Happy Shit – 11/30/12

So, it is the end of another week. A very stressful, sad week for me but it is slowly getting better.

Fun fact of the day: During a solar eclipse, the temperature can drop as much as 20 degrees (That is in Fahrenheit, which is approximately 6-7 degrees Celsius, I think...).

In other words, it is like a normal day in New England.

Anyway, here is some cool/funny shit I saw this week:

The Parent Rap. These parents are legit yo.

Rollin' with their own little posse...aw yeah.

The latest Ask A Mortician video, which is all about donating your corpse to science. It is a fascinating subject to me. If you want to know more about what happens or could happen to your body post-you, you should read the book Stiff by Mary Roach. It is awesomesauce.

"Yeah? Well, I'm gonna donate my body to...math...?"

Are you technologically dependent? I have to say...I do most of these things. Except bringing my phone in the bathroom. Then it will get butt germs on it, and that isn't cool.

Watching TV WHILE fiddling with my phone? I am a fucking multitasker.

Strippers, alligators, AND weed? WTF?!

Little known fact: Strippers and alligators make terrible guards for your weed stash.

A heart-warming story for this time of year. No, seriously it is really a wonderful heartwarming story. Involving boots. Which you have probably all seen on the news by now, but I don't care.

Possibly even this boot.

An hour of the amazing Lord of the Rings soundtrack played live.

That guy is totally thinking,"Could I be more badass right now
WITHOUT setting myself on fire? Nope!"

And that is it for this week.

Fly Away

Last night Fizz succumbed to his illness.

I feel like a part of me has died. I can't stop crying. It was the right thing to do as he was suffering, but that is a small comfort. It hurts, yet I feel numb.

Fly away my sweet boy, I will love you forever.

Fizz
December 2006 - November 2012

Sick Pig 2

Hi all. I am not feeling very bloggy today. My little Fizz has taken a turn for the worse and I am an absolute mess. It is a high probability we will lose him unless something miraculous happens.

I feel sick. I have hardly eaten. I can't sleep until I am absolutely exhausted and then I have horrible dreams about it. I am sad and worried because he is sick and in pain. I just want him to be his happy bouncy self, pushing around ottomans with his freakish shoulder strength instead of laying in his cage all listless and tired.

I am worried about Fig and what will happen if we lose his buddy. He is a senior guinea pig (6 years old) and I am not planning to get another one, at least not yet. I just can't. But I don't want to deprive Fig of the happiness of a cage mate, especially since David and I both work.

When the vet called with the update this morning, I just broke. Even now at work I am crying and I haven't been able to stop. It hurts and I am so frustrated that I can't do anything to help him.

Sorry for two weeks in a row of this.

Happy Shit - 11/23/12

Happy Thanksgiving...for yesterday! YAY, belated salutations!

This is Happy Shit: Post-Thanksgiving Edition. But it is also pre my post-Thanksgiving party, which is tomorrow. I get a free turkey every year from work and this year it was 19 fucking pounds! So we are just going to have a small "I am so sick of turkey, but here is some more turkey" get together. It will be awesome and there will be much turkey and merriment.

Oh god, so much turkey. Make it stop. MAKE IT STOP.

Anyway, fun fact about me: Whenever I see the word "salmon" I always read it as "slammin'" first. Always. I don't know why.

"Well, we do look pretty slammin'." – Sockeye Salmon (except for the one at
the bottom of the picture that appears to have some kind of fish necrosis...)

Here is some shit that made me happy this week:

Felicia Day and Amy Okuda throw a pot. This is TOTALLY what happens when you first try pottery
(Keep watching until the feature segment to see the pottery stuff).

There is always a bitch who gets it right on her first try in every class.
Try to restrain the urge to pummel her face with your clay covered hands, that
leaves evidence. Don some gloves and jump that bitch in a dark parking lot later!

I shared this video on my Facebook earlier this week (I know it is a Coke ad), but it is still beautiful and if it doesn't melt your heart a little bit then you have no soul.

Dance dude! DANCE!

Max No Sleeves has an educational video on greeting people. My favorite is the Boston greeting, because it is fantastically accurate.

Also, accurate directions in New England: "Ya take a left at Turn’as Pond, and drive
till ya get to tha red house that my grandpa painted blue five years back,
an ya turn down tha dirt road… ya all see the stump where the squirral used ta
sit every day? Ya wanna go abouts five miles after that, but tha squiraal got run over by
one of thems Mass of 2 Shits tourist drivers so ya won’t see him, just tha stump…”

And as follow up to that video, this is the video that Max mentions at the end of the above greeting video. This dude that is REALLY into his whiskey.

