How I Plan to Become an Overnight Internet Sensation

I can't tell you how many times I've cursed myself for not being the creator of the Hipster Olympics YouTube video. I find it so frustrating that I spend so much creative energy trying to be snarky and witty when all I need is a blog like "Stuffonmycat.com", "Dontevenreply.com" , or "Passiveaggressivenotes.com" (all of which you should check out because they're funny as hell). All you have to do to make some web advertising coin is snap some footage of your baby on pain killers dancing to Beyonce or Photoshop Bea Arthur's face onto a naked playmate's body and everyone's emailing it to everyone overnight.

Whywontanyofthisshitchargemyphone.com

This is a forum for people who have a seemingly ample supply of power cords, none of which are compatible with their cell phone. Am I right?

Namethatstink.com

I'm in the process of figuring out a way to upload smells. You could ask a forum of housewives, "Is this milk bad?". It could be a sort of trivia game if I can get it all worked out. Is it hamster cage? Or chicken Piccata? Anyway, it could work.

Howdoyouevenusethis.com

I know that anyone who's anyone uses one of these things to make their coffee. But how the hell does it work? Someone gave me one as a house-warming gift and I just want to know how to use it.

Theavocadosibuybutnevereatbeforetheyrot.com

This is a forum for people like me who buy more than one avocado at a time and always end up throwing them out because you put them on the window sill and forgot all about them. Oh, and I've tried that little experiment where you shove toothpicks in the pit and try to make it grow. It doesn't work. I end up searching all over the kitchen for the funky smell until I realize it's moldy water in a Dixie cup and all I've grown is staph.

Hipsterporch.com

This is a site that caters again to hipsters. For some reason, people love to post pictures of hipsters and Brooklyn and bicycles on the internet. Here is a picture of my hipster porch. Notice the scooter and bicycles which suggest we're very active, juxtaposed against the ashtray filled with a giant pile of cigarette butts.

Acaseforeuthenasia.com

This is a human rights cause that's really close to my heart. There's a growing epidemic of dogs chewing shit up. This week it was just my Vans, but next week it could be my face. I know this issue is controversial but I'm just trying to raise awareness.



The following photo was taken at my place of work were I have to clean up after a two-year-old and his five cats. You can't see it in the picture, obviously, but there is a nanny-cam in this room. When I am confronted with the footage of me seeing this mess, acknowledging it, snapping a picture of it with my cell phone and then leaving it exactly where I found it, I will refer them to my nanny worker's rights campaign website,

Notinmyjobdescription.gov

The preceding photo can also be found on Thingsthatmakemedryheave.com.

To save on-the-go gals like me some money, I have come up with,

Proteinbartastetest.com

This one was gross. Have you ever accidentally eaten deodorant? I might have guessed had I read the ingredients, one of which was "pea powder".

So, those are a few of my ideas. I'd love to know what people think. Also, if you think you can do any better, by all means...

Why I Might be a Bad Person - 1

Have you seen the Burger King commercials with the father and son who are cursed with tiny hands? Well, if you haven't seen it, the whole shtick is that this guy is explaining to his son that he has miniature hands and is sorry to have passed this unfortunate trait on to his offspring. And while life will be a struggle in many ways with this defect, there is some redemption thanks to Burger King's Junior Whopper, which fits perfectly into their hands made entirely of pinky-fingers. They can order the baby version of the fast-food sandwich and tell everyone its the grown-up version because it looks like the big-boy burger, relatively speaking, when they wrap their tiny digits around it.

I could have saved Burger King's advertising department a shoot-load of money. Instead of hiring some Russian computer science major to digitally shrink the actors' hands, they could have used this guy I know who actually has hands that small. He would have done it for cheap, too, because I am fairly certain that no one will hire this guy to do anything else since he has frighteningly tiny appendages.

I have so many hang-ups but usually I'm able to overlook even the most egregious of physical issues including halitosis, webbed toes and even a laser-eye (and I know it's "lazy eye" and there's probably even a less-offensive name for it but a good friend of mine once coined it a "laser eye" because she said it was as if the thing was shooting a jerky blue light beam in different directions, making the imaginary zeeeeeeeee! zeeeeeeeee! zeeeeeeeeee! noise as it threatened to sever everyone's heads). However, I can't stand to be anywhere near this person and his toddler hands.

I don't think I can do them any justice by describing them in words. So, if you could get your digital camera and take a photo of your own hand and then zoom out as far as possible. Or, even better, upload the photo onto your computer and open it in Photoshop - I know Photoshop is hard to use but I think there is a tool that is represented by a minus (-) sign - just click the minus sign until the computer sends you some kind of error message. Now, print out the image on a piece of paper and take it to Kinko's (which I think now is actually just FedEx) and put it on the Xerox machine and shrink the shrunken Photoshop version down as far as it will allow. No, wait, actually, if you could ask someone in a blue apron for some assistance because I think they keep the machine you need behind the counter. Oh, wait a second. Scrap all that. You know when you're browsing the web and the mouse cursor turns into that little hand when you go to click on a link....that's it! Those are his hands.

But his hands aren't a cute little cartoon version of a Mickey Mouse glove. They're real human hands and they're not cute. And boy oh boy I cannot stand to look at them, let alone be touched by them. One evening we saw this fellow out at a bar and he came over to say hello. Now, whenever I see him, I take comfort in reminding myself not to look at them and this usually works but on this night it didn't help a lick.

He'd clearly been drinking all day because he had no concept of the imaginary bubble we're all supposed to respect when speaking to one another. He was very close to me and speaking some nonsense that I can't report on because I was too busy telling myself not to look at his hands. I'm not sure what I said to prompt him to do what he did next but I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it. Let's just say I said something like.

