The KFC Double Down, With Minor Parenting

I’ll start today off by pointing out the obvious, in that the Coquetting Tarradiddles you are currently reading does not look exactly like the Coquetting Tarradiddles you’re used to reading. I assure you, this is entirely intentional. I’ve been doing a little bit of housekeeping (even those of us gifted with superhuman mutant powers aren’t immune to tidying up the place now and again), and I decided to stop featuring one full essay with each update. Instead, I’ve chosen to list the three latest entries, broken up into their first paragraphs and slathered all over the main page for you to click through. Just hit the READ MORE >> link at the end of the summary, and you’ll pull up the entire essay. It’s a pretty standard setup, and should be familiar to anyone who’s come anywhere near a computer and the Internet within the past decade or so. I’ll be doing more work to the site’s design in the coming days, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll stay with Blogger/Blogspot much longer. After spending some time with WordPress recently, I’ve come to the mournful conclusion that Blogger is entirely staffed by waterheaded hipsters who are so hopelessly mired in their own hubris that they can’t be bothered to notice that their technology is aging about as gracefully as a bacon-wrapped cantaloupe sandwiched between two sweaty loaves of cavernous ass cheeks. In less colorful terms: Blogger is archaic, non-functional and covered in that special kind of mold that’s just as likely to cure a staph infection as it is to drive you towards a Salem witch trial level of insanity. Also, it smells like bacon butt. (Ok, see that innocent looking, all-caps hyperlink right after this sentence that says “READ MORE >>” – click it and you can, amazingly enough, read more!)

Comparatively speaking, WordPress is to Blogger as Knight Rider‘s KITT is to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Sure, the latter has charm and nostalgia going for it, but the Knight Industries Two Thousand is armored with Tri-Helical Plasteel 1000, has cool flashy lights AND the voice of Principal Feeny (that’s Dr. Craig if you’re old enough to remember St. Elsewhere, or Dustin Hoffman’s dad in The Graduate, if you’re even older and especially crazy about plastics…) It’s not much of a contest, considering KITT can turbo boost over 200 miles per hour and drive on water with the handy aid of his Third Stage Aquatic Synthesizer, when all Chitty can do is fly around the kingdom of Vulgaria making sputtery noises and upsetting Dick Van Dyke. Like KITT, WordPress is sleeker, more robust and more functional than Blogger and the equally cute but pedantic Chitty. I’ve held out hope that Blogger would someday get with the times and start incorporating more customization, more features and better tools to rival what WordPress is doing, but as the months slip by I’m starting to lose confidence. I’m not sure when or if I’ll ever bite the bullet and move Coquetting Tarradiddles over to a current-generation blogging platform, but the more I use WordPress at work, the more I loathe coming home to hack my way through Blogger. So, if you come here one day to suddenly find yourself being directed to a new site that looks like something out of 2010 rather than a retro throwback to 1999, don’t be alarmed. All will be proceed as the Emperor has foreseen…

In other news, Trey made me feel about two inches tall when I came stumbling in from work last night. I walked in the door to find him sitting on the couch, naked from the waist down. In the background, Brittany was sighing. Heavily. It seemed the little guy had a potty accident just before I pulled into the driveway, and I walked in on the tail end of the proceedings while Brittany was busy rummaging through various household cleaners in an attempt to find some concoction possessing the formidable strength of chemistry required to combat the insidious might of toddler pee stains lingering upon couch cushions. Trey, at this time, had been charged with the simple task of obtaining new underwear and blue jeans from his room (a task he was apparently not prepared to fully commit to), further increasing the maternal sighs coming from under the kitchen sink. Eventually, Brittany emerged with cleaners in hand, then paused to stare at the half-naked Trey sitting innocently next to the large dark spot on the cushion beside him and looking not at all like he was about to go get his clothes. Words were spoken, protestations were declared, and stern looks were given. After a brief stare-down, Trey admitted defeat, then reluctantly – and dramatically – lumbered off in the direction of his room. He did not come back with blue jeans.

For reasons unknown to me at the time, the little guy had developed a sudden and uncontrollable disdain for blue jeans and denim altogether, instead insisting that he be allowed to wear a pair of black pants similar to the slacks I’d worn to work on Monday. Of course, being the sometimes obtuse and deeply stupid father that I can be in my most confused and befuddled moments, I failed to make the connection. It wasn’t until after he’d cried seventeen buckets of tears, thrown his blue jeans down the hall and emerged from a parentally imposed time out period of two interminably long minutes that I finally figured it out – and even then, it took Trey telling me for it to fully sink in. He wasn’t upset about having to put on clean pants, nor was he just being obstinate by refusing to wear the blue jeans we were asking him to put on. Rather, he was crestfallen by the horrible notion that he not be allowed to wear pants that were just like mine. That’s all it was: he wanted to be like me.

