Pillow Talk

The Comically Tragic Plight of the Chinchilla

So... some of you will remember an earlier post that I wrote confessing that I don't believe in chinchillas. Turns out a surprisingly large number of people in this world are very adamant that chinchillas are, in fact, real, and have spent the last forever trying to prove their existence to me. I guess people will believe anything these days.

I figured I would humor some of those poor delusional souls and let them make their case, just for argument's sake. This is what I learned from a coworker who is also a zoology major, and also Wikipedia...

Let's start with what a chinchilla is, according to some.

Fig. 1: This is a chinchilla.

Apparently, chinchillas do exist, and they are endangered. These furry fabrications allegedly come from the mountains of South America, and are named for the Chincha people of the Andes. The idea of chinchillas most likely originated from tales spun by Native Americans hopped up on coca leaves that saw a deformed rabbit in the mountains, and thus the legend of the chinchilla was born. (That part wasn't on the Wiki page, but it will be soon, so help me. People need to know the truth!)

Chinchillas are mainly endangered from being hunted by humans for their magical properties and supersoft fur. The small populations that are left live in the Andes mountains or Petco. In the wild, these fluffy falsehoods live in shallow burrows under the ground. Much like hamsters, chinchillas are crepuscular, meaning the are active during the morning and evening and sleep during the middle of the day and the middle of the night.

Fig. 2: Chinchillas are crepuscular. You are diurnal. Chupacabras are nocturnal.

The greatest threat to these charming chimeras in the wild is... wait for it... cattle.

"But... wh... cow's aren't predators!"

You are correct. Cows are entirely herbivorous and totally docile. They roam the mountains eating nothing but grass and minding their own business. 

Fig. 3: This cow is minding its business.

In South America, the cow farmers (cowmen? cowpherds? cattlers?) let their cows just kind of wander every which way, eating all the chinchilla food and wandering onto their chinchilla land. Now, let's flash back a bit to the chinchilla's sleeping habits... 

Imagine you're a perfectly unsuspecting cow wandering through a perfectly normal-looking field, but it's a TRAP!

Under the surface of the earth, dozens of sleeping chinchillae in their shallow chinchilla-burrows have made the ground unstable and totally unsafe for cows.

Fig. 4: Another cow victimized by chinchilla burrows. It could have been seriously injured.

Also, when the cows step in the chinchilla burrows that have sleeping chinchillas in them, they tend to crush and kill the occupant, which is why chinchillas populations are on a constant decline.

Plus it's really gross for the cow.

Fig. 5: It's really hard to get crushed chinchilla out of your hooves. 

My coworker is currently raising funds (using artwork drawn by yours truly) to build fences for chinchillas in South America to keep them from getting accidentally stomped upon by innocent cattle. 

When she originally proposed the idea for fences for chinchillas, it seemed really ridiculous. I mean, it just doesn't make logical sense.

Fig. 6: A fence for chinchillas, approximately 6" tall.

If you build a fence that size, maybe it will keep the chinchillas from wandering into the cow pastures, but it wouldn't stop the cows at all.

Fig. 7: Chinchilla fences are impractical and unsafe, as they present a further tripping hazard for cows.

She explained later that the money was actually going toward building cow-sized fences, which makes much more sense.

Fig. 8: Cow-fences limit the feeding area of cows, but at least chinchillas won't get smushed.

So anyways, if you're into conservation-y things or fantasy creatures or buying sweet hats with PFN-style artwork on them, you should definitely go buy some "Chinchillin'" merchandise in the Union Building at Weber State University on Wednesday, March 19.

It's for a good cause.

I'm So Sorry

Here is a story...

Once upon a time, there was blogtoonist named Jackie. She didn't blog or toon very much because she had a mysterious brain condition that made all of her creativity fail her for months at a time. So please don't judge her.

The end.

