Bear arms, penguin arms, everybody’s armed
In a house with four boys, even the penguins go about armed to the teeth.
Month: October 2009
Think bloodsucking is hot? Ever have your blood sucked?
Philosophy professor Stephen Amsa writes this in The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Any careful reading of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, for example, will reveal not only a highly sexualized description of blood drinking, but an erotic characterization of the count himself.” What he means to say, I think, is that a Freud-besotted modern reading confirms the …
Think bloodsucking is hot? Ever have your blood sucked? Read More »
Kill your television before it gets you
The average child between the ages of two and five in the U.S. watches over 32 hours of television per week, according to the latest Nielsen numbers. Nearly five hours a day, in other words. Given the greater sleep needs of children, this means roughly a third of the typical young child’s time is spent …
They mean well
Well, I caught the bubonic plague, but it looks like I’m going to recover. As I write this, my two littlest boys, Isaac and Isaiah, have taken it upon themselves to clean the house. First there is the predictable fighting over the vacuum cleaner: “No Isaac! I do the cweaner! I do the cweaner! I …
Caroline
Her suffering ended ten years ago tonight. A decade can take forever to pass, with each day stretching into the next into the next, yet you can come to the end of it and feel like all those things you lived and thought would kill you were only yesterday. Sometimes you still wake up and …
Do as I say…
It’s guy night at the Woodlief house. Wife is gone, me and the boys are fending for ourselves. I’m making chili. Caleb stands beside me at the counter as I chop vegetables. He sees me pick up a fat jalapeno pepper. “Ooo, Dad, don’t make it too spicy.” I launch into a disquisition, sounding very …
If only these people would read…
“Though a man’s conviction that all he achieves is due solely to his exertions, skill, and intelligence may be largely false, it is apt to have the most beneficial effects on his energy and circumspection. And if the smug pride of the successful is often intolerable and offensive, the belief that success depends wholly on …
And now for something completely different
I’ll not forget the charming maid Who asked if I had been flambéed And, seeing I knew little French, Proceeded without pause to drench My clothes with liquids dark and strong, And purred I wouldn’t feel it long, Then closed the door and dropped the latch And asked me if I had a match. What …
Why we don’t invite crazy uncles to dinner
Really? I mean, really? I know the Nobel Peace Committee has a sad history of defaming itself, beginning, some would say, with its award to Henry Kissinger in 1973, and solidified, any reasonable person would agree, with the award to Yasser Arafat in 1994. The 2002 award to Carter suggested that it’s good thoughts and …
Etched in flesh
I must confess that my first reaction, upon hearing about the thug who had his seven year-old tattooed with his gang’s symbol, was that the solution seemed pretty straightforward: a bullet under the chin of the sperm-donor, along with a good home for his son, and if someone will pay for two plane tickets to …
There’s always runner up
Isaiah John, at two years old, was born to be a last child. If you are trying to get something accomplished, he hurls his body against your legs, slings his arms upward, and begs to be held. If there is anything sharp or spillable near the counter’s edge, he will lay hold of it and …
Otherwise reasonable people
On a long drive through red-state country yesterday I decided to listen to talk radio. I heard Rush Limbaugh mock the First Lady, in his extended rant about her lobbying Olympic officials to place the 2016 games in Chicago, because she said sports can give children a sense of what they can accomplish, that they …
