The Making of OmaMania! The Musical

~ Laura ~ 35 Comments

OmaMania! movie poster

A few months ago, blogger and all-around nice person Hippie Cahier had a great idea: she wanted to create a video in honor of fellow blogger Omawarison, who’d recently retired from his day job. Her plan was ambitious: gather a couple dozen bloggers in one place and create a video in a single weekend. I was up for the challenge. I just had one concern: I’ve seen enough movies to know that if a group this size gathers in one place for a weekend, one of two things will happen: they’ll either pull off an intricately-plotted heist or be murdered one by one. I mentioned this to Hippie and told her I strongly preferred the heist scenario. She agreed.

I generally travel pretty light, so I packed only a carry-on for this trip. My bag was a little heavier than usual, but I didn’t think much of it until I got to the airport and the bag started meowing. I called Hippie and asked her to pick up some supplies for a last-minute addition to the cast: my cat, Thunder.

During the flight, I read the plans for the heist. Hippie had emailed them the previous night. I was impressed. She’d planned out every detail, including exactly what each person would say at each point throughout the operation. That seemed like overkill, really, and I was a little worried she’d turn out to be a micromanager, but the plan itself seemed sound.

Hippie was a very gracious hostess. Her house is bigger than I’d expected; each blogger got a private room. My room (which was next to one painted plaid, for some reason) had all kinds of personal touches. She’d set up the cat food dishes and litter box that I’d asked for, installed a new cat tree for Thunder, and left the traditional five pounds of dark chocolate on my pillow. Most of the rest of the gang had already arrived, so I dropped off my bag, left Thunder to get acclimated, and headed down to the living room to join them.

Hippie introduced me to everyone, but I’m really bad at names, so I was never quite sure who was who. I poured myself a glass of wine (other available beverages included coffee, tea, gin, and lemonade) and bumped into a woman with bright yellow hair who was helping herself to a Reese’s peanut butter cup. I started to apologize.

“Sorry, I’m — oh, hey, did you paint that?” On the end of the table, there was a watercolor of two dogs frolicking with wild abandon.

“No. I’m not sure who did.”

We both looked around for a minute. The artist failed to materialize. The dogs, however, had been there all along: a collie who looked just like Lassie, and a little black and white dog that I thought was adorable until it began savagely attacking a stuffed sheep, callously ignoring its squeaky cries of distress. I was glad I’d left my cat upstairs.

“Okay,” Hippie said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I think that’s all of us. Did everyone get a chance to look at the script?”

Everyone nodded except me. “No, sorry — I didn’t get the script. When did you send it?”

“Last night, around 8-ish, I think.”

“Oh, that’s weird. I got some mail from you then, but it just had the plans for the actual heist, not the script for the movie.”

There was a long, awkward pause. I heard a few nervous giggles. Finally, Hippie spoke.

“Um, that was the script. There is no actual heist.”

“What? Are you trying to get us all killed?”

“She’s right,” said a pregnant woman, gesturing with a half-eaten Pop-Tart, “movies teach us that in this situation, if we’re not involved in a heist, we’ll be attacked by a serial killer or some kind of supernatural entity.”

People began to take sides. One guy rattled off ten reasons why we should just make the movie. Another walked around with a clipboard taking a poll about whether we should do the heist: the four possible answers were “yes”, “no”, “other”, and something about brains. In the end, we decided to [Note: one blogger who was present for the events described here is also a lawyer. At her request, I’ve redacted some text that was in the original version of this post.]

[redacted text]

[redacted text] and a goat. So of course [redacted text]

[redacted text]

[redacted text] just a bridal shower. But [redacted text]

[redacted text]

[redacted text] hostage situation. They said they used to have a guy who was really good at that sort of thing, but he retired last year. So then we [redacted text]

[redacted text]

[redacted text] which is how we wound up spending the night in jail. We got out on bail with just enough time to go back to Hippie’s place, pack our things, and catch our flights home. And we still hadn’t shot any footage.

The story has a happy ending, though. Hippie filed a FOIA request and eventually got copies of all our mug shots, which she stitched together into an amazing video. As the old saying goes: when life gives you lemons, make a patchwork quilt. I think she’s done an excellent job.

 

Yes, Virginia, There Is An Apple Core

~ Laura ~ 19 Comments

DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say that apples don’t really have cores. Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; do apple cores exist?

Virginia H.
New York, New York

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the gullibility of a gullible age. They believe anything they see on YouTube. Seriously, Virginia, these friends of yours? You could do better. Did you know that Stevie wets his bed at least once a week? And Johnny picks his nose and eats the boogers when he thinks no one is looking? Do you have any idea what Sally and Jane have been saying about you behind your back? But you didn’t ask about your so-called friends; you asked about apple cores, and you deserve an answer.

