bad words

I’ll be the first to admit that my language, when unfettered by social propriety, is pretty salty. I never agreed with pedants who claim that swearing just indicates a limited vocabulary (see–I even used the word ‘pedants’). But sometimes, when confronted with certain situations and certain people, swearing is the only appropriate response. These situations include the following:

  • automated phone menus that instruct you to simply say your choice but then pretend to not understand what you’ve said, taunting you like HAL from 2001
  • convenience store clerks who count out your change so slowly that it seems as if they’re seeing the various denominations of currency for the very first time
  • former members of the Bush cabal who won’t shut up because they can’t seem to understand that not only did their ilk create most of what we’re trying to fix but in addition to that they lost and so consequently IT’S NOT THEIR TURN ANYMORE

It just feels good, on a visceral, primal level, to believe that you’re actually saying “fuck you” to the annoying robotic phone lady, or the kid at the 7-11,  or Donald Trump.

Ironically, when I perform standup comedy, I swear less than I do in my offstage life. In performance, language rarely shocks anymore, and the word “fuck” , for most comics on the road, has become a bright shiny object held up to draw the focus away from some hackneyed, hollow joke. Don’t get me wrong–the word is still in my quiver, but I don’t reach for it as often as I used to.

I’m reminded of a comedian who, by way of explaining that he didn’t swear, would point out that it was because he couldn’t think of any words strong enough to express his anger. Which leads me to ‘gadzooks’.

I want to start a movement to bring back some classic, if archaic, words for those “hit your thumb with a hammer moments. A cathartic way of expleting, without deleting. I propose the following ‘starter set,’ with annotations.

  1. Zounds! This one has a little extra spriritual component (it’s short for “God’s wounds“), and as such is useful when you need to swear in a religious setting–“Zounds! How long is this funeral gonna last, anyway?” Strangely, Zounds is also the name of a manufacturer of hearing aids, so context is important.
  2. Holy Mackeral! I like that this one starts out religious, and then veers toward the surreal, allowing you to express the kind of anger that is so disorienting you actually start to imagine fish with supernatural properties.
  3. Yikes! My favorite. Short, punchy, hard ‘k’ sound…channel your inner B-movie star the next time you’re stuck waiting for the cable guy–“Yikes! I thought you’d never get here, my good man!” (note: the “my good man” part is optional)

Speaking of B-movies,  I’d also like to bring back some phrases from the era of black and white cinema, when you knew who the good guys were by the words they shouted, and you didn’t have all that pesky moral ambiguity you see in indie films. Have fun and make the travails of your workaday life into a melodrama!

  • For instance, when the waitress at Denny’s brings you a Grand Slam instead of the Moons Over My Hammy you ordered, bang your fist on the table, stand up and yell”This is an outrage!” It’s best to have one of your friends warm up the car if you feel this about to happen, as you’ll most likely need to move to a different restaurant.
  • Another standby from the movies works like this–someone has told you something you KNOW is wrong…all you need is one word–“LIAR!” The bank teller says you’re overdrawn? Look at her and loudly proclaim “LIAR!” The pompous twink at the Gap says something isn’t made in your size? “LIAR!” (note: this is most effective if said while pointing at the offending party)

Lastly, on the topic of name-calling…ever felt hamstrung by the fact that you reallyreallyreally wanted to call someone a name, but ‘dick’ seemed a little too eighth-grade, and, if a woman was the object of your scorn, well you just didn’t have the time in that moment to navigate shifting waters of feminist theory to determine whether you could use that particular word? Here are some possibilities:

  • Rapscallion–good to bring out in a bar fight, perhaps…if that doesn’t make them back down, try ‘wastrel‘.
  • Chowderhead–this has the advantage of being gender-neutral, with a certain upper-class sensibility…you can up the ante byprefacing it with “Now listen here, you”.
  • Ninnyhammer–now this is a multi-tasking insult–not only does it say to people  ‘I need four syllables to describe your incompetence,’ but it also sounds like the name of the tool with which you would hit them.

I’m sure I’ll think of some others…oh yeah…here–I wrote it down on this…no wait–now I just had it…oh, bother!

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obama resigns, tired of ‘knuckleheads’

During an appearance with Oprah Winfrey, President Barack Obama today resigned from office, claiming he had become “tired of dealing with knuckleheads.” What follows are excerpts from the surprisingly frank hour-long interview:

Oprah: This week many people are celebrating the killing of Osama Bin Laden, yet your poll numbers are still just slightly over fifty percent. And now, you’re walking away. What would you like the American people to understand about your three years in office?

