I could get used to this. But sadly, it won't last much longer.

* And by day, I mean everyday.
** My goal for this beach trip is one or more snowcones every day. So far, so good.

Dear Internet,

Wish you were here. No, really. It would be fun. I mean, the restaurants would all be really crowded and it would be a bitch to get a good spot at the beach. But it would still be fun. Anyhoo, you're not. So I'm just dropping you a line to let you know that the Cactus-Fish clan is here, at the beach, living it up. We're making sandcastles, walking the boardwalk, eating way too many French fries and snowcones and riding all kinds of rides.

Be jealous, Internet. It's pretty awesome.

Chris

The Weekly Stupid Product, Or At Least I Think It Is But I Don't Have Boobs So Who Knows. KUSH Support. Yes, finally - an in-cleavage breast support system.

The Weekly Time Waster. Little Wheel.

The Weekly Read. Lisa Lutz strikes again with Curse of the Spellmans, her second novel overall and the second in the Spellman series. Lutz is just plain awesome. And so are the Spellmans, the family of private investigators who populate her novels. They're fun, quirky, zany, silly, and incredibly well-written. What's odd is that they're funny but they also have a great deal of heat and at their core there's a really good, serious mystery. While their styles are different, the most logical person to compare Lutz to is Marshall Karp.

The Weekly Celebrity Death Trifecta. Michael Jackson, Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett.

The Weekly Schadenfreude. It's honestly a toss-up between Jon and Kate and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Dumbasses, all three of them.

The Weekly Terrible Customer Service. A homeowner in the DC area was more than a little frustrated with Verizon. He followed the Verizon tech to his van, blocked his attempt to leave then finally relented. Until the Verizon guy put his van in gear. The homeowner reached into the van's open window, grabbed the steering wheel, then fell. He later died. Can you haunt me now?

The Weekly Hypothetical. If you had to come up with a last-minute hypothetical question on your day off when you slept late and can't think of anything, what would it be?

When I was a kid, I found this preoccupation with digging, planting and pruning tremendously boring. It involved neither music nor getting in trouble with my friends so I pretty much had zero patience for it. But for some reason, I never minded helping out with the hard labor. Every year, my dad would have a truckload of topsoil and a truckload of mulch delivered, two mountains on our otherwise flat driveway. For a weekend, armed with wheelbarrows, rakes and shovels, we'd chip away at those mountains, moving, dumping and raking everything into the appropriate places. Like I said, I never minded. Maybe it was because it gave me a chance to work on my tan. For the ladies. But I never saw the appeal of the actual gardening part.

Beth and I bought our house from its original owners. Owners who happened to found and chair the neighborhood gardening club. That sounds about as exciting to me as a club devoted to knitting tea cozies or memorializing the middle names of former U.S. presidents in needlepoint. But we came out ahead in that deal because we inherited a beautifully landscaped yard. Though it came with some pressure. I'm pretty sure the neighbors, for the last two years, have been waiting for us to drop the ball, eying our yard, waiting for us to fuck up, bungle everything and allow it to grow wild and be inhabited by wild monkeys or just up and die.

I'm proud of us. We've done neither.

Springtime last year - the weed season - Owen was pretty brand-spankin' new. Our yard suffered. This year, however, we've made a full-court press in order to bring it back to its former glory. It's sexy work. At the end of every weekend, we find ourselves in the heat, wearing gloves and long sleeves, sweating up a storm, dripping sweat and blood, comparing the rashes and bites we've managed to get as if we dry-humped weeds and vines to which we're highly allergic. But it's worth it.

(Shit. Typing that last sentence made me feel about 80 years old. After I get done here, I'm going to go surf the internet to find the best price on a Rascal scooter than I think I'll head to the local buffet and have dinner around 4:00 this afternoon. If any of you want to join me, please feel free. But fair warning. I can't miss my Lawrence Welk rerun a 7:00 and I've got to hit the sack at 8:00, especially because I'll be up every half hour peeing.)

What things did you not appreciate when you were younger that you totally get now?

No surprise to anyone, they're getting divorced.

