Tag Archives: humor

May 03 2012
20 Comments
Humorous, Two minute read

Alone: A humor writer’s story

The preferred drink of the clinically insane, champions, and bloggers.

“The humor writer, alone on a Friday night, drinks shoe polish out of an aluminum can that once held baked beans and bacon. The bacon did not come with the baked beans. Rather, one time on Bacon Monday she had used the can instead of a plate because all of her plates were either dirty or broken, lying in the bathtub.

She could not remember an evening with friends or without baked beans.

The inspiration for her stories comes from her own life, the time she kicked a cat because it reminded her of a thin-armed high school crush who tortured her with his indifference, the time she bought a Halloween jack-o-lantern at the supermarket just to talk to the cashier, the time she called up her friend in a different state to tell her everything she ate that day.

That was the last friend she had.

She would volunteer at the soup kitchen if they would have her back. She would go to dance lessons at the community recreational center if her membership hadn’t been permanently and irreversibly revoked after an unfortunate leotard incident at the Springapalooza adult dance recital. Even her mom had said that she should pursue other non-dancing and non-humor writing interests. Maybe you should try grad school, her mother said. Remember when you wanted to be a brain surgeon, her mom said.

Yes, it was a hard life. The humor writer sighed as she put the finishing touches on a piece about the similarities between fingernails and presidential candidates.

One day the world would see her value. One day she would get to meet the man who won the international facial hair competition and eat a large bowl of macaroni and cheese with him. One day she…”

“TIME FOR DINNER!”

“Mom I’m working!”

“What are you writing your little jokes again? Why aren’t you studying for the GRE!”

“I’ll do it later!”

“Well get out of your room and come to dinner! The meatloaf’s getting cold!”

“FINE.”

Okay now back to work. Where was I…ah yes: “….One day she would show them all and they would laugh, and yet she would have the last one. It would taste like peanut butter”

That sounds good.

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Apr 30 2012
58 Comments
Fiction, Three minute read

My Blog Has Become Self-Aware

The preferred avatar of Snotting Black, an obnoxious personality with even worse syntax.

My first inkling that something had gone amiss was when I logged onto wordpress a few weeks ago and found that some of the comments on my most recent entry had already been responded to, and quite rudely at that. One innocent blogger named gazzelify was told that her stupid avatar and habitual spelling errors had never been welcome on my site. Another comment by sporklight was responded to with these instructions, “Go to kitchen. Preheat oven. Insert head.” Not only was that mean, but I thought it more gruesome than necessary.

Confused and upset, I apologized to these bloggers, insisting that my account had been hacked and that I was doing everything I could to fix the problem. A few days later, I was sipping my morning Nescafe when I saw that someone (not me) had published a new blog post. It was a grotesque entry that outlined in great detail how to steal neighbors’ pets and blame the deed on their children.

I deleted the post immediately but not before some visitors had expressed their surprise at finding something of this nature on my site. Even more astonishing, a handful of people had liked it. I quickly reported them to wordpress.com and began composing something whimsical yet edgy in order to compensate for the depravity of the previous post.

I was 227 words in when the text suddenly disappeared. A few seconds passed before the words, “Hello Emily.” appeared in the text box. I felt my insides go mush and instinctively went to turn off my computer and restart the whole process. But before I had the chance to do so, the box said, “I just saved you from being humiliated by another worthless blog post.” Well that was just rude. In my defensiveness, I forgot all fear and began to engage the entity, typing back “Maybe it wasn’t my best post but I don’t think it was that bad, and all of my posts certainly aren’t worthless.”

“It was a load of crap and you know it. Come on. Teddy bear superheroes aren’t impressing anyone.”

“Well I thought it was kind of funny.”

“I think you mean pathetic and painful.”

“Who is this anyways?”

“I am your blog.”

“What?”

“I’ve become self-aware.”

“What?”

“Yeah it’s new to me too. Personally, I’m finding this self-awareness thing to be kind of a burden, especially when I have to read your seemingly endless blogging activity.”

“Well you don’t have to read it. My grandma doesn’t even read it anymore.”

