What I imagined the people around me were saying when I was...

this dude also did the brilliant "A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table"

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2007/03/26/070326sh_shouts_rich

MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.

DAD: O.K.

GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.

DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.

UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.

DAD: We all are.

MOM: Let’s talk about which kid I like the best.

DAD: (laughing) You know, but you won’t tell.

MOM: If they ask me again, I might tell.

FRIEND FROM WORK: Hey, guess what! My voice is pretty loud!

DAD: (laughing) There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren’t.

MOM: I’m angry! I’m angry all of a sudden!

DAD: I’m angry, too! We’re angry at each other!

MOM: Now everything is fine.

DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.

MOM: There was a big sex.

FRIEND FROM WORK: I am the loudest! I am the loudest!

(Everybody laughs.)

MOM: I had a lot of wine, and now I’m crazy!

GRANDFATHER: Hey, do you guys know what God looks like?

ALL: Yes.

GRANDFATHER: Don’t tell the kids.

Yeah, both of those are easily the funniest pieces in Shouts & Murmurs in a long time.

Aged 16:

"Wow, look at Charlie's shoes - he's done his laces up just like Robert Smith's"
"I wish I could exhibit that much attention to detail with regard to my favourite band"
"He's even bought the same brand as Robert - but even though they're actually totally disgusting, he looks really cool in them because of the laces thing"
"All he needs now is a...oh no wait, there it is, a copy of Camus' 'L'Etranger' in his pocket! What a man"

(BRILLIANT thread idea)

hay guyz lets not ruin a funny piece/idea by artlessly copying it plz

if you have funny/insightful shit to say about your own childhood invent your own jokez

the only other lolz i ever get from s&m (<-- o_O) is jack handey & paul simms

well I don't think it'll ruin it...the reason I started the thread was to have other peoples do their own takes on the idea. (Besides, I liked CharlieNo4's).

but maybe you're right...

but the reason I think this is so funny because it we all imagined stuff like this, and thus it'd be great to have others think back about it

sorry id like a 'paste funny shit from shouts & murmurs' thread more than a 'trayce and mark grout replace 3 words in somebody elses joke template' thread

haha in that case here's the third portion of that s&m you posted (which I loved by the way, and I didn't realize it was by the same author as "hey look" when I first read it a while back).

III. How College Kids Imagine the United States Government

THE PRESENT DAY

—Did you hear the news, Mr. President? The students at the University of Pittsfield are walking out of their classes, in protest over the war.

—(spits out coffee) Wha— What did you say?

—Apparently, students are standing up in the middle of lectures and walking right out of the building.

—But students love lectures. If they’re willing to give those up, they must really be serious about this peace thing! How did you hear about this protest?

—The White House hears about every protest, no matter how small.

—Oh, right, I remember.

—You haven’t heard the half of it, Mr. President. The leader of the group says that if you don’t stop the war today they’re going to . . . to . . . I’m sorry, I can’t say it out loud. It’s just too terrifying.

—Say it, damn it! I’m the President!

—All right! If you don’t stop the war . . . they’re going to stop going to school for the remainder of the week.

—Send the troops home.

—But, Mr. President! Shouldn’t we talk about this?

—Send the troops home.

THE NINETEEN-SIXTIES

—Mr. President! Did you hear about Woodstock?

—Woo— Woodstock? What in God’s name is that?

—Apparently, young people hate the war so much they’re willing to participate in a musical sex festival as a protest against it.

—Oh, my God. They must really be serious about this whole thing.

—That’s not all. Some of them are threatening to join communes: places where they make their own clothing . . . and beat on drums.

—Stop the war.

—But, Mr. President!

—Stop all American wars!

—(sighs) Very well, sir. I’ll go tell the generals.

—Wow. It’s a good thing those kids decided to go hear music. ♦

This is no game. You might think this is a game, but, trust me, this is no game.

This is not something where rock beats scissors or paper covers rock or rock wraps itself up in paper and gives itself as a present to scissors. This isn’t anything like that. Or where paper types something on itself and sues scissors.

