SchadeBLOG

And this will be why.

Bride, groom spend wedding night in jail

Key Quote: "The groom and cousin were arrested for allegedly resisting arrest."

I don’t understand how that works, but hey, that’s why I’m not in law enforcement.

Some people are apparently very flexible.

This has your SchadeBlog Dryspell Breaker.

We can all breath a sigh of relief, thanks to Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela.  The caption for this should read "I better be getting paid a lot of money for this!"

In my experience as a parent, I have found, as so many of you parents probably have also, that parents are really just a bunch of hypocrites.  And I mean this only in the nicest way possible.

What got me to thinking of this is the way that I recently tried to entice my daughters into following me into their room and letting me start the "bedtime process".  I did this by promising a chocolate treat.  Of course, they happily followed me into their room, thinking they were going to get a lucious confectionary delight.  Children are so easily fooled.  When they got to their room, I handed them the "chocolate", which turned out to be nothing, and they happily accepted it, recognizing that this was just a game.  The huge smiles on their faces as they pretended to eat the chocolate were clear cut messages to me that they were amused by this and that 20 years from now, when we are all sitting around reminiscing, they would use this as one of the many reasons why it is my fault that they are psychologically damaged.

Of course, I lied to my children.  I told them they would get a candy treat if they followed me to their rooms, and when they did, I gave them…nothing.  All this time, we teach our children that it’s a bad thing to lie.  We tell them that lying is a surefire path to Hades, that they will burn in the firepits of hell for telling even the tiniest smidgen of a lie.  We say, "you know, you may be able to get one past me, but God always knows when you’re not telling the truth," or "If you keep up the lying, you could end up as a congresshuman."  We give them all of these warnings and concequences and then what do we do?  We lead them to their rooms with a false promise of chocolate.  But as parents, we have a distinct advantage, and that is that at least during the first 10 years of our children’s lives, we are infalible, which means we can get away with the lie and not face the concequences.

Adults are always insulting the intelligence of children to manipulate them (the children) into doing our bidding.  It’s not just you and me, either.  This has been going on for centuries.  I’m willing to bet that Noah lied to his kids to get them to help him build the Arc.

Noah: Kids, if you help me build this giant boat that is nowhere near any body of water, which will cause our family heartache and ridicule from our neighbors - especially from the Smith’s down the road - and then help me load up 2 of every kind of animal, I will give you a piece of chocolate.

I suspect that the only parents that could never get away with lying to their kids were Mary and Joseph.  

Face it, your parents lied to you and my parents lied to me.  I remember one particular time that my mom lied to me and my friends just to get us out of the house (if you can imagine).  Of course, I never caught on to what she was doing until well into my adult years, after I became a parent myself and understood the power of the "Parent Lie".  The Parent Lie is this entire thing I’m describing - a lie that parents tell their kids in order to get the kids to do their bidding.  It plays off the trust that children have in their parents, believing that their parents are all-knowing and powerful creatures that would never lead them astray.  The power of this lie wears off during the teen years, when children come to realize that their parents, especially their dads, have the cognitive capacity of potato salad.

The lie my mother told me has been passed down from generation to generation in her family; which is that if you are able to put salt on a rabbit’s tail, it will slow down enough for you to catch it.  Of course, as kids, this was a fantastic idea.  The idea of catching a wild rabbit has a magnetic draw to it that is completely irresistable.  They are so cute and cuddly, and because of that they make ideal animals to try to catch.  Never mind the fact that they have very sharp teeth and claws (Monty Python comes to mind).  On top of that, there’s one glaring truth that almost always escapes all but the brightest of children; if you could get close enough to a rabbit to put salt on its tail to begin with, chances are you’re already able to catch it.  Probably because it’s dead. 

My friends and I were not among the brightest of kids of our time, and thus this little tidbit of information never occured to us as we blasted out the door , salt shakers in hand and fully loaded, vibrating so much with excitement that I’m sure we registered at least a 4.0 on the Richter Scale.  We went out into the desert near my house and weren’t seen for hours, guaranteeing my mother at least a little bit of stress-free time to herself.

Perhaps you disagree with this practice and have sworn that you would never lie to your children.  Perhaps you are an idiot.  The brilliant thing about the Parent Lie is the fact that, if done properly, your kids never have an opportunity to question your genius until well into their adult years.  By this time, it’s too late for your kids to use any incidents in which you employed the lie as an excuse for their adult phsychoses.  Don’t worry, by the time your kids are spending millions on psychological treatments they will have plenty of other reasons to blame you for their problems.  Some of them you won’t even remember.  It’s just part and parcel to being a parent.  I used to blame my parents for nearly every bad thing that happened to me.  Now I just blame Global Warming (it doesn’t argue back).  I’d get into this more, but right now it’s time for me to go give my kids some more chocolate.

