The Guileless Vituperator

Toys and Sexuality

2008-12-18T22:46:00.000-08:00

It’s been quite a while since my last blog so forgive me if I've lost a step or two. Being a full-time parent and full-time employee certainly takes its toll as I find myself exchanging the written rants for the verbal ones. But today, I had a surprisingly profound conversation with my mother-in-law which may have actually changed the way I raise my daughter from here on out.

Now, anybody who knows me or has read my writings knows that I am a fairly strong conservative. I’m the kind of guy who, like Archie Bunker, longs for the days when “...girls were girls and men were men.” And once upon a time, not all that long ago, America was a very conservative country.

Pick up a history book or, for that matter, watch an old movie. From the first days of their lives, girls were raised to learn how to be ladies. They were taught to be well-mannered, submissive and, yes, feminine. Boys were brought up to be tough, strong and dry in the eyes at all times.

What happened next is a bit of a mystery.

Sure, I can point a few fingers at possible catalysts that served to wreak havoc on this male/female dynamic (i.e.: television and the liberal media), but I couldn’t say for sure how many things contributed to creating the ultra f**ked up society in which we currently live.

As I just mentioned, I think it all really started with television and, more specifically, with a certain feisty wife who dared to stand up to her obese, bus-driving husband. His “Pow, right in the kisser” threats fell upon apathetic ears and people laughed their asses off because it was so… well… different. Alice Kramden wasn't a submissive TV wife - not by a long shot. Her posture, language and attitude were gruff, as was the pitch of her voice. She barely even sounded feminine... and given Ralph's large frame, one might have wondered if Ralph could have even taken his own wife in a fight.

So, what’s my point in all of this? My point is that, for YEARS now, I’ve been telling people that sexuality (...like most everything in this world) is LEARNED and not something with which we’re born. Yes, we’re born with sex organs and, as we grow, our hormones run on auto pilot for a while, but we still need to learn what sex is all about, how it works, etc. If I was wrong on this, there wouldn’t be so much as one “how to” book or video on anything related to sex.

Yes, I’m a guy. Yes, I’m into chicks and yes, common sense drives the vast majority of us to ultimately seek out members of the opposite sex, but who’s to say how many of us straight guys wouldn’t be gay if raised in a completely different environment? If same sex relations were the norm and heterosexuality, the deviation from that norm, maybe the majority of people in the world would be gay.

Which brings me to my issue.

My daughter recently turned two years old and, from the time she was like seven months old, she would play with those wooden train sets every time we went to the Children’s Museum. Sure, she’d play in other areas as well, but the train table was never missed. At present, she’s a HUGE Thomas the Tank Engine fan and, yes, as a parent who wants to nurture her interests, I’ve done a few things to bring Thomas closer to home.

I downloaded a bunch of Thomas episodes, showed her a few of them and bought a few of the more popular trains (Thomas, Gordon, James, Percy, etc). Now, not a day goes by where she doesn’t literally drag me to the computer, ask me to sit down and say to me, “Daddy! Choo choo! Watch... choo choo!” to let me know that she’s yearning for her daily Thomas fix. And for her birthday, I gave her the wooden train set table that she runs to whenever we’re at that famous toy store with the giraffe who yearns to be a certain kind of kid.

My wife and mother keep telling me that these are toys that only boys should be playing with and I’ve been calmly waving them off in a “what harm could it do” kind of way. Well, here’s the harm. The harm is that the trains could very quickly turn to planes… or Transformers… or action figures… or Star Wars gear – toys that are traditionally crafted with boys in mind. The Thomas trains just might be her gateway toy to increasingly boyish toys.

With such toys comes the desire to play with like-minded children and before you know it, she's only gonna want to play with boys because she'll have so little in common with the girls. Yes, those girls... who are having invisible tea parties, playing with dolls, cooking pretend food in their "kitchens" and imagining themselves as the princesses they always see on their toys... won't want to have much to do with the girl who plays with boys' toys.

I happen to know of a couple of mothers who so adamantly refuse to conform to societal and gender norms that they go out of their way to dress their girls in anything but pink. They encourage these girls to play with whatever toys they want. One girl plays with toys from both gender categories, but the other girl is decidedly tomboyish and, lo and behold, she has zero female friends.

Zero.

Now, I’m not gonna sit here and tell you these girls are future lesbians, but it certainly wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. I believe that a big reason why we are attracted to the opposite sex as adults is because we spent our entire childhoods in closest proximity to members of the same sex, building brotherhoods and sisterhoods with our friends and sharing common interests. If you’re reading this and you 100% disagree with me, that’s totally cool because I’ll be the first to admit that I have very little professional data to back up anything I’m saying here. For me, however, this is more than just a gut feeling.

When the opposite sex is different from you and your friends, they lend themselves to a degree of mystery and intrigue. The “Vive la differénce” spirit ignites as we boys catch our first quick glimpse at a girl's smooth, bare legs. As boys, me and my friends got curious about girls because they were absolutely nothing like us, yet they seemed to enjoy themselves just as much as we did. I mean, there’s a whole “sexuality” known as bi/curious for a reason. Everybody's curious about sex at some point in their lives, whether it be straight or gay.

For me, I just couldn't figure out how girls could have such a great time without so much as one Transformer in their hand. A life without Optimus Prime and Megatron was, for me, a life not worth living. I had my fellow dudes as friends, we did male things, played war games, superhero games and swapped action figures from He-Man to Star Wars to Transformers to G.I. Joe. It’s what boys of my generation did. Ask any thirty something straight guy if they played with any of the four groups of toys I just mentioned. I’d bet my house that 100% of the guys surveyed will have had experience playing with at least one of those four if not ALL of those four.

There wasn’t a miniature tea set, Barbie or Cabbage Patch Kid ANYWHERE in our vicinity and I’m reasonably sure that we’d have kicked the ever-loving sh*t out of any boy in our group if they DID have anything like that. Once in a while, in between trench battles and galactic Empire showdowns, we’d spy a group of girls playing with girly things, having girly conversations and bursting out in girly giggles. We swore them off and spoke of cooties, but honestly, we were all secretly intrigued.

By the time we hit Junior High, the toys started to disappear and we started looking at legs instead. A girl would walk up a row of stairs and if she was wearing even a moderately short skirt, you can bet that at least a few dudes were scoping out the goods. In my senior year of high school, a female friend once asked me about our fascination with boobs and legs. At seventeen, the best answers I could come up with were "They look great" and, in the case of boobs, "Because we don't have any."

At 34, I doubt my answers would be a whole hell of a lot more profound.

We boys weren’t at all confused about our sexualities because most of us were brought up in stable “one mom/one dad” households and were given a pretty clear path to how boys became men and how we should never, EVER hit girls no matter what. Nowadays, couples are splitting up at the first signs of trouble and leaving their children in broken homes. Kids are being brainwashed by their ultra-liberal parents to believe that conformity is a form of oppression and that hugging trees is more important than hugging your parents.

Some kids see their nannies more than they see their own parents and there are no strong role models for them to emulate. It comes as no surprise to me that some people's compasses are a bit off-North. For me, part of being a boy involved my dad taking me aside and telling me that sometimes a boy has to stand up for himself and kick a few asses. Sure, work to resolve the conflict amicably, but if it doesn’t work and you have to belt him, lay the bastard out. Then, Dad gave me some pointers and we bonded as males.

Nowadays, lawsuits appear shortly after a mild bitchslap and ultra-pacifist hippie, hummus-eating parents pussify their kids to the point that a slight frost in the morning will send them into a hissy fit of pansy-ass proportions.

So, I’ve switched gears a bit. Sure, my daughter gets to keep her Thomas trains, but her birthday gifts also included a Mommy & Me doll and a small baby stroller, complete with a pack of mini-diapers and mini baby bottle. And I’m happy to report that she loves this doll tremendously, changes her diaper often, remembers to feed her and even tucks her in to sleep – all with virtually no direction from us.

And yes, the vast majority of her clothing is either pink, red or lavender. We also just bought her another winter coat last week. It’s a very warm, magenta jacket that she loves about as much as we do. Our daughter often sees her mom and me together, giving each other loving attention, hugs, etc., and I really believe this will benefit her a great deal. Coming from a solid and loving home will teach and nurture her in ways that no amount of book-reading ever could.

Lastly, I'm aware that there are some “experts” in the field who believe that one can be born as a homosexual, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that “nurture” has a WHOLE LOT more to do with sexuality than “nature.” And I'll actually back up this claim, citing Volume 146, Issue 20, Page 95 of the November 13, 1995 issue of TIME in an article entitled “New Evidence of a ‘Gay Gene’” by Anastasia Toufexis.

An exerpt from the article reads:

“"Gay gene" researcher Dean Hamer was asked by Scientific American if homosexuality was rooted solely in biology. He replied: "Absolutely not. From twin studies, we already know that half or more of the variability in sexual orientation is not inherited. Our studies try to pinpoint the genetic factors...not negate the psychosocial factors."”

Homosexuals might not necessarily have chosen their sexual tendencies, but they did pick it up somewhere along the line after they left the womb – not while they were in it. Furthermore, they choose to ACT on those tendencies, so don't make it like someone's got a gun to their heads, making them have gay sex.

Anyway, upon finishing up this conversation with my mother-in-law, I resolved to give my daughter more pink clothes, tea sets, dolls and dresses..... not to mention a very loving and stable home.

Hillary and Obama Both Suck

2008-05-08T17:28:00.000-07:00

Well, if you’re a John McCain fan at the time I’m writing this, then you’re thrilled to pieces at watching Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton absolutely obliterate any chance the Democrats might have had at taking back the White House. I’m aware that Hillary has her legions of supporters and Obama seemingly has more, but I happen to think they’re both a couple of dumbasses and I couldn’t be happier at watching these two nimrods destroy their party from within.

I mean, c'mon! McCain hasn’t even had to DO anything yet.

Usually by now, the Republicans have their star, the Dems have theirs and the race to 1600 Penn Ave is on. Yet, neither Clinton nor Obama have really been able to put a dent in McCain’s chassis because they’ve been too busy contending with each other. Way back when talks first surfaced of Hillary throwing her hat into the ring, I called it.

I said, “Hillary doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the presidency.” At the time, most of the people with whom I shared that particular opinion thought I was nuts.

I wonder what they think now?

Not long after Bush started his second term as president, I’d heard whispers of somebody named Barack Hussein Obama. Only he wasn’t a terrorist and he wasn’t harboring weapons of mass destruction (…at least I don’t think he was). He was presumed to be a future contender for the presidency.

The United States presidency.

I was like, “Who the hell is this Obama guy and why would anybody be stupid enough to elect a guy with a name like that to our country’s highest office?” I know that the 9/11 tragedy happened close to seven years ago, but the wounds are still there. “I'd never even heard of this ass-clown until like four years ago, so who's gonna actually vote for this guy?” I thought.

Well, apparently quite a few people bought into the Obama fad. I don't know - Maybe it’s my immaturity, but don’t we have any viable candidates with a name that isn’t reminiscent of two of the most evil men of our time? Anyway, once the campaigns kicked off several months ago, I started doing research on this guy. He’s about as far right on the liberal track as you can possibly get as a politician… and I’m fairly close to the edge of the left, so you can imagine what his odds are of scoring a vote from me. He’ll win the state I live in, but I guarantee you it’ll be without my help.

“But as of the date I’m reading this, Barack Obama hasn’t even officially won his party’s nomination. How can you say he’ll win your state?” Because he just will. Because my state is so sickeningly liberal that they’d vote for a potato if it touted the merits of abortion and gay rights.

As I’m writing this blog entry, Obama is just now starting to set his sights exclusively on McCain because his lead in pledged delegates is now pretty much insurmountable. Just the other day, he took North Carolina convincingly while Clinton barely took Indiana. So, going forward, Obama is unlikely to give Clinton a second thought.

But here’s the part that I absolutely, positively LOVE.

Hillary Clinton, so famished for power, simply REFUSES to concede. She has pretty much ZERO chance of winning her party’s nomination, but it’s not penetrating that thick head of hers. And here’s another great thing about this Celebrity Deathmatch we’ve been watching. Clinton’s already done the lion’s share of research and subsequent anti-Obama muck-tossing in a desperate attempt to erode voters’ confidence. She’s gone on the record several times, insisting that Obama just isn’t electable, while speaking of a possible gas tax holiday.

Not only is Obama electable, but a gas tax holiday is pretty much the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard come out of a candidate’s mouth. Either she’s really dumb or she’s really smart and is hoping that every American voter is dumb. Day One of any economics class will cover supply, demand and how price is determined based on the first two. If supply is high and demand is low, prices are low. If supply is low (or steady) and demand is high, prices can be high.

Gas is ridiculously f**king expensive. So, will a gas tax holiday help? Of course not. Any idiot with a semi-functioning brain could tell you that. It’s a perceived aid for an ever-rising problem that will continue to rise because nobody’s chipping away at demand. Our president needs to look at the long-range solution that will WORK.

Memo to Hillary: Focus on alternate sources of fuel, numbnuts!

If we can find and mass-produce altenate fuel sources, that will cut into demand… which will finally lower gas prices. A gas tax holiday is a cheap "tell them what they wanna hear long enough to get me elected" tactic that only the biggest idiots would ever consider tossing into a presidential campaign because the majority of upright Americans will see right through it.

Meanwhile, McCain has barely needed to lift a finger or spend much money. Having locked down his party's nomination ages ago, he's been able to campaign at his pace and spend at his pace. That'll all change soon enough, but luckily for McCain, he's got plenty of fodder ready to fire - thanks to Hillary and Obama. These two fools are already tearing each other apart and revealing their stupidity at nearly every turn.

But the bleeding won’t end yet. Oh, no no noooooo! Clinton won’t concede. She’s not only flat-ass broke, but she's now MILLIONS of dollars in debt… and yet she keeps limping forward, uttering annoying catchphrases like, “Full speed ahead to the White House.” Yeah, full speed with no brakes. Luckily, the White House is gated, lest she plow through the pillars at the front.

It’s no wonder that, nowadays, her campaign speeches begin with requests for more money. She's gonna have to write another couple of brain-numbing books if she ever hopes to crawl out of that hole. I'll be honest here - I hated her when she was a power hungry first lady, but seeing her true colors in this campaign, I've learned to loathe her all that much more.

So clear is the fact that she’s irrationally desperate for power that even some of Hillary’s “supporters” are switching sides. Without a doubt, she was confident coming into the fray – so confident, in fact, that she all but assumed that securing the nomination would be like a quick knock out blow as opposed to a twelve round split decision. She certainly didn’t prepare for such a long haul, evident by her poor campaigning strategies and her inability to pull in the volume of campaign funds that the Obama crew did.

Who the hell would trust this daffy freak with nuclear launch codes? For that matter, who would trust a dude with a name like Barack Hussein Obama with our nukes? But, at the very least, I gotta give this Obama guy credit. Sure, he can’t bowl for sh*t, but he stayed cool, calm, collected and non-confrontational for most of this campaign. He never looked desperate or famished for power. All he really did was to put forth a quiet air of confidence and a steady hand.

Meanwhile, virtually every still bug-eyed shot I’ve seen of Hillary on the net would be enough to scare little children into hiding under the covers. No wonder Bill looks like complete hell.

So, unless Hillary manages to uncover the biggest scandal of all time against Obama in the next few days, she’s toast. Even then, I think that anything less than Obama having ties to al-Qaeda wouldn’t do anything except hurt his chances against John McCain in November. And thanks to Camp Hillary, McCain’s already got plenty of free ammo to fire at Obama. In short, the only chance Hillary Clinton has at becoming the president in 2009 is if she is offered and accepts the vice-president’s spot on the Obama ticket, they win and she has him rubbed out.

Beyond that, she can kiss the Oval Office good-bye.

My Bank of America Counter-Attack

2008-03-27T21:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve never been all that fond of banks, but it’s clear that we have a basic need for them and, as such, I’ve been a customer of Bank of America for a number of years now. Yet, once in a while, their business practices kinda piss me off, particularly when it comes to overdraft fees and their need to put holds on large checks for several days more than what it would take to make a call to the bank from which the check came and confirm sufficient funds.

Yet, I’ve put up with this stuff for years prior to this most recent occurrence. In short, I filed jointly with my wife as usual. She and I agreed that she'd take last year's refund and that, this year, we'd split it 50/50. I already had the money in my account to cover half, so about a week or so before receiving the checks, I transferred half of our return to her account. Once the checks came in, we both agreed that I'd toss them into my account.

So, I deposited said tax refund checks into my personal checking account. The state check seemed to clear without issue, as did the federal check, although it took slightly longer for the federal check to clear. Yet, all funds were made available to me in a few short days and the funds remained intact for about eight days. Then, out of the blue, I had been made aware of a hold that was placed against my account when a supermarket purchase was denied authorization. I’d come to find out that some mysterious hold had been placed on my big federal check and that Bank of America had allowed four previous purchases to go through with a $35.00 overdraft fee accompanying each one.

I received letters in the mail about a week later to advise me of this, which as you can imagine is about as useful as receiving a parachute a week after you’ve hit the ground following a 25,000 foot skydive. I was pissed off.

Very pissed off.

And make no mistake about it – I resolved to walk into that bank and have it out with whomever had the misfortune of getting in my way. The account hold couldn’t have come at a worse time, too. I was hours away from taking a train to New York City with my 15 month old daughter and simply wasn’t going to have the time I was gonna need to deal with this bullsh*t, so I decided to have this fight after I returned to Boston. My wife lent me what little money she had to ensure that I’d have enough to keep my little one properly fed.

I got back the other day and arrived at my bank. And yes, I came to fight. I came to be belligerent and I had every intention to be sarcastic as hell whenever the mood hit me. Why? Because it's high time that somebody stepped up to these a$$wipes and lay into them for some of the devious tactics they employ to squeeze more money out of us to line their own pockets.

For simplicity’s sake, I decided to bring a pocket recorder so that I could transcribe the exact words of the bank manager as well as my own vicious words. And for anybody out there thinking to themselves that what I did was illegal, know this. It's only illegal if you plan on using the recording as evidence in court and you fail to advise the other party that you are recording their words. Not only did I have no intention on bringing this to court, but I erased the recording shortly after transcribing what you're about to read.

So, here’s how our battle of wits played itself out. If my words seem at all rehearsed, they absolutely were. I wanted to be ready to fire out a rapid response for every conceivable excuse with which I was bound to get hit. I literally wanted to have an answer for everything and I did my best to anticipate everything I was going to hear once I was inside. I mentally prepped myself for this confrontation during my time in New York, right at the point where my blood was at its boiling point. And if it’s not blatantly obvious, I’m playing the role of the Pissed Off Banker:

Bank Manager: “Sir, do you need help?”

Pissed Off Banker: “Yes. Yes I do.”

BM: “Okay, how can I help you?”

POB: “Well, a shade over ten thousand of my dollars has gone missing and I’d really like to have it back.”

BM: “Okay, well I can guarantee you that I didn’t take it.” (laughs)

POB: “Well, that’s a start. One down.”

BM: “And about nineteen million to go, right?” (laughs again)

POB: “Well, hopefully not.” (I pulled out my paperwork; a recent account history, plus a scanned copy of the government check I received for $10,386.00). “As you can see here, I deposited two checks into my account on March 10^th.”

BM: “Okay.”

POB: “By March 12^th, the funds appeared in my account and remained there for just over a week, leading me to believe that all was well. Here you will see the 57 transactions that followed which represent various purchases, automatic bill payment withdrawals and “Keep the Change” credits… all made subsequent to the checks having cleared.”

BM: “Um, hum.”

POB: “On March 20^th, the bank saw fit to put a hold on my government check for $10,386.00 which, as you can see, means taking the money out of my account and denying me access to it. Note the negative balance here. And here are four purchases I made after the hold was placed and right next to each purchase, you’ll see a nifty little $35.00 overdraft charge accompanying each transaction.”

BM: “Well, sir. What I’m showing….”

POB: “The fifth purchase was not authorized, which alerted me to the fact that there was a problem.”

BM: “Right, well what I’m showing on your account is that the hold on your account has been lifted as of this morning, so your money is now present, accounted for and ready to use.”

(I'd checked my account in the early morning hours of that day online and my account was still in the red, so seeing that the money was back in my account admittedly took a little bit of the wind out of my sails. But I wasn't done yet. Not by a long shot.)

POB: “Well, that’s obviously good news and I’m thankful for that because now I can purchase petty contrivances like food and diapers for my infant daughter, but the fact that the bank’s business practices have caused a serious breach of trust is still unresolved, not to mention the overdraft fees that have yet to be refunded.”

BM: “Well, there’s not a lot I can do about the overdraft fees, but let me ask you a question.”

POB: “Well, then kindly fetch the bank manager for me.”

BM: (slightly annoyed) “Sir, I am the bank manager.”

POB: “Then we are unfortunately off to a very bad start because I know that there’s actually a LOT that a bank manager can do about overdraft fees, but… go ahead. Ask your question.”

BM: “Uh…. okay. This check that was put on hold, was it deposited through a teller or in an ATM machine?”

POB: “ATM.”

BM: “And was this a remote ATM location?”

POB: “Well, if you call that ATM machine over there remote, then yeah.” (I pointed to the ATM machine at the entrance of the bank). “I deposited my two refund checks about 30 feet from where we’re standing.”

BM: “And did you deposit these checks in a joint account or your own account?”

POB: “I deposited them in my own checking account.”

BM: “Well, that’s the problem because, as you can see, the check was made out to both you and your wife, so if she didn’t countersign it, either we or the feds could have put up the red flag.”

POB: “And that would make sense, except for the fact that I’ve been filing jointly with my wife now for four years, we’ve deposited checks in the same fashion for those years and this is the first time anything like this has ever happened.”

BM: “But sir. Any check that you deposit that is made out to two people needs to be signed by both parties.”

POB: “And that would also make sense, except for the fact that this check from the State is made out to the both of us and nothing’s happened to it.” (I showed her our state refund for $2,838.00).

BM: “Well….. let me see the check, please. Okay, this is under $10,000.00 so it probably went unnoticed.”

POB: “Oh, well that’s really comforting.”

BM: “Well, what I mean is that we can’t possibly look at every check that comes through this bank. We just don’t have the staff for it. So only checks with a dollar amount over a certain value ever get that second look.”

POB: “I find it interesting that so many businesses will use that “understaffed” excuse, yet there are tens of thousands of people in this state alone that are looking for jobs.”

