Doggie Bags

I was standing in the Golfsmith store today, browsing through stuff I want but will never buy, when a long-haired blonde guy stuck his head in the door.

"Can I bring my puppy in here?" he asked.

"What the hell?" I thought to myself. Why would someone bring their puppy to a golf store? Why would he even take his dog in the car if he knew he had shopping to do? What would make him think that a store would allow a dog inside?

Maybe the dog is a golfer, I snorted. This joke kinda backfired because I spent the next 20 seconds actually picturing a dog playing golf, which would explain why people in the Golfsmith store saw a sunburnt guy stopped dead in his tracks with a huge doofey smile on his face.

But I wiped that smile off of my face in a hurry because there's nothing funny about Florida's dog problem. Not even golfing dogs. Although they do come very close.

Anyway, people in Florida collect dogs. And when I say that Floridians "collect" dogs, I mean they collect dogs like people used to collect Beanie Babies, except that these particular Beanie Babies will often pee on the furniture, vomit on the floor or both.

The Florida obsession with dogs would not bother me at all, except that my mother-in-law, the owner of three (sometimes four dogs) has decided that my family needs another dog. She and many other Florida dog owners agree that we need a second dog because:

1. My Current Dog is Apparently Lonely and Needs a Friend. I'm not sure how anyone can calculate my twelve year-old dog's need for companionship, but apparently it's obvious. Perhaps my dog has been clumsily placing ads on Craig's List.

2. My Kids Need a Younger Dog. This one is an insidious reversal of the first reason because it posits that my current dog has too much companionship. It seems that my rambunctious kids may accidentally break my elderly dog in the course of normal activity. We need another, healthier dog to draw away our kids' attention. There may be some truth to this, though. My mother swears that my kids broke her once when she was babysitting.

3. Florida Needs More Poop. Okay, I made that last reason up. But if you ever come across a room full of people and you want to pick out the Floridian - just look for the guy with the plastic bag on his hand.

I left the Golfsmith before I found out whether they let the dog in. Probably, they did. This is Florida. I don't know yet whether we'll get another dog, but we probably will. This is Florida, after all, and my mother-in-law is very convincing.

I don't want another dog, but I'll take it in stride. I'll feed it, walk it and love it. And when I'm picking up poop, I'll picture that dog playing golf.

Cling

Every married person creates their own vision of what marriage should be like. My wife, for instance, built her marriage beliefs around her spirituality and a strong sense of right and wrong. Because I have neither of those things, I based my vision of marriage on reruns of the "The Dick Van Dyke Show" on late night cable television.

This has worked well for me so far. Sure, I have that problem with Capri pants but, honestly, I think that's society's problem and not mine.

In fact, my only marriage issues occur when I violate the sacred guidance that Rob and Laura Petrie have set out for me. I, for instance, never understood why the television couple slept in separate twin beds. This seemed a waste of both space and Mary Tyler Moore's supreme hotness.

But I've shared a bed with my own wife since then. And now I know the truth about the separate beds. Laura, like many otherwise great wives, was probably a clinger. She probably slept wrapped around Rob Petrie like an anaconda, restricting his movement, inhibiting his R.E.M and generally making a good night's sleep impossible. Laura Petrie drove Rob Petrie into that separate, tiny twin bed.

My wife is a clinger, too. Don't get me wrong. I like the clinging. I like the fact that as soon as I hit the bed, my wife will casually throw a leg over my leg. It feels good to have a human, physical connection to the woman I love.

But leg connection is never enough for my wife. It's merely the opening move in a physical contest with a feature unique from all other physical contests - one of the participants is sound asleep (my wife) and the other participant (me) is wide awake.

Within seconds of the leg sweep, my sleeping wife will perform a "reverse" that closes the distance between us and throws the entire left half of her body over mine. When done for maximum effect, my wife rests her neck directly on my left arm which, as all martial arts masters know, compresses the brachial nerve and renders that arm useless.

Often, I still mistakenly believe I have a chance at this point. I did some wrestling in high school. I know a few moves of my own. So I turn over on to my stomach.

Halfway through this maneuver, I remember that I did not wrestle in high school. That was actually my brother. I was on the yearbook staff. I quickly run through my yearbook staff skills and decide that kerning and pagination are probably useless here.

It's too late. Instead of escaping my wife's grapple like the Rock in a WWE match, I've instead put myself in the hucklebuck like Andy Dufresne in the Shawshank Redemption. Sometimes, too, my three year-old daughter will wake in the middle of the night and jump into bed with us. And true to form, she will wrap herself around her mother's back who, in turn, is mounted on my back.

Eventually, I lapse into something less like sleep and more like a coma. When I wake in the morning, I check on my sons before I do anything else. I watch them sleeping peacefully and, God help me, I resent them for their bunk beds.

Daddy's Little Helper

Most of our friends think that Bridget and I relocated our family to Florida because we had found better jobs and a bigger house in the sunshine state. Not so. We moved because we thought we could trick Bridget's Florida-based mother into babysitting. Frankly, we had depleted Virginia of willing babysitters.

