Friday Links: Russian Cat Portraits and Dolly Parton

Posted on by thepoelog

Welp, I made it through another week as a single pet parent and house caretaker. I’ve only peed my pants imagining someone was breaking in to murder me about 25 times this week, including one very terrifying instance where I was woken up at 5 a.m. by the sound of XFE’s shower mirror falling in his shower. There were some tense minutes while I crept around the house, wielding a high heel as a weapon, until I finally pinpointed the source of the clatter.

Needless to say, my nerves are a bit thin. Every the dutiful boyfriend, even from thousands of miles away, XFE has bought me a nice, long massage tomorrow. And I’m very much looking forward to that.

While it wasn’t a good week for rest, it was a good week for random stories on the Internet. Enjoy!

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  • Since I dug around and learned about my heritage, it only seemed fitting that I would do the same for Princess Petunia. Turns out that she’s Russian royalty, of course. We’ll be commissioning one of these cat portraits to hang in the Hermitage any day now.
  • XFE was in Japan for work last week, and well, I love bunnies, so a story about a Japanese island that used to be testing grounds for chemical warfare and has now been left to be overrun by the former lab bunnies suits my weird sense of humor.
  • First Subway footlongs are not actually a foot long and now this? Oh, I smell a future class action lawsuit, by the way, which I will join and from which I expect to be paid in mounds of insufficiently stuffed Oreos. I’ll make it a work. I’m a survivor.
  • According to people who were there, members of this Peruvian “uncontacted” tribe asked for bananas, rope and a machete (ummm, quick tip: don’t give the strange angry people machetes). I think they were asking for Double Stuffed Oreos.  They obviously got worked up and hostile because they couldn’t make themselves understood.
  • Travel is so exhausting. This kid has the right idea.
  • Dolly Parton is my spiritual guru. I decided this while walking quite tipsily in the middle of the day in London in 1997. Me, and my older and way cooler British friend decided right then and there that Dolly was an absolute genius and we bonded over our love for her. Suddenly, the American Revolution seemed ridiculous and the key to British-American relations swas so clear: Dolly. Parton. This video sums up that day pretty damn perfectly.
  • Being blunt is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, insults just bounce off of you (slide 1) and you’re the life of the party because of your honesty and big mouth (slide 14). On the other, people are just so damn sensitive (slide 2 and 7). Here’s hoping you think I’m an ironic genius anyway (slide 20).

Friday Links: Bunnies and Breaking Bad Edition

Posted on by thepoelog

My bosses have been out this week. By bosses, I mean my editor, who’s on vacation this week and next. And my lifestyle-coordinator-manager XFE. He’s abandoned me for a cross-country golf trip with his dad to celebrate Senior XFE’s retirement.

This means I have to single-handedly run a multimedia information empire (hey, we post videos sometimes), and attend the approximately bazillion meetings that my work boss attends (including meetings to discuss work products that cannot be worked on because of mandatory attendance at said meetings where we discuss the potential work products that can someday be worked on if one is not in meetings.)

Literally, one of my notes from a recent meeting suggests we take a Facebook poll on which filter to use on an Instagram of our forthcoming infographic, and then write an online story about the poll results, which we should then pin via our association Pinterest account and reblog on our campaign/initiative’s Tumblr. Obviously, tweeting from our various Twitter accounts along the way. It was all very META. And hopefully, a joke.

Wait, what was I saying? Oh yes, not only am I booty-cheek deep in all that outlined above, BUT, I also have to care for and feed myself this week, including setting my own alarm, which I failed to do this morning. (And also, feed and care for my chubby cat. But really, that’s just a footnote.)

As a result of managing my own life in both a professional and personal sense, I am quite the tired bunny. In fact, I’m such a tired bunny, I stole this gif of a tired worker bunny from this Texan, who is a freaking hilarious genius.

 

Every time I’ve felt stressed out the last couple of days, I’ve looked at that gif. It slays me.

Here’s some other things from around the InterWebs that have helped me get through the week.

  • In honor of Shark Week, a video of a dissection of a Mako shark. Spoiler alert: his last meal was a 200-pound seal.
  • I feel like every year, just as Porktober is poking its pointy pink ears up over the horizon, there’s a story warning about bacon shortages. Here’s this year’s. And now I’m going to be obssessed about Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus. Awesome.
  • The Duggars better watch out. Deadbeat dad Orlando Shaw, who has 22 kids from 14 different women, says he’s got a reality show in the works. I dunno, if they couldn’t get All My Babies’ Mamas made, what chance does this guy have?
  • I hate WalMart and I love libraries. We need more of this.
  • Sephora is nirvana and I run around like an insane person who’s never been exposed to toiletry products every time I go in there. Which is why I try to order online instead.
  • Did you know there are an estimated 23,000 nuclear weapons in the world? That and other world enders are outlined in this terrifying infographic. Might as well hit up the casino (casino.org produced the infographic. No subtlety there.)
  • And finally, the most amazing thing in the history of ever (in just six minutes): a middle school musical version of Breaking Bad. These kids deserve an Emmy. Or, at least, a trip to Comic-Con next year.