"Oh no," Allison Mack said, "someone's blocked the door to my house with all these bottles of chocolate milk!"
"Don't worry," I called out, "I'm here to save you!"
"Who are you, mysterious stranger?" she asked, already starting to love me with her eyes.
"I am none other than Future Boyfriend Man, sent here from The Future to take care of you."
"Like in The Terminator?"
"Exactly like that! Our child is destined to be the savior of all mankind."
"Before we make sweet, passionate love that's not afraid to get energetic, tell me - what threat will we face?"
"Umm. It's squid. Giant squid. Land squid!"
"That sounds horrible." She paused, her nose wrinkling. "Wait, how do squid live on land?"
"They're...they're also vampires."
"Oh," she said. She squinted. "That doesn't answer my question."
"Well, uh, vampires don't breathe. So the squid can be on land and not drown. Drown? Is that the right word? 'cause they breathe water, so they can't drown drown, but you know what I mean."
"Suffocate?"
"Yes! That's it. Suffocate."
We stared at each other for a moment.
"That doesn't make any sense," she said. "How do they move around on land? They don't have a skeletal system to support that kind of locomotion. And if they're so big, and they're vampires, how do they hide during the day?"
I rolled my eyes. "You're asking so many little questions that you're missing the big issue. My world is a burning wasteland! Mankind has been reduced to slavery, forced to fight in the arena for our squid overlord's amusement."
"Why did the squid burn everything?"
"Arg! Can you not get past this one thing!? Squid bad. Future ruined. Us baby. What more do you need from me?"
Suddenly, a van drove up and three large orderlies emerged from it.
"We're sorry Ms. Mack," the driver said as he stepped out, "this one got loose again. He's real troubled, but not violent. Says he's a time traveller from the future and he has to have your baby."
"He has to have my baby? You mean he's going to carry it to term?"
"No," the driver said, "he wants to impregnate you, and then you'll have his baby."
"Wouldn't it be our baby?" Allison asked.
The driver's mouth hung open while the orderlies grabbed me. "Is that really important, ma'am?" he finally asked.
I turned to him. "I know, right? You should have heard her earlier. It's 20 questions with this one."
"Look!" she shouted. "Strange men keep showing up in my front yard, and I'm entitled to some answers. Like how the hell did all this chocolate milk get here?"
A milk truck pulled to the curb and hastily parked behind the van. A bespectacled man jumped out, the buttons on his overalls jingling.
"Oh, I knew I had the wrong address," he said when he saw all the milk. He wrung his hands. "I hope it's not all gone bad."
"Why did you deliver the milk to my house?" Allison asked, turning to him
The driver and I rolled our eyes at the same time.
"Me oh my," the milkman said, "I thought it was a six instead of a nine. The Johnsons'll sure be sore when they don't have their morning milk!"
We all chuckled at his folksy speech. Allison stopped laughing and turned to the man.
"How do you confuse a six and a nine without messing up the rest of the numbers? And who needs this much milk for one morning? And what company in this century still delivers milk?"
The milkman's eyes darted left and right before he pulled out a pair of scissors and quickly clipped a lock of Allison's hair. "He ha ho hoooo!" he hollered as he ran to his truck, hair in hand.
One of the orderlies looked at the driver, who nodded. "I'm on it," he said, running after the milkman.
"What do I do with all this milk?" she asked.
The driver sighed. "Lady, I don't care. I'm in the business of apprehending nutjobs, not listening to every damn thought that passes through your pretty blond head."
The other orderly had already subdued the milkman.
"Why is it so hard to find good help these days?" she wondered. The driver stared at her, spit in the yard, and we all turned to go.
I watched her throwing the milk away from a grate in the back of the van.
"I'm just like Sarah Connor!" I shouted as we drove away. "Sarah Connoooooooorrrr..."
Monday, November 15, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Things No One Cares About
Everyday conversation is a burden.
