I think about this stuff too much

I thought about giving myself the week off, but I’m going to bust something out because that’s the kind of guy I am. One who fears change.

I got a crap ton of stuff to do today so this won’t be very good I’m afraid.

I saw the movie Brave a while ago. I quite liked, Scottish butt-jokes and all. I thought is was a charming tale properly told full of great lighting effects.

I was a little nervous going into it. I’d heard a lot about how this movie marked the official “Disneyfication” of Pixar. I can see it. It was very much a story you could see Disney telling these days. It had an easily marketable princess main character who was spunky, had the world on her plate, dreamed of more, had a strained parental relationship and great hair.

I can think of another movie that this reminds me of.

That being said, despite the similarities, I actually think Brave is the least Disneyish of the Pixar movies for one very important reason: she had both parents. Think about it. Name a Disney movie where both parents are around the whole time.

Half the main characters in Disney movies are orphans. Mowgli was raised by wolves. Peter Pan by fairies. Christopher Robin by stuffed animals. I’m not even going to go into how many Disney heroes had a parent die as part of the movie (It scares me, maybe I don’t want my son to be a hero).

Now think about Pixar movies. With the exception of the Incredibles, I can’t think of a traditional family until Brave. Nemo’s mom died. We never hear anything about Andy’s dad. Lightning McQueen seem to burst full grown from something somewhere.

And in the Incredibles, they had to have super powers or that dad would have bought it in the first scene.

So yeah. Brave, least Disneyish Pixar movie ever.

Deal with it.

Time to face the change or change the face

Alrighty, I’m fighting a massive head-cold with Theraflu as I type this so we’ll see how this goes.

For some reason, these days I almost feel obligated to defend myself for still using Facebook.

I know for some people it is an endless wasteland where productivity goes to die, however for me, it’s a place where I can scroll down for five minutes (max) and get caught up with the lives of pretty much everyone I’ve ever known. I can see their triumphs, their heartaches and quite often, what they had for dinner.

All this, and I don’t have to actually interact with any of them. It’s great.

All that aside, lately on Facebook, I’ve been seeing a lot of messages from people I knew from college talking about how much change has come into their lives since I last saw them.

And I’m not talking about change from their lives in college. If, after six years in the workforce, you’re still eating the same crap, sleeping as little and doing math by hand like you did in school, you’ve failed adulthood. You might as well turn into a senior citizen now.

Just to be clear though, still wearing the same T-shirts is totally kosher. There’s no reason to leave everything behind.

No, what I’m referring to is it seems like a very large percentage of somebodys that I used to know, have gone through multiple careers, relationships and even countries since they graduated.

I can’t say that. I still work at the same company I started at 1 week after graduation. I still drive the same car. I’m (thankfully) still married to the same woman. I even have the same pair of nunchucks.

You’re suppose to upgrade those every two years people.

And so, to make myself feel a bit better about not being a total sell-out to the Lords of Consistency here is a short list of some things that have changed since I wore a silly hat and a dress.

I bought a house and had a child. I know these are cop out, easy answers, but I gotta start somewhere.

Let’s see, what else.

I kinda like rap now.

I’m not nearly as scared of vampires as I used to be.

I’ve learned how to fix a leaky faucet.

My friends say my obsession with randomly quoting Scooby-Doo has gotten much better.

And yep, that’s about it.

In the end, it’s not my fault I turned out this way. When I was in fifth grade the girl of my then dreams wrote in my yearbook “Don’t ever change.”

So I guess I won’t.

Bleeech. The last swig of Theraflu always tastes like burnt death. I’m going to bed.

Jinkies.

Everyone wants fries with that. They just know better

It’s a dark time in your life when you realize you don’t know where in the McDonald’s playground your only child is.

Let me rephrase that. It’s a dark time in your life when you realize you’re in a McDonald’s.

I know it’s cool to bash on fast food these days. I know it’s hypocritical to bash I place that I loved so much when I was allowed in the ball pit. And I know the industry helps the economy and teaches teenagers the importance of hard work and all that crap.

I also know that the food comes wrapped in paper with its name on it. That’s should be enough to justify 450 words of mocking.

What confuses me the most about these places is how come when I eat something me or my wife made, when I burp, I can taste the lasagna again; but if I eat anything from McDonald’s the only thing I can taste in shame and a sense of regret.

I’m also confused what the food product the Grimace is suppose to represent. Did McDonald’s used to sell homosexual gumdrops?

I remember when McDonald’s was my idea of heaven. When I was a kid I would rather go to McDonald’s than the beach, the zoo and the plastic dinosaur store combined.

I had fantasies about showing up and McDonald’s one day and being allowed behind the counter and giving a tour of the Willy Wonka-esque world of wonders that surely waited behind, but with a grease waterfall instead of chocolate, and instead of Oompa Loompas, walking zits.

And now, all I can do when drive by a McDonald’s is judge. I judge the customers who keep filling their faces with nothing but calories and lies. I judge the corporate sellouts that power the whole enterprise. I judge everyone but the employees.

They have enough problems. They work at McDonald’s.

Also, there’s something about a McDonald’s pickle that just calls out to me. I want one so bad right now.

So that’s my anti-McDonald’s rant. Am I a real blogger now?

Or do I have to do a part two where I talk about Taco Bell and the unspeakable things it does to my bathroom (my theory is whenever I eat there, someone from Del Taco sneaks into my house with a bucket of sewage, it’s the only way to explain it).

Oh, and for anyone concerned about where my son was, he was just talking as much time to go down the spinny slide as it take him to feed his fish.

And while he was up there, I got to eat his chicken nuggets, so I came out ahead.

Phew, just made it.

The end of the world may soon be upon us. At least there will be pizza.

There have been many terrifying moments in my life since I became a father. It strikes me as a truly cruel joke that the life event that required the most bravery, also turned me into the biggest weiner.

Many of these heart threatening moments have involved falling. The first time he fell running down the hall. The first time he fell down the stairs. Heck, the first time he fell asleep freaked me out. I was convinced nothing that small could survive with constant supervision.

Today, however, my moment of terror had nothing to do with falling. Today it was all verbal. Today, when he got back from preschool, my son said the following: “Dad, I’m home! We’re going to Chuck E Cheese!”

I’m not sure how he got Chuck E Cheese and Outback Steakhouse confused, but I’m not sure how he always gets his left and right shoe confused either.

“We’re going to Chuck E Cheese” has to be in the top ten scariest phrases kids can say to their parents. Probably right between “Hey watch this!” and “Mom, Dad, this is my fiance Snakeface.”

And unlike normal parent, I’m not scared to take my child there because it’s a place where he and 50 others just like him can run around in circles until they vomit greasy pizza into the ball pit.

I’m not scared because if we went there I would probably have to leave my game of whack-a-mole (thereby letting the moles win) to go climb up into the kids-only crawl space to pull my kid’s head out of one of those stupid steering wheels they put on all those things.

I’m scared, because I have reason to believe that the robot uprising has already begun and their leader is currently singing a synthetic rendition of “The Lion Sings Tonight” at a pizza parlor.

That’s right.

The Singularity has happened.

And it happened a Chuck E Cheese.

Forget the skull-like visage of the Terminator. When the robots knock down your door to defrag you and all you hold dear, the last face you’ll see will be a giant smiling rat.

I can’t prove it yet. But I’m going to keep working on this. Unless of course my kid gets his way. Then I might find myself in enemy territory. If I do, I’m going to try and save all mankind but stopping the threat at its source.

Wish me luck.