My Month As A Hobo

Actually, this entry isn’t about my month as a hobo. It’s mostly to inform you that I have recently spent a month as a hobo and that there will be hobo-related adventures forthcoming. Highlights include: Wichita is purgatory, improbable injuries, bear fights that didn’t happen, dogs made of methane, bus trips from the twilight zone and more! Stay tuned because I honestly can’t keep sitting in the lobby here trying to write funny things while people vacuum and glare at me. It’s just impolite.

So I’m going to sit here and read funny things that I didn’t write while I wait for my brother and his best friend to trek the last 20 miles to pick my tuchus up.

But seriously, being a hobo can be pretty cool if you hobo in trucks with other people.

Expertise: I haz it.

In the age old trope of letting commenters supply content, I’m going to answer questions posed in the comments today. Unfortunately, they were all spam and seemed to be very interested in the illicit candy post.  Oh well: you gotta work with what you’ve got!

From Spammer McSpamsalot:

Excellent put up, very informative. I’m wondering why the opposite experts of this sector don’t understand this. You must continue your writing. I am confident, you’ve a huge readers’ base already!|What’s Going down i’m new to this, I stumbled upon this I’ve discovered It positively useful and it has aided me out loads. I hope to give a contribution & aid other customers like its aided me. Great job.

Dear McSpam:

Aww!  You flatter me!  I had no idea you needed so desperately to know about the existence of cooterpops. Actually, now that I think of it, I was rather glad to have no idea… You know what? Let’s move on.  Because now I’m kind of afraid you’re going to tell me what the “opposite experts of this sector” think about these things and that’s going to give me nightmares. Thanks.  I can assure you, though, that as long as the world is bizarre, I will continue my writing. My huge readers’ base will be happy to know that the Internet is still full of terrifying things and I will continue to write about them, even though today I’m answering spam comments on my blog. You and the porn comment were tied for being featured today, I might add. Thanks for pulling ahead by being sufficiently vague; I didn’t really want to talk about Russian brides today. When I fell over the existence of cooterpops, it was my sole mission to point it out so that others need not stumble into those parts of the web. And as you seem prone to this whole “stumbling upon” thing, it’s good to know the sacrifice of my dignity and the searing of my retinas “aided you out loads.”  I think.  Unless that’s a bad thing, in which case, I’m sorry?

Love & Liquor,

Auntie Ms. Hazard

Tune in next time for “Top Ten Reasons Mitt Romney Really Needs Me As A Running Mate.” (Probably.)

That’s…not how lollipops work…

Okay, so it started innocently enough. A friend linked me to a gourmet lollipop site. This is the friend who’s also sending me some kind of witchcraft that’s apparently a sandwich spread MADE FROM COOKIES.  So she’s totally the good kind of friend!  We got to talking about the particular lollipops in question.

When I say “gourmet lollipops,” I mean that they make their own lollipops and feature flavours like Habañero Tequila, Chai, Maple Bacon (about which I will speak in a moment) and, my personal favourite name, the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster.

Maple Bacon lollies.  The description is something about being the first ever to make a “bacon-based” maple bacon lollipop, which I guess is the same thing movies mean when they say “based on a true story,” because there’s no actual bacon in them. In fact, it’s both kosher *and* vegan — two things I’m pretty sure real bacon can’t be. Then that same friend — the “I’m sending you spreadable cookies” friend — pointed out that the picture chosen to represent the fake-bacon monstrosity pop was a lasciviously posed woman being far too friendly with a bacon lollipop.

Turns out that the company is going to be changing all their lollipops pictures over to pictures chicks really enjoying these lollipops.  Aside from the whole “Lolita” aspect, which is problematic enough from a feminist perspective — but this is not a thinky blog, so don’t look to me for a sociological breakdown — there’s apparently a dark side to candy, guys.

I don’t know how to put this, especially since my mother occasionally reads this blog, but there’s a whole candy-coated perversion out there.  Lollipops are not the innocent candies of youth anymore.  I don’t think I’ll ever buy another lollipop again.

Did you know that there are people who will apparently buy lollipops that have been entirely too close to someone’s netherbits for anyone’s comfort?  (And isn’t that just begging for a yeast infection?  And… and… I don’t even want to think about this.)

