Category: Uncategorized

SPOILER ALERT: Let’s Talk About Antasay

If you are a kid and you’re reading this, shame on you! Really, though. Stop reading now and go outside and play or read a book.

Ok, moms and dads, since it’s Memorial Day, and there shouldn’t be any red flags, I need to talk about how we fuck our kids up with Santa Claus. This guy seems to be the source of the biggest, most easily accepted, and most soul crushing cryptozoological phenomenon in the last thousand years. This jolly, red creation is a force of both joy and crippling disappointment, so why do we do it?

As a dad of an almost seven-year-old, I have had to dodge the landmines of my son’s classmates with older siblings telling their peers that there is no Santa. My wife and I have had to practice spurious logic in explaining the synchronous presence of Santas at the mall, in front of grocery stores, at school events, at Christmas festivals, on T.V., and pretty much everywhere you look starting around Thanksgiving. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy. I’m a fan of the vintage style Saint Nicholas, myself. I just know that I’m perpetuating a lie that will inevitably destroy my credibility with my son.

I remember that first Christmas after I found out that there was no such thing as Santa, and I remember having to keep up the ruse for my younger brother, thinking, “You poor, poor bastard. If you only knew what is coming.” My brother is much more emotionally reserved than I am, so he seemed to take it on the chin way better than I did. Santa would be my argument winner for any religious teachings that have followed since. I’m not saying that religion has no merit, because I believe in the Big ‘Ol Clockmaker and the power of faith and prayer, but you’d better not pee dogma on my leg and tell me it’s raining because I have worked through the Santa thing.

As someone who has committed to keeping the faith in the potential shattering of faith, I have to admit that I love it. I enjoy seeing the joy on my son’s face on Christmas morning. I love it when my wife writes a reply letter from Santa and puts it in the mailbox for my son to read. I even like the attempt to get him to see the man with the bag at the mall (still no dice, there). So, am I putting me and my son through psychological boot camp for my own enjoyment? Well, maybe a little.

Santa is fun, but damn it if I don’t get a knot in my belly when I think about that inevitable talk. I’d much rather explain the mysteries of death, where babies come from, or why no one but you, the doctor, or, in a pickle, your parents should ever touch your privates (he’ll figure out the joys of a simple tug job on his own). Maybe Santa is our cultural reminder of the sour and the sweet. Maybe Santa sets us up to be able to handle feeling crestfallen when we learn our parents love us but are fallible humans, institutions are only as good as our active involvement, and that people might just disappoint us (thanks a fucking lot, Bill Cosby). Perhaps Santa is the problem that we’re supposed to reconcile to help us come around to understanding the spirit of Christmas. I just wish it didn’t have to hurt my kid.

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

 

Happy Life Day! May the… awe, fuck it.

 

I want to believe.

 

Remember the empty threat of no presents for Christmas?

 

As good an explanation as any…

 

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

There Will Be Blood

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that kids will probably freak the fuck out if they see a parent bleeding. There’s also a pretty good chance that, within the larger group of kids who will freak the fuck out when they see a parent bleeding, there is a subset that will also freak the fuck out if they see a parent faint. I can’t say that I’ve done scientific due diligence here, but I have made close observations in one, unplanned case.

My son, much like his father, runs high on the sensitivity scale. We were riding a pretty positive wave while my wife was out of town this weekend, and I felt like I could at least place in the top ten of a Fun-Dad-Of-The-Year pageant. We were two dudes living the life: playing board games, watching movies, pleasantly doing chores around the house, laughing, playing catch, and feeling the gift of warm spring sunshine. That is, until I decided to make friends with a stray tomcat.

Our family is an animal friendly one, and sometimes animal friendly people take some unwise risks. Our oldest cat, who still has some metaphorical balls if not actual balls, is more bluster when it comes to fighting. In his advanced age, he will acquiesce to neighborhood cats if a good holler doesn’t work. I tend to forget that, and I did so when I saw him sitting with an un-neutered, gray tomcat. The strange cat meowed a friendly kind of meow to me from under a bench on our front porch. I decided to make a new animal friend by trying to scratch him under his chin. Acting from a cornered position and seeing a giant, bald human reaching for him, he decided to tear me a new asshole.

The cat placed my new asshole on my hand, and probably hit a vein on one of my knuckles. The result was a bloodbath that put a slight damper on our otherwise nice weekend. I ran to the sink, freaking out, and my son followed suit when he saw my bloody, new-assholed hand. Now, I’m what you might call a “fainter.” As being one of these “fainters,” I staggered to a clear spot on the living room floor to make way for a good faint. Well, my son, not being accustomed to his dad in full-on faint mode, mistook the slow ebb of consciousness as my soul leaving the earthly plane. Yep, he freaked the fuck out.

