12 Books That Have Actually Pissed Me Off (Whether I've Read Them Or Not)

I was recently dismayed to learn that Sloan Crosby was nominated for the Thurber Prize for American Humor for her eh book I Was Told There'd Be Cake. How something so sub-par could make such an splash pisses off anyone who has ever wanted to write a book. IWTTBC is totally predictable and only occasionally funny. Wow, she moves to New York. Get this!!!!! She has a really crappy first job!!!!! Oh, the shenanegans she finds herself in. She hates bridal showers?!? WHAT?!?!? Silly goose! Her family is just plain ZANY. (But the loveable kind.) And she pokes fun of herself in very safe ways, while ending up on top in each story. BORRRRINNNGGGGGGG.
This reminded me of other books that have actually pissed me off. Right off the bat, I thought of 11 more. Stop me now, before I rip to shreds every book that I have ever (and have ever not) read.

The Cay by Theodore Taylor

When I was in eighth grade I had to read this book and my teachers, who must have thought we were all retarded, built an island set in our classroom and dressed up as the goddam characters and read the book to us. We were 14. 14 year olds have sex and swear and they sure as hell are intelligent enough to read something more challenging than this pamphlet of a book and watch their teachers interpret it to them via crappy acting. My dad picked up the book one night when I was doing my "homework" (making a pop up book about the book) and he's like "what the hell is this bullshit?" I don't remember this part of the story, but he claims that I said, "Well, Dad. The boys in my class don't like to read very much. So we have to read fake books." And that is what The Cay is.

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

Who doesn’t hate James Frey ("The Man Who Conned Oprah") just a little bit for blatantly lying in his memoir? If Oprah hates you, the entire goddam world hates you.

Sex in the City by Candace Bushnell

I never read the book, but I have watched every episode of the show. I watch it because two of my favorite things in the universe are fashion and New York City. Unfortunately, my third favorite thing is good writing. So I am pained to hear the background voice of Sarah Jessica Parker as she makes uninteresting observations about men in a really annoying, dumb voice. "I wooOOOnnnndered... Can MEN and WOMEN REALLLLLLLLLYYY!?!?!? be FRIENDS?"

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon

This was Mark Haddon's thought process when writing this book:

"I have a TOTALLY FUNKY, original title for a book: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Oh wait, I have to come up with a story line and good writing, too? I don't think so. I worked hard enough to come up with that awesome name."

Eat This Not That by David Zinczenko

"Let's give them something to FREAK OUT about."

Life was more fun before people started obsessing about calorie counts. People don't enjoy food anymore. Food should taste good. Enjoy it. Love it. Don't freak out about it. None of the "Eat This Not That" comparisons are really that surprising, either. And we can all read nutrition labels, if need be. This is just like one big freak out book.

On The Road by JackKerouac

Any chick who says she likes this book is lying. She's saying that so guys think she's cool -- a guy's gal. This is a dude book. Period.

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I have never read this book, but I hate it all the same. (I did, however, listen to a pod cast about it. And I was vomiting all over the place. My mother also read me some exceprts, which I listened to while I writhed in a ball on the floor.) Many of her observations in Rome are really far off and she says a lot of false things about Rome, Italians, and the language school she attended. (I know because I went to the same language school.) This makes her an unreliable (and unlikeable) narrator and I automatically hate everything she has to say. I think the premise of the book is dumb, too. I say this, fully understanding I am being unjustifiably harsh. Maybe I should actually read the book sometime. I've spent enough time bitching about it.

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

I was expecting a cool twist on Christianity, here. But Donald Miller's "twists" are unoriginal and un earth shattering. It's like he was at one time very conservative, and then got a little more liberal, and then wrote a really (painfully long) journal entry about it. It's not well written or organized, and it's just so annoying. He talks down to the reader, even though I would bet that most readers have spent more time thinking about the subject than Miller.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

One of my favorite things to do is go to Barnes & Noble and look at the stands they have set up of different book collections. "Science," "African American Interest," "Non-Fiction Favorites," etc. I am a huge sucker so every time I see a stand of books I think "OOOoOOOooo! I want all of those books right now!" Not so when I saw the "Barnes & Noble Staff Recommends" stand. Every single book could fit into three categories: 1) A diet book 2) A book about how to get over a relationship (some of the books strangely fit into both of these categories) and 3) Atheist books. Really, guys? Could we fit in something else, here? I suppose I am more troubled by the fact that the only POV represented at the Barnes & Noble recommendation stand is Atheism, but I also don't understand why Atheists are so intent on proving people with faith wrong. Leave them alone. I have noticed that they don't actually lash out at Atheists if unprovoked. (They don't care about atheists.) And Richard Dawkins -- shit, I haven't read any of his books, either. But I've wasted too much time reading about them, and his books about God, I've come to understand, are really just unscientific montages of fiery rantings, dogmatism, and mind boggling misrepresentation of Christianity. I know that he thinks religious people are always pushing their faith on everyone. But nobody pushes faith (the Un-Faith) on people more than Richard Dawkins.

