I’ve always dreamed of being a writer.  A damned good writer.  Someone that finds himself sitting at a tiny table in a New York bookstore, signing a hardcover book and adding some pithy statement.  Perhaps for some yawning cubicle cowboy during his lunchbreak, who says to me  ”I don’t get your stuff, but my son can’t seem to put your books down.”  Something like that.  In order to get there, I know I have to write and write and write.

I don’t actually suck at writing, but I don’t not suck at it enough….  You have that one thing you wish you were better at, know you would be better at, if only you had a third arm, more muscles, a sharper mind, or non-opposing appendages.

April 15th is National That Sucks Day, so I gotta share a few things I’ve learned about not sucking, as though I were an expert.  Ha.  They’re not secret or anything, so feel free to share them widely.  If I actually followed these golden nuggets of better-ness, I would be spending my time signing those hardbacks for cubicle cowboys, instead of typing this for you…

How Not to Suck at Something

1.  Figure out what you really, really, deep down care about being good at.  Try to stick with that one thing, okay?  Because what comes next takes a looong time, and you don’t want to have to repeat the process over and over while “discovering yourself.”  Colonel Sanders got good at cooking chicken, because he didn’t spend much time considering a better burger.

2.  Surf the Internet and learn as much as you can about what you want to not suck at.  Unless, of course, you are trying to get better at surfing the Internet.  Copy and paste text into easily accessible Word or Google docs, or handwrite your new treasures of knowledge into a journal.  Really consume the information you find, and try to put it in your own words.  Ruminate on the things you’ve discovered at night, rather than having hot sex with supermodels.  That’s what Colonel Sanders would’ve done.

3.  Visit your public library, or better yet, purchase books on the subject.  If you pay cold hard cash for something, you are more likely to consider it an investment and demand dividends from it.  Read it all, page by page, using a highlighter.  Take notes in the margins or that shiny new journal.

4.  Watch videos related to the subject.  C’mon, if YouTube has videos on how to knit a dog sweater, it has videos on what you’re trying to not suck at.  Go online and find local venues that demonstrate the skill you are working on.  Get a front row seat, and try not to weird out the speaker by staring too long at him as he works the stage.

5.  Talk to others who either don’t suck at what you’re getting better at, or are learning too.  Join online forums, Facebook fan pages, local groups, etc.  Make friends with these people, if you can.  Don’t you think Tony Hawk spends his “off time” with really freaking awesome skaters?  Yeeeessss….

6.  Don’t be afraid to actually pay for and take classes on the subject.  Nothing beats being surrounded by other individuals who are focused on not sucking at the same endeavor, as well as an instructor you’ve paid good money to push you.

7.  Break down the skill you are working on into its most essential elements.  It might be easier to work on each element separately, getting better at it until you feel you’ve mastered it enough to take on another related skill.

8.  Try your hand at what you love.  You’ll fail, by the way.  Miserably, and people will laugh and point.  You’ll downright suck at it.  You just might get physically or emotionally hurt during the process.  Think this is hard?  The next step is the hardest, and the most essential in surmounting your suckiness…

9.  Don’t stop trying.  That’s what separates those who suck from those who don’t.  While rubbing Neosporin on your healing scabs, watch more videos.  Read more books.  Attend more events.  Get back on, under, in or over the damn thing and try it again.  Wear more padding or make sure you find a private place.  Get an understanding therapist or doctor.  Just don’t stop trying, okay?

10. Get a mentor.  Any mentor.  If he smells like old goat cheese and curses at you too often, get another one.

Good luck.  Why not spend a little time and tell me in the comments what you’re working on?  I’d love to know, and it’ll give me more practice at responding to comments.  This is a skill I have to learn in order to be a better blogger, so you’re helping me too!

“Humor is tragedy plus time.” ~ Mark Twain

Seriously. It’s pretty bad out there these days. Natural disasters, job losses, gas prices, and the Transformers movies just keep coming. We’re not waiting for the next shoe to drop anymore — we’re waiting for it to smack us upside the head. Hard. How do we deal with it? Well, sometimes with a good laugh…

April 14th is International Moment of Laughter Day. It would be a nice time to open up another browser window and sneak peeks at one of those “Not Safe For Work” sites. Go ahead, do it. Because you’re starting to worry people, and it’ll do you some good.  If the boss isn’t looking.

You could also use this day to calibrate your funny bone. How’s your sense of humor these days? Do you have problems laughing at the shows that used to give you a lot of pleasure? How many times have you actually made others laugh — and I’m not talking about that time you picked up that dropped sheet of paper and a fart slipped out.

