Next I'll be getting harassed about trust funds.
While Cel and I were on our belated honeymoon, and my step-grandson was beginning his path towards black-caped evilness, and my stepdaughter was well on her way towards a nervous breakdown, and my father-in-law was-- then, as ever-- an incompetent, drunken asshole, and the rest of our friends and acquaintances were engaged in their usual substance abuse and sexual encounters with anonymous horses, we left our children in the hands of a long-term babysitter from a professional child care service. They had my agent's picture and a few Polaroids of her eldest son (now deceased; see: apocalypse #1- Númenor II/Huge-Ass Flood) plastered with warning labels all over their main office; I trusted them immediately.
In spite of the mild trauma the sitter suffered upon finding the closet where Celeborn had been hiding his drug-addled goblin, we got both children back intact and reasonably healthy. Unfortunately, right after our return, the service was bought out by Yahoo!Geocities, who immediately sold their client records to Gerber, Microsoft, Coca Cola, a number of porn sites, Rohan, McDonald's, Eldar Records, Spam Inc., the guy who eats tennis balls outside a shopping mall in Minas Tirith, and several overpriced preschools designed for the spoiled children of demanding yuppies. So, naturally, yesterday afternoon, we were visited by a representative of Mlle Cerleau's Prepatory Educational Centre for Very Young Individuals, a preschool in downtown Imladris. I found him talking to Celeborn in the living room when I got home from the studio. How the fucker got past the anti-solicitor laser beams I had set up in the front lawn, I'll never know.
"Glorfie! Good, you're home. Come sit down. We have to talk, it's about the kids."
"Who's the tool?"
Said tool stood up, brushed cookie crumbs off of his lapel and handed me a business card. 'Jeff, PR Field Manager, Mlle Cerleau's blah blah blah'. Beautiful. Celeborn gave me a Glorfindel-be-nice glare and ordered me to sit down. The tool then asked me if I had seriously begun to plan for my children's future.
"They're less than four months old. My loftiest goal for them at the moment is solid foods." Undeterred by my sarcasm, or possibly missing it entirely, he launched into a well-rehearsed, statistic-spouting schpiel on how children with poor preschool education are 10% less likely than other children to be accepted into ivy league middle schools and 7% more likely to develop tongue psoriasis. Jareth conveniently popped out from under the couch somewhere in the middle of the tool's speech about the poor dental hygeine and likelihood of joining the Church of Gene Simmons in children who aren't taught how to colour in the lines at a sufficiently early age. Jeff the Tool did his best to maintain a professional front with a goblin gnawing on his ankles for several seconds before finally making a hasty exit, unfortunately taking only a few minor laser burns on his way out. Stupid secondhand Mordor Tech security system. I burned the mainframe in the back yard this morning.
In spite of the goblin's best efforts (which earned him a hard-won tequila goblin biscuit), the PR tool has Celeborn now deeply worried about inadequate preschooling and tongue psoriasis. He's outside fretting over his azaleas at the moment.
Now I have to call and set up an interview with Mlle Cerleau, and my front porch smells like slightly charred tool-and-JC-Penneys-polyester-jacket.
Damn it.
Anyway, hello again.
In spite of the mild trauma the sitter suffered upon finding the closet where Celeborn had been hiding his drug-addled goblin, we got both children back intact and reasonably healthy. Unfortunately, right after our return, the service was bought out by Yahoo!Geocities, who immediately sold their client records to Gerber, Microsoft, Coca Cola, a number of porn sites, Rohan, McDonald's, Eldar Records, Spam Inc., the guy who eats tennis balls outside a shopping mall in Minas Tirith, and several overpriced preschools designed for the spoiled children of demanding yuppies. So, naturally, yesterday afternoon, we were visited by a representative of Mlle Cerleau's Prepatory Educational Centre for Very Young Individuals, a preschool in downtown Imladris. I found him talking to Celeborn in the living room when I got home from the studio. How the fucker got past the anti-solicitor laser beams I had set up in the front lawn, I'll never know.
"Glorfie! Good, you're home. Come sit down. We have to talk, it's about the kids."
"Who's the tool?"
Said tool stood up, brushed cookie crumbs off of his lapel and handed me a business card. 'Jeff, PR Field Manager, Mlle Cerleau's blah blah blah'. Beautiful. Celeborn gave me a Glorfindel-be-nice glare and ordered me to sit down. The tool then asked me if I had seriously begun to plan for my children's future.
"They're less than four months old. My loftiest goal for them at the moment is solid foods." Undeterred by my sarcasm, or possibly missing it entirely, he launched into a well-rehearsed, statistic-spouting schpiel on how children with poor preschool education are 10% less likely than other children to be accepted into ivy league middle schools and 7% more likely to develop tongue psoriasis. Jareth conveniently popped out from under the couch somewhere in the middle of the tool's speech about the poor dental hygeine and likelihood of joining the Church of Gene Simmons in children who aren't taught how to colour in the lines at a sufficiently early age. Jeff the Tool did his best to maintain a professional front with a goblin gnawing on his ankles for several seconds before finally making a hasty exit, unfortunately taking only a few minor laser burns on his way out. Stupid secondhand Mordor Tech security system. I burned the mainframe in the back yard this morning.
In spite of the goblin's best efforts (which earned him a hard-won tequila goblin biscuit), the PR tool has Celeborn now deeply worried about inadequate preschooling and tongue psoriasis. He's outside fretting over his azaleas at the moment.
Now I have to call and set up an interview with Mlle Cerleau, and my front porch smells like slightly charred tool-and-JC-Penneys-polyester-jacket.
Damn it.
Anyway, hello again.