New Life Form Discovered in Eastern United States

Biologists the world over are expressing cautious excitement over reports of the discovery of a new species of animal life that was discovered last Friday.

Reports were received of a number of small furry creatures residing in the refrigerator of a Massachusetts family’s home. Animal control officers on the scene then reported the hitherto unidentified animals to the scientific community.

The Chenopodiaceae Beta Fuzzae, or Fuzzae Beet as it has been nicknamed, appears to thrive in the dark, chilly ecosystem of the vegetable drawer, and requires only as much light as is offered by the little lightbulb that goes on when the refrigerator door is opened. It resembles a common beet root in appearance, but with a coat of downy fur, and is believed to be part vegetable and part mammal. It was observed roaming among the piles of arugula and turnip greens, and exhibited signs of rudimentary intelligence. “One of them looked right at me, and I was sure it was going to start speaking,” said Bob Loobsteele of Animal Control, who was first to arrive on the scene.

A family of the Fuzzae Beets have been extracted from the rest of the colony their natural habitat, in order that their behavior may be studied under more controlled conditions.

The implications of this discovery are far-reaching. “With so many other species being threatened by climate change, it is heartening to find that new life is evolving,” says Dr. Frank Murgentroober, head of the Springfield University Department of Paranormal Vegetable Phenomena. “We think it’s only a matter of time before more life forms are found lingering in the depths of neglected vegetable drawers, or even emerging from pizza boxes left under the bed in college dorm rooms.”

Dr. Wilma P. Snodgrass of Large Urban University, however, is a dissenting voice among the excited scientific community. “We think this may well turn out to be a hoax, or the twisted delusions of someone who has far too many vegetables on their hands.”

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This improbable report is brought to you hot off the presses of this week’s Monday Mission, which solicited posts in the style of a news article.

Introducing AHTV: The American Hovel TV Network

American Hovel Magazine, April 2007 coverAHTV
Lowering Acceptable Neatness Standards in the Home
…and Beyond!

Following the incredible success of American Hovel Magazine, the magazine dedicated to lowering acceptable neatness standards in the home, this month will see the launch of AHTV, the American Hovel TV Network. Here are a few shows that you’ll be able to see on AHTV:

  • Fashion Programming
    Laundry Day Style
    Getting dressed can be a challenge on those days when laundry is overdue. But with a little help from our fashionistas, you can throw together outfits that make a statement using what’s left in your closet.

  • Science and Nature Shows
    The Wild Kingdom: Indoor Edition
    Ever wonder what kinds of things are growing in your refrigerator? What sorts of animals have taken up residence in your garage or attic? Tune each week to find out.
  • Sit Coms
    The Oddly Compatible Couple
    Oscar is a messy slob. Felix is a messy slob. What happens when two messy people move in together? Hilarity ensues!

  • Dramas
    Law and Disorder
    A courtroom drama about a group of attorneys whose offices are in constant chaos. They’ll get to the bottom of the case, once they find the tops of their desks.

    The X-Piles
    Is that fuzzy gray thing in the vegetable drawer becoming sentient? Are rooms really disappearing in your home? Did aliens steal your remote? Join special agents Molder and Sullied as they investigate reports of supernatural occurrences.

    Max Clutter, P.I.
    Crime is a messy business, especially when Max gets involved. Join the Detritus Detective each week for a new mystery, as he searches for clues, missing persons, and his missing car keys.

  • Home and Garden Shows
    Trashing Spaces
    See some of America’s most beautiful showroom homes.Then see what happens when real families move into them.

    Martha Stewart’s Not Living Here
    Join our hosts, who are nothing like Martha Stewart, as they give ideas for ways to appreciate your messy home. Topics for upcoming shows include “Loving Your Dandelion Garden,” “Clutter Chic,” and “Feng Shui is not For You.”

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This programming is brought to you by…The Monday Mission, sponsored by The Flying Mum, now with more TV programming than ever. Nothing brightens teeth better!

you just didn’t get it, dude

Yesterday’s Monday Mission, a project calling for posts in the form of a rejection letter, which I found to be a somewhat challenging mission. It’s not that I’m unfamiliar with rejection letters, mind you. It’s just that I couldn’t decide where to go with it. I explored multiple options. I posted the pirate one, but I also wrote another one. And not wanting to be wasteful, I’ll post it today.

Ms. Alejna, dude,

It’s a total bummer, but I gotta tell you. You didn’t get the job, man. It sucks, I know.

Your resume was, like, the awesomest. And you totally rocked the interview. We were all like, “woah, she knows her shit.”

