How Would You Define "Cheeky"?

Today's entry will not technically be NSFW, but since the topic at hand will be a news story involving human sexuality, and there are those that go a bit red in the face based entirely on the fact that I just used the words "human sexuality", I'll write it in stages of "naughtiness". I'm putting this preface in here to give those individuals who are already mortified a chance to decide that they would rather go read Garfield or something (or better yet, read Garfield minus Garfield, as it's a lot more interesting).

Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way, I was intrigued by yet another fascinating study that's currently being reported on. Apparently, the good people at the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire-Durham have determined that spanking your children may lead to "sexual problems" later in life, including arousal by spanking. Wow. Thanks for clearing that one up. I don't know how we've all gotten along thus far without that tidbit of information to guide our parenting. I can only hope that this received government funding, as it's far more important that school supplies and whatnot.

This totally cracks me up for a couple of reasons, the first being the idea that this might stop someone from spanking their child. Of all the arguments against corporal punishment, I'm guessing this one is not going to be the scale tipper. I'm trying to imagine the conversation between two parents on differing sides of this argument here:

"That's it. I've told Junior for the last time that he's not supposed to throw the ball in the house. He's getting a spanking."

"But dear, spanking is cruel, and has repeatedly been shown to be an ineffective form of punishment when trying to get someone to change their behavior."

"Bah. Spare the rod, spoil the child,"

"Okay, but if Junior ends up wearing a ball gag all the time and marrying a woman who demands that she only be referred to as 'Mistress', you'll have no one but yourself to blame."

Yeah, that's going to happen.

We now pause for a moment to give those who have dared come this far to question whether or not they really want to go further. Instead, maybe they would feel more comfortable simply closing the browser, going to get a nice cup of coffee, and moving on with their day. Imagine the sense of accomplishment and self righteousness, knowing that you, gentle reader, decided to take the high road and walk away, not needing to know what depths of depravity I may have exposed you to had you continued.

Waiting...

Waiting...

Waiting...

Getting sick of typing gerunds...

Good. Now that we got rid of the quitters, we can get on with this.

So, what really cracked me up was the way that the different news agencies sensationalized the headlines to pull people in. Some were fairly reserved, and seem to reflect the actual findings. "Spanking colors sex lives" or "Spanking may lead to sexual problems later", that kind of thing. Others took the ball and ran with it. "Spanking raises chances of risky, deviant sexual behavior". Now that sounds pretty serious.

What gets to me is that everyone's opinion of "deviant" is pretty well self-defined. I mean, what does or does not arouse a person is completely dependent on the person. Some people are completely asexual, and nothing can arouse them. For others, that couldn't be further from the case. As Xander Harris put it in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "I'm 17. Looking at linoleum makes me wanna have sex". Indeed.

So that leaves a pretty wide berth of behaviors. At what point would you say we hit "deviant"? Being turned on by brown eyes? Long legs? A graceful neck? The fact that we're talking about a giraffe? Beats me man.

Seriously, we live in the age of rule #34 - if it exists, there is porn about it. The internet has done nothing as impressive as revealing just what the full spectrum of human sexuality truly encompasses. If you've seen even a millionth of what is out there, the idea of someone being turned on by a spanking will seem quaint and charming in comparison. So I think maybe we need to back down on the name calling and maybe consider what it means that other people, people who seem normal and likable, people we probably know, are most likely masking something "deviant". After all, they're not making this stuff for themselves, right? So maybe, just maybe, we can all take a step back and try to be a little more tolerant of others when discussing something as fluid and unique as passion and arousal.

Unless of course we're talking about furries. Those people are *&$%ing freaks.

UPDATE:
Just to be clear, I have no intention of allowing images or links in the comments to this post. Those that this rule applies to know who they are.

Now Where Will I Keep My Soup?

Once again, this morning I took out the hedge clippers and eliminated yet another facial hair configuration. I change my beard options more often than most people change their sheets. I don't know why, but I have this constant need to try and define what it is I'm supposed to look like, as if finding the correct configuration of hair, clothing, etc. will give me some kind of insight into who I actually am.

There are better reasons to change one's looks of course. There is a certain novelty in being able to radically alter your appearance with little repercussion (work doesn't care, and after thirteen years, I think I could come home with a spider web tattooed on my face and Management would just ask how much I paid for it). Plus, I figure if the government is spying on me, at least this keeps them on their toes. Make them update their databases once in awhile.

I think I personally do it for several reasons. I do have a certain amount of identity confusion right now. I sort of feel like I'm totally defined in terms of other people. I'm sure a lot of you know what I'm talking about. I'm a programmer for my employer, a parent of the Moose and the Princess, husband and general lackey to Management. Sometimes it's a little unnerving to realize that when I find myself alone, I'm not exactly sure who it is I'm supposed to be. It makes a person uncomfortable, and I usually just clean up the mess, bury the body, and find someone else to hang out with. So like I said earlier, I keep thinking that if I knew what I was supposed to look like, maybe that would give me some insight.

This morning a strange thing happened though. Every time I go clean shaven, I have the same reaction: I look just like my father. Frankly, I think I grew my little beard and mustache just because part of me didn't want to wake up every morning and see him. I have enough issues. Looking into a dead man's face isn't exactly what I call comforting.

Well this morning when I placed razor to skin, I admired the results and for the first time in ages, I didn't see him at all. It was just me - my chin, my eyes, my tiny scars that no one else sees but me. I'm not sure what that means, but one thing is certain.

I'm almost dangerously good looking.

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Each night after school, one of the first orders of business is the unpacking of the bags. This includes the Princess' folder of work, which contains the usual sheets of word and math exercises, various art projects, and other such school related work. It also frequently includes various sign ups, fund raisers, and event notices, each calling for cash. It's getting to the point that I'm wondering if a private school might have been a more straight forward investment.

I don't want anyone thinking that I'm unhappy with the schools themselves. As far as education, I have so far been pretty happy with what she's getting. It's just disheartening to see so much reliance on fund raising for everything. Right now, we have no less than a book order form, a notice attached to the book order form letting you know that all of the books will be available in a store set up in the cafeteria for a couple of days that all the students will be visiting (nothing like peer pressure to make sales), a notice about tomorrow's bake sales (we've got to send in baked goods to sell and make sure the kids bring money to buy the stuff from other classes), and a request for contents for the gift basket auction.

