Gamer Tags

I am 40.

I am a father.

I am a son.

I am a nerd.

I am a gamer.

I am not a gamer.

Do I play COD or WoW or know what the difference is between a Hunter and a Promethean Knight is?  Can I perform a 360 no scope?  No.   But so what?  You don’t get to give me a tag of gamer or not.   That is not for you to decide.  Now, I would never call myself a soldier because I’ve never been in the armed forces or trained in the military.  That is an entirely different thing. The reason you don’t get to call me a gamer, or not a gamer, is because you aren’t the governing body of video games.  You are not a part of some hierarchy of video game admins that decide who or what defines me as a player of video games.  You are a gamer or you are not a gamer, by your own definition.

Let’s face it, video games have been around a lot longer than some of you who consider yourself to be MLG.  And, by using that term alone I sound like an old man, I know.  But I also know that video games are older than I am, which makes whatever you think of my gaming ability to be irrelevant.  You have no idea what being a gamer or not being a gamer is.   You’ve never stood in an arcade, with your quarter sitting on the rim of the bezel, waiting for your turn as some geek stands there, their eyes darting back and forth as they move left, right, down, and up to avoid pixelated enemies, knowing that there is no save point or continue.  One quarter.  One shot.  

Now, you may also wish to contend that the games of old, back in the days of the arcade, were simplistic.   All it took was memorization of some pattern or repetitive moments to be good.  Sure, go ahead and keep believing that.  I dare you to even try to keep up with someone like Billy Mitchell.  

Video games have come a long way.   From text adventures to monochromatic 2D sprites to isometric RPGs to millions of polygons per second rendering on the screen, we’ve seen games that have told stories of searching an underground kingdom to saving a princess in another castle to surviving the night in a haunted pizza restaurant and sometimes, it’s not even a game by traditional standards, but an unfolding tale of lost loves from car accidents or cancer.   We simulate everything from amusement parks to prisons to farms.  We blast aliens and fruit.  We build vehicles contraptions and even other video games.

Playing one specific type of game does not make someone a “gamer”.   It’s an understanding of many disciplines and it doesn’t mean you have to be any good.   You don’t have to compete in tournaments or carry your own custom controller and gear.  You can sit in a café and play across a network connection with someone next door or across the world. 

And when someone else says they are a gamer or not a gamer.  If someone plays video games they can consider themselves whatever they want to be.   They can be old, young, male, female, Christian, Muslim, or Jewish.   The fact that they play, that they care, gives them the right to call themselves whatever they want.

This idea that you have to be a male with a Gamerscore over 20,000 to be a “gamer” is ridiculous.  Who cares?  I don’t have a Gamerscore.   My daughter plays video games.  She records videos.  She’s under the age of 10.   She can be a gamer if she so chooses to be called one.   This shaming and violently attacking others for playing games is a ridiculous practice that needs to stop, yesterday.  Are there problems in the world of gaming in way of gender exclusion and objectifying of a gender?  You betcha.   I remember the Nude Raider mod for Tomb Raider, Strip Poker on the Commodore 64.  Come on, we need to grow up.  We need to start acting like human beings.  

Gaming is an outlet for expression and creativity and we should embrace anyone that wants to be a part of that.  We should nurture the desire to figure out what makes games work.  We should engage in a community that doesn’t hate someone because they don’t know how to play a particular game, but helps them learn so they can enjoy the same thing we do.   When you tell someone that you play video games or that you like video games what is their reaction?  Do they roll their eyes or do they continue a conversation, invested in your attachment to the activity?  Maybe if they understood it like you do, had your passion, they would be more open to accept that you like to play video games and don’t brush it off as something juvenile or a waste of time.   With that in mind, why would ever try to dissuade someone from joining your ranks as a person who appreciates and partakes in the playing of video games?  We need more people in this club.  We need help from all walks of life.   We can’t make this idea exclusive to who we feel is deemed worthy to wear the tag of Gamer or whatever is an appropriate title. 

Father

Son

Nerd

Gamer

Not a gamer

Human Being

This Parent's Perspective: Response to Nerdist On Retailers Selling M-Rated Games

Right off the bat, I am going to say this.  Your Mileage May Vary.   I am not your kid’s parent, and you are not my kid’s parent.  What I am about to say is going to totally misalign with your views and that’s OK.  This is merely the perspective, and really an opinion, on how I am raising my child who happens to love playing video games.

Last week, Nerdist: Play published a story about retailers’ selling M-Rated games to underage kids.  It talked about how the author watched a kid buy The Evil Within and how to deal with that occurrence.   The question asked was “Was there anybody in the wrong for what happened?” 

The response?

No. 

Why? 

Because parenting.

While I agree in the hypocrisy of saying a kid, today, shouldn’t be sold a game for which I clearly would have bought and played at a young age as well (circa 1987), I also have to say with complete awareness of how clichéd it sounds, “It was different in my day.”

Let’s flashback to the 80s when Atari and NES were the big names in video game consoles and look at this further.

