Da-da's Illustrated Guide to Parenting

Fig. B. A FLASH of SAHD Twitterers.

Ape Scenes From Da-da's Mind-Roasting Summer

"Hey, you apes! Go roughhouse out front... AND KEEP YOUR STINKING PAWS OFF THE MONOLITH."

HOW to Read... The TAO of Da-da

The TAO of Da-da -- Now Available

Da-da's third book is available on Amazon.  

"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day?"

Glad you asked Da-da that, Bronko. Da-da makes sure things are well stocked...

...sculpts WHERE NO CAT'S GONE BEFORE...

...competes in Competitive Balling at a high level...

...turns fire hydrants into Cthulhydrants...

...violates physical laws...

...and he is his own boss. Any more questions?

FINALLY, Da-da Can Save $$ on Duct Tape

Thanks, Control Toys! (Alas... NO, this isn't real -- [sniff] -- but it should be.)

O the Snowmanity

Perhaps using Calvin & Hobbes to teach reading wasn't such a good idea.

"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?"

Two words: ROBO DOG. "Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?"

"Da-da, What Do You Do When We're in School All Day?" TWO WORDS...

...Clam Husbandry.

"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?" (PART 3)

"Hoooblee hooblee hoobleeeee LEFT!"

"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?" (PART 2)

"Oh, la di daa di daa..."

"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?" (PART 1)

Da-da goes for a little walk around the town... in his way.

Trash Talk

Da-da's Final Post on the NFL, Melting Nazis and Reaching the End of the Batman-Riding-Unicorn Rainbow

A real graphic from ESPN, not doctored by Da-da.

The above image and text... is just weird, right? Da-da's seen so much weird that he kinda takes it for granted. But then there's WEIRD. (Btw, "were" as in "werewolf" means, "MAN." So, werewolf means, "MAN-WOLF" and, "WEIRD" means, "OF MAN." Fitting, right?) Anyway, the above image and the below text are directly from ESPN's site, circa 2011:

BRISTOL, CT—ESPN announced that they will replace Hank William Jr.’s theme song for Monday Night Football with a scene from the 1981 film Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark in which a large group of Nazis are liquified upon opening the Ark of the Covenant.

Williams’ song “All My Rowdy Friends” served as the broadcast's introduction for over 20 years, but was pulled following comments he made comparing President Barack Obama to Nazi leader and noted hater of Jewish people, Adolf Hitler.

“We at ESPN want to send a strong message that Monday Night Football is strictly an anti-Nazi program,” wrote Carol Stiff, Vice President of Programming, in a statement released this morning. “Mr. Williams’ comments contradicted that view, which is why we have decided to replace his introduction with something more in line with our belief that Nazis are awful, awful people, and we think a solid minute of melting German nationalist social party members accomplishes the goal of getting fans ready for football in a family friendly way.”

Mmm, liquified Nazis = Family Friendly! Not to mention WEIRD. But this makes total sense to DISNEY, ESPN's parent company. The above happened three years ago and Da-da's still scratching his head, not that he cares if Hank Williams Jr. is ever heard from again (psst, he doesn't). Jeez, it's as if ESPN had no idea who owns them. Wake up and smell the hot wax, guys.

Now, Da-da doesn't want to write about sports -- or start sentences with, "now." He no longer believes in the manufactured duality of sports spectacle with their cheeseburgers-for-the-apocalypse raison d'etre wagonload of rabid flagwaving run-on-sentence color-schemed WINNER and LOSER separation, dividing humanity into FUMBLERS and those who are not. Into those who beat their wives in private, and those who don't. This is nothing but sophomoric, outdated, third-dimensional vibratory us-vs-them raw-meat thinking -- in italics, yet.  However, the good news is that, like the cabal and the Powers That Were, it's quickly going the way of the Reagan hairdo couch.

Indeed, our sad, capitalistic world will continue to wheeze on for a little while longer, clutching its Dick Cheney-model pacemaker and sucking wind, thinking that we -- we redundant WE -- we feckless Viewers in Viewing Land, we useless eaters, are clueless and stupid and easy to control. Well, guess what: we're not, and we're waking up to that fact. In fact, we've showered, shaved, had a good rousing breakfast and have been standing on your former-controller-bonehead lawns since daybreak. Ever see the end of Frankenstein? Like our torches and pitchforks, our unicorns are glinty and pokey, our dolphins freshly waxed, and you -- The Monster -- will not win.

Everything's fine, Gotham.

What's Da-da complaining about?

