What My Dog Did Last Week

Kimber reports.
As most of you know, I’ve recently acquired a dog. His name is Spartacus, he’s adorable, and I love him, but he can be a little pill sometimes. Last week was particularly bad.

P.S. Pictures will be added to this post, as soon as I can find the cord that connects my camera to my computer. Check back soon.

Monday
Spartacus tricked me into thinking he was a good boy by being a good boy. The most he did was show the neighbor Shiatsus his dominance by pooping on their lawn in front of them. I cleaned it up, so the Shiatsus didn’t pay much attention to it.

Tuesday
I left some laundry hanging on various door knobs, and Spartacus got to it before I did. He devoured one bra, but looked very sheepish about it. Later, while playing with Spartacus in the yard, I met some of the BYU students who live in an apartment complex behind my house. My upstairs neighbor (I live in a basement apartment) had introduced me as, “this is the one that lives downstairs. Her name is Kimber”.

Wednesday
Spartacus showed his preference for bra-consumption by finding another one and starting in on it. I got to him in time to stop it, but I fear he’s developed an insatiable taste for expensive under-things. Perhaps I should buy some decoy bras from the dollar store in order to lure him away from the more expensive Victoria’s Secret fare.

Thursday
I woke up to Spartacus barking madly in the yard, so I went outside to quiet him down. Every time I yelled “Spartacus, no!”, a voice on the other side of the wall would say “yes!”. After three or four rounds of this I gave up, having decided that if my neighbors were going to mock my disciplinary efforts, then they could just deal with the dog barking. Right as I turned away to go back to bed, I heard the voice on the other side of the fence say, “That’s Kimber. She’s the downstairs one”.

Friday
When I got home from school, I opened the gate a little too widely, and Spartacus got out. Instead of bouncing up and down around me in a desperate bid for attention, Spartacus shot across the street to where the neighbors’ hound dogs were holding conference. Spartacus sniffed noses with them politely before biting their faces. They sat on him. Spartacus is not dominant with these dogs.

Saturday
I brought Spartacus to my family’s house to visit, as my younger sister was home for the weekend from college, and she loves Spartacus. Unfortunately, she brought home a lot of her stuff in an attempt to make moving home next week easier. She had boxes and bags of food and clothes on the floor, and Spartacus seemed to be leaving them alone, until we turned our backs on him. That’s when he grabbed a can of hot cocoa powder and ran outside. We didn’t realize what he had done until he came back inside dragging a shredded canister with his face and front paws covered in chocolate. His breath smelled like French Vanilla for the next two days.

Sunday
The entire family was gathered in our white carpeted living room, watching TV and eating dinner, when Spartacus ran in covered in mud. Apparently we’d left the sprinklers on a little too long outside. Spartacus ran all over the white carpet, jumped on the tan couch, ricocheted off of every member of the family, and pounced in all the food dishes before we caught him and threw him outside, where we could hose him off. We then brought him inside and gave him a proper bath, which he shivered through.

Spartacus had a very busy week.

Show and Tell with Devin: Jap Barcodes

Well if you couldn't tell from the title, this is Devin with your Show and Tell!
Today's item once again comes from The Land of the Rising Sun and it's: dududududud(drum roll) Creative Japanese Barcodes!


These barcodes are completely legit and appear on grocery packaging all over the place in Japan. Some firm known as D-Barcode(fancy that) is responsible for this travesty to boring grocery shopping.

I want these in America

Also, Nolan won't be writing for the next two months or so. He has left us to join the Navy and is now under strenuous training in Boot Camp. Most of you already know this. But in case you didn't, consider yourself informed.

One Sentence Summaries

Sometimes you just don’t want to read a required book for a class. Sometimes even the Cliffsnotes are too long. Sometimes literature just isn’t worth the effort it takes to experience it. In that spirit, here is a list of one-sentence summaries of some of the canon’s most vaulted books.

Oh yeah, spoiler alert. Some of these sentences will give away the book. You’ve been warned.

Lord of the Flies: Little naked boys kill each other.

The Good Earth: A man is poor, then rich, then poor, then rich, then poor, then rich, then dead.

As I Lay Dying: Poor white trash have a funeral and go crazy.

The Road: The world has ended, so a boy and his father take a walk.

My Antonia: Jim is obsessed with Antonia, but doesn’t have the balls to ask her out, so he settles for a lifetime of stalking her across the prairie.

A Room of One’s Own: Chicks need money in order to write.

Hamlet: Whiney people aren’t good at vengeance.

Heart of Darkness: Lord of the Flies for grown-ups.

The Scarlet Letter: Humble embroidery doesn’t save Hester from her sin of adultery, especially as she was doing the priest.

Dandelion Wine: A boy’s childhood wrapped in nostalgia and dipped in a dream.

Pride and Prejudice: People argue, but marriage solves all problems.

The Grapes of Wrath: A family goes from broke in Oklahoma to SOL in California.

