Today I learned what "Rick Roll" means.

I'm taking a break from writing a term paper to bring you this update:

For some reason, I often manage to ignore the existence of slang terms and put off looking them up for a long time. People use these terms regularly and I continue to ignore them and pretend like they don't exist. Much later, I end up getting confronted with one directly, and whoever is talking to me looks at me like I am a complete moron for not understanding things like "ROTFLSHMSFOAIDMT" which I actually still could not explain to you even though I just Googled it.

Anyway, in the interest of relevancy and of sharing my love for whoever you are reading this, I am going to link you to a bunch of websites that are worth sharing. I pinky swear that I would tell you if any of them were not safe for work. Without further ado, here are the first six things that popped into my head:

• http://bit.ly/12DTYK9
• http://bit.ly/11UnhR4 and accompanying gif: http://bit.ly/170EVM0
• http://bit.ly/109MJYX
• http://bit.ly/18tPPdG
• bit.ly/ZHVPJU

Someday maybe things will get really weird around here and I will post all of the things that I can think of that are funny in a really screwed up, twisted way, but today is not that day.

This post is terrible and I apologize. It's finals week and sharing is caring and if anything funny happens right now, it will be at my expense grade-wise and I am really hoping that doesn't happen.

It would be pretty neat if you decided to comment with funny internet things or Tweet 'em at @DaisySqueaks. I could use a break from writing and studying.

The Cat Who Cried "MEOW"

The little striped cat has a one-cat
party in a box of packing peanuts

This post is based on a conversation that I recently had with a very grumpy Daisy:

There once was a little striped cat who liked to tease big dogs through the window, frolic, and eat grass. Often, she would come inside after eating grass and barf on things. One day, she wanted out, and her humans obliged, and she ran in front of a moving truck, across the street, and into someone's back yard. Her humans promptly stopped opening the door wide enough for her to leave.

Every sunny day, the cat asked to be let out. She meowed at the humans, but they ignored her. So, she meowed again, this time (with all of the sadness and pathetic-ness she could possibly muster) she asked to be let outside.

Unfortunately, all that her humans heard was "MEEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW", but they understood that she wanted to be let out.

The little cat continued to be kept indoors, but she kept trying, and the humans heard "MEEOOWWW!", and understood that she wanted to be let out.

Someday, the little cat is going to have a real emergency. A burglar will get in, or she will fall off of something and hurt her little foot, or she will fall into the toilet... and she will cry "MEEEEEOOOOOOOOWW!"

And her humans will say "NO, you can't go outside right now" and she will say "no, I am having an emergency!", and her humans will hear "MEOWWWWW!"

And no one will listen.

And it will be sad.

Marcus Sleep-Talks: Part 1

Sometimes, Marcus sleep-talks. Apparently he used to sleepwalk, but now the worst of it is confined to sitting up suddenly in bed or getting up and standing at the side of the bed looking lost.

Generally, when he talks in his sleep, it's completely incoherent. This usually wakes me up and, in my just-woken-up stupor, I assume that he's actually saying something meaningful and I proceed to get very confused. This used to send me into a near panic-state, because I would think that something very important was going on that I needed to know about... but now Marcus's sleep-talking usually go something like this:

Marcus: "slkjdlsf!"
Me: "What?"
Marcus: "slkjdlsf!!!!"

Me: "What?!!"

Marcus: "slkjdlsf!!!!!!!"

At this point, my brain usually un-fuzzies just enough to allow me to distinguish between English words and vaguely-English sounding nonsense syllables, and I tell Marcus to go back to sleep. He always seems happy to do so. 

Wednesday night, I had a hard time getting to sleep. This is not uncommon, but usually Marcus falls asleep right away and eventually I get bored enough that I fall asleep. At what I am guessing was around 1AM, Marcus started chuckling to himself.

Me: "What?"

Marcus: "Oh hey there!"

Me: "You were laughing in your sleep"

Marcus: "I haven't fallen asleep yet"

(He had clearly been asleep prior to this, but I thought that he was awake and somehow didn't remember falling asleep or waking up, but I later discovered that he was asleep the entire time.)

Me: "Oh, why were you laughing?"

Marcus: "I avoided something"

Me: "...what?"

Marcus: "The second time you tried to kill me, I avoided something."

