humans are funny

Author: laurenne

  • Letting it all out. In so many ways.


    Once upon a time, I woke up in a pile of poo.

    It’s true.

    I’d flown to Rome to find out if my long lost love was really ‘the one who got away.’ We’d always come back to each other and this trip would finally be the clincher– would we walk away married or just walk away? Since he was unemployed and living there with his family at 35, he had booked us into a—wait for it—-hostel.

    I can do hostels. And I don’t think I’m materialistic. But for such a momentous occasion, I admit I was slightly disappointed. We talked awkwardly through dinner, and I figured we just needed the first few days to warm up to each other again.

    Warm up we did.

    I woke up to my possible future husband as he paced anxiously around the five-foot square of a hostel room. Even though he screamed for me not to move, I of course shifted my body towards him. That’s when I felt the warmth envelope my knee and the smell hijack my nostrils.

    He had shit the bed. One side of my body was covered in warm poo. And my maybe-man was pacing around dressed in pajamas sewn from his own excrement.

    And we were in a hostel.

    There was no calling for new sheets, and the shower was a crusty spigot over the toilet. I knew I had to act fast or I would also lose control and add a pile of vomit to the situation. I gathered the heart-print sheets and threw them out the window. That’s right. I pitched those babies into the courtyard and watched the stained hearts sail to the snowy ground below.

    Thankfully, the hostel had been prepared for this and had equipped the bed with one of those romantic plastic sheets. Perhaps bed shitting is a popular sport in Roman hostels. I don’t know. I took those stained hearts as a sign though, and I decided not to elope with this man that weekend. I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone about the unfortunate affair.

    But during a writing class in 2008, I stood up and told the tale to twelve other students. It felt so right to tell this story. A relief. An awakening. A release of something I’d been holding in (too many poo jokes to choose from right here). Corey Podell, my friend and a fellow comedian, insisted on reading after me. She stood up and read a piece about how SHE had woken up one morning in a pile of poo. She, unfortunately, did not have a plastic sheet on her bed and had to throw out her mattress. And her man didn’t fess up to it. Instead, he blamed it on her, told her she was gross, and left in a huff.

    We’d both been shit on.
    We knew this was a sign.

    We started talking to other people and collecting poo stories. Everyone seems to have one, and with a bit of encouragement, they were all happy to share it. One friend shit himself on a drive during a cold Detroit winter and had to walk himself through an icy self-serve car wash. Another friend pooed in a French train and had to use his sock to wipe. I’ve shit myself twice while running. Recently.

    What?

    And so it was. We went along collecting poo stories, on the road to making the biggest poo anthology in the history of man.

    But then I wrote this piece about my father’s suicide.

    It was also a story I had been holding in for so long, and writing it transformed me. Writing it helped me let go of it. I realized then that poo stories are not so compelling because bodily functions are funny. Bodily functions are just funny because nobody talks about them. When society says we musn’t converse about something, it’s hard to ever say it out loud even though we desperately want to. Suicide, poo, fetishes, disease, obsession, whatever. If it’s something you wouldn’t normally share at tea time, it’s taboo. And the more taboo stories you hold inside you, the more you feel ‘wrong.’ Ashamed. Both take a toll and really fuck with your self-confidence. Nothing is wrong with anyone. We’re all fucked up. We all just need to talk about it more. The moment you let it out, it loses its taboo.

    Corey and I decided to collect a variety of taboo stories instead. We put the word out around LA, and the submissions rushed in. Our inbox became a safe haven where taboos could congregate. People sent scandalous stories about smuggling drugs in maxi pads and fantasizing about orgies with boy scout troops and accidentally promoting lynching on a bus full of black people in DC. Nothing you’d normally hear at the dinner table.

    We chose eight brave souls and invited people to hear them read their taboo tales aloud.
    Last Thursday was the Taboo Tales debut show, and it couldn’t have gone better. Over 100 people filed into the theater. It takes an open mind to hear and share taboos, and we had the perfect crowd of magical, interested, and uninhibited strangers. The storytellers rocked that microphone. And we read anonymous taboos from the audience as well. Lots of adultery. Lots of masturbation. Holy calamity– I am still shocked at all the masturbation. So many people touch themselves on the freeway. Seriously. They should give out Driving While Masturbating tickets. In the end, we all felt closer. And relieved.

    Taboo Tales is a live, more detailed, non-anonymous, adult version of Post Secret for people who don’t like to decorate cards. And it’s here to stay. People need to share. Once we all admit to picking our nose in the car, then we won’t have to hide it anymore.

    It’s an LA show for now, but it’s also a movement. So, wherever you are, I encourage you to share your taboo tale. Maybe it’s about how you secretly think your son is ugly. Or how you didn’t feel anything when your mom died. Or how you love to smell your own farts. Whatevs. Make it something we can laugh about. Because, not to be a self-promotional whore or anything, but… humans are funny. Even under the most dire circumstances. If we could only just admit it, we’d all feel so much better. So get it out. Put it on paper. Let it free.

