KJToo

Last night, Miscellaneous G™ and I took a trip to Hobby Town USA before commencing our console gaming activities. I wandered through the aisles of the store, practically drooling at the model rockets, slot car racers, remote control aircraft and model trains, dreaming of bringing each home to my young apprentice. Despite my innate ability to rationalize almost anything, even I was unable to conjure a justification for dropping three hundred dollars on a toy boat before Kyle can roll over without adult intervention.

Miscellaneous G™, having recently seen one of the kids on my cul-de-sac playing with a remote control airplane, was in search of something simple, stylish and relatively inexpensive that he could fly around the vast fields surrounding his dojo in the country. As I explored the Star Wars models—recalling that I have an unassembled model of the Millennium Falcon in the closet at home—Miscellaneous G™ solicited the help of a friendly sales person, who apparently tried to sell him remote control aircraft that cost more than many European sports cars.

We were about to admit defeat and leave the store when I spotted two things: a thirty-dollar, battery-powered remote control biplane and the Magic Wigglee. The plane was just the sort of thing Miscellaneous G™ had been looking for, so he made his way to the checkout while I watched the jittery, jumping video on the Magic Wigglee endcap.

Amazing! The fuzzy, googly-eyed little worm climbed out of a glass, then crawled over a little girl’s hands and between her fingers! In the video, children laughed and clapped at the antics of this mischievous little artificial annelid as it wiggled to and fro, seemingly of its own accord.

I’ve got to give the proprietor of Hobby Town USA a lot of credit; he didn’t even crack a knowing smile as I loudly declared, “I have to know how the hell this things works,” and then plunked down not one, but two of the four-dollar wiggling wonders on the counter. He didn’t chuckle to himself, recalling the immortal words of P.T. Barnum as he swiped my debit card. The guy’s face was an immobile slab of granite as I signed away $7.98-plus-tax of my hard-earned money; nary the faintest tremor or twitch tugged at the corners of his mouth.

After fastening my seatbelt in Optimus Prius Supercar, I eagerly tore open the package. A small, folded piece of paper labeled “Top Secret” promised to reveal the mystery behind the Magic Wigglee’s hidden means of locomotion. “It’s probably a string,” Miscellaneous G™ muttered as I prepared to peek behind the curtain to look upon the wizard’s true face.

Of course it was a string. Tucked into the folded paper was a small piece of cardboard, around which was wrapped about eighteen inches of not-so-invisible thread. Immediately, I knew just how Ralphie Parker felt when he decoded Little Orphan Annie’s secret radio message in A Christmas Story. If Ralphie’s mom had heard the next few words I uttered, she would have crammed a bar of Lifebuoy so far down my throat I’d be farting bubbles for a month.

My first Father’s Day as the honoree has come and gone, and I’m quite pleased. Kyle gave me a big smile when I came down in the morning; he always does that, and it always makes me feel fantastic, but yesterday it was a Father’s Day smile, and that made it even better.

A big smile wasn’t all I got for Father’s Day, either. I also received:

1. Membership in the William Shatner DVD Club: William Shatner has “assembled a series of films that run the gamut of Sci-Fi, Horror and Fantasy, including underground hits, genre classics, and even some gems pulled from the far reaches of independent cinema.” Each month, one of these gems will be delivered to my mailbox. The long and short of it: more movie reviews.
2. A pair of Arizona Jean Company Rapids: Sandals to replace my current pair, which have served me well over the last several years and taken a lot of abuse. The new pair is very nice, but I won’t be getting rid of the old ones; they’ll be relegated to lawn mowing.

I’m pretty sure that Laura helped Kyle with the selection and purchase of those items.

To escape the heat and humidity of the International House of Johnson, we fled to the Manhattan Deli for breakfast, then assembled at my in-laws’ air-conditioned abode for a day of Carpocalypse, Ultimate Obstacle Course and drag-racing.Kyle and I also watched a show about the bloodline of Dracula on The History Channel, but we both fell asleep on my father-in-law’s comfy recliner about halfway through. Our involvement was fairly passive, but it was Father’s Day, and I understand that it is my duty as a patriarch-American to sit on my fat ass and watch TV all day.I’m very good at my duty.

After an afternoon of watching television, we enjoyed shishkebab for dinner, followed by homemade strawberry shortcake. My in-laws gave me a Superman Returns alarm clock, a picture of which I’ve been unable to find on all of the Internets.EDIT: It would seem that my searching of “all the Internets” was a bit lacking in scope. In fact, I did only a Google Image search. Thanks to my other apprentice, an image of the alarm clock in question has been located. Laura, Kyle and I gave my father-in-law a new, wireless Microsoft optical mouse.This was my suggestion, and a fairly selfish one, as my primary motive for giving the gift is that I don’t like cleaning the mouse every time I sit down to run maintenance on my father-in-law’s computer. He really did need a new mouse, though.

