puredanger.com Blog

Kids artwork May 31, 2006

I put up some new pics of artwork from Ella and Truman. Ella is starting to do her first representational pictures. The April one shows her first real stab at a person – if you squint, you can make out hair, legs, and a face. The May one shows a picture of Ella with mom and dad, which is showing some refinement. She had a great one recently of sheep (blobs) with fences around each but I can’t find it at the moment.

Then there are some from Truman – he’s starting to experiment with color and mixes of crayons and stickers as you can see. He claims that every drawing is a dolphin, regardless of what it looks like. Not sure why.

My favorite joke

Part 1:

One day a man with no arms shows up at a monastery, asking if there is any work.  The monk thinks for a while and asks if the man can ring the bell in the tower by running into it with his head.  The man with no arms thinks he can manage that and starts his new career while the monk returns to his devotions.

For several days, the man happily rings the bell.  Then one day he slips, misses the bell, and falls off the tower, plunging to his death.  The local constable shows up and asks the monk whether he knew the man.  The monk says “No, but his face rings a bell.”

Part 2:

Same monastery, few months later.  A second man with no arms shows up and says he heard the monastery has a job for a guy with no arms (and an opening).  The monk explains and the man takes the job.  He also happily rings the bell for a few days before slipping and plunging to his death.  The constable shows up and again asks if the monk knew the man.  The monk says “No, but he’s a dead ringer for the other guy.”

Clerks II Trailer May 25, 2006

The Clerks II Trailer for your viewing pleasure….

Phone company idiocy May 24, 2006

So, recently I moved into St. Louis west county and the dreaded 636 area code and away from the beloved 314 area code that I have known all my life. As far as I can tell, it is completely random whether you need to dial the area code and/or the preceding 1 when calling a 636 number. There are four possible combinations and I seem to dial at least 2 before getting it correct.

I am already exhausted from hearing that piercing do-dwa-DWEEP sound and that stupid phone company message that you have to dial a 1 (or not dial a 1) or whatever and to “please try your call again”. Now, in this day, if you know what I want to do and how to do it, just DO IT FOR ME. Why do I need to hear a message, hang up, and dial some slightly different number if you know what I intended? Just DO IT FOR ME – I don’t need to be involved or even notified. Just imagine if you were using your favorite web browser and you typed in “sears.com” and it said “Do-dwa-DWEEP. I’m sorry, you must enter the hypertext protocol http:// at the beginning of a URL. Please try your URL again.”

It’s getting to the point where I don’t even call people on the land line anymore because I’m afraid of the message. I just can’t take it. Much easier to pick up the cell phone and unambiguously dial 10 digits (or a shortcut of 7 if I’m in the same area code). No wonder so many people have killed off their land lines in favor of cell phones.

Stinkerbutt May 23, 2006

For some reason we started playfully calling the kids “stinkerbutt” when they got into something they weren’t supposed to but that weren’t particularly serious. For instance, Truman gets into the pantry sometimes and distributes boxes of Jello throughout the house.

When we catch him starting to do it he’ll get his mischievous grin and say “stinker…butt”. And when his sister gets in trouble he says “sister…stinker…butt”. This is usually quite funny but comes at a time when people are upset so can either be inappropriate or sometimes it totally breaks the tension.