2006 Layne Family Christmas Letter

As we sit huddled all toasty and warm before the crackling fire displayed on our giant, flat panel television, we find another holiday season upon us.

The passing year has been most generous in providing much to ponder, loathe, and fear. Though global warming threatens to plunge us headlong into another ice age, we at least have an avian flu pandemic to look forward to. Perhaps the greatest threat to our health, safety, and longevity, however, may well be living right under our own roofs. Much as bats are known to carry rabies and politicians VD, so are children bearers of every known malady harmful to man. Case in point, Amanda has had a cough since August (of 2004), and Ally’s nose runs with such consistency she is being considered by the US Department of Energy as a site for a hydroelectric plant.

From a very young age, children offer clues as to the future directions of their lives based on their interests, predilections, and predispositions. Imaginative, domineering, and quick to defend her strongly opinioned ideas, Amanda will someday make a terrific surgeon, lawyer, or dictator. Thankfully, Allyson has all but stopped relying on her fists to express herself, opting instead to use her head – as a bludgeon. A Butkus Award finalist, she now “head bunks” her way through conflicts, striking fear into all who cross her, and earning her the household nickname “Urlacher.” K & M are hopeful the NFL will allow female linebackers by the time she’s draft eligible.

In June we traveled to northern California to attend Karen’s cousin Judy’s wedding. California was hot, but it was a dry heat – not unlike a steel mill, kiln, or active volcano. We visited Karen’s cousin, John, who lives suspended on the side of a cliff so steep that one misstep, and next stop, Tijuana. We also stayed with Karen’s best friend from high school whose husband is Silicon Valley’s leading trucking magnate and food critic. The children got along well, mostly because they let Amanda boss them around.

While there, we drove through California’s wine country which looked a lot like rural Wisconsin, but with grapes for corn and snooty ex-actors for farmers. We also had occasion to gaze upon the oldest living things on earth – no, not Gerald Ford or Zsa Zsa Gabor, but the awe-inspiring redwoods and sequoias of Muir Woods – majestic, 300 foot tall monuments of nature, many of which predate Christ. As we were leaving, a team of conservationists from the Department of Interior arrived with chainsaws. It seems the White House needed firewood.

Mark’s cousins from Maryland drove out for a visit, but after spending three days stuck in traffic on I-80/94, gave up and returned home. Mark otherwise spent so much time in swimming pools he began to grow a dorsal fin, placing him in grave danger of being caught, canned, and sold under the label “Squab of the Sea” (a wholly owned subsidiary of “Chicken of the Swamp”).

In September, Amanda began first grade and Ally preschool. As one might expect, it was not without a torrent of tears, angst, and trepidation. We’re all confident Karen will eventually adjust. The jury was out until the last minute as to whether Ally would attend school at all owing to her intense dislike of other humans, especially male humans (except, of course, for Shaggy, Freddie, and sometimes, Daddy). She finally agreed to go as long as she didn’t have to talk to anyone or share her snacks.

Amanda now wakes each morning, surveys her closet full of clothes, laments over which brown top and brown skirt to wear (hopefully UPS will be hiring when she turns eighteen), and then spends the rest of the time before her bus arrives whining that nothing fits. Ally isn’t nearly as difficult when it comes to clothes in that she prefers to not wear any, making getting her dressed like stuffing an angry porcupine into a gym sock. Owing to their eardrum bruising protests, Karen has given up trying to brush either girl’s hair. Good thing dreadlocks are all the rage with kids these days.

Mark hangs out with his two new best friends, Harley and Davidson, pursuing his lifelong dream of transmogrification, relieved property values have begun to recover now that the PGA has left town and Tiger Woods has moved out of the neighborhood. Karen prays for the ability to tune out the girls’ bickering if only long enough to hear herself cry.

If it is indeed true that much of life’s more poignant wisdom can be found on bumper stickers, then as we stumble forward into a new year, confronted by increasingly difficult decisions, we might do well to ask ourselves one important question: “What would Scooby Doo?”

Merry Christmas to all, and to all good grief.

Karen, Mark, Amanda, & Ally

Hussein Dubbed Genius

WASHINGTON DC – A ruthless dictator in life, Saddam Hussein is now being regarded as a political genius in death by the very forces that sponsored his downfall.

