The Time the Otters Saved the World

I somehow have the day off today, and am waiting for an important phone call. The person who is supposed to call me only has my home phone number. So I cannot leave the house. I have a million billion errands to run and I CANNOT LEAVE THE HOUSE. This is killing me. In a little while if they have not called me, I’m going to have to call them and leave my cell phone number on their voice mail, which I think is probably unprofessional because it’s a very important phone call and that’s going to make me look like a fool (and also when I left the original voice mail DAYS ago it was all DO NOT LEAVE MULTIPLE VOICE MAILS but at the TIME I did not anticipate they would be SO SLOW ABOUT CALLING ME BACK DAMMIT), a fool I tell you, but I don’t get a day off very often and if I don’t get my shit done, I may not have another chance to do it this week, which means I will be eating toast for days. And I’m almost out of bread. In related news, I’m still the most impatient person on the face of the earth, and waiting – for ANYTHING – makes me itchy like I have hives. Somehow, when the patience genes were being handed out, I was not in the correct line. I’m sure I was in the line for hair that sticks up all over the place or crazy eyes or something along those lines. BAD CHOICE IN LINES, AMY.

No, my phone doesn’t look like this, goofy. It’s like a cheap Walmart cordless or something, I don’t know.

I know you’re getting a lot of random posts lately. Sorry. I have to write these in-between times and my brain’s kind of scattery. It’s the way things will be for a bit. Someday we’ll get back to normal here in Amy-land. Well, at least I hope we will. I can’t promise we will, but no one can promise anything, can they? Nope. They can try, but they’re liars, all.

I’d be remiss not to mention what today is. You all know what today is. I won’t go all “NEVER FORGET ALWAYS REMEMBER” on you. I’ll just say, I hate today because it makes me random-weepy and I assume that will happen until I am an old, old Amy with a million cats. I’m going to attempt to avoid the weepery today but I think we all know how that’s going to go. OK FINE. There will be a LITTLE weepery. I’m only human. Shush, today’s a hard day that brings back a lot of bad memories. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

HOWEVER! In much much happier news, it’s Jim and Mrs. Jim’s anniversary. Happy anniversary, Jim and Mrs. Jim!

In additional fantastic happy news, our Science Fellow, Andreas, is expecting a new baby!

Well, HE isn’t. That’d be super-sciency, wouldn’t it? GROUNDBREAKINGLY sciency. Tabloid-newspaper sciency. No no no. His fiancée is obviously the one who will be giving birth, of course. But he AND his fiancée are expecting their second baby in just a few weeks! Their first child is (and I am admittedly biased) absolutely wonderful and adorable and funny and also one of the most beautiful children to ever exist, and Baby Andreas the Second* (*probably not what they will name him, I mean, MAYBE, but odds aren’t good) will ALSO be wonderful amazing perfection, of this I have no doubt. YAY ANDREAS! Congratulations to you and The Fiancée! The world can only be a better place with more baby Andreases running around in it. This is TRUE FACTS.

In news of wonderful animals and science, guess who’s going to save the world?

Yes, that’s right. OTTERS!

Here’s how it goes down: the world needs kelp. Kelp is a good thing. Kelp can absorb twelve percent of the CO2 from the atmosphere. TWELVE PERCENT! That’s a lot of percent, yo. We have too much CO2 in the atmosphere because we’re dirty polluters and therefore we need kelp.

Also, it’s pretty! But I bet if you drive your boat into it your motor would get all tangled up.

Sea urchins like to nom on kelp. Now, I can’t hate on the sea urchins. Sea urchins are pretty kickass. They’re all spiny and pretty and someday I’m going to eat somewhere fancy so I can taste one because before I die I want to try ALL the seafood, all of it. But, because sea urchins are eating the kelp, and we need the kelp, this is a bad thing. This is where OTTERS come in!

