Adam Dorsey.com

typetrigger of the day: “Tassels”

It’s like one giant tassel. That’s what they should call it. A “tassel.” I think that’s a better name anyway, better than comparing it to something that comes out of a horse’s butt. A “Ponytail.” Sounds like some weird sexual act. Can’t believe they let little girls walk around with something called a “Ponytail.” Not my daughter. Not my hypothetical, unborn daughter. No, sir. 

I had a friend who used to like to bat them around. The ponytails. Excuse me, the tassels. Whenever we had some long boring assembly to go to in school—you know the ones where they would make all of the classes throughout the day ten minutes shorter so that you could sit in the gymnasium for an hour or two learning about the dangers of drugs or abstinence or positive thinking or something—I had a friend who used to choose a real good tassel to sit behind during these things. He would choose his bleacher seat very carefully, getting one with primo length and sheen, then spend the next hour just staring at that tassel. Sometimes he’d take the back of his hand and gently brush up against it. If the girl turned around he’d just smile that smile of his and she’d think she was the one out of line, that she was just imagining things. God, by the end of some of these assemblies, through a complex regiment of “accidental” grazes and recovery smiles, he’d just be batting the tassel around, like a kitten with a play toy. Once I saw him manage this with two tassels at once, double-fisting the tassels, and when the girls turned around they looked at each other, blamed each other, and he just sat there smiling. 

You’re right, maybe “tassel” is creepier than “ponytail.” Forget what I said.

The above is something I wrote for typetrigger, an awesome writing website that gives you a new “trigger” every 6 hours and 300 words with which to express yourself. In the near future it’ll solve all writer’s block, or at least give you something funny to read. It’s in beta right now, but if you ask me nice, I’ll send you an invite.

The Idea Hole

I want a program where I can press a hotkey, write something smart or funny or true, and then it saves it to a personal database. I want to be able to tag it with keywords, and then search for posts containing those keywords. Everyday I want it to remind me of one of the notes I wrote years ago, one of the ones I’ve forgotten about, so that I can write new notes about that old note. Later I want to take all of the little bits and combine them into a book and then sell that book and make tons of money off of it, even though no one buys books anymore.

I want all of those girls from my high school to read the book. I want them to message me on facebook and say they will pay for me to fly first class to their lame small town to fuck them until their shitty husbands and boring children just go to a mixed-martial arts event and never ever come back. Then I want to facebook message these girls back, and tell them that I think it’s “cute” that they read my book on paper instead of on something like a Kindle or an iPad or a Gameboy or something else that’s relevant to the world. Then I want to tell them that I’m sorry, baby, but I’ve got a girl, and she’s the best—like literally the best girl ever—like Victoria Beckham if she’d never been in those lame Spice Girls, or married that lame soccer player, or learned the definition of “posh”… Like she just WAS posh, you know? My girl’s like that.

But hey other girls, if I see you around during the holidays when I’m back home and sarcastically shopping in Wal-Mart like I do after the right amount of egg nog, I’ll wave to you, and your husband will say who’s that, and you’ll say no one, but he’ll know the truth, because he’ll have seen me on Good Morning America or Jimmy Kimmel or Charlie Rose or some other bullshit show people only watch clips of on The Soup anyway, and your man will feel like slightly less of a man. Or maybe your man will look in the shopping cart and see my book next to his over-the-counter “vitality” pills, my book that you re-buy twice a week just to feel closer to me, because I wrote that thing that time about being such a big fan of the movie Conspiracy Theory. And look, other girls, I’m going to unfriend you on this facebook thing, but I need you to try and not take it personally, it’s just that I don’t give a shit what you think about anything. But listen, you and your husband and your kids, you can totally “like” my facebook fan page if you want. My publicist handles that shit anyway.

