Serious Advice for Children

(Another translation from Joachim Ringelnatz’s 1931 Children-Confusion-Book; read about him here). Serious Advice for Children (Ernster Rat an Kinder) Woodchips fall when you plane Corpses float in the Seine Every boat below the deck Gets covered in a sticky dreck Beneath the mane’s greasy patina Of every lion and hyena Cling a host of critters In …

And Don’t Bring the Shredder

Nathan’s nomination for Worst Father’s Day Gift is already out there (as is my dissent), but he’s got competition. The Huffington Post’s nominees are up here, in slideshow form. And they are definitely bad, at least most of them (that bike/mower doesn’t seem so horrid to me, though I doubt it’s much fun to use …

It’s all right not to have kids

By coincidence I happen to have several women friends all of whom are in their mid-forties, are recently (within the last couple of years) married, and are all either having children or attempting to have them. As you might expect, the ones having babies have had some assistance from modern medicine (twins, anyone?), at times …