Let Them Eat Cake

Hey now I think I know why they killed that French lady for giving everyone cake, they wanted ice cream!

Sunday was my birthday party, it wasn't actually my birthday, and so OurDad kept calling it my pseudobirthday. Other than that OurDad behaved, he really loves me. He even helped everyone skate since most of my friends can't ice skate. I knew lots of them couldn't skate, but I wanted an ice skating party before I left Michigan for Missouri where there isn't any ice--especially with global warming! Anyway we had pizza and chocolate cake, and there was lot's left over. So that's all we've eaten for a couple days pizza and chocolate cake. Cake, Cake, Cake, Pizza, Pizza, Pizza! I'm sick of it. Yesterday we had pizza for breakfast and lunch and dinner. Today we said, "we weren't eating pizza for breakfast!" So OurDad said we could eat Cake. The BoyChild thought this was great, but I wanted ice cream.

"Dad, what's the difference? Cake and ice cream are really for dessert so if you can eat cake for breakfast why can't you eat ice cream for breakfast?" Usually this type of logic works on OurDad. He thought for a moment and said, "it's too cold. Ice cream is too cold, you just can't eat food that's that cold for breakfast."

"Fine," I said, "then I'll have hot chocolate!" And he actually made me hot chocolate. I was being sarcastic! It's only supposed to reach 92 degrees today. That's why I want ice cream for breakfast!

I'm going back to bed until after breakfast so I can have ice cream.

Environmental Science Proves It or To Pee or not to Pee

Last week OurDad took his Environmental Science class to a waste water treatment facility. That's where all the water in your house or business goes to be cleaned up before it's released back into the environment.

This sounds appropriate for an environmental science class, but not in the hands of OurDad. The first hint of trouble was that he entitled the field trip, "What Happens When You Flush." Gross!

Ok so it is about poo water, and the students were grossed out-- like they don't poo-- but the facility's manager told them it's not just toilet water, "it's dish water, shower water, anything that goes down the drain." At these words OurDad was enraptured by an epiphany: "So it's ok to pee in the shower!" he thought out loud.

Great environmental science makes the planet safe from OurDad's pee. What's next the pool?

Be sure to see OurDad's side of this one in the comments.

Paper or Porcelain

Lately we have been using a lot of paper plates. Ok maybe the dishes aren't really porcelain, but Paper or China didn't have that paper or plastic alliterative ring to it (oh God OurDad is wearing off on us).

But I was wondering since OurDad is teaching Environmental Science this semester at the Old CC which was better for the environment, real dishes or the paper dishes.

"Hey Dad what would the Goracle say about us using all these paper plates?" I knew I was risking an entire environmental science lecture, but since we don't have a power point projector at home I figured it was pretty safe from the worst of it.

"Well son, there's more than just trees to consider. Sure cutting down trees is bad, but necessary in our society and many trees are farmed just for paper, paper can be recycled into make more paper plates or cups for that matter, and if you recycle them they aren't taking up space in a landfill.

The thought of eating off someone else's recycled plate was disgusting. "Dad I don't think yucky paper plates with grease and bits of food all over them can be recycled. They don't recycle pizza boxes. And cutting any amount of trees has a negative impact on global carbon emissions, farmed or not."

"Well it's not just about trees, how about the water we're saving. Not only the water we'd use to clean those plates," he said with a sneer and pointing to the cabinets to indicate the real dishes, "but the water we'd be polluting with all that detergent too."

"So water is more important that trees-- when you have to clean the dishes."

Just don't put it that way to your mother.

OurDad's Father's Day or Perhaps it's Androgyny

We are still getting the house ready for this dismal market here in SE Michigan. It's so bad GreatMom had OurDad working on Father's Day. First he shoveled a truckload of mulch onto all the garden beds in the front yard, then he watered all the flowers and bushes (that global warming thing is acting up here in MI-- it hasn't rained on over a week and it's hot).

Then we took him out, for a break, to Home Depot his favorite store in the world so we could buy him some paint and trim. Then he painted the garage door. Then he installed trim around the entryway into the garage. He even put my bed back together, because they think the bunk bed makes my room look small. Yeah right... I think they just wanted to get rid of more of my stuff as if my whole life in Michigan wasn't enough.

Anyway OurDad was working and GreatMom was lounging around with me. Some days I wonder if our parents have any idea how much they are confusing the GirlChild and me.

Or perhaps GreatMom had this Father's day revenge planned since....

Looking out for OurDad

Were not sure yet how we'll be referring to OurDad's new school on our anonymous blog (so he doesn't get fired), but we have been doing few searches around the web to get the scoop on the school. One thing's for sure it's a jock school. It's not a Div 1 school so we figure (hope) they really are student athletes. I checked to see if they had a skating team, but no such luck. I just hope he doesn't want us to go watch the water polo matches with him.

Speaking of water polo we found these posts the other day at the rate your students blog about administration-sponsored student-faculty get togethers. As of yet we can't verify whether or not either is about OurDad's new school. However, if they are there could be trouble.

We see several problems with these supposed get to know your prof schemes.

When we get to Missouri OurDad will be too busy unpaking our stuff to be helping students move into their dorm rooms. They are big strong kids their parents can carry their stuff up to their rooms.

I'm not too sure GreatMom would like it if OurDad attended the new-student pool party, but I'm sure he'd love it.

Although we're big Harry Potter fans I don't really care if the students think he's more like Professor Snape or Professor Lupin. I happen to know he's a squib.

