Nonsense

Nonsense covers random thoughts and ramblings.

I Am Trying to Write a Blog Post While Working from Home*

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27

Or: My Cat Doesn’t Want You to Read This

*While taking a totally legitimate work break. Smokers have smoke breaks. Bloggers have blog breaks. It’s an addiction, which is a disease, so it’s not my fault and I’m super entitled to it. Shut up.

Guys, this week, I really wanted to share a whole bunch of hilariously awful stories of the tragedies that are my romantic history. I have a lot of them, and they’re great fodder for doodles.

But this week, the Snowpocalypse has come to visit the Queen City.

That means I’m working from home.

Crap. It's weird, isn't it?

My cat wanders around purr-hum-meowing. That’s normal, right?

With my cat.

Like a tiny fuzzy ninja

She is an expert at sneaking into laps from under blankets.

Who is very clingy.

We suit each other so well

She’s also kind of shove-y and personal-space-invade-y.

And does not share attention well.

weog234ng3058g98iher5

This is why my current project reads “wretcidnpwvnrub79843” in the middle of a sentence.

I have no idea how she got this way.

And the laptop says "i4e80t208wh"

Purr. Purr. Purr.

No clue at all.

I guess life is full of little mysteries like that.

Cold Medicine Is a Tricksy Mistress

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19

Or: I Was Going to Write about More Tragic Tales of Failed Romance, but then THIS Happened

It’s no secret – I’m sick this week. I got laid low by what I like to call “horrible death cold” somewhere around Saturday night, and now, by Wednesday, I like to think I’m all better.

SO MUCH BETTER

Woo!

But I’m not.

Uh oh

Huh?

It’s a lie. It’s cold medicine.

Yup. Not really better at all

Oh Dammit.

I woke up this morning feeling spectacular.

Woooo!

It feels really spectacular to breathe after four days of being unable to breathe.

I almost acted like a morning person. I showered and brushed my teeth and flitted around without even the help of coffee. Because I had AIR. Air was my new best friend. It gave me super powers. It made me feel like I was fueled on sunshine and happiness.*
*Which isn’t really helpful today, since the Queen City is preparing for a snowpocalypse today. There’s no sunshine to be had.

Wuv. Twue wuv.

It’s a true love. And unbreakable love. A love that lasts until death.

In my bliss, I completely forgot exactly how much cold medicine I’d layered on myself last night. Specifically, I forgot the sweet blessing of 12-hour Afrin.** Which I used last night, specifically because I was completely unable to breathe at all, and without breathing, there would be no sleep.
**Which is the divine gift to sick people.

Product placement!

Can you hear the angels singing? It’s really evil malicious laughter.

I know this, because now that I am at work, officially far away from life-saving congestion-fighters and medicine of any kind, I cannot breathe at all and am once again convinced I am so sick I may die.

Wheeze wheeze wheeze

Must…breathe…ack…

Not funny, medicine. Not funny at all.

 

Side note: The product placement in this post didn’t benefit me in any way at all. I’m just being honest about the medicine that conned me into thinking I was well just long enough for me to go to work.

I Am Totally Prepared for Our Robot Overlords

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15

Or: This Post Is Going to Talk about a Lot of Geeky Things and You Might Judge Me

I know I keep it pretty under wraps, but you may have guessed that I’m kind of an enormous nerd.* I read geeky books, and I’m in love with science. I can talk philosophically about unicorns and dragons and dinosaurs. I play a lot of video games. I watch a lot of action movies and science fiction.
*If you happen to be dating me at this moment, or have just met me and have fallen for my suave act of awesomeness, please stop reading this right now. I’m totally cool and normal. For sure. Go sports teams!

What this all boils down to is one thing: I think I am totally prepared for our future robot overlords.

Have a hug of war, not a tug of war

No, I cannot draw robot hands. And yes, he has four fingers on purpose. How many fingers do YOUR robot overlords have? Go ahead. Count. It’s four.