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

The Secret is not a book. It is a marketing campaign. And marketing campaigns are SUPER ANNOYYYINNNGGGGGG.

Confessions of a Shopoholic by Sophie Kinsella

Once again, never read it. But When I saw the cover of it in the bookstore, I literally dropped my purse and said "OH NO." I think I cried that day. "Confessions of a ANYTHING" books are super stupid. They're trying to sound racy when they're totally not. And shopoholics do not deserve the attention of an entire book. OR an entire BOOK SERIES. OR a FUCKING MOVIE. OMG, someone missed the memo.

13 Signs I've Joined A Suicide Cult

The tragedy in Jonestown (remember... the Kool-Aid Suicide Gang?) in 1978 is a story about a lot of things, and though Tim Reiterman did a great job telling the story in his book Raven, I felt there were things he was leaving out. How did the government not catch on to Jones' brainwashing and illegal activity? The beatings? The stealing? Not paying taxes? How is it possible that the families of more than 900 people weren't objecting to the sudden, FUCKING BIZARRE behavior of their loved ones? Some of them did, but none of them who had members deeply entrenched in the Temple were able to pull them away. I'd like to think that if I was talking about suicide, miraculous (and obviously fake) healings, and claiming this random guy from Indiana was my Savior, my mother would fucking snap me out of it. If I thought she had joined a suicidal cult, I would drug her and bring her to Antarctica, lock her in my bathroom, or do whatever was necessary to keep her away. That's right, mamma. That's how much I love you. Lots of people dropped the ball, and Reiterman does not say who, exactly.

I picked Raven up in the first place because Helter Skelter is one of my favorite books of all time, and I figured this story would be equally thrilling. In some ways, it's creepier. Manson brainwashed some aimless teenagers to murder for him. Jim Jones convinced almost a thousand children and educated, settled adults that he was their savior and they needed to kill themselves in the name of socialism. (The two crazies had very similar childhoods, though. Both were pretty much abandoned losers who were looking for attention.)

So please. I beg of you. If I display the following behavior, please sit down with me and let's have a conversation. Smack me if you must. Let's be safe and expect the worst.

• I start studying Russian. Words on my vocab list: socialism, guerilla warfare, Hail Chairman Mao.
• I start shopping for warm-weather clothing and express interest in vacationing in South America.
• I start sleeping with an image of Jim Jones over my heart to protect myself from death.
• I adopt fourteen children and let them live in my studio apartment.
• I work for 21 hours a day and turn all my money over to a church. ("It's cool -- the end justifies the means.")
• I lose 40 pounds and my skin turns grey.
• I start referring to a human being as my savior.
• When you ask me what I did last Friday night, I say "Suicidal Ritual Drill".
• I've been deathly afraid of airplanes my entire life but I suddenly get my pilots license so I can start shipping cargo to South America for the guy I'm sleeping with.
• And oh yea, the guy I'm sleeping with is a "preacher" 40 years older than me, and he has a wife, ten mistresses, and fucks guys just to make them think they're gay.
• I move into a Co-op and will not receive your phone calls.
• Every time I see you, I am recording our conversation with an old tape recorder from the 70's.
• I burn a cross into my forehead. Oh, wait. That was the Manson Family. But look out for shit like this, as well.

I Moved to NYC to Touch Gabriel's Penis

This isn't Gabriel, but it's a picture I found of one of the Urge boys.

A few weekends ago, I found myself on a Friday night with my hand on a stranger's penis. Let me explain.

I was at a gay bar, Urge, with some friends. The DJ was playing It's Raining Men and there were ADONISes in ass-less chaps, thongs, and garments I was previously unfamiliar with, (which I believe are called leather penis cozies), walking around on top of the bar. I had assumed that because we are chicks, my friends Hannah, Mel and I would fade into the background and be totally ignored in the Urge atmosphere. But as luck would have it, the hunkiest nearly-nudes were straight and paid an awful lot of attention to us. I'm not going to get into specifics, but some of them immediately got very comfortable with us. (I usually make guys buy me dinner before this stuff goes down, but at this point I was drinking, which made it okay.)

