Five Apps You'll Be a Horrible Parent Without

You’re a smart parent. You have a smartphone. You’re familiar with apps that create loud, bright emergency diversions like YouTube, Hulu and Netflix. But here are some Android apps that will kick up your parenting game seven or eight whole notches.

*Image cropped to remove several square inches of empty space

1. Fortune Clock

by Swiven. $0.

This is a handy alarm clock app that — and this is a huge game-changer — also incorporates fortune-telling. You meditate on a problem that’s been bothering you, then you tap one of eight symbols “by intuition.” A wild fortune appears!

“When you prepare something already, marches forward courageously, it’s real good symbol for you!” Fortune Clock says. “Due to this factor, you will sacrifice time of with your family, even away from your lover…”

It’s super effective! And this is obviously much more sophisticated than somebody’s first attempt at coding an Android app. Each fortune feels uniquely crafted and comes with at least 7 sets of contradictory advice.

2. Dancing Toilet Fun Dance Game

by Mibejo Mobile. $0.

This app’s strongest point? It does what it says in the title. A poorly drawn cartoon toilet with big angry eyes dances to synthesized music when you press the “dance” button. A poop appears, complete with fart noise, when you press the poop button. When you press the “F” button, you hear a flush and the poop shrinks until it disappears, because that’s exactly how toilets work. When you press the back button on your device, a giant ad swivels to cover the entire screen. If Dancing Toilet Fun Dance Game isn’t your thing, you can check out another app from the developer, Dancing Poo Virtual Pet Dance.

3. Alien Scanner UFO Radar

by Circle Star Software. $0.

Possibly the most complete UFO Radar app I’ve installed. It has a sweeping purple arm, some moving yellow triangles and even a moving red dot! There’s a transceiver tuned into the intergalactic frequency for scary text messages, and words like “humans” “earthlings” “mothership” and “surrender” scroll by in an intricate pattern that seems random until you stare at them for seven minutes straight and the paranoia kicks in.

Marcanthony Garcia gave Alien Scanner UFO Radar three stars, saying: “its fake why do the yellow triangles hoover and red dot fly plus all it said on the tanseiver was attack surrender human contact earth and earthlings but i gave it a good review because it did scare me at first lol”

To sum up, Alien Scanner UFO Radar is an indispensable app for anyone who wants to detect free audiobooks and can’t remember audible.com’s URL.

4. Fingertip Violin Playing

Canada HadAPP Team. $0.

This app opens to the minimalistic interface of a tiny violin on a white background. When you touch the screen, a tiny bow appears beneath your finger. Then violin music starts playing, even though your finger isn’t moving. After wiggling your finger around for a couple of seconds, you realize the movement of your bow has nothing to do with the music. You are a deaf violinist, and no matter what horrible screeching sounds you could potentially be making, in your own mind it all sounds like a beautifully performed and horribly compressed classical recording. A “More” button will just play the recordings for you without all the tedious bow waggling. The “Supply” button opens a window, which reads:

“How to support this app?

Give me 5 Stars;

Share with friends;Tell me problems;

(button) Give 5 Stars (button) Later”

This app, while not really a workable replacement for the “world’s tiniest violin” gag where you rub your fingers together and make violin sounds with your mouth to accompany a friend’s melodrama, is a nice reminder that there’s someone out there to whom you can tell your problems.

5. Scales Simulator

by Piupiu. $0.

Like some of the other apps on this list, Scales Simulator really earns points for simplicity. When you put your finger on the picture of the scale, it displays a completely random number — down to the thousandths! Of course, to get to the picture of the scale, you have to get past the loading screen, then press the start button partially obscured by an ad, then close out of the full-screen ad that pops up. But don’t worry! There’s a big blue arrow that takes you back to the screen with the start button, in case you missed the ad there. The app has one shortcoming, as Elvin Babayev points out: “Works if only put your finger. Very very bad.” Indeed, if you try to place other objects on the picture of the scale — such as the tiny mound of white powder featured on the app’s cover — it fails to generate a random number. I can imagine several situations involving tiny mounds of white powder and impulsive decisions that could end up “very very bad” if you were to rely on Scales Simulator. That’s why it’s important to read the app description: “Make fun with friends with scales simulation.” And that’s where this app really shines.