Since I invented shark rockets to save NASA, I figured someone might need some proof that I’m not inventing hootiepops.  So, garnering every bit of dignity I have ever had and immediately shredding it, I googled. FOR YOU.  That’s how much I love you people.

But I couldn’t click any of the links and I felt intensely nauseated — because holy cow, people, the THINGS that turn up! — and I hated all of humanity and this time I was reasonably certain it wasn’t my own insanity pushing me toward misanthropy.

Cooterpops, people.  And that’s only the beginning. I’d tell you more, but my brain is threatening to leap out of my skull and strangle me if I even try to type — for the good of mankind — and, more importantly, I can’t think of witty euphemisms for the worst of them. It’s like humanity moved out of caves, put on some clothes and the following occurred:

Mankind: “We’ve invented the Internet!”

Internet: “Yay! Have vagina lollipops!”

Society: dies, screaming

Once you start selling herpes-flavoured crotchpops, society has broken down beyond repair.  I’m going to go loot the liquor cabinet and try to forget. Feel free to do the same.

I...I can't even look them in the eye. Wait. Since when do they have EYES?? I'm never going to sleep again.

North Korea: Solved.

So after I saved NASA with brilliant shark rockets, NASA basically rolled over and gave up by sending Discovery to the Smithsonian. Thanks, NASA.  If you didn’t want shark rockets, all it would have taken was a polite email. Or even a tweet.  I’m not stuffy; I consider tweets decent for communication.  But just rebuffing me and giving up?

Anyway, this post isn’t about my apparent feud with NASA.  It’s about Korea — specifically North Korea because they’re the ones flinging missiles at people. On the one hand, I want to tell them to just stop already because that’s just RUDE.  But then I remember that their last “fearless leader” claimed immortality and then up & died — which is ALSO rude — so I wonder if nobody ever taught North Korea how to behave in polite company (i.e., the rest of the damn world.).

The more I thought about it (and realizing that this post will get me beheaded if I ever wind up in North Korea), I decided to be the courageous person who would finally step up and say, “Hey, North Korea:  knock it off.”

So that’s what I’m doing here today.  I hope North Korea is listening because I realize that Kim Jong Un basically inherited a whole country full of people who were forced to believe that Kim Jong Il was immortal and stuff and they’re understandably confused, hurt and kind of chaotic because immortal leaders don’t usually die.  I realize that there are some religions with leaders who are considered spiritually immortal or whatever, but this isn’t a religion, it’s a country and so far as I can tell, Kim Jong Il is still rather dead.  So I figured I’d step in and give N. Korea a few pointers on how to behave.

Lesson 1:  Don’t fling missiles

Seriously. North Korea, you might not have noticed, but that’s usually considered an aggressive thing since missiles (if properly made) tend to explode. And explosions are no fun for anyone. Flinging missiles really just makes the other nations want to fling them back at you — or worse, fling them first so they don’t have to worry about whether or not you’re going to fling freaking missiles at the next birthday party.  (Note: this is part of why you don’t get invited to UN slumber parties. That and that time that you wet the bed.)

Lesson 2:

Maybe let someone who isn’t crazy be in charge for a little while.  I know you have a long and proud history of super crazy dictators and while there’s something to be said for tradition, there’s also something to be said for not being that kid at the global lunch table that everybody thinks is 3 seconds away from eating a live kitten just to get some attention.  Settle down. It’s way cooler to get attention for doing good things, I promise.  You don’t have to chomp down on kitty tartar just to get someone to look your way. Believe me:  we’re all watching you already. I’m not saying you have to have a revolution, but … you might need a revolution.

I have lots of others, but really? I think these 2 might be enough to keep you busy for the next 20 – 40 years, if you apply yourselves, North Korea.  Just… think about it, okay? Next time, we’ll talk about picking more stable friends. I don’t really think you need to be hanging out with India so much until we get this settled, okay? Now go have a good nap and think about it.

 

I’m not stabbing people. I think it means I’ve grown.