Wait, what was I saying? Yes! Software! Where’s this magic software? And don’t tell me that this magic software I’m looking for is Tumblr, you cheeky bastards, this isn’t a joke, I’m serious here. Someone make this, and I’ll endorse it to those nice ladies on The View (“nice ladies”?? So that blonde republican won’t be there obviously, what’s her name? Whoopi-something? JK LOL!!1!)—-I’ll endorse it after I’m famous, and hey guy, you’ll make tons of money. All you have to do is make the software now, okay guy, then it’ll make me organized and productive and successful, and then you’ll be successful too, deal? Then you can tell the girls from high school who facebook you whatever you want to tell them too, okay? Okay, guy?

I think this is going to be a great partnership, guy. Let’s call the software “The Idea Hole.” Unless you think that’s going to make people want to fuck it? No, you’re right, guy, that’s almost EXACTLY what we want them to think, isn’t it? God, I hope you’re writing all this down, I’m going to need to put it in my Idea Hole later, you know, if these “vitality” pills really do what they advertise, otherwise the Idea Hole will just have to settle for my cunnilingus-crying combo again.

TypeTrigger: “Night Swim”

Here’s a TypeTrigger that I did today with the trigger “Night Swim.” TypeTrigger is a cool new service for writers and people who want to be writers. You write a short piece for a “trigger” that they provide, and new triggers pop up every 6 hours, so you never get writer’s block. Drop me an e-mail and I’ll get you in the beta…

Night Swim

The ice cube hits my drink with a splash. I wipe the drops of lime and tonic and gin from my face. “Come on,” she screams from the water, barely visible but for the moon’s reflection off the lake. “Quit acting like my dad! Take off your pants and  get in here.” 

“I just poured this,” I jostle the ice in my glass so that it echoes a “ting-ting” through the forest trees. I take a sip from the gin and tonic and—- 

Oh Christ, I am acting like her father. I mean, besides drinking this gin and tonic, and being thirty years her senior, and teaching at the same school as her father—-but who wears a Black Label Ralph Loren sport jacket to a midsummer night’s lake rendezvous? Rachel’s father that’s who. And just like William, I’m sitting here drinking my drink and remembering those cliched days of yore while a beautiful co-ed doggy paddles before me, nude and begging for my company. She looks just like Debbie in this light, which I guess makes sense. 

What am I doing here? When did my lectures bleed into my love life? Probably the same time William began signing my checks, which was about the same time those thirty-year-old grad school jealousies of him and Debbie grabbed hold of every facet of my life, which—-for those really keeping score—-was about a week before I decided the solution was to bed this lovely teacher’s assistant. 

“Coooome oooon!” she whines again, wailing arms and glistening breasts the only thing visible in her lazy backstroke. Genetically, she’s half-William and half-Debbie, so I guess I’m about to fuck them both, which seems… appropriate. 

I let my ice melt

TypeTrigger

A friend of mine in Seattle is working on a website called TypeTrigger. It’s for writers, with the intent of defeating writer’s block. Every few hours they have a new “trigger,” and you use that trigger to inspire a short bit of writing (300 words max). Then you can read what other people have written using the same trigger. I think it’s super cool.

You can check it out at http://www.typetrigger.com but they’re in beta right now. That said, if you’re a writer, a friend, and you drop me a note, I can probably hook you up (I’ve still got 3 invites to give out).

Below is the piece I wrote today, from the trigger “While I was out.” It is exactly 300 words, because I am crazy like that. Enjoy:

I wake up in a pile of my own disgusting. This isn’t like that movie The Hangover at all. There’s no exciting action montage. There’s no hilarious Mike Tyson. There are no friends. I’m just here alone, on the floor. I’m not having awesome adventures trying to remember whathilarious antics took place the night before. I remember everything that happened the night before. I just don’t remember why I would ever think those things were a good idea. 

It’s a sobering experience. It really is. You know, besides the fact that I’m still completely drunk, it’s a totally sobering experience. 

We used to just drink Jack and Cokes. Then she started being concerned about a nonexistent tummy pouch, and so she switched to Jack and Diet Coke. I figured I’d one up her, so I switched to Jack and… well, to straight Jack. In retrospect that’s probably where things took a turn. 

