Tag: humor

Good News! Heavily Armed Killer Dolphins Are Not Out To Get You. Yet.

~ Laura ~ 23 Comments

It turns out that the widely-reported news story about those three missing Ukrainian military dolphins (you know, the ones “trained to attack enemy combat swimmers using special knives or pistols fixed to their heads“) was actually a hoax. I had my doubts about this story from the start — for one thing, why would enemy combat swimmers have special dolphin-friendly weapons attached to their heads? And wouldn’t a dolphin’s lack of hands make it difficult to fire a gun?

Unfortunately, the only part of the story that was a hoax was the part about the dolphins escaping — there actually is a Ukrainian program to arm dolphins and train them to attack. This is terrible. Have these people never seen a 1970s-era science fiction movie? Even if you ignore all the ethical considerations, teaching other species to kill us is not a good idea.

Speaking of other species trying to kill us, there’s been another armed-dog attack in Florida. I know, I know — this hardly seems newsworthy; dogs shoot people in Florida all the time. But these incidents seem to be escalating. In 2004, a puppy shot a man in Pensacola — but the man was shooting puppies at the time, so it was self-defense. Then in 2011, a 78-year-old Tampa hunter was shot by his dog in what appears to have been an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment attack (witnesses said that the dog was “overly excited”). This latest case, however, must have been premeditated. A dog in central Florida shot his owner with a gun that the man thought was unloaded. This can only mean one thing: the dog planned the attack in advance and loaded the gun when the man wasn’t looking.

One thing I really like about my cats is that they’ve never tried to kill me. This week, they participated in a science experiment — someone on YouTube noticed that his cat reacted to an optical illusion and wondered whether other people’s cats did as well. Here’s that original video:

If you click through to YouTube, there’s also a questionnaire to fill out if you try it with your own cat.

I made two videos in response: this one shows that Seffie probably doesn’t see the illusion, since she ignores it in favor of another picture:

This one proves conclusively that my cats are adorable:

I’ve decided to move this blog back to wordpress.com. That means that the blog will be down briefly this weekend, and if you’re getting blog posts by email, you may get an email invitation that you’ll need to click on in order to resubscribe (or you can just go to unlikelyexplanations.com after the move and subscribe there). Sorry for the inconvenience, but moving back will mean I can spend more time writing posts and less time managing the blog.

Guns Don’t Shoot People. Ovens Shoot People.

~ Laura ~ 28 Comments

And now, a few important safety tips:

Yes, I did just discover the Pulp-O-Mizer. Why do you ask?
Yes, I did just discover the Pulp-O-Mizer. Why do you ask?

1. Before you turn on your oven, make sure there are no bullets inside. A woman in Tampa was injured this week when she neglected to take this simple precaution. She said she was preheating her friend’s oven in order to make waffles, unaware that her friend used his oven to store  ammunition.

Personally, I find this story hard to believe. Who makes waffles in the oven? Modern waffle irons are electric appliances that provide their own heat; old-fashioned waffle irons use heat from the top of the stove. There’s no such thing as a baked waffle.

2. To be extra-safe, store your ammunition somewhere other than the oven. I’m going to go even further and recommend that you keep all your explosives out of the oven.

3. If you find a bunch of dead mice in a tree, you can eat up to 8 of them every 4-6 hours, but don’t eat more than 32 in a 24-hour period. Don’t eat any dead mice if you’re pregnant, have liver problems, or drink more than three alcoholic beverages per day. You can serve dead mice to your children, but only in smaller portions. Do not, under any circumstances, feed dead mice of unknown origin to your cat.

4. Remember to periodically check your water supply for decomposing human remains, especially if you’ve noticed that your water has “a funny taste”. Corpse water can sometimes be perfectly safe to drink; however, the presence of a dead body in your water tank may be an indication that you have a murderer running around.

5. If you do find a murderer on your property, don’t let him store anything in your oven.

The Delusional Homeowner’s Guide to Faucet Repair

~ Laura ~ 28 Comments

My house was built in 1926, but I’m pretty sure the plumbing is older than that — the former owners appear to have found some ancient water pipes made of hollowed-out mastodon tusks and built a house around them. Some parts have been upgraded since then, but others haven’t, and the older ones have an unfortunate tendency to develop leaks whenever you sneeze on them, or breathe on them, or glance in their general direction.