While my hand was on Gabriel's penis (he put it there, not me), I kind of had an epiphany: I was really proud of the girl I have become.

Let me explain. In High school, I was a really fun, silly person, and I loved myself a lot. In college, I was pretty unhappy and kind of lost myself. I took school really seriously and ran our school newspaper sort of like a dictatorship. (Once I frightened a large tour group of perspective students when they came by the office and overheard me screaming into the phone, "Must I do everything around here? Am I going to have to start wiping everyone's asses, too?")

But that's not who I really am, and I moved to New York City hoping to get back to the real LP. I think a few years ago it would have made me really uncomfortable to be touching someone's penis in a bar. And at first I was uncomfortable. I was shocked. But I didn't know why. It was really no big deal. Why was my brain programmed to be kind of offended by this? Touching Gabriel's penis was so overtly sexual that it should not be taken seriously at all. It was hilarious.

It would be hard to live in New York City and be uptight about everything. I think that's why I moved here -- I wanted to shake off that stress and seriousness I had accumulated at Gettysburg College. I moved to New York so I could get lectured for 20 minutes on the B train about the Myan prophecies by a man wearing an umbrella as a dress. So that I could walk to work on a Thursday morning so hung-over that I'm too out of it to notice that my skirt is tucked into my thong and I'm throwing a buttcheek parade for 30 blocks down Broadway. Essentially, I moved to New York City so I could touch Gabriel's penis. All this stuff really humbles me and makes me chill the fuck out.

The most important thing I learned at college was that working your ass off will reap rewards, but if it's not making you happy it isn't worth it. Now I just want to be happy. I'm sort of going through an immature period in my life right now. People assume I am 18 and my mother has stopped hoping that someday I will get married or be responsible enough to own a plant. But I need this time right now -- I didn't have it in college and I have some catching up to do.

I am kind of hoping my parents are not reading my blog right now, but Mom -- if you're there -- aren't you proud of me? Although it may seem the opposite is true, I think I'm finally growing up.

How To Correctly Shake Your Ass

I get yelled at for a LOT of stuff in hip-hop class, but the number one issue that always comes up is my booty. Apparently, I really need to work on shaking it the right way. But how? Where do you learn how to do this? I'm trying, I swear.

Doing the Booty Dance in practice clearly wasn't working. I needed some secondary resources. So I did some research. Conducted some interviews. With Booty-Shaking EXPERTS. Well -- not really. I listened to a lot of rap music. And here is what it told me:

"Face the wall shawty, put your hands on it. Bounce that ass up and down make a nigga want it. Roll that ass round and round like a motherfuckin' wheel. Shake that shit, this ain't no motherfuckin' drill."*
-Ying Yang Twins (Salt Shaker)
*By the way: these lyrics are totally nasty so I didn't post the most graphic, informative Ying Yang Twin recommendations. See them here.

"If you wanna make the money shawty work that shit.
Put a hump in your back and lift your rump."
-Pitbull (Shake)

"Drop that ass shake that mother fucker up, now drop that ass shake that mother fucker up, lean back some mo',shake that mother fucker up, lean back some mo, shake that mother fucker up, shake that ass real hard, to the left make it right, shake that ass real hard, to the left and the right."
-Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz (Aww Skeet Skeet)

"Papa think your ass lovely. Raise it like sugar, g-string hussy and hussy."
"So don’t be actin’ like you don’t be backin’ that stuff up. Girl in the club 'cause that’s what you got ass for. Wobble wobble, I’m infatuated."
"Now this ain’t for no small booties. No sir 'cause that won’t pass. (Show me what you’re workin’ with.) But if you feel you got the biggest one, then move, come shake ya ass."
-Mystikal (Shake Ya Ass)

"Better yet put ya back into it. Do ya thing like they ain't nothing to it. Shake shake that ass girl."
"She move so sure erotic. I watch her, im like bounce that ass girl."
-50 Cent (Disco Inferno)

"Bring that ass back yes sir like that. Shake your ass ma do your damn thang. Make that ass dip and do your damn thang(thang). Shake it real fast , but dont hurt nuttin. Lemme see you stop, drop straight twirk something."
"Do the duck walk and make your butt talk shhh less talk more duck walk."
"I aint tryna brag and i aint tryna boast but the way you shake that jelly I can put it on some toast so shake your ass quick like the holy ghost."
-Genesis (Duck Walk)

