Daddy Dan

One last post for this week.

I would be remiss if I didn’t share this, especially for stay-at-home moms.  Do you really feel this way???  This has been the funniest thing I’ve seen all week.

Lindsay Ferrier, who blogs at Suburban Turmoil, wrote a piece for The City Paper, Nashville’s Daily News about the beginning of Momcation, the day the kids go back to school.

Here’s two excerpts:

Just as our children race out of class on the last day of school, shrieking with anticipation and throwing their backpacks in the air, so do their mommies let out loud whoops the moment those kids walk back through the school doors in August. The merry horn honking and engine revving you hear in the school drop-off lane that first morning isn’t coincidental — School’s in, baby! Time for mommies everywhere to Par – Tay.

and

I stare out my kitchen window and dream of the day when my smallest children both are safely contained within the walls of the local elementary school. I imagine myself walking little Bruiser to his kindergarten classroom for the first time, my eyes spilling over with tears. “Don’t be sad, Mommy,” he’ll say, giving me a big hug. “Oh, don’t worry about me, little man,” I’ll reply, pushing him a bit too hard into the classroom “These are tears of joy, dude,” I’ll whisper as I saunter back down the hall. Free at last. Free at last. Thank God, almighty, I’ll be free at last.

Read the whole thing, and check out her blog too.  She’s hilarious.

Have a nice weekend everybody!

Since I heard about the Bigfoot discovery last night I’ve been confused.  I thought we already had clear and convincing evidence that Bigfoot existed.  In fact, I vaguely remember him becoming a celebrity, starring in both movies and a TV series.

Was it just my vivid childhood imagination?

No, it was not.  I did some research, and in fact Bigfoot has been around (and well-known) for at least two decades.  For those of you too young to remember, I present Bigfoot (who prefers to go by Harry)……

You can even buy a copy of his movie HERE at Amazon. I think John Lithgow won an Academy Award or something for his performance in this movie.

CNN really needs to do more research on their stories before they create such widespread hysteria.

As we’ve all heard over and over again, and as we’ve all seen while filling our gas tanks, we are in a serious energy crisis.  As demand for fuel increases and the availability of oil continues to decrease, we need to find alternatives for the future.

There’s been slow advances in technologies such as electric power, solar, wind, hydrogen, and ethanol, but the advances aren’t coming as fast as we would like.  What happens if the scientific community NEVER develops the technology enough to meet our needs?  What will we do?

The answer may have to come from our ancestors, but if we’re going to use the technology they used we’re going to have to get to work NOW to ensure that it will be available in the proper quantities.

What is this old technology?  A technology that I haven’t heard anyone talk about, not even Al Gore - horses!

Horses may be our last and final hope to meet the transportation needs of the future.  Horses may finally break our dependence on the Middle East (unless you plan on having an Arabian horse).

Now I know what you’re thinking right now: “You’re brilliant, Daddy Dan!”  Wouldn’t it be fun to get to ride a horse to work every day?  Yes, it would, but we have a lot of work to do before that dream becomes reality.

First of all, I don’t think there are enough horses in the world to meet our needs.  We need to start breeding and breeding fast!

Secondly, the infrastructure is not in place.  We need to have places to park the horses.  We need water troughs everywhere for the horses to get water.  We need armies of poop picker-uppers, preferably from the government, to be in place to keep our country clean.  None of this work has been done, and frankly, it’s sad.  We are way behind.

Third, our government short-sightedly let all the buggy manufacturers go out of business in the late 20th century.  The government should have bailed them out so they’d be in business today to meet our buggy needs.  The newly revived buggy industry, not to mention stage coach, covered wagon, saddle, and horse whip industries just may pull us out of this economic recession.  It’s a win-win for all.

We need to get to work.  Who’s going to “take the reins” and lead this movement?  Someone needs to step up before it’s too late.

Are you with me?  Now let me be honest - I haven’t completely thought this through.  Am I being too simplistic or have I just solved all the problem we’re currently facing?  Let me know in the comments.

You may not know the name, but you’ve definitely seen Michael Ian Black. He’s a regular on VH1’s I Love The…. series, he was on MTV’s The State, NBC’s Ed, and can be seen on Comedy Central.  He also has a hilarious blog at MichaelIanBlack.typepad.com.  He’s put together a book of short comedy essays in his new book My Custom Van.

The book is a collection of sarcastic, ridiculous, silly, and absurd essays on a variety of topics.  He’s the type of comedian that people either love or hate.  Personally, I love him.  Some of the best essays in the book are “What I Would Be Thinking If I Were Billy Joel Driving to a Holiday Party Where I Knew There Was Gong to Be a Piano,” and “A Series of Letters to A Squirrel.”  While a few of the 50 essays miss the mark, a great majority of them will have you laughing out loud.

Check out his website to get a really good idea of his type of humor.  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

I don’t know why I’m admitting this here on my blog.

I guess I’m hoping that bringing it out into the light will help me to get the help I need.

Tonight, around 10:00pm I was driving down the street to get me and my wife something to eat.  As I reached the crest of the hill, I saw it.  A DUI checkpoint.  I immediately panicked, hoping against hope that somehow I could make it through without notice.

The officer asked for my driver’s license and registration.  As she was looking over the documentation and then looking back at me, I knew that I was busted.  She could tell that there was something amiss.

She told me to pull my car off to the side of the road and wait for another officer to handle me.  She also told me to turn off the engine when I reached the side of the road.  As I pulled over, I saw the unlucky others sitting on the curb behind their cars, their hands behind their backs in handcuffs.  Was this my fate?

An officer walked over to my truck and asked me if I knew why I’d been asked to pull off to the side.  I wasn’t going to lie.  I know I had done wrong.  Thoughts ran through my mind.  “What is my wife going to say?  She’s going to kill me!”  She’s told me several times that I had to take care of this problem, but I never did.  And now it was too late.  I admitted my crime to the officer.

Surprisingly, he was very nice to me.  He said, “Not a big deal, Bud.  It’s just a fix-it ticket.  Get that registration taken care of and that’ll be it.”

Yes, I do have a problem.  I am a procrastinator. 

IN MY DEFENSE:  I have paid my registration, but California law requires that each car get a smog certificate before a new registration is issued.  I took my truck in for a smog check and it failed because the ‘check engine’ light was on.  The emissions and everything else passed with flying colors.  It was just that damn light.  I had planned to take the truck in to the dealership to determine the cause of the ‘check engine’ light, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it.  The state will not issue the actual tags and registration until it receives the smog certificate.

If you haven’t visited MetroDad’s site before, I highly recommend you do.His latest post, “It Takes a Village: Questions for Other Parents” is hilarious.Some of my favorites: 

Why does everyone freak out about potty training?  Do you have any adult friends who “just never quite got the hang of it?

Is it really possible for a human being to greatly enjoy a food and then one day decide never to eat it again?  Or is that done solely to drive one’s father insane?

What lasts longer?  That fresh new baby smell or that fresh new car smell?  I’m just wondering because my car still smells pretty good but my daughter’s feet smell like vinegar. 

READ THIS!

You can’t go wrong with a story that begins like this:

“Recently, I got a sex change on a whim.”

It’s a story written by Jack Handey, of “Deep Thoughts” fame. It’s very The Leaky Brain-ish.

He has several other stories on The New Yorker site. You can find a complete list here.

Enjoy!