Category: Blog

Keeping up with Emily

cat rear end on a table

Cat Law: Just Try Sitting On It

Posted on | by Emily | Leave a Comment on Cat Law: Just Try Sitting On It

If the human legal idiom is “possession is nine tenths of the law,” then the cat law equivalent is “if in doubt, sitting on it has a 90% success rate”

Cats are notoriously imperialistic: what they touch is theirs. The coffee table, your sleeping face, the half-drunk glass of water, dog food, and a prize orchid. If a cat has touched it, it is theirs. A favored method of the cat is just sitting on it. To be sure, this applies to all of the items listed above and more.

There is definitely something to be said for this – asserting your place in the world by just sitting on it. However, I’d like to discourage anyone from dropping trou and planting their bare tukhus on a public surface. That’s just gross.

Firstly, the bus (or train). There is an awkward balance between leaving enough space between yourself and your neighbor, and also fitting everyone into the bus (or train car). Sometimes it’s easier to stand on the bus and avoid any potential confrontation rather than squish yourself down into an open seat. This is when to channel a cat and plant your butt right down. It might be prudent to do the perfunctory mouthing of “is this seat taken” or “is it OK if I sit here?” You aren’t really a cat, after all – manners should be part of your life.

Secondly, the bathroom. This, to my knowledge, is primarily a woman-based issue. Women decide that it’s more sanitary to hover over the toilet seat. Take three seconds, a bit of toilet paper, and clean the seat, if you’re worried. Sit yourself down, ladies. The person cleaning the bathroom will thank you. The back of your legs isn’t going to just fall off if you make seat contact. Take a lesson from a cat and sit down.

Third, the conference room. There always seems to be a bit of a tip-toeing dance in a conference room. Should you sit next to your team? Away from or angled towards where the projector is? Is this the time to squish up next to the VP? While I’m sure each meeting has nuances that dictate social mores, a cat would not care. Take a page out of a cat’s book – put your butt in a chair, and let the others do the dancing.

Cats, ladies and gentlemen, have a lot of it right. Assert yourself, and look cute while doing it.

Yours, etc.

someone had some serious focus on this pile of clothes

I Moved a Pile of Laundry From the Chair to the Bed & Back for a Week – You’ll Never Guess What Happens Next!

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Right hand to God, I think 60%* of my Facebook feed is terrible clickbait.

I get it, I really do. Somehow you have to break the flow of constant images and information competing for attention and make someone click on your article. A really easy way to do that is to have a cliffhanger-like title. It’s so common that there are literally websites, subreddits, Facebook pages, and twitter accounts designed to go through the article so you don’t have to.

My favorite articles are ones that pair the “what happens next!” title with an unrelated image.  Though, let’s be honest – it’s rarely an article. It’s usually 26 semi-related slides that all require different pages to be loaded. Gotta maximize that ad revenue, son!

The articles’ contents are really just appealing to the lowest common denominator – unabashed and morbid curiosity. I say this with at least four clickbait-y gadget reviews in my reading list. There is no condemnation from me for clicking on one of these articles. Seriously; cliffhangers have a long and storied (sorry) past of hooking a crowd in to obtain interest and engage them. Clickbait titles are just very tiny cliffhangers. It’s what you lean over your desk to discuss with your coworker instead of dealing with Cheryl from accounting. The end of last night’s popular sitcom; the articles with titles proclaiming “x celebrity did this action and you can too!”

I’m not saying anything new, but I would like to propose alternate clickbait. Title your photos with “My baby did this, and I can hardly believe it” and put their (normal) action in the caption. Like, we all know your baby has smiled – it’s gas, by the way, it’s always gas – but spice up the presentation. Maybe your baby’s month-by-month photos with the stickers could be something like “My baby is the size of a vegetable, and I can’t believe it!” It’s a pumpkin.

If our lives are going to be slowly consumed by clickbait, let’s embrace it, and make it our own.

Oh, if you were curious about the laundry situation, I’m still resolving it. The bottom drawer of my bureau has broken (the front panel has come off) and I’m whining and moaning about whether to repair it or purchase a new dresser. While normally I’d have just fixed it by now, the drawer is an amalgam of tiny nails, dovetail joinery, and a little bit of glue – I’m not even sure where to start. The whole bureau is a masterpiece of 80’s construction and style. Purchased for the grand total of “I found it on the side of the road,” it’s been a faithful companion, but I might just have to take it out back and put ‘er down.

