Random Observations and Trivial Events

1. I came across a great blog title the other day that made me laugh out loud: I Moved Your Cheese, Moron. If you haven’t heard of the title of the popular book it refers to, however, that’s probably about as funny as dirt.

2. What are parents thinking when they buy their children provocative T-shirts to wear out in public? At a big mall recently, I saw two examples – both with fathers and daughters – of this phenomenon. First, I saw a teenage girl, fairly sweet and innocent-looking, walking around with a T-shirt that said something like, “I was NOT at Hooters with my dad when he bought me this T-shirt.” I guess it’s their version of, “My dad went to Hooters and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”

The other example was a father walking with his somewhat goth-looking pre-teen daughter, who was wearing a T-shirt which read, “DV8.” Is Dad #1 glad that his daughter’s friends know she has a dad who goes to Hooters? Is Dad #2 proud that his young daughter is walking around in front of men advertising the fact that she is supposedly a sexual deviate? What are these bonehead dads thinking? Do they not care what messages their daughters advertise in public? Are they so afraid of being considered “uncool” by their kids that they won’t say no?

3. Snarky T-shirt slogan of the month: “Stupidity is Not a Crime, So You’re Free to Go.”

4. My 9-year-old daughter and her friend got tired of waiting for me to cut the backyard grass so they could play an unobstructed game of soccer, so the other day they went out with scissors to do it themselves. Yes, I felt guilty enough to cut the dang thing when I got home from work that evening.

5. I notice that there’s a number of big, extra-disc collectors DVDs coming out this fall for some true movie classics. Each set is filled with commentaries, documentaries and lots of other bonus goodies. To Kill a Mockingbird comes out in a new 2-disc set on Sept. 6; Ben-Hur will be released in a whopping four-disc set on Sept. 13; and an absolutely fabulous 3-disc version of Wizard of Oz debuts Oct. 25. And if you consider The Blues Brothers a cinematic classic, as I do, its 2-disc special edition DVD comes out Aug. 30.

6. In one of his latest posts, The Nightfly talks about the new combination printer and scanner he just bought. Sounds like he got a good deal, and bought a model which doesn’t use a lot of ink. Last summer, we bought an Epson Photo printer, which prints gorgeous stuff, but it has six separate color cartridges, and that baby drinks its ink like nothing you’ve ever seen. It seems as though every time I turn around, I’m off to Office Max to purchase another $15 cartridge. I got taken in by the manufacturer’s grand plan: sell the printers cheap, then price the ink high and watch the money just roll in.