I was going to write about the incredible trip with my best friends to Eureka Springs a few weeks ago — which was awesome. But it was a 4 day trip and that’s a lot of work and I just don’t feel like it, but I did start it. Then I was going to write about politics because I *totally* solved the problem of North Korea (you’re welcome, world).  But I wrote about half of it and realized that it was just making me mad, so I checked my email and found a company telling me how I could advertise for them (for free) because that’s apparently a thing they feel entitled to now and then I popped my knee and decided I hate everything and everything is stabby.

And then I remembered that I lose my mind sometimes, so I checked my calendar and, yeah, I’m crazy right now.

I was Dx’d with PMDD a few years ago and if anyone even hints that it’s PMS, I will find you and slap you, so shut up.  It is NOT PMS.  PMS is maybe you feel cranky and bloated and you have cramps and it sucks enough. PMDD means you lose your damn mind.

Seriously. I already knew I was crazy because I’ve dealt with depression most of my life.  But then I started taking medication for that and I was substantially less prone to kill myself most days.  But for a few weeks out of every month, I would lose my grip on rational thought, cry or rage (or both) over everything, including microwave directions, become convinced that life was absolutely HOPELESS and anyone who said differently was a liar and I hated them.

It was kind of like having the worst years of being a teen compressed and shoved into my brain through a convenient opening for maximum crazy.

It made me think I was beyond help because I was taking the medication for depression and it obviously wasn’t working, except when it did, but that didn’t count because it wasn’t working now. (If that made sense to you, you should probably see a psychiatrist.) Once I could convey that yes, I was taking my meds, but I was still flipping out every month, I had a doctor ask me if I’d heard about PMDD and I said I thought maybe it was something in one of those commercials that I never paid attention to because it made me homicidal.  She said that yeah, we should probably treat this before I became a felon.

So we did. And for the last couple of years, the meds I take mean that I experience something less like “batshit insanity” and something more like what I imagine bad PMS must be, what with the cramps and bloating and cranky-kind-of-emotional, but I don’t automatically assume that I’m responding absolutely logically and that the best thing for everybody is for me to die so the world can go on.

And while I’m writing this rather tongue-in-cheek, it’s not a tongue-in-cheek kind of topic.  PMDD is actually really serious. (And yeah, I’m dropping the smartass for a minute to say this).  If you find yourself flipping out and nothing in the world makes sense anymore but it all makes you angry or depressed, seek help. It can get better.

And maybe, some day, you can not stab people too.  We’ll not stab people in solidarity. But call me after you’re drugged because I don’t want to be that last person you stab before treatment. I love you, but there are limits. Also, if you want to read something by someone who isn’t currently blogging weird stuff and tweeting irrational hatred for stupid marketing moves by major corporations, you can click here. I hear these people have medical training and stuff. Show offs.

And here’s a picture to take your mind of stabbing things:

If this makes you feel stabby and you're not female, you might be a sociopath. Either way, I suggest you ask a professional. I'm a blogger. They're not the same.

Shark rockets and other equally incredibly awesome things.

I’ve taken to sketching on my iPad. Quite likely, this is only the first of many brain dumps. You’re welcome/I’m sorry?

When I was growing up, everybody wanted to be an astronaut – including me – but then the Challenger exploded and I rethought my career goals. I still feel like that was the day my generation lost faith in NASA which is probably what led to all the funding drying up and is probably also the reason we don’t have moon colonies. Apparently most people my age are responsible adults who get asked about whether to renew funding for things. Just be glad I’m not one of them….

But still, I feel kinda bad for NASA an d really feel like I should have at least tried to help out, even if almost no one asks me to approve any kind of budget unless it’s my nephew asking me the rules for Communist Monopoly *again* — sometimes I think he just doesn’t listen.

Anyway, last night I had a bout of insomnia and I had the idea I should have had ages ago and maybe NASA wouldn’t be so sad and I wouldn’t have all this childhood guilt about moon colonies. So as my official apology to NASA, I’m offering them exclusive use of this design for all upcoming space missions. I wish I’d thought of it sooner, but my list of things about which I carry existential guilt about is quite long and. If I stayed awake long enough to solve every problem arising from 1979 onward, there’s a good chance I could be psychotic, dead or BOTH. And I don’t want to be a psychotic zombie. Really, that solution isn’t good for anyone. Do you know how hard it is to come up with a valid treatment and medication regimen for a psychotic zombie? I don’t, but I’m guessing it’s not easy. If it were easy, people would treat zombie psychosis like it’s as dangerous as the common cold. That’s clearly not the case and mental health professionals are already overworked.

