A Simple User’s Guide to Changing Your Privacy Settings on FaceBook
Step 1: Go to Account and click on Settings. This action leads to coded instructions in the form of a detailed transcript of the 1969 John Wayne movie, True Grit, written in a secret font legible only to flamboyant cuttlefish. (Luckily I am fluent in cuttlefish, having once taken a class in Oceanic Languages as an elective when demographic knitting was unavailable.)
Step 2. Click on the information you want to change.
Step 3. Click repeatedly on the same field when Facebook denies access for change.
Step 4. Place index fingers of each hand in your ears and try to make them touch.
Step 5: Put your right foot in.
Step 6: Take your right foot out.
Step 7: Put your right foot in.
Step 8. Shake it all about.
Step 6. Swear mightily and creatively in an open letter to the FaceBook founders.
Step 7. Using the big toe of your left foot, press the power button on your computer.
Step 8. Place your head on your desk and sit quietly until the teacher says you can sit up.
Following these detailed instructions will either launch a nuclear warhead or change your privacy settings. I deleted my birthday and five pages of status updates from public view, performed a magical keystroke that changed my picture to a shot of a cunning gopher lunching on a banana sandwich, and erased the child restriction settings that prevented me from viewing old Michael Jackson videos.
My homepage retaliated with an immediate status update sent to all of my relatives, the entire population of non-English speaking countries, and the Queen of England, that said, “This user is a gopher! Lock your doors! Hide your children!”
The Queen responded by immediately withdrawing as my neighbor on University Farm Zoo City Co-Ed Island, where she had previously harvested my crop of watercolor cows with impunity. All I can say is I’ve sprinkled her sugar maples for the last time.
It’s possible that I went astray in the directions. Next time perhaps I’ll put my left foot in.
And walk right out.
Laugh
Showing posts with label zoo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zoo. Show all posts
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
I Do's, Zoos, and Underoos
Everybody else gets a lousy TShirt when they go on a trip. How do I manage to get everything backwards? Join me at An Army of Ermas for my undercover adventure. But you've gotta promise not to tell.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Animal or Edible? Mother's Day at the Zoo
My kids are taking me to the zoo for Mother’s Day this year. It’s the only place where I’ll feel at home, yet get to watch somebody else clean up after the baby. And if the elephants track mud into the dining room, well, let their mothers take away dirt slinging privileges. Somebody will hit the hay without having any of it to eat.
First, the family offered to take me to the all-you-can-eat buffet at the Country Club (insert snooty font here), but I don’t want to go somewhere on Mother’s Day that would question my credentials if I applied to serve as kitchen help. I’m not trustworthy with the crystal on normal days, and it’s alarming to know that I’ve been seen swirling my homegrown manicure in the champagne punch and complaining about the consistency of the water in the finger bowl.
The most important setback is that their idea of “all you can eat” at the Club is three English peas and a broiled scallop. I’d have better luck taking my chances with the penguins diving for fish at the polar exhibit. So I’m off for a treat at the zoo—and if the trainers are sloppy with their aim in the sea lion tank, I might get lucky with a herring.
The trouble with zoo food is that I’m never sure what I’m ordering. During my last trip I found that keeping with the theme, everything is named after animals or their habitats. Frankly, I’d rather have a Brillo sandwich than belly up to a Penguin Patty or a Moose Nugget dipped in the special Serengeti sauce. Even McDonald’s is keen on white meat these days, but I’m not familiar with which part of the moose the resident Quality Control experts dub “nuggets.” I'm afraid to ask the origin of the special sauce.
On an information board near the Jungle Park Tanning Salon, Ice Cream Boutique, and Gift Shop, I discover that besides the availability of Desert Dogs and Farmyard Fries, a special feature available at our zoo is the availability of Zoo Poo. I may not be excited by the litter box back home, but I’m ecstatic to find that I can purchase a full square yard of exotic animal droppings to fertilize my drooping day lilies down by the mailbox. I couldn’t grow a dandelion with a degree in botany and a lifetime supply of Weed Chow, but here’s fresh hope that a sprinkling of zebra droppings will give my garden new life. If I go wild and get a memento from the elephants, I could probably turn my scrubby pine trees into giant Redwoods by fall.
It’s hard enough trying to figure out which kiosks sell pop and which ones sell poop, but complicating things is the bizarre effect I seem to have on zoo creatures. I don’t know if it’s the clean, fresh scent of my apple shampoo that drives them wild or the everpresent aroma of meatloaf from hard time served in the kitchen, but I must be the animal kingdom’s equivalent to soft lighting and Frank Sinatra, because every time I stroll through the gates, suddenly everybody from the sea turtles to the hungry hippos are in the mood to engage in activities that I don’t want to explain to the kids.
