Kobayashi Maru

Just a couple of quick Muppet stories for your enjoyment.

For reference, allow me to start with some pertinent background information. All things being equal, if given the choice, the Muppet’s preferred state is one of complete undress. She loves to be naked. Since all things are not equal and Ferf and I do not condone such behavior all the time (though Ferf is fond of being naked too, just in more appropriate settings and times) she is more often than not, fully dressed. That being said, if she must be dressed, she prefers to change clothes every 30-45 minutes. And she will invent “logical” reasons for needing to do so such as: spilling a drop of water or any other liquid on them, falling down on the carpet and getting her pants “dirty”, or simple fashion imperatives like her favorite color keeps changing and the clothes must keep up.

That being said, the other day she was in the kitchen with Ferf and I and she was wearing her stripped dress - the one that she wore for her 3rd birthday and thus appropriately (if not uncreatively) named by her the “birthday dress”. She asked me if she could have some water in her cup…and on a side note, there was water in her cup already, but it had been there for at least 20 minutes and so she actually asked if she could have some “fresh water”. I tried to point out to her that is was fresh water because I would be a very bad father if i had given her saltwater in the first place, but this semantical nuance was lost on her. She wanted some fresh water. So, being the magnanimous dad that I am, I got her the water. She thanked me profusely and promptly spilled some on herself as she gulped it down. It was at this point that she, with great ceremony and flourish, put the cup down and declared that she needed to change clothes and put on her flower dress (you guessed it - the one with flowers on it…3 years old and already a master of the obvious, nothing gets past her keen eyes). I told her that this was unnecessary and wasteful and I even started to tell her how children were starving in Africa and then I realized that (a) I sounded MUCH too much like my parents and (b) starving children, while a compelling visual to an adult did not impress a 3 year old and (3) technically her wanting to change dresses really wasn’t pertinent to children starving in Africa anyway. But the point is I told her no. So, being the precocious little darling she is, she walked the 18 1/2 inches of linear floor space to stand directly in front of Ferf who had been amusedly watching my and the Muppet’s interactions (which, to be honest, she watches us me with mild amusement more often than not) and says, “Mommy.” Ferf inclines her head towards the Muppet and responds with a very maternal, “Yes Muppet?” And the Muppet proceeds to stammer out an incoherent stream of words/feelings. Ferf tells her to slow down and says (knowing full well already) “What do you want Muppet?” And the Muppet pulls on the ends of her dress and twists her torso back and forth just a bit and says, “I wanted to put on my BEautiful, WONderful, gorGEOUS flower dress…PLEASE!!!??” I actually laughed out loud. Ferf gave her the obligatory, “Your daddy already said No Muppet.” But she said it with a glint in her eye as she tried not to laugh at the fact that our 3 year old is already fully understanding the importance of vocal intonation when pleading one’s case as well as the judicious use of a well turned adjective when trying to reel one’s audience in.

Ladies and gentlemen - this is SOOO MY DAUGHTER!!

Then this week we were out for a quick bite of sushi and Muppet wanted some edamame beans - yeah, go figure, my 3 year old has a palate that appreciates Asian delicacies. So anyway after pounding back most of them, she finally stops long enough to look at a few of them after she has shucked them out of their pods. It is at this point that she realizes, and verbalizes, “Daddy, these look like magic beans!” (We have recently been reading Jack and the Beanstalk as a bed time story.) Not wanting to quash her joy nor her imagination (as I believe that is one of the best things that we are given in life) I opened my eyes wide and signaled my agreement with her that they did indeed look like magic beans. It was at this point that she decided that we would take a few home and throw them off the deck and see if a beanstalk would grow in the back yard. This is a completely reasonable expectation for a 3 year old I realize. I was caught in a bit of a quandary. I thought about trying to tell her that they were cooked and much like those who believe in the raw food concept beileve, if you cook something then all the magic in the food is destroyed. But I realized two things: (1) I don’t want her to think magic can be destroyed - what a horrid concept. Magic is like energy - it can neither be created nor destroyed, it just changes forms, but as much as I think the Muppet is a genius, I am not sure that she is quite ready for my personal bastardized version of the first law of thermodynamics. And (2) I am not sure I could explain the concept of raw food and the mentality behind that in a way I could understand, much less a 3 year old…seriously, who the hell doesn’t cook their food? If we weren’t meant to cook our food, then fire would not be the single most important thing needed in the first episode of Survivor every year. Honestly people…

