While my parents were visiting, my mother told me that a tarantula came to her school one day and I imagined it wearing a little backpack. She later told me it showed up in a box and was not trying to enroll. I was mistaken in my earlier assumption.
She’s a teacher. Support teachers and support learning. Also consider supporting spiders. They eat loser bugs like mosquitoes, fleas, flies, and cockroaches.
My parents are visiting in from out of town so I don’t have time to finish up all of the things I’ve been working on this week. However, as appeasement, I crafted this little beauty for you. It’s based entirely on a brief moment within a dream. It was the gayest dream I ever had and, even though I am straight, it was also one of the best.
In my experience, the best way to get a woman to like you is to be totally apathetic and make as many bad jokes as humanly possible.
Keep in mind that this really only works on women you aren’t particularly interested in. If you are into someone, you can attempt to feign apathy but I should imagine that it would be akin to drinking non-alcoholic beer: utterly pointless and sad. If possible, attempt to put on sunglasses while delivering jokes and follow it immediately up with a sad story about your childhood. Your goal here is to confuse their brain until it feels too tired not to love you.
“Did you know that first humans that ventured across the ice bridge from Asia to North America were lost most of the time? I guess you could say that they just couldn’t keep their Bering Strait…. Also, I was molested as a child.”
If you follow my advice, the inventible wedding will be so passionate and emotional even the cake will be in tiers. You can thank me giving all of your sons and daughters my name.
The Daily Post was kind enough to ask me for an interview and get my take as a humor expert but just I used it as a platform to engage in hate speak against my least favorite comic strip character of all time. Read it all here:
Make ‘Em Laugh: Five Funny Favorites on the Art of Humor Writing.
Now that I’ve got third-party verification that I have a handle on humor, I just need to figure out the cosmos and the super natural. Then I’ll be all set for whatever comes at me.
Watching someone attempt to fight off ghosts in real life is nothing like it’s portrayed in the movies. On the big screen it’s all Hollywood special effects and computerized lasers but, in reality, it’s all cursing and screaming the right spells. I saw someone fighting a losing battle with a few demons on my way home the other day. He was wearing a dog collar, sunglasses, a long leather duster, and a backwards baseball cap. Stationed near the side of the road in a wheelchair, he was wailing on a pile of garbage with a claw hammer yelling about how he was a killer. The majority of people gave him a wide birth, disallowing him the ability to prove that claim. I was not to be one of those people and may be curious to a fault.
Finding the situation to be nothing short of surreal, I attempted to photograph the man. It has been my experience that, when a person is doing battle with ghosts, their range of perception is greatly diminished. However, as my phone slowly navigated to its camera app, I realized that I had miscalculated. He was coming for me. For a moment I thought I had a few moments to unfreeze my screen and get off a few award winning snapshots, but he was moving impressively swift for someone in a wheelchair. He started shrieking and swinging his hammer in my general direction. A girl bolted past me and I heard a lady yell that she had called the police. But, just as he was about to strike, I played my trump card of not being in a wheelchair and backed away quickly. Having functional legs gave me a decided advantage and, once I was about fifteen yards away, he refocused his rage back on inanimate objects. Rather than tempt fate a second time, I walked the long way around the block to go home and eat ice cream.
I still regret not having documented the occurrence but, unlike the meth-fueled insanity that caused a man to jump through a second story window on a friend’s birthday, the proper equipment was unavailable. The entire experience left me with so many questions though. I’m always left wondering what role, if any, drugs play in these sorts of situations. A lot of ghosts occur naturally in the brain but sometimes you can use chemicals to coax them out. During my teen years I attended a party where a man claimed he had a gun and was going to shoot everyone after someone offered to light his cigarette. I almost stabbed him in the throat in the hopes I might prevent a horrible mass shooting but he backed down and ran off. We found him punching a car an hour later and crying his eyes out while clutching a greeting card. Eventually someone showed up to take him away and explained that he was on angel dust. I think they said he worked at a bank.