As a young kid, I had a vivid imagination.  I knew there were no such things as monster under the bed or vampires or zombies, but my mind could certainly conjure up something more viscerally disturbing than anything Stephen King, Clive Barker, or even David Lynch could put on paper or screen.  Quite frankly, what you couldn’t see scared me more than what was actually shown.  I saw Poltergeist and Nightmare on Elm Street, The Exorcist, and Evil Dead 2 at a young age and those films scared the piss out of me.    Hell, the scenes in E.T. where the government scientists descend upon Elliot’s house were the stuff of mindmares when I returned home from the theater to a darkened house.   But, I survived.  I watched Die Hard in the theater and I was only 14 at the time.    So, while my imagination was overactive when it came to coming up with scare worthy thoughts, it didn’t spill out into the real world with me stringing up and torturing neighborhood animals or other children.  I did not become Ed Gein or Buffalo Bill.  Why?  Because my parents still had a grasp of what I was out doing and even though I did watch those scary movies… and *blush* I did sneak a Playboy or Hustler from another friend as well as rent low budget R Rated movies like Galactic Gigolo from my local video store when I couldn’t find something salacious on HBO at 2 in the morning.   I think I turned out fairly normal as an adult.   And, I have a 7 year old daughter who clearly shows signs of evil genius which means my parents failed me.   I was most likely going to follow their lead raising her.

Here’s the thing, though.   The amount of material available to me in the 80s is a far cry from what there is now.  Yeah, I did see my fair share of nudity, violence, and drug use on film and television and other media, but the level of “depravity”, as some would call it, were ridiculously tame compared to stuff today like The Human Centipede and The Evil Within.   Now, that’s not to say that the same genre of movies or video games were available in the 80s.   After all, I Spit Upon Your Grave was made in 1978.  Custer’s Revenge, an adult themed Atari 2600 game, was made in 1982.   The difference was that there was no real easy way for a child like me to get ahold of those items when I was a kid.  Furthermore, Custer’s Revenge, while a depiction of nudity and sex between a man and a woman was still rendered in all the glory of Atari graphics, so it’s laughable if not even recognizable.    

It was just a different time when we were preteens in the 80s.   It was a time when Married With Children, The Simpsons, and Beavis and Butthead were deemed too hot for TV.  The amount of jaw dropping luridness seen in those shows was about as shocking as an exposed ankle would be to someone in the 1970s.  This was only 30 years ago, people.  We now have Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead on television.   

That’s the difference.  Today’s level of realized creativity has exponentially multiplied as has the manner in which to depict it.   It would be no different than reading H.P. Lovecraft in the 60s.  So, I ask, which is worse, the imagined horror that had to be filled in with your brain reading Lovecraft, or seeing a depiction of his work on screen today?   The availability of that work is also mainstreamed.  The Internet has a wildfire mentality that has yet to be controlled and parents are still catching up to and combatting the circumnavigation of such restrictions over what their kids shouldn’t see.    My own daughter has accidentally rented movies OnDemand, albeit nothing bad.  Yet, I give a decent amount of leeway like my parents did.

When she was two years old, she faced the mortality of humankind when we lost her grandmother to a brain hemorrhage.   There was such a close bond and we didn’t sugarcoat the information.  She saw her in the hospital, hooked up to life support.  She watched her go through chemotherapy the past year.  She was well aware of the world of doctors and illness and what can and may very well happen to others she loves.    Shortly after that ordeal she became very interested in fact that her grandfather and I would play video games to pass the time (Keep him busy).  And, because it was such an easy controller, we played the Wii.  Titles ranged from Call of Duty to Big Game Hunter to, yes, House of the Dead 2 and 3.  And my own kid sat there and watched us play it.   She was fascinated by it, not scared.   One day, I had flipped to Comedy Central and Ghostbusters came on.  She immediately latched onto it and enjoyed it.   She became a huge fan and I decided to use it as a teaching moment about the difference between reality and fiction.  I grabbed my DVDs and we watched the behind the scenes stuff as well.  She watched how they made the ghosts.    I simultaneously demystified the movie magic I so adored as a child in the hopes that she could understand that these things were entertainment and not scary.    She enjoyed a lot of my movies from childhood.  She loved dinosaurs, so we watched Jurassic Park and The Lost World.   Clearly the child could differentiate between movies and real life.  She had an understanding of what was going on and it neither scared her nor scarred her.  She saw me playing Minecraft and loved the creativity.  She just started playing Fallout 3.   She keeps bugging me to get Skyrim.  She has joined me in creating videos on YouTube and solo played.   She has a knack for entertainment and humor that I never had at her age.   She’s hilarious.   Like I said, my parents ruined me. 

But I do monitor what she does, to a point.   I won’t let her watch me play Grand Theft Auto, at least with the sound up.  Then again, the subtitles don’t help so I am careful.  I won’t play Last of Us in front of her.  I won’t let her watch The Walking Dead or play other games that I feel may be too close to realistic depictions of violence or gore because I know she has that same level of imagination that I had.  I recently played Gone Home, which I realize has no scary imagery in it, but it does unsettle me every time I hear a noise in the game.    So, I pick and choose which level of stimulation she is exposed to.  And, like the video from Nerdist says, even if Target doesn’t sell the kid the game, they can go watch a walk through of The Evil Within on YouTube with full gore and burning children.  How is it any different?  

