Moon Landing to Marmite

Ah, the moon. Earth's little, gray, cheesey friend in the sky.
The moon is mad popular these days. You've noticed it, I'm sure: people make awesome sci-fi movies about it, blame crop circles on it, make terrifying spray paint art about it (more on my fear of oversized planets to come in a future blog post, probably), and even convince themselves that it's cool to wear one of the most tasteless items of clothing known to mankind because of it:

That's right, even our president has been sucked into moon mania.

I don't know if this is fact, but at least in my opinion it seems about right: this "moon mania" started back in 1969 when, for the first time ever, mankind stepped foot on the moon. Not all of mankind I mean, that would've been crowded. Just two men. On July 20, 1969, in the same year that David Bowie appropriately released "Space Oddity" and Denmark legalized the sale of porn (unrelated, hopefully), Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin hopped in a spacecraft, flew around the earth for a bit, landed on the moon, and then walked on it. Since then, the world has gone batshit for the moon.

There really is an incalculable amount of love for the moon on this planet. Pink Floyd wrote a pretty famous song about the dark side of it, the singing hamster-potato-alien things from the Quiznos commercials wrote a song about how much they love it (youtube "we like the moon" of you have no idea what I'm talking about. You're welcome.), poets and musicians have written romantic verses about it, and Wallace and Gromit loved it so much they went on a holiday to it. Seriously, google search for "The Moon" and you'll get about 309 million hits.

This poses the question: who in their right mind doesn't love the moon?!??

...Me. I hate the moon.

The moon causes bad things to happen more than... well... anything else that causes bad things to happen (sorry, I can't think of a good example. Because the moon is the only example). Where to begin? The position of the moon affects the tides, which is great for fishermen because hey, fish. But when the moon screws up even the tiniest bit, really, REALLY bad shit happens. Like tsunamis. And jellyfish infestations. What else? The moon is what causes regular people to turn into werewolves (sure, it's a fictional thing. OR IS IT?). Werewolves and other fictional evil things inspired the Twilight series, which there is absolutely no excuse for. Then there's that whole "moon cycle" thing that women get, and speaking for womankind I think it's safe to say that we all could really do without it from time to time. You see? The moon is evil, and I hate it.

How does this relate to Marmite, you ask? Well, the marketing slogan for the British food spread is "Love it or hate it." Because if you have tastebuds and are not British, you'll know that Marmite is well gross. I've never tasted it, but on wikipedia it says that it's a "sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, powerful flavor which is extremely salty," and that's enough for me to make a snap judgement that the stuff is gross. Maybe one day I'll try a taste of it and change my mind, but for now I'll stick to hating it about as much as I hate the moon.

And finally, to tie it all together, here's a musical about the moon landing written by some British dude who probably smothers everything he eats in Marmite: "Moon Landing"

Next post: Herpes to Harpies.

GPS to GPA

Ah, GPS, one of many things that I wish by beloved 1997 RAV4 had inside it (other things I long for include a sound system capable of playing my iPod in the car and a completely reliable left blinker.)
If you don't know that GPS stands for "Global Positioning System", I weep for you a bit. They're generally voiced by an individual who sounds soothing and competent enough to coerce you, gently, to stop panicking and find a way to do a three point turn to escape from going the wrong way down a one way, dead end street in the ghetto. This is a much better system then the one I am experienced with, the traditional navigation system that my ex had for the two years we were living together-- ie, me, with an atlas and a perpetual squint. Unlike your average GPS, which would placidly announce "take your next left" in a voice that would make Stephen Fry seem absolutely manic, I tended to shriek incoherently until he had passed the required turn, then rifle frantically through the atlas as he shouted "what?" at an increasing volume until, inevitably, we stopped in a deserted parking lot to fume at each other and listen to Metallica until the urge to kill had somewhat diminished. Our experiences with one way streets were surprisingly abundant, and unsurprisingly terrifying. My reaction to them was just about the same as my reaction to normal street directions, only louder, and with more profanity. On our last fateful encounter of looking into the cold, dead headlights of an approaching Subaru Forester, I actually rent my garments in terror.

My God. It's full of stars.

You'll be gratified to know that we never got into an accident (together, at least. He was almost as bad a driver as I was a navigator, and has, since our breakup, totaled three cars. This may, however actually be a result of karmic retribution raining down upon him. I have totaled no cars.) but it was often a near thing. Perhaps because of this, I'm a big fan of GPS.
Except when people tell me the government can use it to find you.
This makes me panic, just a tiny, tiny, bit. As an English Major I was required by literature nerd code to read 1984, and ever since then things like satellites and CCTV cameras knowing where I am has being ever so slightly pants-shittingly horrifying.
And what's the most interesting record being kept on you between the ages of 18 and 23 (unless of course you're a criminal)? Your GPA! Yes, the record of your grades that makes you feel like your entire life is a video game, as your whole future hinges on how many experience points you have, and what level it puts you at. Every class you finish, in the corner of your eye you see a small blip of "Congratulations! You have been awarded the English 199 Achievement!"
Or maybe that's just me and a small collective of incredibly geeky 14 year-old boys.
Either way, there you have it. GPS to GPA.

Next up: Moon landing to Marmite.

Hallucinations to the Hubble Space Telescope

Okay.
Suppose you and your buddies are hanging out in the park. It's warm and sunny outside, so you decide to play frisbee because that's what you do when it's warm and sunny and you're at a park. So you're playfully tossing that frisbee back and forth to each other, occasionally throwing it too far and pretending to be mad when you have to go retrieve it from the bushes, and you're laughing and smiling and generally being happy that mother nature likes you today and wishing that it would stay like this always.
Then all of a sudden the sky turns black and the frisbee becomes a rabid honey badger and your buddies all become sheeagleopards (sheep-eagle-leopard creatures, duh) and your nose is a doorknob and the honey badger opens your nose-door and you and Alfred (the honey badger) get sucked into your nose-vacuum.
Boom. You just hallucinated.
Maybe I should've mentioned that before you went to the park you and your friends took a shitload of LSD, because hallucinations like this only really happen when you're hopped up on all kinds of illicit substances. Hallucinations can also happen when you're violently ill with some kind of brain disease or if you happen to not sleep for too many hours. But mainly its the drugs that'll do it.
Many people did hallucinogenic drugs in the seventies. Because hey, it was the seventies. It's just what you did. Anyway, lots of these drugged-out hallucinating hell-raisers were probably inspired to do all those drugs and raise all those hells because of that crazy rock and roll music they were listening to. Not because of the music, per se, but most likely because of the psychadelic artwork on the album covers of the records (records? were those really ever a thing?). Since real life was far less interesting than what was being shown on those album covers, (like this one from the band Cream:)

