Today is Saint Pambo's day. Saint Pambo was a member of a group of people known as the Desert Hermits of Egypt. He was a disciple of Saint Anthony, and when he asked Anthony what he should do, Anthony told him "Be not confident of thy own righteousness; grieve not over a thing that is past; and be continent of thy tongue and belly."

Pambo took this to task, especially the last part. He spoke little, and what words he said were usually deep and profound. Many people came to follow him--kind of like Forrest Gump running back and forth across the country, I'm feeling--and they worked to help the poor and spread the Word of God to the Egyptians. He was most famous, however, for the fact that he didn't speak often, but when he did, the words were usually carefully selected and their meaning profound.

On the day he died, he was weaving a basket. He looked up at his followers and said:

"There's a million fine looking women in the world, dude, but, they don't all bring you lasagna at work. Most of 'em just cheat on you." He then bought a pack of smokes and walked out.

His follower, Saint Melania, dressed his body and took the unfinished basket to lay in the ground with the body. Reports say that she had long blond hair, wore a black sock cap, went nowhere without her trademark black trenchcoat, and had a mouth that was constantly running.

So, wish your fellow man a Happy Saint Pambo's Day. But just do it with a knowing nod.

Ah, here we are, Friday again. Was your week as long as mine? I sure hope not. However, I'm sure that there's not a problem troubling your soul that a little alcohol couldn't cure.

You know who liked a good drink? The Romans. Of course, in the early days of the Republic, they didn't care so much about the wine. They were more concerned with killing the Etruscans (to the north of Rome) and the Greeks on the southern part of the Italian peninsula and the Samnites...who kind of filled in the space between the Etruscans and the Greek settlers, but east of the Romans.

However, once those folks were all defeated (and we'll throw in the Phoenicians and Carthaginians and the rest of the Greeks for good measure), the Romans found themselves with a shit ton of grapes, control of all the trade routes in the Mediterranean, and many parched and thirsty throats clamoring for the wine. Not to mention the Romans were absorbing other Mediterranean cultures into their own, and those cultures loved the wine. So, the Romans decided that--if you'll excuse the phrase--when in Rome...make some wine.

And once the wine started flowing, so did the coins. The Romans decided this was one sweet ass deal, and decreed that it was illegal to make wine anywhere outside of the Italian peninsula. So, the boot became filled with wine and it was soon being exported to all parts of the Empire...especially to those whiny (ahem) folks in Gaul. And boy did the Gauls love their wine, which was convenient because the Romans loved selling it to them. The Gallic folk--who tend to have an arrogance of haut couture about them--didn't water their wine down while they drank it, which was quite a faux pas by Roman standards. Thanks to this, the Romans considered the Gauls to be uncultured, barbaric and slovenly. However, while the Gauls were drinking wine which wasn't watered down, they had to keep buying more and more and more. Oh la, la the wine trade, she was a lucrative one, which allowed the Emperors to build extravagant palaces, public works and armies with which they could keep the wine-starved populace under Roman rule.

And the Romans were able to pretty much corner the market by clever use of their laws, by owning all the great grape-growing areas around the Mediterranean, and by being completely ignorant of the ability to distill alcohol from water. Of course, there's another brewed beverage that is mouth-wateringly delicious, sometimes known as "beer". While beer was important to the Romans during the time of the Republic, by the time they controlled all of the grape-growing areas, the Romans decided that beer was suitable only for the barbarians to the north. So, a combination of ignorance, law, and--in the case of beer--more ignorance with a smattering of arrogance and a healthy dose of the jingling of coins in bags, wine became the most important source of alcohol in the World according to the Romans.

Now, while the old Roman maxim of in vino veritas ("in wine there is truth") rings true, in wine there is also stupidity. And by stupidity I mean that state of mind beyond just being drunk to where you're loud, profane, and you might be taking pieces of clothing off. So, in other words, how I act when sober.

