Real Parenting Conversations: Once More Unto The Snow

Secondborn: "Can I got outside in the snow?"

Me: "You have no pants."

Seconborn: "Now can I go outside in the snow?"

Me: "You put on one glove. You still have no pants. Where are your pants?"

Secondborn: "I tink dey are hiding outside."

Me: "Your pants are not hiding outside. Where did you put them? Find your pants."

Secondborn: "Here dey are!"

Me: "That's good, but you still have to put them on before you get to go outside."

Confidential File Transcript: There Arose Such A Clatter

(Translated from the Italian. Records obtained by InterPol on December 6, 2013.)

To: [REDACTED]
From: [REDACTED]
Regarding: Visit from Interpol
6/12/2013

The Office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith received a visit from agent Emma Ström of Interpol this morning. Since Your Holiness may not be immediately familiar with the issues involved, I am attaching a collection of background documents regarding this situation. I advise you to read through them before considering the results of this morning's meeting.

Following up on last year's assessment, the office has confirmed reports of Snowblossom Smith's presence in Darmstadt, Peshkopi, rural New Zealand, and eventually Guaraí (Brazil). After that, we lost track of him. Since it was Interpol taking an interest in this matter, I received the visit in my role as Cardinal Prefect. The conversation that followed was both intriguing and disturbing.

According to Agent Ström, Interpol has received troubling reports of "prancing and pawing" on certain rooftops in San Carlos, Venezuela. The Bolivarian National Police put out a request for information on any similar incidents, which led Interpol to contact us. It seems they have received requests to put out a "red notice" on Snowblossom Smith. So far, however, the charges and accusations have not been sufficient to justify that level of response.

I informed Agent Ström of Snowblossom's attempt to contact this office last year, including the response from Polar Liaison Twinkle and the discovery that the person who came to our office was a fake. Agent Ström accepted our account. It appears that she was aware of our interest in the matter, as she offered to keep us informed of any new developments in exchange for any information that we discovered. I tentatively agreed, and as a gesture of cooperation offered her our list of confirmed sightings. According to Agent Ström, our list matched three confirmed Interpol reports and added a fourth. Their listed added London (Ontario, Canada - not England) to our own.

Bearing in mind the Vatican's current focus on social issues, and the appearance of ongoing interest in Snowblossom Smith by the North Pole, I recommend that we cooperate fully in sharing information with Interpol on this issue. The issues submitted last year remain relevant, but the risks remain as well. This is a situation that requires close observation and extremely cautious action.

Icepocalypse!

Ladies and gentlemen of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, winter weather is (finally) coming. According to the Weather Channel, local temperatures will actually drop below freezing some time tonight. This dramatic change in temperature will be accompanied by 100% chance of precipitation, which can mean only one thing: Freezing Rain.

Fellow Texans, I'm sorry to say... many of you will not survive this. If you want to have any chance at all, you must go - GO NOW! - and hoard food, water, blankets, and fuel. (If you don't have firearms already, you aren't a True Texan.) Remember, the temperature may go as low as twenty-six degrees. That's low enough that the precipitation might actually accumulate as ice! The roads could possibly become completely impassible for several hours, or even a whole day!

Create or review your Family Emergency Plan. Be sure you know which of your neighbors you will eat first, should that tragic situation arise, and what steps your family will take to keep your neighbors from eating you. Every neighborhood has that one house that's uglier than everything around it; in an extreme emergency, unsightly houses can be torn down for fuel. If the unsightly house in your neighborhood also happens to be home an edible neighbor, it will make your emergency operations all the more efficient.

Then be sure to check back Saturday morning for our next report on this devastating winter storm.

(I think I missed my calling when I decided not to go into meteorology. I could have put my penchant for needless drama to good and profitable use in a career like that.)

Do not underestimate the power of the curse waffles!

Dinnertime...

Secondborn: (age 3.75) "Is because of waffles!"

Firstborn: (age 7.5) "It is not because of waffles."

Secondborn: "Is because of waffles!"

Firstborn: "What are they, cursed waffles?"

Me: (age 40) "Do not underestimate the power of cursed waffles! The nation of Guggenheim was destroyed by cursed waffles!"

Firstborn: "There is no nation of Guggenheim."

Me: "Because it was destroyed! By cursed waffles!"

Firstborn: "..."

Me: "Once upon a time there was a princess who came to the town of Guggenheim to meet the prince. They were supposed to have waffles together. But the prince decided that he didn't want to meet the princess, so he went off to eat... an omelette! All by himself! And the princess was left alone with the waffles, and she was very sad."

Me: "But what the prince didn't know what that princess wasn't just a princess. She was also a witch. She put a curse on all the waffles in the kingdom. The people who ate the waffles all thought that the prince was a putz."

Firstborn: "What's a putz?"

