kristyeldredge

[kristyeldredge]

The Danish Concept of Negge

Lie under a lead blanket. Receive bad dental news.

Put on cozy house slippers – for the 212th day in a row because you’re unemployed. 

Surround yourself with gentle colors – of your meds!

Collect scented candles – pine, rosemary, sage. Don’t light them – the flames can push you perilously close to psychosis. Enjoy their scents unlit. 

Embrace despair, as Kierkegaard said. You think you know better than Kierkegaard? Also he was Danish and so is Negge.

Hyggebusker are the baggy sweatpants you curl up in during Hygge. Neggebusker are the paper pants they gave you at the psych hospital. Layer them with warmer items.

Put on your coziest, thickest sweater – the kind that’s not for work, only for sub-zero hikes or skiing. Recall you did wear it to work and wonder if that’s why you lost your job.

Indulge yourself! If you want to watch that serial killer show, forget your objections to media that portray women as prey. Glory in the darkness – this is Negge. (But don’t fantasize about it later when you’re in bed – that’s way beyond Negge, getting into Pathologge.)

Curl up in a cozy nook and watch the world go by, like it does every day anyway. Will you ever speak to a human soul again? Wondering this is very Negge.

[kristyeldredge]

Lolita the Killer Whale To Be Freed

                            A Love That Dare Not Spout Its Name 

Oh Lolita. Light of my life, behemoth of my loins. My sin, my soul. 

Mangled through the loudspeaker system of Whaleworld, she was Lo-lee-da. She was Lola at the feeding trough, attended by burly Neds and Nicks who spooned kelp muscularly into her jaws. 

But in my telephoto lens and later at night in my cerebellum, she was always Lolita. 

Did she have a precursor? Yes indeed – may I introduce a certain Willy of Wallyworld for whom I had unrequited teenage “hots” for five anguished years. If not for Willy, I might not have been as susceptible to Lolita’s shimmery flanks and louche blowhole. Willy set up the longing; Lolita swam into the trap. 

How did we do it? How did we evade the aquarium patrols for so long? Well, I happened to have a device called a motorboat – I spent many an illusory hour zipping mindlessly around the marina even as the guards stared me down with their gargantuan, phallic binoculars. As if I cared one millicentime for the local brats – they could flash their brown limbs all they wanted, I was only interested in my 4,000-ton darling surging erotically in the depths. 

And Lolita was there, to be had. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if I got close and shot tranquilizer into her with a borrowed dart gun (doctor, garage) I could sometimes access a segment of her tenebrous, black-glowing quiddity. And clinging awkwardly to her damply rubberish hide, I’d enjoy myself (as His Honor put it later) for a few precious seconds until some primitive survival reflex kicked in and she dove, my unpredictable darling, at a violently sharp angle into black depths, dislodging me to fight my way back to the surface. 

This got wearying, I don’t deny. I’d have to locate my boat and swim often a great distance to retrieve it, my mood not improved by Lolita surfacing with showy lunges and siphon spurts – activity designed to delight shallow Bobs and Bettys on the tour boats, which wounded my feelings after so recent an intimacy. 

I leaf through these memories with both joy and misery, for Lolita gave me much of both. And I return to a question I often put to myself: Why could I only love whales? Was it the adolescent obsession with Willy, which glittered in memory though it took place exclusively in movie theaters, that set my compass eternally on 10-ton mammalian love objects? I’ve never quite figured it out and I refuse callow counseling about “appropriateness” – that signpost of mediocrity wherever it alights!  

But I’m tired of explaining myself, which I’ve done ad infinitum from both this jail cell and the hospital where I’m featured in silly classes on interspecies perversity. What I want to convey today is my fond regret on learning Lolita is being “freed” – she will be taken to her original home in the Pacific Northwest, where I always sensed she’d end up, being a very broad sort of creature in the end. I can’t say I’ll exactly miss her. You see, alas, my passion for my ethereal cetacean ebbed since she reached 50 whale years. With age has come a dimming of her glorious, shimmery snout – it’s now merely functional – and even her tail only waves in desultory nods where once it swept about like the seraphims’ sashes in Botticelli’s Venus. As for her hide, it barely gleams, except in my memory, of course. 

I console myself with these lines, inscribed forever on my soul:

Oh Lolita, you are my girl – who cares about size or phylum? 

Are you Beluga, Orca or Baleen? What matter, my sweet Leviathan? 

[kristyeldredge]

The Debt Ceiling Crisis

What is a debt ceiling except who cares

What can it possibly have to do with me times 8,000

What’s going to happen zzzzz

Will any of it affect my life, lmfao 

Why is pizza so expensive now, is that related?

Never mind, next crisis please

[kristyeldredge]

The Richest Man in the World Offers These Perks to His Skeleton Crew:

Bagels on Fridays 

No pesky union fees

Free Medicaid

Flex time: Either 12 noon to midnight or midnight to 12 noon – your choice! 

Fitness facilities: A great way to stay fit is to physically get off your couch and come to work. Novel, I know.

Work from home: Okay if you're severely disabled. Must provide video. 

