All family, friends and freedom aside, here are some other things to be thankful for this holiday:
Kaleidoscopes
Goat Cheese and/or Goats
Artificial Hearts
Corn Candles
Aretha Franklin
Chairs
Baby Elephants
Suction Cups
People Named Gladys
Water
de la Rosa Dulce de Cacahuate
And last, but certainly not least, Google Images.
It’s Thursday again and you know what the means! So please fill me in because I have no idea.
But what I do know is we’ve added 160 more pounds of raw, hairy manliness to Our Thursday! Prepare to fill your deepest emotional void with violence, German shepherds, Batman, neck beards, neck ties, neck veins and Afrin.
Just kidding. That’s terrible.
Listen, do we really need another man in the single white male-dominated bathroom? No.
Did we search for a brilliant individual to bring more content, more laughter and more vulgarity to your life? Yes.
That said, please give a warm, wet welcome to everyone’s favorite homonym, Mike White!
My Quite is a wildly talented writer whose wit delights and horrifies thousands of followers in a little corner of the world called Twitter. Follow him if you like breathing @THEmikewhite.
Mike will disseminate cutting commentary on everything from celebrities, sports and politics to the gum on his shoe, right here on Our Thursday. He premieres in one week, so look for it on your news feed and share, share away.
When he’s not writing, Mike is gyrating somewhere in Culver City eating burritos by himself and growing an impressive mustache. He looks like Bill Murray, but after a few tequila shots he might resemble Ryan Gosling and Grover holding hands.
Do you want to write or snap photos for Our Thursday? Send samples to [email protected].
Steve Jobs died today and I’m having a rather unexpected reaction to it. Sad, inspired and confused — I wonder how a complete stranger can tap so vigorously my shoulder. Typing on my MacBook Pro at this very moment, I slide my fingers across the trackpad to multitask between writing this and discovering new articles, blogs and tributes to Jobs. Beside me is an iPhone 4, my magic hand mirror to the world, and in the front pocket of my white leather purse sits a silver iPod classic, sheltering nearly 7,000 digital fragments of my soul. Jobs’ empire allows me, a monetarily privileged woman on the wrong side of my twenties, to enhance my everyday with sleek, sexy and convenient gizmos, light enough to be toted by my frail city arms.
And the thing is, that’s not going to change.
Despite the bruise near the base of its stem, Apple remains crunchy. We can still get our mitts on the iPhone 5 (when?) and continue emptying our wallets for the thrill of balancing on the tight rope of tomorrow.
So why does it matter to you or me or that guy on the bench over there, that the founder of a billion dollar corporation has transitioned to the unknown? Mortality.
If Steve Jobs can follow his dreams from a garage in Northern California, so can you. If Steve Jobs wants to wear black turtlenecks instead of short-sleeved shirts and a tie, then you can wear flip flops on casual Friday, if you’re courageous enough.
And, if Steve Jobs can die, we certainly don’t stand a chance.
Steve Jobs changed the world, arguably more so than a president or a queen or a king or the kindest nun. And coming to terms with his demise is a peculiar sensation. If/when we lost the person who invented shampoo, hair dryers, pants, the polio vaccine, caprese sandwiches, airplanes, tweezers, socks, cardboard boxes, swords, French Bulldogs, Fig Newtons, puppets and all the other tangible items that have somehow impacted the world, it probably wouldn’t/didn’t feel this way.
And from my lowly, ignorant, technologically-inept vantage point, today Jobs demonstrated it’s possible to live out one’s dreams, but impossible to outlive whatever the hell this all is.
So, the next time you put your face back in your iPad (right now?), realize that one day back in the 70s, some guy felt like doing something, did it, then departed with a screaming message.
And, if you don’t know what it is, you’re probably an ostrich.
Note: My heart goes out to his wife, children and all who were close to him. At 14 I lost my mom to ovarian cancer and typed up her eulogy on a friend’s Mac because, surprise, my PC died at the same time. So did my parakeet.