Any parent will tell you how difficult and expensive it is to get a babysitter. And that's just for one kid. If you have two kids, the difficulty is doubled. If you have three kids, the difficulty is tripled. And if any one of those hypothetical kids is my five year-old son Julian...well, you should order HBO and upgrade your home theater system, because you're probably spending Friday nights at home.

That's not to say that the other two Grim Richard kids aren't a challenge. Tow-headed Gabriel, for instance, spent an entire evening convincing one babysitter that she had been calling his little sister Riley by the wrong name for two years. The babysitter apologized so sincerely to us that it seemed almost a shame to tell her that Gabriel was lying.

Almost.

Julian, though, is the toughest babysitee of our bunch. Julian is, as I've detailed, the living personification of Loki, the Norse god of mischief and lies. He boasts a double-sided personality, a frosted shredded wheat soul that gives forth sweet, unconditional love on one side and brusk, fibrous tricks on the other side.

Maybe two weeks after moving to Florida, Bridget and I decided to go out on a date and leave the kids with their grandparents. We hoped that Julian would give them some kind of break on their very first night of babysitting. This was not to be.

While Bridget and I bought tickets to "Juno", our kids slipped into the brand new pajamas that their grandparents had bought them. Even later, while Bridget and I sat in the dark eating popcorn smothered with butter, one of my kids slipped out of bed, grabbed one of his/her grandmother's phones and reported a murder.

You probably think I'm exaggerating. You probably think I've run out of stuff to write and decided to crib a stale plot from some old television show. Nope. One of my kids dialed 911 and reported that someone was being killed. The police even dispatched a black and white to investigate. If you doubt me, you can ask Bridget's mother. But ask her later - she's still pretty busy explaining to her neighbors that no one has been killed in her house.

Officially, three year-old Riley took the blame for the whole mess. The dispatchers identified the caller as a small girl, so after making sure that no one was actually in jeopardy, the police officer lectured my daughter and then left. Mystery solved.

But this is what the grandparents and police officer didn't know. Riley doesn't know how to dial 911.

Nope. The actual culprit confessed later that night once I promised never to tell his grandmother. Maybe "confession" is too strong a word. Though Julian that he picked up the phone, handed it to his three year-old sister, dialed 911 and told Riley what to say, he still firmly believes that Riley "did it" and he "helped".

And, God help me, he's convincing. I couldn't figure out who to punish, so I just talked a lot and wagged my finger in authoritative manner. Besides, I don't think something like this will happen again.

Just in case, though, I'm making a list of family members who live in other states.

iForget

Okay, I admit it. I bought an iPhone.

Yes, I realize that I specifically counseled the readers of this blog not to buy iPhones. I believe I also referred to the iPhone as the "High School Cheerleader of Cell Phones" in an attempt to underscore the superficiality of spending $400 on a phone just because it looked cooler than other phones.

In jumping to that rash conclusion, I didn't give take into account two factors:

It is damn shiny and, God help me, so very pretty.

I'm glad that I spent the $400, actually, because not only did I pick up a sexy new phone, I also learned something important about myself. I'm not referring to the fact that I'm a shallow consumer tool with too much money and not enough common sense. I already knew that. I'm referring to a revelation that occurred as I transferred all of my contacts to my new phone.

As you may know, the iPhone is not just a phone. It's an e-mail client. It's a Web browser. It plays music. It takes pictures. It stops nipple chafing when applied directly to the male breast.

Okay. I made that last part up.

The point is this: getting an iPhone required me to punch in not only the name and phone numbers of all the significant people in my life, but their physical addresses and e-mail addresses as well. I also needed to put in the Web addresses of my favorite sites. I started to set everything up immediately after buying the iPhone, once I reached my car in the parking lot. I stopped about two minutes later.

Other than my wife's cell phone number - which used to be my number - I remembered exactly none of that pertinent information.

I depend on computers and cell phones so much that I have not bothered to remember any of the information of any of my friends. I don't know their phone numbers. I don't know their e-mail addresses either.

A couple of days later, the rest of the epiphany came into focus. My eight year-old son, Gabriel, was wrestling with subtraction problems. I easily walked him through the first twenty or so problems. Then we came to a thorny nest of problems where you had to "borrow" from the next column of numbers. Suddenly, I mentally stumbled in explaining the process to my son. I realized that I hadn't done even simple math in years without using a calculator. And right then, I realized that I'm actually getting stupider because of my electronic devices.

I have become e-tarded.

The Wonder Woman Belt Buckle

There are few opportunities for a husband to actually make his wife hotter. Usually wives are in control of their own hotness - and this is a good thing. If guys did control hotness, the malls would overflow with blond, rail-thin women with unnaturally large breasts...

Never mind.

As I was saying, the average husband cannot change his wife's hotness. I, however, stumbled upon a way to make my wife so hot that even the blond, rail-thin women at the mall must rest their huge breasts on a food court table for a moment and recognize just how hot my wife is.

How did I do it? I bought my wife a Wonder Woman belt buckle.

I have no doubt that the geeks among my readers have already begun to nod their heads affirmatively. Many of these geeks, in fact, have begun to look for their near mint copies of Wonder Woman #1 and might already be fondling their Wonder Woman action figures.

