humans are funny

Category: funny humans

  • Unrapable.

    Sometimes I perform this live to illustrate how funny humans are. I thought I’d post it here too:

    When my friend asked me to be her bridesmaid, I said yes. In my near 30 years of life nobody had asked me to be in their wedding, and I was dying for an opportunity to prove to my family I had a friend.

    Then she told me her wedding was in Australia. Shit. In order to be in someone’s inner circle, I had to take an expensive trip. I’m not the type of good friend who will pay a thousand dollars for airfare and spend the week running around preparing for someone else’s big day. If I was going to spend a thousand dollars, I would have to see all of Australia. And if I was flying all the way to Australia, I would have to see Papua New Guinea too.

    I also decided that I couldn’t go all the way to Papua New Guinea without seeing Japan, and I couldn’t go all the way to Japan without seeing Vietnam. So, I quit my job and decided to travel around the world for a year. Sometimes you have to go to some great lengths to be a good friend.

    Since I was so busy putting things in storage before my trip, I had no time to research anything. I knew nothing about Papua New Guinea except that it was next to Australia. I saw that there was a cheap flight to the mountain town of Tari so I booked one. I did read one blog that said I had to write a letter (with a pen and paper– the horror!) to the one hotel owner in Tari. They had no phone or internet. No phone or internet? How did they live? I wrote the letter, excited to see what type of world could exist without email forwards from moms or status updates about True Blood. I feared a culture I could not win over with jokes about MySpace. Top 8!

    After the wedding, at which I was the only single person, I was on my own to travel like the hippie backpacker I always knew I was.

    I popped in a book shop to ask for a travel guide for Papua New Guinea.

    “Why would you ever go there?” the shop owner asked. “I guarantee you’ll be raped.”

    I felt scared. And slightly excited.

    I did a quick internet search and found a news story about Papua New Guinean women killing male babies to stop tribal wars. I’m not a male baby, and I don’t believe rumors ever since Donnie D’Alesandro told the whole junior high I put a cordless phone antenna up my vagina. Of course I was still going to Papua New Guinea.

    I stepped off the plane with an German man.

    “You’re here alone?” he asked. “You better watch out. You’re going to get raped.”

    I started to wonder if raping was just some sort of New Guinean custom. In Spain people greet each other with two kisses. In Papua New Guinea, maybe it’s a quick rape.

    Again, I felt scared and slightly excited.

    I had one night in the capital city of Port Moresby before I headed out to Tari the next day. I found a helpful welcome packet in my hotel room. It said atop a bright picture of a sun, “Welcome to Port Moresby! Please do not go outside. AT ALL. Even in the daylight. It’s not safe for tourists.”

    Hmmm… At this point I began to worry a little. I spent the night paying $25/hr to send goodbye emails to friends. And I wrote my will. My mom got everything in storage, which was a papazan chair and a magic bullet blender.

    The next morning, I hopped in my airport shuttle freshly shaven in case I was raped. I asked my shuttle driver what was the deal with the danger and the raping. He said, “Don’t worry about it. Most people who go to Tari come back.” “Most people?” I asked him. But by then the shuttle was being hijacked, so he didn’t have time to explain.

    From the plane, the country looked fake, a series of rivers criss-crossing perfectly like freeways. The amount of untouched green was shocking. A country can sure be beautiful when Westerners don’t barge in, claim the land for development, and kill off the natives. The passenger next to me was not wearing shoes and had two teeth. He did not seem at all like a rapist, so I settled in for adventure.

    The airport in Tari was a fence. When I got off the plane, thousands of villagers were waiting to see who was cool enough to ride a plane. That’s what you do when you don’t have phones or email. You gather to watch planes land. So many strange black faces stared at me through the fence. I was the one white lady as far as the eye could see, even a really good eye with 20/20 vision. I understood what it must have been like for the one black kid in my high school who everyone just expected to play basketball. These people just expected I buy stuff from them.

    First I had to find my guy, the one who surely had received my letter and was waiting for me to arrive. He wasn’t there.

    “Oh, that guy,” someone said. “He had to pay a tribal compensation so he went to go buy some pigs.”

    Oh. Ok. Of course, sure.

    Patrick, the self-appointed mayor of the mountain, took me under his wing and brought me back to his village to stay with his sister, Janet. It was there I immersed myself in true Papua New Guinean culture.

    I was one of the few white people to ever grace the town. The first one arrived in 1932 wearing pants and looking for gold. The villagers had never seen pants before, so they assumed he had a penis down to his ankle. They didn’t realize the white man was a human being until they spied on him and saw that he also squatted in the bushes to excrete brown snakes. Swear.

