Tag Archives: humor blog

Nov 14 2012
8 Comments
Humorous

Ovember: Let’s Ovulate!

This morning, as I was stirring my instant coffee, I finally deciphered the word Movember. Previously, I’d thought it was a call for people to move more, or perhaps a poor mashup of the word “man” and “November.” In my moment of insight, I realized the word was formed by cleverly taking the letter “m” from the word mustache and placing it at the beginning of November instead of  “n.”

This revelation was followed by a visit to the campaign website, where I learned that Movember is the month known formerly as November, “where men and women across the globe join together to raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues. Men grow and women support a Mo (moustache) for 30 days to become walking, talking billboards, for our men’s health causes – prostate and testicular cancer initiatives.”

Suddenly I understood why some of my guy friends are growing out mustaches, claiming to support Movember instead of doing it without reason except for its hipster and ironic facial hair appeal.

Then I thought to myself, “This is all well and good, and men’s health is certainly important, but why can’t I raise support for the cause in an equally fun way with something only ladies can do?” So I removed the “n” and created Ovember, in which women have ovulation races.

Through a centralized tracking system on the website, millions of women across the country will be able to compare their menstrual cycles with one another in this action-packed month. The woman who increases hers the most will win a grand prize of twenty years of FLOW! feminine hygiene products, an Estonian brand known for its fiber quality that’s trying to break into the US market.

Women are encouraged to do whatever it takes to increase the number of menstrual cycles they complete in the month, including moving in with ladies who are master-ovulators, visiting various fertility pools, and praying to ancient gods.

Men who support the Ovulatrixes, which is what the participants will be called, are called Ovamen, and all the money raised from Ovember will go to purchasing fake mustaches to wear at Movember events.

Join me, ladies! Let’s ovulate!

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Sep 13 2012
16 Comments
Food, Humorous

Top Chef Michael Mina Describes My Daily Diet

Teddie Peanut Butter only served on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Breakfast

Today we have a par-boiled oatmeal made with Trader Joe’s Organic Old Fashioned Rolled Oats, seasoned with Organic Pumpkin Spice and Morton’s Kosher Salt, both stolen from a roommate personally by Emily Drevets.

The oats are prepared by pouring tap water heated to exactly 212 degrees Fahrenheit over them and letting them sit for as long as you can stand. As a garnish, we sprinkle just a touch of raw oats over the finished dish. Served with tap water and our signature Nescafe Instant Coffee.

These oats remain mostly raw because they are not Quick Cooking, so you get some of that tough oaty texture that reminds you of the earth and eating wheat off the stalk. I feel this is a very honest dish that reconnects you with how eating must have felt for our ancestors.

Lunch

For this dish, I was inspired by childhood and children in general. I’m fascinated by the way they approach life, absorbing everything as if it were completely new, captivated by what has become ordinary to us. They are the very embodiment of “fresh eyes” and that’s where I got the idea for a Toasted Whole Wheat Peanut Butter and Raspberry Jam Sandwich.

To prepare this re-invented childhood classic, we open the bag of Trader Joe’s Organic Whole Wheat Bread and gently set two slices in a preheated toaster oven. As the bread toasts and becomes progressively drier, we ready the peanut butter and raspberry jam by taking the respective jars out of the fridge and opening them.

The peanut butter we’re using today is an Organic Crunchy, Natural Trader Joe’s Peanut Butter, made from local peanuts and harvested with the help of a man who is, by coincidence, my second cousin Bill. Bill and I don’t talk much, and our jam of the month is Safeway Brand Raspberry jam, with real cane sugar and artificial colorings.

Once the bread is done toasting, we remove it from the oven and slather it in peanut butter. The warmth of the toast causes the peanut butter to melt slightly, adding to the gooiness of the sandwich. Then, we smear raspberry jam on the toast, making sure to swirl the mixture.

Much like checking for the appropriate swirls of fat in high-quality meat, a healthy swirl in a peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwich is an equally important indicator of quality. Then we press the two slices together, seeing to it that some of the filling drips down the sides.

