If You Belonged Here

The Question is Begged, The Dol is Two-Legged. Er...

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. 

- Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

For those of you with kids in school, it may not come as a surprise that Dr. Seuss' birthday was March 2. It was used as a springboard for Read Across America, so if your school is like my daughter's, you got annoying robo-calls about reading to your children. We really didn't need the reminder at our house, thanks, and it bugs me when a robo-call interrupts my viewing of "Dogtown," but there you go.

Not that the obnoxious calls have anything to do with how much I love Dr. Seuss. I love him.

My daughter's school encouraged kids to dress up as a Seussian character. Most kids did Thing 1 or Thing 2, or Sally from The Cat in the Hat. Baby Dol and I spent an entire day creating a fabulous, fabulous Cindy Lou Who get-up.

Here's the hair.

Yeah, I know--pretty damn awesome, right? I have no trouble fishing for a compliment on this bad boy, people, because it is the best thing I have ever done in my entire life. When I put that bow on the top and stepped back to look at it, I giggled maniacally, because I don't do hair. 

I mean, look at it, people! It's beautiful, quirky, lush! Feel free to heap compliments on me in the comments. 

After you answer the question, of course. Which is coming, now that I've vainly tooted my own horn.

My question today refers back to one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books, The Lorax. I will be honest here, amigos: I get choked up every time I read that book. 

I mean, who doesn't love that grumpy little Lorax? 

He was shortish. And oldish. And brownish. And mossy.
And he spoke with a voice that was sharpish and bossy.

He's quite the environmentalist, is The Lorax. 

I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.

The Onceler tells the story of how he  (the Onceler) destroyed the local habitat and drove away all of the native wildlife in his quest to create Thneeds (a sort of universal clothing item that doubles as a multi-purpose linen). 

The Lorax fought hard to stop the destruction of the habitat, but eventually even he fled. 

The Lorax said nothing. Just gave me a glance...
just gave me a very sad, sad backward glance...
as he lifted himself by the seat of his pants.
And I'll never forget the grim look on his face
when he hoisted himself and took leave of this place,
through a hole in the smog, without leaving a trace.
And all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks, with the one word

UNLESS.

The Onceler gives the last remaining seed of the Truffula Tree to the reader so that the habitat might be brought back again.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

And that's where we come to today's question:

What do you do, big things or small things, to make the world a better place? 

Pandora Ventures Onto Chatroulette

Oh it's a man's man's man's world and that's no exception for the internet phenomenon, Chatroulette.  I kind of felt like Lisa Ling going into the jungle for Oprah to bring back secrets of secretive societies.  Yours truly, Pandora, ventured where few chicks go and many dicks do-- literally.  

For months I had been avoiding the site.  The idea of letting a random stranger see my face--let alone hear my voice--over the Internet was disturbing.  It's not really that I care what others see about me, I'm just not really into the whole anonymous male genitalia thing.  

Let me rephrase that; I like penis.  Yes, I do.  

I happen to prefer males to females when it comes to sexual encounters of any kind.  It's just in my wiring.  However, exposed male penises via webcam really don't exactly do it for me.  I mean, straight guys are turned on by boobs no matter what the circumstance, right? 

So my question is this: are there any ladies that ultimately get turned on by the sight of a penis?  Sure, it's not like I've encountered too many penises in my life, but I just don't seem to find myself particularly overjoyed by looking at one.  The male anatomy just isn't as aesthetically pleasing as the female's.  

The penis is just sort of there. Hanging.    

Now that there has been enough penis talk for a week, let me get back down to the gritty of Chatroulette.  

The whole concept of the site is to connect you with random strangers around the world with just the click of the button.  If one should encounter a creep or a flailing dong, simply click the "next" button and you'll be connected to the next random stranger.  

Beware though, another flaccid twig may appear and there is a high chance that several more are to come.  

About 30% of Chatroulette consists of older men playing with the family jewels.  Kudos to the first person who thought of the idea to expose his junk to the world. It might have been actually funny then.  But to all the others who have followed: you're just not that clever.  

On a side note though, if your little friend is 3 inches long, why, oh why, are you showing that embarrassment off to the world?  Now, 50% of the site's users are just older men who sit around without their shirts.  This leaves us with the other  40% that consist of some pervs and college boys.  Thus, we are left with the 10% that are females. It's a sad truth but, you can only really make it on Chatroulette if you're a decently attractive girl.  It's not that I ever not found myself attractive, but it's definitely a confidence booster when almost every guy you talk to tells you that your smile is adorable and that "it's nice to finally talk to a cute girl instead of a dick." 

Once you get past all the exposure, Chatroulette is honestly a brilliant concept.  For a fun fact, it was actually created by a seventeen-year-old from Russia.  I've encountered and talked to some pretty cool people through the site.  One moment I'm talking to a British bloke about Mumford & Sons and next I'm engaging in conversation with a group of school girls from Indiana.  

Recently, I talked up IYBH to a group of intelligent, yet drunk, college boys from Maryland.  They had transformed Chatroulette into a drinking game in which you took a drink every time you encountered a dick. 

A mighty fine game that is guaranteed to mess you up.  

I informed them I was writing a post and sent them here.  They were suprised that people actually kept blogs with regular postings.  

So far, my favorite encounter on Chatroulette was when two college-aged boys from Boulder serenaded me with a surprisingly awesome rendition of Soul Sister by Train.  It was two in the morning and they had been waiting all night for a girl to show up and listen to them.  Like I said previously, girls are the gems that are rarely seen.  

Men light up the moment they see one.  I almost feel like I could change lives via the site.  

