Uh…. unless you’re a unique kid, or hell, even a unique adult.

Think back to your childhood. What was the most important thing to you then? I can tell you: To fit in. To be the same. To be anything but different.  You wanted to blend, right?

Me, too. Only I didn’t blend. I was emotional, very sensitive and I had some “glitches” (for lack of a better word because honestly I still don’t fully understand what caused me to struggle.) I was the last kid to hold my pencil correctly. I had issues using scissors correctly. It took me longer than the average kid to learn to ride a bike or tie my shoes. Throw multi-step instructions at me and I performed the first part and then froze like a deer in headlights as I panicked to remember the other steps.

It seemed like every day I went to school I was surrounded by perfect kids who learned quickly, seemed to feel none of the anxiety I dealt with, and it seemed to me that the majority of them were… well, alike. (Insert the “One of these things doesn’t belong here” song and invision a picture of yours truly with an arrow pointing at her head).

I had a very loving and supportive family who encouraged me to focus on the positives and to keep trying. They worked with me on shoe tying. My dad, god love him, came home early from work for days on end to work on teaching me to ride a bike. I mastered things in my own time and the resulting boost in my self-esteem was exhilerating, let me tell you. ..but it was short-lived. My insecurity would speak to me “Well, other kids have been doing this for years. Other kids didn’t take months to learn to ride a bike.” And there went my momentary high.  I was my own worst enemy.

My son (mini-me) confessed he has been having these same kinds of feelings and anxieties in school. He told me he feels like “everybody else” is one way and he’s different.

And he’s not a snowflake, so different sucks.

The snowflake story has a special (fucked up) place in my psyche, and after praising my son for confiding in me and validating his feelings, I shared my story with him in hopes that he would appreciate knowing he’s not alone in his… aloneness. I’ll share it with you, too, because I know there are a lot more screwed up, non-perfect snowflakes out there. (I recognize some of you by your untied shoelaces and deer in headlights stares.)

Here goes.

First grade. The class is preparing to decorate the room for Christmas. (It was still called Christmas back then. I’m old.)

The teacher (after giving the whole different is good, no two are the same bullshit story) stood at the front of the room with a crisp white sheet of paper and a pair of scissors. Here come the instructions: “Fold your paper in half, then diagonally. Fold this part from here to here. Cut the tips off here and here and here and here. Now cut a hole in the middle and cut some other holes here here and here. Now look what happens when I open it up. It’s a snowflake! Everyone open yours up!”

20 kids held up snowflakes. You could tell they were snowflakes. Every one slightly different.  Every one beautiful. You know what I held up? Nothing. I opened mine up and it looked like a crumpled up piece of paper with ragged edges and a few holes. I became embarrassed and upset. I cried.

The teacher walked over to me and attempted to show me “the right way” to make my snowflake look like everybody else’s as several classmates stared at me and giggled. She tried. I was too upset and too embarrassed to really try, so she fixed mine for me.

Ahhhh, sweet relief. Thanks Teach.

I told my son that back then I felt relief that someone else “fixed” my snowflake for me and helped me feel the same as everybody else.

Today I think back on that scene and I wonder what would have happened if I had had a teacher (and many more teachers as the years went by) who looked at what I could do and embraced what was unique about me and encouraged me to embrace it as well. I also think back on that scene and wish I had said “Bitch, we live in Orange County. Whens the last time you saw a snowflake? I’m pretty sure mine looks more like the real deal than all these other perfect-y, symmetrical DUDS.”

That woulda been awesome, am I right?

Moral of the story, and you knew it was coming (and my son practically yelled it at me when I  finished reliving the hell that was “Snowflake Day”) is pretty basic. The magic of snowflakes IS that they are different and unique. They are also fragile and they tend to disappear in the blink of an eye. Kinda like childhood.

“She shoulda just said yours was pretty and hung it up by all the other ones because then you would have felt better. She said they should all be different, but she didn’t mean it.”

We have to surround our kids with people who mean it. We have to say it and encourage it and nurture it and mean it ourselves, too. Unique IS good. Nobody is perfect.

Why the hell do you think velcro shoes are so popular?

The test comes less than two months after the WSFB enraged the nonfun world by test firing a long-range ballistic missile directly at Your Mom’s cooze.

The WSFB news agency, the regimes official mouthpiece (LOL), said: “We have successfully conducted another nuclear test as part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen our defenses, and there is nothing you can do about but just sit there with a stupid smile on your big stupid face and SUCK IT.”

President Barack Obama said, “those are some very angry young men, with serious attitude problems. However, they are right on this one. Suck it, we must. Commence sucking, America.”

Presumed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney told reporters, “I think about this situation exactly what you think about this situation, whatever that is. You like it, I like it. You hate it, me too. I am on everyone’s side here. I agree with every single person who has ever lived or will ever live. WHY DADDY WHY WOULDN’T YOU JUST HUG ME?!?!

