YouTube is my babysitter

When I worked in a cube farm, I had coworkers who spent every off-task moment scrolling through the endless photos, profiles and bulletins they had found on MySpace. That site never held my interest for very long, perhaps because I am further on in years than the bulk of those who make MySpace their space, but I recently have found myself visiting and revisiting YouTube with a similar fervor. I use it mainly to entertain my toddler, of course, but I can’t say I’m immune to the hypnotic trance induced by the campy, kitschy and sometimes downright bizarre things to be found in this corner of the innerwebs.

Who are the people who make these videos?

Like many children, Meryl is amazed by animals. The sheep and the donkey, the geese and the goats along with kittens and puppies and horses and monkeys all make for suitable cybertainment judging by the look on Meryl's face when I click play after finding a video that features one of these creatures. This also gives me an opportunity to teach her new words and expand our conversations beyond what she’d like for breakfast or whether she wants to sit on the potty, two topics that become more and more tedious with each passing day.

Outside of watching creatures from the animal kingdom, Meryl also likes to watch human babies in various stages of pleasure or distress. I think in the past three weeks alone she and I have seen just about every laughing baby on YouTube there is to see. There are babies who laugh at throwing food, babies who laugh at a mommy making silly faces, and babies who laugh at other babies. Some babies have a giggly laugh, while some have a screechy laugh. Still others have what can only be described as a maniacal laugh. It's the ones in this last group that make me fear for our future. Well, I guess when it comes right down to to it it would have to be a tie between the maniacal laughing babies and this one kid who takes a huge Dora the Explorer doll on the potty with her while her mother films the whole thing. Then again, we can only blame the parent for this last one.

When I'm jumping around the internet and come across one of those big tv-screen-like YouTube links where the first frame of the video is visible and whoever orchestrates the site is inviting me to click on the link to view the video, I usually pass. What people think I should find amusing and what I actually do find amusing are generally two different things. Kinda like when someone prefaces a joke by saying I heard a great joke yesterday; wanna hear it? At least on the internet we can politely pass and not be socially forced into hearing a joke we don't want to hear.

With that disclaimer, here are links to a few videos I discovered that Meryl or I found either funny, moving or just plain baffling. Click if you will. If not, no hard feelings.

Laughing Babies

Devil Sheep

Patches the Horse

Woman Dancing to Dora's Theme She needs to quit dancing and clean that room!

YouTube is My Life

Gooble Gobble One of Us

Mall of Georgia Kidgits' play area -- the unspoken rules

Before my daughter was born my wife and I would walk the mall and I would look down upon the children's play area there. I don't just mean I was on the second floor and the kids' area was on the first floor. I mean I held the play area in low regard. I had a certain disdain for it. Figuratively, I looked down upon it.

It's difficult for me to explain why I disliked it the way I did. I think it had something to do with the slovenly types that sometimes frequent the area. I'm sure if you go to any shopping mall with a kids' playground you'll see them there. They litter the pleather benches with their mammoth diaper bags, their food court purchases and worst of all their own wide asses. In fact the only thing separating the pleather bench from their wide asses is the latest fashion from Land's End or L.L. Bean. It's just not pleasant to look at.

Now that I parent a toddler who requires an outlet for her energy other than banging on pots or flushing the Fisher Price family down the toilet, I've acquired a certain appreciation for the indoor play area. After all, it's warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It comes complete with its own changing table, and if that's too immodest, the changing table offered by neighboring Nordstrom's is not only more private but also bigger and plusher. Indeed the play area is a convenient spot to sit relatively undisturbed and watch the world go by.

To those who make use of the mall play areas, I'd like to outline for the benefit of your child and mine (but mostly for me personally) some of the unspoken rules that apply. Sure, you've seen upon entering the sign that requests you remove your kid's shoes and leave your stroller outside, but I'm here to tell you some of the things that no one else might be willing to tell you.

