Because there is no honor among zombies.

A few Bratz dolls with some Play-Do and Silly Putty accessories.

As always, a list of the things that are currently amusing me, and might amuse you, too.

1. Picture a Day spoof – By now you’ve probably seen the myriad Picture a Day videos that are proliferating YouTube. This is a brilliant video inspired by and poking fun at them. But it’s worth watching even if you live under a rock and have never heard of a Picture a Day project.

2. I Wish I could Bat-Quit You – From the web comic called Bigger Than Cheeses. I don’t always connect with its humor, but when it’s on, it’s really on. This is my favorite one, but I like the one where they make fun of Episode 3, too.

3. Paper Toys – A nifty little site with lots of paper projects to print out and fold. Quality varies, but you can make everything from a Tyrannosaurus Rex (which isn’t all that impressive) to Neuschwanstein Castle or Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (which are). And okay, no, I haven’t actually tried any of the patterns yet, but I do like the idea of them. And while we’re on the subject of paper art, this video over at haha.nu is incredible.

4. Rosetta Stone German – My fascination with the German language continues. This program is absolutely wonderful. Billed as “dynamic immersion,” it uses pictures, text and audio to teach, test and build your German vocabulary through context. It’s fun, it’s addicting, and in less than a week you, too, can be talking about the color of your car, or even warn someone that there’s an elephant under the table. “Ein Elefant ist unter das Tisch!” See?

5. Earth Album – A mash-up of Flickr and Google Maps, you can explore the world through user submitted pictures. And the world seems smaller every day. Long live the Internet.

6. Microfiber cleaning cloths – I first ran into these while staying with my best friend after her new baby was born. I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, “What? They’re just some cleaning rags.” Oh no, these are not just some cleaning rags. These are the cleaning rags. I’ll never have to buy glass cleaner again thanks to these babies, and for drying dishes they’re the bomb. Get some. They will change your life.

7. Legos – especially the pretty red ones. My son and I just completed a 722 piece Avatar ship which was very fun and somehow immensely satisfying, and these legos were just so pretty they made me happy. I think we’re ready to take on the Death Star next. Yikes. Or maybe not. Did you see how many gray bricks are on that puppy?

8. Pimped Out John Sweepstakes by Roto-rooter. Enter and win, and you’ll never have to leave your bathroom again. With such entertainments as a flat screen TV, an xbox 360, a refrigerator with cup warmer and beer tap, and even a pedal exerciser to fight the flab while nature is calling. Bizarre and amusing.

9. Found Magazine – A collection of found stuff – including notes, doodles, photographs and shopping lists – submitted by whoever has something they’ve picked up somewhere and wants to share it. I spent well over an hour sifting through the offerings, and these were some of my very favorites. “Honey Point”, The Bacon, My Big Head, Fat Dog, Roommate Wanted, and Page Me Later.

10. BBC’s Pride and Prejudice – Okay, so this isn’t exactly a new discovery. But I got the DVD for Christmas and my daughter and I have been rewatching it. Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy is the very essense of smoldering, and his appeal spans generations, or at least grabs the attention of the 9 and 34 year old sets.

11. Simon Cowell – American Idol is not the Death Star of TV, it is the Borg. For six years I’ve resisted it’s pull, in fact had no interest in it at all; even held myself above it, preferring my junkfood television in the form of more high brow offerings like, um, Survivor and Gene Simmons’ Family Jewels. But resistance, as they say, is futile. And it was all because people began complaining about the meanness of Simon. Much like my friend Mike, I thought to myself, “Uh, hello? Season 6, guys! He’s always been mean. This is what you love about him.” I finally had to judge for myself, and found him utterly charming and myself completely sucked into this season’s Idol, thus far. Because I needed more television in my life. Ugh.

