“This is the Meijer Customer Service Department, how can I help you”

“Ok, this is going to sound a little strange, but I figured I should call you guys, you seem to have the most lenient return policy of all the stores, I think back to some of the things I have been allowed to return at your store and it makes me laugh, granted you typically only give me store credit and not a full refund, but who doesn’t want store credit from Meijer?”

“Great, so what do you need to return?”

“My three year old, he’s intolerable, not sure I can survive another day with him.  I’m looking for a four year old, I’m not too terrible fussy either.  Two arms, two legs, not a girl,  I’ve seen those daddy daughter dance posts on Facebook not sure I have that in me, and I definitely can’t handle a teenage girl.”

“Well, as much as we would like to help you out, we wouldn’t be able to exchange your three year old for a four year old, human beings are the one thing we don’t sell here.”

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this, but what can you give me for store credit if I bring him in today.”

“Sorry, no store credit either, if we re-stocked your three year old he would probably just linger on the shelf until he is at least four.  Pretty sure no actual store is going to be able to help you out, what about Craig’s List?”

“Oh man, not sure why I didn’t think of that, plus he looks a lot older than a three year old, I will certainly be able to dupe someone on Craig’s List, thanks for your help!”

Someone coined the phrase “terrible two’s”  a long long time ago and it has stuck.  However, two is really not that bad of an age and shouldn’t get such a bad rap.  The positives of two year olds far outweigh the fact that they poop their pants multiple times a day.  They have a limited vocabulary so they can’t talk back, are easy to bribe, and have a little to no mental capacity making it entirely possible to wait them out when they have a tantrum because they typical just forget about what it is they were upset about.  Three year olds  on the other hand are relentless, smart, and most of the ones I have run across have an extensive vocabulary they can utilize to push adults to the brink of insanity.  Hopefully terrorist organizations across the globe never discover the unbridled power of three year olds, if they do we are goners.

At the Jansma household we will be celebrating Winthorp’s third birthday this weekend by going to Great Wolf Lodge.  Moving forward he will be now known as Ted as a homage to Ted Bundy, a serial killer from the 70’s and 80’s who went across the country killing prostitutes, he ended up converting to Christianity right before he received the death penalty in some state that had the death penalty, so ultimately it all worked out for him in the end.  While I doubt my three year old will become a serial killer, his behavior if continued will result in confinement in jail or possibly prison.

The typical birthday is suppose to be a celebration, which I have never really understood, you didn’t really do anything you were just born.  However, I feel like the three year old birthday should have a tone similar to a funeral.  The parents could speak about the cute adorable kid they lost who has now been replaced by a  monster capable of unspeakable things.  Everyone would wear black, no one would laugh, and the venue would have to be Chucky Cheese’s, one of the most depressing and hopeless places on earth.

Typically I’m the one to lose my patience with Ted, but this morning when he was crying in his bedroom and I went in to check on him, and ultimately lay down in his bed with him, he decided he wanted to go in our room where Shirley was sleeping.  I may the correct choice and remained in his bed.  Immediately he began to throw a fit about not being able to be on the pillow he wanted to be on.  Shirley could not appease him no matter how hard she tried, normally she is the calmer parent, but there is one thing that will make her lose her shit, getting between her and her sleep.  She came unglued and began to yell at him.  Man, did that feel good, it reaffirmed every time I have ever yelled at him, ok maybe it didn’t but it made me feel a lot better about it.

At this point I can sympathize with the Cleveland Browns and their plight with Jonny Manziel.  Ted is continually posting pictures on instagram of him eating candy and the police are at our house on a regular basis investigating complaints by Randolph about Ted assaulting him.  Ok, it hasn’t gotten that bad but recently I did almost loose my cool, ok I did loose by cool, but no one got hurt.

I was bringing the kids into day care and had finally wrangled them into my truck.  (Am I the only one who always thinks they have plenty of time to get somewhere with their kids but then you ultimately show up at least ten minutes late to where ever it was you needed to be?)  We were on the rode and Ted was flipping out about how his shoes were on the wrong feet, I looked back just to make sure because they have been on the wrong feet before, and they were on the correct feet.  He continued to carry on about it and even though I assured them they were properly placed he wouldn’t shut up.  After yelling at him repeatedly I finally ripped his shoes and socks off.  Now they weren’t on the wrong feet, they weren’t on any feet.  This made him lose it even more and I had to pull over to the side of the rode and put his shoes back on as I stood in a snow bank.

These are the types of experiences I encounter on a regular basis with Ted.  On top of that he has had an issue I never noticed with my oldest, sporadic boners.  This is particularly problematic when he’s in his car seat and his boner hits up against the car seat buckle.  “My weiner hurts dad!”  At this point I tend to ignore him  when he yells and screams, but that’s a cry for help I’m taking seriously.  He also seems a bit pre-occupied by his penis.  Last night he was sitting down in the basement watching his brother and Shirley play Mario Party 9 with his hand down his pants.  He looked like I do on a typical Sunday when I watch football.  While he does seem to be morphing into a 3 year old version of Rainman who can’t be deterred from any of his irrational and non sensical behavior, there is one thing that gives me hope, sort of.

Yesterday the kids and Shirely stopped at Target to pick up some stuff for his birthday, Shirley also bought him a Spiderman figure because she had a gift card (but that’s another story).   Ted picked out Elsa (from Frozen) paper plates for his birthday celebration.  I’m also currently blogging as Frozen is on in the background, it’s what Ted wanted to watch. So, while he does seem to be incorrigible, he obviously does have a soft side.

 

and they are wrong!  Those who grew up in a Dutch Christian Reformed household likely experienced an environment that was lacking in hugs, nurture, encouragement, and heat.  Fortunately for me, the shortfall in all of these areas was made up for by copious amounts of sugar.  Pudding pops, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and a smorgasbord of candy were always readily accessible.  It’s a wonder that none of my siblings or I caught juvenile diabetes.  Recently, I’ve decided to put in place a diet plan that parallels the 21 day fix.  I ordered the 21 day fix cookbook and it includes a section on desserts.  The reality is that I can eat fish instead of meat, I can eat plain sweet potatoes instead of mashed potatoes, and I can eat shit tons of broccoli in place of pretty much anything that has flavor to prove to myself that food doesn’t have to have taste to provide nourishment.  What I can’t do is go a prolonged distance of time without sweets.  I love the shit out of anything with sugar in it.

I was skeptical when I made my first dessert in the cook book which was flour less brownies, the picture looked amazing, and if these things turned out half as well as the picture they would be just what the doctor ordered for my sugar fix.  After they had cooled down from the oven I took my first taste, my nose was half plugged and I was near the sink in case it was so vile that I needed to spit it out, fortunately it wasn’t too bad, and my kids even liked them.  The brownies were a semi success so I decided to make the chocolate chip cookies.  The ingredients for the cookies were, almond flour (I substituted gluten free flour because I couldn’t locate almond flour), coconut oil, one egg, two egg whites, a half a cup of maple syrup, and a half a cup of chocolate chips.  I mixed everything together and the batter was drier than a popcorn fart.  I proceeded to taste the batter and it tasted like what I imagine a dead raccoon’s butt hole would taste like.

