Quickie: Ferret Potty Pad Ads?

I just started advertising on this site and I have to say it's kind of hit and miss. While I approve of the standing "Fart Button" ad which towers on the right side of my page, I remain concerned about the Ferret Potty Pads that lurks furtively under the Morgue.

It bothers me because I think of Google as the smartest kid in the room. I think of them as a huge complex of highly intelligent, extremely wise, diligent and dedicated innovators who model everything they do for years in a lab before they launch it in beta and I believe everything they say. I am a zealot. So if Google says the best ad for my website is Ferret diapers, what does that say about my content?

Is this what people get from my writing? Do people read "The Great Orange Grove Miniature Cliffside Village Urine Disaster" and look up from their laptop and ask the room, "Do you smell Ferret piss?"

Erma Bombeck never had this problem.

The Wet Willy Way

Death by Children is committed to supporting only the highest standards in parenting techniques. We are especially devoted to methods of parenting that embody joy, love, and laughter, as well as promoting the idea to every parent that their children are not a burden, but a gift. We also tell fart jokes.

WWW Technique #001: The Wet Willy

This technique is designed to teach the parent to stop yelling, to relieve the children of the tension caused by yelling, and finally, to resolve the overall tension through laughter.

Rules:

When someone yells in anger, they must immediately allow the person they have yelled at to stick their spit-slick fingers into their ears for five seconds. They cannot refuse. Repeated offenses double the wet willy time.

Actions:

Upon yelling:

1. The yellee (and anyone else) cries WET WILLY!


2. The yellee must stick their fingers into their mouth with a wicked, perverse, slow drama, making a lot of squishy noises as they swish their saliva around their fingers.


3. The yeller takes a seat at the kitchen table, arms crossed, head held high.


4. All present gather round.


5. The yellee removes their fingers from their mouth and places them in both the yellee's ears.


6. All present count loudly to five.


7. The yellee promptly removes fingers.

Why it works

It relieves tension: Yelling creates tension and stress by engaging the fight or flight response. Everyone involved is engaged in this response. The person yelling is probably fighting, the person being yelled would probably love to fly away, as do the the people witnessing the yelling. This tension must be resolved for everyone to get back to enjoying themselves and being happy. Most techniques of relieving tension are academic or somewhat complicated. But laughter and absurdity eliminate tension instantly.

It realigns the parent's authority: your authority does not come as some kind of birth right. You earn your authority over your children by treating them with respect and, therefore, gaining their trust. By submitting to a ridiculous action, letting your child stick their wet fingers into your ears, you are communicating to them that you know you overstepped their trust and respect and that you are willing to earn it back.

It shows respect: allowing them to stick their fingers in your ears puts them into a position of authority over you. By respecting that authority, by submitting to this silliness, you show them you mean what you say and you respect them enough to keep your word.

It defeats arrogance with humility: yelling at your children is the height of arrogance. You are, in effect, treating them as if they don't matter, with disregard, as subjects over whom you rule. This point of view is kind of hard to defend when they've got their spitty fingers in your ears.

It teaches self-worth: because you are showing humble respect, you communicate to them that they are worth this effort, this humiliation, this silly moment. You teach them that they do not have to submit to abuse and should never do so.

Quickie: Would the Stumble Gods lay it On me, Please?!

In my ceaseless, arduous journey to blog stardom, to becoming Dooced--maybe even by Dooce--to getting the kind of Google numbers Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears get, I keep reading about Digg and Stumble Upon. I honestly don't understand Digg or Technocrati though I have accounts with both. I'm monkey level there. But I use Stumble All the time. I pin little Stumble reminders onto my posts and I really honestly think I deserve some attention there. So, Stumble Gods, if you don't mind, could you send ten or twelve thousand people my way?

Radio killed the blogosphere star.

A friend of mine invited me to cohost a radio show.

Here’s what we have: no theme, no name, no format, no sponsors, no radio background, no training, no frikkin’ idea what we’re going to do.