Should the retailers care about selling M-Rated titles to underage kids?   Yes, they should.  I know.  It’s the parents’ responsibility to police their child’s actions concerning such items.  Well, should a bartender serve a child alcohol simply because it’s not their responsibility to police the child?  Should a 7-11 sell them a Playboy or a pack of cigarettes?  No.   And I’m not cool with retailers selling my kid M-Rated games.    While it’s not their job to police my child, it is their responsibility to not contribute to the delinquency of a minor.    If I so deem it acceptable for my kid to play a game that is M-Rated, then I will buy it for them.  And while I don’t necessarily agree with the rating system for movies and video games, I will make the final call for the time being, because I am the parent.  The Evil Within may be 13+, at best, I don’t know.  Kids today can handle a different amount of that kind of stimulation than in the 80s.   Would I be pissed if Target sold my kid an M-Rated game?  Yes, in theory, but probably not, depending on the game.  I would make sure I found out why it was M-Rate before my kid got deep into it. 

As a parent, I am the first and last line of defense when it comes to my kid’s wellbeing and I am doing what I can to educate and prepare her in that sense.  We have far too many more things out there that can harm.  They are more widespread and more easily attainable than when I was a kid.    This level technology that has exploded in the past 20 years is simply moving faster than we are.  We did not prepare ourselves when it dropped into our laps.  Sometimes I think we opened a Pandora’s Box of issues when the Internet became available but there’s no way to stop it.    However, there does need to be a buffer in place to handle the little things.    Every little bit helps.   To be overly sensitive about it helps no one.   Being a douchebag about censorship is just as bad as being one about freedoms and civil liberties.     In the end, you are the one that has to deal with the Fallout.

Pinin' For the Fjords

My kid has grasped many concepts in her five years.  She’s quite astute and has a well developed sense of humor.  While she does not excel in straight forward joke telling, she’s got the observational and dry wit part down pat, as you have probably read in past posts.  However, she equally impressed and disappointed me in the span of five hours.

Sunday, we went to the Aviary in Pittsburgh.  The West entrance is a parent’s nightmare as it opens right into the gift shop.  This is like crack for my child.  She immediately wanted a stuffed animal as she is a stuffed animal junkie.  We managed to get through the next three hours without having to buy something but on our way out, I caved.  For $12 and ten minutes worth of heavy decision making, she settled on a parrot.  As we walked up to the counter, she took the parrot and flipped it on its back.  She then elbowed me and said, “Look, Daddy… Dead Parrot.” 

Now, I’m not sure if it’s a genetic or instinctual thing for her, but it made me laugh out loud.   I was raised on Python.  My father, the corruptor, had all three of us well versed in British humor from the likes of Python, Dave Allen, and Benny Hill.  So, this was a particularly proud moment.  Why?  I was once reprimanded, not severely, but shamed nonetheless, by our quality team in my old job over this love of Python.  I worked at a medical manufacturer and included in the return authorization for broken equipment various phrases from The Dead Parrot Sketch.  Apparently, the FDA does not have a sense of humor.  Perhaps they are German.

To have my child, who to my knowledge has never seen or heard The Dead Parrot sketch, say to me, “Look, Daddy… Dead Parrot” almost made me question that whole genetic vs. instinct issue.  However, not more than five hours later, after much debate about leaving the parrot at home while we went out, it joined the invisible choir.   The foot fell off and she freaked.   I left her in the car with her mother while I ran into the store.  She continued to sob while I had much needed away time from the situation.  After calming down from my fit of, “We spend money on stuff and it gets broke” to  “Why can’t you just leave it at home and it won’t get broke”, I busted out into a fit of laughter as my wife informed me that our child wanted to take the parrot home and bury it.  Literally put it in a box and bury it. 

So, after getting home and unloading the car, I dug up some needle and thread and she waited patiently while I performed surgery on her bird.

I called her over and she examined it.  It’s one foot was now a little shorter than the other but it passed.   As we put her to bed, bird in hand, she kissed me and said, “You did a good job.  A girl would have done better, but it’s OK.”

With Three You Get Wonka

As a parent, it’s my responsibility to ensure my child’s safety.   That usually means protecting her from the biggest threat to her safety, herself.   In reality, I’m not so much protecting her for her own well being, but my own sanity.   If she’s not in trouble, it’s one less mess I have to clean up at the end of the day.

However, as a parent, it is also my job to teach her how to reason and how to discern right from wrong.  In doing that, I give her three chances.  The first two are me warning her that the wrong choice will have consequences.  Consequences that she will ultimately be responsible for bringing upon herself.  The third time, she gets Willy Wonka.