Ultimately, I improvised and added another egg and brown sugar to make them edible.  The dough still tasted terrible and it felt and tasted like I had  licked out the center of a nuclear reactor.  Since I wanted really badly to have chocolate chip cookies to help me through my diet plan I faked myself into thinking the baked version would taste much better.  Unfortunately, the cookies are currently residing in the bottom of my trash can, my kids didn’t even like them, in fact I don’t even think my dog would have liked them.  My next experiment will be the peanut butter squares but I am a bit concerned because the recipe calls for Peanut Butter and honey which reminds  me of possibly the worst candy bar ever made, that’s right Bit O Honey, it should be entitled Bit O Regret.  Talk about a waste of empty calories.  Flashbacks to the Bit O Honey got me to thinking about the best candybars ever made.  So, I found a list of the best candy bars/candy of 2015 according to a Harris poll and boy do I have a beef to pick with the people they polled.

http://www.confectionerynews.com/Markets/Top-US-chocolate-and-candy-brands-2015

There are three categories:  Chocolate, Premium Chocolate, and Non-Chocolate.  I will address the chocolate and non-chocolate categories, I’m Dutch I don’t even dabble in premium chocolate, way too rich for my blood.  First of all, Hershey’s Kisses is  number one, that is the equivalent of Donald Trump becoming president, hold wait a minute that could actually  happen, regardless it’s a similar travesty.  Furthermore, the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate candy bar came in at 4.  It’s the same thing as Hershey’s Kisses you just don’t have to go through the hassle of unwrapping the tinfoil on twelve of them to get the equivalent of the candy bar.  Who did they poll here people with no taste buds and no common sense?  You just voted for the same thing twice you morons!  Here is my top five and it is flawless:

1. Milky Way:  Keeping it simple.  Caramel, Chocolate, and Nugget, can’t go wrong with that combination.  It’s chocolate perfection.
2. Take Five:  If you have never had it, don’t do it, it’s the candy bar equivalent of crack, I don’t even want to go into the unmentionable things I have done to get my Take Five fix.  Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Pretzel, and Caramel, need I say more?  It’s called a take five but you will likely go into a 30 minute sugar coma after consuming a take five.
3. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.  You can eat other brands of peanut butter cups, but they always fall short.  Miniature’s, full size, or jumbo, you will never be disappointed when you dig into a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
4. Peanut Butter Twix.  I’m not a real big fan of the plain twix because it’s way too plain for my taste, but you throw peanut butter on that bad boy and you have just created something truly magnificent.  If George Castanza would have put this into his candy bar lineup he would have had  a right to be upset when they were all consumed behind his back.  Maybe if we come up with a Peanut Butter version of one of the republican candidates that trails Donald Trump they would somehow be able to over take him for the nomination.
5. Caramello:  I was right in the middle of caramello and I struck gold!  Damn right you did.  Whenever I have one of these I always feel bad for not having it more, a Caramello candy bar is like that girl in college who had a great personality but you just couldn’t bring her out of the friend’s zone because she wasn’t quite cute enough.  Sure, you would mess around with her every once in a while, but you wouldn’t be seen in public with her.

I know I am going to get a huge amount of grief for leaving out Snickers but let me tell you this, Snickers is over rated!  That’s right, I said it, Snickers is the Adam Sandler of Candy Bars, it’s been getting by on name alone for years.  Besides, it has peanuts in it, peanuts are the Mel Gibson of nuts these days, nobody wants anything to do with Peanuts due to their hyper allergenic nature.  Granted, peanuts are the major ingredient of peanut butter, but peanut butter has so much more to offer than plain peanuts that I’m willing to overlook it’s deadly properties for the sake of it’s amazing taste and versatility.

The non chocolate top five according to the poll is even more of a travesty than what is currently going on with Flint’s water.  They have Reese’s Pieces as the number one on chocolate candy.  Are you kidding me, ET looked terrible back in the 80’s when they didn’t even have special effects, Aliens across all of the galaxies were visibly upset when the movie came out because ET was such a stereotypical alien and now he’s still influencing society 30 years later.  I’m pretty sure ET does not stand the test of time in light of it’s terrible special effects, awful plot, and ridiculous candy choice.  Lifesavers is second, this makes me think they only polled people who lived through world war 2, does anyone under the age of 30 even know what lifesavers are?  Come on people, what are we doing here, I don’t care what a bunch of people who are going to be dead with in two months think about candy.

1. Skittles.  They made a huge mistake when they went to sour apple and got rid of lime.  Who likes the taste of Sour Apple, if I don’t want my kids to eat something I tell them it’s sour apple flavored.  Whoever made that decision should be forced to watch an endless loop of Adam Sandler movies for the rest of their life.
2. Starbursts.  When I think starburst I only think red flavors, who actually eats the yellow or the orange? they are just an impediment to getting to the red flavors.  Fortunately starburst was smart enough to come up with bags that only contain red flavors, Way to go Starburst! But why are you still even producing orange and yellow?  When I’m eating starbursts out of the candy bar size package I never let my kids have any of the red ones, and you shouldn’t either, they have way too many good things in life to be allowed the red flavors of starbursts, I had to watch cartoons on a 19 inch tube television and I didn’t even have cable until I was in 8th grade, yeah I’m totally justified in my selfishness.
3. Nerds.  It’s just sugar somehow repackaged as candy.  Whoever came up with Nerds is a genius.  If I was to speculate, the profit margin on Nerds is around 99.9%.
4. Gobstoppers.  Teeth are overrated.  If you made it to the middle of a gobstopper with all of your teeth in tact you really felt like you had achieved something that was truly special.
5. Red Vine Licorice-  America has been brainwashed into thinking Twizlers is where it is at, but let me tell you, welcome to flavor country if you have been open minded enough to give Red Vines a shot.

There it is, now rush out to your local store and stock up, because there’s no telling how long it will be on the shelves after my 12 readers figure out what truly is the best candy in the USA.

After writing about the water crisis I finally looked into it, I think I avoided it because I didn’t want to have anymore white guilt than I already experience on a daily basis.  However, I couldn’t ignore it anymore after discovering that pretty much every celebrity was donating bottled water to Flint, even those who didn’t even know it was a city a week ago, and would have a difficult time finding it on a map.  Their generosity makes my one case of water donated on Saturday look quite meager.

It is truly alarming to discover that Flint, which once was a thriving city of 200,000 could be so mismanaged and run into the ground that it chose a new water source that made no sense financially or environmentally.  I’m haven’t dug deep enough to determine how this whole shit storm can be rectified, but what would seem to make the most sense is to allow Flint to pipe back into Detroit’s water supply and utilize that until the new pipeline to lake Huron can be completed.  Not even sure if that is an option, but water as I indicated doesn’t seem to be the only problem that plagues Flint.  It is a city that is one of the worst places to live in the entire United States and it needs more than just bottled water from celebrities to truly make a difference in the lives of its citizens.

So, while the city of Flint has been poisoned by it’s emergency city manager, and the state of Michigan ignored all of the pleas from the minority of people who spoke up against what had transpired with their water, (who were minorities) a new water system is like putting a band aid on a gun shot wound.  When all of the dust settles they will be a city comprised of a large percentage of citizenry who live well below the federal poverty line.  The only way this could be considered somewhat worth it is if the attention brought on the city of Flint due to the water crisis makes people actual give a shit about the overall conditions of the population of Flint and not just the quality of their drinking water.  Hopefully, it isn’t another situation where everyone pats themselves on the back for coming to the rescue and life ends up going on as usual in Flint after the water problem is solved, because life in Flint is the closest thing to third world living you can experience in this country.

