Citizen of the Month

the writing and photography of Neil Kramer

Tag: happiness

Happiness and Gumballs

August 22, 2013 / / 25 Comments

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It was the day before the annual BlogHer conference in Chicago.   JC and I made plans to stroll down Michigan Avenue and explore the city.  If you don’t know JC Little (The Animated Woman), take a look at her delightful and somewhat repulsive presentation about pinworms at the Voices of the Year ceremony.  She’s my kind of person.

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During our walk, we found ourselves in the architecturally-interesting Chicago Cultural Center, and noticed that there was an art show on the fourth floor gallery.  It was titled “The Happy Show” and the installation was by Stefan Sagmeister, a prominent designer from New York.

The Happy Show offers visitors the experience of walking into the designer’s mind as he attempts to increase his happiness via meditation, cognitive therapy and mood-altering pharmaceuticals. “I am usually rather bored with definitions,” Sagmeister says. “Happiness, however, is just such a big subject that it might be worth a try to pin it down.” Centered around the designer’s ten-year exploration of happiness, this exhibition presents typographic investigations of a series of maxims, or rules to live by, originally culled from Sagmeister’s diary, manifested in a variety of imaginative and interactive forms.  — from the city of Chicago website.

The exhibit was fantastic, and we spent over an hour enjoying the unique infographics and interactive displays, all relating the concept of happiness.

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The most provocative art piece was Sagmeister’s attempt to show a graphical representation  of the happiness of the visitors to the show.  He did this based on the amount of gumballs that were taken from a row of ten old-fashioned gumball machines standing against the wall, numbered from 1-10, each machine signifying one higher level of individual happiness.

I thought about my level of personal happiness before I approached the gumball machines. I decided that I was relatively happy.  Even with some bumps in the proverbial road, I had my health, good friends, my hair, and I wasn’t bored yet with my existence.  I took a gumball from machine #7.  That put me in the top 25% of happiness.

As I put the gumball into my mouth, JC said, “That’s bad for your teeth.”

I laughed.  It’s the little joys of life that enable a person to be happy.

“It’s your turn,” I said, almost a dare.

JC walked to the row of gumball machines and turned the handle of machine #10.  A bright yellow gumball dropped out.

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“#10?” I shouted, rather stunned.

Maybe she was confused by the instructions.  She was Canadian, after all.

“You realize that #10 means #10 in happiness.” I mansplained.

“I know,” she said.

I left it at that, but by the time we were back on the street, at “the Bean” in Grant Park, I couldn’t hold it in any longer.  Her choice had annoyed me.

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“How can you put yourself as #10 in happy?” I pushed again.

“Because I’m happy.”

“That’s great.  I’m glad you’re happy.  But #10 happy?  What about #9 happy?  Then you would have something to look forward to!”

“I think you can be #10 happy all the time, if you are happy at the moment.”

“Are you saying that nothing bad has ever happened to you?  No one you cared about ever got sick or went bankrupt?”

“Of course bad things happen.  I can be upset, but still happy and content.”

“This makes no LOGICAL SENSE.  #10 means the IDEAL.  The Platonic ideal.  Heaven is #10.  No one ever gets to be #10 in this world.  If I thought I was #10 in happiness, I would just kill myself because it’s all downhill.”

“That’s because we have different views of happiness.”

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Two days later, I met JC during one of the keynotes.  It was the day after her presentation at the Voices of the Year.

“You were great last night,” I said.

“Thank you.”

“Anyway, enough about that.  Have you changed your mind about what number happy you are?”

“Are you still obsessing over this?”

“Are you feeling #10 right now?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, let’s make up a hypothetical situation.  Imagine, last night your presentation was a total disaster.  Everything went wrong.”

“Nice.  OK.”

“The microphone didn’t work.  The crowd was booing.  Today, you’re being ostracized by everyone you know.”

“Are they throwing things at me?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“So, what number happiness are you now?”

