Film at Eleven

Interesting news: A recent study has shown that Pop Tarts are flammable.
Bad news: I recently set my toaster on fire.
Good news: I get to buy a new toaster!

Gawd, It's Been a While

So, I recognize that it's been a long time since I made a post (I'm putting up a lot of these apologetic posts over the last few months).

We've been busy in our house. Since I last posted, we've discovered we were pregnant.

Yay!

Except, and I'll be totally honest here, I'm absolutely terrified. I mean, I was never really around kids when I was...uhm...a...kid....and I honestly have no clue how to relate to them. I remember once, a coworker brought her kids to the Alumni House a few weeks ago, and the oldest - six, or something - wandered down to the phonathon and asked how to draw a butterfly. So I went into this long diatribe about the thorax, the abdomen, the structure of butterfly wings (2 lobes) vs. moth wings (1 lobe), yadda yadda yadda...basically, it ended with "so, the body's three parts?"

Great. Just great. I'm gonna get my kid beat up because I never did (I was too speedy).

Anyway, this post also follows the baby-associated movement of furniture throughout the house. We're ditching a sofa, and we've moved what was formerly the den to the upstairs, the bedroom downstairs, and the office is going to be merged with the library. Losing a sofa means we now have space for a crib, and all the other impedimenta of babyness.

Oh, and a basinet. basinnet. Bassinet. Whatever, charging cradle for the crib-dwelling poop goblin.

And this post is taking like 45 minutes to type because Kirsten borrowed The Office from one of her friends (who, though, I have no idea), and I'm having a hard time typing it out.

The Office is one of those weird shows that I actually have a hard time watching - it hurts me to see people embarrased, you know? Even when it's fake, it hurts. And this is the episode where Dwight is picking healthcare. It's really hard to watch. And yet I somehow find myself sucked in, when I'm trying to put this post together.

Augh.

Baby.

Eeeg.

Office.

Post.

ARRRRGGGGHHHHH

Things I'm Ponderin'

1) Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? Outside of a french restaurant, I mean. Despite the huge numbers of pigeons fouling our statues, parks, and shoulders, I haven't - I don't even think they exist. It's like pigeons reproduce through mitosis. And did you know that Mike Tyson trains pigeons? Does he train them to bite off other pigeons' ears?

2) Why do so many straight women enjoy talking about other womens' breasts?

3) Why is it that anyone would ever compliment anyone else on a memorandum? My first week in my first real job out of college, I wrote and distributed a memo describing the expectations for my position, and got complimented on it. Why would you do this? Who says, "Thanks, Brian, for letting me know what you do here, despite the fact that you're the third person to hold this position in the last 9 months and if I'd been paying one ounce of attention I'd have known what you do and how to utilize you to further my own professional objectives?" And why didn't any of my far more pertinent white papers get any attention at all? IT'S A FREAKING MEMO.

4) How long will it be until a major musical tour takes place with one of the supporting acts being a bunch of guys playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band on stage? Will they play their own music? Will they have to play on Expert Difficulty?

5) Where the hell is the orange button?

6) Why is it that whenever I pose for a picture, I let one arm relax, but the other hand goes on my hip? It's not like I'm posing behind a shark I've wrestled from the sea with my bare hands. I'm relatively sure of this, because I've never caught a shark, nor have I wrestled one using my hands or any other implement.

7) Who in the world lets Clive Cussler keep writing books? None of them are any good. Even by pulp standards they're terrible. Despite the crappiness of the books, why hasn't there been another Dirk Pitt movie? Sahara, while not at all like the book, was certainly plenty of fun, and a money-maker to boot. And everyone loves Steve Zahn, right?

8) Why do we wait so long to teach our children second languages? Starting to learn a language at any age is hard, and as your brain fills with sports trivia, 37-character computer passwords (I'm looking at you, Jonathan), wife's name(s), and movie quotes, surely it becomes even harder. Shouldn't we try to teach kids to speak something other than English a little before 7th grade? Or do we just assume that teaching them a second language invites invasion by some other country? I don't recall the kids in Red Dawn taking Russian classes, but I could be wrong.

9) Why are webcomics consistently better than their printed brethren? These are by and large drawn by amateur artists without the backing of large national syndicates, and they don't make money except n apparel sales. What happened to you, Jim Davis? Were you ever really funny?

10) Why are crocuses afraid of my neighborhood? Growing up in Charleston, the crocus was the first flower of spring, the proof that the seasons were changing. And they're popping up all over the place elsewhere. What is it about my neighborhood that scares them? Is it the constant 24-hour barrage of hip-hop music? The 3-am car alarms that people are too lazy to turn off? The litter everywhere? Or is it just that I don't have a yard?

11) Bonus wonder: How do the major broadcast networks continue to produce a plethora of really terrible TV shows and made-for-TV movies, when places like USA and TNT have been rolling out hit after hit since the late 1990s? Does anyone remember the TNT version of Frankenstein? AWESOME.

We're Sorta Like Genesis

My wife and I are both Guitar Hero nerds (though neither of us will ever be able to find the orange button). She has her favored band name - Microwave Ferret. I have mine: Awesome McGee.

We finally bought a second WiiMote and have now formed a two-guitar supergroup:

AWESOME FERRET!

Surely the recording industry will soon beat down a path to our door.

Mea Cul...ah, Screw It

I must admit that I'm not always the hardest-working fellow. I kill time on the internet, like most folks. It's not all that uncommon, especially in Missouri, to screw around at work sometimes.

I worry, though, that sometimes I do it too much. I don't mean that I'm not doing my job, because I am, and frankly, I'm damned good at it. But I still feel like even though I'm achieving my goals, I'm still having problems feeling like I've justified myself for the day. While there is no love lost between myself and the University of Notre Dame (I blame Tostidos), I have had affixed to my office door the Notre Dame home football locker-room statement, "Play like a champion today" ever since I took my current position.

Of course, Notre Dame football has won more national titles than I have. I don't have an all-time record in front of me, but I'm pretty sure I've won...uhm...zero.

Back on topic, I tend not to notice my own self-identified laziness except when I'm working abnormally hard. It's almost like working hard, in the absence of hardly working, makes the latter all the more obvious than the absence of the former. Sort of like how you notice low oxygen levels in a room because you've passed out and turned blue, but when the oxygen levels are normal, you don't even think about it.

Sloth is, I think, the ninja of the Seven Deadly Sins. Gluttony is probably the Bobcat Goldthwait of the group.

So I guess where I'm going with this post is that I've been busy lately - pleasantly so, in fact. With any luck, this'll keep up for a couple of months.