Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
“They must hold a contest at the loonie-bin,” said my Dad, “to see who can come up with the craziest idea for a toy.” The year was somewhere between ’72, when we moved from Arizona to Washington State, and ’76 which was our nation’s bicentennial — I can’t pin it down any more exactly than that. The occasion was a commercial advertisement for the toy, or something very much like it, that was and is the Fisher-Price Shake ‘N Go Smashup Speedway. If memory serves, Mom actually sucked in her breath in abject horror. The cars would zip around this figure-eight track, two of them, at slightly different speeds. Sooner or later they would meet at the intersection, and — built to fall apart — both vehicles would send their respective parts flying in all directions, perhaps hundreds of them.
Now, I wanted the toy as much as any other pre-pubescent moppet kid, but I was accustomed to not getting what I wanted. “Puh-LEEZE!?!?!?!?” didn’t work too well in my childhood. And although I would never have admitted it at the time, I could see my mother’s position to a certain point. I had already gone through the heartbreak of rendering many a prized possession useless by losing this-or-that seemingly insignificant part to it. But of course this wasn’t foremost in my mother’s mind, she was worried about the vacuum cleaner.
It’s a generation later.
And I’m just in shock at what I just heard from my son. McDonald’s has this toy they’re distributing with their happy meals, and the toy is this-or-that “Shrek III” character in molded plastic. You take the top half off the bottom half, and there’s a slot in which you put these annoyingly small playing cards. Down under the ass of whatever character it is, there is this red lever, and I had been operating under the assumption that you gently press the lever down to elevate the playing cards so you could take out one at a time.
And I was dead-flatass wrong. It’s a card launcher. The red lever is a “stomp-em” type thing. You give it a good whack, and the “launcher” launches the cards up, toward the ceiling, to float down to the floor God-knows-where.
There’s no use trying to explain this to me. I’m not going to get it.
See, in my world, “cards” are things you play with. You play for fun, you try to win money out of people, you try to get them to take off their clothes. If you really want to push your limits, you use clothespins to pin them against bicycle spokes so that they make funny sounds when you ride your bike.
“Card” and “launcher” don’t have anything to do with each other…in my world. Like my father before me, I’m wondering about contests at the local loonie-bin. You spew these laminated cards up toward the ceiling…for what possible purpose? It’s time to face facts. Someone has to be trying to give someone else a migraine…on purpose.
There is this program called Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends. It has been, for three years at least, one of my son’s favorite shows. It is no longer allowed in my house — because of “Blue.” Blue used to be my favorite of all the imaginary friends. I thought that was so cool — he was so simple. A little blue imaginary friend, presumably dreamed up by a very young child who liked the color blue.
We were watching it one day, and Blue started launching in with — I’ll never forget this — “I’M GOING TO THE ICE CHARADES! I’M GOING TO THE ICE CHARADES! I’M GOING TO THE ICE CHARADES!” And then Blue did the unthinkable: He repeated it…some more…six…more…times.
This was unforgivable. It was explained to me, both by my son and by my girlfriend, that the whole point to the exercise was to show that Blue was becoming annoying to the other imaginary friends. But that didn’t cut it with me. If this was the intended message, Blue could have repeated himself three times. Maybe even just two times. He did it NINE times…which had one, and only one, possible purpose. To give parents headaches.
Playing cards…ultra-miniature playing cards, no larger than the smallest size of Post-It Note…are being launched toward ceilings. This has what to do with what? Once again, our toy-makers seem to be going out of their way to give parents migraines. Giving the children something fun to do, perhaps educating them, giving them a few more angles of perspective from which to perceive the world and broaden their horizons — this is all secondary. Too many of our toy designers and toy makers seem to regard it as a primary mission, to make parents’ hair fall out of their heads.
The war is on.
Where do we go from here? Well, it seems to me that scattering little bits of laminated cardboard around the room is far too random. Not nearly destructive enough.
I have an idea for a robot. As soon as the technology becomes available, the robot should be able to make some educated judgments about how much things cost. This loveseat is worth maybe fifty bucks…that sectional over there is brand-new, retails at $1700. Given that, it should wander over to the sectional and spew raspberry jam, or blue ink, all over the sectional. Then it could waddle out to the garage, walk straight past the $1500 Toyota, over to where the $80 thousand Porsche Targa is parked, and do a number on it with steel wool.
You know, take the randomness out of it.
Another idea I have is for “stink balls.” They’re made with fish guts. About the size of little spitwads, you add water and they’ll start stinking to high heaven forty-eight hours later. You then pack them in a cardboard tube aimed at the ceiling, put an explosive charge in the breach, and you scatter about fifty of these things all over the living room. Under the couch, behind the television set.
Again — take the randomness out of it — the mission is to get parents more stressed-out and maybe get them to drink more. Just stop pretending you’re trying to do anything different.
What is it that separates my ridiculous ideas from reality? Not much, in the Christmas season of 2007. Just a little bit of candor, maybe a touch of technology that isn’t quite here yet. An elimination of randomness, and a willingness to admit that our toymakers and our parents are not allies after all.
Seriously though. Why do we put up with this? Who made this rule that a child’s toy has to be annoying to his parents?
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