Anyways, this left me in the fairly unenviable position of agreeing wholeheartedly with her and totally engaging in her joy as we tossed them over our shoulders and into the yard. After we put her to bed, Ferf looked at me and said, “we both know that the first thing she is going to ask about tomorrow is the beanstalk - how you figuring on dealing with that?” It was a pointed, yet valid inquiry I must admit. I went to bed not knowing the answer. I got up early and left for work before the Muppet OR Ferf were up not knowing the answer either, but knowing that I had bought myself some time and Ferf would have to field early morning questions. I also knew that Ferf would also tell her to wait until Dad got home and ask him. (That kind of understanding only comes after years of marriage - or when you are passing the buck back and forth with regularity.) Luckily, while at work, I realized that we had a ficus tree in the lunchroom. Not only was it a ficus, it was a fake ficus - a fine fake ficus if I do say so myself. So, I am bringing that fine fake ficus home tomorrow and planting it in the yard. It doesn’t quite reach to the sky like in the story, but then her name isn’t Jack like in the story, so I have some other differences to point out and use to my advantage. The point is that she will have her magic beanstalk. It looks a lot like this:

You can agree that it is eerily magic beanstalk-like in appearance and the Muppet will be totally sold on the concept I assure you. I will however, keep you updated on how it goes and might even post pictures, but I make no promises on that. But it will be worth coming back to see if I do.

...Comment [2]

Allow me to begin with voicing my disappointment on the volume of comments on my last post. Let me be clear that those who did respond are obviously not contextual to that comment of course - it goes without saying, though I find that more and more often that which goes without saying is in desperate need of being said. That notwithstanding, I had hoped for some more stories and at least one attempt at an explication of the lyric of the song I posted. How many of you had even heard of 2nu, much less heard them? That particular song holds many fond memories for me personally. How could it not??
So Monday morning I went to the hospital and for the first (and hopefully last) time in my life, went under the knife of a plastic surgeon. I know…plastic surgeon. Just the name conjures up images of eye-lifts and botox and face lifts and collagen injections and other fun things. I went in for none of those - I had a boob job. I kid I kid - but my google search ratings just went through the roof. For those who remember my lovely story of having a cancer cut off my nose, I pick up the trail that was left cold those weeks ago…the pathology report came back with a yes and a no. Yes, it was indeed cancer as we thought AND No, we did not get it all. In fact we somehow completely overlooked that other cancer on the other side of your nose when we went ditch digging in your schnoz. So, they sent me to a plastics guy to do some serious renovations on my face. I got there and he looked at me and said, “yeah, that’s gotta come off and I see she didn’t get all of the other one - wonder how deep I ought to go?” Seriously, he “mused” this out loud while I am sitting there in front of him. “Hey Doc - I’m right here and you didn’t think that in your head!!!’

So he gets the injection ready to numb my face and says, “I guess since you had that first one worked on you already know that this part is gonna hurt pretty good huh?” To which I replied, “well, not really, my doctor told me that if you know what you’re doing it should never hurt - and when she did it there was no pain. Are you telling me that you don’t know what you’re doing?” It was at this point that I began to realize that Doc Plastic had no sense of humor. He gave me the intellectual equivalent of “Meh” and poked the needle through my nose and into my throat. Then told me he’d be back when I was frozen.

I am not kidding about the depths to which he plunged that syringe. Not only did my whole nose and all surrounding tissue go numb, but my whole top lip and all of my upper front teeth were dead too. He came back in and I said, “you just doing the nose or is there a root canal included in this, cause my whole front bumper is numb!?” He smiled and said, “I wish I was doing dental surgery, that’s where the real money is.” Riiiiiiight doc, cause you plastics guys are hurting in the pocketbook huh? Anyway, trying to bring some levity to the moment (more for me than him really, cause I don’t think he was nervous at all - nothing was getting cut off his face and he still had total feeling in all his extremities) I asked, “so Doc, when you’re done - am I going to look like Brad Pitt?” Not that Brad Pitt is the end all be all - I wouldn’t leave my wife for him or anything, but some people do find him attractive if you’re into that type of thing. But he again gave me what I came to think of as his patented patronizing smile and said “not while I’m getting paid by universal health care.” It was then that I realized that I was sitting in a room with a guy who was seriously taking issue with his pay scale - something I have no authority over. I thought about sending one across the bow like “yeah, I bet that top tax bracket is a real bitch come March huh?” Or, “you guys have a union to fight your battles for you? something like the Plastics Union for Surgical Specialist Yuppies?” But then I remembered - him got knife, me got nothing. So I smiled and gave a socially polite chuckle - the verbal equivalent of a golf clap. Then he laid the cloth over my face. You know the one. Don’t you watch Grey’s Anatomy or ER or House or Scrubs or St Elsewhere or Quincy or Chicago Hope or friggin M.A.S.H.? Geez, okay it’s the cloth that they drape over you so only the part they are supposed to cut shows through:

So the hole in the middle is where my poor nose stuck through. Dr. Plastic then began to cut open my nose and talked about things like (1) he’s from New Brunswick and (2) It was one of the original provinces to join Confederation in 1867.

