Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Tuesday, May 31, 2005 Chilling Effects Those of you who know how this ends, try not to ruin it for anyone else. Last weekend, Trash and I had been outside doing yard work all day. After what seemed like three weeks of nonstop rain, the idea of going inside just wasn't doing it for us, even though it would have meant not clearing brush for a while. At one point, we packed up the kid and headed off to the nursery for some new outdoor plants, and then decided to hit the local DQ drive-thru so we could a) get some kind of cold treat, and b) have a couple hours' break while we waited for our stuff. By this point, we were so hot and thirsty that an ordinary drink wasn't going to cut it. Even ice-cold wasn't going to cut it. We needed something colder than ice. So naturally, our eyes fell greedily upon a new menu item: "Arctic Rush." We each ordered one. Later that afternoon, we reached the window, got our treats, and began sucking them down. And instantly felt as if we'd been attacked by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Batman & Robin. We didn't know what they put in these Arctic Rush things, but they were seriously cold. Possibly the coldest things we'd ever put into our mouths. Mine was cherry and Trash's was blue raspberry, but at those temperatures flavor was irrelevant. They tasted cold, period. Ten minutes later, they were still freezing cold. We tried taking tiny sips. We tried holding some in our mouths until it warmed up. We tried holding tiny sips in our mouths until they warmed up. No matter what we did, every taste was like sword-swallowing a six-foot-long Arctic core sample. I theorized that perhaps space-age technology had made this possible. That it wasn't mere ice mixed with our beverage, but some super-enhanced liquid polymer with a freezing temperature below that of water. And that it was suspended in some insulating medium that prevented contact with the more temperate conditions normally found in our home dimension. Or perhaps we were simply eating fruit-flavored nitrogen slushies. This was pure, distilled cold. This was a freon cocktail. This was hypothermia in a plastic cup. This was twelve fluid ounces of absolute zero. So our friends Chao and the Disqueen and their friend were up for a Memorial Day Weekend disc golf tournament here in the area. On Sunday night, I asked whether any of them had tried this new thing at DQ that they really shouldn't sell you without making you sign a waiver. None of them had ever heard of it. As I explained it, it was basically a lot like a Mr. Misty, but several orders of magnitude colder. The Arctic Rush makes Mr. Misty look like a big girl, I explained. Chao immediately had to try this, so we all piled into the car (M. Tiny included) and embarked on the short trek to DQ. As always, the line for the cash register was several times longer than the actual drive. While we were waiting, Chao happened to notice that the old standby Mr. Misty was no longer on the menu. "Did the Arctic Rush replace the Mr. Misty?" he asked. "Maybe it's the same thing." "No way," I said. "This is so far beyond the Mr. Misty." Eventually we got up to the cash register. "Did the Arctic Rush replace the Mr. Misty?" He asked the cashier. "Yeah, it's the same thing, just in a different cup," she said. Everyone looked at me. "Okay, now I feel like an idiot," I said. * * * Are you going to be in New York on Friday night? I am, and so are a whole slew of other Television Without Pity recappers. And you can come see us! I'd give you all the details, but it’s late and all you really need to do is keep scrolling.  Today's best search phrase: "Pretty mask that makes you look exactly like a pretty lady." Jame? Is that you? posted by M. Giant 9:56 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:Damn it, M. Giant! Why didn't you give us more notice about the reading? I would LOVE to come, but I will be out of town.
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Damn it! Me too. Wait...that's because I'm here. So, uh, call me when you get back.
By Ahh -- is Trash staying home with M. Tiny or are all of you going to the big city?
By Dude, the Re-Capades were a hoot! I can't wait to read your takes on 6 Feet Under.