That's just the current list, and keep in mind that it does not include all of the extra-curricular activities that we pay for. In the last week I wrote checks for all day Kindergarten, after school care, the father-daughter dance (apparently the boys don't dance), and soccer in the spring. Of course none of those is required (or at least if they are, it's because of other decisions we've made), but seriously, what kind of louse would I be to skip out on the father-daughter dance? (Despite what you may think you know, that's the first step to the downfall of a daughter. If I skip that dance, I might as well buy her a stripper pole and change her name to Cherry.)

Anyway, what's really bothering me is that last night's folder included a note from a parent. The Princess' teacher had a baby last weekend, and there is a call for a baby gift. Tell me how much you'll kick in, and then catch me later - that kind of thing. I don't dislike the fact that they asked. What bothered me was my reaction to it. I don't think of myself as a selfish person (discounting situations where there is a limited supply of beer or Rice Krispy treats, in which case it's every man for himself), but I saw that note and all I could think was "Dammit, what do they want money for now?".

That's terrible. Having a baby is a huge (and costly) endeavor, and I'm happy to give anyone any help I can. I can not overemphasize how much I appreciated every baby gift we received, or how much help we got from the in-laws when we needed it. But here I am, so inundated with requests for money from the school systems that when this note came through, I recoiled.

I'll get over it. I just wish we as a country could figure out a way to actually fund schools instead of the ridiculous crap that we currently throw money at. Ask any politician, and they will swear up and down that education is the most important thing we can do to ensure our country's success, but somehow that sentiment never seems to make it to the checkbook.

I'm not all talk either. Once I establish my rule as Supreme Emperor of Everything, this will be my first order of business. Well, I'll get to it after I've disposed of my enemies and made sure everyone gets a monkey if they want one. That will be the key to my empire - judicious use of monkeys (as opposed to our current government, where we only use one but we let him run things).

But It Needs to be Fabulous!

I'm seriously trying to update the layout of this page, and it's proving challenging. For those of you who do not know, I'm a programmer, but I'm back in the world of Windows, which means my web page skills have had a few months of entropy. Now, I'm trying to figure out how this page should look, and worse, how to get that to happen.

I think I've overcome the first hurdle, which is graphics. I'm a firm believer in not getting sued, so the idea of simply pilfering graphics from another site was out. This is kind of ironic, given the piratey theme I have in mind here. Still, I had to figure out how to make my own graphics.

Enter The GIMP. For those of you who don't know, The GIMP is not the guy in a leather mask who lives in a box downstairs, but is an open source answer to Photoshop, which is a good thing to know because I don't have six hundred bucks for a copy of Photoshop and, just between us, the guy in the basement blows at graphics. I have located several spiffy tutorials on creating some of the effects I'm shooting for here, so there's that.

Graphics only get you so far though - actually making the page do what I want is the next challenge, and I shudder to think what that's going to take. See, I'm a firm believer that all web pages should be styled with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets for the non-geeks), which is a good thing. It separates all of the content from the styles, and makes it easier to update things. Well, it's supposed to anyway.

The problem with CSS is that it's extremely powerful, which means it's extremely complex, and the support for it is iffy at best. I'm okay at it, but I'm by no means a master at it. I'll go to a lot of trouble, and when it looks just the way I want it to, I'll open it in something other than Firefox, and it looks like doody. (Again, for the non-geeks, "looks like doody" is something they teach us when they teach CSS and means that something is less than ascetically pleasing. The more you know and all that.) So committing to putting that together is a serious endeavor, and with time always being at a premium for me, I haven't began to blaze that particular trail.

So why am I telling you all of this? Is it because I wanted to let you know that this blog being attractive to all of you is important to me? Is it because I want to stand out from all of the other, templated blogs in my attempt to draw attention to myself? Is it filler because I had nothing else to talk about today? Wait, forget I asked that last question.

Seriously, I do want this to look good. I've never had my own web site, and while this isn't exactly a web site, it's close, and I'd like it to look like it's run by someone who knows what their doing. Fortunately for me, I don't feel the need to actually know what I'm doing. I just need to make it look like I do. Which pretty much sums up my life.

Hit and Run-On

Those of you who hang out here often may have noticed the removal of the personal advice option. There is a really good reason for this. Part of the charm of the idea was to ask the Princess some advice and then transcribe her response here. After serious consideration, I realized that this was pure impossibility. The fact is, the kid has far surpassed me in her ability to talk.

Now to say that I'm loquacious is an understatement. I am gifted with a verbal acuity that rarely leaves me without words for a situation. There are those that would go so far as to say that I'm gifted in my ability to converse on nearly any topic.

Management is not among them. I think garrulous would be the word that management would use to describe this ability. The number of times that I have been mid-sentence when I realized that I was being given the "I can't believe you're still talking" look are beyond measure. (I believe that the reason people who are married sometimes seem more well adjusted that singles is that they are forced to take the way they think of themselves and temper those ideas with the reality of someone who actually has to put up with them.)

Regardless of one's opinion on my constant conversing, I have been usurped as the champion speaker of the house, being outspoken on nearly every occasion and topic. I think what's most impressive about her ability to speak on things is the combination of being able to talk confidently about nearly anything while forming run-on sentences that go on for what seem like days, particularly when doling out advice and suggestions. I realized that in order to properly capture it, I would have to record her and then play it over and over until I got it all down.

Frequently, these meandering monologues will distract her from other, more pressing activities. It's not uncommon for all of us to finish eating dinner only to point out that she's barely touched hers. Suggest that we finish our breakfast so we can go upstairs and get dressed for school and you will be met with a thorough description of how that should go down, something like, "Okay, first you can help me pick out an outfit, and then I'll help you pick out something for the Moose to wear because I helped pick out his clothes yesterday and I did a really good job and you liked the outfit I picked out and then we'll race to see who can get dressed first, but you can't start changing his diaper until I say 'Ready, set, go' because the other day you started changing his diaper before I said you could and that wasn't fair."

Needless to say, breakfast will not be finished.

The other thing she excels at is bargaining. If she has something she wants, she will happily list all of the reasons it's a good idea, countering all of arguments against the action (you wouldn't believe how many reasons there are for having to get a gum ball at the video store, and the extent of the travesty should that gum ball be denied). Ask her to do something she doesn't feel like and she'll spend more time debating with you over why she shouldn't have to than she would have spent just doing what you asked in the first place. What's frightening is that she wins, if only by wearing me down to the point where I simply don't have the resolve to go on arguing about things. She would make a fine lawyer or politician, if not for her complete lack of evil.

