Currently viewing the tag: "here’s something"
If you’re reading this, then I have totally failed to reach my self-imposed deadline of creating a new post for Monday.
If you’re reading this, then I’m really, really, super-duper sorry.
If you’re reading this, I’m begging you not to be all “No update since last Thursday?!? NEXT!” Please, oh please, don’t get angry and go away. Let’s still be friends, OK? I think you’re so great. Have I told you how much I like your hair today? Because, I’ve been meaning to say: You look fab.
I have an explanation for not meeting this make-believe deadline.
Our dog, Winston, has been having some health problems lately. He’s been diagnosed with a ruptured disk. (You can read more about Winston’s disk issues here, but be warned that this link will take you to the first thing I ever drew for the Internet.)
So instead of working over the weekend, as I had planned, I spent most of my time curled up next to my dog waiting for him to blink or cry or ask me for something in plain English.
There are plenty of different kinds of people in the world, and they all feel differently about pets. Some people like to hoard pets; others are happy to wave to other people’s pets but would prefer not to have any of their own. I am the kind of person who can’t sleep if her dog can’t sleep. So I didn’t draw you any cartoons today or yesterday, because I’ve been staring at a dog, willing him to get better, which has made me sleep deprived.
I did try, but everything I tried to draw looked like this:
I’m hoping to make you something hilarious soon, but as you read this, I’m probably laying on my bathroom floor, exhausted and trying to remember how to brush my own hair.
I promise to be right back. Like maybe tomorrow even, provided I don’t have to drive to Jacksonville to take Winston to the vet.
Don’t hate me. I think you’re so pretty!
In recent years, journalist Matt Taibbi has written a good amount about Goldman Sachs, including an article for Rolling Stone magazine and a book. And last week, Taibbi appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher to discuss his writings.
The Mr, who is working on a Master’s degree in forensic accounting, was super interested in watching the interview, because learning about financial stuff is pretty much his favorite.
And I was super interested in watching the interview after I heard that Taibbi had called Goldman Sachs “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” A description too magnificent, too aggressively hilarious to ignore.
I was not the only one Taibbi impressed with his name calling.
Goldman Sachs is pretty unhappy about his work and the vampire squid turn of phrase. You know who else didn’t appreciate it? People who want to protect the good name of the vampire squid. Apparently, Taibbi has received letters from vampire squid supporters who are concerned that he is unfairly slandering vampire squid.
That’s right; vampire squid are real.
Did you know about this? Because I definitely did not.
Terrified to learn that I live on the same planet as an animal with such a deadly name, I did a little research on vampire squid. I was expecting to find an animal so dangerous that it would give me nightmares.
But here’s what I learned: Vampire squid are slow-moving, mostly gentle creatures, whose diet probably consists of prawn and plankton. They live 3,000 feet below sea level and, as a result, have very little interaction with humans. In short, they pose virtually no threat to us.
And they look more like this:
Which leads me to this: For real, guys? Are we sure we want to use such a fear-inducing name on such an obviously benign animal?
Shouldn’t we be a little bit more thoughtful about the names we assign to animals? Shouldn’t something that’s terribly deadly–or at least has a taste for human blood–get a “vampire” descriptor?
I’d like to go ahead and propose that we rename vampire squid “huggy squid”, because you will probably never see one in your life and if you do, it can’t really hurt you.
Additionally, I recommend that we consider reassigning the “vampire” in vampire squid to an animal that is a lot more likely to bite a human. Like bears.
We love bears, even though they are awfully dangerous and sometimes deadly. We give bears to children as stuffed animals. Bears inspire cartoon characters. They may even be the mascot of your favorite sports team or forest-fire protection campaign.
How do you think this makes the vampire squid feel?
The heartbreak of the vampire squid aside, we should probably exercise more caution when discussing bears, for safety’s sake.
When I think about the children’s song “Teddy Bear Picnic”, I seriously question the lesson we are teaching kids. Here are just a few lines to refresh your memory:
If you go out in the woods today
You’re sure of a big surprise.
As I kid, I always imagined friendly, cartoon-like bears sitting down for a picnic of tea and sandwiches, then I imagined myself bringing them cookies. But small children should definitely not try to feed bears. You know what the “big surprise” they’re singing about probably is? A bear attack.
Just so you don’t leave this post feeling completely browbeaten over these animal naming failures, here’s one we got right: bunnies. Bunnies are exactly as threatening as they sound.
A few others we got right: king cobra. Also, velociraptor, because when you hear someone say a velociraptor is chasing after them, you don’t have to know what a velociraptor is to understand that that is bad f#cking news.
I don’t know if you know this about me, but I don’t have any children. Not yet anyway.
Sometimes, I feel like an imposter, because I spend a lot of time romping around the internet, reading the blogs of stay at home moms and being like “You hate cleaning, too?!?!” or “You’re tired, lady with five kids? I’m tired! Ha ha! WE’RE THE SAME!”
