“Dubstep– the nocturnal, claustrophobic subgenera of British electronic music that emerged from garage and 2-step– is descended from dance music but doesn’t sound like it’s made for dancing. The tempos feel slow, the mood is usually threatening, lonely, or both. (…) Hyperdub is usually cited as dubstep’s most prominent and progressive label, but it’s hard to even call most of their releases dubstep, strictly speaking. (…) Hyperdub’s sound isn’t dubstep, it’s urban noir in the 21st century, or at least how the 21st century looked in 1970s science fiction: A procession of florescent signs over an empty street. (…) Most of the music on it sounds made for the head, not the feet. In a way, it’s like a modern analog to Warp’s 1992 compilation, Artificial Intelligence, whose sleeve was a picture of an empty armchair in a living room– electronic music that has a place in the home. (…) These guys aren’t public faces, they’re lost in the crowd– they’re people spacing out in their living rooms, alone.”

Note to self: think about other art with a similar sensibility. I’m sure there are photographs and paintings that fit with this, and probly some literature. An example that springs to mind is Carson McCuller’s novella “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe” but I’m sure other stuff has a similar feel though that’s not an urban story. Maybe some of Nelson Algren’s work as well.

When I write new ones, I put them there. So check back there if you want to read the new ones. I try to write one a day. A friend and I have both agreed we will each do a stand up comedy act at an open mic night. Not sure when. Some day. That’s part of what the jokes are for. Oh and I’m running again. I’ve been off the climbing for a few weeks, unfortunately.

I guess it’s safe to say I don’t know what I want but I can’t wait forever.

My friends and I talked about how happiness takes work. I think there’s probably multiple kinds of happiness and ways to be happy. I think there’s at least two different preconditions for at least some kinds of happiness and they both involve hard work. One kind of work involved in at least some kinds of happiness is preparation, in the sense of discipline. Like, say, playing a musical instrument, or a sport. Doing those things requires a measure of capacity cultivated by training. And that can have a kind of cost – the time spent on that is time not spent on something else. Getting something requires giving up something else.

You don’t know what you will give up.
You don’t know what you want, it may take you years to find out. You don’t know what you need, it’s something that may never come to you.

I think the other kind of work involved in at least some kinds of happiness is commitment to a positive attitude: a decision to be happy. I think at least some of the time the discipline and training required for some kinds of happiness is a kind of a striving, a push forward into the future. I think the other kind involves at least some measure of not striving, a willingness to let the present be enough.

At least for me, this requires it’s own kind of training. It takes practice and cultivating of habits.

And it doesn’t hurt to listen to more music.

I held my baby daughter tonight and watched the sunset over the lake, thinking about all this, and humming to her, feeling at once deeply lucky, happy, angry, and grieving.

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing
About the dark times.
- Bertolt Brecht, “Motto”

“To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.”
- Percy Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

“because I am happy, & dance & sing,
they think they have done me no injury:
And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King
Who make up a heaven of our misery.”
- William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Experience)

Run. Or nothing. Or both.

I went for a run tonight at 11:00. Running helps correct problems with muscle imbalances and posture in my legs, problems that cause pretty serious pain when unaddressed. I had fallen off the running for a while because of work and parenting. Tonight I decided, fuck it, I would make the time. So I did.

It was a short run, maybe 12 minutes. The weather’s gotten nice. People leave their windows open. From out of a house right before my turnaround point I heard someone crying, very upset, sounded like a child.

A few months ago my older daughter (at the time, my only daughter) went through a nasty tantrum phase involving hitting. She’d get mad, then she’d hit, or kick, or pinch, or headbutt – do something to hurt me or my wife. I would deal with this sometimes by letting her hit me – if I was standing, it didn’t really hurt. It hurt her hands to slap my belly at least as much as it hurt my belly. She’d burn out her energy then we’d talk about consequences and move on, getting her back to bed.

Sometimes I would hold her arms. I would especially do that if she started hitting while I was laying down, because I didn’t want her to hit me in the face. That’s not just to avoid discomfort but out of real fear of injury – at 18 months she accidentally jabbed me in the eye with a sharp finger nail, cutting the cornea. The injury was minor but painful and resulted in a permanent tendency to occasionally recurring intense eye pain.

