Belated Earth Day

You may not know this, but OurDad has been known to teach Environmental Science at the Old CC. He's very concerned about the environment we live in. In fact he's so into it he celebrated Earth Day this year by waiting until after Earth Day to spread fertilizer with herbicide all over the lawn we play on!

To OurDad's credit he usually forgoes the herbicides and pesticides and just over loads the lawn with nitrogen based fertilizer, but with the big move he seems to be fixing things around the house, throwing out anything he thinks can fit into the local landfill and trying to make the lawn look extra good with no regard to the environment. Good luck being a stand in for Al Gore now. All so someone else can enjoy our Michigan home.

Who cares about the environment when there's a house to be sold.

OurDad's not exactly this guy, but I could see him singing this way if the mood stuck. I happen to like toilet paper so I'm hoping not.

Not sure what's up

Finally we get to use the computer. Sorry we havn't posted in a couple days. I'm not sure what's going on, but OurDad and GreatMom have both been hogging the computer. I'm not sure what they are up too. Even poetry seems to have taken a back seat this week. And just when I was starting to get into this Poetry Month thing.

Last Friday OurDad took us to a poetry contest he helped judge. The BoyChild played his Gameboy, and tried to pretend he was not paying attention. I sat right up front with OurDad. Some of them were good, and OurDad didn't even act goofy. He was all serious Judging poetry. It was strange.

I even started a poem about OurDad's pancakes. OurDad makes the best pancakes in the whole world.

Anyway The BoyChild and I are on spring break this week, and OurDad and GreatMom just decided we'd run to St. Louis for a couple days to see Grandma and Grandma and Grandpa and Grandpa.

Easter = Sex?

Will someone please tell OurDad Easter is not about sex-- so we can start our Easter Egg Hunt.

We got up nice and early for our Egg Hunt and OurDad got all mad. "So if I put a few hard boiled eggs on the bus you'd never be late for school again, right?"

We tried bargaining for the plastic ones with chocolates inside when OurDad asked, "What do eggs have have to do with Jesus anyway?"

We didn't know. We just wanted to start our Egg Hunt, but he wouldn't get out of bed, and we can't start with out him.

"If you can tell me what eggs have to do with Jesus, I'll get up." We didn't know, and he knew we didn't know. We'd been set up again-trapped, and if we wanted an Egg Hunt we'd have to endure another of OurDad's lectures. There was no point delaying the inevitable so we asked, "Gee dad what do eggs have to do with Jesus?"

"I'm so glad you asked," he said, and we braced for the worst. "Nothing! What is an egg?"

The GirlGhild answered, "A baby chicken."

"Right, if it's a chicken's egg," he corrected. "So an egg, a baby bird, is a fertility symbol."

I was happy to leave it at that and start our Egg Hunt, but the GirlChild had to ask, "What's fertility?" Now I was ready to go back to bed. I almost hit her, and I should have.

"Fertility, it's about making babies so Easter is about sex," he said.

"No it's not," we said in unison as my stomach began to churn. Making babies eeew gross.

Oh you don't think so eeh? So what's a bunny got to do with Jesus?" He'd done it again.

"We don't care! Can't we just find the eggs?" we begged.

It's another fertility symbol--bunnies make lots of babies that means they have lots of sex." Gross making babies and sex, eeeew. I started to break out into a sweat. I couldn't make him stop. I was getting sick even before I got to gorge on chocolates. He was ruining Easter, just so he could stay in bed.

Of course it was 6 am.

That's Our Dad...

More like Jack Frost

OurDad told us about his favorite spring poem the other day. I think I'm starting to get this poetry stuff now. This is just so fitting for our current freezing Easter weather.


Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

 -- Robert Frost

No kidding-- nothing gold can stay-- not when it's frozen! I think OurDad's got the poet's first name wrong. This must be the Jack Frost anthem! Crazy!

Probably not the place to start.

Ok even OurDad says this one's a bit too much. I think you'd need two Ph D's to understand T.S Eliot's The Waste Land. Really OurDad's got one and he doesn't get this poem either.