But we are not the same. No, we are not.
In all likelihood, a woman with five kids is tired because she’s RAISING FIVE KIDS. But I’m tired because I had to dress myself AND brush my hair today.
Parents: Even if you have one child and you’re doing the bare minimum as a caregiver, your day is 150 times more taxing than mine.
I respect the crap out of parents. But I’m also kind of enjoying life on my side of the fence. You know, the side where, if I get out of bed in the morning, great! And if I don’t, no one starves.
Lately, though, the Mr keeps threatening to destroy the delicate balance of my life.
He wants a baby.
Now, I like babies. A lot. I coo over babies in restaurants. I lunge after baby clothes in stores. I’ve even already named and renamed our pretend children.
So, you’d think I’d be psyched and say, “It’s baby time! Let’s DO IT!” (Not “it” it, but you know, let’s go get us a baby) now that the Mr wants to start a family.
But I can’t be psyched, because I am pathologically afraid of pregnant woman.
I like to call this disorder: PREGNOPHOBIA.
When I find out a friend is expecting or I meet a pregnant woman at a bridal shower, I try to give the appropriate reaction.
In my head, though, the interaction goes a lot more like this:
And I end up having to fake a head injury on the spot just to get away from my own awkward laughter.
For the record, faking a head injury mid-sentence is pretty tough to do, but if you suffer from pregnophobia, too, and you find yourself needing to flee from a pregnant woman, I recommend you squint your eyes and chew on your own tongue a little.
Pregnant women and mothers of the world: Please don’t be offended. It’s not that I dislike you. My own mother was a pregnant woman once–four times actually.
I’m just scared.
I cannot wrap my brain around pregnancy.
When you get pregnant, you are physically afflicted for 40 weeks. Even drinking bleach isn’t that toxic. If you drink bleach, you’re going to get sick or you’re going to die. Either way, though, I have to believe it runs its course pretty quickly.
But 40 weeks! That is a long time. And the whole time, there’s all kinds of CRAZY stuff going on in there.
And I know this, because pregnant women don’t spare you the details of their pregnancies. They want to tell you about seeing the baby’s limbs as they get farther along. Hands and feet apparently move across the belly, and you can see them through the skin!
The pregnant women I have talked LOVE THIS! But all I can think when they tell me about this is: THERE IS SOMETHING TRAPPED INSIDE OF YOU AND IT IS ALIVE!
And in my case, it probably won’t be a baby. With my luck, this thing will be trapped inside of my uterus for 10 months:
Yeah.
I will probably be the first woman in history to be pregnant with a web-footed T-Rex.
But growing a dinosaur inside of my body, while uncomfortable and frightening, isn’t even the part that scares me so much I might pass out.
Because after a baby wanders around inside of you for 10 months, changing your body and eating your food and sometimes making you sick, THEN you have to deliver the baby (or the T-Rex, in my case.)
I have been so afraid of this process for so long that it has taken on a life of it’s own in my imagination.
Sure, I’ve seen flashes of delivery scenes in movies, but I’ve never actually been there for all of the 648 hours that it takes to make a delivery happen. And assuming I do deliver a T-Rex with webbed feet, it’s going to take some heavy-duty equipment to get that thing out.
And whether you deliver a dinosaur or a human baby, here’s what I’m pretty sure happens during delivery:
And it takes three shaman and unicorn tears to bring you back to life.
And then, I imagine, you have to be sworn to secrecy or your memory is erased or something, so that other women won’t find out about what happens in that delivery room. I know my friends’ memories have been tampered with, because after their babies are born, their descriptions of the delivery are always pretty vague. Like “Oh, I was in labor for forever” or “They had to sew me back together.”
But as I think my drawings have shown, I have a pretty firm grasp of what’s going on, and I will not be fooled by their efforts to downplay the delivery situation.
I’ve tried to explain all of this to the Mr, but he is not impressed with my pregnophobia. He keeps trying to sooth away my fears by saying, “Hey, it’ll be OK. I’ll be there”
REALLY, MR? I’m going to grow a human/possible dinosaur in my body for 10 months, and you’re going to “be there.” Pfft.
Needless to say we’ve reached a bit of a stalemate for the time being. I’m not throwing away my birth control this month. But I feel certain that the 21st Century household has been contaminated with full-blown baby fever.
Sometimes, I even think the fever is overtaking my pregnophobia.
And even though I try not to take it personally when I pass pregnant women in the grocery store, I feel like these women know my house is infected with the fever and that I am weakened by the sickness. Because every now and then, just for a second, I’m sure they are staring at me, and I can feel them willing me to join them. I think pregnant women know their bellies are load weapons–full of babies!–to a girl struggling with baby fever. And ever so softly I can hear them telling me to cast my pregnophobia aside. And I want to yell, “Hey! Don’t point that baby at me!”
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