Tag Archives: humor

Nov 12 2012
3 Comments
San Francisco, Two minute read

Sacrificing to the Great Tree and Other Holiday Fun

I went shopping yesterday and apparently it’s Christmasandotherholidaystime. Unbeknownst to me, and wholly without my permission, Union Square was decked with an ice skating rink and a giant Christmas tree for retail shoppers to worship as they complete their obligatory paycheck sacrifices.

I should have guessed this season was coming from the dropping temperatures, the massive “Christmas cookie edition” of various magazines at the craft store that I went to a couple of weeks ago, and the fact my skin is feeling more and more reptilian. Still, it seems a little soon to start pumping out the holiday jams and tinsel-fying everything.

This is that special time of year when retail workers begin to go insane from overexposure to Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas” and too many renditions of “Jingle Bells.” It’s that time of year that means everything from “hope” to “believe” to “eat” to “shame eat,” messages that will eventually lead to “start over” “begin again,” and “diet.”  It’s the time of year when it’s impossible to buy clothing that doesn’t look like a Christmas ornament, clothes that will be unwearable outside of these 6 weeks in the future because their sparkles and colors of good joy and cheer are dead-giveaways for holiday merch.

Yes indeed, it’s holiday time. It’s time to spread the laughter, the belief, and the inspiration, whatever those words mean. According to Banana Republic, they mean it’s time to get new dresses that are covered in gold sequins.  But I believe they mean it’s time to be real and break down the barriers between our fellow humans.

I’m going to start by hugging everyone at work today, full of the holiday spirit. And I showered, so I’ll smell nice. Maybe I’ll put a mini-tree on my desk and invite others to place small but valuable gifts underneath it for yours truly. Anything is possible, because this is the time of year when miracles happen. I’m hoping for a bed miracle, in which I find a bed on the side of the street in perfect condition.

I will make my sacrifices to the great tree and see what happens. I advise you to do the same.

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Nov 09 2012
16 Comments
Humorous, San Francisco, Travelling

Crucial Information for the Midwesterner’s First Time in San Francisco

First of all, I would like to congratulate you on making it out to this heathen city. I’m sure you’ll enjoy your time and have some interesting stories to avoid telling your parents when you get back.

As you may have noticed already, San Francisco is not like the place you are from. Not only is it anywhere from 8-20x more expensive, but there is a very palpable cultural difference that reflects itself in everything from who people cheer for on Election Night to the kinds of music you won’t find on the radio station to the way people conceive the vast expanse in the middle of the United States.

Let’s begin with a few tidbits of information that will help make your time here as pleasant as possible.

1. Geography: Many San Franciscans have forgotten about the Midwest entirely, and are only reminded of it every four years when they watch most of it turn an accusing color of red and they boo. This is not a positive connotation. The red, for them, will stand for anger, ignorance, and obesity, three words that start with vowels. Some may even express fear at visiting the place you call home, as if the moment they stepped there, they would be accosted and forced to listen to country music  and believe in Jesus. Do not tell them that this is true. Avoid getting defensive, and merely laugh along with their bigotry. Then, make a note and send it back to your prayer circle to get something moving on the cosmic justice front.

2. Coffee: Be very careful of where you purchase your brown brew. Learn to identify the words “hand-crafted” or “hand-made” with “expensive” and “slow” and sometimes “too strong.” Be prepared to pay up to $4 for a brewed coffee that would have cost $1 at McDonald’s. If you’re not a true aficionado, it won’t be worth the money or the wait. Don’t feel bad about it. Just embrace who you really are and look up the nearest fast food restaurant on your smartphone. Do not ask a stranger.

3. Naked Flesh: Many/Most San Franciscans are horrifyingly more sex-positive than the average Midwesterner and lack a natural and healthy body shame. To make the matter more interesting, public nudity is lawful in some areas of the city (maybe all of it). It is possible, depending on your luck and the weather, that you will see nude flesh of varying quality as you mind your own business in the city, especially in an area known as the Castro. If this happens, don’t stare, don’t gawk, and don’t take pictures, weirdo. Just walk on by. If you’re with someone else who doesn’t see the nude flesh, do them a favor and don’t tell them about it. Let them live in peaceful oblivion and innocence.

