I have put up many frustrations from the parents. I've come to accept it as my lot in life, and try not to be too bothered by it. But when other babies start making accusations about me, I feel I must defend my honor.

For those who haven't heard these patently false allegations, I apologize for bringing these dreadful attacks to your attention. I encourage you to stop reading right now and continue with your day as though nothing had happened.

If you are still reading then I presume that you have heard these slanderous accusations and have come to me seeking the truth, which I am only too happy to provide. Let's cut right to the chase. I know there have been some whispers that I am not a baby, but am instead (please pardon my language) a "toddler". I assure you nothing could be further from the truth.

While it's true that I may be a bit bigger than some of the babies these days, nothing has changed. I may be able to walk and use the parents' language, but I am still fully committed to the mission of turning these rather miserable parents into properly grand parents. Do not listen to the rumors, my fellow babies.

Once there was a hospital with an amazing doctor who could heal any injury or disease. People traveled great distances to be seen by her.

One day some patients met together in the halls of the hospital and began to talk, as patients do, of their treatments.

"The doctor is quite alright, I guess," said the man with the broken leg, "but she keeps insisting that I don't put weight on my leg for six weeks. Doesn't that seem excessive to you?"

"Absolutely," said the man with the rare blood disorder. "What's worse, she keeps prying into my personal history, asking about my parents and the environment I grew up in. What business is that of hers?"

"Frightful," said the obese woman. "Do you know she had the audacity to tell the nurses to stop bringing me the fried food I requested?"

"No!" said another woman, who tried to tell of her plight but was overcome with a fit of coughing.

"That's nothing," said the man with appendicitis. "She wants to cut me open!"

The patients all agreed that the hospital was in a dreadful state and decided they should do something. They raided the supply closets for white lab coats and stethoscopes, then set about to fix the hospital's problems.

The man with the broken leg made it his mission to fit casts to the legs of anyone who would hold still long enough, while the woman with the coughing fits followed behind handing out cough syrup.

The man with the rare blood disorder visited each patient's room, spreading the news of his journey from being a patient to a doctor, and telling everyone where they could find their own white coats and stethoscopes. He was joined by the man with appendicitis, who taught the patients that while the doctor's emphasis on health was excellent, her more radical suggestions were not in step with modern thought, and what really mattered was that they foster a mindset of "healthfulness".

The obese woman took it upon herself to visit the sick in the waiting room and refer them to her fellow patients for treatment.

If you visit the hospital today, you will be met by thousands of patients in white lab coats, each claiming to be perfectly healthy and offering you a similar cure. They will lead you in a reading of the Hippocratic Oath that they have reconstructed from memory and give you your own white lab coat and stethoscope.

Rumor has it that the doctor is still somewhere in the hospital, but no patients have seen her in years.

I have endeavored to keep this website free from the confessional gushing that makes up so much of social media. Yet I have a fantastic personal tale which must be chronicled for the benefit of mankind. You may not believe it, and that is your privilege, but here is the story of how I accidentally invented the Fluffernutter.

I was around ten years old at the time and in elementary school. My family was not wealthy, but as a special treat every Friday my parents would give me eighty-five cents to buy pizza from the cafeteria. The rest of the week my lunch came to school with me, in a lunchbox, and it always included a peanut butter sandwich.

I can't recall a time when I did not prepare my own lunch, and peanut butter sandwiches were easy: get two slices of bread, put a big glob of peanut button on one, spread some butter or margarine on the other, and press together. Some of you are probably wondering about the butter, and the truth is I have no idea why I did that. It was just how I knew to make a sandwich and I never stopped to consider the source of this knowledge or its nutritional ramifications.

My mother had her own thoughts on nutrition, and while she had no problem with my daily ingestion of toxic levels of trans fats, she did have a problem with companies using annatto to give butter and margarine a yellowish tint. Somehow she found some unmolested butter, like she'd had growing up. This made little difference to me. It still made a peanut butter sandwich just fine.

It may come as a shock to those in the audience, but being an overweight know-it-all who wore hand-me-down clothing (without having an older sibling, I should add) did not elevate my social status within elementary school society. I sat near the cool boys who could play sports and say dirty words when the teachers were away, but I knew, and they knew, that I was not one of them.

The coolest of the cool boys was named Bryce. He always got picked first for kickball, and never packed his lunch. He noticed me eating my peanut butter sandwich with snow-white annatto-free butter and was intrigued. "Is that marshmallow?" he asked?

I should point at that I had never heard of marshmallow cream, and I could see no way that anyone could confuse butter with the fluffy cylinders of sugar that I roasted over a campfire in the summer. It was probably some cool kid joke that I wasn't cool enough to understand. So, with the dry sarcasm that served me so well, I responded "Yes, it's marshmallow.

