Marika Malaea

Never forget. Yum!

I was reading a bunch of sad posts on 9/11, but then thought – what the hell for? So we can be all doom-and-gloom on a gorgeous Friday when I’m having a kickass hair day? THAT’S HOW THE TERRORISTS WIN, AMERICA.

The best 9/11 joke I’ve ever heard was on Arrested Development, by far my favorite show of all time:

Tobias: As you may or may not know, Lindsay and I have hit a bit of a rough patch.
Michael: Really? When did that start?
Tobias: Well, I don’t want to blame it all on 9/11, but it certainly didn’t help.

If it’s hard to write punchlines about terrible events without offending people, it’s even harder to write good jokes about terrible events that really entertain. From a writer’s point of view, though, I can say that sitting on an amazing punchline – and not being able to use it – is like four weeks of an almost-orgasm combined with Chinese water torture. It’s a terrible place to be in:  honor, meet humor! WHO WILL WIN? Even if you gamble, you’ll lose someone who didn’t get it, or who thought you were an inconsiderate asshole. I just have to be willing to lose those folks. Love me, love my jokes about date rape and AIDS.

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Whine, groan. Whine, groan.

Yawn, kick, screech. Whine, groan.

Me: Oren, stop.

Whine, groan. Kick, kick, kick. Flop on bed.

Me: Oren – knock it off.

Whiiiiiiiiiiiine. Groooooooooan.

Me: (Mom voice) OREN. COME ON.

Oren: IIIIIII haaaaaaave CANCER.

Kick, kick, laugh.

Me: What the eff! No, you don’t.

Oren: Fine. I have diabetes!

Me:  *laughs*

Oren: Scratch that. AIDS.

Me: (claps) AIDS!

Jawohl!

Children are fucking precious. Especially the ones who imitate Hitler for fun.

Filed Under: I’m Not His Full-Time Parent, Oh Right Like Your Kid Has Never Done This, We’re Getting Him Tested For Brain AIDS, He’s Half-Jew So It’s Totally Cool, Isn’t Hitler Precious? and Well Duh, He’s Related To Me.

I used to work for AmeriCorps, though technically I worked for a vocational school as a tutor and GED-prep teacher. If you’ve never heard of AmeriCorps, chances are you’re a lazy Satanist who probably hates the homeless, because AmeriCorps volunteers help our world and stuff. For those of you who’ve actually worked for AmeriCorps, you’re probably laughing your face off at the thought of you actually caring for the homeless. In AmeriCorps, ‘caring’ wasn’t your job but ‘unnecessary paperwork’ and ‘fucking off’ probably was.

AmeriCorps, for those in the back, is a U.S. federal government program that partners with non-profits, public agencies, and faith-based organizations that was created under Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend by the blah-blah-Act of 1993. The work done by these groups ranges from public education to environmental clean-up to pretending that the sun rises and sets from the exhilarating ass crack of AmeriCorps, all while getting paid less than $700 a month. I did them all.

I was on an AmeriCorps team with three other people:  Mole Girl, Crazy, and Doofus. They were each special in their own way.  Mole Girl was one of those unfortunate girls who would never be considered pretty in her life – all the Oprah makeovers in the world couldn’t help – but she didn’t really care because she already had a boyfriend. When her boyfriend inevitably cheated on her, she broke up with him for three days, taking him back after he proposed sans engagement ring, stating ‘it was probably time to get married anyways.’ Crazy nicknamed her Mole Girl because he said she looked a newborn baby mole, the kind that resembles a blind, sniffly pink penis. I did not disagree.

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(More comics like this can be seen on Natalie Dee’s webpage.)

I am a big fan/complainer of Facebook and its amusing/hateful applications. One hugely viral success is the “25 Things About Me” phenomenon that is sweeping the website. Here’s how it works:

1. You write 25 things about yourself so people can get to know you better.
2. You tag Facebook friends so they have to suffer, too.
3. You post it, and wait for comments about how interesting you are.

I resisted; I’m not a big fan of chain mail, and I don’t have 25 things I’d like to share about myself with people I haven’t seen since high school. So I waited for an idea to hit me – I wanted a different take on it, and to ever-so-slightly offend people. Today inspiration struck, and I wanted to share it on the blog, too.

25 THINGS I’VE BEEN CALLED, HAVE CALLED OTHERS, OR WORSE…

1. A girl, as in “Oh em gee, you’re such a silly GIRL!” I was called this by another girl, who I in turn called a gutless, twat-flavored cow.

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I borrowed this survey from Bangs McGee, who finally got engaged this week! Congratulations, and thanks for being too blissfully engaged to care that I’m stealing straight off your Myspace page.

You’re trapped in a room for 3 days with your worst enemy. What do you do?
Something like this.

