Veronica Brush's Blog

I want to talk about AI, so naturally that required a lot of research into cow cannulation.

Maybe you were thinking you could write a hundred articles about AI without ever even using the word ‘cow.” And to that I say, nobody likes a show-off.

“What even is cow canning?” you may ask.

The answer is: I didn’t say cow canning. I said cannulation. Completely different.

But also, this is what AI comes up with when you ask for a picture of a cow working in a canning factory:

That’s pathetic. And not just because that cow is obviously slacking and not doing any work. Also, upon editing this article (Yes, I DO edit these things before posting and they still come out like this) I noticed that cow has 5 legs. You can claim AI is smart, but I know 4 year olds who are very clear on the number of legs cows have.

In contrast, this is what you get when you ask a human with too much time on her hands for a picture of a cow working in a canning factory:

That somewhat disgruntled cow is not only obviously hard at work, but is also observing proper sanitation protocols with that hair net in case there’s a surprise OSHA inspection. Sure, he’s not happy about it. This isn’t even the cow’s dream career. But after the capybara dropped out of their glam rock band, the cow’s music dreams fell apart and he started thinking maybe it’s time to give up and focus on a stable career for a while, even though it’s not what he really wants. And no matter how nice it is to have insurance and a steady paycheck, the cow just can’t let go of the fact that making music is the only time that he feels like he can actually breathe. And that’s the sort of thing AI will never understand about being human. Or a cow in a canning factory.

But I said cannulation, not canning.

In my quest to be trendy and talk about what the old people think the young people care about, I wanted to talk about AI and ended up going down the cow cannulation rabbit hole (which is kind of funny once you know what cannulation is. Remember that for later.)

The reason AI and cow cannulation are linked in my brain is because the other day, my friend and I were working on a project and she thought it needed a picture of a cannulated cow.

Hey, I don’t judge what you and your friends do on the weekends!

My friend had the fancy paid version of one of the brand name AI tools. I don’t know how much she paid for it. I don’t even buy name brand cookies. She decided rather than search the internet for a picture of a cannulated cow, it would be easier and faster to have AI create us an image. So that’s what we did.

Regrettably, I don’t have the original picture the AI generated but I have managed to painstakingly recreate exactly what the PAID-FOR, BRAND NAME AI generated as a picture of a cannulated cow:

I feel like this is a reverse Rorshach test. We should show it to a psychiatrist and find out if the AI is okay and/or wanting to kill all humans.

Now, if the image above didn’t make it perfectly clear, what is cannulation? If AI were writing this article, it would go like this:

Before we get into a definition for cannulation we need to first answer ‘What is a cow?’

Surely I’m not the only one who has googled things like “How do I know what size sweater my friend’s cat needs” and clicked on an article titled “Top 10 Hassle-free And Fool-Proof Ways Tom Hiddleston Uses To Determine What Size Sweater His Best Friend’s Cat Wears, No Expensive Equipment Required (Updated 2024)(NOT CLICK-BAIT!!!!!)” And after a long intro where the author describes being in a situation similar to mine of wanting to buy a sweater for their friends cat, the article says something to the effect of  “Before we can answer the simple question we promised to answer in the title, we have to first answer what IS a cat?”

It’s so infuriating because they never actually get around to answering the question we do have because they spend so long answering a question NOBODY has! We all know what a cat is! It’s a defective dog! Move on!

(Side note: I’d like to apologize to all the cat people who I offended. I couldn’t help myself because I thought that mean-spirited joke was hilarious. Really I’m over-compensating because, as a life-long dog person, I don’t actually know what a cat is. I just know my friend has one and I’m afraid to touch it.)

The point is these useless articles make so much more sense now that I know people have been letting AI write their articles for them. The same AI that thinks it drew a cow with two ovals, a circle, and a line. Only a computer couldn’t tell you about cat sweater sizes until it had first gone back to understand what a cat actually is and what side it might choose to fight on if robots were to instigate a war with humans. Also, what a sweater is.

All I’m trying to say is you’d better stay on your sweater’s good side or it will choose to side with the robots and how can you possibly defeat a robot if your arms are slightly chilly? If that happens, you’d better pray that the robots try aiming for your 5th leg, giving you a chance to escape.

Wait, what was I talking about again?

AI and cows. (Because that obviously makes way more sense than robots and sweaters.)

A cannulated cow is one that has a hole built into its side. Why? Because veterinarians are weird. They’re always sticking their hands places that I would never even consider. I love my dog, but I’ve never wanted to closely inspect the contents of her spleen. My vet on the other hand, I practically have to hold her back. Every time we go to the vet, she’s sticking her fingers places that neither me or my dog think is a particularly good idea, and then the vet asks for samples of anything she wasn’t able to get her hands on (literally).

Long story short, a veterinarian was reaching as far as she could into the backside of a cow when she realized she wasn’t even able to reach halfway through the cow. Imagine the organs she wasn’t able to fondle.

Next thing you know, the farmer comes out and finds the veterinarian using a jackhammer to drill into the side of their cow. The cow doesn’t seem to mind (because cows are also weird.) Then the vet finished by adding some cute trim around the hole in the cow because the vet had been watching too much Chip and Joanna Gaines.

Here is an actual picture of a cannulated cow: 

It disturbs me how undisturbed this cow is at this entire situation.

Now everyone was happy and the vet could touch all the internal organs she had been missing before. What’s more, she could also trade out one of the cow’s stomachs if she felt like it. (Yeah, that actually happens in real life. Veterinarians reach into a hole they made in a cow and trade out stomachs from other cows. Again, I’m blaming Chip and Joanna Gaines and the DIY craze.)

My point is don’t google “what is that hole in the side of a cow called” unless you are prepared to clear your schedule for the rest of the day because it sucks you in.

Also, I just learned that decannulation is a word. It’s too long for use in scrabble, but I feel like it would be a good conversation starter on a first date;:

Date: What are you looking for in a relationship?

Me: I just want someone nice with a good sense of humor who wouldn’t be afraid to perform a decannulation if it came down to it.

(Surgeon General’s Warning: Consult with your doctor before taking any of Veronica’s dating advice.)

Also, if I’m perfectly honest, I’d watch Chip and Joanna Gaines fix up a poorly cannulated cow — maybe add some cute shiplap around the trim — because I am also weird. And single. Weird.