BM: “Regardless of that, had your wife countersigned the check, there might not have been a hold put on the check in the first place.”

POB: “Might not have?”

BM: “In all likelihood, probably not.”

POB: “Well, I’m sure you can understand how I could be led under a false sense of security here, given the fact that, in four years, this is the first time this has happened.”

BM: “Only because the check is so big.”

POB: “And that would make sense as well, except for the fact that in our second year, I deposited a check even larger than this with only one signature and everything went off without a hitch.”

BM: “But we get complaints from both ends all the time. On the other side, we’ve had complaints from angry wives who were mad at us for allowing their husbands to cash checks that were made out to both of them.”

POB: “Yes, but you know as well as I do that those are domestic issues that are not your responsibility in the first place.”

BM: “But that’s what I’m trying to say. See, we’re gonna have arguments on both ends and we’re the bad guys no matter what.”

POB: “Fair enough.”

BM: “Now, if you have this daughter of yours, do you really want to risk gambling with your own money, especially if you need to buy food and diapers for her?”

POB: “I’m sorry. Gambling, did you say?”

BM: “Yes, you’re much better off just having checks of this nature countersigned.”

POB: “Well, I didn't realize that banking with Bank of America was tantamount to gambling, but I’ll be sure to keep that in mind for the future. My point here is that you have to see this whole mess from my perspective. I cashed these checks in the exact same fashion for several years without an issue. Last year, my wife took the refund checks and she deposited them into her checking account as the lone signatory, again without a hitch.”

BM: “But, if you sprint across the street four times without getting hit by a car, does that make it safe to try it a fifth time?”

POB: “Do you really wanna make that analogy?”

BM: “Sure. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

POB: “Well, I find it enlightening that you equate doing business with Bank of America to getting hit by a two ton vehicle, but hey, if it makes sense to you....”

BM: (chuckles nervously) “I’m afraid you’re missing my point.”

POB: “Then fear no more because, trust me, I got it. However, I suspect that you might not be understanding where I’m coming from. See, I could’ve just put my money under a mattress once the funds cleared and been done with this headache, but I choose to go to a bank because there’s supposed to be a level of trust and security. I’ve done my part and I’ve deposited scores of checks here over the last few years. Does that monitor you have in front of you keep a record of how many of my checks have bounced?”

BM: “Well sir, I’d need some time to research that, so I don’t think….”

POB: “Then let me save you some time. None. Zero. Every check I’ve ever deposited here has been valid. I’ve established that I can be trusted, but what does it say to you that, this most disturbing event has caused me to lose trust in Bank of America?”

BM: “Sir, I’ve explained to you that your funds were put on hold due to…..”

POB: “Put on hold as of March 20^th! But prior to that, the funds had cleared and the money was available to use within my account for over a full week! So, either the bank held the funds as an act of malice or they completely dropped the ball and placed the hold on way too late. And between being evil and being incompetent, I would imagine that being reviled is the lesser of two evils.”

BM: “But we're neither... because now the funds are available to use. Here, see for yourself.” (she showed me the screen displaying the available funds).

POB: “And again, that’s great and I’m happy to see that, but now we need to discuss these bogus overdraft fees and what you can do to reimburse me.”

BM: “Sir, you as the banker have a responsibility to know how much is in your account prior to making any purchase, so if your account showed a negative balance and you continued to make purchases, then you are liable for those overdraft charges.”

POB: “But don’t you think it’s unreasonable to expect me to go to an ATM machine before making every purchase when I have no reasonable cause to believe that a near ten thousand dollar balance won’t be quite enough to cover the cost of a box of Tic-Tacs?”

BM: “Well, perhaps, but you didn’t have a near ten thousand dollar balance, did you?”

POB: “I did... until Bank of America stole my money!”

BM: “Well, I wouldn’t use such strong language, sir.”

POB: “What strong language?”

BM: “Stole. Nobody stole anything from you.”

POB: “You know, maybe you’re right. So, let's see. I HAD ten grand in this account, I didn’t withdraw it, didn’t spend it, didn’t move it and didn’t misplace it… yet the money was removed from my account without my knowledge or consent. Now if I can just think of a verb that could accurately embody the description I just gave.”

BM: “Sir, you don’t have to be sarcastic with me. Besides, the funds are right here, so what do you call that?”

POB: “Uhh, I don't know. Thieves' Remorse? Victim Compensation? Justice? Am I getting warm?”

BM: (laughs) “Sir, please understand that I’m only trying to help.”

POB: “Great, then have a look at the four overdraft fees you guys hit me with, each for $35.00 on an account that had plenty of funds to cover the purchases. Thirty-five times four is 140, so if you’d be so kind as to put the $140.00 back into my account, I’ll be on my way.”

BM: “I can probably refund you one overdraft charge, but…”

POB: “Well, that’s obviously unacceptable, seeing as how Bank of America willingly allowed me to incur FOUR times that amount before putting a stop to it. Why is that, incidentally?”

BM: “Why is what?”

POB: “Why does Bank of America allow for continuous overdraft fees to incur instead of just stopping the first attempt to purchase something when no funds are apparent?”

BM: “Well, the short answer is because it costs Bank of America more money to deny authorization of a purchase.”

POB: “So, instead of costing the multi million dollar entity a few dollars to do its job, the customer is forced to pay the price instead?”

BM: “Again, this goes back to the customer’s responsibility of making sure that he or she has enough funds to…”

POB: “I think I’ve already proven beyond any reasonable doubt that I had the funds to cover it, so why don’t we just stay on-track with this issue? Simply put, if Bank of America has the ability to deny authorization on the fifth transaction, then it has the ability to deny it on the first which is precisely what should have happened. After all, the Bank had to cough up the money to stop the authorization anyway, so now we’re just looking at the four unnecessary overdraft fees.”

BM: (sighs heavily, clearly exasperated at this point).

POB: “Okay, while you’re taking this time to breathe heavily, I’ll lay it out for you. I see this going one of two ways. The way it goes will be entirely up to you. Either you refund the four overdraft fees and I leave moderately happy or.... you don’t refund the fees, I pull every nickel out of my account today – in cash - get my wife to do the same, recommend to all of my friends to do likewise and I file a formal complaint against this branch of Bank of America to the Better Business Bureau with an option to submit a written version of my story to every major news station, hoping to God that one of them decides it might be worth looking into and, who knows, maybe even doing an exposé. The choice is really up to you. I’m fine with either option at this point.”

By this time, it was evident that the bank manager couldn’t hide the anger in her eyes, so she started typing sh*t onto her computer. After a few seconds, it became clear to me that she was doing a refund with “reason” being typed out as “extenuating circumstances.” She put $135.00 dollars back into my account - $35.00 for the first overdraft fee and an extra $100.00 manager override. Yes, that left me five bucks shy, but I had most of my money back and decided to leave before the temptation to utter profanities hit me.

She told me of the refund and showed me on the screen. She even suggested that I could check the ATM machine just outside if I wanted to see it for myself. She gave me a receipt and a copy of the “New Customer” booklet that all newbies receive when they open up an account with Bank of America. I was gonna let her off the hook, but this was clearly her own little "f**k you" to me without actually using the words, so I decided to deliver the parting shot.

I reciprocated by telling her that, now that I know that balances of under $10,000.00 are barely looked at for at least a week, I'm tempted to tell all of my friends to deposit a slice of bologna into their account for $9,999.99 and be sure to cash it out before Bank of America picks up on the fact that they're paying a small fortune for rancid deli meats. By this time, however, she just kept her gaze focused on her screen and, through gritted teeth, asked if there was anything else she could help me with. I thanked her for her time and left without any bloodshed.

Sure, I'll admit that I was a total a$$hole on this day, but if they expect to keep their customers satisfied, they're gonna have to start looking out for the customer's interests before their own. And if they need extra hands on-deck..... hey, I'm looking for work. Let's talk salary, just don't ask me to do direct deposit.

I'm just not in a gambling mood.

Heroes of Mediocrity

2008-02-01T17:58:00.000-08:00

I have a near fourteen month old daughter and it’s my obligation as a father to endure mind-numbing programs once in a while for the sake of her education. Obviously, watching an entire program that centers around, say, counting… won’t exactly entertain me, but I do it for my daughter’s benefit (…and at my wife’s behest).

And since pretty much everything I enjoy on television is violent or otherwise inappropriate for my little princess, TV pretty much sucks these days. As it stands now, football is my only refuge… and with Super Bowl XLII coming up in just a couple of days, TV’s gearing up to suck even more once the season is officially over.

So, my weekday mornings are all about the Disney Channel. My daughter sits mesmerized and I silently criticize everything in my mind. Here’s what I’ve figured out so far.

Winnie the Pooh and Tigger are absolute retards, the Wiggles are gay, the Doodlebops are gayer, Handy Manny never pays for anything, Mickey Mouse is narcissistic, the Little Einsteins need my help with everything... and every ass-clown over the age of nine in Higglytown is a f**king hero.

Things like echos, whistling, melting snow, loose teeth and growing flowers really baffle the sh*t out of Tigger and Pooh and, if not for the little girl (who’s always the one to figure sh*t out first), these retards would probably be dead by now. And yet, no show annoys me more than Higglytown Heroes.

Holy sh*t! Mediocrity is celebrated no more fervently than in Higglytown Heroes; a computer animated show. Imagine a city full of living Matryoshka nesting dolls with the plotlines centering around four kids and a talking squirrel (…all of whom can nest into whoever the next largest kid happens to be). Now, when I think about heroes, I imagine Superman saving Metropolis from Doomsday or, for real-life heroes, I think of the rescue workers of 9/11.

What I don’t think of are hall monitors, mechanics, physical therapists, plumbers, gardeners, artists, waitresses, librarians, window washers, museum curators and cows.

I sh*t you not, I said “cows.” I mean, holy sh*t, EVERYBODY’S a f**king hero on this show!

Then again, I figure that everybody is a hero in these kids’ eyes because all four of them are f**king stupid. Seriously, they can’t figure anything out for themselves and it’s truly pathetic. The girl of the group comes up with all of these crazy-ass ideas you'd swear she could only get from a seriously f**ked up acid trip. The best part is that, in every episode, her theory of the day is shot to hell by a f**king squirrel. And this squirrel delivers an even bigger "f**k you" when she winks at the camera before cutting "Twinkle" down because even a primate knows how ridiculous this girl's ideas are.

And not everything that they fret over is even a big deal. Remember the “cow hero” I alluded to a second ago? Care to know how a cow could possibly be a hero? Well, the disaster for this particular episode was a farmer’s inability to make ice cream because he didn’t have any cream. One kid (in a stroke of pure brilliance) suggested that they could use ketchup in place of cream to make their ice cream. As you can imagine, they’re not exactly setting the bar very high.

Based on how easily these kids are stumped, I can only conclude that they’re borderline retarded. The cow provides the cream necessary to make the ice cream and the day is saved. If I were a nesting doll on this show and the four-eyed kid started fretting “What are we gonna do?” like he always does, I’d probably smack him upside his head and tell him to stop sniffing markers in class.

BLOG LINKS

2007-12-23T09:46:00.000-08:00

Since August of 2006, I’ve very much enjoyed www.blogger.com as it’s given me an outlet to do something that I really love to do – writing. Though these blogs are available to the public, I don’t presume that everybody will love everything I write. In fact, I’m often inclined to write opinions with which I daresay the majority of liberal America would disagree.

My writings are a mixture of personal anecdotes, religious and ideological beliefs. I believe in One Supreme God and His Son, the Lord Jesus. I believe what is written in the Bible and I use the Bible to help guide me to do what’s right. I also realized that, not including this brief blog, I’ve written a total of 35 blogs since getting started here… and it’s getting tougher to find all of the links. So, I decided to hyperlink and summarize the stories I’ve written thusfar to make locating and reading some of these past blogs a little easier

Just click the title of whatever you think you might want to read and enjoy:

Free Will vs. Predestination: My very first blog article, inspired by a friend who asked a perplexing question: How can humans have free-will if God already knows how everything’s going to end? In my inaugural blogger article, I attempt to explain one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith. Whether I’m right or not, only God knows for sure.

Superman Returns (2006) – My Review: Pretty self-explanatory. I’m a huge Superman fan and I was anxious to put my two cents in regarding the latest theatrical release starring the Man of Steel.

ATTENTION: Agnostics & Atheists: At the time I wrote this piece, I had gotten wind of a few incendiary comments that people were saying about me behind my back, regarding my faith. Written partially out of anger, I addressed my detractors directly and, in so doing, addressed what I believe to be the TRUE reason why we have so many people in this country who refuse to believe in Jesus.

I Can Fly: In this blog, I discussed a personal accomplishment of mine within my own subconscious – the ability to partially manipulate and control my own dreams.

The Dumbass Media: A short article on how our media shoots our military might in the foot by giving away our position at every opportunity.

Mary, the Mother of JESUS: My attempt to figure out why Catholicism can’t seem to forgo a semantics issue to bring the various Christian faiths closer together. I also take a closer look at false syllogisms here and how they affect the beliefs of others.

My Pisiform-Triquetral Travails: A short anecdote on a very stupid thing I did one fine day at work. This article is basically me poking fun at myself and making light of a ridiculous occurrence.

Credit Card Companies Suck – My Rant: An all-too-true account of the ruthlessness of credit card companies when they have you indebted to them. This is a tale of survival and a tale of a hard-learned lesson in life and finances.

Nuts Over My New Bike: Another personal anecdote, meant to give the reader a chuckle or two. This is the true story of my first weeks on a brand-new bicycle and the ensuing damage it did to my… self. Let's just say that the title makes more sense once you've read the story.

The Spectrum of Airline Intelligence: A therapeutic rant I wrote in response to what was probably the most frustrating airline experience I’ve ever had. Even at my most perturbed, I did what I could to interject a bit of humor into the mix.

Gender Roles & Hardwood Floors: This one brings back memories as it was the last big home project we undertook prior to the birth of my daughter. This article for more for me than anything else as I wanted to preserve the memories of those last months of my wife’s pregnancy, plus pay homage to a good friend who did a great thing for us.

What’s With the Lisp?: The question that’s been bugging me for quite a while now. In the hot debate over whether homosexuality is learned or if you’re born with it gets interesting when considering the origin of the lisp.

Observations of a New Dad: One of my favorite blog articles as it very accurately preserves those early memories of what it was like to care for a very small infant girl. The time flies so fast and I’m glad I wrote something about those early days. This article was meant to point out the more humorous aspects of rookie parenthood.

Saddam’s Lousy Decembers: My brief look at the last days of Saddam Hussein (he was executed three days following this blog) as well as my defense of the Islamic faith.

Luxuries I Missed While in Brazil – Part 1: Originally written on January 27, 2006, this article pre-existed my Blogger account, but I’d decided to post it because I was fresh off of another trip to Brazil and I thought it’d be good to keep these together.

Luxuries I Missed While in Brazil – Part 2: The sequel and probably the funnier of the two “Luxuries” blogs I posted. Life in Brazil can be pretty good, but it just takes some getting used to. Enjoy the rants.

How I Met My Daughter: An endearing true story of how my relationship with my little girl began. This is a great blog for expectant fathers as I dole out a lot of decent tips for how to be Super Dad even before your baby is born. Also chronicled in this blog is the moment when I knew I’d make a good dad for my baby. This is one of my favorites. I hope you enjoy it.

The Allure of Parenthood: This one kind of works off the vein of the blog that preceded it. Here, I speak of the purity and innocence of a newborn infant and the enormous responsibility we take on when we become parents. Also included are a couple of quick memories that I failed to mention in the previous blog.

The Quiet Car: A humorous and true story of my trip to the Big Apple to pick up my mother-in-law at the airport and take her back home. Let’s just say that folks aren’t always as considerate as they could be.

My Top 20 Favorite Movies: A complete and comprehensive list of my all-time favorites of the big screen. Sure, nobody else might care what my favorite movies are, but what can I say? I enjoyed thinking this one out and deciding for myself which ones ranked among the best ever in my heart. This one’s more likely to interest fellow movie buffs who just might have a few movies in common with me.

People Who Need to Get Punched in the Head: Looking back on this one, it reads like a stand-up comedy routine. Yes, I wrote it primarily for laughs, but I drew my inspiration for each example using events that actually happened in my life. Again, it’s a rant, but it’s also a light-hearted rant with no real anger behind it. Have a look at if if you have a minute. You might get some chuckles out of it.

My Take on Ephesians 2:8-9: Inspired by a vision I had in a dream one night, I wrote this blog to see if I could provide a clear illustration for a difficult Biblical idea. There are people who believe that good works must be done to earn Heaven. There are others who believe that faith in Jesus is all it takes to earn Heaven. My example attempts to illustrate who both are necessary.

Racial and Religious Hypocrisy: This one takes a closer look at the incident that cost Don Imus his job, as well as the tirade that destroyed Michael Richards’s career. It’s my take on the matter and my frustration at how very few people are out there to defend Jesus with the same fervor used to defend the African-American community.

Kauan: A tragic true story of the death of a six-month-old boy named Kauan. He was my wife’s cousin’s son in Brazil. He’d been cursed from the very beginning of his life and, due to doctors’ incompetence, his life was cut tragically short. This death hit me especially hard, primarily because my daughter was only a month younger than Kauan and, as a parent, this is pretty much your worst nightmare. May God rest your soul, Kauan.

Do Any Boston Cab Drivers Speak English?: Another all-too-true story about my recent encounters with foreign-born cab drivers and the linguistic hilarity that often ensues. Though the situations I wrote about were frustrating at the time, I tried to interject humor wherever I could.

Transformers (2007): My Review: Having been a die-hard Transformers fan for as long as they’ve been in existence, I had to see this movie as soon as possible… and had to type out a comprehensive review. Though I made out Pro and Con lists, I really loved this movie. It’s now one of my prized HD DVDs and even the bonus disc is awesome to watch.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – My Review: This is the first time in the history of the Guileless Vituperator that I’ve ever reviewed a book, but given the hype surrounding the seventh and final installment of the Harry Potter series, I couldn’t help but contribute my two cents. I waited a number of days before posting this to give the die-hard fans of the book a chance to read it before reading my spoilers.

The Return of Def Leppard: This was my wife’s first American concert and she loved it. This blog tells the story of Def Leppard’s performance at the Tweeter Center on August 11, 2007.

How to Make a Day Suck: Just an all-around crappy day for everybody except my daughter. This was more of a therapeutic rant than anything else. And yes, I felt a LOT better after writing this one. Who knows? You just might find things to laugh about here.

ABORTION: What I Believe: The title pretty much tells the story. It’s my view on abortion and if I were ever to get hate mail for any of my blogs, it’d likely be this one. In this blog, I explain why I consider abortion to be a crime and a sin, regardless of the reason(s) it is performed. I run through the most popular excuses and break them down one-by-one. I knew it’d be controversial, but I felt it needed to be written and I stand behind what I wrote. I don’t appreciate hate mail, but I do welcome opposing viewpoints and constructive criticism. And this will NOT be the last time I tackle a controversial topic, so be warned.

Waltham High School Lamentations: This story is about my recent high school reunion and the memories it sparked. High School was enjoyable, but looking back, I realized that I could have gotten so much more out of it, had I kept my head up and taken a look around every once in a while. Hindsight is 20/20, right?

Cancún, Timeshares and the Hard-Sell: The true story of our Cancún trauma is told here. Again, this was a frustrating moment of my life that I can now look back on and laugh. This story was written to pull a few chuckles from the past and to bring the world of timeshares to light so that others can determine for themselves whether or not losing 90 or so minutes of your life is worth a few free waffles.

First Year Reflections: Our daughter is one of the happiest babies you’ll ever meet. This article celebrates our first year with her as I reveal the secrets to our early success as parents and what we have in store for Year 2.

Michael Newdow Can Kiss My Ass: True story about a litigation-happy atheist who is single-handedly trying to destroy everything that America stands for with his personal vendetta against the Lord. Just remember that God always has the last laugh, Newdow.

Brazil – The Third Installment: Details of my most recent trip to Brazil, complete with the rantings you’ve come to expect, coupled with some interesting observations regarding airlines and some of the things that can go wrong when you’re flying. This was also the setting for my daughter’s first birthday party, which was a day I’ll never forget.

So, that does it for 2007. I hope you've enjoyed what you've read so far. As it stands now, 2008 looks like it's going to be considerably busier for me, so I doubt I'll be writing nearly as often in the next year. Time will tell, of course, so until then....

Have a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and a safe holiday season.

The Guileless Vituperator -- <")))><

Brazil - The Third Installment

2007-12-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

So, I went to Brazil about a week ago for the purpose of, among other things, attending my daughter’s first birthday bash. I set foot on American soil again a couple of days ago and felt compelled to share some observations and experiences I had on this particular journey.

Loyal Vituperator readers may recall my “Luxuries I Missed” rant in Part 1, as well as my list of kvetches in Part 2. This third installment is really just a review of what happened as well as some of the odd things I noticed. Yes, I have a few new b*tchings to get out of my system, but trust me, they’re far fewer in quantity when compared to the amount I shelled out for Part 2 (…after all, I wasn’t even there a full week this time). And I must say, most of the proverbial fan-hitting sh*t seemed to happen to my wife while I just kept dodging bullets.

So, here’s the story.

During our January/February Brazil trip this year, the wife and I agreed on what looked to be a great function hall to have our daughter’s first birthday party. Granted, our little girl was fewer than two months old at the time, yet we had already started making plans in anticipation of the big event. First birthdays are a really big deal in Brazil and those who remembered our huge wedding were sure to be keeping their eyes on us to see how (or if) we’d ever top our 2004 nuptials.

So, in an effort to keep some sort of organization to this blog, I’ll separate my observations and comments into three categories with subsets for each.

CATEGORY 1: GETTING TO BRAZIL

For starters, whoever coined the phrase “Getting there is half the fun” clearly never had to fly to Brazil. Oh, and we flew with the same F-Me Airline as last time (click here for my F-Me rant). We didn’t choose them because we liked them, rather because pickins were slim by the time we had enough money to buy our tickets and F-Me had the best prices. So, we get to the airport and the fun starts… for my wife.

A.) PAY NOW OR WE KEEP YOUR DAUGHTER: My mother-in-law, Dalva needed to get to Brazil about a week before the wife and I were able to fly out and she really wanted to take our daughter with her for a plethora of reasons. We acquiesced, but to make this a reality, she’d need our daughter’s name (we’ll just use the pseudonym of Sabrina for the sake of the story) printed on her tickets for the flight over... and on my wife’s tickets for the flight back. We were given assurances from the travel agency that once we had Sabrina’s name on those tickets AND got written and notarized permission slips into Dalva’s hands, all would be well.

