The Popcorn Paradox

It is bizarre to me, that the same substance can produce one of the best AND one of the worst smells in the entire universe.

How to Annoy the World in 5 Simple Steps

Last night, while watching the Olympics Closing Ceremony, I came up with the best idea ever, which I have drawn up to share with you all.
This is all the more reason that I need to become rich and famous... or just rich, really.

Down low, too slow!

I hate high fiving. A lot.

High fiving humans...
I will high five the shit out of animals.
Except birds, fuck birds, but I will high five any hamster that puts its creepy little alien paw up for me to gently tap with my palm (because it is a tiny cute hamster and full on high five might hurt it).

High fiving humans holds no interest for me because they judge you when you are awkward and your hand isn't a fucking physics major, so you kinda miss their hand on the forward trajectory, not hitting it right on, and then they know you have spacial issues, and they don't say anything but you can see it in the way that they avoid your eyes.

Or you go for the high five and they do the mercy hand position and there you are, slightly horrified, looking like you are defending yourself again a bully who wants to break your wrists and they are clutching at your hands, jumping up and down, excited, and you are just receding to your happy place until this stranger danger is over.

And it is stranger danger, because anyone who really knows me knows I don't want to touch their hands. They also probably know that they don't want to touch my hands (see the post about my activities on road trips). I'd rather most people put their genitals on me than their grubby dirty hands.


That job I had, the one that I got fired from, they were staunch believers in high fives.  My soul died a little every time I was forced to partake in their bizarre hand touching ritual. Thankfully they fired me though, so I didn't have to come up with bizarre reasons to dodge being touched.  I had already considered "leprosy from an armadillo bite" and "mail order ebola that accidentally got shipped to me instead of my terrorist next door neighbors."  They probably would have just gotten hazmat suits for everyone and upped the "up highs" to boost my morale.

ANIMAL HIGH FIVE CHALLENGE! 

The best ones will be posted later this week with a link to your blog. Draw them up and send them to my email (cheeseblarg at live dot com). You have until Wednesday, 11:59pm my time.

 p.s. Your drawings don't have to be drawings if you'd like to work in another medium, but it has to be self made.

                                     

I selected this post to be featured on my blog’s page at Humor Blogs.

How to Ensure a Prosperous New Year.

Everyone in my family is pretty damned funny.  My sister likes to start traditions in our family, and 14 years ago, shortly before she had our First Annual Christmas Weenie Roast (I don't know that we had more than one), she created the tradition of The Christmas Snake.

It goes thusly:
If you wake up Christmas morning with a bed full of snakes, you will have a prosperous and happy New Year... if you don't die of fright, from waking up with a bed full of (rubber) snakes.

And this is probably why non-Christian funny people shouldn't be trusted to come up with Christmas traditions.

The Stalker

My family has a stalker.  I didn't realize that my internet fame would cause me problems this quickly.  I figured maybe, at some point, like when people actually knew who I was or gave a damn, I probably should invest in a post office box, but it seems I didn't do it quickly enough. And now... every time we leave the house, he is out there, staring at us menacingly. Or maybe she, I can't really tell.

Pictured here covertly hiding behind flowers while still staring at me.

I learned long ago that bunnies were not to be trusted.
In college, my friends Laura and Heather got me a bunny, an adorable ginger buck, or possibly a doe... I don't know. I really have a deficit in telling the sex of rabbits, but I named it Futurix, and I loved it... okay, I loved the idea of it... I didn't really love that it had free reign of my room as I had no cage and it escaped the makeshift corral I had set up for it in my spare closet and it decided the best thing to do when escaping a cozy closet hutch is to get up on its owner's bed and pee and poop all over it.

I also didn't love that I had to learn the hard way that bunnies can growl as I tried to gingerly get it out from under the bed where it was also pooping and peeing and I was met with fierce glowing eyes and satanic snarling.

 Or that bunnies could star in their own disgusting bunny internet shock videos (if only I had had another bun and a cup) because they eat their own poop, although I guess it was just helping with the removal of the tons of bunny poo it had deposited all over my room. Recycling, right?

After a day or two of the bunny and I tolerating each other's existences, I realized that it was possibly more my fault than the bunny's and I gave him/her back to Laura, who promptly litter trained it and gave it a happy life where no one judged it for eating it's own waste.

But that doesn't preclude the fact that I am now being stalked by a bunny... because it is out there...staring at us... with its fur, and its twitchy nose, and the nibbling... the nibbling!

