DadCentric

Jaws Was Never My Scene, and I Don't Like Star Wars

"Dude."

It was Simmons.

"What's goin' on, man?"

"I've got some Donald Duck, dude.  Wanna go see Star Wars for a buck at Leohman's ?"

"Go see...wait...Donald Duck?" I said.

"It's blotter, dude.  I got some..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know what it is," I said.  I had never done acid before, but I knew the lexicon.  Just needed some context.  "Umm...Star Wars?  I thought they were showing 2001: A Space Oddysey." 

"No, dude, Star fuckin' Wars! Huh huh huh. C'mon, let's go!  My mom'll drive."  Star Wars had come out three years prior.

"Nah, dude," I demurred, "I gotta wash the fuckin' van today.  I can't get out of it."

"All right, loser.  Have fun," he said.  Later."

"Later." 

I walked the yellow receiver back to the kitchen, untangling fifteen feet of boinging spiral cord from the basement stairs, and clacked it onto the wall, averting my eyes from Mom's scrutiny.

A Gallery Of Disturbing Christmas Tree Ornaments

This Saturday was Tree Decorating Day, so the whole family went to our local Target to pick up some ornaments. We told the kids that they could each pick out a special ornament to hang on the tree. I picked this one for myself:

Lucas picked a motorcycle, and Zoe picked a Christmas-attired Winnie The Pooh, and...wait. You're bothered by the Beer Ornament, I see. Well, if you think that's bad, wait until you see what's after the jump. I had to take some pictures. Because ho ho holy shit, they're just awful.

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah - Spooky! Scary!

My MacBook is still in the shop and I haven't put together a Halloween costume. So here's one of our favorite holiday classics to tide you over. And don't forget to check your kids' candy for razor blades, hallucinogens, steroids, alien microtransmitters, and/or hidden Prayer Cards. Trick or treat!

Bin Laden's Daughter Watched Him Die, Just Like God Said

Embedded in a CNN article about the White House's decision not to publish pictures of the dead Osama (or to sell any "dead Osama" action figures) was the following:

One of bin Laden's daughters has told Pakistani interrogators that she saw her father shot, a senior Pakistani intelligence source said Wednesday. The daughter, believed to be 12 or 13 years old, was among those left behind at the compound after Monday's U.S. raid, the source said.

So, even though this cat followed a fundamentalist sect of the Quran-reading set and spent his "golden years" plotting against the EVIL, INFIDEL, GOD-FEARING, ALLAH-SPURNING West, his death may have verified a foreboding admonition from the Christian Old Testament:  the sins of the father are visited upon his children (See Exodus 20:5), an idea the Quran directly refutes (See Quran 35:18).  Ain't that a bitch?

You:  But dude was a terrorist!  Of course his kids are going to get brought down for being associated with someone who kept the company he did and committed the atrocities he committed!

But does his daughter deserve to watch him die?  Via gunshot wounds from infidel SEALs? 

Just because an outcome may be predictable doesn't mean it's acceptable or justified.  However, religious beliefs aside, any of us who've been alive for a couple decades have seen that such habits as drug abuse, infidelity, smoking, gambling, and alcoholism (not that having a bourbon or 6 is a sin) will provide negative consequences for the offender's progeny.  So, regardless of whether or not a father's sins "visit" the sons or daughters, his poor lifestyle decisions will certainly affect them. 

Which is why I, for one, prefer to drink alone.

When Puberty Strikes Like Lightning

You can see the storm coming for sure.

But sometimes you just don't know when it is going to hit.

Sure, there were signs: he pointed out that J Woww's boobs were big, his voice has gotten deeper and his penis is a popular topic to discuss.

But then there were questions I wasn't prepared to answer.

Like the day he blurted out, "I don't believe in the story of Adam and Eve."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Like that all people came from those two?"

"Yeah," he said. "I believe in evolution. Because the other way is gross."

"You mean like you shouldn't kiss your sister, that kind of thing?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said.

And it was left at that. It was left with me scratching my head and him probably wondering just how people become people. The head scratching because Adam and Eve is a story of religious bent and I'm not sure where he heard it. I mean public school can't teach religion, right? Okay, I live in the South so who am I kidding? Can they teach evolution? Suddenly I felt lost. I felt like I didn't know what my child was learning or where he was learning it from and I knew it was time to step in.

His sudden interest in boobs and growing fascination with his cock & balls signified it was time to have the father-and-son talk about the birds and the bees. 

But the goddamn school beat me to it.

The Truth About Cats and Gods

Well, the cat's dead. Was she the best cat ever? That is a childish question. And yes. Empirically. If you want, leave a comment and I'll email you the documentation. I'm not here to eulogize the cat though. That's over on Cat Fancy's dead cat of the month page. 

The P-Nut turns 4 in April. She's getting pretty hip to what's going on. Including the fact that the cat--Xiu Xiu (zhu-zhu) the Eldest--had disappeared.

We had to have The Conversation. 

