Vogon called to dictate a list of things he would like me to bring him tomorrow. He didn't want me to pick books for him [1] so I had to go into the stifling hot study and read titles off a pile of books. Much repeating and explaining where a particular title fell within a series ensued.

Somewhere after the end of that, he said "Oh, and I want [mumbles]". I asked him to repeat it.

Vogon: Hitchee goomee.
Me: Hitchhiker's Guide?
Vogon: Hitchee goomee!
Me: I still don't understand what you're saying, so I'm just going to pull the hardcover Hitchhiker's Guide. (I think that he has the pre-Mostly Harmless edition, but whatever.)
Vogon: That's what I said! Hitchee goomee!
Me: I think your mouth is too close to the receiver, because it sounds like you're saying "hitchee goomee".
Vogon: That is what I said!
Me: It must be an abbreviation that doesn't carry over well in speech.
Vogon: [slowly] H. 2. G. 2.
Me: I get that now. You could have just said "Hitchhiker's Guide".

--

1. I was going to pull Musicophilia, The Mind and the Brain, and Banvard's Folly.

I'd been snoozing on the couch with the squeakinator when Vogon remembered he needed to buy some C cell batteries to try out the PediPaws. (I am dubious of the device, but he bought it.)

Five minutes after he left, Squeaky began meowing piteously because he noticed Daddy had left. I told him "If you're going to make that noise, we can always take a shower together!" He quieted down, but a drowsy Laurel in the other room said "I'd rather take a shower by myself, thanks."

I have a working webcam now and it looks like HAL. Thanks, R.

I have been walking around all day saying "Ongawa!" and laughing at myself since reading a post in which a friend saw a license plate bearing that personalization and in sharing with Vogon, he automatically associated it with the 250' jump tower at Fort Benning. Old paratroopers never die, they just go to hell and regroup. (Speaking of that, I have some material fomenting on the upcoming anniversary of the invasion of Grenada, but it's harder to get him to talk than it was to get my older relatives to talk about family history.)

I wore my Weapon of Math Instruction shirt all day today and nobody said a word. One of the elementary school math teachers chuckled at it, so at least I amused someone with it. I am now debating pre-ordering one of the LibrArian tees because the librarian battle rap in Little Dee has been hilarious. Where else would someone rhyme anything with "foie gras"?

You know that "A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar...." joke? I got one better -- and true:

P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins went to see a screening of Expelled! (Both were interviewed in segments for the movie.) Myers was identified as persona non grata and asked by a security guard to leave the premises. Dawkins got in and saw the movie, albeit with a security guard watching him every time he appeared on screen.

Epic failure of irony meters everywhere ensued.

Edit:

(Graphic linked in a comment at the post; credit information would be appreciated.)

Three cat-related items:

0. This weekend marks one year since the cat climbed into our car's fender. He's settled on the name Bubby, although I call him pretty much anything that pops into my head and he's okay with it. (I still need to make a Bubby userpic.)

1. The dish of cat food we keep outside has developed a regular. This morning Bubby and I were laying on the couch watching the morning news when I heard a cat meow at the front door. They were gone by the time I realized it wasn't Laurel or a stray TV noise, but the dish was empty. We suspect it was the friendly brown tabby we've seen around recently.

2. Now that the Sea Hag is gone, I can tell you the cat pee story! Several weeks after Biko ran off, we were parking after a late-night snack run when I spotted a cat curled up on the roof of her convertible. The cat looked light-colored like Biko, so Vogon walked up to the cat slowly while I stayed with our car. He was a few inches away from being able to touch it when the cat startled awake, urinated, and ran off. It turned out to be the tortoiseshell-colored longhair we think is feral.

Over the weekend, I bought a surplice [1] top for Laurel. Blissfully ignorant of current fashion, I noticed Laurel was drawing them on some of her fashion drawings and spotted the top on a sale rack while looking for a cooler-season jacket to bridge the gap between track jacket and winter coat. Cutting off the tag before throwing the purchase in the hamper, I read the tag: "FG LS SURPLUS TOP". I am baffled by how someone could confuse homophones with such wildly different meanings.


1. A surplice bodice has two overlapping pieces at the bustline. Depending on where the overlap is sewn down and the bust of the wearer, the look can range from a modest v-neck to a deep plunge.

Bedroom chatter the other night...

Me: I wonder how much I enlarge my carbon footprint every time I have a lot of gas.
Vogon: ...
Me: Like cows and methane.
Vogon: Why isn't Al Gore against eating beans?

...

These science tattoos rock. They remind me of the time I discussed tattoos with toddler_hiway and he mentioned that if he ever got one, it would be the formula for Euler's number.

...

I heard Dr. Robert Zubrin on All Things Considered on Friday. I kept being distracted by thoughts of That's Eliot's stepdad! while he was talking. Evergreen really is too surreal to be home forever.

The other day polyhymnia mentioned Cool Tools and I've been skimming there on and off since.[1] I'm fascinated by the Nosefrida Nasal Aspirator since I have no problem sucking thick snot out of children's noses with a regular nasal bulb aspirator after using saline drops to thin the stuff. Still caught up in the health category, I'm amazed at the things in there I thought everyone kept on hand: disposable suture kits, QuikClot, self-adhering wraps, SAM splints.

That led me to wonder: is that sort of knowledge not common anymore? Does the average person know useful skills beyond basic emergency first aid like how to clean and suture simple wounds or set and immobilize fractures until an injured person can see a doctor? Are those "poor skills" I acquired as a result of living with medical industry-averse Himself or because I'm a curious mofo? (That's probably a bit of both since I got into taking all the Red Cross courses I could get into before I was involved with him.)