Kid One: “What are those monkeys doing?”
Me: “Square dancing. Have some pizza.”
Just as the monkeys get to the do-si-do, I whip the kids into the aviary where I suddenly discover Rockin’ Robin is not just a song, it’s the theme of the whole park. If the Red, Red, Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbing Along any closer, we’re going to be in the middle of a flying flock.
“Here,” I say, thrusting a waffle cone into Junior’s hands as I pull him along behind me flapping in the breeze like mud flaps on a tractor-trailer. “Have some ice cream.”
It’s no better in the big cat cages, where Mr. & Mrs. Panther show Tony the Tiger a thing or two about what constitutes Greeaaaaaatttt!
Starving, tired of dodging displays where all the animal occupants should be sporting a black box over their eyes, and weary of sidestepping cute carts peddling poop, I sink down on a rock outside the reptile house, setting off a wave of rustling and slithering inside.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Junior says sliding down beside me. “Have a moose nugget.”
I didn’t even ask which stand it came from. And I don’t want to know.
First, the family offered to take me to the all-you-can-eat buffet at the Country Club (insert snooty font here), but I don’t want to go somewhere on Mother’s Day that would question my credentials if I applied to serve as kitchen help. I’m not trustworthy with the crystal on normal days, and it’s alarming to know that I’ve been seen swirling my homegrown manicure in the champagne punch and complaining about the consistency of the water in the finger bowl.
The most important setback is that their idea of “all you can eat” at the Club is three English peas and a broiled scallop. I’d have better luck taking my chances with the penguins diving for fish at the polar exhibit. So I’m off for a treat at the zoo—and if the trainers are sloppy with their aim in the sea lion tank, I might get lucky with a herring.
The trouble with zoo food is that I’m never sure what I’m ordering. During my last trip I found that keeping with the theme, everything is named after animals or their habitats. Frankly, I’d rather have a Brillo sandwich than belly up to a Penguin Patty or a Moose Nugget dipped in the special Serengeti sauce. Even McDonald’s is keen on white meat these days, but I’m not familiar with which part of the moose the resident Quality Control experts dub “nuggets.” I'm afraid to ask the origin of the special sauce.
On an information board near the Jungle Park Tanning Salon, Ice Cream Boutique, and Gift Shop, I discover that besides the availability of Desert Dogs and Farmyard Fries, a special feature available at our zoo is the availability of Zoo Poo. I may not be excited by the litter box back home, but I’m ecstatic to find that I can purchase a full square yard of exotic animal droppings to fertilize my drooping day lilies down by the mailbox. I couldn’t grow a dandelion with a degree in botany and a lifetime supply of Weed Chow, but here’s fresh hope that a sprinkling of zebra droppings will give my garden new life. If I go wild and get a memento from the elephants, I could probably turn my scrubby pine trees into giant Redwoods by fall.
It’s hard enough trying to figure out which kiosks sell pop and which ones sell poop, but complicating things is the bizarre effect I seem to have on zoo creatures. I don’t know if it’s the clean, fresh scent of my apple shampoo that drives them wild or the everpresent aroma of meatloaf from hard time served in the kitchen, but I must be the animal kingdom’s equivalent to soft lighting and Frank Sinatra, because every time I stroll through the gates, suddenly everybody from the sea turtles to the hungry hippos are in the mood to engage in activities that I don’t want to explain to the kids.
Kid One: “What are those monkeys doing?”
Me: “Square dancing. Have some pizza.”
Just as the monkeys get to the do-si-do, I whip the kids into the aviary where I suddenly discover Rockin’ Robin is not just a song, it’s the theme of the whole park. If the Red, Red, Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbing Along any closer, we’re going to be in the middle of a flying flock.
“Here,” I say, thrusting a waffle cone into Junior’s hands as I pull him along behind me flapping in the breeze like mud flaps on a tractor-trailer. “Have some ice cream.”
It’s no better in the big cat cages, where Mr. & Mrs. Panther show Tony the Tiger a thing or two about what constitutes Greeaaaaaatttt!
Starving, tired of dodging displays where all the animal occupants should be sporting a black box over their eyes, and weary of sidestepping cute carts peddling poop, I sink down on a rock outside the reptile house, setting off a wave of rustling and slithering inside.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Junior says sliding down beside me. “Have a moose nugget.”
I didn’t even ask which stand it came from. And I don’t want to know.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Miss Manners Fights Back
While I’m not considered a prude by anyone except the examples of the species to whom I have given birth, I’m altogether a poor sport when it comes to food I will consume in public.
