Thursday's 13 Things That New Scout Merit Badges Should Cover

1. Family Guy Trivia Merit Badge


2. Talk Like Cartman Merit Badge


3. Cut Your Finger While Carving Boobs into the Picnic Table Merit Badge


4. Cry Like a Girl Because You're Scared of a Daddy Long Legs Merit Badge


5. "This Lake has Awesome Graphics," Merit Badge


6. "Does Our Tent Have WiFi?" Merit Badge


7. Sink Your Canoe on Purpose Merit Badge


8. Kick Your Senior Patrol Leader in the Balls Merit Badge


9. Drink a 32 Oz. Chocolate/Watermelon/Mocha Shake Then Puke All Night Merit Badge


10. Hold Your Poop Seven Days Merit Badge


11. Texas Hold 'Em Merit Badge


12. Secret Backwoods Private Club Start-Up Merit Badge


13. Saying "Camp Sucks," So Much It Is Statistically Improbable Championship High Score Merit Badge

Homework Tornado Strikes Chicago Living Room. Dog Scared.

y daughter turns fifteen in a few days and I am compelled to make a few observations. I am finally getting to the point where her boobs don't scare me, where her astonishing compilation of sexual inuendi doesn't surprise me; and where her frank independence no longer challenges my authority and I am damn proud of myself.

But there is a trait that seems to have grown deep roots in the fecund habituae my daughter possesses and that trait is abject, terrifying, horrible absence of kempt. The girl's a slob. She exudes disarray, disorder, and disarrangement. She isn't, how do you say, sheveled.

She comes by it honestly--I am a reverse neatfreak. I'm obsessive-repulsive, I throw stuff everywhere. Well, ok, that's not entirely true. I love order. I relish organization. I get a contact high at the container store. If a house is organized and perfectly arranged I'm capable of pretty much keeping it that way. It's the putting it that way that I'm not up to and never have been. There's so much unfinished laundry in my basement that it's more like excavation than housework. I can pull it apart and read the history of our family as easily as a paleontologist reading lithics: the German Porn Bin-olithic era, the Pink and Purple pajama pant-o-zenic stage, the Osh Kosh B'Gosh-a-zoic. One day I'll break through the onesie-stratum and reach the floor.

But the girl child has taken it to a new height. Her habits aren't human, they're gull-like. She doesn't have a room. She lives in an impenetrable nest of unmatched bikini tops, iPod earbud wires, pantyhose, Pirates of the Caribbean pajamas, and yarn. Lots of yarn. I reached down to yank a lose strand of yarn out of the way yesterday and slung a hamster corpse across the room. This wattle is adorned like a crow's nest with spent Vitamin Water bottles, old glasses of orange juice, chip bags and Popsicle sticks.

This isn't so bad. I venture into her room trembling with fear, wary of boobytraps and micro-carnivores, stuff her underwear into her drawer and back out carefully. I keep the door closed. And just like the mom in Poltergeist, I will occasionally open it for curious strangers who will stare in wonder and fear then marvel at my indifference (not recognizing it as abject terror). As long as it's contained, I feel safe.

But last night, the unclean-teen's poltergeic puerility escaped and wreaked havoc on my living room.

As I have mentioned (bragged) in the past (five minutes) my daughter (monkey) attends Superhero High School, oft mentioned in a national magazine I'm too humble to name (Time) several (5) times. Her workload is college level and she often has homework questions I can't answer. Thank God her mom (rumored to be My Attorney [true]) is a superkillerfreakyEinstein genius with dominate genes or she'd be eating paste every day. Instead she's writing essays about Buddhism and Teen Pregnancy (that was a fun trip to the Library) and working calculus. This last weekend she crammed for her very first final exams ever. Her focus was like a powerful searchlight. You could see her thinking. It was like watching Jackie Chan outtakes, only for math. She studied for 17 hours straight and aced her exams. She earned a perfect score.

However, proud as I am, some reject teacher assigned a scrapbook project on the Greek Gods--all of them--showing the God, the origin of their name, and a well known product or object named after them. Two days before finals. That #@%@!

