Coco Tuesday

Coco is tired of weepy Madge and it's hard for me not to giggle when he rolls his eyes and asks if she's crying again. But she fell asleep before eight and before Coco tonight, so tomorrow should be better. To cheer her up, though, he said, "Everybody who loves Madge, raise your hand." If the cat had been in the room, Coco would have raised the cat's paw, too. He's done it before.

In other Coco news, he's talking non-stop. And with my super-sore throat, I just can't keep up. We realized that I could write on dry-erase boards (which we have in the house), but Coco's reading is very selective. He sounds out the first letter and guesses the rest. So we gave up on that one fairly quickly.

Investments Gone South?

Now they can do so literally.
I read about it in the NYTimes and now I'm giving them a bit of free advertising here. Why not? Their plan is cutely creative.
The idea is this. Elite Island Resorts is taking the German saying "lieber nichts als gar nichts" to heart. (It means, "better nothing than nothing at all.") And, as a result, they are taking stocks as payment for rooms. The kicker is this: they're taking stocks at the rate they were trading on July 1, 2008 (up to $5,000 per room).
The trade is empty rooms for worthless stocks. Everyone wins.
But don't order room service. Who's to guarantee you don't get the food from July 1?

Madge Monday

Madge has been weepy lately, especially at bedtime. She says it's because Mommy's going out of town so close to Christmas. Sure, that's part of it, but there's more. At least tonight she admitted that there's more which she doesn't want to tell.
And I almost started giving suggestions but realized that could backfire too easily. As in, I'd be giving her way more things to cry about than she had ever really considered before.
"What is it, honey? Did your friends say something about how you dress?"
"No."
"Did you find out [BLANK] doesn't exist?"
"No."
"Did you realize you will die someday?"
"No."
etc.
Instead, I'll just wait and see what may be forthcoming.

reflexive actions

Not the kind you think about much, obviously.
But every once in a while an illness reminds you of them. Mine is swallowing. I never knew how often you - I should say "I" but I include all of us in this - swallow extra spittle that finds its way into your mouth - not "my mouth" because that odd mix of personal pronouns would get a little too intimate.
We thought it was strep but I don't have the stuffy sinus achiness and thickness that plays the countertenor to the difficulty to swallow. I went to the doctor and found out that it's essentially a really bad sore throat. Good, because I'm not contagious, but bad because I just feel like a big sissy now.
And that's what she said, too: "Pfffft. It's just a sore throat, you big sissy."
Well, those may not have been her exact words. I'm paraphrasing. What she said was something like "pharyngogobbledygook." But it's what I took away from the visit.

a blurb I'd like to see

"...as educational as de Sade's 120 Days in Sodom, but without the annoying preachiness!"
--USA Today

confused

I had this headline in my inbox: Landmark Strip Club Burns.
And for some reason I thought it was a kind of skin condition.

Of course, it's not.

cold

Maybe I'm too stingy with our nighttime heating, but last night the cat crawled under the covers and curled around Julie's hot-water bottle.
Nah. It's not too cold.
He's a pussy.

relationship status

Facebook is careful about people's relations to one another. So, when I realized I could change my relationship status and finally did click on the box that said married and then filled in my wife's name, it zapped this message to Julie:

Philipp said on Facebook that you two are married. We need you to confirm that you are, in fact, married to Philipp.
To confirm this relationship request, follow the link below:...

I think the bit that made Julie laugh so much was the great timing of the ", in fact," which is quite good, I must say.
(This relationship request, by the way, was confirmed more quickly than the original proposal. It's amazing what twelve years of marriage can do.)
I'm just wondering, if I changed it to "single," would she would get an email about that as well?

And to all of you who have congratulated me on facebook, thanks. I'm registered at Amazon.

