Posted on August 25, 2009
Cry “Oven!” And Let Slip The Chicken Nuggets of War
Our oven stopped working one day, quite unceremoniously and without fanfare. It simply stopped getting hot. I’ve been meaning to call someone to come fix it for ages now, but for one reason or another, I never got around to it. In a few brief bursts of ignorant enthusiasm, I tried to fix it myself. However, since I’ve been neither trained nor tested in the delicate art of natural gas oven repair, I never met with much success. I thought that I knew what the problem was, and I even formulated a very scientific hypothesis concerning how to make the blasted thing work again. The only problem I kept running into was the bizarre and arcane construction of the accursed appliance, which thwarted my every effort to open it up for surgery and get a good look at its innards. I even called in the big guns one sleepy Sunday, and had my father come take a look at it with me. Read More
Posted on August 24, 2009
Something Bridal This Way Comes
As of today, our wedding is officially two months away, and the days are starting to slip past us a bit quicker now, with every terrible tick and ominous tock of the countdown clock accelerating us faster and faster to the I Do Deadline. It’s a funny thing, a wedding. When it’s far off in the hazy glimmer of some distant day, it’s exciting and joyous and – perhaps most importantly – it’s all theoretical. But as the days slide off the calendar one by one and bring you ever closer to the event, things begin to change. And, with the exponentially increasing speed that accompanies the arrival of any deadline that’s been victimized by excessive procrastination, what was once merely theoretical suddenly becomes inescapably inevitable, and the excitement and the joy start to give way to the stress that comes from having so much left to do and the panic that results from having so little time left in which to do it. It’s a common theme, really. They have reality shows about it, wherein future brides channel the ancient spirits of antediluvian Japanese reptile-gods and set about devouring whole cities with the homicidal fury of their nuptial rage. Or something like that, anyway. Read More
Posted on August 17, 2009
Swiper, No Swiping!
I hate Dora The Explorer. I normally stomach Trey’s choice of television programming fairly well, because it’s fun to watch the shows with him sitting beside me in my chair while we both interact with the characters on the screen. Blue’s Clues, for example, is great, sometimes even giving a wink and a nod to the parents in the audience. Dora, on the other hand, is complete and worthless tripe from beginning to end. There is little educational value to be found in any aspect of the show, even if you count the sporadic Spanish words sprinkled about each episode like las migajas del Hansel y Gretel. The animation is poor and repetitive, the voice acting is miserable (especially when the characters break into monotonous musical numbers characterized by tone-deaf vocals and three-frames of a dance animation), and Dora herself is an enormous, half-brained twit. Read More
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