By Saturday, May 21, 2005 That's Intellitainment! About the time we realized that M. Tiny's head was taking on its worrisome trapezoid shape, one of the things the pediatrician suggested was some sort of device for keeping him up off of his head, so as to prevent further asymmetrical flattening action. Not long ago, the ideal thing for that would have been a walker or "ExcerSaucer" of some variety. This is a baby toy that basically consists of a cloth seat that you drop the baby into, and he's then surrounded by a plastic ring with toys built in, and the whole arrangement is on little casters so that pre-ambulatory tots can Fred-Flintstone their way around the linoleum. However, these devices have fallen out of favor in recent years due to the danger of pre-ambulatory tots Fred-Flinstoning their way down the stairs. They're not built for that. In fact, they're not built at all any more, for just that reason. At least not in this country. However, you can still get stationary equivalents that are just as entertaining. So we went to Babies R Us and that's what we got. It stands on four legs at the end of our living room, just waiting to receive M. Tiny's weight at any given moment. Except for those moments when it's already bearing his weight, such as this one:  Just like his dad, back when I used to work at the Podium. Except with fewer computers and fewer phones, at least for now. It's changed our lives. M. Tiny loves every moment he spends in it (not counting the last few seconds or so of each session, when he lets us know he's had enough). We can actually put him down and leave him alone long enough to go to the bathroom and return before he gets loudly and angrily bored--a luxury that was not previously available to us. We've had it so long, and it's become so integrated into our lives, that we're practically taking it for granted. As if it were a seventh member of the family. It wasn't until Al mentioned the Intellitainer in her entry about her Minneapolis trip that I realized that there might be an actual, entire entry for me there. When we first bought it, we thought it was called the Intellitrainer, as in "Intelligence" and "Trainer." But then I saw one at Target (for the same price, I was gratified to see), and realized that there's only one "R" in "Intellitainer." As in "Intelligence" and "Entertainer." This came as a relief to our friend Bitter, who upon hearing the correction thought that the "Tainer" stood for "CONtainer." Which is funny, but hey, we don't go off and leave him in it indefinitely or anything. Besides, any decent baby container should come with a handle for greater portability. But on to the features. One side is relatively primitive, consisting of a set of three plastic gears, a little globe-rattle on a stalk, and a mirror. Naturally the mirror is his favorite part of this side. Can you blame him, looking like he does? The side he's facing in the photo is the battery-powered area. You flip it on, and every button, slide, cylinder, and plastic book page generates a sound. In non-musical mode, it recites nursery rhymes and identifies his three main buttons as "A" (red), "B" (green), and "C" (blue). In musical mode, it sings in the voice of some perky soprano who might be Kristin Chenoweth, only more irritating. Which is where our favorite button comes in: the "half-volume" button. M. Tiny doesn't yet know that his Intellitainer is capable of such a thing as "full volume," and we intend to keep it that way until he outgrows it. But back to musical mode, which is where it gets really educational. Specifically, if he hits the "A" button, it plays a measure of a jazzy little piano riff in C#. If he hits "B," he gets a measure in F#. "C" gives him a lick of A-flat. That's a I, IV, V interval, or "Louie Louie" chords to you non-music-theorists. Which means one of the first things I'm going to be able to teach my son is the 12-bar blues. So far he's resisting, preferring to interrupt the jam in progress with another replay of "The Wheels on the Bus" in A-nnoying. But I'm not giving up. He's past the seven-month mark, and if he's going to be another Mozart we have to get on the stick. He's going to get the blues one way or another. I'll keep you posted. Today's best search phrase: "Anakin and pamie in star wars pictures." Pam, is there something you're not telling us? posted by M. Giant 10:00 PM 10 comments 10 Comments:Exersaucers are still used, it is the walkers that are illfavored. We just had to store Fuller's exersaucer until the next baby because Fuller is definitely too big for it now. He loved his saucer. He would spin and spin and spin until I got dizzy. He would jump and rock and squeal with glee. And I would get 30- 80 minutes of time where I could fold laundry, make dinner, or sit and read your blog. Now I just watch him roll around on the floor, trying desperately to figure out how to crawl. So far we have butt in the air, knees under, arms move forward, belly flop, repeat until frustrated and start crying. It kind of entertains me.
