Tag Archives: John Roderick

A Man and His Monkey Tweets

As a result of a brief conversation with John Roderick on JoCoCruiseCrazy, I decided to tweet once a day about tacos for the entire month of March 2013.

To my great delight, people enjoyed the taco tweets so I decided to continue the daily tweet series.

I felt the obvious follow up to tacos was monkeys. I stand by that decision for many reasons. Like most humans, my two favorite non-swear words are monkey and pants. Monkeys are a great source of comedy. They are so very close to humans and yet so very different. I’m sure monkeys would like tacos, but they have yet to extend that love to tweeting about tacos. But one can hope.

Below is every monkey tweet from April 2013. If you enjoy, you can find me on Twitter here.

Day One: Monkeys with typewriters will eventually write Shakespeare. Monkeys with iPhones will eventually Instagram their junk.

Day Two: Idea for a movie: Rise of the Pedantic Monkeys Who Are Pissed Off Because Technically They Are Not Monkeys, They Are Apes.

Day Three: “Are you throwing poo or is poo throwing you? A TED Talk by a Monkey.” This CHANGED my life.

Day Four: Things that look better on a monkey than a human: fez, diaper, red jackets, monocle, top hat, google glasses, bling.

Day Five: One of the big differences between humans and monkeys is that monkeys don’t use the phrase “it is what it is” so often.

Day Six: From a monkey perspective, King Kong is a romantic comedy with a really bleak ending.

Day Seven: I want to believe that somewhere, right now, a monkey is narrating the actions of David Attenborough.

Day Eight: When I’m rich and crazy I will have a monkey butler. That is, a human butler whose only job is to bring me monkeys.

Day Nine: Monkeys have many euphemisms for throwing poo: flinging the waste, forgetting the past, sending the tweet, etc.

Day Ten: Here’s my suggestion for the next Bourne movie: it should be called The Bourne Monkey. That’s all I’ve got so far.

Day Eleven: This one time I did a commercial with the monkey from Friends. Seriously.

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Day Twelve: Monkey with a banjo: funny. Monkey with a ukulele: hip. Monkey with a sitar: pothead.

Day Thirteen: There should be monkey bars for adults where an actual monkey would make me a martini.

Day Fourteen: Monkey see, monkey do unless a monkey sees someone planking and then the monkey just shakes his head and sighs.

Day Fifteen: If I commanded an army of Flying Monkeys, I would mostly have them steal people’s smartphones and fav this tweet.

Day Sixteen: Today my faith in humanity was restored when I read that two of the most used passwords are “iloveyou” and “monkey.”

Day Seventeen: Things that are so easy a monkey could do them: riding a pig, visiting Ikea, outsmarting Charlton Heston, hugging.

Day Eighteen: Emo monkeys just want to sit in the trees, listen to The Cure, and dream of picking things out of Robert Smith’s hair.

Day Nineteen: A philosophical question: If monkeys had their own social media site would they post pictures of cute humans?

Day Twenty: Things that monkeys don’t have to deal with: pants, their personal brand, reading Breaking Bad spoilers, bad hair days.

Day Twenty-One: True story: Told a friend that a warehouse task was so easy a monkey could do it. He broke the machine and looked sad.

Day Twenty-Two: Right now, Andy Serkis is probably in a motion capture suit pretending to be a monkey. Possibly for a movie role.

Day Twenty-Three: Villains that would be better if they had little monkey sidekicks: Darth Vader, Dracula, Hans Gruber, tax auditors.

Day Twenty-Four: I own socks with pictures of googly eyed monkeys. The socks read “DRUNKIE MONKEY.” This isn’t a joke, it’s just true.

Day Twenty-Five: I want to see a horror film called Monkeys on a Segway.

Day Twenty-Six: One cool thing about monkeys is that they don’t eat bananas ironically. They really fucking love bananas.

Day Twenty-Seven: When a small monkey starts screaming it means they’re angry, tired, or they just read a tweet that spoiled Breaking Bad.

