And Happy Birthday to you-know-who! (me.)

So what's Papa Smurf up to these days?

The Recital

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy watching my children perform what they've learned so far in music class. In fact, I enjoy it a whole lot.

But those recitals... They kill me. Call me a terrible person; I don't care. It's a few short moments of hilarity mixed in with a seemingly endless parade of (terrible) performances by children I don't know. It's a chore to stay awake, let alone appear interested. And from looking around, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who tends to feel that way.

We had one a couple nights ago. Natasha's recorder class performed at 5:30, and Zach's orchestra (he's on the Baritone) performed at 7:00. We had to sit there the entire time in between.

Those instruments. It's been two days, and my ears are still crying.

They try. Bless them, they try. And they're all new and excited to perform, and it's important to get a taste of performing for a crowd. I acknowledge that. But, come on. I'm still not sure how they did it, but they managed to turn one of the happiest, most upbeat songs in history into an elegy for the damned. Check it out:

I imagine if you're marched through the gates of hell on Christmas Day, this is what Satan's Orchestra plays for you as you're herded into the flaying chamber.

(I filmed this using a crappy digital camera. It's shaking so bad because I was doing my best not to fall out of my chair.)

To be a fair, a couple kids got up and performed some solos that were amazing for their age. And when they all sing together, they're not half bad.

I guess it's a rite of passage... first as a child and later again when you're an adult. Sort of like a never-ending circle of Christmas karma.

Though the evening wasn't completely without some serious entertainment... For all those Bill O'Reilly "War on Christmas" fans, I have a treat for you! The evening closer was a bastardized, politically-correct version of the classic, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" that was worth the price of admission alone for the looks on the faces of some of the older, grumpier audience members:

O' Christmas Tree, O' Christmas Tree!

It's funny how you can tell a lot about people based on their Christmas tree. I was just looking at ours, and it's like a historical totem pole. Even from far away, you can learn a lot:

The first thing you notice is there are tons of ornaments on the top half, and the bottom half looks like it was attacked by wild, anti-Christmas weasels. You get closer and look under the tree:

And you can see more destruction laid out. Dead ornaments. Some of them have seen their last Christmas.

That's pretty much how our tree has looked for the past ten years. And the culprit isn't the cat. It's the miniature tornado that is our youngest child who is so filled with the holiday spirit, she needs to personally examine each and every in-reach ornament.

So anyway, you can see we have a wide variety of ornaments on the top half of the tree:

Some of these are very old, and some are not so old, but they all tell a story.

(Well all of them except for the few, random filler ones like this:)

(Though if you look really closely you can see my reflection in it. I'm topless.)

I got this one on my 8th birthday. As a birthday present:

I'm still not sure what that is coming out of the bottom half of the 8. It looks like a kidney.


This one is testament to the fact my poor mother is losing it. She insists I made this one:

"JCD" is short for Julie Country Day, a nun-infested school I attended for three years. However, I'm fairly certain this actually belongs to one of my brothers. I was a little too young to spell out JCD and/or '79 back in the '70's.

This one:

Is one of several homemade pig ornaments we have. They are always carefully placed out of weasal range on the top half of the tree. They were made by my wife's now-deceased, pig-lovin' grandma.

This one plays "Let it Snow" when you press a button on the back:

Which is pretty amazing because I remember when we got it in 1986. I can't even get the batteries in the camera to last 21 minutes, let alone 21 years. (Speaking of cameras, my real camera is broken, and I need a new one, as evidenced by this blurry-ass picture taken by my crappy Kodak Easyshare. Those of you who happen to be thinking of buying me a present...)

And we have lots of random ornaments.

We have creepy ones:

Pop-culturey ones:

Geek ones:

Music ones:

And lots and lots of "look-what-I-made-in-school-today" ones:

Though my favorite is the topper:

It's cracked and rubbed off and ready to turn to dust at any moment. Perfect!

Zero Gravity Cat

If there is a hell, I am going there for thinking this is one of the funniest videos I have ever seen.



I hope for their sake the cat was declawed.

I hate Kid Cuisine dinners, and so should you.

So a couple nights ago I went to the store and the kids asked for "Kid Cuisines" for dinner. So I bought some. Four different kinds.

Simple, right? We've all had TV Dinners every now and then. Easy Peasy. You peel off the plastic covering over the weird mashed potato stuff, pop it in the microwave, cook for four minutes, and you're done.

A Kid Cuisine is supposedly the same thing, only more kid friendly. There is a difference, however, that becomes painfully apparent when you try to actually cook it. Here's an example of the instructions:

Step one. Remove plastic from entire meal.
Step two. Take out chicken nuggets, Juice packet, and fruit snacks.
Step three. Throw the rest in the microwave and cook for two minutes.
Step four. Whilst cooking, juggle the chicken pieces while whistling a song from Cherone-era Van Halen
Step five. Dip fruit snacks in boiling water, but only for 7-10 seconds.
Step six. Forty-eight seconds after microwave dings, put chicken nuggets back in compartment number 3 and remove corn niblets. Cook for two minutes.
Step seven. Remind children dinner is almost ready.
Step eight. After microwave dings again, wait three minutes because chicken nuggets have turned into mushy, boiling, poo-colored blobs of lava.
Step nine. Open frozen goo packet and sprinkle on nuggets.f
Step ten. As you serve child #1, try not to remember you bought three other dinners with completely different, but equally complicated instructions.

