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.

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.

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.

What I know about Charlotte as of October 2013

-- Charlotte thinks humans communicate chiefly through raspberries and shrieks. Under our current schedule, I feed her at night. Most of the time, she's pretty groggy, but by the time I change her diaper, she might blow some raspberries. It's nice that she can be cheerful even right after she wakes in the middle of the night.

The tables turn in the morning. After I've slept in about half as long as I'd prefer, Sarah brings Charlotte onto the bed and points her at me. My daughter spits all over as she says good morning. I do feel a little bad that my wife needs to use our baby as a shield from my grumpiness when she wakes me.

-- Charlotte is surprisingly dexterous. I've mentioned her long fingers before, but it still amazes me how she can use them. She's now picking up little snacks and putting them in her mouth. When we feed her bottles, she often fully extends her arm in the air and looks at her fingers, tilting her hand as if admiring a diamond ring. Then she slowly rotates her hand to look at the front, then the back again. Her specialty, which she learned in the NICU, is grabbing wires and waving them around. During feedings, she'll often pull out my earbuds. I bet some old-schoolers will tell me that's a message.

-- Charlotte gets cabin fever. For those not familiar with the expression, cabin fever, or stir-craziness, is when you can't stand being stuck in your house any longer. Our kid will sit in her Super Activity Play Seat Baby Gundam Mobile Armor for about five seconds before she's sick of it. She loves her Baby Bjorn carrier, and she'll seldom complain on walks.

-- Charlotte loves new faces. She will sit and stare at a stranger quietly for minutes on end. This is very handy in church. Sometimes she's scared by glasses and sunglasses.

-- Charlotte is not easy to impress. With some kids, you throw them in the air or tickle their stomachs a bit and they laugh their heads off. Charlotte laughs for about five seconds, and then she just smiles like she's humoring you. The only times I've ever got her really laughing, she was pretty tired.

--  Charlotte's eyes are currently blue and green. By which I mean one is blue and the other is green. Of course, any predictions about her eye color I make now will end up being completely wrong, but I bet they'll be green or hazel.

UPDATE: Charlotte's trick poops were a result of the Enfamil Gentlease formula the NICU sent us home with. Once we switched to Sam's Club Brand Members' Baby Chow or whatever, her poops got a lot less interesting. She doesn't have blowouts nearly as often as before. Side note: Sarah believes the term "blowout" refers exclusively to baby poop escaping a diaper. Every time she sees an ad for a blowout sale, or hears an anecdote in which a car's tire explodes, she giggles uncontrollably.

Steve Kent's 115th Dream

I just woke from a dream which I think may be prophetic. I was at a party where a lot of food was served. Many people I knew from several periods of my life were there, but no one in my family. Every few minutes, my vision and hearing would be overtaken by an ad -- and I'm not just trying out a hyperbolic metaphor. Carefully placed in my surroundings, I'd see professionally produced hallucinations for life insurance, or deli meat or whatever.
I was going to ask whether these ads were normal -- if everyone at the party was having them -- but as soon as I went into ad mode, I couldn't find anyone I felt comfortable asking whether I was normal or having mini-epileptic fits.
The most effective ad by far struck when the little brother of a friend remarked on how much Monroe shocks improve our lives. As he spoke, the Monroe logo appeared below him. I was already inclined to agree with him, but what sealed the deal was when he got into his wheelchair. Which had shock absorbers.

