Stained Pants in a Ziploc Bag

But watch the cursing

Caroline: cnn.com: "Jesus' return set for May 21, 2011?"

Caroline: I should make a casserole for such an occasion.

Ryan: I was just going to say: "I haven't even prepared a room for him!"
I'll have to dust off that old manger in the garage.

Caroline: But you're remodeling your basement, that's got to count for something. It's like you knew.

Ryan: I knew the wife was pregnant.

Ryan: Our boys would be total best buds with the J-Man.

Caroline: BFFs

Ryan: They'd totally play X-Box.

Ryan: Favorite game: "Halo"

Caroline: Natch

Daddy's Little Tree Hugger

WANT!

WANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Double Take

This is a screen capture of an ad that appears on SiteMeter. It's actually an ad for eye glasses, but when I first saw it I thought "What the hell is that raccoon doing with a samurai sword?

Maybe I need glasses or something.

RACE to the Captain's Chair

I walked through the local RACE exhibit today, as a sort of work field trip, and I made the following astounding discovery:

The Science of Flatulence

Just when I thought I wouldn't be able to come up with a good blog topic this week, I happened to be perusing MSNBC.com and saw the following headline: "How to get boys to read? Try a book on farts." Immediately, I knew I was going to have to check out the article. Because, you know. . . FARTS!

For an article with such an attention-grabbing headline, some of the first introductory paragraphs just didn't deliver what I was hoping for. For example:

Boys have lagged behind girls in reading achievement for more than 20 years, but the gender gap now exists in nearly every state and has widened to mammoth proportions.

See what I mean? Boring! I was lured by the siren song of farts, and now I had to slog through stuff about a "gender gap?" The article was losing me, in other words. Thankfully, the article eventually went on to explain what I've already known for over 30 years. Namely, if you want to get young boys interested in learning, you often have to start with the lowest common denominator: potty humor.

"Butts, farts. Whatever," said Amelia Yunker, a children's librarian in Farmington Hills, Mich. She hosted a grossology party with slime and an armpit noise demonstration. "Just get 'em reading. Worry about what they're reading later."

Sing it, sister!

Actually, I have my own anecdotal experience to draw upon in support of this learning initiative. Back when I was 10 or 11 years old, what I wanted more than anything else for my birthday was a chemistry set. I didn't want the set because I wanted to learn anything, necessarily; rather, I was mesmerized by the picture of the alcohol burning thing-a-mabob that was used to heat up test tubes. That thing alone sold me on a possible life as a scientist.

Lo and behold, my parents bought me a chemistry set for my birthday, and within a couple short hours, I had everything set up in the basement, ready to embark on my new Dr. Jekyl career. After the first few "experiments," however, I was rapidly starting to lose interest. One experiment, for example, was titled "Why hard water is a baddy." Leaving aside the terrible English, I nevertheless labored on that experiment to produce. . . chlorine.

Science, I was quickly starting to conclude, was for morons.

But then, about midway through my experiment book, I happened upon the greatest experiment science has come up with, even to this day. I can't for the life of me remember the title of the experiment, or what it was supposed to prove or disprove, but I remember that experiment like I cooked it up yesterday.

The experiment itself was simple enough. It called for a little bit of sulfur and a pea-sized chunk of wax to be placed inside a test tube, which I then heated up over the alcohol burning flame. The actual experiment also called for a piece of litmus paper to be placed at the top of the test tube but, I'm here to tell you, that piece of paper was COMPLETELY unnecessary.

The result of that experiment was FARTS. I mean, I don't know what kind of chemical reaction went on between the wax and sulfur when heated, but within ten minutes the entire house smelled exactly like the bathroom after my Dad had been in there for an hour. It was as if a semi trailer loaded with the rottenest of rotten eggs had crashed into our house.

My mother instructed me, in no uncertain terms, that I was never to conduct that "experiment" ever again, and I waited a good half hour before I cooked up another batch of fart science. Over the next several weeks, I drove my parents to the brink of insanity by repeatedly conducting that experiment. I called in friends from all over town to come to my house to see and smell science in action.

The experiment was pure murder on the test tubes, however. Each tube was only good for about three or four "experiments" before the bottoms became so bloated with old wax they were completely unusable. I also ran out of pure wax fairly quickly, but my scientific mind was quick to deduce that crayons were a perfectly acceptable substitute.

Eventually, unfortunately, I simply ran out of usable test tubes (and, for that matter, sulfur), and my mother flat out refused to buy me any replacements, knowing full well what I'd use them for. And so, my brief but shining career as a scientist came to a close at a shamefully young age.

I can't help but wonder, however, what kind of mathematics genius I would have turned out to be if only numbers somehow smelled like farts.

The waiting game

I feel as though I've been waiting for something to happen to me, when I should be out making things happen for me.

Perhaps I'm thinking things are more complicated than they need to be.

Aiden is looking forward to walking

Passing of the Torch

It honestly doesn't seem that long ago that we--we being the collective swarm mind of the Internet--were crowing with glee as the walking petri dish known as Paris Hilton was being carted off to the klink to serve her mandated stretch of time for being, well. . . for being Paris Hilton.

Well, time has passed. The lazy-eyed Paris Hilton has been ushered off the public stage and has now been replaced by one Lindsay Lohan, who dazzled us in "Mean Girls" with a pair of breasts that seemed to be a gift from the Great Spirit himself.

Lohan has been in rapid decline ever since, showing the world that, yes, you can actually destroy yourself in less than five years if you really apply yourself. The Lohan is now poised to serve a 90 sentence for failure to appear in court on charges of booze-related shenanigans, or something.

Now, while I'm all for justice being meted out to those famous people who believe themselves to be above such nonsense, there's something about this that just doesn't smell right:

"She is paying her new lawyer a fortune to fix this mess. She doesn't care what it takes," an insider tells me. "If Lindsay needs to start a Facebook campaign or set up protests or something like that she is totally into it. They are treating Lindsay differently because she is a star, so it's about time she used her star power to help her. She's seen the movie 'Chicago' several times, so it's not like she doesn't know how this sort of thing works!"

Sure, it's a great quote that's just dripping with jaw-dropping "No effing way" permeating throughout, but that's just it: no one can be THAT stupid, right? I'd like to know who this "insider" is before I bite all the way into the concept of someone believing a FaceBook campaign can set them free, or that "Chicago" is a template for beating the rap.

Color me unconvinced, in other words.

Salsa Nazi

We went to the nearby town of Byron this evening, thinking we'd go to popular Oxbow Park, not realizing the park closes at 4 p.m.

Before we went to the park and discovered it was closed, however, we decided to grab a bite to eat. We were going to go to Dairy Queen, but we decided to try the Mexican restaurant next door.

What transpired was an episode Seinfeld might label "The Salsa Nazi."

We sat down, and our server (also the owner) was very prompt, asking us if we wanted anything to drink. When we ordered water with a lemon slice, his irritation was so palpable, I could feel my tongue swell. So, we weren't totally surprised when he brought us plain water with no lemons or straws. We weren't going to say anything, because we knew what we were going to order to eat later wasn't going to improve his mood any.

The Salsa Nazi next brought the check to a table occupied by an older couple sitting near us. They asked for his name, and they seemed genuinely surprised when he said his name was the same as the name of the restaurant. It was clear they wanted his name so they could later call and complain, but instead the server/owner handed him his business card, and they certainly weren't going to give the owner the 411 regarding his terrible inter-personal skills. So, they simply paid for their meal and left.