The reports are of people having stomach issues, their hair falling out, and children’s growth being stunted.  However, clean drinking water, while helpful, doesn’t make up for the median household income being so low that pretty much everyone who lives in Flint is receiving government handouts and probably wouldn’t know a fruit or vegetable if it bit them in the ass.  There may be an avenue for the citizens of the city of Flint to pull out of the slow burn their city has been experiencing since General Motors put the entire town in their rear view mirror, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario where a class action suit on behalf of the entire city of Flint actually does anything but make Jeffrey Feiger or another wind bag attorney a whole bunch of money.  (Plus there’s that whole governmental immunity thing that may make it impossible for any monetary gain if someone is dumb enough to file a suit against the City of Flint, State of Michigan, Rick Snyder, or Michigan department of environmental quality)

Hopefully the water crisis not only brings about an overall improvement for the residents of Flint, but it also brings people to the realization that clean water is something the citizens not just of the Untied Staes, but the entire world deserve.

 

Saturday morning I was trying to clear out of the house before all the mom’s  and kids showed up to attend the play date my wife had arranged.  Somehow we ended up on the topic of the Flint water crisis.  My wife indicated that it could be a possible blog topic.  I confess, I know nothing about the Flint water crisis and any blogging about said topic would likely be completely uneducated and entirely insensitive.  So, why not, I don’t see how I can go wrong blogging about something I have almost no knowledge about.  I’m not sure why I haven’t paid much attention to this, wait a minute, it’s a water crisis in Flint, I will be honest, I don’t really give a shit.  If it was a water crisis in Alto (where I live) I might pay attention, anywhere else, I’m probably not paying much attention.  (to my credit when I checked out at D & W on Saturday I donated a case of water to Flint)

Before I get started here are a few stats that I pulled off from water.org

• 633 million people lack access to safe water (not sure if this means the water they have access to has sharks, alligators, and zombies residing in it, or merely lots of unhealthy microorganisms)
• 2.4 billion people lack access to a toilet (hopefully they at least have a good shovel and a roll of toilet paper, or at the very least lots of green leafy trees)
• Globally, 1/3 of all schools lack access to safe water.
• In low to middle income countries 1/3 of health care facilities in those countries don’t have access to clean water.

I have only been to Flint one time in my life, it was to interview for a job with the City Attorney’s office when I was fresh out of law school.  The place is a third world city in a first world country.  Even though I was desperate for a job, I couldn’t see myself working in Flint and living somewhere near it.  I’m sorry, but when you live in Flint, things are bound to go wrong, even with your water.  Some quick stats about Flint:

• Median household income $23,131
• Median Home Value $29,000
• Population: 99,763

So, what it ultimately comes down to when shit hits the fan in our culture is that we immediately look for someone to blame.  The target in this thing is Governor Snyder.  My question is, who does someone who lives in Zimbabwe blame when they can’t locate clean drinking water?  Probably no one, they figure shit out is what they do, they don’t immediately start bitching about not having clean water because on their list of things to be concerned about its well below getting eaten by a lion or contracting HIV.  I have no idea if Governor Snyder is culpable, nor does it really matter, if he screwed up he screwed up, he’s done a fairly decent job of turning things around in Michigan after Granholm handed him a turd sandwich.  Unless he went to Flint and pissed in their water supply I’m willing to give him a chance to fix this thing and move on as governor of this state.

On a completely different note, Donald Trump seems to continue to gain momentum with his hate mongering and complete douche bagery.  What I don’t understand is how someone who is that ugly inside and out doesn’t get called out for his bullshit.  I’m sorry, but when you have hair that looks like it  has been transplanted off road kill you have no room to bag on other people’s appearances.

Furthermore, he continually makes light of people’s weight when it looks like he may be made entirely out of jelly.  The reality is, the only people who can make fun of other people’s appearances are attractive people.  I have absolutely no problem with people who are moderately attractive and above, being given free reign when it comes to making fun of the appearance of others.  They have earned that right, wait a minute, they haven’t done anything, they are just better looking, it still makes sense though, God has chosen to allow them to feel like they are better than everyone else.

On the topic of attractive people(Donald Trump is not one of them nor has he ever been attractive. So, having become a billionaire is somewhat impressive in light of the fact that he is stone cold ugly), attractive people have an upper hand when it comes to pretty much everything.  If someone is on the fence about a hire they are going to go with the attractive person every time.  Furthermore, if you know an attractive person and they have been fired, they are not only not doing their job they are likely completely nuts.  Beautiful people just have to show up and everything works out for them.  For you men out there, if you are dating an attractive women and you find out she has been fired, run for the hills because she’s gots to be coo coo for cocoa puffs.  They will keep attractive women in a job for years beyond what any unattractive women or any type of man could get away with.

Sticking with the Donald Trump theme, it appears that Planned Parenthood was set up with some doctored videos by some individuals in Texas.  The allegations led to nationwide uproar against Planned Parenthood and companies such as Starbucks that support Planned Parenthood.  So, here is an idea for the Republican leadership, doctor up some videos of Donald Trump doing lines of cocaine off a strippers ass, diddling little boys, or sticking gerbals up his ass (PETA will be all over the last one) to get him out of the race and melt this snow ball going down the mountain that is dangerously close to turning into an avalanche.  Granted, there may be damning video that already exists somewhere, but if it doesn’t this is the recipe to dethrone Donald.  In turn hopefully the newly emerging Republican nominee will win the presidency and as his first act in office pardon the person responsible for creating the doctored videos of Mr. Trump.

 

 

My previous blog focused on which gender makes for a better employee.  While I was thinking about that particular blog, it occurred to me that a major difference between men and women is their competitive nature.  I play pick up basketball on a fairly regular basis and in all my time of playing pick up hoops I can count on two  hands the number of female players that have participated in the thousands of games I have played in.  Truthfully, I can’t imagine there is a single lunch time run on the face of the earth that involves all women.  I just can’t see a bunch of women getting together to play hoops on their lunch break multiple days a week.

On the other hand, I have three different options to play lunch ball as well as two different morning basketball options that typically run from 5:45am to 7am.  The dynamic of each lunch run is different, but all of my basketball runs are comprised of men and men alone.  I was playing on Friday with the Kuyper College group which is some ministers and other guys who have been playing hoops for at least two decades and have bounced from gym to gym.  I have been playing with these guys for about two years and have had some issues with one particular player.  Most people who play have had issues with this particular player, I’m just more vocal about my issues.  Typically I don’t guard this guy but was forced to on Friday.  He lowered his shoulder into me under the hoop trying to score and missed his shot.  Typically he calls a foul on that even though he initiated the contact, but because it was me he didn’t call the foul.

On the other side of the court he called a crap call on me that caused me to lose my mind and verbally attack him.  I was fully aware that I was in an awful mood for no particular reason and that me guarding this guy was going to lead to a potential blow up on the court.  I decided to switch up on defense with someone else to avoid the potential conflict but sir douche bag insisted on guarding me when he was on defense.  Ultimately, I ended up switching back to guarding la douche and actually called a foul on myself that he didn’t.  Maybe at the ripe old age of 41 I’m starting to show signs of maturity.  Regardless, there is a different dynamic in each place I play and I know what I can and can’t do.  When I play at MVP I am completely unbridled, which isn’t a good thing.  At Kuyper and South Christian high school I watch my p’s and q’s but am still the most vocal person on the court when injustices rear their ugly head on the hardwood.

Why do I do this?  Because someone has to do it and I’m just the man for the task.  It’s like coaches who argue with refs, they are laying the ground work for calls to go their way.  The more I chirp the more likely people who are known for making questionable calls will be dissuaded from making those calls.