Having said all of that, I don't want anyone to think I'm disparaging her for it. While I would like to see occasional breaks for the sake of sentence structure (and inhalation), I'm glad that she has the confidence to talk to us like that. I'm aware that at some point she's not going to be interested in talking to me so much, and I do my best to appreciate that right now she feels the need to share with me the inner details of her thoughts.

I Wonder If It'll Get Me out Of Buying Groceries, Too

I'll keep this brief, as I'm sick. For the last three days, I have been a world of wheezing, head achy, stuffed up goodness. I even went so far as to go to the doctor, a task I typically reserve for rather serious ailments that might include the words, "So, is it gonna fall off or what?".

The thing is, I left work early yesterday, and then today I called off entirely, and now I feel guilty. I don't feel guilty because I was wrong - I feel awful, and all I would have done is sit at my desk, stare at my machine, and maybe occasionally moan. Also, I am aware that cube-ville becomes an incubator for all sorts of disgusting illnesses, and I always feel like I'm responsible if I work and then someone else gets sick soon after. I even have the time off to spare. I just always feel guilty when I call in, like I'm being a sissy or something.

It doesn't help that I have a desk job. It's not like I shovel coal for a living. I sit and work at a computer. It's a lot like what I'm doing now, except if my grogginess causes a mistake here, it doesn't mean I spend three days looking for some obscure bug. Believe me, it's happened. (On a side note, I wonder if the work "groggy" is somehow rooted in "grog". Like the proper definition is "having difficulty thinking straight, as if one had ingested too much grog".)

So there it is. I'm going to get a cup of decaf (we don't have any good teas), find a blanket, and return to my previous sitting in one spot. Hopefully the antibiotics the doctor gave me will kick in soon, and I will be as spry and witty as you all have come to expect.

Why Not Just Tape Birthdays, Like The Rest Of Us?

Just when I think I'm going to have trouble finding something to talk about today, our good friend Gene Simmons comes through for me. For those who don't know, Gene is the guy in the rock band KISS who had the ability to lick his own eyebrows. I don't think I've ever seen him in any context that didn't just drip with sleaze. The man practically oozes.

So naturally I was not surprised today when he came up in my Google News results as being embroiled in yet another "celebrity sex tape" debacle. At least in his case, it's something I would expect. He seems the type that would revel is this sort of thing.

The link I actually followed (yes, I am ashamed, but only a little), led to a slide show of celebrities who have had similar scandals in the past, and honestly it was a pretty impressive list. By impressive, I mean it led me to repeat the word "ewwww" a few times. Also, the slide show was sponsored by Jello, which, to my mind, is comedy gold. As I have not actually watched the videos listed, I can not say whether or not Jello was involved. I can only hope so.

What I can't figure out is how these people think that these tapes are going to stay secret. I mean seriously, you're famous. People pay to watch you perform. Of course they are going to pay (read as "download") to watch you do something you really don't want them to. Isn't that the entire business of the paparazzi - take pictures of you doing things that you'd rather others not see you doing? Why make it easy on them?

Of course there are exceptions to this business model. I haven't quite figured it out, but I'm pretty sure I could make a lot of money on people paying not to see the tape made by Screech from Saved By The Bell. The problem is that in the recent government hearing on permitted torture methods, being forced to watch this tape was deemed "too cruel, even for us". Fine, make the suspects think they're drowning, just don't make them see little Screech in action. Jack Bauer himself referred to it as "just mean", and he shot some dude's wife in the leg for information one time.

Either way, I will continue to avoid these tapes, because frankly, there are some things I just don't need to see. These schmucks though they were making a movie just for their own entertainment. My voyeurism does not extend so far as to take advantage of their misfortune.

Of course if something involving the Pope ever comes out all bets are off, you know, just to see if he wears the hat.

Don't Talk With Your Mouth Full Either

I had, in the past, never really given any though to the rules that I would lay down for my children. I guess I figured that they would come to me when the situation required it. So far, this has been a valid assumption, but above all other rules we've had to lay down, one easily surpasses all others in weirdness: no farting at the dinner table.

This is a really odd rule for a few reasons. First, I don't recall this being an issue in my family, which is not to say that it wasn't (I've probably mentioned before that my recall is pretty bad for anything that happened before, say, two weeks ago). Growing up, my family had a strict policy of freedom to flatulate, and that freedom was exercised at every opportunity. Almost any occasion not involving guests (and some that were) would be punctuated with a hodge-podge of trumpeting that would make any orchestra tear with pride. Well, their eyes would water anyway. I don't remember it happening at the table though, and it seems like I would because, you know, it's funny.

The other reason that this is a strange rule is that it's so difficult to enforce. The princess, for all of her delicate and feminine traits, is so prodigious a producer of methane that at any moment I expect Al Gore himself to show up at my doorstep. As a result, she is the sole reason for the rule's existence.

Don't get me wrong - she tries to obey. Frequently during mealtimes, she'll ask to be excused so she can discreetly walk around a corner and release whatever she has been holding at bay. This doesn't always happen, and seriously, how do you reprimand someone when you're giggling? Even worse is when she realizes what she's done, and tries to make it better, either through an "Excuse me" for each escaped squeak (frequently in groups in an effort to catch up on a set of them), or worse, "May I be excused so I can go take care of the rest of this?", which left me in ruins, as it was delivered with complete sincerity.

I shudder to think of what other rules I will have to not only create but actually attempt to enforce as parenthood goes on, but I can not imagine that there will be another that is so hard to enforce with a straight face. Years from now, when the Princess is furious with me because I wrote about this on the internet (with my broad audience of around four), I'm sure we will have come up with something. Hopefully, that something will not involve bodily functions

I Still Get to Cook and Do Laundry Though

So, this morning as I was putting shoes on the Moose and hollering up to the Princess to finish brushing her teeth and get downstairs, my replacement showed up. He was an older man with a thick mustache and a baseball cap. He was the handyman, and he completely looked the part.

