A bit about my sense of humor

I may have some more interesting observations about my trip to Austin later, but for now I'll tell a quickie about how I'm beginning to understand where I get my sense of humor from.

Friday, on the way down to Austin, my mom brought up this discussion on how grave markers were being vandalized in my hometown. My sister gasped with the thoughts of how someone could be that cruel. My dad chuckled and said the people who make grave markers probably paid the vandals so the grave marker people could stay in business.

My mom and sister had perturbed looks on their faces.

My dad and I were laughing.

Christmas realizations

What I'm about to say is so cliche that it's a cliche to qualify it by reminding you that it is not. We often take our family for granted.

Children are amazing. They haven't quite fully mastered lying yet, so they'll tell what you need to know and then some. I have a six year old cousin Deborah and a four year old cousin Dylan, and they're so cute. The strange thing is that Dylan already wears glasses, which is highly unusual for his age. I think nothing of wearing glasses now, but he got really excited when I was wearing my glasses. "Daniel, you're wearing gwasses!"

Oh yeah, I do.

I'd probably get more excited about Christmas if I got as many gifts as my cousins did. What it is about being young and having a cute face that nets you so many presents? My sister alone gave three presents to each of my cousins. I mean, my cousins could have tripped, looked up, and there would be another Christmas gift waiting for them at the Christmas tree.

We took them out to see The Incredibles for their first time. It's still an incredible movie the second time around.

This Christmas was most unusual in that I attended my uncle's church...which is a Vietnamese church. I've gone to mostly English services most of my life, so it was an experience singing the Vietnamese versions of the Christmas carols we hold so dear. And some translations don't seem right. Like blessing is translated as "phuoc", which I always thought meant lucky. But I suppose for overly superstitutious Vietnamese, being blessed means being lucky.

So there's some old adage about giving is better than receiving. On the receiving side, I picked up a decent amount of cash thanks to the ole poor college boy routine.

On the giving side, I got a most unusual request. In the Christmas spirit, I was asked to stop heckling a girl. Okay, I admit it, I fall into these habitual loops of just ripping people. I'm a bit straightforward at times. The problem is that my eyes are too wide open and my brain thinks too fast. What annoys me to no end are people who I consider to be friends not doing what I think they should be doing. What I mean is that I'm going to just straight up tell someone that they don't know what they're doing with their lives, or that they have no chance of doing what they're thinking about doing for some odd reason.

Some of you might be like, hmmm, that doesn't sound like you at all. You seem to be a nice and charitable person. That's because I only heckle people I know well, and I only do it to their face (which is kind of hard to do over the Internet). This is where my persistence might be a bad quality. Come to think of it, who likes to be constantly ripped by someone who keeps hitting too close to home? Few people desire to be incessantly ragged on.

Even if I have to be just plain silent around this girl, I shall grant one relatively cost-effective Christmas gift.

Rant on something you can't do, #201

I may be outnumbered here, but I will share with you something that you can't do. You can't tell someone "Ooooooo, I know a secret but I'm not telling you." You can't do that. If you're the type of person who does this often, you should be shot.

Okay, you can, but you can't. You know what I'm saying here? I can forgive once or twice, but it's three strikes are you're out. Sorry, but them's the rules, kiddo.

I'll shoot you myself, so help me God.