Friday, September 20, 2013

Anti-OCD

I am not anti-OCD.

My school is.

My family is living in the Salt Lake City area, and since I'm still young, I attend the local high school. I already don't like this school, since for one, the student body is twice the size of my last school. I loved that prior place, and will always be a bulldog (mascot). This school takes the enemy of the dog and tries to make it seem threatening by calling it the panther. Next off, since this district is rich, the kids here are snobs when they talk about their school over other ones. It's stupid.

Also, they have the weirdest vocabulary. In everybody else's book, purposely missing a class is called "skipping" or "ditching" class. Here? "Oh yeah, I totally sluffed English today."

What?

Urban dictionary (oh yes, the world's most "reliable" website) will back me up, too. Sluff.

Essentially, what this all boils down to is that this school has a number of reasons that I don't like it, the largest being it isn't Nampa High.

But recently I have acquired a whole new reason that disturbs me, even though I don't have OCD.

The hallways of my school are decorated with the following pattern on the ground, made up out of tiles.

Yes, I DID just make this in Minecraft.
This pattern is repeated all the way down every single hallway, all 4 floors of the school. This pattern is repeated with perfection every single time.

BUT.

There is a single spot on the third floor where the tiles do THIS.



Do you see the problem?

No? 

I will place them side by side for you.



THE HORROR.

Every other day I walk by this, and I might as well be walking on coals. I'm not a grammar Nazi, or a walking spell-check, and I don't even correct other people's math (ok, on occasion).

But this tile mistake BURNS me. Who was the construction worker/carpenter that created this monstrosity? WHO??

I could go on, but I'll stop, because it pains me to have that blatant mistake staring me in the face.

Blech. I need to go purge myself.



Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Beekeeping


Here it is finally! Probably not worth the wait, but I kinda dig it.

Bonus points if you can identify the game on the computer screen.

Previous

Monday, September 9, 2013

Dishes

Starting about four years ago, I developed this intense fear of kitchens. This fear is known formally as mageirocophobia, which is technically the fear of cooking, but I have adapted it to encompass everything kitchen-related. Cooking, pulling things out of the oven, dishes, washing the table, sweeping, walking through that profane room... all of these various activities induce this nervous shaking sensation that persists until I exit.

Relentlessly I have been tormented for my public display of avoiding the kitchen. I have never met another individual with the same concerns or symptoms as myself, and this fact contributed greatly to the amount of people who ridicule me.

Finally, and sadly, my fear has proven to be rational.

During the school day on Friday, one of my many teachers specifically said, "Don't get yourself into a hospital this weekend!" Curse you sorcerer and your jinxes!

I returned home after what was probably the most painfully slow school day in the history of teenage angst. Upon return to the house my intentions were to do productive things, such as sleeping and watching documentaries about the cuttlefish and mantis shrimp. My uncle, however, politely asked me to quickly wash the pots and pans before I began my procrastination.

The harbinger of kitchen-induced stress was thrust upon me, and my only available option was to A, complete the chore, or B, flee the scene whilst throwing gravel at objects in my way.

Clearly, option B was more desirable, but due to the lack of gravel on hand, I decided to wash the dishes.

Within 15 seconds of putting dishes under the sudsy water, I received my injury. A glass cup had silently broken in half and cut my right-index finger right on top of the first joint. It wasn't a notch-type of slice. It was more of a the-glass-was-whittling-my-finger-like-an-oak-stick cut.

I applied pressure with my left thumb, and frantically attempted to dial my dad with my nose. After I failed that try, I tried to text my dad with no response. So, I did what any sane person would do: sat on the couch and watched Pawn Stars. Nobody was at home to give me a second opinion on my injury, so I wasn't too sure what to do.

Attractive, yes?
Eventually, my mom got home and did the smart thing (of course) and whipped out some gauze. Not wanting to risk it, I was taken over to the hospital just in case the wound did some nerve damage.

After an extensive period of time in the hospital, I now have a splint and some weird wrapping on my hand as to prevent me from flexing my finger-abs during the healing process.

I've quickly discovered the pros and cons of this situation.

A pretty good pro is that I don't have to do chores. On the flip side, I can't do chores. Oh, you'd like to quickly wash a spoon? NOPE. Can't get that wound wet.

Beyond the former, there aren't too many pros. All is con. GENGHIS Khan.

Showers? I get to act like a car-less New York-er caught in a rainstorm trying desperately to hail a cab, with my arm sticking out of the curtain to protect my splint from getting wet.

Shaving and teeth brushing? I've never seen so much blood.

