Case in point is this brief but hilarious three act story played out via text message in which nothing is as it seems…

Lol! Thanks to Jennifer for passing this one along to me. I can only imagine the look on the lying guy/gal’s face when they looked up from their cell phone and turned around to face their angry spouse.

Ever since I first seen these blackout poems I’ve liked them. I think it’s cool that you can make an interesting mini-story from blacking out words in a boring old newspaper article.

I’ve never tried to make one but it seems like it’d be extremely hard to get everything to turn out right. On the upside it seems like the format would force you to make stories like you wouldn’t ever be able to make on your own.

Check it out for yourself, here’s video of a newspaper blackout poem being made. The whole process is condensed into twenty seconds:

From what I can tell this is what the poem turned out to be:

WITH

little
to gain or lose,
he was
red
and unfinished
and forward
I don’t know how many times
over the years
he
he looked up a dress
with owlish eyes
and
he somehow
turned catastrophe into
nothing

Lol at the ‘owlish eyes’ part! Maybe I will try my hand at making one of these, seems like it might be fun.

Though I gotta say that I haven’t touched a paper newspaper in a very long time so I’ll have to grab a screenshot of a newspaper article online and black the words out in a Paint-type program or something.

What do you think about newspaper blackout poems, are they dull or awesome? Ever tried making one?

It’s a tattoo that someone had done on their arm of something from the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. The tattoo is of the carvings of the two trees, crown, gate arch, etc on the door to the doom-filled domain of Moria.

Obviously something about that part of the Lord Of The Rings story made such an impression on that person that they had this large tattoo done to permanently bind it to them. I wish I could ask that person what it was and if they’re going to have more LOTR tattoos done.

Seeing this picture made me wonder what kind of story-based tattoo I would get if I were to do something like that. The first stories that popped into my mind were something from Ender’s Game or Ender’s Shadow, two of my favorite books.

But then I then I thought about the author of those books…Orson Scott Card.

Long story short Orson Scott Card (amongst other things) is quite the homophobe and thinks that equality for gay people means the ‘end of democracy in America’.

Er, hmm. I’m thinking a tattoo of something by him might burn my skin from all the transferred bigotry so never mind on that one 0_o.

Back to the drawing board I guess, I’m not sure what kind of story tattoo I’d get. What do you think …what kind of story tattoo would you get and would it matter to you who the author was?

Tourists that come to Alaska are notorious for saying funny things. I guess this is because we can seem like such an alien place, set so far from the other states and all. And with the Alaska that you see in movies it’s a wonder that most people don’t think we’re all caribou hunting igloo dwellers here.

Well actually some people do think that lol but even those that don’t can still be mystified by the aura that Alaska is extremely different from other places in the US. This leads to all sorts of questions that seem funny to us locals like:

“What kind of money do you use here in Alaska?”

“How do you get the moose to cross at the moose crossing sign?”

“what time do they turn on the northern lights?”

I think it’s nice how excited people get about the idea that Alaska is this adventurously different and exciting place. In many cases that is actually true but in others it’s just as dull an un-adventurous here as any other state.

Having worked in the tourist industry at one point I’ve had quite a few tourists ask me funny questions but my favorite line from a tourist wasn’t a question or even anything that was said to me in particular. It was something I overheard while Jennifer and I were walking out of a local hotel we worked at one year.

Coming out of the hotel behind us were a group of tourists who obviously had just arrived and were taking their first steps out into the town to look around. They were chattering happily about all the things they had planned and places they were going to see when one of the ladies in the group suddenly exclaimed:

“Oh my god!”

What could it be? I thought to myself while quickly scanning the parking lot, nothing unusual seemed to be there. I looked back at her but she was only looking at some taxis off to the side.

“Oh my god!” she continued, “they don’t call ‘em taxis here they call ‘em tundras!” That last part was said with the happiest air of discovery, that here in Alaska even something that’s usually boring like taxis had a cool Alaskan twist to it.

So yeah I felt a little guilty giggling (quietly) to myself as I kept walking. The reason she said “they call ‘em tundras” is because the lights on the taxis she was looking at said ‘TUNDRA’ on them …because they were owned by Tundra Taxi, a taxi company local to that town.

Personally I hope no one ever told her that taxis were just boring old taxis here in Alaska. With any luck she went through her whole trip experiencing lots more happy (but hopefully more accurate) discoveries, though I’m sure she got some funny looks from people if she said “I’m going to go call a tundra now” or something like that :D.

MASKS

She had blue skin,
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through,
Then passed right by—
And never knew.

Published after Silverstein’s death in a collection called Every Thing On It this poem stands out to me because it uses simple language and storytelling to address a complex problem that affects young and old alike.

Whether you’re a kid in grade school or an office worker about to hit retirement, chances are you struggle at least occasionally with your own personal version of ‘blue skin’.