What I can’t imagine, along with a group of women playing a regular lunch  time game, is those very same women having the occasional disagreement that leads to heated arguments and inappropriate things being said.  Why is that?  I fully realize that there are women out there who are competitive, but not nearly as competitive on the whole as men are competitive.  I was actually playing wii boxing against my five year old and he was kicking my butt and I was getting upset about it.  Ultimately he KO’ed me, I held it together on the outside, but it took every part of my being to not throw the controller across the room.  The next game I KO’ed the shit out of him and it felt good, real good.  I could have gloated but he’s not too terribly competitive and it wouldn’t have affected his mood and the fact that he was a loser would have been completely lost on him.

I attended a poker game yesterday where there were twelve guys playing, yes that’s right twelve guys and no women.  Shirley asked me this morning if the host’s wife participated in the poker festivities.  Seriously?  I’m sorry, but I know of very few women who have any interest in playing poker.  A long time ago I actually brought one of the girls that I shared office space with to play poker in a friendly game where the buy in was only five bucks, it doesn’t get much more friendlier than that, and by the end of the night all of the guys who were playing were completely exasperated because the person I brought, who it was readily evident had no idea what she was doing or a clue about the nuances of betting but she still somehow was cleaning our clocks.  Yesterday, we played from about 3pm until midnight, and it was the typical guy event where we were giving one another shit about everything imaginable because that is what guys do when they get together, at least the guys I associate with.

Now my wife will semi occasionally go out with a group of girls where they typically go out to eat and drink wine.  What do they talk about?  I have no idea, but I’m willing to speculate.  Their kids and their husbands.  You know how often kids and wives were brought up during the course of poker? Two that I can think of and they were by me discussing Shirley with an attorney who knows her.  The first instance was the fact that Shirley asked if I was going to be home for dinner (I left my house at 3pm)  Yeah, sure I’m going to head over to Mark’s play two hands of poker and then come home for dinner.  The second instance was when I played in charity golf outing and Shirley wanted me to get receipts for any mulligans I purchased to use as a tax write off.  Sure thing honey. (I would have talked non stop about my wife and kids but for this blog where they are a primary topic of conversation, all the other guys didn’t discuss their families because they are horrible human beings)

Once there was a text string going on between my wife and her friends about a planned girls night out and my wife’s text appear on our i pad.  Jackpot!  Instantly I joined the conversation pretending to be Shirley and alluded to drinking copious amounts of wine, possible pillow fights in our panties, and ultimately making out with one another.  What I forgot to include was that they should record the entire evening so that their husbands could share in the evenings festivities.  The reality is that men and women not only bring different qualities and characteristics to the workplace, they also bring different qualities when it comes to socialization.  Men and women socialize differently when it is among their own gender.  Furthermore, and I probably can’t get any women to agree to this fact, but guys are just way more fun than  women and that’s why women prefer to attend blended events.

Whenever I attend a guys weekend for golfing or other various activities I am typically asked by Shirley “When do I get to go on a girl’s weekend?”  My response is, whenever you want to is fine with me, fully realizing a girls weekend in theory sounds terrific to her, but in reality is the last thing on earth she wants to participate in.  She plans girls nights out months ahead of time and when the night finally nears she is scrambling for excuses to get out of it.

I’m in the process of trying to plan a spring trip to meet up with all of my college buddies.  The primary purpose of our weekend get aways is to drink beer and act like idiots.  I just can’t imagine women gathering at some remote location to drink beer and act like idiots, its just not in their DNA.  Honestly, I don’t think I can look back on one golf trip with my buddies and say that I regretted going on the trip (even the one in May in Cadillac when there was a snow storm in the middle of our round, or the one where my brother tipped a golf cart on it’s side and I almost lost my middle finger and most of the skin on my forehead as a result)

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy my family vacations equally as much, if not more.  Changing a shitty diaper in a bathroom lavatory, hauling multiple car seats through an airport, adjusting your kid’s sleep schedule to a time zone that is three hours different than yours, sounds like paradise to me!  Just kidding, I love my family vacations, I think my point is, when a women asks you “when do I get to go on my such and such girl’s weekend?”  Call her bluff and tell her anytime she wants to, because chances are, she doesn’t want to.

My last point on the markedly different approach men and women have to life can be seen in how we watch television.  Men are engrossed by the NFL, at least most men are as far as I can tell.  Most men engage in fantasy football where they draft players for their team and they play other teams comprised of other players.  These players have no idea they are on any of these teams and the actually format of these fantasy football leagues is ridiculous and has no real symmetry with actual football.  Furthermore, football has very little action to it and is painful to watch if you are actually present at a game.  What makes football palatable is being able to switch to anther football game when there is nothing happening in the football game you are currently viewing.

The equivalent of the NFL for women seems to be reality  television.  Big Brother, The Bachelor, and Survivor rank right up there with Downton Abbey (which is an actual drama and not a reality show as far as I can tell) as Shirley’s favorite shows  to watch.  Can you imagine a group of women getting together for a reality show draft.  “Ok, Barb, we are meeting at 6pm to at Buffalo Wild Wings for the draft, have you done your fantasy rankings yet?  If I get the first pick in the draft I’m taking Mark from the bachelor.”  Better yet, imagine if there was a particular day of the week that reality television was on the air and women spent the entire day checking their phones and computers to see how they were faring in the reality tv fantasy matchup?

I gave up on fantasy football because I realized it was a complete and utter waste of time, wives, I would suggest you encourage your husbands do the same, it was one of the best and most liberating things I have ever done.  Now if I can just take the next step of getting rid of sports all together there’s no telling how awesome my life could be.

Finally, what truly differentiates men from women is this fact.  My wife would never sit through Sunday Night or Monday Night Football hoping to get lucky, nor would I insist on watching football if that was on the table.  However, I’m willing to endure whatever god awful television show if I’m going to be rewarded or even if it’s just a remote possibility.  When you break it all down men are truly pathetic creatures.

 

 

 

 

There has been a bit of publicity given to the fact that men in Hollywood are paid more than women who have similar roles.  Recently, Jennifer Lawrence took up the cause to fight for equal pay for leading ladies in Hollywood.  Good for her, wouldn’t want her to have her fly a charter when she could have her very own G8 like most leading actors do.  In addition to Jennifer Lawrence bringing this gross inequity to light, the reboot of the X-files also demonstrated the inequality that exists in the Hollywood work place.  Fox was planning on paying David Duchoveney a higher salary for his role as Mulder than Jillian Anderson for her role as Scully.  Fortunately, Fox came to their senses, realizing neither one of them has done anything noteworthy since the original X Files and they are both being compensated similarly.

So, what’s the point of all of this, I am going to address the question of who is better in the work place.  First of all, I am going to do this by addressing cons.  I’m not really a guy who focuses on the pros and I really don’t think there are many of them when it comes to human beings in the work place or society in general.  One of the biggest things that distinguishes men from women is sports.  Men for some reason have gravitated towards sports and it often times consumes them to the point that it interferes with their work, family life, and causes them to be grumpy a majority of their adult life.  Fantasy football, NCAA Tournament pools, searching for tickets to sporting events online while at work, these are all things that interfere with a man’s productivity in the work place.  I know of no women who participate in any of these endeavors and if they are out there I would guess they waste a fraction of the time that men do at work figuring out if they should start Marshawn Lynch or Adrian Peterson.

