image out of context
quote out of context
If you identified with the kids from The Breakfast Club when it came out, you’re now much closer to the age of Principal Vernon.
tweet of the day
Grandma’s vagina
from the comments
Last night my long-time friend Allen shared his recollections of a Dallas children’s TV figure known as Uncle Tiny, whom he dubbed Uncle Tiny the Obscure, as none of the rest of our gang remembered the man. Allen recalled having seen Uncle Tiny in person at Kiest Park in Oak Cliff, where Uncle had “a small trick pitcher from which he poured a seemingly endless supply of 7-UP.” Allen was impressed. “Uncle Tiny was cool.”
“Mr Peppermint died!”
read the email message I just received.
Mr. Peppermint (Jerry Haynes) hosted a long-running North Texas children’s TV program. He was a kinder, gentler Icky Twerp. He was also the father of Gibby Haynes.
from the comments
It’s as though all of the world is so new to her that the transformation of a part of Glasgow into Philadelphia doesn’t register.
Quote out of context
Bert, who is fascinated by pigeons and gets easily upset
– Pete
video out of context
I Had to Put It Up…
It’s not quite the rout I imagined. But I’m sure behind the scenes there was tension.
Oscar Mayer. It doesn’t get better than this.
Oscar Mayer Sandwich Combos are one of the five unique varieties of Adult Lunch Combos.
Cindy tipped me to this, and I have been snorting ever since.
My Favorite Katherine Anne Porter Story
headline of the day
Girl, 12, crashes truck, takes out town’s power
headline of the day
Toddlers won’t bother learning from you if you’re daft
‘In Cookie-Monster related news’
Tim Carmody on Cookie Monster:
Not to get all Lacanian up in this mug, but it’s all about the mouth, and the regulation of desire in accordance with learning of language and letters.
Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus thought the best way to teach children how to learn the alphabet was to bake letter-shaped cookies for them to eat. I know one monster who would definitely approve.
from the comments
Mr. B.’s friend Alec had a routine. He would come home from school, unlock the door, then fret about the “scary noises” he heard in the empty house. I remember the first time I saw him sitting on the bench behind my house. He was craning his neck around watching our house.
Alec had the cell phone his mother gave him to keep in touch while she was at work. She had a long commute and wanted him at home until she got there, taking care of school assignments and chores. He was a very smart and kind boy. I asked the mother to allow Alec to come inside to do homework. But she was adamant. He could sit on the bench until she got home or calmed down. And that was that.
So, Alec would show up several days a week at least, and Mr. B. would sit with him on the bench. I heard that even when we were gone, and that happened a lot, he still would show up on that bench with his books and phone.
Eventually, Alec, his little brother, and his mother moved. We never saw them again. But I still think about him. Especially lately. And this memory is tied up with Clusterflock. Because when I drop by in silence, just reading the posts, I’m like little Alec on the bench, watching the walls of a home where people I care about live. It’s a comfort ritual.
Superhuman Bed Linen
When my friend Melanie was little, she tied a sheet around her neck for a cape and ran wildly around the backyard with her arms outstretched superhero-style, shrieking, “WooOOOooh! WooOOOooh! I’m JEsus! I’m JEsus!”
Her father sat her down and said in his most serious tone, “You should never imitate the Lord.”
Also, by way of an update, this, posted to the Dubuque Freecycle group Thu Jun 30, 2011 5:27 am (PDT):
I have a large blanket with the Incredible Hulk smashing through a wall if anyone is interested
Pending pick-up
“You see? You SEE? DO YOU SEE what all of your showing out and acting the fool leads to? And now everybody drives by is looking.”
Mike Lee on Victimhood
This is not going to be a good essay. This is going to be a terrible essay, which you should not read, for two reasons.
It deserves to be read anyway.
How to land your kid in therapy
MFT intern Lori Gottlieb writes:
Dan Kindlon, a child psychologist and lecturer at Harvard, warns against what he calls our “discomfort with discomfort” in his book Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age. If kids can’t experience painful feelings, Kindlon told me when I called him not long ago, they won’t develop “psychological immunity.”
“It’s like the way our body’s immune system develops,” he explained. “You have to be exposed to pathogens, or your body won’t know how to respond to an attack. Kids also need exposure to discomfort, failure, and struggle. I know parents who call up the school to complain if their kid doesn’t get to be in the school play or make the cut for the baseball team. I know of one kid who said that he didn’t like another kid in the carpool, so instead of having their child learn to tolerate the other kid, they offered to drive him to school themselves. By the time they’re teenagers, they have no experience with hardship. Civilization is about adapting to less-than-perfect situations, yet parents often have this instantaneous reaction to unpleasantness, which is ‘I can fix this.’”
Kindlon also observed that because we tend to have fewer kids than past generations of parents did, each becomes more precious. So we demand more from them—more companionship, more achievement, more happiness. Which is where the line between selflessness (making our kids happy) and selfishness (making ourselves happy) becomes especially thin.
Mr. B.’s Vegas Posse
There, on the left.
What the six-year-old came to the door to tell me
Somebody put toilet paper in our trees! The dog loves it.
from the comments
Oh my. This song. Mr. B. became obsessed at 5, a girl at school taught it to him. He would sing “drove my cheby to the leby but the leby was dry.” He was spooky quiet with the line “this’ll be the day that I die.” I would think okay, not playing Barney songs in the car, mistake. So I’d ramp up the Allmans about then. Something cheerful like “Whipping Post.”
clotheslined
May 23, 1934
This day in 1934 Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow was shot dead by Texas officer Frank Hamer and his posse on a back country road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.
It probably weren’t much like in the movie.
Cooper’s and my friend Allen was just writing to tell about the 1936 Texas Centennial, staged in Dallas.
“One of the attractions which impressed my father, who at that time was 13, was the bullet-riddled death car of Bonnie & Clyde.”
