CranialSpasm

Humor is a weird thing to think about. I consider myself a connoisseur of comedy and anything relating to it. I like to laugh. I have learned to laugh about completely inappropriate things as a survival mechanism.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about friendships and conversations about comedy.

I guess it all started with a Christmas present. For Christmas, my brother and sister-in-law got tickets for us to go see Stephen Lynch at Foxwoods.

Tangent – I love a live comedy show. I’m not that big a fan of a concert because there is that nasty habit of people around you singing along loudly to the songs that you’ve heard a thousand times. The thing is… I didn’t pay to hear them sing it. I paid to hear the artist sing it. If I wanted to hear someone next to me belt out Bruce Springsteen, I wouldn’t have spent $160 to do so. I would’ve spent $7 for a drink at a karaoke night.

I was absolutely tickled when Stephen announced that he was working on new music and he played EIGHT NEW SONGS! People were assholes shouting titles of old songs. I got so fed up I ending up shouting “SING SOMETHING NEW!” and when he did, I felt like a wizard.

Here’s where I get to the actual reason why I’m posting.

Over the last few years, a friend rediscovered her love of her faith. I didn’t have a problem with it… except that I didn’t get to see her as much. That’s not to say it’s her fault that we don’t hang out regularly. I tend to forget that there are people that like to hang out with me.

Let’s not talk about those issues (I can touch upon those later if need be). The reason that is relevant to the conversation is that one of Lynch’s new songs was a comedy bit about a friend being “born again”. As he was singing it, I listened and smiled to at the words. As it concluded, I clapped until I realized that my friend didn’t look amused.

Immediately I worried that I had offended her by finding humor in the bit. Since the show I have been thinking about how I approach comedic appreciation with many of my friends. In an era of hypersensitive flowerchild mentalities, it turns out that I unconsciously had been filtering my humor with her.

I don’t believe that I am intentionally stereotyping someone by doing this because other times, I’m completely freaking oblivious.

I’ve been listening to Marc Maron’s podcast WTF? I listened to some of the back catalog and settled on the Patrice O’Neill episode. I laughed my ass off and thought “man… I know my buddy is gonna get a kick outta this.” So I queued it up and started to play it for him. He was silent during parts that I thought were really funny and I found my head cocking to the side. After awhile I asked him what the issue was.

He told me that he kept saying the word “fag” or “gay” and it started to bother him. He actually got a bit angry with me for introducing him to a comedian that obviously rubbed him the wrong way. He asked why I would’ve played something like that for him as he’s been out and proud for many years now.

I thoroughly apologized and turned it off. I didn’t think of him as my homosexual friend. He’s just… him. It’s never been a character definition when referring to him. “This is my gay friend. Ask him about your pants.”

Tangent – Those are words that will NEVER come out of my mouth when doing a first time introduction. Yes, it’s a part of him but it’s not the only part of him. I love that part of him, but that’s not why we’re friends. I’m not filling a quota. I’m pretty sure that if someone introduced me as their “often mental friend” I would shake someone’s hand and then burst into tears and make them hug me and tell me everything was going to be okay.

So I shouldn’t have introduced him to Patrice O’Neill through a conversational interview with Maron. I found it absolutely fascinating, but now I fear that he won’t watch any of Patrice’s comedy specials… and I feel like he’ll be missing out.

One of the benefits of comedy is that it is entirely subjective. It’s also a detriment.

I have a completely warped sense of humor and when I try to share it with some people their reaction shows me that they are not appreciative of it. That’s fine. However, I think that I limit many of potentially warped conversations with people that I have thrown into a “relatively virtuous” stereotype.

Without realizing what it is I’ve been doing, if I am having a conversation with someone I don’t necessarily hold back but I do try to gauge someone’s comedy/pain threshold. Some people may consider me disingenuous when my humor runs the gamut. I think it has a lot to do with being raised in a political family.

You’d think that would have taught me NOT to judge someone’s humor from a person’s façade. My family puts up with a lot of stuff that I do and say, and most of the time it’s with a laugh and a positive response.

Some people in my family love dick jokes

I am almost positive that I am going to get some flack for this, but I used to be a Dane Cook fan. That is not indicating that I hate him now or anything, I just don’t follow his career anymore. I can still listen to his old albums and giggle occasionally. I don’t despise his current standup (I don’t think). I’ve heard about the issues with one of his recent sessions on the stage. His comments on getting over a girlfriend, to me, are less offensive than Teefury deciding to make a “female artist week” when they don’t make a habit of singling out a specific gender.