Otters eat sea urchins! So by eating sea urchins, otters are protecting the kelp, and therefore SAVING  THE PLANET. So the next time you’re recycling your laundry detergent bottles or whatever, think what you COULD be doing. SAVING THE WORLD BY BEING AN OTTER. Wouldn’t that be so much better? Yes. I want to be an otter. They are adorable and fun, and they always play and frolic. And they’re saving the woooooorrrrlllldddd. Al Gore! Check it out, the otters are saving the WORLD. As it should be. I always knew we’d be saved by adorable animals. I mean, has Disney taught us nothing?

Look! This otter has a little buffet all set up on his belleh. I like this otter. He has style. And panache. He’s a bon vivanty otter.

Oh, I wanted to tell you about the egg situation at the theater I hinted about a few posts back. So I’ve worked on two shows where we had to have eggs onstage. Both were ick. Totally ick.

Listen, I like eggs a great deal. Especially with cheese. But not on a stage. Or in a box or on a fox, Sam I Am.

The first show was cooked eggs. The actor had to eat eggs in a breakfast scene. So I found these frozen scrambled eggs. If you cooked them in the microwave before the show, they were ok. I mean, they were cold by the time he got them, but they were palatable. He never ate much of them, but he wanted real eggs so they looked real (and if I remember correctly, eggs were mentioned in the script so it wasn’t like we could make him a fruit plate or something.) We’d refrigerate (or leave in the freezer) the eggs inbetween shows that he didn’t eat and warm them up and they smelled kind of sulfury and we were all, “P., maybe don’t really eat those eggs. P., we’re worried those are poison eggs. P., just pretend to eat the eggs. NO ONE WILL CARE, P.” and he still ate the eggs. (Only our kitchen smelled, though. Luckily the theater didn’t smell of weird sulfur-eggs.) We were so worried we were going to kill him with those stupid eggs. And they smelled TERRIBLE. I don’t remember what name-brand those frozen breakfast meals were, but I don’t recommend you get them because they were suspect.

It was something like this. But microwaved bacon is disgusting so we threw it away. I don’t think there was a hashbrown.

I know what you’re thinking. “Maybe it’s COOKED eggs that are the problem, Amy. Maybe you need to do a show with RAW eggs!” Well! I am here to tell you that we HAVE done that and IT IS NO BETTER. We did another show (P. was also in that one! but he was not involved in the egg-incident this time, HI, P.!) and in that show (one of my favorites I’ve ever worked on) the characters had to have a raw egg fight. Well, not so much a fight – there was no THROWING of eggs – but they had to smash eggs over each other’s heads. So there was the scene with the egg-smashery (and aw, those poor actors, they had to run offstage, clean egg out of their hair and change their clothing and run RIGHT BACK ONSTAGE, and they are very much in love and moved to New York together now, how cute is that?) and then, in the dark (well, I think there was a slight light, like a tiny bit of light) K. and I had to run out, also in costume (not FULL costume, just long skirts and long-sleeved shirts to fit in with the period of the show) and as quick as possible, with multiple towels, a mop, and a bucket of water, clean that stage up as much as possible in about three minutes so the next scene could go on as if nothing had happened. It was Keystone Kops up there on that stage. We were all muttering “eggshell over here” and “SO MUCH EGG OVER HERE!” under our breath to one another in the gloom and cleaning like house-elves on speed and tripping over one another and trying not to slip on the combination of egg and water. Which, if you didn’t get it all in the dark (and listen, we never did) it turned to glue, so the next day before the show when I had to sweep and mop the stage, I couldn’t get it off the stage. At least it never really started to smell, which is surprising. Even with all of that, oh, I loved that show. One of the best I’ve done in all my years in theater. I was so sad when it was over. I loved the cast, I loved the script, I loved the set, I loved the director, I loved working with K. We had so much fun.