4. Dogs:  San Franciscans love their animals. In many cases, the animals are their children and they are treated as such. You will see an astounding array of fresh pet food stores, dogs wearing various clothing items and political buttons, and  people taking their dogs out to eat with them at restaurants that encourage this sort of behavior. You can use this to your advantage by making it a conversation starter, “Do you have a pet? How much money do you spend on it, per year? Is that more than the money you give to charity?” And so on.

I hope this was a good introduction to the subject of Midwesterner travel in San Francisco. The topic may or may not be continued. It’s not really any of your business.

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Nov 08 2012
16 Comments
Humorous, Two minute read, Writing

Life Would Be Easier if I Didn’t Blog

the blogging muscle is close to the trapezius muscle.

Boom. I’m sitting on a borrowed airbed in a small room with one window that faces into a courtyard full of construction and home-maintenance equipment and old shoes.  My fingernails are getting too long and doing that thing where they click on the keyboard and it’s driving me insane but the cure is far far away in the bathroom.

It’s early-ish in the morning, and I’m in the part of the day I designated as “blogging time.” My hair is clean, my face is puffy, and I’m sitting at my computer still coated in Cairo-dust. And as I go to blog a blog, I find I’m gosh-darn-it stumped and have no idea what to write about. Should  I talk about my new job in a way that doesn’t reveal the fact I’m only doing it for the granola bars? Should I discuss cats? Should I try to write a fiction post about popsicle sticks and fish scales?

I was having a real time with it, and then the thought occurred to me, “This would just be easier if I didn’t blog.” Ding! Ding Ding! We have a winner! Balloons fell from the ceiling, a man with a kazoo and a clown’s nose started parading around my room and I had to ask him to leave, the band struck up a number, and I knew I had my blog topic.

If I didn’t blog, I would never have to worry about what to write on. I would never feel guilty for not blogging or delayed responses to comments, or have to figure out how to describe my blog to other people. Me: “It’s a humor blog….I write about things I think are funny….” Other person: (eyeroll) (swift kick in my gut). My life would be marginally easier and I would have more free time to fill with poking other people on facebook.

But, and here’s the cheesy awful part. I lurve blogging, and the less I do, the harder it is. The times I feel most on top of my blogging game are when I’m crushing it with 5 posts a week and can feel those blogging engines primed and ready to shoot off into unexplored areas of the human intestine. It’s when I lower this standard that blogging becomes more difficult and it’s easier to imagine my life without Snotting Black.

Blogging is a muscle. Writing is a muscle. The heart is a muscle. The airbed I’m sitting on is a muscle. And if we don’t use these muscles, they die and go to the place where atrophied muscles soak in hot tubs all day and get pruny while talking about their former glory. It’s disgusting and I don’t want my blogging muscle to go there, yet.

I wrote this meta-post so it could get some exercise. Now it’s your turn to exercise the muscle of something you love to do.

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Nov 05 2012
4 Comments
Modern Life, Serious-ish, Three minute read, Writing

The Mask’s Inside, Dummy

Amsterdam.

Sitting at a café on Geary and 6th Avenue. I’m in San Francisco, dummy. This is the part of San Francisco that tourists don’t come to because Geary looks like a highway and is lined by things like lamp shops, which are uninteresting to the visitor but for people who like to read a little bit in bed before they go to sleep and also sleep nightly in the city, lamps are of a certain kind of appeal and necessity and knowing where to purchase one is even more crucial.

Last Saturday, I want to a masquerade-themed party in Oakland, at my friend’s house where there are trees outside every window and spiders weave webs wherever they can, and there are tubs of things like spelt flour in the basement. Freaking hippies. I made a mask by smearing glue all over a pre-made plastic mask from Michael’s and sprinkling sequins on it. It took about 5 minutes. My primary goal in every craft project is to finish it. I’m not great at crafts.

