Hyrum's Stand Up Comedy Routine

Hi there. Hy here.

So let's talk about underwear. Kids underwear is a marketing device. Now I'm okay with this. But they put the marketing on the backside of the underwear. What's up with that?

I want to see my marketing. But then my parents tell me I put my underwear on backwards. I can't see Buzz or Lightning McQueen or any of them on my back! Who came up with this?

My split personalities - a little navel gazing

In real life, Myers-Briggs tells me I am an introvert (like I needed someone to tell me I recharge my batteries by being alone and expend it in social interaction) who prefers abstract, intuitive thinking and that I prefer to use my thinking rather than my intuition to understand the rest of you (aka INTJ, the Mastermind, the rarest of the typologies). My boss is also INTJ so we get along splendidly. Joy, oddly enough, is ESFP - she would be my exact opposite if I didn't actually have a 60/40 split on each of the categories.

But my blogs are another story. Cue the Typealyzer who will perform a Myers-Briggs on your blog in seconds. This blog ... does not look like me. It is extroverted to my introvert, concrete to my abstract, and feeling to my thinking. We can't blame Joy because she's seldom on here. Far from being a Mastermind, around here I'm a Socializer! Our answer is that this is just a forum and place for me to express my other not-quite-half.

My work blog on the other hand is almost exactly me (The Duty Fulfiller). The only difference is that again I use concrete examples of things that are present in my communication rather than sticking to abstract thought.

I like the pictures of brain activity these two blogs present. Pity they won't let me copy and paste. Each blog lets me emphasize a very different part of my brain. (I enjoy that my brother's blog - Mental Meanderings of a Modern Superhero - gets a depiction of a fellow with a sword and shield, and the description for my mother's sounds about spot on.)

My clever Dad: Fractured Proverbs

From my dad's Sunday School lesson -- he'll tell you the wrong proverb, you come up with the right form.

a. Debt goeth before destruction.
b. Train up a show dog in the way he should go.
c. To every thing there is a mass, and an atomic number to every atom under the heaven.
d. CAST thy socks upon the washer: for thou shalt find it after many days.
e. A good lawyer turneth away wrath.
f. For as blood pumpeth in his heart, so is he

Daddy says...

Hyrum has a new favorite phrase. "Daddy says ..."

Daddy says, I the Tickle Monster! Once he started tickling me, I would ask, "Are you the Tickle Monster? Are YOU the Tickle Monster??" which he enjoyed immensely and Mommy didn't. I was relieved that the next day he changed his tune: Sometimes Hyrum reports that I say he is the Tickle Monster, sometimes that I am, sometimes that Mommy is. But Daddy clearly has the authority to say who is Tickle Monster and should commence tickling at once.

Hyrum's turns as Tickle Monster are very cute: first he gives us a beep, then with his hand already so conveniently placed, he gives our chins coochicoos while smiling broadly. Oh, it's cute! Tests have also confirmed that Hyrum knows he is not a monster, that he is a child of God and a big boy, so Daddy is out of the soup.

Daddy says, Play Family Feud. We found a Family Feud version on Facebook and Hyrum played it with us by laughing whenever we got an X. Today he tried to convince Mommy to play it with him by claiming I told him to.

Joy hypothesizes that Hyrum thinks whatever he wants is what Daddy wants too, so "Daddy says" is just a way to say he wants something. ... only cuter. It is true that he is picking up on things I have introduced to him.

Another possibility is that he's decided if he can't get what he wants by saying "I want," maybe he can get it by claiming that Daddy said it. If that's the case, he will eventually learn how a family runs, and it's not by playing "Simon says." Watch out when he discovers the power of "Mommy says," though!

Oh, and another wonderful breakthrough happened last week. Hyrum knows his name!

No, seriously. Up until last week, if asked his name, he would say something that resembled "Hammer." Now he's up to "Hy-um" or "Hywum." It'll be a while before he gets that R firmly in place, though. ... I wonder how long it took me to figure out Derrill.... Grandma, any ideas?

Maybe we need a website that will tell parents how long it will be before their child can pronounce its name. "Bob" comes before "Robert" comes before "Mahonrimoriancumer."

Happy Fathers' Day

Lawful Good Vampires

While getting ready for bed, I thought about the poor, cliched 'good' vampire. There is exactly one way to identify a good vampire: he or she struggles to control the urge for human blood. Good vampires eat animals. Cutesy vampires eat chocolate or are vegans.

Blekh.