Late in the evening, we returned to our sweltering abode and I closed out the day by taking out the garbage and then shooting some filthy Communists. Not bad for my first Father’s Day. Not bad at all.

Five months have passed since my young apprentice emerged from his growth chamber, and I am most pleased with his progress thus far. While not yet able to roll over, sit up without support, or do a proper endo, Kyle’s advancement is nonetheless most impressive. Just look at these stats:

Name	Kyle Abraham Johnson		Level:	1	Class:	Neophyte		Age:	5 months
Race:	Human	Alignment:	Chaotic Cuddly			Size:	Small

STR	5	(-2)		Special Abilities & Equipment
DEX	4	(-3)		Enhanced Spit-up
CON	10			Improved Grab
INT	16	(+3)		Infectious Giggle
WIS	15	(+2)		Stinky Feet
CHA	17	(+3)		Baby Blues

The physical stats may seem dismal now, but I expect them to improve rapidly. I’ve already seen significant advancement in both Strength and Dexterity after only five months. The boy’s Charisma cannot be overstated; friends, relatives and strangers alike fall under his spell, reduced to grinning, babbling fools with a mere smile.

I get chills when I think about the power those blue eyes and the soft, cooing voice have over people. With Kyle at my side — or in the Snugli — the possibilities are endless. We will rule the cul-de-sac as father and son!

If you’re a mammal whose large, four-chambered heart has been pumping blood for more than twenty years, odds are you remember Sea Monkeys. In the 1970’s, Sea Monkeys were hawked on the back cover of 72% of all comic books sold in the United States.Pretty shocking, if you believe made up statistics. As a child I was bombarded with images of the shockingly humanoid creatures, naked from webbed foot to crowned head. Mother and father Sea Monkey cavorted beneath the surface with their two little Sea Monkey children. How could I not want a family of these amazing creatures for my very own?

Eventually, I purchased my very own Sea Monkeys (from Pamida, a store that has long-since closed), but I may as well have fed the money to the seagulls that congregated in the McDonald’s parking lot. In my eagerness to create instant life, I misread the instructions and failed to wait the required twenty-four hours between purifying the water and adding the eggsAccording to the Wikipedia entry on Sea Monkeys, the two-step process involves a bit of mis-direction, as the eggs are actually in the packet that claims to purify the water.. Convinced that I’d killed off the entire colony of aquatic simians — and still harboring unrealistic expectations as to what the creatures would look like — I dumped the entire thing down the drain the following day.

It was not until I was well into adulthood that I encountered actual Sea Monkeys, at work of all places. In the late 1990’s, there was a little more latitude about what could and could not be kept in one’s cubicle; plants (which are still allowed) and small fishbowls were not an uncommon sight, and one nostalgia-loving co-working proudly displayed her Sea Monkeys. She had not trained them in any way, so the Sea Monkey circus I often imagined in my childhood remained only a dream. Nonetheless, there they were: brine shrimp, flitting about in the plastic aquarium.

As an adult, I am often tempted to relive moments from my childhood. When I see that The SciFi Channel is showing an episode of The Incredible Hulk, or CMT is rerunning The Dukes of Hazzard, I occasionally tune in, hoping to recapture some of that childhood wonder. Almost invariably, this is the equivalent of kicking my inner child square in the crotch. Through the cynical lens of maturity, the layer of awesome surrounding so much of what I loved as a child is revealed to be nothing more than glitter glue.

This was especially true with Sea Monkeys, as the curtain of illusion was never drawn all the way back when I was a child and I never truly realized the truth; when I first saw those Sea Monkeys on my co-worker’s desk, my inner child expected that cavorting family of crown-headed, web-footed humanoids and instead saw Artemia salina. Doubling over in pain, eyes watering and face red, my inner child collapsed to the floor of my psyche, where he writhed and mewled until I could get to a comic shop and pick up the latest issue of Captain America.

You can still buy Sea Monkeys. The franchise has expanded to include, among other things, action figures, ensuring that another generation of fresh-faced children is crushed by a reality that doesn’t — in any way, shape or form — resemble the fantasy.

Every once in a while, I write up a fake news article designed to mimic the style of The Onion. I wrote this one a couple of years ago, before KJToo.com existed. I’m pretty sure we’ve all encountered our own Derek Thibideaux at some point. Enjoy.