The Grand Canyon Incident

I've become convinced, over the years, that my parents were enrolled in some sort of incentive program with the US Government or possibly a secret military experiment* in which they were paid to do crappy things and then send in detailed information on how I reacted to said government agency. Perhaps some sort of psychological warfare deal.

 My parents are generally good people, did lots of volunteer work, were supportive of our extracurricular activities, helped us with our  homework, threw some of the best birthday parties ever, but every once in a while, they did things that were so crappily out of character, I just cannot explain it any other way than to say someone was encouraging them to fuck with me.

One of these times is now referred to as "The Grand Canyon Incident."  I've never been to the Grand Canyon. I spent a year living in Arizona with my grandparents when I was in first grade; we lived in the suburbs of Phoenix while my mom and dad were stationed in Okinawa, Japan.  I am fairly certain that I wasn't aware of its existence then, because if I had been, I probably would have pestered people to take me, immediately.

However, by the time I had finished 10th grade, I had totally seen the episode of the Brady Bunch where they visited, one time when I was home sick from school, and I had also seen National Lampoon's Vacation, and at some point I had gotten my hands on 1950s postcards of the Grand Canyon and goddammit, I wanted to go. So, when it was announced that we would be visiting my grandparents in Arizona and I was told that we would be driving a rental car across the state to sightsee, I immediately put in my bid to go visit that amazing giant hole... (I don't want to say Grand Canyon over and over again but all of the descriptive stand-ins I can think of sound like dirty dirty euphemisms) and my request was met with whole-hearted consent. "No problem! Sounds great! We'll go!"

Now, I must divulge that, in my family, nagging is the main cause of plans being canceled, and I know this, and I have a problem with getting excited and talking about something ad nauseum and so, after having been met with "You had to go and say something and ruin it for everyone!" many times prior in my life,  I was VERY careful to keep my big mouth shut after I was told that my vacation request would be fulfilled.  I, of course, wanted to sing songs of joy at the top of my lungs at getting to go, as we drove through the desert, which would have sounded a lot like:

( Come on, sing along! "OMG THE GRAND CANYON! HOW I LOVE YOUR RUSTY HUES! YOU ARE THE BEST HOLE THAT I'VE NEVER SEEN, BUT I WILL SEE YOU SOOOOOOOOOOOON!")

 But again, I knew I could only chance about 1.75 mentions before I pissed off my parents enough that they would snap and cancel the plan, so I sat in the back of the rented white Ford Taurus and swelled with very quiet excitement inside, while listening to Skid Row tapes on my off-brand Walkman, as signs began to appear announcing the distance to my vacation Valhalla.

And finally, I knew it was safe! I was in the clear, and so I pointed to the right and said "DAD! IT'S THE NEXT TURN OFF! THE GRAND CANYON! 2.2 MILES! OMG YAY!" and my dad looked over at my mom as I bounced in the back seat and squealed silently, and then, studying the look between them, I said "Aren't we gonna go?" and I was met with, "Eh... I don't really feel like going," and then we drove past the turn off, and then I died inside.

And it didn't occur to me at the time, but surely it was an experiment.  They probably got the crappy rental car comped from the government, and it was most likely wired with cameras so they could study the reactions of the 15 year old female subject experiencing the effects of complete and total devastation and confusion, because the government are the kind of assholes that would do something like that. Right?

And I've yet to see the friggen thing. I want to.  I need to. I will... or else.


(* since I did grow up on a military base and spent a lot of time in Naval Hospitals early on- they say it was because of Agent Orange, but I know better...)

Isla de la Comida Robada

I'd like to talk for a moment about one of the most terrifyingly unsettling members of our society.  As usual, it is a commercial that reminds me, because I watch a lot of commercials while I am not paying attention to the TV, whilst screwing around online, but I digress.

While I am a peace-loving, Pollyanna, give-everyone-the-benefit-of-the-doubt type of girl, I think that people who habitually and purposely steal other peoples' lunches in the work place are bad bad people.

Seriously, and I am not talking about, "starving, come in off the street, just need something to eat."  I'm talking about the kind of sociopath who has a job, money, and a lunch hour where they could go purchase their own food, or order take out, and yet, there they are, stalking through the lunches of their coworkers, stealing food for the sheer thrill of doing so.  These people are untrustworthy douchebags and should be shunned from society.

I mean, what has to be going through their heads?  They work with their victims.  They are committing their crime in a public area.  People look forward to lunch.  They know what they brought to eat. It is just unconscionable.

