Blogspot doesn’t know how love potions work

When you’re making a Blogspot profile, you get to answer some random question that Blogspot uses to pretend they’re extremely quirky. This backfires with me because I am snarky. Actually, I’m not being snarky. They’re just using really unclear questions.

Blogspot: The love potion you made tastes terrible. How will you drink it?

Me: Wait, why would I drink a love potion that I made? Shouldn't I give the love potion to someone else so that they'll fall in love with me? I thought that was how love potions worked.

I realized that it was my responsibility to come up with some questions that people actually need to know the answers to. Questions that provoke deep thought. I even included some of my own sample answers. You’re welcome, Blogspot.

Which fruit do you think is the most sensual?

Passion fruit. I mean, come on, it’s in the name. Also there’s that whole Garden of Eden/Adam and Eve/creationism/and-then-they-realized-they-were-naked connection.

Wait. That was a pomegranate. Or an apple, depending on whether you believe the Fertile Crescent was the Garden of Eden. Actually that could be any fruit depending on where you’re from and what your priests told you. Huh. Now I’m not sure. I guess pomegranate. I don’t even know what passion fruit tastes like but maybe it really isn’t that sexy.

If you were making a school, what would your colors and mascot be?

Purple and silver. Because people just don’t wear enough purple. And I already have a ton of clothing/items that are purple. I would look extremely spirited by just wearing my normal clothes. It’d be awesome because I care very little about displaying school spirit, but everyone would think that I cared, and then I would win.

Mascot is harder than I thought. Here are some of my top choices:

• Secretary bird. They stomp and/or kick prey to death. And their prey can include snakes. And they do this on foot because flying isn’t very sportsmanlike. It would be like cheating, and neither my school nor the secretary bird is okay with that. Also our theme song could be “A Secretary Is Not A Toy”.

They look like they’re wearing shorts, so it’s totally PG to not put some kind of funny outfit on our mascot.

• Hedgehog. They’re covered in pointy death but they are still adorable. There is no way to lose with this mascot. The mascot uniform would be a weapon in itself.
• Cthulu. Do I really need to explain this? H.P. Lovecraft said that it’s like if an octopus and a dragon had a baby. Any team my school is competing against will immediately defecate themselves and shuffle shamefully away from the field/court/arena.
• Zombie. Holy crapmuffins, people. What if your school team was “the Fighting Zombies” or “the Ferocious Zombies”? That would be two hundred percent amazing.

Which apocalypse scenario is your favorite?

Rapture, I guess. Because the people who get raptured win because they go to heaven to chill with Jesus, and the people who don’t get raptured win because everything is the same but with fewer televangelists.

Until the plagues part, anyway. I guess I only like this scenario if I get raptured (unlikely) or predecease the plagues. In that case I guess I change my mind to meteor. Because as awesome a mascot as they’d be, zombies in an apocalypse smell bad.

Choose your celebrity parents.

That’s not really a question. More like a command. I pick Thomas Gibson and Tina Fey, though. Because Thomas Gibson is kind of serious and Tina Fey is hilarious, so I’d be completely well-rounded. And also that would make Aaron Hotchner my father.

Daddy!

If you could get one formula tattooed on your body, what would it be? (And it has to be, like, a real, established equation. You can’t do something like integral of e to the x equals function of u to the n. That doesn’t count.)

I had to do some research for this, but probably the entropy equation ΔS = Q/T. Partially because my first initial is actually S, and Q/T is like “cutie”, so then it’s basically calling me adorable. Also because entropy is associated with chaos and stuff, and that’s kind of exactly like me. Or it seems kind of edgy, at least. So that’s cool.

Which grammar rule is your favorite?

Oh, that’s an easy one. I’m kind of obsessed with the difference between “less” (uncountable amount, like, “there is less butterbeer in my glass than in your glass”) and “fewer” (countable amount, like “there are fewer molecules of butterbeer in my glass than in your glass”).

What is the best idea you’ve ever had that turned out to be the worst idea you’ve ever had?