Obama: First, Oprah, thank you for having me on your show. What I don’t think the American people realize is that my job is…how can I put this…HARDER  THAN THEIRS. I know you all thought I was cool as a symbol—heck, I even got caught up in it—but I wasn’t campaigning to be a symbol. I was handed a big steaming plate of shit by the last guy and was asked to turn it into a chef’s salad. But since about week two of my presidency, everyone’s ‘disappointed.’ Seriously?

Oprah: But your campaign was all about ‘hope’ and ‘change’–

Obama: First of all, what I meant was that the American people should feel free to ‘hope’  for ‘change.’ Sure, we all had a good national catharsis yelling ‘Yes we can!’ but at about ten o’clock on January 20th, ‘we’ weren’t in charge, I was. And this may surprise those of you who missed the last two hundred and thirty-five years of American history, but the guy you pick as president has to work with a whole bunch of other people to get things done.

Oprah: When you were elected, it seemed you had the political capital to make your agenda a reality. What happened?

Obama: Of course, when my approval ratings were higher than Jesus, I wanted nothing more than to enact all of my ideas by some sort of sweeping decree. But it doesn’t work that way, because my office, as it turns out, is located in the REAL WORLD. So I decided to work with the Republicans—fine, I was an idiot on that one, but I actually thought, if any issue were a ‘life or death’ issue worthy of some teamwork, it might be health care, seeing as it deals with…life and death.

Oprah: I think we’re seeing another side of you, Mr. President. What are your real feelings about your critics?

Obama: Well, Oprah, I just get so irritated. I’m so tired of dealing with knuckleheads. But see, the President’s not allowed to be irritated. I’m sure most of you, in your non-presidential jobs, blow off steam once in a while. Not me. I have to be poised and calm, because if I showed the American people how I really felt, it wouldn’t look…presidential. And, there’d be panic in the streets. I swear, Oprah, I’m losing it. If one more person asks ‘what is President Obama’ going to do about this?’ I will snap. I just want to hand them copies of my morning briefings for the last few months and say “You figure this out.”

Oprah: Don’t you have an obligation to the millions who voted for you?

Obama: The people who most annoy me are the people who voted for me. I give the right-wing credit for one thing—they know how to do big-picture thinking. Instead of getting bogged down with details and facts, they simply lump every issue under the heading of ‘family values.’ Whereas my progressive supporters all seem to think that if their particular issue wasn’t made into law by April, then not only did I fail, but I violated their trust and abandoned my principles.

Oprah: Well, to a certain extent–

Obama: I’m not finished. I want to address the people who voted for me. To the sixty-six million, eight-hundred eighty-two thousand, two hundred thirty people who could get past the fact that I’m an Islamic Kenyan socialist, I’m sorry I couldn’t please every one of you. Oh, and I also wasn’t able to do everything I mentioned AT THE SAME TIME .

Oprah: We all remember specific things you promised as a candidate. Why have you not been able to deliver?

Obama: Well, as luck would have it, I didn’t get chosen as President of Gays in the Military, or President of the Environmentalists, or President of the Public Option People. I have to be president of everyone. Which means, somebody’s shit is gonna have to wait. When you’re home, don’t you make little to-do lists and prioritize? Now, imagine if your family had the national media get on your ass because, let’s say, you told them you planned on cleaning the rain gutters but didn’t get around to it yet because you were too busy fixing the broken pipe in the basement. All of sudden you’re having to defend yourself on MSNBC, saying that you realize progress has been slow on the rain gutters but that you are still committed to solving the rain gutter problem.

Oprah: I really appreciate how honest you’re being here.

Obama: As I’ve said, I don’t have the chance to tell people what I really think anymore. I’m too busy trying to figure out a way to keep some sort of health care for people, just in case they start clobbering each other with signs at town hall meetings, raging wackjobs at Tea Parties start shooting people. I didn’t even think the whole ‘Tea Party’ thing was a movement—it’s not like I can actually hear what you’re screaming at me when you march in front of my house—I’m usually way in the back…I thought it was just a bunch of really loud Revolutionary War buffs—you know, like some people reenact the Civil War on weekends.

Oprah: Is there anything else that you’d like to get off your chest?

Obama: Yes. Yes…I’m not thrilled with ‘Saturday Night Live.’ I don’t expect it to be as consistently funny as it was thirty years ago, but Fred Armisen as me? Really? A white guy in blackface?

Oprah: So, you’ve made up your mind to resign. Is there a chance you’ll change your mind?