Needless to say, this short exchange changed Bryce's life. Even in high school he would still fondly recall how I had introduced him to the Fluffernutter, and since the coolest boy in school was eating them, they soon became a sensation all across the fourth grade.

I realize that some people may credit the discovery of the Fluffernutter to other times and places, but as far as my elementary school is concerned, I am its inventor.

As you all no doubt recall, I've never been a fan of the parents' diaper scam. Not only is it shady, but it can become quite uncomfortable. Naturally you can imagine my delight at discovering a way out of this unpleasant situation.

But first, a slight digression. The parents' one redeeming quality is their tendency to take me on car rides. I quite appreciate these outings. It's good to explore outside the house. I must write about these adventures later, but suffice it to say that I have, not to brag, spent quite a lot of time in my car seat.

The ride itself is restful, but sometimes I just don't feel like taking a nap. It's times like these that my focus turns to the oddly named "boots" that the parents insist of affixing to my feet when we leave the house. As I was examining them one car ride I noticed that applying pressure to the top of the boot resulted in a pleasant ripping sound. With a bit more pressure I was able to completely disconnect the strap that held the boot in place. I happily removed that boot, tossed it down beside the car seat, and turned my attention to the other, which responded to the like treatment.

It turns out that the diapers are attached using the same sort of magical bonding agent! Also, like the boots, if the parents are around they object strenuously if I activate said bonding agent. Fortunately, it is not difficult to find moments when their attentions are otherwise occupied. Soon the diaper was gone and glorious comfort and freedom were mine.

I wish I could end the story here, a simple story of a baby triumphing over injustice, but sadly, even the most noble of causes can be frustrated by the parents. In fact, I think their shock at my frustration of their scam has caused their intelligence to descend even further. Now they can't seem to remember how to use a diaper at all.

The other night, once the parents were safely out of sight, I prepared another masterful escape, only to find that my idiot parents had somehow managed to put the diaper on backwards! I couldn't even reach the straps that could release me from my bonds. Of course, one becomes used to the parents making horrible errors, but it keeps happening. Anyone want some parents? I'm thinking I'll put them up for adoption.

Before I begin, I'd like to thank all my fans. It's babies like you that help me carry on when faced with the sheer incompetence of the parents. I don't know how I'd have made it through the year without you.

I know it comes as no surprise that the parents have some unique quirks, and if I took time to document them all I'd never get anything else done, but have you noticed the way they eat? They put their food on tiny round trays that aren't even attached to their chairs, and then, rather than put food in their mouths with their hands like any civilized person, they poke at it with funny-shaped sticks, and whatever doesn't fall off they eat. It amuses me that they can be so slow and never realize their error. Seriously, did they forget they have fingers?

Of course, were this just another of their weird habits I would have let it slide, but now they're trying to force me to play their game. Don't get me wrong, I love playing with toys while I eat as much as the next baby, but they want me to use their sticks for every single bite. In fact, if I try to touch the food like a normal person, they stop me! I swear, I should never have started learning their language. Now they think I want to be just like them!

I never thought I'd say this, but I've been learning a lot from the parents recently. I had been puzzled by their language for some time, but I recently had a major breakthrough: when parents say something, what they actually mean is the exact opposite. I needed to share this insight with my audience, in the hopes that it will help other babies who have difficult parents.

I have compiled a simple lexicon that should help illuminate the parental tongue:

• "No" - Keep doing what you're doing as soon as we look away
• "No No No No!" - We really enjoy that. Do it a few more times and we'll give you a ride around the house.
• "Don't touch that" - Take every opportunity to touch that.
• "Leave that on the table" - Remove everything from the table.
• "Come here" - Run away.
• "Go to your room" - Visit every room in the house but your room.
• "Clean up" - Start playing with the toys on the floor.
• "Give that to me" - Eat that.

I feel confident that I will soon have finally mastered the parents' language.

Normally I like to restrict my advice to the parents, since they so desperately need it, but that does not mean that I am unaware of the failings of my own kind. No, I am always vigilant. Even virtuous beings like us babies can still have room for improvement (though we're certainly way ahead of the parents), and that is what I would like to address today.

There is a disturbing trend in babies, and I must confront it before it goes too far. There's no easy way to put it, so I'll just come out and say it: Babies are getting too small. When I first started my career as a baby, all babies were around the same size. There was some variety, but it was pretty evenly distributed. However, small is now in fashion, and it seems like every baby I meet is tiny. I'm not questioning any baby's individual right to choose to be small. That's a personal decision. But it has become a fashion, and it's getting out of hand.

I can certainly understand not wanting to be big like the parents. Obviously, whatever we can do to separate ourselves from them is a good idea, but think about what you're doing. If this trend keeps up, eventually us current babies will seem as big as the parents by comparison! Would you really want to do that to your fellow babies?

