A few days ago, this is what I wrote in the comments on a friend’s Facebook posting of the video:

Daughter lashes out at father by posting a rant about him on the internet. Father retaliates by shooting her computer, filming it, and putting it up on the Internet. Looks like two people in dire need of attention; like father, like daughter. They deserve each other.

Apparently, the man’s home was visited by both the police and Child Protection Services and everything is okay now. In a follow-up to the original post about the video, the man wrote that it was one of the worst days of his life and that things are now better between him and his daughter. I’m glad that things are better for him and his daughter.

Meanwhile, people are still arguing about whether he’s a good or bad father.

I don’t really care about that. What I care about is where this is all going next.

There really is only one logical direction for a family with members so hell-bent on getting their points across to each other that they post their rants and videos on the Internet for everyone to see: Reality Television.

When people with talents as diverse as Self-Promotion, being a Human Clown Car, Crab Fishing, Ice Road Truck Driving, or Being a Crazy Pageant Mom, surely there is place in Reality TV Land for the likes of The Hot-Tempered Family Members Who Know How to Make a Spectacle of Themselves.

They could even change their last name to “Carolina” and call the show, “The Carolinas.” Week in and week out they can show us all how parenting and back-talking and loving get done in the Carolinas. Or they could call themselves “The Shooters” and take turns blowing off steam by using guns to shoot each others’ personal items (TVs, computers, hair dryers, furniture, appliances, etc.).

Don’t tell me an enterprising producer hasn’t already been in contact with the family. Because when a father shoots his daughter’s computer, it makes for great television.

Why swimming? Because it’s something I know how to do and I enjoy it. I love the feel of the water around my body. I also swam in high school. But I stopped swimming during my junior year for two reasons: 1) It was clear I was never going to break the minute mark in the 100 freestyle, leaving me to finish last or close to last in every race, 2) I joined the Debate Team and it turned out this Argumentative Bastard was a much better debater than swimmer.

I had been thinking about running for some time and after reading Born to Run by Christopher MacDougall, I decided that I should add running to my list of activities…for fun and health. I had done some running before, years ago when I was boxing. You can’t box without running. Running builds up your endurance, improves your footwork, and gives you more power in your punches. Back then I couldn’t run very far without a brace on my left knee, so that is how I ran.

More than 10 years later I decided to take up running and find out of course, that if you need something like a brace to run, you probably shouldn’t be running. So I bought a cheap pair of shoes and started slow and short. This worked for a few months. My left knee was fine. Then I got a slight pull in one of my groin muscles. It didn’t hurt while running. I didn’t even notice anything until two days after my most recent run, when I got in the pool and attempted to do the breast stroke, which requires a frog-kick. And that’s when I felt the “OMG please don’t move me!” pain in my groin. So I stopped that stroke and finished the rest of the my swim.

I went home, iced my groin regularly for a few days and stopped running for a month or so. Pain tends to take the fun out and undermine the health part of doing something for fun and health.

I tried to work running back into my routine slowly, by mixing it with walking. Meanwhile, I did what any over-educated wannabe athlete would do: I went to the library and checked out books on how to run.

The first was Running for Mortals by John “The Penguin” Bingham and Coach Jenny Hadfield. This is a very informative book, meant to take away all the fear of running away from people. I didn’t have this fear.

The authors are, rightfully, big proponents of cross-training. But cycling is their most recommended. And they think you should buy a hybrid bike. And you’ll need gear to go with that, too (after of course spending hundreds of dollars on shoes, shorts, pants, tops, gloves, and so on)…So hundreds and hundreds of dollars later…As if everyone will follow their program and next thing you know you’ll be driving to Florida to participate in a triathlon. As if everyone who decides to run can afford to travel the country or world taking part in marathons, triathlons, and eco-challenges. I realize this is all meant to be part of the positive encouragement tone that the book takes. Which is very good in and of itself. But what is discouraging is the idea that it’s not true that running is a low-cost sport.

Also, every question relating even remotely to injury is answered with “see a sports physician.” As if, in this day and age of not so affordable and readily-available health care, we can also have a doctor (in addition to our primary care physician, if we have one) who specifically treats our sports-related aches and pains.

For once, I’d like to see The Cheapass Guide to Running.

That said, Running for Mortals is an excellent guide to getting started as a runner. The book covers all aspects of running from warming up, cooling down, extending your runs slowly (using the walk/run method), stretching, injury prevention, gear, and strength-training. It also includes some different training plans in the back of book for working your way up to 5k and 10k runs.