One night I held her arms to keep her from hitting me, at about 1:30 in the morning. She’d wet the bed, I think. I forget the initial cause that led to her being awake and furious, but there it was. She was awake, furious, hitting. I held her arms, by holding the cuffs of her pajama shirt sleeves so she couldn’t swing at me. She strained at the shirt and howled “NO DADDY, YOU’RE HURTING ME!” as she fought to get her arms free.

Not long before my run, there were two very upset crying children at my house. Not as intense as the tantrums with the hitting, but still, crying, shouting. Bedtime often involves crying at our house. That’s the phase we’re in. More generally, Kids just cry sometimes, it’s part of how they communicate. Children crying is a normal part of life. I put my shoes on and ran right after my kids went to sleep.

I thought about all this as I ran past that house with the open windows. I tried to make that all I thought about.

I had an unpleasant childhood. It wasn’t all unpleasant, but the unpleasantness was big. And I don’t like to talk about it. I have talked about and am able to, but it’s not fun. If I had to pick a single sound that would sum up my childhood, it would be the sound of crying.

I often felt unsafe as a kid and especially so when at home, and I worried about my siblings’ safety. There were times when I did feel safe, though. Under certain conditions home could be safe. So I learned how to read the weather, so to speak, to see what the conditions were. I think kids who grow up like that have issues with reading the signals around them, or rather, with knowing what is and isn’t a signal – what means safe/unsafe and what doesn’t tell you either way. The crying thing is part of this. There also just a great deal of crying in my house.

I have a lot of bad memories that are conjured up by the sound of children crying, especially when the sound comes from sorta far away, like hearing it through a wall, or overhearing it in someone else’s house from out of their window. But it’s not just or not primarily a matter of memories in the usual sense of memories – incidents, stories. It’s way more a matter of a kind of gut level response. That sound says “danger.” I hear it sound and my fight or flight reflex kicks in. During that, I have bits of various memories of course. But order is not like this: hear crying, remember incident, begin to feel unhappy. It’s like this: hear crying, tense up and feel unhappy, and have bits of bad memories as I tense up further and feel more unhappy. It proceeds from the gut upward, not from the head down. From that agitated place I then think thoughts, speculating based on what might be happening with the crying, which feeds back into the spiral of unpleasant reactions on my part. All of this happened on my run tonight, and to a lesser extent again as I typed this out.

I’m pleased to say that I worked off a lot of the reaction in the short few minutes running home. Exercise helps a lot with this kind of thing (I’ll probly do some pushups when I finish typing this); it can help reset my nervous system, so to speak, when I get agitated like that (like this). I’m also much more adept at dealing with this, as I’ve had a lot of practice and a lot of counseling, and I’ve done a lot of healing.

A friend told me that whenever she travels she brings a spare pillow, a feather pillow with half the feathers missing, that she wraps around her face. She covers her eyes while she sleeps. She mentioned this in passing in another conversation, this was after we’d talked about our childhoods and moved on to more mundane topics. When she told me about the thing of covering her eyes I said “oh I do the same thing, though I use a sheet, and I need to have my whole body covered, or I feel exposed.” She said “it must be our upbringing.” I never drew that connection before. I texted one of my brothers – “random question. do u cover yr face when u sleep? I do. jus curious.” He wrote back that he did. I called him later and we talked about it. We do the same thing. I told him about my conversation with my friend, and how she said it was because of our upbringing. He said that that made sense to him and he’d never thought of it before.

This friend and I connected over our childhoods, but we connected before that. There’s a kind of kinship or connection I feel with people who grew up similarly, a common sensibility or way of being in the world. I regret that other people have similar experiences but that sense of connection is powerful. I think it’s part of how abuse survivors sometimes find each other and then get into fucked up relationships with each other. That’s not what I’m talking about in my life, though.

I have a friend who I mostly interact with by cracking jokes. This friend also had an unpleasant childhood. We’ve talked just a little about it (just enough that we know each other had unpleasant childhoods). In one of our rare moment where we weren’t being rude/vulgar/hilarious, I mentioned to him that I have sometimes thought about how differently I plan and hope for my kids to grow up compared to how I grew up. My bad experiences were an integral part of how I became who I am. My emotional but also my ethical wiring came largely out of that. And like I said there’s a special sense of connection that goes with that experience. This means that I hope to raise my kids in such a way that they won’t quite understand some of my key formative experiences and at a certain level won’t relate to or be in the world the same way that I am in the world. I said this to my friend. He said back to me that he preferred to think that through parenting we would become different people than we were, that parenting could be a healing experience.

