The Mailbox Game

I'm not sure how this game came into existence. I don't remember, but it really doesn't matter. When I go to the mailbox, I can't let anyone see me. If I'm seen, I fail. Sounds easy, right? But it's not. Because (in my mind) the world has been taken over. By who you ask? It doesn't matter. Aliens, another country, who knows. What does matter is that, since the world has been taken over, there are things that enforce the law. You aren't allowed out of your house; that's the law. These invaders have special ways of detecting you. Like if your heart speeds up. Or if you run. So don't do those things, okay? What happens if you get caught? I don't know!!! Cause I rock at this game and have never been spotted.

If you hear a vehicle, you should walk quickly (again making sure not to let your heart speed up). Try to stay under cover (trees, building overhangs, etc) so they can't see you from the sky.

You can play this game anytime you're outside: going to the mailbox, bringing in groceries, etc.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: The front door also needs to be shut (I have a storm door so leaving the door open is a possibility). Because if it's not, somehow they will know that you were outside. And even though an open door isn't proof, they will still punish you.

I apologize now for this post. Rereading it, it’s all a jumble of confusion. I tried to go back and rewrite it so it had more structure and made more sense, but I couldn’t do it. I’m a failure. Sorry. I’m still working on the ‘rules for surviving the apocalypse’ post. I promise.

A post thats research has resulted in my fear of the great mole rat.

When I decide to write, I often will peruse the internet for inspiration. Today I was found a website dedicated to phobias. I also like to make lists. So I made a list of phobias that left me with questions or were just plain funny:

Pantophobia – the fear of everything. How would a person live with this? Would they have to live in a medically induced coma?
Agateophobia - fear of insanity. Would you be so afraid of insanity that you’d go insane?
Ambulophobia - Fear of walking. Does this person crawl everywhere? Or sprint?
Astraphobia/Astrapophobia/Ceraunophobia/Keraunophobia - Fear of thunder and lightning. Why don’t they have words for the opposite of these fears? Because I personally adore thunder and lightning. So I’m going to make up a brand new word: Astralovia – the act of adoring thunder and lightning.
Bibliophobia - Fear of books. WHAT!? Who the crap has this? I know that the written word is powerful but, come on, this is just sad!
Cherophobia - Fear of gaiety. These people don’t want to be happy and festive? Why?
Cholerophobia - Fear of anger or the fear of cholera. I’m confused. What if I’m afraid of cholera but not anger?
Consecotaleophobia - Fear of chopsticks. Did they really invent a word for this? How many people have had it? This leads me to wonder how many have to have a fear before that fear deserves a name.
Homilophobia - Fear of sermons. I just thought this one was funny.
Ithyphallophobia - Fear of seeing, thinking about or having an erect penis. WHAT!? ROFL Maybe this is what happens after men have an adverse reaction to Viagra.
Oneirogmophobia - Fear of wet dreams. Wait I’m confused. I thought those would be considered happy dreams. 

I decided to make a separate list of all my personal fears:

Atelophobia - Fear of imperfection.
Arachnephobia/Arachnophobia - Fear of spiders.
Acrophobia - Fear of heights.
Amaxophobia - Fear of riding in a car.
Atychiphobia - Fear of failure.
Claustrophobia - Fear of confined spaces.
Lachanophobia - Fear of vegetables. I’m hoping this means fear of eating them.
Paraskavedekatriaphobia- Fear of Friday the 13th.

I also made a list of things that I’m afraid of but no one would believe:

Athazagoraphobia - Fear of being forgotten or ignored or forgetting.
Atomosophobia - Fear of atomic explosions. Who doesn’t have this fear?
Barophobia - Fear of gravity. What happens if it stops working one day!?
Bogyphobia - Fear of bogeys or the bogeyman. I have at least one future blogs written about this.
Decidophobia - Fear of making decisions. I would much rather someone else make the decisions.
Gephyrophobia or Gephydrophobia or Gephysrophobia - Fear of crossing bridges.
Hypengyophobia or Hypegiaphobia - Fear of responsibility.
Ichthyophobia - Fear of fish. One bit me. I promise a future post on that.
Kynophobia - Fear of rabies. That shit’s scary. I’ve seen The Crazies.
Mageirocophobia - Fear of cooking.
Meningitophobia - Fear of brain disease. I’m sure that’s what’s wrong with me.

Then I made a list of things I think (please note this is my evaluation and not in any way based on fact) people in my family (I’m not naming names…) are afraid of:

Aerophobia - Fear of drafts, air swallowing, or airborne noxious substances. (mom)
Aphenphosmphobia - Fear of being touched. (Haphephobia) (sister)
Batrachophobia - Fear of amphibians, such as frogs, newts, salamanders, etc.(mom-in-law)
Dentophobia - Fear of dentists. (Boi)
Toxiphobia or Toxophobia or Toxicophobia- Fear of poison or of being accidentally poisoned. (some family members should be)
Phalacrophobia - Fear of becoming bald. (I think dad was…oops too late now!)
Social Phobia - Fear of being evaluated negatively in social situations. (brother)
Trypanophobia - Fear of injections. (Boi)

List of fears I have that have no name:
Fear of returning phone calls.
Fear of listening to voicemails.
Fear of unannounced visitors.
Fear of Boi on an irregular basis.
Fear of being molested by an animal.
Fear of my car falling apart while driving or riding in it.
Fear of used kitty litter.

While reading this list of phobias, I developed a new fear:Picture found at: http://bestiarumvocabulum.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/naked-mole-rats/

Zemmiphobia - Fear of the great mole rat.

After making all of these lists, I have now become paranoid that someone out there will read this and now know all of my fears and will come and abduct me and use all of them against me. I wonder if they make a word for that fear?

Ed

Before you read my post, please read:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/07/dog.html

I showed that post to Boi. He thought that it would be cool to try this for our dog, Ed. We figured we would see if Ed could find a treat in a cup and also see if he could escape a blanket thrown over him.

First, Boi told Ed to sit. Ed is a fantastically good dog and immediately did as he was told. Boi showed Ed one of his favorite treats. He let Ed smell it and watch as he put it under a plastic cup then backed up to watch what happened. I was standing at the other end of the room.  It took about 30 seconds for him to lift up the cup and grab the treat.
We were incredibly proud.

So then we quickly threw a comfortor over him to see if he would be able to get out from under the blanket. He stood still for a moment and then started walking. The blanket dragged off a bit to show just his head. Boi rethrew the blanket over him to try again.

The comfortor is losing stuffing as you can see. Also, that black blur is one of our cats Kuzco.

Again, Ed stood still for a moment and then started walking. After a few circles (still under the blanket), he paused, dropped something, backed up a few feet, and sat.

Ed had dropped his treat and backed away as though offering it up as a sacrifice. Apparently Ed thinks that the only way out from under a blanket is by offering a tribute to his humans.

I don't know if that makes him more smart or more stupid. He started to walk around again (Boi and I were rolling on the floor laughing too hard to help him) until his head popped out. He never did get completely out from under the blanket by himself.

I know that this isn't the 'surviving the apocalypse rules' post that I promised on facebook but I promise that one is coming in the future. I just got a Bamboo pen and tablet so that I can draw pictures to go with my posts. I definately want to illustrate the 'apocalypse rules' post so it may be a few days while I figure out how to use the Bamboo...

The internet is my happy place

I love the internet. A lot. I can find the strangest things on it. The internet stirs up my brain like a big pot of soup. You know how things settle at the bottom of a soup and you can't always see those things? Well my brain is a lot like that. So I go on the internet to stir things up and see what happens.
I was reading hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com and Allie was talking about playing on the internet. Which (with my little ADD brain) made me think about random things on the internet. So I googled 'random word generator' and clicked on http://nexi.com/fun/rw/  This page gives me a blank box to type stuff in so it can come up with random words for me. DumdumDUM! Really? I'm intrigued. This thing is asking me to type stuff. So I figure that the more random I am, the more random the generator will be. So, in my own think-outside-of-my-non-existent-box kinda way, this is what I wrote:

people come across strange things while walking in sewage drains that are needing to be clean that is why mike rowe goes to clean it up snuffle sniffle times a trifle needed to pray clowning around the pie whole lot of proud parents praying to baby Jesus where do all the lonely hearts go when they lay down and die ducks fly in the bedroom frankly driving moon cheese crazy

This is the point where I stop and realize that maybe I don't need to use a random word generator. I am a random word generator. Yay me! If you are wondering what words the random generator came up with, don't. They were stupid made up words. I wanted real words so this did me no good. I was hoping for a random word that would joggle something in my memory so I could write about something cool. Instead here we are.

