Highly Contagious

Everyone knows at least one person who can't keep their nose out of other people's business. They always seem to "know" what's going on without actually knowing if what they know is correct or not. These are people who honestly have nothing better to do with their time. It's like some highly contagious disease. One person hears or sees something they find offensive (warranted or not) then they pass along how "horrible" it was to someone else. The next thing you know everyone is looking at you like you have a horns popping out of your head. This isn't even just the stuff of bad high school movies. It happens all the time, especially in my family.

I have an incredibly nosy family, but they don't bother to fact check. Listening to some of the things they say is like reading the front page of the national enquirer and trust me I have plenty of examples.

I'll start with the most ridiculous of family "controversies." A few years ago when my cousin was a little baby her parents and siblings and everyone else I'm related to came to visit for the summer (like they do every summer). We took some pictures of my older sister holding our baby cousin. My mom sent them to her mom. Instead of my grandmother thinking something logical like, "That's a cute baby. I wonder who's it is." she automatically assumed that my older sister had given birth to this baby. I don't know how her mind managed to come to that conclusion. Maybe, she thought that we hadn't sent her pictures for awhile because we didn't want to show any signs of my older sisters pregnancy. That's honestly the most logical reason I can come up with.

Here's another example: A year or so ago (not exactly sure), my younger sister posted the f-word on her Facebook status. Here's how things went down. My cousin (who's in her forties), showed her mother (my aunt). My aunt then called the neighbor's that we have at our family ranch in Wyoming (there isn't a phone at the actual ranch). My dad then went over to the neighbors to use the phone and received the message that his sister had called. My dad then called my aunt the see what the hullabaloo was. After that conversation he called home where he spent an hour yelling at my younger sister about her language.

The last one that occurred when I posted my blog about helping castrate a calf (see Balls!). My aunt called my grandma (my dad's mom) and after the chat, me and my younger sister received this nice little lecture about being careful with what we post online. I spent a week trying to figure out which of my Facebook posts caused the family freak out. I figured it was a link I posted about gay rights, atheism or something that might even be considered controversial. My grandma couldn't remember what it was, so after much asking from me and my sister she asked my aunt again and found out what it was. As it turns out my aunt was offended by a post that read, "'You might learn somethin'' Sorry Dad but I highly doubt that I'll ever need to know how to castrate a cow." What they found offensive about that post was that I used the word "castrate." What was I supposed to call it? Testicle Removal Surgery? Reproduction Away? Manhood Removal? Bye Bye Balls? I seriously don't know. I figured the technical term was just fine, but apparently that's vulgar.

With the way word travels in my family, I have a pretty good idea of what they'll be freaking about next. A couple weekends ago my younger sister had her boyfriend over. Didn't really think much of it other than it's really annoying to have to ask them to move while they're snogging because they're blocking the stairs. That night at dinner, after he left, my grandma said, "They were getting smoochy." I just know that she will say those exact words to one of my aunts. It will then travel down the crazy phone tree turning into, "they were moments away from sex." When we get it back to us my grandma will have forgotten her "smoochy" comment, but everyone will have taken their own spin on the term.

Japanese Monster Movies

There is something about the Japanese their obsession with giant monsters battling each other. Over the summer me and my friends had a party on world UFO day. We watched some incredibly bad old alien films. apart from Santa Conquers the Martians we watched a movie called Destroy All Planets.

Since we weren't really paying attention we couldn't figure out what the plot of this movie was. It started of with a ship in space the looked like a ring of bumble bees. Then there was another ship. I commented, "It looks like a turtle!" Directly after I said that flames stopped shooting out of it and out popped a head and legs. Turns out it was turtle. Even though the movie had just started we were all totally lost.

Next scene had something to do with waht looked like kid filled military base. A couple of jokers snuck into a submarine and palyed with the wiring so that everything ran backwards. Then when they took it down they saw our friend the giant fire breathing turtle.

Without any warning the scene changed and we were watching a battle between the giant turtle and giant lizard of some sort. Then after a little bit of that a pterydactyl type creature apeared and was battling them. When the sun came up the pterydactyl's head glowed and he disapeared.

Randomly it cut to a scene where the jokers from before were explaining what they saw to what I assume was a teacher of somesort. They said that they saw a giant turtle then BAM! We were back to the epic monster battle. After that we just turned it off and turned on Santa Conquers the Martians.

I'd love to say that this is the only movie like this I've seen but there are several. The Japanese love thier giant monster battles. Small creatures beating each other up is no fun. So they are incresed in size or put inside giant metal robots.

Horror Movie

People always yell at the screen during horror movies (at least in their heads). The one advantage we have as the audience is that we know it's a horror movie and we know that some giant beast or serial killer is gonna leap out and eat their face. But in real life we don't get that lovely advantage. When there's a noise that freaks us out the natural reaction is to go investigate. Last night I had one of these investigatory moments.