This actually started last week. In conversation, management brought up the fact that one of our welcome packages came with a free hour of service from a local handyman. The conversation included something about my habit of making trips to the hardware store in pairs - one trip to buy something, and another to return it and buy the thing I actually needed (my last trip to Lowe's, I told the girl doing returns that if it wasn't for their lenient return policy, I would have to start building myself another house). I'm pretty sure I excused myself from the conversation at that point, as I was tired and more that a little cranky by then.

A few days later, I was forwarded an email. Management had contacted the handyman in question for an estimate on a small list of tasks that needed to be completed around the house. Nothing major, just little things. A closet door that likes to fall off at inopportune moments, or a tub that doesn't sufficiently hold water. Things like that.

For whatever reason, I was crushed. I felt like I had failed. We're not two months into our first house, and we've already given up on the idea that I can fulfill my duties as man of the house. So here I am looking at this list, and I feel like a wife who has been sent a bill for her husbands prostitute. I realize that probably seems like a bit of hyperbole, but it's how I felt.

(This might be a good place to point out that one of the symptoms of depression is blowing things out of proportion - way out of proportion. The above train of thought is one of the things that tipped me off last week that things might be getting out of hand with my thought processes.)

Obviously, I'll get over it, but it's indicative of the situation we find ourselves in so often. The roles that I grew up thinking I would fulfill no longer really fit the situation I find myself in. It's not that I'm lazy, or even unskilled. Given the time, I could complete these tasks myself. I would have to give up something else though, be it some other task that needs to be done, time with my wife and kids, or whatever. So, the role that I've looked forward to for years just isn't something I can actually do right now.

Oh well. I guess I'll have to be content to be good at what I can get to. After all, that guy probably couldn't program his way out of a paper bag. Also, at least he's an older guy. If some twenty something had showed up, I might very well have called in today.

I still haven't figured out why she hired the pool boy though. It's snowing outside, and we don't actually have a pool. Odd.

It Would have Been Easier If Oprah Had Run

I've been trying to avoid expressing any kind of political opinions here, because frankly discussions of politics and religion tend to upset people. Still a lot of people have been wanting to know my thoughts as a black woman on Obama and Clinton. This is really strange to me, first because, as I said, I don't like making political statements, and second because I'm a white guy.

Honestly, when I look past the whole gender/race thing, the two seem very similar to me. Hillary has done things that irritate me tremendously in the past, not the least of which is supporting legislation to regulate the video game industry, once again jumping on the popular "protect the kids" bandwagon that looks so good to a politician, and looks pretty good to parents who don't want to have to think or keep track of what their kids do. If you read here regularly, you know how I feel about that.

Obama on the other hand has some pretty good ideas, but he's newer. My guess is that if he'd been in the game longer, he would also have done things that irritate me. I do like his ideas about public officials having everything they do put online. I mean, it's never gonna happen, but I like the idea. It's like saying we're going to have responsibility fairies following Congress around and reporting back to us. At least with the fairies, you know what kind of story you're listening to.

As far as who will do the better job, I don't know. I do have to admit that part of me likes the idea of a woman president, just because it will truly shake what other countries think about us. I don't mean as a progressive nation, I mean as far as foreign relations go. Any man who's been in a relationship knows that dealing with woman can be a far more difficult thing.

Syria: "What's up Iran? You're looking all stressed out today."

Iran: "Oh Allah. I was out late last night and ended up getting in a big fight with Hezbolla. Hillary found out and now she's all mad."

Syria: "Oh dude, you better do something to make it up to her. Last time she was mad at us, there were serious sanctions, if you know what I mean."

Iran: "No, what do you mean?"

Syria: "You know, non-military impositions placed on a country perceived to be behaving out of line with the international community."

Bill: "Oh man, that is so not what I thought you were talking about."

Okay, that last bit was uncalled for, but you get the idea.

Hopefully, I Won't Start Sleep-Dancing

"Look how fast their feet are moving. It's freaky."

These are the words I heard as I lay in bed last night, trying once again to ignore the sound of the television and get some sleep. In place of Morpheus' warm embrace, what I got was the sound of competitive ballroom dancing. No, seriously. Ballroom dancing. And I wasn't even watching it. I was laying awake listening to ballroom dancing.

"Look at them. He's wiggling his butt."

I gave up and sat up to see if he was, in fact, wiggling his butt. Unfortunately, due to tired eyes without glasses on, I could not discern whether such wiggling was going on or not. For that matter, I couldn't really tell where his butt was.

One of the most pointed differences between management and myself is our schedules. I am a morning person, up at a quarter to six every day. Before I leave for work, I've usually shoveled sidewalks, balanced the checkbook, and fed and dressed two kids as well as myself. On weekends, I wake up wanting to grab my (hopefully complete) to-do list and tear into it.

Management is not such the early riser, and can sleep through nearly anything. This is due to a long past career in the fast food industry, where shifts ended at five in the morning. As a result, snooze button abuse runs rampant; a one to two hour delay between the alarm first going off and her actually rising is not uncommon. I often question whether she'll be able to get up in case of a serious emergency, for example the aforementioned zombie apocalypse:

"I just heard on the radio that legions of the undead have risen and are taking over the cities."

"Mmm-hmm."

"Jesus, they're right outside! They're trying to break down the doors. Get down here and help me move these couches."

"Yeah, okay." Rolls over.

"Oh god, the baby's playing with someone's head. Hey, put that down before it bites you. I could really use some help down here!"

"Mmmm. Just five more minutes okay."

I shudder to think.

On the other hand, in the evening she's a ball of fire while I'm ready to sink into a couch and pass out. She actually plans on starting tasks after the kids are in bed. I'm talking about real tasks, like painting walls or doing taxes. My idea of a task after the kids are in bed is moving the chair closer to the television so I can reach the Xbox controller. Maybe making popcorn.

Somehow we've managed to muddle through this way for over a decade now, as I'm sure we will for decades more. Maybe one day our time lines will meet up, and we'll find ourselves equally awake at the exact same moment instead of one us being in a fog all the time. Who knows what we'll do then.

Maybe we'll take up ballroom dancing.

We'll Leave Jenny Out Of This

Okay, I'm back into a more reasonable emotional state today, which is good because any more of that and I would have had to get an emo haircut and start shopping at Hot Topic. Not cool. So today we can instead focus on a disappearing art form, a loss of American culture that causes me concern. Seriously, when did we completely eliminate bathroom graffiti?


Some people come here to take a *$&#, so I left one.


