Ask TheWebWeavers || How do I tell my parents I’m moving?

John Siebelink asks…

Dear Arachnid,

So, I’ve been planning to move out to California for almost two years now, but because I’m not too close with my parents I haven’t said a single thing to them about it. How do I bring it up that I’ve been planning it for so long without them accusing me of another rash decision I’ve been known to make in the past?

This was sent in early June. So I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now. But I’m going to answer the question anyway. Maybe it’ll help someone else in an eerily similar situation.

So. I think you have to convince your parents that this is not, in fact, a rash decision. Show them that you’ve learned from the past. You said in your letter that you’ve been planning for two years. So WE know that it’s not a rash decision. You’ve put so much effort into planning the move, it’s anything but. So how do you tell your parents that?

This is going to sound silly, but what if you made a PowerPoint with every last detail of your move planned out. Your job, where you’re going to live, a plan to get an apartment/buy a house, your movers, etc. This will probably be helpful for you as well, to figure out any last minute details.

If your plans are rock solid and well-thought out, your parents will know it’s not a rash decision.

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Do you have any questions that need answering? Send them to Ask TheWebWeavers using the Contact Page. Please specify if you want your letter to be anonymous. If you want the world to know who you are (otherwise known as this small corner of the internet), we’ll add a link to your blog to help spread the love.

The Early Death of Our Advice Column (And How to Resurrect It)

Hello peeps! It is a sad occasion.

Unfortunately, our advice column, Ask TheWebWeavers, has died before it could grow up. There have been no questions to feed it and it has shriveled up.

Luckily, the corpse is still warm and it can be brought back with a little CPR and some questions.

Will you, dear reader, help save its life?

It only asks for questions. And the questions can be about absolutely anything. The world of curiosity and troubling problems is at your fingertips.

Do you have any questions that need answering? Send them to us through our contact page or in the comments and all your problems will be solved.

Ask TheWebWeavers #1 || The Spider Squisher

Ask The Webweavers #2: Stuck Up Peeps

Ask TheWebWeavers #3 || The Chewer

Ask The Webweavers #2: Stuck Up Peeps

So Sophia Ismaa Writes sent Arachnid this question: Is there a friendly way to deal with selfish, self-obsessed people? I tend to be blunt, but I want to learn how to do it in a more sensitive manner.

Arachnid got stumped on this one due to her lack of experience in being nice, so I stepped in for her.

The age-old question: How do you deal with selfish people?

Personally, I would ditch them, but if you want them to really be your friend, then I suggest these things:

1. Stop doing things for them.

This may seem harsh, but by not doing those little “favors” for them, you take away their intentions of using you just for attention. Instead of helping said selfish person to pick out clothes when shopping, focus on yourself. Ask them (nicely) if a dress is in your style and then maybe go on a tangent about things that both of you enjoy. By doing this you take away their need to talk about themselves.

2. Don’t become selfish yourself

By being around selfish people, you may contract some selfish traits, so be wary. Continue to be nice to them, but only as far off friends (like that uncle you see only once every decade) and try to avoid them and their selfish ways.

3. Remind them (gently) that the world does not revolve around them.

Sometimes, selfish people get so caught up in themselves that they forget other people are around them. This is a dangerous territory; it may make you feel like saying, “You only care about yourself! Why don’t you care about me?” Beware of this. Instead of reminding them in this way, simply tap their shoulder and change the subject like so, “Hey, (insert selfish person here). I have something that I want to talk about. Do you care to listen?” If this person is polite and realizes his or her wrongdoings, then he/she should say yes.

If he/she refuses and just keeps blabbering about him/herself then I recommend calling him/her a shellfish, throwing shrimp and various soft prawns in his/her’s face and then running out the back door.

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Do you have any questions that need answering? Send them to Ask TheWebWeavers using the Contact Page. Please specify if you want your letter to be anonymous. If you want the world to know who you are (otherwise known as this small corner of the internet), we’ll add a link to your blog to help spread the love.

Comebacks

I’m not one to get angry a bunch, but sometimes insults just grind my gears. Smoke blows out my ears, my face gets red (usually my nose), and I glare at that person for hours and hours. Just believe me on this one— I do get really mad. I don’t show it, but sometimes the anger just ripples under my skin. I metaphorically turn into Arachnid when she’s at a party, but it isn’t just discomfort under my glance, I have a raging fire. No, make that a war, a giant fight of good versus evil, chaos exploding everywhere in my mind as a glare at my newfound opponent.

