Misery = Human Interaction

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you another installment straight from The Nest Of Grump.





A couple weeks ago, I was tapped to find footage for a charity event video thing. It's to help fund an organization that trains inner city kids to do computer repair work. A noble cause. The themes for the video I'm helping with are positivity and communal connection, two things I spend zero time thinking about. I mostly think about the inevitability of an all-out spider war. I'm out of my league with this life-affirming crap. I actually typed "cheesy bullshit" into the search box of Youtube.

Also, as an artist/contributor for this charity, I've been invited to meetings about the event. Whoop whoop!





This is where I struggle. I don't talk to people I don't already know for any length of time, ever. And I especially don't talk to people who want my professional opinion about anything. I'm a simple cave troll. Don't touch me.

When I absolutely have to interact with people, like the ones involved with this charity project, I get really weirded out. The sudden awareness of these alien perspectives thrust upon my excitable brain is almost too much.

Example: There is a party planner/caterer for the charity event, a Jewish one. She's in her 50's, stands about 5 feet tall, and is dressed in upper middle class business-wear (a jazzy pantsuit). While soliciting opinions on what food should be served, she cheerily asked, "How about empanadas? We could do a taco!" And the others nodded and one person said, "Oooh! Now I'm hungry." And everybody laughed. I smiled politely. It was like a Tim and Eric sketch.

And this party/wedding planning suburban Jew-mom was also trying to set her son up with the female video producers. And when I told her where I grew up, she goes, "Oh! Do you know Jordan Goldberg?" Oy vey. Why do Jewish moms think that because I'm Jewish, I know every other Jew in the county? They do it all the time. God, I wanna bite their legs off.





And the producer of the event sends me these texts. Maybe it's me, but whenever I get text messages like "Thanks!" or "Yay!" or "See U soon!", it seems insincere and creepy. The exclamation point is a very delicate mechanism, and used excessively, it makes you sound completely bonkers. OKAY!?!?!

Ya see how ordinary shit gets under my skin really easily? I'm so used to doing my own thing that I forget how people actually behave and communicate. And I'm horrified by what they spew from their evil little face holes.

My life consists of watching movies, building sweat pant forts, and catching catfish. I quit playing honky nice-nice a long time ago.

Hopefully, with the help of a Kapsiki crab sorcerer and a butt load of Wendy's coupons, I'll pull through this dark time of honorable productivity and verbal expression.