Netflix

Out The Window

The other night I was watching a new show, because, amazingly, there was no Drag Race franchise available and I’d finally finished rewatching all one thousand seasons of Seinfeld. It was a kind of cute show called Locke And Key, about a family that moves to their dead dad’s ancestral home, which turns out to be haunted and full of weird fancy keys that do assorted different things, like letting you go out one door and enter any other place you want. Although the characters were fairly archetypical and predictable, I was pretty far into the show, but after a few episodes, it started to get really dumb and illogical. Finally, during one episode, there was a showdown where (spoiler alert), the teenaged boy who killed the dad escapes from jail and comes to the family home, manages to hold the entire family at gunpoint even though there are three of them and two are bigger than him, then ties them all up. Except for the oldest son, who comes home unexpectedly, attacks the gun-wielding villain, disarming him, and punching him several times in the face. But then the villain suddenly, even though he should be comatose, manages to find a key in the son’s pocket, and how he managed to do that is a f*cking mystery, but he pulls it out, seems to instinctively KNOW that it sets sh*t on fire, and then in the pyromaniacal confusion, finds the gun which has skittered away, and has now captured the son as well. At which point, I threw the remote in disgust and changed the channel. Now, I’ve had my own novels criticized for “rushing the ending” but seriously, how drawn out does an ending have to be? I mean, git ‘er done, am I right? I’m really tired of these shows that always have to prolong the agony, and that’s why I love my new show pick, Ozark, where the villain says he’s going to do something bad, and then he literally throws a guy out an 80th story window. And I was relaying all of this at dinner on Thursday night:

Me: And then he just threw the guy out the window. Like, done.
Kate: Now that’s what I call a defenestration.
Me: Lol, he wasn’t a tree, KATE.
Kate: What?
Me: Defenestration is when you strip the leaves off something, like what Agent Orange did to the trees in Viet Nam.
Kate (laughs): No, it’s not! It’s when you throw someone out a window. You’re thinking of defoliation.
Me: (looks up definition on phone): Nah…?
Kate: Have you seriously been using defenestration this whole time as a way to explain to people that the trees have lost their leaves in the fall?
Me: Perhaps.
Kate (shakes head): Okay, English teacher.

But seriously. How the hell is there one specific word for throwing someone out the window (in fact, vocabulary.com refers to the word defenestration as “frighteningly specific”)? Like, how many people were getting regularly thrown out of windows that Samuel Johnson, inventor of the dictionary, decided we needed one word to describe that very precise type of murder? Strangulation is a type of murder, but it’s still an umbrella term for all kinds of things, like strangulation with a rope or a garotte or your hands or a defenestrated tree branch—I mean defoliated, sorry. And stabbing? Another umbrella term. You can stab someone with a knife, a fork, a sharp spoon, an ice pick, an actual umbrella, and even a defoliated tree branch, but you don’t see anyone inventing singular words for that, like—well, okay, there’s knifing, but it’s not one special kind of knife. And based on my research, you could even be stabbed by a swordfish, which I discovered when I googled “ways to die” and came across a website called Final Choices, which claims to be an “end of life planning” website but where I found an article called “Death is inevitable. How you die can be very random. Here’s a light-hearted look at strange ways to die”. And these included:

Being killed by an explosive while trying to steal a condom dispenser
An undertaker being crushed by his own coffins
Being swung by your ankles by a clown and hitting your head
Eaten by a drove of pigs
Lethal sherry enema

None of these are, in fact, light-hearted and I question the sense of humour of the website owners. Thankfully, nowhere in the list was “being overcome by chlorine gas because you put too much chlorine in the hot tub”. But apparently, approximately 24 people a year are killed by champagne corks, so where’s the word for THAT, SAMUEL?! Honestly, this website is terrifying, and proof that there are worse and more random ways to die than being defenestrated.

Anyway, Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to all of you. Stay away from windows.

Atlas Shrugged

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day. I woke up and after a few minutes, I looked at my phone. There was a new notification from Facebook Marketplace exhorting me to check out the latest thing they had decided was “Just For Me”. And obviously, it was a clock. But not just ANY clock—a mid-1800s gingerbread clock, and it was only $10! So I contacted the seller and made arrangements to pick it up. I was about to leap out of bed, but then Ken came in with a card, inside of which was an assortment of LCBO gift cards, and if you don’t live in Ontario, LCBO stands for Liquor Control Board of Ontario, and that’s what they do. They control the sale of liquor here, and you can only buy it from their stores or other ‘official’ outlets instead of at grocery stores and corner stores and off people on the street like you can almost everywhere else in the world. But now I was flush with the potential of buying a lot of wine, and on that high, I demanded that Ken take me clock-shopping:

Ken: But you already have 47 clocks.
Me: Most of them don’t EVEN WORK, KEN.
Ken: But I was going to make a little wooden boat and put this plastic lion on it.
Me: That’s very cute. But the clock is just up the road, and coming with me can make up for you not bringing me breakfast in bed.
Ken: Sigh. Fine.
Me: Great! Also, I bought a jigsaw puzzle from someone in Brantford, so if we leave now, we can feed two birds with one…bag of birdseed or whatever.
Ken: You mean, kill two birds with–
Me: NO.

So off we went. I had put the address into my GPS, and it directed us to a house. A white house with a blue roof. But the number on the house was different than the address the guy had given me, so I messaged him:

Me: We’re here but the number doesn’t match. Can you resend the house number?
Guy: It’s the white house with the blue roof.
Me: OK, we’re here.

So I rang the bell, and I saw a woman through the window scurrying around inside, but she didn’t come to the door. I rang the bell again, and she yelled, “That door is locked!” and I was like, “OK, I’m just here for the clock!”  Then she poked her head out the side door and yelled, “I don’t have a clock!” and slammed the door.

By this point, I was a little frustrated and also feeling gangster-y, like “Give me the clock and no one gets hurt!” but then Ken realized that the guy lived to the north of the highway and we were south and I was like “Is that up or down from here?”, but long story short, we found the guy’s house, and wouldn’t you know it—it was also WHITE WITH A BLUE ROOF.

Then we picked up the jigsaw puzzle and made it back home within the hour. And within that very hour, Atlas decided that the remote controls for our satellite dish and our ROKU streaming stick were exactly the thing for a mid-morning snack. We walked into the house, clock and puzzle in hand, and were greeted by shards of plastic strewn all over the family room. And out of the four AAA batteries involved in this scenario, WE COULD ONLY FIND 3.

So that’s how I spent my Mother’s Day—terrified that my dog was going to die. As for him, he was quite nonchalant about the whole ordeal:

Me: What’s wrong with you?! Those aren’t food!
Atlas: Says you. They were quite tasty.
Me: You could get really sick!
Atlas: Meh, I feel fine now. I can’t guarantee how this will play out around 3 a.m. though.

