Category Archives: Humor

Please Enjoy This Holiday Card

Creative non-fiction, For the love of a dog, Humor, Life and Other Existential Problems, , , , , , ,

Mid-year missive? Seasonal Dispatch? Or proof that I don’t understand how “months” work?

It is not December. It is June. Consider me six months late, or six months early, or maybe precisely on time for the inaugural June 25th Holiday Card I shall send from now until my inevitable end in a Kohl’s changing room (probably). Happy Global Beatles Day, International Day of the Seafarer, and Goat Cheese Day, however you celebrate.

Let’s pretend, against better judgment, that this is a normal holiday letter chock-full of unreasonably upbeat retellings of events that barely qualify as events.

Dearly Beloved,

We are gathered here today to bid a fond farewell to the first half of the year, which has slipped behind a paywall with all the grace of a dropped sandwich.

The 2025 bar was low, but with the grit of the truly uninspired, we limboed beneath it with room to spare. We are 170-something days into the year, depending on your level of faith in February. It’s a (preter)natural time to reflect with the bitter clarity that only hindsight and a poorly fitted bra can provide.

Rest was forecast. Rest was promised. Rest is allegedly in transit and estimated to arrive in the next 3–5 business years. I lie awake at 3:47 AM each day to get a jump on accomplishing absolutely nothing.

On the home front, there was no spring cleaning because spring in the Midwest lasts as long as a sneeze. I did move a stack of unread New Yorkers from one side of the coffee table to the other in a solemn act of seasonal repositioning. 

Told it was “unkillable,” I bought a pothos. It died. I replaced it with a stack of books, which now loiters atop another stack of books.

I also have an orchid, which they say is “difficult,” that chose to bloom for reasons I can only ascribe to malice. It is my favorite houseplant.

Unfortunately, the state of the actual world is ongoing. Politics remains a choose-your-own-nightmare. The word “unprecedented” has formally requested paid time off. Discourse is louder. Stakes are higher. Comic Sans is hanging on. The economy is allegedly resilient. This is code for “no one knows what’s going on, but we’re refreshing stock apps and trying not to accidentally buy crypto.”

Still, we persist if only out of momentum.

There are good things, though.

Vintage Hanes ad with a suspiciously cheerful family in matching pajamas clutching apples for reasons unknown. The father looks particularly smug. Ad’s caption reads: “Good news for the night shift!”

No, not that. 

My children. I have several of them. They are excellent, frequently taller than I am, and united in their disbelief that I once was cool. I will not list their achievements here — this is not a press release from the Office of Glorious Offspring. They are welcome to write their own holiday cards and/or cease-and-desist letters.

The dog continues to be the least civilized member of this household, as evidenced by his projectile shedding. He has barked at the dishwasher, a cloud, the concept of 2:30 p.m., and a bag of rice. He has rolled in unknowable substances and barfed in defiance of God and flooring. We adore him, this one-pooch anarchist collective.

N.B.: “Least civilized” is doing some heavy lifting here. The rest of us aren’t exactly wearing top hats.

I maintain an ironclad inability to stay awake during any show after 8:30 pm. I started a prestige drama that promised to change my life. It did not. Rather, people mooned about in sweaters, looking wealthy and having big feelings. I fell asleep and woke up believing I was in a West Elm catalog and that someone was mad at me.

Thus far in 2025, I have pursued no new hobbies, firmly adhering to my belief in the sanctity of not doing things other than cleaning up dog barf and marveling at my orchid.

Yet I look ahead, which these days feels like the biggest act of hope:

  • I will keep showing up, albeit dressed like I’m in Act Two of an experimental play.
  • I will continue purchasing lemons with unjustified confidence that I will use them.
  • I will only answer the doorbell if it’s pizza or the good parts of the 1970s.

Like many of you, I am tired, slightly out of focus, and occasionally funny according to random people who comment on my dumb social media jokes.

We’ve made it to midyear. That’s not nothing.

Season’s greetings. Enjoy some goat cheese and the following:

Ignore That Refrigerator in the Bathroom

Humor

A Progress Report on Writing

A blue retro refrigerator sits against a lined notebook paper background. The text reads: “Ignore That Refrigerator in the Bathroom: A Progress Report on Writing” by Jackie Pick.

I am of the firm belief you do not ask someone when they are due unless you can see the baby crowning. Likewise, you don’t ask a writer how the novel is going.

We don’t know.

Besides, we’re not supposed to talk about it. We’re supposed to keep our big mouths shut and let the work speak for itself. Ideally after we’ve emerged from a volcano with a manuscript, multiple offers from agents, and severely chapped lips.

But here I am talking about it because apparently I’ve reached the part of writing a novel where I start peeling my skin off like a baked potato and handing it to the internet. Please acknowledge this. It’s covered in salt.

