Veronica Brush's Blog, page 11

Cannibals and Octopi

(I have your attention now with a title like that, don’t I?)

(Also, do not start with me about octopi/octopuses. My blog is not an Accuratecracy.  It is a Randomatorship!)

(Now that we’ve cleared that up, I’d like to move on to making even less sense.)

Everyone always wants to know where we writers get our ideas from. It’s very much like how everyone wants to know where Bill Gates keeps his shoebox of million-dollar bills.

The answer is simple: I don’t know. I think you have to be crazy.

That is also the answer to where writers get their ideas from.

Sometimes it’s difficult and the ideas are not forthcoming. You’re looking so hard for ideas that you get hyper-focused on one thing (for example, a turkey sandwich) and every idea you come up with leads back to that one thing (“What if there was an orphan boy who finds out he’s a wizard and then an owl brings him… a coupon for a free turkey sandwich?”)

On the other hand, sometimes ideas fling themselves at your face like squid.

Speaking of squid, which are not the same as octopi for secret reasons no one but their mothers know, one day I got onto Facebook and there was a trending headline that actually, really (I swear this is not one of my “exaggerations”) said:

“Octopus Mating Event Canceled Due to Cannibalism Concerns, Official Says”.

Now I did not read the article that went with this headline. Why would I? It could only be a letdown after a headline like that. I’m sure the article would have contained a perfectly logical explanation of what that headline actually means.

And who wants perfectly logical explanations when you can have this:

Say what you will about my art skills, but at least (1) the octopi have 8 tentacles each and (2) the official is so official that he not only has an official-looking hat and a badge declaring his officialtiveness, but he also has 5 fingers and a thumb.

And that is where ideas come from! Not from outrageous headlines about cannibals and octopi, but from the free time that allows me to spend time drawing cannibals and octopi. When you have that much un-dedicated time, ideas tend to find you. Not necessarily good ideas, but ideas.

It’s very important to write down these ideas as soon as you have them so you can look at them later and ask, “Am I actually crazy?”

Usually you ask this because the note you have left yourself will not make any sense by the time you come back to read it. In the moment of note-writery, you think you are leaving yourself enough information. It’s only much later that you realize that “Sporks – good tie-in with pandas” is not nearly enough information.

I had the opportunity to realize this exact thing when I recently found that note on a scrap of paper mixed in my drawer of random papers.

That’s my hand-writing. I thought it was important enough to write it down and save it. And that’s why, even though I no longer know what brilliant idea it once was, I have put it back in the drawer to save. I probably won’t ever remember what it meant, but this way my ancestors can find it and wonder if that kind of crazy is genetic.

My point is: ideas are all around you. You just have to know how to look. And how to write them down in a non-cryptic manner.

In conclusion, resolve Jared in BRF.

Curse me and my too-short-hand

Sure hope I remembered to do that…whatever it was.

International Interest

It seems my blog has quite an international following, with readers all over South America and Europe. For example, I have one faithful reader in Italy.

(I am assuming the frequent views I get in Italy are all one person.)

(I’m also assuming that person is the Pope.)

(You don’t know that it isn’t! The Pope needs to procrastinate sometimes, too!)

(So everybody watch your language.)

With such a diverse crowd, I thought I should expand my posts to things of more diverse, global interest.

So here we go.

Flags. Nothing says “international” like flags. Except for IHOP, which actually says “International” in its name. (IHOP stands for International House of Pancakes, but I’m assuming you all know that because they must be popular everywhere in the world or they wouldn’t call it the “International House of Pancakes” because then it would be a lie and who wants to eat misleading, xenophobic pancakes?)(Not me, I can’t eat gluten.)

Umm, I think I’m going to start over.

Flags. Do you know how hard it is in America to find a free stock photo of international flags? About as hard as it is to find a free stock photo of an aardvark, and that’s very hard. That’s why Americans have a tendency to use a picture of triangular flags of various colors and hope you don’t notice that they’re not international flags. In case you were wondering why that seems to happen so much in America.

Soccer, or as you call it, “Un-American Football”. I don’t know why it’s never really caught on in America. It has all the things we tend to enjoy in sports: running, a ball, biting, and riots. Maybe there’s not enough helmets. We really like sports that involve helmets. Not because we like safety, but because we like the sound they make when they clash together, possibly causing some sort of brain damage.

Dr. Who.  He sure is great, huh?

The Metric System. We in America use a different measurement system called the…umm…American System of Measurements and Stuff, Presented By Coca-Cola (because everything in America is sponsored by a company)(Yes, even me.)(I just can’t seem to remember who my sponsor is.)(That’s probably why they haven’t sent me a check in a while.)

