vegansaurus!

Hello, friends! It’s WTF Wednesday!  »

You guys, I was really lonely last weekend. Allen was out of town so I had no one to torment, my parents were out of town so I has no one to fight with, and I was too tired to do anything but sit around at home with the lights on and wait vigilantly for the ghosts to show up and eat me. I am happy to report that none did, although, honestly, I could have used the excitement. On Friday night I tried to latch-hook the Super Mario rug I was making, but threw it across the rom in a fit of pique when the yarn unraveled for the fifteenth hundred time.

You can see how lonely I was. So I decided to adopt a hamster. Look how smart they are. So smart they have to wear glasses. That’s the animal for me!

The first thing I did was text Allen to let him know that I was going to track down a hamster and name hear Jeanine (because that is a name I have always liked). Ten minutes later he texted back in his usual unsupportive style, advising me not to make any rash decisions because he was going to be home in two days. “Also,” Allen wrote, “everything  will smell like hamster pee.” He was right. I have had many hamsters before and while I loved them all very much and cleaned their cages like it was my job I could not shake the feeling that I always smelled like a hamster cage full of urine. My brother and I got into a fight about it once, actually, when he was giving me a ride to work. “Bitch,” he said, “you smell like you’ve been fucking a hamster farm. Get a boyfriend.” We did not speak for a month after that and I had to take the bus everywhere. Recalling these fond memories made me realize that perhaps I was not ready to invite a hamster into my home just yet and would have to think long and hard before I went out and made such a commitment. Allen, probably sensing my despair, sent me another text message. “I have an idea,” he wrote, “why not just look at hamster videos on YouTube?” Allen can be so callous sometimes (this is a sign of psychopathy, by the way. I have been reading The Psychopath Test and am pretty sure Allen’s responses indicate that he is a psychopath fairly clearly), but I decided to look at animal videos anyway. Except I was doing it for a different reason. I wanted to convince myself that I could live without a companion animal at this point in my life. The first video I looked at completely convinced me. Or at least it convinced me that I do not want to mess with turtles. especially because, as a male, I am possessed of a pair of testicles, which apparently turtles have been known to bite the shit straight off. Can you even comprehend the pain of this poor dog? He just nudged a turtle away from him for whatever reason, and that evil monster decides to go straight for the nuts. I immediately felt a pit in my stomach, even though I generally wear clothes and have never had the desire or opportunity to let a turtle crawl around me while naked (I am about to fifteen comments extolling the joys of having a turtle crawl around one’s naked body, aren’t I?) I could not help but feel a certain kinship with the dog in this video and have decided that turtles are not for me. At least penguins are nice, right?

WRONG! Penguins will fuck your shit up! You think a penguin won’t come at you, bro? No, a penguin will bring it the fuck on. And he will bring it so hard that you will try to run backwards and fall and the penguin will waddle towards you as you are laying on your back, frozen in fear and covered in snow. That penguin will come right up to you and kick you straight in the crotch while maintaining unblinking eye contact. And then he will call his friend the ice turtle (may not be a real creature) and they will take turns kicking you in the crotch and biting your withered and frozen genitalia. Penguins, much like Honey Badgers, don’t give a shit. And they give even less of a shit when it’s some Russian douche trying to come at them. Why is it always the Russians, by the way? As a Russian I am concerned that whenever I see a video of an animal being all “Come at me, bro” the person coming at it is some Russian teenager/twenty-something. Get jobs, you guys! You’re making us look bad on the internet!

Dogs get in on the act, too. No longer content to just chill out, sleep and take walks, they’re demanding to be dressed up in eighties fashions and jump rope to set a world record. Sure, you could blame the lady who is having them jump around and dress up like they’re Tiffany on a coke bender, but i like to imagine her as a poor helpless person ganged up on by dogs who just want to have fun (like a young Helen hunt!); dogs that just live to jump rope to the pulsating beats and alluring vocals of Yaz and Men Without Hats. Dogs that can’t be stopped. Dogs that are “teen wolves” and “teen witches” who go to “private school” and are “pretty smart.” and one of them is in a gang called “Foxes” and “she’s out of control.” Top that! 

That’s all for me this week. Send me links for next week and for god’s sakes if your name is Carol Ann, stay away from lights this Wednesday!