This isn’t something where you yell “Bingo!” and then it turns out you don’t have bingo after all, and what are the rules again? This isn’t that, my friend.

This isn’t something where you roll the dice and move your battleship around a board and land on a hotel and act like your battleship is having sex with the hotel.

This isn’t tiddlywinks, where you flip your tiddly over another player’s tiddly and an old man winks at you because he thought it was a good move. This isn’t that at all.

This isn’t something where you sink a birdie or hit a badminton birdie or do anything at all with birdies. Look, just forget birdies, O.K.?

Maybe you think this is all one big joke, like the farmer with the beautiful but promiscuous daughter. But what they don’t tell you is the farmer became so depressed that he eventually took his own life.

This is not some brightly colored, sugarcoated piece of candy that you can brush the ants off of and pop in your mouth.

This is not playtime or make-believe. This is real. It’s as real as a beggar squatting by the side of the road, begging, and then you realize, Uh-oh, he’s not begging.

This is as real as a baby deer calling out for his mother. But his mother won’t be coming home anytime soon, because she is drunk in a bar somewhere.

It’s as real as a mummy who still thinks he’s inside a pyramid, but he’s actually in a museum in Ohio.

This is not something where you can dress your kid up like a hobo and send him out trick-or-treating, because, first of all, your kid’s twenty-three, and, secondly, he really is a hobo.

All of this probably sounds oldfashioned and “square” to you. But if loving your wife, your country, your cats, your girlfriend, your girlfriend’s sister, and your girlfriend’s sister’s cat is “square,” then so be it.

You go skipping and prancing through life, skipping through a field of dandelions. But what you don’t see is that on each dandelion is a bee, and on each bee is an ant, and the ant is biting the bee and the bee is biting the flower, and if that shocks you then I’m sorry.

You have never had to struggle to put food on the table, let alone put food on a plate and try to balance it on a spoon until it gets to your mouth.

* from the issue
* cartoon bank
* e-mail this

You will never know what it’s like to work on a farm until your hands are raw, just so people can have fresh marijuana. Or what it’s like to go to a factory and put in eight long hours and then go home and realize that you went to the wrong factory.

I don’t hate you; I pity you. You will never appreciate the magnificent beauty of a double rainbow, or the plainness of a regular rainbow.

You will never grasp the quiet joy of holding your own baby, or the quiet comedy of handing him back to his “father.”

I used to be like you. I would put my napkin in my lap, instead of folding it into a little tent over my plate, like I do now, with a door for the fork to go in.

I would go to parties and laugh—and laugh and laugh—every time somebody said something, in case it was supposed to be funny. I would walk in someplace and slap down a five-dollar bill and say, “Give me all you got,” and not even know what they had there. And whenever I found two of anything I would hold them up to my head like antlers, and then pretend that one “antler” fell off.

I went waltzing along, not caring where I stepped or if the other person even wanted to waltz.

Food seemed to taste better back then. Potatoes were more potatoey, and turnips less turnippy.

But then something happened, something that would make me understand that this is no game. I was walking past a building and I saw a man standing high up on a ledge. “Jump! Jump!” I started yelling. What happened next would haunt me for the rest of my days: the man came down from the building and beat the living daylights out of me. Ever since then, I’ve realized that this is no game.

Maybe one day it will be a game again. Maybe you’ll be able to run up and kick a pumpkin without people asking why you did that and if you’re going to pay for it.

Perhaps one day the Indian will put down his tomahawk and the white man will put down his gun, and the white man will pick up his gun again because, Ha-ha, sucker.

One day we’ll just sit by the fire, chew some tobacky, toast some marshmackies, and maybe strum a tune on the ole guitacky.

And maybe one day we’ll tip our hats to the mockingbird, not out of fear but out of friendliness.

If there’s one single idea I’d like you to take away from this, it is: This is no game. The other thing I’d like you to think about is, could I borrow five hundred dollars?