Also, this 5-pound fat replica? Awesome. I may buy one for the next time one of my extended relatives looks at my perfectly healthy daughter or nephew and asks "Where's the rest of them?". *snerk*


1. It's been punctuated by a long side trip through the TWoP threads about the Duggars because I was trying to explain the origin of "Vagina. It's Not A Clown Car" to someone. Now not only does that make me laugh, I keep laughing at "Sin in the camp!".

I just used the phrase "fingersnap army" without joking.

Please smack me in the head if I ever do that within earshot of you.

I ordered some mantid oothecae over the weekend. Vogon retrieved them from the mail tonight without knowing the contents of the box.

When I told him, I joked, "I got you one of the plagues for Valentine's Day! Which one did you get me?"

Without skipping a beat, he replied, "Crabs."

(I knew that Joe's Crab Shack shirt I got him last summer was going to come back to haunt me.)

Picking gone-by fruits off the key lime to compost, Vogon found one that had split open. I immediately thought "Goatse" and took a marker to the soon-to-be composted citrus.

( As the original goatse.cx site said, 'if you are under the age of 18 or find this photograph offensive, please don't look at it. Thank you!'; 22 kb .jpg )

Vogon made tofu early in the the weekend and forgot to either use it or put it in the fridge, so I made a mental note to throw it out on Monday so it wouldn't stink up the trash in the meanwhile.

( There's a great punchline at the end, but in between is not for the faint of stomach. )

Every time I hear the TV ad for "Nigella Feasts", I hear "my genitals eat".

I realize it's time to go to bed when Gmail clip has the headline "Rice makes surprise visit to Iraq" and I wonder if that means they can't have Chipotle-style burritos anytime they want.

After enlisting Lalaru to answer the kids' questions in a consumer survey on fruit snacks, I turned to the regular one chosen for me. It asked if I had ever used a personal lubricant to enhance intimacy in the past year. After I answered yes, it informed me I was not qualified to finish the rest of the survey.

So, um, there are people out there that don't use lube. This explains a lot.


(Also, I now feel like buying some of the particular brand of fruit snacks the survey was about because the product description sounded too wacky to be real, like those "pudding bites" I once found on sale.)

Oh dear lord, I'm turning into a Goon. clearmind, save me. (;

gynocide posted a picture of a topless Madonna protester the other day and someone commented "someone needs to photoshop her chest to say 'O rly?'". So I took it to heart.

( 'O RLY?' protestor, 60 kb .jpg; obviously NSFW )

The first time I saw this product photo, I thought it was a joke. It looks like something someone did in Photoshop after a night of drinking:



Cat Scram, $39.99, item # K1971 in the Whatever Works catalog.

If I ever made myself a wedding cake [1], it would have to have an abominably tacky topper. Like Tripp and T'Pol from Enterprise, the Bendy wedding topper that used to be in the Archie McPhee catalog, or perhaps a gnome seesaw. It's actually a garden sculpture, but it's no more of a troutrage [2] than a wedding cake made out of donuts or snack food products.

Actually, after all the inspiration I've gotten from watching Ace of Cakes on Food Network, I'd probably eschew the topper for fireworks.



1. If I could go to culinary school and just wank all day with fondant and spun sugar I would probably die of happiness.
2. Troutrage is a combination of travesty + outrage, coined by suburbfabulous.

I updated and e-mailed some forms I used to organize the Cougar Pride duck race paperwork to my dad yesterday. In his reply, he said he "twisted her [my mom's] clown nose and begged to have her there [at the duck race]" this year. I'm still laughing at that.

Via bookslut, parents in Utah are upset that their children are looking at a library book with artistic partial nudity. I boggled when I read "The question to me is not whether the book has a good story line, but does it sexually stimulate young boys?". Um, yeah.

While waiting in the checkout line to ring up a loaf of bread yesterday, I got distracted by a cart of clearance items full of sparkling deodorant for 10c each. After teasing Vogon that he'd have to take a picture of my underarm after I put some on at home, he joked I should go back and buy a dollar's worth, then send them out to my readers. I passed, but if anyone's interested, I can see if they still have it out today. (:

And if you're still looking for your daily dose of cute, I recommend these letterpressed invitations and an adorable fuzzy laptop case.

SCENE: "15 items or less" grocery checkout aisle, 12:30 PM. We are waiting behind two people and a queue is rapidly forming behind us. Laurel, mildly bored by waiting, is looking at the covers of magazines next to the checkout stand.

Laurel: [reading the headline on a magazine] I'm Gay!

People around us look vaguely uncomfortable, particularly the woman immediately behind us in line.

Laurel: What does 'I'm gay' mean?
Me: It's like J-- and I--.

(J-- is my cousin; I-- is his boyfriend.)

Laurel: So what does 'gay' mean?
Me: It's when a man loves a man.
Laurel: [giggles]
Me: It's just a way people are, like having different-colored eyes. Just in our family, you have blue eyes, I have brown eyes and Daddy has green eyes.

The woman behind us now looks extremely uncomfortable.

Laurel: I'm gay! I'm gay!
Vogon and Me: [simultaneously] That's enough, Laurel.

...

The first time I explained homosexuality to her in the context of J-- and I--, she asked if that she could be their flower girl when they get married. I'm not sure whether I'll be relieved or mildly sad when that magazine goes off the newsstands.