Dalva had no problem getting our daughter out of the country, but when it came time for us to check in, an F-Me clerk told my wife that she’d need to pay for Sabrina’s tickets if she wanted to bring her back home. My wife showed him her tickets and how Sabrina’s name was already printed on all of them, but since Sabrina wasn’t with us for check-in, she somehow got disqualified on all counts and would be ineligible to join her own mother back on the flight to America. My wife was broke to begin with, so I fronted the money to ensure that Sabrina would fly home with my wife.

Fear not though. The travel agency has already promised to refund what we paid for the first tickets. Whether they uphold their end of the bargain when we go to collect, well… we’ll just have to jump off that bridge when we come to it.

B.) COUGH UP THE PERFUMES, TERRORIST!: I have like a MILLION reasons why I prefer to travel light, but ever since marrying the Transporter, I haven’t had an occasion to enjoy my "Light Travel" preference. Everybody in Brazil wants American paraphernalia, especially when it comes to Nike sneakers and electronics, so whenever the family down in South America gets wind that my wife’s heading down there, they all cut deals with her to have her buy stuff for them with the promise of reimbursing her when she arrives. For example, we might pay $200.00 for a digital camera here, but try buying that exact same brand in Brazil and you’re guaranteed to shell out at least DOUBLE that. So, one of the many things she was asked to bring was perfume. Her brother’s wife has a thing for Victoria’s Secret crap and she cut a deal to reimburse her for a variety of perfumes and lotions. The only thing is that my wife forgot that we can’t fill up a carry-on bag with liquids (…not even water), so she wound up having like sixty bucks worth of Vickie’s Secret goop confiscated. Plus, she was gone for like a f**king half hour, so my guess is that they must have “white rubber gloved” the hell out of her for having the audacity to attempt such an evil deed.

C.) SPEAKING OF TERRORISTS: For all of your frequent (and even semi-frequent) flyers, I wanted to ask you a question. Is it just me or is it impossible to get on a plane these days without seeing at least two guys who look exactly like they just graduated from Osama bin Laden’s Infidel Decapitation Academy? It’s weird because I can spend months in the city without seeing so much as one turban. I get on any plane in the States and it’s almost a given that I’ll see at least one poster boy for al-Qaeda with a beard thick enough to hide a Beretta and a few extra magazines. And if he doesn’t look like a terrorist, he most certainly will look sketchy enough to want to bring the plane down just for sh*ts and giggles.

D.) SKYMALL IS MY CRACK: I travel the F-Me Airline and these damn SkyMall catalogs are on every damn plane. They’re the most addictive catalogs in existence because they have all of the crap you never knew you always wanted. All of the really innovative inventions of the day are featured here and they create a demand for stuff that, twenty minutes ago, you didn’t even know existed. Plus, they let you take the catalog home so that your torment can continue long after the wheels touch down on the runway. “Hey, now that I think about it, I do need remote-controlled laser combat cars… and a singing animatronic Elvis robot… and a Steinhausen chronograph watch… and a vintage hot dog cart… and roses hand-dipped in 24K gold… and a scoop-free self-cleaning cat box… and an Oh GOD get this damn catalog away from me before I liquidate my house!”

I don’t even HAVE a cat!

E.) NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM DUTY FREE: Those of you who have flown to other countries will have heard of duty free items. I’ll summarize the phenomenon for those of you who haven’t. Folks who bring more than $500.00 worth of certain types of crap to another country are required to pay an extra fee. I’ll illustrate the reason for this with an example. Let’s say someone in Brazil wants to buy a digital camera, but can’t afford it at Brazil’s prices. Then, they realize they can get this item much cheaper in the states. If they get somebody to buy them a camera in the states and then give them the money for it when they arrive, they have, in a sense, hurt Brazil’s economy. That’s money they could have kept in the country, had it not been for the nice American contraband smuggler.

So, as an incentive to buy expensive sh*t without penalty, they offer duty free items at airports (…and in some cases, on the airplanes themselves). Buy a digital camera at a duty free shop and, as long as you keep your receipt, said item is exempt from that extra penalty fee. The problem is that duty free items are f**king expensive. Seriously, buy duty free stuff only if you have money to burn because I guarantee you’ll find the exact same items almost anywhere else for a much more reasonable price.

I mean seriously, who the f**k is stupid enough to blow $500.00 on a $300.00 iPod?

F.) LUGGAGE? WHAT LUGGAGE?: Want to hear another great reason for packing light? Because you never know what the airline will do with the luggage you choose to stow away. Case in point: I checked in two huge, heavy-ass suitcases filled with stuff for my daughter’s birthday party. So, where did I put my clean clothes? In my carry-on bag… because I pack light and have little difficulty fitting my clothes into one small bag. Good thing, too... because while we may have arrived in Brazil without a problem, our luggage stayed in f**king Miami. Was this a big deal for me? Not really. I had my hygiene items and all of my clothes so I was sound as a pound. As for my wife, she chose to fill her carry-on bag with perfumes and a laptop she bought for her brother. Her clothes were checked in, so she was stuck wearing the same clothes for almost three full days before the airline got our luggage delivered to our Brazil address.

G.) YEAH, WE’LL TAKE THAT OFF YOUR HANDS NOW: Remember that laptop I mentioned just a moment ago? Remember that extra fee? If you bring expensive electronics with you, you need to declare them when you arrive. If you don’t, you run the risk of getting heavily fined. Well, my wife might have had a shot at slipping the laptop past the prying eyes of Brazil’s finest had it not been for the fact that she needed to fill out claim slips to get our luggage back. But fortune failed to smile upon her here as well and she was told she’d need to cough up $500.00 for the privilege of stepping onto Brazilian soil with the laptop for which she already paid $900.00. Meanwhile, I strolled right past everybody with my digital camera and my video camera. Go figure.

H.) IT’S ME! IT'S DADDY!: This part kinda broke my heart a little. I don’t know how strong the long-term memory of an infant is, so for fear that Sabrina wouldn’t recognize us after being without us for a week, I decided to burn a DVD for her. The DVD was basically a short video of me, talking to her, showing her all of the things she likes to play with at home, saying all of the things she has come to expect from me and showing her pictures of her mom and me to ensure that she wouldn’t forget us. Dalva assured us that she had Sabrina watch the video at least once a day and sometimes twice, yet when Sabrina and I saw each other, she didn’t smile like she usually does. I knelt down with my arms outstretched and called to her to come give me a hug. She didn’t move. She just looked at me with her wide eyes and her pout. Inside, I almost panicked.

“Has she actually forgotten who I am?”

I’m the only one who sings the ABCs to her, so I quickly belted an ABC tune out for her, followed by a tune that I made up that she loves to hear. I did all of my signature sound effects and kept repeating the fact that “Daddy” was here. She says “Daddy” a lot when she sees me and, according to Dalva, she said “Daddy” whenever she saw the video. After a few more seconds of nervous tension, something must have clicked because she walked towards me and stretched out her arms. Her facial expression revealed nothing, but her hug assured me that she remembered me.

I swear I almost cried tears of joy with her in my arms again. I’d missed her terribly and the thought that she might have forgotten me nearly tore my heart to shreds. A few giggles later and she was happy as could be, belting out “Da das” and “Daddies” as if not a day was lost.

CATEGORY 2: BRAZIL STORIES AND GRIPES

I said that I didn’t have many gripes, but I did have a few and I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention a few of them. Again, nothing huge – just me having a little b*tch session, but fear not. Some of what I have to say this time around is actually good.

A.) SANTA’S DAUGHTER: One of the things that Dalva wanted to do with Sabrina in the week prior to our arrival is to attend a Catholic church event for underprivileged kids. It’s called “Festa dos Pobres” which quite literally means “Poor People’s Party.” It’s like Brazil’s version of “Toys for Tots,” except on a smaller scale. The church members raised money to buy toys for children who would otherwise have nothing for Christmas and, though it would make more sense to have this shindig closer to Christmas itself, it was held in the first week of December.

Anyway, Dalva thought it’d be great if Sabrina helped with the distribution of gifts, so Dalva dressed Sabrina in her “Baby Claus” outfit for the party. Many of the kids actually believed that Sabrina was Santa Claus’s daughter and one of them actually said, “Santa didn’t bring us any gifts this year, but Santa’s daughter did!” Many of the kids posed for pictures with her and one of the kids even gave her a picture of him to keep and share with Santa when she gets back to the North Pole.

I just really thought that was awesome and I felt honored and flattered that these underprivileged kids thought of my little girl as being responsible for making their Christmas holiday a little bit brighter and happier. It's a short and sweet holiday anecdote to keep for the future when Sabrina gets a little older.

Okay, time for the gripes.

B.) WOULD A QUICK SWEEP REALLY KILL YA?: My wife’s family is great. I’ve said that on numerous occasions, so whenever possible, I give them every benefit of every doubt imaginable. Yet I couldn’t help getting just a little bit pissed off when I saw some of the areas where Sabrina was playing. One house we went to had a concrete floor patio area thingy just outside of the house. There were a TON of little bits of plastic lying around, not to mention cigarette butts and a few sharp metal objects and shards of broken glass, all within a baby's reach. Now, Sabrina had been there for a full week before we arrived and I’m fairly certain this wasn’t the first time she’d been in this area. My question is why couldn’t they have at least tried to sweep the area up? They knew a baby was coming. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that she might want to check out some of this debris for herself?

Sabrina may be a year old, but she's still small enough to want to pick up everything she finds on the ground. True, she doesn’t put absolutely everything in her mouth anymore, but that’s not to say she’s given up the pastime altogether. In the few short minutes I was in there with her, I had to pull several of those plastic bits out of her hand and one out of her mouth. Once she got a hold of one of the cigarette butts, I picked her up and brought her to the sink to wash her hands. From there, Sabrina walked to another house owned by one of my wife’s family members. Only this person owns a poodle who took a dump in the walkway leading to her house. Naturally, Sabrina made a bee line to the dog droppings and cried hysterically when I stopped her from picking them up. I’m sorry, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I let her juggle pieces of dog sh*t in her hands.

C.) PLEASE TRY TO KEEP HER ALIVE, WILL YA?: It was this lack of proper baby care that made me suspicious when I saw Sabrina for the first time. Back home, we keep the house pretty clean and we do our darndest to ensure that Sabrina is healthy. She’d been in Brazil for all of a week and it seemed like she was falling apart at the seams. When we arrived, she was coughing quite a bit with night sweats. A couple of days later, she busted up her nose and forehead and two days after that, her throat was inflamed and she was screaming into and past midnight. Plus, she had a nasty diaper rash; something she virtually never gets under our care. So, what happened? Well, for the busted up nose and head, all accusing fingers pointed at her grandfather.

Dalva asked "Granddaddy" to watch her for five minutes and, within that time, Sabrina apparently made a break for it and landed face first onto the ground. Yet from what I’ve learned about this guy, I can’t get mad at him. He never did much in the way of parenting when my wife was a baby, so I can’t imagine he somehow magically learned how to do the job now. As for Sabrina's other maladies, I told Dalva to keep her in clean environments whenever possible and to try and keep her physical contact with other kids to a minimum. She did the opposite, so perhaps my fears were warranted. After all, under grandpa’s short watch, Sabrina almost f**king died and in the time before my arrival, she had a measles/rubella shot and a shot to clear up her inflamed throat.

D.) NOBODY HAD ANYTHING: To be more specific, I had a great degree of difficulty finding the following six things:

- FOOD: I went to a small number of houses during my brief stay in Brazil, but the refrigerators in these houses were, for the most part, empty. I don’t need food several times a day like some people. If need be, I can get through an entire day on a very minimal amount of food, yet it seemed that if I wanted to eat, somebody had to order a pizza or something else like that because nobody did any grocery shopping for real food like fruits, veggies and meats. Yet, I wasn’t mad or anything because I realize that money is tight and it’s hard to keep your refrigerator full when you’re busting your ass just to pay the bills. That leads me into the other great necessity of life that was in scarce supply.

- WATER: Sure, I like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and other such carbonated drinks, but when it’s as hot as it is down in Brazil this time of year, all a man really wants is some cold, refreshing spring water. Nobody had any. Some houses stocked Coke, so in the absence of water, that’s what I drank. Not a huge deal because at least they had something, but I would have thought water to be a cheaper beverage to buy than soda. Maybe I’m wrong, though.

- TOILET PAPER: This I didn’t understand quite as easily because a wise owl with glasses once told me to read and stay in school whilst handing me a book that said, “Everybody Poops.” Yet apparently, Brazilians don’t because it was damn near impossible to find toilet paper in any of the houses I visited. For those few times where a house did have T.P., it was in a room that was inexplicably nowhere near the bathroom. Does it make sense to keep toilet paper in your bedroom while the bathroom has nothing?

- SOAP: Speaking of bathroom necessities, I was hard-pressed to find hand soap in half of the places I visited. I’ll admit that I may not have looked hard enough in some situations, but seriously, if you want your guests to wash their hands, are you really gonna wanna tempt fate by hiding the hand soap like it's Round One of an anti-bacterial scavenger hunt?

- TOWELS: Both the paper and cloth variety were in scarce supply and I have no idea why. Go to my bathroom and, at any given time, you’ll find anywhere from two to three available towels that you can use to dry your hands after washing them. In Brazil (...and with hands sopping wet), I’d ask, “Hey, do you happen to have any towels around here?” Then, whoever I asked would look around the house and pull out a towel from some secret hiding spot. And you can forget about paper towels. Apparently, that is a luxury that few can afford, so if you spill your drink, you’re pretty much f**ked if you have to use your one house towel to mop it up.

- INTERNET: In Part 1, I spoke of how very few people in my wife’s family have internet access, but on this trip, even the few stand-bys that I knew of were of no help. One girl’s computer monitor was burnt out. Another family member’s internet was disconnected and even the Internet shop at the mall had shut down temporarily due to some weird reason. Once the Internet shop got their system back online, there was like a 90 minute wait to use it. Suffice it to say, I settled for waiting until after I got home to mess with the net.

E.) NOCTURNAL NOISES: I mentioned the annoying dogs in Part 2, but it’s an even worse problem now. Not only are the same damn dogs still barking away, but apparently the neighborhood picked up like eight new ones to join the debate. Of course, none of them are leashed and one night, I could swear I heard a battle royal of dogs barking (and fighting) louder than a Friday night in Michael Vick's garage. But the startling noise I heard on that same night was a couple of guys feverishly arguing with each other from a few streets away.

My Portuguese is fairly strong now, so I was able to pick up the basic theme of the argument; that being that some guy slept with another guy’s wife. After about maybe thirty seconds of yelling, I heard a gunshot go off and then dead silence. “Well, he’s done.” I thought as I attempted to go back to sleep. Apparently, I’ve lost the will to be shocked because within five minutes, I was in dreamland again. Sure, it’s not the ideal neighborhood to raise a baby, but she wasn’t even sleeping at the house that night. She was sleeping a city away in a much safer house with a security gate.

F.) DEAD CHICKENS: Our time in Brazil is usually hectic as we’re usually prepping for a big event. This time, it was the birthday party. Earlier this year, it was the baptism and my brother-in-law’s wedding. In 2004, it was my wedding. Always something… and we’re always running around like headless chickens, which is ironic because I actually saw headless chickens on this trip. I swear, my wife, her cousin and I were walking with Sabrina in the stroller when I came upon two small buckets. Inside both buckets were white feathered blobs with chicken feet sticking out. I asked my wife, “Is this what I think it is?” She said, “Yes... and please stay away from there. You don’t want to get too close to those.”

Hey, no arm-twisting necessary. I’m gone.

CATEGORY 3: THE PARTY AND THE PARTING

In this last part, I’ll end with just a few comments about the birthday party and the pain involved with leaving my family behind.

A.) THE PARTY: What can I say? This party was fantastic. We might have spent a lot of money on stuff, but it was great to see it all go to good use. We had a puppet show, a hair and make-up table, a table for designer nails, a mini-ferris wheel, a monorail, ball pools, a couple of slides, crawling tubes, bridges to cross, nets to climb, ropes to swing from, a mini amusement park-style pirate ship, a basketball game, foosball table, remote controlled cars on a 15 foot race track, open bar and barbecued buffet food, not to mention the goodie bags we made, the retrospective video I rendered and the Disney characters that dropped by for a surprise visit. The funny part is that with all I just mentioned, I’m positive I’m forgetting something. We just had so much for the kids to do and my daughter’s party has been the talk of the town ever since.

B.) FAULTY DVD PLAYERS: What really burned my butt was the part about the DVD videos I burned. I took video clips from this past year, spent months putting together the best clips and rendered what, in my humble opinion, was a kick-ass video. I burned back-up copies and tested each one of them out prior to my trip. I even played one on my brother-in-law’s DVD player and it worked fine. Yet, that next day, it not only didn’t work, but didn’t even recognize that a DVD was in the machine.

Other DVDs were tested and they worked, but I asked my wife to test my DVD when she arrived at the party (…she was getting there early to set up some stuff). The player played my video, but skipped and stuttered a bit at the beginning. My back-up video did likewise, though in slightly different spots which led me to believe that their DVD player might be ready for a replacement. Most of the video played smoothly, but it just got me mad that 100% of it didn’t play perfectly, since 100% of it played perfectly at home and I'd spent so much time ensuring that we'd have the perfect video.

C.) SABRINA THE POOH: Probably my favorite part of the party came at the end of the puppet show. My wife was asked to bring Sabrina behind the platform where the puppets were doing their thing. The hostess opened a door in the front to reveal an area of black velvet. She closed it, said a few “magic” words and when she opened the door once more, there was Sabrina wearing a Winnie the Pooh outfit. The effect really went over big with the kids and I just thought it was the most endearing thing. Naturally, she looked bewildered, but I’m sure she’ll appreciate the cuteness of it all when she’s old enough to watch the video and understand what it is she’s seeing.

D.) THE RICH GET RICHER: My wife told me a story of a certain boy on her side of the family who comes from a poor home and is, by and large, a pretty annoying kid. He certainly doesn’t mean to be annoying – he just is. But regardless of his behavior, he still deserves to have nice birthdays, right? For his most recent birthday, his mom invited a bunch of people over for a humble party. Roughly 25 people showed up… and only one of them brought a present for him. They’re poor as it is. Shouldn’t the invitees have compensated by bringing at least a few presents? That’s my opinion at least.

As for our daughter, she’s not necessarily a rich girl, but compared to this boy and most of my wife’s side of the family, she’s a privileged kid. I personally bought Sabrina a small number of very good toys, saving the others for Christmas. For this party, my daughter received something in the neighborhood of thirty toys! If anybody should have received a bunch of toys, it’s the downtrodden boy; not the privileged girl. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the gifts and am thankful that she has plenty of toys to play with, but c’mon! She really didn’t need so many gifts. It just doesn’t seem fair to the underprivileged children of the family when the one who needs the toys the least gets the most.

E.) SAYING GOOD-BYE: This was probably the saddest I’ve ever been to leave Brazil and go back home because I was doing it alone, leaving my wife and daughter behind. When you become a father, there’s a chance you can get attached to your child(ren) and at this age she’s in right now, she’s just learning so much stuff so fast. You almost hate seeing her do the new things she learned in your absence because you feel like the next time you see her, she’ll be starting college and you will have missed her entire childhood. This obviously isn’t the case, but who said that love was rational?

Anyway, it was all I could do to keep from getting teary-eyed as I held her to say good-bye. I insisted on saying my good-byes to Sabrina privately and before we left for the airport because I just didn’t think I could bear seeing her directly before I had to get in line to have my carry-on bags x-rayed. It was heart-wrenching enough when I waved good-bye to her after getting in the car because she learned how to do that baby wave where she just holds out her arm and moves the four fingers of her right hand up and down. It’s so cute and so sad because she’s got that little baby pout thing happening, too. I miss her to death and I'm counting the days until I can see her again.

Anyway, they’re slated to return on Christmas Day, so here’s hoping there are no delays or snowstorms to prevent me from spending quality time with my family on the most important holiday of the year. <")))><

Michael Newdow Can Kiss My Ass

2007-12-21T09:20:00.000-08:00

I’m aware that this country is full of petty and annoying people, but I rarely single anybody out as being a specific thorn in my side. That all changes today, because a certain name pops up in the news just often enough to piss me off to the point where I feel I need to vent. His name is Michael Newdow and if you don’t recognize the name, odds are you’ll recognize the issue that practically made him a cult celebrity.

This is the atheist who, back in 2000, sued the Sacramento School District because he didn’t think it was right that his daughter and other children in her school should be made to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. He argued that the Pledge violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution (which demands the separation of Church and State) because it refers to our “…one nation under God.”

Newdow says that folks who are gathered in public venues are supposed to be “protected” from state-sponsored religious declarations and, according to this peckerhead, we need “protection” from the words “under God.”

In 2002, a ruling was rendered in his favor, but about two years later, it was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on what can only be described as a technicality (Newdow didn’t have custody of the daughter for whom he alleged to have filed the suit). God had seemingly dodged a bullet… and yet we hadn’t heard the last of Michael Newdow.

In November of 2005, he was back at it again, but not content with just trying to piss on our patriotic traditions, he decided to launch an attack on our money, too.

Side Note: Not long after reading about his first suit, I actually predicted this would be his next move, regardless of whether he won or lost Round One of his God attack.

Apparently, Newdow felt that having the motto “In God We Trust” on our coins and paper currency was a violation of his (and presumably our) First Amendment rights. By the middle of 2006, a federal judge rejected his suit, ruling that the words “In God We Trust” represent a “secular national slogan” that didn’t force any type of individual adherence to a belief in God.

In a follow-up interview (…on the day that the United States House of Representatives passed an act to protect the Pledge of Allegiance from ass-clowns like Newdow), he was quoted as saying,

"A few hours ago, the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States of America voted 260 to 167 to completely gut the Constitution of its separation of powers and violate numerous other clauses because they thought it was important enough to keep 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance. I don't think people would've done that for our political heritage or anything else. They did it because they want God in their government because it stands for a religious view that they adhere to, and they want to see that religious view espoused by government, which is exactly what the establishment clause forbids."

All along, Michael Newdow has claimed to be “fighting for the Constitution” which is obviously a huge load of bullsh*t. He doesn’t give a sh*t about Americans or our rights.