This is my third attempt at writing this novel. Not a third draft. I mean I’ve started over from scratch twice.

The first attempt took years to not finish. Entire children were conceived, born, and sent to preschool in less time. It was an accomplishment in the way that keeping your maternity underwear long after your youngest is complaining about their orthodontia is an accomplishment.

The second attempt was a rebound. A creative fling with all the structure of a failed soufflé and the range of a doorbell chime.

What pushed me into this third attempt was that the first two were steeped in political satire born of deeply unfunny, relentless real-life headlines. The world refused to cooperate. After a while, it felt like writing from inside a sealed flaming trash compactor. I do not enjoy such things.

Around that time, people who actually read books started asking for recommendations with an almost universal plea: “Something fun. Something smart. Something I can get lost in.”

And I thought, YES, SAME, PLEASE, and also, Hey, maybe I can build that place.

I already tell people to get lost all the time. Maybe I should help them do it.

So I started again and quickly finished a draft. It has legs. Newborn giraffe legs, but legs nonetheless.

“Great! So you’ve written a book!”

Oooh, no. I’ve written a draft. This is different from writing a book. A draft is a long, disorganized document that’s too done to be a total mess, and too messy to be anything else.

You know how people refer to airports as “liminal spaces”? My draft is an airport Chili’s.

There’s always revision, though.

People love to talk about revision. They use words like “refinement,” “clarity,” and “where the magic happens.”

Huh.

My revision process, such as it is, involves rereading what I’ve written and muttering, “What is this?” and “Who did this to me?” Plotlines open politely, never to return. Characters introduce themselves, say something baffling, then wander off towards Act Three. Entire pages seem to have been written while I was concussed.

Still, I persist…mostly because I’ve told too many people that I’m writing a book and now I’m trapped. There’s no going back. I either have to finish it or fake my death.

Writing a novel is mostly problem-solving, which is to say, it’s discovering that you are the problem. You move scenes around like furniture in a rental apartment. You convince yourself that having a refrigerator in the bathroom is fine, ignore it. Then you reread it and have to lie down.

I am told by people with better outlooks that this is all part of the process.

“It’s good to question your choices. Writing is about discovery!”

Maybe so. But when they say “discovery,” they mean it like spiritual growth. I mean it like accidentally finding a family of bonobos in the linen closet.

This is not my process. Those people are untrustworthy.

“Oh yeah, Smartmouth? What’s your process?”

Excuse me. Do you also ask a person tripping down stairs what their choreography is?

I mean: I sit. I write. Quietly. Irritably. Daily, if possible.

There will be a book. Sooner rather than later.

It’ll be as smart and as fun as I can make it. Something people can get lost in.

And one day, I’ll admit I’m enjoying the whole rotten process.

Until then, if you ask how it’s going, the answer is “Fine.”

Because I don’t want to talk about it.

What Dangles From Your Trailer Hitch

Creative non-fiction, Humor, Life and Other Existential Problems, , , , ,

Value/Display/Ignore

Writers are tasked with noticing. Most of the time, it’s harmless: overthinking a text or assigning poetic meaning to a crack in the sidewalk. Normal stuff.

But sometimes you are forced to stare at something so aggressively stupid that your writer brain —  wired for metaphor and incapable of mercy  —  whispers, “This means something.”

And unfortunately, it might.

An image of a shimmery pink disco ball against a black backdrop. The text reads “What Dangles From Your Trailer Hitch by Jackie Pick”

Impact at the Intersection

Every great civilization eventually signals the exact moment it gives up. See: bread and circuses, phrenology, Gérard Depardieu.

I encountered what may be our surrender point at a red light.

While stopped, I was running through my usual litany of big thoughts (Did I turn off the stove? Did I accidentally Reply All? Will humanity survive the inevitable collapse of late-stage capitalism masked by hyper-niche consumer trends?) when my attention landed on the truck in front of me.

No. Truck implies a mere conveyance. This was an iron colossus. One perhaps called The Dominator. Or The Torque Reckoning. Or The Doom Hauler.

Being a lusty all-American vehicle large enough to have its own microclimate should have sufficed.

Yet dangling from the hitch by paracord was a set of Truck Nuts.

If you are fortunate enough to be unfamiliar, Truck Nuts (or Truck Nutz) are decorative testicles, usually made from plastic or rubber, that people attach to the back of their automobiles.

The vehicular huevos festooning the back of the  —  oh, let’s say, GMC Rumble Thumper  —  bobbed with needless enthusiasm as the engine idled.

Part of my shock was geographic. There aren’t many Truck Nuts enthusiasts in my area. Car décor usually tops out at 5K decals or proud nods to children’s honor roll status.

These ornamental knackers weren’t even high-quality plastic, just the brittle material of cheap children’s toys that cracks on impact or warps in the sun. No subtlety, no artistry, just bright blue unapologetic vulgarity.