If you ask me it's all wrong from the start. April is the cruelest month? I thought maybe this Eliot guy was from the southern hemisphere where the seasons are all reversed, but OurDad told us that he's from our old home town, St. Louis, but that he moved to England. What a turncoat! The snow is gone, Easter is coming, it's warm again, and most important the Cardinals are back for opening day in April. What kind of St. Louisan doesn't like April and the return of our beloved Cardinal baseball.

OurDad tried to explain something about irony, but I think the guy's off his rocker.

The poem's about a thousand lines long, but you can see where it's going right away so I just copied the first few lines. Oh and I took out all the crazy Latin and Greek at the beginning too. Crazy, just crazy.

The Waste Land APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering	5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

What Kind of Sick Joke is This?!

OurDad just told us it's National Poetry Month! Even in Canada!

A whole month?!

Do you know how long a month is? Can you even remember what you were doing 4 weeks ago? I'll bet it wasn't poetry.

April is the cruelest month...

In an Ideal World They'd Pay Us for This

Yesterday OurDad was trying to tell us about this Philip Roth book he's reading. Usually we just remind him were ten and eight, and some times he stops, but something in yesterday's trip to lit land with OurDad caught my attention---Money.

So this book is set in Prague, Czechoslovakia during some war that was only fought during the winter. It's a totalitarian state where half the country is paid the spy on the other half. Next thing we know OurDad is off on some rant about the President and phone records and the FBI and the Attorney General and 1984 bla, bla, bla... The book is called The Prague Orgy and he thinks the President's domestic spying is obscene. I was giving him a couple minutes to get it out of his system when it dawned on me that maybe this spying thing could work here in the good old US of A.

This meant I'd have to ask OurDad about the book to learn just how this getting paid to spy on people worked, thus risking an hour long dissertation. If I could just make it sound like I was interested in Prague and this totalitarian stuff and not current events it might not be so bad.

"So dad how could people get paid to spy on each other--in the book?", I asked. It worked he was so happy that I'd actually asked a question about literature that he forgot all about Present Bush.

My ears are still a bit sore, but I think it was worth it. It boiled down to this. There were two writer friends. One was a good writer and the other "couldn't describe a shoelace." Well the state government was interested in what the good writer was doing, because people listen to good writers. So the government asked the bad writer to file reports on the good writer, but it was a disaster. The state couldn't make sense of the bad writer's reports. Worse yet the state thought he was faking it to protect his friend. The bad writer went to his friend for help, and the good writer agreed to write the reports on himself! Everyone was happy; the friends split the money and the government got excellent reports, but this too was a problem when the state wanted to promote the bad writer to spy on more important people and to train new recruits because his reports were so fantastic.

This spying bit basically ends with the good writer having to teach the bad writer how to write to keep the government from discovering the whole scam. Eventually the good writer broke off the whole thing by telling the bad writer, "How can you ever become a great writer if you are such a bad spy?"

Hey I think this Philip Roth guy is comparing writers to spies-- More like peeping Toms knowing the books he writes.

Anyway this whole spying thing sounds better than groveling for an allowance.

The GirlChild and I do hereby pledge to provide any and all information on OurDad to the satisfaction any state government willing to pay us the sum of one million dollars.

President Bush if you are reading this we'll be expecting a wire transfer soon.

A Swiss bank account and I'll never have to clean my room again.

OurDad was right the Vice President is Evil-- Thanks YouTube

Tomorrow is my last day as a Cub Scout. No I'm not quitting. I'm crossing over to Boy Scouts and I'll be awarded the highest Cub Scout honor, the Arrow of Light. OurDad will be crossing over too. He's been the Den Leader for five years now, and I think he's more excited about Boy Scouts than I am. He's always said this is his chance to finish being a Scout too.

Anyway I'm not sure OurDad has been the typical Den leader. case in point: our Citizen badge. We had to learn all about our great country including who the important leaders were. We all knew who the President was, George Bush, and our Governor here in Michigan, Jennifer Granholm. OurDad says she's the sexiest Governor in America.

Well, that was about all we knew. So when OurDad asked the Den who the Vice President was I thought I'd be funny and yelled out, "Doctor Evil."

