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13 Back to School Resources!

1. Print your own graph paper.
2. Fix your Frikkin Fractions.
3. Long Division Divided into Long Divisions.
4. Quadratic Equation solved before your very eyes.
5. American History Timeline
6. The Best Number Page Ever
7. THE ATLAS OF ANCIENT WARFARE!
8. Learn Any Language!
9. Important List of Mad Scientists.
10. Cheap School Supplies
11. Cell Phone Texting dictionary
12. How to keep your lunch money!
13. Brown Bag Brownie Points!

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

My Name is [NAME]; I'll Be Your Lunchroom Mom Today

Today was my first day as lunchroom mom for my son's 6th grade class. I am proud to say that I managed to secretly flip him off seven times without detection and he got me twice.

I was up past the witching hour last night writing so I was groggy as all get out this morning and showed up late with Monkey Boy's half-assed bag lunch, wearing a Cabela's hat, and one day's beard which on lesser men looks a lot like a nine day beard.

I was all about the irony of being a lunchroom mom and swore I'd wear a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off and "LUNCH ROOM MOM" written across the back with a sharpie but I manned out and forgot. I wasn't even funny. I didn't speak. I stood near the door like a disgruntled janitor waiting for some kick to cack on the floor. I'm sure some kid asked Monkey, "Dude, is your dad retarded?"

By the time the end of lunch had rolled around, they were stacking desks and had one kid duct taped to the ceiling. The class geek was using the teacher's laptop to hack into the grading queue. Some other kid was making prank phone calls to the class next door. Someone was hung out the window by their ankles. Mayhem. Depravity. I think. Maybe. I don't know. I know that I wasn't counting all the kids leaving for the head and when the teacher showed up I finally shook off my fugue, looked up, and realized half the class was missing.

"Where's my class?"
"Bathroom?"
"All of them?"
"Uh . . . . maybe I should count next time?"

At the sound of her voice the building tipped sideways and the bathrooms spilled children into the hallways, all of which walked past me as if I were some kind of exhibit.

I believe I have mentioned the malicious nature of children. You can't give them an inch, not a millimeter. Today one of the girls walked up to me carrying a bag of skittles and asked if she could go to another class to give it to someone. Dazed, barely awake, I looked at her for a split second then, mustering all the wisdom 8 minutes of sleep can provide, I asked her: "Are you allowed?" then watched the subtle contraction of her irises as she calculated, rechecked, and filed away the precise level of gullibility I had just exhibited and responded "Yes. Yes I am." then disappeared. Unable to properly focus my narcotic gaze as she left my field of vision, I noticed the girl in the desk in front of me, blocked by the Calculatora's head just a moment prior, was staring at me with hr mouth open.

I will never recover. I know how it works. If my daughter's school is Super Hero High, the Monkey's school is Hogwarts for The Holy and every kid in there is a certified genetic malaprop destined to be aggressively wealthy IP lawyers and moguls of various species and already, in sixth grade, I have shown weakness in front of them. They've got my number. I am doomed.

I can see already my lunchroom mom excursions will become increasingly militant as a cold war simmers between me and the students, with them imagining ever more complex and improbable permissions and goading each other to ask me if they can engage them. I'm tempted to just say "No," to every request. But, as I type this, I can feel the ropey sluice of my morning coffee finally jolting my brainpan and I realize that the best tactic for me is not to deny them anything at all, but to allow everything they request. These are honor students we're dealing with here. If I say "Are you normally allowed to superglue the bunsen burner on?" and they say yes, it's them that's gonna git the divil, not I.

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

Vote for My Son For President!

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Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

13 Bad Headlines for NASA's Admission to Sex Training For Mars Mission

A NASA adviser recently battled the president of Virgin Atlantic for the title of "most purposefully misquoted official" after they discussed how co-ed Mars Mission astronauts---stuck together in tight quarters for three years--- might, um, think about, um . . . probing. Read the whole story here.

1. Astronauts Train For Bumpy Ride!
2. The Eagle Has Landed! (um, that's not my Eagle . . .)
3. NASA Talks to VIRGIN About SEX!
4. Asked to Extend Boom, Astronauts Giggle Uncontrollably.
5. Virgin Atlantic Adds "NOT!" to Logo!
6. Probes No Longer Limited to Aliens!
7. Uranus Begs for Name Change!
8. Cigar Shaped Object Not Cigar!
9. Howard Stern Heads New Apollo Mission!
10. Mile High Club Extended by 100 Miles.
11. Cape Canaveral Worker Fired for T-Shirt: "I Got Yer Right Stuff Hangin!"
12. NASA Relocates to Miami Beach, Opens Club.
13. New Space Suits Designed by Trojan.

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

Death By Children's All Inclusive Back to School Sale and End of Summer Halo 3 Body Count

I'm bleary eyed and woggly because it's the last week before school and my kids are attempting to induce sleep deprivation psychosis because, apparently, there's some kind of unspoken contest to see who's groggiest on the first day of school.

The young hommes d'G has been on a three day killing spree on Halo 3, Army of 2, and Call of Duty and is going to walk away from summer with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and a pack of Lucky's rolled up in his shirt sleeve.

The girl child remains obsessed with her monosyllabic post-midnight-calling flop-haired paramour to the exclusion of everything else including sunlight and food. She has to annotate Into the Wild, the hippy bush death manifesto, by Tuesday and I'm relentless and cruel in my efforts to keep her focussed.