There was once a time when being forced to use a public restroom, which let's face it isn't anyone's favorite thing to do, at least meant you could count on some kind of entertainment in the form of well though out prose, pithy sayings and the occasional poem. It seems like these days, everything is sanitized to the point of this simply not being true anymore. Now you are faced with clean walls and sometimes even an advertisement.


They paint the walls but all in vain.
The *$#%house poet has struck again.


This is no good. I liked the graffiti. It was funny. It was inappropriate. It made me happy. Did we really need to protect people from filth scratched into the walls of a stall? Is our society becoming so sterilized that we can't have something inappropriate in the one place where you're absolutely guaranteed to be doing something inappropriate?


I *&$%ed your mother.

Go home dad, you're drunk.


Now I understand that the idea of sending your kid into a bathroom only to be exposed to a crude drawing of genitalia isn't something every parent wants to think about, but you know what, there are a lot of things I have to protect my kids from, and this really doesn't rate. Seriously, when I was a kid, these were just a curiosity. I never called a number that promised a good time. I merely wondered at the audacity of the person who thought to bring a pen with them when duty called. Sometimes I giggled. Worry about what your kids look at on the internet, not what they'll see written on a wall. In fact if you're a kid reading this, go reprimand your parents right now for their poor monitoring skills, and then do your homework. Punk.


Here I sit, broken hearted.
Paid my nickel, only farted.


This last one is important, too. There is a historical context being lost to the newest generation. That's right, kiddies, when I was a tot some people had the nerve to put a *&$%ing coin slot on the door of the stall. Talk about cruel. Once on a family vacation, I actually ran into one of these. I chose to crawl under the door rather than return to the restaurant and request change, not because I was dishonest, but because I didn't know what the #$*% I was looking at.


Flush twice, it's a long way to the kitchen.


If I had my way, every bathroom stall would be equipped with dry erase markers, and the creativity would flow freely. Each night, instead of trying to scrub off pen marks, you could just go in with a dry towel and wipe, ready to receive more nuggets of wisdom the next day. For now, we'll have to start a movement to preserve these bits of culture elsewhere. It will probably get dumped on to the internet, the last bastion of free thought and poor taste in our ever homogenized society, perhaps even plopped into the comments of this very post.

We can only hope. (Warning: Comments in this case will go through unfiltered to retain the original quality.)

Stitches Getting Sicker

Fair warning - I'm in kind of a mood, and the funny will not be found here today.

Yesterday was a bad day, and that bad day is bleeding into today. That doesn't seem fair, but that's how it works, isn't it? A bad weekend changes the course of your week, and attempts to recover fail miserably.

It shouldn't be that big of a deal really, but once in a while I can feel the old sickness lurking about, and today is one of those days. A long time ago, I was diagnosed as depressed, which to this day seems silly, because a medical doctor will diagnose you as depressed or anxious and give you pills for it. Why is it they never diagnose anyone as silly or clinically upbeat? Anyway, I was put on Prozac for it. Prozac was great, because I wasn't depressed anymore. It worked so well, I didn't care about anything at all. "Apathy in a Bottle" should have been their slogan.

After a while the apathy was noted, and a new approach was suggested: get over it. It was put nicer than this, but this is what it boils down to. This worked surprisingly well, and for years now I have done my best to manage my depression by not dwelling on things that depress me.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. Once in a while I feel that overpowering bleakness that I used to, and I just can't shake it. I don't know if it's exhaustion or the workload or what, but today I am in a funk of epic proportions. Not even the Moose could cheer me up, and toddler giggles are a powerful thing.

The weird thing is that no one needs to know this. As I wander about my day, I turn it off and effortlessly engage in witty banter with those around me. I laugh at the appropriate places, I respond when a response is required. Essentially, I make sure that no one has to know what's going on, and I'm really good at it. Even as I'm typing this, I'm wondering if I should delete it and try to replace it with something amusing. I actually feel bad that I'm sharing my problems with people. That seems healthy doesn't it?

Well, at least I'm still pretty.

Hopefully I'll run across a batch of code that actually requires my focus, allowing me to stop thinking about this junk. That's the power of programming and playing video games for me - it's like meditation. I get focused, and everything else just vanishes for a little while. When I come back, things seem more manageable.

If that doesn't work, then I'll become our first customer and put it to the DLOG staff. Maybe they have the answers I seek.

Either way, tomorrow I'll find something funny to talk about. One can only keep up the brooding for so long.

On the Proper Use of a To-Do List

I'm an American, and that means a lot of things to me. It means I believe in freedom and justice and all that rot. It means I'm not keen on having someone tell me what I can and can't say or do so long as I'm not hurting anyone else. It means I occasionally crave a cheeseburger roughly the size of my head, which is odd because I'm a vegetarian. Also, it means that given the choice between sitting on my duff and nearly anything else, I will choose the former. This is not to say we're lazy, but rather is indicative of passion for our hobbies, in my case reading and playing video games.

As such, I take a certain view on the to-do list, a view that I think is shared by most people. I see the list as the things I have to get done before I can move on to things that I'd rather be doing. You do the things on the list, you check them off, and then you chill. Very straight forward.

So this weekend I faced what I believed to be such a list. As a result of becoming a homeowner, these lists have been ponderous lately, and it's not uncommon for entire weekends to be lost to them. Still, the list management presented this weekend seemed reasonable, well within the realm of things we could get done and still have some quiet time left over in the evening.

So, I tore into the list, trying to get things marked off, each checkmark putting me closer to the all important down time. Unfortunately, something was amiss (which is a strange word considering that one rarely hears an embarrassing story that ends with discovering something is a miss, whereas there are many fine embarrassing stories ending with discovering something is a mister - just ask Eddie Murphy). While working, I noticed that management was also working furiously the entire time, spending hours meticulously toiling over her task. The problem was this: the task was not on the list.

My head was spinning. If we were not working off the list, then why was the list there? What meaning did it have? What would we check off when she finally finished the unnamed unit of work that was being performed? Would it replace something else on the list? Was there another list that I was unaware of?

As we continued to work, I realized that the majority of our time was going to non-list items. Night approached, kids went to bed, and still we carried on. Now don't get me wrong, all of the things we did had to be done, and the place looks a lot better now that we've done them. Still, I was hung up on the whole list thing, as clearly the point of down time had come and gone, and we were approaching the point of "I really wanted to go to bed an hour ago".