So I go to sleep and she's perched on the edge of the couch with scrapbook materials and her laptop, prim as a pea. I woke up to this:

Chick Magnet Jr.--Day One

Being hippies, we pretty much let our kids run their own life while we tye-dye our underwear and grow pot in the kitchen and so when the Roon up and said he didn't want to go to school at the Catholic School he'd been attending since kindergarten, we roused ourselves from our purple haze and said, "Cool, man, do your own thing!"

However, we were prepared for him to attend the nearby public school where our genius daughter went. In fact, he'd planned for a whole year to go there and I was overjoyed because he can ride his bike to that school and it meant I could laze out until the screen door slammed and the Hey Dad bird started in on the daily questioning. Now I have to fire up the gyro copter and fly over a golf course to get him.

But it's worth it for two reasons:

• He looks so damn handsome in the much more formal uniform of the new school which employs a white oxford button down shirt, a blue tie, and a dark blue sweater-vest. Kid looks vegas. I mean, it's Catholic Vegas, so no gambling or hookers, but still. Vegas.
• Chicks dig him.

This came as a real surprise to me. I mean, ok, not a total surprise. He'd always had a couple of girls that clearly liked him but it's always been in the "Dad, she's a girl who is my FRIEND not a GIRLfriend, JEEZ!" end of the scale. I mean, he never thought about it.

Well, that's apparently changed. The uniforms for boys and girls at the original Catholic school were the same for boys and girls: dark blue polo, dark blue pants. At the new Catholic school, the boys are all prep and the girls are in a YELLOW sweater vest, a green and crimson plaid skirt, and a matching cravat. Or something like a cravat. It's cravaty. Apparently this minor change in the uniform makes a difference. Maybe it's the different colors--now he can actually tell which ones are girls from a distance. I'm not sure he's consciously noticing girls, but things are moving in that direction. Ie:

He went to the store the other day and got some new clothes which he picked out himself. He spent a lot of time doing this and ended up with the kind of acid streaked jeans, t-shirt and matching over-shirt ensemble you'd normally expect in a GQ ad. He looked hip. Cool. Well put together. And he knew it too. He borrowed my nappy horrible old "G" cap and checked the crook in the mirror for 5 minutes before we took off for sign-ups.

As we're walking out of sign-ups, two yellow-sweater clad girls are talking. As Connor walks past, one of them blurts out to Connor--"Oh my god, WHAT GRADE ARE YOU IN?"

Now I happen to speak 5th grade. (took it in College) and I know what that means. That's 11 for "God, you're hot!" And it means Connor has been noticed, not merely by one girl but, as they share a hive mind, he's been noticed by ALL girls.

As we rounded the lot to go home, the girls never took their eyes off him.

Connor Garlington--Chick Magnet.

Freemasonry, X-Box, Burnout 2, and the New Man

I was doing laundry today when I looked around and realized that this housewife thing ain’t exactly brain surgery.
It can get hard. It can be overwhelming. And, yes, I do have a maid service every two weeks and that seriously helps. For you poor folk out there who don’t live the upscale two-car garage lifestyle I’m becoming accustomed to . . . uh, I use my dead dad’s meager melothemioma suit-winnings to pay for the maids. Otherwise I’d be hip deep in wet towels and dirty dishes. But with the help of my three Slavic cleaners, I get by.

I had been worried I’d never get the laundry completely done, that I’d never scale the Everest of skid marked skivvies that had grown in my basement laundry room, my own private Smatterhorn.

I hate laundry because it’s so ridiculously inefficient. Why do we undress on the third floor but wash our clothes in the basement? That’s like taking a bath but keeping the towels in the kitchen. I want my dresser to have a wash drawer. I throw in what I wore today, open it in the morning—Dockers dried and folded, s’il vous plais.

Sometime in the next two years, we’re redoing our second floor and I’m having an over/under machine put in up there. Screw the basement. The basement is where I grow pot.

Or. Maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way. Maybe the Smatterhorn is a good thing. Maybe the basement is my new office. IT would beat the hell out of my old office, which was in, the . . . on the . . . actually I don’t have an office.

