dream-psych-101

So in my dream last night, this dude I half-knew from grade school for some reason was staying with me for a couple of days. Let’s call him Michael H. I wasn’t super friends with him back then, but it was basically the consensus around Birch Elementary that he was one of the funniest guys in our class. Always joking around, always laughing. Bottom line: Michael H. was just a funny guy, and chances were, some day he was gonna use that sense of humor, by golly, and rake in the dough.

But in my dream, grown-up Michael H. was not the same. Somehow I had the foreknowledge that not long before, Michael H. got into some kind of accident, probably related to a car, but my dream wasn’t specific. And he hit his head and now was a lot slower, clumsy and completely unfunny. Wow. He didn’t tell jokes anymore, he just looked at you uncomfortably, as if he could feel the disappointment in your eyes, “Oh man Michael H. used to be such a gas,” “What a waste,” “He could have written for MadTV,” etc.

And it was really awkward having him around, especially after he sat on my computer, but the dream quickly started to evaporate not too long after that, and I woke up quasi-disturbed, thoughful, yargh.

On a lighter note, I’ve been really liking the word “yargh” lately. It’s not quite argh, which has that dangerous pirate connotation, and certainly not yay, which is just too poofy for me. Yep. Yargh, I’m pretty darn sure, is a winner.

what’s your favorite subway euphemism?

Now don’t get me wrong. The NYC subway system is a pretty miraculous thing. But like any public, crowded, aging great-work, it can be irksome, particularly when it stops mid-tunnel and the engineer comes on the loudspeaker to give us (if you can hear him/her) just enough information so as to slow our collective descents into primitive man (yeah, that’s right, if we’re desperate enough, umbrellas can also be used as clubs).

But what’s your favorite subway euphemism?

Mine is “earlier incident.” You know when the train stops and the engineer apologetically explains, “Due to an earlier incident, trains are running at reduced speeds,” etc. Anything could be an earlier incident, provided it happened and it happened before right now. Yargh, really keeps you guessing, but maybe that’s the point.

What’s yours?

subway-turnstile-fraud

Gee, Golly. What a week. First locksmith-blackmail now this. Ok. So I’m entering the C-train at Lafayette this morning, sort of in a hurry since it’s around 9:02 AM and the train has been wont to arrive between 9:04 and 9:08 most days (who’s counting?), and there’s this crowd of three boys (probably around 16, but larger than me, big surprise) surrounding the single turnstile headed toward Manhattan. As I scurry closer, it appears, through their gesturing and words I can half make out, that one of the boys mistakenly swiped on the Manhattan side instead of the other side, which goes deeper into Brooklyn. So as I try to swipe myself, which is difficult since they’re blocking the way, one of them asks me, “Hey can you swipe on the other side – we already swiped on this side by mistake.” Sounded like a reasonable thing to ask. But just then I hear the train coming – granted it could be an A, but who’s willing to take that chance? It must be 9:05 by now, dear God! I get flustered.

I reach toward the turnstile to enter, but before I get there: “HEY, that’s our swipe!” the kids yell. “Sorry I sort of want to make this train,” I fumble fogey-like, again reaching for the revolving metal bars. “That’s illegal!” one cries, but when I finally try to move through the turnstile, wouldn’t you know – it doesn’t budge. The kids never swiped at all!

So I get out my Metrocard, hear the train-breaks sqeaking (Shite, it is a C!) while one of the boys screams, “But we already swiped here!” “I JUST TRIED IT AND IT DIDN’T MOVE, MAN!” I yell out of nowhere, swipe my card on the 2nd try (after one flub) as the kids wryly giggle, and I stumble down the stairs just as the train starts leaving. Shite. At least I now have ample time to be pretty-darn embarrassed about yelling at some youths, calling them “man” for some reason (what was that about?), and just plain feeling-all-square and blah and stuff. Fudge, I hate work-clothes.

quick-funny

Quick-funny, woo!:

locksmith-blackmail

So at my new apartment, we get a lot of solicitor-type materials strewn across our front-gate, stuffed into our mail-slot, slunk over our doorknob, you know, friendly neighborhood circulars, colorful menus advertising the latest fusion place that just opened down the street, and the like, yet, this morning, one such solicitor just might have stepped over the line.

Ok. A locksmith (Morty’s Lock Services or something) scotch-taped his card directly onto our door – so what, not a huge deal, in itself – yet he taped it onto our inside door! In other words, he somehow got past our first, locked door, which admittedly is aging rapidly, and by taping his card onto our front door (the only thing separating us from the brutal, down-on-its-luck world), this locksmith is basically telling us, “Look, the lock on your front door doesn’t work that well, why don’t you pay me to install a better one, and no one’ll get hurt.”

Yep, I think I’ve been a victim of locksmith-blackmail. Morty’s proven what he can do, and next time, maybe he won’t stop at the outer door! Heck, if I don’t give him business, perhaps he’ll put me on some knock-list (God forbid!), inviting who knows what kind of riff-raff to try their luck with our obviously faulty front-door-lock. Then again, perhaps Morty has simply done us a favor? Maybe he goes around the neighborhood pro-bono style, hunting for break-in-susceptible rusty doors a la the movie Sneakers (circa 1992)? Maybe we should be glad Morty found us before Slippery Jim, Not-Right Larry, or other theft-mongers, who probably don’t even have business cards, let alone scotch tape, and they certainly don’t eat at eclectic fusion places! In any case, watch out for a locksmith who answers to Morty, he’s about “yeah-high” I imagine, and remember, it’s a crazy world, for serious…

just warbling (i never)

Ok. I never touched her Fallopian tubes. That’s right. And I never sang to her hamster. Oh wow, and I definitely did not steal her stamps! Why would I? I can mail things for free at my job. Doesn’t make sense. No. I most certainly never told her sickly grandmother about her tattoos. Oh, stop! First of all. I didn’t even know she had a grandmother, let alone one who’s all sick. Oh really? That’s too bad, poor thing.