Case in point: the first Monday Night Football game for 2014, NY Giants vs. the Detroit Lions. The announcers, John Gruden and Mike Tirico, formerly decent people, prior to say 2011. They were once borderline fair, if not a little overly excited about whatever made the most money, as they themselves are being paid LOTS OF MONEY to be enthusiastic and money's the only thing to be excited about -- for them -- but this has gotten much worse. Tirico was always a smiling ESPN bag man, but MAN is John Gruden drinking the kool-aid these days. It's so disappointing. So much so that Da-da has taken to calling them, "Greedin and SaTirico."

In their most recent season-opening entry, the elite MNF team started talking about the NY Giants. And then there were the Giants. And there was that team from New York... what was their name? Oh, yeah. THE GIANTS. Um, was anyone else playing? Were the Giants gonna play themselves? Sure, New York's a big market. Their team is supposed to be, "good enough" (psst, it's not, and hasn't been for a while) to generate decent ad revenue, not to mention sell tickets and TV rights and NFL jerseys and $75 parking passes and $15 beers, blah blah blah. So of course Greedin and SaTirico only talked about the Giants, their players, their challenges, all their amazing personnel, their roster, their this their that. They did this for the Detroit offensive line, a coach here and there, and that's all about Detroit. After all: it's DETROIT, a moniker that carries a whole load of media-induced baggage. But when the Giants started to suck big time (they lost the game 35-14), Greedin and SaTirico explained that the Giants were having an off night, as that that's the only way the Lions could possibly win, right? Not exactly.

Already rife with "weapons" (they're people -- "players" -- not weapons) the Lions have also retooled recently, and simply outplayed the rather lame and soulless Giants, led by the ever-vacant, three-and-out Eli Manning, despite a ton of penalties called against Detroit. A lot of those calls were interesting, as they were nitpicky, the refs looking more and more guilty at each call; they weren't making those same calls against the Giants that night, despite their actions. It was ostensibly only Detroit that was having a problem. Were the refs paid off to make it tough for Detroit? Was the fix IN with them, the announcers, with ESPN, the NFL, as New York is a big market, their fans millionaires and billionaires, with big advertising dollars and kick-backs and all manner of big city dreck oozing out of the pipe, such that they deserved to win more than lowly Detroit, a failing city which has been made to LOOK like a failing city so real estate is cheap enough to make foreign investors salivate now that gold and hard currency is so hard to come by? Who's to say? But like Da-da said, we're not stupid.

This all looked suspicious to Da-da, especially for an opening night game for both teams. Was ESPN  *that* desperate for ad revenue that they'd tip their hand so obviously? Da-da's not sure. He's only a 20+ year communications veteran who's worked both sides of the camera, and who's been watching football evolve into an embarrassingly jingoistic and venal machine of questionable worth since the '70s. What does he know? Time will tell. It's doubly sad, as Da-da used to like Greedin when he was coach of the Raiders, then Tampa Bay (which he kinda inherited from Tony Dungy). But since then, Greedin's become a big Hooters-lovin' TV phoney. However, Chucky, it's never too late to change.

As for, "Sunday Night Football," which used to be Monday Night Football... [sigh], who cares? Both those guys are so infinitely annoying that Da-da simply doesn't go there. That game is dead to Da-da, whomever's playing. Those guys are even more unwatchable, unlistenable. Such opinionated, biased dunderheads that if Da-da were present, he'd probably hit one or both of them with a rock -- and Da-da's a pacifist. It's getting to that point. Just slap them, laws be damned -- because they are. The law is over. Football is over. They've both been bought and sold -- out.

So why does Da-da watch? Well, it used to remind him of his childhood... but that nostalgia has been whittled thin, so much so that it's too easy to see the cold reality smirking within what once was a game, but has now turned, like everything else, into a moneymaking machine.

This is probably Da-da's last year of watching the NFL, as it's become too sad to watch. The fact that the NFL commissioners lied repeatedly about the severity of player head injuries for over thirty years, has soured many on them. The most recent lies are just the final nails in the coffin.

If that wasn't enough, the fact that the NFL is a 501c nonprofit entity that made a reported $9B last year -- nine billion dollars -- and paid zero federal taxes on that money... well, that's the last straw. Da-da knows that money is the American Way, but if he doesn';t watch... they don't make money.

He's starting not to watch.

How much longer will the NFL and the Powers That Were continue to think that we're all stupid? Not much longer. Da-da gives the NFL about ten more years, maybe less, before they go belly-up, as people's attentions are moving away from us-vs-them mindsets and lies to... well, us. And the truth. The truth is SO much more compelling than the lies we've been told. And now that we have that, we're finding that WE are the ones we've been waiting for.

Oh, and ESPN and MSM... those Nazis that are melting? That's you. That's what you've become. The good news is that you have good people inside you. Let us know when you get that wax out of your hair. We're a pretty forgiving lot. Just don't step on our rainbow.

