Jobless John's Unemployed Blog

In a change from other recent trips to Starbucks, tonight I am NOT enjoying a Vanilla Rooibos Latte. I would probably enjoy it as tea— and tea alone— but it's not working for me in this form. It tastes like there should be a sweetness to it, but the sweetness is far too subtle. It tastes like warm milk that had a teabag dropped in it briefly.

I am trying to be very honest in this blog. I don't know if that has come through. When I was actively performing comedy a few years ago, I found that there were many topics I wanted to talk about but which I was hesitant to bring up. Some topics I could bring up, but I couldn't dive very far into. I don't know if this is a result of my conservative upbringing or not. I tend to think it is. Growing up I cannot recall a single time anyone in my family ever discussed or revealed an emotional state. It was repression by absence. I have grown up without the slightest sense of how to talk about my emotional state with anyone. Worse, if the subject is brought up, I am more than likely going to fight back tears. It's as if merely tapping my emotional core causes decades of unexpressed emotions to erupt.

I believe— as many comics better than I have told me— one of the keys to comedic success is to expose as some vulnerability to the audience. The audience will latch on to that vulnerability like nothing else. So, there we have my quandry: I have a very hard time exposing things about myself. Then, when I do, I tend to blurt out things so bluntly that they make me about as vulnerable as an explosion. So, one of the purposes of this blog is to make myself comfortable with revealing very personal things. As time goes on, I hope that I can speak more freely about anything with fewer intentional omissions.

Hey, if anybody out there needs work done on their computer(s) at reasonable rates, let me know. I could use a little unreported income and something to do.

I was struck by the funniest sight tonight before I got here to Starbucks. I wanted to buy a small sketchpad so I cruised by the local Staples to see if it was open. In front of Staples' doors there are four of those concrete posts that I suppose are there to prevent car-driving terrorists from crashing their mobile bombs into America's stationery targets. You know the posts I'm talking about. They're about 2½ to 3 feet high and maybe 18 inches in diameter. As I drove slowly past the front of the store, there were four young women about 16 years old also in front of the store, one at each of the concrete posts. Two of the girls were leaning against their posts in different poses and the other two girls were sitting on their posts, one with a single knee kicked up. I thought for a second I had stumbled on a photoshoot for Girls Aloud. It really made me laugh the way only a joke you find for yourself can make you laugh.

I have a proposal. Why is it we have mascots for all of our major holidays and gift-giving occasions, but we have nothing for birthdays? Santa brings gifts for good boys and girls at Christmas. The Easter Bunny brings candy at Easter. But, for our birthdays, we are forced to rely on our fellow human beings to bring us gifts and material happiness. To overcome this gap, I propose the Birthday Badger! The birthday badger waddles his way out of his burrow for good people who blow out all the candles on their cake. He brings gifts and joy and a background odor of damp fur and mustiness. What's more, he inspires all of to try even harder when it comes to blowing out our candles. If you don't manage to get all the candles, not only does he refuse to bring gifts, but he launches into a hellstorm of sharp claws and pain.