In memorium of a dead pet rodent

My wife's sister was kind enough to email me this picture of her late pet's backyard memorial. Touching though this may be, the deceased's grave marker is somewhat misleading as it depicts a little mouse much like the creatures that befriend Cinderella and mend her gown for the ball or like the two cousins, one from the city and one from the country, who go and visit each other. Mice after all are adorable woodland creatures that gobble up Swiss...

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Expelling Harry Potter from Gwinnett County schools does not help children

This morning I awoke to a news story that just about made me want to upchuck yesterday's lunch in a way that only Linda Blair could envy. I'm talking about this stupid-ass agenda to get Harry Potter thrown out of the schools. According to WSB radio, local mom Laura Mallory thinks the Harry Potter series is "too dark and anti-Christian." What the article means by too dark I'm not quite certain. Are the characters so angst-ridden that even Nietzsche...

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Poor white kid suffers from M.P.M.D. (Ms. Pac Man Disorder)

Today I treated myself to lunch, which as I rapidly approach fatherhood and therefore become gradually poorer, is a rarity. At any rate, as I sat there uvula-deep in a plate of Ledo's Buffalo wings watching obscure sports on ESPN with the sound turned down, I heard an old familiar tune that brought back memories from times long ago. I don't know quite how to describe it in words, but it was an increasingly rapid pulsating sound that I immediately...

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On life and living

Occasionally in the wonderful world of blogs, you stumble across an entry someone has left up in memoriam of someone they loved and lost. Though I generally read these entries, I, like most others I imagine, do so quickly and somewhat half-heartedly almost out of a sense of obligation either to the deceased or to the blogger and not because I find such postings particularly touching. After all, it's difficult to feel sympathy for someone you know only by a screen name who has lost someone you don't know from Adam. For that reason you'll have to...

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Six Weird Slash Interesting Things About Me

Having been befriended mostly by girls as I was growing up, I would sometimes have to acquiesce to such foolish things as three-way phone calls, organized alliances and those stupid-ass quizzes found in the pages of teenaged girls' magazines. The party-line phone conversations and forbidden friendships led me to better understand the intricate workings of the female mind and the endless joys of catty gossip. The allure of the quiz on the other hand...

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Atlanta Center for Reproductive Medicine account is now closed

I recently received a bill in the mail for $250, that unlike my more run-of-the-mill bills (water, electricity, garbage pickup, etc.) I will choose to no longer pay. Joy of joys, I am no longer in need of this service. The bill is from the Atlanta Center for Reproductive Medicine (heretofore referred to as ACRM) for 365 days of cryogenically preserved sperm storage, but guess what? I'm not paying it anymore. They can close my account. Freeze my assets -- or rather, thaw them. Unfortunately, while it's relatively easy to make a deposit to your ACRM...

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Miracle of birth about to happen for 83rd billionth time

Riddle me this: If women have been birthing babies since the dawn of time, why did I have to spend all day in a birthing class? Tis true that this is my wife's first pregnancy and therefore the first time I will be on the receving end of a slippery newborn, but won't our daughter come regardless of whether we've taken this class? If after my wife's water breaks (and I knew of water breaking before ever going to this class, thank you) are we going to show up at the delivery ward and be quizzed on what we were supposed to have learned in this class?...

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