A few other things that happened which may be less prophetic:

• There was a concert before the party. The crowd started moshing a bit, and my brain hit pause and started designing concert stages for maximum mosh safety. When the dream resumed, the band wasn't playing and people were just mingling. At center stage stood a Utah State University podium, painted Aggie blue but with bloody, smeared handprints on it. A buddy from high school said, "I think they should probably put a new coat of paint on this," and I replied, "I think they keep it that way as a warning." (Incidentally, in real life a couple years ago, I went to a concert on the USU campus where a semi-local punk band was playing. A student coordinator told the crowd a dozen times to stop moshing. It was a pretty considerate mosh, so I felt a little bad about wearing steel-toe boots.)
• After the concert, a good friend from middle school asked if he could use my phone. I said yeah, but only if he promised not to laugh. I then produced my flip-phone, and he laughed. It was set to extra user-unfriendly mode, and I showed him how to unlock it. He said, "Ha! No button does what it's supposed to do," and I said, "They do what they're designed to do -- they were just designed by an idiot." Which says a lot about my feelings toward my phone.
• In line for food, a friend started mashing greasy food onto his brand-new T-shirt. Somehow I knew that he had several T-shirts with him and was planning to cycle through them throughout the day. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, "This way, I can be sure to have a shirt with food stains on it this early in the day."

Now I know how Dylan must have felt.

Things I've learned about Charlotte

• Charlotte's favorite music is the blues. Specifically blues-rock with heavy beats and loud guitar riffs. How I know this: Once she was fussing, and I played Catfish Blues by Jimi Hendrix and she got very still and quiet and her eyes got big. Later that day, she started fussing again when I listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I switched to T Model Ford and she quieted right down. She also likes Led Zeppelin, including (don't tell Sarah) the Immigrant Song.

• Charlotte is capable of trick poops. This is like a trick shot in the circus, where a shooter can throw a deck of cards up in the air and put a bullet specifically through the card you picked (though that sounds dangerous now I think about it). In Charlotte's case, you can wrap her up in a diaper then swaddle her in a blanket then wrap the blanket in Saran Wrap then hold her way out away from you with Inspector Gadget extendo arms and she can still get poop on your shirt. I may be exaggerating slightly, but she does experience diaper containment failure on a regular basis.
• Charlotte likes eating sugar, much to Sarah's chagrin. Before you call social services on us, we found this out in the NICU. While she was on the cooling cap, sometimes the only way to quiet her down was to give her sucrose drops. If you put it on her lips, she would suck her top lip way down into her mouth. If you put it on a pacifier, she would latch on so tight you could probably lift her up by the pacifier if you tried. Which I did not.
• Charlotte has long fingers and is more dexterous than I thought she would be. Exhibit A:

This photo was taken when she was four or five days old.

Charlotte Kent, born in the futuristic world of 20XX

Fig. 1: Charlotte takes a break from the cool cap to try something different. Taken in the McKay-Dee NICU.

As Sarah mentioned in her post, we had a baby. About a month ago. Now that school is out and I haven't started work yet, I've got a bit more time to update the blog.

Sarah also mentioned that Charlotte had to spend some time in the NICU at the McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden. Here's what I have to tell people before I tell this story: Charlotte is fine now, and she's done nothing but normal baby stuff except for the first scare she gave us. Sarah is also fine.

The reason for our NICU stay, for those who are curious: Shortly after we arrived at Logan Regional for her delivery, Charlotte's heart rate dropped and they had to get her out via C-section. The doctors aren't sure what caused it -- maybe the umbilical cord was pinched for a while.

Since Charlotte went without oxygen for a few minutes, her pediatrician wanted to send her to Ogden for brain-cooling therapy. (For some of the science and statistics behind the therapy, here's an article from Shirley Wang at the Wall Street Journal. The story told in the article is very similar to ours.)

They flew Charlotte to Ogden and put her in an open-air incubator. A machine chilled water and ran it through a cap on her head. Unlike the therapy mentioned in the WSJ article, Charlotte didn't have a cooling blanket -- only the cap. The open air cooled the rest of her body and slowed her metabolism, while the cap cooled her brain.

When I arrived in Ogden, seeing Charlotte was a huge relief. I'd been crying my guts out on the freeway, alone, because Sarah wouldn't be released until the next day. I kept worrying and wondering what was happening to her. Would there be more unexpected alarms? Would they need to put her back on a respirator? In the NICU, I still felt anxious, but at least I could see Charlotte and if anything went wrong, I'd know it. Her limbs had been purple and grey right after birth, but now they were a reassuring peach color. And it makes me sound like a complete man-child (see fig. 2) to admit, but the blue of her cooling cap reminded me of Mega Man's helmet, and that helped me picture her as a little fighter.