In a surprise about face, the Bush administration now admits removing Saddam Hussein from his role as dictator of Iraq may not have been in the world’s best interest.

“Perhaps we’ve been going about this all wrong,” Bush remarked during a White House press conference. “Rather than removing dictators from the Middle East, maybe we should be supporting the rise of new ones.”

It is no news to anyone that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated since the arrival of US troops. Prior to Hussein’s ouster, Iraq was a stable, secondary world power functioning efficiently in the global theater. Now, however, Iraq is locked in a chaotic state of rampant civil war with the US caught in the middle.

Coming in the wake of the President’s statement, House and Senate leaders agreed that removing Hussein from his leadership role in Iraq was a mistake. Though commentary on the floor ran to both ends of the spectrum, in the end, all agreed that Hussein was the only person in history able to maintain control over a disparate population of zealous, gun-toting, religious nut-jobs, and should be replaced with a like-minded individual.

While some world leaders consider the idea of reinstating a Hussein clone in Iraq as a foolhardy gesture that will only serve to plunge the nation into another generation of repression and tyranny, many others disagree.

“As it turns out, the man was a genius,” stated an official White House aide. “He may have been a brutal, murderous dictator, but apparently, that’s exactly what those folks over there need.”

Dan Weimaraner, State Department spokesperson, believes that the fighting and unrest is merely a cry for help. “Fear is the only thing some people respond to,” said Weimaraner. “It’s the same reason nuns carry yardsticks.”

While most experts agree that Saddam’s success as a leader was attributable to his clever if not ruthless application of fear, it was his willingness to experiment with non-traditional types of intimidation and terror which seemed to yield the greatest results.

According to General William Bombgard of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US military has been ineffective in Iraq largely because the typical Iraqi insurgent doesn’t fear death.

“What he does fear, however, is being fed to a tiger, or having his testicles cut off and shoved down his throat in front of his kids,” stated Bombgard. “Unfortunately, the Geneva Convention currently prevents us from taking such measures.”

Sociologist Marvin Gardner of New York University agrees. “Just like all children crave boundaries, Iraqis crave terror. It’s the only thing they respond to.”

In a recent broadcast on Al Jazeera, Shiite cleric Kilal Ben Dik Hed Abu Azhol said, “Saddam Hussein was the devil and deserved to die, as do the infidels who removed him from power.” Azhol also called for the deaths of all Christians, Sunnis, non-Arabic Muslims, and people who eat broccoli.

Some speculate the United States’ lack of military success in Iraq coupled with growing anti-war sentiment at home have swayed the President’s thinking, causing him to reconsider his policies for the Middle East in general.

When questioned about the decision by Congress to reinstate a Hussein-like dictator to the Iraqi throne, the President said, “Sometimes you need a bigger whooping stick, which is what we had with Saddam.”

A senior White House official who preferred to remain unnamed told reporters that even prior to his execution, measures had been put in place to commute the sentence the kangaroo Iraqi court placed upon Hussein in the hope of returning him to his seat of power.

Bush considered Hussein's death a setback, but noted there are hundreds if not thousands of "Saddam Husseins" out there just aching for the opportunity to continue with the former dictator's good work, and believed it was only a matter of time before CIA field operatives would find another despot to take Hussein's place.

Said Bush, “People have criticized me for having no exit strategy from Iraq – well, put this in your Hookah and smoke it.”



© 2006 Mark J. Layne/Layne-Duck Productions, Ltd.

Daylight Savings Time (and Other Lies)

It is time once again to participate in that semiannual fraud in which we, the citizens of the United States, run through our homes changing clocks, struggling to remember which buttons to push to reset our digital watches, all so we can delude ourselves into believing that by simply advancing the hands of time by one hour, we will all lead happier, more productive lives.

The annoyance factor aside, I am frankly insulted that our leaders in Washington believe we are this stupid. While I’m certain some folks, particularly those in our southern states, may well consider Daylight Savings Time the greatest thing since food stamps, convinced it provides them an extra hour each day to brew moonshine, pickle pig parts, or figure out how to reinstate slavery, I must demur.

