Category Archives: Humor

The Human Exclamation Point

Creative non-fiction, Humor, Life and Other Existential Problems, Under 750, Writing

This is, hopefully, the final installment in my (also hopefully extremely limited) series, “Why Am I Like This?”

Illustration of a white frosted cake on a wooden stand, topped with a bright pink-and-yellow exclamation mark. The cake appears inside a Zoom call window. Text above reads “The Human Exclamation Point,” and “by Jackie Pick” appears in pink at the bottom corner.

Writers are cautioned not to overuse exclamation points. If we must use them at all, we are told to ration them. No Serious Writer™ uses more than three exclamation points per novel. I use three before breakfast. No Serious Writer™ would dare rely on punctuation to do the emotional heavy lifting. No Serious Writer™ would employ exclamation points unless something truly calls for excitement. I have been alive for some time, and few things ever truly call for excitement. Except cake.

But some of us are Excitement Folks. I myself am a human exclamation point. Out of the house, my natural register becomes Jack Black impersonating Judy Garland while spinning plates. I greet people like we’ve survived a maritime disaster together. I smile as if paid by the watt.

Mind you, this is not my natural state, but it is often my public one.

I have long aspired to become awoman of repose. I have tried, truly, to be someone who radiates calm, who says “hmm” instead of “OH MY GOD, YESSSSS,” who does not tell your dog I love him the very first time I meet him.

Alas, my attempts at composure resemble Animal from The Muppets being shot out of a confetti cannon directly into a line of cymbals.

Women of repose give the impression that they read Smithsonian Magazine in the bathtub. I give the impression that I clap when planes land.

Enthusiasm is a peculiar human response to the otherwise bleak recognition of existence. It manifests as sudden bursts of unsolicited and often alarming cheerfulness. Enthusiasm is socially contagious but has an inconvenient half-life of twelve minutes and a regrettable tendency to startle normal people.

For a while, I managed something approaching serenity. My public self finally matched my private one. My resting heart rate was no longer espresso.

Then came Zoom, a technology that brought people together by separating them entirely.

Staring into a camera instead of human faces, it’s hard to catch social cues unless someone types LOL or You are a dork in the chat. Since we’re all deprived of feedback, I overcompensate as speaker and listener. I nod violently and try to show you that I’M WITH YOU AND I LIKE YOUR VIBE AND ALSO I’M TURNING MY CAMERA OFF BECAUSE I’M SHOVING AN ENTIRE COSTCO TUXEDO CAKE IN MY FACEHOLE AND YOU DESERVE BETTER BUT I’M STILL HERE NODDING PROMISE.

We can call that enthusiasm. Or nightmare fuel. Whatever.

Then the meeting ends, and I power down like a droid in Star Wars.

Is this growth or regression? Is my at-home, off-camera restraint maturity the real me, or just battery depletion? Am I even seeing myself accurately? Because, honestly, the only time I see myself is on Zoom.

Both versions of me feel real, but they can’t coexist. I’m trying to find the midpoint between “!!!” and “…”

Maybe an em dash, that modern-day punctuatio non grata.

Definitely not a period though, because I prefer to do things not with a whimper but (wait for it!) with an interrobang.

Projectile Figurative Language Use

Humor

For all of us who’ve ever asked, “Why am I like this right now?”

Header reads ‘Projectile Figurative Language Use’ with the subline ‘For all of us who’ve ever asked, “Why am I like this right now?”’. Centered brain image has a Spirit Halloween ‘Opening Soon’ sticker across it. Bottom-left box warns ‘This post contains metaphors. Mostly bad ones.’ Credit ‘by Jackie Pick’ appears bottom-right

This week, I wanted to write a funny post to be filed under “Life and Other Existential Crises.” You know, something relatable and semi-literate. The problem: everyone, everywhere, has chosen this exact moment to be an ass. This presents certain creative difficulties.

(Yes, excellent start. Let’s see where this goes, shall we?)

The world, at present, is too much. Everything is a little sticky and smells like pumpkin-spiced feet. Kind of like a Spirit Halloween that’s moved into an abandoned Bed Bath & Beyond space.

(Live. Laugh. Leave Me The Hell Alone. Wooden sign, $29.99.)

I brought my own too-muchness to a Zoom the other day. For reasons no one fully understands, I opined that the period between late August and mid-November is “the PMS of the calendar year.” Everything is slightly wrong and relentlessly demanding. My to-do list now qualifies as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I’m overwhelmed, overbooked, under-rested, bloated, irritable, hungry, dehydrated, and everything itches. I have no idea why I feel this way until I look at the calendar. Oh. Ohhhh. That explains why everyone is being an ass. Including me.

(Maybe that? Maybe leave this post at that?)

I have Projectile Figurative Language Use.

(Ah, I see we’re staying here and carrying on.)

Because ordinary English collapses in my hands, I resort to invoking metaphors, similes, emotional geometry, and a verbal Vitamix. If I can’t find the right word, I’ll invent one. Then, realizing no one else is in my brain, I over-explain the metaphor. Then apologize for over-explaining. And suddenly I’m talking about my eyelid eczema, which was not, in fact, the original metaphor nor the point of anything I was saying.

This, I’m told, is my charm. The metaphor thing, not the eyelid eczema thing. That’s not charm, that’s just sex appeal.

(No one has ever said any of that.)

The writers on the Zoom were kind. Writers often are. We traffic in mutual recognition, responding to each other’s weirdness with appreciative laughs or perhaps mercy mutings. Either way: respect for this collection of creative humans.

