Today is the day to act like you're not freaking out.

First, a notice/advertisement for Chicago writers from Schadenfreude, my favorite sketch comedy group that performs at each Funny Ha-Ha reading:

Schadenfreude Writing Workshop! Take it!

Sketchwriting For The Audience
Schadenfreude
January 21st - March 4th
Saturdays 12-3pm (7 weeks)
$225

Leave the process of writing all by yourself in a quiet room to Kafka. Get on your feet, get into your characters, and move through your pages. SWFTA is for writers and performers who want to stop staring at the blank page, get out of their chairs, and write sketch in a much more exciting setting of improv, performance, and group writing.

E-mail classes@schadenfreude.net to sign up! We are also offering discounts for existing groups to take the class! Who does that? Schadenfreude does.

A Call to Put a Certain Catchphrase to Bed

I was reading somebody's blog yesterday and perusing the comments section, and I came across the phrase "So-and-so made me throw up in my mouth a little bit." I probably shouldn't rely on the comments section of a blog for good writing. But I realized that this is a catchphrase with a very short shelflife, and it has expired.

I'm not sure where the phrase originated. I want to say it was first typed or uttered on Gawker or "Saturday Night Live," in the context of "Watching Star Jones' wedding made me throw up in my mouth a little bit." It was great at the time, because we've all had that fun familiar gagging experience, and it seemed like a perfectly described reaction to something tasteless and stupid yet relatively harmless.

For some reason, a lot of people picked up on this phrase, though. And for some reason, it's quickly become incredibly annoying, even though at maximum I'd say it's a year, year and a half old. Maybe it's because of its presumed snarky origin, but every time I read it now, I get the impression, "Here is a person who thinks they're being pretty clever. But they're not, so much." Why isn't it very clever? No matter where a catchphrase originated, it's not clever to use something that's being said on blogs everywhere.

Then again, maybe catchphrases about vomit have a blessedly short lifespan just based on the nature of the topic. When was the last time you heard "gag me with a spoon?" Maybe we've just tapped ourselves out when it comes to talking about puke.

However, if you are adamant about having new sayings about how things make you want to barf, may I offer some alternates, in levels of graphicness according to the levels of disgust with something:

"...made me dry heave which is still horrible even if you're not actually throwing up."

"...made me throw up but it was all right because it was only water."

"...made me throw up and remember I had a blue Slushie earlier that afternoon."

"...made me throw up in my mouth a little bit, and a little bit of the puke even leaked out of the corner of my mouth, fell on to my jeans, and burned a hole in them"

Now isn't that much catchier?