How to survive a plane crash.

How to survive a plane crash in 8 simple steps that anyone can follow:

1. This is the most important step, which is why it is number one-
As the plane is falling from the sky and crashing into the ground, DON'T die.
If you can't even be bothered to do that, then further advice is useless.  You have to really be committed to the "not dying on impact" directive.

2. Fashion yourself a cool headband - this will keep sweat out of your eyes AND let other survivors know that you are SERIOUS about this survival stuff. SERIOUS..LY AWESOME... Especially if you make it out of a live animal.

3. Get a reasonable distance from the airplane until it is safe.  There is nothing more tragic than making the commitment to live through smashing into the ground, only to find yourself sucked into a jet engine while staggering around in shock. Also, shrapnel from exploding planes is adverse to your objective of living.

4. Find shelter- If blankets and cushions are not available for a fort because the plane is a fiery deathtrap, dig a big hole.  It will keep you warm (or cool) and you can always cover it with sticks and leaves when you are not using it, to trick people into falling in.  Practical jokes always raise morale.

5. Look for fresh water- or quickly get used to the idea that you might be drinking your own distilled pee water soon to live.  Beware other survivors who are fine with drinking urine, right off the bat.

6. Watch lots of episodes of LOST and read teen fiction like The Hunger Games Trilogy before any plane travel.  This will make you aware of all of the experiences you are sure to encounter while navigating a survival situation. Shows such as Survivor Man and Man vs.Wild will do you no good.

7. Always wear a suit of snack foods under your clothes when traveling.  While you CAN forage for edibles, that requires that you actually know what you are doing and don’t eat things that want to kill you. It is safer to just eat your clothes. A good mix of fruit rollups, corn chips, and jerky will keep you healthy until to you can be rescued.  Chocolate is not suggested for these garments.

8. Be rescued.

VERY loosely adapted from the SAS Survival Handbook.

The Chaperone

"He just likes to follow me around on first dates. Totes harmless! So... SUSHI?!"

Feel free to submit your own humorous variations of the talk bubble.

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.

Let My People Go!

It's Passover, which means, it is time for Matzo-related injuries.  If you've never had Matzo, let me clue you in... it is some stabby shit. Think 'stabbing power of Doritos if Doritos were twice as thick.'  And I am not talking about the rounded-edged Doritos that they likely switched to because they were undoubtedly getting sued for injuring so many unsuspecting customers, I am talking old school, 'put it in your mouth wrong and bleed for half an hour' Doritos.

On the first night of Passover, while eating a buttered piece of Matzo, I managed to puncture my mouth, and my throat, as well as stabbing myself in the face with it when I missed my mouth whilst I was complaining about stabbing myself in the mouth area.

Of course, I like to think that the sharp edges are part of the lesson.  "You think being stabbed in the mouth by a bland cracker made of only flour and water is bad... try being a slave.. try wandering around the desert for 40 years... now complain about a freaking piece of unleavened bread, you ungrateful bastard!"

But my people are well known for making the best of a bad situation, so, to take advantage of their natural properties, I think I will work on fashioning my own line of self-defense items made of Matzo... Jewish Throwing Stars, anyone?

It's really hard to nibble the hole out of the center though...

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On another note, I have lost one of my followers in the influx of other awesome followers and I want to find you again.  Your blog is pink, it might have princesses in the title. You once dressed as Rita Skeeter for Halloween, and it was your profile image for a while but not any more... You have great recipes. I need the link to your blog again, please!

House Stalking

Every once in a while, I become convinced that I am going to win the lottery so I begin detailed plans for investments and other extravagant purchases.

Part of that, recently, has been house hunting.  And hunting is precisely what I have been doing, because unless you live here in my city, you probably have no idea that the people who did the street planning in this town either had severe ADHD OR they were heavily intoxicated. Probably the latter since this is the wild west and cowboys are always drunk as hell on whiskey in westerns, right?

See, my town has a Cheese Drive*, a Cheese Lane, and 2 Cheese Avenues, and the address on the website just said "900 Cheese."

After three tries, I became convinced that expensive houses for sale in my town have some sort of cloaking device that makes them only visible to people who actually HAVE the money to even consider buying the house...

Today's hunt was made on account of a search for another house that I decided against (in my imaginary search for a house to buy). Even though the pictures of it were beautiful, and amazing, and perfectly the design I wanted, it was up a mountain, on a road that was at grade of approximately 30 degrees.  It was hard enough getting my car to agree to go up the street when the roads were clear, but I would have had to refrain from leave my house for 8 months out of the year when snow was on the ground, so my car didn't slide down the super steep hill, killing myself (and a lovely neighborhood full of frolicking children and rich folk who like jogging up ridiculously steep roads) in a spectacular fiery crash, because that is what happens when you slide down an ice covered incline, right?

But, actually, I couldn't find that house.  I found where it SHOULD be, but it wasn't really there, as far as I could see.

I did find the house today, on the fourth try.  On the second Cheese Avenue, that I didn't know existed, that was about 8 blocks away from the normal Cheese Avenue, down a one way street...

For the record, I do not waste any relator's time being shown the insides of houses I want to "imaginary buy", I just stalk the houses, driving by, looking at them longingly while playing Journey songs for them on my car stereo.

*The name of the street has been changed in case I really do win the lottery and buy said house, though living on Cheese Ave. would be pretty boss.

Smoke-butt get away from that fire!

When my computer broke, I got a lot of twitter spam about getting a free computer (if I just "filled out some survey") when I complained about the death of my hard drive. I got one the other night, when tweeting about my husband getting me dinner, offering advice on how to deal with men.  Once, I mentioned my best friend from college who died tragically and how she had come to my wedding, and was sent spam for wedding favors (I assure you, they got 140 angry characters back).

And so I have (almost) learned that you cannot mention certain things on twitter without expecting messages from obnoxious spambots:
Smoke, at all... kitchen on fire? Got a new gray cat? Like LOST?
Diets... Anti-diet? Gluten-Free diet? Diet Pepsi?
Harry Potter. No, really. Learned that last night.

Of course, there are lots of bots on twitter that redeem the whole random tweets from stranger-bots thing, like Sue Ellen Crandell who responded when I said "I'm right on top of that, Rose." Or how when you mentioned roads, the (now suspended) Doc Brown bot responded "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!" Totally makes spammy tweets like " Watch the new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movie for FREE!!! JUST CLICK THIS SKETCHY LINK!!!!" bearable.