At this point I am thinking to myself - Look turd, I moved up here when I was in my 30’s so I didn’t HAVE to go to school up here and learn all this useless kind of shite. I am from Texas - one of the original states to not give a crap about New Brunswick, Old Brunswick or Confederation - The Confederacy not withstanding. If it were not for the fact that you are in the process of something that could very well disfigure me, I would tell you to piss off. But what I said was, “huh. How long you been out here?” This was fairly surreal for the following obvious reasons:

1. As previously stated I am from Texas not giving a shite still applies
2. I will never see this guy again, does it matter how long he’s been here? Am I planning appropriate follow up questions like “do you like it out here” or do you miss whatever there is to miss in NB” or “what’s the most statistically significant demographic difference between the provinces” or even some non-question follow up like “cool.”
3. There is a sheet with a hole in it draped over my head and I cannot actually see the guy I am (and I use the term loosely) conversing with
4. While I am “conversing” with Doc Plastic, he is literally cutting an tearing cancerous flesh from my face
5. I cannot feel a dang thing in my teeth and I am talking like a teenager with an “Australian accent” whose parents are in total denial about my need for a speech-language pathologist
6. I am totally awake in a surgical ward while some New Brunswicker with a poor sense of humor and a monotone quality to his voice talks to me as he slices me open
7. His friggin cell phone rang like 6 times during the course of the surgery with EACH AND EVER ONE eliciting the same response from him: “I just learned how to text message last weekend”
8. I was literally making this list up while this was going on, actually mentally writing the eventual blog post in the midst of his soliloquy about his geographic origins

Eventually he got around to doing the stitches on the first area, and I politely mentioned that I could indeed feel the prick of the needle every time he poked me while doing the sutures. He explained that he was almost done and it would hurt worse to re-freeze than to just hurry through the stitches. I semi-nodded because that made some sense to me - until he took the stitches out 3 times because he “wasn’t satisfied with them”. I reminded my goldfish about the wearing off of the freezing and he said “I’ll hurry.” Finally he got to the other side of my nose where he would be re-doing the work of my family doctor. As he made the first incision, I raised my head ever so slightly and said “You just gonna hurry though this too, or can I get a little somethin-somethin for the pain?” He seemed genuinely surprised that I could feel the blade and with some unspoken shoulder shrug, gave me a enough freezing agent to give me frostbite. Then he started whistling and cutting me. I wanted so badly to whistle with him, but alas, I was physically unable to perform since I couldn’t feel my mandibles or tongue and I think my nose was running but I couldn’t be sure without asking and there is just no way to make that question un-awkward. So I resigned myself to mental gymnastics - and I am happy to tell you that I showed great promise and surprising dexterity.

I finally was released back into the wild and I drove home to find my wife somewhat shocked and lovingly telling me that I looked like a (and I quote) “middle earth troll”. And just for reference:

This is a LOTR Middle Earth Troll. And she was somewhat right. There was maybe a barely noticeable familial resemblance. 3 days, 2 swollen shut eyes and a serious jonsing for pain medication later - I look much more like me again. A “I was in a bar fight and caught a beer mug right between the eyes” me, but me none-the-less. Not quite the Brad Pitt look everyone talks about, but I am fairly happy with the me I have seen in the mirror for a while. It is nice to have him back.

...Comment [7]

Music can play a huge part in a person’s life. I know this personally. I was speaking to a friend of mine just the other day extolling the virtues of one having theme music. As a closet fan of the old blaxploitation movies I have seen I’m Gonna Git You Sucka quite a few times and in the eloquent words of John Spade, “every hero’s got to have some theme music”. That being said, I believe everyone should have theme music.

Many of us have a special song that we connect with our spouse or significant other. The ubiquitous “our song“. You have one. You know you do. At least your wife thinks you have one, so you better pretend like hell that (a) you know this to be true and (b) you remember what it is and (c) you remember why it is your song. Because you can bet the farm that she does. And if she’s reading this - she will quiz you.