Even those of us who bought into that business about weapons of mass destruction, or the stories of a weather balloon crashing in Roswell, New Mexico, or that nonsense about man landing on the moon, are hard pressed to swallow the idea that merely advancing our clocks by an hour somehow earns us an extra sixty minutes to work, play, or make prank phone calls to the Department of Homeland Security.

In search of that elusive 25th hour, NASA scientists, applying a sophisticated mathematical algorithm, were able to prove that during the period of Daylight Savings, there are still 24 hours in a day. They also determined that, regardless of how many hours you advance your clock, the average per diem amount of sunlight remained relatively constant during any given month of any given year.

The idea that fiddling with the time runs contrary to the laws of nature is perhaps best witnessed in the behavior of my children. Both are under seven, unable to tell time, and except for those parts altered by consumption of genetically modified foodstuffs, more-or-less creatures of nature. Neither, however, are roused into daily consciousness by the ticking of a clock, but instead by that primordial force existing within each child that says it’s time to get out of bed and begin messing up the house.

If I had to guess, I’d say the sun has far more to do with society’s productivity than the time of day. Going back to my kids, I have observed that when the sun comes up, they begin making noise. Conversely, when the sun sets, they begin rubbing their eyes, yawning, and tripping over toys. On dark, cloudy days, they are inclined to sleep late. On bright sunny days, they wake with the birds.

And what of the birds?

The digital alarm clock on my nightstand faces a window. Never, however, have I observed even a single bird perched on my windowsill attempting to peer through the glass so as to know what time to commence its birdly activities. Nor do the other various and sundry creatures which roam our neighborhood appear sensitive to the hour. I expect this would hold true even if we set our clocks ahead by ten hours, forcing sunrise to occur at three in the afternoon.

But if DST is considered absurd by the scientific community, and likewise contrary to natural law, why do we continue to observe it?

The illogical, unfounded origins of Daylight Savings Time can be traced to an ill-conceived political response to the growing pressure on the agricultural industry to provide food to America’s rapidly increasing, post World War II population. It was believed at the time that providing more sunlight at the end of the day during growing season would allow farmers the ability to find their way home from their favorite taverns before it got too dark, thereby preventing countless tractor related deaths. Nowadays, as the bulk of our agricultural production has been outsourced to China, doubling and/or tripling the average farmer’s T.S.I.T. (Time Spent in Tavern), this albeit once key concept appears to have outlived its usefulness.

For example, until recently the state of Indiana had refused to bow to federal pressure to join the rest of the country in observing Daylight Savings. As a result, Hoosiers (a French term meaning “Gesundheit”) kept their clocks permanently set at noon Eastern owing to the fact that “the cows need milkin’ when they need milkin’ and the corn don’t grow no faster.”

In a dark day for sanity, Indianans have now passed legislation to fall-in with the rest of the country in honoring DST. The motion carried by a narrow margin, barely defeating legislation proposed by Indiana’s large Amish community which would have abolished time altogether, making possession of any mechanical timepiece other than a sundial illegal, and declaring cow tipping as the official state sport.

And considering geopolitical ramifications, is it any wonder why the rest of the world hates us? What with our constant meddling in the time-space continuum, Europeans are sitting back right now, laughing at our arrogant disregard for the laws of the physical universe, mocking us for believing that by merely passing a proclamation, we can cause today to become one hour longer (or shorter) than the day before.

“Basil, have you any idea what the time is across the pond in New York?”

“Really, Reginald. What with their willy-nilly clock fiddling, it’s anybody’s guess.”

“Yes, I suppose it is. Pass the sheep intestines, will you?”

Truly, this biannual attempt at chronological alchemy is tantamount to reordering the periodic table of elements or rearranging the points on a compass. For instance, the stuff inside your Aquafina bottle will still have two hydrogen something-or-others to every oxygen thingamajig regardless of whether we arbitrarily alter its atomic number from H20 to H7G. Likewise, swapping the “W” for the “N” on your trusty compass will no more cause the needle to point in a direction other than north than it will prompt a Muslim to embrace Jesus.

