Category Archives: Two minute read

Nov 12 2012
3 Comments
San Francisco, Two minute read

Sacrificing to the Great Tree and Other Holiday Fun

I went shopping yesterday and apparently it’s Christmasandotherholidaystime. Unbeknownst to me, and wholly without my permission, Union Square was decked with an ice skating rink and a giant Christmas tree for retail shoppers to worship as they complete their obligatory paycheck sacrifices.

I should have guessed this season was coming from the dropping temperatures, the massive “Christmas cookie edition” of various magazines at the craft store that I went to a couple of weeks ago, and the fact my skin is feeling more and more reptilian. Still, it seems a little soon to start pumping out the holiday jams and tinsel-fying everything.

This is that special time of year when retail workers begin to go insane from overexposure to Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas” and too many renditions of “Jingle Bells.” It’s that time of year that means everything from “hope” to “believe” to “eat” to “shame eat,” messages that will eventually lead to “start over” “begin again,” and “diet.”  It’s the time of year when it’s impossible to buy clothing that doesn’t look like a Christmas ornament, clothes that will be unwearable outside of these 6 weeks in the future because their sparkles and colors of good joy and cheer are dead-giveaways for holiday merch.

Yes indeed, it’s holiday time. It’s time to spread the laughter, the belief, and the inspiration, whatever those words mean. According to Banana Republic, they mean it’s time to get new dresses that are covered in gold sequins.  But I believe they mean it’s time to be real and break down the barriers between our fellow humans.

I’m going to start by hugging everyone at work today, full of the holiday spirit. And I showered, so I’ll smell nice. Maybe I’ll put a mini-tree on my desk and invite others to place small but valuable gifts underneath it for yours truly. Anything is possible, because this is the time of year when miracles happen. I’m hoping for a bed miracle, in which I find a bed on the side of the street in perfect condition.

I will make my sacrifices to the great tree and see what happens. I advise you to do the same.

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Nov 08 2012
16 Comments
Humorous, Two minute read, Writing

Life Would Be Easier if I Didn’t Blog

the blogging muscle is close to the trapezius muscle.

Boom. I’m sitting on a borrowed airbed in a small room with one window that faces into a courtyard full of construction and home-maintenance equipment and old shoes.  My fingernails are getting too long and doing that thing where they click on the keyboard and it’s driving me insane but the cure is far far away in the bathroom.

It’s early-ish in the morning, and I’m in the part of the day I designated as “blogging time.” My hair is clean, my face is puffy, and I’m sitting at my computer still coated in Cairo-dust. And as I go to blog a blog, I find I’m gosh-darn-it stumped and have no idea what to write about. Should  I talk about my new job in a way that doesn’t reveal the fact I’m only doing it for the granola bars? Should I discuss cats? Should I try to write a fiction post about popsicle sticks and fish scales?

I was having a real time with it, and then the thought occurred to me, “This would just be easier if I didn’t blog.” Ding! Ding Ding! We have a winner! Balloons fell from the ceiling, a man with a kazoo and a clown’s nose started parading around my room and I had to ask him to leave, the band struck up a number, and I knew I had my blog topic.

If I didn’t blog, I would never have to worry about what to write on. I would never feel guilty for not blogging or delayed responses to comments, or have to figure out how to describe my blog to other people. Me: “It’s a humor blog….I write about things I think are funny….” Other person: (eyeroll) (swift kick in my gut). My life would be marginally easier and I would have more free time to fill with poking other people on facebook.

But, and here’s the cheesy awful part. I lurve blogging, and the less I do, the harder it is. The times I feel most on top of my blogging game are when I’m crushing it with 5 posts a week and can feel those blogging engines primed and ready to shoot off into unexplored areas of the human intestine. It’s when I lower this standard that blogging becomes more difficult and it’s easier to imagine my life without Snotting Black.

Blogging is a muscle. Writing is a muscle. The heart is a muscle. The airbed I’m sitting on is a muscle. And if we don’t use these muscles, they die and go to the place where atrophied muscles soak in hot tubs all day and get pruny while talking about their former glory. It’s disgusting and I don’t want my blogging muscle to go there, yet.

I wrote this meta-post so it could get some exercise. Now it’s your turn to exercise the muscle of something you love to do.

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Nov 01 2012
11 Comments
Two minute read

Dance to the beat of a little girl’s drum

Quick! Steal her drum while she’s not looking!

Hey you.

You have the power to be who you want to be. Dance to the beat of your own drum. Steal a little girl’s drum and dance to its beat if you want to.

She might start crying, but that’s okay, because it’s the perfect chance for you to tell her that she has the power to be who she wants to be, and if she wants to be a sissy whiny pants with no drum, then that’s her choice. Run away with her drum.

Now you have a little girl’s drum and you’re out there dancing to it like there’s no tomorrow, because you want to be a person that dances like no one’s watching.

Unfortunately, there are many people watching, including those with pets, the elderly, and one jock who comes up with a great line to mock you with. “Nice moves.” A pet owner’s pet gets nervous and starts barking at you, because you’re flailing your limbs wildly and your eyeballs are rolling around in their sockets and you’re having a grand old time while everyone around you stares in horror at the maniac writhing to the bizarre beat of a hello kitty drum.

Someone calls the police.

