Sunday Comics: 8th Grade Vocabulary Test

Based on the conversations my kids have with their friends, I think this is what they're being taught.

Tricker Treat

Minor Jokes for Friday

Every year in California, elementary school children study an important element in our history. In other places, students might study the history of their country or important elements of world history and how it relates to their lives. But here in California, our kids study the gold rush. That's right: money, greed, and the founding of a state by the hapless individuals who fell for that marketing trap.

And we wonder at the superficiality of Los Angeles?

In tribute to this annual reflection on our greedy past, I offer these minor miner jokes:


Q: What’s are the three rules of finding gold?
A: Mine, mine, mine.

Q: Why did the miner take a balloon ride in a thunderstorm?
A: He heard that every cloud has a silver lining.

Q: Why did the miner stay in California instead of moving north?
A: Because he didn’t like the sound of a place called “Ore-gone”

Q: Why are so many gold-diggers children?
A: Because it’s the only profession open to minors.

Q: What do you call the diggers with no clothes on?
A: Strip miners.

Q: Why does everyone love gold?
A: You can’t help but dig it.

Q: Why did the student pan for gold all night long?
A: His mother told him, “You’d better finish your homework, ore else!”

Q; Why was silver more popular than gold?
A: Everyone dug the silver, but panned the gold.

Q: Why couldn’t the miner ever find gold?
A: He looked and looked, but searched in vein.

Q: What did they call the miner that threw himself down his mine shaft?
A: A claim jumper.

Video: Bunny Day

Today, a slight departure from my usual "Enough About You..." fare: a nature movie.

I went with the kids and a friend of theirs to Zeum in San Francisco yesterday and made this claymation pic.

Sunday Comics: Chicken Tales

Little Joke for Thursday

My daughter set up a sick bed for one of her My Little Pony dolls. She said it was coughing, so she tucked it in bed.

It made sense to me; it was a little hoarse.

Sunday Comics: Horsing Around

When I am King: Big Toys

When I am King...

Children's toy sizes will be big. Really big.

It's that time of year again; the holidays are finally over. The dead tree sits out at the curb waiting for that magical week when the garbage company decides it's time for pickup. The relatives have all packed up and gone home, leaving behind spoiled children and palettes of empty wine bottles. The gutters are full of leaves and reindeer poop.

And pieces from all of the new kids' toys litter the house, causing puncture wounds with every step.

Toymakers seem to delight in providing toys that consist of an infinite number of tiny pieces. Once the package is opened, entropy ensues, the pieces distribute themselves over an area roughly the size of your house, and the toy becomes unusable. Meanwhile, small pieces with filed-sharp edges embed themselves in carpets, in tile, and flesh.

In my kingdom, children can only be given toys whose pieces are at least as big as the children themselves. This will ensure that:

• Pieces of toys will not magically appear underfoot
• Toys will not be moved around the house at will, as the toys will be too large for the children to shift without a forklift
• The new toy law will obviate the current “when can we get rid of this?” quandary that parents find themselves in. As soon as the child grows larger than a toy, you can safely chuck it; “Sorry, Jimmy; it's the law.”

Children's toys such as Legos, jacks, and razor blades will become things of the past. Kids will naturally migrate to playing with things like pianos, kitchen suites, and Hummers. Sure, an ocean liner will be in the way around the house, but at least you would see it before you stepped on it.

Day of the Rat

What tragic human characteristic is it that compells some people to brave danger, to jump onto the grenade to protect the battalion, to take on armies of alien invaders armed only with a toothpick and a witty rejoinder?

I made the dubious decision of taking the family to Disneyland last week, to spend some quality time with my wife and kids and five million of our closest friends. Like many soldiers, I was fortunate enough to survive the onslaught, but I will bear the emotional scars for life.

The horror began with the traffic dance just getting to our parking place, followed by the many lines we stood in until we finally got into the park. After 50 years, I am sure that the minions of the Rat could figure out how to optimize this and make things flow more smoothly, so I can only suppose that this preliminary torture is done on purpose to either heighten the anticipation or train us for what's to come. After all, soldiers do not simply go running into battle wielding a gun for the first time; there has to be some kind of Boot Camp to prepare them. Numbing us to the pain of waiting in long lines and strengthening our bladders proved essential in the day to come.

