Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

Just a reminder to my fellow Americans, not everything we put in our mouths is good for us. That needed to be said on this day of all days, when we pause to gorge ourselves on our nation's bounty.

Of course, if you're serving blow jobs for dinner today, you win Thanksgiving. My turducken leaves me in a distant second, at best.

Because Every Time Someone Slaps a Child, an Angel Gets His Taser

The show How I Met Your Mother is an acquired taste, I think. The premised doesn't immediately grab you, but if you watch it long enough, you'll find little things to make want to see it every week.

And then, there are things like slap bet, that really hook you. For those of you that haven't seen the show and don't know what I'm talking about, I'll explain. Slap bet is as juvenile as it sounds: instead of money, you bet hard slaps to the face—really hard slaps to the face.

Last night, they took it a step further, by inventing a Slap Bet board game, the commercial for which you can watch above. I love it.

Of course, being the youngest of four sons, every day of my childhood was a game of Slap Bet, except without the cards, spinner, bets, and protections provided by a just authority.

By the way, this is the Slap Bet song:



Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving.

“Pop It, Push It, Rock and Roll It. Can't Control It? I'll Come Hold It” – FreakNasty

Apparently, a long time ago (2006), in a party far, far away—the after-party celebrating her debut as the anchor of the CBS Evening News—Katie Couric took it out on the dance floor and dropped it, like it was hot.

I know you're questioning yourselves, and I know the answer you're wrestling with. If it helps, I'll give you mine first: The answer is, Yes, if she dropped it, I would pick it up—in a minute.

Whoops, too late.



Someone beat me to it.

Which brings me to this The Truth* Public Service Address: Parents, when the kids have to come get you off the dance floor, it's time to go home. Go before your daughter makes the face of shame her eldest made for that photograph, which was clearly brought on by Katie mistaking her daughter's touch for a suitor's and hollering, “Can mama get a little whut-whut?!” (Yes, I read lips, too.)

Thanks, Gawker, a name never more appropriate than now.

Sassin’ Your Mother when She's Trying to Bathe Your Narrow Ass? Oh, You'd Better Believe that's a Tasin’

A police officer who used a stun gun on an unruly 10-year-old girl after he said her mother gave him permission has been suspended—not for using the Taser but for not having a video camera attached when he used it.

Mayor Vernon McDaniel said officer Dustin Bradshaw was suspended Wednesday for seven days with pay. McDaniel said the suspension is for not following department procedures because he didn't have the camera on.

McDaniel wants Arkansas State Police or the FBI to look into whether the use of the Taser was proper. The girl, who hasn't been identified, wasn't injured and is now at the Western Arkansas Youth Shelter in Cecil.

Police were called to the home Nov. 11 after the girl's mother couldn't get her to take a shower.

Bradshaw's report says the girl was “violently kicking and verbally combative” when Bradshaw tried to take her into custody, and she kicked him in the groin. He said he delivered “a very brief drive stun to her back.”

“Her mother told me to tase her if I needed to,” Bradshaw wrote. “Needless to say, after she kicked me in the jimmies, I needed to Tase her.”

Attempts to reach the child at the Western Arkansas Youth Shelter were unsuccessful. According to the director of children services, Gladys Gates, the child was still in the shower.

“She pretty much lives in there. She goes in when she wakes up, and stays in there until we turn the water off at night.

“She gets out of the shower, puts on her little gown, and rocks herself to sleep, whispering what I thought at first was a lullaby. I now know it's just her talking to herself. ‘Unclean. Unclean. Can't get the Tasing off,’ is all she says over and over again until sleep takes her away.

“The poor, li'l thing: that'll learn her.”

It's called “Tough Love,” people, and if more of you would practice it, the world would be a much better place for me to be in, because I wouldn't have to share space with your bad-ass kids. The only problem I have with this story is that it doesn't end with the cop getting a medal.

Now, that's a crime.

“I Know How the Gates Got Pearly”

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* I believe that's a Maya Angelou poem.

“Thank You, Oprah. I Agree. It Is the Greatest Book You've Ever Read.”

Posting has been light, as you've probably noticed (or, more likely, didn't). It's National Novel Writing Month, and I've been distracted, spending way too much time on my roman à clef of a young boy coming of age in the 70s, struggling to understand what it means to be a man in the new age of women's liberation, black militancy, and “passing” in post-Civil Rights Movement America.

To explain the plot further at this point would be difficult, but if you can imagine a story that marries Shaft and Sounder, you're half-way there. It's tentatively entitled Please Don't Dunk This Oreo.

And, yeah, it's practically writing itself, page after page after page. It almost feels like I'm cheating. I mean, at this rate, I might write two novels, this one and its sequel, What Part of ‘Please Don't Dunk the Oreo’ Didn't You Get?

So until I'm back to blogging in full force, I hope stuff like this video of snowboarding gone wrong will tide you over.

I'll Have What He's Having

Tinky Winky, the teen years