So remember! You can't be a good parent without these apps. Your parents didn't have these apps, and they were horrible, remember? Don't let some therapist pin all your kids' hangups on you! Get these apps!

I’d promise a sequel of iOS Apps You Can’t Parent Without, but I don’t have any Apple devices. And it seems like they might have some sort of app vetting process.

Salt Lake Comic Con 2014 panel

A quick note to friends going to Salt Lake Comic Con: I'll be on a panel about defending free speech and the comics medium. The panel will be 3 p.m. Saturday in room 150D.
My research for the panel included asking many of you if you had questions on the topic. The most common response was "Does censorship occur in comics?" My answer: Yes, constantly. It's been a little better since the Comics Code Authority died, but there are still people at every level of comic book production with their own ideas of what the First Amendment does and doesn't cover.
If you're looking for other spots to put on your list, visit Death Ray Comics at booth 805 and Rattle Can Heroes at booth 2803.

Elmo vs. Red Monster Mascot

Charlotte, 17 months old, has had her first interaction with a brand. Until recently, she only had one word for “adult who takes care of me” (“dada”), and long before she’d say “Mama” on demand, she had a word for Elmo. Sure, that word is “Memo,” but she makes her demands clear enough when she stands in front of the computer monitor and shouts, “Meh-MO? Meh-MO? Meh-MO?”

Red Monster Mascot

It’s the same tactic she uses with food, which she calls nana. She starts out at a normal volume, putting a raised inflection on the last syllable like it’s a question. “Nana?” If she’s not fed within the next two thirds of a second, she repeats herself, getting louder each time. “Nana? Na-NA? NA-NA?”

It's not the Elmo brand itself that worries me. He's nonviolent and educational. Yeah, he has a different baby in his house every week, and that's a huge red flag, but he broadcasts interviews with these babies on his show, so I figure it's not a hostage situation. I mean, if you delivered a pizza to Jimmy Fallon's house and you accidentally saw Emma Watson tied to a chair, it'd be a good move to call the cops. But when you see Emma on The Tonight Show and Jimmy demands no ransom, it's probably on the level. So Elmo doesn't bother me — but the idea that companies are already cultivating brand loyalty in my 17-month-old does.

I know marketers did a number on me as a kid. My dad only drinks Coca-Cola. I think colas taste like muddy gasoline, but if I need a sugar or caffeine boost and my options are down to Coke or Pepsi, I'll always choose Coke. If my options are down to Pepsi, I'll choose water and drowsiness. At work, It took me more than a year to realize I might also buy from the Pepsi vending machine in the break room, even though I saw it every day. This despite Pepsi and Coke both tasting like muddy gasoline.

Another example: Legos. I used to play Legos with my two brothers, and we eschewed Tyco Mega Bloks (We also chewed Tyco Mega Bloks, but we chewed up everything as kids.). We got to the point where we could instantly discern the texture and color differences between Legos and Mega Bloks, and if my character Skullhead made a doomsday device incorporating even a single Mega Blok, no one would take it seriously.

Of course, my brand loyalty for Lego paid off years later when I learned that Lego was struggling to make a profit because they couldn't get patent protection against Mega Bloks’ incessant copying of their product in all its varieties. I felt like I was supporting the artistic integrity of Lego against plastic plagiarism. And then Lego licensed Star Wars sets in the late '90s, and finally they had something Mega Bloks couldn't copy. Fast forward to 2014, when the company had picked up enough licenses to make The Lego Movie into the most surreal character mashup ever to hit the big screen — one character can’t keep Gandalf and Dumbledore straight, and (spoilers) Batman steals the Millenium Falcon’s hyperdrive. The one thing they couldn’t seem to do was bring both Marvel and DC comic characters into the movie, despite selling sets from both.

My family’s criteria for brand loyalty selection was pretty weird. We stuck to brand names for Coke, Legos and outdoor gear. Outside those areas, we had Western Family corn flakes and Honey & Nut Toasted Oats and Equate ibuprofen. I suppose the rule I learned in my household is that anything that can save your life — climbing gear, tents, M&Ms — you don’t mess around with. Food’s not as important. In my grandfather’s words: “I don’t know why we spend all this money on food. We’re just going to eat it anyway.” With anything your kids want, sneak some off-brands in there and see if they kick up a fuss.

I hope Charlotte appreciates when Red Monster Mascot shows up at her birthday party.

