Even though my office is on the 19th floor (out of 21), the elevator was already crowded when I stepped into it when I left work.
“There won’t be a lot people in tomorrow because of the holiday,” the woman behind me remarked to her co-worker.
“I know,” he replied. “I wonder if the post office will be open.”
I turned slightly to look at them.
“No, probably not,” she said. “I think the post office will be closed tomorrow.”
Oy vey.
Tags: hilarity, Jewishness
Yesterday at work my co-worker told me about a time she went to the library. A line had formed to enter because a security guard was checking bags as people came in. As she waited, my co-worker became aware of an unpleasant odor. It turned out that the guy in front of her was holding something brown in his hands. The security guard took a look and waved him into the library.
“It’s not that he was homeless and carrying shit into the library that bothered me,”
she said. “I’d be upset if he was in a full suit and worked at Lehman Brothers and was holding shit.”
“Yeah, those collateralized debt obligations!” I laughed. She stared at me. “You know, collateralized debt obligations?” Blank look. “The things that the investment banks used to package mortgages that tanked the economy?” She nodded. “Well, they were essentially piles of shit so I thought you were making a hilarious joke about CDOs.”
Once in a while, it is good to remember that I live on my own little public policy/finance planet. I am such a dork. But I still think that is a funny joke.
Tags: hilarity, nerds, Uncategorized
The organization that I work for, which use Jewish religious teachings and traditions to promote social and economic justice for all Americans, is running a twitter/blog haiku campaign to protest Glenn Beck’s comment linking churches that talk about social justice to fronts for communism and Nazism. If you are down with social and economic justice, tweet a haiku with your thoughts on the matter (use the hashtag #becku) or submit poetic words of wisdom at Haik U Glenn Beck.
My only problem with this campaign is that I am not poetic. OK, and also that all of my best haikus about Glenn Beck involve really foul words that will not appear on the site because they have more class and taste than I do.* I’ll give it a try, though:
Bloviating Glenn
Has a beef with equity
Bawk! He’s chickenhawk
See? Cheese-tastic! And it makes no sense. I trust that CUSS readers all can do better.
*Here are the baddies:
Glenn Beck, douche bag
Bloviating sack of shit
Social justice, good
When I think “dumb fuck”
Glenn Beck’s face comes to my mind
‘Cause I like justice
Tags: hilarity, Jewishness, Uncategorized, What is wrong with people?
“Ideas are like coffee. If you let them percolate, then drip down, you’ll get a nice hot cup of caffeinated material. Drink up.” – me
(I know it’s hard to believe that I came up with this gem, but I did! Yeah, my thesis is gonna rock hard with this type of wisdom. Go me!)
Tags: hilarity, I'm a natural resource producer, Uncategorized, writing
>A white envelope waited for me when I checked the mail last night. In huge letters it said, “United States Census 2010.” Excitement surged through my veins. Ooooh! The Census! Not only do I love filling out questionnaires (seriously), but I love helping New York get its fair share of resources.
I ran back into the apartment. “We got the Census form!” I told Husband, waving the slim envelope triumphantly in the air.
“Are you sure? It could just be a letter telling us that the Census is coming.”
“Oh.” Suddenly the tiny envelope made more sense. I ripped it open. It was a letter. In bold letters, it said, “About one week from now, you will receive a 2010 Census form in the mail.”
Fine. I got all excited again. “The Census is coming! The Census is coming!”
I sort of hope that my enthusiasm for the Census will not be matched by people who live in states that don’t believe in government services or civil liberties. I don’t want them getting their fair share of representation if they are going to use it to deprive me of my fair share of rights. I’m just sayin’….
>Basically, I have no idea what is going on outside of my little sphere of work and thesis writing. I thought today was March 8th, which is International Women’s Day, and was all excited to write about it. I understand now that March 8th was actually yesterday. I’m going to say some shit anyway.