So, the next day, as we once again returned to the list, I approached the subject of our straying yesterday, hoping to tighten up the schedule and perhaps find some time on Sunday evening for rest. It turns out that what I had been fretting over was not due to our straying, but rather a misunderstanding of the list itself. It was explained to me that it was not in fact a to-do list at all, but rather a list of things management did not want to forget to do while working through the real to-do list which was stored internally.

Now, this is probably a me thing, but that took a minute to process. The written list that we were checking off was not the real list, but a subset of the real list. The real list was somewhere else, somewhere I wasn't privy to, somewhere I could not check things off, eventually reaching a goal. I didn't realize until then how much I depended on that list. A lot of my inspiration comes from reaching my goals, from checking things off and seeing the progress that results. All of the sudden, I'm faced with a task that, if not insurmountable, was at least undefinable.

This totally sucked the wind out of my sails. All my inspiration was gone, replaced with frustration. See, we didn't quite finish, so now I'm going into the week tired and feeling like I've failed. This morning, when my alarm went off at 5:45, I was already behind. Ugh.

Obviously, this is something I have to get over, but with a caveat. I think it needs to be a matter of public policy that a written list of tasks presented to someone at the beginning of the weekend is either a full to-do list, or clearly labeled otherwise. Oh, and no fine print. It's the list, the whole list, and nothing but the list. That's all my feeble little task-centered mind can handle.

But what if that noise was a giant spider?

I suppose I understand that certain jobs around the house are now and probably always will be assigned to me for whatever reason, or at least until the kids are old enough for me to subcontract the work out to them. This makes a certain amount of sense, so long as you're willing to subscribe to the stereotype that men are typically stronger than women, which is backed up by scientific evidence that we're all supposed to ignore in the name of being politically correct. Fine. I'll go out and shovel snow off of the sidewalks. I'll take the garbage out. When someone has to move a body, it's all me.

There are two jobs assigned to me though that I do protest. Oh don't misunderstand, I will continue to do them, as attempting to apply any kind of logic to getting out of it has continued to fail me. There's a reason the term "management" is applied here. She's really good.

First, why is it that I am the official slayer of many-legged beasts? I have an acute paranoia of any form of life that has more than four legs. I can't actually touch any kind of bug without feeling like its leaving some trace of itself on my skin that has to be scratched away. For the sake of my children, I attempt to overcome this, appearing brave and even forcing myself to allow a ladybug to crawl around on my hand. The kids think it's neat, but there is always a tiny part of me that's in panic mode the whole time it's going on.

Nonetheless, when some terror rears it's nasty little pedipalps, I'm called in to dispose of it. This makes no sense to me. I have no special training, nothing that gives me the edge when one of the furry little demons tears across the room like the wind itself. It's just my job. No reason.

By the way, did you know that the wolf spider is so named because it uses its speed and cunning to actually hunt it's prey instead of building webs? Well I do, and it doesn't help the situation one lick. Know thy enemy my hiney.

Worse than invertebrate dispatchment though is the job of sound check. I'm not talking about standing at a microphone repeating the words "check, check, sybalance, sybalance". I'm referring to those occasions where I must drag myself out of bed to check on a mystery sound that has occurred somewhere in our abode, typically checking the entirety of the dwelling to confirm that there is no imminent threat to our family.

The fact is, this isn't something I can actually dispute because I am more qualified than my lovely wife to check for the presence of an attacker. As any of you who have actually met me can attest to, I carry a commanding presence that does inspire a certain amount of fear and intimidation to those around me. No, seriously. What are you laughing at? I do. People fear me. I'm a bad mutha *$&%#.

Okay fine, I'm not. But still, going back to the aforementioned differential in relative strengths, I am more qualified to take on an aggressor. So there. I do not contest that this as my duty as man of the house. (Honestly, part of me thinks it's my job just because I'm the biggest, and thus would take the longest to eat should there be a monster downstairs, allowing the others a better chance of escape. You scoff, but these things will come up during the impending zombie apocalypse, and fortune favors the prepared.)

What gets to me is that I almost never hear the offending noise in the first place, which is weird, because I'm a much lighter sleeper. As a result, the knee-jerk response to "Did you hear that?" is typically "No, because I was *&%&ING SLEEPING!". (Did I mention that I can a bit cranky when I'm tired?) Needless to say, I repress said knee-jerk response because I'm not a big fan of sleeping on the couch, or worse, actually having an attacker in the house who walks in on my wife severely beating me about the head while I'm curled up in the fetal position whimpering like a little girl. So I get up, wander the house aimlessly checking locks and windows, peek in on the slumbering tots, and return to bed to issue the "All Clear".

So there it is. These are my jobs in the house and I don't like them. They are "man jobs", which seems wrong, simply because we all know that if I were to refer to some household task as "women's work", Oprah Winfrey herself would come to my home and kick me in the junk. Repeatedly. So we do them, and probably always will.

As a side note, however, I will continue to protest management's habit of telling me to "Get that sweet ass into the kitchen and whip me up a pie." That's just wrong.

Mr. Rogers Would Not Approve

As I've mentioned, we moved into our first house last December, and that means I have to break my longstanding tradition of hardcore antisocial tendencies towards my neighbors. Don't get me wrong, I've never been mean to my apartment based neighbors or anything. I've simply ignored them unless they gave me a reason to complain. This was typically accomplished through bad music being played at a level that I can only assume would cause complete failure of various bodily functions. At least that's what I liked to imagine. The point is, I'm not what you'd call neighborly.

So you can imagine my horror when my new neighbors started introducing themselves. I have no grasp of social decorum in these situations. First, the people nest door brought over Christmas cookies. I introduced myself and my daughter who was standing behind me, they introduced themselves, welcomed us to the neighborhood, and that was that.

Immediately afterwards, Management asked why I didn't invite them in. To be honest, the thought simply hadn't crossed my mind. I mean, I didn't know these people. Why would they want to come into my house? In my defense, they had given me the impression that they had just stopped by to drop the cookies off and welcome us in, and then they were off. Still, it outlines just how much work is needed to make me into a suitable suburbanite.

The funny thing is, I'm really good in social situations. I'm a far cry from shy. I'm always quick with a joke in meetings and parties. It's just that my personality is primed for short, quick bursts of sociability - a meeting, a conversation at a party, that kind of thing.

