Category Archives: Two minute read

Jun 11 2012
8 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Two minute read

Country Girl Refuses to Board the Dreams-Come-True-Express

All trains are a scam. Remember that, America.

Sometimes I go driving at night, after everyone’s gone to bed and it’s just me and the car and the road and the wind running next to me and in the trees. I stop at intersections and sit there with the windows open like I’m in on a big secret. People shouldn’t be out this late, especially in my home town, but here I am. It’s 3 am and I’ve been stopped at this intersection for a full minute and no one will ever know about it. It’s lame but there’s not a lot here to keep me occupied.

Last night I was at Brury and Durstwood. I stopped the car, turned the engine off, and got out, just to look at the stars a little farther away from the “city” lights. The cicadas were doing their thing in those new summer leaves and in the distance I saw the glow of Oklahoma City. It was a small glow with an inferiority complex, but a glow nonetheless.

I heard the faraway sound of a train rumbling through, carrying its chicken breasts and belt buckles or whatever trains carry nowadays. I thought about a time in middle school when I couldn’t sleep and almost started crying because a train was making a racket  and then a police siren went wee-ooo-wee-ooo and it seemed the night would never end. And then I thought about another time a few weeks ago when I almost screamed because I kept bumping into things in my room.

To my left, the sound of the train got louder. I looked around and saw one headlight, a giant shining eye coming straight for me. Guz-WHAT, I shouted and jumped back.

As I considered what it would feel like to be reborn in the shape of a gooey pancake, the train began slowing down and then came to a complete stop.  The conductor poked her head out of the cabin and yelled, to my immense confusion, “All-aboard!”

Was I actually supposed to get on this train headed to God-knows-where?

What about my car?

What about the kid I was supposed to babysit tomorrow? How would he get to Wal-Mart without me?

I asked the conductor what the h kind of a shindig this was and she said this was the Dreams-Come-True-Express and that the destination was up to me.

And I thought that was really disgusting. How dare these circus people, probably from California, come here and try to scam us poor country folks. How much did a ticket for this thing cost? Twenty, thirty dollars? As if I had that kind of money to go hang around in some feel goodery* and listen to someone tell me to dance like my dreams were chocolate hugs.

So I told her to just get on out of there. “Go on, git!” I told her and the train started chugga chugga-ing and soon I was left with just my thoughts and the insects and their thoughts.

As the train made its way towards the city lights and other dumb schmucks that would probably take this deal, I wondered what it would be like to breathe underwater. I would probably never know.

*credit to Arrested Development, one of the best television shows America has ever seen.

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Jun 07 2012
29 Comments
Humorous, Two minute read

7 Rumors About Snotting Black Debunked

Yippee. Happy Anniversary, bloggy-dearest.

This post is in honor of my blog’s one year anniversary, which I forgot to mention 2 weeks ago.

1. I started this blog 378 days ago after losing a bet to my cousin Darayla about whether or not Grandma would drop her false eyelashes in the potato salad again on Memorial Day.

FALSE. Darayla is a name I made up, and as per my inclusion in a “cult,” I do not celebrate the national holidays of this country, instead using that time to plan its overthrow and enjoy powered soup mixes. I started this blog on May 26th, 2011 after being begged by family members not to plague their inboxes with novellas about my time in Cairo like I had done the previous year when I was in Morocco. However, I soon stopped writing about factual experiences so they still had to communicate with me.

2.  This blog used to provide hard hitting political and social commentary about life in Egypt, and at one point the government even considered it a threat and tried to keep me quiet by to bribing me with a hot tub full of Nutella.

FALSE. I blogged about things like mosquitoes and a sandwich I ate once that didn’t give me food poisoning and one that did. Soon my mind left for flights of fancy and I was writing about unicorn carcasses and self-aware blogs. But it’s true that I did eat enough off and on brand Nutella to fill a hot tub.

3. I majored in International Relations and used to want to become Secretary of State and wear a pantsuit to work.

TRUE. Now I want to “be a writer” and am moving out to San Francisco to “make it big.” I’m still trying to figure out which career path was more realistic.

4. My entire family is incredibly supportive, reading my blog daily and sending me cookies when appropriate.

FALSE. My blog is not for everyone, especially the older and more conservative members of my family who could never understand why (everything I find funny) is funny. I learned from my sister roughly two months ago that, “Grandma doesn’t read your blog anymore.” To be honest, I was surprised that she made it that far.