Hello, friends! It’s WTF Wednesday!  »

You guys, Allen is going out of town this week which means that I have to sleep in our apartment all by myself. We’ve lived here for over a year and we both love it, but I cannot help my irrational fear that ghosts will find and eat me as I am sleeping. Anyone else have this kind of anxiety? I end up leaving all the lights on because for some reason I believe that ghosts only eat people in the dark, but then Allen comes home and lectures me about the light bill and power consumption and poor children who do not have the luxury of keeping lights on in order to remain undigested by malevolent spirits.

This brings me to another point about scary things. Last week I posted a clip of a horse doing a Dorothy Hamill and got soundly talked-to in the comments (I read all the comments!). Generally, I do not respond well to these types of things but in this case I really had no idea that it was not only unhealthy but sometimes fatal for horses to do aerial acrobatics, and that isn’t cool. However, once I saw the horse I wanted to see other animals performing amazing feats of grace and flexibility, so I looked for videos in which the animals did not look like they were getting hurt. That’s when I found this cat. Oh my god, what is that? It is climbing up the wall! Then it is just hanging there like it’s no big deal. Who does that? And I am certain the cat is fine, because cats climb shit all the time (trees, scratching posts, your back). I just haven’t seen a cat climb a wall before. To be honest, I would also do anything for a laser pointer. Remember how cool those were in eighth grade? Man, I still regret not purchasing one for grad school and then pointing at random stuff on the screen and looking super-professional. I want a do-over. Not the papers and the classes, just the opportunity to point at stuff and act professorial!

We move on now to an animal that I do not believe I have ever featured here on WTF Wednesday: the amazing Epic Frog! Observe as the frog jumps, jumps, and jumps again. Thrill as the frog falls, and pulls back up! Watch the frog escape vicious predators! Gasp as it performs death-defying feats of froggery! I bet ghosts wouldn’t even try to eat this frog; they’d be too fucking awestruck by its powers!

You know what else would stop ghosts from eating you? A giant inflatable fish that swims through the air to the delight of children and Mark! I can’t even get over how cool these things are. I was never into RC cars or planes when I was a kid, but a radio-controlled flying shark that I can send down hallways and sic on Allen while he is in the bathroom? Priceless! And just think, here I am in the dark, pretzeled into a protective symbol, trying to get to sleep when the ghosts show up. “Aaaaauuuughhhhhhhooo, Mark! we are here to eeeeaaat yooouuu!” they cry, because I imagine ghosts are lacking in both tact and subtlety. “Not a chance, evil spirits!” I cry. Then I hastily release my air shark from its hiding place and it chases the ghosts back to the living room, leaving me both protected and entertained by its antics. Then I get a good night’s sleep!

That’s all for this week! Send me links for next week and have a ghost-free Wednesday!

[photo of Gleeson, Ariz. by Bill Gracey via Flickr]

Hello, friends! It’s WTF Wednesday!  »

You guys, I started about 5,000 internships last week and they have been a whirlwind of new information and tears. You would think that once one receives an advanced degree one would at least be rewarded with a bucket of cash and a penthouse, but you (and in this case I) would be sorely mistaken. Because what really happens after graduate school is that you work a lot and often for no or very little money. And if you’re me, then you come home grumpy and craft until you’re tired enough to go to bed.

When I’m grumpy, I also like to go on YouTube and look at funny videos of people who believe that they are awesome and that the world needs to see them singing or dancing or reading a dramatic monologue (SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!). This generally makes me feel better and less prone to repetitive stabbing motions.* The video that started me on my trip back to happiness and delight was something that my friend Jason put on his Facebook. Actually, I am currently mad at Jason because as I continue to struggle with my schedule and spend more and more time cursing at a rug I am making, he is going to Japan to be a soloist in some kind of magical Disney symphony extravaganza.

However, once he introduced me to the amazing talents of Miranda, I could not help but giggle. There’s just something about a full-grown woman who has used eyeliner to draw whiskers on her face that makes me happy inside. I am  even happier when that same woman, whiskers on, ears perked proudly, makes a desperate attempt at keeping on rhythm, key, and pitch to “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats.” She acts like she’s just playing around, but I think it’s obvious to everyone here that she is secretly hoping to be the next Patti Lupone or Bernadette Peters. What she’s really doing, though, is brightening our day.

