Thank you all for supporting my lil’ comedy blog hobby through the years — I’m looking at you, Aunt Jeanie. Recently I chose to selectively listen to relatives and friends who encouraged me to do stand-up comedy and make a fool of myself on a larger scale.
I’m ignoring all those who have said, “what about money?” and “you aren’t very funny.”
Laughter is one of life’s greatest joys, and I’m honored to heehaw with you.
More updates soon, and thank you for your support!
Call me overly optimistic, but I have St. Patrick’s Day 2020 party cups ready to go at a moment’s notice. I refuse to put them in the closet because any day now the world is gonna turn around and I can throw the Irish pub themed murder mystery dinner party of my dreams.
But, I finally found something making me laugh again after the good people of the internet produced the first wave of memes. Way to go, guys, those really saved me.
Hanes started selling face masks! I found them at one of my favorite places in the world, Walmart. They had a display with sample masks so all us virus-ridden mammals could touch & feel them and rub them all over our bodies.
They feel exactly like underwear.
This is how the Hanes plan came together.
Hanes National Sales team: “We’re concerned that with the rise in remote work and Zoom, nobody will wear underwear anymore. We certainly don’t. Our sales may take a hit.”
Hanes COO: “How can we repurpose our enormous supply of cottony soft 3-ply absorbent jersey designed to capture & retain odiferous moisture from America’s nether regions?”
Engineer: “I want to stay home. Please don’t make me come to the office. COVID!”
CEO: “This is our chance to stand above those fools at Fruit of the Loom. I want a deliberate plan so we will be recognized as thought leaders in America’s undergarment industry!”
Marketing: “Mouths are a lot like buttholes. What about face masks?”
Everyone: “YES!” *also Kanye’s campaign slogan
Please help me caption more of these.
And then everyone at Hanes got to work.
Now, success rests with the American consumer.
Do you plan to purchase Hanes for your face?
So, who else here is a hoarder? Everyone who likes to be prepared, that’s who. High five!
I had to move stuff from my closet last week for a home improvement project, and I tried to sort through my mess. It was agonizing.
Lots of solid arguments for keeping clothes popped into my head.
1. What if there’s some kind of small town civil war where I live, and I have to prove my longstanding loyalty to the high school football team? I will need this knit picked team sweatshirt to demonstrate I’ve been a fan since 2006.
2. What if I need to dress like a Sesame Street character for some kind of sketch comedy? Even though I have never done sketch comedy? But you never know. I might need this primary blue sweatshirt I bought at Walmart several years ago. It’s a good costume base.
3. I’ve already kept this for 12 years, so I might as well keep it a little longer.
Note: the stuff that is 15-25 years old is in a special section of my closet that is no longer subject to this kind of questioning.
4. Aw, I remember when I helped with that charity event and got the t-shirt. What if I want to make a t-shirt quilt out of all the activities I did in my 30s? PTO, Booster Club, the over 30 beginner soccer league — these things meant something! Why is it cool to make a t-shirt quilt from your younger years but not adulthood? That’s not fair.
5. I’ll save these jeans for if I go horseback riding. Every woman needs some sturdy Gap denim from 2002 for horseback riding. I’ll save these 2016 AG jeans for if I go horseback riding and want to look more stylish, like if it’s a horseback riding date with my husband. Wait, it appears I already have a stack of horseback riding jeans that I forgot about, even though I’ve been on a horse less than 10 times in my entire life.
6. I’ll keep this other old pair of jeans in case I find myself on the frontier or a ranch of some sort and I have to chop down tall grass with a machete. This sturdy denim will keep the ticks off of me, too.
7. I need all of these old jeans. Modern, soft jeans with stretch won’t hold up like the kind from 2002. What if the world falls apart and we need our sturdy denim? I’ll probably chop the frontier into submission in my J. Crew jeans from 2010 because they are a decent compromise between sturdy and stylish.
8. So I should probably save this shirt too, because it’s the perfect Little House on the Prairie shirt that says we’ve had it tough but we still want to wear flowers and stay optimistic. And the white cotton will reflect the sun for when I’m chopping down the grass with my machete. Note: I need to purchase a machete.
