Meat Puppies. Sort of a cross between meatloaf and hush puppies. Not sure why we had to do this but as I drove with Da Chimpz to the mall yesterday we decided we needed to cook something different for dinner. Corndogs were too hackneyed a concept, but the idea of them made me want to deep fry something. We considered batter-frying a whole meatloaf but that seemed, er, impractical. And we weren't going to make a meat-block gingerbread house like that guy on Youtube ("Is this heaven? It's snowing bacon.")

So, a compromise: many miniature meatloaf sticks dipped into a cornmeal batter and browned in a peanut-oil jacuzzi.

Yeah, looked very alarming in the batter bowl; but once plucked from the hot oil we knew it was going to be tasty. Rammed each one with a wood skewer (everything tastes better when you put it on a stick) and even had some veggies on sticks roasting down below.

Dinner on sticks. Yum.

After that we did some Monster Truck racing on the Wii -- the new version is very difficult. So we put that aside pretty quickly and got back to the work of viewing every video available in the Netflix database.

The stockings are indeed hung. What a busy week, and today no different. After a last-minute trawl through the Kmarts I headed around the corner so we could properly deck the halls of our neighborhood. Take paper bags, sand, votive candles, and a whole lot of Christmas cheer, then mix it all together; the result is a West Bridge neighborhood standing tall as the star rises in the east.

Sweet.

But that's not all! We just dined on the almost-traditional fish feast of Christmas eve. "Almost" because we only did three varieties (not the seven that proper compliance with protocol would require). Would have been four but the salmon stayed in the fridge. And Da Chimpz liked the octopus -- bonus. And lemme tell ya: you put garlic, fresh parsley, and some sweet onion in a food mill then dump it out into a pan that is searing scallops in hot butter and you will come close to performing a feat of magic. I totally have to make that more often.

The third fish was tilapia -- just a couple of filets I got as a fall-back in case Mojo decided he didn't like anything else. But that little maniac is full of surprises. To say the least.

As is Cookie. He was singing along to a carol yesterday, inserting his own words (I hate when people do that):

"Happy Holiday in Cambodia..."

Santa better get here soon. I'm just sayin'.

We're getting into vacation mode here at Berea Rose. Christmas vacation. Got the tree lit, the boys home, and the inflatables down from the attic. Right now the Grinch is standing tall out front and the creche is dominating the living room. Alane can't stand the thing.

What a busy week. New job for Alane, holiday prep, lots of life maintenance projects to tend to (some vacation -- I'm busier than ever). But all is good. Well, unless you count the food at Golden Corral which the boys seem to love but which I found to be... wow.

Anyway, more later on our Christmas marathoning.

Woke up crazy early so I went downstairs and got the meatballs and gravy going. It's simmering now on the small back-burner, with some big beef ribs thrown in to melt away their bony goodness over the next few hours.

Still dark around here -- it's getting to be that time of year when the sun doesn't get over the horizon until around 7:30 which still seems eerie to me.

Went to the shopping center yesterday -- the outside stores, not the mall itself. Wasn't as crazy as I'd feared. As usual, the overly helpful staff at Beast Buy interrupted my product-browsing no less than three times to offer me assistance in finding expensive electronic products. One guy thrust a clipboard at me to review my deferred payment options. It turns out I could have that sweet blu-ray home theater system that isn't really worth all that money -- and not have to worry about paying for it for 18 months.

Heh. I thought consumers couldn't get credit these days. Or people were learning to live within their means. Or whatever the newspapers are speculating these days. No matter: the merry-go-round is apparently still turning, tickets still being sold. On lay-away.

Decorating for Christmas has begun here at Berea-Rose. It's a gradual process. Naturally, the music is one of the first things to come out. Then lights. That back room is pretty damn festive now. And from there it just gets bigger.

I'm watching the news on the local Fox station. The news-readers are so glum. Maybe it's because Cuyahoga County has no chance of cleaning itself up.

The local phone company knocked on my door today wanting to sell me their broadband TV service. I said I wasn't interested and they asked why. I said I don't get cable TV. That's a great way to end a conversation because it's a statement no one ever expects to hear.

Hey, at least Da Chimpz read books. When they're not eating the Halloween candy. Got heaps of it strewn all over Berea-Rose this week.