I have a lot of bad memories. I have a lot of good memories from my childhood too, but I don’t like to talk about those either. The problem is that all of my good childhood memories are only one or two or three degrees of separation from bad childhood memories, and all of my bad childhood memories are only one or two degrees of separation from truly awful memories. So I mostly don’t like to get into childhood memories. When I do, I usually end up feeling bad.

For some time now my older daughter has asked to hear stories from my childhood. So I tell her stories. They’re appropriate stories, positive, pleasant stories. I tell them in ways that highlight pleasant things, and things she likes (like animals, and poop). She likes that I tell the stories basically the same way but with some variation and she likes to participate in the retellings (today she asked me to tell her friend a story “tell her about the roller coaster!” and as I told it she jumped in, “tell her about the music!” “tell her about the high hill part of the roller coaster!”). As I tell these stories I carve out good parts of my childhood and break or at least weaken some of their associations with the bad parts. Tonight I thought about that and I remembered what my friend had said about parenting being healing, I thought about all that as I left the sound of crying behind on my run home.

For one thing, I think the preference “to assess the situation separately” is something shared in Recomposition, or at least, that’s how we act. We agree on a lot, we disagree on a lot, we don’t wait to lay out clear lines and reach agreement before putting stuff out. We’re a collection of individuals, so to speak, and so our perspectives are multiple individuals’ perspectives, in the way that Nesic and Dauvé’s articles on Troploin are their own perspectives. Each of their perspectives in those two articles is a perspective in and on Troploin but neither is *the* perspective *of* Troploin. Likewise with Recomposition – our pieces are perspectives in Recomposition, but no pieces are perspectives *of* Recomposition as a group. (Though maybe at some point we might co-author articles or editorial. Who knows.)

I’ll also say, as a related aside, several of us who later started doing Recomp, earlier we co-wrote a discussion paper called Direct Unionism, along with some other friends. That was a collective project and product. I think we were all happy with the end product but not ecstatic, which is part of why it sat for a while before we put it out and part of why it wasn’t fully finished. That was a piece that we wrote with one voice and yet I think all of us or at least most of us felt that that resulting voice and its content was a compromise that didn’t reflect each person’s actual views. We were still a multiplicity of views, and only some of that multiplicity came through in the piece. To be clear, I’m not criticizing the piece or the process here. It was intensely thought provoking to work on and I’m really glad to have been part of it. I got a lot out of the exercise and I think more people should do collaborative political writing that way. (Part of why the piece didn’t fully reflect all of our views is that our views changed during and because of the collaboration, at least for several of us.) Again this isn’t to criticize the piece or collaborative writing. If anything, it’s to recommend collaborative writing, but it’s also to say that collaboratively written pieces signed by multiple people likely often are still composed of multiple individuals and the resulting piece only imperfectly reflects those individuals’ actual views. (And so on a practical note, having binding position papers that people are meant to agree with may be a problem or at least something overstated, as opposed to having thinking papers that reflect a process during their writing and an object to think with, and perhaps to think against, once they’re written. I feel like there’s a cliche to be said here, something about journeys and destinations but I’m too lazy to find and type it. I *would* be more cliched, if I was more ambitious and less apathetic. Ha.) Anyway – Recomp’s a collection of perspectives, not a perspective, and shared perspectives that are committed to write are likely the result of or the expression of a partial statement of a collective of perspectives as well.

I totally agree with Nesic’s criticism about the lack of concrete analysis in what (admittedly little) I’ve read of the communization current, Dauve,
etc. I think many of our pieces that people involved in Recomp have written are good examples of concrete analysis that we should be proud of. I suppose we could probably stand to do more theoretical writing (I think Scott has far and away led the charge here, though others of us have written stuff like that too), where we take on problems and try to advance a perspective or something. But I our concrete pieces are good stuff.