Sent From My iPhone

*The other 40% of my Facebook feed consists of about 10% personal posts – life stuff, kids, event photos – and 30% cat and dog photos. I have no regrets.

someone took a close-up of grapes, idk man.

An Argument For Grapes – the Ballistically Smart Fruit

Posted on | by Emily | Leave a Comment on An Argument For Grapes – the Ballistically Smart Fruit

I’d like to pick a fruit fight.

A bowl of grapes sat on my desk at work, and the thought of flicking one across the room to bounce off a forehead was really tempting. My family and friends can attest to the fact that I have hucked a fair amount of fruit at them over the years. In fairness, some of the fruit-throwing was provoked. If someone says “do it, you won’t,” what is there to do?

In case there was concern, I did make it through the work day without any grapes flying through the air.

Reflecting on all the fruit-launching, I’ve come to the conclusion that the grape is the best choice for throwing.

Consider your personal favorite fruit. If you were to try and throw the fruit, what would that look like? Some fruits are just stupid choices, like cantaloupes. They’re weighty and all they do is bulk up fruit salad. A blueberry isn’t a bad idea, but it’s so light that doesn’t fly well, and someone’s gonna be pissed if they have to scrub a purple stain out of clothing. There are others choices probably better suited as biological weapons, like durian. Durian could arguably be an effective ground-based weapon, akin to a caltrop.

Enter the grape.

Grapes fly with a reasonable degree of accuracy, don’t leave marks if you hit your target (though they’re heavy enough to irritate), grapes taste good, they’re light, and easily obtained. As a bonus, if the grape is ripe, there’s no spatter on impact or airborne scatter.

Regardless of what kind of grape it is, I’ll peg it across the room, no questions asked.

If you’re wondering what kind of person thinks about these arguments, I make no apologies. I went to grape lengths to compile this. Don’t be sour.

Eat it, nerd.

 

The Rules of the English Language:

bal·lis·tic: (bəˈlistik/) adjective – relating to projectiles or their flight.
ad·verb: (ˈadˌvərb/) noun – a word or phrase that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, or other adverb or a word group, expressing a relation of place, time, circumstance, manner, cause, degree, etc.

these are actually ruins of poseidon's temple in greece. joke's on you.

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day

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But they sure had more than one person to help build it.

I did some super serious math; the time it would take one person to build the entire city of Rome at its peak population would be approximately a kajillion years. Seriously – one person tasked with creating the entire infrastructure and bits and pieces of Rome would go absolutely insane. They’d throw up their hands and quit. Stomp off in their leather sandals screaming something about the exceedingly high expectations of their boss and just where they can shove their amphora. The building materials and partially finished city would just sit there forever as a parade of people walked past going “yeah, I’m not gonna be the sucker who tries to take that on.”

When I decided to re-launch my blog, I had four hundred ideas and a lot of enthusiasm. Two weeks later, upon purchasing server space and a domain, I had at least six feasible ideas and a moderate amount of enthusiasm. The enthusiasm was mostly caffeine. A week and a half after that, packing up my apartment in preparation for moving to my new space, I had four ideas that I was fairly sure I could do and no enthusiasm. I knew I should do it, since I had already bought the digital space. I put it in the nebulous ‘I’ll get to it someday pile.’

Fast-forwarding three weeks to the present, I had an epiphany and a turkey burger. Mostly because the turkey burger was sitting in my fridge, and Diet Coke can’t be the only thing in ones diet.

I look at all my favorite design blogs and websites with their well-defined structure and layout and I’m trying to create the same multifaceted site with my limited spare time, resources, and knowledge, and expecting perfection. These sites may have a figurehead, but they were built with a team and with time. I, for as much as I’ll deny it, am a single person with limited free time.

Take By Dawn Nicole. Her work is pretty baller stuff. If you throw the URL in the Wayback Machine to a few months after launch, then you’ll see its foundations. It was just her – albeit with a pretty cool site – in her spare time.

I decided I was being stupid. A turkey burger needs Frank’s Red Hot. That, and I can’t wait around for that indefinite ‘it’s finished and perfect!’ date to revive and release a blog. That date will never come; I will have stomped off screaming. The ideas that have bounced around in my head can be fleshed out in time and with help. A two-page site with blog posts is a good place to start.

Until next time.