sunday best-of blogging: the family/unfamily issue

best $10,000 wedding theme:



this trounces any wedding i've ever heard of, including the spectacle a friend of mine witnessed where the couple rose up through the floor in a glass box to the theme from rocky and the plan shane koyczan and i came up with to perform all of our vows as charades. and look, there are accessories:



it'd almost be enough to make me want to go through with it, if i didn't know better; $10,000 is a hefty sum, and i can think of a lot of things i'd rather set it aside for. i can't really see the point of ostentatious weddings. i mean, marriage should be something that you enter into strictly for the sake of yourself and the person you're marrying, right? why the need to put on a big show for other people? i feel like weddings are how couples prove to other people that they're in love, but if all the right reasons for getting married are really there, you shouldn't need the bells and whistles. maybe if i met someone who'd let me have hello kitty and the charades . . . maybe not. i wouldn't eat that cake, anyway.

best song to abandon someone at the altar to: "in a big country" by big country.

best reason to live with toadie until my dying day: she gives the most amazing gifts. look at this stuff:





fun! and then there was a mag-mirror compact with this on the lid:



the "ride with hitler" thing is sort of an inside joke; when the united states was making its first baby steps in the invasion of iraq, i got into an argument with my dad (a two-term busher, which he is, at least, less proud of now than he was a year ago, though i can't say he's truly repentant) about the premise of confiscating weapons of mass destruction. my argument was that i was nearly completely sure we were never going to find any such things in iraq. my father started out calmly enough by telling me i was a callow and idealistic pinhead, and he finished up by throwing something possessing a significant amount of mass across the room and shouting that people like me would have let hitler take over the entire planet. i was a bit taken aback by this. i knew there had been a lot of hitler references and comparisons being bandied about by the gung-ho wingers, but i hadn't expected my own flesh and blood to be suckered by them. we got into a lot of knock-down political brawls about bush leading up to and throughout the first four years, but this was one of the worst. it was also one of the last of the truly ghastly battles, though, since i was completely right, and because since then bush has managed to do nothing right for this or any other country. my dad voted for him initially because he didn't want gore to foster an era of Big Government, and he voted for him again because he thought he would Safeguard the Nation Against Terror . . . . well, the ridiculous "if you won't invade iraq, then you *heart* nazis" debate is one of my favorite wounds to tear open and rub salt in whenever i find myself watching the news with my dad. he's never out-and-out apologized, because that wouldn't be his style, but his new politics-related silence speaks volumes.

holy sidetracked, batman. anyway, toadie gave me these wonderful things and a red vinyl Devil Bear wallet, and she wrapped all of them in faux-mexican wrapping paper featuring icons like El Roadside Santa and La Unconscionably Cute Duckie. i wuv her, even if her parrot does eat my chairs and wake me up with his shrieking every morning.

best thing about the einstein doll featured above: you can take all of his clothes off to reveal more clothes, which you can not take off. under the pants and sweater, albert is wearing another pair of pants and a white undershirt—FOREVER. his sweater is very well-made, by the way, and something i wouldn't mind wearing myself. did you know einstein was only 26 when he broke his relativity theory? it's okay, i've still got time to one-up buddha and/or jesus.

best reason for my subtle* canadian accent: it's an insupportable theory, of course, but i tend to blame the accent on the outlandish quantities of you can't do that on television that i ingested as a child. my frequent lapses into southern and irish accents are much harder to explain, but i've stopped worrying about them. i ams what i ams.

best reason** to stick your tongue out at the parents television council:

We were alarmed to find that the three worst shows on prime time broadcast television are being marketed as family-friendly when, in fact, these shows are none other than wolves in sheep's clothing.

Families should not be deceived. The top three worst shows all contain crude and raunchy dialogue with sex-themed jokes and foul language. Even worse is the fact that Hollywood is peddling its filth to families with cartoons like The Family Guy and American Dad. These two shows have contained scenes in which characters are shown having sex and topics such as masturbation, incest, bestiality, and necrophilia are routinely discussed.

There are several high quality shows on this list that families can watch together and not be caught by surprise over filthy dialogue or graphic sex and violence. However, it is clear that Hollywood does not care about families as evidenced by the fact that we could only cite nine shows on prime time that were deemed safe for family viewing. That is outrageous. Network executives should be ashamed and millions of families should be offended at their actions.

you're right, parents television council, hollywood doesn't care about families. hollywood cares about money and ratings, because that's its job. millions of families probably would be offended by its actions, if they weren't so busy providing it with money and ratings. how about instead of spending hours and hours watching all of these evil, smut-peddling, rakishly irreverent programs just so you can shake your finger at their producers once a year, you turn off your fucking televisions? i would like to remind you at this point that britney spears and christina aguilera, two of the foulest little strumpets i've ever laid eyes on, made their debut on the cloyingly family-friendly mickey mouse club, so maybe "more 7th heaven marathons" isn't the answer after all. but what do i know? i'm just a freak with a red vinyl jacket who likes to get drunk while watching adult swim, whose new sunday lineup is to die for, by the way, which brings me to my final item:

best newfound reasons to be a goofy child instead of have one: squidbillies and 12 oz. mouse. awwww yeah.



* it's subtle overall, but my oots and aboots can be glaring at times. i have no theory as to why the accent is more pronounced on some days than it is on others.

** second best reason: it's parents' television council, you twits.