"Shuka-shu-shake; brake your hips and fall out of your Caravan right into a ditch, Bitch!"
-Lady Sovereign (Sad Ass Stripah)


"Shake that ass, ’cause fornication is the only way to make The Next Generation. When it comes to booty-shaking, girl’s got a gift. ‘Cause she raised that ass like a turbolift."
-Star Trek TNG

"Shake your tambourine go and get yourself a whistle."
"Get low get low, then pick up pick up. Get your hands in the air, it's a stick-up stick-up. Shake your ass quicker, quicker. Shake it down in town, get the picture, picture?"
-Eve (Tambourine)

THE TAKEAWAY (My notes):

• General rule: Drop, shake, lean, repeat.
• Arch your shoulders, KEEP BUTT LIFTED!!!!! (<-- this is key)
• Put your back into it, but act like it's no big deal and not hard at all.
• Small booties are no good. In fact, if you don't think it's huge, don't even try to shake it.
• Find out exactly how, and how fast, the holyghost shakes it, because apparently that is the way to do it.
  
• Figure out what it looks like to "fall out of your caravan right into a ditch."
• Speed is everything.
• Wobbling has a positive effect on observers.
  

I think I'm in trouble. Does anyone else have better advice?

Football: Gayer than Pro Wrestling

Pro wrestling and football are two of the most hypocritical spectacles of the modern age. They appeal to a largely male audience in a traditionally male way, through encouragement of physical superiority and violence and so on. In short, what they're going for is an image of dominant, unquestionable masculinity, and they consistently fail. Because what they both are, when all's said and done, is gay. Very, very gay. Now, we're going to need an operational definition of the word “gay.” For the purposes of this essay, gay has less to do with hot man-on-man action than it does with heavy handed irony.

Consider two muscular men in bicycle shorts dancing together in the NYC Pride Parade. Now consider that they're standing on the bow of a giant pink float called the Mississippi Queen while the DJ—wearing angel wings and a diaper—plays a medley of remixed Cher hits. Are these two men gay?

No, they are not. Not even if they sing along with the disco whistle. Those two men are openly embracing not just each other, but their homosexuality. They might be doing so in a crude and obvious way, but there is no subtext to it. But when football and wrestling try so hard to avoid and denigrate homosexual imagery that they come full circle and mimic it, that's gay. And what we're proving today is that football is unquestionably gayer than wrestling in this regard. We'll start with the obvious.

The tight end: In an all-male sport, calling anything a tight end is pretty much an invitation for sodomy. Wrestling does not have a tight end. It has wrestlers, it has managers, it has valets, it has bodyguards, and it's even had a genie who impregnated a woman by spitting green mist into her crotch. But it has never had anyone whose position, whether behind or in front of the curtain, was referred to as the tight end. Even the old-school practice of insiders referring to pretty boy tag teams as “blowjobs” implied that they'd be receiving them from the women in attendance. Compare this to what tight ends receive.

The center: At first glance, the center isn't really all that gay. He's the guy in the “center” of the offensive line who snaps the ball to the quarterback. Nothing fishy about that at all, right? ...well, except for the fact that he has to bend over directly in front of the quarterback. That's his job. Wearing tight pants and bending over in front of another man. That's his day. Wrestling doesn't have this. True, it isn't really a team sport, but even tag team wrestling doesn't have a guy who just bends over while his partner does all the work. Yes, that wording was intentional.

Subtlety: This category reaches back around to our operational definition. What's gayer; a guy who says something like “hi, I'm Julian and I love feeling penises in my butt,” or the married high school shop teacher getting dragged out of Club Manhole by the police? The answer involves Julian walking off stage with the silver medal. Wrestling is kind of like Julian. There's just no escaping the fact that WWE owner Vince McMahon has forced grown men to kiss his bare ass on national television. You can't ungay that. You can't even unsee it.

Football, by contrast, tries much harder to hide from the truth. They've managed to obscure their gayness behind mountains of cheerleaders and halftime shows and commercials and cutbacks to the broadcast table every ten fucking seconds. You would think that there was some monetary benefit to all this, measured by ratings and ad revenue. And you'd be wrong – the idea is to never show, under any circumstances, footage of the game itself. All those tight uniforms and bulges and motivational butt pats make for bad television. Or more accurately, like Mr. Shop Teacher and his gym bag full of assless leather pants, football hates itself for things utterly beyond its control.

