No Excuse

There is really no excuse for not having one of these...

http://www.kidrobot.com/2008/munny/?p=about

Not Funny...

In the car, on the way to pregnant woman yoga class:

Wife: I think I have super hearing today.

Me: You do seem to have picked up on a lot of little sounds that I've missed today. Then again, I have a tendency to filter out annoying little sounds pretty quickly.

Wife: Ugh, we are going to be really late...

Me: Did you say something?

She didn't think it was funny either.

Why my children have no chance

Me: *says something totally gross during dinner. Think Nickelodeon kids game show gross.*

Eldest Daugher: Dad! That is totally innappropriate at the dinner table!

Me: Yes, but I leaned back when I said it so I technically wasn't at the dinner table.

Magic Numbers

OK, when I started this blog I made a conscious decision to stay away from politics because I can get a little fervent in political debates, and that’s not what I want this blog to be about. It was a tough decision at the time, because we all know that the U.S. political system provides the world with upwards of 2/3 of its entire global comedic output, but it was a choice I made. And now I’m going to unmake it, at least for one post. Today’s break from convention will be brought to you by: NPR.

I think most people with either internet connections or any small amount of working gray matter are aware that media outlets have long left behind the days of providing news, and have rather (or “Rather”) moved into the business of *making* news. We can argue about agendas and ideals later, but I think most of us would agree on that statement. Well one of NPRs big drives over the last two years has been to convince America that our economy is teetering on the brink of total collapse (I like any sentence that includes the phrase “teetering on the brink”). The only real problems they ran into with this crusade were:

a) Most of the key economic indicators (pre-oil-spike), including employment, seemed to categorically refute NPRs premise
b) The vast majority of U.S. citizens were of the opinion that they personally were in a pretty good situation, economically speaking.

So those were two pretty tough strikes against them. Given that, most of what NPR was able to do was put on display the general goofiness of most of us Americans when polls started coming out with results that showed that around 85% of nation felt that personally they were doing just great, but that they also felt that the rest of the country was having economic problems. That’s like ten people standing around in a circle, wearing black label Ralph Lauren, drinking Starbucks coffee, and blogging from their iPhones about how rough the other 9 people in the room obviously have it. We are indeed that easilly influenced. In fact, I’m pretty certain that right after I finish this post I’m going to start my own media outlet and convince people that the only way to stave off Armageddon is to send me all their money. I guarantee that 100% of every 20 cents on the dollar will specifically go to a cause of some kind. If you don’t believe me, just re-read the preceding two sentences until you do.

OK, back to the meat of the post: NPRs amazing street magic. NPR has apparently decided after two years to concede the fact that actual numbers show that we are not, in fact, losing jobs (although the economy is certainly slowing down), so this is what they did (and I’m seriously paraphrasing here). See if you can follow this:

Talking head #1: So Talking Head #2, the numbers don’t seem to be showing actual job losses. Why is that?

Talking Head #2: Well Talking Head #1, here’s my theory, {insert log and rambling story about immigrants here that most resembles an audio version of Three Card Monty}, so what I think is that all of the job loss is occurring in the illegal immigrant sector, so it’s not being reported.

Talking Head #1: OK, so there is some real job loss going on out there, how is that affecting our economy?

There… did you catch that? It’s a little subtle, isn’t it? THEY MADE UP THE NUMBERS THEY NEEDED! And they *told* you they were doing it. If this were a magic show, every single person in the audience would have just stood up and said “Uh… we saw that. You just pulled that straight out of your pocket. It wasn’t even subtle. ” At least my kids used to tell me to close my eyes when they were making things “magically” appear, and they were all of about 5 years old at that phase. And let me tell you, the NPR fellas didn’t even so much as pause to catch their breath as they whipped through that little trick because they knew that if they gave us even one second to digest that little tidbit, the entirety of their audience would suddenly turn to each other and say “Did that just happen? Really? They just did that?” I really can’t convey in this quick post how jarring it was, so if you want to go look it up on NRPs site the report was from Thursday, July 10th. It reminds me of all those movies where the cop tells the motorist “Hey, get that broken taillight fixed” and the motorist of course responds with “what broken taillight?” because he obviously hasn’t seen the other 532 movies in which the cop then smashes the taillight with his night stick. "Oh, those job losses. I didn't notice them until you whipped out the magic nightstick there". The key difference, of course, being that those are movies, something which at least 35% of the American public has come to understand as not being real life.

I have to say, I honestly can’t decide if I’m mortified or excited by this new frontier in news reporting opened up by NPR. On the one hand, all pretense of reporting actual news has just gone out the window, but on the other hand, we are in for some really, really good stories in the near future. Next up: the Fox News Special Report on Illegal Immigrants with Laser Beams on their Friggin Foreheads.

Lovely

I turn and look lovingly at my beautiful, 7 months pregnant wife and think to myself “what a wonderful, incredible wife I have”. I feel the love I have for her radiating outwards. It fills the room. My wife turns to me, sees my love for her written plainly on my face, and stares softly back at me. Then, ever so gently, she says to me: “Hmm, I’m really going to have to trim those eyebrows of yours.”

Doesn’t that qualify us for an automatic upgrade to the next highest major wedding anniversary?