Fun Fact Friday - Nap Time

You know what I want to do, dear reader? Take a nice snooze. So today's fun fact will be about sleep. Because even though I am incapable of napping, I can at least psyche myself up for some fucking awesome sleepy times tonight with a fun fact.

Fun fact: 25 percent of married couples sleep in separate beds.

This seems inordinately high. Now let's be real: I'm not married. I don't fucking know what that shit's like. But I can tell you that my stuffed Elmo and I snuggle every night. And sure, sometimes I wake up and he has fallen and/or leapt from the bed and I wake up in a panic and flail around wildly searching for him, but that only happens every once in a while. And though I can imagine that happening to married couples, I think it's just because my imagination can do very many strange things.

"I'm so glad it's the 1950s and we can't touch. At all. Ever." - Lucy

I can see people wanting their space and getting picky about bed sheets, but - but snuggling! And really? 25 percent? I need to go find myself a cuddle puddle to help wipe away the thoughts of adult onset loneliness. Farewell.

Ways To Procrastinate

I suspect that no one really needs tips on procrastination. But I procrastinate by doing irresponsible things on white boards:

I also sometimes procrastinate by posting pictures of rhinos on the interwebz.

Good luck on the rhino quiz!

Pre-Approved Friendship

You may wonder, dear reader, what has become of me. You might not, but a girl can dream, right? In any case, I have been busy being thankful for you. I hope that if you were feeling vaguely neglected by me,  you now feel a little bit guilty.

In any case, I am home briefly for Thanksgiving. And whenever I come home, I find a collection of credit card offers that my mother has kept aside for me. Now I've told her she can just stick them in the shredder, but saving them for me does give me the opportunity to stuff the postage-paid envelopes with my own brand of vengeance, which you will find below. Please feel free to use it to reject your own credit card offers, although you may wish to exclude the imaginary Mexican pen pal bits.

To whom it may concern,

I want you to know how sincerely I appreciate being offered this undeniably auspicious opportunity. Though I would love to say that I gave your offer careful consideration, I cannot – in good conscience – tell such a grievous lie.

You can be assured that as a woman of a certain age I receive many such offers. They are each as unappealing as the next. It is for this reason that I did not, in fact, even read your letter. If your letter contained any warm offers of love, admonishments for misdeeds, slights directed at my personal grooming habits, or anything besides unwelcome solicitations, then I regret to inform you they went unnoticed.

As I assume your letter to me merely contained information regarding a special credit card offer for which I am most certainly qualified, I hope you won't take this rejection too hard. It is, as was your offer to me, nothing personal.

I also feel you should know that I love getting mail. In fact, I love mail so much that I once had an imaginary Mexican pen pal. For someone who loves mail, an imaginary pen pal is not the most practical choice, and Pepe and I parted ways after middle school. My love of mail may seem vaguely unrelated to most of the content of this letter to this point, and certainly the tale of my imaginary Mexican friend is as unasked for as the credit card offer you sent to me has been. But this brings me to the ultimate purpose of this letter.

If you merely seek to contact me in hopes of getting me to subscribe to a credit card, I feel I must ask that you cease contacting me. It is ruining our relationship and damaging my love of mail. Imagine the inevitable heartbreak I feel when I open the mailbox to find propositions of a most undue nature. I could describe to you the emotions I feel at such cold contact, but to recount such feelings would be to relive the pain I have already experienced at your hands today.

If, in the future, you wish to write to me as a friend, I would be happy to hear from you again, assuming that you do not also include any more credit card offers. Engaging in a deeper personal relationship with you is something I could imagine myself enjoying. Perhaps, after our pen pal-ship has developed and matured, we could go on a picnic or snuggle by the sea. Maybe we could bake together or volunteer at my local library! I am open to other bonding activities as well, and I look forward to hearing about your interests.

Should you choose the latter option, it would be most helpful to me if you could continue to include these business reply envelopes as it does save me the postage for my return correspondence. Also, please be informed that I am a woman of many correspondences. I just want to nip this in the bud in case you happen to be the jealous type.

