CHRIS COEN

My daughter is, as my grandmother would say, “Ornerier than a popcorn fart.”  I don’t know what that means, but she said it and it sounds pretty wild.  Ornery sucks to spell, by the way.  It took me five minutes to figure that out and I was my high school’s co-valedictorian.  That last word took a while too, but that’s Dewar’s fault, not my brain.

Friday night she was fighting sleep like I fight sobriety.  HARD.  I went to get more milk, when the cat, that weird animal that lives in my house and murders things every five minutes, ran like hell’s fire down the hall.  That means one thing.  Dingleberry.  When the long haired cat gets a dingle, it’s crazy time.  I didn’t think about it, but when I came up I saw my sweet girl standing over something, talking up a storm.

“It’s OK.  Accidents happen.”  There was a lovely cat turd with a piece of toilet paper the size of your thumbnail next to it.  “It’s OK.  Mazy has a stinker on her butt.  It’s OK.”  What in the blazes?  “I clean it, it’s OK.  Accidents happen.”  My sweet little sleepless hellion/angel was trying to clean the dingleberry, aka the “stinker on her butt.”  I now am terrified if my kid ever tells me she made a stinker.  God knows the magic that will happen when she starts repeating more words from mom and dad into her own little word factory.

No, not a bed pan.  We all know those work just fine when you’re too lazy to go the can.  The bed fan.

The greatest invention of all time is the refrigerator.  Air conditioning a close second.  This is probably tied for third with a time machine or something.  IT’S AMAZING.  My wife got this on a Kickstarter and it finally showed up after years.  This bad oscar sits at the foot of your bed and blows cool air right up your legs.  No more night sweats.  Night terrors are on your crappy childhood, sorry.

“But doesn’t it make your wife cold, Chris?”  NOPE!  Localized cooling goes straight up like Paula Abdul.  Plus if your undercarriage needs a cool blast, just spread those legs and let your grundle go from hot to not!  For someone like me that sweats at 54 degrees, it may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, with a crap ton of bacon and mayo between it (seriously, sliced bread is lame without a little more).

So I officially endorse the bfan.  Sleep cool and well, sweathogs.  Bfan has your back…and legs…and beanbag.

See how the title went from sexy to…even more sexy?  That’s right, it’s fantasy football draft season!  Where every alcoholic football fan becomes a powerful GM and team president.  It’s simply the best.  I decided to rank the fantasy sports, so you too, can understand more about this (fake) sports excitement.

WORST – Baseball.  WORST (FANTASY) SPORT EVER.  You have to check your lineup every single day.  Baseball players after about 1994 get put on the DL if they sneeze too hard or get a hangnail.  It is exhausting, well, as exhausting as fantasy sports can get.

NEXT WORST – Basketball.  Outside of four or five teams, does anyone give a warm poo about the NBA?  Have fun researching the Milwaukee Bucks roster for a backup power forward.  Be sure to peruse the stat sheets online for the Sacramento Kings vs. the Denver Nuggets to gain some insight.  Just awful.

OK – Hockey.  If you can understand plus/minus and pay minimal attention it’s OK.  Similar to the NBA, good luck following the Winnipeg Jets backup goalie situation.  The good news is hockey players will play if they are on fire, so less injury checks.

MILDLY GOOD – Nascar.  I know, I thought it would suck also.  It’s only once a week and any idiot can keep up.  You just pick five drivers a week and can only use a driver five times overall.  Plus I kept writing in Dick Trickle, so it was a fun time.  Drawback?  Actually watching NASCAR.

DA BEST – Football.  Oh, how great it is.  Once a week (watch out for those Thursday games!) and the injury reports are usually very accurate.  You know the players, the draft is well documented (have fun following NHL rookies from Latvia) and the stats are easy to track.  You, football, are the champion of fantasy sports – at least until I get last place and set fire to my computer.  Screw you, 2015.  2014 forever.

I used to host a party every Halloween.  Here’s what went into it.  Buy booze.  Get Halloween costume.  Clean kitchen and bathrooms.  Run vacuum.  Have party.

My daughter turned three recently.  Here’s what went into it.  Run balloons to get helium, but not too early or they could deflate, so I ran them the night before, picked up that morning.  Mop house.  Vacuum all non mop areas.  Clean everything.  Mow.  Weed whack.  Get juice boxes and mini-waters.  Get booze.  Get food for kids.  Get food for adults.  Draw welcome sign with chalkboard.  Put in order for coffee.  Pick up up cake.  Put up decorations.  Get custom t-shirts for kids.  Figure out gifts.  Print stickers for take home bags for kids.  Order stuff for take home bags for kids.  Wear dog out, give up, put dog outside.  Pull out serving dishes from depths of storage.  Realize balloon store left part of order, drive back and get it while people are pulling in.  Realize you forgot to put out ice and cooler.  Realize you forgot to get ice cream out.  Write down who gave what gift so you don’t forget thank yous.  Everyone leaves – everything in house is sticky now.  Kids make everything sticky.