OurDad looked stunned for a second, I thought I might be in trouble, and then he beamed at me with pride. Not just any pride mind you, his eyes sparkled and he got that teary-eyed faraway look reserved for the fathers of Super Bowl Champions. I thought he was going to hug me in front of the other boys--thank God he didn't. I could even hear theme music coming from somewhere. I still can figure out that one. And then he said, "YOU'RE RIGHT!"

Every one was laughing at what each of us had said. In that moment we were transformed into some great Father-Son tag-team comedy act. It was great. We had bonded like few fathers and sons throughout history. Then I noticed he wasn't laughing, and then he said, "No really you're right. The Vice President really is Doctor Evil." Then every one stopped laughing, and I was no longer the envy of all the other boys. No longer was I a kid lucky enough to have a cool dad, a dad with true comic timing. A dad so funny that no one would even dare look at a milk carton in his presence. It was all an accident. He was just... well, him, OurDad again.

Eventually we got him to admit that a man named Dick Cheney was the Vice President, and he kept insisting that he was like Doctor Evil, but no body bought it.

Anyway it turns out OurDad and I were right, well almost right. Look what I found on YouTube!

It was so funny, and for that one moment we were both so proud of each other.
I just hope he's as proud tomorrow as I become a Boy Scout.

Bloody Knuckles

No OurDad didn't get into a fight. GreatMom would have done more than bloody his knuckles anyway. He fixed a flat tire. Nothing extraordinary there., but then there is the matter of how the tire got flat in the first place.

You've seen those big rocks placed at the corners of parking lot islands just in case the curb isn't deterrent enough... Thats right he cut one a bit short--way short. That's one more dent in the Ranger's collection, and then there was of the flat tire-- torn out side wall. No plugging that one. $85 bucks for a new tire and to hear OurDad tell it, a pound of flesh to put on the spare.

Ok maybe scraped up knuckles aren't exactly a pound of flesh, but OurDad made it sound like switching out the flat for the spare was a Herculean feat since all the bolts were rusted-- hence the bloody knuckles. I'll bet he looked pretty funny swearing away from beneath the Ranger in the fitness center parking lot. 175K miles on salty MI roads breeds a lot of rust, but that Ranger is still going strong, for now...

Our Dad doesn't seem to mind all the dents, but after yesterdays driving we're beginning to wonder if these aren't self inflicted wounds. Is OurDad trying to tell us something?

It's Genetic!!! That's OurDad's Dad

Grandpa got the Girl Scout cookies I sent him last week, and the Valentines I sent too.

GreatMom found this great Valentine's craft. You get a cookie sheet with heart shape molds and you fill the molds with broken crayons and bake them at 250 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes and then you let them cool. And you have these great heart shaped crayons. They work and everything.

Popping them out of the molds is a little tricky, but OurDad figured out that a couple minutes in the freezer solves that problem. He is kind of smart about that science stuff-- something about things contracting when their cold... bla, bla , bla...

They are so cool. GreatMom and I made batches five batches of them in one day! Then we started running out of the valentine's colors, but it was too much fun just to stop so we kept making more with greens, and browns, and tans and blue crayons. They came out kind of ugly compared to the pretty pink and red and white swirly ones.

Anyway I had all these really cool gifts to give out with my Valentine's day cards this year at school. We had lots left over, and OurDad said GrandMa would get a kick out of them so we sent her all the ones we had left. It just happened to be GS cookie time so we sent them with our cookies.

Anyway OurDad's Dad got the Cookies and the chocolate hearts today, or what he thought were chocolate hearts. Below is a excerpt form today's email from OurDad's Dad.

the cookies arrived today and they are great, however there was a sandwich bag with some heart shaped candy and I thought how nice, the kids made candy hearts and sent them to us. So I ate one and had to spit it out and get an tooth pick to clean the wax from my teeth. I showed them to your mother and she looked at them carefully and said they are crayons. I knew the taste and smell were familiar.

Now life makes so much more sense.

That's OurDad's Dad...

We're taking OurDad's Side on this One--Place mats

What is the point of a place mat? Great Mom says they're to catch crumbs, they help keep the table clean. OurDad thinks this is great-- as long as said place mats aren't adorned with idyllic settings for fluffy pink kittens-- you don't have to wipe the table.