Can't we come up with any arrangement for a vampire to be good and still get a daily dose of vitamin A-postive? Oh sure, vampires can also rob blood banks, but that isn't lawful. With all the nice, decent people being turned into vampires by the chaotic and lawful evil vampires out there, how about a Lawful Good abomination for a change?

Well, Derrill, says I, how could it work? I came up with a half-dozen good ideas before drifting off. If you would like to use any of these vampires which I have never seen in print, please stick in an acknowledgment and send me a free copy of the book. My five best ideas in my order of preference:

1 -  Drac Locke (named after this guy, not this one) arrives in a poverty-stricken community with severe social tensions where the national government is completely ineffective. Transylvania, Somalia, California, take your pick. He offers protection, social order, and prosperity in exchange for feeding rights with the rotating "host" family. He keeps away predators, establishes justice, secures property rights, sets up local councils, teaches them new technologies and production methods, serves as international intermediary, and with his hypnotic powers prevents corporations' use of market power against them. The town prospers and they protect him against would-be vampire hunters.

2 - Dracscalante (this guy) becomes the local sorcerer/alchemist/scholar. He takes in children of willing parents and gives them an education compiled over his thousands of years of life, enabling them to escape from poverty. The price of tuition: a pint a day.

3 - Drac Grandin (this gal) domesticated a group of humans centuries ago for feeding stock. The conditions are as humane as possible, but c'mon, they're livestock. That's what they were born and raised for. The hero's debates on what constitutes "humane" treatment of livestock probably occupies a central part of the book. [By the by, I chose Ms. Grandin only in respect: "I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect." Now just think of a vampire with that attitude.]

4 - DracMan, caped crusader, makes criminals pay for their crimes in blood. [Granted, the lawful part is in question here.]
4b - Drac Norris fights the Taliban against the evil vampire bin Dracula.

5 - Dracenerny (this guy) is a grad student who lives in the basement of his university so he never sees the light of day whether he works or not. His hypnotic powers would explain how he's gotten funding for research for so long without ever producing a paper and why grad students feel like all the life has been sucked out of them. It's not grad school: it's Dracenerny!  [This is the least lawful good one of the group, but probably the easiest to turn into a comedy. Dracbert, anyone?]

Money!

My inner economist laughs with delight.
My inner Christian trembles at that whisper.

Hyrum has discovered coinage.

The Culture that is Finnish

Now that I've been in Finland less than 24 hours and walked around a small corner of Helsinki for two hours, I am an Expert on Finnish Culture. (Hey, I have as much experience in the country as most development missions before they pronounce how to solve poverty, right?) So what is special?

1 - In US restrooms, the icon representing women wears a knee-length skirt. In the Helsinki airport, she wears a miniskirt. At WIDER, she's reverted to the more modest knee-length again.

2 - "Every man is an architect. You plan the architecture of summer houses!" Finn Tarp opened the conference mentioning this, and he's not kidding. The facades of the buildings are amazing, and each one is remarkably different. Some are medieval stone, some have Arabic arches, some are all brick, some have Greco-Roman carved marble decorations. The colors are lovely and varied without clashing. Actually, I saw the first 5-story, Eurobau apartments that I thought might be places an American would like to live in. The restaurant I ate in for dinner had beautifully muraled ceilings Very attractive. [Oh, how I WISH they hadn't lost my luggage and CAMERA in the Manchester airport!]

3 - Barren windows. Shockingly, despite the enormous numbers of windows in all these architectural wonders, the windows are empty. I glanced at thousands of windows and in a couple hundred cars and saw: 1 printer, 1 fan, 2 potted plants in buildings, 1 dream catcher, 1 air freshener, and only three cars that had stuff in them. The cars were completely empty! Okay, I was glancing, not searching under the seats, but there was almost no individualization of windows or cars. For a course on flaneurie, I had once tried to identify which person in a store belonged to which car in the parking lot and I did pretty well - there was nothing to go on here! (aside from the owner of the East German Trabant)

Hyrum Strong

You know you're dealing with an academic when he posts a footnote to go with a comic strip. Or several. Y'know, for people unfamiliar with the connection between Wolverine and Republicans.

Being J.R.R.

A rib-tickling website, How to Write Badly Well, brings us this

HOMAGE WEEK #5: Try too hard to be J.R.R. Tolkien

Leotharg son of Peotharg, grandkin of Beotharg, whose horn had sounded over the fields of Giethen at the battle of Eyoiwylin Pass even as his people, descendants of Thargotharg the forgotten, sought shelter in the Great Forest of Than’Dythyll, sat down heavily.