My wife, though, didn't comprehend the power of the Wonder Woman belt buckle when I first brought it home last summer from the San Diego Comic-Con. She wouldn't even wear the red,white, blue and yellow buckle for months.

I don't blame her. My wife is fighting a fashion war. Just taking my kids to school forces her to run a gauntlet of Lexus cars, Louis Vuitton handbags and Jimmy Choo pumps. She fights her own specialized super villains at that elementary school every day.

For instance, there's I Wear Nothing But Coach Woman, who sports a Coach handbag, Coach shoes, Coach sunglasses and, one suspects, Coach panties. I've never seen Coach panties but I assume they're brown and have Cs all over them.

There's also Always on the Cell Phone Lass and her matching Dooney and Burke cell phone case. I can't decide what her mutant power is, but I know it involves unlimited minutes. And there's the villainous Two Face of elementary mothers - Daytime Clothes But Nighttime Makeup Woman. She has great taste in clothes but slathers on the makeup like bridesmaid who has a prom after the wedding.

It took some convincing but my wife finally strapped on the Double W logo of the Amazonian Princess. Her first stop? The elementary school.

"How did it go?" I asked her a couple days later.

"Everyone loved my belt buckle," she answered with a smile.

"How could you tell?" I asked. "Did any of the women say anything?"

"Not really," Bridget replied. "But do you remember Different Designer Dress Every Day Chick?"

"Definitely," I answered.

"The next day she wore a Supergirl shirt."

No matter. If Different Designer Dress Every Day Chick had any fashion sense whatsoever, she would have gone with Power Girl and not Super Girl. And if she does wise up, it still won't matter. I'm buying more stuff for my wife - and not even Versace can beat a Spider-Woman t-shirt.

Spom!

I say this with love in my heart, but no matter how painful, I must say it:

If we are to stop e-mail spam in our lifetime, our mothers must be prevented from using e-mail.

Admit it. You have dozens of cute bunny pictures on your computer. Your mother sent every one of them. And the pictures of kittens saying stuff like "I can haz cheezburger?" It's not your fault. You haz a mudder. And she sends you spam.

This mom spam...this spom...it's worse than regular spam. Gmail and Outlook can stop regular e-mail spam by blocking future e-mails sent from a spamming account. But spom circumvents normal spam defenses because it's sent by someone you trust. It's sent by your mom. And for some reason, she hates you. Why else would she send this:

"Please forward this e-mail. Every time someone forwards this e-mail, Microsoft will donate $1.00 toward little Maria's urgently needed heart transplant."

Every single person on the Internet knows that e-mails like the one above are fake. Except your mom.

And my mom. My mother is literally half blind and needs help doing anything except the most rudimentary things on her computer. But if she gets a fake spam e-mail about a missing 13 year-old girl who can only be found if everyone circulates her picture on the Internet, my mother suddenly becomes Sandra Bullock in "The Net". Suddenly, she can e-mail every single person on her contact list without any help and, if she wants to, take down the "grid" - whatever that is.

"People who did not forward this picture to at least five people died mysteriously...."

How do we stop spom? As I mentioned, we can't block our mothers' e-mail addresses. We'd have to start phoning them again. And no one wants that, not even our mothers.

So, what can we do to make our grown mothers think twice before sending us e-mail? What can we do to make their fingers hesitate before clicking "send" on anything but the most urgent e-mails?

Spam our mothers back. We'll send them ten e-mails every day. And we'll begin every e-mail like this:

"Dear Mom, we need a babysitter this weekend..."

The Chip Licker

Here comes the Super Bowl. I can see the preparations. Millions of eager families are buying new televisions and stockpiling salty snacks. Millions of husbands roll down the supermarket aisles and stop to buy the "good" beer. Millions of wives plan to make teeming plates of nachos.

None of these people will invite my family to their Super Bowl party. None. And it's all my son Gabriel's fault.

He's a chip licker.

Prior to having kids, my wife and scored many invitations to Super Bowl parties. Neither of us really watches football, but we attended the parties anyway. I enjoyed both the strategic and athletic elements of the game. But mostly, I enjoyed the free food and alcohol.

My wife, on the other hand, enjoyed the fashion and rooted for teams based on their uniform colors. She usually sat to the side saying stuff like,"Ooooh! That team is wearing white uniforms. That's so bold!"

Here's something I learned about my wife. Anytime she uses the word "bold" in a conversation,that means she's enjoying the free alcohol, too.

All of this crushed to a stop the first time we took Gabriel to a Super Bowl party. A close friend of ours hosted this particular party. Our son was maybe two years old. The party went well enough for about an hour, until we noticed people making odd faces as they ate chips.

The host noticed this as well and asked if something was wrong.

"I don't want to be rude," answered someone, "but your chips are wet."

Everyone eyed my two year-old son standing near one of the chip bowls. He fished a hand down into the bowl and snaked one chip from the bottom. He eyed it curiously and then licked it clean of Ranch seasoning, like a cat cleaning its paws.

And then he put the chip back in the bowl and grabbed another.

"Now, that's bold," I wanted to say.