It's not small talk that's the problem, it's when we pierce the veil of custom and attempt to exchange thoughts with another human. It's a frightening prospect, but there are certain traps we fall into that turn it into an unadulterated nightmare. Thankfully, I'm here to help. Together we can make the world of tomorrow a better, less annoying place!
One - Dreams
When you're in a dream it's the coolest thing, like, ever. You're an omnipotent action hero fighting a monster that's part the kid that picked on you in fourth grade and part Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7, all while that girl in legal that won't give you the time of day hangs off your arm, worshiping you with her eyes. Then you wake up and can barely remember it.
We all dream. As weird as your dream is, something equally strange happened to someone else last night, or the night before. Part of the weirdness of dreams is how emotions and feelings manifest fully formed - it can take years to fall in love with someone, but you instantly fell for that guy or girl riding the inflatable hoverboard last night; movie after movie tries to fill you with horror, but none of it can match the bedwetting (possibly literally) terror of the closet door from your childhood room slowly swinging open.
However, since you can't relate those emotions to anyone else, your dreams sound like drug fueled hallucinations directed by a three year old with ADD.
"then dinosaurs attacked and mom said I had to go to school anyway but I didn't have pants so the ninja said it was okay because I could take the dragon bus."
Dreams are likely the only virtual reality many of us will ever experience, our own personal Matrix. We're self centered creatures, and dreams take this to the nth level - it's a whole universe that finds its purpose in us.
In fact, have you ever been bored by someone's dream, only to perk up when they mentioned you were in it? Case in point. So keep the dreams to yourself. If you absolutely have to get the details down, start a dream journal that you never, ever share with anyone else. Here's some Lisa Frank stickers to get you started.
Two - Geneaologies
"Now, he wasn't married to Sheila, because he had the marriage annulled on account of her being barren. And that's what she's only my great uncle's cousin, instead of his second wife."
History is important. Interesting, even. That's why we entrust its care to scholars and anyone with a beard on the Discovery Channel. These people make the great events and personalities of the past come alive.
"Haley's comet was alien sperm. Historically."
You can't.
You're a guy who spends more on ancestry.com than a month than Sumatran families spend on food in a year. You have no formal training in historical criticism or the socio-cultural milieu of the time you're researching.
Most people have no interest in geneaology. They're not particularly concerned with where their parents went to high school, so knowing your great-great-grandpa Josiah touched Abraham Lincoln's shoe or how many candles Grandma Baloney sold at her Ye Olde Ne'erywacks Store does nothing for them.
Here's what I know about my family: they spent seven generations farming the same patch of dirt in a redneck county for 160 years. They were dirt farmers. Is that interesting to you? No. It doesn't matter what you find out about your ancestors, even if they were Aztec astronauts that invented the escalator. No one but you will care.
And if you do discover something - the blood curse of the beast which swells at midsummer - at least they'll have some investment in that info. Me? I'll shoot silver straight in your heart.
Three - Health Problems
"Well, my crippl'ins is acting up, and that medicine they got me on for it causes my downstairs to itch up something fierce. 'course, I cain't even do that cause my joints trouble me if I move so much as a fly's mustache. But you don't want to hear about that, do you dear?"
I'm looking at you, old people.
Back in the 50's, "How are you?" might have well meant, "Tell me in detail what you're feeling right now."
let's get ripped at noon and play Adultery Quest!
In this era it's a standardized American greeting. Acceptable responses include "Doing well", "I'm okay", and the ever popular "Fine." Unacceptable responses are anything that make us visualize you sitting on a doctor's cold table, paper gown swaying in the AC, frowning your jowls as you prepare to be invaded by a camera or a spelunking finger.
Co-workers, I didn't forget about you all. What part of sharing an office with someone communicates that it's okay to share the results of your colonscopy? I'm not talking about overhearing it while you tell your spouse, which is annoying; I'm talking about direct, "Hey, want to know how my intestines are doing?" I once had a coworker tell me, "Well, now I know what the inside of my anus looks like."
There is no universe where it's okay for anyone to tell me that. Ever. In another dimension we're silicon based beings that eat with our noses and shit out our ears, and it's still not okay for that to happen.
"Dude, TMI."
This doesn't mean we don't care about your health, or want you to die; we only want you to extend to us the same bland, polite apathy we do to you. I keep that mole with the weird borders quiet, you don't tell me when and how often your bowels bleed. Deal?
Four - Babies and kids
"Jenny's nursing now, and I'm so exhausted! She keeps me up all night, just chewing at my nipples till they're all stretched out. And little Tim wants to hold his sister, but - did I tell you he's doing t-ball now? The coach says that..."
You reproduced. Congrats. So did the people down the street from you, the ones you don't talk to because the husband lost his job and you're afraid they'll ask for a handout. What would actually be impressive is if, like a horse, your baby was running as soon as he fell out of you.
or if your baby is half horse
To the contrary, most of your stories deal with your kid's inability to do anything well; they're shitting and pissing left and right while babbling like the Insane Clown Posse at a spelling bee. Since we were all children at one point, and most of us had siblings, we've heard these stories before. The fact that your baby is named "Brad" instead of "Stephen" does nothing to keep us interested.
Listen - I like kids, I really do, but secondhand stories of macaroni art make me want to force feed you the teapot/hot air balloon/leprechaun head your kid glued to the page in between surreptitiously eating the paste. Yes, your little princess/slugger eats paste. They call it "art candy."
I'm considerate. I don't tell you about my friends when they're drunk, despite the disturbing similarities to your baby tales. And no matter how hard they chew on my nipples, that's between them, me, and the hypnotherapist I hired to make me forget it all.
pete what are you doing noooo
Five - Commercials
"I laid awake at nights and fantasized about killing my husband with a knife I called Spousereaver. But thanks to the patented lazy spring suspension system, I've buried all those thoughts deep, deep down! Thanks Slumberco!"
Prior to the 70's, when people told one another about commercials, there was an obvious, easily relatable gag. Absurd humor hadn't entered the mainstream yet, so it didn't take much to get people buzzing at the water cooler.
"Then the cat - Harry, listen to this - the cat started talking! Asking for the cat food like he was sitting down at a goddamn table in a restaurant. Maude and me nearly shit ourselves laughing!"
The listener would think, "Wow, that's funny. Talking cats. I gotta check that stuff out."
Commercials are a visual medium, and an ephemeral one at that. They've grown more sophisticated over the years, such that they seem like short films; unfortunately, this only exacerbates the problem. When someone tells me about a commercial, I stare at them blankly. Then they look vaguely ashamed, like they should, and finish "I guess you had to be there." Yeah, I "guess" I did, to see the thing you're trying to tell me about with words.
Infomercials are a different case; they embrace the narrative for all it's worth, telling us a story about how the woman who couldn't peel a carrot without burning her house down is now a happy, vegetable peeling maniac. We believe in the power of the ShamWow guy, and Billy Mays was damn near an uncle to all of us.
The fifteen second spot for Tide with the talking bubbles? Not so much.
And companies, this word of mouth advertising is doing nothing for sales. When a friend gives me his lame ass rehash of what might have been a cool commercial, I judge you for it. No, it's not fair, but maybe you should start working on a way to make people stop. Maybe you can run PSA's, like Wonder Woman used to.
"Now remember, don't drink refrigerator coolant."
I hope this advice has been helpful for you. Keep eating your vegetables, don't tell people about stupid shit, and life will go immeasurably better for you!
It's not small talk that's the problem, it's when we pierce the veil of custom and attempt to exchange thoughts with another human. It's a frightening prospect, but there are certain traps we fall into that turn it into an unadulterated nightmare. Thankfully, I'm here to help. Together we can make the world of tomorrow a better, less annoying place!
One - Dreams
When you're in a dream it's the coolest thing, like, ever. You're an omnipotent action hero fighting a monster that's part the kid that picked on you in fourth grade and part Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7, all while that girl in legal that won't give you the time of day hangs off your arm, worshiping you with her eyes. Then you wake up and can barely remember it.
