How Do You Spoon?

As the person who, for the last 20+ years has been in charge of my mother's computer fixing/helping/education, I take issue with this image that I'm sure we've all come across on Facebook:

It seems to make a good point, but  I taught my mom to copy and paste for the first time in about 1995. She's still not sure about it when she has to go from one document to another to paste. She freaks out when she has to attach a file or download a file. I guarantee you, if after 20 years, I still wasn't sure on the use of a spoon and I called her from college yelling at her that she broke my spoon when I was the one who just wasn't good with a spoon, she would yell at me just as much as I yell at her when I ask her for the 600th time, "WHERE DID YOU SAVE THE FILE!? NO! IN NOTEPAD ISN'T AN ANSWER! YOU CAN'T SAVE FILES IN A PROGRAM! THEY GO IN A FOLDER! WHERE IS THE FILE!!!!???"

For bonus content!

Cheeseblarg on Global Warming

I was rage forced to do this comic because of Facebook posts by an old schoolmate who repeatedly posts weather reports about polar vortexes and snow and then adds the oh-so-witty "Global warming strikes again!" or something similar that reads as, "Yada, yada, I don't understand science!"

It's okay if you don't understand science. It is not a crime... and neither is talking about science when you don't understand it, by poorly quoting other people who don't understand it either... unfortunately.

It would be super awesome if people didn't talk about science when they don't understand it, for the sanity of people who do and so as to not infect more people with idiot ideas, but alas, there are scientific studies that say that when people are really bad at things, they are unaware of the deficiency (which is why I always thought I did really awesome on all of my algebra tests in college when I failed most of them*), so my request is really likely to fall of deaf ears through the fault of our silly monkey brains.

*-I was a late algebra bloomer - after I started substitute teaching, I used the teacher's guide and worked backwards until I finally understood it all.

Microwaves Might Be Time Vortexes.

Seriously, why are microwave minutes so much longer than regular minutes?

Below is an artist's rendering of waiting a minute for something to heat in a standard microwave.

And since I know you can't see that, here it is, woefully chopped up:

They call it a PET for a reason...

My husband bought a $3 fish tank from Good Will. He likes fishes. I have a general distrust of any pet that you cannot hug without killing.

He hasn't actually gotten a fish yet, because, as he informs me:

Mr. Rose: I have to get gravel and fish food and you have to get it an "air stone" because fish will use up all the oxygen in the water and suffocate.

Me: Wait, that doesn't sound right... if they use up all the oxygen, does that mean they are just swimming in liquid hydrogen? Does it cease to be water? Since water is H2O and they're using ALL the oxygen...

Mr. Rose [interrupting]: Fine, let me rephrase that. I have to get an air stone because if I just put the fish in there it will die. I don't know why.

Me: I think it is because fish are assholes.

Change is hard.

I don't buy into the whole, "If it's free, you can't complain" dogma.  My lungs are free, came with the package, but I am totally complaining, as loudly as I possibly can, if they stop working in a useful and helpful way. Something being free doesn't and shouldn't preclude it from receiving feedback, as far as I am concerned.

I do, however, think that making the best of everything is the easiest policy, for one's own sanity, and I rarely join in the "OMG! MAKE IT GO BACK!" crowd. I would rather just make fun of the situation and get on with it... so I have annotated my personal Facebook page below to give everyone a positive spin on all the changes that have happened to the Facebook Layout.

While it seems horrifically changed, it really isn't.  

• There is the addition of the "Awesome Stalk-O-Matic ™" scrolling bar on the right - which is perfect for people who like to obsessively keep up with their favorite people and see EVERY SINGLE INTERACTION THEY HAVE... which is right up my alley.  

          These can likely be cut down by altering your subscriptions to people you don't give a damn about.

• Then there is the "Ninja Algorithm Cool Stuff ™" that is marked by little blue triangles which seems to have no rhyme or reason, but a game can be made of trying to figure out the pattern.

• And all the other stuff that you saw before the change lives underneath the new stuff. Mostly. Except possibly your own posts. Unless you are popular. 

The Wrong Number

Yesterday, as I was jazzercising*, my crappy borrowed cellphone rang.  Since I am currently out of the service area and it costs like 2 dollars a minute to take a call, I just checked the number, realized it was no one I knew and went back to my squatting jazz hip thrusts, ignoring the ringing, which is more of an ephemeral ghostly wailing than a ringing, but you probably wouldn't have known what the hell I was talking about if I said I ignored the ephemeral ghostly wailing without letting you know that that is my ringtone. I only chose it because it was the least aurally offensive of all the rings available, and because I was unable to program Hedwig's theme into this phone by hand, since I am certainly not going to pay for a ringtone for a phone I hardly ever use.

Anyway, the phone then made a tinkling shooting star sound, which is the sound it makes when I get a message of the textual persuasion, which I always get when I ignore a call or miss one by accident, which I also usually ignore if I am doing something else, but then... I got another tinkling shooting star sound and I wondered, 'well, what the hell was that?!' So I checked and the person who I did not know had left a message.  And curiosity beat out. My logic being, if it was actually an important call for me from a number I didn't recognize I should know what it was, or if it was something important for someone else like "Billy, it's Devon, mama's being mauled by a snow leopard, you have to come home from the bar RIGHT NOW!" I might wanna let them know that they dialed the wrong number, for mama's sake.