...people decided that life would be oh so much more entertaining if they were tripping balls on LSD. And boy did they trip.
Where was I going with this? Oh right, the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Hubble Space Telescope is that famous telescope that orbits the earth and takes really, really clear pictures of stars and other space things. When the telescope launched in 1990 people were freaking out because the pictures that it took were so detailed and I'm sure the phrase "No human has ever seen anything like this before" was tossed around by the NASA scientists like a frisbee on a warm day. To the ex-hippies, however, the pictures weren't all that impressive. Because Roger Dean had been drawing that shit on Yes album covers for ages.
In other news, "fearless honeybadger" is apparently a meme.

Next post: GPS to GPA

Axolotls to Aviation

When approaching this post, one question leaps instantly to mind like a long-legged, intellectual gazelle: What in the name of fuck is an Axolotl?
If this question did not leap instantly to your mind than 1) Your knowledge of creatures with ridiculous names both exceeds mine and is verging on the encyclopedic and 2)You will have no appreciation for the next paragraph or two, or the aggressive googling that is going to occur before said paragraphs can come into being. You may want to take this moment to go and browse some science websites, or invent teleportation, or make a ham sandwich that can cry like an infant. In short, go do whatever it is that people who know what axolotls are do for a moment. I'll be back with you shortly.
Okay. Everybody else unclear on what this badboy is?
PREPARE TO BE CLARIFIED.
It's this.

Okay. You're struggling with some feelings. Let's take a moment.
First of all, release the stricken cry of momentary horror you've been holding in. Those first few seconds alone with the Axolotl were difficult for both of us. Now let's move on to the creeping, terrible feeling that it might be adorable. Yes, it looks like an aquatic, mutant carrot. Yes, its eyes look like they're painted on, and the protrusions on the side of its head look like it's become one with an unholy anemone. But look, it's smiling! Awwww! Look at the sweet little dream-raping monster!
See, I say little because that one is a baby. This is what they look like in large:

It hurped so hard it derped. Seriously, what IS that? What cruel and unfeeling god crossed a penis with a stalk of broccoli? H.P. Lovecraft couldn't stand to be alone with that thing. Damn it, Axolotl, you simply should not be! Nothing is right about you, NOTHING! That is why you look so sad, damn you. BECAUSE YOU ARE THE CREATURE GOD FORGOT!

Ahem.

Now that we've crossed the mind-searing Rubicon of its appearance, let's learn something about it.
According to Wikipedia (don't go, you'll have to look at the green one again) Axolotls come straight from hell from the lake underlying Mexico City. They belong to the Tiger Salamander complex, and have the horrifying but incredibly useful ability to re-grow body parts. This means that they are used heavily in scientific research and could be immensely beneficial to mankind, and that if there was ever a nuclear incident that caused them to grow to enormous size and attack cities we could never, ever defeat them. They are nearing extinction, either because of pollution in their habitat or because of a healthy self-preservation instinct inherent in anyone who's ever seen one.
Apparently, some people keep them as pets. Probably these people are necromancers and/or Norman Bates, but that is neither here nor there. In Japan (who didn't see THAT coming) they are sold under the deceptively adorable name "wooper looper".
... right.
Everyone who already knew about this particular brand of nightmare, please come back now. And then explain to me why the hell you didn't WARN me about that?
Anyway, where's the connection between these guys and aviation. Well, I believe this takes us back to the nuclear incident scenario.
Were there to be, by some horrible catastrophe, a situation in which even one of these things grew to enormous size and started Godzilla-ing around Mexico, anyone within a thousand mile radius would be wanting some serious aviation to be taking place. Aviation that preferably had some heavy artillery attached. I'm normally a pacifist, but were there to be an abundance of brocolli wangs the size of aircraft carriers invading from a subterranean lake, I think I just might be able to see a situation in which aviation-based violence might be required.
So there you have it: axolotls to aviation.
And when it comes to Axolotls, children, remember: what has been seen cannot be unseen.

Next post: Hallucinations to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Ocelots to Organic Farming

BABY OCELOTS ARE SO DARN CUTE. Just look at them. Look at those cute little eyes. Look at that one snuggling up on the blanket in the corner. Look at the other one stickin' his paw out and looking up at you. Ohmygod they're adorable. Don't you just want to take one home and sit it on your lap and pet it 'til its just a big ball of purr and cuddle with it and watch it sleep and take pictures of it and send it to all your friends and family?

No, you don't. Because while they may be the most adorable thing I've seen since I googled "lobster baby" and found that picture of the chubby little baby in a lobster costume sitting in a bucket (please google it, it'll make you so happy), these cute little ocelot kittehs are actually going to grow up to be vicious, deer-eating, urine-spraying (get that image out of your head now, I dare you), nocturnal hell-raisers. Sure, during the day these cats look all harmless sitting up there in those jungle trees, but at night they turn into predatorial killing machines. Kind of like Batman. Ocelots are like the Batmen of South American jungles.

Ocelots pretty much only live in Central and South America, which is also where the Amazon rainforest lives. In addition to housing some of the world's most incredibly colorful animals, the Amazon rainforest is one of the many rainforests of the world that is being slowly destroyed by loggers and industries and tourism. Rainforests are great for lots of reasons, which is why there are all these hippies out there who want to save them from being destroyed.

Hippies like to spend their time trying to save things like rainforests, the environment, energy, and, by the smell of it, themselves from showering. Hippies are also the biggest supporters these days of organic farming. According to my dear friend who was raised by hippies and therefore knows way too much about all this, organic farming is great because you can use all your scrap organic material waste and compost it in a worm bin which then creates bio organic shit that you can put BACK into your plants. Fun stuff!

I wanted to add some photos to this blog to make things a little more fun, so here's a picture of that terrifying bird-thing from the planet earth special about rainforests:

Next post: Axolotls to Aviaton.