But in the basement, I have Xbox, Playstation 2, Gamecube, three TVs, a stereo, a bar, wireless, a phone, two couches, my golf clubs and the bookcases. My god, my basement is like a Dot Com dream office! I’ve been spending all my time sitting in the living room walking up and down stairs when I could’ve been kicked back with a cold one shooting Nazis with my wireless controller, surfing the net, doing some actual work—and getting the laundry done. I think I feel a new Euphemism coming on. Dude, wanna come over and do a couple loads?

I was doing some stats the other day and found out that there are over 2 million men staying home in the role traditionally reserved for women. 2 million.

X-box is marketing to the wrong people. For that matter, so are the dying fraternities that once funded all the parades—the Rotary, the Lions Club, and the Freemasons.

When they aren’t busy taking over the world and hiding the Holy Grail, the Freemasons spend a lot of time talking about Freemasonry. A website devoted to the fraternity recently posted an article saying that this breeding ground fro Shriners, Illuminati, and Alien Death Ray mechanics has watched its membership dwindle from a strong 4 million around the mid 50s to only about 2.5 million today. The reason for the drop in numbers has a lot to with the disconnect in the 60s, but really, more so with the fact that those 4 million guys in the mid 50s are all dead or dying now and the Masons and all those other clubs where you grandfather used to go practice secret handshakes and wear a fez, well they don’t exactly advertise. In fact, they do the exact opposite. You have to go to them. That’s kind of like having a sports store in an unmarked building. But that’s their way. I think they ought to quietly take a long look into the new crop of daddy-bloggers. Because I don’t want all these old clubs to disappear. We need guys to wear funny hats and drive miniature Caddilacs in parades. We need secret handshakes.

And imagine the boon to these clubs when they get 2 million members who all have no real job? The Christmas party committee is gonna rock! We’ll never miss a meeting (unless there’s a little-league game, basketball, chess club, band, football, theatre, AP classes, or a special episode of Lost. Otherwise we’ll be there.

I’m putting a call out to the Daddy Bloggers out there: join a fraternity today. Get your funny hat. Get your secret handshake. Drive that tiny car. You deserve it!

The Wind Proofed Burnt Leg Polyester Rocket Powered Matchbox Car Disaster!

hildhood, for me, was an adventure involving snakes, setting things on fire, theft, smoking cigars, and innovative homemade toys of nefarious--and potentially lethal--design.

Every day, particularly in the summer, my friends and I were hustled out of our houses and left to our own devices. Given that we weren't anesthetized by cable, and we could read, and were sub-genius bored 11 year olds, we tended to find ways to amuse ourselves that should've involved rope harnesses, fire-proof suits, and an emergency unit on stand by.

Take the rocket powered car.

We learned about rockets pretty quick and Tim McDonald's dad would happily drive us to the hobby shop to buy us rocketry equipment assuming it was keeping us out of street gangs and prison. Our chosen launchpad, our cape Canaveral, was the swamp just west of the cemetery.

We built all kinds of rockets, launched them, and lost them. We'd launch during ceremonies, at night, during school. We didn't care. We just wanted to get as much stuff into the sky as possible.

Eventually, the intensive labor of building a rocket lost its appeal. The launch was the thing. The fire--that's all that mattered. We realized that there were plenty of rocket shaped things lying around and immediately discarded our plans to build bigger and more aerodynamic rockets in favor of launching whatever was close by.

We launched barbie dolls, GI Joes, picnic ketchup bottles, OWL brand metal cigar tubes--anything we could stick an engine into went up. Or around. Often directly back at us.

One day my buddy Mark English and I were forming a sideral rocket launching cabal over a bowl of fruit loops and lack of cartoons. I had two C rocket engines but didn't have the launch rig. Mark had a nearly palpable, hyperinsane need to be entertained, a book of matches, and not much else. We rooted around through the debris in his room and discovered a Matchbox car. Mark held it up with an evil glint in his eye.

We weren't scouts (yet) so be prepared wasn't part of our motto. Our motto was Festina, prae mater videt!¹ We raced out into the cul de sac, carved all the dry rocket fuel from the engine with a pocket knife, and piled it up on the ground. Mark rubber-banded the other engine to the car and pointed it down the street. We both assumed the positions of two pre-teen scientists, testing the wind direction with a wet finger, looking around for adults or cops, hesitating for reasons that were entirely subconscious (our subconscious minds, mute with fear and indignation, couldn't actually tell us we were about to blow ourselves up, only make us pause meaningfully which we took as some kind of noble gesture).