This pitcher, Lincecum, he looks familiar. I want to say he sat next to me at the Rush concert I went to in 1982 at Radio City, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't born yet. The other guy warming up in the bullpen has a Billy Mays beard. Pitch-man, indeed.

I'm also starting to think Berea-Rose is in some sort of electromagnetic vortex, as I can watch a game for about an hour with decent reception and then, blink-blink, it's all stutters and pixelation. Same thing happens with AM radio -- morning and evening the reception gets crappy.

Uh oh, stoner boy let two runners reach base. Time to break out the Oxi-Clean.

It was pretty damned cold this morning, so I decided to drive Da Chimpz to school. I was the humanitarian thing to do, considering that Cookie was in his gym shorts -- having forgotten all his sweat pants in his locker last week).

Anyway, we got out to the car and I realized just how cold it was: the windshield was iced. Didn't require scraping, but soon enough it will. I hate the cold, but summer is clearly over.

Oh, and another recent hint of things to come: last week I was in the kitchen hustling the boys into getting their breakfast and getting them off to school. Before I could ask Cookie which cereal he wanted he reached up to the top of the refrigerator to take down the box of Frankenberry. Scary. Not just the unnatural pink glow of that particular cereal. Moreso how big Cookie is getting.

Yeah, it's election season and the lawn signs are up. Lots of local issues being advertised. My favorite is the lawn sign urging approval of a local initiative to spend a boatload of money to build a few new schools to replace a few old schools. The signs read "save money, vote yes." Get it? They want people to vote yes, so they avoid saying "spend a boatload of money"; instead they make signs that scream "save money." That's marketing.

Which the local pols do a lot. One local ad campaign promotes the airport. It's an ad I've heard often on Cleveland radio; they even give the airport a catchy little tag-line "going places." That's great. My question is this: who the hell are they advertising to? I mean, if you live in the area you are probably aware that there's an airport here. And even if you aren't, you can call a taxi and say "take me to the airport" and find yourself at Hopkins quite readily -- because there's no other major airport near here until you get to Akron (and that place is tiny).

Not that all airport ads mystify me. I hear an ad for Newark Airport on the New York radio stations and that commercial plays up the retail shops and restaurants, urging travelers to arrive early so they can spend their money. So the ad campaign's objective is fairly clear. With Cleveland, it's just another waste of public money.

And it's not like we can't use that money elsewhere. I won't get started on maybe letting taxpayers keep their money. And I've already made clear that I don't favor spending a boatload of money to replace school buildings. So if the money must be spent on making Hopkins Airport more popular among the locals then I will make a bold suggestion: clean up Terminal C so it doesn't stink of urine.

Seriously, it has been months: every time I walk through Terminal C there's an under-the-boardwalk reek that simply doesn't go away. I even asked Alane's friend to verify this on Friday as she went to catch her flight. Her verdict: piss galore. Hasn't any advertising rep noticed this while jetting into town to pick up his payment? Or is that where they got the idea for "going places"?

Yar! We went to 9 o'clock Mass followed by two hours of Cub Scout meeting and no one had the decency to talk like a pirate. Scaliwags.

There is much moping these days at Berea-Rose: the Wii has bitten the dust. Reading discussion boards for DIY diagnostics, we first determined that it was a failing laser gun preventing the drive from reading the game disks. We order the part and I sat with Da Chimpz through several YouTube tutorials on tearing down the Wii, replacing the component, and putting it back together. And on Thursday night that's exactly what we did: prepping the dining room table for delicate microsurgery that lasted well over an hour (I was trying to be methodical and let them do as much of the process as I dared).

Alane had already gone to bed by the time we had it all back together, but even she knew right away (from our cries of "We don't rock!") that operation had failed. Feh. We consoled ourselves on Friday night by watching Mystery Science Theater's take on the 80s horror classic Zombie Nightmare. And this morning we started making a 3D robot in Blender. We'll figure this Wii thing out soon enough.

Fast forward now to the end of summer vacation -- wait, you passed it.

Yes indeed, summer vacation ended as of this morning when we dressed up Da Chimpz and carted them off to school to start another exciting year of (ahem) learning. And mischief.

Well, at least I can't complain about it not being a hot enough summer. Unlike last year this has been a real heater. But that's already fading away as the nights get cool (and cicada loud). It's all good.