The server/owner then came back to our table, and asked for our order, and when we said "We're going to have the fajitas," he took that to mean we'd both have an order of fajitas. We explained, no, we'd share a single order of fajitas, and he scribbled the order on his notepad so angrily, I expected ink to seep through the pad and start dripping on our table. To be fair, we also ordered chili con queso, but when he asked "Large?" and we responded "No, small," he visibly winced and then glared at our infant son, who had the audacity to enter his restaurant and eat Gerber food instead of pay for a child's meal.

Understand. My wife and I have 35 years of experience with American portions under our belts. We know that a single serving of fajitas at a Mexican restaurant can feed five people. We've known, for years, to only order a single serving of fajitas, ask for extra shells, and share them between us. Even when the Salsa Nazi eventually delivered the pared down version he thought would "teach us a lesson," it was still way more than enough for the two of us.

Tonight, in fact, was the first known time in my memory, that the server/owner of a restaurant actually stayed at the table upon delivering the check and waited for me to indicate a tip and sign the receipt, as if we were "dine and dash" risks. And, even though I gave a 35% tip (because the food, honestly, was excellent), he nevertheless seemed indignant about the whole exchange.

I don't mean to disparage this particular restaurant, mind you. As I said, the food was excellent. My wife even proclaimed it the best "local" Mexican restaurant food around.

But, Jeez, man. If you're an owner and you disdain your customers, at least pretend otherwise. Or stay in the kitchen.

First Steps, Sort Of

My infant son spent basically all of June insisting on relying on the army crawl technique as his preferred method of locomotion. For an entire month, like some sort of wounded soldier, he dragged himself around the house, and I could always tell where he was based entirely on the sounds of his strained, grunting breathing as he exerted way too much energy to go from one room to another.

On Monday, June 28, he had his nine-month doctor's check-up. When he returned home and was placed on the floor, it was if he just flipped a mental switch and he was suddenly crawling all over the place using the standard baby crawl technique. It was an amazingly fast transition that took us completely by surprise. In a single day, we went from being able to follow the sounds of our army-crawling baby, to frantically chasing the curious little terror all around the house.

When we finished most of the basement earlier this year, I thought the unfurnished family room would be an excellent place for my son to crawl around in; it's spacious, carpeted and almost completely free of obstacles. I thought I'd be able to put him down in the basement and he'd be crawling in a hazard free environment.

Much to my surprise, when I put my boy down in the basement family room last night, he covered the distance from one end of the room to the other in ridiculously fast time, and I practically had to catapult myself over to the stairway when the little stuntman managed to get to the third step in just a few short seconds. I didn't want to discourage his efforts, but I simply couldn't believe it when he was over halfway up the stairs. I mean, he'd never climbed a single stair in his life, but yet there he was zipping up the staircase as if he'd been doing it from day one.

And his sheer determination was also remarkable. Even though I was hovering right behind him, ready to catch him at the slightest sign of a misstep, he kept his eyes locked on that top step. That was his goal, and he wasn't going to be denied.

In the end, however, his reserve of baby energy proved to be his Achilles heel. After burning so much energy crawling around the basement, he had to abandon his quest a mere four steps away from the top, at which point he just stopped his progress, sat on the step and panted, like an Everest hiker at high elevation.

And so we begin the next phase of baby vigilance. His world has now gotten much larger and more accessible, and our world has gotten much more interesting.

The More You Know

To use the parlance of our times:

Spam: This is bulk, unsolicited e-mail, usually in the form of bad advertising for boner pills or Nigerian royalty scams. It's unclear what kind of success rate spammers realize, but they nevertheless exist in the hundreds of thousands.

Trolls: These are Internet commenters or e-mailers who exist anonymously (mostly) primarily just to be jerks. They typically ask you to kill yourself or to otherwise shut up. It's unclear what kind of psychological need is filled by being a troll, but they nevertheless exist in the hundreds of thousands.

Game Changer

Back in 2004 and 2005, I spent several months playing Star Wars: Galaxies, and I had a blast doing so, because I played by the rules and made my way up through the ranks, including grinding out all the mind-numbing "Camping" requirements to become a bounty hunter.

Players of the game gradually sorted out little exploits and hacks within the game to carve out powerful little niches for themselves, so you eventually had spaceports populated with doctors who, for a price, would offer "buffs" which would improve other players' vital stats for a couple hours, basically making people virtually un-killable by in-game enemies.

The game developers didn't like that, so they kept tweaking the rules, yanking the rugs out from under the players who had invested considerable time building their characters.

Doctor characters became useless, while other characters found themselves with all sorts of new, unearned, skills and powers. This, obviously, made a lot of people mad, while also making some other people very happy, so a transition period ensued during which people settled into the new roles, discovering new exploits and hacks. Weapon makers, for example, created some seriously powerful guns that could mow down in-game enemies with ease.

The game developers didn't like that, so once again they kept tweaking the rules, yanking the rugs out from under the players who had invested considerable time building their characters.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Whenever characters started getting a little too comfortable playing the game, the developers kept intervening to get the game's economic model working the way they envisioned by knocking down the incentives for characters to truly excel.

All of this culminated in 2005 with the much-reviled "Combat Upgrade," which marked the point at which I began to lose interest in the game. Rather than a tweaking of the rules, the combat upgrade completely overturned the applecart. For a good 20 minutes after I logged in and experienced the effects of the combat upgrade, I couldn't even get my character to move around, because my once-awesome armor was suddenly too heavy for me to maneuver within. This was followed later in the year with a New Game Enhancements surprise that was inflicted on players with only 24-hour notice.

So why do I bring all this up? Well, I stopped playing SWG in 2005, because the constant changes just drove me nuts, and it was ridiculous how poorly-thought-out some of the major changes were. I loved the game I originally started playing, but those damned developers just couldn't resist messing it up in an effort to attain a fair and balanced system. In the end, they just totally blew up what was originally a really awesome game.

And I can't help but see a lot of parallels when I look at how governments also butt in and try to fix things they deem broken. Just when people get comfortable playing the game under familiar rules, everything gets messed up when government steps in to try to make things more "fair," whatever the hell that means.

Eventually, the people simply aren't going to like the product being sold, and they'll find ways to leave the game.

Font Talk

Ryan: I really thought I'd have my freelance check by now.

Caroline: I expect mine on the `5th.

Caroline: 15th, even

Ryan: The `5 only comes around during Leap Year.

Caroline: two years, then

Ryan: What's sad is I initially couldn't figure out how you made the ` symbol.

Caroline: magical keyboard

Ryan: I was looking at the "1" key, thinking "did she use the Wingding font for that or something?

Caroline: I hot wingdingin'

Ryan: Heh. Wingding. I'm just happy we live in a world that has a wingding font.
Wingding 1, 2 AND 3, no less.

Caroline: Totally. One Wingding isn't enough. It's kind of like Ghetto Booty in that way.

Ryan: OH MY GOD.

Ryan: I was JUST GOING TO PROPOSE A GHETTO BOOTY FONT.

Caroline: LOLOLOLO

Ryan: That's some powerful fucking brainwave action there.

Caroline: Indeed it is

Ryan: With the Ghetto Booty font, any time there's a double o "oo" it will be represented by a miniature pair of sunglasses.

Caroline: I'd use that font ALL OF THE TIME.

Ryan: It would totally kill off Helvetica.

Caroline: And forget about Arial.

Ryan: Already forgotten.

Ryan: We have some of the geekiest convos in the universe.

Caroline: That's what makes them awesome.

Ryan: Our Ghetto Booty font would have so much bling, it would almost be illegal.

Caroline: BlingDings

Ryan: LOLO!

Caroline: And to think this convo started thanks to a typo.

