April Fools'

Except I think I'm way too nice to actually punch anyone.

Words with Friends Etiquette

You wouldn't think that a fun game like Words with Friends would require its own etiquette, would you?
But it does.
One thing that irks me about that game is the "rematch" feature. Whenever you finish a game with someone, it says, "Rematch?" which isn't really a problem, except that it presents the option to both people playing. If both people playing say, "Yes! Rematch!" it doesn't set you up with one new game; it sets you up with two.

And if you remain apathetic about it and play both games anyway, you'll finish both games and get presented with "Rematch?" again, and you'll probably repeat your actions and choose to answer yes again, and then you and your friend will have four games going, which isn't much fun as it becomes a very confusing chore.

One way to fix this is to choose a rematch, and then deny your friend's game. But that can come across as rude, and it can hurt your friend's feelings since it shows up on their device as "Blahblahface turned down your request."

What I think would really fix this problem and others relating to Words with Friends is some simple etiquette:


Rule #1: The loser retains the right to a rematch.

If you beat someone and rematch them, it's kind of mean.

 But if you lose, then you have every right to a rematch.

Rule #2: Don't whine about your assortment of letters. It annoys people.

It has been said of my English teacher-whiz of a mother, "It's amazing how she can score a thousand points with four vowels and a piece of lint on the screen." (Or something like that.)


Rule #3: Whether you're winning or losing, have no mercy. Don't play dumb if your friend never plays a word above 10 points. There is no room for pity or mercy in the arena of Words with Friends.

(An ibex is a wild goat, by the way.)

In fact, people use playing dumb as weapon sometimes. They wait for you to begin playing weak words in pity, and then they whip out their big letters and obliterate you. You must defend yourself early.

Rule #4: Don't brag about your achievements.

It makes people angry and bloodthirsty for your demise.

Yay, have fun!

(If you are technologically deficient and possibly old, and have no idea what I'm talking about but read this whole thing anyway, go here.)

Gandalf drives an Isuzu now.

The other day, I saw a man with long gray hair and a long gray beard driving his big red Isuzu over the grass and the sidewalk onto the main road. Because of the obvious lack of damns he seemed to give about it, I figured he must have been Gandalf.

That's all.

How you know you are still a child

I am 20 years old. People younger than me say things to me like, "Gee, you're pretty much a grown-up! College? Whoa!" while people older than me say things like, "What's your major? What are you going to do with that? You just don't even know."
I think I might agree with the older people.

Maybe you are like me, and still feel very young.
You know you are still a child if you do any of these things on a regular basis:


You sleep with a stuffed animal.

You don't like vegetables.

You play with your food.

You think poop-related subjects are funny.

You also think curse words are funny.

 You climb on everything.

You still have a Gameboy or Nintendo (or if you're a hipster child, a Sega) that you play on a regular basis. (You are even more like a child if you went out and bought the latest version.)

Finally, you know you're a child if you yell, "NO!" at people when they ask you to do things.

Now I have to go be a grown-up and take out the trash.

5 minute comics

I really did spend only five minutes on each of these. I also didn't start out with any ideas. I opened the drawing program on my laptop, used only my trackpad with my fingers, and told myself, "Go! Now!"

They turned out a little... odd (and sloppy, of course). But I guess that's what happens when you start with nothing.

I hope you enjoy my pure, unadulterated brain spewage.

fancy-schmancy new feature!

I just created a funny button. If you scroll down the page a bit you will see it. It looks like this:

If you click on it, it will magically transport you to a new place that has made me laugh. It may or may not make you laugh too, depending on your sense of humor.

What is even more magical is that it periodically changes!

Warning: The magical places to which the funny button will take you will be funny. If you do not feel like laughing, don't click on the funny button. The funny button will never take you somewhere sad. That is not the funny button's purpose. Sometimes, the funny button will transport you to a funny thing that is also gross. It may or may not include poop and/or snot related content. If the mere mention of poop and snot makes you frown with disgust, think twice before clicking on the funny button.

That is all.

(The funny button will do the best it can to make you at least chuckle a bit-- maybe even giggle girlishly, and possibly laugh out loud. The funny button's highest hope is to make you snort, causing you to laugh at yourself for snorting, causing you to laugh even harder, maybe even until your stomach hurts and you cry.)

(If the funny button causes you to cry, hopefully it will be from laughter. If you click on the funny button and immediately cry without first laughing, the funny button will also cry because it will feel like a failure. Remember that. Please be nice to the funny button and don't make it cry.)

(That is all parentheses-wise.)

Couch Monsters

The neighbors across the street have couches and armchairs on their front porch. These aren't wimpy, spindly couches and armchairs, either. Although I have never stepped onto their porch and sat on their couches (because that would be creepy), they look pretty cushy.

Couches on the porch aren't really a problem if the porch is screened in and/or well-covered. But this porch isn't screened in or well-covered. It is a rickety-looking little porch with a rickety-looking roof.