We were not invited back the next year. And word apparently got out about our chip-licking son because we haven't been invited to a Super Bowl party since. No one invites us to Mexican restaurants either.

We hope to attend another Super Bowl party someday, but the odds - and our kids - are stacked against us. Yesterday morning, I opened a box of six glazed donuts on our kitchen counter. There was one small, neat bite taken out of every donut. I looked around to see my five year-old son Julian smiling at me. I think I cursed out loud.

"What's wrong?" my wife yelled from another room.

"It's Julian," I said. "I thinks he's a donut biter."

The Fierce Ants

Editor's Note:

Last week, I posted the now infamous story about how my wife accidentally wiped her butt with a lizard. This week, I decided to post the story that almost ran instead. Each week, I usually take one theme, build a couple of variations and decide at the last minute which mood or narrative I want to take. Last week, I decided to use Florida's wildlife as a metaphor for the alienation my family is feeling. I ultimately chose to go with a humorous (but very true) slant, but I also used the same wildlife to evoke a slightly different flavor. You can decide if I made the correct editorial decision. Or conversely, you could just decide that I'm a pretentious bastard. Do with it what you will.

---

Two weeks ago, my family and I moved to Florida from Virginia. I lived in Florida when I was a boy and we've visited many times in recent years, but I'd forgotten just how different Florida is. Take the lizards, for instance.

In Virginia, we didn't have lizards. In Florida, multi-colored lizards cling to a trees and windows just about everywhere you look. We didn't have fire ants in Virginia either - just the regular kind that don't bite.

Here in Florida, we see people demonstrating against illegal immigrants. There wasn't much of that in Virginia, really. We had illegal immigrants, for sure, but something is different about the immigration issue in Florida. In our new town, protesters picket the building where illegal immigrants, mostly Guatemalan, gather to get day work. Most of the protesters carry signs and a few carry video cameras so they can film the employers who hire the illegal immigrants.

I saw a video on YouTube where one protester actually filmed the license plate of an employer and told him that he could find the video on an immigration enforcement Web site. Eventually, the person being filmed physically confronted the guy with the camera.

It's not just the ants that bite in Florida.

Inflated Dewlaps

Two weeks ago, my family and I moved to Florida from Virginia. I lived in Florida when I was a boy and we've visited many times in recent years, but I'd forgotten just how different Florida is. In Florida, for instance, you hear people speaking Spanish twenty times a day. You rarely heard Spanish in Virginia. And you know what else I rarely heard?

My wife screaming in terror and disgust.

But here in Florida, we have lizards - which means that I get to hear my wife's terrified screams every couple of days.

At first, I thought Bridget was overreacting. When they're mating or threatened, lizards naturally seek to make themselves seem larger and stronger - which explains why lizards strike aggressive intimidating poses whenever you see one.

I suspect that, in humans, this may also explain the Hair Club for Men.

But lizard poses barely bother my wife. The lizards could inflate and deflate their dewlaps all day long without ever causing my wife to scream. What bothers my wife is the lizards' insistence that they run over her feet in the dark. This has happened to her four times in two weeks. It has not happened to me at all. My wife thinks that the leathery lizards are deliberately targeting her. And she may be right.

This morning, the lizards escalated.

I heard my wife's horrible scream coming from our bathroom at 8 a.m. Her scream sounded so terrible that I didn't suspect a lizard at first. I heard her second scream and her uncontrollable sobbing when I was halfway to the bathroom. I expected to find something horrific - blood or something. There was no blood, but something horrific had happened.

I want to explain this delicately because my wife reads this blog. Unfortunately, "delicate" usually gets in the way of "funny" and I can't have that. So here goes:

A small lizard decided to cling to the toilet paper in our bathroom this morning at roughly the same time my wife decided to urinate.

You can probably figure out the rest. There is, however, no fun in that and I've decided to describe the incident. To be delicate, I'm using nothing but verbs.

Cling. Wipe. Wiggle. Scream. Wiggle. Jump. Scream. Cry. Run. Laugh.

To be fair, that last verb was not the lizard or my wife. That was me.

My wife was still shaking when I took her to work this morning. In the front yard, I saw maybe three lizards on branches smugly inflating and deflating their dewlaps.

What's a dewlap? It's a flap of skin just under the throat that lizards puff up to attract mates. It may also explain some women that I saw at the mall.

The Gahusbander

I realized something this last holiday season.

Christmas parties scare me.

To begin with, I'm uncomfortable with Turducken - and Turducken is way popular at holiday parties lately. As an American, I understand its appeal. It's three foods in one - turkey stuffed with chicken that's been stuffed with duck. It's like a Transformer you can eat.

But if I eat it - and my stomach is stuffed with Turducken - am I now potentially part of this greasy, edible Russian nesting doll? Have I essentially become a Grim Turducken?

I think about these things a lot.

Here's the other thing about holiday parties that truly scares me: the dancing.

Every husband knows how the holiday party works. Our job is to dress up in uncomfortable ties and eat mounds of finger food while sprinkling awkward pauses into random conversations. And, at some point during the night, we are contractually bound to dance once with our wives. Although this annual dance is mandatory, we do have the option of waiting for a slow dance. Since we only learned one dance in high school, it's a great option.