I have often wondered what would happen if someone came up with the ingenious idea of outlawing collegiate and professional sports.  I’d like to say my life revolves around my family (I laughed out loud when I wrote that) but it doesn’t, it revolves around the Detroit Lions, Michigan Wolverines, Detroit Tigers and a number of other sports’s teams I have absolutely no input in or control over.  Makes perfect sense that I would invest so much in something I have so little to do with, right?  I spend quite a bit of time following these teams, during their respective seasons I read articles about them on the Detroit News website, watch their games, and listen to sports radio once in a while (we’ve got Steve from Grandville on the line, what do you think about the current state of the Lion’s Steve?  Seriously, who gives a shit what Steve thinks?  How does local sports radio even exist?  It’s awful)

My wife to the contrary has absolutely no interest in sports, in fact it annoys her and she is constantly disappointed to discover that when one season is over another one begins.  “Is this the last game of football?”

“Yes,the Super Bowl is always the last game, they use to have the Pro Bowl, oh, never mind, it is but basketball is still going on and then there’s baseball right after that, and then we are back to football….”

So, my question is, what do women do with all of their time?  If you took sports out of my life it would free up, on the average, 47 hours per week.  You can’t tell me they are actually working and spending productive time accomplishing actual meaningful activities the equivalent of the time I spend consumed by sports, unpossible I say! (unpossible should be a word)  I wish I had some insight in to what they do, but I’m too busy paying attention to sports to figure out what it is they actually do.

Furthermore, Shirley and I share pretty much equally in house hold tasks, other than she does all of the grocery shopping and not because I won’t, she seems to thoroughly enjoy it.  Maybe that’s what women do, they shop, I think I’m on to something.  Regardless, I cook, I do laundry (I feel like I am the only one who knows there is a lint screen in the dryer, every time I pull the thing out it looks like we tried to dry a labrador retriever, and where does all that lint come from? wouldn’t you think after you have put you clothes through the the wash and the dryer a couple times lint would no longer be generated by your clothes?)

On top of the sports thing, men also seem to be quite a bit consumed by their constant pursuit of sex, which can’t help but spill over into the work place with the advent of the internet.  Those men fortunate enough to work in an environment that has unfiltered internet access are probably the least productive human beings on the planet.  Someone I know and may or may not work with sends out football picks every week and he includes pictures of women in various states of dress and undress.

Not sure what “Ron’s” method is, but I’ve always assumed Ron found women who were alumni of the colleges he included in his games of the week.  I am currently running a playoff football gambling pool, and since Ron is in the pool I thought I would include a picture. Originally it was going to be a joke and I was searching for the lead character of the show Girls, Leena Dunham, topless.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I couldn’t locate such a picture.  So, I ended up settling on a topless picture of Kim Kardashean, say what you want to say about Kim, but they are real and they are spectacular.  I don’t often search for this type of stuff, but I can imagine that if you did, it could pretty much shoot your entire work day pretty much every day of the week.  So the distractibility of men is definitely a con.

So, while women don’t have sports or porn to distract them, I can’t imagine women sitting at their desk looking for dick pictures, I’m sorry but weiners are not attractive no matter how you slice it, and are definitely not worth the risk of a trip to the human resource office for a lecture on how penises can’t be tolerated in the work place.  I also can’t imagine women being preoccupied by the thought of having sex with their husbands all day at work like most men are, along withe hoping that it will happen, which I am sure isn’t something that ever enters into a women’s though process.  What is a con for women is how often they go to the doctor.

I am pretty sure most women average at least one doctor’s appointment per week.  I am not saying this is a flaw or a negative, prevention is way more cost effective in my mind, but when you are constantly going to the doctor, even though you aren’t wasting any other time while at work, it’s going to cut into your productivity.  I haven’t been to the doctor in at least three years, and none of the men I have worked with have ever visited the doctor as frequently as the women I have shared the work place with.  Maybe if women paid as much attention to their naughty parts as men do theirs their, trips to the doctor would be less frequent.  (Shirley just came in and read me the riot act about broaching this topic, but I’m sticking to my guns, this is a broad generalization and not specifically geared towards any women in particular)  I guess that’s a pro for penises, that and they allow you to pee while you stand up, they require much less maintenance than a Vagina.  I think there is a correlation there, just not sure what it is.  What I do know is that with the advances in artificial intelligence robots win hand downs regardless of their gender.

 

 

Those of you who know me know that I am the farthest thing from cool that you could ever find. That was primarily why I had reservations about going to see Straight Outta Compton when it was released in theatre’s last year. I don’t need any further evidence that I am not cool, when I try to dance in front of my kids they plead and beg for me to stop.  Attending a movie about African American rappers would do nothing but further cement how uncool I was. Fortunately, I summoned up the courage to attend the movie and was impressed with how well they did making the movie.  Since it was released on DVD yesterday I thought I would give everyone my take on the movie.

NWA was largely an unknown to me as I grew up in one of the whitest of all places in the entire Untied States, Byron Center, Michigan. Sadly, NWA and all the evolution that was Gangsta Rap would have been right in my wheelhouse having been in middle school and high school when it all evolved into the multibillion dollar industry. Unfortunately for me my mom found The Fat Boys Are Back tape that I had purchased from the Meijers on Clyde Park (I actually rode my bike form my house to Meijers which is at least five or six miles one way) and listened to it. The lyrics were not filled with the explicit lyrics or songs depicting violent acts, merely rap about getting tail and laying pipe. It was probably PG-13 in contrast to the stuff NWA was about to put out in the upcoming years, but the content was raunchy enough for me to get a stern lecture and keep me from making anymore bike trips to meijers for rap tapes.

I think my follow up music purchase was Whitney Houston, man was I a loser. Little did I know things were about to get way worse for me in the not so distant future with braces, a mullet, and acne so bad my dad called me pizza face all before I even was able to get my driver’s license. So, the reality of my terribly dorky junior high and high school years is that I primarily listened to classic rock (Tom Petty, Boston, and Foreigner) and had little exposure to Gangsta Rap. Furthermore, once I was free from the clutches of my conservative parents and made my way to college (1992 the precipice of Gangsta Rap) another phenomenon was taking the music world by storm, grunge had taken over the airwaves and Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Alice and Chains were capturing the young white middle class music consumer. In all reality, even if I had been turned on to Gangsta Rap there was no way I would have even attempted to fit into that type of culture, I wouldn’t have even known where to start trying to be a poser and had I tried I  probably would have been a even more pathetic version of Vanilla Ice, if that’s even possible. That being said here goes:

Fortunately the movie had been out for a couple of weeks and I was at the 3:20 showing on a Monday afternoon so most of the demographic (not middle class 40 year old white males) had either already seen the movie. Had it been opening night I’m pretty sure I would have been looked at like I was from another planet and been disliked almost as much as NWA’s jewish manager (which I will get to in my review) When I got to the theatre there were only two other people in already seated and only a handful of other people came in to the theatre after I had arrived. There was a foursome of grossly overweight individuals who rolled up as my brother got to the theatre and he indicated that they had a handicap plate but they were somehow able to sit in the top row of the theatre despite their handicap, that’s perseverance my friends. Regardless, their only handicap appeared to be eating whatever they could get their hands on.

