He Can Coach My Kids Anytime

I used to think of Kansas State coach Frank Martin like this:

Now I think of South Carolina coach Frank Martin like this:

It all changed for me when Martin was asked, essentially, what's wrong kids these days?

Martin responded: “You know what makes me sick to my stomach? When I hear grown people say that kids have changed. Kids haven’t changed. Kids don’t know anything about anything. We’ve changed as adults. We demand less of kids. We make their lives easier instead of preparing them for what life is truly about. We’re the ones that have changed. To blame kids is a cop out.”

Demanding, understanding, with an occasional yell. That's my kind of coach.

When kids come into this world, they don't know whether they should be spoiled or hard-working. We make them that way by the challenges we allow, and don't allow them to face.

Frank Martin has the right idea. He can coach my kids anytime.

Nazi vs. Jew Beer Pong

The town of Princeton, NJ is an uproar after a it was revealed that students at the local high school have a long standing tradition of playing a beer pong variant called Jews vs. Nazis.

The cups are set up on one side in a swastika shape, and a Jewish star on the other.
The Jew team can "Anne Frank" a cup, to hide it or take it away.
The Nazis can "Auschwitz" their opponents and force them to skip a round.

It's not clear if there is any true anti-Semitism here, Jewish students may even have been part of it.

But they are certainly guilty of not understanding the seriousness of World War II and the Holocaust.
Though they should be commended for their creativity, and at least a cursory understanding of history.

TP For My Bunghole

The night before Halloween is often referred to Mischief Night as teenagers too old for trick-or-treating try to have some fun by wreaking havoc on the neighborhood.
Tonight, after we put the kids to bed Mrs. Poop noticed a police car parked in front of our house and about ten teenagers milling about on our lawn and in the street.
After the police car left and the kids dispersed, I went out to look around. This is what I saw in my bushes:

I would have only been mildly annoyed if I'd had to clean 7 rolls of TP out of my hedges in the morning, but it's a lot better than a carton of eggs, or damage to my personal property (Snoopy dog house).

I actually think I heard one kid try to encourage the others to go through with it after the cop pulled away, but I heard one say "it's not worth it."

Seven rolls of toilet paper ditched in the bushes, I'm not one to waste so I brought them inside and I'm going to use them to wipe my ass.

The Wussification of Halloween

Halloween night, after trick-or-treating and inspecting the candy for apples with razor blades, millions of parents and kids will watch "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on ABC. But not the wussy daddy blogger, Dad Camp, who says it's time to stop airing the Halloween classic. He says it is "no longer appropriate."
He says it has nothing of value for our kids. As if every TV show, movie and book needs to end with low music and an important life lesson delivered by Bob Saget.
In fact there are plenty of great lessons for children in "It's the Great Pumpkin."

1) Never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker:

2) Always have important signed documents notarized

3) Keep your lips away from dog lips

In all seriousness, I do see his point. Were this show made today, parents would never show it to their kids, it no longer fits with our new standards and sensibilities.

The author says Charlie Brown is bullied, not just by the kids but the adults too.
I never saw the rock-getting as persecution, I thought it was just bad luck.

To me Charlie Brown is a poor unlucky schmoe, not someone who is picked on, after all, they are his friends, they tease him in good fun.

He even criticizes World War I Flying Ace the Red Baron (Snoopy) for all the war imagery. The Red Baron is a war hero. Does this guy shield his kids eyes when a man in uniform walks by, so he doesn't have to explain war to his precious angels?

Dadcamp says stupid and dumb are as bad as [fuck]. And maybe most new age parents would agree. But they're wrong. I think my main argument against his argument against "It's the Great Pumpkin" is: this is why we're raising a generation of wussies.

It's ok to expose our kids to "bad" words, and mistreatment of others. We can demonstrate how hurt Charlie Brown was by their words and actions, and teach them to be nicer and more inclusive. We can also show them how Charlie Brown handles the insults, he deals with it and moves on. He doesn't get depressed and cut his forearm. He remains hopeful that one day he will get invited to the parties, and that Lucy will let him kick the football. It's actually a good lesson.

But that's not why we watch the show with our kids every year.

The truth is we've spent too much money on Peanuts themed Halloween decor to turn back now.

The Judge Has a Grudge

Obnoxious teenager Penelope Soto was picked up by the cops in Miami when she crashed her bike while high on Xanax. Police discovered 26 more Xanax pills or "bars" as they are called on the street. She appeared in front of the judge at a bail hearing.



Awesome!
I totally agree with Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat for smacking this young punk down. She was not being serious, or respectful.
"It's worth a lot of money" "Like what" "Like Rick Ross."
He should have held her in contempt after that answer.
But then the "adios" and finally the "fuck you."
Hopefully this dumb slut will use her 30 days in the hoosegaw to reflect on her behavior and come out a rehabilitated young lady.