At any rate, it’s been a week. We still haven’t found the battery, either in the house or in his poo, but he seems perfectly fine, and based on the sheer quantity of the poo over the last seven days, it doesn’t appear that he has a blockage. But now, whenever I want to watch Netflix, I have to push his nose.

Also, competition on Facebook Marketplace must be getting pretty stiff, because people are starting to use sex to sell the most random stuff:

The Shane Of It All

On Tuesday morning, I was getting ready for work when my phone rang. I wouldn’t normally answer an actual phone call that early (or any time really unless it was family) but it was a Toronto number and I work with several people who live there. So I put down my blush brush and said, “Hello?” A woman’s voice answered: “Hello, I’m calling from Doctor ____’s office for Shane Brien.”

And there it was. Like an elusive ghost from the past, Blazefordayz Shane had suddenly reappeared.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Shane hasn’t had this number for a few years.”

The woman sounded confused, but said, “Okay, thank you. Goodbye” and she hung up.

For those of you who haven’t been here long enough to know the saga of Shane Brien, let me remind you quickly. I received a company cell phone about 4 years ago. Almost immediately, I began getting text messages about Soca parties, Facetime calls from Shane’s mother, messages from Shane’s jealous girlfriend (“You better not be with that Angela”) and invitations from his friends to play soccer, go to Vegas, and smoke weed, as well as various job offers from temp companies. In fact, one of my favourites was the time I was offered a ‘warehouse’ job, and after a certain amount of contemplation, I offered to get a team together and requested the blueprints to the warehouse (you can read all about this in My Week 226: All About The Bordens). The response was a confused “What do you mean?” and I realized I may have misjudged the situation.

Over the years, the calls and messages have continued sporadically. I tried to hunt down Shane, but to no avail. Unfortunately, there are several ways to spell both ‘Shane’ and ‘Brien’, leading to about nine permutations, none of which matched anyone on social media that I could see. But I did find out tidbits of information first from a jewelry chain, who had the number associated with a Shane Brien in Brampton. He also had a Canadian Tire Points Card, long expired. And now this—a doctor’s office calling for him.

It made me very concerned. After all, Shane and I go way back, and at a certain point, I began to feel quite motherly towards him. But after all these years, people STILL don’t know he changed his number and they’re STILL looking for him? And then I had a terrible thought: What if Shane had been murdered?!

In case you’re wondering why this escalated so quickly, I started watching a crime show on Netflix about a hotel called The Cecil where people have died or disappeared from. In the very first episode about a Chinese student who went there and was never seen again, I immediately, after an aerial shot of the roof, announced, “She’s in the water tank.” Ken looked it up online, and she was, indeed, found in the water tank, obviously because ‘putting bodies in water tanks’ is the new ‘tossing them into a dumpster’ in the world of crime dramas, and I’m REALLY good at solving mysteries. But it got me thinking, What if…

So bear with me: Shane Brien, a popular young man, goes to a jewelry store to purchase two gifts, each an engraved bracelet. One is for his fiancé, and the other is for a woman named Angela whom he is seeing ‘on the side’. After a heavy night of drinking and Soca dancing, Shane inadvertently gives the wrong gift to the fiancé, who is understandably furious. Little does Shane know that ‘Darla’ (that’s what I’m calling her) is the type of woman that you should never scorn. She begins to plot and plan. She goes to Canadian Tire and drains Shane’s points account with the purchase of an air fryer to establish her alibi—she couldn’t possibly be responsible for Shane’s impending disappearance—after all, she just bought an air fryer to make him chicken wings for f*ck sake! (Darla swears a lot when she’s nervous).

But she’s a small woman—how on earth will she exact her revenge on the duplicitous Shane? Then she has a brainstorm—she calls a ‘temp agency’ which is really a front for a criminal enterprise and asks to hire a ‘cleaner’. And as everyone knows, if a ‘warehouse job’ is a money heist, then a ‘cleaning service’ is obviously who you call when you want someone disappeared.

The ‘cleaning service’ is expensive, but Darla has access to all of Shane’s accounts as well as his passwords. She arranges to have them send Shane a text message advertising a rooftop SOCA party. Party of ONE, but Shane doesn’t know that yet.

“I’ll meet you there,” Darla says with a sweet smile. But she doesn’t. She just sits at home eating chicken wings (those air fryers are pretty goddamn awesome), waiting for the call telling her the ordeal is over. The ‘cleaning company’, in the meantime, has lured poor Shane up to the rooftop of a local hotel with the promise of sweet Soca music, and deposited him in the water tank. He’s never seen again.

Darla, of course, has the password to his cellphone account, which she cancels, although she continues to text Shane to establish a solid alibi and also throw suspicion onto ‘that Angela’. But the one thing she didn’t count on was that Shane’s cell phone number would be passed on to me, a crime drama afficionado. I hope I’m wrong about all this, but I rarely am.

Of course, there could be a much simpler explanation—Shane got a new cell phone and forgot to tell people he’d changed his number. But somehow, I doubt it…

Also, check back here on Wednesday for Creative Wednesdays—I have a big announcement!

A Magnetic Personality

It’s been a fairly busy week, and what with the lockdown, I haven’t done much outside of work. I DID watch a few things on Netflix and rented a couple of movies, which were kind of hit and miss. Now, this isn’t a movie review site but I’m happy to give you a very succinct lowdown of some of my viewing choices:

Wonder Woman 1984: Pile of crap
Tenet: WTF was that?
Bridgerton: Oh yeah. Damn.

I was excited to find out last night that the second season of Blown Away, the glassblowing competition show, is now on Netflix. And while that doesn’t sound very exciting, there’s a surprising amount of drama and tension, especially since the contestants are working with fire and molten glass—I definitely recommend it. Ken once did a glassblowing course and here are some of his pieces. He also made the wooden vase on the right:

But one of the highlights of the week was finally having a virtual Zoom appointment with an orthopedic surgeon about my shoulder. I deliberately wore a tank top underneath a baggy cardigan in case he wanted to virtually examine it. But he didn’t—he just asked a bunch of questions, then said he was sending me for an MRI. His next question really flummoxed me:

Surgeon: Do you have any metal in your body?
Me:
Surgeon:
Me:
Surgeon: Suzanne? Are you frozen?
Me: No, I was just thinking about it.

And if you know anything about me at all, you’ll know that two things were going through my mind simultaneously.

1) DO I have any metal in my body? How would I know that? I did a mental catalogue and came to the following conclusion: I have fillings in my molars that look kind of silver-y, I have earrings but they can come out, my toenail polish has glitter in it and that can easily be removed, but this is JUST WHAT I KNOW. I mean, I could have metal in my body without even being aware of it. When I told Ken this later, he laughed and asked how that would even be possible, but here’s a scenario:

Dude 1: And after the anal probe, the aliens left metal in my body.
Dude 2 (gasps in horror): That’s awful!
Dude 1: I know, right?
Dude 2: Now you can never have an MRI!

I mean, I don’t believe in alien abduction, mainly because I don’t believe that any alien life form in its right mind would travel hundreds of years across several galaxies in multi-generational ships just to stick a camera up Bob’s ass. But there are other ways you can unknowingly have metal in your body, like did I accidentally swallow a penny when I was a kid and it’s lodged somewhere in my intestines? Also, I’ve had several surgeries—did one of the doctors leave something behind? And then I talked to my dad, who’s a former machine shop teacher, and he said that when he had an MRI, they made him get an eye scan in case he’d ever gotten a metal shaving in his eye and hadn’t realized it. So see, you can never be sure about metal—it’s sneaky.

2) The other thing that went through my mind at the same time, obviously, was what it would be like to ACTUALLY have metal in my body, like what if my arms could transform into forklift arms or something, like a Wolverine, you know? I’d be walking down the street and hear a cry for help and see an old lady (well, older than me anyway) lying trapped beneath a stack of wooden pallets that had just fallen on her, and my forklift arms would shoot out and rescue her by removing the pallets one by one. It would be a slow rescue, but it still counts.

And then Kate just read that over my shoulder:

Kate: Forklift arms? That’s a terrible power. Go to Professor X with that, and he’d show you the door.
Me: No, he wouldn’t. It’s just as good as Wolverine, I mean what’s his power? Spikes shoot out of his hands? You can’t lift sh*t with those.
Kate: He’s also immortal. And you don’t need forklift arms to lift stuff when you HAVE ARMS.

But I still want forklift arms, despite the mockery. And of course, the other big question everyone asks when you tell them you’re having an MRI is “Are you claustrophobic?” I started to get worried because from what I understood, the MRI machine is a giant magnet that they stick you in. Last night, I woke up around 3 am as per usual, and lay there thinking about it, and when I imagined myself in a tight cave, I did get a little panicky. But then I googled pictures of MRI machines and they look more like very thick donuts, and you lie in the hole. So as long as I can get out either end, I think I’ll be fine. Then the best part, and I’m being completely sarcastic here, is that they called and my appointment is at midnight. Midnight? I don’t have to worry about feeling claustrophobic—I’ll be asleep. Unless the giant magnet triggers a hitherto unknown genetic mutation involving forklift arms…

 

Not So Happy Endings

This week, I’m going to be talking about endings. Now before you gasp and exclaim, “Not you too, mydangblog!” let me clarify that I am NOT talking about giving up blogging, although I just realized that I’m almost at my 6 year anniversary of posting EVERY SINGLE SUNDAY and isn’t that something to celebrate? I might just have to have a glass of wine or two. No, when I say ‘endings’, I mean movie endings. Normally, I leave the movie reviews up to my good friends at Assholes Watching Movies, Often Off-Topic, Silver Screenings, and Geek Cred, but lately I’ve had some very unhappy movie experiences that I feel compelled to rant about. Because frankly, it seems like the film industry, and television too, has gotten damn lazy and I’m fed up with picking a movie for Kate and me to watch and then 2 hours or more later, turning to each other and saying “What the f*ck was that?” I pay good money for Netflix and Prime, so I expect better. Also, I have a film degree, (Sidenote: once, when I was 20 years old, I had to sit through Michael Snow’s Wavelength. I fell asleep and when I woke up 20 minutes later, the scene hadn’t changed. It was still better than the movies I’m going to talk about), so I’m going to be using some very technical terms like ‘stupid’, ‘ridiculous’, and ‘ridiculously stupid’.

First, before you read on, I’m warning you that there will be several spoilers pertaining to my most recent, dire viewing experiences regarding Sons of Anarchy, Hereditary, Midsommar, and appropriately, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, so if you really feel that you absolutely must watch any or all of these examples of the stupidest endings I’ve ever seen and you want to go into it without any bias—well, I’ve given you the heads up, so you can’t blame me later. So here are the subjects of my complaints in chronological order:

1) Sons of Anarchy

I recently rewatched all seven seasons of Sons of Anarchy because I remembered it being a pretty good series. I mean, Charlie Hunnam is no DeNiro, but he’s still pretty convincing as Jax Teller, the president of a very naughty motorcycle club. The whole series is purportedly based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and as a former English teacher, I can attest that it does follow the plot of a Shakespearian tragedy very loosely. It would be hard to follow more closely since Hamlet was five acts long and SOA is seven YEARS long, but still, I could see the parallels more clearly this time, right down to the end. If you know anything about tragedies, the big thing is that the death of the hero restores the moral order. So in the last scene, our hero Jax is on his dead father’s motorcycle, flying down the highway being chased by an army of police cruisers. He sees a transport truck coming in the other direction; close-up on Jax as he smiles beatifically and takes his hands off the handlebars, holding them out like he’s flying. It’s perfect, in all its self-sacrificial glory. And then—the worst f*cking green screen I’ve ever seen in my life of Jax slamming into the front of the truck. It was so unrealistic, it was laughable, and the tears I’d been crying moments before turned to snickers. Could you imagine Shakespeare ending Hamlet by shooting a mannequin dressed in a jerkin and tights out of a cannon with Horatio yelling, “And flights of angels sing thee to thy death, dude!!”? Exactly.

I give this series 2 Tragic Flaws out of 5 because the series was pretty good, but that last scene was appalling.

And I think SOA started the curse of bad endings for me, because these next three are even worse.

2) Midsommar

A group of American 20-somethings take a vacation in Sweden to visit the commune where their friend grew up. And yes, nothing about that premise makes any sense. What American vacations in Sweden? Do Swedes even live in communes? At any rate, the main character, Dani, has nothing to lose because her family all dies at the beginning of the movie in a very nasty way. Then she tags along with her boyfriend of several years who’s been trying to dump her for a while, as they go to their friend’s weird-ass village. One of the first things that happens is that they witness a ritual where this old couple jump off a cliff, which is incredibly gory. And they don’t immediately leave, so how much sympathy should we have for them? Personally, the first red flag for me would have been being told I had to sleep in a single cot in a communal bedroom full of snoring men and screaming babies. “I’M ON VACATION!” would have been my reaction as I stomped away to find a Marriot somewhere. Anyway, a lot of people die, it’s super-creepy and nonsensical, then Dani’s cheating boyfriend is paralyzed by some drugs and sewn into a dead bear carcass, and he’s left in a hut with a bunch of other carcasses, and the hut gets set on fire, and apparently this is so there can be a good harvest. You want a good harvest? Instead of murdering people, you could always just water and fertilize your crops, but I guess ritual homicide is more fun. The last shot is a close-up of Dani wearing a flower hat, smiling as she watches the hut burn down, and according to the internet, there is an explanation for this, but I’m going with “My boyfriend was a jerk, so I’m very happy that he died in agony dressed as a bear”. At any rate, this movie was a direct rip-off of Robin Hardy’s 1973 film The Wicker Man which is actually a much better film with a very good ending.