I'm quite sure GreatMom would not be happy to learn that we had moved to Missouri so that OurDad could host a faculty cast for a sex ed rendition of the Hollywood Stars. I'm not sure if they'd give him a script, but I'm sure he'd rely on all those sick Philip Roth books like The Breast, or The Professor of Desire for material.

I have no idea what he's gotten himself into, but please please God whatever don't let it make him even crazier.

Books Have Gone to his Head or This Move is Driving him Crazy

In addition to all the things OurDad is trying to get done around the house so we can sell it and move OurDad has been trying to prepare the BoyChlid and me for life in Missouri. And it's working. We like Tom Sawyer. OurDad said Mark Twain wrote another book about Tom Sawyer and we'd get to read it some day. Instantly Missouri sounded like a better place.

"Dad, when's the next Tom Sawyer book come out?" I thought Missouri had it's own redneck Harry Potter and JK Rowling!

OurDad said, "I'm sorry sweety, but he stopped writing books about Tom and his friends along time ago."

"Deary Mark Train lived about a hundred years ago. He's not going to be writing anymore books," GreatMom tried to clarify. I didn't think that could be true; Tom wasn't a caveman, but if mom says so. Then OurDad corrected her. "What are you talking about that old Tralfamadorian has lots of books left in him. "

"Tralfa what--"

"They are an alien race of time travelers." Now the BoyChild was interested, and before he realized his mistake he had asked. "What's Tralfa whaters got to do with Mark Twain?" I hit him. Now we were in for some crazy lecture about literature, but this time with extraterrestrials. It went something like this.

Mark Twain is just a fake author name, a nomdeplume, for Samuel Longhorne Clemens which is probably not his real name either. OurDad claims he's the same person who writes under the name Kurt Vonnegut Jr.--the junior part being a nice touch to throw people off-- and Kilgore Trout. Vonnegut, or whoever he is, in his 1969 book Slaughterhouse-Five described his race, the Tralfamadorians. Thus, according to OurDad, exposing just how the same man could write two collections of books with a span of one hundred years separating them. OurDad says the evidence is in the writing and subject matter: both writers have novels that depend heavily on a very similar use of the first person narrative, and both authors rage against technology and man's inhumanity to man. They both rely in one liners and were essayists at heart. And they both were fascinated with time travel, Twain's Connecticut Yankee and Vonnegut's Timequake and Slaughterhouse-Five. What's known of both men's personalities fits the hypothesis too, both were bipolar subject to massive bouts of depression. Probably because they knew humanities rotten future. But most of all look at them!



Finally GreatMom had had enough, "so basically you're saying that Kurt Twain, or is it Mark Vonnegut, is proof of extraterrestrial intelligence."

"Yeah, pretty much. It's not as exciting as Star Wars, but humans can't write like that guy."

At times I think we're headed to Misery not Missouri.

OurDad's not that Bad or Freak Show at the WoundTight Township Library

Recently someone suggested that we are a bit hard on OurDad. It's true, at times we see parenting that's beyond even OurDad, in fact beyond explanation. Here's an example of what we won't be missing about Michigan's WoundTight Township. Thanks JS. However, these "parents" just give OurDad ideas.

Recently we were forced to go to the WoundTight Township Public Library to do our homework-- where it was figured we would stop whining and complaining about doing said homework being that the public library is a public place. It was pretty horrible to sit in the library and do homework-- no computer time and certainly no Star Wars books (see Four Legs Good, Star Wars Baaaad). OurDad was being so grumpy about "homework" that I don't think even George Orwell would have cheered him up.

Anyway there we were doing our homework, at the library, and soon we realized we were not alone and that it could have been much much worse.

This WoundTight mom wore an angry scowl and black unitard to showoff her surgically exaggerated bubble butt and boobjob. I first I didn't realize it was her costume as she played the part of super villainess in a public plot of pathetic pomposity. She had marched her son to the public library to finish his Science Fair project, but clearly she was there more for the public part than the library part.

The GirlChild and I were there because it is all to well understood that making a spectacle of ourselves in public is VERBOTEN, and carries serious consequences, the likes of which have only been vaguely explained.

However this kid and Villainess mom were all about the spectacle. The first hint was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume?!?! Why in the hell was that kid wearing a costume at the library? But it didn't stop there. There was whining, shouting and as the villainess became ever more enraged she'd loose her grasp of English slipping back into her native tongue to berate the ninja turtle son in one of the many foreign dialects you're likely to hear here in the ethnically diverse WoundTight Township. God knows what wretched foreign curses we heard that day. All for the purpose of gaining the sympathy of the WoundTight Public Library staff. What a dedicated mother she was and what a brat he was, and what attention they got. We couldn't take our eyes off them-- no one could. Staff members were consulted as to how one could finish a project with such a brat.

Finally GreatMom, unbewitched by the spectacle, reminded us it's not polite to stare at people with disabilities. We left gladly so we could finish our homework at home.

Whatever the deal with the costumes was it's now been added to OurDad's repertoire as the all time most frightening homework threat. "If you don't want to do your homework here, I'll just hurry upstairs and get your costumes and we can go to the library."

Thanks a lot, you freak WoundTight family as if OurDad didn't have enough ways to annoy, embarrass and harass us.

Please note that the clientele of the WoundTight Township Public Library is not a reflection on the staff or quality of the Woundtight Township Public Library. It's one of the nations top 100 public libraries, and we shall miss it dearly.