My Grubhub Being Delivered By A Wizard Or Some Sort Of Apostle

my grubhub being delivered by a wizard or some sort of apostle

quick question why does your cat command you to print something on the printer

he really likes to watch the printer print. It seems like he thinks there’s some kind of creature in there that I have the mysterious power to summon that he can then hunt for sport?

he sticks his entire arm inside the printer and breaks it if I don’t put some kind of physical burrier between him and the printer but like he purrs so loud when it starts printing and will beg harder for people to print things than he will for treats.

he just loves hunting the printer so much. he even tried to climb inside the place the paper comes out of the printer when he was a kitten.

No matter where he is in the apartment if the printer makes a noise he sprints full speed. He also knows which button to press to get the printer to print like the ink levels info and alignment sheet, so you have to make sure it’s off or locked up or he will print nonstop himself and then attack the printer and jam it.

is it inconvenient that my cat is obsessed with the printer? yes, but damn if it’s not also adorable.

I don’t actually have a ton of photos of him sticking his whole arm in there though because stopping him from jamming the printer is usually a task that involves all of my arms and also all of my roommates arms.

Found an old tutorial of mine. 

Solid advice, past-me! <3 

pioneering something called "gritted teeth optimism" where everything is gonna turn out okay even if i have to bite and claw and gnash my way through it

dead metaphors are really interesting honestly and specifically i’m interested in when they become malapropisms

like, the concept being, people are familiar with the phrase and what people use it to mean metaphorically, but it’s not common knowledge anymore what the metaphor was in literal reference to. people still say “toe the line” but don’t necessarily conjure up the image of people standing at the starting line of a race, forbidden from crossing over it. people still say “the cat is out of the bag” without necessarily knowing it’s a sailors’ expression referring to a whip being brought out for punishment. some metaphors are so dead we don’t even know where they come from; like, there are ideas about what “by hook or by crook” references, but no one is entirely sure. nobody knows what the whole nine yards are.

and then you throw in a malaprop or a mondegreen or two, where because people don’t know what the actual words of the expression refer to, they’re liable to replace them with similar sounding words (see “lack toast and tolerant”). so we can literally go from a phrase referencing a common, everyday part of life to a set of unfixed, contextless sounds with a completely different meaning. that’s fascinating. what an interesting piece of the way language and culture are living, changing, coevolving things.

maybe part of the reason we can’t figure out where some phrases come from is that over time the words themselves have changed! one of the theories about “the whole nine yards” is that it’s a variant of “the whole ball of wax,” which some people further theorize was originally “the whole bailiwick,” meaning just “the whole area”! the addition of “nine yards” might be related to “dressed to the nines,” which might reference the fucking Greek muses! language is so weird and cool! (and I only know any idioms in two languages!)

the point is. I just came across the words “nip it in the butt” in a piece of published, professional fiction, and now I can’t stop giggling.