Father Nightingale

The ex wife called mid-morning Monday and told me she was picking up our daughter from school and bringing her to my house. The daughter was sick. I figured she had gotten what I had last week; what I had given to my son. The son must have given it to her during one of their face to face torment combats – the ones I have learned to tune out, unless I hear the butcher knife unsheathe. Either that or they are each sharing my toothbrush again. Little do they know I’ve switched to using a tooth pumice stone, which I keep in a hollowed out rolling pin stashed beneath the stairs.

The ex arrived bearing our ailing daughter and some provisions of salubrity – a gallon of grape juice and a package of kid friendly, fever reducing, blah inhibiting, cough and cold über gumdrops. Apparently the weasel cod liver snake milk of rancidity I bought from the Wal-Mart outlet store was not appealing enough for my daughter’s tastes to save her life. I reviewed her symptoms: headache, fever, sore throat, whooping cough, loogie ridden sinuses, lethargy, ornery disposition. Welcome to adulthood, honey. My weasel cod liver snake milk of rancidity would work on these ailments – I was sure of it, and it might even produce her first ever hallucinations. OK, we’ll try the über gumdrops first.

We got the daughter all set up in bed, with a glass of grape juice on her night stand, a belly full of roiling medication and a dvd set on repeat on the television set. Before she left, the ex wife prescribed me with a list of medical maintenance instructions. I was too busy mentally preparing myself for a few days of nursing and wondering where I left my scrubs, nurse hat and support hose to pay attention to her. That’s right, beneath the stairs next to the rolling pin. I didn’t need instructions. I knew how to take care of an ailing child – make sure they are not whining, burning, starving, orally expelling and not unresponsive to simple stimuli like finger pokes and massive tickle attacks. And, above all, make sure their blood stays on the inside. Most of the time, a sick child will abide by these rules if properly tended. All the father nurse needs to do is check on her periodically, keep up on the meds and touch her face.

Face touching is a well known procedure in measuring a child’s infirmity, and it is a little known measure of a child’s maturity. Babies will let you touch their face all day. You could stick your hand on a baby’s face and leave it there until they are about three or four years old, if you wanted to. They don’t know any better, and they really have nothing better to do. "Sure, you feed me and touch my shit so I’ll serve as your hand rest. It’s the least I can do." When they get a little older, they will still accept your hand on their face but will turn away eventually after they figure out they can’t move around and break stuff with somebody else’s hand on their face. As they age you run through the nose button pushing, nose snatching, cheek tweaking, face wiping, face squeezing (they’re all so cute you wanna eat ‘em up!) and whatever other hand to face communication you can get away with. Each year they’ll accept less and less facial manipulation. Eventually, by the time they are pre-teens, a gentle caress to the cheek is met with a slap, head turn and the ignorant look, and the parent realizes the child’s face is no longer part of xe’s domain. That is, until the child gets sick. Then they welcome that hand. They know it’s there to confirm that their malaise is substantiated by the sweltering the hand detects. The hand soothes them, while it soothes the parent as the parent tries to conduct some Mr. Miyagi magic and draw out the pathogens afflicting xe’s baby. The sicker the child is, the longer you can keep your hand on xe’s face. I go with the forehead to cheek to other cheek method. Even if you can’t feel the fever (I don’t know, maybe you high-fived a hot iron once in college), you can judge how they are feeling by how long they’ll allow you to grope their face. As soon as the hand slap, head turn and ignorant look comes back, you know they have recovered.

Most of my nursing effort was to leave her alone to sleep off her affliction. That’s my preferred method of ailing, after all. Occasionally, I would visit her to conduct the face touching, to see if she needed anything and, in some cases, to see if she was still alive. There’s always a chance that she didn’t have what I had had. Even though you may think you have a handle on what is ailing them, as a parent, that death thing is always in the back of your mind. In case the grim reaper shows up and wants to rumble you want to have your parental nun chucks ready. She was sleeping so deeply at times I had to pinch her nose just to get a response out of her. It can be a little scary. The annoyed snarl the pinching evokes can be the most beautiful thing you ever saw in those situations.

After about a day and a half of enduring my nursing, the daughter started to come around. She chose to sit in bed instead of lie down, would no longer accept the dvd player set to repeat, returned to her usual level of hunger, would come out of her room to see what I was doing (pretending to work) and basically took over my nursing duties. Except for the face touching. She indulged me and let me do that until the next day when she returned to school.

To Roderick From Maggie May

Maggie May stopped by for a visit earlier this week. I was surprised to see her, since I had no idea who she was. After I made some tea and we caught up with what each of us has been doing the past sixty years, I asked her to explain her presence in my abode (I ask the same thing of my children each day when they come home from school. The first few times they would answer something like, “I live here”, but eventually they grew tired of my interrogation and now simply give me the ignorant look and head for the snack cabinet.). Maggie told me she needed my help to contact Rod Stewart so she could tell him something about the song he wrote about her. She has not been able to regain contact with him over the years. I informed her that I was not acquainted with Rod. She explained further that Barbra Streisand had referred her to me because of Leper Pop. Apparently, Ms. Streisand is a regular reader and knows for a fact that Rod checks in a few times a week. So, Maggie asked me if I would help her and post a note for Rod on the blog. Below is her message.

This is a personal communication between two ex-lovers. I would appreciate if everyone else would respect their privacy and not read it. Thank you for your cooperation.

Hello Roderick,

It’s been quite some time since I’ve talked to you. The last time I saw your face in person, you were grimacing in ecstasy, chucking your muck on top of me. It is an image that is etched upon my mind. I’d like to say I hope you have been well, but I can’t.

I appreciate that you had written a song about me. While I do not think you depicted our relationship accurately, I understand that you were very young and confused at the time. What I do NOT understand is why you chose to make a comment about your perceived impression of the aged state of my face (in case your decrepit mind does not recall the line: “the morning sun when it’s in your face really shows your age”). There was no need for it as it relates to the rest of the song, unless you felt the urge to let the world know how superficial you really are. I was only 29 years old at the time, for crikey sake! You didn’t seem to mind my aged face while I was giving your tadger a tongue bath, now did you? Besides, you went on to state in the song that my face didn’t “worry you none”, so why even bring it up?

You can’t imagine the ridicule I’ve dealt with over the years because of that lyric. Men would chide me in the street. “Maggie, could you please step into the shade so we don’t see your age?” “Maggie, would you mind wearing this burlap sack on your head until dusk?” “Maggie, can we finish this conversation at night or at least in a closet?” It got to the point where I would only go outside or near a window at night. And even then, some guys would shine a torch in my face and tell me how old I looked. I know I was no Felicity Kendal, but I was no trog, either, even at the still young age of 29.