I know some people aren’t looking forward to the future. I mean, we already haven’t gotten the flying skateboards we were promised by Back to the Future.** So the future can seem like a little bit of a letdown. But one thing all predictions of the future seem to include are robots. We’re already making them (thanks, Japan!), they’re already kicking butt at Jeopardy (thanks, Watson!), and we’re totally using them to perform surgery magic (thanks, medical science! …No, really. I mean it.).
**We’re flying car-less, too. And none of us normal people have jet packs. Basically, we’ve been lied to a lot about the future giving us lots of ways to defy gravity. I’m outraged by the fact that I’m still required to walk places and have not been able to melt into a Wall-e style space blob. OUTRAGED.

I don't know how to skateboard

It doesn’t even really help if you make flying noises.

But all of Hollywood has convinced us that robots are going to develop sentience and rebel against mankind. Some people are worried about this.*** Not me, though. Because I have officially watched enough movies to know that this whole “robot rebellion” thing happens because we aren’t nice enough to all the robots.
***I’m not going to name names here or anything, but you know who you are.

Me and mah robot friends...

YAY! Robot friends!
Watson is not a very good dancer.

Think about it. Skynet/Cyberdine (we’re talking about the Terminator movies here) was full of roboty slaves that culminated in a horrendous judgment day. In AI, robots are cool as long as we love them, but then we neglect them and everything goes wrong. In Portal, well, a lady gets forcibly dumped into a mega-powered robot body for the continuation of science. What this tells me is that robots probably be more ok with things if we’d just given them a day off or two. And probably a hug.

So I’m all set to hug robots when they hit the mainstream. It’ll probably help make them nicer overlords.

And they might even build me a flying skateboard.

WEEEEEEEEEEEE!

“Flying skateboard” sounds more fun than “hoverboard.” Just accept it.

(I really wanted to write about the Olympics today, but since everything that happened last night is currently living on my DVR because I went to yoga, I had to get a little off topic. And learn how to draw robots. Which was difficult****. See the things I do for you? It’s because I care. You’re welcome.)
****Not really, because when you doodle things on post-its, no one expects high art.

Someone Hid the Coffee and I Think the World May End

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25

I am not known for my glowing morning-person personality. I am, however, a known coffee-holic.*
*Also cake-holic, marshmallow-holic, one-more-glass-of-wine-holic…Basically, I should be in a lot of Anonymous programs.

Must....reach...delicious...zzzzzzz....

In retrospect, my life would be easier in the morning if I started keeping my coffee pot on the floor.

It’s the sweet nectar that lures me out of bed in the morning and the bribe I use to transform myself into a professional human being on work days. It is the difference between me staring blankly at the wall for half an hour and me writing a blog post.

In short, it is the breath of life. It is my Gummiberry Juice.

They are the gummi beeeeeeaaarrrs!

This is your obscure 80s/early 90s cartoon reference for the day.
Click for image source.

And this morning I did not wake up in time to make any coffee.** That shouldn’t be a problem. I work in a professional office with a fancy break room full of snacks and coffee-making things. So really, on mornings when I don’t make coffee, it’s just a short walk to work before I can have some nestled in my hands.
**I did not make it out of the shower in a reasonable amount of time, and was forced to choose between putting on clothes or making coffee. It was not an easy decision, and I regret the choice I made.

But apparently not today.

WHYYYYYYY?! (KAAAHHHHNNNN!)

WHO DID THIS TERRIBLE THING?!

Today there is no coffee in the break room. Today, the fancy Keurig, source of all life in the office, sits idle. Someone unpacked the shipment of coffee somewhere secret and hidden. It may be a social experiment. It may be an act of aggression. It may just be general cruelty.

But I think it is an act of war.

And so, since I watched entirely too many episodes of The Walking Dead this week***, I am probably going to go to jail.
***Not true. Not possible. Just stick with me here people. Sometimes humor requires some mandatory exaggeration.

I am a great zombie

This is how TV has taught me to cope with things.