So please, before you decide that you want to be the smallest baby ever, stop and think. If we all stand together we are stronger than when every new baby thinks it has to out-small the rest of us.

As you know, I am not one to criticize the parents. The way I see it, they really can't be held responsible for their actions. So don't take this as me being unkind in any way. It's just that Mommy and Daddy really are complete idiots.

Recently I've been going through the trouble to start learning their language, or what passes for language among parentkind. What a waste of time that has been! Now that I can understand their words they seem more helpless than ever.

They're constantly losing things, and asking me to find them. A few things I can understand. "Where's the ball?" "Where's your bottle?" - I get it. There's a lot of things in this house. It's certainly possible to lose something. The problem is that the things they lose are usually right in front of them!

Not only that, but when I show them where something is, they forget about it almost instantly. They'll ask "Where's the circle?" and ten seconds after I've pointed it out to them they'll ask the same thing again! I've heard about how bad the attention span of parents can be, but I'm pretty sure Mommy and Daddy are setting a new record.

And that's still not the worst of it. Sometimes they can't even find themselves! "Where's Mommy?" Really? You're standing right in front of me! "Where's Miranda?" Okay, this is just sad.

You might think at this point that they obviously have some sort of disability, but the sad part is that it's entirely self-imposed. Mommy and Daddy are constantly wearing these odd windows on their faces. From a distance they look like any other windows, but occasionally Mommy and Daddy will put them on my face, and make a big deal out of it. Apparently they think it's hilarious.

Anyhow, these windows make everything blurry! No wonder the parents can't find anything! And yet they insist on wearing them all the time. I've tried to take them away, but they just grab them and put them back on their faces.

At this point, I'm sure there is no hope for them. They are beyond even my help.

In tenth grade I had to take a course to prepare for the workforce. The class included interviewing a person in my career of interest, doing mock job interviews, and even some creative writing and public speaking.

One day the teacher told us we were going to do lateral thinking problems. As it turned out, lateral thinking was just another term for trick questions. They were designed to test if I could answer questions without making unwarranted assumptions.

Here's an example: A man is walking down a country road that has no street lights. He is wearing black clothes and not carrying a flashlight. A black car with it's headlights off comes speeding around the corner just in front of the man. It screeches to a stop, narrowly avoiding running the man over. How did the driver of the car see the man in the road?

You can have a lot of fun imagining possible answers. At that time cars didn't have collision sensors, so let's assume the car is old and it's up to the driver to stop. It's possible the walker was carrying some light other than a flashlight, like a cell phone, a headlamp, or glow sticks. Perhaps the driver was wearing night-vision goggles. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

As it turns out, none of these ingenious solutions is necessary. Nowhere in the problem does it state that it is dark. Check it out for yourself. Since lights are mentioned several times, the mind makes that assumption, but it's not in the question.

This test still counts as one of the proudest moments of my life. I don't think any of my classmates answered more than fifty percent of them correctly, but I only missed one.

You see, my brain is terrible at handling assumptions. That can be very helpful in programming and, to a lesser extent, business, but it's a major liability in personal interaction. Allow me to demonstrate.

People often ask me questions. I'm good at answering them, provided they're factual. If they're not factual my brain will change them until they are. This is especially a problem with "How" questions. Not all "How" questions, mind you. Some just want you to describe a step-by-step process, such as "How do you download an email attachment?" or "How did you get up in that tree?" Those my brain handles just fine. It's the other "How" questions.

Often when people ask how, it seems like they're asking for a description. "How does the fish taste?" It seems innocent enough, but it's a trap. "It tastes like a fish" is the wrong answer. So is "It can't. It's dead." What people actually want is not a description, but a judgment. Intellectually I understand that, and yet my brain says, "Who am I to judge whether a fish is good or bad?"

This gets even more confusing with "How" greetings. "How are you?" doesn't mean "What conditions led to you existing?" even though that's what my brain hears. And since I can't reliably judge a fish, I definitely don't have enough information to judge my own condition. Of all the people on earth I am singularly unqualified to that task. So my brain gets a bit stuck.

Over time I have divined that the preferred answer is "Good, how are you?" Even "Hi" seems to be acceptable, though I have no understanding of how that is related. Just whatever you do, don't try to answer the question literally. No one wants to know that.

I was uploading a Miranda video this week when I stumbled across some old videos that YouTube had been saving. For your amusement, I present Stuffed Carnage: The Complete Collection:

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMjrPvPTokQ&list=PLD9QSYWzVFY0IgUaF7L9NRk36ohd7bQxE[/embed]

I must apologize to our readers in Canada and Germany, since some of these videos are blocked in those countries. Or perhaps I should be apologizing to the countries where they aren't blocked. You decide.