Tag Archives: writing

Jun 14 2012
25 Comments
Humorous, Job hunting, Two minute read

“I Will Believe in My Glittery Screen.”

Compy goes with me everywhere.

Today I was using the ‘ol computer, typing away at my reinvented hamster wheel and rollerskating through the nets like tomorrow hadn’t been invented yet and I had the life span of an Old Testament patriarch.

I felt magic coursing through my veins as the web opened its doors and welcomed me with the minty breath of an over-eager date. Opportunities pushed me over and grabbed me by the shirt collar, saying, “I’m for you!” Yes, today was different.

It was not like yesterday, when the internet’s waters were grey like grandfather’s liver and my eyes grew weary as they sifted through the words like picking over dance prospects at a honkey tonk after only one drink. Nothing was exciting.

But today, zoom! Bang! Whip! Smash! Crunch! It felt like things were happening.

And then I noticed that my computer screen looked different. It was shining, no, glittering as I sped across the web’s pages. I didn’t think anything of it except for how much of an improvement it was on the dust blanket that eternally covered my monitor in Cairo. And I thought the glitter looked really pretty. It reminded me of when I liked glittery things and the solution to any artistic or decorative dilemma was to rain glitter on that mother effer.

I thought of a conversation I had with my neighbor, a member of a “charismatic” strand of Protestant Christianity, when she told me about a revival at their church. Apparently at the height of the service, some members’ faces and hands started shining with what later turned out to be 24 carat gold.

Maybe I was experiencing something similar, except for it was my computer that was blessed by the Lord and had become a sign to the believers in this household that the Lord does exist and that my computer was an instrument of holy work and had been sanctified for its efforts, that it would now live forever, slowly becoming more and more covered in these glitter specks until it turned into a Mac Wafer, a kind of computer that doesn’t yet exist.

Then I saw a speck towards the right-most edge of the screen that was slightly larger. It looked like a water droplet or something of that nature, but that was impossible, because water evaporates and I hadn’t had any on my computer that day. Oil, however, does not evaporate, and I had been using my computer dangerously close to pots and pans filled with various things sautéing.

My computer screen was not dazzling with flecks of spiritual 24 carat gold. It was cooking oil, either olive or canola, that had splattered onto the screen. My miracle was nothing more than the result of haphazard placement of electronics.

I could choose to be disappointed to think that I merely have a dirty, oily screen that’s no better than the glasses of a fry cook. Instead, I will believe in my glittery screen, will appreciate it for the fact it looks pretty, and will believe that this was still a miracle in its own way, both the fact that I still have a working computer, and the fact the screen looks better now than it ever has.

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Jun 13 2012
11 Comments
Humorous, Job hunting, Two minute read

We’re Modern Now. We Don’t Have to Sweat.

It’s functional. Don’t worry about it.

Saturday afternoon, 1:30 pm. College graduate exits bedroom and runs into father, also a college graduate, for first time of the day. Pleasantries are exchanged. Father, pleased to see the college graduate, lists the yard work he has done that day. He has trimmed the hedges, cleaned out the pool, fixed something, moved something else, and used a loud machine for about two hours. He didn’t mention the last one, but the college graduate knows because she was sitting inside and had to listen to the racket for about two hours.

He’s tired and asks the college graduate if she was planning on making lunch for everyone, a laughable prospect. She chuckles and thinks of this question later when she sees the family has cracked wheat in the pantry. Why didn’t he just make this? She wonders.

In the meantime, college graduate has also been busy. She applied for 3.5 jobs and wrote 2.5 blog posts and made herself an English muffin with peanut butter and jelly on it for lunch. Her mind is tired but she’s hasn’t left the house, hasn’t made any money, and is wearing an old pair of sweatpants and a shirt from two days ago.

She was reflecting on her outfit earlier that day and how she felt surprisingly accomplished despite the fact sweatpants are viewed as the garb of the defeated. At least, she had accomplished until she met father, who had exited the house, made money by virtue of the fact he is a salaried employee of a real company, and burned over 20x as many calories as the college graduate.

She wonders how to explain to father that despite the sweatpants and the fact she was emerging from the bedroom, she had also done work that day, work that was laying the ground for her future and paving the way for his entry into a comfortable nursing home. In the digital age, she thought, we don’t have to sweat while we work. We don’t have to do anything besides stare at a computer screen and think really hard and sometimes type/write stuff down. This is the technological era. We don’t need to go outside anymore.

