crooked house

Cosmo's "What Kind of Female Are You?" Personality Quiz Tells Me I Am Wrong.

Two of my freelance clients are folks who own personality quiz sites. They are very popular and, I am guessing, very lucrative websites right now. People are using the internet like a giant magic 8 ball or  a set of Tarot cards or something -- these personality quizzes seem to fill a deep psychic need.  So I end up writing a lot of them. If you want to know what brand of fried chicken or species of goldfish you are, just ask me. It'll be much quicker.

Anyway, just now I was doing a little research on quizzes targetted to women. So I clicked on this quiz from Cosmopolitan magazine, called What Kind of Female Are You?

I started clickety-clicking through, completed the first page, and hit next to go on to the second page of questions. This is what happened:

That's a screenshot. Cosmo is telling me that I got 4 questions ON MY PERSONALITY QUIZ WRONG.

Another screen shot. I chose "I could see myself as the CEO of a company one day." WRONG, says Cosmo. I also chose "Even after I get married and have kids, I want to continue working." WRONG AGAIN, says Cosmo.

Last screen shot. I chose "I have a clear idea of the kind of man I want to end up with (and if I'm already hitched, I had an image beforehand of who my dream guy would be)." And also "I don't need a relationship to be happy." WRONG WRONG WRONG, says Cosmo.

Uh, okay. What Kind of Female Am I, Cosmo? WHAT KIND OF PERSONALITY QUIZ ARE YOU!?

Actually, you're exactly the kind of personality quiz one might expect from Cosmo...

(I'm guessing it's some kind of bug?)

Update: I kept doing the quiz until I got all the "right" answers. Here are screenshots of those:

You are allowed to click through to your results only when you  get all the answers "correct." At that point, Cosmo's ideal "Kind of Female" is revealed:

Congratulations, you are Girlfriend Material! (And if you are not, just keep trying until you are...)

Buzzfeed Headlines I Would Write if I Worked for Buzzfeed

Have you noticed you can't look at Facebook or Twitter without seeing some Buzzfeed (or Upworthy or HuffPo) headline you just have to click on, even though every atom in your body is screaming not to? Yeah, and you probably noticed this phenomenon last year, right? I take a while to notice these things. I'm really quick, in a very slow way. Anyway, it got me to thinking about headlines I'd write, if I worked for Buzzfeed (which I would be more than happy to do. Please hire me!)

You Won’t Be Able to Resist This Headline: It’s Like a Gun to Your Head Or A Bag of Chips After You Haven’t Eaten All Day, One or the Other or Maybe Even Both.

Bully Taunts Handicapped Toddler: Handicapped Toddler Sets Bully’s Hair on Fire! What Happens Next Will Make You Weep in Terror and Joy and Perhaps Run Screaming From the Room.

If This Makes You Uncomfortable, Then You Make Me Uncomfortable, Which In Turn Makes Everyone Else Uncomfortable, And No One Wants to Be Uncomfortable, So For God’s Sake, Lighten Up Already.

101 Deeply Personal Opinions About Pubic Hair and How They Can Help You Retire NOW On A Guaranteed Income for Life!

How a Strict Diet and Exercise Regimen Actually Caused This Woman to Gain Fifty Pounds While This Other Woman Lost One Hundred Pounds Eating Whatever the Hell She Wanted: And Yes, She’d Like Fries With That.

The Secret to Uncovering All the Secrets: Everyone Knows But You. FREE! For a limited time.

How Finger and Toenail Parings Can Actually Be Used As a Substitute for Money: 15 Easy Ways.

At Last, Scientists Have Discovered How Humans Can Live Forever! If You Don’t Try It, You’ll Hate Yourself Later. You Know, When You’re Dead and Everyone Else Is Still Alive.

9 Out of 10 People Are Completely Wrong About This Incredible Fact: You Think You Know But You Don’t, Unless You Do Know, In Which Case You Probably Don’t Think You Know.

There’s Something Deeply, Inexplicably Wrong With You. You’ve Always Sensed It. Click Through to Find Out What It Is.

You Look Pretty Today.

The Elusive Antlered Hoof

Why, what is that, hanging above the mantle at legendary Milford House? Can it be?

Why, yes, it is. It is the infamous, elusive, antlered hoof! A beast hitherto considered fanastical, like the unicorn. Those antlers must be as sensitive as the whiskers of a cat, or the antennae of an insect, because they have to perform the functions of eyes, nose, and tongue. Or do you think that this unusual creature actually does have a more usual sort of head, and each of its hooves has a pair of antlers attached to it? If so, the beast must have a very broad stance. It is a mystery.

Getting Ideas for Sylvie's Birthday Party

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Party from Sweet Paul on Vimeo.