If these tough times make you feel as though your life is moving from a sitcom into a Greek tragedy, perhaps you should take a little time and redevelop your sense of humor.  It’ll do you a lot of good.  I’ve compiled a few techniques below to help out…

How to Develop Your Sense of Humor

What kind of humor do you like? Realize there are many styles of humor, and each appeal to different people.  There’s dry humor, sarcastic humor, slapstick, puns, exaggeration, irony, public statements made by Charlie Sheen, etc.  Which one of these hits you at a visceral level, making you snort out whatever you are drinking in a CSI-type splatter pattern?  Your favorite type of humor is likely the type you’re going to feel the most natural sharing in your interactions with others.  Just make sure it isn’t offensive to your target audience…  Jenny in Accounting might not appreciate the blonde jokes – I know already.

How do others do it? I know this is going to be difficult, but you must muster the courage to spend endless hours on the couch.  You have to learn from the masters of comedy, so watch a lot of comedies, read a lot of funny books, and visit local improv bars.  Watch for timing, timeliness of content and delivery, and how the audience reacts to the conversation.  It’ll feel like studying for awhile, but c’mon, how often do you get to watch Will Ferrell in action for homework?

What do I think? Spend some time in developing a journal, or starting a blog.   Don’t worry about whether or not anyone is reading your writing – this is an exercise for you.  Besides, nobody really reads blogs anymore, we just pretend we do.  You’re not really reading this, are you?  No, you’re wondering if there’s someone at your workplace actually named Jenny.

Think about humorous events from your past, and write down your own personal slant on them.  What made them funny to you or others?  How could you discuss these events in such as way as to wring from them every possible laugh?

How do I start? After you have a ton of good one-liners that you think would be humorous all on their own, wait to pounce, you hungry comedic leopard. When conversation allows, begin adding these zingers into your daily conversations with others.  Pay special attention to how they are received, and don’t overdo it, even if you leave them in stitches in the break room.  Everything has a limit, except for chocolate.  You will have to learn timing and quantity, as well as how to steer clear of those who simply can’t take a joke.

How do I keep it natural? Comedy works best when it appears to come naturally from the person who is speaking.  Surround yourself with people who you feel are almost always funny. Over time, you’ll begin to see that they are keen to the irony in situations, or to sex-filled double entendres in common conversations. Watch how they naturally slip their commentary in, or how they use timing perfectly. You can learn a lot from observation, and you’ll ultimately be challenged to keep up!

Whom do I approach? Everyone, and often.  You’re never going to be seen as funny if you never have conversations. Begin talking to more people around you, making a point to simply have conversation, funny or not. Compliment others on their outfits, hair, accomplishments, new car, etc. Congratulate people when they have anniversaries, birthdays, children or grandchildren. Pay attention to others and begin to become a part of their lives by simply talking to them.  The humorous banter will come out over time.

Mark Twain had it right, in his realization that humor is a survival skill of sorts.  Through humor we show a sense of relief for having survived something together.  For a lot of us, it’s how we cope with something that otherwise might be difficult to deal with, whether in our own lives or in the lives of others.  By getting more familiar with those around us in our daily lives, we feel a greater sense of having weathered challenging situations with them.  By developing our ability to laugh about our lots in life, we draw closer to each other.  We bond.

I know times are tough right now, but it’s high time you got started on this.  It’s about time you laughed.  Because Megan Fox needs work again, and there’s so much more to say about Optimus Prime.  Really.

We are surrounded by closet clowns.  You see them, in the corners of your eye, as you look around at fairgrounds, concerts, mall parking lots and farmers markets.  While you were spending your high school years trying to blend in with the crowd, they stood against the stream.  Well, not technically.

They rode their unicycles against the stream.

And juggled.

They had groupies too, didn’t they?  Hot hippie chicks you pretended not to notice, as you moved away from them, lest your children catch site of the spectacle…

April 18th is International Juggling Day. Jugglers, to say the least, are an interesting breed.  They’ve never cared what other people think about them – life is about fun, not popularity.  You have to be a maverick to walk away from everyone else milling about, pull out a set of colorful balls, and toss them in the air.

We don’t like to admit we do, but we notice jugglers.  If we have small children, we have to hang for awhile, until our kids pull us onward to the next frivolity.  As adults we’re pretty much jaded to the Art, which is why we find so many jugglers turning to flaming things and sharp things.  Or living things.  Or any combined 2 out of the preceding 3.

Perhaps it takes the high certainty of self-inflicted pain to make us watch. Like the pain we inflict on ourselves while paying full price to see a Nicolas Cage movie.

How to Juggle Three Balls (Video)

If you’ve ever tried your luck at (and miserably failed with the) hacky sack, Rubik’s Cube, yo-yo or other device, this is your chance to learn a completely useless and self-satisfying skill…

Remember to keep practicing, and have fun with it!  It’s only a matter of time before the hippie chicks start orbiting you…

Dork.

