From 2010:
My seven year old talks non stop, sometime I’m not really listening. Today he was going on about Banana Robots. I asked my wife if she knew what he was talking about, “Oh, we talked about nanobots today.”
The Opposite of a Mixed Metaphor
I was so focused, I was dialed in. But then I got lazy and phoned it in.
Columbo Day
Columbus statues should be replaced with Native American statues, but for Italians who complain that they need an Italian hero, I suggests erecting statues of the fictional character Columbo. While this may seem like a joke, I don’t present it as one. Columbus was a genocidal mass murderer. Columbo was a homicide detective tasked with bringing murderers to justice. Italians portrayed in media are almost always murderers (mobsters), so if Italians need a hero, this this is the guy. Oh and he’s also an example of what a good cop looks like having brought corrupt cops to justice, expertly played by Peter Falk, a Jewish-American actor, who represents another group that faced genocide.
Here’s an example of what those statues could look like:
Look—No, Think Before You Leap
The preponderance of rope swing fails on AFV and the internet amazes me. You’ve seen them, someone grabs a rope swing with the fantasy of Tarzan or Indiana Jones, in their head, but rather than an epic swing out over the water, as soon as their feet leave the ground, they lose their grip due to the conspiracy of gravity and their own strength to weight ratio, and instead they fall to the ground barely a foot from where they started, and slide toward the water usually face first in the dirt.
Does it not occur to these people that their inability to do a pull-up is a barrier to success in this activity? If you can’t climb the rope while it’s sitting still, you aren’t going to be able to hold on long enough when it’s swinging.
Roadside Eats
I drove by this place yesterday, but couldn’t stop to take a photo. I looked it up on Google Maps. It’s clearly owned by a different owner now, but at the time, we were looking for a place to eat on the way to Sunday River, ME. We saw the sign advertising lunch, and we thought it was sketchy, given that it was a gas station. Mark went in to check it out. A few minutes later, despite all I believed I knew about his standards for restaurants, he was at the door waving us in. Entering the building, we quickly moved through the convenience store part of the shop and saw a diner kitchen installed along the sidewall. We sat at one of the 4 empty diner tables between the aisles and the “kitchen.” By that I mean that there were only four tables total, not just four empty tables. We were the only customers. Our table was along the backside of the snack rack and we had a good view of the engine fluids aisle.
The owner/waiter/cook/clerk/gas-station-attendant who took our order had a Yankees hat on the wall, and Mark asked him how he became a Yankees fan all the way up here in Maine. He was a stocky, tall, energetic gray-haired man who looked to be in his late 50s or early 60s and he was the only other person in the building. He said he used to be a New Yorker and moved to Maine years ago. He took our order, cooked, we ate, nothing remarkable there. But when we went to pay, we took our checks to a register at a counter that had a variety of granite slabs strewn about.
While I was the first at the register, the owner/waiter/cook/clerk/gas station attendant punched up a different price than mine had cost. I looked to the dry erase board where the specials were listed and it had since been erased. I said, “That’s not what mine cost, mine was only $11.95, it said so on that board before.” He responded, “Calm down. You New Yorkers, always thinking someone is trying to screw you. I’m not ringing you up yet!” And gestured to one of the others. After we all settled up, I motioned to what I thought were granite samples he was considering, “Are you having some work done?” “No,” he said, “I sell and install granite, those are my products.”
I’ll never forget that owner/waiter/cook/clerk/gas-station-attendant/granite salesman. He made what could have been an otherwise unremarkable experience worth remembering.
Echoes with the Sound of Salesmen
Most of my children’s lives, we’ve had only streaming services with no commercials. But recently we got Hulu and it’s only the mute button that allows us to tolerate the service. If I’m not quick enough or I forget, one kid will yell loudly, “silence the sounds of consumerism!” while the other covers his ears and wails, “it hurts me, it does!”
A Ballet Gift
A little bird told us
You liked tiny dancers.
Special shoes on their feet
Made special for prancers.
So a gift for your help
We give to you today.
Because you’re special too,
And it’s your birthday!
Custom Snowboards
There are these companies that will produce custom snowboards, so I played with some art and came up with these options. The looney tunes are in the public domain, but the Frazetta art is not, so licensing on top of the $500 cost of the board itself would probably be beyond what most people would pay. But it's nice to dream...
Boots in Arms
At some point in my life, the phrase “deploy troops” became “boots on the ground.” The media and collective consciousness started saying “boots on the ground” whenever they talked of deployed troops. I remember noting how viral the phrase had become, almost as if commentators and social debaters felt it lent an air of legitimacy to what they were saying.
Last night I listened to the news for the first time in a long time. NPR was on in the car (I don’t drive much right now). The vaccine was the topic of discussion, specifically the discrepancy between production, delivery, and administering it. The expert being questioned said “shots in arms” whenever he referred to administering the vaccine to patients. He said it three times in less than 30 seconds. The host herself repeated the phrase at least twice after that. So now I expect a viral onslaught of “shots in arms.”
I am Not a Musician
This is me and my wife playing with our kids.
I am not a musician.
Ever since we had children, I’ve tried to take time out of my days to play with my kids. I remember that first Christmas with kids, not the very first, but the first time they are able to actually play with toys. We played with the Fisher-Price Little People Farm then. We always played whatever they wanted to play. If they were into blocks, we played blocks. Cars, we played cars. Legos, we played Legos. Minecraft, Board Games, fire shooters, high speed photography, the list goes on.
In the beginning, I showed them how to build, or play, but eventually they showed me how and I became whatever they needed me to be. Lego engineer, photography model, nerf gun marksman, I let them show me how to use their toys and play their games, and we had fun together.
I am not a musician, but this is me playing with my kids, and soon they will be adults and leave home. If you have kids, take time to play with them and their toys, a finite activity, that’s infinitely rewarding.