Stabbing, and on a Scale of One to 10, It's a Seven

What is the deal with Rick Moranis?

He's so Rick Moranis-y.

That will make a lot more sense later.  Maybe.

In the course of holiday socializing, the conversation often turns to life and what, in particular, you are doing with yours.  When this happens, I usually try to look like I can't be bothered to contribute because I'm listening so hard.  My gaze burns into the side of Boyfriend's head and I nod and squint my eyes like I was previously unaware of his occupation.  Oh my God!  That's where you go every day? I thought you were out giving blow jobs to support your crack habit... what a relief!

I start to panic because I know I'm next.  After Boyfriend has informed everyone that he is working on curing cancer, using phrases like "retrovirus vector" and "endogenous," someone will turn to me and say  "So Allie, what are you doing for work these days?"

Me:  "Me?  Oh... uh... I'm blogging?" 

I usually say it like I'm asking a question, like I am completely unsure of whether or not it is true.  Blogging?  Maybe.  It depends on how you feel about the subject.  I do know that there aren't any retrovirus vectors involved.

Friend:  "What?"

Me:  "I write a blog? On the internet?"

Friend:  "Oh... what is it called?"

In this moment, I frantically try to determine whether the people around me are the type to be easily offended by the word "fuck."  I try to think of some way I could test it.  Like maybe I could say "it's fucking called Hyperbole and a Half, motherfucker!!" But that might come off as rude.  I could lie.  I could tell them that I write a blog called "The Awesome Charity for Cancer and AIDS and Diabetes and Ebola and Other Deadly Things That Need Awareness Too Blog," but they'd find me out sooner or later and then I would never be able to see them again without having some long, awkward discussion about how they tried to check out my website but, for some reason, Google didn't show any results for "The Awesome Charity for Cancer and AIDS and Diabetes and Ebola and Other Deadly Things That Need Awareness Too Blog."  At that point, I'd pretty much have to bank on the fact that maybe they don't understand the internet and make up something about Google boycotting AIDS awareness.   No.  I have to tell the truth.

Me:  "Hypermehehshs nnd a Hsss...."

I try to say it really fast out of the corner of my mouth.

Friend:  "What?"

Me:  "Hyperbole and a smfl."

Friend:  "Hyperbole and a what?"

Me:  "and a Half?"

Friend:  "Oh!  What's it about?"

Me:  "Humor?"

Friend:  "Like what kind of humor?"

This part kind of feels like when you're in the doctor's office because your whole body hurts and you are pretty sure that you have ebola, but you don't want to offend the doctor by diagnosing yourself, so you just say "I'm in pain" and the doctor says "describe the pain..." and you say "it's pain-y" and the doctor says "okay... but where?"  And you say "Everywhere" and the doctor says "On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is the pain?"  And you say "Eight?" because you have no idea where the scale starts or ends, but you've never given birth, so you're pretty sure it isn't a 10, and maybe that one time you shut your fingers in the door was a nine and the time you got kicked in the arm by a horse was a seven, and eights sound reasonable, so you just blurt it out - but with a question mark in case you're wrong.  Then the doctor says "Is it a throbbing pain or a stabbing pain?" and you want to shout "IT FEELS EXACTLY LIKE AN EBOLA PAIN AND WE CAN'T WASTE ANY MORE TIME DISCUSSING IT BECAUSE I'M GOING TO BLEED OUT AND TURN INTO A ZOMBIE IN LIKE, FIVE SECONDS!!!!" Then the doctor says "Ebola doesn't turn you into a zombie..." and you say "What the hell kind of medical school did you go to??  They didn't even prepare you for a zombie massacre??"

But instead of trying to lead a doctor to the conclusion that I have ebola, I'm trying to lead my friends to the conclusion that I am funny.  Only I can't just tell them that I am "stabbing funny and on a scale of one to 10, it's a seven."  Because that doesn't make sense.

I usually end up saying something like "observational humor" and my friend says "Like Seinfeld?"

And then the conversation derails and suddenly we're talking about how I should start every post by saying "What is the deal with ________??" And I didn't even get to convince them that I'm funny and they are going to visit my blog expecting Seinfeld, but they aren't going to get Seinfeld.  They are going to get clown AIDS and Wolverine and Rick Moranis.

So I've decided that I need to come up with a good description.  Something that says "I'm funny, but that's just what other people think and I would never say that about myself because I'm modest.  And if you are terribly offended by Jesus jokes and the word 'fuck,' you may be disappointed with me, but can we still be friends?"  It needs to sound as cool as "retrovirus vector," but not quite as serious.  Like if you were to put a little hat on it and make it dance around to Ragtime.  Something that lets people know that I am not really at all like Seinfeld, but I appreciate his comedy and I hope to one day be famous like him which will definitely happen so they should watch their backs because pretty soon I'll be rich enough to hire my own mafia and then I won't need to explain my blog.

I'm Not Wolverine

Remember when I was like "I'm going to be the best blogger ever!  I'm going to post three times a day over the holidays!"

That's easy to say when you are ankle deep in a string of Rick Moranis posts and you're still filled with that Christmas optimism that says "I will be able to find the time.  Fourteen people staying in one house?  I'm staying in that house too?  Bring it on!  I'll find time to blog no matter what because I'm the awesomest blogger ever!  I'm unstoppable!  I'm like Wolverine!"

In hindsight, I can see that getting your hopes up was foolish.  I am a mortal blogger sharing a house with 14 people, several of which are small children, I've had a hangover for three days now and I'm pretty sure that I've succeeded in giving myself Type II diabetes, so that will need to be attended to as well.

What I'm trying to say is that I overestimated myself.  I'm not like Wolverine.  I'm more like that one guy whose only power is the ability to resemble a chicken.  Only I don't even have the ability to resemble a chicken.  At least not convincingly.  I mean, I can do a pretty awesome chicken impression, but I doubt I could fool anyone for even a second into believing that I am an actual chicken.