When I was ten, my best friend Jeannie and I decided to make sandwiches. Not just any sandwiches… the best sandwiches that had ever been made. So we took slices of white bread and filled them with things that were two hundred percent delicious:

• Peanut butter
• Chocolate syrup
• Marshmallow fluff
• Marshmallows
• Chocolate chips
• Sprinkles
• Whipped cream
• M&Ms

I call this the Glory Sandwich.

We were geniuses. We had created sandwiches that people would base religions around. They would eat our sacred sandwiches on the high holy days. These were sandwich gods.

Then we tried to eat these hyperglycemic monstrocities with glasses of chocolate milk that had a chocolate molarity of over nine thousand. We made it about halfway through before collapsing on my couch, sweetly frothing at the mouth (probably just marshmallows and whipped cream) and vowing that we would never do that again as long as we lived. To my knowledge, neither of us has ever gone back.

What is your favorite relatively-PG expression of annoyance and/or disaster?

Crapmuffins.

Where is the worst place to be trapped with a sombrero?

The Texas side of the Mexican border.

If you were a saint, what would you be the patron saint of?

Body-focused repetitive disorders and not believing in moose.

Nope. It’s a hoax.

Are you as funny as you think you are?

Probably not.

It's all Greek to me

When I was signing up for classes this semester, I decided, “Hey, I know what I’ll do. I’ll take Greek and Roman mythology! I love that stuff and I already know tons about it.”

It’s something like this, right? But more incest.

But then, like all desirable classes, it was full and I had to find something else using our lousy registration website, Banner (warning: not PG. And probably not as funny if you’ve never used Banner). I ended up picking Greek Archaeology and Art because even though the course title is synonymous with “pretty old Greek stuff that was buried for a few hundred years”, it filled two of my eleven General Education Requirements, which means I won’t have to take Intro to British Literature or something like that. Because liberal arts educations mean that you need to know stuff about Shakespeare even if you’re a neuroscience major.

The only problem so far is the teacher. He seems like a totally nice human being who is genuinely passionate about what he does. But he also kind of reminds me of the Catholic priest from my hometown—you know, the one who caused me to invent a holy drinking game. He just talks and talks and talks in monotone, while useless slides flip quickly by in the background.

By “useless”, I’ll give him credit that he kind of knows how to use Powerpoint. The slides are semi-organized and he doesn’t have trouble trying to change between them. On the other hand, he doesn’t ever put any text on the slides, so lessons tend to go like this:

Estimated elapsed time: 20 seconds.

This is kind of a problem for everyone who writes at the speed at which most humans are able to write. Because we have to figure out how to remember which art piece he is talking about, and simultanouesly write down everything he’s saying because there isn’t really a hard copy of the notes he’s giving us.

Also, the book is next to useless. I bought mine used because the used copy was only $22 and twenty-two is my lucky number. I clearly didn’t anticipate what “used” would mean, because I definitely wasn’t expecting Chapter Four, part of Chapter Six, and pages 29 through 132 to fall out.

Clockwise from upper left: pages 29 to 132, Chapter 6, Chapter 4, the rest of the book. Not pictured: disappointment.

My other used textbook, which is for Physiological Psychology, is pristine apart from a little bit of highlighting. I’m especially cool with this because I think that biopsych is the most interesting topic in the world. My book agrees with me, apparently, because it even says “Biological psychology is the most interesting topic in the world” in the first chapter. No joke. It’s even all italicized. And then it goes on to say that other people who say similar things about their areas of study are wrong.

Anyway, my method for remembering what my Archaeology professor was saying is now drawing. I write down whatever he says and then I draw the art on whatever it was that he said it about, because sometimes “boar fighting a lion!” isn’t really enough of a description for me to match it to a specific piece. I’m definitely not a trained artist but I have to say that it might be time for me to abandon neuroscience and start a path of becoming an art restoration expert.

Recently we have started learning about statues, which I believe is going quite excellently.

Smithsonian Institute. Call me.

I watch too much Criminal Minds

No, seriously.

