Sensing the Humors

So, you know how sometimes people say about someone else "He doesn't have a sense of humor!" and usually they mean "He doesn't find my fart jokes funny!"  Or sometimes they mean "He never makes any fart jokes of his own!"  

That's pretty much what I always thought not having a sense of humor meant, anyway.  Someone who was unable to sense how funny I am.

Turns out there's a whole other kind of person.  This person is lacking in the sense that there are things that are funny.  Incapable of recognizing a jovial atmosphere.  Given to discussing the brain chemistry behind laughter as a social exercise.  This person will laugh because he has found that it is best to participate and then let the laughter fade a bit before he begins a nonsequitor about the construct of race in this country and the historical implications of doughnuts, because otherwise we'd be able to completely ignore him pretending we didn't hear him over our glee.  This person will follow up your hilarious anecdote with the statement "That's interesting because..." and then say something that wouldn't even be moderately interesting if I were a comparative religions major and hated the universe.  

I'm not talking about anyone in particular here.

I'm just saying.

This person should be killed slowly and in some humorous way, like by drowning in pink frosting.

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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

Way Back... Thursday?

It's my blog and I can write whatever I want on whatever day I want, especially when that just means I want to talk about my childhood on a Thursday instead of a Tuesday because on Tuesday I posted pictures of eyeballs.  

So anyway, I may have mentioned that I grew up in the country, and I had this friend in elementary school (Hi Mandy!  Oh, you go by Amanda now?  That's weird.  Anyway, what's up?)  And she was one of many people who lived on a real life farm, with animals and corn and stuff.  Sometimes in the winter her dad would take the hood off an old junker and hook it up to the back of his truck with chains and he'd drive around in the snow with us dragging behind.  Except for being terrified for my life, that was fun.

And out in the corn a ways, there was this empty silo where Mandy had set up a little play office with a cardboard computer (this was back before most anybody had personal computers, so this was extra awesome good fun).  And there was also a camper in the woods somewhere where we talked about whether Jeffrey Dahmer would break out of prison and come eat us while looking at old issues of Playboy which were more confusing than erotic for a couple of 11 year old girls.

Also, one time I laughed so hard I peed my pants and didn't tell my friend, I just took off my underwear and threw them in the corn.  Was that wrong?

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Dirty South Bidges!

So, over Memorial Day weekend Houseboy and I drove down to Nashburg to check out the city and look for apartments because apparently even though it's warm there, it's frowned upon to live in the park.  We saw trees and flowers:

      

And a downtown that looks like a movie set:

And a building that looks like Batman:

And all in all it was very hot and sweaty and foreign and it scared me and I was glad to get back to Chicago, where it's raining and cold and stinky.  Maybe they could move Vanderbilt up here instead?  We probably have the same amount of shit to move.

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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

Eyeballs

Last weekend, I took pictures of eyeballs.

The Neurotic Cat (he wouldn't hold still):

The Fat Cat:

The Houseboy:

Nice Blogger:

ANGRY Blogger:

I am my own best friend

So, because I wanted to NOT be doing work while eating my leftover soup and diet coke for lunch today, I decided to organize my hotmail e-mails into folders.  I have "Work E-mail" and "Purchases" and "Passwords" and "Friend e-mail" and "Family e-mail."

So, I paused a moment over some e-mails from and to Houseboy, but threw them into the "Family e-mail," thinking, What's the point of getting married if he's not family now, right?

But then I'm about halfway through all my e-mails and realize that I've been putting e-mails I sent to myself in "Friend e-mail."

So, my husband is family, but I'm just a friend.  

Interesting.

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Jesus Cured My Hangover

So, Houseboy being all finished with his life-changing world-altering calm-shattering exams, we're attempting to re-enter the world of a social life, or at least as much of a social life as two thirty year old shut-ins have ever had.  What that means is that we spent Friday night and most of Saturday watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on dvd and eating chips and other fried things.  