Anyways, as I was starting to say before I so rudely rabbit trailed there is that music plays a huge part in our lives. You can hear a song on the radio and have memories come flooding back to you. It’s true. Some long forgotten song starts playing and suddenly you can taste lik-em-sticks on your tongue or remember the heartbreak when little Suzie checked “NO” on the do-you-like-me note you passed her or smell the sweat on the dirty laundry when you snuk into the locker room with the pastor’s daughter at the Christian school cause she had a reputation for being easy and…umm, wait…let’s get back to my point. Music can tap into your mind and memories like few things can. Memory is deeply tied to sensory perception and so auditory sounds can be indelibly linked to moments in our past - like a Polaroid picture that you don’t have to shake. This is why 80’s music is so popular with my demographic. We relive moments in our lives through snippets of song. Sometimes I hear a song and I am transported back to the very moment that I first heard it. When I hear anything off Van Halen’s album 5150 I find myself mentally back in Jason Miller’s garage lifting weights on his brand new weight deck during the summer 2 weeks before football 2-a-days started. I was on the bench press when he hit play on the tape deck and the sound of Sammy Hagar leading David Lee Roth’s band hit my ears for the very first time.

Anytime I listen to either of the 2 good songs that Asia put out Only Time Will Tell and Heat of the Moment I remember clearly the summer I spent with my Uncle when my cousin Ronnie took me to my first rock concert ever in my life - obviously it was an Asia concert. I think I was in 5th grade and my cousin Hope was in 8th and I stayed with them on the air force base where they were living. I have no idea where it was now, but I do remember Hope’s best friend on the base (also in 8th grade). I don’t remember her name, but I remember that she was incredibly good looking (to a 5th grader anyways) and that I thought given time we could overcome the age difference and make a go of a real relationship. Unfortunately (for her in my opinion) it didn’t work out, and I had to go home. But she did give me a full frontal hug before I left and I listened to the album that I had purchased at the concert - that’s a big black disk that played music on a record player for all you youngsters reading this - in fact, why are you reading this? It’s late and it’s a school night, go to bed - and thought of her often and fondly for years. In fact, I still have the record, but more as a memory of the first concert that I went to than as a symbol of unrequited love on a random air force base of my youth. Honestly, I don’t even remember her name.

Back to the point…music can be a soundtrack of our lives. In one of the better movies in existence Hi Fidelity - and truly this is a case where the movie is so much better than the book, cause when I read the book John Cusack and jack Black were not it in, but they are in the movie - the main character Rob owns a record store. At one point he is rearranging his massive record collection when one of his employees stops by to try and get him to go out with him to hear a singer perform. But, alas, Rob is pining away over his recent break up and consoling himself through music. The dialogue goes like this:
Dick: I guess it looks as if you’re reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?
Rob: No…
Dick: Not alphabetical…
Rob: Nope…
Dick: Then what?
Rob: Autobiographical.
Dick: No f-ing way!

The reason that line works is that we could all do it. We could reconstruct our lives with music. HEck, if you play Old Rugged Cross it puts me in a pew in Cypress Bible Church next to my father, with him belting it out with vigor and a complete tone-deafness that horrified my mother, brother and I to no end. Heck Mom always got to sit on the far side of Marvin and I - to keep us in line was the official reason, but as we got older we knew it was just to be as far away from his atrocious vocal sounds as possible. And Marvin and I were left to fight over who had to sit next to dad and who got to sit next to mom. But that song starts to get played on a piano (or especially an organ) and BAM suddenly I am 7 years old again wondering why on earth God put that “make a joyful noise” line in the Bible because it just encouraged my dad.

That being said. I want to share with you a song that has deep meaning for me. The lyrics are profound and the arrangement is nothing short of genius. This song has gone with me since 1999 when it was released. I can remember it like it was yesterday. I bought the cassette immediately and then the CD and eventually the MP3 download. Whatever type of music format is coming next, I will have it in that as well. This song was with me so much that my buddy whom I tracked down a while back via the wonder that is the internet, emailed me after we talked that first time in a dozen years and said, “hey, do you remember that song you used to listen to all the time…” It was of course the song of which I speak. And it was a song, that for him, tied him to many memories of good days. I emailed him the song. And now I give it to you. It won’t bring you back my memories, but maybe it will spark some for you - or at least give you this post to remember next time you hear it…

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Then you can tell me what songs are memory finders for you and what do they remind you of…

...Comment [4]

Freeze tag

Blob tag

Roundup

Bulldog

Marco Polo

Hide and seek

Dub-dub-in

Hide N’ Tag

Kabuki

Kill the Dill with the Pill

Ghost in the graveyard

Line tag

Darebase

Manhunt

Ringolevio

Scrap Tag

Tunnel Tag

TV tag

Cops and Robbers

Fox and Hounds

ardines

Arrow tag

Sharks and Minnows

Zombie tag

Suirai-Kancho

Tornado Tag

Hurricane Tag

Thorn Tag

Alien Tag

Lava Monster

Battle Tag (War Tag)

