Why I Blog

Sometimes people ask me why I like to keep a blog, or how I come up with things to write about. I can think of a whole slew of reasons and answers to those questions, but I thought I'd provide you with a few general examples. Here are some reasons why I blog.



Reason #1: I am a nerd.

And nerds do nerdy things like write regularly and keep blogs about nerdy things they find interesting or entertaining.



Reason #2: I am in grad school.

It's like a bottomless pit of blog topics between my classmates, professors, high school students, rants about classes/term papers, etc. Also, my head would most definitely explode if I didn't engage in some writing (read: venting) outside of academic papers. Barf.

For instance, the picture below depicts what my classmates and I did in a graduate course of ours this past Wednesday night. We constructed "masks" out of tissue paper/masking tape/plastic serial killer-looking-face mask combinations as a way to teach high schoolers "characterization." Right...

Coneheads, anyone?



Reason #3: I come from a family full of nutjobs.

Now before all of you crazy family members get offended....don't. I mean this in the best possible of ways. If you guys weren't all complete weirdos, you'd be super boring. So, thanks for being freaks!

This might be the biggest reason of all. I could spend two whole weeks at my apartment in Columbia and not come up with a single thing to blog about, but after an hour home at my parents' house in Greenville, I'm suddenly inundated with topics. Let me explain...

A couple of weeks ago, I came up to Greenville on a particularly slow weekend in Columbia, hauled my laundry basket into the utility room, and made my way to the kitchen to raid my Mom's cabinets. I also did a quick survey of the kitchen counter to see if there was anything left over from dinner.

However, instead of congealing fettucine alfredo or pot roast remains, I found this......on the KITCHEN COUNTER......:


Why yes, that IS a dead snake placed inside a ziploc bag labeled "Warning! Monster Snake!", just in case you were unsure of the bag's contents.

The author of this bag's label, my Dad, spied me snapping a picture of it from the next room and came bounding in. Apparently, if I was going document this, I was going to document it properly. (Can someone plz fill me on on standard snake-corpse-photography procedures? Kthx.)

He proceeded to pick up the snake-bag, maneuver the python corpse inside until it suited his demented preferences, put it back down on the counter, and demand that I do a re-take.


Much.....better? Thanks, Dad. It appears that Steve committed this reptile execution on one of his many obsessive sweeps down our driveway with Weed-B-Gone.

So, that weekend in a nutshell? Snake carcasses on the kitchen counter. Totally normal.

I came home again this weekend to watch the Doodles because Suz would be out of town. One of the first things I did when I got home this time was go to the refrigerator for a Diet Coke fix. I found a Diet Coke alright, but I also found this.....INSIDE the fridge....:



Why yes, that IS the spare set of keys to the house, stashed inside the box of Michelob Ultra...inside the fridge...

It appears that Suz thought this hiding spot would be most conducive to my actually finding the keys. This tells me that my mother is either very hilarious and sneaky, or she thinks I'm such an alcoholic that the FIRST place I'd think to look (or anyone for that matter) for a hide-a-key is INSIDE a case of beer, INSIDE the garage refrigerator.

Sorry for telling the world about your hiding spot, Suz.

And while we are on the subject of my mother, that brings me to my third reason-du-jour why my family is usually a pretty supple source of blog topics.

My mom has the creepiest, most obsessive relationship with Hallmark ornaments and Christmas decorations I've ever seen. And I've been to a national Hallmark convention.

Almost every single surface in our house already looks like Santa rolled in here and exploded all over everything. So I took a little tour of our house, snapping pictures in any given room of the creepiest decorations I observed on my walk-through....



THIS is the first thing you see when you come through our front door. I left the ladder in the picture for scale. Did I mention that this welcoming fellow is on display BEFORE we even made it to Halloween? Meaning our poor little child neighbors will be subjected to his pedophilic gaze come Saturday night.

Santa really IS always watching you, kids. And Santa is a 7-foot-tall creepy-ass Freud-lookalike.

These next three pictures are in various parts of our house, but all come from the same Christmas decoration "designer." These hideous abominations are called Anna Lee "dolls," but feel free to switch the term "dolls," used very loosely here, for "maniacal demons" or "satanic imps" or something along those lines. What kind of sick person thought that making dolls' faces look like acid trips would create feelings of Christmas joy or holiday nostalgia in any sane person?



(by the way, these 2 are in a random, rarely used upstairs bathroom. Suz leaves no surface un-Christmased.)



And just a few more examples of Suz's decoration-infatuation-blog-topic-inspirations...

Suz has so many ornaments that she can devote entire Christmas trees and entire Christmas wreaths to certain, very specific themes. This one is obviously the Star Wars wreath. In the words of Yoda....Think it's awesome, I do.

Anywhere, literally anywhere you go in our house, you can look around and find some version of the creepy pedophile Santa staring you down. I don't know how any of my siblings or I got through childhood thinking that old Saint Nick was a jolly, good-intentioned soul with these mutant Santas lurking around every other corner.

We certainly wouldn't want anyone to feel devoid of Christmas joy whilst sitting on the porcelain throne!

As if the 7-foot-tall-front-entryhall Santa wasn't disturbing enough on his own, this little sidekick gremlin stands guard at his side. He is apparently "checking Santa's list" for him, a.k.a marking down the names of trick-or-treaters they'd like to molest later.

And finally, a nativity scene. So we can pretend like we are good Catholics when guests come over, and that we don't just go to church on Christmas Eve...... drunk....... (just kidding...)

So thank you, innate dorkiness, grad school shenanigans, and the weirdest (and best) family I could ask for, for providing me ample material to keep this little guy going.

I am, however, always open to suggestions. Happy Halloween!

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