I'm 27 and getting kicked out of my mom's basement

Charlotte tries on my shirt in my mom's basement.

I’m 27 and I live in my mother’s basement. My mom doesn't hassle me a lot about dating, though, because my wife and my 16-month-old daughter also live in her basement.

We used to live in a sixplex near campus with a lot of character and a moat when it rained. Early this spring, Sarah started hearing rumors that our building would be renovated and we might lose our apartment. Whenever she dropped off the rent check, she’d ask about the rumors, and they said they’d let us know if something happened.

They didn't let us know. On June 9, a letter from the new owners informed us we had to be out by July 1. The company was renovating the apartments, essentially changing it from family housing to rent to single students so they could make more money.

We weren't big fans of this plan. I don’t think either of us feel we’re entitled to a whole lot — maybe not even our crummy apartment — but we looked at our baby girl and reasoned that kicking a cute, helpless larva out of her home had to be illegal.

Several blustery Facebook posts and a few minutes of Internet research later, we determined Heartless Business Monsters LLC was well within its rights to kick us out. We hadn't signed a lease, so we couldn't sue for breach of contract. And in Logan, you’re required to give tenants 15 days’ notice before dumping them onto the curb. They’d generously given us 22, so we started looking for new digs.

Then lady luck must have started feeling like a jerk, because the next day, our real estate agent showed us a house in our price range. She’d done that before, but previously all the houses we could afford had meth contamination or roofs slowly ceding the point to gravity. The house she showed us this time was clean and structurally sound. By the end of the week, we were under contract to buy it.

In order to purchase a home, you have to convince the bank you can reliably produce pieces of paper, whether it’s dollar bills, tax documents, papers bearing your signature or checks for $500 they say you’ll get back at some point. In that respect, we made it rain. We buried the bank under a fluttering paperslide, hoping somehow we could move into our new home as soon as we moved out of our old one.

Three-hole-punch drunk, the bank promptly began sorting our paper mountain. They squinted at one third of our papers for a bit, then emailed us, saying these weren't the ones they were looking for. They gave another third to the government, and that’s the last we've heard of those. The last third they shredded and used as hamster bedding, I bet.

By the end of the month, we were up against plan B — my parents’ basement. We packed up our belongings — by which I mean Sarah packed up all our stuff while I told her how I was a packing pro in my bachelor days and didn't have to start yet. We put our things in storage and set up camp at the ancestral home, ready to move out at any word from the bank.

At the beginning of the month, we had word that we’d be waiting at least until Aug. 28 on our USDA loan. It's Aug. 28 now, and the USDA just asked us to produce more papers. We’re enjoying our stay and my parents are wonderful housemates, but there’s a problem. The basement we’re camping in doubles as my mom’s preschool, and we have to move out at the end of the month.

But looking at my cute, helpless baby, I bet my mom’s inclined to keep her as a tenant, at least.

Teething is a... well, you know.

Product Review: Baby teeth (1.5/5)

Do you have teeth? Me too. Remember when they grew in? Me neither, and thank the luckiest of stars above, because it is rough. Teething gets 1.5 stars. Or less.

So I have a beautiful daughter. She's smiley, happy and the light of my life. That's all fine and good, but when I ordered this child I did NOT order a lengthy and untimely ordeal like teething. Her first two teeth came screaming in around 3 1/2 or four months. Stressful. I have read in a very reliable baby book of baby-rearing knowledge that teething does not, in fact, cause any of the following: night waking, fever, extra night feedings, etc. This is an obese lie, the largest lie you can even imagine. She woke up a ton more at night and had a fever and needed more food. I'm sorry Dr. Smarts, you aren't a mother, and you don't have your own baby with teeth coming in.

Lovable and drooly bulldog.

Anyway, we had already been through this teething business once and it blessed us again around seven months. By blessed, I mostly mean scammed. She was for sure teething for about three weeks. I could see the little white buds on her top gums and she was drooling like a bulldog (a precious, lovable bulldog). Then, Houdini-like, the symptoms and the little buds disappear. They just left me wondering if I was a mother making up symptoms to explain an inability to soothe my own baby. I swear, they really were coming in!

Then, in December, she had some back-to-back colds. A nice little Christmas gift for us. At the tail end of the last one, she managed to sneak some teething in for a New Year's surprise. Not one, not two, but three pearly whites just magically appeared with no more fanfare than a bit of extra drooling (think three bull dogs), extra sleeping and a slightly more cranky Charlotte.

