Target, for all your jenas needs.

Gentlemen, she's called you out.

TACO: Nobody should wear head to toe velour.

WIFEZILLA: Oh yeah, that woman? Yeah. Nobody that heavy should ever wear velour.

TACO: Nobody should. Nobody. Ever.

WIFEZILLA: I dunno, those Juicy Couture track suits are pretty cute if you're thin.

TACO: Are they velour?

WIFEZILLA: Yeah.

TACO: See the rule. Not nobody, not no how.

WIFEZILLA: You're crazy. They're really cute. Of course, you'd hate them because they have text written across the butt.

TACO: Why do people buy that shit? Words written across your ass are bad.

WIFEZILLA: Well, I have those sweat pants with the tiger paws on the butt.

TACO: Yes. They're horrible.

WIFEZILLA: They're not that bad.

TACO: I don't think I'm overstating things when I say that after civilization ends, and an alien species sends archaeologists here thousands of years later and they study the remnants of our once great civilization, they'll find that those pants played a role in the destruction of life as we know it.

WIFEZILLA: You're just bitchy. Everybody else likes them.

TACO: Everybody else is dumb.

WIFEZILLA: Go ahead, ask anyone. They'll say they look good.

TACO: ...

WIFEZILLA: Not Steve or Tim or whoever. They're as weird as you.

Sometimes it's like looking into a tiny little mirror.

Tonight was guy's night at our house. I took my son out for dinner on the way to his gymnastics class. We had a really great time, and he was unusually talkative about school.

So we're sitting there over hamburgers, talking about his friends, talking about his classes, talking about the games they play at recess. A lot of it is very similar to what we did. They play a lot of the same games, even the ones I thought were obscure. Comparing my school experience to his was a lot of fun.

I was shocked to find that the public school system has completely failed to teach him to play kickball, but that's another story.

We started talking about the more artsy things like their music classes, and he told me he doesn't like music. I asked why, and he told me that he hates to sing because he's a boy. Only girls like to sing, apparently.

I quickly corrected this by pointing out that there are lots of men who sing, at which point he brightened and said, "Oh yeah, like that guy from Kiss!" (I filled in a few gaps in his rock education a bit at this point. God, I'm proud of that kid.)

Even thus informed, he maintained his staunch anti-singing position, telling me, "It's okay. Everybody else sings pretty loud, and the teacher can't hear who's making noise and who's not. I just move my mouth. Nobody can tell." He followed this statement up with a demonstration of his fakery skills, with the caveat that "you'll be able to tell 'cause there's not a bunch of other kids singing."

The parent in me was dying to have a little chat about correcting that behavior... but he had pretty much described exactly how I got through more or less every class I ever took where they expected me to sing, too.

I called my mom to tell her the story while kidzookie was in his class. She and dad had a long laugh at my expense.

Click Yes or No

I'm not sure why bad error messages bother me so much. Maybe it's because I write software. I dunno. Ran into this beauty in the installer for one of our products today:


So... what should I click again? Thank God I only have to click yes or no if I encouter something. I don't know what encoutering is, but it sounds scary.

This is the kind of thing that happens when you send work to wherever you can get it for the lowest possible price. Sigh.

God Save the Queen

TACO: [listens to God Save the Queen]

WIFEZILLA: Who is this?

TACO: One of the best punk bands evar.

WIFEZILLA: Green Day?

TACO: ...

WIFEZILLA: My God, that's the most horrible expression I've ever seen.

Spousal Abuse for Fun and Profit

TACO: [climbs into bed]

WIFEZILLA: Turn the fan off.

TACO: I'm tired.

WIFEZILLA: I'm cold.

TACO: [pulls bottom eyelid down] Do you see any care in this eye?

WIFEZILLA: I'm about to see a lot of black around it.

Rock Band 2 vs. the Wisdom of Kidzookie

I sold all my Rock Band stuff on Sunday. Listed it on Craigslist, which is always just a pain in the ass. Spent all day getting dicked around by people who wanted to haggle the price down at the last minute. Sorry, there, chief... I've taken really good care of the stuff, and the price is very fair. No love.

Finally heard from a really nice family that wanted to pick the game up for their son. The kid was really excited about it when they came over to get it. He wanted to run off home and play it, but I made him play it here to make sure it worked before they left ("That's what I'd do if I were buying it"). He played drums a little, declared the game to be in proper working order, declined to play the guitar, and looked positively aghast at the prospect of singing in front of strangers.

Good times :)

Picked up Rock Band 2 yesterday after lunch. Primarily, I wanted the new drum set, which plays a little nicer than the old one. Well, and the new songs. The new guitar and drums turn out to be wireless, too, which is pretty nice.

The big improvement, though -- which I didn't know about ahead of time -- is that you can turn off failing songs, so that you can complete them no matter how you play. That's a fantastic feature. As soon as I discovered that feature, Kidzookie, Girlzookie, and I started a virtual band together and played all afternoon. My son did a passable job on drums. My daughter sang Christmas songs to every tune we played.

I manned the guitar, and it was this that led to my moment of zen for the day. I'd just fucked up the ending solo to Shooting Star (again), and muttered, "shit," under my breath, as is my wont. My son looked over and said, "You put it on hard, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"Well, then, it's supposed to be hard to play, isn't it?"