We downloaded Blender over the weekend and have been playing with 3D modeling. That's some complicated stuff. We did make a rudimentary computer game (a cube that displays Cookie's face; you can make it bounce on floating planes that display gorillas, Mojo artwork, and Mojo himself -- just don't misjudge your leap or you'll fall into the abyss).

We recently watched Clash of the Titans. Not a bad movie, though the gods on Olympus were dressed like ELO performing on Don Kirschner's Rock Concert. And now every time Cookie or Mojo are heading to the bathroom they announce with a sinister flourish "Release the Kraken!"

I need to blog more often; there's so much I've missed.

For all the supposed ease of interconnectedness, I still find it cumbersome to shift photos from the Droid over to the PC from which I can then upload them to Blogger. Sounds simple, and I know it is, but I just don't have the patience to stage the operation the way I once did.

It's that impatience that has led this blog to dereliction.

But hey, maybe we can breathe some life back into it. I hope to get some reports from Hartford this week -- we hear there was a big party up there last night. We eagerly await a damage report.

Up late last night to sit by the fire, have a few drinks, and in the spirit of vino veritas contemplate the solutions to light speed and time travel.

I think we came close!

Of course, in the darkness I couldn't see that I'd been stepping in giant gobs of molten marshmallow that the kids had dripped and dropped in the grass. Didn't spot it until this morning when I got dressed for Mass and noticed big clumps of grass stuck to the side of my shoe. Went outside to pound it off and discovered I had marshmallow soles -- which IIRC were quite popular in the 1970s.

See, we did conquer time travel!

For now we're just hanging at the house. Earlier we went out back and lit off some firecrackers -- just a few packs. Later tonight will be the town fireworks over Polio Pond. Should be fun.

Had a lovely backyard breakfast with the neighbors this morning, flipping pancakes al fresco (though these days I can't even eat the things) after making a ton of Bob Evans sausage on my own stove to bring out. Lots of kids running about, with chocolate chip and/or blueberry smears across their faces.

Hot weather is descending upon Berea Rose this weekend. That's okay, I got the A/C on (having capitulated to Alane earlier in the week). Da Chimpz just got back from their gymnastics practice. I'll go downstairs and see what they're doing. Had them out front last night to throw the Nerf ball around -- always good for giving me the sore-shoulder for the next few days (but worth it).

Maybe we'll go to Mass this evening so I can spend the morning rolling out the meatballs (as one should spend a quality Sunday morning).

I wonder if Frylock is still singing Morrissey songs to himself? The more you ignore me, the closer I get...

I got a text message from Bazzukajoe the other day asking me why our hapless prez is once again coming to visit Ohio. My response: "He really wants me to be his friend." Which is actually quite a funny response considering there's some truth to it. Steve just now took it even further, crooning over the phone in his best Morrissey warble:

When you sleep
I will creep
Into your thoughts
Like a bad debt
That you can't pay.

Wow! Life has reduced itself to a sad-sack stalker song by Morrissey! Even the preceding line about how "I bear more grudges/Than lonely high court judges" is just a little too close to reality to be coincidence. This guy isn't like a bad debt we can't pay, he is bad debt.

Yes, the pain was indeed enough to make a shy bald buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder.

Went to a high schol graduation party last evening and everything was lovely -- not least because I resisted the urge to provide the putatve college freshman with gratuitous advice about what to expect. "Almost everyone you meet is full of crap," I wanted to say. "And the more authentic they are trying to be, the more full of crap they are." I kept it to myself; she's a smart kid and I tend to think she will figure this out for herself (thus achieving the non-classroom part of her education).

Went to a Mets game Thursday night. What the hell is a National League team from Queens doing in Cleveland anyway? It was a good time. Alane and I tried to remember the last time we attended a Mets game. We're pretty sure it was in 1999 -- a fistful of proofs of purchase from packages of Khans hot dogs got us cut rate seats to Shea on a pleasant summer night before children.

Haven't watched much of any baseball this year. But last night I made an exception. As unnatural as interleague play might be it has brought my hapless Mets into Cleveland to face off against my hapless Indians. So last night I plopped in front of the TV and watched me some game.

