Tidbits, and mini-Paddlin'

First, to the Paddlin':

Sarah Palin - quitter. Wuss. But I am psyched to see that she still can't avoid the press, and continues to sound like an idiot. Man, the 2012 Presidential race can NOT come fast enough.

Congress - again with the pussiness. Pussyness? Pussitude? Either way, they're a bunch of mincing little girls. You knew about the torture of innocent civilians, you greenlighted an entire war based on little or no evidence, and yet somehow the idea of giving the middle class better healthcare is beyond your reach? All 535 of you are as useless as Pope Hat condoms, contraception for Catholics. Jerkweeds. Pikers.

House Hunters: Wife watches this show. I can't figure out why. Maybe it's watching Iowans choose between McMansion A, B, or C, all for under $55,000. After all, who doesn't love feeling superior once in a while? But it's on more often than Law & Order and CSI: Whatever put together, and she can't get enough. You know who I want to see buy a house? Nobody. I. Just. Don't. Care.

Limes: You're not fooling anyone, you know. I see right through you. You have exactly one use - stuck in the bottle of a Corona to make it taste less like pee (seriously, have you ever drunk a Corona without a lime? It has to be Mexican urine. I'm convinced. I don't know what this means about sticking a lime in there and drinking it anyway, but those ads are just so compelling!). But Lime-ade? Wrong. False. Incorrect.

You are a garnish! Lemon won this war, like, centuries ago. You had your chance. You could have been lemon. But you blew it. We all know the old story of the Last Supper: Jesus had you on one side, and lemon on the other. And what did you do? You made some crack about his beard, and he went with lemon, the silent and tastier citrus. Then you sold out lemon to the Romans, and they crucified him.

I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore, but my point is, shut the fuck up, lime. Go wait by the Corona.

Fantastic new Scientology ads: these have been popping up on my RSS feeds, and I have to say these are misplaced on the Paddlin' list, because they are hilarious.



Awesome! Hooray L.Ron Alien Man!

Recently I've noticed that I really want to be Scottish. This isn't new - I've been obsessed since I saw Braveheart for the first time. It's the accent, the liquor, the opportunity to wear plaid skirts without being a Catholic school girl (although if I do get reincarnated, not a bad choice, if you're listening, Hindu gods...).

But mostly, it's the music. Idlewild, Reindeer Section, Broken Records, Frightened Rabbit - but not Belle & Sebastian. I'm wussy enough as it is - if I started listening to them I'd probably have to start wearing eyeliner and keeping a dream journal.

Finally, a Turducken update: I have mastered the boning - that is, de-boning - or the removal of all bones, there, that's completely empty of bestial innuendos - of a chicken. What I found is that you just have to suck it up and dive in. Just get in there deep, using your fingers to probe around, and find the sweet spots. Crap, I let the sexual innuendo back in, didn't I?

Oh well. Next up - duck. I'm not going to do a practice turkey, because it's expensive, and Wife doesn't like turkey, so I'd be eating the damn thing myself. And I just don't like white meat.

Hey, at least I posted, right? Maybe next time you'll get some sort of structure, or focus.

Random thoughts while I prepare to give Child jetlag for his birthday

At this time last year, Wife was clutching her enormous belly and trying not to poop out a baby on our nice white couch. Our couch was located in our apartment in Boston, which we could no longer afford.

And now...Child is a year old tomorrow, Wife's belly is so taught you can bounce quarters off it, and I'm gainfully employed by one of the few non-profits not completely decimated by Bernie Madoff and his band of Shylocks - making Jewish stereotypes persist for another thousand years! - living in an apartment we can afford in Pittsburgh.

This is not a list of resolutions. Nor is this all cheesy about Child somehow surviving his first year with me as his father. If you want me to be honest with you, this is a post crafted out of guilt and obligation to cover my ass while I jet off to LA for a week to watch Brother S may a girl that's WAY out of his league. Don't you feel the love all over? Sorry, that's a rash. You should get that looked at.

A friend mocked me this week for not watching one of the 754 bowl games. It could be that I was instead watching the Devil Wears Prada (how come no one told me that's not the movie where Anne Hathaway gets naked?). Or it could be that college football is a poor excuse for a genre of sport. It's nowhere near as compelling as the NFL, the skill level is exponentially lower, and the BCS system is so bad that Obama won the election simply by saying he'd fix it. There might have been other reasons, but I don't remember what they were. Something about hope, or dope. Were we promised a bong in every home?