Day Twenty-Eight: Monkey saying: When life hands you lemons, rub them on your body, sniff them, scream, then throw them at another monkey.

Day Twenty-Nine: Of all the monkeys in the world, one of my very favorites is stoic space monkey.

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Day Thirty: Monkeys with typewriters will eventually type Shakespeare. Monkeys with iPhones wilt evening tip shaken pearl.

Monkeys! Thanks! In May 2013, I’ll be tweeting daily with super uplifting affirmations!

Joseph Scrimshaw
Writer/Comedian/Monkey Fan

If you enjoy my work, you can sign up for my fan list here and make more comedy possible by buying a book, a comedy album, or a script here.

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Filed under Daily Tweet Collection

A Man and His Taco Tweets

Tacos are the spirit food of the internet. Particularly, Twitter. When I first joined Twitter in 2009, I would often see tweets along the lines of:

“I just ate a taco!”

And then I would wonder why I was on Twitter. I wondered why I needed to know that someone just ate a taco.

Then I realized I didn’t need to know.

I wanted to know.

I enjoy sharing the daily march through life with a strange and diverse collection of humans. It’s nice to remember we all have victories, failures, and can’t eat a taco without tweeting about it.

On Jonathan Coulton’s JoCoCruiseCrazy, Bill Corbett hosted a panel on writing that eventually ended up as an episode of the great podcast Nerdist Writer’s Panel. During the panel, John Roderick mentioned he was publishing a book of tweets. We got into a discussion about the difference between the world seeing an artist’s creation unfold via social media versus presenting a complete finished product. I asked John if he considered his book of tweets a work in progress. He said, “Well, I’m not including a bunch of taco tweets.”

I was inspired to defend the artistic virtue of taco tweets. So for the month of March 2013, I tweeted about tacos once a day. Here, in all their victories and failures, are my taco tweets. Enjoy.

Day One: Today, for lunch, I did not have a taco.

Day Two: Here’s my breakfast taco recipe: Bacon, a crumpet, and a mimosa in a champagne flute, wrapped in a soft shell. No Doritos.

Day Three: Things that are bullshit: Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t serve tacos. What bullshit.

Day Four: When a man is tired of taco tweets, he is tired of the internet.

Day Five: FREE IDEA FOR CHEAP HOTELS: Replace your paintings of ducks with paintings of tacos. Automatic increase in business.

Day Six: Revenge is a dish best served without tacos. People like tacos.

Day Seven: How does one even define a taco? The tightness of the wrapping? Is a burrito just an uptight taco?

Day Eight: Things that don’t go well with eating tacos: Parkour.

Day Nine: Cookies are great, but if Girl Scouts really wanted to make money they would sell tacos.

Day Ten: Taco Fact: In the time it takes you to read this tweet a million tacos will be consumed at #SXSW.

Day Eleven: Taco fact: No one knows how or why, but Instagram photos of tacos outnumber actual tacos by 2 to 1.

Day Twelve: You are what you eat. Most Americans are 67% taco.

Day Thirteen: Taco fact: There is an actual taco bell. It rang only once in 1547 to declare an armistice in the war of hard versus soft.

Day Fourteen: No one has endorsed me on LinkedIn for tweeting about tacos.

Day Fifteen: Friday is casual taco day. If you work an office job you can eat tacos like you would at home: pantsless and crying.

Day Sixteen: Are there green tacos today? Don’t eat green tacos. It’s an insult to tacos, the color green, Ireland, and eating.

Day Seventeen: Old Irish Proverb: “Give me a taco, I’m Irish.”

Day Eighteen: Tacos are like metaphors. People put a bunch of weird stuff in them that doesn’t make sense to other people.

Day Nineteen: Taco Tip: No matter how much you love tacos, do not name your taco. If you eat a taco you’ve named Steve, you’re a monster.

Day Twenty: How would Batman eat a taco? SUDDENLY FROM OUT OF THE SHADOWS.

