Tag Archives: Stupidity

June 11, 2012 · 0:00

Birthday Party Blasts!

Sigh. The guilt. The knot in my stomach. The heartache of knowing that I am an inadequate mother.

No, I didn’t forget my child on the roof of the car. I did not sell him into child pornography or child slavery. I did not force him to converse with me only in Pig-Latin so that his classmates would laugh at him when he started school.

Nope. I failed in a much more important way.

Birthday parties.

Maybe it is just that I became a parent too soon. Maybe there is still time to discover a spacial anomaly that will allow us to remedy the situation. So that we could once again hold our heads high with the other parents who hosted birthday parties for their equally indulged children. Sigh.

We had fun. Or so I thought.

When Jacob was young, we had a swimming pool. And so we had lovely gatherings for dozens of friends with everybody in the pool. I was young enough then to even appear in front of my friends in a bathing suit.

As he aged, we progressed to other types of parties. We had one at an indoor playground with tunnels and ball pits and slides and pizza. We did bowling and laser tag. All with pizza.

It’s true that unlike a classmate of Jacob’s in 1^st grade we did not hold his 7^th birthday party in one of the fanciest hotels in Geneva, Switzerland, as did one of his classmates. It was quite a doo, actually, with waitresses in little French maid outfits carrying silver trays full of, yeah, pizza. (I’ve always wondered where they’ll hold her wedding.) But Jacob is a boy, and didn’t care a hoot about fancy-schmancy.

Once we had Jacob’s birthday party at a skateboard rink; helmets and pads were required. We indulgent parents want to keep everybody safe, and bubble wrap tends to be somewhat suffocating. We served Pizza, natch.

We only had one real disaster. And that was when the day before Jacob’s 13th birthday party, which had been postponed, John was called out of the country for an emergency meeting. Jacob has never recovered. “Dad missed my 13th Birthday Party,” he sniffed, just this evening.

I thought that was the worst possible child’s birthday fiasco imaginable in an age where parties aren’t done at home, and really all parents need to do is write a check. It’s hard to go too wrong unless the check bounces.

I thought that until today, anyway.

That’s when I learned that there is a whole new type of kids birthday party that will, well, blow away the competition! And we missed it. Sigh. We were simply born too soon.

And, of course, as in so very many things, Texas is leading the way. You see, a Texas gun range will be hosting birthday parties for children as young as 8 years old!

“I don’t know whether anyone has ever tried this before,” said David Prince, who is building the indoor gun range.

Personally, I myself, cannot imagine why no one has ever thought of arming children with lethal weapons, filling them with soda and candy and pizza and letting them go at it. What could be more fun?

Mr. Prince did mention that lots of staff will be around to “help parents supervise.” Boy, that’s a relief.

Because supervising kids parties isn’t really as easy as it sounds. That bowling party Jacob had when he was 8? There were heavy balls falling too close to kids feet, there were shoe rentals (and the fact 8 year olds never know their size) the drinks and snacks to be ordered and kept off the special floor. It’s complicated.

“We’re not just going to have kids running around waving loaded guns and shooting at piñatas,” said Prince, an accountant and gun enthusiast.

Yup, staff assistance will be available. This is handy, natch, when lethal weapons are involved; I’d say it’s worth at least an extra $5, easy. Perhaps an extra $20 if no one dies.

But you know, I imagine that the release form will be a bit intimidating for the parents who actually like their kids:

Yes, I agree to hold Bubba’s Bullet and Billet harmless, in the event that someone blows my 8-year-old child’s head off.

Nevertheless, I think that it’s good to know that entrepreneurs are developing better ways for parents to get a bang for their birthday bucks.

I just hope the staff is good at distinguishing between pizza stains and blood.

72 Comments

Filed under Conspicuous consumption, Gun control, Health and Medicine, Humor, Hypocrisy, Law, Stupidity

Tagged as Family, Gun control, Humor, Pushing Buttons, Stupidity

May 30, 2012 · 0:00

FiftyFourAndAHalf.Com’s Secret to Increasing Your Stats

I hope by now you have all come down from your virtual sugar high after celebrating my Blirthday yesterday, because serious work is at hand.

In a comment on that post, Frank of A Frank Angle asked me to divulge my secret for having reached 24k hits during my first year of blogging. Naturally, I ignored him. I planned to take my secret to the grave. Or to the crematorium. Or into space with Scotty from Star Trek. There are some things you just don’t want made public.

And then I got an email here at my office that made me shout “Curses, foiled again!” That is a phrase not heard happily by medical researchers, as even those working in offices expect to hear a loud noise next.