Nesic says that “there has been a split between our ability (or our will) to dialectically connect the critique of daily life with the critique of more fundamental themes like class composition, the crisis, communisation, etc. We have ended up dealing only with the second type of critique” in Troploin. This is the bit that made me think about Recomp in the first place. Until I read Nesic’s piece I hadn’t thought of it this way but I think our work stories and the pieces on work-related dreams and our general frequent impulse toward first person stories at Recomp could be called
‘critique of daily life.’ It’s also worth pointing out that ‘critique’ can take at least two forms – theoretical/abstract/macro and experiential/concrete/micro/narrative. The piece at Recomp on this tend to be written in an experiential register as much or more than a theoretical one much of the time. We run stories about (stories that try to convey and dramatize, to show rather than tell) how work and the rest of life suck in capitalist society, as much as or more than we have theories about this. Our work is definitely informed by those kinds of theories, to be sure, but we run more stories than theory about this stuff. I want to think more about that and I think we could probably stand to run more theory like this (if so it should reference and draw from the stories, to use the stories to shed light on further dynamics and also to theorize in a way that sheds more light on those stories). But I also want to say that our emphasis on stories here is a strength. I’m not sure it’s a mistake at all, but if it is it’s the opposite/mirror error to what Nesic says about Troploin.

I guess I’d also say that we don’t “dialetically connect the critique of daily life with the critique of more fundamental themes” so much as we have an oscillation between the sorts of pieces we run. This has only been imperfectly implemented and only planned out in a kind of rough and ready way – we try to run different sorts of pieces so there’s a rotation of types of writing and types of content and themes, to make the blog less repetitive seeming.

That seems to me an example of something that’s gone on a lot with our project. We do stuff based on short term goals and issues and interests, and we often do stuff in ways that are pretty intuitive and only partially thought out. Not everything works (the series on sleep and dreams was too long all in one go, for instance, and the posts came too fast, it probly should have been broken up into multiple short serieses) but some stuff does and it works pretty well. I think our willingness to proceed intuitively without needing perfect plans and clear answers is a strength. I also think it wouldn’t hurt us to plan more and have more clarity (though that would mean having more time, which I don’t have at the moment, and would mean running the site in a less efficient way – the site takes relatively little time for our output, in part because we spend so little time deliberating!).

I think it’d also be good to try to go over what we do and have done, and to lay out what our goals were (to the degree that they were clear), and what we’ve accomplished, to see if there are things to prioritize differently or do better. I know one thing we’ve made a priority of is cultivating newer writers and voices, both in work stories and more theoretical pieces. I’m probably the one who spent the most time on that and I’ve suspended that kind of stuff for now because of work and family time commitments. I miss that and look forward to getting back to it (part of why I spent so much time on it is that I found it personally gratifying). I think that’s partly just like a thing we do but I think it’s also a political thing – we are not a collective genius individuals who people should listen to (though I do think those of us involved do have things to say and questions to pose that should get heard), we are or at least should be a group who helps push others to put down thoughts and think together, whether on what Nesic calls ‘more fundamental themes’ or telling stories that express criticisms of life under capitalism. There’s also stuff we’ve layed out to talk about in terms of and because of the content, like for instance the direct unionism stuff, or the emerging conversations on reformi(ism). That’s good too.

(Incidentally here’s an older meandery blog post of me thinking out loud about some stuff about recomp, driven largely by metaphors.)

I think everyone who reads this blog (hey you two!) knows I’m involved in a shared blog called Recomposition. I’m not really doing anything there for now, too busy with work and family. One of the things we did at recomp that I liked best was a series of posts on work, sleep, and dreams. My friend Lou wrote on for that called Even My Dreams These Days Have Work-Related Scenes. The title of Lou’s post comes from the J Church song “Bottom Rung.” It’s a good post, and a good song.

The song includes the line “Saturday, Sunday I was free,” in the sense of getting a couple days off work. That’s great and all, and I sure prefer days off to days at work, but this is definitely a meager sense of freedom. I think this gets at another way in which we can have work-related dreams – work sucks so much that getting out of work even a little feels like enough. Like a hot day can make sitting in the shade feel good, but it’s still a hot day. Some of the dreams people have about better lives are dreams in the shadow of work. I think this is part of what was going on in the country songs I wrote about a while back – dreams of escaping work, but dreams that still bear the marks of work on them.