Day Twenty One: New idea for a charity event: Tacos Across America. A chain of people holding hands while other people feed them tacos.

Day Twenty Two: H.P. Lovecraft describes a taco: A hideous shelled monstrosity oozing with meat and the festering death of hunger itself.

Day Twenty Three: How to make a good action movie trailer: The hero calmly walks away from a giant explosion WHILE EATING A TACO.

Day Twenty Three BONUS TACO TWEET: Also, I’m 100% aware that I just wrote a tweet with the words “taco” and “explosion” without making a fart joke. I stand by this decision.

Day Twenty Four: Here is my recipe for a hangover taco: Meat, cheese, aspirin, lettuce, electrolytes, guilt, salsa.

Day Twenty Five: If someone is depressed a nice, reassuring, not too gross thing to say is “There’s a taco at the end of the tunnel.”

Day Twenty Six: A wise, old proverb: A prison made of tacos is not a prison at all.

Day Twenty Seven: In space, no one can hear you eat a taco.

Day Twenty Eight: In Mary Shelley’s original book, Frankenstein’s monster doesn’t say “FIRE BAD!” He says “FIRE BAD! TACOS GOOD!”

Day Twenty Nine: A confession: Sometimes I describe hard shell tacos as Daniel Craig’s abs tacos. It’s a pretty disturbing thing to do.

Day Thirty: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a taco.

Day Thirty One, The End: A 21st century philosophical question: If someone eats a taco, but doesn’t tweet about it, did they even eat a taco?

Thank you for reading about my adventures in taco tweets. I sincerely hope you’re eating a taco as you read this. For the month of April, I’ll be tweeting about monkeys once a day. Join me.

Yours in tacos,
Joseph
Comedian/Writer/Taco Eater

If you enjoy my work, you can sign up for my fan list here and make more comedy possible by buying a book, a comedy album, or a script here.

14 Comments

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BEER and PRO-TOOLS: Obsessed Ep 21

Wil Wheaton loves beer! Mike Phirman loves Pro-Tools audio software! Molly Lewis plays the Obsessed theme live! A very special episode of Obsessed recorded live on a boat in the middle of the Caribbean sea for Jonathan Coulton’s JoCoCruiseCrazy! Find out the answer to the following questions and more: What is Wesley Crusher’s favorite beer? Could Mike Phirman kill a man with kindness? Why did Molly Lewis smash a pizza box with a ukulele? Plus, Wil and Mike make sex noises to advertise Joseph’s comedy album VERBING THE NOUN. (Also, if you’re a knitter, listen in the background to hear the clicking noises of the live audience’s crafting!)

AWOOGA! Obsessed is now a part of Feral Audio! Go to Feral now to listen to this episode and subscribe for new ones!

Listen, rate, review, and subscribe to OBSESSED on iTunes.

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MURDER CRUISE 2012

On February 19th, 2012, a boat will leave Fort Lauderdale and sail out into the Caribbean Sea carrying with it the attendees of MURDER CRUISE 2012.

There are several inaccuracies in that sentence, so I will preemptively push my glasses up and correct myself.

Technically, it’s not a boat. It’s a ship. But come on, boat sounds more romantic. Also, it doesn’t sail. It moves under some other power than blowing. Nuclear reactors? Coal shoveling? Perhaps a flux-capacitor? I think it might be a combination of turbines and will power. It’s unknowable without looking it up on wikipedia.

And, no, it’s not actually called MURDER CRUISE 2012. That was a joke started by Paul F. Tompkins on the twitters. It’s actually called JoCoCruiseCrazy II. It’s a big floating geek concert/comedy festival hosted by Jonathan Coulton.

If you’re not sure who Jonathan Coulton is, it’s possible this is the first page you’ve looked at on the internets since 2003. All you really need to know is this: Jonathan Coulton is a nice man who sings songs and makes money doing it. After singing songs and making money on land for a while, he looked around and said, “What if I sang songs and made money in the middle of the Caribbean Sea?” And he did and it worked out, so now he’s doing it again.