What could be simpler?
What could be simpler?

The kitchen faucet developed some problems recently, and since it’s only seven years old, I decided I could probably fix it myself. The nice thing about modern faucets is that, according to approximately twenty thousand Internet sites, the solution to every faucet-related problem is the same: replace the cartridge (the cartridge is the heart of the faucet, or possibly the liver; whatever it is, it seems to be the only part that matters). And it’s easy! You just turn off the water supply, remove any non-cartridge faucet parts that are in the way, pop out the old cartridge, slide in the new cartridge, and then put back all the other parts and turn on the water supply. There are tons of instructional videos available; I watched one guy do the exact repair I needed to in six and a half minutes, and it only took that long because he kept stopping to explain things. Of course, I’m not a skilled plumber, so I estimated that it might take me as long as fifteen minutes.

I went out and bought a shiny new cartridge and then cleverly ate dinner and washed the dishes before starting on the repair. (I mean, it was clever that I did these things before dismantling the faucet, not that I ate dinner in a particularly clever way or came up with some new ingenious method for washing dishes). Then I took a picture of the new cartridge and posted it to my blog because, hey, I have a blog. Then I ran out of ways to procrastinate.

When I went to turn off the water valves under the sink, I noticed the hot water valve (or maybe one of the water supply pipes attached to it) was leaking. These are all old, original, mastodon-tusk parts. I considered giving up and calling a plumber at that point, but I decided against it because a) I’d already bought the replacement cartridge, so I was committed, b) I’d already posted on my blog about it, so I was even more committed, and c) the leak would probably fix itself, by magic.

I managed to remove all the parts in the way of the cartridge without too much difficulty. Then it was time to remove the cartridge. All the instructional videos say this is a two-step process: loosen the cartridge using the cartridge removal tool included with the new cartridge (this was actually pretty easy) and then pull the old cartridge straight out (this was impossible). So I googled some more, found out that there is such a thing as a “cartridge puller,” and rushed off to Home Depot to buy one (I got there literally 5 minutes before they closed). The cartridge puller works kind of like a corkscrew, except at the end, instead of getting wine, you get a corroded piece of faucet guts. But the important thing is that it worked, and I was able to pop in the new cartridge and reassemble the faucet.

Note that I didn’t say that I reassembled the faucet correctly. That took about half a dozen tries. Then I turned the water back on to verify that the faucet worked; I think it did, except that the hot/cold sides were reversed. But remember that leak I mentioned earlier? Somehow, it failed to magically fix itself (and I think I may have made it worse by jostling things during the faucet repair). So right now the water is off in the kitchen sink, and a plumber is coming to the house tomorrow. If he asks how the sink got into this state, I think I’m going to say that vandals did it.

Place Your Bets

~ Laura ~ 14 Comments

The Moen faucet cartridge replacement of doom

I bought this today. Will the evening end …

  1. With a perfectly functioning kitchen sink and a massively inflated ego, or
  2. With three more trips to Home Depot, or
  3. With a call to a plumber, or
  4. With a trip to the emergency room, or
  5. With a trip to the morgue?

If the answer turns out to be #5, it was nice knowing you.

A Guest Post. By My Cat.

~ Laura ~ 36 Comments

The following opinions are those of my cat, Thunder, and do not necessarily represent the views of this blog, its staff, or any of its affiliates:

It was a typical Friday afternoon — I’d spent most of the day passed out on the couch, reeking of catnip and tuna — when she walked into my life. Tessa, they called her: an orange ball of fluff with a face straight out of a Fancy Feast commercial and a purr that could wake the dead. She knew how to work a room, oozing the kind of wide-eyed innocence that reduces otherwise intelligent people into mush, wrapping them around her little finger instantly despite the fact that, technically, she has no fingers.

The human and I have the standard arrangement: she provides me with room, board, and a lap to sit on; I provide her with the pleasure of my company and the occasional hairball. But leading up to that day, she’d been acting strangely — there’d been mysterious phone calls and furtive glances, and that morning, she’d set up an extra litter box in the spare bathroom and food and water dishes in the den. Tessa was no spur-of-the-moment visitor; she’d been expected.

