"I Know, I Know..." and "Christmas is NOT Funny."

This blog is more gaunt and emaciated than I had planned. Dusty echoes of past posts and empty words clutter the page as if from some other, sweeter time. Visiting this page is like visiting the ghost town somewhere in the last half of Stephen King’s The Talisman, the town with broken buildings and dirty streets, where a naked, grimy woman stumbles pointlessly through garbage and filth, crying—or screaming, I can’t remember—as she passes us to continue on her miserable way, leaving us with a sense of gloom and an urge to leave this place as soon as possible. Maybe that’s a little much; it’s not quite that bad. Has anyone really ever read that book? I did like ten years ago. Stephen King is smoking something strong, let me tell you. 

It has been a while, though. And if that crying naked woman somehow embodied Popcorn Day itself, she would have stopped when she saw me and said, “Oh, hi there, B-…Brian, right? You’re name’s still Brian, isn’t it? You haven’t changed it or anything? I wouldn’t know; I haven’t seen you for what, two months? Let’s see, you posted on October 7th, and then October 27th came around and you gave us this half-assed post that said, ‘Hey guys, uh, I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long, but I’m going to be gone for even longer because I’m lame and super busy, but I’ll be back by Thanksgiving.’  Remember that? Tell me: when do you celebrate Thanksgiving, Brian? Do you celebrate it at the end of November like the rest of us turkey-roasting, stars-and-stripes-loving Americans do, or do you stack it on top of Christmas like a Canadian or something and that’s what you meant by ‘around Thanksgiving’ because IT SURE AS HELL SEEMS LIKE IT, GIVEN THAT CHRISTMAS WAS YESTERDAY AND IT’S THANKGIVING IS SOOOO OVER!!! YOUR TIDINGS ARE NEITHER COMFORTING NOR JOYFUL!!”

This is where I put my hands up all calm-like and say...

The musical I wrote, Forwards & Backwards, took up all of my free time. And all of my other time too. Mr. GPA was none too pleased. However, the show was more successful than I had ever thought it could be. 390 people showed up, some having to sit on top of tables or stand.

 

It was received so warmly that we’re showing again in January. I see you flaring up, Popcorn Day, but rest assured I will not leave you this time.

After the musical I thought that it would also be a slam-bam idea to release my second Christmas album, Snow. Homework, shmomework, right? 

 [You can even buy this, if you want! Click here! Or down there, if you want to spend less / give me less money.]

Then came finals, which destroyed me and my posture, but ended successfully with grades that would have warranted a parade in my honor if I was in high school. (That means I did well, which I didn’t always do in high school.)

I was totally jipped out of my Christmas spirit. College allows for almost none; any Christmas spirit a college student has is quickly overshadowed by some guilty thought like “I should probably be studying more instead of decorating my dorm room with cut-paper snowflakes and cinnamon-scented pinecones while listening to My Little Drum by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.”

Which I did, by the way, and thought that thought, and went back to studying when the guilt loomed too heavily. Christmas spirit is hardly allowed at college.

Christmas break came, though, ready or not. And thus began my hectic couple of days peppered with a few moments of sublime happiness: a friend’s cabin, a Christmas party with cousins, and much much more. A to-do list is attached. You will see how well I fared.

1. Upon receiving your final grades, discover that you passed all of them, not with flying colors, necessarily, but at least with a few subdued hues hopping merrily along the ground.

Achieved.
 

2. Don’t pull a muscle in your back while trying to un-stuck a snowmobile.

Failed.
 

3. Make horchata for the first time and drink it in December like the song.

Achieved.
 

4. Read for FUN, dammit. The Hobbit, maybe.

Achieved.   
 

5. Don’t aggravate that back muscle you pulled while trying to un-stuck a snowmobile a second time.

Failed. 
 
6. Avoid listening to The Christmas Shoes even once. 

Failed. (And don't click that link if you don't have to.)
 

