Tag Archives: funny

Jul 10 2012
16 Comments
Two minute read

My Mind, The Cupcake

A cupcake from the wedding. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?

My mind has turned into a cupcake. I was afraid this would happen. Instead of synapses firing interesting and creative notions from the different loci of my mind, communicating the thoughts that will drive today into tomorrow and allow me to remember to zip my fly, buttercream frosting clogs my mental passageways.

Drooling results.

Sprinkles have taken the place of ideas, and lace wrappers are now in operation instead of my hypothalamus. Keeping physical and mental balance proves more difficult daily.

All acts of thinking, consideration, pondering, and planning that used to occur in my frontal lobe have been replaced with various cream fillings, fruits, and polka dots. The only things I’m really capable of doing anymore are underarm-sweating, head-scratching, and mouth-breathing.

My brain is adorable and trendy but I now need a caretaker.

Oh god will please someone help me. I ate a poptart and peanut butter crackers for lunch today. Is that a complete meal? Who am I? What is this leaking out of my ears?

I’ve heard about cupcake brain syndrome, which results from too much time spent applying to food service jobs on Craig’s list. Letters, numbers, names blur together into a soft, frosting like combination that begins to look tasty to the job searcher. Sometimes electronic equipment begins to malfunction from the surfeit of saliva that drips over the keyboard and is sometimes applied directly with the tongue onto the screen.

The eyes glaze over, the mouth hangs, and a real career seems to drift farther and farther away into the night, which is never ending. Soon, common words take on different meanings. “Experienced,” “Go-Getter,” “Detail-Oriented,” acquire personalities of their own, are thugs that torture the cupcake brain. Nanny nanny boo boo, they say. The mouth drools on.

Yes, dear friend, this is the great San Francisco job search of 2012. How will it end? Will it ever end? Will there be just another college graduate’s skeleton decorating a sunny road near the bay? Will the dress pants ever be worn in an office environment? How long does it take for a poptart-heavy diet to result in malnutrition? Will there be super powers?

Stay tuned, for all shall be revealed in due time. When the hands stop shaking, when the eyebrow stops twitching, when the stomach stops clenching. All shall be revealed. And yes, my sister is married now but who cares? I need a job.

P.S. I will talk about the wedding more, most likely when I can get better juice from my mind grapes.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Jul 02 2012
28 Comments
Humorous, One minute read, Open Letters

Dear Blog, I’ll Always Love You

Faces blurred to protect identity. Photo credit: Jen Dillender

Hey blog,

How’s it going? Did you hear my sister finally got married?! The wedding was stereotypically beautiful and all that crap. I should have stolen her wedding presents while I had the chance. Now I’m going to Colorado and then San Francisco and who knows when I’ll be back to use her new ice cream maker and name-brand kitchen ware.

I got blood on my bridesmaid dress. I’m pretty sure it was my own. It’s okay because I sucked it out—turns out saliva works pretty well on fresh blood stains. I’ll tell you how it happened later.

My stress-ear cleaning needs to stop. I gave myself another ear infection, but this time it’s on the other side. I sure hope these pills I found help. Do you crave human blood too?

Sorry I haven’t had time for you lately and won’t be around for the next week. It’s not because I don’t love you. I really do, but you see, sometimes I have to go places and hang out with family and be outdoors. You know I’d rather be spending that time with you in a cave, but other people just don’t understand me the way you do.

I’ll always be yours, and you”ll always be mine.

Love,

Emily

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Jun 22 2012
37 Comments
Humorous, Two minute read, Wedding

I’m Trying Not to Ruin the Wedding

Must get to successful toast. This is the goal.

My triplet sister’s wedding is in t-8 days and as the co-maid of honor, I will be speeching. Lord help us all.

In everyday interactions, most people expect very little from me. When I make any kind of joke, they are happy and will give me a laugh. But an audience has expectations. They expect me to be funny, charming, sincere, knowledgeable, sleepy, etc, and they demand their chuckle treats. This and any kind of expectation makes my nerve levels skyrocket.

When I have prepared and practiced for the engagement, it’s possible for everything to go smoothly. When I’m not prepared, however, and when the quotient between the audience’s expectations and my ability to perform is especially high, we’re diving head-on into the danger zone.

I often find myself fighting the temptation to stop speaking and let the entire room sink into silence. How long would they just sit there and watch me as I watch them? How long before someone spoke up and tried to make it all end?

As a sober, well-rested, and unstressed individual, my verbal filter already does a spotty job. When I’m nervous, it’s completely gone. I’ll say anything, literally anything, in order to combat the silence and fill the ever-approaching quiet.

For that reason, having me speak at a wedding is a risky decision. It’s such a special and heartwarming moment and one that’s the result of much planning and travel by many parties, that I will invariable do something to creatively offset the mood with what will be later be viewed as “inappropriate” humor.

In order to protect the wedding from myself, I’m reinforcing my filter by making a list of a few subjects that I will not, not under any circumstance, speak on or mention in order to keep the silence at bay.

I will not make any pregnancy jokes.

