Vegetables? Aw MAN!

I recently accidentally was tricked into becoming a quasi-vegetarian by Jonathan Safran Foer.  If you don't know, JSF is a totes brilliant writer who wrote two of my favouritest novels ever: Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  If you think I'm exaggerating when I say that he tricked me into becoming a quasi-vegetarian, you would be wrong.  Here's the (thrilling) story:

I was at the library and saw on the fast reads shelf (for non-VPL folks: that's the shelf of books that are popular so you can only have them for a week) a book called Eating Animals by my good friend JSF.  "Great!" I thought, "I've been looking for a new and awesome story that will poetically move my soul to a higher plain."  So I took it out.  Turns out it's a non-fiction that's actually about humans eating animals and the farming practices in the US and if you read it and have a conscience there is no way you will be able to continue your usual animal-eating practices.  No way.  Unless you engage cognitive dissonance for evil and choose to push it all away with some cock-eyed justification and then you will probably never question eating animals again but will lose a piece of your soul.  Sort of like how horcruxes work.

So now I am a quasi-vegetarian, which means that I have decided to maybe still eat meat if I'm, say, eating at someone's house and they slaved away at a meal for me.  And I will probably still eat turkey at Christmas and Thanksgiving.  Or at least gravy.  PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME EAT MASHED POTATOES WITHOUT GRAVY BECAUSE OTHERWISE THE POTATOES MIGHT AS WELL NEVER EXIST AND I WILL CURL UP AND SOB IN THE CORNER RUINING EVERYONE'S HOLIDAY.  The big deal for me is that I will no longer order meat in restaurants.  It's pretty much the only time I eat meat anyways because I never buy it to cook because that takes, like, fore-planning and putting some kind of effort into what I eat and who has time for that?

Here's the thing: I now know that altruism is real.  You know how people always say that there is no real altruism because people always feel good about doing their good deed and so it's selfish on some level?  Well I am very possibly the very first example of true altruism in the world.  I don't feel good about this meat-avoiding at all.  Every time I am ordering food and have to figure out what to eat instead of chicken strips or fish n' chips (because YES, fish is bad too, thanks a lot JSF you couldn't have skipped the part about how bad the fishing industry is, could you?) or a chicken caesar salad or whatever other incarnation of chicken I am instinctively driven to order, I am just miserable.  Really.  I try to remind myself that this is better for my health and the environment and the animals and the workers and humanity overall, and I hope that will make me feel better about what I'm doing, but I'm really just unhappy.  I just really want to eat chicken strips so badly.  Or bacon when I get my $3 breakfast from Bon's.  And now I can't.  Instead I will probably have to order something with lots of vegetables in it, which is just the worst.

So there you are.  ARE YOU HAPPY WORLD?  ARE YOU HAPPY JSF?  ARE YOU HAPPY ANIMALS?  I hope so, because I sure am not.  Stupid conscience.

This is how you know you are a horribly lame/amazing person

I feel like a beauty queen!!!!  This morning I emailed Jenny the Bloggess asking her to please find a way to  stop me from reading her blog because I have grown painfully addicted and am reading through back emails all the time, and I know it sounds like I was just trying to write a veiled fan email or get her to come see my blog, but really I was crying out for help because I have gotten literally nothing done this month because I've spent all my free time reading backwards on her blog.  It's a serious problem.  Mostly I blame google for inventing a reader that makes it too easy to read through back-posts on blogs forever and ever, but partially I blame her for being all hilarious and junk.

Anyways, I emailed her and she FREAKING EMAILED ME BACK.  On the very same day.  I am flubbergasted.

Since she posts emails she gets from people all the time, I'm sure she won't be offended by me posting her email to me here.  So, without further ado, this is what the magnanimous Jenny the Bloggess said to lil' old me:
I totally understand.  I've been trying to get real work done for years  but instead I spend all my time blogging.  It's like I'm contagiously ADD.

How about if I ban you from my blog?  YOU ARE BANNED!  But not really.  I don't know how to ban people.  I suck.
Seriously, how lame sad kind of okay cool interesting existent am I?

PS: Yes, I just called myself existent because, well, it's really the only truly accurate adjective I could think of.  I mean, clearly I exist if she emailed me, right?  I just don't feel comfortable putting a value judgement on myself for your benefit.