Ninja Jesus - No Mercy

Jesus is okay, I guess. I mean, turning water to wine and coming back from the dead are pretty neat tricks, but you know what would be totally rad? If Jesus was a ninja!

If Jesus combined his love and compassion for all mankind with the ability to hurl a shuriken like a thousand yards with pinpoint accuracy, or drop down from the ceiling and slice everyone to pieces before they even knew he was there he would be the most awesome prophet warrior ever.

Ninja Jesus would be totally bad ass. He would be able to fight anyone and turn practically invisible and separate from his own shadow, AND He could like totally forgive the Romans or Galatians or whoever and then chop their heads off using only His eyelash. He could multiply some fishes, then turn them into razor blade fishes and fling them at the enemy’s eyes and then take a bunch of loaves and turn them into stones and hit people in the neck with them.

Ninja Jesus would still wear his sandals, but he’d change into black pajamas and he’d wear a headband with a rising sun and the word “NINJA” in Japanesey looking letters and it would also have a cross on it. Ooh ooh ooh…and his disciples would totally be mutants who could control the weather and shoot lazers and reverse time and communicate with falcons and play freakin’ bitchin’ guitar solos with only their minds! They’d all travel around Galilee or wherever like swashbuckling outlaws on tricked out skateboards and everyone would think that they were bad guys but really they’d be secret heroes but they wouldn’t be able to tell anyone because they might get persecuted and OMG they’d have this crazy underground secret training base with all kinds of weapons and root beer would come out of the drinking fountains and they’d have a space ship.

Man, I wish Jesus was a ninja.

“He kept asking me if I’d ordered the large sausage, and saying that he really knew his way around a pie,” said Kardashian. “I was like, ‘well duh, you make pizzas.’ Then he said something about how his 9-9-9 plan was really a 12-12-12, but he couldn’t call it that because it scared all the white women. I don’t understand economics.”

Kardashian’s mother, Kris Jenner, immediately called a press conference after hearing of her daughter’s traumatic experience. “It’s painful for me to talk about, but I feel like I must speak out. Herman Cain sexually harassed me too. He put his hand in my vagina backstage at a Depeche Mode concert in 1992. He was obviously much more attracted to me than to my daughter.”

Cain has denied all accusations of sexual harassment, and his campaign put out a fresh denial after the Karadashian accusations. Well, technically it was the same denial his campaign keeps putting out just with the names crossed out and new ones written in. “Mr. Cain never harassed anyone. All allegations are completely false, whether they happened or not. Even if someone brings forth allegations in the future for something that hasn’t happened yet, that will also be completely false.”

Cain Shows How Many Women He Did Not Harass

One of the last remaining organic bacon orchards

AUSTIN ~ According to a new Time Magazine health report, bacon – lovely, salty, smoky, delicious bacon – contains an ingredient that is most commonly found in pigs. Tests demonstrate that virtually 100% of commercially produced bacon contains pork, a substance frequently used in the manufacture and processing of pigs.

Bacon farmers across the nation use pork as a filler ingredient to increase the volume of their bacon production, according to the report. The National Meat Association and the Baconry Council of America both say that small amounts of pork have not been found to be harmful to either humans or to pigs and that pork can help stabilize bacon for shipping and also makes it a little bit cuter.

The FDA is currently reviewing the issue and will soon decide whether or not to approve the use of pork in bacon products. Food safety activist Kevin Johnson, who owns a large organic bacon orchard in Vermont, says that porkily enhanced bacon is unsafe and unsustainable. “The idea that something as nutritious and wholesome as salted and cured fat could contain the flesh of a filthy pig is like something out of a horror movie. A horror movie about pigs.”

Johnson, just after saying that thing he said

AUSTIN ~ A local Austin man on Monday uttered the dumbest thing that has ever been said by anybody, anywhere. According to reports, an area sandwich artist shattered the previous dumb utterance world record and ended an era of two decades dominated by Texas Governor Rick Perry.

As a matter of policy, the Funblog does not typically publish the identity of people uttering dumb things, nor do we publish the dumb things they utter, out of concern that doing so may inadvertently serve to glorify the utterance of dumb things. But this one was really, really dumb. It was Kevin Johnson.

Johnson’s asinine comment was reportedly uttered in reference to a customer’s request to add avocado to a tuna-fish sub. The staggering dumbness of the utterance, which defied what humanity previously believed to be the outer limits of verbal dumbness, left witnesses with instant-onset ear cancer, cognitive dissonance, and erectile dysfunction.