Here are some punches you can use to destroy people who insult you. You can thank me later.

Insult 1: “You’re ugly!”

“I am shiny and all, but I think you are mistaking me for a mirror.”

“Am I? I was trying to look like you today!”

 

Insult 2: “I’m way cooler than you, you nerd!”

“Does that mean I’m hotter than you?”

“Is that why you are so slow? Brain Freeze?”

 

Insult 3: “You are weird.”

“And you are generic, Bob.”

“You are, but what am I?”

 

Insult 4: “You idiot!”

“If I called you an idiot back, it would be an insult to all the idiots of the world.”

“Brains aren’t everything, you know. In your case, they are nothing.”

 

Insult 5: “Your comebacks are awful!”

“At least I don’t lie every single time my lips move.”

“I’m rubber and you are glue. Whatever bounces off me sticks on to you. Right now, you are dry glue on my finger tips, ready to be scratched off.”

 

Insult 6: “You are too young for this!” or “You are too old for this!” (only for things that don’t have age restrictions)

“Unlike you, I can count my years. See? 1, 2, 3, 4,…..”

“At least in these (whatever your age is) I’ve been doing something in my life!”

 

Insult 7: “You blobfish!”

“It looks like your mouth is having diarrhea!” *gets paper towel and wipes*

“Your butt must be jealous of all that junk you are spewing out!” *gets diaper*

 

Insult 9: “You open the door like this…see?” (like they actually think you are dumb)

“How do I shut your mouth? Can you teach me?”

“Oh, I actually know how to do that, but thank you.” *Slams the door in opponent’s face*

 

Insult 10: “You actually like that book?”

“I love it …but you are on the other side of the spectrum!”

“The words in this book are worth way more than your stinky comebacks.”

 

As I said again… you can thank me later you ugly, uncool, dumb, idiot, wrinkly baby elephants who reek of a foul stench.

I wanted to end the post like that so you nonexistent readers can parade me with comebacks in the comments, but I really just couldn’t. It’s hard to hate elephants who actually spend time reading what you have to type. I love you, nonexistent reader elephants! Remember to spread positive vibes and absolutely DESTROY anyone who stands in your way.

 

 

 

What Do You Think?

Hello, dear nonexistent readers!

Spinette and I are thinking about creating a (most likely humor-based) advice column where we will be solving all your problems!

So what do you think?

Will this work?

Do you think anyone would actually send us emails? Would you?

A note: We are totally qualified to start an advice column. 😉

When you are Home Alone

What do you do when you are home alone?

You could partake in a whole manner of embarrassing activities when there is no one around simply because you can and there is no one around to judge you.

You could break some rules.

You could…

• Leave all the lights on
• Throw all the sheets on floor
• Hang all the wall decor sideways
• Eat mushed Jell-O on a hot dog bun
• Throw a temper tantrum
• Fling things that have been bothering you (like unsharpened pencils, dirty stuffed animals, a tissue box, etc.) down the stairs
• Rip up paper and throw it in the air like confetti (like homework, taxes, receipts, etc.)
• Switch the tulips and the begonias in the flower bed
• Run
• Stomp
• Scream
• Throw things (such as textbooks, dirty stuffed animals, plastic flamingos, etc.)
• Hold a tea party with your china dolls as you’ve wanted to since you were a child, but haven’t as it is considered socially unacceptable for an adult over the age of 33.56 to be the host of a tea party if none of the guests are alive or human.
• Smash things

Do you remember that first time you were alone? Were you one of those people who sat diligently in view of all the entrances to your house? Or were you the one who went slightly insane?

The first time I was home alone, I was asleep.

The second time, I first checked that all the doors were locked. Then, I gorged myself on chocolate, shrieked, and ran around. I believe I also read in the dark.

But, of course, there is a price to pay for every cricket of fun. (Cricket is a very real and definitely not made-up unit of measurement.)

