Tagged: O Loyal Reader
Hutt’s New
Well, it’s a whole new year according to the fairly arbitrary human construct that is a complete circle around the sun, and you know what that means–it’s the season of empty promises!
Yes, now that we’ve imagined a clean slate for ourselves, let’s renew that annual gym membership so we can visit two (maybe three!) times this calendar year, all the while feeling guilty about the money we’ve commoded… Let’s also vow we will stick to a diet consisting only of kale and almonds, until that fateful night we have to stay late at work and don’t really feel like cooking and, oh look! There’s a McDonald’s on the way home. Surely just one Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese won’t derail our progress. Not a chance!… And yes, let’s buy several books that we fully intend to dutifully page through every night instead of gaping at the tv screen—except all of the shows we’ve been following are returning from their holiday hiatus, and we can’t be the ones in the dark on the latest plot twists at work tomorrow…
Sure, it’s a dangerous time to make promises—to resolve to break the rhythm of the past year, or even many prior years. And that’s why I’m here to tell you what you can expect from Twinfamy in 2016.
You may have noticed I have not regularly been attending my own party here at this fine publication, especially in 2015. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to apologize. (See what I did there?)
The truth is that for the most part, 2015 felt like an entire year of recovery, reshaping, and even occasionally (*GASP!*) relaxing—and in the middle of all that, while I occasionally peeked my head out of my cave, for parts of it I wasn’t all that sure what this blog actually ought to even be anymore. Continue reading
The Tap-Dancing Butt Crack
The warm water ran down my back, washing away 36 hours of sweat and grime. I systematically defunkified each of my body’s nether regions with my extremely manly loofah and inhaled the warm, misty scent of my 2-in-1 shampoo.
It was beautiful.
You should have been there. (But it’s probably for the best that you weren’t, because I was naked and that would have been awkward for you, due to the devastatingly chiseled one-pack bulging from my abs.)
As a parent of twins, I’ve grown to truly appreciate the quiet, reflective alone time a shower buys me, and twelve days into being a parent of three, I was absolutely loving the opportunity to finally hear myself think for five freaking seconds.
As you can probably imagine, adding a newborn to the mix has turned the Pseudonymous household into even more of a zoo than it already was. My wife and I settled on fielding the incessant requests for Lego-building assistance and “another snack after diss one” from the Twins as our “new normal” about a year ago, but we’ve added some new floors to our funhouse with Baby Number Three. On top of our typical twinherding duties, my wife (who is also monumentally wiped out from breastfeeding) and I now also spend our days attempting to get our new addition on a suitable feeding/sleeping/not crying schedule–all the while shushing the Twins like two shaven Grinches as they excitedly play with their noisy new Christmas toys two inches from their slumbering sister.
(Artist’s Rendering)
Our meals consist of shoving granola bars and fast food into our faces the moment the opportunity arises, and while we fully intend to shower daily, it doesn’t always pan out.
Now, as I’m sure many parents will agree with, none of this is all that difficult when you’re well-rested, but when you have a newborn, the concept of “well-rested” becomes your own personal Everest. I think my wife’s Ob-Gyn at the hospital put it best as we were getting discharged: “I’m sure you guys already know what you’re in for, but sleep deprivation is literally used to torture prisoners. Sleep when you can, and get all the help you can to make that happen.”
And we have had help–both my family and my wife’s have kicked SO much ass. But still, at some point, our help has to go home…
Don’t Have a Happy Turkey Day (Deluxe Digitally Remastered Edition)
It’s that time of year again, O Loyal Reader. The most important holiday of the year is upon us–the one people wait for all year with bated breath. It’s just a mere few days away, and I can hardly contain myself. I just can’t believe it’s almost Black Friday again!
Just kidding. I couldn’t care less about Black Friday or Cyber Monday or Max Out Your Credit Card Tuesday or Buyer’s Remorse Wednesday. While in my mind Christmas will forever be the King of All Holidays, there’s still a lot to be said for Thanksgiving.