Typically I wouldn’t mention previews in a movie review but I’ve never really done a movie review so I have to throw something in about the Star Wars preview, it looks fucking awesome. Also, there is another Terintino movie coming out that has some real promise. Ride along 2 may be one of the worst sequels ever produced, and that’s saying a lot because there have been plenty of terrible sequels including but not limited to Dumb and Dumber 2 and Grown ups 2 (probably both in Miller and Jenkins top ten movies of all time). The movie opens with Eric Wright AKA EZ E making a transaction at a drug house that summarily gets raided by the police, he narrowly escapes and the movie hits the ground running. It chronicles the exploits of the various members of NWA before they became NWA and does an effective job of building the back story for their rise to success through hard work and effective marketing.

There is an undertone through the entire movie that the police are horrible racist individuals who are completely corrupt and not to be trusted. This is illustrated through various interactions between the members of NWA and the police as they slowly build their fame. EZ manages to make acquaintances with Jerry Heller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Heller  when he is picking up albums of their first single that they are selling on their own. He takes them under his wing and manages to get them a record deal and a corresponding national tour.

The film portrays the group members as fairly benign compared to the typical residents of Compton and effectively captures the distrust that some group members have for Jerry and EZ and chronicles how each member dealt with the mistrust and as a result how they were able to make their own fame and fortune apart from NWA. Mid way through the film Sug Knight insets himself into the middle of the Gangsta Rap scene and has a major impact on the further evolution of the wrap industry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suge_Knight  Eventually things begin to splinter for the remaining members of NWA while those who have broken off from the group are flourishing. There is an attempt to get the band back together at the end conditioned on there being no involvement by Jerry Heller. Ultimately, Dr. Dre makes a shrewd move to distance himself from the record label he spun off from his days with NWA and the rest is history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Dre

My thoughts after seeing the movie were that it was about a half hour too long and that black people are super fucking cool, so super fucking cool that it is probably difficult for white people to hang out with black people because they have no chance of being that cool. Actually, I think that explains the racial divide in our country, black people, for the most part, are so super fucking cool that no one wants to hang out with them. My other thoughts on the movie are that first of all, things were likely embellished a bit to make it more cinematically pleasing to the audience. Secondly, they did a phenomenal job of casting, while the running joke among white people is often that black people all look the same to them, they really don’t and all the actors who were cast in this movie look exactly like the real life version of the person they are portraying. This aspect of the movie makes it much more legit and adds to its credibility along with the fact that the guys who play these roles are pretty good actors.

Lastly, there is quite a bit of T&A in this movie but it’s primarily black T&A which isn’t my favorite type of T&A and it’s from the early 90’s which makes it even more unappealing. However, the parties depicted in the movie are off the hook and amazing, it makes me think that these guys have an even better lifestyle than athletes. However, you know these guys were bagging some super hot white chicks back in the day and that is my biggest knock on the movie, they need to throw some more of that scantily clad into the movie. I was also going to go into the Rodney King shit but I have to get rolling to luch time hoop so that will have to wait for another day, if ever. But, I will say I was a little too young to have really paid much attention to the whole ordeal, but from what is depicted in the movie the way things went down was complete and utter bullshit. Unfortunately, the rioters weren’t smart enough to go riot in the white neighbor hoods and they destroyed their own neighborhoods. I would say that was a major tactical error on their part. Next time something like that happens I will be the honorary riot coordinator and steer the prospective rioters in the proper direction to make the most impact socially and economically by having them riot in the most advantageous neighborhoods.

No matter how I try, I can never fully prepare myself for the toll winter takes on me both physically and mentally.  It never seems to fail, once we pull out of March and things begin to bloom all I can do is look forward.  I think it is the right thing to do, why focus on snow, sub zero temperatures, and days where it is dark well before most people get home from work?  I really think there should be a mandatory video that people who live in cold climates have to watch in November that prepares them for the god awful thing we call winter.  This year we had a fairly mild November and December, this caused the first taste of arctic temperatures to feel like a right hook from Mike Tyson.  As January rolls on it is difficult to really put your finger on what is most miserable about winter.

Last week, as I prepared to get my oldest out the door and off to preschool, I grabbed his snow pants, boots, hat, mittens and coat.  The last time I brought him to school I didn’t put his snow gear on ahead of time and when I arrived at his classroom all the other kids were already fully snow geared up and ready to rock on out to the playground.  I wanted to ask his teachers if they were sadists, why are you making these kids go outside?  But I didn’t, I grabbed my kid’s snow gear and struggled to get all of his shit on while his teachers looked on wondering if they should step in and take over.  I was failing miserably partially due to the fact that my kid was about as helpful as if I was trying to dress a corpse for their funeral and partially due to the fact that I was trying to get his snow pants on over his shoes.  The most troubling part was that I couldn’t yell at him for being completely unhelpful.  “Come on why don’t you ever help me!  You’re five years old, you should be doing this by now, why are you so completely worthless?  Oh, that’s right, I do everything for you because I don’t have the patience to watch you take seven minutes to put your socks on.”

Having learned from my mistakes and wanting to be able to yell at him while I dressed him I put all of his gear on before we left the house.  Once he was fully dressed he immediately began to cry about being itchy.  He tried to start taking his gear off and I lost my patience with him, I can deal with his whining, but I wasn’t going to redress him.  The entire way to school he periodically had tantrums complaining about how itchy  he was.  We arrived at school  only to find his class room completely empty, usually they leave one of the teacher’s aids behind to help Winthorpe out to the playground since he routinely arrives a minimum of five minutes later than anyone else in his class.  So, I figured they must be in the gym or somewhere other than the playground.  Never did it occur to me that they were finally putting their foot down and it was time I started getting my kid there the same time other people did.

After checking the gym and various other parts of the school it was evident that they were all out on the playground.  Part of me wanted to tell the kids to exert their strength in numbers to avoid going outside.  There’s no way these kids wanted to be outside, but when kids are in a group like that they are lemmings and they do whatever they are told, it’s actually a thing of beauty.  It makes me wonder if you have a big family do the kids by default actually listen to their parents?  Regardless, it can’t be worth it, two disobedient kids has got to be better than three obedient kids.

What the kids need to do while they are waiting in line to go  outside is take all of their snow gear off.  There is no way the teachers are going to go through the hassle of putting all the kids snow gear back on to go outside.  It’s fucking hell trying to get my kid’s snow shit on, I can’t imagine trying to get some kid I have no  affiliation with geared up to go outside, let alone dozens of them.

While locating snow gear and putting it on your kids can be frustrating, the inability to go outside and being trapped in your home is even worse than the utter frustration children’s snow apparel afflicts on parents.  I am constantly trying to find ways to get the kids out of the house to preserve my sanity and avoid having child protective services called on me when I finally lose my mind.  I read somewhere that Jack Nicholson prepared for his role in the Shining by spending a weekend with a three and a five year old in an isolated cabin in the woods in the middle of the winter.

There are a number of activities that cater to young children such as Catch Air, Sky Zone, and the Children’s Museum.  The unfortunate thing is that these all cost money, and my kids never seem to get the bang for the buck, always wanting to take a break to eat candy or leave the facility prematurely.  However, there is one place to unleash your kids that is always free, at least as long as you don’t do any shopping.  The play land at the mall is typically my last resort when it comes to finding activities to get my kids out of the house during the winter months.

In Grand Rapids there are two options.  The first option is the play land at Woodland Mall.  The play land at Woodland Mall is possibly the most ill conceived play land I have ever seen. All it is is a bunch of oversized modelings of food. There’s bacon, waffles, eggs, and pancakes, seriously what fat ass designed their play land? Whenever I bring my kids there all I want to do is go eat breakfast somewhere. Ultimately, I end up more depressed as I’m forced to watch filthy children climb up and down sculptures of breakfast food. However, I will give the kids that play there credit, they resemble animals released from their cage and into the wild, running around the fake food and making it appear like it is the best day of their lives.

