So how was your morning?

Wake up.

Shower.

Get kids dressed.

Get self dressed, but not completely, not just yet, lest one or more children dribble some type of child gunk or half eaten food substance on your clean clothes.

Get kids fed.

Get self fed. Curse self for allowing coffee to run out the day before.

Put all our stuff in a pile by the front door. Rack through brain to make sure nothing is being forgotten.

Clean up 1 year old's breakfast mess. Check his diaper, be thankful he hasn't pooped yet, hope he holds out until you get to daycare so it can be somebody else's problem. Feel absolutely no remorse at this dodging of parental responsibility.

Finish getting self dressed, confident that the kids are clean and can't grody up your clothes.

Strap kids into car.

Load stuff into car.

Get in. Start car. Back out of driveway.

Note that strange bumpa-bumpa vibration that wasn't there yesterday, that's never been there before.

Pull back into driveway.

Get out of car.

Spot the flat tire.

Curse.

Curse some more.

Remove children from car.

Attempt to provide sufficient answers to three year old's 18 zillion questions as to why you're going back in the house, thus deviating from the morning routine.

Remember you haven't had any coffee yet, give universe the finger.

Beg children to stay inside and play nice while daddy changes the tire.

Go about business of changing the tire.

Hear screams of children coming from inside, recognize that it's not quite bad enough to check on yet. Also recognize that there's little you can do about it at the moment as you have to get this goddamn tire changed or nobody's going anywhere.

Look up and see three year old standing there. He announces he's there to help.

Ask three year old where his brother is. Get no answer.

Hear banging on the front door. Recognize that it's the baby trying to follow his big brother outside.

Command three year old to stand in one spot while you finish with the tire.

Finish with the tire, realize that you and your clothes are filthy.

Go back inside. Rescue crying baby who has gotten himself stuck in the door.

Start to clean up baby, realize that you're getting grease all over him.

Clean up self while baby screams and three year old continues his line of automobile-related questioning.

Clean up baby. Find that he has now pooped. Realize that you would have had him dropped off by now. See your morning encapsulated in your baby's pants.

Change baby's diaper.

Change into clean clothes.

Still no coffee.

Strap kids back into car.

Drop kids off.

Arrive at work an hour late.

Savor that first cup of coffee.

Rorschach Attack Caught on Camera!

Austin, TX. - A local man claims to have been attacked by the masked vigilante known only as Rorschach. The alleged attack occurred at approximately midnight in the parking lot of a North Austin movie theater. While claims of such attacks have increased over the last month in cities across the nation, the victim in this case was able to escape with both his life and photographic evidence.

The victim, who asked not to be named, had just left the theater where, ironically enough, he had just seen the Watchmen film, which depicts the Rorschach character as well as a number of other costumed crime fighters. "I was just walking to my car when somebody knocked me down. I saw this dark figure jump on top of me and he just started walin' on me. He was mumbling some crazy s--t, like 'Communists, whores, politicians, they could have followed in the footsteps of great men like my father or Alan Moore.' Stuff like that."

The victim added, "He seemed pissed. I don't know why he was so mad at me though. What'd I do? Who's Alan Moore?"

During the attack, the victim managed to pull his camera from his pocket and snap the picture shown above, which he claims to be a closeup of Rorschach. Images of this enigmatic antihero are extremely rare. Its authenticity has not been verified, though some doubt has been cast based on the fact that the victim's injuries were minimal. Rorschach is known for being one of the most brutal and ruthless vigilantes working the streets today. And since the passage of the Keene Act outlawing masked vigilantism, he is one of the few left.

No motive has been established for the attack. The victim stated further, "It's too bad, I really enjoyed the movie. I had thought about reading the book, but after this, I just don't know."

I would have gone with The Hospital Bombers myself

So I'm sorry to be posting one of those crappy youtube videos where it's just a single image all the way through, but I didn't get around to researching a better way to put a song in a post, but at least this way you get a look at the album cover, for what it's worth.

This is my current favorite song, and it has been stuck in my head for like three weeks now. Perhaps it's because I grew up in Texas, and thus can recognize Jeff and Cyrus so very well. They're good kids, just a little misunderstood, and probably smarter than you give them credit for.

Eat Out In

I've got a great idea for a restaurant. I don't know what kind of food it would serve, but that's beside the point. Whatever the cuisine, you'll get to enjoy it while -- are you ready for this? -- a 3 year old runs around your table! If you like, he can sing a song or mumble some gibberish - the waiter could ask your preference when you place your order. When you open your mouth to speak to someone else at your table, the toddler will shout over you, attempt to crawl into your lap, or even demand that you hand over your iPhone. Depending on what night of the week it is, your little table runner may even take a swipe at you.