The party was fun, but it was surprisingly hard to talk to people wearing masks, not being able to see their faces or mouths moving, to calculate if they’re joking or if I went over the line with my last comment. We depend so much on everything besides words, so don’t you forget it. That’s why I thought I wouldn’t get the job at an interview because I was blinking too much. Did I seem nervous? Unprepared? Bizarre and/or inhuman, like the algorithm that controls my blinking was out of whack?

And then at the party I was talking to a girl/woman/lady/chick/gal about why I’d left the field of International Relations. She’s in law school, trying to decide between international law and intellectual property, and she wants to have a career she finds meaningful and help people. And she asked me “what’s Oklahoma like” and I droned on about obesity and chain restaurants before she got bored and wanted to take pictures with everyone else. I was bored of the subject too so I was glad to leave it but I was left with a taste in my mouth like doubt. She seemed so smart and passionate and should I go to law school and do something sexy like maritime law and defend the lives of refugees? Is that even what they do?

She was dressed as what she imagined to be a woodland elf and I got the impression she wanted to be that free-spirited-pixie girl, the one who is brilliant but also fun and spontaneous. Did she even know what it takes to be a woodland elf? Would a woodland elf go to law school and try to figure out what kind of legislation helps the most people? Would a woodland elf even care? Depending on how nerdy you want to go, it’s possible to theorize that because elves are immortal, they would view the suffering of others as so temporary as to not be worth their time. So there.

And my facebook status hasn’t been getting as much traction as I would have liked.

Is it about the journey? Is it possible to get to what you think you want to be, even when it’s proven that most people know nothing until they’ve turned 50 and it seems like it’s too late?

Join me over the next decades and we’ll find out!

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Nov 02 2012
15 Comments
Humorous, Modern Life

Television Shows I’ve Regretted Watching with My Parents

This proved too much for mother.

My parents, who read this blog regularly, are wonderful. They truly are. They only desire to see me wearing shoes without holes in them and have a coat during the winter. On that note, parents, please send both of those things to area code 94122.

They are, for the most part, wonderful people who raised me on the firm belief that television was a treat, and that in general, the shows the children watched should keep sex and witchcraft to a minimum. In my many years of television watching, I’ve undergone some awkward moments with the parents that came from a surfeit of one or both of these elements.

1. The Bachelor/Bachelorette (with Dad): Something about women in tight gold dresses slinking around one bare chested man in a quest for true love just doesn’t scream good father-daughter watching material. On the other hand, 20 men puffing their chests out and wrestling each other to win the heart of a woman is probably more terrifying for a father.

2. Lady Gaga on American Idol (with Mom): Let’s just say she’s more comfortable with clothing made out of textiles.

3. Charmed: I can’t remember what put this on the banned list, but I bet someone was making out with a warlock and it was just too weird for my parents to imagine any of it could be wholesome. “Change it,” Dad said.

4. Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Maybe the talking cat pissed off my parents? Harvey and Sabrina held hands too closely? I’m really not sure about this one, but I do know it was a show we weren’t technically allowed to watch.

5. The Office: This is a family friendly, funny show, right? WRONG. You’d never notice it unless Mom is sitting right there, but every other sentence is about sex, which is evil.

6. Family Guy: See above.

7. Late Night with Conan O’Brien: Lucky for me, my parents went to bed before 12:30 and never got to see how soul-rotting this show was. All I can say is that if they’d ever witnessed the masturbating bear, they would have thought twice about letting me stay up so late by myself.

8. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Sometimes Jay was just a little too racy to watch with the whole family. Also, he was/is depressingly unfunny.

9. The Office, British Version: One episode featured a dildo. Need I say more?

10. Dancing with the Stars: The dancing is beautiful and the grinding can be horrific.

Safe bets:

Extreme Makeover Home Edition

The 5 o’clock news

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