Stupid baking

Know what's the worst part of baking cookies?  Getting used to being able to go to the kitchen and just eat a cookie, or even better, some leftover cookie dough you saved in the fridge, and then having none left.

Then you have no choice but to eat yet another handful of your roommates chocolate chips that she probably actually wanted to use to bake cookies and you hope that she doesn't try anytime soon or notice that her supply is slowly going down, and she is moving out soon so maybe she'll just leave them?  Then you remember that she at least read your blog once before and might still read it and might now know that you just ate a handful of her chocolate chips and have probably done it at least one other time in the past.

Sorry, roomie.  Hugs?

The killer in me

I keep having dreams where people are trying to kill me.  Sometimes it's the running away while they chase me, sometimes it's the hiding, sometimes it's the full on fighting-for-life where I totally channel Buffy the Vampire Slayer and am AWESOME (or probably almost die but with lots of kicking that looks more like flailing), and sometimes it's just the slow, creeping knowledge that the person I'm spending time with in my dream is engaging in some plan that will end in my death.

Always my brain manages to time these dreams so that they happen right before my alarm goes off so I wake up in some kind of panicked state where I'm trying to save myself from death.  Not the most zen way to start your day, but maybe good if I actually needed to start my day with that kind of "FIND ANYTHING THAT CAN BE USED AS A WEAPON AND HIDE IN A DARK CORNER!!!" energy.

So I decided to look up what it means when you have dreams that people are trying to kill you all the time.  But before I look them up, I'm going to guess that the dream means that on some kind of subconscious/molecular level I am very important to the universe.  Probably (like some character from some TV show I won't name so as to avoid spoiling everything for y'all) my genetic structure is super amazing and could save the world if made into vaccine form, so my dreams are preparing me to either a) flee the scientists and save myself at the expense of the human race or b) flee the evil scientists who want to harness my body's amazing cells for terrible purposes.

Okay, let's see what the internet says now:
Well it depends. Let's say your a woman dreaming of man trying to kill you. Perhaps you've had a bad past with men. Or if it was someone you dont know trying to kill you. Maybe you're fearing something. A co-worker trying to kill you? Your co-worker might have gotten the position you wanted. There are all kinds of meanings for different killing dreams. I hoped this helped a little.
Answer #2:
You ate cheese before going to bed?
Answer #3:
to see a killer in your dream, suggests that an essential aspect of your emotions have been cut off. you feel that you are losing your identity and your individuality. alternatively, this dream may represent purification and the healing process. you are standing up for yourself and putting a dramatic end to something.
Hmmmm... Okay, so the moral of the story is, don't eat cheese before bed, stop having a bad past with men (because as a woman this is the only logical explanation - romance troubles), and that in my life I am constantly putting a dramatic end to something.  Sounds... exciting?  Sort of like I'm the chosen one to save all of humanity from some future blight.  That is a tough weight to carry my friends, I mean, just look at what it did to Harry Potter.

Join the Pen 15 club!

Why is it so WEIRD to buy pens?  I mean for seriously, I have realized recently that I am actually fresh out of pens.  My purse, drawers, pen cups and jars, and random surfaces around the house are ALL completely devoid of pens.  The problem is that I feel like the only acceptable reasons to buy pens are for back-to-school or if you are buying supplies for your office.  Otherwise it's just kind of weird, like I'm so picky about my pens that I have to go buy specific ones and can't just use the free ones that always show up from charities and churches and hotels and that I steal from my office (which I would totally do but my office is always running out of pens!  It's some kind of conspiracy).  Maybe that's it, I need to go stay in a hotel for a little while and stock up on free pens.  Free hotel pens are the best and would totally justify the cost of staying at a hotel.  Seriously, they write way better than those fancy pens you buy in the store.  And by "fancy pens you buy in the store" you know I mean the Bic impersonator pens that you get from the creepy dollar store where everything is off-brand.

Fun fact: did you know that the Bic company was created by some dude whose last name was Bich and he wanted to name the company after himself but was convinced that would result in his products only being purchased by douchey teenage boys so they could throw them at girls because they don't know how to flirt?  True story.  I read it somewhere a really really really long time ago.

