Tag Archives: humor

Jul 04 2014
3 Comments
Travelling, Wassup USA?

13 Things You Can Count on While Roadtripping from Chicago to Nashville

imageLife is confusing. Sometimes you don’t know where to go or what decisions to make. Very frequently, it’s impossible to foresee the outcome of certain paths or situations, and you live in the fog of the unknown. Thank goodness there are some things in life that we can count on, like these things that are guaranteed to happen on the drive from Chicago to Nashville.

1. There will always be a Cracker Barrel every 10 miles. If you’re ever uncertain of where you should exit to get to the nearest one, go ahead and exit. There’s probably one close to you.

2. In these Cracker Barrels, there will absolutely be women named Jean and Barb wearing jeans that go above their belly button with hair dos that the coasts haven’t seen for at least a century, if ever.

3. You will stop and eat at a Cracker Barrel, be really excited about going to an old favorite place, and then realize that it’s actually a little overpriced and not that good. Also, you’ll eat too much.

4. You will enter gas station shopping centers that are complete with clothing options, 24 hour dining, a casino, an arcade and convenience food options. The only thing missing is an apartment complex to attach to it.

5. You will see billboards that say things like “Hell is Real,” or “One Day You Will Meet Thy God,” which will make you wonder who is paying for this and shouldn’t they change their marketing strategy just a little bit. I mean, if I walked up to someone who didn’t believe in Santa Claus and told her that Santa was going to give her 1 million dollars if she filled out an online form, do you think she’d do it? Or would she call the police because there was a stranger hiding in her closet. Exactly.

6. Cars will also start to get preachy, with decals and entire paintings displaying ardor for the Christ.

7. Roadside attractions, like the World’s Most Awesome Flea Market and Dinosaur land, will tempt you from the side of the road. You’ll always wonder what would have happened if you’d taken the leap and exited.

8. You will eat too many snacks in the car and feel a little guilty about it but not really. I mean, what else are you going to do.

9. You will take tons of photos and maybe even videos on the trip that are ultimately unusable.

10. At some point, you will either get lost or notice you have a huge zit on your face.

11. You will keep on waiting for the countryside to change but nothing really happens except Tennessee is a little bit hillier than Indiana.

12. You will realize that you actually didn’t have a very good idea of where Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, and Illinois were in relation to one another.

13. You will decide you need to pack up and move to the countryside where life moves a little bit slower

14. You will almost instantly decide that that’s a terrible idea and you’d rather eat your own cardigan than move to the countryside.

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Jul 02 2014
4 Comments
Travelling, Wassup USA?

What you don’t know about this Chicago suburb will in no way surprise you.

You might be familiar with the saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” A lesser known version of that phrase is, “When life throws you a Chicago hurricane that strands you in Evanston, IL for an evening, you might as well stay there the next day and judge / be jealous of everyone.” This is the version that happened to me.

Evanston is a Chicago suburb exclusively populated by people without any problems, beautiful churches made from white stone, homes that look like English cottages, and a creepy amount of trees. With a population of 74,000 (as of 2010), and a leaf count of just over 3 billion, Evanston is the home of Northwestern University (also the city’s largest employer), and the Grosse Point Lighthouse (on the National Register of Historic Places.)

I had the whole day to prowl around and figure out this wild suburb. You will not be surprised by what I found.

Here’s the low down on Evanston and its people:

dog-walking

People walk their dogs.

People leave their stuff outside when they go inside Brothers K Coffee to get something to drink.

They leave their stuff unattended.

They trust strangers. Even me.

They trust strangers.

They play badminton with their kids on the front lawn. (See lower left corner. Disregard my face. It's hard to take pictures behind you with an iPad.)

They play badminton with their kids on the front lawn. (See lower left corner. Disregard my face. It’s hard to take pictures behind you with an iPad while you’re trying to not look like a creep.)

They still use the word ethnic. I didn't know that was allowed.

They still use the word ethnic.

They have breakfast with their high school aged son and some of his engineering friends who are in a summer camp at Northwestern while a woman (me) sitting alone behind them eavesdrops on their entire conversation.

They have breakfast with their high school aged son and some of his engineering friends who are in a summer camp at Northwestern while a woman (me) sitting alone behind them eavesdrops on their entire conversation.

They enjoy a good font, especially this one that is popular with Northwestern University and Ye Olde English Pubs.

They enjoy a good font, especially this one that is popular with Northwestern University and Ye Olde English Pubs.

Even the street rodents are adorable and picturesque.

Even the street rodents are adorable and picturesque. (Those are rabbits.)

They have housing to spare.

They have housing to spare.

Which is shocking considering the world-famous board game night at the wine shoppe just around the corner.

Which is shocking considering the free board game night at the wine shoppe just around the corner.

All in all, Evanston seems like a pretty swell place to be. Especially if you like ethnic festivals, trusting strangers, and rabbit meat.

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May 05 2014
5 Comments
Most Bizarre Posts

RIP: Fake Epitaphs for a Real Life

epitaph_of_an_improviser

You don’t often get to say “I drew my own grave today.”

R.I.P. Emily Drevets, 1989-2280

What will they say about you when you pass on? Who’s opinion matters the most to you? Do you think you’re on your way to being remembered the way you want to be remembered?

I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, but I came up with some true and hopefully true epitaphs that might adorn my tombstone, even though I’d like to be cremated and have my ashes spread in a vegetable garden. Making epitaphs is more fun than suggesting ash-scattering locations.