The second option is the play land at River Town Crossings.  This is an excerpt taken from an email I sent to some of my buddies about  an experience I had in November when I took the kids out to Grandville:  (I am picking this up midway through the email so it doesn’t flow real well to begin with)

I made the mistake of going out to Grandville thinking that it would be a better experience for my kids,  never thinking that while that may be the case, it could end up being completely awful for me.  My kids became restless because there was a traffic jam as I left work that caught me completely off guard causing Randolph to want to get out of my truck ten minutes before our estimated arrival. Furthermore, they told me they wanted to go to the mall before going to eat at Chipotle (There has been a national food poisoning scare with Chipotle restaurants, some would see this as a problem I see it as a bonus, shorter lines, it’s my constant glass half full approach to life) so we went to the mall first and after about 15 minutes of running around like they had just won the Super Bowl they were hungry and thirsty.

To solve the thirst problem I went and bought a regular lemonade at the pretzel place next to the play land hoping that that would tide them over until we made our way to Chipotle (which was the only thing keeping me in a positive state of mind at this point). The guy who sold me the lemonade asked if I wanted an extra large for 30 more cents and I basically told him hell no. My kids both took turns sucking down the lemonade and indicated that they were hungry so I decided to purchase some modified pigs in a blanket from the pretzel place to hopefully extinguish their ravenous hunger. They were mini hot dogs wrapped in a soft pretzel and they were truly amazing. Unfortunately, the mini pretzel dogs made my kids quite thirsty and I had to purchase a refill on the lemonade for $1.31 which put my frame of mind into a complete tailspin.

The first two issues I encountered can be blamed on me, not checking traffic conditions and properly snacking up my kids prior to our trip to Rivertown squarely on my shoulders, however there was something else that was much more perplexing and problematic than traffic or a pair of hungry whiney kids. The treehouse playland at Rivertown is a complete and utter nightmare, its the child’s version of an ICP (Insane Clown Posse)concert minus the illicit drugs and Faygo pop. First of all there was this two year old girl who kept climbing up the slide while kids were trying to go down the slide. Never do you feel so helpless as a person than when you can’t yell at a kid for their terrible and irresponsible behavior, because they aren’t your kid. I wanted to grab this little girl by the arm and tell her to knock it the f off and go up and down the slide the proper way, we have rules that are so fundamental to the framework of our society that they must be obeyed, proper slide protocol is at the heart of those rules.

In hindsight, as satisfying as this would have been, I probably should have found the kids parent and given them my business card because that girl is going to need a criminal defense attorney some day. While the two year old climbing the wrong way up the slide was problematic and could have resulted in minor injuries (most likely to the renegade two year old with no regard for slide protocol so no biggie) of more serious concern was the arrival of a 150 lb kid to the play land. He resembled a nose tackle for a division three college football team, not an elementary school  student. The kid ended up running by one of the slides while a small girl was sliding to the end. She ran into him at full speed and careened off of him like a car running into a highway underpass. If the Rivertown play land had a concussion protocol she would have been sent to the locker room for further observation and at the very least would have been held out of next weeks trip to Catch Air.

Unfortunately for her there is no such protocol and I saw her happily running around the play land five minutes later likely with a traumatic brain injury that will go undetected for years. I was hoping that that was going to be the end of the carnage, boy was I wrong. As I was walking with Randolph towards the slide I saw a small heap on the ground that was apparently a child who was crying his eyes out. Wait a minute, I recognize that cry, that sounds like Winthorpe .

Sure enough Winthorpe had fallen no more than a foot off from the slide onto the extremely plush and soft carpet and was now inconsolable. He cried for at least five minutes and couldn’t move his arm (didn’t stop me from taking them through the mall and looking for a pair of grey casual boots, I have had my heart set on finding these elusive boots but I just can’t find them anywhere) Ultimately we ended up eating at A&W in the food court because I just couldn’t go through getting my kids in and out of the car another time just so we could go to Chipotle, and as I write this our nanny is taking Aiden to the doctor to see if he has a broken arm (so they can charge us for an unnecessary medical exam there’s no way he has a broken arm but Shirley insisted on him receiving medical attention)

So, if you are in a pinch to get out of the house this winter take my advice and hit the mall.  Banana Republic has some terrific sales this time of year, and those pretzel pig in the blankets won’t disappoint.

 

Last week comedian, and I am not even sure I should be using that word to describe him, Jeff Dunham was at the Van Andel arena to do a show.  If you are unfamiliar with his work you are one of the most fortunate people in the world.  He is a ventriloquist, that pretty much sums it up.  I thought ventriloquism was dead, unfortunately I was wrong.  A number of years ago I was in Vegas and the Mirage was featuring Mr. Dunham, at that point I knew he was awful, but so were a lot of other people who had featured acts in Vegas, even the Osmonds were still bringing it at the Flamingo.  That being said,it still pained me to see his face plastered across the Mirage holding one of his puppets.

Obviously funny is subjective, what makes one person laugh is based upon that person’s personal taste, and in the case of Jeff Dunham, lack of IQ.  I was speaking with my brother about the Dunham phenomenon and mentioned that he had the highest rated premiere show in comedy central history.  That may be what made Dave Chapelle loose his shit, Jeff Dunham held a record over him.  He premiered at 5.3 million viewers and 6 weeks later his show was canceled.  One of his skits involved having his homophobic puppet go to a gay counselor.  Hilarity obviously ensued.  Even though his show bombed, he has still managed to thrive in the stand up comedy world despite the fact that he is a racist homophobe.

While being a racist homophobe shouldn’t preclude him from being successful, the fact that he isn’t funny should.  The reality is that comedians are given quite a bit of leeway in the material they choose to use, and many comedians choose to use off color and politically incorrect topics as part of their routine.  I don’t have a problem with that if the person is actually funny, and bringing up humorous things about the differences between races or sexual preferences can be humorous, and for most comedians can be comedy gold.  The problem is is that Jeff Dunham puts about as much creativity into his act as Adam Sandler does into his movies.

Granted, there are plenty of people who lack intelligence and talent but despite that have either been in the right place at the right time, or faked their way to success.  Good for them, that is what our country is built on, people with little to no talent fooling people and faking their way to the top.  I’ve never been a fan of Howard Stern, getting attractive women to come on your show and asking them to show you their tits doesn’t seem to be too terribly difficult when they are hookers or strippers, nor does it seem to be a talent set.  Fortunately for Howard he was able to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and the lowest common denominator is a large segment of our society, and doing so has been lucrative beyond his wildest dreams.

Howard Stern, Jeff Dunham, and countless other people have managed to, in my opinion, snow over the American public on their way to unimaginable wealth and fame.  And even though I don’t find them to be particularly talented, I am sure they have put in an incredible amount of work and experienced quite a bit of adversity on their way to the top. Furthermore, their success has not had a detrimental affect on society as a whole.  However, Donald Trump’s continued rise to the top of the Republican party has.  I heard someone claim that he is intelligent.  Is he really?  He is a race baiter who is also a misogynist and his basic tactic when confronted for his fucked up views is to be a bully or call the person stupid.  Yes, the front runner of the Republican party resorts to tactics most people stopped using after elementary school when people call him out on his shit.

