Author: Laura

Fifty Shades of Gregor Samsa

Fifty Shades of Gregor Samsa -- 50 Shades of Grey meets Kafka's Metamorphosis
~ Laura ~ 44 Comments

A British publisher has updated some classic novels to make them more like the best-selling Fifty Shades of Grey. This seems like a fantastic idea, so of course I have to join in. Here’s the first chapter of my work-in-progress.

Fifty Shades of Gregor Samsa -- 50 Shades of Grey meets Kafka's Metamorphosis
I’m especially proud of the cover art.

Fifty Shades of Greg

Gregor Samsa didn’t show up for work this morning.

It’s my first day on the job, and my boss, Kate, is not happy. This Samsa guy is supposed to give a sales presentation at 2:30. He missed this morning’s pre-meeting strategy meeting. His cell phone is going directly to voicemail, which he’s not answering. Kate is getting frantic.

She orders me to go fetch him. My inner goddess rejoices at the prospect of getting out of the office for a while. My inner wallflower cringes. My inner Cocker Spaniel perks up at the word “fetch” but is immediately distracted by my inner squirrel.

—

Samsa’s parents are in their living room, pounding on his bedroom door. They tell me he’s sick and hasn’t left his room all morning. I explain, loudly, that his job is at stake. The door opens, revealing the most extraordinary man I’ve ever seen.

Gregor leans casually against the doorframe. He’s wearing a coat made of some kind of rigid material. I’d say it was buttoned up, but it has no visible buttons or other fasteners. It’s decorated with an assortment of long, thin appendages that seem to move of their own accord. The overall effect is striking. And then there are his eyes. They’re breathtaking: big and dark and multifaceted, they give the impression that he sees things the rest of us can’t even imagine.

He looks at me with those amazing gorgeous compound eyes. I gaze back at him and wonder whether he can tell that I’m a virgin. My inner HR representative glares at me, walks over to my inner file cabinet, and opens the drawer marked “Harassment Prevention Training Materials.” I pull myself together.

“Greg Samsa? I’m Callie Optera, from the office. I’ve been asked to make sure you get to your meeting on time. But I guess you’re already on your way? Because I see you’re wearing your coat.”

I can’t understand a word of his response. He has a very thick accent. Suddenly, I’m flustered. My face turns 50 shades of red.

As I start to leave, I notice his parents huddled at the far corner of the living room, staring at us, looking horrified. Calling him Greg may have been a little presumptuous, but this seems like an overreaction.

—

I think about Greg’s accent. It’s odd that he has one and his parents don’t. But then, he doesn’t really look like them either. Maybe he’s adopted.

—

The meeting starts. Greg isn’t here. Everyone looks at me. My face turns 50 shades of crimson. I text him. No response.

—

My inner virgin reminds me that it’s been a while since I mentioned I’m a virgin.

—

I pound on Greg’s apartment door – I should ring the bell, but I’m too angry for that. His mom lets me in just in time to see a girl come out of his bedroom. I feel a flash of jealousy, but it turns out she’s just his sister. My face turns 50 shades of beet red – you know, the colors you see in beets that have been roasted in the oven, not those awful canned beets.

I step into his room. It’s empty. I stand there for a moment, confused, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I see a hint of motion under the bed. Suddenly, it all makes sense. I speak to him, softly: “Oh, Greg, it’ll be all right. Lots of people suffer from depression, or agoraphobia, or whatever this is. We’ll work through it together.” I’ve read enough romance novels to know that pure selfless love can heal even the most tortured soul.

On my way out, I pass Greg’s parents and sister. I ask them how long he’s had this problem and whether he’s ever sought help for it. They tell me he’s been perfectly fine his whole life and that this transformation happened literally overnight. I feel sorry for them – some people just can’t see the truth, even when it’s staring them in the face.

—

Everyone at work thinks Greg has the flu. I visit him every evening. I turn out the lights and sit on the floor. He crawls out from under the bed and sits next to me, silently, as I tell him about my day. He’s a really good listener.

—

I sit quietly on the floor in the dark. Greg reaches out and touches my hand. Something stirs inside me, like autumn leaves rustling in the wind. My face turns the colors corresponding to the RGB encodings (206, 0, 0) through (255, 0, 0), inclusive.

