Orphans, Bigamists, and “Science” Oh My!

Because we’ve been spending more time outside thanks to the stupid nice weather (which we’ll still have to do even when the weather gets hot and miserable because Gabe LOVES his swimming pool and will happily spend an hour or two in it every day once it gets warm enough), there hasn’t been much time to create any new bedroom drama. So, I decided to follow a thread that I started with my last post: kids’ shows.

Now, these posts might not be completely relevant to anyone who doesn’t have children under the age of five or six, but you should read them even if they aren’t entirely relevant. You should read them because, hey, you never know. Someday you might be asked to babysit someone’s kid and you’ll want an idea of what might be worth sitting in front of with the kid and what might offer you the perfect opportunity to take a shower or a dump while the kid is otherwise occupied (yes, I have to plan these activities around Gabe’s distraction level, that’s what being a parent is all about: compromising your simple, basic comforts like showers and dumps, both of which you will be forced to do as fast and enjoyment free as possible).

When possible, I will also include pictures of Gabe as the show in question is on, so you can appropriately gauge his distraction level (hinting sometimes at its quality and sometimes at Gabe’s tastes).

Note: Because, as usual, I typed this up the day before posting, I didn't actually have ANY pictures available yet to post. Now, we've missed Gabe's opportunity to watch two of these three shows until later in the day. So, instead of pictures of Gabe vegging in front of the TV, I'll just include two videos along the way instead.

This first video is one of what is rapidly becoming a morning ritual for us. Every morning, Gabe joins Libby in the bathroom while she's getting ready for work. He always starts by brushing his teeth (which he loves to do--though his version is putting the toothbrush under the water and sucking all the droplets from the bristles, there's no actual brushing involved), and then Libby puts some makeup on him as she finishes herself.

Orphans, Bigamists, and “Science” Oh My!

At first I thought I would hit each network in order, listing and commenting on shows as they start early in the morning and moving through the day. Then I realized that I would have to post comments on something like one hundred different shows. This isn’t out of the question because, obviously, I’m full of inspired curmudgeonism for just about everything, and I could easily expound on the qualities of that many shows. However, it would mean that I would have to honestly watch many shows that, if they were on, I was, at best, listening to in the background while we messed with something else. Most of the time, even with the shows that I sort of like, I’m not really paying attention to the TV. I’ve learned to almost doze with my eyes open thanks to his shows—a skill that will no doubt come in handy should I ever become a member of congress or decide to go back to school again.

So, instead, I’m just going to hit on several of the shows that I feel are worth mentioning. I’ll try to keep them clumped together by their networks if I can, just to ease the confusion, but no promises.

I’ll start off with three Nick Jr. shows (they also air on Noggin).

“Max and Ruby”

The biggest problem that I have with Max and Ruby is that social services hasn’t stepped in to take custody of these obviously neglected children from their grandmother, who, I assume, has custody of them. At first, I thought maybe they didn’t even have parents—perhaps they were eaten by a wolf, being giant, fat rabbits that any wolf would abandon its pack to get a hold of—but then, last week, Libby and I noticed a picture hanging up in Max and Ruby’s living room of the two of them standing with two parents. Since the parents have NEVER been in the show, and the only guardian that ever does make an appearance is their grandmother, I’ve concluded that the parents must be negligent drug dealers or, possibly, spies. Either way, they are never home.

Most of the time, Ruby is in charge of everything (note: Ruby is the older sister, and she’s supposed to be somewhere in the 7-9 year old range, I guess, and Max is probably supposed to be 3-4). She has to make Max his meals, get him dressed, make sure he bathes, entertain him, and still try to meet all of the ridiculous requirements set forth by the budding young cult she’s a member of, the Bunny Scouts. It doesn’t help that Max is a “mischievous” simpleton who actively tries to spoil every nice thing Ruby tries to do.

Now, this might make me sound sympathetic to Ruby, but I’m not. I think she’s a manipulative little bitch, not to put too fine a point on it. She’s prudish, priggish, dowdy, and controlling. She has an unwavering idea of how things “should be” in her little world and she is almost oppressive in her attempts to bend Max to her will.