He’s a bitter atheist with an axe to grind against God and this is his way of doing it.

Not surprisingly, he’s a physician with a law degree which is arguably the worst possible atheist in existence. For one, if he's ever saved even so much as one life during his practice, he’s probably already got a God complex of his own. Add to that his legal acumen to pick apart the Constitution to suit his own selfish desires and you get a potentially dangerous litigant who just might one day twist the truth enough to make others see things his way.

What Newdow fails to realize is that the establishment clause was never meant to guarantee that people would never be exposed to any type of religion whatsoever. You see churches all over the place, not to mention cemeteries with countless images of crosses, Jesus, Mary, etc. It does, however, prevent our government from forcing people to worship God... and I'm sorry, but reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or handling money that says, "In God We Trust" is not tantamount to pushing somebody to their knees and praying. Kids stand when reciting the Pledge as a show of respect. I've been to a Brazilian soccer game where their own anthem was sung. I might not be Brazilian and I might not know the words, but I still stood out of respect for the country and what it stands for.

So, what is this country supposed to do? Get rid of the Pledge of Allegiance? Alter it? Wouldn't it just be easier for his daughter to stand (in respect) and remain silent? And how about our “In God We Trust” motto? Do we just get rid of that, too? If so, do we then collect all of the previously minted coins and melt them down? Do we burn our paper currency?

And what about cities like Los Angeles (The Angels) and Sacramento (Sacrament)? Do we rename every city that has a religious name? And what about those cemeteries I mentioned? Do we hit every cemetery in America and remove every religious symbol we find, lest we offend anybody who doesn't believe in Jesus?

Where does this insanity end? Is Newdow gonna try to break into the National Archives and erase “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” from the Declaration of Independence? And before I wrap this up, I'll say that it’s been my experience that liberals will often try to discredit “slippery slope” arguments based solely on principle. Yet I’m already seeing it with the desecration of marriage, I'm seeing it with the gay agenda... and I’m seeing it now with the atheists in our country and their attack on God.

And all of these bullsh*t court rulings start out the same damn way. Some person who lives their life against the grain comes up with an idea on how to get the entire country to conform to what they want, so they file a small suit in a small court. They win the suit and before we know it, the entire country is embroiled in debates that go on for years and even decades. The law changes quickly to favor the litigant, but it takes forever for the voting public to change it back. That is, of course, if we even CAN change it back.

I'm a Christian and a proud American... and whether Michael Newdow likes it or not, this great nation of ours was founded by Christians. The Pilgrims risked everything to come to this land for the sole purpose of having the freedom to practice Christianity without being persecuted or murdered.

This is our history... and I see no reason to try and rewrite it to suit the needs of one pigheaded man.

And yet, people like him are slowly succeeding in their goal to oust God from our country. Don't believe me? Okay, well have you seen the new U.S. One Dollar coins that were recently minted for mass circulation? If not, have a look at one of them and see if you can find the motto “In God We Trust.” If you take a quick glance at the coin, you probably won’t find our motto.

If, however, you squint your eyes and look at the edge of the coin, you just might be able to make out the engraved words. This is how it f**king starts and based on what the courts have done to destroy the institution of marriage in these last few years, I predict it’s only a matter of time before some liberal court votes to do away with all God-related mottos from our currency and our pledges.

Just be careful what you wish for because God doesn't stick around where He's not wanted and if you keep pushing Him out the door, He'll leave... and take His blessings, His protection and His salvation somewhere else. And trust me when I say that America needs God's protection now more than ever.

I don't know about you, but God's always got a place in my home and if Jesus ever knocks on my door, He'll be greeted with open arms. <")))><

First Year Reflections

2007-12-04T20:14:00.000-08:00

I can scarcely believe it, but my wife and I have made it through our first year as parents.

Yesterday, we celebrated my daughter’s first birthday and we were both just overwhelmed when we thought of how much she’d grown, how far she’d developed and how much of a very happy little person she is. When I first wrote about the joys of being a parent here, she hadn’t even turned one month old. Now, she’s a full year old and it’s hard not to feel like a champion parent when you see just how joyful your child is each and every day.

One thing we’ve heard time and time again from stunned parents everywhere is how amazingly happy she seems. They all seemed to want to know our secret and, frankly, it’s not that amazing when you think about it. We all know that children pick things up from their parents. If said parents live in a haze of misery or an overall “Life is Blah” mentality, their kids will pick up on that.

Regardless of the day or the hour, my wife and I do our best to project as much happiness as we genuinely can. Even when we’re exhausted from having no sleep and my little one’s crying in her crib, we bring her nothing but love and soothing consolation. So, in this first year, my daughter has siphoned off a lot of our happiness and made it her own. That’s the secret. Of course, even the happiest parents can’t keep their children perpetually happy, but we’ll still do our best to keep spirits high for as long as possible.

And so, as I prayed for the Lord to give her many more years of blissful happiness, it dawned on me why parents can be so overprotective of their children. I mean, who wants to be the one responsible for tainting their perfect lives for the very first time? I certainly don’t. She’s the kind of girl who loves to giggle, loves the people around her and loves seeing us first thing in the morning. She’s the kind of girl who makes me want to bring my A-Game each and every day… and that entails (among many other things) greeting her with broad smiles and a genuine excitement to see her.

It’s true that my wife and I have made it a habit of shielding our girl from anything that might upset her emotionally. When she was five months old, my wife’s cousin’s infant son, Kauan died and my wife was sobbing almost to the point of hysterics. Seeing that my baby was right in the next room, peering through her crib, I took the opportunity to cross over, greet her and sing a few songs to her. Blissfully ignorant of the horrible thing that had just happened, my girl just smiled and cooed as always. Once my wife had had time to compose herself, she brought her happy face to our daughter.

Some might argue that we can’t keep her in this Pleasantville microcosm forever and I agree with that. But I’m going to do whatever I can to delay her introduction to the less-than-wonderful aspects of life and death. And frankly, I see nothing wrong with that. She’ll find out soon enough that we don’t live in a utopia… and I see no reason to rush to uncover such a depressing revelation.

We’ve also tried to give her the best start with regards to nutrition as possible. My wife aimed to breastfeed her for her entire first year. She made it just over half that time. With scarcely enough time to pump adequate amounts of milk, coupled with the fact that our little princess had turned to biting in Month Six, it just became impossible for her to continue. She let the well run dry and we switched to formula.

When our pediatrician gave us the green light to start her on solid foods, we did the rice cereal thing and quickly moved to introducing mashed fruits and veggies to her. Before long, it was chicken and beef and now, she’s got a pretty solid diet of the necessary four food groups. We cook her food as opposed to buying those famous mini Gerber baby jars and some people (including members of my family) laughed and said that wouldn’t last. Well, we’ve been doing it for months now and I see no signs of us slowing down. If our schedules get too hectic, we’ll cook in the evening and store it for the morning and afternoon.

As for fruit, I’ve found it to be an amazingly useful food to pack with us whenever we go out. Trust me when I say that ready-made food that needs virtually no preparation and can be served at room temperature is a blessing to have when you need to feed your child in a pinch. But the best part of being a parent is having that bond with your spouse and working together as a team. We have a solidarity now that wasn’t really there prior to our daughter’s existence. I mean, sure, we loved each other and supported each other, but having a baby together really puts you to the test. I’ve found that we both come away from the experience a lot happier when we both give our best effort towards keeping our girl happy and healthy.

We marvel at her development and every new accomplishment is cause for celebration. We give her daily doses of confidence-boosting encouragement and we save all of our best smiles, hugs and kisses for her. We read to her every day and we speak to her in soft and loving tones. So yeah, we’re immensely grateful that she’s a happy baby, but given our treatment of her, we’re really not as surprised as everyone else apparently is. She’s a true reflection of my wife’s best and my best and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for our second year as parents. <")))><

Cancún, Timeshares and the Hard-Sell

2007-10-28T01:29:00.000-07:00

I’m sure by now, pretty much every American over the age of sixteen has at least a passing understanding about timeshares and the selling pitches that people endure for the sake of scoring some free sh*t. You usually hear about them shortly after disembarking in some tropical part of the world.

My intro to Timeshare Hell began with my first trip to Disney World at the age of fourteen. I was psyched to be in Orlando (obviously), but shortly after we entered the lobby of our hotel, some dude approached us about a timeshare presentation that was happening that next morning. I was only half paying attention since the salesman’s focus was obviously on my dad instead of me, but the guy basically convinced him to exchange our carefree morning for this presentation.

Our reward? ..... A free breakfast.

Personally, I’d have been like, “F**k you AND your waffles” but what can I say? It wasn’t my call and my dad, knowing the value of a dollar, was more keen to save a few bucks if he could. As you can imagine, I spent that next morning completely bored out of my skull. I mean, Orlando is home to the Magic Kingdom, Epcot and all that cool stuff…. but nooooo, we get stuck looking at room after room of a place we would literally never, ever buy.

At the time, I didn’t quite understand what had happened but I remember thinking, “Wow, that was a whole lot of mind-numbing bullsh*t to endure just for a free breakfast?”

Fast-forward to late August of 2005. My wife and I decided to cash in our AA miles for a free round trip flight to Cancún, Mexico because money was tight enough to encourage us to save, but not so tight that we didn't feel like we should at least try to get the f**k outta Dodge for a few days of R & R.

Now, Cancún had been hit with a couple of tropical storms in the months prior to our trip, but they had no real problems bouncing back, so Cancún was clean and storm-free during our stay. However as I'm sure you'll recall, a couple of noteworthy hurricanes were gearing up to make history.

While we were in Cancún, Hurricane Katrina was approaching the Louisiana coastline to the point that, by the time we were set to fly back home, New Orleans had been destroyed. Ironically enough, me and the missus rang in the 2005 new year in New Orleans several months before the disaster hit. It was our first time there and, after leaving in January of 2005, we both agreed that it really wasn’t a city for us (…as we weren’t sex-crazed heathens or anything).

Our eyes had been on the news while we were in Cancún because our fear was that Katrina would hit us (…it never did). Ironically enough, Hurricane Wilma DID hit Cancún two months after we were there and basically pounded it to hell. Made me glad we didn’t make any major Cancún property investments, which leads me into my story.

Again, it's the end of August, 2005. We de-planed, went through customs, got our luggage and as we were wheeling our sh*t out, a snappy concierge-looking dude approached us. First it was, “Let me help you with your luggage,” to which I replied, “Thanks, but we’re good.” Then, he asked us if we had already made lodging accommodations to which I replied “yes” (…does anybody really go on vacation and NOT make reservations ahead of time for a place to stay?).

So, after asking us where we were staying, this guy whips out a handy-dandy Cancún map, locates our resort, then starts asking us what we had in mind to see while we were in Mexico. Before I even knew what’d hit me, he was offering all kinds of discounts for day trips, evening shows, restaurants, etc. Being the reluctant man that I can be from time-to-time, I (politely) asked, “What’s the catch?” to which he revealed the true catalyst behind his apparent magnanimity.

He wanted us to sign up for a time when we could devote 90 minutes to hearing a timeshare presentation.

All at once, the flashbacks hit me – flashbacks of Orlando with images of me walking on Astroturf for what felt like an eternity in a stupid-ass miniature golf course the Floridians had at their timeshare. I started to tell him that we weren’t interested, but my wife interjected. I then remembered that, hey, we’re a couple and she has every right to have a say in the matter, so I clammed up to hear her perspective.

She pointed out that he did have discounts to at least three of the things we had planned on doing anyway. In her mind, she figured 90 minutes would fly by and we would have all kinds of free stuff to make our already economically-sound vacation that much thriftier (…if that’s even a real word).

I pulled her aside and gave her a quick rundown on how f**king annoying these timeshare presentations can be, but she was fine with all of that. I told her they’ll try to get us to buy vacation property here and she just said, “Well, we don’t have to buy anything to get the free stuff. We just have to listen to what they have to say.”

Then it hit me.

She’s never BEEN to one of these hard-sell timeshare presentations, so she’ll never really fully understand my trepidation until she’s experienced this agony first-hand.

I acquiesced and said we’d do it. After all, my wife will never know the pain of getting kicked in the cubes, but by golly, by the time we get done with this presentation, she WILL know what timeshare pain feels like.

We'd arrived in Cancún late enough to know that we'd have only a little idle time to check in, situate ourselves, scope the area out and grab dinner before that next morning's dreaded timeshare breakfast. The morning started out pleasantly enough. Some Carlos or Pablo dude, whatever the hell his name was, greeted us bright and early and led us to the breakfast buffet.

I coached my wife briefly before meeting with this guy and told her that regardless of what numbers I quote as representing what we make or what we have, just run with it. The last thing I needed was for me to give this guy a fake number for our combined annual income, only to have her chime in with, “What are you talking about? We make way more than that!” I even ran through a few “easy-to-commit-to-memory” numbers to use for continuity's sake in case we got separated.

I mean, after all, it was a buffet. I was bound to go back up at least once, so I wanted my wife to be able to hold him off during that time. I figured that if he believed us to be living in abject poverty, he’d probably cut his sales pitch short. Looking back on the experience, I’m quite certain he’d have continued even if I told him I was a homeless beggar on the streets, living in a piss-stained sleeping bag and talking to my imaginary goat.

He wrote down everything I said with regards to money and the salaries we purportedly made, undoubtedly prepared to plug the numbers into some insane algorithm that would somehow prove that I could buy a million dollar timeshare on a T.J. Maxx salary.

So, we got to a small theater, sat down and watched a boring-as-f**k video about how awesome their properties are, all the while I’m asking my wife things like, “How does this clown look himself in the mirror in the morning? I swear he'd sell cookies to a diabetic.” So, we got done with the video and we made our way to the guided tour of the facilities. By now, we’ve exceeded the 90 minutes of our time we said we’d give, but never wanting to be rude, my wife insisted we stick it out a while longer.

So, there we were checking out the rooms and, yeah, they were nice enough, but who cares? We're not staying there. Then we got to the balcony and he pulled something a little unexpected. I don’t even remember what it was he said exactly, (…something along the lines of, “You’re a funny guy. So, are we friends?”) but he then held out his hand for a handshake.

I found it weird that he’d ask if we were buddies, then look for a handshake right at that moment (…we were out in the open air). Now, when I’m in the U.S.A., I know my rights and I know what people can and CAN’T do. When I’m in a foreign country, I’m less knowledgeable and, as such, fearful of what a simple gesture can sometimes represent.

I had this (perhaps irrational) fear that, if I shook this guy’s hand, it would somehow constitute a binding agreement on my part to buy property. I mean after all, he HAD just quoted a price for the first time since this presentation had begun ($85,000.00), so I'm standing there thinking, “Am I gonna wind up in front of a Mexican judge next year, trying to convince him that I never agreed to anything, only to have him show me video surveillance footage of me shaking hands upon hearing the price I’d have to pay for this sh*thole?”

I even had this imaginary judge’s voice in my head saying, “Well, everybody in Mexico knows that a handshake is just as good as a signature when negotiating a deal and you KNEW you were at a timeshare presentation when you shook, so you’re sh*t out of luck, gringo!”

So, at first I just kinda chuckled and turned my back to him, presumably to admire the view of the coast. I figured that if this really was a harmless gesture, he’d put his hand down in a second or two. I remarked on how beautiful the beaches were, how awesome the weather’s been so far, wonk, wonk, wonk.... and then, after about twenty or so seconds, I turned to face him again.

HIS HAND WAS STILL OUTSTRETCHED!

Now if I was being paranoid about the significance of a Mexican handshake, this didn’t exactly help quell my fears. Again, he said something along the lines of, “C’mon, friend. Don’t leave me hangin’ like this.” I’m still trying to keep the mood light amidst the mounting tension, so I chuckled again as if hearing a humorous anecdote and told him, “Hey, you don’t need my permission to lower your arm.” Then, my “politeness-is-Priority-One” wife turned to me and said, “What are you doing? Don’t be rude!”

Yeah, not helping.

He literally (no bullsh*t) kept his hand outstretched for almost two solid minutes before I had no choice but to come out and say it.

“Sorry buddy, but I don’t shake hands with anybody during a sales pitch unless I’m sure that I’m gonna be buying something.”

This not only did NOT stop him, but I could swear I saw a bit of drool trickle out of the side of his mouth when I said this. He didn’t let up, so I continued with, “Dude, no offense, but I’m not going to shake your hand, so you can put it down.” After a few more seconds of having to look at his outstretched hand, I punctuated my statement with, “No really. You need to put your hand down....... Now!”

Finally, he relented. Needless to say, I had to later explain to my wife why I seemed so hostile towards him. She thought I was overreacting, so I later asked her, “Didn’t you think it was odd that he kept his hand up for almost three uninterrupted minutes?” At that point, even SHE had to admit that was a bit unsettling. My wife, God bless her heart, is the kind of person who tends to get professionally victimized time and time again because she won't stand up for herself at the risk of seeming rude.

And I'm the exact opposite of that.

We got to the final leg of our tour which was the “Sit Down and Make a Decision” meeting. By this time, we’d almost DOUBLED our time commitment and still hadn’t received anything in return.

Now, one thing that separates American salespeople from dudes like this is that, even if the pitch doesn’t result in a sale, the American is still polite to you. So, Pablo's sitting across from us, showing us the numbers and pitching some payment options for the place. Naturally, when you hem, haw and hesitate, the price magically lowers a few times. Yet I told him that, if he had bothered to think about it for five seconds, he’d realize that there’s no way we’d be able to afford this place on our combined salaries.

Then he started going into a story about how his mother owns a timeshare here and how she’s practically a pauper, so we should have no problems. I very politely told him that I didn’t think we were interested, at which point he had the audacity to sigh heavily, roll his eyes, lean in and say, “Look! You’re not gonna get a better deal on a place as great as this anywhere else!” He then stopped me before I could respond to call his manager over.

Not that we were ever gonna buy this piece-of-sh*t timeshare, but what he said next was definitely a deal-breaker.

Not bothering to lower the volume of his voice, he said to her, “Maybe you can reason with him. He’s clearly not understanding what I’m saying here.” Even my wife knew that was a no-no, as was evident by the “He did NOT just say that” look on her face. The manager started in and I cut her off almost instantly. At this point, I had no intention of being anything else other than unapologetically abrupt with these ass-clowns.

“Okay, I've heard enough! I’ve listened to you for almost three hours now! Now it’s your turn to listen to me!

First off, Pablo, I understand far more than you could ever imagine and, unlike you, I didn’t come to Cancún to negotiate major business deals, so don’t presume to tell me what I do and do not understand!

Secondly, if you had even a fourth-grader’s math skills, you’d have realized a LONG time ago that there is no way we could purchase a place like this without plunging ourselves into an insurmountable abyss of debt.

Thirdly, we agreed to give you ninety minutes of our time in exchange for all of these promised discounts, we’ve now given you DOUBLE that time and, unless you count frustration, grief and now, ANGER, we have yet to receive jack sh*t for our trouble!

And finally, we used our AA miles to fly here in the first place because it allowed us the opportunity to enjoy an economically-sound vacation. Only we haven’t had a chance to enjoy ANYTHING because we’ve been in Cancún for almost a day and a half and haven’t done anything we’ve wanted to do because of this pointless timeshare commitment!

Our final answer is NO and we have no intention on buying anything you have to sell us. And if you thought we flew here for free, just to blow eighty-five grand on property we’d never use, then I fear it is YOU who does not understand ME… or little else remotely related to common-sense for that matter.

Now, I suggest you uphold your end of the bargain because we’re leaving!”

Pablo took a walk, the manager conceded, gave us our free discounts and we were finally on our way to officially start enjoying our vacation. I turned to my wife as we exited the resort and you should have seen the look of surprised amusement on her face. I made no apologies then and I make none now because I knew damn well that, without that hard-lined response, we’d have easily blown another hour in there while crony after crony swooped in to break us down like vultures on a fresh corpse.

As we turned a corner, I looked at my wife and with a big grin on my face, I said,

“And that’s what a timeshare pitch feels like.” <")))><

Waltham High School Lamentations

2007-09-22T23:44:00.000-07:00

I recently received an Evite to attend my fifteen year reunion for Waltham High School..... and I nearly stumbled over in shock.

Fifteen years? How? That’s like just under half of my lifetime ago!

Well, I’m definitely going, partly because I didn’t bother with my five year reunion (...not much changed in five years) and partly because I don’t even think we had a ten year one. So, I dusted the cobwebs off of my 1992 High School yearbook and perused the pages a bit. It was then that I realized something rather unsettling.

I really didn’t do jack sh*t at this school!

I mean, sure… I went to Waltham High for the full four, got decent grades, went to my prom and graduated, but I never really made my mark there. A cursory and depressing look at my yearbook confirmed all of that. Now, I know what you might be thinking.

“He graduated in 1992, it’s 2007 and he’s just now figuring this out… after fifteen years?”

Well, yes and no.

See, I’ve looked at this yearbook before, but I just kinda glossed over the sports and recreation sections because I already knew I wasn’t in there. In the past, I’d look at the few pictures of me that were in there and maybe check out some of the babes of yore, whilst wondering what it would have been like to date some of them. Here’s where my picture appears:

1.) Student Portraits

2.) Homeroom Picture

3.) In-Class Picture

And we’re done.

The first two are a given. Every student had to have a portrait taken even if he/she had no intention of buying any prints… and every student who was in class the day they took the homeroom pictures made it to the yearbook.

The only noteworthy picture was the third one of me in some class (...might have been Social Studies or English). Somebody basically came into our class, asked for the seniors in that class to raise their hands and, bam, I got my picture taken.

The funny thing was that this random class shot only made it to the album because I raised $25.00 for the yearbook fund. For $25.00, you got a quarter of a page in black and white and students were encouraged to hit up businesses for this money in exchange for a small ad printed on your picture. I went to my Star Market manager at the time and she gave me the donation I needed. The yearbook had that one random class picture of me on hand, so there ya go.

If not for those three shots, an outsider would never know that I even attended Waltham High School. I’ll be honest. The only times I showed anything that could be construed as school spirit was when I went to the Hawks’ football rallies and frankly, I only had two reasons why I went to any of those.

1.) They were held during what would have ordinarily been school hours.

2.) They had cheerleaders.

Beyond that, I could have given a rat’s ass whether we won or lost.... and given my current love of football, that's hard to believe. Point of fact is that, in my senior year, the Waltham Hawks had an undefeated season. I can only imagine how much more I would have been into our high school football games if I brought my adult mentality with me.

