Maybe shut the fuck up about politics around your kids

 

Kids. They’ll parrot any old shit they hear. You know why? Because compared to most normal grown ass adults, kids are dumb. Kids don’t know shit.

For a quick second, think about what you were like in college. After the fall semester of your sophomore year, you thought you fucking knew everything. Shit, you were a goddamn college student now, after all – you got yer learnin’ on! Now think about how much you actually properly knew back then. That’s right, you knew fuck all. You barely understood anything about all the shit that really matters in this world.

Now think about a little kid – maybe one of yours if you have one. Maybe an eight year-old runt who’s trying to perfect his delivery of two dozen fart jokes, but also thinks mac and cheese for breakfast is totally OK (sure, why not). And for some reason you might think your kid is brilliant. Except he’s not. Because he’s a fucking kid. For fuck’s sake, even your teenager walks to school in shorts when there’s three feet of snow on the ground and you know it – how smart can they be risking frostbite?

As functioning members of the human collective, kids are dumb. Are we clear on that now? This means kids shouldn’t can’t be trusted with certain things. Grown up things. Things like Kitchen shears. Your car keys. A martini.

And most definitely: your bullshit political tendencies.

Seriously, shut the fuck up about politics and the election around your kids. I’m being serious here. Shut. The hell. Up. There is no reason on God’s green earth for you to be talking about politics and the election with or around anyone who’s still bringing PB&Js to school in a lunch box.

I don’t talk politics with my kids. Not one bit. They’re way too busy getting up to speed on everything else being a kid that the last thing I want to do is boggle them further with comical election bullshit.

So when my elementary schooler comes home and starts mouthing off about Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, all the blood rushes from my head while I do everything I can to not completely lose my shit.

“Donald Trump hates Chinese people!” “Hillary lies a lot.” What the fuck. That’s not coming from me, that’s for sure.

Upon some further incredibly restrained enquiry, said elementary schooler confesses that he heard all these Trump and Cruz and Hillary tales from his classmates.

“But what does it mean, buddy?”

“I dunno, I just heard it from them.”

His response is exactly the sort of response I’d expect from a kid his age. Kids his age just repeat shit, even if they don’t know what it means – they all do it. Maybe it all just sounds funny to them. Maybe it’s because they just want to fit in. Maybe they wanna talk and act all grown up. I’m not clear why, I just know they do it.

Which stands to reason that his friends are likely also just parroting this political rhetoric they got off someone else. They sure as hell aren’t coming up with this shit all by themselves. Unless little Pablo is secretly DVRing Bill Maher and Meet The Press? So where or whom are these kids getting this political shit from? Perhaps an older sibling? Sure, it’s possible. Equally possible – and more than likely – is perhaps from an overzealous parent or two who’s getting all too wrapped up in the election dramz. That’s what my money’s on.

You know what, go bananas with your political rantings all you want – it’s your goddamn right as a grown ass person to give a shit about whatever you want to give a shit about. But leave the kid alone. Your kid is not your ally in your deranged political leanings.

Here’s the thing, on their own volition, your kids don’t care about any of this political shit. It’s petty, it’s tedious, it’s confusing, and it’s packed with premium grade bullshit. No, kids care about Minecraft and milkshakes and farts and Vines and Hotline Bling. They couldn’t possibly give two shits about Hillary’s email servers, they couldn’t possibly understand the viability of Trump building walls, they definitely don’t give a fuck about China or Mexico. Unless it affects where Friday night’s takeout is coming from.

Do you think you’re somehow raising some wunderkind by shoving all your political wisdom down their throats? That they’re somehow going to be really fucking intelligent because they now repeat what your ideology? They have no firm grasp of what you’re yammering on about, I assure you.

And if they tell you they’re backing one candidate over another, it’s not because they love that particular candidate – it’s because they love you, and they want to say things to make you happy. They can’t tell one asswipe politician from another asswipe politician. Reasonably informed grown ass adults can barely do that.

So, please for the love for God, knock it off and leave your kids outta this election bullshit. Just let ‘em be kids. Let ‘em watch cartoons. Make ‘em watch Full House reruns so get what the hell is going on with Kimmy Gibbler. Let them pee outdoors. Let them eat Nutella right from the jar.

Anything’s better than some eight year old mouthing off about Ted Cruz’s supremely punchable face.

The older my kids, the shittier my parenting

I used to be a good parent.  Did I say “good”?  No, that’s not what I meant at all.  Not “good” by any stretch of the imagination.  I think what I meant was “not terrible.”  Which is about as much as one can hope for when you have your first kid (we’ll call him Kid Uno for simplicity’s sake).  With your first kid, you’re overprotective, neurotic, and almost invariably, massively annoying to everyone else around you.  I know this know because of all the other first-time parents around me.  With your first kid, you act like you’re the first person in the universe to have a kid – everything is fascinating, pioneering, like no one in the world has ever experienced what you’re experiencing.  But in reality, you’re irritating the shit out of everyone around you with your fucking kid.