Longest Wish List: The eleven year old was as careful and deliberate as we’ve come to expect – very meticulously weighing desire with reality to create a fairly straightforward and sensible list of material goodies. The nine and six year olds, on the other hand, discovered the incredible power of the Copy and Paste function when combined with the Toys’R'Us website. While Nicky gave it a good run with 111 items on his list, Stormy took the title easily with 148. She wanted to give us a lot of options, make sure every base was covered. That way if, for example, every Bratz doll and accessory in the country is sold out, we would have the fallback option of a cookie jar in the shape of a Predator’s head. Just what every young girl needs.

Best Stocking Stuffer: This year Santa showed his twisted side by including a rubber chicken that when squeezed, pops a plastic egg-looking ball out of it’s butt. But I think he might have trumped himself with the “potty putty” – a plastic toilet with a gel-like substance inside that when pressed, makes farting noises. It doesn’t come as a complete surprise that these seem to be the things my daughter plays with most, out of all of her presents this year.

Best Gag Gift: My husband is mean and he likes to play tricks. I am not, and I don’t. But this year he won me over completely with his genius. I’d come up with the brilliant idea of getting my little video game addicts a subscription to Gamelender, so that they can now rent games to their hearts’ content and have them delivered right to the mailbox. Shane wrote the URL, the account name and the password on an index card. Then he taped the index card to two bricks, duct-taped together. Then he put them in an old xbox box, and stuffed old curtains around them. Once wrapped, it looked and felt just like a game system box. When the kids tore into it and saw the xbox logo, there was some mild confusion. On the one hand, they’ve had an xbox for several years and weren’t sure why they needed two. On the other hand, they’re familiar with the fact that just because the box says Ritz crackers doesn’t mean your parents have lost their minds and gifted you with snacks. So they opened the box, and began tossing curtains up into the air. When they pulled out the bricks, they happened to miss the side with the index card that would make it all make sense. So they sat there, box emptied, surrounded by curtains and bricks, dismayed and bewildered, as their mother and father laughed and laughed.

Most Disappointing Gift: Floam. I don’t get it. It’s just sticky gunk. And they think we would want to decorate toys and various household items with it? Why?

Most Frustrating Gift: I thought the Bratz Dream House would win easily, with it’s 60 sticker decals that come with the dire warning “MUST NOT BE REMOVED OR REPOSITIONED, ONCE PLACED!” A perfectionist’s worst nightmare. But instead, the award goes to the Password Journal, which took a good hour to program with date, time, and password. And then Stormy switched the setting to High Security, which means you not only have to be the right voice using the right word to activate the thing, but you also have to have the perfect tone, volume, inflection, intention and posture. We never did. So we had to reset it and start over from scratch on the programming.

Best Present Opener: Nicky, who transforms the traditional rip and tear frenzy into performance art.

King of the Mice: Traditionally we always make chocolate-covered cherry mice as a holiday gift for a few friends and family. (recipe) This year we were joined in our efforts by Khy’s best friend, Mitchell. Mitchell’s style was methodical and neat, while Khy was his delightfully laid back and goofy self. As they worked next to each other, they joked about their mice armies, facing off. I’m afraid you can clearly see which army won the battle, as Mitchell’s are still standing in disciplined ranks and Khy’s lay all over the battlefield, bleeding chocolate. It was pretty brutal. But all the armies were eventually eaten for their efforts, anyway. It’s not easy being a chocolate-covered cherry mouse at Christmas. And we think we have it rough.

What the hell is that? It’s terrifying. If I bought that for my children I would have nightmares.

Did you know that they’ve made a remote control car that can drive 30 feet up a wall? When I saw it I called out excitedly to my 11 year old son, wanting to share the discovery.

“Yeah, that’s cool, Mom,” he said in a tone halfway between dismissive and humoring. Cool? Just “cool?” It’s amazing is what it is! Oh well. He lives in a world where it’s just part of the natural order of things that he should be surrounded by toys that can defy gravity, pens that can help with homework and cars that give directions and parellel park themselves. Where it’s a matter of course to have phones that can go anywhere he does (remember when it was exciting just to have a phone that didn’t have a cord? Or movies you could play at home?) and computers with a great portion of the world’s knowledge right at his fingertips.

