Has Blogger Always Been This Salty?

Blogger.com asked me to prove that I am not a robot by testing my ability to suss out the word "analfire" in this captcha:



I'm twelve, so this made my whole afternoon.

Also, it makes me question what Blogger's been doing with its bad self lately.

The Palinode Rocks a Flowered Pashmina and Saves Kittens

Last night, I tweeted the following:



And then I tweeted:



There were some who doubted the veracity of my statements.

Ha! In your face, doubters. Behold the Palinode in all his kitten-saving, be-caped glory:



You know you're doing well when the man you married blossoms into a Do-Me-cape-wearing kitten-saver. I'm so proud.

In a World of Heidi Klums, Some Might Like It Stout

I just realized where my recent belief that I look like a short troll comes from, even though I am neither short (I am five-feet-six-inches) nor a troll (I'm Mennonite by ancestry, which is more like un-fun hippies than trolls).



A few months ago, the Palinode and I attended a dinner party. We were sharing travel stories before dinner, and one of the guests said that almost all the women in this one country she visited looked like Heidi Klum.

"Well, I'll make sure to avoid the place," I said.

It wasn't a very enlightened thing to say, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't feel like a toadstool in a willow grove if you stuck me in a country full of Heidi Klums.

"Actually," my friend said, "they would probably think that you looked exotic there."

"Exotic?"

"No, they would," she said.

"Right," I said. "They'd shoot a movie all about me called Some Like It Stout."

Everybody laughed, because I'm so funny, and then we ate a great dinner, and a good time was had by all, or so I thought, until I looked at that picture I took of myself up there and realized I wasn't a short troll.

It turns out that I have subconsciously been assuming that I am both shorter and fatter than I really am ever since that night, because, while everyone laughed at my joke, nobody disagreed with my describing myself as stout.

In my mind's eye, I have been viewing myself through a funhouse mirror:



THANKS, DINNER PARTY FRIENDS.

On the other hand, though, I'm feeling kind of hot now, so there's that. Rowr.

Five Lists of Three

I like lists. I like to write lists, I like to read lists (oh, 5ives, please come back and keep existing), and I even created a whole community around making lists.

I like lists enough that I feel somewhat compelled at times to write them, and I like to imagine how I will go about constructing them before I even know what they're about. For instance, I usually make lists using certain patterns depending on their pre-determined length. If the list's points equal a multiple of three, I will write every third point in a round until all of the spots are filled. Sometimes I will cut and paste the points into different places within the list to increase the apparent randomness of the line lengths. My lists are very carefully constructed to imitate chaos.

My particular kind of list-making is a sickness, really, but it gives me so much satisfaction with its delicious and perverted measure of control and affected chaos within that control. It's sick, but it's my kind of sick, and I like it.

Anyway, tonight's lists are all about letting my brain work through its ticks and repetition issues so I can actually sleep, so here are a few short ones to sing me into slumber.


Three Things I Hate About Eggs, Even Though I Like To Eat Them

1. They smell like farts.
2. Sometimes the goo on top of the yolk in a sunny side up egg has the exact consistency of snot.
3. If there is a tiny blood spot in the yolk, I feel bad for the little chicken that could never be.

Three Things That People Twenty Years Younger Than Me Probably Don't Even Know About Anymore

1. Not only do they not know how to darn socks, which I actually used to do, but they don't even know what darning is.
2. They don't know how to put Smurfs records on a slower speed setting so that they sound like dorky country songs.
3. They don't know about being able to unscrew the mouthpiece on a rotary telephone to hide secret notes and/or drugs.

Three Things I Wore That I Regretted Even As I Wore Them

1. The puffy, reversible sweatshirt that had little cars on one side and baby pink with white stars on the other and was stuffed with what I think was polyester fibre fill.
2. The apple green, cotton bomber jacket with a knitted collar and matching knitted elbow patches.
3. Earrings bigger than quarters that were upholstered in the same colour of denim as the jeans I wore them with.

Three Things I Did That Made People Cry

1. I punched my cousin in the mouth.
2. I took the upturned garbage can away that my brother had used to climb a tree, which meant that he had to jump out, and he broke his arm in the resulting fall.
3. I accidentally nailed myself to a door frame with a mattress needle when I decided to pierce the top of my own ear at home.

Three Things I Ate That I Don't Like To Think About But That I Can't Help But Think About Because They Were So Disgusting

1. Head cheese.
2. Earthworms.
3. My own scab before I realized the wound was infected.

Now it's your turn. Go!

Putting On Pants Is Really Boring, Apparently

Because this is a picture of Onion's reaction to panting, which is to bite whatever is near his mouth, I thought it was sideways related to the topic at hand.

Palinode: Whatcha doing?

Schmutzie: I'm taking off my pants...

Palinode: Really? [His face breaks out in a huge grin.]

Schmutzie: ...and I'm putting on some other pants.

Palinode: Oh. [His grin falls.]

Schmutzie: What?

Palinode: Well, it's just that your sentence started out really interesting, and then it ended up being really boring.

Next time I put on pants, I'll try to throw in a little soft shoe or something.