Rejected Vacation Postcards
Wherein I make a few Portuguese people happy, confuse someone from Delaware and once again perplex “gogojoe.”
See the whole gallery at Smosh.com. Thanks!
Other Links:
Lines Cut from the Royal Wedding Invitation
More Upcoming Coffee Table Books
Greeting Cards Best Left Unsent
Why Cats Are Not Doctors
Excerpts from “I Could Pee on This” and Other Poems by Cats
Follow on Twitter @fmarciuliano
Follow on Facebook
Medium Large Comic: Thursday, April 28, 2011
So which fictional British character do you think should have been invited to the Royal Wedding?
Other Links:
Lines Cut from the Royal Wedding Invitation
More Upcoming Coffee Table Books
Greeting Cards Best Left Unsent
Why Cats Are Not Doctors
Excerpts from “I Could Pee on This” and Other Poems by Cats
Follow on Twitter @fmarciuliano
Follow on Facebook
Medium Large Films Presents: What Is Comedy?
A long-forgotten 1951 classroom film from Medium Large’s educational library (including Bake Your Way to Marriage! and How to Cripple a Bully), this short exposes the chilling, horrifying, alarming truth about comedy in a fun, fact-filled format.
The movie was made possible with a grant from Buick: The Cadillac of Cars.
Other Links:
Lines Cut from the Royal Wedding Invitation
More Upcoming Coffee Table Books
Greeting Cards Best Left Unsent
Why Cats Are Not Doctors
Excerpts from “I Could Pee on This” and Other Poems by Cats
Follow on Twitter @fmarciuliano
Follow on Facebook
Rejected Young Adult Books
For the full list please visit Smosh.com. Thanks!
Other Links:
Lines Cut from the Royal Wedding Invitation
More Upcoming Coffee Table Books
Greeting Cards Best Left Unsent
Why Cats Are Not Doctors
Excerpts from “I Could Pee on This” and Other Poems by Cats
Follow on Twitter @fmarciuliano
Follow on Facebook
Medium Large Comic: Monday, April 25, 2011
Check out a new Medium Large comic:
“Angry Birds” (And see how the commenters hate it!)
New Medium Large strips every Monday at Smosh.com.
Follow on Twitter @fmarciuliano
Follow on Facebook
How to Stack Google in Your Favor
Google has long been a way for bosses and headhunters to do continuous and stealthy background checks on both current employees with job applicants. So for the purposes of any and all future job hunts, I hereby provide the following information to put into the search-engine matrix. Simply fill in each blank with your full name (and choose the proper gender pronoun when necessary) and be ready to be practically assaulted by endless employment opportunities.
Let’s begin…
____________________ only engages in alcohol consumption during Communion, when toasting the sanctity of marriage or while infiltrating sleeper cells in Napa Valley.
____________________ speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin, but never utters either for fear of showing favoritism.
____________________ is an exceedingly inquisitive employee, but not to the point that he could prove of any assistance during a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation.
____________________ knows why the caged bird sings—because he/she realizes the true joy of working in a highly-structured corporate environment.
____________________ is well aware of the difference between “personal” and “professional,” having proven himself quite adept at spelling.
____________________ once took a bullet for a Christian puppy.
____________________ fought for his/her country time and time again in Stratego, Electronic Battleship and numerous “G.I. Joe vs. Stretch Armstrong (Evil)” battles.
____________________ understands that humor has its time and place—during opening remarks at a company presentation, while securing the trust of a potential sales client and as “best medicine” in lieu of taxing his company’s health plan.
____________________ knows that the surest way to achieve success in business is by building a great business team. Hence his/her research in robotics.
____________________ is an exceptionally opinionated and strong-willed individual who grasps the importance of going with the flow.
____________________ has never missed a day’s work, a project deadline or an opportunity to help the homeless build corrugated strongholds against their alien enemies.
____________________ has written several books on business leadership under the pen name “Jack Welch.”
____________________ is a devoutly pious man/woman who nonetheless does not discuss religion in the office, since few can pronounce the name of his/her god.
____________________ coined the term “market branding” after realizing the term “market searing” was just too graphic.
____________________ is never too busy to lift a bus off a baby.
____________________ is indeed the person who created that thing you can’t live without at your place of business or worship.
____________________ is a “very big picture” person, to the point that time and space have lost all meaning to him/her.
____________________ may have played a significant role in the recording of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, depending on where his/her mother was during his/her first and second trimester.