Me: "Someone they didn't like. Anyway, the waffles that didn't get eaten grew little tentacles all around the outside edges and scurried around and jumped on people's heads."

Firstborn: "Like headcrabs?"

Me: "Yeah, like headcrabs, except they didn't turn to the people into zombies. Instead they just stuck there, so instead of hair the people all had these waffle-patterns on top of their heads. After that, everybody was so mad at the prince that they burned down the castle, and then the whole city. And that's why Guggenheim doesn't exist anymore."

Firstborn: "Because of the curse waffles."

Me: "Exactly."

Dead whales: more dangerous than you might think

I'm not talking about live whales. I'm not talking about great white whales. I'm not even talking about zombie whales. (Zombie whales probably wouldn't be that dangerous anyway - I mean, what are they going to do? "I will filter feed on your braaaaaains..."? But I digress.)

No, I'm talking about the under-appreciated, and extremely gross dangers of dead whales. Take, for example, this striking (and extremely gross) video of a man cutting open a dead whale (which is, in case I haven't mentioned this, absolutely disgusting and not for the weak of stomach):



That's right, dead whales can actually explode. (There's a quick discussion of the science behind it right here.) Sometimes, though...

Sometimes they get a little help. Or a lot of help. With... um... with dynamite.



I suppose you could consider that a Cautionary Tale... or maybe just a cautionary tail.

This One Weird Trick That Everyone Hates

All right, advertising copy-editors. Listen up. This is important.

Look, I know times are tight. I know you're only pushing out these crappy little one-line scraps of advertising copy because you need the money, and I know it's so little money that it's not worth putting any thought into it. Crank 'em out, get paid, and maybe you can make rent this month. I get that.

But this business of recycling the same advertising hooks for every new job that comes along? It's getting out of hand.

Everything is now "one weird trick". Doesn't matter what's it for. Could be something to lower your insurance costs, increase your muscle mass, help you learn a new language, get you through that writing project, or magically cause you to lose weight. Whatever it is, whatever it does, whatever the hell you want us to click on, it's "one weird trick." Have you even looked at your topic, to see if it's genuinely weird, or even nominally a trick? No, of course not. You're just grinding 'em out, one disposable headline after another.

That would be bad enough by itself, but you can't stop there, can you? No. Whatever it is, somebody hates it. If it helps you learn a foreign language, then professors hate it. If it helps you build muscle, personal trainers hate it. If it makes your computer run faster, computer manufacturers hate it. (Really? They have a compelling dislike for something that makes their products work better? Have you even noticed that that doesn't make any gerbil-buggering sense? No, of course you haven't. Grinding out those taglines, over and over...) I swear, you're not even writing any more. It's just a product-specific version of Mad Libs.

So here it is, ladies and gentlemen of the advertising world: your wake-up call. This thing you're doing, using one-sentence fill-in-the-blank templates to advertise products? It's turned on you. It's become that one weird trick... that everybody hates.

The Hunter Prince: A Chest Full Of Grabby-Monster

I'm revising this one, so while I'm going to leave the original here, I'm also going to cross out all the text. The new version can be found here.

Caijar returned to his room before dinner, and found that his valet had already come and gone. There was a fresh outfit waiting on the bed.

The room was quiet, and Caijar wondered if the grabby-monster was still alive. The chest where he'd trapped it had only a single keyhole for air, after all. He carefully unlocked the chest, and slowly lifted the lid...

It jumped at him.

Caijar had been half-expecting it to attack, so instead of wrapping itself around his torso, it ran head-first into his fist. A moment later it dropped back into the chest, thrashing angrily. "Stop that," Caijar snapped.

The beast went still.

"That's better," he said. He didn't think the grabby-monster was smart enough to understand his words. Apparently, though, it was smart enough that it could be trained... and this one had been. "Well... You lasted this long. You can stay in there until I puzzle out something better."

He tucked a couple of stray tentacles into the chest and closed it again. Then he sighed, and stood.

Usually, he ate with his friends in a small serving room near the kitchens, but tonight was a formal dinner. That meant dressing nicely and eating in the grand hall. It also meant that Saisha wouldn't be there, though Janiva and Morius would. His cousins, Dabin and Seshil, would be there too. They weren't much fun at the best of times, and Caijar had hoped to avoid them until he learned whether they'd had a hand in putting the grabby-monster in his room.

Unfortunately, there was no way to avoid a formal dinner. Caijar's mother insisted that he must be there for the sake of appearances, while his father considered such experiences "training in diplomacy". Neither of them would excuse him from the event.

So much for my evening, Caijar thought. The meal would run for at least two hours, and after that he had to write his description of the use of armor-statues for Master Barigil. He could write that from memory, so at least he wouldn't need to do research; but it would still take time. Finding something to do with the grabby-monster would have to wait.