This is pretty much how the American Dream works, too.

You know how everybody always says that if you just work hard enough, eventually...you'll burn yourself out? Well, that's true. Wait, no, it's "if you work just hard enough every once in a while, something good will happen, probably. If the right people happen to be looking." And that's true, too. Which brings me to my point:

I WON SOMETHING!!!

It's a major award.

The Cat Lady, who does write about cats sometimes, but also lots of other awesome and hilarious things, and who also spells "über" correctly (which is pretty much an automatic win) has been gracious enough to grant me the Liebster Award. I'll tell you the details in a minute, but first LOOK HOW PRETTY!

It comes from Germany, so you know it's high-quality. It's aimed at up-and-coming bloggers, which mostly just means that you have fewer than 200 subscribers; it's probably the case that millions of people read your blog, but just don't want to publicly admit or commit to it by subscribing. Assholes. It also includes a number of tasks that you have to complete, or you'll have bad luck for TEN MILLION YEARS, and the opposite of whatever you wished for will come true. But it's totally not like a chain-letter, because of reasons.

Anyway, here's all the stuff you have to do:

1. Thank the person that nominated you. Thanks, The Cat Lady!
2. Display the Liebster Heart on your blog. Done and done.
3. Nominate 3 to 5 more different bloggers (who may potentially have millions of readers, but fewer than 200 subscribers)
4. Post 11 things about yourself.
5. Create 11 questions for your nominees to answer.
6. Answer the 11 questions you've been asked in your nomination.
7. Ignore the fact that you're now being asked to nominate 11 people to award, and just stick with the original 3 to 5.
8. (Optional, as I've just invented it) Wonder why this award suddenly became obsessed with the number 11.
9. (Also optional, as it stems from the recently-invented 8th task) Blame Matt Smith.
10. (Also just invented; only applies to non-Whovians) Wonder why the hell you were just asked to blame Matt Smith.
11. (For ambitious non-Whovians who will be glad they did, and also because it brings the number of tasks to 11, creating some kind of self-referential circle of completeness) Watch all of Doctor Who to find out.

And here's me completing the aforementioned tasks:

11 Answers (With Questions!)

1. Did you ever have a teacher who yelled at/embarrassed/totally ruined you for life? If so, tell the story.
Not exactly, but during my senior year of high school, all but about 3 teachers at my school got caught up in a panic that my best friend and I ran a local mafia and were going to shoot up the school. Not even joking. (I will so write about this in a separate post.)

2. What is your dream career?
Librarian. And also writer. Technically, I am both of those, but only one probably counts as a career at this point. I'll let you guess which one.

3. Unicorn or Sasquatch for president?
I'd totally vote Unicorn, but I'm not sure they're native to the U.S., so they're probably not eligible to run. We'll have to ask Donald Trump for verification on this one.

4. What is your most embarrassing habit?
I'm kind of a hoarder. Not like A&E-class, this-building-should-be-condemned, but I'm very not good at throwing things away.

5. If you could have one talent that you do not currently have, what would it be?
Regeneration? Although, I've never actually died, so I can't say with absolute certainty that it's a talent I don't already have.

6. Last meal on earth: describe in detail. I'm hungry.
Pizza. Actually, 6 million pizzas. That should buy me some time.

7. If you could bring only three things on a deserted island, what would they be?
I'm going to assume it's not in the spirit of this question to say "my wife and our cats" or "a raft/TARDIS." In that case: 1) Some kind of awesome multi-tool with choppy things and whittly things and probably a magnifying glass for starting fires 2) A really well-stocked first aid kit 3) The Library of Congress

8. Favorite guilty pleasure?
INTERNET. FOREVER.

9. What kind of car do you drive, and what do you think that says about you?
It's a Focus, which probably says that I have a wonderful sense of irony because sometimes I'm not very good at seeing things through to HEY, do you want to go swimming? Once, I went to Scotland. Do you like tigers? I want some enchiladas. Baseball is fun.

10. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I can has confidence?