Unemployment can do this too. Without a paycheck, you need a job, because that’s how you get a paycheck. “I’m just grateful to have a job” and so on.

Another version of this is a sort “I deserve better because I’ve earned it” or “because I have X important quality” (brains, strength, etc) sensibility. Because everyone deserves better. The problem isn’t that the wrong people don’t have enough, the problem is that people don’t have enough, and that we have to spend our time on all this bullshit.

I’ve griped about some of the intellectual and political problems of invocations of ‘precarity.’ To restate just a bit, I think arguments like “unions are outmoded because today there’s so much precarity” are straight up wrong. First, they begin from the peak of unionization and move to the current valley after that peak, and say “the valley has so much more precarity.’ The “precarity, so there’ few unions” argument seems to me exactly backward, when really it’s “there’s few unions, so, there’s lot of precarity.” I think the picture would also look quite different if people begin looking prior to the rise of that peak, a period which was characterized by a great deal of precarity for those sectors who later unionized. That would, I think, show two things. One, to be skeptical about the possibilities of unionization under conditions of precarity is to be skeptical of the the very thing that happened in many sectors. Two, it seems to me that the desirability of unionization was largely derived from precarity: unionization offered a potential for security and control in response to precarious conditions.

“Automobile workers’ tenuous hold on their jobs before seniority was instituted as a criterion for governing personnel decisions was one of the givens of pre-UAW times. Even Fortune Magazine asserted in a matter-of-fact way that “automobile labor (whether Ford, Chevrolet, or Plymouth) is labor with little dignity and less security…” and that “no worker has any definite assurance that he will be working next year where he worked last.” (…) Henry Ford’s principal biographers have pointed out that before unionization, workers in the company “were subject to discharge at any time for any reason. They had no tenure and no appeal.. .On the assembly line.. .the bosses had a natural liking for young, vigorous, quick men not past thirty-five. Experienced hands past that age.. .were thus often the first to be dismissed and the last to re-engaged.” Under such a dispensation, workers perceived as trouble-makers or simply as deficient in deference were dismissed without ado. Since the industry was highly seasonal with long shutdowns for model changeover, absence of seniority rules meant that long-serving employees had no assurance of being recalled to their jobs when production of new models began. There were situations in which the oldest workers in age and length of employment were the least likely to be recalled. It was to counter their intolerably precarious hold on their jobs that automobile workers perceived seniority as the keystone of their moral economy. They were formulating an anti-laissez-faire morality against the unrestrained labor market freedom of employers who acknowledged no limitations based on rights of employees.” “Seniority and the Moral Economy of U.S. Automobile Workers, 1934-1946,” by Carl Gersuny and Gladis Kaufman, Journal of Social History, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1985), 463-475

My kid speaks really well. That’s cool and fun but it makes it easy to treat her like she’s older than she is. That can be unfair when she has needs or acts in ways that are appropriate for her age but we expect her to act differently. She’s still a little kid. And her age isn’t really stable. When she’s at her best and things are going well, she’s like an older kid in a lot of ways. The more she’s not at her best and the more things aren’t going well, the more she’s like a younger kid. The other day after a hard time around dinner or bed time or something (a high needs time – tired, or hungry – and a high activity time where we have to get stuff done – cook, get her ready for bed or back to bed – rather than just hang out; when those moments overlap are among our most friction/conflict-laden), she broke down totally sobbing. That sucked. Later after she was asleep the thought struck me and my wife and I talked about it, our child is still small and young enough that under a lot of circumstances her main response to a problem is to cry. That’s developmentally appropriate, even if we forget this. Remembering that and reacting accordingly is important, and can be hard. It struck me again today that the same is basically true today. The better I’m doing, the better I’m doing… as in, I act my most developed furthest along and best self the more energy and whatnot I have. The worse I’m doing the harder it is to stay at/to be this best most developed self and the easier it is to revert to a worst self. For me personally this reverting involves the return of/increasing pressure from bad emotional and mental habits picked up from early bad experiences and whatnot. I feel like as I age, partly due to hard work but due to a lot else as well, the better I get at being better, but it’s in forward and backward steps. I think it’s possible to revert in ways that create new bad habits or return to old bad habits, but if reverting is kept to a low enough level it’s not near as much of a big deal and is just a normal thing, something to note, deal with, and move on.

