Shoulda' Stayed in the Kitchen

This will be a short post. Jessica and I were feeding Tori and reading a short story by Brandon Sanderson when I glanced at the bookmark I got from the library. On the bookmark there was a list of upcoming events at the library, one of which was a class on starting a book club. Then somehow the sleep deprivation from daylight savings time caused my brain to take the following path: "Book Club. Fight Club. Book Fight Club. What if I wrote a book about guys who join book clubs to secretly cause fights by espousing controversial opinions about the book of the week?" And thus was born:

We laughed about this way more than it probably deserved, then sat around brainstorming fake discussion prompts we could have the guys in the story give the unknowing book club women to cause them to fight. For example, they could say things like: "I hate <insert popular character's name here>. They're so whiny." or "My favorite part was when they killed that one major character. They totally had it coming." Or even "I think the real heroes of Twilight were James and Victoria, for trying to kill Bella." The second-best was: "Who is the worse parent in Pride and Prejudice: Mr. Bennett, for not supporting his wife and shielding Elizabeth from having to marry Mr. Collins, or Mrs. Bennett, for trying to have any say in her daughters' lives when she should have stayed in the kitchen and let her husband make all the decisions?" However, far more entertaining was Jessica's response when I suggested the following discussion prompt. A guest at the book club is asked to defend the following position: "Pride and Prejudice teaches women a false moral by allowing Elizabeth Bennett to end up happily wed to the wealthy Mr. Darcy despite refusing Mr. Collins and endangering further prospects by being willful, opinionated, and out of the kitchen."

*Disclaimer: We don't actually believe these things, that's why they are funny because we get to imagine the response of people who would take them seriously. Also, I've never seen Fight Club. Or read the book. My only exposure to it was the trailers when it came out, and the following youTube spoof:


**Another disclaimer: I haven't read Twilight. I've seen the movie, and totally agreed with Jessica's fake comments once she explained that James was the vampire who almost kills Bella.

***Yet another disclaimer: I'm not really a violent person, and I know making fun of Twilight is overdone and that Twilight wouldn't make a good book club book anyway. This is all nonsense we came up with when we were loopy from sleep deprivation after setting our clocks forward an hour, and really isn't meant to be taken seriously. If you're one of the five people who read this blog you already know that most of what we say isn't meant to be taken seriously anyway.

The first rule of Book Fight Club? Never actually read the assigned book.

Optic Blasts are not the Same as Heat Vision

First of all, I want to warn my Mom: Mom, if you're reading this, you may want to just skip this post. There's no pictures of Tori, and it's pretty nerdy even by my standards.

Since the last two posts worked out so well I thought I'd continue allowing our friends to choose my blog topics. This weeks requests comes from Kevin V.:

As you can see, at first I thought he meant lazy eyes, which like any red-blooded child-of-the-Western-United-States-married-to-a-Texan I associate with the classic film "An American Tail: Feivel Goes West".

I'm planning on doing a whole post about Don Bluth animated films at some point, but for now I just want to point out how great it is even as a child I was taught to love and trust Jimmy Stewart to defend us from evildoers, and John Cleese as the nefarious Cat R. Waul ranks right up there with Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life, the corrupt congressmen from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or even Liberty Valance (I hope you know which Jimmy Stewart movie he's from) in terms of being a jerk who we love seeing Jimmy Stewart beat down. (Offscreen: Wait, you mean John Wayne, Tiger the Cat, and the forces of democracy and a free market economy took those guys down? Then what did Jimmy Stewart do? Moral Leadership!? That's not a beatdown! No I'm not going to change what I said on the blog!  What do you mean the Stewart Family Estate is threatening legal action? All right I'll fix it... grumble grumble).

I've been informed by our legal staff that my previous statements were incorrect. Jimmy Stewart did not beat down any of those people, but instead inspired them by standing up for what's right and providing a blistering Care Bear Stare moral leadership. Also, the Han Solo family estate asked that I display the following image:

Getting back to today's topic, it turns out Kevin meant "laser eyes", not "lazy eyes." On receiving this clarification I became even more on-board with the idea:

Actually, there will probably be several comic-book-related entries in the future. For now, we'll focus on what my day would be like if I woke up and discovered I had laser eyes like Cyclops from the X-Men:

6:30am: The alarm goes off. Jessica shakes me lightly on the shoulder to wake me up. For some reason I'm wearing one of those frilly eye covers that people in old-timey movies wear to sleep in. Even more embarrassingly, it looks like this:

Being the morning person that I am, I take it off my to rub the sleep out of my eyes. The lasers barely miss Jessica, bouncing off the mirror on our bedroom door before adding a new window to our bedroom.