Strawberries for dinner tonight, Tuesday. Red, sweet, tart, nutritious strawberries make eating whimsical and delicate and happy. Place them in a bowl after washing, or in my case, place the colander in a larger bowl to catch the drippings because I can’t wait for them to dry. I can’t wait to eat these strawberries I bought at the grocery store on sale!
Gently picking each berry by the green part, not really stems, maybe leaves. So, by the leaves, I put one in my mouth without looking because I know what’s about to happen. And I’m correct, because it’s as delightful as it is delicious and I can have lots of them because they are not pizza and they are not cheeseburgers and they are not chow mein.
I get a squishy one. So I examine the next one and there’s mold. Mold all over one side of it. Like it fell in a mound of meth. The room is dark, so I switch on the light and look at the rest of them. And I’m afraid. But not because I am eating strawberries in the dark on a Tuesday.
They are weird. Strawberries are weird and no longer cute. They are strange and menacing like monsters. The monsters that seem inanimate, but when you least expect it they open their eyes and roar, then bare giant claws and dangle you by your throat with one while the other grasps the spire of a tall building.
I deal with this frightening dilemma by reasoning that not all strawberries are monsters. A few are in my belly right now and I am not a goner. So I put the innocent ones into a ziplock and the suspicious ones right in the garbage. For safety.
But I’m still hungry and a little put off by strawberries for dinner. It went from a strawberry night to a top ramen night in a finger snap. Strawberries are tricky and quick to pull the wool over your eyes. So be careful not to eat a monster when all you wanted was an adorable springtime strawberry.
The thing about tooth-brushing is that it rids our mouths of all the roughage and animal bi-products we put in there each day. There are remnants of In N’ Out and those Cheetos you secretly ate on the way home from the gym. Residue of morning coffee and lunchtime Diet Cokes. Boogers if you’re 5, and sardine bones if you’re 95.
That said, there are two types of people in the world: Those who find sharing toothbrushes grotesque, and those who will offer their toothbrush to a friend’s cousin’s gardener’s best friend’s babysitter.
Toothbrush sharers cannot be told apart from the rest of society. On the surface they live life like anyone else. They take cream in their coffee and order their eggs scrambled. Sometimes they’ll spring for an omelet, but mainly on weekends. They watch revival films at the cemetery in the summer and wear scarves before the weather drops below 70 degrees. A shocking 60 percent have trampolines in their backyards. Less than half have tried surfing and 94 percent are in monogamous relationships.
Toothbrush-sharing couples argue that if having sex exchanges fluids and bacteria, what makes a toothbrush any different? The penis and vagina are capable of spreading disease, arguably more so than the mouth. “What’s the big deal?” they ask while feeding each other Medjool dates, wearing only their bed sheets and a sex-worn flush.
The following are real questions posted to online forums by real people. Plus my answers to each!
“My significant other and I have a great sexual relationship, but after spending the night together–and exchanging bodily fluids–she’s still freaked when I want to use her toothbrush! What’s up with that?”
Does your girlfriend chew peanut butter-filled pretzels with her vagina? Yes? OK, well what is up with that?
“Is sharing your toothbrush with your 20 year bed partner un hygienic? We are otherwise healthy, neither terribly prone to cold type ailments etc.”
You sir or madame are in luck! You’ve rolled around in each others dead skin cells for two decades and are now immune to total foulness. Have you gotten a head start on storing your shared, un-rinsed brushes in the freezer? So you can eventually harvest the bacteria to create your own miniature earth? Similar to how new moms freeze their baby’s umbilical cord to save him or her from an untimely death? After reaping what your mouths have sown over the years, you’ll sprinkle the accumulated microbes in a fish bowl filled with beach sand, landscaping stones stolen from a Denny’s parking lot and mulch. Over time, amazing life forms will evolve from the beautiful combination of junk, crust and lovers’ DNA straight from your glorious food holes and you’ll be just like God. Eventually you’ll grow one long, white beard that will connect you at the chin, bonding you for infinity and forever.
“I say it’s all good. But my husband HATES it. Lol”
Your husband gets BJs from bums behind dumpsters! Lol
“Can you share a toothbrush? I’m trying to save money by not buying a toothbrush or toothpaste what should I do?”