We all dream. As weird as your dream is, something equally strange happened to someone else last night, or the night before. Part of the weirdness of dreams is how emotions and feelings manifest fully formed - it can take years to fall in love with someone, but you instantly fell for that guy or girl riding the inflatable hoverboard last night; movie after movie tries to fill you with horror, but none of it can match the bedwetting (possibly literally) terror of the closet door from your childhood room slowly swinging open.
However, since you can't relate those emotions to anyone else, your dreams sound like drug fueled hallucinations directed by a three year old with ADD.
Dreams are likely the only virtual reality many of us will ever experience, our own personal Matrix. We're self centered creatures, and dreams take this to the nth level - it's a whole universe that finds its purpose in us.
In fact, have you ever been bored by someone's dream, only to perk up when they mentioned you were in it? Case in point. So keep the dreams to yourself. If you absolutely have to get the details down, start a dream journal that you never, ever share with anyone else. Here's some Lisa Frank stickers to get you started.
Two - Geneaologies
"Now, he wasn't married to Sheila, because he had the marriage annulled on account of her being barren. And that's what she's only my great uncle's cousin, instead of his second wife."
History is important. Interesting, even. That's why we entrust its care to scholars and anyone with a beard on the Discovery Channel. These people make the great events and personalities of the past come alive.
You can't.
You're a guy who spends more on ancestry.com than a month than Sumatran families spend on food in a year. You have no formal training in historical criticism or the socio-cultural milieu of the time you're researching.
Most people have no interest in geneaology. They're not particularly concerned with where their parents went to high school, so knowing your great-great-grandpa Josiah touched Abraham Lincoln's shoe or how many candles Grandma Baloney sold at her Ye Olde Ne'erywacks Store does nothing for them.
Here's what I know about my family: they spent seven generations farming the same patch of dirt in a redneck county for 160 years. They were dirt farmers. Is that interesting to you? No. It doesn't matter what you find out about your ancestors, even if they were Aztec astronauts that invented the escalator. No one but you will care.
And if you do discover something - the blood curse of the beast which swells at midsummer - at least they'll have some investment in that info. Me? I'll shoot silver straight in your heart.
Three - Health Problems
"Well, my crippl'ins is acting up, and that medicine they got me on for it causes my downstairs to itch up something fierce. 'course, I cain't even do that cause my joints trouble me if I move so much as a fly's mustache. But you don't want to hear about that, do you dear?"
I'm looking at you, old people.
Back in the 50's, "How are you?" might have well meant, "Tell me in detail what you're feeling right now."
In this era it's a standardized American greeting. Acceptable responses include "Doing well", "I'm okay", and the ever popular "Fine." Unacceptable responses are anything that make us visualize you sitting on a doctor's cold table, paper gown swaying in the AC, frowning your jowls as you prepare to be invaded by a camera or a spelunking finger.
Co-workers, I didn't forget about you all. What part of sharing an office with someone communicates that it's okay to share the results of your colonscopy? I'm not talking about overhearing it while you tell your spouse, which is annoying; I'm talking about direct, "Hey, want to know how my intestines are doing?" I once had a coworker tell me, "Well, now I know what the inside of my anus looks like."
There is no universe where it's okay for anyone to tell me that. Ever. In another dimension we're silicon based beings that eat with our noses and shit out our ears, and it's still not okay for that to happen.
This doesn't mean we don't care about your health, or want you to die; we only want you to extend to us the same bland, polite apathy we do to you. I keep that mole with the weird borders quiet, you don't tell me when and how often your bowels bleed. Deal?
Four - Babies and kids
"Jenny's nursing now, and I'm so exhausted! She keeps me up all night, just chewing at my nipples till they're all stretched out. And little Tim wants to hold his sister, but - did I tell you he's doing t-ball now? The coach says that..."
You reproduced. Congrats. So did the people down the street from you, the ones you don't talk to because the husband lost his job and you're afraid they'll ask for a handout. What would actually be impressive is if, like a horse, your baby was running as soon as he fell out of you.