Last night, in between the shots and the sipping, I remember ordering a Jack and Diet Coke. Keeping it near me, I nursed on it between my other drinks. That bitter mix of booze and aspartame made me feel like she was there, like we were sharing a drink again. 

So then I called her, to tell her about my Nutrasweet flashback, and she said hello half asleep and I said hey, Kara, Diet Coke and whiskey, remember? and she said Adam and I said yeah and she said it’s late and I said yeah. She asked me if I was okay and I said yeah. Then she stayed on the line for a while more and then she said goodbye. 

The cool think about sleeping in late is that you can start drinking immediately.

Tipping for Quality

I wrote this today, but it is fiction, because I had a really good cup of a coffee.

I go to put a dollar in the jar, but then my hand hesitates. I remember that godawful mocha in that Shitbucks on La Cienega. I tipped there. I tipped before tasting, you know, which is the norm, but it’s a stupid norm. I felt so guilty having tipped—I feel so guilty still, today—because maybe my single dollar-bill and loose change encouraged that barista to keep barista-ing. I mean, it tasted like Yoohoo squeezed from Satan’s anus, someone should have been fired over that fucking mocha.

The dollar is already out, though. Do I put in the dollar? What else do I do, I mean, keep it until I taste the coffee? She’s cute. That shouldn’t matter, but it does. So maybe the dollar doesn’t matter. Maybe the coffee doesn’t matter. —No! Eff that, this is L.A., everyone is cute, the hard part is finding a good cup of coffee. I’ve even tipped dudes down here because they make a good cup of coffee, and I mean, that goes against everything I believe in.

Oh god, she thinks I’m stealing this dollar. My hand is literally in the cookie jar. What facial expression do I flash to make her aware that I’m not taking this money, but instead putting it in? Well, not putting it in, but thinking about putting it in—ultimately taking it out, but thinking about putting it in. Oh god, I’m sexualizing this, aren’t I?

I drop the dollar in and smile. She gives me a fake-smile and passes me my mocha. It’s a pretty smile. Maybe I can keep coming back here. Maybe I can ask her out. Did that smile mean something? Maybe it was a fake-smile because her mind was so busy thinking about me putting my tip into her tip jar, then taking my tip out of her tip jar, then putting my tip back in her tip jar, over and over again. Yeah…

I smile at her again. I take a sip. BLSHFSFD! A spit the coffee all over the clean white floor. Why is Satan drinking so much Yoohoo and then selling his concentrated shit to Los Angeles area coffee shops? Fuck this town.

Happy Cat channeling Robert Evans

So, as happens many times in my job and lots of other jobs, things have to be rewritten for one reason or another. For instance, this t-shirt went through several revisions, revisions that changed the audience of people who would enjoy the shirt, and because of that my original writeup had to be scrapped and I did a new one.

This happens a lot and it doesn’t bother me, it’s all part of the process, but today I’d like to share my original write-up. It is written from the perspective of Happy Cat, the first cat on I Can Has Cheezburger (the one who wants the cheeseburger in question). I figured if a cat became a huge star like this cat has, he would probably grow into a Robert Evans-like personality. Inspired, I watched a bunch of The Kid Stays in the Picture (which I always keep near me), and wrote the following piece. Enjoy:

Below, please find an excerpt from the upcoming The Cat Stays in the Lol: The Autobiography of Happy Cat.

There are three sides to every story: Your side, my side, and the misspelled caption on the funny cat picture. People are always asking me how I got into the pictures. I tell them I just wanted a cheezburger. Ha. At the time? I’m thinking to myself, wow, this can’t be happening to me. When it was over, the cameraman pat me on the ears and said, good job kid. Forty-eight hours later, my picture was sitting in every inbox around the world. The subject line? “Lulz.” Ha, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

The fame. The attention. The catnip with Mick Jagger. Was I enjoying it? You bet. Truth be told, I thought it would last forever. Lucky for me, it did. Not that there haven’t been LOLs to come after me, to follow in my paw-steps. Longcat? Lolrus? Monorail cat? They’re all tops in my book. 

