Day Forty-Three: Sam Craft’s Lament

You know what’s great about this blog? Don’t think too hard.

Answer: You never ever know what to expect!

You know what? (Again don’t think so hard.)

I never know what to expect either!

Isn’t that fantastic?

Just nod.

For instance, I thought I’d be writing about the blustering Winnie-the-Pooh day outside, with fallen trees and cresting waves on the Puget Sound. Instead, I end up comparing my experience at the university with the impaling of a vampire. How cool is that?

Just to be completely honest, before I type on, I’ve been working very hard at out-witting my own dang rules. Having seen the dilemma of me against me, I’ve decided to lighten up some. Today, I’m quite gleefully typing in my pajamas and socks. Who wants to get showered and dressed to blog? Who was I kidding?

This is good, or rather beneficial, this rebel mood I’m in, because today is the big day I’ve been both anticipating and dreading, for around three or more weeks. I’ve lost count. And it’s not worth my time to look at the calendar. I’ve spent enough time and energy on this whole university blowup event.

That’s what I’m calling the happening: a huge blowup. Blowup as in filling up a balloon with so much helium that it bursts. Blowup as in a tire’s thread worn to the bone causing the tire to bust. Blowup as in a restless volcano blowing its top!

I’m pretty darn proud of myself that I haven’t blurted out all that transpired in black and white on this blog. I like the mysteriousness surrounding what I have offered, and the respect I’m giving the villains.

I’m feeling okay about calling them villains, even though I know we are all God’s (Universe’s, String Theory’s, what-have-you’s) creatures.

I know these people have taught me plenty; especially about how I don’t want to lead and teach like them. And I know these lessons will carry me far, that the experience has already given me that extra sheet of armadillo-layer across my soft-bellied-sensitive-tummy.

Still, something feels so delightfully good about calling them villains.

Some words for villain are anti-hero and contemptible person.

I picture a little ant with a small red cape that reads HERO going up against a grotesque giant in a huge white nappy (diaper) that reads Anti-Hero. And I envision the ant winning by some divine intervention from the Roman Gods.

I like the term beyond the pale, too. It’s a word related to contemptible and means an unpardonable action. I believe I am in the right to say the professor was beyond the pale.  He was outside the acceptable and agreed upon standards of decency. And dang it, if I have to constantly adjust my actions and phrases to make others feel comfortable, then he ought to have at least had decency.

A little word origin lesson, as I’m a teacher at heart, and always shall be: The pale means a stake or pointed piece of wood. Think vampire. I’m thinking a sexy vampire. Pale is in the word impale, like in the Dracula flicks. A paling fence represents an area enclosed by a fence; so to be beyond the pale is to be outside the accepted home area, or designated safety zone.

Fenced areas or regions were set up for people for safety, such as when Catherine the Great created the Pale of Settlement in Russia.

So the message is: “If there is a pale, decent people remain inside the pale.”

Look what Crazy Frog Found!

By the way, my professor, he jumped the fence.

Now I’m stuck on word origin again. I just reviewed the origin of flipping the bird, ducks in a row, and, you might be happy to know with all my rambling, I’m reviewing that’s all she wrote.  Okay, done.

Last night I dreamt that I parked my ten-speed bike in front of a quaint neighborhood house. When I returned to retrieve the bike, I found it broke into two (repairable) parts. I knocked on the door of the nearby house. An older man answered. (He looked like my professor but way uglier.) The man explained that he took the bike apart because I left too much of my bike sticking out in his driveway. I hadn’t. He then offered to fix the bike for a large sum of money. I knew he was applying trickery and trying to gain from my loss. I declined, and instead had him carry the pieces into my van. I drove away.

Hmmmm? I wonder how my subconscious is feeling about my dumbass professor?

Another thought: How in the world can I produce such deep felt all-loving, nonjudgmental prose like The Wounded Healer and On Leadership one day, and then turn around and have the audacity to call a professional a dumbass?

Oh! I’m raising my hand! I know. I know. Call on me!

Answer: Because I’m human (just like you’re human, I hope), and I refuse to act like I’m not human to earn some semblance of self-manipulated respect. Plus, who hasn’t wanted to call at least one teacher in their life a dumbass?

Okay, just so you know Melancholic Little Me is still around, and obviously Sir Brain (as I’m still rambling). Little Me is carrying an index card that reads:

My Authentic Self: “…caring, nurturing, kind, creative, intelligent, beautiful being who doesn’t wish harm on anyone and wants to be the most beneficial light wherever she is.”

