children

A Visit to the Toys Store

Welcome to Thursday, SpaceBrewers. On this historic Veteran’s Day, I’d like to salute all of you who served our country in war and at peace, past and present. Thank you all for your time, service and selflessness. God bless you and your families.

I’d also like to remind you that this is National Toy and Breast Appreciation Week, so every column this week has been about toys. We figure we cover breasts enough here on the site. They don’t need a special week devoted to them. Actually, I… Never mind. So Monday I wrote about the new toys with which I find myself playing. I wrote Tuesday about the age of growing out of playing with toys (which I haven’t apparently reached yet), and Haycomet wrote yesterday about her daughter and how she doesn’t play with toys anymore either.

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The End of the Toy Age

Today is my daughter’s birthday. In fact as of 8:05am this morning, twelve years ago, I became a mom. We had a small party so she could celebrate with her friends this past weekend. There’s nothing like having five hormonal “tween” girls all sugared-up on cake and orange soda in your living room. I’m surprised I didn’t have my hair pulled out and blood dripping from my ears by the time I reached Space’s house that night. Back to my story… since it is her birthday, that means I had to shop for presents last week. Now that she is almost a teenager, it wasn’t as easy as it used to be.

With earlier birthdays, I would head to the toy section and just start grabbing toys. She preferred play sets because she loved pretending and making up stories to go with her Hamtaro, and Littlest Pet Shop toys. She could play by herself or with friends and family for hours with those little plastic things.

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The New Age of Toys

As you no doubt noticed, this is National Toy And Breast Appreciation Week here on SpaceBrew. And since we spend plenty of time already appreciating breasts around here, we’re dedicating every column to Toy Talk this week. Even our Bacon Talk is gonna be full of toyful awesomeness. We’ll talk about what toys we like and which ones we played with as children – and maybe even which ones we play with as adults.

My daughters love toys. They play with the pink, girly things like Barbies, Polly Pocket, Disney Princess, and everything that is pink and girly looking – even if it isn’t supposed to be a girly toy. They are your basic standard American kids: suckers for good toys that fit their age and gender. Now my boy, on the other hand…

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Silly Kid, Toys Are For Adults

Good morning and happy Veteran’s Day week, friends and family of the Brew. This Thursday, of course, is Vet’s day, and I’d like to welcome you to another edition of the soon-to-be-award-winning segment here on SpaceBrew, called the Monday-Morning Magic. It’s basically where I write a column on Monday morning that magically changes your mood, and your day. It is sure to either make you laugh, make you angry, or make you bored. Studies have not shown that this segment actually posesses any sort of magical ability, or that it changes your mood at all, in fact. But it completes that alliterative title, so we’re sticking with it.

But I wanted to talk today a little about a new hobby of mine. We’ll go into this a little more on this week’s Bacon Talk, but I thought this was interesting enough to mention this Monday morning. My friends and I – all being intellectuals – have taken to a new hobby. And before you laugh and point your fingers at us and call us immature and gay, just finish the column. Yes, the being intellectuals has something to do with the new hobby. We like to find new and interesting things in which we can get involved. Most of these revolve around drinking and spending time standing around the diner table or the bar in the Space Bar. So what’s this new freak time-waster we’ve found?

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Second Gun Not Necessary

I was awakened abruptly by the sound of the front door being closed forcefully. You have to slam my front door for it to close all the way. Someone had slammed it. Many times I’ve been awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of something that could have been a door, but this time, I knew. You know how they say when it happens, you’ll know? Well, this time I knew. My eyes had popped open as the sound of the door in the otherwise quiet house echoed in my head.

I jumped out of bed where I had been sleeping hard. I had been asleep for around forty minutes. I slung my headlamp over my shoulder because it was the first light I was able to find in the darkness. I also don’t want to be wearing a target around my forehead when I’m clearing the house. Then I grabbed my pistol and turned on my bedside lamp. As I’m standing there naked by the bed, my red-haired wife rolls over and says, “What’s going on?”

“It’s go-time, babe.”

