American Goulash

Quarantine Diet, Day 134:

Breakfast:

1 glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, made from organic Valencias procured from a helpful neighbor

Egg white garden omelet made only with vegetables harvested with your bare hands, with a recipe gleaned from a website that is 25% ads, 70.9%  about the writers’ kids’ friends’ little brothers’ opinions on the omelet (“He actually liked it!”) and 4% the freaking recipe. (.1% margin of error.)

Chives and sesame seeds! Not for eating. Just for staging because chives make social media look better. #MoarChives

A slice of some kind of fresh artisanal bread made from your own vaginal flora because we all know that the stores haven’t had yeast in weeks

Coffee (1 gallon)

Lunch:

2/3 Family Sized Bag of Doritos, eaten shamefully next to the radiator between Zoom meetings. Good thing you made a video loop of yourself nodding intently as a virtual background video so your boss can’t see how low you’ve sunk. Put on some pants. You disgust me.

Diet Dr. Pepper that expired in 2011.

Some kind of abandoned “child food,” i.e., some smashed animal crackers,  chicken nugget stars with the nubs bitten off, bifurcated string cheese, and/or a juice box with the straw trapped inside of it.

Coffee (dregs from breakfast, mixed with bitter tears)

A single, slightly-deformed, rock hard marshmallow Peep. 

Dinner:

The remaining ⅓ of the Family Sized Bag of Doritos

Doritos dust from fingers. (It’s okay because you’ve been washing your hands thoroughly, right?)  

A glass of Créme De Menthe that you inherited from Nana’s medicine cabinet because she thought it was mouthwash.

Halloween candy because who cares?

The COVID-19 sure has a lot of people worried about dirty bottoms. Here are some helpful suggestions for alternatives for your sinful poo hole. 

(* indicates not flushable)

Newsprint*

Cut-Up Cloth*

Bidet/Spray Bottle/Bum Gun/Tabo/Dipper/Any kind of tushy waterer

A small, preferably fluffy, pet. Babies can also work in a pinch.

A banshee, screaming into your dirty bottom. (Note: Most ghoulish banshees are flushable, however, Marvel's Banshee is not safe for septic tanks)

Running Very Fast with Yer Flaps Open

Sneaking into Car Washes

Dragging on the Carpet like Your Dog

Kidnapping a Mummy*

Robbing a bank but only for their T.P. (This only works if you own a sack with a toilet paper roll on it)

Only pooping at work or your rich friends' houses

Never pooping again

1. Play a game. boardgame, video game, etc charades. There are a bunch of free games right now on Steam. If you have any extra cash, support indie games!

2. Read a book. Many libraries will let you check out eBooks instantly for free. It also helps to buy eBooks of indie authors, who can also use your support.

3. Binge that TV series or movie franchise that you’ve been meaning to watch. Or watch your friend’s web series, even though it has terrible audio and you’re not buying that their 15-year-old friends are FBI Agents named Sculder & Mully. At least they tried. Give ‘em a “Like.”

4. Take turns drawing each other. If you don’t know how to draw that well, simply make a facial expression like you're drawing super hard and put a bunch of random lines on the paper. When your loved one questions your depiction of them, tell them gravely that this is how the world sees them. Walk away sternly. You’re an artist.

5. Have a tea party with all of your stuffed animals. Who cares if you’re 40? These stuffed animals aren’t going to tea themselves.

6. Pretend you’re a bee. Pollinate something.

7. Make an elaborate breakfast and eat it in your underpants. Your tears make an excellent salt substitute. 8. Feed your family a bunch of beets and see whose pee looks the most horrific.

9. Play tic-tac-toe with your pet. Flip them off when you win. Your pet is not the boss of you. Upload it to Tik-Tok to sit amongst the 10,000 other similar videos. Know that I will still watch it. I love those videos.

10. Make a sacrifice to an Eldritch God.

11. Take a bath with all of your stuffed animals. Pretend to drown one of them. Make it look like an accident.

12. Make clothes for the figurines on all of your trophies, complete with tiny face masks, to commemorate this incredibly weird and shitty time. If you don’t have any trophies, make one out of old dolls, an empty jar of spaghetti sauce, and gold paint. You’re a winner.

13. Combine every soup you have in the panty into a super soup. Demand that everyone in your family consume it while wearing homemade superhero costumes and yelling “Super Soup!” with every slurp.