So yeah, I knew that because I didn’t play football for the Hawks, I’d never be a chick magnet. I’d never have any cute girls cheering my name, never get my locker decorated by anybody and never have any heroic moments on the field. And so, with every viewing of my yearbook, I always skipped over the football section... as well as the basketball and hockey sections.

The fact that each of those sports had their own cheerleading teams didn’t help, either.

Then to make matters worse, there was the swim teams, soccer, volleyball, golf, cross country, indoor track, skiing, wrestling, lacrosse, tennis, softball, baseball and track teams to ignore as well. I was only vaguely aware of the existence of some of those disciplines at our school, but golf?

We had a f**king golf team, folks!

I haven’t even started with the arts yet. Oh, we had string orchestra, jazz band, wind ensemble, marching band, jazz choir, show choir and chorus… and I couldn’t carry a tune to save my life, so those options were out. Sure, I might be able to play guitar now, but back then I wouldn't have had a prayer with getting into any of those music clubs.

Then there were the miscellaneous activities. I could have actually been a part of some of these, but here again, the very existence of many of these events didn’t hit home for me until after I graduated. I was just really, really out of the loop with these activities. It appears that one of the biggest of these events was homecoming week which included a bonfire. Sure, it looked like great fun on these pages, but I spent the majority of the time during morning announcements daydreaming, so again, I missed out.

And I got nobody else to blame but myself.

We also apparently had an academic decathlon. Now, I was a smart student, but I wasn’t “nerd” smart. An old acquaintance from back in the day (A.J. Hallock) was like two years younger than me, but obviously destined for a lifetime of intense cerebral flexing.

And he definitely looked the part, too.

Thick, curly blond hair, buckteeth, thick-ass quadrifocals and I’m fairly certain he had a pen pouch thingy, too. Sure enough, he (as a sophomore) made it into my senior yearbook! I think his dad knew how to build nuclear weapons and his mom was a teacher at our school, so it didn’t surprise me that A.J. would go on to academic greatness at the expense of any kind of a hip and happenin’ social life. But.... it's dudes like him who are pulling in six and seven figure salaries these days, so who am I to knock him, right?

Waltham High also had Student Santa and to my credit, I brought in a gift and helped wrap many others in homeroom one fine day, but there was also some sort of event to cap everything off and, naturally, I wasn’t there. As socially lacking as I may have been back then, I still had enough heart to want to help underprivileged kids. As for the ladies, finding the courage to ask a female out to the prom was enough to deal with that I didn’t even bother attempting the Senior Social (…which for all intents and purposes was the same damn thing).

Then came something that actually looked like a lot of fun: The Senior Revue.

It entailed acting in skits and singing songs. These days, I absolutely love acting and I’m sure that I would have done fairly well even back then, but I knew nothing about this event until the day it was supposed to happen. Oh, well.

We also had a Teacher Appreciation Dinner, but I’m not losing any sleep over that one as I’m fairly certain that I’d miss that one even today. However, according to my yearbook, there was also a Senior Roller-skating Night at the old Wal-Lex rink (…since torn down). And I loved roller-skating, so why the f**k didn’t I go to this one?

Probably because I had no idea it even happened (…seems to be a pattern).

I don’t know what Dance Theater even was, but we had one of those as well. Then, there was the National Honor Society Induction Ceremony, which I actually attended because my sophomore friend, Ajay was one of the award recipients. He was yet another brilliant kid I used to know that soared above me in higher academia and was, no doubt, destined for great things.

The yearbook also had a few pics devoted to the Student Council and their year-end banquet. And no, I never bothered running for President, Vice-President, Secretary or Treasurer. Maybe if I could have done it all over again, I’d have tried out for President, just for the hell of it. Who knows? If I could bring my brains, life experience and slowly-cultivated personality back in time to 1992, I might have had a shot.

I was as good with a camera back in 1992 as I am today (which is to say I was pretty good), but it never even dawned on me to try and join the yearbook staff, either. Oh, and there was a Gong Show, too! Here’s another thing I’d have definitely tried out for if I could do everything over again. I don't know, it just seemed like a lot of fun and I'm sorry I missed it.

I didn’t bother with the Senior Dinner or the Scholarship and Awards Night (…I knew I hadn’t won anything), but thankfully, I DID make it to my prom and subsequent graduation, so I wasn’t a total dweeb. But by the time I got to prom, I really felt like a newbie. I had attended exactly one dance in my four years at Waltham High (...I think it was in my sophomore year) and with no extra curriculars on my schedule, prom was a rather big deal for me. It was my first real full-fledged social event and, to be honest, it felt kinda like crashing a high-tone party with unwashed, homeless clothes. Sure, I had my tux on, but looking the part didn't mean I felt the part.

I mean, had it not been for the Prom and actually attending Graduation, I’d have been 100% shut-out of everything! How the hell did I let this happen?

Well, given my attitude towards college at the time, I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised that my high school activities were thin. I spent my entire senior year worrying about my dad and his battle with cancer (...a battle he lost shortly after I graduated). But I'm really not trying to use my dad as an excuse because I know I'd have been thin on extra-curriculars even if he were in perfect health.

As for college aspirations, I distinctly remember one day in my junior year English class. Our teacher asked, “By a show of hands, how many of you are planning on going to college.” I honestly think that mine was the only hand that didn’t go up. My folks just never talked about college.... at all. Most parents are talking about it before their child even enters high school. In my house, it just never came up. Maybe they figured they'd never be able to afford to send me, so why bother bringing it up? I honestly don't know.

Frankly, all I wanted to do was get out of high school and go to work. I'd had enough academics to last me a lifetime, so the thought of four more years of hell wasn't sittin' too well with me.

Remember in the movie The Breakfast Club where Bender (Judd Nelson) is ripping on high school clubs and activities? Well, that was pretty much me, minus the bad ass attitude and tough guy façade. Claire (Molly Ringwald) tells Bender that the reason why he doesn’t belong in any of those clubs is because he’s afraid that they won’t take him, hence the reason why he dumps all over them.

Thinking back, I honestly don’t know what the hell my problem was, but I’m thinking I might have thought a bit like Bender did. Amazing how things change, though. I’m thinking today as a 32 year old man who’s pretty much not afraid of anything or anybody. God, I wish I thought like that back in high school.

And, I could give less than a rat’s ass what people think of me.

It’s not even a defense mechanism as it was in high school. I just outgrew the angst, though I still remember it. I didn’t transform into a chick magnet since 1992, but I did lose all of the anxiety that goes with getting rejected. I know how to talk to women now and it really ain’t a big deal.

I honestly wish I could go back in time and just start digging in. Get involved with stuff, raise more money to get a full color picture in the yearbook…. and YES, date a few girls. Would I get shot down? Sure, probably… but if I asked out all of the girls I thought were hot at the time with my present outlook on life and accompanying attitude, I’m sure I’d get a few “yes” responses as well.

Hindsight, right?

I wandered the halls going from class-to-class, but I wasn't blind. I saw the camaraderie shared between the popular kids. I saw the heroes that made up our undefeated Waltham Hawks football team and how well they interacted with some of the hotter girls in our year and I got kinda bummed. I still have memories of walking by the lockers of our football elite, decorated with the school colors by the cheerleaders.

And somewhere deep inside of me, I wanted a piece of that glory, too.

Alas, I’m fairly certain I would never have attained it. After all, I was fairly skinny for a senior and didn’t start putting on any significant kind of muscle until after I graduated. I played basketball, but always preferred low-key pick-up games to the high-pressure games played in front of cheering and booing fans. My dad used to tell me to enjoy these years while I had them because they'd be gone before I knew it and I wouldn't want to look back with regrets.

Back then, I thought that just meant, "Don't slack off with your studies." Now I know that he also meant seizing the day and not letting opportunities pass me by.

So here I am in the year 2007 and I'm ready to seize the day. With this fifteen year high school reunion coming up, I’m looking forward to pretty much mingling with everybody and I'm sure I'll shock the sh*t out of most people when I do.

It won’t change who I was as a senior in high school, but who knows? Maybe I’ll score some "playdate-parent" friends for the benefit of my daughter who I’m hoping will make more of a mark in her school than I did in mine.

ABORTION: What I Believe

2007-09-19T00:57:00.000-07:00

I’m going to start straying a bit from some of my more anecdotal writings to tackle a few of the most hotly-debated and controversial topics of our age.

Tonight’s topic is..... ABORTION.

DISCLAIMER: If either the Word of God or opinions that differ from your own offend you, stop reading this immediately! If you're not mature enough to handle the fact that not everybody thinks exactly as you think, you might want to go read something else.

I intend to write what I believe and, simply put, this will literally piss off all of the liberal hedonists of our otherwise great nation. Opinions, either for or against what I write, are always welcome, but know this ahead of time. Some of my opinions are most definitely gonna come off as caustic. This is because I feel very strongly about this subject and don’t take too kindly to cold-blooded killers.

And before I get rolling, if I happen to toss out a few Bible quotes (which I’m pretty sure I’m gonna), I’ll take them from the King James Version. Just thought you should know.

Without a doubt, abortion is an extremely sensitive topic and God knows this country has heard just about every reason under the sun that people have come up with to justify having abortions. In reality, however, none of those excuses hold water.

You read that right - NONE.

I'll start by getting the toughest and most challenging “rationales” out of the way first.

LIFE OF THE MOTHER IN DANGER: I am not a woman, so presumably, the easiest way to shoot down any of my opinions would be to simply remind me of the fact that I’m a man and will never know what it’s like to be a woman faced with the abortion dilemma.

Well, guess what. I might not have a uterus, but I have a brain and the right to use it as I see fit. I’m capable of rendering opinions and holding fast to my beliefs and I’m more than reasonably sure my beliefs regarding abortions wouldn’t change if I’d been born without my Y chromosome.

So, if it’s all the same to you, I’m gonna keep typing.

Or would you prefer it if I just stood idly by and allowed the slaughter of innocent lives to continue unopposed? I’d also remind everybody that “asking men to butt out of abortion issues” will only help the pro-life cause.

Why?

Because polls consistently show that more women oppose abortions than men do. If the opinions of all men are taken out of the equation, Roe vs. Wade would have never happened and abortions would still be illegal. Plus, the vast, VAST majority of abortion butchers ("doctors") are men, so you might wanna take that into consideration before you show me the door.

To the godless, the “mother’s life in peril” excuse is an easy out because their physical, earthly life is all they believe they’ll ever have, so it must be preserved at all costs. However, for those who truly believe in our Lord, not even this excuse works.

Here’s why.

Because an abortion is nothing more than the murder of an innocent human being; the extermination of a soul-bearing vessel. And absolutely no end justifies those means. When a stunt man signs on to participate in an action movie, he goes into it knowing full well that he’s gonna have to put his physical health on the line. He’ll need to sign all sorts of waivers to acknowledge this reality before they’ll even let him play checkers.

As such, a woman who allows for the possibility of becoming pregnant puts her own corporeal health at risk. Granted, most women are at least moderately prepared for some of those physical maladies, such as morning sickness, edema, respiratory difficulty and a whole host of other physical side-effects that comes with bearing new life in her womb, but there are more serious risks to consider.

As for the women who haven’t thought all of that through, well.... they’re not somehow magically absolved from this responsibility. Fortunately, incidents where a pregnancy will, with absolute certainty, cause the mother’s death, are far, far, far fewer than the media would have you believe, particularly in the United States where the vast majority of abortions are performed.

For those rare exceptions (where the mother’s life is legitimately in peril), committing an act of evil for the sake of accomplishing a perceived good is still unacceptable (see Romans 3:8). It is just as inexcusable to kill the baby to save the mother as it would be to kill the mother to save the baby.

And, on the subject of me not being a woman, I consulted my wife on this very matter not long before she became pregnant with our daughter. Guess what she said. If doctors told her that her pregnancy would surely kill her, she’d go through with it anyway.

Reason? She had a few, actually.

For starters, God is far greater and wiser than all of the doctors on our planet put together and she believes in the power of earnest prayer.

Secondly, she also believes that abortion is murder and knows that God would forgive her far faster than she’d ever forgive herself for choosing to extinguish the most innocent of life forms in the interest of self-preservation.

Thirdly, she prefers to be a good spirit for the Lord to being a living human being guilty of killing a defenseless fetus.

And finally, she is reminded of the words of Jesus in Mark 8:35 where He says,

“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it.”

She’d rather lose her life for the right reasons than to keep it for the wrong ones. “So, what about cases of rape or incest?” Well, let’s do those next then, shall we?

RAPE AND/OR INCEST: Here’s the classic “Two wrongs don’t make a right” scenario. In short: Rape is a sin. Incest is a sin. Murder is a sin.

No woman will set things right by answering one act of evil with another.

When a woman becomes pregnant, she’s already a mother whether she wants to be or not. The difference is whether her pregnancy will end with a living baby or a dead one. Regardless of how a new life is created and regardless of the physical health of this life, we’re talking about an innocent soul.

Are we (as flawed and sinful humans) qualified to gauge the value of a human life based on its physical state and/or the circumstances surrounding its creation?

Do we have the right to end that life because of what we think the child might grow to be or what other people will think or say about that child?

I say no..... and, near as I can tell, God agrees.

Certain sexual acts that lead to a conception can be as ugly as Satan himself, but the soul that God provides is still pure. With even the most debilitating and grotesque birth defects, humans can still live, love, pray and worship. They can lead productive lives and they can inspire people to do great things.

Unless, of course, they’re murdered before they ever get the chance to take their first breath.

As for victims of rape, we’re dealing with the same basic truth. Rape is an extremely ugly act of evil, second only to murder. I understand how a woman can loathe her rapist, but can a woman really loathe and despise her growing fetus, regardless of how she got it?

Only if she fails to realize who is innocent and who is guilty in this act of rape.

The growing baby certainly didn’t commit any crime, so why does s/he have to receive the death penalty? Will killing the baby heal the anguish that the woman is suffering as a result of the rape?

Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly, depending on what you believe), the vast majority of women who abort babies that are spawned from rape or incest actually come away from the experience feeling even worse. Many of these women go from having to deal with being raped to having to deal with being raped, plus their newly-acquired post-abortion trauma. And yet so many people out there assume that erasing the baby somehow erases the trauma.

It doesn’t.

In fact, if there was ever anything that had a halfway decent shot of healing some of the woman’s post-rape trauma, it would be taking care of the baby. There’s also the very real risk that the raped woman who has an abortion might actually sustain physical damage. It is said that three to five percent of women who have an abortion are left sterile. Still others suffer complications, such as infection, uterine and cervical tearing and a host of other maladies. Still others who manage to become pregnant wind up having miscarriages as a result of the permanent damage done to the woman’s body as a result of the abortion.

It’s almost like having God tell you, “No dice, lady. You had your shot. I blessed your womb and you murdered my creation.” So, now this woman has the rape, the abortion and her sterility to deal with. Doesn't sound like an equitable deal to me.

Quick Story: A thirteen year old girl was raped back in 1896 and became pregnant. She delivered a girl who would later become a Broadway sensation; a famed African-American Jazz and gospel singer by the name of Ethel Waters. Wikipedia the name. It's an interesting story; one which would have never existed, had Ethel been aborted.

HEALTH OF THE BABY: Now we get to an abortion rationale to which I can relate. Some women choose to have an abortion if there’s a chance their baby will be born with some sort of physical abnormality or mental retardation such as Downs Syndrome. Sometimes, the mother aborts due to a disease that she has that she fears will be transmitted to the fetus (i.e.: AIDS). So the baby is aborted as an act of perceived mercy so that he or she won’t have to live a terrible life.

Again, however, we don’t have the right (at least not under God’s law) to decide these things for ourselves. You don’t know God’s plan any more than I do. For all we know, the child who would have been born as (Heaven forbid) a Harlequin baby just might have had a positive and lasting effect on the few who would bear witness to his brief existence. Maybe witnessing this baby would somehow draw souls to Jesus. We can’t possibly know what God’s grand design is, so we must continue to treat every baby and potential baby as precious, because every one of them IS precious in the eyes of God.

And I said that this “health of the baby” excuse is relevant to me because my wife and I were faced with a health dilemma in the first months of her pregnancy. After preliminary blood tests were done, the doctors said that there was a fair chance that our baby would be born with Downs Syndrome. That was disturbing to hear, for sure, but what I found even more disturbing was that our counselor’s first suggestion was to abort the baby.

Because there was a chance our baby MIGHT have Downs Syndrome.

I acknowledged my wife’s legal (though not God-given) right to choose by saying the following, “I know it’s my wife’s decision, but if it were left up to me, I’d say there’s no way in hell I’d ever consider aborting this baby. He or she will be loved no less, regardless of how s/he is born.” My wife told the counselor that she agreed with me 100% and that she would love this baby with all of her heart no matter what.

Then the counselor offered us a chance to have an amniocentesis done to confirm with 100% accuracy one way or the other. This procedure had a 1/100 chance of miscarriage. We said that “one in one hundred” is a gamble that neither of us was willing to take. Sure, most women might have either gone ahead with the amnio or fretted out her remaining months.

My wife chose a road not often traveled.

She continued carrying our child in blissful ignorance. She saw our baby for what she was and is: a blessing from God.

And where I come from, you don’t turn down a gift just because you don't like the way it's wrapped.

In short, the pregnancy ran its course and our daughter was born… perfectly healthy and free of Downs Syndrome, praise be to the LORD. If, God forbid, the baby dies in childbirth, then that means that God brought your baby's soul home. And make no mistake - that is God’s right to do so. We as humans do NOT have the right to release a soul; not even our own.

If the baby is found to have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, then that’s the mother’s fault and perhaps raising said child would serve as a permanent reminder of the dangers of alcohol consumption. In fact, virtually any drug can adversely affect a fetus. You might think Prozac’s the way to go, but trust me, your baby won’t agree.

Now, this next set of excuses falls under the general category of, “You should have thought of that before you spread your legs.” Let’s begin:

I JUST CAN’T AFFORD A CHILD: Here’s a news flash: The majority of parents on this PLANET can’t "afford" the child(ren) they have, but you owe it to your own flesh and blood to do everything you can to try and make it work. Contrary to popular belief, quality of life is NOT defined by whether or not you have an iPod.

If there’s one lesson I learned by working in a supermarket as a teenager, it’s that our government can help you out quite a bit if you ask. WIC checks, food stamps, welfare… you name it.

If you truly can’t afford to keep your child’s heart beating (regardless of whatever help you might get from the government, your family or, dare I say it, the father of the child), then adoption is always an option. Sure it might be emotionally painful, but giving up your baby for adoption isn’t a sin.

Murdering your child, however, IS.

Besides, if my daughter turns seven and, God forbid, we can’t afford her anymore, that doesn’t give me the right to shoot her ass, does it?

I DON’T WANT TO BE A SINGLE PARENT: And to think there are millions of people out there who think the notion of “no sex before marriage” is unrealistic and ludicrous. Trust me, I was one of them. I had sex WAY before marriage, used condoms, the whole nine. But with all of that, I knew in my heart and soul that if I had ever gotten anybody pregnant, abortion would not have been an option - at least not with me.

This is merely ONE of the reasons why abstinence is the absolute best option for anyone who is not rich enough, not old enough or not mature enough to have a baby. But damn, it’s just so easy to have sex, isn’t it? Most people who engage in sexual intercourse have at least a passing knowledge as to how a baby is made, yet so many unwanted pregnancies occur each year. Proof positive that with all of our technology, we’re no smarter now than we were thousands of years ago. These are usually the same enlightened clowns who think that gay marriage is just A-OK.

It’s like watching apes use an Etch-a-Sketch.

I’M TOO YOUNG TO HAVE A CHILD: Then you were too young to be having sex, weren’t you? Again, if you can’t handle the blessing God gave you, give your child to someone who IS ready to carry the burden. Odds are, the prospective parents you choose won’t look at your baby as a "burden." at all. And fear not, because I’m fairly certain the waiting list of loving couples who are anxious to adopt is at least a couple of years long.

Yes, the emotional pain of having to give your child up for adoption might be tremendous, but take solace in the fact that, at the very least, you’re giving your child a chance to live his life. No matter how you try to spin it, the majority of pregnant “children” aren’t victims of their pregnancies - they’re participants.

I DON’T WANT OTHERS TO KNOW I HAD SEX/GOT PREGNANT: This is pretty much THE... MOST... IMMATURE reason in existence for killing an unborn baby. Occasionally, the glittering princess gets knocked off of her pedestal. Life sucks that way sometimes. You might not want everybody to know that you got “knocked up,” but guess who already knows.

God knows.

And what’s more, God knew you’d get pregnant EONS before you even existed.

“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”

Jeremiah 1:5

Remember that no pregnancy can ever be hidden from God.

“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”

Psalm 139:13-16

PARENTS/BOYFRIEND MADE ME ABORT: This is a LIE, because nobody can make you have an abortion, even if you’re pregnant at the age of twelve. Granted, it’s tough to make a monumentally mature decision at that age, but like I said, that’s yet another reason why a girl should wait until marriage before having sex.

Most states need the consent of at least one parent or guardian if a minor wishes to have an abortion, but the state must also have the full consent of the minor before terminating her pregnancy. If a minor faces threats by one or both of her parents (or even her boyfriend) to “have an abortion or else,” she can go to the police or the courts for help.

She needn’t give in to threats, though even I’ll admit that the average 12 year old pregnant girl probably has neither the maturity nor the composure to think rationally enough to invoke all of her legal rights. It doesn’t make the abortion any less wrong, but odds are that even abortion opponents won’t come down too hard on a scared child who caves into pressure by adults with far stronger intimidation tactics.

CHEAPER TO ABORT THAN TO HAVE A WELFARE BABY: Well, if your interest is in saving the tax payers some money, why not go the full nine? Let’s kill all potential AND realized welfare babies? Why stop at fetuses if the almighty dollar is what’s really at stake? Let’s just start wiping out the children who are already straining my tax dollars? If we allow morality to take a back seat to thrift, this is the logical route.

Clearly the idea of rubbing out kids is preposterous but, as far as God is concerned, so is the idea of wiping out unborn children.

MY BODY, MY CHOICE: Hmm, catchy…. but wrong. It ain’t always your choice just because it’s your body. After all, last time I checked, you can’t legally sell your body for sex, nor can you legally ingest cocaine, so why should it be legal to destroy the contents of your womb?

