ASK MJ: THE BIG BOOK OF SNAKES
Melissa asks: Maureen! What happens on Friday when Blog Every Day April is over???
This is an excellent question. While BEDA may be ending on Thursday, very little will really change. The Ning is permanent! The only thing that changes is that I, personally, won’t be blogging every single day. I need time to do other things, and I just need to spend a least a LITTLE time away from my computer. However! Blogging every day in April has been excellent conditioning for me. I’m blogging MUCH FASTER now. So I’ll still be posting quite a lot, I imagine a few times a week. I will still be answering questions and giving out stuff and helping you in ANY WAY I CAN.
People have also been asking if I’ll do this again. I think it’s likely. I also think I might try to work up a NEW project for this summer . . . something ELSE we can all do. I am always up to something. I have a few ideas.
More important, though, is what it means for you. If you’ve started blogging during this month, if you’ve made friends . . . keep that going. If you have a BEDA Buddy, continue on reading each other’s blogs! There’s no reason to stop AT ALL!
Also, I just want to point out that a few BEDA-ers have started the BEDA Awards on the Ning! Check it out!
And if you have any suggestions about what we should do for the last day of BEDA, let me know!
omgsquid asks: I'm wondering what size feet you have?
Women’s 8.5, American size. Also, my feet are flat. Totally and utterly flat.
SIXella asks: I have a question: What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex?
I am a very traditional girl. I just use a gun.
Whyohyou says: I sat on my little sister's birthday cake and ruined my jeans.
Not a question. But I really need to know how this happened.
Raine asks: So. I have heard whispers you and John Green appeared on a Food Network show. It was Molto Mario, wasn't it? Will you please prehaps... share a video? Or at least confirm that it was Molto Mario? The public demands an answer.
It wasn’t John Green. It was ANOTHER friend of mine named John, but for the purposes of simplicity, we will call him Sebastian Goodnight. And it wasn’t Molto Mario—it was a show called Good Deal with Dave Lieberman. Someone who knew of my obsession with cooking shows asked me if I wanted to be in the audience for one. I said yes. I dragged Sebastian along under the promise that we would never be on camera and would just get to watch the show being taped and try the food. What ACTUALLY happened is that we were the ONLY people on the show, aside from Dave and Dave’s actual friend from Yale, and we were going to be “Dave’s other friends who are meeting him for a picnic.” The show featured just the four of us, and it was shot at a brewery, and they kept making us drink and sniff things and bit food over and over. It was all very surreal. Sebastian STILL wants to kill me for that, but I honestly didn’t know we were going to be FEATURED PLAYERS and have to pretend to know the guy.
hilly_wa asks: what do i do when a boy i dont like keeps hitting on me?
Well, Hilly-wa, first . . . be flattered. It is very nice when someone likes you. Some people have a hard time expressing this.
That being said, there sometimes comes a point when you have to let someone know that they really have to stop. There are a LOT of ways to do this. If you want to be friends with the person, then you really have to talk to them and be nice, but honest, so you can get on with your friendship.
If you don’t plan on being friends with the person, really, can I recommend the Big Book of Snakes approach? It takes a little bit of work, but once you’ve done it, it will come in handy again and again! And you can do this for less than $20. In fact, you might be able to make this with materials that are already around your own house! Here’s how it’s done.
1. Get a notebook or scrapbook of some kind. Any kind of blank book with do. Go with your instinct—fancy scrapbook, art pad, flowery, photo album, Jonas Brothers notebook, whatever feels right.
2. Make a cover for it that indicates that this is YOUR Big Book of Snakes. Again, be creative! Write it in colorful marker, stencil it in, use stamp art, cut letters out of newspapers in a ransom-note style. Make it your own.
3. Now comes the fun part! It is time to fill your big book of snakes! Find some old magazines, go to the library and make photocopies, print them out from the internet. Wherever you can find them. Get a bunch of them. They don’t even have to be real snakes. Ideally, you should have some cartoon snakes, or pictures of stuffed animal snakes. Here’s the critical step: you must include one or two pictures of things THAT ARE NOT SNAKES AT ALL. Pictures of sofas, fire hydrants, cement blocks, trees, cats, sweaters . . . these are all good.