14. Put googly eyes on everything in your house, except your toilet if you have pooping anxiety. We wouldn’t want you to get constipated because the toilet is watching you. Unless that turns you on? Then I guess add extra googly eyes? It’s a free country.

I wasn't surprised when I heard the knocks on the door. I was expecting UPS or a neighbor who was helping me put together a food donation box.

But it was a dog. A very large dog - sort of like Max from The Little Mermaid has but black, with 50% more mange.

It ran into our living room and I became hyper-aware of how many extra-rectangular glass surfaces we own. For the first time ever, my husband and I do not have roommates or guests with big pets and/or random small children running around. Our apartment is a death trap of mini-ecospheres, aquaponic systems, and dangling champagne glasses.

I've always admired dogs from a distance, but having never owned one, I had no freaking idea what to do. It had a long purple leash on it. Do I grab it? Will I hurt it? Will it hurt me? Is this my life now?

Its human finally arrived and stood in the doorway. She took her head and called the dog a Yenta while it Bull-in-a-China-shopped around our small apartment. I guess I was unclear that I needed help. Or maybe she was a vampire who needed a clear invitation.

The dog took out the Bart Simpson as "The Predator" statue from our Shelf of Atrocities. Then it licked the dust off of our trophies before it ran back to its human. The human claimed that the dog must like me because it "smiled" at me. I awkwardly had to close the door on them to prevent the dog from Round 2 of destruction. Neither the dog nor the human apologized.

Only when I locked my door did I remember the bag of Ummy Yummy Chicken Jerky Fillets and organic grass-fed sweet potato dog food on my floor. If this were a sitcom, I would have rejected this scene for bad writing because I, as a non-dog-owner, should not have dog food of any kind. But no. So allergic am I to wasting a single ounce of food that I've ended up in a situation where I'm running an amateur food pantry out of my living room. (Shoutout to my ladies at Buy Nothing Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, CA. Woot woot!)

Is it possible that the dog had such a sensitive sense of smell that it knew that there were unattended Ummy Yummy Chicken Jerky Fillets on my floor? Did it somehow learn the exact knock of my UPS guy to access the aforementioned Jerky? Or is this some elaborate Truman Show situation, since this week has been kind of weird?

::Gasp!:: Did the dog thing that I was being rude? Normally, I offer a glass of water to visitors, but I didn't want to encourage this kind of shenanigans. Was it expecting a tip for its trophy-cleaning services?! Is it weird that I kind of miss the dog?

Anyhow, thank you for asking how my day was, Steve from UPS. My tracking says that my rechargeable lint shaver arrived yesterday, but it's not here yet.

And on another episode of "Life with R.S.F. (Resting Smiley Face)":

Matt and I were minding our own business at the grocery store. A dude dressed in all black barreled up the produce aisle. I figured it might be some kinda kale emergency, so I moved way off to the side. He turned the corner and ran towards me with the speed of Dino the Dinosaur about to jump on Fred.

Matt and I have a bit of hypervigilance, so we both reflexively got into our "gonna Riker-punch this guy" stances until the dude yelled, "DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE COTTON CANDY GRAPES?" Oh my gosh, he was so excited.

He stopped short of us to grab several grapes out of the package, "Here, take some, you have to try them!" He offered me two unwashed grapes with his bare germy stranger hand. I noticed that he was wearing a Ralph's uniform, so my politeness kicked in and I accepted the grapes. But then it occurred to me that this might be a modern Evil Witch/Snow White scene with Branded Designer Fruit.®

I mean, you can probably get a Ralph's nametag anywhere, like a dead employee's corpse or Aisle 9 (Office Supplies.) Trying not to look too panicked by what might have just been a simple random act of kindness, I replied, "Oh, thank you, I've had them before, have a good night."

He continued, looking deep into my eyes, wanting me to partake in the grapey goodness, "TASTE LIKE COTTON CANDY! Don'tcha think? Do you think they inject them with cotton candy or regular candy or-"

I replied, "I believe that they are hybrid grapes. Just fun with genetics. Only available seasonally." I half-pretended to eat a grape. Satisfied, he said, with a mouth completely filled with stolen, unwashed grapes, "Oh. Well. They're expensive!"

Growing up, one of my favorite things to do with my family was “sample lunch” at Costco, even though I don’t think my family ever had their own Costco membership.

