Wild Assertions Unsuported by Evidence

In which your humble narrator makes unsubstantiated claims.

Having always quietly envied the undeserved confidence of idiots, I have decided to forgo my usual personal standards of argument and make several wild claims. They are, in no particular order:

• Secretary of the treasury, Timothy Geithner is clearly an elfin prince, impersonating a human being in order to spread faerie mischief throughout the financial sector.

• Orange is the most dangerous color.
• "Molecules" are just a big joke perpetrated by scientists on an unsuspecting public.
• Saskatchewan has a purpose, and once we know what it is, there will be a new golden age of television.
• You know Rhode Island? Well the locals don't call it that. They refer to their state as "Uncle Phil."
• Animals whose plural names aren't different than the singular form (like "moose") are the accountants of the animal kingdom.
• "France" doesn't exist. It's a cleverly wrought fantasy country designed to collect the excess sneers of conservative politicians in the United States and United Kingdom. 

Children looking dignified

In which your humble narrator shows off his progeny.

Child #1contemplates something in his weird little brain.

Child #2 smears tasty Indian food all over her face, and yet manages to maintain a certain dignity during the experience. She looks like she's testifying before a congressional committee. "Senator, if you'll let me finish..."

Spring, when a young man's fancy turns to avoiding being hit by an Audi

In which your humble narrator marvels at the natives' Jekyll and Hyde behavior when it comes to anything with wheels. 

Minnesotans are not friendly. They are "nice." They will tell you this themselves. There's an entire cottage industry of "Minnesota Nice" merchandise and paraphernalia. There's a freakin' Wikipedia page for Minnesota Nice! But as best as I can tell, the niceness generally only means that they will grudgingly answer direct questions put to them and they generally refrain from spitting on strangers.

All bets are off when you put these people on wheels. Cars, bikes, roller blades, put a Twin Citizen on wheels... and well, you have a wheeled menace. Amazingly this extends even to shopping carts. Back in my old Rust-Belt, Ohio home, people sort of moved out of the way in the Kroger so you could pass by them. Not here. Here, people are so militantly resistant to admitting that other human beings exist in the universe (when wheels are involved) that they will park their carts in the middle of the damn aisle and pretend you don't exist while you glare at them. Then you finally clear your throat and say "Pardon me," and the nasty local glares at you, because you've interrupted her careful meditation on Frosted Spelt Germ Puffs.

Cyclists here constantly write letters to the editors of numerous local publications about bastard car drivers and how we all have to share the road. Of course I've seen one cyclist stop at a stop sign in the last 60 days. Three have failed to stop and turned left in front of my car while I was stopped at the stop sign.

And the drivers are terrible. After an awful winter, the warm weather has made people even more hell-bent on driving like maniacs now that there's no ice or snow to contend with. Drunk driving is tolerated to a degree that's both embarrassing and completely contradictory to our image as a northern socialist nanny-state. Ten people died this past weekend in traffic accidents. In a metro area of 3.5 million, that's high.

Last session, the legislature passed a ban on texting while driving. This was before Oprah's crusade too. But since we only have about 7 highway patrol officers nobody pays a damn bit of attention.

Wheels go on, brains go off.

Trans-species confusion

In which your humble narrator considers that he may have committed a strategic error.

I think I accidentally taught Child #1 to play fetch with Child #2. This wasn't really my intention. The three of us were horsing around upstairs in our gracious master bedroom with en-suite bathroom,* and throwing an itty-bitty soft-sided (vinyl maybe?) basket ball around the room. At some point the baby decided that she was going to use her mad crawling skills to chase the little ball when I threw it across the floor.

Child #1 recognized a nascent game immediately and began to throw the ball across the room with the express purpose of having her chase it down. All the while he shouted encouragement such as "Go, get it!" and "Good girl!"

Is she a baby or a puppy? She already drools a lot, eats anything off the floor and bites people when she's in a bad mood. I'm afraid this is just going to add to the confusion.

*It's the entire second story of the house! Which would be impressive if we didn't live in a teeny-tiny, post-war, ticky-tacky cape cod.

Sass Mouth

In which your humble narrator shares some choice utterances from that fount of sass, Child #1.

Upon being told that his baby-sitter was coming (and he loves her):

"She's not my friend any more."

Upon being encouraged to eat some pieces of apple:

"No. It's too dangerous."

Upon being encouraged to defecate in the potty rather than in his diaper:

"I will never poop in the potty. It's gross."

Upon being presented with a slice of homemade pizza made by his father:

"I don't like your pizza. I like the pizza the man brings to the door."

Reflections on an undocumented week

In which your humble narrator writes a list rather than composing a substantive essay about something of interest.

• Lists are easier to write than regular posts.
• This is the earliest spring I've ever seen in 12 years in Minnesota.
• Undergraduates have a hard time focusing when the temperature is above 60 degrees.
• A friend applying to the bar (you know, like, lawyering) asked me to write a a character reference for her application (being her friend with the best ratio of "length of time known" to "ability to write sentences"). I emailed the first line of my draft letter to her: 

"Dear State Board of Lawyerliness: J.R.T. is one of the finest, most ethical hoboes that it has ever been my privilege to drink with under a bridge. She only stole my bottle of gin once and that was my fault since I pushed her shopping cart into the river."

• Child #2 has taken to signaling that she has finished her meal by hurling the remainder of her food to the floor, or grasping it and rubbing it vigorously into her scalp.
• Potty training Child #1 is a total drag.
• Apparently, I like talking about the Large Hadron Collider way more than most people. Particle acceleration is cool and "Large Hadron Collider" is fun to say. 
• On a related note: I am made inordinately happy when man-made calamities do not end life as we know it. First they fired up the Large Hadron Collider and we didn't get blinkered out of existence in an "oopsie-doodle" accidental black hole. Second, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann appeared together on stage in Minneapolis and the resulting explosion of jingoistic malarkey proved to be entirely metaphorical, leaving my beloved adopted homeland relatively unscathed.
• Manchego is a tasty cheese.

Wife-a-roo's quotable quotes

In which your humble narrator relates an utterance from his spouse of nearly nine years.

Granted, it was relaying a pronouncement from Child #1, but still.

"Your son told me that I was round like a circle."

 "Wait. In reference to what?" I said. "He was feeling my head," she replied.