She is now trying to break these three new teeth all the way out of gum-jail. I'm really surprised by the quiet nature of this third teething round. It's not so bad as the first or second time (and the second time really did happen; I'm not crazy) and I am also a fan of cutting multiple teeth at a time. I'll take a week from the pits of Tartarus if it means all the teeth coming at once.

So, if you're thinking of ordering a round of baby teething, here's a review for you to ponder:
Delivery: A bit early, then a no-show, but then just right.
Satisfaction: Well, it increases the ability to chew food and smile less like a toothless grandpa, but it does increase nose-biting ability. That's from experience, people. Terrible experience.
Cost: Doesn't cost much, just a few extra pounds perhaps as you stress-eat your way through bags of chocolate or gallons of ice-cream.
Overall: 1.5 stars. It's worth it in the end, but boy-oh-boy, it's a rough ride.

I'm lucky I still have all my digits.

Today's post brought to you by a miracle

"I spilled water on the computer" is not a great text from your wife to get at work.

The imperiled Pew! Pew! Kickstarter

Sarah had been using our laptop, which I have named Freeman, when she tipped her giant water mug and the lid came off. Water spilled onto the keyboard, and she snatched the mug away. Freeman automatically logged her off and powered down as she quickly dried the keyboard, unplugged the power and removed the battery. That's my wife!

If I learned anything in my two years as a computer repair technician at PCs Unlimited, it's that computers don't do well underwater. And being a starving journalist, replacing or repairing a dead laptop could take a big chunk out of our finances. Without going into too many embarrassing budgetary details, our cost-cutting project this week is learning to make ramen from scratch.

What's more, I had launched the Pew! Pew! Kickstarter just that day. I needed Freeman, or at the very least the files on Freeman, to create the magazine I promised my Kickstarter backers. Even if the Kickstarter raked in twice my goal of $500, replacing Freeman would put us right back at square one.

When I got home from work after 11 p.m., Sarah was still up. I told her not to worry, it wasn't her fault, but I may need to get a second job. I'm a pie-in-the-sky kind of guy, meaning I have a very poor sense of what jobs are available and how to get them, so any conversations about finding work slowly spiral out of control until I'm talking about being a carney or signing up as a Mars colonist.

We tried powering Freeman up 4 or 5 hours after the spill, but during bootup he started beeping, which usually means something's gone wrong with the fiddly bits inside. Those fiddly bits are usually not cheap. On the plus side, the keyboard was much cleaner.

I went to sleep worrying about Freeman, worrying about Sarah, worrying about whether my insurance would pay for booster shots before I joined the circus. I prayed that Freeman might be OK somehow.

This morning, I tried booting Freeman up again. This time I still heard the beeping, but I didn't hear the cooling fan. That could be good news or bad news -- fans are cheap to replace, but they're not electronically complicated -- so if water somehow took out the fan, the rest of Freeman's guts couldn't be doing well.

I dug out my static clip and opened Freeman up. You know how when your walkie-talkie breaks as a kid, you get a screwdriver and open it up, even though everything you know about electricity comes from watching cartoon Ben Franklin fly kites? Despite the hundreds of computers I've opened up, I felt a lot like that.

I unplugged the fan and looked at it. Wonder of wonders! Miracle of miracles! A dried clod of dust was lodged in the fan, just big enough to keep the fan from spinning. When the water seeped into the fan, it must have dampened the dust and clumped it all together. I removed the clump and named it Dustin.

Dustin

After that, Freeman booted up fine. I'm grateful for a God who answers my prayers, and I'm grateful that he has a sense of humor. Now I'm writing a blog post with Charlotte on my lap. If I'm rambling, you'll have to forgive me. I'm restraining Charlotte, because she's trying to eat Dustin.

Update: A couple of days later, Sarah made a batch of miso ramen. It was delicious.

If you're our neighbors, please shut up

Resist the urge, Steve. Resist the urge. Photo by Fran Gambín.

We live in a college town, a couple of blocks off campus. I can genuinely say I enjoy living here, but pretty much only when school is out. When school is in -- especially at the beginning or end of a semester -- there's a party every weekend night.

Sarah and I were lying in bed at about midnight last night. We could hear the bass notes of a nearby party.
"I'm giving them half an hour, then I'm calling the police," Sarah said.