She always answered her email.
A consummate professional and friend.
Her emails were easy to read and contained very few typos.
She never dumped her personal life onto her Facebook friends.
She never gave money to the homeless. She just didn’t know what was the right thing to do.
She tried to get what she wanted out of life. She was pretty sure she knew what that was.
She sought out the unknown unknowns.
She called her mom every week.
A frugal dresser.
She wasn’t too picky about the food she ate.
She never spent too much on cosmetics.
Paid little attention to things that bored her.
Doodler.
She never knew quite what to do with Twitter.
Oft more afraid than others knew, she sometimes struggled with asking for help.
She wanted to remember everything, but only remembered some things.
She wanted to do everything, but only did some things.
She enjoyed sharing mundane details of her life with other people.
Mighty consumer of oatmeal and peanut butter.
She never understood fashion.
She had trouble understanding why others might feel differently than her about some things.
She told multiple people she wanted to be a tree but never became one.
She didn’t know what the criteria were for regretting something.
She really liked the sound her iPad made when it closed.
She finally walked on foot through the mountains.
She found love in the end.
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Apr 28 2014
5 Comments
Food

We Worship Thee Oh Coffee, Sustainer of Life

A coffee cup I drew

A coffee cup I drew

Our Lord and Savior coffee hath provided us with much. Whether it is harsh and bitter, too weak, or absent, it rules our life with a brown fist. We don’t control coffee or where it comes from or where it goes. We accept whatever is in the pot in the kitchen and we drink it down dutifully, faithfully, knowing it will give us magic that will make us successful.

It hath given us many things. Oh coffee, how can I count your blessings. Praise thee, oh coffee, sustainer of my office and personal life.

You are a reason to get up in the morning and sweet relief from my office desk prison. You are proof that I am a grown-up, suffering in rages the caffeine-induced angst that driveth me down the fair I-35 in Edmond, OK.

You bequeath-eth me with the power to leave any conversation, providing I seek only you, and you offereth me omnipotence in claiming incompetence for work done poorly as I cry upon your name, saying, “Wherefore were there only coffee in my blood, this email wouldst not have had the typo.”

You are an eternal and everlasting measure of all things, a way to cast judgement upon others through their tastes in your many shades of brown. Should I speak to one who loveth only Peets, I know they haveth not any taste buds. Were I to happen upon one who claimeth Starbucks to be the fairest in all the land, I knoweth then they are capitalists with a bucket of oil for a heart. And should they only partake of Philz, I know them to be of the wisest and most discerning of all your admirers.

Contained within you is the key to my self-realization and my self-destruction, oh addiction of my heart. How many pictures of you have been posted to Instagram! How many statuses updated with your acidic yet endearing flavors! How many people have met and fallen in love over your warm cup, their hearts quickening as they drink down your everlasting spirit!

You are perfect with milk, a calcium chew, and the darkest of chocolates. Whiskey and biscuits are lucky to call you their friend. Were you to be a bath water alternative, that would be weird but not all together disdained.

In the spring I drink of thee. In the summer, I dance in your libations. The autumn calleth me nearer to you, and in the winter, my breath the very clouds of a steamy train, you fill me with your hope.

Oh coffee, oh you berry (delicious drink), oh you natural laxative, you fuelant of revolutionaries and capitalists, of artists and tyrants, you brew not recommended for infants lest their hair curl, oh coffee you are my sustainer and my drink of choice always and always.

You have given us much, and much you have taken away. Your ways are just and your law is a higher law. Though I don’t understand your taste or price, I have faith. I believe that you are perfect and that it is I that must change.  To you, o coffee, be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

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Apr 22 2014
4 Comments
Humorous

Why the Office is a Teeming Cesspool of Miracles

BrightTALK hqAre you familiar with the term the built environment? It’s not the mountains or the ocean or the forest or a rocky outcropping. It’s the places that humans have built for themselves to spend tons of time inside. An office, for example.

An office is a teeming cesspool of people operating according to three things: their innate animal nature, the needs of the business, and their levels of coffee intake. The office, as a human creation, is kind of disgusting and kind of a miracle. On the one hand, you’re stuck in the same room or building as a group of essentially random people.

These people may or not make you laugh or care about you. Not only that, there are millions of other beings out there in the world that you could be interacting with but instead you’re stuck with the bozos that HR hired.

On the other hand, it’s miraculous. No where else in modern life are we able to interact with the same group of people so continuously and together-ly. In Western culture, the extended family has pretty much broken down. Both parents work and are 50% divorced, and the rest of the family is dispersed. In many ways and due to sheer time spent together, the office has become a family replacement. And as depressing as that is, after a while you start to notice things like hey, Aaron is attractive and wow, Sunita really loves nuts. But mostly you notice that everyone is a freak in their own special way. I mean this only in a positive way.

Everyone’s a freak with incredibly distinct gaits and styles of talking and weird food habits. Even a complete lack of personality is awesome, because cool! They have the personality of a cabinet. That’s so….interesting. How did they lose their ability to have a point of view or add anything useful to a conversation?

It’s fascinating! And so you might walk into an office (or any other built environment) on your first day thinking, “wow, everyone here is normal.” But by month 6, you realize that not only is everyone incredibly normal, but they’re also wildly bizarre beyond your imagining and you’re part of it too.

You’re all freaks and awesome together and you get over it and work with your pseudo family, bound together by a non-human entity known as the business. The office is also an actual cesspool in that you share everyone’s germs and weird anger outbursts and acts of kindness until you or the business leaves. And that’s what an office is. It’s a built environment teeming with freak miracles. Unless you don’t like where you work, in which case everyone is an idiot except you.

P.S. If you’re in the Bay Area, you absolutely MUST check out the Femprov fest coming up April 24th – 27th because Women + Improv + Comedy = Awesome Sauce. Yours truly will be performing with True Medusa on Thursday, April 24th and you can check out the whole line up for Femprov fest here, and read more about Leela here.

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