Inevitably, though, at least one wife has brought a husband who actually likes to dance.

We hate this guy.

Not only does this guy like to dance, he likes to dress, too. He's the guy wearing cologne and a tie pin. His shoes are polished and he got a hair cut specifically for this party. If one of the women decides to bust out some karaoke, he's down for it. He knows the Hustle, The Electric Slide and the Cha Cha Cha Slide.

He's not really a husband. He's a husband stuffed inside of a dancer stuffed inside of platonic gay friend. He's a gahusbander.

And once the gahusbander starts dancing, things start to go downhill. The wives, who have contented themselves by dancing with other wives, now start to glare at the sullen husbands nervously discussing golf and NASCAR. And the wives begin to resent us.

Panic sets in with most husbands at this point. If you combine women, alcohol, years of pent-up dance moves and a gahusbander, you are maybe five minutes from an explosion of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive."

And sure enough, that's how most of these parties end - with the wives dancing together, glaring at the husbands and lip-synching meaningfully in their direction:

"But I spent so many nights thinking how you done me wrong and I grew strong; I learned how to get along."

And the gahusbander? His work is done at this point. He's licking his fingers at the food table. And he's probably eating Turducken.

Beefed Up Wind Instruments

The gauntlet has been thrown down.

Each year, my friend Kevin and his family send out a Christmas card. Tucked in each of these cards is a three paragraph note detailing what Kevin's family has accomplished during the year. The paragraphs organize themselves by family member - starting with Kevin, moving to his wife and finally closing with the details about their smart, talented daughter.

It is very similar to other holiday letters we receive, except for one thing:

Kevin's family accomplishes an amazing amount of crap in one year.

Kevin, for instance, is a project manager on two major government construction projects. He's been selected by a trade magazine as one of fifty up and comers for his field. In his spare time, he got a law degree. His daughter is no slouch, either. She goes to school and takes multiple classes outside of school. In her spare time, she wrote a book.

In my spare time this year, I taught my kids to fart the melodies to all the songs on Britney Spears' comeback album.

As impressive as that accomplishment is, I still feel like something of a slacker when I look at Kevin's annual letter. So, I've decided to do something about it. I'm going to send out my own letter. Obviously, I can't go back in time and urge my family to achieve more than they actually did. No, it's much more practical for me to just lie about our achievements.

"When he wasn't spending hours working on his award-winning blog, Grim Richard mapped and sequenced his own human genome using parts salvaged from abandoned bread-making machines and exercise equipment. He also was nominated for, but did not win, a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the half life of french fries lost in the fissures of car seats."

Now, we're getting somewhere.

"His wife, when not perfecting her technique for growing breast tissue with her mind, finished writing and inking her twelve volume graphic novel detailing the history of the Middle East - making it the first graphic novel written in English, Farsi and Esperanto."

I'm starting to like my family better already. But my letter needs a little truth to keep it anchored to reality...

"Grim Richard produced and re-mixed Britney Spears' comeback album, Blackout, using "found" instruments and a beefed-up wind section...."

Yep. that's it.

Catnip for Chicks

Ahhhhh! Our small house rings with sound of cooking, caroling and giftwrapping.

My only complaint? It's difficult to concentrate on video games like Call of Duty 4 or Halo 3 with all of that ringing Christmas crap going on in the background.

Every married video game player faces the same conundrum. How do you fit quality time with your wife into your already hectic video game schedule? And when you're spending that quality time with your wife, what's the best way to pretend that you're not thinking about playing video games?

It' a question as old as Atari, my friend.

My personal strategy combines elements of chess, timing and a keen understanding of my wife's television-viewing habits. When I get home from work, I resist the urge to jump online and play video games. Instead I do something less intuitive - I help around the house. My wife notices this pretty quickly.

"You're not going to play video games?" she asks.

"No," I reply. "I figured we'd watch T.V. together on the couch. You can lay down and I'll rub your feet."

At this point, my wife senses the trap, but to no avail. For some reason, foot rubbing is like catnip for chicks. They can't resist it and my wife is no exception. She positions herself on the couch; I turn on the Lifetime channel which, when combined with foot rubbing, forms a potent cocktail unrivaled by even Valium. My wife is snoring within 15 minutes. Then, I go play video games for three hours.

If she asks the next day, I tell her that I rubbed her feet for about an hour and then went to bed early.

I mentioned my strategy to a fellow video gamer at work.

"I use a different strategy," he said.

He begins the same way I do, by watching television with his wife. He tolerates it as long he can and then, when he can't stand it anymore, he turns to his woman, looks soulfully into her eyes...

"...and then I touch her boobs," he said.

Her response is almost instantaneous. She doesn't even look away from the television.

"Why don't you go play some video games, baby?"

The Web's Only Honest Holiday Gift Guide

The Web's Only Honest Holiday Gift Guide
(What You Shouldn't Buy This Christmas)

Every year, I see Web sites filling up space by publishing holiday gift guides. And every year, I see parents standing in line outside of Best Buy trying to buy the items listed in those holiday gift guides. Coincidence?