I know that on the occasion, this friend and I go to Vaughn’s and drink beer and smoke cigars and talk about stuff and crack each other up. I know that I could probably make toe fungus funny if I tried. I know that I wrote spec scripts for a false company called “Angry Clown Daycare” that were way funny. I know that Jerry Springer does it. Thus: so can I.

The Bad Parent's Apologetic Manifesto and/or To-Do List

1. I will not insert bigfoot and flying saucers into my readings from the bible just to make it “more interesting.”


2. I will not teach my son that mooning is considered a polite greeting in Papua New Guinea.


3. I will not teach my son that burping aloud is ok when you turn it into a word. .


4. I will not consistently offer that the sound of my own fart was actually that of a rare “barking spider.”


5. I will not fart on my son.


6. I will not teach my son the ancient rubric “Why fart and waste it, when you can burp and taste it.”


7. Apparently it is NOT ok for him to have a mohawk when he attends a private upscale catholic school.


8. Peanut butter and Hershey’s Chocolate Milk mix is not an acceptable substitute for a healthy sandwich.


9. I will not teach my son to forgive the fat bully kid on his basketball team for being such a dickwad by patting him on the shoulder and saying “It’s ok, being adopted must be hard.”


10. I will not laugh uncontrollably when my son shoots himself in the finger, point blank, with the compressed air nerf-pellet gun I told him he couldn’t play with.


11. I will not convince my son, over the period of one year, through subtle ‘slips’ and through stories of his ‘difficult capture and hair removal surgery’ that he’d started life as a monkey.


12. Or a girl.


13. I will not wait until we are deep into a forest trail to talk about how people who get pythons from pet stores secretly release them into the forest preserves when they get too big.


14. There is no such thing as being able to kill someone with a single touch.


15. You’re best friend is NOT a ninja ‘in hiding’.


16. You are NOT ‘every once in a while’ possessed by the devil.


17. The TV remote will NOT work on the neighbor’s set ‘if you try hard.’

 

Gay is the New Dude

An unscientific poll of grade school boys in northwest Chicago shows a disturbing trend toward a new epithet that is entirely inappropriate: instead of 'stupid', they say 'gay'.

For instance: when my father would play me, say, a Roger Miller song when I was ten, I'd say "Dad, that song is stupid." Today, when I play, say, King Crimson, Roon says "Dad, that song is gay."

Where the hell do they get this language? Who says stuff like that? I mean using an entire subculture's sexual proclivity as an epithet is totally gay.

Oh.

Ok, so they get it from, um, us.  Surely they didn't make up the word and surely they didn't decide to use it as an interlocutory substitute for "unacceptable" without a little modeling. (And by modeling I mean behavioral modeling, not runways.) I know you think I'm talking about parents but I'm not. I'm talking about comedians.

Every single comedian doing a gay impersonation drops the prancing fey bomb and impersonates the very same gay guy from 1987 who idolized Kate Bush and wore his button down shirts like halter tops. We all know that guy didn't rep the gay community even then, but today it's so far off the mark it's like thinking Amos & Andy are hip.

Today's gay is indistinguishable from today's not so gay. They have earned their place in the status quo by becoming so typical and every-day that there's not even any drama in coming out anymore. I expect parents will be throwing coming out parties with the same indifference as sweet sixteens. And as much as I'd like to follow my comedic instincts and make a Cotillion joke, I just can't. Not because it's not politically correct, but because it's just not funny. Why? Because gay is boring. Big yawn.

But the poofy queen has become such a stock character in sitcoms and stand-up that comedians just can't give it up. They keep swishing across the stage in a parody of a person that hardly exists anymore and truthfully, I wonder if the slang logic of ten year-olds is picking up on this.

When they say 'gay' they actually mean 'boring' or 'stupid' and so in that respect, they're dead on. Maybe this isn't indicative of intolerance but of sophisticated linguistic theory at work. Maybe they're all micro Chomskyites and we're really behind the language curve here, like finding out phat means awesome, a linguistic shift that has a perfectly intact logic but didn't trickle down to the elders until it was already passe.