5. Number five was missing in this blog post until the blogger’s mother asked her, “Did you mean to leave out number five?” after which the oversight was hastily and obviously corrected.

FALSE. There has never been a typo on Snotting Black, especially in one of the Freshly Pressed pieces.

6. 378 days is equivalent to 9,072 hours, 544,320 minutes, 32, 659, 200 seconds, and 58 jello salads.

FALSE. 378 days is equal to 9,072 hours, 544,320 minutes, 32, 659, 200 seconds, and 67 jello salads.

7. Soon, Snotting Black is going to change completely and become a paid community where I carefully curate everyone’s personal details and share them on an organized basis with the other members until all forms of privacy are completely obliterated.

TRUE. See above answer about “cult” membership. We like to call it Stew Wednesday.

Highlights of a year of blogging: Being Freshly Pressed twice (here and here), meeting awesome members of the blogosphere, re-discovering my love of writing, and using the term “blog fodder.”

Low points of a year of blogging: The post “Will it stick: Thanksgiving Edition” and the blog title “Noodle Haste Makes Taste Waste.”

Real search terms that people have used to find my blog: “I used somebody else’s toothbrush and now I have a sore tongue,” “I hate my puppy,” “Abba demonic music,” “my dirt family,” “snot in my ear,” “stump arm,” 44444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444,” and finally “chacos as deal breaker.”

Happy Anniversary and thanks for reading.

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Jun 05 2012
25 Comments
Best blog posts, Humorous, Job hunting, Two minute read

The Cover Letter that Gets the Job

I’m coming for you.

Listen up, mother narker

I know what you’re thinking. You’re at work, wearing your power skirts and wrist-control cuff links, and you think that this is just another cover letter, just another piece of pre-trash that you need to skim before taking your 15th M&M break of the day. Turns out the power to control human destinies doesn’t energize like it used to.

Your precious bundles of neurons are throbbing with boredom from the mediocrity of the stack that lies before you. Where is a peer? Where is the employee so detail oriented she counts her Lucky Charms and times herself on the john?

Where is that special someone with the suit-wearing abilities of a psychopath and marketing skills of nervous high-school nerds trying to convince Big Bob he doesn’t want to beat them up?  All you want is someone with a degree from every Ivy league university and 59 years of experience that has brought the total costs of running a company down to zero while increasing efficiency by 867 percent. Is that too much to ask?

Well let me tell you something, you open-gobbed hand-shaker. I don’t have any of that crap, and I’m not about to sit here and dump out my purse for you and tell you why my tic-tacs are the best ones for this company and how I really am the go-getter you’re looking for because I punched someone when they tried to cut me in line.

I’ve been out there. I’ve met with the graduates of this generation and I was parented by the last generation and I have some friends who belong to the place in between. You think they have something I don’t? You’re wrong, dead wrong. Your last-season shoes and chipped coffee mug tell the whole, sad story. You’ve spent your life trying to find the best and the brightest in the front displays of department stores, hand picking the newest merchandise that still smells slightly of formaldehyde. Then they come in and what do you get? Beneath their shiny surfaces, they’re turds like the rest of us.

This is the best it gets, sweetie. Leave Nordstroms and you’ll see me there on the street. I’ll be playing a pan pipe and have an overly-exited following of neighborhood dogs. Watch me closer. I’ll take those dogs across the street and trade them to the CEO of a start-up tech company called Whiznit for thirty bucks. I’ll take that thirty bucks and come back to Nordstroms and offer to take you out to a cheap lunch and tell you why I’m the best person for this job. Because let’s face it, you can get a shiny Gucci bag from any street corner in the world, but they only make me in Oklahoma, baked in the close confines of an over-crowded womb and served in a harsh world that doesn’t give out any favors. Hire me.

Sincerely,

Snotting Black

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Jun 05 2012
20 Comments
Travelling, Two minute read, Wedding

Guess Who Has 2 Thumbs, a High Platelet Count, and Doesn’t Get Carsick from Reading Anymore

Bachelorette Party was held in surprise location. Sister was thrown under a blanket.

Well, I’m home (points for those who recognized this as a LOTR reference. Negative points for those who don’t know what LOTR stands for–please get a life) and there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that I can now read in the car without vomiting and the bad news is that no one noticed my haircut. I literally had to point it out to everyone before they would even compliment me. On the bright side, because of my reading-in-the-car-abilities, I laughed my way through Bossypants (by Tina Fey) and didn’t think about ralphing even once.