I got all excited because Daniel got me a sweet new laptop that comes apart and magically transforms into a tablet, and I had all these grand plans for how I was going to draw cooler pictures than ever before! ...but then I couldn't think of what to draw, so I've mostly spent my time using the laptop to watch Netflix and YouTube videos of elephants who are better at drawing than me.

I tried again today to draw a picture, and this is what came out of my brain:

You're welcome.

That Britney Song (You Know The One)

So, here's a sad story.

Once upon a time, I was very young, and then I turned 14 or so and put on like 40 pounds overnight. Which, I'll admit, wasn't that big of a deal since I was a tiny human being to begin with. That's not the sad part. After that, I stayed at the same size... forever.

But then, TRAGEDY STRUCK! I got married!

Okay, that wasn't tragic. What's tragic is the thing that happens to everyone (apparently) after they get married: I started putting on weight again. 

My mind was totally blown, because for the past six plus years of my life I had eaten whatever and not changed size at all, except maybe a couple pounds of variation. Seriously, I'm not kidding, there was a point in my life where I ate almost exclusively Doritos, ice cream, and boxed pasta for four months and barely gained an ounce. 

So now it's a new year, and aside from my resolution to be less of a jerk, I also resolved to lose the pooch I've put on since my wedding. But here's the problem...

I'm SO LAZY, you guys.

No matter what I did before, I didn't gain or lose any weight, so I didn't really bother to exercise or eat people food. And I hate exercising! And I really hate being hungry!

I hope to lose at least all of the weight that I've gained since I've gotten married, since I apparently qualify as "overweight" now.

I did think of a pretty quick plan to lose some weight, but I don't really want to resort to extreme measures just yet.

So before we do anything drastic, I know some of you readers out there are fit/healthy people. What advice do you have for a twentysomething office drone who can barely climb the stairs to sit her lazy butt in her cubicle every day?

Here are some requirements for your specially tailored diet/exercise plan:

1. Jogging makes me want to die, so we definitely can't have any of that.

2. I probably will never go to the gym more than... twice. In my life. Seriously, I once paid for a gym membership for a year and didn't even go to that part of town.

3. I'm like frigging Paula Deen in the kitchen. Meaning I really like to cook and not much of my cooking is even sort of healthy. 

4. I do not like being hungry. Admittedly, sometimes if I get too busy I can go for days without eating, but if I ever notice that I'm hungry, heaven help us all.

5. I have a bored-eating problem. Sometimes I'll look down and my desk will be covered in wrappers from candy I didn't even know I had. My mouth just needs something to do!

6. I'm pretty terrible at self discipline. I'll whine like you wouldn't believe, and I'm no good at following through on things on my own motivation. 

So anywho, good luck with that! If you can find a way for me to lose 15-20 pounds without dieting, exercising, or making any sort of extra effort, you... uh... get to marry a princess. Or perhaps you get the key to the city. Or some sort of trophy. Yeah! I'll buy/make/acquire a trophy, and if you solve the riddle, I'll give it to you.

Let the games begin!

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You're welcome.

The Worst Thing I Ever Did

OK guys. Let's be serious here for a minute.

Today I want to talk about a couple things that everyone talks about, and I'm sure you've heard it a million times, but I'm going to say it all again, because I want everyone to know exactly how I feel. Most people are probably going to read this and kinda scoff and move on, but I hope that what I'm about to say can change some people's opinions for the better.

Today we're going to talk about not being a giant jerk.

As I'm sure all of you are aware, gay marriage recently became legal in Utah, which was hugely unexpected for everyone and has met with a LOT of media coverage and backlash. Utah is famous for being the "motherland" of the LDS religion, and is a notoriously red state. I myself have lived in Utah my whole life, and I was born and raised a Mormon. 

This is a story about how I learned an important lesson about morality.

It all started a long time ago when I was very young. I was in middle school, and I was probably in 6th or 7th grade, so I would have been about twelve-ish years old.

