Bridget's dad. No, that doesn't explain anything, which is why you should read the story.

"Let go of me," I said.

He pushed me back on the bed, his leering face only inches from mine. "No," he breathed. "Do you know what I've been through? I've literally been to Hell, died, had my body reconstructed into this monstrosity," and he pointed down at himself, "All to search for what is rightfully mine."

He paused.

"You."

Another pause, as he loomed over me.

"You, you are mine."

"I got that," I told him, trying to sound braver than I was feeling. He was lying on top of me and was heavier than I felt I could move.

"I created you, Rachel. Not literally. I did not myself carve up the women who would become your parts. I did not myself go and kidnap you from that concert. I did not drag your unconscious body down into the cellar where that mad idiot works doing things only he can do. I did not remove your chip and I did not pick out the limbs that would become the new you and then sew them together into this remarkably sexy package, binding them seamlessly by calling on energy from in between the dimensions."

He looked down at the stump of my left arm.

"Except for that one. I picked out that one, and that one in particular was the one that belonged to me." He stared back into my eyes and then put one of his hands, the one with the delicate nails, onto my breast, began kneading it and pulling it, roughly.

"Do you want to know why?" he asked.

"Don't touch me, please," I managed to whisper.

He took his hand and pushed harder against my breast, and I felt a cold sweat break out. Shifting his weight, he pressed his knee into my stomach, just below my ribcage.

"Don't tell me what to do, you lesbian zombie whore," he said, and my blood stopped in my veins at the threat in his voice.

With a tiny twitch of his weight, he pumped his knee into me. My breath whooofed out of me and tears sprang to my eyes and I gasped. He pinched my breast and then punched me in the face.

"Stop it!" Bridget yelled. I couldn't see her. I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath as my legs were roughly pushed apart.

"You don't know what resources went into creating you, all to have a body that could hold on to that hand and all because that hand was the final ingredient in controlling the thousands of slaves we created," Bridget's dad said.

"Don't do this, Daddy!" Bridget yelled again.

"SHUT HER UP!" Bridget's dad roared and punched me in the face again. Before I could even catch my breath he pushed his knee into my stomach again and I gasped again, feeling emptied of air entirely. His hands were pushing in between my thighs and I wanted to fight him, I did, but I couldn't even catch my breath and my lungs were so empty it caused me actual pain inside my chest.

I heard a crack of metal on a head and Bridget screamed and The Me's voice said "Don't do that!" and there was a scuffle sound as Bridget's dad's hand pushed into me and I tried to fight and he said:

"Don't fight me. You have lost the one thing you were created to keep and since this body belonged to others before it became your demon soulless shell, you shouldn't care what I do to it." He pushed his knee down again and my body felt like it was turned inside out as I struggled to breath. He punched the side of my head and I saw stars.

"I would kill you, but I need the body alive. I must make sure you understand never to oppose me again," he said, and viciously raked his nails over my inner thigh. I would have screamed but I couldn't even suck in air, as he was keeping his knee pushed into my stomach now.

I began to black out.

I felt his hands in me, inside my thighs and on my breasts and one pushing into my mouth and the room went all spinny and then a voice crackled through an intercom:

"It's not here!"

Bridget's dad stopped staring at my pussy and turned his terrible face back to look at mine. Through blurred tunnel vision, I saw him purse his lips.

"That is very bad for you," he said. "But worse for your lovers."

He punched me again in the face, and said: "Kill them."

250=1: Story Two

2012-01-17T01:44:00.002-12:00

What's this all about? Click here.

Everyone in the world is copying me in advance.

It made you uncomfortable to be alone with him in the subway car, not just because he was mumbling loudly enough to seem he was trying to talk to you, complaining about how everyone knew his thoughts and did the stuff before he could.

“And the waffle iron? I came up with that!” he suddenly said ferociously, and you got off the car at the next stop because that little fleck of spittle in the corner of his mouth seemed too wild to want to deal with at 3:00 in the afternoon.

The job interview didn’t go well. You were still unnerved by the whole incident, and you were pretty sure that the waffle iron was older than the subway nut. The interviewer never called.
Later on, even Gina’s encouragement (why don’t you just go ahead with that idea you had?) wasn’t enough to help you sleep and in your dreams you saw him again.

“EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD IS COPYING ME IN ADVANCE!” he yelled in your head, and it didn’t help that in the dream he was an extra on the set of Ocean Girl.

And you had to take the F train, two days later, to yet another job interview. He was there, of course, and he said “I’m going to invent an app that will scan the ears of small children and see if there is an ear infection.”

But that was your idea.

Six months ago.

The Partially-Edible Snowman and The Happy Bear! (Life With Unicorns)

2012-01-16T03:37:00.006-12:00

As much as that post title might sound like the best/worst fairy tale ever, it's simply describing the two most recent homework assignments that I, as the handsomest parent (that's how you choose who helps with homework, right? The parent that the world would consider the best-looking?) had the luck (?) to help with.

Last night's homework was to decorate a snowman, which Mr F had to do over the weekend because it was a lengthy assignment that involved glue and Sweetie's seemingly-great idea for snowman decorating that actually wasn't so great because almost no great ideas end up with kids eating glue, if you leave aside the invention of the light bulb.

Mr F was sent home with a two-tiered snowman cut out that he (we) were required to decorate any creative way we wanted to, which almost immediately puts my mind into arms race mode because when you say do something creative you're throwing down the gauntlet for me and I immediately want to do the most creative thing anyone ever has done. So when Sweetie said "You have to help him decorate his snowman creatively" my immediate first instinct was "Let's turn that sucker into a hologram."

Which I would have done but I do not, unfortunately, have even the vaguest clue how one would create a hologram, so we settled on foam cutouts, popsicle sticks (the foundation of any good homework project), and, for some reason, cheese puffs.

We decided to do cheese puffs via this conversation:

Me: How are we supposed to decorate it? (I was killing time while my mind wondered if any of the tools I had in the garage would help me build a hologram. Since the tools are a level, a random assortment of screwdrivers that sometimes are Philips-Head and sometimes flathead depending on which one you don't need, a soldering iron, and three toolboxes, that seemed unlikely, but you never know.)

Sweetie: You should use cheese puffs.

Me: Okay (but really I was working through how many flathead screwdrivers I wouldn't need to build a hologram.)

So we sat down last night, with me having pre-made the foam shapes for eyes, nose, mouth, and hat, and gotten the Elmer's Glue, and the Cheese Puffs, and the snowman shape (i.e., everything you need) before getting Mr F, the final ingredient to this homework puzzle.

He set down to work right away:

But by "work" I mean "pulling off the cheese puffs I had glued to the snowman as an example of what he should be doing." I had, upon sitting him down, put two cheese puffs on the snowman to demonstrate what he should do, and he then began trying to pull the cheese puffs off, which resulted in my having to wrestle the cheese puffs away from him because I didn't want him to eat the glued cheese puffs, so I was struggling to get the puffs away while he was struggling to eat them...

... I should point out that we had purposely bought a different kind of cheese puff for this, buying the kind that he won't eat so that we would avoid this exact thing, but Mr F is supersmart and knows many ways of avoiding homework...

...and I kept saying "If you want to eat some eat the ones from the bag not the ones with glue on them," but that wasn't an option.

So Mr F would grab a puff, I'd wrestle it away, get a new one, glue it on, and then say "Now you do it," and he'd grab the one off that I'd just glued which I'd wrestle away and this kept on until he was fast enough to get one in his mouth, glue and all, and eat it, after which he looked smug and also consented to gluing the rest of them down, and also taking the occasional puff and smashing it into powder to show me he could.

Pretty soon, we had the base of the snowman covered in cheese puffs, the result looking far less cool than I'd imagined, and looking a lot more like we'd accidentally spilled a snack mix on it and decided to call that homework which, let's face it, was pretty close to the truth, and then it was time to start gluing on the foam face and popsicle stick arms:

Which we accomplished by me gluing one stick-arm on, and then telling Mr F to do the other one, and then me putting glue on each foam shape and encouraging Mr F to put it more or less in the general area it should be on a snowman. I mean, I don't have a Masters in Snowman Anatomy, or anything, but I have a pretty good idea where the eyes need to go if you don't want your kid to spend his entire life being examined by the school psychologist, so I would help him glue the shapes by gently pointing his hand towards the head region of the snowman, because he just wanted to be done and so was trying to glue the shapes to the table, or his leg, or my hand, or the bottom, cheese-puff-covered portion of the snowman, and our snowman already looked weird enough without having eyes growing out of his bottom.

It only took about 30 minutes of Mr F resisting, having to go get frequent drinks of water (snowman building is hard work!), gluing things to me, and sometimes eating another puff off of the snowman, glue and all, to show me he could) before we were done. I encouraged Mr F to hold it up for the camera, but the best he would do is let me hold him holding it up for the camera:

And here is the finished project,
which I kind of think looks Picasso-esque because parenting is all about improbable comparisons of your kid to geniuses, thereby elevating your kid while reducing the genius.

Which then brings me to The Happy Bear, which was Mr Bunches' homework project last week, and I'm glad they spaced those out because I can hardly keep up with these things.

Mr Bunches' homework was to take a red stuffed bear that they'd sent home with him and draw a picture of it, and then tell a story about the bear. Sweetie said that I could figure out what kind of story to tell about the bear by looking at what other kids had done, but Mr Bunches was second in line on this project and the only other kid who'd written something in the book had done something dumb like "I played with the bear" or something similar; there was really no plot to her story at all and I found it incredibly lacking.

This, though, was not my project (you can tell because there aren't 14 Volumes of "The Bear Story" available on Amazon), so I left it up to Mr Bunches how he wanted to begin, and how he wanted to begin was to do this:

That is Mr Bunches getting up to go play Skee Ball on his iPad, which we bought for educational purposes only and which has caused me, in turn, to hope that there is something educational about playing Skee Ball because that's what Mr Bunches uses it for 99% of the time, and worse, he won't share. But he is very good at Skee Ball so maybe there's a future in that. (Laugh if you want, but these days you can make money doing anything if you do it in an entertaining way, so I am encouraging Mr Bunches to play Skee Ball in iambic pentameter because I figure that'll get the snobs to go for it and he'll get a show on The Learning Channel. That may not sound so entertaining, but my only other idea was Mr Bunches Celebrity Skee Ball Show where he'd have celebrities on and interview them and play Skee Ball with them, but that might mean that celebrities like Ryan Gosling would hang around us and frankly, I do not need the competition.)

Mr Bunches kept getting up to go play Skee Ball, which words I've now typed so often they're annoying even me, but he did work on his drawing of the Bear, which he did entirely by himself:

And he even drew the Bear's little sewn-on heart, but hearts are kind of hard to draw, so instead of a heart-shaped box, he drew a box-shaped heart:

Which would be great, actually, because a box-shaped heart can hold more love, which you didn't think of, did you? Now that you did think of it, it seems kind of sweet, doesn't it?

With the bear drawing done, Mr Bunches' interest level (already dangerously low) waned rapidly, and we still had the story to go. Mr Bunches, unlike his dad, is a man of few words. We had this exchange:

Me: What story do you want to tell about the bear?

Mr Bunches: It's a happy bear.

Me: [thinking well, sure, but what's it happy about? Maybe the bear is happy because...]

Mr Bunches: Black crayon please.

And so he wrote his story, which is:

"IT IS A HAPPY BEAR."

Which I am now trying to option into a miniseries on HBO.

The Great Sled Race (Life With Unicorns)

2012-01-14T11:59:00.002-12:00

Me and Mr F vs. Mr Bunches:

Some men just want to watch the world burn, while others would prefer that it not burn until they’ve had a chance to suck a godless amount of profits

2012-01-14T10:00:00.001-12:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Walgreens for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

That, I imagine, is what the mission statement for a company known as “Express Scripts:” Suck all the money out of people’s lives while placing their health at risk. But they probably put it in lawyerese.

