funny

Living Abroad Makes You Talk Funny

November 16, 2018November 23, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

There's a scene in Highlander where our hero, the immortal Connor MacLeod, gets hauled in by the New York City popo for engaging in some swordfight and beheading shenanigans in a parking lot during a wrestling match. During the questioning, a cop tells him he talks funny, and asks where he's from. Without hesitation, 450 year-old MacLeod answers, "Lots of different places."He talks funny because he's a French actor portraying a 16th century Scottish man. If you suspend your disbelief and allow yourself to have fun, he speaks this way because he's been wandering the globe for more than 400 years and it's distorted his accent into something that can't be identified.I wanted that. The first few months I spent living abroad, I was certain that it was only a matter of time before my American accent softened. That after years of being immersed in a sea of French language, my English would become smoother at the edges where the...

London, Paris, New York… and Longmont

June 23, 2015December 1, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

It all started with laughter and a longing to be somewhere else.I don't miss my hometown. I moved out of Longmont, Colorado in 1994, and never wanted to move back. For me, crossing that town line is like stepping into a dark parallel universe of bad memories. It's a time machine that only goes back to traumatic events; to people who only knew me as the juvenile delinquent offspring of a narcissistic, alcoholic mother. People who said I'd end up as nothing, popping out kids, smoking crack and ending up dead in a ditch. It's the town where a loser who nearly killed me is still frequently seen walking around on the street.I still have some very awesome friends living in Longmont, and while I almost envy their loving view of the place, I simply do not share it.My home life was not as bad or as good as it could have been, but it was difficult. It had a...

The Cure for Arachnophobia

March 9, 2015November 30, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

I sat with my friend Ed at the tiny kitchen table in my shitty apartment sipping coffee, watching the spider dangling above us. The table used to sit in a Village Inn, before it became the place where I ate ramen and drank coffee with my downstairs neighbor."Dude. Squish that thing.""Aw, we don't have to do that," he said, stepping up on a Village Inn chair. "You got a jar or glass or something?"I handed him a jar. He trapped the spider in it and offered to take it outside, but I stopped him, reaching for the jar. A weird curiosity suddenly laid eggs in my brain. I poked some holes in the lid."I've got to get rid of the arachnophobia somehow," I said.I named the fuzzy brown wolf spider Cowboy Otis. For a few months, I took him everywhere. To work. To the bar. To lunch at Souper Salad and to my weekly therapy sessions. He sat on the...

Girl Drink Drunk

September 24, 2014November 23, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

Everyone needs some kind of a refuge. A place away from home where they can go periodically to slow down, unplug and recharge their serenity levels. When I lived in Colorado, my refuge was probably the same as every other Colorado resident - some place at a higher elevation, up in the mountains, on a trail, near a lake or a river.These days, my refuge is much different. When I came to meet Olivier in France in 2005, it was my second trip to France, but was the first time I'd ever seen any of the country outside of Paris, which is the best part.I spent the first week of my trip at Olivier's apartment in Montmartre, (which a year later, would morph into our apartment) and the second week, we hit the road. We stopped in places like Blois and Dijon. We walked through castles and ate in restaurants. We stopped among the volcanic landscape of Auvergne to meet...

I Got Nerdy & Ended Up With a Ridiculous Comic

November 20, 2013November 30, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

I like to get my nerd on. One of the really cool things about the internet - aside from funny animal .gifs on Buzzfeed - is the bottomless pit of nerdery. This year, I've spent countless hours getting lost on various subjects in iTunes U, Open Culture and Coursera.This summer, I enrolled in a writing class on Coursera. It wasn't on craft, but the basic mechanics of grammar, along with paragraph and sentence structure. It was a nice review on the basics, but also a nice intro to a MOOC (massive open online course), which I'd been curious about.I got into it. I enrolled in a few more courses. One of which was Comic Books and Graphic Novels, from the University of Colorado in Boulder.I fucking loved this class. Come on... a class where I get to watch PowerPoint lectures about Batman and study Alan Moore and Art Spiegelman? For free? HELL. YES.In all seriousness, though, this was an interesting...

Boobs Are Cool. Bras Are Dumb.

August 13, 2013November 23, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

Earlier this year, a French doctor announced that women are better off without bras. Now, I know some women are quite fond of their bras, or feel the need for a bra. Cool. Keep on rockin' the harness, ladies.However, I read the article and said, "Well, no shit. Bras are stupid."I have always hated bras. I feel stiff and restrained. Tied down. Strapped. Saddled. Shackled. I scratch and claw, twisting and reaching, trying to bite at it - much like my cat when someone is foolish enough to put a collar around her neck.That said, I'm going to tell you that there is one benefit to binding your boobs.When you move to France, there's a whole laundry list of things that a person must do in order to obtain their carte de séjour (their residency card). One of those things is to get a chest x-ray to make sure you don't have tuberculosis. So, back in 2006 when I was...