I give Midsommar 0 Magic Mushrooms out of 5 because you had to be stoned to appreciate it and I don’t do drugs, although Kate pointed out that she FELT like she was stoned while watching it.

3) Hereditary

Imagine my shock a few minutes ago, when I was looking up “What was the name of the girl in Midsommar?” and discovered that Hereditary was directed by the same guy? So it makes sense that this movie was also ridiculous. It started off really well, with the creepy little miniatures and whatnot, but the pivotal scene that begins everything revolves around the older teenaged brother, Peter, being forced to take his thirteen-year-old sister to a party that he tells the mom, played by Toni Collette, is a “school barbeque”. First, what Mom forces her little girl to go and hang out with older teenagers that she doesn’t know, especially when the kid wants to stay home? Kate’s 22 and I’m still like “Stay home with me and we can watch crap movies together”. Second, the little girl has a fatal nut allergy—we know this because early in the movie, she’s very obviously asked by the mom if the chocolate bar she’s eating has nuts in it. Still, the sister with the fatal nut allergy is sent out without an epipen or even a warning not to eat anything that might have nuts in it. Then, at the party, there’s a very obvious shot of people chopping a HUGE quantity of walnuts and making cake with them, cake that the brother tells her to eat, which she does, because they have BOTH seemingly forgotten that she has a fatal nut allergy and neither think to ask if the cake HAS NUTS IN IT. She has an allergic reaction and that leads, obviously, to her accidental decapitation. Yes, I said ‘decapitation’.

Long story short, it becomes really super-weird and it turns out that it was all a plot by some bizarre cult to turn the brother into a demon prince with the sister’s spirit inside him. The last shot is a close-up of Peter wearing a paper, or maybe human flesh, who the hell knows, demon crown, surrounded by some other decapitated corpses, staring at the camera while the cult yells “Hail Paemon!”

I give this one 0 Walnuts out of 5 because it was stupid.

4) I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Ugh. The first 45 minutes was great, kind of like a Get Out for white people. Toni Collette was in this one too, and she was pretty good as the unhinged mom, which seems to be her wheelhouse these days. The premise was a woman and her boyfriend going to meet his parents for the first time. The first part of the film was from the perspective of the woman, who had a bunch of different names by the end, but initially she was called Lucy. They meet the parents, who are weird and keep appearing older and younger in different scenes which was cool because Kate and I would yell at each other, “Wait, his hair is gray now? WTF!” and she wasn’t allowed to go into the basement. At first anyway, then she went down to do laundry later. Then suddenly the whole thing changed once they left the house and there was a snowstorm, bizarre ice cream servers, a high school janitor, interpretive dance, the musical Oklahoma, and the whole thing now seemed to be from Jake, the boyfriend’s, perspective. At which point, I turned to Kate and said, “Is it almost over?” and she replied “There’s still over an hour left.” Thankfully, we finally came to the last shot which was of the janitor’s pick-up truck in the snow. So maybe Jake was the janitor, maybe the janitor was Curly from Oklahoma, who the f*ck knows or cares? Apparently, the director of this film, Charlie Kaufmann, is willing to explain it all to you. Frankly, if I need a User Manual to understand a movie, then maybe the director should have worked harder to make it clear. This movie is also based on a book, which is now on the bestseller’s list again, because people are dying to know if the book explains things any clearer than the stupid movie.

I give this 1 Tulsey Town Ice Cream Cone out of 5 because the beginning was good.

And now I’m going to rate this blog post by giving it, and myself, 3 1/2 Glasses of Wine out of 5 because it was a bit long and ranty. The End.

Detective Duos I’d Love to Watch

On Tuesday night, I was bored and there was nothing good on TV, so I decided to watch a rerun of a show whose title had intrigued me for a long time: “Houdini and Doyle.” From what I understood, it was about a detective duo at the turn of the century, and I love detective shows. One of my all time favourites is the updated version of Sherlock Holmes called Elementary, starring the irascible Johnny Lee Miller, and Lucy Liu as Watson. I also adore Benedict Cumberbatch in the BBC version of Sherlock, which I’ve rewatched several times on Netflix, so I thought I’d give Houdini and Doyle a whirl. All I knew is that Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-American magician, and that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the Scottish author of the Sherlock Holmes series, among other things. I love magic and I love Scottish fiction writers (albeit a very small group) and I had high hopes for its ability to keep me happily occupied for the next hour while Atlas slept. Unfortunately, the TV show was—and I’m being polite here—absolute sh*t. Here are my main complaints:

  • The plot was ridiculous. This episode took place in a town where everyone except the local doctor and a little girl suddenly died. People were just lying on the streets in their period costumes, or keeled over their dinners of mutton and ale. Even the dogs were dead. And so were the mice—I know this because Houdini pointed out a nest of dead mice under a porch in a very obvious way in order to prove—well, I’m not actually sure what he was trying to prove. Houdini and Doyle eventually decided that everyone died due to a large cloud of carbon dioxide which had escaped from a nearby mine and which had asphyxiated the entire town. And as convoluted as that all sounds, it wasn’t even the ridiculous part. The most illogical part of the whole thing was their explanation regarding the survival of the doctor and the little girl. I was hoping beyond hope that since the show revolved around a famous magician that there might actually be a supernatural or magic-y rationale, like they were both alien mutants with cosmic lung capacity, or immune to the biological weapon that the government was experimenting with or something cool, but no. The doctor was in bed having a nap, and the little girl was sick and was also in bed. Therefore, they were BELOW the gas cloud and escaped its nefarious and deadly clutches. At which point, I yelled at the TV, “WHAT ABOUT THE DEAD MICE UNDER THE PORCH?! ? WHAT ABOUT THE DOGS? ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TELLING ME THAT ALL THE DEAD DOGS WERE TALLER THAN THAT KID’S BED?!” Yep, it made no sense whatsoever.
  • It made even less sense later, when having “solved” the first mystery, Houdini and Doyle then prevented the assassination of the President of the United States at a hotel because they had found a note with the words “King Edward” on it, and after thinking it was about killing the King, they realized it was the name of a hotel and got there just in time. All in one episode of 45 minutes (not counting all the commercials).
  • There were no magic tricks AT ALL. Considering the show stars one of the most famous American magicians of all time, there was a surprising LACK of magic-type stuff. Not even a f*cking card trick. They should have had Houdini in a locked closet, tied up with padlocked chains, racing against time to escape and thwart the assassination. Instead, he just knocked the gun out of the guy’s hand. Boring.
  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was Scottish, yet he spoke with an English accent. Yes, they sound different. The English always sound like they’re trying to schmooze you, and the Scottish always sound like they’re mad at you, thusly:
    English: Darling, can you please be quiet?
    Scottish: HAUD YER WEESHT, CHEEKY WEE BISSOM!!
    But Doyle was always like “Good Heavens! What the devil happened here, my good man?” instead of “Whit? Awae wi’ ye, numptie!” Yes, I know that the actual Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was well-educated and spoke the “Queen’s English”, but it would have added something to the show if he’d used spicy phrases and unintelligible dialect. The plot didn’t make any sense, so why should the dialogue?
  • Houdini sounded Canadian and the whole show had a distinctly Canadian feel ie: it was kind of amateur-ish, like Murdoch Mysteries, where a Canadian detective in the 1890s “uses radical forensic techniques of the time, including fingerprints and trace evidence, to solve gruesome murders” (imdb) along with his partner, female coroner Dr. Julie Ogden . An episode was once filmed in the town next to mine—we were at Wine Bayou bottling wine, and when my mom found out, she ran out on us mid-cork just for a glimpse of Yannick Bisson, who plays Murdoch. I’ve never seen her move so fast. Anyway, I wasn’t sure WHY I felt like it was so Canadian, then I googled it, and it turns out that the show “has Canadian producers and comes from the same production company as Murdoch Mysteries.” Mystery solved.
  • Last, throughout the show, Houdini kept insisting that you always know when you’re dreaming because “You can’t read in your dreams.” This is patently untrue. Just last night, I was reading Facebook posts in my dreams and some of them were just as annoying as they are when I’m awake—I don’t give “amens” to anything, and NO, I will not copy and paste your anti-mask rant regardless of my state of consciousness. But the kitten videos were a-DOR-able.

