No-Longer-Teenage Mutants

This will mean nothing to 99% of you, but whatever, I'm stoked so just roll with it- in May my favorite superhero team of all time, the New Mutants, is returning. (Young Justice is a close second, but Young Justice never had any shapeshifting techno-organic aliens on the team. Instant fail.) This group was the balls back in the day, and even though I only discovered them in college, I've been waiting eight long years for them to reunite. My excitement is hovering somewhere around 110%, partially on the strength of these two sweet-ass covers:





Not much has been revealed about the first storyline, save that it's supposed to involve the return of old friend/enemy Legion (for he is many), but one thing's for certain: it will be awesome. Oh yes, it will.

The definition of mixed emotions:

Being really psyched that you finally got off your lazy butt and got HR to give you a new keycard to the building... and then noticing the heavy wear on it and wondering which of your recently laid-off colleagues it used to belong to. That is what we call "bittersweet" right there.

Different strokes

More grad school travails- after scoring a 75.5 on my Operations Management midterm (higher than the class average, believe it or not), we got a take-home exam today in Finance 2 ("The Bloodening"). It's a case study with pages upon pages of a conversation between two business people about whether to invest in somesuch or another based on projected zzzzzzzzzzz. I called Ann at the class break to tell her we'd gotten it and that the professor had told us to take 20 minutes to look it over. She asked what my initial impressions were, to which I replied that the plot was weak, the characters one dimensional, and the dialogue needed some serious work. Then she had the nerve to ask if I'd spent the entire time since we received the exam thinking of that one, and I mean come on, give me a little credit, it was only like a minute or something. God. She still has a lot to learn about comedy, I'm afraid. However, I'm once again faced with the sad truth that in an English class (see: things I'm actually good at), my noticing of the fact that one of the characters starts three consecutive sentences (and then two more later on) with the phrase "No problem." would be grounds for my immediately passing the exam, or at least win me some points with the professor. Here, I have the sickening feeling it would earn me nothing more than a blank look and a query about whether I had a question.

Sigh. These people may know how to predict financial models when working with a very defined set of data you'd never actually be able to get in real life, but they could stand a few more lessons about creative expression and writing interesting scenarios. Not once have I seen one where the company's stock suddenly plummets because the founder and CEO has a massive coronary while in bed with his mistress, forcing his long-suffering and inexperienced wife to take the reins of the company. And that's just sad.

Exhuming McCarthy

This week we had to fill out self-assessments at work, probably to justify the huge raises we'll no doubt be getting. It was an automated thing, broken up into various different categories. And I started to wonder: do you think the fact that, upon reaching the "Business Acumen" section I immediately thought not of anything work-related, but rather the following lyrics:

Sharpening stones, walking on coals
To improve your business acumen
Enemy sighted, enemy met
I'm addressing the realpolitik
Look who bought the myth
By jingo, buy American

...means I'm really not cut out for business?

Creative nursery rhymes

Of all the new experiences I've encountered since Molly was born four months ago, by far the most amusing has been Ann's ignorance of -- and steadfast refusal to learn -- the correct words to "Hush Little Baby." She can handle the first three and a half verses just fine, but anything after that, forget it... she's totally off the reservation. Where the humor comes in is that instead of just stopping the song there, she'll actually make up lyrics on the fly, like some kind of freestyling rapper trying to lull his daughter to sleep before the crowd boos him off stage. The following is a completely unedited transcription of what I heard her singing to Molly tonight after the squirt woke up crying from a bad dream:

Ann: And if that diamond ring turns brass,
Mama's gonna buy you a looking glass.

And if that looking glass should break,
Mama's gonna buy you a... garden rake.

And if that garden rake don't work,
Mama's gonna buy you a loin of pork.

Me: What the f-?!

Ann: And if that loin of pork's no good,
Mama's gonna bring you Little Red Riding Hood

And if Red Riding Hood runs away,
Mama will have to save it for another day.

Me: Okay, you need to stop now.


Give her credit, though- girl can improvise. I mean, "loin of pork"?

If you're gonna spew, spew into this

Lately I've found myself wearing a wife beater around the house at all hours. This has less to do with us becoming a white trash family (hell, just today I got mad when NASCAR ran late and caused The Simpsons to not record), and more to do with Molly's astounding proclivity to spit up at any and all available opportunities. The only real rule she abides by when determining when to let loose with a torrent of vomit is that it must always be when you have just gotten her into a new outfit literally ten seconds ago, and when you yourself are also fully dressed. I believe she also awards herself bonus points if she manages to get some on the carpet as well (double for the couch), and she has a special addendum to the rule that when visiting grandparents or other relations, she absolutely, positively cannot show up there wearing an outfit they have bought her, no matter how many clothes she has to spit up on within five minutes of when you need to leave to run through them all. I swear to you, this child is gifted, and that's not a compliment. As the son of a health teacher, I'm well aware of the dangers of bulimia, but I foolishly assumed that wasn't anything I'd need to be on the lookout for for at least another decade. Nope. If she could fly, it would be exactly like living in an aviary, and I think you know what I mean.

The worst part is that I can't even complain too much because everything else is great: she's incredibly cute (unbiased opinion, of course), generally good-tempered, loves to smile and laugh, has recently taken to sleeping through the night again, and is in general quite healthy. On the list of things that could go wrong it's small potatoes... but dammit, I really didn't want to get that steam cleaner back out again.