Brave’s Merida: Before (right) and after (left)

One of the downsides of the internet is that when an issue comes up, people share the hell out of said offending item, take 10 minutes to start an internet petition and use their online “influence” to try to shame said offending party. It’s far too convenient to blow something out of proportion.

Case in point: Disney officially “crowned” their newest Disney Princess, Merida from “Brave.”

Now, Merida came to be viewed as an ideal animated princess role model (that should have been society’s first clue) for our little precious snowflakes because she wasn’t done up in makeup, had a rougher-around-the-edges appearance, she was fiercely strong-willed, had frizzy red hair, and so forth.

Now that Merida is going to be an official Disney Princess, they gave her a makeover: Makeup, non-frizzy hair, and a thinner waist to name a few changes. A picture of the side-by-side changes can be seen at the top of this post.

People all over the world (I’m assuming most are Americans, because this debacle seems like something us pampered, lazy Americans would create) are up in arms over these changes saying,

The redesign of Merida in advance of her official induction to the Disney Princess collection does a tremendous disservice to the millions of children for whom Merida is an empowering role model who speaks to girls’ capacity to be change agents in the world rather than just trophies to be admired. Moreover, by making her skinnier, sexier and more mature in appearance, you are sending a message to girls that the original, realistic, teenage-appearing version of Merida is inferior; that for girls and women to have value — to be recognized as true princesses — they must conform to a narrow definition of beauty.

Source: Merida From ‘Brave’ Gets An Unnecessary Makeover, Sparks Change.org Petition

Ironically, the very petition claims they want children, specifically girls, to “benefit from seeing depictions of strong, courageous, and independent-minded girls and women that are so scarce in animated movies,” but the angry mob is missing the point entirely. By shining a tinted spotlight on this, they are actually sending a message to those same young children that, apparently, you cannot be “strong, courageous and independent-minded” if you tame the frizziness in your hair, dress certain ways and wear makeup.

This circles back around to something I’ve been quite vocal about before: YOU’RE PARENTS. ACT LIKE IT FOR A CHANGE!

Parents who have gotten complacent with their roles as parents and let Disney, Nickelodeon, Top 40 radio hits and iPads raise their children, are flipping out because there’s a shred of responsibility inside of them still, fighting to be heard, asking, “I wonder how this will affect my kid?”

Instead of trying to shame Disney, what these parents should be doing is sitting down and talking with their child. They should be asking their child how THEY feel about Merida’s changes and then have a discussion with their child about any worries they might have.

As the father of two daughters, I know what it’s like when your kid doesn’t think they’re pretty or says they want to be pretty, which is why this whole uproar is both hilarious and maddening. When one of my daughters is having one of those days, I certainly don’t stop and think, “If only Disney had its act together!”

Want to hear what makes girls feel pretty?

Letting them wear princess costumes and play dress up makes them feel pretty.

Wearing pretty hair clips and fake tiaras in their hair make them feel better about themselves.

Being told they’re pretty, always does the trick.

What is actually doing a disservice to our young girls is this salacious village mob that rises up anytime someone does something that lazy parents don’t like. It’s time to get back to being parents again and stop relying on corporations and brands to teach our children what it means to be a confident, happy person.

Update: Here’s a link to where you can reserve a copy of “The Walking Dead” to rent from your local Redbox kiosk

I have to admit that I was cautiously optimistic about the PS3 video game, The Walking Dead. As with most products that are thrown out there, piggy-backing on something much bigger than itself, I expected this title to fall on its face (Which is why I absolutely LOVE Redbox!).

There were two things that drew me to this game: The animation is done in the same low-brow, comic book style that the Borderlands franchise has, and zombies. That’s really it. Given that those were the two things I wanted from the game, I was very pleasantly surprised!

The first thing people should probably know about The Walking Dead video game, is that it is not your typical hack-and-smash zombie game. The zombie setting is really the vehicle for the choose your own adventure style of gaming. In this game, you play a man named Lee who is suddenly thrown into a world reeling from a sudden outbreak of walking dead. The game is broken up into five separate episodes which, as I understand it, parallel events in the actually comic series of The Walking Dead (Note: I have yet to read The Walking Dead comic series).