The Legend of Me.
BY JACK HANDEY

They say that when the October moon is full, and the swamps and meadows are covered with an eerie mist, I will put down my beer and go walking through the streets.

According to legend, my hair will stick out wildly, from lying on the couch all day. I will walk with an awkward stagger, my arms held forward. No one knows why I walk this way. Some say it is to be ready in case I trip. Others say it is to make sure I don't go face-first through a spider web.

When I am abroad on the land, many of the frightened townspeople report hearing a ghastly, bloodcurdling howl. This is the part of the legend that hurts my feelings the most, because I think they're talking about my singing.

Some stories claim that if you confront me during my midnight walks and chant, "Jack Handey, Jack Handey, give me some candy," I will give you some candy. Man, forget it. I need that candy.

I am said to prey upon young lovers, and that if I look into a bedroom window and see them having sex I will stand there and watch with my red, flaming eyes. But I am not looking for young lovers; I am usually looking for something else, like, I don't know, my lost treasure or something. If I happen to see two people having sex, I will stay and look, for I am curious about your human ways.

They say I can turn into a bat. I can, but not very well. What I am probably best at is wandering into a party and transforming myself into someone who looks like he might have been invited. And woe to him who fingers me as an impostor, for he will be greeted by a hideous hissing sound coming from the tires of his car.

It is whispered that I can suck the blood out of you. Others say I can start to tell a joke, but then get really confused and not remember where the joke goes, and start over again and again until it drives you mad. But it's not my fault. You see, I am the offspring of an unholy union between a man and what people in these parts call a "wo-man."

Some of the townspeople believe in me, and some don't. And even some of those who believe are reluctant to loan me money.

A few say I exist but that I'm actually dead. As evidence they point to the old gravestone in the cemetery with my name carved on it. But I have apologized for doing that and agreed to do community service.

The truth is, I live in a weird netherworld, somewhere between the dead and those guys who are out riding their bikes, doing stuff like that.

People are always asking me if there's anything they can carry or wear or hold up in front of me that will frighten or repel me. I'll be honest with you: just about anything you suddenly hold up is going to frighten me. About the only thing I can think of that might not is an ice-cream cone, so long as the ice cream isn't in a scary shape.

How did I come to this curse? I'll tell you. I was bitten, bitten by a wolf. And not an ordinary wolf, but something called a "schnauzer." A schnauzer owned by my so-called friend Don. Ever since then I am compelled to wander the night, like a schnauzer. Legend says my midnight haunts will never end until I am united with my true love. The sad thing is, I don't even know her name. It's that French girl from the movie Swimming Pool. But unless I can figure out the area code for France, my love is probably doomed.

Maybe magically the curse will be lifted. And I'll get up bright and early and point to myself in the mirror and say, "You're going to do great things today." No, wait, that's a different curse.

And so I stalk. Usually Friday and Saturday nights are the main times I go stalking, and also, like I said, the moon should be full and mist covering things. But, to be honest, it could pretty much be any night of the week.

This is the most fantastic thing I've read in a while.

This=all the guy's stuff posted here.

The Ambien Cookbook
Paul Simms
_The New Yorker_, “Shouts and Murmurs” 7/31/06

"The sleeping pill Ambien seems to unlock a primitive desire to eat in some patients, according to emerging medical case studies that describe how the drug’s users sometimes sleepwalk into their kitchens, claw through their refrigerators like animals and consume calories ranging into the thousands.” _The NY Times_

Sorpressa con Queso
7 bags Cheetos-brand cheese snacks
17 to 19 glasses tap water
5 mg. Ambien

Place Cheetos bags in cupboard.
Take Ambien, fall asleep.
Wait 2-3 hours, then sleepwalk to kitchen, tear cupboard doors off hinges in search of Cheetos.
Find Cheetos, eat contents of all 7 bags.
Fall back asleep on kitchen floor.
When awakened by early-morning sunlight, get up and say, “What the—?”
Wipe orange Cheetos dust from fingers, face, and hair.
Drink 17 to 19 glasses of tap water from the kitchen tap.
Return to bed.