For those of you who are not familiar with Costco, it’s a wholesale warehouse store where you can get a mega-size of anything from storage sheds to a year’s supply of emergency food to actual coffins ( (if the apocalypse prep doesn’t work out for you.) I think the coffins are regular-sized, not mega-sized, but I digress. The deal with Costco is that you have to pay a small annual membership fee in order to access their extraordinary savings/10-pound tubs of butter. I was told that you had to also be a business owner - which is why my family pretended to be our business-owning neighbor. Honestly, I think we were just frugal. It was easier to commit these small crimes back in the ‘80s/’90s. Early digital photo technology was so bad that my mother, Anyu - a perpetually worried, statuesque brunette Transylvanian woman - somehow managed to pass herself off as Humberto Jose González-Villaseñor - a barrel-chested, long-haired Latino man with an infectious grin. If questioned, she’d say that the picture was of my grandma, Nagymama, who had not smiled since 1955. Anyu said that the picture was just really, really old. At 24 pixels-per-inch, either the Costco greeter either couldn’t tell the difference or did not want to risk angering my Nagymama.

I have included a rudimentary illustration to indicate how ridiculous this was:  

I’m the little one in the hat dancing because Costco had ice cream samples that day.

I’m not actually sure what the heck we bought at Costco. We were a small family, so I doubt we would have been able to go through five gallons of 100% Pure Vegetable Oil or afford the 10-pound bag of fish sticks. “Vild caught!” Anyu would say, “Just like your fadder and the po-lice, ahahaha.”I’m pretty sure that the number one reason for going to Costco was for Sample Lunch. You see, Costco has vendors come in to do product demonstrations, which usually comes with a free sample. We could have smiled, thanked the vendor, and enjoyed one sample per item per person like normal humans.  The thing is, there is no limit on how many samples you can take. So per usual with my family, there was always some kind of scheme.

Here’s how it went - my mother would “distract” the person handing out the samples. Meanwhile, I would pull out my oversized sweatshirt like a sort of parachute so Nagymama could load up sample after sample into my shirt. (Though unrelated to the scheme at hand, it's worth mentioning that she’d always check first to make sure that my undershirt was tucked into my underwear so no torso skin would ever be exposed to refrigerated air, lest I catch a “kidney cold.”)

When my mother was done being distracting, we would combine the samples into a piece of tin foil that Nagymama had been saving since the war and go for a loop around the crate of frozen peas. I’d usually eat a few before they went into the tinfoil and Nagymama would yell at me for eating too fast because the sample was too hot/too cold. Only room-temperature foods were safe. Then, Nagymama would put on her glasses, thinking that she as a 5-foot-tall lady who looked exactly like George Washington in a babushka wasn’t enough of a disguise, and we'd round the sample aisle again. And again. 

We did this so often that the vendors started to get to know Nagymama. She even asked if she could bring the perfume sample vendor, Marlene, to my choir recital, even though I have no idea why she hung out in the perfume sample section since  Anyu was allergic to perfume. “Vrap them up in a plastic in case we can give them as a gift to somevon,” Nagymama said. As little as we had back then, Anyu and Nagymama were oddly generous about collecting as many things as they could so they could give gifts to other people. 

A part of me also thinks that Anyu knew that we could get as many samples as we wanted without all the trickery, but simply welcomed the time to commiserate with another adult human being. Sure, they were paid vendors, trapped behind a booth and forced to be nice to her, but isn’t that also what 90% of therapy is? 

Anyu: “Nobody appreciates how hard I vork.”  Vendor: “You do work hard. Why not treat yourself to Totinos Pizza Rolls™?” Anyu: “...and I told him, you get out!” Vendor: “The great thing about Totinos Pizza Rolls™ is that your deadbeat husband can take them even when he’s on the go!” Anyu: “...and you know vhat? He doesn’t even pay child support ” Vendor: “The Totinos corporation understands that money is tight sometimes. That's why it is just three dollars for 150 Totinos Pizza Rolls™. And yet, they technically qualify as food!” I poked fun at all of this even at the time, but flash forward 20 years and I am not any better. This is my food diary entry from today: 

Bibigo Steamed Vegetable Wonton (½) 

Kirkland Orange Juice (2 ounces)

Dark Chocolate Coconut Almond (3 almonds)

Organic Chickpea Puffs (2 & 1/4 puffs)

Haagen Dazs Vanilla Milk Chocolate Almond Ice Cream (like a thumb size?) 