So last night, I only solved NASA. I’ll try to do better in the future.

Dear NASA: Shark Rockets.

You’re welcome.

Adventures in Cough Syrup

If you’ve ever seen television (and I know, because I almost never watch, but wait — I’m getting ahead of myself), then you have seen this stupid monkey with better fashion sense than I have on my best days. You know the one. The orangutan with

You can tell he's evil. Only evil looks that good in green.

the Slytherin scarf? (Seriously, first hint there, guys.) This stupid monkey would have you believe that getting cough relief is simple.  This monkey makes you think that you can just go to Robitussin, click a few buttons and then they’ll give you a moron proof code for Your Perfect Cough & Cold Relief™.

This monkey is a lying sack of fuzz.

I have had a cough since last Sunday and lost my voice (much to the relief of many around me, all of whom are welcome to go eat a shoe) on Tuesday.  Then the REAL coughing began.  This came after about 3 weeks of not sleeping because fun fact about me, I happen to be crazier than a whole box of squirrels with chicken pox.

Anyway, I couldn’t sleep — again — because sleeping would let the mucus demons settle just enough and they’d get cranky and decide to rip my chest open just to make things more interesting. (NB: This version of the story could have something to do with my hitting the NyQuil pretty heavily at this point.)

Anyway, NyQuil wasn’t helping. Delsym promised 12 whole hours of relief.  Delsym lied to me AND tasted like slightly sweetened butt, grilled over a raging butt fire, sprinkled with freshly plucked BUTT.  It was insult, injury AND NO COUGH RELIEF WHATSOEVER rolled into one.  I’m a bit bitter. I hope one day with therapy that I’ll move past it, but the outlook is not good (I asked my magic 8 ball; I call him Keith).

So two strikes so far. Then I decide I’ll believe the freaking monkey even though I know enough about pharmacology to know that the only difference between Delsym and Robitussin DM (the one the monkey said I needed) was guafenesin. Basically, the D part is supposed to make you hork less, but the M part (guafenesin) is supposed to make the times you hork useful.  (Also, spell check believes that instead of guafenesin, I mean “deafening.” Draw your own conclusions there.)

Not only did it not stop my horking, I now had overdried sinuses, so the horking was all dry and non-productive and yes I’m writing a paragraph about snot, but I’m done now. Go on to the next one.

So, miserable and convinced that I would die of the lamest chest cold ever — though if I could convince people it was mucous demons, at least my obit would be interesting — I did what any sane human does when all of one’s arsenal of non-professional knowledge has failed her. I called and croaked at my grandmother.

Granny fixed me up, all right. Her instructions were, “Sip it if you can. If you can’t stand it, drink it hot; you won’t taste it.” These words terrified me. I didn’t ask what was in it because I was almost sure it was better not to know. But that night, I took a swig, gagged — and didn’t cough. MY GRANDMOTHER WAS A GENIUS! She’d invented a cure for the EVERYTHING. It tasted like donkey butts, but it was WORKING. …and I was a little dizzy.

That’s when I called and croaked at Granny to find out what was in this genius blend.

She told me: 1/3 lemon juice, 1/3 honey & 1/3 whiskey.  Yup. My granny had cured me with a bottle hot tottie.

Still, the cough isn’t entirely gone yet, but… I don’t really care much.  (hic)

Adventures in Tea

I realize that the last time I wrote an entry my excuse for not writing was that I’d been sick.  This time, I’m writing because I’m sick and it doesn’t seem to be over yet.  Before that, I was just uninspired. But I’ve realized that having no immune system means that I have a lot of adventures that most normal humans just don’t get to have. So I felt obligated to share with you.  See, normal people have a degree of coordination and mental clarity that allow them to navigate the world relatively unscathed by things like tea and wine racks and door frames.  I’m not one of those people.