Drugs are a big part of our culture. They give us energy for our day, help us sleep, improve our moods, regulate our blood pressure, eliminate allergies, give us erections, and offer an incalculably numerous list of other functions. Our ancestors would find plants, pick them, grind them up and then eat or smoke them. For a long time that was it for drugs, but eventually people realized that you could mix up chemicals in a lab to make new ones. Some of these drugs were useful but several have occasionally evaporated that piece of a person’s brain regulating emotions and whatever it is that keeps us from killing and eating each other. The ending result is rarely, if ever, pleasant. Ghosts can’t be solely chalked up to drugs though.
I have had friends that suffered from schizophrenia. While I’m not close with them anymore, they were intelligent and kind gentlemen that functioned on a level most people seemed incapable of. It was almost as if a door was perpetually wedged open in their mind that didn’t even exist for average humans. It allowed special little things to trickle in but sometimes a ghost or two would get through and wreak havoc. One of them accused our entire group of friends of theft and being evil before suddenly packing up all of his belongings and moving out of town. We were all a little hurt and perplexed by it. I wouldn’t imagine schizophrenia is a very enjoyable experience.
We met him late one night on the porch of a house we collectively partied at during college. He was in his forties, wore khaki shorts, an argyle sweater, purple knee-high socks, black tights under that, and some of the darkest hair I had ever seen on a man. We drunkenly asked him how he was and he replied “oh, not well” and proceeded to explain to us his mental affliction. I was immediately intrigued with how open he was and spent the next hour talking to him. He came back night after night just to talk to us and most of us loved him. He was educated, intelligent, funny, and knew how to get us free pizza every single night. He said his name was Ink-Ira, but I wagered he came up with that himself. I knew that Ira, like most biblical names, had a second meaning. It meant “watchful” and Ink-Ira most assuredly was. You could routinely see his paranoia start to overtake him before he would smoke a joint and ease himself back from the edge. Ironically, while they might create ghosts for some, drugs can cure them in others.
It should be noted that I had the habit of engaging most strangers in our bizarre town that passed by. I knew the majority of the neighborhood drifters, addicts, and homeless by their first names. While some of my friends found the practice unsavory, I felt it made more sense to befriend them and they always offered me a unique perspective or interesting story. I never got too close or too invested, but I made an effort to test the waters and was always willing to listen. I suppose it was, at best, a double-edged sword. They certainly had a few ghosts of their own but who was I to judge someone else? I’ve certainly felt my own sanity slip and scramble for a foothold from time to time. I’ve got ghosts of my own. Hell, we all do.
At some point in your life you will either find yourself among the breeding masses, having brought a child into the cruel indifferent universe, or trapped on the outside of that realm as a broodless pariah. Either way, you will walk the earth as a monster or as a person who brought one into this world. That’s alright, though. That’s how things are supposed to work and it might not be all that bad. I’ve seen hundreds of happy families and contented lone rangers.
In my own life, I have noted that people have not only reproduced en masse but that their offspring are actually growing into little people. When all of my friends started having children, I did not take much notice because of how boring the little creatures seemed. Most babies spend the majority of their time crying, sleeping, throwing up, or pooping. Having one is like being in a relationship with someone who is violently bulimic and extremely depressed every single day. It’s actually worse because you can’t ever break up with your baby or even take it to the bar and show off how sexy thin it is before getting into a weirdly public argument with it about when was the last time you did something romantic.
A baby just sits there like a houseplant, except it doesn’t make oxygen. It makes messes and screams and you go to jail if you forget to water it. But, if you are patient enough, it will eventually start to do things and even play games with you. The first game entails momentarily obscuring your face and then showing it to the baby as if you’ve done something incredible. While nothing special to us, a brain in the early stages of development views this as the very highest level of magic. To the baby you have vanished from this plane only to return again healthy and non-mutated. Once this game has been mastered you can move onto pretending you’ve stolen the baby’s nose off its face. While this should be terrifying to them, expect hysterical laughter nearly every time. A baby’s sense of humor is very dark.
