Shall probably have more to discuss in rambling fashion re: the camping trip, including shanty freezing cold Deliverance shack, but for now, am harkening back in time to Friday night, in which my lovely and wicked friends had fun continuing Allison Birthday celebration, and I am thinking my birthday is now going to last for the entire season of Autumn.
I think that is a fab idea and I am totally going to make that a thing.
Because parties are awesome! And evenings with friends are awesome! Plus presents! Also awesome!
But guess what is NOT awesome?
Owl attacks.
Not an actual live, loose owl plucking out my eyeballs, although I am pretty sure that is going to happen any moment. I am instead referring to perpetual onslaught of owl items, photos, and other forms of owl terrorism.
And it is all Mark Zuckerberg's fault.
I was innocently checking Facebook a while ago, making sure I was up on wishing people happy birthdays and reading ten zillion political rants and those cards people post, either inspirational or "Mommy needs a Xanax" in theme. And what to my wondering eyes should appear?
(Spoiler! Was not Santa and tiny reindeer. Was EVIL.)
The ad stream on the side of my FB page felt that I would be interested in "whimsical owl buckets." Um, FB? You need to rework your spying on me and deciding what I like program, because it is a known fact that I hate both whimsy and owls.
RANT ALERT!!! There are words that cannot be said aloud or used to describe oneself or others or a thing without immediately invalidating the self or thing that you are labeling with the word.
Whimsy is totally one of those words.
I am a fan of things whimsical. But only if it is not labeled as "whimsical." You cannot call something whimsical. That automatically invalidates the whimsy. Whimsy has to be an on-the-spot, internal determination of the sheer fun and fluff and whee of a thing.
If you say, "Please observe this whimsy, we are being whimsical over here!" You are promptly, totally not whimsical.
You are the opposite of whimsical.
You cannot plan for, or label something whimsical.
It is like calling yourself classy. You know what is immediately, forever not classy?
Calling yourself classy.
Calling anything classy, really. Classy is the same kind of word as whimsy.
You can totally know it when you see it, you can think it, but if you label it, it invalidates the whimsy, or the classy, and turns it into some other thing, something faux and contrived and wrong.
Rant on advertising the whimsy over. On to rant about owls!!!
Owls are evil.
It is true.
I have proof.
They eat eyeballs. Their heads turn the whole way around, which is officially a determination of evil, I saw that in The Exorcist. They have talon feet full of the detritus of their previous victims, which will infect you and kill you, except they have already killed you and eaten your eyeballs. Plus, that one from the Tootsie Roll commercial when I was a kid, the one who stole candy from a child? The "A One, A Two, A Three, CRUNCH one?
Evil. And I am fairly sure he is a pedophile. All "come here, little boy, while I steal your candy and terrorize you." Wearing a mortar board as disguise as professor, when really evil candy stealing eyeball eater.
I have always loathed and feared owls, with the exception of Hedwig from Harry Potter, and that was a fictional, non-living, loose owl. And I am fairly sure I have shared my owl hate with anyone whenever the topic came up, which is (UNTIL RECENTLY) not that often, except the one time an owl followed Matt and me home from a sushi restaurant and I am not making that up, he totally stalked us home, Matt even agreed with me and he normally does not fall for my nonsense.
And get this? When we were in Ireland, we stayed one night at a castle. Doesn't that sound fancy? Like, super glam? Maybe I am riding there in carriage with Austen characters and lovely leather gloves and all?
Not so much. This was a real castle, but it was a Castle of Crazy.
World's largest collection of creepy kids portraits (Note: I am not exaggerating, the one over the library mantel looked like the Children of the Corn and I am pretty sure the one in our room was holding a hatchet and a whip), stuffed birds, a LIVE LOOSE owl, which is my total total nightmare.
It was named Gilbert, but I changed that to Lucifer. Apparently his talents include golf, impressions, and being a teetotaller (Note: This devil creature had a RESUME, provided by Crazy Proprietor I have dubbed Roger the Crazy, for above reasons) which I guess is good since a drunk loose bird would really be frightening.
But other than random owl assaults and encounters, I had not really been consumed by owl horror until the day Facebook decided I should purchase "Whimsical Owl Buckets."
Foolishly, instead of ignoring it and running away from the computer until the owls left, I posted a little diatribe about how it was very uncool of FB to scare me with owls and that I was totally insulted by this ad as I hate whimsy and owls.
MISTAKE.
BAD IDEA.
I forgot I am friends with crafty, twisted, clever people who also seem to have long memories and very good search engines for finding horrifying owl things and harassing me with them. Since the original owl rant, I have been owl bombed daily, sometimes hourly.
You think you have any concept of how many owl things are out there?
(Note: You do NOT)
Eighty zillion majillion, all evil, creepy, and weird. There is no normal owl. But there are: owl crockpots in 1970's Brady colors of brown, harvest gold, and avacado green, owl necklaces, talismans, cards, rings, posters, creepy photos of baby owls being held by someone (someone evil, of course), there is no stop to it.
Lip gloss in owl shaped container. Owl magnets. Owl owl owl owl owl.
Also, owls make for good puns (Note: by good I mean, horrible. I hate puns, as they are not funny, but owls and their stupid hooting sounds can be incorporated into just about anything you want, if your goal is to harass me). I am not writing any of them here, or ever, because I have learned that they will never go away.
Threaten Matt with death for owl posts on FB? He posts a photo of an urn for his ashes, an OWL URN. I tell him instead I am putting his ashes in the body of a creepy doll with ringlets and blinking dead eyes from the 1930's, but he is not deterred.
My cupcakes last night? Topped with owls. My ingenious and wicked friends had their kids glue gunning owl cutouts to sticks to top cupcakes. That is clever, and also very mean abuse of a cupcake.
I tried to put a stop to the owl bombing by purchasing and wearing sparkly owl shirt.(Note: I was wearing it ironically, for one day, and it was sparkly and otherwise I love anything sparkly, but my friend K and I saw it when we were at Most Funnest Music Festival, and decided it was divine intervention that a vendor had a sparkly owl shirt so I got it, wore it, posted photo of me in it, in hopes that people would think, oh, ok, if she's wearing the owl, maybe I can stop sending her evil owl pictures.)
See, proof!
My apparently non-clever attempt at fending off owls, did NOT fend off the owls.
Owls are everywhere, and they were out in full force at my fun friend celebration the other night. The kids are in on it. My girl scout campers were in on it. Owl terror is apparently amusing to children, and I clearly underestimated the gleeful malevolence of my friends.
Ug.
Lesson for Today: If you have a phobia, or an irrational loathing of something, or even a VERY VALID REASON to hate a wicked creature, do not tell anyone.
Ignore Mark Zuckerberg and his FB overlords trying to mess with you.
Don't tell your friends.
Trust me.