Vacate to the deepest, farthest, most treacherous volcano in the universe.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention clearly states the following under Recommended Toothbrush Care:
“Do not share toothbrushes. The exchange of body fluids that such sharing would foster places toothbrush sharers at an increased risk for infections, a particularly important consideration for persons with compromised immune systems or infectious diseases.”
I am putting my foot down. Even if licking your girl/boyfriend’s wisdom teeth holes gives you the world’s biggest pants tent, sharing toothbrushes is never OK.
Excerpt featured in The Tangential
Original Toothbrushes are Not for Sharing
Penned by an 11-year-old girl to a 12-year-old boy in 1996:
The boy is now a man who is happily engaged to another man. The girl is now a woman who hoards boxes of L’Oreal Red Copper #RR07, and wipes her tears on dead hamsters.
Is bubbling “i”s still a thing? Or vintage?
Lastly, “than.”
As a child, did you think you were mentally handicapped and no one was telling you? I did.
In fourth grade, I received a scholarship to a fancy/expensive sleep away camp for my achievements in Hebrew class. In general I wasn’t a top student, and quit every extracurricular activity attempted. It seemed that I was much better suited for making Barbies and Norfin Trolls have sex behind the shed. Sure, I could grumble my Israeli Rs with the best of them, but didn’t believe I deserved an award for anything besides number of boogers collected on the wall beside my bed.
That night, the night I won the award, I slept beneath the watchful eyes of Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Devin Sawa like always, but was eventually shaken to consciousness by an alarming realization. I am mentally challenged and no one is telling me. Or I’m too mentally challenged to understand that I’m mentally challenged. It explained why I’d swallowed pennies as a toddler, couldn’t retain the rules of kickball and was convinced a giraffe had entered the house anytime my mom said “do you feel a draft?” This scholarship didn’t recognize my academic excellence, it rewarded me for being average against the odds.
I stayed up for hours, hugging my knees to my chest, recounting all the clues to my abnormality. For one, I was the only redhead in my class, and I sprouted my first pubic hairs (also red) in kindergarten. I showed them to my bumper bowling team in the back of my mom’s Pacifica on the way to a game. A loud “ewwwww” resounded through the family wagon, and I tucked them away with red (typical) cheeks and haste. At my 5th birthday party I commanded my friends to gather in the backyard and scream “surprise!” upon my entrance. Though the beginning of my plan rolled out with perfection, I scurried back into the house and wailed into the couch. It was more terrifying than anticipated. Around the same time, I decided that I loved my dogs so much, that I’d try to be one of them. So I proudly dropped to my hands and knees and shared a bowl of kibble with my beloved Australian Shepherd/Lab mix. It was salty and crunchy and annihilated my innards. I thought, what would Daisy do? So I swallowed a few handfuls of grass then soaked a hibiscus bush with vomit. It’s these types of poor decisions that proved I had a problem.
I purposely concealed any knowledge of my mental malady, mainly because I enjoyed the attention and also because I’d been taught that special needs kids are cool too. All the “I love yous” and the “I’m so proud of yous” that so often departed from my parents’ mouths were out of sympathy, and I didn’t want it to end. My mother would embrace me and sing “the most beautiful girl in the world, Rebecca Pardess, yes,” and everyone’s unconditional kindness began to make sense. I was special, different and could now sit out of P.E. with ease. I attended private school and went to a different synagogue than my friends. At the age of nine, I had found my true self.
Summer approached and my anxiety built around the reality of leaving for three weeks, knowing absolutely no one, in the “wilderness” of Ojai, California. Would the camp staff know of my disability? Or did all the campers share this same challenge? I knew I wouldn’t find out until I arrived, but the anticipation was torturous.
The day came — My first time at sleep away camp! My mom drove me to a parking lot where parents pushed their children onto yellow school buses. In my cut off shorts, white t-shirt, camel work boots, one blue scrunchy sock and one purple scrunchy sock, I embarked and sat next to a tiny boy with translucent skin and hair redder than mine. “He’s just like me,” I thought, then felt my chin quiver as my parents waved goodbye, smiling larger than I’d ever seen before.