I don’t know if you have looked in a mirror recently, but it doesn’t take the brightness of the morning sun to show your age lately. Blimey, a full solar eclipse in a dense fog could do the job. Maybe I should write a song about it. Tell me, what rhymes with crag?

The song was a nice little earner for you. I wish I could say the same thing about me. There are no royalty laws on the books governing the compensation for the muses of popular, lucrative art. Otherwise, I would not have had to spend the last thirty years heaving pollocks in a Newlyn fish market and living in a caravan underneath the wharf. I know you are a very talented man and deserve your riches. Still, it would not have killed you to send some of that crust my way.

I’ve said my piece. But, before I go, I do have to question another lyric in my song. “Oh, Maggie I couldn’t have tried anymore.” I think you quite possibly could have. Instead of writing a song about the feelings you had about our relationship, maybe you could have, I don’t know, maybe talked to me about it. Unless your definition of “trying” is sneaking out before I woke up without saying a word or leaving a note. Heavens, if you had written, “Later, bitch!” on my mirror with your lipstick, that would have been considered trying harder than what you actually did. But, I’m not bitter. I will leave you alone now.

Good-bye, Roderick.

Maggie May

p.s. what is that thing on your face by your mouth, by the way? Is that a button you installed to make your wanker go up and down? Just wondering. But, I’m not bitter.

This has been a public service announcement brought to you by Leper Pop and the Council for Aged Faces.

The Heathen, the Snowman, Judy and the Christmas Spirit

It’s not easy for a heathen. Putting up with the Christmas season, that is. Every year it gets more and more difficult to participate in the festivities in good conscience, without feeling like a hypocrite. Growing up, I had been brainwashed with all the season associated myths: Santa Claus, good will toward men, the birth of a savior and the importance of over-spending to maintain a strong economy. When the root myth fell apart for me, the business about birth of a savior, the other more fun ones slowly became tarnished to a point where they weren’t real anymore, either, and Christmas Day began to seem like just another day to me.

Consequently, I have been going through the motions each year for the benefit of the children – all of the children of the world, but mostly for my daughter. While she no longer believes in Santa Claus, and I’m not sure what her official stance is on the Jesus matter (I’ve been doing some of my own brainwashing on her to combat the brainwashing from her mother and CCD . I lost religion in the divorce, but it doesn’t mean I can’t talk some sense into the kids on the side. I converted my son, but I think that had more to do with church being a boring drag than anything else.) she’s still into Christmas because of the presents (both giving and receiving), the decorations, the merry making and the good will toward men. Even the good will toward men gets to me every now and then. I try to appreciate it but, I have two issues that get in the way. First, why can’t there be good will toward men all year long? Why do we have to amp it up around Christmas and then piss on each other the rest of the year? Second, why can’t we have good will toward women, too? It’s almost as if women are treated as second class citizens in the Christian belief. I don’t know how you ladies put up with it. I wouldn’t. Somebody may need to slug the pope right in his dangling rosary beads. Just a suggestion.

As I was saying, I did feel a little bit of Christmas spirit this year because of the good will toward men, I mean, toward EVERYBODY notion. It started after I watched Meet Me In St. Louis when Judy Garland demanded in song that I have a merry little Christmas. It was magical. Oh baby, my heart strings, they were a-zinging. What a voice! What a star! What a cutie! Too bad she ended up becoming a horrible, pill-popping, drunk skank. But I did what she sang. From there it slowly built each day as I was pushed around by mean shoppers, honked at by harried drivers and trampled upon by the dire state of our economy. The more negative vibes I endured, the more I heard Judy sing in my head and the more the spirit grew. For a time I was able to cloak my disdain for the mythical pillars that created the season with the very feeling of warmth only this time of year could muster. It was almost as if I was falling in love with nobody in particular. Or maybe I was merely a necrophilic pool boy for the dusty corpse of Judy Garland. What’s the difference, really? I would find out later it was just gas from eating too many holiday burritos. But I enjoyed it while it lasted.

Bemused amidst a billow of holiday glee, I nabbed the daughter and braved the winter warlock to purchase new holiday decorations. We went to Menards, the most Christmassy place on Earth. Each year I buy at least two new pieces of decoration – one for inside the house and one for outside the house. We became the proud owners of a mischievous plastic light-up snowman for the front yard and a nineteen inch, fiber optic holiday moose to help guard the Christmas tree in the family room. This was going to be the best Christmas of the year!

The new trimmings’ acclimation into our team of decorations started out well. The sleeping holiday-talking Homer Simpson and holiday-decked-out My Size Barbie appreciated the help the moose gave them while guarding the tree (this is the fourth year in a row we’ve had no attacking incidents on the tree, by the way), and our plastic light-up Santa Claus seemed happy to have somebody his own size to stare down. But then, something strange began to happen. Each morning we found the snowman lying on the ground in a different spot in the yard. I had secured him to the ground the same way I secured the others. It hadn’t been windy. None of the other pieces were out of place. I couldn’t figure out what was happening, until one morning when I leaned over to pick up the snowman, I slipped in the snow and landed face to face with the him. His breath smelled like an old boot full of whiskey sitting in the sun for six hours and Slim Jims. Our snowman was a drunk!

I did not tell the kids, fearing it may ruin Christmas. But I couldn’t have a drunken snowman desecrating my lawn. Plus, I could tell my plastic Santa wasn’t too happy with him. I couldn’t lose my Santa. He pulls the whole front lawn decoration motif together. The last straw was when the snowman began trying to corrupt our cute little plastic light-up Christmas penguin. What would the cast of Happy Feet think? So, I sat the snowman down and gave him a stern talking to. I wasn’t sure it helped because all he did was stare at me with a mocking grin the entire time I scolded him. To my surprise, he remained standing in his spot the next couple of nights. It looked like I got through to him. Owning a drunken snowman is no different than raising children. You just need to love them and show them the way. And sometimes buy them stuff so they shut the hell up and leave you alone.