But instead of saying any of this, she lets the conversation fall into silence and quickly hides the tab with the YouTube music video of “Call Me, Maybe,” the music video that the college graduate had danced to only seconds earlier, maybe, when trying to recall some moves from her hip-hop class last spring.

Maybe father will read blog post later on and want to dance to the music video as well, she thinks, and then we will both burn calories.

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Jun 11 2012
8 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Two minute read

Country Girl Refuses to Board the Dreams-Come-True-Express

All trains are a scam. Remember that, America.

Sometimes I go driving at night, after everyone’s gone to bed and it’s just me and the car and the road and the wind running next to me and in the trees. I stop at intersections and sit there with the windows open like I’m in on a big secret. People shouldn’t be out this late, especially in my home town, but here I am. It’s 3 am and I’ve been stopped at this intersection for a full minute and no one will ever know about it. It’s lame but there’s not a lot here to keep me occupied.

Last night I was at Brury and Durstwood. I stopped the car, turned the engine off, and got out, just to look at the stars a little farther away from the “city” lights. The cicadas were doing their thing in those new summer leaves and in the distance I saw the glow of Oklahoma City. It was a small glow with an inferiority complex, but a glow nonetheless.

I heard the faraway sound of a train rumbling through, carrying its chicken breasts and belt buckles or whatever trains carry nowadays. I thought about a time in middle school when I couldn’t sleep and almost started crying because a train was making a racket  and then a police siren went wee-ooo-wee-ooo and it seemed the night would never end. And then I thought about another time a few weeks ago when I almost screamed because I kept bumping into things in my room.

To my left, the sound of the train got louder. I looked around and saw one headlight, a giant shining eye coming straight for me. Guz-WHAT, I shouted and jumped back.

As I considered what it would feel like to be reborn in the shape of a gooey pancake, the train began slowing down and then came to a complete stop.  The conductor poked her head out of the cabin and yelled, to my immense confusion, “All-aboard!”

Was I actually supposed to get on this train headed to God-knows-where?

What about my car?

What about the kid I was supposed to babysit tomorrow? How would he get to Wal-Mart without me?

I asked the conductor what the h kind of a shindig this was and she said this was the Dreams-Come-True-Express and that the destination was up to me.

And I thought that was really disgusting. How dare these circus people, probably from California, come here and try to scam us poor country folks. How much did a ticket for this thing cost? Twenty, thirty dollars? As if I had that kind of money to go hang around in some feel goodery* and listen to someone tell me to dance like my dreams were chocolate hugs.

So I told her to just get on out of there. “Go on, git!” I told her and the train started chugga chugga-ing and soon I was left with just my thoughts and the insects and their thoughts.

As the train made its way towards the city lights and other dumb schmucks that would probably take this deal, I wondered what it would be like to breathe underwater. I would probably never know.

*credit to Arrested Development, one of the best television shows America has ever seen.

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Jun 07 2012
29 Comments
Humorous, Two minute read

7 Rumors About Snotting Black Debunked

Yippee. Happy Anniversary, bloggy-dearest.

This post is in honor of my blog’s one year anniversary, which I forgot to mention 2 weeks ago.

1. I started this blog 378 days ago after losing a bet to my cousin Darayla about whether or not Grandma would drop her false eyelashes in the potato salad again on Memorial Day.

FALSE. Darayla is a name I made up, and as per my inclusion in a “cult,” I do not celebrate the national holidays of this country, instead using that time to plan its overthrow and enjoy powered soup mixes. I started this blog on May 26th, 2011 after being begged by family members not to plague their inboxes with novellas about my time in Cairo like I had done the previous year when I was in Morocco. However, I soon stopped writing about factual experiences so they still had to communicate with me.

2.  This blog used to provide hard hitting political and social commentary about life in Egypt, and at one point the government even considered it a threat and tried to keep me quiet by to bribing me with a hot tub full of Nutella.

FALSE. I blogged about things like mosquitoes and a sandwich I ate once that didn’t give me food poisoning and one that did. Soon my mind left for flights of fancy and I was writing about unicorn carcasses and self-aware blogs. But it’s true that I did eat enough off and on brand Nutella to fill a hot tub.

3. I majored in International Relations and used to want to become Secretary of State and wear a pantsuit to work.

TRUE. Now I want to “be a writer” and am moving out to San Francisco to “make it big.” I’m still trying to figure out which career path was more realistic.