To make matters worse, I remember names for exactly thirty seconds, and then they are gone permanently. My memory is a funny thing to begin with, but this is the worst of it. Names just don't stick with me. So now I've met four adults and two children who live within spitting distance of me (or would if I were a more practiced spitter anyway), and I've forgotten all of their names. Usually I count on Management for these things, but she's been conspicuously absent from all of these meetings, probably because most of them have occurred while I was out shoveling snow.

I have a plan though. Since all of my relationships have moved to the internet, I'll use the internet to solve this. I'm using the public records and online white pages to look up the owners of the surrounding houses and building a custom Google map of them. At least then I'll have the names of the adults.

And it's scary easy. So long as I have the names and addresses correct, we're in business. How's that for geek? I'm moving actual flesh and blood relationships onto the internet.

Oh Mr. Java, You Are So Good To Me

Okay, I told myself I was going to do this every day, but today it's proving more difficult. This has a lot to do with the fact that for the last couple of months I've been averaging one or two good night's sleep a week due to sick kids, a noisy cat, and a thunderstorm. The sick kids and noisy cat I'm kind of used to. The February thunderstorm feels like I'm being punished for something.

I have always maintained that a decent amount of sleep is the source of all my power (well, that and the light of your yellow sun). If I can sleep eight hours a night, I am essentially unstoppable. If get a few nights with less sleep, I'm slow and cranky. Worse yet, I'm uninspired to act on anything. I just want to sit and read or play video games or watch television. Oh, and eat. Eating is good.

Fortunately, I have my good friend coffee by my side, the only beverage that is universally free. Today, I conservatively estimate that I've had three pots of coffee. That's good. That's down from yesterday. Of course, I only slowed down today because it was giving me a stomach ache, but hey, whatever works, right?

Coffee can be kind of rough though. While universally free, free coffee tends to be squarely mediocre. The coffee my work supplies in abundance falls in this category. The first few cups are okay, but then it gets hard to drink, especially as I'm forcing myself to drink only black coffee on weekdays to avoid the massive amounts of creamer and sugar calories. Of course, it's better than the coffee at my last job, although they made up for bad coffee by occasionally supplying free beer. The job prior to that actually had a system that pushed all of the coffee through a series of used tube socks before it hit the pot. Okay, I couldn't actually prove that, but I'm pretty sure it's true.

My favorite office coffee was the work of Evil. By Evil, I'm referring here to an employee at my last job, not "that which causes harm or destruction or misfortune" (although I never really asked what he did in his personal time, so that may apply as well). When they hired him, he was the second Matt in the room, and as he had a goatee, he was naturally Evil Matt. They were hardly twins, but that didn't matter. Everyone knows goatee == evil.

Anyway, at one point we lost the employee who sat next to Evil, and before someone new could be hired, Evil had set himself up a coffee stand. Apparently, in a previous life Evil had been a barrista, and man did he have the set up for it. Big, honking espresso machine. Bean grinders. Mini fridge for milk. Heck, he even had the paper cups with the cardboard tube around them so you don't burn your hands. The man was hooked up.

Don't get me wrong - he wasn't running a business. You threw in some money for supplies if you wanted a cup of something and he made it happen. It was more of a public service. A barrista sitting in a room full of programmers - it was a beautiful thing to behold. I didn't even drink the coffee he made that often, I just admired the sheer audacity of the thing.

Now Get Off Of My Virtual Lawn

Okay, like all gamers, when the "Next Gen" consoles came out, I drooled appropriately. I stood in awe of the shiny graphics. I follow each release and review and long to play those console-only titles that garner the greatest ratings. In short, I wanted.

I am not, however, going to get, because the good people at Sony and Microsoft officially lost their collective *$%#ing minds. At some point, someone decided that nobody needs a gaming system, they need an entertainment system. And let's face it, in a world of giant, flat screen televisions that cost thousands of dollars, what's a few hundred bucks for an entertainment system to run on it. While we're at it, if you're willing to pay that much for the system, fifty or sixty bucks for a game to play on it must be reasonable.

Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.

Only Nintendo seems to understand that people have DVRs and DVD players for their television and movie viewing pleasures, and that what we need is a gaming system that just plays video games. This isn't rocket science. So they put out a system for a couple hundred dollars that plays games and, what do you know, people buy them. A lot of them. Of course, I don't have one of those either, but if I was going to buy a new system, that would be the one I got.

No, instead I'm going to continue to do what I've always done. I'm going to enjoy the last generation of games. You see, after a year or two, I can go to the bargain bins and Amazon, and score what was the absolute greatest game ever written two years ago for a few bucks. Funny thing is, the games are still a lot of fun. Not as shiny, but a lot of fun.

Current example: I just scored Evil Dead: Regeneration for ye olde Xbox. Not the 360 mind you (which for those of you who are geometrically challenged is turning all the way around and ending up in the same place - odd name for the next gen), but my faithful black brick of an Xbox. It's not the greatest game in the world, but it has a lot of elements I enjoy in a game. There's brutal violence directed at undead foes, there's a chainsaw, and it's voiced by the one and only Bruce Campbell, which all by itself was worth the price of admission. The best part of the deal though, was that I got it for three dollars.

That's right, three buckaroonies. Less than a vente at Starbuck's. Less than a bag of Doritos. Heck, it's less than I paid to rent the last DVD of the latest season of 24, which is why I was in the video store to begin with.

That right there is why last gen is always, to my mind, the best. Sure I miss out on all the neato graphics and all that, but the games still rock like they did when they were released, the reviews are all in so I can avoid the games that blow eggwater, and I pay next to nothing for them.

So you can all keep your fancy toys. I'll read the reviews, make a list of what's worthwhile, and score them in a couple of years, when the Xbox 720 is making the other kids dizzy. The hordes of the undead need not be stunningly rendered, so long as the boomstick does what it's supposed to.

Home Decorating As A Bloodsport

It strikes me that this is swiftly becoming a place of far too much seriousness. As such, before this post is over, I promise that I will interject some much needed, juvenile humor into it, with a good, solid warning beforehand so those with more delicate sensibilities (i.e. my mother-in-law) will know to stop reading at that point.

