Yesterday's "Shudder" Moment

We were enjoying a nice dinner yesterday of home-made vegetable soup (beef broth and frozen vegetables with some secret spice mixture of my wife's) and grilled cheese sandwiches. We were have some lovely conversation when suddenly my daughter started talking about "Dancing With The Stars".

Now, I HATE reality TV shows. I find the attempted reality far too offensive...why not just script it and be done with it. Anyway, M was apparently screaming yesterday the night before while watching the afore-mentioned show. What was a surprise to me was why she was screaming.

My 6 year old daughter has apparently developed a crush on an adult male soap opera star!?!?!?!?!?! WTF, over!?! SHE'S 6?!?! I could understand her liking the show...she is a dancer and it's about dancing...but crushing over a soap star??? Needless to say, my appetite took a short vacation, while I shuddered and had to go sit in another room to collect myself...

These kids are going to be the death of me...that or I will finally go the way of so many male animals and eat my own young...after cooking them, of course.

My Little Ninja Warrior

Ok...so occasionally I will post something that isn't a rant...who am I kidding...I only post occasionally. Something about my wife saying rants about the family being off-limits and people getting fired for blogging about work kills a ton of what I could use as fodder.

Anyway, my kids and I love cable. I love high-speed internet (duh...computer geek); however cable television is the absolute bomb. Mini-rant warning!!! I just wish I could pick and choose my channels. Why in the name of purple fish do I need every single movie channel??? What is the purpose behind the near insanity of 900+ channels??? Mini-rant over. If I could get away with picking channels, I would be in heaven. Give me Discovery, AMC, Sci-Fi, Science Channel, Military Channel, and probably a dozen others and I'm good. My kids love alot of the same channels...even the girls (which drives the wife insane).

Lately, however, we have been watching a lot of "Sasuke" on G4 TV. "Sasuke" is a Japanese game show...gotta love 'em. "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge" is great!!! Voice-over is hilarious and watching people bite it while attempting crazy stunts is always good for a laugh. Anyway, "Sasuke" or "Ninja Warrior" as it is called here is a competition which pits 100 people against a crazy-sick obstacle course. Half the fun is watching the insane characters that people come up with...who would have thought, "Hey, I'll string some octopi together and call myself 'Octopus Man'". Anyway, the kids and I love this show. So much so, that the baby will sit still to watch it.

Recently she began opening the child gates herself, by bouncing on the pedal until the gate pops open. However, today she attempted something different...I call it the "The Gap". You can see in the picture below that she was attempting to cross "The Gap" in true ninja warrior fashion, much to our amusement.



Now I can't explain the whole lack of clothing thing. Apparently, she decided that her "jammies" weren't a necessary part of the attire for the ninja warrior attempt. I love this child...she is the source of much laughter and bemused shaking of the head. What can I except from "Tripod"...so named for her penchant for placing her forehead on the floor while standing with her feet spread a bit wider than her shoulders and attempting to walk around her own head.

Anyway, enjoy and laugh, if you want to....I do :)

Teen Suicide After Internet Harrassment

My wife mentioned this story the other day and I went reading. Apparently a teen girl was out on MySpace (grrrr) and received a friend invite from a boy. What she was unaware of is that this boy was fictitous and would eventually turn on her and begin posting nasty things about her. She committed suicide, due in part we assume, to this activity. What is truly horrifying is that the boy was apparently the creation of an adult woman from her neighborhood and some friends and/or family. Now granted, we as a nation will probably never get the whole story, but based on what I've read...a few thoughts come to mind.

Okay...first of all...let me say I am sincerely sorrowful for this girl's parents. They have lost a child and no parent should ever have to bury their child.

Now that I've gotten that taken care of...here I go, albeit as respectfully as I can.

Suicide is the pansy way out of dealing with problems. It is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, which will in turn create problems for those left behind. All too often, the story gets out that the person had problems with life not being fair or some other excuse...NEWS FLASH...LIFE ISN'T FAIR...get a helmet and grow a skin. People can be rude, insensitive, downright mean and just generally crappy to each other quite easily. To allow the crass-ness of humanity to cause you to give away the gift of life is to buy into other people's opinions and/or thoughts. Guess what...we all have opinions and like butts, they all stink. Nothing in life is worth killing one's self over...period. I have a loving wife and 4 kids I love more than anything else; however...none of them are worth killing myself over. Dying to protect, yes...suicide, not even on a good day.