Happy Fourth of July

Well, we made it. The 4th of July weekend is upon us.

There was a time in my life when the 4th of July was a month-long event, rather than simply a three day weekend. That was before the dark times, before the Empire. . . I mean, before a job, and a home, and payments and responsibilities, and all those other icky things that intrude into our lives: also known as "adulthood."

When I coming up, which is an old-timey way of saying "growing up," I started to prepare for the 4th of July during the first week of June, or even into May if I could swing it, by buying fireworks. Granted, fireworks were illegal in Minnesota at the time, but trying to keep fireworks out of the hands of determined children is like trying to keep Lindsay Lohan away from a bottle of Grey Goose.

It's funny, but one of my earlier memories was of my Dad taking my brother and me down to the basement--the darkest place on the planet--and lighting a couple of sparklers. The fact that's one of my earliest memories should tell you a bit about the deeply ingrained allure of fireworks flickering in my soul.

For a solid month, I'd build my fireworks stockpile and keep it under lock and key in my skate box. I'd open it from time to time to marvel at the colors and breathe in the spicy aroma of gunpowder just waiting to be ignited.

This year marks the first 4th of July for my son, Aiden, and I have to admit I'm a bit torn. On the one hand, I want him to enjoy the holiday and the fireworks that are part of it, but on the other hand (thank God I still have two) I remember all too well the misadventures I had with pyrotechnics over the years. I'm probably one of only a handful of Americans who never went into the military, but nevertheless managed to detonate a grenade in his parents' backyard. So, I've set some fairly dangerous firework precedents, and I can see in my baby boy's eyes the glint of a child who will be no stranger to the lighter and fuse, whether I encourage him or not.

Fireworks are now legal in Minnesota, which is to say the most boring fireworks on the planet. If it can leave the earth or make a boom, it's still illegal, so we're left with things that, to use industry lingo: "Emit showers of sparks." Which, that's still cool and all, and to a nine-month old I'm sure they're every bit as magical as my father with his sparkers in the basement, but my boy's bound to discover the real world of fireworks at some point. You can make fireworks as illegal in Minnesota as you want, after all; so long as we share a border with South Dakota, we're going to get the bigger stuff, just as sure as you're going to get cocaine coming out of Mexico.

Perhaps it's a bit premature to be worrying about how and when my son will discover his first firework artillery shell. Hopefully, if I show good judgement and safety this year, some tendrils of that cautionary behavior will make its way into his rapidly-developing mind and will exhibit itself in his firework use years from now.

So, this year, probably tomorrow, I'll buy a big assortment of Minnesota-approved fireworks, and I'll light them this weekend as he watches, no doubt with delighted eyes, and we'll celebrate together this ongoing experiment that is America.

Enjoy your Independence Day, and the independence that comes with it.

How many years in a name?

Ryan: You know, I was just thinking about the name "Matt."

Caroline: That's ... not interesting.

Ryan: You never think of an old person with the name of "Matt."

Ryan: A 90-year-old named Matt. I just can't see that.

Caroline: Or Ryan.

Ryan: Hey, I plan on dying at 50, so there.

Caroline: Shit, you'd better get livin'.

Ryan: Now, Caroline, that's an old person's name you could set your watch to.

Caroline: Old Caroliiiiiiiiiiine, good times never seemed so good

Ryan: Or so far away.

Ryan: Bradley is a good old person name, so you're safe there.

Caroline: PHEW

Ryan: Bradley is an old man, sucking thoughtfully on a corncob pipe, feeling the tingle in his right knee because it's gonna rain, sure 'nuff.

Caroline: Old man Bradley

Ryan: Marc's a goner at 52 though. Ain't no Old Man Marcs.

Caroline: He plans on dying at 56ish.

Ryan: Wait, he could always play the Marcus card, I guess. That would at least buy him into his 70s.

Caroline: It's the Marks who need to worry.

Ryan: If they try to go with Markus, God smites them on the spot on general principle.

Ryan: Matthew can get you into your 80s, I suppose.

Caroline: That's better

Ryan: There's really no way for me to get old with my name. Just "Ry" might let me limp into my 60s.

Caroline: And there's no using your middle name to help the cause.
Let's be honest.

Ryan: No. My parents pretty much doomed me with "Carroll."

Caroline: My middle name is Louise, which is a fantastic old-person name.

Ryan: Shit, you're set until you're 112.

Ryan: Carroll O'Conner made it to 76, so I could maybe go that route.

Caroline: Brittany Murphy proved that she didn't have an old-person's age.
Although Heath should be an old-person's name and that didn't pan out.

Ryan: If Brittany can't make it, then Britney is totally screwed.

Watering Can FAIL

Ryan: You know what's hilarious to me?

Caroline: I think the watering can was the problem.

Ryan: Isn't it always?

Caroline: Typically, yes.

Ryan: It's astounding she was able to keep on her feet as long as she did, frankly. Damn that's just funny! One of those videos that will always make you laugh.

Ryan: Maybe we could do a documentary about HER!!!!!!!!!! She could meet the news anchors!

Caroline: Totally!

Ryan: "Runway Girl"

Caroline: "Watering Can Fail"

Ryan: LOLO! I KNEW you were going to include something about the watering can.

Caroline: It's just too great not to.

Ryan: How many careers have been destroyed by watering cans?

Caroline: I bet she was all "I own this runway." Then the designer said she had to walk with the prop and all hell broke loose. Can not walk.

Ryan: It's generally understood watering cans can't walk themselves.

Caroline: And models can't walk with watering cans.

Happy Crawl Day!

Today was Aiden's nine-month doctor check-up. He received a clean bill of health and, even though his length and weight remain about average, his noggin continues to top the charts at an astonishing 97 percentile.

Perhaps inspired by all the confidence instilled in him by his successful check-up, Aiden apparently decided today was also the day he was just going to start crawling all over the place. Granted, he's been army crawling pretty much throughout June, but today marked the first time he just up and started crawling everywhere in the normal fashion.

Perhaps unfairly, I relied on a visual pointer to cajole him into demonstrating his new crawling ability, but I had to do what I had to do.

Ailing Automobile

I've officially owned my current automobile for ten years. The 1996 Cadillac Eldorado two door came to my attention in June of 2000 after the grandfather of a friend of mine passed away and the vehicle became available as the family looked to liquidate his assets. In other words, I bought an old-man's car because it had very low miles (39,000) and an equally low price.

I always stressed to friends and family that I planned to drive the Cadillac until it gave up its automotive ghost and was no longer driveable, and I'm beginning to suspect--now at 140,000 miles--that it may very well be nearing that once inconceivable fate. Rust now eats its way through both doors, the driver's side leather seat is now a cracked and broken mess, the front-end assembly can be heard dangerously rattling, and the driver's side window only goes back up when it damned-well feels like it.

Most of the cosmetic stuff doesn't both me. I can live with rust and a disintegrating car seat, but the front-end assembly rattle presents me with a bit of a cunundrum. Fixing it would cost in the realm of $800+, and I just don't quite believe it's worth that investment.

The irritating thing about the front-end assembly damage is that it was almost completely the fault of Yellowstone National Park. Specifically, it was a poorly-maintained access road in Yellowstone National Park that had no signs indicating it was in such poor condition most Humvees couldn't successfully traverse it. By the time I finished gingerly picking my way through that harrowing ordeal, I was frankly astounded I still had four functioning wheels beneath me.

I won't necessarily miss my Cadillac when it finally gives up the fight, but I will miss the fact the thing has been fully paid for since 2003. I don't look forward to the days of car payments again, although it will be nice to have a more practical automobile for the sake of carting my baby boy around.