Fig. 2: From Hark! A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton. www.harkavagrant.com

She wore the cooling cap for 72 hours. She would shiver and cry, and then they'd have to sedate her to keep her temperature from rising. The C-section, the NICU and the cooling cap were incredibly stressful, but we feel blessed to have had access to them.

Sarah holds Charlotte's hand in the NICU. This was Charlotte's actual cooling cap. You can see the color  over her ear. There's a white insulating cap over the blue one.

Dating advice is for suckers

The Utah Statesman is starting a staff blog about dating. There's only one post so far, and it's mine. It would fit well in this blog, but alas, you'll just have to read it on the Statesman site. We've got some good posts coming, though -- and hopefully one titled, "How #DateTavin ruined my love life."

The hearing-loss blues

I don't know exactly how I converted to the blues. My favorite song when I was 6 was "Bad to the Bone" by George Thorogood. I'm fascinated by the idea that a musical style can embody an emotion, but I'm not usually a fan of subtlety. Here's a list of blues songs so loud you don't have to guess at what the singer is feeling.

Rockin' Daddy by Howlin' Wolf

I started listening to Howlin' Wolf my junior or senior year of high school. I first heard of him on the "Screamin' and Hollerin'" station (now defunct) on accuradio.com. I couldn't believe there was an artist who called himself "Howlin' Wolf" and I'd never heard of him. What's more, the name fit the singer perfectly. He sounded like some big cartoon wolf, growling his lyrics and even howling on choruses.

For a few months, I thought I was the only person on the planet who had heard of him. (That's changed now. A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to "Smokestack Lightning" in the office and a co-worker identified it as "the song from the Viagra commercial.") Fortunately, I wasn't the only person who heard of Howlin' Wolf. He influenced blues-rock giants like Cream and the Rolling Stones. This track, done for the Howlin' Wolf London Sessions, was recorded with Eric Clapton on lead guitar, Hubert Sumlin (one of Howlin' Wolf's guitarists) on rhythm guitar, Ian Stewart and Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones on piano and drums, respectively, and Phil Upchurch on bass. Howlin' Wolf shows a lot of fight for a man in his 60s, and the bass and piano really carry the track.

Act Nice and Gentle by the Black Keys

Shortly after I discovered Howlin' Wolf on Accuradio, a friend told me about Pandora. I tested it out, and it was either on "Howlin' Wolf Radio" or "Ball and Biscuit Radio" that I heard the Black Keys. The music's texture hooked right into my guts. The lonesome slide guitar wailing in the background, the raw, growling guitar and Dan Auerbach's weary but soulful voice again made me wonder why the band wasn't in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I listened to track previews of Rubber Factory every time I went to Borders, worried that some secret task force of Black musicians would swoop in, snatch the CD from my hands and punish me for appropriating their music. A little while later, I learned with a shock that Rubber Factory had been released the previous year, and the Black Keys were a couple of geeky white guys from Ohio. I still sometimes wonder if Auerbach got vocal chords transplanted from a 50-year-old organ donor.

Hello Operator by the White Stripes

I never thought Jack White was black for a second. That didn't stop me from appreciating his approach to the blues, though. One great thing about the White Stripes is you seldom have to analyze their music -- what you hear is what you get.

The Gospel According to John by the Soledad Brothers

Oddly enough, I eventually stopped worrying about the Black Key's theft of African American music because the Soledad Brothers were much worse. One of their albums has the Black Panthers logo on it. If anyone is trying harder to be black than Eminem, it's the Soledad Brothers.

The vocals on this track (and pretty much on every track by the Soledad Brothers) suck. Someone here is confusing soul with fake southern accents. Thankfully, the guitars are loud enough to drown them out. The Interstate-inspired guitar is as loud as the White Stripes, but less vicious.