“#10.”

“Bullshit!”

“Like I told you ten times before.  I can be upset.  But still happy.  Because I know who I am.”

“OK, what if your pants fell down during your presentation last night, and you weren’t wearing any underwear and everyone saw your privates?  What then?  How would you feel today?”

“That would be quite memorable.  It would probably make me more happy.”

“Aha, GOTCHA!  You are already #10!  You can’t become MORE HAPPY!”

It’s been a month since BlogHer.  Last night, I had a dream.  I was standing in front of the row of gumballs in Chicago, ready to make another choice.  I gazed at the yellow balls of sugary gum enclosed in reflective glass tubes, and then I went for it.  But this time, rather than taking a gumball from machine #7, I turned the lever of machine #6.

The Recipe for a Happy and Successful Man

January 24, 2011 / / 18 Comments

Editor’s Note: I know this post is rather odd.   Look at it as an experiment.

Every man instinctively knows the recipe for a successful and happy life. The recipe is as simple as the easiest homemade mac-n-cheese or a basic chicken soup.

The recipe for a man’s happiness contains three ingredients.  I call them Head, Heart, and Groin (or you can that last ingredient Dick, Cock, Johnson, or “the Big Fella,” whatever term you prefer).

If a man can satisfy the needs of each of these essential ingredients of his Life – Head, Heart, Groin – blending them artfully so they all work together reasonably well, he will be a happy man.

Let’s imagine your life as a soup. We are talking metaphor here, not a real soup, although I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there was an actual “Head, Heart, and Groin” oxtail soup  served at some food cart in the Chinese province of Guangdong.

The happy man is our final completed soup, ready to serve.

Sadly, few men are anywhere near Master Chefs when it comes to their own soups. 99% of men are completely amateur cooks.  They brazenly overpower their soups with one ingredient, act cocky and don’t follow the recipe at all, and get so distracted that they burn the pot, or in extreme cases, even burn down the entire kitchen.

Head, Heart, and Groin.  What does that mean?

We all want to —

1) satisfy our intellectual curiosity (Head)

2) love and be loved (Heart)

3) connect physically with another (a polite way of saying “get laid”) (Groin)

These ingredients are easy to find.   If these items were sold in a typical suburban supermarket, we would find them right on aisle 1, next to the other common kitchen staples, such as Heinz Ketchup, Diet Snapple, and Ring Dings.

If the ingredients are so easy to find, and the soup so easy to make, why do we fail to be happy?  If the answer is as simple as a recipe scribbled on the back of an index card, why are there a million self-help books giving us advice?

Most men have one basic problem.   They were never taught to use a measuring cup, so the soup never turns out right.

In my own case, my soup of Life always turns out over-salted, too spicy, or bland.

It’s not that I’m lazy or stupid. I’m working on perfecting my soup all the time, trying new methods and techniques, even adjusting the amounts depending on the life situation.  I just can’t seem to get my soup to taste right.

When I am alone in the house, I over-think every move and action.  My soup is mostly Brain.   It is like I have created a matzoh ball soup with a giant matzoh ball plopped right in the middle of the bowl, allowing no room for the broth.  The matzoh ball absorbs the liquid, and the dish can hardly be called a soup anymore.

This does not create happiness.  Too much Brain makes a bad soup.

One of the reasons I am writing this post right now is because I’m procrastinating from “real” work.  I cannot think today. My mind won’t rest.  I feel like one big brain, with my body irrelevant, and my body doesn’t like it at all.  I just want to take a nap.

When I leave my house, I tend to experiment with my recipe, hoping to adjust the balance of the three ingredients, striving for that perfect soup, and a happy Life.  I do this as a necessity, knowing that Brain soup will never make you friends.   But as an only child, I have always felt somewhat uncomfortable with others.  I think I also have some co-dependency issues, as you can from five years worth of posts about my relationship with Sophia.  When I connect with others, both in real life and online, my soup becomes heavy on the emotion and schmaltz — Heart.