I think not.

This year I offer the Web's only honest holiday gift guide as a remedy. It's list of really cool stuff and reasons you shouldn't buy that cool stuff.

The Nintendo Wii

Every parent I know is searching fruitlessly for a Wii. It's the cheapest game console on the market and boasts revolutionary controls that encourage players to actually move and exercise when they're playing games.

My family got one last Christmas. It took my kids about an hour to figure out that big, wild, vigorous movements (you know, exercise) can be completely replaced by small, controlled wrist movements. Luckily for my kid's health, they enjoy playing a virtual reality game called "Running Around" on a revolutionary game console I call "The Outdoors."

The Lowdown: The only exercise benefit you're likely to get involves standing in line at Best Buy.

The I Phone

I really, really want one of these $400 phones with the revolutionary multi-touch interface. I want one of these so much that I harangued my wife into getting me one for Christmas - and then I withdrew my request.

You know why? It's a $400 phone. And it doesn't actually do anything better than other, cheaper phones. It just does it cooler. It's like the high school cheerleader of phones.

Hmmmm. Now, I want an I Phone again.

The Lowdown: It's expensive and won't improve your life. It does have the ability to make early adopters look cooler than they actually are, but if you don't have one by now...save your money and buy another black turtleneck.

Big Screen Televisions

The old adage says it all: size does not matter. Unless you plan to sit more than 20 feet away from your television, a huge screen size is cool for exactly ten minutes - and then it looks like every other television screen.

The Lowdown: Bigger does not mean better. If someone tries to tell you different, they're either trying to sell you a television set, trying to justify why they bought one or compensating because of other, uh, size issues.

Gift Cards

You realize that this is a scam right? Stores offer them because up to 30% of the money put on these cards is never used - resulting in pure profit for the stores.

The Lowdown: If you'd like to approximate the purchase of a gift card for a friend without actually buying one, do this: withdraw $100 from your bank account. Hand $70 to your friend. Light the remaining $30 on fire and hug while you watch the money turn to dust.

Happy holidays!

The Unreview

I'm a man with varied and eclectic interests that include reading, writing and working on elaborate science projects with my kids. I am, however, also a busy man and I've concluded that actually spending time on any of these interests would consume way too much of my discretionary time. For this reason, I don't actually participate in any of my hobbies, but I do enjoy buying stuff that gives me the appearance of actually participating.

Lately, instead of reading, I've been trying to buy Amazon's new electronic reading device, the Kindle. The Kindle, for those who don't know, is a white, paperback-sized device that lets you buy books wirelessly and begin reading them almost instantly - all for the low price of $400. I used the phrase "trying to buy" because the Amazon Kindle is sold out and will not be available until February.

A person less dedicated to buying stuff might use this opportunity to actually read books the old fashioned way. Not me. Instead, I've spent hours reading the Amazon reviews for the Kindle. I haven't actually learned anything new about the device, but I have learned something cool about the consumers who write Amazon reviews:

Hundreds of people who have never actually touched the device have given it negative reviews. That's right. Of the hundreds of negative reviews garnered by the Kindle, only a fraction were written by people who've actually used the device.

Frankly, this was an epiphany. For years, I've held back my opinion on various products because I hadn't actually used them. I've stifled my thoughts on hundreds of movies I haven't seen and buried my feelings concerning thousands of books I haven't had the time to read.

I had no idea you could unreview something.

Well, I'm going to make up for lost time. I'm planning to become the Internet's - nay, the world's - best unreviewer. And I've started by unreviewing the Kindle. You can read my unreview here.

Those Damn Sunday Shoes

On the day after Thanksgiving, my two sons, aged five and eight, decided to get full-on, 80s-style Mohawks. This was decided by the boys and their mother within the space of five minutes. Within an hour, each of the boys sported a closely-shaved head with a thick, hairy stripe of rebellious hair running down the middle.

The Mohawk is a classic rebellion move, designed to give a big, fat hairy finger to "The Man." I would be immensely proud of my kids, if it weren't for one thing:

I hate my kids' Mohawk haircuts.

This confused me at first. Why would their haircuts bother me? Both of the boys look kinda cool. And, as far as I know, neither of them are going for any job interviews in the near future.

Then I realized what the problem was. I am "The Man." I discipline the boys. I force them to eat leafy, green vegetables. I make them do homework. I have - God help me - actually bought them food from McDonald's that didn't come with some kind of toy.

I'm not supposed to like their Mohawks.

Don't mistake me. I don't like being "The Man." In fact, I specifically purchased my IPod to show that I'm not like the rest of my peers. No way. I'm hip. I'm cool. I'm so funky, in fact, that I need a portable music device with a thousand songs on it because the urge to dance might overcome me at any moment.

You know, like Ren McCormack in "Footloose." I can't count the number of times I've stifled the urge to kick off my Sunday shoes.

She Owes Them

Winona Ryder's refusal to do a nude scene has not only irritated and frustrated her male fans, it has endangered her chances of ever collecting a Best Actress Oscar.

I learned this surprising bit of news last night as I chomped down a Hooter's hamburger with two of my oldest friends, Kieth and Matt.