The drink of choice with this finished product: tap water. You’re going to need a lot in order to keep this viscous mixture moving down.

Dinner

Dinner today is a handful of Trader Joe’s Cats Cookies for People, kind of the big sister of Teddy Grahams with a similar, cinammony taste and innocent crunch, along with some spoonfuls of peanut butter straight out of the jar, served with Twinning’s English Breakfast Tea and tap water from a nickel-plated sink faucet in the bathroom.

I’ve found that eating eating peanut butter right from the jar works on both the experiential and gustatory levels, and the proximity to such a primary ingredient in its natural and abundant state is a real crowd pleaser.

Bon Appétit!

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Sep 11 2012
8 Comments
Food, Humorous

The Pros and Cons of these Trader Joe’s Cats Cookies I Bought Last Week

Destructive and beautiful.

Pro: They’re delicious.

I’m more than satisfied with the cookies’ taste, which has a good amount of cinnamon and is sweet but not too sweet. The crunchiness is quite appealing, yet I never feel I have to work too hard for them to give up their tasty inner-workings.

Con: They’re delicious.

Damn these cookies! They are so small that it feels to me each one merely introduces the depths of their tantalizing flavor! It never satisfies the cinnamon hunger that it awakes. But I can never move past the initial “hello, I taste great.” One cookie is just enough to pique my taste buds and get them wanting more. Always more! Madness!

Pro: They’re small.

I think “oooo! I’ll just have about three with my coffee and that’s the perfect snack size for 5 o’clock coffee. Just three small, crunchy, cinnamon cookies from the huge container I keep right on my desk, right within reach. No more, no less. This is great!”

Con: They’re small.

They’re too small! They’re so small I can always have another one, or at least think that I can always have another one. What difference does one more tiny cookie make? What about five more? Twenty more! INSANITY!

Pro: They’re numerous.

For so many cookies, they were certainly a steal. 15 cookies is one serving, and there are 15 servings in a container which means 225 cookies, which would last me over two weeks if I just ate one serving a day. Wowzers! So cheap!

Con: They’re numerous.

There’re so many of them I can always convince myself that just one more cookie won’t hurt, that the actual level of cookies in the container will never go down, that the supply will never be depleted, even though I know, beyond a shadow of a glimmer of a doubt, that these cookies are numbered and they surely will end, and just as the earth itself is counting down its days to the final destruction when the sun blows up in billions of years, so will these cookies end, because there are at maximum 230 cookies in there, depending on weight discrepancies.

But my dumb psychology tells me that one more cookie has no real effect on the sum total of the cookies, even when there is mathematical, scientific, arithmetic proof that it does, but this is the Cats Cookie madness, and it is inescapable. My only hope now is that the cookies are gone in less than two weeks, which they surely will be, and that I don’t have enough motivation to drive all the way to Trader Joe’s again in order to purchase them, which I would likely do in a moment of weakness because I lay in their thrall. Help me.

Cookie anyone?

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Sep 04 2012
8 Comments
Humorous

What Do You Do When the Coffee’s Gone

Is there anything sadder? Besides the poem, that is.

When the lamp is on, and the chair is warm, and the coffee’s gone, what do you do?

Where do you go when there’s nothing there, not in your cup, not a drop to spare?

What can you pray, to take the pain away, to smooth the rough edges of another rough day?

What do you know that can whisper to your soul, the way the coffee does, when you’re feeling so low?

And the loneliness is pressing, the wind whipping round, the chill to your bones, the stale coffee grounds.

The dry brown ring, the sad coffee stain, the slight dampness mocks you and your coffee-addled brain.

Oh sweet Lord in heaven

Oh red Devil in hell

I don’t care who I pray to, as long as it breaks the spell

This endless white emptiness, the crushing heartache, the yearning and hoping as I’m lying awake.

For a cup of coffee. Hot. No sugar. Just milk. Please.

