101 Damnations: The Humorists' Tour of Personal Hells
368
101 Damnations: The Humorists' Tour of Personal Hells
368eBookFirst Edition (First Edition)
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Overview
Dear flappable reader:
Do you bristle at a handshake that resembles a limp fish? Do oblivious pedestrians bring you to the brink? What about museum gift shops, superfluous courtesy (do we need a gas pump to show us gratitude?), behemoth SUVS, or inexplicable operating manuals? Have you had it with screeching leaf blowers, beseeching telemarketers, escalating movie-ticket prices, or proliferating celebrity magazines? Is it children's choirs or karaoke singers, waiters bearing pepper grinders or dinner guests blathering on about salt, that drives you to distraction?
For anyone who has recognized that this peaceful kingdom of ours has more than a few potholes, 101 Damnations is the perfect companion. It's your ticket to the nine circles of personal hell.
Armed with wit, bewilderment, and words to the wise ass, today's leading humorists conduct a brief tour of the trivial and often universal exasperations we all must endure. Among the damning, Henry Alford reveals our wanton desire to affect Britishisms. Sandra Tsing Loh has it in for people who forward "funny" e-mails. Once and for all, Merrill Markoe sets forth cell phone etiquette. And there are many, many others. Ninety-eight to be exact. Make yourself comfortable. Misery loves company.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429979917 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 08/03/2002 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 368 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Michael J. Rosen is the author, illustrator, or editor of something like fifty books for both adults and children, including the biennial humor series, Mirth of a Nation.
Michael J. Rosen is the author, illustrator, or editor of something like 125 books for both adults and children, including the biennial humor series Mirth of a Nation and the Jewish Book Award-winning Elijah’s Angel.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A Damnation, Directed Toward Telemarketers
Tim Carvell
Let us imagine a domestic scene. A husband — whom we shall refer to, for purposes of speed and dramatic clarity, as Husband — is addressing his wife, Wife. "I've been thinking," he says, "and I feel like we really ought to switch our long-distance service. I'm certain that there must be a cheaper alternative out there."
"Yes," Wife replies. "If only we knew where to find one! If only there were some way for us to learn about the range of long-distance providers, and their charges for various services!"
There is an awkward pause. Then the telephone rings. Husband scrambles for the receiver, but Wife beats him to it.
"Yes?" she says. "Why, what an odd coincidence, we are interested in — you don't say! You don't say! You don't say! Gracious, we'd be delighted to switch to your fine, fine long-distance service."
We shall have to content ourselves with imagining such a scene — a moment when a telemarketer calls at exactly the right time, offering precisely what one needs — since, reaching back to the dawn of humankind, such a moment has never ever taken place. No, the history of telemarketing has been an ignominious one, consisting, I am positive, entirely of summoning individuals from their beds and showers and forcing them to aver their lack of interest in magazine subscriptions, timeshare condominiums, or term life insurance.
I am not certain at what moment in the telephone's history it went from being a tool of communication to being an implement of annoyance, but the two seem so inextricably linked that I would not be surprised to learn that they were born, like a pair of Siamese twins, in the same damp instant. I harbor a dreadful suspicion that the telephone companies — all too aware of the bad reputation that the speed-dialing sell-weasels of the telemarketing conglomerates have given them — have heavily edited Alexander Graham Bell's first telephone call, which originally went, "Watson, come here, I need you to consider what would happen to your loved ones if any mishap were ever to befall you. For just ten dollars a month, Watson, you can purchase peace of mind."
I have employed various means of coping with telemarketers, which tend to track nicely with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of grief: anger ("How dare you call me at home?"), denial ("Please take me off your list at once"), bargaining ("If I buy something from you, will you leave me alone?"), and depression ("You're the only person who's called me all week."). I have now arrived at the logical end point: acceptance.
By "acceptance," I do not wish to imply that I am no longer irritated by telemarketers and their nefarious schemes. Nor do I mean to imply that I don't spend my idle time fantasizing about getting my hands on the home telephone numbers of various telemarketing companies' CEOs and calling them at all hours to regale them with tales of my personal life. By "acceptance," I simply mean to suggest that I have ceased to fight the incursions of telemarketers upon my life; I now choose to view them as one of the many irritating yet irreducible facts of being alive — like sore throats and sunburns, measles and Miss Marisa Tomei — which have no redeeming grace save for one: they soften and sweeten the knowledge, ever present if rarely acknowledged, that one's days lead softly, inexorably to the endless silence of death.
TIM CARVELL is a writer and editor based in New York City.