To the contrary, most of your stories deal with your kid's inability to do anything well; they're shitting and pissing left and right while babbling like the Insane Clown Posse at a spelling bee. Since we were all children at one point, and most of us had siblings, we've heard these stories before. The fact that your baby is named "Brad" instead of "Stephen" does nothing to keep us interested.
Listen - I like kids, I really do, but secondhand stories of macaroni art make me want to force feed you the teapot/hot air balloon/leprechaun head your kid glued to the page in between surreptitiously eating the paste. Yes, your little princess/slugger eats paste. They call it "art candy."
I'm considerate. I don't tell you about my friends when they're drunk, despite the disturbing similarities to your baby tales. And no matter how hard they chew on my nipples, that's between them, me, and the hypnotherapist I hired to make me forget it all.
Five - Commercials
"I laid awake at nights and fantasized about killing my husband with a knife I called Spousereaver. But thanks to the patented lazy spring suspension system, I've buried all those thoughts deep, deep down! Thanks Slumberco!"
Prior to the 70's, when people told one another about commercials, there was an obvious, easily relatable gag. Absurd humor hadn't entered the mainstream yet, so it didn't take much to get people buzzing at the water cooler.
The listener would think, "Wow, that's funny. Talking cats. I gotta check that stuff out."
Commercials are a visual medium, and an ephemeral one at that. They've grown more sophisticated over the years, such that they seem like short films; unfortunately, this only exacerbates the problem. When someone tells me about a commercial, I stare at them blankly. Then they look vaguely ashamed, like they should, and finish "I guess you had to be there." Yeah, I "guess" I did, to see the thing you're trying to tell me about with words.
Infomercials are a different case; they embrace the narrative for all it's worth, telling us a story about how the woman who couldn't peel a carrot without burning her house down is now a happy, vegetable peeling maniac. We believe in the power of the ShamWow guy, and Billy Mays was damn near an uncle to all of us.
The fifteen second spot for Tide with the talking bubbles? Not so much.
And companies, this word of mouth advertising is doing nothing for sales. When a friend gives me his lame ass rehash of what might have been a cool commercial, I judge you for it. No, it's not fair, but maybe you should start working on a way to make people stop. Maybe you can run PSA's, like Wonder Woman used to.
I hope this advice has been helpful for you. Keep eating your vegetables, don't tell people about stupid shit, and life will go immeasurably better for you!
Monday, November 8, 2010
The Ark and a Tent for God
I'm teaching children's church for the first time since the Noah's Ark incident. I've had a hiatus of what feels like years, and in the intervening time period no tiny faces have peered at me like I have a dog's head. I danced like a madman at my friend's wedding, and if I can handle that self-imposed public humiliation, being told I can't sing Sunday school songs should be kid's stuff, no pun intended. (Okay, it is. It always is.)
The little girl who drew a Shoggoth is something I'm convinced I made up. Little girls are made of sugar and spice, and are surely not robotic shells housing worms locked in Sisyphean labor.
pictured: not a little girl
I was exhausted by the wedding and another instructor was going on vacation, so we swapped weeks. I ended up with "The Ark and a Tent for God" instead of "The Ten Best Ways to Live", which is what the teacher's guide calls the Ten Commandments. Seems even the Old Testament is getting a PR spin these days.
For those of you wondering why I'm doing the Ark again, this is a more different Ark. The Bible has two Arks, and as far as I know they're never connected with one another. A key difference is that one holds an implausible amount of animals and the other melts Nazi faces.
internet law requires I put this here
Having looked at the lesson plan, I think the other instructor was leaving town to get out of teaching this one. "The Ark and a Tent for God" is a Byzantine walk through the ritual implements of nomadic Jewish religion, meant to demonstrate the prefiguring of Christ in the majesty of the mobile Tabernacle, as well as call attention to the disparities between a human and divine intercessor.