This American measurement system has its pros and cons. The main pro is that having our own unique measurement system makes us feel special. The main con is that we tend to get confused when people refer to “grams”. “Kilometers” sometimes make us pass out.

We could switch over to the metric system like everybody else, and we have at times thought about doing that. We just have some concerns:

(1) We don’t want to give up “feet” (“liters” as I believe you call them). The great thing about feet is that it leads to a lot of bad humor-

You: “How many feet in a yard?”

Me:“Depends on how many people are standing in the yard!”

You: (Pretend to laugh while un-friending me on Facebook)

We don’t want to lose that! Does the metric system have its humorous side? Because we like humorous systems. Have you seen our presidential elections?

(2) Is it going to be hard? We don’t like things that are hard. Switching sounds like it’s going to be hard on a daily basis. We already have enough of a drinking problem in this country without not knowing how much wine is in a box because we’ve switched from gallons to metric tons.

And centimeters? Really? This is what I picture when I hear something like “He’s 181 cm tall”:

At least he looks sort of happy. (He’d have been happier if I could draw a little better.) (At least I’ve got “bemused” down.)

Centimeters are tiny! Have you looked on a ruler? There’s like a million of them!

One time I accidentally pressed a random button in my car that switched my speedometer from Miles Per Hour to whatever the heck KPH is. And then I couldn’t find the button to switch it back. I tried to keep driving, but I got pulled over and when the policeman said, “Do you know how fast you were going?”, I had to answer, “No, but the speedometer said 96 KPH.” He didn’t know how fast that was either. So he had to let me go without a ticket. Imagine if either or both of us had understood KPH? I might have been out several Euros, which would have only created more problems because how many thousands of centimeters are in a Euro?

Maybe instead of America having to do all the work, the other 99% of the world could just meet us halfway. Of course it would be very difficult to agree on what halfway is if we’re using two different measurement systems. You guys should all learn our system so we can figure out what halfway is.

Thanks.

Kabobs (or Kebabs). It’s a universal truth that all food tastes better on a stick: popsicles, meat, spaghetti, soup. We in America eat a lot of hot soup on sticks. I could tell you how it’s done, but you have to use inches. Sorry.

The International Space Station. That has “international” right in its name! And astronauts are more truthful than pancakes. At least that’s how the saying goes (We say that a lot in America). Astronauts eat a lot of jello up there and do a lot of zero-gravity back flips. I eat a lot of jello, too. Also, I fall a down a lot, which I blame on gravity.

So you see, we’re not that different after all. Wherever you may live, we all put on our Pope hats one at a time.

Except perhaps when we’ve had a few too many metric tons of wine.

(P.S. Tell your international friends I’m funny!)

(P.P.S. I’ve added a Flag Counter sidebar so all you crazy readers can see where you’re from.  You know, in case you forget.)

Black Friday

Now that we’re past the horror that is Valentine’s Day, it’s time to start thinking ahead to the next important holiday: Christmas.

And of course you can’t have Christmas without Black Friday.  At least not legally in most North American countries.

Black Friday was named after one of Britain’s famous dukes, Duke Steve “Black” Friday, who was known to shove people down when he saw a bargain. His memory is honored every year on the day after Thanksgiving, the anniversary of the day he died tragically trying to pull the last half-price TV from a brontosaurus. (I should mention Duke “Black” Friday was one of the first dukes ever)(and that he invented the first TV.)(Don’t be impressed; it could barely handle 3D.)

(And now that fact is on the internet, so it’s true!)

For those of you who have never celebrated “Black Friday”, this brief introduction may be helpful. Especially if you have a family history of brontosaurus attacks. Consult your physician before embarking on a brontosaurus attack.

“Yes, it is my professional opinion that this man is healthy enough to get attacked by a brontosaurus.”

The first step to Black Friday is to sneak out of the house. You don’t want to wake up all the relatives who have gathered to celebrate the holidays with the ones they love most and have also sworn to strangle if woken before noon.

But family is not the only life-threatening obstacle you will face today, although they may be the most dangerous because they know where you live.

The second step is determining which stores you want to be at when.  The correct answer is: All of them, Right now. (Did I mention you should have yourself cloned several weeks before Black Friday?  I meant to mention that.)

If for some reason you encounter difficulty in getting yourself cloned, you may have to depend on your most loyal friends to help you. (Did I mention you should get yourself some loyal friends several weeks before Black Friday?)