UPDATE: Crisis narrowly averted!  I was at a make up party tonight and totally stole a pen.  HA!  Or maybe I was supposed to take it because she gave us all pens in a secret ploy to make it easier for us to keep track of products and fill in purchase order forms... Nope, that makes me sound like a lot more of a sucker.  I totally stole it.

UPDATE 2.0:  The day after writing this I came across this on The Bloggess.  Does this mean that part of growing up means stopping stealing pens?  Another reason to avoid growing up I guess.

I want to be.... HER!

I have needed new glasses for a really really really really long time.  My eyes are kind of actually pretty bad but I like to pretend they're not for a few reasons.  First of all, getting glasses means thinking ahead and scheduling all kinds of appointments.  Then they expect you to pay for them.  Then you have to remember to wear them on your face.  It all seemed like way too much work until I watched season two of Dollhouse and met this stunning lady:


I know it's not the best picture, but EFF it was hard to find one that showed her amazing glasses.  Look how amazing they are.  The best part, though, you can't even see in this picture.  She is wearing them on a CHAIN.  And it's so seductively awesome it's ridiculous.  Here's the best picture I could find showing off the chain:



Seriously, look how cute?  Don't you just want to BE her?  Well, no you don't because (SPOILER ALERT) she turns out to be kind of evil, then not so evil, then maybe evil, then not, then dead.  Okay, that really was a spoiler, sorry about that.  Or is it?  I mean, we all die eventually.

Anyways, I want to be her, minus the semi-evilness and dead arm, and the closest I think I can is those awesome glasses on a chain.  Also, I want her sweater.

Who would have thought that the thing that motivates me to actually spend the time and money getting new glasses would be an alluring somewhat evil genius?  Scratch that, who WOULDN'T have thought that?

Finally, you should watch Dollhouse.  Joss Whedon is a freaking genius and gets better all the time.

Things I Learned Today (and it's not even noon)

Predictive text mistakes are interesting

If you use predictive text on your cell phone (probably because you STILL don't have an internet phone with a real keypad thingy and you don't even actually remember how old your phone is except that you remember it was new two houses ago making it at least 4 years old and that you were really excited about having a "sexy slider phone" which is totally not sexy any more and really just kind of makes people sad when they look at it) and type "in the" but forget to leave a space it will say "movie".  No?  Well now you do.  And yes, your life is better for this information.

Can you believe that was what motivated me to write this post in the first place?

The truth about bikini waxing.
Warning: this section will definitely fall in the "too much information" file.

Today I am getting my bikini waxed for the first time ever in my life, which is apparently shocking and a little disgusting*, and I get why it's a little surprising because I guess most girls start taking care of their lady-box's hat when they are much younger than me, but I never really have.  I mean, I have taken care of it in other ways, with very little commitment, and now for the first time ever am getting it waxed.  On the phone they asked if I wanted a French or a Bikini and I was trying to sound all clever and experienced and remembered my friends saying that the French is just like cleaning up the strays and stuff, so I said with full confidence and know-how in my voice that I wanted a French.  Then I looked it up online just to be sure and turns out that a French means they take pretty much everything off which really just freaks me out and I do NOT want them to do that, but now when I get there I'll have to admit that I don't know what I'm doing and have never been waxed before and then I'll try to be all casual about it but will laugh really awkwardly and she'll know that I am terrified.  Because who wouldn't be terrified about yanking the hair off their lady-box?  All I want is to be able to wear my bathing suit on the beach without embarrassment!  Or with significantly less embarrassment anyways.  I mean, there's only so much I can control.

Also, I have been amazed to recently learn how much work some girls put into grooming their lady-box and I had no idea that it was even possible to put that much work into it, but apparently it is not only possible but common.  Have I been missing something here?  Was my mother supposed to teach me more about this?  I don't think I would have listened because I would have been horrifyingly embarrassed that she was talking to me about her lady-box grooming and would have just agreed with everything she was saying without actually listening to it just to make the conversation end.  Then I still wouldn't have known anything about this.  So my question is, if that's how conversations with mothers turn out, then where exactly did all these other girls learn that they were supposed to do all this stuff?  I mean, it's just a LOT of work and expense and what exactly are they trying to accomplish?  I mean, I get some basic tidying up, but that aside, are you trying to disguise it?  Are you doing it for yourself or for the dudes?  If it's for yourself then I'll just shrug and say "have fun down there!" while moving on to one of my ridiculous past times that probably make no sense to anyone else and so we'd be even.  If it's for the dudes, then I get it even less, because if they're down there isn't it because they like lady-boxes?  Why would you want to disguise it?  Why would they want you to disguise it?  Does it make it like a safari for them, to see if they can still recognize it?