    Send it to our safe haven email [tabooooooooo@gmail.com] and, no matter where you are, we’ll try to fit it into a stage show or our anthology. Yes, anthology! We’re gonna publish a book. A SERIES of books, each with a different taboo theme. And then what’s Snooki going to say? Well, she probably hasn’t heard of the word ‘anthology,’ but she’ll surely be, like, jealous.

    Rahul Subramanian reads his horrifying story about the time he lost a battle to a tampon. Other storytellers were Jean Black, Liz Brown, Marilyn Friedman, Stirling Gardner, Melinda Hill, Vanessa Carlisle, and Michael Kass.

    facebook.com/TabooTales

  • Rationalizing the Risqué

    I hated myself yesterday.

    My inner feminist stabbed me in the ovaries, angry that I allowed myself to fall into the same trap I’ve fallen into ever since I switched to tampons. I let myself collapse into a dangerous abyss with every other woman in LA: I got a slutty costume for Halloween. I just wrote about how mini skirts have reached an all-time size crunch, and how disappointed I am in the vagina-baring youth of America.

    And there I was deciding between a slutty maid or a promiscuous lady bug.

    WHY? Why couldn’t I have just gone as a hot dog or a funny mummy? It must have been my inner hooker calling out to be noticed…my butt cheeks screaming out to be fondled by drunk men…my belly button begging to be paraded around the lonely Los Angeles bars. And I listened to them. Sadly, I did. I could not stop my hands from plucking the nose, bow tie, and bright red boy shorts from the walls of the seasonal store and into my basket, the pieces to my slutty clown costume. Yes, I managed to make a clown slutty.

    At first I was sad and downright angry that I allowed myself to be ‘one of them.’ But then I thought more about why we’ve turned this already pagan holiday into a lingerie parade. Maybe we do it because we have a burning desire to be lusted after by all. Or maybe we do it because most of us are forced into suits and “proper” attire in our daily lives. Or maybe Freud was right and all everyone really lives for is sex. Either way, it means we’re oppressed, unable to be our true sexy selves in today’s society.

    Now that I’ve come to such a conclusion, I say we stand against this oppression! In fact, JUST ON HALLOWEEN, I encourage everyone to be slutty. To show as much skin as possible. To give nurses cleavage and police women fishnets. To turn every single uniform into a desperate plea for sexual attention. Do it while you can, my friends. Do it while you can. REVOLT!
    (Note: If you already dress like a whore, this revolution does not apply to you.)

    Note #2: I wrote this 2 years ago, but updated it just for you. My thighs are smaller now. That’s right. I’m gonna say my thighs are much smaller now:

  • Funny Human of the Week: The Plane Dresser Upper

    This week’s funny human is the Plane Dresser Upper. We’ve all seen her sporting an A-line skirt, perfect make-up, and four-inch heels in line to board with her Louis Vuitton hand tote.

    But why?

    I get that we all used to put on our snappy Sunday best in the days of yore when planes were mysterious and special and had ash trays and full meals and nuts and a security line that didn’t require shoeless body scans.

    But now we know how planes work, we don’t get pillows, and the meal is a box of cheese product and crackers for seven bucks. The plane honeymoon is over. We’ve been married for years now, so let’s act like it. Let’s wear sweatpants.

    I understand Miss PDU’s reasoning. I get that it’s a common fantasy to meet that special someone in 23F and and hit up the cramped john together for a lust-filled tryst that makes for a good fantasy but probably not an actual good time.


    But it’s funny to me because, regardless of the mile-high possibility, I can’t fathom the idea of stuffing my thighs into tight pants and my plane-bloated feet into heels when I know I’ll probably be stuck next to a business man in a too-tight Oxford who drinks two scotches and snores and a chatty grandmother who wants to tell me about her daughter’s rare eczema and her Bible study class. For five hours.

    It’s cute that your unjaded brain is full of romantic possibility, Miss Plane Dresser-Upper, but let’s get real. Of all the times I’ve flown (over a hundred, probably), I’ve only once sat next to date material. And that didn’t work out because he decided to tell me he had a son on our first date to see R. Crumb’s illustration of the Old Testament. God was yelling about circumcision, and I said I wouldn’t circumcise my son and he said he already had. I feel like offspring should be announced either before the museum or over wine but not during foreskin talk. It was bad timing all around, making him not-the-one and averaging me zero for a hundred. So I’m going to say that the likelihood of meeting a quality guy on a plane is slim.

    Some women would argue that they’re dressing up for themselves, that it’s a form of self-love. No. That is a lie. If you were really loving yourself, you’d come comfy, without a bra or makeup, in thick socks, and wearing a blow-up neck thing. Because that’s really the only way to sit comfortably in 23B for five hours. Or ten if you’re cool and going internationally.

    But really… The main reason to not dress up on a plane is that heels are not allowed on the emergency blow-up slide. Miss Plane Dresser-Upper, you didn’t read the information provided in the seatback pocket, did you? I’m outraged.