Mark knelt with a lit cigar to ignite the saltpeter and black powder pile and I did what came naturally back then, I listened to what the esteemed writer, Neal Stephenson, refers to as the imp of the perverse: I stood directly behind the engine, the car pointed away from me, and stated, nobly, assured, full of purpose and aplomb:

"You light it, I'll block the wind."

Mark set flame to powder. There was an enormous, powerful flash, the car leapt into the air, bounced off Mark's skull, slammed into the asphalt, then spun around for a minute or two before the chute charge blew. Then it just laid there, smoking.

Much. Like. My. Left. Leg.

I didn't feel any pain. I was wearing the usual assortment of 1975 clothing made entirely from petroleum, uncomfortable as a burlap sack, emblazoned with a motocross closeup. I was a flammable boy. My pants--long pants--were deep blue polyester with a smoking hole in the middle of the shin.

I pulled up my pants leg, and stared in horror as blackened skin peeled off my leg with them. There was a black oval about the size of a train-flattened nickel in the middle of my shin. The skin around it was bright red and there were pieces of melted polyester fused with charred Christopher and things were curling up away from my skin like I'D BEEN HORRIBLY BURNED BY A ROCKET ENGINE!

We both screamed and ran away in different directions. I was literally hopping up and down while I ran. I was completely terrified as somehow this burn has morphed into an all consuming holy fire and I was about to go poof.

Tim McDonald's sister heard us and somehow collared Mark, found me limping home crying copiously, holding my charred polyester pant leg. She rushed us back to her bathroom (she was older than us, listened to David Bowie, and smoked. She was the epitome of wisdom) slapped some Vaseline on my burn and smacked us both in the head for being  "such [DELETED] idiots!"

You might think we learned a lesson about improvising chemical fun but I assure you we did not. We went on to ever more colorful ways of injuring ourselves, all predicated on the simple principal that a boy's untethered imagination, unlimited access to power tools, and depraved ingenuity add up to great stories told by people in slings, the worst case involving molten lead, a coke bottle, and screaming. Coming soon.
-----------------------------
¹ Hurry, before Mom finds out!

----------------------------

My kids are TRYING to be the death of me!

The Miraculous Immaculate Crack-Head Christmas Tree

ometime after we abandoned (were evicted from) our flea-bag abode, My Attorney and I found a spanking gorgeous condo and moved up in the world. It had a pool, laundry, air conditioning, two bedrooms, and two baths. It had sliding doors, a small balcony, a decent kitchen, a big open living room with cathedral ceilings--and crack-head roommates.

My Attorney has a heart the size of a 1971 Buick Riviera and has a couple of penchants which have thankfully tapered off since we’ve been together so long but which, in the beginning, were . . . frustrating.

Penchant (a) is a heartfelt and often overwhelming urge to rescue lost dogs. In the first years of our enshackenation, she rescued and cared for no less than six dogs. We had one dog as a pet and, off and on, a couple of cats. So there were times when the house, she was doggy.

When I say lost dogs, I mean, more specifically, the four footed dead. Because My Attorney’s penchant for rescuing lost dogs somehow only manifests when those dogs are on the brink of death with little or no hope for recovery and are certain, destined perhaps, to bring us heartbreak and vet bills like we’re trying to buy a private Caribbean Island.
Penchant (b) is similar but applied to humans and is a sudden and irrepressible urge to help people less fortunate than ourselves and by people I mean her secretaries and by less fortunate I mean crack addicts.

Take Christmas, 1990. My Attorney had both a doomed hound AND a crack addicted secretary living in our spanking new condo. This would be our first Christmas in a nice place where we could actually invite people over without worrying about them being hit on by the homeless and we were happy about it. But true to a form that has become life-long, at around Christmas, My Attorney got sent out of town and was going to return CHRISTMAS DAY.