At first, a Heart-heavy soup seems like a perfect recipe for relationships, but too much heart is like too much salt or chicken fat, or in the case of the matzoh ball soup, a matzoh ball that wasn’t molded correctly, so sits in the soup all soggy, crumbling like the New York Jets in this year’s championship game at the mere touch of the spoon.

A Heart-heavy soup is more edible than the Brain-heavy soup, but most people would pass on it the second time.  It gives you heart-burn.   Men who approach life with too much Heart frequently grow irrational, even crazy.  They are rarely happy.  When you see me on Twitter getting petty with you, you know what type of soup I am preparing in my kitchen.

The third ingredient for a man’s happiness is very important, although we sometimes keep this hidden from view, like MSG in a Chinese restaurant.   Without getting into too many of the details, there are specific personal reasons why I’ve been overcompensating my soup with Groin.    Have you noticed how many of my blog posts are all Groin, with little Head or Hearth?  I don’t intend this to be the case.  I just sometimes let the soup kettle boil and boil with too much Groin inside the pot until it is practically jumping off the stove

Some men enjoy being all-Groin.  In matzoh ball soup terms, their soup contains two round matzoh balls, and the matzoh balls can be quite tasty, but the soup is absolutely bland, as if the chef forgot to add anything else to the broth.

I frequently make this type of Groin-oriented soup online, especially in my blog posts, but rarely in real life.  I would be happier if I added more Groin to my real-life soup, and more Brain to my virtual version.

So, there you have it.  The three simple ingredients, the recipe to a man’s happiness.

Of course, I struggle, just like the rest of you, in creating the perfect soup.  My soup is always too much of this, or too little of that.

Being a Master Chef in Life is a difficult task.

What I Can Teach Neil About Making a Women Really Really Happy!

August 7, 2008 / / 31 Comments

Today’s guest poster is Linsey from Uncouth Heathen.  I knew she was special from the minute I read her About page:  “I began with a major in Biochemistry, switched to History, then Political Science, Philosophy, Psychology, English and finally settled on Humanities, graduating after eleven (11) years of haphazard learning. I now possess a degree that qualifies me to do exactly nothing at all.”  Now that’s my kind of blogger.  When I noticed that she was gay, I decided to get personal — and make her write an entire post for my benefit:  “What I Can Teach Neil abut Making a Women Really Really Happy! ” After all,  most of my male blogging comrades seem to be clueless.  “If you want to impress a woman online, send her a photo of dick!” said one guy.   “The way to make a woman happy is to jump on her the first thing in the morning and three minutes later ask “What’s for breakfast?”  Oh, and driving her around in a sports car.” said some male blogger who went to BlogHer this year to pick up women.  Linsey ended up writing a wonderful post that completely gets to the point.  It also taught me something important.  Linsey, why aren’t you a therapist?

What I Can Teach Neil abut Making a Women Really Really Happy! (or “For The Record, Asking If She’d Have Sex With A Mannequin Will Only Make Her Really, Really Uncomfortable”) by Linsey

Before I started to write this on Sunday night, I asked my wife, Janie, if she was happy. I didn’t tell her why I was asking because I wanted an honest answer. Perhaps I wanted to feel like I had something to say here and her happiness was some sort of special credential I needed to carry on. I was certain she’d tell me she has never been happier in all her life; that she would go on about how every day with me is like nothing else in the world that matters and nothing can dampen her joy, not even the asshole who keeps cooking hamburgers in the bathroom at her work. As it turns out, my wife is not happy, generally speaking. Ain’t love a bitch. Thank you, Mr. Citizen of the Month!