We aren't going to mention that children shouldn't be on MySpace...according to one of the stories, her parents mentioned several times to stop using it and stay away from the fictitious person, yet she persisted. Mayhap, stronger measures were needed...there are many methods for securing internet traffic and preventing access to questionable and/or merely unwanted content. Don't read any of the above to in any way excuse the...the...(My wife will appreciate the difficulty I'm having in controlling my language...a personal struggle) individual/s from any wrongdoing.

Now I've done it...I've breached the part where my paternal instinct to protect children takes over. If after all the investigation finishes, these "people" (read...vindictive buttholes) are determined to have been directly responsible for the harassment and/or culpable in the suicide of this girl...they should be dragged into the street and shot. Children are incapable of defending themselves and for that reason, we have to guard them with such aggressive responses that people think they've been tossed into a pit of rabid wolverines on crack. For a parent to even contemplate the perpetration of such a hoax on a child is unthinkable. There is absolutely no excuse...I don't care what the child may or may not have said about your child. Now, if you witnessed your child being physically attacked by another child, you as the parent are well within your rights to drag the offender to their parents and relay what you witnessed. Will that solve the problem? Maybe not, but that is as far as you can go. Again...exceptions..."A Time To Kill" is about the father of a girl who was raped and murdered, who then goes on to extract revenge. I can understand the emotion and reaction. I can't say what I would do in that case, but it would probably be similar. I haven't seen anything that indicates the girl who killed herself was physically abusive to the woman's daughter anywhere. So we are back to this happening over things said...

As I mentioned earlier, we will probably never get the whole story. However, all of us parents should take from this sad event several warnings:
  1. Be involved in your child's life...but don't try to live it for them or protect them from life. As "The Princess Bride" said, "Life is pain." The pains in life are what make the joys that much more intense. Everytime I am reminded of my son in the hospital with IV's being pumped full of anti-seizure medication at 10 months old, I smile at the realization that it was a freak occurance and he is healthy as a horse. Or when I think of my baby's feet purple and bruised because her blood sugar wouldn't normalize and they kept sticking her to check it at mere days old, but I see her now running or dancing or giggling.
  2. The internet is a truly dangerous place...wonderful, but dangerous nonetheless. The grasslands of Africa are beautiful...at least, from what I've seen on TV...but they are also deadly. There are animals that can kill us without so much as a second glance. The internet is similar. The collective knowledge of mankind is available, in a nearly instantaneous format; yet so are the sick minds that prey on others.
  3. As a parent, protecting my child is just that. I would gladly die to protect any of my children, but that doesn't give me the right to turn the tables and harm another's child. To pass beyond protection into the willful attack on another's child is beyond the pale. Anyone who would pursue these actions, should be stricken of their children and required to seek the most strenous help we can find. We can't fight our children's battles for them...we can only act as backup.

Now I imagine people will disagree and that is okay. Get your own blog and post your own opinions...see earlier for my thoughts on opinions.

Ammonia Factories

I wonder at what point I will stop listening when my wife and kids when they say that they will take care of new pets.

I am the sole cleaning service for a pair of lovely "Ammonia Factories"; which most of you would probably call guinea pigs or cavies. I refer to them as "Ammonia Factories" due to the lovely sickening aroma they exude. As the sole cleaning provider, I get to wallow in their by-products on a weekly basis; and I'm getting sick of it. I'm fairly certain that my wife who will certainly complain about the smell, would suffer through it until we all passed out due to ammonia fumes, rather than stoop to cleaning the cage. I can drop all of the hints I want and they will just sit and stew before she ever cleans the cage.

The fish are no different. We have a goldfish that we rescued when someone abandoned it and 2 betta's (who are funny to watch when you pull the little shade away and they start puffing). Have you ever smelled a betta bowl on cleaning day? Holy smurf noses! The smell sticks to your hands for a hour or more.

I wonder how hard it would be to explain that they got away while I was cleaning their cage. Ok, not really...I wouldn't be able to tolerate the tears and crying from the children. Far be it from me, a mere mammal and fish maid, to incur pain and suffering on my younglings.