You’re a hard worker, trying to either shine or hide in this tough economy.  You keep your head down at your cubicle, type softly, sipping your coffee with all of the abandon of a nervous hummingbird.  Unless, of course, you achieve something worth marveling at; kicking in the bosses’ door and singing like you’re Adam Lambert and it’s down to the final two on American Idol.

Not today, my blog-reading friend.  Because April 13th is Blame Somebody Else Day.  It’s time to put your neck out there and take chances.  You can do it and still keep your employment status safe, because I’m going to share with you 4 ways to blame the guy next to you if something goes wrong, thus ensuring your evil success!

How to Pass the Buck at Work

1. You’ve finally been given a work project.  Go and form up your team, and begin brain-storming already!  Just make sure you keep your sharp mind finely tuned as to how something could go wrong.  Today, we say positive thinking is for the naive, the mindless! You must keep your mental fuel burning in such a manner as to enlighten that clear vision of pending doom.  In this manner, you will see the weak points before all others on your makeshift team.  Hide these points, assigning responsibility for them to team mates, if only in your mind…

2. Put off making a decision on everything important, even though you are the person in charge.  Ultimately, someone on the team who can’t stand your hemming and hawing any further, will offer a decent suggestion.  Go with this new bright idea, ensuring you are seen taking charge again.  Bask in the warm purple glow of your plausible deniability.  It’s the other guy’s fault; after all, it was their idea not yours, right?  Repeat when necessary.

3. On your journey to project failure, create dark alleys of confusion for your coworkers to get lost in.  Describing what needs to be done to your cubicle-mates?  Make sure the instructions lack definable objectives, with a multiplicity of vaguely defined goals.  Ensure responsibilities merge between individuals, because it will cause friction between them.  They’ll get too mad at each other to question you…

4. Once the investigation into what went wrong begins (and it will,) you must step up immediately, donning your Inspector Clousseau persona.  Be shocked!!! and angry!!! that things did not occur to the satisfaction of your boss.  Promise to the Heavens that you will get to the bottom of things.  Yank your co-workers out the dark alleys you created, offering them up for public derision.  If you have done your work properly, your co-workers will actually blame themselves for not understanding what needed to be done, and you will shine as the person who “gets to the bottom of things,” who “sets things right.”

Oh, this is soooo evil.   Perhaps too evil.  But I didn’t make up this holiday.  So if you decide to do this, it’s your decision, not mine.  It’s alllll in your hands….

You see how I did that?  Pure evil…

As a child, I loved to spread out on the lawn and watch the clouds move across the sky.  They seemed so alive, especially as I watched them form for storms, layering themselves before dropping raindrops on me, chasing me inside.

March 12th is Look Up At the Sky Day. A good time to simply go for a walk and stare upward, at the splendor above.  How well do you know your clouds?  Here’s a very simple guide to 9 types of typical cloud formations.

Cumulus clouds have sharp, easy to see edges, and develop upward into nice, puffy cotton balls.  Occur in lines or clusters, and may turn into cumulonimbus if the weather turns to the worse.

Stratus clouds layer outward across the horizon in a nice, uniform line.  Common with snowfall or very light rains.  Overcast foggy-type days can be caused by stratus clouds blocking out the Sun.  Love those hot cocoa kind of days!

Cirrus clouds are typically wispy and stretched across the sky.  Some get so big they cover entire continents!  Sometimes they are attached to and follow storm clouds.

Nimbus (or Cumulonimbus) clouds are nimbus type clouds that carry a lot more precipitation, and are ready to ruin your good hair day with a steady downpour.  Cottony fluffy but grey and scary.

Contrail clouds are vapor trails caused by condensed water from the exhaust of jet engines.  They can last from seconds to hours.  The one pictured below is from a Shuttle launch.

Billow clouds are caused by air flow returning to an area and redirecting clouds in a new direction.  The gusts often are uniform in nature, so you see what look like waves or ripples across the sky.

Mammatus clouds are pouches of clouds underneath cumulonimbus clouds, typically formed during very, very bad thunderstorms.  They’re heavier, and have lots of ice crystals in them.  Cool, huh?

Orographic clouds form when warmer air masses are pushed over higher elevations, such as over mountain ranges.  They typically drop snow or rain as they rise, and spread out over the ground feature they are pushed on top of.

Pileus clouds are horizontal clouds that form like caps over cumulus clouds, due to strong updraft winds being pushed up by the cumulus.  They form as sheets, and look like hats over the cumulus.  This is a photo of a pileus cloud forming over a volcanic eruption.

There are a number of other classifications and types, depending on elevation.  You can combine a number of the terms above as needed, and there are a lot of other much more complicated explanations of cloud formations.