After a long discussion into the wee hours of Monday morning about how Janie can be happier, I decided to attack it at another angle. I thought I’d get better feedback (feedback that didn’t involve my crying wife asking me how she could have wasted her best years) from my sister and her husband who have been married for over ten years. On our ride into work Monday morning, I asked them what they thought it took to make a woman really, really happy. My brother-in-law said that asking a question like that was akin to asking who God was. My sister shot him a look the likes of which I hope never to see again, there was some cursing, a few hurtful things were said at high volumes and then they stopped talking for the last 15 minutes of the ride.

On Tuesday night, I asked my dad how he has managed to keep my mom happy for the 41 years they’ve been married. He couldn’t hear me. His eardrums are damaged from 41 years of my mother’s screaming and I suspect that his refusal to get a hearing aid has something to do with that, too. I can’t ask my brother because we don’t talk anymore. Besides, his current girlfriend has broken up with him no less than 30 times in the last year and, well, that doesn’t sound like happiness, to me.

If you’re looking for an answer from me or anyone in my family, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. I’m with comedian Wanda Sykes on this one: “You can’t make a woman happy. That’s like trying to cure a fatal disease. The goal is to treat the symptoms so you can comfortably live with the illness.”

What I think she means is that I am not responsible for the happiness of any woman other than myself. That’s the same thing my therapist has been telling me for five solid years. What I guess I’m trying to say to you, Neil, is that you can’t be responsible for the happiness of any other woman than yourself, either.

In the absence of any personal or familial wisdom on the matter, I did some serious Internet research and found this article dating back to the summer of 2006. If you don’t want to bother reading it, let me just skip to the part I think you may want to know. The article quotes a gentleman who heads up something called the Happiness Project wherein he states that “the major cause of unhappiness for women in the 21st century is a lack of meaning: What’s the point?” Maybe if you want to make a woman really, really happy you have to help her find meaning. But you know what? You can’t always help someone find meaning in their life. Like my wife, for example. She’s a librarian. She has a degree in motherfucking Information Science and she hates that god damn library. That doesn’t have anything to do with this, I just wanted to say that because what the hell is that about? I want my $20,000 in graduate school payments back, with that attitude.

Next, I came across this BBC article from 2002, wherein so-called scientists “discovered” that semen makes women happy because “the mood-altering hormones in semen absorbed through the vagina help to boost women’s mood.” What this looks like to me is that some guy got tired of wearing a rubber and wanted to prove to his girlfriend that really, in the end, it was going to benefit her. Sure, there’s the off-chance there might be unwanted children or a burning itch in her genitalia, but she’ll be so happy on account of that semen that nothing else will matter! Well, let me just tell you something to prove this bullshit wrong, and it isn’t about me and how happy I am without semen in my life because, you know, if I had some of that I’d impregnate my wife and save us a few thousand dollars in fertility treatments. I’d be able to spend that fertility money on better things like booze and Ikea furniture. Let me share a story about my friend. We’ll call her Karen. You see, Karen and her husband are trying to have a baby. Trying really hard. They’ve each had fertility tests, she’s had surgeries and, apparently, a lot of the sexual relations, but she’s not happy. A neighbor recently offered her husband a “#1 Dad” Mariners t-shirt and she started to cry because she thought he was mocking their misfortune, their inability to have the child they so desperately want. A child they’ve been having so much sex in an attempt to conceive that she should be shitting rainbows and unicorns and mountains of whatever mythical creature signifies happiness to you, on account of all that sperm being showered into her vagina. But she’s not. In fact, she’s now refusing to allow semen into her body more than once per week because, in her words, “please, who needs that much spunk in their hoo-ha?” It doesn’t seem like semen is the answer to me, or to Karen.