Jupiter to Jasper Johns

So once upon a time I decided that I was gonna up and move to London for a semester. Having now arrived and settled myself in my flat, I can commence writing again. Only... the move has left my mind a bit jangled. See, I spent the last hour and a half on Google seeing what it would fill in if I typed "How to...", "Why do..." or "Where is..." and laughing hysterically, all alone in my room, about the fact that Google tries to tell me how to take my dog camping.
Something dangerous has happened to my brain. It's either the water or the perpetual flow of one pound lager. Possibly both.
Anyway, enough of these surrealist apologetics! On to the matter at hand:
Jupiter is a planet. Please tell me you already knew that. Let's assume you did, and move forward with this whole making assumptions business by also deciding that you probably know that it's the biggest planet in the solar system. Yes, Jupiter is the solar system's fat friend. Come on, every group has one.
But gracefully leaping off the boat of general knowledge into the dark and turbid waters of random, internet-generated information, here are some other things you should know about Jupiter:
It is actually shaped not like a sphere, but oblate spheroid, which means that not only is it fat, it's lumpy. And how fat IS Jupiter exactly? Its mass is 2.5 times greater than the all of the other planets in the solar system combined. To give you an idea of this on a smaller scale, if Jupiter was a person every aspect of its wardrobe would contain elastic, and labels with a number of L's that even a fluent Welsh speaker would find intimidating.It's a bigass planet.
Perhaps because of all the fat jokes made about it by the other planets, Jupiter has a hard, rocky core. And severe self-esteem issues.
Jupiter and I also have something in common (apart from the severe self-esteem issues, and hard, rocky core). We both have a large, red spot. Mine is on the back of my head--cleverly hidden by what I may flatter myself by calling a singular and spectacular haircut-- while Jupiter's is located 22 degrees south of the planet's equator. Also, Jupiter's spot is an anticyclonic storm and larger than the earth, so I guess actually they're not that similar, when you think about it. While I can only be reasonably sure that my spot is in fact a birthmark, and not a large-scale circulation of winds around a central region of high atmospheric pressure, I can be completely sure that it is not larger than earth.
Point is, Jupiter has a spot, and it's red.
Know what else is circular and red? No, not clown noses. Don't be a dick. Besides, those are spheres. Focus.
A target. A target is circular and red AND TWO DIMENSIONAL SO IT IS IN FACT A CIRCLE. Okay, several circles. You know what, never mind. Jasper Johns painted a lot of works based on targets, targets look like the red spot on Jupiter, end of story.
In a slightly related but fascinating side note, I had no idea who Jasper Johns was until I "researched" him for this. And by researched I mean googled. Point is, my confidence in my artist knowledge has been taken down a peg. Well played, blog, well played.

Ocelots to Organic Farming.

Privateers to Pond Life

When you Google Image the word privateer, you get lots of pictures of 17th century boats. Of course you do, that's what they are: private warships that were authorized by a government to attack foreign ships. Like pirates! Only they had to report back to their country for assignments and money and such. And they weren't allowed to sink other ships, only capture them. And none of them were ever commanded by Johnny Depp. So not like pirates at all, really.
Anyway, what's weird is that equally spread out through all these pictures of big boats on Google Images are what appear to be screenshots of some futuristic space video game. Specifically, they look like giant star wars-like spaceships shooting at things while purple laser beams shoot out their rear ends. Also scattered among these pictures of Hornblower-era naval ships are pictures of WWII-era combat airplanes.
This odd collection of images leads me to believe that if you had no clue what a privateer was and you went on Google Images to get some kind of vague definition of the word, you'd probably believe that a privateer is something that flies or floats and shoots at other things during battles. In that vein, the word privateer could also refer to things like submarines, Spiderman, and dragons.
I don't know about you, but I was kind of disappointed when I first learned that dragonflies weren't little fly-sized dragons. Wouldn't that be neat? I mean, you'd be sitting beside your little pond, hangin with all your little freshwater tadpoles and newts and snapping turtles, then WHAM! all of a sudden you're smacked in the arm by a teeny little FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON. As it lays there on the ground for a minute, struggling to pick itself up after its nose-dive into your upper arm, you quickly take out your little bug-gathering jar that you always carry with you, stick some twigs in it (after all, you have to make the jar at least a little cozy for the poor guy), and gently coax the petite beast inside. Then you take it home and show off to your friends that you just caught, yeah, AN ACTUAL DRAGON!! Come on now, doesn't that just sound great?! "What did you do today, Billy?" "Oh, you know, just went down to the pond and caught a ferocious mythical beast with my bare hands. You know, no big deal or anything."
But alas, in reality pond life isn't all that exciting. Nope, all you have there these days are dumb little tadpoles and newts and snapping turtles and tall grasses. Oh yeah, and mosquitos and worms. Otherwise known as things that squirm through dirt or give you malaria. Much too lame for me. I'll take things that BREATHE FIRE AND GUARD PRINCESSES, thanks very much. If only pond life was as exciting in real life as it is in my totally awesome imagination.

Jupiter to Jasper Johns

Hammocks to Henry VIII

Today I am taking a break from writing my (face-meltingly horrible) final papers and writing a blog entry instead. I apologize for how long this took. You see, my face melted, and I had to convince it to go back into a solid form before I could write anything. I don't know how many of you have had to talk to your face while it's not attached to you and also a liquid, but it is not a pleasant experience. You look at it there, on the floor, in its tupperware, and a it stares defiantly back at you, just daring you to try and reattach it.
But, yet again, I digress. Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
Hammocks to Henry VIII
Hammocks come in many different varieties. Or at least they come in two, one being the weird, net-ish kind that makes you feel a little bit like you're cast in the worst possible role on an episode of Deadliest Catch, and the big canvas ones that you can use to role someone up into a tenuously suspended human burrito. The second ones are significantly more awesome, firstly because of the human burrito aspect, but secondly because there's less of a chance that stuff you put in them is going to fall out, or that your foot is going to become trapped in a gap in the woven net and you won't be able to free it and you're going to die out here and you never should have hung this up somewhere so secluded because it seemed relaxing at the time but now NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM OH GOD.
I have feelings about woven hammocks.
But anyway, the canvas burrito kind are better. Do you know the logical, human, non-paranoid reason that they're better? Two words: More material.
You know what else more material makes better? Codpieces. Nobody would ever want to see a mesh codpiece. Although this is the internet, so... based on personal opinion alone, a fully-fabriced codpiece is a better codpiece.
And who loved codpieces? (and shoulder pads, and male heirs?) Henry VIII. You just see if you can find a picture of that man without a cape and an aggressively visible genital protector. Many of them are bejeweled. The codpieces, not the pictures.
And just for the sake of making this entry circular, you could, theoretically, say that a codpiece is in fact an early iteration of the banana hammock.
I'm going to go ahead and let you try to unread that for the rest of the day.

