the underwear drawer

baby lucifer

A few days ago, our nanny suggested that Cal might enjoy looking at some of those Baby Einstein videos. I want to hold off on letting the baby watch any TV--he's only three months old after all, and I want to get him interested in books first--but I was curious about the phenomenon of these videos, which has been described to me as audiovisual crack for babies. So post-call today, I went out and scored one of these tapes, figuring I could just see what the fuss was about and save it for when The Boy is older. There were about a million different choices ("Baby Beethoven," "Baby Van Gogh," "Baby Mozart") but I ended up choosing the Mozart one because everyone knows that exposing your baby to Mozart at an early age is the fast track for making sure that he's a Nobel laureate before the age of 35. Obviously.

People, I have no doubt that babies love these videos, but my god, they are totally Satanic. The whole tape (well, maybe not the whole tape, I only watched about five minutes of it) is just footage of various pendulums and gears and perpetual motion machines moving around while Mozart is played in the background. So right off, that's bad. In this house, we will obey the laws of thermodynamics! No perpetual motion machines allowed! But then it started to get more disturbing. There was one scene in particular with silver rings spinning endlessly on a black background that was clearly some sort of hypnotic mind-control thing that subliminally programs babies to kill their parents in their sleep. And then every once in a while there was this interlude with a green lizard sock puppet who would prance around, making scrunched up faces (I think the sock-puppeteer was literally just making a fist inside the puppet's head) and then making this little "Bleaugh!" puking noise as it opened its mouth and spit out its little red felt tongue. Its little red forked tongue. SATAN!

The video is now hidden in a bureau in our bedroom. Cal was only minimally interested in it while I was screening the thing anyway, so I think we can hold off on the whole Manchurian Candidate Baby thing for a few more months at least. I just hope it's not one of those tapes that makes you die seven days after watching it. That would be a bummer.

Currently eating: Food. After I wrote that last entry about the Hot Pockets, my mom came by and did some cooking. We're saved!