One thing that’s lacking in Running for Mortals is a detailed look at form. With any athletic endeavor, form is one of the most important things. You can have all the strength and conditioning necessary for performing the activity, but if your form is incorrect you will be setting yourself up for injury.

So I picked up Natural Running by Danny Abshire (with Brian Metzler). Abshire is big proponent of minimalist shoes and using barefoot running as a training technique to maintain good form. This book is a detailed account of the mechanics involved in running. He goes over the various muscle groups that are used while running, his experiences helping runners adjust their form to get over injuries, proper technique, exercises and drills, and (like any running book it seems) a guide for transitioning to a more natural running style.

Barefoot running enthusiasts seem the harshest critics of Abshire, faulting him for NOT being a full-on Barefoot Running Enthusiast. While Abshire says that the mechanics of barefoot running are best because it’s what our human bodies are designed for, he acknowledges the reality of American and European infrastructure with concrete sidewalks and debris-filled streets. So while he recommends training barefoot on grass or cushioned tracks, he recommends minimalist footwear, with a low heel-to-toe height ratio, for running everyday.

(It is true that Abshire recently started and runs a company called Newton shoes that makes and sells minimalist running shoes. He does not push his product in the book. Rather he draws on three decades of experience as a runner and as a consultant to professional runners for much of the information in his book.)

One of things I found helpful was how he explained why it is difficult to maintain good form while running with traditional running shoes (highly-padded heel). The high heel makes it difficult to land mid-foot. When running, I found myself almost shuffling in my $35 Avia’s, struggling against the shoe’s “desire” to make me heel-strike. Heel-striking is the source of most injuries and problems with pronation.

Since before the Christmas Holiday I’ve tried to get back to running a few days a week, with mixed results. I even bought a new pair of shoes (New Balance MT20s on sale from Zappo’s; they feel great). I’d run pain free, but then a few hours later the soreness in my groin would return. It wasn’t constant and it only occurred when I moved my leg a certain way. So I’m going to stop running for the next month and then try again.

I’ll still be hitting the water early in the morning three times a week. One negative about swimming: despite using anti-chlorine shampoo, I’m getting highlights in my hair.

So it’s been interesting to see how Legos have been in the news recently, and for very different reasons.

First, a U.S. Marine Captain has set a world record for the most Lego kits built.

While many have a hobby, few have the drive and dedication to turn that hobby into a world record. Capt. Kyle Ugone, however, not only has that drive, but also the certificate declaring him as the Guinness World Record holder for the most completed Lego sets in a private collection with an astonishing 1,091 sets.

- snip -

Ugone contacted Guinness to see what the current record for most sets was. Finding out there was none, he was told he would need at least 500 sets to claim a record.

“At the time, I had about 600-700 sets, but I wanted more,” said Ugone. “So, I spent a lot of time scouring the internet to purchase more sets and build them.”

Meanwhile, north of the border, two teenagers in Canada launched a Lego guy into space. Seriously.

Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, 17-year-old classmates at Agincourt Collegiate Institute, took four months, many Saturdays, and $400 to carry a Lego figurine and four cameras miles above the earth, a project that the two did for fun, not for class.

Here’s the video. It’s awesome.

And lastly, here’s a guy who makes a living by playing building with Legos. From the Chicago Tribune.

Starting in 2006, with kits of the Sears Tower (now the Willis Tower), Seattle Space Needle and Empire State Building, Tucker has been the force behind the toy-maker’s unlikeliest success, its Lego Architecture series. The pieces are pricey, serious, intensely complex and sold to teenagers and tourists — though, as a Lego executive told me, “many are bought by 45-year-old architects who put them on their office shelves.”

Lego has become this former Northbrook architect’s life. Tucker is now a “Lego Certified Professional,” one of the 13 artists and educators in the world endorsed by Lego to use its bricks in their projects. Though only Tucker has parlayed this into a Lego toy line, he would be fast to correct you: Lego is not a toy, it’s a medium, and Lego Architecture is only part of what he has accomplished with plastic bricks.

He’s a bit too serious, for my taste. He doesn’t seem to get a whole lot of joy from Legos. If a U.S. Marine can have fun, then surely this guy who works for Lego can lighten up a bit.