That's all wonderful, but how am I supposed to look these kids in the eyes and talk about the Table of Shewbread? What is a Shewbread? Is it pronounced "showbread" or "shoebread"? How many jokes about eating footwear will I endure if I get this wrong? Shewbread is also called "bread of the presence", which sounds like an item from World of Warcraft.
kid_icarus1988: need BotP?!? 10g in arim's deep
Furthermore, I'm pretty sure the lesson plan is a logic puzzle I'm not smart enough to figure out. It's like this:
The Ark goes in the west end of the desert box facing east. The Altar of Incense goes in front of the Ark, but not too close, because the Veil goes between them. The aforementioned Table of Shewbread goes on the north side. The Menorah goes opposite the Table of Shewbread on the south. Place the Tabernacle so that it encloses the Ark, the veil, and that it faces east. The Altar of Burnt Offerings goes outside the door, leaving room for the Laver. The Laver goes in front of the door. The tent goes around all that. The fence goes around the tent. Put everything back in the box in reverse order. Now, what color house does Mr. Green live in?
I don't know what any of those things look like, and I have to memorize that order exactly or the children will think Jesus is the sun again. I foresee myself holding tiny pieces of wood, silently cursing my now defunct year of Hebrew language training, little eyes boring into me.
Why can't we do it with Legos? When the lesson was over, I'd turn the Ark into the Ark and carry all the animals to safety.
this picture is all wrong
UPDATE: One attentive little girl was later able to draw the entire Tabernacle from memory. I'm choosing to credit her intellect rather than my teaching abilities, and I hope she solves the cold fusion problem before we reach oil depletion.
The little girl who drew a Shoggoth is something I'm convinced I made up. Little girls are made of sugar and spice, and are surely not robotic shells housing worms locked in Sisyphean labor.
I was exhausted by the wedding and another instructor was going on vacation, so we swapped weeks. I ended up with "The Ark and a Tent for God" instead of "The Ten Best Ways to Live", which is what the teacher's guide calls the Ten Commandments. Seems even the Old Testament is getting a PR spin these days.
For those of you wondering why I'm doing the Ark again, this is a more different Ark. The Bible has two Arks, and as far as I know they're never connected with one another. A key difference is that one holds an implausible amount of animals and the other melts Nazi faces.
Having looked at the lesson plan, I think the other instructor was leaving town to get out of teaching this one. "The Ark and a Tent for God" is a Byzantine walk through the ritual implements of nomadic Jewish religion, meant to demonstrate the prefiguring of Christ in the majesty of the mobile Tabernacle, as well as call attention to the disparities between a human and divine intercessor.
That's all wonderful, but how am I supposed to look these kids in the eyes and talk about the Table of Shewbread? What is a Shewbread? Is it pronounced "showbread" or "shoebread"? How many jokes about eating footwear will I endure if I get this wrong? Shewbread is also called "bread of the presence", which sounds like an item from World of Warcraft.
Furthermore, I'm pretty sure the lesson plan is a logic puzzle I'm not smart enough to figure out. It's like this:
The Ark goes in the west end of the desert box facing east. The Altar of Incense goes in front of the Ark, but not too close, because the Veil goes between them. The aforementioned Table of Shewbread goes on the north side. The Menorah goes opposite the Table of Shewbread on the south. Place the Tabernacle so that it encloses the Ark, the veil, and that it faces east. The Altar of Burnt Offerings goes outside the door, leaving room for the Laver. The Laver goes in front of the door. The tent goes around all that. The fence goes around the tent. Put everything back in the box in reverse order. Now, what color house does Mr. Green live in?
I don't know what any of those things look like, and I have to memorize that order exactly or the children will think Jesus is the sun again. I foresee myself holding tiny pieces of wood, silently cursing my now defunct year of Hebrew language training, little eyes boring into me.
Why can't we do it with Legos? When the lesson was over, I'd turn the Ark into the Ark and carry all the animals to safety.
UPDATE: One attentive little girl was later able to draw the entire Tabernacle from memory. I'm choosing to credit her intellect rather than my teaching abilities, and I hope she solves the cold fusion problem before we reach oil depletion.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)