Monday, January 28, 2008

sassy, in three parts

Eating brunch with a guy friend, at Foreign Cinema. He's talking about a girl he likes.

Friend: "I should invite her to an event. How can I do it casually?"

Me: "Pick something you know she likes to do. What are her hobbies?"

Friend: "She takes ballet classes."

Me: "Why don't you invite her to the San Francisco ballet?"

Friend: [raising eyebrow] "You realize that I would then also need to go to the ballet."




Over dinner at Ronald McDonald House, a mother is talking about her newborn who was born with her intestines outside of her body.

Mother: "They rushed her from my C-section immediately to the ICU. They hooked up a device so that her intestines are suspended over a cavity in her abdomen, and over the next few days, gravity pulled them back into her body."

Me: [shocked]

Mother: "But she wasn't gaining weight for the next two months. The doctor said it could be the [long medical term] condition, but he didn't want to do a test to check because that condition is so rare."

Me: "So what happened?"

Mother: "I told the doctor, 'Being born with your intestines outside your body is also extremely rare! Do the test!'"

(In happy news, the newborn later gained weight. Mother and daughter were discharged from the hospital today.)




Last month, I told my brother about a Stanford writing class I took. We were each asked to bring two pages of a published work from an author we admired. I brought Harry Potter, which was denounced by a middle-aged Indian student CJ for being "cliche". Another person brought the Foundation trilogy, and CJ criticized both Asimov's writing and science fiction in general.

Finally I asked what he brought. He announced that his "two pages from an author you admire" was his own published work. He proceeded to hand out copies of his story, each with a stapled photocopy of his acceptance letter to a local literary magazine.

Tonight, at the grocery store with my brother:

Me: "I'm taking another writing course. Guess who I saw on the first day. Remember that guy I told you about, who brought his own published work?"

Tom: "Of course I remember that dumbass."

Me: [shaking with laughter]

Tom: "Oh sorry, was I being too truthful?"

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wait, wait... so how was CJ's story, anyways?

Strider Aragorn said...

Gotta love the conceit.

Anonymous said...

Hyped commercial success is seldom ever and usually NEVER admirable.

And absolutely not worth repeating.

Be more original.

Sheeple, all of you are easily hearded.

Anonymous said...

Lol, If You'd asked him about Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky he would probably say that they were just big egos and both had rich fathers to promote them but on the writing side they were just boring and sucky.

Anonymous said...

They were.

So sucky.