I was infuriated - in the almost-throwing-stuff-at-the-TV infuriated - by their obliviousness to the fact that they got themselves into this situation. That coupled with their need for us to feel sorry for them pushed me over the edge. When you let the network that broadcasts your show buy you a house so there's enough room for the crew, you turn the TV show into your primary source of income, you've turned reality on it's ear. You're no longer a credible subject because of your ability to bend the reality you're attempting to portray. Jon and Kate filed for legal separation hours before the pre-recorded show aired. The show itself made mention of the separation that had occurred only hours earlier. Orchestration is the word that comes to mind. This is orchestrated. We are being manipulated. And the bottom line, the essential truth out of all of this, is that it was their decision. It was their decision to subject themselves and their kids to this situation that at the very least played some sort of role in their breakup. And now the kids have to pay.

Most of all, though, I was sad. For the kids. The kids didn't have a dog in this fight. They never signed up to be on TV. Their parents did. They never asked for paparazzi to hound them, to snap shot after shot of them at school or on the playground. Their parents did. They never asked for the vast amount attention and pressure that has been heaped upon them. They just want to be kids. And in many cases this is worse for these kids than most. Kids their age get to deal with the sugar-coated tales of divorce their parents pass off as reality, insulating them from just how vicious things might have gotten. Instead, these kids, in the years to come, get to go back, pop in the DVDs and see just how their family fell apart.

I know I'm giving these poor excuses for humanity more attention than they deserve, that I'm giving them just what they're looking for. But honestly, maybe we need to pay more attention to them and call the show out for what it is - the perfect example of the worst our society has to offer. It's got all the ingredients - child exploitation, greedy fame-seeking whores, infidelity, manipulation of reality, and now complete and utter dysfunction culminating in the division of a family. I can't help but think that eventually this will all fade away some day - the show will be canceled, the kids will be off in school, the limelight will be gone - and the parents will both sit back and finally, in some shining moment of clarity, ask what the fuck did we let happen to our lives? By then, they'll be best known as Jon and Kate Who? and the flavor of the month will be the family of dysfunctional midget multiples and their obese lesbian adoptive mothers one of whom will be undergoing gender reassignment. It'll be a hit, I'm sure.

A couple months ago, I decided to give something else a shot - Second Life. If you don't know anything about Second Life, it's pretty much what it sounds like - a virtual reality in which you reinvent yourself and your life. I know what you're asking - why would you want to build a second life from scratch when you already have a good one going? Answer: I have no fucking idea. But I was curious and, in my line of work, I'd heard a lot about it.

After I decided to check Second Life out, after I'd downloaded and installed the ginormous application necessary (big because, I guess, it was a whole world after all), I was forced to name myself. I have no memory of the name at which I arrived because it assigned some bizarre names based on social status or trade or some shit like that. I felt like I was in some dork's basement playing D&D. Not that I ever did that. Okay, well, there was just that one time but everyone was doing it (um, okay, four guys who couldn't get invited to a sixth grade party) and it's not like I didn't use protection (I had, after all, the Magic-Repellent Cloak of Mordor). Anyway, it felt kinda like that except, after I'd chosen a name and some other random stuff, there I was, on the screen wandering around on some Island of Newbies, trying to get accustomed to my virtual self. Two things became abundantly clear - I needed money and it was going to take me a month to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.

For the uninitiated, Second Life functions just like reality in that you trade money for services and things. The only thing is? It's real money for fake stuff. Need a new virtual jacket? A toaster to burn fake toast in your fake apartment? A virtual blowjob from a fake hooker? You'll need some cold, hard, real world currency to make those dreams come true. I didn't have any money nor was I sure how I could go about getting money nor was I convinced that this was some lark I wanted to fund with actual cash. So I decided to focus on me for a while and do a little exploring. And what better way to explore than naked?

I'm not sure precisely how I did it but somehow whilst trying to navigate the immense menu of controls and options available to me - an idiot with no idea what I was doing - I managed to free myself from all my clothing. I was naked (virtually, of course) and alone, as if I imagined Second Life Newbie Island to be some sort of virtual nudist colony instead. I became rather less alone when some Second Life Perv Chick named Darla walked up to me and started chatting, apparently oblivious to the fact that I wasn't wearing any clothes. I felt surprisingly vulnerable and embarrassed. I frantically leafed through the multiple menus of clothing options available to me only to realize that Second Life requires one to be very precise about the order and location of the clothing you put on. Darla eventually gave up on me and wandered off to find a less wardrobe-challenged person to chat with. And I couldn't blame her because after she left I noticed that I was wearing underwear on my head and I had no penis. Apparently, Second Life draws the line at realism and that line is around the crotchal region.