He begins to massage my shoulders. And my upper back. And my lower back. Simultaneously. How is this possible? I think about asking him, but I don’t want to ruin the moment. My feelings are more intense now, like leaves being thrown around by a leaf-blower at full blast.

Greg touches me in ways I’ve never been touched before. He runs his mandibles playfully across my left shoulder. He strokes my face gently with his antennae. Greg has mandibles, says my inner Greek chorus, and antennae. I don’t care. Inwardly, I feel like a pile of leaves caught in the chaotic turbulence of leaf-blowers aimed in opposite directions by a pair of hostile neighbors, each trying to blow his own leaves into the other’s yard. The feeling grows even stronger as Greg makes his way towards more intimate areas. When he reaches my special lady place, I shatter into a million pieces, like a pumpkin frozen in liquid nitrogen and dropped from the roof of a tall building on Halloween.

—

Greg’s parents glare at me as I leave. I wonder whether they can tell I’m not a virgin. My face turns 50 shades of scarlet. My inner dermatologist prescribes a cream for my rosacea.

Update, of sorts: there’s a hilarious recap of Fifty Shades of Grey over at Speaker7.

Probably Not Covered Under Warranty

~ Laura ~ 30 Comments

I love my Kindle. The display is easy to read. The case has a built-in light. And the power cord is, apparently, delicious.

It’s an e-reader and a chew toy.

My cat managed to do this last night without electrocuting himself. I need to remember to specify “no catnip, please” when buying electronics.

If you’re reading this on the 4th of July, why not check out my July 4th holiday post from last year?

Sparkle

~ Laura ~ 35 Comments

I found my true calling in life at the 13th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2004.

I consider most work-related travel a chore, but this trip was different. The conference was the final event of a high-profile project I’d been immersed in for years. It was an opportunity to show off some work I was truly proud of. And it was three blocks away from the Five Senses Bakery, home of the Chocolate Sparkle Cookie.

Chocolate sparkle cookies
See? They actually do kind of sparkle.

I first encountered the Chocolate Sparkle Cookie in 2002, when I saw an unusual recipe in the Los Angeles Times. I decided to try it. The first bite of the first cookie of the first batch changed my life forever.

If you’ve ever had a Chocolate Sparkle Cookie, you know what I’m talking about. If not – well, I’ll try to explain. I was once like you. I thought I knew how good a cookie could be. I was wrong. The Chocolate Sparkle Cookie was better than that. It was impossibly good. It was rich and soft and chocolaty. If chocolate intensity were measured on a scale of 1 to 10, this cookie’s intensity would be infinity. If cookies were cars, the Chocolate Sparkle Cookie would be the DeLorean from Back to the Future. If cookies were amphibians, the Chocolate Sparkle Cookie would be the kind of frog that grants wishes.

The LA Times credited the recipe to the Five Senses Bakery. I vowed that I would go there one day. Two years later, I was sent to a conference three blocks away. It was fate.

I landed in Vancouver late on a Saturday night. The Canadian immigration officer seemed unusually suspicious. He kept asking about the reason for my trip. I told him I was attending an earthquake engineering conference. I didn’t say that this was my pilgrimage to the birthplace of the Chocolate Sparkle Cookie. I think he could tell I was hiding something.

Sunday morning, I walked to the Five Senses Bakery – and discovered it was closed on Sundays. I was depressed. I went back at the crack of dawn on Monday – and found that it was closed for “British Columbia Day.” I’d never even heard of this holiday. I was despondent. I went to bed early Monday night. Outside my window, I heard fireworks. It was like they were mocking me, celebrating a holiday that separated me from the one thing I loved more than anything else in the world. I fell into deep despair.

I managed to drag myself out of bed and to the bakery Tuesday morning. It was open! My heart filled with joy. I handed my empty backpack to the woman behind the counter and asked her to fill it with Chocolate Sparkle Cookies. I wound up with three dozen, which was all they had.

I practically inhaled the first cookie. I took my time with the second. It had the same intense chocolate flavor as the ones I made at home, but the texture was a little smoother, a little more melt-in-your-mouth. The recipe calls for ground almonds in place of flour; the bakery must have ground their almonds more finely than mine. Or maybe they used magic fairy dust instead.

I shared the rest of the cookies with my colleagues back at the conference. As I looked at each person’s face as they took that first bite, I realized that introducing people to these cookies was the most rewarding thing I’d ever done. That’s when it hit me: I was born to be a choco-vangelist.

So please, try these cookies. Don’t worry. I won’t judge you. I’m not some crazy cookie fundamentalist. I accept the fact that some people don’t appreciate the Cookie. I don’t hate these people; I pity them. My niece likes my sister’s black-bottom cupcakes better than the Cookie. Can you believe that? I admit, those cupcakes are really good – they’re responsible for at least six of the eight pounds I gained over Thanksgiving – but they don’t compare to the Cookie. Cookie-impaired people like my niece deserve our tolerance.

But tolerance has its limits. Some people refuse to even try the Cookie. Like my ex-friend Steve, who made some lame excuse about the almonds triggering his severe nut allergy. How is this a problem? He carries an epi-pen and lives five minutes away from a hospital. A near-death experience is a small price to pay for the bliss of the Cookie.

Sorry, I seem to have gone off on a tangent. To answer your question: yes, 7:15 is a little early, and I apologize for waking you. But I work during the week, and Sunday mornings are the only time I’m free to go door-to-door, so I like to get an early start.

So please, try a Chocolate Sparkle Cookie. It’ll change your life.

Chocolate Sparkle Cookies were created by Thomas Haas at the Sen5es Bakery in Vancouver. They and he have since moved to Thomas Haas Chocolates & Patisserie. The recipe can be found here — I follow it exactly as written except that I don’t sprinkle it with powdered sugar at the end.

An Open Letter to The Infinite Monkey Cage

~ Laura ~ 21 Comments
Not a self-portrait. See end of post for all image credits.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, and The Infinite Monkey Cage is one of my favorites. Driving to and from work is a little less unbearable when your show is on. On behalf of everyone who’s alive today because your blend of science and humor prevented me from dozing off and crashing into them: thank you.

A monkey in an infiniteyly tall cylindrical cage.
No monkeys were harmed in the making of this picture.

I was, however, disappointed by your response to ongoing criticism that your program’s title promotes inhumane monkey husbandry practices. Your assertion that an infinite monkey cage would be “roomy” is misleading at best. An infinite cage might be roomy, or it might not. An infinitely tall cylindrical cage would feel pretty cramped if it were only as wide as the monkey inside it. The monkey’s movements would be limited to climbing and spinning. While monkeys are avid climbers, I believe most would find such an environment claustrophobic.

A monkey in a cage that extends infinitely in two dimensions but not the third, ignoring a banana.
Never underestimate the importance of the cage-height-to-monkey-height ratio.

You might think that an infinitely long, infinitely wide cage would have to be better. It wouldn’t. It all depends on the cage-height-to-monkey-height ratio. A nine-inch-long Geoffroy’s tamarin, for example, wouldn’t be happy in an 8.75” high cage. He’d have more freedom to travel, but he’d be forced to maintain an unnaturally stooped posture, leading inevitably to back, neck, and/or hip pain. A veterinarian wouldn’t be able to squeeze into the cage to treat him; your only recourse would be to toss in some ibuprofen-laced bananas and hope for the best. The prognosis would be bleak: monkeys almost never comply with this treatment plan, because ibuprofen-laced bananas taste terrible.

A lonely monkey against a white background.
Solitary simian seems so sad.

A cage that extends infinitely far in all three dimensions would be roomy – but a solitary monkey in such a cage would be lonely. Monkeys are social animals and can’t handle that kind of isolation, even if you give them iPads and show them how to use Facebook. The obvious solution would be to add an infinite number of monkeys for company, but you’d need to get the density right. If each monkey were a thousand miles from its nearest neighbor, you’d wind up with a desolate cage populated by infinitely many melancholy monkeys. On the other hand, if they were packed in too tightly, the monkeys would begin to get on each other’s nerves. They’d gossip and call each other names, and soon you’d have an all-out infinite monkey brawl on your hands.

An infinite number of monkeys packed closely together.
Massed monkeys: mob mentality, madness, maybe mayhem.

Maybe you should start with a finite number of monkeys. That’s all you’d be able to afford anyway, after blowing your budget on cage construction and amenities like gravity, air, and monkey food. If you put a bunch of monkeys in a cage that extends infinitely in all dimensions, then in theory they’d be able to spread out to a comfortable density. But be careful – monkeys can travel only so fast, so if you put too many monkeys too close together, the ones in the center will die of old age before they ever get to experience roominess.

A monkey contemplating a Klein bottle.
9 out of 10 monkeys surveyed preferred The Sustainable Monkey Habitat

I don’t mean to lecture you. I’m just concerned that some of your more impressionable listeners might take your remarks at face value and wind up constructing poorly-designed, inhumane monkey cages. Perhaps you should consider changing the name of your show to something more socially responsible, like The Sustainable Monkey Habitat.

Image credits: Typing monkey from WikiMedia; spider monkey from Tancread’s flickr stream; sideways-looking monkey from epSos.de’s flickr stream; banana from Wikipedia; delighted mandrill from Chris Arneil’s flickr stream; Klein bottle from Acme Klein Bottle.

Update: A finite number of monkeys respond to this letter in the last few minutes of the July 2 episode (“Does Size Matter?“).

I’m Beginning to Think You’re Smarter Than I Am

~ Laura ~ 22 Comments

I go into the salon and tell them I have an appointment with Melanie. They say Melanie’s not here, but don’t worry, we have a guy named Roy who takes care of all our walk-ins. And I say fine, whatever, but then it turns out Roy isn’t there either. He should be back in 15 minutes. I go out to get some coffee.

When I get back, everyone is looking at me strangely. More accurately, everyone is going to great lengths to avoid looking at me. I try to figure out what’s changed in the 15 minutes I’ve been gone. I realize I’m completely naked.

You’ve figured out that this is a dream, haven’t you? Well, I haven’t. I’m still standing there, naked, in the salon, thinking this is all really happening. I should know better. Once, I noticed that the interior and exterior of my car were different styles and knew I was in a dream. But sudden unexplained public nudity (or even killing someone for no particular reason) isn’t a big enough hint.

I’m horribly embarrassed. Luckily, I have a suitcase with me. The clothes are at the very bottom, and I have to dig through all the battery chargers, coffee mugs, and egg beaters before I find something to wear.

More clues that this is a dream:

  • I don’t normally pack an egg beater in my suitcase. Maybe this dream is trying to tell me I should.
  • In the real world, I probably would have grabbed one of those smocks they always have in hair salons. But this wasn’t the real world. It was more like the kind of dystopian alternate universe you sometimes see in movies, where everything seems like it’s exactly the same as in our world, but then it turns out that in this horrifying version of reality, the idea of putting on a smock before getting your hair cut never really caught on.
  • My clothes had disappeared some time in the last 15 minutes. I had no memory of this. Wouldn’t you find that kind of alarming? I didn’t. I wasn’t even vaguely curious about what had happened.

Eventually, I get dressed. Roy still hasn’t appeared. But my friend Steve is there. He’s a software developer who works as a stylist on the weekends. He agrees to do my hair. Right after he starts, Roy shows up. He’s mad. Roy and Steve argue like a couple of used-car salesmen fighting over a particularly gullible customer. Roy wins. He takes over. He’s a little gruff. I begin to regret not confirming my appointment with Melanie before coming in.

In the end, my hair looks terrible. I usually get highlights, but now my hair is all exactly the same color, a sort of shoe-polish brown. “Shoe-polish” also describes the texture — instead of moving freely, my hair is arranged in random sticky clumps. I don’t say anything to Roy, though, because this is the kind of dystopian dream world in which you don’t get to see your hair until after you’ve left the salon and gone home.

I had this dream last Monday. I had a real hair appointment yesterday. It went much better than the one in the dream.

Driven to Distraction

~ Laura ~ 33 Comments

My daily commute is an hour of excruciating boredom punctuated by the occasional near-death experience. While I’m driving, I listen to NPR. This week, NPR’s hot topic was lard. Lard was the victim of a smear campaign by Procter & Gamble and Upton Sinclair. Lard is making a comeback. Lard makes pie crusts tender and flaky. After a week of this, lard makes me want to drive my car into a telephone pole.