Anyway, to cope with stress I’ve been trying to write a joke a day. Writing them is hard. The concentration required helps me stop thinking about the things that stress me out, and it takes little time. Here’s my jokes so far.

*

These are current as of May 24th

*

What did the punchline say to the opening? Look out! It’s a set up!

The two worst things about being a lazy writer are that I always leave jokes unfinish

Joke writing is a lot like masturbation. It takes hours and involves a lot of sobbing.

I spent most of Monday switching between joke writing and thinking about Minnesota winter. It’s a cold, bleak, brutally inhuman experience, writing jokes.

I decided not to write a joke with the phrase “butter me up” and a Last Tango in Paris reference. My good judgment always ruins everything.

Sometimes I hate the whole world. Then I look up and see the stars, moon, or sun, and I realize there’s so much more out there for me to hate.

My therapist said I should cultivate a better attitude because feeling resentful and bitter is a poor use of emotional energy. Great, another fucking thing for my to-do list. He also said I respond unreasonably to criticism, so stabbed him in the face.

If I don’t get over my tendency to over-react I’m going to die, painfully, alone and unloved.

My three year old is like a mythical god – incomprehensible, quick to anger, and only appeased if I sacrifice a goat.

The worst part about going on an outing with my three year old is all the crying. Leaving the house just upsets me.

I’ve been with my wife 15 years. I’ll never forget the first time she said those three wonderful words: “you were right.”

Rich people remind me of potatoes. They’re funny looking. And I always cut their eyes out before I eat them.

My local librarian is such a racist. She totally freaked out when I took my clothes off. It’s because of my skin color. And tentacles.

This week on the bus I ran into my neighbor three different times. I wish he’d gotten out of the way. I’m probably gonna lose this bus driver job.

It took me a long time to get over my fear of getting too close to people. Now I really like to get too close to people.

Apparently I look like a flasher if I don’t wear socks under my trenchcoat, which sucks because then I lose the element of surprise.

I’m on Facebook. You on Facebook? With Facebook, we can all be narcissistic and lonely together!

As a physically active person I have experience with broken bones. The worst part about breaking your arm is how loud you scream when I do it.

I’m convinced anything fun is bad for your health. That’s why I want to learn to write very funny jokes, to hurt people.

I’ve noticed everything fun is bad for you. That’s how I know I am leading a very healthy lifestyle.

All that stands between me and fame as a writer is luck, hard work, motivation, discipline, and talent.

Twitter has taken the fun out of being a cult leader. Back in the day you really had to work to recruit followers.

All that stands between me and becoming a famous musician are his bodyguards and the time it’ll take me to peel off his skin and put it on.

Online dating sucks. People are nice at first but once they see the real me it’s all “please, I want to live” and “oh god no not my eyes.”

My wife said “let’s stop arguing. We’ll call this one a tie.” I insisted, “No, it’s definitely a belt.” Or I would have, if I could breathe.

my wife said “I’M COLD!” “And distant,” I said. “WHAT?” she said “ITS HARD TO HEAR FROM SO FAR AWAY.” I wish she’d climb down from that tree.

“You’re so sweet,” she said. “Stop biting me!” I said, though it came out more like “AAAAAAHHH!”

Finding common ground with people I disagree with can be very trying, but mostly it’s very failing.

Lately people have been praising Rand Paul for his filibuster in Congress. Personally I don’t think politicians should be lionized. They should be sharked, or wolved.

I feel surrounded by self-centered people. Instead they should be surrounded by me. Or rather my armed minions.

The most important part about cooking vegan is having high quality ingredients, so be sure to catch a healthy, young vegan.

Being nice to jerks is hard, but like I always say, kill ‘em with kindness! And if that doesn’t work, use a claw hammer.

I want to get a smart phone. Then no matter where I went I could refuse to read my email.

“I hope to make my mark on this world,” thought the asteroid as it entered the atmosphere.

I find shooting stars really underwhelming. Not nearly as cool stabbing news anchors.

I had to walk to work today so of course I got soaked. There just aren’t enough public toilets.

When I grow up I want to be really rich. I’d especially like to be a chocolate mousse.

