The hubs is watching "Gojira" with the girls right now. Before he put it on he invited me in to help preface the movie with some context on why it might just be a stupid monster movie today but it was genuinely terrifying to people in the 1950s. We talked a little about WWII and atomic energy and nuclear hysteria. Then they started watching together and I left. I don't honestly know how they can watch those stupid movies. And then, as I was thinking that, I realized that I watch movies every bit as stupid. One of my favorite movies of all time is "The Creature from the Black Lagoon." It's utterly moronic but I find it hypnotic.
The thing is, the hubs and I both understand and identify with the fears that drive our particular favorite monster flicks. Godzilla was a modern update of the same fears that drove Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein." Science is capable of monstrous things sometimes and those fears are manifest in reanimated corpses, giant irradiated lizards, and even the fantastically popular "Jurassic Park." I prefer a different sort of film. The impetus for "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" is a fear of the unknown, the undiscovered. Even today we're visiting remote locations on our very own planet and finding things we never knew existed. Any one of those things *could* be a murderous beast. Our own bold strides into the world, our insatiable need for understanding and discovery and exploration, could bring about the end of the human race. Movies like "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "Star Crystal" and "Event Horizon" are flicks I can get behind. I don't care much for the "Jaws" movies but the novel is among my favorites, along with some of Benchley's other novels of undiscovered terror.
No point to this post, I just find it interesting to look at what psychology motivates our media choices.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
A Daliesque Day
This has been my brain most of the day. It's like there's a vast internet conspiracy to make my brain explode. Let me share with you a random sampling of the WTF I have been exposed to today.
My husband shoved this bizarre gem onto his blog last night and waited for it to detonate in my head this morning.
Then I show up at Shamus Young's blog and find THIS. Before I've even had coffee I've been subjected to both of these.
After coffee a friend who does not deserve the anonymity I'm giving her here shared a link to vegetables that look like genitals. And no, that's not safe for work. They're vegetable that look like genitals. Why would you even ASK if that's safe for work? That's not safe for human consumption, people.
Next was this:
And then this:
Followed by a link to an article about a woman that had her mouth raped by a squid and no, I haven't been watching the hentai again thank you very much.
And the guy that linked to the squid rape followed it up with this
And that was the point at which my head turned into a Daliesque mushroom cloud. Thank you so much, internets.
New Regular Content Coming Soon
My super-awesometastic friend Dawn blogged today about being a "Craft Buster" which is like Myth Busters but for Pintrest and other sorts of crafts. And then I told her that she should make that a regular thing because it kind of sucks to try a cool-sounding craft and discover that it's either a hoax or requires a degree in quantum physics to execute. She responded back that somebody needed to do the same thing for recipes and then she was all like *hint, hint* and I think maybe she was suggesting that she'd rather bust recipes but I'm totally going to steal that from her anyway :-P
Hello, I'm Mari and I love to cook and bake. I love food. People know this about me and are constantly sending me recipes and cookbooks and things. And Pintrest is a really cool place to go for recipes. But not all recipes are "user friendly" so from now on, every week on Friday I'm going to test a recipe I find on a popular cooking blog or on Pintrest and let you know how it turns out. I'm not a gourmet cook. In fact, my only real qualification for cooking is that I like to do it a lot. I screw up recipes a LOT though, y'all, so I think I'm qualified to tell you if something is hard or easy. And I'm not going to just be all like "This recipe sucks and is too hard." I'll tell you why and how it works or doesn't work and we'll walk through it all together.
So, today is Friday and I'm going to just get the show on the road here. Father's Day is this weekend here in the U.S. and this is a day that is all about gorging yourself on really manly food. Or maybe that's Thanksgiving. Or, well, pretty much every day, really. Anyway, I'm going to kick us off with something pretty amazing that reminds me of my own father. My dad was a total ice cream-aholic. Like, dude would get a gallon and a half bucket every two weeks and eat it all. In these HUGE mixing bowls. Always vanilla. Often with Hershey's syrup poured over the top. In our house it was called "nothin'" because you would hear him rustling around in the kitchen and ask, "Whatcha looking for?" and he'd say "Nothin'" and eventually I'd start saying, "Well get me a bowl of nothin' too!"
Until recently I always kept a bottle of Hershey's syrup in my fridge. Good for making chocolate milk and topping a bowl of nothin'. But I'm making a concerted effort to make more of my food from scratch. It gives me more control of what is in our food as well as being a great budget helper. So a while back I stopped keeping Hershey's syrup on hand. But the other day one of my kids decided that she desperately needed chocolate milk right then. I whipped out a recipe I had come across on Pintrest and we tested it. Verdict? AWESOMELY EASY.
Here's how easy this stuff was, y'all. My 13 and 14 year old daughters made it themselves while I was frying bacon. And it was still perfect.
