From the Stranger Than Fiction department, I bring you:

The Glaucoma Hymn
(Must have sound to appreciate: read the lyrics for full effect)

At least that organization goes to the trouble. The American Lung Association never wrote a song about my ailment of choice, asthma…but then I suppose its sufferers would pass out trying to sing it. [– insert song-about-disease-of-your-choice joke here –]

Michelle Collins of You Can’t Make It Up provides a valuable service to those of us sickos fans interested in Dan Radcliffe’s progress toward adulthood:

Click here for the Countdown Clock To Dan Radcliffe/Harry Potter’s Legal Age!

She also states:

I’m going to be the first one brave enough to step forward and admit it: Daniel Radcliffe, i.e. Harry Potter, is growing up to be a stone cold hottie.

Finally, somebody dares to say out loud an opinion for which my roommate’s been making fun of me and which I’ve been not-very-believably denying I hold for the last three years or so. (Only Michelle Collins is 24, so it’s far less creepy when she mentions it.)

She then follows up with:

Sure, his eyebrows bring to mind an elderly Charles Nelson Reilly; and yes, some of his red carpet outfit choices make me wonder if he’ll one day lend his name to a Las Vegas Lion Taming Show…

…which is why you need to go read the rest of the (quite funny) post at You Can’t Make It Up: Dan Radcliffe.

It’s late, I’m bored and without romantic prospects — why not make snotty fun of other people’s personals headlines? Right. Let’s get to it.

This is a listing of the men my personals site currently thinks might be a match for me.
(Works like this: “Headline”
My comment on headline)

“Tall athletic dominant male”
Oh, sign me right up, Tarzan.

“Life’s Too Short”
Seen on approximately 394813098198148390 profiles.

“just looking,” “Looking for fun,” “Let’s have fun !!”
See above.

“Atractive italion christian man mariage minded loves children”
Is there something about being “italion” that makes you unable to double consonants where necessary? (I mean “necesary.”)

“dark edgy with alot balls”
Alot balls? Is that like rum balls or something?

“curious i am”
Apparently Yoda is seeking a mate.

“Life is short. So, enjoy it!”
aaaaauuuughgghghghhhhhh…

“Living life to the fullest”
Every single person on earth who puts this anywhere in a profile should be repeatedly napalmed.

“Super Hero Handyman to Repair Your Heart”
“A” for initiative, but no shmoopy love promises. I prefer you to have a relationship to reality.

“Love to meet someone specail”
Really? Why not try hanging out at the Special Olympics? As an added bonus, they’re likely to spell the same way as you.

(Not a headline, but in a different section, a lot of the ads specify: )
“Looking for Women or Lesbian Couple”
Pff. Keep dreaming, nerdboy, and go watch “Chasing Amy” again.

“Seeking Sanity in L.A.”
You have DEFINITELY come to the wrong town.

“Cute LA Guy Looking for Women To Watch Me”
<idiot voice> Why, watch you do what?? </voice>

And last but not least, let’s make fun of a personals picture: There is NO WAY this man is actually looking for women, as he alleges:

Three words: Corky St. Clair. Am I right??

Aw hell. To sum up, I’ll tweak Albert Brooks’ line in Broadcast News: “Wouldn’t this be a great world if cynicism and jaded negativity made us more attractive? If “bitter” were a turn-on?”

If that were true, I could obviously be a polygamist.

My neighbor continues to exhibit strange interpretations of the purpose of our hallway.

After Christmas I kind of figured we wouldn’t have anything new from her to look at, but I underestimated her creative energies. Pretty soon this arrangement presented itself:

Magazines. Laid out for perusal in front of her door. Either she had plans to make her visitors spend a long time loitering in the hallway before she let them in, or else she was celebrating the little-known (and less-appreciated) Dentists’ Office Waiting Room Day.

A few days after that her vision expanded. She would not only thoughtfully provide reading material, but she would offer storage and display space.

Weary travelers would have a place to put their books, tchoktchkes and Franklin Mint commemorative plates. No visitor of hers would be forced to carry their high school track trophies any further than her threshhold. But they still might have to wait a bit before seeing her, as the continued presence of the magazines attested.

I can hardly wait to see if she starts offering comfy chairs. Maybe if she does I’ll make an appointment. Either that or I’ll “contribute” some stuff to the shelves. After all, at the moment her kind offering is going to waste.

