Shared posts

28 May 18:55

Saw this floating around Tumblr and thought it was too perfect...



Saw this floating around Tumblr and thought it was too perfect not to post.

Hope you all had a gneiss holiday!

28 May 18:55

When you don't expect your mineral to be halite

24 Feb 18:56

So with your promise of cats galore does that mean more Regal? (Regal for Ruler of Vadrans 2k15)

Denise

ALL HAIL HYPNOCAT

HYPNOCAT THANKS YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT BUT ORDERS YOU TO TEMPORARILY FORGET ABOUT REGAL

24 Feb 18:16

calibrashuns:I WENT TO THE CAFE DOWN THE STREET AND THERE WERE A...

Denise

That iguana is waaay nicer than that a**hole one we had at McWane.



calibrashuns:

I WENT TO THE CAFE DOWN THE STREET AND THERE WERE A BUNCH OF PEOPLE THERE CELEBRATING THIS LIZARDS BIRTHDAY

HE HAS A LITTLE PARTY HAT

19 Feb 14:51

Victory Music

Denise

D'awwww

13 Feb 22:01

strip for February / 13 / 2015 - Have You Taken The Coffee Oath?

10 Feb 20:36

Scott, I'm reading republic of thieves, on page like 360, and I just wanna say the book needs more Regal the Pirate Cat. That's it though. Aside from that I have no complaints. I love it. You kicked ass on this book.

Denise

MORE REGAL!

You and my girlfriend think alike. There was a… disagreement on whether or not the book should contain even more Regal.

09 Feb 22:14

10 "If I Fits" Memes that Truly Explain the Phenomenon

A few days ago we posted about science trying to understand the "if I fits" mentality of cats.

We agreed that cats are weird and you all submitted some awesome memes on the subject.

Here are some of the best.

06 Feb 18:44

Mr. Lynch, they red scaly things are palm trees (leaves hidden out of frame)! Not nearly as exciting as your interpretation, sadly!

Denise

"Dancing Pyres of Igneous Doom" is the name of my next band.

Yeah, I like magma cones much better. In my head they’ll always be dancing pyres of igneous doom.

06 Feb 18:41

midwinterblossom:Us Camorri GirlsWe’re unforgettableFancy...

Denise

Sharing for 1) the lyrics, and 2) Lynch's comments. Love both!



midwinterblossom:

Us Camorri Girls

We’re unforgettable

Fancy skirts, with daggers on top

Long red hair, so hot

We’ll melt your popsicle

Now put your hands up.


No, seriously, put your hands up. Now give me your money. Good.

Okay, I recognize the Katy Perry costume, and the sharks, no problem. I recognize the dancing surfboards. But what the shmeckity-hell are those scaly red things? Are they meant to be crabs? Another masterpiece, Picasso. Are they shrimp? Are they… magma cones? Is this whole dance number about how the ocean is thick with cruel and indifferent predators, and how even that is meaningless in the face of inevitable geothermal upheaval? That would be pretty amazing, and significantly more lyrically challenging than “Firework,” I gotta say.

06 Feb 18:21

Lesson #2379 - Dragons


Dragons burn, coffee burns. I figure caffeine headaches are equivalent to being impaled on a dragon. I could be wrong but do you have a dragon nearby to allow me to scientifically test my theory?

WIRED: I was asked a few months ago to join a group that is contributing to WIRED magazine for their Chartgeist segment, and I got a chart accepted for their April issue. It is quite possibly the dumbest chart I have ever come up with, but I now will have had my work in a national publication. So there's that!

PATREON:You can become a patron of STW and help us make more and better comics!

PhD UNKNOWN: My other webcomic about science, school and monsters! Drawn by Joan Cooke!

02 Feb 20:30

Hey, fellow cat parents — we found these GREAT cat beds at Costco. Perfectly sized, tuck nicely under the wall heat vents, apparently super comfy — and best of all, very inexpensive, unless you fill them with packages of ribeyes before you bring them home.

02 Feb 20:25

Ugh. Today, goddammit. Those days where you semi-emerge from a...



Ugh. Today, goddammit. Those days where you semi-emerge from a period of bad anxiety and all the wonderful artifacts of depression, and discover all the Things That Need Doing. Oh shit, not the goat too… !

02 Feb 19:53

And I Can Enjoy It Without Donuts, Now

sleep is dumb

Tonight’s comic is basing our whole friendship around coffee.

16 Jan 16:28

A Question For Discussion This Fair Evening

by John Scalzi
Denise

Okay, so I missed this when it was first posted, and don't need to read through all of the Scalzi-fan comments. But I did want to comment on the pain-thing.