Max, I suppose, is supposed to be a “free spirit” or something. He doesn’t listen, refuses to cooperate, and usually causes no end of trouble in each episode. Yet, somehow, he always ends up being “right,” inadvertently solving whatever dilemma they are facing with his acutely simplistic and painfully myopic insistence on doing whatever the hell happens to catch his fancy at the time. In this sense, he’s very much like my own two year old son (only I would never dare use words with such negative connotations when talking about the way Gabe never listens, does whatever the hell he wants, and focuses with stubborn glee on doing the one thing he absolutely shouldn’t be doing at the time—with Gabe, it’s cute, with cartoon characters, it’s a bad example and it makes me a touch cranky).

As for Grandma, she’s pretty much a useless piece of tit meat as far as I’m concerned. Sure, she’s supportive of whatever lame-brained scheme Ruby has concocted and its pathetic end result (laughing at her semi-literate plays, “enjoying” her abominations of cooking, pretending the artwork she’s proudly presenting doesn’t look like it was done by a handicapped proto-human, those sorts of things), but she never actually DOES anything. Not once has she offered her grandchildren any sort of care. She doesn’t even live particularly close to them. She just pops in at her leisure, leaving the kids to fend for themselves somehow after praising them for churning out whatever mediocrity they’re currently working on. I’m not entirely sure what kind of message the show is supposed to be sending to kids, but to me it seems to be supporting leaving kids unattended as a rule.

That isn’t to say that I don’t occasionally enjoy parts of the show. I mostly try not to watch it, and Gabe, for some reason, sort of enjoys it from time to time (I blame Libby because she’ll watch it and seems to get a kick out of it most of the time), but, every once in awhile, I find myself smiling at it. Mostly it happens when Max is getting ready to do something that he knows he’s not supposed to. In these instances, he gets an evil little, shit-eating grin on his face that I find quite charming. Otherwise, though, I find the show to be annoying tripe of the first order.

“The Backyardigans”

Gabe during Backyardigans. In a few minutes, we start to play the "Glh Glh" game (it's the video at the end).

About a year and a half ago, when I started making a conscious effort to make sure whatever was on the TV—if the TV was on, obviously—was kid friendly, I started by watching Nick Jr. Mostly I did this because it was before we had digital cable and, aside from PBS, it was the only channel we had that played kids shows (disregarding Cartoon Network, of course, since its stuff is mostly appropriate for kids over ten years old who have been repeatedly hit on the head with blunt, heavy objects—except for “Chowder,” which I think is pretty funny). And, if I sat through the Nick Jr. stuff, eventually they would show some Spongebob or Fairlyodd Parents, both of which are pretty funny and usually watchable. Anyway, during this time, I became familiar with the range of shows on there at the time. Most of those shows are still on Nick Jr., but the ones that aren’t are still shown, usually ad nauseum, on Noggin (which, apparently, is the network where old Nickelodeon shows go to die), and the first one that I decided was nearly enjoyable was “The Backyardigans.”

Enjoyable though they are, I feel it’s necessary to start by shining a little light on this show’s dirty little secret. The Backyardigans are the children of bigamists—possibly Mormons. How do I know this, you might ask. Simple, I have seen about four episodes of “Big Love,” so I am obviously an expert on the subject of managing multiple spouses. One of the aspects that I found most interesting about this show (and there weren’t many, which was why I only made it through the first four or five episodes before deciding that bigamy involved far more talking and far less sex with multiple wives than I found interesting) was the “compound” that Bill Paxton built for his three wives and their kids. The houses shared a common backyard that was fenced off from the rest of the neighborhood, easily connecting all of the houses from the prying eyes of nosy neighbors.

And the Backyardigans have a setup that is almost exactly the same. The four or five houses that each kid comes from (they usually only show three of them) shares a common backyard where they all have their imaginative adventures (thus the name).