____________________ can handle multiple tasks at once, having double-majored at Duke University in “English” and “Cloning.”
____________________ is a remarkably creative type who nonetheless will never cajole the rest of your staff into attending his/her gallery opening, recital or haiku slam.
____________________ came up with the idea of Google after standing on a toilet to hang a clock only to slip and bang his/her head on the sink.
Other Links:
Lines Cut from the Royal Wedding Invitation
More Upcoming Coffee Table Books
Greeting Cards Best Left Unsent
Why Cats Are Not Doctors
Excerpts from “I Could Pee on This” and Other Poems by Cats
Follow on Twitter @fmarciuliano
Follow on Facebook
How to Read Your Date’s Body Language
Please see the whole list at Smosh.com. Thanks!
Other Links:
Lines Cut from the Royal Wedding Invitation
More Upcoming Coffee Table Books
Greeting Cards Best Left Unsent
Why Cats Are Not Doctors
Excerpts from “I Could Pee on This” and Other Poems by Cats
Follow on Twitter @fmarciuliano
Follow on Facebook
Now with Freezer: The Grand Victory of a Tiny Triumph
Back in college I was so painfully shy I was unable to order pizza over the phone, not only denying myself almost 95% of my collegiate nutrients but also leaving me to depend on the help of friends or the likelihood a large with pepperoni would be delivered to my room by mistake.
This, however, was a step up from high school, when I both averted my gaze any time my name was called in class (resulting in several minutes of “Francesco?…Francesco?…I can see you, Francesco…Francesco!…Scott?”) and managed to avoid using the bathroom six hours a day for three straight years for fear of bullies or social contact.
And somehow even this was a grand leap from elementary school, when I was so scared to ask for permission to go to the bathroom that one time I simply thought it easier to pee at my own desk. (The fact that I still wound up on the “Honors” track instead of the “Food Industry” or “Monitored by Scientists” track confounds me to this day.)
To put it lightly, speaking up has never been a strong suit of mine. This fear has followed me well into adulthood, causing no end of delays in professional advancements, personal achievements or even tasting a Starbucks Holiday Latte (which ultimately proved a remarkable letdown to say the least). It has also led me to continue living for years with an inoperative oven, two dead burners, a closet door that does not close and, worst of all, an ancient, malfunctioning refrigerator…
…complete with an equally defective icebox.
While living with what increasingly feels like a prop from The Honeymooners–and having to defrost every 36 hours–certainly has had its quaint charms, I began to long for an appliance that allowed me to keep dairy products over the course of a full afternoon or did not require eight pounds of salt and the torch from Fahrenheit 451 every time I wanted access to a Fla-Vor-Ice.
Thus, when it came time to renew my lease–an act I do year after year despite my ramshackle existence solely because it allows me to utter the phrase “private backyard” (which in New York City is the equivalent of saying, “Would you care to see my gryphon?”)–a wholly unique thought popped in my head. “What if,” I wildly pondered, “I asked for a new fridge…or at least a fridge from this decade…or at least a fridge with working door hinges…or at least a fridge with shelving that does not consist of cardboard featuring cereal mascots…or at least a fridge that does require it’s own coal shoveler…or…” It was at this point I cut off my train of thought, for fear I would call up my landlord requesting they replace my refrigerator with a burlap sack resting atop an ice floe.
So after several days of pumping myself with courage–and then having to rest an additional two days after discovering my body can only handle mild pluck, not outright valor or even middling grit–I called my landlord and announced with my boldest squeak, “I would like a new fridge.” To which they immediately responded, “No. You already got a new fridge in 2008.”
Admittedly, I was not prepared for this response, if only because the very same fridge was in my apartment when I assumed the lease back in 2007. When I mentioned this over the phone–much to my own great surprise–I was informed that I was wrong, that my refrigerator is practically brand new and that it was still under warranty with its seller, P.C. Richards. When I asked if they could send someone over from P.C. Richards to check my supposedly newish fridge, my landlord said with not a little annoyance that since it was under warranty it was my responsibility, not theirs, to have it repaired. Then they hung up.
For someone who considers talking on the phone a Herculean effort–and requesting anything a Satanic exercise–this was perhaps the worst outcome I could have imagined. It was as if I had finally worked up the courage to ask a woman out only for her to say, “I’m sorry, I only date men.” Ashamed, ashen-face and almost certain I would never be able to keep cheese, I then did what I thought was my only viable course of action–do what a stranger had told me to do and call P.C. Richards for repairs.