An indeterminate number of sausage pieces (each skewered with ½ pretzel stick! This is a good idea. Remember to do this at parties so people don’t waste plastic forks. Add to a different list of things that I’m supposed to remember)

Weird Chicken Salad Thing ( ½ oz)… man that sucked, why did I even get that? I knew it was going to be bad but there wasn’t a line. Now I know why. Who wants to lap tepid chicken salad with low-fat mayo out of a cupcake liner? I should have gone back for another piece of wonton instead, but there was a lady standing there, causing a bottleneck, talking to the vendor about her sciatica and.... OMG! I think other people do the thing my mother did! Remember to write blog about this.

Etc.

At least I actually pay for my membership now, and I never take more than 2 at a time - one for me, one for my husband, who I swear exists (even though he refuses to wear an oversized sweater.) I may or may not do multiple laps.

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I recently won a $50 gift card to TJ Maxx/HomeGoods. I asked my husband to come with me to pick out some stuff because he's never been to a TJ Maxx. He left absolutely haunted. He was immediately uncomfortable because there was some kind of beeping toy permanently turned on and hidden in a towering stack of women's underthings. The place reeked because someone had exploded a bottle of Jean Nate in aisle 5 and instead of cleaning it, they wrapped packing tape around the seeping bottle. In an attempt to escape, he went to the only empty aisle and looked at an arbitrary pot for 1.4 seconds. Sensing that someone in the store might have found savings, a gaggle of shoppers poured over him, shouting, "Is it Teflon? Stainless? Areyougonnagetthat?!" Before he could even reply, the pot was plucked from his hands and swept into the alley of precariously perched rugs and lamps.

He called the place, "A post-apocalyptic wasteland where your own grandma would club you to death with a mannequin leg for 75% off an overpriced birthday cake-scented candle covered in sweater lint." This is 100% accurate.

--

Smart Elevators for Dumb People

My husband and I got in an elevator with no buttons inside of it. Noticing our confusion, the young lady riding with us explained that you have to tell the elevator where you’d like to go *before* you enter it.I got out and said into what looked like a speaker, “Ground floor? Hello, Elevator?” Nothing happened. Because it’s an elevator, not freaking Siri.

Sensing my burgeoning senility, the young lady got out of the elevator and directed us to an iPad-like device, where she scrolled through the colorful logos of several destinations supported by the elevator. Embarrassed from my mistake and not accustomed to this level of hospitality from a stranger, when she asked, “Where you headed?” I panicked and blurted “Coffee Beanery.”

But there is no Coffee Beanery.

Yes, I made a stranger scroll through a terminal looking for a fictional coffee shop before panicking and running down the stairs.

And you guys, this is the FOURTH time I have told someone that I am going to a Coffee Beanery. What the heck is wrong with me?! Is it simply that the question, “Where you headed?” bores me so much that I auto-generate Lorem Ipsum?

…Or maybe…in a past life, I lived in Flushing, Michigan, where there actually *is* a Coffee Beanery (I Googled it.) Perhaps the soul of my former self is trying to get there to resolve some sort of Macchiato-based issue?

…Or has years of my old-world family discussing the government spies made me paranoid? Am I subconsciously creating false flag coffee places to protect me from perfectly nice people trying to help me?

And speaking of spies, how much did this Smart Elevator app company sell this technology for? You know they're tracking where all the elevator users are going. Then again, we do have tracking devices in our pockets, so they know anyhow. Google doesn’t even tell me to turn left anymore; it says to turn slightly at the Pollo Loco. And that bastard knows I love Pollo Loco.

I’m between writing gigs, so one of my mentors suggested writing steamy romance novels under a pen name.

I’d probably be bad at that, so let’s skip straight to the reviews that I'd get:

“Fill in the Blank,” an erotic romance based on a true story, by Yephanie Stuhas Tagline: He pulled the wool over her eyes.

⭐ ⭐ ***Contains spoilers**** Got halfway through the book before I realized that the love of her life was really a fleece blanket that she got on sale at Kohl’s. Now I feel sexually confused and kind of clammy. Way to go, Stuhas.

⭐ Click my profile for discount vⓘ@g®@

⭐ Tat sucked. Pirate site I downloaded it on gave me a virus.