I wrote a post for BlogHer about 30 Woman Making History, a campaign by the Woman’s Media Center to highlight, yes, 30 women making history while also raising some dough to employ women to write about news and politics. Good idea. I picked five women that I thought were making history (Shada [Shatha] Nasser, Eveline Shen, Sindiwe Magona, Shirley Rodriguez Remeneski, and Alysa Stanton). Links for more info on each awesome woman is in my post at BlogHer if you want to know more, and yes, that’s my way of getting people to click over there. Whatever.
Today I read a post over at another awesome woman’s blog, Suebob’s Red Stapler. She quoted a not awesome woman blogger who said that equality is stupid because it is about fairness and we all know that life isn’t fair. “Fuck that!” was essentially Suebob’s reaction, echoed by all the excellent people who left comments on it.
One comment in particular stood out: “Vagina’s are wasted on some people I swear.” This was written by Thordora, who totally made my day.
And now, back to my day.
Tags: Asshole idiots, democracy in action, hilarity, props to my peeps, random, What is wrong with people?
>My thesis, which is about the spoken and unspoken experiences that I inherited from my paternal side, uses humor to explore the horrible things that happened to my grandparents and father during and after World War II. The humor is integral because my grandfather relied on jokes to deflect topics that he didn’t want to deal with and as a coping mechanism for his enormous losses. I think that this reliance on humor is something that I inherited from him.
Anyway, today I spent some time reading Jewish humor books. Partly it is for research, partly to procrastinate because I have no ideas at the moment. I thought I’d share one:
Sadie says to her husband, “Moshe, I’m fed up with frozen chicken. Please buy for me a live chicken for a change. Then I can make for us a lovely meal.”So Moshe goes to the market and buys the chicken. On his way back, he sees that Funny Girl is showing at the movies. He calls Sadie on a pay phone. “Sadie,” he says, “They’re showing Funny Girl at the movies. I think I’ll see it before I come home.”
“OK,” replies Sadie, “but what about the chicken?”
“I’ll take it inside with me,” Moshe answers.
Moshe stuffs the chicken down his trousers and goes in to see the film. Unfortunately, part way through the movie, the chicken pokes its head out. Two women are sitting next to Moshe and one turns to the other and whispers, “There’s a man next to me with his shmeckle hanging out of his pants.”
Her friend says, “Why be shocked? If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Just watch the movie.”
“But this one’s different. It’s eating my popcorn.”
OK, this joke totally cracked me up because it is so weird and random. I can almost hear my grandfather telling it. (He really liked dirty jokes, just like I do.)
Tags: hilarity, Jewishness, leering perverts, props to my peeps, random, yummy eats
>For a nanosecond, I wanted to scream when I stepped onto the subway on Tuesday morning. In a seat between two disinterested women lay a disembodied head, face down. Its black hair stood up at odd angles, and its brown neck was evenly sawed off from a torso.
I quickly realized that the reason that the women were so nonchalant about this horror was that it was a severed mannequin’s head. Further inspection lead me to notice that the mannequin’s little bud nose rested on a cosmetology magazine. The head seemed to belong to the woman on its right, who thoughtfully gave it its own seat so that actual humans had to stand.
At 42nd Street, the woman gathered her shopping bags, scooped up the head and magazine, and exited the train. I sat down in the seat formerly occupied by the lifeless head. I love living in New York City.
Tags: hilarity, I love New York, mortification, random
>Two years ago, my friend Sara and I were interviewed for documentary on abortion. I even put on make up and shit so that I would not look like a fetus-eating zombie on film, hence making the pro-choice side of what we were assured was a “balanced” look at the abortion debate look bad. Nope. I wanted to represent!
I never heard back from the motherfuckers. Not even, “Thanks Suzanne. It was nice of you to take time out to help us make a shitty documentary that no one will see.” So when I discovered that the filmmakers actually did come up with something – and it is a scripted “dramamentary” about abortion in which the pretty blond white girl is treated like shit by nasty nurses in an abortion clinic and thus of course have her baby and all is good and – deep breath; this is an angry run on sentence/rant, sorry – the black girl who is raped and comes to NYC to have her abortion is saved by the nice white woman who hosts her through the Haven Coalition (which I was, at the time I was interviewed, the co-head of), I was mad fucking pissed. These douches could at least have had the courtesy to email me and let me know their shitty “unbiased” film (featuring a really cuddly 22 week old fetus in utero) that I helped them with was coming out. Or at least a “Lifetime”-esque trailer that befits a solid piece of filmmaking such as this was online for my viewing pleasure.