Jump to November 14th, 2009 — I’ve just climbed the biggest scratching post of my life, I feel like a kitteh again, like before I was declawed. I’m at the top, the scratching post summit, and I’m enjoying a cheezburger, you know, for old times sake. I sit up there, gazing out over the intertubes. Were they all WINs? Of course not, but FAIL is not in my vocabulary… even if it’s in my bookmarks.

Did I make some people laugh? You know it. Hey, if I got some free cheezburgers out of the deal, so be it, I’m not telling. Haha. What a ride it’s been. Why did I do it? I did it for teh lulz. I did it all for teh lulz, and it was worth every minute. Would I change a thing? Ha, maybe I’d look up the right way to spell cheezburger.

To Walk and Drive in L.A.

I took this picture one day while walking to the gym.

The people in this town are aggressive drivers. That’s an L.A. stereotype, and it is a stereotype that is based in what I like to call COMPLETE FACT. If you come from a small town where no one runs a yellow light, in L.A. you will quickly be rear-ended for obeying traffic laws. If like me you honed your driving skills in the passive-aggressive Pacific Northwest, where eye contact is avoided at all costs, even when that asshole almost just hit me why isn’t he looking at me he’s just looking straight ahead like I didn’t almost die—the orchestral honking of Los Angeles will hit you hard. The honking is how people communicate down here, not to say that they are without anger, because oh gosh are they angry, but the anger comes in spurts and then is just as quickly gone. How often? I don’t know, how often do you drive through an intersection?

But you can get used to this. You move down here, your aggressive driving skills improve until you’re more aggressive than everyone else, then they level off to fit in with the pack. Worst case scenario, your car gets bumped into every once in a while, you exchange insurance info, and you go about your day. No matter what, you’re protected at all times by a huge chunk of roaring steel, so you’re relatively safe. Plus there’s an anonymity there, like you’re wearing some sort of oversized Detroit Sunglasses. The same can’t be said about traveling on foot.

To these assholes’ credit, the sidewalks are relatively small here. They can also be tightly packed sometimes. BUT JESUS CHRIST PEOPLE, CHOOSE A FUCKING SIDE AND LET’S SINGLE-FILE THIS SHIT. I mean, seriously. If Angelenos are aggressive drivers (and they are), then they’re fucking inconsiderate walkers. No one moves to the edge of the sidewalk to let you by. If a couple is walking side-by-side, they will never separate and let you pass by, so have fun stepping in the dog shit of that little grass island. That is if you’re lucky enough to get a grass island and you don’t have to just step right out into oncoming aggressive traffic. And speaking frankly concerning the shit of dogs: dog owners, please stop turning your leashes into urban trip wires. We’re sort of on the same team here. Sort of.

I mean come on, if there’s a group of pedestrians traveling in a pack, why is it that I’m the one who has to go all sideways to get through? And even then I still have to graze you as I go by? Are you that starved for attention? I’m sorry that your career isn’t going how you thought it would be. I’m sorry that you thought you’d move down here and that you’d be Brad Pitt by now. But look, bro, I’m sure you think you’re as important as the Pittster, but that doesn’t mean you can’t share some sidewalk. I can’t help but think that even Bradlaham Pittlincoln would make a little eye contact with me, choose a side, and we’d both walk by each other without the hassle that you’re causing. And no, I don’t know if Bradlaham Pittlincoln is a Brad Pitt who’s been bitten by a radioactive Abraham Lincoln or if it’s some sort of alternate history celebrity-couple nickname.

Back to the point: Are you really that bitter, people? Is your sense of entitlement really so out of control that we can’t share this asphalt? If we work together, we can make it so that I don’t go batshit crazy and murder you all. Okay? Okay. Bah. And don’t even get me started on L.A. bicyclists.