Out of Context! (November 2019)

Obligatory disclaimer, none of this is supposed to make sense. These are all real quotes, from real conversations I had, heard, or overheard in public. They all made sense in context, but I thought they were funnier without.

“Would a Raisin Rock be served with a Prune Boulder?”

“Did that English woman, sort of wander off?”

“Apparently he’s never been here on pudding night.”

“You beast-lump!”

"The recipe is in my mother's lavender cookbook, because of course I have a mother who owns a lavender cookbook."

“This counter is a rind graveyard.”

“I feel like I need to walk like a football player-sized penguin.”

“Embrace the goat, man. Lick the goat.”

“I saw a very hairy woman making cheese.”

“I’ll take the turkey with no soul, please.”

"You may touch her back hair."

"There is a Siamese named Jimmy in Minnesota."

"You just poisoned the fluffers."

"I would love a daily finger puppet."

"It's like, I don't want to care about the linoleum!"

"I remember hearing a muffled conversation about oranges while I was floating in the amniotic fluid."

"Those are my experimental cherries."

"I'm sorry I violated your nostril privacy."

"We'll name you Puce. Puce Dribble McFuzz."

"I didn't come down here to massage your scalp."

Amazing Trick-or-Treat Ideas 2019

I feel like I write this every year, but for some reason, every time Halloween rolls around, I somehow realize that I forgot this series was a thing. It is one of my favorite series I write, but every year I get busier, and since it's not a regular thing, I need to be reminded each time Halloween rolls around. However, this time, I remembered at the beginning of the month! On October 3rd I was bored at work, scrolling back through my blog, found the post and realized that this was the month! So with a month to plan, will I be able to write the post in time? I guess we'll see!

Edit: I finished on the 28th! I can't believe it! I doubt I'll be this prepared next year!

If you're new to this series, every year I compile a list of treats for you to hand out to the little beggar children who come creeping around your house, shaking you down for candy. Since I'm sure you want to stand out from the crowd, here are ten unique treats that will be sure to have the town talking about your wonderful creativosity! That's a thing, right?

If you're interested, the previous years' posts can be found at these links:
2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018

A Trowel - Did you forget to buy candy this year? Did you accidentally leave your porch light on, beckoning all the little children to your door? Is one standing there right now with their little hand outstretched, looking at you with big, sad eyes? Do you still have that trowel on your front porch that your husband forgot to put away after he finished potting the tulip bulbs for the winter? Give them that. Then shut off your lights! You can't afford to be giving away all the random garden tools that Richard leaves on the porch!

Several Dead Leaves - This time of year, nature drops her splendor all around us, free for anyone to gather and give as we please! Sure, these kids could pick up their own dead leaves, but it will mean so much more when it comes from your heart. Or something. I don't know, I'm trying to think of some sentimental options okay?

Sage Life Advice - With age comes wisdom, so the older you are, the more wisdom you have to share! What better day to share this wisdom than on Halloween, when children come to your door, asking for treats. I think a good, memorable platitude could be one of the best treats you can give.

Ha! Yeah, sorry. I couldn't do this one with a straight face. You'd get paper mache'd for sure. That's like getting toilet paper'd, except with more glue and hatred.

A Hug - How about a hug? That's a good treat, right? No? Oh yeah. Stranger danger. What was I thinking!? Sorry! We're done with the sentimental stuff. Back to some more sensible, traditional options.

Cardamom Pods - I heard about them on a cooking show once. They're probably a good baking ingredient, like for cookies? Kids love cookies! They also love stealing chocolate chips while you're trying to make the cookies, so they'll probably love these too! No stealing required! Except for your heart when they tearfully thank you for your selfless generosity.

An Old Car - Do you have a beat up old junker sitting around on your front lawn that you don't know what to do with? I know my Uncle Jed'thro does! And Aunt Shirline wants that thing out of her flower patch, so it needs to get gone now!

The first thing you need to do is get the title for the car. I know it's a pain, but you need to go through that pile of papers in the basement at some point before you die! Next you need to fill it out completely to get it ready to sign over to the next un lucky little kid who comes to your door! Once one shows up, have them write their name, hand them the title, and tell them no take backs! That makes everything legally binding, and their parents can't say anything about it!

Recycled Parade Candy - This one takes some planning and several assistants, but if you have kids of your own, this is a cinch. It's free, and it's recycling, so you're basically saving the earth! You're a hero!

Anyway, next time the county fair throws their annual parade, set up checkpoints all around the parade route with several volunteers. Or unwilling children. Whatever is easiest. Gather candy as it is pitched over the sides of various firetrucks, tractors, and rickety trailers full of screaming kids and mediocre sousaphone players.

To make sure you get the most candy, be sure to pay attention to the floats manned by local politicians, and beauty queens, and beware of the ones manned by terrifying dental mascots. I'm talking about you, Bucky the Braces Beaver! You know what you did! Your horrifying, sadistic, pearly-white smile is fooling no one!

NO ONE!!!

Ahem...

Sorry about that.

Anyway, as soon as you hit the end of the parade at your checkpoint, get yourself to the other end of the route as fast as you can and keep on collecting that sweet, free parade candy! If your entire team does this, you should be set for at LEAST this Halloween, if not the next one as well! Just put the candy in your pantry for the next 4 to 16 months, and reuse it! It'll be totally fine. Parade candy is already halfway to fossilization anyway, it basically preserves itself.

Caviar - This tip is for the rich people only. I know there aren't that many of you left, but the few that remain have more money than you'll ever be able to spend in your lifetime. Therefore, you should spend it on the juiciest treat, that kids love to eat, caviar!

           🎵    🎵
*Whimsical Music Cue*
           🎵    🎵 

🎵 - Ooooooh...
🎵 - Theeeeey....
🎵 - Pop in your teeth!
🎵 - They're from fathoms beneath!
🎵 - They're the tiniest eggs
🎵 - That you ever will eat!
🎵 - So sweet and delicious,
🎵 - They taste like the fishes!
🎵 - Caviar! Caviar! Ca-vi-ar!

"It's the juiciest treat, that kids love to eat, caviar!
Available wherever luxury fish chunks are sold."

Dimes - This tip is for poor people only. I know there are a lot of you around these days, and you have less money than you'll ever be able to earn in your lifetime. Therefore, to save money, just give out dimes to the children. They won't mind. Children are born with an inherent understanding of poverty and the stressful financial situations that arise this time of year. They'll appreciate that you tried. 💕

Just kidding. Children are monsters, and will hate your very existence for denying them the sweet, sweet taste of a fun-sized Caramello. Also, what kind of Rich Uncle Pennybags do we think we are? Who can afford to be giving entire dimes away like that!? Lock your doors and shut off all your lights until November 2nd.

Dirt - This tip is for the vagrant that lives by the railroad tracks only. I know there's only one of you, and you may actually just be a family of raccoons in a trenchcoat, so... Um... Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Dirt. Give them dirt.

Watch This! (October 2019)

So glad I made no solid promises as to how often I would make these posts. Between my job, my internship, and my podcast, I haven't had that much extra time this year, and my blog has really gotten neglected. I've made a few good posts, trying to catch up on pictures etc, but these simple, "Sharing" posts have totally fallen by the wayside. I think I've done two so far this year? We'll see if I can make it to four by the end of the year. 😆

Either way, as I haven't been sharing as often, these videos are a lot more curated than they have been in past years. I used to share just about everything from artists that I really enjoyed, but with so much time between posts, I'm not going to give you a hundred videos in one post to catch up. I watch a lot of YouTube, (overnight job at the hotel 😉) so I'm filtering out the best of the best.

Let's start this out with an old favorite, Alaa Wardi. No idea what the song is, I just love the way he sings it.



If you'll recall from several posts both this year and last year, I was eagerly anticipating a forthcoming release from LSD (Labrinth/Sia/Diplo) and I finally got my wish this spring! I just love their sound, and their music videos are so bizarrely creative!



Walk Off the Earth is always putting out great music, but this collab with Sarah Silverman was just so simple and fun. I loved it.



One channel that I don't usually share on my blog, but I still love, is the Valleyfolk. This is a sketch comedy group that started out on SourceFed back in the day, ended up going their own separate ways for a few years, and then came back together to form one of the funniest channels on YouTube. Now their content is not always the most family friendly, hence my decision to not share it here, but they recently performed on (and WON!) NBC's Bring the Funny, a new comedy competition show, and their sketches were some of the funniest things they've done yet! And since they were [moderately] family friendly, I thought this would be the perfect way to share them!

Now, because of self imposed space constraints, I'm only going to share one of the sketches, but this one is by far the funniest. I about died laughing. And that's almost literal. Stifling laughter hurts, but for some reason I decided to watch Bring the Funny at work, instead of at home where I could ugly laugh in private. Sometime we don't always make the wisest choices in life. Anyway, here's the Valleyfolk's funniest Bring the Funny sketch.



And speaking of Bring the Funny, JK Studios, the new sketch group comprised of the original Studio C cast, were also on the show! They didn't end up winning, but they did make it to the semi-finals! This was my favorite of their sketches.