We've been planning this Wizard of Oz party for months...

The Dunkley Motorized Pram From 1923

This is the Dunkley Pramotor -- a motorized pram sold in 1923. "We should get that. That's what I'm thinking," says Sylvie as she looks over my shoulder.

Whenever I had to lug around one of those incrediblyawkward and heavy removable car seats with one of my babies in it -- say into the grocery store -- I liked to imagine that in the future, a podlike car seat would hover in the air beside the mother, trailing her wherever she went. Recently I tossed around the idea of a kind of remote control stroller that would follow a parent, so he or she could be hands free for shopping or holding the hands of bigger toddlers or whatever. Are these ideas as crazy as this stroller looks? Via I Cannot Go to Bed -- There is Epic Shit Happening on the Internet, which I found through Lizzie Skurnick.

Arthur Recreates Scenes from Classic Movies

Arthur recreates 12 Angry Men.

Arthur recreates American Beauty.

Arthur recreates Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There are more at Studio Arthur. Thanks @sue_oz!

How To Make A Dowager Countess Hat

Holly and I made a Dowager Countess hat for The Awl. You know, from Downton Abbey? Go find out how to make one for yourself. And see some more deeply unflattering photos of me. (Man, is that mirror ever dirty.)

Sylvie, the Queen Mother?

Luke and I were just watching footage of Princess Diana's car accident on youtube and looking at google images of the royal family whilst discussing the possibility that Prince William will succeed Queen Elizabeth instead of Prince Charles -- as you do when you are a Canadian, much as Americans idly discuss, I don't know, say Paris Hilton's hair extensions of an evening -- when we noticed that Sylvie bears an uncanny resemblance to the Queen Mother. We should get her to an astrologer pronto. If she is her reincarnation, maybe she could get us tickets to the upcoming royal wedding.

Polo Is a Sport and Breastfeeding Kittens

A couple of nights ago I had an extremely vivid dream that I couldn't help sharing with Luke at breakfast. "I dreamed I had another baby," I told him, expecting either delight or horror from him, or a mixture of both.

He nodded calmly.

"And the baby had a full head of red hair!" I continued. "Isn't that funny? Both you and Sylvie had hardly any hair when you were born."

He nodded.

"But the funniest part was that he was born able to talk," I said. "The first time Daddy held him, the baby announced, 'Polo is a sport.'"

"What's polo?" asked Luke.

"Uh, it's a game where people ride horses and hit balls with some kind of stick," I said.

"Then polo is not a sport!" he said. 

I refrained from telling him the rest of the dream, in which the baby turned into a kitten and I debated whether or not to breastfeed. "I don't think I'm up for breastfeeding a kitten," I said to David, trying to convince myself it was okay not to.

I was also annoyed that the ultrasound hadn't revealed the fact of my baby's kitten-ness earlier. "Although," I announced to the woman giving birth next to me in the giant gymnasium that served as a communal delivery room for hundreds if not thousands of labouring women, "My first baby was also a kitten. Then I had Luke and Sylvie before this kitten. It happens."

David and I spent hours dealing with the bureaucracy involved in getting special kitten formula, to no avail. Soon it had been so long that my baby/ kitten had gone without sustenance that I feared for his life. So I marched into the laboratory adjoining the gymnasium and started making a scene. All the technicians eyed me suspiciously, muttering to one another that humans never gave birth to kittens and that I was just trying to get attention. I was flabbergasted, hurt, and deeply worried about the kitten's well-being. That's what you get for not breastfeeding.

Sylvie Recommends: CAT!

Sylvie has a new favourite book that she can't stop babbling about. It's called Cat by Matthew Van Fleet and everyone in this house has now become deeply, intimately familiar with it. I know this book better than I know my husband. I know this book better than I know I'll need another coffee before I can face reading it again.

Actually, it's not that bad. The first fifty or so times we read it together were fun. It's got many, many good photos of cats, a rollicking rhyme, and lots of pull-tabs and flaps and so on. It's even got a squeaky toy that Sylvie can actually make squeak -- no mean feat where baby books are concerned as many of them of them contain squeaky toys or sound buttons are too difficult for little hands to manipulate.

The best thing about this book is the way Sylvie has now begun to say the word "CAT!" Of course she calls ducks, dogs, and lemurs "CAT!" too, but with the incredible diversity of cats pictured in this book, who can blame her? Perhaps she will grow up to rework the system of biological classification, irrefutably demonstrating that the first forms of life on this planet were not simple cells -- prokaryotes -- but teensy tiny, practically invisible "CATS!"

Even Luke knows this book by heart. As an added bonus, he can now spell the word "CAT!" Note Sylvie's look of intense concentration.