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“The ego as we formerly understood it was a psychological construct. Today, we know differently. Today, we have evidence to suggest a physical manifestation of the ego.”

So said Dr. Raymond Smithfield at a press conference yesterday. Doctor Smithfield is a theoretical physicist at the esteemed Mauser-Hopkins Institute of Physical Sciences in Ellsworth, New Hampshire. The new evidence Dr. Smithfield refers to comes in the form of Derek Thibideaux, a sales clerk at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Mentor, Ohio. Thibideaux is regarded by his co-workers to be the single most self-involved person on the face of the planet.

“He’s got an opinion about everything,” said one co-worker, who preferred to remain anonymous. “No one can stand to even talk to him, because if you say one wrong thing he’ll rant for a good hour about why you’re wrong, how stupid you are, and why his point-of-view should be adopted by everyone. God, his ego is huge.”

“‘Huge’ is something of an understatement,” said Dr. Smithfield. “The size of Mr. Thibideaux’s ego defies explanation. What we can say is that it has a direct physical effect on the world as we know it. This an unprecedented discovery.”

Specifically, Derek Thibideaux’s ego exerts gravitation pull on everything around him. “Mr. Thibideaux weighs less than three hundred pounds, but our instruments have detected a gravitational field around his body.” The mass required to generate such a field, says Dr. Smithfield, “would be incomprehensible to the layperson. We literally have no point of reference for such a thing. It’s far less than that of Earth’s moon, but far greater than that of any man-made object or structure on our planet.”

The field is strong enough that Dr. Smithfield and his team were able to detect it without instruments. “The effect this gravitational force has on the human body is rather unusual,” he said, “typically manifesting in a mild nausea.”

“Derek’s presence is generally enough to make me ill,” said co-worker Melissa Hadley. “He’s so self-centered, I can hardly stand to be around him.”

“This is really quite a common complaint about severely egotistical individuals,” confirms Dr. Smithfield. “Until now, it’s always been assumed that this sensation of illness was merely figurative or – at the very worst – psychosomatic. Our findings reveal that it is very real, and that there is a physiological explanation for it.”

The team anticipated some skepticism. “It really is an unprecedented notion,” Dr. Smithfield admits, “but we’re confident that all our bases have been covered.”

Dr. Edmund Whittier headed the project. “We have been extremely careful and systematic throughout the discovery and quantification processes,” he said. “We certainly didn’t want to go public with this without due diligence. All other factors have been taken into account. The only possible source of this gravitational anomaly is Derek’s hyper-inflated ego.”

Not surprisingly, Thibideaux’s ego has grown significantly larger since the findings were verified. “Quite honestly,” said Dr. Smithfield, “we’re a little concerned. The gravitational force created by Derek’s ego increases proportional with his self-esteem.”

Dr. Whittier echoed his colleague’s concerns. “As self-centered as Derek is at present, this new attention simply exacerbates the problem. We’ve already found that gravitational field is growing. While this field causes mild nausea in humans, it can kill smaller animals, such as lab rats, and it’s only going to get stronger.”

Strong enough, Smithfield and Whittier theorize, to eventually bring about the destruction of the planet Earth, and perhaps even reshape the solar system as we now know it. “At the present rate of growth, we could see widespread loss of life in a few months. By the end of the year, Derek’s ego will be strong enough to alter the orbit of man-made satellites.”

There’s no telling how powerful this force could eventually become. “Derek knows that people are interested in him, that he is special, and this awareness serves only to feed his already astounding ego,” says Dr. Smithfield. “Whether the attention is positive or negative, Derek’s sense of self-importance is increasing exponentially. That could cause Earth’s moon to plummet into the planet, pull Venus and Mars into Earth orbit, or even send us careening into the sun.”

Efforts to reverse or even slow the growth of Thibideaux’s ego have proven unsuccessful. “Derek’s ego is, as best as we can tell, feeding on itself. We have experimented with sexual rejection, social ridicule and a number of other tried-and-true ego-deflating mechanisms with absolutely no effect,” said Dr. Smithfield. “We have been unable to find a way to negatively impact his self-esteem.”

“Great,” said Melissa Hayward. “As if he wasn’t overbearing before. It’s going to be practically impossible to work with him now.” Hayward is one of several female co-workers whose sexual rejection failed to damage Thibideaux’s ego.

“However you look at it, this is one of the most significant scientific findings in our lifetime,” said Dr. Whittier, “but we don’t know whether to call it a breakthrough in physics or psychology.”

[Editor's Note: Though Derek Thibideaux repeatedly made himself available for interviews, none of our reporters could stand to talk to him for more than a few seconds. He really is an arrogant, self-absorbed, condescending prick.]