Humor

Painting A Picture

Since I make my living attempting to make my words paint a picture—or at least a good doodle—I don’t usually subscribe to the hooey about a picture being worth a thousand words. Not everybody feels this way, of course. Napoleon said, “A good sketch is better than a long speech.” And, truth be told, I find myself sometimes agreeing with Napoleon, even though I do think it depends largely on who is doing the sketch and on who is speaking. For example, I have no idea whether Martin Luther King Jr. could draw. But, still, I imagine that a sketched version of “I Have a Dream” delivered to the crowd in Washington via overhead projector would have been something of a train wreck. You see my point. On the other hand, this photo of me, above, actually illustrates Napoleon’s philosophy nicely. I could give you the background here: Setting the […]

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I Can Haz Hoomin Hart-aik

Maybe it’s because the holidays put me in a melancholy mood. Maybe because I’m again staring down the barrel of six bleak months of winter. Whatever the cause, I can’t help but read lolcats these days without glimpsing the heartache of the human condition. In a piece a few weeks ago in Salon, Jay Dixit articulated it perfectly, when he wrote, “This is all funny stuff. But I submit that the true genius of lolcats lies in their tragedy.” Lolcats, if you don’t know, is a web site and internet phenomenon that combines a photo of a cat with a funny, idiosyncratic caption in broken English—a sort of dialect known as “lolspeak,” “kitteh,” or “kitty pidgin,” which parodies the poor grammar and spelling of Internet slang. The name “lolcat” is a compound of the phrase “LOL” and “cat.” It’s simple, it’s goofy, and it’s stuffed full of references and self-references.

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Punked

When the flight attendant advises that passengers place the oxygen mask over their own faces before assisting those traveling with them, I always interpret this imperative more broadly—that I should take care of my own needs first, whether or not I’m strapped into an airplane seat, 30,000 feet in the air. Day to day, this doesn’t really happen, of course. What with dogs needing kibble and work needing to get done and kids needing an occasional warm embrace or a ride to school… my own needs often wind up in the back seat, shoved in the cushion crevice along with candy wrappers, loose change, old gum. But one thing I do hold sacred: In the morning, I don’t want anyone to bug me before I’ve cleared that first cup of coffee. Around my house, my daughter has learned to steer a wide berth for the 5 or 10 minutes it

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Relax and Open Wide: Dentist vs. Doctor

Sometimes when I’m bored and have neglected to tote some reading material—like when I’m standing in line at the supermarket, or waiting for a movie to begin—I indulge in a debate I have with myself: Which do I dislike more: a visit to the dentist, or a visit to the gynecologist? Both require me to grant access to the dark and private parts of my body that I’d rather keep classified—at least, to all but a privileged few. You might think that men can’t grok that dilemma, but my friend David suggests that the equivalent procedure for men would be a prostate exam. I’ve never had one, but—although I don’t like to—I can imagine. I admit that I don’t like the physical exposure, the act of opening wide for strangers. Intellectually, I know there’s nothing truly intimate going on. But, still, it feels weird. What’s more: I dread the way

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Sarah and Me: Junior High with Sarah Palin

On the surface, I should like her. Sarah Palin is 44, precisely my age. We were born three months apart. And like me, she’s a mom and works full-time. We should hang out, clink our highball glasses, and salute the kind of kismet that competent women often need to create real achievement. Except, in her case, the kismet catapulted her to the national stage and into history. In my case, it occasionally lands me a first-class upgrade. Sarah and I could talk about stuff that professional Moms our age talk about: The rush of being in charge; the need to wear seriously rimmed glasses, even if your eyes don’t require it; and techniques for gagging and hogtying that persistent little voice in the back of our heads that suggests our ambition comes at the obvious expense of our kids. But for some reason, I can’t warm up to her. And

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Notice to Staff and Stakeholders: Reorg

Greetings all staff and stakeholders of Coddled Teenage Boy Enterprises: It has come to my attention that there has been some confusion about your roles and responsibilities within the organization, which has led to infighting, yelling, and name-calling—this happened just yesterday, prior to 7 AM. Such behavior is both unprofessional and upsetting, and it is my job as the CEO and central “brand” of this enterprise to address this situation before it begins to negatively affect morale as well as my performance in the marketplace, also known as “school and social life.” First, a word about the incident that prompted this memo and took place at headquarters yesterday. Many of you, I know, heard it—or heard of it—and I need to clarify actual events to dispel any notion that the CEO of Coddled Teenage Boy Enterprises was at fault. Because, as you know, it’s never my fault. The incident took

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I Suspect Everyone Else Is Smarter, Better-Looking, Taller, Cooler, Cuter, Has Newer and Shinier Objects than I Do (and Is More Modest)

When you are prone to measuring yourself against others, like I am, and when you both work and live out chunks of your life online, as I do, the Internet can be a bitch. It’s easy to get caught up in measuring your impact online, and to suspect that your own self-worth is tied to it. It’s easy, for example, to measure your popularity and self-esteem in terms of the number of “friends” you have on Facebook, the number of followers on Twitter, the extent of your professional contacts on LinkedIn, your cache of Feedburner subscribers, your Web site’s Google PageRank, tags on Flickr, comments, links, visits, clicks, referrals, Karma on Plurk, and—worst of all!—your Technorati degree of “Authority,” which implies a sort of collected clout and power that, for most of us, doesn’t really exist outside of the unblinking screen that is our dashboard to the world. Those of

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