As much as we think things change so drastically over the generations, they really don't. Mia and Beth just finished the entire Little House series. She loves the Oz books, some of the Narnia series and I recently discovered that the Choose Your Own Adventure books are now in e-book form.

While the classics are good, I have to admit that I absolutely love one particular series of more contemporary books. Clementine.

I was introduced to Clementine by some good friends who happen to have a daughter named Clementine (no relation) and gave the book to Mia for her birthday. Clementine is a smart, hilarious kid who lives in an apartment building in New York where her dad is the superintendent. Her mom's an artist and her brother - whose name I forget because Clementine rotates amongst all of the vegetables since she, herself has to deal with a fruit name - is a rather pleasant bother.

I was reading the latest Clementine book to Mia last night when a particular line struck me as brilliant:

Fair doesn't mean that everyone gets the same thing. Fair means that everyone gets what they need.

And that's when I realized what I like about these books. They tell the truth. Yes, they're funny but they're honest, they're smart, and they don't talk down to kids. And to be honest? It's rare that a kid's book makes me stop reading aloud because I'm laughing so hard.

What were your favorite books as a kid? And if you've got kids, what are they're favorite books?

- I come up with something startlingly brilliant that I am sure will win whatever is the blogging equivalent of a Pulitzer. Or at least snag me a comment or two.
- I try my best to develop a lame, half-assed idea into something tolerable and somewhat amusing.
- I find myself unable to think of anything and pray for the baby jesus to give me a sign or at least allow a celebrity sex tape leak at which point I can act indignant and pretend I didn't watch it.

On any given day I've got an equal chance of these three options playing out. But when the third thing happens, I consult my notes. I have an extensive supply of lame ideas that I write down and forget about precisely because they're lame. I hunt them down when I'm desperate and hope to wring some brilliance from their excessive crappyness. (Aside: My spell check apparently has no clue how to spell crappyness so this is not the fault of the panic-stricken, hurried author.) Last night was one of those times. When I looked, however, the well was pretty much dry except for one hastily scrawled note.

For those of you who can't read my writing - poison microwave birds. I have no idea what this means. Absolutely none. I think it could refer to the birds that live outside our house where the microwave is vented. But it's equally possible that I'm a brainwashed Jason Bourne type person who's memory of a burned out African village will return and these three words will somehow save humanity. Or its a shitty band name I came up with after a few beers and a couple hours of VH1's Behind The Music.

Any ideas?

It's obvious that moms past and present have a special place in our consciousness. Yesterday I happened to drive by a cemetery. It was filled with people leaving flowers, standing, heads downward, remembering. I'm assuming that most of the graves visited were moms. Of course, there was also a rather odd looking group of people one of which was shoveling dirt away from a grave which, frankly, is taking the concept of visiting with the dead just a bit too far.

Regardless, all this is a very long-winded way of saying that all you moms rock. Us dads are pretty damn great too if I do say so myself but it's you, moms that do the heaviest of heavy lifting. So, thanks. And a belated Happy Mother's Day.

How did you celebrate Mother's Day?

The Weekly Bold Political Move. President Obama finally clued us in to his thoughts on gay marriage. I'm starting to remember why we elected this guy.

The Weekly Read. Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva was a great surprise. I found an ebook version for a couple of bucks and forgot about it until last week. What I got was this great little mystery in which the state of Rhode Island with its relatively checkered past was both location and character. It's a gritty little mystery about arson, corruption, and the death of the newspaper industry. And it was a whole lot of fun to read.

The Weekly Short Film. I dare you to watch this and not somehow be impacted.

The Weekly Beer. Evolution No. 3 IPA.

The Weekly Greatest Ad. If you havent' seen it already you must - MUST - check out the ad posted on Craigslist for a 1995 Pontiac Grand Am. Frankly I'll get behind any product with an ad that begins Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ

The Weekly Loss. Maurice Sendak

The Weekly Question. What are you doing this weekend?

Don't get me wrong. I fought for my right to party as much as the next guy. I remember when License To Ill hit the shelves. No one had ever heard anything quite like it. Almost everyone went ape-shit over it. Pretty amazing. White rappers and Guess jeans. Quite a combo.

What gets me about MCA's death isn't the inevitable loss of a band and the music they created and would probably create if he was still alive. Instead it's the loss of such a strong cultural and popular influence who, with a couple of friends, carved out a piece of the music industry, shaped it, and made it his own. And ended up doing so much good with the influence he achieved.

