A Dude's Guide. . . to everything

My Daughter Taught Me How To Brush Her Teeth

All my kids need help… brushing their teeth. The four of them think that 9.4 seconds is long enough to remove all the sugar, chocolate and food that finds refuge in their mouths. So, we help them brush. (Hopefully, we’ll finally be able to stop by the time they’re married.)

Anyhow, I always took a glob of tooth paste and put it on the bristles and tried to brush away. Every time the glob would fall off and I’d have to sweep it up from the bottom of their mouths. Yesterday my 6 year asked: “Daddy, why don’t you jam the toothpaste into the bristles? That way the toothpaste wont fall.”

My girl is genius! Tomorrow I bet she will have solved world peace…

Dude!, sometimes I am amazed what my kids can teach me. I should listen to them more often.

- Barry

Johann Zahn; You Made My Kids Run Away!

Today, I come to praise the Dude! who first made the camera small and portable enough to allow us mere civilians to start taking our own photographs. Believe it or not, he did this in the 1600s. So, while progress marches on, sometimes it marches very. . . very. . . very. . . very slowly. Still, once cameras hit, they hit big.

Today, thanks to the evolution of technology, we’ve got the cheap digital camera and that, quite simply, is the greatest invention ever in the history of keeping track of your family and little dudes as they grow. I’m old enough to remember when taking pictures of your little dudes involved film camera, finally taking all the pictures on the roll, getting them developed, finding out if you actually did get a good picture, then saving and labeling the negatives so we could — maybe — get some more copies made. It’s a wonder we actually took the time to make any pictures at all.

Now, thanks to the digital camera, I’ve got more than 10,000 pictures at my fingertips. I throw together albums at the drop of a whim and my little dudes can actually see the pictures I took of them. Now, I can see the little dudes as they looked a couple of years ago without leaving my desk. That’s progress.

My only problem is my little dudes start shrieking like little girls and run as soon as they see me coming with the camera. Maybe I’m taking too many?

- Richard

Elite Eight (Billion)

I think I’m better than you, but I don’t want to be. Well, that’s not quite true and, of course, I wasn’t speaking of you specifically, dude reader, but them out there. Allow me to explain.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a big kerfluffle about a national politician who got called elitist because of some comment he made. He quickly backed off the comment because being called an elitist is rather a curse in our national discourse. I think the opposite is true. I think you should want to be an elitist.

I’ll tell you why after the jump. Continue reading ‘Elite Eight (Billion)’