I stared. I didn’t want to, but like Medusa, these marbles demanded eye contact.

Two questions came to mind:

1. Who is driving this be-nutted behemoth?

2. Just…why?

The Driver: Breaking the Hypothesis in Real Time

Naturally, I started profiling the driver. Cargo shorts despite wind chill. Thinks taxes are theft, turn signals are for betas, and protein powder is a personality. Refers to women as “females,” has more Tapout shirts than sense, and once tried to fight a locker in high school.

The light turned green, I accelerated, pulled up next to the…let’s go with Chevy Thunder Tusk… and looked.

Stone-faced. Sunglasses. Holding large iced coffee.

A woman.

A woman who, I could tell with just a glance, has strong opinions about butter boards, and somehow manages to be unbothered and deeply furious at the same time.

She zoomed ahead of me as if to say, “Yes, I know. And no, I won’t explain.”

The Windows 95 error sound pinged in my head.

Where Capitalism and Low-Hanging Metaphors Collide

The more troubling question was why.

Clearly, there’s demand. Like it or not, an entire Truck Nut industrial complex exists, operating, presumably, within the legal parameters of commerce.

A factory.

Machines.

An entire logistics chain ensuring that no motor vehicles in America need remain ball-free.

Actual adults waking up in the morning, pouring coffee into World’s Best Dad mugs, and heading to a job where they debate aerodynamic integrity of plastic scrota.

There was undoubtedly a prototype. Wind tunnel tests. Torque calculations. PowerPoints on market scalability. Some guy insisting, “We’re revolutionizing the industry.”

Enormous vats of melted plastic poured into molds, cooled, popped free, and sent to a quality control specialist probably named Earl, who gives each a light tug to ensure structural integrity.

Shrink-wrapped pallets of these faux family jewels are distributed to gas stations, online marketplaces, and that one hardware store where someone’s grilling hot dogs in the parking lot.

A marketing team works on branding. Tough Nuts for Tough Trucks! Don’t Be a Ball-less Hitch! Freedom isn’t Free (And These Are Only $24.99)!

Perhaps even a network of aftermarket enthusiasts who have rousing online chats about proper ball-to-bumper ratios

All leading to the driver of the Ford Fee-Fi-Fo-Fummer in front of me (or her partner) slapping down actual money. Then, kneeling behind their truck, they tied these orbs of virility into place, wincing not even once.

I remind you we once wrote the Constitution, built Chicago (twice!), and sent humans to the moon.

I remind myself that I used to write about civic responsibility, democracy, and motherhood.

And yet, here we are.

The Philosophical Collapse

Still, was there meaning in these petrochemical gonads?

Irony? Prank? Postmodern critique of gender norms? Radical rejection of patriarchal tropes through appropriation of male genitalia?

Or worse  —  was it apathy, the apex predator of meaning?

The social contract as envisioned by Rousseau was not designed for this. Democracy, human rights, collective dignity? Yes. Plastic testicles on the back of a Toyota Titan Howler? Absolutely not.

Hobbes believed life without government was “nasty, brutish, and short.” I generally agree, but still argue that life with government has somehow produced a scenario where I’m stuck in traffic behind a Jeep Inferno Stallion, eyeball-to-clangers.

I cannot point to the exact section of the social contract that discourages such a thing, but I assume it’s located in the part about not making public spaces unbearable for everyone else. Or maybe tucked into an addendum called “This Should Really Go Without Saying.”

But if the driver in front of me didn’t care about the affixed Truck Nuts on her Honda Oblivion Rover, then the entire framework of cultural semiotics disintegrates. They mean nothing.

And if they aren’t anything, nothing is. Everything just sways pointlessly.

Metaphysics, but Make It Dumb

Perhaps material offers meaning.

There is something grotesquely poetic about the fact that the fake gonads are plastic.

Plastic is eternal.

Glaciers will melt, cities will sink, and centuries from now when the Great Plains are waterfront property, an archaeologist  —  probably also named Earl  —  will stumble upon slightly cracked, sun-bleached Truck Nuts. He’ll scan them for meaning and ask, “What god did these people worship?”

It’s not an unreasonable question. What else could it be other than an object of reverence? Is this who we are now? Cheap, crass, oscillating as if to measure the time we have left before the entire country embraces hollow spectacle under the hazy guise of, “I’m just asking questions.”

Or maybe we worship the in-your-face part.

Conclusion: Swing Inevitability?

The woman in the truck didn’t notice my deep dive into culture and philosophy like I was some one-person Department of Cultural Anthropology. She zipped off with the patriarchal baubles wobbling behind her.

I sat there, eating her proverbial dust, realizing two things:

  1. You cannot parody a culture that’s already doing it for you
  2. At some point Truck Nuts will come factory-installed. Standard.

And only Earl will understand the horror.