So, here's the recipe, originally from The Tightwad Gazette
Hello, I'm Mari and I love to cook and bake. I love food. People know this about me and are constantly sending me recipes and cookbooks and things. And Pintrest is a really cool place to go for recipes. But not all recipes are "user friendly" so from now on, every week on Friday I'm going to test a recipe I find on a popular cooking blog or on Pintrest and let you know how it turns out. I'm not a gourmet cook. In fact, my only real qualification for cooking is that I like to do it a lot. I screw up recipes a LOT though, y'all, so I think I'm qualified to tell you if something is hard or easy. And I'm not going to just be all like "This recipe sucks and is too hard." I'll tell you why and how it works or doesn't work and we'll walk through it all together.
So, today is Friday and I'm going to just get the show on the road here. Father's Day is this weekend here in the U.S. and this is a day that is all about gorging yourself on really manly food. Or maybe that's Thanksgiving. Or, well, pretty much every day, really. Anyway, I'm going to kick us off with something pretty amazing that reminds me of my own father. My dad was a total ice cream-aholic. Like, dude would get a gallon and a half bucket every two weeks and eat it all. In these HUGE mixing bowls. Always vanilla. Often with Hershey's syrup poured over the top. In our house it was called "nothin'" because you would hear him rustling around in the kitchen and ask, "Whatcha looking for?" and he'd say "Nothin'" and eventually I'd start saying, "Well get me a bowl of nothin' too!"
Until recently I always kept a bottle of Hershey's syrup in my fridge. Good for making chocolate milk and topping a bowl of nothin'. But I'm making a concerted effort to make more of my food from scratch. It gives me more control of what is in our food as well as being a great budget helper. So a while back I stopped keeping Hershey's syrup on hand. But the other day one of my kids decided that she desperately needed chocolate milk right then. I whipped out a recipe I had come across on Pintrest and we tested it. Verdict? AWESOMELY EASY.
Here's how easy this stuff was, y'all. My 13 and 14 year old daughters made it themselves while I was frying bacon. And it was still perfect.
So, here's the recipe, originally from The Tightwad Gazette
½ cup cocoa powder
1 cup water
2 cups sugar
⅛ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon vanilla
Mix the cocoa powder and the water in a saucepan. Heat and stir to dissolve the cocoa. Add the sugar, and stir to dissolve. Boil for 3 minutes over medium heat. Be careful not to let it get too hot and boil over! Add the salt and the vanilla. Let cool. Pour into a clean glass jar, and store in the refrigerator. Keeps for several months, but trust me it will be gone before then. Yields two cups.
We used store-brand baking cocoa and homemade vanilla. Here's how we did it, step by step:
Mix the cocoa powder and water in a cold saucepan on a cold burner with a standard wire whisk. Turn the burner on high and continue whisking until the cocoa is dissolved. We slowly added the sugar (not necessary, but makes it much easier to stir in). Reduced the burner to medium and kept whisking for 3 minutes. A couple of times the mixture threatened to boil over. When it starts rising up high enough to make you nervous, pull the pan off the burner and keep whisking while holding it in the air. When it settles back down, return to the burner. Remove from burner and add salt and vanilla.
Then just let it sit there. After about 10 minutes it was still pretty hot, but mostly cool enough for the kid to make her chocolate milk. It was definitely still too hot to bottle, though. So I wandered off and pretty much forgot about it until late that evening and then I was like, "Oh crap! I forgot to bottle the chocolate syrup!" So I dashed back in the kitchen and gave it a little stir. It had a very thin skin on top that needed stirring but was otherwise still perfect and now cool enough to bottle. I didn't have a pretty flip-top bottle handy like the one in the picture. I did have several brown glass bottles for homemade vanilla, though. So I used a funnel and poured the sauce into two of my brown glass bottles. Then I printed some labels because I like pretty labels and like ten years ago I bought some kind of crazy case of full-sheet label paper for the printer and it's STILL not used up so I snagged some of it.
We used store-brand baking cocoa and homemade vanilla. Here's how we did it, step by step:
Mix the cocoa powder and water in a cold saucepan on a cold burner with a standard wire whisk. Turn the burner on high and continue whisking until the cocoa is dissolved. We slowly added the sugar (not necessary, but makes it much easier to stir in). Reduced the burner to medium and kept whisking for 3 minutes. A couple of times the mixture threatened to boil over. When it starts rising up high enough to make you nervous, pull the pan off the burner and keep whisking while holding it in the air. When it settles back down, return to the burner. Remove from burner and add salt and vanilla.