Anywhoo, college football blows unless it's overtime. They have the single greatest overtime system in sports. Better than hockey's shootout. Better than your extra innings. Better than your closest-croquet-mallet-to-the-testicles-wins croquet. Even better than cricket's Animal House-style ass-whacking Rochambeaux. It's exciting, each team gets a fair shot, and the score runs up absurdly into the 70-64 range. Plus there's no punting, and we all know punting is for pussies who play rugby.

Meanwhile, I'm reading Beckett and this guy Gary Lutz. If you've ever read either one, you will wonder why the hell I'm reading both at the same time. Well Watt is funny, no doubt about it. But it's also dense, and boring, and not a whole lot's happening right now. So sue me, I got antsy. So I picked up Lutz only to discover that he treats English like a salad. He tosses some verbs here and there, and thinks adjectives are just super over anything, without regard to context, or definition. So you'll get a sentence like

"I disturbed the pages of my newspaper, spoiling them, melancholizing them with sudden prosperities of eyesight, despecificating the stories until all that was still binding in them was a vague and ungiving sense of people motioning dimly toward me from within their own cumbersome towns."

What the fuck does that mean? It makes me feel stupid, and jealous, and exhilarated. Turns out, I enjoy things that make me feel like an idiot.

E.g., being a dad. Child went through a period of eating nothing but frozen pancakes and waffles. Couldn't get enough. And then we got a note home today - "Please do not send any more frozen pancakes or waffles. They make him scream." Well alrighty then. Of course, Child will eat just about anything if you distract him with fun toys like paper, or a magnet. So we tag team him for dinner - Wife shoves food into his mouth, and I try to do the weirdest, most bizarre things I can to keep Child's attention until he realizes he's full. He lets us know by vomiting.

On Sunday we get on a plane to fly across the country. Child has flown before, but never for this long. Can anyone tell me how much Benadryl - aka baby heroin - will it take for us to make it to LA with our sanity intact? One bottle? Three? In the meantime I'll try to remember funny things about the trip, and maybe when I return I'll regale you with tales of the Left Coast, and all their vegan hilarity.

It ain't just for babies anymore

I have to teach Child a lot. He didn't come into this world with the ability to swallow, for example. And forget about proper jump shot form. There are literally thousands of different tasks and abilities he'll have to master before he can take me on as King of the Castle, and he better get on it quick because who knows how long it will be before he's got competition.

Note: this is not a secret hint to my 20-odd loyal readers that Wife is with child. It just so happens that the Fancy Pants patented impregnating mechanism can only be held off for so long before it breaks through the gynecological defenses and captures the childbearing flag. (Further note: that last bit was way weird, even for me. But you know what? I'm leaving it in. Too bad.).

One thing I thought Child would have had down pat in the womb is napping. He had all that time floating around doing nothing - what else was he doing? Sure, all you holy folks will talk about him learning Torah with an angel, but let's face it - my kid would be sleeping through even that class.

But no, we had to teach him that he has to sleep every couple of hours, or his brain melts and his eyes fill with salty needles. Which is a shame, because napping is one of the few pleasures Americans deny themselves in pursuit of the, well, the American Way. Mexicans have their siestas, Israelis have their sha'at menucha, Italians have their June, July, August and September (ha ha! Italians. So lazy. I love stereotypes.). But Americans get...what, power lunches? Brunch? Other things that end in -unch?

Not for me, these non-idle pursuits. For a baby napping may be a vital time to recharge and grow and crap out the neck of your t-shirt, but for adults napping is a glorious luxury, a kind of blissful oasis in the middle of the day.

Ask around, and you'll hear some stories about the Fancy Pants and napping. That I once ditched Hebrew class to take a nap in the closet - that carpet was new, and quite cozy. That I slept through all of my econ requirements in college, and actually most of my major classes. But it was nuts-and-bolts finance, so you can't blame a guy, can you? Then there was the time I slept so often in one class that the teacher threw an eraser at my head. That incident, though, I consider an honor, because back in the day he was a world-class army sniper for the IDF, and he hit me right in the forehead. A fantastic shot. Must have been fifteen feet, easy. My point is that when I talk about naps, I'm kind of an expert.

