christmas WIN!

ahhh, halloween is almost here, which means its time for christmas shit. eggnog, check! pouring it into my coffee daily. and into MonkeyBeef's sippy cup. i knew i liked that kid. christmas music, check! i have 5 different christmas playlists on my ipod (and PRM has stated that he will be carrying a baseball bat for any speakers that point that shit at him before december.) christmas shopping... check and MATE!

pretty much got the kids covered now... the three older kids are getting a bunch of books (some nonfiction on their favorite subjects, like bugs, some really gorgeous manga, etc) some bakugan crap, and some madballs... do you remember madballs? i remember loving them as a kid (to the point that i can still sing the commercial jingle... oooooh, is it lame), and they're really big with middle school boys these days. not only are they the same characters as when i was a kid, but they've been improved... the "sick series" of madballs have clear rubber pouches of gooze insides that squooze out when squozen - eyeballs, brains, puke, etc. what's not to love?



then there's MonkeyBeef. a two-year-old is generally the easiest demographic to buy stuff for, but with four brothers worth of hand-me-down crap to his name and three sets of grandparents, there isn't much that he needs...

until we found this! scored one for $20 on ebay, and prm and i spent an HOUR playing with it after the kids were in bed...



it's the blue man group's percussion tubes. wave your hands over the tubes, and they make noise. this description does not begin to do it justice, though... there are several sound schemes to chose from, like "marimba" and "full drum set," and your choice of built in back-up tracks, plus an mp3 player jack so you can jam along to any music you want, but most importantly: the motion sensors are really, really good. they don't just sense "there" vs. "not there," they sense any kind of motion, and the sound reacts accordingly. seriously, it's so easy to make really good music with this thing; it is SLICK. and the used one was 75% cheaper because it was missing the AC adapter (totally inappropriate for a 2-year-old who is constitutionally incapable of leaving anything, from lamps to laptops to sewing machines, plugged in anyway; it runs off batteries until maturity strikes) and the drumsticks (also totally inappropriate for a 2-year-old who really doesn't understand that, one of these days, mommy is going to lift the ban on brothers hitting him back.) not only am i done shopping before stores get crowded and good stuff gets scarce, and not only did i only have to make one trip to a store to get the bakugan, and got the rest on the internet... we got absolutely the perfect toy for the kid who has almost everything. he LOVES music. he hums. he hums actual, recognizable tunes (unfortunately, his repertoire consists of his big brothers' favorite songs. like the bakugan theme song.) he can take the pieces of the saxoflute:

carefully put them together, and then actually play the cussed thing, right down to using his fingers to cover and uncover holes. on purpose. HE PLAYS NOTES ON PURPOSE. i would say he's frighteningly intelligent, but you have to put that kind of thing on the scale opposite other incidents. for example, him being so pissed htat EvilGremlin ate the last of the mini powdered donuts the other day that he ambushed him by jumping over the back of EG's chair, landing in his lap, grabbing his face and slurping the powdered sugar residue off it. EG was not impressed, to judge by the screaming. also? he can't talk. it evens out.

anyway. christmas WIN!

feeding the troops

as you might imagine, the grocery bills around here aren't pretty. this is a household where we go through 4-8 boxes of cereal per week. even the resident 30-pounder can polish off a can of spaghettios by himself, and making macaroni and cheese is now a 2-4 box event.

one of the boys' favorite junk food treats are those stupid little single-serving bags of chocolate chip mini-muffins. a three dollar box of those things will feed the kids for about ... two minutes. the best part is that each box has FIVE bags of muffins in it, and the competition for that last bag has gotten pretty creative. last night's incident culminated with SpazMonkey and DramaQueen deciding that the first person to finish his bag o' muffins would win the last bag. Spazmonkey, seeing that DramaQueen was eating more efficiently (mostly because DramaQueen is able to stop talking from time to time) jammed his last two mini-muffins in his mouth and ran - wide-eyed with fear that his plan wouldn't work out and trailing frothy muffin-drool - for the last bag. He was so busy looking over his shoulder, though, that he tripped and dropped the bag. MonkeyBeef, quiet opportunist that he is, grabbed the bag and, pausing only to push SpazMonkey back to the ground, ran off with it to his favorite hidey-hole behind the sofa, squealing and cackling.

this is even funnier when you know that MonkeyBeef doesn't even like the goddamned things. he's licked them, sniffed them, and smashed them like playdoh, but he's never actually eaten a single one.