    White people to these villagers are pretty gross. A baby saw me and burst into tears. Cosmo magazine does not have Tarian issue, but if they did, the models in it would be large, dark skinned women with beat up hands. Men there like a woman who looks like she can work hard under the sun. The more meat on her the better.

    I told them that people had warned me I’d be raped, and they laughed and cackled. “Who would want to rape you?” They said with disgust. You are not fat enough. They gave me advice on how to be prettier though: eat more. I’m working on it.

    I have to admit that I felt a bit hurt for not being rapable. My instinct was to show them an American magazine and say ‘Hey look! This is the ideal you should be reaching for.’

    But then I heard myself telling them about our beauty ideals.

    Well, I said to shocked faces, We pay a lot of money to have a doctor break our noses and then shave the bones down and then put it all back together.

    Then they told me about marriages. Women are bought with 30-60 pigs and if a man is rich, he can buy as many brides as he wants. People hardly ever marry for love and couples never sleep in the same bed.

    I thought that was tragic and wanted to teach them about ‘Romeo and Juliet’ or another famous love story like ‘No Strings Attached.’ But then I heard myself telling them about American marriages.

    Well, I said to more shocked faces, we marry just one person. But most of us decide we don’t like them anymore after a few years. And many women in their forties shove silicone bags under their nipples and wear slutty dresses in bars so they can find a second or third husband.

    Then they told me about the lady friend. If a woman is menstruating, she is not allowed out of her hut and she can’t talk to men.

    I wanted to call Gloria Steinem and get her there to fix these misogynists!

    But then I heard myself telling them about abortion.

    Well, I said to more and more shocked faces, women pay a doctor to take a machine and kill the baby while it’s inside of them and then suck it out through a large straw.

    They had never heard of straws. Or Michael Jackson, electricity, sunscreen, wifi, soy lattes or even cheese.

    I felt the urge to run home, grab some electricity, a pizza, and a Netflix password to catch them up on everything. My instinct was to show these people what’s right and teach them that they should venture off their mountain and see the beach. Find some manchego!

    But who am I to say which lifestyle is better? I watch The Jersey Shore. (I mean, only sometimes. Not religiously or anything.)

    I was able to shower away my self-righteousness in the village’s cool natural stream after eating fresh pesticide-free vegetables from their gardens. Though those villagers convinced me to give them all my cash, I wasted no money at all. What I bought was perspective. And it’s what I needed so that I could truly appreciate all the other cultures I encountered during that whole year of traveling.

    Come to find out, I am unrapable in several other countries.

     

  • Funny Human: The Eighties Leighdy


    The eighties were a fine decade. I was there. I admit they existed. I had a Caboodle and holey jean shorts. Sadly, I wasn’t old enough to partake in all the free-flowing cocaine and dollar bills I hear mentioned when someone daydreams of the eighties. I also missed out on the music so often played now at frat parties and dive bars. My dad listened to opera. My mom listened to Motown. I didn’t have any older siblings to introduce me to cool stuff like that band with the one-armed drummer. Until college, I really thought there was a very famous deaf leopard at some zoo.

    For me, the eighties were a decade of dates at McDonald’s Playland, torturing babysitters and learning why my fingers smelled funny when I stuck them in my butt. When I think of my past, I much prefer to reminisce about the nineties, when I wore padded bras, spent dates at Olive Garden and moved to California.

    Some people, however, lived their best years in that colorful decade. They had sex in a bathroom at the Rainbow Room with Ron Jeremy. They bought stock in IBM. They amassed the biggest collection of cassettes and betas on the block. They fucked every White Snake member on a black lacquered table. They partied with Wham at fancy beach parties and tattooed roses on their tits. They wore shoulder pads and sold real estate and then went home to their black and red apartments to drink fancy wine with a side of cocaine.

    They lived through that decade. And some refuse to believe it’s over. These eighties dwellers aren’t trendsetters who are ‘getting back to their roots’ by adopting an updated set of leggings from Forever XXI. In the twenty years since that decade, Eighties Leighdies haven’t changed and they don’t want to. Some still have small traces of pink zinc oxide in the creases of their noses. They’re a rapidly endangered species, but they make appearances at Au Bon Pains and Kinkos locations near you. When I see one, I nod my head and smile in understanding. Because I get it. I know they can’t let go of a time so great. I understand why they want to continue to look like an extra in Working Girl. Because Working Girls had it made. They had power in their bangs and knew how to work a shoulder pad.