After two hours of sobbing surrounded by raucous throughout what seemed to be the vessel of nightmares, we arrived at a large, hilly expanse of grass and a flag pole. I disembarked and before I could get my bearings, a brunette lady who I could have sworn was at least 48, but was actually 19, charged me, grabbed my hand and said “Hi Rebecca! Welcome to Camp Ramah!” and somehow, everyone started singing the same song. How did she know my name? Why didn’t I know the song? Just how many sunflowers were in her hair? Oh, right.
Entering the cabin full of strange girls, I had no idea what to do or say, par for the course for a person like me. With my head towards the floor, I sauntered to my lower bunk, near the cabin’s side door. I knew it was mine because it said so on a 3 foot long, orange strip of construction paper.
Being a conservative Jewish camp, we’d wake up and thank God for it. Then we’d eat, but first we’d pray about it. Then we’d pray after eating because we ate, and how wonderful that we could do such a thing. Before free time, we’d pray for the grass and having legs for running or something, then talk to God a little more before going for a swim because “he” made it possible for a rich Jew to buy acres of farm land, hire some other minority to dig a hole in it, fill it up with water and dunk a few chlorine tablets in it every few days.
And of course, we prayed before bed, which involved terrible hand holding and singing. At two weeks in, I still hadn’t found a clique. I was alone and felt like an outsider. I reasoned that life had dealt me this card, and I had to play it. Later that summer I’d be taking my first trip to Hawaii, and while discussing it with my bunkmate before lights out I asked, “Do they use American dollars there?”
“Are you stupid?!” she snapped. “What are you, a retard?” I was taken aback at first, but glad that someone had brought my impairment to light. That blonde, stocky girl with pit stains the size of pancakes may have been a bitch, but at least she acknowledged the giant giraffe in the cabin, and I wasn’t afraid anymore. Or so I thought.
That night, all 15 girls finally fell asleep, the cabin was quiet, the counselors snoozing in their nook off to the side. At 3 in the morning, suddenly roused by a scratch at the door, my eyes burst open as I was confronted by the treachery of the woods. It was a bear, no, a mountain lion! Wait, a buffalo! The creature scratched again, and with every frightened fiber in my 10-year-old being, I shot up, ran to a counselor’s bedside and screamed bloody murder directly in her rat face. She responded by shrieking ax-swinging hell back at me, and we promptly woke the entire camp from its summer slumber.
It was a cat.
In my three weeks at Camp Ramah, I managed to avoid making any lifelong friendships, get a bee sting by trying to feel the texture of an interesting rock and learn the trials and tribulations of life with a cognitive deficiency.
About a year after faking my ignorance of my “shortcoming”, I realized that extreme awkwardness and apathy did not mean I had a handicap. I then figured that many people with actual inborn challenges didn’t use them as an excuse to get out of kickball or be frightened by a nocturnal house pet, and that I was actually quite the ass hole.
Initially, I had my name as “Burner” on here because I wanted to protect myself from what I thought would be a crude portrayal of my life. Turns out my life is anything but, and now I can handle writing under my real name. Hello! My name is Danielle Bernabe.
Recently I joined twitter and with that came a lot of self reflection- Who do I think I am? Danielle Burner. Am I funny? According to twitter, I’m not funny. And what’s next? I’m guessing not much. With that said, I invite you to follow me on twitter @daniellebernabe.
Enough about me (for the most part).
In other, more significant news, I want to introduce you to Our Thursday’s new writer. It took me awhile to warm to the idea of another woman in the bathroom, and I think it’s because I’m not comfortable with another woman possibly overshadowing me. That’s how we think as women- irrationally.
However, Rebecca Pardess– a ginger, a drinker, a lover, a fighter, a knocker knocker out–has since smothered us with delight. The first time I met her neither of us paid much attention to each other. The second time, the same thing occurred. Same goes for the third time. The forth time, over turkey sandwiches, we discussed our love of writing, and although I am not gay for her (or anyone in that matter, except for Rosario Dawson), I became smitten by her honesty and courage to say the word “cunt” without remorse. She has tickled me and the rest of Our Thursday with her witty exposés and renderings of her everyday and we hope that she does the same for you.
