The Sublime Beauty of Putting Things on Other Things

So, this afternoon, I decided to take a few minutes out of my otherwise hectic schedule of watching as much of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD as Gabe's interest would allow at a time (for the record, Gabe will allow me to watch almost exactly fifteen minutes before he starts mercilessly shrieking "Max and Bee! Max and Bee!" or "Dor! Dor! Dor and Boots!" and I have to give in and put something on that I'd rather have forced under my fingernails than into my eyeholes) and teach Gabe an important lesson about the potential awesomeness of hybridization.

Now, I know that hybrids are USUALLY boring--hardy strains of wheat or a dog whose breed name ends comically in "poo"--but that is just because they are bogged down in "science" and "facts" and "breeding compatibility," things I'm not the least bit concerned with (especially the last one, I think--the more incompatible something is, probably the more curious I would be to see it try to breed. I'm just jaded that way.). Or you're talking about a vogue combustion engine type. No, I wasn't teaching him about that. Not at all. That might prove useful and practical. I took the time to teach him about the wonders of stacking one thing on top of another thing to create a new thing that is boundless in its imaginative possibilities. Specifically, because we were playing with his cars, I taught him how to create cartrosities.

It all started with the "hotdog tractor" that we created a few weeks back.

The future of farming. One of them, anyway, if you hold with that whole infinite universes theory.

Hotdog tractor happened rather by accident. The tractor used to have a little wooden man that drove it. Several months back, we had to take the little man away because Gabe was putting him in his mouth and trying to swallow him. When Gabe stopped trying to swallow everything, we gave the little man back, but now he's gone again. I can only assume that Gabe went ahead and swallowed him because that is the direction the evidence points ("evidence" being that he used to try and swallow him, and now he's gone, there's no NEW evidence, obviously, like a choking boy on my floor or a rather long, very hard poop in his diaper). Poor little man. But, without its driver, the tractor looked incomplete. So, when Libby bought Gabe a set of Melissa and Doug foods that included a hotdog that fit perfectly, I improvised. Since then, Gabe has called this his hotdog tractor, even when the hotdog isn't in there.

Today, Gabe added the hotdog to the tractor again, and it gave me the idea to see what else we could come up with. Here are the awesome results.

The Trainbine. Imagine all the sorghum (or whatever your crop of preference is) something like this could harvest! As long as the crop was planted in and along railroad tracks, that is. So, yeah, probably not the most practical invention. But here we were still in our "brainstorming" phase, where there are no bad ideas (just stupid ones).

The Bikedozer. All the earth moving properties of a bulldozer coupled with the speed and agility of a four wheeler (Gabe calls it a bike, for some reason, even though I correct him regularly--not that I care about the integrity of four wheelers or anything, I'm just a prig for correctly calling things what they are--but I had to admit that working "bike" into a new name was much easier than "four wheeler."

The Helicarptor (Gabe removed the blades from the helicopter less than twenty-four hours after receiving it as a gift, but it IS a helicoptor on top of that car). All the leg room of a car that's been converted into a monster truck (and all the requisite chompings from Carzilla and line-of-buses jumping that goes along with that title), but it can fly! Almost too awesome to conceive.

Unfortunately, though, because it's me we're talking about here, things started dipping into the surreal from this point.

The Duckrete Mixer. What practical purpose this could serve to justify its existence, I'm not sure. Ducks are mean, stupid animals bent on the destruction of all humanity (read this, this, and this if you don't believe me), and they certainly would never help to build anything worthwhile. So, probably, this is something they conceived to build their own terrible weapon or evil base of operations. Beware!

The, er, Garbage Collection Horse Truck. Yeah. This one was Gabe's contribution (I say that because he put the horse on top, but, really, I can't BLAME him for creating something that I couldn't hybridize the name of because I handed him the horse and told him to put it on top of the truck). It has all the majesty of a horse and the stinkiness of a garbage truck. Rejoice or tremble in fear, your choice.

And, last of all, our most horrifying abomination:

The Tractorbaby! Or Bactor? Babtor? Tractby? Whatever. It's terrifying. This one I didn't actually name in front of Gabe because, you know, it's probably not good to encourage him to start putting things on top of the baby for the sake of naming it. As it was, she was unimpressed enough with the entire process.

Which reminds me of another picture that I thought I would share. It's unrelated to the rest of the post, but it boggles my mind, so I'm sharing.

Look at those spit bubbles! This is what Butts does with her days right now. If she spends the majority of the day fairly upright, she can completely saturate FIVE bibs in a single day. It's a bit ridiculous, frankly. I'm not sure how she's not dehydrated. I know she gets all of her nourishment in liquid form, but still. I could squeeze her bibs out and probably fill one 8 oz. bottle every day (eww). I'm hoping this phase doesn't last long. I have to do a load of bibs in the laudry every day just to keep up.