My writing partner/husband and I were invited to a networking event. It seemed like a great opportunity, but we became concerned when we heard insanely loud music from outside. I will never understand why venues do this, especially during sanctioned events where folks are trying to make genuine connections with one another.

Matt and I immediately exchanged a look: Pee & Flee? The Pee & Flee is when one of you goes to the restroom while the other one tries to suss out the situation. Then you switch. If neither of you finds the host, a friendly random person, or a way to get them to turn down the frikken music a little bit so folks don't damage their vocal cords, you flee without a fuss.

Unfortunately, we struck out. On the walk back to the car, Matt confessed that he was relieved because he had been looking forward to going home to eat some soup. I confessed that I had been longing for some ointment to combat winter dryness.

I went to the pet store to purchase two ghost shrimp for my fish tank. They come in a clear bag, which I wrapped in a fleece jacket to try to keep them from getting stressed by the outside world during my very short walk home. A lady stopped me on the street and said, “Aww, new mom, you look tired. Is the baby sleeping? Then she stood on her tippy toes to try to see the baby. I shamefully unwrapped the top of the bag to show that there was no baby in there and said, “I have no excuse for looking tired; these are just ghost shrimp.” She got this really weird look on her face and said, “Oh. Sorry your shrimps died,” as she walked away.

It just occurred to me that was unable to see the shrimp (they’re tiny and clear). I love the idea that she’s home right now, telling her friends that she saw some crazy lady carrying around a bag of water disguised as a baby in order to transport the souls of deceased crustaceans. This is my legacy.

-

My friend is shopping for a new home and stumbled onto this listing of a beautiful Philadelphia suburban home with a Fifty Shades of Grey room. This does not shock me and if you'll indulge me in storytime, it reminds me of a funny thing that happened in college. (1 min read):

Some goth-enthusiasts and I had a tradition of visiting the 24-Hour South Street Diner after clubbing at Nocturne in Philadelphia. One night, we saw a sign hanging on the door: South Street Diner is CLOSED. We stood there in our pleather pants and runny eye makeup, looking for guidance from the other drunks from Downey’s and the TLA. Closed for tonight? Forever? Where will we carbo-load after a night of stompy clompy dancing in our sleepy city?

A dude dressed like a rainbow version of The Twins from The Matrix suggested grabbing Lorenzo's. It's a divey pizza joint with limited/no seating, so he suggested doing carryout and eating at his place. I was hesitant because I didn’t know him, but my friend said, “It’s safe; he’s a pediatrician.” For some reason, that convinced me.

It was a GORGEOUS place, tastefully decorated in a hybrid Victorian/Modern style. Everyone was oohing and aahing over whatever the hell sconces are, and Matrix Twin suggested touring his “Rumpus Room.”

Since you are a smart person, it’s probably obvious that Rumpus Room is code for Sex Dungeon. But young, naive me was expecting fake wood wallpaper, an ATARI 2600, and some kind of ping pong table with Christmas decorations stacked on top of it. I mean, technically, there were paddles but they were the fancy, gilded silver kind (for butts, not ping pong.)

The most surprising part about the Rumpus Room was how NOT-creepy the tour was. Rainbow Matrix Twin presented it with the professionalism of a real estate agent.

Matrix: “And to the right, you’ll see the former pantry, which we converted into a sex machine nook.”

Group: “Oooooooh. Ahhhh.”

Matrix: “And this spanking bench is made out of a coffee table we found at a garage sale!”

The Friend Who Invited Me: “Way to upcycle!” ::high-five::

There was also this guy who reminded me of Scruffy from Futurama in a leather jacket with lots of buckles. He was wearing ripped fishnet gloves while pointing at everything with the intensity of a master builder.

Fishnet Scruffy: “Nice sex swing you got there. You used tie-down anchors for that?"

Matrix: “Oh, yeah, I just hate the aesthetic of a swing stand.”

Fishnet Scruffy: “Yeeeeeep. Those eye hooks will getcha!”

Somehow, I wasn't uncomfortable. Everyone was so chill and sex-positive that I did not feel unsafe.

I also appreciated my friend, who, seeing the odd expression on my face, whispered, “Hey if you’re uncomfortable around all these whips and stuff, we can bounce.”

I had to confess, "I'm worried that the pizza is getting cold." She agreed that Lorenzo's does NOT hold up when cold, so we went upstairs, ate pizza and went on our merry way.

