Category Archives: Posts that will get me hate mail

Dear charitable organizations who inexplicably keep sending me money:  FUCKING STOP IT.

Is it just me?  I get all these letters asking for money but there are pennies and nickels glued to the requests and I guess that it’s supposed to prove that it only takes 9 cents a day to not kill cats or something, but I’m not going to give you money because CLEARLY YOU SUCK AT HANDLING IT.  You need money and you’re sending it to me.  WTF.  I don’t want money from orphans or dogs on death row.  I’ve gotten probably six dollars in guilt change this year and it only serves to remind me not to donate to you anymore because 1) this feels super manipulative and 2) is the money I gave you last year being used to send guilt change to everyone else?  Am I part of the problem?  Because that money has to come from somewhere.

Also you all stick the coins on the letter with this grey goop that I have to scrape off and I want to just throw it away but I can’t because my grandmother said throwing change away is bad luck so I have to open the envelope and wash the gunk off your guilt change, and then there are pictures of orphans and disappointed Jesuses glaring at me while I do it, like, “So you’re going to just take the money from orphans?  Really?”  And yeah, I guess I am because you certainly can’t be trusted not to throw it into envelopes to give to people who clearly don’t need it.   Also, pennies are germy and gross me out.  They live in the bottom of purses until they gets stuck to lose hard candy and then they get covered with a layer of sticky lint scum and then eventually you get grossed out when the pennies get stuck to your keys and then you throw the whole purse away.  Pennies are garbage money and everyone knows it.

Also, while I’m being bitchy to people who are trying to help others can I just add that I don’t want anymore notepads reminding me how many people die of starvation each day, or cards with cats having some sort of lobotomy.  I don’t want that.  NO ONE WANTS THAT.  (Also, PETA, you’ve sent me the cat lobotomy cards twice in the same year and it’s starting to lose its shock value, although actually I can’t complain too much because I totally used one as a Christmas card to someone I don’t like.)

Conclusion: I am a terrible person and I’d like you to stop sending me money proving that.

Hugs,

Jenny

This week Hailey went to a bullying workshop at her martial arts school and I sat through it and agreed with most of what was said, except that it was missing the one thing that all bullying talks seem to miss.

They get that most people will be bullied in their lives but you almost never see them point out that almost all of us will bully others ourselves.  We talk about it like bullies are these horrible hobgoblins creeping around in corners because it’s easy to forget that we are the bullies.  We all have the capacity to be cruel and horrible.  Sometimes it’s because we’re young and stupid and scared.  Sometimes it’s because we think we’re doing something noble or brave.  Sometimes we’re screaming terrible things at people, but really we’re screaming those things at the ghosts that haunt us.  And those people scream back.  At us, and at their own invisible ghosts standing in front of us.  Sometimes it’s done inadvertently.  So much so that we don’t even recognize it.  We don’t see that we step on the small tender pieces of others.  We don’t recognize how unaware others are that they are stepping on us.  We fight back because we have to stand up for ourselves and for others.  We fight back at others because others are fighting back at us.

When Hailey comes home from school she sometimes tells me awful stories about kids being horrible and I try to help her.  I tell her middle schoolers are a bunch of assholes.  I tell her it’s good practice to ignore them because people are assholes all over.  I help her with the ones she can’t handle on her own.  But I do one thing that I hope other parents do as well.  I remind her how easy it is be horrible ourselves.  I tell her to be mindful of others.  I tell her to be kind.  And that is not always easy, as evidenced by the fact that my first response is to call middle schoolers “a bunch of assholes.”

Hailey found the bully seminar helpful though and was telling Victor about a few of the things she’d learned, like when you see a kid just about to get pummeled you can go up to that kid and say, “Hey, the principal told me to come get you.”  That way you remove the kid from the situation and you have a reason to leave too.  And they taught about how to protect your head in a fight, or how to deescalate it.  And Victor said that all sounded good but if someone was pushing him around in middle school he’d just say, “Hey.  You ever see a donkey-faced person get kicked in the mouth?” and I was like, “THAT’S TOTALLY NOT WHAT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO” and Victor was like, “I didn’t say you should actually kick them in the face.  Just…you know...ask the question.  It’s not illegal to ask questions.”  And Hailey was like, “Yeah.  That sounds like a good way to get sent to the principal’s office,” but Victor was all, “Well, if your principal calls me in I’ll say, ‘Hey.  You ever see a donkey-faced principal get kicked in the mouth?'” and then I yelled, “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?  YOU ARE A TERRIBLE EXAMPLE,” and he shrugged and said, “I’m just asking an innocent question.  I really want to know‘.”  And then we had to leave Red Lobster because I was yelling too loudly and Hailey couldn’t stop laughing.

I sort of lost track of this blog post but I think the main point is that you should be kind.  And tell your kids to not be assholes.  And don’t have loud disagreements at Red Lobster because they’re really sensitive about that shit.

I don’t have a good image for this post so here’s an angry otter:

Y’all, I found  Jesus.

