Murphy and babies - a refreshing insight

The wonders of childhood are a all-know realm while parenthood is only-some-know realm. Thumbing through a good humor collection at the local community library, I came across this wonderful book "Mother Murphy's law" by Bruce Lansky. As far as this blog goes, it is not original. I am posting a few excerpts of this book - nothing like sharing a few laughs [I made sure I am not violating any copyrights]. Please consider this as a review and read the book.

Nomenclature nonsense
Why do they call mothers who work "working mothers"? They don't call fathers who are working "working fathers"!

Dissatisfaction doctrine
1. Babies can never be held enough.
2. Children can never get enough attention.
3. Teenagers can never get enough space.
4. Parents can never get enough time for themselves.

The curious convolution
1. At 3, he asks "why"?
2. At 7,he asks "why not"?
3. At 12, he asks "are you kidding"?
4. At 13, he says "cut the crap".
5. After that, it is all downhill.

The Aural ambiguity
All new born babies sound alike. But yours is louder.

Excerpt's from baby owner's manual
1. Babies leak. From both ends.
2. Babies do not meet the latest EPA emission control standards.
3. Babies do not meet the latest EPA noise control standards, either.
4. babies cost more that $200,000 to feed, clothe and educate.
5. Babies come with no guarantees.
6. Babies have no trade-in value.

The junk food Gourmet
Your baby will probably not get sick from eating:
1. Half an ice cream cone he found in the park.
2. Half a hot dog bun hr found at the zoo.
3. A cigarette butt he found in the gutter.
4. A dead bug he found on your dining room floor.
5. A used piece of chewing gum he found under a restaurant table.

If you watch him eat those yummies, you will get sick.

Baby's first word
Your baby's first word is that four letter word you usually mutter when you discover the diapers need changing, again.

The quiet conspiracy
1. The quieter it is in the bathroom, the more likely it is that your toddler is pouring the goldfish into the toilet bowl.
2. The quieter it is in the living room, the more likely it is that your toddler is finger-painting the wall.
3. The quieter it is in the bedroom, the more likely it is that the toddler is pouring finger paints into the gold fish bowl and using the gold fish to paint the wall.

The toilet trap
1. Before you go shopping, they won't go to the bathroom.
2. As soon as you arrive to the store, they are dying to go to the bathroom.
3. Unfortunately, there is no toilet they can use in the store.
4. When you finally find the toilet they can use, it is too late.

Keep reading for part deux [maybe].

Overly over

I was watching TV and they aired a program on the most "Most entertaining moments in TV entertainment".

My this particular article takes the cue from one particular part that was from Sienfeld where there was a debate on "Over" stuff which went on something like this:

George: Take the clothes out of the dryer else they will be overdried.

Jerry: They cannot be overdried. There is nothing as overdrying.....

George looks puzzled.

Jerry: As there is nothing as overwet. If your boxer is wet it is wet. It cannot be overwet or underwet. Like for eg. you cannot overkill a person. You cannot kill a person and then shoot him again to overkill him. He won't overdie. If you die, you are dead, You cannot be overdead. Similarly the clothes cannot overdry.

Talking about overdoing things, lets examine a small list I composed:

1. Overburn a sandwich. How can you in all reality overburn anything. Anything that's burnt is burnt and not fit to be consumed. So what do you mean by overburning.. make a black sandwich turn into charcoal?

2. Overimagine. How can you overimagine something. If you imagine dating Aishwarya Rai [AR] or Collin Farell you just imagine. It is not your overimagination. What you imagine is your business. Nobody else can say you overimagined. It's my prerogative to imagine and there is nothing in it that I can overdo. If you happen to imagine dating Jennifer [whoever.. there are so many of them] after imagining dating AR, you have not overimagined. People might argue that this cannot be true so it is overimagining. Well, thank you for pointing that out. I did believe AR could be my date.. ahem.

3. Overfamiliarity. I am familar with the way this drink tastes. I cannot be overfamilar with that. Either you know or you don't. If you know then you are familiar. You cannot drink water 100 times and say, yeah I am overfamilar with the way it tastes.. gulp.

4. Overexaggerated. [exaggerated: Represented as greater than is true or reasonable]. Then what does overexaggerated mean? More than exaggerate? I flapped my arms and flew like a bird [maybe]

There are many more and you people can probably do good to fill me in. Don't overdo it ;)

Talking about "over" stuff.. surely you cannot let cricket pass by. India did it again. Well we are kinda used to it now. So doesn't matter. What really is interesting is the ongoing Ashes. Will Australia be made to follow on after 17 years?

The fall.. the glide .. an indelible flight

The ascent wasn't even a trifle exciting as the descent.. people would say "that is obvious". But if there was any excitement of a first timer it eluded me. At 13500 feet, 30 degrees colder than on the ground, the CESSNA opened up and I, strapped onto my instructor, plunged towards the monstrous earth.