I don't think any explanation is necessary

Oh and a short announcement. I added a new link to a new site. It's the Perry Bible Fellowship and it's a bunch of funny comics. I'm announcing this because last time I added a new link one of our readers didn't discover it for a while and was upset because if he had found it sooner than he could've read more fmylifes back then too or something.

She's got more then hams on her mind

Show and Tell time with Nolan here, and I got an important announcement: Ferret Told me he's gay, that's right HE TOLD ME HE's GAY! just so you know.

alright on to business, I couldn't upload any videos because Blogger.com is as gay as Ferret. But here's an awesome video I found which I thought was appropriate for the moment since I'm leaving for the Navy.

Since you can only see half the video you might just want to go to the source


Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at Aniboom

Puppeteer professionals

Nolan here with an important message: yesterday me and me buddies made a puppet show video.

It was extremely difficult and I screamed at my friends multiple times to shape up and shut up. Doing so just riled them up even more and in the end Devin, Ferret and Kimber Striped me naked and felt my body inappropriately. I am now emotionally and physically scarred. So in two to three days I'm running away to the Navy Boot camp.

here's the movie, Hope you enjoy it




hope you liked it

An Excerpt from Kimber’s Notes

At Nerd Night, some people have expressed interest in the kind of notes I take while in class. Frankly, a lot of what I write is not appropriate for a general audience, but today, when reading back over what I’d written, I decided to treat you to a small sampling. On an explanatory note, I wrote these in a post-colonial literature class. We were discussing a play called A Dance of the Forests by Wole Soyinka. And now, my notes:

I missed last Tuesday, so I’m going to say my grandfather died. I’m also tired enough I might look like I’m sad about the death. What a trickster am I. Also, I don’t have any of my posts done. Damn. Oh well. Onwards.

Wole Soyinka was born on the 13th of July in western Nigeria. The Soyinkas were members of the Yoruba tribe. His father was the headmaster of St. Peter’s Primary School. Soyinka’s mother, whom the author calls “Wild Christian”, was a shopkeeper and respected political figure in the community. Soyinka wrote a fun little autobiography called Ake, if you’re interested.

Soyinka and Achebe have many similarities, though Achebe was an Ibo, whereas Soyinka was Yoruba. They both were opposed to the civil war, and received similar educations.

Soyinka has published about twenty works: drama, a novel, and poetry. He writes in English and his literary language is marked by great scope and richness of words.

So, A Dance of the Forests deals with post-colonial nationalism, or how to define oneself and one’s country once independence has been achieved. Hey, really, you should do all your reading and writing assignments from now on, okay? There’s a very strong oral tradition in Africa. One of the most vibrant genres in Africa today is the home movie. People make their own little movies (scripted and everything), then make fifty copies on DVD and sell them on the street corner. One critic said that the Nigerian national theater was dying out because of this home movie industry.

Magic is a part of African culture. The Palm Wine Drinker is a good book to read if you’d like to learn more. There’s the land of the living which is above ground, to the land of the dead, which is below ground. People can travel between the two. There’s a notion of reincarnation, as well as gods and spirits. Very many of the Nigerian audience would believe that there are real-life equivalents to the characters in the play. Over time, with Colonialism, the traditions were corrupted a little bit, and so not everybody would have believed in it as strongly as they might have before colonialism.

In some sense, Aroni is a stand-in for Soyinka. He is the one who is speaking warnings at a time when the entire nation wants patriotism and pride. Soyinka is saying that nationalism, or a sense of pride is a good thing, but people can’t just say that they’re the best and call it good, they have to be able to self-evaluate, or examine themselves for faults. I’m hungry, but I left my bag on the other side of the room, and I don’t want to get up because I’m cold and moving around would dissipate the little heat I have.

British people call a semi-truck an articulated lorry, meaning a connective truck. You’re presenting on Stuart Hall on May 14. The girl next to me wrote “I love Eli!” in huge letters at the top of her notes, colored it in, and surrounded it with hearts. I didn’t realize I was back in high school. Let’s see, if today is the seventh, that means I only have one week to find out who the hell Stuart Hall is, where I can get his stuff, and how I’m supposed to make a presentation. Damn. Oh, that chick is married. So really, BYU is just a mass of adults playing out very juvenile roles under the guise of receiving a higher education. I can’t wait to graduate.

On page 71 there’s a speech and it relates to the “proverbs to bones and silence phrase”. This sounded like it might have been important, so you should probably go back and look at it.

Show and Tell: Mr Ando of the Woods

Devin today on blog duty.

Here is the next installment of show and tell. It's a strange video. The animals in the woods are trying to figure out if Mr. Ando is a human or not, obviously ignoring the fact that all the animals have human faces as well. Make sure to stick around for the fish singing about wanting to sleep with Mr. Ando even though he's fishy or something.


Also notice that in the credits, even if you can't read it, that all the symbols on the right side are the same. Meaning that the same person did all the work and voice-acted all the roles. I find that funny. It reminds of high school films where three people would film three minutes and then have two minutes of credits because they just made up filming jobs and new people that didn't exist before. In fact sometimes we do that when we film movies(Bill's Close Shave anyone?). I still find it funny though.