It was then, wandering around naked and genderless, that it became clear that keeping up with every trend isn't worth it. Especially one in which you have to build a life from scratch. See, I've done that. It's what I spent the last 36 years doing. I've been successful. I don't need a expensive fake wardrobe with a virtual Beth, Mia and Owen to prove that. I've got the real thing.

Technologically, how do you keep up? And how have you given up?

We did quite a few things. We ate donuts, spent quality time at the pool, ordered Burmese takeout, read books, and celebrated. We had the entire family over for a Saturday brunch for which I whipped up about three tons of hash browns and Beth came up with the glorious egg dish which I never got to try because they were gone by the time I got to them. But I hear they were great.

On Sunday morning, after letting me sleep late, Mia, Owen and Beth came into the bedroom and woke me up with snuggling and kisses. "Pancake Boy! Happy Father's Day!" Mia cried. Then she cooked me breakfast. With help of course. She made two varieties of pancakes - chocolate chip and blueberry. As they contained fruit, Mia was decidedly less interested in the blueberry pancakes but those turned out to be my favorite. We had, the previous evening, opened all my gifts because Mia couldn't wait. She got me books. For her. Or, precisely, for me to read to her. She's very considerate.

After breakfast, my parents brought over a screen we somehow managed to inherit. I say somehow though I know the exact way but to mention it here would bore you to tears and probably prove more confusing than its worth. Anyway, I'm pretty sure my parents never opened it up because, if they had, they'd never have given it up.

Mia: Let's snuggle. And talk.
Me: What do you want to talk about.
Mia: About how dark blue can possibly be.

And then we talked about how dark blue could possibly be. And cuddled. Not surprisingly, there's not a lot you can say about the relative darkness of blue. But that's okay.

The Weekly Beer. Widmer's Drifter. This stuff is good. And odd. But good. It pretty much tastes like you've squeezed a grapefruit into your beer. That, surprisingly, doesn't suck. In fact, it kinda kicks ass.

The Weekly Worst Product Ever. Can't (or won't) wipe your own ass anymore? Never fear, Comfort Wipe is here!

The Weekly Time-Waster. Redstar Fall.

The Weekly Gadget. The new iPhone. Yeah, I'm green with envy.

The Weekly Read. Though we're only halfway through the year, I suspect that Greg Ames' Buffalo Lockjaw will easily make my list of top ten books of 2009. It is wonderfully fresh, simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. And to be hilarious while writing about Alzheimer's and assisted-suicide is something of a feat.

The Weekly Music. You've probably never heard of Elizabeth & The Catapult. But you should. Taller Children, the band's debut, is a confused mess of styles and influences, wrapped up in a beautiful package and somehow made to work. Elizabeth's voice is spectacular. Think Amiee Mann without the mumbling and with greater range and clarity. The musicianship is wonderful. This is clearly a band of insanely talented musicians. And those musicians weave a variety of influences - straight-forward rock, folk, jazz - into a really impressive stew of poppy goodness that is clever, catchy and meaningful. I honestly can't recommend this enough.

The Weekly Dose of Political Chaos. Iran. We're witnessing something incredible here, a people often repressed by its leaders rising up to challenge authority. Not something that happens in that part of the world all that often. But we're also witnessing the battle between technology - namely social media and the internet - and political rule and suppression. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

The Weekly Schadenfreude. Eighteen year old Kimberley Vlaeminck asked for three stars to be tattooed on her face. Then fell asleep during the procedure. Now, I don't have any tats but I hear they're a tiny bit painful. One wonders how she fell asleep. That's not the punchline though. No, when she woke up, she had 56 stars tattooed on her face. Apparently there was a little misunderstanding.

The Weekly Hypothetical. The world is going to end in five years. You have the opportunity to travel to a colony on the moon and spend the rest of your life there. Or, you can spend the next five years on the earth. Your immediate family goes or stays with you. What do you do?