Privateers to Pond life.

Holy interrupting blog post, Batman!

Hello all of you (nine or ten) loyal readers! We thought we'd give you a little treat this week, since we've been kind of sucking at updating this blog on a regular basis. As you know, we started doing these shortest distance things via facebook, so we thought it might be fun to share some of our earliest posts with you now. Enjoy!
(Side note: we're busy busy college students, and while this blog is clearly worthy of our undivided attention it is unfortunately not all that important to our professors, who for some dumb reason expect us to get all of our homework done well and handed in on time. So if we don't post updates weekly, don't blame us. Blame the damn teachers for making us do actual schoolwork instead.)

Pumpkins to Papua New Guinea:

Pumpkins are orange. Lots of things are orange, for instance orangutans. Orangutans are animals, not unlike guinea pigs. Guinea pigs are neither pigs nor do they come from New Guinea, as you would assume from their name. Papua New Guinea is a country in Asia that guinea pigs do not come from.

Bears to Battleships:

Bears are large hairy creatures that live in the wilder lands of various parts of the world. Bears also like to eat blueberries. And sometimes people who are picking blueberries, but that's unrelated and sort of horrible. Blueberries, while they grow, are sometimes housed in little metal cages so that animals (like bears) won't eat them. The skeletons of battleships are just metal structures before people put battleship all over them (or blueberries inside them.) There you go. Bears to battleships, via blueberries.

Foxes to Folding Chairs:

Foxes are generally orange, which is a popular color and flavor of popsicles, which are usually eaten in the summer, which is when many people like to sit outside, and because of this shitty economy the only things people can afford to sit on are folding chairs.

Buoys to Bangladesh

Buoys are those metal things that float around in the ocean that aren't boats. I really don't know much about the things other than the fact that they bob up and down in the water just far enough away from the shore so that we don't accidentally knock into them when we're swimming around or surfing in the ocean. They pretty much indicate the all too necessary "don't swim beyond here or you'll be eaten by a shark or carried away with the current" boundary. I think. I don't go swimming in the ocean much, but I imagine that's what those things are there for.
I also know that the word buoy is ridiculously annoying to type. Try it. Buoy. No matter how many times I try I can't type that word without fucking up. Buioy. See? That sneaky little "i" comes in outta nowhere.
But I digress. Buoys are always in the ocean. If you were awake for most of elementary school you'd know that about seventy percent of the earth is covered by ocean. Technically there is only one ocean because all of those big bodies of salt water on the earth are interconnected, but because mankind has some sort of issue with sharing we've divided the world ocean up into five different mini-oceans. These oceans are: the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Arctic Ocean, and the easily forgettable Southern Ocean (it borders Antarctica, so who cares).
The Indian Ocean is bordered by Africa, Australia, and southern Asia. I guess it's called the Indian Ocean because India's kind of a big country that sticks out in the middle of this ocean like a sore thumb. Bangladesh is right next to India, and a little bit of it lies on the Indian Ocean. I think. The map on Wikipedia is mad tiny. Oh wait, I can zoom in....yep, definitely. It's got some ocean. Cool.


Hammocks to Henry VIII

Slinkies to Soviet Russia

Good evening, party people.
I would like to tell you that the lack of updates had something to do with my being trapped for weeks in a cave surrounded by zombie raptors (not all of them became fossils. Learn the truth the paleontologists don't want you to know) and fighting my way out with nothing but a Jeep, a chainsaw and my sheer, unadulterated awesomeness, but it had a lot more to do with writing a series of 15-20 page papers and college a'cappella.
Pretend it was the raptors. It's so much more fun with raptors.
Anyway, Slinkies to Soviet Russia. Wikipedia, reality's attempt at the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, tells us that a Slinky is: "...a toy consisting of a helical spring that stretches and can bounce up and down. It can perform a number of tricks, including traveling down a flight of steps end-over-end and reforms itself with the aid of gravity and its own momentum." In layman's terms, "it rolls downstairs alone or in pairs."
It would seem to most people that this is really all the Slinky needs to do. Walking down stairs is a pretty neat trick for what would normally be an inanimate object. However, if you are a small child, a Slinky absolutely must be a belt or a bracelet. There is no way around this. The fact that they are specifically designed to collapse in on themselves will not stop you from joyously wrapping a Slinky around your waist and wailing with despair when in becomes entangled in a brightly colored plastic (or worse, steel) Gordian knot from which you will never properly disentangle it. Even if it comes apart, it will never slink again. It will be permanently deformed, with one tragically herniated segment of spring protruding sadly from its side. You will try to get it to roll happily downstairs and it will halfheartedly lope down two or three before sitting there, staring at you, blaming you for trying to force it into a life it never wanted. Under its baleful, plastic eye, you will vow to never attempt to turn a Slinky into a fashion accessory ever again.
Until you get another one, at which point you will be instantly possessed with the need to turn it into a belt.
It's a vicious cycle.
Aside from persistent, fashion-concious children, there is another group of people who want to do weird things with Slinkies. These people are 1980's era astronauts.
I was disappointed to learn "1980's astronauts" does not mean a lot of people in futuristic helmets and glittery jumpsuits gliding majestically through space in a day-glo shuttle to the strains of David Bowie. However, on the plus side, though they may be low on glitter, they did bring toys into space to see how they worked in zero gravity. Turns out that in space, no one can see you slink. This is because you can't. Or rather, Slinkies can't. One scientist is reported (by Wikipedia. Don't hold me to this, but:) to have said "It won't slink at all... it sort of droops."
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. A toy that relies on the aid of gravity won't move without gravity. A revelation about Slinkies brought to you by the era that decided to combine them with eyeballs to produce "crazy eyes." Now THOSE I would like to see in space.
You know who else was very into doing things in space? Why, the former Soviet Union of course! True, the whole space race thing wound down about ten years or so before they started blasting Slinkies into the great, black beyond, but I'm sure the Soviet Union did all sorts of funky space stuff as well. Maybe they tested the Etch-a-sketch?