I prefer NOT to get the novocain shot when getting something drilled. Why, you ask? Do I enjoy pain? NO, I do not. That is why I don't get the shot. 1) The shot hurts like the bejeezus, and 2) I still feel everything with the drilling because novocain does not work for me, other than making me feel all discombobulated about where parts of my face are.

So, if I get a shot, I have the pain of the shot, AND the pain of the drilling, PLUS weird face crap. No shot means just the pain of the drilling (which they can put a local on the nerve ending when they get to it).

Which is:

I was at the dentist’s yesterday to get a small filling done, and while I was there the dentist, his assistant and I had a discussion about painkillers, and the fact that some people — not a huge number but not an infinitesimally small number either — prefer not to use them when getting their teeth drilled. The thinking there, as far as I can tell, is that the momentary displeasure of a high speed drill on your tooth is not worth either a needle being jabbed into your gums, or having half your face numb for a couple of hours, or both.

I personally think this is incomprehensible — please, numb me up and numb me up good — but I’m also aware that my tolerance for pain is not, shall we say, Olympic.

So let me ask you: When at the dentist, do you prefer to be numbed up into oblivion? Or do you prefer to ride it out without the Novocaine? Or does it depend on the procedure? I’m genuinely curious. Let me know in the comments.


15 Jan 14:47

It could have been Calo, Galdo, and Bug's world, couldn't it??? You monster! >:(

Denise

:D

Well, the real secret is that when Locke leaves the map room feeling awesome about himself, that’s when the curator slips back in and removes the “Locke’s World” signs that had temporarily been placed over all the “Sabethavania” signs.

30 Dec 18:29

How much fun is it to get to answer a question about your writing with 'Can't talk. Spoilers.'? because it looks like a lot of fun.

It’s like walking in a sunlit meadow and discovering a basket of kittens, and then the Free Cupcake Truck drives by, just in time for the twenty-dollar bills to start raining from the sky.

10 Dec 22:14

Small Moon

Denise

This would be the kind of thing to bring down a Rebellion.

GENERAL JAN DODONNA: An analysis of the plans provided by Princess Leia has reinvigorated the arguments of the 'artificial moonlet' and 'rogue planet-station' camps. I fear this question is fracturing the Rebellion.
10 Dec 22:09

strip for November / 25 / 2014 - Daily Protection Money

Denise

Yep. And a tiny little mobster that I ADORE.

10 Dec 22:05

Food and Consequences

Denise

We now know the true reason cats are assholes - they just want our coffee, beer, and pizza!

sleep is dumb

Tonight's comic is about sharing.

19 Nov 21:03

She's Met Her Match

Denise

I AM SO METAL.

19 Nov 18:46

November 19, 2014

Denise

BWAHAHA!


If you want a Science book in a hurry, they're on amazon!
13 Nov 16:00

Outside Voice: The Pain of Wanting to Protect My Daughter's Spirit and Knowing I Really Can't

by Anonymous Guest Blogger
Denise

Wow. WOW. Yes, yes, yes. Hits home a bit hard for me.

Outside Voice is a series of stories by anonymous writers who need a safe space to share them. The following piece was written by a friend and reader of Schmutzie.com, and I am honoured to publish her story here.


When I got pregnant the first time, I didn't know the kind of pain I was in for.

by Milan Nykodym, Czech Republic [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

by Milan Nykodym, Czech Republic [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I knew, of course, that pregnancy could be awful and that labour and delivery would surely be no picnic. Then there's the whole recovery and getting used to looking after a baby thing, which can be so, so, awful. And that's just with your standard, no complications, pregnancy and labour. There are so many things that can pile on top of that.

When my daughter was in kindergarten, she had HSP, which is an over active immune reaction. She was in pain for months, with bruising  all over her legs and lower back and swelling in her joints. There was a period where she couldn't eat or walk. I carried her from place to place, any movement that jarred her legs causing her to cry. She spent some time in hospital on anti-nausea drugs while drinking Ensure, because she'd lost five of her thirty-five pounds. We had to take her to specialists to make sure her liver was still functioning. We were thrilled when she was able to keep food down, and cheered when she actually requested to eat. My heart broke a hundred times a day for her.

There is an entirely different pain though, that comes with children.

She likes to tuck her pants into her socks because she finds the feel of them moving against her legs as she walks irritating.

"Some girls at school told me ten things that I should do to avoid being bullied. They said I need to get new clothes. I like my clothes though.  I decided I don't want to do any of them, because then I wouldn't be me anymore."