If you’re a teenager/young adult and you’re out somewhere with your “relatively normal” mother and you see someone of the attractive sex, I’m guessing your mother will elbow you and be like “Ooh, look. (S)He is so cuuute! You should go talk to him/her.” And then you go “Mooooooooooooom” in a way that sounds kind of like “I can’t believe you said that out loud in a grocery store. Why are you doing this to me?!” and she pretends that she doesn’t know why you’re upset even though she’s probably laughing at you inside.

My family doesn’t do that. My family is a family that watches Criminal Minds together. So if my mom and I are out somewhere and we see someone who is vaguely suspicious or has gross facial hair or is eating/sitting by himself or is wearing a hoodie, my mother will elbow me and be like “Oh my God. He’s totally an unsub.”

(For those of you who don’t watch too much Criminal Minds, “unsub” is what they call the bad guys who try to Hannibal Lecter people or kill kittens or whatever. Also they usually wear hoodies. But I’m almost entirely sure that kitten-killing bad guys is a plot they haven’t covered yet. CBS—free ideas. Right here. Just make it so I can meet Thomas Gibson and/or Matthew Grey Gubler.)

Matthew Grey Gubler (he plays Spencer Reid and is also the current voice of Simon from Alvin and the Chipmunks), by the way, is kind of crazy but also awesome at the same time, as far I can gather from his website. It’s called Gublerland. He has an entire land. I know all these things because he used to be in a leg brace due to what I believe was a tragic dance-off incident, so when my sister found out she had to wear a scoliosis brace, we emailed him through his website. He made himself “brace buddies” out of cloth when he was in his leg brace and we were thinking maybe we could buy one for my sister from him. The answer was no, we couldn’t, but they sent us a really nice consolation email:

Thank you so much for the super kind words. Matthew treasures your support, thoughtfulness, and great spelling. Sadly, (as much as he wishes he could) it's physically impossible for Matthew to personally respond to each and every letter we get here at Gublerland. So it is my job to make sure the super special letters, like this one, are printed out for him to read, enjoy, and save forever in a special place

Unfortunately there aren't any brace buddies available right now. Hopefully in the future. Thanks for watching! Again, Matthew thanks you from the bottom of his heart.

Love,
Geeselund the Mail Monster of Gublerland

p.s. I have attached a photograph of me reading your letter, as well as a picture of a baby otter. cheers!

Oh, holy crap, people.

I swear I could never make that up. Matthew Grey Gubler. Really.

Anyway. I moved into college last month and oh dear god, do you have any idea how many Criminal Minds episodes take place on college campuses?

The answer is “three that I can think of off the top of my head”. Probably more. I don’t know. It’s like a lot of serial killers have nothing better to do than hang out in Intro to Philosophy classes. Even though my college is in probably one of the safest, sleepiest towns in the state and even though my college has trusty blue lights, I’m still really paranoid about being kidnapped by unsubs who are either disguised as people I would trust or are actually police officers/fellow students who just really want to kidnap people.

Because guess what? That happened on Criminal Minds too.

That’s why when I walk across campus at night in attack mode. Apparently some of my top choice weapons against attempted midnight kidnapping are “prohibited” because “mace” and “blades over three inches” aren’t something we should have. Then what the hell is the point of there being a fencing club, college? That is a club solely dedicated to teaching people how to fight with weapons over three inches in length.

But I make do with the weapons the college gave me. Whenever I walk across campus at night I do it with my hand like this:

Come at me, unsubs. I dare you.

That is my hand holding my emergency whistle poised to blow, with my room key (thicker and better for scraping/gouging) and my mailbox key (thinner, pointier, and stabbier) clamped between my fingers like homemade ninja shanks.

I don’t know how loud my emergency whistle actually is because I’ve never tried to use it. I think about blowing it just to make sure it works, but I don’t want people to think I’m actually having an emergency and run over ready to save the day and then not have an emergency to fix. If that happened I would probably have to fake a fainting episode so that everything was legit and I wasn’t “the girl who cried wolf with her emergency whistle”. Because then if I had a real emergency no one would help, and my last thought would be “Damn it. I shouldn’t have tested my emergency whistle that one time.”

The whole setup would probably be more effective with mace. But beggars can’t be choosers. And I’ll just settle for stabbing over blinding. I can probably get to a blue light in time if my emergency whistle doesn’t actually work.