Dogs Have it Good

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Science: It is Neat

Science is crazy interesting. My idea here is to write about something science-y, something wild happening in the science world, or an in-depth dissection of something that you probably know nothing about that is super cool. Each installment will surely blow your mind.

This episode, however, is going to be quite short due to the limited amount of time that I have to dedicate to writing and drawing. So, without dilly-dallying any longer:

Science: It is neat.

Episode #1: House Flies

I hate flies and you hate flies. That’s because they are annoying as hell and they have an unnatural ability of ruining anything edible or attractive by landing on it for one second. Imagine Carmen Electra. Now imagine Carmen Electra post-fly landing. She may as well be be Steve Buscemi now.

Fortunately for us, flies have exceptionally short lifespans. This is especially good when you consider that one female fly can lay up to 500 eggs in her lifetime. Imagine if they lived as long as humans. Gross.

On average, an adult house fly can live two to four weeks, in which time they will drive everyone totally nuts.

The diet of the housefly consists mainly of feces, mucus and phlegm, and open sores. Basically, flies have no sense of self respect.

There is some good news, however! Houseflies are only able to ingest liquid foods. So, next time one lands on your sandwich you don’t have to worry that it ate any of it with its nasty fly mouth. On the down side, flies do regurgitate partially digested food when they land for the simple reason that they like to be as nasty and invasive as possible. So don’t worry, flies don’t eat you food. They only throw up on it, lick up their puke, and then fly away. Also, when scouring the internet for information on houseflies, I came across this tasty fact on Wikipedia: “Because of their high intake of food, they deposit feces constantly . . .”

Are you kidding me? Not only are flies sharpshooters when it comes to landing in my milk, but they also have to spread their excrement all over my house. And thats after treating my sandwich like a barf bag.

God, flies suck so bad.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we will be rid of these tiny punishments from God any time soon. The housefly, or musca domestica (as some latin idiot decided to name this globule of winged hate), has been around for about 65 million years. This basically means that they have endured 65 million years of animals and people despising them and trying to kill them and they have gotten pretty good at surviving.

Houseflies are also highly dependent on humans to survive and so, with global population rising, we are pretty much totally screwed. And here our mission becomes clear: we must reduce global population to like five people (myself included as one of the five). Once I am sure that the last house fly has died and its genetic material has been destroyed I promise to repopulate the world and return everything back to normal. Unless the other four people alive accidentally turn out to be dudes. In which case we are all out of luck.

All of my information for this post can be found on the house fly page on wikipedia.com. If you do not consider wikipedia to be a very credible source of information then you probably shouldn’t be spending time reading my stuff anyway.

Tags: Cartoons, Comic, Flies, Funny, Science

Coming Soon: Help me choose….

Seriously. Help me choose what to write about next. Right now it’s kind of coming down between writing about a weird sleep-derprived 3 days I had which resulted in me feeling like I was on acid or starting a new continuing-post idea in which I teach everyone something amazing and awesome from the world of science.

Please let me know what you would like most…even though I will very likely disregard your input altogether and do whatever I want.

Procrastination

The beginning of a new school year. Time to organize, buy some books, and prepare mentally for some intense learning. However, along with the excitement (and depression) that is bundled in with the new school year comes something else: My finely tuned procrastination skills. I know that procrastination is a quality that is inherent in many college students. But I don’t just dabble in procrastination. It is my profession and I excel at it.

(By the way: I’m not an idiot. I know the school year started months ago. It just so happens that I procrastinate so much that I ended up procrastinating writing this post on procrastination so much that I am only getting to it now rather than when the school year began.)

The school year always starts out the same. I have my books all organized, folders and notebooks labeled, fresh pens waiting to take notes, and a noggin full of motivation. Basically, I transform from summer mode into badass, hardcore scholar mode within a matter of days. All the slacking and laziness goes out the window. I toss my flip flops into the closet and lace up my learning shoes. I hang up my baseball cap and strap on my thinking-cap. The sunglasses come off and the reading glasses go on. (I actually do not wear reading glasses but I’m really trying to stress the mental transcendence that I undergo when summer ends with all the school-y items. Come to think of it I do not have a thinking-cap or specific learning shoes either. Whatever. The main idea that I am trying to get across here is that I get totally in gear for school when summer ends. That is all.) I become a machine.

Unfortunately, this whole motivation-packed mindset that I get last for about 3 hours or until I realize that it is still super nice out and that I should go for a bike ride. Whichever comes first.

Poof! Instantly motivation has been shoved under the bed and instantly forgotten. Actually, being shoved under the bed is putting it too lightly. It’s more like my motivation gets mauled and ripped apart by  my procrastination.

Sorry motivation, I have better things to do. Once all traces of motivation have been shed, I go off and oblige my desires by doing exactly what I want when I want. Read pages 34-78? Maybe when I’m done with this hike. Edit my paper? If there is time after I make a sandwich. Prepare my speech for tomorrow? But everyone is going out tonight!

Once I lose all resistance to temptation (which is pretty much immediately), I have invited my little friend, procrastination to take things over. The nice thing is, procrastination makes me feel good immediately and I’m happy in the moment by rationalizing with myself and saying, “It’ll get done soon.” The lame thing is, I’m pretty much only happy in that moment and so 8 hours later when I am up at 4:30 am, I am cursing my very existence. Procrastination, therefore, is not like eating a delicious dinner where hours later I will be like, “Yay! I am still full! I am experiencing happiness from eating that!” Procrastination is more like not getting kicked in the nuts right now at this moment but then getting kicked in the nuts like 40 times 2 hours later instead.

The interesting thing is, I still procrastinate even though the feel-good part of it is so brief and minor while the awful, regret-filled part lasts for so much longer. I still claim that smidgen of pleasure from putting off homework for a few hours even though I know full well that staying up all until 4 A.M. makes me want to light myself on fire.

So at this point I have fallen deep within the quagmire of procrastination. The only way out at this point is to be jolted by getting an “F” on an assignment or for a professor to say something like:

“Hey Danny, not to be an A-hole or anything, but the work you have handed into me looks like the product of a epileptic squirrel seizure-ing on a keyboard. Are you on drugs by any chance?”

I honestly believe that negative feedback like this would shock the motivation back into me at least for a few days.

Unfortunately, this never happens. Somehow, against all odds, I end up getting decent grades! What the hell karma? Where were you when I got an “A” on that book report that was on the book that I “couldn’t find time to read?” Shouldn’t I be punished by some higher power for cramming for an exam the night before? Apparently not. And so, my habit it reinforced indefinitely.

Now I am 22 and the habit is so deeply engrained in me that I have come to accept it as a permanent malady. Procrastination is to Danny as Sonny is to Cher. Or rather, Procrastination is to Danny as “believing crazy stupid things” is to Scientology.

Please don’t send the aliens after me Mr. Hubbard.

A Word About Posts 2.0

As the school year has now begun, I am finding it more and more difficult to find the time to write and draw posts. With that said, I will now be shutting down LTC forever and deleting all of the posts from the internet.

Just Kidding. Can you imagine?

Nah…I still very much enjoy having a semi-productive outlet for my weird drawings and will definitely continue to work  tirelessly at adding more posts. In the mean time, please don’t forget about my blog and feel free to submit any suggestions/praises for posts. Criticisms are strongly discouraged.

Have a wonderful day.

Your friend (maybe. If you’re lucky.),

Danny