I’d like to believe that I wasn’t like that with my first kid.  But I can’t tell ‘cause I can’t properly remember what I was like with Kid Uno.  I do remember that when my second kid (and we’ll call him Kid Dos, because why not) came around, I was a shit ton more chilled out about everything kid-related.  “Chilled out” perhaps has positive connotations – relaxed, not overly excited, somewhat in control, etc.  Except that’s not entirely what I meant.

In this case, chilled out meant giving zero fucks; my parenting nose-dived into a tragic spiral from Kid Dos on.  It is astounding how little I give a shit anymore.

 

When my kids were much littler – young enough when at least one of them was still shitting his pants – I took so much care over what I fed them.   Something like breakfast – the most important meal of the day! – was a meticulously calculated affair.  I’d spread just the right amount of jam – not too much, not too little, and fuck you, no high fructose corn syrup, you animal – on their toast.  Whole grain toast!  None of this shitty white bread bollocks.   I mean, how’re you gonna know if something’s good for you if it doesn’t have two full cups of sawdust in it, right?  I’d carefully cut up, skin, and core an apple because shit, these guys needed their wholesome nutrition directly from a fruit.  Full cups of milk.  Whole milk for full milk power.  That sort of thing.

This morning, I lazily filled their bowls with some peanut butter cereal, and promptly forgot the milk.  I’m not even sure if they ate it, that’s how little of a shit I give these days.

 

Keeping the kids occupied?  Whatever the fuck it takes.  Things like TV and movies aren’t a luxury – they’re basic necessities, essential tools when used strategically  will do wonders by keeping your kids distracted enough so that you can get other shit done.

In this case, I’m not even shielding Kid Dos from age-inappropriate content anymore.  Whatever works for Kid Uno works for Kid Dos now.  Kid Dos is watching shit that Kid Uno never go to watch at his age.  Questionable language all over the place, and I have the nerve to get mad when they use the word “heck.”  (Yes, yes, the irony is not lost on me, given the tenor of this blog, assholes.)

“Hey, you guys wanna go watch tons of explosions, gratuitous violence, a skin-to-win Gwyneth Paltrow, and two dozen Iron Men?  AWESOME!!!”

 

I don’t get to help out with the kids’ homework very much.  They don’t get a ton of homework, but they often tackle it when they come home from school, while I’m still at work.  That said, the missus probably does a fair job “refereeing” the exercise…  I think.  I have no fucking idea.

I used to try and sit with them to help them with some of the homework if I wasn’t in the office.  But these days, it does seem that more and more of their homework is done online.  While I should probably more concerned about their online access, I somehow saw this as an excuse to fuck off even more.  I mean, how many pairs of hands can be on the keyboard at the same time, right?

“You’ve got to do your homework on the computer?  Well, go right ahead!”  I have no idea what type of homework a 6 year-old needs to do online, but I’m far too willing to let him loose on it.  I suppose if I was a more responsible parent, I might sit with him to make sure he’s not accidently running into questionable material (like everything his father writes online).  But I’m not, so I don’t.  I am a shit parent.

It’d be one thing if my deplorably parenting habits were just passive actions like simply not bothering.  But I’ve now found myself going out of my way to be irresponsible.

 

A couple of Sundays ago, I woke up and decided that Kid Dos should have a drum kit after months of talking about it.  Kid Uno plays the cello, and Kid Dos had nothing, so I got it in my head that I needed to rectify this immediately.  Truth is, I was at a concert the night before, and the band had a kick-ass girl drummer – and girl drummers are the fucking best.  There was also a veiled sliver of me that thought that this was also my chance to learn to play the drums.  Don’t act so surprised, I’m not the first asshole to use my kid to get something I wanted.

Things happened rapidly.  I found two listings for drum kits on Craigslist.  After a few email exchanges, and conferring with my drummer friend, I bolted down to Brooklyn, and by 3pm, I came home with a shiny blue drum kit for Kid Dos.

He couldn’t be more excited to give it a good and proper thrashing after I put the whole kit together.  And I do mean thrashing.  I play guitars loudly and full of distortion, so I understand the beauty of noise.  But drum kit in the house in the eager hands of a 6 year-old?  Holy fucking shit, this I was not even remotely prepared for.  The kid can hold an impressive beat, but holy shit he’s loud.  Loud enough to make my aging ears ring.  Loud enough for me wonder if I’ve made a terrible decision here by giving him something that might damage his hearing.  Drums, what a great idea.

I guess one upside is I’d be too deaf to hear anything when I get yelled at for being such a shitty parent.

 

 

 

Literally the worst children’s book of all time

My kids read themselves to sleep every night.  That’s kind of a given, a habit that started with my elder kid, and now both kids do it, and it seemed to be a habit that was encouraged (read: required) by schools and all the other overachieving parents with whom I’m surrounded.  It’s just something you do.