I thought all was well, so one night I planned some time for myself and headed out to a local pub. I was having a grand ole time whooping it up with the fellas and enjoying the holiday cheer. Later in the evening I happened to be wooing a fine lady at the bar. As we talked we moved closer and closer to each other. Right when I was about to move in for some sugar plums, I made the mistake of looking to my left. I don’t know why I did it – I just sensed something. There was the snowman standing on a bar stool staring at me. The sugar plum moment was destroyed. I could tell by the glazed over look in his eyes and by that maniacal smile that he was shit-faced again. I asked him what he was doing there. He said nothing. He just stared. Couldn’t he see I was with a fine lady? After a few moments of silence, I turned my back on him to try to pick up where we left off. The fine lady looked at me and said, “Your friend seems pretty drunk. You better take him home.” FOR THE LOVE OF JUDY!!! Realizing the sugar plums had gone stale, I closed my tab, which I noticed had eleven shots of whiskey on it that I had not ordered, grabbed the snowman by his radiating nose and dragged him out to the car. We didn’t speak a word to each other all the way home.

A few days later when my daughter came home from school, after being at her mom’s house for a few days, she asked me why the snowman was duct taped to the bush. “It’s an ancient Armenian tradition to bring good luck in the new year.” “Are we Armenian?” “We are now.”

Fortunately, my Christmas spirit survived the drunken snowman’s follies, but has faded since I stopped eating the holiday burritos. The important thing is that I had a loving holiday season with my family. And I now have a fiber optic moose, who has become a pretty good pal. And we will always have Judy.

Knute Rockne, I Am Not

It’s finals week here in the Rub abode. At least for my son it is. And he’s actually been studying! Once I determined he was not an alien replacement organism, I patted him on the head, gave him a cookie and said, “good boy”. Not knowing how to respond to my behavior, he took the dog’s lead and licked himself. I’m all about positive reinforcement – canine and human alike.

This morning he seemed a little groggy. So, I gave him a two liter bottle of Jolt Cola and a bag of Skittles for breakfast. He still seemed punchy. What kind of a parent would I be if I sent him out to take two finals in such a tepid state of mind? I had to rile him up.

To get his mind cranking a little, I asked him about what he expected to be on his tests. He replied with a snotty, “Everything - they’re finals, you know.” No need to be a dick, asswipe. I devised another line of questioning specifically designed to entice the capillaries feeding his brain, to which he replied with a Gatling gun-like round of “I don’t know” responses.

Since brain tickling seemed like a lost cause, I decided to rev up his mind through psychosomatic irritation. I began punching his arm, daring him to get mad at me, to get mad at the tests. “Don’t take crap from those tests, dirtbag! You can take them! They’re just words on a page. Are you gonna let harmless little words get the better of you? You gotta show those words who’s boss! You gotta get mean! You gotta get ugly! You gotta smell bad! You gotta take a relaxed yet alert posteur and draw consistent and deliberate lines and curves with your yellow number two pencil! YOU GOTTA GRAB THOSE TESTS BY THE BALLS AND RIP THEM APART!”

“I’m going to miss the bus.” And he left.

Then I remembered he wasn’t very good at comprehending figurative language. Luckily, he never listens to me. I think he’d get a zero for a ripped up final. But if he did listen to me, literally, I would be interested where he grabbed the tests before he ripped them apart.

Obama Rub Time Line

Most of you are aware that Barack Obama has been elected as the 44th president of the United States. What most of you don't know is that Barack and I have lived remarkably similar lives. We are about the same age. He is three years my senior, but I don't mind having given him a bit of a head start. It is hard to believe that our individual destinies have taken us to such disparate lots in life. Upon closer examination of our lives, one would think we would now be sharing the office of the presidency as the first ever Co-Presidents in American history. Somehow, it just did not work out that way.

To prove my point, without actually having one, I have composed a time line of our lives, using Barack's time line as determined by the Associated Press (11/8/08). I don't mind following his lead.

Read below to see which one of us screwed up and when.

Date	Barack Obama	Moist Rub
1961	Born on Aug. 4 in Honolulu.	Existed as protein molecules passed around a ranch in Wyoming to be eventually turned into sperm by father after eating a meatball sandwich in 1964. Subsequently fertilized mother’s ovum following a heated night of gin rummy (note: beat out that one sperm with the double flagellum).
1967	Moves to Indonesia with mother and stepfather.	Moves bowels in cloth diapers. Father forgets to change diapers for a few days while mother is away visiting relatives. Still has part of the rash to this day.
1971	Returns to Hawaii to live with maternal grandparents.	Discovers the wonderful world of game show television with programs like Password and The Newlywed Game, eventually leading to recurring infatuation with Brett Somers.
1979	Helps his high school basketball team win a state championship.	Experiences first of many knee injuries thus destroying potential hundred million dollar multi-sport athletic career.
1983	Graduates from Columbia University; works for a business research company.	Graduates from Amos Alonzo Stagg High School. Diploma withheld because Track and Field uniform was not turned in. Spends celebratory dinner at Mama Luigi’s sulking. Attends University of Illinois. Meets Sid F’er.
1985	Works as a community organizer in poor section of Chicago.	Drunk in college. Co-writes “Alan” and records it for posterity as guitarist for Leprosy (the world’s greatest band that was never meant to be).
1988	Enters Harvard Law School; graduates in 1991.	Is allowed to graduate from the University of Illinois. Currently encumbered from ever returning to school there because of some superficial arson charges.
1990	Becomes first black editor of prestigious Harvard Law Review.	Finally gets a “real job” for some soulless, profit gorging, conglomeration of quarterly fabrications.
1992	Runs Project Vote! which registers 150,000 new voters in Chicago; marries Michelle Robinson.	In a strategic move to secure a lifetime of free sex, marries Mrs. Rub.
1993	Joins law firm specializing in civil rights cases; becomes a lecturer at University of Chicago law school.	About a year after the birth of son, Rubson, determines that people should have to pass a test and become certified in order to become a parent, knowing full well he never would have passed.
1995	Publishes "Dreams from My Father," a well-reviewed memoir about growing up in America with an absent African father.	Spends most days waiting for friends to have kids, too. Sits at home while friends are out having fun.
1996	Elected an Illinois state senator.	Rubdaughter is born. Doesn’t realize it at the time, but it is the best thing that ever happened to him. Rubdaughter takes offense at being referred to as a “thing”.
1998	Daughter Malia is born.	After the first family dog, Emily, is killed in the infamous Mother’s Day Dog Killing Traffic Miscue, the family obtains Cammie, the second family dog, from a dog rescue in Bourbonnais, IL.
2000	Loses Democratic primary in Illinois' 1st Congressional District to incumbent Rep. Bobby Rush.	Celebrating the new millennium with a 7 year old and a 3 year old was not as much fun as Prince’s song promised. Nobody had a lion in a pocket.
2001	Daughter Sasha is born.	For some reason, the family needed another dog, so they went and got one while Moist lay in a hospital where medical personnel had to enter through an existing orifice to retrieve a kidney stone. Cailey, the dog, not the kidney stone, was welcomed to the family.
2002	Speaks out against invading Iraq.	Informed that services as a husband were no longer required. Released back into society as a gentleman bachelor.
2004	Delivers keynote address at Democratic convention; elected to U.S. Senate.	After being ridiculed for driving a 1989 Plymouth Reliant K car for two years, bought a 2002 Pontiac Aztek. This did not squelch the ridicule.
2006	Publishes "The Audacity of Hope," a book detailing his views on national affairs; his narration of "Dreams from My Father" wins a Grammy Award for best spoken album of 2005.	A year in to contributing to the award winning blog, Leper Pop, decides he has nothing better to do, so decides to continue wasting people’s time and clogging up the Internet.
2007	Launches presidential campaign; raises a record $100 million in campaign contributions.	Bored, takes up the hobby of letting his hair grow long.
Jan. 3, 2008	Wins Iowa Democratic caucuses; becomes the front-runner for the presidential nomination.	Still hung over from New Year’s Eve.
Feb. 10, 2008	"The Audacity of Hope" narration wins him a second Grammy.	Got drunk at Kowal’s Bar for friend’s birthday.
June 3, 2008	Locks up the Democratic presidential nomination.	Not much going on. Just a regular Tuesday. May have mowed the lawn.
Aug. 28, 2008	Accepts the presidential nomination at Democratic National Convention.	Irritated because Ugly Betty rerun pre-empted by some dumb political circus show. Curses the existence of George Will.
Nov. 4, 2008	Elected president.	Spent the evening watching election results. Didn’t see his name anywhere.