You’re stuck on an elevator with the person you’ve fallen the hardest for. What do you do?
Cut somebody’s face off and wear it, so we can re-create the elevator scene in Silence of the Lambs.

The celebrity you love the most offers to marry you, as long as you don’t talk to any of your current friends or family members. Do you marry them?
Sadly, yes. But I’m being realistic: I’m not going to NEED any of you people when Johnny Depp is my husband.

You weigh 700 pounds, do you get liposuction or lose the weight manually?
If I weighed 700 pounds, I would jump off a bridge. Or maybe roll off a bridge.

Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do?
Move in and duke it out, like all good couples.

Your boyfriend/girlfriend finds out they have AIDS, do you get yourself tested?
Only after I send out letterpress announcements.

You wake up and you’re the only person left alive, what do you do?
Find something to procreate with, if I know me.

Do you want a life style like Britney Spears?
Financially and pharmaceutically, but nothing else. I stand on principles.

You have to dye your hair a different color for the rest of your life, what color do you choose?
Brown. Yawn.

Someone asks you on a date, where do you wanna go?
Browse a record store, get a hot dog, peruse the Goodwill, play skeeball, get lost in a bookstore, ride on the Ferris Wheel, visit the flamingos at the zoo, march in a parade, bake cupcakes, catch a silent film, throw the first pitch out at a Major League baseball game, and a photobooth. In short, everything. (This was a lot like my first ‘hang-out’ with the Esq, minus the parade.)

You have to get a facial piercing, what do you get?
Nose, because I’ve done it before.

You have to get a tattoo, where and what do you get?
The alphabet, in varying sizes, colors and fonts, all over my body.

When is the last time you were in a photo booth taking pictures with friends?
The last time was with the Esq on his 25th birthday, back when I was 50,000 years old.

Are you mad about anything?
Just the small stuff, like how LESS THAN FIVE BUSINESSES IN AMERICA can control our entire economy and the federal budget.

Your good friend is getting beat up in a fight. Do you help out?
HELLZ YEAH I LIKE A GOOD FIGHT.

Do you like your first name?
Snotty is an adjective, and I like adjectives.

Are you listening to music?
Santogold, Cut Copy, Stevie Wonder, Rachmaninoff.

When is the last time you went to a birthday party?
Scott Rosen’s at Moe, last Saturday.

You planning on going to college?
My mom is.

Could you go a month without cursing?
It would be easier for me to go a month without breathing.

Ever been on a horse?
I’ve been to horse camp. Make all the jokes you want.

What’s the funniest movie you’ve ever seen?
Showgirls, as brought to you by David Schmader.

What are you wearing?
A turban and a smirk.

One thing I really like about my boyfriend’s family is they play board games. My family used to play them – Shoots & Ladders, Candyland, Clue, Jenga, Trivial Pursuit, and on truly ambitious evenings: Mousetrap – but playing a board game has specific pace requirements (SLOW) that my family can’t realistically meet. We don’t leisurely hang out very much, we just stop in and catch up; a board game could take up to two hours, which sounds unnecessarily luxurious. I also think my parents have a Wii now, which is the only gaming console I believe to be inhabited by very tiny, very intelligent Japanese people – how else does the damned thing work? Everyone has one except me; it’s the Cool Table in high school all over again. I’m going to shake my fist at Nintendo the next time we drive past the campus. That’ll show them! …show them my fist, anyway. Actually, I’m just going to shake my fist at Cory, who lives downstairs; he works at Nintendo, and that’s more of a direct blow to The Man. I’m all about simple solutions.

We play a lot of Apples to Apples with the Esq’s family – it’s THE GAME OF HILARIOUS COMPARISONS! The rules are simple: there’s a rotating Judge holding an Adjective Card (ex: DELICIOUS!), and you have a hand of Noun Cards (ex: apple pie, Johnny Depp, babies – all prime examples of something ‘delicious’). You choose the card that will convey the most ‘deliciousness’ to that particular judge. If I was the judge, and you chose ‘babies,’ you would have won the green card. Everyone takes turns being the judge, and the point is to win a certain amount of green cards. There’s an immigration joke in me somewhere that’s dying to get out, but I just don’t have the energy today. My lack of enthusiastic racism concerns and frightens me.

Even though there are hundreds of cards, we all have our favorite Noun Cards; mine are usually a bit on the genocidal side of things. My favorite cards: AIDS, The End of the World, Adolf Hitler, and his wife Oprah Winfrey, The Challenger Explosion, The Internet, and 9/11. My favorite second-stringers are Canada, Babies, and Mormons, all used in a hideously negative fashion, which is my favorite fashion to wear.

We were at the Red Balloon Company on Capital Hill, goofing around, when I found the Games section. I stood there in amazement, eyes adjusting to the sunlight pouring in from the big picture window. I curiously read each game title, writing each one down in my notepad, and all I could think was: what the fuck is this crazy ass bullshit?