Rebecca Pardess (@HeyBeccaHey), welcome. We look forward to your self deprecation and more importantly, bringing the juice that I cannot.
Lupus and the Greedy Jesus
(A One-Act Tragedy Play for a Modern Recession and a Poor Faith Economy)
by
Matt Zbrog
—
CURTAIN:
It was the opposite of a dark and stormy night. The Wells Fargo branch was quietly going about its business… Marshall the bank teller was standing at his post with hopeless ennui… Matt was on the far end of the bank, an air conditioning vent running softly through his gorgeous hair…
ENTER ANNE, a gigantic potato sack of an old lady… she speaks with the loud authority of a Martin Luther King, Jr., and with the righteous indignation of a fox news lunatic…
Anne: YALL NEVER GONNA BELIEVE
WHAT HAPPENED TO ME
Anne stumbles towards Marshall… her walk looks like a water balloon tumbling lazily across smooth tile… She has a smile on her face as wide as a watermelon slice… And she launches into her Shakespearean sonnet where syllables and pace are missing but only because she is eloquent enough not to need them…
Anne: I GOT THE LUPUS
GOT MY OLD CROCK-ED HIP
EVERY STEP FEELS LIKE I’M FALLIN
BUT YALL KNOW ME
THAT AIN’T THE WORST OF IT
Her fat melting tootsie roll fingers slap the papers on Marshall’s desk…
Anne: I’M HERE TO DISPUTE THESE CHARGES!
Marshall studies the pages with absolute blasé. He confronts the reality of his day to day job in terms of the big picture and blah blah blah blah bank stuff blah blah… back to Anne…
Anne: I WROTE A 20 DOLLAR CHECK
AND YALL BOUNCED IT
Anne waves a twenty dollar bill in the air like a white flag from a foxhole…
Anne: BUT I GOT THE MONEY
RIGHT HERE
Marshall shrugs his shoulders and says something stupid about that not mattering and he feels like blah blah blah dude you work in a bank no one cares blah blah blah. Anne continues…
Anne: I WROTE THAT CHECK
FOR TURTLE ROCK BAPTIST CHURCH
YEAH
THAT’S RIGHT YOU SON OF A BITCH
I WROTE THAT CHECK TO JESUS.
Silence. Then, on cue, from far away, Matt speaks up…
Matt (softly): Woah!
Anne does not hear this. She continues…
Anne: YOU SEE NOW?
JESUS WANTS HIS CUT
OK
OK
ALL PIMPS GET ‘THEY’ SLICE
BUT
NOW JESUS WANTS TO CHARGE ME FEES?
NOW JESUS WANTS PROOF I GOT HIS CASH?
SOMEONE BETTER TELL JESUS
TO GIVE THAT SHIT A REST
In the distance, Matt hangs on every word, hands clasped as in prayer… Marshall’s reaction is worthless and disrespectful… Anne has exhausted her obese body with all this emotional rage… She fans her moist, gelatinous skin with her clammy hand…
Anne : I MEAN
LOOK AT ALL WELLS FARGO GOT!
LOOK AT ALL THAT CRACKER MESSIAH GOT!
WHAT DO I GOT?
I GOT A BOUNCED CHECK
AND THE GOD-DAMN LUPUS.
… Anne pauses for a breath into her fat, fat, grocery bag lungs… musters every joule of energy… And then yells out her Faith Eulogy, confronting her upbringing, her creator, her destiny, her reality (!!!) …
Anne: THIRTY DOLLAR FEE ON A TWENTY DOLLAR CHECK?
WELLS FARGO AND THAT GREEDY JESUS
CAN GO STRAIGHT TO HELL.
Silence, it has a sound.
The bank-turned-congregation tries to process the miracle just performed, but their tiny bank-minds are grappling with implications far beyond their bank-depth. Marshall begins to sob… few are concerned…
Matt: HALLELUJAH!
FIN.
—