So a lady (I can’t remember her name so let’s call her Laura) had decided to break things off with her girlfriend, things were not going well at all and she felt like it would be best for everyone to just go their separate ways.

The breakup did not go over well with the girlfriend though, and Laura sensed that there might be trouble ahead, but she had no idea of exactly how much. Oh so much trouble lol.

First there were the phone calls demanding that they get back together immediately. That was okay but then she noticed that a figure suspiciously similar to her ex girlfriend seemed to be lingering in the shadows and bushes at night. Pretty scary stuff but she did her best to move on with her life, thinking that this craziness will all pass when her ex realized that it truly and utterly was over.

Then the letters started to show up at the offices and homes of her colleagues and friends. Her ex tried to play on any possible prejudices of her co-workers, bosses, friends, etc by detailing how she had been in a relationship with a woman for some time and had not ever told them. Her ex hoped to get her fired and isolated from all of her friends and force her to go running back to the old relationship.

This was somewhat alarming as Laura worried about her job being in jeopardy. She owned a house and had a lot of financial obligations and couldn’t just lose income all of a sudden, not to mention all her friendships.

However, the letters were so startling and psychotic that it just made her friends and co-workers feel sorry for her more than anything. She didn’t lose her job but she did lose her sense of this whole breakup being even remotely in the realm of what’s normal.

Far from things cooling off as time went on they seemed to be escalating, her ex was not at all ready to let go and worked harder and harder to force a way back into her life.

Around this time Laura started to hear strange noises from under the house, scratching type noises kind of like raccoons were in the crawl space or something. But she was too busy dealing with all the craziness from her ex to worry too much about it. And anyway, if she put things off for a bit how much damage could raccoons really do under the house? Probably not much.

What she was worried about though was the fact that things around her house weren’t quite right. She started to notice slight little… changes.

Before work she would leave her coffee cup on the counter but when she got home it would be in the sink. Pillows seemed to have mysteriously shifted and towels were on the floor where she could have sworn none were there before.

‘The stress of all this is getting to me’ she thought. And there was a lot to be stressed about. For some reason her ex seemed to know every detail of her life, even her future plans.

She would make a lunch date with a friend and her ex would instantly know about it. Getting an oil change, switched days off at work, no matter how trivial or important the event her ex seemed to be all-knowing and didn’t hesitate to show it. How could she possibly know all these things?

Paranoia might be too light a word for what Laura started to feel. Things weren’t adding up until one day she decided to call an animal handler to come and get the raccoons or whatever animals were living under her house.

The man shimmied under the house with a flashlight to assess the situation and see what traps would be needed. Moving the light around in the dark he found not a single raccoon or sign of animals.

What he did find were blankets and bottles and food wrappers strewn all over the dirt under the house. Somebody had been living there.

The man thought it was kind of comical, who in the world would be crazy enough to have lived under the house in such cramped and wretched conditions?

But Laura realized with horror that somebody hadn’t lived under the house, they were still living there. It was her ex!

All the pieces came together after that. Her ex had been living under the house and scratching around moving from section to section, pressing up against the floor to listen to…everything. All the phone calls, all the conversations, every movement. She was never actually alone, her ex was always slithering right under the floor.

She suspected also that her ex had made a copy of the house key and was coming into the house while she was at work. Eating, taking a shower, sleeping in the bed, rifling through all her things, having the run of the place. It was like they had never broken up.

Laura immediately had the crawl space cleared out and changed her locks. I’m not 100% sure on my memory on this but I think she also filed for a restraining order (and who wouldn’t do at least that). But a piece of paper generally won’t stop a psycho and it definitely didn’t in this case. Things came to a head when her ex took things to the next level.

Understandably wanting to have some company at the house with her (and not the under the house slithering type company either) Laura invited some friends over for dinner and coffee one night. And who shows up inside the house with them but her ex in a very agitated and psychotic state. Oh, and she had a shotgun. And she took them all hostage.

Because you see, the ex wasn’t ready for things to be over. And she wasn’t ready to stop living on the property. And she really wasn’t ready to give up control just because Laura didn’t want to be together anymore.

So there they all were, the ladies sitting stiffly in chairs under the watch of the ex’s shotgun, with the outcome of the hostage situation uncertain. Would the ex snap and kill them all or would she be appeased with promises of getting back together? Things were looking kind of grim after a while until one of the ladies was able to break away without getting shot and ran out of the house into the dark of night.

Banging on the door of a neighbor’s house she got safe and had them call the police. Next was a long crazy night full of SWAT team operations and hostage negotiation. The psychotic ex was eventually apprehended and taken to a new and much more roomy place to live than the crawl space she had made herself at home in for so long.