John Madden: Now that he's retired, it's easy to pick on him, but Madden left behind a legacy of broadcasting that called almost entirely upon upon homosexual imagery. “He hits the hole right after Jesse opens it up” is one of many examples. And when you describe anything in football as “the last shot out of the Roman Candle,” you mean ejaculation. Same for any situation that prompts a comment like “he's going to fire into this guy right here.” Don't argue. You will lose.

Wrestling has had some pretty bad play-by-play men and color commentators over the years, especially the 80s, but nothing can match Madden's consistency. Not even Lord Alfred Hayes' fretting about manager Jimmy Hart “always on his back” and constantly “inventing new things to do to [him],” or Mean Gene Okerlund's questionable on-screen relationship with Hulk Hogan, can compare. They weren't regular announcers anyway – Jesse Ventura and Gorilla Monsoon were the commentators of the Reagan years, and unlike Madden, they could think faster than they spoke. Even Dusty Rhodes was quicker on the draw, and he used words like “clubberin'” on a regular basis. And as dumb and inarticulate as that is, it isn't gay. But the Roman Candle thing? Gay.

So there you have it. Ironclad, irrefutable proof that what happens on the gridiron is roughly ten or eleven times gayer than what happens in the squared circle. Actually, “squared circle” could be a euphemism for the anus...nope, football's still gayer. Tight end. Jesus.

Don't invite me to your wedding

Long ago, I was asked to write a short monologue/speech thing for my friend's bachelor party. I'm sure he regrets it now, because the following is what I wrote, which someone else read in my absence. The names of the groom-to-be, his guests, and his fiancee have been replaced, to protect their dignity and social standing, by names chosen at random from the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame.

Before I begin, I should soothe the anxieties of the environmentally conscious by noting that this speech was written on 30% recycled paper and consists of 60% recycled jokes. Never let it be said that I didn't chip in for the good of us all.

Now then, the speech. When Felix Ross first suggested that I contribute to the roast of our good friend Alex Bennett, I was rather surprised. And flattered. Felix and I, you see, have a unique friendship in which we both hate each other. I was concerned that, due to my as-yet-unstable housing situation, I wouldn't be able to write anything to mark the occasion. But I snapped out of that pretty quickly. This was important, by thunder, and I needed to pull my weight, for two reasons:

1) My friend Alex Bennett, who proposed to his fiancee Alice Fergusson during the opening night performance of Faustus—a play I was in—is embarking on a special and wondrous life journey with someone he obviously loves very much.
2) My friend Felix Ross—who is fruitier than Carmen Miranda's party hat—is attending a heterosexual marriage ceremony. It's a novelty too bizarre and unlikely to let pass without comment.

Oh, and the rest of you oughtn't worry; Felix and Alex are the only two standing in front of my slings and arrows this time. Everyone else gets off easy. Or so your girlfriends tell me.

Anyway, back to the groom-to-be. We met in college, you see, and thus mutual acquaintances often ask me what my first memories are of Alex, and...actually, they don't. My friends know me well enough to never ask me anything like that, because I have the worst short term memory in Christendom. Also, my sleep schedule in college was highly irregular, so I'd often distinctly recall things that never, to be technical, happened. Hell, my first memory of Alex involves us on the sawdust floor of some sketchy oyster cellar, pounding opium into the soles of our feet with wooden mallets as the two lithe, pulchritudinous daughters of a wealthy Arab sheik—himself half-crazed by strong drink and giggling somewhere off in the corner—danced around us before doing things to, with, and for us that we'd only read about in Hustler's Letters to the Editor. And what the hell kind of remembrance is that for a stag party? What kind of effect would it have on Alex as he crawled into bed with Alice? Christ, he'd get cold feet so hard his ankles would freeze together.

Besides, it isn't true. No Arabs attended our alma mater. My first plausible memory of Alex brings to mind an odd, lanky fellow fascinated by Gumby and prone to running about in the woods swaddled in foam. He also played a hand in that year's Dungeons & Dragons campaign as a plucky, young adventurer on an endless search for “tray-sure,” a term I recognize but can't identify.