Yes, it’s a lot of work, but the difference is my daughter is dragging her new toys to bed to snuggle with them at night and no one called the cops at her party.  Plus booze made everything sticky at my old place also and I had nothing to show for it but a hangover and a $50 costume I never wore again.  Oh and no one invited their friends who stole CD’s or jumped off the balcony.  Maybe these kid’s parties aren’t so bad after all.  Except the music.  Please, God, stop the music.

One thing about society currently that is very disturbing is the rapid and uninformed outrage that happens when stories break.  Most are true or based in truth, but incomplete.  Doesn’t matter, time to rage.  I saw a story recently that should be the learning moment for these things: The Cubs baseball incident.  A video came out where a gentleman got a foul ball that a kid in front of him missed, he picked it up and handed it to a lady, who was very apathetically on a phone.  The internet exploded.  This heartless jerk stole a ball from a little kid.  He was found and harassed online, his job was threatened, his life was threatened, and even his lady was targeted.

The problem?  Turns out he had given the last three foul balls to kids around him…and the kid that missed that ball already had been handed a signed ball earlier in the game.  The Cubs team had to get involved to protect the fan from the onslaught.  What if they hadn’t?  What if the guy was fired and lost his job?  Maybe then loses his house?  Maybe gets divorced over financial strain?  No one would care, it’s time to destroy the next guy!

This is normal for politics, but it’s creeping into everything.  Reporters break stories, some one-sided, the internet gas can is tossed.  The irony is that if people just shut up for a couple days, the flash mob of tweeters and Facebook posters has already moved on to the next thing.  Everyone wants the moral bank account filled with likes and retweets more than learning the whole story.

As to the latest topic du jour, if Urban Meyer was covering up a violent abuser on his staff, he should be fired.  We don’t know if he was.  It looks bad, but “we” don’t know that currently.  I also would ask – is anyone to blame?  I heard the interview with the ex-wife of the fired coach and she mentioned her own parents and in-laws discouraged her from filing charges.  Is anyone upset with them?  Any other coaches to blame?  If someone is a wife abuser and is say, an accountant, do we fire their bosses?  Never.  Not once.  High profile person?  Hell yes, burn them down.  It make us feel better, whether it’s justified or not.

It’s very easy to run to a computer less than five hours after the first information leaks out and type a diatribe.  It’s much more prudent to find out more and let our weakening standard of innocent until proven guilty take its course.  Thomas Jefferson said it was better for 10 guilty men to go free than one innocent one to be wrongfully convicted.  I wonder if anyone agrees with that anymore.  Social media sure doesn’t.  Zach Smith never did one day in jail for abusing his wife, let’s not forget that.  Let’s also not determine guilt OR innocence by what team we root for or our desire to get some likes.  When more comes out, then we can build the guillotines.

When I was a lad, I loved being in the woods.  I made forts, swung from a tree on Marty’s Hill (Marty put the rope up and got to name the hill – Marty also broke his collarbone swinging from the rope, so that too) and had poison ivy 3-6 times a summer.  Oh how times have changed.

This is my ankle.

I get bit by mosquitoes, on average, every third second I stop moving.  At one point two summers ago, I had 23 mosquito bites on me.  I also have OCD tendencies, so I scratch them open to keep them from itching me into the nuthouse, so there’s that also.

Yesterday, my son decided the party started at 4:50 am, so I got up early and finally got him back down.  I was up, so I took the dog for a jog…which sounds like Dr. Suess.  I need to read a real book soon.  As we ran down the street, at one point I noticed a white tail glowing next to me, just three feet away.  It was a skunk, with it’s balloon knot pointed right at us.  By the grace of merciful God, it didn’t spray.  OH BUT THERE’S MORE!  Later last night at 10:15, right when the kids finally fell asleep, the cat busts in the room – smelling of skunk.  I spent the next 55 minutes trying to catch the cat to get the smell off, while my wife tried to figure out how to get the smell off.  Luckily it wasn’t a direct blast, but I opened the back door and it was still a cloud of stench, much like a music festival in July.  This is now me when I see a skunk.

I have resolved the only time I will go outside is to get to a liquor store or if I see Seal Team 6 sweep the area with pesticide and Claymore mines.