Highly-Focused Yet Nearly-Baseless Hate

I write this short article to fill what I see as a glaring hole in the Internet.  I know I am not the first person to search for the words that ultimately brought you here.  You aren't alone, friend. I feel your pain all too well.  Here it is:

"I hate the Superkids".  There it is. The phrase that Google thinks no one has ever expressed before this moment, apparently.  Once the bots get here there should be no more of this "No results found" nonsense. 

If the last two paragraphs are just gibberish to you, consider yourself blessed and feel free to move on to the next article. The rest of us are just gonna hang here for a bit. 

Like most hate, it's not based in logic.   I mean, how can anyone legitimately hate a clearly effective phonics-based mechanism that is designed to help kids enjoy their path toward literacy?  I don't know.  There's just... something there. But if I had to rank the level of hatred, I would put it somewhere above my hatred of the CarFax fox but below that of the original USell guy. Maybe on par with that of Sid the Science Kid and his classmates at the Montessori School for the Hyperactive, Lumpy, and Oddly Hued. 

Yeah, that's about right. 

Jeez, I... I hate a lot of things. I'm sure that's a healthy sign...

With the Superkids it's a photo finish between what I hate most: the androgynous style of the art or the other-worldly naming conventions of the gang members. There are somewhere between, like, ten and fifteen hundred of these...um...kids and their pets every one of which is absolutely special, uniquely skilled, and yet totally interchangeable and forgettable. Kids apparently have no problem figuring it all out and keeping it straight but all of the parents I have talked to have at least some difficulty. Is this Tac or Toc? Is Ettabetta a girl? Is this kid seriously named Icky? Wait... "Fast Cat" is not the cat?

Definitely making it into the top ten of my grievances with these characters is the bipolar nature of their emotional responses to anything that happens to them. Every event is a cause for ticker-tape-parade-level celebration (finding a lost mitten) or bottomless grief (being the "rotten egg" because you are last to jump in the pond).  Cripes, find a center, would you? I mean, while I was writing this I discovered that the apple in my lunch was unexpectedly juicy and sweet but I also noticed a typo in a test procedure I wrote, but I'm not going to respond by doing a few cartwheels of joy immediately  followed by offing myself with my stapler in a fit of suicidal depression. 

Everything in their whole world is "fantastic" or it is a "flop" - there is no middle ground.  I mean, how can a small wooden desk be "fantastic"? In my life I have built a number of desks, and not one of them has ever been described as "fantastic".  "Well-built", sure. "Adequate", closer to the mark. "Interesting", uhh... nope. I'm pretty sure a desk would need to be crafted out of materials not normally found in this dimension or it would need to be known for its ability to slay dragons to earn the title "fantastic".  

And who besides movie critics describes something as a "flop" in normal conversation?  "Tac  tries a handstand. The handstand is a flop." Pfft. Frankly I would rather have my (then) five-year-old read "Tac tries a handstand. As you can see, Tac kind of sucks at handstands."

Finally are the after-the-book questions that don't test reading comprehension as much as they test my ability to resist reading them in the most sarcastic tone imaginable. For example, I try to not say things like "As if you could possibly give half a rat's behind, do you think the clubhouse is a good place for the stuffed lion?" Here's another: "(Heavy sigh) After what's-her-face gets a letter from whosits, how do you know she is happy? It couldn't possibly be the fact she is smiling rapturously and hugging her friend, so it must be something we're missing... (rolls eyes)".

But, hey, like I said, I can't argue with the method. Teaching a kid to do something "simple" like reading, riding a bike, swimming, tying a shoe or any of the other things we all "just do"  is really challenging. And maybe... Just maybe... if the Superkids were around when I was growing up people wouldn't have to deal with grammar and spelling errors littering every single thing I write like shattered cinder blocks strewn all over a bike path.  

Peaches

I was grilling out a few weeks back listening to iTunes Radio attempt to converge on a solution you the question "Who exactly are you, SnowUrchin, musically speaking?" I was about to get up and check on the burgers when all of a sudden a few chords transported me to a long since demolished college bar. There I stood with a fifty-cent Natural Light draft in one hand and a pool cue in the other. Just audible above the people noise of the crowded hole-in-the-wall were some cheap speakers blaring "Peaches" by The Presidents of the United States of America. 

A half-second later I poofed back to my deck and grinned. I grabbed my tongs and dealt with the food and I was shocked to discover I still remembered the music and most of the words - I mean it's not like I really liked the nonsensical song in any more than a vaguely ironic way.  After dinner I looked up the song and discovered (in the Content section) the most soberly written and thorough description of music lyrics I have ever seen.    

Other songs I have looked up - Sussudio, Iko Iko, Angela, Red Red Wine - have had your typical fuzzy artist-y non-answer "well, you know, it's sort of like this but maybe not..." feel to it.  That's what made this description so great... 

Well, to me, anyway...

If you know the song look it up and appreciate the care and complete lack of whimsy the author took in nailing down the details of the description. While you go off and do that, I’ll be completing my Master’s thesis outlining the 19th century historical origins of the animosity between Triangle Man and Particle Man.

FCOL Just Post Something!

I woke up this morning to discover that I had an email from a stranger in my inbox (fun!).  The person described the problems they were having reading some of the posts in my blog and posited that some browser-related issue could be causing the problem.  I thought about it for a moment and then I realized that OH MY GOD I HAVE A BLOG I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THAT THINK THINK THINK WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME I PUT SOMETHING OUT THERE WITH SOME MEAT IN IT OH MY GOD ITS BEEN MONTHS OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!!!