And I’m not passing judgment of any sort here. I personally don’t have a problem with bigamy—and by that I mean that I don’t care even a wit that it exists in some places and cultures. I do, however, have a problem with the idea as a practical application. I can’t imagine why anyone would ever choose to take on the responsibilities of multiple families and spouses. Keeping up with one child and one wife is plenty for me, and anyone who disagrees probably isn’t doing a very good job with the one’s he’s got. But, I guess if people can make it work, I wish them all the “whatever” at my disposal.

So, if you have a problem with bigamy, I wouldn’t recommend Backyardigans. I mean, they never actually SAY anything about their “community,” but I’m sure there is some subversive, subtle, underlying tones that people could pick up on if they wanted to(and I’m sure there is someone out there who has devoted WAY too much time to it, like the people who want Spongebob banned for being gay propaganda). Because, really, you CAN pick up on just about anything if you really, really want to.

Otherwise, I find the show to be pretty clever. The songs are sometimes witty well beyond the years of the intended viewing audience, and I always appreciate it when writers include content that is over the head of their audience for the benefit of the parents who have to sit through it too. Here is “Racing Day," one of the more amusing songs from the show. I wish I could show a video, but I think Nickelodeon is owned by Viacom, and they have a bug up their butt about their shows being on youtube, so I guess you’ll just have to listen to the song for free on Amazon instead.

As for Gabe, he’s mostly indifferent to the show despite the fact that I started singing the theme song to him when he was about six months old and still try to encourage him to dance to it whenever it comes on (actually, now that I think about it, this might be the exact reason why he doesn’t like it. Great, I’m raising a critic). He SHOULD like it. It’s colorful and has singing in it, two of his favorite things right now. The lesson, obviously, is that kids will like whatever they damn well feel like liking and their parents can’t do much more than try to point them in the right direction and be disappointed when it doesn’t work out. Oh well.

“Go Diego Go”

I feel a little guilty that two of the shows I’m covering today are two of the shows that I have the biggest problem with. I feel like maybe I’m peaking a little too early.

But I do hate Diego. Actually, this is one of the only shows that I absolutely refuse to watch, which often pisses Gabe off. Diego plays at random intervals through the day, first in the morning on Nick Jr., sometimes more than once, then through the late afternoon and evening on Noggin, and it almost always follows something that I don’t mind. So, usually, Gabe gets to hear the first part of Diego’s theme song playing—enough for him to start saying, “Dee! Dee!”—and then I change the channel. Often he cries. Always he gives me a look far dirtier than someone his age should be capable of. He loves him some Diego. And Dora. But Dora I don’t have the same kind of problem with and I’ll get back to her another day anyhow.

I hate Diego because all of the references within the show, even the very concept of the plots for each episode, CLAIM to be “science” or “scientific” in nature. They are rescuing animals. They give random nature factoids about whatever animal they happen to be saving. They pull out little tidbits about the animal’s habitat or ecosystem or SOMETHING. They use the jargon, and they use it well enough for kids to THINK they are learning about science.

But then they plunge headlong into fantasy and the impossible—making them seem real and plausible. Take his goddamn Rescue Pack, for instance. It can turn into ANYTHING, clearly defying any of a number of laws of nature, physics, and probably decency itself. The animals in his shows invariably go through some magic transformation as they age from being a baby into adulthood right before their very eyes. And speaking of animals, SOME of the animals talk (not all of them because, apparently, some of them ARE STILL JUST ANIMALS).

Now, the most frustrating thing about this show, to me, is that its claims to be “science” infuriate me—and I’m really nowhere near a science-nazi. In fact, I barely even care about science, except for the many ways that it can invent diet sodas that I love (only to be taken away a year later by the heartless soda companies). And maybe how it will cure the heart disease I’m sure I’ll have later in life (partly due, I’m sure, to the side effects of loving diet soda). Otherwise, science is little more than a trivial curiosity to me—random bits of information that I can digest and pull back up later to use in completely useless context (which, really, is how my brain digests ALL information). But Diego’s irreverence has made me care about how science is being mistreated in this show, and that makes me even angrier than I get at the show for screwing up the good name of science in the first place! And then that makes me angry that I’m getting angry about something so stupid, so I end up even angrier. And, before we’re even ten minutes into the show, I’m ready to tear Diego’s stupid head off his stupid body and shove it up his stupid ass and then I’ll transform Rescue Pack into an atom bomb and blowing the hell out of his whole stupid cartoon universe.