Then just let it sit there. After about 10 minutes it was still pretty hot, but mostly cool enough for the kid to make her chocolate milk. It was definitely still too hot to bottle, though. So I wandered off and pretty much forgot about it until late that evening and then I was like, "Oh crap! I forgot to bottle the chocolate syrup!" So I dashed back in the kitchen and gave it a little stir. It had a very thin skin on top that needed stirring but was otherwise still perfect and now cool enough to bottle. I didn't have a pretty flip-top bottle handy like the one in the picture. I did have several brown glass bottles for homemade vanilla, though. So I used a funnel and poured the sauce into two of my brown glass bottles. Then I printed some labels because I like pretty labels and like ten years ago I bought some kind of crazy case of full-sheet label paper for the printer and it's STILL not used up so I snagged some of it.
 |
| There weren't a ton of places to take this picture. Also, the wine glass is for scale, not because I drink chocolate syrup from a wine glass because that would be crazy. |
I ended up with two of these brown bottles full of chocolate syrup.
And there you have it. A super-simple recipe for homemade chocolate syrup. I have not tried this recipe with alternative sweeteners or anything, just with regular granulated sugar from the grocery store. So if your family is off of the refined sugars you're on your own. But probably if your family is off the refined sugars you're not looking for reviews of chocolate syrup recipes anyway.
Tune back in next week to find out if adding pumpkin puree to yogurt is a good plan or a bad plan. I'm kind of hoping for "good" because I loves me some pumpkin.
And there you have it. A super-simple recipe for homemade chocolate syrup. I have not tried this recipe with alternative sweeteners or anything, just with regular granulated sugar from the grocery store. So if your family is off of the refined sugars you're on your own. But probably if your family is off the refined sugars you're not looking for reviews of chocolate syrup recipes anyway.
Tune back in next week to find out if adding pumpkin puree to yogurt is a good plan or a bad plan. I'm kind of hoping for "good" because I loves me some pumpkin.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
The Common Internet Troll - Some Thoughts
So the hubs and I were talking this morning about internet trolling. It was spurred by the following http://kotaku.com/5917623/awful-things-happen-when-you-try-to-make-a-video-about-video-game-stereotypes Go read it. Feel free to follow the bunny trail of links for a while to grasp the full scope what complete dicks some people can be.
Ok, done now? Here's the thing: I'm not talking about the validity or lack thereof of the woman's argument (which is a whole other topic, and one that I'm not up to discussing so if you want to talk about it, go here which will lead you on a whole other bunny trail about sexism in video games, which is something Heather and Shamus are way better at talking about than I am so go argue with them if you want to argue about that.)
OK, done again? Now, back to my point which is basically that the internet is filled with trolls. If you haven't been under a rock for the past 15 years, this is probably not breaking news for you. But it's something I want to talk a little bit about. See, when I was a kid my parents held some questionable and probably not-good views about the world. But generally you wouldn't have known it to talk to them because they were POLITE. Basically, they were the kind of people that didn't particularly enjoy making other people miserable so they generally kept their opinions to themselves when they intuited that their opinions would be unpopular. They taught me basically the same thing. Your grandma might have called it, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Your kindergarten teacher probably called it The Golden Rule and it went something like, "Treat others the way you would like to be treated." Your middle-school peers didn't call it anything at all because kids are stupid and cruel when in large, institutionalized groups but a big part of raising children was once considered teaching them not to act that way by the time they reached adulthood. To that end, adults did things like yelling at you and grounding you and refusing to let you hold "secret Prom" so you could exclude that one kid that nobody liked and might even go so far as to ground you from the internet if they caught you making a fake social networking profile to torment a peer. I'll be honest, I'm not so big on yelling and grounding, but there are plenty of ways I would make my displeasure known if I caught my kids acting like jerks to other people. Because, yes, I'm polite and I want my kids to be polite too.
That goes for posting the kind of crap that appears on most YouTube videos with more than a dozen or so hits. That crap is trolling. It is deliberately posting offensive (and often below-the-belt-personal-attacks offensive) comments to the internet in an attempt to stir up controversy, debate, and general hate-mongering. There's a lot of internet sociology and psychology commentary about the phenomenon of trolling. While trolling is nothing new, it certainly seems to be on the upswing. A lot of things I read about trolling indicate that the seeming-anonymity of the internet is responsible for the surge in such behavior. Certainly there's some truth to that argument, but it doesn't cover the whole problem. I've been an internet user for 20-odd years and I've never gone trolling. Very few people I know engage in internet trolling, even though many of us use the internet for the majority of the day most days.
