I'm on Facebook! Whee?

As part of my job with Examiner, I have to promote myself and my articles. Normally not one for social networking, either online or in r/l (real life), I joined Twitter, then Facebook. MySpace comes later.

The problem is, I have been too busy to post anymore articles, which makes posting anything to those sites meaningless, and leaves me feeling too guilty to take time joining any others. Added to that is the vile temptation provided by Mafia Wars on Facebook, and us rejoining the insidious World of Warcraft.

Between homeschooling, housework, Amazon and Craigslist, I barely have enough free time, and I have been wasting it on Facebook. Tonight I need to re-focus on my Examiner articles. Anyone reading this, please check out the articles I have written, maybe leave a comment. It would do a lot for my self-confidence.

Now, how much is a getaway car and machine gun?

How men shop.

I went to the grocery store today. Not by choice, mind you. The idea was to hit the library; I had a few things on hold and a couple that needed to be returned (i.e. overdue). The library is actually a treat for me. I'm a voracious reader and love movies as well. Considering I'm not into sports, gambling, dating or anything else associated with the average male, the library is where I want to be.

Considering I am raising and homeschooling two autistic sons, the peace and quiet of the Columbus Library is nirvana for me. So, when my wife suggested I spend a little time there today, I jumped at the chance. It was only after I had showered, made breakfast for everyone, gotten dressed, had on my shoes with one hand on the doorknob that Mrs. Write ensnared me. "Can you stop at the store and pick up a couple things?"

My heart sank. First, I hate the grocery store. I'd rather clean the cat's litter box* than shop for anything. Second, my wife has a rather subjective idea of "a few things". As suspected, she handed me a list, a wad of cash, the credit card and a stack of coupons. I actually ended up spending three times as long at Giant Eagle (or "Jaunt Iggle" for my friends in Pittsburgh, and "Roc" for my old AD&D group) than at the library.

There were nine things on the list, including toilet paper and all the candy for trick-or-treaters this Halloween. You know, "a couple of things," Plus, I had to pay part of it in cash and part with the credit card (don't ask), and hand a small stack of coupons to the cashier. Oh, and did I mention that Mrs. Write, who has a mind like a calculator, figured out that the candy bars in the checkout lanes going for 2/$.99 were actually cheaper than the bags of candy, per ounce. Meaning I had to park the cart in an unused lane and pick out 100 candy bars ("At least four different kinds," as per instructions). During this, customers kept queueing up behind me, thinking the lane was open, despite the sign being turned off and the "This Lane Closed" sign prominently displayed on the conveyor belt. Not to mention the odd looks and suspicious glances from the employees. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I am a large and hairy man, the kind from which women tend to shelter their children.

Bear I mind, I'm no monster or predator. On the whole, I'm a quiet, thoughtful person who loves his family and thinks kittens are cute. It takes a lot to raise my ire, and that only if my family is threatened. But, I LOOK like a psychopath. After having my picture taken for my first college I.D., my friend Brian looked over my shoulder and said: "Hey, you look like a rapist!" Everyone came over to look, and the general consensus amongst a group of people I barely knew or hadn't yet met, was that my picture belonged on America's Most Wanted. The hell of it was, they were right.

Anywho, back on track. So, I spent a long period of time at the grocery store today, most of it in a rush because, on top of everything else, I was instructed to be home by noon as Mrs. Write had errands to run. *sigh* So, armed with a foul temper and time in an institution I abhor, I took to observing people around me to relieve stress. Something I've noticed before yet still never fails to amaze me, is how the average man shops for groceries.

Have you ever noticed that men absolutely refuse to use a shopping cart unless forced to by their spouse? I've never understood the reason for this. Is he afraid of looking feminine by pushing a shopping cart? You'll see some guy trying to carry eleven items, including a case of beer and four bags of chips, using only his hands and a lack of comprehension for the law of gravity. Or physics. To this individual: you don't look manly just because you used your big, hairy hands instead of a cart. You just look stupid. And don't get me started on the basket. A guy would rather circumcise himself (or, worse, sit through a "Sex and the City" marathon... *shudder*) than even acknowledge the grocery baskets exist.

Secondly, coupons. Why the hate for coupons? This isn't regulated to men only, but they are the more verbal opponents of those little, innocuous slips of paper. I'll be checking out five items and paying in cash, while some guy behind me, trying to fit 37 items on the conveyor (in the 12 Items or Less lane), while simultaneously talking loudly on his cell phone about all the hot wings he ate last night and how he had diarrhea for hours afterward. Then, when I hand the cashier a couple of coupons, this guy has the audacity to sigh loudly and comment on it to his cell phone buddy. Look, this isn't the 1970's. The cashier can scan the coupons as fast as he could scan your Preparation H. It will take all of fifteen seconds, max, to run my coupons through, but I'll save five bucks or more. And where do you have to be, really?

You get the same reaction to credit cards. Why the hate? It's not like the cash register jockey is going to haul out that old monstrosity with the carbon paper, you know, the one that looks like a miniature meat slicer? I run the card through the card reader (oooh, technology scary), punch in my PIN, and we're done. Hell, half the time it's faster than cash.

Lastly, the actual shopping. I hate the grocery store (granted, not as much as a clothing store, but there's enough material there for another post), but at least I do it right. Most guys go in without a list, even if their spouse wrote one up for them. Sorry, but I'd rather do it right the first time. When you go to the store with the instructions to pick up some food and drinks for dinner, and come back with a case of mac n' cheese and a case of Miller Light, she's just going to send you out again. You know it, I know it, and she knows it. Your ploy won't work. Looking incompetent will not get you out of shopping. Shell just make you do it twice.

Trust me on this. I know. So get ti right the first time. And use a cart for chrissakes, you look like a doofus.

I'm Gainfully Employed! (Sort of!)

Well, it's only been two months since my last post. At this rate, I'll be up to daily posts in about two-and-a-half years. Stay tuned!

Those of you who read my last post (still holding steady at zero) may be wondering what our situation is. Heck, I'M wondering myself. We got the van back and it's running pretty well. The guys at R. J. Wheels in Polaris did an excellent job. The van is still a piece of crap, but it gets us from Point A to Point B.

We've officially ended our relationship with eBay. Their new rules quite simply favor the buyers and screw over the sellers, and the fees are ridiculously high. Anything we sell online goes through Amazon or Craigslist.

My wife is back to the Mystery Shopping/Auditor thing, but I haven't the time, due to my homeschooling duties, housework, and my NEW JOB! Yes, someone actually hired me for something. Scary. I am now the "Stay-at-Home-Dad Examiner" for Examiner.com in Columbus. They expect me to send in a minimum of four articles per week. As usual, I am falling behind. So far I only have three published articles, which you can view through my profile page link above and under the title of this post. I would have linked all three, but i figured there were enough links in this already. (I just recently figured out how to make this link thing work; I'm not very tech savvy, I'm afraid. As a result, everything post anywhere is riddled with links like Amy Winehouse is riddled with STDs.)

I have also published two Topics pages on Cracked, one about Internet Comments and one about The A-Team. As you can see, the Internet Comments one was posted before I figured out how to link URLs. I'll have to fix that one of these days.

On a side note, right before the car was finished, our hot water tank broke down. Seeing as how most of our $$$ went to getting the wheels out of the shop and making the house payment, we haven't been able to get it fixed yet. That's no biggie, though. I just LOVE hauling four or five pots of hot water up a flight of stairs two or three times a night so my family can take baths. Luckily, or unluckily, for me I never really like baths. No, I'm not a filthy pig, I just prefer showers. The idea of wallowing in your own filth, in a pool of water filtered through your own butt hairs, never appealed to me. A shower always feels cleaner to me. Now I'm enjoying the natural way of getting clean: ice cold showers. Whee!