Since my kids became literate human beings, I’ve started to slack off on the time I spend with them at bedtime.  In the past, I used to read to them, but now that they can hold their own, fuck it, they’re reading themselves to bed.  I got other shit to attend to.  Those chips and salsa aren’t going to eat themselves, after all.

In any case, for reasons I can’t remember, I decided to read a bedtime story to my younger kid this evening.  I wasn’t even three pages into the thing when I realized that this was the worst fucking book in the history of children’s books.

I guess at some point, this seemed like a clever idea to a bunch of grown-ups.  Grown-ups who thought that a book based on the idea that homophones are a funny concept for kids.  Sure.  Whatfuckingever.

And it might not be such a poor idea if the execution was slightly better thought out.  You see, the idea that homophones are worth a few chuckles is based on the premise that you get to see both sides of the homophone.

“Dad, my new cello song is ‘Begin The Beguine.’  Geddit, Dad, geddit?  That’s so funny!”  That’s the sort of shit I gotta put up with these days.

So, homophones.  That’s proper kid territory, right?  Fucking wrong.  ‘Cause this is the sort of shit you’ll find when you crack open that cover.

Oh, ah ha ha, geddit?  ZOMG, gorillas, right?  Hilarious!  No, fuck you – because now I gotta explain why the fuck this is ironic to a 6 year-old.  Ever try explaining guerilla warfare to a kindergartener?  Neither have I, and fuck if I’m about to start now.  Fuck you and your ape uprising.

Oh, great – so now the counterpoint to daddy pulling a RuPaul is that mommy and daddy have hot make-up sex after a big fuck-off row?  I’d have a far easier time explaining the former than the latter, for fuck’s sake.

Oh good, we’re right back to weaponry and warfare.  That’s always a hilarious subject, asshole.

“A new wing”?  Are you fucking shittin’ me?  What sort of bullshit entitled kids do you think I’m trying to raise here?  Mommy wants “a new wing” to the fucking house, and Dad’s response is “hmm, I’ll give it a think?”  How about, “Bullshit, we can’t even keep the old wing in order, you want a new wing?  Fuck that noise.”  Seriously, this Housewives Of The Overprivileged USA is fucking horseshit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m sorry, but I’m not explaining jail time to my kids.  I mean, they know what jail is, but there’s no reason they ought to find it funny.  Besides, who the fuck needs to go into jail time at bedtime?  Fuck. That.

 

Seriously, this writer is an asshole.  And his publisher is an even bigger asshole.  There are always a shit ton of books in contention in all our schools, and some are always on the verge of being banned, or already banned outright – Huck Finn, Little Red Riding Hood, you name it.  Far as I’m concerned, this stupid book needs to move to the top of the list.  If it didn’t belong to the library, I’d be all Fahrenheit 451 all over it.

Cartoon food

 

Have you ever made cartoon food?  I have.  Twice.  In one weekend.

Never, ever be stupid enough to let your kids influence your meal decisions.  Especially if their decision tree sprouts from cartoons.

One of the cartoons they watch – Cartoon Network’s Regular Show – had an episode that was centered around something called a “Death Sandwich.”  There’s a whole backstory to this sandwich. It involves a failed dojo – Death Kwon Do – run by a mulleted instructor in cut-off jean shorts (sort of an animated equivalent of Napoleon Dynamite’s Rex Kwon Do).  Thanks to the show’s protagonists, the dojo was shuttered, and then reborn as a pizza and sub takeout joint, because why not.  Like the dojo, everything associated with it bears an “of death” suffix (“punch of death”, “kick of death”, “sandwich of death”, “be back in 5 minutes of death”, etc.).  The Death Sandwich is the sandwich joint’s feature special.  Of course.

So naturally, my elder kid decides that it’d be a brilliant idea to make our own Death Sandwich.  But since the cartoon doesn’t explicitly explain what goes into a Death Sandwich, it was left to my kid’s observation of what needs to go into a Death Sandwich.

“Dad, this weekend, can we please make a Death Sandwich?  We gotta buy a baguette, soy sauce… You know that pink ginger you get with your sushi?  Yeah, that… And meatballs.  It’ll be so cool, Dad.”

Riiiiight.

I ran through the ingredients in my head.  I mentally hurled a little.  There was absolutely no way on God’s green earth I was going to make a sandwich out of that list because I knew there was absolutely no way on God’s green earth these kids were going to eat such a monstrosity.

My kids and I went to the DVR, huddled around the TV like bunch NFL refs and replayed the Death Sandwich-making sequence over and over again, and negotiated a slightly more palatable make up of the glorious Death Sandwich: Italian rolls, meatballs, marinara sauce, and genoa salami.

And of course, making the sandwich can’t possibly be a simple, straightforward affair.  Oh dear God, no.  Like the cartoon, I was required to make it with all the required Death Kwon Do martial arts gestures, complete with rapid-fire hand movements, hushed breathing, and the occasional “HI-YAHHH!”  Because if you’re not gonna go all the way, why bother, amirite?