Me: Hi, I was referred to you by my primary care physician and I'd like to schedule an appointment to come in and see Dr. Smith.
Receptionist: Okay, sir. What would this appointment be about?
Me: A vasectomy.
Receptionist: And when would you like to have your vasectomy? We have openings next Tuesday and Thursday.
Me: I was kinda hoping to come in and meet the doctor and talk about the procedure. Before having it done.
Receptionist: Snip snip. There. That's the procedure. When do you want to come in for the vasectomy?
Me: Still hoping to see a doctor.
Receptionist: I just told you when he'll do.
Me: Yeah, but are you a board-certified medical practitioner?
Receptionist: No.
Me: Then I'm thinking - and no offense intended - I'd like to talk to an actual doctor who's, you know, trained in the snip-snipping.
Receptionist: Why?
Me: At the very lest, I'd like to talk to him and make sure I'm comfortable with him.
Receptionist: He snips your balls. Takes five minutes. What's there to be comfortable with?
Me: If he was, you know, a meth addict who wore a clown suit to work everyday, I might think twice.
Receptionist: He's never worn a clown suit to work.
Me: How about the meth?
Receptionist: I don't think so. He's Jewish.
Me: What does being Jewish have to do with meth?
Receptionist: It's against the teachings of the Koran.
Me: Um... Never mind. I'd still like to see the doctor.
Receptionist: He has some available appointments in late July.
Me: You just told me he could do the procedure next Tuesday.
Receptionist: He doesn't really consult with people much. Just does the operating.
Me: You know what?
Receptionist: What?
Me: I've got the name of another doctor I might try.
Receptionist: Suit yourself. Just give us a call.
Me: When hell freezes over. When hell freezes over I'll come in, get snipped and ice my balls with a small slice of hell.

Luckily, I have a few more names on my list. Moving right along...

* more about "the dishwasher".

1. My parents heard me say fuck. Oh, uh, fuck! Say it ain't so.
2. Hundreds of tiny spiders come on our ceilings. Maybe they're shooting some arachnid gang-bang porn? A little spider bukkake?
3. The word fuck excites me. Are you, perhaps, related to that first guy?
4. I'm so glad I don't have balls kick. Fine, rub it in. But I can pee standing up.
5. Grapenuts ice cream Columbus, OH. Half my family is from Ohio so I think it gives me some right to say this. People in Ohio are fucking nuts. Grapenut ice cream?
6. Waffles quotes. Madam, we must have waffles! We must all have waffles forthwith! We must all think, and we must all have waffles, and think each and every one of us to the very best of his ability. Tom Hanks in The Ladykillers.
7. Do not scare my kids talking about apocalypse. Someone could have shared the same sentiment when we were all hiding under our desks in elementary school in atomic-bomb-unleash-the-fires-of-hell drills. Like a desk was going to do any damn good.
8. Three programmers walk into a bar. Okay, I'll play. The first turned to the other two and said "want a byte?"
9. 81 year old father can't stop burping and farting. Two words - mercy killing.
10. Hilarious vibrators. Once met a vibrator with his own stand up act in Vegas. Quite a buzz about him. For reals.
11. Stripper Shortcake. When Strawberry Shortcake wasn't cute and cuddly anymore, she still needed to feed herself.
12. Why do people make mistakes and then feel sorry for them when they know that they can t change anything?sometimes you just need to walk away and pretend that everything is ok don t try to fix it cuz maybe you ll make it worse. That is so emo.
13. Jeff Probst penis. Probst's Probe.
14. Speedo sausage mullet. Never before have three seemingly randomly strung-together words terrified me so.
15. Does it rain more on weekends because most big factorys are shut down? No. It actually rains more on weekends just to piss you off. And learn how to spell factories.
16. Can I put a tampon in my butt. Yes. Please note - the words can and should have to very different meanings and implications.
17. Did They Might Be Giants write The Backyardigans theme song? No. They didn't. The song - and all the music - is brilliantly written by Evan Lurie and Douglas Wieselman.
18. How to kill and keep cactuses out of your yard. You can just tell me to leave. Don't get all drastic and homicidal.
19. Nachos & midgets & sombreros. One word - Partay!
20. Wilma and Betty hardcore whores. Finally someone else who understands the true nature of The Flintstones.
21. What would happen if a horse and a woman had sex? Obviously you haven't explored the darkest corners of the internet.