I lost track of time and didn't notice that it was getting dark. For that reason I had to go out and feed the cows and horse in the dark. I don't really care if this happens. It just makes the job far more difficult than it needs to be. So I'm out there in the dark scooping hay to the cows when I here this barking, whimpering,  whining sound. I froze for a moment and listened. It didn't happen again so continued shoveling hay. Then I heard it again. I thought maybe the dog had snuck out the door after me. I called, "Girlie!" The sound seemed to stop so I finished giving the horse hay. Then I heard it again.

I couldn't help it I had to investigate. So I followed the noise in the dark clutching a crappy flashlight in one hand and a pitchfork in the other. Every once an while it would stop so I'd stop and listen. Then follow it once it started up again. I got to the edge of our fence and the noise stopped completely. I stood there and listened for a couple minutes. All I heard was may heart pounding. I started back towards the cows. I got about half way back when I heard the noise again. Only difference was that it was coming from the direction I originally came from. If I wasn't completely freaked before that, I definitely was after. I got back and our horse, Rocky, was staring at something. He didn't seem concerned, but by that point I was too freaked to even bother trying to figure out what the sound was. I booked it back up to the house.

I figure that it was probably a coyote or something. Where we have our cows and horse can echo pretty well sometimes. Heck if it was an animal it probably just moved. That would be the logical explanation of things. But while I was down there my mind started with coyotes than progressed to cults sacrificing animals, vampires, pontianaks, were-wolves, manticores, the Questing Beast, and Will-o'-the-wisps (once I'd heard it coming from my starting point). The whole time I was "investigating," my mind was yelling at me the same things you want to yell at the screen for a horror movie. Needless to say it didn't make a difference.

Oblivious

I'm oblivious on many things. On most occasions I'm the last to know things. Heck sometimes I'm even the last to know things that actively have to do with me. Often times when my mom plans something for the family I only learn about the night before. I'm not sure if this is because I just pay no attention or if no one actually tells me anything. Honestly I would say that it's both.

I'm not even just oblivious about what happens around me. I'm also horribly oblivious about what I do. When I get excited you might as well throw observance into a boiling pit of lava. There have been many occasions where I've gotten excited about something. Then fallen on my face because I tripped over something. Once I did an epic leap over the dog and landed perfectly. I was really proud that I stuck the landing. Then I took one step, tripped over my grandma's oxygen hose and THUMP! I was down.

I don't even just get injured when oblivious attacks. I do some dumb things as well. I went to the library, gotten really excited because they had a manga series that I was really excited to read, and with out reading I grabbed the whole series off the shelf. When I was checking them out I noticed that I had grabbed two copies of each book. I felt really bad that the librarian had to re-shelve half the books (but then he was rude about it so I felt a little less bad). I felt like a dumb ass.

Now I once again I feel like a dumb ass. Earlier today, I went shopping and got really excited when I saw that they had The Muppets soundtrack. I grabbed a copy off the shelf again not really looking. When I got home and was about to open it I discovered that I had bought a copy of it that was in Spanish. Or as it says on the cover, "LOS MUPPETS: INCLUYE: LA MUSICA ORIGINAL DE LA PELUCULA EN ESPANOL"

I'm a dumb ass.

Balls!

"You might learn somethin'," is the most common statement my dad makes. At random points through out a day you'll walk by him and he'll be doing something. Instead of letting you continue on your merry way he says, "Sit down. You might learn something'." If you try and continue on your merry way he gets mad and either pouts or will yell at you. Either way you get stuck listening to a lecture, watching an educational video, or maybe just stuck holding down a calf while he castrates it.

This morning my dad informed me and my younger sister that we had to help castrate our new baby calf. The ultimatum was that we either did that or my parents wouldn't take us to a friends house for a New Year's Eve party. While I don't live in suburbia or even in a town, I don't know for sure, but I highly doubt that not wanting to help castrate and brand a calf is grounds for punishment. So about two this afternoon we went down to the mucky cow pin and got to hold down a calf for about twenty minutes while he squirmed and we got yelled at.

Thanks to my dad, I did learn something. I learned that I will never need to know how to castrate or brand a calf, that doing so makes me feel queasy, and that my dad needs a hobby other than buying farm animals. Thanks to my mom I also learned, "He doesn't look too happy." Mom, I wonder why.

Fire

I have been lit on fire three times.

The first time was when I was a little kid. It was the fourth of July so like every other American I attended a fireworks display. Well my family just made the mistake of attending one in New Castle, Wyoming. While I was sitting and enjoying the loud, colorful explosions a flaming piece of shrapnel landed on my foot and it caught fire. I didn't even have chance to react before the old man sitting next to me started stomping on my foot and put out the fire.

