How to Get Out of a Pickle (ex: How to Open a Jar)

Are you stuck in a sticky situation? Well, Auntie Spin’s here to help you!

First, try to identify ze problem. Say the lid is stuck on a jar. What’s the problem? Is it the jar or the sticky lid? Also, make sure you identify the scent of the problem as well. If you don’t have a strong nose or for some mysterious reason don’t have one, you can always turn off the lights and find the little pickled demons hiding out. They usually are fluorescent purple.

Once you identified the problem which is (spoilers) obviously the jar, eliminate it. Destroy it. LET IT DIE. Don’t let it stay in your consciousness to rot and throw it away.

At the end of this step the jar should be broken or in other words, the pickle should explode.

Also, after you work your way through the first problem of a jar being rebellious, shards of glass may litter the floor. Practice your problem-solving skills and pick up the glass, or even better, smash it into smaller pieces.

At this point, your hands might be covered in blood. But look at it positively! Use it as an opportunity to redo the second step; elimination. Wash your hands thoroughly with lots of soap and keep on doing so even if it stings.

After this, you just may feel a sharp sensation under your feet. This is the perfect opportunity to identify the problem! Turn off the lights and look for the pickled demons. If they turn up, try using a conveniently placed missile to take it down.

Your house may come down with it, but at least you solved the problem, right?

Short People Problems

Clocking in at 5’2″, I’m generally regarded as a short person. I’m shorter than most people, so I have to look up when I’m talking to them (but I usually just end up talking to their chins) and I have trouble reading menus or watching plays over people’s heads. You know, the usual slew of short-people problems. (Not that tall people don’t have problems, too.)

In elementary school, whenever we had assemblies, the fifth graders would sit on chairs in the back and everyone else would sit in neat rows on the floor in front of them in descending order of grade with the kindergarteners in the front row. In theory, this is a good idea because older people are taller, right? So, hypothetically, if the older kids sit in the back, they’ll be able to see over everyone else’s heads because everyone else is younger. For me, at least, this didn’t really work out. After kindergarten, I was always seated behind taller, but younger, students, so I never got to see anything. (Another flaw in this plan: those freakishly tall kindergarteners that make me jealous of their height.)

Being short my entire life, I’d come to accept that this is the way it will be forever, no matter how much I hope and wish and stretch and dream.

Until I went to Bangladesh.

It turns out that Bangladeshi people just happen to generally be even shorter than me, and for the first time in my life, I got to experience being tall. I got to look over people’s heads, I got to look straight at (or down at) people when I was talking at them. I got a taste of being tall, all 5’2″ of me.

And I never wanted to go back (to being short). But I’m back in America, the land of tall people, and here we are again, short.

But this isn’t the shortest I’ve ever felt. When I lived in Kentucky, the general population seemed to be significantly taller than the general population of Michigan. When I walked through the hallways, I was stuck staring at people’s shoulder blades instead of the backs of their heads. I had trouble finding my classes because I couldn’t see anything except humans. Whenever I talked to sixth graders, they were always shocked that I was in the eighth grade. Every single one asked me twice to double check and when I assured them that, yes, I am, in fact, an eighth grader, they always responded with a “but you’re so short!” In Michigan, while I am on the shorter side of average, my grade is never questioned.

Warning: This following segment will feel contradictory to the rest of the post.

While I’ve always felt short, I’ve never felt extremely short. As I said, I’m on the shorter side of average.

Mare Barrow from Red Queen, as I recently learned, is a fellow 5’2″.

Mare Barrow, as it states over and over over the course of the four-book series, is extremely short. She barely makes it to the shoulders of most of her acquaintances.

Which begs the question, “How ridiculously tall is the general population of Red Queen?!” and “Was this entire series developed to make me feel bad about my height?”

