Category: Humor

My Car is Really Dirty

car in river
~ Laura ~ 6 Comments

My car is dirty. Really, really dirty. If someone were to steal my car and replace it with a car-shaped pile of dirt, I probably wouldn’t notice until I tried to open the door. car taking a bathI’m tempted to drive my car into the nearest body of water and give it a nice long soak before washing it, as the owner of the car in this photo apparently did. I say “apparently” because she claimed she drove into a river because her GPS told her to — but seriously, if the car was clean, what made the water turn so brown?
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Sofa, Cat Toy, or Work of Art? The CatSofa is All Three

~ Laura ~ 12 Comments

Thank you for your interest in CatSofa, the world’s only claw-friendly living room furniture.

How It Works


The CatSofa is an upholstered sofa with a twist — instead of a single layer of upholstery, the CatSofa features twelve layers of fabric in different, coordinating colors. When your cat scratches the sofa, she exposes hidden layers of upholstery, creating a stunning work of art. The more your cat scratches, the more attractive your sofa becomes!
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Negative Space

~ Laura ~ 3 Comments

What happens when someone who can’t draw tries to create a webcomic.
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Vampire Bee Update

~ Laura ~ 2 Comments

This probably won’t make much sense if you haven’t read my earlier post about vampire bees.

A yellow jacketI’ve never understood why, in most vampire fiction, everyone conspires to keep the existence of vampires secret. It makes sense for the vampires to do this, of course, but why would the human vampire hunters go along with it? Wouldn’t it make more sense to educate the public about the existence of vampires and the steps we can take to protect ourselves?
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The Unsuccessful Undead: Four Animal-Themed Horror Movies You’ll Never See

~ Laura ~ 6 Comments

Thanks to everyone who commented on the “vampire bees” post; some of the stories about zombie bees and similar creatures inspired this list of hypothetical horror movies.

1. Jaws 5: Night of the Wolf


Sharks are scary, and werewolves are scary, so what could be more frightening than a shark werewolf? This 3D IMAX movie features some breathtaking underwater visuals but ends somewhat abruptly after the first full moon, when the shark turns into a wolf and drowns.

2. Hummingbird Horror


Hitchcock’s classic The Birds meets, well, any zombie movie ever made. Zombie hummingbirds terrorize an isolated coastal town; however, because hummingbirds need to flap their wings very rapidly to fly, and zombies move very slowly, all these creatures can do is sit and stare at passers-by. Still, this behavior is pretty creepy, and some people do sustain injuries tripping over the birds.
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Vampire Bees

Vampire bee from the 1931 Dracula movie.
~ Laura ~ 66 Comments

Vampire bee from the 1931 Dracula movie.I’ve been trying to get a picture or video of the bees on my patio, with no success. No matter how many bees are around, I always wind up with a picture completely devoid of bees; in fact, I don’t even see them when I look through the viewfinder. This is probably because I’m taking the pictures from a distance (because they’re bees, and they’ve already stung me once), or because I’m not a very good photographer, or because my cellphone camera just isn’t up to the job of photographing small insects flying rapidly with bad lighting conditions from a distance.

At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. But no matter how hard I try to rationalize, I just can’t ignore the fact that the simplest explanation is that I’m dealing with vampire bees.
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Weekend Movie Guide

~ Laura ~ 1 Comment

Here’s a little flowchart to help you decide what movie to see this weekend (updated because Jens reminded me that Primer exists).
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An Open Letter to the Bees Swarming on My Front Porch

~ Laura ~ 8 Comments

Dear Bees,

I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time, so let me start by saying thank you for all the hard work you put into pollination and honey production. Also, I love the expression “hive mind”, which never would have been coined if it weren’t for you guys (well, I suppose someone might have used that phrase, but it would have referred to an itchy allergic reaction and wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting). So, thanks again.
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From the archives

~ Laura

Several years ago, I was peripherally involved in a large-scale earthquake engineering project. Some of the experiments in this project used shake tables to simulate the ground motion of an earthquake. At about the same time, the Department of Homeland Security came out with a number of illustrated brochures (like this one) with safety tips for various situations. I borrowed some of those illustrations and created this set of safety tips for our project.
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The Gashlycrumb Terrors

~ Laura ~ 1 Comment

Every year around April Fool’s day, Bruce Schneier has a (somewhat misleadingly-named) Movie Plot Threat Contest. The challenge in this year’s contest was basically to create a story that would frighten small children into obeying their government without question. Writing an actual story seemed too difficult, so instead I wrote a little poem inspired by Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Here’s an updated version of my entry:
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