Of course logic and common sense have never been a priority in this country. Just ask those first folks who climbed aboard boats the size of modern day sofas and, after washing ashore at Plymouth Rock and gazing around at a wild, untamed land lousy with dangerous creatures, harsh weather, and Indians, decided to invent the International Dateline.

© 2007 Mark J. Layne/Layne-Duck Productions, Ltd.

That Kid Coulda Been Somebody

Procreation is a cherished human tradition dating back to prehistoric times when cavemen, owing to the daily labor intensive struggle for human survival, came up with the idea of reproduction as a means of shifting their responsibility for hunting, gathering, and mowing the lawn to someone other than the cavewomen who were too busy shopping and scrap-booking to be of any assistance.

Even today most couples, and some singles, consider having kids a fashionable thing to do. While there are still those who raise kids solely for the meat, children have become such an important status symbol in your upper socioeconomic groups – coincidentally the same class of people who experience one of the highest levels of infertility among other population segments – that these folks will go to almost any length to obtain offspring, resorting to such cutting edge medical practices as “in-vitro fertilization,” “genetic mapping,” and “kidnapping.”

Granted, widespread infertility in the US is no doubt God’s way of preventing the planet from being overrun by spoiled, dysfunctional, heroin-addled video junkies cruising the streets in $100,000 German sports cars while talking on cell phones. Regardless, our nation’s well-to-do would-be parents seem undaunted, not only fueling a billion dollar fertility industry, but also accounting for over 90% of the gross national products of several Asian nations where “baby factories” housing millions of impregnated women crank out thousands of babies per week, all bound for export to US families.

The irony is, no matter how much money we spend or what level medical science we apply, in the end we parents have little control over how children turn out. All children learn, all children grow, and all parents are proud, as if they alone are responsible for the naturally pre-determined series of chemical reactions and cell divisions that result in the fully grown human beings most babies eventually become. But as every parent of more than one child quickly learns, each child is a unique being with character traits, personalities, and bizarre predilections that extend beyond what mere science and environmental influences can explain.

Not to downplay the role of heredity, but the byproducts of genetics would seem confined more to physical factors – elements such as hair and eye color, height and weight, the ability to walk and chew gum simultaneously, or the capacity to metabolize large quantities of vodka.

My oldest daughter, for example, most certainly tripped and fell into my genetic pool. Tall, willowy, brown-haired, and with all the grace of a blindfolded water buffalo, she is a victim of my DNA through-and-through. Her stalwart, blond-haired, blue-eyed sister, however – possessor of a bellicose nature and hair trigger temper that sends the other children in her preschool running for cover – tends to favor my wife’s Austrian-Italian bouillabaisse.

But here is where the similarity ends. The personalities of these two genetic replicas of my wife and myself are so dramatically different in terms of the extended family tree from which they dangle so as to make us wonder whether they are truly our own, or if they were perhaps switched at birth, mislabeled by the hospital nursery, or even transported into our midst from some other planet or dimension.

So, if not for genetics, how is it that children – and I’m talking about young children under the age of five who have not yet been acculturated (i.e. “brain washed”) into societal customs and norms – come into this world with certain “baggage” in the form of preponderances, predilections, fears, aptitudes, and allegiances to certain professional sports teams which don’t necessarily track with any person, living or dead, within their immediate circle of influence, nor jibe with the contemporary aspects of the times?

Demonic possession is but one explanation. For instance, I must imagine that when baby Ug pointed at a dinosaur towering over the door to his cave and grunted his first word, “Eek!” his kin gazed upon him with pride and satisfaction – everyone except Aunt Glurg who was up to her waistband in the dinosaur’s mouth, knee-highs flailing in the air. Had he, however, pointed to the sky at a circling pterodactyl and said, “Airplane,” his family would have no doubt locked the door to the cave with him outside, certain he was under the influence of evil spirits.

Children requiring exorcisms, while certainly growing in numbers, do not, however, represent a majority population, leaving only one other rational explanation for this observed phenomenon – reincarnation.

The cruel hand of fate notwithstanding, and no matter your religious beliefs or philosophical inclinations, the open-minded must at least entertain the possibility that what we might be witnessing in our children’s behavior is some sort of “bleed-through” from a previous existence in some other lifetime or dimension.