Plus, at least with the first two examples, it really IS only your body. With abortion, it’s your body AND your baby’s body. So, why doesn’t your unborn child have a choice? You certainly have a choice. You can choose to remain abstinent or roll the dice and have sex. That is your choice, but with any gamble, there's a chance you may lose and you have to be prepared to live with that choice. And speaking of choice, I’ve been seeing the term “anti-choice” thrown around a LOT lately to describe “pro-lifers” such as myself. To anybody who chooses to label somebody like me as “anti-choice” just because I value the life of an innocent unborn child, I have just one thing to say to you.

GO F**K YOURSELVES!

Seriously, go f**k yourselves, you evil prick bastards!

Do you really believe that you will somehow make ME look like the evil one if you’re the ones condoning the murder of innocent fetuses? Do you somehow think that by changing the words, you’ll somehow change the action? If anybody is anti-choice, it’s the "pro-choice" movement for the simple fact that YOU AREN’T GIVING THE BABY A CHOICE.

You are completely denying the unborn baby any say in its own fate. The baby doesn't get a choice on whether he gets to live or die. You'd rather subject an innocent, defenseless fetus to a barbaric death than take responsibility for your own pleasure-seeking actions. Would you like me to start calling you “pro-murder” crusaders?

No?

Then shut the f**k up!

IT’S JUST A BLOB: Ohhh, nothing gets my blood boiling hotter than this little pearl of faux-wisdom. I’ll have you know that the STRONG MAJORITY of aborted fetuses already have arms, legs, hands, toes and a beating heart before they’re butchered to death. Just because it’s little doesn’t make it any less human. Yet, people try to kid themselves by calling a fetus a blob so that they won’t feel guilty about killing it.

I couldn't even begin to quantify the amount of joy and love I had for my daughter when she was no bigger than the size of a grain of rice. Do you think she was "just a blob" to me?

Hell no!

In the very first day when sperm meets egg, all of the baby’s genetic information (including gender, hair and eye color) is determined. And in the fetus’s twentieth day, the beginnings of the brain, spinal cord and nervous system are already established.

Yet, we always hear the same irrelevant bullsh*t questions being asked like, “When does life begin?”

Yes, it may take several weeks before the fetus has any shot of surviving outside of the mother’s womb, but make no mistake – life begins at conception. Once the sperm cell has penetrated the woman’s egg, life has begun. This is not up for debate. This is FACT.

How do I know this?

Because dead cells are incapable of mitosis (cell division). One cell becomes two, which become four, which become eight, etc. If the original zygote were not alive, this process simply would not be possible. Yet, people attempt to grade the worthiness of a fetus to live, based on how much time its been growing in the womb. It's the earliest form of elitism that we humans are exposed to in our lives.

If you've been in the womb for more than 24 weeks, you're deemed worthy enough to live and worthy enough to receive protection under the law. If you've been alive for 23 weeks, we can legally kill you.

Yeah, okay. Tell me this world's not going straight to hell.

THE PLANET’S ALREADY OVERPOPULATED: So, why the f**k are we spending billions of dollars a year on finding ways to lengthen life spans? Why do innocent fetuses have to pay the price because a band of idiots thinks the planet is full?

Wanna save some money? Cut funding for medical research and let humans die whenever their bodies decide to fall apart. F**k finding a cure for cancer, AIDS or whatever. Spend that money on ammo and guns and let's start shooting whoever's not worthy of living in our eyes.

And while we’re at it (....and we apparently see nothing wrong with murdering innocent fetuses), let's snuff out the elderly folks, too. I got nothing against old folks, but let’s face facts. Murder is murder, but at least the old timers have lived their lives. Plus, God knows that the golden oldies are using up way more resources than fetuses are, so you’ll save money there, too.

THIS BABY WILL HAVE A TERRIBLE LIFE ANYWAY: Oh, really? You can tell that already? Wow, and I thought Nostradamus died hundreds of years ago.

What is this? Gattaca?

So now, apparently, abortion is a mercy killing to save the unborn child from a life of misery. Well, if that’s the case, let’s wipe out the kids who are already miserable. If abortion is humane if done to prevent misery in the unborn baby’s life, then certainly it’d be that much more humane to knock off the kids who are living in poverty, starving or are having the sh*t beaten out of them on a daily basis, right?

Come to think of it, didn’t slave-owners use that exact same rationale to justify keeping slaves? After all, the slaves weren’t starving to death in a third-world country anymore, because we “rescued” them, brought them to America, gave them a full day’s work, food, water, clothing and shelter, right? Yet, few Americans today would argue in favor of making slavery legal again, would they?

DON’T LIKE ABORTIONS – DON’T HAVE ONE: Another cute, yet merit-less bumper sticker. It’s what people say when they can’t adequately defend their pro-choice (anti-life?) position. Although it should be noted that this message does have a ring of truth to it. The mistake we make is asking the wrong person for their opinions on abortion.

We really oughta be asking the unborn child this question.

“Hey, little one. Comfy in there? Gooood. Hey, here’s a question.

How would you like to be ripped to shreds, ground up like hamburger and dumped in a landfill?

What? No?

You WOULDN’T want that? Well gee whiz, I guess we shouldn’t kill you then, huh?”

I’m sure there are plenty of other “reasons” to have an abortion, but I think I’ve made my point. Besides, addressing these common excuses is only serving to make me more cynical and sarcastic. My very simple point is that abortion cannot be justified under ANY circumstances.

Politicians, judges and layfolk can argue this until Armageddon, but abortion is one of the worst possible sins a human being can commit, no matter how they try to spin it. God can forgive this sin, mind you, but not if you’re trying to convince yourself that abortion is anything other than what it is:

MURDER.

How to Make a Day Suck

2007-08-18T23:16:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a sh*tty day today turned out to be!

And for once, I hardly did anything wrong, so the thought of a day going that far south without my intervention kinda freaks me out.

Ya see, in an effort to structurize our lives, my wife likes to make charts and lists for us to follow, lest I deviate a smidgen and throw my existence into utter chaos. So, barring any medical emergencies, kidnappings, hangnails or other unforeseeable mishaps, Saturday is my day to take the lead in daughter-care.

So, a few days beforehand, she brought up the idea of us going to the zoo. I was like, “Yeah, super. Let’s do that this weekend!” ...figuring, you know, that she, like, knew how to get to the zoo and stuff. Turns out, she didn’t have Clue #1 as to how to get there (awesome!) and just kinda told me to map out our day, figure out what zoo we’d go to, get directions and make damn sure we were there at the ass-crack of dawn. Now, I'll pause from typing for just a sec to pat myself on the back because my life is chock full of awesomeness.

Okay, time for a fun fact: I hate mornings.

Always have.

Probably always will…

...but for my little girl, I’ll drag my dead ass out of bed at 5:00am and play games with enough sweetness to give Barney diabetes. This particular Saturday, however, I woke up to the wonderful sensation of my daughter slapping me in my eye orbit… at 10:00am!

Normally, when my daughter wakes up, it’s like five in the morning, so my wife will shake me and say, “Ariana’s awake.” That's the groggy dad's cue to turn on the fun machine and jam-pack her first two or three morning hours with books, games, giggles, hugs, food and everything else a growing girl needs.

Fine. No problem. Happy to do it.

But my wife woke me up at 10:00am, so my first thought was, “Wow, my wife actually did something nice for me by letting me sleep in a bit! This is sure to be a great day!”

Holy sh*t was I wrong!

Yes, she did let me sleep in, but then she went straight to blaming me for letting the morning go by without going to the zoo!

“But…. you let me sleep.”

Now, according to the woman to whom I swore I'd spend the rest of my life with no matter what, the whole day was somehow shot and I was the a**hole. Apparently, the world heads off for bed at 11:00am now? Well obviously, with my reckless late slumber, I'm clearly at fault here, right?

“But…. you let me sleep!!!”

She said, “Well, you said you were gonna get up early.”

I said, “Yeah, because I knew full well that if Ariana’s early morning screams didn’t do the trick, your foot up my asspipe most certainly would!”

Meanwhile, my wife was up early, so while I appreciated the extra Z’s, I really didn’t get why she didn’t just kick me out of bed like she does every other friggin’ Saturday. But undaunted, I was now up, amped and ready to see some vicious, caged beasts of the Serengeti.

Here’s where the real fun begins.

The night before August 18th (...which would be August 17th for the thought-impaired), my wife got a call from the mother of an old friend of hers. Before I go on, I should mention that we’re going to Brazil for my daughter’s first birthday party and my wife was nice enough to invite her friend’s little daughter.

So my wife's friend’s mother calls and asks if she can bring other people to this party. Now if you wanna split hairs here, this woman wasn’t even invited to the party - technically, her granddaughter was. So, it seems a bit forward on her part to not only assume she can come, but that she can also bring along a few other ass-clowns.

But, to my wife’s credit, she's always been cool about stuff like that, so she’s like, “Sure, the more the merrier.” My mother-in-law (...herein referred to as “Dalva” because I’m tired of typing out “mother-in-law”) got pissed because apparently, this same woman did one thing to piss her off, back in like, 1991 or whatever, and she never learned to just let it go. I won't get into what happened, but trust me when I tell you that, in my opinion, the "offense" was really not worth sixteen years of bitterness.

So, Dalva is still holding this grudge, but instead of putting things into perspective, she decides to freak us all out with acts of mental instability. Last night, my mother-in-law cried for like twelve hours solid, then today, my wife nearly canceled our zoo outing because her mother was muttering quasi-suicidal phrases or whatever.

You know. "Goodbye, cruel world" type of melodrama.

She claims to be this devout Catholic who loves the church and everything about it, yet she harbors long-standing grudges, intense jealousy and an apparent need to throw herself pity parties and otherwise hold her breath when things don't go her way. This is coming off as kinda harsh and I don't mean it to be, but it's tough to sugar-coat some of the behavior I've witnessed from her over these past couple of years.

Now with this last minute zoo cancellation, I already had my daughter strapped in her car seat, so I was mentally preparing myself to make this trip a solo endeavor (...just me and my little girl), because if I go to the trouble to map out an entire day, pack every essential baby item and someone pulls the rug out from under me at the eleventh hour.... f**k that.

You can watch me drive off into the sunset.

However, Dalva also had a last minute change of heart, decided to go to the zoo after all... and all four of us climbed into the car.

Now, if you have a chance, look up the word “fun” in the dictionary and you’ll almost certainly see a picture of the four of us in the car on our way to Dorchester’s famed Franklin Park Zoo.

Either that or you’ll see a picture of a man shredding his eyeball with a cheese grater and an olive fork dipped in lemon juice, because in my mind, the two experiences deliver about the same levels of giggles and pure glee.

The deadly tension between Dalva and her daughter made a nice little topping to the “Pissed-Off Commuter Traffic Nightmare” sundae I was trying to finish off as I dodged cars driven by drivers who might have actually had sh*ttier lives than me at the time.

So, we get there, grab our cameras and, yes, the missus and I are having a grand ol’ time, pointing out animals to our daughter. Meanwhile, Dalva’s got her “Goin’ to the gallows” face on, but we're just kind of ignoring all that. Bear in mind that all of this negativity stems from my wife's sole act of granting permission to a woman to come to our daughter’s first birthday party and bring a couple of friends.

This party isn't even happening for another four frickin' months!

Speaking of our little bundle of joy, she’s awesome, but she’s 8 ½ months old now, so Ariana intermingles smiles and cries with giggles and whining. This is partly due to her growing attachment to her mom, partly due to her desire to play with daddy’s expensive gadgets and partly because she’s still teething. Yet, she loved the animals and stared at them with a wide-eyed fascination.

Plus, we actually got to witness (up-close) a butterfly emerging from its cocoon! How awesome is that?

In that regard… and that regard alone… the day was a success. After all, these trips aren’t about the amount of fun we adults can have, but about expanding the young and thirsty minds of our children.

My wife was eager to leave because she had things she wanted to get done in our house, so we packed it in not long before five. Dalva looked about as happy as a poison oak and erythematous syphilis double-header... and my wife’s patience was wearing thin. Naturally when this happens, I tend to catch hell, but fortunately for me, she kept the husband-bashing to a minimum.

At least until I got lost coming home and unknowingly went down a restricted street.

This street, which gave no indication that it was restricted, wound up getting me into hot water with the Boston Police. Five cops are on the sidewalk chatting… at a spot right after the street goes from being publicly accessible to restricted. So, Joe Dragnet comes sauntering over to me and b*tches me out for driving on this road. Bear in mind, a car that was right in front of me went through this same street without catching sh*t from anybody, but I get pulled over.

I looked in my rearview mirror and three other cars made the same “mistake” that I made. I said, “What about these guys behind me?” He said, “They’re wrong too... and we’re ticketing them. License and registration, please.”

Naturally, my first thought was of the, “You gotta be f**king kidding me!” variety. Neither my wife nor I noticed any such signs or indicators that this road was restricted, but she was still kinda pissed at me for getting tangled up with Dunkin Donut’s finest.

In typical self-righteous fashion, Doughboy comes back over to me and hands me a “warning,” telling me that it’s normally a fifty dollar citation and that I should be thankful for his clemency.

I'll take this moment to express my appreciation for his humanitarianism:

“Hey, Numbnuts! How about a few f**king traffic cones or a “Do Not Enter” sign if you’re serious about keeping us dangerous criminals off of this street? Maybe you can spare a few bucks from the “Dig Up My F**king Streets for No Reason Whatsoever” fund and buy a few festive orange cones! How about that?”

I really loathe cops sometimes.

Anyway, in a last-ditch effort to smooth out the jagged shards of our day, the wife suggested we go to church that evening instead of waiting for Sunday. Everybody agreed, so we went.

Did it work?

Not really.

It did, however, seem like it was starting to work and that Dalva might actually get over this earth-shattering “Birthday Invitation” incident, but by the time the mass was over, she was every bit as quiet and sullen as she’d been for the entire day.

My wife’s response?

Complaining to me that my radio channel-surfing was preventing our daughter from falling asleep at 9:00pm. Bear in mind that I had the radio on the first volume setting so that turning it even one notch below would have muted it.

Yet, that’s what was keeping her up.

Not the seven micronaps she took throughout the day as she sweltered in the “Fun Car.”

No, it was me... the Radio Whisperer.

So, to eschew more ridiculousness, I turned off the radio and hoped that my oxygen inhalation wouldn’t be the other thing keeping her up. After all, lungs are f**king loud with all of that ridiculous breathing they do all day and night, aren't they?

I undoubtedly come off as a total d*ckhead with this story because I’m sure it looks like I’m just bashing my mother-in-law for sh*ts and giggles. The truth is, however, that this has become a noticeable pattern with her and Dalva's entire world seems to crumble over the slightest little thing.

Quick Side Story: Wanna hear what I did the last time she put me on her sh*tlist? I washed a cup for my daughter. Yes, you read that right, so I’ll retype it and let it sink in a bit before I continue.

I WASHED A CUP!

This simple act on my part earned me almost a full week in Dalva’s dog house. And she wasn’t just pissed at me. The pisstivity was academic. No, she initially responded to my reckless act of aggression with a sobfest in the bathroom. Later that night, my wife talked to her (…on my behest because I wanted to know who I unwittingly murdered to earn such a response) and as Dalva responded to her, she loudly mixed her words with high-pitched sobs.

Let me back up here to remind everybody what set this all off:

I WASHED A CUP!

As it turns out, she had already washed it and filled it with water for Ariana. Earlier that morning, I had seen this exact same cup filled with water that’d been sitting there for days. As a responsible father, my instinct was to dump the water, wash the cup and refill it with fresh water for my little girl.

Somehow, in some cosmic way, Dalva interpreted that act as me saying, “I don’t trust you enough with my daughter’s overall health and well-being.” My response was simple and staggeringly true:

“My bad. I didn’t know you’d already washed and refilled the cup.”

This explanation should have EASILY quelled any doubts as to my intentions, but my mother-in-law cried... and cried... and CRIED. Yet, believe it or not, I trust her completely with caring for my daughter because I’ve seen her with Ariana and she’s amazing. The care and love that she gives my daughter should be filmed and used as educational videos for nannies.

Seriously. She's that good. And when she's with Ariana, Dalva is perfectly calm, at ease and emotionally fit.

Yet, every so often, Dalva will wig out on us and it’s so hard to get inside her head without a compass, a roadmap and a secret decoder pin. Yesterday was about how my wife wronged her, but God only knows what tomorrow might bring.

For all I know, I might wind up inadvertently sending my mother-in-law into a tsunami of tears by scratching my earlobe.

Oh, hey look! Satan just sent me an e-mail:

__________________________________

Subject: August 18^th

Hey, Bill:

So, how’d you like the day I sent you today?

Satan

__________________________________

Re: August 18^th

Satan:

The butterflies were cool. Everything else bit. You suck.

Bill <")))><

P.S.: Jesus kicked your red ass, you know it, so deal with it, give me back my rainbow and stay the hell off of my television!

The Return of Def Leppard

2007-08-15T21:30:00.000-07:00

Well, we did it!

My wife and I finally went to a concert together. I know. Not exactly a monumental accomplishment, right? But it just seemed a bit weird that, with all of the stuff we’ve done together in our four years of marriage (plus our nine months of dating), we’ve never done the concert thing.

We’ve hit a few states, traipsed through a couple of countries, been to the circus, done the four major sports (Celtics Basketball, Red Sox Baseball, Bruins Hockey and Patriots Football) seen David Copperfield, taken in some wrestling (Raw & Smackdown), been to a pay-per-view (Backlash in Worcester) and even sat in the front row for WrestleMania XIX in Seattle.

Going to a concert was the one thing I had yet to do with her... at least that was the case until August 11, 2007. I scored a pair of concert tickets as a gift for our four year wedding anniversary, but I wasn’t about to blow money on just any concert. It had to be a concert that I had a reasonably good feeling I’d love and that she’d also enjoy, so I went with one of my favorite bands of all time:

Having been to two of their concerts in the past, I knew that Def Leppard delivered a kick-ass live show, so I figured it was a safe bet. Sure, they might be a group of five dudes pushin’ 50, but they can still rock the house. Once in a while, my nephew would give me sh*t about being a Def Leppard fan, but I didn't mind. He has his own tastes in music and, frankly, I think he was a bit quick to dismiss them as just another glam rock band. In a world where most rock bands will lose you in guitar distortion, Def Leppard always had a crisp and clear sound. To the naysayers, I say mock all you want, but it might surprise you to know that Def Leppard is one of only six rock bands with two original albums selling over ten million copies each in the United States. Here are the other five:

Eagles
Van Halen
Pink Floyd
The Beatles
Led Zeppelin

Okay, back on-topic.

Knowing that this was my wife’s first American concert, I paid close attention to her reactions and I was happy to see that she was really enjoying herself. Foreigner and Styx opened for Def Leppard at the Tweeter Center (Mansfield, MA) and maybe it’s just me, but even at the height of their popularity, I could never have imagined saying, “Hey, I’m gonna go to the Foreigner concert!”

Yet, I’ll give both bands credit. Neither of them sucked like I inherently imagined they would.

It was one of those situations where they’d belt out a song and I’d be like, “Oh yeah. I know that one! Hmm, Foreigner sings that one? Who knew?” When Foreigner played hits like, “Hot Blooded,” “Juke Box Hero” and “Feels Like the First Time,” I was like, “Wow, and here I thought they’d only play, “Waiting for a Girl Like You” and be gone.”

Foreigner went first so presumably, Styx was the bigger name of the two openers, right? Yet, I recognized far fewer of their songs (...though my wife seemed to actually prefer Styx). What can I say? I was never a huge Styx fan. Apparently, Styx will be touring with Def Leppard for the entire tour, but Foreigner will only appear at some of their shows.

As for me, well, beyond “Come Sail Away,” I was pretty much lost… and kinda anxious for Styx to leave the stage. What was funny was that, aside from the ENORMOUS “Styx” banner in front of our eyes, my wife thought they were the main band of the evening. She really liked their songs and was impressed with the way they dressed. I responded by saying, “I can’t speak for what they’re gonna wear, but just wait until Def Leppard comes out. Then, you’ll really see a show!”

Sure enough, they saved all of the cool and brightly lit screens for Def Leppard’s performance; screens that had remained hidden and unused for Foreigner and Styx. Def Leppard opened with “Rocket” and the huge screens behind them played out an elaborately animated video of a rocket racing by images of the band, sexy women, their album covers, etc. It's hard to describe, but in a way, the huge screens actually seemed to give new life to these tried and true classics. For the first time, I actually understood the appeal of music videos. They just seemed to make the songs more explosive. It's the only way I can think to describe it.

At the risk of sounding cliché, you just hadda be there.

My wife was pleasantly surprised to discover just how many of their songs she actually knew. Plus, she had an opportunity to swoon a bit when Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell took their shirts off (…it’s such a staple in their act that I barely noticed it until she pointed it out to me). I’ll give them credit. For a couple of virtual fifty year olds, they’re still in phenomenal shape.

Joe Elliott (the lead singer) has almost always looked like unadulterated, broken ass, but he’s still fairly slim in his own right. Can’t say the same for his face, but if you’re a true Def Leppard fan, you only care if they can still play… and without a doubt, they can.

Rick Savage (bass) is slim as well, but that’s the only thing he’s got going for him at this point. In the glam rock eighties, he fit in well and was the object of lust for many a female fan. Now, he looks like an cracked-out old woman with big bug eyes. It kinda creeped me out, but here again, he can still play, so who cares, right?

You really couldn't see Rick Allen (drums) and, like I said, Vivian and Phil (lead guitars) still looked good for their age. I was bummed out about one thing, though. In the past, you couldn’t bring cameras to these shows, so for fear that I’d have mine confiscated, I left it at home. Turns out, however, that plenty of people brought digital cameras and nobody gave a rat’s ass, so I have no pictures to share, outside of the one I pulled off the web that gives you an idea as to what the stage looked like.

I’ll keep this camera-less experience in mind for the next time they’re in town (...assuming they come back). Until then, Def Leppard can rejoice in the knowledge that they gained a brand-new fan on August 11, 2007… and she’s more than up for another concert if they do come back.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - My Review

2007-08-02T01:14:00.000-07:00

SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and do NOT want to know what happens, stop reading this blog. I will also talk about several of the other Harry Potter books, so the same rule applies.

Well, now that the madness surrounding the seventh book has subsided a bit, I feel it’s safe to write about it without having a hit put out on me. For the first time that I can recall, serious leaks sprung in the days before the release of the seventh and final Harry Potter book. This, of course, means that the culprits responsible for giving away details of the story... are dead.

Clinically.

Like, “No longer amongst the living” type of dead.