11. Favorite Disney movie?
The Empire Strikes Back totally counts. So does The Avengers.

11 Things About Me

1. I play roller derby; my derby name is Albus Rumbledore (Number: The Only 1 He Ever Feared).
2. I cross-stitch. Someday, I'll post pictures of some of the awesome stuff I've made. Probably.
3. I'm a vegetarian.
4. I've been on anxiety/depression meds for almost a year now. I've been trying to write about it for that same amount of time, minus about five minutes.
5. I have hitchhiked exactly once in my life. I got picked up by the short bus. Not even joking. There was a kid on there. He was in a wheelchair and wearing a helmet. (Still not joking.)
6. My superpowers are retcon and snakes.
7. I totally own a Sonic Screwdriver (10th Doctor's model). Once, I used it to fix a screaming child in the library.
8. I have 5 parents: Mother, Father-I-Grew-Up-With, Biological Father, Stepfather (married to Mother), and Stepmother (married to Biological Father). Hallmark does not make cards for this shit.
9. There is an Odin in my family tree. Given my unique family situation, I figure that, at worst, that makes me Loki.
10. I have tattoos of several things that are awesome and which have been important in my life for various reasons. Someday I will have full sleeves.
11. At least once in my life, I want to do stand-up comedy.

11 Questions for victims recipients of this award

1. Do you have any semi-useless superpowers (e.g., "I always know exactly what time it is," or "I can pay attention to two TV shows at once")? If so, what are they?
2. What is the worst book you have ever read? What was so terrible about it?
3. If you use some kind of analytics tool, what's the weirdest search that's led someone to your blog?
4. Which Hogwarts house would the Sorting Hat place you in?
5. How many roads must a man walk down?
6. What's your favorite alcoholic drink? (If it's somewhat obscure, what's in it?)
7. What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? Please specify African or European.
8. What's the coolest thing you've ever gotten paid to do?
9. What's in your Zombie Apocalypse survival kit?
10. What would you do for a Klondike Bar?
11. Cake or death?

Tag, you're it!

Jen, the Geek Fabulous geekiness from places like Firefly and The Walking Dead. Also, spoilers, so be careful if you're not caught up (or if you don't want to be nagged by River Song).

Gabi Books It Contender for next companion of The Doctor, wearer of high heels, and reviewer of books. Quite possibly involved with Sherlock Holmes. She's also joining roller derby soon (Ha! Now you have to do it!).

Desperate for Something Life. Love. Politics. Recently, quite a number of political posts, which were equal parts awesome and glorious snark that amounted to a bitchslap of, well, Mitt Romney, mainly. But other kinds of stupid in the election process as well.

DON'T PANIC.

So today is Towel Day. If you don't know what that's all about, I suggest you go and read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Seriously. It's only like 200 pages. I'll wait. Otherwise, this won't make a whole lot of sense, and it's slightly more serious than funny today, so this whole thing may just end up getting lost on you. At the very least, read this (from the third chapter of the book):

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
     A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value—you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you—daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
     More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit, etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker may have accidentally "lost." What the strag will think is that any man that can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
     Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

I first picked up a copy of HHGG at the age of twelve. It was a small stroke of luck that I even came across it in the first place. It had been cleverly hidden away in the A section of the fiction area of my school library which, in turn, had been even more cleverly hidden away in a town of 100 people in North Dakota. (Actually, it was the Omnibus Edition of the trilogy that was published about a year before "The Hitchhiker's Trilogy" became a misnomer. FYI, and such.) The cover bore a cartoonish planet with a wide mouth and lolling tongue. This planet was juggling three similar planets. Ten years later, a face like this one (except with eyes) would come to be known as the Jake Face, and would become the exclusive facial expression used in pictures of me.

Apparently I wear that hat a lot. And that jacket.

The book had only been checked out once or twice before, but I would go on to add my name to its card (remember those?) several times before I graduated. I started reading it immediately, and had already finished the first chapter before I even reached the desk to check it out. My initial impression was that this may have been the single greatest combination of words ever assembles. As I progressed through the book, I would discover that this may have been an understatement.