so lately, the boys' response to "because that costs too much," is "can we make it ourselves?" 90% of the time, the answer is no (examples include real lightsabers, nano-microscopes, bionic suits, genetically modified organisms, and credit cards.) but sometimes (board games, food) the answer is yes.

so, mini muffin tins, mini chocolate chips, and a super-white egg-yolk-less cupcake recipe from my grandma's treasure trove of cookbooks, and we duplicated the things almost perfectly.




one thing about letting your kids cook from the time they're two (or younger, in MonkeyBeef's case... that little bastard can get up in some cookie dough and double fist it til half the batch is gone before you ever baked it) is that, by age five, they're perfectly comfortable suggesting new recipes. and a lot of them are actually good! then there's SpazMonkey. the kid who dips his apples in ketchup and scoops up his lucky charms with doritos. he wanted to make "hot and spicy cheezit muffins." i told him next time i made cornbread, we'd go ahead and do that, but he would be staying the fuck off my cupcake recipe with that shit.


mini-muffins also score high on the instant-gratification scale. they're done in under ten minutes, and you can see them puff up, solidify, and brown... hence the boys throwing the horns.




baked 48 of the little things, which lasted them several days. fuck you, hostess!

"would you rather", political edition

PRM: seriously, can you think of someone you would NOT rather have as president than sarah palin? any random person. for example. LL cool J.

me: don't even have to think about that one. LL cool J, hands down. madonna?

PRM: oh fuck yes. try to think of one you'd actually have to stop and think about.

me: uhhhh... prince. i'm probably going ot pick prince, but i'm at least going to have to think about that one for a minute.

PRM: he is a wierd motherfucker. i mean, when he gives press conferences, he's going to be wearing a bag over his head and answer questions like "are you going to bomb iran?" with the sound of a bell.

me: that's pretty fucked up.

PRM: as as fucked up as that would be, it's probably less fucked up than the answer sarah palin would have.

me: true. if it was between W and palin, i'd vote W. that wouldn't even be tough. the only person i can think of i might want less is dick cheney.

PRM: is that fucker still alive?

me: good point. if he's dead, my vote is for weekend at bernie's.



so my plan for election night is to have people over, let the kids stay up late, keep the tv tuned to comedy central's stewart/colbert election coverage, and party. i may be drowning my sorrows, but the last week of polls has me getting my hopes up that the milfy retarded lying sack of shit actually scares america more than the black man. everybody's welcome. if you voted. even if you voted republican! (if you didn't vote, go fuck yourself. especially if you love in a swing state. i'm talking to you, half-dozen friends in colorado.) anyway. beer and party food. it gives me a chance to make all the recipes that didn't make the final cut for the thanksgiving if-you're-on-call-like-PRM-and-can't-go-home-come-pretend-you're-family-and-stuff-your-face-with-us extravaganza. like ethiopian pickled green beans. shut up, you love it. meatballs in a chile-cranberry sauce. that's actually going to get me to pull my crockpot out of hiding. oh, and in honor of the white house turning into the black house, fried chicken and watermelons. because we're progressive like that.

PositiveRoleModel leaves his ass unattended at a strip club again

so our last stop of the night was the unsexily named spearmint rhino. and due to the lateness of the hour, and the fact that no photos exist to jog my memory, this will be the least coherent story of them all.

there are no photos because it is a strip club, and you're just not allowed to have cameras at a boobie party. this should be obvious, but i damn near pulled out my camera at one point, because i am ditzy like that. BlackLikeMe figured that would be the point at which we would find out if getting an ass-kicking from a dude in a suit with a clipboard was more awesome than the regular kind of ass-kicking. this is one high-class titty bar, people.

a certain member of the party paid money to lick a stripper. a certain other member of the party got licked by two strippers at once, for free. i leave it to you to guess the genders and identities (and parts of the anatomy in question) of each of said members of the party.

i almost didn't see our other near-miss high-class ass-kicking, but LiquidCourage pointed it out to me as it was in progress. PositiveRoleModel was walking to the bar, minding his own damn bidness. he walked past a seated man who was dressed to the nines and had two strippers in his lap making out with each other. as he walked past, one of the strippers came up for air, took aim, and delivered a righteous hard smack on PRM's unguarded ass.

possible reasons for this very odd turn of events include:

1) the stripper decided that the best way to go home with her g-string full of cash was to get two dudes in a bidding war over her attention.

2) PRM has the most irresistibly sexy man-ass on the planet.