I said those words aloud during a group therapy meeting (in the college course I’ve dropped) when asked by the professor, “What do you wish to share in this group?”

But I didn’t share what I truly wanted to share. I had wanted to say, in group, how my heart had been impaled by two professors and by my classroom study-partner. That would have been authentic!

 

Who is Van Helsing? A protagonist in Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula.

Day Forty-One: To Blog or Blob? That is the Question.

The Blob Lives!

People with Aspergers incorporate different coping strategies in order to feel more comfortable. This post, I am pleased to report, is a fine example of such coping strategies, including:

  1. Humor
  2. Data Organization
  3. Tangents
  4. Analysis of Self
  5. Correction/Editing of Self
  6. Analysis of Others
  7. Research
  8. Interconnection of Data
  9. Data transformed into New Information

My original intention today was to report on how my blog has become a mind- and time-devouring entity, closely resembling the indistinct, formless entity from the movie The BLOB.


But, instead I deleted an entire, page-long list that had words such as: obsession, fixation, ice pack for shoulder pain, eyestrain, fear, and extreme anxiety. And replaced this here posting with the land of the blob. Which I know, and you know, has a much higher fascination-factor than a post about obsessive blogging.

Unfortunately, I planned on writing for only 30 minutes today, and instead I am further made blurry-eyed and pain-ridden. Once again, I was sucked in and consumed by my BLOG! The HORROR!

At this moment as I am typing, I have my computer in split-screen mode, and I’m watching the 1958 horror flick The Blob. If you are in the X Generation, there is a high probability that The Blob, (which was originally titled the Glob), rates in the top ten of all time horror flicks.  In the movie, an alien life form consumes everything in its path. As the blob devours, it continues to grow in size, until it resembles one massive lump of blood-red Jell-O. When the movie ends, the blob is dropped into the Arctic. Then a big question mark (?) appears on the screen, leaving little kids from the 1960’s and 1970’s to wonder forever, if the blog is in fact living in bedroom closets, streets, under beds, and in toilets.

Just think: if those Generation Xers had been told the blob was only a modified weather balloon and colored silicone gel, we’d have saved a lot of money on mental health therapy.

The movie makes me think of the words heebie-jeebies and jeepers-creepers, both words that Louis Armstrong has perfected, by the way.

I’m still watching the movie, and finding the scenes rather dull. Waiting for the blob to show up.

 

Here are some conclusions I reached from the data I collected from BLOB research.  

1. People who saw the Blob were scared shi*less!

I’ll need to buy tons of ice and fire extinguishers before I’ll ever feel safe again.

I saw this movie about 30 years ago, but was so scared that I ran out of the cinema before I could see the end!

I used to wonder about the question mark. I saw tons of horror movies when I was a kid, but seriously, not one of them scared me half as much as this one.

I wouldn’t call myself lucky. This movie scared the crap out of me so bad that I had to sleep with my mommy!

I was 5 years old and it knocked me out. I had nightmares for two weeks.

I saw this movie when I was a child and alone with my brother. I was so scared. I’m still having nightmares.

Saw it on TV way back in 1975 ,scared the crap outta me too! What can kill it?

I remember this movie scaring the crap out of me when I was a kid. And it was almost 30 years old by the time I saw it.

Omg, I remember this movie used to scare the hell out of me.

This movie scared me to death when I was a kid. After seeing it I couldn’t eat cherry Jell-O for weeks.

Well, for people back then, it was creepy as hell.

I think if it were real those people would run away and crap their pants.

When I saw this movie on the tv as a kid, it literally scared the piss out! of me. I woke up screaming and peed my nightgown.

2. People don’t like older men playing teenagers, even if the guy is sexy.

Looks like he’s pushing 30 and he has to sneak out of his parent’s house?

Yeah, Steve McQueen is the oldest looking ‘teenager’ I’ve ever seen.

Steve McQueen is supposed to be 17 in this movie and he was 27!

He hangs around with these teenage boys and he looks like their uncle!

McQueen is the sexiest man in history of men.

He’s supposed to play a teenager in this movie? They could have chosen someone who didn’t look 50 years old.

I like way they keep calling Steve a crazy Kid!!!.Shit he is as old as the old.

Steve McQueen was and still is ‘The Man’!

The old guy is so damn cute.

Are there nude photos of Steve?

3. People reminisce when they see old movies from the 1950’s.

In those days boys had good manners and girls behaved like well children.

Back then, when you missed something on TV that was it, until you caught it again.

Wow, 1950’s, I wish to see that day and die in the 50’s.