Express Scripts, in case you didn’t know, is a middleman health company. It enters into contracts with health insurers and drug stores, getting payments from health insurers and giving the money to drugstores.

That’s all. That’s why Express Scripts exists: it’s a conduit for money that would be paid anyway.

But as a conduit, it’s an amazingly profitable business. Peeling those crumbs off the cake, as Sherman McCoy’s wife would say, gives Express Scripts, Profit Troll, profits that rise about double the rate of other industry companies.

But the crumbs are no longer good enough for Express Scripts: it wants the whole cake and will put your health at risk to get it, strong-arming companies into charging you more and making you go elsewhere to get your prescriptions.

Take the recent Walgreens and Express Scripts dispute.

Walgreen’s, which has been contracting with Express Scripts, offered to help keep costs down by keeping not increasing its rates, and by guaranteeing the lowest prices to military families who get their insurance through Tricare (an Express Scripts client.)

Express Scripts responded by saying “Screw people, forget the military, give us more money and more control.” It demanded the ability to define what’s a generic drug and what’s not, and demanded Walgreen’s accept below-industry prices.

Walgreen’s, of course, can’t make a deal that costs it money to get your prescriptions to you, and so Express Scripts no longer has a deal with Walgreen’s, which means that military families will pay more for their medications, and you will pay more or go to a different, farther away pharmacy. That puts you at risk because you can buy fewer medications, or you have to get them from a pharmacist who doesn’t know you.

All because Express Scripts, Profit Troll, wanted more money than it already had at your expense.

But you can do something about it (besides die, which is against Express Script’s wishes because if you die they don’t get all your money). You could join the Prescription Savings Club at Walgreens:

http://www.walgreens.com/pharmacy/psc/psc_overview_page.jsp

If you join in January, you’ll get a discounted membership of just $10 per family in ($5 for one person), getting the option of discounts on 8,000 different brand-name medications, low prices on generics, Walgreen’s discounts on flu shots, pet scripts, nebulizers and other things. Members also get bonuses for using other Walgreen’s services, like photofinishing, so you can continue to save on medications and still do one-stop shopping at your local pharmacy.

And you can show your support for the companies that are trying to do the right thing: Pick sides, like me: Stick up for Walgreen’s: Like Walgreens on Facebook and follow Walgreens on Twitter (@Walgreens), and help make things better.

Honest Opinions... (What the H?)

2012-01-13T16:39:00.003-12:00

So I have wanted and tried to upload this video because I would really like to know the opinions of people that I don't know and that don't know me. I love to sing but I have been told that I cant and that doesn't bother me but since I am passionate about singing I wanted to share my passion with as many people that I can. Here you go. Be as honest at possible. (And let me tell you that this is not the entire song by Miss Adele it is merely a small tid bit, and this video is also five or so months old.)

What Scares You? (What the H?)

2012-01-12T15:37:00.002-12:00

What makes a movie scary…?

I am probably the number one fan of scary movies and I have seen just about all of them. So I am going to make a list of my top 5 favorite scary movies. But first I would like to say some things that I think make a great scary movie.

To me a scary movie keeps me on my toes. The movie does not necessarily need to be scary as in goose bumps on my arm but if a movie has me engaged and it makes me think that something like this could actually happen. Or if I don’t see something coming and I scream (which has happened in the middle of the movie theater I may add) that is considered a great scare.

With those little tid bits in mind here is my list of scary movies;
1. Halloween
2. Blair Witch Project
3. The Strangers
4. The Decent
5. The Ring

I choose these movies for different reasons.

Halloween: I choose Halloween just merely for the idea behind it. I think that if I had a brother that was stalking me and trying to kill me I may piss my pants and then die of being scared before he got to. I also think that the way that the movie was filmed (it was a long time ago which helps a lot with it being even more scary) where Michael Meyers stands in the middle of the street just starring at Jamie Lee Curtis freaks me out. It makes me grab the pillow or blanket or nearest arm and cover my face watching what happens with one eye.

Blair Witch Project: It took a while for the shaking camera to not make me nauseous but I got use to it. I really thought that documentary part added to the scare factor because it only had three characters in it but one person is always filming so there are usually always only two people on camera. I think the scariest part of the film for me was that they were stranded in the woods and the noises that they hear at night are scary. The word cackling still sends chills up my spine.

The Strangers: What I like about this movie is that I think that something like this can actually happen. I mean two people are in the middle of nowhere and then three people come out of nowhere and starting torturing and these innocent people. There are people out in this world that would do something like this because they are bored and they want to make their lives better (in their eyes).

The Decent: I don’t think that this particular movie did well in the theaters but I bought the movie and it is one of my top five because it is so insanely weird that I literally freak out and have nightmares about the creatures that are in this movie. A group of girls wanting to go and explore caves and then they each start to disappear and are killed by these “man-creatures” that have been living in this cave for hundreds of years. The girls start to think that they may not be making it out but if they do they will be the first ones to make it out alive.

The Ring: OMG! Do I need to explain? I will anyways. I will mention crawling out of a well and that is where I will leave it.

What is your top 5?

what is 'the After'?

2012-01-12T02:48:00.001-12:00

the After on Prezi

the After is...

... everything you want it to be.

...a trap

...where all your friends and family wait for you

...frighteningly perfect

the After is my latest book: four years in the making, the After tells what happens to Saoirse following a plane crash that leaves her standing in her perfect kitchen with her perfect family in a perfect world that she cannot stand. Told by William Howard Taft -- yes, that William Howard Taft, who appears on her doorstep -- that she can leave, Saoirse sets off on her own travels through a world almost entirely of her making, trying to find out how to leave and to decide if she wants to.

If you ever wondered what comes next, the After is a must-read. Buy it on your Kindle for $0.99 or in paperback on Amazon.

Click here for a sneak preview of a portion of the book.

So Oldest Daughter Wanted A Picture Of Herself With The Twins (A Photo Essay)(Life With Unicorns)

2012-01-11T00:39:00.005-12:00

only a few more days until you find out what this is about...

2012-01-10T14:12:00.004-12:00

She hated take-off. She hated the lifting, the run-up, the noise, the ear-popping...

“What happens, do you think, when we die?”

"I couldn’t tell if it was burnt down or torn down or just… crumbled away. I didn’t know how it had ended.”

You clicked that link, right?

I didn't even bring the pedometer with me. (My Daily Walk)

2012-01-10T08:27:00.003-12:00

Some sidewise pictures again because I'm still working out the kinks, but here's

What I Saw:

Lake Monona, from above:

The side of a food cart (the food cart was upright)

I like this one:

What I Listened To:

"Hilawe," from the Pineapple Express movie:

"The Bad Touch", The Bloodhound Gang:

Snorkel, Leo Kottke:

"Fictional State," by To Kill A King.

As for that last one, if you listen to any one song today you should listen to that one. That song tells a story and it's a sad one. I love to listen to that song, in part because it reminds me that I'm not sad.

The Artsy B&W photo:

"Miniscule Man, Massive Building."

One Thing I Thought While Walking: "I hope people don't think I'm wearing this sweater vest because of Rick Santorum. I've been a sweater vest guy for longer than him." (It's true.)

Sorry, no Narnian Doors Today!

What Mr Bunches Is Watching, 1 (Life With Unicorns)

2012-01-10T02:51:00.002-12:00

Mr Bunches is crazy for Youtube, and since we managed to scrape up enough money to get an iPad for Mr F and him to share, he's even more able to find stuff that he wants to watch.

This is his current favorite video:

He calls that "Jumping Spider" and watches it in breathless anticipation each time, warning the bee to look out and gleefully celebrating when the jumping spider catches the bee.

(Oh, and SPOILER ALERT! if you hadn't yet watched the video.)

Here's this about that: I can't stand spiders, as I've made clear before. (On numerous occasions, in fact.)

So I'm not exactly crazy about watching that video, but here's what's worse.

Mr Bunches kisses the spider.

Kisses it.

When this screen comes on:

He kisses the spider.

My skin is crawling just typing that.

I USED TO Get Paid For Doing This? (My Daily Walk)

2012-01-09T10:28:00.005-12:00

UPDATE: I didn't get fired. The pictures are of places I used to work.

Well, THESE are some unsatisfying pictures. As I continue to wonder why my camera won't let me easily upload photos like it used to, here's the pictures I took on My Daily Walk, which today I took outside the Milwaukee County Courthouse because I had to drive nearly 2 hours (one way) to go for an in-person "scheduling conference" hearing.

I don't make the rules. I only benefit from them.

Here's a hot dog cart outside the Courthouse, taken in artsy black and white and I'd put this in the format of the usual "My Daily Walk" post but I'm grumpy from a variety of things today, so here's the picture:

In 1993, when I lived in Milwaukee, I ran one of those hot dog carts, for about 2 weeks. Eventually I'll get around to posting about what that was like, but for now let me say it was amazing in a not-always-good way.

Here is a sculpture outside the Courthouse that looks better when not lying on its side:

In real life, that sculpture is vertical, but in real life my camera is a jerkface, so there you go.

Here, just to remind me that I spent five minutes complaining because my superexpensive smartphone isn't cooperative enough in allowing me to post photos on the internet, is a picture of some homeless men sitting on a heating grate outside the Milwaukee Public Museum:

God, I'm a horrible person.

Here's a sculpture outside the Milwaukee Public Library:

Here is a Subway restaurant, one I worked at from 1991-1994. (It's the little yellow awning.)

Here's a window I thought was neat, because I live the kind of life where I can walk around for twenty minutes taking photos of neat windows and later complaining that it's not easy enough to post them online, and, okay, I fully realize how lucky I am now.

Neat window, remember?

Here's a sidewise view of the office building where I worked as a paralegal intern for the Public Defenders, a job that let me go to court, watch a lawyer argue a motion I'd researched, and thought "I could do that better" so I quit screwing around and went to law school:

And here is the Narnian Door:

There's no stairs or anything. It's just a double-door that opens into midair from inside that building.

Also: On my walk I listened to the Planet Money podcast of "Who Killed Lard?" which led to me remembering:

(A2.) On my honeymoon with Sweetie, we took a picture of a bucket of lard in a restaurant because it reminded me of an earlier time when...

(TJ.) ...Sweetie objected to my having bought especially cheap margarine and said, as she got ready for her breakfast in the morning "Aww, I have to have toast with lard."

Which just proves that my entire life apparently revolves around toast.

I'm not going to call her that. (What the H?)

2012-01-09T09:52:00.005-12:00

When Middle first told me the title of her post, I had to ask her who the reference was.

You can just call me Stanley Yelnats!

So for those of you who are unaware of who this “Stanley Yelnats” character is then I will take a brief moment to enlighten you: Stanley Yelnats is the main character in the book Holes by Louis Sachar. In the book Stanley claims that his life changed when he stumbled upon a pair of shoes. These “shoes” that changed his life fell from the sky and he was accused of stealing them, so he was sent to a juvenile facility in the middle of nowhere where their punishment is to dig holes demanded by the warden of the facility. There Stanley meets new friends and other people that have become his family. (If you want to know more I recommend reading the book.)

Anywho, I also have found a pair of shoes that have changed my life as well as given me the confidence to get on a treadmill again.

I will first start by telling you why I have not gone on a treadmill in years.

I was fifteen years old when my mother and I decided to go and work out at the athletic club. I thought I would run a little maybe do a little power walking but ten minutes into my light jog I became the most embarrassed girl in the world. I am not a huge fan of running because I am not the most in shape person and running makes me look like a giraffe doing ballet. So, I am doing a little jog and I thought to myself that the time may go by a little faster if I ran with my eyes closed.

(Yep I attempted to run on a treadmill with my eyes closed because I am the world’s dumbest person.)

I closed my eyes and started running. I thought that everything was going peachy and fine until my headphones were ripped out of the headphone plug so I couldn’t hear the television program that I was listening to anymore. I opened my eyes and I saw that I was falling off the back of the treadmill.