State-of-the-art apple core removal technology
So many cores, so little time.

Yes, Virginia, there are apple cores. They exist as surely as the Farberware Classic Apple Corer exists, or the OXO Good Grips Apple Corer and Divider, and you know these gadgets are real because of the joy they bring on those rare and wondrous occasions when someone uses one to make a pie. Imagine how dreary the world would be without apple cores. There would be no Norpro 5103 Stainless Steel Apple Corer with Plunger, no Amco Dial-A-Slice Adjustable Apple Corer and Slicer, no R & M Industries 5920 Apple Peeler / Corer / Slicer. There would be no Apple Core Removal Technology industry at all. Do you have any idea, Virginia, how many factory workers and engineers would be out of work if there were no apple cores? Or, for that matter, if people stopped believing in apple cores? Is that something you want on your conscience?

Not believe in apple cores! You might as well not believe in Santa Claus. You might slice an apple crosswise and see no evidence of a core, but what would that prove? Have you ever seen the Tooth Fairy? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t exist. How else would you explain the fact that every time you leave a baby tooth under your pillow at night, it’s gone the next morning, replaced by a shiny new coin? This could only be the work of the Tooth Fairy. Or possibly the Tooth Alchemist, who transformed the tooth into a coin and then just left it there, possibly in an attempt to free the Tooth Fairy from her crippling addiction to human teeth. We’ll probably never know the details, Virginia, but the point is that even though no one has ever seen either of these entities, we can be confident in the knowledge that they exist and that they skulk around your room at night, searching for body parts.

Apple cores exist, Virginia, and they always will. Rejoice in the knowledge that you were right and your friends were wrong. You should celebrate! Eat an apple! But watch out for the core — you wouldn’t want to chip a tooth.

 

Six Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Santa Claus

~ Laura ~ 18 Comments

How much do you know about Santa Claus? Most people are unaware of these six basic facts.

Actually, one of the elves probably invented this
Diagrams from Santa’s human-powered sleigh patent (US1419558 A)

1. Santa initially used birds to deliver presents. He ended this practice after receiving many complaints: the owls, hungry after a hard night’s work, would sometimes carry off a family pet, and the swallows were just too slow (an unladen swallow travels about 24 miles per hour, and they’re even slower when carrying gifts). He tried using bats next, but those were considered “too creepy”. Dogs and cats were perceived as friendlier but were often mistaken for gifts themselves. Eventually, Santa decided to deliver all the presents personally. He started with a human-powered sleigh and soon switched to the now-familiar reindeer-powered model.

2. Since its inception in 1790, the United Stated Patent and Trademark Office has issued 437 patents to Santa Claus, including “Method for Rapid Delivery of Items Utilizing Airborne Woodland Creatures”, “System and Method for Calculating Metrics of Naughtiness/Niceness Based On Observed Behavior”, “Aqueous Solution to Facilitate Rapid Movement Through Chimneys or Other Narrow, High-Friction Passageways“, 27 patents related to surveillance technology, and several hundred patents related to toy design and manufacturing.

3. The International Federation of Competitive Eating banned Santa from all eating competitions after the 1997 Extreme Cookies and Milk Challenge. Santa ate all his cookies in record time, grabbed and ate some of his competitors’ cookies, and then got into a brawl with another celebrity contestant over a packet of Oreos held by an audience member. That other contestant, a popular children’s entertainer, later attempted to rehabilitate his image by appearing in a public service announcement.

4. Santa’s patent attorneys have filed over a dozen FOIA requests in an attempt to determine whether the NSA has been using any patented Naughty-or-Nice™ surveillance technology without paying licensing fees. None of those requests has been answered.

5. He performs annual feasibility studies to evaluate the practicality of replacing his Rudolph-based navigation system with GPS. The conclusion is the same every time: while modern commercial GPS devices can store thousands of waypoints, none have the capacity to handle the 447,304,311 destinations that Santa needs to visit. And even if one did, it would take his fastest elf at least 14 years to enter all those addresses into the system.

6. He once shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

—

If you’re feeling lonely or isolated on Christmas, check out Company For Christmas, where a bunch of bloggers will be hanging out throughout the day. I’ll be there from 10pm-12pm PDT on Christmas Eve (in other words, for two hours starting at this time).

Ten Reasons Why I Haven’t Updated My Blog Lately

~ Laura ~ 45 Comments

1. I’ve been busy at work. I know everyone always says that, but my job is really challenging. Performing brain surgery while rescuing kittens from burning buildings is harder than it sounds.