Solving All Your Stupid Problems Part 2

You are a cheese hater of the greatest proportion. Excluding lactose-intolerant people, you must hate cheese more than anyone else in the human population. Your twin brother, on the other hand, loves cheese more than anyone else in the human population. Over the years, your extremely differing views on cheese have led to a growing rift between you and your twin and you are now feuding, as you have been for the last 3¾ years. One night, you go to sleep peacefully, safe in the knowledge that your loyal guard of 3½ years is protecting you and preventing anyone from entering your room while you lay vulnerable and unconscious in your bed. But, beyond the boundary of your knowledge, your brother infiltrated your circle of guards three-and-a-half years ago with his trusted friend, Kevin, and tonight is the night that they plan to act and finally end this feud.

When you are sleeping deeply and snoring loud enough to cover any sound a squeaky wheelbarrow may make, Kevin quietly opens the previously-oiled door and rolls in a rusty, squeaky wheelbarrow full of cheese. He surreptitiously pours the cheese over you like Mount Vesuvius surreptitiously poured ashes over Pompeii and Kevin tiptoes out of the room, leaving the wheelbarrow.

You, being a deep sleeper, don’t wake because of the cheese. But you do wake up because you had an unsettling nightmare of being buried alive in bat guano.

There is no simple solution to this simple problem. But, some (not your brother) would say “fortunately”, there is a complicated one. Fortunately, it isn’t too difficult if you hold tight to your wits. This is assuming you had any wits in the first place, of course.

I suppose one could simply dig through cheese, but there’s no thrill in that.

• Using cheddar, provolone, and your nightcap, create a time-traveling device.
  • If you aren’t of the scientific prowess to achieve this, use pale-colored cheese to create a genie lamp. Rub the lamp and ask the genie for a time-travel device. This should result in the same results, but it’s not preferable because no one likes to deal with fussy cheese genies.
• Use the time-travel device, however obtained, to travel back in time to when Kevin had just finished putting the cheese in the wheelbarrow.
• Dispose of the traitor Kevin however you wish, but do it quietly, for word cannot get back to your brother that his plan has been foiled.
• Dispose of the monstrous cheese as well. I recommend throwing it into a volcano. Cheese deserves no better.
• Dispose of your monstrous, cheese-loving brother. I recommend throwing him into a volcano.

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You are a brand new lifeguard, fresh from the assembly line. You’re not yet familiar with the tricks of the trade, but you make up what you lack with enthusiasm. Life has not yet had a chance to bring you down. You meticulously scan the beach for trouble, hoping in a place dark place of your mind you’d rather not acknowledge that something goes wrong and you can be a hero. With all your attention focused on the water, you don’t notice the curious seagull pecking around your lifeguard chair. Well, at least you don’t notice the seagull until it’s too late.

The seagull leaps into your lap in a flurry of feathers. You, in a state of shock, scream at a high frequency, scaring the seagull, who squawks back at you, frazzled, and scares you further, increasing the pitch of your scream.

The seagull finally gets fed up and hops off of your lap, but he takes your megaphone with him in his beak. The seagull waddles down the beach, the megaphone in tow. About ten yards down the beach from you, he stops and starts squawking into the megaphone. Everyone on the beach covers their ears, protecting themselves from the seagull’s horrible yodeling. You are at a loss of what to do. You’re somewhat terrified of birds, but you’d never admit it, so you need someone to help you. Someone who can either be trusted with your secret or is so oblivious to the world that they’d never figure out your secret without being explicitly told. You decide to go with the latter option and you call your cousin, a professional fisher who lives twenty minutes away.

• Call your cousin, who happens to be a professional fisher and lives nearby.
• Wait for your cousin to arrive. Warily watch the seagull while doing so.
• Order your cousin to catch a fish. This shouldn’t take long as she’s a professional, right?

2 HOURS LATER

• Most of the beach-goers have left the beach due to the incessant squawking. Your cousin finally catches a fish.
• Take the fish from your cousin.
• Dangling the fish on the fishing rod, lure the seagull away from the beach so the beach-goers can return.
• Make a deal with the human-language speaking seagull to trade the fish for the megaphone.

Assuming the seagull agrees to your fair deal, your problem is solved! If the seagull has become too attached to the megaphone and refuses to trade it, I’m afraid I can’t help you.