Now, I’m not saying that she gets a candy bar or that she gets a viewing of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  I’m saying that my attitude towards her choosing to do the wrong thing will result in my letting her do it and explaining why she was wrong afterwards… Oompa Loompa chorus, notwithstanding. 

Willy Wonka can be seen as a lot of things: crackpot confectioner, crazy chocolatier, even sadistic salesman.  The one thing he isn’t is a helicopter parent.    We live in a world where we take away the prospect of winning at competitions in order to spare our little snowflakes the harsh reality of failure.  Soccer games.  We give everyone a trophy and say good game.   Are we really surprised when they grow up to be unable to handle rejection?

Willy Wonka gives them a warning and then he lets them go, usually ending his warning with, “Don’t. Stop. Come back.”   He lets the behavior happen.  He doesn’t interfere with the potential of a bad person doing bad things.  Failure is essential in order to learn where we went wrong.  In that realization we make strides to correct the action that caused the failure. 

In the end of Roald Dahl’s book, the losing children do not die, they are returned to their nasty, rotten, selfish old selves, but perhaps they are a bit wiser.    They are not returned to their former states, because consequences have permanent results.  You cannot “unring” that bell.

Now, my intentions are not always good natured.  My child does her fare share of bad things and I sometimes want her to fail in order to understand why shouldn’t make those decisions.  I would never purposely put my child in harm’s way and often times I continually repeat myself by saying, “stop jumping off that” or “don’t swing your arms in a circle near there.”  I know my own lack of grace and agility and recognize those same defects in my kid.  I’m trying to save her a broken leg.    Usually, the things I let her fail at are not listening to us when she should in reference to cleaning up her room or getting something as a reward like a trip to PetSmart (just to look) or McDonald’s (to play).

But, in most cases, she gets two warnings and then after that, she gets Wonka.

"Good Day Sir."
Available from Skreened.

One Does Not Simply Barf Into Mordor

People always ask, “How was your Christmas?” This year was a down year. There are more reasons than I care to relate, but the biggest was having a kid with the stomach flu on Christmas morning. Now, I don’t believe it was the stomach flu, because neither my wife nor I came down with it. That may seem trivial but the kid had three separate bouts of stomach issues across a week, where the stomach flu usually lasts around 12-24 hours. We both thought it was strep as the kid has had the same symptoms without being contagious in the past. But, her pediatrician, Ted Nugent (He looked and sounded like a cross between Ted Nugent and Joey Slotnick with a goatee that stuck out like four feet from his chin), said it was the stomach flu. Anyway, I want to explain to you, in Mongo terms, what Christmas was like for us.

Now, I am going to give you a visual marker and I want you to remember it. It will help as this is how I can only describe what happened.

Do you remember somewhere around the last third of the film, The Return of the King… which had about 14 different endings… the part where Sam and Frodo are stuck on a rock in a river of lava? If not, I’ll sum up.

Gollum attacks Frodo who has given himself over to the One Ring. Gollum bites off Frodo’s finger, which I heard is no harder to do than to bite through a carrot stick. That’s a little tip for you playing at home or in a bar. Anyway, Gollum and Frodo fight for the Ring and he falls over the edge and pulls a Terminator 2 with the Ring in the lava. Frodo and Sam hightail it out of the Crack of Doom as everything goes to shit and Mount Doom erupts.

After high fiving each other for completing the journey… they have an “Oh FUQ!” moment when they realize they are now stuck in the middle of the flowing lava. Soon, the eagles come to their rescue, which was the one thing that made no sense, because they could have just flown on the eagles from The Shire and it would have been a half hour long movie…. But I digress. So, keep that image of Sam and Frodo adrift in your mind. If you are still having trouble… here…

Now, on the 23rd of December, I took my kid out for a bit of last minute shopping, while my wife wrapped presents and cleaned for company to come over on Christmas Eve. The last thing I really wanted to do was take my kid out into the madness that was the shopping mall on the day before Christmas Eve, but she helped pick out some great Yankee Candle stuff for my wife and she had a ball playing some floor projected video game which uses your shadow like a controller as you step on an area of the floor.

As a reward for her good behavior, I took her to Cold Stone Creamery for some ice cream. Ok… I wanted to get some and used her as an excuse to get some. She had a standard kids cup with chocolate and we went home.

After a bit, she started complaining of a stomach ache and ran around the house clutching her tummy and I yelled… get to the bathroom. So, she sat there a good 20 minutes and finally let it all out. Then, before I could assist her, I heard it. I heard the familiar sound of the child spewing used ice cream all over the tile floor in the bathroom. I ran into the bathroom to the back porch to grab the garbage can she and my wife both used two weeks before when they both had the stomach flu… the real deal. It was empty, but we just hadn’t disinfected the can, yet. As I turned the corner into the bathroom, it was too late, again. Mount Doom had erupted… everywhere.

I managed to reach the can over to her as she finished vomiting into it. Now, she was trapped. Not only was she sitting, with dangled feet, on the toilet, but she was stuck in the middle of a used ice cream flow, with no escape. She was Sam and Frodo, awaiting death on the side of Mount Doom. Here, I was, Gandalf, riding in on the backs of giant eagles.