Everybody’s it

Shadow Tag

Color Tag

Red Rover

Under hökens vingar kom

No Touch Gravel

Virus

Warp Tag

Electric Tag

Murder in the Dark

Tag Bob Down

Blind Man’s Bluff

Monsters

Inverted Tag

Elbow Tag

Maniac

Hide and Seek Tag

Troll Tag

I simply have to link you to another blog for this. Fedorable over in greenish-black ops now has his own blog. In addition, his blog is fairly good. This particular post is, however, downright disturbing. It deals with a Forbes article about a Colorado school banning playing tag on the playground. I shite thee not. Playing tag (or any “chase game”) is banned and they are not the first school to do it! This has been going on since 2002 - that is the first instance I can find on line at FoxNews. I am obviously way behind the times on this, but I felt that it needed my attention anyways. Because frankly, I wanted to know what my opinion on it was too.

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Now seriously, I would expect this in Canada. In fact, Badger’s younger child, Thing 2, saw it happen in his school up north a couple of years ago. This passed with nary a comment…well, Badger did mock the hell out of the principal, but he was the only one and that’s cause he has some American blood in him cause his birth father was an american porn star / hell’s angel. But in Canada they banned it because it simply showed that some kids were faster than others and it made the ones who were caught feel “slow” and that is politically incorrect. The correct term is “expeditiously challenged” and one does not do things that point such things out - even if they are true. SO now all the kids walk around the playground believing firmly that they are as fast as every other kid. (But the bad kids walk around thinking that they are faster than the others. It’s all about the criminal mind now.) But by all outward appearances, everyone is equal.

I think this is inherently stupid. Of course some people are faster than others, and yes, this by definition makes some people (glup) SLOW. Next they are gonna make all the kids wear paper bags on their heads so they don’t compare their outward appearance to each other, cause God forbid that little Johnny is better looking than little Billy. I have no idea how they are going to deal with girls developing breasts before others…cause that’s gonna start a whole new game of tag. When did we as a society lose our collective minds. Now, understand that I am fully aware of the maxim, “None of us is as dumb as all of us” when it comes to group think. But seriously, how did a group of people think this was a good idea. I want to go on record saying that I am not a proponent of bullying, I do not support it, I do not encourage it and I do not like it. But I can say the same about taxes and getting fat, and yet both of those march on with time and no one seems to be able to stop them. That being said, it happens. We all know it does. But to ban games like TAG because it makes a kid feel “uncomfortable” is asinine. That’s paramount to not allowing people to buy towels so they will stop getting wet. That is not the correct cause and effect correlation - and in fact, will only serve to tick off the silently powerful, often talked about but seldom seen, towel lobby.

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Tag is not bullying. Like Fedorable so eloquently said, if you don’t want to be chased in tag - don’t run! And then don’t chase the next person. That in and of itself will effectively kill the game. This is not rocket science. If kids (or their parents who ought to be talking with them about it) can’t figure this out, then they ought not to worry about possibly being bullied because they are slow, they oughtta focus on the fact that they will be bullied because they are stupid. (if you can read that last sentence with a Southern drawl, you will get the full effect of its meaning)

One would think that at an institution of learning they could figure out something that was not quite so reactionary and a little more, well, um, thoughtfully considered. It is possible that thinking (especially critically) is no longer considered of value at places like schools. Because really, if you start discussing ideas, it might become apparent that some people are smarter than others and then we would have to ban discussions as well. Otherwise some of the dumb people would get their feelings hurt. And that would lead to low self-esteem. (cause the only thing worse than an idiot is an idiot with low self-esteem)

I am interested in your thoughts on this. Even if they are different than mine. Of course I might make fun of you, so if that would run the risk of damaging your psyche, then maybe you should just pretend that you agree with me. It’s safer for everyone that way.

I leave you with a quote from Burt Prelutsky:
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“I would like to know the name of the buffoon who first decided that competition was a bad thing. Who was the silly goose who woke up one morning with the goofy notion that kids shouldn’t keep score in their games so that the members of the losing team wouldn’t suffer from low self-esteem? And what fathead decided that high schools shouldn’t have valedictorians because all the other seniors would feel like a bunch of underachievers? No doubt it was the same idiot who determined that a level playing field didn’t really mean equal opportunity, but equal results.” —Burt Prelutsky

...Comment [4]