Anyway, in keeping with the current trend of unrealistic detective duos, like Murdoch and his Victorian female coroner partner, or Houdini and Doyle, I came up with a couple of my own.

1) “What The Dickens!”: This show stars Charles Dickens and David Copperfield, played respectively by Gerard Butler and Shia LeBoeuf. Because why the hell not? In the show, Dickens has time-travelled to the future and meets American magician David Copperfield. Together, they investigate the disappearance of many large buildings and monuments, and battle their arch-nemesis Uriah Heep, played by Betty White, who is as immortal as any supervillain. After they’ve solved every mystery (turns out it was Copperfield all along), Dickens returns to his own time and writes a very long novel called “David Copperfield” where he makes a LOT of stuff up, (he got paid by the word, after all) but leaves out the detective/magic part because he doesn’t want his heirs to get sued by Copperfield in the future for revealing his magical techniques.

2) “Fitzgerald and Wife”: In keeping with the fine tradition of married couple detectives, this show stars F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Every week, they are presented with a new mystery which they fail to solve because they are too drunk.

3) “Robbie and Doug”: This is a Canadian show starring famous author Robertson Davies, who almost won a Nobel prize, and Doug Henning, a Canadian magician who ran for Parliament as a candidate for the Natural Law Party, which believes that all the problems in the world can be solved by learning the art of “yogic flying”. In the show, Davies just grumbles a lot about everything because he’s 90 years old and Scottish, and Henning solves all the crimes by flying around and meditating. The show is cancelled when viewers discovered that Henning isn’t REALLY flying—it’s only special effects. Yogic flying is actually just bouncing in a lotus position, and everyone knows you can’t solve crimes by bouncing.

As a side note, I know that neither F. Scott or Zelda were magicians, but I liked the concept too much to leave it out on THAT technicality. Also Ken just read this, and got really huffy:

Ken: I can’t believe you criticized Murdoch Mysteries.
Me: I didn’t criticize it.
Ken: You called it poorly made and amateurish.
Me: That was a generalization. ALL Canadian shows are poorly made and amateurish.
Ken: The BBC is just as bad.
Me: What are you talking about? The BBC is awesome!
Ken: Next time you’re watching Masterpiece Theatre, pay close attention to the terrible production values!
Me: OK, Ken.

Ken and I would make a great detective duo:

Me: Ken. The puppy just threw up.
Ken: It’s 4 o’clock in the morning…what does it look like?
Me: Pretty solid. Doesn’t look like food. Kind of stringy.
Ken: Stringy…string…rope. Ah ha! He swallowed that little chew rope he was playing with earlier.
Me: I don’t see it around here anywhere. Good deduction.
Atlas: Better out than in.

In other news, I was recently interviewed by Jenna Neece, writer and editor. If you’d like to learn more about The Mystery of Mydangblog, you can read it here. 

Spoiler Alert

One of the bonuses of not being able to go anywhere for the last few months has been the ability to binge-watch TV shows without feeling guilty. Did I do a Tiger King marathon, becoming increasingly more disturbed and fascinated over the course of one delightful evening? You’re damn right, and I did the same thing with the Criminal UK/Spain/Germany series, Sex Education, Better Call Saul, Queer Eye, Picard, every Rupaul’s Drag Race episode available to humankind on a variety of platforms, and a myriad of other shows. And I did it all on WEEKNIGHTS as well as weekends. No remorse whatsoever. One thing I struggle with though, like many people, is that there are SO MANY shows out there to choose from that I quite often end up scrolling through lists relentlessly looking for something that catches my eye. Because more often than not, the titles make it very difficult to judge what a show is about. Tiger King was simple—it’s actually called “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness”. All three of those things are very enticing as far as I’m concerned. Same goes for The Haunting Of Hill House. There’s a house on a hill and it’s haunted—watch to find out what happens next! Then there’s The Witcher which is about a dude who’s a witcher—fairly self-explanatory if not a little derivative. And if you’re like “Hey! It was very original, dammit!”, let me summarize the premise for you thusly: a nearly immortal lone wolf-type who is very attractive to the ladies and has a relationship with a magical woman travels across a fantastical land with a group of dwarves. He and the dwarves skirt around a mountain containing their old mine looking for a dragon who is killing villagers nearby. Sound vaguely familiar? Of course, there are differences too—there’s a bloody and violent race called the Nilfgaardians who are kind of mutated elves—oh wait, that’s just like Orcs…anyway, it WAS a great show, and sorry for the spoilers, but if you’ve read Lord of the Rings, you already have a pretty good sense of the plot.

Speaking of spoilers, Ken and I were watching TV a while ago, and a commercial came on for a 6-episode mini-series about a female doctor who kills people with a hypodermic needle. The show was called “Mary Kills People”.

Me: Way to give away the ending.
Ken: Well, the whole commercial showed her killing people. It’s not like the title was the REAL spoiler here.
Me: Couldn’t they leave just a little bit to the imagination and call it “Mary May or May Not Have Killed People”?
Ken: At least we don’t have to watch it now.
Me: It’s such a dumb title. Can you imagine if the first Star Wars movie was called, “Luke Blows Up the Death Star”? What would be the point of seeing it? Why would anyone read Pride and Prejudice if it was called “Elizabeth Marries Darcy”? I like the trailer for Cardinal better.