Um, no.  That’s not what happened.  Not exactly.

At least once a week I would walk to (not actually into, mind you… just passin’ by, see) my office, stop, stare at the laptop for a bit, go “Meh.  Tomorrow, I’ll write something, I swear”, then continue on my merry way.  Same thing goes for my encounters with my tablet.  Also my phone. And my various journals and sketchpads I have scattered about the house. And the notebook I carry around with me at work.

It’s not like I don’t have anything that I could fill up a page with.  Heck, these last few paragraphs took me five minutes and basically say nothing but just look at how much space they take up!

And making clever use of white space fills up the page even faster!  Like this!

Look at me go!

“But where’s the beef?”, as the kids say nowadays.  

It’s been so long let’s just throw together a highlights reel of sorts and push it out there.  (Deep breath).  Humblebrag… Engage!

Fitness: Crossed over 25,000 calorie mark in YourShape Fitness Evolved 2012 for the Xbox a while back (not sure if I mentioned this or not in an earlier post).  I would probably be closer to 35,000 by now but I have been riding my bike in the mornings before work and switched to The Biggest Loser Ultimate Workout for a month just to mix it up a bit.  The Biggest Loser software is just about the worst exercise software I have ever used.  I had a huge article all outlined comparing these two and the Nike one but it just fell apart.  Short story: You want a good workout where you beg your TV to stop killing you, go with Nike.  If you want to burn calories and be guilt-rewarded into doing so, go with YourShape.  If you want to kick yourself for spending $13.49 on a pre-owned copy of The Biggest Loser instead of just setting fire to the cash in your driveway, go ahead and do that then.

Kid: He’s six!  He is taking tennis lessons, he has learned to roller skate, and he can swim the entire length of the neighborhood pool unassisted.  Full disclosure: the tennis balls are often (but not always) within one steradian of where he is aiming, his skating technique is defined mainly by a panicky and desperate grab at anything within arm’s length, and his dives into the pool would be immeasurably more graceful if I simply picked him up when he wasn't expecting it and chucked him in overhand.  After all, he’s six!

Travel: Took the family to the Bahamas, specifically to the Atlantis Resort.  It rocked.  As we approached the island and the sea turned from slate grey to translucent blue the boy asked if we were going to land on the beach or at the airport.  I said the airport because we have to go through customs and besides I didn’t feel like dealing with The Others anyway.  On the shuttle ride from the airport to the hotel my wife learned why I was so against her idea of “spending a day walking around outside the resort” (the shuttle’s windows were the fancy “seein’-through” kind, not the rose-colored kind, you dig?).   If you are wondering if I did that water-slide shark aquarium ride the answer is “Hell yeah!  Six times!  No lines, baby!” As long as you went to the rides when no cruise ships had just pulled in the only lines were those to have your swim trunks professionally extracted from your large intestine after “conquering” some of the more treacherous drops.  The food was awesome (I love conch!) but expensive, but the beach was even awesomer and totally free, so it’s all good.  

Music: I am still learning to play guitar but I really don’t fire up the Rocksmith software very often anymore except to play the practice games with the boy.  I bought him a 3/4 size electric (an all-black Laguna) a while back and he can play (slooowly) the first 36 notes of Welcome to the Black Parade from memory (read: from a sticky-note cheat sheet).   A co-worker asked me this week if I would be interested in a mini Strat Squire and I said I’d look at it.  It was a gross mess with broken strings and corrosion everywhere but it cleaned up nice and with the new strings i slapped on it sounds a little better than the Laguna.  It’s not perfect - it’s a little buzzy and the TONE knob seems to be there just for looks but at $40 with a strap and a cable I think I’ll take it.  It fits the boy’s hands better than the Laguna and the color matches my bass… Oh, yeah, speaking of that, this week I learned “Down on the Corner” by CCR.  Super easy and fun to play.

Books: Read William R. Forstchen’s Pillar to the Sky and Neve Maslakovic’s The Runestone Incident.  Pillars to the Sky was fine.  I found the first 133 pages a drag but then the story took off and it ended up being very exciting - I am glad I took a co-worker’s recommendation on this one.  It ended appropriately anchored in reality.  If you have a physics background pop some Eyerollsatol and just enjoy the ride.  I favor time travel stories so The Runestone Incident held no flaws for me…  But, hey, let me nit-pick to death the Pillar to the Sky book cuz of physics, right?  I kind of wish the female protagonist (Julia) in the series was a little more powerful and a little less self-deprecating.  I don't know… give her a gun or something.  Again, good book.  Give them both a go.

Booze: I bought a bottle of Laphroaig 10 about a month ago to congratulate myself on a job well done for… something… I don’t remember.  I throw myself so many ticker-tape parades they all kinda blur together, you know?  Anyway, to say that this Scotch is “smoky” doesn’t do the flavor justice.  I would say (and this is just my philistine opinion, mind you) that this is sort of like drinking a shot of Jack Daniels though a burning sofa cushion.  One time two decades ago (yikes!) I was in a bar and I accidentally took a swig from a half-beer that someone had put a cigarette out in.  I would rather finish that beer than have another glass of Laphroaig.  To repeat, this is just, like, my opinion, man.

Ok, then.  That should do it.  I've got two posts ready to go in the queue and according to the last 1,000 pics I have on my phone I have a lot more to say but let's call it a night for now.  Time to go watch Phineas and Ferb before the little one goes off to bed.  

Night, y’all!