The nightmare began when a close friend of mine came out of the closet and announced that he was gay.

"Gasp!" thought my delicate pre-teen sensibilites, "But gay is wrong!"

Being the devout religious zealot that I was, I took it upon myself to set him straight, so to speak. That night, I went home and searched the most sketchy parts of the Old Testament to find the perfect scripture to show my good friend the error of his ways. My master plan was in motion.

The next morning, my friend came to school like any other day, and opened his locker...

...and out poured a bunch of tiny scraps of paper. Each tiny scrap of paper had a scripture reference written on it.

All the scraps of paper had the same reference, over and over again. In case any of you were curious, here is the full verse:

"22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."

In my childish mind, I had done the right thing. I had shown this poor young man God's supposed opinion of him and his sinful ways, in the most passive aggressive way I could think of. I went about my day feeling all warm and fuzzy inside for having done the Right Thing. 

But after a little while, things started to go a little differently than I would have liked...

Throughout the day, people who I had thought were my friends came up to me and called me names, pushed me around.

"Bigot!" they said.

"You should be ashamed of yourself!" they shouted.

"How dare you!"

"Jerk! Mean! Heartless! Bad friend!"

...and a lot of other things I won't say here because this is a family-friendly blog.

I was upset, but not too terribly shocked. I was certain I had done the Right Thing, and now I was being persecuted for my religion. I knew it would happen. You heard stories about it all the time. It was all part of being a Mormon and standing up for your beliefs. 

...but all of a sudden I didn't feel so good about myself.

I left school that day crying, because it felt like the whole world had turned against me. I don't remember what time of year it was, but in my mind it was winter, because I felt so cold and sad inside. It felt like the whole school hated me, and I could feel their glares on my back and I ran for the bus.

That day, I felt like I truly knew what it was like to be bullied.

Now... let's take a moment to pause and examine this story. 

Years later, I looked back on this experience and remembered how terrible I had felt that day. But as I got older and smarter, I looked back and imagined how my poor friend must have felt.

...and I realized that I was the bully.

It's not easy to confess something like that, especially not in middle school. I recently watched a TED Talk by a woman who was lesbian, and she talked about coming out of the closet. She explained that for someone who is gay, coming out is one of the hardest things they will ever do. But she also said that gay, straight, black, white, brown, tall, or short, we all have closets. Maybe our closet is telling our parents we are dropping out of college. Maybe it's telling your boyfriend you're pregnant. Maybe it's telling your children you're getting a divorce. Maybe it's telling your friends and family you have cancer. Maybe it's joining another religion even though you know your family will reject you and you'll lose a lot of friends. Whatever it is, these things are HARD. They are so hard! And that young man had the courage to tell people when he was just a child, and I spit in his face. Not only that, I publicly humiliated him in the name of my religion. IN MIDDLE SCHOOL.

So, I hope that young man reads this, and knows how deeply, truly sorry I am that tweenage Jackie was such an idiot. I hope he can accept my hundreds of apologies and forgive me for the terrible stupidity of that act. I also hope he realizes how many people stood up for him that day, and defended him against such a mean, heartless little girl during that sensitive period of his life.

And I hope everyone else reads this and realizes that bullying is NEVER ACCEPTABLE, regardless of the cause, or whether you're right, or whether you've been taught that it's alright to do things like that.

IT.

IS.

NEVER.

OK.

And I'm not just talking atomic wedgies and swirlies. I'm not just referring to childish, hurtful nicknames or taunting jeers. 

I mean excluding, rejecting, or ridiculing someone because of their life choices. I mean grownup adults treating other adults with disdain or disgust because of the way they look or think or act. We are taught from a very young age to be a certain way, and those behaviors are perpetuated across generations, because people don't just stop and think about what they're doing. 

People always talk about what we can do to stop bullying, and about how it has become such a big problem in our society and for our children. 

To those people, I have the perfect solution:

STOP. BEING. BULLIES.