Eerie, isn't it?

Biology Lesson

Last night the daughter and I were studying for her science test, and I asked her what were the two types of biological reproduction.

She smiled embarrassingly and covered her mouth, unwilling to provide the answer. “I don’t want to say that word!” she begged.

I told her there was no need to be embarrassed. These are scientific terms and she must learn to approach the subject matter without any social bias.

She sat giggling, flapping her hands, and still would not give me the answer.

I became a little sterner with her and demanded she answer the question.

“OK, OK, just give me a minute.”

“I know you know the answer,” I said, “don’t think about it, just blurt it out.”

-pause-

She took a deep breath and said, “Asexual and fucking.”

Parent Orientation

I attended my son's high school parent orientation tonight. I was required to follow his schedule in fifteen minute intervals and listen to all of his teachers tell me about their classes. It was very informative. Although I went to the same high school, he has none of the teachers I had. All of the teachers I had are dead. Their bodies are still in the lockers I stuffed them into.

The Miley Cyrus Lesson

She’s at it again. Miley Cyrus has infiltrated my parenting world once again. A few months ago I wrote about how Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus hates my baby. She still does. Now she has my son’s interests in her sights. But this time, she is being helpful, not harmful. She has created an educational video lugging a valuable lesson for all the machine-gun-bonered adolescents of the world. Here, take a look..

Pretty amazing, huh? One would think that all I would have to do is show my son this video and all of my boy-girl relationship parenting guidance would be complete. Unfortunately, my son is not bright enough to comprehend the video’s blatant message, and, even if he was, I doubt he could see beyond his hormones. So, I’ll have to spell it out for him and his partners in his gender-age continuum. The rest of you can continue reading, but what follows is for the young men of the world.

At the core, what Miley is telling us is to stay away from girls because they are psychotic. But you won’t. Nor should you. But, don’t blame me when you are sitting in your car with the tires slashed, maple syrup gushing out of your carburetor, fingernail scratches on your neck, all of your money gone and you are wondering what the hell just happened. If this should happen to you, stop wondering. You will never figure it out. Just move on and see what happens tomorrow – it’ll probably be something that will confuse you even more.

To keep it simple, I will not attempt to interpret all of the lyrics. However, I will identify some points of danger in them later on. Let’s look at the song as a whole. What is it about? What is she telling us? (I don’t mean to generalize, but I’m using “she” in a general sense applying to all women. I do this because Miley Cyrus is the voice of all women, from what I’ve heard.) First, she reflects on our prior relationship. Then she tells us there are seven things she hates about us. That’s understandable. It’s no surprise that there would be some animosity lurking after a break up. But then we find out the seventh thing she hates about us is that we make her love us. Sounds confusing, right? Well, it is, so don’t get too hung up on it. It’s confusing on two levels. First, how can she hate us and love us at the same time (unless she has multiple personalities – which she does, but this is not a psychological essay, so we’ll let that go)? Second, we weren’t trying to make anybody love us – we were just doing what our little generals wanted us to do (just so I don’t get into any kind of pedophilic trouble here, I’m using the term “we” and “us” in the general male sense, and it should only be perceived as applying to legally age congruent situations). By this point, we get the idea. We suck. Fine. We can live with that. We’ll go hang out with the fellas. But, no, we can’t do that, because, all of a sudden, without any warning, the second half of the song comes along and she’s telling us about the seven things she likes about us! Well, which is it???!!??

They can do that, you know. They can stop on an emotional dime and turn. One hundred and eighty degrees, if need be. Their emotional output mechanism is fine tuned from all the work they give it. This creates an emotional trajectory resembling a laser beam shot into a ball of uneven mirrors. It’ll drive you mad unless you learn to filter out everything except the important emotions – like the ones that will cost you money or require you to make an effort. We guys cannot be so precise with our emotions. Sure, we have emotions, but they serve us more as an infection than a social utility. When one emerges we try to ignore it hoping it will go away so we can get back to whatever it was that we were doing. We don’t have the means to make it stop and change its course. We have to ride it out until the next one comes along. In this sense, we are very much like geographic locales affected by varying weather patterns. Sometimes I like to think of myself as London, England – basically walking around in a fog. For extra credit, write a paper about your geographic emotional climate city.

Overall, as the song tells us, this is your lesson: Women are psychotic by male standards. The lyrics and the video support this claim. As promised, here are some lyrical danger zones of which you should be aware.

The initial break up has made her scared? What’s that all about? Scared? Scared of what – did the break up move her up on the Boogie Man’s list? Since she is now available, is she committed to follow through with her pre-arranged marriage to Ryan Seacrest? Will this cause George Bush to usurp the twenty-second amendment of the Constitution and stay in office? What the hell is so scary?

:~ Nothing is gonna change until you hear the seven things… ~: ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! DANGER WILL ROBINSON! Don’t you get it, man? She wants you to change. You can’t be who you are. You have to be who she wants you to be. These seven things are your honey-do list to selfamorphosis as designed by her. Run away. Run away as fast as you can.

“I wanna be with the one I know”. This relates to the prior lyric’s demand for change. The one she “knows” is her archetype for the ideal man – the one she’s been constructing in her head since she was born. If you aren’t that man already, there is no amount of changing you can do to become that man. Besides, you are a guy, so you can’t change, anyway. You’re better of being yourself and putting up with the insults.

Somewhere in the song she asks for a sincere apology. Go ahead and give her one, but it won’t change the fact that she caught you naked in the hot tub with three of her friends. I know, apologies don’t really do anything in the real world, but somehow they make a difference to girls. Just don’t ever let her know that none of your apologies have ever been sincere. The point of this lyric is that you have to apologize because the break up was your fault for not being her ideal man. In her defense, she probably already apologized to you, but you didn’t notice, nor did you care.

“Your friends are jerks”. The people you have let into your life, the ones you’ve palled around with your whole life, the ones who accept you for who you are and still are your friends (sure, there are plenty of things about you that bug them – it doesn’t mean they are going to write a psychotic love/hate song about you and expect you to change), the ones you have shit in the woods together with, well friend, they’re just not good enough. And when you act like them it hurts her. So quit trying to have fun, go sit in the corner and do as you’re told.

There is more evidence if you want to delve further into the lyrics. You can do that on your own for more extra credit. And be sure to explore the purpose for choosing the number "7" as the break point number of love/hate selections (it would be an ideal thing to do). As for the video, try watching it with the sound turned off and concentrate on the girls’ expressions and their mannerisms, especially the stuffed animal clutching. If you didn’t know this was a Miley Cyrus music video, you very well may mistake it for a documentary depicting women in a prison for the criminally insane.

There you have it, young men. Miley Cyrus has given it to you straight. She is very wise with her manipulation of the music video art form. As I said before, this should not deter you from trying to have meaningful relationships with women. Miley Cyrus can only tell you so much. There is much more to learn about them, although, you will find that it eventually comes back to what Miley has taught you in this video. Try to enjoy the good times, and take the blame for the bad times.

As a personal note to Miley Cyrus, I thank you for your help in this matter, but it does not make up for the hate Hannah Montana launched at my little girl. You still owe me for that.

Oh, and just in case any women or Alan Aldas out there take offense to anything I’ve written above, remember, these ideas were all those of Miley Cyrus, not of my own. I was merely acting as a conduit to enlightenment, kind of like a hookah.

High Expectations

My son’s high school strives to maintain a climate that emphasizes high expectations for all students. I know this to be true for two reasons. One, the last time I was at the high school I saw one of their thermostats, and it was set to “Emphasize High Expectations”, which is the setting right next to “Endeavor To Not Get Shot By A Picked-On Nerd”. Two, I received a letter from the dean’s office bragging about their emphasis on high expectations. The letter went on to say that my son has met those expectations set by the HVAC system in the school.

Do you know how he did that? No, he hasn’t gotten straight A’s. No, he is not a McDonald’s All-American (but he does order the Double Quarter Pounder when he eats at McDonalds’s, so I’m guessing he may have gotten a few votes for that). No, he was not voted Prom Queen (he took eighth). He has achieved these lofty heights of success by being courageous enough to have behaved himself in a manner as to not have received a discipline referral for one month. That’s one month, IN A ROW! If that isn't expecting the most out of teenagers today, I don't know what is.

As you might imagine, his mother and I are very proud. Neither of us ever performed so admirably in high school to have prompted such an illustrious letter to our respective parents. For this honor, my son has “earned the right to have four progressive discipline points removed from his discipline record”, and possibly a lesson in redundancy.

This letter surprised me, but not because I did not expect my son to last a whole month without getting into trouble. I never realized that could be even considered a feat of recognition. What surprised me is that this has been the first month out of the seventeen months he’s been in high school that he’s been an upstanding citizen.

I had been aware of only three instances of notoriety on his part. Two of them involved improper use of food in the cafeteria. Apparently, he’s found other uses for the liverwurst fruit rollups I’ve been packing in his lunch bag. I don’t recall the specifics of the third incident, but I seem to remember something about photographs, blackmail and the teacher’s lounge. Why didn’t they tell me about the other thirteen months worth of shenanigans he’s been waging? He's been waging shenanigans. That's not easy to do.

What bothered me the most about the letter was the last line: “We would like to thank you for your involvement and for your son’s commitment to improve.” Right - my son’s commitment to improve. In reality, you just haven’t caught him doing anything stupid for a month. They may as well have said to me, “Your son isn't as big of an asshole as we thought he was. We are delighted to see that you’ve gotten off the couch and finally did some parenting.” As if I ever told him specifically to launch liverwurst bombs at the cheerleader lunch table. I did advise him to develop his entrepreneurial skills, which may or may not have led to the blackmail episode. I’ll take credit for that one.

How am I supposed to nip him in the bud unless they tell me about the nefariousness he’s blossoming into as it happens? They didn’t even bother to tell me how many progressive discipline points he’s “earned”. If he can only reduce his total by four points a month, is it even mathematically possible for him to reach zero in his remaining nineteen months? It would help me to know what I’m up against here. Who knows, maybe he’s on the brink of a new record. If he’s close, it may behoove him to set a goal to beat that record. It’s good to have goals. I wouldn't want to get in the way of his road to immortality.

As the true criminal that my son is, he denied having any knowledge of the existence of discipline points, referrals, the dean’s office, the fact that he’s in high school or the notion of what a good boy is. I admire his resolve. I told him to take the letter to the dean’s office (after he “finds out where it is”) and ask them for a medal, or at least a ribbon. Meanwhile, I will wait by the mailbox for the invitation to Honors Night.

Boogie-Woogie Resolution

I bought a digital piano a few years ago. My children had begun taking piano lessons. I thought a real sounding, yet digitally rendered with quasi-authentic real piano action, device would be better for them to practice on instead of the arrangement of white chalk and licorice sticks I had set up on the kitchen table. As it turns out, I could have stuck with the chalk and licorice. Actually, I did. It’s still on the kitchen table, but my kids never used it for piano practice. They hardly used the digital piano, either. My son quit piano after about a year to focus on the stand up dulcimer. My daughter stuck with the piano lessons, but only used my piano to store her music books between lessons. In her defense, she did try to practice, only she had time management issues, choosing to dedicate the majority of her time to practicing whining about having to practice piano. Luckily, her piano teacher died recently, so that saves me sixty-eight bucks a month, which I spend on torrid jaunts at Applebee’s.