Onsite laundromat: Well, not quite onsite. Three exits away.

Trips to Mars: You legitimately might get a trip to Mars. I mean that’s not nothing, right?

Overtime: We can’t pay overtime right now -- it’s all hands on deck. Did Ahab pay his whalers overtime? There’s such a thing as commitment to a vision.

[kristyeldredge]

Obey This. No, This.

Why You Should Be Afraid

Worry Burnout Is Real

“Apocalypse” Not an Exaggeration

Doomsday Scenarios Not Helpful

Grim. New. Statistics.

Tips for Holiday Cheer

Deadeningly Pessimistic Forecasts

How to Hold on to Optimism

Tidal Wave of Despair

Fun Ways to Fold Napkins

Get Ready for Disaster

The Surprisingly Low-Calorie Mint

We’re Out of Time

We Have 15 Minutes Left

Find a Bunker

Try These Easy Thigh-Firming Exercises

Life As We Know It Is Over

Turn That Frown Upside Down

Say Your Goodbyes Now

Time for Holiday Rice Chex!

[kristyeldredge]

Rock Band Names for Our Diminished Times

The Strolling Scones 

The Beatens

Minideth

Taupe Sabbath

Arcade Ember

Quartz Jam

Princess

The Antidote

Puce Day

The Ordinary Pumpkins

Mousey-Brownie

Alice in Sweatpants

Warm Chili Peppers

No La Tengo

Jefferson Three-Speed

Some Doubt

The Missionary Positions

The Harmers

Medford

[kristyeldredge]

Donald Trump’s Letter for Joe

Dear Joe, I wont leave a long letter bicause thers no point riting to a FONEY. You are a lier and you did not get elected presedant. You are allso very STUPED. You are treying to controll the poletticel prosess and you CANT. 

Be kerefull becuz ther are ennemies behined every piller in here, “Joe.” You wont last in the job, the job is eezy but you wont be abel to do it, you dont have any “feel for it”. Things you are expectid to do will be to hard for you becauz you dont have any hyumen feelins or instinks for fairness. You wil try to chainje things but juges wont let you because you’re ideas are RONG.

It makes me sick how you are comming hyre and I am expekted to leve. I hope you choke. I knoe you will FAIL. You arnt sooted to the job wich is obveous to evryone. It woud be sad if it wasnt so skary what you will do to the countrey.

I left a bunch of Covid germs in places the kleeners wont find them. 

Mary chrismas.

Donald  

[kristyeldredge]

Things Robert Mueller Is Thinking

I kind of told you so.

Didn’t I imply this on page 1041? Does “Read between the lines” mean “Hey, why don’t I take everything at face value?”

My font was super-signaling this.

I as good as said it.

You could tell from my gait.

These are the ways I looked:

Grave

Unhappy

Insular

Low-key

Trustworthy

Yar (means trustworthy) Hulloooo.

Cf. Bryan Adams’s “Do I Have to Say the Words?”

[kristyeldredge]

The Secret to Avoiding Having the Most Depressing Summer of All Time

Steal away under cover of night

Go to the North pole

Or the South, but North is easier 

Through powerful magnets attached to jet-fuel engines, sloooowly halt the rotation of the earth while also slooowly changing the earth’s axis (also use magnets)

Return home and say hello to fall – we don’t have to go through a depressing summer unless we are complete DEFEATISTS

[kristyeldredge]

What To Do On The Dreariest St. Patrick’s Day Since 1347

Wash and disinfect your hands, put on gloves and go to your corner store. Pick up a sixpack of beer. Buy it with cash that could be contaminated so lend the cashier your Purell. Throw away your gloves and put on new gloves to receive your change. Make a mental note to disinfect the money at home. Disinfect your hands outside the store. Go home quickly, wash your hands for 20 seconds, then disinfect your hands, then your phone, then your hands again and then your phone again. Drink a beer thinking of the Auld Sod. 

[kristyeldredge]

Important Information from Your Healthcare Provider: Yes, It’s the Same as Last Week But You Might Not Have Seen Our New FONT

We want to go over our privacy policy with you.

We will always guard your privacy.

Under every circumstance we will:

-       Not tell as opposed to tell

-       Refuse to be a blabbermouth

-       Be discreet with your information

-       Do the opposite of share inappropriately

-       Not give away – oh we said that

-       Be responsible with your data

-       For more, see pages 8, 9, 10 and 13

What We WILL do:

-       Mail brochures to you explaining things we’ve already explained

-       Mail more brochures explaining things every human knows innately

-       Produce countless, multi-page, expensive brochures 

[kristyeldredge]

Budget Levels of U.S. Healthcare

Leaf level

Lint level

Used Kleenex level

Fruit Fly level

Toe Jam level

Fecal Fleck level

Masturbation Hanky level

Republican level

[kristyeldredge]

I Am the Food Intolerance You Failed to Plan For

I am not vegetarianism. Vegetarianism, with its reliance on cheese, is as outmoded as lampshades encased in pleated plastic.

I am not veganism. Veganism uses too many soy-based meat substitutes – those are death to me.