I'm going to say it again.

STOP BEING BULLIES!

I'm not saying I'm perfect, by any means. I am probably the worst about teasing people for fun. I pick on my poor husband, my sisters, my friends, my coworkers... But I've been thinking a lot about it lately, and with the whole gay marriage thing in the spotlight, bullies have been coming out of the woodworks like crazy. 

I don't want to be bullied, and I'm sure you don't either. But when we say things like "their lifestyle is disgusting" or "people like that shouldn't be allowed in public" or "God hates those people," we are being bullies just as much as that big kid at recess who hangs kids from the coat hooks by their underwear. Probably worse, because Indian burn goes away eventually, but those sorts of emotional scars drive kids to suicide. How would you feel knowing that something you said to someone, or even a look you gave them, drove that person to take their own life?

The absolute worst part is, if we act a certain way as adults, young children will see those things and then perpetuate them across another generation! We always hear stories of how mean and nasty kids are at school, but they certainly weren't born mean. We can blame it on the media and the decline of society, but it all starts in the home. I don't have children myself, but I have siblings and cousins, and I recently was called to be a leader of young women in my branch. I hope each and everyone one of those girls sees this and takes it to heart.

Let's go back to my story for a moment. A few years later, another, even closer friend of mine came to me one day. We had been inseparable for years, and we had stayed close even when we went away to different colleges. One night, we were sitting in his car, and he confessed to me that he too was gay. 

To be completely honest, it came as kind of a shock to me, but this time, all I said was "Okay?"

He told me that he had been so afraid to tell me because he thought I would hate him, or that I wouldn't want to be friends anymore. But I realized at that moment, that it didn't matter what I thought about homosexuality, or what was or was not sin, or even if it grossed me out. Because I loved him, and he was my friend, and that was all that mattered. The fact that he was gay didn't change the fact that he was still him, and we were still us, and that was that.

(Unrelated note, I screwed this situation up pretty hard core too, but it had nothing to do with bullying. But I'm still sorry about that, too.)

Anywho, that brings me to my final point:

It doesn't matter what you think.

Let me say that one more time in case you didn't get it.

IT. DOES. NOT. MATTER.

Do you think homosexuality is gross? That doesn't matter. Do you think all Muslims are terrorists? Screw you, dude, it doesn't matter what you think. Are you worried that that black man is going to steal your purse? Shut up, it doesn't matter.

I read another interesting article by a gentleman who was not Mormon about what Mormons believe. It was a surprisingly positive take on how we should approach issues of morality. You should definitely read it when you get a chance, but to summarize the author points out that the basic premise of all Mormon belief is agency. The whole reason we are here on this earth today, according to Mormon theology, is because we fought for our right to choose for ourselves, rather than be chosen for.

So why would we presume to make that choice for others?

We all have our own opinions and ideas and beliefs, and that's GREAT! That's what makes people who they are, and it's awesome! We should embrace our individuality, and focus on bettering ourselves in a positive way, rather than trying to make ourselves feel better by making others seem worse. 

If you think about it, making others feel worse to make yourself feel better is a great way to bring the societal average down. 

Here's a math lesson! 

If you feel 60% good, but another person feels a whopping 65% good, and then you tell them they're going to hell for voting Democrat and they feel 15% worse, that leaves them at only 50% good feelings. Hooray you, you're the best at 60% good! But if you think about it, now the average between the two of you is only 55%.

Now imagine you feel 60% good, and they feel 65% good, and you tell them that you like their shoes. Now they feel 5% better because of your nice complement, and you feel 5% better for having given a complement! On top of that, you get another 5% happiness bonus for having ignored something negative that you may have disagreed with, and instead focused on the positive. Now you're both at 70% good feelings, and the world is a slightly happier place!