Coco Tuesday

Part of our wonderful Thanksgiving weekend included a trip to Macy’s Santaland. If you go on a Sunday morning, as we did, the lines are non-existent and the Santas are relaxed. (Incidentally, I typed this up in MSWord and its spell-check does not allow for the plural of Santa; they believe!) And, to continue that thread of thought, the elves were more informed this year. I think Coco wore his Omnitrix (MSWord has not heard of the Omnitrix) this year to test them, and when an elf commented on the “cool Ben Ten watch” he nodded approvingly. Last year’s elves didn’t know whereof he spoke when he mentioned Ben Ten and this really worried him.
Anyway, one of the greater Random Coco Inventions is that he just started chanting the word Santaland and it eventually morphed, via an extension of the final “a” into something resembling Robert Plant’s banshee yell in Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.”
I am not kidding. He’s seen “School of Rock,” after all. So we’ve expanded it. Now we play it on the iPod and sing along.
So far we have:

Daddy: DiGUNG-dugga-DIgah, DiGUNG-dugga-DIgah…

Coco: Santalaaaaaaa-AAAND! Santalaaaaaaa-AAAND!

Daddy: He comes from the land of the ice and snow,
Where the elves make toys and the reindeer go.
Santa makes his rounds.
He flies his sleigh to new lands,
To hand out gifts, singing and crying:
Oh, children, I am coming!
Kiddies sleep, parents snore,
And in the morning they hear, “More! More! More!”

DiGUNG-dugga-DIgah, DiGUNG-dugga-DIgah…

Coco: Santalaaaaaa-AAAND! Santalaaaaaaa-AAAND!

Daddy: He comes from the land of the ice and snow,
Where the elves-

Coco: Daddy, can you stop that and we do the Santalaaaaaaa-AAAND part again?

The pardoned

I guess what I was trying to get at about the names is that they sound too Dickensian to be true, as if Marc Rich and Pincus Green would be followed by Sir Sydney Coinpurse, Whelan Dealings, Saint-John Pennypincher, James Gross, Franklin Netwirth, and Johnny Cash.

Catching Up

I'm trying to be a little more informed about what's going on, seeing as how I voted and all and figure I ought to be an example to the kids.
So, there's this Eric Holder guy who wants to be Attorney General. Or, to be more lawyerish: he has been asked to be the Attorney General and to the best of his knowledge, he did not decline.
And the sticky point in his nomination is his role in the pardon of Marc Rich.
Like most people (I'm guessing), all is know is: Marc Rich pardon = not cool. But why? pffff, uh, um...
The backstory is this (from the NYTimes): "In 1983, Marc Rich was indicted along with his partner, Pincus Green, and their companies on 65 counts of defrauding the I.R.S., mail fraud, tax evasion, racketeering, defrauding the Treasury and trading with the enemy." (Oil, Iran, hostages: the usual.) Or, as we like to specify in my family, "No, kids, he was indicted for 'getting caught' defrauding and racketeering. The lesson..."
Now, I just can't get over the cartoony names of these guys. Is he Richie's dad? And Pincus Green? Was Red-Whitus Blue taken?
But once I do get over the names, the dates are striking. Indicted in 1983. No wonder I didn't know about it, I was busy trying to get my elvin thief past some orcs.
And then, maybe because I'm reading Bleak House, I realize that Clinton was done being president - at least as far as the law and the history books were concerned, I'm not talking about in his mind - in Jan. 2001. That's a speedy legal process, no?
So maybe the subtext of the Holder hearings is that he's a crappy lawyer for letting the Marc Rich issue end so soon, before every law firm in the U.S. got a little taste of the legal fees involved.

Madge Monday

Poor Madge is still not feeling up to snuff.
Of course she can get up at 7am every morning during the Thanksgiving break, but this morning, for school...
She went. But I had to get her, early, from the nurse's office, since she is still easily exhausted. Madge, that is. The nurse may be, too, but she hasn't told me.
Part of Madge's problem is that she's very tired but can't get herself to go to bed before her little brother, who's on top of his game, making nonstop poop and fart and pee references.
Which bug a tired older sister.
Joy.

half-full/half-empty business news

A NYTimes headline, "New York Pays Back $800 Million in Business Tax," might be rewritten as, "New York Businesses Get $800 Million Windfall."
They'd better report that income.