But that would likely kill Dora, too, who I don’t have the same kind of problem with. And that just wouldn’t be fair. Plus I can’t interact with cartoon characters in that way. So I just leave the room or change the channel instead.

But, man, I hate Diego. I don’t know why, exactly, he riles me up the way he does, but he does. And he DAMN sure better watch his back if he’s ever in my neck of the woods because me and Science are going to put to the test the probability of Rescue Pack actually functioning like he thinks it will when we tie him up with kite string and drop him down the World’s Largest Hand Dug Well. Then we’ll see who needs rescuing.

Man, I’m feeling all gangsta right now, threatening imaginary violence on an eight year old cartoon character. I’m pretty tough. Think I’m going to go eat some walnuts. Not cracked with my own hands, of course. Pre-shelled, and cut into halves so I don’t choke. But tough.

For some reason we're not quite sure of, Gabe has been saying "glh glh" for "light" for about six months now. I like to think it's because he's so smart he's just pronouncing the silent letters in the word (and the "l"), but somehow I doubt that's the case. We usually play this game at least once a day, sometimes for fifteen or twenty minutes. The electric company surely must love us.

The Eerie Effectiveness of Advertising

Yesterday, we made our first "tent" in the living room. For a few months now, Gabe has insisted, on a pretty much daily basis, on having the foot rest extended on the recliner. Usually, once it's extended, he has no interest in it, but once in awhile he'll play with his cars on it. Another staple of his living room environment is Poof. Poof is a twin sized feather comforter that we keep behind the couch because our living room--having drafty windows and being on the north side of the house--tends to get pretty chilly in the winter. Every day, Gabe stands on the couch, looking over the back edge of it, saying, "Poof! Poof!" until one of us pulls the comforter over and let him do what he wants with it. Usually, he wants to throw it on the floor, and all he will do with it the rest of the day is trip over it, but for some reason he still insists.

Yesterday, though, after an extended game of hide-and-seek (wherein I covered myself up with Poof and he backed up three or four steps then ran at me full tilt, fists extended, until he punched me either in the face or the junk--but, since he was laughing the entire time and having the time of his life, I HAD to keep doing it, despite the black eye and swollen bollocks I have this morning) I decided to try throwing Poof over the extended foot rest and creating a "tent."

After I threw the blanket over, it took about five minutes of coaxing before I could convince Gabe to crawl under and see the open space beneath the foot rest, but once I did, he was digging it. I brought in a handful of his cars and laid down on the side--while still under Poof--so I could watch what he was doing. It was adorable, and I should have taken a few pictures. Sadly, the camera was still in Libby's purse from use over the weekend.

Anyway, on to the point of this post. While we were under there, the TV was on in the background. We had it on Nick Jr (the Nickelodeon programming that runs from 7:30 am-?, where "?" represents the earliest point the network believes older kids will want to watch Spongebob again--or around 1:00 during the school year and anywhere from 10:00-12:00 during the summer) to watch Backyardigans. Then, out of nowhere, Gabe says, "Baby." I said, "What?" He repeated it. I listened to the TV and, sure enough, one of the many diaper commercials was running.

"Huh," I thought. Having never been one to pay much attention to what's going on in the foreground, I was pretty impressed that he not only heard it but recognized the voiceover/background noise in the commercial to remember what was in it.