As Lee and the story progress, you are faced with many agonizing (or not, depending on how you play the game) moral dilemmas, which not only impact how the other characters view and treat you, but also how the story progresses from that point forward. Think of this game as an interactive Choose Your Own Adventure Book from when you were a kid. Don’t dispar, though! There is plenty of zombie killing, suspense and bloody violence.

The creators impressively took the monotony out of the point-and-click style of the game by putting a timer on the important, spur-of-the-moment decisions. Need to decide whether to do something? More often than not, you’re only given a few seconds to weigh the options and make your choice. This is true for major, plot-altering decisions as well as replies you make when talking to other characters.

The Good

The Bad

The Bottom Line

I recommend buying this game when it goes on sale or used, as long as you’re the kind of gamer who enjoys the play style of old-school RPG video games.

Earlier last week, Keli and I were driving home from somewhere and found that the main road we take was completely closed off, with lots of police cars, road flares, ambulances, and the such. We followed the detour and made some stupid, ill-humored jokes about how maybe they found a meth lab or something.

Then we found out a few nights after that, that the neighbor boy’s father was in a motorcycle accident, not more than 5 blocks from where we live – hence the road block that night – and later died from his injuries. We noticed that the family was gone for a several days last week but that wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary. What was strange, was that, when they were back suddenly Friday morning, they were running around grabbing blankets and pillows.

I didn’t really know him but we got along when we talked and he seemed like a nice guy. His wife told me yesterday, that she’s pretty sure he was on his way to try and get a second job at the time of the wreck. From what I’ve heard, the guy who hit him was in an SUV and, rumor has it, had been drinking but not enough to land him a DUI. The similarities of the situation are what really struck a chord with me.

He was 30 years old and I’m 31.

He had three kids and so do I.

He loved console video games and so do I.

He and his wife were married 9 years and I’ve been married for a handful of years more than that.

I took out some recycling yesterday morning, having to walk by their apartment, and she stopped talking to the others who were with her and called down to me, asking me if I had heard what happened. She was trying to keep it together but only a few minutes later, I had a shaking, sobbing widow hugging me, telling me she wished she “didn’t fight so much with him” because now she just wants him back. She went on to tell me that he was an organ donor but resented the doctors telling her where “pieces of him” were going, and how he always took care of his family, even working extra jobs to help pay the rent of an extended family member.

It’s a terrible feeling not knowing how to help someone who has suffered such an unimaginable loss. All I can think about is those poor children. Not that she won’t suffer or struggle with this undeserved twist of life, but her children – all under the age of 12 – are suddenly without their dad. In a cruel sense of irony, as I was talking with the man’s wife, their youngest child, who is around 4 years of age, was walking around with one of his dad’s old crutches. His wife told me “that was from when he laid his bike down last April.” Whenever someone tried to take the crutch away, the little boy would just look at them and say, “But it’s my dad’s.”

We made them a big batch of food and dropped it off last night. It wasn’t much but it’s all we can do. The hardest part for us is watching the ripple effects of this tragedy, as she tries to figure out how to provide for her and the kids by herself, with a sudden and complete lack of income. They’ll probably have to move and all we can do is hope for the best.

It’s surreal not seeing him walk through the courtyard in the evenings, to go home to his family. Or to return from throwing out the garbage late at night and no longer see him on his couch with headphones on, playing his XBox. I just hope that wherever he is right now, that it’s a peaceful place.

Case in point: When I fold the laundry, pausing every few pieces of clothing to take a sip of coffee while I watch Wipeout on TV, only to look down and realize that the next piece of clothing I grabbed to fold, is some other tween girl’s underwear and clothing. Why do girls have to perpetually share each other’s clothes? It makes me feel like the Feds are going to kick down my door, which is JUST GREAT because now my prints are all over some other kids underwear!

Psychotic mood swings are another fact of life these days. I’m not talking about the ones you can rationalize away as PMS because, lucky us, that hasn’t even hit yet. But oh, dear god! These mood swings are the stuff of legends (that’s right, I said ‘are the stuff’). It wasn’t Helen of Troy whose face launched a thousand ships. No. It was the faces of their once-cute children, suddenly contorted and twisted up in some seemingly unnatural rage, which caused those men to choose death by sword over death by Tween Angst.