I digress. When I was younger, I thought it would be super cool to get a SUFI tattoo. So I did.

Me this morning

One of my biggest issues with looking at this tattoo and seeing it wasn’t regret. It was more apathy than anything else. It was a fun while it lasted, but I didn’t feel anything towards it anymore.

This will probably piss off my parents, but I decided to take a small chunk of my tax return (State, and I didn’t use it all so it was a very cheap present to myself) and get a tattoo. I just wanted to cover the tattoo with something that I have loved since childhood. My body has changed so much in the past few years, I thoroughly enjoy decorating it with lovely things. Also it was getting super faded and I didn’t want to get it freshened when I didn’t really care about it as much.

So I got something to remind me of both my love for the macabre, and the car I used to have that I named after one of my favorite characters.

I walked into a parlor today and after talking to Dustin and taking a look at his portfolio, it was set in motion. As the needles vibrated against my skin I knew that I was doing the right thing (for me). As he inked over the scar tissue of the old tattoo I winced, because tattooing over scars is ridiculously painful. But I soldiered through. Pain is something that I am used to. It’s something that I used to revel in.

I saw the tattoo slowly fill in and couldn’t stop smiling.

So here it is, the newest addition to my body. I couldn’t be happier.

I am the shadow on the moon at night.

Obviously I have made it known to many that I am going to be migrating West in the summer. With that decision I have actually had several panic attacks. Am I making the right decision? What if I fail? What if I move out there and don’t make any friends?

The biggest panic attack that I have had in recent days has a lot to do with finding a job out there. When the majority of my classmates were continuing their education, I tried it and had a meltdown and ended my pursuit of structured education.

I have always been a person stimulated by intellectual pursuits, but the idea of having to focus on one thing has never been something that I was ultimately comfortable with. I didn’t want to work hard for a job that I ended up hating. Instead, I started a laundry list of jobs and such that would pay my bills while taking my own path to learn new things.

When I am given a rubric of things that I need to focus on and my interest is not met, I have a tendency of getting angry about the idea of spending my time on something that I am not passionate about. I could blame it on my generation with our crazy sense of entitlement, but that is a generalization that is not fair to people my age that knew what they wanted to do and followed through on their pursuit. In fact, I have a misguided sense of entitlement that whatever I want to do I should do and should be paid highly for it.

Sadly, the world doesn’t agree. I have recently joined LinkedIn and spent my lunch break one day looking through jobs that are currently available in the Portland area. As I clicked on jobs that interested me, I felt my anxiety grow. The requirements for so many of the positions required a degree in something that I wouldn’t have ever thought was a possible degree. Eventually it felt like a centaur had kicked me in the solar plexus.

My brain started to battle itself. In my head, it was like a part of my brain was an irritated douche and the meek reply I imagined was from that of a brow-beaten child that had failed and knew that they had done something wrong. The conversation went thusly.

KidBrain: “Oh, this is an awesome job. I’m going to check it out.”

DoucheBrain: “You’re not going to get it. You need to have a degree.”

KidBrain: “I know, but maybe they will…”

DoucheBrain: “Stop it. Stop living in your stupid little fantasy world. They are NOT going to hire you.”

KidBrain: “Yeah but I have all this experience with webpages and sound editing…”

DoucheBrain: “… that you cannot prove at all because you don’t have a piece of paper telling them that someone has already confirmed that you are capable.”

KidBrain: “But… but… I AM capable.”

DoucheBrain: “Why would you even send over a request. Think about all of the rejections for your book idea. Think about all of the jobs that people didn’t call you back about before. Didn’t you want to work on a cruise ship?”

KidBrain: “Yeah… I thought I would be good on a ship.”

DoucheBrain: “And did they call you or contact you after your preliminary inquiry?”

KidBrain: “… … no.”

DoucheBrain: “ What makes you think that anyone wants you to do anything?”

KidBrain: “… … … … … shut up.”

After awhile, KidBrain would just allow DoucheBrain to brow beat me into exhaustion and I would look for something to take my mind off of the stomping of hooves on my breastplate. My hands would be shaking from an argument that I hadn’t even had with someone else. I DIDN’T have a reason to feel that way. I had used nonsensical logic to incite a riot in my body.

