"here we are now/ entertain us" - Kurt Cobain (Nirvana)

so once upon a time some people asked me how to be funny.

not that i'm "oh-my-gosh-so-funny-my-stomach-hurts-from-laughing-now-i-can-ditch-my-ab-lounge" kind of funny but i do have a few tips:

A). don't over do a joke.
it's all too common that someone will tell a joke & get a positive response, but the problem is they repeat the joke over and over and over... jokes are like cars, they lose value with age. unless they're "classics" and unless you have your own show on E! or comedy central, you probably can't come up with a classic.

i'd say give it a week. you can use a good joke for a week, then let it go.
you DON'T want your audience to be thinking: "oooomigosh that was sooo funny... last week."

Q. How do I know if a joke is being overused?
A. you don't. so don't use it.

Q. How do I know if a joke can be used again without annoying people?
A. let someone else bring it up. if other people are like "Ooomigosh remember that one time you said "da-da-da" and it was soo funny. wow, tell that story again!"
then you know it's okay.

(more tips to come.)

"the more i learn/ the more i can't understand" - Straylight Run

once upon a time
my mom came into my room
randomly, nonchalantly
began to tell me
the story of my birth.

"It hurt so bad!" she cried
burying her face in my pillows
"it felt like you were
trying to push you're way out--
through my back!"

I'm silent.
then, confused, respond
"I'm sorry?"
what exactly was i supposed to say?

then, grinning,
"you know--
i never could take direction."

"we should get jerseys/ cause we make a good team"- RK

I hate it when people say "I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat meat."

yes, i know what a vegetarian is. do you know what redudancy is?

& tell Uncle Sam i said "what's up"

I’m not sure how many people are actually reading this, but I think blogging is like tanning and shaving your legs, and having sex—once you start you’re pretty much obligated to keep up with the program.

While filing my taxes, my mom interrupts, insisting that the social security number I used is wrong. I say this is the same SS number I’ve used since I started my first job five years ago & Uncle Sam hasn’t complained so far. This gives us both the picture of me, fifteen years old and driving pepperoni pizza around the Sioux Falls vicinity, having inadvertently stolen someone’s identity.

I’m giggling hysterically. ID theft gets about as much news time as the Iraq war these days so I’m pretty jazzed about becoming an ID crook. This may just skyrocket me to fame.

I tell my mom all I need now is breast implants and I could spring for my own reality show. (After Jersey Shore I’m convinced that in order to be on a reality show, I only need either breast implants or an alcohol problem. And I hate vomiting. Plus, I think alcoholism is too expensive while breast implants would at least be an investment.)

She isn’t convinced yet so I explain this could benefit my journalism career, “I may even make it on CNN!” She’s not amused.

I try to ease her worries. “Look on the bright side. With any luck, I’ll have stolen someone’s ID who is at least getting a decent return.”

(We later deduce I have the correct number, and am not, in fact, a criminal.)

Anyway “EZ File” finally says “Subtract line 10 from line 9” or whatever, to determine the amount of the return.

My eyes are glowing with dollar signs in the pupils. Maybe I can actually make back a fraction of the mortgage I spent on text books this semester.

My glittering visions don’t prove themselves gold when I notice the second line is bigger.Mom double checks our work, then glumly explains that I owe money.

“Is this some sick joke?” I probably make about what Angelina Jolie spends taking the kids to McDonalds. “That’s so unfair!” I complain. I thought you had to have a substantial income to owe money.“Come on—I’ve been transporting pizza not marijuana!”

She leaves me at the computer, pouting and rethinking that whole ID theft thing.

Oh i'm supposed to think of a clever title too?

How does one open a blog entry? Someone told me to blog about what I know. That wasn’t much help; some days I’m sure I don’t know much of anything.

But I love to laugh until my stomach hurts. And I would love to make you laugh until yours does as well.

I think I know how to make you laugh. Unless people have been humoring me for twenty years, which would be downright insulting.

This is the first think you should know about me: I’m not going to be fake with you because I don’t want you to be fake with me.

If you say something you think is funny, but I don’t think it’s funny, I’m not going to laugh.

Some people think that’s me being rude, but I’m not going to patronize or humor you, nor should you want me to. Sure, I’ll sit there with a smile on my face and let you laugh it out. (I’m not going to say something sarcastic or snotty about how you make lame jokes.)

I want to tell Chelsea Handler stories. Her stories are complete tangents but hilarious! I love her. Honestly, if I was promiscuous, an alcoholic and Jewish, we’d just as well be roommates. I’m neither of those things, although promiscuous content daily makes its way into mainstream media and therefore my life.

I’m borderline nympho thanks to my church and wasting my money on pop culture magazines. Plus I developed this habit of leaving my house every day, and it was basically downhill from there. Really, I can barely check the mail anymore—the snail mail, mind you—without being morally offended. There’s no sense in discussing email, because I haven’t sifted through the Junk mail section of my email since sixth grade and thought Viagra was a brand of bottled water.

Plus I’m twenty, and according to Freud, I have eight years of all this built up sexual tension manifesting itself in my subconscious. And unless I plan on joining a convent anytime soon, I think I’m just going to have to ride this one out.

But I digress. I warned you I don’t know what I’m doing. Where was I--Chelsea Handler? Oh yeah. I was going to say maybe I can be the non-sexually active, dry, Christian Chelsea Handler for the, oh I don’t know, eight people who are reading this.

Christian. That’s something I’d liked to start with, right off. I hate how when your friends (for lack of a better word) “find out” you’re a Christian, then decide to alienate you from all the conversation topics they assume you “wouldn’t approve of” or wouldn’t understand. Basically they treat you like you’re some moral guidance counselor, or an idiot. And they do it in a loving way, too, like that’s what you want.

Like when someone swears, then they look at you, almost surprised, and then call you out--in front of everyone else, no less-- and go “Oh! Sorry, Joanna.” Like I’m four years old. Or speak a different language.

Yeah, thanks. Because I really want to be spoken to condescendingly, or involuntarily made into some speech cop. And what are you apologizing to me for?

Whatever. Yes I’m a Christian, but I’d also like to think of myself as well-read. I’m in college, and I pretty much only watch MTV and Vh1, so let’s assume I understand your language. Even though I don’t speak it. Think of me as bilingual. (I’m now four-credits short of a minor in Spanish, BTW.)

How do I end a blog entry? Sorry if this is unorthodox.

Maybe someday I will tell you who I am and all about me. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I will tell you gradually because I know you’ll stop reading as soon as you find out I’m just like you.