I used a good portion of a roll of paper towels just to clean up a path as I told her to sit tight. Once I got that cleaned up, I could get her cleaned up. She was then told to just stand out in the living room, naked and not sitting on anything, while I exorcised the rest of Captain Howdy’s Pea Soup out of the bathroom.

As she shivered in her nakedness in our living room, I scrubbed and Lysol wiped everything I could. The Christmas shower curtain was now speckled, as were the towels and floor rug we had just put into the bathroom. After finishing my crime scene clean up, I gave the kid a hot bath and called it a day.

This is how I know it was not the Stomach Flu. As I cleaned out the garbage can, I simply rinsed it down in the tub before scrubbing it with Clorox Cleanup and Lysol Wipes. I turned on the bathtub to rinse down the remaining liquid and it splashed up and hit me in the face as if it was that liquid from the cylinder in The Prince of Darkness. I never got sick.

Perhaps it was luck… or a trick…

Do not take me for a conjurer of cheap tricks.

2012 D-Bag Awards: Abridged

I was going to post an entry for the D-Bag awards sometime this week. Things have changed, though.

I had already compiled a list of all the nominations including entries from Sports (The Pirates, The NFL, The NHL, and Lance Armstrong), to celebrities like Chris Brown or Donald Trump.

Businesses featured prominently due to the cutting back of workers and benefits after the upholding of the ACA and/or gay marriage issues.

Politics was huge among the entries, and it was hard to keep them to four. There were so many d-bags eligible.  Everyone, from the Rape Republicans to the constant lying and misinformation during the campaigns, made it hard to choose a clear winner in that category.  The fiscal cliff issue alone should have been the winner just on principal.

The Hollywood or Entertainment bracket was going to be great thanks to NBC’s colossal fail at the Olympics or the release of Honey Boo Boo on TLC.  The vast amount of remakes and childhood mining for material in Hollywood added a tough competitor to the mix.

Lastly, the category with the most impact this year started to unfold. The Life category had the Christmas Creep, a new nominee competing against the likes of The Mayans and Mother Nature, because of the whole apocalypse and Hurricane Sandy business.   But when I started listing all of the names of people who died this year for the stats of Death, a perennial contender, I found that it was clear where I needed to lay the award.

It wasn’t bad enough that a lot of great and influential people died this year. Yes, there were a lot of celebrity deaths, which is normal because THEY get reported more than anyone else, but we also had the attack in Benghazi as well as the Colorado, Oregon, and now Connecticut shootings. Prior to last Friday, it was somewhat of a tossup as to who would be taking home the title. I was going to say the Mayans and post the results on 12/22. What? Did you honestly think this was some kind of scientific or statistically measured tournament? Sorry. I’m just a guy with an Internet connection and a lot of voices in his head.

So, as I was saying, when I started listing out all of the names of people who had died and were listed on the news, I left it open, because there was still time on the clock. Then, the Newtown shooting happened.

As a 20 something, Columbine was hard because I was only a few years removed from that environment. Virginia Tech was even harder because it was closer to my age. However, since I am a father of a five year old girl, who is just about the age of most of the victims, I reeled when I found out. I caught the early reports on the radio, as I was rushing around getting things done on my day off, Friday.  Immediately, my heart sank.  I was going to meet up with some coworkers to see The Hobbit and would probably not be home in time to kiss my little girl goodnight. I texted my wife to tell her to give her an extra hug and kiss as I was near tears most of the day.  Then, I got a call from them and got to speak to her. She was so earnest in her little voice explaining what had happened.

After the movie, I got another call because she was going to bed and I wanted to say goodnight to her. Her sleepy little voice reminded me how much I love being her Daddy.  For all the bad times, the tantrums, the repeated requests to watch the same four episodes of Wild Kratts OnDemand, the intelligence and sweetness she brings into grown up conversations just melts my heart.

And realizing that she had to go to school today, in a different world, again, made me realize that there was no more need for discussion.

Therefore, I give you this year’s D-Bag of the Year Award winner, Death himself.  He recaptures the title after winning it the first year. Well played, douchebag. The amount of lives lost this year in senseless fashion just bolster my decision.

Now, some may wonder why I just don’t give it to the guy who did the shooting. Well, that’s because I don’t feel we need to give this sorry excuse for a human anymore recognition than he deserves, which is none.

If I could give away an opposite award for the best example of a human being in this world, I would give it to the teachers and principal at Sandy Hook. They were heroes. None of them with any kind of training or weapons. They protected those children and gave their lives to stop more from dying. They deserve a medal. Yet, all we’ll do is debate mental health and gun control until their sacrifice is nothing more than a Facebook photo of a candle.

Phone a Friend

A coworker brought this up to me and it made me wonder the following:

“Do people spend long amounts of time talking to their close friends on the phone?”