When I have a panic attack, I tend to forget that I can go to someone when I’m having an issue. I KNOW that there are people that would be willing to help usher me through it, but during the stampeding centaur moments it rarely occurs to me. There used to be a place where I felt safe to admit that I wasn’t feeling great and needed help. The moment there was note that sharing that side of myself wasn’t welcome, I had the misguided notion that no one would be able to help me and I felt so very alone. Since that happened, I feel lost when I suffer through a panic attack.

I never wanted to be considered THAT GIRL or the butt of someone’s joke. The idea of sharing something so vulnerable about me and having it met with either indifference or flat out hostility turns my stomach. But alternately, I had to realize that only sharing sadness is rough to whoever is on the receiving end.

Tangent aside, I have had a difficult time listing the things that I am capable of when setting up my assault on the job market. I figured I would try to make a list (and if you can think of anything that you feel I am capable of PLEASE let me know).

Things I Am GREAT At:

-          Talking to people: When someone isn’t being a megadouche, I have to admit that I enjoy speaking with people and hearing about their point of view.

-          Visual design: If I have a blogging theme to work with that allows me to customize things I am actually very proficient in making it appealing to people that would be frequenting it.

-          Sound editing: Being able to edit down a podcast or set up a theme song is not only fun for me, but it is exciting following a project from start to finish.

-          Adapting: Whether it is working on a webpage and figuring out how to set up a podcast or teaching myself how to use Windows Movie Maker, it is the problem solving part of my brain that fits things together like puzzle pieces.

-          Efficiency: Creating spreadsheets to make any job easier is an absolute joy for me. I cannot tell you all enough that my brain thinks in excel spreadsheets. I streamlined my job and I streamlined the compilation process of several projects and have made it so much easier to keep track of things in the future.

-          Writing: I enjoy writing, regardless of the amount of people that actually read it. Sometimes I get discouraged about it not being read by many, but knowing that the possibility of someone happening upon it is invigorating.

-          Appraisal: I have ideas for things when people approach me and I have the ability to offer critique or even offer a different perspective (even if I don’t agree with the perspective I’m giving).
… I’m sure there are more things that I am proficient in, but I just don’t know. If you can think of something, please please please let me know.

Every year I make a postcard to send out to everyone. Here is this year’s.

I hope you all have a fantastic holiday season and keep in touch! Much will be happening to me in 2012 and I would love to share it with you all!

And always remember… The way I want to dress for the holiday, isn’t always the way I dress for the holiday.

… I am leaving my gas mask at home.

* (This post will probably not excite anyone but me)

ahhhhhh!!!!

I just tabbed a song that I barely know for a friend’s birthday in a few months. I’m so friggin excited I want to play it for them right now. I’m like Veruca Salt in reverse.

Granted… it’s in a completely different key than the actual song, but I had to tab it that way because an Emaj would kick my hypothetical dick off.

I guess it’s mostly because I have never changed a key and modified chords so that they would sound okay. Granted, it’s a very very simple version of the song but it’s the principal of the matter.

hmm… Maybe I’m more instrumentally inclined than I thought I was.

Sorry this is a really vague post, I just don’t want to spoil it. I am terrible with gifting. I immediately want to give the gift and have them see it, touch it, feel it, hear it, whatever it.

 Sweet cuppin cakes this was a mistake. I haven’t written this much/posted this much EVER.

For all of you that have Black Friday off, Go Fuck Yourselves.

I’ll be at work, so I’m sleeping right now. Goodnight internets.

There are a lot of times in life where I have been given the opportunity to really send myself to a deep dark place and I luckily avoided much of that with a hearty laugh.

Sometimes I have “laugh battles” with friends. You fake laugh at them, they fake laugh at you, and then you continue on until the laughter is real. It helps.

It tells me things, has nifty little programs in it, allows me to mistext people and kept me sane during the power outages. That’ll do, IPhone. That’ll do.

My memory isn’t always that great, so the moments that I remember are always so vivid. It’s terrible. I can’t remember that it’s November, but I can totally remember a dream about a fox whose tail glowed every time you paid it a complement.

Memories are weird, but I’m very thankful for the ones I have!