However, GreatMom disagrees. Of course you have to wipe the table, and the place mats. This is where the GirlChild and I agree with OurDad. If the place mats are for protecting the table from sloppy eaters, like OurDad, fine then there a are just place mats and not the whole table to clean. This makes sense. But GreatMom insists that the table still needs to be wiped after dinner in addition to cleaning the place mats.

So what are the place mats for?!

We need a answer to this one before were expected to do our share of housework here.

He knows they should be studying

I'm not sure why OurDad did this today, but he told his students he'd give any of them that found this blog an A. They aren't going to find it, and he's not going to give any of them who do find it an A, but clearly some of them took it on as a challenge I'll bet they are combing wordpress and blogger sites right now when they should be studying for the pop quiz he's writing up for tomorrow!

Why does OurDad have talk to everybody at the library?

A trip to the library with OurDad can be a real problem. If we're staying a while it's not so bad; I just find some books and DVD's and the BoyChild and I play some computer games while OurDad is off doing god-knows-what amongst the stacks of books, and he doesn't bother us. But if it's a quick run... Well there is no quick run to the library with OurDad. He has to talk to all the librarians, bla bla bla. I'm not knocking our WoundTight Township Library, it's one of the top 100 public libraries in the country, but please WTT librarians could you stop talking to OurDad, you're only encouraging him. We have a life outside of books!

It's only the library you say? Judge for yourself: The other day OurDad I was walking into the WTT library with OurDad and he said, "I love the library; it's just an orgy of books."

Whatever that is I know it's something disgusting...

Much Ado About Something

The other night Great Mom and OurDad rented the DVD of Shakespear's Much Ado About Nothing the Kenneth Branagh film version to show us where they got the name Beatrice.

It's a great comedy about denial and love or denial of love. I could tell form the opening scenes that Great Mom and OurDad got it right: Beatrice, the character, was a sassy barker that had to let everyone know her opinion. That's just like our Bea-- some one would start an argument, and she'd try to finish it. And boy was that woman in denial. It's sooo funny kind of like how a certain dog lived in denial of actually being a dog.

Where have we been?

Dear Readers,

Some of you have expressed concern for our absence here in the blogisphere. It's true we didn't felt like blogging when our Beatrice left us, but we have been feeling better for the past week or two.

So why so quiet. It's OurDad's fault of course!

OurDad has some new LitLand project, and it's for the internet. He never gets off the computer now! Really it's worse than usual. GreatMom had to threaten him so she could get on the computer to figure out how much money we owe this extortionist nicknamed Uncle Sam.

We aren't allowed to tell anyone about the project yet, but OurDad says it will be on the internet by April 1.

We're not sure, but we suspect it's some kind of joke.

School's out for Summer, or till Summer

Yes it appears school has been canceled in southeast Michigan until the weather improves. I could really care less, I'm off school, but OurDad is raising a stink and threatening to write letters to the Woundtight Schools superintendent and the local paper. Granted were not off school because of snow or ice. It's just too cold, fine with the GirlChild and me, but you should hear OurDad.

"It's going to be this cold all week. This is still Michigan isn't it. People know how to dress for this: coat, scarf, mittens, snow pants, hat, long socks and boots. It's that simple simple. It's not like you have to walk two miles to the bus stop."

I admit there is something fishy going on since yesterday it was colder than today, and we had school. Some schools were closed yesterday because they couldn't start the buses, but that was not the problem in the WoundTight District. So I can only guess that the WoundTight kids complained so much about having school when most of the metro area got to stay home that they convinced their parents to call the superintendent and demand a day off too. "It's only fair, and it's too cold."

I'll take it, really what did OurDad have to do today anyway...

Our Poor Bea

OurDad says Beatrice was named for a character from Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing. GreatMom and OurDad say she's always played the part being so bossy and barky, but now our comedy has turned into a tragedy by way of cancer. We're gonna loose her soon.

Last night we all slept in the family room with her, and we will for as long as we can.

He send's me to my room for this?

Life with OurDad is just ridiculous!

Did he send me to my room for
A) Forgetting to clean my room.
B) Hitting the GirlChild when she messes up our PS2 Lego Star Wars games.
C) Tormenting the GirlChild in general.
D) Singing, just plain old singing.

And it wasn't even copyright protected, totally public domain lyrics. It's got a nice ring to it.