What's my point, exactly? My point is that I want to bring back the nap. I want you people to tell others, and they'll pass it on further, and soon we'll have a whole Ponzi scheme built on the Andy Capp lifestyle.

Sleeping during the day, it's like you're stealing it. It feels naughty. You mess up the sheets which are still cool from not being used since the morning, the sun shines through the blinds - but not too bright, because you're not there to read. No need to put your clothes away, although I know some people are all about napping in their suits. Not me. Clothes go in a rumpled pile next to the bed, and I just crash for two, three, five hours until Wife wonders whether I'm in fact dead. Magnificence. It's a tiny slice of selfish indolence onto which I will cling until multiple Children decide it's time to play How Many Legos Fit in Daddy's Nose?

So that gives me like, I don't know, years.

As the song says, they're everywhere

I want to talk to you today about what's under the Fancy Pants: underwear. Everyone wears them, yet somehow they usually don't come up in polite conversation. Unless you're a precocious three-year-old, in which case it's more polite to talk about your Underoos than it is to tell the story of when you caught Mommy and Daddy "wrestling."

I could go all different ways with this topic. I could talk about how they have become optional, or the glory of the thong, or something along those sexy, sexy lines. I could even wax nostalgic about the aforementioned Underoos. I always loved Spiderman. I think I actually have those somewhere...

Instead I'm going to talk about the boxer brief phenomenon.

A young man's undie evolution proceeds thusly: diapers, Underoos, tighty whities. From there things branch out. Some people stick with the traditional whites. Others move on to boxers, or as Wife calls them, "useless shorts." A few - this number, according to scuttlebutt hearsay and locker-room gossip, is rising - move on to the leopard-print manpanty. But more and more guys are finding a middle ground with boxer briefs. I'll make the joke again: neither boxers nor briefs. Discuss.

For a long time I wore only boxers. It certainly helped that for years I wore clothes that were 2 sizes too big, convinced that my growth spurt would have to come eventually, right? Wrong. Instead all I have are pictures of myself looking like Tom Hanks after he turns back into a little kid in Big. Which would have been fine if I was a rapper, or 12, or a 12-year-old rapper. When you're 21, that look doesn't really attract the ladies. But I needed room for my boxers, and my junk (see Appendix: Offensive Mental Image #1). There's a...freedom that boxers allow, a liberation that stops just short of the notorious "freeball." And since this was a time before the upskirt shot gained prominence, I kept everything double-wrapped.

Then I got to law school. There I learned the importance of clothes that fit, and how pants are supposed to shape and cup the buttocks (see id.: Offensive Mental Image #2). But it's hard enough tucking in shirts (yet another upcoming sartorial post). Add the bulk of unwieldy overwashed cotton, and all of a sudden your hip-ass-groinal area begins to look a giant donut.

Please note that I refrained from making the easy sexist joke about a middle-aged lady's extra-wide hips. Because I'm all about political correctness.

So Wife, then going by Girlfriend, suggested boxer briefs. I admit I was skeptical, and a little frightened. Except for swimsuits, I hadn't worn such tight undergarments since I was seven. I worried about heat, and sweat, and constriction, and the "coal-diamond" effect (I worried my nuts would be compressed into a single ball, with which I could both cut glass and set in a lovely ring). Then there was the other problem: boxer briefs are sort of the San Francisco treat. But I'm a liberated guy, and it only took me four or five years to overcome that issue.

I've gotta say, though, that they've come in handy. My ass looks fantastic - or so Wife says - and the goods are protected, even cradled (see id.: Offensive Mental Image #3).

But I'll never totally forgo boxers. For one thing, there's the flap issue. When you need...access, boxers are a hell of a lot easier. One of the most awkward acts to perform in a men's room is to reach into your pants through your fly and start jerking around (no pun intended; I couldn't think of another word for "jerking"). And some boxer briefs don't even come with a flap; you have to find another...exit strategy.

I think the most pressing question is, "What the fuck, guy? I come here looking for the funny, and instead I get a barrage of sausage imagery! How about a warning next time?" Well you know what? That's 2 questions and an exclamation, so I'm not going to answer your rude question. What do you think of that?

But I will leave you with an interesting bit of trivia. The guy who wrote the first song in Juno also wrote this song, which is a much cooler underwear song than that "thong thong thong" crap. Barry Louis Polisar, ladies and gentlemen!