CHAPTER 2
Food for Naught
Michael Francis Martone
Behold: those charlatans who have committed acts of fakery against our food. The evil inventor of simulated crabmeat will be cracked open daily and dipped into the River of Boiling But-R-Spread; the villain who first inflicted Circus Peanuts upon an unsuspecting planet is forever gnawed upon by a feral orange-colored banana that smells like Jif; while the Quaker Oats logo is dunked in dye and drowned in oatmeal to atone for his crime of impersonating a blueberry, thus wiping that sanctimonious "My hat is more widely brimmed than thine" smirk off his face.
MICHAEL FRANCIS MARTONE (michael_martone@yahoo.com) is a contributing editor for Modern Humorist.com.
CHAPTER 3
In Response to Your Mass E-mail Solicitation
Matt Summers
When I receive a mass-solicitation e-mail (that is, a solicitation from someone who doesn't know me), I reply by forwarding the following message:
To: From: Subject: In Response to Your Mass E-mail Solicitation Dear Sir, Madam, or Company, I have put together an exciting new CD-ROM product that will inform you (and other mass e-mailers) of things that Uncle Sam, your boss, your mother, your neighbors, your lover, and other people you know (but who don't want to know you) don't want you to know. But I want you to know how to do it because the e-mail you sent me isn't persuasive. Its text is boring, and its promises are pedestrian. Something must be done to "zam-pow" it up. Mass-Solicitation CD-ROM will help you zam-pow your e-mail text for just $119.99. Mass-Solicitation CD-ROM contains: • Every mass-solicitation e-mail I have received in the past two years. That's over four thousand annoying, loathsome mass-solicitation e- mails! Study and learn! Improve on others' diddling narratives, plodding sentence structures, and shoddy e-mail titles (e.g., "Be Your Own Boss!"; "Learn the Secrets of the Internet"; "Lose Weight While You Sleep"— boring!). • I've created a database collection of "hook phrases" that you will use to zam-pow your e-mail (e.g., "memo to self: must hire someone to move these moneybags from my Jacuzzi"). • Step-by-step, learn how to establish a temporary e-mail address that effectively immunizes you from those would-be customers who reply to your message with a bothersome "REMOVE." In addition, Mass-Solicitation CD-ROM contains an e-mail "wizard" that develops your own riveting mass e-mail. It's easy — just answer simple, multiple-choice questions, and Mass-Solicitation CD-ROM will mold your answers onto a zam-pow, knockout mass-solicitation e-mail. Here are three sample wizard questions and possible answers: 1. How much money will your customers make? $1,000 Today! Tonight! Overnight! Yesterday! They already have it! 3. Which zam-pow phrase would you like to use? I must hire someone to move these moneybags from my Jacuzzi. Paradoxically, when you're your own boss, no one is your boss, not even you. Remember, a million-dollar bill takes up the same amount of wallet space as a ten-dollar bill. There's more! As an added bonus to rumor lovers, Mass-Solicitation CD-ROM contains the full text of the seven-hundred-plus e-mail rumors I have received in the past eighteen months. Weave these wild stories about kidney thieves, NPR petition hoaxes, and gangster initiation ceremonies into your mass e-mails! Everything you need to zam-pow your mass solicitations is finally on one convenient CD-ROM. Zam-pow, Matt If you'd like to be removed from this mailing list, please reply with the word "REMOVE" in the subject line. It will be the perfect chance for me to demonstrate how one can make a mass e-mail impervious to "REMOVE" requests. ORDER MASS-SOLICITATION CD-ROM TODAY! MATT SUMMERS is a writer and editor based in Washington, D.C. CHAPTER 4 Adding Memory Andrei Codrescu The other day, a friend of mine was explaining how she had to move these pixels around her computer and had to add twenty megabytes of memory to handle the operation. I had the disquieting thought that all this memory she was adding had to come from somewhere. Maybe it was coming from me, because I couldn't remember a thing that day. And then it became blindingly obvious: all the memory that everybody keeps adding to their computers comes from people. Nobody can remember a damn thing. Every time somebody adds some memory to their machine, thousands of people forget everything they knew. Americans are singularly devoid of memory these days. We don't remember where we came from, who raised us, when our wars occurred, or what happened last year, last month, or even last week. Schoolchildren remember