This wasn’t the first time I have passed out (ask my phlebotomists) or got hurt by trying to make an animal friend (I got my face hurt trying to give a cat a hug, once), and it certainly won’t be the last. All in all, the rest of the weekend was good, my wife gave me a good talking to when she got home on Sunday, and I have an appointment to get antibiotics. Maybe I toughened my son a little. Maybe I took one for the team to teach a life lesson that might spare him his own bloody, fainty experiences. Probably, though, I just added to the litany of stories in the book of Dumb Shit My Dad Did. C’est la vie.

 

 

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

Animals (not humans) fainting

 

“I ain’t got time to bleed.” Well, maybe I do.

 

\m/

 

C’st La Vie

 

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

Taking the Piss

I can’t speak for most dads, but I like to think that I’m not alone in having a rich mental life, where I bond with my son while dispensing wisdom to a receptive young mind. Usually, what I imagine is like T.V. super dad pontificating, but what comes out is frat boy level stupid. Sometimes, though, there’s a magical spark in all our Animal House shenanigans.

It’s nice when a generational bond comes in the form of a shared cultural phenomenon like Star Wars. Since Brian Posehn already claimed anything I could share about a father and his progeny sharing a Star Wars experience, I’ll just say that I will forever appreciate looking over at my son, his tiny face aglow with cinema lights and geek blossoms sprouting, and enjoying adventures of a galaxy far, far away and the toys spawned from those adventures. Since I can’t wax on about that experience, I’ll just muse over how nice it was to take a walk in one of our state parks and pee outside.

While he is six years old and still holds humbler, more affordable expectations for spring break, my wife and I took him to a state park during this year’s break. It wasn’t South Padre Island, but I think he had a good time. This particular state park has swampy lakes, birds galore, and free-range alligators. My wife and I enjoy that kind of thing, and we want to instill the same appreciation in our son. This is also the place where I proposed to my wife, so it holds a special place in my heart greater than most outdoorsy spots.

Our walk was nice, and my son was all on board as our nature tour guide. He pointed out birds, gators, bugs, and cool sticks. We were a happy family, surrounded by quiet nature whenever we could get away from other, much louder families. This happy day was forever cemented in the dad-son memory book when my son and I rushed ahead on a walking trail and pissed on a mature tree as nature intended us to do. What it is about two dudes peeing that makes them laugh then stare in Zen bliss? Why is it best outside? There’s probably a name for it in some psychology journal.

I don’t know why it was so much fun to take a leak outside. My wife could only shake her head and say that she wished we would have gotten ourselves more out of the way to do that. She’s probably right; we probably should have thought out our peeing around. I like to think that somewhere between my wife’s explanations of feathers and foliage and my epiphanies of serendipitous opportunities to take a whiz lies a happy balance. That balance is the brain capacity mixed with the bawdy fun of the nerdy Tri Lambs of Adams College. Yes, my wife is right. No, we should not have marred our nature walk by peeing on the trail. But, we had fun.

Thanks for the memories, kiddo.

 

Pissing in the Wind

 

There’s trouble with The Trees!

 

This is what I think about me and my son, but we’re really just peeing on things.

 

This is a side project from Dethklok’s Murderface. This has one of my favorite lines from any song ever, “Now what are you all doin’ on a Saturday night?
I’d rather be sleepin’ than gettin’ in a fight.”

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

Happy Father’s Day

A toast to you, dads and dad figures. This comes the day after Father’s Day by design. I respect your day of dad-ness and all the enjoyment you deserve. In fact, you deserve more than one day, but let’s take the day with gratitude. You do not always display the greatness that lies within, but it is there, waiting for an opportunity to shine to the world.

You have hidden strength that you hone in secret, crushing full garbage to more compact, manageable garbage. That shows thrift, by the way.

Should a challenger come to test your dexterity, you can draw on your reserves, comb in nimble fingers, to deftly give a show of Track and Field arcade tapping. Those are your quarters on top. You always have next!

Some may challenge your memory, citing omitted grocery store items and forgotten birthdays. Ha! Can those doubters recall Dead Ted, Potty Scotty, Windy Winston or Barfin’ Barbara? You can pull Garbage Pail Kids’ names with no effort, and what have they? 

Yes, you dads of perfectly ripe vintage don’t just remember when this was all just fields, but you also remember trekking through that field to rent The Three Amigos from The Movie Shack three times that one summer.

Fly your dad banner and relax, Dads. I will honor you even after that special day.

 

Here’s to you, Dad.

Happy Father’s Day!

Otto Scungy

 

Track & Field

 

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

 

The Three Amigos