Toxoplasmosis or Super PAC? How to Tell Them Apart

~ Laura ~ 26 Comments
Fruit is good for you, but not after you drop it in your cat's litter box. (Image courtesy of the CDC

Have you found yourself acting contrary to your own self-interest lately? Do you ever get the feeling that some external force is exerting undue influence on your behavior? Well, you may be right. Scientists have theorized that infection by Toxoplasma Gondii, a parasite found in raw meat and cat feces (yum!) might affect human behavior. And it’s an election year in the US, so if you live here, you’re probably being bombarded by political advertisements created by Super PACs, a particularly hardy strain of political action committee. This simple comparison chart will help you figure out which one you’re dealing with:

T. Gondii Super PAC
A type of protozoa discovered independently in 1908 by scientists in Tunis and Brazil. A type of political action committee created in 2010 by the US Supreme court.
Forms unhealthy relationships with cats. Forms unhealthy relationships with political candidates.
Cats are unaware of the presence of T. Gondii and have little or no control over the parasite’s behavior. Candidates are aware of the presence of Super PACs and communicate with them via the media; however, they’re not allowed to “coordinate” with them.
Also infects humans, influencing them to behave in ways that benefit cats and, ultimately, T. Gondii. Influences humans to behave in ways that benefit  specific candidates and, ultimately, the Super PAC.
Also infects mice, causing them to behave in ways that make them easy prey for cats. Has no known effect on mice.
Millions of T. Gondii protozoa create cysts within the human body.* Millions of Super PAC dollars create commercials transmitted to television sets within the human home.
T. Gondii protozoa are difficult to see. Super PAC donors are often difficult to identify.
Makes you love cats. Makes you hate people.

It’s important to remember that most cats are not infected with T. Gondii and that infected cats are innocent victims. Also, cats are adorable. Don’t you just love cats?

*I actually have no idea how many T. Gondii it takes to cause an infection.

How to Destroy America (Step 1: Dig Up Marilyn Monroe)

~ Laura ~ 30 Comments
Be careful what you post on your Tweeter website account.

A British/Irish couple, Emily Bunting and Leigh Van Bryan, were denied entry to the United States recently because, according to the official DHS paperwork, “Mr. BRYAN confirmed that he had posted on his Tweeter website account that he was coming to the United States to dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe. Also on his tweeter account Mr. BRYAN posted that he was coming to destroy America”. Naturally, this raises a number of questions, such as:

1. Seriously?

2. Where can I get one of these Tweeter website accounts? And why isn’t “Tweeter” capitalized consistently?

3. Is it just me, or does it look like DHS kicked them out because of the plot to dig up Marilyn Monroe and only mentioned the part about destroying America as an afterthought? Does that seem backwards to anyone else?

But the most pressing question is: how are these two actions — destroying America and digging up Marilyn Monroe — related? The way I see it, there are four possibilities:

1. Destroying America is one step in the plan to dig up Marilyn Monroe (I think this is pretty unlikely, actually, because it’s just so incredibly inefficient).

2. Digging up Marilyn Monroe is one step in the plan to destroy America. At first I thought this sounded ridiculous, but then I realized I was totally ignoring the possibility that there may be some sort of America-destroying weapon buried under Marilyn, and they have to dig her up to get to it.

3. The couple came here primarily to destroy America; however, they realize that this is their last chance to fulfill their lifelong dream of digging up Marilyn Monroe, because once America is destroyed, her grave will be inaccessible.

4. He wants to destroy America; she wants to dig up Marilyn Monroe. Who can reach their goal first? Find out on the new reality TV series Felony Challenge.

Customer Review: The Acme EZ-Jump Personal Teleportation Device

~ Laura ~ 35 Comments

My drive to work is 32 miles each way and involves practically every freeway in the greater Los Angeles area. That wouldn’t be so bad if it lots of other people didn’t also drive on those freeways — but they do. I hate my commute, so when Amazon.com suggested I might be interested in the Acme EZ-Jump Personal Teleportation Device, I ordered it right away.