The search for meaning seems like a good starting point to finding happiness. I know that I’m constantly searching for meaning. Why am I here? What is this life all about? Why is Living Lohan still on the air? There are so many questions and, I believe, we are all asking them, conscious or not. If you want to make a woman happy, you need to work on two separate things: First, search for your own answers, and then help her along, supporting her as you travel that path together. The reward of relationships is the journey, in discovering together what it means to be alive, to have a purpose. It’s like they always say in those episodes of (NERD ALERT!) Janie’s favorite show, Xena: Warrior Princess, especially the ones where I’m certain that during the commercial breaks Xena and Gabrielle are enjoying relating to one another, if you know what I mean. And what I mean is that they’re sweaty and naked and having dirty homosexual lesbian lady gay sex. I’m sorry, I got distracted. Lucy Lawless has the nicest teeth. Anyhow, relationships are about what you can learn from one another, how each can make the other a better person. It’s like how Xena is less murdery because Gabrielle is such a pussy and how Gabrielle finally learned how to kick a guy in the balls because Xena told her where they were. Lesbians don’t always know that sort of thing.

The truth is that I don’t know how you or anyone else can make a woman really, really happy. I know that I’m happiest when I find a purpose to my existence, however small it may be. Tonight I brought my beautiful wife some M&Ms because she was having a bad day. When I gave them to her, she looked at me with joy in her eyes and said that I always knew just what she needed at any given time. For that brief moment I knew my purpose was to bring bags of candy-coated chocolate pellets to the woman I love. Then she took her shirt off to reward me and I had a whole new purpose that I can’t talk about here.

A-OK

June 11, 2008 / / 20 Comments


Normal guy who is A-OK

I need to take a deep breathe and make sure this blog does not fly off the tracks.   I’ve only been away from Sophia for two days.  We haven’t spoken yet, but I’m sure we will at some point this week.  I am not losing it.  I AM living with my mother, but it isn’t a Bates Motel type of thing where I “think” I am living with my mother.  In fact, here’s my mother to tell you herself —

Neil’s Mother:  Yes, I am Neil’s mother.  Despite what you may think, my son is a completely normal and well-adjusted man.   Don’t judge him by his irrational blog.  Even his penis jokes are mostly done in good humor.  But since we are on that subject, let me tell you, if it is anything like what his father had, any woman will be very lucky….

Neil:  Uh, thank you, Mom.

Neil’s Mother:  And I bet you he kisses well too!

Neil:  Enough, Mom.

I just want to reiterate.   I am a completely normal, stable, and confident person.  I do not intend to spill out my guts to you every night on my blog.   Life is going on.  I am writing this wonderful screenplay.  The sun is shining.   Everything is A-OK.

Have a nice day.

 

Happiness Project, Day Four: Send in the Bras

March 4, 2008 / / 35 Comments

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The Official “Bras for Happiness” badge

Neil: Hey, Penis, you want to come out and play?

Neil’s Penis: Nah, I’m depressed.

Neil: Wow, I never heard you say that before. I thought you NEVER got depressed.

Neil’s Penis: Well, you’ve finally done it, haven’t you? Proud? Now, I just want to sit around and watch American Idol.

Neil: I’m sorry. I guess I know how you feel. It’s because…

Neil’s Penis: Yes… and also…

Neil: …it’s our birthday on Friday…

Neil’s Penis: Woo-hoo, big deal.

Neil: You’re always so sarcastic, Penis. You don’t really mean that. We can still celebrate together.

Neil’s Penis: Celebrate what?! You have to admit this year’s birthday is gonna be a downer. Last year, Sophia arranged for our greatest birthday we ever had, thanks to all of those bloggers. This year, with Sophia and you…

Neil: Well, maybe other bloggers can come through again, cheering us up. They always do. Remember when we missed Fall, they emailed us photos of the foliage from the East Coast. And when we were lonely with Sophia away, they shared photos of their beds with us.

Neil’s Penis: Yeah, they are a special group. But now we’re at a low point. I can’t imagine anything they could give us that would be the pick-me-up we need.

Neil: I can. Remember when when we were teenagers, and we used to wait for the mail to come, so we could see the Macy’s circular, just so we can look at the bra ads.

Neil’s Penis: Of course, that’s one of my fondest memories.