I've given up on random words and think, oh oh, what about a random PHRASE generator!? Surely this will work better for me right? So I find a website and presto! Tons of giggles and the occasional snort. Some random phrases that tickled my funny were:

'south slave conceived trend'  -  What trend? I think that perhaps this would not make a good blog. I could offend people. *giggle,snort*

'supporting eccentric deck bastard'  -  Really!? Did this generator just cuss at me? This phrase makes me feel like I'm giving money to a pirate whore. I don't know why. Why would you even ask me?? If you think anything in my mind makes sense, please refer back the random words I strung together for the word generator. That's right; you should be ashamed for even asking.

At this point I lose focus. This happens frequently so I'm not alarmed. I am clicking away without even reading the words now and my eyes are wondering down the sidebar...ooohhhhh! Random sentence generator. Could be more happy fun, I decide. *click*

'Should the metaphor camp?' This reminds me of camping for obvious reasons. And thinking of camping always leads the the epic adventures of Springmaid Mountain.  Finally a topic worth blogging about.

At this point it was almost 6am (me having to be up at 7:45am). So I give up completely and go to bed. However, I promise that I will blog about the epic adventures of Springmaid Mountain next.

The name She looks like a Haddock

Some of you may be wondering what the crap I was thinking when I named my blog: She looks like a Haddock.
Well, I have added a link here (hopefully. I am after all new at this) that should help.
http://www.facebook.com/beth.the.butterfly#!/photo.php?pid=162750&id=100000075180688&ref=fbx_album
If it doesn't work, please copy and paste into your address bar.

At this point, let me please advise y'all that the picture used on the album cover is not Boi's or mine. I can't remember where it came from and apologize to whoever picture it is as I can not give that person the credit they deserve.

Boi and I were playing around making a 'band album cover'. One of the steps to make this fake band album cover was to use a random quote generator and use the last 5 words as your album name. Boi's album name turned out to be 'She looks like a Haddock' from the quote:

“Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.”  -John Barrymore

We both found this delightfully funny.  It still randomly tickles my funny bone even though we did that back in Dec of 2009.  So I chose it as my blog name. Random I know, but that is the story of my life. Seems fitting.

Starting my blog

Sometimes I have a random moment where I can stop and think "Man, I really am ADD." For example, I was just reading blogs on www.hyperboleandahalf.com which led me to googling "beth looks like". Which made me laugh really hard cause, what, really? Do I really look like Gambit from x-men? Do I really look like a dude? A horse? Really?? (I'm so not even kidding. You can google it yourself if you need proof). So I go to post that as my status on facebook and when I switch tabs I remember, hey, oh yeah I was playing Treasure Isle. And then I think, wow. I really am ADD. And here we are. I have 4 open tabs in internet explorer: Facebook, pointlesssites.com, hyperboleandahalf.com, and google (beth looks like...). And I have open my handy dandy notepad where I write down random ideas to write about later. So I open up my notepad cause I really think it's a good idea to write about how I think I really might be ADD (cause when a doctor tells you something like that, there is always at least some doubt, right?). At this point I have decided to start my own blog. Leaving all my other tabs open (BECAUSE THEY"RE IMPORTANT!!!!!), I start researching 'how to start a blog'.

While setting up my blog with google, I find I need a google email account. So I start the set up. During so, it asks me to pick a security question using a drop down menu. Sounds normal enough. Until I pull down the menu. Some of the menu options are as follows:

What is your primary frequent flier number?            Um....I don't have one?

What is your library card number?                          Um....I don't have one?

What was your first phone #?                                 Ok. I know most people wouldn't remember theirs but I do :D

What was your 1st teachers name?                         This seems like a simple enough question. Unless you are me. Cause are we talking preschool, k-5? Or does the question mean 1st grade teacher's name??? I'm so confused. Now, of course, I can't pick this question or I might face the same dilemma later.

Write my own question.                                         This seems like the best choice for me.


Then comes the dreaded word verification. I can never read those damn things. The always just look like a jumble of random lines and possibly circles to me. After 3 incorrect tries, I decide to try the handicap feature. Which is where it plays numbers aloud and you type them as you hear them. Seems simple enough. So I click the button feeling like a fraud as I'm not handicapped. Wait, since I'm too dumb to get the letters right, maybe I'm mentally challenged. So now I feel better and vindicated. I can continue. Until the sounds start. It sounds like aliens are talking to me through a very long wormhole. I'm totally screwed. So after failing miserably at this as well, I go back to just typing what I see. Many tries later, I succeed.
YAY! I have email through gmail now. Now I can create my blog. And here we are. Welcome to my world.