“Do you have the crockpot full of meatballs?” my mother asked me after I got out of my car. We’d just driven two vehicles to my uncle’s house for a holiday gathering. However, all the food was in my mother’s car, not mine.

“Uh, no,” I told her after a short pause. I couldn’t believe my mother was asking me this question. My mother, who compulsively checked the stove before leaving the house. My mother, who carefully staged all the food on the dining room table the night before departure so she wouldn’t forget anything. My mother, who made me top off my car’s coolant in the dark and cold on Christmas Eve so she wouldn’t worry about my car overheating on the drive down. How could my mother ever possibly misplace a crockpot full of meatballs?

“I carried them out and put them on the sidewalk by your trunk,” Sister-in-law chimed in. Two seconds later we all simultaneously made the same realization: We had left a crockpot full of meatballs on the sidewalk in front of [...]

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I was driving to Cleveland in the dark and I’d had a headache for half of Ohio, when Elna Baker came on my MP3 player. I had downloaded podcasts of The Moth, a storytelling show based in New York, and the latest episode featured the comedian/writer/Mormon recounting a family trip to Cyprus (which you can listen to here). My second reaction was, “Man, my family vacations only occurred at lame places (like Gettysburg,which is as interesting as you think a field would be) or predictable places, like Ocean City (love the salt water taffy). Why didn’t I get to go to Cyprus?” This was my second reaction because my first reaction was laughter, which helped me get through the rest of Ohio.

Later, I looked up information on Elna Baker and realized I’d heard her before, on This American Life where she told another funny, yet disturbing story, about selling dolls at FAO Schwarz. So, when I saw that she had a memoir coming out this October 15th called The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween [...]

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I’ve laughed and laughed and laughed at this video ever since a friend instant messaged me with the link. What a silly little hamster, running as fast as he can to escape the wok, but never making any progress.

“Why doesn’t he ever figure out it’s pointless?” I asked my friend. Then I started the video at the beginning and watched it again. But upon this viewing I started to wonder, are there things in my life that I am attacking like a hamster in a wok? Is there anything I am working and fussing and plowing at head on, making no progress, when it would be better to take another approach? If so, some highly evolved organism might be laughing at a YouTube video of me too.

Then I found this video of cats on a slide and started laughing all over again.

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Saturday, November 1, 2008

1:40 pm – I pull into the parking lot at the north side early voting station, one of three locations in Marion County, easily located by glut of political signs in the grass. Front lot is packed.

1:42 pm – Pull into back parking lot driving past unimaginably long line which wraps past two buildings and ends at the dumpster. Is this the line to vote or for tickets for a mythical Led Zeppelin reunion tour? Consider going home, but doubt the line will be shorter on election day. Realize I would just lie on couch in post-Halloween stupor anyway. May as well stand in line on this lovely day in a post-Halloween stupor. Brought a book. I may be achy, but I am prepared.

1:45 pm – Get in line. Pull out my stopwatch and start timing.

1:46 pm – Already want to kill man in front of me. He is complaining on the phone that the line is “sick.” Somebody didn’t bring a book.

1:55 pm – A child and her mother walk past [...]

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While the current state of the US economy is about as funny as the obits section, what is funny are the photos accompanying most of the articles about economic gloom and doom. You can’t take a picture of the economy, so most media outlets are running photos of people reacting on the stock market floor. Except they are all reacting in the same way, which is rather humorous when you see the repetition over and over again in every article. I would show specific examples here, but out of fear of prosecution respect of copyright law, I will instead post my personal interpretation of the art accompany articles on the current economic crisis. It is a play in three acts.

Act 1: The stocks have fallen and they can’t get up.

Act 2: Oh wait, they have Life Alert (aka 700 billion from Congress). They can get up after all!

Act 3: You may have Life Alert, but your hip’s still broken. (Stocks plunge again. The world markets recoil.)

* Members of the media, feel free to use these [...]

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