Happy Halloween!

I love Halloween. We need a lot more holidays that allow people to dress in costume and eat an entire bag of Reese’s cups. Seriously, just think about how much better Valentine’s Day would be if you could buy yourself a box of chocolates while being an imperial stormtrooper.

I squandered a few Halloweens in my childhood by wearing the same fairy princess dress for multiple years in a row, thus forever missing my chance to be baby Yoda. Since then, I’ve learned to show greater respect for the idols of my formative years.

[Important Update: It has come to my attention that some people think the creature pictured above is Cookie Monster. If you missed this important part of Sesame Street, I feel really bad for you.]

In addition to dressing up and sugar, I also love being good at things, which is why I rarely go dancing. However, one of the community centers in town has swing dancing every Tuesday night, and my roommate convinces me to come roughly once per year for the Halloween costume contest. A little coordination-based loss of dignity is a fair price to pay for dancing with the Dread Pirate Roberts and Dr. Horrible.

This year I couldn’t settle on an appropriate nerd culture role model, so I wore this:

I received a couple of compliments and only one “You look like you’re twelve,” but I just joined the contest for the fun of it. My outfit could never compete on the level of the guy who built a Transformer suit out of spare car parts.

But to my intense surprise, when they started announcing the winners, I had come in first!

In the children’s category.

Specificity was clearly not this contest’s top priority, though. Other winners, as announced from the stage, included:

“The robot”

stars.ign.com

“The Fantastiks”

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…and finally, “The Star Trek dude.”

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I asked Jean-Luc how he felt about being demoted from Captain to “dude.” Apparently it’s a little like dressing as food and being mistaken for a middle-schooler.

Picard did dance with me, though. My level of excitement was probably sufficient to put me on some kind of watch list for deranged stalkers of fictional characters. I elected not to mention my own tenure on the Enterprise.

It's My Party

By the time most of you are reading this, it’s already my birthday. Actually, it’s probably months past my birthday and you are delving into my archives because I’ve become an overnight viral sensation whose every word is like platinum honey from the petals of a fragrant orchid.

I’m turning 25, which I plan to celebrate by exercising my new legal ability to rent a car. This age—which also entitles me to run for the House of Representatives—is pretty much the last of the privilege-granting birthdays until I turn 50 and get to join my local senior center (Light Yoga Thursdays, anyone?). I don’t really intend to become a senator (30) or run for president (35), so it’s going to be a long, arid stretch to 50 without earning any further practical, age-based rights.

As you may have divined, I’m also celebrating by not writing a real post this week—you know, the kind that requires effort. Instead, I’m going on a short vacation (see above, re: car). There will be hippies, though, so this basically guarantees a topic for next week.

Also, I plan to eat one of these:

(I think this picture is from Steak ’n Shake, but the sundae of my dreams comes from the 66 Diner here in Albuquerque.)

There’s no better birthday present than a stepping stone on the journey toward diabetes.

Anyway, if you’re looking for something funny this week, I strongly recommend the following video, which is (SPOILER ALERT) not related to the rest of this post.

Special Bonus Anniversary Double Post Spectacular!

Now that it’s technically May 10th because I still haven’t gone to bed yet, Clarafication is officially a year old!

Many thanks to everybody who’s been reading during that time. For those of you who have come on board recently, here’s a special look back to my humble early days…

…when I was just a girl with some free time and the face of a newt. I’m really glad my elbows have filled in since then—it makes typing easier.

In case you’re wondering, appropriate one-year blogiversary gifts include worldwide fame and tremendous quantities of money. I will also accept cake.

How I Did Not Save Christmas

I didn’t draw anything this past week because of Christmas. I did get to climb in a dumpster at work today, though. If this sounds like fun, you need a more stimulating job.

See, a couple of weeks ago I borrowed my roommate’s plastic Christmas platter to take a bunch of cookies to work. The cookies lasted about three hours, and the platter got repurposed for a swanky executive event in another part of the building. I figured it would turn up eventually. A single fried chicken thigh can spend six months in our office fridge unmolested, so nothing terrible could happen to a heavy plastic tray in the ten days before Christmas.

As it turns out, that is not the correct answer.

This morning at work I remembered that I should retrieve that platter before my roommate gets back from her Christmas vacation, so after a cursory but fruitless search, I sent out an inquiry to the staff.