7. Get your annual massage with Christie.

Achieved.
 

8. Don’t somehow jab yourself in the elbow with your thumb and injure it while boxing on Kinect. 

Failed.
 

9. Avoid listening to The Christmas Shoes even twice.

Failed.
 

10. Don’t throw out your back playing Kinect because it will limit your movement on Christmas.

Failed.
 

11. Go to the chiropractor on Christmas eve.

Achieved.

And I suppose that brings me to where I am today. Feeling nourished, Popcorn Day?  I don’t want to give you too much too soon; you may get diarrhea.

So I shall return to regular posting.

“Why I’ve sucked so hard at blogging lately” or “Is Brian posting on some invisible blog we don’t know about?” or “I wish I could juggle better”

So it’s been three weeks since I’ve posted something, which is, like, unheard of here at Popcorn Day. I’m so sorry, my dear readers.

I planned on this, my senior semester of college, to be busy, but controlled.

Eighteen credits = doable.

A job = possible.

A blog = yes! Plenty of time! 

All was going according to plan until I realized that this was my last semester in which I can present the musical I’ve been writing for four years, Forwards & Backwards, to the only people that care about it here at Bethel. 

Our official picture:

 

[This is a link to the Facebook page of Forwards & Backwards so you can see what we’re doing and the music I’ve written. Follow us and COME TO SEE IT ON NOVEMBER 20TH, PEOPLE!]

That being said, "Popcorn Day time" has become "Forwards & Backwards time", and I’ve neglected you.

The bad news is that I’m probably going to continue neglecting you until after November 20^th, when maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to breathe a little bit. I’ll come back around Thanksgiving to find a gray and emaciated Popcorn Day with sunken eyes and stuff it so plump with holiday spirit that the walls of its stomach will explode. The life that comes back to Popcorn Day will be more inspiring than that horrible Christmas Shoes song (I recommend that you don't click that link), and the world will start spinning again, I promise. In the meantime, I have to be crazy someplace else.

To keep you entertained until then, here are links to my most recent sculptures. They’re web-based, so you can all see them! Yippie-kai-ayyy!! 

602 Free Cups

 You Say You Spilled (But I Say Bullshit)

Anyway. Catch you on the flipside, readers. 

"Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. Please try your Nice Chinese Food with Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glorious history and cultural." *

An interesting little piece of realization came to me the other day while eating food from the Asian line at the Dining Center: Chopsticks are shockingly accurate instruments for gauging how high-strung a person is.

For example, people who can be described with words like chill, laid-back, or easy-going tend to have no problems whatsoever using chopsticks. Their wrists are calm, their fingers are unperturbed, and the chopsticks look like natural extensions of their body—like a Buddhist Wolverine. 

[He must do yoga.]

 

On the other hand, people who, say, are a little more stressed-out than others, maybe breathe a little too much from the chest, maybe bounce their legs up and down when sitting idly on a chair…(you know, people like me…) CanNOT work those damn chopsticks. 

People like us, who maybe idolize relaxation, go on trips just for that reason, or take time out of our day to sit in a hammock and relax even though all we can think of the whole time is what we’re going to blog about next (hellooooo), have some problems. We tend to go towards three techniques of chopstick usage:

1. Eat a third of our meal before giving up and searching for a fork, mumbling something like, “Errr…give up…I can’t…damn…FORK!” 

2. Go completely ape-sh** and use the chopsticks to stab at the chicken in our lo mein with bloodshot eyes and a strange sense of obsessive patriotism. 

[This is the second draft of this drawing. The first one is far too creepy, so I'm leaving it out. 

Oh, what the heck. Here it is...]

[I think this qualifies as "ape-sh**." 

And yes, those are American flag lightning bolts.]  

3. Buck up and pretend like everything’s normal, and hope that nobody sees the mangled mess of appendages and wood coming out of our wrist. 