Cardinal is another series I want to watch, but I have no idea what it’s about , except that there are two detectives investigating a murder in a cold town somewhere. The trailer doesn’t show much, except the one detective says to the other, “I’m happy to be working this case with you,” and then a block of ice containing what looks like a body is pulled out of a frozen lake. See, THIS is how it’s done, because at the end, I was like “What?! I need to watch this show and find out what happens. And who the hell is Cardinal? Is it a guy? Is it a bird? I need to know.”

It’s a certain fact that people HATE spoilers. Have you ever just seen a fantastic movie and you want to share it with a friend, so you only tell them the beginning? And then they say, “So what happens at the end?” and you have to first confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that they will NEVER see it themselves, because you don’t want to be the one who spoils it for them? Have you ever accidentally given away the end of a book, and had people look at you like you bought the last remaining rolls of toilet paper in the store?

Of course, there are people who deliberately give away the endings of movies just to be a dick, and they’re hated almost as much as racists. And they probably get punched in the face more frequently, even though the racists deserve it more. Seriously, I think the only way Donald Trump’s supporters would ever turn against him is if he finished every press conference and Nuremberg-style rally with “And by the way, the head in the box was Brad Pitt’s wife. Such a great movie.” So the people who decided to call the series Mary Kills People are not very astute, in my books. Unless…maybe the series isn’t really about a female doctor who kills people. Maybe it’s just a ploy to get people who’ve exhausted all other options to watch it, and then those people will be like, “OMG, it was SO good! I can’t tell you what happens, but it’s not what you expect…Oh god, I wish I could tell you! Are you sure you’re never going to watch it?!” And maybe the body in the lake in Cardinal was put there by a female doctor named Mary. Don’t tell me. Don’t spoil it.

In other news, my puppy’s a ho.

Oh, he’s as sweet as pie most of the time, but he has two teddy bears. One is name Blue-beary, the other is named Thurston, and he is regularly having relations with both of them. Indiscriminately. It’s simultaneously hilarious and horrifying. We play a PG version of a certain game that we like to call Marry, Make Merry, or Murder. He decided he wanted to marry me (he demonstrated this by licking my face, rolling over on his back and waving his paws at me), make merry with Blue-beary, which he did with incredible gusto for such a tiny thing, and murder poor Thurston by attempting to rip his furry face off. And then he made merry with Thurston right after, and murdered Blue-beary. But he still wants to marry me, which I suppose will wear off when I tell him that not only am I his Ma, we’re not even the same species. Spoiler alert.

My Week 270: Words You Can Say On (British) Television

There are a lot of TV shows that we watch in North America that are actually based on British shows. The Office is one of the better known examples, but there’s also House of Cards, Veep, and even Three’s Company, which was a TERRIBLE show in both venues. Sometimes the British version is better, and sometimes the American version is, depending on your taste, but the biggest difference between the U.S. and the U.K. is that British shows tend to be more racy when it comes to sexuality. Or at least more graphic, if my experience this week is any indication, and fair warning, if you’re uncomfortable hearing the word ‘nipple’ or ‘vagina’, then back away slowly and miss all the fun.

For a couple of years while I was living in Toronto, I loved watching a show called Botched, where a couple of well-known California plastic surgeons fix cosmetic surgeries gone wrong. It was a fascinating show, but also very frustrating at times due to the strange prudishness American television has about the human body. They don’t mind showing you a person being blown up or eaten by zombies, but if the person’s nipple is showing while they’re being ripped apart, then it’s an R rating for sure. So on Botched, they were always fixing boob jobs gone wrong, but they would blur out the nipple so you could never actually see the new result. One time, a woman had completely lost her nipple due to a botched surgery, so the surgeons got a tattoo artist to give her a new, 3D tattoo of one. I was so excited about how realistic it would look, but they BLURRED IT OUT! It’s a f*cking tattoo, for goodness sake! And it was the same thing every time someone had to have surgery on any part of the body that had to do with boobies or butts or genitalia—everything was censored. But still, it was a great show—the only problem was that when I moved home, I couldn’t get the channel anymore, so no more Botched for me, even if it was needlessly rated G.

But then I was scrolling through Netflix and I discovered another show called Botched Up Bodies and it was the exact same premise, only it was British. I immediately started watching it and if its American counterpart was rated G, this one is outrageously XXX. Not only are there nipples galore, but there are butts and balls all over the place. And vaginas—SO MANY VAGINAS. I had NO F*CKING IDEA that people were doing surgery on their lady parts. WHY???!!! The episode I just watched focused on a woman, I think her name was Sherry, who had had a botched “designer vagina” surgery. But the narrator is this really posh English lady so she said it like “designa” so that it rhymed:

Narrator: Sherry wanted the perfect vagina, but instead of getting the designa vagina she’d hoped for, all she got was a botched-up vagina.
Sherry: My vagina was lopsided. I was always so afraid of being judged for it so I had surgery to make it look more socially acceptable, more like all the other vaginas, but now my vagina is a nightmare.
Narrator: Let’s watch as Dr. Bob tries to give Sherry a nicer vagina. Ooh, that’s not good. Sherry’s vagina is a bloody minefield!
Dr. Bob: This vagina is an extreme fixer-upper.

The narrator legit said “Sherry’s vagina is a bloody landmine” and the analogy left me even more confused. So here are a couple of the questions that I have:

1) Who is judging people for their vaginas? I mean, who the hell is looking at them? Are people flashing them in the supermarket and then the other shoppers are all like, “Damn girl, that vagina looks asymmetrical—you need to get surgery”?

2) Who in their right mind would let someone put industrial grade silicone filler in their privates in an attempt to ‘even them up’? How do you even know it’s “lopsided”? Like how the hell are you seeing it? The only way I could actually see mine would be through a series of contortions that would most likely cripple me and there would be several mirrors involved. ANYTHING looks lopsided when you’re trying to look at it upside down and backwards.

3) What does “all the other vaginas” even mean? Where do you see THEM? Is there a gallery somewhere that I’m unaware of? I tried Google images and they’re all just cartoon vaginas, so is she trying to get one that looks like an artist’s rendering?

It’s a Fendi scarf.

4) What exactly is a designer vagina? Something from the Lagerfeld collection? Chanel Couture perhaps? Or that weird Fendi scarf as seen above? Is it like taking a picture of a hairstyle you like to your hairdresser and saying, “Do it like that?” or does the surgeon come up with the concept? And what if he’s really avant-garde or wants to make it all whirly like Seneca Crane’s beard in The Hunger Games?

Make it look like this.