My Favorites:

DRAGONOLOGY

In this board game, based on the New York Times best-selling book Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons, you will travel the world by AIR, LAND, SEA (and BOARD) gathering knowledge of nine different species of dragons, using ancient spells and – you know what? This sounds like science class at the Renaissance Fair, which makes me think of math, and I don’t want to do Renaissance math, or dragon math, or any math at all. I will never buy this game.

SOLITAIRE FRENZY: For Up to SIX Players!

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary describes the word ‘solitary’ (from which the game Solitaire was probably named) as:

1. Being, living, or going alone or without companions.
2. Unfrequented, desolate.
3. Taken, passed, or performed without companions.
4. Being at once single and isolated.

Taking Solitaire and adding five unwanted cohorts on top of the ‘roid-raging word FRENZY is unrealistic, and doesn’t sound like ‘going it alone.’ There is no aye in TEAM, because Solitaire is for pirates, and pirates play alone. Everyone in the world has played Solitaire at one time or another, whether you were avoiding homework or in a drunken blackout. All you wanted to do was relax, veg out, get some peace and quiet. In this new and improved game, frenzied relaxation is easy to achieve when you’re emptying the Bone Pile and stomping your opponent with a Racing Demon, or with the obscenely-named Double Swinging Door Nertz. It’s just hard for me to imagine playing late-night Solitaire in my kitchen, looking up at 3 A.M. and thinking, ‘This game could only get better if I had five frenzied friends here with me.’ I just don’t get it.

RUBIK’S SUDOKU

That’s right, folks, everybody’s favorite reminder of childhood failure – the Rubik’s Cube – is teaming up with everyone’s favorite modern math game: Sudoku! As a child, I saw the Rubik’s Cube for what it really was: man’s inhumanity to man. I could solve that thing in five minutes flat, but only because I practiced really hard at cheating. I even had a surefire way of removing the stickers cleanly, and putting them back on with the precision of a brain surgeon. But a brain surgeon that did not make me.

What is Sudoku? Can anyone really tell me? It’s a math game? It’s a logic-based number placement puzzle? The Japanese predictably love it? Oh, sorry, I fell asleep there for a moment.  With such an interesting objective (was there one?), and a fun-loving attitude (MATH: IT’S FOR EVERYONE!), a game like this could only be improved if an equally frustrating game were its’ colorful gay lover. What, you don’t think Sudoku is gay? Really?

CAREERS: The classic game of fame, fortune, and happiness!

I’m scared of the child who marches into Toys ‘R’ Us and demands this game. I wish games had a more realistic bent to them. How about – CAREERS: The classic game of drinking on the job and getting canned. Or – CAREERS: Getting Knocked Up In College Is A Bad Idea. Or even – CAREERS: What’s the Point When There’s All This Pot to Smoke? And my favorite – CAREERS: You’ll Never Amount to Anything, Just Like Your Dad. To me, this game sounds like a deflating balloon that is filled with feces. Which is what MY career sounds like, incidentally.

Heil Apples to Apples!

Trends are out of control today. I know this, because I keep buying into them.

“I’m not really into the trendy stuff,” I’ll say. I emphasize the word ‘trendy’ as though the word itself has gone out of its’ way to offend me. When I think ‘trendy,’ I think of the fashion world and its’ up-to-the-minute seasonal fare. These trends are made for starving giraffes with windshield-sized foreheads – wave to Paris Hilton – and not the human female. I should craft a strongly-worded letter to the fashion designers, imploring them to leave the Mothership and walk amongst actual Earthlings, just to get a feel for what we really look like.

Fashion fads are one thing, kitschy trends are another. Remember when bacon used to be one of your favorite breakfast foods, and was only for eating? Now you have to show your love through bacon-themed products; eating it for enjoyment isn’t the point anymore. You must purchase bacon Band-Aids, bacon action figures, bacon bumperstickers, a bacon wallet, bacon mints, bacon undies, and bacon air fresheners if you want to be seen as a true connoisseur. Until you’re driving down the street wearing a bacon uniform, driving a custom-made Baconmobile, and waving an oversized bacon flag through the streets of your city, you will not be considered a fan, oh no. I personally own all of these bacon-related things, and yet I don’t know why; probably because I love bacon so much, and I want that love to win. True love should always end in competition. Words to live by.

It’s not just bacon, it’s EVERYTHING: pirates, ninjas, cowboys, kitties, monkeys, unicorns, robots, yetis, hula girls, zombies, monsters, nuns, leprechauns, the Kraken, the narwhal, sushi, tofu, parasites, flamingos, retro everything, tattoos, cupcakes, mustaches, and even Jesus. JESUS. This year was totally His year: Dashboard Jesus, action figures, t-shirts, band-aids, decorative tape, lunch boxes, wall hangings, jewelry. That Jesus really knows how to brand himself; He definitely has a future in marketing.

