Raging Dad

"Connie"

Raging Mom and I have, over the years, had differing opinions on the relative danger of placing information about our children on the Internet. Our family blog, now almost completely defunct and overgrown with virtual weeds, became less interesting after our relocation and eventual settlement in the Pacific Northwest. I think the final blow to the blog came after traffic rapidly jumped following an off-hand remark I made in a post about how Princess Aurora is “hot stuff” (she is). We began to get hits from Riyadh, Stuttgart and Newcastle Upon Tyne, resulting from Google searches for the term “hot Disney princess.” Even I was alarmed at this.

For a while I posted pictures of our kids on Flickr for friends and family to enjoy, and then found that one picture of Michael and Sonny in the bathtub had been viewed three dozen times, and the other photos only two or three times. The caption to the photo was “boys in the bathtub.” There are some creepy mofos out there, my friends.

So when I started this blog last week, Raging Mom grew concerned that by using the kids’ real names I was creating the potential for creeps to come and lure them by name into their creepy cars and take them away from us to do creepy things to them. Perhaps. You know that scene in Knocked Up, where Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann are having that fight about what to do after learning their neighbor was a registered sex offender? Yeah, we’ve had that same fight.

Anyway, for the safety of our children, I have taken a cue from Black Hockey Jesus and retconned my family’s identity. I have chosen the children from the Corleone family (from The Godfather, for the ill-informed) as source material, because I always wanted to name one of the boys Santino, so that I could call him Sonny. Raging Mom felt that was inappropriate because Sonny died in a hail of bullets, and the boy’s Scandinavian appearance was at odds with the name Santino. And so, like all dads, I live vicariously through the Internet.

The names actually have some logic to them as well, given the devious, thoughtful personality of Michael and the raw emotion and aggression of Sonny. No one got stuck with Fredo, which is good because he was weak-minded and betrayed the family. The Connie connection is really not there for my daughter, but why let that spoil the fun?