Tag Archives: humor writing

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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Lord of the Blog

One blog to rule them all, one blog to find them. One blog to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, in the blogosphere where the shadows lie.

Beware of Mark.

Long ago, in an age that has been forgotten, evil covered the earth. Men struck each other down with their hands, teenagers used poor spelling in social media posts, and children dreamt nightly of living inside a television, in order to break the last barrier between them and the only thing they loved. Humans were slaves of chaos, fear, and greed. Art was rendered impossible, as was music. Only bare shrieks were heard in the never-ending nights.

Then hope came in the form of the Googles, a race sent from Outside to restore order to the earth, a daunting task. But the Googles were a wise race, emboldened with cutting-edge technology and neat glasses. They were strong, powerful, and benevolent. Through their kind words and endless tutorials, the people began to hear and see beyond themselves for the first time after years in the dark.

Decades of toil passed until music could be heard in the streets once again, spilling over from warm homes that were broken no longer. Art covered the walls of cities, and men and women greeted each other with a smile and a how-do-you-do as they went about their business.

But the peace was not to last, for living among the Googles and the earth peoples there lay a snake in the grass, a wolf in sheepskin, a polar bear in a baby seal suit, and its name was Mark. It gets a little complicated, but essentially Mark was a fallen archangel with some serious attitude problems and the overwhelming desire for everyone to worship him. Alas, through his aura of salivation-inducing coolness and his superior coding abilities, he fooled the Googles and earth peoples into giving him their trust, and they knew not that they spelled their own ruin.

Baiting them with honeyed words, Mark used the Googles to construct the ultimate weapon of all time: the blogosphere. He told them that it would be a massive art project, something of true beauty, where anyone who wanted to could write or post or share to their hearts content and thus enrich the lives of other earth dwellers. And thus it was a thing of true beauty, with one horrifying, deadly flaw.

He enlisted their help in building one Blog that was to guide the others and help them achieve their full potential. It was to be the most powerful Blog in the blogosphere, one that only Mark could use. And so it happened. He created a blog so compelling, so readable, that all others wanted to be like it and bent to its will. Each keystroke controlled an army and every post could incite millions to action or passivity. The world breathed only with the Blog’s permission.

With hearts and minds in sway, Mark soon used the one Blog to inspire the earth dwellers to war with the Googles, and the age of prosperity was no more, with darkness once again consuming the earth and cat pictures populating the blogosphere.

Ages later, the password to the Blog was lost and Mark was diminished and moved to Minneapolis. But still the Blog waits, for those who would find it and aspire to wield its power and become Lord of the Blog.

But there is only one. And he is in Minneapolis. Fellow bloggers, beware.

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Did You Hear the News? It’s Friday!

Attention, Attention! Today is Friday. Everyone, put on your Friday hats and Friday cloaks before heading out into the pre-weekend world, the world that’s on the cusp of relaxation for most industries (with the noted exception of the service industry except for in some locations i.e. business districts).

My Friday hat is in the shape of a duck, which reminds me of an old colleague’s haircut. What does your Friday hat look like? What does your Mom’s Friday hat look like? Have you considered wearing it? My mom won’t let me wear her Friday hat. She says it makes my skin tone worse.

It doesn’t matter what you spilled on your shirts during the week and how many loads of laundry you did or need to do or whether or not you’re certain your life is heading in the right direction because soon enough you’ll be able to forget all and immerse yourself in a world called weekend.

We don’t remember what it was like last Monday. We only remember the weekend’s promise of the perfect balance of productivity and relaxation. On the weekend, if you eat a salad and then a donut within a couple of hours, they cancel each other out.

In Weekend World, people sing and dance and make merry because Monday’s never coming OH GOD IT’S HERE.

Well that was fun I guess.

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The Elastic Minutes

Get it? It’s a toast clock.

Now, here I am, in a place I didn’t expect to be for longer than a couple of minutes. It doesn’t matter where it is. It could be the bathroom, it could be the doctor’s office, it could be a shark tank or a church or on the side of the road waiting for the N to come so I can get on and sleep and mouth breathe on everyone around me.

Sometimes I think most of my life is spent in these places, when dinner goes too long or a class didn’t get out on time, because it’s these times that stretch the most. These are the elastic times, when you could swear on a number of things, both holy and unholy, that more than a minute has gone by but alas the damned clock speaks to a different reality and the fish in the aquarium are pecking feverishly at the plants just like they were a minute ago.

These are the extra minutes that no one wants. Everyone wishes for more time, but what if somehow the request was granted but instead we spent another sixty minutes waiting in lines in a 25-hour day?

Maybe what we do with these nothing minutes is important, because if we ever got past feeling like they were unbearable we could write a song, or think of a way to make a loved one feel appreciated, or give Suzie a call. Who’s Suzie anyways? These are all things we could find out.

If you really want to go for it, talk to a stranger in line and see how uncomfortable that makes you and everyone. At the very least, you’ll have a great story. At the most, you’ll have an interesting conversation and maybe a couple extra bucks in your pocket if you decide to go for coffee afterwards and the other person pays for some reason. This is all theoretical, so don’t blame me if this doesn’t happen and all you get are scared stares.

I’m just the messenger. Waiting time is time, so we should use it. I should use it. And especially Suzie should use it.

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Drinking a Cup of Ralph

Don’t be fooled. It’s not as good as it looks.

True or False: instant coffee is disgusting. It is as bitter as the Devil’s eyebrows and as foul as his horn trimmings. It is more profane than an episode of Jersey Shore and more loathsome than a can of Tecate full of slugs.

If you answered true, I’m sorry, but you are incorrect. If you answered false. I’m sorry, but you are also incorrect. This was a trick question designed to make everyone fail.

The correct answer is that some instant coffee is indeed a rank substance unfit for consumption by all things that breathe. Some, however, is just fine. For example, Nescafe, Nescafe Gold, and Starbucks Via are all brands of instant coffee that I would gladly give to my friends, family, and sundry.

I am an instant coffee believer. Some people who term themselves true coffee lovers may scoff at the fact I dare drink the black dregs of coffee crystal solution as they believe it all to be equally unbearable, but this is simply not the case. I’ve learned this lesson the hard way, by drinking a brand called Ralphs Instant Crystals Coffee.

It was purchased in what was later recognized as severe error by a person who thought, at the time, that all instant coffee would taste the same and that if instant must be purchased, it mattered not which brand he chose.

Despite its low sticker price, Ralphs Instant Crystals Coffee has extracted a terrible toll on my life as I’ve drank it day after day, waiting for it to run out like the freaking lamp from the Hanukah story because then new coffee will finally be purchased with rejoicing.

Its very name, “Ralphs Instant Crystals Coffee,” does not inspire any level of confidence, nor do the crystals themselves as they glitter in the jar like a pile of dead ants. And upon the first sip of an overly strong cup, one will immediately notice the desire to upchuck, or Ralph, welling up at the back of the throat. At that moment, the unfortunate coffee drinker will realize they are, in fact, drinking a cup of Ralph.

Yes indeed. For the past month I have been drinking cups of Ralph every morning, knowing that even Folgers would be sweet relief. The day of reprieve cannot come soon enough.

One day I will drink Ralph no longer. One day. But until then, the best part of waking up is finishing the Ralph in my cup.

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