Dust Raven

“Go the Fuck to Sleep” by Adam Mansbach (illustrated by Ricardo Cortés) is a parody of children’s bedtime story. It is a humorous and exaggerated example of the frustration any parent feels when their little one won’t fall asleep. I recently came across an article on cnn.com regarding the book and some of what I read disturbed me.

The full article can be found here: (http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/27/zacharias.kid.book/)

The general gist of the article seems to be along the lines of demonstrating the book isn’t funny because in the real world there are neglected children and parents use the word “fuck” a lot. I’m sure I’m not giving the author (Karen Spears Zacharias, author of “The Shelter of Mockingbirds: The Murder of 3-Year-Old Karly Sheehan.”) proper credit, but at least I’m presenting her writing for what it is.

Zacharias, in my humble opinion, doesn’t seem to understand the point of humor, and may not have a properly developed sense of what is funny. She quotes an expert on child development (Dr. David Arredondo, founder of The Children’s Program in the San Francisco metropolitan area) as saying “Imagine if this were written about Jews, blacks, Muslims or Latinos.” You know something? I can’t imagine it.

Can you imagine anything you’d reasonably expect or desire a Jew, black person, Muslim or Latino to do because they were Jewish, black, Muslim or Latino? Well, can you imagine it without being racist? I can’t. How is expecting your child to go to sleep, and being frustrated he won’t, akin to racism?

Zacharias goes on to say Mansbach’s book “accurately portrays the hostile environment in which too many children grow up.” What? Show me such an environment. The problem here is there is no such environment to be founds within reality. An episode of The Family Guy more accurately portrays an environment (hostile or otherwise) in which children grow up.

Okay, so “far too many” parents say “fuck” and “bullshit” and other such obscenities. I’d question that. I’ve looked into this and I have not found a single American family that did not use such language. Sure, there are some that don’t use those words specifically, but they have words which mean the same thing and they use them.

I’d agree the book “Go the Fuck to Sleep” is not intended for children and it would be bad parenting to use as an actual bedtime story. Not because of the “message” it may send, but because as a society we have deemed the language used without to be inappropriate. But is it demeaning to children? Not at all.

I do think Zacharias sums up her article quite well by implying parents should be more like the parents in “all those beautifully illustrated storybooks.” Sure thing, let’s all get right on that. I’m sure we’ll all be ideal parents by modeling our behavior after the parents of Rapunzel and Cinderella.

And we lived happily ever after.

Welp… it’s been a more or less fucked up month.

My cousin, Mark, moved up from Yuma. We’re giving him a play to crash while he looks for work and then saves up enough cash to get his own place. I haven’t seen Mark in… maybe 10ish years. Maybe more like 15. My only solid memories of him are from our grandparents house at Christmas, which was nearly 20 years ago. Funny thing is it turns out that’s his most solid memory of me too. I’m sure having the whole week on film (and recently put on a DVD) has nothing to do with it. Upon getting to know him, I’ve found Mark to be a great guy… meaning he’s an introverted gamer like the rest of us. He’s also motivated and hard working, or at least I get that impression as he got a job within a week of moving in and has already secured his own transportation to and from work.

After Mark had time to settle in (more or less), in came the visiting relatives. Aunt Jill (Marks’ mother) and my godmother, Sherry, came to visit for a few days. Well, Sherry for a few days, with Jill coming up for a few hours. I never really got to know Sherry. She’s my godmother, which in my family means Mom really liked her around the time I was born. Seems she really likes her now too, and the two had a blast playing Scrabble and other games old people play and I’m no good at.

Father’s Day came and went, though Jacob had to be reminded it was here. He’s me son and I love him, but I have to wonder sometimes.

The car’s front brakes went out, but fortunately a friend of ours was kind enough to assist in fixing them (thanks Shane!). Unfortunately when the back brakes went out a week later, we would find our friend missing some necessary tools. I’m not sure what we’re gonna do on such short notice, but hopefully they’ll last long enough to figure out how much it will cost to get them professionally done.

I washed DeAnna’s phone with the laundry. Turns out cell phones don’t take well to water… Who knew? The good news was that one of our phones was due for one of those free upgrades T-Mobile offers its customers periodically. The bad news was T-Mobile changed it’s policy a few months ago and there is no such offer anymore. The best they could due was sell us their cheapest phone for around $60. That sent us into a spin of frustrating, leading to checking out the options for changing carriers, which also lead to us finding out T-Mobile wanted to charge us up to $200 per line to break our contract. That wasn’t going to happen, so we started to look for used phones on Craigslist and eBay. As it turns out, the friend of ours that can fix front brakes had some trouble with his old phone (from T-Mobile) and was happy enough to pass it along to us. Now we’re back to three working phones, with one of them being a smartphone!

Oh yeah, and NY passed it’s Okay to be Gay thing. I’m pretty sure it’s not called that, but apparently it’s now not illegal for a dude to marry a dude there. According to the fine print it also looks like it might not be legal yet either, but it’s a step in the right (or left) direction. In either case, I’m putting up a happy rainbow desktop image on my new phone to celebrate gayness. I suppose I should find an Adam Lambert ring tone or something too…

I’m confused about the new Valvoline commercials. Where is this probably coming from? Maybe it probably lubricates my car’s engine? Maybe other motor oils occasionally do something other than lubricate engines. I’m not sure what it is they might do. All I do know is that if I really want my engine lubricated I’m probably not going to use a parachute.

The Alphabet of the Internet… or rather Google… for your amusement:

A is for Amazon
B is for Bank of America
C is for Craigslist
D is for Dictionary
E is for eBay
F is for Facebook
G is for Gmail
H is for Hotmail
I is for iTunes
J is for Justin Bieber
K is for Kohls
L is for Lowes
M is for Myspace
N is for Netflix
O is for Overstock
P is for Pandora
Q is for Quotes
R is for Realtor
S is for Southwest Airlines
T is for Target
U is for US Airways
V is for Verizon Wireless
W is for Walmart
X is for XM Radio
Y is for Youtube
Z is for Zillow

Each of these are the first auto-complete results for typing in a single letter on Google. T kinda threw me, as until I looked today, it was Twitter. I also found it interesting that Justin Bieber beat out Jobing.com, as not only is the Canadian pop singer not a website/business, but he’s not likely to help anyone get a job. In our time of economic decline and abundance of unemployment, people still think entertainment is more important than finding a job to pay for said entertainment.

I have discovered I have a superpower. While it’s nothing as dramatic as the ability to fly or move objects with my mind, my ability is just as astounding. I did not come to this realization suddenly, for I had my suspicions for some time there was something… unusual about myself. My suspicions lead me to test myself. My lab was anyplace where there were lots of people, specifically moving people. Shopping malls, department stores… even a busy street. In each of these places I tested my ability and found that I am capable of generating a field of slowness around myself.

Wherever I went, people who crossed my path would invariably slow down, perhaps even stop right in front of me. At first I thought they were just being dicks, but how could so may people have a universal disregard for those around them? Especially in America! So I am certain this must be a superpower of my own that is influencing these people, causing them to linger in my path for far longer than is reasonable. I only wish I could control this ability…

I’d really like to turn it the fuck off.