I remember thinking—because I was twelve and American—that the error in Ford Prefect's attempt at adopting an inconspicuous name was merely orthographic in nature, and that misspelling "Perfect" was simply an entertaining irony. At some point not long after this, I read in the introduction that the name was actually a mistake on his part regarding the dominant species on the planet, and suddenly I began to understand that this was a book I was going to be reading very many times. It's the first book I remember reading in which I was not only being told a story, but also learning a lot about How To Write. Before that, most of what I'd read took itself far too seriously. Douglas Adams was the first author to show me it didn't always have to be that way. He somehow managed to blend Telling The Truth and Making Shit Up in a way that was funnier than anything I'd ever read before (or since), but also incredibly intelligent. He was one of my very first literary influences.

In 2001, at the age of 49, he joined my ever-growing list of authors whom I deeply regret having the misfortune of never being able to meet in person. I was just about to finish the first year of a Bachelor's degree in English at the time. $20,000 of higher education had equipped me with the ability to go "oh, shit" and feel a deep sense of loss, which is as good a tribute as any of us who Make Shit Up can hope for—that it meant something to someone, even someone we never met. Especially someone we never met. Two weeks later, some people who were not me created a holiday to commemorate his life and his work. That's Towel Day. That's today. That's why I spent the past two nights making this:

Just the towel. I didn't make the book. That was Douglas Adams.
Honestly, have you been paying any attention at all?

Also, I think I just made it through a whole post without saying "fuck." Except for there. Fuck.

Anyway, happy Towel Day.

This calls for a picture of Wil Wheaton collating.

So I got an email at work yesterday from a vendor who wanted me to drop about a thousand bucks on like 8 DVDs. It's relevant to point out that my email address at work includes my name, because the email began "Dear Jack Goodell." I have no idea who that is. Unless that's the name I use when I'm running around the country setting up fight clubs.

It continued, "Since we talked last year..." I didn't even work here last year, but apparently, during this prescient conversation, my alter ego requested that this guy touch base in late October. It's November. Twenty-first. The sale ended in October.

Also, "Remember Bob Barker and the Price is Right? Well we hope our prices are right" is the cheesiest sales pitch I've ever gotten. I do remember it. I used to watch it with my grandparents all the time. It was great. It's also completely irrelevant unless the DVDs you're selling are actually of The Price Is Right, and you think I'm 65. Even the penis pill spambots have better sales pitches than that because they don't go "hey, remember Andy Griffith? Click here for free Viagra!" Although, come to think of it, that would probably actually work because it's appropriate to their target demographic. So even if they did say that, they'd still have a better sales pitch than you.

And "We are aware of your recent budget cuts" is probably the worst way I could ever think of to get someone to buy something. "Hi. I know you're broke as shit, but here's something really expensive. I'm sure you'll be interested now that I've reminded you that you have absolutely no extra money to spend on stupid shit. Also, it was on sale last month, but that's over now. How many would you like?"

You get an F. And a picture of Wil Wheaton collating. How many would you like?

Courtesy of The Bloggess.

They were probably out looking for shovels.

Dear TxDOT:

Although I know you probably receive thousands of these letters, I wanted to write to you and express my gratitude for the complete closure of State Highway 121 this morning. I understand that the world does not run on a strictly 9-to-5 schedule and that, even though today is Saturday, many people in the area still had to go to work this morning. While the construction crew for this segment of highway was not actually among our number, the hundred or so of us stopped on the convenient one-lane detour you provided knew that, for the half hour we spent practically motionless, unnecessarily burning up a limited and expensive resource, they were with us in spirit. I would also like to compliment you on your decision not to announce this closure in advance, as I am sure that the waves of commuters adjusting their routes would have caused an undue increase of literally dozens of vehicles on each of several nearby roads that would otherwise have gone nearly untraveled at that hour of the morning. It is precisely this kind of thoughtful planning that makes you one of the finest Departments of Transportation in all of Texas.

Again, thanks for making me late. You owe me like $7.50.

Love,

Jake

P.S. I don't mean to complain, but we could really use a few more medians around here. Yesterday, I saw at least two different vehicles attempting to make a left turn rather than simply driving several more blocks and making a U-turn.

Apparently, we've met.

You know it's bad when even spellcheck starts making the joke.

Fuck.