Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Giant, Over Complicated Looking, Explody Robot Destructo Machines

  • Dear Summer, I'm sorry. You and I are just not going to make it. I'll still bring the kids around once in a while. They deserve their time with you. I just can't stand the constant sweating, the way the sun effects my skin. We need some time apart. Let's just try to get through the next few months existing together as best as possible.
  • I'm reading a book right now that acknowledges the hardships of parenting, and gives the advice of just being consistent and staying the course even if things appear to be in vain.
  • It also acknowledges a lot of the specific hardships I've encountered: wife and husband disagreeing on things, kids appearing to ignore certain lessons… I could keep going.
  • Gage is a never ending stream of words lately. His grammatical skills are surely lacking, but he gets the points across most of the time.
  • When he can't see, he makes it painfully obvious. One night we were at our local school playground. The sun was setting and had blinded him a bit. He shouted, "I can't see my eyes! I can't see my eyes!" Likely there should have been a comma or pause in there, but…
  • He has eagle eyes for fast food restaurants. Which might make you think we eat out a lot, but that's really not the case. He just has a great memory. As we pass just about any restaurant, he identifies what type of food they sell and adds, "I gotta get some."
  • Bob Evans is known as "Pancakes." If you try to explain that it's called Bob Evans, he gets a bit angry.
  • Owen is obsessed with the clock, telling time. A good thing to be constantly concerned about in some ways. A bit annoying in other ways.
  • The main reason for his obsession is a show called Wild Kratts on PBS. The show starts at 5:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday. It is educational. He does absorb every second of it. His life seems to revolve around it lately.
  • He's doing that fact finding thing kids his age do. "What would happen if you took a bath in fire? What if you tried to eat 100 cheese tacos? How come you only kiss me on the top of my head instead of on the mouth?"
  • What I'm about to say will shock you: I liked the Land of the Lost movie. I had avoided it like the plague because so many people hated it, but I borrowed it from the library last week. I liked it. It was funny and fantastical. I was never a huge fan of the TV show. I caught it in syndication, but the TV show never endeared itself to me.
  • I'm sure I just lost a bunch of credibility in the movie review department.
  • The new Transformers movie is out. I really wish they would have just made up a new franchise. I know. I know. I'm an annoying fan boy that just wants things to be the way they were when I was eight years old. The thing is, I might enjoy these movies if they just changed the names of the characters. That would remove my expectations.
  • Maybe they could release a dubbed over version that replaces all the characters' names. They could call the movies, Giant, Over Complicated Looking, Explody Robot Destructo Machines. I'd pay to see that.
  • They finally made a Simon Pegg movie I didn't like, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. It wasn't totally terrible, but it was too long or poorly edited. I'm not sure. I just didn't get the same enjoyment out of the flick.
  • Can someone clone Desmond Tutu please?
  • I'm officially a year older this week. I don't really care for birthdays anymore. My hair has been grey for years now. No one cards me anymore. It's been a while since someone called me, "Young Man."
  • We have a tent that claims it will sleep nine people. We put four air mattresses inside which left room for two people to sleep at our feet. If nine people slept together in that tent, it would be an intimate, lack of personal space, uncomfortable evening.
  • My favorite headlines lately: "Police Say Drunk Man Tried to Operate on Dog" and "Monkey Steals Camera, Takes Self Portraits." Some would say they both contain the best parts of the story in the headlines, but I want to know what type of operation we were talking here. Was it brain surgery? Did the dog have a bowel obstruction?
  • I don't like to judge other people's parenting skills, but when you go out to watch fireworks in public, you see things that you can't help but judge. If a kid throws a lit sparkler in the air toward a stranger holding a baby, you just don't hand him firecrackers ten minutes later for him to light by himself. It's like saying, "Here. You almost burned a stranger's baby, now go blow off your hands."
  • A few years back the local TV news started running stories about what types of fireworks were legal in Michigan and which weren't. Basically, if it leaves the ground or explodes, it's illegal. Here's the catch. I was working at a newspaper at the time, and we were running ads for a local fireworks dealer that advertised bottle rockets and firecrackers (flying, exploding). We called the local police to see if the advertisement was promoting something illegal.
  • Their response was this: Dealers can sell any type of fireworks. Consumers can buy any type of fireworks. Consumers can not legally set off any type of fireworks in Michigan just because they can legally purchase them here.
  • Of course, no one really cares because you see huge displays flying and exploding in most Michigan suburbs all the time.
  • I think I've stated this before: I'm not very nostalgic for actual eighties music. I do, however, enjoy modern music that is clearly heavily influenced by the eighties.

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