‘Epyothnell of Yangdril,’ he said, ’protector of those who are lost and prophesied Lord of Balthangdrang’Grathril.’

‘Speak,’ replied Epyothnell of Yangdril, protector of those who are lost and prophesied Lord of Balthangdrang’Grathril.

‘My wounds are deep,’ said Leotharg son of Peotharg, nephew of Eotharg, second cousin of Uluklolotharg, ‘but I come before you to ask a boon.’

‘If it is in my power, it shall be made so,’ said Epyothnell of Yangdril of the bloodline of Esh, namer of the tree and maker of the book of chronicles. Leotharg bowed his head in supplication, as was the custom, and spoke.

‘I want to change my name,’ he said.

The Anticipated Day Arrived

I live for the annual talent show. I start seriously planning for it at least 6 months in advance, and give next year's performance thought even the day after I just finished the last performance. "Do you wait a whole day," Joy quips. "Joy knows her husband." What a pity the ward and the stake don't have a talent show anymore! Waa!

Thankfully, before we left the Branch, I got myself a Go Directly to Boardwalk card. So when the Branch held their talent show on Friday, Derrill was ready.

I had one of the silliest ideas I think I've developed. I gathered several instruments that I cannot play, read up on their history, development, and -oh yes - how to play them ... and gave myself almost no practice time. I announced one of my favorite grad school lines: In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice there often is. This would be a test of whether almost-pure theory could overcome total lack of practice.

"He just wanted to be like Professor Harold Hill" - the Think system. As I described the idea to Joy in September, I wondered which songs I should play. I started suggesting that I could start with this one song and then transition to another, and so on. Then Joy turned to me in the car and said, with that special look in her eye, "You actually think you can pull this off, don't you??"

I didn't get near the time I intended for studying theory, sadly. But I got just as little practice time as I could! I borrowed a guitar and an accordion on Saturday and Hyrum was kind enough to loan me a harmonica that he got for his birthday Monday night.

With about 15 minutes' practice on the guitar, 7 on the harmonica, and close to a half-hour on the accordion, I played and song a parody of "Ghost Riders" on the guitar; "Praise to the Man" on the harmonica, and "I Heard the Voice of Jesus" on the accordion. I also sang the rendition of "Popcorn Popping" I came up with one night for Hyrum done in a blues style.

I also told everyone, this would either be a demonstration of musical talent, or an opportunity to see me fall flat on my face. Either way - it should be fun. In fact, in the dress rehearsal that morning, I flubbed pretty badly. The performance went pretty well. I was quite pleased. I could tell what sections really needed a bit more practice, but I got through all the songs with major mishap, got some laughter, and the MC asked for a second round of applause for me. Pres. Horrocks, when he saw me later today, had to comment again that it took a lot of guts.

At one point, my fevered brain had imagined turning on a techno song ("I Can Walk on Water" by Basshunter) and playing that same song on guitar, accordion, bagpipe, and piano on each verse, including singing AND dancing. It looked really cool in my mind. But you can't get a bagpipe in Ithaca, and it turns out (from my studies) that you have to use a practice bagpipe chanter first to teach you proper breath control and fingering. Actually, the music store people laughed at me when I asked if they had a bagpipe for rent.

Thanks to everyone who loaned me their instruments! Thanks to Joy for giving me time to practice and useful pressure to keep my practice time limited, and to Hyrum for cheering "Again!" after each song. I love my little critic

Someone was taking video. If you happen to know who, please let me know so I can get a copy.

He is Risen

Happy Easter

Spelling attempts

Hyrum likes trying to spell out whatever is on the t-shirt I wore to bed the night before when I come get him in the morning. This week has been full of nostalgia for my undergrad institution.

"BYU 81st Ward" - It took him a while to figure out that d was not o, but he remembered it the next time I wore the shirt and got every letter correct yesterday morning.

"BYU Economics Club" - He got BYU and he got Club this morning. Spelling economics for the first time was cute. "E-CD-O-O-one-CD-S." There's a world of information about him in that spelling. There are times I'm glad to be an ecdoo1st. I believe that's pronounced ec-DOO-first, not to be confused with ec-DOO-fus.

Maybe I should wear the BYU Swing Kids t-shirt tonight and see what he makes of that. "Living the 8-count lifestyle."

What does this blog sound like?