And you never saw two teams work so hard to blow the game! Lots of sloppy play, strange ump calls, and vuvuzela-strength-annoying commentary by the local sportscasters. But all in all a good game -- and a Met win!

Gotta wake Da Chimpz soon. School ended last week, so now they go to their day camp over in town. They like it. (Well, except for Mojo who thought it manifestly unjust that they declared half the wet field off limits yesterday even though he was sure there was no mud there. This bothered Mojo greatly and I fear he is becoming radicalized by the systemic oppression.)

Been meaning to give an update on the bacon soap situation -- things are looking up! What first seemed like just a dish of greasy goo has now solidified into something that looks and feels a lot like an honest-to-goodness bar of soap.




Stinks pretty bad. Leaves an yecho film on your skin after wetting it. And has red dye in it, so washing is not exactly what you'd be doing anyway...

But technically, I do think we created some soap here.

Still need to edit down the video for Youtube posting -- not that it's very interesting... Just me standing in my garage mixing caustic chemicals while being mocked by by wife and friends and abandoned by my children.

I got ideas, though. Bacon soap sounds like an excellent Fathers Day gift. Watch your mailbox, Don Vito. The neighborhood dogs are definitely going to chase the local letter carrier.

At the end of last year I came across instructions in a DIY magazine for making soap out of bacon fat. So of course, we decided we had to do it.

Well, after months of ingredient-acquisition, selfless consumption of bacon, and generalized thoughtless delay we finally got the gear together last night and went through the painstaking process.

Bottom line: we wouldn't last very long on the frontier -- and we had industrial lye, not even needing to leach it from campfire ashes.

I think I had more than half a gallon of bacon fat altogether. It's good to get that much refrigerator space back. I heated it on the outdoor grill and filtered it through an old t-shirt. When the Brydens came over we got started: plied ourselves with wine (for courage) then donned the protective gear in the makeshift lab set up in the garage.

The process lasted more than three frickin' hours. And we're not sure what we created is actually going to be soap. But we did drink a fair amount of wine, and the boys (knowing better than to stick around for longer than two minutes of this craft activity) had fun running the sidewalks, drawing pictures, playing Wii... anything but stirring the proto-soap goop we had in that big bowl in the garage.

The stuff is in my basement today, poured out in its mold, happily marbled with red-dyed goop for that classic bacon effect. It's not quite liquid, not quite solid, not quite grease-smelling. I'll let it cure for a few days before declaring it a failure.

This is what it's all reduced to (I'd offer explanatory text but have none):

Stopped today at the local Walmarts and found the epxerience so entertaining I had to send text-massage updates to Marlin as my shopping progressed.

And speaking of trashy fun, Cookie can't wait to go back to the paintball field. Yeah, I could do that.

Not much political commentary from Frylock or Big Kahuna these days: we're living in grim times and there's not much left to say... Maybe the only thing left to do is take bets on what collapses first: Europe, Greece, California, U.S., N.Y., who knows.

Is counterfeiting still considered illegal?

A while back we scoped out the nearby paintball field and Cookie was saddened to see that you had to be ten years old to play. And so began the countdown. In fact, the weekend before his birthday we went to Dicks (heh, Dicks) to buy ourselves some paintball facemasks -- we were making ready.

Today, we hit the field and made a day of it. The upshot: he's one Tough Cookie. And I am one out of shape old man. (All those deep-knee bends and duckwalking to keep the cover of odd-shaped obstructions has my legs super-sore already -- and that's just going to get worse tomorrow.)

Anyway, Cookie had a great time and that's all that matters. It is a pretty intense game and I knew he was a little nervous at first. We stuck together for the first few rounds and he got the feel for it. After I took a direct hit to the neck (yeah, ouch) I sat out what I thought would be only one or two more games. Cookie kept going back in; in the last game they let him pick the teams. He was by far the youngest player on the field all day, and everyone seemed quite amused at his willingness to play and his ability to take a hit (those friggin' paintballs hurt).

He even got hit in the neck, almost in the same place I got it. Now we have matching welts.

Tomorrow I'm taking a vacation day. I was going to drive around and get a bunch of things done. But if my hamstrings are screaming the way they are now, I think I'll just lie around and vegetate. Because what's better than that?