I attempted to catch myself, which made things worse because then people had the vision of me crawling like an animal trying to get back onto the treadmill. I finally got back on the treadmill and I looked at my mother who was laughing hysterically.

(Yeah, nice, thanks for the warning, Mother!)

Since then, until now, I have not got onto a treadmill for any reason because I have not been able to get past that moment.

Then, about three weeks ago I went online with the purpose of purchasing a new pair of work out shoes. Not just any pair of athletic shoes but one pair in mind:

And I do not care what anyone thinks of them because like Stanley Yelnats these shoes have changed my life.

Although, mine look a little different than that pair. Mine look like this:

Because of these new shoes that are the most comfortable running shoes that I have ever owned (just like I thought they would be, which was why I specifically looked for them) I have been working out three of four times a week. And not just working out; I have been running on the treadmill three or four times a week for thirty minutes. Yes, I am finally back on the treadmill and I have been running.

I would recommend these shoes to anyone looking to get back into working out and keeping in shape. They are like wearing your own feet. Light as feather.

One more look for good measure…

Ahh don’t you just love them :D

My toaster is still insufficiently cool, but now it's also mocking me. (Quote Of The Day)(Thinking The Lions)

2012-01-08T02:19:00.007-12:00

"We're just a couple of toasting fools."
-- Sweetie.

It has been an exciting and confusing morning for us here, as we try out our brand new toaster, the second of the year for us.

2012 promises to be The Year Of The Toast, and also promises to prove that you can have 737 years of college education and still not be able to work a machine that has exactly three controls, leading you to accuse your wife (Sweetie) of wanting toast that is so lightly toasted that it's just warm bread, and also trying to institute a rule in your household that the toaster dial never be moved.

Yes, when I flex my "head of household" muscles, it is over important things.

I don't ordinarily give much thought to a toaster, other than to ponder why some, but not all, have a marking on it that says "One Slice Use This Side" or something similar, a marking that's always made me want to say "oh, yeah? I'm going to do what I want. You're not the Toast Boss of Me," but then I don't want any trouble before breakfast, or before lunch, or at any of the other times of the day that I'm having toast, because toast is not necessarily just a breakfast food. It's delicious anytime, and you don't have to go all fancy with your marmalades and whatnot: Classic Toast, with butter, is where it's at.

Toast-wise, I mean.

But our toaster has become something of a thorn in our side in recent months, beginning with our decision to replace the lopsided toaster that we'd been struggling with for a couple of months since I dropped it on the floor and didn't tell Sweetie that I'd dropped it but opted, instead, to just act as though our toaster had always had one end sort of wedged a little off-center so that the toaster, when it sat on the counter, looked as though the back-end had been jacked up like a hot-rod.

("Hot Rod Toaster" being a great idea for a kids' cartoon: A toaster dreams of joining the drag-racing circuit like his dad used to do, but finds his way stymied by... um... an angry bunch of adverbs? I'll get back to you on that.)

That happened when, one morning, I dropped the toaster, an accident I blame on not having an automatic coffeepot that would make my coffee before I got up in the morning. I used to have an automatic coffeepot that had a timer and I could set it for, say, 5:45 a.m., and then when I got up at 6 a.m. I'd have coffee ready, but that coffeepot died because we live in some sort of weird electromagnetic zone that destroys any electric appliance that enters it for too long: Coffeepots, popcorn makers, vacuum cleaners, toasters: if it is a simple electrical device, upon entering our household it will be zapped through with cosmic rays of the kind that don't turn one into a superhero but instead mean that eventually your toaster is going to throw off ball lightning.

Which is what happened to our toaster, the one I dropped: When I dropped it, the one side that didn't have the lever-and-temperature controls on it got knocked off-kilter, and I went without toast that day (bravely deciding that I'd let Sweetie make the first toast with the now-potentially-life-threatening-Toaster-of-Death), and the bottom wedged in so that you couldn't empty the crumbs out of it (which is fine because I never did that anyway, because not everything has to be superhigh maintenance, you know. We all, in 2012, effectively work a second job as tech support already, constantly trouble-shooting our supposed-miracle devices, but I'll be damned if I'm going to be a slave to a toaster, which is one of the lowest classes of household devices.)(Household devices being one of the last remnants of the class system.)

That toaster continued to toast bread, which, really, how hard is that? You're just warming it up, rather more quickly than the sun will. (In fact, I'm surprised there's not some eco-nerd group of people out there making sun toast the way my father-in-law makes sun tea, which sounds grosser to me than regular tea, which is saying something, because tea is disgusting, but making it via the sun means making it via nature and we all know my feelings about nature: it's repulsive and ought to have nothing to do with our food chain.)

We lived with the Offset Toaster for a few months, but around Christmas, it got a little worse, and by "worse" I mean "more burny-smelling," which is worrisome when you're cooking a breakfast treat and trying to read the morning headlines but you have to also wonder whether your kitchen cabinets are on fire and, if so, whether Sweetie will catch it before you do so you can finish reading the headlines (in reality, you are reading the comics in that scenario, but Sweetie does not need to know that.)

Then the Offset Toaster began to not just smell burny, but also began to seem burny, in the sense that it got hot and seemed to use all its heat not for toasting things, but for warming itself and its environs up, alarmingly.

That caused Sweetie to unilaterally make the decision to get a new toaster, which she did by going to Walgreen's, which is of course where you'd want to get an electric device, at the same store where they sell you cotton swabs and other things that nobody knows what to do with them.

It doesn't seem right to buy an appliance, even an appliance that's just an electric circuit of the kind we used to make out of tinfoil in Mr Karsten's class in the 6th grade, at a drug store, because... well, just because. There's an order to things and sometimes that order can be monkeyed with (pizza for breakfast) and sometimes it cannot, and buying appliances that use deadly forces at a drugstore is like buying nasal spray at Sears: it's just wrong.

(I don't use nasal spray, and I try to avoid people who do.)

I didn't say anything about Sweetie's ill-advised purchase, except for mentioning about 150 times the first morning she used it that it "smelled plastic-y," and then that it "smelled burning-plastic-y," both of which I said in a very neutral voice that in no way implied that I was better than Sweetie because I would not have bought a toaster at a drugstore.

(I might have bought one at the Dollar Store, but can you blame me?)

That toaster lasted about two weeks in our house, each day smelling more plastic-y and more burn-y, until Thursday, when I tried to make some toast for breakfast. I put in two slices of bread, and set the level of toastiness, which, frankly, I ought not to have to do. You know how in sitcoms all the time but not in real life ever women are always complaining about men leaving the toilet seat up? That fake complaint pales in comparison to the very real complaint I have about living in a household of people who don't actually toast their toast.

Sweetie, Oldest Daughter, Middle Daughter, and The Boy, all like their toast, essentially, raw. They put the bread in the slot, then turn the little toastometer all the way to the left, to its lowest possible setting. Then they unplug the toaster. Then they put the toaster in the freezer. Then they ship the freezer to the farthest reaches of outer space so that the molecular activity in the bread slows almost to absolute zero. Then, after letting that cool off for a while, they eat it.

That's not toast, although it is the worst sci-fi story ever. Toast has to be brown and hot and nobody but me has ever in this household made what I consider toast. (Mr F and Mr Bunches do not, yet, eat toast. They regard toast the way they regard almost every food that isn't a cheese puff, banana, or mac-and-cheese: with a vague sense of distrust and a sly smile, like you're trying to trick them into eating a mousetrap.)

I know this is America, and everyone's free to eat whatever level of toast they can afford to eat (with the 1% in particular eating toast made of equal parts platinum and little kids' souls), but this being America, people (Sweetie, the kids, et al) should also remember that their toast preferences are weird and completely untoasty, and so when they're done making their Not-Toast, they should re-set the toaster levels to "actual toast" so that those of us who are still suffering with a coffee maker that doesn't make coffee on its own ahead of time don't also have to remember to re-set the toaster.

On Thursday, I reset the toastometer and pushed the lever down and went to turn on the computer, and heard my toast pop up.

I went to the kitchen and checked the little dial and pushed the toast down again and walked away, and heard it pop up again. This time, one slice of toast was toast -- browned already. The other slice of toast was bread, toast's lame forefather.

So I pushed the lever down again, this time paying attention, which I don't like to do to things, and saw a flash of ball lightning appear on the untoasting side.

"Fzzrtt!" it went.

(That's a direct quote.)

(That's the sound ball lightning makes.)

I shrugged and went back to work on restarting our computer, as we have to do every morning because, again, we are all tech support now.

After a few minutes, I began to wonder if the toaster was going to ever pop up and I went back out to find that the toaster hadn't popped up but wasn't cooking anymore, so I manually popped it up because my life is impossibly hard and noted that now one piece of toast was burnt and the other was uncooked.

I popped it down again, saw more ball lightning, and had Rice Krispies instead. I did mention to Sweetie that the toaster was acting up:

"The toaster is throwing off sparks," I said, causing Sweetie to try to toast her own bread via the freezer, Deep Space 9, etc.

Later that day, she agreed with me: The toaster was dead, and so yesterday, Saturday, we made a special trip to Target to get a new new toaster, because we'd already gone more than 24 hours without a toaster and frankly, it was killing us.

Sing it with me: "Don't it always seem as though/you don't know what you got 'til it's gone. They paved paradise... and we didn't have a toaster either."

To avoid spending too much money, it was decided that we'd send Sweetie in alone; we had Mr F and Mr Bunches with us, but taking them into a store with us often means that we end up not just getting what we're there to get, but also a lot of other things we happen to see along the way, like the other night when I went to the store to get a couple of things that didn't include "an aircraft carrier with six jets and a helicopter" but when I left the store, I had a couple of things and "an aircraft carrier with six jets and a helicopter," which will be, I'm sure, helpful when we are foreclosed on because we can't pay our mortgage.

"But we have an aircraft carrier with six jets and a helicopter," we'll tell the bankers, who will be twirling their moustache and tying Sweetie to the railroad tracks they have installed the local branch office for just that purpose.

"Tell it to the bank!" the bankers will say, confusingly.

Okay, I'm back.

I sent Sweetie in with express instructions:

"Do not go over $20," I said. "But if you can, try to get one of those cool toasters that we saw at Christmas."

"What cool toasters?" Sweetie said, and so I had to pull out my phone and show her the picture of the toasters I keep on my phone, just in case:

(They're really cool and sometimes I just like to look at them and imagine a life in which I have a cool toaster, with the kind of lifestyle that implies.)

"Okay," she said.

"But don't go over $20," I said, because we live on a budget and we hadn't sufficiently budgeted for the incredible amount of toaster-related expenses 2012 was obviously going to throw at us.

"Okay," she said.

"But don't go too cheap, either," I reminded her. "We already know what a ten-dollar toaster does."

"That toaster cost us $12," said Sweetie, who knows these things, and into Target she went. Mr Bunches and Mr F and I killed the few minutes she was gone via this actual conversation:

Me: "So, are you having a fun day?"

Mr F: [Looks out the window, doesn't answer.]

Mr Bunches: "Please, don't sing."

And soon, Sweetie returned with our new new toaster, shown here in action this morning, cooking my toast

Which, don't be fooled by the shiny black exterior and cool-looking purple glow; those are tricks of the light. This toaster is nowhere near as cool as the ones I wanted, but it is more difficult to operate, because if you look closely, it's got not one, not two, but three controls: the lever, which anyone even me can work, and then two others.

The obvious one is the toastometer, which sets the level of toastiness from 1 to 7, anything above a 7 being military-grade toast that can't be handled by us mortals.

The less-obvious one is the "Bagel Button," which is there and which led to this conversation:

Sweetie: Our toaster has a Bagel Button.

Me: What does that mean?

Sweetie: I don't know.

Me: Are you telling me we have to use an instruction manual to work our toaster?

I then noted that when Sweetie cooked her toast, she pressed the Bagel Button even though she wasn't toasting a bagel. Don't turn her in.