Staten Island Suicide

Felicia Garcia was a 15-year-old high school student in Staten Island. She went to Tottenville. She had a hard life, was living in foster care because both her parents died when she was younger. She was depressed and had been on medication to treat it. As many young girls do, even ones from loving homes, she sought to increase her self-esteem and popularity through promiscuity.

After a football game she went to a party. She had sex with four football players at the party.
And it had the opposite effect on her popularity. She was made fun of in school, bullied on Facebook and Twitter, and pushed to the edge literally.
She was going home from school, waiting on the platform for the train to arrive. When the train finally arrived, a friend said "finally." Felicia said "yeah, finally" and then leaned back in front of the oncoming train which could not stop in time.
A couple disturbing trends in our society came together to spell doom for Felicia Garcia. Young girls feeling the need to have sex to gain acceptance and the bullying culture that's allowed to fester and grow on the internet.

Note: This happened about a week before Sandy and I never had time to write about it until now.

Rectum? Damn Near Killed Him

A University of Tennessee student was dropped off at the local medical center with a blood alcohol content of above 0.40. The legal limit in most states is 0.1. And 0.4 death can occur.
You wouldn’t think someone could drink enough to become that intoxicated, you’d throw up or pass out first. Turns out he didn’t drink that much. The zany brothers in the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity were giving each other alcohol enemas, also known as butt-chugging. Police found this out after “extensive questioning” of the brothers.
Here’s how it works: you put a rubber tube in your ass; then pour the alcohol into the tube with a funnel. Why would you want to consume alcohol through your ass? There are a lot of capillaries and blood vessels in the rectum, therefore the alcohol gets into your blood stream faster and it skips the filtering by the liver.
It actually seems pretty ingenious when you think about it, except for the part about nearly dying.

Red-Shirting

I have known for quite a while that CBS News was a hopelessly biased news organization. But I hoped in non-political coverage it would be a little more fair. I was wrong.



This casts parents who red-shirt as even villains who are trying to push their children into success in sports at the expense of other kids.

In our school district the cutoff date is October 1. So our August babies will always be among the youngest in their class.

We briefly talked about red-shirting Chase when we sent him to preschool a couple weeks after his second birthday, while some kids were just a couple months short of turning 3. Chase has done well in preschool and his teachers saw no need to keep him back. So he'll go to kindergarten in the fall as scheduled.

We were also contemplating it with Julian, who seemed in greater need of maturity, but lately he has had an explosion of language, and coupled with his enormous size, red-shirting likely won't be necessary in his case either.

But what if we felt it was? That should be a parents decision. I resent the implication that red-shirting is cheating, or somehow harming the other kids. And even if it were, why should what's marginally better for some other child supersede what you feel is much better for your own?

I also resent the implication that this is just for fathers who want their sons to be sports stars. What's so wrong with wanting your child not to be one of the smallest kids, to avoid bullying? Or for him to at least be good enough at sports to build his confidence, to make him be the first kid picked not the last, to make him feel an important part of the group instead of a benchwarmer. I think all parents want those things for their kids. Regardless of what that old fossil Morley Safer thinks.

A Beatdown is in Order

We all know kids can be cruel but this takes it to a new level. Four junior high school students in Rochester, NY harassed a bus monitor so horribly they reduced her to tears. You don’t have to watch the entire 10-minute video, just enough to get the idea.





They called her fat, a troll, poor, stupid and then at the very end came the clincher. One of the students said “you don’t have a family because they all killed themselves because they didn’t want to be near you.” Little did they know (or maybe they did know), her son killed himself 10 years ago. The video cuts off right after that remark so we don’t know how she reacted. But when I first heard this story I said she should have just ignored them. They were kids being kids calling her fat and she should have just let it go. But it went on for 10 minutes. And then that personal comment at the end. She should have killed them all.



The video went viral and an effort was started to raise $5,000 to send her on a nice vacation. It already has $208,000 as of mid-Thursday.

I'll Raise My Own Kids Thank You Very Much

Anyone who ever did a 3rd grade science project can tell you a simple requirement of research: eliminate the variables. We can only find out if plants grow better when listening to classical musical as opposed to rock if everything else is the same.

One of my favorite fallacious arguments of all-time is a commercial voiced by Jamie-Lee Curtis which professes that simply eating dinner with your children will stop them from doing drugs. The research shows children from families that eat dinner together regularly are less likely to do drugs than children from families where family sit-down dinners are not as frequent. I am sure this is correct, but post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because something happened after something else doesn't mean it is caused by something else.