First and foremost, kids aged five and older do not belong in this play area. Why, oh why, do some people think this is a suitable place to plop their fat selves down and let their elementary-aged children roam free while they cram more MSG into their gullets from styrofoam boxes they got at the Panda Express Chinese place? The few play fixtures that make up this area are clearly designed for the crawlers and nouveau walkers. A second grader, no matter how stupid, is not really going to derive much pleasure from the busy beads or the two-foot long tunnel the same way a 20-month-old kid will.

Maybe some see this as a convenient place to exchange their role of parent for that of a garbage disposal, but the rest of us would really appreciate it if they took their McCholesterol and their child back to the Food Court or better yet out to their car. Either way our children wouldn't have to be trampled by a big kid while we watch a Jabba the Hut lookalike shovel deep fry into its face.

Yuck! Enough said on that. Just thinking about it, I started to throw up in my mouth a little bit.

On another note, I am a fan of private ownership as much as the next consumer, but if you insist on displaying your kid's snack, sippy cup and diaper bag toy out on the bench beside you, I'm going to leave it to you to keep my kid from putting her grubby little paws all over these precious commodities. Sure, I'll tell her half-heartedly from across the way that those aren't hers to mess with or that they belong to that nice little boy and his mommy but I just think that if you bring shit like that into the arena, you're asking for trouble and deserve what you get.

This isn't the rational adults' play area. This is the kids' play area. More specifically it's for the little ones who developmentally just aren't ready to differentiate between things that belong to them and things that don't. You and I are adults so, sure, I can respect that your Cheerios aren't my Cheerios and your free Nordstrom giveaway balloon's not my free Nordstrom giveaway balloon, but toddlers don't grasp that. At their age they're not content to accept my explanation of one's right to property. I'm not saying don't bring the stuff in. I'm just saying if you bring it, I'm going to leave it up to you to referee.

Besides, I don't want to get off the comfy pleather seat.

Alternatively, I am always grateful to the mom who asks Do you mind if I give your daughter some goldfish crackers? I appreciate a parent who realizes it just sometimes makes for less headache for everyone if generosity prevails. When it comes to free snacks, my daughter has little concept of stranger danger and same goes for me.

Another unspoken rule, and this doesn't just apply to the play area, is meant specifically for the other dads out there. Don't wussify your child. Most of our children already have a parent whose job it is to coddle and pamper and occasionally overreact when a typical mid-playground collision occurs. My dear fellow fathers, our children look to us to be the parent who picks them back up, brushes them off and sends them on their way with little more than a pat on the butt.

Today my daughter and I showed up early to the play area and on the parent front there was just me, two moms with their kids, and another dad of two boys. Of the four parents there, the other dad was easily the biggest Nervous Nelly of the bunch. Every time either of his sons so much as looked back at him funny, he was up out of his seat asking them what was wrong. At one point a little girl who couldn't have been more than 18 months old bumped into his three-year-old son. Though the boy seemed to escape uninjured, he waited for the little girl to walk off and then purposefully dropped to the floor and faked his hurt cry.

Almost as though on cue, me and the two moms busted out laughing at this kid's display. He wasn't hurt. He just knew that if he put on a show his daddy would get up out of his seat and provide him with some undue attention. The kid was right.

Part of me wanted to go up to the dad and say to him Dude, you've got boys. You can't treat them this way but since part of the fun of being a parent is silently gloating at the fact that you are better at the job then most everyone else out there, I just kept my mouth shut.

The Kidgits play area at Mall of Georgia (why they call it kidgits I don't know -- is it for both kids and midgets or just kid midgets or what?) has a small playhouse complete with slide. This is a favorite feature for every kid that comes in the place. Because this is a high-traffic area sometimes congestion occurs. Here's a tip. If the kids can work it out between them who's going next, just leave them alone.