I forgot about Penchant (c): My Attorney is a Christmasaholic and has a hard time if all the Holiday icons aren’t in their proper place. Growing up among Senators and Commissioners in a neighborhood that would’ve made Norman Rockwell kick a hole in a Harpers Magazine cover, she is used to a traditional Christmas. And by traditional, I mean turkey-in-the-oven-miniature-city-complete-with-a-petting-zoo-under-the-basement-tree-snow-on-the-ground-nog-in-hand-carols sung-garland-hung-candy cane-red-scarf-MARTHA STEWART BE DAMNED level traditional and being that we lived in a second floor condo in Borelando, FL., some of those things just weren’t gonna fly. In particular, we had the following:

• No tree. A sin against God.


• No presents. Too broke.


• No lights. Too broke.


• It was not cold.

Worse, before My Attorney had left for wherever she was going, we’d had a pretty bad week because the secretary she was loaning our spare room to had secreted her insane redneck tattooed criminal crack head boyfriend in her room and he went crazy EVERY NIGHT. He’d scream about being a “rock star” and then they’d Rock the Casbah. Noisily. The whole reason this girl was staying with us was because this reject had beat the crap out of her. Suddenly he’s there and it was very wrong. Finally, I kicked him out and he came back later and banged on the door and threatened to kill us all. Then, somehow, they got hold of our Texaco card and bought beer. For Daytona.

So we kick them both out and My Attorney flies out of town.

My Attorney was acutely aware of the nakedness of our Holidays. To make matters worse, I hate Christmas and always have. So here’s My Attorney, Xmas Addict like a meth-head, due in on the plane Christmas morning to arrive at our tropical condo with no fest.

Worse, I was not exactly working a sweet job. I was in my post-newspaper-post-band management-unemployed phase and working what may be my single least impressive job ever: the midnight sandwich guy at Subway. I would come home every morning, 2 am, smelling like onions and mayo. I got ripped off all the time by my crack head boss and I got hit on all the time by drunk guys coming home from Southern Nights, the tranny cabaret around the corner. And I didn’t make any money. It was horrible.

So I talk to My Attorney on the phone right after close the night before she’s leaving. I’m my usual mayo & onion smelling Bah Humbug self and she’s feeling pretty alone out wherever she’d been sent and she’s lamenting the lack of Christmas cheer and the fact that we can’t afford a tree (Christmas trees in Florida are 5 times what they are in Illinois) and I’m trying to be supportive but, again, I smell like lunch and I‘m wearing a brown nylon uniform and it’s 2 in the morning in December in Florida. I hang up, lock up, get into my pathetic tiny little car and drive home.
So, tally it up: it’s hot; we’re broke; we have no Christmas; we’ve been harbouring a fujitive; we got ripped off; I haven’t even mentioned the bats, but: bats; and I smell like onions.

I walk out to my car and somehow, in the middle of the night, the temperature has dropped to Orange killing cold. I can see my breath and there’s a freezing layer of fog everywhere. Driving along the deserted highway at 2:30 am through this fog is other worldly and I’m puttering along, muttering to myself about what a crap boyfriend I am to not have a decent Christmas for My Attorney—at LEAST a tree—when the mossy body of a beached whale looms out of the fog and I almost wreck my car.

I skid to a stop, bumper just touching it’s tail, get out of the car, right in the road, to find a 14-foot tall Blue Spruce lying in the road. A HUGE Christmas tree! Right in the road! At 2:30 in the morning! In a FOG! With NOBODY AROUND! Clearly I was experiencing divine providence. I didn’t hesitate. I slung that tree over the top of my car where it hung off the front and back by a couple of feet. I was only a block from our condo so I reached up and grabbed a branch and drove like a 90 year old Myopic gnome into the parking lot. I drug the damn thing up the stairs and wrestled it trough the door and propped it up against the living room wall where the tip of it stuck up past the railing of the second floor!

I knew My Attorney would be back in the morning so I had to work fast. I didn’t have any money so a late night Walgreen’s run was no solution. I needed ornaments and garland. (I thought about the bats, briefly.) I popped corn and strung it into a Garland. I gathered all the Christmas cards we’d gotten and covered the facing side of the tree with them. I found a lone box of tinsel. ONE of those tiny little flats, enough for one toss on a regular tree. I carefully separated EACH strand of tinsel and placed it on the branches so that—after an hour—the tree was passably tinseled.