The best (and most logical) punishment, in my estimation, is a Lord of the Flies/ LOST sort of scenario in which discovered lunch thieves are placed on a desert island and all forced to make elaborate, delicious lunches each day, which they then put in a refrigerator that is routinely raided by crazed monkeys or possibly genetically-engineered dinosaurs, leaving them having to eat grubs and coconut milk for eternity.

They should also be fired.

A Girl and her Bunny.

My family (and I, obviously) lived in Southern California when I was a wee one. Occasionally we would take trips up into the mountains between Oceanside and Ramona.  And of course, each trip has a fairly horrific story about me attached to it.

My memory doesn't separate any of the stories, but I have been assured that there were three different occasions, so for now, you only get to hear one of them-- you would have thought that they would have learned to stop taking me up into the damned mountains though.

This story, in particular, occurred on the first trip we made. While driving happily along, as we made our ascent up the mountain, I called out to my parents, begging them to pull over and stop the car.  Watching out the window, I  had seen a very fluffy rabbit on the side of the road that I desperately wanted as a pet.  They very kindly and patiently explained to me that the bunny wasn't sleeping.  The very bloated bunny was, in fact, very dead, which meant I really didn't want it.
"But, I want a dead bunny for a pet!" I told them eagerly.
"Why?" They asked with concern.
"Because I can hug it and it won't run away!"
 Which makes some sort of sense, I guess, but is a little morbid for a 4 year old.  I suppose I didn't quite grasp the concept of decomposition.

Thankfully, they did not allow me to have the dead bunny, but they did get me a rabbit pelt, which was probably the safest alternative to keep me from becoming a serial killer.

Stirring the Pot

This is going to be an obscenity laden rant regarding something about which I am impassioned. In not so fancy terms, OMG PISSED!

So, I had an argument this morning, it was a petty silly thing but, seriously... I have very little money. It seems that most humor blarggers are in the same rickety boat.  So, the argument happened because I became enraged when it was suggested that my household needed a Robostir. If you are unfamiliar with the Robostir, it is a "robot" that you put in a pot, and it stirs it for you.

It stirs a fucking pot... for 17-24 dollars.

But, it is not even a robot.  It doesn't have any AI.  It doesn't like, use lasers to stir. It isn't connected to Skynet.  It is just a motor, with a whisk attached to it, on 3 stupid legs that you plunk into your soup pot.  If I'm promised a robot, I want an actual gawddamned robot.

I'm so em-effing tired of gadgets that do things that people don't need help doing.  The average person is perfectly able to crack an egg without a gadget, or cut brownies into suitable squares...(if you don't like them being slightly uneven, don't eat one, asshole!)... or OMG, A BUTTER PLUNGER!?!? TWENTY TWO DOLLARS TO MAKE A RIBBON OF BUTTER! ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME!?! Sorry, I was just looking for examples at a website where you can buy all these idiotic gadgets.

And don't get me started on the Topsy Turvy. "Tired of having to bend over to pick up tomatoes that have fallen off the plant?"  Why, does the thing come equipped with an anti-gravity force field that keeps the tomatoes from falling? Because it seems to me that if you hang the plant upside down 6 feet from the ground, the tomatoes would be MORE likely to fall (that pesky potential energy and all) and, instead of being happy and whole, they would die a miserable, squashy, death.

But don't get me wrong, I am not against gadgets all together. I had a Ronco Showtime Rotisserie that I absolutely loved (made the best sausage EVAR). I just hate things that assume I'm a blathering idiot who is incapable of gross motor skills.


So, no, I don't want a Robostir because you know what else stirs a pot really well?! Your hand and a wood spoon, and that's like, virtually free. If stirring a pot is such a bloody problem, call me-- I can do it for you for $2.15.

Plus Shipping & Handling

SNOMG!

So, uh, I know I have said that I live in Montana, but I have also indicated that I am not originally from here. I am, in fact, from Florida originally. I've lived here in Montana for three years, and as such, driving in snow still scares the holy living hell out of me.

Today, I was coerced into driving to do stupid errands that totally could have waited, in the middle of what should have been labeled a blizzard... and would have been if people without meteorological degrees from Florida were in charge of classifying northern weather.

I missed one turn because this was my view:

And then I hyperventilated as I drove further and further out of town because I couldn't tell where the median lumps broke because everything was covered in snow.  Finally about a mile or two later the median lumps disappeared and I then flailed as cars whizzed passed me at 50 mph while I looked for stop sign shapes to try to turn left to get off the road and turn around.  Have I mentioned I'm afraid of left turns?