Come to think of it, I think he probably finds it much more amazing that I once had to live in a world without xbox. But maybe someday it will be him, yelling for his 11 year old son, wanting to share his own wonder at the invention of a working teleporter, only to get a shrug and a “Yeah, that’s cool, Dad.”

You know, despite feeling like a pretty technologically savvy person, sometimes I still feel like I’m a Flintstone living in a Jetson world.

But thirty feet up a wall!

I’ve always believed that one of the many perks of parenting (besides having someone to train to do the dishes and dust) is the second childhood you get to experience in the toy section of the store. Granted, I have two boys – three if you count my husband – so I often get stuck in the action figure aisle until my eyes begin to roll back in my head and I bleed from the ears. The video games aisle is even worse. But I have a girl, too, and while the first piece of jewelry she ever chose for herself involved a skull and she’s long moved on to green as a favorite color, we still find more than enough in the pink and sparkly aisle to enthrall us both. Shut up, I’m indulging my inner child, here, and she’s very girly.

Of course, as both a mother and a sentient being with an actual working brain, my favorite aisles continue to be the ones that boast the kind of toys that promote creativity and cleverness. Board games are always good, from the tried and true Connect Four and Clue to the newer fangled Cranium and the endless assortment of DVD games. I really love the aisles that carry kits, too, from crafting and beadwork to building crazy towers out of magnets and molding dinosaur bones. And it’s fun to see the retro toys popping up. My old friend Rubik’s cube is back on store shelves, for example. I still can’t solve it.

As enthusiastic as I am about most toys, though, I’m finding a few reservations about my daughter’s newest craze, and for once I’m not talking about Bratz. (24 dolls and counting.) Or even about how the new Hannah Montana CD has been playing on repeat for the last 72 hours straight. (“Who said – who said – I can’t be Superman? I say – I say – that I know I can.”) What I’m talking about are those ever seductive reality simulating toys. I liked to play house as much as any little girl, so I know the lure of pretending to vacuum around your ten children, providing the dirt you’re vacuuming is imaginary and the children are varying animals stuffed with cotton. As soon as the dirt turns real and the children start bickering over the Gameboy, the fun and games are at an end. Which is why I’m wondering if maybe some of the realistic toys on the market today might have crossed a few lines.

Take Baby Alive for example. The doll was originally released in 1973, made a big comeback in the eighties and nineties and is reborn again to inspire a whole new generation to purchase specially designed diapers and accessories. With tweaks and improvements to each new model – the latest has cutesy facial movement to go along with the talking – it still continues to rely on the cutting edge of technology in the form of a tunnel that stretches from the mouth of the doll all the way through to its nether regions. All the better for the water she drinks from the bottle to magically transform into the pee in her diaper, and best of all, the already questionable looking baby food “transforms” into baby poop on the other end. Very sweet, very realistic. Ish. Except for the part where once a day “Grandma” here has to hose out the baby’s magical tunnel in a very shocking and unrealistic way. We wouldn’t want baby to attract ants. But my daughter had fun with it for about three days. Which is about when Grandma explained that in order to be responsible for her own child, she would have to use her own cash to buy more diapers and baby food. I am all about the realism.

More disturbing to me is Barbie’s newest bid for relevance in a Bratz dominated world – Barbie and Tanner dog. The doll that supposedly gave most of our generation of women their body image issues now has a pet. Tanner has a mouth, head, tail and ears that – “move just like a real dog!” Provided we’re talking about a real dog that’s the size of a mouse and paralyzed in all four legs, of course. But that’s beside the point. The point is this: Tanner comes with nummy plastic dog biscuits that you can feed to him. And it comes with a pooper scooper and trash can so that Barbie can clean up when the dog biscuits come out the other end of Tanner. But wait. Think about this for a minute. What do you suppose happens when Barbie wants to feed Tanner another dog biscuit? Exactly.

I’m all for recyclable products, but this is a level beyond.