Now the piano is just another piece of furniture, like my elliptical machine and the trapeze. I walk by it every day wishing the ghost of Liberace would haunt it. Once the ghost of Peter Allen stopped by, but I had to kick him out because he was just too razzmatazzical. The worst part is that I know who Peter Allen is.

I saw Jools Holland on the Chicago episode of his show Beat Route on the Ovation network. In it he presented the music of some of his boogie-woogie piano heroes from Chicago, like Albert Ammons and Jimmy Yancey. I happen to enjoy boogie-woogie piano music. If fact, you could go so far as to say I dig it. You dig? I dig and have dug. Watching this program gave me an idea. It’s about time I made a New Year’s resolution for 2008.

Why do people make New Year’s resolutions on the first day of the year? At that point nobody has any idea what is in store for the upcoming year. You may resolve to eat right and get in shape. How do you know there isn’t going to be widespread famine in June? It’ll be pretty tough to keep to that resolution when you are living on tree bark and the occasional rancid bag of Buddig meat found in the street (note: Buddig builds the rancidity right in – no need to prepare with weeks of exposure to sunlight). I say, find out how the year plays out before making any commitments. You don’t want to toss that pack of smokes away only to find out in October that some upstart grad student discovered that smoking cigarettes laced with strawberry Kool-Aid is the cure for cancer, AIDS and unwanted tattoos.

As you may have guessed by now, in light of my love for boogie-woogie piano music and my unused piano/dust collection shelf, I have resolved to get rid of my piano and replace it with giant ceramic jar of pickled beets. I’m pulling your leg. I already have a giant ceramic jar of pickled beets. Of course, I am going to attempt to learn to play boogie-woogie piano. I’ve already learned that much of it is played with the I-IV-V chords, say C-F-G, for example. How hard can it be? I already know how to count up to eight and a half by Roman numerals and most of the alphabet. The rest should be a stomp.

Take us home Albert and Pete.

The Fray of the Little Rubber Elephant

This went on for about an hour.

Give me it!

Why do you want it?

Because it’s mine.

But why do you want it?

(Repeat)

My son, who is fifteen years old, was the beggar. My daughter, who is eleven, was the holder. I ignored the bickering for at least forty minutes. Then I started to wonder what it was that was needed so badly by both of them. It must have been something valuable or important. Was it my wallet? It couldn't be - it's not valuable. There is no cash in there and all of the credit cards are maxed out. Could it be the last Ho Ho in the box? No, I’m the only one that eats those. Wait a minute, there’s one left? I’ll be right back…

…it had to be the television remote control or maybe a “One Free Hug from Dad” coupon. I decided to let it play out to see if they could come to a compromise.

Twenty minutes later, their battling dronified whining started to get to me. I had to intervene. What on Atlas’ shoulders are you two going on about?????

“She has my elephant!”

I didn’t even know my son had an elephant. Is that why his room smells so bad? I never had an elephant. No fair! I’m not paying for this elephant, am I?

“What elephant?”

“My little rubber elephant.”

Are you serious? Clearly he was either very bored or very insane. Fifteen year olds do not covet little rubber elephants unless they are in an assholic mood, which he was, I deduced. Somewhere in his life my son obtained a little rubber elephant and had kept it sacred somewhere in his bedroom. Gandalf had told him to keep it secret, keep it safe. At some point between the day of her birth and a few days ago, my daughter found it in his bedroom, liked it and put it in her purse. Somehow, it came up in their conversation tonight after dinner.

“So, I was thinking, if Einstein never wrote that letter to Roosevelt,
the United States may not have been the first to develop the atom bomb.”

“Oh, yes, I know. Isn’t that scary? Can you believe they didn’t allow
him to work on the Manhattan Project because they thought he was a security
risk?”

“How preposterous! By the way, do you have my little rubber elephant?

“Yes, of course. It is in my purse.”

“Give me it.”

“Why do you want it?”

Etc.

The situation was so bizarre I didn’t attempt to reason with either of them. I confiscated the little rubber elephant. I guessed they were both bored, and not yet certifiably insane, so I gave them each a box of Froot Loops and told them to catalogue each piece by color, size, granularity and crunchitude degradation at ten second intervals of soaking in milk. That should keep them busy while I play with the little rubber elephant.

This Etiquette Stuff Is Getting Out Of Hand

This etiquette stuff is getting out of hand.

Tonight, my son asked me if he could have a snack. Of course, I said “no”, because he did not say “please”. He asked me what difference it made if he said the word “please” or not. I told him, for the millionth time, that saying “please” is a matter of etiquette so the person who you are asking knows you are being courteous and sincere. He argued that if the asker is asking in a polite manner, shouldn’t the askee already perceive that the asker is being courteous (although, he didn’t delineate his argument in those words. Instead he chose the words, “So what?”). He had a point.

What difference does it make if we use these magical words of etiquette when communicating with people? If we are treating one another with respect in our speech and our actions, that should be enough. Words of propriety like “please” and “thank you” and “kindly” and “are you gonna finish that” are merely social pitfalls providing overly sensitive people the opportunity to become offended should someone’s discourse not meet their uppity standards. These terms are unneeded formalities that only lead to more dissention in our society. If you do not agree with me then I will fight you, and you will prove my point. Besides, there are too many rules of etiquette to remember.

To simplify this etiquette conundrum for people worldwide, the son and I came up with one word that can be used in any language in any courtesy needed situation to prove to the receiver that the speaker/writer/sign-languager/telepathicer/smoke signaler etc… is being courteous. That word is joad. It should always be used as its own sentence to be presented immediately following the statement or question in need of illustrating the state of politeness. For example: “Pass me the salt. Joad!” I forgot to tell you, the “joad” sentence must always be used exclamatorily so people know you are serious. Here is another example, “That was a lovely used toilet brush you gave us for our wedding. Joad!” Note, the person in the last example could have easily over-enthused and said, “Joad! Joad, very much!” Don’t do that. It’s a little pathetic.

That’s about it for the rules of “joad.” We don’t want to attach too many rules to it. It will only lead to more whining and silent treatments in the world. To acclimate my kids to a courteous life of living with joad, I made them practice using it with each other. The following is an excerpt of their joad training.

“That’s a lovely zit on your face.”

“Joad! Hand me the remote. Joad!”