I went through a lot of strategies in my head. Wait until she asks, then offer ice cream. Wait until she asks, then shout "Look over there!" and then run away. Make her watch a particularly brutal nature show and when it's over go, "There. That's what happened to Xiu-Xiu, understand?" Tell her she was cheating on us with a second family. Business trip. Called up by the Reserves. Time traveler. 

The Tropical World

A couple of days ago I commented on a post about Jesus and it reminded me of a recent conversation I had with my seven-year-old.

We were talking about death.

And religion.

Religion is a tricky thing in general to introduce to a child, but it becomes even more challenging when the parents are of different denominations. Mom was adopted into a Jewish family who are more social in their experience than conservative, while Dad (me) was raised in a Catholic family - twelve years of parochial and parents who still go to church every Sunday. 

Early on we skirted both religions but as the kids entered school, and we're talking public school at that, religion began to creep into their lives because religion is everywhere in the South. The good news is that through school they've made friends with kids of different races and religions. They have been introduced to the concept of fasting by their Egyptian Muslim friend, and turned on to Hindu gods by another neighbor. 

They are leaps and bounds ahead of my introduction to the concept that there is more than one god that people can believe in.

So I'm sitting there talking to my seven-year-old who is asking me what happens to you when you die. From his exposure to Hinduism he is aware of reincarnation (samsara) and through Catholicism/Judaism heaven and hell. He's pondering what animal he'd like to return as when he turns to me and candidly says, "There are four worlds, Dad."

"There are?" I say.

"Yes. Heaven, Hell, earth and the Tropical World," he explains.

"The Tropical World?" I ask. "What's that?"

"It's the place where dead pets go," he says.

I think that is where I want to go when I die... 

Oh, Jesus

"Dad, was Poseidon real?"

Easy! "Nope. The ancient Greeks made him up - they created stories about the Gods because it was a way to help them understand the way the Universe works. For example, Poseidon: nowadays, we know what causes storms, but thousands of years ago, they didn't have meteorologists or computers or, well, science. So they believed that Poseidon caused storms at sea."

"Oh. Do you believe in God?"

And here is where we part ways, me, and the Me who thought I wouldn't have to deal with this until his first viewing of The Ten Commandments. That was my first exposure to the Judeo-Christian thing. (Well, the Judeo part, anyway.) Yul Brynner! Chuck Heston! Now there's a Bible movie!  

If only it were that simple.

I Really Don't Want to See The Pasty Guy's Manscape

This comes from an Oklahoma-based church that believes in "relevant teaching and amazing worship" as well as high production values in its Father's Day rap videos.

They lose credibility for calling it a "WEE-ber" grill when any dad worth his meat tenderizer knows it's pronounced "WEH-ber." Word.

Heroes and Villains and Fake Proms

 Let's talk about bullies. They seem to be winning these days. And they seem to be getting support from the people that are supposed to stand up for their victims. Phoebe Prince killed herself rather than face another humiliation at the hands of her tormentors. You'd think that the school board would be looking inward, trying to figure out what they could have done to help Phoebe, to understand that when it comes to bullies, silence means approval. You'd think they'd admit that they'd bear some responsibility, because they were charged with the most sacred duty imaginable - the care and protection of kids.

You'd be wrong.

In Constance McMillen's case, the bullies are classmates AND the school administration. Constance, of course, is the girl whose school decided to cancel their prom because she might go and she's a lesbian and what would Jesus and Jefferson Davis think of a gay person attending a prom? (An aside: I really do hate making generalizations of the South - I have friends and family in Dixie, and South Carolina is one of the loveliest places I've been to, thanks in no small part to the people there. But really, The South, you are running out of excuses.) Well, the school cancelled the "real prom". Sorta. Actually, they did have a school-sponsored prom, and Constance was invited. It was chaperoned by the principal and a couple of teachers. Not that their presence was needed. Because Constance was one of only seven students that were invited. The rest of the students? They were whooping it up at a "secret prom" organized by the parents, with the full knowledge of the school board. Their cover-up attempt was something right out of Gomer Pyle's playbook. Psst! Homophobic teens! Wanna keep your Straight Prom secret? Don't post pictures of it on Facebook! (Google "Itawamba prom Facebook pictures" if you want to see them, because I'm pretty sure I'd get in trouble posting pictures of drunk 16 year-olds on my website.) The kicker: the two special needs students who were also not invited to the secret prom - apparently the good people of Shitkicker, Mississippi think that "people can catch them learnin' disabilities like they can catch The Gay". 

There are villains in this world, and some of them are teaching our children. They turn a blind eye to cruelty; worse, they shrug and say it's not their job to intervene. They wrap themselves in American flags and quote the Bible and claim to hold the moral high ground, while destroying the lives of those who are "different". It must stop. 

But lest we forget, there are also heroes. Constance's quote about those two special needs kids speaks volumes. "They had the time of their lives. That's the one good thing to come out of this...(those kids) didn't have to worry about people making fun of them."  Now that's a girl I'd be proud to call my daughter.