No colleagues were injured in the copying of this Google Image

Yes, my nephew, Clinton, had sent me this article: Avoid these words to prevent Homeland Security from spying on your social networks.

Now, I should tell you that I have known about this for years. I figured it out, in fact, before I even started my blog, that all I had to get attention was to include some special terms. And I do! That way, hundreds of thousands of government workers click on my blog every day leading to, umm, 24K hits in a year.

Wait. Does the math work here? Shouldn’t I have millions of hits by now? Billions? Centrillions? Pishaw! Word Press is probably lying to me about my stats. Just like when it tells me that today I have ZERO links to my blog using search terms.

You would have thought that at least my post on Butt Burn would have alerted the authorities and resulted in multiple fear-ridden G-3s trying to figure out the terror angle in car seat warmers.

But apparently not everyone in the government clicks on my blog. So I guess I’m going to have to expand my list. Up the ante. You can too — I believe in sharing. Well, this time, anyway. I want company when I get sent up the river because my blog “breached” “homeland security,” “threatened” a “standoff” with a “SWAT” team, causing the “lockdown” of my office and its “evacuation” because of folks who cannot distinguish between someone who is “a riot” and a real riot. You know, one with “shots fired.”

Plenty of room for all of us! (Thanks, Google!)

67 Comments

Filed under Gun control, Health and Medicine, Humor, Hypocrisy, Law, Science, Stupidity, Word Press

Tagged as Boomerism, Gun control, Health, Humor, Stupidity

March 13, 2012 · 0:00

Take Me Back

I’m a white woman of Irish descent, and so I am pretty sure that I can explain exactly why President Obama, and really, all African-American men and women, would do just about anything to return to the way life was before the Civil War. Life was so much better way back then, don’t cha think? Especially for people of color.

Shopping!

You gotta love Sarah Palin. You gotta pay attention to the former candidate for Vice President of the United States. Well, you gotta do something with her. Slapping would work for me.

You see, she couldn’t keep quiet knowing that the new movie GAME CHANGE might just imply that she was, well, not the brightest star in the GOP firmament. She couldn’t rest thinking that some people who once thought that she really did have a brain might see this movie and change their minds. Instead, she made sure that nobody will mistake her for someone who should be allowed out without a muzzle.

I’ve got to say, though, she is so dog-gone creative in her criticism of the President. You betcha!

[Sorry – this is an Obama fundraising ad – I’m not pushing you to give. But the full video, surprise, surprise, seems to have been taken off of Fox News.]

Now, Poor Sarah has contended that this video was edited to quote her out of context. So, here, you be the judge. The stuff between the italics is what was edited out.

He is bringing us back to days, you can hearken back to days before the Civil War, [when unfortunately too many Americans mistakenly believed that not all men were created equal. And it was the Civil War that began the codification of the truth that here in America, yes we are equal, and we all have equal opportunities, not based on the color of your skin, you have equal opportunity to work hard and to succeed and to embrace God-given opportunities to develop resources and work extremely hard and as I say, to succeed. Now, it has taken all these years for many Americans to understand the gravity of that mistake that took place before the Civil War and why the Civil War had to really start changing America.] What Barack Obama seems to want to do is go back to before those days when we were in different classes based on income, based on color of skin. Why are we allowing our country to move backwards? [instead of moving forward with that understanding that as our charters of liberty spell out for us, we are all created equally?]

Huh?

For my international readers, pre-Civil War America was not a nice place for blacks. Trust me on that one.

But you know, only Sarah Palin would say out loud, and in front of a television camera, that a black man would want to go back to the days of slavery, of being sold away from your family, of being whipped to death for the smallest reason, or for no reason at all. Only Freedom lovin’ Sarah Palin could even think that. Yup, those were the days. Who wouldn’t want to go back? Those dresses were amazing. And the lifestyle? Well, it was to die for” You betcha, especially if you were a slave.

Apparently, it was very hot that day.

In fact, I bet Barack is irritated as hell that there is no “Way Back Machine.” Because, although Sarah didn’t say it, I bet President Obama might also like to go back in time to the fifties, where being the biracial son of a white woman and a black man was the height of cool. I bet he’d love those fire hoses — so refreshing on a hot summer’s eve.

And the dogs that sometimes greeted blacks like this one in Birmingham.

Hey, aren't you Rin Tin Tin?

Hey, the President is a dog lover — maybe he could bring Bo with him!

Look! They already know how to play!

Perhaps we can even throw in a visit to South Africa, say, sometime between 1948 and 1994, you know, during Apartheid! He could hang with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island! Who hooo – wouldn’t that be a time.