Here is a sign you are growing up: the more you learn the more questions you have.

*I reread that sentence and realized it's a little unclear.  I mean to say that apparently I am shocking and a little disgusting for having never been waxed before, not that waxing is shocking and disgusting.  Although it probably is.  I mean, think about it.  Really.

The Vancouver Police can be awesome, who knew?

The other night I went to a Yelp party at the Vancouver Police Museum, and let me tell you, that place is cool.  If you're a creepo like me anyways.

You see, ever since childhood I have been fascinated by the whole "dark side" of humanity.  Not kidding, I would take true crime books about mothers killing their babies out of the library when I was 10 (and I brought it to school to read during silent reading.  Adam Carmichael was sitting next to me and thought it was sick.  It probably was.  I'm impressed/worried that my parents didn't try to stop me considering they didn't even let me watch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).  I like to think this is part of the reason why I love both acting and psychology so much.  There's nothing better than delving into what makes a person go all psycho killer-esque, either from a first person or detached scientist-researcher perspective.  So long as you stop delving at some point, right?

I like to think that I have a special connection with the Vancouver Police Museum because of this special connection I have with psycho killers, and that I'm the only one who really understands the Vancouver Police Museum.  Really, that's probably not true because theoretically a lot of other people go there too and it's been open for a long time and I'd never been there before so clearly it wasn't made just for me, but I REALLY liked it and especially found fascinating the real crime scene pictures and evidence and stuff.  Like, "here's the picture of a person lying in a pool of their own blood (don't worry, it's black and white so it's not too gross) and next to it is the axe that was used to kill them, notice how there is still a blonde hair stuck to the blade, this is the hair of the killer.  We are not even joking, it really is." - how could that NOT be awesome?

So, you know, check it out.  Or whatever.

The Leader of the Pack

A young girl tells her friends about her former beau - a bad boy who was sad underneath.  Her parents force her to break up with him and as he rides away from her in an emotional fury he dies.

Confession time: this song makes me cry every time.  Seriously.

Check out this live performance and awesome acting by these ladies and tell me you don't mist up a little bit.  What are you, made of stone?

EXTRA EXTRA: We are killing the shrimp - AGAIN!!!!

I don't actually know if we've killed the shrimp in the past, but it seems likely that we have.  I mean, we kill stuff all the time, right?  Actually, that reminds me, I've been meaning to write about my huge step closer to being a vegetarian, but that will come later.  For now: SHRIMP!

Our overwhelming societal depression issues are causing increases in antidepressants in the ocean which are causing shrimp to swim up to higher waters (closer to sunlight), making them more likely to get eaten by predators!  So because we live in a world that forces us to be unhappy all the time where the only escape is constant medication, they are getting drugged into a blissful "find the light" kind of state where they end up dying.  It's kind of sad, if you think about it.  Or ironic?  Probably not ironic.  Probably just sad.  Or unexpected, anyways.

I wonder what other sea life is blissing out to our meds?

Original article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100706204430.htm




One of Many Open Letters to Facebook

Dear Facebook,

I know people write you open letters all the time.  I read once that the majority of status updates on Facebook have the word "facebook" in them, which means that people are talking about you.  Probably saying things like "Dear Facebook: I am scared of change and am angry that you changed the layout" or "Hey Facebook: Stop abusing my personal information!  I am threatening to quit you but probably actually won't but will tag all my friends in this so they have to see it!"

My letter is slightly different.  First of all, it's not on Facebook itself because, well, I felt a little silly writing a note to you on there for some reason, and feel much less silly about writing an entire blog post about it.  It's like the best use of social media ever - using one form to comment on another form.  And also totally original, because that is what blogs are for.  Pure originality.