Ugh. It ended up taking 1/2 hour to make four of them.

The Pussification of Humpty Dumpty

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a fairly liberal guy. Still, driving to/from work when the music mood doesn't strike me and NPR has something terribly boring on, I sometimes switch the radio over to the talk (rant) station which is inevitably someone like Michael Savage or Bill O'Reilly or Laura Ingram. While I disagree with most of what they have to say, I can't help but be entertained by the image of them spitting into the microphone, fists clenched and brows furrowed, leaning forward or even standing as they roar their disdain at the current state of America. At how the Liberals are destroying our children and turning them into godless Sodomites who eat kittens and have little cards in their wallets that get stamped after each abortion because the tenth one is free.

I laugh, and I laugh.

Tonight I'm not laughing. I'm not laughing because tonight I'm going to turn into one of those right-wing radio wackjobs, at least in spirit.

I just read this book to my two-year-old daughter. DK Baby Fun: Humpty Dumpty.

Ahhh, the classic tragedy. Humpty Dumpty.

Who among us hasn't been enraptured by this timeless story of daring, danger, and untimely death?

It's the king of nursery rhymes.

It's the king because it exemplifies the very purpose of nursery rhymes... to allow us to introduce the harsh realities of this world in bite-sized, neatly-wrapped packages.

So let's rewind to the reading of this particular version of Humpty Dumpty.

Page one:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

(Already my daughter is interested. I laugh. Oh that silly Humpty Dumpty. Won't he ever learn?)

Page two:

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

(That's what you get, you stupid egg! Sitting on the edge like that. My daughter shows appropriate concern. Already I see the lesson sinking in. Don't sit on ledges! Especially if you're an egg!)


Page three:

(This page has lots of explosions and bangs. A nice touch, I think.)

Page four:

All the King's Horses and all the King's Men

(A bunch of concerned citizens rush to Humpty's rescue. A glimmer of hope appears in my daughter's eye.)

Page five:

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

(Bam! That's right! That's what you get! My daughter realizes sometimes stories don't have happy endings, so you better be careful! She clutches onto to me more tightly so she doesn't fall. Lesson properly applied and learned. Thank you Humpty Dumpty for your lesson!

...but wtf is this? There's two more pages.)

Page six:

But if we close our eyes and imagine...

(But? But?! There's no freakin' "but's" in Humpty Dumpty! Already the lesson my daughter has learned is being wiped from her subconscious hardrive. I know I should stop, but I don't. )

Page seven:

We can put Humpty Dumpty back together again!

My daughter promptly leaps off my lap, assuming we can imagine away pain. Luckily I catch her in mid-air.

All lessons are promptly forgotten. The damage is irreparable.

This is worse than that Puppy Book Incident from last year.

This is like re-writing Romeo and Juliet and having the Montagues and Capulets get together to talk out their differences over Starbucks. It's like that wolf giving Old Yeller a hug instead of rabies. This is a literary slaughter of colossal proportions.

Before

Seriously, what the hell? Any parent who picks up Humpty Dumpty knows what's in store. This is the wholesale guerilla pussification of our children!

I'm all for happy endings. (Heh.) But write your own damn story if you want one! Don't bastardize a classic so you can sneak your agenda in! (Picture me standing at my laptop and spitting.)

After. And the End!

The Countries of the World

They don't make cartoons like they used to, even in the 90's. Meredyth hated the Animaniacs, but I thought it was brilliant.



Pinky and the Brain was better overall, but this was just awesome.

What horror outcome would you pick?

So I'm trying to think of the most common horror/scary/thriller movie villains.

We got

Zombies



Ghosts



Demons



Psychotic Killers



Psychotic Supernatural Killers



Aliens



Pissed-off animals



Monsters



Science gone awry



Disease



(Quick, off topic note. Don't ever, ever, ever do a Google Image Search for the term "herpes." You've been warned.)


Man-made destruction



Mother Nature



And I'm trying to think of all these situations, which of these I would most want to face if I had to. Like if The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones appeared and demanded I choose my fate, and the above were my choices, what would I pick?

I would probably avoid all the apocalyptic ones, so zombies, disease, disaster, etc. would be out because those movies never have happy endings. Ghosts/demons would be out as well because in those, the victims tend to be damned for eternity or have fates where the outcome doesn't necessarily end with just death.

Aliens are unpredictable, and they tend to come back in force after you kill the first one or two.

Serial Killers like to torture. I'm not a big fan of torture.

So that leaves supernatural killers, animals, and monsters.

The thing about supernatural killers is they tend to reincarnate after you kill them and kill you, the survivor, off at the very beginning of their next spree.

Monsters usually have a specific weakness, and the only way to kill them is to exploit it. I'm terrible at puzzles, especially when I'm being chased around by something with tentacles, so I would probably avoid that.

Animals kill you quickly. Usually. They leave a mess, but dead is dead. So I'd probably go that way.

What would you pick?