4. My entire family is incredibly supportive, reading my blog daily and sending me cookies when appropriate.

FALSE. My blog is not for everyone, especially the older and more conservative members of my family who could never understand why (everything I find funny) is funny. I learned from my sister roughly two months ago that, “Grandma doesn’t read your blog anymore.” To be honest, I was surprised that she made it that far.

5. Number five was missing in this blog post until the blogger’s mother asked her, “Did you mean to leave out number five?” after which the oversight was hastily and obviously corrected.

FALSE. There has never been a typo on Snotting Black, especially in one of the Freshly Pressed pieces.

6. 378 days is equivalent to 9,072 hours, 544,320 minutes, 32, 659, 200 seconds, and 58 jello salads.

FALSE. 378 days is equal to 9,072 hours, 544,320 minutes, 32, 659, 200 seconds, and 67 jello salads.

7. Soon, Snotting Black is going to change completely and become a paid community where I carefully curate everyone’s personal details and share them on an organized basis with the other members until all forms of privacy are completely obliterated.

TRUE. See above answer about “cult” membership. We like to call it Stew Wednesday.

Highlights of a year of blogging: Being Freshly Pressed twice (here and here), meeting awesome members of the blogosphere, re-discovering my love of writing, and using the term “blog fodder.”

Low points of a year of blogging: The post “Will it stick: Thanksgiving Edition” and the blog title “Noodle Haste Makes Taste Waste.”

Real search terms that people have used to find my blog: “I used somebody else’s toothbrush and now I have a sore tongue,” “I hate my puppy,” “Abba demonic music,” “my dirt family,” “snot in my ear,” “stump arm,” 44444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444,” and finally “chacos as deal breaker.”

Happy Anniversary and thanks for reading.

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May 28 2012
28 Comments
Anecdotes, Three minute read, Travelling

Two Chicken Dinners and an All-Star Airplane Sleazebag

That’s my neighbor’s house. Don’t stare too much.

I take a brief intermission from the land of Sheba to proudly announce that I have made it through homeland security and am now in the United States of America. After over 24 hours of being in-transit, I and my half eaten box of McVities digestive biscuits arrived unharmed in the wonderful state of Oklahoma, where I was greeted by exactly half of my family who were unaware of the severity of my state of jetlag and country immersion shock.

This shock became quite apparent only 45 minutes later when I brought up, in the company of my bride-to-be sister, her fiancée, and a friend of his that I had just met, how I had been thinking about lingerie for sister and how it would be funny to buy a bra and panty set made entirely out of bacon.

All this talk about meaty panties made the crowd a little uncomfortable, especially because where I’m from we pretend males don’t know that we buy and wear underwear. The joke still got big laughs from me, however, and you can expect a meat lovers’ lingerie post to be coming up.

The travel from Egypt was fairly uneventful and I successfully slept open-gobbed on three different flights and one café table.

The flight from Amman (flew there from Cairo) to Chicago was about 12 hours long and I was looking forward to passing out because I hadn’t slept at all the night before. The plane wasn’t full and I had high hopes that I would have the two seats next to the window all for me.  I planned on curling up and traipsing through dreamland as soon as possible.

However, I and my sleepy dreams were in danger. One over-gelled man was planning to ruin everything.

I was looking out the window for a few minutes and when I looked back all of the sudden there was giant man sitting next to me. He had mild halitosis and clearly thought he was God’s gift to the entire airplane and to me in particular.

Almost all of the seats around us were empty, yet here he was, leaning his girth into my personal space and polluting my air with his foul breath. Why was he tormenting me, I thought. He introduced himself by saying he name was Toffee (or something similar) and that he planned on talking for the entire flight. I wanted to die.

From the outset, he made it clear that he was putting his moves on me, which included asking me to prove my Arabic skills by saying I love you, offering me some of his sleeping pills, verifying if the boyfriend I had in Cairo was just for fun or not, and inviting me to come to Northern California, with or without my bf (wink.) It was pretty pathetic.

After about five minutes of painful and unwanted conversation, I told him that it was a pleasure meeting him and that I was going to go to sleep. I turned my back towards him and after about three minutes he took off, having realized that this “sweet, good-looking girl” (his words, not mine) was not going to take his magic pills or waste any more breath talking to him. In the end, the flight was quite pleasant and I slept, watched 2 movies and 2 television shows, and ate chicken twice.

If you’re reading this, Toffee, thanks for the blog fodder. I look forward to avoiding eye contact with you very soon in San Francisco.

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