Pickles, The New Lemon

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

One thing I repeatedly find myself bumping up against, that insists on being a problem, is that, when it comes to technology, I know a little about a whole lot of things, but I don't know enough about any of those things to really consider myself fluent.

Computers? I love 'em! I use 'em all the time! But, once you start stripping away the layers, eventually it will be revealed just how many applications I know very little about. I've tinkered with PhotoShop, for example, but it's just so big and scary that I usually go scampering back to MS Paint, which is just pathetic.

Or, take the Windows operating system. I know how to work my way around Windows fairly well, but the underlying secret about Windows is that it's basically really pretty window dressing for DOS. DOS is the skeleton upon which the Windows muscle and skin alight. However, call up a DOS prompt screen, and I may as well smash my keyboard with a sledgehammer, since the results would almost certainly be better.

I used to know my way really well around the Macintosh operating system, since my first actual desk computer was a Macintosh Performa 405. That machine got me through most of my college years, but by the end of its tenure, its 256 MB of hard drive space just wasn't cutting it. So, right about the time I should have been learning about all things Mac OS, I jumped ship to a Windows-based PC, because I simply HAD TO PLAY Command and Conquer: Red Alert.

I was briefly very interested in how computer networking worked, but after learning how to string five computers together for a weekend of playing Delta Force with some friends, I generally just kind of let that knowledge drain from my brain.

So it is, today, I find myself hampered when people ask me to fix their little technology problems. There's a chance I MIGHT be able to help, but it's most likely I'll have to get really lucky.

I honestly don't know what's better

The concept of something as deliciously awesome as Canned Unicorn Meat.

Or the fact they're getting sued.

Just so I remember

Sitting with my boy on the couch each morning, shortly after 7 a.m., feeding him a bottle of formula and watching television together is, for now, the purest little joy of my existence. I write this now so I remember it when he's become a nasty little asshole in his teenage years.

Something I didn't know until today

CNN.com has a special section dedicated to "Gay in America."

My father-in-law is gay and, having built up my own extensive list of anecdotes over the years, I have to say the whole gay lifestyle isn't as glamorous and witty as "Will and Grace" and "Queer Eye" would seem to suggest.

My Only World Cup Commentary

Via.

Use Technology to Solve the Panhandler Problem

The wise Solons of the Rochester City Council recently decided to take a closer look at the expanding popularity of panhandling in our fair city; this after the mayor and others experienced the effrontery of beggars hitting them up for a buck or two on the Peace Plaza.

It's one thing to have cardboard sign poets staking claims on off-ramps and overpasses, mining motorists of their compassion—that's tolerable—but when they start migrating downtown and advance to shoulder-tapping, that's something else entirely.

Whether the downtown beggars are cut from the same herd as the overpass panhandlers is questionable. I've personally been hit up for spare change by beggars downtown in times pre-dating the panhandling phenomenon. I've even been asked by individuals, on occasion, if I've found Jesus, as if one has gone missing. Regardless of their origin or intent, the downtown beggar variants are admittedly annoying, and for some people I can imagine they're somewhat intimidating. The panhandlers, by comparison, are mostly a visual nuisance.

So, what to do about the problem? The city council wants to look into the possibility of licenses for beggars, which is a curious solution. A panhandler is just a panhandler, after all. But a Licensed Panhandler almost sounds distinguished, as if they're panhandlers who can also inspect a house's electrical work.

Rather than legitimizing panhandlers, I think it might be far more effective to give them one of the biggest things they hate: exposure. This being the information age, with the omnipresence of digital cameras, cell phone cameras and relatively-inexpensive digital video cameras, I propose having some fun with the panhandlers.

Take their pictures. Conduct video interviews with them, if they're willing (don't be a jerk about it). Just as they're free to park themselves on an overpass and mope for dollars, so too are we free to take their pictures. They may not like it, but there's nothing they can legally do about it.

But pictures and videos aren't enough without a place for them to live. To the Internet! I figure, if Web sites dedicated to dog and cat pictures can thrive online, there simply has to be an online audience willing—nay, eager—to surf through panhandler images that have been altered to include humorous captions, along the lines of http://www.icanhascheezburger.com.

Yes, I can envision millions of people Googling their way to http://www.panhandled.com (looks like that domain will have to be purchased from GoDaddy.com. Figures!), where hilarious content awaits of panhandler images with such captions as "I'm on ur overpass, lackin' mah dignity" or "Oh, hai guyz! Spare me some change?"

After awhile, the word will get out to the panhandlers, and they'll eventually find themselves one evening in their apartments, perusing the Web on their laptops (which they totally have, trust me), and they'll see some of the most unflattering pictures of themselves imaginable, complete with captions mocking them mercilessly.

The results of such an online approach to the panhandler problem, I imagine, will be twofold. First off, panhandlers who don't respond well to merciless mockery will give up their career path and seek actual gainful employment. Second, it will make panhanders a national laughingstock, and motorists will opt to take their own pictures rather than hand over cash.

I'm telling you, this is a surefire cure.

Just a duck, taking a nap

Tonight after work, as I walked the seven minute trek from my office building back to my car, I happened upon a female duck that was taking a nap about a foot away from the sidewalk. It was so close, and so perfectly at peace, I probably could have reached out and touched it.

Rather than reach out and touch it, and contract bird flu, I opted to take out my Flip minicam and film the little critter. I don't know why I wanted to film it, exactly; there was just something about the dumb napping bird that struck me as somehow cute. After all, the sidewalk was a high foot traffic avenue, and there were cars and buses cruising by, yet the duck found that specific spot and decided it was perfect for a quick snooze. How could I NOT film it? Besides, I've been carrying that damned Flip camera around with me for months hoping to capture a major event on film so I could sell it to NBC for millions of dollars. It may have been a napping duck, not a major event, but it seemed filmworthy.

Now, my strength lies in writing. As far as public speaking goes, I'm hit and miss, and mostly miss. Further, as impromptu speaking goes, I'm borderline retarded. Further still, for the last eight months, I've been speaking in baby talk. Taken together, you have this:

"Nappy duck."

Nappy duck. The more I said the term silently in my head as I continued to walk back to my car, the more it amused me. Nappy duck.

By the time I got to my car, I was imagining a scenario in which both Daffy and Donald were calling my fictitious radio station, demanding my immediate termination for the insensitive slur against the duck community, with Daffy calling me "Dethspickable" and Donald so beside himself with rage he could only squawk unintelligibly and moult feathers in that endearing way he does. I was being called out by maligned mallards nationwide.

Sometimes, I think the walk back to my car after work is perhaps the absolute best time of day.

Unions Apparently Really ARE Evil

Screen shot from MSNBC.com:

And Suddenly He's a Little Boy

I was told, while my wife was still pregnant, that babies really start to exhibit personalities after three months. So, I was a little surprised at how much personality I actually saw reflected during the first week.

He was smiling--yes, actually smiling, not just gas-induced smiling--within the first month. For some reason, that still amazes me.

I look at him now, and personality abounds. I never know what he'll find amusing or interesting from moment to moment. His brain is going a mile a minute, and I would give almost anything to inhabit his mind for even a minute just to see what he's thinking, although I suspect it would be something along the lines of "HOLY SHIT!! EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!" in a perpetual loop.

Some nights after he's been put to bed, I steal myself away in my office and I watch some of the earliest videos I have of him, and I feel somewhat dismayed by the fact I almost can't remember what those early weeks and proceeding days were even like. I mean, I remember many of the details, but I strangely can't recall what emotions I was feeling. Exhausted, sure, but that's not really an emotion.