By We had an exersaucer back in 1999. Loved it. Many tasks could be completed while Ethan was in it. And it was easily transported. One day while we were getting ready to head to grammas house I plopped my fresh, sweet, clean baby into his exersaucer and proceeded to collect all of the baby crap needed when visiting overnight. 10 minutes later we were ready to rock. I picked Ethan up and noticed he had poo'ed that liquidy poo we all know...His exersaucer turned into a neat spinart kind of thing. Needless to say another bath for the rugrat and a hosing down and scrubbing with Lysol was necessary for the exersaucer. My advice is: Make sure baby is wearing pants when placed into the exersaucer...not just a onesie. My work here is done.
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I think the full search phrase must have been:
By Wow - it's been 7 months. Doesn't it seem like just yesterday that M. Tiny came into this crazy world? Soon it will be his first day of school.
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I'm one of the reasons the walkers don't exist anymore. I took a header down the basement stairs trying to follow my big sister, a pile of laundry saved my life.
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Not to be too much like my mother, but how did any of us survive? I zipped around our house in a walker, rode my bike without a helmet and ate both bugs and dirt. I guess we were just lucky.
By M. Tiny's thought bubble might say "Ground control to Major Tom..." I think there's not much of anything cuter than a busy baby. ~Laura
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He appears to be in training to become the pilot of a living ship like Farscape's Leviathan, Moya.
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When I saw that, my first thought was that he was in a little DJ booth. From your description, I wasn't too far wrong. Awesome infant containment.
By I read this entry (I just got back from maternity leave, so I'm behind) Friday and bought the thing over the weekend. Our four-month-old LOVES it. She's pooped in it twice already, which means it's very special to her. Kind of a pain in the ass to put together, but well worth it. I still can't believe I spent 70 bucks on a toy, but whatever.
By Tuesday, May 17, 2005 I Have a Bad Feeling about This. Trash doesn’t much like not knowing what’s going to happen in a movie she’s seeing (please don’t mock her for this; that’s my job). If something dark and scary is coming out that she thinks is interesting, she says, “You’re going to have to see that and tell me about it before I can go see it.” And then neither of us sees it until it’s out on DVD, so she can leave the room during the upsetting parts. We can probably trace this back to what may have been the most frightened she’s ever been at a movie theater: during the climactic lightsaber battle between Luke and Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. Which, yeah. Me too, probably. What? We were ten. So there’s a certain symmetry in the fact that the most recent movie I’ve been instructed to pre-screen is Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Hayden Christiansen is on the cover of Entertainment Weekly this week. Trash looked at it and said, “You’re going to have to see that and tell me what happens.” I said, “I can tell you what happens now. “Amidala gets pregnant and has twins. Palpatine takes Anakin under his leathery, batlike wing, turning him to the Dark Side. And he takes control of the Clone Army of Stormtroopers and declares himself Galactic Emperor. The Jedi get wiped out, except for Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda. Yoda goes into hiding on Dagobah. Amidala’s twins get split up; the girl gets adopted by Senator Bail Organa from Alderaan, and the boy gets shipped off to Tatooine, which is also where Obi-Wan disappears to, escaping the Emperor’s iron fist and his former padawan’s mastery of the Force by changing his own first name to ‘Ben’ and assuming that Anakin will never find a boy with Anakin’s last name who lives on Anakin’s home planet. But first, Obi-Wan and Anakin have duel in a volcano and Anakin is burned so horribly that he has to start wearing a Darth Vader mask all the time. And maybe Amidala dies. Basically the whole series ends on kind of a downer.” “Thanks.” “No problem.” “Anything you can tell me that we didn’t know six years ago?” “Chewbacca’s in it. And I think there’s an evil robot named General Grievous.” “Now you’re just making shit up.” “I wish.” “I don’t know the order in which everything occurs, if that makes you feel better.” “It doesn’t.” Not that there’s much chance any time soon of my finding time to download and watch the fan-made Star Wars: Revelations (which is only forty minutes long and doesn’t require me to leave the house) on the Internet, let alone spend half a day standing in line at the movie theater and then sitting through a two-and-a-half-hour movie. I haven’t seen a movie at the theater since a couple weeks before M. Tiny was born. That movie? The Village. That boy of ours has a lot to answer for. Today’s best search phrase: "Pointy chin yahoo." Who you calling pointy-chinned? posted by M. Giant 6:10 AM 10 comments 10 Comments:Dude, now is the time to go to movies. M. Tiny will sleep through them, and he isn't running all over, getting lost and demanding popcorn. I mean, he isn't running yet, is he?