Today is Mojo's birthday. Thus begins that happy time of each year during which both Cookie and Mojo have the same odometer reading. And during the next four days I will say to them at least a hundred times, "you're both nine years old, y'know."

Yeah, they're going to get tired of me fast, if they haven't already.

Mojo's caper this week involved an in-class assignment: type a story on the computer and attach clipart. He did exactly that, composing an epic tale of a master criminal, the Easter Bunny, two penguins, Santa, a (random) New Years baby, and a ninja -- all locked in an epic conflict ultimately overshadowed by time's inexorable march upon man (which the ninja actually overcame -- by using his paintball gun to chase away the attacking New Years baby).

That little classroom assignment was sent home with a note directing that he rewrite the story "without ninjas or violence." Oh, and it had to be signed by a parent.

I gotta stop showing him clips from Youtube. (It also can't help that last week we went to the mall to get paintball masks -- because as soon as Cookie turns 10, we're heading to the paintball park!)

Was just playing Frank Sinatra for Mojo. After a few minutes he started singing along:

I've got poo
Under my chin

Don't you hate it when people do that to songs?

Ah, there's no better place to hear people express the values of the modern day doucheoisie than on public radio. And when that public radio program is telecast on public television, well that's just a tsunami of idiocy.

I was adjusting my antenna and testing reception when I stopped at an Ohio-based talk show that seemed to be focusing on the sorry state of the local economy. Things are terrible they said: no one is lending, no one is investing, and real estate is overbuilt. The two guests didn't exactly say"OMG, what're we gonna do now?" but nor did they provide any serious insights as to filling all that empty retail and industrial space.

In fact, when a woman called up to say she was ready, willing and able to set up a business if only the local zoning commissars would give her a variance, all they had for her was "gee that sucks."

Then they moved on to a story about a local company that's leaving for greener pastures -- and all they could talk about is the intense political and union pressure being put on the company to not pull the plug.

So they make it hard to open your business. And they make it hard to close your business. But for the life of them they can't figure out why no one wants to make a business investment here. Amazing. But hardly a fresh insight: I especially like the part in this video where the local hack politician brags about how easy it is for a business to build in Cleveland. Why, with his guidance he helped a constituent get all the paperwork done in about 18 months!

Hey, maybe if the politicians turn the screws a little tighter on investors and entrepreneurs -- maybe then we'll have that economic recovery everyone wants. That'll restore my lost property values. Asshats.

Utterly fascinating article appears in today's WSJ. It's got all the stuff of intense docudrama: mass violence, innocent victims, caring neighbors, perverse tax policy, actual poverty, and a greed that you know is there but are reluctant to call out. It's the dirty-details real-life stuff -- not the paint-by-numbers morality plays they show in pop culture news shows.

So as I drove to Home Depot today to buy dirt (there's an economics lesson somehwere in that statement) I was thinking about what they call the Tragedy of the Commons: how assets held for the "public good" are always gamed and wasted and ultimate do no good to anyone, let alone the public.

Which made me think of communism. Not in the normal sense of my taxes going up. Again. Like they do every year. Despite the nonsense I hear on television. But communism as a system of control over a unit of society. I decided that I was aware of only one well-functioning communist totalitarianism, and that would be my own household. All assets are held for the benefit of all, with all wealth ruthlessly redistributed, and everyone compelled to contribute in their own way.

Okay, we still have our power struggles. Like Alane walking into my man-cave to look over my shoulder while I type this -- as party leader I get more private space than the nomenklatura. (While our simian prole offspring duke it out in general population.)

And just like the real life commies we also have our dialectic paradoxes. So for instance, when I tell the boys, "your behavior is inappropriate," it will not suffice for them to reply, "I will not be repressed by your normative absolutes." No, son, you will be repressed. Because without repression communism cannot operate.

It's a harsh regime, but I see my neighbors run their house pretty much the same way. We respect each other for that -- but I don't think it has ever occurred to us to pool resources and try to run the two households (much less the whole neighborhood) in that collective model. (Here I'm picturing us barging into the home down the street and announcing that due to the relative size of their large-screen television, their household will also now be made part of our collective.)

Which thoughts swung my flightful mind back to the tragedy of the commons and the onerous tax bills that sap the funds from Cookie and Mojo's college funds. Meh, maybe by then I will have come up with a get-rich scam that swindles the masses and makes me wealthy enough to not care whether a working stiff can make it on his own.

