“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!” shouted the red-suited man from atop the roof.
Then he shot a web to the next building and swung out of sight.
My So Called Life
COINCIDENTALLY
The church is getting check 666 as an offering tonight.
COINCIDENTALLY.
FRA-GEE-LAY: A USPS Story
I ordered a Christmas present for Sara which was extremely fragile. Since I could go on about the USPS for QUITE some time if I get going, I am presenting these pictures mostly without comment:
I will say that, through some herculean packing efforts on the part of the sender, the gift inside was not damaged.
The efforts of the USPS strike me as…less than herculean.
(Unless you consider throwing things around and destroying them herculean, which, you do have a point there.)
Star Wars – The Force Awakens
This post will be spoiler free.
So, I didn’t buy tickets to see Star Wars, because this baby had the unfortunate timing to be due opening weekend (kids — not even born, and already inconsiderate!).
But a friend of mine bought me a ticket and said, “Hey, if the baby’s not born you can come and see it, and if you can’t make it I’ll eat the price of the ticket and call it a baby gift.”
BEST. BABY GIFT. EVER.
First off, let me start by saying that I’m a little confused by all the Star Wars love these days. I’m now dubbing this the “nerd’s dilemma”: on one hand I’m excited that everybody is excited about this thing that I am excited about (Yes! Star Wars IS awesome!), but on the other hand, why do all these people now get to appropriate my fandom?
These days everybody loves Star Wars, but where were you when I was wearing Star Wars shirts in high school? Respecting how cool I was, probably. And when I slept outside in line overnight to get tickets to Episode I, you were just thinking how awesome and mainstream and not-nerdy I was, right? Since you’ve always been this huge Star Wars fan?
I mean, either you’re lying now – secretly hating Star Wars but pretending you like it to fit in – or else you were lying then, and desperately wishing you had the chutzpah to spend Friday night staging Star Wars miniature battles with us in my friend Eric’s basement.
::Whew:: Okay, got that out of my system. On to the movie.
OMG you guys it was so good!!! It was exactly what I thought Star Wars would be under the iron boot of Disney: fan service, and exactly what I wanted to see. Say what you want about Disney, but this is what they know how to do. They’ve created the perfectly consumable piece of Star Wars: delicious and sugary, fully reminiscent of your childhood while also leaving you full and satisfied at the end.
It does everything: establishes great new characters, revives great old characters (in both senses of the word old), makes you laugh, tugs on your heartstrings, sets up further movies without leaving you hanging, epic in scope, but full of small moments…
It is a masterpiece of setting out to do something, and then fully and completely doing that thing.
I could absolutely see myself watching this over and over, the way I did with the original trilogy (and the way I didn’t with the “new” trilogy). This is a must see (as if you didn’t know that already), and honestly feels like it will mean the same to the current generation of children that the originals meant to me.
In short, I loved it.
Lock Saga – The Very Disappointing Conclusion
Sorry folks, Christmas is canceled this year. 😦
If you haven’t been following along with my lock story, you only need to know two things:
- The only thing Ollie wants for Christmas is the combination to this lock he found, and
- I spent a whole lot of time figuring out the combination to his lock
Since I did ultimately find the combination to the lock, I’ve kind of been coasting to victory here, just imagining Ollie’s face on Christmas morning when he gets the combination. All the hard work, finally paying off.
Welp, it was good while it lasted.
When we first figured out the combination, we realized it must have come from the school. “Do you think we should return it?” I asked. “No,” said Sara, “it’s been missing at least two months, surely they’ve replaced it by now.” Well, they hadn’t, and they wanted it back. Sara mentioned the story to Ollie’s teacher, who informed us in no uncertain terms that the lock is the property of the school and needs to be returned by Friday.
This was obviously pretty upsetting to me. I just had this whole magical moment built up in my head, and it was really hard to watch that die. I know returning the lock is the right thing to do, and knowing that, I have no choice but to do it.
Ollie says he found the lock in the park across the street from the school. It’s not lost on me that it’s entirely possible that he took it from the school, knew he was doing the wrong thing, and lied about where he found it. He is 5 after all. And in that case, forcing him to return it is unquestionably the right thing to do (and really, returning something that someone lost is unquestionably the right thing to do in the first place).
On the other hand, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that he found it somewhere else, or forgot where he found it, or did some other thing a 5 year old might do that was not intentionally malicious. And really, if a 5 year old finds a dirty lock on the ground, even if it’s at school on the playground, it probably looks like a thing that’s okay to take (here in Chicago we find all kinds of weird things on the ground all the time).
I just wish there was a way to teach him a lesson about honesty and responsibility without sacrificing his most precious possession.
Of course I could buy him a new lock, but honestly, I don’t think he cares about locks. He doesn’t like this lock because he’s really into locks, he likes it because he found it, and it’s his. I thought instead about buying the school a new lock, and rush-shipping it so it could be here by the end of the week.
Instead, I decided to cut out his little heart so he could learn a lesson about honesty, responsibility, and never caring about anything until you are a cold, heartless, nihilist with nothing to live for and nobody to hold you down.
Sara composed the following letter and we mailed it to Ollie:
Naturally, the mail did not arrive on time, and we had to print a second, black and white copy and slip it in with the rest of the mail.
Ollie took it about how I expected. He was VERY VERY excited to get the combination, and spent about 15 minutes just locking it on things and unlocking it. “Now it’s locked on the crate! Now it’s locked on the toilet paper!”
He is obviously reluctant to return it, but I *think* he’s going to actually do it. He seemed sort of resigned to his fate. I can’t blame him for not being excited about it, but I’m proud of him for doing it (even if it was under an implied threat from Santa).
So I think Santa may end up getting a lock for him after all. Now I just have to remember to snag the copy Santa mailed before he sees it.
We might not be completely out of the woods yet. “I’m going to try the combination on all of the locks at school and see if it works!” he said right away, and also “I’m going to tell [my friend] at school the combination!” So, uh…returning the lock may come back to bite the school a little bit.
I didn’t expect this to be so complicated.
Shane Halbach 