I'm not talking about the parent who has to assist a baby who otherwise wouldn't be able to go down the slide. That's different. What I'm saying is that everyone would have much more fun playing on the slide if all these over-protective parents would just get out of the way. As it is it seems like there's always at least one if not more moms or dads playing slide patrol making sure each kid goes down the slide in what the parent presumes is an orderly fashion. Instead the kids look like products on an assembly line, and each one just goes down hurriedly with a straight face so as to not upset the slide nazi.

This sounds all well and good but the fact of the matter is these kids would each get a turn at the slide regardless of what busy body stepped in to offer unneeded assistance. It is true that toddlers don't queue up and wait their turns the same way grown ups do at the Panda Express, but a kid who wants badly enough to go down the slide will eventually go down the slide.

If on the other hand your kid is one of those slide-o-phobes who after getting up on the first step then chooses to just stand there and pick his seat for the next ten minutes, leave him be too. That's his idea of fun. Just don't come crying when my daughter gently makes her way around him to enjoy the slide for the fourteenth time in a row. It's called survival of the fittest. Don't worry. It doesn't mean your child has a deficiency or anything. He's just learning his place. The world needs seat pickers too.

One final word of advice from me on the kids' play area. When the Teavana employee across the way brings out the free samples of his wares, do not leave your child unattended just so you can go taste the latest greatest infusion from the Far East slash West Coast. Yes, I know the goth kid with painted black fingernails puts a sign out claiming his tea aids memory or improves digestion or somehow makes one a better person, but leaving your child unattended even momentarily so that you can go drink some snake oil to boost your chi is just plain wrong. What would you think of a dad who, just for a minute or two, left his kid and hopped over to the Tinder Box to check out the pre-embargo Cuban cigars? That would be bad, right? Well, ditto for tea.

Now on the other hand if a dad wanted to check out the eye candy that works at the women's clothing store across from the Teavana, that's okay provided he doesn't have to get off his comfy pleather seat.

Hey, I don't make the rules. I'm just here to make the world a better place for everyone.

Okay, so . . . maybe just for me.

Ding dong door-to-door soliciting.

Both my wife and daughter were napping, so I was enjoying a relatively quiet Saturday afternoon today until two people came and rang my doorbell. If you're like me simply hearing a knock at the door or ringing of the doorbell sets off your Spidey sense. Ever since Ed McMahon died, I quit holding out for the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. If I'm expecting guests it's one thing, but when out of the blue someone comes calling, I immediately start to suspect mischief is afoot.

In our home, when someone signals their arrival at the front door our dog goes nuts. While my suspicion is that if someone were to ever break into our house, our Irish Terrier would go running to the doggie toy basket to grab something for the burglar to throw, his bark can sometimes come across as more vicious than his bite especially to those who don't know him. Our exterminator for instance is afraid of him, but then again those exterminators are a unique people unto themselves

Since my first guess as to who a mystery guest might be is usually someone who's selling aluminum siding or religion, I seldom run up and greet him with an open door and a smiling face. Instead, I cautiously tiptoe to the front hallway making sure to try and avoid being seen through the windows by whoever's on the other side. Our door isn't outfitted with a peephole so I just have to stand several feet away and discreetly peer through the slats of the shutters.

This time it was a forty-something couple. The man was thin with white hair and the woman was a heavyset blond with a poor dye job. She was holding a Christmas gift bag that contained something heavy enough to make the bottom sag. Even though curiosity was pushing me to open the door and find out what tidings they were offering, I decided I would find greater comfort and joy back in my comfy Rooms to Go chair. They didn't give me long to make the decision because shortly after they rang the doorbell, they decided to turn around and make their offering to my next-door neighbor instead. Maybe they were turned off by the dog.

Later this afternoon I discovered the mystery couple had left a flier on my door for presidential candidate Ron Paul. I'm not really up on Ron Paul so I don't know how glad or disappointed I should be that I didn't open the door. A brief perusal of his website shows pages labeled Homeschoolers for Ron Paul and Gun owners for Ron Paul. Incidentally why is homeschoolers supposedly one word while gun owners is two? Am I the only person who's bothered by this?