Imagine you tore out the first fifty pages of all of your bothersome textbooks and flung the corpses down the stairs, all while screaming. The phone rings. You freeze, your mouth full of peanut butter, globs of it dripping onto the nice tablecloth. You see the caller ID says “Mother” and you wince. You know that you have to pick it up otherwise your mother may believe that an overweight gumdrop has broken into your house and kidnapped you. You hold the phone against your sticky face and say, your enunciation horrific due to the peanut butter coating your tongue and teeth, “Hello?”.

You: Hello?

Mother: My engagement has been canceled because an Inconceivable Event has just occurred. I’ll be home in fifteen minutes. (Sigh) I’ll just get married next month. And I thought your enunciation was better than that.

What you must do in fifteen minutes:

• Pick up the confetti
• Tape the confetti together so it looks like the first fifty pages of your textbooks
• Replace the first fifty pages in your textbooks
• Fix damage to textbooks from being flung down the stairs
• Wash the nice tablecloth
• Get new peanut butter
• Wipe peanut butter off every surface in your house
• Take a shower
• Brush your teeth
• Bribe your neighbors so they don’t tell your mother anything

How To Create a Difficult Time For A Person Who Wants to Borrow Your Pencil

“Can I borrow your pencil?”

We have all heard the phrase of the lunatic who can’t bother to carry a pencil or even a writing utensil at all times. Stupidity such as that just grinds my gears, because who wouldn’t want to have a multi-faceted-wooden-stick/writing-tool/weapon/stabber? I really can’t name a person who wouldn’t, except the pencil-borrowing shrimps who slug around and aren’t responsible enough to bring a pencil with them. Needless to say, I have been in the trauma-inducing situation of living without a pencil once or twice. But I am talking about that person who asks me ALL THE TIME for a pencil or pen and then ends up breaking it!

Do you want to get revenge on this person?

So first thing is first, find out about your borrower’s pencil habits. If not done so already, identify your pencil borrower. Do not just identify them, stalk them, know everything about them. See their behavior around pencils—what is his/her favorite type of pencil? What are his pencil pet peeves? How many times a day does he sharpen the pencil? How many lead refills does he need to last a year? These are all questions that are important to bring justice to your pencil borrower-breaker.

But the best thing to see, among all these things is this: How does he break the pencil? Keep in mind all his evil plans, from snapping the pencil in half to simply taking out lead from a mechanical pencil. Various writing-utensil-destroying methods may include exploding pens, filling in the top of a marker with another color, and pressing down on chalk so hard it becomes dust. Once you’ve realized what his worst type of pencil is, let’s say a normal wooden pencil, for example, move on to the second step.

From here, start giving out the culprit’s worst type of pencil, and make them almost unusable! Take out erasers, sharpen them until they are the shortest they could be, or do that thing where you take out the lead of a wooden pencil then put it back in so the next person who dares to borrow it has to go through the Seven Gates of Terrible Elementary Wooden Pencildom. So, for you rookies out there, let me introduce you to the seven gates.

Gate One is a dangerous warning of a dangerously stubby pencil— the master’s victim will have to push with all his might to get the last of the lead.

Next up, Gate Two, where he may have to go up to sharpen his pencil in front of the whole class with that old sharpener collecting cobwebs.

Now, he retreats back to his seat, ready for more writing when his lead snaps, which is Gate Three.

He goes back up again, Gate Five, his face reddening with shame.

Finally, when the sharpening is done, he wants to erase something, but he cannot because the lack of the eraser and also realizes that he has skipped the fourth gate, and now considers this the fourth gate.

The sixth gate involves asking desperately for an eraser and the master handsomely declines his request.

Annoyed, the master of the gates gives the young lad a handsome eraser.

The lad begins to erase, but he has scribbled all over his papers! The eraser writes instead of erases and is the greatest weapon in all of The Arts of Pencil Manipulation, also known as the last and seventh gate.

Step Three: repeat steps one and two over and over and over and over again. If your victim doesn’t get a new pencil, go on to the next step.

Now, it is ultimately time for step five, the most frightening and terrifying step of them all. Give them a vicious tool, an item that can never fill things in, virtually uneraseable:

THE CRAYON.

The Art of Writing Body Language

Body language is very important in books as it makes characters more realistic. If there were no body language, everyone would communicate like crates of semi-rotted apples and be as boring as scarecrows nailed to fence posts.