And now we're entering a phase, very soon, where he'll be crawling, opening a whole new world of exploration that will no doubt include the discovery of the cat door to the basement, and I'm forced to agree with the conclusion my parents reached during one of our many Skype sessions.

"He's really a little boy now."

I guess he is. I just kind of wish I would have noticed when that happened, exactly.

Baby laughs At Me crawling

Helen Thomas in Limerick Form

Helen Thomas long covered the White House
Against Democrats and Republicans she groused
Now press secretaries
Who she so long had teased
Will no longer be able to look down her blouse.

Helen Thomas looked regretfully at her shoes
After her ill-advised meltdown about Jews
She said some dumb things
And payback sure stings
Tonight she'll no doubt be hitting the booze.

As a White House reporter for nigh 50 years
And annoying press secretaries to tears
Despite her maturity
She lost job security
Anti-semitism can at least end SOME careers.

"Go home to Poland" Helen Thomas suggested
Which is a stupid thing for her to have requested
It's a pretty big mystery
How she's so ignorant of history
Perhaps in school she wasn't adequately tested.

Lemon Head

Memorial Day Recap

Ah, Memorial Day, a.k.a. "The Starter Pistol of Summer." I never seem to take adequate note of my Memorial Day activities, owing primarily to the fact I used to use Memorial Day to sleep until noon, and everything that followed was just more self-indulgent crapulence.

But now, I'm a Dad, so Memorial Day was a chance to see the world anew once more, through the babbling wonderment of an eight month old. It's easy to capture these kinds of days exclusively through the camera lens or the Flip video camera, but those only go so far. So, to the written word I turn.

Aiden began his day, as he usually does, at 7 a.m. It's uncanny, really, how punctual he is about waking at that hour. It's also uncanny how I've become programmed to wake up in anticipation of his waking up. Alarm clocks are for people without children, I've come to believe.

After his obligatory post-wake-up bottle of formula, he was ready to play, so we went into the porch, where he rolled and babbled and tried a few abortive attempts at crawling; all the mechanics are in place, but he can't seem to get them all to work together as a cohesive crawling whole. So, he tends to roll his way to whatever he wants, although he has performed some rough army crawling when an object particulary grabs his attention.

Then it was a quick jaunt downstairs to my office to fire up a Skype session, so my Dad could watch his grandson grab assorted objects off my desk and place them in his mouth. Skype is one of those technological innovations that I always knew was on the horizon, but I never figured it would be A) so damned cool and B) FREE. I don't imagine it will always be free, since fee-creep always tends to spoil this things eventually, but for now it's the chance to live like Star Trek, entirely free of charge. Amazing.

By that time, my wife had woken up and gotten ready for the day, and we decided Memorial Day would be the day we took Aiden to the house of his non-Skype Grandpa to use his swimming pool. I knew there would be some logistical things to take care of prior to actually putting Aiden in the pool, but I certainly didn't anticipate I'd find myself at Toys-R-Us loading up on swimming pool necessities, such as a baby-floatation device, a diaper-protecting swimming suit, assorted water toys and sunscreen. All told, the bill came to $91, which struck me as rather expensive for an outing that probably wouldn't be much longer than an hour.

To say Aiden enjoyed the swimming pool would be a supreme understatement. I didn't know what he'd think of the whole experience, because the water wasn't what you'd call. . . what's the word. . . WARM. While it wasn't cryogenically cold, it certainly could cause shrinkage. Regardless, Aiden couldn't wait to get in that pool. There was a brief lower-jaw quiver acknowledging the temperature drop, but other than that, it was pure, undiluted joy. He was practically crowing with delight. I could have bottled his excitement, since it was almost radiating off him in waves. It was one of those moments that make up for the last 200 changed diapers.

Then it was home for his afternoon nap as we waited for the time to pass before the Memorial Day dinner hosted at my mother-in-law's house. Once there, I broke out one of the water toys I'd purchased earlier in the day. While it's currently being marketed as a Toy Story 3 "Buzz Lightyear" rocket, old school water toy people like myself recognize it as a current iteration of the clown head and pointy clown hat toy from our youth. It was that magical toy that used a focused stream of hose water to levitate the clown hat above the clown head. Now it's a Buzz Lightyear rocket and launch pad. Whatever. It's still AWESOME.

While Aiden was far too young to do anything with the Buzz Lightyear water toy, his three-year-old cousin, Rosemary, immediately amused herself by running through the water stream. Although she started out wearing a swimming outfit, within about 30 seconds, she had stripped herself down to her birthday suit and was revelling in her nudity. It's odd how you just accept nudity from children. We all just kind of rolled our eyes in collective "Oh, it's just easier this way."

And so Memorial Day wrapped up with burgers, bratwurst, chips and beans, and Aiden slept like a rock, starting almost immediately once we got home. It was a great day, and I'm missing it already.

Aiden at the "Beach"

Cartoon Logic

Thanks to a now-daily routine of waking up with my infant son first thing in the morning, I'm becoming reacquainted with the cartoons of my own youth.

While I can stomach the pre-school-level broadcasts on the "NickJr" channel fairly admirably, eventually something will come on that's just geared for such slow-wits, it makes Mr. Roger's Neighborhood seem like theoretical physics by comparison. When those shows come on, I go up one channel to a cartoon network that replays all my old favorites, and I feel briefly ashamed that I think of them as my "old favorites."

First off, there's "The Smurfs." I really did love that show when I was just a lad, but it just doesn't hold up well now that I'm 35. Each and every smurf is presented as a total stereotype, right down to the insufferable "Brainy" who always ends up being catapulted out of the smurf village by his fellow exasperated smurfs. Why does he always, ALWAYS land on his head. You'd think a smurf that's supposedly as smart as Brainy would have the sense of mind to attempt some sort of in-air course correction so he at least lands on his feet; then he could attempt a roll of some kind. At least there would be a chance of him saving his glasses from being crumpled AGAIN.

Then there's the whole Gargamel and Azrael dynamic. Gargamel's bipolar relationship with his cat is frankly dumbfounding. One minute Gargamel is laughing maniacally and talking to Azrael about his plan to catch the smurfs, and Azrael responds by almost TALKING. But, the next minute, when Gargamel's great plan unravels, he all but kicks that cat across three counties. After watching that play out enough times, I can't help but think Gargamel is responsible for that paper punch on Azrael's ear. I just KNOW he did it.

"The Smurfs" is usually followed by "Wacky Races," one of those cartoon abominations that constituted the long list of Hanna-Barbera dreck. The biggest problem with this show is that it actually only ran for about five months between 1968 and 1969, and only produced 17 episodes total. So, in my efforts to keep my boy content, I've now seen every episode roughly 12 billion times, and each viewing annoys me just a little bit more each time. Now, when that dog, Muttley, does his little naughty raspy laugh routine, I actually wish for it to be possible to physically punch a cartoon character.

There are some other cartoons I'm becoming reacquainted with, but "The Smurfs" and "Wacky Races," are the two I most often see before leaving for work each morning. I shudder to think how cartoon insane I'd be if I were unemployed.

Behind

Walked the boy through Best Buy tonight. Verdict: I'm woefully behind on technology gadgets right now. Not that I think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's just a thing.

But, it was instructive. I once trained myself to learn "Fatality" combos for "Mortal Kombat" on Sega." Those were simple compared to the joystick operations I watched a young man perform tonight, just for regular stand-up and jiu-jitsu moves.

When my boy starts playing games via Nintendo Cerebrum Wii, I'll be pretty much screwed.

