humans are funny

Author: laurenne

  • Another New Thing!


    Fridays are now mini Thanksgivings.

    I’ve always heard that the key to happiness is ‘wanting what you already have.’
    And now that I am noticing all the little things that I didn’t have in 2009 (like plates or orderly traffic or clear drinking water), I absolutely agree.

    Inspired by my friend Leah and this new friend Christina, I decided to make a list every Friday. Please add your own comments. And by the end of the year, we’ll have a big old list of things that make us happy. I’ll make a downloadable poster of our big fat list, and you can hang it up to remind yourself every day that life is good. In my pre-travel life, this shit would have made me gag. But now I realize what happiness is. It’s:

    peanut butter
    freshly laundered sheets (still warm from the dryer)
    mail from my mom
    old T-shirts
    cuddling
    squirrels who think that if they stand really still you won’t see them
    warm rain
    old people who bathe together (sorry. it was a photo series, and I couldn’t leave this last one out)

    Until next Friday…

  • New Thing!


    From now on, Wednesday is DFS (Day For Sharing).
    (we’re gonna pretend it’s Wednesday due to the fact that I worked non-stop til midnight on Wednesday and it’s as if the day never happened)
    I sometimes find things that are cool and would like to share. Sharing is caring. And I care a lot.
    I met an old man yesterday who swears that homosexuality is linked to diet soda. They both became pretty popular at the same time. Since I couldn’t find any links to support his theory, I am sharing these sites I love:
    Postcards From Yo Momma. I found this one because my mom is a great texter. When my nephew, Cole, was born. She sent ‘coleborn’ since she couldn’t find the space. I had no idea what the hell she meant. So I decided to start a blog called ‘Texts from your Mom.’ Turns out these bitches already did. Jerks.
    Finally an easy way to learn Spanish:


    You might end up with an Argentinian accent, but that’s the sexiest one anyway. Trust me. It is.
    (you can buy a set for much less than Rosetta Stone here)
    My friend Carrie discovered this radical journal project: here
    Dallas Clayton’s poems are pretty awesome. Here’s one:

    I’ve been called an adult this week

    by multiple sources.

    I am not sure how to take this

    but rest assured

    an investigation is in order.
    He also has an awesome book to match. It must be awesome since that’s the title (Thanks to BS for sending me the book. I love it! If I had a coffee table, it would go right in its center.)


    Please note: I searched ‘sharing’ and all these old people in baths came up. I went with it.
    Happy Wednesday-but-really-Thursday!

  • Simple things


    After so much time carrying my life around in a pack, I have to say I’m really excited about owning plates.

    And books are cool too.

  • Pepperoni will prevail!

    I know I just stated that I’m finally at peace with advertising. But I wanted to illustrate what a huge leap I’ve made by getting here. You see, when your work is making ads, life often gets pushed out of the way to make room for pitches and presentations about the next best product. And there are always emergencies. A client’s wife mentions something about not liking the color of someone’s hair in the commercial, and you’re canceling your road trip to Big Sur to watch a colorist charge thirty grand to go in and cover up the blond’s roots.

    Advertising stops for no one: birthdays, vacations, weddings, psycho killers hiding out in your yard. What? Psycho killers? No, you say. Nobody would be thinking about their upcoming pizza commercials with a psycho killer on the loose. You’re wrong, my friends. Here’s proof that even in distress, the pepperoni will prevail (Actual conversation from my friend Ron V):

  • Nothing is permanent. Especially cubicles.

    It’s official. I’m an employee again.

    Making ads just like I was when I realized I hated cubicles and took to the skies. Just like I was when I decided that I would NEVER do this again: Hurried lunches at my desk, REALLY IMPORTANT meetings about things that really aren’t important, inventing more and more ways to annoy the general public with polished product info. It’s much better than picking poo off the floor of a video store, that’s for sure. But it’s not saving lives. It’s not teaching something useful or helping to change the world. Instead, it’s convincing innocent citizens to eat burgers they don’t really want and drive cars that may or may not fall apart after a year. This hurts because it goes against all my beliefs.

    Just when i was feeling despair and failure about landing back in this same exact place… just when it was getting more and more difficult to get out of bed in the morning, I got an email from my friend Pete, the photographer I met in India, who snapped this one.
    He sent me some shots from his time in Indonesia:

    The dude went swimming with a monkey. SWIMMING WITH A MONKEY. You might think I’m about to complain about the amazing adventures this man is having while I’m stuck between cardboard walls arguing the uses of a semi-colon. But, no! I am again revitalized. There are millions of adventures to be had in life. And whether they come in the form of monkeys doing breast stroke or huts in Papua New Guinea or walking to the beach from my apartment, I will have them. Because I want to.

    And this little advertising stint is what’s going to catapult me there. It’s just for now. And for now is going to get me to later. So, I no longer hate advertising. It’s my friend, my catapulter. My ticket to a slightly older swimming monkey. Although it takes away from my blog time and inflicts tiny bursts of internal conflict several times a day, I’m at peace with it. Phew. It feels good.
    I hope all those who aren’t too thrilled with their current careers arrive at such a point. As long as you have faith that there’s a way out and that the present will lead to this way, those meetings about meetings and conversations about kids you don’t know and hastily written Excel documents all seem kinda worth it.