The GirlAlive Blog

Ancient circus tents.

Here’s a conversation I had with my husband while he was asking me trivia questions last night. (Approximated – I didn’t take notes at the time.)

HUSBAND: Where is the largest stone circle in the UK?
GIRLALIVE: I don’t know.
H: Avebury. It’s so big the whole town is inside the circle.
GA: But it might not be so big if the town is all midgets.
H: They’re not midgets.
GA: That would explain the stone circles. They were ancient circus tents.
H: They were not circus tents.
GA: Then how do you explain the midgets?
H: There are no midgets in Avebury!
GA: So you know where all the midgets in the world are? You have a database?
H: No. It’s just that Avebury is not all midgets.
GA: Then why is the whole town inside a giant ancient bigtop?
(HUSBAND glares.)
GA: Doo doo doodle oodle oo doo doo doo. (circus music)
(Husband gives up and asks next trivia question.)

Husband is a great straight man, but not much of an audience.

What should I write?

I have no ideas. I’m depressed and bored and I still have no job. Oh, and I’m also no longer eligible for unemployment benefits, so I have no money and can’t afford to pay my bills.

So here’s my idea: tell me what to write about. I’m trying to prove myself as a decent writer to potential employers, so I want you, my readers, to tell me what to write about. What do you want to know about? The last book I read? The reproductive habits of anglerfish? My favorite sideshow freak? A short story about a hamster? Suggest a topic in the comments, and if I like it, or if enough people second the idea, that’ll be what I’ll write about. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever. Then at the end of that post, I’ll ask for more suggestions. This will continue on an approximately weekly basis until I get tired of it or until I get a job.

So let me know what you want to hear about. Nothing is too weird or obscure. I will probably not write anything that violates my personal privacy or morals. And my husband has veto power over topics that are borderline. Go for it. Tell me what you want to read. Pass this post around to your friends. Spread it around. The more ideas I get, the better.

A thing of beauty

I know I’ve talked before about Twiglets and how they are made of Satan’s poop (also known as Marmite). Additionally, there has been a fake feud going on between Justin Bieber and Conan O’Brien, which has been hilarious. Like, I normally would hate a teenybopper Canadian like Bieber, but he is actually kind of funny (his music is cheesy pop crap, but he seems like a nice kid). So this video made me all kinds of happy.

The Epic Tale of the Evil Death Spider

After I finished college I moved to Seattle to look for a job because there weren’t any in Duluth, where I lived before. I lived in a teeny tiny studio apartment in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle. It was a crappy and overpriced building, but it was in a great location. Anyway, just after I moved there I went into my bathroom one day and I saw a spider!

But it wasn’t just a spider in the bathroom. I had seen spiders in bathrooms before. They have those in Duluth. But in Duluth, they are pretty small because it’s cold there. The biggest spider I had seen there was about an inch across. But this was a whole nother kind of bathroom spider. It was three inches across and hairy and gross.

It was a giant spider of death and it was in my bathroom and I lived alone so I couldn’t make someone else go kill it. I either had to kill it myself, or accept it as a new roommate. Since it didn’t look like it was going to help with rent, I had to get rid of it. So I ran to the other room to look for something with which to kill the evil spider of death. I grabbed a newspaper and a can of bug killing spray from the other room and on my way back to the bathroom I saw what was on the tv.

It was a news report about a deadly new kind of spider that was being found in Pacific Northwest homes! Holy crap! I’ve seen this before! There’s always a news report about a monster on tv while the hero is battling the monster for the first time. I’m in a horror movie, and it’s not a very good one! As soon as I go into the bathroom I’m going to be set upon by hundreds of spiders, or the one spider is going to grow huge and bite my head off! Holy crap! I’m totally going to be killed horribly in my crappy small apartment!

But I’m still stuck with the matter that if I don’t go into the bathroom and kill the beast, it will forever be in my bathroom and I’ll have to move because I won’t be able to pee or shower ever again. So like the stupid girl in every horror movie I keep going into the bathroom to face my enemy. I’d like to say that I fought an epic battle and barely got out alive. But actually I sprayed the spider with poison, smooshed it with a newspaper and then flushed it down the toilet. Because it turns out I wasn’t really in a bad horror movie.

Then I washed my hands and had some ramen noodles. Cause that’s what heroes do after they destroy the evil.

The End.

Stuff this week.

I’ve got a bit of the scatterbrain this week so I’ll just throw out a bunch of stuff.

First of all, the government of the UK is being stupid. Someone has proposed a law where if someone is accused of illegal file-sharing (accused, not tried and convicted, just accused) their whole household could have their internet access cut off. Without a trial. Which means that file-sharers who get caught will hack into their neighbors’ wi-fi and innocent people will be cut off from the internet. All without a trial. There is a petition to stop this idiotic crap from happening. If you are a UK resident, or a UK citizen living overseas, please go and sign the petition.

I have no interest in reading or watching anything Twilight related. It bores me. It is just another stupid romance novel, but with more bestiality and necrophilia. When I see pretty jewelry on Etsy I sometimes thing, “Oh that’s nice,” but when I see it labeled as “Bella’s” thingy or “Edward’s” something, I surf elsewhere and refuse to buy it on the basis that someone might mistake me for one of those Twilight people. So I loved this comic.

Also, my niece and nephew are awesome. Exhibit A. Exhibit B.

Julia Nunes has a silly new video. It is entirely worth watching.

That’s all.

Google is just screwing with me now.

At work I was entering some data from a form that had been filled out in Poland. The handwriting was a little questionable, and it was supposed to be the name of a drug, so I did a quick google search to see if what it looked like made any sense. I don’t know the Polish names of prescription drugs off the top of my head, and I figure that’s what google is for. So I did this:

So the friendly Google elves gave me this answer:

I thought, “Oh, the Google elves have given me a suggestion of something that might make more sense than what I thought it said. So I clicked on the “Did you mean” link and this is what I got:

Now excuse me, Google, but you’re the one that brought it up. I had no knowledge of the phrase ENOK SAPARANA until you told me that I should go read more about it. Why would you even bring it up, when you already knew that it wasn’t a thing? Are you just mocking me? Is this Google saying, “Look, I made you think ENOK SAPARANA was a real phrase. You’re so stupid you clicked on it.” You always have to prove that you know more than me, don’t you Google? I might not know names of Polish prescription drugs, but one thing I do know is that you, Google, are kind of a dick.