Ventilator Blues by the Rolling Stones

If anyone can find another song with double-tracked vocals and slide guitar, please let me know. When I head this song, I thought some indie band like the Shins or Pinback invented double-tracking, but I'm glad I was wrong.

Vampires and Failures by Grandpaboy

Who is Grandpaboy when he's at home, you might ask. It's Paul Westerberg, former punk rocker. In 2002, Westerberg released Stereo under his own name and Mono under the pseudonym Grandpaboy. Ironically, the tracks on Mono are much richer musically. Westerberg doesn't always counterbalance his vocals, and most of the time comes off as the anemic ghost of Tom Petty, but the ground-shaking bass in this track counteract him perfectly. Westerberg opens up the soundscape with echoes and backup vocals. During the last chorus, it sounds like he's cutting someone's hair with electric clippers.

Turkey and the Rabbit by T-Model Ford

Once, as a misssionary in Ishigaki, I knocked on the door of an old woman. We started talking to her about the meaning of life. She didn't seem to understand our broken Japanese, but seemed happy to talk to us. "Hey now," she said, "I'm, you know, I'm--" She paused, and I was sure she was going to say she was an ancestor worshiper and not interested in Christianity. "I'm 105 years old."

T-Model Ford is somewhere between 88 and 92 years old and can't remember his own birthdate. Every once in a while, you meet someone so old you can't understand a thing they say -- but you can't stop listening, either, as if they're chanting some spell to keep you entranced. I'd love to see someone try to tell him to turn his music down.

Pride and Joy by Stevie Ray Vaughan with Albert King

I really can't tell what's different about this version of Pride and Joy, other than the bass is cranked way up. It makes me feel like I'm jumproping with moonboots on. There might be another guitar part, some piano in there, but I can't really hear it. Vaughan exhibits here one of the only things white bluesmen ever invented -- he sings the song exactly the same as he always does.

Catfish Blues by Jimi Hendrix

I never considered the advantages of being a catfish until I head this Muddy Waters cover. While I'm not sure of the logic involved, I've since said I wished I was a catfish many times. Sometimes several times a day (ask Sarah).

I give the hottest smoochies

UPDATE: One night at the Good Time Yum-Yum Stand Up Show at Logan Out Loud, I found out Kendall Pack was Stu's anonymous critic.

I found the following flier on a bulletin board in the Family Life building on campus at Utah State (click for full size):

I blacked out Stu's number before posting, but it looked like a legitimate 801 number. I thought about calling him to see if the flier was sincere or a prank from his buddies, but I never did. Right next to Stu's brave foray into bulletin-board dating, someone posted a response:

I felt a little bad for Stu, but holy moly, what a critique! This kind of interaction fascinates me. I'll bet Mark Zuckerberg saw something like this and said, "Hey, this should be a website," and invented Facebook.

Free Book Review: ‘Penrod' by Booth Tarkington

Penrod tests home-made Smallpox medicine on a rival.

Free Book Review highlights public domain books you'd actually pay for if you had to.

Penrod, published in 1914, initiates readers in the secrets of the worst boy in town. (Population: 135,000.) The 11-year-old hero is more than a caricature ala Dennis the Menace, though. He's a compressed storm of human emotions — pride, jealousy, love and humiliation — familiar to adults but fresh to children. Never has an author written about young boys with greater insight and empathy.

Before putting this book on your kids' holiday reading list, however, read it yourself. Much has changed over the past century, and here's an abridged list of sit-down discussion topics Penrod might prompt:

—Racism
—Cruelty to animals
—Prescription drug abuse
—Slander
—Alcoholism
—Bullying

To his credit, Tarkington stands firmly in Penrod's corner throughout his misadventures and reveals his motives. Set in a time when corporal punishment governed American children, few of Penrod's adventures end without a lashing, but Tarkington questions the justice and efficacy of the rod.