This bumper sticker is one of many available accessories.

It arrived three days later via UPS (which seems like an odd way to ship a teleportation device, but whatever). The box contained the base unit (a plexiglass booth approximately the size of a refrigerator) and an instruction manual. The manual is 47 pages long: 3 pages of legal disclaimers in tiny print, 1 page of technical specifications, 37 pages of safety warnings in large print, 2 pages of operating instructions, a 1-page list of authorized service centers, and 3 pages of ads for EZ-Jump accessories (my favorites are the “Honk if you didn’t see me on the road today because I teleported” t-shirt and the “My other car is a teleportation device” bumper sticker). I skipped over most of the tech specs and safety warnings, which in retrospect may have been a mistake.

In theory, the initial setup is pretty simple: just move the base unit to an out-of-the-way corner, plug it into the wall, download the EZ-Jump app to your phone, then register with their online service, MyEZJump. But the base unit is unwieldy and difficult to move, and it turns out that the app is only available for iPhones and for Android versions 4.0 and later. My phone runs Android 3.2.2 and doesn’t support 4.0 yet, but I was eventually able to find a compatible, unofficial, user-contributed version on the Android app market.

The EZ-Jump’s maximum range is 50 miles; you can only teleport within a 50-mile radius of your base unit. Once you’ve set up the device, you can use the phone app to teleport from anywhere (within range) to your base unit; you can also teleport from your base unit to locations (within range) that are registered with MyEzJump. You can use the phone app to find publicly registered locations, although at this point, there aren’t many of them. Most are repair centers (and, really, what are the odds that you’d need a repair and still be able to teleport to the repair center?), and there aren’t any within range of my house. Fortunately, you can also register your own locations.

My next step was to register my office as a location. I drove to work, hit the “register this location” button on the app, and then drove home at the end of the day. The next morning, I left the car at home and teleported to work. Easy-peasy. Or so I thought. When I tried to teleport home, nothing happened. It turns out that the initial trip had overloaded an electrical circuit, which cut power to both the EZ-Jump and to my Crock-pot, ruining the stew I’d left simmering for dinner that night.

I upgraded my home electrical wiring, and it’s been mostly smooth sailing since then. The biggest adjustment for me has been that I can’t really run errands “on the way home” any more. Well, that and the thing with my left hand — the retractable claws are cool, but if I had it all to do over again, I probably wouldn’t teleport on Bring Your Cat To Work Day.

Another Reason Why You Can’t Take Me Anywhere: Dim Sum Broccoli

~ Laura ~ 29 Comments
So beautiful. So delicious. So slippery.

I have a love-hate relationship with dim sum broccoli. It’s sauteed, but not too much, so it’s crunchy and sweet, crisp and fresh. It looks gorgeous, sitting there on the plate, a vibrant, shiny green that almost shimmers in the light. And I love the idea of it — I can tell myself that yes, I just ate three days’ worth of calories and five days’ worth of sodium and fat, but I also had some broccoli, so it all balances out.

There’s only one problem: I am unable to eat this dish and maintain any semblance of dignity. That gorgeous sheen is really a thin layer of oil that, combined with the smooth texture of the stalks, creates a slippery surface that makes them difficult to pick up with chopsticks. But I manage, and then I’m faced with a new challenge: taking that first bite. But from where? On one end, there’s a single, solid stalk, which branches out into three or so thinner, leafy stalks. The leafy end seems like the natural place to start, but the leafy stalks fan out just enough to make it difficult to take a bite of all of them at once, but not enough to allow me to take a bite of one without having the others hit my cheeks. And the leafy stalks are sometimes a little stringy and difficult to bite through cleanly. So that leaves the solid end. Taking a bite of that is easy enough, but it causes the leafy stalks to wave back and forth in front of my face like the arms of an overly-eager schoolgirl trying to attract the teacher’s attention.