For a little bit more, you can also have an unhappy one year old seated in a high chair next to you. Any item of food that you may offer to it will be shunned - perhaps even flung at you! When the three year old's revolution around your table brings it within close proximity to the one year old's high chair, they can interact in a somewhat violent manner, the one year old grabbing the three year old's hair, the three year old screaming and hitting. You never know what you'll find when you come out to dine with us!

I wonder if it would make for a good first date spot. Or maybe it'll be popular with the hipster crowd since eating with children is such an ironic thing to do (except it's really really not). You'll scarf down your food so fast that you'll still have the whole evening in front of you.

How my interview went

So the nice guys over at Dadlabs included me amongst the roster of dads that they interviewed for one of their latest videos. The topic: why men couldn't handle pregnancy. I'm the stunningly handsome one.

Failure to pinpoint

There is an annoyance buzzing around inside of me that I can't quite put my finger on...actually, that's not entirely true. I can put my finger on it. I can get a whole goddamn hand on it, in fact. I can see it resting there on one of my ribs, third from the bottom on the right, and I can deftly bring my hand around in a sweeping arc and !POW! catch that pesky little fucker under my encupped palm.

I am speaking, of course, of the G.I. Joe movie that's coming out this summer.

The problem, of course, is that once I've caught the idea of the G.I. Joe movie under my great big man hand and pinned it against my rib, the annoyance that it creates for me doesn't just go away. Wouldn't it be awesome if problems just went away once you isolated them? Because I can still feel it buzzing around under my hand, and it kind of tickles. And I swear I can hear...it sounds like...oh my fuck, am I hearing words? Is the idea of the G.I. Joe movie that's coming out this summer trying to say something to me? I lean my head down closer, as close as I can possible get it to my third rib on the right, and open my palm just a tiny crack.

"What is it, idea of the G.I. Joe movie that's coming out this summer?"

And it says to me, "Hey, what's your problem, man?"

So I says to it, "Hey, you're my problem, buddy. You bug me. You rub me the wrong way. I don't like the cut of your jib."

And I think that's the end of it, but before I can seal his prison again, he asks the question: "But why?"

And I scoff, of course, because that is what I do when asked questions that have answers that I think should be obvious, except that it is in that very moment of scoffitude that I realize that I don't have a good answer on the ready set, so my scoff rings false in my ears, and I am certain that the idea of the G.I. Joe movie that is coming out this summer can hear the fake and the phony in my scoff, and it knows that I have no real case against it. And in this moment of doubt, the idea of the G.I. Joe movie that is coming out this summer slips between my fingers and continues buzzing around my innards.

Before we continue this nonsense, how about a trailer:



Must all action movie trailers have that vaguely Limp Bizkit-esque rap-metalish soundtrack thing going on? Must the world continue to provide sustenance to the makers of such music? At this point, isn't it just some bored hipster with a Macbook Pro?

But back to the question posed to me by the idea of the G.I. Joe movie that is coming out this summer. Why does it annoy me so? Did I not play with G.I. Joe toys when I was a wee lad? And have I not found great excitement at the prospect of the moviefication of so many other staples of my youth? Have I not welcomed with open arms the film adaptations of so many other comic franchises? What exactly is it about the idea of the G.I. Joe movie that is coming out this summer that has me so perturbed? Why do I shake and shudder with rage every time I think about it?

Because there is just something about it that screams BAD IDEA to me. Not bad idea in that it won't make an assload of money, because it probably will. Not bad idea in that the world doesn't need to see two ninjas battling it out, because it does, it absolutely does. Just bad idea in that...AAGGHH there's that goddamn wall again.

Allow me to articulate further: I can't articulate it. I can't quite figure out why the idea of the G.I. Joe movie that is coming out this summer pisses me off so. I can't just say "because it's violent" because there are plenty of violent movies that I dig. In fact, there are plenty of movies that I dig precisely because of their artfully done violence. The sauna fight scene in "Eastern Promises" goes down in my book as one of the most ass-kickin'est bits of ass kicking I've ever seen. What would "Fight Club" be without all them busted-up faces? Would "The Matrix" be any fun without all those guns? Would "Million Dollar Baby" be nearly as interesting if you didn't get to watch Hillary Swank beat so much ass? Oh, and of course, every John Woo film ever fucking made.

So it eludes me. Did I use that word right? There's elude and allude...yeah, I think that's right. Anyhow. Here's a bullet point list of the things related to my annoyance with the idea of the G.I. Joe movie that's coming out this summer. Somewhere in here is a single sentence that ties it all together.