Regardless, take heart Lego Lovers: you are never too old or too young to play with Legos.

Exasperation quickly sets in because you can easily end up telling your child to do something (or forbidding them to do something) 50 times or more, the volume of your voice rising with each repetition.

Why the repeated commands?

Because children have, as Bill Cosby put it, “brain damage.”

Then there are those times when the exasperation at my kids’ inability to listen and follow directions makes me want to shout,

IT RUBS THE LOTION ON ITS SKIN OR ELSE IT GETS THE HOSE AGAIN!!!

and get out the garden hose and spray them down with the high pressure setting until they DO WHAT THEY’RE TOLD, screaming, crying, and pleading be damned! But that would create a soggy mess, which I would most likely have to clean up myself. And since I already spend a good portion of my day cleaning up after myself and the kids, I don’t want to create more work. (Don’t worry, as they get older, more cleanup is expected of them relative to their age.)

Lately, I’ve sometimes been commanding them to, “Hut! Hut! Hut! Commence Operation: [fill in the blank]!” and marching/herding them towards where they need to go so they can do what they need to do. It’s silly, the kids know the reference (the Army Men in the Toy Story movies, which everyone in our family has seen as frequently as a new day has dawned in our lives), and most of the time it works. Nothing works 100% of the time with them. These are children we’re talking about, and children have brain damage.

P.S. If you don’t know where the “lotion” ditty comes from, go here…Yes, I am well aware that I have a twisted sense of humor.

I have never been an active user of the site. It seems like it’s an excellent resource for people in the workforce. But being out of the workforce, well, being out of the PAID workforce, LinkedIn is downright annoying. The constant updates about who people are now connected with, their updated profiles, their latest whatever are annoying. By far the most annoying for me are the urgings to “update your profile” so potential employers can find me.

So I finally did update my profile information, detailing my current position (Homemaker) at my current place of employment (Home).

September 2006 – Present (5 years 5 months) Home

Among my duties, I have been and am responsible for cooking, cleaning, baking, washing and folding laundry, refereeing disputes between children, judging the petty crimes of children, wiping butts, vacuuming, potty training, answering “why” questions, developing a tolerance for repeated viewings of children’s cartoons, making complete and working Thomas the Tank Engine track layouts, constructing Lego projects, painting with watercolors, drawing with crayons, playing hide and seek, building furniture cushion forts, assisting with grade school homework, reading stories (sometimes the same ones every day or night for months straight), removing bodily fluids that have been spilled on me or others, and wrestling small children into their clothes or pajamas. Have also gained extensive experience changing diapers (disposable and cotton) and dealing effectively with sleep deprivation.

All of the above has contributed to a marked increase in my own level of patience with Life.

I don’t think the people at LinkedIn had this in mind when they conceived their service.

I should note that my wife refuses to be connected with me on LinkedIn. We’re already connected on Facebook and living under the same roof (we’ve even argued on FB while being under the same roof). She actually uses LinkedIn in a professional manner. And now that I’ve updated my profile in such an accurate way, she says there’s no way in hell she’s going to be connected with me on the site.

Hmm…maybe I can use it to upgrade to a better Homemaker position.

It’s not likely though. I’ve got it pretty good here.

With all the brouhaha about the Lana Del Rey “debacle” on SNL, as a music fan, I had to satisfy my curiosity to see what the latest batch of Outraged Internet Missives were about. You can see the performances below.

Video Games
http://www.nbc.com/assets/video/widget/widget.html?vid=1379139

Blue Jeans
http://www.nbc.com/assets/video/widget/widget.html?vid=1379120

Watching these off-key and nervous performances reminded me instantly of another singer/songwriter I saw perform at one of her first concerts: Liz Phair. It was 1993, her album Exile in Guyville had been out for a bit, garnering a lot of critical buzz. I had bought the album and loved it, despite Phair’s vocal weaknesses. (Ever since developing an Opera Habit my tolerance has disappeared for bad or “ugly” voices, by the likes of Phair, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and Lou Reed, regardless of their skills as song writers.)

The Phair concert was at the Metro, in Chicago, a much smaller stage and more friendly hometown crowd than that for Del Rey. Phair was stiff, holding the guitar in her hands like it was a foreign object she wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to do with. I was more receptive to her nervous performance for a few reasons: 1) I had just endured a craptastic bumbling dirge of a performance by the opening act Red Red Meat, 2) I loved the album, and 3) I wanted desperately to like her performance.