2. I was abducted by aliens. Really boring aliens. I kept waiting for them to do something interesting enough for me to write about, but they just kept droning on and on about glorfball, which apparently is a very popular sport on their planet.

3. I sold a short story to a magazine and got hit with a case of rebound writer’s block.

4. My intern quit and it took me two months to figure out how to work the keyboard.

5. The intern who quit had secretly outsourced his job to a group of monkeys living in my basement and banging randomly on typewriter keys. It took me a while to find new homes for them.

6. When I first went down to the basement to check on the monkeys, I slipped on a banana peel. I managed to catch myself before I fell, but then I realized we were almost out of bananas, so I went to the local banana emporium. On my way home, I was in a car accident. It was just a fender-bender, but the bananas were crushed, so I had to bake some emergency banana bread. While reaching to get my banana bread cookbook from the top shelf, I lost my balance and fell. I landed on my head and got the kind of amnesia where you remember everything else but forget that you have a blog.

7. With the intern and monkeys gone, I decided to try Blog-O-Matic Content Generator 2.0. Big mistake. It kept crashing my system and would only generate shopping lists.

8. I called the Blog-O-Matic customer support line six weeks ago. I’m still on hold. After the first hour, I started counting how many times their on-hold music repeated itself. When I got to 50,000, I hung up and reinstalled my operating system.

Oh, and if you think hanging up means I’m no longer on hold, you’ve probably never listened to the same on-hold music loop 50,000 times in a row. It changes you. I’ll be on hold, hearing that music in my head and half-expecting a Blog-O-Matic customer support representative to appear at any moment, for the rest of my life.

9. When I reinstalled my operating system, I lost all my saved passwords.

10. My dog ate it.

To celebrate my return to blogging, I’m holding a contest. The first three thousand people to comment on this post will each receive a free pre-owned typewriter! Each one comes with its own unique collection of stains and odors.

Dorothy and the Multiverse

~ Laura ~ 27 Comments

Wait! That’s not helium! — Last words of Henrietta Gale, June 26, 1937.

Dorothy’s parents took her to the dog pound on her sixth birthday. She walked slowly past the cages of beagles and corgis and stopped to look at a cairn terrier puppy. It was love at first sight. She named him Toto.

Dorothy’s mother baked a birthday cake while her daughter and puppy played outside. When the cake was done, she set it aside to cool, lit a cigarette, and walked out to the garage, where her husband was inflating balloons for their daughter’s party.

She saw his mistake immediately. “Wait! That’s not helium!” she cried, but it was too late.

###

“Look what your dog did to my flower bed,” said Mr. Glitch, who did not in any way resemble famous character actress Margaret Hamilton or any trademarked Warner Brothers character.

“Toto would never do anything like that,” said Dorothy, just as Toto began to relieve himself on the ruined flowers.

Mr. Glitch took a step towards the dog, then stumbled, lurching forward. Toto interpreted this as an attack and bit him on the ankle. Mr. Glitch smiled the coldest smile Dorothy had ever seen.

###

The doorbell rang while Dorothy was setting the table for lunch. It was Mr. Glitch, with a court order authorizing him to seize Toto and have him euthanized immediately. Her uncle read the document carefully and said there was nothing they could do. He told Dorothy to get Toto and hand him over to Mr. Glitch.

Dorothy went outside to find Toto. She paused for a moment and made her decision. She wasn’t going to let them kill him. She was going to run away with him, as far away as possible. She picked Toto up and started down the road.

They didn’t get far. A storm forced them to return to the farmhouse. Moments after they went inside, a piece of flying debris hit her in the head and knocked her unconscious. She had a vivid dream. When she woke up, the storm had passed, and Dorothy had decided not to run away after all.

Mr. Glitch returned shortly after Dorothy woke up. Toto was euthanized later that afternoon.

Universe #2

Mr. Glitch took a step towards Toto, then stumbled, lurching forward. Toto interpreted this as an attack. He jumped up and bit Mr. Glitch on the thigh, severing his femoral artery. Dorothy ran for help, but by the time the doctor arrived, it was too late. Toto was euthanized later that afternoon.

Universe #3

Mr. Glitch took a step towards Toto, then stumbled, lurching forward. Toto interpreted this as an attack. He jumped up and bit Mr. Glitch on the thigh, severing his femoral artery. Dorothy cleaned the blood off Toto’s face and quietly returned home. The coroner determined that Mr. Glitch had been attacked by some kind of wild animal, possibly a wolf. Toto lived a long and happy life with Dorothy and her aunt and uncle.