The election, as written by John Hughes

It's your classic high school love triangle:

On one side, there is the cool, hip class president. He's on his way to Harvard on a full scholarship, which he won by designing a system to remove the carbon footprint of homeless people. Sure, he's got some baggage - his dad, for example, is CRAZY. And not evil crazy, like Judd Nelson's dad in Breakfast Club. Real, supercool movie crazy, the kind that can't actually be real, but somehow is.

On the other there's the nerdy romantic, who's spent three years with her nose in a book, or hidden behind her brash, slutty best friend (this only works if you pretend Hillary is a lesbian. I would say keep the jokes to yourself, but why am I the only one allowed to be funny?). She's worked really hard. She's always pined for the Prom Queen, and this is her chance. They've been in every class for her, and every time the Prom Queen has gotten drunk and gone down on the lacrosse team, her faithful bookish friend has always been there to take her to the emergency room to get her stomach pumped.

Finally there is the Prom Queen herself, who looked pristine and virginal when she started high school, but is already a little worn out. She's still hot, and her legs go all the way up, if you know what I mean (to her hips, which are connected to her back, if you don't know your anatomy), but that "new car" smell has faded. But somewhere deep, deep inside is a heart of gold, just looking for the right match to bring it out, and drive her to win Prom Queen one more time.

We've all seen this movie. As adorable as her effort is, the nerd is not going to win. The cool kid sees the error of his arrogant ways, and does right by the Prom Queen by paying for her abortion and dancing the tango with her while Fallout Boy rocks the first dance. The nerd gracefully steps aside; after all, it was her sage advice, given offhandedly in a seemingly random moment, that showed the cool kid the right path. And as beautiful as the Prom Queen is, she's just not as attractive as the understanding witty friend, who's got a better record collection and also doesn't have the free clinic on speed dial. (I don't know who that would be in this allegory. Canada? Cuba, post-Castro? Let's call it Costa Rica, because why not.)

What's different here is that Hillary, even though she, too, has seen the movie, still thinks she's got a shot. Maybe someone should send her a copy of Sixteen Candles, or Pretty in Pink, or whichever one has Duckie. Molly Ringwald as America? I buy that. Especially since I always thought Ally Sheedy was hotter. Hell, I thought Judd Nelson was prettier. Wait, what were we talking about?

Bad Penmanship Is a Sign of the Devil

The world today is fraught with danger. Some of these life-threatening life-threateners are visible to the naked eye: sociopathic clowns wielding chainsaws, vats of sulfuric acid surrounded by loose gunpowder, perhaps vampires.

I'm not afraid of these obviously sinister characters. What really scares me is the unknown. The indecipherable. Evil incoherent. Remember that little boy (and it's always a boy; girls are too careful to let their diabolic nature manifest itself in a random grammar quiz) who sat next to you in the third grade, who would sneak a nibble at his boogers when he thought no one was looking, but you always caught him? His handwriting was terrible. He never learned to write a proper cursive "z." Do you know what that lad does now?

He kills neighborhood pets, just for kicks.

But who knew to suspect little Roger? It took me twenty years to understand the threat, to comprehend the precarious limb upon which society is balanced. But I've seen it too many times to ignore it now. And that's why I'm going to become a Satanist.

I must concede, for the good of humankind, that my handwriting is nearly illegible. My 6's look like G's, my e's disappear, showing up randomly at the end of "the," and then only as a squiggle. My m's, n's and r's are indistinguishable. Often I have no idea what I've written as a reminder to myself: am I supposed to see the doctor, or wash the car? I have no understanding of my own mind. What evil lurks in my heart? The Shadow would know, if he could read chicken-scratch.

So I shall devote myself to the propagation of evil. I will trip old ladies as they cross the street, and beat up cub scouts. I must fulfill my destiny as revealed through my handwriting, a clear indication that my life is meant to do Lucifer's work. The very sight of my grocery lists will make grown men weep, and clergy hose themselves off with holy water. My personal checks, abominations every one, will be used to purchase diabolical utensils, like sporks, and pentagram branding irons.

No one may understand what I've written, but now the world can be sure that whatever appears on my stationery shall be missives from the depths of Hell. Or maybe just a to-do list. A vile, odious to-do list.