Via shifty shenanigans

BROOKE F. IS A WHORE

It is a mystery I have never solved. After first period on my first day of high school I found bathroom graffiti about myself. In the second stall in the second floor bathroom, someone neatly penned BROOKE F IS A WHORE on the toilet paper dispenser. I hadn't even been in high school for a full hour! Surely there was a Brooke F in a higher grade with a nasty reputation. How awkward for this freshman, to share a name with the school slut.

I searched for this hussy in the school directory. She was not there. Just me. I was the whore! How could this be? Who hated me enough to slander me during the first 50 minutes of school?

There was only one real suspect: Heather from summer school basketball. That bitch would have knifed me if she could have gotten me alone. 

I don't know why she wanted to smash my face with a basketball. It was instantaneous. I think it had to do with my shorts, which were cutoffs. I missed the first two weeks of training because I was on a school trip, and I missed the day they told us no jean shorts. My Umbros were long gone; I cast them off in seventh grade, when I figured out girls hate girls who wear Umbros after elementary school. The cutoffs were all I had and, since NO ONE told me they were forbidden, I wore them every day. 

Layups in my jorts. 

Suicide runs in my jorts. 

Scrimmages in my jorts. 

Trouble with girls AGAIN because of my shorts. 

I later heard from a few girls that they thought I was giving the finger to our coaches and everyone by wearing the cutoffs and I was probably an asshole. These girls eventually learned that I'm not an asshole, but Heather never caught on. She ran laps behind me, whispering "bitch" with each pound of our feet. 

So I guess it was her. I don't know why calling me a whore would be anyone's priority on the first freaking day of school, unless maybe it was my ex traveling back in time? He was pretty fond of that word, too. 

The moral of the story, my friend, is to be very careful about your shorts. You don't know who you're gonna piss off. 

You mean... they ate each other up?

I just finished The Man Who Ate His Boots, by Anthony Brandt. I think you should get this now. Right now.  Even if you're not usually into history/nonfiction stuff, this book is the opposite of trying to sail a wooden boat through pack ice. Meaning it is FAST and EASY, even at almost 400 pages.
The man who ate his boots is Sir John Franklin, one of the "Arctic Knights" searching for the Northwest Passage in the 1800's. It's the obsession of one idiot, John Barrow, that sends these men into the ice again and again and again, never learning a fucking thing. They freeze to death because they want to wear their wool clothes, because they don't learn how to build igloos for shelter, because they don't think for one second savage people who have lived in sub-zero temperatures for hundreds of years could possibly teach them, ENGLISHMEN, anything about survival.
And so they die. Horribly.

I first heard about the final expedition, the Franklin Expedition, while watching a NOVA special on mummies. 30 parties went in search of Franklin and his men after they disappeared in 1846, and the first graves they found were of three sailors on Beechy Island. The bodies were preserved by the ice and in the 1980's anthropologist Owen Beattie exhumed (and defrosted--the guys were ice cubes) the remains to figure out why they died. Lead poisoning, from their canned food, had something to do with it. Lead poisoning will kill you, but it will make you crazy first. Beattie's discovery enlightens the terrifying behavior of the other 120-some men. 
They had two ships: The Terror and The Erebus. And they sat, entrenched in ice, for two years. One of the ships was crushed and sank. Franklin died (possibly of a heart attack). The remaining officers and crew abandoned the ships and went in search of food. What did they bring with them, you ask? Oh, not much. Just a fourteen-hundred pound life boat full of arctic necessities, like silk scarves and scented soaps and slippers and, oh yes, a writing desk.
A. FUCKING. WRITING. DESK.
That's what stuck with me. These men were dying, weak with scurvy and hunger and fear, and they decided it would be a good idea to drag a giant desk across the arctic? I remember watching the tape in the dark, my legs shrinking up to my chest as I imagined them saying "Oh yes, well we must bring the writing desk!" like that was normal and smart and not crazy at all. That kind of crazy, when everyone has caught it, when the most idiotic decision seems like a fantastic idea and how logical! that scares the bejezus out of me. That's probably not how that scene played out in real life, but it's how it played out in my head, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.
The men on Beechy Island were the only ones to be buried. Some were found face-down in the snow, fully clothed (why oh why weren't they wearing fur?) and still carrying their papers. The remains of others told a gruesome tale. The men, starving and probably mad, turned to cannibalism. As if this story wasn't scary enough. It's something you don't want to think about for too long, but maybe you can't help it.

It is a fearful thing to imagine what must go through the mind of a man reduced to eating the body of another,  someone he has known personally, has broken ship's biscuit  with... How is it even possible to saw hands off arms, or to  break into a skull for the brains inside? Very few of us have ever been hungry enough to know. (Brandt)

The Franklin Expedition (his third, by the way. He was 59 when he left England forever) makes up only a small part of The Man Who Ate His Boots. It is all fascinating. Brandt is a great writer. You will also never want to make a joke about scurvy again. That shit is nasty. 

Cyrus

It was a horrible shock to be reminded that John C. Rielly is not actually Dr. Steve Brule. It made me a little sad. I want him to be real! Maybe if we clap he will be real. Maybe if we send the bones.
SEND THE BONES!

So it was a new cake recipe and it didn't really rise, and I discovered our stove is slanted, but I made this tasty cake to celebrate the 4th.

(That blog is amazing. I can't wait to try more of her recipes!)

Yes!

The Walking Dead TV Show

May I humbly submit my pick to play Rick:

 = 

Way Harsh, Facebook

So I sent a friend request to an old pal and former co-worker, kind of against my better judgement. I'd just caught up with a mutual friend and this guy's name came up. I thought: "Hey, I kind of miss that guy. He was really cool and very nice to me." I knew he was tight with some people I don't get along with, but I figured I'd give it a shot.
He didn't reject me, but he hasn't approved, either. Which is actually just fine. I knew I was taking a chance when I sent the request and, after perusing his wall, it became apparent it might be awkward for us to be facebook friends.
Like I said, that's fine.
But facebook keeps giving me the news flash that he's adding all these other people as friends! What the hell! Why is facebook rubbing this in my face? The dude didn't accept my friendship, so why should I be getting updates on his activity in the first place? And for it to be like "Hey, dude accepted like 5 more friends today. Hmm, funny, you're not on the list!" is uncalled for.
It's a cruel game, Facebook, and it's not appreciated.