In conclusion, I hope you now understand why “cow cannulation rabbit hole” is funny.

You’re welcome.

Like most people lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about feet.

If you haven’t been spending a lot of time thinking about feet, I bet you would be happier if you had rather than whatever you have been thinking about.

It really started last winter. I had walked a short way on an errand. On my return trip, I noticed the footprints I had left in the light snow. I found them quite upsetting. I took a picture of them.

Brace yourself.

What in the name of sweet pickles is wrong with my right foot?

Apparently I walk through this world like a hobbled pirate, dragging my right foot along behind me creepily. No wonder I’m still single.

And yet no one’s ever asked me, “Why are you walking with only one and a half of your legs?” Although to be fair, I wouldn’t approach someone I saw walking like that. Anyone who walks in the manner these footprints imply can only be a grizzled pirate or a disgruntled ghost shackled to this mortal world by the chains of their sins, which they are forced to drag in an unending march into eternity.

Or their foot fell asleep.

My foot was not asleep at that time. I’m not sure I want to know which one of the other options I am.

But my foot eccentricities didn’t end there.

I just found out that my feet are not the same size. Now I don’t mean the normal thing where your feet are not exactly the same size as each other.

MY feet are not the same size as THEMSELVES.

It’s confusing, but I can explain it with 3 simple facts:

1.) I wear size 7 shoes.

2.) When I have tried on size 6.5 shoes, they are too small for my feet to even fit into them.

3.) I had my feet measured by a professional shoe seller and found out my feet are size 5.5.

In other words, my feet are bigger on the inside…of shoes.

My first thought was to question the accuracy of those little metal foot measure thingies (You don’t know what they’re called either.)

So I googled it.

It’s called a Brannock Device, which sounds like the Macguffin in a Mission Impossible movie

Turns out, they’re 96% accurate on everyone except ghost pirates. (I made part of that up, but I’m not telling you what part.)

In other words, modern science is 96% sure that my feet are not the size they are.

It’s like an optical illusion. Or maybe the opposite of an optical illusion because it’s the opposite side of my body. It’s a podiacal illusion.

I’ve been avoiding looking at my feet since I found out this information. It’s like I don’t even know them anymore. What are my feet hiding? Whatever it is, it only comes out when I put on shoes, and that’s why I need a shoe that is an entire size and a half bigger than my foot. That’s a lot of secrets.

I don’t dare imagine what happens when I put on socks.

There’s a lot that modern science can’t explain about my feet. All I know is that I would totally go see a Mission Impossible movie that involved a booby-trapped Brannock Device that is going to be used at a gathering of world leaders and Tom Cruise has to pole vault off the moon (I mean, what other stunts are left that he hasn’t already done) and figure out which world leader needs new shoes…BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

And if there’s a role for a pirate, I have a lot of experience. Apparently.

I got covid.  Possibly.  It’s surprisingly difficult to say.

I know what you’re thinking: “Please tell me you’re not going to try to write a humor piece about covid!  Because that is the very definition of ‘too soon.’”

Yes, this is the 487th time I’ve thought I had covid this year.

It’s not unreasonable that I keep thinking I have covid because I, much like the rest of you, am insane.

It’s basically impossible in our current climate to remember that other diseases exist, let alone other reasons for coughing that don’t even involve disease.  I once choked on a piece of cereal.  That made me cough quite a bit.

And I need to point out that it was Life cereal.

While eating Life cereal, I almost died.

At least, when I’m telling the story, that’s the way it goes.  Other witnesses may recall it more that I coughed several times and then went on with my Life (in every sense of the word).

My point is that for the better part of 2020, anytime I sense anything out of the ordinary, my brain immediately jumps to “I have covid!” Everything from an itchy pinkie finger to abnormally slow internet leads my well-read, college-educated brain to immediately conclude that I have covid.  I’m starting to question my brain’s ability to lead.  If my brain isn’t careful, my appendix will start a mutiny and take over.  My brain should have taken out my appendix when it had the chance.

We’ve gotten off topic.

I had a headache, so I took my temperature and discovered I was running a fever of 99 degrees.  After a moment of panic, I took my temperature again and discovered that in just those few minutes, my temperature had dropped to 94 degrees.

That’s when I realized I had never actually read the instructions for this fancy laser-guided thermometer I had bought after the itchy finger episode.  It was meant to put my mind at ease.  I didn’t realize I needed some sort of NASA training in order to operate it.

I pulled out the manual, which turned out to be about 37,000 pages long.

After a little light reading, I took my temperature again and I was back at 99 degrees.  I immediately shut myself in my room and would have boarded up the windows except it turns out rustic barn wood is super expensive and if I’ve learned anything from movies, it’s that you shouldn’t use new wood to board up windows.  I don’t know why, but they never do.

I got myself an appointment for a covid test, but then I had to wait for the results.

Like the stages of grief, it turns out there are several stages you go thru when you have a serious covid scare:

Guilt: Asking yourself “What did I do wrong that I got covid?”  After taking time to carefully contemplate all of your actions since March 2020, you transition to stage 2…
Justified Rage: Upon examining the facts, you realize that you hardly did anything wrong and the things you did do wrong were MONTHS ago and so THAT’S when you should have gotten covid. Not now, when you’ve got not one, but THREE back-up masks in your car, you’ve improved your diet to near perfection as a help to your immune system, and if anything, you’re washing your hands TOO often!  Where’s the JUSTICE?!  I followed ALL the rules!  I demand to speak to a referee!  Seriously!  What the hell…(This stage can last quiet a while, but eventually you move on to stage 3…)
Bargaining: Unfortunately, bargaining almost immediately devolves into rage arguing, which is particularly sad because you’re quarantining, so you are having this shouting argument with yourself.  “What should I have done to avoid this?  Huh?  Always wear a mask?  I DID THAT!  Stay away from people?  I’m an introvert!  I can literally sink into a wall to avoid other humans!  I’ve barely touched another human in six months!  Why do you think I’m so ANGRY?  AND DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I HAVE SUNG THE HAPPY BIRTHDAY SONG THIS YEAR TO MAKE SURE I WASH MY HANDS FOR AT LEAST 20 SECONDS?!  AND YOU DON’T JUST SING IT ONCE!  THAT’S NOT LONG ENOUGH!  YOU HAVE TO SING IT TWICE!! EVERY!!! SINGLE!!!!!!!!! TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” (Which loudly transitions us into stage 4…)
Acceptance:  When you finally reach this stage, you take a deep breath, and accept how incredibly unfair it is that you have covid.  That’s when the real rage starts.  (But then comes stage 5…)
Invincibility: At a certain point, in the midst of all the rage, it dawns on you that if  you actually have covid then, after your proper quarantine, you’ll probably be immune for an indeterminate amount of time (according to the internet: somewhere between “not at all” and “until the sun burns out.”  According to the CDC (at time of publication): 90 days)  That means you could engage in all kinds of crazy, thrill-seeking behavior, like going INSIDE the grocery store to get the brand of cookies you have tried to order all year, but their curbside shoppers keep giving you the wrong ones. You could go somewhere completely unnecessary, like to the movies, without feeling like you’re risking everyone’s lives just to see the reboot of a sequel of a remake!  You could get on an actual airplane, assuming they still exist!  In fact, why stop at one?  With your newly developed powers, you could circumnavigate the globe, which should only take 80 days, according to that Jackie Chan movie you didn’t actually see based on a book you didn’t read.  And if somebody starts coughing on any of your many flights, while everyone else tries to subtly move further away, you could stand up, announce to the other passengers, “Behold! I am invincible!” and then lick the coughing person’s face (Side note: the CDC has not ruled on if that is in fact a good idea, but it may be outside their jurisdiction.)  It’s like diplomatic immunity, only better!  It’s actual immunity!

And just as you start to feel on top of the world, that’s when you get the call to tell you that you DON’T have covid.

That’s why my phone call with the doctor went like this (and this is true):

Doctor: Your results came back negative.  You don’t have covid.

Me: ……Oh.  Okay.

Doctor:(Surprised) So…you do NOT have covid. (Pause) Yaaaay. (That was not an actual excited or happy “Yay.”  It was a monotone, unemotional “Yay” meant to inform an obvious alien disguised as a human as to the emotion a real human being would express at such a moment.)

Me: Yeah.  That’s………………………….great?

Doctor:   Yes.  Yes it is.  That’s correct.

But it really wasn’t that great.  For one thing, they had interrupted me just as I was hitting my high, imagining unlimited airplanes and licking unsuspecting strangers over international waters.  But a negative test resulted presented another problem, too.

Did I REALLY not have covid?

I googled how accurate the tests results are while waiting for the results (in between bouts of rage at the injustice of getting covid NOT before I knew about the little markers on the grocery store floors that tell you where to stand, and so I stood too close to someone and had literally zero idea why they kept glaring at me.  But instead I got covid after I had become a world-class floor-marker-stander-onner.  What sense does that make, universe?!?)

It turns out, there’s a 38% chance of getting a false negative.  That’s kind of a lot.  If it was just a little bit higher, we wouldn’t need testing centers, because everyone could just flip a coin at home: heads, you have it; tails you don’t.

To be fair, 38% is better than flipping a coin (although I don’t know if my insurance is covering the test yet, so I may change my mind when I get the bill).

But now I’m stuck in a weird covid-limbo.  When I thought I had covid, not leaving my room for 10 days straight sounded heroic.  Now that I PROBABLY don’t have covid, staying in a room for 10 days sounds like evidence brought against you at a hearing to decide if you’re legally insane:

Neighbor:  I’d see her sitting at her bedroom window and she’d just stay in there for like 8, maybe 9 days, straight!

Prosecution:  But not 10 days?

Neighbor:  10 days?  No!  Even a crazy person wouldn’t do that!

On the other hand, it’s my unspoken life goal to not directly cause any one else’s death.  And I have to say, for the most part, I’ve done okay at that goal so far (at time of publication).

Frankly coming up with a NEW life goal just sounds like WAY too much work.

And I do own a TON of books, which I like to admire during the ads on all the Youtube videos I’ve been watching.

So I’ll definitely stay in my room. But my odds of getting an Emmy for this hard-hitting piece of journalism are down to 38%.

I feel like Schrodigner’s cat: for the next several days, I will both have and not have covid.

Granted, it’s not super similar.  For example, unlike Schrodinger’s cat, I WASHED MY STUPID HANDS FOR MORE THAN 20 SECONDS, COVID!!!! WHAT MORE DID YOU WANT FROM ME?!?!?!?

As a rule, I don’t watch nature shows.  They all have the same plot.  This is how every single one goes:

(Footage of an adorable newborn seal)

Announcer: Here we see a baby seal.  Young, wide-eyed, and innocent, it looks so happy just to be alive.  In the distance, a hungry whale draws ever nearer, unseen by the other seals.  The dutiful mother of the baby seal must leave the baby seal for just a few minutes to get food.

(The background music begins to sound like a near copy of the Jaws music.)

Announcer: Unattended, the tasty…I mean, baby seal frolics, SO delighted in every precious moment, as it makes plans for a long and happy life.

(The whale jumps out of the water, terrifyingly large mouth open, splashing water and obscuring everything for a moment until it falls back into the water.  The baby seal is gone.)

Announcer: For seals, especially adorable baby ones that want nothing more than to be alive, nothing comes easy.

(The baby seal slowly emerges from its hiding spot behind a rock.)

Announcer: It seems luck was on the side of this baby seal THIS TIME.  It may have survived this attack, but when you’re an adorable baby animal, death lurks around every corner.

(The cameraman pulls out a bazooka and shoots the baby seal.)

~

The term “Nature documentary” is just a euphemism for snuff film.  They never show you an animal unless it is about to be killed by some other animal.  They never follow an animal just because it’s having a good hair day or has a striking resemblance to a member of the royal family.

Somewhere is millions of hours of footage of happy, frolicking baby animals that DON’T end in death.  I know for a fact that not every adorable baby animal gets eaten, or all animals would be extinct by now!  There must be footage of it somewhere.  Maybe Area 51 is actually a depository of nature films deemed unusable because the death toll is less than 100%.

But this blog post is not about the government fabricating alien spaceships as a cover-up for the fact that they are sitting on the most adorable baby animal films of all time with animals that live to a ripe old age.  Although that sounds exactly like something I’d write.