Know your vegetables! Broccoli and rapini images via Wikipedia.

I wouldn’t have this problem (and, to be fair, it wouldn’t taste as good) if I were actually eating broccoli. Broccoli stalks are thick enough that they’d have to be sliced and not served whole. But instead, they use some other vegetable that’s more like broccoli rabe, which always sounds like it should be a character in a western (“There’s a new sheriff in town. They call him Broccoli Rob”) or maybe a crime story (“Robert ‘Broccoli Rob’ Tortellini stared across the table at Vinnie ‘Soft Serve’ Zamboni. By the end of the night, their two families would be embroiled in a war that would last for decades”). I keep hoping that someday, a real Broccoli Rob will emerge and teach me and others like me how to eat this stuff.

Everyone’s a Critic

~ Laura ~ 40 Comments

In an effort to keep my New Year’s resolution to learn to draw, I’ve done a few practice drawings in the last week or so — and because I’m too lazy to put them away, I’ve been leaving them sitting out around the house. This morning, I woke up to discover that my cats had apparently studied my work during the night and decided to make a few enhancements. I’m not being entirely objective here, and I know they meant well, but still — I don’t really think the cat vomit was an improvement.

Artist's rendering. In real life, my cats look more like cats.

An Open Letter to the Nice Couple Who Didn’t Have Me Arrested When I Broke Into Their House

~ Laura ~ 46 Comments

Hi,

Remember me? I’m sorry to bother you again, but I just wanted to thank you for not calling the cops or shooting me or anything. I’d also like to explain how it all happened, and why it wasn’t my fault, really.

This is not a photograph.

It all started when I got an invitation to a housewarming party. I couldn’t decide whether  to bring a present — the invitation said “no gifts”, but that doesn’t really mean anything — and if so, what to bring. How are you supposed to pick out a house-oriented gift when you’ve never been to the house before? I hate this custom. I eventually decided to bring a bottle of wine, mostly because of its ambiguity — I could just say “here’s a bottle of wine”, and leave it to others to decide whether it was a housewarming gift or just a bottle of wine I brought to a party. And I probably wouldn’t even have to say that, because most of my friends have encountered bottles of wine before and recognize them when they see them.

I don’t know about you, but for me, there’s only a certain amount of mental energy I’m willing to spend preparing to go to someone else’s party. By the time I’d finished pondering the gift question and actually selecting a bottle of wine, my pre-party mental energy budget was almost depleted, so I decided to leave the navigation to my car’s GPS system. I knew I was taking a risk — my GPS hates me — but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

You know what happened next. I just want to say the following in my defense:

  • My friends live at 1200 Big Street*, and my GPS directed me to the corner of Big Street and Side Street.
  • The house on that corner — your house — has a big 1200 over the front door.
  • The housewarming invitation included a request not to wear shoes inside the house. There was a big pile of shoes on your doorstep.
  • Your front door was open.

So of course I walked up to the  door (okay, your  door), took my shoes off, and went inside. The first thing I noticed was that there were only two people in the living room, and that they were people I didn’t know, but that didn’t seem too unusual — everyone else was probably in the back yard, or the kitchen, or getting a tour of the house, or something. So when I asked “is this Bill and Kathy’s housewarming?”, it was really a rhetorical question. You were supposed to say yes, introduce yourselves, and tell me everyone else was out back. When you deviated from the script and said “no”, I thought you were kidding. What else would I think? That I’d wandered into the wrong house? A house that just happened to have the same house number, an open door, and a pile of shoes? At the exact spot that my GPS led me to? What are the odds of that? I think I took a couple more steps into the room (okay, your living room) before I stopped and said “really?”.

Thank you for giving me directions to my friends’ actual house. And thank you for believing me. It’s heartwarming to know that there are people out there who are so trusting — although, when I walked past your house on the way back to my car after the party, I couldn’t help but notice that you’d closed your door.

*Names and addresses have been changed, on the theory that it might not be the best idea to post “here’s the address of some people who don’t mind if their house gets broken into”.