Should you opt for the bar tonight--and why the hell wouldn't you?--and someone decides to get a little too far into their cups and start making an ass of themselves, uttering this will get your point across and sound profound enough that you'll avoid the requisite bar fight that breaks out when someone points out just how drunk another person is.

Tu podex videris
Pronounced: "Too poh-daix weed-air-ees"

Translation is in the hovertext!

So, there you go. Enjoy a lovely beverage, unwind from the work week, and make fun of people in a dead language. Also, if some snob decides to loudly proclaim just how great the French are with their wines and such, you can smirk and set them straight. And that's something to drink to.

Normally, on Thursdays (or, normal for the past couple of months), I tell you about some bodily function of mine that makes for somewhat amusing reading. Today, however, I'm going in a slightly different direction.

Yesterday, my youngest started school. While he was in "school" last year, that was pre-school, so he was really just along for the ride and was there so that he could figure out how to act around other people. Turns out, he fits in with the monkey troupe just fine.

Anyway, yesterday he went to kindergarten. He's at a year-round school, and his staggered entry was yesterday and today. So, we all got up, got dressed, got ready and walked him to the bus stop. After what seemed like forever, the bus finally showed up. I walked him around the front and led him to the steps. He got on, sat down, and waved and then drove away.

Me? I'm cool. My wife was all sorts of nervous for him. But, it turns out, he was just fine. He didn't get in trouble. He didn't get upset. He didn't get lost. In fact, he found his room all by himself without anyone helping him. Though he did admit that the kraken kind of frightened him when the boats were taking his class across the lake.

Apparently, he got back on his bus without incident and was delivered home safely. He bounded off the bus and then pranced home. We were worried about this second part, since we didn't know what bus he needed to be on. However, the night before we sent him off to school, we got a phone call from one Dr. Jordan, who assured us that our "baby would get home just fine." Apparently, Dr. Jordan sounded a lot like Bubby from Flapjack.

My son had a good day, played hard and made two new friends, Zachary and Enya. He says that Zachary is cool, but the girl has a tendency to sing songs about rivers in South America.

This made me hearken back to the days of yore, when I first went to kindergarten. I was in the last kindergarten class at Union Elementary School (home of the Aces). I had to walk up the street to get to my bus stop, in front of Amy and Jamie Randol's house. I got on the bus, went to school, and I remember sitting at the head of my table. Little did they know they were feeding my megalomania from a young age.

I sat at the same table as two of my cousins, and the aforementioned Jamie Randol. I remember it distinctly because someone from the local paper came in and took my picture. I was sitting there, flashing a dinosaur picture I had just colored to my cousin Jennifer, who could have cared less. She was bent over coloring her own picture, probably of Raggedy-Ann. My cousin Jennifer fuckin' loved her some Raggedy-Ann. I still have a couple of pictures of me in kindergarten. Maybe I'll scan them in and share them on a day when I feel like being made fun of. Well, moreso than normal.

Contrast my first day of kindergarten (and my sons, if you must) with my younger brother's (sis never went to school). He got on the bus, went to school, and came home. My mom asked him how it went and he responded, "Fine, but I'm not going back." Ah, yes, certain trends in life are set on the first days of school. I had my arrogance sated and my brother...well...some things are better left unsaid.

I even remember my kindergarten teacher: Miss Brown. She lived up the street from me. Apparently, when they closed Union Elementary (home of the Aces), she went to teach somewhere other than where I went to school for the remainder of my elementary and middle high school days. In fact, I had no idea where she was, other than she wasn't anywhere near where I was.

Fast forward a few years to when I was a member of the Liberal Media. I was writing a column about the goings on in my home town for the county paper. While I would often report just the facts, ma'am, I would also poke a little fun at how little went on in the town on a weekly basis.

And then, one night, I got a phone call (my number was listed in the column as the way to get ahold of me and pass along gossip information news). It was my kindergarten teacher, Miss Brown!!! I was excited...for about five seconds. She told me what a good job I was doing and how she enjoyed reading my articles...and then she ripped into me for making fun of small town America. Apparently, she was living in Chicago (or the west side of Chicago) and missed her life in Small Town, USA. And now she was yelling at me about it.