I then cooked my toast, pushing down the button and going back to the computer only to hear my toast pop up and, when I went to look, I found my bread slightly warmed up but still clearly bread.

"What's this?" I said. "What level is this set on?"

"Toast," Sweetie said, defensively, and I explained (again) that for something to be toast it has to change color, and then went to change the toastometer, only to find that there was no marking on it to tell me what level it was set on now, and so I had to turn it all the way counterclockwise and then slowly turn it back clockwise to set my toast level, at which point I realized that I had no real idea what the levels meant. Was "7" pitch-black toast briquettes? Was 5 where I wanted it? Did I want to go through trial-and-error to establish a new level of toast that I liked? Think of the waste!

And then there's still the question of that Bagel Button...

Epilogue: Sweetie told me, after she bought the "Bagel Button" toaster, that the cool toasters were on sale for $25, which I would have said was a definite must-buy even though I said not to go over $20, but I didn't say anything about it because I am an awesome husband who never would insist that his wife not go over budget no matter what only to turn around and suggest that she should go over budget anyway if it's only a little over budget and for a cool toaster. But secretly in my heart I am sad.

It's time we had a little talk...you might find this embarrassing, but it's important.

2012-01-08T01:59:00.003-12:00

Remember that one "Friends" episode where Rachel tells Ross that she's pregnant and Ross gets mad because they used a condom and he calls the manufacturer and yells at them?

Now, granted, a sitcom isn't the best, or even in the top fifty best, ways to learn about sex, but I still thought that episode was one of the least responsible things a sitcom had said about sex since Seinfeld said pastrami was the sexiest of the salted, cured meats.

The truth is that condoms are highly effective -- a less than 2% failure rate, compared with 4% pregnancy rates for people who use "withdrawal" method, and way better than not using condoms at all.

Plus, condoms -- unlike other birth control methods -- help reduce the risk of getting a sexually-transmitted disease, and no matter how well you know or think you know the other person, you can't be sure they are disease-free until they've been tested and proven that they're trustworthy and aren't fooling around on you.

Which is why I got so upset at the Friends episode: Seemingly responsible (Ross and Rachel used a condom!) it actually was irresponsible (But they still got pregnant!) thereby continuing the idea in some people that condom use is ineffective and therefore not necessary.

That, combined with the "if you tell kids about condoms you're encouraging them to have sex" is one of the most pernicious lies around.

Saying that "telling kids how to have safe sex" encourages them to have sex is like saying "telling kids fried food isn't good for you" encourages them to eat: Sex, like eating, is a basic drive people have and they're going to do those things, whether or not you parents want them to. Nobody says anything like "we shouldn't tell kids how to eat healthy, because that will encourage them to eat more!", and the truth is that since kids will have sex in their life at some point -- 15, or 18, or 47 -- they ought to learn how to have it safely.

And emphasizing that condoms fail (rarely) would be like emphasizing that helmets fail. Some people die in accidents even though they had a helmet on; would you tell kids don't wear a helmet when you ride a bike because of that? No.

We've always been upfront about sex with our kids: We've answered their questions, and emphasized to them that sex is a big decision that's best left for when they're adults and in committed relationships -- but that whenever they have sex, they use protection like condoms.

And now condoms are easier to get than ever -- there are even companies that sell them over the Internet, delivering them discreetly and privately, so kids don't have to worry that the cashier at the grocery store will embarrass them. (The links in this post will lead you to the premiere Internet source for that.)

Click the picture again. (You know you want to.)

2012-01-07T12:26:00.002-12:00

In search of the elusive Mr F, two (Life With Unicorns)

2012-01-07T07:34:00.001-12:00

At the McDonald's playland today, Mr F snuck off...

Thanks, Andrew Leon!

2012-01-06T08:59:00.003-12:00

The first review of Santa, Godzilla & Jesus Walk Into A Bar... has been posted, by author Andrew Leon, whose own book, The House On The Corner, is loaded onto my Kindle and awaiting my free time.

Says Andrew:

************************************************

If you've ever wondered what Douglas Adams would have been like if they'd locked him in a room for weeks at a time to get him to write... oh, wait, they did lock Adams in a room for weeks at a time to get him to write. Okay, if you've ever wondered what Adams might have produced if he'd been locked in a room for weeks at a time with only Twinkies and Jolt cola, you should read "Santa, Godzilla... ...It has that same frenetic energy that Adams has only weirder. Yeah, I know; how can you get weirder than Adams?

Does SGJWIB have flying couches or falling whales? No, but it does have carnivorous trees, and that's saying something. It's also saying something that it really is a Christmas story. Or Xmas, as Briane says it. Or, really, an origin of Xmas story. Except a sci-fi, futuristic story that somehow takes place in the past so that it is an origin. You know, "A long time ago in a galaxy..." No, wait. "A long time ago, right here on Earth..."

Somehow, Mr. Pagel manages to weave all of the essential elements of our Christmas traditions into a linear story. There are the trees, mistletoe, Wenceslas... I think he missed the wise men, but he gets a lot of it in there. No, it doesn't always makes sense, but, then, that's why it reminds me of Adams. I mean, if I could fly because I somehow got distracted from hitting the ground while falling, I would totally do that! And SGJWIB has those kinds of leaps.

Here's the thing, if you're not someone that likes Douglas Adams, first, "what's wrong with you?" and, second, you probably won't enjoy Briane's... almost book. However, if you do like Adams, as I do, you should definitely give SGJWIB a try. At a buck, you really can't lose.

The story is wild and crazy enough that there's not much you can say about it in a critical way. It's one of those things you like or you don't like. I happen to like. I'd give it an A except for one thing: the ending. It felt a little like Briane decided it was just time to end the story and, so, just did that. It's rather abrupt. However, he adds in a twist that makes it (mostly) okay. It's one of those kinds of things that Briane seems to like and leaves you wanting to say, "So... what actually happened here?" But he doesn't answer those questions, so you'll have to decide for yourself.

Anyway, it's a fun read, and I give it a B+ to an A-. I need to reread it before I can make a firmer decision than that, but I'm in the middle of something else at the moment and don't have the time. ...like I said, if you like Adams, for a measly $0.99, you really can't go wrong.

*****************************************************************************

Music to my ears! And I didn't even have to bribe him.

If you'd like to order "Santa, Godzilla, & Jesus Walk Into A Bar..." on your Kindle, click here.

If you want the paperback version, click here.

And, remember, at some point in the future, everyone who posts a review of the story on Amazon gets a chance to win an autographed copy of the book!

Today, we go in search of the elusive Mr F... (Life With Unicorns)

2012-01-05T05:28:00.005-12:00

Mr F has a bed. I just feel that I should emphasize that because I do not want people to get the idea that my parenting is so deficient that I do not supply my children with a bed.

My parenting is so deficient that I considered not providing Mr F a bed, because Mr F does not use beds. Since being freed from his crib and having the option of sleeping anywhere he wants to in his room, Mr F has slept in a plastic tub, in his closet, on his dresser, in his other closet, and, last night, here:

That's the corner of his room, at the end of Mr Bunches' bed. Mr F is partially hidden by the chair and using a book as a pillow.

At first, when I went in there to shut off their light, I couldn't find him.

In the end, you'll be glad to know, I am continuing to provide Mr F a bed in case he ever decides that a mattress might be a good place to sleep.

Okay, so some exciting news here...I've got scantily clad cheerleaders and William Howard Taft, so read the whole post.

2012-01-05T05:08:00.005-12:00

First off:

I won an award! Heather Arundel, who blogs at My Demon Spirits, awarded me the "Cheerleader of the Year" award:

For my efforts in drumming up competitors for her Christmas Story Contest. The winners are up on her blog, so when you get done staring at the picture of that cheerleader, you can go to her blog and stare at that picture of the cheerleader there.

Second up: let's not lose track of the important thing here, which is that my story,

"Santa, Godzilla & Jesus Walk Into A Bar..."

has been called "The Greatest Xmas Story Ever Written," and that's true, and you can buy it for just $0.99 on your Kindle, or get a high-quality paperback version of it for $7.78.

Thirdly: There's a new blogfest coming up and I'm going to take part in it solely for the purpose of proving Michael Offutt, Retired Stormtrooper, wrong.

The blogfest is "I'm Hearing Voices,"

And it's co-hosted by "Live To Write... Edit When Necessary," and "Reading, Writing, and Lovin' It!". Beginning February 6, you have to do three posts:

February 6th - Monday: Characters on the couch: Have one of your characters answer the following questions (to make this work to your benefit, choose a character who is the hardest for you to write :) Max 250 words (Not including the questions—only the answers).

What is your biggest vulnerability? Do others know this or is it a secret?
What do people believe about you that is false?
What would your best friend say is your fatal flaw? Why?
What would the same friend say is your one redeeming quality? Why?
What do you want most? What will you do to get it?

February 8th - Wednesday - Dialogue Introduction: Have two characters introduce each other using only dialogue—no backstory, no internalization, just dialogue between the two. Max 250 words.

February 10th - Friday - Emotion Flash Fiction: Emotion is the engine of a story. Pick an emotion and in a flash fiction piece of 250 words MAKE us feel it! We want to connect with your character. This will be a challenge in 250 words.

That's all, and there are great prizes but, as I said, my motivation is to show Michael Offutt, Riboflavin Compounds, that I can write with less than 250 words; I've already proven to him that leftover pizza and I can exist in the same universe, so this'll be a piece of cake.

AND, FINALLY, The Big News...

I'll save for another post. But it involves William Howard Taft, and the afterlife, so you'll want to check back soon. You can tell your wife that you're trying to find out what the big news is, when we all know that really, you'll be looking at this:

If they won't let people film them, it's gonna be hard convincing Disney to make me... I mean them... millionaires (Life With Unicorns)

2012-01-04T08:27:00.004-12:00

On Sundays, Mr Bunches and Mr F and I go to the office, where I go through paperwork and otherwise try to seem important, while they do stuff like this:

Lest you think Mr Bunches' dancing is one-dimensional, it is not:

I've been thinking that I need to get more of Mr F doing stuff, but Mr F is more camera-shy than Mr Bunches, who is surprisingly camera shy already; yesterday I tried to get Mr Bunches to sing the Family Guy theme for me on video and he wouldn't. Last week, when I tried to videotape Mr F doing some free-form Cirque du Soleil-type stuff on his living room swing, he abruptly stopped and walked out of the room.

I believe my cell phone company is metering my internet use. (My Daily Walk, 11)

2012-01-03T09:51:00.003-12:00

I thought I'd better get back to posting this before Grumpy Bulldog accuses me of not keeping up with it...

What I Saw:

I don't know what's going on, but it's harder and harder to transfer photos from my phone to the web, which makes it more annoying for me to do posts like this and makes me mad at my phone company. But here's what we've got today:

That is the artfully-tilted view of the very first apartment building I lived in when I moved to Madison in the summer of 1995. The window on the top floor closest to the lower left-hand corner is the actual window of my actual apartment.

What I Listened To:

Radiolab's Patient Zero podcast.

How many steps I walked, according to my Dollar Store Pedometer: I don' t even know where I left that thing after the holidays.

One Thing I Thought About: "There is still dirt in my jacket pocket from where I put the rocks in there so that Mr Bunches and Mr F would have some rocks to throw off the bridge on our walk."

Today's Artsy Black & White Photo With Cringeworthy Title:

I could not transfer the artsy black and white photo. Here, instead, is a photo of Mr Bunches building (with my help) Howl's Moving Castle out of MegaBlox. If you follow me on Twitter, you probably already saw this, but isn't it worth seeing again?

Today's Narnian Door:

I'm a Smart Cookie? (Thinking The Lions)

2012-01-03T05:06:00.006-12:00

I happened to page down a little on Michael Offutt, Ritz Cracker Aficionado's blog, SLC Kismet, when I went there for my daily reading, which is a good thing because Michael Offutt, Sous Chef, praised me, and in doing so justified again my ultra-high opinion of myself:

That took me seventeen hours. And I don't know how I turned the background black, but it looks kind of cool, right? Like a Pink Floyd album cover.

Anyway, because I accidentally paged down to read old blog entries, I saw that Michael Offutt, Leftenant had nominated me for something called a "Smart Cookie" award:

Which by some social contract I don't understand because I'm not really fit to live in society obligates me to say and do things now, and so I will say and do those things.

The first thing I'm supposed to say and do is "Thank the award giver and link back to him within my post."

So:

You can read more by Michael Offutt, Secret Offspring of Clara Peller, at his blog.

Then I'm supposed to "Share 4 little known facts on anything," which is a tough assignment because it's not like I go around gathering up little known information and then boring Sweetie with it at dinner.

I choose to share four little known facts about... snack foods! Sit in amazement as you learn that...

(17*): Potato Chips were created out of spite! Which is the best reason for doing everything. According to this website which seems totally legit because it has an all-red background,

In the summer of 1853, Native American George Crum was employed as a chef at an elegant resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. One dinner guest found Crum's French fries too thick for his liking and rejected the order. Crum decided to rile the guest by producing fries too thin and crisp to skewer with a fork. The plan backfired. The guest was ecstatic over the browned, paper-thin potatoes, and other diners began requesting Crum's potato chips.

That site also notes that George Crum sometimes went by the name "George Speck," which naturally brings us to:

(Brown): Pringles are made from slurry! Yum! IO9, which is one of the things I'm reading when I'm not watching television because I really don't watch all that much television**, reports that

Instead of shaving bits off of a potato and deep frying them, the company starts with a slurry of rice, wheat, corn, and potato flakes and presses them into shape. So these potato chips aren't really potato at all. The snack-dough is then rolled out like a sheet of ultra-thin cookie dough and cut into chip-cookies by a machine. The cut is complete enough that the chips are fully free of the extra dough, which is lifted away from the chips by a machine.

Imagine the time, effort, and money that went into creating a machine that would lift away the excess dough created by cutting out perfect Pringles every time. Then imagine if we'd put that time and money and effort into not having the 37th best educational system in the world. Then get depressed. Then go eat some Pringles, and cheer up! Yay for US!

You can watch Pringles get made on this video, which for some reason cannot be embedded into other sites because old people don't understand how the Internet works.

But the real point of all this is that

(3A.) Your kid could be making you rich just by being himself: In our house, Mr F and Mr Bunches rarely eat anything but snack foods, not because they're learning by example... okay, because of that exactly, but that's okay because they could earn $30-40 per hour from people who want to know what kids think about snack foods. So if you thought your kids had to have talent to put them to work, think again, and I will be leaving work early to sneak Mr Bunches and Mr F away from Sweetie, because a world of Getting Paid To Eat Foods awaits us, and that world is one I want to live in, which brings me to the final previously-unknown fact about snack foods:

(1st): Snack food makers are just making fun of you, now: I give you, the Slim Chip:

You may not know it to look at them, but those chips are weaponized irony in blueberry form. The maker's website says that "Slim Chips" are a

paradoxical product that plays with weapons like irony and nonsense thus leaving the interpretation to the bravest consumers.

I have never eaten a snack food that requires my interpretation, so finding out that I must now be aware of the meta-implications of a Dorito was quite a shock,but not as shocking as what a Slim Chip actually is. Again, from the people who sell these:

Slim Chips is an experiment around alternative types of snack food. The consumption of junk food is very often associated to habits and social rituals that help interrupt the flow of routinary daily activities more than to the hunger impulse. The basic ingredient here is edible paper, almost nutritionless. Don’t get fat, just eat nothing.

It's like eating tasty air, available in mint flavour, blueberry, cheddar or wasabi.

I believe that's a haiku. The Slim Chips people also have "growing jewelry," which I now want, and sell something called "Blod Berg," which appears to be a thyme-flavored soft drink. Perfect for washing down your paper snacks!

And now you know why I never get anything done at work.

I now have to name other Smart Cookies, which I will do as follows and for the following reasons:

Grumpy Bulldog, because he is superbusy right now and trying to kick road rage at the same time, so this ought to give him something to be mad about.

Heather Arundel, who blogs at My Demon Spirits, because I am not above sucking up to her to try to win her contest even though I blatantly broke the rules. Rules are for suckers. And societies, true, but mostly for suckers.

Anna And Her Sisters, who blog at "Every Day Is Awesome!" because every day really is awesome, especially if you read their blog.

Joy Mom, who blogs at Elvis Sightings, because she's thoughtful and mentions Elvis right in her blog title.

Tim Morrissey, who blogs at "Rifles At Dawn," because he makes his living writing and I therefore find it amusing to distract him from that the way my blogging distracts me from making a living.

and

Joshua Cejka, because he just started up a blog and needs stuff to put on it, and because maybe in return he'll delete that comment that posted before me and we can all pretend I really was the first-ever commenter on his blog.

In closing, let me just add that I love this picture and have made it my desktop on my work computer.

* I'm no longer giving into Western Civilization's too-restrictive list methods. I'll number lists anyway I want to, and you're not the boss of me, Western Civilization.

**Aren't people who say that really a bunch of jerks? I mean, except me, because I really don't watch all that much television. But everyone else who says that, yeah. They're jerks.

250=1: Story One.

2012-01-03T00:12:00.004-12:00

What's this about? Click here.

Children's Magazines Are Full Of Lies.

For the 74th time, on his 37th beach vacation, Kincaid walked the shore just after the tide went out. Alone on the beach, sand sifting into his sandals wetly, he shuffled along knowing he would not find what he was looking for.

Somewhere, in the past, which in his thoughts was a country he’d never visit no matter how many travelogues of it he watched, a little boy lay on the floor, a magazine spread out before him showing a glossy photo of a sea urchin and a crab in a tiny pool of water, trapped in the rocks after the tide went out. It was a private ocean, and Kincaid, like that little boy from the other country would, eventually, too, had spent his life looking for one.

Later today, he’d take Olivia to ride on roller-coasters. They would stop for pizza at that restaurant. But for now, Kincaid simply walked by himself, the taste of corn flakes on his breath. When he saw rocky outcroppings he climbed on them, carefully, watching where he put his hands and his feet, each time to no avail.

“Why do you get up so early?” Claudia asked him once on vacation. He’d shrugged. “I like to not waste time on vacation,” he’d said.

“Next year, maybe, we’ll go to the mountains,” Kincaid told the surf. But he knew it wasn’t true. There are 217,490 miles of coastline in the world, and he was not getting younger.

250=1: The Complete List Of Stories and Explanation.

2012-01-03T00:06:00.005-12:00

Page down for an explanation of this.

1. Children's Magazines Are Full Of Lies

2. Everyone In The World Is Copying Me In Advance.

250=1 is a new challenge I've set for myself. (Note: although it's beginning to be posted in 2012, it's not a New Year's Resolution, as I never make New Year's Resolutions. Why postpone doing whatever it is you intend to do? No, I'm starting to post it now because I had too much other stuff to post last week between Christmas and New Year's, and so didn't get around to this.)

250=1 came about because I like writing long stories. The longer the better, as far as I'm concerned, because if I like a story I never want it to end. And so I decided to challenge myself, the way I once saw a giant, steep hill in Oakland, California and went jogging there just so I could try to jog up that hill, but in this case the challenge was to write short stories.

And not just any short story: A short story of exactly -- exactly -- 250 words.

Counting the title.

I'll be posting new ones from time to time, so check back often.

Today, Middle proves she reads my blog! (What the H?)

2012-01-02T04:03:00.005-12:00

What The H? is a semiregular guest spot written by Middle Daughter, who retains that title even though the birth of the twins pushed her off the center spot. Here's one she emailed me before Christmas, but I'm lazy and didn't publish it until today. Think of it as reminiscing.

************************************************************

I love getting paid for this…haha!

So as many of you don’t know I am a cook at a hospital and this past weekend was Christmas and with that comes holiday cookies.

I love to bake and I don’t actually get to bake much at my job because I grill sauté and steam items. But I had the pleasure of baking and frosting over 200, yes 200, cut out cookies over the weekend for the patients as well as the employees and the families of the patients and employees.

For those of you who know how to make cookie frosting you can skip the next few thoughts while I give others how I made my very simple yet delicious frosting.

Frosting: -Powdered Sugar
-Water
-Almond Extract (Or Vanilla if you prefer)
-And to add a little creativity food coloring

With a little love and a little patients my cookies turned out like this…

This is obviously not ALL of the cookies but you get the idea.

I got paid for an hour to decorate cookies and they were even more delicious than they look. Decorate some cookies and make sure that you share with people you love. It will bring all of you closer.

I can't stop listening to this song. (The Greatest Thing In The World, EVER!, 6)

2011-12-30T03:42:00.003-12:00

I began today listening to "Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk" by The New Pornographers and then slowly moved into The Airborne Toxic Event and then I found this song and now I can't stop listening to it.

What's weird is that the second line is "I've had my mind wrapped around this one song."

I think I've just been hypnotized.

Age doesn't get lighter with dreams (Friday's Sunday's Poem)

2011-12-30T02:38:00.004-12:00

Why He Decided To Live In Tomorrow

My mother and father died yesterday.

And I know what people say
About living in today

But that doesn’t make it easier to bear.

Too, I dropped a child’s toy just days ago.

My move to catch it was slow,
Seems I can’t let that go.

But that doesn’t make it easier to bear.

A month ago I almost quit my job.

I’d dreamed I might try something
Else to make a living

Dreams don’t get lighter with age.

At 39 I tried to write a movie script
At 35 I tried to run a marathon.
At 30 I thought life would be easy.
At 25 I thought my education done.
At 20 I hadn’t yet slipped

Into life.

Age doesn’t get lighter with dreams.

Tomorrow:

Tomorrow there are flying cars.
Tomorrow there are trips to the stars.
Tomorrow will be weather-controlled.
Tomorrow will be brave and bold.

Tomorrow doesn’t acknowledge today.
Tomorrow won’t shake hands with yesterday.
Tomorrow spits on last week and if it ever met a month ago Tuesday, it would kick it in the shins and skip away laughing because Tomorrow has no weight.

Tomorrow is easy to bear.

_____________________________________________________________________

About the Poem: I wrote this poem just after I heard about the island of Samoa deciding to skip December 30 entirely and move ahead to December 31. The concept of simply skipping a day seemed amazing to me, provided that you skip the right day, but more amazing to me was the idea that you could suddenly declare it tomorrow instead of today.

This poem is not about me.

I should add that. Too many people think everything written in the first person is (semi?)autobiographical. This poem is not.

There is one part that's a little about me: I really did drop one of Mr Bunches' toys the other day, a train engine he'd just bought at the store, and a wheel broke off of it, and it made him super-sad, so sad that I then bought him a Batman action figure to make up for it, but it was a very poignant moment, so I decided to use that here. But the rest of the poem is made up. I am not living in tomorrow or even worried about tomorrow.

I love today too much to cheat on it.

About the Hot Actress: I picked this one. It's Lea Seydoux, who plays an assassin in Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol, which Sweetie and I saw Wednesday night and which was really incredible even if it did kind of jump over major plot holes by saying "Let's just ignore that major plot hole." I picked her because everyone thinks that other girl is so hot, the one who stars in it, but I didn't think she was all that great-looking, and [SPOILER ALERT!] she is, like, the worst IMF agent EVER. I can't imagine her performance reviews go well each year.

Improve your Mr Bunches vocabulary. (Life With Unicorns)

2011-12-28T06:27:00.002-12:00

This is Mr Bunches, just before I left for work this morning. He's playing on the computer, and wearing the shirt he picked out:

I bring this up because when I asked him what shirt he wanted to wear, he pointed to his drawer and said "X-Ray."

I picked up that shirt, the one he was pointing to, and said "This one?"

And he said: "Yeah. X-Ray."

I'm going to start a Mr Bunches Dictionary, I think, in which smokestacks are volcanoes and rugby shirts are X-rays.

The first 1,000 buyers get a kiss from Sexy Cop...

2011-12-28T04:15:00.008-12:00

... or an Angel, if you'd like.

Santa, Godzilla and Jesus Walk Into A Bar...

is now available as an eBook on your Kindle, for just $0.99.

I know, I know: You're thinking "Why would I pay ninety-nine cents for something I could read for free on your blog?"

What? You weren't thinking that? You were still stuck on that kiss from Sexy Cop or the Angel? Let's move on, here.

Here's 5 reasons why you'd pay $0.99 for an ebook you already read for free on my blog:

1. If you download it to your Kindle, you can read it on the subway and that cute girl, the one with the glasses that make her look all smart/sexy, will notice you reading it and think you're hip and strike up a conversation.

2. It gives you a perfectly legitimate reason for typing "Godzilla" into the search bar of your Kindle, as opposed to all those other times when you did it just to see what came up.

3. It'll irritate your husband/wife/Republicans/Democrats/that jerk neighbor with his dog who's always cutting across your lawn. (Choose one or more.) I don't know how it will irritate them, but it will. Take my word for it.

4. In the e-book version, it's easier to picture the Angel and Sexy Cop looking like whoever it is you're currently all hung up on and fantasizing about.

5. I've deleted the posts off my blog so you can't read them for free anymore, and you're going to want to re-read this story about a zillion times, right?

PLUS! A SPECIAL BONUS REASON FOR WHY YOU SHOULD GO DOWNLOAD THIS BOOK!

6. Because I thought we were friends, man. I thought we meant something to each other. I'd totally do it for you. You know, if I could have a million dollars, or the chance to buy your book for $0.99 on my Kindle, I would totally pick buy your book for $0.99 on the Kindle.

No, wait. That's stupid. I would take the million dollars and then I would buy two of your books. Maybe three. That's what kind of guy I am. So you millionaires reading this blog, go buy three copies of my book on the Kindle. The rest of you, buy one, will you? Or at least go give it a good review. Because I'm also going to do this: If you go review my book -- you don't even have to buy it, and you don't have to give it a good review -- I will enter your name in a drawing to get a signed copy of the proof version of the hardcover (which isn't even available yet.) I'll hold that open for about 30 days to give you a chance, even though you could go do it right now.

That's Boss-level stuff, there: An original, demo copy signed by me. And it'll carry an inspiring quote, like "Chase your dreams" or "What's black and white and red all over?"*, to boot.

So:

Go buy the book on your Kindle.

Or click here to go leave a review of "Santa, Godzilla, and Jesus Walk Into A Bar..."

Or just Kindle it up. I'm trying to make that a verb: Kindle. Work with me, here.

*A communist penguin, that's what.

Actually, in the picture, it looks quite pleasant, though. (My Daily Walk, 10)

2011-12-27T09:50:00.002-12:00

What I Saw:

This is the State Office Building. Although hard to tell from this
picture, this building is one of the most foreboding, grim-looking
buildings you will ever see. I picture that brain thing in A Wrinkle In Time
working in a building like this.

I took this because I don't know what
"Swink" is or what it's supposed to mean.

What I Listened To:

Most of the second half of this week's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me podcast, featuring a Neil Gaiman interview.

How many steps I walked, according to my Dollar Store Pedometer: 1. But it changed to 2 as I looked. Who says a watched pot never boils?

One Thing I Thought About: "I may have made a mistake not wearing a jacket today." (I thought that a lot.)

Today's Artsy Black & White Photo With Cringeworthy Title:

"I wonder if it's legal to take a picture of someone's office from outside?"

Today's Narnian Door:

Thanks for wishing the Shaw Twins Merry Christmas!

2011-12-27T09:19:00.002-12:00

All these people wished Mateo and McHale Shaw a Merry Christmas...

Andrew Leon, who blogs at Strange Pegs and who wrote The House On The Corner, which you can buy here.

Devin Pena, who is Kora's father, an activist, and a blogger: Follow him on Twitter here, and read ab0ut his efforts to open the Chop Wood Carry Water Retreat here.

J.L. Campbell, who blogs at The Character Depot, and who writes romantic suspense, women's fiction, and YA. Her latest, Don't Get Mad... Get Even is available here.

Claire Lachance, who blogs at Claire Lachance: Writer, Nurse, Mom...,

Author Rusty Webb, who blogs at The Blutonian Death Egg. Buy his incredible book A Dead God's Wrath here.

Author Michael Offutt; Go click "to-read" on his upcoming sci-fi book "Slipstream."

Author Patrick Dilloway. Go buy his awesome book "Where You Belong," and give it to someone as a gift. And buy one for yourself.

...but only one gets $20 in an Amazon Gift card. The winner was chosen by assigning each person a number (from top to bottom, 1-7) and going to Random.org, where the random number was:

Which is Claire LaChance. Claire, Click here to email me the address you'd like it sent to!

This is all within give blocks of my office. (My Daily Walk, 9)

2011-12-22T08:45:00.004-12:00

What I Saw:

What I Listened To:

Hymn 101, Joe Pug. (I listened to this twice. It's an excellent song to walk through the woods on a cold December day as you burn off steam from a frustrating morning and realize what's really important.)

(What's really important is whatever's really important.)

Adventures In Solitude, The New Pornographers

Navras, Juno Reactor

How many steps I walked, according to my Dollar Store Pedometer: 742. That actually sounds about right, because I did a lot of hills and that path was kind of hard to navigate.

One Thing I Thought About: "Is there an app or program that would let you make a photo mosaic thing where you combine all your little pictures into one big picture? That would be neat." (There is. I looked it up when I got back.)

Today's Artsy Black & White Photo With Cringeworthy Title:

"Was This Really The Best Way To Tell Him?"

Today's Narnian Door:

My Daily Walk, 8

2011-12-21T08:26:00.004-12:00

What I Saw:

What I Listened To:

The "How To Do Everything" podcasts relating to NFL numbers, staying awake while driving, UFO landings, and some other stuff.

How many steps I walked, according to my Dollar Store Pedometer: It was completely blank when I finished. Didn't even say zero. It's like my walk never happened.

One Thing I Thought About: "What's a holistic pet grooming, I wonder?"

Today's Artsy Black & White Photo With Cringeworthy Title:

"Who photographs the photographers?"

Today's Narnian Door:

"Twenty Four Hours Of Pizza": A tale of love, betrayal, patriotism,guilt, innocence, Higgs Bosons, intrigue, and, above all, LEFTOVER PIZZA!

2011-12-21T07:00:00.012-12:00

Yesterday, on Twitter, Michael Offutt declared that he would never believe that there is leftover pizza in my house without photographic proof.

As it happens, Sweetie had a meeting with the boys' teachers yesterday, and they ordered in pizza. So there was an entire pizza waiting when I got home from work. Let's see what happens!

Later...

A little later...

*See FOOTNOTE!

Still later...

Hey, what's that? But wait... there's more!

Later...

Later...

The Sweet Taste Of Victory... and LEFTOVER PIZZA!

*FOOTNOTE: The trip to McDonald's was after the health club. It was a reward for Mr Bunches, who (the health club playroom reported) had done "really well" sharing a puzzle with another kid. So when I said "Where should we go as a reward for good sharing?" Mr Bunches said: "Krabby Patties."**

**That is what he calls McDonald's.

SUPERXmas! A Quick Update!

2011-12-20T23:32:00.003-12:00

And in no particular order, which is just great for you, because it means my ramblings will make less sense than ever.

I have, of course, continued SUPERXmas! even though I've spent most of my time blogging, and so I'm going to do a quick update here using pictures and, of course, words, because words are my first-favorite way to say things.

So here goes:

My toaster is insufficiently cool, is but one of the things I learned while doing Xmas Shopping Round One, when Mr Bunches and I wandered into the small appliance aisles and saw toasters that are way cooler than the one we've got. I particularly liked the purple one, but the red one would probably get more girls if you're a single guy.

Mr F is not asleep here. He's reading a book he wanted to buy. That's on the same trip, which was (I think) Monday the 14th, when we picked up 90% of the presents that we still had to get including the present that we got which made us get another present: If you look at the cart, you'll see Shark Attack Hot Wheels on the bottom, which is a present Mr Bunches wanted very much.

We took a chance and bought it for him despite the fact that he was there on the trip, because he was on my shoulders and couldn't see the cart, but he noticed the Hot Wheels set on the way home and then just kept saying "Shark Attack Hot Wheels?!" in a hopeful, pleading voice over and over until we gave in and let him play with it, so we had to go back out and get him a new Xmas present.

Also: They had these.

This is really not Xmas related at all. Mr F fell was sitting on his dresser reading and he fell asleep. I thought it was cute, especially because he was wearing his Crocs.

Here's a turkey a client gave me as a thank you for being an awesome lawyer. So I get poultry for doing this.

This is the black-and-white photo of a Christmas tree that goes with a "My Daily Walk" post a while back when I couldn't post my photos. Yes, Rusty: You should take pictures while you walk. I do it because (a) I love pictures almost as much as I love words and (b) it makes you really look at things around you if you're trying to find interesting photos.

I liked that you could see how big the actual toy was, and that they had "boulders" in quotes so that nobody would sue them when the toy wouldn't eat actual boulders.

Last Thursday, we got to go with Mr Bunches to his school and make Gingerbread houses. Mr Bunches picked out all his decorations and did almost all the frosting himself, and then put all the decorations on himself. His was the best in the class. Sorry, other parents. It's true. And I'll explain why.

Because he used the stars like this, without any prompting from me or Sweetie, and he was the only kid in the class to do that. Genius? Or supergenius? You don't have to sell me on Mr Bunches. I'm buying.

Two ornaments on Xmas Shopping Round Two caught my eye because I can't imagine who wants to hang a Bud Light can on their Christmas tree, and is this actually better than just hanging a real Bud Light can on your tree?

And then for the life of me I couldn't figure out why they chose The Man In Black as the song this ornament plays. Johnny sang Christmas songs, you know. I remember my dad playing Johnny's Christmas album. Go Tell It On The Mountain is a classic.

Here, by the way, is Mr Bunches at the outset of the Gingerbread House project.

This is my niece on Saturday, trying on the princess dress and feather boa we gave her for Christmas. The dress was one of four things she asked for, the other three things being (1) high heeled shoes (2) a chainsaw and (3) a gun.

The feather boa was Sweetie's idea.

This is a Narnian door from one of my walks where I couldn't post the pictures.

Here are some more pictures from Christmas at my sister-in-law's. They show people standing around and playing,

and other people standing around and playing,

and then some more of that.

This was from two photos I posted on Twitter after which I was accused of having killed my kids with too much shopping. Mr Bunches hit the floor first. Mr F joined him, I think because he was jealous that Mr Bunches got to lay down in public and he didn't.

Here's Mr F, Chair Pioneer. Again, not really Christmas-y, but so what?

Decorating the tree! We began with the star, because Mr Bunches was excited about putting that on.

Then we laid out the supplies, the supplies being "candy" and "the tree." This was the year I finally realized "it's stupid to take apart this tree and then put it back together again next year," and so this year I am not taking the tree apart. I'm going to bag it and put it in the garage, fully assembled/lit because I hate assembling and putting lights on the tree, so this is it for me.

Gravity was much stronger this Xmas than past Xmases.

And that's the update for now. I've got other pictures but other things to do, so you'll have to wait for a picture of the completed tree.

Prior Days:

One: Putting up the yard decorations

Two: Making a Christmas list

Three: Sleep, Actually

Four: How to make popsicle stick (SUPER)Xmas trees, in 437 easy steps.

5 & 6: It's a SUPERXmas! Miracle.

Day 7: Santa, Babies.

Day 8: When Christmas was corykilverty

Day 9: Mr Bunches covers Katy Perry

Day 10: I'm sorry about that homemade gift I gave you.

Day 11: Here are some pictures of some things.

12 & 13: The year without a Bad Santa, and my office Xmas party.

Day 14: A pizza coupon at the start, a Candy Cane Blizzard at the end (PHOTO ESSAY!)

Day 15: The state holiday, or Christmas, or whatever tree.

My Daily Walk, 7

2011-12-20T09:39:00.003-12:00

I walked yesterday but again couldn't get the pictures to upload. So here's today's:

What I Saw:

This is a historic house but
the picture of the placque
didn't come out well.

What I Listened To:

Come Home, Chappo

Cheesecake Truck, King Missile:

Movement, LCD Soundsystem:

Black Wolf Blues, Champion Jack Dupree:

Movin' On Up, Primal Scream (The Best Christmas Song That Is Not Even A Christmas Song But Which I Am Just Going To Declare, Unilaterally, IS In Fact A Christmas Song (2008) )

God Only Knows, Petra Haden

Don't Be Shy, Spektrum:

How many steps I walked, according to my Dollar Store Pedometer: 0. (Looks like I got my money's worth.)

One Thing I Thought About: "For my birthday, I should have the kids get me a gift certificate to that italian restaurant built in an old church and babysit while I take Sweetie there."

Today's Artsy Black & White Photo With Cringeworthy Title:

"Homogeneity is the same everywhere."

Today's Narnian Door:

(I know for a fact that that door goes nowhere. See the window in the upper left, with the yellow square in it? That's my office. This is the alley I look out from my window, and the lower floor is ours and there is nothing on the other side of that door... in this world.)

My Daily Walk, 6

2011-12-16T05:47:00.003-12:00

What I Saw

Is that irony? I don't know.

What I listened to:

Bob Dylan's 115th Dream, Bob Dylan

Don't Know Why (You Stay), The Essex Green

Faith, The Violent Femmes

I Adore You, Esperanza Spalding

How many steps I walked, according to my Dollar Store Pedometer: 1,499. What? What happened there? Maybe I was taking extra-large steps.

One Thing I Thought About: "I should go to the Children's Museum with Mr Bunches and Mr F one of these days."

Today's Artsy Black & White Photo With Cringeworthy Title:

"Fowl Play"

Today's Narnian Door:

"Santa, Godzilla, and Jesus Walk Into A Bar." a/k/a, "The Greatest Xmas Story Ever Told"

2011-12-16T03:16:00.007-12:00

Time to 'up the ante', as they say. For two weeks or so, I have been celebrating SUPERXmas!, and I continue to do that even though I haven't been able to post much the past few days -- I'll get caught up soon -- but with just one week left until my SUPERXmas! vacation and 8 days until SUPERXmas! itself, I've decided to keep things fresh by writing the greatest Xmas story ever told.

Heather, who blogs at My Demon Spirits, has challenged people to write their most original scary or uplifting holiday story, with the winners getting prizes ranging from a $25 gift card to leather writing journals. And so, with that gauntlet thrown down, I have, well, picked it back up, and in the grand spirit of Charles Dickens (who serialized stories) and Ray Bradbury (who wrote stories) and other people I probably shouldn't be comparing myself to, as well as the grand spirit of the annual Christmas story, I have taken on Heather's challenge and have written what I have humbly decided is going to be the greatest Xmas story ever told.

Heather's contest calls for stories of only 500 words, which I find extremely limiting. It takes me 500 words just to clear my throat, as you know. So here's what I've done. Today's story is my official entry in Heather's contest. But each day, between now and Xmas Day, I will update the story until it's heartwarming thrilling amazing uplifting scary phenomenal will-probably-feature-a-choir-singing conclusion on Christmas Day:

Is that enough ado about nothing? It sure is. Here's Part one of:

"Santa,
Godzilla,
and Jesus
Walk Into A Bar"
a/k/a The Greatest Xmas Story Ever Told.

(By me.)

No orphans were harmed in the making of this story.

And only one orphan was harmed in the telling of it.

On the street in front of Nick, who makes UFOs for a living – it’s a long story, and there’s no time to explain it right now because we’re only moments away from something really important happening -- was a tiny brass trumpet.

It was dirty.

It was covered in soot and laying in a puddle of slush next to a crumpled pack of cigarettes, and looked as though it had a lipstick smear on it, on the wrong end, and maybe some teeth marks, too.

So naturally, Nick picked it up and was just seconds away from blowing into it when the door to the bar he’d just been told to leave opened up behind him and he heard the voice of the man who’d told him to leave, saying:

“Okay, okay. So here’s this one: Santa, Godzilla, and Jesus walk into a bar…”

and Nick paused with the dirty lipstick-smeared horn up to his mouth and listened because with a set up like that who wouldn’t, and then that important thing you were told was going to happen but you already forgot about it happened:

A body slammed to the ground in front of Nick, falling into, as it happens, the exact same puddle that Nick had just pulled the trumpet out of. How’s that for irony? We’re only just getting started, too.

Sirens immediately started up all around Nick, and from both ends of the street – he was in the middle of the block – came cop cars racing towards him, almost as if they’d been waiting for just this.

(They had been.)

Nick squatted down and looked at the body in front of him. It was a large man, laying on his stomach. His face was turned to the side, his eyes closed. Somehow, the fedora the man wore, which Nick hadn’t noticed until that moment, had stayed on when the man had fallen to the puddle from wherever it was he’d fallen from.

All the buildings on the street being three stories or shorter, Nick didn’t bother looking up above him. The man had fallen straight down from the sky, Nick knew, because it had happened right in front of his eyes.

“We’ll take care of this, sir,” said the surprisingly sexy cop who was suddenly standing in front of him. Nick blinked up at her, and saw her eyes narrow in a fetchingly cute way.

“Where’d you get that horn?” she said.

Nick looked down at his hand, still poised near his mouth.

“It’s a trumpet,” he said.

The cop reached for her waist, and Nick made his second regrettable decision that day, the first being “admitting to the bartender that he had no money before he ordered.”

He ran.

The third regrettable decision he made a second later when he looked back and saw the sexy lady cop lifting up the dead bum’s jacket, and noticed the dead bum had wings.

Click here to go the NEXT Part: He calls it "Xmas."

My Daily Walk, 5

2011-12-14T07:07:00.004-12:00

I didn't get to go for a walk yesterday because I was in a mediation settling a case from 11 to 5:15, which meant that I didn't even get to eat lunch, my brown-bag sitting back in my office, which, today, let me test a theory I've had, the theory being "Leftover pizza doesn't need to be refrigerated if kept in a lawyer's office overnight instead," and so I ate yesterday's lunch today and so far, so good. And if it turns out the pizza was bad, well, that's the way I want to go, with people saying around my grave "He sure loved his leftover pizza" and then trying hard not to add "Idiot."

Here's today's walk:

What I Saw:

I have been trying for 20 minutes to get my photos to upload from my phone. I know what Louis CK says about being grateful for the miracle of life and all and how I should be amazed that I can do some of the things I can do, like take a picture with a tiny computer and upload it to a worldwide information network, but I'm sorry, I'm not grateful when the thing that I'm promised I could do doesn't work. Listen, Louis CK: If I told you that you could snap your fingers and instantly transport to any time, any dimension that you wanted to, at will, and you snapped your fingers and it didn't happen, would you be all 'That's okay, I'm just grateful that I live in a time when people can snap their fingers and travel to other times and dimensions, even if it doesn't work for me perfectly?' What if it worked once and then the rest of the afternoon you kept having to restart and reset your fingers and then you had to take the batteries out of your fingers and count to ten?

Okay? SO $(#*%&$ you, Louis C.K. If a cell phone promises me "take a picture and load it to the Internet with one touch," then I'll be grateful when I can actually do it.

So what I saw was a picture of a church, in the fog, and it's amazing. And I'll post it if and when all the promises my cell phone company made me start coming true.

What I Listened To:

act of war, Owen Duff

Folksong Oblivion, The Phantom Band

Only If... Enya

Hot Soft Light, The Hold Steady

I'm a Roustabout, Elvis Presley

An Angel Returned, Trans Siberian Orchestra

No video posted because all the videos I could find are cruddy audio. Why post a cruddy audio video to Youtube, people? Do you think HTML grows on trees? It doesn't.

Black Cab, Jens Lekman

How many steps I walked, according to my Dollar Store Pedometer: 3,906, but I forgot to check it at the end of the walk and had it on for about a half hour after the walk, so my going around my firm handing out candy bars to celebrate the big settlement was included in the total, which, technically, is okay, because I was walking. Also: the candy bars were full-sized ones.

One Thing I Thought About: "I bet this is what Christmas in London is like." (Because of the fog, you see. The fog.)

Today's Artsy Black & White Photo With Cringeworthy Title:

"I know each Christmas is celebrated in color, but I always remember them in black and white."

[See foregoing rant vis a vis pictures.]

Today's Narnian Door:

[Ditto]

"Nobody who is covered in tattoos will ever live to see 90"-- Daniel Tosh (What the H?)

2011-12-14T04:37:00.005-12:00

Middle has tattoos, and yet doesn't see this story as a cautionary tale...
____________________________________________

A story that I think that the whole world needs to hear…
haha.

So I was visiting with some friends the other night while I was getting my tattoo touched up and my friend (who was touching up my tattoo) asked me if I had read the story online about the tattoo artist in Iowa who got the greatest revenge on his girlfriend.

I, of course, had not, so he began telling me the story. And let me tell you, for all of you who are reading this, this story is one of the best revenge stories I have heard in a very very long time.

So the story begins with a couple who have been dating for a while and the women starts to cheat on her boyfriend. A little while after she starting cheating on him he found out. He didn’t tell her that he knew and she had no idea that he had found out.

One night when she was out with her friends partying she decided that she was going to go and get a tattoo at her boyfriend's tattoo parlor. When she got there he noticed that she was beyond wasted but he didn’t want to miss his chance to get back at her for cheating on him.

Anyways, after noticing that she was wasted he had her sign a consent form saying that she allowed him to tattoo her and after she signed the consent form it was history for girl and a world of wonders to the tattoo artist/boyfriend soon to be ex-boyfriend.

It turns out that he was not going to give the tattoo that the girl had originally thought that she was thinking. She passed out from being too intoxicated in the tattoo chair and when she was passed out he decided to tattoo this to cover her entire back….

(Yep for those of you who may not be able to see it, this is a tattoo of a pile of dog poop surrounded by flies. )

When she woke up the next morning she not only had an incredible headache but she also discovered this on her back.
,
But when she tried to sue her now ex-boyfriend for tattooing this on her she was unable to do it because she had signed that little “consent form”.

Talk about revenge huh?

________________________________________________________________

Update: The Smoking Gun claims the story is bogus, a story I found when I had to get the image for this story.

Jokes.com

Daniel Tosh - Tattoos

comedians.comedycentral.com

Daniel Tosh

Comedians

Stand-Up

Perhaps things would have been different if the kids had gotten better grades or at least not lost so many pairs of pants.

2011-12-13T07:40:00.001-12:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Sprint for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

For the next 24 hours or so, all of my kids’ wishes could have come true.

When the older kids – Oldest Daughter, Middle Daughter, and The Boy – were growing up, one common theme we heard constantly was “Why don’t you get us a cell phone?”

(That was among the other common themes, themes which included “I didn’t do good on that test because my teacher hates kids” and “I don’t remember where I left my pants, why do you ask?”)

We never did get them a cell phone, though – not just because I’m supermean (or so I was told) but because a cell phone is a big, expensive thing to get a kid. The phones cost a lot of money, the plans cost a lot of money, and we didn’t have a lot of money.

Too bad for the kids – but too good for you and others who are looking for a cell phone – that Sprint wasn’t offering back then their very limited time offer of a 4G Android powered phone, free.

That wasn’t sufficiently emphatic, so let me say again:

FREE.

Android™ powered EVO 4G devices.

FREE.

FREE is one of my favorite words, and for the next day or so, you can make your kids’ or your wife’s or your own holiday wishes come true by getting the newest hottest phone on the market, for free.