"It's OK. It's not too bad," I said.

Sarah gave me a dirty look. She had a rough day and didn't feel well.

She looked inclined to violence, so I said: "That's just what I was telling myself. I was just trying to CONVINCE myself that it's not a problem."

Then I'm assuming the partygoers got too hot and opened the windows, because a tide of OPA GANGAM STYLE crashed over us.

"Look out the window and see which house it is," she said.

I did, and every window outside looked dark. If I strained at the blinds of one house, I could see a strobe light.

"It's that house again," I said. "Let's burn it down."

"No," Sarah said. "That's not real."

House fires, not real? At my job at a great metropolitan newspaper, I listen to the police scanner for hours. Just last night fire crews responded to a house in Hyrum after someone said they saw flames. Last Monday I laid out a story for the News-Examiner in Montpelier about a fire that burned a family's house half to the ground. There was a great picture of the mother holding an oxygen mask over their pet turtle's head. Fires are real. And I really wanted to burn their house down, but my own wife kept denying the very reality of arson as a solution. I needled her, trying to find out what her specific objection to my plan was.

"I could go next door and fill a can up with gas and use that to get it going."

"Stop that. That's not real."

A few minutes later, I tried a reconciliatory approach.

"I guess I keep forgetting how close that house is to the other side of our apartment building. I bet a house fire right there would burn us up, too," I said. "But then again, our house is very wet."
Sarah laughed. We were at the tail end of a warm spell, and melted snow pooled up in our parking lot and over the sidewalk, coming right up to the foundation. The sagging rain gutters dripped more steadily right in front of our door. The lake wasn't new, but because we don't have a basement, we haven't complained to the landlord yet. But about a year ago, going to an early morning class, I opened the door to find a family of ducks.

"How many diapers do we have in the trash?" I asked. "We could set a bucket of dirty diapers on fire and leave it on their doorstep." This motion also died in committee.

"They have 14 more minutes. Then I'm calling the cops."

"You know what we should do? Here's what we should do. I'll take some speakers over there, plug them in and play Shaina Feinberg's cha-cha album. That would get them."

"I don't know what that is."

I should note that Sarah hates 95 percent of things I try to introduce, and she's never loved anything new after 11 p.m.

"It's the diametric opposite of whatever music they're playing. It's impossible to party to." I played it for her on our tablet.

"Turn that off. That's the worst thing I've ever heard."

For the record, Shaina, I like the album.

Sarah was afraid the noise would wake Charlotte. I said if it did, I'd take Charlotte, crying, over there and none of them would get lucky. Nothing kills the mood faster than a crying baby.

"No, you won't," Sarah said. "Why do you keep saying these things that aren't even real?"

"I dunno. I'm tired of calling the cops on these guys. The cops probably think I'm a whiner. I guess I want to do something that really makes them question their grip on reality. Where could we get 20 -- no, 50 cats? I want to break into the animal shelter, steal 50 cats, put them in a van and back them right up to their door. I'd let them go, and suddenly their house would just be full of cats."

No use. Sarah told me to call the cops, and when I refused, she stalked off downstairs with her phone. A couple of minutes after the call, the party stopped. Sarah made me look out the window again. I told her the cops were there, all right, with choppers and national guard tanks. She gave me another dirty look.
Sarah couldn't sleep for another half hour afterward, she was so mad. We watched Keeping Up Appearances on the tablet, and I couldn't help feeling a little like Hyacinth, the human killjoy. We broke up their party, but hey, they were asking for it at 12:30. And while by the light of day I realize arson isn't the answer, I still want to do something incredible. I want to host the loudest outdoor dance party in our parking lot. I'll do it every day for a week before finals and invite all my non-student friends. Then, at the end of the semester when they're partying again, I'll sneak over and caulk all their doors shut.

But Sarah's right -- I won't do any of that. None of it's real. What's real is the seasonal swing from party town in the spring and fall to ghost town over Christmas and summer. Even though those kids will someday turn 25 and realize that all parties are horrible and binges are killing them, they'll move out and we'll be stuck with another batch of 18-year-olds. They'll be younger every year, and every year my wife will remind me that we need to get out of here.

Maybe when I'm 45, and Charlotte is out of the house, and I'm having a real midlife crisis -- maybe then I can burn their house down.