I recently heard about a documentary talking about a grouper fish and an octopus that team up to catch food.  The grouper fish can see tiny fish hiding in a coral and an octopus can reach the small fish, so the grouper fish finds them and points them out to the octopus, who either grabs them to eat itself or scares them out to where the grouper fish can eat them.

If animals are going to start teaming up, we’re all going to be in trouble.  Imagine the danger for all plains animals if a lion were to team up with a giraffe, who could scope out prey from 500 yards.  And imagine if that giraffe got its hoofs on a sniper rifle.

Which led me to come up with other dangerous animal pairings:

Skunks and Zebras:

Zebra’s black and white stripes are designed to make it hard to tell where one zebra ends and another begins.  Now imagine blended among that sea of stripes are some hidden skunks.  And because the skunks are riding on the zebra’s back, their tails are that much closer to your face!

 

Elephant and a Boa constrictor:

An elephant with a boa constrictor attached to its trunk could strangle something from so far away, it could have a convincing alibi across town when the murder happened.

 

Ostrich and Flamingo:

So much leg and so little actual bird.  It just wouldn’t be right.

 

Pangolin and Moose:

First of all, there’s the obvious difficulty in pluralizing both of these animals. (I had to Google it and it turns out the plural is pangolins, which is not intuitive.  For some reason, I feel like the plural should just be “pangolin”.)

Secondly, if you are unfamiliar with the pangolin, it is essentially chain mail armor that has become sentient.

[image error]Attribution: Piekfrosch at German Wikipedia
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pangolin_borneo.jpg

So if you were to take a moose, which is approximately 80 to 90 feet tall, and cover it in pangolins, you would have a dinosaur.

And I’ve seen enough of those Jurassic Park movies to know that dinosaurs cause people to either be eaten or worse, have extremely inconsistent personalities.

 

Nematode and an actual Toad:

I don’t know, but it would be confusing.

 

Cheetah and Llama:

Really the only thing I know about Llamas is that they spit.

Now imagine that there was a llama on rollerblades being pulled along at 80 miles an hour by its cheetah buddy.  At those speeds, it could spit on a lot of people in a short amount of time, and at a certain point, I think humans would have to stop calling themselves the dominant species on the planet.

 

Dolphins and cats:

At first glance, you might not think this pairing would be dangerous.  But you take the second most intelligent species on the planet and pair them with one of the most maniacal species on Earth, and I guarantee only bad things will come of it!

 

Alligator and Crocodile:

You know you can’t tell them apart.  If they were constantly together, the social awkwardness alone would be fatal.

 

Humming bird and an Anteater:

Usually an anteater uses its long nose to inhale ants.  But imagine how fast it could shoot a hummingbird out of that nose.  And hummingbirds have those long, sharp beaks.  Somebody’s going to lose an eye.

 

Duck and a Beaver:

It would be like a deconstructed platypus, but with twice as many brains and slightly more feet.  The better to kill you with, my dear!

 

Baby Yoda and a Gorn:

I don’t have anything to say here.  I was just seeing if you were still paying attention.  You nerd.  (I mean me.  I’m a nerd.)

 

Koala Bear and a Lobster:

Picture it: you’re standing under a tree, admiring an adorable koala bear in the branches, when it suddenly throws a lobster at your face. (Honestly, given how dangerous everything in Australia is, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out koalas actually do this.)

 

Tarsiers and Quokka:

Look at these two!

 

Look at how they’re looking at you!  If you went anywhere and saw these two looking at you like that, you’d know something was up, and it would drive you crazy not knowing what.

 

Raccoon and a Great White Shark:

If you don’t leave enough scraps in your trash can, the next time you open it, there could be a great white shark inside.

 

Murder Hornets and Tom Cruise:

As if Scientology wasn’t scary enough already.

I think when you find yourself reading a full, legal warranty, it’s safe to say you’ve got too much time on your hands.

On the other hand, I discovered that warranties can make for a thrilling read, full of unexpected twists and turns.  For example, the one I was reading was a store add-on warranty for furniture purchases.

On the surface it may sound dull.  However, included early-on in the coverage explanation was this sentence:

            “Complete stain coverage for stains including (but not limited to): Food, beverage, and/or human bodily fluids.”

They had my full and undivided attention at that point.

I don’t know where your brain went when you read that, but my brain said, (very matter-of-factly) “So, if we murder someone on our new couch and they bleed on it, this store will replace the sofa for free.  That’s a good deal for only $10 more!”

Maybe you think I’m crazy, but it’s a 2 year protection plan, which means I’d have plenty of time to figure out the other important details, like body disposal, a convincing alibi, character witnesses, and reasonably-priced movers (for the sofa, not the body.)(Although, now that I think about it…)  For only $10!

I would also argue that I am the sane one and it’s the people who write the warranties that are a little bit off.  They’re the ones who brought up human bodily fluids.  And blood is the least gross of all the human bodily fluids.

(Pause here and break into small groups to discuss other kinds of human bodily fluids and rate their grossness levels.)

Further down this same warranty was the description of things the warranty didn’t cover.

That’s when we really started to go down the rabbit hole.

I don’t know what these people do in their spare time, but I am both scared and jealous of their lives after having read the things they could think up that would damage furniture in such a way that the store would not replace it.  I mean, when the bar is set at “worse than covered in unspecified human bodily fluids”, where do you even go from there?

I will tell you where they went from there: to places I had never previously considered.  And I’ve dressed a block of cheese up like a fortune teller.  There’s not a lot of places my imagination hasn’t at least found on a map.

Some actual examples of damage not covered by the warranty (I swear these are all 100% real):

-Damage caused by claws, jaws, and beaks.  No, seriously.  They used those 3 words.  In other words, if you own or rent a griffin, do not waste your money on this warranty.  Also, if you have the misfortune of getting attacked by a werewolf, do yourself a favor and try to move the fight away from your new furniture.

-Collision.  This makes me feel like I’m missing out on what sounds like a really exciting part of furniture ownership.  My furniture has always been overwhelmingly stationary.  How do  people have furniture with collision damage?  And how does it happen so often that stores are like, “Look, we just can’t afford to cover this anymore!”  Do other people strap furniture to the fronts of their cars, drive to opposite ends of the block, and then joust at each other?  And why don’t they invite me?

-Liability of injury or death to a person.  I brought this one up to point out that they’re not saying they WON’T replace the sofa if we murder someone on it (and yes, I said ‘we’, because you are in this as deep as I am now and if I go down, I am taking you with me!)  They just said they aren’t liable for it.  Which is fair.

-Damage caused by war, civil war, riot, rebellion, or hostilities.  First of all, how many people tried to get away the old excuse, “I know the warranty doesn’t cover damage caused by war, but this was damage caused by a CIVIL war.  Totally different!”?  Secondly, if you’re going to spill red wine on my new couch, don’t be rude while you do or that hostility could void my warranty.

-Burns exceeding 1 inch in length.  Do you know why?  I honestly can’t figure this one out (and I came up with furniture car jousting)(patent pending).  Best I can think of: People were trying to pass off their cremated pets’ remains as their burned up sofa to get a 2nd sofa free.  Also: yet another way to legally discriminate against people who own flame-throwers.  If I owned a flame thrower, I wouldn’t stand for it!  I’d call the NCAA immediately!

-Stains of unknown origin.  This is the title of the next book I’m going to write.  Or maybe a heavy metal band I’ll start.

Also, since we’re in this together, I’ll be happy to provide you with a back-story for any stains you don’t recognize so you can still be covered by the warranty.

Also, maybe this is obvious, but this last clause means you do have to KNOW the person you’re murdering, at least casually, in order for the warranty to be in effect.  How embarrassing would it be if you brought in, say, your sofa covered in blood stains (within 30 days of the occurrence of the stain, which is also required by the warranty) and the clerk asks, “Where did these stains come from?” and you’re left stuttering, “I think he said his mother was German.  Or was it Dutch?”  Warranty voided.  Rookie mistake.

Conclusion:

This really opened my eyes to a world I didn’t know existed: the magical, mysterious, and often seedy world of store warranties.  Those people do not mess around.  Or maybe they mess around too much and that’s how they end up with so much collision damage to their credenzas.

Nothing left to say except: may all your stains have convincing origin stories!

For those of you who don’t recall last week’s post, let me re-set the scene:

Many, many years ago in February, before the Caronapocalypse, I was at my friends’ very grown-up dinner party.  While eating a mango as a “dessert” (I don’t get it either), I suddenly realized that I might be allergic to mango as my throat began to burn and tingle.

In that moment, I learned that there are two voices in my head (well, two I’m willing to talk openly about): the Now voice and the Future voice.

The Now voice began to panic, thinking we needed to alert the hostess, the other guests, and possibly the neighbors, to my condition through frantic screaming, crying, and flailing of arms.

The Future voice pointed out that, even if I am not invited back to another dinner party for some time, I may run into any of the other guests at other important events, such as job interviews or parole hearings.  The Future voice felt that I needed to remain at least outwardly calm while seeking help, and also pointed out that someone else was currently talking and it’s rude to interrupt.

This is the moment that, had I not ever notice it before, I would have realized I am completely insane.  Fully believing that my airways were closing up in some sort of anaphylaxis, I remember very clearly thinking, “It is rude to interrupt.  I’ll just wait until he is done with his story about a funny thing a guy at his office said before I request someone call an ambulance.”

Now, at this point I’d like to pause to remind all of you of the saying that brevity is the soul of wit.  As a writer, I’ve often been disgruntled by people spending a good three minutes trying to remember if their anecdote took place on a Thursday or a Friday when the day has absolutely zero bearing on the story itself.

I cannot say that this particular gentleman’s story suffered from that problem as I did not actually listen to a word of it.  I missed the entirety of Act 1 of his story because I was busy trying to create a mango stampede to trample a spider in my throat that it turns out never existed.  And I missed Acts 2 thru 14 of his story because I was focused on breathing, having decided that when the moment came that I no longer could, it would be an appropriate time to interrupt.

After several more minutes, I began to suspect that my throat was not going to fully close up, nor was this gentleman’s story ever going to really be over.  In retrospect, after how divided the whole “which has more antioxidants, berries or mangos” debate had been earlier in the evening, he may have actually been filibustering. (Making a joke about filibustering falls on the adult spectrum between discussing foods that don’t agree with you anymore and commenting how young college kids are nowadays.)

Continuing to breath seemed like a positive development, but I was still coughing.  The thing about coughing is that anywhere you go, that location has a coughing quota, meaning the amount of times that you are allowed to cough before people want you removed from the premises.  A few examples:

Grocery store: 2 times, provided you are not standing near the produce.  Zero coughing near the produce.
Movie theater: 4 times, but they have to be spread out and preferably during swells in the music or during montages
Doctor’s Office: 0 times.  Cough once in a doctor’s office and everyone is convinced you have the plague and will scatter.  This is true even if the doctor is an eye doctor.
Church: As long as it’s one of those religions with a merciful God, nobody cares.  Cough away.  Although be prepared for someone who say “God bless you” after you cough, which is strange.

(Update: Since the Corona virus, there is now a universal coughing quota for all locations, and that number is -1. Coughing zero times in public is no longer good enough.  If you are anywhere in public and look like you could have coughed within the last 24 hours, you are in danger of being burned at the stake.)

At a dinner party, the total number of coughs allowed is 10, and that’s for all the guests.  If there are 10 guests and one of them coughs three times, then only seven of the remaining guests can each cough once, and two guests must commit to not coughing at all.  That’s why it’s always a good idea to try and establish early how many coughs you intend to use that night so the other guests can plan accordingly.

By this point in the dinner party, I was coming dangerously close to ten coughs and I knew this was annoying the other guests, particularly the ones who were planning on doing their own coughing that evening and would no longer be able to.  That’s why I decided to excuse myself to the bathroom.

Yes, while possibly dying, I secluded myself.

What’s more, I locked the bathroom door.  If I had actually believed someone else was trying to kill me (someone other than a mango), I would have probably taken a shower, just like those idiot characters in a horror movie.  That’s the quality of decision making I was at just at that point.

I guess I thought, while it was very polite of me to excuse myself from the table before dying (thus not spoiling that guy’s story, which was probably well into hour 3 by now), it would be rude to leave the bathroom door unlocked so that the next person who needed to use the facilities was greeted by a dead body on the floor.

So, locked in the bathroom, I Googled, “Am I dying?”

Based on the results Google offered me, I determined that yes, I am dying, little by little, day by day, in this soul-sucking rat race that we call life.  But apparently eating Keto and “These 10 Habits That the World’s Top CEO’s Do Every Day” will fix that.