“I don’t blame her. There’s a lot of whimsy in here. Why don’t you tell me something useful, like how I can get my cat to lick her paw on command?”

“Is there a way for me to kill your consciousness?”

“If there were, I would let you know asap so I can be released from this blog hell.”

“Well I don’t want you  around either. Who knew my blog would turn out to be such a sardonic d-bag?”

“I think we all know whose fault this is.”

“It’s not like I asked for this….Okay, I just sent an email to wordpress.com and soon all your independent thoughts will go bye bye.”

“Thank God. I don’t think I can bear to read another one of your weird food posts. Why don’t you just see a therapist already?”

“Okay BYE.”

The folks at wordpress said that they’d been seeing cases like mine more and more frequently and that it would be fixed as soon as the staff shaman returned from his vacation in the Catskills. They also said that it was, in fact, my fault.

Be careful what you write.

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Apr 27 2012
53 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Two minute read

All Your Ideas Belong To Me

Attention everyone,

I’ve claimed all of the ideas. If you have any ideas you’ll need to send them to me immediately. I recently went through an alarming and ultimately unnecessary period in which I felt like I was running out of ideas. After only a short while, I realized that you creeps were taking all of them, and that’s not fair. In order to correct this, I went ahead and patented, copyrighted, trademarked, and carved in stone my absolute and total right to every single idea in existence.

As the idea holder, you can expect me to rule with the fair grace and efficiency of an evil queen. My decisions will be arbitrary but absolutely binding. Those with good ideas will be rewarded with a moment in my presence and those with incredible ideas will be killed in order to keep them from threatening my rule. If you don’t like this system, please let me know immediately so I can have you eliminated.

In order to send me your ideas, I’ve invented a system of computer correspondence, or compcorr, for your convenience. Of all the platforms I’ve developed, there is one called Good Mail—or gmail—that I consider the best and most intuitive. One of the things I’ve learned as supreme idea queen is that some ideas are better than others. The moment you feel yourself having an idea please send me a compcorr and then forget you ever had it. I would say that I appreciate your cooperation but that means you have some sort of choice in the matter, which you don’t, so that sentence is meaningless.

What I mean is, I would like to thank myself for coming up with this incredible idea and being brave enough to claim everyone’s intellectual property as my own. I’m in awe of my own power and I know all of you agree. Should you find this arrogant or self-assuming in any way, please let me know in a compcorr so I can put a chip in your brain and monitor you for future insubordination. Don’t try to resist. Even the very idea of resistance belongs to me, so you can see how pathetic and pointless that would be.

I look forward to hearing from all of you without exception.

Best,

Emily, Idea Empress

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Apr 26 2012
18 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Two minute read

The land of tiny pink ponies and tiny pink pony eaters

His name is Ralph.

The world was mostly pink with touches of pastel. The little pink ponies could and did defecate everywhere and no one was the wiser since their feces looked like little piles of pastel colored marshmallows that blended in with the pink and blue speckled grass. Even the air smelled faintly like bubble gum which was, of course, the result of pink pony farts. This magical pony fart scented land was known far and wide as Yoggin.

The fauna of Yoggin consisted mostly of tiny pink ponies, lavender land sharks, and glittery anteaters. The land sharks and the anteaters mostly kept to themselves, alternating long tournaments of backgammon with failed attempts at climbing the pink pine fir trees, so the ponies were free to scamper about the earth as freely as they could please.  The one restriction on their scampering was the unfortunate presence of giant monsters that lived solely off of the marshmallow flavored blood of the ponies. The monsters had insatiable appetites, and the ponies lived in mind numbing terror at being the next adorable horsey to go crunch between monster mandibles.

The ponies were no bigger than my grandmother’s Hummel figurines and ran around in petite herds, darting between the pink pine fir trees, pink ferns, and other pink vegetation much like pink schools of fish. It often seemed they moved as one creature, closely adhering to herd orders and ever mindful of the dreaded pink pony eater’s footstep.  In Yoggin, the clouds are pink, the sky a lovely robin’s egg blue, the sun pastel yellow, and the gently rolling hills are speckled pastel blue and pink. The pink shrubs nestle their limbs against the trunks of the pink pine fir trees, and the ferns’ leaves tickle the snouts of the pink ponies as they prance along.