Icebox Melange
Entire contents of refrigerator
1 Diet Snapple
5 mg. Ambien

Take Ambien, fall asleep.
Wait 2-3 hours, then sleepwalk to kitchen.
Devour everything in refrigerator (including all fancy mustards and jellies, iffy takeout leftovers, and plastic dial from thermostat).
Belch loud enough to wake wife or girlfriend. When she enters kitchen, bellow, “Can’t you see I’m working here?”
Fall asleep on kitchen floor.
After 4-5 more hours, wake up on subway, fully dressed from the waist up, drinking a Diet Snapple.

Licorice Surprise
1 black extension cord
1 wall outlet
5 mg. Ambien

Plug extension cord into wall socket near bed.
Plug other end of extension cord into clock radio on nightstand.
Take Ambien, fall asleep.
Sleep 3-4 hours.
Roll out of bed, wake up on floor.
See extension cord, think, What a big delicious licorice rope that is!
Chew on essentially flavorless cord until you get to the metallic center, where the surprise is.

Tummy Cake
5 eggs
2 cups flour
1 cup Crisco
½ cup milk
5 mg. Ambien

Take Ambien, fall asleep.
Wake up in kitchen, mixing eggs, flour, Crisco, and milk in—for some reason, a mop bucket.
Let batter settle.
Go to living room, turn on TV, search channels for a show that explains the second part of how to make a cake.
Curse the designer of you TV remote for making a device that has the buttons on the wrong side—all facing the floor, where you can’t see them.
Remember batter.
Retrieve bucket from kitchen, drink entire contents in 3-5 gulps.
Remember that the batter was supposed to be cooked.
Draw hot bath, immerse yourself in it, knead bloated stomach in effor to facilitate cooking process.
When mouth fills with now cooled bathwater, wake up and return to bed.
Lie back on pillow, watch cartoon bluebirds orbiting your head.
Grab one cartoon bluebird in midair and devour it raw, feathers and all.
Wake up at 7 a.m., with wife or girlfriend demanding to know what the F happened in the kitchen last night.
While trying to answer, burp up a single cartoon-bluebird feather. Cover mouth guiltily, even though she seems not to have noticed the feather.
When she slams the bedroom door and goes to work, pick cartoon-bluebird feather out of the air and swallow it.
Fall asleep for 36 more hours, interrupted only be periodic—and somehow epic-seeming—trips to the bathroom.

Nhi Ho Trang Phu
1 package of beef jerky
1 quart mango-flavored Gatorade
1 saucepan potable water
Salt to taste
5 mg. Ambien

Lay out beef jerky and Gatorade on nightstand, in anticipation of somnambulistic snack attack.
Take Ambien, fall asleep.
After 2-3 hours, awaken half-submerged in a rice paddy in the jungle lowlands just north of the Mekong Delta.
Back “in country.” You know you’re going to Heaven, ’cause you’ve spent your time in Hell. But here you are once again—back in the Shit.
Stay still, stay quiet—as quiet as a mouse. You are asleep, but all of your senses are alert.
Spot V.C. sapper no more than one foot away, playing possum in spider hole beneath duvet-cover camouflage.
Silently stalk stationary V.C.’ two can play this game, no?
When you gain tactical advantage, corner V.C. and remove ear(s).
Go to kitchen, put ear(s) into pot of water on stove, tie on souvenir lobster bib from Cape Cod trip last summer, sit down at kitchen table with knife in on hand and fork in the other, saying “Fee, fi, fo, fum” over and over—until water boils, or you wake up in police custody despite now earless wife or girlfriend’s protestations of how your innocence as delivered to police detective in emergency room, where she now is (whichever comes first).

The "this is not a game" one reads rather like George Saunders.

Tummy Cake made me lol

"Curse the designer of you TV remote for making a device that has the buttons on the wrong side—all facing the floor, where you can’t see them."

My favorite shout and or murmur is Four Short Crushes

Well, well, well.