The niece is about to finally abandon us for Portland, Hippy Mecca, the Haight Ashbury of the 21st century, leaving me defenseless and alone before the drooling horde of drowsy, unwashed, wrinkled, laze narcotized, couch dwelling summertards my children have become.

I have had to go downstairs every night and threaten my hideous spawn with torture and maiming to get them into bed using what I believe is the sane argument of pointing to the clock where it is plainly after 2 am, well past the allowable period of microwaving popcorn, playing Halo, and watching the "Mysterious Ticking Noise"YouTube video three hundred and seventy four times without headphones.

It would be one thing if I came downstairs to find them studying Latin or using a ouija board or engaging the ring valve on the flux capacitor or something useful, something that shows their mind is vibrant and spinning in its gambols but no, I come down and they are pasted into the back of the couch, eyes wide and glazed, face bathed in a gray light from the computer, from the TV, from the video game, mouth partially open, like grandma after three days at the slots.

And I'm not much better. I usually reserve the summer for drooling and watching tv and then maybe drooling but I put a bid on a fun job and I won so I've been working all the time and not paying attention unless I smell fire or hear sirens. I walked into the living room today and realized the boy child hadn't bathed in . . . well, I actually can't remember which is bad since he will only take a bath after I'm literally holding his Xbox out the window so I should recall his last ablution. I did notice the dog stopped sleeping with him.

What I'm saying is I can't wait for school to start so I can have my routine back, so I can have a house where the walls don't ring from ordinance and if the phone rings at midnight it means somebody got hit by a truck and breakfast is at 6:30, not 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I want my life back. I want peace and quiet. I want normal again. Thank God for school.

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

Historical Precedent for my Parenting Methods!

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

I'd get more submissions if I posted more pictures of cats. So . . . .

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

I bet we're related!

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For everyone who has a story of their kid sticking a fork in th garbage disposal, sticking a slice of bologna into the DVD drive, or getting lock in the running car, I present your one-uppance:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

Why Men Shouldn't Watch Sex in the City with their Teen Daughters, for the love of Christ!

I may have mentioned that [My Attorney] and I are somewhat liberal in our parenting values. I should say we are a weird mix of Catholic conservatism and freak hippy liberalism. I.g., I don't care if my kids cuss but I don't want them cussing in front of my relatives or on Easter Sunday. This also means that while we have raised our little girl
with the care and attention and best education regarding sex we can possibly find and/or afford, and while we realize that we can't raise her to be a sophisticated genius AND a prude, we remain mortified whenever she proves the level of sophistication she has achieved vis-a-vis a clinical understanding the humdrum sex lives of most Americans.

I am regularly distressed by some wry comment or the sound of her laughing to a dirty joke I didn't know she could hear, distressed because she gets it which means she understands it which means AAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGHHH!!!!! It makes my brain shrivel. But this point of view has been coming at us like a glacier on skates since she started rocking her traveling boob display case wardrobe and being beautiful on purpose. Also, my daughter is a measurable and certified genius, gets a 4.0 at Superhero High School, and can, as she displayed at th Rusty Armadillo rooftop Margarita oasis yesterday, explain RNA versus DNA protein transference through cell wall membranes, from memory--IN THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER. So when [My Attorney] suggested we invite her and her visiting highly sophisticated artist cousin to watch it with us (she's been iTuning it and letting them watch) I didn't think twice. I just took my customary chair, patted my daughter on the head, clicked the remote and AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!

It was porn. I mean, ok, it was porn if you're Mormon. But still, as sophisticated and aloof and urbane as I'd like to blieve I really am, I spent most of the show with my face buried in my hands while [My Attorney] fumbled wildly with the complicated PAUSE ACTUATOR SEQUENCE INITIATION DEVICE and my daughter howled with mirth at our silly bourgeois prudishness--and the face of the guy doing the horizontal mambo over the should of on of the main characters.

But I made it through this important plot device at the very opening of the show and thought "it can't get any worse" until it did and an entire storyline was devoted to one woman being hugely disappointed by her new boyfriends not being, um, huge. The conversation on the screen proceeded through a discourse on the value of a boyfriends', um, added value, that it was over before I could heave a chair through the gas plasma screen and I was left, again, glaring at [My Attorney] who was laughing so hard she could barely breathe, all while my daughter screamed.

This is coming on the heels of our most recent family movie, scheduled at the last minute when the DARK KNIGHT was, again, sold out at our favorite luxurious theater, and we said oh, ok, let's got see wanted, which is a really REALLY good movie for eleven year old boys and 15 year old girls if, a) you really want them to see a guy banging his best friend's girlfriend against the sink during his lunch break while he checks his watch and, b) the kind of high definition entry and exit wounds that would make Sam Pekinpah shoot himself for being such a loser with his paltry slomo dime shot shots.

But the flip side is the best-friend-betrayer and his girlfriend get a non-lethal and wholly justified come uppance in Wanted which (I hop) teaches the leeches that bad manners will get you a swift backhand from former friends and gratuitous sex is stupid.

As for watching SATC with my daughter, you can bet your adze it ain't happening again. I truly don't mind if she watches it with [My Attorney] but I hope to never have to sit through another HBO porn shot in the same room as my burgeoning goth princess.

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.