I don't believe in hum hums... I don't believe in hum hums...

Oh sure the GirlChild had to get OurDad into it. "Dad the BoyChild won't stop killing fairies." "Dad make him stop," she cried. I mean it she cried, she's such a girl some times.

Ok so maybe I was pestering my sister a bit, but was OurDad upset about that? NNNOOOOooooooo. We have been through this before see I Don’t Believe in... or It’s Just a Story

"Get to your room! We do not speak like that in this house, young man!" I could parade around the house shouting F this and F that; he'd be been so proud, but question the existence of fairies, and it's the old heave hoe.

Of course while in solitary I built three Lego star ships. Oh the horrors!

Nikolai Gogol and the Superheros of Literature

You guessed it form the title: OurDad has a new book, and so it's off to Lit Land again as he tries to explain his latest find at the used book store.

"This guy created the anti-hero. His stuff is both sad and hilarious at the same time. He captured the absurdity of real life 100 years before Kafka."

Now there's trouble. Once he mentions Kafka I know the full-on lecture is coming, complete with another reading about that bug again. I had to think fast.

"A hundred years before the communists made Russia really absurd, and 100 years before Orwell, " OurDad continued.

Now Orwell and that Farm book. I was in real trouble, and GreatMom wasn't home to save us with orders to go clean our rooms. I had to get him off track and I thought of just the thing.

"So dad is he a hero or an anti-hero? Is he like say Superman or Lex Luthor?" Misdirection it never fails.

"Son it's not that simple. First off William Shakespeare is the Superman of literature, and Lex Luthor of literature-- that would be L. Ron Hubbard. Gogol would be one of those obscure nearly forgotten heroes maybe one of those mixed up anti-heroes, not all bad but good in a bad way. Actually Gogol might be the Northstar of literature. He was the first superhero to come out the the closet, but really it's only speculation the Gogol was a homosexual." I realized this was backfiring terribly, and it could only get worse if I didn't work fast to control the conversation.

So if this Shakespeare person is Superman, who's Batman, or Spiderman? Who are the other super villains of literature? OurDad thought for a minute and I could see a light at the end of the tunnel.

"Batman-- a heavy hitter, very popular, a dark side, but with no real super powers-- maybe Steven King. Spiderman-- that's got to be some satirist, very popular-- Of course that's Sam Clemens, better know by his secret identities Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut.

"So who's Wonder Woman dad?" That stumped him and thank God I could get back to my homework.

That's our dad...

On Time?

Getting OurDad to do something on time is impossible and he is always blaming us. I wonder what he tells his students about deadlines?

Well a deadline caught up with him this time. He submitted one of his weird stories to a blog that hosts writing contests-- 250 words with this picture as the prompt. Well he was too late, but here's the story.

Cross Words

He folded the gray paper in half and then in half again, took out a pencil and scanned the clues.

“Are you going to do that now?” she asked. He shrugged his shoulders at her, looked back at the puzzle and gave his mechanical pencil a pair of clicks.

“Hey, I’m trying to tell you something.”

“Uhhm,” he replied around the pencil in his mouth. Then he removed it and asked, “What’s a four letter word for barrier?”

“I don’t know, wall? I’m trying to talk to you.”

“I know, I’m listening.”

“No you’re not. You’re doing the crossword puzzle,” She looked at the paper, and added, “yesterdays.”

“Yeah, that’s so I have the answers if I get stuck.” He pointed to indicate today’s paper on a pile under the table.

“Two across is waver,” she said. He gave her a quick glare, and she folded her arms as he penciled in the letters and continued reading the clues.

“How about a five letter word for gray?”

“Does dingy fit?”

“Oh, yeah,” he replied as if he’d known that himself.

“Seven letters for electrified,” he thought out loud.

“Charged?” she said, again he glared, but wrote the letters.

“Blank dreams,” thinking out loud again.

“Four letters? Pipe?”

“Why don’t you do this yourself,” he said holding out the pencil to her.

“No, I’m going to sleep,” and she walked down the hallway.

He nodded and looked back at the puzzle and thought one down and filled in the letters s-l-e-e-p.

Weird... Anyway, I wonder what would happen if he was on time once in a while.

You can see the winning stories, by writers that kept to the deadline.