Other things come to mind as well. His sleep schedule was similar to mine, in that he'd spend all day playing video games in the house I lived in, and he'd be there button-mashing away as I went off to bed for the evening. When I woke up, he'd either still be there playing, indicating that he hadn't slept, or he'd be asleep on the couch, game still on, controller loosely gripped in his slumbering hand. Had I the presence of mind to fetch a camera, the resulting picture would be a modern-day Goatse; familiar to all corners of the Internet and, in its own degraded way, an accurate symbol of the human condition.

...Jesus, why do I write things like this? I must be getting sick. That ungodly cleaning lady of mine is trying to poison me. Revenge for leaving that spanikopita box where their dog could get it, I suspect. But that doesn't have much to do with Alex. I'd better get back on track.

Alex also had, and still has, a remarkable grasp of philosophy. And it is his alone, because when he goes off on random theoretical tears, no one around him knows what the blue fuck he's talking about. Oh sure, the graphs and puppets help. But Tube Socrates can only explain so much before the brain of whoever he's talking to goes into autopilot to avoid implosion.

What else? There's got to be more. I've known the man for years now. Man. How long it's been since his freshman year. Since my freshman year. We're getting old, Alex. It's only a matter of time before we're reminiscing about dining hall food during alumni weekend because it'll be the only thing there that still connects us to the alma mater. Once it hits that point, we're led away from the watering hole at sundown by well-meaning undergraduates who promptly remove us from the breeding pool. Come on, they'll say. Come on, grandpa. Cooing at us like we're goddamned children. Come on and take your medicine.

Good lord, how did that tangent hijack this speech? Did I get a contact high from something? Ether under the carpet? Fresh paint? It doesn't matter. Gotta keep moving.

Alex's theatrical roles come to mind now, for some reason. He played such memorable, imagination-capturing characters as...um...fuck...oh! One of the murdered husbands from Big Love, and the creepy vagrant from The Cherry Orchard, and various Shakespearean parts where he was either good with a sword or gussied up like a Cambodian hooker; I honestly can't remember which, and it may have been both simultaneously.

But it was Faustus, his senior showcase, that I actually do remember, because the stupid bastard cast me in it. And dressed me as a pimp, no less. Working on that show was a lot of fun, and it was my first main stage production (and my only proper one, since I'm trying to expel that ghastly Brecht play from my head with all appropriate speed). Alex put together a professional-looking show with limited time and extremely limited budget, and no jokes are necessary to once again thank him for the experience. The Faustus movie was also pretty cool, although it did suffer a bit towards the end when one of the actors stopped showing up.

And that's pretty much it. Whatever further accomplishments, trials, failures, or successes Alex has experienced during his life are best left for someone else to detail. All I can say is best of luck my friend, may you and Alice have many years of happiness and joy, and please, if you have a kid, don't name it after me. It'll probably turn out to be a serial killer, and I don't want that on my conscience.

Thank you.

This LOL Shit Is Out Of Control

The amount of LOL I see out there concerns me. I recently read a funny status update from a friend and literally laughed out loud.

No fucking around. And I wanted to tell him, LOL, but we have overused LOL to the point that I don't think he would have believed me. We have cried wolf on LOL too many times. This is my imaginary conversation with Mike:

Me: LOL.

Mike: Nice.

Me: But I LOLed. Really, Mike.

Mike: I know. Big deal.

Me: But what you wrote was so funny, that I actually could not suppress my laughter.

Someone that I communicate with for work LOLs at everything I say, and I either do not believe her or am very concerned about her mental state. If she is LOLing as she claims, she must be qualified insane. The people around her must wonder if they need to provide her with a straight jacket. I don't even have to say something funny to get a LOL in reply. Just as I was confessing my LOL to Mike and my qualms with admitting I LOLed, she responded to an e-mail I sent her, in which I agreed to help her with something.

"LOL, I am actually laughing hysterically at my desk and people are looking at me like I am crazy. Ha, ha. Thanks for your help! :)"

It's as if she was reading my mind. "No really," she was saying. "This LOLing is the real shit." I was glad to hear the confirmation. (But borderline worried that she is crazy.)

"We need a "small, earnest chuckle" abbreviation," Mike said. "Or one that indicates, "yeah, you made me smirk, but it wasn't good enough to cause me to emit a sound."

Mike is right. But what? Does anyone have any ideas?

And all of this LOLing seems rather tame compared to its relative, Rolling On The Floor Laughing (ROTFL). Has anyone actually done this? This is getting scary.

"The ramp up now is too excessive," Mike said. "Either I'm laughing out loud or rolling on the floor laughing my ass off. That's not always true! There are nuances."

How true that is. What do we do, guys?