Finally, let’s talk about a happy. Well, a happy thing to come from an asshatty situation. So apparently, there is a football team (don’t start with me, I don’t care about sports) named the Baltimore Ravens. I’d cheer for a team called the Ravens because it reminds me of Poe. In Maryland, there’s a ballot initiative to legalize gay marriage (GO MARYLAND!) A player on the Ravens came out vocally in support of that initiative. Why? Well, shit, who cares why? Because he’s a human and it’s the right thing to do? Whatever. His name is Brendon Ayanbadejo. I like that last name. It has a lot of character. After he did, Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr. contacted the owner of the team (teams have owners? shut UP, I TOLD you I don’t know anything about sports, really? People OWN teams? What, can they invite them over to like, mow their lawn whenever they have a whim, or something?) and told the owner to “inhibit such expressions from his employee.”

“My name is Mr. Burns, and I hate gays. I HATE THE GAYS SO SCARY SO SO SCARY MAKE ‘EM GO AWAY MOMMA.”

WHOA NELLY. Is anyone else imagining Emmett C. Burns Jr. as Mr. Burns, all “release the hounds?” I am.

Anyway, so ANOTHER player, on ANOTHER team (the Minnesota Vikings) named Chris Kluwe wrote a letter to Mr. “Exxxxxcellent” Burns, and it is VERY VERY AWESOME. If you don’t care for cussing, well, probably don’t click on it. But if you don’t care about profanity, and you like people who aren’t afraid to stand up for something they believe in even though they’re aware it will probably piss some people off, I recommend you click on the link.

Some highlights:

“Your vitriolic hatred and bigotry make me ashamed and disgusted to think that you are in any way responsible for shaping policy at any level. The views you espouse neglect to consider several fundamental key points, which I will outline in great detail (you may want to hire an intern to help you with the longer words…)”

“What on earth would possess you to be so mind-boggingly stupid? It baffles me that a man such as yourself, a man who relies on that same First Amendment to pursue your own religious studies without fear of persecution from the state, could somehow justify stifling another person’s right to speech. To call that hypocritical would be to do a disservice to the word.”

“As recently as 1962 the NFL still had segregation, which was only done away with by brave athletes and coaches daring to speak their mind and do the right thing, and you’re going to say that political views have ‘no place in a sport’?”

“This is more a personal quibble of mine, but why do you hate freedom? Why do you hate the fact that other people want a chance to live their lives and be happy, even though they may believe in something different than you, or act different than you? How does gay marriage, in any way shape or form, affect your life? If gay marriage becomes legal, are you worried that all of a sudden you’ll start thinking about penis?” (WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM? This made me laugh so hard I spit-took. Because it is a thing DAD SAYS. And MEANS. To ME. It is usually in this sentence: “Why do you Dumbocrats hate freedom so much?”)

And…best paragraph of them all:

“I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life. They won’t come into your house and steal your children. They won’t magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster. They won’t even overthrow the government in an orgy of hedonistic debauchery because all of a sudden they have the same legal rights as the other 90 percent of our population—rights like Social Security benefits, child care tax credits, Family and Medical Leave to take care of loved ones, and COBRA healthcare for spouses and children. You know what having these rights will make gays? Full-fledged American citizens just like everyone else, with the freedom to pursue happiness and all that entails. Do the civil-rights struggles of the past 200 years mean absolutely nothing to you?”

Yes, you can totally get a Lustful Cockmonster t-shirt, here you go.

I don’t care in the least about sports, but I now have a major crush on Chris Kluwe. I did research. He is 30 so it’s not SO creepy. Research tells me he’s an MMORPG nerd and plays bass in a band (sigh, I do love me a bass player.) He unfortunately is married (…dammit) but that doesn’t mean I can’t crush on him from afar. I promise I won’t actually TOUCH him. Or lick him. Or anything to him. Just crush. Nicely. From afar.

I think we (by “we” I mean “I” because sorry, I have problems with this) might mistakenly assume football players to be unintelligent meatheads. I’m quite pleased to discover this is not the case.

NEW SECRET CRUSH!

OK, this is LONG. And guess what, the phone never rang. Well, it did, but it was only my job calling with hours for the week. Spoiler alert, there are a lot of them and they involve me waking up before the sun. I’m going to leave the house. The minute I do this phone is going to ring. You know it is, right? Sigh.