What brought all of this up to the point of a blog post instead of just a conversation with the hubs was the fact that while I was out running errands today, I happened across a Trollmobile. I don't know what else to call it. I didn't take pictures, mostly because I was busy being glad the kids weren't with me to see it. Even if I had taken pictures, I wouldn't have posted them here because that car was covered in offensive bumper stickers like you would not believe. One sticker featured a "double birdie" salute and the legend "F*** Cops." Several extolled the virtues of Satanism. One referred to the owner's enjoyment of engaging in a particular sex act with graphic slang vocabulary. One even used a phrase that appeared a couple of times in the comments of the first link in this post - a reference to a sex act that lesbians are apparently in severe need of experiencing despite the fact that lesbians explicitly don't enjoy the body part necessary for such an act. I can only assume, in the terms of internet culture, that this vehicle was owned and operated by "a 13-year-old boy." I hate to use such an expression, though, because I know quite a few 13-year-old boys and none of them would engage in such behavior as trolling or use such vile language. Besides the fact that such a vehicle must be owned by someone at least 16 years of age.
Frankly, the whole thing sickened me. Not because the words were offensive. I'm not the type to be offended by words. What sickened me was the attitude behind such a display. This wasn't an anonymous display of bravado. This was a person who holds society in contempt and feels the need to dominate others with his/her ideas. This was a person who hates. And hate is sickening to me. There are a lot of things in life that I dislike. I disliked the bumper sticker display of that vehicle. I dislike trolling in general. I dislike most politicians on general principle. I dislike certain people in specific. But hate is something I can't honestly say I've ever experienced. Hate requires a degree of energy that I just don't want to give my unhappiness or dislike. Hate, like love, is not an emotion. It is a verb, a DOING word. Hate doesn't happen. It takes cultivation, a conscious choice to indulge it and make it grow and keep it alive. Those bumper stickers weren't just an outpouring of feeling, they were a choice to cultivate and nurture the basest and most negative things about life. And that's what sickens me. As screwed up as the world is, why choose hate? If you expended that same energy in nurturing something positive and good and real, you might make a difference to the world around you. Instead, someone chose hate and with every action, with every mile that Trollmobile drives, they are taking something OUT of the world.
Ok, done now? Here's the thing: I'm not talking about the validity or lack thereof of the woman's argument (which is a whole other topic, and one that I'm not up to discussing so if you want to talk about it, go here which will lead you on a whole other bunny trail about sexism in video games, which is something Heather and Shamus are way better at talking about than I am so go argue with them if you want to argue about that.)
OK, done again? Now, back to my point which is basically that the internet is filled with trolls. If you haven't been under a rock for the past 15 years, this is probably not breaking news for you. But it's something I want to talk a little bit about. See, when I was a kid my parents held some questionable and probably not-good views about the world. But generally you wouldn't have known it to talk to them because they were POLITE. Basically, they were the kind of people that didn't particularly enjoy making other people miserable so they generally kept their opinions to themselves when they intuited that their opinions would be unpopular. They taught me basically the same thing. Your grandma might have called it, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Your kindergarten teacher probably called it The Golden Rule and it went something like, "Treat others the way you would like to be treated." Your middle-school peers didn't call it anything at all because kids are stupid and cruel when in large, institutionalized groups but a big part of raising children was once considered teaching them not to act that way by the time they reached adulthood. To that end, adults did things like yelling at you and grounding you and refusing to let you hold "secret Prom" so you could exclude that one kid that nobody liked and might even go so far as to ground you from the internet if they caught you making a fake social networking profile to torment a peer. I'll be honest, I'm not so big on yelling and grounding, but there are plenty of ways I would make my displeasure known if I caught my kids acting like jerks to other people. Because, yes, I'm polite and I want my kids to be polite too.
That goes for posting the kind of crap that appears on most YouTube videos with more than a dozen or so hits. That crap is trolling. It is deliberately posting offensive (and often below-the-belt-personal-attacks offensive) comments to the internet in an attempt to stir up controversy, debate, and general hate-mongering. There's a lot of internet sociology and psychology commentary about the phenomenon of trolling. While trolling is nothing new, it certainly seems to be on the upswing. A lot of things I read about trolling indicate that the seeming-anonymity of the internet is responsible for the surge in such behavior. Certainly there's some truth to that argument, but it doesn't cover the whole problem. I've been an internet user for 20-odd years and I've never gone trolling. Very few people I know engage in internet trolling, even though many of us use the internet for the majority of the day most days.
What brought all of this up to the point of a blog post instead of just a conversation with the hubs was the fact that while I was out running errands today, I happened across a Trollmobile. I don't know what else to call it. I didn't take pictures, mostly because I was busy being glad the kids weren't with me to see it. Even if I had taken pictures, I wouldn't have posted them here because that car was covered in offensive bumper stickers like you would not believe. One sticker featured a "double birdie" salute and the legend "F*** Cops." Several extolled the virtues of Satanism. One referred to the owner's enjoyment of engaging in a particular sex act with graphic slang vocabulary. One even used a phrase that appeared a couple of times in the comments of the first link in this post - a reference to a sex act that lesbians are apparently in severe need of experiencing despite the fact that lesbians explicitly don't enjoy the body part necessary for such an act. I can only assume, in the terms of internet culture, that this vehicle was owned and operated by "a 13-year-old boy." I hate to use such an expression, though, because I know quite a few 13-year-old boys and none of them would engage in such behavior as trolling or use such vile language. Besides the fact that such a vehicle must be owned by someone at least 16 years of age.