Now you can find out what this blog sounds like. At the moment, it sounds like an organ synthesizer in the key of a minor. The first 30 seconds are probably the best. The song changes as the blog goes on, particularly if I were to start writing more words like bade, gad, caged, dead, ebbed, feed, deaf, etc. Hat tip: Newmark's Door

UPDATE: Now it's a piano. I like this version a lot less. Let's add another letter a to make it major.

UPDATE: Now there are horns with a very short drum part and, yes, it's A major now. Let's keep it that way.

UPDATE: Now it's a slap bass with the shortest drum part possible. Ugh.

UPDATE: Back to piano, back to minor, longer drum but still short.

UPDATE: And back to the major organ with a short drum. Fascinating.

It's All in How You Say It

Hermione unlocks doors in Southern California: "Aloha-like-mora."

The Jewish-Mormon sings: "I am a child of God. And He has sent me Here?? Oi!"

[My brother groaned over these, but the ladies stared at us, puzzled. So if this makes no sense to you, you're in good company. Derrill's just being silly.]

Dancing with the Toddlers

Dancing to "Tarantara" from Pirates of Penzance and preparing for his first musical chairs competition.

For those unfamiliar with the operetta, the police are singing, "We go. We go. Yes, forward on the foe" while wandering around in circles. The Major General sings his annoyance that they don't actually go, during which they pause. This is Hyrum's faithful reenanctment. "Tarantara" is their version of the "trumpet's marshal sound" which they recite to compensate for an innate lack of courage.

A little later, the pirates are making their climactic attack on the Major General's castle, singing in their loudest possible voice that their appreach is silent and stealthy, "With Cat-like Tread." During the movie version (thank you, Youtube!) they take a step, swing their swords for 3 counts, then take another step on the downbeat. This is Hyrum's reenactment.


UPDATE: Right this second, on the way back from a diaper change and Daddy singing Tarantara, he opened his mouth and spake, saying "I want Tarantara song, please."

WOOOOHOOOOO!

The End of the World

I've been meaning to talk about this for a few weeks now: the chance that you or I could be killed this weekend on Channel 9. Okay, not really.

(You may want to stop the video at the end of the song - even the ads for College Humor's other fare can be quite inappropriate. Courtesy Today's Big Thing. Contains zombies.)

But when I watched this, it got me thinking about The End of the World As I Knew It. (Funny thing, that). I realized that the world as I knew it has ended quite frequently. The last time the world ended was in September. When the world ends, it's not just a change in lifestyle, but a near-permanent rearranging of everything. It affects who I think I am and how I relate to the world, not just narrow confines. Adam would call it a shattering as you try to rearrange the pieces and create a new person from the old.

Though that reconsitution is never easy, the end of the world can be a good thing! Hyrum's birth ended the world as I knew it. Joy's too. It's a more complex, physically and emotionally-draining world, but a world with much greater sweetness and delight in little things.

Most of the time, the world ends without warning. The world as I knew it ended 6 years ago next week when I met Joy. It ended again shortly after we were married as my dissertation was shot down and I began doubting myself from the center out. It ended with little warning in the rain on the streets of East Germany while I lay waiting for an ambulance. It ended the night my date reached up to try to kiss me and I discovered for the first time there was hope for even me. ... Other people seem to have a lot to do with the end of the world.

Sometimes, though, the world ends on schedule. It ended on graduating from BYU and to a lesser extent from high school, but oddly enough not when graduating from Cornell - what really changed? not much. I expected a lot more to happen concurrently that didn't. I had fair warning when my missionary world was going to end and Hyrum came right on schedule.

The world can also end so gradually, you don't notice. Per was going to end the world and invite me into several new ones, though I had no idea of that when I met him. The world slowly ended while I sat on the nursery room floor to play with and teach the 2 year olds in our church. Regular temple attendance and repentance have continually changed the world as I knew it - always for the better, seldom obviously at first. The world ended one day studying the scriptures as I decided whether to go in to economics or German, but I had no idea what I was doing to the thin-spread, multi-majored undergrad Derrill.

Will moving to the ward be the end of the world as I know it? It felt like it last night after my last branch presidency meeting. But probably not. Then again, my Dad's first comment just happened to be mine also when we learned about it: "Time to grow up." Maybe it will all just be part of the gradual end of the world as I move from student to (someday) teacher - a consummation devoutly to be wished?