Thing 2 brings his own head-scratching emotions to the table. He cries. A lot. Over everything. Yesterday morning he cried while asking where his spelling list was. HE CRIED OVER A SPELLING LIST. I find myself impersonating Tom Hank’s character from “A League Of Their Own” a lot, saying, “There’s no crying in baseball!” Except we’re not talking about something enjoyable, like baseball. We’re talking about how there’s no crying over spelling words. Or losing a coin toss. Or being reminded to do a chore. Or getting beaten in his Pokemon card game. Or being told, again, to put the sock on his foot and not just sit on his bedroom floor, zoning out.

Then there’s 3-year-old Thing 3, who most days is a pleasure to be around but I feel, ever increasingly, like the guy in this AT&T commercial:

By the way, AT&T, those commercials are gold! My wife and I laugh ourselves silly almost every time we see one.

First World problem.

Folks, you can’t make this stuff up.

This is a game that was put together in spare time and, as it turns out, has been totally funded in under 72 hours, with more stretch goals available as funding increases.

If you enjoy silly, immature roleplaying games and want to help fund this fun little project, head over to the Busty Barbarian Bimbos Kickstarter page and donate!

I’m often referred to, usually half-jokingly, as a grump or a pessimist. Those comments usually spur on a friendly debate on pessimism vs. optimism vs. being realistic.

Growing up, my dad always used to say, “Expect the worst but hope for the best.” That was his way of teaching my sister and I to go forth into life’s experiences, planning and preparing for the worst-case scenario, but hoping (aka: praying) for the best.

If it was a social problem at school, expect the worst reaction or behavior from the other parties, but hope it won’t be that way.

When we were stressed about hearing back from a job interview, expect that you won’t hear back and plan for your next move, but hope you get a good job offer.

The result of this advice was that I grew to assume that the worst was going to happen. Not because I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, but because I came to see that, as the song “No Leaf Clover” says, often times “…it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel, is just a freight train coming your way.” More often than not, expecting the worst helped because the worst-case scenario is what actually happened.

As I wrote about before, being laid off forced me to evaluate how I view the situations going on around me and how I react to them. There are so many things that I can’t control and every day I struggle to identify the things I can control and the things I cannot control.

I can’t control the job market or the demand for work in the fields I have experience in. What I can do is continue to put myself out there in hopes that the next time I throw my hat in the ring, it will be for something that will become a reality.

The internet is full of negative things and, while often times very cheesy, I’ve found I really do enjoy seeing motivational and inspiring things like this:

Or this:

These things usually put a smile on my face and serve as a breath of fresh air, blowing away my less-than optimistic thoughts. Here are two sites I like to visit when I need a change of perspective:

• /r/GetMotivated
• Live Life Happy

For this post, I wanted to officially close out a less-than-stellar 2012, by focusing on the awesome things that happened to myself and those around me over the past year.

Me First! (Selfish, aren’t I?)

• My Unemployment benefits ran out. This might seem like a negative thing and, while it did suck, it opened a lot of doors for me. Specifically, I am able to start freelancing and being my own boss.
• In November, I started working as a freelance ebook editor for Teague Publishing. My first project, Birds of a Feather, is up on Amazon as we speak. I threw up a quick work-in-progress site for my freelance business, called Word Slinger Media.
• I’ve been blessed with being able to be a stay at home dad and getting time with my kids that most fathers don’t. I’ll admit, on a lot of days this is makes me groan, but looking back, I wouldn’t have traded it.
• Nerd Alert! My favorite RPG, Iron Kingdoms, was updated and finally re-released by Privateer Press. Let the Full Metal Fantasy begin!
• I got to take a trip to visit my brother from another mother, Chicago John. You all know him as Logtar. We hung out for a few days and ate our way through Chicago. It was a great time!
• Relationship-wise, my wife and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary and our 14th year of being together. We’ve grown together and in many aspects, I feel like 2012 made us a more solid couple than we were before!
• A childhood dream of mine was completed: I became a Guinness Book of World Records record holder!