Unless I am in the company of dear friends who have known me long enough to identify the stains on my Riverbanks Zoo T-Shirt right down to the unsightly spot from the day we learned that the output of Lorikeets is greater than the input, or of family who is bound by the courts and/or the church to love me for better or for Waldorf salad, in sickness and in Heath bars, I’m not ordering anything that displays unlikely tendencies toward flinging sauces at random passersby.
Salads are particularly offensive in a social setting and should be regulated to over-the-sink binges indulged in while wearing particularly offensive pajamas destined for cleaning canary poop from the birdcage or grimy corners in the garage. Salads are filled with treacherous items that shoot streams of noxious juices into your eye when pierced with a sharp object, and difficult fibrous items that do not respond admirably to cutlery.
Likewise, I am not interested in consuming steaming dishes of noodles at, say, Sunday School gatherings because the first time an errant strand of fettuccine slaps my chin with a load of steaming Alfredo leaving a worm-shaped brand that will be with me til death do us part, I am altogether capable of comments that will guarantee excommunication on the spot. At the very least I'll be voted out of the covered dish dinner line.
On one ambitious jaunt to a local restaurant I couldn’t help but notice a young lady at a nearby table gather up more vegetation from her salad bowl than many farmers reap during a summer afternoon, and place the bales of foliage in her mouth with the same delicate flair usually reserved for swallowers of flaming swords. She was sitting with a young man who was engrossed in hand-dipping pieces of his French toast into the syrup swamp he cultivated in a nearby soup bowl. How have we raised a generation of young people who are passionate about a clean environment, but do not consider Mr. Knife and Mr. Fork their friend?
I watched in open-mouthed amazement as the girl hauled up a load of greens that wouldn’t fit into a lobster trap and crammed the whole package into her mouth. She looked like Sylvester the cat seconds before Granny rescued Tweety Bird from his jaws. She chewed contentedly for several minutes, then blotted her lips with a napkin and, looking my way, leaned over to Sticky Hands Steve and whispered through the poppyseed dressing, “Somebody should help that little old lady with her food. She can’t even close her mouth and there’s a puddle of gravy in her cleavage.”
I summoned the waitress and ordered a dessert dripping with enough chocolate sauce to cover Hershey Pennsylvania in profits and had her deliver it to the young lady and her boyfriend, Mr. Syrup Hands. Then I pulled out my digital camera with movie function.
Good manners are nice, but You Tube is still the best revenge.
Unless I am in the company of dear friends who have known me long enough to identify the stains on my Riverbanks Zoo T-Shirt right down to the unsightly spot from the day we learned that the output of Lorikeets is greater than the input, or of family who is bound by the courts and/or the church to love me for better or for Waldorf salad, in sickness and in Heath bars, I’m not ordering anything that displays unlikely tendencies toward flinging sauces at random passersby.
Salads are particularly offensive in a social setting and should be regulated to over-the-sink binges indulged in while wearing particularly offensive pajamas destined for cleaning canary poop from the birdcage or grimy corners in the garage. Salads are filled with treacherous items that shoot streams of noxious juices into your eye when pierced with a sharp object, and difficult fibrous items that do not respond admirably to cutlery.
Likewise, I am not interested in consuming steaming dishes of noodles at, say, Sunday School gatherings because the first time an errant strand of fettuccine slaps my chin with a load of steaming Alfredo leaving a worm-shaped brand that will be with me til death do us part, I am altogether capable of comments that will guarantee excommunication on the spot. At the very least I'll be voted out of the covered dish dinner line.
On one ambitious jaunt to a local restaurant I couldn’t help but notice a young lady at a nearby table gather up more vegetation from her salad bowl than many farmers reap during a summer afternoon, and place the bales of foliage in her mouth with the same delicate flair usually reserved for swallowers of flaming swords. She was sitting with a young man who was engrossed in hand-dipping pieces of his French toast into the syrup swamp he cultivated in a nearby soup bowl. How have we raised a generation of young people who are passionate about a clean environment, but do not consider Mr. Knife and Mr. Fork their friend?
I watched in open-mouthed amazement as the girl hauled up a load of greens that wouldn’t fit into a lobster trap and crammed the whole package into her mouth. She looked like Sylvester the cat seconds before Granny rescued Tweety Bird from his jaws. She chewed contentedly for several minutes, then blotted her lips with a napkin and, looking my way, leaned over to Sticky Hands Steve and whispered through the poppyseed dressing, “Somebody should help that little old lady with her food. She can’t even close her mouth and there’s a puddle of gravy in her cleavage.”
I summoned the waitress and ordered a dessert dripping with enough chocolate sauce to cover Hershey Pennsylvania in profits and had her deliver it to the young lady and her boyfriend, Mr. Syrup Hands. Then I pulled out my digital camera with movie function.
Good manners are nice, but You Tube is still the best revenge.
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