This is a boy's lot: anything he does, anything whatever, may afterward turn out to have been a crime — he never knows.

Penrod's dense prose proves a minimalist style isn't always better. Tarkington builds the book with scholarly phrases and euphemisms, telling each story the way Penrod could if he had the words. Absurd situations like a tar-fight in the street are conveyed with straight-faced gravity, reminding the reader the power of emotions as felt by an 11-year-old boy.

The brevity of each story offsets the sophisticated style, though, and I had no trouble finishing the book. Rather than bend Penrod's tale to an adult's attention span, Tarkington instead stitched together a series of semi-related short stories to form a pleasing whole. The format suits the main character, whose life itself is a string of fits and phases. Penrod bounces back from the consequences of his exploits, no matter how spirit shattering or publicly humiliating. The author explains this remarkable resilience:

With a boy, trouble must be of Homeric dimensions to last overnight. To him, every next day is really a new day.

Though there's no overarching plot, the somewhat sudden ending is powerful enough to satisfy the reader.

Penrod reminds us that emotion is universal, love can be new and the best stories come from a bold life. Though nearly a century has passed since Penrod's glorious 12th birthday, there are still some lessons you can only learn from the worst boy in town.

Penrod is freely available for download in multiple formats from Manybooks.net and Gutenberg.org. An audiobook of questionable quality is available from Librivox.org.

Manecdotes

The majestic snowcat

"I wish we had that one thing that sits in front of the mall," Sarah said as we pulled into our parking lot after a shopping trip.

"A snowcat," I said. "In the boy scouts, we took a tour of the Search and Rescue hangar at the airport. They had a big blue diesel snowcat that had 4-inch cleats on the treads. The guy said it could climb up anything that wouldn't tip it over backward."

"That's cool," she said. I don't know whether she was interested or not. I didn't really care — the compulsion to recite knowledge of machines and adventure opened a primal faucet in my soul. The snow cat story poured from my mouth as if it might bring home the brontosaurus bacon, impress my mate or cement my status within the tribe.

In some higher level of my brain, the odometer rolled over. I must have told that story an even thousand times. In celebration of the milestone, I gave the story a name: It was a manecdote.

man·ec·dote
noun, plural man·ec·dotes

1. A short account of a particular indecent told to impress listeners with the speaker's manliness 

I believe every man has a dozen of these tidbits filed away in his brain, ready to vindicate his masculinity.

Here are a few more of mine:

I was riding my fixed-gear bicycle on campus when a longboarder ran into my rear wheel. Since I was braking — and since backward pressure on the pedals transmits directly to the wheel on a fixed-gear bike — my wheel spun backward and sucked the longboard right out from under its rider. To our credit, neither of us fell over.

My old backcountry skis didn't have brakes on the binding. If your ski popped off, it would slide right to the bottom of the hill. I had tethers, to tie my skis to my ankles — but man they were a pain —so I rarely used them. Once, I hit a crusty patch around the top of a clear-cut slope. I went down, and my ski popped off. It darted toward the bottom of the hill — but an invisible bump popped it into the air. When it landed, the tip dug into the snow and the ski stuck, pointing straight at the sky not 15 feet from where I was untangling myself.

Speed trailers — those solar-powered, digital signs that tell you how fast you're going — are my favorite. When I lived in Smithfield, sometimes the cops leave them at the bottom of 300 South. I'd call my longboarding buddies and we'd go bomb past it. I think my record on that hill is 32 miles per hour.

GROUP ACTIVITY: Add your own manecdotes (or ones you've heard) in the comments below.

Best Bob Dylan covers

When I was a kid, I walked downstairs one night to find half my family gathered around my dad, playing "I Shall Be Free" on the phonograph. It was the funniest song I'd ever heard. Over the following years, I pawed through my dad's records, looking for the funny Bob Dylan songs. It seemed I had to listen to 10 songs I didn't like to find one that I did, but I found the funny ones. I also found his sad songs, his deep songs and songs that didn't make any sense. I found songs that were all those things at once.

