More Weird Shit I Did as a Child- the Sculpture Edition.

(I'm going to start this post with an irrelevant story.)

This morning I locked my keys in my car. In my own goddamn driveway.

Granted, this could have happened in worse locations- a dunk'n'donuts on the highway, for instance- so I guess I was lucky in that respect. But still. It's galling, and annoying, and mostly I just feel pretty dumb. This meant that I have been stuck in my house all day, and conceivably will continue to be trapped indoors until either (a) someone comes and rescues me, or (b) my mother comes home with her set of keys.

To entertain myself, I decided to do some baking, a hobby I enjoy but rarely have the time/motivation to indulge. Not only was I going to bake, I decided, but I was going to bake something challenging! I decided on Three Pepper Cookies, which are essentially peppery-sweet cookies dipped in chocolate. Here's the recipe, in case you are curious : http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Three_pepper-Spice-Cookies_-Recipezaar

ANYWAYS. On the left hand corner of the top shelf of my spice cabinet, where no-ones been in, oh, years, was a relic of my childhood. It looked like this:

I sort of vaguely remember crafting this racist-Myan ripoff statue in middle school. I think the assignment was to... actually, I have no idea. I can't think of any topic they would give small children that would result in this. Indo-colonialist stereotypes? It's clearly supposed to be some poor South American tribes-person sacrificing to his pagan god.

World, I apologize for this piece of shit.

Yes, that is a skull. I think. *sighs*. 

But you know what? Everyone has one weird art project as a child, right?

Right?

I was a strange child. 

So I had a big sculpture phase in middle school, ok? Or was it freshman year...
At least this wasn't, you know, blatantly racist. The idea was cool (I thought). It was supposed to look as if you'd picked up a block of water, and then had all the bits of fish swimming around and through it. Except the cube of water looked more like...well, a big heavy box.  With penises sticking out of it.

At least my stuff was better than my brother's.

Of course, he made this in first grade. Don't tell. 

Kids Say the Darndest Things

While cleaning my room the other day, I found an old journal from 5th grade. That was the year I had Mr. Folk, the famous teacher with one fake ear (but was it the right? Or the left? He would never say; I suppose I'll never know). I started flipping through this thing, and I came to one conclusion:

I was a weird little kid.

I thought you might find some of this amusing. So, of course, I'm putting it on my blog. With illustrations. I even left in all the bad grammar and spelling mistakes, because hey- shits funny. You're welcome.

Hopefully you'll be as amused as I was to read them. If not, well I don't really care. Have fun!




#1: Snow, or What the Hell Was I On?

3/23/00

I was very suprised when it snowed on the first day of spring luckily, it didn't stick. It was snowing the size of footballs! Snowing cats and dogs! Pancakes! Giants!...It was a miracle! ...I'm telling you, its this El Nino thing. The guys a complete loony! I don't think there's a loony bin in this side of the GALAXY big enough to hold his nuttiness. The guy must have had a brain transplant were you give away your brain but don't get a replacement!

An Artist's Rendering.

#2: I Was an Anxious Child


4/4/00
yesterday, I went to Mc.D. I had heard that they have Furby's at their stores. I was quite pleased. But then I had a thought; WHAt if they didn't have them? I was soon to find out....
When we got there the drive through was too crowded so we went inside. The lines were relatively long, but withstandable. The question still remained; Did they have them?

Finally it was our turn. we ordered. I was all tense. Then, to my great releif, i saw the man put in the Furby! i was all excited. The Furby was white with brown spots it has pink and brown ears. I makes a gurgling noise. 
 

PUT IT IN THE F!*%ING BAG, BITCH.

#3: Adventures with Proper Nouns


Date Unknown
The Other day I was over at Emilys house with Kristena. We were going outside to play crocay. When we opened the door we heard a wierd sound like this, "Eeeeooooeee." I peaked my head outside the door and in the Bushes was a racoon! We got really excited and ran to tell Emilys dad. He chased it away. I was really excited! 
Later on, When I got home I toll my dad. He said that the racoon must have rabies. I got very nervous.

GET OUT OF THOSE BUSHES, MR. RACCOON.

QUICK! EVERYBODY PANIC!

The apocalypse is this Saturday.

Oh, but don't worry. Saturday isn't the END end. It's just when all the good people who love Jesus get to go to heaven. The rest of us have five months of earthquakes, fires, and zombie hordes to look forward to before October 21st, when the world will actually be destroyed.

Graduation is gonna be badass.
 
All the recent hullabaloo comes from an octogenarian, Christian radio guru named Harold Camping. You can read about his predictions on the technological dinosaur that is his website.

A product of the AARP's new 'elderly web design' program.

I haven't seen something so ugly since 1992.  I bet he still plays Minesweeper.

Oh, I'm sorry, did you think 2012 was the apocalypse? Well you were wrong. And in case you were confused, he's made it nice and obvious right on the front of his website. Next to the countdown.

Look at that- "The bible guarantees it!" That's interesting, as I'm pretty sure there's nothing in the bible pointing to May 21, 2011 as the End of Times. I guess I'm not in the loop since I'm just a silly Jew. Besides Mr. Camping made a very special mathematical formula that clearly pinpoints 5/21/11 to be the end of the world. You probably wouldn't understand it unless you were really really smart and good at Hard Math like he is.

 

I don't remember this being at the end of the quadratic equation...