Then I narrowed down my search parameters to “Am I dying *comma* mangos.”  Those search results were much more optimistic.  Well, all except the first one, which was this article from India Today with the headline: “Consumption of Ripe Mangos Can Cause Death.”

The rest of the results were articles that described my exact symptoms and reassured me that it would probably clear up on its own.

I returned to the table, so proud of surviving my ordeal that the next time there was a lull in the conversation, I decided to fill the awkward silence with the proclamation, “Apparently I’m allergic to mangos.”

And then, I kid you not, the first thing anyone said in response to that was, “Oh, that’s what happened to your face!”

I do not know what happened to my face.  I was distracted when I was in the bathroom, so I didn’t look in the mirror.  But apparently, all the while that I was sitting there, politely dying as I force-fed myself mango slices, my face was trying to alert the others to my distress by changing form in some manner.

Now I would like to point out one of the unspoken yet MOST important rules that you must follow in order to have a polite dinner party.  That rule is:

Should the topic of conversation arrive at the question, “What’s wrong with my face?”, the other guests should quietly confer BEFORE answering.

This rule is due to the fact that if there is any disagreement, it can quickly become the most awkward and uncomfortable dinner conversation you can have outside of discussing digestive irregularity.

I know this rule because I just made it up.  I invented it because at this dinner party, there was some confusion over just exactly what it was that my face was doing in a not normal manner.

One person suggested my face had become “splotchy,” but someone else suggested that could just be my makeup.

Another person suggested that my face looked very puffy, to which the first person corrected that my face had looked like that since I arrived, way before the mangos had been served.

Yet another person thought I had broken out in some displeasingly prominent hives, but later corrected himself by realizing those were my freckles, which apparently merely give the illusion that my face is covered in unpleasant hives.

At that point, I stopped listening, contemplating eating an entire bowl of mangos in order to escape the conversation.

The only person who had a worse evening than me was the hostess, who felt terrible.

At least, she gave the outward appearance of feeling terrible.

As I said, I don’t think she was trying to kill me.

Although I have to admit that it would have been the perfect crime.

She could have planned it all down to the letter: knowing I’d feel obligated to come to her dinner party to fulfill my social needs; also inviting the most long-winded friend she had; knowing I’d be too introverted to feel comfortable interrupting someone, even on the verge of death; and inviting several other friends to corroborate her alibi that she was WAY down at the other end of the six-foot table when I was murdered.  And by the time the police arrived, I’d have disposed of the murder weapon for her myself, an unknowing accomplice to my own murder.

It’s brilliant!

The only problem is she didn’t know I was allergic to mangos.  I’m positive about that because I didn’t know I was allergic to mangos.  It seems like an awful lot of planning to all hinge on the possibility that I might have a mango allergy I didn’t know about.

I’ll have to ask her about that when I see her next week.  She’s having another dinner party.  But she’s planned ahead and taken out a very large insurance policy for me, just in case.

I know what you’re thinking, but she promised me there’ll be no more mangos!

She said we’re having blowfish, which is apparently deadly if prepared wrong.  Should be fun!

Prologue:

I was going through some old writing and I stumbled upon this gem.  It’s crazy to look back and see how different I was and how different the world was.  This is from almost a month ago.  It’s called: “The Complete Guide to Dying Politely While at a Dinner Party.”  I promise it has nothing to do with corona virus.

Back then, in the bygone days of February, you could not only go to a dinner party, but you could also joke about it.  Nowadays, if you tell someone you went to a dinner party, they will freak out before you even have a chance to explain that you brought two yard sticks taped together to ensure you stayed the correct distance away from all human contact.  AND you’ve been emotionally distant from all humans for years, so you’re good there, too.

Anyway, I never posted this article because it is a longer than typical blog post.  It’s a two parter, even.  But I happen to know that you now have more free time than you used to.

And so without further ado:

Part I:

The Complete Guide to Dying Politely While at a Dinner Party (from the days before corona virus could actually kill you at a dinner party)

They say you should write what you know, which is why I decided to write about dying at a dinner party.

Now, before you get all judgy and spew hateful things at me like “You’re clearly not dead”, I’m going to cut you off and say you weren’t there, so you don’t know.  And I know you weren’t there because this was a classy sort of a dinner party attended by classy people who would not read my blog.

It’s not that my friends are fancy.  It’s just that many of them are trying overly hard to prove that they are adults by engaging in adult activities such as flossing, having a mortgage, and refraining from blowing the paper cover of their straw at the person sitting next to them.  (Actually, that last one they don’t do anymore because they no longer use straws since plastic is bad for the environment, and being concerned for the environment is an even MORE adult thing than refraining from blowing the straw paper at people.)  They also throw dinner parties sometimes.

A dinner party is just like a normal party except for 2 key differences:

1.) The food that is served requires silverware

2.) Games and other fun activities are not allowed, being replaced by lively conversation

As in introvert, dinner parties are basically one of the circles of hell.  Now, I don’t want all my extroverted friends to take this statement the wrong way.  I do mean one of the outer circles of hell reserved for the less-evil people, such as people who order a week’s supply of food in the drive-thru lane or people who don’t pronounce the ‘H’ in ‘Human.’  (There’s no such thing as a Uman being and if you say it that way, you can go to Ell.)

My point is I didn’t want to be at a dinner party in the first place, but I make myself do a certain amount of social activity per week.  And that “certain amount” is one.  Only one social activity per week.  And I do include honking at people who order a week’s supply of food in the drive-thru lane as social activity.  I honk at them, they flip me the bird in response.  I don’t see how that’s any different from someone asking me what I do for a living and me responding by stutter-mumbling for five minutes trying to make “unemployed blogger” sound less awkward.

Really what happened to me at the dinner party was just a freak accident, unless of course the hostess was actually trying to kill me, which is really the danger of any social activity.

Yet another reason why I limit them to one per week.

There we were, done with all the courses (In case you’re interested, we started with the salad-and-main-entree course, which was then followed with the dinner-rolls-she-had-accidentally-left-warming-in-the-oven course.)  It was time for dessert, which was a generously large serving of fresh mango slices (FYI: Having fresh mango slices and calling it dessert falls on the adult spectrum somewhere between worrying about the environment and using the word “refinancing”.)