Having out of town family visit is a good opportunity to reminisce about the past, when you realized it was a good idea to move away.

My wife and I had an argument. She said “I’m not talking bad about your family, that’s your job.” I said “Typical! I have to do everything!”

Sometimes I think people feel threatened when they see my good looks. And gun.

Scientists should develop a test for the gene that makes people believe in eugenics. Then everyone who has it should be eliminated.

Once I worked cleaning this rich guy’s house. Soon I just couldn’t take anymore. It’s hard to get a maid costume with well concealed pockets.

If I just keep going despite all the monotony and failure, eventually something good will happen. That’s my approach to joke writing, and sex.

You know what sucks about making unfunny jokes? I don’t.

People always talk about how it’s so hard to quit cold turkey but I don’t see what the big deal is. Turkey’s gross.

I think its funny to use the internet to insult people I like. Unfortunately none of them are around so you’ll have to do. Dummy.

Daily affirmation. I know I can achieve healthy self esteem once I stop being truly unlovable.

My heron addiction really puts the ‘egret’ in regret.

Joke writing may seem easy but I have truly suffered for these jokes. Now it’s your turn.

I had a dream about getting totally drunk. I was a glass of milk.

I was into dismissing things for becoming popular way before it was cool.

I didn’t intend to be so pointed. It’s just the shape of my head.

My three year old is very mature for her age. Last night she shouted at me, “I hate you!”

I was trying to check my email but my mouse died. I was really distracted by all his squeaking.

Some kid at the library took a toy from my kid. He started crying when I made him give it back. I guess I shouldn’t have pushed him so hard.

Brad Paisley’s “Accidental Racist” was bad enough but he’s really hit a new low with “Deliberate Ethnic Cleansing.”

In a job interview it’s important to leave a lasting impression. Try wearing a colorful tie, or taking a hammer to the interviewer’s forehead.

A teacher of mine used to say “a good writer will write till it hurts.” He read my work and said “yep, this definitely hurts.”

The career counselor said “I always say ‘in a job interview just be yourself’ but this time I’ll make an exception.” Luckily I used a fake name.

If you ever start to feel sad and alone, just know that I’m here. With my telescope. Also, your hair looks nice.

I can’t think of anything funny to say. So I wrote this joke.

You ever feel like you made terrible life choices and you just have to learn to live with them? If so then it must suck to be you.

Fox News reported that a dentist infected patients with hepatitis. A condition causing nausea and vomiting, millions suffer from Fox News.

My older daughter is mature enough that we can go to restaurants, and as long as they serve ice cream I don’t have a tantrum.

I’m jobhunting and my wife’s pregnant. Many people have moodswings, anxiety, and nausea from the physical and emotional ordeal of jobhunting.

I would like to take this moment to tell you a very funny joke. It’s the thought that counts.

I have a bad habit of making jokes at my own expense. You can help me break this habit. Send money.

I’m emotional because we just had a baby. Newborn babies give me hope. Hope that people can love vacant-eyed wrinkly bald folk with nothing to say.

If I die from eating all these tacos I will have no regrets. Because there’s no consciousness after death.

You know what’s the worst part of being awesome? No, you definitely don’t.

Job hunting tip: Emulate the people with the best jobs. Attend an ivy league college, have rich parents, be a total douche.

He said, “Apply for jobs that play to your strengths.” I said, “I’m good at failing, and getting fired.” He said, “Umm. Maybe art school?”

He said “Look for a job doing things you enjoy. What do you like?” I said “Bullying and being obeyed.” He said “You’re management material.”

Health tip: If you experience a burning sensation while urinating, check to see if you are on fire.

If you attend a birth you will need to deal with blood and cries of distress. To prepare yourself, before the birth, commit a few murders.

I been agnostic for years but could never fully believe the universe was indifferent to humanity. Then I had kids. Now I know there’s no god.

This guy at the bank was totally cutting in line. So rude. I said “I’m gonna call security if you don’t put down that knife.”

My boss had this hilarious expression when I called him a little worm, and stuck that fish-hook through his neck.

If people start to annoy you, it may help to imagine them as cute little kittens. Then put them in a weighted sack and drop it in a river.