It’s practically a felony at this point to finagle one’s way into releasing details of the book to the public before the publisher’s release date. I’ll admit that I spoiled it for myself by reading one such leak, which gave a detailed account of the “Deathly Hallows” deaths, as well as the end of the book.

One more warning before I proceed: I’m gonna talk about some of those deaths as well as what happens at the end of the book, so if you really don’t want to know, stop reading this.

I'll talk about the deaths first.

A few years back, I read about this group of outraged parents who were up in arms shortly after the release of the fourth book (Goblet of Fire). The concerned parents were mad because their children were reading about extreme violence and death before they felt they were ready to deal with such dark themes.

The fifth book (Order of the Phoenix) brought about the death of Sirius Black which saddened readers because of what Sirius meant to Harry.

The sixth book (Half-Blood Prince) revealed the death of Albus Dumbledore, which saddened readers because they loved and idolized him.

For a year or so after the sixth book’s release, people even began theorizing how Dumbledore could still conceivably be alive, much the same way that people kept seeing Elvis in grocery stores and shopping malls after he died. I don't know, it seems like many folks have a hard time letting go of people they idolize and love.

Well, without a doubt, “Deathly Hallows” has the most character deaths of any other Harry Potter book and, at certain points, it feels as if they’re dropping like flies. Hedwig (Harry’s owl) and Mad-Eye Moody meet their ends in the “Seven Potters” ambush, but that happens relatively early in the book to give readers an idea as to what they can expect from the remainder of the story.

Scrimgeour’s next to meet his end, followed by Wormtail and Dobby the elf. The real tragedies, however, start hittin’ near the end of the book, beginning with Fred Weasley’s death during the Battle at Hogwarts. I can imagine that anyone who reads and loves the Harry Potter books must have felt horrible for the beloved Weasley family. It may sound stupid (...and in a way, it kinda is), but people really, really get into these books and they treat these characters as if they actually exist.

For years now, Rowling (the author) has received many pleas for clemency to be granted to certain characters. Concerned fans have actually begged her not to kill Dumbledore… or Harry… or Hagrid… or Ron Weasley, etc. It’s crazy! You'd think they were asking her not to shoot their mothers or something.

One event that I kind of expected and was surprisingly apathetic towards was the death of Severus Snape. Obviously, he’s been a hated character since the very first book (Sorcerer’s Stone), but every so often, you kinda got the feeling that, deep down, he was fighting for the good guys... and by Book 7, you realize that he was. However, I felt the author did a good job at finding ways to make you hate him all over again, just when your heart started to soften a tiny bit.

By the end of the sixth book, people loathed Snape more than ever because of the fact that he killed Dumbledore, yet I still had respect for his character’s formidable skills as a wizard as well as Occlumency master. Amazingly enough, it only took one chapter to completely vindicate Snape (Chapter 33). Voldemort, thinking that Snape’s death will make his wand invincible, orders Nagini to make the kill. Right before succumbing to Nagini’s deadly bite, Snape removes the truth from his memory (via wand extraction) and gives it to Harry. Harry, having spent loads of time in the Pensieve, knows exactly where he needs to go and what he needs to do.

He downloads the info into the Pensieve and with that, we learn more of Snape’s love for Lily Potter (and how he wanted Voldemort to spare her life on that fateful night that Harry got his scar). More importantly, we learn of Snape’s true allegiance to Dumbledore. We learn that Dumbledore’s blackened hand from the Horcrux wasn’t just an unfixable injury, but also an incurable curse (not unlike a cancer).

Dumbledore’s days were numbered and, before long, he came up with the plan to have Severus Snape kill him. Best of all, when Dumbledore reveals to Snape that Harry Potter must die in the end, Snape actually seems hurt by the idea. By the end of the sixth book, I was fairly certain that Snape’s vindication would come, but it’s always nice to read it for yourself.

If there was one part of the seventh book that I felt was lacking, it was the romance aspect. Not because I’m a sap or I somehow feel the need to see everybody hooking up, but because of the frustrating ten year build up.

Yes, the seventh book reveals that Ron and Hermione wind up together, as do Harry and Ginny, but it was such a non-event that I’m sure the die-hard romantics were left a little disappointed. Typically, any romantic scenarios that occurred in the Harry Potter books were always stunted in some fashion. Every possible confession of love that could have occurred in these books was always interrupted, but it was clear that they would eventually HAVE to be addressed.

Without a doubt, Ron wears his love for Hermione on his sleeve in “Deathly Hallows.” He’s extremely protective of her and he damn near lays an egg when the Cruciatus Curse hits Hermione at Malfoy Manor. There’s even a scene where a Horcrux, in a last-ditch effort to stop Ron from destroying it, audibly voices all of Ron’s inner feelings, trepidations and fears regarding how Hermione feels about him.

Ron hears Hermione’s voice (faked, of course) telling him how she could never love him when Harry is around and Ron even winds up seeing an image of Harry and Hermione in a passionate embrace. It is there that Harry, having seen all of this, quells all doubts about his feelings for Hermione (...she’s like a sister to him), thus letting Ron know that the field’s clear if he wants her.

Obviously, Hermione cares very much for Ron as well, evident by the fact that he’s got the power to hurt her more deeply than anybody else ever could (...evidence of this started appearing with the Yule Ball in Goblet of Fire). So, after six books of amorous tension between Ron and Hermione, readers pretty much said that they NEED to hook up. So, do Ron and Hermione end up together? Yes. But here’s how it went down.

It’s Chapter 31 (The Battle of Hogwarts) and, if you’re reading from the American hardcover version, it’s on Page 625. It reads like this:

There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione’s arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet.

“Is this the moment?” Harry asked weakly, and when nothing happened except that Ron and Hermione gripped each other still more firmly and swayed on the spot, he raised his voice. “OI! There’s a war going on here!”

Ron and Hermione broke apart, their arms still around each other.

“I know, mate,” said Ron, who looked as though he had recently been hit on the back of the head with a Bludger, “so it’s now or never, isn’t it?”

That’s pretty much it.

Harry snaps them out of their mutual reverie and the battle continues.

The next mention of Ron and Hermione together (as a couple) doesn’t happen until the Epilogue which is set nineteen years following the downfall of Voldemort. So, for all of the hopeless romantics out there, yes they do get together, wind up getting married and have two kids (Rose and Hugo). However, it’s mentioned so matter-of-factly that it’s extraordinarily anti-climactic. There’s no lover’s dialogue, no confessions of undying love, etc.

After seven books and, like, a DECADE of building up the tension between Ron and Hermione, the only sensible ending would have involved much more dialogue between the two as a payoff for readers who'd been waiting so long for the tension to break.

As for Harry’s love interest (Ginny), they wind up together as well and also are mentioned as being married in the epilogue, again in an anti-climactic fashion. Plus, they have three kids with the most unoriginal names EVER:

Lily, James and Albus Severus.

You also learn from the Epilogue that Neville Longbottom is now “Professor” Longbottom at Hogwarts and, not surprisingly, he’s the Herbology professor. Draco (who has a son named Scorpius) is on good terms with Harry, Ron and Hermione and, as the last line of the book indicates, all is well.

One of the things I really liked about the seventh book was how the Malfoy family came around. The long and the short of it is that, in the end, Narcissa and Lucius cared more about the well-being of their son than of their allegiance to Voldemort. Given Voldemort’s crappy treatment of the Malfoys in “Half-Blood Prince” and “Deathly Hallows,” it should come as no surprise that they’d desert Voldemort in the end.

At a point after he hit Harry with a killing curse, Voldemort asked someone to check and make sure that Harry Potter was really dead. Narcissa felt that Harry still had a pulse, but instead of screaming that he was still alive, she whispered to Harry and asked if Draco was still alive, to which Harry whispered back, “Yes.” Then, Narcissa announced that Harry was dead (...presumably as a thank you for that little nugget of info on her son).

I also thought it was a nice touch (albeit surprising) that the Malfoys were in Hogwarts, sitting with Draco when all was said and done. I honestly thought that Narcissa and Lucius would have been killed in the seventh book.

And now, onto Horcruxes. I’m proud to say that I was actually right for once in two of my Horcrux guesses, stemming from the sixth book. The big mystery by the end of “Half-Blood Prince” was, “What and where are the other Horcruxes?”

A Horcrux, as Harry Potter fans will know, is a receptacle in which a dark wizard can hide a part of his soul for the purpose of gaining immortality. Voldemort found a way to cleave his soul into seven pieces and stash them in various relics scattered throughout the country (...one of them even made it to Albania).

Dumbledore had suffered a serious injury to his hand in “Half-Blood Prince” after finding and destroying the Horcrux which was Marvolo Gaunt’s ring. The injury, as we find out in Book Seven, would have eventually killed Dumbledore had he not already arranged to have Snape snuff him out.

Between Harry’s ability to speak Parseltongue, his constant visions of Voldemort’s thoughts and even Nagini’s actions, I figured that both Nagini and Harry were Horcruxes. This turned out to be correct.

The downside to this final book was that Harry, Ron and Hermione spent way too much book time hiding as they tried to come up with ideas as to where the other Horcruxes were hidden. Aside from that, it was interesting to learn that Gaunt’s Ring was also one of the three Deathly Hallows; the others being the Elder Wand and Harry’s very own invisibility cloak.

Speaking of the Hallows, the other thing I found interesting was that Draco Malfoy unwittingly became master of the Elder Wand after disarming Dumbledore in the sixth book. Harry then goes on to become the Elder Wand’s new master after taking it from Draco, which is how he is able to defeat Voldemort once and for all. The book had given a decent explanation of how the wand wouldn’t really work for Voldemort the way he wanted because he never “won” the wand. Voldemort actually raids Dumbledore’s tomb to steal it.

The only thing that wound up confusing the hell out of me was the Epilogue and that was only because I had that one and only chapter to retrain my brain to put new identities on names I’d gotten to know throughout the seven books. Hugo and Rose I was fine with, but all of Harry’s kids had names that I had forever associated with other people.

Albus Severus was the worst, of course, being a mix of Dumbledore’s first name and Snape’s first name respectively. Then, of course, there were Lily and James, which were also the names of his parents. If memory serves me correctly, James is also Harry Potter’s middle name. I was surprised that the boy’s name wasn’t James Sirius Potter and the girl’s name wasn’t Lily Luna Potter or something f**ked up like that.

But all of that aside, it’s nice to know that the Harry Potter frenzy is pretty much over. Next on J.K. Rowling’s list of things to do will be to compile a Harry Potter Encyclopedia, but according to her, that won’t happen for quite a number of years to come. Sounds like she could really use a vacation.

Transformers (2007): My Review

2007-07-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

Before I dig in with my hundreds of unsolicited opinions regarding the Transformers movie, let me just get this out of the way right now.

The Transformers movie was kick ass.

Phenomenal CG work, decent plotline and enough action to satiate my appetite for explosions and battling robots. I threw that out there because, like most diehard Transformers fans, I had my issues with the movie. Nothing unforgivable, mind you, but they warrant a negative word or two. There are just certain aspects of the movie that bug me the way a pebble in your shoe would bug you if you had to walk with it long enough. I’ll probably write this in con/pro format, but bear in mind a couple of things.

Again, I really did like this movie a lot. My cons are likely to outweigh my pros, but that’s just because I’m better at whining like a b*tch than I am at doling out praise. Those who gain a negative comment or two are not automatically barred from gaining praise. In fact, many of the characters that I rip on or criticize in my cons will also receive their due praise in my pros.

So, let’s start with the bad stuff first.

MICHAEL BAY PISSED ON THE TF TREE: If you’ve seen Armageddon more than a few times as I have, you’ll pick up on a LOT of similarities. Bay is really big on dramatically filming our armed forces and the heavy artillery they bring with them. He’s also recycling music from the Armageddon soundtrack. I think it was one of the very first scenes where I heard a familiar Armageddon tune. When this movie comes out on DVD, I dare anyone to play that first scene alongside of that scene in Armageddon where Harry Stamper's oil-drilling team arrives at the Johnson Space Center. The soundtrack is identical. They even had someone named Colonel Sharpe in the Transformers movie! Colonel Sharpe is that same dude who shakes Liv Tyler’s hand at the end of Armageddon. Michael Bay is even recycling NAMES.

C’mon, man. There ARE other names out there, you know.

I DARE MEGAN FOX TO CLOSE HER MOUTH: Megan Fox plays Sam’s love interest, Mikaela in this movie. She’s undoubtedly a scorching hot woman, but one thing that just bugged me was the fact that she could never seem to close her lips together. It’s as annoying as a steroid freak who can’t put his arms down by his sides because his lats are flared up like wings. I realize that the open mouth look can be sexy on a woman and Megan Fox is no exception, but sweetheart, trust me when I tell you this.

You’re plenty hot already without having to do the agape mouth routine throughout the entire movie. Next time, ease up on the collagen a bit, okay? Most guys will still wanna bang you harder than a catflap in a hurricane. Be content with that.

LOSE THE AUSSIE ACCENT: The other half of the “Hot Chick Tag Team” is Maggie played by an Australian girl named Rachael Taylor. She’s hot in a plastic kind of way and she’s not hard to look at, but for the love of all that is holy, she is really tough to take on the ears. Her accent is so amazingly thick that it’s annoying. She pronounces the word “know” like “noh-hyuhh” and it just makes me want to hit myself over the head with something blunt and heavy until I draw blood.

Here’s something to check out if you haven’t seen the movie yet. She’s filmed in the middle of two nerd dudes when they’re in the signal analysis room, being briefed by the Secretary of Defense played by Jon Voight (…don’t even get me started on him). Notice how they manage to blur the faces of the two dudes a bit, but her face comes in sharp as a tack. Trust me, I know enough about filming to know that the cameraman could have EASILY gotten all three of them into focus, but no… they give the HD treatment to the Aussie mannequin. Fortunately, she doesn’t speak all that much.

Here’s hoping they cast an equally attractive American girl who speaks normal English for the sequel.

WHERE ARE SPIKE AND SPARKPLUG?: When I first heard the name “Shia LaBeouf,” I thought it was some kind of French appetizer. When I found out he was playing the role of Spike, I was like, “Well, never heard of him, but no biggie.” After all, I hadn’t heard of Brandon Routh either, but I thought he did a respectable job of reprising the Superman role. So, after seeing the movie, I’ll give props to LaBeouf. He played his role very well and he’s believable as Spike. There’s only one problem. They called him “Sam” Witwicky!

I heard the name and said, “Oh, okay. So, his real name is Sam. That’s cool. Wonder when people are gonna start calling him Spike?” Here’s the answer:

Never f**king happens!

He was Sam until the very end of the movie. So, as I’m trying to get the Sam pebble out of my shoe, I get my second kick in the nuts. Sparkplug is also missing. Gone is the mechanical genius who would wind up working alongside of Ratchet, fixing busted up Autobots. And what do we get instead? We get a guy who LOOKS JUST LIKE SPARKPLUG, but whines and b*tches more than my aunt did when she had bone spurs in her feet.

He’s not “Sparkplug.” He’s “Ron.” Oooh, I'm impressed!

He literally spends half of his lines b*tching about people walking on his grass! No, seriously! He really does! He’s seen with a glass of red wine in his hand shortly after bitching out “Sam” for arriving home three minutes late. Are you kidding?

Seriously, are you kidding?

Plus, unlike the cartoon version of Sparkplug, this ass clown shows absolutely no mechanical prowess whatsoever and, near as I can tell, can’t even lay down his cement tile path correctly. He never even sees the seventeen Autobots camped out in his backyard and was, for all intents and purposes, a tremendous disappointment.

Please do something with him in the sequel, Bay. I’m beggin’ ya! Sparkplug was so cool in the cartoon and you’ve reduced him to an old guy sitting on his front porch, yelling at squirrels.

TONGUE-IN-CHEEK HUMOR: It was hard deciding whether this goes under PROS or CONS. In the end, I decided to b*tch about it instead of praise it, but bear in mind, it’s not all bad. The script’s pretty well packed with innuendo and double-entendres. I lost count of the quantity of Sam’s Freudian slips with Mikaela, plus I had to deal with the “more than meets the eye” line like three times in the movie. Then there was the Bill Clinton impressionist asking the Air Force One crewmember if she could “wrangle up some Ding-Dongs” for him. Adding to that, there’s Sam’s mother who shouts at the Feds to “Keep their hands off of my bush.”

And notice how every possible embarrassing thing that could happen to a guy in front of his dream girl happens to Sam? He gets humiliated in class, has his pants taken off in front of her, crashes a girl’s bike in front of her and, worst of all, has to rebuke masturbation questions from his mother whilst in her presence. In real life, there’s no way she would have ever still gone for him with all of those strikes against him. Plus, the other tongue-in-cheek moment I noticed happened with the first Bumblebee scene.

For a diehard TF fan such as myself, it was a disappointment because I saw the exact make and model that Bumblebee adapted for his character in the cartoon (Volkswagon Beetle), but he actually turns out to be this rusty sh*tbox Camaro (later to revamp itself into a much sweeter version), parked right next to the Beetle. However, it’s one of those details that I had to make my peace with long before the movie came out, so I was able to deal. Also, diehard Transformer fans will most definitely catch Prime’s line of , “One shall stand, one shall fall,” taken directly from the 1986 animated movie.

MICHAEL BAY IS A G.M. WHORE: This isn’t a huge gripe, only because according to my friend, General Motors really needs the publicity, but virtually every vehicle in the movie was made by G.M. Again, no biggie, but they certainly don’t win any points for subtlety. I can just see the meeting now:

Bay: "I need sh*t to blow up! Do we have a deal or what?"

G.M. Rep: "Okay, Bay. You give us product placement throughout the movie and we’ll give you 729 G.M. vehicles to blow up and otherwise trash as you see fit."

Assembly Line Worker: "You guys suck. I quit."

WTF IS AN ALLSPARK?: I forgot to ask my aforementioned friend this question when I had the opportunity, but I don’t recall ever seeing anything about an almighty AllSpark in any of the Transformers cartoons. Like many of Bay’s recent movies, this one starts with a monologue. Optimus Prime mentions a cube and, instantly, I’m thinking “Energon Cube.” Instead, it’s this complete ripoff of the Borg Cube, floating in space and it’s apparently responsible for the war on Cybertron. I just didn’t get the point of it, other than it has this amazing magical ability to turn any piece of technology into a whacked-out, gun-toting Decepticon.

One blast from this thing turned a Nokia phone into a miniature Rambo which, in the span of a few seconds, fired off a few dozens rounds and a small missile. If I find out my phone’s got missiles waiting to be launched into my cerebellum, I’m switching back to landlines and pay phones immediately! Everything happens so fast in this movie, but I swear I saw this same Borg Cube turn a Mountain Dew vending machine into a deadly Decepticon. Again, this newly-birthed "Decepticon" just started firing ammo at nobody and for no apparent reason, other than perhaps to vent about the fact that he’s carrying around a couple dozen cans of monkey piss in him for 75 cents a pop.

OKAY, THAT IS SOOOOO NOT MEGATRON: One of the things I had to come to grips with well before the movie’s release was that Frank Welker would not be reprising the role of Megatron for the movie. “Fine, I’ll deal” I said, figuring that he’d still be a bad ass. He was, no doubt, a bad ass Decepticon, but he was NOT Megatron.

The Megatron I knew and loved was this huge, barrel-chested warrior that transformed into a gun and b*tched at Starscream every seventeen seconds. This version looked more like a giant pile of Farberware stainless steel cutlery sets than a Decepticon. I actually had to ask my friend, “What the hell does he transform into? A kitchen?”

Well apparently, he transforms into a flying craft, not unlike Cyclonus in overall shape…. and that’s fine, but it’s NOT MEGATRON! And if I hadn’t read that Hugo Weaving provided the voice of Megs, I’d have neither believed it nor even picked up on it. Agent Smith/the Vendetta dude is doing Megatron now? Hey, whatever works, I suppose.

DEVASTATOR IS NOT ONE TANK: The title pretty much spells out this particular grievance. Devastator is a collection of six construction vehicles (Constructicons) that merge into one giant Decepticon named Devastator. He is NOT just one big ol’ tank. I had heard about the possibility of Devastator making an appearance and almost had a nerdgasm on the spot. Imagine my immense disappointment when all I saw was a four second clip of a rolling tank who actually had the temerity to call itself Devastator.

Bitch, please.

WHERE’S MY REDNECK IRONHIDE?: Similar gripe to the other wannabe Transformers that look nothing like what the cartoon made them out to be. Ironhide is not remotely red anywhere and what’s more disappointing is that he didn’t sound like trailerpark trash at all. I loved how Ironhide always sounded like a pissed off Texan, waiting and itchin’ to kick some ass. What’s even more disappointing is that they HAD the voice talent for Ironhide and didn’t use him. All diehard TF fans know that, along with doing the voice of Optimus Prime, Peter Cullen also voiced Ironhide. Talk about dropping the ball on that one. Plus, surprise, surprise… Ironhide is now a black GMC truck.

My childhood takes another hit.

JAZZ DIES: Even after all these years, my wounds are still a bit raw from the 1986 TF movie where all of the G1 Autobots pretty much die in the first five minutes. Fast-forward to 2005 when I first heard about the TF movie and I was all happy because I was sure they’d bring back all of my favorite characters. So, what did I see? Well, for starters, I saw a bunch of Decepticons I didn’t recognize, but I can deal with that. What was NOT cool, however, was the fact that Megatron kills Jazz. Granted, Megatron kills him in a totally bad ass way, but still.

Jazz steps up to the Ginsu Menace and says, “You want a piece of me?” Megatron grabs him, says I want TWO and rips Jazz in half. That’s f**ked up, I’ll grant you, and it’s par for the course in the realm of Transformer trash talk but why couldn’t Megatron’s victim have been a newer, unknown Autobot? Why not some aimless Autobot pawn who decides he wants to be a hero and winds up getting owned? Though I don’t think a "second in command" was ever officially established in the Transformers mythos, I’m pretty sure that if a survey were to be conducted, Jazz would head to the front of the line. He was always Optimus Prime’s right hand bot, so why did he have to be the one to die? That just really sucked and, what’s worse, it brought back those horrible feelings I had in 1986.