3) the stripper recognized him as part of the same party as LC and IAHAD, and figured PRM would give up the dolla dolla bills, too (making her not so good at her job, if she couldn't smell the cheap wafting off that man.)

3) the stripper was fucked up on several illegal drugs and just didn't give a fuck about the rules of ettiquette.

this was the point at which LC figured there would be a WWF tag-team battle royale between "the dudes in our party" and "the bouncers," and another between "the girls in our party" and "the strippers." i'm almost sorry it didn't come to that, because i have yet to have an actual fistfight - not just in my adult life, but in my ENTIRE life - and i'm interested in how spectacular my performance would be. spectacular failure, spectacular upset... either way, i'm sure it'd be spectacular. also? i'd finally know what the sound of a popping silicone balloon is.

and now, the holes in my memory, courtesy of LC:

LiquidCourage: what you failed to mention was the fact that:
LiquidCourage: A.) PRM was blasted. BLASTED
LiquidCourage: b.) PRM had just done some unruly shit to a stripper, completely unannounced, just 10 minutes prior...
LiquidCourage: Now I remember!
LiquidCourage: there were two dancers talking to each other in front of us
LiquidCourage: PRM sauntered up behind the stripper, and yes, it was a full on saunter, where she never saw him coming, took out two Mr. Washingtons and proceeded to slip them under her g string. and by under her gstring, i mean damn near in her asscrack. and by damn near in her asscrack, i mean, IN her asscrack.
LiquidCourage: she was, to put it mildly, surprised.
LiquidCourage: at that point i had my concerns about us leaving with all members' faces intact.
welfareloser: HAHAHHAHAHHAHAH... i do remember him doing that shit! i just didn't connect it with the ass-smack.
LiquidCourage: i figured the flood gates to the ass kicking apocalypse had opened
LiquidCourage: because now the strippers were touching HIM!

as it was, i did not get the opportunity to beat the snot out of any strippers (note to PRM: it'd be a great gift for MY next birthday.) PRM was at the point where the ass-smack barely registered. he knew it had happened, but had no idea what he should do about it. eventually, he decided that, if he was unable to decide what to do, he probably needed to do exactly nothing, and sauntered on his way. it was probably the perfect time to make the one and only boring decision of the night. as bad an idea as it may be to taunt the pond-raised, cornfed strippers in iowa, it was probably a worse idea here. i got the feeling that at least a certain percentage of the employees of the spearmint rhino were armed. between acting like an asshole at the spearmint rhino and acting like an asshole at woody's, i'll take AccidentProne screaming "she's crowning; catch, dr loser!" every time the pregnant stripper at woody's humps the pole any day.

The Epic Cuntcar Tackle Fail of 2008

welcome to incoherent story #2 from IAlsoHaveADream's birthday party. when you last saw your inebriated heroes, we were acting like assholes in the bar's men's room. fast forward an hour or two to us leaving the bar, whereupon we immediately commenced acting like assholes in the bar's parking lot.

the bar was on a main-ish street that was fairly busy around midnight on a friday. the parking lot was a horseshoe shape that wrapped around three sides of the bar, with an "in" and an "out" to the road at the ends of the horseshoe. as we walked across the parking lot to our cars, a woman drove her car into the parking lot. instead of slowing down to let us pass, she sped up. this was some old bullshit. luckily, LiquidCourage knew exactly what to do about that kind of bullshit. he got a good running start and threw himself at PositiveRoleModel. He threw himself with abandon. he threw himself so hard that when he hit PRM, he just about landed on his face.

as you picture what happened next, keep in mind that, in addition to being pretty solidly intoxicated, PRM had at this point been awake for 21 hours straight. now, any other mere mortal in similar circumstances would have flown a short distance, and then hit the pavement when the inertia transfer from LC ran out. this would have gotten him within a few feet of the cunt's car, maybe given her a brief moment of fear that he was going to come hit her car. that fear would be over almost as soon as it started when the mortal in question hit the pavement. the cunt would roll her eyes, and we'd chuckle and head on our merry way.