I assured her that I would lighten up on the bumblefucks who lived in town. Then the next week, we had perhaps the most inept bank robbery in the history of mankind go awry and the drama played out on the streets of my hometown. That's a story for a different day, but my reporting on this again painted the town in a rubish light. While I never got another phone call, I could feel the seething anger coming from the northwest. Let it go, Miss Brown. Anger and hatred lead to the Dark Side.

There you have it. I'm now the father of two school-aged children, which might or might not be an indication of middle age. And since everything I know about middle age I learned from watching American Beauty...where's the high school chick with the enormous forehead? I gots me some lust to slap around.

Finally, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is released today. After waiting for months under the guise of the writer's strike, we finally get to see the adaptation of my favorite book in the series. Ka-loo, ka-lay!!!

However, apparently, our good friend Vincent Crabbe won't be at the theatre tonight. In case you hadn't heard (and the story can be found here), the actor who plays Crabbe--one James Waylett--got pulled over in April. When the police looked in his car, they found eight bags of marijuana. Apparently, later, when the police went to his mom's house, they found "nearly ten" marijuana plants...so, I'm guessing nine. Tsk tsk...fifty points from Slytherin and a detention to be served with Groundskeeper Argus Filch.

Of course, Waylett is best known for his role in the Potter films where he portrays Malfoy's bully bodyguard, Crabbe, half of the infamous pair of Crabbe and Goyle. Apparently, the sorting hat made a grave mistake while assigning Crabbe to House Slytherin, despite his parents being Death Eaters. Clearly, Crabbe should have been placed in Hufflepuff.

At least he easily passed his N.E.W.T. for herbology.

Professor Sprout could not be reached for comment.



Oh, and--Jesus H!--did Ginny get hot.

Remember how, whenever the criminal du jour needed to add that creepy effect to his fake ghost story, the villain from Scooby-Doo would always employ dry ice and water to create his ghostly fog. I think Scooby even made some donuts out of the dry ice fog once. Mmmm...carbon dioxide. So tasty.

I guess if you're a stoner and a dog--stone dog--then when the munchies hit, you have to respond, right?

When I was a lad, I remember my mother helping to make a parade for a float in the parade for our local festival. They needed to create a smoky effect coming out of a pot. For some strange reason, with all the papier mache, streamers and tissue all mounted onto a particle board frame with a tractor pulling it unsteadily down the road, they shied away from using actual fire. So, they opted for dry ice in water. I remember seeing the result--a few wisps of smoke-like vapor escaping the top of the cauldron--and being completely underwhelmed.

I've since learned that, if one wants a really good fog effect from dry ice, isopropyl alcohol--otherwise known as "rubbing alcohol"--gives a great plume of foggy carbon dioxide. So, there you go. In case you find yourself working on a float in the near future and you need a good, boiling plume of fog, drop some chunks of dry ice into rubbing alcohol. Just be sure to recharge the alcohol from time to time, because as it gets colder, the effect cools a bit. Heh. Pun.

Dry ice--which is frozen carbon dioxide--undergoes one of those rare phase shifts from solid to gas, called sublimation. Most of the time, we think of solids turning liquid first and then going to gas, but some things go straight from their solid form to their gas phase. Snow will do this sometimes in the winter, as well. The net result of the sublimation of dry ice to carbon dioxide gas is the nice fog effect.

We can also harvest the awesome power of the sublimation explosively. Don't believe me? Take a look.

For some reason, seeing that cinder block get blown to gravel really amused me. I think part of it is because I went to undergrad with this guy named Seville that someone once described as having "a personality like a cinder block." The damnedest thing was, that description was dead accurate.

Walking monoliths aside, I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the power that this showed. If I were to guess, I would have thought that the force would escape up and away from the block where the bottle was not holding it. Shows what I know about explosive forces.

Now, I'm not telling you to go out and try this stunt at home, but after watching this, I would make damned sure that the dry ice bomb doesn't go off in your hand. Otherwise, you might be getting the Tyr experience without all the fun of tricking Fenrir.