Eating dinner with your kids doesn't keep them from doing drugs. And banning toys from Happy Meals doesn't make kids healthier.

Although that is the argument being used by New York City Councilman Leroy Comrie. He wants to ban meals with more than 500 calories from being marketed to kids, because he thinks that will solve the problem.



The only way to get people to have proper eating habits is to teach them proper eating habits. And the best people to teach proper eating habits are parents. The government can't do it, and the government shouldn't do it. I am sick and tired of the government seeking to ban things that I do in moderation just because other irresponsible people abuse them.

I am talking about poker, but also McDonald's. The night before Passover we had no food in our house. So we went to McDonald's. We got Chase a Happy Meal. 4 chicken mcnuggets, some french fries, a ton of ketchup and a toy of a little dog named Luiz from the movie "Rio." I can't remember the last time before that we had McDonald's but we are teaching him it is a treat, only to be used occassionally.



I always say the biggest problem in this country is a lack of personal responsibility. It's easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, than to accept them and fix them. And my biggest problem with liberals in general, too often, out of guilt or misguided sympathy, they offer these excuses for people. It's not your fault your kids are fat, McDonald's is marketing Happy meals directly to their malleable little minds and there's nothing you can do about it.

But there is something you can do about it. Teach your kids proper eating habits, which can include the occassional visit to McDonald's.

I'm sure there will be a time in the future when between soccer and baseball and trumpet and whatever other activities, we don't have time for a home-cooked meal. So we decide to take our kids to McDonald's.

That's right. We decide, because they're our kids, not the government's.

What's the Capital of Thailand?

A new form of bullying is sweeping playgrounds across this great nation: sack-tapping.
That’s right, kids are hitting each other in the plums and calling it a game.
14-year-old David Gibbons of Crosby, Minn., had to have his right testicle amputated from being sack tapped in the hallway between classes.
The main reason this game continues, what teen boy wants to fess up to being a victim of a prank involving their genitals?
Once a few aggressive or deviant individuals start engaging in a practice like sack tapping, it can quickly come to seem normal, drawing in other boys who want to feel like part of the majority.

The Unedited Anne Frank Diary

Some parents in Virginia are objecting to their children reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" in schools.
But not for the reason you might think.
The problem is the school was using the unedited version of the diary for 8th grade students. This includes some passages that are often deleted.
A mother of an eighth-grader at Floyd T. Binns Middle School became concerned about an entry in which Frank describes having erotic feelings for another girl and another in which she describes what her vagina looks like. The mother did not want the book removed, she said. She was asking that her daughter not be required to read the book aloud, as the class had been doing.

There But For The Grace of God Go I

I'm actually proud to admit that me, JLeary, Reissberg and the Conch were doing this same thing when Mike Butrym was still in short pants.

A New Jersey high school student has been suspended for organizing a contest in which boys voted on the school's best-looking girls in a bracket modeled on the NCAA basketball tournament.

Mike Butrym, of Towaco, says he was continuing a Montville High School tradition and believes his five-day suspension is too harsh.

The contest was called "May Madness." Teenage boys chose 16 female students from each grade. Each day, they paired off the girls and judged them on their appearance. Winners advanced to the next round.

The 18-year-old says many girls in the school think of the contest as a joke. He says they even started their own version judging boys.

He was suspended for "intimidation, harassment and insubordination."

Smoking Smarties

Lots of controversy about this video as this young punk smokes his Smarties and will surely grow up to a life of smoking cigarettes, then weed, then stealing from his mama's purse to pay for his crack habit.
A little ridiculous if you ask me, but I'm not letting Chase watch this, just to be safe.

You've Got To Admire Their Ingenuity

High school kids in Maryland have invented a new game called "Speed Camera Pimping."
Here's how it works: find a teacher or student you don't like and take down his or her license plate number.
Go home and create a high quality digital reproduction of the license plate.
Print it on glossy paper and affix it over your real license plate.
Drive through a known traffic camera at a speed in excess of the limit.
Laugh when your target gets a ticket in the mail.
These pesky kids even used the same model or the same color car to make their prank more convincing.

Let's Sell Salads

The time-honored tradition of raising money for school activities with bake sales is fast becoming obsolete in this day and age of obese video gamers.
California has instituted strict policies about foods that can be sold on school grounds. Snacks sold during the school day contain no more than 35 percent sugar by weight and derive no more than 35 percent of their calories from fat and no more than 10 percent of their calories from saturated fat.
How do you regulate that? You can't, so most homemade goodies are banned.
Its admirable that the school district is trying to prevent their students from diabetic comas, but once again their solution serves to do nothing but punish.
Access to treats and goodies is not the reason why kids are fat. Teach the kids how to live a healthy lifestyle and let them have a brownie once in a while for a good cause.
Oh, and you know what's next? Bringing in cupcakes for a birthday party will soon be replaced by carrot sticks and lowfat peanut butter.