“Here you go.”

“Joad!”

“No, joad! to you.”

No, really, joad! to you.”

“You’re a joad!”

“No, you are!”

“Uh-uh, you’re the joadiest joad! I’ve ever seen!”

“No, you are!”

“Is that all you can come up with, Joad!”

“Joad! to infinity!”

“Joad! to infinity plus one!”

“One more joad! to you than whatever joad! you said to me!”

“What?!”

“JOAD!”

“JOAD!”

“Why don’t you stick a joad! up your…”

“TIME FOR BED, KIDS!”

Annoying Pursuit

My daughter challenged me to a game of Junior Trivial Pursuit tonight. I stepped up to her flung gauntlet with a resounding, “It’s on, baby!”

Of course, I crushed her.

She played reasonably well, for a little girl who knows hardly anything compared to the inches and inches of useless information stored in my skull. She took the beating admirably considering she also had to put up with my arguing over technicalities such as “a” versus “the” in an answer, my frequent “accidental” upending of her playing piece while I reached for the die, and my cheating attempts of changing answers like “warm-blooded” and “eye of a hurricane” to “fart- blooded” and “bellybutton of a hurricane”, respectively, when she answered correctly. After about a half hour, she had had enough.

“Dad, if you say 'Orange you glad I didn’t say banana' ONE MORE TIME when you land on an orange square, I’m gonna stuff all of your pie pieces up your nasal cavity, through your temporal lobes and scramble your hippocampi so that you will never have the cognitive faculty to compete at this game ever again!”

So, we called it a draw.

Now that I think about it, she may have been letting me win.

Hannah Montana Hates My Baby

Here is all I was told. The movie is only going to show for a week. Only a week. It’s never going to come out on DVD. If we don’t see it next week, we will never, ever, be able to see it. My life will be ruined if I don’t see it.

Well, that last part wasn’t spoken. It came across loud and clear on the expression of my daughter’s face when she was pleading with me to try to buy tickets to the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus 3-D cinematic promotional propaganda buzz saw.

Sorry, honey, your life will just have to be ruined.

I tried to explain to her that this was just an evil marketing ploy created by the evil Disney corporation to drive up demand for a below average carnival act. The more I spoke of their diabolical plan the more her bottom lip jutted out. Eventually it was so far out that helicopters began landing on it. I could not make her understand what a huge farce she was falling for. I even told her that Miley Cyrus must hate her fans if this is how she chooses to treat them. Why would she make the movie available for only a week if she really cared about you? You don’t want to go see somebody that hates you, do you? Logic, even distorted, and possibly mean, logic, was no match for her infatuated will. So I turned to education. I showed her a typical supply and demand chart and explained to her how it works: no matter what the supply and demand, the price is always too high.




She didn’t seem to get it. So, I threw some puppies and bunnies on it.

Still, no response. I carried on and showed her what happens when an evil corporation decides to limit the supply of something that they know young, sweet, adorable kids want so bad.


To make it a little more relevant, I added some real life consequences to the chart.



“But why can’t we go?”

Because it’s all bullshit, that’s why. Well, I didn’t say it like that. But I assured her that she will have an opportunity in the future to see the movie, and that she will look back on this event when she is older and realize how wise and caring (and handsome) her daddy was to make such a difficult decision, not to mention how average of an act Hannah Montana actually is. The same thing happened to me with Shaun Cassidy. She’ll understand one day. Once the hate, vindictiveness and emotional scarring clears up.

She walked away with her head down. I felt crummy but I knew I was doing the right thing. I would not be a Disney pawn of torture, even though that is what I was. But it wasn’t me dripping water on her forehead. Disney ran the hose and set me up as the conduit of pain. I curse them, flagrantly.

My daughter seemed to get over it in about an hour. The next day I received a phone call from my ex-wife: “Go on to Fandango and help me buy Hannah Montana tickets.”

I most certainly will not!

After denying her request I emailed her my supply and demand charts as evidence. Her response was, “I know but she REALLY wants to go.” I can’t argue with that, but I was determined not to be an accessory to blatant marketing malfeasance. It took her most of the day to navigate through Fandango’s server clogs, but she was able to buy four tickets to a 9:15 pm show for tonight at a theater miles and miles from her house. They are probably at the show right now. I declined their invitation to join them, so my successor had to go. He didn’t seem very excited about it.

Today I learned that, now that the hysteria of being the first on the block to see the supposed limited-time-only concert movie has subsided and all the money has been collected, Disney has graciously extended the run of this fiasco, allowing theaters unlimited showings.

Someday my daughter will realize that I am never wrong, and when I am, it’s only because I wasn’t right. I hope she enjoys the movie, but I also hope she learns a lesson. And that lesson is: get some better taste in music.




As for Disney, you can suck my left nut.

Dumb Ass Parenting

Many people think I am an anthropologist. I’m not sure why. It could be the Australopithecus africanus skeleton I carry around with me on my back. Or maybe it’s my dirty knees that causes the confusion. Then again, it could be because of the I’m an anthropologist. Wanna feel my bone? t-shirt I wear almost everyday. Whatever the reason, I can assure you, I am not an anthropologist. Please stop asking me to dig up your dead relatives.

Even though I am not an anthropologist, it does not stop me from coming up with anthropologistic theories. I recently developed a theory about a certain aspect of human behavior while reading a book about Bonobos. Bonobos are primates similar to chimpanzees. Some may go so far as to refer to them as the forgotten ape. The most interesting characteristic of Bonobos is that they love to have sex. They are the Charlie Sheen of the animal kingdom (not including humans, which I believe Charlie Sheen is a part of. If I included humans into that metaphor it would set off an infinite loop and we’d be here forever and never get to view the next installment of Dr. Phil’s video blog), only without the popular sitcom (Men with Two Dads, Monday nights at 8:00 on the WB). If only Bonobos had a famous actor dad so they could get the same break. Which brings me to my theory, as it is related to Bonobo dads. But first, to learn more about Bonobos, and you really SHOULD learn more about them, go here, but make sure you come back here. You don’t want to miss the rest of this. They do more than just have sex, like eat, shit, walk around, live in trees, roller derby and have more sex.