By that, I mean, the friends that they see on a regular basis. Not the ones they haven’t seen since childhood or went to college with and only see like once in decade. I’m talking about classmates, coworkers, neighbors.

The reason I wonder is that with the technology we have, the ability to talk on a phone is probably the least of the features people want when they shop for a phone. People want texting and Internet and apps. And do people even worry about home phones anymore?

If talking on the phone with a friend for more than ten minutes is a out of date practice then I weep for the new generation. Let me set up a scenario for you.

Circa 1987, there was a show on MTV called Remote Control. Most will only know that this is where Adam Sandler became well known and moved onto Saturday Night Live from there. At its zenith, MTV could balance shows with music videos but… that ended with a loud thud around 1992. That’s another story.

Anyway, after a long day of seventh grade, I came home and turned on the television to see this new show on MTV. The next day I told my friend about it and he said he had seen it, too. So, the next time it was on, I called him and we pretty much sat on the phone for a half hour, bullshitting while watching this show. There was no important discussion; no need for a call. It was just two friends watching the same show, in two different houses, at a time when a stretched phone cord could be considered lethal to someone under five foot had they ran from one room to another.

I cannot remember the last time I spent a half hour talking with someone on the phone without an explicit purpose. “We have Facebook and texting and email, who talks 30 minutes in a row? How do you get anything done?” We’ve become so task oriented in life. If we can’t get it done while doing two other things, we don’t do it. I can’t sit in a meeting unless I’m troubleshooting one issue, reading email, and IM’ing another person about another issue all at the same time. I am not that important of a person. I could only imagine someone with three letters in their title. You probably never see those people laying on their bed with a phone pressed to their ear to the point of sweatiness discussing their favorite show with their friends. These are things we don’t do anymore.

Do teenage girls call teenage boys anymore? Is this something I’ll need to deal with when my kid is ten years older? Her generation will never know the pains of my generation when it comes to a house telephone. We had one line, no call waiting, and no answering machine before 1984. That was when we had two high school students in the house at one time.

When we moved into a new house in 1984, we had a second line set up for my brother and sister, but still no call waiting or answering machine. In fact, we still had two rotary phones and a push button one, all corded. Then, when my brother and sister were off to college or working late nights, my parents had another push button phone put into their bedroom. Still no call waiting but we did have an answering machine by 1987.

In fact, I don’t think my parents have call waiting in 2012, but they have upgraded to wireless handsets and both have cell phones. That’s why I don’t know how much of an impact the phone will have in my life when my daughter gets to be a teen. She’s certainly not getting a cell phone… at least one that can text or take pictures until she’s 18. (I know. I can wish, right?) If anything, I’d like her to be only able to call us or the police from a cell phone until she’s 18, but I know that’s not going to happen. In any case, I have a cell phone. My wife has a cell phone. We don’t use our home phone that much except for other calls, that we usually don’t answer as it is. We mostly have the ringer turned down because stupid calls come at inopportune times. We can called ID on our television, so we know if we want to answer it, anyway.

But even in the most extreme cases, I won’t care that my kid is on the phone, unless she’s talking long distance to a friend, for hours, or if she’s calling a nursing home for me. Then, I might cut the cord. Or… at least the power.

Butt Wait, There's More

Kids are funny. It was always the case with us, growing up. Our parents would spend obscene amounts of money on Christmas presents for us and we’d be more enthralled with the packaging. My kid is just as nutty when it comes to getting a present or basically whatever she sees advertised on television.

"they 're cuddle cuddleuppets cuddle cuddleuppets blankets that are puppets..."
HER: “Can I have that?”
ME: “We’ll see.”

"Dreamlite sleep tight …"
HER: “Can I have that?”
ME: “We’ll see.”

"You pop ‘em. You dip ‘em. Decorate ‘em and devour ‘em. They’re Bake Pops!"
HER: “Can I have that?”
ME: “We’ll see…”

"What’s shaky, chilly, and makes you silly? SLUSHY MAGIC!"
HER: “Can I have that?”
Me: “We’ll… wait a minute? Kiddo, these aren’t toys.”
HER: But we can freeze the magic cubes, pop em in the Slushy Shaker and add our favorite cool drink to make a Slushy cold drink!”
ME: “…We’ll see.”

So, for her birthday, she got a Slushy Magic. She begged me to get it out and make her a Slushy Bunny Milk (NesQuik chocolate milk). So, I checked out the directions and popped the “magic” cubes in the freezer. She expected it to be ready to make out of the box. I said, “No, honey. First we have to freeze these things and then put them in the drink. It could take a few hours.”

HER: “Oh, so when they’re done, we can put them in the Slushy Shaker and add our favorite cold drink?”
ME: “Yeah.”
HER: “Oh, OK.”
A minute later…
HER: “I hope they don’t cause butt cancer.”
ME: “We’ll see”



Footnote: it appears that the “magic cubes” are simply bags of saline. So, in essence, I am adding breast implants to our favorite cold drink. And… they don’t work. 