practically nothing. I take the Greyhound bus every week, and I swear half the riders don't know where they got on or where they are supposed to get off. The explanation is simple: computer companies are stealing human memory to stuff their hard drives. Greyhound, I believe, has some kind of contract with IBM to steal the memory of everyone riding the bus. They are probably connected by a cable or something: every hundred miles, poof, another five hundred megabytes get sucked out of the passengers' brains. The computers' thirst for memory is bottomless: the more they suck, the more they need. Eventually, we will all be walking around with a glazed look in our eyes, trying to figure out who it is we live with. Then we'll forget our names and addresses, and we'll just be milling around trying to remember them. The only thing visible about us will be these cables sticking out of our behinds, feeding the scraps of our memory to Computer Central somewhere in Oblivion, U.S.A. I think it's time for all these memory-sucking companies to start some kind of system to feed and shelter us when we forget how to eat, walk, and sleep. ANDREI CODRESCU is an author and NPR commentator. His newest book is Casanova in Bohemia, an historical novel. He edits Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Letters and Life at www.corpse.org. CHAPTER 5 The Thumb-and-Pinky Pretend-Telephone Gesture Kevin Shay Quick: pretend you're talking on the phone. Now, what are you doing with your hand? Are you pretending that your hand is a telephone receiver, with your thumb extended toward your ear and your little finger extended toward your mouth? If so, stop it. That's wrong. It makes no sense. Because here's the thing: In all other cases, when you mime an action involving an object, you do not make your body into the object. Why not? Because it would be extremely silly. To pretend to be working at a computer, you would perhaps hold one arm out in front of you, representing a keyboard, and "type" on your forearm and wrist. When signalling for a check in a restaurant, instead of holding an imaginary pen with which to write on an imaginary check, you might simulate a pen with a rigid index finger, which you would manipulate with your other hand. Please try this now and see how easily it might confuse your waiter. What about mimicking a tennis forehand or the swing of a baseball batter or golfer? Do you use your arm as a bat, a racket? Do you press your leg into service as a nine-iron? Of course not. And an air guitar is just that: air. You do not contort your limbs into the form of a Stratocaster as if you were some heavy-metal Wondertwin. Even the professional mime, enacting a person pulling on a rope, does not attempt to directly portray that rope with a portion of his anatomy. And the justly celebrated I'm-in-a-Shrinking-Box routine hinges on the performer's understanding that he is inside the box; only the least successful mimes try to be the box. To indicate a silent-movie villain twirling his sinister mustache, you do not lay a finger under your nose and groom your finger. When pretending to kick a soccer ball, you do not make like your head is a soccer ball and kick yourself in the head. If you saw someone doing any of these things, you would laugh derisively at him, would you not? Well, when you do that thumb-and-pinky thing while recounting a phone conversation, some of us are laughing at you. So remember: You are holding the telephone in your hand. Your hand is not the telephone. Now try it again. KEVIN SHAY is a contributing editor for McSweeney's Internet Tendency. CHAPTER 6 Operating Instructions Paul Tullis I don't have a problem with electronics per se. For instance, I have no trouble, regardless of the stage comic's oft-repeated avowal, programming my VCR. (That is, I wouldn't if I could find the remote control, which I cannot.) It's more the owner's manuals that give me difficulty. My recent experience with my microwave oven would not have been so dreadful — it is the nature of things, after all, to decay — if the operating instructions had not proven useless. They read something like this: Operating Instructions for the Daewoo Model KOR-6115 Microwave Oven Part I 1. Congratulations on your purchase of the Daewoo Model KOR-61 15 Microwave Oven. The KOR-6115, with its high-power setting, mechanical time dial, and rotating shelf, will give you many years of microwaving pleasure. It truly is a marvel of contemporary electronics, this microwave. 2. Plug the KOR-6115 into an electrical outlet. It has a three-foot cord with a grounded prong for such purpose. 