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Recently I attended a graduation for a small class of registered nurses.  There were twenty graduates, sixty invited guests and two-thousand digital cameras.  If sasquatch had shambled through the auditorium we’d have had definitive photographic evidence of his existence….along with his hair color (brown), eye color (brown), and shoe-size (fifty-one triple-wide).

Each time a graduate crossed the stage, a handful of audience members popped up like meerkats emerging from their burrows — except (outside of Disney cartoons) meerkats generally don’t engage in flash photography.  When the next graduate walked, an entirely different set of people popped up.  The whole thing felt more like a runway session at a Milan fashion show than a commencement ceremony.  All that was missing was the bass-heavy music and the lame announcer saying, “Angie is wearing a black gown with a mortarboard hat.  Perfect attire for the new graduate!  Steve has chosen to accent his outfit with honor cords!  Here comes Harry with a daring, backless number and the words ‘Hi Mom’ emblazoned in masking tape on his hat!”

To be fair, at least the guests stayed more-or-less in their seats.  If you’ve been to any kind of public event featuring small children lately you’ve probably noticed that the digital dads all fancy themselves linebackers. (Full Text)

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I built my youngest son a new dresser this week. That would be a lot more impressive if the dresser hadn’t come from Walmart in packaging that resembled an oversize pizza box. And, with a little luck and some caution, it won’t actually collapse and bury him in a flash-flood of rumpled clothes.

At least it was cheap.

According to the label, my ninety-nine dollar investment bought me the Hearthwood Heirloom Chest of Drawers. The full-color photograph showed an elegant piece of furniture with a dark wood-grained finish. You could almost smell the warm, rich scent of old oak.

The inside of the box was a different story. The wood evidently came from the finest pressed-board forests of Europe. The pebbly-brown material had a few chunks of actual wood embedded in it, as if to assert that some portion of the dresser was in some small way related to the illustration on the box. In truth it resembled a thicker form of the paper kindergarteners write on. All it lacked were the dashed blue lines. (Full Text)

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Earlier this week my car asked to be taken to the shop for repairs.  A deep, distressed growl replaced the normal quiet hum of road noise.  Either I’d developed a mechanical problem or a dyspeptic grizzly had taken up residence under the hood.

Frankly, given the usual cost of a trip to my mechanic, I hoped it was a bear.  At least then I could turn the whole problem over to Animal Control.

An examination of the engine compartment revealed the usual cryptic tangle of wires, hoses, belts, gears, and greasy metal parts.  No bears, badgers, beavers or any other unexpected wild fauna.

“Yeah, we don’t see bears real often,” my mechanic said.  “We’ll take a look at it.  Have a seat in our Waiting Area.” (Full Text)

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You’ll forgive me if I’m a little terse right now. I’m recovering from an attack of Irritable Dad Syndrome. Although you may not have heard of IDS before, it is a serious problem in this country. IDS afflicts virtually all fathers at some point. Fully half of the fathers in America suffer it at least once a week with a few unfortunate souls finding themselves afflicted daily.

Attacks of IDS are triggered by things in the environment which frustrate or annoy dads. For example, someone — let’s pick a hypothetical person at random, say an adolescent male — might put a milk jug back in the refrigerator with a scant sixteenth-of-an-inch of liquid remaining. Technically speaking, this isn’t really a quantity of milk as much as it is a film of milk! If it spilled there’d be no need to cry over it because the whole mess could be easily cleaned up with a medium-sized cotton ball. Now why would anyone do something like that? Why not drink the rest of the milk? Why entomb it like a Holy Relic? WHY! TELL ME WHY! (Full Text)

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Thanks to Pascal for linking through to this site!  (http://velorizontal.bbfr.net/le-bar-f6/fun-in-english-t11727.htm)