The Art of Leisure

Enh, Chuck Norris can do all that in his sleep

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Stuff You're Glad You Didn't Get for Christmas

The Airline Screening Playset. The website for this (done back in '05) is a hilarious description of one frustrated person's morbid playtime. I wonder if the latest version includes a full body scanner. Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.

Hyrum's other December adventures - a Joy post

Meal time has really progressed into something fun which I had never supposed possible. Hyrum will go to take a bite and then wrinckle up his face and say “oooooooo” . I will then laugh, he will give me an adoring grin and laugh too. What comes next is just as funny. He will purposely try to get me to laugh again, but his laugh becomes more fake the more times he tries it. But, although fake sounding it still produces his desired affect, because I will laugh even harder at the fake laugh than I did at the real one.

Fun new words for Hyrum are ‘clean’ when he wants his hands clean, and Fanm for Farm (old McDonald) He loves that song. Additionally Hyrum now says song as a way to request music, which is great, because music is his most requested item, besides Buzz Lightyear or Bob Builder.

So speaking of Buzz, a new game that Hyrum has replicated a few times is to put a toy on dad’s office chair (stand it up or put it in a specific place) and spin the chair. The game started by Hyrum being in the chair and mom spinning him, then he progress to spinning balls and now the special subject is Buzz. Buzz have only one rule the he is supposed to follow. Hyrum wants him to remain standing. As you can imagine, this is a little difficult for Buzz, but they are sometime successful in playing it according to the rules.

Yesterday Hyrum took apart his spiral ball toy. We didn’t stop him, but I didn’t rush to fix it for him. Infact I didn’t rush so much that Derrill got to putting it together before I did. It's the toy Derrill mentioned in the other post about frogs.

So now that the holidays are finally over it has been time for me to sanitize the house again. This means putting all of his toys in plastic bags or something so that he has to interact with me to get to them. It encourages social and language interactions and make me look like a big ‘chocolate chip cookie’ as the behavioralist that was over a couple conferences that I went to explains. Every time we spend time together we have fun and it has really improved our relationship. If he has free access to all of his toys he just plays and ignores me a lot. This technique has really stoked up his language quickly.

Hyrum has become a very persistent counter. He sits in his crib during nap time and practices saying ‘OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOne-ah, Twoooooo’ and he uses all his little energy in each word and spits with the Two. He is also quite fond of 9 and 10. When we finish time out we always count out the last 10 seconds and about 7 or 8 (or during the whole thing) Hyrum with say, ‘ni, ni, ten!’ by the time he say said he is in a pretty good mood no matter how bad timeout was. What I find fascinating is that he has already generalized counting into conducting. Because when he conducts the Halleluiah chorus, he says ‘1, 2….. 1, 2’ but when he points each object gets both a 1 and a 2 in quick succession.

Another fun number thing with Hyrum is while eating. He will tell us his word for each food that he likes to eat as his request. The beginning of December Derrill started a new game with Hyrum that he loves. After Hyrum lets us know what kind of food he wants to eat, then we ask him how many. He usually responds with ‘TWO!’ and we give him 2 spoonfuls. Sometimes he will just say the number and not type of food, but we wheedle it out of him.

Two new favorites for Hyrum of books are Hands are Not for Hitting and Germs are not for Sharing. There is book that we read with Hyrum that he almost always giggles when we read it. It is ‘Red Hat, Blue Hat’ and because of the book he has started to say Ooops all by himself. It is a riot, as you can see in the video.

And news flash, Hyrum will finally wear a hat, on occasion. Some of the necessary requirements are that it is HIS idea and that the hat go on and off when he wants it to. He is pretty proud of himself for putting it on. He is mostly interested in hats that dad has been wearing recently.

Playing with blue play doh has also become a must, infact at the beginning of a meal yesterday he was so determined to play with it he told us he was all done eating after only a couple of bites. We told him he could be all done, but he was going to a nap and not playing with playdoh, he finally was willing to eat his lunch, but it took a while to convince him we were firm on that decision.

Snow time is fun too. Hyrum calls it Sonow. I go out to shovel and he goes out to tromp, fall, and get hit with the snow that I shovel over his head. It is all in fun. It really started out as a technique to keep him close to me and out of the road and has turned into a game. I get a large shovel full of snow and say ‘up…. And over’ as I pick it up and thrown it on to the nearest pile. Well, Hyrum started trying to get close to me as I was doing this so I would throw it over his head, which he get the biggest kick out of . But he likes it even more is a little snow falls him on the way over. He also helped me sweep some snow off of the car.

He is a fascinating kid in every way.