I will refrain from littering my website with my political views on home schooling and gunownership or anything else for that matter, not because I don't have views. It's just because I think if you are a member of the elite intelligetsia that reads my website, you probably are secure enough in your own political views that you could care less what mine or anyone else's are. If on the other hand you're one of those who needs someone else to tell you what you value and believe, send me a tax deductible donation of $20 and I will be glad to write you back outlining what social ills to indulge in and what books to light afire.

Just kidding. It wouldn't really be tax deductible, but I would gladly accept.

What I do wonder about though is what success door-to-door solicitors have with their product. I politely slammed the door on two Mormon proselytizers a couple weeks ago and wondered the same thing. OK, I didn't exactly slam the door in their faces. I shut it gently, but the conversation went something like this:

Me: [struggling not to spill cheap red wine while holding back a badly behaved 45-pound dog by the collar as I smile at two twenty-something Mormons holding a copy of the book thereof] Hey! How y'all doin' today?

Mitt and Moroni: Great, and you?

Me: [still smiling] Good, good. [Door closes.]

They, like the Ron Paul supporters, didn't stick around long before moving on to my neighbor's house. I really wished I could have followed them over there too since the neighbor's English is limited. He can say "hello" and ask "How are you?" when he gifts us fresh vegetables from his garden, but somehow I think the Latter Day followers may have run into a language barrier had they tried to convince him of Joseph Smith's prophetic abilities or that the ancient nation of Zion will be rebuilt in downtown Salt Lake. I'm just guessing.

Someday I'm going to ask one of these guys what their close ratio is. I mean out of all the doors they knock on trying to market their religion, how many people say to them Where can I sign up?

And these political campaigners? Out of all the doors they knock on, how many people say to them Ya know, I was in the middle of an online Scrabble game when you arrived, but since I have limited intelligence and don't have any clue what the presidential race is all about, I'm just gonna vote for your candidate?

Give me a break!

Now, I don't want anyone reading this to think I just pick on religious minorities or the politically zealous. Last year one of the neighbor kids rang my doorbell wanting to sell me cripcraps in order to benefit his school. I was perhaps a little more polite to him than I am to most, but he basically got the same smiling abrupt treatment.

I've taught in the public school system, and I'm well aware of where money ends up. I didn't tell the neighbor kid this, but if his parents want his school to have more money for something, they should look first to the board and the superintendent. That's where the decisions are made and any subsequent monies are mis-allocated or squandered.

Want more shekels for Johnny's classroom supplies? Look at how much money gets spent in the transportation department. Kids whose "behavior disorders" merit their own personal one-passenger bus complete with driver? Ch ching!

I remember the days when someone ringing a doorbell was likely a neighbor offering fresh cookies or a school chum wanting you to come out and play, but sadly those days ended during the Reagan administration along with hyperrealism, mood rings and the final season of Mork & Mindy. Now a knock at the door usually alerts us to the fact that we're about to become the next thread in a blanket solicitation, the product being religion, politics or cripcraps. And I'm not sure which one of them is worse.

Well, between those three it's probably a tie between politics and religion.

I don't know though. Cripcraps ain't all they used to be either.

Remember Creepy Crawlers? Oh, wait a minute. I meant Wacky Walkers. Either way, those were some quality cripcraps.

My Experian credit report

Today I took it upon myself to pull up my Experian credit report online. I'm in a good situation right now where I don't necessarily have to concern myself with what my credit report has on it. I have far more credit than I can afford and I don't plan on applying for a mortgage or new insurance or anything like that. But since, like many, I've decided on some new financial goals, I thought it best to make sure no one was reporting anything about me that shouldn't be reported.

Because I used to work for a company that pulled credit reports for third parties making inquiries, I have had more than my fair share of experience reading and disputing the reports from all three of the major credit reporting agencies. From what I saw it was rare that there was a significant error on a credit report unless someone happened to be a junior to a senior or vice versa. When a computer sees a similar name name at the same address it could care less whether or not the social security numbers match or even whether one person is dead and the other is still alive. Two family members with the same name should expect to have to unravel quite a tangled credit history at some point in their future, but anyway I digress. My point is that because I'm very familiar with the whole process, I don't share the mass paranoia that many do when it comes to identity theft or credit histories.