Counting down

Well, tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, we'll have carpet installed in the basement. It will be the culmination of an ongoing basement remodelling project that began back when I first purchased the house back in 2004. There will still be much work to be done, not the least of which will be untangling the nightmare plumbing issues that have plagued the house from day one, but with the installation of the carpet, 4/5 of the basement will become fully livable.

Over the years, I've resisted taking out an additional loan to complete the basement project, mainly because the basement wasn't a huge priority. The upstairs provided more than enough space for my wife and me. It made more financial sense to pay for incremental steps towards the final finished product.

The addition of the infant boy, however, changed that dynamic considerably. We still have enough space, but once the boy starts crawling--which should be in next couple weeks--we'd be sorely pressed for space and room to maneuver. Thankfully, I've had enough in my savings to pay for the rather substantial projects we've had done over the last month and-a-half. It should be worth it though. The basement project basically doubles our living space, so I'm excited to see what it all looks like when I get home from work tomorrow.

When I think back to what the basement used to look like, with its burlap fabric acting as a ceiling, the ancient panneling, the iron gas fireplace and just the general creepiness of it all as a whole, I'm amazed at what we're about to have in its place.

Just having carpet is somewhat exciting. While I love the hardwood floors we resurrected back in 2004, I do miss the bouncy, soft feeling of carpet, and I suspect the boy will enjoy crawling on carpet rather than spinning his wheels on the slippery hardwood.

It has all cost a lot of money to get to this point. Thousands and thousands of dollars. And, an eventual new gas fireplace will also be necessary before next fall, which won't be cheap. But, we're about to have a whole new house to come home to, and that's pretty damned cool.

A real gem

Ryan: Jem
jem Is Excitement
ooh, Jem
jem Is Adventure
ooh
glamour And Glitter
fashion And Fame

jem
jem, Is Truly Outrageous
truly, Truly, Truly Outrageous

whoa, Jem
jem, The Music?s Contagious
outrageous!
jem Is My Name, No One Else Is The Same
jem Is My Name

but we're The Misfits, Our Songs Are Better
we Are The Misfits, The Misfits
and we're Gonna Get Her

jem
jem, The Music?s Contagious
outrageous!
jem Is My Name, No One Else Is The Same
jem Is My Name

jem!

Ryan: They really drive home the point her name is Jem, don't they?

Caroline: No confusion there.

Ryan: Contagious music?

Ryan: Great, now we have to worry about the media going crazy about "Jem Flu."

Caroline: I got the Jem!

Ryan: How did the Misfits manage to get in there and hijack Jem's song for a verse?

Caroline: Remember in the opening credits? YouTube that shit.

Ryan: I KNOW THAT.

Ryan: It's so insanely pathetic that I know so much about Jem.

Caroline: A little bit.

Ryan: I was one drip of estrogen shy of being full on queer.

Caroline: Another tag line for the short list!

Ryan: My best one-liners are totally wasted in IM convos.

I can has

You can't handle the tooth!

Okay, he could.

Aiden's first tooth broke through today. Bottom right front tooth. He celebrated by being rather indifferent, all told. It's funny, when he was born, he had a little white dot on his gums, and we rather stupidly assumed it was a tooth poking through. Then the white dot went away, and we've been assuming teeth were the reason for every cry we didn't totally understand. Now, the tooth breaks through for real, and he's all smiles and laughs. Makes me wish Homer's brother really did invent a baby-to-English translator, in real life.

The local neighborhood is observing an area wide garage/yard sale, which is a phenomenon that has basically grown to a "here's a bunch of stuff you can probably buy cheaper next door and on and on and on down the block, and it's all used crap, so it's all on the corner for free (or trash) at the end of the day anyway."

Come on, a garage sale is only special if one garage in a forty mile radius is conducting it. Otherwise, if every house in the area is selling the same crap, it's just stuff people want to get rid of that doesn't fit in a garbage can and they can't afford to bring to the "recycling center." Hey, if you can make a buck on garbage, great. My father-in-law excels at it on CraigsList. But neighborhood and city-wide garage sales are just junk-swapping excuses.

On to the weekend!

Enfamil Baby

Aiden says: I trust Enfamil because it tastes great, and my ensuing diaper changes are so horrid, my Daddy starts gagging until he practically starts to vomit.

Of Genies and Nipples

Parenthood carries with it all sorts of unexpected little dramas you never dreamed would enter into the parenting equation.

For example, I would never have guessed how important it is to keep Diaper Genie liner refills on hand at all times. Whenever I load the Genie with our last remaining liner, I get some idea what it must have been like for the Germans manning the machine guns on D-Day as an endless stream of allied forces stormed the beaches.

The last Diaper Genie liner is like the last bandolier of ammunition. Once it's gone, you have real problems to deal with, because those allied forces--in the form of unspeakably filthy diapers--just keep coming at you, one after the other.

Or, consider bottle nipples. I didn't realize, until this very week, that bottle nipples come with varying hole sizes. My wife just happened to notice our boy was having an unusually difficult time getting at the formula in his bottle and concluded it was time to move him from low flow to medium flow nipples. I had no idea such a progression was even necessary. I mean, do human breasts come equipped with varying spigot widths? If so, breasts are even more amazing and awesome than I had previously believed, which is saying something, because I held breasts in very high regard to begin with.

Now, if you can imagine a scenario in which you are both out of Diaper Genie liners AND your baby is graduating to larger nipple holes, you have an idea of the drama I experienced tonight after work.

It started off innocently enough. While walking back to my car after work, I called my wife and asked her if I should pick up something to eat on the way home. She agreed take out would be nice, and then she reminded me of our dire need for Diaper Genie liners. Perhaps it would be possible to pick up dinner AND make a Diaper Genie liner run. It wasn't "Mission: Impossible" difficult, but there would be some logistical planning involved. Then she remembered the nipples, at which point she uttered something remarkable:

"Oh, and we need bigger nipples. You should go get those nipples."

The last time I had been given a directive like that, I think I was attending a bachelor party. As it was, I knew perfectly well what my wife meant, which is yet another unexpected side-effect of parenthood: your vocabulary understanding changes drastically.

So, the mission was: pick up something to eat (pizza), and buy Diaper Genie liners and bottle nipples, and hopefully don't confuse the three when I get home, because putting a pizza in the Diaper Genie would just be plain embarrassing.

In my mind, it made the most sense to order pizza and then go shopping while the pizza was prepared. Unfortunately, since I ordered pizza from a Pi Wood Fired Pizza joint, it meant my pizza would be torched and ready to eat within a matter of minutes. So, I place my order and sprinted across the street to the nearby Target.

I've been dealing with Diaper Genie liners for over seven months now, so while I may not be an expert, necessarily, I have more Diaper Genie experience than most high school age Target employees. So, when I asked a young man where they moved the Diaper Genie liners, I was met with a particularly blank stare. I could have just as well asked where they kept the bottled unicorn flatulence.

Eventually, I was handed off to an employee well-versed in the dark arts of Diaper Genie maintenance, and by rare luck the liners turned out to be in an aisle across from bottle nipples.

Another unexpected parenthood realization: there are a lot of different types of bottle nipples. Babies apparently have a wide variety of nipple preferences. I had no idea babies had such an eclectic taste when it comes to their nipples. I imagine babies get together in secret to compare and sample each other's bottle nipples, sort of like an infant version of wine tasting.

Thankfully, my nipple selection process was made simple because I was looking for a very specific brand, and there wasn't much variety to that brand, so I said a silent thank you prayer to the nipple gods, grabbed a couple packs of nipples, and headed for the check-out.