Universe #4

Dorothy’s parents took her to the dog pound on her sixth birthday. She walked slowly past the cages of beagles and corgis. Her mother steered her past the cairn terrier puppy, who was licking himself in a manner that she thought was inappropriate. Dorothy stopped to look at a six-month-old female collie. It was love at first sight. Dorothy named her Lassie.

Dorothy’s mother baked a birthday cake while her daughter and puppy played outside. Dorothy’s father went into the garage to inflate helium balloons for his daughter’s party. As he prepared to fill the first balloon, Lassie burst into the garage, knocked him down, and started barking loudly.

“What’s that, Lassie? This isn’t the helium tank? This is a propane tank? The helium tank is over there?”

Lassie, Dorothy, and her parents lived happily ever after.

Epilogue

Another young family arrived at the dog pound moments after Dorothy and her parents left. The boy walked slowly past the cages of beagles and corgis and stopped to look at a cairn terrier puppy. It was love at first sight. He named the dog Toto.

Timmy and Toto were inseparable. One day, Timmy fell down a well. Toto could hear Timmy’s cries. He stayed by the well and whimpered in distress for a while, but then he was distracted by a squirrel. Timmy’s body was never recovered.

Today Is National Ice Cream Day — Or Is It?

~ Laura ~ 39 Comments

We have always celebrated National Ice Cream Day on the third Sunday of July.

— George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

In 1984, Ronald Reagan signed a presidential proclamation naming the third Sunday in July as National Ice Cream Day — or so the dairy-industrial complex would have us believe. But the actual text of that proclamation refers only to dates in 1984 — so where did the recurring Ice Cream Days and Ice Cream Months come from?

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RONALD REAGAN, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim July 1984 as National Ice Cream Month and July 15, 1984, as National Ice Cream Day, and I call upon the people of the United States to observe these events with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this ninth day of July, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and ninth.

And why did Reagan wait until July 9 — almost a third of the way into the month — to sign this proclamation? The obvious answer, of course, is that he didn’t want to detract from National Duck Stamp Week, which ran from July 1 through July 8. But wait! Look at this:

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week of July 1 through July 8, 1984, as National Duck Stamp Week and 1984 as the Golden Anniversary Year of the Duck Stamp. I urge all Americans to observe these occasions with appropriate ceremonies and events, including participating in this program.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this third day of July, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and eighth.

Do you see? National Duck Stamp Week was July 1-8, but he waited until July 3 — when the week was almost half over — to issue that proclamation. Was this a passive-aggressive means of asserting a deep-seated hostility towards commemorative dates in general? Or was the government engaged in secret ice-cream- and duck-stamp-related ceremonies and activities that the general public has no knowledge of even today?

And why do we have a National Ice Cream Day and a National Ice Cream Month, but no National Ice Cream Week? Why has there never been a National Year of Ice Cream? If there’s an entire month devoted to ice cream, why isn’t there even a single day set aside to honor hot fudge?

These are deeply troubling questions. I have, however, decided to set aside my misgivings and celebrate National Ice Cream Day with appropriate ceremonies and activities just as President Reagan may or may not have intended. If you’re in the United States today, I urge you to do the same. And if you’re not, then of course you’re not bound by our national customs, so you’ll just have to celebrate with ceremonies and activities that are inappropriate. I’m sure you’ll find a way to rise to the occasion.

New Filibuster Rules for the Texas State Senate

~ Laura ~ 39 Comments
The shoes Wendy Davis wore during her filibuster have some great Amazon reviews
The shoes Wendy Davis wore during her filibuster have some great Amazon reviews

Recent events have led some Texas state senators to conclude that their filibuster rules — which forbid eating, drinking, sitting, leaning, going off-topic, or leaving the senate floor for any reason — are too lax. The following are some new restrictions they’re considering:

1. If you’re a senator engaged in a filibuster, you must speak only in sentences that can be spelled out using a standard set of Scrabble tiles. For example, “the muzzled dog ran through the maze” is permissible, because it can be constructed using one Z tile and two blank tiles, while “the muzzled dog zigzagged through the maze” is not.

2. Vulgar language will not be permitted. Don’t say “pregnant” when you mean “expecting”. Don’t say “trans-vaginal” when you mean “through a lady’s special passageway”. Don’t say “rape kit“, ever.

3. During each sixty-minute period, you must say at least one sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet exactly once. Remember to stay on-topic.

4. The dress code will be strictly enforced. All senators must wear appropriate footwear. Appropriate footwear is defined as brown or black men’s dress shoes for normal senators and shoes of any color with at least a 3” heel for lady senators.