The next point of pain came with the admission prices. I am someone who still balks at the prices of a movie and looks back nostalgically to the costs years ago when I worked as an usher in a movie theater (and thus got in for free). So the idea of paying $63 for any activity that lasts only for the day is mental and financial torture. Add on the ticket costs of the rest of the family (all of whom selfishly insisted on getting into the park as well) and the pain was excruciating.

Of course, that one single ticket price gets you into rides throughout the day. Being a math guy, I calculated how far that ticket price went in terms of rides and minutes. I figure that $63 is distributed evenly among all of the rides I waited to get on yesterday, bringing the per-ride and per-minute cost way down to, let's see ... $63. For each of us.

My wife pointed out that it's not the rides per-se that you are paying for at the park; it's the experience. The experience of spending all day in lines with huge crowds, apparently.

As ever, I am an optimist and I figure it's not a total loss. When the kids ask to go again sometime, or ask for anything else at all, I'll remind them that we went to Disneyland that Christmas in 2006 and that memory will have to do. I plan to get mileage out of this for decades.

When I am King: Baby Labels

When I am King...

Hospitals will provide a gender-labeling service for newborns.

Most babies look like variations on the same blob theme. Hence, most people have difficulty distinguishing the gender of these blobs. Some parents are (for reasons that elude me) mortally afraid of someone guessing the wrong sex of their child. It's as if someone saying that your little boy is a cute girl will cause irreparable emotional damage and possibly a strong attraction to musical numbers.

So the parents staple a pink ribbon to their girl's head. Or put a blue baseball cap on their boy's head. They dress the girl blobs in painfully frilly pink things, and the boy blobs in denims and truck shirts. They basically do everything shy of mounting a billboard on the kids' heads saying “This is a boy!” or "This is a girl!".

So why not provide exactly that service for the parents?

Prior to releasing the baby, a hospital will offer parents the option of having the sex tattooed on the baby's forehead (in the language of their choice, although sign language may be problematic). The tattoo ink will be specially formulated to disappear within one year, which is about the time it takes for most blobs to actually develop some sexually distinguishing features, like pot bellies or hair buns.

The program will allow for some customization, where parents can choose from a select set of pictures or phrases. For example, we expect cartoon syndicates to do well in licensing various characters, and there will be popular use of such catchy phrases as “Baby on board!”, and “666”.

There will also be an opportunity for high-end parents/customers to have a more dynamic and customizable system. This will entail installing a color display on the baby's forehead (for removal at any time, although medical experts suggest this should be done before the skull's growth starts tearing the mounting screws). The display can be dynamically programmed to display whatever words, phrases, and pictures the parents want. In fact, the system can also be programmed to show movies. This feature is appealing to families with older children that might otherwise pay no attention to their new sibling. This way, the infant will feel loved and admired by their family as parents and siblings spend hours staring in rapt attention at the baby's forehead.

Working parents would also benefit from our Date-Care(TM) options packages such as an appointment calendar, address book, and speaker phone (part of the BlueToothless(TM) package). No longer will these important people forget their devices and lose track of their hectic schedules; as long as they remember to bring the baby, they'll always have what they need.

When I am King: Nicer, Dumber Kids

When I am King...

Kids will only go to school through the 5th grade.

This is also known as my "Every Child Left Behind" program.

We learn bad habits from middle and high school that carry us through the rest of our lives. For example, are politicians any better than high school class presidents running in a popularity contest? And do they accomplish anything more than our class presidents did?

We seem to learn good habits in kindergarten and grade school, like sharing, talking through our problems, and closing the door when peeing. We learn bad habits later in life, like insulting, sucking up, and talking on a cellphone when we should be driving.

I propose simply pulling our kids out of school before all of that happens. That way, maybe our kids will grow up with the ethics they learn in grade school instead of the horrors they pick up after that.

Think about it:

• Politicians would think that kickbacks are when you return the soccer ball to their friend
• Celebrities would be popular by being nice to everyone
• Clothing styles would be worn because they're practical
• Disgruntled employees would only play with toy guns
• Terrorists would cause fear and chaos by farting in public places

It's not clear yet what we do with the kids between 5th grade and adulthood, although the idea of simply sending them to work is appealing from both a daycare and a monetary standpoint. I know that some countries are condemned for their child labor practices. But perhaps that has all been a cultural misunderstanding, and they are just trying to keep their kids from becoming cheerleaders, jocks, and burnouts.