wipe that scenario from your heads, my friends, because PRM is no mortal. he's actually incredibly graceful, fast, and steady. i've never seen him lose a race, miss a goal, or slip and fall in a streambed. when we were in tae kwon do in undergrad, i could probably count on one hand the number of kicks i actually landed on him in all the years of sparring with each other (and use the other hand to count the number of punches and kicks of his that i ever successfully dodged or blocked.) in fact, as i sit here now thinking over our 15-year history of soccer, basketball, ultimate frisbee, hiking, canoeing, biking, running, sailing, fly-fishing, sparring, wrestling, and drunkenly beating the shit out of each other naked on the neighbor's lawn while the cops spray us with firehoses and rubber bullets... i can't think of a single time that he did anything i could describe as clumsy. and if you've been reading my blog for any length of time, i'm sure you know that i wouldn't hesitate to tell you all about it if i could.

so, wipe that hypothetical scenario of two paragraphs ago from your imagination: here's what really happened. he took the full impact of the similarly-sized LC moving at top speed, and flew several feet. he had tilted forward by a good 20 or 30 degrees by the time his feet touched the ground again, which is when a mere mortal would have fallen. somehow, though, he managed to throw his back foot forward and stay on his feet, still 30 degrees off of upright. he was still flying forward way too fast to right himself, so he kept putting one foot in front of the other, trying to right himself... in other words, he was moving at a sprint, still at a steep angle to the ground, headfirst.

so when he hit the car with his head, he left a dent... the size of his head. and he has the biggest goddamned head of any human i know. at a hat size of 7-7/8, "one size fits all" doesn't even come close to fitting him. adjustable baseball caps, if he's lucky, will just barely stretch around his massive noggin and cling to it by only the very last buttonhole. now, i'm sure the size of his brain is impressive, but even at that, some of the girth of his keghead must be attributable to an extremely thick skull, as evidenced by the noise it made as it crunched several inches deep into the CuntCar's back door. horrified at the fact that that he could have been injured, we were so relieved when PRM came up unharmed that we did what any good friends would do: howled with laughter, jumped up and down, pointed, and high-fived. (i swear i would have helped him to his feet, but the fucker didn't need it. he never lost his footing for a second.)

CuntCar knew only that some asshole had headbutted her car, and all of his asshole friends were laughing about it. so she actually drove around the horseshoe so she could come at us AGAIN (not the brightest move, if you think about it, given that the score was currently CuntCar 0, PRM's head 1). she rolled down her window to yell, "i guess you think that was pretty FUNNY?" in a screechy, your-least-favorite-ex-girlfriend voice. i remember PRM finally getting his cackling under control long enough to shout back "yep! i sure do!" before he resumed cackling.

as i remember it, that ended the Epic CuntCar Tackle Fail of 2008, and we headed on our merry way to the strip club. however, i'm told that the witty banter actually continued for a few more exchanges, and that one exchange involved me calling her a cunt. i can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of this account of events. all i know is, MyEvilTwin wasn't with me, so i didn't end up in jail.

Rico from Afghanistan finds himself unable to shut up in the now-unisex men's room

now that i'm finally getting around to telling this story from IAlsoHaveADream's birthday party, i realize that there's really no way i'll pull off turning it into a coherent narrative. good luck following along at home!

i believe NurseSexy and i were headed for the women's room, and noticed through the slow-swinging men's room door that a large crowd of men was having an animated conversation. even pickled like cheap kimchee, we recognized this as wildly atypical men's room behavior. in a typical men's room, eye contact and conversation are avoided, lest they lead to accidental dick-gazing, which can only be resolved with an ass-beating. even in the men's room at a gay bar at 3 AM after the meth-and-ecstasy-fueled foam party, the activity may well be animated as all git out, but there still isn't much in the way of conversation.

so NurseSexy and i did what anyone would have done - we went into the bathroom to see what was up. i'm pretty sure the rest of our party was in the men's room for at least part of the event. it must have been a pretty big bathroom. actually, now that i think of it, we were all just packed in really, really tightly.

the "event," such as it was, centered around a squatty, dark-haired dude who said his name was rico. he had the heavy latin accent, greased-back black hair, and smarmy white suit you might you might expect from someone named rico holding court in a men's bathroom at a bar. however, he also said quite clearly that he was from afghanistan, which, last i checked, we had not bombed halfway around the world to south america yet. i have no idea what was up with this glaring discrepancey, so here are my favorite theories; choose the one that feels right and we'll move on from there:

1) rico was so shitfaced that he mispronounced argentina. really badly.

2) rico was so shitfaced that he got afghanistan confused with argentina.

3) rico, who is actually a third-generation united states citizen with a fake accent for picking up the ladies, was so shitfaced and stupid that he didn't know that afghanistan is not in south america.