  • If only I had bigger boobs and ate more pickles

    We’ve been talking about the economy for so long that we’ve overlooked the largest economic tragedy of the past year.
    Obama hasn’t once mentioned it.
    I’ve seen nobody picketing about it.
    Society is just allowing it to happen, encouraging it even.
    The tragedy of 2010, and perhaps of all the years from now until 2012:

    Snooki makes more money than all of us put together.

    Snooki.


    I know that several people in today’s society make more than all of my blog readers put together. I know my blog stats, and I’m fully aware that simply based on my numbers, we aren’t coming close to Brad Pitt or even Joan Rivers.

    But this is Snooki.
    Snooki– the pudgy orange ball of a girl who truly doesn’t know the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’, and in fact thinks it’s simply ‘yer.’
    She’s drunk all the time, has never heard of pants, and has one goal in life: to “hook up with a tan, juiced gorilla Guido.”

    Ah!
    It’s not fair. All she does is get wasted at clubs, have one-night stands with other equally uninspiring people, and go tanning. I spent years doing that in college, and I saw not a penny of return on investment. And there was a lot of investment into those slut costumes and bronzing lotions.

    What has put me over the edge is her book deal.
    Book. Deal.
    Do you know how long I’ve been working on getting a book deal?
    And now Snooki is getting one?
    It’s a memoir about love. And it’s going to sell for twenty-four dollars. That’s more than a Harry Potter book. Snooki is more expensive than Harry Potter. Snooki. Again, Snooki. Snooki’s memoir can only really say, ‘I got drunk. I fucked a Guido. I got my nails done. The end.’ And it’s more expensive than a Harry Potter book.

    You might think that I sound jealous. Oh, no. I’m not jealous. Not at all. Not a bit. Okay, maybe a bit. In honesty, I’d rather have my brain and untan skin coloring than be Snooki with a book deal. I’m mainly jealous because our society rewards drunk dumb people, and that really didn’t start happening until I had already climbed over the drunk dumb phase of my life. In 1998, I rode a mechanical bull in Mexico in a short skirt and no underwear, and all I got was a bottle of cheap tequila. No book deal.

    But I have no fear. My time will come. You hear that literary agents? MY TIME WILL COME! And my book will sell for a million dollars. And only millionaires will buy it. And I will only have to sell one copy before I retire to a treehouse in Laos. And I won’t have to get a fake tan or fuck a gorilla for it. This, I must say, is a much sweeter deal.

    Credit: some funny person on the Internet

  • Funny Human of the Week – The Ghayter

    Number two in the Funny Human Visual Series is The Ghayter (gay hater).

    Ghayting is quite a topic as of late. Society is up in arms because of some recent gay bashing as if it’s a new thing. I’m overjoyed it’s now in the media and that people care.

    But guys, seriously, where ya been?

    I took a quick gander through Google to find a good gay-bashing case to reference here, and there were simply too many from which to choose. In fact, as long as I’ve been alive, I’ve been reading news stories about ghayters. They’ve bashed in the car windows of those bearing rainbow flags. They’ve bashed in the faces of those bearing leather chaps. And then there was my ghayter godfather, who was nothing like a god or a father because he never talked to me again once my pops came out of the armoire.

    Ghayters are everywhere. And they are plenty. And I’m happy that we’re now collectively talking about how despicable they are. Not that a video from Ellen would make a ghayter stop ghayting. I doubt any one of them has seen it and said, “Oh, that lesbian is actually cool. I’m going to stop throwing bricks through that faggot’s window.” The truth is that a lot of ghayters are just too far gone to listen to our arguments or care that they’re hurting people. Their bodies are too filled with hate to notice. Ghayters are haters from the core, so they also hate Muslims and liberals and people on bluetooths (ok, in some cases, the hate is justified).

    The good news is there’s a funny side to all this hatred. Okay, perhaps not funny. Maybe karmically ironic, which always leads to funny.

    Regular haters and ghayters alike wake up each morning and drink a cup full of hatred before their coffees. Instead of sharing meaningful conversation with loved ones, they spend time making signs to carry on the sidelines of gay parades that say things like ‘God Hates Fags.’ Instead of taking their kids to the park, they make them wear tiny little Klan outfits and surely cause them future psychological issues. Instead of creating a loving family atmosphere, they spend their energy alerting the media about their plans to burn the Quran. And all this time, they’re full of hate hate hate, basking in negativity.

    In truth, their lives are very sad.

    There will always be gays or groups who are different. We can choose to see that as beautiful or we can choose to see that as horrible. It’s our choice. But if we choose the latter, we’re choosing a life in the negative. A sad, negative life full of hatred of everything including the Self.

    Jokes on you, bitches.
    Have a negative life while we go party it up in our rainbow flag underwear. Suckas.

    note: I copied this ghayting sign from an actual protester [HERE]. Also, I used Rush Limbaugh’s face for reference.