More Awesome Weirdness From the Fairy

Well. I haven't blogged in several days. You'd think I'd have a whole bunch of goodies for you by now, wouldn't you? Well, I sort of do. But I've been doing a bunch of other things, like reading... and playing Spore... and letting my wife do the finances on the computer while I goof off. Thus, not much blogging in the last few days.

I really am working on a long, meaty post. In my head, I mean. Usually I get a Big Idea in my head and I chew on it a few days (or weeks--or, in the case of my stupendous post on Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems that I haven't actually written down yet, the better part of a year. It's going to be a masterpiece when I finally get around to writing it, you'll see). Anyway, I've been thinking a lot lately about what exactly Social Conservatism is, and what role it plays in a society--thoughts that were triggered by our church's recent focus on Social Justice. I'll be writing those thoughts up in the next few days.

But for tonight, I'm not going to do any of that, because it would be hard. So! So I'm going to share with you the Pillowfight Fairy's Next Big Thing, because most of my readership is more interested in her than in Social Conservatism anyway. Let alone Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems.


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Funny I should mention Big Ideas! The Pillowfight Fairy recently became acquainted with a video series by Big Idea Productions (same guys who do VeggieTales), entitled 3-2-1 Penguins.

This show is weird. We haven't seen the first episode in the series yet (the DVD we have is a later episode), so we don't know the full backstory behind all the characters. But basically, the main characters--a twin boy and girl--are staying at their very eccentric grandmother's cottage for the summer. Somehow, they've tripped some kind of space portal, so they spend half their time in the grandmother's cottage and half their time on a spaceship crewed by sapient penguins. (Well, we're not so sure if Kevin is sapient... or the captain for that matter)...

As I say, weird show. But it's a lot of fun. The penguin named Kevin sounds like one of those "yobbo" characters--think about Monty Python when they're pretending to be from Northern England ("Ahm op'nin' a booteek!") , and that's what that guy sounds like. I can pretty much make the Fairy laugh now just by saying the name Kevin in Kevin's accent.

The humor is a little edgier than VeggieTales, and the stories are faster-paced--perfect for the short attention spans of today's hyperactive six-year olds. :-P But it's not too bad for those adults who have to watch this stuff alongside their kids--there's a lot of cultural sci-fi in-jokes in there as well.

One scene particularly has caught our daughter's attention. One of the characters (Fidgel--the penguin science officer) has been captured by the evil Cavitus, and duct-taped to a pressure hose that's going to explode and wipe everyone out. But (spoiler alert? C'mon, everyone knows what's going to happen anyway) the good guys save the day, and the pressure on the hose is released safely. So then they have to untape Fidgel. The pilot, upon being asked, "C'mon, untape me!" freezes for a second, then looks into the camera with a manly yet mischievous grin, then--ofscreen--you hear:

Riiiiip...

AAAAAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEE!

Now, at first the Fairy didn't understand exactly what was going on in that scene (or why Daddy was laughing so much). So I had to explain to her about tape.

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who try to minimize the pain by pulling the tape off a little at a time, stretching out the wavelength of their suffering but reducing its amplitude; and those who try to minimize their pain by pulling the tape off all at once--giving a sharp--but mercifully short-lived--spasm of agony.

Ok, strike that. There are three kinds of people in the world. There are the two I mentioned above, and then there are those that, for whatever reason, intentionally put tape on themselves so they can experience the joy of ripping it off. Somehow, Tonya gave birth to one of these.

I'm not sure, but I suspect it comes from her side of the family.

Anyway, after I explained to the Fairy about the two types of tape-puller personalities, she thought the whole thing was really, really funny. So she started getting out the tape. Now, this wasn't Duct Tape--this was the clear Scotch tape that we keep accessible for her craft projects.

(We actually suspect that if she really had used Duct Tape for her little experiments here, she would have done it once.)

So, what is this Daddy supposed to think when my daughter comes up to me, with a bunch of tape stuck to her arm, and she says: "Daddy, could you pull this off me?" Um....

Riiiip.

AAAAIIIIEEEEE!!!!!

Of course, her little squeal was all an act, followed by lots of giggles (and more tape). She was just pretending to be Fidgel, and she thought the whole thing was fun to act out. So I made her stop. We go through tape fast enough as it is.


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By the way, apropos of nothing, were you aware that at least one scientific study has concluded that Duct Tape is an effective wart remover?

Riiiiip....

AAAAIIIIIEEEEE!

No, not like that. Apparently there are some chemicals in the adhesive that occasionally have been known to shrink and eliminate warts. Now, this study is disputed (as all studies are, these days), but it's still interesting....