Ten minutes later, a coworker came over to inquire how much the platter cost and where it was purchased.

Apparently, in a pre-holiday cleaning frenzy, the tray was mistaken for a disposable one and purged. And then the trash went out.

Luckily for me, the garbage truck doesn’t hit our neighborhood until Tuesday. All I had to do was fish around a little in the dumpster we share with a few nearby buildings. I was even a little bit excited, since my job does not include a lot of field trips.

The good news is that now I know what the neighbors got for Christmas. The whole top layer of the dumpster was Barbie playset boxes and sacks of wrapping paper, all of which I could reach from the outside. Last week’s office trash was farther down, though, so I glanced at my open-backed shoes and jumped in.

I knew that one of our neighboring businesses dealt with large, feces-rich birds (it seems they board parrots). I did not know that Monday is cage-cleaning day. The shoulder-high mound of discolored, dribbling newspapers convinced me to get out of the dumpster and call my roommate to confess.

She says the tray is not emotionally irreplaceable, so I will not be returning in the wee hours of the morning with hip waders. And my pants should be okay after a couple more washings.

Ultimately, I have emerged with further validation for my policy of never throwing anything away without watertight evidence that I will never need it again. Also, I’m pretty sure I don’t want a parrot.

Popcorn and Stuff

I have spent the day eating day-glo orange cheese popcorn, which a vendor thoughtfully provided for my office. If every staff member were to eat as much of it as I have, we would need about 650% more popcorn.

It’s in one of those big cans with the cardboard divider, so there’s butter flavor and caramel corn as well, but those are clearly inferior products. We also have another can featuring white cheddar popcorn instead of the traditional atomic tangerine. That one is tasty too, but it cannot measure up to the full-on flavor magic chemical onslaught of the orange kind.


I do love Christmas for reasons other than the abundant food, like family and Jesus and hanging jingle bells on things. But it’s definitely the season that most reveals my level of self-control, which is roughly that of an attention-deficit hummingbird on crack. That’s why it only took me 32 hours to get through an entire bag of Reese’s peanut butter-filled chocolate bells, including the 15 hours when I left them at work.

The candy came from my excellent office Secret Santa, who had correctly divined that I am essentially a tall, well-educated eight-year-old. Thanks to her, I also have a new desktop collection of colored pens and things that light up. I acquired these items on a scavenger hunt through the building, featuring rhyming clues and the freezer. It was pretty much the best day ever.


She probably figured out my overall maturity level when she saw me eating a cupcake someone brought for the breakroom. This process requires attention to each of the elements involved.

There’s the frosting, which should be slurped off in one smooth swoop. The cake may be devoured in one bite for the very brave, or in up to five with breaks to lick up the crumbs. Then the paper remains, with its fine coating of concentrated delight. You should skin this off with your teeth, working around the circle and punctuating with noises of pleasure.

I do that last part in the copy room by myself.


In conclusion, here are some more shiny things.


UPDATE: Looking at it in the light of day, I see that this post doesn't make a lot of sense. It's like I just spit up the contents of my brain onto the web and pretended to connect the dots. Then again, that's pretty much what the internet is like as a whole, so I don't feel too bad.

Anyway, sorry about that. If you want, you can try not sleeping for a while and see if that helps. Actually, if you do that, just read the whole site and tell me how it goes. Preliminary research suggests that I get a lot funnier with decreasing brain function.

The Challenge

I know this week’s post is late, and I’m sorry. I’ve been busy. This is why:

A few days ago, I (and the rest of my office) received the following urgent message from our CEO:

In case anyone missed the important part, here it is again:

I am aware that my boss composed this message to be festive and cute. At the same time, a person presented with an offer like this would be crazy to refuse it. Or at least that person would not be me.

After a trip to Hobby Lobby and a few hours with the hot glue gun, I was able to show up on Tuesday as follows:

(TIP: If you get hot glue on your glasses, get used to having it there. It is now an immovable structural component.)

As it turned out, while my coworkers seemed pleased with the outfit, no one was surprised. A couple of them had been taking bets, not on whether I would dress like a turkey, but on which day. Apparently I'm becoming predictable.