Although my shopping sojourn took all of ten minutes, by the time I returned to pick up my pizzas and wrapped up the drive home, the pizzas were fairly cold, so we had to reheat them in the oven, which sort of put a damper on the whole "Wood Fired" appeal that drew me to the pizza place in the first place.

All is well, however, because now we have the bottle nipples with the larger holes, so the boy can feed more easily, and we have the Diaper Genie liners necessary to hold the diapers that will catch the end product.

Bailing out on bailouts

I can't pretend to understand the complex economics of the world. I've always had a suspicious relationship with numbers in general, and I stopped trying to absord the universal language of math after scoring a "B" in calculus in college, thereby filling my one math class requirement. I've spent the last 17 years doing my very best to forget such terms as "quadratic equation."

It's been the written word and me ever since.

So, I can't really wrap my head around the financial numerical engines that drive economies across the globe. I can, however, sniff out a ridiculous-sounding idea when it hits the news.

A financial bailout of a country? I think that qualifies.

How the HELL do you bailout a country? America can't even bailout an auto industry, for crying out loud, and we've been pretty shit-all lousy when it comes to financial sector bailouts, too. Heck, some of them are still on the government doorstep, hat in hand, asking for more.

And the EU thinks it can bailout an entire country? As Wayne once said: "Pshaw! As if!"

But, hey, a $1 trillion flush of a toilet should at least be interesting to watch. I know it's been just AWESOME watching our own bailouts do a faceplant right off the starting line. It will be nice to see someone else try it for awhile.

Someone, SOMEWHERE, is aware that a bailout is just a measure to stay afloat that doesn't actually address the underlying problem that led to the need for a bailout, right?

Right?!!

Crawling backwards to success?

A little late, but

I now have a bloglines RSS feed.

See?

Of course, I have no idea if I did it correctly, but whatever.

Convenient Experts

There's an ongoing disagreement between me and my wife about television, of all things. She's of the opinion that television is bad for our seven month-old son, whereas I think that's just plain nonsense.

The basis on which I build my side of the argument is that, after an hour-and-a-half of attempting to entertain my boy face-to-face, I'm pretty much desperate for something else that can hold his attention for awhile. And, since television--particularly the "Nick Jr" channel--seems to delight him to no end, I have a hard time finding any problem with it. Besides, watching Nick Jr may actually one day result in the boy learning some Spanish, Chinese and sign language, so he'll have surpassed all his father's communications skills by the age of five.

My wife, on the other hand, always falls back on "experts." After arguing my position until I'm out of breath, she'll always just click off the television and say "All the experts agree television is bad for babies."

I really get frustrated with my wife's "experts" argument, because it's entirely unfair. For starters, she doesn't have to name specific people, or even their professions: they're just "experts." She doesn't even have to bother to tell me where she heard or read of these experts and their position on infant television viewing. They're just experts, and they're all in agreement. How can I even begin to argue with that? I can't even cite leaked e-mails that show experts have been fudging their research numbers and subverting the work of other experts who disagree with them. It's exasperating.

What makes it all even more irritating are the uneven ways by which my wife implements her interpretation of the advice of the "experts." For example, I've noticed that television viewing is particularly bad for our son when I fall back on it after exhausting my own personal Daddy powers. However, television is perfectly permissable if my wife wants to take a ten minute shower.

Television is also okay if my wife has to conduct some business on her computer. Apparently, her understanding of the experts is that yelling "You're doing good, Honey!" from two rooms away to an infant watching "The Smurfs," is entirely acceptable and promotes infant health. However, the moment Daddy flicks on the tube in an attempt to assuage a fussy baby, I'm informed that the "experts" all agree television is rotting our child's brain as we speak.

The rate of brain rot, the experts say, accellerates in direct proportion to how much Daddies may find relaxation and entertainment from the television viewing. Television is at its worst for babies when it seems to be annoying Mommies. It's all based on very complicated research and numbers. It's science.

Personally, I'm inclined to think my wife may be spouting a bunch of bull. I know a thing or two when it comes to throwing bull. You could say I'm something of an expert.

Check the Title

Caroline: Yes, I open a blank .doc file when I start a new article.

Ryan: See, I always open an old file, delete all the old text, and save it as a different file.

Caroline: why?

Ryan: Habit, mostly. But I started doing it to preserve all the old settings and fonts and margins of the previous file. It never caused any issues, until I came here.

Ryan: Thing is, even if you do a "Save as" of an old file into a new file, the file retains some of the old information from the old file. Such as the title of the document.

Caroline: well that's stupid

Ryan: It is. Anyway, I sent a file on to editing today. It was about "Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation."

Caroline: riveting

Ryan: Guess what the title of the document is. . .

Ryan: "Barbecuing."

Caroline: I can see the connection.

Caroline: Why do you have a doc about barbecuing?

Ryan: I couldn't for the life of me figure out how I had a .doc file about barbecuing. Then I remembered I wasn't the original content producer. It originally came from a freelancer.

Ryan: So, apparently, I'm not the only person who does a "Save as" over previous files.

Caroline: That's so weird. i wouldn't think to do that.

Ryan: It would be interesting to discover just what doc titles are floating around that have nothing to do with the actual content.

Caroline: You and I have different definitions of the word "interesting"

Ryan: Oh, come on. Imagine if "Barbecuing" was the title of a .doc file about Heat Ablation Surgery.

Caroline: Funny, yes. Interesting ... probably not.

What a Tangled Web We've Weaved

There was a time when I felt I was generally caught up with technology and its associated effects on how the mass media is distributed and beamed into people's cerebrums.

That time was 3:45 p.m. on Aug. 12, 2004.

Ever since then, I think I've basically been watching the technology/mass media bus leave me behind in a choking plume of diesel exhaust and helplessness

I'm not sure what happened, exactly. One day I felt all hip and with it, with a blog--A BLOG!--and I was writing for a business IT magazine and everything. Now, I'm basically totally confused and out of my element.

It's not like I haven't TRIED to keep up. I have a FaceBook account, and a Twitter account, and a LinkedIn account, and even a Tumblr presence (which I don't much like because it feels like the blogging equivalent of "Meh). But maintaining all those different social and professional networking presences is like trying to juggle kittens: sure, it's amusing, but the claws hurt and it just seems cruel somehow.

It doesn't help that I've never been much of a multi-tasker, and each social and professional networking offering that blinks into existence tends to have its own unique audience, at least for me: Facebook is for friends and family, so watch the effenheimers, if you please; Twitter is for 140 character missives that challenge me to make very tightly wrapped poop and fart jokes; LinkedIn is where I sheepishly ask current and former colleagues to keep me in mind for any writing/editor positions or freelance opportunities and always reminds me of Russell Crowe passing the hat around the bar for donations in "Cinderella Man;" Tumblr's where I post whatever Web flotsam I find amusing on any given day; and of course through it all there's this eternal blog. Oh, and also, YouTube, which I primarily use to upload baby videos.

That's a lot of crap to keep straight in my head, and it's supposed to be FUN, but there are times when it feels an awful lot like work.

And that doesn't even begin to address the world of digital gadgetry, an area that I've had almost no interest in whatsoever. Texting has always struck me as a completely pointless exercise to engage in when I've been writing professionally for over a decade. . . you know, with real WORDS and everything. In those rare instances when I do dabble in LOL-speak, I consider it the equivalent of kicking a dog turd down the street a piece.

I have a cell phone, but I don't really want anything to do with a "smart phone." I have a Microsoft Zune and Flip Video camera, but I only even knew about those because I won them via Pepsi Sweepstakes. I mean, I LOVE the Flip camera, but until I was informed I won one, I had no clue what it was. And, of course, the Flip camera has only led to my further immersion into YouTube.