So that settles it. Chopsticks usage has nothing to do with practice or culture. If you can’t use chopsticks, your character is to blame. The only probable solution is to quit your job, drink more wine, take up yoga, maybe some Ritalin, move to Asia and become a monk, ring more gongs, light more incense, probably smoke pot, stop watching Jersey Shore, and breathe from your freaking abdomen. This hasn’t been proven, but it has got to be more effective than practice.

*This title is quoting the wonderful, lost-in-translation inscription on most chopsticks packages. For those who are wondering if there's a point to this, or if I'm just making fun of the Chinese. The latter, people; the latter.

The Centennial (which actually means 100 YEARS, but I don’t care that I’m using it incorrectly. Anyway…)

I’ve been waiting to write anything for this, my 100^th POST, and put it online for fear that it wouldn’t be big enough for all the splendor and glory of this monumental day. This post should be—pardon my use of such a common word of this generation—EPIC. I’m talking a moon-landing-ticker-tape-parade-erect-a-statue-in-my-honor kind of post, people. I’ve already put up 99 good ones; it’s time for EPIC.  

[This picture isn't fully necessary, but it felt really good to draw. What can I say? I dream big on special days.]

But, given that I haven’t posted for a week and a half, I figure I should postpone the world-saving, rally-inducing, room-key-throwing post for now and tell you about a dream I had yesterday while I was taking a nap. For only an hour, my brain packed a lot in.

I was working at a doggy daycare. Who knows what influenced me to dream about that, Christie Roberts. As I was cleaning the waiting room, I noticed that Sandy, a friendly yellow lab, had gotten out of the kennel room.  I gently led her over to the door that had been left open and watched as she trotted over to Bunker, a black lab. A woman came up to me and said, “Aren’t they cute? They’re married.”

It did not seem necessary to question this comment about canine matrimony.

I was just about to close the door when the lights darkened in the kennel room. Then up came risers filled with cheering and picture-taking crowds of humans, and a ring circled around Sandy and Bunker, who donned boxing gloves on their front paws. Rearing up on their back legs, they began to box.

ME: Whoa, these dogs box?

WOMAN NEXT TO ME: Yeah. They say it’s really therapeutic for their marriage. Once a week, they just start going at it. Like dogs, hahahah.

ME: That’s funny.

Allow me to mention my memories of what I saw in this dream. The dogs didn’t necessarily look like dogs with boxing gloves. Like maybe….this:

 

No, they looked like an airbrushed painting of dogs with hairy, human bodies boxing, the kind that artists who have no artistic integrity paint and then sell at the mall next to pictures of Dale Earnhardt and American flag-decaled motorcycles painted in the same style. Something like this…

[Dear Artist, 

Don't you feel like you're kind of limiting your audience to dog-loving boxing fans who have no concept of art or originality? Or do you think that this is reminiscent enough of the cliché poker-playing dogs painting that people will actually buy it and put it in their suburban basement game rooms next to their foosball tables and unused NordicTracks?

Just saying.

Love,

Brian]  

Artistically, it was pathetic. But I dismissed that because, hey, two married dogs are lovingly duking it out in my doggy daycare.

ME: Wow. I wish I could talk to them about their marriage.

WOMAN: Well go ahead then!

Suddenly I was transported into Tim and Jill Taylor’s living room on the set of Home Improvement. And it happened just like the way the old episodes would go to commercial—each chunk of the surrounding scene flew off the screen with a sound effect while that chromatic descending music played...starting with the flute, and then with the full band...Bee dee tee teedle-ee dee dee, dah dah, dah dah, dah dah, dah dah…bum bum BUM! (Tim’s guttural man noise.)

I’m guessing you all know what I’m talking about.  

And there I was, sitting across from Tim the Toolman Taylor and his wife, talking to them about their marriage. This is a paraphrase of how the conversation went:

TIM: Oh, blah blah blah. Women blah blah. Men can do much better blah blah. Ah can’t stand ‘em. Blah. Jill’s the worst. Blibbity blah blah.