Neil: Bras! The Magic of Bras can save the day.

Neil’s Penis: Bras? What do you mean?

Neil: Imagine if bloggers email us birthday photos of women in bras — retro Maindenform ads, Victoria Secret models — or even the most special gift of all — a photo of a female blogger’s OWN BRA. She doesn’t have to be wearing her bra. Her bra can be hanging in the shower or on the kitchen chair, or just sitting next to the dog on the bed. But it would be HER BRA — and I would know it!

Neil’s Penis: Brilliant, Neilochka. I think it might just work!

(I will be posting these photos, so if you actually email me a photo of YOUR BRA for my birthday and just want to keep it, uh, private… please tell me so. Otherwise, just send me a photo of a woman in a bra — any age, any race, any shape!)

(Why do I have the feeling like this post is going to get me booted out of BlogHer?)

(If I said this post was sponsored by Bali and was using this as a way to monetize my blog rather than just being a horny guy exploiting his birthday for selfish purposes, would that sound better?)

Send in those bras! My birthday is Friday. Neilochka at yahoo dot com.

Update: You can now email me photos of things other than bras.

Happiness: A Photoshop Tutorial

February 28, 2008 / / 43 Comments

My mother was a little worried about me today, so I decided to take some action to make her feel better. Luckily, I’ve gotten pretty proficient in Adobe Photoshop over the years. Here’s a handy little tutorial in using Photoshop to change your emotional state from sad to happy. Try it yourself!

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original emotion — SAD

Now, open up Photoshop, and follow these specific directions:

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As a final step, SAVE AS Happiness. You’re successfully used Photoshop to enhance your life!

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new emotion — Happy

Come back for more FREE Photoshop Tutorials!

P.S. — By the way,  Communicatrix deals with the issue of happiness in a slightly more mature way.

You Can’t Spell Happiness without Penis

February 21, 2008 / / 31 Comments

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There’s an old showbiz adage — “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” Look how easy it was for me yesterday to write about being miserable. All I had to do was throw some Leonard Cohen or Beck lyrics up on the screen and everyone is crying a river.

But comedy requires work.

Today, I received an email from someone in the PR department of Conde Nast. I don’t know her, but just from her name, I visualize her as extremely attractive, single, ambitious, brunette, Jewish, with knowing eyes — someone like Sophia, but who’s not kicking me out.

Anyway, back to reality. This lovely PR person wrote to me wondering if I was interested in writing a post about an article in their current Details magazine. The article is very creatively titled “Is Being Well Hung the Key to Happiness?” She titled her email “Hung = Happiness.” The Economist this magazine is not.

Here’s the opening of the article:

Is Being Well Hung the Key to Happiness?
Some guys never seem to worry. The reason for that is probably in their pants.

Things were not looking good for Josh (not his real name). He had lost all the money he’d made as a day trader. To make matters worse, his longtime girlfriend walked out on him, taking all the furniture and whatever else she could carry. By any measure, it was rock bottom. But when Josh’s friends mobilized the rescue crew, they were astounded: Josh appeared to be totally unfazed.

“He didn’t care!” says Josh’s best friend, Steve (not his real name), a 35-year-old hedge-fund manager who worked with him on Wall Street. “He shrugged it off. It would have killed a lesser man.” But Steve knew his friend’s nonchalance wasn’t due to some elaborate form of self-hypnosis or handfuls of Wellbutrin. Josh owed his composure to something far simpler: nine inches of the most primal form of self-assurance known to man.

“If it weren’t for his cock, he’d be a hobo riding the trains around the country,” Steve says. “It’s opened doors for him. Rich women put him up at their apartments. We have friends who have more money than him and are more successful than him, but they all say, ‘I want to come back as this guy.’ Secretly, we all want to be him.”