Apparently, the cartoon suggests that the Death Sandwich is named so because you need “eat it right, or you die!”  That detail was not lost on my kids.  So how do you “eat it right”?

“We need to get a proper haircut, Dad.  We need to get a mullet.  Then we need cut-off jeans and…”

“Let me stop you right there, bubba.  Nothing you just said is alright by me in any way.”

[blank stares]

“Guys, you are not getting mullets.  And you’re certainly not getting cut-off jeans.  Especially just to eat one sandwich.”

In the end, they ate the Death Sandwiches without much fuss.  In fact, quite the opposite: “This is the greatest sandwich I’ve had my entire life.”  It better well be.

In the end, everybody lived.  No one died.

At least no one came close to dying.  Until the next morning, when my kids decided it was time to make bacon pancakes.  Bacon pancakes – only recently did I find out that they are likely the only breakfast with their own theme song.  Thanks to another cartoon – Adventure Time – there’s a song about bacon pancakes that’ll bore itself into your brain, lodge itself in there for all eternity, and go on infinite loop ‘til you want to shoot yourself in the head.

Bacon pancakes,

makin’ bacon pancakes,

Take some bacon, put it in a pancake,

Bacon pancakes, that’s what it’s gonna make,

Bacon pancaaaaaaaake![repeat a kajillion times]

You may already know this, but on YouTube, there are tons of remixes of the song, pointless exercises like 10-hour video loop, and mashup versions.  All this over a 12-second video of Jake the dog frying up some bacon in pan while singing.  All the science and engineering in the world to give us unbelievable computing power to let us create and share video content, and it always – ALWAYS! – comes back to dog and cat videos.

That morning, the Bacon Pancakes song soared out of two insane children in my kitchen NON-STOP from the minute the bacon started sizzling in the pan, to chopping up the bacon, to mixing up the pancake batter, to carefully embedding the bacon into each pancake, to scooping them off the griddle, to serving them up at the breakfast table.

Apparently, songs about breakfast can make you want to commit murder.

Unlike the Death Sandwich, which was practically inhaled with vigor by both kids, these much-celebrated bacon pancakes weren’t an automatic hit.  One kid gobbled up a stack, probably more thrilled that he was being allowed to live out another cartoon episode than he was with the bold flavors of fried pig fat and cooked batter.  The other kid just went, “meh” and walked off.

Like I said, murder.

And just like that, the hoopla was over.  It’s been three days and neither one has brought up either the Death Sandwich or the Bacon Pancakes again.  It’s like neither the cartoons nor the meals ever happened.  They just had to ‘em out of their system, I suppose.  That, or as I suspect to be more of the case, these ingrates have the attention span on a gnat.

But this is the last time I’m eating anything out of a cartoon.  I won’t even drink Duff beer, there’s no reason I should be eating anything that came out of an animation studio in Korea.

 

 

Road Noob: Part 1

Just over eight years ago, the missus and I were expecting our first kid.  And as fat and out-of-shape as I am now, I was even more grotesquely overweight then.  I was over my ideal weight by about 50lbs or so.  Absolutely no athletic ability to speak of, I got winded walking up the three steps to the front door of my house.  I was fat, repulsive, and I realized that this was no way to greet my firstborn.

So I bought a $300 entry-level mountain bike and started huffing it around town.  Then I took the bike the dirt and decided that a $300 bike wasn’t something I should use to bomb around these dirt trails.

As I have a slightly obsessive personality, one thing led to another, and eight years later, I ended up with eight bikes in my garage – each one quite different from the next.  Dual suspension, geared hardtail, singlespeed hardtail, geared 29er, singlespeed 29er, the list goes on.  But they were all mountain bikes.

I took pride in riding mountain bikes.  Because mountain bikes are fucking hard.  Mountain bikes are big and burly, not skinny and frail like road bikes.  Mountain bikes have big chunky tires that eat up the earth, not thin little pussy tires that glide on the road.

But I went further.  While everyone’s riding aluminum bikes, I only rode steel frames.  Heavy, tough steel rides.  And I assembled almost all of them myself.  I bought the frames, I bought the bike parts, I bought tools, and I gradually learned how to assemble bikes in my garage.  I was obsessed with building bikes.  If I’m honest, I probably enjoyed tinkering with bikes more than actually riding them.

In that time, I’ve had nothing but disdain and bucketsful of fuck you for road bikes and the sinewy, shaven fuckfaces who ride them.  Road bike riders are goddamn nerds.  And nerds ruin everything.  Road bike nerds are the fucking worst.  These shitheads with their immaculately specced carbon fiber bikes with carbon wheels and carbon parts and their shitty skin-tight bike clothes that are color coordinated with their Kenny Powers sunglasses and matching helmets, and their shaved legs and heart rate monitors, all nerding over their wattage and VO2 max and cadence and GGGAAAARRGGGGHHH, fuck you, fuck you to hell, roadies!

God, I hate roadies.