Anyway, here's what I found: Everything looked hunky dory with a few minor exceptions. An auto parts store was still reporting an account as open and unused for the past eight years, and it probably is still open, but since I don't have any use for it, I've disputed it with the hopes that the result comes back as closed. If not, I'll have to take it up with the merchant itself.

I know there are credit report nazis out there that will shout at me that if the account is showing a zero balance that I should not mess with it and instead just let it continue to show as open, but I don't buy that. The last thing I need is for a tech-savvy employee of that company deciding he's going to get charge happy on my credited nickel and make my life a living hell. I would much rather sacrifice a few points on my credit score than put myself at that kind of risk.

Additionally an employer from several years ago was still being listed as my current employer which frankly wouldn't have bothered me so much except that the employer's name was misspelled. I know it's shallow and pedantic of me, but I have little tolerance for that. It's G-W-I-N-N-E-T-T period. No E at the end, in spite of the fact that when I was growing up a sign along side Hwy 29 in Lilburn, GA said Welcome to Gwinnette [sic] County.

It's Gwinnett. Like Button Gwinnett who incidentally was one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence. His signature to this day is one of the most valuable simply because, unlike other historical signers like Thomas Jefferson or John Adams, Button Gwinnett didn't throw his John Hancock around too much. This is possibly because he died relatively young at the age of 43. He died of complications after being the losing party of a duel. I forget who with though. Georgia public school doesn't ask you to remember that much unless you want extra credit. I seldom shot for extra credit.

Which brings us back to the credit report.

Rooms to Go's banking partner HSBC/RS still shows an account that is over ten years old. Again, it says the account is paid on time in full, but why is that shit still showing on my report? Most of that furniture didn't even survive into my marriage, and that wasn't to happen for another four years after I bought the stuff and I've been married seven and a half years now!

I wouldn't be concerned except that I had a negative experience with Rooms to Go back then and it's left a bitter taste in my mouth ever since. I don't like a company that makes you jump up and down and scream in order to get them to follow through on their own promises. Any asshole customer can make a scene in a store, but it takes a certain degree of social engineering to cause a scene and get the desired result. Been there. Done that. Got the couch, end tables, coffee table, two lamps and an arm chair. The arm chair survives to this day.

The only other thing on the report that irked me was in the personal information section. I used to think the aliases and former addresses didn't matter until I got a few calls at the aforementioned job from people who wanted desperately to dispute inaccuracies in that section of their credit report. One was a woman who was about to be appointed judge and the other was from a man in the federal intelligence industry. Both of their concerns were the same. They didn't want a faulty address showing because their being hired depended on the employer viewing them as honest and forthcoming. An undisclosed address could have been looked at unfavorably.

My bootleg address was weird because it in no way resembled any place I had ever lived before. Furthermore, I mapquested the address and it was in no place I ever would have lived. I wouldn't have wished such a reside on my worst enemy in fact. Sure, I like living on the edge from time to time, but to live in a home where the neighbor's first language is gunfire? No thanks. The last thing I need is to wake up to the sound of someone next door shouting Say hello to my little friend just before riddling my newly purchased Rooms to Go furniture with bullet holes.

Again, I doubt the shady address would really cause me too much to worry about. I'm not likely to be appointed judge or be offered a job where I get top secret phone calls on my shoe phone anytime soon, but disputing it gives me something to do. If someone is pulling up my personal information, I want it to be right.

I'm well aware of the fact that I only pulled one report when there are three credit reporting agencies, Equifax and TransUnion being the other two, but you only get to view a report for free once a year from each of the agencies. If you log onto annualcreditreport.com the site gives you the choice. Point to whichever one you want (or all three) and it comes to your computer screen abzolutely free. I'll get one from another bureau four months down the line, but in the meantime this one should tide me over.