It’s been a week since she arrived. When she saw that I wasn’t taken in by her sweet innocent little kitty act, she told me a long, rambling sob story about being found under a trailer when she was three months old, then spending the next four months in a foster home, being put on display in a pet store every Sunday afternoon and passed over like a novelty ashtray at a hospital gift shop.

“Listen, princess,” I told her, “we’ve all got problems. You’re seven months old. Old enough to take care of yourself. Just stay out of my way.” So she hides. And when the human finds her, she purrs. And then it starts. The human tries to coax her out. “Tessa,” she says. “Tessa Tessa. Tessa Tessa Tessa Tessa. Tessa Tessa. Tessa. Tessa Tessa Tessa Tessa Tessa. Tessa. Tessa Tessa. Tessa.” It’s like a flea gnawing at that spot you can’t reach at the back of your neck. “Tessa. Tessa Tessa Tessa Tessa. Tessa Tessa.” There’s only one way to make it stop. Desperate times call for desperate measures: we’re going to have to change her name.

While I don’t agree with everything that Thunder says here, he does have a point: Tessa probably isn’t the best possible name for this cat. She’s very good at hiding, but she doesn’t mind being picked up and carried out of her hiding place. She’s been getting braver and braver; when she’s not hiding, she purrs all the time and basically acts like a kitten, playing and/or lap-sitting. So please, help me think of a better name!

A Christmas Poem

~ Laura ~ 15 Comments

I have eaten
the cookies
that were on
the mantel

and which
you had probably
left there
for Santa

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so warm

—

I have read
the note
that was by
the cookies

and which
you had thoughtfully
written
for Santa

Forgive me
it was delightful
so sweet
and so warm.

—

I have burned
the note
that you left
for Santa

and which
would have proven that
there had
been cookies

Forgive me
it was glorious
so bright
and so warm

—

(with apologies to William Carlos Williams)

Who is Astrid Volpert? And Other Questions for the Butterball Turkey Hotline

~ Laura ~ 26 Comments
Not the actual turkey hotline (image courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives)

I’ve just heard some exciting news — just in time for Thanksgiving, Butterball has launched a turkey recipe app. At just $4.99, Butterball Cookbook Plus sounds like a real godsend for anyone who owns an iPhone and doesn’t know how to cook a turkey or look things up on Google.

If you have turkey-related questions and don’t own an iPhone, don’t despair. You can still call the Butterball turkey hotline, which “employs more than 50 professionally trained, college-educated home economists and nutritionists” to answer questions — which is exactly what I need, because I don’t have an iPhone, and I do have some questions. Like these:

1. Who is Astrid Volpert? She’s listed as a Butterball turkey expert, but when I click on her link, I get an error message. Some independent research led me to her website, which offers no evidence of any formal turkey-related training whatsoever. I don’t think she even speaks English.

2. The wish I made on last year’s Butterball turkey wishbone didn’t come true. When can I expect my refund?

3. What’s the capital of Turkey?

4. Remember that story about the woman who kills her husband by hitting him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb and then cooks it and serves it to the detectives who come out to investigate the murder? Do you think that would work with a turkey? Asking for a friend.

5. A turkey, a giraffe, and an otter walk into a bar. Who gets served first?

6. Help! I have a dog, a cat, a baby, a roasted turkey, and a bottle of wine in the kitchen, and I need to move them all to the dining room. I can’t leave the cat alone with the dog, I can’t leave the cat or the dog alone with the turkey, I can’t leave the baby alone at all, and it’s probably best not to leave me alone with the wine. The cat and the dog can walk. The dog will go where I tell him to, but the cat just does whatever he wants. I can carry any two items at a time except for the cat, who won’t let me pick him up. What should I do?

7. If I drop an 18-pound turkey and a 2-pound Cornish game hen off the top of the Empire State Building at the same time, what crime will I be charged with? Does it matter if the turkey is frozen?