And not only did they keep saying the word ‘vagina’ over and over and OVER AGAIN, they kept showing it. Like really close up. Which is when I realized that this show is perpetuating an anatomical myth. Sherry didn’t have surgery on her vagina, she had it on her LABIA, and I was like, “When did the word ‘vagina’ become an acceptable synonym for any part of a lady’s private area? Is this like how we say Kleenex when we mean tissue? But you wouldn’t say Kleenex if you wanted a sandwich, so can we just get the terminology correct and STOP SAYING VAGINA WHEN WE MEAN LABIA?! No wonder Brits are so confused—while I was googling “Gallery of Vaginas” an article came up with the headline “Half of Brits don’t have a CLUE where the vagina is… and it’s not just men!” and it’s probably because they watched this show. At any rate, the surgeons were able to remove the filler and reconstruct poor Sherry’s labia so that she didn’t have to worry about being judged any more. Well, we’re not judging her for her THAT, but…

Two other random thoughts:

First, Designa Vagina would be a fantastic name for a drag queen.

Second, I haven’t seen this show do any penis surgeries but I’m just waiting for the narrator to say something like “Stan’s penis is a bloody Gatling gun!”

My Week 254: I Invent More Reality Shows and Alex Trebek Hosts Them

Lately, Ken and I have been consumed with watching reality shows. No, not reality shows like The Bachelor or Big Brother, which we have never watched because, let’s face it, even if you like those shows, you have to admit they’re pretty dumb:

The Bachelor

Bachelor Guy: I was going to give you a rose, but then you ate sushi in a weird way.
Girl: I’m so sad now.

Big Brother

House Guy: I was going to save you, but then you ate all the sushi.
Girl: I didn’t eat all the sushi. It was Bob! And he ate it in a weird way!
House Guy: Bob! I might have known. You are evicted!

And please bear in mind that I have NEVER watched either of these shows and just made the previous sh*t up based on what I’ve seen on Twitter. I have no idea if I’m even close.

Ken and I, however, have been watching these very avant-garde-y reality/competition shows. The first thing we really got into was Forged in Fire, where 4 blacksmiths faceoff against each other to create knives and daggers and swords and whatnot. In the first round, they have to make a weapon and then test it on stuff like dead fish and sheep carcasses. Then it’s narrowed down to two finalists who go back to their “home forge” to create a super-weapon and isn’t a HOME FORGE the most incredible thing that you could possibly have? Like, “Hey honey—I might be late for dinner because I’m making a giant f*cking sword in my HOME FORGE”. Anyway, it’s a very cool show, with a judge whose only job is to attack things with the contestants’ blades and then say, very proudly like a happy dad, “Your blade will cut. Your blade will kill.”

The newest show we just watched on Netflix is called “Blown Away” and it’s a glassblowing competition, which might sound kind of tame, but BELIEVE ME, it’s very awesome and also the glassblowers get quite bitchy with each other. It started with 10 competitors and every episode there was a challenge, with one person “blowing the judges away” (I’m sure EVERYONE is glad the word ‘away’ is in there) and one person being sent home for being an utter disappointment. Spoiler Alert: I’m going to give away the ending so don’t read this if you’re planning on watching the whole season. In the last episode, it came down to Janusz, a very experienced glassmaker who was very technical and talented, and Deborah, a rather nasty person who was not quite as talented, but who talked a good game. They were tasked with filling a gallery space with something “immersive”, whatever the f*ck that means. Janusz did a whole series of pieces on climate change and hope for the future, and Deborah made a giant fried egg, a frypan, and a bunch of very phallic sausages. The judges were struggling with the whole thing, but then Deborah cried and said that her piece represented the way she’d been marginalized her whole life and SHE WON. With BREAKFAST. And there is literally a petition on Change.org to award the $60 000 prize to Janusz, so you can tell how much people were into this show.

Which got me to thinking. If I could create a new reality show, what would it be? Here are a couple of thoughts. Also, for the purpose of this post, Alex Trebek is the host of every show, because he is the best host of everything and I love him.

Show 1: Tanked

This show is a fish tank decorating competition. Every week there’s a new theme.

Alex Trebek: All right, contestants! This week’s challenge was “The 19th Century”. First up is Donna. Tell us about your tank, Donna.
Donna: Well, Alex, I tried to capture the essence of The Industrial Revolution by pumping coal dust into the water. I think I killed all the fish, but the concept is pure.
Alex Trebek: Interesting. Bob, tell us about your tank.
Bob: All my fish are wearing bustles and bonnets. It’s a signature 19th century look.
Alex Trebek: The judges have made a decision. Bob, please hand in your scuba diver ornament.

And take the corset off that scuba diver, damn it!

(*It’s been pointed out to me by a couple of people that there was already an American reality show called “Tanked”. I’d never heard of it, but apparently it aired on the channel  ‘Animal Planet’. To clarify, their version was about INSTALLING giant fish tanks; mine is about DECORATING little fish tanks. Plus my show has Alex Trebek while their show’s hosts got divorced and the show got cancelled.)

Show 2: Stick It To Me

In this show, the competitors have to make everything out of popsicle sticks.

Alex Trebek: All right, contestants! This week’s challenge was “Iconic Buildings”. Donna, what happened here?!
Donna: Well, Alex, I tried to recreate the Eiffel Tower, but as anyone who’s ever participated in a team-building exercise knows, popsicle sticks aren’t stable at great heights, especially when all you have to attach them together is masking tape.
Alex Trebek: That’s a shame. Bob, tell me about your structure.
Bob: I built a scale model of the Globe Theatre.
Alex Trebek: Didn’t the Globe Theatre burn down?
Bob (*lights match ominously*): That’s right, Alex.

This is how the Great Fire of London started, Bob.

Show 3: In the Bag

Who doesn’t love homemade purses?

Alex Trebek: I don’t understand what I’m still doing here.
Mydangblog: You’re the host of a reality show that I made up about people creating purses out of everyday household objects.
Alex Trebek: But–
Mydangblog: Shhhh. Everything is all right. Just ask about the purses.
Alex Trebek: So the challenge you were given was “purses made from clothing”. God, this is dreadful. Donna?
Donna:  I cut the bottom off the sleeve of a sweatshirt and hemmed it, adding a piece of cord. It’s now a cute satchel.
Alex Trebek (sighs): Bob?
Bob: I made a cunning “manpurse” by cutting the legs off these jeans and hemming the thighs. You can wear it as a fanny pack OR a courier bag.
Alex Trebek: Can I please go back to Jeopardy now?
Mydangblog: OK, but I want to be an answer in the Potpourri category, like “Who is a funny Canadian blogger?”
Alex Trebek: You mean “Who is a WEIRD Canadian blogger who keeps breaking the 4th wall?
Mydangblog: I’m good either way.

Is that a wallet made out of a tube sock?

We now return to our regular program.