How a Ride for Five-Year-Olds Defeated Me Twice

When I was three, my parents took me to Disneyland right after Christmas, along with my aunt, uncle, and four-year-old cousin. I had recently received a baby brother for my birthday, and by Christmas he was doing fascinating things like not crawling yet. The camcorder was also new that year, resulting in hours of footage like this:

My cousin had a new baby sister of his own, and he was exactly as thrilled about the arrangement as I was. Our grandparents kept both babies while the rest of us went to California, though, so Chad and I spent most of the trip shouting “no babies!” where most kids would say “Look! Mickey!”

Most of my memories from this trip consist of the ways I thought I might die. Flying Dumbos? I will fall in the water and drown. Monstro the Whale? I will be attacked in the darkness, then fall in the water and drown. Hall of Presidents? Abraham Lincoln will kill me with his creaky, double-jointed hands, then find some water where I will drown. Splash Mountain? We did not go on this ride because my parents thought it would be too scary. I thought it sounded great.

Of all the attractions bent on my destruction, though, the most horrifying was Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. By the time I had my last Wild Ride-induced nightmare around the 8th grade, my memories of it had boiled down to darkness, multicolored fire, and unrelenting full-body terror. Naturally, when I went back to Disneyland in college, I had to try it again.

My friends and I lined up behind six dozen parents with toddlers, listening to jaunty music while a giant Tigger the Tiger bounced by. I smiled at all the happy children and reflected that my memory must have been faulty—Disneyland wasn’t scary! It’s the Happiest Place on Earth!

Do you know what happens on that ride? You climb aboard a little car that speeds through Toad Hall, crashing through doors and fireplaces before it leaves through a wall and starts terrorizing the town. After almost running into buildings, pedestrians, and the river (you will drown!), you are tried and sentenced to prison. You promptly break out through the prison wall and ride through darkness until a light approaches—and then a whistle sounds—and then a train runs you over and you die. After that, you go to hell. It’s full of red light and fire and stalagmites and stalactites and laughing demons and the screams of children oh wait that’s you and WHY MR. DISNEY WHY???

If your childhood lacked this particular trauma but you want the souvenir psychological scars, try watching this video with the lights off and multiplying it by a billion.

In the end I escaped with my life, but my dignity is still lying in one of those tunnels.

Superpowers, Part III

If any of you thought you had figured out my super alter-ego’s weaknesses, you didn’t count on the power that makes me wise to your plots:

#3. Super Paranoia

My dad worked in law enforcement for the federal government for a couple of decades. His security-consciousness extends to keeping the extra keys to the gun safe in a different gun safe, and I learned the ancient ways at his knee.

• I keep all doggy doors bolted shut, as well as all cat doors, because some burglars are very small.
• When I get into my car at night, I always check under the reusable shopping bag I keep in the back seat, just in case any of the very small burglars are also carjackers.
• When running errands, I do not leave mail in my car right-side up because then the bad guys know my address, know that I’m not there, and also know that I’m super important because Publisher’s Clearing House has once-in-a-lifetime offers waiting just for me.

Here is a step-by-step guide to how my power of Super Paranoia keeps me alert to the dangers lurking in everyday life:

1. Go to the gym and change into stylish, high-tech gym clothes.


2. Place gym bag in locker #80 like you do every single time.

3. Get distracted by something shiny on the floor that turns out to be a gum wrapper.

4. Carefully fasten lock onto locker #82.

5. Watch “International House Hunters” while you use the elliptical trainer. Pretend that you are not fascinated by this show and do not go to the gym at this time specifically to watch it. Talk out loud to the people on TV, even though you are listening to it through headphones—the person on the machine next to you surely enjoys your banter.


6. Return to the locker room, bleary-eyed from a whole 30 minutes of exercise and visions of the half-gallon of ice cream in your freezer.

7. Recognize and unlock your lock.

8. Stare, horrorstruck, into the empty locker. Your bag is missing!

9. Open and close the locker in disbelief. Notice the number. Realize, “This is not my locker. OH NO! THIS IS WHERE THE STALKER REATTACHED MY LOCK AFTER STEALING MY CLOTHES AS TROPHIES!”

10. Check locker #80 in case the stalker left any clues behind. Find your gym bag, all the contents still folded that special way you invented so that you could tell if anyone had touched them.

11. Go home, confident that if any danger had existed, it could not have hoped to escape your keen detection.

NOTE: If you think that you, too, may possess the power of Super Paranoia, it’s easy to test on any national holiday featuring fireworks. I personally spent about six hours of July the 4th being extremely alert to the ever-present possibility of home invasion.