As the scale of the dumbness of Johnson’s comment slowly emerges, volunteers are desperately trying to help survivors. A spokesman for the World Health Organization said, “The damage caused to the collective intelligence of mankind by this one single utterance is almost impossible to comprehend. We’ve never seen anything like it. Entire psychological constructs were wiped out, linguistic devices were turned upside down, and almost a million people are without power. This region will be facing the consequences of that thing he said for generations to come.”

Johnson’s comment was not only at least 25% dumber than anything that has ever been uttered before in the entire world history of uttering, it was also offensive, mathematically impossible, unhygienic, and composed with excruciatingly poor grammar.

Research Director Kevin Johnson, Ph.D., presented the finding at the recent Vacuums of the Great Plains conference in Oklahoma City. “When we began our research, we were actually trying to discover why tectonic shifts over time have failed to cause the great state of Texas to slip into the Gulf of Mexico. It turns out to be because OU SUCKS.”

It has been speculated since the evolution of man (which has yet to take place in Oklahoma) that OU SUCKS. The first known reference to the astounding suckfullness of OU is in the 72 Psalm, where David tells the Israelites, “OU SUCKS. And they have atrocious and ugly whore-like women. And their mascot is a wagon, for fuck sake.”

Linguists (those are people who study words, for anyone reading this in Norman), also point out that you cannot spell “loudmouth douchebag” without three OU’s, nor can you spell “Cocksucking Cousin” without two OU’s. Additionally, the name of the “school” is The University of Oklahoma, but they call themselves OU. Yes, even OU GRAMMAR SUCKS.

“It’s clear from our research that nothing has ever sucked as much as OU SUCKS,” Johnson concluded. “Not octopi. Not Paris Hilton. Not the needle-like proboscis of the hummingbird. Not the economy. Not even an Oreck. Nothing. Not only has nothing ever sucked before to the extent that OU SUCKS, nothing ever will. It is physically impossible, and God would never allow such an abomination.”

“The reason we’re instituting this fee is simply because we can,” said Bank of America spokeswoman Anne Pace. “It has nothing to do with economics, rising costs, operational challenges, or new regulations. It is simply because we fucking want to, so you can just sit there with that big stupid frown on your big stupid face and groove on it.”

A message on the BofA website explains the board’s decision to levy the fee:

We wanted to charge you assholes more, so we decided to actually charge your assholes. Stop whining and pay the damn fee.

Bank of America is the largest U.S. bank, with more than 57 million insignificant, dirty customers and takes for granted over 2.25 trillion dollars in assets. “They obviously wanted to humiliate their customer base, and what better way than to charge them a fee for taking a dump,” said consumer advocate Kevin Johnson. “It makes the customer confront their own humanity while earning the bank undeserved income for doing absolutely nothing.”

“We were getting tired of only metaphorically charging the shit out of our customers,” Pace said. “We decided to do it literally. Don’t eat so much fiber if you don’t want to pay the fee, you meaningless, defecating shadows of nothingness.”

The fee will apply to all customers who go #2 with a BofA issued debit or credit card in their pockets, purses, or on their persons. The fee will be waived for customers who are only urinating and those who thought they needed to poop but actually only needed to toot.

First, if you are lucky enough to actually get an interview, (and that is a whole ring of hell in itself) you have interview #1, The Prescreen.  This usually involves a phone call with the Human Resources Department where they ask you lots of questions to make sure you are not a crack- head serial killer, or that you can at least hide it. HR people refer to this process as “kissing toads.” Nice, huh? Fortunately, a perky disposition and lots of words about “a place where you can really make a difference” is really all that is needed here.

If you are allowed past the gate, you usually go on to interview #2; most likely with the hiring manager or director.  This can be face to face or a phone call.  This is a bit more stressful, but doable, usually only lasting an hour.  You try and say all the things they want to hear, you act professional, you answer questions, you even ask some really good questions to show that you ain’t  no dumdum. You do all this without crying, begging for them to hire you, or vomiting on their desk from stress.

Then if you are really lucky and make it through that ring of hell, you go on to a third interview.  This will either be with upper management, so they can put in their two cents (which nobody actually wants), or with the hiring manager’s team, so they can see if you will be a good fit to the work environment.

At this point, you are feeling pretty darn good.  You have made it through two of the rings of interview hell and are thinking you might actually be in the running for this job. I was recently lucky enough to get to the third interview ring of hell, where they brought me back in, for a four hour interview.  Jesus Christ, four hours?  I’m not even going to work four hours a day if you hire me. But fine. I can do that. And I will, because I’m a team player and there is no “I” in team and I can think “out of the box” and I can increase sales and help the bottom line and I have the ability to work unsupervised yet met all my deadlines and yadda yadda,  (fill in the rest with any corporate crap you want). So I go in, ready to take on the world.  Four hours later, I leave and think to myself, “Damn I was GREAT.  I would TOTALLY hire me. I love ME.” And I go home and wait for that phone to immediately ring and start running up credit card debt that I’ll be able to pay off soon.

