Hey! Thanks for reading my newsletter. I will be writing to you weekly (or so, depending on how many people subscribe, to be honest) to share some of my jokes and feelings. I will tend towards writing jokes, but I fear that I may occasionally let a feeling slip through. Therefore, I wanted to put it in the title of the newsletter so you’re not startled when it happens. There’s nothing quite like happening upon another person’s feelings when you didn’t expect it!
I will be profligate in my usage of commas and grammatical errors, as always. Please do not ever, ever, ever write to tell me of a grammatical error in the newsletter, unless I’m in a good mood, in which case, I’ll be grateful you noticed.
This week, I’m in London with my parents. A year of social-distancing wasn’t enough, I also needed to be several time zones away from everyone I know. I have been eating freeze-dried strawberries in oat milk and trying to pass it off as “cereal.” Things have gotten pathetic.
One crazy thing I did this week is follow a man who sexually assaulted me in college on Twitter. A day later, I unfollowed him. It was fun! Can’t recommend it enough.
Here’s a little bit of satire to get you started with. I consider this ‘joke,’ although I also had ‘feelings’ while I wrote it (I needed to pee).
A Refurbished Birds and the Bees Talk
Hi sweetie. I understand you’ve heard some things on the Zoom playground and you have a few questions. My Mommy used to tell me babies came from storks, but that - like so much else in our society - fails to give appropriate credit to women. In a technical sense, babies are born through the strength and perseverance of the Mommies carrying them. But I know that’s not really your question.
You want to know the logistics of how the baby becomes an entity. Pretty much all babies start with a right swipe. This usually takes place on a dating app.
After the right swipe, the two people FaceTime. You know FaceTime, right? The thing Mommy makes you wave to her sorority sisters through, so it looks like she has her life together? FaceTime dating is ostensibly to avoid spreading the coronavirus, but it also gives one a chance to hang up on the other if the other shows up drunk and in a towel. Seeing a few guys drunk on FaceTime is just part of the beautiful process of giving life.
Next, either or both people lie and say they're vaccinated. They don't explain how - it's not necessary. They meet up in person.
When one person wants the other to put their mouth on theirs, they usually just stare at their mouth for a little while. If you do this and then change your mind about wanting their mouth on yours, you can just say, “Oh, sorry, I’m a little distracted, I’m just getting off my ADD meds.”
If one of the baby-makers tries to put on a podcast as background noise - particularly Marketplace or anything else by NPR - the other one leaves, and the baby can’t get made. It happens.
Traditionally, at some point in getting babies from Heaven to Earth, clothing would come off. However, we now recognize that clothing is a social construct, and it’s more than welcome to be removed at any moment in time, or to stay on. The parents can even pretend that keeping their socks on is a good way to avoid the transmission of germs. Also, the bed does not need to be made.
A crucial part of producing a baby is one person telling the other they’re “not in a good place right now,” and that the "pandemic has given them a lot of time to think about what they really want." This means they’re not in a good place right now, and also that they don't know what they want, but it's definitely not you. It lets them know that the only thing the two of you will be doing is making a baby. And possibly sending each other memes of camels making pizza (how?) - but not expressing any sort of thoughts or feelings to the other person.
Another important fact: if none of this sounds appealing, there are tons of other ways to bring a baby into the world that don’t involve bumping bods, which is an expression I promise to never use again. You can get something shot into your butt. Or you can adopt. Or I think you can even have something shot into your arms these days, too. The options are endless!
Anyway, the baby is almost in the oven. Next, the two people sorta flop around for a bit and one says, “this never happens to me,” and the other will comment on how much they both had to drink. This is standard, in terms of ensuring a baby makes its way down to Earth in a prompt manner.
And then nine months later, the baby shows up. Go to bed.