I will not make any jokes about or mention previous boyfriends and how we were SO surprised when sister and her fiancée got together (note: this isn’t entirely true, but it’s exactly the kind of thing I’m prone to say).

I will not bring up family squabbles or secret shames.

I will not discuss my personal sweating with anyone besides my immediate family.

I will not talk for longer than twenty (20) seconds about the wedding night in the company of grandma.

I will not mention people I think dressed poorly.

I will not make jokes about myself, other members of the wedding party, or the preacher being drunk or on drugs.

I will only make two (2) weight-related jokes about sister having to fit in her dress.

I will not complain about having to be at the wedding, how I’m bored, or how it could have been better.

I will not stray from the content of my written-out speech, unless there’s a really funny joke I can make.

These are my promises to myself and to my sister. Let’s hope for everyone’s sake that I remember this while I’m on stage fighting the silence. May I reach for my speech and not for the sex jokes.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Jun 20 2012
19 Comments
Best blog posts, Food, Humorous, One minute read

God in the Kitchen, Making Casserole

This is from The Far Side. Please don’t sue me.

This is the concluding post of the Miracles of Midwestern Cooking series.

Sometimes I think of the whole world as one big casserole, assembled in a glass dish God purchased at Wal-Mart and set to cook at 350 million degrees Fahrenheit, with all of the  creatures, both plant and animal, bubbling together for millions of years.

North America is the cream of chicken soup. England is cream of mushroom. France supplies the butter and cream, while Italy comes up with some carbs and Germany throws in its brats.

India and China add spice and Japan classes it up. North Africa brings the sweet with the salty, West Africa tosses in some peanuts, South America beefs it up and adds the lime juice and beans.

Other regions mix in their own special beats, the carbs and proteins they love best and all of the roasting and toasting and broasting they do to get them just right.

We’re topped with a combination of cheddar cheese ozone and fried onions that sizzle and melt under our very own star.

As the goop swims around we learn stuff, finding that some things are delicious on their own, but most often they taste better together. That’s why there should be world peace, because cream of mushroom soup is a physical abomination by itself and spices need something to go on.

I’m not advocating an Indian-spiced cream of mushroom soup, but you get my point.

And in the end maybe a casserole isn’t the best metaphor for earth, because casseroles can be kind of gross and uncivilized. Then again, so can humans.

Probably the best reason the casserole metaphor falls apart is because each of these regions developed at the same time over many years from the same primordial cream of human soup instead of being added separately. None of us could be where we are without the other.

But I still like the image of God in the kitchen, mixing together the most epic casserole of the day. I hope it tastes good.

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
May 16 2012
24 Comments
Humorous, Two minute read

Today I Wear Underpants

This photo is only half staged.

Warning: much exaggerated complaining followed by lighthearted ending. Use this information well.

It’s the last week of school and I am a disheveled shadow of a human. My aspirations of being fluent in Arabic have turned into the desire to live through the final day of my program, which is today.  Monday was not good. I woke up eight minutes before class feeling like death incarnate and rushed out of the house pen-less and still wearing my bed hair.

I had ten minutes to prepare for a presentation that was 20% of my grade. Luckily for me, I decided earlier this semester  that I don’t believe in grades. I ate 14 raw almonds for breakfast during class and afterwards wolfed down a falafel sandwich before taking a four hour nap, waking up just in time to skype with mother who silently judged me for my apparent sloth.

I felt defeated as usual here in Cairo, and I’ve come to realize that this city has utterly wiped me out and used me like a plaything.

My program ends today and I return to the states in a mere 2 weeks. I should be happy, but ahead of me looms a formidable job hunt in one of the most expensive cities in the world. This life-consuming job hunt must take place in the same month that I plan and attend a bachelorette party, a bridal shower, an afterglow brunch (ew), a  boyfriend’s visit, and a family vacation in which I’ll be forced to leave my mountain grove and actually socialize.

I’m looking from a place of exhaustion forward to months of exhaustion with no apparent end.  I’m staring from a position of defeat towards a future me curled on the ground with HR representatives kicking me in the stomach while chewing up my resume and spitting it at me. Things look grim.

In times like this, I can only do one thing. I take out my planner and write down the secret that will give me the strength to go on and conquer my fears and climb the mountains and brush the hair. At the very top of my to-do list I write “wear underwear.”

Can two words change a life? Yes.

After donning my underthings, I cross off the first task on my to-do list and breathe deeply while I look at the twenty things I have left, my rear end carefully caressed by a familiar pair of unmentionables. Yes, today is my day. I’m beginning the rest of my life and I’m wearing underpants.

You, world, may be tough and you may have well dressed people who don’t want to hire me and you may have chatty cousins that distract me from the book I want to read but I, dear world, am wearing underpants and anything is possible.

Who wears the underpants? I DO! Who’s not afraid? I’M NOT! Who’s going to stop crying and leave her mother’s closet today? ME!

WHAT TIME IS IT? UNDERPANTS TIME! WHO ARE WE? UNDERPANTERS! WHAT DO WE DO? WIN!

P.S. Things really aren’t that bad. I’m going on vacation to Ethiopia today. Yay!

Tagged , , , , , , ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →
Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started