Come for the brains, stay for the laughs

OMFG Fido!

Totally know what I'm doing June 15.

As if. I think the last movie the husband and I saw in the theatres starred Carey Grant or Gina Lollobrigida or maybe Buster Keaton. No, wait, it may have actually been a daedalum of, I don't know, fucking CAVEMEN or some shit.

Or maybe Spiderman 2.

Whatever.

The following post makes some references to scary porn from the 70's

I went to a wedding shower for a friend from my distant childhood last summer. I've known this woman since first grade and we were really good friends until high school and then, you know, high school got in the way. We thought different boys were cute and so we went our separate ways--no animosity, no I-think-we-should-see-other-people. We just did the old shuffle-shuffle-drift like I did with almost all of my friends that I'd had since first grade or so. It happened to almost everybody. In fact, the weird thing was that I was best friends all through high school with someone I'd gone to flipping kindergarten with. I'd transfered to a different school for first grade, made new friends, met up with this guy again in seventh grade, drifting from old friends commenced to ensue, youknowtherest.

When my friend and I both had babies waaaaaaaaay before any other people we knew, we kind of found each other being friends again. It was good. She got married last summer, and I went to her shower. We have come full circle. I congratulate myself.

I was several months pregnant with the Sprout when I went to the shower which was attended by all these people I hadn't seen since we graduated from high school 9 years ago. People that I maybe had gym class with or were maybe in my art class or perhaps English? Unfortunately, while I am good at a great many things, I am a math-retard and took stupid-math and these people, while maybe imbibing beyond human comprehension on the weekend and then having sex with the football team (ok, not really. Probably.) were actually pretty smart, so we never took math together. But I knew them. They're all really nice but since nice counts for shit in high school and what really mattered was what kind of soul-wrenching existential novels you were reading at the time...hhmmm...maybe that was just me. Also, my friends did more sophisticated drugs and I hated smoking pot. That may have had something to do with it.

Although, you know, probably not that much.

So here we are, at a nice house in Sonoma, all these beautiful people (I probably didn't mention that they were beautiful. They were Popular, which in highschoolspeak is synonymous with Beautiful.) who are, although perhaps Popular, also Incredibly Nice and remember which classes we had together and have kept in touch with all sorts of people I'd need a yearbook and shock therapy to remember and adult conversation is happening all around me between people who have somehow morphed into Real Live Adults. I am doing my best, always worried that they will find out somehow that I am still a child in a pregnant woman's body when my chance arrives to blow it.

Someone asked me what my husband does.

"Oh, he's in internet porn."

Thank you, and good night.

Luckily, most people within earshot thought I was joking, so I laughed too, like, ha ha, how funny I am, I said PORN! and they said, No, really, what does your husband do, and I had to think and make up words because beyond his side job of being a porn purveyor extraordinare, I honestly don't know what he does. It's something to do with computers and thinkytalkspeak. He is involved in a business that corrals usenets or some goddamned thing, and what do YOU think is the most popular type of information that is shared on the internet (please pardon--am complete LUDDITE)--all I know is that Porn pays some of our bills.

I used to have a problem with this. Then we bought a bigger house. I am quiet now.

Anyway, we have developed a fairly laid-back attitude to porn. I have seen enough to know that IT ALL SUCKS, but every now and then a coworker alerts him to a particularly interesting porn and so we watch 5 minutes of it before deciding that we will not lose 60 minutes of our lives to hairy asses from the 70's. An example from the other night:

Husband: So-and-so said we should check this out.

Me: Alrighty.

H: Hmmm.

M: (finding a quiet happy place away from hairy body parts)

H: ....

M:.....

H: .....

M: Wow, she's got really great shoes. I hope she sticks her legs way up in the air again so I can see them.

H: Um, seriously? You were watching her SHOES?

Fucking fuck! I cut you! I cut you!

Dude. Afro Samurai. I have not seen anything this awesome since I acquired sight, along with life, almost 28 years ago.

Mirror, mirror, in the car...

Alternate title: Why I Hate My Daughter
Alternate-Alternate title: Why I Hate Pop Culture
Alternate-Alternate-Alternate title: If Ashlee Simpson Ever Enters This House In CD Form, Heads Will Roll -or- I Really Like To Make Generalizations About Bands That I Know Nothing About

The Peanut has been singing a Killers song.