Even though society as a whole has very little discernment, I have always believed that when we choose people to lead our country those who appeal to the lowest common denominator will be weeded out and exposed.  This has not happened as of yet with Trump and he continues to gain momentum.  He has absolutely no substance, doesn’t know the issues, filed for bankruptcy and divorce a handful of times, yet people think he is the answer, the shot in the arm the Republican party needs and the shot in the arm this country needs.

Trump should have never made it this far but he has and what is most troubling in my mind about Trump is his insistence to pretend he is something he isn’t.  Damn it Trump, you are bald, just admit it, that is the world’s worst comb over and you can not be the nominee for the Republican party with that god awful combover.  Does the Republican party want their nominee to lack the confidence to acknowledge the fact that they are bald?  I can just see Putin at some foreign summit tackling trump and pulling his comb over off, revealing his bald misshaped head.  It is fairly obvious that he is insecure for two reasons, his combover, and the fact that he bullies everyone by claiming they are stupid and inferior to him.

So, what is the end game here?  What happens if Trump somehow manages to secure the Republican nomination?  He will get his ass kicked in the general election, the Democrats could put a ticket together of Jeff Dunham with one of his puppets running as VP and they  would beat Trump.  The brush back from all of this would be the complete disintegration of the Republican party as we know it with the conservative faction of the party breaking off and forming their own party, leaving the democrats to take complete control of the national political landscape for the foreseeable future.

Obviously this is all speculation on my part, but the American political landscape thrives on gridlock, and if one party is able to dominate it will allow politicians to actually accomplish things, do we really want politicians accomplishing things?   Allowing one political party to become the New England Patriots of politics would be like giving Jeff Dunham his own show, it may seem like it’s working in the beginning but ultimately it will fail.

 

 

 

 

There are plenty of things to worry about in life, is the Mars candy company going to do  away with another Skittles flavor and replace it with a god awful flavor? (they replaced lemon lime with green apple, does anyone like green apple flavor, I will take an apple pucker mother effer shot every once in a while, but that’s only because there is alcohol in it)  Is there actually an airborne pathogen that could bring about a Zombie apocalypse?  Will I accidentally see Lena Dunham (the disgusting actress from the HBO series Girls) naked on the internet when I am surfing for other more interesting material?  (She’s totally disgusting and anyone who applauded her for being courageous enough to take her clothes off in front of a  camera is an idiot, how about she gets courageous enough to get on a treadmill? or better yet create a show that is actually funny?)    That being said, I think most parents in the early stages of parenting wonder, and to a degree, worry about how their children are going to turn out.

I shouldn’t have this problem, Rudolph and Winston are well on their way to being Juvenile Delinquents, and likely will spend a significant amount of time causing what hair I have left to turn gray.  This assumption is strictly based on my short comings as a parent and have absolutely no reflection on Shirley’s parenting ability.  But maybe I am placing an over emphasis on the roll a father plays in his two son’s lives.  Hopefully they can overcome all of my terrible qualities as a parent while at the same time avoid inheriting any of them.  Unfortunately, I already see parts of my personality in them.  When an inanimate object gets the best of them and they can’t get it to do what they want they flip out and try to damage it (I still do that).  My oldest became completely unglued last night when I told him he wasn’t funny, “I’m funny dad, he repeatedly said between sobs” (I would react the same way if someone told me I wasn’t funny,  “listen here you SOB!  I”m funny, right?  What about me isn’t funny? Ok, maybe I see your point, my humor isn’t for everyone”)

That being said there are other things that concern me about my oldest son, and had I won the Power Ball last night I would have used some of my winnings to determine if there is such a thing as the dork gene.  Obviously the dork gene would not have come from my loins, genetically I’m dork free, but there are a number of possible dork gene carriers in Shirley’s family and thats where the research would start.  There would be a lot of swabbing and blood draws on that side of family as part of my scientific research.  (There is the possibility that my oldest received the gene from his paternal grandmother’s side of the family, but I’m just going to merely mention that in case she happens upon this blog someday)  Now, some of you may say I’m over reacting, but I have plenty of ammunition to back up my theory that he has the dork gene.

First of all, last night when I was putting him in his booster seat he tried to lick my face, when we got to his swimming lessons he also tried to lick my face.  (He’s five years old)  Also, we attended a party for the Michigan/Michigan State football game and one of my friend’s daughters was asking some of the kids if their siblings wore diapers and Winston or Rudolph, I can’t remember which one my oldest is, got right in her face and said MY BROTHER DOES! spraying spit all over her. It’s already quite obvious that he won’t be too terribly smooth with the ladies.  (no way he inherited that trait from his old man)

The big question is; (i’m using a semi colon here, probably not the correct time or place for that but I thought I would give it a shot)  what do you do with this information if it is revealed to you in utero?  The dork gene probably isn’t a deal breaker, but knowing it ahead of time will help a parent determine how to address their child’s inevitable dorkiness.   I’ve given this quite a bit of thought over the recent past and there are two approaches to this perceived problem.  The first approach would be to foster the dorkiness and make that kid the best dork they can be.  There is really no sense in trying to make them something they aren’t, popular, then your kid is going to be stuck on the fringes of popularity, always wanting more but never being able to achieve it. Popular kids can sense dorkiness and unpopularity like a dog can smell fear, and popular kids are even meaner than a rabid dog, and much more dangerous.

If you mold them into a terrific dork they can strive to be at the most popular dork.  Living a life of a dork they will know no better way of life, model airplanes, comic books, masturbating into a sock (wait a minute cool kids do that as well) are all things that your child will be led to believe are top notch entertainment, except the masturbating part they will probably figure that out on their own.  They wont’ expect to be the quarterback of the football team, king or queen of prom, or the kid who slays all the chicks.  Being a mathlete,  on the debate team, or taking first at the science fair with the robot they made out of fingernails and boogers and powered by urine, will be shining moments in their high school career.  The upside to this entire concept of fostering your kid to be a dork is that their self esteem should remain at a normal level, dorks in movies all seem nice and I can’t imagine them picking on their fellow dorks.  However, if your child makes an attempt to be popular and hang out with the cool kids there is almost an absolute certainty that they will have their self confidence completely shattered  at some point in their scholastic career.

The second option is to beat the dork out of them, this is likely to work  about as well as trying to beat the homosexual out of your kid.  You could force your kid to play sports, my understanding is there is this program called upward sports and they are prepared to indoctrinate your child into the lucrative field of youth sports as early as when your child reaches the age of 5.

You can also try and get your kids to socialize with the cool kids by befriending the parents of the cool kids and hoping that their kids will in turn hang out with your kids because their parents are friends.  However, being rejected by the cool parents at your kids school is probably just as traumatic as being rejected by the cool kids you went to school with, so tread lightly if you are going to attempt and implement this particular strategy.

Or, you could just pay cool kids to hang out with your kid.  Obviously the price would vary based upon the dorkiness of your kid, I’m guessing Shirley and I would have to take out a home equity loan if we wanted to put this plan in to use.  (this strategy is similar to the plot line of the sneaky good movie starring Patrick Dempsey called Can’t Buy Me Love)   The harsh reality is that no matter how hard you try, genetics are who we are and there is little that can be done to alter our genetic makeup.  Granted, science is making great strides in genetic research, but it is unlikely such strides will benefit my children.  The reality is that I need to just realize, it could have been worse, they could be on the path to be the next Justin Beiber, I can’t imagine even his own mom can stand him.  And on top of all that, Shirley will be able to fully realize what I believe to be one of her goals as she over nurtures (code for coddling) Winston, he is likely to never leave the nest.