Then we can have conversation and pass the pleasantries

And thoughts will float between us, as they do between old friends. That is, as they do, before the coffee ends.

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Aug 24 2012
36 Comments
Guest Posts, Humorous, Three minute read

I Immediately Regret Doing This: Draggin’ Aspen

The blogosphere is full of weirdos, cat-gentlemen, and Craig’s List posters. In the milieu of what can be a terrifying and terrifyingly unfunny land, there is an oasis, a sweet haven of laughter and quality humor writing that is called The Byronic Man.

I asked the proprietor of this quality weblog to guest post for Snotting Black, another hilarious and altogether exceptional humor blog, on the topic of “I immediately regret doing this.” He came through in spades and sweat. Read on. And then go to his blog. And then come back to mine. Then get a sandwich.

I’ve certainly been there before. As in sleepy, not exerted.

Draggin’ Aspen

I ran in a half-marathon a couple weeks ago, called the Haulin’ Aspen (Get it?  It’s a pun!).  I enjoy running and have done one half-marathon before, but would not ordinarily have considered running in this one because it is notorious for being one of the toughest trail races in the area.  Very dirty.  Lots of hills.  Sharp switchbacks, some of which are very narrow and on jagged rock.  A rollicking good time, right?  But a friend suggested is a kind of group activity, so, hey, I figured, why not.  We’d tough our way through this thing together.  Toast our awesomeness with a beer afterward.  So I signed up.

Short version: I wound up being the only one who actually signed up for the race.  Call this Bad Omen/Regret Milestone #1.

That morning turned out to be the hottest day this summer.  It was hot before we even started running, and a number of people stood around muttering, “I thought we’d get at least a little time before we were actually too hot.”  Bad omen/Regret Milestone #2.

I had run the course a couple times before, which was helpful, and made me in to a prophet of wisdom and faith beforehand as we milled around the starting line.  “You’ve seen the course?” two women asked.  “Is it as bad as they say?”  “Yea,” I replied, “Verily, it is true that there is about two and a half miles of straight uphill in full sun, but thou must have faith that an aid station waits at the end with Gatorade and gel packs.”

Side note: those gel packs they give runners – if you’ve ever seen those – why are they all like ‘chocolate cream’ and ‘apple cinnamon’?  Who the hell’s jogging along in the heat and thinking, “Man, a big piece of grocery store pie would really hit the spot right now”?

Then we started running and immediately closed in to a narrow, dusty path.  Vision obscured.  Dirt inhaled.  Sun pounding.

It was pretty immediately clear: I’d made a mistake.  This would not be the last time I’d have this thought.  The heat was brutal, the dirt was thick (there would come a moment where I’d blow my nose and dirt would come out.  Not brown mucus – dirt).

There were definite stretches where things were looking up… until they looked up for that two and a half miles in full sun on the hottest day in the summer.  We can call that the Turning Point from “Regret Milestone” to “Mother F***er…”

The kicker of this race is that trails aren’t quite long enough, so you get so close to the end that you could hit the people crossing the finish line with a rock (which was tempting), and it’s directly in front of you… and you take a sharp right to run another mile and a half.  Now that’s just mean.

I finished, so I suppose there’s that.  I’ve done one before, and on that one when I hit the 12-mile mark I kicked into gear for that last mile.  Hoo-ah, and all that.  This one when I hit the 12-mile mark I was puttering, thinking of activities I might take up besides running, and trying to remember the signs of heat stroke.  I was not alone.  We looked like that moment in the horror movie when the protagonist looks out the window and sees the zombies shambling down the street.

But I made it.  I didn’t even check my time, I just stumbled around looking for fluid – water, beer, vinegar, mustard, whatever.  I did have a beer, but there was no toasting of personal awesomeness, only the desperate need for fluid and carbohydrates and, hopefully, death.

I’m proud of myself for getting through it… but I keep waiting to think, “Ah, I’m glad I did it.”  And… I’m still waiting…

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