What has my kid been watching? !?

Alright, I am being a complete hypocrite, but I am going to tell another story about my kid again. This one is definitely short (and there is a picture to go along with the story). 

I was getting some coffee creamer from the refrigerator when I noticed something spelled with the magnetic letters.
Note: I swear on my life that this is not something that I staged. I did not manipulate the letters in any way.

Notice anything? Do you see a secret message in the letters? Ok... I have already told you that I did not do this (if I had, I would have picked a much funnier word to write). I know that my wife did not do this either because she is not immature. The only person that it could have been is my 3 year old because we haven't had any company over in a while and we don't let the really little guy crawl around in the kitchen. As a little added bonus to the word SEX, my brilliant little pervert has also written HEF in sort of a crossword format. I'm going to defend myself as a parent by saying that he watches Nick Jr., Sprout, and the Disney Channel. Granted, I usually zone out or read something while he is watching because I can only take so much of the Fresh Beat Band (his favorite).I'd say we are pretty strict about what he watches. We don't even let him watch Spongebob because my wife and I feel that he makes too many bad choices and Jackson should not emulate him (because he emulates everything). So, I can only assume that he is being exposed to the Playboy Channel at daycare... or he is getting up in the middle of the night and ordering it on cable. I think I would have noticed that charge on my bill, though.

It is amazing...

Humans and technology never cease to amaze me. I remember back when my high school first got the internet. It was the slowest, dial up connection that you could imagine, but I thought it was amazing when I loaded up Netscape, typed in a search query, and 20 minutes later I had 10 pages with information on that subject. What's the first thing that every pubescent boy in that computer lab searched for when the teacher wasn't looking? Are you kidding me? We couldn't type in "nude women" fast enough... at least those of us who hadn't taken keyboarding class yet couldn't. Anyway, now we have broadband internet. With a few keystrokes we can have any information, from some very reliable (and some not very reliable) resources, on any topic you can imagine. We also have devices that can hold every song you have ever heard and every song you have yet to hear. On top of that, these things fit in your pocket... anybody want their cassette Walkman back? We have cars that run on electricity and fuels other than gasoline that are filtering onto the market. We have Tivo. We have televisions that rival the movie theater experience. There are refrigerators that can order groceries for you! My cell phone can call anywhere in the world, from just about anywhere in the world, surf the internet, play old Nintendo games, has a built in gps, plays mp3s, AND it is made of metal so if my clumsy ass drops it, I'm not going to the store to buy a new one. That would have blown my mind 10 years ago... With all this great technology and these great advancements, the question that comes to my mind is "How much is too much?" I think I have found the answer:

 

Meet Roxxxy: True Companion, a $7000 sex robot that was recently unveiled by a German manufacturer. According to what I have read, she is fully programmable, "has a personality," and of course C-cups. She (it) is a fully functioning skeleton beneath "real feeling flesh." Oh f#$k this... I am making myself sick writing about it. Read for yourselves here. 

Seriously, this is too far people! This thing is hideous, and even if it was pretty; still unacceptable. The geniuses behind this couldn't have designed a prettier face? 

Human communication in general, has already taken a beating. We communicate more through email and social networking sites than in face to face conversations, or on the phone, or (GASP) a letter on paper. And we use emoticons and shorthand (LOL) to convey feelings... we ALL do it. It has just become so impersonal and some people are losing their ability to communicate with other people without a keyboard in front of them. Now this friggin' thing comes along to give men an alternative to dating? Goddammit! People aren't meant to have sex with robots! Even when I was a lonely (desperate for interaction with a female) teenager, I would not have wanted a fully programmable woman as a companion. Differences are what make people interesting... and awkwardness is what made dating fun. If this trend continues and people buy in, 20 years from now we will all be living in bubbles, eating our favorite foods for every meal, listening to our favorite music all the time, and having all of our needs met by a robot that never disagrees with us on anything... THAT is scary!

HEY SARAH!

NOTE: Please don't misconstrue this as being a republican bashing because it isn't. This is me picking on someone I don't respect. I think that this person is in a position of political power that is undeserved. This person just happens to be republican. It is true that I am a left swaying liberal (some may call bleeding heart) and I do not agree with the right a majority of the time. I also hate Fox News and their fake claim of fair and balanced. But, once again, I am not bashing republicans in general here... 

With that said:
 
I saw a bit of passive aggressive political commentary during my trip to the grocery store today. It seems that Wegman's has a bit of an agenda and I support it.

Why am I happy about this picture? Notice where the two stacks of Sarah Palin magazines are. They are right there where they belong; in the entertainment section. To the left you see Star Trek  magazine announcing that "Klingons Strike Back" (Editors note: I think that Klingons would have a more relevant political message than Sarah Palin even though they are fictional characters. In many ways, so is Sarah.). On top you see Gucci Mane on the cover of a hip hop magazine and a couple of guitar magazines. Below you see Black Belt magazine, UFC magazine, along with another mixed martial arts/fighting mags. Where are the serious political magazines like Time, Newsweek, Harpers, The New Yorker, even The American Conservative? They are a couple of sections over in a completely different area in the books and magazines aisle. Was this done intentionally? I have no idea, but I appreciated the hell out of it. Can she save America? No! She is a walking contradiction who claims to be the representation of the every-man/woman when her record shows that she is just another greedy, corruptible politician (Gravina Island Bridge Project, the Walt Monegan controversy). Do your research America and quit buying into this!

Short post about one of my kids... the one that can talk...

Ok, I am going to keep this short and try not to make a habit of blogging about my kids simply because I think that there are enough people blogging about their kids. I have nothing against it. It's just that when you flood the market with too much of a good thing, that thing becomes diluted and boring. I'm sure that there was a time when apples were the greatest fruit in the world, but then people started growing apples in new ways and cross breeding apples with other apple varieties to make even more apple varieties. Now, you walk into Wegman's (or any given grocery store for that matter) to buy apples and you are overwhelmed by the variety of apples. There are Gala, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, McIntosh, Fuji, Cortland, and Granny Smith to name a few. That is one aisle of the produce section. It's such sensory overload that you end up buying oranges because there is only one variety that you can afford; Navel. (Put the damn Blood Oranges down. I know they are really good for you and have been called a "super food," but they are $4.50 a pound and you can't afford that!) Same with blogs about kids.
So much for short.What was I talking about? Right, my kid.
Jackson has been in particularly rare form lately. There are 3 instances that I want to share with you:
1. My wife was on the phone with my mother in law and Jackson decided that he wanted to talk to his Nana. They were chatting and somehow got onto the topic of Monte (my sister in law's 6 month old Mastiff). They were talking about how big he was and Jackson pops out with "Yeah Nana, and when he laid down on the floor, his penis went like this" (made motion with finger that represented when Monte got a puppy boner while he was here).
2. The other night, my family and I were watching the Super Bowl. We are not football people. We don't follow it and we don't have a favorite team. We watch the Super Bowl because of the commercials. We decided to root for the Saints the other night, though, because Jackson was asking who we want to win. We picked the underdogs. My wife ended up on the phone again about halfway through the game and of course, Jackson had to get on and talk. He was talking with my sister in laws boyfriend and was asked who he was rooting for. Jackson responded, "We want the whites to win." Now, it took me a second to realize that we had told him earlier that the Saints were the guys in the white uniforms and we were hoping that they would win. For a minute there, I cringed. It sounded like we were having a little Klan rally in our living room.
3. Last night, it was bed time and we were getting ready Jackson ready. My wife said something funny that made Jackson laugh very hard. He yelled, "Mommy, you knock me up!" I immediately turned my head to contain the laughter. My wife said, "You mean crack me up." Jackson then said, "Oh, what does knock me up mean?"
Enough said...

One of the many reasons why I hate the today show...

This morning, I was torturing myself with the Today Show again (Why!?! Well, because my wife was watching it). In one segment, Matt, Ann, and Meredith were hanging in the plaza talking about the Super Bowl and Matt brings up the interesting factoid: 700,000 footballs are produced annually for use in the NFL. Meredith responded to that by saying "That's a lot of balls."
Well, it really is.
Matt chuckled at the double entendre.
Ann, on the other hand, started laughing so hard that she actually transformed into a 13 year old boy. You would think she was watching the greatest comedy routine of all time. She did that walking around thing that people do when they are laughing really hard on their feet. I honestly thought I was watching an episode of Beavis and Butthead for the minute and a half that this went on.
Look NBC... for a quarter of the amount of money that you pay these knuckleheads (Matt Lauer makes 13.5 million dollars annually), I will commute to New York City, co-host the show better than ANY of them (better, at the very least, than Jenna) , AND as a special bonus I will tell much better dick jokes. C'mon NBC! Give a guy a shot!

Oh God, I can't believe I am doing this... In defense (sorta) of Jersey Shore

I am going to preface this by saying that I am not a fan of Jersey Shore. I have not watched a single episode and I never intend to. I think that I have better things to do with my time than watch a reality show. It's where I live. I don't need to watch it on TV, you know? 

I was watching the Today Show this morning (I HATE THE TODAY SHOW, BUT IT SOMEHOW ENDS UP ON MY TELEVISION EVERY MORNING) and I happened to catch the big interview with the kids from Jersey Shore. They announced that the show will be back for another season and the cast will be making a boatload of money ($10,000 per episode). Good for them. They juxtaposed this announcement and the typical Today Show shenanigans (Meredith Viera asking about stupid things like why the one guy is called "The Situation" and if Ronnie and Sammi are still an item... blah blah blah) with outraged Italian Americans in the media and a group called UNICO National (an Italian-American service group (Unity, Neighborliness, Integrity, Charity, and Opportunity)) bashing the show for perpetuating stereotypes. More or less, they were saying that the show should not go on. 
Here's my problem. I am an average television viewer and media consumer, not of Italian descent (I am of Irish, French, and English descent) and when I see a show like Jersey Shore, I see it for what it really is: mindless escapism. When I think Italian, I don't think tanned, steroid using, hair-gelled people referring to themselves as Guidos and Guidettes. I know some Italian folks and if anything, my stereotypes are (based on the people that I have known in my life): they tend to have dark hair, brown eyes, and slightly darker (olive if you will) skin than we lily white folks. If they are second generation Americans, they probably have some awesome relatives who know how to have a get together... but beyond that, nothing really. Being the average media consumer that I am, I can separate reality from the reality show. Do I believe that the people of the Jersey Shore exist and act the way they do on TV in real life? Sure, but comparing them to my stereotypes, these people are freaks and THAT is the draw. MTV wants anomalies. They want to put a show on with people that claim to represent Italian-Americans and their lifestyle on the Jersey Shore, and make people go "I don't know anyone who acts like this!" The audience is drawn in by the freaks and they keep coming back every week to see what sort of hi jinks they'll get into next. The average consumer (me) is not going to go to work the next day and call one of their Italian colleagues a guido because some dummy on Jersey Shore referred to himself as a guido. Just like I am not going to go up to one of my African American colleagues and ask them how much weed they smoked last night or how many gunfights they've been in because I watched a Lil' Wayne video. It's a little insulting to think that there is a group that believes a show like this will cause Americans to develop broad generalizations about entire cultures based on the exploits of 7 people living in a beach house on the Atlantic Ocean.
The whole perpetuating negative stereotypes argument is kind of a cop out because that has always been one of the specialties of entertainment media. Look at my heritage and how they are portrayed in the entertainment media. Irishmen are all drunks. Englishmen all have bad teeth. Frenchmen are all pointy nosed elitists. Am I any of those things? I barely imbibe (ok, I have a few beers over the course of the week, but honestly I could take it or leave it.), so I am being a poor representation of the Irish stereotype. I have great teeth, aside from the small gap in my top front teeth. Down goes the English stereotype. I don't have enough of an ego to be an elitist, so out the door goes the French stereotype. 
So, I say sure UNICO and other Italian-Americans have a right to say "Hey, these people don't represent me." But, let the show go on and realize that a majority of the media consumers out there are going to realize the cast of Jersey Shore doesn't speak for all Italian people. And besides, it's a hit show! It's good for the economy. These kids are getting 10 grand a show? What would you have done in your early 20's with that amount of money? They are going to blow all of that money at all of the mom and pop owned tanning salons, hair salons, car dealerships, and bars in that area and keep some small business owners in business. Considering the state of the economy, this group of kids who are willingly exploiting themselves for money are, in a way, performing a service at the same time.