Thank you and welcome to my newest piece. I like to call it “I can’t even!” The name makes no sense whatsoever, other than the fact that it’s a funny phrase that’s associated with a certain young demographic. Again, it has nothing to do with this blog at all. I intend these posts to be nothing short of a disaster. A train wreck of random thoughts that I’ve collected over the days, hurling at your senses like something that goes kind of fast. Some of these thoughts might be deep (not likely) and some of them might be downright chupa-macabre. If you didn’t get that pun I totally understand. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty lame. So without further ado, I present to you “I can’t even!”
Talk about being in the right place at the right time! I don’t know how I even managed to snap a picture of this guy with my cell phone. What’s weirder, is that Mr. Chupacabra doesn’t even live in Alaska. I really don’t understand why not, I mean, we have goats up here right?.
As warned about above, I’m going to take this opportunity to get some random thoughts of mine down on the epaper – as I like to call it. That’s a fancy French word meaning to evacuate one’s bowls. Trust me, because I’m pretending to learn French. It’s a regular verb ending in – er and it’s also the infinitive form of the word, except that it’s not.
I’m not entirely sure what it means – pretty much like most idioms (it’s not even an idiom) in a foreign language – but I’m guessing it has something to do with pouring out the milk bowls at the end of the night. Possibly for the poor feral kittens that inhabit certain areas in France. If you can’t tell by now, I’m not saying my fact checking is the best in the world. So if you think my previous not idiom doesn’t make any sense, here’s an idiom that makes even less sense than a head mounted toilet paper dispenser. That’s right everyone, they do exist. And so do shoe umbrellas. I’m just saying…
“Revenons à nos moutons” = Let’s get back to the subject at hand.
But translated literally, it means: Returning to our sheep.
It’s raining cats and dogs, makes so much more sense don’t you think? Okay, obviously everyone (especially anyone that speaks French) knows I’m making all this up as I go. I combined the word electronic with the word paper, and came up with epaper. Kind of like email or eBay or Elance; I feel it’s going to be a groundbreaking word. But it looked French so I went with it. By the way, the term “Revenons à nos moutons” actually has a cool backstory. If you care you can check it out here at this link: french.about.com
And those are my thoughts on that matter. I might return to some more French subjects a little bit later, I don’t know. For now, let’s move on. Please follow the arrows below.
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This is a sheep. It’s a Dall sheep. It lives in Alaska and other places on the steep cliffs surrounding the Turnagain Arm and other places. This one just so happened to have badly lost a game of paintball to Steve the marmot. Steve’s a hoary marmot, and he’s kind of a jerk sometimes.
So this conversation just happened while I was sitting at our kitchen table thinking about whatever it is I think about. Vanessa was reading Nathan a book about something or another. I don’t know what it was. I was zoning out pretty hard until I heard her say the following.
Vanessa: “Blah blah blah something something blah blah make sweet justice.”
Me: *Confused by what I just heard, I looked at Vanessa and waited for her to pause. “Did you just say…make sweet justice?”
Vanessa: *She looks at the previous page and confirms the wording. “Yep…make sweet justice.”
Me: “You know, that sounds a lot like something Batman would say.”
Vanessa: “That makes sense, the author is black.”
Me: “……”
Vanessa: “……”
Me: “Not Blackman!…Batman!”
Vanessa: “…it’s been a minute…”
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Update. We were talking about chickens and how one would raise them when it’s -40°F (-40° C) outside. Vanessa dropped some knowledge on me, and I learned that 1 chicken is capable of heating 1 cube square of volume. On a side note, she also informed me I would be in charge of changing all the poopy diapers today for making fun of her.
So I decided I would do a little math and figure out how many chickens it would take to keep a particular size chicken coop warm enough during the winter, utilizing nothing but chickens. No outside heat sources would be allowed. Self sustaining chicken heat is what we’re looking for. And it turns out, if 1 cubed chicken is equal to π²/zxy, then the prolate spheroid of the circumference of the dominant female chicken is equal to 8∑¾∇ x ƒ0.3732. And we all know what that means right!?
The “I can’t even” chicken.
It’s so simple guys. If you had a chicken coop that was 5 feet wide, 3 feet deep, and 7 feet tall you would have an area consisting of 105 square cubes. Therefore you would need 105 chickens to warm a coop with the previously mentioned dimensions. Sure, they might get tired of standing on each other’s heads, but that’s the price the chickens would have to pay if they want to save money on their heating bills during the winter.
In Vanessa’s defense though, I don’t think it was just my response to the chicken comment that caused her to mete out such a harsh punishment. I think it was a combination of three things she said that I didn’t quite understand. And what’s the natural response to someone who just said something you didn’t understand? Well, you point at them and laugh really hard. And it’s just that much better if you can pull that off in a crowded place such as a large mall.
Most likely though, I didn’t understand what she was trying to say because I tend to take things quite literally. I was therefore unable to process the information successfully. FYI if you use the wrong synonym as part of an everyday expression, I probably won’t know what you’re talking about. For example, if someone were to approach me and say “Stop being such a dumb donkey,” I would in all likelihood not know what they were trying to tell me. On the flip side, here’s a great one because it pertains to the subject matter above – “Don’t count your chickens before the eggs have hatched.” That is the correct wording and I totally get it.
But imagine this scenario if you will. I’m just chilling outside drinking an iced tea, probably with a little lemon in it and one of those tiny umbrellas, reading my French for Dummies book when all of the sudden, this random guy named Shilifilshilshillyshil walks up to me and says “Hey buddy, don’t total your chickens before the eggs have hatched.” I would have no other choice but to tell him, “I really hadn’t planned on crashing those eggs. It would be a shame if the cost of repairing the eggs were to be more than what they were actually worth.”
So that’s how chickens work. Let me now share with you two other things I didn’t entirely understand. Again, this is my fault for not making the correct connection. One of our day care children had arrived for the day wearing a fireman’s hat. At some point he decided he was going to stand on a flat piece of wood and begin pondering life. We politely asked him if he would be willing to share it because another child was interested in using it. To make a long story short, he was too heavily involved in what he was thinking about that he didn’t hear us. Vanessa then said, “He’s thinking hard about what’s on his head.”
Normal people would most likely understand that to mean he’s thinking about what’s on his mind. But not me. The first thing that popped into my brain was – what does a fireman’s hat have to do with anything? And why is he thinking so hard about it?
And the last thing (that I can think of at the moment) that Vanessa confused me with was something about going down a “bunny trail.” She thought it was the funniest thing that I had no idea what she was talking about. Folks, it’s a “rabbit trail.” I completely understand “rabbit trail,” because I always seem to be going down them in my blog posts. There’s no need to speak of bunny trails. And finally, if everything I have written so far means absolutely nothing to anyone, then I have done my job.
Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately for some of you) I must take my leave at this time. But before I do, I would like to leave you with a few things I’ve thought about since maybe yesterday or before.
So here goes. There has to be somebody that has “time fo dat,” wouldn’t you think? I feel that “Big Chunk No Beans” would be a hilarious nickname for someone. I love the concept of heavy water and I have no idea why. I really really don’t like the word “flavonoid.” I honestly don’t know what the fox says nor do I know how porcupines mate.
And with those final thoughts, I must head out. For it’s five for Friday at one of our grocery stores. That’s right, cheap Chinese food and buffalo wings. Oh yeah!
Later everyone.
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