I’ve had a chest cold that leads me to cough inexorably for the vast majority of the time I’m awake — which isn’t much until the last few days. And I wanted hot tea. Hot tea is good for me because of REASONS and also SCIENCE.  Apart from that, I happened to have some rather good tea that I wanted to use and I’ve successfully made tea on a number of occasions in the past.  This was not to be one of those times.

Things started as per usual. I selected my tea — a Teavana blend, cocoa praline tart — and my mug. While I might have been tempting the tea gods by trying a loose tea with an addled brain, I did at least use a standard mug.  It wasn’t like I was trying to figure out the proper proportions of tea to, say, this thing:

Even on my best days, this mug would not render unto me tea.

 

This is apparently a “fuddler mug” or something. Wikipedia gave me lots of bizarre mugs to choose from, but they were all substantially more boring than this one.  But I didn’t use a fuddler mug. I just used a normal, standard, thrown clay mug with a smiley face on it because I’m 32 and sometimes I need tea in a smiley face mug. Don’t judge me.

Anyway, what I wound up with was something like vaguely chocolate gravel with lumps of something not-quite-milk. My tea ball infuser apparently failed at its job, too, so we sat together in shame for a  while. After I recovered (though I think the tea ball will need therapy), I mixed up a faux lime soda instead. Originally, I told twitter I “engineered” faux lime soda because saying I engineered something made me feel marginally less stupid.

And now if you’ll excuse me, my sore throat, lack of voice and abundance of snot are going to sit over here and figure out whether I still qualify as a human if I’m 37% phlegm. I’ll be drowning my sorrows in faux lime soda.

My dog has been useless.  Sarah’s dog is understandably traumatized, apparently, and has PTSD of Labradorian proportions.  My dog is just a sad cocker spaniel. I think perhaps she fell prey to a brain-commandeering alien squad of sorts when I wasn’t looking, so it’s probably my fault she’s no use.  Also, she has no thumbs. Lack of opposable thumbs makes one rather useless as a nursemaid.

If I were you, I’d go disinfect your eyeballs after reading this. Just in case.

Adventures in Absence (Or: How I spent a month in my pajamas)

Yes, I realized I’ve been gone just over 3 months. I have an excellent reason for it — I just haven’t, you know, thought of it yet. I know that for at least 1/3 of the time, though, I’ve been in my pajamas and that’s not much of an adventure. Plus, if I wrote an entry called “Adventures in Flannel” we’d have to go back to that whole “Why My Mom Sometimes Thinks I’m A Lesbian” post and I’m far too lazy to link things.

So what have I been doing other than being in my pajamas? Well, I’m glad all three of you asked. I last wrote in mid-September, right after the nephling went back to school and I came down with martian death flu. (I once said “Venusian mumps” and someone said, “Oh, I’ve heard that’s awful!” She was totally serious, so I went back to Martian death flu because as far as I know, no one really takes me seriously when I say that….)

So I kind of spent like 2 weeks being mostly dead. But then I got past that. I hoped that when I recovered, it’d be all like Sleeping Beauty or something, but turns out if you spend 2 weeks being dead of Martian death flu? You wind up more like “Ew, please get a shower; you’re 80% lint and fever residue.”  So I got a shower. I even saved a glamour shot just for you people!

See? All kissy face. (It gets better, I promise!)

See? Not much of an improvement, you think, but I’m doing you the courtesy of not including BEFORE pictures. Those are pretty sad and I only took them to text to my mom to illicit sympathy and invoke special favours like “Can I have cherry 7up, please? So I won’t die?” [Insert pathetic photo of me, looking dead]. (I’m not above emotional blackmail when it’s warranted — as in the case of cherry 7up and Bold Ten Dr. Pepper — I love that stuff!)

Anyway, lest you fear that this is as good as it gets, I promise, I did clean up better.  I refuse to admit whether I am currently, at noon:02, wearing my pajamas at the moment — okay, well, I am, but there’s a reason!  I’m watching my nephew today as part of his Christmas break and his stipulation was “Can we have a relaxed day?” What’s more relaxed, I ask you, than pajamas?  Nothing. Unless you have pajamas and xanax, at least, but that’s a little far afield for our conversation at the moment. SO: we are having a pajama day. Even the dog is being lazy.