My Week 225: Who The F*ck Is Daniel and Other Interesting Questions

On Friday, I had a rather stressful experience. I had been invited to appear on a local social media show to promote my novels, both published and upcoming, and I had to go to the taping on Friday morning. I had recently discovered how to use the GPS on my Google Map during our trip to Ottawa—it was invaluable in helping us actually FIND Ottawa, as well as our hotel and various museums. I used it especially for walking trips since it was December in Canada, and everyone knows that you calculate the possibility of walking ANYWHERE by subtracting the outside temperature from the time it would take to get to your destination. For example, 20 minutes minus 20 degrees means “hard pass”. I don’t think I’m doing the math right, but that’s par for the course, if you know me at all. Anyway, the taping for the show was at the Woodstock Curling Club at 11 a.m., so I programmed the GPS with the address and set out in my car at 10:25…

Hmm. It doesn’t want me to take the highway? OK, maybe this back way is faster.
 Turn right at Pittock Trail? There’s no right turn here.
Turn LEFT on Pittock Trail and turn around?! I don’t see a road. That’s a WALKING TRAIL.
Turn right on Landsdowne? OK, this seems familiar.
I’m lost. Where the hell am I? I should pull over and check the GPS.
How could it possibly take 41 minutes to get to the curling club from here?! None of this makes any f*cking sense! I’ll ask this old couple for directions.
How do you live in a city your whole life and NOT know where the damn curling club is?!
Oh my god, I’m going to be so late!! They’ll do the taping without me and I’ll never be famous in Woodstock! I should do what any normal person would do…
Ken! I’m lost and also this GPS is a piece of sh*t.

Sure enough, Ken was able to search the address from his work computer and guide me to the curling club. It was 7 minutes from where I was and I got there just in time (I’ll post the link when the show goes up—I’m sure I looked like a lunatic, all out of breath and whatnot, so it’ll be good for a laugh if nothing else). Then later, I was having lunch with my aunts and I had to go to Kitchener at 3 o’clock, so I looked up the address and it said it would take me 6 hours and 7 minutes to get there. I said to my aunts, “This stupid GPS is broken. How could it possibly take that long to drive to—oh. It’s set to ‘walking’ instead of ‘driving’. That explains Pittock Trail…”

So one mystery solved. But I have a few others. And since I was just nominated for another Leibster by the creative and inventive sci-fi guy Simon at Planet Simon, and because everyone knows that if you nominate me or tag me for anything, I will either answer your questions in my own weird way or simply make up my own, here are my responses to questions that I have been asking myself this week:

1) Who the f*ck is Daniel?

This is an excellent question and one that I can’t currently answer. On Monday, I decided to watch a little Netflix on the big TV in my condo. I haven’t done this for a while, because I normally use the TV in my bedroom, but I’d been halfway through Lord of the Rings at home before I left to go back and wanted the grander scale of the 36-inch living room screen. I scrolled down to the “Continue watching for Suzanne” section, but that’s NOT WHAT IT SAID ANYMORE. And I was like, “Continue watching for ‘Daniel’? Who the f*ck is Daniel?!” I messaged my current roommate, hoping that he was a friend of hers but no. I messaged my previous roommate, the one with the fruit fetish, thinking that she and Daniel had shared a cantaloupe or something, but she was adamant that she had never had anyone over to our place, let alone someone named Daniel. So now all I can think is that “Daniel” broke into my condo, logged me out of my Netflix account, watched a bunch of cooking shows and documentaries about Paleo dieting, then forgot to hide his tracks by logging himself back out.

2) How many shop vacs is too many?

Four. Four is the number of shop vacuums that Ken found in his workshop last week when we decided to clean our attic. Two of them are brand new in boxes. Why the hell do we have four working shop vacs? Ken says he doesn’t remember buying them and I certainly didn’t, so where did they come from? Did Daniel put them there? Every once in a while, I say to Ken, “Remind me not to buy any more jars of butter chicken sauce for a while—I have three in the cupboard right now.” Apparently, I need to start doing that with shop vacs.

3) Am I the queen of sexual innuendo or do I just have dirty-minded co-workers?

You be the judge. As I mentioned, Ken and I were cleaning out our attic over the holidays. When I got back to work, one of my colleagues asked me what I’d done over the break.

Me: Ken and I went up to the attic. We hadn’t been up there for a long time. It was pretty dirty.
 Colleague: Hubbadahubbada!
Me: What?
Colleague: Nice!
Me: NO. We actually went up to our attic to clean it. How does that sound even remotely sexual?
Colleague (laughing): I don’t know—maybe it was the way you said it.

Then later, I was trying out my new SodaStream machine, but I forgot to screw the bottle in tight and the water went everywhere, including all over me. Right after, the same woman came into my office:

Colleague: Are you OK?
 Me: I just soaked myself. I’m so wet!
Colleague: Ho HO!!
Me: With WATER. From my SodaStream!!

Then we both started laughing hysterically and making attic jokes. I’m just glad I didn’t tell her that the bottle wasn’t screwed in tight enough.

4) Should grown-ups sleep with stuffed animals?

Of course. If children are allowed to do it then adults should be too, and there should be no stigma attached to that. I personally have two stuffed animals that I currently sleep with: one is a duck named Quackers, and the other is a tiny shark named Brian. It is a complete coincidence that I started tucking Quackers, who used to belong to my daughter, under my arm at night after she left for university. Quackers is just the right size to keep my arm slightly elevated and prevent my shoulder from aching in the morning and that’s the ONLY reason I sleep with him. Brian, of course, protects me from the monster that lives under my bed.

Safe from the monsters.

5) How did Ken almost kill your horse?

Last year, Ken joined a service club in town. He does a LOT of stuff with them, fundraising and whatnot, and it’s good that he keeps busy when I’m away for work. But a couple of weeks ago, I had this strange dream where Ken and I were taking our horse to the vet. We don’t have a horse in real life, but in the dream, we were pulling a horse trailer and driving along, when suddenly we passed a park where all the other members of the club were assembled. Ken looked at them, and then looked at me with this really wistful expression on his face, and he wouldn’t stop staring at me, so finally I said, “FINE. Go be with your friends!” And then he leapt out of the truck and ran off, leaving me to take the horse to the vet by myself. I started driving up a really steep hill and I freaked out about the horse falling out the back of the trailer, so I turned around and went back, but I got lost. In a situation eerily close to real life, I couldn’t get my GPS to work, so I called Ken and yelled, “Thanks for almost killing our horse, KEN!” I don’t know what any of this means except that Ken needs to be more equine-conscious and that next time, I’m taking Daniel with me. He’s not a very clever criminal but I’ll bet he knows how to program a GPS.

So I know that I’m supposed to pass the Liebster on, but I also know that some people don’t like to answer the questions or whatever, so here’s the deal: if you can solve ANY of my mysteries, then you automatically get one and then you can choose to post your own answers to your own questions or go back to Simon’s post and answer HIS questions. However you like. Deal? Let the detecting begin!