Last, and most certainly least, I am now a member of Twitter. This is something I swore I would never do, but the Examiner expects its correspondents to promote their own articles. Seeing as how I get paid based on the number times people view my articles (hint, hint, Hint, HINT, HINT) I figured I'd try Twitter first. Next comes Facebook and MySpace, when I find the time.

Yes, I'm still alive.

Well, I did say in my first post that it might be six months between updates. Actually, it's closer to nine. Wow, that's pretty bad. Granted, I have been busy: trying to get an eBay business off the ground, working as a Mystery Shopper (more on that later), getting the kids back to classes (remember, we homeschool, so most of my day is eaten up by that), and trying to keep the house clean and running efficiently.

So, how has all that been going? Terrible. Our eBay account got hacked, draining our linked Paypal account, leaving us with no money available to ship items, so that came out of our household money. I would be more surprised by this, but it happened once before, many years ago. That time we had a pretty established name on eBay; this time it was just starting up. So, to hell with eBay, Paypal and their lousy security.

The Mystery Shopper thing? Pretty interesting, and somewhat lucrative as a part-time income for a stay-home Dad. Just sign up with one of over 200 companies online, including Corporate Research International, Marketforce, Gapbusters (if you love McDonald's), and so on. Then, once you have an account with one or more, pick and choose which jobs you want and when you want to do them. What do you have to do? Just follow the guidelines for the job you've chosen, usually going to a specific store or restaurant, interact with an employee or two, buy something, and head back home. Last, fill out an online report, scan/photograph any receipts or relevant paperwork, and send it off to the mystery shopping company. They compile the results and pass them on to the store or restaurant.

Sounds nice, doesn't it? It was, until my van broke down. The axle on our Ford Windstar actually snapped. Not only is this going to cost us around $900 to fix, but we're without wheels until it comes back. I've had to turn down nearly two weeks' worth of jobs, including some I'd already scheduled. The main drawback to mystery shopping is the initial overhead: you spend money out of your own pocket during the shop (or, as the call it, "audit"), then wait for your paycheck to come in. Most of the jobs you take reimburse you for your purchases -up to a certain amount- and pay a fee for performing the work. Generally, the jobs pay 2:1 ratio, if you spend ten bucks at McDonald's you get around $20 back.

So, in my situation, I've spent about $100-150 in the past four weeks, with no return yet. That wouldn't be a problem, if two of the three companies I work for didn't operate through Paypal. I may never get paid. As for school, dealing with lost jobs, towing the car, negotiating with the mechanic (who has been very accommodating so far), and busing it everywhere, it's been hard to get any teaching done.

And don't get me started on housework.

On a bright note, my wife found this in a bag of cherries she bought a couple weeks ago:

Yes, that's a cherry with a wiener. The ever-elusive male of the cherry species. I call it: The Dinglecherry. Yes, I am childish and sophomoric, thank you.

So, other than the cherry, that's my sob story for this month. Between car troubles, working through the summer (and now picking up a part-time job in the evenings to pay for the repairs), school, travelling, and whatnot, I've barely had time to work on this blog. On a side note, I just got hired by Examiner.com in Columbus as their "Stay-at-Home Dad" correspondent, which means more work for me, but getting paid to do it. Yay! I think.

Feeling Hairy and lazy. Perhaps I should shave for a change.

This is my first post in a month and a half. Why, you may ask? Because: I'm lazy. Anyone who read my first post (at this moment: nobody!) will know this. How lazy am I? I'll give you an example.

I play World of Warcraft (no, that's not the example; bear with me... ). Those familiar with the game, or with MMORPG's in general will have heard of Guilds. For those outside the loop I'll try to explain briefly. Granted, brevity is NOT one of my strong suits, as you might notice after reading my post about homeschooling. In an Massive Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), a guild is a group of players who form a kind of club. They generally have a name, their own private chat channel, a shared bank of goods, and so on.

The guild I joined was named ProcrastiNation. This speaks volumes about my personality. I had been booted from my previous guild because i took a couple months off the game when real life got too busy. The officer who recruited me said that wasn't a problem. "Look at our name", he said, and we shared a hearty virtual laugh. After joining, I discovered I could not use some of the guild's features, such as the Vault (the aforementioned shared bank), the ability to recruit others, and others. This was new to me. After putting it off for a while (hint: ProcastiNation), I finally got around to asking a guild officer why this was. She informed me that i had to register on the guild's external website, link an e-mail, and perform a few other tasks. I replied that this was a ridiculous amount of hoops to jump through for a guild named -need I remind you- ProcrastiNation. They stood firm, so I left.

So, let's recap. I joined a club on a video game, who's name was synonymous with being lazy. I joined because their guidelines for attendance were incredibly lax. And I quit because it was too much work. I should be ashamed of myself, but that requires more introspection that I'd like to spend. On a side note, I actually started this post a week ago. It was saved as a draft, and just now re-opened, eight days later.


Lazy, I tell you.


On to a topic less self-flagellating, what say? My wife (who submitted the vending machine comic a little while ago, which I love) suggested I start a section of this blog dedicated to weirdness. not weirdness in general, mind you. I find enough of that in my day-to-day life. No, I'm talking about the kind of weirdness someone mistakenly took time to chronicle. I mean the misprints, errors in judgement, typos, misplaced headlines and other silliness people put into print.


I was inspired by a feature once carried in Maxim magazine, back when it was still funny and more than sixty-odd overpriced pages. This feature was called "Found Porn", and showcased ads, books, periodicals and products that could easily be construed as pornographic. This was one of my favorite parts of the mag, and reminded me of another fond memory of a once-humorous entertainment: "Headlines" from the Tonight Show. I've already gathered (i.e. either found or been handed by my wife; I'm too lazy for research) several items of weirdness, and will be putting them up for the world to enjoy.


So far, that includes myself and my wife. Get with the program, people.


The problem I'm encountering in this: What to call this feature? I can't use Headlines, firstly because it's already taken, and is a misnomer. Half the stuff old Smilin' Jay holds up are pictures or ads, not headlines. Found Porn is both copyrighted and too narrow; not everything I've gathered is a sophomoric attempt at puerile sexual humor. A lot of it is sophomoric in entirely different ways. So, until i either come up with a name or someone reading this suggests one, I'll just call it "General Weirdness".


Once again, get with the program, people.


We live in Columbus, Ohio. This first installment is a flier from a local Mexican restaurant named Tacorriendo. It is unaltered and not Photoshopped (I'm too cheap to buy Photoshop):

Excuse me, waiter. Come se dice "barf bag"? Thanks.

I'm all for truth in advertising, but in this case ignorance is bliss. I love how each is a little worse than the last. Stomach? Okay, that's not too bad. Tongue? Well, people eat tong- What? Intestines!?! Why, god, why?

Now that I've brought a little weirdness into your life, and ruined your dinner, I bid you adieu, or however you spell that in your weird moon-man language.

Homeschooling is NOT what you think.

In my previous post, I mentioned homeschooling my two sons. Tell most people that you do this, and you get the same aghast look and disapproving sigh. I know, I held much the same opinion whenever hearing that word: "homeschooling". You know the image people form in their minds: flabby, pasty kid with thick glasses, introverted, perhaps the wide-eyed zeal of an indoctrinated religious fanatic. I saw "Jesus Camp" too.

This is far from the truth. Granted, there are many religious zealots who choose homeschooling as an option to protect their delicate children from the dangers of progressive thinking. better they have their heads filled with religious propaganda than hard science. THAT will prepare them for the real world. But this is only a portion of the homeschooling community, and it is a community.

We live in Ohio, one of many states that have accredited, school-supported homeschooling. Several companies provide strictly-structured programs and strong support from trained educators. In fact, many of these programs prefer to be called "Home-based public school", as their guidelines and curriculum are based on regional, state, and national educational standards.