Me: "I think you were dreaming"

Marcus: "Pfft. Okay."

And then he rolled over and promptly resumed sleeping quietly. 

Major Accomplishments of Dead Week

"Dead week" is what colleges call the week before finals, but there really isn't anything "dead" about it. The goal of the week is to study and prepare for finals. Today, my major accomplishment was making Daisy barf in the kitchen.

To clarify, Daisy is our cat. Sometimes she squeaks, but usually she is a lot louder than that.

To clarify even further, I didn't actually make Daisy barf. See, Daisy has a terrible habit of barfing in places that are difficult to clean. This is usually the carpet or rugs, but she has been known to throw up in our bed and on Marcus's pillows. I once woke up to cat barf on the side of the bed that I am supposed to sleep on. (I actually sleep in the middle of the bed because sleeping Lauren is determined to cuddle and sleeping Marcus is usually about 400 degrees and wants nothing to do with it.)

Anyway, Daisy hopped down from the water heater in the bathroom last night and started to barf on the bathroom rug. The illustration is slightly inaccurate, as I was peeing at the time. In a heroic, selfless gesture, I shoved Daisy onto the kitchen floor... and then yelled into the other room that Daisy barfed, causing Marcus to clean it up.

You would get such nice pictures if I weren't too lazy to actually draw anything.

Easy clean up cat barf = daily accomplishment. I only need one, right?

Dear, Past Lauren (How to Bake Banana Bread)

Step 1: Buy way more bananas than you and Marcus will ever eat. When bananas start to go bad, freeze them and then forget about them and buy more bananas. Tell yourself that you will make smoothies because smoothies are healthy and you want to be healthy. Remember that you can't be bothered to clean anything ever, especially the blender, because you will never be a real adult. Give up on smoothies.

This is what happened when I Google searched "so many bananas". Via

Step 2: (Probably several weeks/months later) find a huge bag of frozen bananas in the fridge. Decide to make banana bread. Look up recipes. Get out a mixing bowl and all of the dry ingredients. When you go to measure out dry ingredients, you will realize that you don't have a measuring cup or measuring spoons. Instead of stopping to think about what you are doing, you will decide that this makes things more fun. Guesstimating is a valid form of measurement*, so go ahead and throw together those dry ingredients. At this point, you will realize that you don't have any of the wet ingredients except for a bunch of frozen bananas. Hide the bowl of dry ingredients in the top of the cupboard so that Marcus won't notice what you've done.

I know the frozen bananas look like a bag of slugs, but I really wanted 

to illustrate a future point and it seemed wrong to include only one visual. 

Step 3: (Several weeks after Step 2) you will randomly crave banana bread and, having accumulated even more old, frozen bananas, this will seem like the perfect time. Now, you will have eggs and milk, but the recipe will call for butter. Make the first substitution that comes to mind, which will be something like vegetable oil and water, because you remember someone telling you once that EVOO is not for baking. Grab that bowl of dry ingredients out of the cupboard and assume that nothing weird has happened to it.

Continue to guesstimate. Make sure to include a preposterous amount of cinnamon and nutmeg that the recipe did not call for. Add way more bananas than the recipe calls for and don't bother to thaw them first. You will realize that this was stupid and that you are too impatient to wait for anything to thaw. Repeatedly stab the bananas with a fork and then when you can't stir anything, use your hands to stir, which will turn them into ice cubes. Take this as a sign that you should remove your hands and taste test everything, because if the batter tastes good, the bread has to taste good.

I imagine that bananas do not like to be stabbed. 

Step 4: Pour your banana bread into some greased pans. Even though it says to bake for an hour, check your bread every five minutes by stabbing it with a sharp object to see if it comes out clean. When it does, pull bread out of oven. Do not wait for it to cool.

Whoever thought that the "food" editing option on Marcus's iPhone camera app. would come in so handy?

Step 5: Decide your banana bread is awesome. Get friends who don't bake to help you eat everything before anyone else can taste it and ask for the recipe.

Final step: Regret not taking pictures of the process. Decide to illustrate. Remember that you are the worst MS Paint user in the history of MS Paint users. Do it anyway. Apologize profusely.

Also, if you're curious, this is the recipe that I butchered.

*I work in a chemistry lab, where guesstimating is generally frowned upon.