Frankly, the whole thing sickened me. Not because the words were offensive. I'm not the type to be offended by words. What sickened me was the attitude behind such a display. This wasn't an anonymous display of bravado. This was a person who holds society in contempt and feels the need to dominate others with his/her ideas. This was a person who hates. And hate is sickening to me. There are a lot of things in life that I dislike. I disliked the bumper sticker display of that vehicle. I dislike trolling in general. I dislike most politicians on general principle. I dislike certain people in specific. But hate is something I can't honestly say I've ever experienced. Hate requires a degree of energy that I just don't want to give my unhappiness or dislike. Hate, like love, is not an emotion. It is a verb, a DOING word. Hate doesn't happen. It takes cultivation, a conscious choice to indulge it and make it grow and keep it alive. Those bumper stickers weren't just an outpouring of feeling, they were a choice to cultivate and nurture the basest and most negative things about life. And that's what sickens me. As screwed up as the world is, why choose hate? If you expended that same energy in nurturing something positive and good and real, you might make a difference to the world around you. Instead, someone chose hate and with every action, with every mile that Trollmobile drives, they are taking something OUT of the world.
What that person won't be taking out of the world is MY dignity, MY self-respect, MY love, and MY compassion. I refuse to let that person and their hate win. When I'm done with this blog post I will not waste another minute of my thought and feeling on their hate. As Paul put it so well, "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you."
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Zombies Everywhere!
OK, y'all, I'm just going to warn you now that this is the blog version of getting drunk-dialed except there's no telephone involved and I'm not drunk, just mentally deranged. So by now the whole zombie apocalypse thing is old news and everyone's getting bored hearing about how the end is nigh because dudes are smoking bath salts and eating faces and throwing their own intestines at people and eating their children - which I don't think really counts as zombie activity anyway because that mom totally only did what most of the animal kingdom has been doing all along which is eating the weak young to nourish the mother so that she can nurture the stronger young. And I think I may have missed something in that sentence but I'm not fixing it so just live with it you grammar Nazis!
Anyway, this blog is not about any of those events. This blog post is about how those events are effecting my own household. And I know what you're thinking. Because I'm not just a zombie, I'm the psychic Queen of the Zombies! Ha! Um, yeah, anyway, you're thinking, "None of that stuff except the cannibal mom is even anywhere near you so why are these events effecting you?" But it doesn't matter because the zombie germs are already airborne and my family has been infected.
That's right, I'm infected. I'm not completely zombified (which my spell-checker says is not even a word - clearly it has also been zombified and is like a PR zombie propagandist or something - and why is propagandist a word but not zombified?) but I think I may be too far along to cure.
I woke up this morning because my husband was violently jumping on the bed - or sat down on it - and I tried to open my eyes but my eyes were all like, "Do not want!" and I was all like, "Eyes, you guys have to open" but they refused so finally I lifted my arms to my face and forced one eye open and was like, "Victory!" and my eye was like, "That's what YOU think!" and closed again really fast. So I thought I was just really tired but it turns out that was my first symptom of zombiefication (which spell-checker also claims is not a word - clearly my spell-checker is a zombie denier). Eventually I managed to get both eyes to stay open but they were incredibly angry about this and kept burning and watering in protest so I got out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom which probably sounds like another zombie symptom but it isn't because I shuffle to the bathroom every morning but most days I'm not a zombie. Once I was done forcing out the last vestiges of my previous life I shuffled on to the pet bowls and then the coffee maker.
Which is when Ben asked if I wasn't going to go to the bathroom first because he was busy being naked while I was forcing out the last vestiges of my life and totally missed it or something. So I mumbled something at him and he was all like, "What?" and I mumbled it again and he pretended he got it that time but it was obviously the way you pretend you understand something because you're too embarrassed to ask someone to repeat something one more time and thereby admit how incredibly old you are so you just smile and nod. This was zombie symptom number 2 and fear of admitting how old he is is the only thing that kept Ben from pointing and yelling "Zombie!" and severing my brain stem at that exact moment. Otherwise he would have realized because I'm usually very talkative in the mornings and he's the one that mumbles entire paragraphs without moving his lips even once.
So I sat down at my computer after that and might have been unconscious for a couple of hours or I might have posted a bunch of nonsense to Facebook but I'm not really sure because the zombification is doing bad things to my brain and it's really all kind of a blur. But the next thing I clearly remember is when Mindie came in to say good morning and then ran to the other end of the room and informed me that I smelled like "decomposing bodies."
Me: You mean like a zombie?
Mindie: Uh, yeah.