Things will continue on like this and you’ll notice your little creature evolving quickly. Despite this swift progress, your baby will not be ready for all games. Basketball is a good example of a something you’ll want to hold off on until your child’s body has developed a little more. While you can technically play one-on-one, it’s incredibly easy to dunk on a baby. Even a child at the age of five would be hard pressed to make a single basket when you’re stuffing every single shot back right into their face. You might be tempted to tell the child to “get that weak stuff out of here” but this is actually their A-Game.
I have learned from my nephews that it’s actually more enjoyable to play games just for fun most of the time. I’ve even let them win but, sometimes, they’ll get a feeling of overwhelming superiority from this and I’ll need to destroy them six times in a row at Connect Four. Letting a kid win all the time doesn’t help them become any better at the game or life in general. There is also nothing more obnoxious than a smug six year old.
Whether or not I will ever produce offspring remains a mystery to me. I used to be really afraid of having children but then I started noticing that a lot of stupid people were having three or four of them in a row. I don’t know anything about daycare, potty training, early morning feedings, or anything of that nature. But knowing that the same applies to a lot of people who actually have kids is a big relief. If you’re running solo through life or directly responsible for the lives of others, every child you encounter has the opportunity to benefit from you… and vice-versa. Remind yourself that nobody has the answers and that good advice can come from anywhere. I doubt any of us are ever really ready to be mentors or parents but that doesn’t make us any less responsible.
In the third podcast, I return from being stricken with an upper respiratory infection and ear ache. It turns out that ears and lungs are two elements that play an integral role in creating a stellar podcast. Still feeling a little under the weather, I bravely chat up the owner of Riki Tiki Pies and discuss the subtle levels of food fanciness, moms, and the Chinese.
Theme music by Stephen Jolley and Brett Cimbalik. All additional music courtesy of the lovely Ralph from Pretty Scary. The album is called But It’s All True Even If It Didn’t Happen and is available for purchase.
Last week I created a want ad seeking peace of mind and posted it on Craigslist as sort of a social experiment…
Here are some excerpts from a few of the responses I received over the weekend:
I hope you kill yourself, gaywad.
If you want peace of mind, I would suggest shutting up and going to the bar. Complaining on Craigslist isn’t going to help you.
Nobody is happy or has peace of mind… GET OVR IT.
youmonstersarepeople? what kind of stupid ass email address is that?
I’m sorry to hear that you are unhappy but remember that you aren’t alone. I’m looking for a job right now and coming across your ad reminded me that we are all just trying to make due. It’s scary and I hope that we both end up with a little peace of mind. Godbless you.
Queer.
I am offer lessons in meditation in Harlem.
MAYBE YOU SOULD JUST KILL YOURSELF!
Don’t join the military. that’s what I did and I regret it.
Here is a suggestion: Cram your entire fist into your own ass and then set yourself on fire.
Hello. I am in search of someone to help in tutoring my son, his name is Alexavier and he is 12 years old, will be coming to states for a visit. My family and myself are current in London, he’s in the 7th grade and am offering to pay $55/hr and the job will be for 8 hours in 2 weeks so get back to me with the total cost of your tutorial lessons.
As regards to your payment, I want you to know that I will be paying via certified check for the payment of the tutorial and also will be sending some extra for the payment of the Nanny to take care of him while he’s there for the lesson. The nanny will be the one to bring him to you whenever he’s suppose to be with you and will also be the one to pick him up after every tutoring session.
If you are okay with my terms and would like to proceed with the tutorial position I will like you to kindly send your full contact information to receive the check so that payment can be sent out to
you on-time. Thanks and waiting to read from you. Kindly get back to me with your full info so as to issue out the payment as soon as possible. Please get back to me asap and i don’t want any delay at all.Full Name:
Address:
SSN:
City:
State:
Zip code:
Contact Number:Please acknowledge the receipt of this email so that i can understand you got it.
Thanks
I actually received a lot like that last one. Sometimes there were six or seven from the same person. People really need you to tutor their children or help out their family members in far off countries but haven’t quite figured out the methodology of using separate checks or their own credit cards yet. In the end, I feel like this was a learning experience.