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Baseball and Politics Don’t Mix

There are a few things I wish to discuss with you under the topic of ‘baseball’. I know we’re all excited that the Rangers were in the World Series for the first time ever, even though they got their asses handed to them for all intensive porpoises. It was still exciting. Irregardless, I’m not really here to talk about the Rangers. Or the Dallas Cowboys. Ahem. One and six? Seriously? Yeah. Let’s move on.

Let’s talk about little league! My son plays for the Local Ball Club Association for Baseball Playing Children of the Local City Ball Club Academy. It’s not a school team, but a select registration team. Anyway, I’m not sure any of that is relevant except to say that it’s not a school team. Which is important for several reasons, which I will list here:

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Here’s Your Sign

You always hear people asking, “Why do drive-up ATMs have Braille on the buttons? Do they think blind people will be driving? LOL”. But my question is far more simple. Why do ATMs have Braille on them? Do they think blind people will be pulling out cash? The buttons don’t have assigned functions and values, and their purpose changes with every option you select. So how would a blind person know when to hit which button?

It seems we as humans are advancing technologically into areas our parents’ generation only dreamed of. There’s that damn preposition at the end of my sentence again. But at the same time, we’re getting dumber and dumber. Think about it. Do you know any rocket scientists, personally? Do you know anyone who actually has contributed something to the technology revolution? It’s sort of just something that happens when we put our minds together. Yet, I don’t know any single individual who isn’t susceptible to being an idiot sometimes.

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Bacon Talk: Tree Houses

Good morning, friends, family and – well, good morning to you too, enemies. Welcome to a special edition of Bacon Talk. That’s right, folks, tomorrow is International Bacon Day! But aside from being knee-deep in all that hoopla, I really just have one word to say right now. TREE HOUSES. HELL YES, TREE HOUSES! Sorry. I got a little carried away there. Almost choked on my bacon. See, you know that nostalgic feeling you get in your tummy sometimes when you think of something cool, like opening a pack of Topps baseball cards back in 1984 and pulling out the stick of gum, popping it in your mouth, and then sorting through them to see who you got? Hoping it was a Jim Sundberg or a Bobby Valentine? Yeah. I get that same feeling every time I think of tree houses. Because son of a bitch!
I get so excited thinking about tree houses that it makes me just want to quit my job, go plant some bad ass oaks in my yard, and start construction on one tomorrow. I’m talking like a three-level freakin’ mansion in the trees here, friends. Every time I Google Image search for tree houses, I start squirming in my seat getting excited. I love me some tree houses!
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Bacon Talk: Video Games

Dude. It’s time we talk about video games. Seriously. Why haven’t we covered this yet, Haycomet? We’ve had how many Bacon Talks now? Welcome, friends, fans and enemies, to this week’s edition of the award-winning feature we call Bacon Talk. For those of you wondering what we mean by Award-Winning, let me give you a list of the awards this feature has won:

  • SpaceBrew’s Best Features of 2010 presented by SpaceBrew
  • Brandon Spacey’s Favorite Blogs presented monthly
  • Haycomet’s Recommended Reading a very prestigious award
  • Jessica Simpson’s “You Gotta Have Someone Read This To You!” presented by Space

So there are a few of the many awards this feature has won. I mean, we’re not trying to brag or anything. Trust me, friends, the Bacon Talk is not near as good as the Bacon we eat while talking! Ain’t that right, Hay?

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Wait. What birds? What bees?

A few years ago, when my nephew was still just a little shaver, we found ourselves faced with an uncomfortable confrontation when my sister mentioned something about sex. Now it wasn’t something inappropriate, to be sure, but rather something along the lines of “sex in a movie” or something equally as innocuous. So all she did was basically say the word sex. It might even have been something like, “what sex is the child?” or whatever.

Anyway, my nephew, hearing the unfamiliar word, piped up with this little gem: “What are secks?” Well, seeing that a possibly uncomfortable situation might abound, I went ahead and stepped up to the plate with a perfectly delivered response, when I said, “Well, son, let me tell you what secks are.” So as the boy sat on the couch and looked at me, I told him that secks were like different categories into which women are grouped to determine their eligibility. I said, “For example, your mother would be in Seck A. Grandma over there? Well, she’s in seck B. Now Step, my red-haired wife? Yeah. Hi-five. She’s Seck C.

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