Me: Cool. Apparently I'm a victim of the zombie apocalypse.
Mindie: Um, no, I don't think so. You smell like a zombie but you're not all hunched over and shambling. And you haven't been snacking on the flesh of the living.
Me: That you KNOW of...
Mindie: ...
Me: Have you asked yourself lately, "Where's my sister?"
Mindie: ... (backs away slowly)
Me: ...
Mindie: Go take a shower!
And then I sat there, zoned out and zombie-like for a while longer. And then my phone rang and it was Ben needing me to pick him up "a lot of the really big boxes of baking soda" to clean out his agricultural chemical tanks. Because he's a farmer but he's KEEPING IT GREEN y'all. Because it totally counts as green agriculture if you wash out the evil Monsanto germs with baking soda after you're done hosing down the crops with them. So I took a shower and kept trying to go to the store and get him his Greenie McGreenerson stuff but I kept getting more and more zombified. And at one point Mindie came in and was like, "I guess you were right, Mom. It is the zombie apocalypse. Shannen just moaned something at me that sounded like 'Brains.'" And I was all like, "See?? See, I told you I had been snacking on your sister. And now she's a zombie like me. You're the only survivor of the zombie apocalypse." Only my speech centers were degrading by then and I might have said "apopalypse" which my spell-checker says isn't even a word and it is right.
At some point I made it out the door and there weren't hordes of zombies everywhere but that was ok. And then I went to Wal-Mart and I kind of shambled mindlessly down the aisles and then I paid and went to the store because Wal-Mart didn't have the big boxes of baking soda. And at the grocery store I did some more random shambling but the only brains they had were in the frozen pig heads (no, I'm not making that up) so I just got the baking soda and some chicken which totally tastes like brains but is leaner and cheaper. And the checker was all perky and friendly and trying to converse and I just kind of stood there mumbling words that might have been "Braaaaaaains." And the bag boy followed me out to my car but I forgot where it was and there's only ever like 20 cars in the whole parking lot but we wandered around for a while before I spotted my big, honking white SUV - although in my defense every other car in west Texas is also a big, honking white SUV so my car was kind of camouflaged.
I got home and put away the brains and might have wasted some more time on Facebook before the zombification took its toll on my body and I was forced to take a nap. When I got up, I noticed that my motor functions were more impaired than before as I stumbled around like a drunken Buster Keaton. But by that point, Mindie had also succumbed to the process and was similarly motor impaired.
When Ben got home we all fell on him like the zombies we are, at his brains out, and shuffled off into the night. Or maybe that part didn't happen but I'm running out of things to say and can't figure out a good way to end this blog. So, we ate my husband and shuffled into the night. Beware, for the psychic Queen of the Zombies may be coming for you soon.
Anyway, this blog is not about any of those events. This blog post is about how those events are effecting my own household. And I know what you're thinking. Because I'm not just a zombie, I'm the psychic Queen of the Zombies! Ha! Um, yeah, anyway, you're thinking, "None of that stuff except the cannibal mom is even anywhere near you so why are these events effecting you?" But it doesn't matter because the zombie germs are already airborne and my family has been infected.
That's right, I'm infected. I'm not completely zombified (which my spell-checker says is not even a word - clearly it has also been zombified and is like a PR zombie propagandist or something - and why is propagandist a word but not zombified?) but I think I may be too far along to cure.
I woke up this morning because my husband was violently jumping on the bed - or sat down on it - and I tried to open my eyes but my eyes were all like, "Do not want!" and I was all like, "Eyes, you guys have to open" but they refused so finally I lifted my arms to my face and forced one eye open and was like, "Victory!" and my eye was like, "That's what YOU think!" and closed again really fast. So I thought I was just really tired but it turns out that was my first symptom of zombiefication (which spell-checker also claims is not a word - clearly my spell-checker is a zombie denier). Eventually I managed to get both eyes to stay open but they were incredibly angry about this and kept burning and watering in protest so I got out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom which probably sounds like another zombie symptom but it isn't because I shuffle to the bathroom every morning but most days I'm not a zombie. Once I was done forcing out the last vestiges of my previous life I shuffled on to the pet bowls and then the coffee maker.
Which is when Ben asked if I wasn't going to go to the bathroom first because he was busy being naked while I was forcing out the last vestiges of my life and totally missed it or something. So I mumbled something at him and he was all like, "What?" and I mumbled it again and he pretended he got it that time but it was obviously the way you pretend you understand something because you're too embarrassed to ask someone to repeat something one more time and thereby admit how incredibly old you are so you just smile and nod. This was zombie symptom number 2 and fear of admitting how old he is is the only thing that kept Ben from pointing and yelling "Zombie!" and severing my brain stem at that exact moment. Otherwise he would have realized because I'm usually very talkative in the mornings and he's the one that mumbles entire paragraphs without moving his lips even once.