There was one conversation that I had with a boy in the Army.  I thanked him for his service and he told me that I was the first person who he's encountered online that actually told him that.  One boy even told him I was the first person to actually sit and have a conversation with him.  Before, he was constantly being nexted.  

I even met a celebrity!  Well, maybe I did.  Does this look like Snoop Dogg to you?

 

Apparently this is Thomas Delonge of Angels and Airwaves.  I think he was a little disappointed that I didn't recognize him because he nexted me.  Truth is, I had no idea who the fuck he was and had use the mighty powers that be Google.  However, once I remembered the band, I also remembered that I kind of loathed their music....

 
How ironic that the girl named for destruction and despair is spreading happiness and joy to males all over the world. 

So, now that I've broken the ice, are you going to jump onto the wagon and explore Chatroulette?  I know I've found my latest site to procrastinate and wreak havoc.  

   

Diosa Does Disney

We took a family trip to Disney World at the end of January. You know, that obligatory family trip that's practically a rite of passage in this country. I know all sorts of families that have differing opinions on the Disney trip. Some just refuse to do anything quite so cliché and commercialized. Others make the trip a yearly tradition. And then some, like us, make the trip once, maybe a second time. Of course, we're talking families that can actually afford vacations. Let's not forget that not everyone is quite so fortunate.

Now, by saying the trip is obligatory, that doesn't mean that it's not enjoyable. Disney is pretty amazing. It's different for this generation than it was for me, though. I went to Disney once as a kid. I was nine and I was a huge fan of the Disney channel. The Disney channel is still around, but it's not what it used to be. My kids barely knew who Mickey and Donald were before we went. They've never seen the old Disney cartoons. Maybe they show them at some specified time or not at all. I have no idea. And seeing that I have two boys, the whole princess-thing is of no interest. They've never been fans of Little Einsteins, Hannah Montana, Handy Manny or anything else Disney. Trouble has recently discovered the Jonas Brothers, but I don't think it's clear to him they have anything to do with Disney.

So while my boys were excited to go to Disney, they weren't really sure why they were excited. It was like they knew they were supposed to be excited, and they were trying to be, but couldn't really muster the actual emotion.

It turns out one of their favorite parts of the trip was watching the old Disney cartoons that they showed constantly in the hotel lobby. I'm thinking I need to buy them a DVD. Every night when we got in they wanted to spend half an hour watching cartoons in the lobby.

And as you can see in the following clip, the boys learned to appreciate Mickey Mouse while we were there.

Trouble was excited to be in Florida in January, period. As soon as we stepped out of the airport and he felt how much warmer it was, and saw palm trees for the first time that he could remember (he has been to visit Polly and family in San Diego, but he was only five and doesn't remember much), he was in love. 

You are taking a chance visiting Florida in January, or practically in any season for that matter. In the fall, you're taking your chances with hurricane season. School vacations, I hear, are a nightmare. Summer is too hot. We had days that it was 70 and we even managed to hit the one water park that was open. Blizzard Beach was closed for maintenance. These are the chances you take when you visit off-season. We had other days where it rained and was 50. We also didn't have to wait in extraordinarily long lines. We used Fast Passes for only the most popular of rides. Most times you didn't even need them.

One thing about Disney is that it requires a great deal of planning and the choices are overwhelming. You can stay at a Disney resort or stay off-site and rent a car. There are certain perks to staying at the Disney resorts. You don't need to rent a car or pay for parking and there are extra magic hours available at one of the parks each day. We decided to stay at one of the more economical Disney resorts - All Star Sports. It was nice enough. The room was roughly the size of a shoebox, but seeing that we spent less than one waking hour in the room most days, that didn't matter much. There was an outdoor heated pool, but the one big drawback was no jacuzzi.

We also did the Disney Dining plan with one quick service and one sit-down meal each day. I spent two hours on the phone with a Disney booking agent arranging our dining a couple of months before we left. Curls tipped me off to that. 

You can't expect to be able to make dinner reservations once you're down there. You have to do it months, or at least weeks, in advance. And to book your meal reservations, you have to know which park you're going to be in each day because you don't want to have to leave a park and spend an hour traveling to another park for lunch or dinner. Like I said, a lot of decisions and planning.

The best part of the dining plan was that some of our meals weren't actually at the parks but at different resorts. And some of those high-end resorts are amazing. We got to see the Boardwalk, which must be five star. It's one of the resorts where they perform weddings. From there, we caught the ferry over to Epcot and entered that park through the back door. We also saw the Animal Kingdom resort where you can watch the giraffes while you soak in the hot tub. And the kids' favorite was the Wilderness Lodge. The way the different pools all connect and follow a path through the resort --wow. And then inside, the main lobby goes straight up through the five or so levels of rooms which are an open, log cabin design. Very cool.

LT was also very thrilled to learn that he was tall enough to hit the height requirement of 42" on most of the rides. I think the only place there were some rides he couldn't do was at the water park.

And Trouble even got to train as young Padewan.

I wouldn't want to go back and do Disney the way we did this time. It was a great trip, but not one I'd want to repeat. I could go back and spend a week at the Animal Kingdom Lodge or Wilderness Lodge, they're resorts in and of themselves, and spend some time outside of Disney. Visit Sea World and Universal. Of course, we're talking an even more expensive trip than the one I'm still paying for.

But it was totally worth it.

One thing you want to make sure you don't miss if you go is the show Fantasmic at Hollywood Studios. Truly awe inspiring and magical.

 

Blackstone keeps telling me that our next couple of trips should be to see the icebergs before they melt and Venice before it's under water. I think he has a point.