6:45am: having dressed and proverbially powdered my nose, I now turn to the task of shaving. Mistaking my laser eyes for heat vision, I decide to make the best of my new-found destructive powers and shave by looking at myself in the mirror. Instead of burning away the stubble the optic blast knocks me down. Now I'm tired and have a headache.

7:15am: After shaving the conventional way and polishing off my Honey Nut Cheerios, I decide not to risk punching a hole in my computer monitor at work and call in sick. I dig out some sunglasses and paint them with a loose coat of Jessica's red nail polish. Somehow this makes it so I can see through them without blasting anything with my laser eyes. I have Jessica dress Tori and we head to the doctor's office to try and figure things out.

7:25am: As we're getting out of the car at the doctor's office we're confronted by a paraplegic Patrick Stewart look-alike, who offers me a job as a teacher at a school for lazy kids gifted youngsters in New York. I'm hesitant to accept his offer until his surly Canadian bodyguard starts cracking his knuckles and six knives shoot out of his hands.

8am: For some reason there's a jet parked behind the doctor's office. We get in with the mysterious bald guy, who explains that they've been looking for a guy with laser eyes ever since their previous laser-eyed teacher was portrayed as a doofus in a motion picture trilogy and killed by his schizophrenic wife in the third movie, which was critically panned.

8:30am: As we're flying across the country the Canadian notices Jessica's red hair and green blouse and starts asking creepy questions about whether she's ever been to Phoenix. I stare at him pretty hard and tragically blast him out the side of the plane. When I apologize to the bald wheelchair guy he shrugs, looks out the window, and proclaims that "Logan will be fine." I'm unsure whether he means the Canadian or the northern Utah city of the same name which he landed on.

10:15am: After finally convincing me to call him "Professor X", the bald guy starts insisting he's psychic. I'm skeptical at best since the closest he comes to reading my mind is responding to my unvoiced criticism that Shawn Spencer from Psych does more productive things with his "powers".

10:45am: I've now been introduced to the rest of the faculty, who seem strangely ethnically balanced, like the cast of an early 90s cartoon. There's even a memorial in a corner for a dead Native American with the totally plausible and not-stolen-from-Pontiac name of Thunderbird, though I'm told he was an offensive hodgepodge of stereotypes and died after one issue. When I ask what they mean by "issue" the white-haired African lady stutters a bit before saying "I mean he had a blood issue."

11:45am: Lunch is catered by Cafe Rio, and I'm feeling much better about the situation.

12:30pm: I'm walking off my lunch when....

Jessica: When what? What happens next? 
Me: I'm trying to build dramatic tension. I've already bored most of our readers with an extra long post and almost certainly alienated my poor mother, so I thought I'd call it good for now and take your advice to turn this into a two part post.
Jessica: I'm telling you, if the guy who wrote the Percy Jackson books can get away with a gratuitous cliffhanger then you can too.

Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion: same laser-eyes time, same laser-eyes URL!

Baby Avengers Challenge

Ok, this is going to be a little experiment to see how awesome my artistic friends (or any other random person from the internet who happens to wind up on this blog post) are. As many of you know, I like to draw random things when I'm in meetings. Being a slightly hyperactive, nerdy guy I need an outlet for my excess energy, and drawing actually helps me focus and retain information a lot better. Anyway, a few weeks ago I drew this:

It kind of speaks for itself, but I will say that I'm especially proud of Baby Thor and Baby Black Widow. Laugh at my bad art skills if you must, but my challenge is this: I want your help in creating the greatest collection of baby superheroes the world has ever seen (you know, in case the Baby Masters of Evil or the Brotherhood of Evil Mutant Babies, or the Baby Skrull Empire decide to attack). Submit your own drawings of baby versions of the Avengers, X-Men, Justice League, or whatever. As an added incentive, the submission that gets the most likes will totally get bragging rights, and maybe a signed eaten-by-Tori copy of the original. (Jessica: You can't like comments. Me: Then we'll print them off and the one that takes Tori the least time to eat will win.).

The fate of the Baby Universe rests in your hands. Send your pics to minortechnicaldifficulties@gmail.com or it you're Facebook friends with us you can get it to us there (if you're not Facebook friends with us: EWWW! Go away creeper! Unless your art is really good, then you can stay.)