Saturday night though we really tore it up and had Hedgehog over to drink beer and eat fried things on our couch with us.  Because, as I may have mentioned, I am an elderly person, I had about 5 beers and ended up all kinds of hungover on Sunday morning, which happened to be my morning to teach all the little childrens about Jesus.  There were sheep and a sheepfold and a good shepherd involved, I think.  There was a significant amount of staring silently at the sheep.  Maybe some stroking of their backs.  There was also a photographer there to capture the magic of our multicultural classroom at work and post the photos on the wall.  So, next year, when I'm long gone to Nashville and quite possibly sober enough to put in contacts, there will be pictures all over my former church of me in a ratty t-shirt and bloodshot eyes stroking some wooden sheep with a distracted look on my face.  I hope that really sells the program to the parents.

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Dirty Pictures

Are you an aspiring Blogger?  Do you want to know how to get a bunch of hits on your blog, become world famous, pay for your new pool with shiny ad pages and all without leaving the comfort of your couch?  Try using sexual innuendoes in your blog title.  Or, just say "sex," because that's simpler.  I know innuendoes can be hard to think of, as I demonstrated on Wednesday.  

The unfortunate thing is that you'll have a hard time keeping readers if you use your best blog titles on reviews of Nabokov.  For some reason people who googled "sex on the bathroom floor" don't come back after reading about semi-obscure Russian novelists.  Sorry dudes.  Next time I promise nudie photos.  Oh, this is next time?  Well, I've got a camera, and I've got a work computer, I don't see how this could go wrong...

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So he says, "Have sex with her on the floor of a gas station bathroom? I don't even know 'er!"

So, a photographer is coming to take pictures of our apartment to put it on the market this afternoon, and as a result I've done things like clean the windows and dust the walls and de-fur everything in the house over the last week, and as Houseboy pointed out (with a total lack of irony), our apartment is now the cleanest it's been since we moved in.  I also was asked by our realtor to "declutter," so there are about 10 boxes of books and knick knacks in our storage container(s) in the basement and I'm thinking maybe I have a clutter "problem."

Anyway, all of that is a very astute introduction to this week's book, "Bend Sinister," by Vladimir Nabokov*, which I have in such an old edition that none of the google images shows the cover I have, which fell off while I was reading it and I used it as a bookmark.  So, anyway, my edition also has an introduction in which they quote Nabokov saying that everyone took the book rather too seriously the first time around and looked for hidden meanings where there were none.  That pretty much gave me the carte blanche to just read it and enjoy it, since Nabokov writes in his second language at least three times better than the average writer in his first.  I had a whole bunch of good quotes underlined for you, but I already packed the book away, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  So, possible deeper meaning aside, this book takes place in a fictional Eastern European country, where the new government is one of those fascist/communist ones that were so popular in that region at a certain time.  The main character is a famous philosopher (Adam Krug) whose wife has just died of natural causes, leaving him alone with a very young son.  He has no interest in getting involved in the political hullaballoo, but he's famous and plus the dictator is an old school chum that he nicknamed "The Toad," and on whose face Krug repeatedly sat when they were children.  So The Toad's henchmen keep trying to get him to sign things and give speeches and he keeps going out to country houses to stay with friends, who are then arrested by a couple who fit the Communist/Nazi stereotype used so often in Indiana Jones and Wonder Woman--clean and fit and completely self-absorbed, they have conversations about their sex life while carting folks off to the gulag.  

So, despite all his friends disappearing, Krug is more or less winning this battle since he remains calm and unaffected and doesn't sign any "The Toad is Great" documents, until they arrest him and kidnap his son and then shit gets emotional**.  All in all, without looking too deeply, there are some definite anti-totalitarian vibes and some intellectual freedom stuff and definitely a whole pro-family message.  And that's all I'll say on that.  Go read it.  It's good.  And this one doesn't even have any sex with little girls in it, I promise.

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* Think about it hard and you'll figure it out.  Take the day off if you have to.