Lessons Learned From Last Year’s Search Terms

~ Laura ~ 23 Comments

If this year’s search terms have taught me anything, it’s that the world needs a quality robot mouse cat toy — preferably something better than the Squeaker 3000 Robotic Toy Mouse.

I also learned that the problem of getting locked in the bathroom because the door is blocked by an open drawer is much more widespread than I’d previously imagined. I posted about my experiences with this last summer, and while I did manage to get out alive, I suspect that most people won’t be able to use my escape technique. So please, everyone, take these simple precautions:

  • Before entering the bathroom, make sure there are no precariously-balanced partially-open drawers adjacent to your outwards-opening bathroom door.
  • If you have children or pets, install child-proof drawer locks on any drawer adjacent to the bathroom door.
  • Assemble a simple locked-in-the-bathroom survival kit with 3 days’ worth of food, a spare cell phone, a cell phone charger, a change of clothes, some reading material, a jigsaw puzzle, and a jigsaw. Store this in your bathroom, just in case.

People seem to need a lot of help finding the Roman numerals for future Super Bowl games. My Super Bowl guide didn’t include that information, so I’m providing step-by-step instructions here. It’s really simple.

First, figure out the number. Super Bowl XLV was played in 2011. XLV is the Roman numeral for 45, and the numbers increase by 1 each year, so obviously you can find the number for any future Super Bowl by calculating sqrt{year^2 - (3932 * year) + 3865156}. For example, to find the number for this year’s Super Bowl, start with 2012 squared (4048144), then multiply 3932 times 2012 (7911184) and subtract the second number from the first. That gives you a negative number (-3863040), to which you add 3865156, which brings you back up to 2116. Then just calculate the square root of that number, which is 46. Similarly, next year’s Super Bowl number is sqrt{2013^2 - (3932 * 2013) + 3865156}, or 47.

If you have trouble remembering the formula, just use this simple mnemonic: Sally Told You That She Tasted Part Of The Yellow Apple, 3932 Truffles, And 3865156 Anchovies Today — Then She Regurgitated, which makes it easy to remember to Square The Year, Then Subtract The Product Of The Year And 3932, Then Add 3865156 And Take The Square Root. Or I guess you could just add 1 to the previous year’s number, or maybe subtract 1966 from the year. Whatever.

Once you have the number, you just need to convert it into Roman numerals. That’s also pretty simple, as long as you remember the symbols for each number:

1 I
3-ish π
5 V
10 X
42 DONTPANIC
50 L
100 C

Based on what they’re searching for, many people seem to want to be reassured that they have nothing to fear but fear itself. Those people are wrong. They should also fear zombies.

I wrote a post last year inspired by the search term MY SON KEEPS SEEING BEES BUT THERE IS NO BEES. Since then, I’ve been getting a lot of searches from people who seem to be concerned about loved ones hallucinating bees and other kinds of insects. I also get lots of searches from people who see flies in the house all of a sudden. Sometimes I wonder how often I get both kinds of search from the same household.

In the unlikely event that you’d want to read even more about search terms, you could check out my open letter to anyone who was directed here by a search engine, which is a year old today (although it has been updated a few times).

Only 330 more days until Sugar Plum Awareness Month! Sugar Plum fact of the day: a sugar plum dropped from the roof of the Empire State Building would hit the ground in approximately 9 seconds.

My New Year’s Resolution: In 2012, I Will Humiliate Myself Publicly On This Blog

~ Laura ~ 33 Comments
What passes for an illustration on this blog today.

I love reading illustrated blogs — blogs with cartoons, watercolors, or even doodles. But although some of my posts have included photos, graphs, and even a few images I’ve cobbled together with Photoshop, I’ve never posted any original drawings. The reason for that is simple: I can’t draw. At all. Which leads me to my first resolutions:

Resolution #1: I will attempt to learn how create some kind of original freehand illustration that won’t make me cringe with embarrassment. (Any suggestions on how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated).