Traffic slows down

Here’s a story that affects a frightening percentage of my acquaintance. (Frightening in the sense that, if the percentage is more than zero, those people frighten me.) But I’m sure there are reasons for being shocked by the story.
Who, for example, hasn’t been a little late to a flight – I don’t know, maybe because you had to repack because you decide you wanted to take your workout shoes after all and they didn’t fit in the smaller suitcase – and thought: skip the limo, I’ll just take a helicopter?
See? And now, in New York, in Manhattan of all places, you’re stuck. You’ll simply miss your flight because the city’s only helicopter shuttle service can’t seem to comply with TSA rules. It seems to me that this is code for “what with all the upcoming changes in DC, we didn’t know whom* to bribe.”
*That is, if people who bribe others were to use the objective form of the pronoun.
The story ends with a quote about how the helipad service is “safe and efficient.” At first I thought this was a dig at the TSA, because anything that complies with their rules is obviously not. But then it turns out that they still run sightseeing tours.
And there actually a small percentage of my acquaintance – relation, even – who has done this.

the moth's signoff

The Moth has a podcast. It's worth listening to, especially since it's free - though I encourage you to donate, of course.
In case you're wondering what they do: each week they select a story from their various Moth stages and events and share it with the broader podcast audience. They are over in about ten minutes, so they tend to go from funny to poignant and sometimes back again.
Occasionally, they involve heartbreak and/or physical injury.
And especially when they have serious physical injury or the death of a loved one, I urge them to reconsider their signoff:
We hope you have a story-worthy week.

Maybe I should write them rather than blindly posting it here.

Tragic

Yet another innocent person dies, defending the American way of life.
Only in a story like this do you get a link from "Walmart" to "Hobbesian frenzy," all in one short paragraph.
Yikes.
But then again, is there a scale of death from senseless to sensible? Does this rate higher than "friendly fire" and lower than "drunk driving accident" and "choking on a pretzel"?
Just wondering.

Gobble Day

It was nice, but we didn't have anyone over this time, which means we have more leftovers than ever.
And the whole festivities were topped off with an Avatar marathon on our part which was sad because we are now done with this amazing series.
Now the kids will be back to watching shows I don't like, or endless reruns of Avatar, which I probably won't partake in.
Instead, I'll be reading my "Big Book of the Winter," Bleak House. It's amazing how Dickens is endlessly inventive and still manages to put me to sleep.

Business report

From some newspaper:
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reports that the number of “problem” banks rose sharply in the third quarter.
The report issued Tuesday shows the number of firms on the agency’s so-called problem list grew to 171 during the third quarter -- the highest number since 1995. There were 117 banks on the list in the second quarter.


I have a theory about these numbers that is awaiting its final proof on the next release of these numbers. If the next number - which is entirely feasible - is 711, then it will have been proven that the FDIC uses the time-tested Dyslexo-Rectal Fiscal Calculator.

Coco Tuesday

Similarly belated.
These past few mornings, getting ready for school went more quickly because there was one less lunch to make and one less bag to pack. And on Tuesday the miracle happened: Coco was the first in his class. And he loved it. And wants to continue the trend.
So this morning we left in good time and he kept asking if we were early. When I said Yes, he seemed upset. And then he asked what "early" means.
And I'm not writing this in order for you to commiserate about the difficulty of explaining temporal concepts.
No, I'm writing this to feel sorry for my son, who apparently has no event in his past on which to affix the label "Early."
Or maybe he's just been living in denial because he slipped out of his mommy's belly three and a half weeks before his due date.

Madge Monday

Behind schedule, because Madge Monday was a Madge sick day when I was set to help out at a store as a holiday help-weenie.
She's still home, sick. But this morning she topped herself by asking me to go to her teacher and get the class- and home-work she's missed.
Whence does she get the sense of responsibility?
We'll have to have her DNA tested.