I’ve been Todd Marrone’d people. Be sure to check out his website when you click the picture. He’s awesomely talented, and also a witstreamer, so check out his twitter here. #FF
Created this special for Twaggies, a fantastic site where illustrators turn hilarious tweets into drawings. Tons of great stuff on there - check it out!
The Real Housewives of Little Gym: An @yoyoha Live Tweet Event
Today I took my 3 year old son to his Little Gym class. The events that transpired have been recorded for posterity. Names have not been changed to protect the innocent, because no one is truly innocent in this world, as far as I’m concerned.
The moms in my son’s Little Gym class are having the STUPIDEST conversation! And they won’t even include me in it :(
Melissa’s husband Tom is taking a business trip to Italy, she was invited but their kids have too much going on! I get that, but Italy!
Melissa is taking advantage of the time Tom’s in Italy to power wash the house. He doesn’t want to spend the money, but she’s doin it anyway! #burn
Jill carried twins full term without ever being on bed rest! You go girl!
Jill’s husband Jim got called to Turkey 3 weeks after the twins were born! Luckily her mom was able to help! It really does take a village.
Melissa’s daughter Isabel saw her friend’s dad and totally made Melissa stop the car and say hello. So cute. He used to play for Ohio State!
Theresa has a lot of cousins, but is only close with a few. Damn Theresa, don’t you know that’s how cousins work!
Theresa’s mom stll works, which is great because she didn’t work for a while and drove Theresa crazy! Moms need their own drama, am I right?
Melissa’s daughter Annie just started a ballet class. She’s doing great but is being so funny about the tutu! Her stocky frame isn’t helping :(
Melissa’s oldest, Mary Beth, is happy Annie’s doing ballet like her, but in her own way.
Melissa’s kids are allowed to pick instruments this year at school. Leaning toward clarinet, but don’t count out the flute!
Jill’s twin sisters played clarinet, Theresa played violin. Instruments Are so funny, they say so much about a person, don’t you think? Totally agree!
Melissa chipped a tooth last week. So glad she saw the bright side of a few hours at the dentist. With no kids, she almost fell asleep in the chair!
~ fin ~
Also, special thanks to Todd Stover (@maddad) for collecting and reordering the tweets and posting them on his tumblr!
BUM: A Fictional Memoir of Life on the Street
Noon. The lunch bell rings pretty constantly in my waking hours, but something about noon makes the opening of my merlot lunchbox feel right.
Not only am I the biggest fan of antioxidants on the planet, I find the crippling headache I wake with every morning is best eased at the noon hour, when the sun is at it’s ripest, and the sweat factory that is my current outfit can concentrate a thimble full of alcohol into something that would make a fat man forget his name and occupation for a good twenty minutes.
Considering that, one styrofoam cup of the cheapest red wine on the market will keep me fairly numb until the late afternoon, which helps get me through the peak tanning hours without suffering heat stroke or foaming at the mouth and going into convulsions. And during this time (which i fondly refer to as “the day’s haze”), I get my best thinking done - whether I’m trying to invent a more effective way to trap squirrels or just dealing with the ocean of regret for having attempted to work as a stock broker with a form of dyslexia that had me buying high and selling low until I found myself giving stock tips to people wearing spring fashions that were first available to the market in 1978.
While most of the brain cell real estate from that time has been repossessed by fermented grape overlords, I do get flashes of my former life the few times a week a pinhole of light pierces through a particularly light blackout. And while most of these memories are painful, it is fun to remember a time when I was able to enter an actual female vagina, instead of the tightly closed fist with some facial hair glued to the top I have today. And in those partially-conscious moments, I always arrive to the fact that romance is still important: whether your chosen mate is groomed and shimmering like a magazine ad or resembles a lump of raw poultry buried in a nest of steel wool with a hat on it.
At least I had the foresight to avoid having children. Though, looking back it would have been hard since my former wife insisted that we use a condom, a diaphragm, birth control pills and made me pull out and finish by myself in the bathroom every time we made love. Even when we had phone sex, while I was away on business, she would hang up the phone well before the moment of truth, and for years after I would find myself aroused by the sound of any phone that was off the hook and beeping.