Can you hear the shark-jumping? It's loud.

SAHD PHOTO ESSAY: "Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?"

Well, kid... it's complicated.

First, Da-da does a lot of this, while monkeys scream inside his head. This could go on for years.

Then Da-da tends to a few projects he started long ago, but can't seem to finish.

Then it's time for some home improvement.

Next, Da-da steam cleans a few things.

Touches up the scenery.

Has a small adventure.

Gets out in nature, for a bit.

Returns to perform a little maintenance on the family vehicle.

Handles the unexpected.

Starts to work on dinner...

...and keeps working.

Then Da-da waits patiently, in the short time left...

...before he picks you up from school.

And only then, after a long day, does Da-da unlock the donut.

Fillin' Da-da's Head

The Wonder that is Woman appears courtesy of Toby Price, the Jedipadmaster.
No idea what she's filling Da-da's head full of, but Da-da's grateful for anything these days.

Top 5 Books to Bring to the DMV

The DMV isn't an easy place to read. People coming and going. Nervous teens fidgeting, awaiting first-time driving tests. Strangers jostling and making inane small talk. Cranky, reclusive writers taking it all in and not paying for it. Numbers on a screen chanted by a banal computer voice every minute or so, only one of them yours.

Sure, you could go the obvious vehicular-travel-essay route, but if you know you must visit the DMV -- and chances are good it'll happen at least once every few years -- you might prepare for it in a different way. Da-da suggests the following ontological experiment.

People are curious, in more ways than one, especially about what other people are reading. Read a book in public and you're guaranteed to have at least one person in three glance at the cover of your book -- and judge you accordingly. This proportion goes up if there are more women than men. In this light, below are Da-da's top five books, off the top of his head, to take to the DMV, each designed to not only discourage conversation, but to give you a nice and puzzling no-man's-land buffer zone radius, or at least near-total invisibility.

5. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

This is the book equivalent of classical music when it comes to driving away people you don't want to talk to. Note: be wary of using psych books at the DMV; like the DSM-IV et al, tomes such as these can actually draw in PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS, which might be good, or it might be bad. Da-da married a psychologist, so you do the math.

4. Cracker Ingenuity

This pretty much pegs the people at Da-da's DMV, such that the book is nearly invisible to said patrons, referencing their outward lives so resolutely that they run screaming into the night. In a good way, o'course.

3. The Killer Inside Me

A disturbingly realistic story, esp. these days, and Jim Thompson's best work. For maximum distance, be sure to laugh loudly while reading, fist-pumping and exclaiming, "YES! YES!"

2. Abe Lincoln Grows Up (dust jacket mind-hack)

 

Da-da was famous at his university for reading this one book over and over again for years. You could find Da-da everywhere, in every shady alcove and every library carrel, his nose deep inside its pages. Thing is, Da-da has never actually read this book. He just borrowed the dust jacket from one of his old childhood books, hiding the books he was reading inside this book cover. He'd even move his lips sometimes when he read, whenever critical people walked by, to give them something to complain about. Many thought him simple and either said something nice, as to a loose mental patient, or snort and not give him another look. The people who were nice to Da-da are still his friends. DMV-ers will probably fall into the former category, but you never know.

NOTE: Da-da also used several incrediby boring and subject-specific dust jackets for use in class... but then, it has to be a special kind of boring. Thus:

You can almost hear the snoring. Which brings us to the #1 Ultimate Book to Bring to the DMV...

1. Jane Eyre 

Jane Eyre? Believe it or not, Jane Eyre is a manly and modernesque, two-fisted tome about a former soldier living with his crazy pyromaniac (soon-to-be-ex) wife and adopted daughter in an old dark manse, and how a hot, intelligent tutor he hired falls for him. Slowly. Besides offering up a perfectly opaque and a near-incomprehensible shield for DMV denizens, Jane Eyre is the ultimate Stay-at-Home-Dad book. Why? C'mon, there are (poorly paid) servants who do all the housework and child rearing, with the eponymous Jane doing all the teaching and discipline work, leaving the master of the house free to lounge around and read all day, ride horses with vapid blondes while delivering fey, smoldering glances at everyone. It's a postmodern male dream come true. It's also one of Da-da's favorite books, so it does double duty.

Anyway, this is such a good book, it's easy to forget where you are, which is probably the whole point of reading it, at the DMV or anywhere else, plus it's got a name not easily pronounceable (like Da-da's real name), making folks balk at its cover, not to mention its thickness. Plus, there's the extra added attraction that males don't typically read Jane Eyre, guaranteeting you even more of a witch's circle distance around you -- and an impossible-to-deny allure for that one special someone who'll appreciate it. Not that Da-da needs this, anymore. He caught his limit.

Honorable Mention