See what I did there? Brilliant, no? I thought so, too.

I'm certainly no stranger to door-to-door religion salesmen. We used to be plagued by Jehovah's Witnesses all the time up in Bumblefuck, IN. Most of the time, when these young men dressed in their spiffy white shirts, black pants, and ties would knock upon the front door, my mother would ignore them. Even if my brother and I would be standing in the front window where the God-peddlers could see that the house was, indeed, occupied, she'd just ignore them. They'd knock and knock and, eventually, would traipse away without getting to spread the joy of the gospels to us.

But, alas, my mother would have already been on the neighborhood watch line--also known as the telephone--informing the neighbors that there were Jehovah's Witnesses in the town and that they should lock their doors and ignore them. Also, that Christi Tiegland was pregnant again. Can you believe it? What a whore.

Now that I've moved to the South, we don't get Jehovah's Witnesses so much, but we get a far worse kind of plague: Baptists. The first time they came, they tricked me. Two rather attractive young ladies dressed in short skirts and sleeveless shirts were standing on the step out front ringing my doorbell. Thinking that their car had broken down in front of my house and if I helped them to repair it or call for help, they'd repay me in true porno movie style they were selling cookies, I threw the door open. To my horror, they had neither automotive problems nor delicious snacks to sell.

Ladies: Good afternoon, sir. We're with Liberty Baptist Church, and we'd like to invite you to come worship the Lord with us.
Me: I'm Catholic.
Ladies: We want to extend the invitation to worship the Lord to all God's children.
Me: I'm Catholic.
Ladies: The table of the Lord is set for anyone willing to be born again in His glory and righteousness.
Me: *blatantly staring at their breasts*
Ladies: Sir?
Me: *still staring at their chests* Thank you, Jesus!

Eventually, they left. Since the initial confrontation, I had become wary of their religious guile. Another time, I was sitting at home and I had ordered a pizza for me and the kids to enjoy. The doorbell rang. Expecting a big round slice of Italian heaven, instead, I once again got invited to join Jesus at his banquet table--apparently, all that walking everywhere made him hungry. Again, it was two attractive teenage girls peddling the Lord's wares and not delivering me with a pizza nor offering to massage my sins away.

Finally, a third time they arrived. I wasn't expecting anyone this time, so I didn't immediately throw the door open. The kids were running back and forth, screaming that someone was at the front door. Undeterred, my uninvited guests continued knocking and ringing the bell. Finally, the football game had gone to halftime I had had enough, and so I decided to end this little charade here and now.

That, of course, meant dropping my pants. I kicked off my shoes, ripped off my socks and dropped trou. My daughter asked what I was doing. I just nodded to her and said, "Answerin' the door, honey."

I ripped the door open, fully expecting it to be yet another pair of teenage girls looking for a jump to peddle Jesus to me. Instead, it was a couple of dowdy middle aged women, and you could see by the shock on their faces that they were not expecting me to be standing before them in my underwear and a t-shirt. However, they pushed on with their spiel message:

Women: Good afternoon, sir, we're with Liberty Baptist Church and we wanted to ask you some questions.
Me: Aren't you two supposed to be teenagers?
Women: We have many members of the congregation who do door-to-door missionary services.
Me: Well, I guess I'll just have to 'covet my neighbor's wife' instead of his daughters this time.
Women: Are you familiar with Jesus?
Me: Familiar with? Hell yeah. He's a great guy. Cuts the lawns on Tuesday. He does a good job. I recommend him.
Women: We're talking about our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Me: Oh, yeah. THE Jesus. Yeah, I have a healthy snack of his blood and flesh every...well...once a year, at least. Sometimes twice.
Women: Well...if you were to die today, do you know where you'd go?
Me: Are you selling funeral plots or funeral planning? Cause I'm not interested. I want a Viking funeral.
Women: No, we're talking about your immortal soul.
Me: *reaches down to my balls to scratch...and just keep scratching* Oh, yeah, that. Well, I figure I'd go to Purgatory for a few thousand years or however long it takes. They're a little fuzzy on the details. But I'll eventually make it to the Pearly Gates...unlike those bastards who decided to go nailing stuff to the church's door. I pity those poor souls and their eternal torment. *lifts fingers up to nose and sniffs* Yergh. That smells terrible.
Women: Thank you for your time, sir.