I distrust political correctness, but I insist on linguistic integrity and I'm leaning toward an appreciation for the 'gay' epithet coming from these tiny Stevie Pinkers. The big swishy gay is as dead as E. Aaron Presley and impersonating either of them is as lame as the current GOP. It is, in a word, stupid. Kids know this instinctively and they're language reflects it. To think otherwise is to promote a belief that children are not sophisticated users of language, and that's, in a word, gay.

13 Reasons My Son Is Annoying

1. Hey, Dad?!
2. Hey, Dad?!
3. Hey, Dad?!
4. Hey, Dad?!
5. Hey, Dad?!
6. Hey, Dad?!
7. Hey, Dad?!
8. Hey, Dad?!
9. Hey, Dad?!
10. Hey, Dad?!
11. Hey, Dad?!
12. Hey, Dad?!
13. Hey, Dad?!

Top 10 Rules for Replacing a Glass Window Pane Broken by Your Starving 11 Year Old Son who Thought He Was Locked Out in the Dark.

Death By Children is about more than the nefarious and deadly machinations of our spawn or their efforts to render us twitching and pale from their ongoing appropriation of internet porn slang. It's about a lifestyle, a way of going about your day with a ruthless Zen focus, a way of being ever more self sufficient and capable. To that end, we present our ongoing series of Do It Yourself projects.

1. Look at son. Liberally apply hairy eyeball. Say "This is going to come out of your allowance."

2. Assuming the glass is severely cracked, but not actually knocked out: liberally apply duct tape until the entire spidery shatter crack is covered. Say "I'll get to it tomorrow."

3. Three weeks later, respond to wife's complaint that the excess masking tape looks like, as they say in France, merde, by carefully exacting the edges of the masking tape so not a shred of tape exceeds the edges of the window frame. This should take about five hours and you need to go to the hardware store twice to buy a really expensive multi-head exacto knife and more tape.

4. Six months later, think about replacing the glass. Say out loud, "You know, I really ought to replace that glass."

5. Merry Christmas.

6. After the spring thaw, go to the hardware store and spend no less than $78 on a glazing tool, glazing compound, window points, drill bits (you never know) a new roll of masking tape, one of those cool drain clog snake things, 19 feet of textured step pads, gardening stakes, and a 4 watt light bulb for the stove. Leave it all in the trunk of your car for through summer vacation.

7. After the summer heat subsides, go and replace the materials you left in the trunk of your car. Ask Glenn at ACE hardware to cut you a piece of glass. When he asks for dimensions, spit them out like you memorized them after carefully measuring. Glenn knows you didn't, but Glenn's not going to say anything because he's been telling stories about your masterpiece home-improvement purchases for years. He uses you in his stand-up routine instead of making fun of people from Alabama. If he knew you were actually from Alabama, he'd never stop laughing.

8. Remove the wood frame pieces holding the glass in. Marvel at your skill. Clean all the old glazing putty off the wood. Sweep up. Get the glass out of the car. Carefully unwrap this perfect crystal square cut to your specifications. What power. What casual tool using elan. What do you do about the one inch gap between the wood and the top edge of the glass? You move the window up and down, as if there's some middle position where the glass fills the frame. How? What? How did? How the hell did you not realize the panes weren't perfect squares? Ok. Measure it again—where's the tape measure? Shit. Oh, look, there's a wooden ruler you bought for the kids. Measure the window. Don't worry about the fact that the ruler doesn't bend into the space so you can get an actual measurement. Eyeball it. Reapply tape.

10. Get Glenn to cut a new piece of glass. Act casual.

11. When you get home, lay a half inch thick rope of glazing putty all around the frame. Try and fit the glass in. It won't because you gave Glenn OUTSIDE measurements instead of INSIDE measurements. The glass is exactly the same size as the hole in your door. Yeah, go ahead, try to force it.

11. Call the hardware store and ask for Glenn. Do this at least once a day until he's not there. Go in and get a 1/4 inch shaved off the glass.

12. Using jeweler's pliers (because you left your channel locks in the vanity you threw away two months ago) peel the dried putty out of the window frame. This should take a good three hours.