As for Laura she actually kept living in the same house, although I don’t know how she could do it. Maybe she moved out eventually but personally if it was me I would have packed and got out as soon as humanly possible. How do you shake that feeling of being watched, somebody with their ear up to the floorboard or a vent? Every creak or banging of a pipe would freak me the heck out. And was that coffee cup there when I left this morning or somewhere else? LOL, I just couldn’t do it and I don’t know how she did it but she’s a braver person that I am.

I do know one thing though, if you hear scratching coming from under the house don’t wait to call someone to look at the crawl space 0_0. Who knows how long the ex would have kept living under there, creeping around and listening to every little footstep of the one person in the world she just couldn’t let go of.

Every time he tries to walk past the fence of a certain house a crazy rabid dog starts to bark like crazy, snapping his teeth and pushing on a loose board in the fence to try and attack.

His only option is to go the long way around it all by taking the bus. That is until one day someone leaves a plastic bag with a goldfish in it on the seat next to him.

This isn’t an ordinary goldfish though, it has a secret…

I thought The Passenger was a great bit of storytelling, not to mention animation work, and was very happy to have come across it on YouTube. I really liked how all the comedy was done in this video, especially when the main character was in the bus.

The opening of the umbrella, how he was still smacking the bag even after the fish went back to normal, the plugging and unplugging of the headphones, etc. None of these were revolutionary sequences to the art of comedy but they were executed perfectly and had me laughing the whole time. Oh and as for the bus driver he must be the most oblivious bus driver ever lol.

What do you think, did you like it? Y/N?

To make things worse I was the shift manager so all complaints that couldn’t be solved by a regular employee were routed to me. I quickly became adept at always maintaining an extra polite demeanor even under the worst of treatment.

Some people were just having bad days (holidays and at the height of Alaskan cabin fever season were the worst times of year for this) and they felt like it was the natural thing to do to take their crappy day out on a lowly teenage fast food worker.

Maybe it eased their stress to feel superior or maybe they just needed some sort of outlet for their frustrations, either way I knew better than to get flustered or frustrated under pressure.

This extra polite demeanor that I had to keep up did have a silver lining though, it lead to a lot of funny situations. One of them popped into my head last night and became the inspiration for this post, here it is:

—–

So it was dinner rush in the middle of winter. That meant grumpy people in cars lined up around the building and grumpy people in a line to the door inside the building. Here in Alaska there’s barely any daylight during certain times of the winter and this was one of them, it was dark outside and gloomy inside which just made people feel extra sour.

I understood this and was working the front counter trying to be as accommodating as possible under the circumstances. Suddenly I realize that the drive through has completely come to a halt. ‘What’s up?’, I wonder while rushing around to put orders together.

Apparently there’s a lady at the drive-through window who’s demanding to see a menu. She had just realized that she needed to order more things but she doesn’t know what exactly, apparently she needs a menu so she can sit with the others in her car and talk it over all leisurely like. Never mind the million people stuck behind her while this all would be happening, she’s already at the window so she’s not in a hurry now.

The exasperated employee at the window says he’s sorry but they don’t have menus available because it’s assumed you’ll look at the board by the microphone where you order. The woman grows more upset and strangely even starts to take a tone of blaming him for her not knowing what else to order.

At this point I realize that even though it will slow down the front counter I have to go over there and talk to this highly agitated lady before the people in the cars behind her form a lynch mob. I walk over but as I’m walking up to the window she speeds off without taking any food.

‘Oookay’, I thought to myself, ‘well that’s the end of that I guess’. No, no it wasn’t.

Back at the front counter I’m doing my best to catch up on putting fries, hamburgers, and sodas, fries, hamburgers, and sodas, and on and on up on the trays whizzing by me when a woman steps in front of all the other customers and demands my attention. It’s her. There’s something about this lady, she just knows how to grind things to a halt.

‘Yes Ma’am?’ I say, bracing myself for a tirade but trying not to show any apprehension. Some mean customers can smell fear you know lol.

She starts in on on how she needs a menu, demands a menu, to take back out to her car so that they can all decide what extra items to order.

Looking at the menu board she is now standing in front of is not enough (and for some reason the people in the car just can’t come inside), she needs something on paper and she needs it now. ‘What am I supposed to do without a paper menu??’ she says loudly and with finality, she’s digging in and not going to move until she gets a menu.

The customers in line start to shift their weight impatiently and look at the lady with quick sideways glances, the first stirrings of a hungry lynch mob.

‘Well…I think we might have something around here.’ I say digging through a pile of papers under a side counter.

While cleaning up one day I had come across a menu for the seeing impaired, it was paper and had extra large print in case some elderly person needed to go sit down with it and then we could bring the order out to them. That scenario had never happened though and so the paper was shuffled from one neglected spot to another.

A minute or so of awkward silence passed and I was starting to formulate a plan B to appease this lady but I finally find it…a paper menu. Hallelujah.