In any case, I hope you shan't take my rejection too hard as I know that you are courting many other young men and women with similar financial situations to my own. I hope you will find some comfort in their loving arms or, at the very least, some solace in what may turn out to be their debt.

Kind regards,

Jes Marbacher

Super Hero and Student

Fun Fact Friday - Ass Bare Jungle Living

Yesterday I may or may not have written a thank you note to a fictitious aunt for a birthday gift of some very fine underwear. As I'm learning German, sometimes I am made to do strange things to practice the language. Although, the gift being underwear was actually my idea.

In any case, my non-existant Aunt Martha's gift of Unterhosen has inspired me to bring you an underwear fun fact.

Fun fact: Loincloths, often considered the earliest underwear (although then, it wasn't really under anything), were worn by many different ancient cultures from all over the world.

That is your fun fact. Do with it what you will. I shall, at some point, probably bring you a more exciting underwear fact, but for now the rest of this will be about how Tarzan and his creepy ass loincloth freak me the fuck out.

"Oh, why hello! Is part of my ass showing?" - Tarzan

When Disney's Tarzan came out, I'm going to say I was eight. It was not my favorite. It was only years later when listening to Phil Collins' "You'll Be in My Heart" made me feel vaguely awkward that I sat down and had a think about Tarzan, his awkward face, and his loincloth.

First of all, Tarzan should not be wearing a loincloth. He should be ass bare jungle living like his adoptive gorilla family. That's why Kerchak doesn't like him! Sack up, Tarzan! Who the fuck showed you how to make a loincloth? Your annoying gorilla cousin? The scared elephant? No.

And fine, maybe Disney didn't want any dick flailing around in their film, which honestly I find a little hard to believe given the whole Little Mermaid boner fiasco, but if we're operating on the assumption that there was a penis embargo, then why a loin cloth? He was found in a diaper! They could have stuck with that! In fact, that probably would have made the movie pretty damn awesome. Everyone loves adult diapers.

This would be less threatening if Tarzan were wearing a diaper. And if he stopped doing whatever the fuck he's doing with his face.

And aside from the implausibility of Tarzan and his primate pals suddenly thinking up a way to unreliably conceal all his bits, there's the physics of it. Throughout the movie, Tarzan goes tree surfing. And vine swinging. And cliff diving. And his hair goes all over the place. So would his damn loincloth!

Also, I still don't like his face. Just so we're clear.

Collegiate Quotes - Volume 3

Tonight, as I take a brief respite from research paper writing, I bring to you the third edition of Collegiate Quotes. If you missed the first two editions, you can find the links below. This time, I am featuring the normal fare of pomposity and a few gems (trust me, there were more) from a conversation I heard between a conservative professor and a douchey student. (Please be aware that I often use those modifiers interchangeably.)

Female: He's beautiful, but like, he's a dick.

Student 1: You should try the soup. It's really good.
Student 2: I'm not ethnic.

Female: There's a bunch of kids here from New Canaan. Like 10. Or more.

Student to her friend: I'm not wearing a coat yet. It's not time. (A large gust of wind blows.) Oh, God!

And now for the promised bullshit!

Professor: Hispanics are natural conservatives.

Student: Ginsburg's getting ready to die, right?

Professor: I actually don't know who Gary Johnson is.
Student: He was actually running for president in this election.
Professor: Oh, is that right?

If you don't know who Gary Johnson is, dear reader, he was the libertarian candidate in the election that just happened. A week and a half ago. While I may not necessarily expect you to know that, I do expect conservative political science professors to be up on that shit.

Volume 1
Volume 2

Until next time!

Fun Fact Friday - (In)explicable Stilts

Why, hello! Are you suffering from political fatigue? I have just the thing! A presidential fun fact!

"How does a presidential fun fact heal political fatigue?" I like to imagine you asking. (I often imagine you, dear reader. Sometimes you ask me engaging questions like the aforementioned one. Sometimes you simply read my interblahg in the nude while sharing a pint of ice cream with your cat, Hiram Ulysses. You're a bit odd at times.)