What's the weirdest thing you've searched for?

This scared me a little not because I blush or stammer or become the least bit uncomfortable with anatomically-focused discussions of which there seem to be many in my household. Quite the contrary. I don't mind at all. As a matter of fact, this very weekend Owen and I shared an anatomical eureka moment ourselves when he discovered that I, too, had a penis. I'd just gotten out of the shower. He saw it and rushed me, pointing and shouting. Then he grabbed it and pulled and that was the end of that. Anyway, this scared me only because we've been having the whole vagina-private-parts discussion with her so I was curious to see how much or how little headway we'd made.

Me: Um, Mia? What, exactly, do you want to show me?
Mia: It's not my bottom.
Me: I figured.
Mia: It's my whistle.
Me: Mia, you have to call it what it is. It's your vagina, not your whistle.
Mia: No. I call it my whistle.
Me: And last week you called it your rhinoceros.*
Mia: I mean my whistle, daddy.

At this point I need to tell you that both of us were getting a little frustrated. Mia had clearly not processed our earlier conversations and daddy was just being a dick obstinate.

Me: Okay, your whistle. But we're coming back to this topic at some point.
Mia: Okay
Me: And really, Mia, that's a private part of your body. So it's something you need to keep to yourself unless there's something wrong and then you can show mommy and daddy, okay?
Mia: But I want to show everyone my whistle.
Me: Mia, that really wouldn't be polite.

And then, magically and as if from thin air, she produced an actual, real-life whistle from the depths of her underwear. And blew it.

The lesson? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And a whistle is not a vagina.

* True story. That one took me a few minutes to noodle through.

We spent pretty much the rest of the weekend working in the yard or hanging out at the pool. We took some breaks to eat, to pee, to nap and sleep. As a matter of fact, we spent a wonderful evening with Clementine, Oscar and their parents.

The weekend ended when aliens invaded the planet - or at least my little corner of Virginia - and replaced my daughter with, well, someone else. The girl with a diet limited to peanut butter, crackers, the occasional apple and a rare splash of cheese decided that she would tackle tofu. And she did. With an abandon formerly reserved for ice cream and frosting on cupcakes. And then she shared her ice cream - her reward for the unexpected tofu consumption - with her brother.

So, uh, how were your weekends? And what, precisely, do you think came over my daughter? Have you seen her?

The Weekly Time Waster #1. Check out Empire's Cryptic Canvas.

The Weekly Time Waster #2. CiviBalls!

The Weekly Read. Michael Marshall's Bad Things is an intensely creepy, extremely well-written novel. I almost couldn't put it down and became fairly emotionally entangled in the story and the people in it. That said, I was expecting an end, an explanation that would justify the creepy mystery. And it just wasn't there. The means justified the end. It's most definitely worth picking up.

The Weekly Music. Todd Snider is like a hip, countrified Randy Newman. His songwriting is wonderfully smart and his sense of humor is fantastic. Despite the fact that I don't own all his stuff, I was pretty excited when I heard that his latest - The Excitement Plan - had hit the street. Lyrically, it's smart and clever as all things Snider are. The thing is, despite having a world class producer and some great sidemen along for the ride, the production and the mix just don't sound all that great. Okay, not great. That shouldn't deter you though. Snider's wit is fully intact and more than overcomes any issues with production.

The Weekly Schadenfreude #1. What do you do when you realize you're stupid? You file a lawsuit because being dumb can't be your fault, right? That's what a certain ignorant idiot did when she realized that not all was what it seemed. Especially Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries cereal. "The plaintiff, Janine Sugawara, alleged that she had only recently learned to her dismay that said 'berries' were in fact simply brightly-colored cereal balls."

The Weekly Schadenfreude #2. The world's financial situation is pretty dire but you shouldn't start hording money in your mattress. That's what one Tel Aviv resident learned. See, her daughter gave her a new mattress and pitched the old one. But that old mattress? Contained about $1 million that she'd stashed away.

The Weekly Hypothetical. You can eliminate one law. Which one would you do away with and why?