As for that bootleg address, it still puzzles me. Where did it come from and how did it get listed on my report? Part of me wants to go knock on the door and see who answers. Would I be greeted by a knife-wielding gang leader? A unibomber? A Mitt Romney supporter? Possibly all of the above?

What if when I showed up at the door I was greeted by my doppelganger and his entire place was furnished with my old Rooms to Go furniture?

Who knows?

I am a husband and a father now so I cannot go flying into the face of danger the way I used to.

I could always google the address though.

Our Piper Heidsieck who art in Kevin

Blogger announces Hindi transliteration? The hell? I'm just not down with that. Sorry.

What I am down with right now is some tasty Piper Heidsieck that I'm enjoying with my spouse before checking out on this final day of 2007.

At the time of this writing it's just a little before 10:30, which means the missuz and I will be retiring a good hour and a half before midnight. Oh well. I'm old and fat and can't stay up as late as I used to, nor can I remember the last time I was up at midnight on New Year's Eve. Call it Jungenheimer's Disease. I don't care.

What?

Actually I do remember that New Year's Eve that I was up at midnight. My wife and I were in the emergency room at the Naples Community Hospital in Naples, FL because she had ingested nuts . She's allergic to almonds, pistachios, pine nuts, basically all nuts other than peanuts -- they're not really a nut -- kinda like a fauxnad. She's not allergic to that either.

Oh yeh!

There is little sadder than some overworked orderlies counting down the last seconds of the year before they start their twelfth hour of a fourteen-hour shift. Even the noisemaker I heard that night sounded weak. No New Year's Rockin' Eve in the ward less traveled, let me tell you.

Anyway, I've made my resolutions and have found peace with the poured so I won't be long.

If you've stumbled my way in the year 2007, close out your browser, find someone to kiss and enjoy the final moments of the year. If you've found me on the first day of 2008, let me congratulate you on having pried yourself off that toilet and found your way to the site that's home of champagne wishes and White Trash caviar dreams. Indeed there will be a recipe for my sister-in-law's White Trash Caviar, but I'm just not up to it right now.

Did I mention that I'm old and fat? And it's after ten.

Happy New Year.

Insomnial musings

Earlier today I was dead tired and couldn't wait for my daughter to lie down for a nap so I could do the same. Unfortunately our evil cat (his picture on mycathatesyou.com) foiled that plan by constantly trying to either curl up on my neck or, after I attempted to avoid him all together by pulling the covers up over my head, wriggle his way under said covers to stick his nose in my ear. Most annoying.

Now for whatever reason it's 11 o'clock at night and I can't sleep. Funnily enough my wife doesn't respond positively when I roll over and whisper in her ear all the random thoughts that I'm having when I can't sleep, so I'll just humor you with them. Lean closer.

Closer still.

I make no promises as to any rhyme or reason to all this. These are truly just some things I was thinking of as I was lying in bed.

First a quick thanks to my sister-in-law and mother, both of whom took pity on my feet after reading my blog and gave me foot scrub and gel socks respectively for Christmas. The scrub is nice because it doesn't have a girly smell, and the gel socks rock because when I walk around with them on I feel like I'm stepping in goo only its a good feeling goo. Plus, the socks aren't made to cover your entire foot, just the heel and around your ankle. In spite of the fact that my toddler referred to them as tights when she saw me putting these on, they really are a unisex item. They're a bit macho in fact. Kinda like that super hero who wore the wrist bracelets. Who was that? Oh yeh, Wonder Woman. Well, never mind. They're not really like those bracelets. They're way cooler.

In the meantime, I've thrown away the foot shaver not because I won't ever use it again but because my old one's rusted. I'll probably use some Christmas monies to go get another one. Even as hardcore as I am, I won't bring myself to use rusted gear.