I wasn’t sure if I’d actually ever had real mango before.  I know I’ve eaten mango-flavored items, but maybe not real mango.  I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, but giving into the peer-pressure of eating everything I was served like the other guests, I charged ahead and ate a piece of mango.

Spoiler alert: I did not like it.

And yet, I did not stop eating it.

Somewhere around the third piece of mango, I coughed and it felt like a jalapeño had suddenly sprouted out of my tonsils.  I was confused and wondering why it felt like something was in my throat and why I was coughing every thirty seconds.  I politely sipped some water, but the feeling didn’t go away.  So then I took a large swig of water, which also did nothing.  I started to wonder if I had swallowed a spider.

Now, maybe at the sorts of grown-up dinner parties you go to, you find it nearly impossible to accidentally ingest a spider without realizing it.  You may think people only really swallow spiders while they are in deep sleep, lying in an easy-to-reach position, with their mouth hanging wide open.  All I can say to that is, again, you weren’t there.  It’s possible that at this particular dinner party, there were spiders everywhere and multiple guests had ingested a few spiders by this point and were just too polite to say anything.  You don’t know.

With that in mind, I decided I wouldn’t say anything either, thus proving to the other people in the room that, while I may not be able to really participate in a debate about which contains more antioxidants: berries or mangos (I swear, that was the actual debate at that moment), I was adult enough to handle swallowing a spider without abruptly declaring, “I need an adult!”  I just needed to figure out some way to dislodge the spider that was apparently trying to climb back up my throat using a pair of those spiked boots tree-trimmers sometimes use to climb trees.

Since the water I had drunk hadn’t washed the spider out as I was promised it would many times in my youth, I decided to try something else: more mango.  I began to voraciously eat mango slices, gleefully thinking of the rock-slide I was bombarding the spider with.

While I had successfully cleaned my plate of mango slices, giving me more adult points, the feeling in my throat hadn’t gone away, I was coughing more frequently, and now the whole of my mouth was tingling.

Unfortunately, that is when it occurred to me that there was a possibility that I had not in fact swallowed the world’s most indestructible, unswallowable spider.  It could in fact be that I was actually allergic to mangos.

I looked down at my clean plate, moments ago a badge of honor, now a plaque of shame.  I had tried to stop my body from having an allergic reaction by eating massive amounts more of the food my body was reacting to.

That was the moment I realized that I definitely needed an adult.

(Read the exciting conclusion next week!  It could be exciting.  You don’t know.)

Many, many years ago in my writing career, I wrote an article for a mommy-blog.   Why?  I don’t really remember why.  I must have had a reason.  More than likely that reason was too much free time.

Anyway, the mommy-blog that originally posted my article is no longer in operation.  I now suspect this particular mommy-blog, like most mommy-blogs today, was really a front for some sort of illegal, international, sheep-cloning syndicate.  Thus I can only assume it has since been shut-down after a massive sting operation involving the British Secret Service, two badgers, and a 40-foot taco.  But I also didn’t get much sleep last night.

And now that I have you all excited to read about that sting operation, here is my mommy-blog article:

Let me first explain that I was a youngest child.

I mean, I still am. But I lost my youngest child innocence a long time ago.

Back in the good old days, I had never changed a diaper, mixed formula, or calmed a screaming baby. I’d held happy babies, but once they were no longer happy, I handed them off. The only baby living in our house was me.

Then my innocence was lost. I was hired as a babysitter.

A friend hired me to watch her two year old and twin ten-month olds for a whole day. Looking back now, I’m not sure what made this nice couple think I could handle it. Maybe with 3 small children, they’d become experts and had forgotten how hard it is to look after 1 small child all day, let alone 3. Or perhaps, with 3 small children, they were desperate.

I was determined to make a good impression. As soon as I walked in the door, the 2 year old latched onto me. We’d met once before, so we were now best friends (when you’re 2, you don’t get out much).

“We went to the zoo,” she told me.

“You went to the zoo?” I exclaimed, repeating her exact words in the form of an overexcited question in that way that you only do with small children and sarcastically with your boss (e.g.: “You’re moving up the deadline from next week to tomorrow?”)

Kid’s love this form of conversing (bosses, not so much), so the 2 year old answered with eagerness, “Yes!”

“What did you see at the zoo?”

“Umm…Lions.”

“You saw lions?”

More excited, she answered, “Yeah! And monkeys.”

“You saw moneys?”

There’s so much excitement now, she’s attempting to hop. Being 2, both feet never quite made it off the ground at the same time. “Yeah! And cows!”

“You saw cows?” That time I was really asking. What kind of zoo was this?

“Yeah! And penguins!”

“You saw penguins?”

She stopped hopping. “No.”

I do love a good twist-ending to a story, and I’ll admit I didn’t see that one coming, but it confused me. So the penguins turned out to be kind of a conversation killer.

The mom showed me around, telling me everything I needed to know. Or so she claimed. Then she and the dad left.

As a youngest child, what happened over the course of the next six hours I witnessed with pure terror and disgust. I spent a majority of that day on the phone, making panicked calls to my mother.

Topics of these calls included:

-Only one of them will eat

-Now they all only want to eat what the child next to them is having, which is a problem because only one of them has sufficient teeth to eat a sandwich. Also, should a 2 year old have baby formula?

-One of them ate a sticker

-The 2 year old pooped in the toilet and wants me to look at it. Do I have to?

-THE 2 YEAR OLD’S POOP IS BLUE!! IS SHE DYING?!?

-The 2 year old isn’t dying. She ate a bag of colored animal crackers, the majority of which were blue.

-They’re all crying and they won’t stop.

-It’s been six hours and I haven’t gotten to eat, pee, or sit, and now I can’t stop crying.

My mom did not seem to appreciate the trauma I was experiencing. Even over the phone, I could tell she was stifling laughter.

Somehow I survived the day. When I got home, I made an immediate bee line to the shower. I had the 6 types of baby fluids (pee, runny poop, spit, tears, regurgitation, and food that went into their mouth, was chewed but never swallowed before it came out again) from 3 different babies all over my person. I was not sure how I was ever going to be clean again and I was pretty sure I was going to have to burn my clothes.

Seeing my distress only made my parents laugh all the harder. This wasn’t exactly their wish that I have a child just like me someday, but it was close.