Sometimes it’s not a person that brightens my day; sometimes it is a horse that thinks it is Nadia Comaneci. First let me stress that the horse appears fine at the end of the video so I feel that it is all right for me to play it on a loop and laugh every time it does its death-defying loop of wonderment. How can you not feel cheered up watching this? Have you ever seen a horse do a somersault before? Can you do a somersault? I can’t! I can’t even do cartwheels without hurting myself despite years of gymnastics my parents paid for. This horse is a hero! I just wish someone would put this video to an amazing Nyan Cat-like soundtrack.

Speaking of Nyan Cat, I know it’s old meme, but have you guys seen the three-and-a-half-hour version that just does not quit? I listened to it for about 30 minutes yesterday as I was working. Then Allen and I had an argument: He insists that the cat is wearing a toaster, like he’s never seen a Pop Tart worn like a sweater before. What is wrong with him? And for that matter, what is wrong with me?

That’s all for this week. Send me links for next week and have a less grumpy Wednesday!

*Please note that loom knitting does not actually require repetitive stabbing motions. This is something I’ve added myself.

[photo by LuLu Witch via Flickr]

Hello, friends! It’s WTF Wednesday! (on Thursday!)  »

You guys, Allen pulled some kind of back muscle this week and it has been hell here at our house. Allen is always in the living room rubbing himself with some strange green thing called a Thera-cane, or rolling around on an oddly textured orange thing, or engaging in what he says is stretching but looks suspiciously like pony play, hooked up to some rubber band contraption to the door that leads to the kitchen and I cannot eat. If he isn’t moaning around he is sitting on front of the television and calling me from the living room—on the telephone—to tell me that it is time to make him lunch.

Our conversations always go like this:
Me: Hello.
Allen: It is lunch time!
Me: What would you like me to do about this?
Allen: I want lunch.
Me: Make yourself some lunch, then.
Allen: But, my back…
Me: OMG I am reading and also I am so comfortable and I just saw you doing like cartwheels. Make it yourself.
Allen (in the most pitiful voice imaginable): But I hurt sooooooo much! Please help me! Meow meow meow!

At this point I feel bad and go to the kitchen to rustle up something for him to eat. Unfortunately, I cannot find the potato he is asking for (mother of god!), and gently yell into the living room to find out where he might have left a 10-pound bag of potatoes AMD why he was heaving it around if his back hurts so much.

“Allen,” I say, in the gentlest way possible. “where are the potatoes?”

“In the lefthand cabinet,” he says, suddenly robust and healthy. “And hurry up! I want to eat before my show comes on.” And that, officer, is why I murdered my boyfriend in cold blood. It was a crime of passion. Also, I was reading, and he was disturbing me with his physical problems.

Allen trolling me for lunch is like one of these cats who are into water. There are two things I learned about cats when I was a kid: Cats hate dogs; and cats hate water. What the fuck is this, then? Look at these cats just playing in the water like it’s no big thang, just pawing around in the sink. Look at these cats taking luxurious baths! I bet you that this is what cats do when you are not home. You try to give your cat a bath and it claws the shit out of you and leaves your hands looking like they’ve been through a meat grinder. As soon as you leave the house, however, the cat’s all up in your shower, washing itself with the expensive soap your horrible boyfriend doesn’t let you use because it is just for show.

These memories are making me irritated. Allen is going to be home soon and will probably force me make dinner for him because he spent the whole day at work and I spent it in a recliner eating bonbons. I am going to be so mad! I hope you are just as mad at Allen as I am for trolling, but if you’re not, I leave you with this amazing .gif of an ape eating his own boogers while another ape openly disapproves. That’s what relationships look like. Send me links for next week and have a great first day of school!

[photo by s. myers via Flickr]

Stephan Nance: My new boyfriend goes on a world tour!  »

I would never leave Allen, but if I were going to be all “to the left, to the left,” it would only be for an adorably awkward ginger who loves frozen yogurt, writes songs about how people should be nicer, and reminds me of a less cynical Bo Burnham and an off-Broadway musical about coming out to your mom and hugs. Luckily for Allen, such a dude did not exist to, and he has always responded to my threats with a nonchalant “good luck out there!”

Then I stumbled onto the website of Stephan Nance. OK, I didn’t stumble—why would I make a wholehearted effort at finding a replacement for Allen?—Stephan sent us an email to promote his upcoming tour and I thought I would take this opportunity to support his efforts and also break up with Allen in a really public fashion so he wouldn’t cause a scene. Just like in Jerry Maguire.