9. I might want these old, black spandex leggings that were pre-athleisure wear because what if I play some prank where I want to sneak around at night and be invisible, without any of the reflective stripes? And also this prank could be messy, and I don’t want to get paint/vomit/slime/mud on my Lulu.
Ultimately some of these reasons were deemed better than others. If you think of any good pranks, lemme know. I’m donating some black spandex, but I saved some too. Just in case.
Dear Readers,
My daughter ate her own rib meat.
There, I said it.
Yes, she’s a cannibal. I don’t know if cannibalism is illegal, and I’m too scared to search it on the internet. If anything should alarm law enforcement, it’s people researching the legality and logistics of cannibalism.
***Before we go any further, please agree that if my daughter ever runs for president or decides on any kind of future where cannibalism is frowned upon, you never read this story. You will say: “What rib meat? I don’t know any cannibals! But if I did know a cannibal, I would surely give her my vote!” Thank you.***
Back to the rib meat.
“Why did she eat her rib meat?” Valid question. Because it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“Speaking of once-in-a-lifetime, is she still alive?” Yes, thank you for asking. She’s healthy and happy.
“How did she eat her own rib meat?” Longer story.
She had to have her top right rib, the small one under the collar bone, surgically removed because of a rare condition called Paget–Schroetter disease.
“There’s a rib under the collar bone?” Yes, who knew!?! Unless, of course, you are in the medical field or remember high school biology. Experienced cannibals may also have some anatomical knowledge.
“Why did she have the rib removed?” One of her main veins was kinked between her top rib and collar bone, so one of the bones had to go. The kink caused blood clots (deep vein thrombosis) in her collar bone area last fall. It was kind of a big deal.
“I’m a hypochondriac and think I might have Paget–Schroetter disease. What are the symptoms?” Is one of your arms swollen from the shoulder down? Is your hand or arm blue from a lack of oxygen? Or has it been blue recently? You probably have this rare condition. Go to the emergency room!
“What if I just slept on it wrong?” That’s what I said, along with “eat less salt.” Rookie mistakes! Go to the ER.
“I forgot the point of this blog.” She ate the meat on her rib.
“Oh yeah, that’s kinda gross.” Is it? I mean, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“Super weird.” Maybe you have a point. But what did the doctor think she was going to do with it when they let her keep it? It was almost as if they were condoning this.
“Was it raw???” No, that’s where I drew the line. It would’ve been cooler to eat the raw meat (because if you’re gonna do it…), but the rib was at room temperature in salt water for 3 days so we had to cook it. (That’s me! Ignoring my daughter’s blue arm but concerned about food safety for a 3-day old, possibly putrid human rib.)
“Why did you keep it? Why did you clean it? Didn’t the hospital do that?” She wants to make a necklace out of the rib, but, shockingly, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills does not buy you a squeaky clean, pearly white rib. It buys you a meaty rib floating in bloody liquid in a pee cup.
“How did you know how to clean it? Have you done this before?” Alaska Fish and Wildlife Commission recommends boiling fragile bones for a short time (in their section on human bones, jk, elk bones). And then I pretended it was a pork rib and went from there. After boiling the rib for about 20 minutes, we scraped off the meat. That’s when she ate a tiny piece before I could even stop her. (I was not going to stop her because BLOG MATERIAL.) But even if I were a better mother…it happened so fast.
And then I soaked the bone in hydrogen peroxide for a few hours. Now it’s beautiful! She can make a necklace, or use it as a dainty utensil to spread goat cheese on crackers. She actually did this just to freak out some neighbors.
“Wow, just wow.” I know. She’s amazing.
This human rib can be used as a utensil! Or a necklace! We take recycling seriously. Hey, the Native Americans did this with buffalo bones, and everyone is all Dances with Wolves.
*Thank the Lord for a happy ending to this story. And for real, don’t ignore a blue and/or swollen limb. While rare, this condition happens more often in youngsters who develop their shoulder muscles, like athletes in volleyball, baseball, softball, or swimming. She wasn’t in any pain at all, so we didn’t realize how serious it was. On Web MD, I skimmed right past the “go to the hospital immediately” section because that never applies to us. Urgent care sent us to the emergency room, where she literally skipped in with her backpack on. One of the nurses described her as “bebopping in with deep vein thrombosis.”