I just arrived back in OKC from five days with people who elongate their o’s just slightly, are too polite to comment on the fact I wore the same dress two days in a row, and say things like, “I just love her!” to my sisters seconds after meeting me. Some of them said slightly culturally inappropriate things like, “Oh! Your cowgirl boots and dress are so cute! It’s so different from the way we dress up here!” or “It was just so nice to meet you people!” And then I wondered if maybe in Chicagoland the phrases “you people” and “different” have positive connotations, because in Boston I learned that those terms tend to define what we call “the other.”

At any rate, the attendees at both the bachelorette party and bridal shower were sweet, down-to-earth Midwesterners who bequeathed my sister with a mountain of gifts that any thief would be lucky to steal. Though many of the women at her bridal shower were complete strangers to my sister, they were all extremely kind and watched with great attention and wonderful oooo’s as the bride-to-be tore an entire forest of wrapping paper off of her presents, revealing all kinds of variations on kitchenware, home decorations, and headlamps.

The bachelorette party was particularly fun, if tame by societal standards. One of the raunchiest highlights was when we played “pin the kiss on the hunk” and someone (gasp!) didn’t aim for the mouth. Can you even do that? The bridal shower was equally tame, though well catered, and held in a home that prioritized the use of the words “faith, love, and hope” in its decoration. There was, however, a question about how many kids the husband wanted to have that caused some minor blushing. Apparently he wants a baker’s dozen, but it’s okay because babies are brought to the chimney by a monster that lives in neighborhood ponds.

Through this experience, I learned that there some things associated with my co-maid of honor position that I am not good at. One of them is wearing above-the-knee-dresses. Another is decorating anything. However, with a crockpot and a recipe in my hands, I become Martha Stewart herself, minus the prison sentence. The same goes with a telephone and a list of strangers to call. These are my fortes, in addition to having a high platelet count, and I look forward to implementing them in the coming 3.5 weeks of wedding preparation.

Coming up this week: a review of my year in Cairo, my one-year blog anniversary, and a job-finding celebration (hopefully.)

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May 17 2012
33 Comments
Travelling, Two minute read

The Ethiopian Adventure Begins

I will get a baboon fang.

At 20:45 GMT on Wednesday, May 16th, an Egyptair flight left from Cairo, Egypt to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Both of these countries are in Africa, by the way. Why does this matter, you ask? Who’s asking, I ask. I am, you say. Big deal, I say. Well can you just tell me why, you ask? Yes, I say. It matters because yours truly was on that flight, probably.

And I probably landed in Ethiopia at the most comfortable hour of 1:30 am GMT, where I was greeted by a crowd of friendly Ethiopians before riding a giraffe named Dorothy to a flea-free safari lodge where I fell asleep. After hours of delicious slumber, I likely woke up to the most wonderful all-day breakfast spread I have ever seen. I may or may not have spent the whole day in the dining room, finally leaving only when I was forced to because Dorothy was getting impatient and we needed to begin the journey to Lalibela.

That was a paragraph of lies. The one true thing is that I am probably in Ethiopia right now, breathing in the sweet Addis Ababa and/or Lalibela air and counting down the hours to drinking my next coffee. I will be in this country for about a week and have left compy at home, making sure to set out some food and water for it and my blog. No, I will not be blogging during my Ethiopian adventure, but I do plan on harvesting a good crop of blog fodder that I will use for upcoming posts. This trip will be a much needed rotating of the mind crops.

There is a slight chance that I won’t return at all, due to kidnapping by the organized baboon gangs of the Simien mountain or because I will have willingly joined these gangs. I also might be overcome with the Simien madness and feel that I have become “one” with the landscape and refuse to leave, clinging to the neck of the mule that we have rented and annoying the mule handler with my incessant weeping.

But, if everything goes well, I should be coming back next Wednesday with a baboon tooth necklace, as few flea bites as possible, mild digestive problems, and priceless memories.

Expected highlights of the trip are:

1. Not being in Cairo.

2. Seeing churches carved out of the living rock in Lalibela.

3. Using the phrase “living rock” as much as possible.

4. Seeing castles in Gondar.

5. Making countless Lord of the Ring references to Gondor.

6. Trekking in the Simien mountains and seeing baboons.

7. Claiming to see family members in and among the baboon herds: “Mom? Is that you!?”

8. Eating in a country that doesn’t have an endless culinary winter.

It should be a good trip, and I’ll probably write stuff about it when I get back. As usual, it will be fact-poor and reveal very little about what I actually did. See you later!

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