You will need to get to the stores before most of the shoppers. How early you arrive depends on how big a city you live in.  Take the total population, divide this number by 60, and that is how many hours you need to arrive before the store opens. This may mean missing Thanksgiving all together (as well as the 4th of July) to stand in line, but you know as well as I that Christmas is only 30 days away and you are going to need the other 29 days to start getting ready for Easter.

No matter what size city you live in, there is going to be to a whole lot of waiting. A good shopper is always prepared. A great way to do this is to mug a Boy Scout. Just first make sure he’s not one of your loyal friends.  Or a brontosaurus.

Also remember to bring something that can be used as a weapon in case you have to defend your spot in line. An umbrella works well. So does a 6 inch sharpened knife. If you find you’ve forgotten to bring a weapon, try to make one. Prisoners can make a shiv out of anything, and you are much more desperate than they are. For them it’s life and death. For you, it’s a possible 80% off retail price. In fact, in some states it is legal to kill someone for anything above 65% off. Part of your preparation should be checking the manslaughter laws in your area and, if they’re strict, perhaps thinking of some way to frame the person in front of you.

And that’s about it. Waiting is really the main part of Black Friday. All that’s left after the waiting is the pushing, punching, biting, insulting, threatening, confronting, arresting, sentencing, and going down in your permanent record.

We hope you found this helpful. Or entertaining. Or passable. Or at the very least, you have to admit it’s the most helpful Black Friday article you’ve read in February that involved brontosauruses.

This has been a paid message from the Brontosaurus Counsel.

Everyday Math

I’d like to take a minute to seriously discuss the importance of Math.

Not right now.

But someday.

Maybe.

You really do use Math every day in ways you might not even think about. For example, when I’m changing the sheets on my bed. The fitted sheet has four sides, two long ones and two short ones, not necessarily in that order. Using Math, I know because of complex formulas I do not understand that it should only take me a maximum of two attempts to find a direction my fitted sheet will fit on the mattress. But it always takes me 3. Explain that one, Math!

Also, you should never buy a homemade mattress off Etsy.

The reason people don’t understand how vital Math is to everyday life is because schools don’t teach Math using real-world applications.

Remember those word problems about figuring out how much total change there is in all your friends’ pockets? The only real-life reason you would need to be able to calculate this is if you were deciding whether or not you should mug your friends.

And the answer is almost always no.

Then there’s all the Math problems about apples. Math is obsessed with fruit. Math needs to take a hint and figure out that Fruit is just not that into it and move on. I’m sure there’s some other non-sentient-food-source that would love Math exactly the way it is, and they could settle down and have 2.5 children per square cylinder.

Besides that, Math should drop fruit and use foods that people are much more likely to need to calculate amounts of. Have you ever, EVER found yourself worrying if you would have enough apples for each of your friends? If you have, I imagine you don’t have very many friends:

Friend #1: What should we do tonight?

Friend #2: Well, Steve said we could drop by and watch movies.

Friend #1: Not Steve! He always runs around muttering something about how he’s going to make it all come out right and then tries to force apples on me in weird amounts, like 2/7ths or 1 and 3/16ths.

Friends don’t let friends obsess over apples.

Here’s the sort of real-life food equations Math should focus on:

Sara works at a restaurant. She waits on eight tables at a time. Bill is a customer. He spends an average of forty-five minutes at a table when he eats soup and salad, and fifty-five minutes at a table when he eats steak. He only tips eight percent. How many times is Sara allowed to spit in his food? (Round up to the nearest 10
Bobby is having a release party in honor of the new Justin Beiber single. He bought a six-pack of regular soda, a six-pack of diet soda, and a six-pack of caffeine free soda. How many hours is it going to take him to figure out that no one is coming to his party because Beiber sucks? (Be sure to list all the ways Beiber sucks)
Jason has taken a date to a burger joint exactly four miles from his house and almost seven miles from her house. How many of his fries should he let his date steal before he is entitled to angrily point out that he asked her if she wanted fries and she said no, so why is she eating all of his fries now? (Show your work)
Susan is throwing herself a birthday party. She is planning on inviting 20 people. How many food allergies should she try and accommodate before she gives up and just serves booze? (Don’t forget to drink while you explain your answer)

These are the sort of equations people need to be able to do in everyday life. Somebody get on this. I would, but I have to go find out how many apples everyone on my block has and how we could divide them all equally.  Not for Math.  I’m just out of apples and don’t want to go to the store.

Into the Wild

Wild animals are like celebrities: They’re fun to watch on TV, even cooler to see in person, but it’s cruel if you cage one up in your own home, even if you have a big backyard, and it won’t end well for you.

Best case scenario: you’ll get in trouble with the law when someone finds out you have them.

Worst case scenario: they eat you. George Clooney has the air of confidence of a man who has eaten a few people in his time.

So if you ever see him in a restaurant, smile politely, but don’t get too close and never, ever, ever try to take his food away from him.

I went to a wild animal rescue with my friends and it was highly educational and may have cost me a few friends. (None of them were eaten.)(I’m assuming. I didn’t take a head-count before and after)

(In retrospect, maybe I should have.)

(Someone did comment on the extra leg-room after the trip home.)

(James stopped returning my calls around that time.)

(But most guys I date end up not returning my calls.)

(Could they all have gotten eaten by wild animals? That would certainly make me feel better.)

(That’s ridiculous. How are they still updating their facebook pages?)

(Can you get cell reception from inside a lion? I can’t even get reliable reception in my kitchen. I need to find out who their provider is.)

What’s happening? Oh, I was blogging.

So, youngest children are communist.

Wait, wrong post.

I was at the wild animal rescue with friends.

My group followed the tour guide around and took turns asking questions and taking pictures.  That’s where I took the picture of the lion playing cards.  Okay, I photo-shopped in the cards.  He was actually playing dominoes.

Towards the end of the tour, one of my friends said, “You can really tell what everyone’s profession is based on the question they asked the tour guide. Heather, the vet, was asking about the spread of diseases among the animals. Dale, the electrician, was asking about the voltage of the electrified fences. And I didn’t hear what you asked the tour guide, Veronica.”

To which I replied, “I asked if she thought it would be quicker to kill someone by pushing them into the electrical fence or hoisting them over the fence into the lion pen.”

This being a fairly new friend, she asked, “What is it you do again, Veronica?”, searching through her purse, presumably for some mace.

“I’m a writer!” I answered, and we all had a good laugh.

Actually, I still got maced.

And I had to take the bus back home after getting voted out of the carpool.

Artists are always misunderstood.

The point is wild animals belong in the wild. My hope is that everyone will learn to respect nature and keep the wild in the wild. Maybe then nature will reciprocate by keeping wild things out of our homes.

By which I mean: KEEP YOUR SPIDERS OUT OF MY BED, NATURE!

Patent Pending on my new designer comforter.

Some people are okay with spiders in their home. “They eat the flies!” these people say. “If you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone. It’s a symbiotic relationship!”

These people are on the payroll of spiders.

Spiders do not have a symbiotic relationship with humans. You may think I’m only saying this because of my deep-seated phobia of spiders. It is true that I am afraid of them and I wish I was not, at least not as much.

If I was slightly less afraid of spiders, maybe my brain would have time to finish important commands to my muscles such as “But not your iphone” after my brain sent the initial message “Spider! Throw something at it!”

I wish I had better aim, too.

And softer walls.

Spiders have moved into your house not merely to catch flies, no matter what they may have told you. They have moved into your house because they like your house and they want it all to themselves.

I know what you’re thinking: “Do I need to do laundry or do I have enough underwear to last me a few more days?” Well, even though the spider is tiny and does not need a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath house, it wants it nonetheless and will stop at nothing to get it.

We humans get a bad rep for being materialistic, but spiders are even worse. Think about where you find them: in your shoes and clothes (trying them on for size), in your boxes of stuff (looking for collectibles to sell on ebay), and in your bed (checking the thread-count quality of your sheets)!

Spiders want to take over your life! You know how they say every person will eat 200 metric feet of spiders in their lifetime?  Or something like that?  Unless this is some strange new diet fad (I suppose they have to put something into meatless hot dogs), it’s all from spiders crawling into your mouth while you sleep.

That seems like an odd thing for a spider to do.  But it’s all part of their plan.  That is a spider attempting to try YOU on, the same way they tried on your clothes. Cutting-edge spider explorers are attempting to find a route into the human consciousness so they can take over our bodies.

You laugh, but how else do you explain the knitting craze?

Spiders are taking over and it may already be too late to stop them. But you can still do your part and buy me a new iphone.

An Incompetent Guide to Football

In a very special Sunday edition of my usual Monday post I am pleased to present:

Football for the Uninformed

As someone who doesn’t understand football, I feel it is my duty to explain the sport to those who know even less than I do.

In modern football, two teams of approximately fifty players each stand on the field. Each player has a different position. There’s a quaterback, a receiver, a halfback, a quarterafter, a fullback, a moneyback, a sexyback, a nickleback, and a blindside. None of the other positions have names, since their job is to just mill around the field until someone gets tackled and then jump on the pile to create an adequate dog-pile.

The most important player on a team is called the ref. The ref wears a special black and white uniform to distinguish himself. The ref tries to do things to make it impossible for the opposing side to win, much like the seeker in Quidditch when he catches the snitch, only the ref does it by throwing flags onto the field. You’re not allowed to tackle the other team’s ref, but you can yell and spit on him.

You may think it gets confusing if all teams’ refs wear the same black and white uniform, but it’s obvious which side the ref is on by the calls he makes.

That’s my team!

Football games are divided into quarters because in each of the four time-periods, the ref throws a quarter in the air. The quarterbacks are called quarterbacks because it’s their job to try to catch the quarter when it comes back down. Whoever can catch it automatically wins that quarter (both that section of the game and the actual quarter, which is good because I don’t think football players make very much money). If no one catches the quarter, then they have to play round two with a football.  If no one remembered to bring a football, round three is charades.  But someone almost always remembers to bring a football.

In round two, all the players line up facing each other, then someone hands the quarterback the ball. I can’t think of a good reason why the quarterback doesn’t just start out with the ball.

Once the quarterback has the ball, his job is to throw it. He has three choices: he can throw it to a teammate, he can throw it to the other team, or he can throw it at the ground. Now, throwing the ball at the ground is technically not allowed. It’s called “grounding”. For some reason, though, no one ever enforces this rule. Not when quarterbacks do it to footballs and not when airlines do it to airplanes full of passengers for four hours.

A receiver is the guy who the quarterback throws the ball to. Each team only has one receiver, who the quarterback picks with a round of one potato, two before the game. In order to keep the other team from finding out who the receiver is, all the players dresses alike and wear padding like mall Santas to hide their body types and disguise their faces with helmets.

A failed attempt to disguise the receiver.

There’s two ways to score in football. One way is to kick the ball through that giant yellow thing. If you make it, the refs have to stop and do the YMCA dance. Unfortunately, due to the financial problems football often struggles with, they can no longer afford to license the rights to the YMCA.  So the refs just make the letter Y, which is as far as they can go without getting sued for copyright infringement.

The other way to score points is to make a touchdown, which means the receiver failed to get tackled, but made up for it by getting to the end zone.  This is also referred to as a field-goal, because you’ve made a goal by running in from the field. The receiver has to make it to the end zone that is painted with the logo of the opposing team. He does this by communicating with people in blimps flying over the stadium.  People in the blimps tell the receiver which way to run.

Meanwhile, in the blimp: “Boy, that receiver is not going to be happy when he finds out we meant our left.”

Like basketball, which has a three-point line that a player must stand behind in order to make his basket worth 3 points, football fields are divided into point zones. Those are the numbers painted on the field from 10 to 50 and back down to 10 again. In-between each of those lines are 9 single point lines. The announcers call these “yard lines” because that’s what they call points in Europe. At the same time that Europe unified their currency to the Euro, they also unified their point system to the yard. (Yes, that is why it’s called “Scotland Yard”. It’s a cute, self-affirming name, like the “A-Okay Plumbing Company”)

If a team is on the 1 yard line and makes a touchdown, then the touchdown is worth one yard or 1 metric point. If a team is on the 50 yard line and makes a touchdown, the touchdown is worth 50 points. You’ll notice the numbers go down after the halfway point of the field. That’s because nobody likes a show-off, so if a team makes a touchdown from too far down the field, it’s worth fewer points. It may sound silly, but this point system helps football players keep the humble attitudes they are known for.

For those of you who are just watching football to be social and can’t wait for it to be over, there’s a little clock in the corner of the screen and when it’s out of time, the game has to be over. Unfortunately, the clocks they use are internet clocks and because football stadiums are still using dial-up (those pesky money problems again) the clock stops running a lot as it takes time to buffer. The officials never seem to take this into account, so football games can last a very long time.

When the clock finally gets to 0:00 in the fourth quarter, whichever team caught the most quarters or made the most touchdowns wins. If there’s a tie, they throw a fifth quarter. If neither side catches the quarter, then whoever makes a touchdown first wins the whole game because everyone is tired of football at that point and just wants it to be over.

Once the official game is over, the journalists, who have been waiting on the sidelines all this time, get their chance to run onto the field and tackle the quarterback.

I hope this has helped you understand the game better.

And I hope, for the sake of brevity, the quarterbacks catch a lot of quarters this big game.

And you can quote me on that.

(Be sure to share this with all your football-challenged friends!)

 

Brains

They say getting on a regular schedule is good for you. Go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning and eventually your body will get into the rhythm of it. Soon your brain will be waking you up at the same time without your alarm even going off.

What “they” don’t say is why that would be considered a good thing?

If you had a roommate who came into your room on your day off and shouted, “IT’S 8AM! YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE TO WORK!”, would you be grateful?

Spoiler alert: the answer is no. You would get rid of that roommate immediately, with the only delay being if you took time to beat them soundly first. So why is it okay for your brain to do to you?

Then again, we do let our brains get away with way more than we’d ever let another human being do.

For example, these games that you would punch a human for but let your brain play:

“I’ll hum a song over and over and over until you guess what it is!”
“Guess who that person is! I’ll give you a hint: Their name starts with a ‘P’”(which is a lie, because it will turn out their name actually started with a ‘J’, but your brain is a cheater)
Random Acts of Amnesia, where you forget vital pieces of information as you are about to use them, such as why you entered a room or a commonly used word just as you are about to say it in a sentence. (And don’t believe your brain when it tells you that the word starts with a ‘P’. It’s never a ‘P’!)
“Let’s make you look crazy! The rules are that I’m going to make you think so deeply about something that you’ll forget no one else in the room could hear your internal conversation and then you’ll say something that makes sense in the context of your thoughts, but to no one else in the room. Ready? Go! But do you think his height worked against his career?”
“What else have you seen that actor in? You have until 3:00am to name that movie or I’ll wake you up and tell you.”

Basically, you are sharing your body with the world’s worst roommate and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Allow me to further illustrate my point with this graph:

What does that have to do with brains? Nothing.

That is my point.

That graph does not belong with this post. So which post does it belong with?

I cannot answer that.

I drew this graph specifically for a certain post I was writing, but I can’t remember which. My brain has decided that piece of information is above my security clearance and thus I cannot be trusted with it. My brain has successfully orphaned this graph, which makes no sense out of context. (To be fair to my brain, knowing me, it wasn’t going to make sense in context either.)

Brains are horrible, horrible things and yet we put up with them because we don’t really have a choice.

Maybe that’s what we really need to fix. We need to put the pressure on our brains by showing them that we DO have a choice in brains. I propose science follow current trends. We have ride-sharing. We have home-sharing. Now we need brain-sharing.

Imagine having someone else’s brain for a week, legally and without fear of a sudden raid of your basement collection, and subsequent life-sentence.

I know what you’re thinking: “Dang it! Why can’t I think of what else that actor’s been in?” But it won’t be too crowded in your skull because you’ll wait for your brain to leave first.

You know when you realize you’ve just been staring off into space for a while, thinking of nothing? That was your brain taking a smoke break. That’s when you quickly move another brain into your head. When your brain comes back and finds another brain has a 2 week lease on your skull, it’ll be awkward, sure. But it’ll also send a clear message to your brain that you don’t like the Macarena, so stop singing it every time someone says “macadamia”! They’re not the same word, dang it!

So…who wants my brain first? (Comment below to reserve your slot.  First come first serve.  No smokers.  Must love dogs and weirdness.)

P.S.  I remembered!  This was a graph about the amount of credit perfectionists give themselves.

I’m so glad I remembered. I just wish I could get back to sleep now.

Aliens

First of all, anyone who disputes the contents of that blurry photo of blurry aliens is part of the conspiracy and for your own safety, you shouldn’t trust them.

Now down to business.  Then up to tacos.  Then back down to jazzercize.  But I digress (already, which is frankly a bad sign for the chances of coherency in this post).

I don’t want anyone to panic, but aliens exist and we should all panic.

I know what you’re thinking: “Is it Thursday today? I was supposed to return Steve’s drill by Thursday.” But I don’t think we need to go to such extremes…yet.

You may be wondering how I came to know aliens exist? I think this photograph speaks for itself.

Are you panicking yet? I know I am.

That is not the surface of the moon.

That is my back yard!

And those circles are crop circles made in the snow of my backyard!

BY ALIENS! Because who else makes snow-crop-circles? Mormons are the only people who ever show up at my house and I’m pretty sure they do not currently practice crop-circle-formationizing.

That only leaves aliens.

And the Chinese food delivery guy, but I tip him well.

Here’s a zoomed-out version of that picture.

There’s the intergalactic-snow-crop-circles in the middle, the nearest footprint is down there at the bottom of the photo, a good two to three feet away. And…WHAT THE HECK IS THAT BLACK BLURRY THING IN THE CORNER?!? Oh, that’s my shadow. I’m pretty sure. I may need to get this photo analyzed by a professional before I can say one way or another.

But what this picture proves is that ALIENS EXIST AND THEY’RE LOITERING IN MY YARD!

No, don’t panic now! I’m talking now.

Not that you don’t have every reason to panic. Aliens in my backyard is bad for everyone for many reasons.

For one thing, I have a dog.  It has been snowing for days and I know there are doggie land mines hidden all over that yard. If an alien inevitably steps in one, what kind of inter-planetary war is that going to cause?

But more importantly, I NEVER CHECK MY EMAIL!

I have your attention now, don’t I? I am notoriously bad at checking my email or my text messages and worse at responding to them in a promptly matter.

So what are we supposed to do now when the fate of two worlds demands that I be the one receiving, interpreting, and delivering snow-crop-circle messages?

I think it would go a little something like this:

Aliens: Puny humans (they always call us that in movies)! Your time is up to give in to our demands. Prepare to be destroyed!

Me: Was that today? I could of sworn you said by next week. Look, I’m really sorry, but I have just been swamped lately. I have not had two minutes to send the world leaders your messages yet.

Aliens: We can see through your puny human windows. For someone so swamped, you spend a lot of time on puny human Twitter.

Me: It’s called networking. As a free-lance writer, that is very important for my business.

Aliens: What is the last time you wrote anything?

Me: . . .

Still Me: I’m not really at the writing phase right now. I’m still in the outlining phase.

Alien: Present your puny human outline!

Me: You know, I’m not at the writing down the outline phase yet. I’m waiting until it’s really all together before I commit it to paper.

Aliens: You’re on puny human Twitter again!

Me: Don’t judge me!

And thus the world as we know it will end, unless I can (nope!) write (not doing it!) an outline (you can’t make me!).  Or at least get the aliens hooked on Twitter.  Unless they’re already on there, which would explain a lot about Twitter.

So here is when you should panic. The world is going to come to a close because of my failure to read snow-crop-circles and I feel remotely horrible about it. (I’m not sure what I meant by that either)

In recompense, I would like to offer everyone my collection of laundry detergent coupons.

Full disclosure: Most of them are expired.

But we’re all going to be, too, so it works out.

Oh, I should tweet that!

Ideas

Warning: This post is sort of a self-help post. Please only read if you’re beyond regular help.

A lot of people have blogs, want to have blogs, or read blogs about people who want to have blogs about turtles. With all these people coming up with fresh posts all the time (ie: “Turtles: I Have Nothing to Say About Them”), it can be hard to come up with interesting new ideas.

So I think it would be helpful to other people if I talked about ways to come up with fresh new post ideas. This is for people like you (and by “you” I mean definitely not me) who are so unfortunate as to need to write a blog post, late on Sunday night for example, but who have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO WRITE ABOUT. I can only imagine how painful that must be for you (and that “you” might actually mean “me”, although “you” would never admit it.).

So to help you (as well as the “you” that’s “me”) avoid that pain, I’ll brainstorm ideas here, making this both an entertaining and educational post, which is in no way just a space filler. I may even get a some sort of grant for this.

You’re welcome.

Sooooo…things you could blog about when you’ve got nothing. Where to even start in such as vast topic, flowing with so many ideas. Like a million and twenty different ideas.  At least.

Grants, for one.  Grants would make for thrilling posts. Like “Grants: I Have Less to Say About Them Than Turtles”. I don’t think that’s been done a lot yet.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. One idea down, a million and nineteen to go.

Umm…

I think we should pause here from all these ideas for a moment.  Let’s all take some time to discuss with our friends and family what sort of topics we find to be important. This can not only help you give me ideas, but help you have a better relationship with your friends and family, who I’m sure will be very grateful when you interrupt whatever it is they’re doing to get them to give you ideas for my blog. Communication is a lost art, so make sure you communicate clearly to them that they will in no way be compensated for use of their ideas.

Wow. I thought family values would take up more space.  Why don’t we have more to say about family values?  Discuss.

Unsung heroes. That is a trending topic. Everyone appreciates a good, unsung hero. Contrastingly, nobody likes a well-sung hero. So, whatever you do, make sure you do ample research on your hero to make sure they’re not too-sung. They need to be just the right amount of singafied.

Seat fillers. Those are unsung heroes. You know when you watch the Oscars (and this time, I really mean “you” when I say “you” and not “me”. I watch the Oscars the same way I watch football: namely that I turn on the TV with the intention of watching whatever is on after the Oscars/football, only to find out the awards/game is still going on, but promising to end in four minutes, which actually ends up being a good half hour that I am disgruntled about having sat through, although it does give me something to say when someone asks me, “Hey, did you see the game/awards ceremony last night?”)

That was a long paragraph of aside.

But there’s more to seat fillers than just my disgruntlement at football.  During the Oscars, when they do that shot of the standing-room-only audience, it’s a lie. Your brain knows this somewhere deep in your subconscious because Taylor Swift is presenting an award to the New York Raiders (I told you I don’t watch the Oscars and/or football) and all those people are standing on the stage, but you just saw them come up from their seats, which now are occupied. This lie is thanks to seat-fillers also known as I-moved-to-Hollywood-to-get-into-the-movies-but-sitting-in-Sandra-Bullock’s-chair-is-as-close-as-I’ve-gotten-to-an-acting-gig-ers.

Well that took a turn for the depressing.

So we’ve learned something! Like I said, this is an educational. We’ve learned don’t write a post about seat fillers. It’s best if they stay unsung.

Here’s some other topics that you (oddly enough, by that “you”, I mean “turtles”) certainly could delve into:

Modern pages: why the heck are they so long? How many trees would we save if pages were shorter? The answer: none, because I am actually talking about OpenOffice documents.

Turtles: For the love of pete, why can’t I think of anything besides turtles? Is that a symptom of some rare disease? Somebody check WebMD.

Light bulbs: Umm…I cannot think of a single topic regarding light bulbs except why aren’t they more like turtles?

Dramatic Pauses: they sure are great, right?

(Dramatic pause)

Discuss.

Frenemies. They’re a mix of a friend and an enemy, yet somehow lack the delightfulness of other mixes: Mango-ritas, Labradoodles, Smart Cars (which are a mix of a car and a single atom, which explains their size). Perhaps a third element needs to be added to the mix of frenemies to tip the scales in a more favorable manner.

Cross a frenemy with a poodle, a Frenemyoodle if you will. A cute poodle could help distract you from what a subtle jerk that person is.

I bark things about you behind your back.

 

 

Cross a frenemy with a lion and you will end up with one less frenemy to worry about, but possibly pending legal charges.

Um…that was not the kind of lion I was originally thinking of. But whatever.

I hope this has given you (“you”) some things to blog about. Which brings me to my final thought:

Endings: Why are they so turtle?

Discuss.

Which of Your Children Are Commies?

I recently discovered that all youngest children are actually Communists. While I’m waiting for my Nobel Prize to arrive in the mail, I’ll elaborate.

This was not an easy bit of research to accomplish. First I had to infiltrate the world of the youngest children. I did this by purposefully being born last in my family. That gave me the sort of street cred one needs to work their way into the inner trust circle of youngest children. I lived as a youngest child for 31 years.

I know what you’re thinking: “Why can I only find one shoe? Where would the other one even go?” But I didn’t have to grow out of being a child and become an adult. Youngest children never do. Not only is it not required of us, but no one would believe it if we said we did grow up. For every time we youngest children ask an older sibling to do something for us, there’s two times that a job has been taken from us because nobody expects the baby to be able to do it, even if that baby is a 45 year old brain surgeon.

But where does Communism fit into all this? Well, (*removing glasses to look more authoritative*) (*putting glasses back on in order to see keyboard*) youngest children believe in the system of non-ownership. Everything is community property, with no need to ask permission in order to use or wear or ruin. So, as a youngest child, if I find a shirt that I like, it doesn’t matter who it “belongs” to because it just as equally “belongs” to me, so I can wear it to paint in.

Now if you’ve ever had a youngest sibling, you may be wondering why this sentiment of non-ownership didn’t seem to go the other way, from youngest sibling to other siblings. That’s because of the hierarchy. The Chinese people didn’t need to have their own possessions and gladly shared everything with the Chinese government. Now, in Communism, all people are equal. But some people are a better kind of equal than others. The Chinese government, being equal more better than the common people, didn’t have to share all that stuff back again with the common people. Youngest children are simply more better equal than their older counterparts, so we don’t have to share our stuff with anyone.

Here’s how it looks in graph form:

Now, I know youngest children’s more equal betterness is an indisputable fact, but those of you who don’t know the reasoning behind it, it goes as follows: When a man and a woman love each other very much or get very drunk, they have babies. Then they keep having babies until they feel they can’t top their last child. Youngest children are the perfect result after years of practice children.

All this may make being a youngest child sound ideal, but there are struggles. I myself have struggled. I had to learn to do my own laundry in college because my family wouldn’t take the twelve hour drive every week to my dorm room.

Youngest children also have an inability to hold things. Be it a coat, a box, or a drink, youngest children lack the muscle strength to hold up any kind of item for an extended period of time. We are constantly dependent on other people to hold our stuff for us while we go rummage through their stuff.

So as long as there are youngest children, Communism will thrive. And, speaking as a youngest child, that’s totally okay.

And if my older sisters are reading this, I don’t know who’s shirt this is, but I kinda got paint on it.