I Can't Wait for Run Over an Anti-Semite With Your Car Day

Several sixth-graders from suburban St. Louis are being disciplined for creating "Hit a Jew Day" and then hitting Jewish classmates.

Four or five students at Parkway West Middle School in Chesterfield could be suspended and undergo counseling for last week's incident, school officials told the Associated Press. Others who taunted Jewish students or encouraged others to participate face lesser punishment.

Officials said fewer than 10 of the school's 35 Jewish students were hit. One was slapped in the face and the others were hit mostly on the back of their shoulders.

It began with an unofficial "Spirit Week" among sixth-graders that started harmlessly enough with a "Hug a Friend Day." Then there was "High Five Day."

Soon, though, the days moved from friendly to silly. Next there was "Hit a Tall Person Day" and, finally, "Hit a Jew Day."

Later in the school year the the sixth-graders will be studying the Holocaust.

"It's going to be a little more meaningful this year than it's ever been before," Principal Linda Lelonek said.

Unfortunately I disagree. I remember during our school trip to see "Schindler's List" some black kids left the theater and snuck into some Wesley Snipes movie. There were also other stories of kids at schools across the country laughing or joking during the movie. I even remember Steven Spielberg going to one school to talk to kids about the Holocaust.

You're All Winners

Beachwood, Ohio canceled its Little League All-Star game for 9 to 12 year olds because it didn't want any kids to be left out
Fred Engh made the decision saying kids that young don't really care about achievements, they just play to have fun.
I can't even describe how much shit like this irritates me.
This decision is short sighted because it's only protecting the meek. The losers who play rightfield and strike out every time don't miss out on being named All-Stars but they still know they suck.
Why doesn't the kid who practices and works hard deserve recognition for his efforts?
I think the best way to help kids is to explain to them that everybody is good at something. Some kids are good at baseball, some aren't. If you're not good, you should still play, have fun and work hard to get better and maybe you can become an All-Star one day.

Teenage Sluts

A group of 17 girls all ages 16 under are pregnant at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts. Because this is 4 times the school's normal rate of pregnancy one school official suggested the girls entered into a "pact" to get knocked up at the same time. Now there is some doubt about whether there actually was a pact, but there are still several questions that are bothering me.

Who are the fathers? One of them is reportedly a 24-year-old homeless guy. What did these girls do, go into an alley and ask the homeless guy if he wanted to fuck? I'm sure if this is anything like high school, no more than 10 dudes are responsible for these 17 pregnancies.

Where's the justice in this world? With so many older, responsible, married women having such difficulty getting, and staying, pregnant, why do these whores find it so easy? I'm sure if you took a group of 30 year old women who were all trying to get pregnant at the same time, at least a couple would be a few months behind, or not be able to get pregnant at all.

The school is now saying there was no pact and that once the girls found out they were pregnant they banded together and agreed to raise their kids together. What about the girls who were high-fiving when their pregnancy tests came up pregnant?

I spoke about this story to my neighbor who runs the daycare for a local high school. She takes care of the students' kids. She says her program has room for 24 kids, and each year her school has 80 pregnancies. She already has 6 incoming freshman who have applied for the service for September. That's 14 year olds.

What the fuck is this world coming to?

Tough Love or Too Much?

When California Highway Patrol Officer Eric Newbury visited El Camino High School on May 26, he had some bad news.
He told students that 17-year-old senior Brittany Bennett, editor of the school newspaper was killed by a drunk driver.
Newbury read a brief eulogy, placed a rose on Bennett's seat, then left the students, some in tears, to think about the death of their classmate.
Newbury went to several classrooms telling kids the same thing.
An hour later all the students were called to the football field and told the whole thing was a hoax. Bennett did not die, nor did any of the other students whose names Newbury used to make his hoax hit home.
Newbury said that if even one student thinks twice before driving drunk, the scare he put in the kids was worth it.
Some parents complained that the kids have been traumatized, Newbury says "what I'm doing is waking them up.
“If I sit there and lecture somebody in a nice way, it's going to go in one ear and out the other,” he said. “In today's world, where they have all sorts of gore and fantastic things that kids can access on the computer, if you want to compete with that, you have to jar them emotionally.
“I want them to be an emotional wreck. I don't want them to have to live through this for real.”
Newbury's father was killed by a drunk driver.
The program, titled “Every 15 Minutes,” was designed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Its title refers to the frequency in which a person somewhere in the country dies in an alcohol-related traffic accident.
More people die in traffic accidents each year than have died during the entire 5 years of the Iraq war.