- The United States has had a significant percentage of its armed forces deployed in war zones for almost six years now. Said deployment has incurred many costs to our nation, among them thousands of lives, millions of dollars, the physical and mental health of I-don't-know-how-many soldiers, the stability of numerous military families, and on and on.
- The G.I. Joe unit portrayed in the idea of the G.I. Joe movie that is coming out this summer is some kind of covert answer-to-nobody unit. This somehow adds to their badass mystique. The previous administration liked to hire outfits like this to handle various security tasks. I don't know if they had any ninjas, but they sounded like bigtime fuckups from all the news I heard.
- From the look of the trailer, it looks like France is the primary target of a terrorist attack, an attack which is responded to by covert U.S. forces. To my knowledge, my bloodline is not significantly French, but I still get annoyed when the French are portrayed as pansies, for the fuck-you-ity of the French simply cannot be denied.
- There is a chance that this film is using the G.I. Joe characters and backstory to create a covert-ops movie for 2009, one that is fully aware of everything I've said above, and will tell a story that is brilliant and captivating, which has no real good or bad guys, but still has several very hot women and two very awesome ninjas. In that case, I'm even further annoyed because I got all worked up.

I have a feeling I will end up seeing the G.I. Joe movie that is coming out this summer. But only at a theater that serves alcohol and chicken wings. Because that is the only way to watch G.I. Joe, or any other movie. And now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

A post with two endings

Today, my 3 year old answered the phone. We were riding in the car and he was playing a game on said phone, one of those memory matching games where you're supposed to flip a card and then flip another and if the pictures on the cards don't match you try again. When I had handed him the phone, I was very specific. "If it rings, you gotta hand it back to daddy." He had agreed to this arrangement. And he also knows full well that when I say "ring", I mean the phone starts playing a song all by itself, which here lately is the theme to Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which was just the most rad thing to suddenly have pipe up in a meeting at work the other day. By the way, I played this little matching game for myself yesterday, and I only beat my son's best time by 5 seconds. You're slippin', old man.

So yeah, the phone rang just as I was pulling up to our destination, which is a whole other story in and of itself. I reach back and request my phone, but instead of the feeling of smooth sweet technology, I hear my son say "Hello? Hello?" And then proceeds to have a conversation with my wife, er, his mom. They're the same person. So on the one hand, he's violating our agreement, but on the other hand he's performing a basic task for the very first time, which is always fun to watch.

After we were done, we went on home and he proceeded to not eat dinner, after which he voluntarily washed all of the baby's bottles and hung them on the rack to dry. And they're actually clean. And now he's in bed. The end.

I guess this was sort of a minor bragfest, but what's the point of having kids if you can't brag about them. And pick their noses. My youngest had the biggest goddamn bugger you've ever seen earlier today. Okay, the end for real.

Its Own Reward

I've had this here trusty Macbook now for a little under two years. I bought it for myself as a going-back-to-school present after my first semester at the seminary, and it was a purchase over which I agonized because I do not spend large sums of money lightly. That final mouse click to submit my order did not come easily, but I fought my way through.

One of the items I was most excited to find on my new toy was a program called Comic Life that lets you make your own comics. A little drag, a little drop, a wee tad of cleverness, and vwalla. So the half dozen or so of you that have been reading here for a while know that I've taken advantage of this little program and its functionalities to create a few of my own masterpieces. I've enjoyed doing these, but you see, there's this one particular story that I've been wanting to tell in its entirety for a while. I've written about it in bits and pieces here, but I've never told the whole thing from start to finish. And I started thinking that maybe the story would work well in a graphic format. I knew it'd be a bit more of a challenge than any of the other comics I'd created, but I figured it would come out to 2, 3, maybe 5 pages tops. I kicked the idea around for a while, but then I finally stopped kicking and started writing.

Well, I'm waaaaay past that 5 page ceiling that I didn't think I would reach, and the end is still nowhere in sight. It would seem that I have gotten myself into a full-blown project. How'd that happen? Oh right, see above.

The thing is, I'm not sure what the hell I'm going to do with it when I'm done. All of my other major writing projects up to this point have been plays, and I always knew that they were headed for a stage. There was a purpose to them. But with this, I just don't know. It seems too large a thing to just throw up on my blog. At this point, I'm working with no end goal beyond getting this story out of me. And maybe that's enough. In fact, maybe that's for the best. Maybe the telling of the story is the most important thing, and all else is mere distraction. I read an interesting article a while back which I can't seem to find at the moment am too lazy to go hunt down. It was about writing in this age of computers, how even when a writer is disciplined enough to shut down everything on their computer but their word processing program, they still face all the distractions presented by the program itself, what with all the formatting options available to them. The article went on to point out that writing and formatting are two separate tasks, to be dealt with at different times in the process. So maybe what I'm doing is like that. The writing is the task now, the thing that matters. The finished product, assuming I finish it, is the only goal, the reward. What comes next will just have to, uh, come next.

Speed...I am Speed

He bolts through the yard and screams "I'm so fast!" He carries heavy objects up the stairs and declares "I'm so strong!" He colors a picture and gasps "I did it!" In other words, he has reached the point of being amazed and overjoyed at his own awesomeness.