I also thought it would be fitting to write about this now because my ex (Allen) just informed me that Wednesday is “Ginger Wednesday” on turntable and we are totally rocking out in a room full of ginger avatars on there. Also, GET OFF THE COUCH, ALLEN! YOU HAVE TO MOVE OUT! Also-also: Stephan’s stuff is on turntable! I especially like “Immunodeficiency” and “Song For Losers.” What? I do my research!

Ok, so about my new boyfriend and his career: Stephan Nance (pronounced Steven but never spelled that way, as per his website) has come up with a genre all his own that he calls “awkwardly charming vegan straight-edge queer alternative piano pop.” Since I have trouble understanding genre in the first place—never mind that there is something called “blue-eyed soul” that is an accepted thing—I am just going to take his word for it. Also, every time I hear piano pop I am all “oh yeah, totally! Tori Amos! I love her!” This seems to annoy a lot of people because apparently Tori Amos is not the only person to play a piano. Prime example: Stephan Nance also plays the piano. And he doesn’t just play the piano; apparently he plays it for a cause. I can’t wrap my head around that either. I can’t even wake up for a cause, let alone write songs and then record myself doing them for one.

From Stephan’s email:
“I’m about to embark on a tour of vegan-friendly frozen yogurt shops (and other frozen treateries and places that happen to have vegan froyo or soft-serve) in Oregon and Northern California, with later dates in Washington and B.C. In part this will be to promote my first full-length album (to be released in September), A Troubled Piece of Fruit. Since the album isn’t quite ready, I’ll be bringing along an EP of five songs, A Piece of the Piece. My larger goal is to challenge the popular interdependence of entertainment and alcohol consumption, and to encourage musicians and all-ages, alcohol-free businesses (e.g., sweet frozen treat parlors) to build relationships that will be beneficial both mutually and for the community as a whole.”

Awesome. Why are you not getting dressed for this already? Oh, right you want to know where he’s playing. OK, here you go. I even noted which fro-yo “treateries” (new boyfriend, you are adorable with your little words!) serve vegan options and which are dubious (because their websites don’t state it).Also, you would probably look pretty silly getting dressed now considering he isn’t playing until next week.

• Saturday, Aug. 13 (TOMORROW!) at 7:30 p.m. at the Yogurt Hut in Ashland, Ore. (non-dairy options available!)
• Thursday, Aug. 18 at 7 p.m. at Redwood Yogurt in Arcata, Calif. (not explicitly stated!)
• Saturday, Aug. 20, time TBA, at the Sacramento Film & Music Festival in Sacramento (no information available!)
• Sunday, Aug. 21 at 5 p.m. at Nature’s Express in Berkeley (you kidding me? We did a piece on them. Get up on this!)
• Tuesday, Aug. 23 at 8 p.m. at Forté Frozen Yogurt in Merced, Calif. (not explicitly stated!)
• Saturday, Aug. 27 at the Vida Vegan Con Galarama in Portland, Ore. (All vegan, bitches! Also, Laura and Meave are speaking!!)

I suggest that you go to Stephan’s website and check out some of his music (which is definitely awkward and charming), and then go out and see him in concert. I also suggest that you purchase his EP and also his full-blown album when it is released. Not just because it is really good, but because as my new boyfriend he is going to have to spend some cash to impress me. In “Song For Losers” he suggests that he would like to take me to the fair and win me a teddy bear. That’s all well and good, but I also need to visit the fun house and the rollercoaster for adventurous three-year-olds. And that is $20 minimum right there. At least this kid doesn’t even have has a “like” page on Facebook.

I also need yarn, Stephan! You need to sell more CDs!

[can’t see the videos? watch them on Vegansaurus.com]

Hello, friends! It’s WTF Wednesday!  »

You guys, I am so mad at Allen! Last night he left the lock to his gym locker in his car and had to run back and get it while I was changing in the gym. This totally wouldn’t have been a big deal if Allen and I didn’t share a locker when we go to the gym. Unfortunately, we do. So as Allen hustled (I imagine, he could have walked slowly to inflict maximum humiliation) back to the car I was left to watch our stuff. In my swim trunks. for five minutes. You guys see where I’m going with this? Here I am, in a room full of men in various stages of undress and I’m just sitting on a stool in my swim trunks, trying not to make eye contact with anyone so I don’t get reported to the staff for perving out half-naked at the local family gym. When Allen returned, he failed to see how this was an issue in any way. “It’s fine,” he said. “No one even noticed—probably.” And then he did this little giggle thing which made me realize that he probably knew exactly how I felt and not only did not empathize but also found it amusing. It took all of my energy not to drown him as we were Zumba-ing about the pool, but there would have been too many witnesses.

In addition to the above injustices, it appears that Allen also took the delicious cookies I purchased for myself yesterday to work with him. I have no proof of this (because Allen refuses to take my phone calls at work due to an unfortunate incident several months ago when I called to inform him that my Mii beat his Mii at running) but I cannot find my cookies, so I have decided to spent the rest of the afternoon seething and sighing loudly about the great wrongs that have been done to me. If I have enough energy, I will sit in the living room in the dark and when Allen comes home and asks me what is wrong, I will say “nothing” and storm off in a huff. That’ll teach him. Goddamnit, now I really want those cookies!

I am really angry now, and since it is unhealthy to reserve all of my anger for the one person I live with and get kicked by at night (oh, that’s another thing! It’s not a good night unless Allen kicks someone in his sleep!) I am going to project some of it further outwards and onto this one douchebag* who raped a cat and then threw it out a window. Seriously, if I have told you once I have told you a thousand times, stop having sex with animals. They can’t consent, and based on the charming personalities and physical appearances of the people who are trying to get into their (no) pants, I doubt they would be all that into it even if they could agree. Especially if you’re going to try to throw them out the window afterward. God, I bet to this guy throwing a cat out of the window after inserting himself into it was probably the equivalent of closing down all of your internet browsers (or ripping the VHS/DVD out of the machine) after you’ve finished doing what Deenie used to do in the bathtub. Oh wait, I am totally right! He threw a porno out of the window along with the cat. Awesome, so he murdered a cat  because he was feeling guilty. What a horrible human being. I hope he gets a lot of counseling while he spends a potential five years in jail.

Oh, before I go on I need to point out that I found the cookies and have now finished the entire packet. I blame this on Allen because if he had gotten back to me sooner, I would not have been craving them as much and would not have inhaled them with such alarming speed. Now I am on a sugar rush and will certainly have enough energy to sigh and flounce about when he comes home. Man, I am even angrier that i ate those cookies so fast that I didn’t even think to put them into soy milk. He is really going to get it for being so inconsiderate.

Gary the gourami is totally feling me on this one. That fish lived on Kit-Kats for a hella long time and then had to be tricked into eating fruits by having Kit-Kats stuffed into them in order for him to eat. That is for real. That is how I function. Allen is all, “Mark, here is some delicious broccoli!” and I am all, “IS THE BROCCOLI MADE OUT OF CANDY?! NEXT!” And then both Gary and I outgrow our tanks and people have to trick us into eating our fruits and vegetables and then we resent them for it. How big of a problem is it that I feel that if Gary and I were to meet we would totally kick it together and then get into a quickly spiraling co-dependent relationship that would end with lots and lots of tears and melted Kit-Kats? Should I be seeking help for this?

Now I need to take a nap. Please send me links for next week and try to spend the rest of today without trying to throw a party in a subway. Actually, no I’m not done. As someone who takes public transportation EVERYWHERE the idea of some hipsters invading a subway train and “partying” in it fills me with an unspecified amount of vitriol that I would like to spew all over them as my head turns around and around and around. That’s not cool, you guys. People have to go places!

Now I’m done!

*I spent like five minutes trying to come up with a better word, but this one is just so good! What would you have used?

Marin: not a good place to be a vegan inmate  »

Having volunteered in jail and jail-adjacent settings, I have seen some pretty ridiculous things happen, and been bummed out by the treatment some people receive at the hands of those in power. Here’s the thing: our jail system is really broken. I don’t want to go into the details of how and why, because this isn’t “Mark gets on a soap box about mental health and the jail population (if you’re interested, email me!), but if you google “jail” and “mistreatment” you won’t want for examples. One thing I have never heard of or seen, however, is anyone being refused a vegan or vegetarian meal. Because that’s crazy, right? There’s no reason to do something like that. Except, apparently, in Marin (and a whole bunch of other places, but we’re just focusing on Marin today).

In jail you are already stripped of so much. You shower when you’re told to, you have to raise your hand to go to the bathroom, and you have to submit to random searches and do count times and all sorts of other weird administrative things that seem both frustrating and annoying. I get it; it’s important to make sure there’s no crowding in the bathrooms and that no one is fighting. It’s also important to account for all the people that are supposed to be in a pod/wing/ward. What I don’t get is why someone would be denied a vegan meal because they’re not vegan for a religious reason. That just seems so arbitrary and poorly planned that it makes my head spin in several different directions at once.