Resolution #2: I will post some of my attempts on this blog, even though I don’t really expect to achieve the “won’t make me cringe with embarrassment” part of Resolution #1.

Also, because of recent events:

Resolution #3: I will not buy any flashlights in 2012.

Resolution #4: I will acquire some matches.

And finally:

Resolution #5: I will make Sugar Plum Awareness Month a reality in 2012. Sugar plum fact of the day: sugar plums are the most popular of all the flavored plum confections, outshining vinegar plums, anchovy plums, and even wasabi plums.

Happy New Year!

December is Sugar Plum Awareness Month

~ Laura ~ 21 Comments

It was brought to my attention this week that many people have no idea what a sugar plum is. In an attempt to combat the global problem of sugar plum ignorance, I hereby declare December to be Sugar Plum Awareness Month.

Q: You’re making this announcement on December 29th? Wouldn’t it make more sense to choose a different month?

A: I chose December because it’s the month in which the sugar plum awareness theme song is heard most frequently. The timing of this announcement is less than ideal, but I think we can make it work — there are still a couple days left this December, and next December should last at least 21 days.

Q: Have you ever seen a sugar plum?

A: No.

Q: Do you know anyone who’s ever seen one?

A: Not to my knowledge, no.

Q: How do you know they exist?

A: Wikipedia has an article about them.

Q: Wikipedia also has an article about Santa Claus. Does that mean he exists?

A: Sugar Plum Awareness Month is a time of discovery, during which we will separate the truth about sugar plums from the myths.

Q: You really should have led with that.

A: Yeah, I know. Too bad I never edit these things.

Q: What do you think will be the high point of Sugar Plum Awareness Month?

A: The highlight will be Sugar Plum Tasting Day, when participants will attempt to taste sugar plums for the first time and then report back on them. This will enable us to resolve the question of whether sugar plums exist and, if they do, to track regional variations. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to organize a tasting day this year, but we expect to have one in 2012.

Q: What exactly is a sugar plum?

A: Wikipedia says it’s a kind of candy made from chopped dried fruit, almonds, honey, and spices.

Q: So a sugar plum doesn’t necessarily contain either sugar or plums?

A: Right.

Q: Have you learned anything else interesting about sugar plums so far?

A: Apparently they grow on trees.

Q: How can I, a member of the public with no specialized training, help to make Sugar Plum Awareness Month a success?

A: I’m so glad you asked! You can add any sugar-plum-related information or questions you might have to the comments here. You can suggest sugar plum activities. And next year, you can participate in Sugar Plum Tasting Day.

You can find more sugar plum facts (and, eventually, more information about Sugar Plum Awareness Month) on the Sugar Plum Awareness page.

The Pop Quiz Before Christmas

~ Laura ~ 45 Comments

1. Where and how were the stockings hung?

a) by the chimney, with care.

b) on the clothesline, haphazardly.

c) in the library, with a rope, by Colonel Mustard.

2. Who were the children waiting for?

a) Saint Nicholas.

b) Godot.

c) Krampus

3. Why does St. Nick employ tiny reindeer instead of regular-sized reindeer?

a) Tiny reindeer have better aerodynamics.

b) Full-sized reindeer would exceed the weight limit specified in most roof warranties.

c) It was an accident. The baby reindeer that St. Nick bought from a pet store developed stunted growth and a variety of other health problems due to the horrible living conditions and poor breeding practices at the reindeer mill where they were born.

4. Visions of sugar plums…

a) danced in the children’s heads.

b) performed acrobatic feats in the children’s stomachs.

c) grew into unhealthy obsessions and, in many cases, eating disorders that lasted well into adulthood. Some of the children refused to eat sugar plums ever again; others would eat nothing but sugar plums.

Happy whatever-you-celebrate. And please, if you decide to bring reindeer into your household, don’t buy them from a pet store — adopt from a local shelter instead.