How can you not believe what he says? He proved it with math. Math! The world runs on math. It is never, ever wrong, especially when predicting the apocalypse. I mean, okay, there was Y2k, but that was just a glitch. Look the point is that math is always right, especially when it comes from numbers found in a 400+ year old book. And especially when it comes from this guy:

Harold Camping: the product of forbidden love.

He has such conviction, such passion, behind his scientific mathematical formula. This is what he said to New York Magazine:

"God has given sooo much information in the Bible about this, and so many proofs, and so many signs, that we know it is absolutely going to happen without any question....I would be absolutely in rebellion against God if I thought anything other than it is absolutely going to happen without any question."

I wonder if that's what he said in 1994, the last time he predicted the End of Times. That was just a "preliminary study," though. He was just testing it out.


GUYS HE'S TOTALLY CERTAIN THIS TIME. FO REALZ.

But you may not be a believer yet. Dear old Harold is just one man, and maybe his calculator was acting up when he divided 7000 by the year of Noah's Flood. What about God? What does he have to say?

Well don't you worry your pretty little head. We're not down this proverbial coal mine without a canary to warn us of disaster.

Ooh, Papyrus! Haven't seen THAT since 8th grade.

Yes, that's right. God put gays on earth as an End of Times litmus test. Every time an office accepted a gay partner at an office party, or a state validated gay marriage, we were taking one step closer to the apocalypse. No wonder the government is so discriminatory to a segment of the population that has done nothing more than love the people they love. Apparently the US government has been taking Mr. Camping's advice- though not for much longer!

I hope Obama has a wrathful-God contingency plan.

 I could go on. I could tell you why Camping's assertion that "the Bible has every word in the original language — it was written by God..." is ridiculous, especially since he uses the King James bible which wasn't written until 1611 (that's 1,611 years after Jesus was born). I could explain that no, math doesn't work like that, Mr. Camping. I could even make fun of his website some more. Trust me when I say there's plenty of material.

But I think that's enough. The point is that this 'end of times' is no worse than every other 'end of times' that has ever been predicted. And so far, they've all been wrong - even though I'm sure that each prophet was always just as confident in his prediction as Mr. Camping. We need to stop waiting for God to take us away from this planet. We're not going anywhere until we die, people. And if I'm wrong, fine. I'd rather be down here fighting off zombies with the sinners than up there with all the boring saints.

In case you want to learn more, I encourage you to visit Mr. Camping's site. Perhaps you would like to read one of his insightful articles, as sampled below. I, personally, am intrigued by "I Hope God Will Save Me!" I'm pretty sure I know the answer already.

In addition, you can read Mr. Camping's interview with New York magazine here.

Osama Bin Laden is Dead, and I Feel Fine.

(Serious post time. We'll get back to the humor tomorrow, promise)

By now, I'm sure you've heard the big news of the night. Osama Bin Laden is dead- and no, not 'mostly' dead. Miracle Max can't do anything for this S.O.B. I wouldn't say that I'm happy about this development. This isn't the kind of situation that evokes joy. Instead, what I'm feeling is much closer to relief- deep, soul lightening, bone weary relief that this is finally done.

Everyone knows exactly where they were when they realized how the attacks of 9/11 would change our lives. For me, it was lunchtime in my middle school's cafeteria, when I realized that my mother had traveled through the World Trade Center only two hours before the first plane hit. Now what haunts me is her face when she talks about how she watched through her office window as two planes crashed into the New York City skyline. When the trains started running later that day and we picked her up from the station, she got in our car and wouldn't talk about it except to say that her shoes had been ruined. Later, watching footage of the debris that had blackened the air in New York play on every news station, I understood why. My mother still gets nervous when planes fly overhead.

I won't lie and tell you I feel any safer now that one of 9/11's biggest perpetrators is dead. I'm not an idiot. As one of my roommates correctly pointed out, Bin Laden is just one man, and undoubtedly others will rise to fill his shoes. There will always be despicable people out there, and far too many are as disgusting, or worse than, Osama Bin Laden. But what it means when the President says that yes, we've got Osama Bin Laden's body, is that in some small measure justice has been done. In a very real way my roomate was incorrect. Bin Laden is not just one of many. He is an example of the very worst that humanity is capable of becoming, and killing him will strike a blow at the heart of Al Qaeda and, to a very limited extent, provide closure for those scarred by 9/11. 

There will be retribution. We have to be careful how we treat Bin Laden's death, because there are powers out there that are going to try and turn him into a martyr. I'm sure in the coming days- hell, even the coming hours- we're going to see increased activity from terrorist organizations as they fight in the false name of revenge, or righteousness, or independence. People are going to die both in the West and the Middle East. We'll also have to resist the dangers that lie within ourselves. We have to remember that the victims of 9/11 included Muslims as well as Christians and Jews (etc etc), and that terrorism is universally deadly. As the President said, "Osama Bin Laden was not a Muslin leader. He was a mass murderer of Muslims."

For the moment, however, we can let go of that breath our nation has been holding since 9/11 thrust Bin Laden into the front of our consciousness. Tonight a mass murderer has been destroyed, and damn but it feels good.

As I write the end of this post, I realize that I was wrong when I said that I only feel relief at Bin Laden's death. I see my mother's face, almost 10 years after 9/11, as planes fly overhead and bring her back to that nightmare, and I think that what I feel may be closer to happiness than I thought.