Sunday, February 23, 2014

Unreal Life


Today I’m taking a bit of a break from my Perl series over on my Other Blog, on account of The Mother is gone this weekend and I’ve been chasing 3 kids around the house for 3 days.  A trinity of trinities, I suppose, although the perfection implied is looking more like perfect exhaustion at this point.  Said 3 kids are now (almost) 15.5, 8, and 2.  There are many interesting bits of fallout from having kids spaced out like that, but the one I’ve been pondering lately is that I’ve now been watching children’s television pretty much continuously for 15 years.  I’ve written about this phenomenon before, although I really only scratched the surface.

Eventually, all that stuff starts to run together in your brain, and it becomes one giant, colorful, frenetic, singing, vocabulary-spouting, Spanish-speaking whirlwhind melange of light, sound, and giggles.  And, you know, you start to wonder what your life would be like if you lived in a children’s show.

You don’t?  Well, maybe it’s just me.

But, anyway, here’s my Letterman-style top 10 things that would be different about our family if we were children’s television stars.  Enjoy it just for the surreality, or see if you can figure out which specific shows I’m referring to in each item.*

10. We’d all fall over backwards when we laughed at something.

9. We would turn invisible when frightened.

8. Our youngest would keep a screwdriver in her diaper for tricky escapes.

7. Our potatoes would be moonlighting as detectives.

6. We would live in constant fear of our personal possessions being stolen by a fox.

5. We could take the train to visit our distant ancestors, but not our grandparents.

4. Our guinea pig could play the trumpet.

3. No one could find the snails.

2. We’d have a pet chair.

1. If we were unsure what lesson to draw from events, we could consult the Wheel of Morality.



* Tip: If you need help with the answers, the period at the end of each item is a link.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Perl blog post #30


Another in my continuing (never-ending?) series about my relationship with Perl on my Other Blog.  This one delves more into the minutiae of Perl, so I won’t even suggest that you try to make sense of it if you’re not a techie.  But it’s all I have for this week.  So, you know, there you have it.  Or not.  Take your pick.  Or don’t.  That’s okay too.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Perl blog post #29


I’m still doing my series on Perl and Me, over on my Other Blog.  You should check it out if you’re a techie person.  If you’re not ... well, I told an interesting story about my college days, so there’s that at least.

Well, I mean, it’s interesting if you know anything about computer science.

Okay, so I told an entertaining story about my college days, which you may or may not see the point of, if you’re not a coder.  But it does reveal all sorts of heretofore-hidden secrets about what a slack ass I was when I was in school.  So ... yeah.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Perl blog post #28


I continue on my quest to understand Perl, and understand myelf.  This week there’s a fair amount of technical jargon, but also a fair amount of self-discovery.  Pop on over to the Other Blog and check it out if you’re so inclined.