Now in grade four, my baby's mind wanders. She is easily distracted, she has big emotions and huge reactions. She is not great with transitions, which there are a lot of at school. She assumes that everyone she meets is a friend, and she's not great at picking up cues that maybe they aren't.

"Mummy?"

"Yeah?"

"What does 'spaz' mean?"

"In what context?"

"Well, some kids at school called me that today. And no one would tell me what it meant."

She reads two novels a day, and she has trouble pulling herself out of a book with no warning. She takes forever to get ready to go anywhere. She doesn't always have the best sense of time and doesn't realise that she's been doing something for an hour if there are no visual cues. She gets frustrated when people don't understand what she is saying, and that can lead to temper tantrums. All of this also causes trouble at school.

by nerissa's ring (Flickr: girl, lost) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

by nerissa's ring (Flickr: girl, lost) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

And I'm torn. I understand the dilemma of her teachers. I really do. You can't focus all your attention on one kid out of 25. You can't take time out from your day to deal with frustrations and tantrums. You can't be everywhere at once. You can't stop kids from saying hurtful things when you're not around. I understand all that.

That doesn't make it better when my child is in tears telling me that her classmates laughed at her. Or that they've started calling her something new and she doesn't know what it means either.

"They don't do it in front of the teachers, Mummy. I guess they don't want them to hear it."

 She has been tested, and the verdict was that she does not have ADHD. She does not have enough of the markers to be diagnosed with Aspergers. She is Gifted, with a Learning Disability.  What does any of this mean? It means that her classmates think she is weird and don't hesitate to tell her so. 

"Sometimes, I feel like they want to wash their hands after they work with me."

This is the pain I wasn't prepared for. The pain of wanting to protect my daughter's spirit, and knowing that I really can't. I want to help her fit in so that her days will be easier, but I worry that in fitting in, she will be losing parts of her that make her who she is. I worry that, as I did, she might strive so hard to fit in that she'll realise one day she doesn't know who she is. 

If I'm being entirely honest, her fitting in would also make my life easier. I wouldn't have to sit with an understanding face on while I listen to her tell me about these things. I wouldn't have to try to come up with the reasoned, calm reactions that I hope to model for her to emulate, while inside I'm crying for her and raging at the kids who think that treating someone this way is alright. My heart breaks for them, too, since I really don't believe that this kind of behaviour comes out of nowhere. I wouldn't be sitting at home after a phone call with a teacher who seems more interested in making her conform than in finding ways to work with her differences.  

"You know what, Mummy? If everyone was the same, there would never be any inventions, or good stories. I'm glad I'm different."

I also struggle, because in a world where children laugh at one another's struggles, or judge them for the way they wear their pants, I don't really want my kid to fit in. I'm glad that she is strong enough to understand that different is good, and kindness is always best, and I hope with all my heart that she manages to stay that way.

In a world where a teacher assures me that "the kids are really great with her" because they are learning to ignore a person, instead of learning to understand that everyone is different in their own way, I don't want to fit in either.


I'm taking part in NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month, during which I am publishing a blog post every single day during the month of November.

Check out the NaBloPoMo blogroll.

13 Nov 14:41

Allons-y Alonzo!

Denise

Click through - it's bigger on the inside, and made of LEGO!

keyboard shortcuts: previous photo next photo L view in light box F favorite < scroll film strip left > scroll film strip right ? show all shortcuts

07 Nov 15:19

Chemistry

Denise

Sarah, have you not seen this?

These are all sans-serif compounds. Serif compounds are dramatically different and usually much more reactive.
06 Nov 15:21

The Real Sonic Screwdriver

sleep is dumb

Tonight’s comic is about the REAL Sonic Screwdriver

22 Oct 17:45

Orb Hammer

Denise

This is kind of what I deal with when I talk with people about data preservation "Well, it IS preserved but no one needs to know anything about it! Or even ever see it!"

Ok, but make sure to get lots of pieces of rock, because later we'll decide to stay in a room on our regular orb and watch hammers hold themselves and hit rocks for us, and they won't bring us very many rocks.
03 Oct 15:14

They say that water cannot be created or destroyed

All artwork and content on this site is Copyright © 2014 Matthew Inman. Please don't steal.

TheOatmeal.com was lovingly built using CakePHP

26 Sep 18:08

Behind the Curve

sleep is dumb

Thanks to the magic of time dilation, tonight’s comic is a little early.

26 Sep 14:51

Scritch Scritch Scritch

Denise

SQUEEEEEEEEE!
(Marten if you F this one up I will enter the QC universe and give you a world of hurt!)