You think, “They must have a good reason and I’m sure they’ll share it with us.” Then you read the rest of the article and discover that Dave McDonald, the man whose requests were denied, was basically starved because the officers were “following the law.” Not to say that following laws is a bad thing, certainly not in jail, but I’m wondering why no one took a look at the laws governing jails and asked why inmates couldn’t have vegan meals. I also wonder why no one considered that some laws are so outdated that it doesn’t make sense to follow them, especially if not following them doesn’t harm anyone. I wonder how providing a vegan meal could have been harmful to anyone in the jail. They kind of tried to put some stuff together for this guy, but if you’re going so far as to throw the guy a mix of vegetables and bread, why not just give him the vegan meal and be done with it? Why barely feed someone for 99 days (which is how long it took for some tests to be run on alleged controlled substances) and explain your behavior by claiming your hands are tied?

A good result of this debacle is that people are taking notice, and reviewing the laws and policies. Why did it take so long, and why does reading this article make me so sad about the state of social services—jails, especially those that provide programs, classes, and case-management are definitely social services—today?

Snails are the new cockroaches!  »

You know how people talk about the world ending and the only beings that survive will be Cher and the cockroaches? Well, now they’ve got company, because snails can be digested by birds and come out inexplicably healthy. This shocking and somewhat disgusting  news comes from research being done in Japan, where grad students are studying bird feces. I do not know about you, but this sounds like one of the worst jobs ever to me. I cannot imagine getting up in the morning and knowing that I would spend the day messing around with bird poop for scientific research. not even if I loved science. not even if I loved it enough to marry it, which I don’t.

The point, however, is not how much I dislike bird poop; what is more important is the fact that tiny snails (not the big kind, yo) can apparently grab onto the insides of the birds’ digestive systems and catch a ride back out into the wild, where they emerge healthy and with a kick-ass story to tell. The only issue I have with this is that in order to find out how many snails would survive, the researchers have to feed the birds multitudes of snails and then see how many will come out the other end. I recognize that this is the circle of life and all, but I kind of feel bad for the snails, who were probably not expecting to get ingested in such large numbers with only 15 percent coming back to tell their tale. I also wonder what these results mean and how they could be useful beyond giving Cher a new audience to perform to after the apocalypse. What do you guys think?

[photo by Melissa Maples via flickr]

Hello, friends! It’s WTF Wednesday!  »

You guys, work is really stressing me out. I am going to spend most of my half-day off catching up on horrible paperwork and I am dreading it already, as I would prefer to spend the day eating bonbons and playing Super Mario Galaxy. When I am bummed like this, there is only one thing that makes me feel better (well, two, but crystal meth is pretty expensive on my salary), so after Allen picked me up from work we went to the gym and did water Zumba for an hour. Here are the reasons I like water Zumba: first of all, Zumba is like this horrifying campy mix of boxing, salsa, and belly-dancing that is all about being fun and taking itself too seriously at the same time. Second of all, when I am doing any kind of aquatic fitness activity it is all limbs and grunts and I look like I am having a panic attack mixed with a seizure and everyone is silently backing away and holding their hands over their mouths in shock and mortification. You take all of this and add a whole bunch of amazing middle-aged ladies just shaking their stuff and doing water acrobatics in a circle at the end and Allen wading around assuring people that I’m OK and that no one needs to call 911 and everyone’s having a good time!

I don’t feel that I am doing a good job explaining this, so let me show you with this cartoon of Narwhals just tearing shit up in the water. Quick question: are Narwhals even real or what? They are sea animals with horns! They fight polar bears! They have a catchy song about how awesome they are that will be stuck in my head for the next two weeks and will not be able to sleep because as soon as I close my eyes all I hear is that amazing techno beat taunting me with the millions of fantastic qualities Narwhals have that I will never achieve. Fun story: my friend Stephanie took me to some kind of Etsy craft fair a couple of months ago and one of the activities they had was making stuffed Narwhals out of felt and cloth. I was super drunk at this point (and had been eating so many cookies and cake pops—cake pops!!—that I was almost in a sugar coma) that the only thing I could do was supervise by yelling “give the Narwhal a huge schlong!” while twirling around and laughing. in the end, the Narwhal had a giant appendage and I spent the rest of the evening showing everyone my Narwhal which I was wearing as a necklace. True story.