8. If someone calls the hotline and asks a question about a turducken, do you hang up 1/3 of the way through the call?

9. Can I come work for you? Answering turkey questions seems like it could be fun, at least until the novelty wears off, at which point I’d probably just start making stuff up. That wouldn’t be a problem, would it?

10. Does this stuffing make my drumsticks look fat?

Do you have any turkey- or holiday-related questions or concerns? Leave them in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer.

What’s Your Halloween Personality Type?

~ Laura ~ 19 Comments

1. What’s your pumpkin-carving style?

A. I choose the perfect pumpkin, create an original design on paper, create a template, and then cut the pumpkin very precisely and painstakingly.

B. I dig the plastic pumpkin out of the back of the hall closet and blow most of the dust off.

C. I don’t decorate for Halloween.

D. I carve my start-up company’s logo into the pumpkin, then take pictures and post to all my social-media sites. It’s a festive decoration and free advertising.

E. I enjoy carving faces.

2. What’s your approach to distributing Halloween candy?

A. I engage each child in conversation to determine whether their treats need to be gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, or sugar-free.

B. I point at the candy bowl and say “help yourself.”

C. I turn off the porch light and don’t answer the door.

D. When parents come to the door with their children, I invite them in for a drink and a marketing presentation.

E. I make sure everyone gets what they deserve.

3. It’s two days before Halloween. What last-minute supplies do you buy?

A. None. I’ve already carved my jack-o-lantern, sewn homemade costumes for my children, put up decorations, and bought a carefully-selected assortment of candy.

B. A few bags of fun-sized candies to replace the ones I bought last weekend but ate already. And some beer.

C. Blackout curtains and a “No Solicitors” sign for my front door.

D. None. I’ve already picked up the candies that I had custom-wrapped my company’s logo and web address.

E. Extra-large garbage bags, duct tape, an area rug, and a shovel.

4. Halloween is a good time to …

A. Impress the neighbors.

B. Eat candy.

C. Turn out the lights and hide in the dark.

D. Network with people from the neighborhood.

E. Dispose of a body.

—

Happy Halloween! If you’re looking for last-minute advice, you may find some of these older posts useful:

For costume ideas, why not try some of these Reese’s-themed fashions?

Don’t want to spend the evening handing out candy? Try some of these alternate candy distribution methods

And it’s always a good idea to follow these simple Halloween safety tips

—

I’ve switched to a different mail-sending mechanism, so if you get these posts by mail and anything looks strange, please let me know. And as always, please feel free to follow my sad, lonely Facebook page.

Oops! Some of you may have gotten two copies of this in the mail. Sorry about that — it won’t happen again.

How to Eat Fruit (Fall Edition)

~ Laura ~ 17 Comments

Dana from Zona Pellucida read my piece on how to eat summer fruits and asked:

Too bad I haven’t been able to read this until autumn. Are there any recommendations on how to eat fall fruits easily and safely?

Good question, Dana. Fall fruits are more challenging than summer fruits. For one thing, they’re elusive. Wikipedia’s Seasonal Food page lists a couple fruits each for winter and spring, 18 different summer fruits, and a grand total of zero fruits for fall. But don’t despair. Fall fruits do exist. They include pumpkin, apples, and … um, did I say pumpkin already?

The most important thing to remember about fall fruits is that they should always be consumed in the form of pie. Pies can be obtained in a variety of ways.

Method 1: Bake a Pie

Baking a pie is the oldest and most traditional method of pie acquisition. To bake a delicious pie featuring your favorite fruit, you will need:

  • A recipe for a delicious pie featuring your favorite fall fruit.
  • Pie ingredients, as listed in the recipe.
  • Assorted pie-making tools, such as an oven, a rolling pin, a pie pan, etc.
  1. Learn to bake.
  2. Following the directions in the recipe, bake the pie.

That’s all there is to it! What could be simpler?

Method 2: Purchase a Pie

If you don’t have time to bake a pie, you can always buy one. You will need:

  • Money.
  • The name, address, and operating hours of a reputable pie retailer (typically a grocery store, restaurant, or bakery).
  1. Go to the pie retailer during their operating hours. Bring money.
  2. Find an employee, and inform them that you wish to exchange some of your money for one of their pies. They’ll walk you through the rest of the procedure.

