I considered writing a blog post but when my hands learned that they would have to touch my slightly-warmer-than-the-surrounding-air laptop, they retreated into my wrists.

I think the title sums it up well.

It’s freaking hot.

Temperature: 90 degrees.

Feels like: Actual hell.

And Weather.com said, "We're gonna have rain, so don’t turn on your air conditioning because everything will be better soon!"

Well I just checked Weather.com and JUST LIKE LAST TIME, it has announced that rain actually never existed; it’s just something the Men In Black told us when they used that little memory-eraser thing on us.

Bitches.

Steve Carell: Secrets from His Butler (me)

I was visiting home for the weekend, which is quite a convenient place to get the flu. The night went badly; I was achy and I had horrible chills. This kept me from ever fully sleeping, so I stayed stuck in a kind of half-awake half-asleep limbo for most of the night. What made it more interesting, though, is that I was dreaming.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve dreamed about Steve Carell. He was actually Steve Carell in this one, not Michael Scott from The Office. And with quite a different economic status, too. In this dream, he needed help taking care of his humongous, gaudy, centuries-old mansion adorned with dusty paintings and bear rugs, and I was lucky enough to be hired as live-in butler. 

 

[I would do this constantly.]

Now here’s something that not a lot of people know, but I do because I was his personal butler: Steve Carell, when he comes home, actually becomes three very large, very old rich women in satin bathrobes with golden fringe. 

Hard to believe, I know.

He—well, they, feminine—is/are less funny, too. They just lie in their lavish beds adorned with overstuffed down comforters with floral patterns and numerous pillows with tassels on them, and moan while stroking their a**hole Pomeranians, at least twelve to a bed.

My job was to run from room to room to room taking care of the massive moaning triplets.

But remember what I said before: I was half awake the entire time, but still dreaming. As the butler, they way I would tend to these three dames was to lie on my left side, my back, or my right side. And at the moment of successfully repositioning, I would become one of them, lie uncomfortably in my extravagant bed and moan in influenzalic agony. After tending to one for a while, I would switch positions to become another, and then another. 

 

=

 

 

=

 

[All Pomeranians are a**holes.  They're the only kind of dog I would be willing to strangle. Just looking at my drawing makes me all, "Pffft. A**hole.]

 

 =

So in a way I was those three whale-like women. And in some bizarre, fluish way…I was Steve Carell.

Note to Mom and Dad: Listen, can we get some NyQuil up in here so I don’t have to become morbidly obese triplets when I’m sick at home? They’re really a bare to take care of. And bitchy.

Fan Mail

Okay, this isn’t fan mail fan mail; it’s just an email from my Mom. But she reads my blog and is one of the four comment-leavers that make me feel like I’m actually doing more than sending my stories into a clouded and scary abyss, so I shall share.

So I got an email from her, because we do that...

[A nod to The Oatmeal nodding at Hyperbole And A Half.]

...And the email said:

“I had a dream last night that made me mad during the dream but when I woke up it was hilarious!”

Can you tell we’re related? A run-on sentence used to show how excited we are to write it? That’s us.

“It was about multi-tasked-one-handed nose blowing.”

She’s referring back to this post, probably one of the most absent-minded ones I’ve ever put on this blog (but nonetheless one of the funniest, I think). A complaint about bananas turning into a rant about the fact the Jane Goodall never has to go to the zoo and, you guessed it, my resentment towards people who blow their nose with one hand. Apparently this inspired her unconscious mind.

“I was at work and stopped to blow my nose. Two-handed, of course. My boss walked by with a disgusted look on her face and told me that I blow my nose very inefficiently! She then proceeded to do whatever it was that she was doing and reached over with a Kleenex one-handed, grabbed my nose, told me to ‘blow’, I continued to work on my computer while blowing. She then looked at me and said ‘SEE!? You should be able to keep working and blow your nose at the same time if you only used one hand!’

Bitch.”

 [A few things about this drawing: 

1. Since my mom left out what her boss was doing in her dream, I naturally assumed that she was playing badminton.

2. I've found drawing anyone besides myself as a stick figure is really strange. I went through about a million sketches of my mom's head before I found one that didn't completely suck. This one still kind of does, but it's not the worst thing in the world.