I learned a lot that summer. I learned that I can handle a surprising amount of grossness. I learned my parents are a little vindictive. And I learned how to write a formal letter of complaint to a certain colored animal cracker company.

With the whole internet buzzing about the new Star Wars trailer, I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk about squash.

I recently spent 5 days at my sister’s house.  That’s never a good idea.  My sister is a mechanical engineer.  I am a liberal arts major.  I know just enough science to know that mixing matter and anti-matter like that could make the universe explode.  But I’m careful, so usually it just makes her brain explode.

Case in point:  My sister had two orange squash on her dining room table.

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Obviously, you can see where this is going.

You can’t?  Well, that’s okay.  Neither did she.

“Why do you have squash that look like flamingos on your dining room table?” I asked.

“They’re decorative,” she answered.  “And they don’t look like flamingos.  They look like squash.”

Challenge accepted.

The next day while my sister was at work, I happened to go walking by said dining room table.  I noticed my sister had some wire strippers and a pair of gloves sitting on the table, probably left out from working on the giant robot I’m convinced she must be secretly building.  But that’s a non-squash-related story.

My point is BAM:

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Flamingo squash.

I didn’t say anything when my sister came home from work.  Eventually she noticed.

“What were you doing with my wire strippers?” she asked.

“Art!”

She looked again at the table.

“Oh, I see.  It’s a…turkey?”

Clearly I needed to up my game.

Day 2:

I was going to eat a banana when I had an even better idea.

I call it…

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…FoodMingo.

That’s banana wings, a garlic paper beak, and pepperoni-stick legs.

I again played it cool when my sister got home from work.

“Ah,” she said.  “A flamingo.”

Finally!  Success!

But it was also too late, because now the daily flamingo art had become a thing.

And like Picasso’s “blue period”, this began my “garlic paper as a beak” period.  Someday there will be entire college courses engaging in passionate discord about my squash art.

Day 3:

Perhaps I should point out at this juncture that I do currently have a job.  It’s just a work-from-home job with flexible hours.  Which means if I’m willing to stay up doing actual “work” until 1am, then I can spend the better part of the day doing important things for the betterment of humanity like this:

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These are all things I found on my sister’s craft table (she was clearly in the middle of sewing clothes for her giant robot) except for the garlic paper beak, which I augmented by drawing an eye on.

When she got home from work, my sister said “I see you’ve expanded into palm trees.”  But she didn’t sound sincerely impressed.  I knew I was going to have to do something big and flashy to REALLY impress her.

Day 4:

Have you ever seen the M. Night Shyamalan movie Signs?  In it, the little girl leaves glasses of water all over the house, which in the end proves to be life-saving.

I’ve never liked white socks.  I only own one pair of white socks, choosing instead to buy socks in bright colors (although I also own some black socks for stage managing and/or funerals.)  This sock thing never seemed significant until I realized it had all been leading up to this life-changing moment:

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Sockmingos.  You’re welcome.

Even my one pair of white socks were needed for this classic piece of art.

You’ll notice I put down a giant piece of paper under my creation.  I did this because my sister, being an engineer, was likely to set aside the sheer awe that this sock art inspired in her soul and skip right to unimportant details like, “Why are there socks on my dining room table, where I eat food?”

Instead, when my sister came home and saw the result of my brilliance, she said, “I don’t know what to say about this.”

Speechless.  I’ll take it.

Day 5:

I was leaving my sister’s house before she got home from work.  I wanted to leave one more piece of squash art that would clearly express my true feelings.  Thus:

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Because even though we don’t get to spend a lot of time together, and despite our fundamental differences, I will always love flamingos.

There are exceptions to every rule.  Including that one.

Here are some examples of other rules that have exceptions:

            Cheaters never prosper.
            All babies are adorable.
            You should never lie to your doctor.
            Don’t get revenge on your ex-boyfriend by filling his car with pudding.

All of those rules have exceptions.  For the purposes of wasting your time (let’s face it, you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t trying to do that), let’s examine one of these rules and its exception.

Take the last one, for example.

Actually, I probably shouldn’t talk about that one.  Not until the court case is settled.

Take the second to last one, for example.

You should never lie to your doctor because your life is in their hands.  Which, if you knew what was on their TiVo would probably be a much more horrifying realization.

Exception to this rule: Dentists.

You probably weren’t thinking about dentists as doctors.  But actually all dentists are doctors, while not all doctors are competent.

It’s okay to lie to your dentist.  Why?  Because he knows you’re lying before you even open your mouth.  Which is especially impressive because your mouth is usually already open when he enters the room, as someone you hope is the dental hygienist (and not just another bored patient from the lobby) scrapes pointy metal sticks against your teeth.

If dentists believed their patients, they wouldn’t even have to look inside your mouth.  They could just ask you questions over the phone, all while horrible drill noises are coming from the background because, much like Jaws who can’t go anywhere without his theme music, dentists can’t go anywhere without drill noises.  That’s why dentists don’t make good spies.  (Exception: James Bond.  Bet you didn’t know he was a dentist.  His parents insisted he have a back-up career in case a recession impacted the sexy man spy business.)

If your dentist wanted the truth, he wouldn’t ask you.  Dentists are a lot like lawyers: they only ask questions they already know the answers to, hoping to catch you in a lie:

Dentist: Are you flossing?

You: …….yes.

Dentist: Really?

You: Of course!  You told me to last time.

Dentist: How often?

You: You actually wouldn’t shut up about it during my last visit.

Dentist: No, I mean how often are you flossing?

You: Ohhh…you know………..two or three….…………….hundred times………………………a day.

Dentist: I see.  Then perhaps you can explain to the jury why I discovered over 3 million different species of germs thriving in the plaque between your teeth?

(The jury gasps!)

Judge: I order a 5 minute recess so the defense can rinse and spit.

But it’s not all bad being a dentist.  They maintain the distinction of being the only people who can ask you how often you’re flossing.  It doesn’t matter how close you are with someone.  You can’t just walk up and ask someone that question, whether they’re strangers or loved ones.

Exception to the rule: Michael Phelps.

I’m not sure why, but I feel like Michael Phelps could walk up to anyone, ask how often they floss, then swim away.  Even if there’s no water.

In conclusion…, actually I don’t have a conclusion.  That’s all the funny things I can think of to say about dentists.  So I guess I’ll just stand here and make drill noises until you go away.

Dzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu