Suck My Eyeball
2005-03-14,

This weekend was something truly awesome -- H and I (and a couple of other parents) took the (Cub Scout) Wolf den to the Cleveland Natural History Museum to sleep overnight on Friday. We even got to sleep in the dinosaur room! And none of the kids got freaked out by sleeping in a room full of skeletal monsters! Yay!

It started out with an opener in the conference hall, going over the basics of how the night would go. Then we split up into groups and did some kid-level cool stuff in various parts of the building: we learned about wing structure (the theme of the event was 'feathered dinosaurs', how birds today are elated to everyone's favourite fossils); got a panhistorical perspective on egg laying; and did an archeological dig by excavating chocolate chips from their host cookie, using only a wooden pokey stick. H and I both complained that we needed brushes to do our work properly; I don't think they would have appreciated us blowing cookie crumbs across the room.

After that, we got to see the official Feathered Dinosaur display, which along with a lot of interesting info, featured some nifty animated dinosaurs. The protoceratops and the velociraptor were okay, but the best one was the t-rex. It wasn't one of those clunk-clunk, whirr-snap, ka-chunk, let's-pretend-I'm-moving-and-scary contraptions; it was swinging it's head around and roaring like it meant business. While the boys thought it was awesome (and were poking fun at it, I think in order to alleviate their subtle - and understandable - fear of the thing), we the parents agreed that it was at least disconcerting to see this massive thing flailing about. If I have time and motivation, I'll post the vid I took of the thing with my digital camera.

Then it was quiet time, to either get ready to sleep or stay up to watch a movie. The two features were the phenomenally bad Gargoyles, starring a young Scott Glenn, and the Hitchcock classic, The Birds (get it? Birds? Theme?). I'm sure that I slept through most of Gargoyles, and then moved on to do some reading and go to bed. I vowed to stay up late, so as to give sleepers plenty of time to soak up some serious Delta waves before being subjected to my notorious snoring. H said I did pretty well that night, and that she only had to poke m a couple of times to get me to snore down. I think part of that success was due to my lack of real sleep, as a sleeping bag and comforter are not much of a barrier between my aging frame and the cold, very hard floor of the dinosaur room. I was a little loopy the next day, go figure.

The rest of the weekend went quietly; Saturday night brought another Socrates Caf�/wine party event our way, though it was really more of a decompression social gathering than a proper discussion. Most of us were so razzed out by the last two months that few of us were able to wax anything near philosophical.

Last night we had a coupon from the video store for a free rental, so we traded it in for a copy of Ray, which was quite good, though I wasn't happy with the abrupt ending, like the editor suddenly realized what time it was and slapped together a typical 'where-are-they-now' ending so he could get to his next appointment.

So we're at the video store, just bout to leave, when H spots something on the counter. My immediate thought (said aloud) was, "Oh god, what nasty thing have they come up with now?" This store is notorious for having questionable candy options on display for sale; it's where we first saw the wretched White Chocolate Resse's PB Cups (why, God, why?).

Her only response was, "Uh..." She picked up what she was looking at, which was an Easter holiday treat, one would assume. It was a cardboard square, with the picture of an Easter bunny's head. Or at least most of his head; the board had two eyeball lollipops inset, and they were placed where the bunny's eyes should be. The lollipop sticks were poking out of the bottom, so you could twirl them around inside the packaging. So what they were pawning to kids was the opportunity to suck on the Easter bunny's eyes. Happy Holiday! How sick (yet fun) is that? I think it should come with a vulture hand puppet, and you can use it to pluck the eyeballs out of the packaging.

I promise to make an effort to take a picture of the thing when I take Ray back to the store.

All Hail the Dying Clown.

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