Narwhals not doing it for you? You want to go for more conventional? Fine! How about these mother-loving kittens being DJ Heroes?

[Can’t see the video? Watch it on Vegansaurus.com]
They’re not even playing it on the Wii, you guys! They are on real-life decks just spinning like there is no tomorrow and meowing out sweet musical beats. I know a little bit about being a DJ (read: Laura and I spend a lot of time on turntable.fm) [Ed.; YEAH WE HAVE! And Megan Rascal told us about it so mad props to DJ My Lil’ Pony!] when someone is a hot act. And let me tell you, three kittens fucking it up on a couple of turntables is just what the club scene needs. I don’t generally go to clubs because I hate people and dancing and lights and music, but I would be there to see these kittens and break my neck (that is DJ lingo for “bop my head”) to the rhythms they’re putting out.

Kittens don’t do it for you? Why? Did your soul break? Perhaps you should have it repaired. Oh, you like dogs? You like dogs that make you go WTF? You like English dogs that make you go “huh?” Let me introduce you to Sophie, then. Let’s see what’s up now! Adorable or terrifying? You tell me!

That’s all for this week! Please send me links for next week and have the best Wednesday of your life!

Hello, friends! It’s WTF Wednesday!  »

You guys, last week was a long week. I can’t believe I’m saying that, as I had Monday and most of Wednesday off, but you can’t really count the Fourth of July as a day off because it is exhausting. If you’re not hopelessly trying to avoid all the drunk and disorderly people on the highway, you’re waking up from the sound sleep you fell into at the reasonable hour of 9 p.m. and screaming, “It’s the apocalypse!”

True story: I hate fireworks. I only go to Disneyland when I know they’re not going to happen, and if I have to see fireworks up close and personal, I am always the person huddled on the ground praying that I’m not accidentally ignited by the flames. Once, when I was living on my own, I was enjoying a movie on my laptop when I started hearing these horrifying sonic booms. Because I am a completely rational human being, I was immediately certain that San Francisco was under attack. No idea who would be attacking us at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night, just certain it was happening. In my haste to save humanity, I immediately called my mother and told her to hide, and ran outside (smart, right?) to see if there were any other survivors. What I found was a block full of people standing outside and smiling up at the sky. Continuing my logic, I was sure that these people were either trapped by some mind-ray I was immune to or in hysterics, and I cautiously approached my next door neighbor.”I heard it, but we seem to be fine. Is anyone hurt?” I said. My neighbor, to his credit, just pointed at the sky and said “Mark, those are fireworks,” in a slow and nonthreatening manner. God, I hate fireworks. You know what? Fireworks are assholes. Corgis, according to the internet, are also assholes.

I didn’t know this because I generally think they’re pretty cute, but then Allen pointed out that Corgis are not only assholes but out to ruin this awesome new streak of marriage equality. Why you gotta do that Corgis? What gays ever do to you? You know what, Corgis? Only gays and rich people adopt you, and the rich people who adopt you are usually gays. I have to be honest, this website is really making me look at Corgis in a different light. I am usually not a hater of any breed, but I cannot get down with any animals that are not down with marriage equality. Or animals that pee in pools. Or animals that bring wine to AA meetings. And I can definitely not get behind dogs that dress as KKK members. You guys, I didn’t even know this was happening. This is why I mainly stick with hamsters, who would never discriminate on the basis of race, creed, or sexual orientation.

Apparently, Moths don’t discriminate either, choosing to now spend their time not only scaring people when they float out of closets like evil harbingers of doom, but also crawling into the ears of children in order to cause them stress, fear, and a glimpse of mortality. Let me be clear with you on one point: if a moth, or any other bug for that matter, crawls into your ear, go immediately to the emergency room. Do not pass go. Do not try to flood your ear with water in order to drown the moth in your cavern of earwax. Moths are stubborn, and as a 12-year-old in Denver learned, they cannot be killed with water. When the boy’s mother finally took him to the emergency room, the doctors had to pull the moth, still alive mind you, from his ear where it had decoded that it would take up permanent residence. Doesn’t this remind you of that horrible story we all heard as kids about spiders laying eggs inside people’s faces? Thanks, internet, now I will never be able to sleep again.

That’s it for this week! Please send me links for next week and have a safe and bug-free Wednesday!