Clearly the PR department of Conde Nast did their research and knew exactly who on the blogosphere who be interested in this new “scientific” research. (I can’t believe the hoity-toity Huffington Post wrote about this important scientific discovery too!) It really didn’t matter that I had never opened a copy of Details magazine in my life.

At first, I had no interest in writing about this post. After all, the PR department sent it to me because they WANT me to write about it, and as Sophia would love to tell you, I’m passive-aggressive. Therapy has changed me, and as proof of that, I’m actually going to go against the grain and agree to help out this lovely and good-willed woman from Conde Nast.

But, here’s my dilemma. I want to say something funny about the article, but I’m stuck between two vastly different comedic “gags.” This is what makes comedy so difficult. Follow along as I mull over my options. Consider this a “Master’s Class” in Comedy.

Gag #1 —

“Happiness = Hung? I think the scientists at Details Magazine better go back into the lab. I think my sleeping in the car last week being miserable clearly refutes their findings!”

Now, I’m the first one to admit that this joke is a dud. However, it serves a vital purpose. Think about the context of the joke. What important piece of real-life information am I subtly adding to the joke? Here’s another hint — soon I may be re-joining the dating pool. Have you figured it out yet? Can you see why I might want to let this less-than-stellar joke remain?

Imagine, mommybloggers across North America, emailing and twittering each other this afternoon, “Did you read Neilochka’s blog today? It wasn’t very funny, but tell me if I’m wrong — in the subtext of the joke, wasn’t he insinuating that he is… well… uh… well… really…well…?

Gag #2 —

“Happiness = Hung? I see! Now I understand why I was miserable sleeping in the car that night!”

That is a much funnier punchline. It is a double whammy. I end up sleeping in the car and blaming it on my own… shortcomings. Of course, it also sends a message out to the world that may end up hurting me in a few months when I make my first appearance at BlogHer.

Imagine, I’m waiting on line to get my BlogHer badge, one of the few men amidst hundreds of horny housewives.

Mommyblogger #1 (not her real name):  “Isn’t that Neilochka? He’s even better looking in person. And so tall!”

Mommyblogger #2:  “Uh, yeah. But did you ever read that post he wrote in February about Details Magazine…”

Mommyblogger #1:  “No, send me the link.”

Mommyblogger #2:  “You NEED to read it. It says so much about him. I’ll send you the link in tinyURL.”

Mommyblogger #1:  “Huh? Why in tinyURL?”

Mommyblogger #2:  “Read his post. Then you’ll understand.”

Clearly, you can see the dilemma I have here. Go with the joke that has the subliminal message that drives women crazy or go fo the funnier line that doesn’t get me laid at BlogHer. This is exactly why comedy is underappreciated. Funny movies never win the Oscars or any serious awards. I don’t mean artsy-funny movies like Juno. I mean the crap that I’m going to write. But they really should. Men expose their souls through comedy!

My Penis just hit me on the leg.

Neil’s Penis:  “What the f**king kind of post is this, Neilochka?  Are your cracking up over this Sophia thing?  Stop moping around and be happy!  Remember Bobby what’s his face’s song– Don’t worry, be happy!”

Neil:  “And what should I be happy about?  I think soon I’m going to be moving out of the house… again!”

My Penis clears his throat, reminding me about that dumb Happiness = Hung article in Details magazine.

Neil’s Penis:  “You’re happy, right?”

Neil:  “Oh, right… right… I’m happy…. very happy indeed.  Don’t worry about me anymore, Mom.  Everything is great.  I’m happy.”

Neil’s Penis:  “Exactly! Woo-hoo!  Nothing can get us down!”

Neil:  “Thank you, Dad, for your excellent genes!”

Neil’s Penis:  “That’s right.  You can learn something about PR from Conde Nast.  Self-promotion is important.  Party!  Party!  Happy! Happy!  Joy!  Joy!”

Neil and Neil’s Penis: (singing together) “We are Family…!”

Thank you Conde Nast and Details Magazine for reminding me that I have so much to be happy about!

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