A Funny, if not, Sadly Comedic Father's Day

While I hope none of you had experiences with your fathers that were as bad as these comedians, I thought most of it was pretty funny. It did make me think more about the comedians though than fathers. I guess you have to have a pretty screwed up childhood to be a comedian. Here you go:



Happy Father's Day!

Giving your life meaning...

Feel free to call it laziness, but today I'm just posting some ridiculous pictures that just happen to be funny. I didn't have to look hard, and in fact stumbled upon these in a friend's photo album (probably of his childhood). I'm sure you'll relate to some of these, and hopefully, if you're drinking milk you'll share it with your computer screen.

Uh oh.

Sweet.

Cannibal pumpkin beasts are the worst.

Mean, but effective.

I wonder who it could be...

I pretty much died after I saw this.

That's deterrence 

That used to be me before I dialed Jenny Craig.

She's so happy.

I hope that made your day. If it didn't, maybe it's time to re-examine your life. Maybe you have nothing to live for. Well, live for this blog. It will always fill your life with meaning. It's a good replacement for Scholasticism, Humanism, McCarthyism, or prisms.

Phone Tag and Rediscovering Your Inner Child

From the days of our early childhood to maybe even last week (for some of you), we have been brought up with social games. There is duck-duck-goose, "pin the tail on the donkey," "truth or dare," and the classic, and my personal favorite, tag (not to be confused with Mitt Romney's son Tagg). For those of you reading this in Pakistan or Singapore, tag is a game where there is a group of people, with one designated as "it," and thereby endowed with the prerogative, power, and responsibility to tag everyone else. The last person to get tagged wins.

(This man is enjoying a nice game of tag with a polar bear)

Tag quite often devolves into arguments among children. One says, "I got you," with the other saying, "No you didn't," or, "That was my jacket, it doesn't count." But, petty bickering aside, it's a pretty wholesome activity. And, I'm not about to make it into some metaphor for life or root out your inner demons by psychoanalyzing your success or lack thereof while playing the game as a child. However I do want to talk about the more relevant form of tag for adults, or more sophisticated adolescents. This derivation is called 'phone tag.'

I myself am a master at phone tag. You might think it hubris on my part, and, perhaps you're right, but I have proof. First off, let me start by explaining the ins and outs of phone tag and by which criteria you can go by to find out if you've got skills. Phone tag, (the structured form) involves two people. One person calls the other, for whatever reason does not reach the person, then the other calls back in hopes of getting a hold of the person who called. The game only continues if they never get in touch. When someone finally does, the game is over. Either the caller or the called wins, and that depends on the context of the game (and, if you really want to talk to the person, I guess everybody wins, but I'm not espousing Marxist dogma).

So to my case study. Myself. I make plenty of outbound calls and receive plenty of inbound calls, but I am meticulous in calling people back if they call me. So, you might say I am naturally inclined to end phone tag quickly. But you would be wrong. Whether it happens to be divine providence or luck, I seem to get embroiled in regular bouts of phone tag. It starts off simply enough with me calling someone and leaving a message. Then the person calls back, but for some reason they catch me during the .5% of the day I don't have the phone with me. This might be while I'm taking a shower, making a sandwich, at the gym, or circling the earth in a satellite (that happens more than I'd like to admit). Then, I call them back and magically get the voice mail box again. If it carries on I either leave random or ridiculous tag messages. For instance, I might claim to be a towing service, or prize patrol, or an angry Chinese man, but always I end with "Tag, you're it" even if it is unintelligible in a thick Chinese accent.

So I suppose the moral, if there must be one, is to keep your inner child alive through adaptations of children's games like phone tag. If you can find a way to play duck-duck-goose with phones, texting, or skype, you're my hero.

Cat Lovers vs. Dog Lovers

Most people like animals. And, as pets, we treat them sometimes even better than people. Part of that is because they often times treat us with more love an affection than other humans. The other part is because we're crazy. But regardless of our addiction with furry, scaly, winged and/or shelled creatures, the easiest breakdown between mentalities is between those who prefer dogs, and those who prefer cats.

My family has a cat. Her name is Sophie. She is psychotic. But, before I tell you about how weird and skiddish she is, let me tell you why she's nice. She has fur. Soft fur. And, she can be affectionate, and can kill pests. Now let me tell you why she's not so cool. She vomits on the porch. She is paranoid and starved for attention. She only wants attention from you on her terms. She sheds fur everywhere. So, cats are not on the top of my list when I think of a new pet.

I have never had a dog. The reason for that is because my mom is allergic to them. So, growing up she let me have every other kind of pet known to man (She is also allergic to cats, but likes them better, and lets the cat have her own room in the house, and claims that cats don't need as much social contact as dogs, which may be true). So growing up I had a menagerie of animals. I had turtles, a tortoise, hamsters, mice, lizards, fish, frogs, ferrets, quails, parakeets, guinea pigs, crayfish, etc. It was pretty cool growing up. But as cool as all those pets were, they were never dogs. I always tried to goad my mom into letting us get one with comments like, "Well bulldogs are hypo-allergenic because they have short hair and don't shed as much." To which she would reply, "If we ever do get a dog it will be a poodle, but for now it's either a dog or me. Take your pick." It wasn't very fair, but that was life. And, to make me feel even more guilty, when I said, "Well when I move out, I'm getting a dog!" She would say: "So you're saying I won't be able to come visit to see my grandchildren? You'd pick a dog over me?" Those kind of tactics were obviously manipulative. 

But, fortunately her tune has changed, and she thinks she could deal with a dog for short visits, and even longer visits if she took an allergy shot. Given the fact that she visits my Great-grandmother in Indiana all the time, and she has a dog, I don't think it was ever really a problem. So, that being said, I'm a dog person.

The anti-dog people will say they smell, make messes, are easily disobedient, drool, etc. But they are still better than cats in my mind. They are loyal, affectionate, always like attention (and aren't fickle about it like cats), they can be very obedient, and can do more things than cats. How many people go on walks with cats? How many cats catch frisbees? How many cats will play tug-of-war or do judo with you? I think you see my point. But, let me remind you that I do not condemn cat lovers. Any pet is better than no pet. Even if it does hack up hair balls in the middle of the night.