I should probably mention here that I don't really believe that Purgatory stuff, but I had a football game to watch and kids to ignore, so I needed to employ drastic measures. So, if you're a Protestant, don't worry...I know that you won't go to Hell; you'll just keep languishing in Purgatory for a while longer than I will.

Anyway, that was nearly three years ago now, and they haven't been back since. Not at least while I've been home. I don't know, maybe they've visited my wife, but I do like to cling to the notion that I've scared them off and that there's a big red X over my house on their Heathen Map.

The wonderful thing about having a blog is that I have, over the past however many years, come to befriend a great many people from a wide variety of places around this vast globe of ours. Sure, some of you I know in real life or we went to fifth grade together or got shitfaced drunk in Gallagher hall or whatever, but larger majority of my readership is comprised of people I have never met. Would I like to? Fuck yeah, but I really don't see that happening in the near future.

Unless you all get really fucking drunk and wake up in North Carolina and then, after trying to piece together just how the hell you got to North Carolina, you decide "You know what? I think I'll go give that Jenks guy a visit, see what he's all about. Wait a minute...who the fuck lets their grass grow this long, that fat motherfucker over there? Help me, Mr. Wodka, take me away!"

What was I talking about again?

Oh yeah, how keen and spiffy and boneriffic you people are.

Anyway, when I started this whole blog business, I certainly didn't think I'd meet up with someone from South Africa. I figured the most exotic places would be somewhere like Scotland or perhaps some Scandinavian locale. Right time zone, but wrong hemisphere (or some such bullshit like that).

I stumbled across Pfangirl's blog while looking up some shit about the GI Joe movie coming out this August. That was probably two years ago (at least a year and a half), and for a nerdy motherfucker like me, I landed smack in the middle of geek heaven. If you've never given her a read, take a look. I'm especially a fan of her Girlz 'N' Games webcomic, especially this one where she details the writing and drawing process.

Well, this weekend, Pfangirl is hitting something called ICON, which is South Africa's biggest games and comic convention. In order to pimp her webcomic stuff, she had a Girlz 'N' Games shirt made for the convention, and then invited everyone to stare at her chest. At least, that's how I interpreted it. So, because I'm such a good bloggy friend, I was going to leave her a comment, when I noticed something strikingly coincidental about her word verification...which I went ahead and copied, just so people would believe me.


That's right, the word verification is "enerd". Fitting and awesome.

I hope you had a good time at the con, Pfangirl, and that all the dudes staring at your chest lands you a sweet publishing deal for your webcomic.

Can you feel it? We're in the middle of summer, and that can mean only one thing: the Major League Baseball All-Star Game is upon us. Or nearly so. What was that? Did I hear a collective 'ho-hum' from the audience?

I can hardly blame you. As far as All-Star events go, baseball probably does have the best showcase--though it's been diluted down even further by having 33 players on each side now. Bud Selig, always striving for mediocrity.

Now, there used to be a time when I gave a shit about baseball, and I used to love the All-Star Game. I used to wait with bated breath during the summer months until the event was upon us (I mean, I was a Cubs fan...it's not like I was waiting for the play-offs). Now? I had to look it up to see if the damned thing had been played yet or not, and whether I'd have to shuffle this week's Latin Lesson to the World Series.