5. The president of the senate may, at any time, interrupt you and demand a numeric accounting of your speech. You will then have thirty seconds to respond with the total number of Scrabble points for all the words you’ve spoken while you’ve had the floor. The calculation should be performed as follows: use the face value of each Scrabble tile. Assume that blanks are used only when absolutely necessary. Assume no double- or triple- letter or word squares. Don’t forget to add the 50-point bonus for each 7-letter word.

6. In the past, senators have said “I yield for a question, but I do not yield the floor” in order to ensure they kept their right to speak after answering a question. This is no longer sufficient; in order to hold the floor, you must say “I yield for a question. Simon says I do not yield the floor.”

7. The president of the senate may, at any time, interrupt you to ask a question from a basic literacy test. You have twenty seconds to answer correctly.

8. Scrabble tiles are not permitted on the Senate floor.

9. The clock says whatever the governor says it says.

 

Through a Peg, Freshly

~ Laura ~ 5 Comments

Today Peg from Peg-o-Leg’s Ramblings is running one of my old classic posts as part of her “Freshly Pegged” series. Fun fact: Peg is indirectly responsible for my blog’s header image. In addition to being a very funny blogger, Peg is great at organizing coordinated blogging events. A year or so ago, she convinced a bunch of us to write Reese’s-themed blog posts. I chose an obscure topic (Reese’s and fashion), and from that, the Reese’s ballerinas were born.

So go check out my Freshly Pegged post, and while you’re there, take a look at the rest of Peg’s blog.

And if you need even more things to click on, you can check out my brand-new tumblr: Things I Found In My Cat’s Water Bowl.

Total Recall

~ Laura ~ 86 Comments

I’ve had my car for a little over seven years, and I’m pretty happy with it despite the fact that I’ve gotten approximately three dozen recall notices during that time. It all started with a problem with unintended acceleration that resulted in a series of recalls: first they wanted to inspect and/or remove the floor mats. Then they wanted to replace the floor mats (because we shouldn’t be forced to drive with bare carpet under our feet, like savages). Finally, they wanted to cut off part of the accelerator pedal on the theory that if the pedal is tiny enough, then you’ll never step on it, and you’ll be really, really safe.

These lights have nothing to do with the recall, but I was impressed when they all lit up at once.
These lights have nothing to do with the recall, but I was impressed when they all lit up at once.

At some point they must have noticed that the more recall notices they sent out, the more business their service departments got — after all, if your car is due for maintenance and you get a recall notice in the mail, you’ll probably just get everything done at the dealership at once instead of going elsewhere for the oil change. So they kept sending more and more of them — and maybe it’s just my imagination, but the jargon seemed to get more confusing each time. The most recent one went something like this:

‘Twas brillig, and the spliny struts
Did gyre and gimble as it stormed:
All wobbly were the bolts and nuts,
And other parts deform’d.

Beware the insufficiently hardened intermediate steering extension shaft, my son
It bends like wire! It breaks like glass!
Beware the dread floor mats, and shun
The pedal meant for gas.

It goes on like this for a while, and from what I was able to decipher, it’s saying that at any moment the steering column may spontaneously disintegrate, leaving you clutching a disembodied steering wheel; the car will then spin out of control, resulting in a fiery crash and an untimely and painful death for anyone in or near your car.* Also, you should get those floor mats looked at again.** The repair should take about an hour.***

This sounded pretty serious, so I promptly took my car in for service after procrastinating for 3-4 months. The repair was pretty uneventful, but apparently the dealership has added a new amenity to its waiting room: complimentary medical advice. While I was there, a man in a white lab coat walked up to a pregnant couple and had a fairly lengthy conversation with them; this is the only time I’ve ever seen someone say “thank you, complete stranger off the street, for the extensive unsolicited advice regarding my pregnancy” without being sarcastic. Then he continued approaching people, seemingly at random, and giving each person medical advice (except for one woman who turned out to be a physician herself; she got career advice instead).

He never talked to me, despite the fact that I was obviously at serious risk of dying of old age waiting for my car to be ready. I was a little disappointed at the time, but at least I know that when I get the inevitable “Notice of Possibly Faulty Medical Advice Dispensed in Service Department Waiting Rooms” letter from Toyota, I’ll be able to safely ignore it.

*This may be a slight exaggeration.

**The recall notice didn’t actually mention the floor mats. But every time I take my car to the dealership, they want me to let them hack off chunks of my gas pedal, and I have to keep refusing over and over again.

***Hi again. I don’t really have anything to add; this paragraph just looked weird without a third footnote. Oh, hey, while you’re here, I have a question. Do you have any idea why I wrote “deform’d” instead of “deformed” in that poem? I mean, the apostrophe is totally unnecessary, right? And yet I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it.