3. More offices should probably have badminton. This picture is like a workplace paradise.] 

I will give you, Mom, the coveted label of Posts I End With The Word ‘Bitch’ for that one.

Conqueror of the Common Cold

Three days ago I was attacked by a vicious cold—a snotty, congested, achy, pissed off, tasteless wanker of a cold that tore me limb from limb and made me wish I wasn’t taking eighteen credits. Or any, for that matter. A bed was all I could handle at this point.

Yet I pressed on. I went into battle mode. Behold, my artillery: 

Three Cold-Eeze zinc lozenges a day.

Three Airborne tablets a day.

Spicy food (the only thing I could taste) 

and salads with broccoli and spinach for lunch and dinner.

Citrus fruit smoothies between meals.

An entire lake (for drinking)

Numerous Puffs Plus with Lotion

And I have annihilated this cold.  This cold wishes it were never born. This cold is begging me for mercy, like the Legion demons in the bible beg Jesus. “Oh, please, Brian! Don’t cast me out! Allow me to go into the grazing swine!”

“No,” I reply. “But if you must, you may infect Christie for a short time, but be warned: she has the same weapons that I do.”

“Oh, thank you, merciful Brian!”

This cold is freaking done for.

You wanna know why?

‘Cause Brian ain’t nobody’s bitch.

Second Grade Journal: I tend to lie about my interests.

I’ve always hated sports. When I look back to all my days of being in sports—football, basketball, baseball—I always hated it. I went through probably two years of confusion, though, in second grade when my family moved to La Crosse. Everyone cared about football, especially the Packers, who my family told me I should probably hate because we’re from Minnesota and we have our loyalties already.

(A note on the Packer loyalty/a-little-more-than-loyalty/obsession: You have not seen team obsession until you’ve come to Wisconsin. Packer mailboxes? Yes. Packer license plates? Yes. Kids’ rooms with green and yellow walls, packer bedspreads, and memorabilia on the walls, including a cup of dirt from Lambeau field, which they treat like something more than a cup of dirt? Yes. THIS IS WISCONSIN.)

So when I came to school, I had to face daily the question: Do Vikings rule and Packers drool, or is it the other way around? For many of my classmates, that was their only argument; when asked to give a logical explanation, they would only be able to repeatedly quote that rhyming worldview and look satisfied, as if they had actually said something. My feelings towards football and team loyalties were much more about this argument than even about the sport. However, my dad told me to stand firm—as if I really cared—so stand firm I did.

Proof from my second grade class journal that I made it look like I cared about football.

Transcript/Translation: 

November 18th, 1996: 

Dear Journal, 

Tonight the big game is on. Packers vs Cowboys. I hope that the Cowboys win. 

Last night I went to Kyle's birthday party. We saw SPACE JAM. 

I didn't watch that game. However, I did receive the update from my dad in the morning. And I wrote...

Transcript/Translation:

November 19th, 1996:

Dear Journal, 

COWBOYS WON! You're probably wondering why I'm making 

football helmets on all the O's. It's because COWBOYS WON.

Notice my teacher left no comment on these two entries. This will be important knowledge later in this post. 

The Packers made it to the Super Bowl that year. To celebrate, my teacher cut out a bunch of green and yellow construction paper footballs, and told us all to write to our favorite Packer player. After sitting at my desk for a while and deliberating over what I should be doing about this, I walked up to my teacher and the student teacher.

Me: Uh, Teacher? [I didn’t know her name.]

Teacher: Yes, dear? [Smiling.]

Me: I don’t like the Packers.

Teacher: [Silence. Her smile leaves. Looks at the student teacher. They look back at me.] Um, well, just write to one anyway. Write one to Antonio Butler. He’s my favorite.

Me: [defeated] Okay.

If you think this story isn’t true, I have more proof.

Transcript/Translation:

January 7th, 1997:

Dear Journal,  

This morning it was 0 degrees outside! We had to write to the "Green Bay Packers." 

I hate the Packers! I had to lie, because we had to say "Your Fan," so I feel kind of stupid. 

Your friend, Brian.

Notice my teacher put a star on this one, right after I said that I felt stupid. 

Bitch. 

It’s actually a little horrible. Not “call-the-superintendent” horrible, but still kind of horrible.