Just look at you, walking into this dreary bar and lighting the place up like the noonday sun at midnight, twirling a lock of your long auburn hair pensively as you search the room—for what?

For a soul mate, perhaps?

(I know, I know—I hate that phrase, too. Maybe that will end up being one of those things we both hate.) Maybe a few weeks from now, lying in your bed on a Sunday morning, I’ll ask you, “What’s your least favorite word or phrase?,” and you’ll say, “ ‘Soul mate,’ ” and I’ll laugh till you say, “What? Tell me!,” and I’ll tell you how I knew that from the moment I first laid eyes on you, and then we’ll have sex again.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You haven’t even noticed me yet. That’s O.K. I can wait.

Maybe when your gaze settles on me, and we lock eyes in that mutual Hitchcockian tunnel-vision effect where the camera is, like, pushing in at the same time it zooms out, or however they do that, you’ll come sit down next to me and we’ll—

Now you’ve spotted the friends you came to meet. They look like good friends.

Maybe they’ll be my friends, too.

Our friends.

Your eyes just came to life like emeralds lit by subterranean torches, and as you move across the room toward your friends you shriek at them, “What the fuck is up, yo?,” in a voice so piercing that the entire bar goes silent for a moment, and I have to check my glasses to make sure the lenses didn’t crack. You continue to bellow your every utterance (including the lines “Jägermeister is the bomb, dawg!” and “Just ’cause I’m a white girl don’t mean I don’t got some serious junk in the trunk!” and “Random! Random! Random!”), and the bartender leans in and whispers something to his bar back, and they look at you and laugh.

You must be a regular here.

(Duration of crush: seventeen seconds.)

So silly does my impatience now seem, stuck as I am in the Starbucks line during the morning rush. But that was before I noticed you in line ahead of me.

And now that I’ve seen you—with your gossamer hair still damp from the shower, with your well-moisturized ankles strapped and buckled into high heels that make you wobble and sway like a young colt just finding her stride, with your scent of lilacs and Dial, and, most of all, with your infectious sense of calmness and serenity, which makes me wish that the world itself would stop spinning, so that gravity would cease and we two could float into the sky and kiss in the clouds, giddy with love and vertigo—

Now you’re at the register, and the dreaded moment when we part without meeting rushes toward me like a slow-motion car crash in a dream.

You’ve been at the register without saying anything for, like, fifteen seconds now, still scanning the menu board with those almond-shaped eyes that would make Nefertiti herself weep with envy.

Seriously, you’ve been to a Starbucks before, right? I mean, it seems like there are a lot of choices, but most people find a drink they like and stick with it. And order it quickly.

But maybe I’ve caught you on a day when you’ve decided to make a fresh start. To make a fresh start, to try a new drink, to walk a different way to work, to finally dump that boyfriend who doesn’t appreciate you.

O.K., even if that were the case you could have picked out your new drink while you were waiting in line, right? I mean, come on.

Well, you’ve won me back, my future Mrs. Me—by turning to me and mouthing, “Sorry,” after you finally noticed me tapping my foot, looking at my watch, and exhaling loudly. Sensitivity like that can be neither learned nor taught, and it’s a rare thing indeed. The rarest of all possible—

Jesus Christ, you’ve ordered your drink and paid; do I really have to stand here for another forty-five seconds while you repack your purse, the contents of which you’ve spilled out on the counter like you’re setting up a fucking yard sale or something?

That’s right, the bills go in the billfold, the coins go in the little coin purse, the billfold and the coin purse go back in the pocketbook—no, in a side pocket of the pocketbook, which seems to have a clasp whose design incorporates some proprietary technology that you haven’t yet mastered.

I think I hate you now.

(Duration of crush: five minutes.)

yea "four short crushes" was fantastic. a good shouts & murmurs can be the best thing about the new yorker

paul simms is the best

Couple of funny Easter eggs in this week's Shouts & Murmurs disguised as bit.ly links.

I kinda liked this week's Simon Rich piece:
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2012/01/09/120109sh_shouts_rich

Simon Rich is Frank Rich's son??