By So, will M. Tiny see them I-VI or IV-I?
By An unsolicited piece of advice from someone who has run a pediatric office? Semi-gloss paint. Everywhere. Pee, poop, food, crayon...it all just wipes off. Of course, the people in Home Depot will think you're insane, but never mind them.
By Please do not take M. Tiny to the movies. Get a nice friend or family member to watch him. As a public service please get a sitter.
By What's especially funny about this picture is the way M. Tiny is looking off to the right, as if he's trying to say "Mooom! Dad's being weird again, come and get me!" So cute.
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If M. Tiny sleeps you can take him to the movies. I went to the movies with my happy sleeping baby till he was about seven months old and began demanding popcorn.
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I don't know if you have them there, but we actually have a Drive-In theater, and we discovered it when my oldest was about three. We could see movies again! And he could scream his head off if he so desired! Without us getting booed out of a theater! Both of the kids adore it now. The baby conks out, and the oldest eats his weight in popcorn and hangs out quietly, or falls asleep. Lovely.
By Yuck. You saw The Village in the theater? That must have been fun.
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...and as I recall, someone had a crying child in that audience, too.
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Best website ever for scaredy-cat movie-goers... themoviespoiler.com. I have to visit it before any movie that might contain any frightening element at all.
By Saturday, May 14, 2005 What I'm Not Doing I picked up the lovely and charming Al Lowe at her hotel last week, and I wanted to apologize for the disarray in my car. Even though she’s far too polite to have said anything—even to herself, probably. We ended up having a very nice visit and she got to spend her one free evening in town hanging out at my house and meeting the fam. We were happy to see her. Normally when I meet up with other Damn Hell Ass Kings from out of town, I have to fly somewhere. So this was a nice change. But that aside, I have another reason not to have to apologize for having a messy ride. Know what it is? I have a baby. As we all know, having a baby makes it impractical to do certain things you might otherwise want to do, like getting blind, violent drunk at a bar mitzvah or spending an entire weekend at the multiplex or leaving your desk at 11:30 on a Tuesday morning and going to Bangkok (or, if already in Bangkok, to Fort Wayne). But what they don’t tell you is that having a baby gets you out of stuff you don’t want to do, or out of trouble for stuff you failed to do. Can't stay late tonight, boss. Got a baby. Oops, forgot to shave this morning. It’s because I have a baby. Christmas lights still up outside the house? Yeah, I have a baby. I needed to sleep in this morning. I was up at three o’clock. Why? Because I have a baby. Who hasn’t at all been sleeping through the night since January, nope, not my baby. Sorry, Sars, but the reason I submitted that 24 recaplet that made no mention of Tony’s return, the biggest event of the episode? It’s because I missed the fifteen seconds he was onscreen. Because I went to help Trash with something that seemed to be making a lot of noise. Why, as a matter of fact, it was the baby. Haven't mowed the lawn all spring so now the grass in the front yard is as tall as I am? Well, it's been raining every day for most of the past week, and I'm not about to mow wet grass. Also, I have a baby. Go see that three-hour-long French film? Yeah, I know the art house theater is only eight blocks away. But I have a baby. Playing my guitar? Well, sure, I still do that, because the baby likes it. He does! Two hundred unanswered e-mails in my various inboxes? What can I say? I have a baby. I'm trying to teach him to type so he can answer you. Went for over two weeks without updating for the first time ever? Sorry, everyone. I have a baby. Of course, using the baby as an excuse for everything means we'd damn well better be keeping him a happy and healthy one. So what do you think?  Today's best search phrase: "Giant girls and their tiny friends." So near and yet...not. posted by M. Giant 10:02 PM 8 comments 8 Comments:ahhh, that's a great picture. M. Tiny is getting so BIG!