The cruise is packed with talented entertainers and I’m honored to be doing a performance on this will-and-turbine-powered geek boat.

Right here and right now, I’m going to make seven predictions about what will happen on JoCoMurderCrazyCruise II and we’ll see how accurate they are.

PREDICTION NUMBER ONE:

There will be a MURDER. Not a sad real life murder involving consequences and human feelings, but a light, festive, Agatha Christie murder where some jackass no one likes gets drowned in a chocolate fountain when the lights go out on the Lido Deck and a bunch of colorful suspects with easy-to-remember names happen to be in the same room.

PREDICTION NUMBER TWO:

We will not sink. Though we will be attacked by a Kraken.

The Kraken will be easily defeated. A Kraken is basically a bully who lives in the sea. We will confront the Kraken about what is missing in his life that he has to attack a boat. He’ll say, “It’s not a boat, it’s a ship.” And we’ll say, “Don’t be pedantic, Kraken.” And we’ll make some quick and funny “It Gets Better, Kraken” parody videos and he’ll go away.

PREDICTION NUMBER THREE:

There is a possibility the owners of the cruise line will charge me extra if I look at the sea too often.

PREDICTION NUMBER FOUR:

I will probably get full-on old man cranky about the use of the word “squee.”

There will be a lot of excitement on the boat and people will want a short, emphatic word to express that emotion. I’m all for that. The emotion, the expression. Just not the word choice.

When I hear the word “squee,” I picture a panel from a Star Wars comic book in which R2-D2 is farting. Big, block letters shooting from the little astromech droid’s backside.

So while I might enjoy the comedy of John Hodgman or the music of Paul and Storm or the stories of Wil Wheaton or the reasonably priced rum drinks at a pirate ship bar on a small island in the Bahamas, I can’t squee.

For me, it’s a matter of respect. I can’t bring myself to say, “I’m enjoying John Roderick’s song. I think I’ll use my mouth to fart like a robot.”

Perhaps this opinion will lead me to be the man that is drowned in the chocolate fountain.

PREDICTION NUMBER FIVE:

I will foolishly attempt to define geek culture to an old woman from Arkansas.

The people on the cruise who are there for Jonathan Coulton and friends call themselves Sea Monkeys. Sea Monkeys are a fun, friendly, and inviting group of people.

There will be many people on the boat who are not Sea Monkeys. They will be confused and alarmed by all the excited people running around singing songs and saying “squee.”

They won’t even know that “squee” sounds like you’re imitating a Star Wars robot farting in a comic book. They think comic books still cost a dime and mostly feature Superman beating up nazis.

At least one of these people will gaze at me across the gaping cultural chasm and say, “Hey, you want to leap across the gorge and explain this to me?”

And I will try. And I will fail.

I will say words like “twitter” and “ukulele” and “bonhomie” and phrases like “no, we don’t all wear glasses, some of us have contacts” and “no, nerd isn’t really a negative term as we’ve made an effort to culturally appropriate the word and celebrate its positive aspects.”

And the perfectly nice woman from across the chasm will say things like “what?” and “huh?” and “so you’re all just getting together to sing songs about the Star Tracks?”

And I’ll use the word “filk” and she’ll think I’m swearing at her.

And I will go drown myself in the chocolate fountain.

PREDICTION NUMBER SIX

Even though my name is Scrimshaw, I will fail to hunt and kill a whale, then carve a picture into its bones. I will drown my sorrows in whiskey and this will make my ancestors proud.

PREDICTION NUMBER SEVEN

The cruise will be awesome. I will grossly overuse the word “awesome” and it will make me seem like a big hypocrite about the farting robot word.

After the cruise, I’ll do my best to let you know exactly how inaccurate my predictions were. Until then, I’m off to pack some shorts that I will not wear for fear of blinding my fellow Sea Monkeys with the pale white glow sticks that are my legs.

Cheers!

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