People I Wish I Knew

Kimber writes.

There are times when watching, reading, or listening to something that I wish I’d been able to have dinner with the artist responsible. I wouldn’t say no to dinner with most artists, but a very few of them seem like people I really could have been friends with, either because of a wicked sense of humor, a passion for life, or just a series of interesting personality quirks. So, with that in mind, here is my list of people I would invite to the best dinner party ever.

Kurt Vonnegut
I love Kurt Vonnegut’s writing. I’ve read almost everything he’s written, and I’ve adored all of it. He’s a pessimistic optimist, and I connect with that. His writing is wonderfully self-conscious, yet is still graceful. Most importantly, Vonnegut went through some of the most brutal experiences, yet still held on to his hope for humanity.

Orson Welles
At first I thought Orson Welles was a pretentious—if gifted—asshole. But that was because I only really knew him through Citizen Kane and his War of the Worlds radio broadcast. I’ve recently watched some of his later work, and have found him to be delightfully whimsical. More than anything, Welles was an indulgent person. Indulgent with his food, indulgent with his filmmaking, indulgent with his conversations. I recognize that I’m the same way; I only hope I pull it off with the same finesse.

Katherine Hepburn
Let me begin by telling you that I love Katherine Hepburn’s voice. It’s low and a little raspy, but wonderful; it sounds like crystallized honey. Talking with Hepburn would be lovely simply for hearing her voice. However, there is much more to the woman than that. She wore pants regularly when no respectable woman would. She persisted in her career despite initial difficulty. She pursued what she wanted in her life with few reservations and no apologies, something we’d all do well to try sometime.

Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde, when coming to America, passed through customs wearing a maroon jacket, green waistcoat, blue breeches, and gold gloves. He was asked if he had anything to declare, and replied, “nothing but my own intelligence”. I would invite him to dinner for his one-liners alone. More than being a witty writer, Wilde was kind. He visited people in distress and successfully cheered them up, he didn’t condemn people, but rather gently mocked them, and he was willing to interact with people regardless of their class background. Wilde eventually became an outcast for his idiomatic lifestyle, but he kept his sense of humor till the very end.

Edith Sitwell
I know Edith Sitwell only through Façade, and through a failed paper on her connection to Sappho. However, just this brief brush with her work is enough to pique my interest in her as a person. She wrote just as modernism was coming into its own, and embraced satire when it was not proper to do so, especially for a woman. More than that, she wrote her poetry with an incredibly musical ear (Façade is set to music), and crafted each of her works with careful attention to detail. Any dinner party would be enriched by having such an independent and thoughtful guest.

The Venerable Bede
Any historian who has the balls to put a favorable adjective in front of his name, and then proceed to give the history of the world in a very gossipy manner has to be an interesting person. Not much is known about Bede, but I’m willing to risk inviting a possible jerk to a dinner party based on the evidence which shows he’s a pretty neat person.

Virginia Woolf
I imagine Virginia Woolf would be semi-whiney, introspective friend, but one that people keep around because of the novel way she thinks of things. I’ve never counted her as one of my favorite authors, but have always been intently interested in her work. I’m not sure if I would get along with her, but I would invite her to dinner, just to see if she speaks the same way she writes. Plus, I imagine that she and Edith Sitwell would get along well, so if worse comes to worst I can seat them next to each other and ignore Virginia Woolf altogether.

Zora Neale Hurston
One of my favorite personal essays, “How it Feels to Be Colored Me”, was penned by Zora Neale Hurston. In it she remarks that we have different outsides, but the insides are the same. More distinctly, she remarks that these insides are things like mismatched marbles, bits of colored twine, and door knobs which open doors long decayed away. Hurston is realistically fanciful in her writing. She recognizes the realities of life (she was a black woman in the 1920s), but refused to be limited by the way others thought she should be. She worked with what she had to create a better life for herself, and wrote pieces that touched deeply on things resonant with the human soul. Most importantly, she kept her perspective and a sense of humor, two things everyone needs, no matter where life takes them.

Show and Tell Time

Ok this is Devin.

I decided that show and tell was one of the most awesome parts of elementary school and that they need to do it for all the K-12 grades and then do it for college too. It would just make things less stressful and more happy. But I also think we should do it for this blog. And so I proudly present your new dose of WTF show and tell.



I hope you liked it because I found it on some weird obscure blog about crazy japanese stuff. Apparently this guy moved to Japan and just finds crazy news and random stuff about Japan, stuff like this. And I know that I'm not helping the stereotype that Devin just posts pictures and videos but Kimber doesn't do it, so somebody has to. No offense to Kimber since she makes up for no pics with excellent writing skillz. Also what the heck is with Nolan? His writing ratio is like Kimber:6 Devin:4 and Nolan:1(maybe). I would like to see more Nolan posts. And I'm writing this at 3:00 am and am tired. Good bye.