My kids are enrolled in the Ohio Virtual academy, a division of the K12 program. We are provided with a computer and Internet access, an online curriculum with support and links to educational websites, including museums. They send us textbooks published both by educators at K12 and by other publishers, including the same textbooks your kids use in public school, student workbooks and teacher's guides in each subject, supplemental materials including supplies for Science experiments, with graduated cylinder, spring scale, litmus paper, and so on, Math teaching tools such as number cubes and flash cards, handwriting workbooks and worksheets, maps and books pertaining to History, Art and Music supplies with instructional CDs and DVDs, instruments, clay, oil and pastel paints, and more.

Along with the extensive supplies, I have weekly meetings with Intervention Specialists, former public school teachers and administrators who act as a liaison between my students, myself, and the state, making sure the kids are keeping up with their classes, and lending advice and aid whenever they get stuck. Each students has their own teacher, as well, whom I also have a phone conference with each month, who is even more familiar with their individual classes and needs. During these meetings, my kids speak directly with their teacher either via phone or on a shared classroom online, and their do activities to show what they have learned.

Whenever you tell someone your kids are home schooled, the same two arguments pop up: socializing and qualifications. To be honest, while I can understand the latter, the former leaves me scratching my head. What about public school do you remember as positive socializing? Being shoved into large groups of people all the same age as yourself, spending 90% of your day sitting quietly and being punished for "talking" or "laughing"? How does that teach you about interacting with others? Was it fun being judged by others for your appearance and clothes, especially those of us who didn't grow up in affluent families? My favorite are the people (usually without kids of their own) who get that smarmy smirk when I mention bullying. "How are they gonna learn to be tough, to stand up to bullies, if you protect them all the time?" they ask. You just know this is the same guy who made the skinny kid eat his own gym socks in ninth grade.

Yeah, that's how it works. I remember being picked on by groups of sixth graders when I was in seven years old. I should have stood up to those eight kids who out-sized and outweighed me, especially the grandson of the Superintendent of Schools who never did anything wrong, the little angel. What necklace made of teeth? I've been a big guy since I hit puberty, but I always felt smaller than others, a distorted perception of myself derived from low self-esteem and years of abuse. Being bullied didn't make me stronger, it made me hate myself. Eight years and two botched suicide attempts do not a strong person make.

I'm teaching my kids to stand up for themselves without being bullies themselves. Both of them have Autism-Spectrum disorders. They are intelligent, sweet, polite boys, but they lack in social skills, and all the artificial peer constructs public school has to offer wasn't changing that. When my oldest was bullied, he internalized it, blaming himself, no matter how much we told him is wasn't his fault. He didn't, and still can't, understand why people are mean to each other. Hell, I don't get it, either, kid. My youngest had a different solution. When he was picked on, he lashed out, shoving, kicking or otherwise rebuking his tormentors. Oddly enough, this made him the more well-adjusted. To him, the problem was solved. When he kept getting in trouble for fighting, we asked him what was going on, a novel approached the Principal, Dean and teacher at his school never considered.

Turns out he was being picked on by an older girl during recess. She had been held back once, and was bigger than all the other kids in the class, except my son, who is tall and broad for his age. When told this, the Dean (who served no real purpose, considering the school had a Principal and Vice-Principal; I think he was related to someone on the school board) said he never saw anything when he chaperoned the playground. So, living only five minutes' walk from the school, I snuck over with my digital camera and caught her bullying him on video the next day. By this point, he simply stood there and took it, having been told by his "superiors" at the school that it was wrong to hit a girl. So, while this beast and her three friends shoved him around, he stood there, head down, enraged and impotent, then took it out later in class on other boys.

Yeah, public school is a great place to learn social skills.

Our homeschooling program has get-togethers such as socials, skating parties, birthday parties, and more for students in the area. My kids are learning to socialize with kids of all ages, and adults as well. Most homeschooled kids I've met are well-mannered and can speak with an adult with poise and intelligence, unafraid of sounding stupid or being rebuked for having an opinion, a stark contrast to how I grew up. One mother told a story about being asked by the mother of a public-schooled boy how her daughter socialized when she wasn't in public school. She asked this question at a soccer game, in which both their daughters were on the same team. The homeschooling mother just laughed it off.

