children

SpaceBrew Review: The Blind Side

Yeah, I went and saw it. I love football. And, well, I love my wife. So I took her to see Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw on the bigscreen. Just kidding, it wasn’t really about that for her. See, I got me one of them good wifes. She likes football too. Yeah. Told you. But this review is not about my wife. It’s about the movie.

Speaking of which, it might have been Sandra’s best role yet. Well, not counting Speed, of course. And Tim McGraw wasn’t all that bad, either. I mean, he’s no Keanu Reeves, but he was pretty good. And get this: in some places, even believable. But the big black guy who played the big black guy was awesome.

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Day One : 2009

We got up at about five ’til five today. Well, I say we – I actually slept until about 5:40. Stephanie got up at 4:55. We got ready and headed in to the hospital. This is so unlike Callie’s birth where Heather’s water broke and I tore off down the rainy highway at close to FTL velocity. This morning we were prepared, we know Stephanie is being induced – or having a c-section – and knew that there was no rush. We could just sort of drift on in. We needed to be there at a certain time, but that’s something you can plan for. If the water breaks, you gotta haul.

We arrived and they got started with an IV drip. Our first step in this process was to have the baby verted. Its head was still up as of 21:30 last night. We prayed that God would turn the baby so we wouldn’t have to go for the version. That’s a very dangerous process that can cause all kinds of bad things to happen. Things of nightmares. Bleeding, hemorrhaging, up to and including loss of the child or the mother. So yeah, mark me down for being a little bit nervous.

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What happened to baseball?

My girlfriend and I were at her son’s baseball game last night, and I have a few words to say about it. First of all, he’s eight. So it’s still not that serious. It is, however, more serious than your typical “everyone plays” league. It’s double A ball, so the kids are a little better than average, and this year, they’ve begun to allow base stealing.

Now for those of you familiar with the rules of Little League baseball, which I am not, you’ll know that up until a certain age, they aren’t allowed to steal bases, and the coaches pitch part-time for the pitchers to give every batter a fair chance at a hit. Except that sometimes the coaches screw it up for them worse than the pitcher was doing. Whatevs. The point here is that now they allow base stealing.

And encourage it.

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Minnesota Chronicles, Vol. 1

What’s there to say about the fine state of Minnesota? Uh, well we’ll see if we can find anything worth saying. I flew in this morning to visit a friend, and – having never been here before – wanted to see the sites. Or is that sights… Either way, there were some things rhyming with “ites” that I had come to see. Let me back up a little though.

I’ll start with the plane flight. We were delayed in taking off by almost an hour. Sigh. Okay, I don’t mind sitting in the terminal. I started a paperback my friend Jim had given me. Called Jupiter. By Ben Bova. Have you read it? Well it may be the kind of book you only read in airport terminals, I’ll have to wait and see. Anyway, I had my iPod playing and was making eyes with a couple of honeys, so I wasn’t terribly upset. Fifty minutes late, we finally boreded. (Boarded. Yeah, I’m full of it today.)

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My Grandfather’s Farewell

June 1, 2004. Today a candle burned out, tonight the music fades.

My grandfather passed this afternoon. He was 87 years old, frail, and weak. He’s been a soldier for the past few years, battling the years as they fought him with heart attacks and strokes and many other ailments. His grip was iron though, and he held on strong. He’s been burdened by death for much longer than he suffered it. And tonight he’ll finally sleep in peace after so many years.

His spirit, trapped in this old body, was probably long ready to move on, but he held on for hope everlong.

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Day One

Today was the day. The first day of February, 2004. I woke up about eight-thirty and let the dogs out. Heather went to the bathroom, and asked if I wanted to go to church today. I said, “Yeah, as long as you feel like it.” She agreed, and said it might be the last time we get to go for a while. With the dogs out back, I lay back down for a while, and Heather came out of the bathroom and said, “Honey, I think my water broke.” We did the tests though, and it hadn’t.

Heather got in the shower to get ready, and then sat on the edge of the tub to shave her legs. I was drifting off again, rather nicely. It was about nine at this point. And a muffled yell through the bathroom door awakened me. “Brian! Brian!” I got up and ran in there. “Brian, my water broke!” I looked in the tub. Indeed it had. My mind got in Let’s Go gear, throwing things together and getting dressed. During this madness I managed to make it to a phone and call my mom to let her know, “The water is broken.” As it turns out, it was a good thing that I had called her, because she wasn’t freaking out like I was, and had a mind to call the hospital and get us a room.

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Nicotine Lollipops

Good day, Crater Faces. Another month is upon us, and another item of controversy has sprung up on the shelves. Every year we digress as a society, to the point of which we will finally become a sludge pit just like Palestine. Children are learning to kill at younger and younger ages, and all we do is feed it to them, on a shiny silver spoon we call television. In Europe they show nudity in commercials and on regular television. Here we show murder. Crime. Killing and rape, guns, drugs, and a whole slew of other bullshit that has somehow become acceptable. I’d much rather my children see a naked body than a dying one on television.

And don’t hand me that hogwash line “Well that’s the real world, Brandon”. Yeah, only because we make it that way. Anyway, to the point. This item I speak of is the latest development in smoking cessation. The nicotine lollipop.

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Children: Spare ‘Em or Spoil ‘Em?

Let’s talk about spanking children. A lot of people have a lot of problems with it, and some people cannot decide if they think it’s wrong or right. Well let me set the record straight, at least about my point of view on the issue. Anyone who’s gonna be my kid better be ready to receive spankings when they eff up. Period. To spare the rod is to spoil the child. My sister told me her Child Development class teaches (from the text book) that spanking your kid makes them violent as a teenager. I say to this – hogwash. I can’t tell you how many times I was spanked, and I am further from being violent-minded than the East is from the West. Complete horse caca. I will hear no more of it.

At that, I would have had to walk out of the class in disgust, tossing the text in the trash on the way out. It is not only Biblical, but also statistical that children who are disciplined correctly (i.e., spanked – for you lay people) are better in school and less likely to be in trouble with the law as adolescents. Is that not clear? I have witnessed firsthand children who walk all over their parents. Whether or not they are disciplined correctly is none of my business. But I can tell you what I do know. I do know these children I speak of are not spanked as a general rule. So make your own analysis, but my inference is that something is amiss.

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