I now have an iTalk and I’m afraid of it.

An iTalk is a little attachment you can plug into the top of your iPod that changes it into a voice recorder. I asked for one for Christmas, because I’ve been thinking about taking this writing workshop where you write spoken word stuff and perform it in front of the workshop and get helpfully critiqued. It’s a little pricey, but I audited the class once and I really liked where the instructors’ heads were at, much as I did not expect to…because it’s an UnCabaret thing. And though I’m sure they didn’t mean to, Beth Lapides and her followers killed my nerve to do stand-up with a tire iron. Yet now it seems I’m finding deliverance in the ranks of my former “enemies”—irony, or inescapable fate? I don’t know. They’re only dick jokes. It’s a long story.
(more…)

MEMO

TO:           My Period
FROM:      Me
RE:           Recent events

In future, please do not veer wildly from established pattern, as was experienced this last 13 January. In specific, do not taper off as per usual, giving every appearance of having diminished on schedule and then without warning, blithely return with a Hell’s Angels’ vengeance when we are unprepared and unprotected. This last resulted in annoyance, distasteful circumstances and increased laundry duties, for which you will be billed.

Your cooperation is appreciated.

cc:        Uterus
             Hormones

bcc:     God

I was looking for an anti-comment-spam plugin to make it so you don’t have to sign up for this blog in order to leave comments. Then I found that the new WordPress version has one built in. Why not upgrade, I thought.

Well, one reason not to would be that you might fuck everything up completely and make your blog look like a pile of recycled ass, if it appears at all. But I’m going to go ahead with the upgrade, even so. So, if my blog is looking–to you–like said B.P.O.R.A., then you’ll know why. Please excuse the assiness until I get things straightened out.

edit! Hey. ::looks around:: Everything went fine. Wow. So, uh, now you won’t have to sign up to post. I’ll go make sure it’s deactivated now.
Never mind.

Sometimes I feel I may have roped myself into a corner here on this blog, with the “Reporting the Found Funny” thing. Because we all know that sometimes the function of a blog is to whine. And God knows I like that function of it, and whining in general.

At least I’m generally kind of comedic while whining, or so I’m told. I once had a writing job I was terribly concerned about doing well enough, and one day I called a friend to declare that I was a complete wash-out at it, utterly unsuited and had furthermore lost all ability to be funny. (Comedians do this occasionally. They believe it totally while they’re saying it–and should be coddled in their extremely vulnerable state–but in the mind of the listener? All claims of lost funniness can be completely disregarded (as you’ll probably do automatically anyway), because it’s likely never actually happened to a truly funny person in the entire history of the world.)

And it hadn’t happened with me that day, either. My friend said later that my description of why I wasn’t funny was itself funny enough that it was really hard to keep from laughing and ruining the gravity that was required of her, as a listener.

The following whine isn’t too serious a whine, as whines go, and should be considered in said not-so-serious vein, but it felt the need to be expressed nonetheless.

It’s about January.

If November and December are wintry wonder and holiday good cheer, colorful and sparkly and merry and warm and smelling like things baking and gift wrapping crinkling and ribbons unrolling, January is “Ladies and gentlemen, we now return you to your drab, wretched lives.”

My birthday is in January.

And I know there are crappier times to have birthdays—on major holidays, on leap year. But I still think about the legacy of my birthday every time it presents itself. The hallmark of my month is all the decorations coming down. It’s everything reverting to the usual. It’s *sigh* back to work. It’s trying not to tangle the lights when you put them away this time and suspecting you won’t succeed. My birthday itself is the day when all the coupons expire, when all the special offers are over, the last day to get the forms in.

January is 50 miles of frozen Kansas plain. January is everybody look busy, the boss is back from vacation…and beware, he had a crappy time. January is sweating inside raincoats while cold rain pounds your head and you wrestle a wind-contorted umbrella. January is starting diets and resolving not to spend so much. January is December’s hangover. January is no more holidays to look forward to till February, and those are just meaningless dead guy birthdays and the minefield of Valentine’s Day.

January is “You don’t have to go home, but you CAN’T STAY HERE.”

And then my birthday comes around, to make everyone all “Oh yeah…we gotta do that still, don’t we? Let’s make with the haphazard tossing of wishes…we do love ya, really, and we’d do more, but we’re fat, hung over and broke.”

I wish we had January before the holidays. It’s January we need a holiday from.