Appliance of the Week 2: The “Dryer”
Posted: July 21, 2009 Filed under: Funny (looking), Uncategorized 6 CommentsWelcome, once again, to our special “Appliance of the Week” feature! What’s that? You say I missed a week? Well that’s curiously apropos, since today’s appliance is So Last Week! Yes, I’m talking about YOU, “Dryer”! I have learned to circumvent your deviltry, yes I have!
But first things first. Here’s the miscreant:
That’s the “dryer” up top, of course, and his partner-in-crime, the washing machine, down below. This is not that different than our set-up at home, frankly, except that at home the dryer holds less than the washer, which holds less than the laundry basket. Here, I noticed right away that the laundry basket holds exactly the volume that the washer and “dryer” hold – basically, one outfit for each of us, plus some extra socks.
Sure, it’s small. That’s not what torques me. Similarly, the controls are in Japanese, as one might expect:
But hey, that’s why I learned katakana, right? I know which indicator light is for the hiitaa, which is the taimaa, and which the ko-oh-su. I’ve even learned the kanji for high (or maybe hot?), low (or maybe cool?), and minute (that one I know I’ve understood correctly). And of course, as you may have anticipated, the big orange button is the Sutaato.
(For those who don’t know the trick to katakana: hiitaa=heater, taimaa=timer, ko-oh-su=course, sutaato=start)
Except that it isn’t, for some reason. You have to push the red-circled button first. The one with no katakana to explain it. But hey, ha ha, let the machine have its little joke! This is not the kind of thing that makes me want to take a baseball bat to its rusty chassis!
Here’s the interior:
Ha ha! Roomy! And boy howdy does it get hot! It heats up the whole damn house, it’s so hot! Someday we’re gonna open it and find our underpants on fire, yes indeed!
That Wheel of Terror at the back is the filter. Let’s clean it, shall we?
Erm. Assuming we can get it out. Hang on. There’s a trick to it, clearly. A trick I haven’t worked out yet, but when I DO, watch out… urng… world…
Okay. Here. I saved you some lint. See how I’ve started peeling it off the fine mesh? That looks straightforward enough, doesn’t it? That’s because you haven’t yet noticed the evil that lies beneath:
Underneath the fine mesh is a layer of pure WTF. It’s like thick felt. I don’t know why it’s there, except that apparently the fine mesh isn’t fine enough – an awful lot of lint gets through. And yes, it clings to the felt. And what am I supposed to do, exactly? Pick lint out of the felt? You try it. It can’t be done, with human fingers. I sometimes take a fork to it, but it doesn’t help.
But you know, even that I could forgive, if only this “dryer” got the clothes dry! How a machine can be simultaneously so hot and so ineffective, is beyond me.
When I was a kid, we used to hang our clothes out on a line, and I remember thinking to myself quite clearly: No Way. This is ASS. I’m happy to save energy any other way, but my clothes are going in the dryer, thankyew. But here, the lack of dryness has given me pause. Because you know this machine, for all its incompetence, isn’t using any LESS energy than my machine back home, even if I have to run it four times as long.
And so, yes, on sunny days, I am hanging up my clothes. They don’t really get dry in the house, either (but at least they’re not ripping through the kilowatts while doing it), but on a sunny day, if you hang the clothes up on the balcony, they will eventually dry.
Stiff as board, too. But we can’t have everything.
The end of Kindergarten
Posted: June 26, 2009 Filed under: Funny (looking), Uncategorized 2 CommentsThe last day of school came and went without a hitch. I realized, though, that I didn’t have a picture of Byron and his teacher! I took a pic on the very first day, with the teacher he had for three weeks, but never took one with Ms. Natasha. Maybe I was afraid she’d disappear too!
Anyway, here they are, on the last day of school. Byron is reading her a story he wrote, with a certain amount of difficulty: he can read, but he can’t spell, so reading what he wrote is almost impossible, unless he remembers it in detail… which in this case he didn’t.
He is painfully sounding out words that sound like nothing when you try to read them that way. But Natasha, that old pro, enjoyed it ANYWAY. She’s that good.
And now, the home stretch to Japan…
Raisin’ a charmer, here
Posted: May 13, 2009 Filed under: Eat me, Funny (looking), Moron Monday, Uncategorized 1 CommentSo yesterday afternoon I had a terrible headache, which the lad, of course, took as license to be really rowdy.
Me: Dude, would you mind NOT climbing all over me and shouting, right now? My head really hurts!
B: Why does your head hurt?
Me: Oh, this time of year, there’s all this pollen, and my sinuses…
B: Maybe you have BRAIN DAMAGE.
Lucky for him, a good hard laugh was exactly what I needed right then.
A well and happy toilet
Posted: August 24, 2006 Filed under: Funny (looking) 1 CommentAll fixed! I should be a plumber in my next life, I really should.