But then there was this other dude. Or dudette, really, like yourself. And she rocked the interview even harder. Her quals weren’t as good, and for a while, we were all like, “can she even do the job?”

But then we went out for a beer, and we flipped a coin. And it was tails. Ouch, man.

It sucks to be you. And it sucks for me that I gotta be the one to tell you. Mr. Wilcox pulled a rock when I was sure he’d be all about paper, freakin’ paper pusher. And so I got stuck with it. Whatever.

Yeah, well, right. Ya know. It sucks, and all that. But if it makes you feel better, this place kinda blows sometimes.

Later,

William R. Bartholomew, III

Vice President, or Something Like That
Acme Stuff, Incorporated

unable to offer you a position at this time

Dear Mr. Rackham,

I regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you a position as nanny in our home at this time. While we truly appreciated your time and efforts in coming to the interview, we feel that there is not a good match between you and our family.

Both little Emma and Neil were greatly intrigued by your colorful anecdotes. When Neil admired your stylish eyepatch, it was very considerate of you to take it off to let him wear it. The empty eye socket greatly impressed both children. However, I’m sorry to report that both children have been visited by frequent nightmares since the interview.

In addition, their teachers have sent home notes expressing concern that both children have been using increased amounts of inappropriate language at school. Neil was reported to have asked the lunchlady, “what’s crawled out of th’ bung hole, me hearty wench?” while Emma allegedly made another first grader walk the plank during gym class. When queried about this, Neil simply responded “Arrrr!”, and Emma scowled and waved what appeared to be a cutlass at me in a menacing way. (If this item was a gift from you, I must stress that this is far too generousa gift for such a small girl.)

You clearly have some strong ideas about discipline, and Mr. Smith and I appreciated all of your advice. However, we feel that corporal punishment, especially using the cat-o’ nine tails, is somewhat too harsh to use with children under the age of 7. There is also the matter of personal hygiene. We had hoped that our nanny would work with us to foster a reverence for cleanliness and neatness. However, both children have been quite taken with your statement that “washin’ more than twice a year be fer lily-livered scalliwags.”

While we had only expected that you would stay for the 45 minute inteview that we find typical, it showed great initiative that you were intent on moving in with us at that time, and remarkable perserverance that you chose to camp out in our yard upon hearing that we were not yet ready to make a decision about the position. We must ask, though, that you please consider departing as soon as you can pack your trunk and retrieve your parrot.

We wish you success in your search for employment.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Jane Smith

p.s. Enclosed please find the names and address of a family on the far side of town who may be in need of a nanny.

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This post is offered up as part of this week’s Monday Mission, which asked for posts in the from of a rejection letter. It can also be considered a follow-up post to last week’s submission of a resume.

On the topic of rejection letters, though, you should really check out this one, which is the funniest rejection letter I’ve seen.

Shiver me timbers! Give me a job! Arrrr.

Dirty John Rackham
jrackham@arrrrr.com

OBJECTIVE

To contribute to your organization’s success through the use of exceptional customer service, managerial, and plundering skills. Or to find a position as a nanny. Arrrr.

QUALIFICATIONS

  • Hard-working, tough-skinned swash-buckling individual with questionable personal hygiene
  • Exceptional versatility, adaptability and swaggering
  • Solid managerial, administrative and looting experience
  • Ability to manage multiple tasks in a pressured environment.

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
Interpersonal and Managerial skills

  • Interacted with and kidnapped a wide variety of personalities while pillaging, plundering, and wreaking havoc.
  • Delivered excellent customer service and conducted in-house plundering promotions
  • Proved multi-tasking abilities by scheduling and supervising crew of scurvy dogs, bilge rats and lily livered scalliwags
  • Served as right hand to notorious Bloody Captain Roberts (whose original right hand was lost to gangrene)

Administrative skills

  • Completed, submitted and burned edges of invoices and maps for buried treasure.
  • Fondled large sums of loot and booty.
  • Maintained rum inventory control.
  • Looted petty cash, payroll, inventory, accounts receivable and payable.
  • Said “Arrrrr!” a lot. (Mayhaps that be an interpersonal skill.)

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

  • Sailin’ the seas since I were a young lad and had all me teeth.

EDUCATION

  • I learnt things th’ hard way. I got th’ scars t’ prove it, ye landlubber. Arrrr.

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This post can be blamed on a confluence of unrelated events: the Monday Mission, which asks this week for a post in the form of a resume, and the approach of Talk Like a Pirate Day (which is coming up on Wednesday, September 19.) This resume is very loosely based on a sample resume. Actually, quite a lot of lines from the resume worked pretty well from that verbatim. Arrrr.

