Avada Yodada!

"ARE YOU BOYS FIGHTING AGAIN?!"

Merlin's pants! 6 and 8YO Bronko and Nagurski are running all over the house, wands at the ready,  cursing each other... in their own unique way:

"AVADA YODADA!" 
"POOPEFY!" 
"AFARTA KADAVRA!"
"GLOPPIO!"
"IMPEDIMENTA BUTTSIO!"
"LOOGIA!"
"BARFAMENTI!"
"POOPMOS!"
"LEVIDORKUS!"
"ALOHA MAMA!"

Then Da-da stops them cartwheeling on the stairs and they say, "NOFUNDO."

Jeez. The wizarding equivalent of cowboys and indians, by way of Blazing Saddles.

[Btw, "avada kadavra" is actually Aramaic for, "let the thing be destroyed," originally meant to heal, as in, "let the illness be destroyed." It's also the etymological source of, "abracadabra," which Da-da guesses you already suspected; alas, the abracadabra curse can only make rabbits disappear and reappear. Of course, one might seriously need to consider the skeletal remains.]

Oops. Looks like someone used abracadabra again.

Of course, Viagra-maker Pfizer is now working 24/7 to copyright, "LEVIDORKUS."

Night of the Lepus II: LOOK AT THE BONES

"Where is he?"  "I dunno." "Can I eat this?"

"WHHEEEEEE!"

"Who are we looking for again?"  "I dunno. I'm stuffed."  "Where's the phone?"

"BONES... Mr. Bun-Bun's on line one. He wants to know what you're doing in this movie?"

The Cult of Mr. Bilby Meets Happy Chocolate Reason Day

Hey, kids, it's the Easter Bilby!

Australia has a rather checkered past when it comes to rabbits, so they celebrate Easter with this guy: The Easter Bilby. (Um, a bilby is an animal in Australia, Mr. Clench.) And yes, like other magical rodents, it delivers eggs to children and they devour its chocolate carcass -- which makes total sense, right? Of course, it makes more sense that in the Northern Hemisphere we have a giant RABBIT delivering eggs to children, where we then devour its chocolate carcass. Totally different. And makes a lot more sense.

What makes the MOST sense -- besides the fact that Da-da's sententious emphasis is often in CAPS -- is that in Washington DC, and London, and Paris, and Moscow, and Beijing, and in really every place where politicians hang out and... do... whatever it is they do... they celebrate Easter with this guy...

Politicians love chocolate tortoises. This one is filled with gold bullion.

...which also makes perfect sense. Unfortuntely, it also insults tortoises.

What Easter has become, alas, is a day to devour chocolate animal effigies, or more basically, a day to eat chocolate. So Sunday is "Happy Chocolate Reason Day." THAT makes sense.

"Arr, what a vile and cruel chocolate-craving rodent. LOOK AT THE CHOCOLATE BONES."

Forget It, Jake. It's Bunnytown.

That's right, Da-da's currently portraying the most foul, cruel and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on. He's into that kinda thing, so just go with it. Jeez, LOOK AT THE BONES. (Good costume, huh?) Next stop, a remake of "NIGHT OF THE LEPUS," called, "LATE AFTERNOON OF THE LEPUS." Brrrrrr.

Don't Ask, Don't Dwell (UPDATED)

Bronco's breath is fresh and minty. Go ahead, lean in and give a sniff.

Whenever anyone asks how his four- and six-year-old boys -- Bronko and Nagurski -- are, Da-da usually says the same thing: "LOUD." Dangerously loud. Jeez, look at the bones. The decibel level flenses meat right off. But that doesn't begin to illustrate the preternaturally unrestrained CLAWING, wrestling, shouting and hooliganism at our domestic gulag. The boys vacillate from brief moments (lasting about two seconds) of cute and happy and wondrous -- and sometimes shockingly obedient, gasp -- to looooong toothy geologic epochs of chewing on each other like rabid badgers, but in a CUTE way. Therein lay the child's main survival tactic.

Besides love (cast aside so easily? Da-da thinks not), CUTENESS is a child's main line of defense. Without it... well. If children acted the way they act while looking like fangy, miniature Ernest Borgnines, we as parents would chuck them out the air-lock posthaste -- provided of course we weren't, as Cervantes said, blindfolded as to their defects by that pesky L word that ostensibly permeates every square inch of existence. Damn. As Da-da's mentioned before, parenthood is somewhere between Christmas and being roasted alive, and WE NEED A LITTLE CHRISTMAS, even if it lasts five minutes. Without that little cherubian cuteness Christmas window, all human life on earth would probably cease to be... which might be a good thing if you looked at it from the earth's perspective.

When Da-da clears the streets, he calls it what it is: "Community Service."

It's Snowing Again...

...LOOK AT THE BONES.

That Morning Look of Parenthood

Scenes From a Colder Planet