Though there are several ways in which presidential fun facts heal political fatigue, I don't feel obligated to provide any. I am feeling vaguely lazy. And my croissant won't eat itself. Or at least I hope it won't. But I digress.

Fun fact: Every member of Theodore Roosevelt's family owned a pair of stilts.

Teddy: unaware of the inevitable stilt based  disappointment his future held.

I have seen the familial stilt ownership explained by TR's children, who evidently loved to have adventuresome playtime. I assume that Teddy and his lovely wife, Edith Kermit (yes, Kermit) Carrow, were simply practicing for the circus.

I like to believe that Theodore hoped to join the circus for much of his life, which is why he cultivated such a fine mustache. During his presidency, Theodore stayed in training, ever hopeful that upon his retirement from politics, Barnum and Bailey's Circus would find a place for the routine he and Edith had perfected: Theodore and Edith's Stilted Waltz. It was a beautiful, lilting dance, but by the time the Roosevelt administration came to an end, ragtime music was at the height of its popularity. Circuses had no place for the act. Dejected, Theodore destroyed all photographic evidence of the routine and threw his own stilts into the Potomac.

Of course I have no proof that any of that is true, but isn't it pretty to think so? And I have not come across any other explanations for Theodore's stilt possession. Or his mustache...

Vote, Vote, Vote, Vote, Vote!

I registered to vote on Monday, December 15, 2008. Thanks to a huge ass ice storm, my family didn't have power. I hadn't showered in several days and had been sleeping in the basement next to the wood stove to keep warm. But fuck all - it was the first day the town office was open after I turned eighteen and I was registering to vote.

Yeah, my mom came and took pictures when I registered to vote. And then we got some fucking ice cream.

The more astute among you may realize this means that this is the first presidential election I can vote in. It's not the first time I'm voting. There have been seven local, state, and/or federal elections since I registered to vote. And I have voted in all of them. With this election, I'm eight for eight, bitches!

This may seem like I am bragging, dear reader. Because I am. I don't fancy myself a bragger. I hate writing out my resume because it makes me uncomfortable to say so many nice things about myself all at once. But I always brag about voting.

And so should every goddamn person. And yes, the system's not perfect, the candidates aren't perfect, and the voting booth's not big enough to comfortably perform acrobatics in. But come the fuck on. Vote. You color in a few circles, you poke a few buttons on a screen, or, if you're in Idaho, you can still hang a chad or two.

And maybe you have excuses - or reasons, as you might prefer I call them - but I'm pretty sure I'll think those are bullshit.

In 2008, I drove around with my friends for hours one night looking for a McCain/Palin campaign sign. To pee on. And while baptizing electioneering materials in urine was a momentarily satisfying way to participate in the electoral process, I didn't pee on any campaign signs this time. I just voted. And it was immensely more satisfying. And I didn't even have to worry about getting urine on my shoes.

My family voting together in the NH primary. Suck my dick.

And I'm sorry if this seems sanctimonious or if you were only looking for penis jokes instead of a rant from an impassioned political nerd, but I care about this shit. So vote.

And now, for those of you who have survived my pontificating, an electoral limerick:

There once were some young polling stations,
Who just wanted some brief satiation,
So they met some voters
And gave them strict orders,
To pull levers across the whole nation.

And sure, bitches don't pull levers any more, and you have to read "orders" with a Boston accent, but I have shit to do that doesn't involve perfecting a limerick about voting booths orgasming. Sorry. But for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, vote!

In Other Words - Dickhole

Dear reader, I'm sorry about missing Fun Fact Friday again. I was in the wilderness. I hope this factual but vague claim is mysterious enough to intrigue you.

In any case in honor of the upcoming election, today I bring you a political installment of my newly defined vulgarities.

And maybe I'm a little behind, but if Dick is still going to periodically inject himself into politics, then I am going to keep shitting on him.