something, something, something Saintus Dee

Finally finished watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks ten years after I started watching it. Had a chat with Neighbor regarding the perceptions of children.

The littlest kid in the movie assumed that Professor Brown was going to automatically be their father. Nephew's doing something like that with Neighbor. When Nephew decided that Neighbor was his dad and he was Neighbor's son, Neighbor tried to explain that he was just a friend, not a daddy. That didn't work too well... To Nephew, "friend" to Mommy ... you know how kids get their own names for the people around them sometimes? Nephew's name for Sis's boyfriend is "Friend."

Neighbor now knows this. Neighbor will now be referred to as yet another uncle. Nephew knows "Uncle." That's like Uncle S* (That Woman's husband, a very cool guy), Uncle Dude, Uncle Alan, Uncle Darkside. "Friend" has never been an uncle. "Friend" is just ... "Friend". We're going to try to explain the concept of "couple" to Nephew, using Dude and Chick as a working model. Sis and "Friend" aren't such a good example, because they rarely get to see each other, but showing Chick and Dude to Nephew and saying, "See, this is how it is between a mommy and a daddy. Even though they yell at each other sometimes, see how they always hug each other afterwards? See how they hug each other a lot and are together a lot and hold hands and hug each other and Dude stays the night at Chick's house? That's how Mommy and Friend are when they're together," ... that will work. Dude and Chick are an excellent teaching relationship for a little kid, even though they do argue a lot, because they're such a loving couple. Couldn't pry them apart with a ten foot pole.

Shaggin' the Dragon

In the cleaning out of Neighbor's apartment, Neighbor and his parents found an old, beat-up mop. Neighbor tossed the trashed mop head and gave Sis the stick. Alan did the honors and poked the end of the stick into the hole on the bottom end of the stuffed dragon and shoved, jiggled, and tugged until Mooshu had a spine.

"You can feel the end of it in his neck, man!"
"Deep throat!"
"Eeeew!!!"
[much giggling]

The mop handle is a little too long, and there's a good three to four inches of it sticking out the dragon's bottom. Sis will borrow a saw from Uncle Alan and fix the poor dragon... meanwhile, we giggle. A lot.

Maid of Honor

Oh, yeah, just so's you'll know... DC from back home is going to be my maid of honor if I ever get married. I promised her. She may end up sharing with Sis, but she'll be my maid of honor. Y'know how you speak of people as being "two peas in a pod"? Sis and DC are two peas lobbing hand grenades out of the pod.

DC says she's most likely not going to get married, because if J* ever does get drunk enough to propose to her, she's going to say, "Ok, as long as you dance with me at the wedding," and that will be it. No wedding. J* (her boyfriend) does not dance.

moral lessons up a cartoon character's ass

Seriously, if I said I watched this cartoon last night, four episodes of it, and the lessons in it were:

Parents should teach their children about sex, it's not the schools' job
Some people will take revenge way too far
Money does not buy happiness
Children should not bear false witness against their parents

...honestly, you'd look at me and want to know what the hell I was watching that moralistic crap for, and didn't I have anything better to do with my time.

Last night I watched South Park. It's sick, it's twisted, it takes little everyday events in the lives of kids and blows them up out of proportion, but everyone's going to remember to never piss off Cartman again, not after what he did to Scott Tenneman.

And, good gods, "Red rocket, doggy, red rocket!" School sex education lessons stuff kids' brains with facts, but leave out important parts and in the end give the kids no more real understanding of the situation than they had to begin with.

Inflamed hemorrhoid or not, the episode where Cartman gets a million dollars teaches that money may buy temporary happiness, but nothing permanent, and teaches some sound lessons in economics on the way.

Lord of the Flies, South Park style... a lot of the child abuse out there is real, but there are some kids who are going to pull the old "my parents 'molestered' me" line without even really understanding what it means, and the people looking at the situation may not be as concerned for the good of the children as they are for their pet cause.

...that's enough of my mutterings. I may have just wrecked the innocent trashtalk of South Park for some of you, but so be it. I could give more examples, but what's the point? South Park is just plain cool, and that's a reason for it to be cooler. It's got intellectual depth, and I like that.

we won't stop until we find underpants

Work today was ... well... work. I got pulled off the teen antismoking survey to go to the fast food survey with V*. She bitched. As usual. She'd be such a sweet girl if she didn't complain so much ... or be paranoid about her boyfriend so much.

We chatted about the general lousiness of the company, and how to best get fired (a couple bright boys decided to get online from the company computers, and were promptly sacked). I immediately figured out one of the (at least three) possible ways to get access to the world wide web from a company computer, never mind that said computers are almost impossibly crippled so that we weird and creatively stupid workers won't do anything to hack them up.

We are not allowed to change our screen colors from white text on blue to the more eye-friendly white on black, by the way. The rationale that V* quoted, straight from her supervisor boyfriend, was that if you figure out how to change your screen color, you might also figure out how to hurt the computer system or get online. So they will actively discourage any screwing around with screen color to discourage any other poking around with the controls of the computer to see what it does. The first time you change your screen color you get a warning (in theory). (I had a supervisor come over my shoulder while I was in the middle of an interview and change it back and run off, without explaining anything to me. Hurt my eyes like hell.) Second time, you get sent home for the day. (I wasn't dumb enough, or in enough eye-pain, to do it again.)

If I stick with this company, I fully expect to be running at least part of it by the time I'm out of college. Management has dumb opinions. But then, given some of the cow-orkers I've got there, .... nevermind. Management has to deal with them too. If only everyone there were like me...

...we wouldn't get anything done.

consciousness

...or lack thereof. I came home from work and was crashed within the hour, upon which point I slept for four hours solid, and only woke up when the cat decided to push open my door and cry at me.

I almost got cat-whammied. "Okay, I'll get you your dinner." Swear to gods. I look in the fridge and I don't see any cat food... "I'll let Sis take care of it. Sorry, cat." Turns out he gets fed in the mornings, not at night. Damn cat.

Tonight's Agenda:

Drunk. Getting there. Chocolate milk with Bailey's.

Think I had my first hangover. My lack of attention at work on Saturday, the eight hour day where I was semiconscious and not entirely coherent for the whole day, and got exactly two interviews (in eight hours), the dehydration, the crusty eyes... that may have been a hangover. I didn't recognize it as such because I had no headache.

more nattering

AzureLunatic (10:10:17 PM): I think I got my first hangover.
AzureLunatic (10:11:24 PM): What a thing to be quasi-proud of in some weird and twisted way. I feel as if I should be telling my mother and having her put it in her Baby Book to signify that her little darling is grown up now.