4. Now it’s time to assemble your book! Make sure that the first several pictures are all the snake pictures and that the non-snake pictures come a few pages in. This will make for a wonderful surprise! And feel free to write in captions, preferably in spidery, tight handwriting that crowds the page. Here’s are just two sample captions to get you started:
I really like these snakes they live in the jungle, I wish I lived in the jungle, sometimes I dream about these snakes eating everyone I know lol! No not really but okay kind of. They are not poisonous but I wish they were. RWAR!
This is a south American python, native to Canada. It lives in fruit trees and eats seven times its weight every hour. Mostly it eats mice but sometimes it will eat other snakies like it. It likes crackers too. Yay! I like crackers.
You get the idea, I am sure.
Now that you’ve made your Big Book of Snakes, you are ready to go! When the person hits on you again, say, “I have something I really want to show you. I think you’ll like it. It’s kind of . . . I don’t know . . . personal. Kind of sentimental. I feel I can show it to you. I think you’d really get it. I think you’re just like me.”
They are likely to accept. Agree to meet them somewhere nice and public—coffee shop, mall, something like that. All you have left to do is bring along the Big Book of Snakes. Treat it with great reverence. Flip through it slowly. Make sure they see ALL of your snakes.
You should have no problem after that.
This is an excellent question. While BEDA may be ending on Thursday, very little will really change. The Ning is permanent! The only thing that changes is that I, personally, won’t be blogging every single day. I need time to do other things, and I just need to spend a least a LITTLE time away from my computer. However! Blogging every day in April has been excellent conditioning for me. I’m blogging MUCH FASTER now. So I’ll still be posting quite a lot, I imagine a few times a week. I will still be answering questions and giving out stuff and helping you in ANY WAY I CAN.
People have also been asking if I’ll do this again. I think it’s likely. I also think I might try to work up a NEW project for this summer . . . something ELSE we can all do. I am always up to something. I have a few ideas.
More important, though, is what it means for you. If you’ve started blogging during this month, if you’ve made friends . . . keep that going. If you have a BEDA Buddy, continue on reading each other’s blogs! There’s no reason to stop AT ALL!
Also, I just want to point out that a few BEDA-ers have started the BEDA Awards on the Ning! Check it out!
And if you have any suggestions about what we should do for the last day of BEDA, let me know!
omgsquid asks: I'm wondering what size feet you have?
Women’s 8.5, American size. Also, my feet are flat. Totally and utterly flat.
SIXella asks: I have a question: What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex?
I am a very traditional girl. I just use a gun.
Whyohyou says: I sat on my little sister's birthday cake and ruined my jeans.
Not a question. But I really need to know how this happened.
Raine asks: So. I have heard whispers you and John Green appeared on a Food Network show. It was Molto Mario, wasn't it? Will you please prehaps... share a video? Or at least confirm that it was Molto Mario? The public demands an answer.
It wasn’t John Green. It was ANOTHER friend of mine named John, but for the purposes of simplicity, we will call him Sebastian Goodnight. And it wasn’t Molto Mario—it was a show called Good Deal with Dave Lieberman. Someone who knew of my obsession with cooking shows asked me if I wanted to be in the audience for one. I said yes. I dragged Sebastian along under the promise that we would never be on camera and would just get to watch the show being taped and try the food. What ACTUALLY happened is that we were the ONLY people on the show, aside from Dave and Dave’s actual friend from Yale, and we were going to be “Dave’s other friends who are meeting him for a picnic.” The show featured just the four of us, and it was shot at a brewery, and they kept making us drink and sniff things and bit food over and over. It was all very surreal. Sebastian STILL wants to kill me for that, but I honestly didn’t know we were going to be FEATURED PLAYERS and have to pretend to know the guy.
hilly_wa asks: what do i do when a boy i dont like keeps hitting on me?
Well, Hilly-wa, first . . . be flattered. It is very nice when someone likes you. Some people have a hard time expressing this.
That being said, there sometimes comes a point when you have to let someone know that they really have to stop. There are a LOT of ways to do this. If you want to be friends with the person, then you really have to talk to them and be nice, but honest, so you can get on with your friendship.