If you ever start to feel sad, if it helps you to feel better, tell yourself that I love you very much. It’s just a little white lie.

You know what I find uplifting? Elevators. Though they can also be a real downer.

Man I used to love getting high. That’s why I became an airline pilot.

If you start to feel low, help is out there. You can try platform shoes, or climbing a ladder.

I’d like to be known for my biting wit instead of dumb jokes and sharp teeth.

I tried to drink a toast to your honor but I choked on the bread crusts.

You know what really gets under my skin? Scabies.

All your problems are actually quite funny when you think about them the right way. Or at least when I think about them.

You know what’s pointless? Broken pencils. Also, loving anyone, because they’ll just die and leave you alone.

NYU students complain of bedbugs in their dorms. Almost 40,000 of these disgusting parasites infest NYU, and an unknown number of bedbugs.

Chinese police seized over four million counterfeit Durex condoms. Officials reported “They’re for, uh, a friend” without making eye contact.

If everyone lived by “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” then more people on the bus would tell me my hair smells good.

An Australian politician reported being attacked by a kangaroo while jogging today, prompting many to ask why a kangaroo would take up jogging.

Today I bought a new wallet, and a sandwich, and very nearly got rained on. Once again I have lived a compelling part of the human drama.

New research definitively links fracking to both earthquakes and climate change. Petrochemical industry spokesmen replied “Muahahaha!”

Sometimes I worry that age, marriage, and parenthood have made me boring. But then I remember I’ve always been dull.

You know what I hate about paranoid delusions? Don’t lie. I know you do.

Today I misunderstood the meaning of ‘flash flood’ in an embarrassing way. Luckily I still had my raincoat.

Recently I’ve gotten into dubstep. It’s cool to have a new genre of music to make me feel inferior.

One asset I bring to making jokes is a lifetime of experience at publicly embarrassing myself.

My newborn cries too much. I’m sick of her being such a baby.

I’m worried my kid’s gonna grow up racist. Her mom’s German. You know how THEY are. Even worse than the blacks.

Parenting has lowered my standards. “It’s only got a little pee and puke on it, I can still wear that.” It’s like I’ve become punk again.

I used to worry that getting old meant that I would lead a pathetic empty life, but then I discovered jogging, and home-made muesli.

Ugh. Parenting. I’m so tired all the time it’s like I’m constantly a bit drunk. On the bright side, it’s kinda like my kids equal free beer.

Women pay tons of attention to me when I have my baby in a baby carrier. I’m all like “gross, ladies, get away, I do NOT need more kids.”

Novelist Marcel Proust said “La permanence et la durée ne sont promises à rien, pas même à la douleur.” Unfortunately I don’t speak french.

I’m really good at remembering times I said something embarrassingly stupid. I’ve had a lot of practice.

I’d like to say my good judgment saved me from making a joke comparing clitorises and klansmen but really I just didn’t know the plural.

My favorite jokes are what are called “meta-jokes” which is a fancy way to say “jokes that aren’t funny.”

I got a philosophy degree in college. When I graduated my 13 year old brother said “what’s philosophy?” Twenty minutes into my explanation he said “you paid HOW much for that degree?”

I thought things would get easy when I got old. I didn’t realize adulthood would be so terrifying. For instance, there’s hair growing in my ears.

FEMA officials use a ‘Waffle House Index’ to rate disasters. Critics argue that this makes light of hardship and that IHOP has better coffee.

A Chicago man spent a record-setting 48 hours on a Ferris wheel. He plans to use his expertise at going in circles by running for Congress.

My baby daughter was born three weeks ago. The labor was really intense, judging from all the texts my wife sent me. Just kidding. I never read her texts. Any of you have kids? Then you know, having a newborn means never sleeping. Some days I get so tired I want to slit my wrists, but then I look at my baby and I think, “I’m overreacting. I could just hold a pillow over her face.” My wife really doesn’t like those jokes. She said “you don’t read my texts?!” She also said that she gets even less sleep than I do so she gets to be the one to smother the baby. It’s weird, having a baby. I love her so much but all she does is cry and sometimes pukes or pees on me. She’s a lot like her mother. To get serious for a sec, I know those are some dark jokes. I want to be clear that I would never actually hurt my baby. But if you have a baby, keep it the fuck away from me.