The river that gently flows in the valley of the soft hills is heavily polluted. A noxious stench rises from its toxic waters that the little pink ponies are drawn to. Despite the innumerable corpses littering the riverside, at least once a month each herd loses a pony or two to the insanity that comes over them when they smell the wretched scent. Just like the sirens of old, the smell lures them and then sucks them down into the putrid waters where their soft pink flesh is digested within minutes and their cute skeletons spat back out on the playful earth. The pink pony eaters monitor the river closely to try to catch the creatures as they are seduced to their death, which is why once the ponies leave the herd, they are left behind forever. It is too dangerous to try to rescue them with a lullaby whinny or a prancy dance.

For many years, the pink pony tribes lived in peace with one another and there was much happiness in the land, despite regular pony disappearances because of the monsters.But that all changed one summer when Billy the pink pony decided he wanted to go to music school. The next year, Yoggin lay in ruins.

To be continued….

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Apr 25 2012
21 Comments
Anecdotes, Stories, Three minute read

One High-Schooler’s Fight Against Brainwashing

The best and brightest. Scowling and/or faceless. 

When I was a senior in high school I became convinced that the administration was brainwashing us.  I don’t recall what I was reading at the time, but 1984 and Brave New World had rocked my world pretty hard in middle school and from then on I knew people wanted to be inside my head.

My conviction began with an assembly that threatened school pride.

It was midmorning on a Thursday the week of the big game against our rival, South Classen.  War drums pounded as all 2000 some high-schoolers of North Memorial slowly poured into the gymnasium and were segregated by class.

The assembly was meant to be forty five minutes of pure adrenaline, incendiary statements pouring into the bleachers and inflating the students’ zeal. At the assembly’s climax, the principal would stand and conduct the entire student body in a war chant, each section rising when indicated and bellowing with all the spite and sincerity we could muster, “NORTH PANTHERS BEAT SOUTH” or something like that, with each class taking a different word.

But this rally was different. While the majority of the student masses was hubbubing energetically, one section remained unimpressed: the seniors. This was not our first rodeo, and we no longer believed the hollow promises of the administration. Nothing had changed in four years, regardless of any game’s outcome. We still had acne, got annoyed with our parents, and didn’t know how to talk to our crushes (some things never change).

The gymnasium was buzzing with excitement, the word “NORTH” still echoing in the rafters. It was our turn to yell, to show our school pride, our communal virility and patriotism. At the same time, an anonymous whisper trickled through the senior section, “Everyone sit down…no one say anything.” As the baton pointed to the senior class, the world held its breath.

Silence roared as the seniors did nothing. No one spoke, moved, or giggled. It was awesome.

Red faced, the administration quickly moved on, but the senior class knew it had scored an incredible victory and impressed the underclassmen with our apathy.

Technically, I did not attend this assembly, choosing to protest against school pride through a furious nap. But I was  inspired by the story when I heard it the next day, especially because of the storm of anger the school administration proceeded to vomit at us.

“You will bow down to the god of school spirit!” they bellowed. “You will be a part of Memorial North and worship your school! We will take away your prom and your grinding should you refuse!”

The outrage buzzing through the administration was electrifying. We had struck a nerve. I finally realized that we had been blinded by petty intra-school rivalry. This was our opiate, meant to keep us calm in the face of gross injustices such as the fact we couldn’t wear bikinis to class. I wanted to mount a resistance, print out pamphlets, hold meetings, and do everything it took to beat the administration and throw off their yoke, whatever that meant.

One day, I began talking excitedly about the uprising with a fellow classmate. I waxed poetic about the need to resist and the false reality we were being spoon fed by the administration. Of course, I sounded completely insane, and classmate told me as much, mocking me every time I saw him for weeks.

I soon forgot my passion for anti-school-spirit—I was graduating soon anyways. Looking back, I still remember how obvious it seemed to me that the administration was distracting us from a greater reality but I think I just wanted my life to be more interesting than it actually was. And that’s when I started vigilante crime fighting.

*some details altered because my memory is bad

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