Oh. And I did I mention that this “balanced” film is executive produced by the guy who made that other even-keeled movie, Passion of the Christ, and the awesome Ben Stein movie about how “science” teachers who want to teach that evolution is all a lie are persecuted by baby- and Christ-killing Jews like me? Right. (CORRECTION: “The Passion of the Christ” guy is the one marketing this balanced film, although the exec producer is a right winger, too – “Hollywood’s Most Powerful Christian,” according to Christianity Today magazine. My bad.)
Of course, some of the documentary footage that these tools shot is in the film. (Hence the “-umentary” part.) The pro-choice people, according to the “LA Times,” all get to say things like how fetuses are nothing more than parasites (which, sorta, is true, but unlike digestive parasites which make women thin, fetus ones make them fat – ewwwwww). I’m assuming (hoping and praying) that I didn’t make the cut, but since this doesn’t appear to be available to pro-choice audiences, I may never know. I think it’s unlikely that I’m in it, since I said that people who supposedly are “pro-life” have killed a lot of actual people, and that they really scare me. Seems like something that a “balanced” film would not want to highlight.
Tags: Asshole idiots, hilarity, I'm Famous (Not), other rants, What is wrong with people?
>When I moved to New York City from the ‘burbs of Chicago 15 years ago, one of the biggest adjustments I had to make was the lack of Walgreen’s. NYC had plenty of pharmacies/drug store chains to choose from – Duane Reade (as ubiquitous in NYC as Walgreen’s is in Chicago), CVS, Rite Aid, the one that was on 8th Street between Broadway and University whose name I am blanking on but that no longer exists, etc. – but I thought Walgreen’s had a better variety of random products than any of them. Whenever I went out to Long Island, I rejoiced in the Walgreen’s near the train station that served Husband’s parents’ town.
Over time, however, I adjusted. Duane Reade, still annoying in general, spruced itself up a bit as it expanded its presence. (At one point, it seemed like the only commercial space left in the City would be bank branches, Starbuckses, and Duane Reades.) I adapted to its overpriced merchandise, surly cashiers, and long lines. They introduced a card in which you got points for every dollar you spent, and they rounded up, which made me feel a bit better about paying $2 for a Diet Coke that the corner bodega might sell for between $1.25 (if I’m lucky) and $1.75. Once you get a $100, you get $5 off your next purchase. I love bribes.
So, when I got Husband’s email this morning that informed me that Walgreen’s acquired Duane Reade, I was shocked. Even more shocked than by the fact that the New York Times finally posted what was rumored to be such a scandalous story about Gov. Patterson that he’d immediately be forced to resign and it turned out to be boring. I mean, Walgreen’s taking over Duane Reade? This is craziness! I can’t decide if I am excited or horrified.
For now, Walgreen’s is keeping the Duane Reade name, but it will be really weird if they replace it and there’s no more Duane Reade in NYC. I wonder if this is revenge for Macy’s buying Marshall Field’s and then changing the name, an affront to the civic pride and identities of Chicagoans everywhere. Huh. Maybe I’ve uncovered a diabolical plot. Now that Duane Reade is threatened, I feel very defensive of it, even though I fucking hate that store (other than the bribes). Interesting.
Tags: epiphanies, hilarity, nerds, random
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Name: Suzanne Reisman
Location: New York, NY
I'm a misanthropic humanist. While I'm a do-gooder by training and profession, I sort of also loathe people. Now I write, too.
COPYRIGHT: Please note that everything on this page is covered by my Creative Commons License, and should not be quoted without attribution, reproduced for profit, or altered in any way. Thanks.
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