Pete the Tapeworm

There is a tapeworm in our midst.

Behold, the phantom menace:

Pete, the tapeworm.

Discreetly disguised as a fluffy glutton of a cat

but he's not fooling anybody, anymore.  His behavior betrays him.  

1.  Lives for food

2.  Un-catlike, clumsy behavior; generally unversed in cat etiquette, suggesting that the alleged "cat" is, in actuality, not familiar with normal cat behaviors (examples: tail wags like dog when petted, never lands on feet)

3.  Tongue looks like a tapeworm (vacant stare reinforces cat-suit hypothesis)

Cleverly done, tapeworm, cleverly done.  

Mental Disorder

The other day I drew a picture.  It was a nice picture.  It was of a duck-billed platypus with a unicorn horn, surveying a stack of pancakes, unaware of the presence of a militant worm with a bazooka.  Perfectly normal, unless you consider the fact that this was all taking place on the top of a giant green mushroom.  The sun may have also been a glowing purple corpse.  But anyway.  It was a nice, innocent, peaceful picture.

Behold:

Proud of myself, I emailed the picture to a friend of mine, sure he would appreciate my vast artistic abilities.

His response was slightly different than I had anticipated.

Sigh... at least we appear to have the same sort of mental disorder.

The Fabled Versatile Blogger Award

What is a Versatile Blogger Award?  Apparently, it looks like this:

and is given to bloggers by other bloggers.  What a lark!  This information was unknown to me until I was nominated (Thank you Sweet 16's Country Kitchen!) and I became aware of the existence of blogger awards.  I'm loving the awesomeness of bloggers who want to support each other, hence the passing around of awards from one blogger to another.  Pretty sweet.

Oh look, rules!  How droll.

1.  One must thank the blogger who gave the award and link their blog.
2.  One must share seven things about one's self of which the general populous may not be informed.
3.  One must give this award to a maximum of 15 other bloggers and include links to their blogs.
4.  One must comment on said blogs to inform said bloggers of said award.

Okeydokey...

The Seven Hithertofor Unknown Truths of My Majestic Self

1.  One time I had this plecostomus fish and it jumped out of the tank and got all dried out.  Later on I found it on my bed, where it had landed, in a pile of small animal figurines, and I thought it was a toy.  I was a little grossed out when I realized the erroneous nature of my assumption.  Ick.
2.  I have a pet snake.  His name is Bob.  He would like to kill me, I think.  But he's not big enough to fit my head into his mouth.  He never stops dreaming, though.  Maybe someday, SOMEDAY, he'll be able to swallow me whole.
3.  I don't always wear a blue shirt, contrary to my (lying) illustrations.  I actually own a whole closet full of clothes.
4.  One time I found a decomposing (think, still has a tongue) deer carcass by the side of the road.  I made my dad stop the car, jumped out, put my foot on the deer's ribs and wrenched the head off by the antlers.  I then proceeded to bring the thing home, dangling it by the antler out the car window.  That was an interesting day for other motorists who passed us.
5.  I do girly things like knit and sew and stuff, despite my often disturbingly-strange behavior.  In fact, a lot of my hobbies are quite normal.
6.  I have an actual, for-real job.  In an office-type place.  And I have a desk and a computer and stuff.
7.  I am on Team Oxford Comma.  As in, you should write "Bacon, orange juice, and toast" rather than "Bacon, orange juice and toast" because option B makes it sound like you poured your orange juice on your toast.  Which is totally fine, if you actually did that.  I'm open to diverse eating habits.

Now, I stroke my imaginary evil beard and twirl my imaginary evil mustache, contemplating my extreme power and my ability to nominate other bloggers.  Maybe I'm having too much fun with this.

1.  Art by Amelia Kay
2.  Colours & Things
3.  A Place of Quiet Rest
4.  The Selfish Seamstress
5.  Peneloping

It's like a plague of nominations.  A good kind of plague.  Like, a plague of daisies or secondhand clothing.  Pass on the plague!  Nominate blogs!  And go to thrift stores.  Although that won't do anything to help support fellow bloggers...but you can't go wrong with secondhand clothes.  You know how it is.

A Sordid Little Story: Timmy Gets a Job

See Timmy.  Timmy is a human teenager.

See Timmy enjoy the fruits of an irresponsible existence and mediocre high school grades.  See him feed on the success of his parents, more or less like a leech.  See him using his anterior suckers and a combination of suction and mucus to attach himself for feeding.  Watch him secreting hirudin, an anticoagulant enzyme, into the bloodstream of the host.  Timmy is disgusting.

Look, here comes Timmy's high school diploma!  Timmy is now a jobless graduate with no purpose in life. 

Here come Timmy's parents.  Run, Timmy, run!  Too thick-skulled to sense the impending danger, Timmy is coerced into an office job requiring endless menial labor.  

See the effects of work and responsibilities catch up with Timmy.  See them stalk him and take him down like the grim reaper or some sort of joy-killing wraith.  Watch him crumble from the inside out.  Watch his soul evaporate and his hopes and dreams form a puddle on the floor.  

See Timmy hang himself with his own tie.  

Look, here come Timmy's relatives!  Watch them squabble over Timmy's secondhand clothes. 

See Timmy's father.  See him look at Timmy's suicide tie.  The tie is made of silk.  It is an expensive tie.  Timmy's father wants it for himself.  See him abscond with the tie.  See him wear it himself, with one of Timmy's shirts.

See Timmy's mother.  She is annoyed by the funeral arrangements, but at least now she can go back to school and get a degree.  See Timmy's mother and father slow-dancing in the living room.  