Spread-eagled we clocked an incredible 45 seconds falling without any solid inhibitions. 45 seconds seems a long time when you know that your life is not in your hands anymore. I was counting on my instructor to pull the right string [at the right time] . As the dots became bigger and bigger I realised they were trees, houses and cars and I needed a probability of astronomical proportions for me not to hit any of them.

The falling does give you such a big grin which does not go away till the canopy opens up. No, there was no body joking to give me that grin.. You tend to appreciate the laws of nature and physics like gravity, friction and what those forces can make your face look like.

So after about 45 seconds of free fall, I felt a huge jerk as I shot up a few feet like a rocket.. The chute had opened up. Sense had prevailed over my instructor than to continue with the maddening rush towards the ground. Another minute or so gliding gently like an eagle and still trying to absorb every moment of this, I let my instructor touch base before I put my feet down [All's "only" well that ends well].

Couldn't believe that after an hours drive and an hours wait and $250 lighter I had finally sky-dived. Though I have this itch to tell everybody about this [guess I am posting this for the same reason] I dare not tell my parents right now. My dad might charter a plane to pick me up and drop me down back in India.

Anybody who has ever wanted to do this, if you can now, do it without any delay. No ride can give you the real feeling of 45 secs of free fall.. Awesome.

Movie reviews:
Stealth - Plz dont go. Sleep if you have nothing else to do.

Dukes of Hazzard: A nice watch though a bit off from the TV series.. a through comedy... and specifically if you pride your Indian orgins on hearing Shymalan [Signs fame] then this is another Indian in the make - that's what people are saying.

Scoop a la bovine

I recently happened to stop by a friend of mine. I was not knowledgeable of what family he had or not-had. As I met him at the door of his house, he indicated that it was time to lunch and we should go out somewhere nice. I concurred [yeah, the same way DiCaprio does in catch-me-if-you-can].

He turned around and said.. Jimmy come on.. lets go for lunch.

Well, I half expected to see a teen, given my friend's age, coming out. By I was kindlessly greeted by a black blood-hound sniffing it's way at my most precious parts as I solemnly prayed.

If a survey is done surely we would find more per capita cats-dogs in US households than the number of children. Curious we Indians never share that kind of spirit for animals.. I would not be exaggerating if I were to blame the bovine cause.

So important are they in the part of Indian ecosystem and socio-religious system that we cannot for a minute imagine being without the "holy-cow".

Here in the parks we have strict rules about people picking up after their jimmy's or wookie's poops. Wouldn't it be a little nice to see people foraying behind the holy bovines with a fry pan?

They are not merely animals for us. They are part of the ecosystem. Think about all the garbage newspaper, vegetable market remains and other obnoxious materials that they ingest, partly digest, ruminate, fully digest and then excrete - only to be used to layer the floors of some houses and use in "havans" [gau-mootra].

The bovine problems have been severly compounded by our apathy and our attitudes - I will explain both.

Is there anybody who has thought about something like parking-lots for cows. Wouldn't that be a nice idea if the cows get up in the morning.. go to the lots.. do their ingestion-excretion and go back to thier places to sleep? They can probably sleep there and live there if they do not have home.

All the lesser Morarji-Desai types need not go around looking for a bovine creature. Just hop into one of these lots and you will get a packed liquid or solid whatever you want [for a price of course]. So this talks about employment avenues [I should be a finance minister.. sigh!] in procuring [all the waste], cleaning, packaging, marketing [surely there will be competing lots], administrating areas. Do I see any B-school people nodding their heads?

Agreed that these lots will not be a nice place to work at, but surely it would be better than to have slimy scoops of poops on the road or unemployed youth indulging in criminal activities.

No longer will the truck/bus drivers need to be stressed out thinking how to manuevre around the meditating cow on the road [don't ever try running over it!].

So having succeeded in keeping our ecosystem intact lets move on to the sociological ramifications and issues.

The slimy poops everywhere are our creation. We see lots of places marked "Men" "women" or "His" "Her" but have we seen anything marked "Cows" [I do not know if we need "bulls" and "cows" different]. Now you see from my point of view.. they had no where else to scoop out.

After complex analysis by psychologists or using the prevailing common sense among general people we can conclude one thing - anything the cows do or have reflect our own attitudes and habits. Lets see the common traits:

Cows are lazy and dirty....

All they do is eat.... [I am again feeling hungry.]

They do not respect traffic signals, the zebra crossings even less.

They see people relieving themselves anywhere and everywhere...
[Some people have an itch in their groin as soon as they see a wall].
Cows might think "what the heck?" and raise their tails.

So what we need to do is set an example for the cows. Stop succumbing to that itch. Build cow-lots and train the cows as we train our kids.

adieu