Just glad she never saw this on TV

The Dagobah Spa

Growing up, the one thing I always wanted to have was a pool. For the first ten years of my life, I lived in a house without air conditioning. We didn’t even have a window unit; just box fans to make the sticky July nights somewhat more bearable. Because I had become accustomed to that constant hum from the fans in the window, I sometimes would have to have them going in December just to sleep at night; white noise at it were. But something that would have made the summers even more enjoyable would have been a pool.

When my parents built a new house in 1984, AC included, I thought that perhaps we would finally get a pool. The backyard was flat and open. It was the perfect location for a pool. Now, at our old house, the back yard sloped right to left with a drop off onto the grass driveway before going further down as it neared our neighbors’ house. There was no conceivable way to put a pool there, other than the baby pool I had as a kid. This new yard was so much better. Two acres with plenty of space. Never got that pool, though.

Now, my wife, on the other hand, had a pool during her childhood. However, when she got older, her father did not want to keep taking care of it, so they took it down. So, here we were, two different pool backgrounds; one that always wanted one and never got it and another who always had it but chose to get rid of it. I never could understand how someone could NOT want to have a pool. Now, I do.

When my brother built his own house twenty years after my parents built theirs, he got a pool. Of course, when you build a house, it’s hard to justify such a luxury. That’s what my parents had to do. They prioritized. But in the days of everything is possible, they came out with pools that were simply a liner, held together by piping. That INTEX pool may not have been the prettiest looking thing but it did the trick. So, when my wife finally wore me down into getting one for her and my daughter I thought it was a justifiable $400.

Of course, being the cheap bastard I am, I didn’t really want to pay that much. I was happy to pay $10 for a Saturday at the local public pool. Sure, you had to deal with the crowds, the chance of urinated water, and wet pool bathroom smells but it was still a pool and someone else’s problem. I mean, we did it growing up. We belonged to the Bullskin pool near our house. It was somewhat of a relief to go out there and swim. Still, my wife gave me that look and I cracked. Fortunately, my brother stepped in and helped out.

They had recently got a NEW pool. They got a bigger pool; a better pool. So, in pure family fashion, I got the old pool. Whether it was clothes or a car, being the youngest child meant hand me downs. This one, I could truly appreciate. I save $400 and made my wife happy.

I was never happy again.

Like my first house, growing up, my current house resides in a hilly area. My yard is about as level as Mordor. But, we managed to clear out a space that could be level enough for a 16 foot round pool that runs on paper cartridges and enough HP to power a car driven by a hamster for ten minutes. Constant trips to WalMart to buy more cartridges and chemicals proved to be futile as I could never get the right size filter. The trees in my yard, two oak and two maple, kept providing my wife with hours of enjoyment as she spent the better part of an hour skimming them out of the pool. Her first order of business was always to “MAKE A WHIRLPOOL!” I thought we got a pool to relax, not run around in circles tripping on the ladder every ten seconds.

At the end of the summer, she hated letting go of the pool and tried to keep it open until the last possible moment in September. Then she’d go off and work every weekend at the farmer’s market, leaving me with a toddler to close the pool by myself. In the Spring, after the cover blew off, the water had froze, and one out of every four leaves on my four trees ended up at the bottom of the exposed pool, I had to turn the green and brown cesspool into a clean and sparkly magical oasis of fun. Repeat the cycle.

The outcome was always the same. Try as we might to clear the pool with chemicals, the only option was to drain it, scrub it, and fill it. My water company just loved that. Because of our efforts to get it clean through chemistry, we always ended wasting most of June before coming to the conclusion that we just needed to drain it. Then, in the fall, I attempted to close it by myself and tore the cover and said, “EFF IT!” June came around, I drained it and restarted. However, this was a new year.

We could see the paper filter bit was not going well. In fact, because I could not find the exact filter model I needed, I had to use a table saw to just slice off the bottom off of the (A or C) filter model because it was big enough to just cause the cover of the filter to not close right.

Over Memorial Day, an old friend and teach of mine sold me a Haywayd DE filter and pump. That’s like sticking a HEMI engine on a moped. My father-in-law and I spent the better part of a week making various connective pieces out of what we were given and what I had, coming up with a strange hybrid of hoses for the intake and output. By the end of June, we had a working pool and I decided to be smart and buy a new cover. I was convinced that I was not going to drain the pool next Spring.  Come December, the pool cover was snug and secure in its box in my garage. The leaves were snug and secure in their watery grave at the bottom of my pool.

I did manage to dismantle the filter and pump and stored them underneath our porch which is out of the elements but still cold enough to weaken the top of the filter basin which cracked when I put it on this past May. Green water gushed out of the top and I was forced to consider the possibility that I would have to spend a good $200 to fix my $200 filter on my free pool which cost me $200 in a water bill last August.

Luckily, another friend had a filter and pump he looked to get rid of in June. And, by mid month, I had a working pool. A working pool that looked like the swamp on Dagobah that Luke crashed into in Empire Strikes Back. “DAMNIT! I AM NOT DRAINING THIS BASTARD! TO THE POOL STORE!” I took a gallon jug of my water to see what I needed to do to clear up the pool. I knew I still had leaves on the bottom, but I couldn’t see them. I needed to be able to see what was in there in order to clear it out. The pool store looked at my jug like I had just brought over a sample from Karen Silkwood’s bathtub.