To this day, I wonder if I blocked an entire group of people from fun in the Rumpus Room due to my insatiable pizza lust.

-

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Energy Transference Fatigue (ETF): A term I totally just made up to explain the physical pain and exhaustion some individuals feel after they connect with a lot of people, especially strangers. ETF is sometimes referred to as "being an empath" but that sounds like something you would read about in the New Age section, so I rebranded the concept for people who frown upon patchouli. ETF often occurs when people are doing a lot of emotional labor (a real thing.) For me, it happens when I need to make a good impression, such as weddings, networking functions, funerals, mandatory business functions, etc. ETF is common with people who do a lot of public speaking and is often more severe in people who are counselors, emergency medical technicians, and people who need to keep groups of people calm in a crisis. ETF does not always mean that you're a hermit. Often, people who are susceptible to ETF love helping and connecting with people, to the point where they experience this type of social fatigue hours, even days after the social interactions.  Honestly, the best way I can describe the feeling is when you forget to turn the WiFi off on your phone and go for a drive. So it’s searching and searching for a connection, which drains its batteries much faster. I don’t feel this way ever when I’m with close friends. So I think it comes from being a little awkward, so the anxiety of trying to make a connection is exhausting. 

Solutions to ETF for me include binge-watching Netflix, reading a book, eating an apple (even though I never want to), exercise (I super don’t want to), or any alone time that does not require additional energy transference. It's probably a bad time to help your neighbor with his/her dating problems, for instance. Even if they’re hot and you’d totally make out with them. Note: I am not a psychologist. I’m just tired and frustrated when people say (errr, totally hypothetically), "What do you mean you feel physically ill because you spoke to too many people? You’re totally an extrovert because I saw you give a lecture only a few hours ago and you seemed fine!” 

Dear Verizon & Friends,

Stephanie Yuhas here. 

Attached is the police report from my identity theft. This is in addition to the two forms of ID, credit report, and stool sample you requested in your previous letter.

I’m doing this because over a dozen of your agents have called to ask: 

1-If Stephanie Jackson was my alias. 2-If at some point my last name was Jackson and I forgot. 3-I was perhaps married to someone at one point with the last name Jackson and also forgot. 4-If bought a Verizon cell phone in Texas and then forgot about that.

I would like to officially put my answers to these questions in writing, for your super-official documents so your kind agents can stop calling me at the butt-crack of dawn. 

1-I have no alias because I am not an international spy. Should I become an international spy in the future, I will go with the name Flip Buttkick. No, wait, Skulls McCrackin. No, wait…You know what, I’ll let you know when I’ve decided so you can update your super-accurate files. 2-The movie “Memento” was not based on my life. And if I do get that weird amnesia disease, the only tattoo I’m going to get on my hand is “Don’t get Verizon.”  3-I have never been in a state of intoxication to marry anyone and then forget that I married them. Besides, weddings are expensive, so if I did do that, I probably would have seen the bill for a dress/ceremony/assorted shrimp platter. Or at least a 99 cent iTunes purchase for “Sorry, Miss Jackson,” because I think you legally need to own that song if you are marrying anyone with the last name Jackson. 

4-I have never been to Texas because I have an irrational fear of cacti, and I would never open a Verizon Mobile account because GoogleFi is better. Here’s my affiliate code if you want to join a better network and also get $20 off your first bill.  I truly hope you find whoever this Stephanie Jackson person is. Should I ever meet anyone named Stephanie Jackson, I will be sure to slap her in the face with a large, raw fish for causing you all of this trouble. Of course, I might be slapping the wrong Stephanie Jackson, but hey, you’ve gotta punish people for wrongdoing, right? Come to think of it, I should learn from you and slap anyone named Stephanie in the face with a fish and accuse them of being named Stephanie Jackson. Only then will the real Stephanie Jackson come forward. To be fair, I’ll fish-slap myself first to get the ball rolling. Yes, yes, this sounds like a reasonable solution that is in line with your corporate policy. 

Speaking of your corporate policy, I especially appreciate how whenever I call Verizon’s customer service, ping Verizon’s Twitter, and send out miscellaneous V-Shaped smoke signals in Verizon’s general direction, your agents refuse to give me the account number, phone number, or any other information because they know that I am not Stephanie Jackson.

They would like me to pay for this $1200 bill, but they are also committed to protecting *her* private information. Hold on a second. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! 