"It's true," said Kieth, a big guy with long hair. "You have to do a nude scene before you can get a Best Actress Oscar."

Matt scratched his grey, untrimmed beard. "Tell that to Reese Witherspoon. She won it for "Walk the Line" without taking off her clothes."

"I didn't say the actress has to be naked in the role that wins her the Oscar," countered Kieth. "Only that she has to get naked on film before she can win the Oscar. Reese Witherspoon had a topless scene in "Twilight".

"No way," Matt and I said simultaneously. I wondered where my Blockbuster card was.

"Yep." said Kieth. "It's why Natalie Portman took her clothes off in the recent "Hotel Chevalier". It had nothing to do with the story; she just wanted to get the nude scene out of the way."

"How do you explain Dame Judi Dench?"

Kieth deflected it. "I don't have to explain Judi Dench. She's never won the Best Actress Oscar. She was, however, naked in a 60s movie called "A Midsummer's Night's Dream".

"Yep," said Matt, "That Shakespeare dude has gotten a lot of girls in trouble."

Kieth continued. "Charlize Theron? Nude scene. Hallie Berry? Nude scene. Hillary Swank? Nude scene. Nicole Kidman? Ditto."

"Aha!" I said. "Julia Roberts. Julia Roberts is famous for never doing a nude scene."

"She's doing her nude scene later. Like Kathy Bates did. She got the Oscar for "Misery", but the did the nude scene the next year in "At Play in the Fields of the Lord". Have you ever wondered why she takes her clothes off on film?"

"All the time," I admitted.

"She owes them for the Oscar."

Save the Children's Foreheads!

Before I became a dad, I assumed that parents carried out one main function - raising their children to be productive members of society. This sacred duty, I thought, probably involved spending time with your kids, passing on important life lessons and occasionally motivating my kids to achieve more.

Oh, naive, base fool!

I now understand that my primary parenting job is to watch television and have the crap scared out of me by parenting experts. Oh, I'm still responsible for turning my kids into efficient cogs in the societal machine, but really there's not much time for that.

Right now, for instance, I'm confronting the twin terrors of deadly, unstoppable staph infections and the deadly, lurking dangers of lead-painted toys. And these are relatively new terrors. I was already juggling trans fats, childhood obesity, attention-deficit syndrome, Internet predators, child safety seats, toy magnets, stranger danger and video game violence.

I'm pretty busy just being terrified.

I'm on top of it, though. I'm slowly but surely removing all potential sources of danger from my children's lives. I've decided to share my list of the top four actions concerned parents can take to danger-proof their children's lives.

1. The Outside is Bad - Circumvent the child safety seat problem and the stranger danger problem by forcing your children to remain in their rooms when they're not at school. If you must expose your children to the outside in order to get them to school, remember to apply huge amounts of sunscreen to their exposed surfaces. Also, don't forget the bug spray or you're just begging for lyme disease, West Nile and Malaria. Anyone is potentially a predator, so teach your children to avoid speaking with anyone. In fact, my experience shows that teaching children to talk at all just invites problems.
2. Friends are Bad, Too - Generally speaking, I'd love for my kids to have friends. Unfortunately, friends are major vectors of infection, teen pregnancy and a love of hip-hop. Studies show that kids are 87% less likely to bow to peer pressure if they don't actually have any peers.
3. Danger Proof Your Home - Over 85% of homes are built almost entirely out of sharp, 90 degree angles. Corners are dangerous. As a child, I once got my head stuck in a corner for well over three hours with permanent consequences. Only my special haircut hides the sharp indentation down the center of my forehead. I recommend puttying over the corners in your house. While you're at it, remove the furniture and replace the beds with fire-retardant blankets securely fastened to the floor.
4. Remove the Media - Get rid of the televisions and video games. Burn that copy of Catcher in the Rye. Deny your kids access to most of the Internet because it's chock full of predators and, even worse, dangerous friends. Do allow them access to blogs because blogs are the best source of accurate lists of potentially dangerous stuff.

Well, that's my list. Use it well. I'm heading to the kitchen now so that I can throw out anything with corn syrup, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil or sugar. It's tough work, but I'm doing it for my kids. Sure, they're pale, mute, friendless, illiterate and afraid of right angles - but at least they're safe.

Baz Truman Returns!

Editor’s Note:

For years, workers have suffered through the advice of pundits, over-achievers and corporate lackeys, some of whom have had only three or four jobs in their entire lives.

Wouldn’t it be better to get career advice from someone with experience at literally thousands of jobs?

Baz Truman thinks so. Since the early 1980s, Baz Truman has been working at and getting fired from more jobs in a week than most people get fired from in a lifetime. Baz’ single-minded determination to excel at his career - no matter the cost – has gotten him fired from some of the world’s biggest and brightest companies.

The Most Fired Man in America
By Baz Truman

Q. I'm fairly new to Human Resources and still learning my craft. Since you have more experience getting fired from jobs than anyone in America, I'm wondering if you have any tips you can give out to the professional on the other side of the table who's doing the firing. Any suggestions?
Terminating Neophyte


Dear Terminating Neophyte:

After hundreds of terminations, I've gotten to see just as many techniques in action. I've found that every Human Resources person has their own technique as individual as a snowflake - only you wouldn't want to eat one of these snowflakes because they're bitter and much, much colder than a regular snowflake.