Then about thirty seconds later he said, "Trash. Trash." Because his version of "trash" sounds like about a dozen other words he'll say atrandom intervals during the day, I had to look at the commercial for context and, sure enough, it was a Hefty commercial that, for one reason or another, he enjoys. Actually, I know why he recognizes that commerical. It has a five or six year old "big kid" taking the trash out for his mom, and I often point out to Gabe, "See how that big kid is helping his mom by taking out the trash? Some day YOU'LL get to help us that way!" I say this in the hopes that it will not only prepare him but get him excited at the prospects of doing menial chores for us some day. Because I fully intend to exploit that for whatever I can when he's old enough to do more good than harm. But the point is, he again recognized what was going on in the commercial based solely on the sounds coming from it.

All of this got me thinking and, perhaps, worrying just a touch. Of course, the first thing that came into my head was, "He's watching too much TV." And, no doubt, he is. Long ago we swore that we wouldn't use the TV as a babysitter. But then we had a kid who, without the TV to occasionally distract him, would need one of us in the room with him ALL THE TIME to coordinate his activities. Gabe is not a self-entertainer. So I try to maintain a happy medium. We watch SOME TV, which allows me to do other things around the house, but we mostly watch either PBS or Noggin, which don't show commercials and mostly show educational type programming. Only during the dead space in the morning, when neither PBS nor Noggin are showing something that I can tolerate, do we watch Nick Jr. So, he really only gets exposed to commercials for a rather limited period each morning.

So, I decided that, while I'm still somewhat to blame for his knowing commercials well enough to identify them without seeing them, it's MOSTLY the fault of the advertising agencies for making commercials that stick in my kid's head. Stupid advertisers! How dare you take advantage of my innate laziness and my child's spongelike brain! Shame on you for doing your jobs well! Why can't you be like most Americans and do a half-assed job, creating commercials that slip easily from his mind and, thus, letting me believe that I'm not doing some kind of irreparable harm to my son's development? How dare you make me question, um, things. Sorry. Hold on. Something funny just happened on the TV. Anyway, what was I saying? Hmm? Ha, ha! Monkey!

The Lord of the Dance

I'm afraid we're still in recovery mode from the long weekend--which means not much of a post today and this is also the reason there weren't any posts for much of the last week (we spent most of the end of last week getting the house cleaned and ready).

The extra day off for Libby was fantastic, of course, but it always leads to about three days of readjustment for Gabe. Since he barely tolerates having to spend all of his days with me, he LOVES it when Libby is home. He ends up doing almost exactly the same things he does with me (except she spends more time outside and doesn't go upstairs), but for some reason it's much more fun doing it with Momma than it is with me. C'est la vie. Now we'll spend at least the next two days readjusting, which means he'll be used to me about the time the weekend starts and it all begins again.

Another factor in our recovering from this weekend was our annual wine party. It seems worth noting at this point that getting older is stupid. Our parties start later and later (we USED to get started "preparing" for our parties with shots and mixed drinks in the middle of the afternoon, now we're lucky if we can even get most of the people here by 8:00) and they end earlier and earlier (once upon a time, if a party ended before 3:00 in the morning, we considered it a failure, now, if they last until midnight, we consider them a success). Usually, we get my folks to watch Gabe when we have a party, so we can have the following morning to sleep things off, but my folks are in California right now. This meant that we had the privilege of waking up around 6:00 Sunday morning, after about five hours of inebriated sleep, to entertain our boy. Obviously, this helped to delay our recovery time.

So, it was a busy weekend--but it was a busy and largely uneventful weekend as far as posting material goes. There is one picture from the party that I will post, just because I'm in it and I look awesome.

Oh, wait. Awesome isn't the word I'm looking for. Terrible is what I meant. This was about three hours into the party, and Libby took the picture while I was, apparently, whistling for a taxi. Also note the sexy, sexy chest hair. For some reason, we decided that our traditional "fancy party" garb (old suit coats a few of us wear that we don't mind getting puke on, because at least one person always ends up puking at our wine parties, and you just never know who it's going to be) should be worn without shirts this year--I blame the nearly hot weather. Whatever the reason, I think the look will catch on very soon. Keep watching those Old Navy commercials with the mannequins. As soon as they start wearing coats with no shirts, you'll know that I've influenced a fashion trend.