If you'd like to irrevocably link your adolescence as well as your childhood with the former Soviet Union, go ahead and watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8

And now to turn my Slinky into a belt.

Buoys to Bangladesh.

Farming to Frank Zappa

Along with dinosaurs and circuses, farms are one of those many things that we're taught about all wrong in our childhood. We begin to grow up with these wonderful expectations that all pigs are adorable and pink, roosters made the "cock-a-doodle-doo" sound, dinosaurs were big and cuddly and every circus has a man with a mustache holding a chair next to a friendly lion. But around the age of eleven or so our schools begin to slowly crush all of our childhood hopes and dreams. I used to be all about those cute and cuddly farm animals that I saw pictures of on my placemats and in cartoons that said things like "oink oink" and "moo" and stuff. But then, of course, we all learn that some pigs aren't pink but brown (and not even a nice brown, more like the mystery things you fish out of the garbage disposal kind of brown), roosters don't actually say "cock-a-doodle-doo," dinosaurs were ugly and terrifying and carnivorous, and...well, I'm pretty sure many circuses have men with mustaches holding chairs near lions. Nevermind.
Point is, there are many things about farms and farming that are withheld from us as children. They don't want us to know that farmers wake up at the crack of dawn every single day and pretty much work their asses off all day long in the heat or snow outside and around filthy animals and bugs and dirt and sweat and they have to take care of a lot of land and animals and by the end of the day they're so exhausted (I'm guessing at this point, I mean I've never been/known a real live farmer) that they can't do anything but be grumpy and eat a little and go to bed early. Then they wake up and do it all over again the next day. And the day after that. Also farmers lead a pretty difficult life otherwise. Most of the time these days farms are run by families who make their living selling the goods that their farm produces, and if the goods are bad (heheh) one season they can't make moneys off it. So they pretty much starve. Or they eat the bad goods (heh). But they still go on and hope for the best next year.
I don't know why they don't teach us these things when we're children. If they told us the truth about farming, we'd learn all about perseverance and optimism rather than cute n' cuddly animals that oh wait aren't cute and cuddly they're rank and disgustingly unclean. They should teach us about all kinds of farmers, from those American ones that we usually stereotype to farmers from around the world, like African tribal farming (yams!) and Alaskan Eskimos and their seal hunting or whatever those crazy clowns do up there in the snow.
Eskimos are one of those topics I wish I learned more about as a child. All we learn about them when we're young is that they're people who live in the snow, build igloos, and wear puffy jackets with fur hoods that are pulled tight around their faces. And that's pretty much all I still know about them. My knowledge of Eskimos is almost entirely based on two things: childhood cartoons and the Frank Zappa song "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow." And trust me, neither of those are reliable sources. "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" was the first Frank Zappa song I ever heard (side note: if you've never heard a Zappa song and you want to listen to this one, I just want to warn you that he's basically - wait, scratch that. not basically, definitely - insane). If you don't know the song, it's about a dream he had once (hearing Frank Zappa's dreams is pretty much the equivalent of watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory but on acid, turned upside down and dubbed in Norwegian) that he was once an Eskimo who wanted to go to a rock concert and his mother didn't want him to. The best part of the song is the end, when his Eskimo mother, with a tear in her eye, says to him "watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow."
And that's all I know about Eskimos. They live in the snow, wear puffy parkas, live in igloos, like to go to rock concerts but can't, and are often reminded to not eat pee-snow.

...maybe I should've wikipedia-ed this one.


Slinkies to Soviet Russia

Park Rangers to Pegasus

What I know about the profession of park rangers I learned from visiting the park near my grandparents' house between the ages of six and ten. In those few extremely formative years I didn't spend an enormous amount of time in the park when visiting grandma and grandpa, mainly because their beagle and I were much too busy saving the world from a billion or so ceramic frogs, my older cousins and a concrete statue of St. Francis in grandma's garden (my childhood axis of evil) but when I did, I drew the following conclusions about park rangers:
1.) One of them always worked in the weird little toll booth thing going into the park. But that job was clearly his or her downtime because
2.) They were always stoic, silent, majestically fit men and women. They were so mighty that digging out a map of a park for you was beneath them, but they did it anyway because inferior beings needed sympathy too.
3.) They wore uniforms that I assumed you got after they gave you your license to kill in boyscouts or girlscouts.
I decided, based on these conclusions, that being a park ranger was epically bitchin'. As a child, I imagined the day of the park ranger beginning just before dawn in a cabin deep in the woods. Probably the ranger arose to the muted baying of a distant wolf about five seconds before the sun rose because park rangers had no time to waste waiting for the sun. They then proceeded to eat some wholesome granola soaked in a shot of Jack Daniels, so as to be both healthy and prepared for the day to come. After breakfast, the park ranger would engage in a rigorous training regime. Their exercise would be based on a secret martial art known only to park rangers, and would definitely involve breaking shit with their feet, jumping inhumanly high and that thing where they stand on a little pillar of wood for an indefinite amount of time while concentrating really hard (I knew this had to be part of the ritual training because those little wooden pillars were in the park. No I don't mean tree stumps. Focus.)
After completing his or her preparatory training (they wouldn't train together. Park rangers are far too hardcore for that), the park ranger would leap deftly into his or her Jeep four by four to do a quick check of the park. Many dangers would be waiting in the bracken as the park ranger drove along. Some days they might merely have to shoo some children off a picnic table. Those days would be lame. But other days, a massive bear would lunge out of the woods and start raining down a shitstorm of asscrazy bear-wrath hitherto unknown to man. The only option for the park ranger, in order to maintain a safe park environment, would be to cooly step out of the Jeep and wrestle the everliving fuck out of that bear. They'd grapple wildly in the leaves, throwing punches and kicks and... err... claw punches until the bear was subdued. The park ranger would never actually do any lasting harm to the bear, of course. That would be against their code.
Other days a flock of vicious swans (anyone who thinks swans can't be vicious has never been chase by one. Those bastards would peck out both your eyes as soon as look at you) would storm up from the lake and start carrying off the children of picnickers. The park ranger present would have to charge (or, because they were just that awesome, casually stroll) in and stop the swan chaos. Every day would be a new challenge, a new mind-wrenchingly intense game of Russian Roulette with the sawed off shotgun of nature.The life of a park ranger was always fraught with danger and intrigue -and also clearing paths when trees fell down.
I may or may not have confused them with ninjas a little.
But the point is, when I was a child I accidentally created a mythic park ranger. Much like what I thought the park ranger's job entailed, the pegasus is a myth. It's a winged horse, FYI. Sired by Poseidon in his role of horse god. Aka, in horse form. Aka, in a situation I feel a strong need to avoid imagining for the rest of my life. Long story short, it's a winged horse, it can fly, it's a myth. A slightly disturbing myth.