But just to prove that there are indeed times when I am not in my pajamas, I’m going to include this photo, too, as additional proof that I don’t always look like a pop art exercise in absurdity.

See? Not so bad, right? Right. (If you think this is no better, then, um, HUSH.)

I clean up better, I promise! In this picture, I am upright, driving (well, not at the point of taking the picture. I hadn’t even started the car at that point.), wearing makeup, have combed and washed hair, and I’m even kinda smiling. There are no pajama pants in sight — not even the fuzzy blue snowman pants, and those are like fluffy fleece security!  Nope, I’m wearing colour coordinated big girl clothes! It was a really grey day, though, and for some reason, the only logical shade to counter grey with is bright green and lots of it. So I’m wearing quite a lot of green in that picture. Including my Kiva t-shirt. I’m a fan of Kiva. You should be, too. GO EXPLORE KIVA OPTIONS!

I got a little off track there. What else was I going to say? Come on; you were meant to be paying attention so you could chime in when I forgot where my brain was going! I’m considering this a failure on your part, personally.

Anyway, except for the fact that I am indeed wearing my pajamas currently, the pajama days are over for the foreseeable future. I think I’m good with that. The pajama nights, however, will continue, because that’s why God made pajamas anyway.

I have exciting news I can’t tell you yet, by the way. So you’ll all just have to wait to find out what that is.  But to distract you from the thing I’m not telling you, I’ll tell you something else!

Last month, somewhere near the end of November, we celebrated Thanksgiving, which was awesome. It’s not usually my favourite time of year, but it was good. This year was so much more laid back than the years before. In the past, seriously, Thanksgiving prep started a month ahead of time and by the time the holiday rolled around everyone was exhausted and cranky and it just wasn’t much fun. This year, we kind of scrapped all that. So my holiday was pretty good. I spent it with people I genuinely liked doing things we all genuinely enjoyed and it was pretty relaxed for the most part.

 

The day after the “official” day of Thanksgiving, I stalked the Sparks clan to their super secret hideout in Pocahontas, AR.

ACTUAL SIZE

Don’t be fooled by the presence of Smiths and Brookses; this is a Sparks hideout.  For those of you not yet familiar withPocahontas, though, let me give you an idea of the sort of metropolis we’re dealing with (though how you could be ignorant of such an important port of commerce and culture, I have no idea; I blame your parents).

This is Pocahontas, Arkansas. All of it — right there.  And it’s exactly that big. My only guess as to how they manage to have a population of non-microbial persuasion is possibly TimeLord physics and I think city hall might be a TARDIS.

And later, when I’ve recovered from the exceptional amount of work this simple entry has become, I’ll tell you what I found there.  Stay tuned; it’s possibly fascinating. (But probably not.)

 

 

 

Yesterday’s Adventure (What, I gotta be clever all the time?)

Yesterday was “Take Mom To The Dentist Day” again.  She’s having a series of things done and we never know up front which days might wind her up drugged, so I get to be designated driver again. (Seriously, if I ever decide to get drunk, she owes me at least 3 free butt-crack-of-dawn get-out-of-drunk-free passes now.)

Anyway, I tell her we’re just practicing for her inevitable senility. I intend to haul her around to her various appointments when she’s old and feeble and I’ve promised she can become a benign alcoholic as long as she can pay for her own booze. (What? It works; don’t knock it.)

Anyway, as I’ve explained before, I live in a somewhat rural area of the world. In order to get to her dentist’s office from here, we go through Farville, Goobertown and Brookland before we hit Paragould. It’s all trees and bean fields.

See? This is a bean field. Except the parts that are trees. I'll leave you to sort that out.

And for some reason, someone decided a few years ago that two lanes through the beanfields and trees weren’t quite enough, so it got a 4-lane highway. This is nice, especially since there’s never any traffic.  It gives you a better view of the bean fields. And the trees.

I’d post a picture of the trees, but that’s just unnecessarily cudgeling of the deceased equine. (Big words are basically my only talent. DON’T JUDGE ME.)