If you don’t plan on being friends with the person, really, can I recommend the Big Book of Snakes approach? It takes a little bit of work, but once you’ve done it, it will come in handy again and again! And you can do this for less than $20. In fact, you might be able to make this with materials that are already around your own house! Here’s how it’s done.
1. Get a notebook or scrapbook of some kind. Any kind of blank book with do. Go with your instinct—fancy scrapbook, art pad, flowery, photo album, Jonas Brothers notebook, whatever feels right.
2. Make a cover for it that indicates that this is YOUR Big Book of Snakes. Again, be creative! Write it in colorful marker, stencil it in, use stamp art, cut letters out of newspapers in a ransom-note style. Make it your own.
3. Now comes the fun part! It is time to fill your big book of snakes! Find some old magazines, go to the library and make photocopies, print them out from the internet. Wherever you can find them. Get a bunch of them. They don’t even have to be real snakes. Ideally, you should have some cartoon snakes, or pictures of stuffed animal snakes. Here’s the critical step: you must include one or two pictures of things THAT ARE NOT SNAKES AT ALL. Pictures of sofas, fire hydrants, cement blocks, trees, cats, sweaters . . . these are all good.
4. Now it’s time to assemble your book! Make sure that the first several pictures are all the snake pictures and that the non-snake pictures come a few pages in. This will make for a wonderful surprise! And feel free to write in captions, preferably in spidery, tight handwriting that crowds the page. Here’s are just two sample captions to get you started:
I really like these snakes they live in the jungle, I wish I lived in the jungle, sometimes I dream about these snakes eating everyone I know lol! No not really but okay kind of. They are not poisonous but I wish they were. RWAR!
This is a south American python, native to Canada. It lives in fruit trees and eats seven times its weight every hour. Mostly it eats mice but sometimes it will eat other snakies like it. It likes crackers too. Yay! I like crackers.
You get the idea, I am sure.
Now that you’ve made your Big Book of Snakes, you are ready to go! When the person hits on you again, say, “I have something I really want to show you. I think you’ll like it. It’s kind of . . . I don’t know . . . personal. Kind of sentimental. I feel I can show it to you. I think you’d really get it. I think you’re just like me.”
They are likely to accept. Agree to meet them somewhere nice and public—coffee shop, mall, something like that. All you have left to do is bring along the Big Book of Snakes. Treat it with great reverence. Flip through it slowly. Make sure they see ALL of your snakes.
You should have no problem after that.
Comment
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Comment by Raine on May 1, 2009 at 12:50am -
Thanks for answering my question xD
That sounds...tedious. Darn OCD film people.
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Comment by SupernovakGirl on April 29, 2009 at 9:39am -
I think my
stalkerfriend would actually INCREASE hisstalkinginfatuation after seeing my Big Book of Snakes. He probably has one of his own.
-
Comment by Teryn on April 29, 2009 at 2:57am
- Maureen! By any chance would you take notice to a BEDA buddy collab channel starting up soon if I linked it here: http://www.youtube.com/BEDAbuddies ?
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Comment by Chris Hall on April 29, 2009 at 1:04am - Hilarious! Although, as some have already mentioned, what if s/he LIKES the book? Do we have a plan B?
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Comment by SarahE on April 28, 2009 at 10:38pm - I wish I had known this sooner, it would have been enormously helpful!
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Comment by snowaeris on April 28, 2009 at 10:20pm - I am SO doing the Book of Snakes idea...except it may not be snakes, it may be something even weirder.
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Comment by Lauren Rodia on April 28, 2009 at 10:15pm - OMG the snake DOES like crackers! yessss
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Comment by Kate Awesome on April 28, 2009 at 9:38pm -
Hopefully the dude doesn't like snakes. That would be a problem.
Everyone should have a list of weird obsessions so if the Book of Snakes doesn't work they can go straight to the next one. ;)
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Comment by Keila :D on April 28, 2009 at 9:31pm - LOL! That Big Book of Snakes is the coolest thing ever. :D
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Comment by Jordan on April 28, 2009 at 8:54pm
- What is the weirdest/funniest/most interesting/etc. class you've ever taken? Because I'm taking a class about vampires, and we pretty much just watch episodes of Buffy and it's amazing. So I was wondering if you had any fine tales for us, your readers.
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