ME: [Smiling, but considering punching him in the teeth for being so chauvinistic.]

JILL: Do you want me to tell you what’s the problem with Tim?

ME: Sure. [Wanting to see their trademark bickering…considering whipping out my cell phone to take a picture.]

JILL: See that handle on his back?

ME: Um, yeah. [Suddenly confused to see an actual handle coming out of Tim’s back.]

JILL: Give it a pull!

Tim then turned and allowed me to take the handle into my hand.  Then, just like a seatbelt, I pulled out a long, thick ribbon filled with many insults in bold block letters about Tim the Toolman Taylor. I stopped to read one.

“The only people that Google Tim Taylor are Google People.” 

And then I woke up.

I’m not even going to try to look deeper into that one.

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.

Phrases of this Generation: The Like-Legit-Like Sandwich

Before I begin, allow my to send out a disclaimer that this may sound surprisingly like a rant, which is something I promised would never appear on my blog way back. However, my friends, I think this may be funny enough to lose that negative title and instead be referred to as “a humorous discussion of a subject found annoying by the author.”

There are a few phrases that this (my) generation uses that just don’t make sense to me. Actually, they kill me a little. Or at least figuratively smash my fingers in car doors. My first example of this is The Like-Legit-Like Sandwich. If you haven’t heard of it, once I explain you’ll hear it everywhere you go from the mouths of this wicked and perverse generation.

The moment legitimately became legit the world started losing all coherence and meaning. Legitimately is a pretty word that also sounds long. People should enjoy using it…especially those who could use a few easy, long words to make them seem just above the smart/dumb line (kind of like vocabulary or evidently or obviously). But no, legitimately became legit, and soon everything was either legit or not legit (illegit?).

Definitions of this word have been whittled down to, “You know…it means, like, ‘for real.’”

Then shoot me legit.

And then something happened that changed the entire world forever. Some people with monosyllabic vocabularies who had adopted legit as the hardest word they know found out that they never have to trouble their brains anymore by asking someone, “What do you mean?” or, “Are you telling me the truth?” Instead, they could just say…brace yourselves…

“Like, legit, like…?”

Cryptic? Allow me to explain.

Let’s say I walked up to a friend and said, “Today I took a wolf up to the top of the highest hill in Minnesota and we had a picnic.” 

[Wolves actually have surprisingly balanced backs. They can carry pretty much anything up there.]

After hearing it, he would say, “Wait. Like, legit, like…?”

And I would be forced to say, “Yes. I’m telling the truth. I took a wolf up a hill and we had a picnic of berries and potato chips.” 

[Wolves only eat SunChips in the compostable bags, even though they're noisy.]

Really, it just takes all the conversational responsibility off of my friend, so all he has to do is observe my talking and do something more intelligent than squeak or grunt when he starts to get lost.

This is what the Like-Legit-Like Sandwich is really saying:

Like #1 = Are you saying

Legit = that you’re serious?

Like #2 = For example, you actually sat on top of a hill with a wolf and it didn’t eat you?

And it says this at the same time:

Like #1 = Did you know

Legit = that I have no idea

Like #2 = how to actually form a coherent sentence?

Another use for the Like-Legit-Like Sandwich is when one is trying to explain something that they don’t have the words to explain:

“The lyrics in this song are so cool. They’re like…legit, like…I really like them.”

This is merely using the word “legitimate” incorrectly. I mean, when are words not legitimate? Are there songs that are written with words like “fliminhaha” or “sklideedoo” out there? The words, I suppose, would not be legitimate in that song. But this happening is very unlikely.

[This is the most likely place to hear goofy words like this in a song. 

I dedicate this to my great friend  Billy Sveen.]

This, my friends, is The Like-Legit-Like Sandwich. You will find that the word legit is rarely found without word like nearby. May you be forever annoyed.