Once again, it’s time to play the game where I pretend I have about 67,345.9 readers that actually send me important questions and hope that I will use my superior intellect to answer them. Today’s question comes from Roland Thumpleganger of Unicorn, PA (that’s a real city. The ZIP code is 17563. I am not making it up).

Roland asks, "If memory serves, you are an aspiring writer with hopes and ambitions of one day becoming a published author.  I understand that you are also an important instructor at your local community college and find yourself in a position that allows you to warp mold young minds into the Information Technology professionals of tomorrow.  Both of these professions put you in a position to receive numorous written works from students and others in your community.  You have recently started actually downgrading your students’ assignments because of poor grammar and spelling, including what has become known fondly as ‘leetspeak’.  Is this because you find poorly written works loathsome and unworthy of your attention?  Os is it simply because you hate teenagers?"

Yes, Roland, that is true.  Of course I hate teenagers (just kidding)(not really), but I hate writing that throws all manner of grammar and spelling rules to the wind even more.  And perhaps it’s a bit harsh to say that I find such writing loathsome and unworthy, but like anytime that I find it difficult to to come up with other words, I don’t care.  The problem isn’t just from the teenage crowd, either.  I have seen this terrible lack of decent writing coming from even well-seasoned adults who should know much better.  For example, here is an exact replica of an e-mail that I received from a student in her thirties, who shall remain nameless in this blog post because she does not want me to tell you her name is Linda.

"Ok I was going to ask in class but everyone was standing there so I had my book for XXXXX but my lovely other half works construction with the new housing developments and since we know thats been down he’s been laid off for 3 weeks,  so I had to take my book back so I could pay a bill, now next week I’ll have plenty of money to rebuy it but thats when everything is due. I know you’ve let me use your book in class but I was wondering if maybe this week or weekend you would let me again but actaully make copies of the turtorials so I can finish it up this weekend unless you trust me to use it this weekend and return it on MOnday if you have class I’m sure most students dont ask you this but I am different I know not to be confused with weird."

So you see my point, now?  This is a perfect example of the kind of e-mails I receive regularly from my students.  I mean, look at that!  Not even a single mention that Confused With Weird would be an excellent name for a rock band album.

I think we can all say that there are topics in this world that we happen to be good at, but don’t necessarily find those topics of particular interest nor do we work to excel at them.  We just happen to be good at them.  For me, English was one of those topics.  There are times in my life when I wonder if I should have been an English major (it most likely would have led to a more prolific career in publishing).  So when I come across written works like this, I find myself cringing just reading it.  I also find that I have to catch my breath a lot.  It’s just plain difficult to read, and it makes the writer look like their brains are made of pigeon phlegm.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the creative use of the English language.  Coming up with amusing word usements is almost a hobby of mine, and I take special note of particularly imaginitive works when I hear them.  For example, recently a coworker inadvertently made up the word "teleworketing" as a term to describe telecommuting.  I thought this was fantastical.  Another example is from one of my favorite authors, Dave Barry, who coined the term "the behindular zone.", referring of course, to Congress one’s backside.  The world is replete with excellent verbage, but this leetspeak stuff just isn’t in that category.

Of course, I blame global warming for all of this.  I’m sure there’s a connection.  They’ve managed to connect just about everything else that’s wrong with this world to global thermalization, so why not this too?  It’s either that, or we have an entire generation of kids who have grown up with text messaging that somehow believe the rest of the world works that way.  If they made it to college writing this way, what were their previous English teachers doing?  So it’s either global warming or a bad educational system.  Surely it can’t be the latter, right?

-Brian

While this story isn’t particularly funny, I do find one particular quote amusing;

“Dozens of orbiters and spacecraft have crashed into the atmosphere in recent decades, but the U.S. government has never felt it necessary to shoot one down.”

I wonder if the reason for this might be that it’s only been in recent decades that we’ve been putting orbiters and spacecraft up there to begin with?

-Brian

It’s been so long since my last post.  But I can’t think too much about that at the moment.  I have to relay a story that happened here in my little town.

The short answer is, yes, I’m still here.  I have a new resolution to start making relavent posts on this blog again.  It’s just been really hard to do so.  I basically have three jobs, right now.  My real job during the day, my teaching gig at the local college on some weeknights, and my full-time position as Owner and Chief Information Officer of Twilight Teez, LLC, the business my wife and I run.  It’s been one crazy holiday season and we’re still playing catchup.  I’m hoping that things will calm down some soon, and I’ll be able to work on getting some real good quality posts going on here.  I’m anxious to get back into writing.  I miss it, and I’ve got a few good stories to tell.

Thanks to those who haven’t given up on me.  I hope to get back to this very soon.

-Brian