I had a most bizarre dream last night. In it I was supposed to go meet someone I used to know about a real estate deal. This particular someone died almost ten years ago, which incidentally was long before I started doing real estate. I wasn't sure where the house was and I was driving through this neighborhood at night and couldn't see the houses very well. I finally came across a 70s looking split-level with wooden stairs leading up to the front porch. I knew this was the house because a blown up copy of the picture I used for my business card (it's on the Flickr badge on the right side of the page) was hanging on the mailbox.

When I got in, the guy wasn't there but his roommate was. The roommate was a kid who lived in my neighborhood when I was growing up. These two people most likely wouldn't have known each other in real life, but in my dream, which ended rather abruptly, they were roommates. Just weird.

On a somber note, it just occurred to me while I was typing this out that while I do know for certain of only one person who died since I got into real estate five or so years ago, there is likely at least one other if not two or even three people I worked with who may have also died. One person I'm thinking of was terminally ill at the time I met with her and her husband to talk about selling their home, and the other two were an elderly couple. When I say elderly I mean elderly as in he was 87 and she was 93. Whenever I stopped in to visit with them the ninety-three-year-old woman would refer to me as her ray of sunshine. On two occasions the husband fell asleep while I was over there chatting with them. Not really surprising I guess, huh?

My wife and I enjoyed a movie from Netflix this evening which we watched in bed on the laptop. The movie was Flannel Pajamas and it got very mixed reviews from other viewers so I didn't know what to expect. I really liked the film but my wife wasn't at all crazy about it.

Netflix allows you to rate movies you've seen with anywhere from one to five stars. This movie had an average customer rating of 2.6 stars but of "viewers like me" it got 3.5. That Netflix keeps a profile of me that is detailed to the extent that they feel they can compare me to strangers is a little bit creepy and often I find the "viewers like you" ratings are way off base, but in this case I agreed. In fact, I'd give the movie four stars.

I do face a small dilemma though because my wife most likely would have given the movie only two or maybe even just one star. Since she and I generally watch movies together part of me feels like I should give the movie a crappy rating, or at the very least compromise and rate it three stars. In all honesty though, I'm not likely to do either of those things. I'll probably give it the four stars I think it deserves. That's what I usually do. If I write a review of it though, I'll make note of the fact that my wife thought it sucked.

On a side note, of all the 1311 movies I've rated with Netflix I've only given 131 five out of five stars. That's perfectly ten percent. Weird huh? That it's exactly ten percent I mean. Weird kinda like that dream I mentioned earlier.

Here are a few of my favorite five-star movies to add to your rental list:

Little Children
The Mudge Boy
The Corndog Man
Hard Candy
Everything is Illuminated
The Chumscrubber
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Fat Girl
Dummy
The Station Agent

Some of those are funny; some are dark; some are more mood pieces. A good portion of them my wife would think are crap. But I don't feel guilty because also rated five stars in our cue is Sex in the City: Season 4. Whaaaaatttt? It was a good show and all, but five stars?

Miranda was my favorite character, but I was disappointed when the actress who played her came out of the closet. Same goes for Jodie Foster. The fantasy was just ruined. I guess I still have a chance with Sarah Jessica Parker though.

Really, what's with those three-name celebrities? Anthony Michael Hall? Edward James Olmos? Nat King Cole? Julia Louis Dreyfuss? Please, celebrities, pick two names and stick with them. Unless the name has Spears in it. Then just please do us all a favor and fade away.

In the last three weeks, a 16-year-old coattail riding celebrity gets knocked up by her nineteen-year-old boyfriend and the first woman elected to lead a Muslim nation state was murdered. Which one of these two women will the American public remember two weeks from today?

We did not put up a Christmas tree this year because we feared fragile ornaments and hooks would be too tempting for a toddler. My wife did a great arrangement of some Christmas things on the mantle though and we also have an indoor-outdoor resin cast of Buddha that we like to put a Santa hat on this time of year. We're not Buddhists or anything, not that it should matter to you. I just happened to see the thing at Target one day and thought it'd look cool in our living room. Santa Buddha comin' down the chimbley tonight.