Later I found out that it was one of Phair’s first shows, that she had not spent any time playing her songs live in the clubs that dot the city. It was the last time I ever saw her play live. Later, a friend would see her on her next tour in support of her subsequent album. My friend told me that Phair had improved. But then I watched video clips of Phair performing and I saw the same brilliant song writer who looked lost and unsure of herself on stage, with the same awkward grasp of her guitar that I had witnessed years before.

Didn’t the likes of Joan Jett and Chrissie Hynde blaze trails for something stronger than this? Those women own their stages, and they hold their guitars as if they are natural extensions of themselves, as they should.

Del Rey finally responded to the controversy over her poor performance on SNL with this statement,

“Things are cool. They always will be, whether the music goes good or not,” she says. “Like, I consider being able to sing a luxury, it doesn’t run my life, it’s not my main focus…”

That doesn’t sound like an artist who thrives on the stage. What I saw on both SNL clips was someone who was unsure of what to do with herself on the stage. She was not in control of the audience. She didn’t know how to play to the audience. This ambivalence doesn’t bode well for improving her live performances. Which is a shame, because the songs are catchy in their weird but heavily produced way.

All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling Down House by David Giffels. This Akron, OH journalist and his ever-patient wife Gina buy a decrepit old mansion that is not just in a state of neglect but they find out shortly after taking ownership that it is about to be condemned by the city. Why do they buy it? So they can fix it up and live in their Dream Home. “Fixing it up” entails far more than almost anyone can possibly conceive. More than simply rehabbing it. There’s a raccoon that lives in the attic, plumbing that doesn’t work at all, a garage that is collapsing, old money stashed away, a $1300 natural-gas heating bill for one month, a carpenter ant problem, and so much more. It’s a wonder neither David nor his wife went crazy and had to be medicated or carted off to an institution specializing in mental rehabilitation.

This is the DIY Home Improvement Tale to end all DIY Home Improvement Tales. Recommended for Anyone Who Has Ever Had an Inkling to Restore an Old House.

The Lesson of the Master by Henry James. This novella by James is far less well-known and unfortunately I can see why. All the elements are there: intrigue, European locations, relationships depicted with subtlety, and a hard twist at the end. But this story of a young writer who is in awe of an older writer feels not quite lifeless. It just that it doesn’t simmer the way a good James story does, like say The Turn of the Screw or The Aspern Papers. Recommended only for Fans of Henry James.

The Duel by Giocomo Casanova. Yes, that Casanova. This novella details similar events in Casanova’s life in which the narrator finds himself forced to duel a Polish aristocrat. There is plenty of tension amid the court intrigues and plot twists. The e-book edition from Melville House is loaded with great extras, including commentary on Casanova and short bios of famous duelists. Recommended for Those Who Follow an Anachronistic Style of Honor.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The Sony Reader store had a deal for this best-selling Young Adult trilogy ($18) and I took the plunge partly out of curiosity to see what all the press was about. This high-stakes fast-paced adventure is set in a very grim future where young people battle to the death in a high-tech coliseum (there are MANY parallels to the Roman Empire) at a competition called the “Hunger Games.” Revolution is spawned almost by accident thanks to the actions of 16-year-old expert archer Katniss Everdeen who volunteers in place of her sister to participate in the Hunger Games. Katniss is a serious ass-kicker, tough-minded and honorable despite the moral quandaries she finds herself stuck in. I liked this series. I didn’t love it. The plot is far more compelling than the characters, who are too often flat and perfunctory. But I understand the appeal of Katniss. Warning: she passes out due to injury or some other calamity at key points and then comes to in a hospital gown so frequently it becomes repetitive. Recommended for Young People Who Feel Put Upon.

The book is a collection of X-rays or, as they might be called, “Stomach Shots” or “Ass Slides.” From the few I’ve seen, the objects (everything from a cup to a fork to a Buzz Lightyear figure) look painful.

One of my favorite TV shows of all time is Scrubs. And of course, Scrubs already addressed this confoundingly odd issue in its very first season.

I just might have to add Stuck Up! to my Amazon Wish List.

In case you are interested, you can buy an actual “Ass Box” and an “Ass Box” T-shirt at an online store called ihatedrcox.com. (BTW, Dr. Cox was my favorite character on the show. “Newbie!”) The site also sells a lot more Scrubs-inspired objects.