Meanwhile, today’s other headlines* include:
Moron Mom Forgets Camera — Again! Misses Chance to Photograph Offspring in Firetruck, With Uniformed Mountie. “She knew they’d be here; that’s why she came!” says local Drop-in Lady.
Mounties Have the Coolest Boots in Entire World! Hats Not Bad, Either; Poofy Pants Must Go. Local smartass resists making Dudley Do-right cracks.
Jaws of Life Needed to Pry Preschooler from Firetruck. Who Knew They Were so Tenacious?
Bawaffle — It’s What’s for Lunch! What’s a “Bawaffle?” Local Chefs Baffled!
Toddler Announces: “I Stop Sucking Thumb When I Go to Preschool!” Immediately Falls Aleep Sucking Thumb. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” says local mom.
*With a wink and a nod to my sister Laura!
Differential diagnosis
Posted: July 26, 2006 Filed under: Funny (looking) 10 Comments(This one’s not going to make a lot of sense unless you watch House, so most of it is under the fold.)
Foreman, Chase, and Cameron are sitting around the table. House comes in and casually tosses a file in front of them.
HOUSE: Tell me what you make of this one: three year old with low-grade fever, coughing for a week and a half beforehand, driving his mother crazy with his incessant negativism…
FOREMAN: We can’t do a diagnosis on the kid! She hasn’t even brought him in yet!
HOUSE: The negativism is contagious! Let me finish, you idiot. The kid isn’t the patient — it’s the mother. She’s on a cleaning rampage, and she’s hearing TV characters in her head. Differential diagnosis?
Um, dang.
Posted: February 15, 2005 Filed under: Funny (looking) 8 CommentsAll right, well. My little TV rant sure did bring everybody out of the woodwork.
This means only one thing to me: I’ve got a receptive audience for my Philosophical Magnum Opus.
I know, I know. My sister Laura is the ethicist, or at least, the grad-student ethicist. And I DID pitch this idea to her first, but NOOOO. She has other ideas for her “dissertation”. Yeah. What-EVER! So it looks like it’s up to me.
The magnum opus will be called: Ethics, Worldview, and the Problem of Evil in Preschool TV Programming: Examining the Philosophical Scalps of Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine, The Berenstain Bears, and Others, for Ethical Cooties. Oh, and Hermeneutics. All Prestegious Scholarship Contains Lots of Hermeneutics Anymore, and This is No Exception.
You’re intrigued now, aren’t you. A snappy title will do that.
A correspondence
Posted: February 6, 2005 Filed under: Funny (looking) 3 CommentsFrom: The Academy of Infantile Sciences
Publications Review Board
Dear Dr. Oser:
We regret to inform you that your recent submission, Mommy and Daddy: Different Sexes? has NOT been accepted for publication in Infantile Research Quarterly. As you are aware, ours is an experimental journal, and this kind of theoretical speculation is beyond the scope of our interests.
In light of your previous exemplary work, especially Objects Always Fall When Dropped and It IS Possible to Eat With a Spoon, we would be willing to reconsider this paper if you were to add some concrete, real-world research. Your idle speculation that the presence of facial hair and chest bulges indicates entirely different genders is insupportable without further experimentation. If you were, for example, to observe differences during Mommy and Daddy’s diaper changes, perhaps we would have more to discuss.
Sincerely,
Dr. Marcus “Sweet Potato” Franks
Dr. Claudia “Bugaboo” Norton-Bing
—————————————————————-
From: Oser Labs, 4th Avenue
Office of the Director
Dear Review Board:
I am formally withdrawing my paper from your consideration. If your academy is so stuck in old ways of thinking that you go so far as to ignore current research (e.g Dr. “Squeaker” Reese’s Mommy and Daddy Do Not Wear Diapers), then I believe our professional relationship is at an end. Experiments are underway here at Oser Labs, including the “Lift Mommy’s Nightie” and “Walk in on Daddy in the Bathroom” projects. Results are slow in coming, due largely to funding issues, but this in no way invalidates our preliminary results regarding beards and boobs.
My paper will be resubmitted, unchanged, to the Toddler Science Journal, and won’t you feel silly when it comes out!
Cheers,
Dr. Byron “Pooka” Oser
Rachel of the Pointy Elbows
Posted: January 11, 2005 Filed under: Funny (looking) 11 CommentsSo after bragging, shamelessly, that I was going to enter Blogging for Books again, I then failed to write ANYTHING for it. I do other things, people! We are busy busy busy here at Casa Milkbreath.
Well Jay (curse you, Jay!) extended the deadline. Did I curse Jay already? I guess I did. So how can I NOT enter, now? Especially considering that my scathing trash-talk probably scared off half the people who would’ve entered this time. I feel I have an civic duty, at this point.
And so, without further ado, an episode from my daily life (which I blogged about previously here. Sorry if that was confusing earlier) …
milkbreath and me 