3. Use the KOR-6115 in the usual manner. 4. As the KOR-6115 dutifully performs the chore for which it was scrupulously designed, manufactured, marketed, and sold, for a few months be pleased and — go ahead, you deserve it! — self-satisfied (but not smug; we really must draw the line at smug) with the bargain you have found for yourself at Cosco. Ninety-nine dollars, was it? Boy, howdy! And the one it replaced, the one that broke after six years or something, you got for free from a friend who was moving back to New York after college, so the sum total of what you have spent on microwave ovens in your entire life amounts to a mere ninety-nine dollars, plus tax. You are one fastidious motherfucker. Part II 1. By now you have learned that you should not have turned the KOR-61 15's mechanical dial to "0" before the conclusion of the preset time cycle. The KOR-6115, now that it has been turned off, cannot be turned back on. The dial is useless. The Start/Stop button — also useless. Unplugging the KOR-6115 and plugging it back in do nothing. 2. Turn the KOR-6115 around, hoping a label or something will tell you what to do. Find only a rather brusque warning not to open the back of the KOR-6115 unless you are an authorized Daewoo Service Representative — or risk electrification. Imagine yourself being electrocuted. Feel the current pulsing through your body. Picture your hair standing on end, as per the cartoons. Smell the unmistakable smell of seared skin and burnt hair. Recall the cautions of your father never to let an electrical appliance, such as a hair dryer, near your bathtub when it is full and you are in it. [What the hell did he think I would be doing with a hair-dryer? I was, like, eight.] Blink and shake your head as the gray metal of the KOR-6115's posterior returns to your mental-imaging faculty and reminds you of the task at hand. 3. Return to the box whence the KOR-6115 came — you wisely saved it because you knew that should the KOR-6115 ever require servicing (perish the thought!), you might need the original packaging, as is the practice of certain other manufacturers of consumer electronics. Find this booklet of operating instructions. Read it thoroughly. Discover that not only are there no instructions for recourse in the eventuality that has befallen you, or any other malfunction-related eventuality, but neither is there an address, phone number, or Web site listed as a means of contacting the manufacturer about your problem. 4. Frolic for a moment with the notion of returning the KOR-6115 to Cosco. Shudder at the thought of traffic on the 101 at this hour. Consider that customer service isn't exactly Cosco's raison d'être. Blow it off. 5. Instead, search the Internet for a Daewoo presence. It's a wondrous thing, this Internet. Learn that the manufacturing of microwave ovens is but a small parcel of the Daewoo economic empire. This large South Korean concern also has interests in automobiles, light and heavy manufacturing, metals (ferrous and nonferrous), chemicals, textiles, energy, securities, telecommunications, commodities ranging from soybeans to squid, and those giant-dog-looking things that unload cargo from ships. Do not make any extrapolations about the quality of other items manufactured, or services provided, by Daewoo based on your experience with the KOR-6115. Recall having read something about the overdiversification of Asian-based corporations as a factor in the 1998 financial crisis there. Banish this thought as irrelevant. (Continues…)
2. When will these people make this money?
Excerpted from "101 Damnations"
by .
Copyright © 2002 Michael J. Rosen.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
| Damnation 101, an Introduction | xiii | |
| Circle 1 | The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Inventions (New Items in the Devil's Workshop) | 1 |
| 1. | A Damnation, Directed Toward Telemarketers | 3 |
| 2. | Food for Naught | 6 |
| 3. | In Response to Your Mass E-mail Solicitation | 7 |
| 4. | Adding Memory | 11 |
| 5. | The Thumb-and-Pinky Pretend-Telephone Gesture | 13 |
| 6. | Operating Instructions | 15 |
| 7. | She Knew You Had Your Own Finger, or, I Remember Ma Bell | 20 |
| 8. | Those Damn Blow-ins | 24 |
| 9. | Cell-Phone Etiquette | 26 |
| 10. | SOBs in Their SUVs | 30 |
| 11. | In the Tuscan Oven | 33 |
| 12. | Blood, Sweat, and Tears | 37 |
| 13. | On Porn E-mails, Reality TV, Tailgaters | 39 |
| Circle 2 | Speaking of the Devil (Speech That Deserves a Tongue-lashing) | 43 |
| 14. | Abuse of Grammar, Exhibit 23A-C | 45 |
| 15. | Angloism | 47 |
| 16. | Nite | 49 |
| 17. | A Taste of Hooey | 51 |
| 18. | Niceness | 54 |
| 19. | Feigned Praise | 56 |
| 20. | A Movie Trailer We'd Like to See | 58 |
| 21. | Mission Impossible | 62 |
| 22. | And All That Good Stuff | 65 |
| 23. | The Undead Language | 67 |
| 24. | Say No to Funny E-mails | 71 |
| Circle 3 | Infernal Affairs (On Hell's Belles and Other Damnable Sorts) | 75 |
| 25. | TV and Movie Aliens Who Are Attracted to Human Females | 77 |
| 26. | Crime and Punishment: Damnation! | 80 |
| 27. | The Damnation of People Knowing Me | 83 |
| 28. | The Female Handshake: Firm, Flaccid, or Fit for a Queen | 87 |
| 29. | Revenge of the Amish Friendship Bread | 90 |
| 30. | Not in My Face, If You Please | 94 |
| 31. | On Being the Sole Representative of One's Gender in a Hostile Room: A Random Example of a Perennial Dilemma | 96 |
| 32. | Public Mastication | 100 |
| 33. | In Which It Is Shown That Crime Is Bad, and That Stupid People Should Perhaps Not Be Allowed to Get As Drunk As Smart People | 102 |
| 34. | The Saunterers | 106 |
| 35. | Do NOT, Especially If You Value Your Ass, Tell Me to Smile | 110 |
| Circle 4 | It's Not the Heat, It's the Humi--No, Come to Think of it, it is the Heat (Seasonal Misery, Year-round) | 113 |
| 36. | A Short History of My Dread | 115 |
| 37. | Golf Spelled Backwards Is Flod | 117 |
| 38. | Strike Three: You're Bored! | 121 |
| 39. | February Is Twenty-eight (or Twenty-nine) Days Too Long | 125 |
| 40. | The Dog Days of Spring | 128 |
| 41. | That Which Does Not Kill Me Grows Back in a Week and Tries Again | 129 |
| 42. | Those Flags | 132 |
| 43. | Leaf Blowers | 134 |
| 44. | See You in September | 136 |
| 45. | New York City State of Mind: A Weekend near the Expressway | 139 |
| 46. | There's Gonna Be an Earthquake Tonight: The Eagles as Harbingers of Doom | 141 |
| 47. | Real Beach | 145 |
| Circle 5 | Our Bodies, Our Hells | 149 |
| 48. | On Allergies | 151 |
| 49. | My Left Hair | 154 |
| 50. | Olives | 157 |
| 51. | On What'shername--You Know, the Actress | 160 |
| 52. | To Be Continued ... | 163 |
| 53. | Antibody | 165 |
| 54. | Fine Print | 170 |
| 55. | Salty Talk | 174 |
| 56. | Standing Bull | 177 |
| 57. | Night of the Living Near-Dead | 181 |
| Circle 6 | Hell Hath no Fury Like a Bored Child (Playing with Matches and Other Youthful Pursuits) | 185 |
| 58. | Treble Yell | 187 |
| 59. | Rules for Reentry ... into the Foreign Galaxy of Our Home | 190 |
| 60. | David Blaine and His Big Goddamn Ice Cube | 195 |
| 61. | The Young and the Debtless | 199 |
| 62. | On Returning Home and Being Greeted by Your Mother | 202 |
| 63. | Circus | 206 |
| 64. | All I Needed to Know About, Well, Gym, I Learned in Gym | 209 |
| 65. | The Great Sea-Monkey Conspiracy | 212 |
| 66. | Web Sites of the Damned | 215 |
| Circle 7 | Out of the Frying Pan (Hellish Situations) | 217 |
| 67. | Fresh Pepper? | 219 |
| 68. | Tables Turning | 223 |
| 69. | Signalling for the Check | 226 |
| 70. | Why I'm Not a Spy | 227 |
| 71. | Pennies from Hell | 230 |
| 72. | Karaoke Katharsis | 233 |
| 73. | The Bitter Aftertaste of Office Goodies | 235 |
| 74. | When I Die, I'm Going to Heaven Because I've Spent My Time in the Apartment Next-door to Hell | 238 |
| 75. | I Hate Change | 242 |
| 76. | Temporary Hells | 244 |
| 77. | Better Off Renting | 249 |
| 78. | The Lost World of the Waiting Room | 253 |
| Circle 8 | Devil in a Blue Dress (Also Available in Toast, Smoke, Ash, and Sulphur) (The Wretched Excesses) | 257 |
| 79. | "Special Editions" of Monopoly | 259 |
| 80. | A Purgatory of Postcards | 263 |
| 81. | Bonnie! The Magazine | 267 |
| 82. | What Were They Thinking? | 271 |
| 83. | Name and Address, Please | 274 |
| 84-88. | Much Too Much of Such and Such | 277 |
| I Smell Coconuts | 277 | |
| Red, White, and Sky | 278 | |
| Purina and Puppies and Pussies, Oh My! | 279 | |
| Cigarette Whore | 280 | |
| Miles and Miles of Vertical Smiles | 281 | |
| 89. | Executive Decision | 283 |
| Circle 9 | The Devil Made Me Do It (for God and Country) | 287 |
| 90. | Eternal Revenue | 289 |
| 91. | Jack-o'-lanterns and Other Empty-headed Phenomena | 292 |
| 92. | Halloween Versus Election Day | 296 |
| 93. | The Bullet Bible | 299 |
| 94. | The Law, the Ass | 302 |
| 95. | Don't Blame Me | 304 |
| 96. | Plastic | 308 |
| 97. | Marketing Rebellion | 310 |
| 98. | A Lesson in Bureaucracy | 312 |
| 99. | A Coney Island of the Sole | 315 |
| 100. | That Darned Satan | 318 |
| 101. | Bad Jew | 322 |
| Appendix | 329 | |
| Thirty Things I Hate About Hell | 331 | |
| A special offer for our readers from Matt Neuman | ||
| Acknowledgments | 339 |