And that’s your silly post for Friday. Have a great weekend!

According to the description on Youtube, it must have taken many many hours to “animate” all those books. This kind of animation fascinates me. Like clay animation, which I know is quite laborious, when it’s done right the results are wonderful to behold, like this video, where the books “organize themselves.”

Courtesy of my children, I recently saw the newer Bob the Builder episodes, which are done with CGI animation. I have to say, they seem sharper and more harsh than the original clay animation episodes. The clay animation seems far more warm and tactile, as if they are actual toys that could be picked up and played with.

It’s this tactile sense which appeals to me about the “Joy of Books” video, being the bibliophile that I am. Even a bibliophile who owns a Sony Reader.

Should I ever get the chance to visit Toronto, I know which bookstore I’m going to visit first. I’d like to see and touch those books in person, and buy a few.

Over a year ago, we had water damage in our basement from a burst pipe, a pipe leading to one of our outdoor faucets. The old mangy brown carpet had to be ripped up along with the padding. The wall had to be cut out, about two-thirds all the way around the room from the floor to about two feet up. After we had the drywall replaced and the stucco applied to match the rest of the walls, I put primer on it, so that it’s ready to paint whenever we get around to it.

What we never got around to doing was putting carpet in. For over a year we just had the concrete sbufloor, which the kids found to be wholly uninviting, having been used to the carpet.

A few months back, I finally went to a highly-rated carpet store and had them give me an estimate. To cover the nearly five hundred square feet of floor plus the stairs would have cost around $3000.

And that’s with “cheap” carpet.

For carpet that will be destroyed by our children in the next five to ten years.

It’s also three thousand dollars we do not have.

So I did some research and stumbled on these floor mats. They’re made by Norsk-Stor. I found them on sale at Amazon.com for roughly $16 per case of four. That’s roughly $1 per square foot. So after discussing it with my wife, we decided, what the hell, let’s cover the basement floor with them. It’ll be fun, easy to do, relatively inexpensive.

I went back to Amazon.com and tried to order 24 cases of the mats. But Amazon would only let me buy six. So I ordered the six and then I went and ordered six again. But Amazon stopped me after my second order of six.

That’s right. Amazon.com, that Unmatched Paragon of Capitalist Efficiency, wouldn’t let me buy as many as I wanted.

My wife and I figured we would simply wait until we received the 12 and then order again. But that would take awhile, ordering 6 or 12 at a time. After the initial cases arrived, I put them on the floor of the basement. They looked good and felt comfortable, and, most importantly, the kids liked them.

I researched where else I might find these same mats and lo and behold Sears sold them for a dollar more a case but with free shipping to a local store. I double-checked my measurements and ordered 17 from Sears on Thanksgiving weekend. Sears did not limit how many I could purchase. A month later I received an email telling me they had arrived at the store. It took a far longer than I had expected, but I was happy that now the rest of the basement floor could be covered.

I went to Sears to pick them up. Except no one there could find the mats. They had disappeared. The order had been made, my credit card charged, and there was every indication that they had been shipped to the Sears store. But no one at the store had seen them or could locate them. The store offered to refund me the charge on the credit card and let me know if they found them sometime in the next week. I took them up on that offer but I was pissed, muttering to myself about how it was no wonder Sears was closing stores and going the way of Montgomery Wards.

It seemed the universe did not want me to cover our basement floor with these colorful mats. So I waited a week. I was about to go straight to the manufacturer’s website and order the mats for about $5 more per case when I got a call from Sears. They had found the mats. Turns out someone there had set them in the boiler room, thinking they had been purchased for their workspace. Why someone would think multi-colored floor mats were for a workplace that’s not a children’s daycare center I’ll never know. But the important thing is they had found them and I so I went to the store, paid for them and picked them up and brought them back home.

The kids were enthusiastic about helping me put the mats down on the floor. I set up a pattern to follow and, as my son Henry said, “It’s like putting together a puzzle!” we set them down and snapped them in place. It’s the easiest floor I have ever done. Far easier than laminate and much less laborious than tile. See this?

I used a utility knife to cut the hole. No power tools were used during the installation of this product.

Now we have a soft, cushioned, insulated basement floor for the kids to play on. It’s stain-resistant and easy to clean. When the kids grow out of the mats, I’ll just pull the mats up and donate them or throw them out.

Let the Wild Rumpus Start!