My Family

• Early this year, my wife accepted a job at a real estate company with a big bump in pay. Recently, she was sought out and recruited for a different company, making a bit more money with full benefits and, almost more importantly, room for advancement.
• Thing 1 has been doing much better in middle school than we expected she would. She has been bumped up to Advanced English.
• Thing 2 has also been excelling in Second Grade and has been consistently given more challenging work in both Language Arts and Math.
• Thing 3 has been growing and doing all the normal things toddlers are supposed to do. She’s learned things much faster than her siblings, because she has two other kids to learn from 24/7.
• My sister-in-law and brother-in-law had their first child. They live in Kentucky, since my brother-in-law is in the Army and currently stationed there, and this December they flew out for Christmas and we got to see them all again and squeeze our new baby nephew.
• My sister has made some amazing strides to make herself healthier and happier, which will also make her entire family happier.
• After moving back to California from Idaho last December, my parents found a nice house to rent and have been able to settle down about 15 minutes away from our home.

I mean, really. What possible need do I have that can compare to what the families of those snuffed-out souls need right now?

But the fact is, I’m devastated by those deaths. Not because I knew them and not because I was related to them, but because twenty small, innocent children and six adults were brutally murdered. Normally, deaths in the news are a bummer. Having worked at a newspaper, I read and saw depressing things every day and I can usually rationalize them away, trying to make them seem fictional.

They were doing something stupid and deserved what they got.

They were terrible, horrible people and deserved and the world is better without them.

They died while doing something they loved.

Those children and adults died with hearts full of confusion, terror and pain. I received the AP news update early Friday morning that a gunman was reported at a school. As bad as it sounds, I figured there would be stand-off and after a short time the gunman would be arrested. End of story. But as the morning unfolded and as my phone lit up with update after update, it became clear that this was not like most of the other occasions.

Shots were fired and people were killed. Then the news that children were being targeted.

Like most parents on Friday, all I wanted was to bring my own children home from school and hold them tight. I grabbed my napping toddler from the next room and brought her out to the living room couch, so that I could hold her while she slept, as I watched the news.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a very real ability to empathize with people. Their pain becomes my pain. I can almost literally feel their anguish and heartache. Realizing these children were killed were the same age as my son, made it almost unbearable to think about, as I imagined my son in that situation. Then came this tweet from VDog, someone I follow on Twitter:

All I know right now is that my nieces are safe with their mother. My nephew we don’t know.

December 14, 2012 10:39 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@VDog

VDog

My heart sank even further. Then, several hours later, VDog posted this tweet:

He’s gone. Thank you for all your prayers. @mamaspohr & @kaisermommy will have updates.

December 14, 2012 2:56 pm via txtReplyRetweetFavorite

@VDog

VDog

That’s when I really felt numb and angry. I cried for those families whose children went off to school on a sunny Friday morning, not knowing they would never, ever hear their child laugh or see them smile again. No more Christmases or Hanukkahs. No more opportunities to wish them a happy birthday and no more nights to say tuck them in and say, “I love you.”

I may be a bad father because I haven’t told my kids about what happened and I haven’t sat them down to share the fear with them. I’ve wanted to let them go on being children. Children who are sweetly and blissfully ignorant of these kinds of evil. I’ve tried to reprimand them less this weekend and enjoy them more. Sleepovers happened. More cookies and desserts were consumed than there probably should have been. I cheered harder for my son at his basketball game. Time was spent with them. Games were played and a lot more random hugs and “I love you’s” were said.

At this point in my life, I’m not sure what my faith is. I’m confused and more often than not, angry at whomever/whatever is up there pulling the strings. What I do know is that I believe those innocent ones who were murdered on Friday, are somewhere better and, hopefully, the shooter is suffering until the end of days in some terrible hell.

All I can do is think happy thoughts for those families, going through the worst kind of pain in what is supposed to be the happiest time of the year. If you would like to help out the family of Noah, VDog’s nephew, you can do so by making a donation through PayPal. Donated money will be used to pay for Noah’s burial expenses, meals for the family during this difficult time, and counseling services for the family and for Noah’s siblings.

Be good to each other and tell those close to you what they mean to you. You never know when you may be out of chances.

Tim Armstrong. Lars Frederiksen. Davey Havock. Fishbone. What do these punk rockers have in common? Oh, nothing, except for being in Rancid frontman, Tim Armstrong’s, rock opera!

Tim Timebomb’s RockNRoll Theater has been described by Rolling Stone as, “A cross between Rocky Horror Picture Show and anthology TV series like Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits…” There’s not too much to see at their web site, rocknrolltheater.tv, but what is there looks campy as hell and entertaining. Since it’s from the fellas behind Rancid, it should go without saying that it’s not safe for work.

Check out one of the music videos from RockNRoll Theater: