Currently viewing the tag: "true story"
When I got married, a friend of mine hosted a beautiful bridal shower in my honor. Knowing that I’m not much for shower games (I crack under the pressure of staged merriment), she kindly skipped the typical trivia and clothes pin fun in favor of a little “advice for the bride” session, where guests anonymously left notes of marriage advice in a basket for me to read aloud to the group.
The notes said sweet things like, “Always accept a kiss from your hubby, even if you’ve just applied your lipstick” and “Never go to bed angry.” How nice.
I read about 30 cards, all authored by women whose “mrs” tenures ranged from a few months to decades. And not one of those cards said: You are entering into an eternal game of ‘Mother, May I.’
So, you can imagine my surprise when that was exactly what happened.
For those of you who are not familiar with Mother, May I, it’s a game children play. One player is designated as the “mother” and all of the other players have to ask permission to move, in hopes of advancing toward a specific destination. In the version we play at my house, I am the “mother”, but I’m not really sure what we’re advancing toward. Perhaps insanity?
Please understand that this is not a passive-aggressive jab at the Mr. He is a wonderful man. He even endorsed today’s post (sort of*).
But seriously, does this ever happen at your house?
How about this?
Does this look familiar?
What about…
OK, maybe that last one was a bit of an exaggeration.
But, for reals, how does this happen? And, more importantly, how do I undo it?
I love the Mr, but I need to empower him to wash his hair with out me nodding in approval.
So I think the next time, he’s like “I’m going to get my oil changed this week”, I’m going to be all “No.”
See what I did there? By denying him permission, I might actually be able to bamboozle him into hiding the performance of these mandane chores from me. It’s a little feeble, but it’s all I’ve got. I’ll let you know how it works out.
*Here’s how I broke the news of this post to the Mr.
Me: Hey, would you be offended if I wrote about how sometimes marriage is like deranged version of Mother, May I?
Mr: What do you mean?
Me: You know how we’re always announcing what we’re doing to each other.
Mr: I don’t think you do that.
Me: [Awkward silence.]
Damn! His legal training has made him impervious to mind tricks!
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.
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