Okay, I will now get to the point.  That point is that you have all these annoying ads lately telling me that my other friends used the Friend Finder and I should too.  It's like you are telling me that my friends are not enough.  I need more.  You are saying "LOOK!  Your cousin and friend's sister have found more people to add to their online collection of 'friends' - you are so much less of a person if you don't do it too!  Don't you want every single person you've ever emailed to be permanently connected to you through the internets?"  At first I resisted.  I said, "No Facebook, I am okay with the number of friends I have.  They are, for the most part, people I am actually friends with.  That is all I need."

But then you kept on posting the ads.  With different people as examples of those who have used it.  I am skeptical as to whether they actually did, but you are not known for your honesty, oh Facebook, so I am not going to nitpick this particular detail.  The fact of the matter is that the ads continued and I am the kind of person who notices things even if I try not to, so I couldn't help but stare at them every time I logged in.  Which was not all the time.

Thus, in a tragic turn, I caved.  Yes, Facebook, you won.  I was tired of seeing the ads and was growing curious as to whether or not there was someone who I have emailed over the course of my life who I would wish to permanently cement friendship with through your useful social networking tool.  In short, I succumbed.  At the very least, I figured, the ad would go away and maybe I would reconnect with someone I actually want to talk to again.

So I let you into my email account, let you see everyone I'd ever emailed, and browsed the list of people I could add as "friends".  Now I was faced with the usual dilemma where I used to be good friends with someone a long long long time ago and do I really want to add them just as some record of our former friendship?  Am I that person?  What does it even mean to be that person?  Is it actually a good thing?  Finally, I selected a few people I was happy to regain some form of contact with and people who I considered to be useful contacts to have another connection point with.  I added new friends through the Friend Finder.  It felt dirty to do exactly what you had asked of me, Facebook, since you had been a bit of a bully about it.  I felt weak.

Now I am not only weak, but I am annoyed because THE ADS HAVE NOT STOPPED!!!!!  I DID WHAT YOU WANTED, FACEBOOK!  I USED THE FREAKING FRIEND FINDER AND ADDED NEW PEOPLE!!!  WILL YOU NOT GIVE IT UP ALREADY?  I KNOW YOU HAVE THE CAPABILITIES TO TRACK THESE THINGS AND DO YOU HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN PESTER ME CONSTANTLY AND POINT OUT THE FAKE FRIENDS I LACK??????

I mean seriously.  Don't you have a life?  I know I do.  A life I am spending writing blog posts about YOU, Facebook, and it's all your fault.

What do you call a couple who uses the rhythm method?

Parents!

Best joke ever.

But seriously folks, the rhythm method doesn't work.  There have been known cases of women getting pregnant even whilst they are on their moon time, which many ladies think is impossible.  Nothing is impossible with nature y'all.  I mean, have you seen Jurassic Park?  Nature always finds a way to make the most effed up thing happen.  And what, I ask you, is more effed up than getting pregnant when you aren't planning on it?  Maybe thinking that all the dinosaurs are ladies and won't get preggers but realizing instead that your genetic scientists didn't account for the variability society allows women in terms of gender roles and sexuality that is not allowed to fellas.

Why am I talking about the lamest form of birth control ever, you ask?  Well, apparently a whole whack of teenagers think it's a good idea.  Like 17% of teen girls who are sexually active.  17%?  That's pretty close to the efficacy of the rhythm method!  Okay, that's an exaggeration - the rhythm method (which is timing when you "do it" based on when your "aunt flo" is "coming to town" - I use quotation marks and awkwardly attempted vague lingo to mimic what teenagers might say because they are uncomfortable with real terminology which probably means they shouldn't be doing those things in the first place if they can't say them!) works more like 75% of the time.  Which is really not that much when there's a baby on the line, y'all.  Not to mention that I'm pretty sure it's 0% effective at blocking the venereal your man-whore boyfriend picked up from one of his many other escapades.  Just sayin'.

Now I'm off to grumble about abstinence-only education and how it actually increases the number of teen pregnancies and disease-contractions.

Wow. Version 2.0.


I don't know if this will post big enough to be legible, but this ad for Lysol brand douche (if you're me then that's enough to make a scrunchy face and make a skeptical/pain sound) literally equates marital strife with a non-disinfected lady-box.  Seriously?  Golly gee, I'd better get me some Lysol Concentrated Germ Killer to maintain my feminine daintiness!  

At least modern companies that try to convince me my lady-box is disgusting on its own and needs to be disguised with fancy washes and scents pretend that they are made for confident, empowered women instead of meek housewives desperate for a dude's approval.