I imagine a collective noun for writers is “A Card Catalog of Writers,” or “A Procrastination of Writers,” or “A Syntax Error of Writers.”

The singular of all of these is “A Flinch.”

(Tip your waitstaff.)

Somewhere in all of that is a point. Maybe to keep talking even if the words come out like anguished verbal origami. Maybe to sit with your odd language instead of trying to translate it into something respectable, which is how good ideas can die of politeness. Maybe to trust that someone, somewhere, will hear your nonsense and send you a party-hat emoji in solidarity.

Were I a better personwriter, I would pivot here into something about gratitude or artistic discipline or the resilience of the creative spirit, but, truthfully, I just want to stand in the middle of that abandoned Bed Bath & Beyond (now Spirit Halloween!) andscream, “GET IT TOGETHER!”

Because…Autumn…the PMS thing. Remember?

(Yes, we get it.)

I want to be insightful, but maybe the humor/mess of language is the panic room I built for myself. Right now, all I have are half-finished thoughts and worries up the wazoo. Julia Cameron would suggest journaling through it, but I’m pretty sure she never had to navigate endless labyrinths of online portals while her dog threw up on the carpet and a kid yelled ‘Mom?!’ from somewhere inside a Common App essay draft while the entire world burned.

So these days, I spend a lot of time in my own head. It’s not exactly insightful or profound in there, but at least there’s parking.

(Don’t)

And yeah, part of it is that the world is kind of awful and falling apart, and I oscillate between feeling idiotic for making jokes and idiotic for not making them.

However, the only thing that feels truly dangerous and guaranteed to lock up my words is not saying anything.

So here I am: over-metaphored, under-hydrated, armed with a single, wobbly sentence about the itchy PMS-ish quality of autumn. Perhaps that’s enough to keep me from desperately clutching a package of Nutter Butters and insisting, “I’M FINE.”

Sometimes the best you can do is name the chaos and tack on a punchline.

And sometimes the best you can do is offer, without reasonable transition, Mary Oliver telling us quite firmly, “Don’t Hesitate.”

(That’ll do.)

A Modest Proposal for the Preservation of Civilization by Means of Group Chats

Humor, Ink Spatterings, Under 750, , ,

Encompassing but not limited to text chains, Messenger threads, WhatsApp dramas, Facebook comment kerfuffles, and similar circles of digital grievance.

It is a melancholy object, to those who dare attempt discourse, when they find conversations derailed by nuance, muddied with civility, or — ye gods! — conducted in person. Face-to-face conversations are notoriously unreliable, as they often involve people saying things that sound suspiciously like what they mean.

In this smoldering age, politicians argue, institutions creak, and somewhere, someone is inventing a new kind of paperwork.

I think it is agreed by all sensible parties (and at least three committees who have been trying to adjourn since 2006) that the sheer multiplicity of human communication is a public menace. Who amongst us has not endured the inefficiency of speech, the peril of eye contact, or the muppety flapping of arms to emphasize a point? No politician, pundit, or professor can preserve us.

Therefore, I modestly propose (usually preferable to immodestly proposing) that the group chat be the model and indeed the mechanism by which all of society is preserved. All communication, be it domestic, political, or sextual, should be confined henceforth to group texts, Facebook comment threads, and other online bitching arenas. All comments can be observed, recorded, and weaponized as needed. I propose these places not because they’re good, but because they’re reliably bad, which these days is the closest thing we have to safe.

We have already seen its power. A PTA chat of fifteen mothers and one father who replies “sounds good” can coordinate massive amounts of allergen-free snacks with more efficiency than the Pentagon deploys aircraft. A college roommate chat can process four marriages, two divorces, and one regrettable tattoo with fewer delays than family court. A midnight “you up?” has sparked (and derailed) more talks than Geneva.

By my best calculations, a group text of six to thirty-seven people, on a topic of no importance or clarity, can continue for weeks without resolution yet with feigned enthusiasm, thus bonding the community like poorly-set epoxy. Likewise, a Facebook thread can be expected to produce on average 142 comments: 118 bad-faith accusations, 17 GIFs, and 7 people sincerely attempting to help. They will be ignored. Surely these numbers demonstrate the efficiency of the system. Surely, also they demonstrate the futility of resistance.

Also, I posit with the mathematical certainty of one who regularly zoned out in algebra class, that for every one thousand “k” reactions, at least five international conflicts may be prevented. Gross domestic happiness would increase by twelve percent.

Of course, rules must be clear: no muting, no leaving, no sneaking off to Buffalo Wild Wings for in-person jibber jabber. Every meme circulated thrice shall acquire the force of law.

Should anyone run afoul of these rules, the penalty shall be immediate banishment to an uncomfortably governmental Signal chat.

Some will cry out that this proposal reduces sincerity, nuance, and basic human decency. To which I reply with all possible graciousness: obviously. Have you met people? And have we not already reduced all discourse to bloviating, grievances, and emojis? I merely propose a proper filing system.

Others may object in favor of email, to which I say: That way lies madness. Group texts are the last good ship on the sea, and if we are to survive, we had better climb aboard. (Also, just admit it: your Gmail is a Mausoleum of the Unread.)

A third objection may be raised, that conversation face-to-face is preferable. This, in theory, I cannot deny; yet in practice, it has already ruined civilization, whereas the group text has not yet had the opportunity.

I profess sincerely that I have no personal stake in this. I have been ejected from three group chats, ignored in countless threads, and endured the indignity of someone attempting to mute me in person with a TV remote. My only motive is the preservation of civilization by its last remaining instrument: the perpetual ding of notification