How about going outside today and trying to find a few of these formations?  Impress your work-weary friends with your fresh knowledge!  When’s the last time you stopped and watched the clouds?  All of the magical shapes you saw as a child are still there…

But my friend, have you conquered the past?

April 11th is 8-Track Player Day. If you are over 40 you definitely remember those heady days of the 8-Track player.  As well as roller skates, Daisy Dukes, head bands and Afros for all.  Brings a tear to my eye, realizing there might still be photos circulating of me in those days…

Yes, you can!

Did you know that you can still purchase working Realistic 8 Track players?  Why not pick up a piece of history, and see how many conversations it starts!  There’s nothing that says “I got it all” like having what was, too!  Here’s an old Radio Shack commercial to help get you in the mood…

Three things you can do with your brandy new/old 8-Track player…

1.  Got iPod? If you’re worried about how your 8-Track will integrate with your modern audiophile lifestyle, here’s an article from Unplggd.com on how to convert your existing 8-track player into an iPod speaker dock.  Everything old is new again!

2.  We got us a convoy! The idea of showing off your car’s brandy new 8-Track cause some sense of arousal?  How about going whole hog and adapting your new/old device to become that other scion of the 70′s?  That’s right, you can turn your 8-Track player into a CB Radio!

3. Take it mobile! You’re a runner.  I get it – you enjoy the wind in your hair, and the steady swish-swish of your track pants.  Why not turn your incredible new/old toy into a Jurassic Walkman?  It just might stun the muggers into laughter, keeping you safe (You’re welcome!)

You too can be a retro warrior!  So dust off those roller skates, find that old head band, and do what every American adult loves to do – embarrass the Hell out of your children!

Every year right around this time, the rains start up, and my undernourished lawn begins to (somewhat) green again.  I don’t mind it – I actually love mowing the lawn (almost) each and every weekend.  Fresh cut grass and lawnmower exhaust are one of my oddly favorite scents, going back as far as I can remember.

Invariably, I  find much more than grass in my front lawn.  I’m sure to be welcomed by bright white dandelion puffs, swaying to and fro, dropping their drifting seeds in silent defiance.  Our family has spent a great deal of time pulling these unwelcome strangers out by the root and tossing them into our green waste can, knowing that we’ll be doing it again, over and over.

March 28th is National Weed Day, typically a day to remind people about safe methods of weed removal, including removing them right into your salad bowl.

Weeds You Can Eat?

Yes, you read that right.  Some of the pesky plants you pull out of the ground came to this country as part of a an ancient food pyramid.  They’ve been tossed into salads, cooked into meals, and planted neatly in rows in foreign soil.

So which weeds can you stick in your mouth without winding up retching (or worse?)

Indian Strawberry

Indian Strawberries

Indian Strawberries, also known as Mock Strawberries, have leaves that look a lot like regular strawberry plants.  The plants bear small, yellow flowers and fruit.  The strawberry-like fruits are bitter, and best passed over; however the tiny leaves can be put into salads and enjoyed.  Medicinally, this plant has been used in the past to lower fever temperatures.

If you find any good recipes, please share them, because I can’t find any!

Purslane

Purslane

Purslane tastes a lot like spinach and has rounded, succulent leaves, along with a reddish stem.  Purslane can be added raw to salads, or cooked and eaten as a vegetable.  These plants are very nutritious, with vitamins A and C, and a healthy dose of Omega-3.

Epicurious has a number of Purslane-based recipes for you to use.

Lamb’s Quarter

Lamb's Quarter

Lamb’s Quarter is also known as Fat Hen or White Goosefoot.  This plant is very rich in calcium, and can be cooked and served in soups or stir frys, or served raw in place of lettuce in a salad, or in a sandwich.  It’s been enjoyed by European peasants for quite some time.

Here are some Lamb’s Quarter recipes for you to give this weed a try!

Dandelion

Dandelion

Did you know that dandelions were originally introduced to our country as a salad green, with the expectation we’d all be munching down on them someday?  It’s been recorded as a food item since the 10th Century.

All parts of the dandelion plant are edible, with the exception of the seeds and stalk.  It’s leaves have just as much iron in them as spinach, and four times the Vitamin A.  Herbalists swear by its ability to help with proper liver function.  Add the leaves sparingly and unopened flower buds to salads, or cook and eat the roots.

Mariquita Farms has shared a number of recipes, and you can find tons more online!

Danger – Read Before Eating!

Before putting a weed in your mouth, please make sure you are absolutely sure which weeds you are pulling!  WeedAlert is a great, informative site you can use to match up weeds.  If you are still unsure, find your local American Horticultural Society Master Gardener or visit a local garden shop and bring a few freshly pulled specimens to identify.

Have you been eating weeds already?  Share your stories, recipes, or identify which other plants you’ve enjoyed in the past in the comments below!