That and the fact that he was so damn young.

- Grey's Anatomy (shut up)
- CSI: Cheers
- The Daily Show
- The Colbert Report
- Community (that's all me)
- No Reservations
- Breaking Bad
- Chopped (though we delete more episodes than we watch)
- Survivor
- Sons of Anarchy (oddly, that's all Beth)
- The Walking Dead

And that's pretty much it. You can see why TiVo is unhappy. And since I'm running out of Breaking Bad and Community, and Walking Dead will be back in, like, 2015, I'm pretty desperate to find the next unturnoffable show.

Help!

It's been a beautiful spring here in the outskirts of Monkeytown. The days haven't been overly hot and the nights have been breezy and cool. Our windows remain open around the clock. And that explains why we're awoken each morning at precisely 4:28 by the loudest, most annoying and purely evil bird that has ever flown the skies above this earth.

The devil crafted this bird himself out of feathers, attitude and bullhorns. I've never seen it but judging by the noise it makes, I can only assume that it's got an eight-foot wingspan and devours small children for nutrients. It's call is a four syllable mixture of pain and orgasmic delight cranked up to 11 Nigel Tufnel style. It sounds, vaguely, like wake the fuck up...wake the fuck up. And we do. In the absence of an actual name, I'm calling it the Northern Virginia Red-Throated Douche Bird.

I'm a vegetarian. While I fully believe that everyone should consume whatever they want to consume, I choose not to eat anything with a face. That said, I would gladly kill this bird, spit-roast it and put it in my tummy if it would mean sleeping past 4:28. Or introduce a horrifically destructive species into the environment, whatever natural predator would consume an incredibly annoying eight foot bird. Like a flying fire-breathing air squid. And if that air squid torched every tree in the neighborhood and made off with a few of the smaller, yappier dogs, it would be well worth it because we'd be able to sleep until a more godly hour.

The problem is I'd break my neck if I climbed the tree in our front yard this thing lives in. And air squid aren't real. I guess I'm going to have to deal with it.

My Robot by Mia

Hello, my name is Pirely. I am a dessert robot. I pick up trash cause it's my job to scoop scoop and suck. Lalalalalalalala. Oh I forgot to menchin I can swim. Ahhh! Acshely, it's no big dell. I love trash! And I also forgot to menshine this story takes place July 20th, 2020.

This is my friend Jake. Hi. I am a flying robot. My talent is when a plain crashes I save the day.

Bom bom bom bom Jake the robot saves the day again!

We love to go on walks in the forest together. I mean we love, love, love, love, love to. Good bye. I have to do my job.

After I tucked her into bed and we discussed what it meant to be published on the internet, she gave me the four-finger Vulcan salute and said live long and prosper. She's destined to be a geek. And I'm totally okay with that.

I've never read anything about death that adequately captured the range of emotion it encapsulated. It would be silly to think that on this morning I'd be the one to crack the code.

I can only tell you that my grandmother was a pretty special person. She taught me how to play gin rummy. She taught me that I liked radishes pulled straight from the ground. And peas. Though not from the ground because those would be weird peas. Her basement smelled amazing and I've not smelled another room like it since. She loved birds, including the male cardinal who flew into her kitchen window every morning. And flowers. She loved gardens and what they grew.

My grandmother was the very definition of stoic in the best, mid-western sense of the word. She took her life and death in stride. Perhaps the first and last time we talked about the possibility of her death - about three months ago - she told me, if the good lord decides to take me now, I'd be happy with the life I've had. I lived a long and good live. And I'd like to see your grandfather.

That, my friends, is all any of us can hope for.

The dead are always looking down on us, they say.
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a long afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.

- Billy Collins

My favorite of Mia's was ofange. She couldn't quite bring herself to pronounce orange correctly. The day she got it right we tried our best to talk her into reverting. She'd have none of it.

My favorite of Owen's is smooky. As in, Look! Scooby Doo and Shaggy are about to run into the smooky ghost. The other day he said it correctly. Sadness filled the land.

But all is not lost. When talking about old, long-departed cat Callie - who purred 24 hours a day, seven days a week (seriously) - Mia referred to her as a purring mantis. And after returning from a subway trip to and from Monkeytown, Owen informed me that the train had stopped at the Froggy Bottom metro station.