4) rico was so shitfaced that he really, really butchered a fake afghani accent. which would make sense, since he would also have to be pretty shitfaced to think a fake afghani accent would help him pick up chicks.

so, rico from afghanistan was leaning heavily on a very dazed, brutish-looking dude who was at least 6'2 and 280 lbs. given that there was about a foot difference in their heights, this was accomplished through a combination of rico hanging from the dude's neck and the dude leaning way, way over, both swaying in unison, threatening to knock down the entire crowd like a drunken domino rally. rico was telling a long, drawn out story about how he loves america, and where he comes from, they don't have blonde women. he had never seen a blonde woman before, and he loves america. and this is why he was pawing the nice blonde woman - who i think made a brief appearance in the men's room, as well - on the dance floor and trying to kiss her. and he REALLY loves america. and then the woman's boyfriend threatened to beat the shit out of rico, and rico had to explain to the boyfriend that he was from afghanistan, he had never seen a blonde woman before, and he loves america. as he told the story of telling the story, it became apparent that the story might never end. it also gradually became apparent that the dude rico was using as a rubbery monkeybars was, in fact, the boyfriend who wanted to beat the shit out of him. luckily, rico's Blather of Stunning +3 (+5 vs. caucasians!) seemed to be saving his ass from said beating. all he had to do to keep his ass in its pristine, unbeaten state... was to keep talking.

which he did. i have no idea what he talked about, i just remember that it was funny. and that he filmed it all. with his camera phone. while periodically yelling "FOCK THE INNERNETS!" and PositiveRoleModel and LiquidCourage gave him mardi gras beads from our party, which earned them posed photos with rico and his stunned caucasian friend.

then the bouncer came in and politely asked me and NurseSexy to leave. he was such a nice guy that we eventually did so with minimal backsass, but there was some hesitation due to the bouncer being about my height. so we went back to our tables, and were eventually joined by our menfolk. who swear up and down that there was no sex in rico's impromptu champagne room. yep. if they're lying, i'm sure we'll see it on youtube any day now.

rockin ain't easy (product review: rock band 2 for xbox360)

sorry for the long delay. been busy as hell for a week, mostly with processing and freezing the last of the produce in the garden before we get our first hard frost any day now, but also with catching up on all the things i've neglected over the past month when PRM was on his "education" rotation. he's now back to "real" work on a VA rotation, and i get to survey the damage. and a fine mess it is! anyway, i've been working my butt off, but i took some time to move the 360 to the basement and set up rock band 2 yesterday, and we finally got around to playing it today. and i must say, it is very, very hard to rock the piss out of the drums to the bangles "we got the beat" when your guitarist, during the song's introductory riffs, starts screeching "OH MICKEY YOU'RE SO FINE YOU'RE SO FINE YOU BLOW MY MIND HEY MICKEY!" in his best japanese grrrl voice. (if you're confused, go dig through your 80s music collection for "we got the beat" and "mickey," and then try to tell me they aren't damn near the same song.) it's hard to play one song when your brain has been tricked into thinking about some other song.

i'm not sayin PRM's a pain in the ass. i'm just sayin.

the kids were as excited as i was when the game showed up... because of the packing material.



they could give two shits about a video game, apparently. they were much more excited by my other major purchase this month... each boy got his very own rake to make their very own leaf piles to jump in (since i've explained that the neighbors might not be too impressed with them jumping in theirs.)

finally, when it was time to test out new delay tactics for bedtime, SpazMonkey came down to rock out with daddy. he wanted to play the drums, too, but we held him to bass guitar and vocals. the drums is mines, dammit.




my product review, in a nutshell:

LiquidCourage (9:35:35 PM): get your shit flyin?
WelfareLoser (9:35:47 PM): oh my god i rock so hard.
LiquidCourage (9:35:51 PM): heheeh
WelfareLoser (9:35:50 PM): oh, you heard me.
WelfareLoser (9:36:16 PM): that wasn't a typo-ed "it rocks so hard."
WelfareLoser (9:36:25 PM): nigga, i said I ROCK SO FUCKING HARD.
LiquidCourage (9:36:35 PM): =)
WelfareLoser (9:39:14 PM): i may be going to bed very, very late tonight. i should feel like an asshole for being an adult who feels like ass the next day over a video game... but i just can't quite pull it off.




anyway. getting caught up now. house is almost clean. i know i always have lots of updates on what MonkeyBeef is up to, mostly because he is the msot easily mockable of the 4. i'm just going after the low-hanging fruits here, people. but coming soon: some updates on what the other three boys have been up to. also, rico from afghanistan and the cuntcar tackle's epic fail. almost done with those posts. by the end of the week. i swear. the voices say they'll kill me if i don't have it done by then, so you can take that promise to the bank!