So I sat down at my computer after that and might have been unconscious for a couple of hours or I might have posted a bunch of nonsense to Facebook but I'm not really sure because the zombification is doing bad things to my brain and it's really all kind of a blur. But the next thing I clearly remember is when Mindie came in to say good morning and then ran to the other end of the room and informed me that I smelled like "decomposing bodies."
Me: You mean like a zombie?
Mindie: Uh, yeah.
Me: Cool. Apparently I'm a victim of the zombie apocalypse.
Mindie: Um, no, I don't think so. You smell like a zombie but you're not all hunched over and shambling. And you haven't been snacking on the flesh of the living.
Me: That you KNOW of...
Mindie: ...
Me: Have you asked yourself lately, "Where's my sister?"
Mindie: ... (backs away slowly)
Me: ...
Mindie: Go take a shower!
And then I sat there, zoned out and zombie-like for a while longer. And then my phone rang and it was Ben needing me to pick him up "a lot of the really big boxes of baking soda" to clean out his agricultural chemical tanks. Because he's a farmer but he's KEEPING IT GREEN y'all. Because it totally counts as green agriculture if you wash out the evil Monsanto germs with baking soda after you're done hosing down the crops with them. So I took a shower and kept trying to go to the store and get him his Greenie McGreenerson stuff but I kept getting more and more zombified. And at one point Mindie came in and was like, "I guess you were right, Mom. It is the zombie apocalypse. Shannen just moaned something at me that sounded like 'Brains.'" And I was all like, "See?? See, I told you I had been snacking on your sister. And now she's a zombie like me. You're the only survivor of the zombie apocalypse." Only my speech centers were degrading by then and I might have said "apopalypse" which my spell-checker says isn't even a word and it is right.
At some point I made it out the door and there weren't hordes of zombies everywhere but that was ok. And then I went to Wal-Mart and I kind of shambled mindlessly down the aisles and then I paid and went to the store because Wal-Mart didn't have the big boxes of baking soda. And at the grocery store I did some more random shambling but the only brains they had were in the frozen pig heads (no, I'm not making that up) so I just got the baking soda and some chicken which totally tastes like brains but is leaner and cheaper. And the checker was all perky and friendly and trying to converse and I just kind of stood there mumbling words that might have been "Braaaaaaains." And the bag boy followed me out to my car but I forgot where it was and there's only ever like 20 cars in the whole parking lot but we wandered around for a while before I spotted my big, honking white SUV - although in my defense every other car in west Texas is also a big, honking white SUV so my car was kind of camouflaged.
I got home and put away the brains and might have wasted some more time on Facebook before the zombification took its toll on my body and I was forced to take a nap. When I got up, I noticed that my motor functions were more impaired than before as I stumbled around like a drunken Buster Keaton. But by that point, Mindie had also succumbed to the process and was similarly motor impaired.
When Ben got home we all fell on him like the zombies we are, at his brains out, and shuffled off into the night. Or maybe that part didn't happen but I'm running out of things to say and can't figure out a good way to end this blog. So, we ate my husband and shuffled into the night. Beware, for the psychic Queen of the Zombies may be coming for you soon.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Texting is fun
So I'm having this text conversation with my husband. We were talking about internet and network problems here at home and how I resolved them all by myself because I'm totally awesome like that. And he said, "So it's fixed?" And I said, "Yep. So now I can watch the maiden voyage of the dead cat helicopter on YouTube." And there's silence for like 7 minutes and then I get a text back that says, "Don't" and I'm thinking, "Dude, it took you SEVEN MINUTES to type that???" but maybe he's just really busy or maybe it took him a while to process the words or something. So I text back, "Too late. It was pretty awesome."
Monday, June 4, 2012
Public Humiliation is the Best Kind
In my ongoing efforts to provide better content for the whole six of you that read this blog, I've been vowing to start posting here daily. This morning I started trying to find something to blog about but nothing came to me even after a torturous 2 minutes of wracking my brain. At last, this afternoon, Mindie provided inspiration.
I love my kids but sometimes they are total spazzes. Which is probably not a surprise to anybody who knows ME since I am also a total spaz. But I think my kids surpass me.
Earlier this afternoon Shannen had to give her sister a hand. Mindie had been sitting at her computer, reading and twirling her hair as she often does when concentrating. She must have been concentrating very hard because before she knew it, her finger was caught in her hair so completely that she couldn't get it out. Yes, my daughter had to get up and walk through the house with her hand stuck on her head because her finger was so tangled in hair that she needed help pulling herself loose from her personal "tar baby." Shannen, always happy to help (inflict pain), grabbed Mindie's hand and yanked as hard as she could. Mindie's hand came loose, still bearing a huge wad of hair. Niiiiiiiice. And where was I during all this? Laughing so hard I couldn't breathe.