13. Replace glass using tub caulk because you put the glazing putty and the glass points down somewhere and you can't find them. Make sure to use an ungodly amount of caulk so that when you press the glass into its new home, bright white silicon paste oozes out all over your door on the side you aren't paying attention to. Also, since you don't have the points, hold the glass in place with the bright blue electrical tape you bought as a joke three years ago (because you can't find the duct tape (it's in the trunk)). Replace the wooden slats of the frame. Buy another multi-head exacto knife (it's in your trunk)  and trim that blue tape.

Time: one year, four months, and nine days. Cost: $113.56.

Today, you are a man.

Sex, exercise, and getting the kids out of the house.

I'm trying this out. Here's part of my latest article, this on in Sacramento parent, and it's about sex. So, sure, you'll read it.

My kids have ruined my sex life.

Not for the reasons you might think. My wife and I aren’t too tired. I still think she’s sexy after having kids. Hell, you could roll my wife in axle grease, give her a 1977 perm, and add 30 pounds and it wouldn’t deter me from my husbandly “duties.” We’re not too busy.

It’s them: les petits saboteurs. They walk around on little ninja-rabbit feet. They are silent, sexy-time killers. We never know when they’re just going to pop their head over the edge of the Serta and ask for water. It got so bad that we couldn’t do the wangdango at all.

“Oh baby, I love how—did you hear something?”

“Everything’s fine, sweetheart, let me just—“

“I think he’s coming up the stairs! Get Dressed!"

Read the rest. . . .

 

So Much for Neighborhood Watch!

It's one of those arctic days in Chicago where the mercury just drains out the bottom of the thermometer and birds freeze in midair. Right now it's -4 degrees. It's the kind of mind numbing cold that makes you paic if you can't find your car keys instantly. The kind of cold that makes the river smoke. The kind of snowy blizzardic nightmare that coats your satellite dish with two inches of frozen snow and kills reception so you can't watch American Idol or 30 Rock--and that makes it an emergency.

I called customer assistance early today because our satellite was out. AFter several minutes of the usual unplugging and replugging the guy says: wait, you live in Chicago? Is your Dish covered with snow?

I walk out into my frosty yard, look up past the ice encased fortress of solitudesque tudor roof line and lo, the Dish, she is deeply besnowed.

Well there's your problem.

I stood there on the sidewalk staring at this little frozen lozenge while my kneecaps froze in place and wondered how the !@#%# do you clear snow off one of those things! Jesus Haploid Christ--I'M GONNA MISS THE NEWS! I'M GONNA MISS 30 ROCK! OH MY GOD--I MIGHT MISS PSYCH!

Now, I am not an educated man. But I do know that one way to solve a problem is to set it on the back burner and go do something else, let your mind do the work behind the scenes. I did dishes. I fixed something. I made chili. Then the dog brought me his favorite drool soaked tennis ball and DING! I was out the front door in Full-On Homer mode. I threw the ball at the dish and hit the neighbor's dining room window.

So we're eating the chili and staring out the window as the sun goes down (4:17 pm) and eating this awesome, ungodly delicious garlic and serrano pepper corn bread ala Jacque Imo's, when I remember the airsoft pistol I got the boy sometime last year. DING!

This time it's really cold so I put on my big boots, my black jeans, my blood red hoodie, and a black leather jacket--and the gun--then go out and stand in the open end of the alley between my house and the neighbor's holding a pistol and peering up at my roof.

Now, the world is bright, glaring white in all directions and I'm dressed like a gang banger and aiming a gun at my house.

Did I mention I live on a street populated mostly by cops, retired cops, a detective, a fireman, and a cop? Did I mention that every window on either side of the street has a "WE CALL POLICE!" placard in the front window?

The airsoft comes with a little fake laser scope and I peg the dish with the little red dot and squezze off a couple of shots. I think I brought down a plane. I definitely missed the dish. I think. Maybe I hit it. All I know is the snow is still there and I'm still going to miss 30 Rock--and my neighborhood watch program sucks.