It's New Year's this week, y'all. It's a time for making resolutions about weight loss that we all know we'll never keep, and celebrating the year that has passed without losing those 10 lbs you resolved to lose last year. I'm gonna go ahead and challenge everyone reading this to make a real resolution that we can all hopefully keep. I'll refer you to my earlier statements:

STOP BEING BULLIES.

And of course, remember:

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU THINK.

I want to be a better person this year. I wish I could have been a better person last year, and the year before that, and all those years ago when I acted like a douche and probably really hurt someone's feelings. Unfortunately, though, time is linear and I can't go back in time and change things. If I could, I would punch Younger Jackie in the face so hard.

And one more thing...

If I ever see or hear about someone I know or love bullying someone, I'm gonna be super pissed. It's hard, I know, but let's all make an effort to be a little better. If you slip up, realize where you went wrong and apologize. 

If it helps you, have someone else that you trust call you out on your BS. I said something kinda mean at work the other day and one of my coworkers was cool enough to pull me aside and say "Hey, I know you thought that was funny, but just be careful because you might hurt someone's feelings, and I know you wouldn't want to do that." And you know what? It was so embarrassing. I felt awful. But it was GREAT! Because now I know that the things I said may have been construed as mean, and I can be more sensitive to other people. We can all help each other be better. 

Finally, if I ever catch you bulling someone without remorse, or just for bullying' sake, I will punch you. 

Be afraid. 

But mostly be nice for niceness's sake. 

Love, Jackie.

Surprise!

So, as many of you well know, today is my birthday. On this day, 21 years ago, I was born. 

As most every oxygen-breathing American knows, birthdays are a time for cake and gift-giving. So everything was going according to tradition when Daniel went online to buy me a present for my impending birthday.

Now, not gonna lie. I love surprises as much as the next person. Daniel has to work pretty hard to surprise me though, because I'm kind of a supersleuth. For instance, as he was shopping online that day, he called from the other room, "Would a junior's medium be too small for you?" And then proceeded to hum the theme from the all-too-short-lived sci-fi series "Firefly."

"Are you buying me a Firefly themed T-shirt?" I asked.

"Whh... No! Shut up!" he replied.

Eventually he settled on the perfect super-secret gift for my birthday, and I resolved to try really hard not to spoil the surprise for myself.

Fast forward a few days...

I check my email several times a day because I sometimes get important work things there. And because it makes me feel important whenever I get an email. But that day, I pulled it up, and right there in front of me...

"Your Amazon Order of A Song of Ice and Fire (4 Book Boxed Set) and 1 More Item Has Shipped!"

...and all at once I find myself faced with a dilemma. 

Daniel had used my Amazon account to order my birthday present, but at no point in time had it crossed either of our minds that the confirmation emails would be sent to my email account, for some reason. I suppose neither of us is good at planning ahead.

So now, I feel bad for spoiling the surprise when in reality there was nothing I could do about it.

Do I tell him and make him feel bad for not surprising me, or do I keep it to myself and just act surprised? 

But then a thought came to my head...

It's called "Jackie's Birthday Curse."

I have developed a terrible habit over the last few years since I got a real-person job and became an independent woman. Let's flash back a couple of years to see what I mean...

And then the next year...

And now, here we are at the present year, when all I wanted was the books that Game of Thrones is based off. They seem really exciting, and I want to start reading more so I won't seem like such a moron!

Truth be told, had I not seen that email, I most likely would have bought the books on Kindle myself.

So now, flash forward to that day, the fateful email staring me in the face.

I came to the conclusion that I was going to keep it to myself and not tell Daniel, because he worked so hard to keep it a secret (although, apparently, not hard enough). 

And now, it's the present, and it's my birthday, and Daniel has given me my gift. And I honestly truly was excited! I'll probably start reading as soon as this is posted. But I came to the conclusion that I couldn't keep it secret from him forever, so I had to tell him one way or another.

So now, here's the surprise. As I type, he is still completely unaware of the situation. In a few mere moments, I shall post it, and he shall know the truth.

Wish me luck...