Category: In Conversation
Where Are You From?
Today's question at the office:
If you're an expatriate from a country that no longer exists, how do you answer the question of "Where are you from?"
Do you say "I'm from the former Soviet Union" or "I'm from Czechoslovakia" or "Yugoslavia," even though they don't exist anymore?
Or do you give a more complicated answer, like "I'm from a town that is now located in Uzbekistan."
Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who left a country before it broke away/fell apart that I can ask. Maybe I can make a pen pal in Tuvalu, then wait for climate change to sink that island and see what they say when asked the question.
"I guess I'm from the sea."
Christmas Morning Chat Session
Pop-in-law: What did Santa bring you Michael?
Michael: Oh, you know. This & that.
Michael: An I.O.U. slip of paper. A drawing of a hand turkey. Two and a half match sticks.
Mom-in-law: Candy, nuts, and oranges?
Michael: A stripe of toothpaste in an envelope.
Michael: Just.... squeezed out into an envelope.
Something Awful About Spider-Man in Cinema
God I hope they use the old scripts where peter parker is a 35 year old neurotic mess after being spiderman for 18 years, where he's chugging 5 gallons of milk on the way home every night trying to replenish the calories and protein he burns through every day, where his spiderman costume is a halloween costume he bought at a shop after he became a pop culture hit because it was better quality than his original suit and where he wears fake mechanical webshooters because he has a deeply rooted fear that one day during a fight one of his gloves might come off and people will see that the webs are biological and everyone will think he's a worthless freak and this is the only thing he could think of to stave off his own self hatred. -- Cinnamon Bastard @Something Awful
Kyle Kinane vs The Roller Rink
See, it's for moments like these that I have a Twitter account. The world could care less about anything I actually contribute, but having the account allows me to see comedians get into fights and this is the best since Neil Hamburger tried to get AXE to cancel a concert out of respect for the mourning fans of actor Tom Bosley.
Kyle Kinane wrote:
When I was little I dropped a brick on a frog and this Drew Berrymore roller derby movie is still the worst thing I've ever experienced.
This cause a chorus of roller derby participants and fans to start inviting him to perform crude activities, to which he has (so far) responded with the following:
kylekinane: Wow, people got really upset that I shit on that shitty movie about that shitty sport. What a shitty attitude, you shits.
kylekinane: Looks like I'm getting "hip checked" all over twitter. Is that the right term, tattooed women who mistake being loud for being interesting?
kylekinane: Rollerderby names still available: Barista-farian, Wheel Annoying At Dive Bars, Obligatory Ramones Shirt, Boring 2B Wild, Literal Fishnets.
Work colleague via IM: A panda walks into a restaurant, sits down, and orders a sandwich. He eats the sandwich, pulls out a gun, and shoots the waiter dead. As the panda stands up to go, the manager shouts, “Hey! Where are you going? You just shot my waiter, and you didn’t even pay for your sandwich!”
“Hey, man, I’m a PANDA!” the panda shouts back. “Look it up!”
The manager opens his dictionary and reads:
Panda: A tree-dwelling marsupial of Asian origin, characterized by distinct black and white coloring. Eats shoots and leaves.

M. SignalStation: Pandas are not known for their grasp of the structure of English and the importance of punctuation. Being native to China, it's a miracle they understand enough English to even get to the point where they can order sandwiches, so some credit has to be given, regardless of the price paid by the waiter's family and the owner of the establishment.