Tag Archives: humor
Day Two of The MayDayChallenge finds us visiting the baristas at The Raindrop Cafe, who got something to tell us:
- fair trade, shade grown
- fair trade shade grown
roasted 3 blocks from your home
shipped in sacks from africa
hispanic lands and sumatra
each cup is crafted expertly
all our milk is hormone free
or if you dont take to dairy
we also offer milk from beans
- fair trade, shade grown
& for your dog a biscuit bone
our flavored syrups ultra pure
evaporated cane sugar
and if you’d like a pastry
we buy ours from french bakeries
except for these delicious pies
they’re made by this one bearded guy
- fair trade, shade grown
our cafe, your second home
and if you must use your cell phone
kindly use conversive tones
we offer high speed internet
(don’t use it for your bit torrent)
yes we compost & recycle
as marked on these receptacles
- fair trade, shade grown
succulent, velvety foam
we’ll top your late with a heart
of if you like some abstract art
we’re here before the sun is up
especially to fill your cup
and if you’d prefer the decaf
we promise you we will not laugh…
This is a part of my Over The Top Non-Stop Stop Action Non-Toxic Sock Poppet Rock Opera.
Leave a comment | tags: 1984, 401k, adverbs, aeopress, africa, agro, almond, apple, beans, beer, behavior, berry, billpay, biscuit, bodum, breakfast, cafe, cafe culture, caffinated, caffine, capuccino, cell phone, cellular, cherry, chewing, childhood, children's, church, coffee, coffee breath, comedy, compost, composting, contest, conversation, cuisinart, cuisine, cups, customer, dairy, deities, delicious, discipline, disposal, diuretic, dog, dog training, dog treats, drinkng, environment, espresso, espresso machine, etiquette, fair trade, fixtures, foam, food, foyer, french bakeries, funny, garbage, gods, grammar, guiness, gum, heat, hispanic, humor, jester, jokes, kidney stones, kids, krups, lactose intollerance, latte, liquor, loose change, mac, manners, milk, mints, minty, modify, money, mugs, narrative, nature, oil, oil spill, opera, pan, pancakes, pele, physiology, pie, plants, please, pleasing, pressure, psychoanalysis, psychology, recycle, recycling, register, restaurants, retail, retail rage, retirement, roasting, rock opera, sailing, service, service industry, shade grown, shots, silly, sink, social, someone once offered be a bag of bandages but i declined, soy, speech, speech therapy, steam, steamer, stories, strawberry, studybreak, succulent, sumatra, talking, tea, therapy, tipping, tips, travel, treats, trickster, unemployment, vacation, wine, writing | posted in Uncategorized
Here are a few words that are on my rewriting “watch list”, which I try to minimize / synonymize in each successive draft:
- Look
- Just
- That
- So, very, really
- Something
- Said
- Walk
- Actually
- Suddenly
These words (especially just) are used often in casual conversation, so they just tend to slip in when one is first ‘telling’ the story.
But writing, imho, should actually be a grade above the casual. Also, I’ve seen a lot of first drafts where writers use double modifiers on the subject, I.E.:
The stairwell sent him quick, dark echoes…
It’s a matter of taste, but I think that the second of the two modifiers should always be an uncommon word, or else the prose comes off as really, very predictable, or something.
Most importantly: while editing, concentrate on the tone and rhythm of the narrative itself, and let all the rules and such attend to it like servants.
If all we did as artists was follow rules, then this game would have long ago been over.
we are storytellers first, and writers by way of revision
Leave a comment | tags: achtung, agency, agent, allergies, amatuer, america, ants, aphroism, apps, arbory, audio equipment, bees, blogging, bones, boring, brown, busy, campfire, candles, casual conversation, copy, copywriting, danger, editing, English, first drafts, fishing, flapper, forest fires, fruit, fubar, funny, gaming, grammar, granola, graphics, history, hobby, homeschool, honey, humor, ideal, idolotry, iOS, ipad, juicy, knots, kraftwerk, lesson, lit, literary agent, literature, maintainence, marrow, matter of taste, mowing, noose, old women dancing naked in the moonlight, peanuts, plucking, query, revision, rewriting, rowboat, sailing, salad, saying, sexual innuendo, singalong, soldiers, songs, stairwell, sunshine, technique, toenails, transplant, tshirt, uncommon word, warning, wax, wit, writing | posted in Uncategorized
My first spiritual experience was most likely my conception, or “benception” as my mom calls it (I am kidding, my mother is not too hot on puns) — but as that moment of happenstance-laden and conjugal-sanctioned becoming is about as far removed from my conscious recollection as the goings-on in our Sun, I will move past that, and also past the childhood experiences which are neither completely accidental nor intentional in their selectivity — moving forward to my tenth year, where at a week-long Bible Camp hosted at the college where my parents met I was taken up — all 95(approx.) pounds of me — in a charismatic flowering of my heart.
The chapel in which I found myself on that warm Monterey evening was dark and filled with praise music. I’m not sure what triggered the sudden flood of emotion that came over me. It was something about God’s love for us. How amazing and awesome it is. But as the tears came, followed by strange movements of my tongue, I knew with certainty that God is real. This had nothing to do with belief or anything I had been told. It was a pure and powerful experience of a vibration that was beneficent and all-encompassing. When my parents swung by to pick me up the next day, I told dad that I spoke in tongues. He (jokingly) asked for a demonstration. That was one of those rare instances where I failed to find something funny. I shook my head. You can’t tell the Spirit when to come or where to go…
There was a couple more incidences that year or the next where I was able to know things that were marginally unknowable. Our church had lost its pastor, and after waiting several months for the right fit, a man with the correct qualifications came through, and the congregation voted on him, and I started bawling and bawling because he wasn’t right. Over the next couple of years that man dismantled the fellowship. Things like that—that can only be verified by retrospect—that have no true ‘gain’ to them, in the material sense… what is call Insight, is what I think I had a line on for a year or two, back then.
But then came the coarse hair and the itching drives of puberty. The hormonal crush of anxiety, self-consciousness and icky, icky change. That swallowed up my insight, obscured it with a dorky sense of humor and the need to cuss when out of earshot of my parents and pastors. Over my high school years I was very involved in my church’s youth group. I loved being in church—not the services necessarily, but the building itself felt like home to me. It’s odd that I keep finding myself working in them, though I haven’t been a congregant for a teenager’s lifespan, now.
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7 Comments | tags: acid, adventure, answers, beauty, Bible, Bible Camp, Bible College, biblical, boredom, bud, Canada, childhood, christianity, cocaine, confession, Covenant, crosscountry, dessert, diary, different, distance, doctrine, drug abuse, drug use, druge experimentation, drugs, Easter, English, experience, experimentation, gifts of the spirit, humor, identity, jokes, journal, long distance running, marijuana, memoir, memory, message, monotheism, Monterey, mysticism, orthopraxy, othrodoxy, parenting, politics, pot, prayer, psychology, questions, religion, religious experience, searching, self, sex, short story, shrooms, soda, speaking in tongues, spirit quest, story, storytelling, strange, subud, Torah, weed, women, worry, writing, youth, youth group | posted in Uncategorized
personality > emotion > humor > honesty > originality
Leave a comment | tags: art, art theory, audience, emotion, expression, honesy, humor, obscenity, originality, popularity, ratings, shocking, wit | posted in Uncategorized