(I should have done laundry) yesterday

(I should have done laundry) yesterday

Yesterday
All my laundry seemed so far away
Now I need to dress for work today
Oh, I believe
In yesterday

Suddenly
I’ve lost half the clothes I want to wear
Can’t find any of my underwear
Oh, yesterday
Was laundry day

What I’ll
Have to wear I don’t know
This shirt won’t do
I spilled
Something blue now I’m screwed
For meeting day

Yesterday
Laundry seemed an easy task to shirk
Now I need some socks to wear to work
Oh, I believe
In yesterday

Where I
put my pants I don’t know
I couldn’t say
Goofed off
All day long now I long
For yesterday

Yesterday
Laundry seemed an unimportant job
Now I’ll look like a disheveled slob
I’ll wear what I
wore yesterday

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This post can be blamed on the Monday Mission, a phenomenon with a long history of which I only recently became aware, and which is currently being hosted by Painted Maypole. The mission, which I chose to accept and inflict on any unwitting readers, was to rewrite some song lyrics.

If you enjoy this sort of thing, I must refer you to a masterful song re-writer. Mixmaster KC brought to the world an enlightened version of Baby Got Back, as well as a host of other insightful song rewrites.

Update: Still not had enough? To read others of this Monday’s Mission, head over here.

finding pants in unexpected places

From the pantheons of pants I bring to you the the ultimate excercise in pants procrastination¹. Upon my recent realization that the word procrastination contains the letters of the word pants, my mind has suffered an onslaught of other words which contain pants. You see, pants are that pervasive. So I offer to you the following bit of complete nonsense, just for the sake of using all these pants-containing words.

I recently read an article about a distinguished pantologist, who is being recognized for her life’s work.

She is best known for her prediction of an alignment of planets, for which she used computations based on her observations of a species of bee that pollenates resupinate plants. She also recently received international attention for her study on the mating habits of the spantangus, large percentages of which were highly unexpected by the scientific community. She has hundreds of publications in dozens of fields, on topics ranging from pantheism and theories of pantisocracy, to histories of Pakistan and Palestine, to the cultivation of eggplants. She holds patents for many inventions, including a method for stapling using only dental floss, and various contraptions, such as one for plasticizing antipasto displays for restaurant windows, or another for separating vast quantities of egg whites from the yolks. It is hard to say which of her many achievements is most representative of her work.

She is a passionately creative spirit as well, and one of her favorite leisure pastimes is spattering colorful paints on paper, and pasting on patterns of pastina. She is also a talented pianist, and tapdances whenever she has the opportunity.

The pantologist attributes much of her early explorations into vast areas of knowledge to the eccentricities of her parents, with whom she has a strong relationship, and whose intellectual partnership was an inspiration to her. Her father was once a pantomimist, known for a routine of silent stamping of feet (clad in his signature pantoffles) and for his impersonations of 17th century philosophers and contemporaneous politicians. He left the entertainment industry after a complaints from a reviewer suggesting that his acts catered only to the whims of his sycophants. He then became quite reclusive, and dedicated his efforts to designing closets and pantries for small apartments. Her mother once had aspirations to become a paleontologist before becoming a veterinarian, with a specialization in elephants (which are known to be disproportionately challenging patients). Upon retiring, her parents devoted their time to running the family’s plantations, which primarily grow plantains and peanuts.

The distinguished pantologist’s record is not untarnished, however. There were some phantoms of rumors of misappropriation of funds, as well as some speculation about the ethics of some of her experimentations. There was the well-publicized scandal of 1983, during which she received some criticism for a study on the benefits of regular naptimes, in which participants were misled about the compensation they would receive. Her interpretations of data have also sometimes been called into question, and her explanations have not always been transparent. Her fan base, however, anticipates that these minor problems will soon be forgotten, and that she will be remembered for her accomplishments.

An award ceremony, an event with all the trappings for which elaborate preparations were made, was held last week. The article contained a brief transcript of the highlights of the award presentation, during which the distinguished pantologist surprised the audience with a spontaneous anecdote about an embarrassing incident from her youth involving the mispronunciation of the word cephalopod. The article was also accompanied by a few images, some with rather cryptic captions.

Okay, there it is. Anyone want to count how many words in this post contain the letters p-a-n-t-s? (I actually haven’t counted yet myself. I have work to do, you know.)
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¹ An expression for which I now have (thanks to azahar, and the anagram generator to which she referred me) a veritable abundance of anagrams:

How about A Catnap Torsion Sprint? Or A Transact Pinion Sport? Or maybe A Tsarina Popcorn Stint?