With 4G speed. Now, I don’t know what the “g” stands for, but I know that the more g’s you have, the better and 4G is the most G’s you can get on the market. So you’ll have ALL THE G’s.

AND, Sprint is waiving the activation fees for a limited time when you get one of these phones. “Waiving the activation fee” is, of course, lawyerspeak for FREE!

A smartphone might be the ultimate present: a camera/websurfing/gaming toy that you can claim (as I do) is necessary for work but which you can then get Plants v. Zombies on so you have something to do during boring meetings. And right now, you can get them free. But the clock is running. Literally- go to the Sprint site and you’ll see the countdown clock telling you when this offer expires.

I had a double major, in law and "that is most definitely not art." (I Get Paid For Doing This)

2011-12-13T03:46:00.003-12:00

This diagram:

is from a meeting I had this morning. You, with your lack of law schooling, may not immediately recognize what that is, so I will tell you.

It's a statute of limitations.

Let's look at it again:

Do you see it now? Over on the left there, that flat line, that's your statute of limitations beginning to run. Then, a lawsuit is filed (the large vertical line), after which the statute is tolled, and then the lawsuit ends (the second vertical bar) which means you're then you're filing more motions and some of those motions may reopen the case which reinstates the tolling period which...

... is why you pay people like me a lot of money.

Trust me.

It all makes sense if you pay me a lot of money.

Just 12 Wishing Days Left 'Til Christmas:

2011-12-12T11:02:00.002-12:00

... So don't forget to go over to Caring Bridge and say Merry Christmas to Mateo and McHale Shaw, who were born joined at the spine and underwent a 19-hour surgery to separate them when they were just 3 years old. That was several years ago, and the doctors gave the boys almost no chance to survive, but years later they're still going strong through more surgeries than anyone should ever have to suffer through.

Their parents, Ryan and Angie Shaw, make frequent trips to Washington D.C. for ongoing medical care, care which is provided without cost at this point because the twins have used up all their medical coverage for their lifetime. (Donations to help defray expenses are accepted by a trust.) And despite everything else they have going on, the Shaws helped raise funds for a handicapped accessible playground near them, so that Mateo and McHale (their names mean gift of god) could play, too.

These boys, and this family, have gone through more struggles in their life in just five years than most of us will in 100. And yet they think about others and in every picture I see of them, they're smiling.

I'm trying to get everyone to say "Merry Christmas" to the Shaws, and you can do this easily by going over to their website at Caring Bridge. You'll have to provide an email address, and then sign their guestbook. It takes less than two minutes, and if you do it, I'll not just think you're a great person. but I'll also put your name in a drawing to win a $20 gift card.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE SHAWS' CARING BRIDGE SITE, and then click the 'guestbook' link to say Merry Xmas!

People who have done this so far:

Andrew Leon, who blogs at Strange Pegs and who wrote The House On The Corner, which you can buy here.

Devin Pena, who is Kora's father, an activist, and a blogger: Follow him on Twitter here, and read ab0ut his efforts to open the Chop Wood Carry Water Retreat here.

J.L. Campbell, who blogs at The Character Depot, and who writes romantic suspense, women's fiction, and YA. Her latest, Don't Get Mad... Get Even is available here.

Claire Lachance, who blogs at Claire Lachance: Writer, Nurse, Mom...,

Author Rusty Webb, who blogs at The Blutonian Death Egg. Buy his incredible book A Dead God's Wrath here.

Author Michael Offutt; Go click "to-read" on his upcoming sci-fi book "Slipstream."

Author Patrick Dilloway. Go buy his awesome book "Where You Belong," and give it to someone as a gift. And buy one for yourself.

Remember: On Christmas Day, I'm going to put the names of everyone who has done this into a hat, draw a name out and give that person a $20 gift card.

So go on!

My Daily Walk, 4

2011-12-12T05:57:00.004-12:00

What I Saw:

Remember the days when yoga wasn't rationed?

Mr Bunches calls smokestacks, "volcanoes." "Hi, volcanoes," he says, and now I like smokestacks.

Below is #Occupy Madison:

Click here for more info or to help out Occupy Madison.

What I Listened To:

Celestial Soda Pop, Ray Lynch:

15 To 20, The Phenomenal Handclap Band:

Year of the Dog, The Lovely Sparrows:

(I listened to that one twice.)

Heartache Boulevard, Eilen Jewell:

Sea Lion Woman, Feist:

How many steps I walked, according to my Dollar Store Pedometer: I forgot it in my car, so let's just go with a billion.

One Thing I Thought About: "How long have I had these action figures in my coat pocket?"

Today's Artsy Black & White Photo With Cringeworthy Title:

"When I was young, I thought I could go anywhere,
but now I realize I was always fenced in."

Today's Narnian Door:

There's no handle, and no spot for one. In this world, anyway.

SUPERXmas, Day 15: The State Holiday... er... Christmas... er... WHATEVER tree.

2011-12-12T03:23:00.005-12:00

If you're the type of person who doesn't like all these words, you can always page down to find three videos, each about 10 seconds or less in length, that will fulfill your SUPERXmas!/ADHD needs.

For the rest of us/you/me, yesterday, I and Mr Bunches and Mr F did our usual Sunday morning routine, which was to go to the office for a while and do a little busywork before heading out for a day of fun, adventure, not having the patience to wait for a choir to perform, and eventually going to get milk.

Or, SUPERXmas!, for short.

My office is directly across the street from the State Capitol, which has been the scene of lots of controversy this year; it was relatively recently that they took the armed guards out of the building and started letting people enter without being almost strip-searched, and even that didn't reduce the tensions after our idiot governor decided to call it a "Christmas Tree" instead of a "Holiday Tree," that annual debate being the single-most-important thing that most people can think of, and if you ask me, people who worry about what the stupid tree is called are missing... well, a lot of things, but the point is one of the things they're missing.

Those people who shouted down a childrens' choir in Rhode Island, for example: What was it, exactly, that they were standing up for?

The "right" to call a tree a "Christmas tree?" That's a funny thing to stand up for, considering that evergreen trees are used in pagan rituals, too.

The "right" to have Christmas placed front-and-center in December? That's a weird thing to demand, too, given that "Christmas" celebrates Jesus' birth anywhere from four months too late to six months too late -- most people in the know have determined that Jesus was born sometime between June 17 and August 22.

So you Rhode Islanders, and others who protest what a tree is called, were standing up for the right to celebrate a pagan symbol that was adopted ("plagiarized") centuries later by your religion, and is now used to celebrate the day the government says we should rather than the real day.

Just thought you'd want to know.

I'd originally anticipated that our visit to the Whatever Tree would be brief -- it's a tree, you go look at it, and move on, kind of like when you go visit someone's newborn baby-- but I hadn't counted on the hypnotic, mystical effect the Whatever Tree would have on the boys.

As soon as we got to the Capitol, they ran forward to the rotunda where the giant tree is located, and Mr Bunches immediately noted the train that was running beneath it, and they both stared up at the Whatever Tree, and then sat down to just sit and look at it.

So, I sat with them for a few minutes. Why not? When was the last time you just sat and looked at a big public Whatever Tree?

After we sat there for a few minutes -- with Mr Bunches naming the parts of the train (Engine, coal car, box car, water car, caboose!) -- we decided to get some alternate looks at the Whatever Tree, so we went up to the second level of the Capitol, where Mr Bunches looked through the bars to see the Tree and the Train,

while Mr F hung back with me because Mr F is now afraid of heights and might be more afraid of them than I am.

Then it was up to the Third level, for an even-higher-up glimpse at the Whatever Tree, before we headed back down to the ground level, where Mr Bunches wanted to sit and watch the train for a while.

As he did that, I looked more closely at the children-made ornaments on the Whatever Tree, finding ones that celebrated:

Gingerbread Santa: At first, I thought it was African-American Santa, but there were other Gingerbread Men on the Tree:

And Christmas Royal Buckingham Palace Guard

Who might instead be Christmas Russian Hat Wearing Dancer, for all I know, and then I found my favorite Christmas Ornament of all,

Christmas Chopper Attack:

Yep. That's a Patriotic Helicopter Bombing a U.S. Tank on a Christmas Ornament. The country of origin of the Chopper is unknown, so I hope that's not Christmas Friendly Fire. But is Christmas Taliban Resistance really any better? That's for future generations to decide.

And here are the promised videos:

First up: Mr F says tree! That may not seem like much, but it really is phenomenal:

Then, in case you wondered what Santa says, Mr F and Mr Bunches can fill you in:

PS: Later that night, I sent this picture to the older kids, Oldest, Middle, and The Boy:

I said "this is what we did today," and Oldest immediately called me up and said "That's not how I thought you were going to decorate the tree!"

I said: "That's not our tree. It's the holiday tree at the Capitol."

Oldest said: "Oh. I thought it was your tree."

To which I said: "It's forty feet tall. What did you think we did?"

She had no answer.

Prior Days:

One: Putting up the yard decorations

Two: Making a Christmas list

Three: Sleep, Actually

Four: How to make popsicle stick (SUPER)Xmas trees, in 437 easy steps.

5 & 6: It's a SUPERXmas! Miracle.

Day 7: Santa, Babies.

Day 8: When Christmas was corykilverty

Day 9: Mr Bunches covers Katy Perry

Day 10: I'm sorry about that homemade gift I gave you.

Day 11: Here are some pictures of some things.

12 & 13: The year without a Bad Santa, and my office Xmas party.

Day 14: A pizza coupon at the start, a Candy Cane Blizzard at the end (PHOTO ESSAY!)

Just 12 WISHING days left until Christmas...

2011-12-12T02:42:00.004-12:00

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE SHAWS' CARING BRIDGE SITE, and then click the 'guestbook' link to say Merry Xmas!

People who have done this so far:

Devin Pena, who is Kora's father, an activist, and a blogger: Follow him on Twitter here, and read ab0ut his efforts to open the Chop Wood Carry Water Retreat here.

J.L. Campbell, who blogs at The Character Depot, and who writes romantic suspense, women's fiction, and YA. Her latest, Don't Get Mad... Get Even is available here.

Claire Lachance, who blogs at Claire Lachance: Writer, Nurse, Mom...,

Author Rusty Webb, who blogs at The Blutonian Death Egg. Buy his incredible book A Dead God's Wrath here.

Author Michael Offutt; Go click "to-read" on his upcoming sci-fi book "Slipstream."

Author Patrick Dilloway. Go buy his awesome book "Where You Belong," and give it to someone as a gift. And buy one for yourself.

Remember: On Christmas Day, I'm going to put the names of everyone who has done this into a hat, draw a name out and give that person a $20 gift card.

So go on!

This week in budgeting (Thinking The Lions)

2011-12-11T12:59:00.000-12:00

This was my contribution to the discussion:

SUPERXmas! Day 14: We begin with a coupon for free pizza, and end with a candy cane Blizzard (TM) (It's a SUPERXmas! Photo Essay!).

2011-12-11T03:09:00.009-12:00

No words*. Just pictures.

*Well, not many.

ARRRRGHHGGH!

Prior days:
Prior Days:

One: Putting up the yard decorations

Two: Making a Christmas list

Three: Sleep, Actually

Four: How to make popsicle stick (SUPER)Xmas trees, in 437 easy steps.

5 & 6: It's a SUPERXmas! Miracle.

Day 7: Santa, Babies.

Day 8: When Christmas was corykilverty

Day 9: Mr Bunches covers Katy Perry

Day 10: I'm sorry about that homemade gift I gave you.

Day 11: Here are some pictures of some things.

12 & 13: The year without a Bad Santa, and my office Xmas party.

How about "I'm feeling a little arjvmydgs?" (Life With Unicorns)

2011-12-10T09:24:00.002-12:00

Mr Bunches was working on his alphabet today, and when I saw what he'd laid out:

I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what words he was trying to spell... before realizing he'd just sorted them by color.

But that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a couxflir. Especially if that couxflir is bhqezkwnt.