Baby carries on baby business.

Asked recently about her apparent unwillingness to cooperate or to act according to her parents’ wishes, Abigail Moore explained, “I don’t really listen to them. I pretty much do whatever I want.”

Pressed for additional details, Abigail continued, “look… they have their agenda and I have my agenda. Sometimes our goals synch up, but often we simply want to go in different directions. Hell… lots of times I can’t even figure out what they’re babbling about any way, so I’ve learned to just tune them out most of the time. I just filter out all the words except backpack, quack quack, raisins, Granma, and bath.”

Baby plans no changes.

Abigail’s father was not shocked to hear such revelations from his daughter. “Yeah… that sounds about right. I’d estimate that Abby listens to me about 10 percent of the time and complies with my requests about 1 percent of the time. I’m hoping to double my success rate over the next 17 or so years.”

Abby’s mother insisted that the problem was overblown. “I haven’t seen much of this behavior. Abby frequently does what I want her to do as long as she wants to do it and has started doing it prior to me asking her to do it. It’s not a perfect system, but it works out. Success is all about anticipation.”

Asked if she plans on behaving better in the future, Abby reflected, “probably not. Right now I’m in a phase we small people term ‘liftable.’ As soon as I get a little heavier, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to ignore my parents completely. The dog weighs about a buck-five and he hasn’t listened to anyone in like four years. He’s the gold standard for me right now.”

Don’t down your bottle and then try to walk!

Abby test pilots snow suit...

White stuff is cold. Can’t move in this damn suit. Can’t see in this damn hat. Parents are laughing at me. This is why I bite.

Raaaarrhhh, Baby! Raaaaarrrhh!!!

In a move surely designed to antagonize Hogan, Abby “chose” to be a tiger for Halloween. More troubling, Abby then “decided” to try on her furry outfit and to parade in front of the Rhodesian Ridgeback as he dozed on his leather lounger.

Hogan did not, however, leap off the couch and try to corner the “cat” in the livingroom. Instead, he merely lifted one weary eye toward costumed Abigail before circling three times on the cushions and returning to the realm of canine dreams.

When later asked about his lethargic reaction to a wild tiger clearly in need of chasing, Hogan seemed surprised that the tiger was in fact Abigail in disguise. He explained his lack of interest instead by insisting that his ancestors were “lion hounds,” not “tiger hounds.” He patiently explained that there are lions, there are tigers, and there are bears in the world, and that each respective game species has an appropriate breed of hound to chase them.

He was not at all sure what breed of dog should chase tigers, but in any event, he made it clear that it was not the Peabody Ridgeback.

So does Hogan…

Forget tea leaves or psychics!

My mother and father currently have barely 50% of their football picks correct so far this NFL season. That’s not impressive. My grandmother is under .500 for her picks. That’s even worse!

What these amateurs need is a viable, proven system for handicapping teams, but instead they rely on senseless data like “which team has the better punter,” or “which team plays in a dome,” or “which team’s mascot is more powerful.”

I wouldn’t care, but since they’re foolishly gambling with MY future college funds, I need to get these people back on track pronto. Towards that end, I offer my full-proof method for determining NFL winners.

All you need is a list of match-ups and a supply of cereal. Raise several pieces of cereal above your head, close your eyes, and drop the cereal on the list of teams. Where the cereal ends up accurately determines the victorious team, since cereal naturally gravitates toward winners, milk, and dog mouths. As you can see from the example pictured, the Patriots are looking like a lock to beat the Jets and to cover the spread.

Note: don’t conduct your experiment near milk or dog mouths or you may end up with spurious data!

I happen to favor stale Cheerios for my picks, but you can also use Capn Crunch. I do not suggest using oatmeal, simply because it tends to splatter, to obscure the results and to anger the owners of the carpet.

Give my system a try. I think you’ll like the results.

War-painted Header!

STFD! was incomplete and outplayed this week at Tin Whistle Trivia. We offer no excuses; we do offer an explanation.

Since the Silbergleit Summer Carnival pulled up its tent pegs and hoofed it out of town, we expected fewer/weaker competitors and we handicapped our varsity team accordingly. Our magnanimous, parity-seeking actions (we left both Abigail and Emily off the roster!) were horribly misplaced, as five fully-staffed rival teams ponied up and came to play harder than megashark and giant octopus combined.

We did not know who won the first ever Monday Night Football game, we did not know all of the monthly birthstones, we were not familiar with Jay-Z’s catalog of crap, we did not know Vince Vaughn’s sundry Hollywood aliases, and there were absolutely no questions concerning the wingspan of fowl.

Feel lucky, punk?

Andy also proved to be, in the words of one observer, “pretty damn useless” during crunch time, since the final round was a puzzle variety akin to the brain-wrenching rebus riddles to be found beneath the evil caps of Lucky Lager. This is an area where Andy has never performed above the .08 percentile, and he once again folded before the challenge like a house of cards assembled by a kindergarten class.

A few Tin Whistle Trivia final round puzzle examples:

1. 18 H I A R O G
2. 200 D F P G I M
3. 8 S O A S S

Would-be utensil usurpers?

But perhaps more troubling than our third-place finish was the emergence of a new trivia team named Get The Fork Out!, a team clearly parodying the legendary success of Shut The Front Door! with admirably postmodern, mock homage.

This new team (which finished in forkly fourth… heh heh!) will undoubtedly polarize trivia fans, since it makes sense to either Shut The Front Door! or to Get The Fork Out!, but to do both is unnecessarily redundant.

Next week we will field a complete, well-conditioned, motivated team. We will listen to additional crappy music, we will drink and solve several cases of the Lucky Lager, and we will arrive early to Shut The Front Door! before the fork folks even arrive. We’re curious to see if Get The Fork Out! turn into Lettuce The Fork In! when faced with a blocked entrance.

What does my daily schedule look like? Here is a VERY rough idea:

• 7:00am – 6 ounce bottle!
• 8:00 or 9:00am – nap… whether I want it or not! I usually scream for 10 minutes, and then sleep for an hour or an hour and a half.
• 9:30ish or when I wake up – solid feeding.
• 11:30ish – 6 ounce bottle!
• 1:00ish – solid feeding.
• 2:30 or 3:30pm – another nap for an hour or so.
• 4:00pm – 6 ounce bottle!
• 6:30 or 7:00pm – my last 6 ounce bottle!

How do you make my bottle? No sweat. Really, don’t put sweat in my bottle. Put six ounces of warm water in a bottle, add three scoops of Enfamil premium formula (level scoops… no packing!), and shake it up!

I hate naps and I will scream when you put me down for one. That’s ok as I’m just developing my lungs. Let me shriek until I nod off (usually 5 to 15 minutes of me swearing at you in baby will tire me out the last little bit and I’ll fall asleep!)

Please change my diapers every couple of hours or when I smell like poo. And don’t take any pictures of me just wearing a diaper, or you will pay a stiff, violent price for your insolence!