Remember when there was a vibrant healthy middle class and anyone notice the COLORFUL clothing and cars? Look at how many people wear black today and drive gray cars. And go down any Main Street USA today and see the poverty and boarded up windows…

4. People side with or personify Blob.

If I were an alien from another planet and I had an ignorant old piece of white trash poking me with a stick, I’d devour him, too!!

What kind of an idiot goes outside and pokes at a lugee?

This music leaves me with the impression that the Blob’s a suave, fun-loving guy who’d stop eating towns if you just got him a cigarette and a nice cocktail.

That Blob sure is a cool cat!

My sister had a girl friend she called the blob.

5. People theorize about the future of the Blob.

“As long as the arctic stays cold,,,” Ha ha, it’s like they we’re already setting up a sequel to be released whenever global warming thawed the arctic.

I still wonder why there was a question mark at the end.

Well, even if the ice caps were to melt, the arctic would still remain too cold.Then again, the blob could just float like a big ice-cube and drift out towards warmer waters in the sea.

Imagine that thing in the water eating whales and big, big things in the sea. It will be unstoppable.

Shit! Global warming is gonna set the blob free and it’ll either start with the Scandinavians, the Russians or the Canadians…

(These are all quotes I found under comments beneath the video clips on YouTube.)

Last thought. My Giant Question Mark:

1. I’m wondering if the search term crap will bring people to my blog now. And I’m thinking: Oh, Crap!

Day Forty: 13 Mouth Facts

 

Each and everyday, many people in the blogging realm are typing in the search terms 13 or mouthGuess one place their glorious search takes these inquiring minds? Yep! You’re such a smart cookie! Right here: the happy little place of Everyday Aspergers.

Because of the lovely search term mouth, my Proverbial Foot in the Mouth post keeps ranking in the top five out of all my blog posts.

I can understand the obsession with the awesome number 13. Who doesn’t love number 13 facts? But why are numerous earthlings searching for the word mouth? Is it something to do with the Mayan calendar?

My middle-son offered studiously, when queried about the blogging-mouth-hunts, “It’s quite obvious, Mom. They are looking for a good dentist, and want to see what type of job the dentists are doing.”

Great thinking. But when I think of people searching for the word mouth, my mind doesn’t go in that exact dentist-handy-work direction.

One can only hypothesize.

Because I cannot control the search term mouth from boosting a post’s ranking—a post I consider mediocre in comparison to the other grand knowledge found  on this mighty blog—today I have spent many, many hours searching for 13 intriguing mouth images and  13 facts about mouths.

My favorite part was Googling: “Do Hippos Really Fart through their Mouths?”  I still don’t know. Although, I found some disturbing YouTube videos on the subject matter. Okay, without further nonsensical ado, I present a one of a kind list of 13 Mouth Facts.


13  Mouth Facts

People whose mouths have narrow roofs are more likely to snore.

It takes food seven seconds to go from the mouth to the stomach.

In Pennsylvania you may not catch a fish by any body part except the mouth.

A jellyfish passes waste material through its mouth.

An average dog’s mouth exerts 150 to 200 pounds of pressure per square inch.

A person cannot taste food unless it is mixed with saliva.

The crocodile bird flies into the open mouth of a crocodile and cleans its teeth for it.

The snail’s mouth is no larger than the head of a pin, but it can have over 25,000 teeth.

It takes more muscles to frown than smile.

Your tongue is the strongest muscle in your body.

Some moths never eat anything as adults because they don’t have mouths. They live on their caterpillar energy.

When a person pees a small deposit of urine enters the mouth through the saliva glands.

Just as we all have unique fingerprints, we all have unique tongue prints.


The Geek Posse Chimed in on more random facts “we” found while surfing the net.

Sir Brain: 80% of the brain is water.

LV: You cant’ tickle yourself!

Prophet: The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog” uses every letter of the alphabet.

Crazy Frog: A group of frogs is called an army.

Little Me: Scientists say the higher your I.Q., the more you dream.

Phantom: A duck’s quack doesn’t echo. No one knows why.

Elephant: One pound of peanut butter typically contains up to 150 bug fragments and 5 rodent hairs.

OCFlea: A female flea consumes 15 times her own body weight in blood every day.

Crazy Frog cites the example of this anomaly as a side lesson: A frog when dropped should move towards the ground. If the frog remains in mid-air, the levitation would be considered an anomaly. Or considered super darn Matrix-Cool!


Sam Craft's Mouth. Or I guess, teeth!


Note: I have not confirmed all of these facts to be truthful. Please never rely on the validity of the Internet or the validity of Crazy Frog. 