Of course, I haven’t really had a moment to say anything about it because I’m: 1) in the middle of (FINALLY) running a research study for my dissertation; 2) organizing another study as a research assistant; 3) battling a terrible viral infection that has struck my entire family (including my dog and this one scorpion I found blowing snot-rockets in my backyard); 4) fathering the Dynamic Duo; and 5) trying to figure out where I can get a good deal on a partridge in a pear tree on Max Out Your Credit Card Tuesday.
It’s no secret I’ve been a little short on blog posts here lately. I am reminded of this every time I leave my house when I have to shoo away the protesters who stand constant vigil on my front lawn with signs demanding, “More Crappy Stick Figures!” and “What do we want? Mildly clever pop culture puns! When do we want them? Now!”
Luckily, I happen to have written one of my favorite Twincidents about Thanksgiving one year ago. While I’ve never done the whole reposting thing before, I feel like this one has a message worth repeating, so I decided to carefully dust off the text file character-by-character and present it to you in this newly-restored, digitally-remastered, platinum edition, which now includes an afterword with B. A. Baracus himself, the one and only Mr. T. With this more-than-sufficient amount of ado, I give you:
Don’t Have a Happy Turkey Day (Deluxe Digitally Remastered Edition)
This Space Unintentionally Left Blank
This is a picture of my son doing an impression of a zombie, but it might as well be a picture of me as of late.
If you’re anything like I imagine you to be, you’re checking in here at least twice a day to make sure your eyes aren’t deceiving you, and possibly even calling your Internet provider claiming that your strand of the World Wide Web must be tangled in a knot, resulting in the loss of almost a month’s worth of Twincidents.
“Surely John hasn’t stopped writing!” you lament, blotting tears of frustration off your trackpad. “Surely it is the Internet’s fault! I knew I should never have trusted Charlie. That kid bit his own brother’s finger without batting an eye. And it really hurt!”
No, Charlie has not bitten off my fingers, thus crippling me as a typist. And no, a LOLcat has not taken off running with my laptop, enthusiastically meowing “I can has computer?” And I certainly have not been busily studying the craft of how to write in a more Gangnam Style.
No, you must free your mind from these highly possible scenarios, O Loyal Reader. The truth is that lately, I just haven’t had a free frickin’ moment to sit down and spew genius into this fine publication. The reasons will probably not surprise you, since many of you have already told me you don’t know how I’m able to write at all while spending half of my week wrangling twin toddlers and the other half getting my PhD on. Factor in being a trophy husband and maintaining a shadow of a social life, and there’s not a whole lot of time left for pseudo-clever wordplay and bow-wearing stick figures.
Ugg
I am very excited, O Loyal Reader.
Ecstatic even.
I’ve never been a much of a dancer, but you can bet in just a few short weeks I will jig the jiggiest jig ever jigged, so jiggy that Will Smith will record a new song called “I Thought I Was Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It, But It Appears John Pseudonymous Has Even Bigger Willie Style.”
He could even have Willow Whip Her Hair back and forth in the video if she hasn’t already given herself whiplash.
You see, the reason I intend to throw my hands all up in the air (and possibly even wave them like I just don’t care) is because in a fortnight I will have completed The Semester From H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks. As I’ve explained previously, this is largely due to the two statistics classes I have been This!-Is!-Sparta!-ing.
I realize my work for this fine publication has been spotty, and will admit that as the term draws to a close, I’m very preoccupied with smearing Braveheart-blue warpaint on my face for this final fustercluck of papers, proposals, and stattacks (that’s a word I just created at this very moment that means “the act of attacking statistics problems, either with or without a Light Saber”). I’d feared I would not have sufficient time to complete a Twincident this week, but as luck would have it, I was struck this morning with a jolt of…well, I wouldn’t necessarily call it inspiration, but, it’s…well…
Twinfamy 