** Yeah, that's an Idiocracy reference.

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My Cat Ain't Fat

I could have put something vaguely dirty in the title, but I decided to be Klassy today.

Here is our Fat Cat:

Who, we have decided is at least part Maine Coon Cat, which explains why he's impossible to hold and weighs over 20 pounds.  It has nothing to do with his fat belly and really really really sharp claws.

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Pretentious Hipster

So, there's this new Facebook quiz that got circulated among my friends recently, and I made the mistake of taking it, despite everyone's universally disappointed comments on their results.  Those of you reading this on Facebook will probably know what I'm talking about.  It's the fantastically intuitive and eminently universal question of "Which Mac Stereotype Are You?"  Whoever wrote it got all clever pointing out how Macalester is all anti-establishment and hates labels and shit, which is actually why I took it, because I like labels and boxes and the establishment and all that.

Anyway, my result was "Pretentious Hipster," and they predicted that I currently work in a coffee shop and have ironic facial hair.  Well, they're right in that any facial hair I have is certainly ironic.  Other than that, this doesn't seem very accurate to me.  All right, so I moved to Uptown Minneapolis after graduation and worked in a record store and watched independent films at the Lagoon.  That was because I had no money.  And that was because I was an English major.  And that was because I didn't think about my future after college until I was exactly 22 1/2 and graduation had just ended and all my shit was in a Pontiac Sunbird and I had nowhere to go.  And that was because I had a really hot boyfriend who was a really good kisser and etcetera and we were going to move in together (somewhere) and probably get two phone lines so his very Catholic mother would not find out.

Ok, and yeah, I own a t-shirt or two that has some kind of incomprehensible photo/slogan combination and was bought at Metro Mart for ten cents along with a pair of oversized men's pants and a cross-stitched pillow that reads "Forty is Farty."  But someday I'll be forty andI'll sit on that and fart and then it won't be ironic anymore, so that takes care of that issue.

Anyway, what it all comes down to is that none of the questions on that quiz had answers like "because I never really thought about it" or "I spent most of my time drinking and studying" or "the red-assed baboons," so it really can't reflect my college OR post-college personality very accurately.  

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The All-Asshole Brigade

This morning I had to wait through three rounds of elevators before I could get on because everyone in the universe is insane.  There were about 20 people waiting for the first elevator, but I would have gotten on if it weren't for the most unchivalrous man in history, who came running in past security and shoved his way into the elevator in front of me.  Then, the second one was taking a long time, so I took two steps to my left to mail my Netflix, and this tiny old lady shoved in front of me and proceeded to mail about 15 letters, examining each one before dropping it in the slot like this:

Hold letter up to the light.

Turn the letter around to make sure it has a stamp.

Hold it up to the light again. 

Sniff it just in case.

Guide it into the slot with both hands.

Watch it drop.

Stand there staring at the slot for a full minute.

Repeat with the next letter.

While I was waiting behind her, two elevators came and went, because for the first time in the history of my tenure here, the doors opened and closed in less than twenty minutes.  

Also, I slept really poorly last night because we rearranged our apartment for showing it, and my chi is all garbled or something.

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Swine Flu

So, I've been sick for about eleventy days now and it's getting really old.  I'm back at work today, since I'm once again able to breathe through my nose at least every 10th time or so, and people have stopped having "subtle" conversations nearby about the swine flu.  It's actually a good thing I got this disgusting cold that won't go away at this particular time in our nation's history, since the two times I tried to come in to work last week I got the nastiest looks, and even my boss basically told me to go home because the last thing they needed was my pig-loving ass to get everyone sick.  

I tried to tell him I don't eat meat and I hate Mexicans, but he wouldn't listen.

Anyway, as a tip to Way Back Tuesday, the last time I missed this much work due to illness is when I was 25 and had bronchitis and worked for a nonprofit full of old people who informed me that this was just the beginning of my gradual health decline.  They've been mostly right on that front, but they were definitely wrong about the prune juice.

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