I don't know what it is with Mindie, but I swear she is the most accident-prone kid I know. Saturday we went to a big graduation dinner at church. On the way inside Mindie tripped (on misplaced molecules of air) and went flying, face-first, to the ground. She lay there, stunned, and Shannen and I suppressed giggles and pretended to be helpful. Finally I gave her a hand getting back up. Apparently my laughter wasn't appreciated because she did her darndest to drag me to the ground with her.
Then there was Friday night. I only have this story second-hand because I was sound asleep when it happened but it's too good not to pass on anyway. Apparently the kid decided to cut her toenails. She has to do that often and it's quite the ordeal since she got her father's toenails which are roughly the hardness of horse hooves. This particular night she was hunched over with the clippers working away when a stray toenail shot out of the clippers and jabbed her square in the eye. We're all grateful she wasn't blinded by her projectile nail clipping which was a distinct possibility. Instead she sat there for a minute, blinking back tears, then realized the hilarity of the situation. In true Mom spirit, she went across the hall to her sister's room and actually ratted herself out for being such a big spaz because somehow it makes you feel less like a dork if your spazziness can at least give someone else a good laugh. And Shannen did, indeed, have a good laugh. As did I the next day when I heard the story.
And just to prove that this blog isn't all about humiliating my children, I give you the following story about myself: the day I took Mindie to have her spacers put in, we had lunch at Carino's. After the meal Mindie asked if anyone else needed to go to the restroom. I didn't but knowing she wouldn't go on her own (because people might stare at her if she used the public restroom alone - bet you didn't know that's why women go in groups, did you?) I volunteered to accompany her. We traveled all the way across the packed restaurant to the restroom where I decided since I was there I'd give it a shot anyway. That's when I discovered that I had just walked all the way through a crowded public place with MY FLY DOWN.
So, yeah, a few embarrassing stories about myself and my daughter to brighten your day. Now brighten mine up with an embarrassing story of your own. Please. I need to know I'm not the only loser in the world.
I love my kids but sometimes they are total spazzes. Which is probably not a surprise to anybody who knows ME since I am also a total spaz. But I think my kids surpass me.
Earlier this afternoon Shannen had to give her sister a hand. Mindie had been sitting at her computer, reading and twirling her hair as she often does when concentrating. She must have been concentrating very hard because before she knew it, her finger was caught in her hair so completely that she couldn't get it out. Yes, my daughter had to get up and walk through the house with her hand stuck on her head because her finger was so tangled in hair that she needed help pulling herself loose from her personal "tar baby." Shannen, always happy to help (inflict pain), grabbed Mindie's hand and yanked as hard as she could. Mindie's hand came loose, still bearing a huge wad of hair. Niiiiiiiice. And where was I during all this? Laughing so hard I couldn't breathe.
I don't know what it is with Mindie, but I swear she is the most accident-prone kid I know. Saturday we went to a big graduation dinner at church. On the way inside Mindie tripped (on misplaced molecules of air) and went flying, face-first, to the ground. She lay there, stunned, and Shannen and I suppressed giggles and pretended to be helpful. Finally I gave her a hand getting back up. Apparently my laughter wasn't appreciated because she did her darndest to drag me to the ground with her.
Then there was Friday night. I only have this story second-hand because I was sound asleep when it happened but it's too good not to pass on anyway. Apparently the kid decided to cut her toenails. She has to do that often and it's quite the ordeal since she got her father's toenails which are roughly the hardness of horse hooves. This particular night she was hunched over with the clippers working away when a stray toenail shot out of the clippers and jabbed her square in the eye. We're all grateful she wasn't blinded by her projectile nail clipping which was a distinct possibility. Instead she sat there for a minute, blinking back tears, then realized the hilarity of the situation. In true Mom spirit, she went across the hall to her sister's room and actually ratted herself out for being such a big spaz because somehow it makes you feel less like a dork if your spazziness can at least give someone else a good laugh. And Shannen did, indeed, have a good laugh. As did I the next day when I heard the story.
And just to prove that this blog isn't all about humiliating my children, I give you the following story about myself: the day I took Mindie to have her spacers put in, we had lunch at Carino's. After the meal Mindie asked if anyone else needed to go to the restroom. I didn't but knowing she wouldn't go on her own (because people might stare at her if she used the public restroom alone - bet you didn't know that's why women go in groups, did you?) I volunteered to accompany her. We traveled all the way across the packed restaurant to the restroom where I decided since I was there I'd give it a shot anyway. That's when I discovered that I had just walked all the way through a crowded public place with MY FLY DOWN.
So, yeah, a few embarrassing stories about myself and my daughter to brighten your day. Now brighten mine up with an embarrassing story of your own. Please. I need to know I'm not the only loser in the world.
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