Ha ha ha ha. Just kidding.

That's exactly what's missing from most terminations - the spirit of fun. I've got a few suggestions to liven up any termination meeting and send everyone home with a smile on their face. Except maybe the employees who are getting fired. If you don't have the kind of experience I do, it's easy to get caught up in the whole "I don't have and job and I can't pay my bills" thing.

Here's my list of "Dos" and "Don'ts":

Do pick some kind of theme for the termination. Instead of wearing a business suit to the meeting, wear a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops. Hand the employee a beach towel and bottle of suntan lotion and turn the negative meeting into a positive by saying brightly, "Guess who's got a lot more time to go to the beach?"

Then point to the employee.

I know what you're thinking. How will the employee have time to go to the beach if he or she is looking for a new job? That's exactly what makes it so funny.

Don't bring paperwork to the meeting. The employee is not going to agree with you any way. Why spend the last few minutes you're ever going to have with this employee detailing his or her faults and signing documents?

Finally:

Don't use a security guard theme if you can possibly help it. In my experience, security guards almost always "oversell" the joke, no matter how much you wink to let them know you're in on the joke. Take it from me, tasers are only funny the first couple of times.

Sincerely,

Baz Truman The Most Fired Man in America

General Mom

My wife left town today to attend her sister's wedding. This seems like a monumental mistake to me because, frankly, I am not qualified to take care of three kids by myself.

Our family has already ignored the first rule of parenting - which says that the total number of kids should never surpass the total number of parents. Bridget and I smugly assumed that this rule applied to other, less capable people. We were wrong about this. Time and again, the three to two ratio has meant that two of our kids could effectively launch frontal attacks to distract us while the third child moved to flank us. I use battle metaphors only half in jest because parenting is exactly like war, except the troops fight for and against you. And the battles usually end with an entire roll of toilet paper mysteriously wedged into an overflowing toilet.

No, parenting requires a capable general - and our general is on furlough.

This morning, for instance, the kids began their assault, as usual, at breakfast.

"What's for breakfast?" asked Gabriel.

Normally, General Mom would issue marching orders at this point.

"Julian, get bowls out and set the table. Gabriel, get the milk out of the refrigerator. Riley, get your underpants off of the dog's head."

Then she looks at me. "And you should stop laughing at the dog. It's only encouraging Riley."

This is exactly the right way to handle the breakfast situation. Each unit is given clear orders with little room for interpretation. Even the dog appreciates the clarity.

How did I handle the same situation this morning?

"Uh, what would you like to have for breakfast?" I asked.

Apparently, the troops wanted one bite of peanut butter toast, one spoonful of yogurt, one piece of bacon and fifteen glasses of milk. They also clamored for chocolate sauce, which I might have given them except I had already used the entire bottle for my own breakfast.

I am no General Mom.

I know my wife will read this blog entry today, so let me say this:

Under your capable leadership, the troops have always assumed that I was second-in-command. You've only been gone about four hours, however, and the troops are beginning to realize that I am, at best, an enlisted soldier like themselves.

We love you. We know you deserve a couple of days with your family. But this is war, dammit! With all due respect, your furlough has been revoked.

3 and a Half Pack

Two exciting "husband" things have happened to me recently:

First, I bought the "Halo 3" video game and have been playing it online almost every night. For those who don't know, "Halo 3" allows you to battle players from around the world in a tense, futuristic setting using various lasers, grenades and machine guns. That's the promise, anyway. In actual practice, twelve year-olds from around the world use various lasers, grenades and machine guns to blow me up while casting aspersions on my mom's dating habits.

Man, I love that game.

Second, fans of this blog know that my wife became obsessed with Jake Gyllenhaal's massive biceps and forced me to start working out. Well, it worked.

Kinda.

I have lost weight and built some muscle. I don't have a six pack, but I can now pull off my shirt and proudly point to a three and a half pack. Truthfully, I suspect that the "half pack" may be a hernia. Whatever. Progress is progress - even it's big, red, bulging and painful to the touch.

And though my wife forced me to start working out, she worries that I will be tempted to put my bulging, red painful muscles to ill use if I'm out of her strict gaze. And this is where "Halo 3" intersects with my workouts.

My wife actually encourages me to play "Halo 3" because it means that I'll stay on the couch on a Friday night instead of hanging out with my bachelor friends. In other words, now that my wife feels that she's made me more attractive, she's using my favorite video game to effectively keep a leash on me.

I find this more than a little condescending and cynical. That's why I'm going to hang out with my friends this weekend. I'm grabbing the car keys, ignoring my wife's protests and going to meet my bachelor friends. If we end up at bar, my wife will just have to trust me. If my friends and I end up at a party of some kind, my wife will just have to remember that I'm a happily married, responsible adult. I told my friends that I'm up for anything this weekend, so bring it on.

I think we're playing "Halo 3" at Thad's house.