The daily insult.

I'm giving the boys a little television history, telling them that when cable arrived, the profusion of channels created a huge appetite for programming, and long-forgotten TV series were dug up and dusted off to fill the available space. Those "Tom and Jerry" cartoons they love could be seventy years old (and, of course, first appeared in movie theaters). And now "Wacky Races" is back, which I used to see when I was Primus's age. Still can't do a decent rendition of Mutley's laugh, alas.

"Did you watch a lot of television back then?" Secundus asks. "Not a lot," I reply virtuously, although England in the 1960s had a grand total of two channels, so children's programing was limited to little more than an hour a day.

"I guess you had to look out for the pterodactyls," he sighs.

You know, sometimes they're trying too hard to get into this blog. That's why I ignored it when Primus, phoning in on the drive back from visiting their grandparents in Virginia, made of point of telling me that Washington, D.C. offers funeral insurance.

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I changed my razor blade the other day, and was astounded at the difference it made. The new blade was so smooth it was just gliding across my cheek, with no drag whatsoever.

Then I realized I'd installed it upside down.