BUSTED! (aka, why MonkeyBeef isn't allowed in the toy room.)

see the carnage behind him? 95% of it is the direct result of him busting baby gate #3 off its freakin hinges (another one bites the dust!) while i was in the bathroom for about 5 minutes.

here's the speech i gave the three older boys when they got home from school:

"i need some help cleaning the toy room. i know you didn't make the mess, and i know it's bad. it's going to take you guys at least an hour to clean it up. but it would take me at least two hours to do by myself, but i have to clean the rest of the house and we're not going to get to do anything fun tonight if i have to clean that up, too. so if you will please just help me out here, everybody gets a new bakugan."

i almost never resort to bribes, not because i'm a good parent, but because i am cheap. but given the speed and silence (not so much as an attempt to bargain for less work! not a single complaint!) with which they proceeded to thoroughly clean the room, i must say, i'm a BIG fan.

product review: bakugan

this bakugan nonsense has earned an official stamp of approval, even after we got the dvds of the cartoon and watched them last week. the cartoon is really, really... mockable. the first time we popped in the dvd and watched the intro, PRM started cackling uncontrollably at the flimsy premise. it goes something like this:

"one day, all these, like, cards just started falling out of the sky. and we didn't know what they were, so we made up a game with them. but then the game was, like, real and stuff. in another dimension."

then there's the annoying theme song. almost as bad as the boys singing along at the top of their lungs is PRM screeching his version of the lyrics out of the boys' earshot ("this is bakugan!" becomes "it's fucking bakugan!" you get the idea.) following the intro is a 22-minute episode of pokemon, in which badly named creatures that pop out of pokeballs battle each other in a dumbed-down magic-the-gathering-knockoff cardgame. yeah, that's not a typo: i said pokemon. just replace "badly named creatures that pop out of balls" with "balls that pop open and transform into badly-named robot thingies" and you've got yourself an episode of bakugan.

that said, bakugan has several things going for it that make me like it more than i like pokemon.

1. it takes place in the real world. hence, the japanese and american main characters travel the world. never too early to start learning something about geography. and world cultures! for example: all german women wear beer wench costumes.

2. the female characters aren't just a token 1-out-of-5 as on most kids' shows; it's seriously 50/50. including the battling robots! some of the cool battling robots are female! yay! big change from the 80s cartoons i grew up with. and most shows today, unfortunately.

3. one of the robot thingies is addicted to tv cooking shows. this amuses me to no end. they occasionally whip up meals like "japanese squid hamburgers." my kids have a new appreciation of the other 12 aisles in the asian grocery store besides the candy aisle.

4. outside of the tv show, the game itself actually differs quite a bit from the pokemon card game. instead of being entirely card-based like a pokemon battle, a bakugan battle involves laying down magnetic "gate" cards, and then rolling your bakugan onto the field of battle; landing on a magnetic card causes the marble to pop open into a robot, and which card they land on helps to determine who wins the round (along with the inherent abilities fo the bakugan you're battling with, and any special-ability cards you may play from your hand.) it's easy enough that the 5-year-olds can play, and pretty entertaining.

5. magnetic shit is cool. pokemon can't do this!



of course, all bakugan are sold out everywhere, and it ain't gonna lighten up before christmas. i managed to procure a few sets at retail price, plus a few more special edition sets to squirrel away for christmas. check the ebay prices. hell, check the amazon prices 90% of the time - if amazon is sold out, which they usually are, the price suddenly doubles (or more) if you choose to buy it from some 3rd-party amazon seller. insanity, i tell you. i have already carefully explained to the boys the marketing ploy that is "collectibility," in which supply is artificially kept lower than demand, which both causes prices to skyrocket AND increases demand with the exclusivity factor. the punchline: if you get your heart set on a certain bakugan, and it's in short supply, mommy isn't spending $50 on it. they totally understand, are perfectly happy with the bakugan they have, and they're becoming good little anti-capitalists. fuck the man!

gone fishin once again

the planets aligned this past month to give us both perfect weather and an under-employed pater familias, courtesy of his "education rotation," in which he lectures to medical students a couple of hours a day and then comes home to keep me from getting a damned thing done. not that i'm complaining. i'm just sayin, if the carpet crunches when you step on it... his fault, ultimately.

anyway. fishing several times a week, in the last days before it gets too cold for boys to want to do it (us parents, on the other hand, have happily stood waist-deep in snow to cast a few flies.)

all your bath are belong to us

it doesn't matter whose bathtime it *technically* is... all bathtimes are MonkeyBeef's bathtimes, as far as MonkeyBeef is concerned. never have such howls of outrage shaken the walls of the loser household as when somebody carries MonkeyBeef past the bathtub - where splashing is occuring without his contributions - and straight to his bed.

an open letter to george lucas

dear supreme being lucas sir,

i forgive you for jar jar binks. i forgive you for that twit 8-year-old anakin. i am a 32-year-old woman who has dressed up as various incarnations of princess leia for halloween for the last 27 years, and i don't really want to fall out of love with star wars now. but for fuck's sake, your obsession with the clone wars is starting to wear me out. as far as i'm concerned, there really aren't any holes in the story between episodes ii and iii that need fleshing out, okay? it's fleshed, dammit. it's as fleshily corpulent as a cat lady who no longer fits out the front door of her double wide. quit with the pornographic close-ups of that fat lady for me, okay? i'm just sayin.

remember that twenty-plus year gap between episodes iii and iv? that's where there are stories begging to be told. i want to see the expansion of the empire, the last few jedi hiding and waiting, the fringers wreaking some firefly-style havoc around the edges, maybe an exploration of mandelorian society, the ascendancy of the hutt clan under the new regime... the possibilities are endless!

now that i've convinced you to leave the fat lady that is the clone wars alone and explore the massive iii-to-iv gap, allow me to respectfully suggest that you take a six-month hiatus from story development of any kind. spend that time playing gears of war. and halo. start there, and then i'll suggest a few more manly, violent, exciting, gorgeously rendered, intricately plotted video game war stories.

i'm not saying you've turned into a pussy in your old age. i'm just saying a fat shot of testosterone never hurt anyone.

cordially,

WelfareLoser

P.S. - fuck your shitty japanimation. i mean, seriously, dude. even my five-year-olds, who want to play t-ball with lightsabers so the force can help them hit the ball farther, are not fucking impressed.

i'm just sayin.

reason #264 PositiveRoleModel is going to hell

PRM: so those ballots we just mailed in?

me: yeah?

PRM: how did you vote?

me: straight party.

PRM: fuck that. i specifically filled in the bubble for obama. how did you vote on whether or not to retain all those judges?

me: i left them blank. i don't know anything about them.

PRM: i voted against every one of those motherfuckers.

me: because change is good?

PRM: fuck yes.

me: what else did you do?

PRM: i voted against changing the language in the iowa constitution from "idiot or insane person" can't vote to "person ajudged mentally incompetent" can't vote.

me: i can't wait to hear why.

PRM: because our god-fearing forefathers chose those words for a reason. you don't fuck with that! that's not a good enough reason to change the constitution. besides, i LIKE the word idiot. and the words retard, cripple, cretin, and midget. anyone who wants to get rid of the word midget will have hell to pay!

me: i bet you were the only one who voted that way. i can't wait to see the newspaper article about the single vote against that measure.

all signs point to pregnancy...

okay, first, a few weeks ago, all three major brands of baby formula started sending me their propaganda again... coupons, literature, full-sized cans of formula, the works. whatever; i just figured that, after three pregnancies, all two-and-some-change years apart, they were just playing the odds and figuring that if i wasn't knocked up again yet, i was probably trying.

then, a few days ago, i got one of SlutMonkey's patented random gift packages in the mail... and i probably shouldn't read too much into it - this is the same guy who gave us a ginormous purple butt plug as a "happy 4th of july" gift - but it was a black ribbon car magnet ("support sex drugs and rock and roll" ... oh, i do. i always have. but now i can proudly advertise it!) and a freakin maternity shirt (featuring a sonogram with the fetus flipping the bird.) yeah, you're funny. or maybe you're psychic. dammit!

now i'm paranoid. i've been really thirsty all the time lately. and feeling like throwing up. i was just going to chalk those up to "working out more during the day" and "stripper-cootie sickness," but last time i felt like this, it ended in the 10-pound wonder-baby. you know how drug addicts could swear they feel bugs crawling under their skin? i'm sitting here telling myself that the unrest in my belly has to be the nachos and butterfingers i had for second dinner, and not yet another invader that's going to grow up to have a vocabulary almost as big as his police record.