I told them that I was all prepared to just drain the pool and start over, but if I could save the water, I’d prefer it. Well, of course they don’t want me to drain it. No. Because I would lose whatever chemical base was already built up. They did their little tests and came back with a regiment for how to treat the pool.

Now, when I looked at the chemical makeup of this water that would make Swamp Thing go, “DAFUQ?” I was a bit skeptical. Chemical makeup? The chlorine level was less than my tap water. In fact all of the levels were a third or fifth of what they should be. Yet, I spent $200 on chemicals and a new skimmer (The old one broke) in order to save my precious chemical base.

I followed their directions and by step three, when it says, “Your pool water should now be clear.”, I said, “EFF IT!” I bled that bastard faster than a Nigerian banker bleeds a naïve grandmother. When I walked out Sunday morning and saw what was left in my pool, I thought a new life form was going to crawl out of the ooze with plans to take over the top spot on the food chain. I half expected to find a dead cat carcass in there, amongst the leaves and inch of green algae. Although, I don’t know how that would compare to a “live cat carcass.” Would that have been Church from Pet Sematary?

Anyway, I now have a crystal clear pool ready to swim in and it’s only the second of July. Plenty of time until I have to scramble and get the cover on in October. Of course, the $200 I spent in chemicals will be nothing compared to the $450 I will have to spend in August. I left the hose on overnight, with the assurance from my wife that the pool would not overflow. I had a river in my backyard this morning.

The point is, if you are a lazy bastard like I am who keeps forgetting to close his pool properly at the end of the summer then you will have to spend the money to fix it in the Spring. The question is, do you spend $200 on chemicals to make your algae soup highly chlorinated, or do you just drain it and start over. Most pool store employees will tell you to use chemicals. I mean, why not? You spend the money on them and if it doesn’t work, you spend more money because now you have all that chemical base built up. Win-win.

But, if you have a 5000 gallon pool, like I do, you are better off draining it. Yeah, it costs a lot of money but now I’m $500 in the hole because of the chemicals I did buy and the fact that I drained my pool. Rest assured, I will be PROPERLY closing my pool and keeping the chemicals I didn’t use for reopening the pool next year. I will also put my pump and filter in my garage which is more climate controlled than the room under my porch.

It’s your own judgment, I guess. If you have anything bigger than a 16 x 48 pool, you might want to consider keeping the water and fixing it through chemicals. At that point, I would go to sever pool stores with a sample before making that decision. A lot of them will test the water for free if you buy something. If you have a pool, you’ll need chemicals anyway, so buy a bag of shock or tub of chlorine tabs at each place.

Now, I know why my father is one of the smartest men I know. Yes, we never had the pool, but he never had the headache.

The Ruination Of Easter or How I Can't Win With My Kid

Here’s a little tip for all you parents out there just getting into the threes and fours with your children.  Expect the ruination of any holiday by your own hand.

On Good Friday, while my wife was at work, I took on the task of coloring eggs with my daughter. I set it all up and let her have at it and she did a really great job. She colored 2/3 of the eggs all by herself. She put the eggs in the cup and put them on the rack to dry. No parental mucking up of the process.  It was because of that self sufficiency that made it horribly apparent that this would all end in tears.

See, after Easter is over. Those eggs need to be dealt with in some manner. You either use them or throw them away.

Personally, I’d rather use them. Chef salad and egg salad sandwiches are a wonderful use of hard boiled colored eggs. Unfortunately, they are also the last fates a four year old wants to see beset upon her prized colored eggs.

Last Wednesday was the day of eggs-ecution. I had hoped to do it in secret but unfortunately, my child is nosy and has to be involved with everything regardless of what kind of exploration Dora is doing at the time.

I pulled the carton out and began to peel the eggs. There was some initial begging and pleading for the eggs on her part. There was even some bargaining for a commuted sentence. I even think she promised to be a good girl at one point. Alas, dinner would wait for no one, not even the sobs of a four year old.

She fled to the safety of her bedroom and wet her pillow with the sobs and wails of someone who just watched their child put to death for the amusement of others. All her hard work, the accomplishment of coloring the eggs by herself, destroyed by the hand of the father. It was almost a tragedy of Greek or Biblical proportions.

Eventually, the cries of anguish subsided, replaced with the sounds of snores. She had cried herself to sleep, the poor thing. And in an hour, she was awakened for dinner and the sobs and ire for her father resumed.

But, I was to not be outdone by my wife who placed her bunny crazy straw in the dishwasher this past weekend. She straightened that bitch out… and I’m talking about the straw.

As I sat there, waiting for karma to free me from the guilt of being made the hand of fate against those eggs last week, I was given the cold shoulder and my daughter said, “It’s OK mommy. It was an accident.”

I hate holidays.