Richard Patterson: drinking like a motherfucking gentleman.

Since I am on a New England kick: for those that didn't see it when it came out, let me present Granite State of Mind (and part 2) It is a scarily accurate portrayal of what it is like to live in New Hampshire.

Accurate, but not all encompassing. There are no jokes about inbred motherfuckers, and no
mention of the fact that we call towns by insulting names and everyone knows
where you are talking about (ie - Rochester is known as Crotch-fester).

And I would like to thank one of my Facebook friends for sharing this gem. You know who you are.

Luckily, I only suffer from road mouth. I will say awful things
but I won't actually do anything stupid.

And that is it this week. Sorry there wasn't a real post. Between Fizz being sick, work, and Thanksgiving, I have had no time whatsoever. But hopefully everything will be back to the normal state of weirdness next week. Then Christmas will come and fuck everything up again. Yeah.

Sick Pig

Well, this post isn't going to be as awesome as previously anticipated because I spent the morning at the emergency vet with my little guinea pig Fizz. He wasn't eating very much, was very lethargic, wouldn't pee or poop, and didn't even come out for his favorite treat this morning.

"I am stinky and very upset to be at the vet." -Fizz

Turns out, he has a serious bladder infection that may or may not have made it into his kidneys. It is very difficult to tell when this all started as Fizz is a paraplegic pig with very limited feeling in his rear extremities, therefore he doesn't exhibit signs of discomfort until it is pretty bad. We have antibiotics, he has eaten a little and peed quite a bit, though not poop yet. He is currently chilling on my desk.

Get out of my face with that camera, lady! I am being ill over here! LOVE ME!!!

Tomorrow I will write something better. Maybe about Thanksgiving or something else super awesome. Today has been way too screwed up and all of my work deadlines are even more urgent since I was 2 hours late.

 Happy fucking Monday to me. FML.

Happy Shit – 11/16/12

Hello all! We made it to the end of another week and I for one am so glad it is over. I have been in last minute project hell for the whole week. Why does nobody plan that shit out?!

Anyway, fun random fact: Giraffes are the only animals born with horns.

"You are so lucky I love you, because
giving birth to you SUCKED." - Mom Giraffe

Pinterest has made it so you can have three "secret" boards that no one can see but you. I have been hoping they would do this forever!

Now I can pin all my porno...I mean...uh...Christmas gifts...?

I love news anchor fails. Anchors and reporters are usually so serious about everything while they tell you all about everything bad that happened that day, so it is funny to see them seriously mess up.

Hahaha! She said "dick"!

I think that this is what most guys do when they are home alone. Except David wouldn't do the the finger toothbrush thing. And he would definitely not poop with the door open, as he locks the door even when I am home. I think he is scared that people (or me?) will sneak up and straight-up murder him while he is dropping a deuce and then everyone will remember him as the dude who died on the toilet whilst making a tootsie roll...

Do I have a safe location to poop?

This isn't even fair. This girl is playing the violin while playing "Hop Mario" with the difficulty set to super hard. I can't even do either of those things independently.

And she got a perfect score. WTF.

I had my first massage ever and it was very nice. Here is a link to the spa I went to. I have felt calm and haven't had a panic attack since, which is amazing.

Sue, you have magic Reiki skills.

And that is it for this week. Not a very long list, like I said work has been all like "you are actually going to do work at work" so I haven't had as much time to be Spidey on the interwebs.

Hope you all have a totally awesome weekend. See ya Monday :-)

Veterans Day

It's that time again! The time when I tell you weird facts and the history of a holiday! I know, I know. You are TOTALLY pumped.

That is your pumped face, right?
Of course it is!

What do most Americans know about Veterans Day? Most know it is to commemorate those who have served in the military, there are parades, and some people hand out those little red paper flowers, but is that it? Open your books people, it is knowledge time!

Because knowledge is a sexy beast. Rawr.

So was Veterans Day always around? There have been wars since the dawn of humanity, so surely this holiday began a really long time ago...

I am Spartacus! Or Jesus...it is really hard to tell. We all dress kind of alike...

Surprisingly, it is a relatively new holiday. Veterans Day began in 1919 as Armistice Day. Why Armistice Day? I don't know how much you know about 1919, but the year before there was a little spat going on called World War I.