More specifically I found Jesus on a wall pocket at a thrift shop and Victor wouldn’t let me buy it because he hates Jesus.  Or because he hates wall pockets.  Hard to tell.  But it’s fantastic because LOOK AT HIM.  Most Jesuses (Jesusi?) fall under the subsets of “Caring Shepard Jesus” or “Vengeful Threatening Jesus” or “Peaceful Hippy Jesus” or “Fat Baby Jesus” but this is the first time I’ve ever seen sassy, eye-rolling Jesus who is adorably fed up with your continued poor decisions and silliness but is resigned to the fact that you can’t even seem to stop yourself from fucking up.

“What is wrong with these people?” ~ Jesus

He is my favorite personal Jesus and I assume this is what He looks like all the time when He reads this blog.  It’s the same look I give the cats when I find them back-kicking the giant pile of toilet paper they’re currently shredding into a nest after they’ve unravelled the last roll in the house.

If he had a thought bubble it would be him looking at God like, “I know, right?”  Or perhaps an audible sigh of disappointment as he muttered, “Ugh.  I mean, really?”

I told Victor is was like this Jesus was channeling your sassy gay friend and Victor was like, “Who…Kevin?” and then I gave him the above Jesus look and showed him these videos, but he still said $25 was too much to pay to have Jesus disappointed in you:

And then I held Jesus in front of my face and said, “WELP.  Y’all done fucked up.  Again. Just… AAARRGH.  Forgive them Father, because a lot of them are dumbasses, apparently.  *deep breathe* No.  It’s okay. You know what?  I’m cool.  I’m fine.  Y’all are just lucky that vengeful Jesus is busy appearing on a tortilla because he would not put up with this ridiculousness.  Y’all need to get your shit together, okay?”

And then Victor said it was more like the look that Jesus probably gives when people are being shitty to other people and are like, “I’M DOING THIS IN THE NAME OF JESUS” and Jesus is like, “Oh God.  Do not bring me into this mess.  You know nothing of my work.”  And he’s right and I laughed.  

Praise Jesus.

I’ve had a lot of people send me links to this auction where a woman is selling a purse made out of a dead cat (it was already dead if that makes it less awful for you) and half of the people are like, “THIS IS AWESOME AND I TOTALLY THOUGHT OF YOU” and the other half are like, “THIS IS SICK AND HORRIFIC AND I TOTALLY THOUGHT OF YOU” and either way I can’t decide if I should be insulted, or just happy that you all know me so well, so I’m sticking with the latter.

Via Trade Me

And although I do appreciate the thought, this is one of the few times when I looked at terrible taxidermy and thought, Um…maybe not.  First of all because of the shedding, secondly because it’s looking at me reproachfully, third because it looks a bit too much like Hunter S. Thomcat and I’m pretty sure it would give all of the cats nightmares.  Besides, I already own an easter basket made of a 100-year-old armadillo, an antique coin purse made of a frog, and hat made out of an ethically taxidermied raccoon face, and I suspect there’s a limit to how many animals you can wear at one time, even if they did all die of natural causes.  Also, the starting bid is $1400 which is just ridiculous, especially considering that I could probably make it myself.  Not that I would.  Unless someone I really hated was allergic to cats.  Then maybe I would make one just to keep them away from me.  But it seems like it would be easier to just put Hunter S. Thomcat in a Baby Bjorn and carry him around strapped to my chest.  Except he has anxiety too so he gets scared when we travel and gets AWFUL, explosive traveler’s diarrhea.  Which would probably keep even more people away from me, now that I think about it.  So technically I think I just found an inexpensive way to make sure people don’t get in my personal space in airports and I didn’t even have to use hot glue to seal a cat’s corpse to a pocketbook.

Life hacks, y’all.

Things I wrote on my phone at 2am and then later found and read and wondered if maybe I need to cut back on my sleeping pills:

It’s weird that kids will walk for miles just to see a dead body in a ravine when they could just walk into a funeral home and look at a bunch of them without all those flies and lack of air conditioning. Kids, right?

Although maybe it’s because kids always want to poke a body with a stick and funeral directors won’t let a bunch of kids come in with sticks. That’s why I always bring a cane. A cane is a fancy stick and people assume you’re too sickly to be a threat, so when you get in trouble for poking all the dead bodies in the funeral home you can run away and funeral home people would be like “Whoa. Look at her go. That’s gotta be some kind of miracle. Maybe she was on to something with all this poking.” If I was a kid I’d bring a cane to poke bodies, but I guess the problem is that you have to share it with your friends because whose gonna believe an entire roving pack of kids who all have canes? That’s just unsettling. Although people might avoid looking at you out of pity. So maybe canes-for-everyone is a good idea if you’re poking bodies, or doing some light shoplifting. I haven’t really thought it through but this is exactly the kind of stuff I should bring up if they ever invite me to speak at an elementary school because those speakers almost never give good real-world advice.

PS. I’m leaving tomorrow to be part of the faculty (JESUS THAT’S SUCH A GROWN UP WORD) for the University of Dayton Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop and I’m speaking at the same time as a bunch of award winning famous people who probably don’t giggle when they refer to themselves as “faculty” so if you come to see me and it’s less than three of you I say we just go to the bar and get stupid.  Drinks are on me.  Unless there are 4 of you.  Then we go halfsies.  I’m not made of money, people.  Maybe BYOB?  Come prepared.

PPS. Spellcheck says “halfsies” isn’t a real word.  Really, spellcheck?  Because I think a member of “the faculty” would know what words are.  Honestly, I’m not sure if I’m proving me or spellcheck wrong here.