If the world is ever taken over by robots

And luckily someone invents a giant robot killing machine and all we need is a five-word sentence to attract every single robot and bring it to its death, and the world turns to me and says "Brooke, WHAT FIVE-WORD SENTENCE DO ROBOTS LIKE BEST, everyone is counting on you" don't worry, I already know what sentence we could use. 

And with that taken care of the rest of you can just be in charge of bringing snacks that we can eat while we watch all the robots come swarming in.

Guess my name

A few weeks ago I was in LA, being a young professional, eating Pop Chips, and taking a lot of cab rides. And the cab rides were sort of the worst.

I thought the very worst ride ended with my driver punching the dashboard when I told him I didn't have cash, then fumbling with a credit card machine while screaming "Get away from here, I don't accept your kind!" at a group of teenagers banging on the windows. But then it actually ended with my realizing I had given him the wrong address and was pretty lost, so I wandered around a while before standing in front of an out-of-business menorah store for a half hour because it seemed like the safest area.



My trick for deciding if something is dangerous is imagining how the worst-case scenario would look in the newspaper and "Girl Robbed Blind by Wrong Sort of Teenagers in Front of Out-Of-Business Menorah Store" sounds like a horrible newspaper headline so I knew I was safe. Also the capitalization is all wrong in that, I faked sick the day we had a headline capitalization test in middle school and never looked back. In French you only capitalize the first word which in my opinion makes it a strong contender for Best Language or Second best language, depending on how you capitalize and what your favorite language is.

That's a long way of saying that I was excited when my friend told me about a new sort of cab service where you sign up on your phone and it charges directly to your card. No cash involved! No finding one, they come to you! I won't tell you the name because I don't want to buzz-market it, but believe me, it is great. It is extremely fancy.

These cabs meet you wherever your smartphone is in less than five minutes. All black on the outside, all back on the inside, enough legroom for the lovechild of a spider and an octopus which also happens to be my new greatest fear. My driver was a composed man in his sixties wearing a driving cap - he ran through all the benefits of the service in what sounded to me like a fake accent. I was never going to spend another night alone in the dark trying to remember the story behind Hannukah and I was pretty excited.

"I LOVE this!" I said.

Without missing a beat he adjusted the rearview mirror so he could make eye contact.

"And we love you, Brooke."

Which brings me to the one bad thing about this cab service: apparently the drivers know your first name. And they're excited about it. I started alternating between pretending he knew my name because he was my professional chauffeur and trying to forget the whole thing had happened but switching back and forth between the two made me carsick. Luckily he kept the conversation going.

"It pays great, Mondays are the slowest but this Monday I still made $500."

"You're kidding!"

"Well, actually I made $450, but it's close to $500 and I thought it would be easier to just round up."

"Oh believe me," I said. "I tell lies like that all the time."

He laughed. "I like you, Brooke. You're my kind of girl."

At this point he realized the street he had been taking to my hotel was a dead end, and he started to turn around. But the best thing about paying for cabs with your phone is you can just suddenly yell "This is well within walking distance!" and jump out of the car when you want your ride to end. And I suddenly did.

And then when I got back to my hotel room I ate some more Pop Chips, because they're a delicious low-calorie snack.

The tooth fairy isn't real.

I woke up this morning with a half-dollar in my hand and a vague sense of fear.

I'm not talking about half of a dollar bill, or two quarters. I was lying in bed, in my pajamas, holding a really large coin with JFK's profile. I have never seen a half-dollar before this morning, and I don't think I knew they existed. I have seen a Sacajawea coin, but this is not a Sacajawea coin. Enough about Sacajawea coins, and back to this mystery half-dollar. Here are all the possible explanations I can think of.

1. I'm finally collecting money for the wisdom teeth I had removed eight years ago.

2. After months of practice I've become a complete expert in lucid dreaming and brought back this money from another dimension.

3. A stranger put a half dollar in their pocket and put their jeans in the washing machine where the half dollar fell out and stayed there until I did my laundry and then it went into my clothes and stuck to my body. This one seems both the most physically possible (because it doesn't require magic like the others do) but also the least likely.

4. I sleepwalked and went shopping.

5. Time-travel. Either into the future or the past. It seems like a possibility worth adding.

6. Someone broke into my apartment and is living in it and paying a very small amount of rent. I checked the shower and the fridge. I didn't check under the bed. I was too scared.

There is probably actually a really normal explanation for this and when I find out what it is it will be my duty to let the internet know. A lot of other strange things that have happened that turned out to have perfectly normal explanations.

Age 18: Finding a cartoon about myself as a superhero, drawn by a stranger, hidden in a bush on campus. (Someone in my dorm had started drawing a cartoon about me in class. This explanation is not that normal. The others will get better.)

Age 8: A miniature screw that fell from the sky. (It fell out of my glasses.)

Age 14: My band teacher wearing a shirt with the name of my dad's company. (He got it at a thrift store.)

Age 12: A tube of glitter lip gloss with a note that said "Hi Brooke" on my desk in Physical Science. (I had complimented the girl next to me on her lip gloss, so she bought me some.)

Age 25: A box with my name appeared on my doorstep. (I had ordered something online.)

I'm leaving LA without ever seeing a celebrity

No, that guy with the crazy hair that I always talk about seeing doesn't count. To be honest, I don't think he was famous. I think he just had crazy hair.

Starting next week I'm going to be jaywalking, eating french fries, and making too much eye contact with homeless people in a brand-new city. Which one? Read on to the next sentence to find out!

Oh man, what if I did one of those scrolling things from chain emails where you scroll down for days?

   __       __   ____       ____
   ) \     / (   )   \     /   (
  )_  \_V_/  _(   )_  \_V_/  _(
    )__   __(       )__   __(           
       `-'             `-'

Remember those?

                     /\/\
        ___--~^~~--_(-  -)_--~~^~--___
       ^\      HOORAY 4 TENNIS       /^
          \   /\   /\    /\   /\   /
            \/   \/  \  /   \/  \/
                     ^\/^

Didn't you love those?

                 _..-'(                       )`-.._
              ./'. '||\\.       (\_/)       .//||` .`\.
           ./'.|'.'||||\\|..    )*.*(    ..|//||||`.`|.`\.
        ./'..|'.|| |||||\```````  "  '''''''/||||| ||.`|..`\.
      ./'.||'.|||| ||||||||||||.     .|||||||||||| ||||.`||.`\.
     /'|||'.|||||| ||||||||||||{     }|||||||||||| ||||||.`|||`\
    '.|||'.||||||| ||||||||||||{     }|||||||||||| |||||||.`|||.`
   '.||| ||||||||| |/'   ``\||/`     '\||/''   `\| ||||||||| |||.`
   |/' \./'     `\./          |/\   /\|          \./'     `\./ `\|
   V    V         V          }' `\ /' `{          V         V    V

No, guess not. Portland! I'm moving to Portland.

I don't know a lot about Portland yet except that it will be awesome and that people bike a lot there. Apparently there's even a restaurant where the electricity is powered by stationary bikes at all the tables. I have wanted to do that for years but in a GYM because think of all the people moving in a gym, you could power a city. Feel free to use that idea. And stay tuned for more great ideas, sent to you via the internet, from Portland.

How many times do you think I said "Portland" in this post?



football plays football plays football plays football plays

I miss you already LA.

live-blogging from an army surplus store in Atlanta

Did you want to know what search words people have used to find my blog lately?



Best of luck to desperate people here looking for information on football plays. Especially because my blog doesn't show up until well after tons of actual websites about football plays.

But anyone who wants the definition of laundry has come to the right place.

Football plays football football plays.