I have not actually come up with a new theory. I only said that so you think I’m cool and have it together. Rather, I have found evidence to support an existing theory, one that human mothers choose not to accept. That theory is that dads don’t understand children, really don’t know how to handle them and are incapable of dealing with them to motherly standards. Sure, we all try and some of us are better at it than others, but when you come right down to it, none of us has a clue about what is going on with them. The unfortunate part for you mothers out there is that no matter how much teaching, reassuring, nagging, withholding sex until we learn, whining, instructing, demanding and pleading you do, we will never understand children. On the surface this seems illogical since most of us act like children ourselves, and that may be a clue as to why we are unable to figure out kids. But that is a theory for another day. The reason all of your efforts to change/enhance dads’ (since the plural of man is men, shouldn’t the plural of dad be ded? I think so.) outlooks towards children is that we are genetically incapable of comprehending why they all act like such little dunderheads most of the time. And I have proof. I’ll get to it in a minute.

Half the time, we dads try to ignore the deranged behavior of children, which is why we spend most of our time in the garage, in the bar or sleeping on the couch. The other half of the time, when we are forced to deal with it, we stare in aggravated bewilderment and shout preposterous directives and invectives, because we have no idea what causes children to do what they do and have even less of an idea what to do about it. Consequently, we berate them out of frustration. A classic example of this paternal bafflement is illustrated by Red Foreman, the father from That 70’s Show (Monday nights at 8:00 on the WB), and his “Dumb Ass” and other ass related scolding of his son, Eric. And there is nothing we can do to change that because it is an innate response, solidified by trillions of years of evolution.

Here is proof of my claim:

Take a gander at the look on the Bonobo dad’s face. Obviously, the Bonobo tike must have just punched his sister in the face, taunted a hungry leopard with a rusty slice of terrestrial herbaceous vegetation, or penis fenced with that weird kid in the Bonobo community down the forest path. You know, the one whose hair is parted on the side of his head with the excessively prominent eyebrow ridge. The Bonobo father’s expression elicits thoughts of “What is wrong with you, boy!”, “There is no way you came from my loins!” and, of course, “Dumb ass!” Basically, our only defense as fathers against our offspring is to tell them, in a variety of ways, “don’t do that” in the hopes that they’ll eventually figure out what they should be doing by eliminating all of the insane shit they are inclined to do, ultimately becoming adults in some capacity as a result. This process is validated by the successful breeding and raising of trillions of punks of trillions of species over trillions of years of evolution, with a little bit of help from the maternal side. The picture proves the “You’re a dumb ass!” parenting trait is embedded in all of malehood and cannot be denied. We are helpless against it.

Chat Room of Ignorancy

My son's friend's sister is thirteen years old, and apparently, she "fell in love" with some guy she "met" in a chat room. He lives out of state. Her parents were unaware of this “relationship” until recently, when this dude showed up at their house. He is twenty years old, and he claims that he is in love with the thirteen year old girl. He also threatened suicide if the family wouldn't allow them to pursue their relationship. Sounds like she picked a winner.

My kids don’t do much chatting online. They limit their online communication to email and MySpace messaging. But, you never know when they’ll submerge themselves into the world of Lamarckian Skank Talk. That’s what I call it, anyway. Why? Well, “Lamarckian” because, as far as I can tell, all that people do in those chat rooms is pass their adaptive characteristics back and forth to each other. I threw in “Skank” because I like that word and it has a cantankerous feel about it. Probably because of the two k’s, just like Krispy Kreme. There is nothing worse than cantankerous doughnuts. They taste like a fuzzy sound, never fit neatly in a box and I don’t even want to get into their effects on my digestive system, other than stating that feces should not bubble. The last thing I need is my daughter coming home with a box of cantankerous doughnuts and asking me to mix her up a batch of my famous vulcanized tuber coffee. You know what? I’m not gonna do it. In an attempt to employ some preventive maintenance, I had a little family meeting with the kids to discuss chat room love and other perils.

Below are the minutes from that meeting (as documented by our dogs – note: “I” refers to me. I have trained my dogs to write in the first person, where the first person is always me. It’s good to be a primate.):


1. It is physically impossible to fall in love until you are at least thirty years old because the emotional part of the brain, the amoritorium, does not mature until then. I showed them my Psychology diploma from college which proves I know about that kind of stuff, and whatever I say is true.


2. It is impossible to fall in love with somebody who you have only interacted with in a chat room. You cannot “know” somebody by merely talking to xe on a computer. You must interact with xe on other levels and share actual experiences with xe in order to get to know xe enough to even think about falling in love, which you can’t do until you’re thirty, anyway, so you might as well just play video games until then. Also, you can’t go bowling together online, and if you can’t go do that, you can’t fall in love. Any attraction or feelings you sense in chat room relationships is just your brain filling in the spaces, i.e. the unknown details about the other person with an ideal concept of who you want that person to be (just like after you put a door in you have to caulk the spaces between the door frame and the wall, and you use the best caulk, not the crappy cheap stuff, because that will crack before summer comes), and the yearning you feel is just your hormones telling your body to procreate, but your hormones don't care about your psychological, financial or not-being-a-whore well being. Their job is to promote the sustenance and continuation of life, regardless of the long term emotional, psychological and financial impact their actions may have on the host, or the host’s father (primarily in regards to the financial impact). The government should regulate hormones like it does booze, cigarettes and guns. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should add Hormones to their repertoire – the ATFH. Action Item: Write letter to congressperson.


3. Twenty year old people who pursue thirteen year old people are losers, otherwise they would be pursuing people their own age. There are just as many losers at your age as there are at any other age. This is due to the principle of physics known as the conservation of losers, which states within some population domain (e.g. age group), the amount of losers remains constant; losers are neither created nor destroyed, but only changed through the action of social forces as described by Newton's law of losers. Twenty year old people only seem like non-losers to thirteen year old people because of the eternal law of adolescent ignorancy, which states that if any twenty year old person hits on a thirteen year old person, xe is a loser and the thirteen year old person is too ignorant to know any better, but the thirteen year old person's parents do know better and should be heeded. It is for this very reason that I always turn down advances from hot chicks in their twenties (you gotta lead by example, ya know. It’s quite a sacrifice, but my kids are worth it). Action Item: For demonstration purposes, find a hot twenty-two year old chick to come over to the house and hit on me and then send her away in a firm, yet polite manner (but find out where she’ll be later).


4. Threats of suicide are not measures of ultimate devotion. They are symptoms of psychological imbalance and should not be reinforced with promises of love. Or blow jobs. And definitely no anal.


5. Don't do drugs until college. Action Item: Go back in time and do more drugs in college.


6. Always wear a rubber.


7. Somebody take out the garbage. Action Item: Somebody take out the garbage.


8. I’ll be home after last call. Action Item: Borrow twenty bucks from the son.