With the exception of LinkedIn, all the preceeding stuff I dabble in for personal entertainment and archiving purposes. The professional world of the Web has left me completely mystified.

I've been writing freelance articles and humor columns now going back to 1999, so I like to think I have some understanding of freelance writing gigs. But searching for freelance writing opportunities online is like diving naked into a pool full of worms.

I mean, there are a ton of freelance writing opportunities available online, but most of them offer writing gigs that are the literary equivalent of a Chinese sweatshop that requires a single worker to churn out 900 Air Jordans a day for the price of a chicken and a smile. I've seen online content requests asking for 500 word product reviews for $10. At that rate, I'd have to write 23 hours a day, seven days a week, just to pay my mortgage.

And even those 500 word $10 gigs come with their own challenges, including writing for search engine optimization (SEO), which is just a bitch of a way write content. If you read something crafted to appear high in search engine results, you'll notice it's alarmingly similar to listening to the automated voice on the Weather Channel.

Also, perhaps you've already heard, but "Content is King," which is an encapsulated way of saying "throw as much crap against the wall as you can in the hopes that some of it sticks." Those online freelance gigs mentioned earlier? The companies that offer those gigs aren't much interested in general written quality; they just want something--A LOT OF THINGS--they can upload and attach ads to. Which of course just means the Web is getting ridiculously bigger and louder and messier every single day.

And every day it just gets more and more complex, and more and more niche. And I honestly don't know if I can keep running along behind this technology bus much longer, because diesel smoke is just murder on the lungs.

Fun-chucks

Ryan: "Mass. woman with no arms preparing for black belt"

Caroline: Glad it's not "Black arm band"

Ryan: "McCorry, her teacher, said he's never seen a student like Radziewicz. Despite her condition, she can use nunchucks and break boards with her kicks."

Ryan: This is where sentence structure comes into play. She can use nunchuks with her kicks?

Caroline: That confused me for a second.

Ryan: How dangerous do you have to be to use nunchuks with your kicks?

Ryan: Like dodging the kick isn't hard enough, you also have to take into account the nunchuks.

Caroline: I wouldn't want to find out. There should've been a 5th Ninja Turtle who was armless and used nunchucks with his kicks.

Ryan: "The foot I could deal with, but those fucking nunchuks got me right between the eyes."

Caroline: Fucking nunchucks.

Ryan: Fuckchucks.

Caroline: Holy nunfucks

Ryan: Sacreliscious.

Caroline: Mmmmm.

Sneeze laughs

Aiden sneezed during bath time tonight, and thought my exaggerations hysterical.

Mark My Words

Some day, I will take over the world.

Today's not looking that likely.

Neither is Saturday.

You know what? The weekend in general just doesn't work for me.

Some day though. SOME DAY.

Coping Mechanisms

When I went to live in Tokyo during my senior year of high school, all those many years back in 1992, I had to discover several different coping mechanisms to help me mentally resolve the waves of culture shock that washed over me on a daily basis.

You may find this hard to believe, but growing up for 17 years in a small Minnesota town, with a population of just over 1,000, and transitioning into a major metropolitan city of over 20 million people is a rather jarring experience. Throw into the mix the fact virtually the entire Japanese population didn't regularly speak my language, and you can adequately start to appreciate just how out of my element I actually felt. Every day for the first couple of months brought with it a new adventure, and there was no telling if each new adventure would be a pleasure or a nightmare.

So, yeah: coping mechanisms.

During my first week in Tokyo, I was put up in a hotel located near a fairly popular shopping street, and one of the first shops I encountered while exploring that street was a fascinating model store, where a customer could find models of practically anything you could imagine. There were model cars, model airplanes, model buildings and even model humans, all in neatly stacked boxes, just waiting to be purchased and assembled.

Even though I hadn't assembled a model in years, I found myself sequestered in my hotel room my second day in Tokyo, meticulously putting together a model of a ceremonial Japanese parade shrine. Over the next several months, I would assemble roughly two dozen other models, ranging from a model Porche, to model Japanese swords, to model Japanese castles. In retrospect, I think I was trying to understand my new world by assembling a tiny Japan I at least had some control over.

But assembling models was only a gateway coping mechanism. It wasn't long before I discovered video games, which was quickly followed by gambling, which wasn't that much of a transition, since most video game parlors were housed in the same building as Pachinko parlors.

For those not familiar with Pachinko, it's basically a type of Japanese gambling machine where you try to manipulate a bunch of tiny steel balls, via gravity, down a brightly lit panel consisting of a bunch of pins that ping and pong the balls this way and that, not unlike a vertical pinball game. The idea is to guide the balls, if you can, into certain slots and cubbies which, if you do so, results in the reward of many more steel balls. If you're good at Pachinko, you can accrue a lot of steel balls, which can be redeemed for cash--albeit in a somewhat shady, back alley sort of way..

While I wasn't particularly good at Pachinko, I was nevertheless an enthusiastic participant. Nothing soothed frazzled, culture-shocked nerves quite like burning through $50 worth of Pachinko balls. I would later discover most Pachinko parlors also had slot machines, which were immensely easier to understand, but just as capable of separating me from my money. However, I have to admit, I did have some winning streaks that kept me flush with cash for quite some time. I think such winning streaks maybe happened three times over the course of that year.

Video games, however, held their own unique appeal, to say nothing of their own unique surprises. I was surprised, for example, by the regular appearance of video games dedicated to Tetris, of all things. I mean, I had played Tetris for many years on my Nintendo and, later, on a Game Boy, and I had long since grown tired of that irritating game with its irritating music, so it was a bit surprising to see it featured so regularly in Japanese video game parlors.

The mystery surrounding the appearance of so many Tetris consoles quickly evaporated once I discovered the "reward" for completing different Tetris levels. I was seated at a different video game, based off the movie "Hook," when I noticed the young man beside me was playing a particularly fast-paced game of Tetris. He completed the level, and suddenly an image of a nearly completely naked Japanese girl flashed up on the screen for about 20 seconds, before fading back to the Tetris game and the next level.

I was initially dumbfounded, but I have to admit to a renewed interest in the game of Tetris. I watched that young man play Tetris for the next half hour, and I'm here to tell you, he was REALLY GOOD at Tetris. The blocks descended at rates so fast, they were almost a blur, yet he was able clear level after level, and he was rewarded each time with 20 seconds of viewing different Japanese women in varying levels of undress.

The genius of this pornography reward system was immediately obvious to me. For years, I'd played Tetris and was rewarded for clearing each level with. . . MORE Tetris. No WONDER I got so sick of that game. But there, in Tokyo, I saw a Tetris/porn reward system that was obviously resulting in a population of young Japanese males who were just plain awesome at Tetris. I'm not saying it necessarily resulted in better school grades, generally, but I can't imagine it really hurt.

And, I have to tell you, it really made stop and consider whether assembling models and Pachinko parlor gambling were my best choice of coping mechanisms.

Greed Bridler

Ryan: "Goldman execs accused of ‘unbridled greed’" Isn't greed, by definition, unbridled?

Caroline: A more interesting headline would be "Goldman execs accused of bridled greed"

Ryan: "Bridled Greed" is the title to our third book we're not going to write.

Caroline: That there greed was bridled.

Ryan: "Ponzi Schemer desperately wanted to take advantage of the situatioin that presented itself to him. After all, he could make millions of dollars if only he'd act. In the end, however, he let the opportunity pass him by. He bridled his greed."

Ryan: You greed bridlin'?

Caroline: Yeah I do!