Anyhow, 4 lanes through the bean fields and random stoplights scattered throughout. I guess they’re so that we can pause and properly appreciate the bean fields. Normal trek takes about 20 – 30 minutes.  That is, of course, unless you’re me and unless it’s yesterday. But you’re not and it isn’t, so I’ll explain:

Yesterday, I seriously had to have ticked off some lesser god of asphalt or something and caused this 4-lane highway of indulgent convenience to become something other than its normally clear, carefree self.  In fact, it had become a traffic jam. Traffic STOPPED.  If you live in a regular metropolitan area, this is probably de rigueur  for you, but in an area where the highway has more lanes than cars, it’s a bit of an oddity.

Seen here, the autopocalypse. Or maybe a Chrysler. Anyway, it's not moving.

See that over there?  That’s not normal. That doesn’t happen on this highway at this time of day. I’ve never even seen that many cars on this road at one time, leading me to believe they’d been there for at least a week. They were probably about to go cannibal.  I’m probably lucky to have escaped with my life (and Twizzlers)!

Okay, so actually at this point I was wondering what happened. The only thing I could think of was that it had to be a wreck. And it had to be a bad one. And I started going over CPR steps in my head just in case. (Step one is to take CPR classes, right?  Remind me to do that…).

The longer we waited the more I was certain that it wasn’t just a wreck. It was probably an earthquake and the whole road had caved in. Or, since I had been reading abnormal amounts of H. P. Lovecraft lately, Cthulhu was picking off cars one at a time. Either way, it was obviously not good.

So I used my handy-dandy iPhone app to tune into police band radio for my area only to find it had mysteriously gone off the air! I’m not really surprised, though, because when Cthulhu attacks, all kinds of weird crap happens. Or, um, so I’ve read. So no radio, no visual cues beyond the stopped traffic and no plan for riding out the autopocalypse beyond “Eat my Twizzlers before anyone else spots them.” I began to feel a bit less optimistic about  my chances for survival.

As we crept along, I tried to scootch ever so slightly into the turn lane to angle for a better view up ahead. No dice. See that white van? It was blocking me at every go. Probably Cthulhu sympathizers.

Eventually, though, we came to the part of the road called Farville Curve.  It happens rather handily to curve at that point and we had an opportunity to see what lurked ahead (and to provide me with a better estimate of how fast I’d have to eat my Twizzlers before Cthulhu stole them).

That’s when I saw this:

See that? THAT'S NOT CTHULHU.

Do you see that?  That’s not Cthulhu!  That’s a HOUSE.  I felt so cheated. Here I was prepping for disaster and hoarding my Twizzlers and all it was is a lousy oversized HOUSE.

Why they were dragging a house down the road, I’ll never know. We passed some more chunks of house, too, because they apparently had to saw the thing into thirds to get it to adequately block the entire highway. And right as I snapped this picture, that house tried to turn left into a bean field.

I live in a dumb state.

It swerved back through all 4 lanes of traffic and carried on its way for a bit until, I guess, the drivers sensed they were in mortal danger and pulled all chunks of the house off the main road long enough to let the 3 miles of cars that had piled up behind them cruise through.

It was the dumbest adventure ever. I had prepared myself for Cthulhu and I got a house — not even a full house.  A THIRD of a house!  Hey, lesser god of pavement or whoever?  Next time you plan to block the road, try to call up an elder god or at least (AT LEAST) get an airplane or something to block traffic.

I was sorely disappointed. So disappointed, in fact, that I actually feel kind of bad for dragging you through all of that for such an anticlimactic resolution.   So, hey, how about some ice cream?  Yeah?

Okay, not for real (for you, I mean, but for me).  A few days before, at Burger King, I asked for a vanilla cone. The woman handed me one and then her manager called out, “Ma’am?  I’m sorry. I can’t permit you to take that ugly cone.”  (My cone looked fine…. I was just gonna eat it, not frame it….).  Anyway, she took my apparently sub-standard comb and instead handed me this:

Note the aesthetic ... something.

It was basically a monstrous tower of ice cream. Hope that makes up for it.  You’re welcome.