Recently added to my list of toys that have crossed disturbing lines of realism is the Love ‘n’ Licks Puppy. These I’ve only seen in a commercial and thus far, they have not captured my daughter’s attention. But they captured mine, if only for the unnecessarily oogy commercial, depicting very graphically that if you love your puppy very much and make him very happy, he will drool on you. “How wet will you get from a love ‘n’ licks kiss? So wet you should wear a bathing suit!”

Now, I’ll grant you that I’m not much of a dog person, and probably the number one thing that keeps me at arm’s length with most pooches is the drool aspect. So obviously I’m not the target audience here. But really, is this necessary? If the child is so keen to be drooled on by a dog, then I say buy her a dog.

Preferably one of the breeds that’s less likely than Tanner to eat its own poop, if you don’t mind.

My daughter turns 9 this weekend, and in celebration of that lovely day we’ve invited 4 of her closest girlfriends over for a slumber party. I know, I’m scared, too. So, as parents have asked us the inevitable question “What’s she into?” my husband and I have fallen on to the default response of “Bratz dolls.” Because she is. Very. And while it’s true that we might wish our daughter – who in our eyes is above average in every way – might’ve picked something a little less – well – predictable to be into (say, building a working steam engine using only found objects, or re-enacting the Battle of the Bulge single-handedly and with hand-made costumes, or deconstructing the French Poets of the 17th Century while knitting mittens for impoverished Albanians), it is what it is and she loves Bratz and we love her anyway and remind ourselves that the phase will one day pass. And the French Poets will wait. Most of the parents asking us for gift ideas laughed in a knowing and sympathetic way at our answer, probably themselves staring at a room bursting at the seams with Bratz boyfriendz and kid sistserz and accessoriez, too. But one father had a different response when my husband said “She’s pretty into Bratz dolls right now.” He said, “And you’re okay with that?”

Um. Yeah.

I mean no. We just thought it would be fun to lure everyone into bringing them so we can have a Bratz bonfire. Bring your friends. Bratz are EEVILLL.

You know, I get that plenty of people find Bratz dolls objectionable, I do. Truth be told, I don’t like them much either, though my distaste has a lot less to do with morals and a lot more to do with trying not to vacuum up mini lipsticks and earrings, and a bone deep objection to how many twist ties they use to wire the damn things inside the box. This is not a parent-friendly product. I also have a natural mistrust of anything that insistz on the gratuitouz replacement of S’s with Z’z. But you know, at least they don’t carry nearly the stigma that poor Barbie does with the masses these days, accused of being an unfairly proportioned model of womanhood for burgeoning young girls. I’m not the first to note that there probably aren’t too many little girls out there saying “But Mommy, why don’t I have an overlarge head and removable feet, too?”

But the point is, I wasn’t surprised to run into a parent who objected to the Bratz phenomenon. What always surprises and mystifies me, though, are when such parents seem genuinely surprised that we don’t feel the same way. “And you’re okay with that?” I have an aisle and a half in Target that suggests that my daughter is not in the minority with her Bratz affliction, here, buddy. I’m not the weird one for a change, you are. I fully support your right to make conscious and informed decisions about what is best for your child and your family, but I expect that in return you will live in the Real World with the rest of us. Back up your belief with facts and research or even just passionate and irrational opinions, I don’t care. Tell your daughter she can’t attend any slumber parties until all of her peers have outgrown Bratz and are into nice wholesome things like rebellion and experimentation, makes no difference to me. But don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re with the majority on this, okay? Because that stubborn insistence on remaking the world in your own image is what will damage your daughter more than any Bratz doll exposure ever could. Bratz are here. Little girls have embraced them. Deal with it. That’s all I’m saying.

My daughter loves plastic, big-headed, materialistic, snotty-talking, lipsticked, loose-footed, consonant-switching and occasionally head-exchangeable with a strange predilection for bell-bottoms and belly-bearing half shirts Bratz dollz. And yes, I am okay with that. But I’m sure she’ll enjoy the Bible cover and long underwear your daughter gives her, too.