Big Daddy Paul

I visited my friends Tunzel and Matt this past weekend.  They took me to Matt’s parents’ house in Maine and we had a splendid time.  Mostly, we ate and talked about where we were going to eat next.  They are truly good friends, as they put up with my whining about how cold it was and listened to me drone on and on about how much I know about everything.  They also politely ignored all the bad advice I dispensed about how they should lead their lives, not a difficult task considering I mistook hand saniti

zer for soap while in the shower and liberally applied a gob on my head.  (I could detail why I was using hand soap in lieu of shampoo in the first place, but it wouldn’t really help my cause out that much.) At least my hair is now sanitized, which is nice.

Tunzel gave me some feedback that the lame clip art that I use as eye candy for my blog is tired, and I need to use more pics of Malcolm and I.  Since they are both talented writers, they also told me that I needed to have a presentable “author photo” to use to show off my literary side.  I thought, “Better my literary side than my back side, so, without further adieu: My Author Photos.

#1 – Writers read and write.  Maybe I wrote all those books behind me.  Maybe I read them all.  Either way, I’m pretty literate.

#2 – I have it on good authority that serious authors have menacing cats.  Tunzel and Matt told me so!  Such a pretty kitty. Such a serious author.

#3 – All that reading and writing causes good authors to need glasses.  Sometimes good authors think about things while gnawing on their glasses.  I am thinking these glasses don’t taste very good.

#4 – Good authors usually write indoors, causing their skin to become a sad pale hue.  So, your pictures must be shot in black and white.  Plus, check out the bitchin’ wildlife art in the background.  I am really hitting my stride here.

#5 – I got to thinking, if good authors need glasses because they read and write so much, then really good writers must need twice as many glasses.  Plus, I get to look down my nose at you, you with your shocking grammar. Don’t dangle your prepositions here!

#6 – If I need twice as many glasses to do all that reading and writing, surely, I must need twice as many hands to be as prolific as I am.  I really got it all, I am pale, blind as a bat and prolific.  Who wouldn’t want to read my writing?

Which do you like best? Vote in the poll!

Balloon boy’s daddy appears to be headed to jail for a while.  Of course, as a parent, I revel in delight at others’ misfortune.  Everything bad that happens to somebody else is something bad that is not happening to me.  At the very least, I take the opportunity for it to be a teaching lesson, things that the rest of us can do to avoid looking this bad.

Do Want Your Kid to End Up Like This?

First, don’t name your kid Falcon.  For that matter, don’t name your kid after anything in the bird species.  I know that certain baseball fans out there will think I am crazy, but bird names are creepy.  There absolutely needs to be a person on the other side of that conversation, being the voice of reason, “I want to name our kid Falcon. No!!! Kids named after birds hide in boxes in the attic! What about  Jimmy, or Steve?”  If you must name your kid after an animal, at least make it a horse.  Ponyboy or Clyde(sdale) are much better.

Second, never conspire to commit a felony with a 7 year old.  I got this one from Randi Rhodes.  Seven year-olds will generally not withstand the scrutiny of intense questioning, so if you are going to try and perpetrate a fraud, don’t team up with someone who will give you up for a candy bar.   I have a time coming up with things I can do to commit crimes, but, being a dad, if I did come up with a Jim-dandy of a plot, I can guarantee that it would absolutely do not involve my son.  Kids are young minds to mold into greatness, not accomplices.  If you are looking to exploit your kid, have them work in a coal mine like the good ole days.

Lastly, never, ever try to put yourself in the limelight.  It will never work out.  Most of the time, the public will seize on something that you do, like hide your kid in a box in the attic, and use it to make you look bad.  I myself have many things that I don’t want the public to find out about.  I collect ice cream men.  You know the creepy guys who go around selling ice cream in weird vans? I have about a dozen of them locked up in our crawl space.  Seems rather innocuous to me, but I could see how a news story about me might portray us in an unflattering light.

So, I should be just fine. My kid’s name is Malcolm, and not Pigeon, and I do not use him to outsmart the authorities. We are not going to be famous, and the bevy of weirdos will forever remain hidden in our crawlspace.  Yep, everything is fine in the Wilson-Schwartz household.

Here’s my new blog!  After a fight several months ago, Amy flipped me a $20 bill and told me to go buy myself something pretty.  I think she was trying to condescend as $20 is more money than I made all last year.  Of course, my first thought was to spend $10 on a huge, greasy double cheeseburger and the other $10 on a pretty new pair of sweatpants.  (That would show her!)  Upon further reflection, I decided instead, to upgrade my blog.  Sure the old blog was nice, with its standard templates and its flaccid score on the excitement scale.  I wanted to be proud of something, though.  My softball skills have eroded quite a bit, I haven’t ever won a fantasy football championship, and the only other objective measure of my success as a person (Malcolm’s development as a non-knife wielding human) isn’t going very well.  For all intents and purposes, I am a complete failure.

I needed something to jump start me into being a winner again.  So, I redesigned my blog.  You could say that this is chapter one of “How Paully Got His Groove Back.”  You could also say that Kevin Henney, a web designer did all the work redesigning the blog, but let him get his own groove back!)   This blog is my new precious, and I am going to cherish it.  You’ll see new kinds of posts.  You’ll also see better versions of the old kinds of posts.  Consider this your one stop shop for articles on food, parenting, goofy stories, children’s book reviews, movie/TV reviews, and weird pictures of squirrels.  Plus, I am going to start torturing myself and my family by going on weird diets!  So, stay tuned, the best is yet to come.  If you have an idea that you want me to comment on, let me know! If you don’t like me or what I do, let me know!  So, poke around a little bit and enjoy the new site.  I know I will!

P.S. Thanks Kevin.  Kevin, for those who don’t know him, is my number one fan.  How do I know this? He signed up for my facebook fan group first.  What number will you be?

I am constantly looking for photos to include in my blog, so I do a lot of searches for images on Google. I have noticed that, despite whatever search terms I use, pictures of cats invariably come up. We have a cat, so it’s not like I am a dog loving, anti-catter. I just wonder why is it that so much of the internet is dedicated to the enjoyment of silly cat pictures.

Don’t think it’s a problem? While looking for pictures of “funny roast chicken”, I got this.

My search for “Jazz Hands” came up with a ton of cats, most of which looked like this:

Sadly, even my search for “absolutely nothing” returned this pearl:

I am not sure if Google is a dumb, cat obsessed computer, or if it is rather savvy and knows that people will click on cat pictures no matter what else they are doing. I do know that we are obsessed with the kitty pics, as there are even support groups on the internet for people who really enjoy looking at pictures of cats. Things have gotten so bad that a counter movement has started and 9/9/09 was designated as “Day Without Cats” day. And these are just the pictures. If you enjoy watching videos of cats, you can spend the next three years of your life watching the 965,000 cat videos on you tube. Luckily, I don’t have to deal with that, as my blog is not multi-media, yet.