Method 3: Steal a Pie

Occasionally, you may find yourself unable to bake or purchase a pie. For example, you may be out of both money and pie ingredients, or you may have a sudden desire for pie late at night, when all the pie retailers in your area are closed. In that case, you’ll have to steal a pie. You will need:

  • The name, address, and operating hours of a reputable pie retailer.
  • A set of lockpicks, a crowbar, or a rock.
  • A car or other motor vehicle.
  • A friend.
  1. Have your friend drive you to the pie retailer during a time when the retailer is closed.
  2. Ask your friend to remain in the car and keep the engine running.
  3. Using the lockpicks, crowbar, or rock, enter the building.
  4. Working quickly, locate the pie storage area. This will probably be inside a refrigerator.
  5. Take a pie, leave the store, and jump into the waiting car.
  6. Instruct your friend to drive away from the pie shop.
  7. Enjoy your pie! And don’t forget to share it with your friend.

Method 4: Obtain a Pie Through Extortion

If you can’t bake or purchase a pie, and none of your friends are available to help you steal one, don’t despair — you can still obtain a pie using a simple time-honored process known as extortion. You will need:

  • The name, address, and operating hours of a reputable pie retailer.
  • A general air of intimidation.
  1. Go to the pie retailer during their operating hours.
  2. Project a general air of intimidation while entering the pie shop. Try to walk with a swagger.
  3. Maintain the swagger as you approach the pie display and pick up a pie.
  4. Say something like “Nice pie shop you’ve got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”
  5. Swagger out of the store with your pie.

Well, Dana, I hope this answers your question and provides you with the knowledge you’ll need to incorporate delicious and healthful autumn fruits into your diet. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with.

Coffee Conundrum

~ Laura ~ 42 Comments

I have a problem. The following scenario happens far too often:

I stop at Starbucks on my way to work, and  someone else gets to the door a few seconds ahead of me. They hold the door, I say “thanks” and walk through, and they walk through behind me. What should I do next? I have three options.

1. I can just go directly to the counter. This seems a bit presumptuous, like the act of a mouse who, having been given a cookie, demands a glass of milk. Maybe I should just run with it and point out that since the other person is stuck behind me in line anyway, he might as well do something productive with his time, like wash my car. It’s the blue one with the three giant tubs of kitty litter in the trunk. Well, not the trunk, obviously, but whatever you call the storage space in a hatchback. Yeah. The one with the pile of empty Trader Joe’s bags on the passenger seat. That’s the one. Thanks.

2. I can tell the other person to go ahead of me. This never ends well. It just results in an uncomfortable “after you — no, after you” exchange that negates any good feelings left over from the initial interaction and goes on forever, or at least until one of us eventually notices that the dozen or so people who’ve accumulated in line behind us are glaring with varying degrees of hostility, raising the very real possibility that if one of us doesn’t give up and place an order immediately, we’re both at risk of being bludgeoned to death by an angry, caffeine-deprived, iPhone-wielding mob, which would be a horrible way to die, because iPhones are pretty light, actually, so it would probably take a really long time to beat someone to death with one.

3. I can wander off to the side and try to look like I’m doing something else until the other person is safely in line ahead of me. This is my usual strategy, but it doesn’t always work. Once while I was pretending to read notices on a bulletin board, I blocked the path from the door to the counter — which I failed to realize because I was so focused on my performance that I didn’t notice that the guy who’d held the door for me was waiting patiently for me to finish. I should have said something like “oh, go ahead — I want to spend a few more minutes admiring the lighting and composition of the photo in this lost cat ad,” but by then I was just too flustered to do anything but slink forward to the counter.

You’re probably wondering what I do when the situation is reversed. I don’t know, because that never happens. I never arrive at the door first. I haven’t been keeping exact records, but my best estimate is that in the last year someone else has held the door for me approximately 22.375 times, and I’ve arrived in time to hold the door for someone else exactly 0 times. I think people must see me coming and hide.

That’s my dilemma. What would you do in my place?

This blog has a sad, lonely Facebook page that you can “like” if you’re so inclined.