‘Here you go Ma’am.’ I say while handing the menu to her over the counter, ‘It’s got extra large print but otherwise it’s a normal basic menu.’

She takes the menu from me, looks down at it for a second, and then looks up at me with a certain triumphant look like she had caught me doing something bad. She looked at me like I was the one ruining her day (or her life or whatever) and I was about to get my just desserts. Revenge. I braced myself.

‘Uh!’she said loudly and with disgust,‘THIS is a braille menu, I can’t read braille! Tell me just how am I supposed to read this huh?’ And with that last part she made a big show of flinging the paper down on the counter towards me and it twirled toward where I stood. It was her deadly paper ninja star that would put an end to my obviously malicious efforts to trick her with a braille menu.

She stood there with a half smirk and waited for me to…what? Grovel? Crumble? I can’t be 100% sure of what was in her mind but I can tell you that her body language and face told me that she was suddenly feeling a lot better, this dysfunctional fast food restaurant theater was a weird sort of release of stress for her.

I gotta admit, at this point I was feeling pretty embarrassed. I looked down at the paper on the counter and saw that yes it was indeed a braille menu. I could feel all the impatient eyes of the crowd in front of me staring too, now what? I could have sworn that it was a large print menu and I thought I had just seen the letters on it a second ago, how could I make such a mistake? Then I remembered.

I reached down, picked up the paper, and calmly flipped it over.

There on the other side was the large print menu. I had handed the paper to her a bit sideways and she must have turned it braille side up. ‘There you go Ma’am’, I said and pushed the paper towards her on the counter.

I made a point of showing no affect at all, lest I might accidentally give her something to latch on to for a tirade. All I wanted her to do was to take this paper menu out to her car so her and her associates could decide on what cheeseburgers and chicken nugget combos to get without inflicting more hassle on other customers.

What she actually did surprised me. She made a half disgusted half surprised noise like ‘Ugh!’, turned around, and stormed off never to be seen again! Lmao!

I can laugh about it now but at the time I was so surprised that I just stood there. Some of the customers in line laughed and someone off to the left did a slow clap.

What’s more, a few minutes later after the line was moving again while I was handing one customer a tray of food he leaned over to me and whispered ‘Good job!’ and smiled. Haha, well it was definitely nice to hear that after such a grueling exchange with a lady who obviously had a lot more problems going on than finding a paper menu.

—–

I’m sure everyone who’s worked in fast food has a whole collection of these kinds of horror stories, though I bet not all of them end in such a hilarious way :D.

It’s a picture of a guy wearing a tux and a lively white afro …I know there’s a story behind this but I can’t imagine what it could be. Got any ideas??

via Sarah Hickox

I love how the look on his face is very nonchalant too, like ‘Hey no biggie I’m just a guy wearing a tux and a GIGANTIC white afro, nothing at all unusual about this. Maybe I’ll go have a coffee in a second.’.

When I saw that picture I immediately thought of Phil Spector and the surprise fro he wore to court one day:

I don’t think anybody ever figured out what his fro was all about either. Maybe the world isn’t ready to know.

It’s not the kind of connection we’re used to thinking of, where you fall in love with your soul mate and feel an intense connection to them.

In Chinese folklore the red string of fate is an actual object… a string that’s red (are you surprised lol) but also invisible at the same time. It’s tied to a pinky finger of every person on earth and stretches all the way out to the pinky finger of their soulmate wherever that is, regardless of time and space. Legend says that the string can get very tangled up but it will never break.

The red string of fate is tied by a being called the Old Man Under The Moon and once he has bound you to your soul mate your destiny is set, no matter what you think:

—

A boy was walking home one night and was startled to see an old man leaning up against a fence beneath the moonlight. The old man was standing next to a giant bag and flipping through a book.

‘What are you reading?’ said the boy.

‘This is the book of marriages,’ said the old man, ‘I need only use one of the red strings in this bag to tie two people together and they will become destined to be married.’

The boy didn’t believe it so the old man took him into the village and pointed out the young girl that was destined to be his wife.

The boy became angry as he was really young and did not plan on ever getting married. He picked up a rock and threw it at the girl and ran away from the whole scene as fast as he could.

Many years later the boy’s parents arranged a marriage for him and on the night of the wedding the boy (well, actually a man now) nervously lifted the veil covering his new wife’s face.

He was happy to see that she was one of the most beautiful women in the village. But he also noticed that she wore an unusual decoration on her eyebrow and asked her about it out of curiosity.

Flustered, she removed the decoration to reveal a scar. She explained that when she was very young someone had thrown a rock at her and it had hit her in the face right above the eye…

—

Awkward! The question now is does he tell her he was the one who threw the rock and scarred her for life (I say yes)? And if so at what point does he bring it up, now or later?