Alternative Uses for Common Household Objects

Discovering a new source of energy can't be far off ...



I bet you never thought about using shorts to keep your neck warm.




Lens cap: safety device or tasty snack?

Milo's iPod is also a phone. Is yours?

A Quick List of What Will Happen When You Bring A 13-Month-Old On A Plane

1. Within 15 minutes of getting on the plane he will take a dump.

2. By the end of the flight you will be covered in milk/Diet Coke/drool.

3. He will smash the seatback tray onto his head/snap his fingers in the seatbelt/slam the window shade on your fingers.

4. He will lose one or both of his shoes.

5. Midway through the flight your spouse will point out the dried applesauce/piece of cheese/brown smudge that has attached itself to your sleeve.

6. The 13-month-old will insist, twenty minutes into the flight, on walking up and down the aisle and saying hello to every single person on the plane.

7. Half an hour before landing he will turn beet red and launch himself across the width of the plane while shrieking.

8. The flight crew will be forced to suggest to you that perhaps letting him play with the emergency exit door is not wise.

9. He will drink all his milk and cry for more. When he receives said milk he will indicate that what he really wants is your seltzer. When, after taking a sip of seltzer, he discovers he hates it, he will indicate that what he really wants is to bang his head against the window. When he discovers that hurts, he will indicate what he really wants is to be OFF THIS MOTHERFUCKING PLANE. (See number 7.)

10. After you have spent an entire day trying to please and placate him, the 13-month-old will see Hillary Clinton on television and call her "Mama".

Next He'll Be Ordering A Pizza

This morning, as I was packing up my laptop and files so I could schlep into Manhattan for a meeting, the doorbell buzzed.

"Who is it?" I called into the intercom. It was a little early for UPS; my money was on Mormons or ConEd.

"Police," said the intercom.

This seemed highly unlikely, so instead of buzzing in the "police" I walked to the front door, where there were indeed two of New York's finest standing on the stoop.

"Yes?" I asked, opening the door. I expected them to say they were going door-to-door alerting people about something. Or maybe this was about that weird truck that had been parked across the street for two weeks, which Steven and I had been theorizing was either a mobile terrorist cell or the CIA.

"We got a call for help from your apartment," said one of the cops.

"I don't think so," I said.

"From a small child," said the officer - he seemed to be the designated talker. "Do you have any children?"

"Yes, but he's 13 months old," I said.

"Well," said the officer, "someone from your apartment dialed zero and hung up. When that happens we have to dispatch a unit."

Two thoughts ran simultaneously through my mind. The first was that I now finally knew how to get a member of the NYPD to show up at my door. I remembered back to a night four years earlier when, after multiple 2am calls to the police about a car alarm that had been going off for all night, Steven and I had finally slept in the living room. The police had said they were busy.

The second thought was that Milo had made his first successful phone call.

"My son sometimes plays with the phone," I explained. He'd probably dialed zeo by accident, screamed "mama dada broom up!" into the phone, and hung up.

"We still need to check the apartment," said the officer. The came in and looked around, then asked to see the baby, who had of course just fallen asleep. I took them into Milo's room where they shined a flashlight into his face to make sure he was alive. Milo immediately woke up and started crying.

"Okay," said the officer. "Seems fine."

"Thanks," I said, following them out of the nursery. "Sorry."

"We just have to check these things out," said the cop.

We both stood in the front hall feeling slightly ridiculous, and then the police left.

"Sorry I'm late," I said when I got to my meeting. "My son called the cops."

Fashion Choices for the Environmentally Idiotic

"Are you going to buy a coat?" Steven asked.

We'd been perusing some online coat options over the weekend.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm confused about what kind of coat I'll need if there's not going to be that much winter anymore."

"You mean because of global warming?"

"Yes."

"So that was your takeaway from An Inconvenient Truth."

We're on a six-month lag for movie watching and had finally gotten around to seeing the big Al Gore movie the night before.

"Yes. I want to know how global warming is going to affect my fashion decisions. I mean, there's no point in getting a heavy winter coat if it's not going to be that cold."

"Right," said Steven. "Just checking."

Milo's Blue Period

Blue hues at the playground on Sunday.
Click through for more pics on Flickr.