If you’ve never watched the Gummi Bears, a product of Disney’s imagination and corporate greed, then you should probably watch this. It’s the intro, and it sums the whole thing up nicely. “Hey kids! Learn that bouncing a lot and drinking sugar water is a great way to win EVERYTHING!”

Disney says you’re welcome, parents of the world.

It’s The End of an Era

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25

Or: I Finally Figured Out How to Quit Zoosk

Guys. Today is an important day. A day of both joy and sorrow. A day of celebration and mourning. A day of overly dramatic, hyberbolic statements in introduction paragraphs.

Today is the day I finally completely rejected the advances of Zoosk and demanded it never talk to me again.*
*And that it return all the mixtapes I gave it.

I'll never let go, Zoosk! I'll never let go!

Those tears of sorrow are super heartfelt, I’m sure.

Now, everyone** knows Zoosk and I have had a tumultuous relationship. For one thing, the first time I tried to quit it, it repeatedly crashed until I gave up and read all the nonsense poetry people were writing to me. 
**All the people I imagine read this in the quiet comfort of my own head

And then I was hooked. The pickup lines were too impressive. Too ridiculous. Too…incredibly obviously not going to work.  Honestly, things were getting bad. I was going to end up TLC’s My Strange Addiction, confessing to strangers how I just couldn’t quit reading the bad poetry of pickup lines on the Internet.

Something had to be done.

(It’s also possible that I’m just maybe seeing a real live guy. Maybe.
…Shut up. It IS possible!)

So, on this solemn occasion, I bring you (for the final time)…

Zoosketry
(Better defined as “Zoosk Poetry.” The dulcet words of potential woo-ers in the Land of Zoosk.)

“Do you have a map? I keep getting lost in your eyes.”
(No. I don’t have a map. Man up and stop to ask for directions. Duh.)

“I hope you know CPR, because you take my breath away.”
(Nope. I took it, therefore it’s mine. I’m not giving it back.)

“What does it feel like to be the best looking person in this room?”
(Oh man. We’re getting super metaphysical here. In “this” room? Like, the one-on-one chat “room” you’re trying to start with me? Or the room of Zoosk? Clarify here, so I can know how flattered to be.)

“What’s your favorite scary movie?”
(Oh, we’re starting off with movie quotes? Then how about this one: “I thought you’d be taller.”)

“Why aren’t you in jail? It’s illegal to look that good.”
(You don’t know that I’m not. Stop making assumptions.)

“Describe in one sentence the kind of person you’re looking for.”
(“Not a serial killer.” Wait! That’s a fragment. Let me try again. “The kind of man who does not end sentences with prepositions.”)

“Why is a good looking person like you still single?”
(….This is not a legitimate question. Try again.)

“I know you lost your phone number, so here’s mine. <phone number included.>”
(…Know what? That’s thinking outside the box. It’s also a way to end up getting drunk texts from strangers at 3 in the morning.)

“When I saw you, I fainted and hit my head. I need your name and number for insurance reasons.”
(Oh, holy crap! Of course! I’m SO sor-wait a minute. This is a trick!)

And, the best of all of them:

“You r pretty enough.”
(…Wait. Wait wait. Pretty enough? Enough for what? What system of measurement are we using here, and what’s the competition? I need answers!)

And so an era of dating website mockery ends. At last, I shall no longer stay up until 2:30 in the morning on a work night, flipping through messages to note down the very best ones for blogging purposes. My pre-geriatric bedtime shall be restored!

I know. This leaves us all very sad.**** So I shall leave you with a thought experiment to take your mind off things:
****Also there have been exactly zero actual doodles in this post.

I present to you Schrödinger’s Cake.

Cake is better to experiment on than cats

There may be cake inside. There may be no cake inside. There both is and is not cake…Until you look inside.

Guys. The cake might be a lie. But it also might not be. There could be cake in there.

The cake is a lie the cake is a lie

It’s not really a lie if I knew it was once a truth…