For instance, my oldest is the loud intellectual type. She has never lacked for an opinion concerning what everyone within range of her voice should be doing, saying, or thinking at any given moment, continually spouting commands and directing the destinies of those around her with indiscriminate precision from the time she was able to walk. Granted, just because she’s bossy doesn’t necessarily mean she was once Alexander the Great, Albert Einstein, or Mussolini. But exactly how does a three year old develop the leadership skills of a career army general?

Add that she left the womb with an odd interest in all things supernatural, mysterious and/or paranormal, exhibiting rapt fascination with the Harry Potter series from the tender age of four as if during our nightly readings I was quoting the Bible or True Crime magazine, and more experienced parents might be left scratching their heads. With no frame of reference against which to judge her, however, my wife and I thought her more or less normal… until the next child happened along.

Whereas daughter number one favors a cerebral approach to most situations, employing logic and reasoning to resolve her problems, her younger sister prefers a hammer. And just because we caught her when she was not quite two shoving Disney Princess figurines into the mouth of her Little Tykes volcano, doesn’t mean she was a former high priestess of some ancient tribe who dabbled in human sacrifice, just as her innate obsession with trains and railroads is no guarantee she was once George Mortimer Pullman. When you consider, however, her irrational fear of balls, the picture becomes less clear.

Most persons would agree that balls, in and of themselves, are relatively benign – certainly not diabolical or fearsome at any intrinsic level. Even so, from the time she was able to simultaneously sit upright and drool, our youngest has perceived lurking within most orb-like objects an incarnate evil that once sent her scooting backwards up the gymnasium wall during a park district mommy-and-me program.

Writing it off to the unexplained, some months later we visited my parents’ house. My mother has never failed to fall prey to every television info-mercial, direct mail scam, or telemarketing sales pitch that has crossed her field of view. As such, when those huge exercise balls – the sort one sits upon while watching TV in the hope of achieving some perceived sense of fitness – were all the rage, my mother naturally ordered one.

When we carried our youngest into the house and plopped her down on the family room floor, she immediately spotted the huge yellow ball resting playfully in the corner and began screaming, wide-eyed and terrified, employing any means within her ability to ambulate her self away from the danger.

Aside from the fact she learned to crawl that day, the event is etched in our minds as one of our more harrowing experiences as parents. Even now at two-and-a-half, she will still peer around every corner and doorway of my parents’ house in search of the evil yellow sphere. My mother keeps the feared object stowed thoughtfully in the basement from where, within minutes of our arrival, our oldest will retrieve it merely to experience the pure joy of causing her younger sibling untold anxiety and distress.

In an effort to help you better understand your kids, below are some examples of things to watch for that may well indicate your child has some connection to a previous life. (Note – does not apply to Chinese children who are naturally gifted and far smarter than non-Chinese children of the same age):

1. Fondly recalls the good old days before cars.
2. Her first word was in fluent Latin.
3. Points to picture of Methuselah, shouts “Look! Daddy!”
4. Asked Santa to bring him a velocipede for Christmas.
5. Can identify Atlantis on a map and point to the house she grew up in.
6. Refers to the refrigerator as an “ice box.”
7. Can construct a geometrically perfect replica of the Great Pyramid with Lego’s, including heretofore undiscovered interior chambers.
8. Can tell time, but only with a sundial.
9. Is able to print her name in Cyrillic.
10. Was able to play “Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A” before he could walk.
11. First crayon drawing was of a reasonably accurate human DNA strand.
12. Expresses remorse over how he and his friends treated Jesus that one day.
13. Shows unusual proficiency with a broadsword.
14. Has been terrified of the ocean ever since “that Titanic incident.”
15. Refuses to leave the house without his powdered wig.
16. Remembers Abraham Lincoln as having chronic halitosis.
17. Complains of having had to carry those heavy stone tablets all the way back down Mt. Sinai without any help.
18. Refuses to eat anything but bison.
19. Is an expert at celestial navigation.
20. Has a morbid fear of animals that have been extinct for millions of years.

So next time you gaze down in wonder at the sweet, smiling face of your child, thinking to yourself, “Wow – what a weirdo,” think again. He or she could have been, as Bill and Ted so aptly put, “A famous dead dude.”