Church: Prologue, "This Is a Song" @4:20 PM
On a Sunday last fall, I was working downstairs with the space heater on and the office doors closed when the phone rang. The caller ID read DAN KOIS, which meant that it was my wife, upstairs, calling our home phone from my cell phone. As is often the case on weekends, we were trading carefully-negotiated Work Periods. I was writing while she looked after the children; later, I would take the kids while she worked. Later still, we would maybe eat dinner together and then put the kids in the bath.
I answered the phone. In the background I could hear crying. Alia said, "You have to come upstairs right now." READ MORE 93
Underparenting, with Tom Scocca: The Misplaced Child @1:30 PM
There was a loud but muffled scream, and when I looked up, the kid was gone.
It wasn't that scary for me; I did know where he was, more or less. But this was what I was leaving my wife with, on the other end of the phone:
[Child's screaming.]
Fuck! Shit. Uh, I gotta call you back—
[Screaming continues in background.]
[Call disconnects.]
I was standing by the elevator bank, all by myself. The screaming was coming from the other side of a closed elevator door. READ MORE 20
New Kodak Commercial More Like 'Poltergeist' Than Presumably Intended @1:30 PM
What exactly is going on in that new Kodak Gallery commercial? A creepy piano tinkles as a little girl and a grandma shout to each other across the span of an absurdly large couch. Little girl says something stupid, grandma laughs at her stupidity. But the mood darkens when little girl asks grandma, "Were you ever in love?" Grandma answers with a cryptic, "Well…" The music intensifies, takes on an almost maniacal quality. Then the little girl says something about magic sea horses, grandma seems confused and, wait a minute-that couch is definitely getting smaller! Is this like an Alice In Wonderland thing? Or they're trying to convey the horror of senile dementia? Or, wait, is the grandma supposed to be a ghost? Are they both ghosts? Is this a commercial about the victims of some grisly, long-ago mass-murder coming back to haunt the living? 9
Underparenting, with Tom Scocca: No H1N1 Vaccine For You, Kiddo @10:30 AM
"Keep calling back," the receptionist at the pediatrician's office said, ringing off. They were out of H1N1 flu vaccine, she had told me, and they didn't know when the next batch might be coming. So keep calling.
I would rather not keep calling. That was my third or fourth or fifth inquiry about the swine-flu vaccine, by phone or in person at the office while getting other shots for the kid. This is not because I am a hysterical parent, unable to bear the thought of my child going without medical intervention. I do not snap awake at three in the morning with flu panic, worrying that some filthy stranger may cough around my precious offspring before he has been properly immunized, cursing the government for not coming up with vaccine fast enough, scheming to intercept the life-saving product before it goes to someone else's child. (Let the other child die.) READ MORE 24
Today In "Heartbreaking And Inspirational" @2:30 PM
Via Fark, there's this:
No one has ever told 7-year-old Dominic Osorio that he has brain cancer. Instead, his mother devised a story and made him the lead character. When Dominic undergoes surgery, chemotherapy or radiation, he is not a patient; he is the Dominator, waging war with an evil enemy that he calls a megazoid.His grandmother, Monique Spagna, recalled the day Dominic finished weeks of daily radiation treatments at Johns Hopkins Children's Center that required the Bel Air boy to wear a mask and remain motionless for what seemed an eternity to a child.
"He could not move, so he would change identities and be the Dominator battling an enemy he called a megazoid," she said. "His mother came up with this story to help him deal with it."
A local restaurant manager, inspired by Dominic's story, created a comic book about him. You can read the rest of the story here, but be warned that it's a tough one to take. 8
Britain, Seventy Years On @11:50 AM
It's been seventy years since Operation Pied Piper, which evacuated the children of London to the English countryside in advance of the Battle of Britain. The Times of London reports from an anniversary service today at St. Paul's Cathedral, where one evacuee explains the emotion: "We all look at each other, these old geezers, and see ourselves as children." READ MORE 5
Most Pediatricians Do Not Recommend Cigarette Smoking For Children Under Three @3:57 PM
A YouTube video making the rounds—most recently posted on the entertainment news blog Crazydaysandnights, since disappeared—shows a two-year-old boy lighting and smoking a cigarette while a group of surrounding adults laugh and clap and cheer. This is less okay than those already not-really-okay Etrade commercials. And much less okay than the forever-awesome cover of Dinosaur Jr.'s 1991 album, Green Mind. 28
SchoolDefender™ Will Keep All Children Free From Molestation @1:25 PM
TouchMate® Interactive Solutions today announced that it will bring a new level of protection to our country's innocent and highly touchable children, with its new SchoolDefender™ system! This handy system interrogates all school visitors, checks them against databases (using the PassagePointEDU™ from STOPware™!), and ejects all people from the school that might be on any number of hastily-assembled lists from any number of government or private contractor agencies. How can this not be a good idea? 6
Science! Something Makes Poor Children "Stupider," Study Finds @9:58 AM
The Daily News trumpets a recently-released study which says that, of 249 pregnant women in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, those that breathed more truck and car exhaust had children who scored worse on IQ tests. (This appears in the August issue of Pediatrics, which also includes the shocking results of a study called "Paternal Depressive Symptoms During Pregnancy Are Related to Excessive Infant Crying." NO WAY.) This is some shocking data! Let's take a look inside! READ MORE 5
Underparenting: The Birthday Party, And Its Preparations @5:06 PM
Why was it that I baked the brownies from scratch? Well, first of all, there needed to be brownies. It's the kid's birthday, the actual birthday as opposed to the day we had the birthday party, and we were given to understand—in the way such understandings are given—that some parents like to send in treats for the preschool class on the birthday, to contribute to the birthday observances. Such things are done. READ MORE 23
People With Children Get Laid Off Last @8:58 AM
Basically all this front-page article in the Times about small company bosses laying off their workers teaches you is: they really do discriminate against childless and single people! Literally, if you have kids, you get laid off last. Also when you do finally lay off the people with children, they totally flip out on you, because they expect the corporate mommy-state to enable their God-given right to breed. It's so wonderful to have one's paranoid theories confirmed. 17
Bring back the rope. @1:05 PM
Why do the English hate their children? Because they're vicious killers, every one. 0