When My Attorney arrived, she came in the front door desultory and dejected. She couldn’t see the tree yet and I took her bags and said I’d meet her in the living room.

I came back down and she was crying; she was overjoyed. She had her Christmas.

Proper Potty Training for People with Penises

For sending parents into drooling catatonia, nothing compares to potty training. It's first of the classic thresholds of child development and the first time you and your spawn have a shared weird experience. Trust me, there will be more.

All parents will have to teach their kids this simple skill. Every "What to expect when you're Expectorating" book out there has a chapter devoted to the minutiae of merde and most of them try to convince you that potty training is an intricate, delicate, and difficult period, requiring endless couch-time for the parents and their progeny. Most guides imply that improper potty training can lead to lifelong neuroses and Emo music.

My kids were so easy it was almost spontaneous. I sat the boy down on his little chair at exactly the right moment and the resulting efficacy of exporting his effluence sans diaper made an instant impression on him.

My great neglect at that moment was a lack of follow-through. I should have explained immediately that the chamber of reflection has a dual purpose, that one can use it for sitting or for standing. I figured it would come up in the very near future and shelved the whole idea and went back to doing laundry.

[My Attorney] was on deck for the next Number 1 and wasted no time in teaching the boy proper penis procedure: sit, release, wipe.

She told me she was teaching the boy how to pee in the bowl and I didn't think twice about it. I just crossed it off my to-do list. Only later did I wonder about the obvious mechanics and thought to myself, how does she know what to do?

"You taught him to shake, right?"

"What?"

"You know--shake."

"Shake what?"

"His thing."

"Why!?"

"Guys shake."

"Before or after?"

"What did you teach him to do when he's done?"

"Use a tissue, duh."

"Oh my god. Babe, how exactly did you teach my son to pee?"

"I don't know, like everyone pees: you sit down---"

"@#!^%$ ^$##@!"

I want all the new moms and moms to be to please listen up and listen up good: leave proper penile procedural to the papas.

When it comes to penis training, the dad has the upper hand because the dad, presumably, is furnished with the same equipment as the son. He has, in fact, been training his entire life in peni practicalia, and, again, presumably, knows things that, as a mom, you don't know.

Specifically, and this is paramount penis procedure, are two habits unique to the water closet ways of woman-kind: tissues and sitting.

Pay very close attention: men don't sit down to pee. Pay even more attention: when we're done, we S H A K E. We don't W I P E.

I realized [My Attorney] had been teaching the toddler to touch up his tallywacker with a tissue for two weeks before I found out. Then I realize that it is too late--TOO LATE--to change. He's been trained.

Then it really hit me: my son pees like a girl!

His life as a man was finished. Now when other boys make jokes about writing their name in the snow, the Roon will have to ask them what they're talking about. I had a vision of him walking into the urinal bay at school and wondering out loud,  "Dude, where are the wipes?"

He would be an urinary outcast; a pee pariah.

I acted fast. I called him over.

You know you're supposed to pee standing up.

Gross!

And you don't wipe.

What? Well . . .  well . . .what do you do?

You shake.

Shake what?

What do you think?

Oh my god! Dad, that's gross! Gross! It'll go everywhere!

I was too late.

I went out to the garage. I dipped my hands into a bucket of crude oil, lit a cigar, and thought about guns. I had to protect my manhood and for some reason I thought it was at stake. I thought maybe the boy's manhood was at stake too. I remembered great pee moments from my childhood:

• Peeing into the wind off the back of a moving pick-up truck;


• Peeing onto an electric fence;


• Writing my name in the sand at the beach then drinking three whole cokes because my name is 22 letters long and I was trying to write in cursive and I ran out at christopher pa--


• Peeing off the side of a boat


• Peeing off the top of a building under construction


• Peeing into the campfire


• Peeing into the bait-well in our boat


• Peeing on a cow


• Starting a forest fire . . .

Those are cherished memories, the very building blocks of a boy's life. How was my son supposed to ---

Hey dad, you're right. It totally works. I can pee standing up.

Awesome. You made it into the toilet?

Toilet?