Archive for August 2011
Everything’s wrong.
My daughter, though only two-years old, is already prone to drama. It is not uncommon for her to wake up from her nap and say, “Mommy, something’s wrong.” “What’s wrong?” my wife will ask. And she will respond by saying that a bear pushed her or Quack (a duck from her favorite television program) heard…
Read MoreWikipedia: I could read this stuff all day long
I love Wikipedia. I think it is one of the single greatest creations in human history. Reading Wikipedia has become a bit of a passion for me. Though there is always a reason I find myself plowing through a passage, I am never disappointed with what I find. A couple days ago I read the…
Read MoreProtecting your KRAFT Macaroni & Cheese
My editor directed me to this via Twitter yesterday. It’s brilliant. It is brilliant because embedded within the humor and silliness is pure truth. It’s the kind of advertisement that I would love to try to write if my wife wasn’t cutting deals and negotiating with me every time I want to add a new…
Read More“Nobody puts baby in the corner” changes ever-so-slightly with fatherhood
Things change when you have a child. You begin to feel differently about a multitude of life’s experiences. The entire world takes on new meaning and nuance. Take Dirty Dancing. Pre-fatherhood, I watched Patrick Swayze tell Jerry Orbach that “Nobody puts baby in the corner” and thought, “Hell yeah, Johnny Castle! You let that patronizing…
Read More718 words on 13 words: A literary analysis and deconstruction of my daughter’s very first story.
Yesterday I wrote about my daughter’s first story. Her story went like this: Once upon a time there was a bear. She ate dinner. The End. Then I tweeted about it using the following description: @MatthewDicks: My two-year old daughter told her first original story, complete of suspense, romance and a hint of existentialism. Then…
Read MoreMy wife’s reaction to my latest idea was predicable and understandable.
I had an idea yesterday, probably born from several sources, including my success at The Moth, a sudden burst of amusing anecdotes and my bi-weekly intake of Marc Maron’s popular podcast dealing with the world of comedy. The idea: I want to try stand-up comedy. I told my wife about the idea, and she looked…
Read MoreClara Dicks’s first original story
My daughter told me to go to sleep (a frequent demand), and then, instead of waking me up with a kiss or (more often) a smack on the butt, she proceeded to tell me a bedtime story. She said, “Once upon a time there was a bear. She ate dinner. The End.” And there, my…
Read MoreA messy ABC
My daughter knows almost all of her uppercase letters and a few lower case letter, though she you wouldn’t know it based upon this video. The girl refuses to perform on camera. She is the Aloysius Snuffleupagus of home movies.
Read MoreWhat would you tell your pregnant self? My three suggestions.
Nummies, a maker of maternity bras, asked women what they would tell themselves if they could go back in time to just before their first baby arrived. They produced a video of the mother’s responses. Along similar lines, NPR’s The Baby Project asked mothers and fathers: If you could go back in time before…
Read MoreYou called me an idiot. You said I acted like a bully. You told me that I was cruel. I respond.
In regards to the much critiqued post about my handling of the slow driver, I offer a few comments: 1. Opening with the question “Was this mean?” wasn’t smart. I know what I did was mean. I knew it was mean while I was doing it. I should have asked if my actions were justifiably…
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