So many of these fun fads are way overdone; I only need to mention the word ‘pirate’ to convey my full meaning. Suddenly, every jerk I know was shouting ‘YARRR!’ and wearing striped shirts and bandannas, even my own father. Skull-and-crossbones flags went up in homes, in car windows, in office cubicles; it felt inauthentic, because it so bloody popular. That, to me, is the definition of trend. When every white-collared white guy in your office is quoting Blackbeard and singing sea shanties, the trend is OVER. Instead of feeling like part of a rogue pack of thieving scalawags, I felt like I was stuck on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland with a bunch of thirtysomething toddlers. It was cool for two seconds, and then kind of annoying. Chop off a leg from the knee down, train a parrot to speak, develop scurvy, and forget about bathing for six months: NOW I believe you’re a pirate. Yo-ho, indeed.

I jumped on certain fadwagons, even though I loved them before they were popular (and will continue to love them equally after their popularity wanes): cupcakes, robots, bacon, unicorns, and smoking bunnies galore. The narwhal gets an honorable mention, because my partner loves it so. He claims that the narwhal is majestic, but that kind of language should be reserved for British royalty, purple mountains, and the animated Disney film Fantasia.

I wish I could like something just because I want to. Places like Archie McPhee’s, Urban Outfitters, and neighborhood boutiques make it impossible to just like something for the aesthetic, or for the memory it evokes. You can’t just love a trend, YOU HAVE TO LOVE THE SHIT OUT OF IT. You have to buy and love and buy and love, on and on, ad infinitum. You must take the thing you love, advertise it throughout your life, and strangle any positive feelings that may remain; then, and only then, will you be truly worthy of enjoying a thing like bacon in the way God intended: through good old-fashioned capitalism.

Man, I killed on cupcakes tonight. KILLED. I was a cupcake-decorating machine. Had you lived in my building, you would have heard me in the kitchen, screaming, “SHIT! SHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT!” – just like Martha Stewart. I lost a few soldiers along the way, but poured one out for my homies and moved on. When it comes to cupcakes, you have to be focused. That’s how you win.

The rest of our day consisted of:

Waking up:

Oren is nine and brimming with the energy of a hummingbird suffering from ADHD; I am 31 and filled with the majestic spirit of a sea cow. At 9:15AM, he came into our room where I was happily drooling in my sleep, and said, “It’s NINE A.M. When are you going to get UP?!” My response: *groan*

Nintendo tour:

People often say, “I can’t believe you think my son/daughter and I are alike – I just don’t see it!” I will never have the luxury of repeating that sentence. Mother-son bonding moment of the year: singing the AIDS Song from Family Guy, together in the car. Once at Nintendo, Cory took us to lunch at the Mario Cafe, where Oren helpfully demonstrated how Hitler actually ‘heil’-ed, in front of a dozen people. Then he wanted me to buy him a Nintendo DS. Yep. He’s my kid. We then went to Archie McPhee’s, where we spent too much money, as is always the case at Archie McPhee’s.

Ballard Locks:

Hiram M. Chittenden is surely the most difficult (and ugly – sorry, I had to say it) name for a place so pretty. The sun was out and we wandered around, watching the ships and rolling down grassy hills. The Esq and I saw a young girl on a leash that was attached to her unicorn backpack – at some point I said something negative about putting children on leashes, and the Esq replied, “I thought it was to prevent the unicorn from running off with the child.”

Smokey Pete’s:

We ended up eating at one of my favorite BBQ joints in Ballard; too bad they sucked ass today. Two things I love there are the pulled-pork sandwich and the tender beef brisket. Unfortunately, they were out of both. OUT. I had a lukewarm catfish po’ boy that was okay, but I really want to go back when they have, you know, a menu again.

Home:

Cupcakes galore! We decorated them with robots, ninjas, teeth, razor blades (my personal favorite), googly eyes, action figures, HitlerPeep, sprinkles, Jesus, babies, martini glasses, fingernails, and love. I gave away most of them to my neighbors or my peeps, leaving 2 per person in this household – because no one needs to eat 24 cupcakes on their own. Again.

The Canterbury:

Met up with Ben and Bree at the ‘Bury. Food, drink, racism, AIDS, doodles, good buddies, and this out-of-context quote from Ben: “I’ll go mad trying to beat it!” If only all of my nights ended like this.

I had forgotten what an effort it is to entertain a nine-year old; I’m fucking wiped OUT. Tomorrow I’m training people at work, then off to the Science Center with Oren and Anthony! Even though I’m totally pooped, this week has been the best week ever – having the kiddo around has exceeded my expectations. He’s a decent little guy, although I fear for his shoe size; if he takes after me, he’ll be like Sideshow Bob, and I cannot let that happen.