Crap.  Boyfriend just found me.  I've been hiding upstairs, huddled in the least trafficked corner of the house, trying to write as quickly as possible before I am called downstairs to eat something called a "Dutch Baby," which I am told it similar to a pancake, but I'm not buying it.  Why would it be called a Dutch Baby if there were no babies in it?  Either way, it sounds like a conspiracy to me and I'm probably going to be making my first foray into cannibalism.  Wish me luck.

Anyway, Boyfriend walked in on me blogging in my corner and it was kind of like I had been caught eating an entire cake by myself or shooting up heroin or something.   He was like "Are you blogging??"

Me:   "Yes.  And you can't stop me."

Boyfriend:  "I wasn't trying to stop you."

Me:  "Good.  Because if you did try, you would not succeed."

Boyfriend:  "What are you blogging about?"

Me:  "About how I'm like Wolverine but actually I'm not like Wolverine because I'm more like the guy who can turn into a chicken.  But I can't turn into a chicken."

Boyfriend:  "I see... so you can't turn into a chicken?"

Me:  "No.  But I can do a pretty good chicken impression."

Boyfriend:  "Prove it."

Me:  :>  (That's the emoticon for "impressively accurate chicken impression")

Boyfriend:  "If you don't put a picture of yourself doing that on your blog, I will be angry and I will stop loving you.  And I will set you on fire."

Well, he didn't actually say that last part, but that was my interpretation of what he meant when he said "You should put a picture of that on your blog."  His face is really what did all the talking.

At any rate, I don't know if it would be a good idea to try to cram my first experience of cannibalism, the realization that I am more like a chicken than Wolverine, the demise of my relationship and being set on fire all into one day... So I'm posting the chicken picture:

If you look really closely, you can tell I'm not actually a chicken.  I'm just pretending and it's nowhere near good enough to be considered a superpower.  Yet.

I Bet This is Exactly What Blogs are Intended For

Boyfriend was like "I don't know if multiple posts consisting almost entirely of the same picture of Rick Moranis is something that other people will find funny..."

I beg to differ...

Another Post on Christmas Eve? I'm Pretty Much a Hero

False alarm.  It's just another picture of Rick Moranis.

If This Post Doesn't Convince You To Subscribe to my Blog, I Don't Know What Will

Legend has it that many bloggers don't post very much during the holidays.  I was like "I'm not going to be like that... I'm going to be the best blogger ever!  I'm going to post three times a day!"

And here I am, on Christmas eve, posting a picture of Rick Moranis:

Consider it an early Christmas present.

You're welcome.

12 Emoticons for the Advanced Writer

Have you ever been overcome with an emotion but unable to find the right emoticon to express yourself?  The answer is yes.  And I'm going to help you.

*:0 = "MY FACE IS ON FIRE!!!!"

!,! =  "Hi.  I am a rabbit"

% = "I feel like I am a mosquito looking directly at you."

|:( = "I am displeased with my unibrow."

<:( = "Pointy hats make me sad."

>:( = "Now my hat is upside-down and I don't feel any better about it."

(::::) = "I feel like I am the underside of a pregnant dog."

:0& = "I LOVE PRETZELS!!!! NOM! NOM! NOM!"

:*( = "You make me cry sparkly tears."

{:| = "I am a Frenchman."

Q:| = "I'm Davy fucking Crockett."

:$ = "I am trying to look unimpressed, but someone drew a squiggly mouth over my real mouth and this must be terribly confusing for you.  I am sorry."

Shit That's a Lot of Toys... (A Christmas Story)

When I was young, I always looked forward to receiving the Oriental Trading Company catalog in the mail.  The Oriental Trading Company catalog was magical.  You could get 200 toys for under twenty dollars.  Yes, they would probably be tiny, rubber pieces of fruit.  Or plastic whistles shaped like pianos.  And they would probably have faces.  And the faces would look like they were painted by a thumbless epileptic with a depth-perception problem, but you could get TWO-HUNDRED of them.  OH. MY. GOD.  How awesome would it be to have 200 toys?

My mom would hand us the Halloween or Thanksgiving edition of the Oriental Trading Company catalog and ask us to circle the toys that we wanted for Christmas.  She learned early on that if she waited for the Christmas edition to come out, we wouldn't get our toys until April and she would have to buy us emergency-replacement toys from K-Mart to keep us from leveraging the injustice whenever we wanted a puppy.

I spent hours studying the Oriental Trading Company catalog's glossy pages, trying to figure out how to obtain the most toys possible.  My mind raced with the possibilities:  "If my mom has one hundred dollars and I am willing to overlook the fact that my toys will probably be an assortment of random objects with monstrously deformed faces painted onto them, I can get... let's see... ONE THOUSAND TOYS!!!"

The situation became slightly more complicated when I reached the plush toy section of the catalog and noticed that I could get twelve zoo-animal puppets for twenty dollars.  I wanted the zoo animals.  I really did.  But for the same price, I could get almost ten times as many "assorted toys."  This was a weighty decision for a nine-year-old.

I would try to bargain with myself and work out exactly the right ratio of quality to quantity, but it is hard to argue with quantity and greed almost always won out.

On Christmas morning, I would feel so self-satisfied, knowing that I had maximized the number of presents I would get to unwrap.  I remember watching my sister unwrap the two or three expensive items that she selected from Oriental Trading Company and thinking "She's so stupid.  I'm going to get at least two-hundred times as many toys as her..."

Three days later, my sister would be playing contentedly with her super-deluxe farm animal play-set and I would be eyeing her with jealously, having run out of ideas for how to have fun with two hundred plastic banana-whistles.