But the sad reality is that over the past two years or so, my time on dirt trails dwindled to almost nothing.  Trail riding takes time.  It takes time to get all your gear together, it takes time to actually get to the trail, and when you’re there, you wanna take your time to enjoy the trail.  Mountain rides go slow compared to road rides.

Having a couple of ingrate kids with increasing demands (soccer! baseball! camp!) meant time that would’ve been spent on the trails was now rapidly being sucked away.  A three-hour trail ride now turned into a mere hour-long sprint on the road.  To do this, I had to convert one of my mountain bikes for the road.

This bike was a proper Frankenstein’s monster.  I had bought the bike for $50 from my local bike shop and had immediate stripped it of all its shitty parts, then had the whole thing repainted.  Then through some manner of witchcraft and sheer luck, I was able to cram road wheels (which are larger than mountain bike wheels) into the frame, and cobble together something was somewhat roadworthy.  This beast would serve as my road ride for over two years.

But it was far from perfect.  The chain would fall off the bike frequently.  Using road bike parts on a mountain bike frame had its challenges.  Most of all, it was slow as fuck.  The combination of being an older heavy lugged steel frame with only 9 speeds meant that I wasn’t about to suffer windburn on my rides.

Denial: not just a river in Egypt, as they say.  I was in denial so long about needing a road bike, I can’t even pinpoint the moment when I finally did face up to the fact that my Frankenstein bike wasn’t cutting it anymore.  I mean, fuck road bikes, right?  I don’t ride road bikes.  Asshole nerds ride road bikes.  And you know who else ride road bikes?  Old people.  Old fucks whose bodies can’t hack it any longer on a mountain bike.  Because they’ve gone soft.  And old.  I’m not old, I’m still young!  That’s what I kept telling myself over and over again.  Somehow, in my head, I’d conjured up the perception that getting a road bike is a sign of giving up, growing old.  I wasn’t prepared to do that.

But then, I went and bought a fucking road bike anyway.

 

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

 

I’ve been reduced to cartoons now

 

It should come as no surprise that my crippling Peter Pan complex has plummeted to new depths.

Several weeks ago, the missus and I went out to a movie with another couple, and when we came home, we found out that our kids had been introduced to a Cartoon Network show called “Regular Show”.  I’d never heard of it.  Mainly because my kids typically don’t watch Cartoon Network – most shows are a bit over their head, and there’s no fucking way they’re getting exposed to the Adult Swim stuff at their age.  And I’m a fucking grown up which means I don’t watch cartoons – society tells me that I ought to bewasting my life on shit like “Homeland” or “Breaking Bad” or some other  TV drama I’ve actively avoided.

But the kids started raging on and on about “Regular Show”.  That, and “Adventure Time”.  I’m savvy to “Adventure Time” and I’d watched a few episodes in the past.  The cult following that show has built up over the past few years didn’t go unnoticed.  But I’d never pushed “Adventure Time” on my kids.  First of all, the only thing I’ve ever pushed on my kids was Star Wars.  Because I’m a responsible parent, damnit.  And even so, I’ve only pushed hard on Episodes IV, V, and VI, because a) they’re the only legitimate Star Wars films as far as I’m concerned, and b) any kid who goes through life without a proper appreciation for the original trilogy means that they have horrible parents who have failed them.

Anyway, “Adventure Time”?  I get it, but I can’t be arsed.  If you watch it, you know it can get pretty fucking dark.  It’s like preschool animation of Hayao Miyazaki films.  I’m not letting my kids watch Studio Ghibli films yet.  So, I’ll let them ask for “Adventure Time” when they think they’re ready for it, and not a minute sooner.

But I didn’t know jack shit about this “Regular Show” that my kids suddenly can’t get enough of.  So before I let them watch any more, I had to watch a few episodes myself to gauge the level of appropriateness.  Responsible parent!  The 8pm time slot for the show suggested that this might not be your average “Phineas & Ferb” fare.  Or maybe it was, I had no fucking clue.

So one evening, after the kids had gone to bed, and the missus was out, I grabbed a couple of brews, sank into my couch, and watched a half-dozen or so episodes of “Regular Show”.  This is how fucking lame I have become, as a parent.  I’ve got the whole joint to myself, and what I do I do?  I sat down and watched fucking cartoons.  Didn’t even occur to me to do other sorts of cool shit I used to get up to when I had the whole place to myself – like fire up the hi-fi, make a mixtape, harass celebs on Twitter, grind out some tunes on the guitars, go wrench my bikes, work on my screenplay…  We all know I made that last one up because I realized the rest of the things I listed were all pretty fucking lame, too.  Shit, I suck so much I want to puke.

Anyway, half a dozen episodes of “Regular Show”.  Which turned out to be no big feat since each episode’s only about 10 minutes long.  But… that’s a quality 10 minutes of show there, people.  As I suspected, it’s got all the adult subtext that’s almost entirely lost on a pair of unwitting kids.