Today I’m driving to a meeting across town. They’ve reserved a parking space for me – Space #7 on Level 2. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. Each Level 2 parking space is about six inches wider than my car. On my way to Space #7, I gaze longingly at Space #4. Space #4 is empty, as are Space #3 to its left and Space #5 to its right. I fantasize about parking in Space #4, but I’ve been warned that the penalty for parking in the wrong space is severe. It’s so severe that no one will say exactly what it is. I’m pretty sure it involves public flogging. Or maybe the parking reservation lady glares at you. Either way, I don’t want to risk it. I pull into space #7 and climb out through the hatchback. I’m glad I didn’t wear a skirt today.

Delorean with its doors open
I need doors like these. Image via Wikipedia.

I need to find out whether my boss will reimburse me if I rent a DeLorean for the next meeting. DeLorean doors open straight up. I could pop the door up, climb onto the roof of the car in Space #6, close the DeLorean door, jump off the roof, and be on my merry way. After the meeting, I could reverse the process: hop onto the roof of the car in Space #6, lift the DeLorean door, climb in, pull the door closed, and drive off. A similar strategy might work with any car that has a sunroof, assuming you can open a sunroof from outside. I should find out how sunroofs work.

After my meeting, the car in space #8 has left. I’m able to get into my car through the passenger door. I’m almost home free. There’s one car ahead of me at the exit gate. I turn on the radio. Soaking the chicken in buttermilk before frying makes it tender and juicy. The driver in front of me puts his ticket into the ticket machine. He rolls up his window. The smoke point of lard is 361 degrees. He rolls down his window and puts something into the ticket machine. He stares at the ticket machine. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. It’s not complicated. You put your ticket into the ticket machine. You put your validation stub into the ticket machine. If you don’t have a validation stub, you put your credit card into the ticket machine. If you have a validation stub, but it doesn’t cover the entire time you were parked, you put your ticket in first, then your validation stub, and then your credit card. If you don’t have a credit card, you can buy a pre-paid parking voucher from the vending machine on the – okay, maybe it is a little complicated. I back up one and a half car lengths. Fry the chicken pieces until they’ve turned a nice golden brown. He looks back at me. He looks at the ticket machine again. I don’t know what he expects to see this time. A fried chicken dinner wouldn’t be complete without biscuits. He looks at me again. Lard makes biscuits tender and flaky. He backs out, giving me a clear path to the gate. I smile and wave, pretending I’m not going to spend the entire drive home fantasizing about bludgeoning him to death with a chicken drumstick, or possibly pushing him into a huge vat of boiling lard.

Note: that last sentence may have been a little ambiguous. I meant I might spend the drive home fantasizing about pushing him into a huge fat of boiling lard, not actually doing it. Trying to push someone into a vat of boiling lard while driving would be dangerous and impractical. Also, while this story is mostly true-ish, I’ve never had to climb into or out of my car through the hatchback.

The Eagle Has Landed

~ Laura ~ 16 Comments

I’ve just finished moving this blog to a different server, and I realized too late that I’d neglected to take one important step: choosing a catchphrase that I could use to indicate that the move had been completed. Here are some I’ve been considering:

The eagle has landed.
The car has parked.
The bicycle is balanced precariously.
The top is spinning, but it looks kind of unstable.
I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up.

Please let me know if you see anything wrong or weird with the site. And if your previous subscription method stopped working (e.g., if you were using the WordPress Reader, or if you were getting mail before but aren’t now), you can use the RSS links or the email subscription form over on the right side of the page.

Moving Day!

~ Laura ~ 4 Comments

This blog will be moving to a different server this weekend. By Monday morning (in any time zone), the move should be done, and if you’re still subscribed at that point you should see a new post in your email or RSS reader or whatever. If you don’t, and you want to be subscribed, drop me a line at laurasbadideas@gmail.com or just go to http://unlikelyexplanations.com after the move and subscribe there. You’ll know the move has happened because there will be a post saying it has.