Prime Minister #3: John Abbott

I am feeling way too lazy to look up the format I used for the first two prime minister posts, so instead I'm just going to tell you some fun facts about John Abbott.


  1. There aren't very many fun facts about John Abbott. 
  2. When you google him, the fourth link actually goes to a site talking about him.  Apparently a college in Montreal (that is actually probably named after him) and a photographer are more important than the third prime minister of Canada!
  3. He was the great-grandfather of Christopher Plummer!  Now there's a guy who shows up first when you google his name.
  4. He was a reluctant PM - he actually wanted his successor (John Thompson) to be the leader, but everyone forced him to do it instead.  Bet they regretted that when he wound up being all corrupt, which is exactly what happens when you force someone into a job they don't want.  Even I could have told them that.  YEESH.
  5. His famous-est quote is "I hate politics."  Oh hardy-har, how ironic.  Was he the first hipster prime minister?
  6. Just below Prime Minister John Abbott's listing on Google is the Imdb page for an actor named John Abbott who was in the Audrey Hepburn classic Gigi.  Well done, John.  Well done.
First of all, brilliant marketing strategy.  Seriously.  Second of all, this one is my favourite.



There's much more where that came from on the Old Spice Youtube page.  These guys are seriously brilliant.  Oops, I already said that, except what I actually said was that they were "brilliant.  Seriously." so maybe that wasn't as redundant as I thought?  Anyways, I love how in this one he uses a nice long, run-on sentence of fertile imagination, as I tend to do in my writing.  Also, I love the idea of being fertile with him.  Except not actually the fertile part, I just want the activity associated with fertility minus the actual fertility.  Although if someone was going to convince me to carry and squeeze out their spawn, he could probably do it.  Let's be honest.  All he'd actually have to do is say my name, from a horse that is riding a motorcycle over a desert that's actually a tropical beach surrounded by hot tubs.

Andrea's Advice!

Another instalment of Andrea's Advice!

I have been dating a guy over the net. We are close and even told each other that we loved each other and we both really mean it. I am almost 16 and he is 18.
Now he won't email me back or even try to find me on the net. I know he has a steady job but shouldn't he make time for his girlfriend? Please tell me what to do.
Yes he should make time for his girlfriend.  This guy is clearly a cad and you are not being unreasonable at all because you love each other and you really meant it when you said it so he must have too and actions do not speak louder than words, so the fact that he is ignoring you now doesn't mean he never really loved you and has found a new trollup to trollup with, but that he has simply forgotten how to be a good boyfriend and needs to be reminded.  The best reminders are constant.  And I don't mean that you should constantly send him messages because he also might be too busy to read them.  No, since it's his work that's keeping him busy you just need to find out where he works, march on over there, sit your butt down in his workspace, and not move until he gives you the love and adoration you so richly deserve.  If that doesn't work, let him know in no uncertain terms that you will find a way to be wherever he is, because if he can't make time for you in his life you'll just have to be his life.  Find out his complete schedule and show up wherever he goes.  If he starts getting angry at you for disrupting things then his priorities are all out of whack and you should gently redirect his energies towards you by getting rid of those distractions.  This includes getting him fired, turning his friends against him (especially if any are girls) and alienating him from his family in any way you can.  Then he will be yours forever.

Men and Vampires

Men and vampires - they are more similar than you might think, although there are some key differences that will help you tell them apart.  The main key difference is that vampires drink blood all the time and human men usually avoid drinking blood, or at least do it secretly and in private with a whole lot of shame involved.

Now for the similarities:

Similarity #1: Many vampires actually are men.

Like, biologically.  They have man parts.

Similarity #2: Like men, only one vampire is needed to continue the survival of their species.

