Aren't children just precious angels?

Johnny just called me to tell me he heard his daughter, my darling niece Finola, playfully reciting the names of the people in her family:

"There's Nana (my Mom), and Coach (my Dad), and Michael (my brother), and Crappy Girl (me)..."Because her older brother Eoin has consistently disliked me since he's been old enough to say, "I hate you," Johnny taught him to call me Aunt Crappy.

Whatever. This "Crappy Girl" thing's just a phase; I know it. She'll be back to puking on me in no time.

Next stop:

THE ISLAND OF MISFIT TOOOOOOYYYSSS!

My Dad says that all the time, not just at Christmas time. It's from that stop-motion animated Rudolph movie that I've seen about a gazillion times. Jess put it on in the background while we put up our tree and lights. I never realized as a kid how uncool-ly the movie treats disability. Poor, Charlie! Check it out below. Mom, where were you on this one?



But seriously, that's kind of a whack message to send to kids about differently-abled folks (Toys, I know. Whatever.)

shwag

God I love free stuff. Everyone does, I know. But I, like, reeeeeally like it. When we were little, Dad used to take us to the Auto Show, and even though I've never had any interest whatsoever in cars, I would get seriously invigorated by the process of collecting hundreds of *free* brochures and posters for fancy vehicles. Upon returning home, without fail, I would promptly throw them in the garbage. (Obviously, this was before being green was uber-trendy.) And don't even get me started on the free gifts he would bring home from the Chicago Tax Club. Words cannot express that kind of goodness.

Check out the free crap I got today!


Oh yes, that's an Urbana School District pedometer you're seeing there below the Urbana School District pen and above the Urbana School District hand sanitizer. (O.K., but I'm seriously kind of excited about the tote bag.)


... And all joking aside, my job rules.

My favorite brother

turns 25 today! And to celebrate, since I can't be at home, I've uploaded some vintage shots of The Guck-meister.

Here's Condor sitting on the kitchen counter at our house in Burbank (Mom, check out this link! I can't believe how cool Google Maps has gotten!) with a bunch of dirt in all of his orifices. He used to eat the houseplant in the fronch room. It was there, so he ate it. It happens:

Ha. I can't look at that picture without laughing. Look at how it's all matted into his shirt, and he's like, "What."

Here's Con and I showing some love in his old room. (It looks like I have no less than 4 bows in my hair. Thanks, Mom.):


Here he is circa 2007, sharing his shit with our niece Finola:


A rare (because no one cares) Dahlke kid photo that's pre-Ellen and Neil:

Now that's just good advice.

Just now, as I'm getting from a crappy, makes-me-feel-incompetent kinda day at work, my big brother Michael's gmail away message is what my Dad tells us to say when things are just shitty: Fuck the fucking fuckers.

Here's to some long-distance family-bonding.

Can I get some first amendment up in here?

I was at the library near my parents' this morning, getting some stuff done for work, and was unable to check through all my friends' blogs. I got this:

I got over that, but then when I wanted YouTube, I got:

What the F? What is this, censorship? Are not libraries supposed to be bastions of free speech? When I inquired, the librarian assured me that this was not usual, and that she really had no idea why these sites were blocked. She said they block things for kids on the library's own computers, but that adults and laptop users shouldn't have any filtering going on. Color me suspicious.

whoa

This is cool. My Dad sent me a list of sweet things to do with Flickr, but I really like this one: retrievr.


Using a Paint type thingy, you sketch the image you're looking for, and then it loads and displays a ton of images that are similar. I'm not exactly sure what I would use this for, but it sure is neat.

The other gadgets, in case you're interested, are Mirrr, Phrasr, Tag Galaxy, and Notifyr. And wow, they are all so cool.

an ode to Susan's new sweet blog

reasons (besides my family) why I like visiting my parents' house:

1. Art Institute membership card
2. My mom always has goat cheese in the fridge.
3. driving my Dad's car and listening to Neil's mix CDs
4. my parents' badass remodeled bathroom
5. the Friends bookstore at Oak Lawn Library where books cost 25 cents
6. Pappy's and Irish Manor and Elia's
7. delicious and nutritious home-cooked meals
8. basically, the food in general, especially since I'm on vacation from being a vegetarian
9. walking on the lakefront
10. when my Dad says work was "taxing"
11. getting my English Journal and other sweet mail that's collected since last time I came home

Days of Existence update

Dad, not to be outdone by Mom in the Hilarious Department, sent me this message this morning. My brother Conor (CRD) and I (ECD -- Dad only deals in initials. First names are passé, I guess.) have some Big Days coming up in 2008! If you're interested in getting an exact number for Days of Existence (DOE) of our family, or if you'd like to see a matrix detailing the Differences in Days Old among us, I can gladly make the Excel spreadsheet available to you.

"Well, it's been building up inside of me for, oh, I don't know hooow long!"

Maybe it's because over break my mom (Third Mom shout-out this week? Oh yes.) made fun of me and Moe for the inane smiles on our faces as we sat on the couch one morning watching the end of Love Actually, but lately I've been hyper-aware of the faces I make when I'm watching TV. Like today I checked out the end of Never Been Kissed as I was eating dinner, and I caught myself with that same pathetic, shit-eating grin. I mean, I think that movie is dumb as hell, so what's the deal?

It's quite possible that I'm just a sucker for make-out scenes enhanced by The Beach Boys.

The Simpsons poll closes

I do wish that I could say that I'm too mature to think, "I'm a stupid moron with an ugly face and a big butt and my butt smells and, uh... I like to kiss my own butt," is funny. But I'm not. Gets me every time.

Mom, see what you did to me? If you would have let me get it out of my system in the '90s I'd be so over this.

really really ridiculously good-looking

Dad, Conor, Finola, Eoin, Johnny, Neil, Mom, Michael, and me

My whole family was home this weekend for the first time that I can remember in a loooong time, not including the odd Christmas here and there. Pretty big deal. All day Saturday we mutted around in the yard and in the pool blasting Wilco albums. Is this heaven? No, it's Evergreen Park.

It's a yes or no question.

The surveys that we're taking are purely quantitative. We survey as many people as we can reign in for each administration of it, and ask them to fill in the bubbles completely. Just like they do for the standardized tests, we say. But our participants do not always feel confined to the bubble system, apparently.

Q: Would you be able to have an honest and open discussion about sex with your mother or father?

A: No / maybe later when I'm older

Q: What person is most like a father to you? (MARK ONLY ONE ANSWER.)
A:... My brother / my fathers dead he luves me =)

I think this is pretty cool. There are quite a few more examples of this kind of scrawled note to the researcher, although surveys with written responses are certainly a minority. Sometimes I get the sense that the participant desperately wants to explain her/himself, or somehow apologize for the bubbled answer. Other times, the indecisiveness is nearly tangible. Who can decide if they plain agree or plain disagree with something like "My opinions are often influenced by others"? Where's the "It depends on who 'others' is" bubble?

In other news, I got a package from my parents today. Some of the highlights of what Mom included are flavored tea and new underwear. Dad threw in Dr. Scholl's gel inserts because he likes to ask me, "Hey Ellen, you gellin'?" I like it, too. My parents are great.