But back to the WSJ article. It's all about the victim relief fund set up after a horrible shooting -- and the contentious fight that ensued over the size of the share distributed to each victim. Human nature and group dynamics being what they are, this stuff is inevitable. And as any thoughtful lawyer knows, the messiness of it all can almost never be resolved with a straightforward appeal to bright-line rules. But without bright-line rules the process will bend, as it must, to popular sentiments making outcomes variable (to put it nicely).

Is that justice? Is it even charity when it's done this way? Or does it not matter because the only reason we make donations is to make ourselves feel better -- tell ourselves we improved the plight of far-off victims, even though all we did was cast crumbs before them. Inviting a competition for a finite resource. Empowering a special master whose work will require a thick skin, an aversion to temptation, and superhuman wisdom.

Which makes me think again of taxes and all the crazy schemes aspiring to the ill-defined concept of "social justice." It's bad enough to consider all those competing for the scarce proceeds; worse to see all those grabby climbers asserting roles as special masters; worst is thinking through the cost to non-subjective justice.

Meh, at least people feel better.

The people who perpetrated the original Boston Tea Party were certainly an unruly mob -- and they knew it themselves, disguising themselves to cover, barely, evidence of their manifestly criminal activity.

And no one could have thought at the time it had been a step in the right direction. The Brits just tightened the screws on the local government, holding out for repayment on the ruined tea, making their control seen and felt. Did anyone really think dumping the tea would work? Did disapproving Tories condemn the lawless rampage? Sure, Sam Adams defended it -- said it was a necessary protest against illegitimate governance. But wouldn't the Tories just declare him a kook? A violent kook.

Today, they'd label him racist.

When I was in school, American history always seemed so boring. These days, it's captivating -- records of a log-ago past that read directly into the future.

I'm not much a fan of Google but I do appreciate their defiance of the censorship laws imposed by that powerful statist regime (the one in Asia). I especially liked the government apparatchik's denunciation of Google's move: he said the nation's leaders are "opposed to the politicization of commercial issues."

Get it? When you defend your right to convey thoughts and information you're politicizing the issue. Restricting the right is not political at all -- that's all done in the general interest. That sounds familiar.

Yep, that's the same rhetoric used by statists around the world to clamp down on individual liberties -- rights to speech, religion, association, and property. Yeah, there is a right to property but you'd never know it from reading the popular newspapers. Or listening to elected "leaders." Or watching Google's lobbyists perform their black arts. The busybodies want to tell you how to manage your own earnings, evaluate your investments, and run your businesses; attempting to maintain a zone of self-determination is condemned as rank politics. The busybodies themselves? They style themselves more as Plato's philosopher kings -- no politics there!

Just a brief observation on the state of the statists, as I sit here sipping my coffee and reading my WSJ, pining for a restoration of First Principles, happy to see a glimmer here or there, saddened to see them swamped by the corruption inherent to our fallen state.

WHEREAS an act was passed in the last session of parliament, intituled, An act for granting and applying certain stamp duties, and other duties, in the British colonies and plantations in America, towards further defraying the expences of defending, protecting, and securing the same; and for amending such parts of the several acts of parliament relating to the trade and revenues of the said colonies and plantations, as direct the manner of determining and recovering the penalties and forfeitures therein mentioned: and whereas the continuance of the said act would be attended with many inconveniences, and may be productive of consequences greatly detrimental to the commercial interests of these kingdoms; may it therefore please your most excellent Majesty, that it may be enacted; and be it enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that from and after the first day of May, one thousand seven hundred and sixty six, the above-mentioned act, and the several matters and things therein contained, shall be, and is and are hereby repealed and made void to all intents and purposes whatsoever.

Yeah, here they are comrades: the gangster-mobile and the slug-sled. We didn't do so well in the competition, as we expected. And the proceedings were lengthy indeed. So now we're back at Berea-Rose cooling out while Cookie does his homework, Alane watches XU play ball, and Mojo rolls around on the living room carpet.

Trying to avoid the news sites this evening, as I find all this advancing statism to be so friggin depressing. Infuriating, actually.