There is a time of night where weaker-minded of us fall victim to the darkest of super natural phenomena. A moment where thoughts and dreams are emptied out of the brain and replaced with the most primal fears and temporary insanity. The hypothalamus commands the body to make noise to scare away enemies and fashion weapons out of nearby objects. You wander, broken and mad, until an impending threat causes you to stand your ground or scurry away to safety.
If you wake up early enough, you can see the aftermath: Men in suits waking up on a park bench, the brokenhearted crying into their half-consumed Big Gulp® and Rums, disheveled prostitutes tottering home, patches of blood on the sidewalk, urine everywhere. It’s like catching the tail end of the saddest and scariest parade of all time, and it’s every single night. Nothing can stop it, nothing can curb it, and nothing can keep you from joining in when the time finally comes.
I also cannot recommend late-night grocery shopping highly enough if you’re seeking a similar experience with a lot less danger and doom.
A friend of mine called me late the other night and said the following, “It’s like we’re in hell. This is hell… but it’s still so beautiful.”
I knew exactly what he meant. A few days prior, I was wandering around in the middle of the night sulking and filled to the brim with self-pity. Filled with pressing uncertainty and unsure of where to turn, I felt the kind of bad that you know is going to be special. At times, I wasn’t even thinking, I just felt this wave of cold negativity churn in my stomach and esophagus until it settled in at the base of my spine. From there it evolved into a sharp pain as it bore itself deep into my skull. I considered jumping off a bridge or just walking until my legs couldn’t carry me further. I couldn’t rationalize anything or visualize a solution to my problems. All I could be was unhappy. But, just when I thought I was going to snap into a permanent melancholy madness, I saw the thing that saved my life.
In the middle of the sidewalk was an entire slice of pepperoni pizza and standing triumphantly on that slice was a single pigeon. Somehow he had come across it alone and could feast in relative privacy. It was an important moment for both of us and, even though he couldn’t quite express it, I knew he understood that. I watched in awe as he took bite after peck, completely uninterrupted. That slice of pizza was that bird’s moon landing, Woodstock and wedding day all rolled into one giant greasy triangle. All of my sadness left me. I couldn’t even keep myself from laughing and, when I imagined someone watching me from their apartment window, I laughed even harder. Not wanting to disturb its meal, I crossed to the other side of the street. People don’t tend to give the pigeon a lot of credit but it’s one of the smartest birds on the planet. They are also the only non-mammals that we know can identify itself in a mirror. With that in mind, I trusted that it could sense my reverence for it and the moment we were sharing.
It took me a long time to settle back into being unhappy after that. Life will sometimes go that way. You’ll be in a perfect state of utter misery and then something ridiculous will come along and shake you out of it. When it finally returns, though, take that time to wonder about the big picture. It isn’t always clear but it’s worth your thoughts and energy to contemplate upon. We’re not made to be happy all of the time. Sadness has an authenticity sorely missing from a lot of other emotions. It helps focus you into realizing what really matters and what really doesn’t. It offers perspective. When was the last time you were sobbing into a pillow and stressing about not having the next consumer product du jour? Probably never, unless that was the reason you were crying in the first place. If that’s the case, you’re probably confusing sadness with some deeper seeded mental issue anyway. What I’m talking about is a real and profound sorrow that has been earned through poor choices, a great injustice, or the inevitable nature of life. It’s an imperfect world and most of us are just trying, unsuccessfully, not to be dicks to each other.
But whether or not that sadness goes away is irrelevant. Whether or not you share even a single thought about it doesn’t matter either. It’s special and for you to do whatever you want with it. For me, I compartmentalize what I can and share whatever manages to wiggle its way out of the corners of my mind. Sometimes I feel like one of those dogs that Russia shot into space– confused and scared, but part of something so much greater that they could never quite wrap their minds around. Some of those dogs were doomed from the start and maybe some us are too. But the fact remains that they had to go because they were chosen and, in a way, extraordinary.
You Monsters Are People. 