Closed Captions

by Grant

    A dirty little secret of lazy parents (I put myself and pretty much all normal parents in that camp) is the use of closed captions. This way you can watch TV while your kids are being noisy, which is always, without deafening yourself with Law & Order "Duh-Dums." Actually, my wife and I started watching TV this way pre-kid. I don't remember why we started, but I do know that it was really easy with her TV. She had a 20" TV which actually had a dedicated CC button. You didn't have to wade through menus to turn it on and off at will. A couple button pushes and it was on or off. Watching TV with closed captions, hereafter referred to as CC, has it's pluses and minuses. First, we'll cover some minuses. One (and the biggest), it tends to annoy people. Get over it, I always say. Second, depending on what you're trying to watch, the CCs may be slow, inaccurate, or downright garbage. Since I'm of the younger generation (although my body tends to disagree) I don't get my news from TV but from the Internet so that doesn't annoy me. I also am not a big sports fan so it doesn't annoy me there. Live events like awards shows I shun as well. Basically, live events are where closed captions don't work unless you truly are deaf. Even then I think it's insulting to those who are aurally challenged. But I digress. Getting back to the minuses... there's one other one. Sometimes CCs will give away the punchline to a joke. It'll pop up the answer before the comedian has finished setting things up.

Now on to the positives:
1. You learn a lot. I enjoy the Simpsons (yes, I know you think it's evil even though you've never watched more than 5 minutes of it 10 years ago). And one thing the Simpsons has in it is a lot of hidden humor. The songs that they'll play during some event won't just sound appropriate, they frequently will be written for something exactly like that situation.
2. It exercises your mind more. You are actively using your brain, unlike most TV watching experiences. You cannot help but read the text. So, I think that by using CCs it slows down brain rot.
3. It helps you to spell. 'nuff said
4. You catch other hidden humor that is very subtle. Example: on the Simpsons they did a French version and they had Moe the bartender. (See, told you Simpsons was evil). Well, Moe, since he was French, was actually spelled Meaux. There is no way that you would have known that unless you had CCs on.
5. I like it. You will be in my favor if you turn to the dark side.

Baby/Life update:

The girls are doing well. Still fussy (please God, when will this end???), but otherwise healthy. Whenever I hold them they're fussy. Rebekah says it's cause they sense I'm stressed. Well, maybe I'm stressed cause they keep fussing? huh? They ever think of that? Rebekah had a rough night last night so I'm going to work from home part of today to let her catch up on sleep.

I've been struggling with allergies that are knocking me out. At the same time, my back muscles started hurting a lot worse. Thankfully, I got some rest over the weekend, but am still trying to adapt.

The boys are good but taking advantage of any distractions we have. You have to stay on the constantly. I guess that's why they call it "training"

Still no jealousy. Sometimes Forrest misses his Mom she thinks, and he'll go sit by/on her when she's holding a baby. But I am much more involved with the boys now--for better or for worse.


There's a line from an evil heathen song that runs through my head frequently these days. "You'll be lucky if you get out of life alive."