Many main characters are also extraordinarily amazing at reading body language. They seem to always be discerning loads of information just by looking into one’s eyes. Being mediocre at reading people myself, I think that body language depends more on the eyebrows.

Eyes don’t change all that much anyway. They can look at things, roll, squint, glare, and widen, and that’s about it. In real life, you don’t see a lot of “melting” or “hardening” or “growing cold”. Eyebrows, on the other hand, have a large selection of shapes that they can take, and they all mean something different. They can be furrowed, raised, cocked, scrunched, drooped, lowered, arched, straight, bushy, thin, absent, etc.

Despite being much more useful, I never see eyebrows mentioned in books when referring to body language. Nope, the eyebrows are just overshadowed by the eyes. But I suppose there’s a reason for this. Which of these sentences sounds better to you?

• She looked into his large, depthless eyes, onyx, like the shadows of the velvet darkness encompassing the stars, and saw the deep sadness and weariness behind them.
• She looked at his thick, bushy eyebrows that seemed like caterpillars had taken refuge in his forehead and saw the deep sadness and weariness behind them.

Comebacks

I’m not one to get angry a bunch, but sometimes insults just grind my gears. Smoke blows out my ears, my face gets red (usually my nose), and I glare at that person for hours and hours. Just believe me on this one— I do get really mad. I don’t show it, but sometimes the anger just ripples under my skin. I metaphorically turn into Arachnid when she’s at a party, but it isn’t just discomfort under my glance, I have a raging fire. No, make that a war, a giant fight of good versus evil, chaos exploding everywhere in my mind as a glare at my newfound opponent.

Here are some punches you can use to destroy people who insult you. You can thank me later.

Insult 1: “You’re ugly!”

“I am shiny and all, but I think you are mistaking me for a mirror.”

“Am I? I was trying to look like you today!”

 

Insult 2: “I’m way cooler than you, you nerd!”

“Does that mean I’m hotter than you?”

“Is that why you are so slow? Brain Freeze?”

 

Insult 3: “You are weird.”

“And you are generic, Bob.”

“You are, but what am I?”

 

Insult 4: “You idiot!”

“If I called you an idiot back, it would be an insult to all the idiots of the world.”

“Brains aren’t everything, you know. In your case, they are nothing.”

 

Insult 5: “Your comebacks are awful!”

“At least I don’t lie every single time my lips move.”

“I’m rubber and you are glue. Whatever bounces off me sticks on to you. Right now, you are dry glue on my finger tips, ready to be scratched off.”

 

Insult 6: “You are too young for this!” or “You are too old for this!” (only for things that don’t have age restrictions)

“Unlike you, I can count my years. See? 1, 2, 3, 4,…..”

“At least in these (whatever your age is) I’ve been doing something in my life!”

 

Insult 7: “You blobfish!”

“It looks like your mouth is having diarrhea!” *gets paper towel and wipes*

“Your butt must be jealous of all that junk you are spewing out!” *gets diaper*

 

Insult 9: “You open the door like this…see?” (like they actually think you are dumb)

“How do I shut your mouth? Can you teach me?”

“Oh, I actually know how to do that, but thank you.” *Slams the door in opponent’s face*

 

Insult 10: “You actually like that book?”

“I love it …but you are on the other side of the spectrum!”

“The words in this book are worth way more than your stinky comebacks.”

 

As I said again… you can thank me later you ugly, uncool, dumb, idiot, wrinkly baby elephants who reek of a foul stench.

I wanted to end the post like that so you nonexistent readers can parade me with comebacks in the comments, but I really just couldn’t. It’s hard to hate elephants who actually spend time reading what you have to type. I love you, nonexistent reader elephants! Remember to spread positive vibes and absolutely DESTROY anyone who stands in your way.

 

 

 

5 Things Not to do Whilst Baking

Do NOT do these five things ever when baking. It will result in unsatisfactory results.

From now on, “it” will refer to the baked goods that you have baked or are currently baking.

1. Do not leave it in the fire too long and burn it.
2. Do not drop off a cliff of any height. (It will be difficult to retrieve your baked goods.)
3. Do not go swimming with your baked goods, no matter how much you may want to.
4. Do not mix up flour and powdery white sand from the beaches of Wyoming.
5. Do not burn your house down.

This list has been compiled from personal experiences. As you can probably tell, I usually buy storebought baked goods now.