Category Archives: Non-Exhaustive List
Deep Thoughts on The Little Mermaid: A Non-Exhaustive List
Repeated viewing of any movie allows you to catch things you didn’t notice the first time, and so when one has seen a film enough times to recite it ad nauseum, one is bound to look beyond the suspension of disbelief most viewers enjoy, dissect its every nuance, and discover gaping holes in the story’s logic. If there’s any movie that fits this description for me, it’s Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
She’s somehow become a big “Part of My World.”
Not only do the Twins request it at least three times a week, it was also a VHS my two younger sisters would loop at least three times a day when we were growing up. (Fun fact: When the Twins are at my mom’s house, they watch that very same VHS. It still plays perfectly.) It has recently occurred to me that–by my half-assed calculations–this incessant exposure to The Little Mermaid places it comfortably at the top of my all-time most-viewed movies list. While I’d prefer my chart-topper to be something badass like The Empire Strikes Back or Back to the Future, I guess it could be worse, right? (I’m looking at you, The Chronicles of Riddick.) Anyway, apparently watching The Little Mermaid has become my life’s work, so I feel it is my duty as an expert in this field to share the following observations I’ve made over the years, to further enhance your own Mermaid-viewing experience:
Things I Did This Weekend: A Non-Exhaustive List
1. Woke up at 3am both mornings to rescue the Twins from drowning in a sea of their own mucus, caused by a recent onslaught of sickness.
2. Wiped tiny noses every thirty seconds, literally working through six boxes of tissues.
3. Wiped tiny squirts of child cold medicine defiantly spat at me off my face every four to six hours.
4. Listened to my washing machine suddenly start playing dubstep mid-cycle, culminating in a crash and sudsy water pooling below it.
I told it three times to let me know if it needed to go potty.
5. Helped my wife scour the Pseudonymous Family’s vast collection of receipts and instruction booklets for the washing machine’s warranty information, continually chasing down toddlers who took off running with unsearched piles, wiping their noses on them.
6. Worked during too-short naptimes and into the wee hours of the night on a National Science Foundation research grant proposal that is due Wednesday and nowhere near done.
7. Got my son to repeat “My Precious” several times after he woke up from a nap with a raspy, swollen-sinus voice that made him sound exactly like Gollum. Which made it all worth it.
Reasons the World Should Not End on Friday: A Non-Exhaustive List
1. We still haven’t seen the second Hobbit movie. Peter Jackson has worked way too hard for it to go unseen.
It’s going to be amazing in 3-D, Precious! We swears!
2. I would not finish the Ph. D. I’ve been toiling over for years and would have no choice but to throw a hissy fit in the afterlife, surely banning me from all future John Lennon concerts–all because the Mayans couldn’t find anymore paper.
3. It would prevent us from seeing whether Science will fulfill the prophecies of hoverboards, self-drying jackets, and flying cars in 2015, as set forth by Back to the Future 2.
4. It would really be a bummer to not watch the Twins grow up–to never see Little League games and dance recitals, Christmas pageants and graduations, to never walk my daughter down the aisle, to never spoil my grandchildren rotten. Seriously, Mayans, what’s your frickin’ problem?
5. Despite the divisiveness the election caused, the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, and the atrocity in Connecticut, there is still just too much good in the world for us to throw in the towel just yet.
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Don’t stop believin’, society!
Lesser Known Things Tiggers Do Best: A Non-Exhaustive List
1. Managing personal finances
2. Remembering whether or not they are running out of milk at home
3. Creating iTunes playlists for road trips
4. Knowing the name of that one actor in that one movie you are talking about
5. Saving seats for you in the movie theater that are not behind the tall guy with a head the size of Jack in the Box’s CEO’s
6. Photobombing
Man, Eeyore just can’t catch a break.
Bad Places to Congregate with Your Family at Disneyland: A Non-Exhaustive List
1. Right in front of the f*cking bathroom entrance.
2. Right in front of the f*cking FastPass dispenser.
3. Right in front of the f*cking Pirates of the Caribbean exit.
4. Right in front of the f*cking place I’ve been saving for 45 minutes so my kids can see the parade.
5. Right in front of the f*cking camera shot of my wife and kids in front of the Sleeping Beauty Castle.