i swear, if some little motherfucker has somehow managed to take up residence in my bombed-out baghdad storefront of a uterus, i will punish him (because we all know it couldn't possibly be a her) with the most spectacular case of fetal alcohol syndrome mankind has ever seen. and if i waste $8 on a pee-stick and it comes up negative, i will be drinking heavily in celebration. either way, i win! woooooooo!

omg omg omg omg! banjo epiphany! RUFUS fucking KASEY!

when driving across northern illinois, your choices of radio stations suck: "christian," (with two subcategories: "shitty jesus bubblegum pop," and "god hates faggots pulpit screaming") "country," and "shit that wasn't even good in the seventies, let alone now."

but on this particular drive last weekend, i stumbled across NPR. and i'm bored by 90% of NPR's programming, but this was their "american roots" program, and the focus of this particular show was the roots of the blues. old-school blues is one of my favorite styles of music to listen to and to play, so i left the dial there. after a string of awesome fingerpicking guitar songs, they played the most amazing banjo recording i've ever heard. as i sat listening, i actually got excited. i had two thoughts: 1) this is EXACTLY what i've always wanted to sound like on the banjo, and 2) what the holy freaking hell kind of magic is that man even DOING with his fingers to get that kind of sound?!?!? i mean, it's frailing... but it's more than that.

teh google was not the biggest help. after figuring out that the dude's last name starts with a k and not a c... i found that rufus kasey doesn't seem to have much in the way of a "discography." in fact, all i found that first night was a single song, "coo coo bird," which appears on a couple of compilation albums.

this nearly led to an incoherent rant on the man keeping a negro down, and how the new york jews ruined country music. but then, saving me the trouble of composing it (and you the discomfort of reading it), tonight i stumbled onto the digital library of appalachia.

oh. my. freaking. god.

not only do they have a dozen rufus kasey recordings that don't seem to exist anywhere else, you can download them for free. holy shit! i'm sitting here listening to this stuff getting a massive banjo-boner all over again.

so, all together now: go buy a banjo. download this music. learn to play it. it'd be like living my life along with me, only without the five year olds on accordion and kazoo, 8-year-old on banjo, and not-quite-two-year-old on... well, whichever instrument he decides to beat up a brother for, or sometimes percussion on daddy's guitar. anyway. you'll probably do fine without the backup orchestra.

speaking of learning how to play this stuff, though... whose dick has to get sucked over at mel bay to get someone to transcribe this into tab for dipshits like myself? because seriously, it took me about 20 hours to work out the banjo tab for green day's "time of your life." and that's some simple music, folks. comparing green day to rufus kasey is like comparing nursery rhymes to beethoven. if beethoven were black, and wore a trucker hat with the playboy bunny logo on it.

alright, people. i got the poop beat out of me at fencing tonight. i'm actually just at this keyboard to order some fencing equipment. time to go heal up now... but as soon as the bruises on my arm clear up, i'll be diving into the digital library of appalachia for more inspiring unknown artists. magic, i tells you. my life is full of it.

a day in the life of the loser family

QUIETLY WINDING DOWN BEFORE BEDTIME ... may take a while to load.

but seriously, if you've ever wondered what life was like in this house, that's pretty much a complete picture. the only thing missing is the kid whose lips are now permanently attached to the back of the leather sofa, because he figured out how to make big, wet fart noises on it.

i will be making a scrapbook for EvilGremlin

...just so i can put this in it.

at school this week, the third graders are doing a project that involves doing something nice for someone in secret. so EG has come home with little presents in his backpack all week, homemade cards, artwork, etc, all from "guess who?" or "????"

and now, i will let this particular one speak for itself:

this short message brought to you by the Stripper Cooties Epidemic of 2008...

so several people from last weekend's birthday party have come down with a nasty cold. in cases such as these, the mother of four unclean little creatures might be the one on which to slap the "patient zero" label. in this case, however, LiquidCourage and i unanimously agree that the label goes to the guy who licked the stripper.

IAlsoHaveADream: j'accuse.

so, until i feel better, you get nothing but one-liner nonsense.

today's nonsense: PositiveRoleModel's haircut. he wasn't happy with it. it's a lot shorter than normal, but i think it's fine. he doesn't. here's how he described it:

it's like if harry potter had a practical exam in his charms class, and his assignment is to animate a pair of toenail clippers to cut someone's hair. in the dark. "HIRSUTIUS MASTICATUM!" ...and then you turn the lights on, and i look like this.