Farming to Frank Zappa

Percy Shelley to Post Secret

*Addendum: Apparently I'm an idiot, and everyone but me knows who Percy Shelley is. If you're going to be offended by my naivety, then skip reading this post...it may seem just a little (or actually a lot) blasphemous.

Dude, you've got to give up on assigning me these English major-y topics. Percy Shelley? I mean, come now. I've heard of Mary Shelley (of Frankenstein fame...gotta love those movies), but Percy?! Nope, no idea. Sometimes I think you make these people up just to confuse the hell out of me.
Ugh, fine. I'll go wikipedia it...
Oh, okay. Percy was also an author, and he was married to Mary. That explains some things. He also, apparently, was a transvestite. I mean, judging by his portrait:


My god, just look at the guy! That's not a man, that's Meryl Streep in a funky collar holding a quill pen. No man has perfectly coiffed hair, plucked eyebrows, and high cheekbones like that (besides Noel Fielding, who we all can agree defies pretty much every gender stereotype). Even wikipedia can't completely cover up Percy's femininity: "In 1804, Shelley entered Eton College, where he fared poorly, subjected to an almost daily mob torment his classmates called "Shelley-baits." Surrounded, the young Shelley would have his books torn from his hands and his clothes pulled at and torn until he cried out madly in his high-pitched "cracked soprano" of a voice." Hello, there is no better evidence than this. Percy Shelley was a lady. I wouldn't be surprised if she was actually born Persephone Shelley, then shortened it to Percy when she was in grade school 'cause she wanted to be a writer and she thought that only boys could be writers. Plus she was a lesbian, and that just didn't go over well in society in the late 1800s. So she became Percy, and eventually gained all this success with her writing and married Mary (who was the daughter of a well-known feminist and wrote Frankenstein, which is about how even when some guy tries to create the 'perfect' man, he turns out to be a monster...yeah, Mary was also fond of the ladies). Then she drowned in a boat accident, probably because the crew was all "AHHH ITS A TERRIBLE STORM OUTSIDE AND PERCY WE NEED YOU TO HOLD ONTO THIS SAIL SO WE DON'T ALL DIE" and she was all "OMGZ NO WAY, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THAT WOULD DO TO MY NAILS?!???" And so she died.
At least, that's what I like to think happened.
Yeah, I may be re-writing history, but my version is just so much more exciting than "Percy Shelley was a dude who wrote some stuff then died in a boat."
There are many people in this world who, like our dear P. Shellz, would have preferred to be born as a different gender than what they are. These people are called transgendered. Lots of them decide, at some point, to get operations so that they can actually become the other gender that they want to be. Sometimes, before they make such decisions, these people are afraid to tell their friends and families that they feel like they were born the wrong gender. When people have these kinds of secrets, they let them out in all sorts of ways - some write poems, some do drugs, and others choose to anonymously confess their innermost secrets on postcards which they send to an organization called Post Secret, which then publishes books and websites where they share all these secrets with the world. Basically Post Secret is one big tattletale. People find comfort in these anonymous confessions, however, because a lot of times other people comment on their postcards with remarks like "oh hey I'm also secretly attracted to my pet lobster!" or "wow, I never thought anyone else was afraid of the color orange!" It makes them feel like they're not alone in the world, that their eccentricities are not all that abnormal.
So maybe if Percy Shelley had Post Secret, she would've been able to confess her true identity and she'd have had a much more interesting life. Or maybe if I re-wrote Percy Shelley's Wikipedia page, it would just seem to the uneducated masses that she had a supremely interesting life...

Park Rangers to Pegasus.

Braveheart to Breakdancing

I'm going to admit to a moment of cultural illiteracy and tell you that I spent the entirety of "Braveheart" doing watercolors, eating jelly squares, occasionally dozing off (jelly squares are very soothing) and awaking to find that yes, Mel Gibson was still painted blue, celtic music was still playing, and half-naked, very hairy men were throwing themselves across vast, green expanses in order to illustrate visual the concept of liberation from tyranny. Or something like that. I don't know, I was doing watercolors.
The things I know about "Braveheart", in no particular order, are: 1) William Wallace was a badass who fought for Scottish independence with the vigor of Chuck Norris and Mr. T's musclebound somehow gaelic lovechild. 2.) Mel Gibson is, to put it lightly, a bit of an asshat. 3.) They got the costumes wrong. "Braveheart" is set in 13th and 14th century Scotland, and the Scottish characters are wearing kilts. That's all well and good unless you take into account that kilts didn't exist until the end of the sixteenth century. But maybe this was an artistically based decision. After all, nothing says "freedom" quite like a kilt.
But back to point one: William Wallace was a registered badass, and the English forces he and the other Scottish freedom fighters were up against did not really appreciate this. To illustrate their lack of appreciation, they had him drawn and quartered.
Being drawn and quartered is one of two things that I can think of that are worse than the soy hotdogs they serve in the dining hall. (You know the ones. Floating in their warming tray they look like soulless, eyeless fish that have never seen the light of day or felt the slightest tingle of anything resembling joy. Eating them tastes like guilt, shame and loneliness. Also, not at all like hotdogs.) When someone was hanged, drawn and quartered-the usual punishment for high treason in Wallace's time- they were hanged, obviously, then also emasculated-just for the gentlemen, obviously. Ladies generally weren't drawn and quartered because of concerns for what Wikipedia hilariously refers to as "decency", so no one ever had to face that embarrassing moment of how to get around step two-, disemboweled and beheaded before being chopped into four pieces. Technically I guess they ended up in eight, counting from the first point at which bits start getting lopped off, but no matter how many pieces a person ended up in by the time the process was over they were about as dead as someone can get and had not had a good time getting there.
Now this is where I get into the assumption zone because (thankfully) I actually don't know that much about 13th century torture. I'm assuming that the four pieces would each have one limb still attached. Now this had better be close to true, because it's vital to connecting in to the concept that breakdancing uses all your limbs! Also, I would probably end up in that many pieces if I attempted to breakdance, but that's another issue for another day. Till then, the most difficult thing I'm facing is soy hotdogs.