Working under the theory that due to the warranty calling P.C. Richards was not so much bothering them with a favor as fulfilling a contractual obligation they themselves had put into motion, I dialed the number my landlord had barked at me and told the store my situation. The store asked for the refrigerator’s identification number. The store then said they had no such refrigerator on record. The store then asked me to locate the refrigerator’s manufacturing date. The store then asked me to read said manufacturing date aloud.
“March 1997.”
And so I was embarrassed for the second time in under 15 minutes. Embarrassed that I had bothered an appliance store (though I’m quite certain my chagrin could easily lend itself to any number of retail outfits). Embarrassed that I had not thought to look up the manufacturing date myself. And embarrassed that I had let myself be so easily convinved I was in the wrong from the very beginning.
But something else had happened. In addition to being embarrassed I was also quite enraged. And it was because of this newfound anger that I was able to skip completely over my “Six Stages of Grief over Having to Call a Stranger” (Stage 1: Fear; Stage 2: Panic; Stage 3: Horror; Stage 4: Outright dread; Stage 5: Put off call for eight months; Stage 6: Aneurysm) and immediately call back my landlord.
“Hel…Hello, this…this is Francesco. We spoke earlier…No, no, I know…I know….I know…I’m sorry…I’m sorry, but…but…I called P.C. Richards and they have no record of my refrigerator. In fact, I found out…I know…I’m sorry….I found out that my fridge was manufactured in 1997, and so could never have been delivered in 2008.”
Then there was silence, followed by a hushed but hot-tempered exchange in Hindi on the other end of the line and then eventually the following response.
“You must have read the manufacturing date wrong.”
Now, I admit that I have never had a facility for foreign languages, but I am quite confident that I have a firm, white-knuckled grip on Arabic numerals. Had the refrigerator been built in Japan and the manufacturing date been written in Kanji, then yes, I would have readily admitted that I could not say with any certainty whether I was reading a year or perhaps the name of a Kanto prefecture. But this was patently ridiculous. And it was at this very ludicrous moment that I realized my landlord and I had accomplished something previously thought physically impossible or only the commodity of feverish science fiction–we were actually communicating across two alternate realities.
In my reality I had an almost decade-and-a-half fridge that made such a horrible grinding noise it sounded as if I was milling granite in my kitchen. In my landlord’s reality I had a brand new fridge featuring such technological advances as an icebox that could store a single ice tray or King Cone and a vegetable crisper sans drawer, resulting in more of a tomato cubbyhole.
Now, there comes a time when a small child is arguing with his or her parent that the kid will say something so unbelievably stupid in their own defense that even they will be startled by the boldness of their doltishness (ex: “Bunnies WOULD make good pilots!”). This is known as “the point of no return” in a verbal quarrel, the moment at which a person is so desperate for a victory that they are no longer concerned about being right but simply about not having to admit that they are wrong. It was this very point that my landlord had reached. So desperate was he to not be made a fool–as well not to have to cough up $600–he fearlessly tried to undermine the very linear nature of time itself. And it was at this very point that I miraculously found my voice, my confidence and my very right to express my needs.
And so I said–not muttered–in a calm yet courageous tone, “Get me a new fridge today.”
It’s been a while since that series of increasingly insipid conversations, a period of time punctuated with Fla-Vor-Ices retrieved from my brand new refrigerator with actual freezer. And while the preceding story may seem a small series of inconsequential events to you, dear reader, please know that to me it means if not a grand victory in personal development then at least a tiny triumph in being able to store and eat leftover pizza I order all by myself.
Other Links:
Lines Cut from the Royal Wedding Invitation
More Upcoming Coffee Table Books
Greeting Cards Best Left Unsent
Why Cats Are Not Doctors
Excerpts from “I Could Pee on This” and Other Poems by Cats
Follow on Twitter @fmarciuliano
Follow on Facebook
How to Tell Your Kids about the Easter Bunny
Share your childhood thoughts/mythologies/crippling fears of the Easter Bunny down below!
Other Links:
Lines Cut from the Royal Wedding Invitation
More Upcoming Coffee Table Books
Greeting Cards Best Left Unsent
Why Cats Are Not Doctors
Excerpts from “I Could Pee on This” and Other Poems by Cats
Follow on Twitter @fmarciuliano
Follow on Facebook
Medium Large 
3 comments