See Timmy's picture, forgotten in a box of Aunt Maude's chinaware and discarded knee-highs.  Watch everybody forget about Timmy.  Such is the fate of all slacking teenagers unhappily thrust into employment.

The End.

And Then She Decided to Curl Her Hair

Every few months I become dissatisfied with my straightened hair.  It's probably the negative influence of the internet - all those misleading pictures of women with perfect curls.  Although attempting to force my hair into spirals is pure lunacy, I never seem to learn.  With this in mind, I've put together a lovely step-by-step tutorial for curling your hair.

Step 1:  Plug in the curling iron and wait for it to heat up.  Get impatient and start straightening your bangs before it's really hot.

Step 2:  Pin the top layer of your hair up.  This not only enables you to curl the bottom layer of hair, but it also makes you look ridiculous and ensures the laughter of all brothers who happen to walk by.

Step 3:  Get your hair tangled in your industrial, and then accidentally hit it with the curling iron.  Scream.

Step 4:  Curl the top layer of hair.

Step 5:  Forget the 'mist with hairspray' junk you see most people doing.  DRENCH that hair.

Step 6:  Rejoice; you are a princess!

Well, crap.

Step 7:  Rinse out hairspray in the sink.  Straighten your hair.

Congratulations, you now have a lovely ponytail.  Just like every other day, ever.

Traumatic Weirdness and The Gift of BAGEL

Although I would like to think of myself as one of those witty, suave characters who has a reputation for dry humor and sarcasm, BAGEL.

That abrupt, nonsensical, and confusing sentence ending serves to illustrate my social finesse.  I know that most people are weird once you get to know them, and most of them are awkward and say dumb things once in a while, but really, I think I have a rare and unusual gift.  Let's call it The Gift of BAGEL.

For instance, one time I decided to go to the post office with my mom.  I fully expected to just ride along as company while she ran errands, but when we got there she wanted to do her makeup so she sent me in with a mysterious package.  As I opened the door and beheld the overly-friendly lady behind the desk, I realized I didn't really know what this package was.  Who was it going to?  What was in it?  I was suddenly very confused.  Looking back, I probably could have just handed it to the lady, because the address was already written on it.  However, in the heat of the moment, such a complicated maneuver didn't cross my mind.

I reached the desk and stopped.  The lady smiled expectantly as I stood there like a wet owl, my glare of bemusement probably coming across as malice.  Frowning down at the box in my hands, I knew I had to say something.

''Um...I don't really know why I'm here."  I squinted at her, desperately trying to make a normal, socially-acceptable expression.  The pity on the lady's face was apparent as she said "Oh, hon, let me see that." and took the package from me.  She probably thought I was some poor amnesia victim who had forgotten how to mail boxes.  I'm sure my unreadable expressions didn't help.  When my mother came in to buy stamps, she was confronted with the sympathetic face of the post office lady.  She got a discount on the stamps.

While the post office incident merely proved my social ineptitude, other situations are simply inexplicable.  Like the time I was washing dishes and decided, for some reason, that the cheese grater I was holding didn't look like our cheese grater.  I spent the next five minutes insisting to my brother that this was NOT our cheese grater.  He continued to insist that it was, indeed, our cheese grater, and had been for nearly 20 years.  I'm not sure why I thought it wasn't our cheese grater, but it was only when I had reached the point of tears and hysteria that I realized, oh yes, this IS our cheese grater.  By then it was a little late to play it cool and act like I had known the truth all along.

Why that was such a crisis is not clear.  Perhaps I had a hunch that the cheese grater mafia was infiltrating our cupboards and dishpans, plotting to grate our fingers off as we slept.  Highly plausible.

One of the most sincerely embarrassing things, worse than my awkwardness and seeming inability to function in normal situations, is my face.  Or rather, the color of my face.  Observe, below.

My face when I'm pretty sure no one is watching me or talking to me:

My face as soon as someone walks by, makes eye contact, addresses me directly, mentions my name in passing or glances in my general direction:

Maybe if I plastered my face with foundation, no one would notice the color change...

Stunning.

So I'm sort-of like a chameleon, only slightly less camouflaged and more pointlessly humiliated.

BAGEL.

Reasons Why Eating Should Be Conducted in Bathroom Stalls

Here is a plate of spaghetti.  It is, for all intents and purposes, an entirely innocent and unassuming plate of spaghetti.

Here, also, is a perfectly normal lettuce sandwich.  I mean, as normal as any sandwich containing only lettuce can possibly be.

And some nondescript marshmallow cereal.

Although these somewhat appetizing and unimposing food items do not appear to be dangerous, they can be transformed into weapons of mass destruction in the blink of an eye.  Personally, never having been one of the most graceful eaters (or dancers, or runners, or standers, for that matter), humiliation is a regular part of my life.  I'll just be strolling along and some new sort of calamity will overtake me, causing the laughter and mild concern of those around me.  This accident-prone existence of mine is not limited to athletic activities such as walking and sitting, however.  I also suffer a great deal of anxiety over my inept eating habits.  Hence, my own compilation of reasons why eating should be conducted in bathroom stalls.

Reason #1 that eating should be conducted in bathroom stalls:  privacy, people!

Reason #2 that eating should be conducted in bathroom stalls:  self-esteem issues.

Other people eating: 

Me eating:

Reason #3 that eating should be conducted in bathroom stalls:  serving sizes.

Nobody judges you based on how much food you eat IF THEY CAN'T SEE YOUR FOOD.  Cue the conspiratorial laughter...

I think I've made my point.  Eat in public bathrooms and reap the benefits in boosted self-esteem and less dinner-induced anxiety.  You're welcome.