Joel and Potato

I have a pretty good sense of humor, if my family and friends are to be believed.

However, when encountered with recipients of said humor who are not the sharpest tools in the shed, my rapier wit is wasted.

What that means is that stupid people don't quite get what I'm saying. I don't know if it's because I'm a word snob who uses too many syllables in order to compensate for spending all day working in my low-level, low brain-actvity job, or if it's just because I like to hear myself talk, but I have to cop to liking words that are a little bigger than average. And phrases with more words in them. In fact, my ex mother in law told me that I was a good influence on her son, as he started speaking more intelligently during the course of our marriage. However, I'm pretty sure she changed her mind when I came home one day and announced that I wanted to divorce the little b*st*rd.

As you can imagine, I am usually fairly chatty. Usually. Unless I'm in a really foul mood. Or have been reading too much gossip about vacuous celebriwh*res (yes, that's you, Paris) and their vile, spoiled friends (ie Brandon Davis). After reading all that vitriol about Lindsay Lohan, whom I actually respect (hey, she's a good actress and she actually has a decent voice), I feel sorry for the source of it, not sorry for Lohan, whose Davis-labelled firecr*tch and seven-inch genital appendage of the female variety will now come out smelling like a rose.

Anyway, that's beside the point.

So I'm on the phone during lunch today with a friend of mine. We'll call this person Potato, as their a*s was, at the time, planted on a couch and seemed to have grown roots there. And it seems sometimes that Potato's head is not filled with stinky grey matter but is instead awash with thick, buttery, warm, delicious mashed potatoes. With buttermilk and an egg. Yummy but not smart.

Every time I talk to Potato, I just can't make good conversation. Of course, there does happen to be that little barrier, which is that Potato barely speaks. Potato may occasionally cough up a nuggest of advice, wisdom, or empath,y but, other than that, it's pretty dry. Conversation is not Potato's forte. Good friend, yet does not talk much. Hmmm.

So I'll make jokes and stuff, expecting Potato to laugh, but no chuckles are forthcoming. I'm working really hard in these conversations to try and elicit some laughter, to try and elicit SOMETHING, one friggin syllable, yet there's usually silence when I finish speaking. It's like talking to myself. I used to think that was because of me, but now I know the truth: it's because Potato has more relation to that darling root vegetable than I initially thought. Especially while in a stupor from whatever Potato's just finished doing, whether that's sleeping or relying on illegal pharmacopia.

And yet. And yet, that's still better than Joel, who can only talk about the relationship that he's currently in, currently getting out of, or currently getting into. Or the hot little waitress 12 years his junior (he's 34) whom he thinks may be flirting with him. Or how this one girl that he was seeing, who had a good career and seemed like a nice girl, wasn't fat, but was just a little heavier than he wanted. So one night while out at a steakhouse, when he saw some people he knew, he asked her to pretend to be his sister in order not to be embarrassed by her. She was smarter than he, figured it out, and promptly kicked him to the curb. Good for her.

After having written the paragraph above, I am compelled to vomit. But I already smell like fart thanks to the abundance of fiber that I consumed yesterday, so why add vomit to the existing, pure bouquet?

I think my next internet search after publishing this little work of art will be about why I have so much bloody gas lately.

I have to change Nitpicker's name now. She's too nice to be called Nitpicker. We're back to just calling her Temp.