This weekend, when I shed my work attire to don a pair of faded blue jeans and an old t-shirt to work in the yard, he picked out the same outfit for himself. Afterwards, we spent the day together, making the yard “look really super pretty”. I didn’t try to dress him in any other clothes that day because I understood that he wanted to wear the same thing as me while we worked together, side-by-side like really big kids do. I knew what he wanted then, so why was I so clueless about him wanting the same thing now? I don’t know the exact reason, but whether my momentary lapse of competent cognitive processing was the unfortunate result of stress or exhaustion or any number of other external influences, the end result was the same: he’d been punished for wanting the two of us to be “just the same together,” as he says. I felt like a jerk.

To make it up to him (and to avoid an unnecessary struggle at the dinner table after a long and tiring day), I offered to go buy him some chicken nuggets and french fries for supper. I’d just stuffed my delicious and not-at-all-disgusting (I promise!) meatloaf into the oven to cook, so I had time to kill and a hungry Trey tummy to fill. Just because I don’t come wandering in the door until seven o’clock doesn’t mean that the three-year-old should have to wait on dinner too, so I hopped in my car and headed to KFC. He usually prefers McDonald’s nuggets, but lately has developed a taste for the Colonel’s eleven herbs and spices. And, despite KFC’s mistreatment of livestock and the fact that ten of the eleven secret herbs are otherwise known as Sodium and MSG, I reasoned that giving him some Kentucky nuggets made up of actual bits of chicken was a better alternative than allowing him to shovel more handfuls of pureed and press-formed chickenlike goo into his mouth than is absolutely necessary. (Although nothing compares to the healthy deliciousness of my own, homemade nuggets.) Also, he loves the picture of Colonel Sanders that adorns every box and bucket of KFC chicken. Trey calls him “the guy” and loves the way that he “always cooks my chicken yummy for me”.

So, I scooted my car down the road to the nearest KFC to place my order, when I suddenly remembered the date. It was August 12: the day marking the national debut of KFC’s MeatBread Sammich (otherwise known as the Double Down)! Basically, it’s a bacon and cheese sandwich with boneless chicken breasts standing in for slices of bread, with some sort of suspicious looking sauce binding the whole soggy thing together. It sounds disgusting and it looks hideous – but I just had to try one. It has almost an entire day’s worth of the USDA’s recommended amount of sodium, more calories than a hyperspeed StairMaster could shed in a month of constant use, and more saturated fat than butter deep fried in pig lard – but since I’m always on the lookout for terrible new ways to contribute to this blog, I elected to go all in and Double Down, as it were. I did not regret it.

Probably because I only ate a couple of bites of the artery-clogging monstrosity, I didn’t hate myself when it was over. I was in this for the taste test and to document my reaction for the sake of posterity, not to indulge my tastebuds in a euphoric sensory explosion. I did not expect to like it – but I did. In fact, the sandwich was so immeasurably delicious, I’m not sure I have the ability to describe the experience through the clumsy act of making words out of letters. The closest I can come to is transcendent. Yes, that’s probably a little over the top, seeing as how I didn’t exactly achieve some sort of spiritual ascension and become one with both God and Nature as a result of masticating the greasy goodness of the sandwich, but it’s close. In fact, tasting the Double Down went in rather the opposite direction of my usual Food Snob tendencies, penetrating straight through to the caveman lurking within me: the always-on-edge hunter/gatherer who thrives on infrequent high caloric meals laced with inhuman levels of salt and fat. The very first bite trigged my Cro-Magnon side, throwing my brain’s reward centers into overdrive and sending a soft but torrential cascade of dopamine and endorphins rushing through my body, ushering me into my Happy Place. I could have done without the bizarre and sticky sauce painted onto the inside of the Meatwich, but other than that minor quibble, the Double Down wins a Double Plus Awesome award for being ballsy enough to even exist in the first place. It’s a horrible meal and should not be part of anyone’s regular diet unless you fancy the idea of having to pay for three seats every time you fly coach, but as an infrequent indulgence, it doesn’t get much better than this:

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
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Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?

Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
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The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

Gaming | Nonfiction
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This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.

Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
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What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.