"Ha ha, you're pretty drunk, huh?

And then, the unspeakable happened....Ok...here goes... He "shushed" me. But instead of shushing me by placing his finger up to his own mouth, he put his finger on MY mouth!

Asa knows how I feel about this guy's baby hands. He knows how I feel not just because he's heard me talking about it before but although he'll never admit it, he hates those baby hands as much as I do. He's just a better person than I am, that closet baby-hand hater! Anyway, he looked at me and had this astonished expression on his face. It was as if he was waiting for me to react as though I'd walked through a spider web. And while I felt like I'd walked through one inside my heart, I remained comp0sed, laughed it off and took a big swig of my wine.

Eventually the guy moved on to gross someone else out and I haven't seen him since but I think about that night all of the time. I mean, what's wrong with me? Huh? The guys hands aren't bloody or pus-y (pussy?sp?) or even a little sweaty and I can't let it go.

This is why I might be a bad person, reason #1.

Just the Tip

You Gotta Be Fucking Kidding Me!


A group of yuppie friends are out at dinner. They're all sitting around a big table and the air is filled with conversations about work and play and life in general. One guy, Frank, turns to his friend Jim and mentions that his mother is interested in having some cosmetic surgery at his private practice.

"Say, Jim, how much does a thing like vaginal reconstruction cost?" asks Frank.

"You know what Frank, don't you worry about it. We'll work something out. Your mother deserves only the best!" Jim assures him.

"I know my dad's really gonna appreciate that!" chuckles Frank as they clank their glasses of twelve-year-old scotch.

Their wives are having a different conversation altogether:

"You know Jenny, I've noticed that since so many people are poor right now, that Rosa is putting a little extra elbow grease into scrubbing those toilets. And you're not going to believe this, but I think she's been studying English!"

"Tell me about it Kimberly! Luis has been putting in extra hours, unpaid! My only complaint is that he's always kneeling and praying before using any equipment. It kind of causes a scene. He is so petrified he'll end up like his brother Raul, footless, jobless and deported after a nasty incident with a faulty lawnmower. It's actually pretty adorable!" giggles Jenny.

"I hate to say it but this recession, or whatever it is, is about the best thing that's ever happened to my picture window!" laughs Kimberly.


Their dinner and conversations go on like this for awhile. Everyone is enjoying expensive food and libations. Someone orders some vodka and caviar. Someone else orders a side of lobster tails to take home to their Peikapoo. One of the ladies orders a glass of Dom in which to dab her napkin so that she can try to remove the spot of Opus One she has spilled on her white mink. Everyone is indulging and having a good time.

Then, the waitress brings the check. She hands it to Frank. Frank opens the thing up, has a look at the bill, looks up at the table and asks, "So, who had the....?"


REALLY Frank?!

Frank, Frank, Frank, Frank, Frank....Frank Frank Bo Bank, Banana Fanna Fo Frank, Mee My Mo Mank..... Frank.

FRANK!

You got to ask yourself, Frank, WTFWJD? Do you think Jesus would make his fellow fat-cat and his wife split the bill? NO! Frank. He wouldn't. And I can tell by looking at you and your Hummer that you love Jesus so don't disappoint him by being a total ass-hat.


I'm pretty poor. I mean, I'm not poor-poor. I have all of my teeth and I smell fine. I'm just on the bottom of the middle. We always pay our bills and mortgage on or around the times that they're due. We get by but some months, just barely. We eat in a lot. We save spaghetti sauce jars and use them as drinking glasses. I work tirelessly all spring, pulling weeds and hoeing myself out so that we don't have to buy a single tomato all summer.

And you know what? I have never uttered the words at dinner, "who had the...?". No, in fact, if you're standing in line next to me at Subway, I'll pay for your footlong and make it a combo. No sweat. I don't know what it is, but I cannot stand to nitpick over an itemized receipt. And I find it so quintessentially rich, white, American to divide a dinner bill, tallying up each person's or couple's every individual morsel before adding a twelve-percent tip.

First of all, it's totally classless. Second, it is the most annoying thing to put a waitress through. I mean, you might as well walk in at 9:59 when the kitchen closes at 10 because she's going to be there all night running your six different credit cards and making change anyway. Ok, at the beginning of dinner you are allowed to tell her, "Say, sweetcheeks, we're gonna be on one check and they're gonna be on another,". I don't love this, but this is totally acceptable. She's got it all nice and organized right from the beginning and you each just had her your black American Expresses and don't worry, you didn't accidentally buy your friends anything.

This could quite possibly be one of my many, many, many neuroses. I understand that we're not all ballers and can't be picking up everyone's tab all of the time. But if you're out with friends and you don't despise them so much that you think you may go out with them again sometime, then do the classy thing and take turns.

OR, you can play a little game I like to call "Just the Tip". My sister and I love this one. We'll have lunch twice a month or so and alternate. One time, I'll get the bill and she'll get the tip and the next time, vice-versa. Get it? Yeah, and we get to have a giggle over it. Even though it's always the same routine, when the waitress brings that little black book, we can't help but say,

"Hey, you wanna play just the tip?"
"Just the tip? Are you sure?"
"Yeah, it's so much better than having to deal with the whole thing,"
"Yeah, totally. You should do just the tip, just to see how it feels,"
"Ok, I'm just putting the tip in here,"
"Ok, how was it? Was it ok? You only put just the tip in there, right?"
"Yes, yes, don't worry. It was just the tip,".