Percy Shelley to Post Secret

Arctic Foxes to Accordians

Arctic foxes are basically regular foxes but they also have white fur instead of that orange-y red stuff they're usually rockin' and they also live in the tundra. If you don't know what the tundra is, then you definitely didn't go to my elementary school. When I was in, like, second grade or something my teacher had us make dioramas (which, btw, is how I know what a diorama is. I've never had to make one since, which kind of sucks because I have sooo many shoeboxes and absolutely nothing to do with them) of all the different biomes of the world. I was assigned the desert, so I made a diorama that was all orange-y yellow (for sand) and I put a bunch of meerkats in it. I love meerkats. Have you ever seen Meerkat Manor? It was a show on Animal Planet. Basically it's Big Brother but with meerkats instead of humans. Hilarious. But anyway. A few years earlier my sister got assigned the same project and she made her diorama about the tundra. So she took a shoebox and put a bunch of cotton balls or something in it to represent snow and and put a bunch of caribou in it to make it all tundra-like. I think I ate caribou once, actually. I mean I went to a restaurant that was having "wild game night" where they cooked all exotic semi-extinct wildlife (which now seems a little cruel but when I was younger was soo awesome) and served it to their guests. I also ate alligator and bison, neither of which I remember very well but I'm sure it all tasted like chicken.
Sometimes when you go to restaurants there's live music there to amuse you while you're all eating and things. Sometimes this happens at Mexican restaurants, and sometimes at these Mexican restaurants there are mariachi bands that come around and annoy the crap out of you while you're trying to eat your meal and all they want to do is play their guitars and harmonicas and ACCORDIONS and you're all like "woah, dudes, I can't hear my date on account of you're basically squealing into our ears and I want you to go away now although maybe if you were playing for other people in the restaurant I'd probably laugh and enjoy myself a lot more because you're farther away and my date and I can make fun of you but also hear ourselves think at the same time." I've never had that happen to me, but I bet that's what I'd be thinking if I ever was in that situation. I was, however, in a subway once in NYC and a mariachi group came into the car I was in and started playing and it was lovely. There was an accordion there, I think. That was nice. Probably wouldn't have been that nice if I was eating in a nice restaurant, though. Accordions can be pretty annoying if you're just trying to eat your taco in peace. Wait, do they serve taco's in nice restaurants?

Braveheart to breakdancing.

Vuvuzelas to Vikings

As anyone who spent any amount of time watching the World Cup knows, vuvuzelas are the horn-like abominations from South Africa that made you spend half of the match wondering if you were losing your hearing or if everybody in the room heard that weird buzzing noise. It may interest you to know that the vuvuzela is also known as the "lepatata", and that noise it makes that sounds like a terrified hamster attempting to escape from an air horn is typically around the B flat below middle C. Or you may just be in the process of trying to remove the stain of the vuvuzela from the dry erase board of your mind forever. Spoiler alert: No amount of desperate, squeaky erasing is going to save you. Look on the vuvuzela, ye mighty, and despair! Or get the psychological equivalent of a damp paper towel; "The Final Countdown." It will erase the sound of the vuvuzlea- and probably everything else you've ever heard- from your mind and replace that knowledge with a burning desire to sing along to "The Final Countdown." Your passion for this endeavor will be multiplied ten fold if the only lyrics you know are: " IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!"
After that short transfer from the train of thought onto the midtown bus of unrelated tangent, let me continue.
Another arguably fun fact about the vuvuzela is that it was inspired by a horn used to summon distant villagers to attend community gatherings. A little bit further North in the world, Vikings tended to come to community gatherings un-summoned. And not un-summoned in that lovely "We were in the neighborhood and just stopped in to say hi, remember us from college?" sort of way, more in that "Give us all your valuables and/or we will kill you, on second thought forget the 'or'" sort of way. Theoretically, if vikings and vuvuzelas had existed in the same place at the same time, vuvuzleas probably would have accidentally summoned vikings who would have destroyed the vuvuzelas and beaten the everliving daylights out of anyone using one, eventually leading to the downfall of the vuvuzela and celebrations among soccer fans everywhere (or at least everywhere that isn't South Africa.)

By the way, the best thing in existence related to vuvuzelas is The Fellowship of the Vuvuzela. Look that up on youtube, friends, and prepare for hilarity.

Arctic Foxes to Accordions.