By heh. I like the hat on the valence. Gives that special little something that says "My house isn't clean, and this sack on my chest is why."
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heh. I like the hat on the valence. Gives that special little something that says "My house isn't clean, and this sack on my chest is why."
By Good god that is cute. If there is anything more adorable ... well, it might just kill me.
By You seem to be getting some of my search traffic...
By You do get the weirdest searches. You should turn them into a book, complete with comments, like Leno's funny ads. Except yours will actually be funny.
By And the best thing about the baby excuse - you can use it until they are at least six years old! It just changes from baby to toddler to kindergartner, etc. I always blame the state of my car on my kid! What's a kid for?
By Your story is so sweet and make me happy to read it. Thank you so much...
By Wednesday, May 11, 2005 Humpblog (5/11/05) I never thought I would want a "Baby on Board" sign for my car. I always agreed with the general interpretation that it was asking other motorists to drive more carefully, which would only piss a lot of them off. Now part of me wants a sign, but not for that reason. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a sign that says "Baby on Board. That's Why I'm Driving Like a Complete Wuss." * * * The past few weeks, I've been hearing about how Bill Frist has been doing some cagey maneuvering to position himself for a possible presidential run in 2008. I stopped believing a long time ago that the news media has that much influence in deciding national elections. Don’t believe me? Ask President McCain. But if they do, I imagine they're going to pull out all the stops to scuttle any Frist campaign. You know why? Copy editors won't stand for the prospect of spending four years wondering whether a reporter means "the Frist family" or "The First Family" every time it appears. Of course, if copy editors had any power at all, people would quit misusing the word "literally" all the time. * * * Since my last entry, which was about feeding M. Tiny, I talked about how at least he doesn't spit. I spoke too soon. Well, he still doesn't spit. Instead, he blows raspberries with a mouthful (and faceful) of food. If I've just emptied the spoon into his maw, then I can shield the surroundingd from the worst of it by holding the bowl a fraction of an inch in front of his mouth and let him blow himself out. Something else I've learned: a couple of weeks ago, he was eating slowly, not cooperating by opening his mouth for the approaching spoon. There was a long pause, during which I stubbornly coaxed and cajoled him to open his mouth for me, while he just as stubbornly refused. Until he suddenly opened wide and inhaled while hiws eyes screwed shut. In the ensuing tenths of a second, I realized that he was about to sneeze. I could wait for the moment to pass, or I could take advantage of what (I thought) was his vulnerable oral posture, this vanishingly brief window of opportunity. I chose poorly. The thing about trying to synchronize the insertion of a spoonful of strained squash with a baby's sneeze is this: it's a really dumb idea. Really, really dumb. * * * The place where I work has announced this employee-wellness-related campaign aimed at me and my thousands of coworkers. It's called "Take the Stairs," and it centerpiece is, naturally, encouraging us to take the stairs. Since I work on the 24th floor, actually taking the stairs each day would amount to a not insignificant amount of exercise. I don't know what all the campaign entails. Probably e-mails, stickers, magnets, little logbooks, whatever. But you know what would really impress me about this program? If, as part of it, they unlocked the door from the stairwell to my floor. In the meantime, I shall continue taking the elevator and being a fat-ass. Today's best search phrase: "Peeing on light sockets light sockets." I would advise against it, but something tells me it's already too late. posted by M. Giant 4:38 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:
First!
By But really, have Trash look up some legal stuff to bully them into opening the door to the stairwell.
By Finally a new Velcrometer. If you had added a picture of M. Tiny sneezing food, it would be perfect.
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There's a song by a Canadian singer named Nancy White entitled "Child on Board". The theme is that parents need the sign to explain why our deving is so funny.
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Peeing on light sockets light sockets
By Please make that bumper sticker and sell it to me!
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I hate to mention it, but my understanding is that the *real* use for those annoying 'baby on board' signs is that in an accident the rescue services know they may have to search for a baby in the wreckage as well as much more easily-visible adults.
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