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Read more: Solving all Your Stupid Problems Part 1

Solving all Your Stupid Problems

I’m sure all of these problems have graced you, dear reader. You wouldn’t believe it, but they’re quite common, really. You’re just sitting there thinking that all your problems are unique because you are a unique and special human bean with your own unique and special set of problems. But nope. Everyone else deals with them, too. You are completely generic. But they won’t anymore, because I’m about to solve all your stupid problems!

Lettuce, begin the drumroll!

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You get gum stuck in your hair, but there are no worries. As good ole grandma used to say, “Peanut butter will get gum out of your hair, your pet’s hair, your cactus’s wig. And then you won’t have to become prematurely bald!”

But Grandma never considered what happens after you get the gum out of your hair. What happens when the peanut butter gets stuck?!

The answer is simple.

Become prematurely bald.

Go outside and grab a squirrel. Make sure it doesn’t have rabies! (Rabies are bad, in case you didn’t know.) If squirrels aren’t available, other small, peanut-butter-loving animals are good substitutes.

Set the squirrel in your hair and watch it work its magic.

You are a lover of pickles. (These kinds of people are strange. Dear readers, I know that you are not pickle-lovers, because I like you, so a word of advice from author to reader: Don’t associate with pickle-lovers.) You are such an enthusiast of pickles, that you decide to use your life savings to buy a ticket to Pickle World, the pickle-themed amusement park in L.A. (L.A. is also strange. Do not associate with people from L.A. I mean, those L.A.-ians decided to build a pickle-themed amusement park. Couldn’t they have at least gone with cucumbers?)

At Pickle World, they have giant jars full of giant mutant pickles. Trust me, pickle-lovers love giant pickles and will willingly swim with them, despite the fact that the vinegar will make their skin all pruney and will make them smell awful for weeks.

But sometimes, accidents happen.

Sometimes, people get stuck inside pickles. (Don’t ask me what they were doing. I told you, pickle-lovers are insane.)

But there is an easy solution to this, excuse me for the pun, pickle, as well. But I’m sure you readers won’t need it, since you are not of the pickle-loving breed.

Simply ask a trusted acquaintance to pull you and the pickle out of the jar. You will see that in minutes, no seconds, the pickle will be devoured by ravenous pickle-lovers and you will remain magically unscathed. Pickle-lovers are insane, but they’re not cannibals.

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I hoped that I have solved some of your (many) problems. And don’t worry if you have problems that haven’t been addressed in this short post. There will be more parts.

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

13 Artist Problems

I’m an artist. I like to draw stuff. Onto the list!

 

1. Mistakes

This drawing is amazing! *Finds stray ink mark and has mini existential crisis*

2. Better People

I will never be a good artist! *sobs in pillow* whyyyyyyyyy?

3. Hands

You put the thumb on the wrong side… *banshee screams*

4. Curious George

CG: Can you draw me? Me: No. I don’t draw ugly things.

5. Bye bye friends…

*Throws away science notes from ten billion years ago*

I will miss you Albino Polish Man with Fluffy Hat, sketch of Naruto, and random bottle of kawaii pepper spice! *cries*

6. Ze Artist Block

Me: *Stares at paper*

…10 hours later…

Paper: This is getting uncomfortable.

Me: *Crumples up paper*

7. Ink/ Water/ Drink/ Noodle Spillage

BLOBFISH!

8. Unsharpened Pencils

*world explodes*

9. What’s That? 

*glares intensely* Can’t you see what is on this paper? 

10. When a person walks in and you haven’t finished drawing the clothes on your character.

Person: …

Me: *examining drawing* Hmmm, how will this cloth curve around her chest?

Person: *walks away*

11. Doodled Up Notes or Reminders

*Takes out notebook and flips to a random page* What is this wonderful adorable smiling cinnamon bun doing here?  *Continues to doodle getting off task*

12. Unfinished Sketchbooks

…They just turn into black holes… *furthers into existential crisis*

13. When the Eraser Starts to Draw Instead of Erasing

*world implodes*

 

That’s what I face on a daily basis. Tiring isn’t it?