Instruments? While playing the piano I have exactly 1.58 millimeters on either side of my finger, or else I'll play an extremely dissonant chord. On the other hand, for the time being, I have a built in guitar pick.

Basically the moral of the story is don't face your fears, or else you'll hate the period in between sleeping.


Saturday, September 7, 2013

Ridiculous and Smart

5 Things That Will Make You Sound Ridiculous (Yet Smart) in Conversation

1. Klein Bottle

In a previous list, I brought up the Mobius Strip, the one sided piece of paper. Derivative of this concept is the Klein Bottle, which has no inside or outside. Though it can only accurately be made in the 4th dimension (seriously), the current representation in our meager 3 dimensions is still pretty awesome looking.

Note: if you get me one of these a desk top toy gift, I will worship you like a Pagan God for two full days.



2. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia

This obscenely large word is pronounced as hippo-potto-mon-stross-ess quip-eh-dalli-phobia.

If you didn't know already, this, ironically, is the fear of long words. Though it's made up, it's still one of my favorite words to throw at people, especially when you were previously using common vernacular.

3. Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure

These are the little known pharaohs for which the great pyramids at Giza were built. They are listed in order from largest to smallest, just like in real life (starting in the back of the photo).


Yes. The one in the far-back on the right side is the largest one, not the middle one.

4. Bringing Up xkcd "What If?" Blog Entries

I pity the person who reads the xkcd comic but not the What if? blog. Seriously. Go check it out. Randall Munroe was already one of the coolest guys ever, but his funny and scientific approach to solving theoretical questions puts him on the same level of coolness as Fallingwater. 

5. Digit-Strings in Pi

Alright, this one is a little out there. But, it's pretty fantastic to know that at the 2,124,327 digit of pi, you can find my birthday. Since I'm kind of interested, let me know in the comments if your phone number is in pi, as in all 7 digits plus the area code. No, I am not trying to get your number, but apparently it's pretty difficult to have a specific string of 10 digits in pi (less than 1% chance for a specific 10 digit string, less than 0.1% for an 11).


For those of you who noticed, this list is being posted on a Saturday and not a Friday. I unexpectedly had to be rushed to the emergency room, due to some broken dishes attacking my hand. Also, I have a comic drawn up and ready to be edited, but I haven't had a chance to scan it in yet (office being moved around). As soon as that gets finished, it'll be posted for your enjoyment (should you be able to enjoy those kinds of things).

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Simple Minded

I am not a complicated person.

If our brains had to be compared to roads, with size and design of road corresponding to brain quality, then my mind would probably be best described as a deer path. Narrow, winding, random things growing on the sides, and hard to get through unless you made it yourself. (Not to mention the random piles of meaningless crap everywhere.)

My thought processes follow very few steps to reach a conclusion. If there are many, it's for a good cause and every step is defined. For example, some math problems take quite a bit of thinking, but each step is logical. Or if someone I particularly care about asks me for help, I'm more than willing to answer them.

But with casual human interactions, I try to stay away from overcomplicating things. People are too complex as it is, so why make it worse? Sticking to yes's and no's in conversation and decision making is required in order for me to appear to function. If I am asked a "why" question, I'll give you an answer. But under the surface, I'm figuratively hemorrhaging fear juices.

Because of this, ordinary things can easily confuse me.

Fire drills, for example.

Throughout all of my school years, fire drills have been a once-a-month practice for the student body, in the case of a fire. After the initial shock of the sound, everyone chaotically shuffles outside into seemingly random positions.

Who came up with this idea? The faculty expect us to exit in a calm and orderly fashion. I don't understand how this is possible. For the procedure, they start by making everyone pee themselves by blaring the sounds of a foghorn assailing a few dissonant car horns. Then, they continue blast Satan's ringtone from EVERY DIRECTION.

How is it even remotely possible to stay calm when you feel like gouging out your eardrums with rusty sporks?

Speaking of sporks, do you know what you eat with them? The ever-confusing TV dinner.

Sure, I can think of a few reasons as to why they'd be called "TV dinners" in the first place. Maybe it's because you eat them in front of the TV? No... uhm... perhaps it's because they're only advertised on television? Nah, that's even more lame... what if it's because the meal presented on the box looks oh-so-picturesque?

None of these reasons seem plausible to me. Where does this name come from? Where?

Look out Google, here I come!

*Update*

Apparently when TV dinners first came out, they were created by this company called C.A. Swanson and Sons. The full name of the product was originally TV Brand Frozen Dinner. So basically, because this is 'Murica, we got rid of those two middle words.