Tikkabik

"Robert, clip your fingernails. You look like Nosferatu," said Bonnie.

James: "What's Nostrataco?"

Posted by flargh at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Daddy, what's tax?" James asked.

So I tried to explain tax. I explained sales tax. Income tax. Property tax. About how sometimes the government charges people tax, and charges business tax. About how you have to calculate tax. About how the state and the federal government each takes tax.

"Tax is stupid," said James.

From your mouth to God's ears, kid.

Posted by flargh at 07:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't know what it is that makes some parents think it's okay to put their children on TV without a good reason. Bernie & Phyl's, a local chain of furniture stores, has tapped into whatever this need is, however.

Bernie & Phyl's, like most furniture stores, has long polluted local television stations with idiotic ads, usually featuring the eponymous founders, who are now doddering well into their final years. The ads are always punctuated with the store's jingle, a doggerel rhyme. ("Quality, comfort and price, that's nice!")

A while back the store's advertisers figured out that if they put up a camera in public spots in and around Boston they could get the local populace to do their advertising for them, so we've been subjected for months to townies barking "Quality, com-faht an' price, dat's nice!" in their thickest Beantown brogue, which in itself was enough to set my teeth on edge.

Recently they began advertising "casting calls" for kids to come into their stores and do the jingle on camera, so now we have a new slew of television ads featuring grade-schools parroting the jingle, over and over again in 30-second increments. Off-key, off-tempo. But awwww. They're kids! They're so adorable! It's so endearing!

Not.

Posted by flargh at 06:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So for the past few months I find myself using the Twitter microblogging service more and more. Maybe you've noticed, as I keep a Twitter widget embedded on Tikkabik.

Twitter, if you're unfamiliar, is a service that lets you post your thoughts in 140 characters or less. Users subscribe to each other's Twitter feeds (called "Tweets") and often use Twitter as a somewhat less-than-realtime chat client.

Twitter is appealing for a variety of reasons. For me, it's because the 140 character limit -- a somewhat arbitrary number that, if I understand correctly, is grounded in Twitter's original roots as an SMS-based service for cell phone users -- enforces an economy of thought and expression that's utterly the opposite of the average blogorrhea you're likely to find.

Having said that, Twitter isn't the be-all end-all of communication. There's still a healthy place for blogs, for longer posts. But for more and more things -- off the cuff observations, anecdotes, humorous comments -- Twitter's becoming the go-to place these days.

Posted by flargh at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hillary, you ran a good race. You ran a hell of a long one, too. But at this point, it's a war of attrition, and you're exhausting the voters. Pack it in. Give it up.

Posted by flargh at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can't quite figure out why, but my interest in electronics never translated into any aptitude to tweak home appliances or automobiles, unlike some of my friends. I was never one of those kids who tore apart the toaster to figure out how it worked. It was enough for me that it heated up the bread.

Anyway, our dishwasher stopped working a couple of days ago and a tech came out today to take a look at it. Turned out there was a power surge of some type and the controller board that manages all the system's on-board diagnostics froze up, sticking the dishwasher in an endless loop that I, as a hapless operator, couldn't escape from.

Fortunately, he knew the Vulcan nerve-pinch to reset the system back to its baseline, so he had the machine up and running about ten minutes after he arrived.

I suppose I'm glad it wasn't anything more serious.

Posted by flargh at 08:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

James had his first holy communion on Sunday, which went off without a hitch. He was well-behaved, did what he was supposed to, and although the weather didn't cooperate, everyone did well. I think one of the reasons he cooperated was because I promised that afterwards we'd go to the movies to see Iron Man, which opened on Friday.

Iron Man didn't disappoint. In fact, it's one of the best superhero movies I can remember in the past few years. They didn't rush the story for the sake of the action, and did a solid job of fleshing out Tony Stark's motivation for creating his superhero alter ego. The special effects were stupendous, the cast was great, and they've certainly paved the way for a sequel, as anyone who stayed through the credits can tell you.