 

Day Twenty-One: Blog Rules 101

Concerned I might not know the etiquette of blogging, I perused the Internet in search of answers.

Blog Rules 101

1. Don’t vent personal issues about someone else.

2. Take the time to comment without calling names.

3. Don’t drag people into your drama.

4. Mix in a video.

5. Make meaningful charts, articles, tables, and pictures.

6. Monopolizing, hijacking, or steamrolling prohibited.

7. Keep commentary on topic.

8. Don’t gang up on anyone.

9. Racial, ethnic slurs, stereotyping of any kind not tolerated.

10. You can’t copy and paste copyrighted stuff.

11. Be safe—do not share personal information about residence, phone, etc.

12.  Keep religion out of discussions.

13. Say what everyone else thinks. {Psychic!}

14. If someone asks for a critique, offer constructive criticism.

15. Remove constructive negative comments.

16. Have a thoughtful discussion with courtesy and discourse. {discourse means discussion}

17. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

18. If I overlook a question, ask me again. {Really?}

19. Start all statements with “People are Stupid and here’s why?” {Copied word-for-word.}

20. Include interesting links.

21. Be more creative than the rest.

22. Post at least one guiding question in the blog. {I don’t know why I find that funny.}

23. Have a bigger vision. {I’m going to rule the world!}

24. Let’s agree to be honest but still “sisterly.” {giggling}

25. Don’t be racist or morally offensive.

26. Threats, slander, and violence prohibited.

27. Make sense.

28.  No trolling.

29. No inappropriately long, rambling rants.  {Good thing rants was included.}

30. No threats of any kind.

31. No name calling, particularly if I’m the recipient. {Love the last part.}

32. No nasty, snide, snarcky tone. {It’s snarky.}

33. Be Ladies and Gentlemen.

34. Passion without wallowing in mire. {One of my favorites.}

35. Don’t cyberbully.

36. No real names.

37. Be careful who you talk to. {whom}

38. No inappropriate pictures.

39. Avoid legal entanglement. {laughing again}

40. Cite your sources, check your facts, respect copyright law. {Does this include the copying of super cute images?}

41. Don’t have any private “convosations.”

42. Consider the implications.

43. Purposely don’t follow blogging rules. {Say what?}

44. Add your own rules.  {Okay?}

45. Traditional blogging doesn’t exist. {Oh, no!}

46. Keep posts short. {Oops}

47. Keep posts as long as they have to be. {Deep sigh of relief}

48. Use correct grammar. {I’m dyslexic.}

49. Challenge yourself and others using your critical thinking skills.

50.  Provide value, something worthwhile.

51. Focus on a niche.

52. Insults are not tolerated and will be subject to edit or deletion.

53. Be opinionated. {What’s left to be opinionated about?}

54. Be more extreme than others. {I’m thinking sports.}

55. Get personal.

56. Be more personal than the others. {The mysterious others on the other side of blog island? Lost reference.}

57. Be transparent.

58. Remember kids might read the content.

59. You have to know what you are talking about.

60. You have to want to write it.

61. You have to care about your readers {This from a blog filled with half-naked photos of women.}

62.  Be the best teacher in your niche. {I want an easy niche!}

63. When competitors begin sending customers to your site to understand a topic, you’ll know you’ve won. {So not making sense.}

64.  Be funnier than the others. {Does dorky count?} {More mysterious others.}

65. Your blog should be easy to navigate.

66.  Don’t focus on widgets. {Crap, I seriously love widgets!}

67.  Be the source of timely news.

68. Develop your own strategies.

69. Posting the same thing over and over again is annoying.

70. Posting the same thing over and over again is annoying.

71.  No flaming. {Or hosing}

72. No soliciting. {Try some vita-juice!}

73. Do not engage in criminal behavior.

74. Don’t drag visitors off with comments.

75. Use good judgment.

76. Blog frequently and intelligently.

77. Be trustworthy.

78. Be respectful of other people, especially when you disagree.

79. People will disagree, and might be really mad at you. {Yikes!}

80. Be right.

Conclusion: Blog rules, like all rules in life (especially the social arena rules), sometimes involve basic common sense but can also be restrictive, contradicting, ambiguous, confusing, debatable, and sometimes just downright laughable.

                                                

My Blog Rules:

 1.   Be yourself

2.    If you are a dumb butt or poop head, prepare for deletion.

Just incase you’re wondering: 101 means introductory to something. The reference is to a college course with the course code 101, which in the American system indicates an introductory course, often with no prerequisites.

Feel free to continue onward

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