But it’s best not to dwell on the past too much, especially when you have to remain aware of your surroundings enough to not get sucked up by a street sweeper.
~ Fin
BUM: A Fictional Memoir of Life on the Street
10am: With the optimum tanning hours rapidly approaching, it seems like a good time to remove three of the six layers I’m currently wearing. Heat is a funny thing for those of us who only shower when it rains. It’s not by accident you never see the homeless wearing tank tops and jogging shorts during sweltering summer days. Despite having hands and faces that peel more aggressively than a boa constrictor shedding it’s skin, the rest of our bodies are paler than a graduating class from Devry technical college. And the lack of dresser drawers always make storage an issue, so we are forced to wear as much as we can as often as we can, and fashion the rest into a pillow, a chair, or possibly a portable toilet if the need should arise.
I know that sounds awful, using wearables to soak up bodily waste, but you’d be surprised how often a nice restaurant will refuse to let us use a bathroom without having purchased a plate of appetizers or provided them a written oath to permanently move ourselves and our toilet clothes at least ten city blocks away. And even then, they still make you come in through the back and go in an empty produce box.
Although, be warned, sometimes in addition to letting us relieve ourselves in semi-private conditions, on occasion they do allow us to place our genitals on a warm plate of food, often belonging to a particularly unruly customer, or so I would assume. This only lends credence to my belief that you should never, ever, be rude to a person serving you food.
Luckily, it’s still early and the lunch crowd won’t be treading on my Joe Cool beach towel for hours. So, during quiet times like these I make an effort to conceptualize new techniques for relieving people of their change. A new one I have been experimenting with involves stealing heady books from the library, and pretending to read them with conviction during daylight hours. In financial sectors, it seems to be working, as the Wall Street honks apparently appreciate a bum attempting to better his situation through the aid of the written word. Little do they know the conviction they are witnessing is actually me resisting the urge to eat the pages I happen to be leafing through that day. The list of things I do so I can afford to brush my teeth with red wine are staggering, and the fact is, the gainfully employed are easily manipulated.
Knowing that, a proper bum will use the ocean of minutes, hours and days constructively, as opposed to simply retching recently digested three day old Wendy’s Chili into a pair of holey gloves.
BUM: A Fictional Memoir of Life on the Street
6am: Got woken up by my favorite sewer rat, Rabey, who was gnawing lightly on my genitals in hopes of foraging the only cheese available for 12 city blocks. As good a way to start the day as any when you’re living on the street.
After squeezing the little guy to within an inch of his life, it seemed like the perfect time to head out of the alley and start screaming gibberish at people on line at the Starbucks down the street. Man, do those early rising yuppie assholes get bent. They should thank me, because getting threatened by a hobo wakes your ass up a lot faster than any venti latte ever could, and I’ll go away for a measly buck, instead of the $3-$5 those fancy pants baristas are taking them for.
8am: Two hours of shouting would tire anyone out, much less a 110 pound street urchin who’s done nothing but smoke stray cigarette filters and suck down Riunite for the last six months. And let me tell you, getting one those boxes of wine into a paper bag is a chore. Most times I just poke a hole into the side of a regular grocery bag for the tap, then pour it into a cup housed in a smaller paper bag. For the flea set, it’s actually quite a sophisticated look, and it’s rare a fellow tramp doesn’t give me a satisfied nod before attempting to stick me with a rusty shiv and steal my grocery cart.
You know, I have to say, drinking out of a paper bag has really become a lost art form on the street. A lot of times I see guys using those plastic grocery ones, which is a sorry substitute, and between you and me, a little bush. Some don’t even care enough to use a bag and can be seen sipping from liquor bottles buried in their shirt sleeves. It’s an awkward look to be sure, though the amputees seem to have an easier go of it. I, for one, take a little pride in trying to create an image that Norman Rockwell might admire, an overall look that encapsulates the spirit of the unbathed, which I truly believe helps with the public’s monetary assistance. If they’re going to stop what they’re doing to whip some loose change in my direction, I at least want to show people I am making an attempt as I chase them down the street waving a large stick. Even when horrified, I think people can sense the difference and appreciate the effort.
Next: 10am!