Also, to further the effort to keep this from becoming too serious, I've decided to add sort of a "Dear DLOG" feature. So, should anyone have some pressing questions, feel free to send them to us here, and one or more of the DLOG staff will respond. Keep in mind that the DLOG staff consists of me, a five year old girl, a one year old boy, and a rubber skeleton that hangs in my cube and goes by the name of Hermie. If I have to, I'll involve management. You might want to formulate your questions appropriately.

So, this weekend continued the long trek of trying to get the things we've been toting around all of these years into their appropriate places in our new house, and that included a Saturday night of attempting to hang a picture over our fireplace. Like many tasks that my lovely wife and I have undertaken together in that past, this one ended with the picture still quite secure in it's place on the floor while we exchanged withering looks and barbs across the room.

While sitting and stewing at the situation, I came to a sudden and horrifying realization - I was wrong. Totally and completely wrong. I can not describe the angst that comes with trying to be reasonable once I've gotten a really good brooding going and then realize I have nothing to brood about. Part of me wants to be angry, like maybe if I sit and be mad for another few minutes I'll have some epiphany that I really wasn't in the wrong. Fortunately, I was able to shut that part of my brain off long enough to see what had happened.

Apparently, unbeknowst to me (but knowst to my wife), I have a really terrible habit of dismissing the ideas of others when I think my ideas are better. Upon thirty seconds of reflection, this is completely true. When trying to tackle some problem, if you try to explain an idea to me, and I either disagree with it or don't fully understand what it is you're trying to suggest, I will dismiss it outright and push my own agenda.

I have no idea why I'm so sure I'm right about things, or if I even am so sure. I mean, I can't stand it when people dismiss the ideas of others based on preconceived notions without even hearing what the other people have to say. It's the arena of political pundits and fundamentalists. I do not want to be lumped into that crowd.

Even worse than that though is the thought of what I'm doing to people when I do this. How demeaning is it to have someone treat your ideas as something not even worth consideration? Even worse, I'm doing this to my wife, whose ideas I constantly rely on. We're supposed to be a team, but I'm blowing off her ideas as if they're worthless. In short, I was being a *#$%.

Given a little thought, I know that this in part comes from my upbringing. My family was supportive, which is good, but we had a really bad habit of enforcing our ideals as if they were laws. People who disagreed were open for mocking, and if we were good at anything, it was mocking people. Since we all maintained the same set of opinions for the most part (the mocking rule applied within the clan as well), the idea that we were right and the rest of the world was wrong became second nature.

So here I am now with yet another terrible habit that I have to try to break. It's amazing to me how long it takes to retrain my own brain to behave like I want it to instead of just switching back to my old self. You'd think that as sentient beings, we would be able to just decide to behave a certain way, and that would be that. If only it could be so easy.

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AND NOW WE TAKE THIS SENSITIVE AND THOUGHTFUL POST AND DRAG IT DOWN INTO THE GUTTER, WHICH, LETS FACE IT, IS WHERE MOST OF YOU WOULD RATHER IT BE. STOP READING HERE, OH TENDER READERS.

SERIOUSLY. ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO CONTINUE. WHAT WILL BE READ CANNOT BE UNREAD.

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So, here's a question for the fellas; you ever drop a duece, and then check it out afterwards and try to guage just how big a cellmate you could stand if you found yourself incarcerated? No? Just me then.

Dangerously Low On Grog - your source for thoughtful introspection and shameless bathroom humor since 2008.

Rated R for Rant

Okay, yesterday I attacked an American icon during a tirade about double dipping. While I stand firm in my opinion of Fun Dip (that opinion being best described as "Ewwwww..."), I do not in fact support the widespread boycott of Wonka products in general. Unless of course Hershey's was getting a case of almond bars together with my address on it. In that case, to hell with Wonka and his half-pint armies.

Seriously, I was trying to point out that every time anything happens in this country lately, it seems like someone is right there with the fear mongering, demanding that some group be regulated or some product be pulled from the shelf for our own safety. We do this for two very simple reasons: we need someone to blame our problems on, and we need to avoid personal responsibility at all costs.

A few months ago, all of the headlines rambled on about how studies proved that children's cold and cough medicines were dangerous. Soon after, the government began to push on the drug companies, and what do you know, now I can't get something to clear my kid's noses so they can sleep without coughing all night. Whew! Thank goodness we dodged that bullet.

Had anyone read beyond the headline, they might have caught the part where the kids who were getting sick and dying from this stuff had 12 times the regular dose in them. So the drug itself wasn't necessarily the problem, it was the moron parents who couldn't read the label and follow directions. Unfortunately, it's more difficult to outlaw moron parents, so we try to take their toys away instead.

The same thing applies all over the place. I'm a gamer, or as much of a gamer as one can be with a full time job and two kids. Still, I keep up on things. I read Penny Arcade and Ctrl-Atl-Del. I watch X-Play when the Disney Channel isn't on. Occasionally, I even sit down and play a game.

As such, I am thrown into fits when some uninformed boob declares that video games have to be federally regulated. It's the same argument that's been made about books, movies, music, comics...essentially any medium. "The children can get the games and warp their fragile little minds." Yes, the children can get the games, and do you know how? Their idiot parents buy them. Just because Billy Bob doesn't bother checking the rating on Halo before handing it over to his kid doesn't mean that we need to regulate games to protect Billy Bob Junior, it means we need to better educate Billy Bob. Besides, it's Halo - the worst thing to come of it will be Junior talking about his "pwnage" and referring to people he's never met online as "homos". (I was only on Xbox Live for a year, but judging from what I heard, there is a huge, gay, gaming community out there that I was previously unaware of.)

There is no reason for this. If we're seriously concerned about the children, how about teaching people not to have children? Or teaching people about rating systems and why they exist? For that matter, how about teaching people that THEIR LIVES AND THE LIVES OF THEIR CHILDREN ARE THEIR OWN DAMN RESPONSIBILITY AND THEY SHOULDN'T NEED THE GOVERNMENT TO MAKE THEIR DECISIONS FOR THEM.

Wow. Where did that come from? Apparently I'm a little pent up about this topic. Let's just leave off by reiterating that if you think something is a bad idea (e.g. Fun Dip), don't participate in it, and question whether you should let your children participate in it. If you're not sure if something is a good idea, ask someone who knows more than you about it, or look it up. Don't make uninformed decisions that lead to our government stepping in and making decisions for up. In the words of Funkadelic, "Think - it ain't illegal yet".

There, I said it. Now can someone please get these damned Oompa Loompas of my lawn?