That was really boring. I apologize. Please accept this video of Maru playing with a Q-Tip (or, if you prefer, this one of a dog being a dog) as a token of my apology.

How to Survive a Solar Eclipse

~ Laura ~ 44 Comments

Here are a few last-minute tips for anyone planning to view today’s eclipse:

1. Don’t stare directly at the Sun. Staring is rude. The Sun has been around for billions of years, and without it, none of us would be here. Show a little respect.

2. Don’t look at the Sun through sunglasses. The Sun receives no compensation from the sunglass industry for the use of its name. The Sun believes this is unfair. The Sun filed a lawsuit. The Sun lost. The Sun is still bitter. A pair of sunglasses pointed at the Sun is like a slap in the Sun’s face.

3. Don’t look at the Sun through those 3-d glasses you got when you saw Avatar a couple years ago. 3-d glasses make two-dimensional images appear three-dimensional. The Sun is already three-dimensional. Who knows how many dimensions it would appear to be if you looked at it through 3-d glasses? I’m guessing four, four and a half, or nine. That’s too many for your tiny human brain to process. It would explode, the way computers always did on the original Star Trek TV series whenever anyone asked them to solve simple logic puzzles.

4. Consider using binoculars to project an image of the Sun onto the ground. But don’t look through the binoculars at the Sun. Also, don’t look through the binoculars into your neighbors’ windows; if your neighbors are anything like mine, this makes them inexplicably testy.

5. Consider using a pin and a large cardboard box to make a pinhole projector. But – and I cannot stress the importance of this enough – remember to use the pin to poke a hole in the box, not in your eye.

6. Consider using your fingers as a pinhole projector. Hold your hands so that your fingers overlap at right angles and the spaces between them form pinholes. But resist the temptation to make shadow figures with your fingers. You’ll get distracted and miss the whole eclipse.

I hope this helps make today’s eclipse a safe and enjoyable experience. If you have any favorite eclipse-viewing tips of your own, please leave them in the comments.

My Cats Probably Don’t Have the Disease From the Movie “Contagion”

~ Laura ~ 44 Comments

Unlikely Explanations is moving to a new server, and you may need to resubscribe if you want to continue being notified of new posts after the move. See this page for details.

This morning I found blood spatter stains on my bed. It wasn’t a huge amount – I was able to eliminate “maybe someone stabbed me while I was asleep” and “maybe I accidentally stabbed someone in my sleep” as theories right away. It was a collection of small drops that looked like the pattern a cat’s sneeze might make if a cat’s sneeze were made of blood, right in the spot where my cats like to sleep.

Spatter pattern from an apparent bloody cat sneeze
This week on CSI: Feline

I did what any rational person would do – I panicked. One of my cats was sneezing blood. I’m pretty sure that’s the first symptom of the disease from the movie Contagion. I knew exactly how the conversation with the vet would go:

“We’ll have to run some more tests, but it looks like your cat has the disease from the movie Contagion.”
“But… that was fiction.”
“That’s right. There’s no easy way to tell you this, but you and your cats are fictional characters.”
“Is it serious?”
“That depends on the genre. Based on your symptoms, the most likely candidates are Medical Thriller or Romantic Comedy. Can you think of anything in your recent history that might point to one or the other?”
“A guy made eye contact with me while I was being adorably clumsy in Whole Foods the other day.”
“This may be a romantic comedy. If so, you and the cats are fine, and the stain is from some red wine you spilled last night while watching an old black and white movie on TV.”
“But I wasn’t drinking wine last night. And I don’t have a TV in my bedroom.”
“Oh. Then you should probably focus on getting your affairs in order.”

I prepared for the appointment the way anyone would: I took a picture of the blood spatter on my phone to show to the vet, then I decided the phone display was too small, so I emailed the picture to myself and printed it out, but then I noticed that the color balance was off, so I took more pictures with my “good” camera, uploaded them to my laptop, and printed them. The vet appointment wasn’t quite as bad as I’d imagined, but in the end, she said the words I’d been dreading: “Give each cat one of these pills twice a day for a week.”

Wish me luck. I’ll need it.

The vet thinks Holly may have a sinus infection, but she’s not sure. We should get some lab results tomorrow.