Tag Archives: humor blogging

Sep 19 2012
6 Comments
One minute read

The Adventures of Dreamily

Arabic dreams are the most frightful of all

Late at night when I’m a-slumber, Dreamily traipses through the land of nod and discovers many strange and wonderful things and writes them all down in her little notebook. But when I awake, Dreamily has already left long ago with her little notebook and I never can know exactly what she saw.

That’s why I had to start following her on twitter, because she’s a fairly diligent tweeter/instagramer, and man this stuff she sees is weird. Last night, at 1:30 am she tweeted that she saw a full-grown man wearing a Winnie-the-Pooh costume eating pie with his hands on a deserted playground and that she wept but then he turned into a huge baby the size of king kong who wanted her to pick it up so she screamed and ran away.

And then at 3:03am she tweeted a picture of a swamp full of dragon flies with human faces that had gotten stuck from watching the television too close.

At 5:34, she was prowling around someone’s house in Kansas on the night a storm was brewing and a little boy was sitting alone in the kitchen next to the stove with a kettle on it. A door was squeaking somewhere.

6:49 found her interviewing for a job she was completely unqualified for at a techie startup where no one realizes they all have horrible body odor and then suddenly she finds that she’s the stinky one and is mortified but can’t remember which person is her interviewer to ask to leave and go take a shower.

After reading her twitter feed, I usually decide it’s for the best that I don’t remember everything Dreamily sees or does. At least I’m not missing out on any magical feasts.

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Sep 17 2012
7 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, San Francisco

Fake Backstories of San Francisco Neighborhood Names: The Mission

Mission Dolores and the site of the Great Carnitas Cook-off

Journey with me, if you will, back to the magical peninsula on which is situated that most unusual of cities, San Francisco, a gleaming wonder, 7×7 miles of living myths, tree huggers, dog lovers, and Banana Republic wearers.

Directly south of the city center is a sunny, burrito-scented patch known as The Mission, not A Mission, or Mission, or Mision, but “The Mission.” Its population is divided more and more evenly between feather-wearing hipsters and the more original hair-gel wearing latinos.

Dolores Park lies at the heart of The Mission, a park named for the nearby Mission Dolores, and the site from which the nearby restaurants have taken their carnitas recipes, perfected by Father Junipero Serra in the year 1779, the year of The Great Carnitas Cook-Off.

At the time of its founding in 1776, Mission Dolores was one of 18 different missions located in the city, each run by a brother of the same mother. The founders of these missions were drawn to SF because of its reputation for being a liberal lighthouse and a place where people could have a go at being themselves. In general, they disapproved of this laissez faire attitude and wanted to shut it down and end the rampant short-wearing that was going on at the time.

So 18 brothers came out to the city and each one set up his own mission, with Father Junipero Serra choosing the rather wise location of what would come to be known as The Mission—sunny and flat, it was both easy and pleasant for the friars to bike around and get their morning lattes.

Next to God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, the Serra brothers loved them some good carnitas. In addition to the prayers and confessionals, in each of the missions was also non-stop innovation in the realm of this delicious fried pork dish. Each week, the brothers revealed their latest carnitas creations and the parishioners would rejoice and partake.

After about a year, however, with the congregations growing and the general population feeling over-served by the well meaning but all too present Serra brothers, it became painfully obvious that 18 missions in such a small area was probably too much. The short-wearing problem was already under control, and the brothers were getting tired of meeting potential parishioners only to find they were already in attendance at their brother’s mission.

It was decided at a family meeting that only five missions were to remain open in the city, and that those missions would be chosen in a great carnitas cook-off. Each brother rushed off to their mission and began preparation for the carnitas battle.

On September 17th, 1779, the day before the contest, Father Junipero Serra prayed a mighty prayer to the Lord.

“Lord, make my carnitas an instrument of your peace. Where there is toughness, may there be tenderness, where there is dryness, may there be moisture. Lord grant that I may honor and glorify you in the carnitas cook-off, and I shall exalt your name forever and ever.”

And the Lord did hear Father Junipero’s prayer, and his carnitas that day were filled with a holy flavor that none has ever tasted the likes of since. His brothers and parishioners alike were in awe of the indescribable flavor, and rumor has it that some shouted for Junipero’s immediate sainthood upon tasting his saintly creation.

And thus his mission, Mission Dolores was named The Great Mission, and he stayed in the city along with his five favorite brothers. Over time, The Great Mission was corrupted to just The Mission, and the name was given to the area within the carnitas sway of Father Junipero.

And that was fake history. Because research takes time.

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Sep 06 2012
16 Comments
Food, Humorous, Writing

The Horrifying True Story of How My Sister Ate My Fingernail

I already threw these away. I promise.

Dearly beloved, I have gathered you here to tell the terrifyingly, heart-wrenchingly, skin-crawlingly true story of the day my sweet, sweet sister ate a fingernail, my fingernail. Come with me, if you will, all the way back to that that fateful, surprise-filled day in July.

It is Monday and I am in San Francisco. I flew on the big steel bird all the way to fogtown, a place I still unknowingly call Sunny San Francisco. It is not sunny here, but oh it is to be even more cloudy and dreary in Suburb, Oklahoma.

Backstory: For years I’ve had the charming habit of forgetting to throw my fingernails away immediately after clipping them. This simple action tends to slip my mind, along with the middle names of significant others. The pile of clippings sits quietly on the coffee table, or desk corner, or languishes in the crease of a newspaper until I spot it a couple of days/weeks later and think to myself, “the socially appropriate thing to do here is to throw it away” and then throw it away. There are rumors that friends invited to social functions at my home have been forced to stare at piles of fingernail and/or toe trimmings, piles that are within broad view of God, myself, and the guests, while they interact with me. I deny these rumors.

But woe to my dear sister, my poor, sweet, innocent sister as she eats a sandwich on that Monday. She is famished and eats with gusto. Growing up in a family with four sturdy children, we learned to not let food linger on our plates lest it be snatched by another sibling. Wasted food is unheard of. As she wreaks the final justice on her sandwich, the moment of despair approaches silently, for a fingernail clipping lies on the very table where she eats, a keratin sliver I had charmingly and endearingly forgotten to remove before my departure to the West Coast.

The sandwich gone, my sister’s hunger not quite sated, she pokes about for remnants of her quickly-eaten lunch, checking for substantially sized crumbs and perhaps a scrap of ham that has fallen to the wayside.

But beware dear sister! Not everything is as it seems upon this lunch table! Danger prowls outside your door!

Alas, my warning goes unheard, typed months later in a blog post on the internet.

She picks up a crumb of notable size and unusual shape and eats it.

This, dear friends, is my fingernail.

Less than a second passes before she realizes her critical error, her tongue discerning the grossness and general inedibility of the fingernail, which used to be part of my very being. She spits it out, stunned, the now moist fingernail lying on the table as innocuous as a polka-dot.

How had it come to this? Who is to blame here? The absent-minded but generally lovable sister for leaving fingernail clippings out past their due? Or the blind hunger and gastro-greed that led her to clean the table of crumbs?

She asserts it is the former. I also assert it is the former, but I believe we have all learned a lesson here.

Be more careful of the crumbs you eat. You know not which body parts you might be ingesting.

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