Phew, that’s a good one. I’m getting junk mail in her name, too, from when you so graciously sold *her* information to your logical corporate “partners.” I’m sure Stephanie Jackson would love to buy expensive frilly underwear to match her fraudulent cell phone. Just put the panties on my tab, aka, i.e.,  social security number, along with all of those raw slapping fish I need to buy. 

I hope none of this fish-related violence offends you. For all I know, you might be a vegan. Or vegetarian. Or a fish. This might be a P.O. Box under the sea, I don’t freaking know. But if you are offended and would like to get rid of me, or if you are a reasonable human/human-fish hybrid, could you kindly remove Ms. Jackson’s account from my otherwise spotless credit report? Otherwise, the next letter you receive will be from my attorney. She has a crapload of fancy diplomas, which gives her the legal authority to be super mean and collect large settlements from folks just like you. And she bites. Not in a sexy way, in an Ozzy Osbourne/Mike Tyson kind of way. So for your benefit, I think it would be best if we wrapped this up here, okie dokie?

XOXO! Stephanie “Never Been a Jackson Even Though I Know the Steps to ‘Thriller’” Yuhas

PS: Putting this on my blog in case Stephanie Jackson Googles herself. I’ll delete this once you pay your phone bill, girl.  Get your shit together. <3

Even though I’m a comedy writer by day, I dream in sci-fi. 

This time, I was at my 20-year high school reunion. I was sitting on the bleachers of the football field next to my best friend, Alia, waiting for a performance from the reunited Class of 2000 marching band.

My high school sweetheart, John, sat down several rows in front of us. He had his arm around his wife, with two small boys in tow. I smiled at their happily-ever-after. Alia sighed, “You really dodged a bullet with that one. His life expectancy was already less than 65 out-of-the-gate and it’s all downhill from there.” “What the heck are you talking about?” I asked. Alia handed me her phone, which had a profile of John on it. It wasn’t much unlike your typical social media listing - pictures, hometown, hobbies - except it contained graphs and pie charts linked to a family tree.  “It’s an app I bought called Projections. It analyzes everything you’ve ever said or searched for online and draws a conclusion about you. It says here that John will likely go into a depression due to his Nature - his family history. But the Nature will be exacerbated by some of the projections in his Nurture column, like when his wife dies somewhere in her mid-40s. In an effort to seize the day, he will finally take the boat trip he’s been meaning to take. But since he is often rash and does not do ample research, the app says that he will likely perish sea. 70% hypothesis due to bad weather or 20% from some kind of nutritional deficiency, 10% unknown.” My eyebrows shot up, “That all sounds like a crock of crap to me. Of course, some stupid app thinks John doesn’t research. He’s not into computers. And his wife doesn’t even have cancer. And-” “Well, it triangulates the data with personal and family medical history to project when and what people will die from. And yes, cancer is what his wife will die from, within a .001% margin of error. Most of the data is public except for the medical history. Only she knows her own Projection, but as a nurse, I can search through anybody’s, so, like, don’t tell anyone I told you.” “This is a freaking horror show...” “Not necessarily. The doctors on her account have suggested preventative radiation and a double mastectomy. As long as there are no freak accidents, her Projection would change and then she’ll probably die in her 80s of heart disease. But she opted out, which affected John’s Projection. Selfish, if you ask me. I mean, even if they just broke up due to personal reasons, the outcome of the boat accident on his profile is still the same. So it’s a good thing you didn’t end up with him is all I am saying. When I connected you with him for a Projection analysis-” “I don’t want to hear this crap!” I screamed over the band, which started to play a happy tune.  “Sheesh, chill. I’m just trying to help. This app really helps cure people and gives them longer lives. Hey, if this was out sooner, and his mom saw this projection when was a kid, she could have bought him books on boats so he could learn-”

“If his MOM saw it? She would forbid him from going near anything boat-related. God, it would be like the scene in Sleeping Beauty where they burn all of the spinning wheels in the kingdom. This isn’t technology...this is the evil fairy’s curse.” “Oh, so what you’re saying is that ignorance is bliss? God, it’s not like I invented the damned thing. Everybody is using it, so you may as well know about it.  You always say that education and prevention is the key. So here it is. Be careful what you wish for.”  “But it won’t educate. It won’t prevent. It will perpetuate fear. It’ll-.” “Want to see how you die? Because I know. And I can stop it,” said Alia.