Captain Crunch to Curling

Woah.
I haven't updated this thing in ages.
Sorry about that, you've probably been waiting with baited breath for the next post to show up. I'm sure you've all logged in about seven or eight times a day for the past week hoping to read a new post and, seeing that there were no updates, burst into tears screaming "WHY GOD WHY?!!!??!?? WHY IS THERE NO NEW POST?!???!!!!?? AHHHHHGGSHHHGAJH!!!!!!," at which point in an uncontrollable fit of rage you knocked over the table breaking everything in its falling path and almost cutting off your poor little kitten's tail on its way down. I know. And I'm sorry. I'll pay for the new table. (Side note: no I won't. It's your own fault.)
But anyway.
Captain Crunch to Curling.
Captain Crunch is delicious. This is a universal truth. It's delicious if you eat it all by itself, but that's lame. All the cool kids mix and match their cereals up to make a funky cereal concoction. That's one of the best things about college - the cereal bar. Every single morning you can go down to the dining hall, grab a bowl, and create your own unique type of cereal by mixing together all the other ones that are there. And there are always about six different options, so that means that you have about (hold on - taking a moment to do a math problem in my head that is waaay too much for me to handle this early in the day or actually ever okay screw this I'm using a calculator) 40 different combinations you can make. And that's pretty cool. My favorite is mixing Captain Crunch with Chocolate Rice Krispies and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Yes, it's intensely sugary, but my God if it's not one of the most amazingly delicious things you've ever tried. If you put milk in your cereal like I do, it turns your milk into chocolate milk. CHOCOLATE MILK IN YOUR CEREAL. It's so, so good. I'd go on and on about it, but I'm getting hungry and I'm nowhere near a cereal bar. Actually, if I really wanted to I could make my own cereal bar. And you can, too. Just go to your local supermarket and pick up one of those little travel packs of cereal that has like twelve different boxes in it and presto, you've got yourself your own little college-like cereal bar.
You don't even need to go to a supermarket to do all your food shopping these days, you know. Apparently places like WalMart and Target are incorporating supermarkets into their stores so that if you ever need to shop for anything ever you can just go to one store and get it all done, which I think is stupid 'cause the whole fun of shopping is schlepping all over the place and getting so exhausted that all you can do after is go home, blast the air conditioning, take a shower, then crash on the couch and fall asleep watching re-runs of Friends. And that's what shopping's all about - exercise disguised as walking around with heavy bags, trying on lots of clothing that ends up looking horrible on you and ruining your self-esteem for the next few hours, getting blisters on your feet from walking around all day, then going home and refreshing yourself and finally realizing that you actually did get some cute dresses and the food you desperately needed so things aren't so bad at that. But Target's screwing that all up, eliminating the fatigue, blisters, and ruined self-esteem so that you're happy all the fricken time while shopping. So selfish.
Anyway.
The logo for Target is, well, a target. Really, I applaud the guy that thought that one up. That's some innovative, original thinking that is. But anyway, that Target logo look thing is what defines the goal spots in the sport of Curling. If you don't know what Curling is, it's a sport in which players slide stones across a sheet of ice to a target area. In order to make the stones go faster, players take brooms and sweep the ice away really fast in front of the stone as it's moving. Basically Curling is one of my favorite sports, as it combines two of my favorite pastimes - cleaning things and sliding around on slippery surfaces - into an Olympic sport.

And in the spirit of awesome world sports... Vuvuzelas to Vikings. (And you can't just say that they're basically horns and Vikings have horns on their hats.)

Androgyny to Alka Seltzer

I love androgyny. Men who look like women, women who look like men, individuals who could go either way, I think it's fantastic. This is primarily because androgyny remains fantastically attractive while still confusing the everliving fuck out of people. In my opinion, this is the best kind of attractive you can possibly be. People need lines blurred occasionally. It builds character. There is also a kind of defiance inherent in androgyny. You're very visually not pinned down within a gender role, you just are who you are. That kind of freedom and individualistic beauty is something that often appeals to people who want to challenge their society's standard perception of the world. Let me just amend that to say, awesome people.
Performers sometimes use androgyny to challenge those perceptions and make a rebellious statement, for better or for worse. For better, David Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust period. For worse, Marilyn Manson with breasts. Go on, try to get that image out of your mind. No, pouring soap in your ears won't help. No amount of hopeless clawing at the sides of your head will erase the pale, grey, nipple-less.. You know, I'm probably not helping here. Moving on. Other things performers sometimes do include mass amounts of substances that might kill them. Many of these things are illegal, but one of them that isn't is alcohol.
Not to encourage irresponsible alcohol consumption, but during the actual drinking stage of its usage, that shit is awesome. Note that I say it's awesome during the actual drinking stage. There is a point at which consuming alcohol suddenly ceases to be awesome and rapidly becomes the worst thing you have ever done, ever. This is the point directly between when you tell that impossibly attractive person that you really, really love bratwurst in a near romantic sense and the moment when you realize that the blindingly white death bubble you were gazing into is actually a toilet bowl and what you assumed was the shrieking of a thousand damned and suffering souls undergoing similar punishment to your own is actually your friends debating whether or not you're going to die in their bathroom. From that point onward, alcohol ceases to be your friend. It may have been engaged in a romantic, dizzying tango with your brain, but at that point it switches partners to begin the forbidden dance of death with your liver, and like any awful chaperone you will regret leaving them alone together for the rest of the night.
After that point, you do not want to think about what will happen in the morning. The morning after a night like that is what Alka Seltzer was invented for.
Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, feel what real damnation is.

Captain Crunch to Curling.

Marshmallow Peeps to Moldova

If ever you find yourself depressed, sad, angry, or just in need of a good pick-me-up, get on the internet and go to the Peeps website. I swear if a smile does not immediately appear on your face there is something inexplicably wrong with you - that website is the most cheerful thing I've seen since the Polyphonic Spree's "Light & Day" music video (this one - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVaqXGGh9kk). The best part of the website, I have to say, is the "Peeps fun facts" page. I've learned more about Peeps in the last minute and a half than I had ever thought I'd learn about Peeps in a lifetime. Did you know that it takes six minutes to create just one Peep chick? Amazing. Also, apparently there are over 200 unofficial Peeps websites out there, which does not surprise me at all. Die-hard Peeps fans are CRAZY. They dress up Peeps, explode Peeps, re-enact classic movie scenes with Peeps, cook with Peeps, figure out 100 ways to kill Peeps (not kidding, it's a real website), and pretty much do every crazy thing possible to feed their unhealthy Peep addiction. Which isn't that unhealthy, seeing that each Peep has only 32 calories and 0 grams of fat in it (thanks, Peeps fun facts website). But anyway. Peeps fans are crazy, but I bet there are crazier fans out there. The weirdest fan club I've ever heard of is the Rat Fan Club. Which is, you know, a fan club for rats. As in those rodents who screwed everything up in the middle ages by carrying all sorts of horrible diseases which ended up killing about half the population of Europe. There are people out there who keep these things as pets (or "companions" as they prefer to call them, which is infinitely creepier), and even subscribe to a newsletter called the "Rat-a-tat Chat" which is written by the club's founder, the aptly nicknamed "Debbie The Rat Lady." Membership to the RFC is free, and it only requires that you sign up for the online chat room. Chat rooms are places where people from different parts of the world can communicate with each other about their shared interests. For instance, someone in America could sit by their computer and have a conversation about how much they love dressing up their rat companions with someone sitting by their computer somewhere in Europe. Moldova's a country that's somewhere in Europe. Right? I know about as much about Moldova as I used to know about Peeps before I came across that website. And that's pretty much nothing.

Androgyny to Alka Seltzer.