Wait, what? You heard my fingerprints were on the scene? Who told you that? Oh, a source. Wait wait, hold on. Exactly what scene are we talking about and who’s dusting for fingerprints? Tyrone? Tyrone who? Tyrone Fletcher? He’s a WHAT? Ok. If Tyrone Fletcher’s a private eye, I can make milkshakes with my ass. I’m sure he did take a class online. I bet he does have a certificate hanging above his stove. That doesn’t change the fact that he used to lose his thumbs in fourth grade. You got it. We’d all be practicing cursive or whatever and he’d start hysterically crying out of nowhere, and the teacher knew by now what it was, “They’re on your hands Tyrone!” But he still didn’t get it, he’s looking all around. “Look at your hands Tyrone! Your thumbs are attached to your hands!” Oh sure, I don’t doubt he’s made major strides since then. Because people change. They most certainly do.

Look, get the hell off my lawn, ok? And if Miss So-and-So wants to come see me in person, she better bring her lawyer next time. Oh, Tyrone Fletcher’s her lawyer now too? Took another online course? That’s perfect. I’ll tell you what. Just give Miss So-and-So a little message for me, ok? Just tell her: I never loved her. That’s right. All those times I said it to her. Nope. I didn’t mean it. Just said it for symmetrical value. Symmetrical. It means two halfs of equal sides. S-Y-M-M – ok just – hold on a sec, I’ll write it down for you. Let me just get a pen from the house. No you stay there. I’ll be right out.

wicker

I know this guy who really really hates wicker. You might say, he’s just not one for wicker. It simply doesn’t agree with him. The texture. The stench of it. All the holes. Wicker literally makes this guy sick, I’m not even joking with you (I wish I was, for his sake). Because we live in a wicker-world, ladies and gentlemen, let’s be honest for a darn second. Baskets, hampers, rocking chairs, waste-containers, patio furniture, the like – we’ve got wicker every which way you turn. Come to think of it, I’m looking at a plant right now in my living room, guess what it’s sitting in? Let’s just say there’s a little sticker on the underside that reads: “Made in the United States of Wicker.”

And I asked this guy once: “What is it about W, really?” Oh, you can’t even use the word wicker around this guy, cause he’ll break out in hives or whatever, so I abbreviate it to “W” whenever I discuss it with him and he knows what I mean. “Have you ever thought about where this hatred for W really came from?” I ask. And he just stared right back at me all serious. I could tell he was thinking about something real hard. He takes a deep breath and whispered: “I never told no one this.” I nodded in anticipation.

“My first mother,” he began, “People called her tushy-face, don’t ask me why. ” I didn’t. “She had a magical way of turning polaroid pictures into real pictures by cutting off that white bottom thing. People would say she was 2 parts genius, 1 part Mets fan, and 1 part tushy-face, don’t ask me why, but I just called her mom, or sometimes tushy-face, behind her back, cause it was pretty unavoidable: I’d be talking about her to someone, ‘Oh my mom said so and so,’ and they’d be like, ‘oh you mean tushy face?’ and even though I didn’t love the implication, I eventually would just nod to avoid confusion.” He looked up in the air, “Sorry mom,” he said.

I was hoping he’d get to point soon. “I’ll get there,” he bellowed. Things were heating up. “She was a real crafty lady, you know. That’s not to say she was up to tricks all the time, but that she had a real penchant for arts and crafts projects. Well one morning she started blabbing on and on about some new miracle medium. ‘Oh I just love W!’ she kept saying.” He meant wicker, of course. “‘It’s so easy to use, yet so elegant.’ Pretty soon the whole house was filled with W – W chairs, a W dining room table, W couches, W dishes, W floors. And one evening she knocked on my door holding some new W contraption and said, ‘Try this on.’ It was a pair of dungarees made out of W. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I started crying. ‘I never see you anymore,’ ‘You love W more than me!’ but the kicker: ‘And you have a real tushy-face!’ And after I said this, she just, her face tightened up real hard, sort of like it was trying to squeeze out a large piece of poo. She grabbed the W dungarees, walked out of my room, and my life, it would turn out, cause she tripped over the W cat, fell down the W stairs and broke her neck.”

I was silent for a long while. Then asked, “Do you have a picture?” He nodded, then took out something battered from his wallet. I could tell it was a polaroid with the white part snipped off. His mom was posing with her son in front of a life-size wicker statuette of Ron Darling. I figured it was taken circa 1986. “Yeah, you know, I don’t get the tushy face thing at all?”

just warbling… (heck yeah)

Um. Lard is pretty funny. But butter, ehhh, you know, it could be funnier. And. Acorns. Yeah. They’re not the funniest either, to be perfectly honest. But pine cones. Yeoow! For some reason, they’re pretty darn, they’re just, they’ll make you chuckle no doubt about it, especially if they’re caught in your beard! Wow! Because, just imagine for one darn second, um, you got a big ol’ beard, bearwithme, and you’re rolling around on the ground, it’s autumn (of course) – leaves are about, they’re, some might say, leaves-are-a-plenty, and when you stand back up, wha-oh! What’s that? Pine cones in your beard! OMG! That’s wow, that’s hilarious! Not one, but two! I can’t, um, that’s never been done before, I don’t think. Never. At least not for a long long – many years time. Well we’ve been coming up here for two years, so at least not since then. Um. You just, you my friend have stumbled upon a sincere funny. Just amazing. Just.

Best time of year, hands down. Just. Heck yeah.