Other religious articles we have in our home are a replica of the infant Jesus of Prague, a novena of same and a lunch box with Gonesh on it.

Oh yeh, and the Sesame Street Giggle and Go Garage.

Resolutions for the next solar revolution

I foster enough guilt throughout my daily life without piling on the self loathing that comes from not having achieved hastily made resolutions for a new year, but since tradition dictates such behavior, and frankly, last year I made so such undertakings and have come to regret the decision, I’ll humble you the reader with a few promises I have made to myself for the upcoming 2008.

Please note that these are not decisions I’ve made to you per se. As such these are not things to be thrown back in my face when, if again I am struck by tradition, I choose to forego these pursuits because other more pressing responsibilities take priority (other responsibilities may include but are not limited to: husbandry, fatherhood, and la joie de vivre.) I am but one man and am at times stretched thin by the multiple and sometimes contending roles that I play throughout my life so I can’t promise to anyone including myself that I will respect any of these declarations for any longer than perhaps – oh, I don’t know – let’s just say the night of January 16^th.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I want more than anything to do a better job of telling those around me how much better my life is because of them. That’s resolution numero uno, say thanks to people who rightly deserve it. While I fancy myself a very thankful person, I don’t do a sufficient job of telling those to whom I’m thankful that I’m thankful. Family and friends alone account for the majority of my gratitude and yet while I am quick to tell my spouse at the end of the day how someone in our social circle helped make my life better, I seldom tell that particular person. That’s wrong. Our being thankful falls on deaf ears if we don’t tell the people for whom we’re thankful that we’re thankful. On the other hand, if we tell them we’re thankful, they’re more likely to continue to do our bidding. And isn’t that what life’s all about?

I’m not schmaltzy, I’m not syrupy, and I’m not generally the type people would refer to as sentimental, but what if everyone who read this blog entry took it upon themselves to stop and say thanks to someone -- one person, mind you -- who makes life on Planet Earth just a little bit more tolerable? I’m not saying to do it. I don’t care if you do or if you don’t. I’m just asking that you contemplate what goodness would come about if you were to take the time to express gratitude to someone who deserves it. Again, my life does not revolve around your expression of gratitude. I’m just throwing that out there for all of cyberdom.

Another undertaking I need to look into is doing a better job of watching what I eat. While I’m not at my fattest, I’m certainly not at my thinnest, but more pressing is the fact that I’m approaching the age when calories (especially the empty variety found in wine) aren’t burned as quickly and tend to hang around in the body for longer periods of time until they can be joined by more of their friends and come together to make fat. I remember the days when I could sit and down worthless foodstuffs by the metric butt load with little repercussion, but those days are long gone. The times they are a-changin’.

Just as my waistline seems to fluctuate back and forth between too much and way too much, so goes my spending money from comfortably cush to a small fraction of my average daily balance if you catch my drift. While I’ve struggled at times, I’ve never been destitute. Likewise there have been times when financially I was sitting pretty. But it’s always been a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. You’d think by 35 I would have learned to spend and save more stably but for whatever reason I’ve always laughed in the face of moderation like a former Buddhist monk with a dishonorable discharge. Dining out is both a money pit and a calorie pit, so if I can curb that one, I’ll be in good shape.

You know, I’ve never made resolutions before, so I’m not quite sure how it’s done. Am I supposed to come up with several pages of resolutions or are these three enough? It seems to me like the more I come up with the harder a time I would have keeping track of them and the more likely I’d be to let them each fall to the wayside, so maybe I should just stick with these three. Yeh, I’m gonna just stick with these three.

And another thing, I know that the first day of Qwahhhnzuh (I always opt for the more traditional spelling) isn’t generally when people make resolutions for the New Year but when it comes to self improvement what good does it do for us to limit ourselves to the Gregorian calendar? What does a sixteenth century pope know about my hectic schedule anyway? I give that a gyahh and an oh brother!