Me: Froggy Bottom?
Owen: Yep. Froggy Bottom.
Beth: Don't you dare fix that. Let me have it.

Sally's visiting. Along with her eleven children. That woman's a machine. Most notable among her children is Jill who just graduated from medical school. We had a party last night to celebrate. Amazingly, all twelve of them are crammed into our guest room. Frankly, I didn't think it was going to be big enough. Then there's Jack. Jack is 99 years old and sleeps on the pull-out couch in the playroom. Poor guy has to hobble through piles of Legos in the dark just to make it to the bathroom. Thankfully Jack's spry.

Normally having so many visitors in the house would cramp our style...and be a bit tiresome. Lucky for us they're all invisible.

My kids have fantastically active imaginations. Sally's been with Mia for four years. Jack's a new invention of Owen's. They're all awesome.

I don't think I ever had invisible friends. I was an imaginary detective named John Copley for a stretch of time in the late 70s - that has to count for something - but I never had an imaginary friend. Did you?

How It Went Down
Wednesday. After a day or two of random internet outages - fixable by rebooting the router every couple of hours - I called the Verizon tech support people. I described the symptoms and they diagnosed a bad router, citing a crapped-out wireless transmitter. I objected, quietly, since it wasn't just impacting the wireless connection but also wired connections. But it's the first thing my former help desk-running self would have done in their position so, whatever. The router came the next day. I installed it. Same problem.

Monday. Are you there Verizon, it's me Chris. I felt genuinely sorry for the guy I got on the phone. He sounded clueless-by-birth and stumped around this particular issue specifically. Apparently the old router-swap routine rarely fails. After I told him again that particular silver bullet didn't do it's thing, he put me on hold for a very long time. When he returned he said (and I shit you not this is how it played out and since, for quality control purposes this phone call was recorded, somewhere it's on tape):

Him: I have a solution I want you to try.
Me: Okay, let's hear it.
Him: After we get off the phone, I want you to unplug the coax cable from the wall and blow on it. Then put it back.
Me: Blow on it?
Him: Yeah, it might clear the static on the line.
Me: You're kidding.
Him: No, blow on it. And if that doesn't fix the problem, call us back.
Me: Oh, I think you can count on that.

So I blew on it. Five minutes later our internet connection dropped.

Wednesday. I gave my buddies at Verizon another call. They agreed to send someone over on Friday afternoon.

Friday. Five minutes before the Verizon guy arrives, the internet died. I left it that way. You know, you want the mechanic to be able to hear the terrible noise your car is making though it never makes it when you need it to. He verified that there was indeed a problem but couldn't figure out why. The best bet, he said, was replacing the box on the outside of the house where the cable came in.

This was an odd choice since I'd spent a couple of minutes earlier that day checking the log files. Something was clearly up but I couldn't tell exactly what. So I asked:

Me: Do you guys check the log files on routers before you start swapping out equipment?
Him: Nah, not usually. I'm not a computer guy.

And I'm thinking, you're not a computer guy? All this whole thing is is just a bunch of computers talking to each other! But no, he just replaced the hardware outside the house and everything worked fine.

Saturday. I woke up Saturday morning to a world in which no television, phone or internet existed. At least in my house. I got my ass on the phone (the rest of me too) and they promised to send someone out that day. They did. The battery backup unit was dead. They replaced it. Everything is working dandy.

The Actual Problem
The problem was actually pretty simple. Here it is in layman's terms.

Routers have tables - code, really - that direct traffic. Depending on the router you have, sometimes those tables are pretty big, sometimes pretty small. If you're an average user, it doesn't really matter. But if you have a lot of devices, lots of connections to the outside world and a pretty good deal of traffic, you want a router with a big table. When those tables get full, weird things start to happen. Primarily, your internet connection drops and our router has to be rebooted. Verizon happens to give out routers with pretty small tables and doesn't offer any alternative.

Why This Is Annoying
For the thousands of dollars on hardware and manpower they spent on my little problem, they never actually diagnosed it. They patched it with hardware instead of finding out the reason. Know how I know? Because I figured out the problem over the weekend. The answer's Googleable. It's all over and apparently a big enough issue that every single Verizon tech should have asked some different questions. And it had absolutely nothing to do with hardware. As a result they fixed stuff that didn't need fixing, actually broke stuff in the process, and cause a pretty major outage.

This is why your cable and internet bills are so high, people.