Posted by flargh at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not that this should be any surprise to anyone with a pulse and two brain cells to rub together, but a new poll published Thursday shows that George Bush is the most unpopular president ever.

He's managed to crack 71 percent -- a higher rating than even Harry Truman and -- almost unbelievably -- Richard Nixon got during the nadirs of their administrations.

Then again, why shouldn't he be? In seven years he and his cronies have devastated the economy, blown billions upon billions of dollars on an unpopular war, done more than any administration in modern history to destroy our citizens' civil rights, turned the executive branch of the government into some monster that's one step away from a dictatorship, turned us into a hated bully on the global stage rather than a shining beacon of hope to the oppressed...it just goes on and on and on.

Posted by flargh at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know, I'm not even slightly prudish, and Lord only knows that I'm inclined to swear like a sailor. But this pegged my bullshit-meter into the red.

Brooke Anderson at CNN interviewed Rick Haskins, the executive vice president of marketing for the CW television network, about a new ad campaign for their popular teen drama "Gossip Girl," about randy debutants in New York City. If you haven't seen it, imagine The O.C. or Beverly Hills 90210 set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It's flashy and trashy, but it's really no different than any of the prime-time soap crap we've been polluting ourselves since Dynasty and Dallas. That's not the problem, from where I'm sitting.

The CW's new ad campaign features posters of two teens locked in a pretty obviously carnal embrace, which on its own was enough to send Puritan ninnies like the Parents Television Council into the stratosphere over the usual problems -- the glorification of people using their genitals for pleasure rather than just the sober creation of new life, and daring to do so on television, where children might be watching, because, you know, the TV is a cheap babysitter.

But what jacked them up even further was the CW's decision to use the Internet acronym OMFG -- Oh My F**king God -- in the ad as well.

When Anderson interviewed Haskins, he coyly defended the use of the acronym, and suggested that if you ask ten different people what it means, you'll get ten different responses. Seriously. That's what this guy said. Haskins is smirking as he delivers this galling line of horsecrap.

I can't quite tell if that smile is the cat who ate the mouse -- a Hollywood studio exec knowing that he's getting free air time for his ad campaign and will come out smelling like a rose regardless of what happens -- or someone who's being forced to eat shit on national TV and pretend that it's filet mignon.

What I do know is that he's too goddamn old for that haircut. Brand Yourself, indeed. What happens when the brand you've created is "Asshole™?"

Anderson's straw poll of people on the street reveals a pretty uniform and consistent understanding of what OMFG actually stands for.

Listen, I'm not one to restrict free speech in advertising or anywhere else in our country, but there's an issue of basic corporate responsibility here. For Pete's sake, CW. Grow up and act like adults, even if your job is to pander to kids.

Posted by flargh at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's the last day of the kids' April vacation, which started on Monday of last week. We had a pretty quiet one this time around.

A while back we drove down to Florida to spend the week with my in-laws, during an April vacation that coincided with Easter weekend, so we were able to get an early start by leaving the day before Good Friday, which gave us a head start on the long trek southward.

Both my in-laws and my kids asked if we could do it again this year, but our budget is tight, and we could afford neither the plane tickets nor the gas to get down and back, so we told them back in February that we didn't think we were going to get to Florida.

The kids resigned themselves to spending the week around the house, but they had a good time in spite of their restrictions. Emmeline had an overnight with her friend Vicky, James had an overnight with his friend Jamison, and Robert is in the midst of an overnight with his friend Joey as we speak -- and all of them spent an evening with Grandma at a local hotel with a pool and a breakfast buffet, and from what I hear, that also went swimmingly well.

Bonnie and I, meanwhile, are in the midst of a few different onerous responsibilities, and neither of us are feeling very well for totally unrelated reasons. I guess it's best, all things considered, that we'll be back to our usual routine tomorrow. The day is a bit gray and grim outside, and the clouds are threatening rain. Seems like a somber end to this year's April vacation.

Posted by flargh at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)