Then three days later, the email comes, (similar to a Dear John letter).  “This is to inform you we have chosen another candidate who was better qualified and good luck and go screw yourself.”

Wait a minute… I gave you an Academy Award performance of “I am the greatest employee in the world” and you give me “Here is your van, now go live down by the river”?  I want my four hours back.  YOU STOLE FOUR HOURS OF MY LIFE.  And really, if you count the stress that I went through before the interview, in pure fear and worry hours, it was a good 16 hours.  Don’t I get anything?  Can I at least get the valium back that I took so I wouldn’t wet myself from nerves during the interview?  Do you people have any idea what I could have done in four hours?

Well, I will go ahead and list the things I could have done in those hours that you brutally stole and I will never get back (see, I have nothing else to do with my time…because you didn’t hire me):

1. I could have driven across the state (not Texas, but a normal state)
2. I could have flown across the country (not China, but a normal country)
3. I could have had major open heart surgery (the easy kind)
4. I could have watched 8 episodes of “The King of Queens” and laughed my butt off
5. I could have taken drugs, gotten super high and then sobered up, all in four hours (not good drugs, but crappy ones)
6. I could have written an entire symphony in that time, (not a good symphony, but a crappy one).
7. I could have made a complete thanksgiving dinner; turkey and sides for 8 people. (I would ABSOLUTELY never do this; but we’re speaking theoretically, dipshit)
8. I could have run outside, laughed and played with butterflies, hugged the trees and put good karma out to the world, (I would have to do this during the time I was very high, see #5 )
9. I could have had sex, gotten pregnant and CREATED A FRICKEN HUMAN BEING, (actually that would have only taken, maybe, 15 minutes counting the cigarette after)
10. And maybe, just maybe, I could have found the cure to cancer. But we will never know, since those four hours were ripped from my life.

Yet, I sit here today, sending out more resumes, hoping that I get noticed and someone will pull me back into the circle, so that I can go into the second, third and fourth circle of interview hell.   So that I can get a job and work at it forever, which I think is the ninth circle of hell; treachery.  Dante would be so proud of me. Maybe he is hiring.

House Speaker John Boehner made the announcement during an appearance on The View. “This policy is a model for efficiency in government, something the liberals don’t seem to understand. They would have you believe that the best way to make far-reaching, irreversible policy decisions is to carefully study the problem, explore both sides of the issue, and then come to sound, rational decisions through consensus and compromise. That kind of wasteful debate could take weeks, and cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Well, friends, NOT ON MY WATCH! We say ‘no’ right now. NO!”

GOP presidential front-runner Rick Perry echoed Boehner’s sentiments. “Why listen to what someone has to say before stamping a label on it and rejecting it? I’m no Washington insider, but that just doesn’t make sense. I mean, what if after you listen to them you find you actually agree with them? Then it’s only that much harder to say no.”

“ Look, it’s like how we handle the death penalty down in Texas,” Perry continued. “I suppose we could listen to everyone, weigh the evidence, and explore every possible bit of information to see if it supports the decision to take a human life. But that’s just big government run amok. We might not always get it right, but we usually get it right, and by God, that’s good enough for me. That’s my vision for America – Government by Pareto.”

Tea Party favorite Michelle Bachmann was quick to point out that her opposition does not just extend to Democrats, but that she also categorically rejects everything said by her fellow GOP candidates. “It’s important heading into the primary season that we don’t limit our dogma-fueled resistance just to Democrats. I also disagree with everything said by everyone else.”

To help keep Republicans across the country on message, the RNC drafted three outrage templates:

#1  “We are indignant that the Obama administration’s socialist policy of _________ seeks to take money from your grandparents and give it to gay illegals. Maybe liberals like gay illegals, but we don’t. We like you grandparents. Don’t you like your grandparents? America is at a crossroads: we can be a nation run by gay illegals, or a nation run by your grandparents. The choice is yours.”

#2 “Obama’s plan to _________won’t create jobs and will only serve to punish job creators. Creating jobs is the government’s number one responsibility, especially in a free-market economy. Evidently this administration hates jobs, hates people who create jobs, and absolutely loathes creative job creation. It is Obama’s responsibility to give you a job, ideally a job creating jobs, and that is a responsibility he has failed to live up to, with regards to jobs and job creation.”

#3 “The science on _________is inconclusive. I am a man/woman (please only circle one) of faith. Faith means accepting a concept in the absence of any evidence, which I am fine with, but I reject science that is inconclusive. If that sounds incongruent, it’s because you lack faith. Through the ages, science has been the instrument of the devil and the Illuminati. I’m not saying Obama is the devil or that he is a member of the Illuminati. I’m just saying that by his own admission he eats arugula.”