As for being qualified to teach my kids, I admit that this was the big hurdle I expected to face when I began this program last year. I'm not a schoolteacher, I told myself, How am I going to teach them? Let me tell you, with the proper materials, you can teach just as well as any public school teacher, perhaps even better.

Let's face it: when you were in school, the teacher graded your homework and tests off an answer sheet; the lesson taught from a curriculum. Between the Internet classroom, textbooks and teacher's guide, I can relate any information to my kids. If I have trouble relating the lesson to them, my wife, who is in MENSA, can help. Otherwise, I can call either one of their support teachers or Intervention Specialists. In college, I took classes aimed at future educators (A Liberal Arts degree leaves a lot of flexibility for the undecided). In the Math and English courses I took with this theme, we were taught how to relate the subject to a group of students, how to make it understandable to students at all levels of understanding. Loosely translated, future educators are trained to present the course to the smart kids, the average kids, and the booger-eating mouthbreathers.

I know my kids, even better now that I've been teaching them for a year and a half. I know the right references to make something come alive in their minds, to make it something they can relate to, whether I use a favorite book, cartoon, video game or TV show, I can teach them anything. Instead of asking how many apples are left after giving three to a friend, I ask my son how many Krabby Patties he has left if he serves three off the grill. And he gets it right.

No, school isn't all fun and games. Some days, they don't want to start class. But they aren't going to be skipping out of class or playing sick to go home. I can adjust their schedule to the right fit for them. What does that mean? well, if I teach my son how to measure angles in one lesson, and the next is about supplementary and complementary angles and measuring three-dimensional shapes, I can simply go on to the next lesson while it's all fresh in his mind, instead of putting everything away and witching rooms so we can weave baskets out of reeds. Last year, we made it all the way through every subject, even though the state only requires 90% of the subject be covered. It's even less for public school. Remember the days leading up to and after holidays, and the last three weeks of school? My wife dubbed those "Disney Days", as you spent them watching videos, coloring pictures and making crafts. We work. I clearly recall never reaching the end of any school textbook. Heck, most history classes never taught us anything past WWII, and I remember blank worksheet pages in at least 1/4 of every English class.

When my sons tested to enter K12's program, by their standards he was one year behind in Language Skills and Literature. According to public school, he was near the top of his class. Literature? They didn't even offer Literature. I'm not necessarily bashing public school, but you'd be hard pressed to convince me they were better off there. Yes, many people who homeschool make up their own curriculum. Sometimes they do an excellent job. Other times they're like my former neighbor, who's son was kicked out of tenth grade. They began "homeschooling" him, which meant he spent all day playing video games, throwing the football around with dad, or pummeling a guitar that did nothing in any of its former lives to deserve the torture he put it and us through. All the while, his mother is inside, taking his tests for him and sending them in.

But people like that, or like the ones in "Jesus Camp" who suggested that global warming was impossible because the earth is too big, or that the Earth is really only 6000 years old and scientists who say otherwise are only guessing, are a small portion of homeschoolers. I'm an atheist; i didn't pull my kids out of school because of any religious beliefs. I did it because they weren't receiving a proper education. They both have Autism Spectrum Disorders, and their homeschool provides Speech and Occupational Therapy services the public school wouldn't. They socialize with people of all ages and aren't afraid to speak up and ask questions for fear of looking foolish.

They work hard, they learn, and they have a sense of accomplishment, all without being pigeonholed into a certain social group, being abused by older kids, sat in neat little silent rows of other third graders, peeing only when given permission. The next time someone suggests that public school prepares a child for the real world in ways homeschooling can't, ask them the last time they had to carry a wooden block with "Lavatory" written on it in Magic Marker, just to go to the bathroom.

That's what I thought.

Nature's Vending Machines

A funny, simple comic by my wife. Hope you enjoy it as much I do.