The second time I got to close to a candle when the power was out and caught my hair on fire.

The third time I was taking something out of the oven. I accidentally tapped to top of the oven and my oven mitt burst into flames.

Now while I have been lit on fire three times I was not the one that caught the electric stove on fire. Yesterday my younger sister went into the kitchen and turned on the stove with plans to cook an egg. Even though my mom had used it several times before that point, it burst into flames when my sister used it. I don't know what it is about my family, but they have quite the ability to kill technology (see Technology In My House)

Technology in My House

For some reason, I am the only person in my house that can get technology to work for them no matter what. Everyone else has an incredible amount of issues.

MY COMPUTER
My younger sister, Liz, whenever she touches my computer it absolutely refuses to work properly. In fact this morning it even froze when she just walked in the room. My mom also has this obnoxious ability. It's for this reason that my family always complains about how slow my computer is. The thing is it runs perfectly fine when I use it. My friend, Spyke, built it for me my sophomore year. I absolutely love this computer. There are only a couple issues that I have with it.
1. It has to warm up a bit when you first turn it on.
2. On occasion it will play random eighties music from no discernible source.
3. Once instead of eighties music it decided to play the sound from a 1960's documentary called "The Homosexuals"
Those are the only three issues I have with my computer. I don't really mind them, but the last two are relatively disturbing at times. I'm pretty sure Spyke had some sort of subliminal messaging in mind when he built it.

THE DVD PLAYER
For years the only DVD player we had was a piece of crap that one of our aunts gave us for Christmas. This thing worked fine until my sister broke the remote. From then on we cold only do stuff with the buttons on the player itself. Now that wasn't even much of a problem until it decided that it was going to start rejecting random DVDs for no apparent reason. Almost anytime you put a disk in the machine it said, "no disk." You'd have to stick it in several times in order to get it to play. For some reason I was one of the few people that could get it to work. Whether it's because I'm incredibly stubborn would try dozens of times before giving up or that the thing just liked me for some reason, I don't know. We recently got a new DVD player that runs awesomely or well it did until Liz used it. Upon the first time my sister used it, the thing lost it's ability to fast forward or rewind. It can no longer be done.


THE SATELLITE RECEIVER
We get Dish Network satellite and it's one of the few things that remains functional in our house. The only problem is that Liz broke off the power button. If we don't have to remote (which by the way we've replaced more time than we can count) we can't turn on or off the satellite receiver. Also, whenever any time there is  movement nest to it the signal to go fuzzy.

THE TV
Last week we got a new TV and there has yet to be any issues with it. The one before this one was a tube TV. This one was just getting old so the picture was going due to no fault of my family, but there were other problems created by my family. Like the satellite receiver my sister broke the power button off so we had to use the remote. I'm waiting in fear of what my family will do to the new TV.


THE CAR
This next one was just brutal. Not even something that is just a random happenstance. This would be my dad's disregard for anything he doesn't know how to use. In the Subaru Outback we had before I rolled it (see The Perfect Ending), We had some really nice speakers. It had one really nice sound system that my dad methodically murdered. Whenever he drove down our dusty dirt road on a warm day he'd roll the window down filling the car, it's CD slot and speakers with dust. That was the first step. The second step was reenacting. For all of his civil war reenacting adventures he'd have to transport tent poles and what not. He couldn't tie them on top of the car because that was reserved for his period accurate flag pole. Instead he shoved them down between the seats and the door and impaled the speakers. It wasn't even just once he did it multiple times. Step three was jamming the sky lights. When we first got it you could open the window covering and just look up at the sky with out actually opening the window. He jammed it so that it only opened when he opened the window. Step four was the cup holders. Not an overly important part, but none the less annoying. In the back seat the cup holders folded down. They got misaligned slightly so they were jammed. Instead of realigning them or fixing them in anyway like a normal person would, he just ripped them out.



THE TECHNOLOGY MURDERERS
MY MOM
My mom isn't as much of an issue as the rest of my family, but on occasion she gets to thinking that she's knows more than she does and usually causes more problems.
MY DAD
Refuses to learn how to properly use something. He just destroys it instead or asks people at ungodly hours to do it for him.
MY YOUNGER SISTER
Knows what she is doing, but technology just absolutely refuses to work properly for her.
MY GRANDMA
Usually has a pretty good idea of what she's doing, but on occasion gets confused about what is what and will have something running that she doesn't need or want.


P.S.
THE VACUUM CLEANER
As soon as I first posted this I went downstairs to vacuum like my mom asked. I changed the bag then when I went to turn it on again nothing happened. The light still worked but the vacuum made not even the slightest attempt to suck anything up. And now that I think about it I have had several vacuum cleaners quit while I was using them. I guess that I'm just not meant to clean.