Now for the Gabe video. It's pretty self-explanatory. The only thing I feel I should say is that I don't recommend trying this at home. It was, of course, a terribly irresponsible thing for me to encourage considering he's standing up on a chair at the dining room table. However, without that bit of setting, the video would have lost something. So, you know, whatever. And no children were harmed in the filming of this video, so I'll chalk it up as a Win.

Terrible Peaches-Related Carnage

This post is dedicated to Gabe's uncle James because it contains two of his favorite things: shoes and zombies.

First, the shoes. Over the last week, Libby and I have been trying to get the house back into shape—doing some spring cleaning, finishing up a few projects, and just generally getting the house ready to have a mess of people in it on Saturday for our annual wine party. Part of this cleanup was the semi-annual Bringing Upstairs of Libby’s Shoes, which have been piling up in our back room for quite some time. As the seasons change, and the pile up of shoes gets too unreasonable thanks to the addition of new-season shoes, we always reach a breaking point (usually, quite literally, as I trip and fall on some errant boot that’s cascaded off the pile and into the walking path, which leads to much cursing of some people “having more shoes than God could have needed in his thousand millennia” and suchlike. On a side note, Molly should be pleased to know that I no longer put shoes in the freezer when I trip on them. Sadly, our freezer is just too full for such poignant lessons). So we make three or four trips upstairs with armfuls of her shoes (and usually one or two pairs of mine—one pair of winter shoes or two pairs of summer shoes because I’m a bit of a prima donna and have to have sandals AND flip flops). This time, we got distracted halfway upstairs and stopped in the dining room with an armful of her shoes.

And Gabe LOVED it. He stacked and sorted and lined up and tried on her shoes for about two hours all told last night. Right before bedtime, we finally thought to get out the camera and caught a little video of him trying on and attempting to walk around in some of her shoes.

Terrible Peaches-Related Carnage

This afternoon, we decided to capitalize on his newfound zombie impersonation skills a little bit with Peaches and the rest of his bedroom.

It was a slaughter. A bloodbath. Just awful. Twice I said, “Oh, the humanity!” in an unironic way.

You just don’t know how easy a target a stuffed animal makes until you’ve watched one being overtaken by a zombie. They’re just defenseless unless someone is actively trying to save them. And, since I was the only one there to help them out, and I was too mortified to move a muscle, it was a near complete destruction of the cozy little bedroom scene.

What, exactly, set off the normally reasonable Peaches is tough to say. My bet is that someone said she looked fat in the outfit she was wearing. That usually does it. But whatever set her off, she didn’t bother with starting off slow, she dove right in with all of her brain chomping muscles working double time.

She started with the “bed” toys (the ones that rarely leave the crib since they’re the ones Gabe insists on sleeping with each night) because, obviously, they were the easiest prey. Even if they COULD have moved on their own, they wouldn’t have had anywhere to go. It was like eating the brains of stuffed animals in a barrel. She started with the biggest one—Fat Bunny.

Fat Bunny, surprisingly not as filling as one might assume.

After Fat Bunny and Crotchy, she moved on to Elmo, savoring the kill just a little too much (or some might think, and I would agree, just enough, considering it IS Elmo).

Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo, Elmo's Brain.

Then she did something quite unexpected, using her amazing zombie muscles, she leapt into the air and tangled herself up in the mobile that is hanging above Gabe’s bed so she could feast on each of the little insects hanging up there.

If only zombies could fly, this would have been so much simpler.

From there, she moved along the top of the crib and found the Wonder Pets, huddling in terror on top of the set of drawers that are built into the bed. They tried to use teamwork to defeat their foe, but that only made her job even easier as their heads were deliciously close together for her dining enjoyment.

Wonder Pets, Wonder Pets, we're on our way, to help a zombie's digestion and smell of decay.

Next, she jumped off the bed and made her way to Creepy Baby and Maria, who were having a tea party around Gabe’s table (the picture was taken after Gabe's video, so Maria's not in the picture). Oh the sweet, sweet taste of human baby brains! So tender, so unspoiled, so nourishing!