The last time I watched an All-Star game was in 2000, and that's a bit of a stretch even. I was still single back then, but I was dating the comely and buxom and ailurophobic Bouddica. I lived in a swinging bachelor's pad out by the airport with three other guys, all chemists in some capacity (two biochemists, a chem engineer, and me). Somehow, we all snuck out of our respective labs early. A couple of my friends went and bought the booze, and I picked up a couple of pizzas for the evening. Papa John's, with jalapenos and Italian sausage. I decided that we also needed some porn, so I picked up the latest Playboy out on the shelves. It was the one with Darva Conger in it. I was underwhelmed. The only thing I remember about the spread was that she had nipples that bore a disturbing resemblance to Cocoa Puffs. *shudder*

As for who won the All-Star game? Shit, I dunno. Tottenham Hotspur? Let's go with them. We dragged a television out onto the deck at the house we were renting, but we ended up getting shit-faced drunk and shooting off bottle rockets long into the night. I can assure you that the drinking and the explosives were far more entertaining than the baseball "game".

Anyway, should you find yourself next Tuesday hanging out, drinking heavily, or shooting off illegal fireworks--or hell, all three--you can turn to the chap next to you and fire off this little beauty. Profundity shall ensue:

Lex clavitoris designati rescindenda est!
Pronounced: "Laix clah-vee-toar-eese day-seeg-nah-tee ray-skeen-dain-dah est!"

Translation is in the hovertext.
I did try to look up pictures of some of your favorite teams to feature here, since some of you still like the baseball and whatnot. Most of the Red Sox pictures had already been seen over at Jon and Mike's respective places. A search for "Sexy Twins" gave me results that I wasn't quite looking for (but bookmarked nonetheless). And, sorry, Red, when I looked up "Sexy Padres Fan", all I got was this.

Lord amighty, is it that time again already? And here, we had just gotten over last week's episode in which I learned to never sit down at the porn shoppe. *shifty-eyed* Anyway, today is my brother-in-law's (Bouddica's brother) birthday. He's 32 or something like that. Whatever. I think I'll tell a story that he'd truly appreciate. Nothing says Happy Birthday BIL like a raunchy TMI story, no?

We'll head back to the fifth grade when I was an erstwhile and callow-faced youth at Salamonie Elementary and Junior High School. There were enough of us that we had two fifth grade rooms. The strange thing, though, is that the fifth grade rooms were separated by a false wall. It was a sort of cardboard-like wall that folded up all accordion-style. I remember it being a deep brown. The thing is...it didn't really separate the two rooms all that well, aside from visibly. We could still hear pretty much everything going on in the other fifth grade classroom, and I assume they could hear us. Wait, check that. I know they could hear us. Here's the sordid tale of how that fact became painfully clear.

Every week, as school children often will, we had a spelling test. We had something like twenty spelling words and usually five "difficult" bonus words. These were optional spelling words you could take on the back of your spelling sheet and then you'd get a 105 or something like that. Anyway, in order to practice for these things, the whole class lined up and we had a spelling bee.

I suck at spelling. Already in this post, I've fucked up "accordion" and "separate" and "difficult" (though that one was because I was typing too fast). So, I only ever won the spelling bee once, and I was so happy I did a sort of happy dance and went to give my friends a high five, and they all stonewalled me. Motherfuckers. The lot of them.

Anyway, I'm getting off track here. One day, we were all lined up at the back of the room, and things were quiet so that everyone could hear their word and try to spell it correctly. So, things were still and quiet with only one voice raised at a time. I think next door they were having a test, as well, because it was awfully quiet over there, too.

That's when I felt a bubbly in my tummy. Being a man of excellent rectal control, I've been known to be able to hold a good fart in and quietly sneak it out, should the situation merit such an action. Being that everything was so quiet and the fact that I was in school, I felt the polite course of action would be to back myself into the corner of the room and try my best to sneak this gaseous eructation out. And so I backed into the corner carefully so as to not draw any attention to myself. I then squeezed by my cheeks and loosened the tensile grip of my sphincter to let a tiny bit of gas go.

A sound reminiscent of a jet engine roared roared from my backside.

For a fleeting second, dead silence filled the room, which was suddenly filled with gales and torrents of mirthful, wonderful laughter. I could feel the color quickly climb into my face, which must look absolutely horrified, I'm sure. However, I couldn't quite contain myself when I looked up and the sweet little old lady teacher--Mrs. Etherington--herself was caught up in the moment and laughing heartily at my gaseous misfortune.