This is the real thing that makes men and vampires pretty much the exact same thing.  This realization was born out of a combination of one of the many episodes of Buffy where Spike taunts her about the inefficacy of The Slayer on a global scale, and a super intellectual conversation I was having with some old high school friends.  The super intellectual conversation was about how societies tended to send young men out to battle as frivolously as I might send a manservant to buy cheese (if I had a manservant and a special bank account just for cheese that a secret cheese donor made sure was always brimming with cheese-purchasing cash) because young men were dispensable.  Not that they weren't valuable members of society, we all know that the ladyfolk have traditionally been much lower-rung in that regard.  No, men were dispensable because their nation could survive and carry on even if most of the men died.  Heck, even if there was just one left, he could go around inseminating all the ladyfolk and continuing the survival of the species.  Although, actually, a generation down the line that would mean half-siblings getting hitched and that's icky, so I guess they would need to hold onto a few men.  Anyways, all I'm saying is that less men = birthrate can still stay the same, whereas less ladies = probably lower birthrate.

Likewise, as Spike so sweetly pointed out to Buffy, all that vampires need to continue the survival of their species is for one to remain.  Just one to bite and turn all the fleshy humans into steely killing machines of awesomeness.  So, kill off all vampires except one or maybe two = vampires will never leave our society so you might as well get used to them.

I will pay you $4.50 to kill someone

Or so Stanley Milgram might as well have said in his newspaper ad for those famous electro-shock obedience and authority studies.  Of course, then he probably wouldn't have gotten the same results.



http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/12/eerie-relic-of-scien.html

The power is out in my basement suite. AGAIN.

The power is not actually out.  A fuse has been busted or blown or whatever the technical term for that is.  Maybe a circuit got stomped?  Flustered?  Stumbled?  Anyways, some of the electricity in my house is working and some is not.  This happened once before, right at the beginning of a party I was having.  Luckily the only people who had arrived thus far were burly and helpful men who said practical things like "where is the nearest electrical panel thingama?" - but they even actually used the real name for it.  Of course, then it turned out that my landlord had done something to make the fuse/circuit blow/trip and then he did something to fix it a few minutes later and the party was restored.

This time I am alone in my crummy little hovel wonderfully affordable basement suite, and am unsure if my landlord realizes what he has done.  Since anything plugged into an outlet seems to be working whilst all the lights actually wired into the home are not, I can only assume this is a similar situation and has something to do with the fact that he is upstairs drilling things.  Since it is all summery and bright out, and he lives above ground, he may not be aware that the lighting potential in his home has been significantly reduced.  I, on the other hand, live like a burrowing animal/vampyre below ground and need as much light as I can get.

Sadly, I lack the technical prowess and matter-of-fact confidence to do something practical like go tell my landlord he has disabled the lights in my home.  Instead I will sit here in the orangey glow of the decorative lights left over from Christmas and stare directly into the glaring, neon light of my laptop until I go blind.

Well, now that I've informed you all of my plan, I guess I'd better go... and act on it.

Attack of the Giant Killer Bees - upcoming?

This morning when I was in the bathroom I heard a buzzing coming from the Evil Closet of Darkness.  I'm pretty sure the buzzing was the giant killer bees regrouping.  It sounded like there were a lot of them.  Meaning, it sounded like I might actually have some kind of nest inside my home.  I cannot say enough how much this scares me.  An actual HIVE of giant killer bees?  REALLY UNIVERSE?  WHY?????  I cannot for the life of me think of what I may have done to deserve this.

Just in case, let me try to make some amends and try to fix my karma:

Krista, sorry I read your diary when we were in elementary school and wrote about it on the board in my class.

Mark, sorry I was so mean to you when we were kids and kicked you in the head and splashed water on your face those two individual times.  Also, all the other times I was mean or hit or kicked you.

Mom and Dad, sorry I was the best child you could ever imagine having.  I know it made it harder for you to love your other children.  Also, sorry for being so indulgent in my pride just now.

OKAY UNIVERSE?????  Now no more bees.

Please?

Canada Day - it is over.

Yesterday was Canada Day.

Just thought y'all should know.

Canada is a pretty cool place.

Most of the time.

Best.

From the font of all things awesome online, Boing Boing, comes this piece of comic genius:


Okay, technically it came from American Apparel.  It's just so... so... SO!  I like the Boing Boing blogger's suggestion of wearing it over a speedo, and American Apparel's choice of pairing it with a Western-villain moustache.  Would a big, gold chain be too much?  I really hope to see some of these on Main Street this summer.  

If the speedo is a little revealing for you, this could go over very well with a pair of ratty swimtrunks rescued from the bottom of your Dad's closet.  Just make sure they used to be neon pink with a contrasting accent, but are now dusty pink with a dusty accent.