• Cheesy Poofs, the retired BBW stripper, is on the local news right now. After she gave up throwing her massive panties at drunk men, she went on to found a children's charity.

• In my neighborhood, there is a magnificent hole. (But enough about Bunny.) The city is working on sewer lines or something like that around the corner. For two or three days last week our street was closed to through traffic. This was pure heaven.

• With as much hair as Mittens the kitten sheds, I don't understand how she's not bald. She was just sitting on my lap for about 30 minutes and she left behind around 200 hairs on my dark blue shirt. This cat must have an amazing ability to produce hair. Are the Rogaine people studying this?

• The nasty amount of cat hair clinging to the front of my shirt requires I get friendly with my lint brush. It's not a lint roller because it's not one of those cheap masking tape contraptions. It's heavy wood and has bristles and what not. It's not really a "lint remover" since it only works when the brush moves in one direction. If I move the brush in the other direction, it becomes a "lint adder," which makes it sound like a poisonous snake that lives in the dryer. It might be less dangerous if it was a snake. I've somehow managed to whack myself in the balls more than once while using this lint brush.

• The Chicken has pretty much mastered his bicycle. Just this weekend he learned to start himself from a full stop. The only big thing left to learn is using the brakes, which, you know, might prove useful someday.

A couple of weeks ago we bought a new bicycle for The Chicken. He's had one or two bicycles before, but this is his first big kid's bike. It has 20" wheels, a spiffy paint job, a tough sounding name like "Marauder" or some such thing… and no training wheels. So now he needs to learn to ride it.

The weather has been a little uncooperative since we bought it, so we've only had a few evenings after dinner to work on teaching him. We've spent some time on three or four separate evenings practicing in front of a neighborhood school and he's making real progress with it. But then, riding a bike isn't especially difficult. The real trick is in convincing yourself you're not going to fall on your head. After that, it's just a matter of practicing a bit. Basically Chicken had already learned how to ride, but he's still working on his confidence. He's getting really good at falling though.

Because I'm father or the year and all that, I've been experimenting with several motivational techniques.

Dog shit doesn't really work. "Chicken, you see that dog bomb over there next to the sidewalk? You're going to land right in it if you can't make it past that spot." Yeah, that doesn't work. He'll make sure he falls before it, or after it, or on the other side of the sidewalk.

Starvation doesn't work. "Chicken, you can do this. I know you can. You know you can. If you're not going to do it, we're going to have to… I dunno, stop feeding you or something." I'm pretty sure he doesn't believe me.

So far the most effective method is making myself look like an ass for him when he does particularly well. If he stays upright for the whole distance we've laid out for him, I will yell out "I love kitties" for all the world to hear. This hasn't happened yet, but if he makes it half the distance I'll yell a single word of his choosing. To Bunny's great embarrassment, this has happened several times.

We seem to be making real progress with this. It's possible, of course, the shouting has absolutely nothing to do with it, but how often do I get the chance to yell "pancakes!" in public?