Archive | March, 2011

Further proof I am an idiot.

21 Mar

There are some foods I love because of their texture: Tic Tacs would be one, banana chips another. I don’t even like bananas, but I love banana chips. Go figure.

One thing I like to do with banana chips is to put one in my mouth and wedge it between my upper teeth so it fits there snugly for a moment before I tap it with my tongue, breaking it in half and relieving the tension. (I know – this is vaguely pathetic. I can’t even believe I’m admitting this.)

Since you’re already cringing in horror at my revelation, I’ll take it one step further down the path of shame.

About a minute ago, I performed “Operation Wedge” and got a banana chip stuck in the roof of my mouth. Except, when I went to “tap and relieve” it, it wouldn’t break.

There is a fine line between enjoying a texture and imposing some odd tension on your palette, and freaking out because you think you’re going to need to have a banana chip surgically removed from your upper cleft.

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911: Tales from Dispatch

21 Mar

If the callers decorated cakes, they might look like this.

One of my dear friends works as a 911 dispatcher in a major US city. I never want to be the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf, so I tend not to call 911 – even when it’s probably warranted.

(To wit: after going over the top of that Prius last month, the witnesses had to convince me to call 911, and when I finally did, I asked the dispatcher to send a police officer but not an ambulance.)

Apparently other Americans don’t have this qualm, because I get a text or email from my friend about once a week highlighting the latest bullshit she’s been subjected to. For your amusement, here are a few of her anecdotes.

 

Please let this woman edit the dictionary:

Wow. I asked a caller for her telephone number and she says – like I’m the stupid one, “Telephone number?! I don’t have a telephone number. I have a cellophone number.” I tried to explain (don’t ask me why I bothered) that her telephone number was indeed her cell phone when she once again insisted she didn’t have a telephone number and I gave up.

Nice. A Cellephone number. Do you think she covers her left-overs with Telephane?

Stop wiggling your tail at me:

Just had a report of a car driving erotically.

I’m still not clear on why 9-1-1 was called for this:

Oh my. This young man was saying he was at his friend’s crib and his baby mam came over and there’s a no trash passing sign in the front. I asked him if he thought it was funny to call his child’s mother trash. He said his apartment entrance had a no trash passing zone posted. He sounded young, so I pictured one of those fake parking signs you can buy in a gag store. Turns out it was actually a no trespassing sign. He just couldn’t read it.

Get your mind out of the gutter:

Early during the job, she received a call from a woman reporting a man who was asleep on a bench.

“His pants are kind of pulled down. And all his junk is all over,” she said.

My friend replied, “So he is exposing himself?”

The woman paused for a fairly long time, then responded, “No. His STUFF is scattered all around him. What do you mean, is he exposing himself?”

A big THANK YOU to the 9-1-1 workers out there. Thanks for tolerating our general stupidity.

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I think there’s probably a lesson in here somewhere.

16 Mar

This has nothing to do with the rest of this post. But it's so disturbing I had to share. (Image source: http://www.tmz.com)

Thankfully, she’s been out of the news so long I couldn’t remember her moniker. Hence I found myself googling, “woman who wants to be Angelina Jolie” and “woman with too many babies” before I stumbled upon it: OCTOMOM.

While I believe whole-heartedly in Zero Population Growth, I wasn’t googling that Waste of Space  because I wanted to mount my soapbox. No, it was actually because I was trying to come up with a good comparison to make this statement come to life:

Today I used so much KY Jelly I think I may have outpaced Jenna Jameson and the Octomom combined.

Now I have your attention, don’t I?

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Doing our best to give HR job security.

16 Mar

Yesterday morning I was showing a colleague a piece of corporate swag I had received at an event. It was a rubber watch made in the style of those “Silly Bandz” or “Slapz” things that are popular with kids these days.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? First, thanks for making me feel better for actually knowing what these things are. I feel much less grandma-esque now. Second, for your edification: they are rubber watches that are straight and rigid until you hit them on something – then they curve and wrap around it.

Hence this watch looks kind of like a ruler until you smack it on your wrist – then it curves and becomes a bracelet around your wrist. Get it?

Anyway, as I showed it to my colleague, she said, “Awesome! I love this.”

And then, seeing it go from curled to straight, about a beat later she exclaimed, “It’s like a little orange penis!”

At this point, she happened to realize she had SPOKEN OUT LOUD and that we were not the only people in the office. In fact, the person closest to us was a guy, separated only by a cubicle wall, left to his own imagination to figure out what we were talking about. She collapsed into a puddle of embarrassment on her desk.

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You’re funnier when I can hear you. (TWSS!)

13 Mar

At pottery this weekend, Jill was demonstrating how to make a teapot lid so it is sized properly and doesn’t fall inside the pot after it’s fired. As she worked with it, she explained, “You need to make sure it’s a bit bigger than the actual hole it’s going to cover.”

Then, grabbing a trim tool, she started to point at the circumference of it, “This is probably going to shrink by 15%, and if it does, it will fall right out of the hole.”

I was only half-listening from a few wheels away, but I was dialed in enough to hear the only guy in the class say, “That’s what she said.”

I couldn’t help but smile. I whip that phrase out frequently, but rarely have I had a set-up that perfect.

Unfortunately, Jill didn’t hear him, so she said, “What’d you say?”

He repeated himself, “That’s what she said.”

I’m not sure if it was a hearing thing, a sexual-orientation thing or a generational thing, but she again asked him to repeat himself.

“Oh, never mind,” he told her, clearly embarrassed for a simple one-liner to have required such notice.

And in that moment, I was reminded of something I learned years ago: say it loudly the first time. The more you have to repeat something, the more your confidence sags. This is doubly true when it comes to humor.

Even if it was funny when you started, it won’t be when you’re done beating your punchline to a pulp. Unless the whole point of your schtick is the mumble itself. In which case, you should take a lesson from this guy:

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