You try to tell them but they don’t understand and that you have the power to be who you want to be. Unfortunately, they have the power to make you be who they want you to be. You had never heard the corollary before.

You’re arrested for theft of a little girl’s drum, and dancing is discouraged in the courthouse. You learn that sometimes you need to think about adages before you follow them blindly, and you shouldn’t take advice from someone with unclear motives.

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Oct 31 2012
10 Comments
Social Media, Two minute read

Hi everyone! I changed my profile picture.

This is my former profile picture.

Dear facebook community,

As many of you have probably noticed (and commented/liked), I changed my profile picture today. For the past year, three months, and…you guessed it! 22 days, my profile picture portrayed me making a funny face while my parents tried to kiss me on the cheek. It was taken on a cliff in Maine shortly after I graduated (with honors, three ribbons, and a wheel of cheese) from Boston University.

The picture was hilarious. It provided all of you with enjoyment for many months, but in truth, I’ve felt for a while now that I needed a change.  I was held back by the fear of not measuring up to past profile picture greatness, of failing to find the one image that bursts with humor, creativity, and wisdom and shines like my beacon into the darkness of facebok.

It just so happened that yesterday, as I was showing my boyfriend pictures I had taken of myself, that I stumbled upon a great prospect.

While being an attention-whore, ham, and all-around obnoxious and spotlight-sucking rockstar in July, I had grabbed antlers and posed with them pressed to my face, as if they were emerging from my cheeks and I was undergoing a painful transformation into a creature both cursed and beautiful. I forced my mother to choke back embarrassment and take pictures of me.

This is the new profile picture.

When I found this gem, glittering in the dust of the My Pictures folder, I realized I must make it my profile picture, that it encapsulated everything I feel about my current situation in San Francisco, that it was the embodiment of who I am and who I am becoming.

“This is it.” I said to myself, and I uploaded it, changing my life and yours forever.

I immediately commented on it, liked it, and did everything I could to promote it, including making it a life event and asking people politely to comment or like anything regarding the photo change. Just a few minutes into the barrage of news about my profile picture I was bestowing upon you, the facebook community, the giddiness of my endeavor wore off and I realized I had made a huge mistake.

The picture was too dark. The community could not appreciate how ridiculous it was. The expected outpouring of likes and comments was not appearing as I had expected. Not only that, I felt in my heart of hearts that this was not the best possible photo for my profile.

I am now trapped, with no way out. Should I change my facebook photo again so soon, I will make an ass of myself and the 5 people who liked it will mock me endlessly. Soon I shall become an echo of my former facebook profile picture greatness and live in the shadow I have created for myself.

I shall grow paler.

My freckles will fade.

And I will be forgotten.

Goodbye, facebook community. Goodbye to those who know me and love me.

Please like this post.

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Oct 30 2012
11 Comments
Humorous, Modern Life, Two minute read, Writing

A Desire Burns in My Breast

So I want to change the world. Go figure. Who doesn’t? The question is: how the blork am I going to do that?

The solid, hot truth is that I have no freaking marbled cake idea of how this dumb globe even works. Thanks a lot, 4-year education at an “accredited” institution.

If only I’d read a little bit more Dante maybe I’d know what the heck was going on, and how hurricane what’s-her-face is connected to the plight of migrant workers is connected to Wal-Mart is connected to the Christ and Madonna and soaring flocks of macaws in the Amazon.

Heck, I don’t even know how to dress myself. Every single pair of pants I own has or had a hole in it, and I spent two hours today trying to figure out what a person who goes to a professional job for work looks like. I failed miserably and ended up gawking at tubs of extra-terrestrial creatures at an Asian supermarket before day drinking and retiring to my abode where I contemplated the chocolate-covered toffee on my desk and felt the impending free time about to destroy my brain.

I must do something.

This is the eternal desire, the ever-burning flame within my pasty breast. I must do something. But what does it look like? How does it taste and smell? Does it like children? Will the child I babysit like it more than me? These questions bubble to the surface of my existence like those tell-tale doom bubbles in the lower intestine after a July chili cook-off.

What must I do? Should I climb the tallest mountain? Should I chop down the tallest tree in the forest? Should I drink the tallest milk shake? Tell the tallest tall-tale? Slap the tallest man? Braid the hair of the tallest woman? Wear the tallest pants? Take a dump in the tallest building?

Am I even on the right track with the tallest thing? Do you see the problem here? Sometimes the world is spinning and spinning and just when I think I have the game down and I’m hopping and stepping in time with everyone else like at St. Gregory’s Church, I catch my breath and realize I have little to no idea what’s going on.

It’s refreshing and terrifying, like a cucumber-scented bodywash that dissolves your skin days after you use it.

And then, after I figure out what I must do, how do I do it? Are the discovery and the doing part of the same thing? Can you have one without the other?

But here’s a better question: how do I forget all of this and just get to the point where I want to make a lot of money? Isn’t that a safer and less confusing place to be—more easily quantified too!

And then I could blog about money, and everyone would want to read my words and learn out how to get rich like me and I would purchase a pair of shoes without holes.

Alas alas, I am in the holey time of my life, and there is much pondering to do. Join me, if you dare. Mock me, if you will. Just don’t ask to see the inner thighs of my pants.

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