Fighter planes in those days were kept aloft with hope
and copious amounts of arm flapping.

But on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, a temporary cessation of hostilities (aka an armistice) was declared between the Allied nations and Germany. 

And they used the downtime to build bitchin' slingshots.

Although the official peace treaty (Treaty of Versailles) wasn't signed until June 28, 1919, the general shooting and stabbing of other dudes stopped with the Armistice. People were pretty pumped about not getting shot at anymore, so the next year they decided to celebrate the anniversary of totally not blowing up the world.

I don't know about you Larry, but now that the war is over,
I am never digging a fucking hole ever again.

Although Armistice Day was endorsed by President Woodrow Wilson and celebrated every year from 1919 on, it wasn't approved as a national holiday until May of 1938, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration.

FDR, you just fixed the Great Depression! What are you gonna do next?!

It is speculated that they finally signed it into law because another war was on the horizon. Adolf Hitler had by that time declared himself Fuhrer of Germany, annexed Austria, and was ready to march on Czechoslovakia and possibly Poland. They wanted to acknowledge and make heroes out of the soldiers of the last "Great War" to promote a surge of patriotism should the need to go to war arise.

Hey kids! Captain America says get out there and punch some Nazis!

But at this point, Armistice Day was still for commemorating only WWI veterans. By 1945, another world war had been fought and won, and veteran Raymond Weeks thought maybe these dudes deserved to be celebrated too.

We need to commemorate all veterans. Also, I need someone
to draw me punching Hitler right in the balls.

Instead of demanding their own holiday, Weeks proposed making Armistice Day for veterans of all wars and therefore change the name to "Veterans Day." He led a delegation that petitioned then-General Dwight Eisenhower to act on their behalf to establish a National Veterans Day. Eisenhower loved the idea. After struggling with red tape for almost ten years, the Veterans Day bill was approved by Congress and signed into law by none other than now-President Dwight Eisenhower in 1954.

"Want a law passed? Become president.
Checkmate, bitches." - Eisenhower

In researching for this post, I also came across some pretty sweet trivia:

• Veterans Day does not include an apostrophe because it is not a day that belongs to veterans, it is a day for honoring them.

• Many Americans believe Veterans Day is just another Memorial Day, a day to honor those who died in battle. While that is the purpose of Memorial Day, Veterans Day is meant to thank the living for their dedication, loyal service, and sacrifice.

• A number of other countries also celebrate their own versions of Veterans Day on November 11th. Other names it is known by include: Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, and Poppy Day.

• Poppies are considered the flowers for consolation and eternal sleep and is often used to commemorate the fallen. Their distinction as the "flower of the the fallen" began with a poem written by Canadian John McCrea in WWI. Another distinction of poppies, is that they flourish on the loose soil of fresh graves, unlike most other flowers. 

• Although poppies are traditionally given out in the US on Memorial Day, most other countries use them as a symbol for Veterans Day as well.

I'll leave you with this quote from Eisenhower:

"It is well for us to pause, to acknowledge our debt to those who paid so large a share of freedom's price. As we stand here in grateful remembrance of the veterans' contributions we renew our conviction of individual responsibility to live in ways that support the eternal truths upon which our Nation is founded, and from which flows all its strength and all its greatness."

Happy Shit – 11/9/12

Well, it is the end of another week. Did you make it? I did. Barely.

Above: Accurate representation of my week.

Anyway, fun random fact: An ostrich egg is also the largest existing single cell in the world measuring, on average, 17 inches in circumference. The smallest cell is is the mycoplasma bacterium with only a diameter of 10 micrometres.

Oh shit, stop measuring the egg. They looks PISSED.
Oh man, I think they are going to kick us with their angry talons of death.

Without further ado, here is some shit that made me happy this week:

This beautiful cover of We Found Love by Lindsey Stirling. What makes the video more amazing is that she filmed the video while visiting Kenya and this was the first time any of the natives had heard violin music.

Proving once again that music transcends race, religion, and creed.

This hilarious video about a kid telling his parents he is gay, but it devolves into bartering for his orientation. It is funnier than it sounds. Really. Just watch it.

We don't get magic gay gold?!

The Galaxy Song, because I used to know all the words to it as a kid and I finally saw the movie it belonged to this past week.

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving,
and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour...

The Avengers gag reel because it is hilariously awesome.

Dammit Mjölnir! Thor, get your shit together.

The Hulk just smashing the shit out of the world.

Dr. Banner, I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control
and turn into an enormous green rage monster.