Later today we go to Mass, after which the Cub Scouts hold their Pinewood Derby races. Da Chimpz have crafted a pair of wacky racers using the crude tools in our basement -- that POS plastic miter box and saw cost me about $9 at Home Depot several years ago and even brand new it barely worked. Ah well, we did our best -- we're not exactly going into these races with any spirit of competition.

"Mojo, the wheels on your car kind of point in all different directions. I don't think you're going to win any races. Is that OK?"

"Yeah."

I also asked hi if I could paint his car brown and give it yellow spots. Then I had to talk him out of that.

Gotta give credit where it's due: if I wake up at 4 a.m. in a NYC hotel room, it's very unlikely that I'll be able to find an open newsstand anymore. And the few bodegas that run 24-hours -- I don't want to drink their yecho coffee anyway.

So it's nice to know that here at Berea-Rose the WSJ hits my driveway before 5 a.m. -- today I was all set up in my back room with hot coffee and a crisp newspaper by 4:30. That's living.

The weather is finally breaking around here, with temps going into the 40s yesterday. We broke out the Nerf and hit the street to toss it around. Then I got Da Chimps' bicycles into fighting shape and they rolled around a little while longer. Might even make it to 50 degrees later this week. In the Cleveland area, that's as good as August.

Mojo told me this morning that he wanted to make a poop so large that it would poke out of someone else's toilet.

I found this quite ambitious on its own -- even without his added goal that someone be sitting on that toilet when this happened.

I told this to my co-worker and his only response was, "And this is after you cut off the cable TV?"

Makes me think I should turn the service back on -- this kid's brain is a little too active.

Right now I'm blasting some old (it's old already!) Leftfield on the stereo downstairs and for some reason it's making me think of Thanksgiving 2006 when Merle and Ree joined me in the kitchen of Berea-Rose and we suddenly fell into a spontaneous symphony of celebratory food-prep -- as if we'd been making the sausage stuffings and squash soups as a team our whole lives. Reemus and Marlo: you are the coolest cousins.

And Mojo is one messed up kid.

The jesuitical Mojo has declared a Lenten sacrifice: for 40 days he will forgo gaming on his Nintendo DS.

As with all things Mojo, the sacrifice comes with an out: all the good games are on the Wii. Giving up handheld gaming leaves a loophole large enough for Mario to drive his Kart through.

But last night brought a further Motion for Relief: Mojo wanted to play a GameBoy game, and wanted to do it without breaking his faux Lenten resolution. At first, I misunderstood his request:

"Well, it hardly seems consistent with giving up handheld gaming on the DS to then just do all your handheld gaming on the GameBoy. But since it is a different platform, I guess you'd still be within your commitment."

But I had it wrong. He wanted to plug the GameBoy game card into the DS and play it that way. (Apparently the platform is backward-compatible.) The rabbinical court of Mastandrea promptly ruled this technique out of bounds.

Got a pot full of beef shanks and meatballs simmering in the stovetop. Berea-Rose is filled with a heavenly aroma -- perfect for a sacred Sunday morning (even one that has Mojo sitting in a living room corner furiously thumbing the controls of his GameBoy).

I like to keep track of things that don't matter. It keeps my mind blissfully unburdened by thoughts and cares that might otherwise have real consequence.

And so I declare that I just now used our basement shower-stall for the second time ever. And it was a good shower. I'm not sure what I was thinking when we first moved in, but after the moving van dumped out all our belongings back in May 2006 I happily dropped into place a bar of soap and a half-empty bottle of shampoo. What, did I think I'd be washing down there several times a week? Who knows.

Even today I didn't wake up planning to shower down there. In fact, I skipped the shower altogether for the day's first trip to Giant Beagle. Unshaven and unwashed I walked the aisles, loaded up on the grocery, and frightened the locals. Got back and did a few things out in the garage -- collapsing boxes (Space Ghost says it's the responsible thing to do) and changing the rear wiper on the Subaru.

(Oh, and that too is a first -- friggin car has been scraping by on the same stripped and exhausted rear wiper since we drove it off the lot back in 2006.)

Anyway, I shaved at the tiny sink in the bathroom off the kitchen (another first!) because Alane was cleaning the upstairs bathroom. Then I went up and got ready to shower. Then Alane saw me. From behind her caustic washrag she shot me the hairy eyeball -- as if I was about to undo all her work.