And remember, you agreed to forget about the rib meat thing in case this story becomes inconvenient. “My daughter” could be code for “my dog.”
Dear Readers,
I have a new hobby, and you should try it too: trolling for the betterment of society. It all started when I read this article about social media sites from a teen’s perspective. He says the app Yik Yak is super popular among college kids. I’m in marketing and wanted to learn more about Yik Yak’s appeal, so I downloaded it. Users on Yik Yak anonymously post “yaks,” and everyone within a 10-mile radius can read and interact with each other’s yaks. It’s popular because students can yak about professors, tests and parties without revealing their identities or exact locations. Cool, huh?
Except it wasn’t cool in my area. It’s the worst. There’s no college campus within 10 miles of me, so the Yak population in my radius is made up of high schoolers and a few university kids home on break. Over the winter holidays, I read yaks like, “The worst thing about being home from school is your dealer isn’t here.”
Some posts bubbled over with teenage angst, but 98% were vulgar commentaries on sex or requests for drugs. And a few local delinquents made fun of their moms in a mean way, which irritated me on a whole other level. I generally like the teens in my tight-knit community — most are great kids — so the Yik Yak feed shocked and disappointed me. I can’t post most of the stuff I read, but this is a sample of some of the tame posts:
A few of the nicer yaks in my radius.
So I’m doing what I was born to do — ruin it for everyone. Just like Gen X and older contaminated Facebook with posts on kids, charities, and weight loss strategies (truly annoying) — making it uncool for younger generations — I am determined to spoil Yik Yak for all the area punks by filling it with old people posts.
But there’s a catch: users can vote yaks up or down, and if your total gets down to -5, your yak is removed. (You can also vote once for your own yaks and reply to yourself anonymously.) So if you post something, it has to be somewhat appealing, or you have to have some compadres vote it up for you. My strategy was to yak boring mom content with curse words to make it edgy. (I took out some of the letters for the blog because my Grandmother reads this.)
This was my first yak:
“Pansies from Calloway’s are the best! And save your receipts, ’cause that sh*t’s guaranteed!” Some yakkers thought it was funny, and some were annoyed. But my vote total was positive. Success!
Then I posted this:
“Looking for new crockpot recipes, c*cksuckers. Watchu got?” 7 up votes, that’s what. Success again!
So then my husband joined in. We cracked ourselves up and laughed for hours creating fake posts about Viagra, non-iron dress shirts, HGTV, casseroles, frequent flier miles, dieting, menopause, oil prices, vasectomies, minivans, antacids, and more. And then neighbors got in on the action too, so we have a whole contingent of middle-aged yakkers in our area. It’s a legit grass roots counterculture movement!
“HGTV is the sh*t. Fixer Upper kicks a**. If it’s House Hunters, that sh*t better be International.”
“D*mn frequent flyer miles don’t go as far as they used to. Platinum status hardly means anything anymore. WTF!”
“Up vote if you like the Moment of Nature on CBS’s Sunday Morning Show.”
And I like to post as an elderly woman with poor spelling:
“The company that made this foot warmer said it would help my bursitis. Bunch of liars! My toes are still swellt up.” (That one got voted down and removed within an hour. Bummer. Apparently bursitis and the word “swellt” are very off-putting to teenagers.)
“My Grandson just ate a hole can of Pickled Beets!” This one got some up votes (thanks, neighbors!) and replies from teens like, “Get off. Just get off.”
We didn’t let up:
“Have to stop at 3 different grocery stores in this town to get all the sh*t I like.”
“Non-iron dress shirts are the sh*t. Hang up hot out of the dryer, and those b*tches stay perfect!”
And many, many more.
Now the young druggies are getting uncomfortable:
“I am so confused why there are so many older people on this yak, [sic] no one wants to hear about how your kids have practice or that you take Viagra.”
“This app is made specifically for college age students… Most people older than that on here just make this areas [sic] YikYak [sic] a little awkward.”
And the plan is working!
“I’m probably one of the last college kids here and without us yik yak [sic] posts are from old people and high schoolers, lame.”
Lame! We made it lame! 10 miles down, thousands more to go. Ridin’ the Yak is super fun!