Anthony of 10 Second Songs is always so creative and talented, so having him work with Peter Hollens just magnifies the talent exponentially. This video they did to coincide with the release of the new live-action version of Disney's Aladdin is just pure fun.



So you know how you sometimes just stumble down a YouTube rabbit hole? Not the kind of YouTube hole where you end up believing the lizard people put fluoride in our toothpaste so they can harvest our chemtrails, but the ones where you end up discovering music and talent that you've never heard of before. That happens to me semi-frequently, and during one of those rabbit-hole journeys I discovered the Hong Kong Ballet. Apparently Hong Kong has a ballet and I REALLY want to go see them perform now.



Over the summer, a couple YouTubers I've watched for years (I'm sure I've shared their videos here at some point) were cast together in a Broadway Musical, and they made a video to announce it. And this is just their own personal video, not Broadway's. Todrick does not go halfway with anything.



Lindsey Stirling never ceases to astound me with the work she puts into her music videos. I love the dark, 80's-esque distopian sci-fi fantasy vibe in this video. It's like Doctor Who Meets Tron meets The OA.



Another channel I don't share much of, for the same reason as the Valleyfolk, is College Humor. However, they have been stepping up their game recently and some of their stuff has been downright, die-laughing hilarious. They recently did a parody of the science fiction series Black Mirror, which, from what I've heard, is like a dark, depressing, version of the Twilight Zone about the potential dangers posed by new technology. And from what I've been told, it usually ends with some kind of disturbing twist. I don't actually know this first hand, I still haven't brought myself to actually watch it, I just don't like being depressed and disturbed. But, the College Humor parody of Black Mirror was hilariously funny, and since it was a lot more clean than some of their other stuff, I had to share it.


As you may recall, Avi Kaplan left Pentatonix in 2017 to make his own music, and even though he doesn't release music that often, his work is always worth waiting for. His latest video gives me feelings I didn't know I could feel. It's like nostalgia, but for something I've never even experienced.



As I alluded to above, Studio C is currently undergoing a change of cast. Of the previous members, only Tori and Dalton are left, and while I'm still on the fence about whether the quality will still be as funny as it has been with almost entirely new people, I'm still hopeful, especially after they released a few preview videos of the upcoming season, including this absolutely hilarious parody of Downton Abby. Do the Academy Awards cover web series? Because if they do, Dalton Johnson deserves a best actor nod. Either him or Dalton Johnson, and if possible, maybe even Dalton Johnson. They're all amazing. 😆



And if you'd like a taste of some of the new cast, this has been my favorite sketch so far. 😆



I think that's all I'll do for now, I have lots more I could share, but I think I'll try to do another post next month as well. We'll see. Either way, I have more blog posts coming, I just need to actually finish them. I'm shocked I finished this one. 😆

Out of Context! (September 2019)

Obligatory disclaimer, none of this is supposed to make sense. These are all real quotes, from real conversations I had, heard, or overheard in public. They all made sense in context, but I thought they were funnier without.

“What do I look like? I need to check!“

“It looks kind of like a sentient gumdrop.”

“The ghost has OCD.”

“He was trying to eat pellets.”

“Today we’re going to be eating roof thatch! Just like they did in the old country!”

“It’s a drink with lots of chunks in it.”

"I don't know how frogs work."

“Yeah, I just walk around with cheese in my pocket.”

“He’s just gonna nibble on my coat.”

“Does it have Asian juice?”

“You can trade that for Skittles!”

“No, the real thing! Not that drippy brown imposter!”

“I like the idea of having an armoire with a lot of glop in it.”

“I need to ask my dad about some empty paint cans.”

“It’s like a seagull eatin’ a hotdog.”

“This is my chicken pile here!”

“Decaf Chai, Whales, Oviraptors; basically the same thing.”

“WHAT IS THIS?!?!!! WHY IS THERE MILK IN THIS?!?!!!”

“It needs to be warm, with lumps and a skin.”

“Oh no. They stole a dirt baby.”

Nebraska Wildlife Safari Park - 2017

So, like I said... months ago... I am way behind on my photography. Like, WAY behind. In 2017, the summer after I "Graduated" (I'm still working toward the degree, I just need to finish my internship and then I'm totally done) my cousin Sarah and I went on a series of excursions, all around Iowa, and a bit of Nebraska. I took tons of pictures, and then never did anything with them. I started editing some of them, for use in my portfolio, and the rest ended up just kind of languishing in folders.

But I'm trying to change that! I have sorted through all my pictures, put them all on a thumb drive, and I am slowly but surely editing them while I work my overnight shifts. Sometimes. Occasionally. Okay, the pictures in this post were sitting on my work computer for like 2 months before I decided to actually get to work on them.

Anyway, let's not dwell on my failures, let's just keep moving forward, and celebrate the fact that I actually accomplished something with these pictures! And not just these, I actually made a whole other post on my photography blog! I edited those pictures for use in my portfolio and my photography blog, but they only made it into the portfolio at the time. I have finally got them up on my photography blog, so make sure you check that out when you're done here.

So to begin with, for those of you who don't know, Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo owns a wildlife safari park in Ashland, Nebraska. This is a wildlife sanctuary that you can drive through and get up close and personal with all kinds of native, American wildlife. Bison, Eagles, Elk, and more! It really is a cool experience, and I highly recommend it.

Back in 2017, Sarah and I wanted to do something that summer, and since we didn't have money for an actual, proper vacation, we decided to get out and do as many free and inexpensive things close to home as possible. The first place we went was the Wildlife Safari Park. We've always loved the zoo, and we knew that they had this park, but we'd never been there before. We didn't really know what to expect, but we wanted an adventure, so we went anyway.

The first thing we discovered was that you actually drive through this place. There are places you can get out, but for a lot of it, you need to stay in your car. Exhibit A.

These things are right off he road as you're driving. They're fine with the cars on the road, but I would not get out of your car.

I have a long lens for my camera, so I was able to get some great shots that would otherwise not be possible.

After the Elk, there is a place you can park, which leads off to a variety of trails you can walk.

The birds weren't part of the official display, but I love getting good bird pictures when I can.

There were several flocks of pelicans around the park. It seemed weird to see them in the middle of Nebraska, but many of the animals at the park are being rehabilitated, so maybe that had something to do with it.

It's always cool to get to see an eagle "Up close."

These weren't quite as close as they seem, my lens helped a lot here.

There was also a hill you could climb to see a couple of bears.

Obviously these were secured a bit more than the Elk, and other herbivores.

One of the coolest exhibits was a valley of wolves. There was a high walkway that went up and over them, so you could watch them down below.

They could also watch you.

It was really cool to see them running around.

I got a lot of great pictures here.

The wolves would also howl. And they were LOUD. I wish I would have thought to take a video of them. Oh well. Maybe next time.

In another part of the park there was a huge tower you could go up and look down to see a ton of different waterfowl.

Cranes.

More pelicans.

After the parts you could walk around in, you get back into your cars, and then drive some more.

There is another herd of Elk. Unless the first one moved, which I suppose is a possibility, we were there long enough.

And then you get to the main attraction. The bison.

There is even a white one!

After that we saw a whole bunch of wild turkeys.

And that was all for the main park itself. After that you get to another parking lot where you can find their main buildings, including the gift shop. We were in the park long enough that all the main buildings had closed, but we did find one more attraction.

Prairie Dogs.

They were really cute and fun to watch. 

I think this was my favorite picture of them. :)

And that was it! This park is really fun, and if you're an animal lover like we are, you definitely need to check it out one day. If you'd like some more pictures from that trip, I saved some of my best ones for a separate post on my photography blog. You can find that post HERE.

And as much as it feels like I've neglected this blog, only posting once or twice a month, that one hadn't been updated since 2016! And the pictures I'd posted were from 2014! I really hope I don't let it languish like that again, I'd really love to get back into photography, plus I have plenty more from 2017 I can work on, I just need to actually do it.

Anyway, there are more pictures coming, I won't make any promises as to when, but there are more coming, so stay tuned! :)

Out of Context! (August 2019)

Obligatory disclaimer, none of this is supposed to make sense. These are all real quotes, from real conversations, or overheard in public, that just struck me as funny. They all made sense in context, but I thought they were funnier without.

“I hear a British person. And rustling." 

“They love the balls of filth.” 

“Mmmmmm.... Milk solids.....”

“Is your armpit hair tasty? Is it like marshmallows? 

“Your nose has changed.” 

“Things are pretty naturey out here.” 

“I’m just gonna stand here and eat raw tortillas.” 

“My innards feel fine.” 

“I forgot that the Dino had sweet moves.” 

“It will be a very quiet death match.” 

“You could have written ‘Toad Tinkle’.” 

“He’s got a fistful of pudding!” 

“So you would eat the angry alpaca?” 

“It’s okay if you commandeer a random napkin, it happens.” 

“I’m scarred from a very unfortunate fiber supplement.” 

“Beautifully coiffed in tights? I’d take it. Let’s dance, Baby.” 

“A little life advice: Never eat an old nitroglycerin pill because it’s really bad for your teeth.” 

“I’m always up for a new mozzarella adventure.” 

“He’s touching your beans again." 

“I’m just gonna squeeze this stripey thing one last time.”