But it wasn't for me, and it wasn't Devon calling for Billy, it was Ron, calling for Josh.

Hey Josh, it's Ron.  I'm in Montana for a few more days so give me a call when you get off work, dude, okay?! I wanna hang out. See ya man!

I can only assume that Ron was in town for something having to with a medical marijuana convention because this was the rest of the exchange when I texted to let him know that Josh was not getting his messages:

Me: Wrong number- sorry!

4:40pm Ron: What is the #

Me (thinking, doesn't your phone have that feature where you can see who you dialed? I thought that was standard, but fine, whatever...): XXX-XXX-XXXX (only I put my phone number instead of Xs, obviously, although I can't see that it would have made a difference had I not used numbers).

5:09pm Ron: Got it dude thanx when u off work

Are you fucking kidding me?! You were asking me, the person on the receiving end of the wrong phone call, what Josh's actual number is... *facepalm*

Me: This really isnt josh. XXX-XXX-XXXX has never had a male owner. (Screw capitalization and punctuation for wrong numbers, let them think I am dumb, what do I care?)

5:59pm  Ron: Cool send me a pic so I know this aint josh

FFS... really?! Now I have to sext you to get you to stop calling? But I would have sent a picture if I had had the capability to send pictures just to get him to go away. It would have looked a lot like this:

Yes,  I would have hired a skywriter for the occasion.

But instead, I just ignored him, while being annoyed and partially amused. Until 8:46 pm when I received yet another call from Ron, which again, I ignored. And again, he left a message... and again, I was too curious and had to listen to it.

Josh- Ron. Dude, give me a call.

*blink*


If he calls again, I am texting him a link to this post.


 *fine, I wasn't really jazzercising, but that is more pleasant than what I was really doing, just trust me on this one.

Don't lick me, bro!

I have to wonder if my nephew has been licking toads. Wait, it's winter... I've not seen any toads. Do toads hibernate? Yes, they do, says google... anyway, maybe he was playing in the snow and found some toads sleeping in a burrow and dug them up and was licking them because he was really weird today.

We went with my mom to the eye doctor today and he was obsessed with the number 1 on the exam room door and  kept saying it was at the end of the depth of the universe. And some something I couldn't even understand about black holes and. . . kick ball, maybe?

But the thing above all that must be passed along that he told me at lunch (for no reason whatsoever, that I can surmise) is:

Little boys are NOT beds.

Which they certainly are not.

Maybe he just fits in well in the family.  He obviously comes by some of his weirdness honestly... but I am not setting aside my toad theory just yet. 

Licence to Abbreviate

While out today on "Mission: Last Minute Cupid," I saw a vanity plate that I couldn't quite decipher.  I decided that the person was either a rodeo clown or did animal husbandry for a dairy farm...

Here in Montana, there seem to be an inordinate amount of vanity plates.  Assigning a story to each of them makes for an enjoyable pastime, especially while waiting at train crossings.
A word of advice though, (also from an example found in town) if you are going to get a vanity plate, have a friend look it over for you, just in case.

I vant to suck your blood!

I am usually fairly level-headed and logical, silly, yes, but firmly rooted in reality.

However, I have learned that I am not immune from drawing completely ridiculous conclusions when my brain is challenged by information that just doesn't make sense in how it knows the world is supposed to work.

That incident, in this case, was the time that my husband had innocently propped a mirrored tile up against the front of the mirror next to our bed.  I had been laying in bed watching a movie and I sat up to go to the bathroom and looked to my left at the mirror, because I always look in mirrors if there is a mirror available, or at my reflection in windows, cars, etc.  I'm obsessed with looking at myself. Anyway... I sat up and looked to the left and the mirrored tile just happened to be exactly where my head was and when I looked, instead of seeing my face in the mirror as I expected, I saw only the white reflection of the wall behind me (which was actually the ceiling I was seeing).

And my immediate thought was, "OMG! I'm a vampire!!!" And then in my flailing panic, I realized that when I moved I could see myself around the white patch of mirror, and then I felt dumb... and also relieved that I was not a vampire.

Clonerator 3000

During my childhood, we moved around a lot.  I started school in California, moved to Arizona, then to Florida in 2nd grade.  I went to two different elementary schools, a magnet school that was an hour away for middle school, and a different magnet school for high school. That should explain why it is that it wasn't until college, again, that I realized that people look pretty much the same when they are kids as they do when they're adults. College was a big time for discoveries for me.

I realize now, that everyone else knows this, but I had never seen anyone consistently while they were growing up and it wasn't until I ran into a kid from my 2nd grade class in college, who looked exactly the same only taller and with facial hair, that it clicked.  My only frame of reference for aging before that moment was movies and TV. Well, and my sister, but maybe it was just really good casting.  Okay, fine, I have no explanation.

I have a solution though; I think this confusion could be avoided for other people if we just had actors keep a collection of clones of themselves at different ages, just in case their movie requires a scene that flashes back to childhood.

Electronics Don't Get Thirsty!

No matter how they try to convince you otherwise, your electronics are not thirsty.  Even if you've just finished paying them off, and you'd like to celebrate with them, they don't want to share your ginger ale.  Please believe me, I know.
They also don't want to do a dance number with you with in the rain, as much as they say they really would like it.  Nor do they want to go for a swim with you.  It can be confusing, because they often seem up for this sort of thing, but no, they're just being agreeable as electronics are wont to do.