You could google the show, but maybe I can save you the trouble: it’s about two buddies – Mordecai, a bluejay, and Rigby, a raccoon, and their misadventures with their friends (a fat Frankenstein idiot, a ghost with hand on his head, a yeti in skinny jeans, a fancy pants gentleman with a lollipop head) with whom they work at a park run by their boss, Benson, who’s a gumball machine.  Got it?  Good.  Because that’s the completely sane part of the show.  This premise exists with no explanation whatsoever.   And there’s no need.  Every episode, something bat shit insane out-of-this-world happens to Rigby and Mordecai.  Flaming Cadillacs fly out of the sky, space babies rule the outer universe, alternate planes exist where no rules apply, trippy dreams with fanged milky midgets, dodgy smugglers with a gunpowder and salsa side business in Mexico, the list goes on.  Is that part fucked up enough for you yet?

And that’s why I’ve started watching goddamn cartoons again.  I’ve lost count of how many episodes of Regular Show I’ve watched now.  Without my kids.  Seriously, WTF is wrong with me.  But I’ll happily watch it WITH my kids.  It’s one of these nonsensical cartoons that I can watch with my kids – they’ll laugh at the literal silly stuff, and I’ll crack up at all the fucked up subtext that soars over my kids’ heads.

In fact, thanks to “Regular Show”, my younger kid crafted this whole idea on how he wanted to celebrate his sixth birthday – like this:

Nothing made this kid happier than orchestrating his own “Guys’ Night” with he and his brother – and me – spending the evening making overblown nachos and gorging on them in front of the TV, walking around in our underwear, speed-building Legos, stuffing our faces with birthday cupcakes, farting in the bathtub… and of course, watching a shitload of “Regular Show”.  Shit, if they had a palate for soda (which they don’t), they’d probably have wanted to polish off a six-pack of Mountain Dew before crashing at 4 in the morning.

And there you have it: a perfect circle.  I’m now reduced to parenting by way of cartoons.  Idiot.

 

 

Can everybody please stop eating my pretzel M&Ms?

Seriously.  I said, “please” after all.

This is some bullshit, constantly having my pretzel M&Ms wiped out from right under my nose.  And the thing is, I know who the culprits are EVERYTIME.

I like regular M&Ms well enough.  Peanut M&Ms, on the other hand, are like my crack.  I can’t get enough of those things.  Then, pretzel M&Ms showed up.  Total fucking game changer.  Scratch that: life changer.

So, I have a friend who once came over to my house, we were all hanging out, there was a bowl of pretzel M&Ms on the table, and as one would expect, the M&Ms got devoured.  They were, after all, pretzel M&Ms, the champagne of M&Ms.  Or something.  In any case, I guess I must’ve been visibly chagrined when the M&Ms were gone.  I barely got to eat any and now I had an empty bowl with little bits of the candy shell smithereens at the bottom.

Several days later, she came back and brought with her a new bag of pretzel M&Ms.  I had been a bit too obvious about those fucking M&Ms, after all.  I felt like a douche.  And I haven’t been able to live it down since.

I try not to buy pretzel M&Ms too frequently, despite my apparent fandom.  Common sense prevails when I realize how much I fucking love these crunchy M&Ms, and when you match that with my fat, doughy body, no good can come from enabled overindulgence.  I know my habits well enough – after all, I have first-hand experience of how to clock in at 150lbs as a 12 year-old by being an expert at standing at the fridge, door ajar, and devouring an entire Cadbury chocolate bar right there and then.  I’ve done that plenty of times, and it’s fucking grotesque.

It’s taken a lot of hard work (this is how I channel my energy?!), but I have learned to pace myself with M&Ms.  I now buy them once in a blue moon.  And when I do, I do my best to just eat a small handful, then walk the fuck away from them.  It’s not easy, but shit, do I work hard at not eating an entire pound of it in one sitting.  If I had my way, a bag now could probably last me about 3 weeks.  I AM A RESPONSIBLE ADULT.

But I don’t get my way.

Because these days, I’ll buy a bag of pretzel M&Ms, and it’ll be gone in 2 days.  Or less.  Not by me, mind you.  Once I bought a bag, got on a plane the next day for a day trip to Boston, came home, and the bag had all but disintegrated.  Naturally, I lost my shit, held a family inquisition, pointed accusingly at everyone, and all I got was a trifecta of fingers pointing every which way amongst my wife and two kids.  So, so messed up.

Today, I came home and it happened again – a freshly-opened bag of pretzel M&Ms laid limply on counter.  About four-fifths of the bag drained… again, not by me.  I peered at the missus and the kids.  No one returned any eye contact.  In fact, they all fled the room.

When it was clear that I gone into full WTF mode, the kids tried to be “helpful.”  “Dad, maybe next time you should keep the M&Ms out of sight, so that no one can see them and eat them.”  “Hey Dad, maybe you should put a sign on the M&Ms telling people to stay away.”  What “people” are you talking about?!  These people are you guys, you cheeky monkeys.  I shouldn’t have to hide my candy or make special signs.