So I managed to turn around and get where I was going and then sent a text while I waited for the first errand to be done, informing my loved ones that I was going to die while driving in crazy snow storm (thankfully I received a reply that was not "K"). And then I promptly experienced the joy of my car pretending to be a Disney ride while trying to enter an intersection as I lost traction and slid at 90 degree angles left and right while begging my car, Eunice, to 'PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! for the love of weasels, go forward,' so that we were not smashed by the people approaching way too quickly.

I managed not to die, as you can probably deduce, but I think I might now need blood pressure medicine, or some sort of anxiety pill as a result of my crazy snow storm adventure.

Ode to State Taxes

Montana, I would like to pay you taxes on all of our income, but you won't give me any information ANYWHERE on your website on where to list OTHER FREAKING INCOME on ANY OF YOUR TAX FORMS!!!!! Or maybe you do, but the fact is that I can not find it anywhere by looking in the booklets of ALL of the different tax forms, or the forms themselves (using ctrl-f), or by searching your website, or by sacrificing virgins on your digital alter in the hopes that maybe you will have some freaking mercy on me. Because we are talking about a $1000 discrepancy. A THOUSAND DOLLARS that is on a 1099-misc which you don't have space for anywhere... so I can just assume you don't want me to count that money, but I am guessing you probably would like the additional 20 bucks of tax money from me on that, and I would REALLY like to avoid being audited or corrected again like last year, or whatever, and I am certainly not paying 30 bucks to have H&R Block do it. . .


I just have to say, the state of Montana is very lucky that I am filing electronically or I would be rubbing the tax forms all over my ass before sending them out!

Fine, damn it, I called and talked to Tax Man Brian and I found out where to put the damned thing, but in this day and age I should not have to interact with actual humans to get information!

Monster Math- Zombies and Negative Numbers

It’s been a while, but Monster Math is back and it's coming to get you, Martha!  Today, we will be battling the number apocalypse with :

NEGATIVE NUMBERS - Zombies and Survivors

First of all we have two teams, positive numbers, which are represented by living humans, or survivors, and negative numbers, which are then, obviously, the undead, zeds, zombies.

positive numbers                      negative numbers

ADDITION

Let’s start with an addition word problem. Addition with negative numbers is just comparing, canceling, and letting the bodies fall as they will.

We have seven humans, hiding out in a rickety old warehouse, with a surprisingly large arsenal of shotguns and buckshot.  Five ambling undead come stumbling out of the local cemetery that has been rained upon by an unknown chemical that reanimates corpses, most likely created by the government as a chemical warfare agent. Who will survive the inevitable fight?

This would be represented as 7+ -5.

Now, our humans are not trained in combat at all, and whether they are or not, to fit the plot of the math problem, we know that they are incredibly bad at fighting zombies and anyone who kills a zombie ends up getting bitten and must die.  As in real life, if there is a zombie attack, it is best to hide and stay out of it, but alas, these are brave, if not foolhardy,  little positive humans and so, they are jumping right into this fight.

Something in the pipes.

There is a nightly ritual in my house. It goes like this:

Me (yelled throughout house): TAKING A SHOWER!!!
Family (yelled back through house): OKAY!!
Me, happily showering.
Burbling clicking sound.
Water slows to a trickle.
Horrid screeching monster sound from pipes as a result of family member turning on water despite my making them aware I would be in the shower and they should not flush toilets/do dishes/water the lawn.
Me, being angry/frightened/concerned by my bleeding ears.

I've had water systems before that didn't like other water being used, but seriously, the pipes in my house now sound like they are possessed by some sort of terrible terrible creature.

Don't miss the video of the sounds  in the next post!

The Worst Gift- Orthodox Blue Whale

One of the worst Hanukkah gifts I ever got was this weird lump of a cat figurine.  I believe it was made of wood, possibly stone, and it was covered with goat fur.  It also had little realistic eyes that stared at me with malice. It looked like this, only less friendly:

The worst Hanukkah gift you ever got was an orthodox blue whale! Enjoy!

Musical Interlude- Hungry Eyes

I've been meaning to tell you, 

I've got this feelin' that won't subside.

I look at you and I fantasize. 

You're mine tonight.

Now I've got you in my sights 

With these hungry eyes.

Hungry Eyes - Eric Carmen

I'm Killroy!

There is a group on Facebook called something like, "When I was a kid, I used to talk into the fan to hear my robot voice." I spent a lot of time doing this as a child singing Mr. Roboto by Styx.


I wonder if robots will at some point use this trick to sound human when they begin their overthrow of the human race.

Of course, because I have written this, I fully expect to be targeted first in this sort of scheme.  I'll just make sure to listen for a lack of contractions when someone knocks on the door and asks to borrow a cup of sugar.