Do you know the episodes of the Simpsons where Marge asks Homer something like "Did you get Lisa a present for her birthday" and Homer looks all skeezy and backs away and says, "Yes, of course I did, I just left in the car. Let me go get it." And then when he's off camera you hear his footsteps pounding and the door slams and suddenly the car peels out of the driveway? Well, I heard something kind of like that, except it was from the other fifth grade room.

There was the pounding of footsteps and the door to the other room suddenly burst open and the footsteps continued down the hall toward our room. Suddenly, the door to our room burst open, and the other fifth grade teacher comes flying into the room.

"Who did that?" she asked. Everyone looked to me, still laughing. Again, horrified, I raised my hand to show it was me.

"We all heard that through the wall!" she proclaimed. And, that was all. She had half a smile on her face as she turned toward the door. And then, she paused, "You might want to check yourself, make sure you didn't leave a mess." And then she was gone.

More laughter and then, finally--mercifully--after about five minutes, everyone quieted down. Finally, through peals of mirthful giggles, I stepped forward and, with as much dignity and grace as I could muster, I softly offered up.

"Pardon me!" This caused the teacher to laugh more, and then we finally bagged the spelling bee and we all went outside for recess a little early. So, I guess, no one won the spelling bee, but we were all winners for having a little bit extra recess. And we owe it all to my ass.


Does this not sate your thirst for awesome TMI stories? Then check out all the other glorious tales of things we probably shouldn't tell at LiLu's home for the staunchy raunchy, TMI Thursdays!

This is my five hundredth post. I was going to write something pithy and brilliant centered on the number five hundred...but, since today is my son's fifth birthday, you're getting this instead. Nothing says "Happy Birthday, Son of Mine" like being publicly mocked and humiliated on the internet!

Yesterday, my daughter was being a snot. Cookie (as I've designated her on this here corner of the innerwebs) decided she wanted to have a tea party...an all girl tea party. My son, Tank, wanted to go to the tea party, too, but since he's not a girl, Cookie wouldn't let him.

My wife, the Comely and Buxom and Ailurophobic Bouddica, tried to talk Cookie into letting Tank come to her tea party, but she'd have none of that shit. Tired of arguing, my wife went to take a shower.

When she emerged from the shower, there was Cookie standing by the door to our closet, giggling. Tank was nowhere to be seen.

"Where is [name redacted] Tank?" my wife asked.

"He's in the closet," Cookie responded.

"Tank, come out of the closet," my wife said.

"I can't," he giggled. "It's too embarrassing."

This went on for a few minutes until finally the closet door creaked open and, well, this emerged:
The thing on top of his head is a scarf that has been cleverly tied up to resemble a wig. The clothes are Cookie's, but I think the shoes are Bouddica's. It's nice to see the boy can accessorize. Just notice how striking that red belt is with the black ensemble.

*sigh*

The problem is, he didn't want to change out of his clothes. He liked dressing up in girls' clothes. He claimed it was more fun to be a girl. In lieu of a tea party, they decided to have a fashion show. Oh, those plucky children of mine.

My wife is distraught. She wants me to take him and do manly things with him. At a loss, I didn't know what to do. Teach him how to piss in the stream out back? Download some videos of other guys getting kicked in the nuts and laugh at their pain and suffering? Take him to the joint down the street with the signs out front proudly proclaiming they boast an "All Girl Staff"? Blow some shit up? Vegas?

So, I sat down and pondered this situation in the only way I knew how: by asking myself "What Would Homer Simpson Do?" I immediately went home and fell asleep on the couch, ignoring my children. When I took them outside after my nap, Tank was climbing to the top of the swingset and hurtling himself off it. I figured there was no activity that was more "little boy" than a possible shattered pelvis and thusly patted myself on the back for another parenting job well done.

Oh Homer, you never fail me.