    The next time you see an Eighties Leighdy, whether she’s in a full set of Lee press-ons and a pantsuit that tapers over a pair of Reeboks or sandblasted denim cutoffs, a Duran Duran concert T-shirt, and a pink fannie pack, don’t judge her as living in the past. See her as reveling in the best years of her life.
    And maybe, just maybe… throw her up a real nice, powerful, hang ten. Show her you know she’s totally radical.

    Note: It was not my intention to draw the Eighties Leighdy to look like Jay Leno.

  • Funny Human of the Week: The Crowd Farter


    Society says you’re really immature if you talk about farts. And comedy says you’re lazy if you talk about farts. I’ve been torn for the last few days because the infamous Crowd Farter has brought to my attention an intense desire to talk about farts. So, let’s all join hands and wear turtlenecks and be mature for a minute. Let’s forget that farts come from our butts and sometimes sound like sirens, and let’s just concentrate on the Crowd Farter himself.

    I felt a call to action when I went to Disneyland on New Year’s Eve. My man friend and I took a delightful jaunt to the happiest place on Earth for an afternoon of casual roller coaster riding and a few hugs from Mickey and friends. We weren’t aware that New Year’s Eve is the busiest day of the entire year.

    Oh.

    When you arrive, they hand you a little paper that explains all the good things about the neighboring park, pretty much begging you to please go there instead. But did we? Nope. As soon as we handed our tickets to the grimacing Disney attendant, we knew we should have heeded the advice of the little paper. It was like walking through peanut butter. People and more people everywhere. And this special eve is one of those occasions that calls the fanatics out. Not one but many grown men dressed as Jack Sparrow pranced as much as grown men dressed as Jack Sparrow* can prance. Hidden among the men with eyeliner, the families wearing Mickey ears and the college kids dressed as princesses lurked several Crowd Farters.

    Crowd Farters are aware of the noise level of crowds. They know there’s movement in a group so they feel safe, finding no need to walk away briskly or defensively joke about smelling it and dealing it. They wouldn’t do this at a business meeting or on a date. But as soon as big numbers ensure their anonymity, they delight in ruining firework displays, church, concerts, the theater, subway rides, elevators, mall food courts, outdoor festivals, ride lines at Disneyland, and worst of all: airplanes. They’re farting professionals.

    And they need to be stopped.

    But can they be? There’s no proof in the pudding, my friends. And I don’t understand that phrase because is there ever proof in pudding? I’m not sure there’s ever even fingerprints on pudding. I’ve contemplated this, and I’m thinking anyone would be hard-pressed to brush for prints on either bread pudding or chocolate pudding. And many crowds don’t even have pudding in them. Therefore, Crowd Farters cannot be identified. We all like to guess the culprit just by the expressions of our fellow crowd members, but there’s never any pudding. You know who you are, Crowd farter. Yes, you do. And I beg you to please… hold off. Do it for humanity. Do it for the pudding.

    I inhaled at least thirty farts on New Year’s Eve, appropriately encapsulating the stinky year that was 2010. It wasn’t the Happiest Place on Earth for me that day. Because it was filled with Crowd Farters but also because I paid $15 for two pretzels and because Mickey was very rude when I poked him with needles.

    You might say that I know so much about the psyche of the Crowd Farter because I’ve been one myself. And to that, my friends, I must guffaw. My farts are like that of this video. In fact, there are so many butterflies flittering around my apartment, I’m actually scared to sleep.

    *Jack Sparrow is from some movie called Pirates of the Carribean. I never saw it, but I guess Johnny Depp wears eyeliner and long black dreads in it. Based on the costumed men at Disneyland, I will never see it.

    *If you’re from a literary journal, hello. No, I did not just spend six hours writing about farts. What gave you that idea? Here, look! A very mature Funny Human: The Ghayter

    *Yes, I do think there is a connection between Crowd Farters and Ed Hardy shirts.

  • 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.

  • Funny Humans – #1 The Scarf Abuser

    I really like to draw funny humans. I drew the ones on this here blog because they’re particularly funny. I’d say peeling back your boob in order to shove a plastic bag filled with a watery substance under your chest and then sewing it closed again in a vain act of titty envy is pretty funny. Not to say I haven’t thought about doing it myself. A lot. But it’s still funny.

    So is the act of stretching out your neck by forcing metal rings on it. Why the need for a long neck? And then there are hipsters. Hipsters are just funny because they’re hipsters.

    I’m going to draw funny humans more often. If you have an idea of a particularly funny human I should draw, hit me up.

    Here’s the first in the series:

    People who think that wearing scarves makes them artsy and European. I am guilty of this. When I wear scarves in meetings, I tend to speak up more often in a slight accent and talk more with my hands. And I eat more croissants. All day long. I’m not wearing a scarf now, so I’m back to snacking on dog biscuits and making jokes about poo.