The same goes for Dylan covers — most don't seem very special, but if you listen to 10, one might change your life.

Hard Rain by Leon Russel

I heard this cover for the first time in my dad's record collection, then freaked out when I heard it on "Remember the Titans." Remember? It's the part where they're running through the woods of Gettysburg. You don't remember? Well, you've done it now. You've gone and forgotten the Titans.

If You Gotta Go, Go Now by Cowboy Junkies

Dylan was a great songwriter, no question. So great, in fact, that he didn't need to be an even half-decent vocalist. Some of the best Dylan covers just put a smoother voice in front of the mic.

Buckets of Rain by Fistful of Mercy

Without the growling guitars, this cover would be too sweet. A few guitars like these would go a long way in the Byrds' Dylan covers. If someone mixes them in, I'll add a Byrds track to the list.

I'll Be Your Baby Tonight by Norah Jones

See the notes for "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"

Oh, Sister by Andrew Bird

This song has a wacky intro. The first time I really listened to it, I accidentally left a recording of a crowded room playing on my computer. I think it made the track better. As it stands now, it's a great track. Bird brings his trademark string sections and ghost whistling but doesn't chuck a jazzy freak-out into the middle of the song. If I couldn't hear him breathing or double-check on Wikipedia, I'd swear he's playing a saw instead of whistling.

Goin to Acapulco by Jim James and Calexico

Just before the listless guitars and deep-throat-high-vibrato vocals* let you slide into boredom, who comes to the rescue? Trumpets! Martial drumrolls! A glockenspeil? Ah, whatever. Go and have some fun, Calexico.

With God on Our Side by K'naan

Out of all the songs attempting to update or remix Dylan's work, this is the most successful I've heard. The synthetic beats and the words are new, but the song stays true to Dylan's message. The piano echoing through the background and the swelling strings lift the track to a light, airy mood. Dylan's song looked backward — this one feels like it's looking forward.

All Along the Watchtower Like a Rolling Stone by Jimi Hendrix

Yes, "All Along the Watchtower" is probably the greatest Dylan cover of all time, but how many times have you heard it? This live cover is more fresh, more raw (Jimi says, "Yes, I know I missed a verse, don't worry,"at about 5:13).

Outlaw Blues by Queens of the Stone Age

What could possibly improve on Dylan's original, stomping electric-guitar rhythm? More guitars, maybe. Josh Homme is even a little easier to understand than Dylan on this one.

Desolation Row by My Chemical Romance

With this song, the playlist gets a little more weird. My Chemical Romance took an eight-minute dirge, added a couple of guitar solos and finished it in three minutes. No complaints here.

Leopard-Skin-Pillbox Hat by Beck

This cover ditches the swagger of the original but adds a guitar vamped up to monstrous proportions. It keeps the messy, irreverent blues feel, though.

Not Dark Yet by Silversun Pickups

If I ever go on a spacewalk, my suit's music player will have this song. It creates such a huge, lonely soundscape that I zone out when it's playing. The Silversun Pickups have a vocal style you almost can't help but hate on first listen. It sinks in after a couple of verses, though.

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol by Cage the Elephant

If I ever go to space, I'm leaving this song at home because it would scare the bejeebies out of me. Cage the Elephant instills a kind of shuddering energy to their songs, like the glow you feel once you're done crying. They're definitely one of the strangest and most wonderful bands to hit mainstream success. It's fascinating to hear them perform lyrics much deeper than their usual stuff — and their  unique style lends a spooky, Tim Buton-esque atmosphere to Dylan's tragic tale of a servant's murder at the hands of a plantation owner.

I Shall Be Released by Jack Johnson

Yes, it sounds like pretty much every other song Jack Johnson ever sang. It puts the playlist down on a nice note, though.

*I like My Morning Jacket, but I think it should be named My Christmas Sweater because Jim James has a thick, warm, thoroughly uncool voice.