Creepy Baby, it's what's for dinner.

It was a veritable orgy of grey matter! And Gabe got to help! Sort of. Though, as you’ll note in the video at the end of the post, I did also teach him how to say, “Ohm nom nom,” so he’s almost got his zombie repertoire complete! Actually, I guess it is complete. They say, “Braaaaaains!” until they find a head to bite into, then they say, “Ohm nom nom” as they’re eating. And that’s pretty much all zombies do. Eating is just about all they do. They’re actually pretty similar to small children in that sense, except they don’t poop.

Holy crap. Revelation! Zombies are like small children without the poop! Why do people waste their time raising children when they could just get themselves a zombie and have one less mess to clean up? Think about it, people! Granted, the food will be bit tougher to come by, but, really, breast milk isn’t what you’d call an “in your dairy case” item either—we’ve just CREATED food to fill the gap, and I imagine that science can do the same for brains. Think about it, science!

So from the tea party, Peaches climbed up into the urban jungle habitat and made quick work of Dag. Poor big monkey.

I kept seeing the dinner scene in the palace in Temple of Doom in my head while I was taking this picture.

And the tray on her buffet was filled with Karl Weathers, who was sleeping on Dag’s couch at the time. But Karl, having heard the unsettling crunching noises coming from Dag’s bedroom, was prepared for trouble. He put up a valiant fight, wrapping the demented head nosher in his strangulating coils.

This Saturday, don't miss the Sci Fi original, "Urban Jungle Zombie"

Sadly, since Karl had been away from the wild for so long—reduced to coiling bottles of Gatorade and packages of pimento loaf in the place of freshly caught meals—he was desperately out of practice, and he stupidly wrapped Peaches up with her mouth still in biting distance of his head. Sorry, Karl. On the up side, I suspect the Sci Fi channel would JUMP at a movie proposal of his recent real life experience, which might even help put him (or, rather, Carl Weathers, who he’s still standing in for) back on the entertainment map.

And that was where the feasting stopped for the day. Exhausted, her belly nearly bursting with fresh brains, Peaches collapsed onto Dag’s couch and began to sleep the intoxicated sleep of the over fed.

Where that puts the state of the bedroom as a whole is difficult to say. While Peaches didn’t kill or infect everyone, she certainly made her mark. Realistically, by tomorrow morning, everyone in there should be a zombie unless they had the good sense to lock themselves in the closet with enough supplies to wait out the armageddon. And I think we all know that Gabe’s stuffed animals don’t have enough sense to do something like that.

Presumably, a Night of the Living Dead type aftermath adventure will have to happen next. Though, with luck, it will end up being a little more like Shaun of the Dead.

Oh yeah, one more thing on a zombie related note. Just Monday, I learned what ZOMG means. OMG, obviously, is the standard acronym for Oh My God and has been a staple of internet chat rooms for, what, more than 15 years now. But ZOMG is one that I’ve seen a few times but never cared enough to look up. Apparently there are a few different meanings (one is that the “z” is meant to be a mistake, hitting it instead of the shift key, another is that it’s just used for emphasis, because a caps-locked abbreviation isn’t emphatic enough, I guess), but the one I choose to believe is the REAL definition stands for Zombies! Oh My God!

Which means that, in Gabe’s playroom, if his toys have texting options, they have the only actual, legitimate reason for anyone in the world to ever type that exact bit of webese vernacular. I hope they are using their opportunity wisely.

And on a self-effacing note, before I looked it up Monday (on wiktionary, I believe, though it might have been urbandictionary, I can’t remember), I had completely failed to make the connection to OMG. I was, literally, reading it as the word “zomg” and then dutifully ignoring it as too stupid for me to care what it meant. So, that’s just how out of touch I am with the leets and the txtrz (that last word, curiously, I can’t find in urbandictionary, so I’m going to have to assume that I’m coining it right now—which is awesome because it means I’m BOUND to understand what it means when it catches on) these days.