I went fake shopping on Pinterest. It is cathartic and there is no stressing about making sure things come in your size, the store being crowded, or not being able to afford shit. You just look for shiny, pretty things and pin that bitch right to your wall.

Oh hai adorable purse. You are almost $300. Let me pin you.

Re-watching old episodes of BBC's Sherlock and impatiently waiting for season three. If you have not seen the show, get on that. It is on Netflix. Go. Go now.

I'm not a psychopath. I'm a high functioning sociopath.

Started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time ever. I know, I know...stop judging me.

Oh the nineties...I had forgotten about your fashion and your slang.

And lastly, this gag reel from the show Firefly. For those of you who have never watched Firefly, I thought we were friends. I...I don't even know who you are anymore. That shit is on Netflix, so put it in your goddamn queue and bask in its awesomeness.

Curse your sudden, but inevitable betrayal!

Parting remarks: Have a good weekend everyone, and if you are in a country that celebrates Veterans/Armistice Day, please thank a soldier for their service. Freedom isn't free.

Commuting Skills

Commuting in general sucks ass; however, I think the day after daylight savings people somehow think mistake it for an intense course in Mario Kart.

Fuck you, blue shell...

All the assholes ever are out and ready to show you their best moves. Here are just some of the lovely skill sets I observed out there on the road this morning.

*All diagrams are made in accordance with driving on the left. People who drive on the right, adjust accordingly.

The Casual Lane Changer

You are just riding along and there is a dude beside you. Everything is fine until you realize that you are very slowly being pushed into the breakdown lane. They managed to edge you over so slowly and over such a long period of time/distance, you just don't notice their cunning plan until they are all up in your business. 

YOUR LANE IS MINE NOW BITCH.

How to know if it is happening to you:

Where it occurs: Anywhere there are multiple lanes or a merge

Characteristics: They always act like it was your fault for occupying the space they wanted and they never use their blinker, because that would give you insight into their cunning plan.

Warnings: They love to strike in merging situations, so be wary.

Fool! You will suspect nothing until it is too late!
MWAHAHAHAHAHA!

The Befuddled Floater

I love this one. The guy ahead of you is experiencing an existential crisis and can't decide what lane to be in, so he stays in both. You know, just to be safe. Either that or he thinks the yellow line is there as a guide in the road that you have to keep your car centered on.

I choose...ALL OF THE LANES!

How to know if it is happening to you:

Where it occurs: Anywhere there are multiple lanes, a merge, or a split in the road where you have to choose to go one way or another

Characteristics: Undecided wavering, riding centered on the line between lanes

Warnings: Look out for last minute decisions. Once they make up their mind, there is no stopping them from reaching their goal, even if they have to cut you off and then ramp something to achieve it.

They will ramp that shit like they are in the General Lee.

The Vigilante

The Vigilante can strike in a multitude of ways, but one of my absolute favorites is the "Speed Trap" Vigilante. This guy can't stand that you are going fast in the fast lane, so he pulls out in front of you and because of other cars you are effectively trapped behind him. He then proceeds to do the speed limit just to enforce his law. 

Sweet, sweet street justice. Vengeance is mine!

How to know if it is happening to you:

Where it occurs: Multiple lane highways

Characteristics: You are cut off so the assailant can go the same speed as the slow lane, thus ensuring that you are trapped.

The E-Brake

I hate these people with the fiery vengeance of a thousand suns. You are just going along like normal and then they jack on their brakes for no goddamn reason. There is no fuzzy animal to save, no car that cut them off, no hidden cop that came into view – nothing.

Unexpectedly thick air could happen to you!

How to know if it is happening to you:

Where it occurs: Anywhere

Characteristics: Sudden, yet forceful application of the brake causing you to A) contemplate peeing yourself, and B) hope that you don't hit the bag of dicks in front of you, or C) get rear-ended by the unsuspecting dude behind you.

Warnings: These guys love to stop just over the rise on small hills or bridges, or just out of sight around a curve.

Constant vigilance people!

The Invisible Ninja

You are driving along and you can kind of see a guy hovering mostly in your blind spot and he just stays there. Forever. If you speed up or slow down, he will match your pace. This guy is more of an annoyance until you have to change lanes. Then he becomes a royal pain in the ass.

"I AM THE BAT." – Invisible Ninja Guy

How to know if it is happening to you:

Where it occurs: Anywhere there are multiple lanes

Characteristics: Matching speed with you and hanging out in just the wrong place

Beware my friends.