How about you ingrates just not eat all my goddamn M&Ms.  How about that?  How about some goddamn self-restraint, kids.  There are two things I ask for that I don’t think are entirely unreasonable: the biggest piece of chicken, and someone else not eating all my goddamn pretzel M&Ms.  Is that too much of an ask?  No, no I don’t think so.

Just let me have my M&Ms, people.  Seriously, everyone please just stop eating my pretzel M&Ms.  ‘Cause I’m about to lose my shit.

 

 

Your kids are screwed up because you screwed up their names

 

 

A while ago, there was a Deadspin article about horribly shitty names that assholes of the world were giving their kids.  I remember thinking that some of the names were entirely too comical to be real.  These weren’t even the retarded names that celebs give their future headcase offspring (I’ll get to that later).  These were names that were accumulated off some database – I’m guessing here, I have no idea if any of it was legitimate – which seemingly average people were giving their perfectly average kids.

It’s frustrating when I can’t figure out which group of parents I loathe more.  Is it the dullard parents who give their kids the most unimaginative of names? “Oh, your son’s name is Jonathan? How clever!  We just don’t hear that name very often.”  Or those who try too hard by coming up with completely insane spellings for what are otherwise the most unimaginative of names?  Looking at you, Dwyane Wade’s mom.  Worse are those with terminally-doomed-to-be-a-stripper names like Tiffany, when they’re spelled in the most insane way, like Teaphuneigh or something.

The other day I read a ridiculous story about some girl named Shiseido.  “Yes, that’s right, nurse, I’m naming my child after my wrinkle cream.”  And now we know why she’s so fucked in the head.

And do my eyes deceive me every Sunday, when I turn on the TV, and three quarters of the football field have players whose names start with some prefix, like Le- or De- or D’?  LeJonathan-something-or-other.  D’merit-wha?  I don’t understand this trend.  Even more perplexing is the growing fondness for football players to hyphenate multiple last names.  Everyone’s an Anglophile all of a sudden.  Previously, the Poms seemed to be the only people on earth who had two last names that were hyphenated.  Now, every other football player strives to be English gentry.  In two years’ time, I wanna watch Roger Goodell’s head explode when some NFL rookie tries to add “Esq.” to the back of his jersey.

There are any number of reasons why your kid’s name sucks.  But one of the most contemplative reasons – at least for me – is giving your kid a name for which you have absolutely zero intention of ever using to address him or her.

Yesterday, I read that Uma Thurman named her kid Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence Thurman-Busson.  I hate that I fucking know this.  First of all, that’s just being fucking greedy.  Why are you amassing all those names for just one kid, Uma Thurman?  Second, you’re gonna fuck her up when she’s got forms to fill out – they’ll never give you enough boxes to fill in her full name.

Third, Uma Thurman plans on calling her daughter “Luna”.  That’s night, because Luna is one of her na… oh, right, IT’S NOT EVEN HER NAME!!  Listen, you crazy bitch, if you want to call you daughter Luna, JUST NAME HER LUNA!!  This is such a typical celebrity asshole move.

Actually, that’s not entirely true.  The big about this being a typical celebrity asshole move.  Because tons of pretty average non-celebs do it, too.  I’ve lost track now of how many new parents I’ve run into who boast, “We’re going to name him X, but we’ll call him Y”.   This isn’t a case of calling a kid Joe when the name on his birth certificate is Joseph.  This more like, “His name is Charles, but we call him Brad.”  Fuck you.

I get the super-ultra-mega-WASPy thing of giving your kid the WASPiest nicknames in the universe, like Chip or Bo.  I watched enough shitty ‘80s high school comedies to understand that culture well enough.  It’s part of what makes you the whitest human being on the planet, I get it.

Which I guess is par for the course because you think about who else is given a name but is called something entirely different?  Show dogs.  Show dogs owned by the whitest people on earth, by the way.  You ever watch one of these insane dog shows?  You think race horses have crazy names?  Show dogs have like five horse names strung together.  “Grand Ballerina Of The Martian Nile” or some shit like that.  But make no mistake: that Lhasa Apso is called “Muffy” at home.

Awesome, so you’re treating your kids like show dogs now.  That’s nice.

Listen, I’m not saying my kids have the best names (they do).  After all, we named one after a race car driver, and another after an insane murderous king.  Them’s the breaks.  As it is, I’ve already fucked things up because Chinese heritage says that you shouldn’t consciously name your kids after someone else, especially not an ancestor.  Given the reverence of ancestors in Chinese culture, having your kids bear their name would be far too great a burden on the hapless child.  Think of the children!

But in the end, I’m calling my kids what I named them.  It’s their names, if I have the gall to give them these names, the least I can afford them is their privilege of actually using them.  It may seem like some insignificant gesture, but it’s one thing – one thing –  I can do to not fuck things up for them.