WHY, GOD, WHY? WHAT HAVE I DONE TO OFFEND THEE? HAVE I NOT SPENT THE LAST 6 FUCKING YEARS TRYING TO MOLD AND SHAPE AND SOMETIMES CONTORT THIS LITTLE BEING INTO A FACSIMILE OF MYSELF BY FORCING MY VIEWS AND PREFERENCES ON HER? IT HAS BEEN HARD AND LARGELY THANKLESS WORK, LORD, AND THIS (MOTHERFUCKING THIS!!) IS HOW YOU CHOOSE TO REWARD MY CAREFUL OVERBEARANCE?
Come fucking on, man.
We have tried so hard to pass our incredible hipness on to the youngsters. My older children can tell Amon Tobin from Mr. Scruff, and although they really enjoy themselves some Laurie Berkner they balance it out with a deep admiration for Gorillaz. (side note: No, I don't actually play them the Gorillaz. Anymore.) I have tried so hard to protect their little systems from harmful wuss pop and tweener whining. Husband seems to be ok with gay euro-pop.
Harmless enough, right? And also: awesome.
The best thing that happened last week? I played them Josephine Baker singing "Don't Touch My Tomatoes". Oh. My. God. It was like they had just seen a bunch of guys dressed as wolves do a song-and-dance number. (Or maybe a man box a kangaroo.)
And the thing is: I don't even know where she heard the Killers. I don't play it. Husband doesn't play it. She's in a pretty creepily protected environment at her school and all her friends are too. It's like the song just seeped into her consciousness and took root. Like it was just drifting in the breeze of pop culture and somehow the music and words materialized in her brain and it was catchy and she started to sing it. Next thing I know they'll be wanting to know who Kelly Clarkson is and wanting tickets to see the Arctic Monkeys. That's when I know that I have failed and that they're no longer under my control. (Note to self: must invest in large boxes with air holes where I can keep the children through their tween years.)

edited to add: Ok, The Killers really aren't that bad. I mean, in the scheme of things, Peanut could be doing a lot worse. It's just that...I don't know....over produced earnest-rock just doesn't cut the mustard around here. That's all.

Holy psychosis, Batman!

So, the Sprout has a fever. Why is this newsworthy, you might very well ask?
It's not. Babies get fevers. They are healthy and help to make his little body stronger. Having a fever now may actually help him in the long run, and there is no damage done under 108 degrees in infants. I know this. Ok, some if this I just learned via Google U, but the gist? Well known.
And yet, last night, one word kept swimming through my head. I kept pushing it down to the bottom of the pool where maybe a little shark could come by and snatch it away (yes, dammit, there are sharks in pools. In our hot tub, for example. When we bought a house with a drownerific hot tub in the back yard which the children were fascinated [fascinated!] with I promptly informed them that there were sharks that lived at the bottom and therefore they could not enter the hot tub without parental involvement. My husband has a theory that a fairy dies every time we lie to the kids but, meh. It kept them the hell away from the hot tub. But it might explain the Bean's reluctance to enter any body of water deeper than his bathtub.), but it would float right back up to the top (shakes fist at pretend pool-sharks).

....MENINGITIS......
my brain would whisper, in more of a stage-whisper-shouty kind of way.
..........MENINGITIS........

...aaaaand that's when I decided that that kind of heavy Salman Rushdie book that I was trying to avoid reading was sounding really good, so instead of listening to my crazy ass brain whisper to me that my baby had meningitis because he's running a 101.6 fever and we're behind on inoculations, I read about the rape of Kashmir instead.
Yay!

Arrgh

Soooo...I'd kind of like to be a pirate.
Ok, maybe not BE a pirate. Maybe I'd just like to talk like one. And to hell with Speak Like A Pirate Day. That's, like, one day a year. No, I'd like to talk like a pirate EVERY day.
Ok, maybe not EVERY day, but most days.
Maybe some days.
Ok, maybe just today. Unless I can do some kind of, I don't know, Pirate Wednesday. Or something.
Oh, I know. In honor of Mother's day, we'll be talking Pirate. A day early.
Scurvy dog.
So I'm going to relate a not-at-all interesting story in Pirate in the hopes that it will intrinsically become more interesting.
Here goes.
(ahem.)
Aaargh! Aye was lookin' at me local rag and a small ad caught me eye. Arrgh, no, me hearties, it was naught an ad for rum, but for a local boutique. Aaargh. Me seein-eye parrot informed me that there was a URL in the ad so we hauled ourselves out o' the brig to cast our remainin' eye upon't. Aarrgh, but it was a pleasin' website. There was even a link to the starboard side of the page that me seein-eye parrot informed me was maybe worth gawkin' at. 'Twas for a painter's personal webpage me hearties, and what a painter she is. Reminded me straight off of a young lad I knew, aargh, many years ago who was also a painter. Aye, and still is. When I was reminded of the young fellow, I found meself doin' a bit of the Googlin' and lo and behold, maties, but there he was! In all his glory! On a webpage! For his band! On MySpace!
Aaarrrgh, but I thought I'd never see the day, me hearties. After staggerin' back from the galley with me rum I decided to try to send him a note. Aaargh, but I was fit to be keelhauled! In order to send a note to that scurvy dog I had to sign meself up on MySpace, a place I promised me seein-eye parrot I'd never go again after the humiliation of garnerin' only three friends the last time I had an account. Me seein-eye parrot threatened mutiny, but, aaarrgh, I keep his wings clipped, heh heh, scurvy dog that he is.

Phew. That was tiring.
So yes, my best friend from High School and also kindergarten has a really great sounding band and he lives in the city and I fucking signed up to fucking MySpace again just so that I could say hi to him because calling his mom to get his new phone number seemed harder. Even though I still totally know his old phone number by heart, which, aaarrrgh. What kind of useful information has not been able to take root in my brain because I remember his childhood phone number?
Probably not enough to make a reasonable argument for my stupidity.