"I'm taking a shower, not a colonic."

It didn't matter, so I went to the basement. And what a treat: it's a totally no-frills stall with an excellent pre-Gore showerhead and that half-full bottle of Clairol Herbal Essences clarifying shampoo (with palm oil!) that I must've first opened back in 2005. I cranked up the hot water and luxuriated. Great experience. The bare-bulb lighting created a perffect underground ambiance and the stall's industrial utilitarianism was perfect for blasting the industrial stink off my no-frills body.

And now what remains of my hair smells as it did back in 2005.

Still got a few things to do today. Been a busy week around here. I've taken a new tack in waking the boys for school each morning -- I blast the rather-strong speakers on my computer in the room across the hall and play something ridiculous. Yesterday it was this:

A ton of snow fell on Berea-Rose yesterday. Da Chimpz were still out there today playing in the tunnels they burrowed through the mighty banks.

Later, with Mojo at the mall with his grandma, Cookie and I had vicious snowball fight in the driveway. I hate to say it but I think he won -- effectively landing a giant snow-form right onto the flat of my face, where it exploded in a cloud of tiny ice crystals. I became a Bumble.

Got a nice fire going downstairs. Alane just turned the game on so maybe I'll watch some of it. Or not -- I just don't have the patience.

And what the hell are these Duraflame logs that purport to burn in "festive" colors? The flame is just sort of bluish. Until you throw in some regular wood logs, like I just did (and like you're not supposed to). Then they burn very blue. And big. Eh, better than that stack of newspapers I immolated the other night. Made the house stink like the apartment buildings on the corner of 38th Street. Glad that's over.

I've been in a mischievous mood this week, so I got out my ancient Dr. Demento audio. Now Da Chimpz are familiar with the classics -- yesterday I rousted them from bed by blasting Frank Zappa singing "watch out where the huskies go, don't you eat that yellow snow." Then we went downstairs for breakfast (not St. Alfonzo's pancakes; I did not steal the margarine).

We also found this online. And we are struck by its genius. Spatula.



Oh, and there's also this guy. Genius? You be the judge.

Last night I was watching Cops and they had a segment filmed in Palm Beach County. I was especially fascinated when the text on the screen showed that the cop was patrolling the Northlake area. I saw that and said out loud: "North cake."

I couldn't help it; it's a reflex.

Alane, who was disgusted that I'd be watching the show, was sitting next to me reading a book. I picked up the phone and said to her: "I'm going to call Steve and get him to say the words 'north cake.'"

So I dialed the phone and told Steve that I was watching a police car patrol Northlake. He said: "North cake."

This morning I got up very early and started the gravy to the lilting tunes of The Smiths. Been a while since I played that stuff. And I had to laugh as Morrissey groaned out his "...the calf that you carve with a smile, is murder..." as I was just then in the process of slicing some beef shanks to get better browning of the meat around the bone.

I'll make the meatballs when we get back from Mass. Maybe for that I'll play "Every Day Is Like Sunday."

So met a total Debbie Downer today. People like that don't deserve any macaroni.
On a much better note, I'm trying out a new skincare. I think my eczema will clear up.

We rented the nature film "Earth" this weekend -- that HD spectacular that features many of the planets most interesting and tasty animals. As we watched I was a bit concerned that the film's soft-propagandizing would have an effect on Da Chimpz, but I needn't have worried. As they showed some weird-looking cranes migrating from Mongolia to India over rugged mountains I heard Cookie singing under his breath "Holiday in Cambodia."

Quite right.

No WSJ today. Maybe they're not printing today. So my paper delivery service is either mistakenly or mockingly giving me a chance to read the Plain Dealer -- that's what was in my driveway this morning. I rarely read it because it is profoundly crappy and dishonest.

It still is -- I read a few articles just now and saw all the familiar laziness of conventional thinking. Sad, but hey, that's entertainment.

This blog has been dead all year -- we rang in 2010 without the obligatory message of high hopes! What the hell, it snowed around here for about two weeks straight earlier this month. Only in the last week did we get above freezing long enough to put some melt on.

We must ask Jenia about the snow levels in Russia and compare them to Berea. Everything these days feel so... Soviet.