 

I’m sick of looking at your kids on my Facebook feed

When I joined Facebook at the rise of the whole social media thing, I was massively skeptical about how it worked, how I was going to use it, and what the hell it’d actually do for me.  Truth is, if it wasn’t for work purposes, I might still not be a user.  Thanks to work, I had to dive right into the deep end of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Path, the list goes on.

Over the years, my usage has gone from wary and skittish to full-on voracious consumption.  I use almost all the channels now, and I use them a lot.  I use them for work, and I use them to keep informed, and more importantly, I use them to help pick out the shithead imbeciles out there so that I can make sure I stay the fuck away from them in real life.  Oh, I actively use it to push out these stupid blog posts that I write – shit that entirely no one cares about.

But there is one thing I’ve done from day 1 across my social channels that I haven’t changed ‘til today: I don’t post pictures of my kids.  At least, if I do, their faces are usually obscured.

Chalk this up to leftover leeriness of the interweb.  Or rather, the creepiness of the interweb.  I’m not suggesting that I have people in my circles of friends who are creepy (maybe I do).  It’s just that I know that there are a crazy, creepy assholes out there, and some of these fuckers will go to great lengths to do crazy, creepy shit.  Shit, if Facebook can openly admit that “hackers” (coughbullshitcough!) are hacking into the system to register fake “likes”, then what the fuck is stopping other assholes from trying shit that’s more malicious?

Here’s my underlying fear: I don’t need creeps scouring the interweb to find pictures of my kids to fap to.  Fuck.  That.  So, my twisted retarded logic is, if I don’t put pictures of my kids online, there’s no way that can happen.

Besides… no one needs to see pictures of my kids.  I mean, who gives a shit about looking at my kids.  I barely give a shit, and that’s only because I have to (I kid, I kid, no not really, yes I’m kidding, whatever).

But I’m firmly in the minority here.  People will post every fucking stupid picture of their kids on Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, you name it.  Pictures of the kids at the beach, eating pizza, taking a shit, sometimes taking a shit on the beach while holding a slice of pizza.  (Actually, that last one sounds pretty cool, but that’s not the point.)

I’m not saying that I’ve NEVER posted a picture of my kids.  But like I said, when I do, they’re not recognizable.  That’s because when I post a picture of my kids, I’m often using them as a tool to amplify a point I’m making (maybe).  When you post a picture of your kids, it serves no purpose other than putting them on a virtual pedestal so that everyone out there can oooh and aaah at how cute they are, and laud wonderfully saccharine, vacuous YET COMPLETELY EXPECTED compliments, which does absolutely NOTHING for the kids, and does EVERYTHING for your little fragile ego.

“Hey you guys, look at the marvel of the universe that is my cute, adorable kid.  The kid that sprang from my glorious loins.  She is SO AMAZING!!!  Am I Is my kid not spectacular?  Go on, tell me how brilliant I am he is!!”

Ergo, posting pictures your fucking kids is self-absorbed narcissistic behavior.  Stop your desperate and poorly-cloaked attempts at fishing for compliments.  Stop trying to find assurance, admiration, and adoration online.  And for fuck’s sake, stop using your goddamn kids to do it.

And don’t let me get started on pictures of your fucking cats and dogs.

 

Shit I thought about when riding the subway

• This morning, I saw a dad checking to see if his kid had a poopy diaper.  No biggie, just pulled the top band and peeked into the kid’s crack.  I’m so fucking grateful I never ever have to do that again with my kids.  The next time I have to do this with my kids, the roles are gonna be reversed.

• It should be perfectly alright to make fun of a guy who wears pleated trousers.

• If you shoot a video with your camera phone in vertical orientation, the phone should prompt you, “Are you sure you wanna shoot it this way, stupid?”

• It is entirely too fucking soon to have pumpkin beer on the shelves.  It’s fucking August, for fuck’s sake.  First of all, pumpkin beer is for assholes, so let me get that out of the way.  Beer needs to taste like beer, not like a pie.  There are rules for this shit.  But if you must stock pumpkin-flavored beer, August is too soon.  Everyone bitches when Santa shoves his ass into our faces by Halloween – selling pumpkin beer before Labor Day is exactly the same fucking thing.  Fuck off with pumpkin beer.

• You know what I really need?  A Michigan filter.  This time of year, every insufferable Michigan fan farts their fandom to make sure that everyone knows that they went to Michigan.  Fuck Michigan.   No one – NO ONE – is more annoying than a Michigan fan.  They go on about the motherfucking Big House.   Good one, Michigan – the prison metaphor fits you assholes perfectly.  Yet, you’re like boneheaded Raider fans who are too pussy to earn proper criminal records.  “Go Blue” is such a fucking stupid pointless chant.  Last time I checked, this little bitch team had two colors – blue and yellow (fuck off with your “maize” – that’s corn, motherfucker).  Why the fuck are you ignoring the yellow?   Dipshit NY Giants fans also holler “Go Blue”, so way to go, Michigan.  Way to set yourselves apart.  Fuck Michigan.