Gluten-free is old hat. Yes, I can’t absorb gluten but who can?

Dairy, as usual, is not an open-and-shut case. I can tolerate pure cream but nothing more affordable. Certain cheeses will work but no one can guess what they are.

Yes, you heard me – grains are out. Oh and carbs. Forget about potatoes, corn, yams, rice, bread –  including stuffing – and anything else pleasant. But that's not the intolerance.

Pies – no, never, not of any description. Fruit and fructose do not metabolize in my system. Cream-based food is poison to me (though not cream itself). Parfaits and other whipped desserts can deliver harmful electrolytes to my lacrimal glands. Chocolate-covered mints give me seizures.

You still haven’t guessed the intolerance.  

Gravy? You mean the oil-based goo laced with additives we pour over meat and carb substitutes? Well, I like it but it’s just common sense to avoid it but anyway that’s not the intolerance.

Oh all right, I’ll tell you. I’m following the Australopithecus diet – meat cured by dead flies and only the kinds of fish that were evolving in 900,000 B.C. I.e., tadpoles but not frogs; leeches but not eels. I can eat mitochondria.

Green beans? What part of 900,000 B.C. don’t you understand? Phaseolus vulgaris, or string beans, weren’t cultivated for human consumption until c. 400 B.C.

Squash looks pretty but it wasn’t available to our Australopithecan ancestors. We ate mostly Savannah grasses or grubs.

Grub substitutes can include risotto and farro but really should be actual insects.

Again, it’s not to be troublesome that I ask you to respect these dietary guidelines but because I have too much respect for my body to subject it to the elaborate poisons you’re putting on the table.

And no, I’m not mocking the physically handicapped – I just find it more natural to walk on all fours. Now please pass the cream.

[kristyeldredge]

What Flyover Man Thinks About the Ukraine Scandal

-      There’s an eerie parallel with Euripides’ play Heracleidae, not to be Captain Obvious.

-      The attempt to normalize China by pairing it with Ukraine is a hilarious Stygian knot, we all keep saying down at Applebees. 

-      This just proves Hegel was right.

-      I’m a little behind. Has Hunter Biden’s exculpatory position been undermined by right-wing exceptionalism yet? My question is mostly rhetorical.

-      Nietszche anticipated all of this.

-      How much of our interpretation of Ukraine’s position is subject to confusions caused by the Cyrillic alphabet?

-      This means the end of Trump, for which I’m very grateful. I’m an unemployed factory worker, looking forward to Warren’s progressive policies and free healthcare.

[kristyeldredge]

What Should I Know Before Taking PlizzPlazz?

- Do not take PlizzPlazz if your family cannot afford to pay for a funeral 

- Do not take PlizzPlazz if you’re a prima donna who freaks out if your hands develop sideways scissor-spasms while you also go temporarily blind

- Do not take PlizzPlazz if you don’t understand your symptoms may get worse while taking PlizzPlazz, after taking PlizzPlazz, or even if you are within 100 miles of PlizzPlazz

- Do not take PlizzPlazz if you can’t handle taking drugs like PlizzPlazz

- Do you feel good? Are you content? No? Then you might as well take PlizzPlazz. 

 -- Call your doctor right away if you begin to develop rigor mortis.

[kristyeldredge]

Famous People’s Reactions to Being Held in Contempt

Emily Dickinson:

             Earthworm, my master — 

             Ease my shame with

                      Your slimy unction—

Ernest Hemingway

           They held me in contempt. I obscenitied in the milk of their mothers. We                       called it a draw.

Slavov Zizek

             I love being held in contempt. The bad part is when you’re no longer          held in contempt. That gets degrading.

Julian Assange

           Pitiful gesture from an impotent system. Could I get a Skor bar?

The Donner Party

           This is so far from the worst thing that’s happened to us.

Charles Manson

           Say what now?  

[kristyeldredge]

Other Wording the New York Times Can Use to Tiptoe Around the President’s LIES

“President Trump revived an inaccurate refrain about doctors executing babies” – New York Times, 4/28/19

·     The president gave a shoutout to the scientifically unproven assertion that the Holocaust never happened

·     Trump called climate change “a conspiracy by the left” in an oft-repeated mix-up about what some call actualities

·     POTUS gave a tip of the hat to the rather outmoded concept of eugenics

·     The commander-in-cheif restated his not-yet-fact-checked claim that everyone is lying except him

·     POTUS gave another sashay around the bandstand to the imprecise notion that Caucasians are superior

·     Trump sentimentally reminisced about Hitler’s executive skills, something not generally lauded

·     The president dusted off a faulty piece of folklore about all immigrants being serial killers

·     POTUS humorously reminded the crowd there’s a sale on tiki torches at Lowe’s (untrue, per Lowe’s) 

·     The president then sang out a medley of counterfactual assertions about the Mueller report, his connections with Russia, his successes in office, his popularity rating, his tax records, his absolute power, his sexual prowess, and other matters in his highly specious and unsound rhetorical manner, evoking snake-oil salesmen of the old West and other Merry Old Conmen.