Obama: Bottom line is, the job just isn’t worth the hassles. And, frankly, it’s too hard. Do you think I really understood every arcane and obscure detail about economics when I was running? I’ll bet most of you didn’t know what a derivative was either. I hired some smart people and we’ve tried to keep all the plates spinning. And guess what? Sometimes two smart people have different ideas about how to fix things. And they have to work out a compromise!

Oprah: When I had Jay-Z on the show, he mentioned how difficult it is to be on top.

Obama: I know how he feels. I suppose I’ll miss some things about being President—there are perks. But there are definitely things I won’t miss. Do you realize there were mornings when the person who woke me up was Rahm Emmanuel? Can I really walk away from that. I think I’m gonna look for a community that needs organizing—that’s where the real changes are made. Can I really walk away from the Presidency? Yes I can.

Oprah: Former President Barack Obama, everybody! Now if you’ll all look under your seats, you’ll find a special gift—it’s a copy of his autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope”!

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it’s a good thing i’m not president

I’ve never wanted to be in charge of anything.  I’ve certainly never wanted to have political power, and I don’t envy those who have it. I’m content to change the world five hundred words at a time with my little comedy pieces.

Besides which, I’m probably not very electable, and it’s not my stands on the issues as much as what some would call ‘voter negatives’—namely, that I’m a bisexual, pot-smoking socialist. I don’t doubt that there exists an vast army of horny, stoned leftists out there as a potential base, but it strikes me that this would be a difficult group to galvanize, what with them already busy getting laid and getting high.

I may not want to be president, but I do have a big enough ego to imagine myself as president.  And in looking at what President Obama was handed for his first term, I think if I were in his place, my first official act would have been to flip out.

Seriously, what a crappy gig this is.  Two (three? I can’t keep track) unwinnable and unpopular wars, collapsed banks, outsourced companies, nobody has credit, nobody has a job, nobody wants to buy cars because they don’t have credit (and don’t have jobs to drive to),  and, for nostalgia’s sake, let’s throw in travel advisories for the country right next to us, a country that is apparently governed predominately by drug lords. Oh–almost forgot–most of the world isn’t really sure they trust us. Here’s the paperwork on all that, Mr. President. Any ideas?

As we approach the next election cycle, pundits are already assigning letter grades to the President–and they’ve been doing it since his ‘first hundred days.’ First hundred days’ is such bullshit. Do the math, people. A little over three months, and we’re seriously judging  performance? It takes most people more than three months to get the hang of a new job in the mail room. Hell, it took me four months at my last office job before I figured out where they kept the extra paper clips.

When I look at my last hundred days, I see a mixed record. In no particular order of importance, my accomplishments include:

  1. filed income tax returns
  2. signed up with two temp agencies
  3. responded to 137 Craigslist job leads
  4. wrote over several allegedly funny essays
  5. organized the music on my computer into folders
  6. bought two pairs of jeans

In my defense, I didn’t have a staff of advisors, so I was pretty much flying solo on most of this.

I don’t think my personality is suited to the demands of the presidency, anyway. First, I’m not a morning person, and I understand the president has  ‘morning briefings’. Now, everyone I worked with at the old office job knew that until 11 o’clock, it probably wasn’t a good idea to talk to me, let alone hand me a bunch of paperwork.

Secondly, and I’m not proud of this–I’m a ditherer. If I absolutely have to make a decision, it takes me for-freakin-ever. I once spent three and a half hours in a book store trying to decide what to get for a girlfriend’s birthday. “Hmmm…I could get this, but she might have that already, maybe this is too serious, she might hate this, screw it I’ll get a gift card. ”

So imagining I were president, let’s look at just one decision from Obama’s first year. The Somali pirate thing. Here’s how I would have handled it.

After making several dumb pirate jokes, I would call my advisors in, and then I would have to sort through the options. And then I would freeze up.

“Hmmm…I could send in the Navy, but maybe that’s too aggressive, and what if the pirates shoot the captain, well then we have to shoot the pirates first, but they’re teenagers, and what if we miss, then they shoot the captain anyway, but if I don’t do something right away I look weak, but wait I’m the President so who cares what they think”–and by the time I called my advisors back in, the pirates would have actually seized our Navy ship. Maybe our entire Navy. And the pirates would have been in their mid-thirties.

I think it’s pretty clear that I shouldn’t be president. What’s also clear to me is that it’s a thankless job for anybody, and maybe we should hold off with the evaluations and grades. In fact, I have an idea–maybe, instead of the first hundred days, we should judge him on his first 1460 days in office. Then we can…vote on it or something.

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