WHO THE HELL IS BARRICADE?: I wasn’t at all surprised to see a police car in the movie because my first thought was, “Aw, cool! It’s Prowl!” Then I saw the side of the car where it read something along the lines of, “To Punish and Enslave” and I thought, “Well, that can’t possibly be Prowl, so who the hell is it?” Off the top of my head, I couldn’t think of any Decepticon Police cars. I found out later that the Decepticon in question was named Barricade. I think there might have been a Barricade character in the cartoon, but I could have sworn he was a race car; not a cop car. Anyway, he does get PRO points for being super bad ass, so stay tuned. What’s funny is that this new "Barricade" is already being sold on eBay, which segues in nicely to my next gripe.

TRANSFORMERS SURF THE WEB?: According to the movie (and Prime), Autobots and Decepticons learned how to speak English through the World Wide Web. And they also like eBay, apparently. Well, if either side knew sh*t about eBay and they really wanted those glasses badly enough, they could have just utilized the “Buy it Now” feature that Sam had for those glasses, PayPalled over the $250.00 that he wanted for them and gotten them that way. So, to recap, they’re really good at hacking into the US Government’s database in mere seconds, fantastic at f**king up Air Force One, but they’re too cheap to cough up a couple hundred bucks for the miniaturized map to ultimate power.

Dumbasses.

FRENZY? REALLY?: Another one who's kind of a PRO and CON dude was Frenzy. Originally, he was a cassette tape, but being in the digital age, he’d have been discarded as passé, so they needed to update him. Trust me, I get that.

But I’m a traditionalist, so even though I totally understand the rationale for the upgrade, it sucked not knowing that this nutjob was Frenzy until my buddy told me who it was. The other reason why he made the CON side was that he reenacts a scene right out of Bad Boys 2. Check out the movie if you have it and go to the part where Will Smith’s got a gun in each hand as he’s backed up against a wall as the camera rolls around in a circle to show the bad guys on the other end, trying to blast his ass. Watch how Will Smith dumps his magazines and tell me that Frenzy doesn’t do virtually the same damn thing, using the same damn camera motion.

Well, Bad Boys 2 is another Michael Bay baby, so I suppose one could make the argument of, "If you can’t rip off ideas from yourself, who’re ya gonna rip em off from, right?"

STEADY THE DAMN CAMERA!: George Lucas's famous ILM was contracted to do the CGI effects for this movie and they're f**king expensive. Now, I’ll admit this may be my ignorance, but why not get your money’s worth and actually steady the camera to see some of the action more clearly. I was intrigued with the prospect of seeing live-action transformations, but Michael Bay likes to add to the booming war effect by shaking the camera. In other words, blurring the details of the CGI.

Maybe this was a cost-saving trick (because I know that ILM doesn’t come cheap), but it kinda ruined it a bit for me. The action at times is just so fast that you virtually miss it and can’t tell what’s happening to whom. Ang Lee was immensely disappointed to learn that, with his budget, he was only gonna be able to do like 20% of what he wanted to do with ILM for his “Hulk” movie, but that’s the nature of the biz. There’s ILM and there are all of the other pretenders to the throne, so naturally, you pay a TON to hire them.

But see, this is where my “simple is better” idea would have really saved them a ton of money because every Transformer was so intricately detailed that animating them must have been a real b*tch. The over-the-top detailing of every Transformer just made it too difficult to keep anything straight and half the time, I couldn’t tell who was who. When all you can see is one big pile of metal shards battling another big pile of metal shards with the speed of the action, f**ked-up angles and unsteady camera shots, all you wind up seeing is a glorified version of Twister 2: When Metal Shards Attack.

Then again, maybe the blurring of details was intentional so that animators didn’t have to worry about the logistics behind where every gear was gonna go when bots were transforming.

STARSCREAM ISN’T A WHINY IMBECILE: I know, at first glance, this would seem like a PRO, but I WANT Starscream to be an idiot. One of the things I loved most about the Transformers cartoon was how Megatron and Starscream would constantly bicker like Felix Unger and Oscar Madison. There was actually one scene in the movie where Megatron uttered something about how Starscream had once again failed him and I was all excited. I was all like, "Awesome, here it comes!"

But… that’s all that he said about it.

No fighting. No bickering. No attempts by Starscream to become the new leader of the Decepticons. I’m also aware that Chris Latta died several years ago and that is (obviously) unfortunate, but that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have found a voice somewhere on the planet that could do a screechy Starscream. Yet, good ol' Double S just sounded like another low-bassed Decepticon with no real mental issues at all. Now, where's the fun in that?

WHAT’S UP WITH RATCHET?: I have no real “complaint” against Ratchet, except to ask why he wasn’t made into an ambulance. I understand the design change with Prime’s truck and I understand why Ironhide is no longer a boring-ass family SUV, but last time I checked, we still have ambulances. And they’ve got a modern look to them, too!

So, why’d they give Ratchet a look that was more reminiscent of Grapple? All I have to say on that one is that somebody should have given Ratchet’s design more than a couple of seconds' worth of thought and realized that he really needed to be an ambulance.

BAY HAD DOUBTS ABOUT PETER CULLEN?: Peter Cullen had given an interview some time ago where he recounted the audition process for Optimus. He reprised the voice to perfection, yet Bay had his doubts as to whether or not he could do this movie. Clearly with the myriad list of things that Bay managed to f**k up about the Transformers, he obviously wasn’t a fan of the cartoon series. I daresay he’s probably never even watched it.

If he knew even a sliver of information about Peter Cullen, Michael Bay would have quickly realized that NOT casting Cullen would have been akin to career suicide. Sure, hold an audition to make sure he can still DO the voice, but once you’ve heard it and can authenticate it, that’s the ball game right there. Cast him and move forward.

But NO. Bay had doubts!

Bay: “Hmm, Cullen. Cullen. I just don’t know, guys. So, how many rounds should the Mountain Dew machine fire off before we cut to the next scene?”

Moron!

PUSH THE CUBE INTO MY CHEST?: Under my WTF category goes this little gem. At one point, Prime tells Sam that, if he can’t defeat Megatron, Sam needs to push the Borg Cube into Prime’s chest. What was funny was that, when he opened his chest, I thought he was gonna whip out the Matrix of Leadership. Then I remembered who made this film and nearly slapped myself for thinking such a thing. Had Prime been carrying the Matrix, he’d have probably been better off at least trying to open it before sacrificing his body for the cause. Plus, had Megatron been designed the way the cartoon designed him, he wouldn’t have had that open section of his chest in the first place and they’d have had to figure out another way to kill the bastard.

WHERE’S OPTIMUS PRIME’S FACE PLATE?: With all of the massive changes that were made to pretty much every Transformer on the marquee, you’d think this would be the last thing I’d b*tch about, yet here I am b*tching about it. Optimus, without a doubt, has the most lines out of any Transformer and he’s even got a few close-ups of his face, which I thought was cool. I just didn’t get why they gave him lips instead of a face plate.

Seriously, Bay. Would it have killed you to at least come moderately close to getting one of the Transformers to look remotely like what it looked like in the animated series?

You have no problem giving us a spidery Frenzy, killing the Number Two Autobot, inventing Decepticons who have never existed (just who the f**k is Blackout anyway?), having a Mountain Dew machine go postal (What the hell’s he using for ammo? Soda cans?) and turning the leader of the Decepticons into a very large lawn tiller, but you can’t see clear to giving Optimus Prime a face plate?

It takes Prime like... f**king seventeen minutes to transform from a truck into a robot and you waste time and money animating a mouth that Prime has literally never, ever had?

And, oh, while I’m b*tching at Michael Bay for his Optimus desecration, Prime has not and should never be heard saying sh*t like, “My bad.” Watch for the sequel where a short circuit changes Prime’s voice from Peter Cullen’s to Big Gay Al’s.

Okay, I’ve whined and complained long enough. Let’s get to the PROS.

BERNIE MAC: His role is a short one as used car salesman, Bobby Bolivia, but he makes the most of it. Most of what he says in those two minutes is funny stuff and though I didn’t expect to see him there, it was a decent and (at least for me), a well-received surprise.

RAVI PATEL: Topping the list of funny unknowns is a guy named Ravi Patel, who did a great job as the Arabic telephone operator that Josh Duhamel needs to deal with to get connected to the Pentagon. This movie had its share of stupid and prurient attempts at comedy, but this particular dude was just funny as hell.

MEGAN FOX: Again, this is one smokin’ hot female who’s incredibly easy on the eyes and doesn’t piss you off by being too butch or trying too hard to be some superior amazon warrior princess. Gaping mouth aside, she’s pretty much flawless and, to his credit, Michael Bay does have an affinity for female flesh. There’s a scene where Mikaela is leaning in to check what’s under Bumblebee’s hood and you get a great shot of Fox’s perfectly-toned and sexy-as-hell midriff. What sucks for guys like me is that, no matter how old we get, we’ll never stop finding 21 year old girls sexy.

The downside is that we just wind up feeling more lecherous with each passing year.

TOP-NOTCH CG MAGIC: Yes, I was disappointed in the shakiness of the scenes, but that’s only because I really wanted to stare slack-jawed at ILM’s awesome work with the Transformers. For the scenes where we’re actually allowed to get a good look at some of the transformations, they’re just phenomenal to watch. What’s funny is that, just like the cartoon, some transformations are fast and some are slow.

Starscream and Barricade take top prize for fast transformations, but they also look pretty frickin’ cool. That scene where Barricade transforms back into a police car to go after Bumblebee was, in my opinion, one of the coolest transformations of the movie because it's the kind of transformation I'd make if I were pissed off and ready to kick somebody's ass. Plus, I loved how Barricade was in full car mode whilst still in mid-air. Nice touch.

And speaking of Barricade….

BARRICADE IS BAD ASS: While I was put-off by the fact that I didn’t recognize this Decepticon, I thought he was immensely awesome and bad ass. There’s a scene where Barricade is making like he’s gonna run Sam over. Then, he turns into this big ol’ pissed off Decepticon with this wicked cool and evil voice, bitch-slapping Sam’s body into another car, then cornering him and slamming his huge, metal fist against the pavement as he’s interrogating him.

I was just sitting there in the movie theater and thinking, “I think if he cornered me like that, I’d probably sh*t myself swampy.” Granted, he gets his ass handed to him by Bumblebee of all Autobots, but that couldn’t have been an easy task.

MILITARY MIGHT AND PROPERTY DAMAGE: I’ll give Bay his props. His format might be predictable, but you can’t help but be impressed with those sweeping aerial shots of US fighter jets, Blackhawks, aircraft carriers, tanks, etc. He also truly IS the master of destroying cars, streets, shops and entire cities and you come away from one of his movies wondering just how much it cost him to lay waste to so much machinery and property.

PETER CULLEN: If someone gave me the decision to cast just ONE of the original voices from the Transformer cartoons to do this movie, I’d have easily gone with Peter Cullen any day of the week and twice on Sunday. When the announcement was made, TF fans the world over rejoiced. There’s just something about that voice that screams “Leader!” It’s authoritative, commanding and totally suitable for an Autobot legend like Optimus Prime. Often imitated; never duplicated.

Here’s a quick, true story about the awesomeness of Optimus Prime of which a lot of people aren’t aware. In the animated movie from 1986, Optimus dies. Later in the television series, he’s brought back to life.

Guess who resuscitated him? Angry mothers.

Countless thousands of young boys (and yes, many girls) were so distraught over Optimus Prime’s death and had become so depressed over such a long period of time that hundreds of pissed off mothers wrote in, basically asking the execs, “What the hell is wrong with you people? My boy/girl is too young to have to be exposed to this type of misery and dismay.”

So, after a whole lot of heat, Optimus Prime was brought back to life. But seriously, who else could possibly play Optimus Prime for this movie than Peter Cullen? Think about it. The answer is NOBODY.

One more quick comment about the awesomeness of Optimus Prime. Check out his one-on-one battle with what I believe was Bonecrusher. Prime goes old school with his blade (the one that appeared in that three part pilot episode of the Transformers cartoon), but he does something very un-Optimus-like. He f**king decapitates Bonecrusher.... and as his lifeless body crashes to the ground, Prime drops Bonecrusher’s head. I was like, “Damn, that was one sick, bad ass maneuver there!”

MEGATRON STRIKES FEAR IN ME: Well, not really, but when you suspend disbelief, Megatron’s definitely no joke. He’s incredibly large and absolutely merciless. As pissed as I was that he ripped Jazz in half, you gotta admit that’s both cool and a bit unsettling at the same time. He RIPS an Autobot in HALF!

In HALF, folks!

And best of all, he’s got a few equally fear-inducing one-liners to boot. Imagine running for your life and getting told that, if you cooperate, he MIGHT just have enough mercy on you to enslave you as his pet. The Decepticons were seen chanting, “All hail, Megatron!”

If it had been ME, I’d have been like, “No, keep that twisted motherf**ker on ice! I have no desire to be one of his hood ornaments, thank you!”

AWESOME TRANSFORMATIONS: The transformations that Bay actually allows us to see in detail are amazing. Whether or not they obey the laws of physics is irrelevant. Just watching all of those small gears and parts moving around was impressive. Hell, even Prime’s head was made up of like a few hundred individual moving and rolling parts. Again, many of the sick transformations belonged to Barricade and Starscream. Watching Starscream pick off other fighter jets and bouncing from jet to robot and back to jet again was just incredible.

BUMBLEBEE AND “SAM”: I really hope he somehow earns the “Spike” name in the sequel. But I digress. I liked how Michael Bay was nice enough to establish the friendship between Bumblebee and Sam (I’m really tempted to just call him “Spike” on principle). It was one of the things I always loved about the animated series and that bond continues on in the movie version. Bay gets a lot of respect from me for doing that.

RIPE FOR SEQUELS: There’s not a doubt in my mind that, with what I feel will be a tremendous success at the box office, there will be at least one more Transformers movie (maybe even two). This will give Michael Bay an opportunity to right some of the wrongs he committed. I mean, we obviously know that we haven’t seen the end of Megatron and maybe, maybe, maybe they’ll figure out a way to bring back Jazz (...though I'm not holding my breath on that one).

Plus, the sequel gives him an excellent opportunity to introduce more Transformers into the mix. How sweet would it be to see a live-action version of someone like Blitzwing? Or Skyfire? Or even Omega Supreme? Like I said at the start, the movie was overall a tremendous success and though I can b*tch all I want about the little details, I admit that I definitely want to see it again.

Do Any Boston Cab Drivers Speak English?

2007-06-07T13:53:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, one of mankind’s great unanswerable questions makes it way through my head. Just yesterday, I got another one:

Why the hell can’t I find an English-speaking taxi driver in Boston?

Seriously! Every time I need to hail a cab in Beantown, the dude behind the wheel is either inaudible, a foreigner or an inaudible foreigner. Bear in mind, I’m far from being a stranger to the city of Boston and trust me when I tell you that I’ve taken quite a few cab rides all over this great city of ours.

Not one time have I ever had the pleasure of stepping into a Boston cab and seeing some Irish Catholic white dude behind the wheel with an all-American (or all-Bostonian) accent, ready, willing and able to talk intelligently about the insanely expensive Big Dig, the abysmal Celtics or the Pats’ chances in the post-season.

Instead, I’m consistently “blessed” with dudes you'd only see in National Geographic publications or on CNN amidst car bombs exploding in the background. Don’t believe me? Try it and see for yourself.

Head over to the TD Banknorth Garden sometime, pick the first available cab you find and step in. Twenty bucks says he’ll be from Haiti, Africa, Russia or some lesser-known Arabic-speaking country. I’ve got nothing against these people or these countries, mind you, but just once I’d like to not have to stress my brain to the point of fracture as I try to decipher my cab driver’s thick-ass foreign accent.

Remember that show “Taxi?” Ah, the good ol' days! All of the drivers were American, right? Sure, they had Latka, but they kept his googly-eyed ass in the garage, fixing cabs - not driving them!

Just last week, I had the pleasure of spending over thirty dollars on an Arabian Death Cab special. Nice enough guy, but he may as well have been speaking with a mouthful of marbles because I couldn’t understand a f**king word he said.

I told him that I needed to get to Trapelo Road (pronounced: truh-PELL-o).

He said, “A bubble?”

I said, “No, Trapelo.”

“Flah Fubble?”

“No, Trapelo.”

“Uh blubbo.”

“TRAPELO!”

“Wait! You go Boston?”

“No, we’re IN Boston, Numbnuts! I need to get to Trapelo Road. It’s a main road that connects Cambridge to Belmont to Waltham to Weston. TRAPELO ROAD!”

Finally, he goes, “TRAH-pelo Main?”

I said, “Lose the Main and you’ll be close enough.”

Then he asks me, “What route want take?”

I said, “Just hit Storrow Drive West. It’s the quickest route.”

“Burrough West?”

“Storrow!”

He, of course, took Memorial Drive.

I could have saddled up an arthritic cow, blindfolded her, given her an address and gotten there faster than this clown, but whatever. At least the cab was in motion now. And by "motion," I mean speeding up to 80 mph, then slamming on the brakes, then hitting the accelerator, then slamming the brakes again.

Clown Boy hit the brakes so hard one time that my head nearly went through that plastic divider that separates cabbies like him from dudes like me who just want to strangle him to death. After his one final, stop-on-a-dime demo, I paid him, stumbled out of the cab and spent the next twenty minutes coughing up shards of skull and checking myself for signs of internal bleeding.

Then, just yesterday, I had to get to the Fire and Ice restaurant area in Boston, which is very close to the Arlington T stop. That particular Fire and Ice is located in the same building as the office where I had my job interview, but I didn’t know the exact address. However, figuring that Boston cab drivers know their way around, I figured I’d just ask whoever I got to take me to the Boston Fire and Ice adjacent to the Arlington T Stop.

Seems simple enough, right?

So, I get in and "Captain Haitian Mumbles” is my pilot for the day. I must have repeated myself at least fifteen times before he even bothered to start driving the vehicle. And I know that he was asking me questions, but for the life of me, I couldn’t hear the man. Instead of being my abrupt and rude self by shouting, “Speak up, Slappy!”, I decided it’d be better to just reiterate that all he had to do was get me to the Arlington T Stop on the Green Line and I’d do the rest.

To his credit, I did get there eventually, though I had to tell him to stop as he zoomed right the f**k by my destination.

I was like, “Yeah, it’s right here. See the Arlington T Stop entrance? And just beyond that, there’s the Fire and Ice sign? See that?”

You’d have thought I just got done explaining Julian Schwinger’s theory on Cold Fusion with the blank stare he was giving me. I swear some of these people have gotta be fresh off the boat, yet there they are, driving cabs all over Boston with names I couldn’t correctly pronounce if you had a loaded Uzi pointed at my head. I'm sure there's a logical reason why Boston decided to stop hiring English-speaking Americans to drive cabs, but I'm guessing my Arabic will be nearly fluent by the time I figure it all out.

Kauan

2007-05-05T20:03:00.000-07:00

Very early this morning, I awoke to the sound of my wife sobbing on the bed with her mother trying to console her. My heart almost stopped. Even in my groggy haze, I knew that something horrible must have happened and being the father of an infant girl, I feared the worst.

Kauan, my wife's cousin’s six month old son, had just passed away.

I don’t know exactly how his problems started except to say that his health seemingly hung in the balance from the very beginning. Kauan (pronounced: cow-WAN) had reached his ninth month in utero and though his mother, Jacqueline was feeling pain, the doctors in Brazil (where the parents reside) kept sending her home, saying that it wasn’t time. Apparently, they waited too long and, somehow, his overstay in the womb put a tremendous strain on Kauan’s heart. He was born with what I believe was a clogged artery. As a result, he needed to be kept content and at peace 24/7 as every moment of distress would cause Kauan to turn blue and continued stress would wind up killing him.

Also, doctors advised against any heart operations until the boy reached six months of age. As of late April, Kauan reached his sixth month and by the 25^th, he’d had his operation. Doctors found a second clogged artery which they repaired as best they could. Kauan spent the rest of his life under constant surveillance in an intensive care unit of the hospital. By the very early hours of this morning, however, Kauan’s heart stopped beating. Now, he’s gone and, as a parent of a five month old baby, I can’t even begin to imagine the pain that Jacqueline and her boyfriend (my wife’s cousin, Ivo) are having to endure.

We’ve been planning for our daughter’s first birthday party even before she was born and my wife had been preparing gift bags for all of the children who will be invited. How sad it was to see her, lachrymose and with Kauan’s tag in her hand as she removed it from the bag of nametags. And for purely selfish reasons, I’m also sad because Kauan was so close to my daughter’s age that I once felt so great knowing that Ariana would have a family member in Brazil who was virtually the exact same age as her. Knowing that Kauan’s path has ended and that he will not grow with Ariana just breaks my heart.

He died this morning at 2:45am and in just over twelve hours, he was buried. With as little faith as I have in American doctors, I have that much less in the ones in Brazil. The sad thing is that, if not for the incompetence of the doctors that kept sending Jacqueline home when Kauan needed to come out, he’d have probably been born perfectly healthy and would have avoided all of the health problems that led to his death.

Kauan didn’t go to the best heart hospital in São Paulo because it was too expensive, so he was admitted to a lesser renowned location. These were the people who scheduled Kauan’s heart operation and, almost at the last minute, they postponed it because they hadn’t thought to get an anesthesiologist to sedate him. Once he had his operation, the doctors inserted all kinds of tubes and hooked Kauan up to various machines that he’d need to survive the week that would follow.

A day or so after the operation, they noticed that his middle had become distended and it dawned on them that they’d forgotten to put a catheder in him so that he could expel urine. As if he hadn’t already suffered enough, he literally had to hold everything in him until their blunder was visibly evident. By this time, they had to pretty much make another hole to drain him out. In essence, another surgical procedure, albeit far less major. From what I understand, he was soon doing better so they removed all of Kauan’s tubes and connections. When his condition worsened last night, they opted to reinsert the waste tube which caused him so much pain that his already delicate heart couldn’t endure anymore. He literally and physically died from intense and unbearable pain.

I can’t speak for all parents, but if my daughter ever had to endure unnecessary pain for any reason, I’d just lose my f**king mind. At four months, she had her four vaccinations, but this set caused swelling and bruising on one of Ariana’s thighs. I raised all kinds of hell, trying to get answers as my daughter screamed in pain. And that wasn’t even the result of incompetence. If I ever found out that doctors forgot to do something for my girl which caused her immeasurable pain, I really think I’d wind up killing somebody.

I’m that nuts when it comes to my little girl.

All I can say is that Kauan will be sorely missed for so many reasons and it’s just such a heartbreaking shame to know that, had it not been for the ridiculously inept medical “care” that Kauan received, he’d still be with us today.

Rest in Peace, Kauan.