If my general knowledge of the world is correct, I know that cushy things and the outdoors do not go well together.

When it rains, cushy things get soggy. When it stays humid for days after raining, the way it often does here in east Tennessee, mold grows on cushy things, because they never completely dry.

Let's zoom in on that red couch, shall we?

I bet my neighbors have mold monsters like this one living on their couches and armchairs.

And come to think of it, I've never actually seen anyone sitting on the couches or in the armchairs...
Maybe it's because they tried, and the mold monsters bit them!
Or because the couches are still damp from the rain and humidity.
Or because the couches smell weird.

When cushy things stay damp for a while, they smell terrible. My neighbors' couches and armchairs most likely smelled terrible from the beginning.

When they originally bought the couches and armchairs, I bet my neighbors said, "Hey, let's air them out on the porch first." Or they said, "Crap. They don't fit through the front door. I guess we'll leave them on the porch." Either way, it probably rained that night, making the furniture smell even more terrible. And then my neighbors just gave up and threw a party. (They throw lots of parties. The other night, I saw a guy there running around in boxers drinking beer next to a guy wearing a five piece suit. It was weird. I also think I saw a bathtub in their living room.)

But I don't think the mold monsters are the ones who make damp, cushy things smell nasty. I think the fart monsters do.

Instead of clinging to the outside of the couches like mold monsters, fart monsters live inside the couches.

"But that looks like a rat," you say. It's a fart monster. Fart monsters are much, much larger than rats.

I'm pretty sure that rats used to live in my neighbors' couches until the fart monsters took over.

Here is the size of a fart monster in comparison to a rat:

Here is the size of a fart monster in comparison to my face:

The reason why fart monsters make couches smell bad during humid weather stems from cheese.

Fart monsters feel okay about dry, crumbly cheese, but they like moist cheese better. When they can, they stockpile their cheese and wait for a rainstorm. The humidity that follows swells the cheese to the level of deliciousness that fart monsters desire. Then they feast on the cheese.
We all know how atrocious cheese farts smell.

So, the two main monsters that I think live in my neighbors' couches and armchairs are mold monsters and fart monsters.
Mold monsters grow when the couches are damp. They bite people. Fart monsters make the damp couches smell rotten with their cheese feasts.

I could bore you all day with all the kinds of monsters I think live in my neighbors' poor, poor furniture, but for now, I will only mention a few more.

There are dust monsters, who come around during periods of dryness. They make the fluffy innards of the cushions crumble into little dusty bits that leak out the sides.

There are thread-picking monsters, who act as accomplices to dust monsters. They make whole patches of upholstery mysteriously vanish, so that even more fluffy-couch-crumbles can escape.

Finally, there are metal-eating monsters. They have acidic saliva that can corrode metal. They like to eat the couch springs.

Eventually the couch springs break and pop out of the couch through the cushions. If you are able to withstand the mold bites, cheese-fart-stench, and fluffy dusty innards flying up your nose, and you idiotically decide to remain on the couch, a metal-eating monster will stab you in the butt with a spring.

Moral of the story: Don't keep cushy furniture outside the way my neighbors do.
I give their cushy furniture about six more months before it looks like this:

I drew a... thing.

WHAT IS IT? At first I thought, "Hey, maybe this is what a beastosaur looks like." But I don't think it is. I mean, it is part beast, but instead of part beast and part dinosaur (the way I usually imagine a beastosaur), it is more part beast and part octopus. So it's a "beastopus"? That sounds horrible in more than one way. An "octobeast," perhaps?

And even after we figure out what it is, we have to find a name for it. And is it a he or a she? Sometimes drawing unidentified things leads to more work than I originally intend.

Headaches

A common cause of headaches in young adults, particularly college-age students, is the angry octopus. Angry octopuses hide in the shadows until they find someone suffering from exhaustion and too much thinking (which explains the commonness of this type of headache in college-age students). When someone exhausted enough passes by the angry octopus's hiding place, the octopus leaps out of the shadows and latches onto the person's brain, much like this:

It makes sense that an octopus squeezing the crap out of one's brain causes pain. The victim of the angry octopus then clutches his or her head, and exclaims something similar to the phrase, "AAAGH my head bleep bleepity bleep OOOW!"

The pain of angry octopus headaches causes people to think garbled thoughts and react strangely to common situations.

 Angry octopus headaches can also cause delusions.

The only thing that frightens away angry octopuses is coffee. They don't like coffee at all.

Unfortunately, this enmity between coffee and angry octopuses has two downsides:

1) Coffee is what makes angry octopuses angry. Scaring away an angry octopus with coffee only makes it angrier, and then it returns to squeeze one's head even more viciously.

2) Drinking coffee to rid oneself of an angry octopus headache in the evening is not an option if one desires to sleep that night.

If you ever find your brain in the grip of an angry octopus, fret not!
Actually, you may fret. You are now part of a vicious cycle where you must choose only one: proper sleep, or painlessness.