journal features

Why you little!

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2010.10.25

Being a careful father, I'm raising our boy on a steady diet of The Simpsons.

Kenny loves it. It occurred to me to try the trick where Homer grabs his son Bart around the throat with an angry yell of, "Why you little!" and throttles him.

I carefully got my hands around Kenny's little neck and said, "Why you little." He responded immediately by sticking his tongue out the way Bart does. I've since taught him to make Bart's choking "acch! acch!" sounds.

Heh heh heh.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner