Posted By Dan Bolles on Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 9:49 AM

It's Monday, which means it's time for your weekly dose of locavore levity: the Joke of the Week! This week's joke comes from Burlington's Tim Bridge. Take it away, Tim …

I was dumped recently. And it sucks being broken up with. It does. It only sucks more when you're sitting on a couch, being broken up with, and multiple times in the conversation you have the thought, That's a good point.

No one wants to be broken up with. I feel like the best case scenario is being able to say, "Screw it, man, that girl was crazy." Or, "Who cares, girl. That guy was an asshole."

No one wants to be like, "Nah, this makes sense for you."

About that joke

Says Bridge: Writing jokes about how sad you feel is a pretty great way to get over how sad you feel.

I was broken up with. It made a comical amount of sense when it was explained why I was being broken up with. So I made it into a joke in order to convince myself that everything was going to be okay, which it totally, definitely, 100%, completely is.

I'm fine.

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Posted By Sadie Williams on Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 2:13 PM

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Peter Moore

On a website called Chivomengro, a group of Champlain College students  publishes essays, cultural reviews, something  kind of like news, and original art. The tagline for the site calls it "a nonfiction semi-literary entity devoted to pasta and angst." The "about us" section says it's a "purveyor of collegiate whatever."  Despite those waggish descriptions, the site has existed since 2012, is evolving and has become more organized. But it's still angsty, and often hilarious.

Chivomengro's latest edition includes a review of Bon Iver's new album, a piece by Walter Proulx called "Fucking Space" (did you know NASA is apparently working on a way to travel faster than the speed of light?), and site manager Peter Moore's reflective essay on the indescribable nature of certain experiences. Like their writers, the pieces are a little awkward and a lot endearing. And they're smart.

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Posted By Dan Bolles on Mon, Oct 31, 2016 at 9:50 AM

It's Monday, which means it's time for your weekly dose of locavore levity: the Joke of the Week! This week's joke comes from Burlington's Tarzan Jenkins. Take it away, Tarzan …

My eight-year-old son says to me, "Dad, I've been thinking … not all children should have birthdays."

And I'm like, "What?!"

He says," I don't think all kids should have birthdays. Some kids should have C-section days."

And I'm like,"What?!!!"

He says,"It's still a celebration, just the cake comes pre-cut down the middle."

I said,"Cut it out, boy!"

He said,"Exactly dad, exactly."

About that joke

Says Jenkins: "The wisdom of children is precious. The logic of children is hilarious!"

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Posted By Dan Bolles on Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 8:36 AM

In celebration of the annual Vermont's Funniest Comedian competition, which runs Wednesday through Friday, October 26 through 28, at the Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington, all this week we're posting a daily version of our weekly Joke of the Week feature. Today's dose of local hilarity comes to us from Montpelier's Kathleen Kanz. Take it away, Kathleen …

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Posted By Dan Bolles on Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 12:08 PM

In celebration of the annual Vermont's Funniest Comedian Competition, which runs Wednesday through Friday, October 26 through 28, at the Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington, all this week we're posting a daily version of our weekly Joke of the Week feature. Today's dose of local hilarity comes to us from East Orange's Bitsy Biron. Take it away, Bitsy …

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Posted By Dan Bolles on Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 12:35 PM

In celebration of the annual Vermont's Funniest Comedian Competition, which runs Wednesday through Friday, October 26 through 28, at the Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington, all this week we're posting a daily version of our weekly Joke of the Week feature. Today's dose of local hilarity comes to us from Burlington's Paul Church. Take it away, Paul …

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Posted By Dan Bolles on Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 1:05 PM

In celebration of the annual Vermont's Funniest Comedian Competition, which runs Wednesday through Friday, October 26 through 28, at the Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington, all this week we're posting a daily version of our ongoing Joke of the Week feature. Today's dose of local hilarity comes to us from Winooski's Beth Norton. Take it away, Beth …

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Posted By Dan Bolles on Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 6:00 AM

It's Monday, which means it's time for your weekly dose of locavore levity: the Joke of the Week! But guess what? In celebration of the annual Vermont's Funniest Comedian Competition, which runs Wednesday through Friday, October 26 through 28, at the Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington, we'll be posting a new joke every day this week. Kicking off our week of local hilarity is Burlington's Annie Russell. Take it away, Annie…

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Posted By Ken Picard on Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 5:27 PM

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Courtesy of Amy Schwartz

"Amy, I'm only stopping this car once: Do you have to go No. 1 or No. 2?"

Amy Nicole Schwartz sums up her job as "basically dick jokes and boxes." As design director for Cards Against Humanity, the  wildly successful and hilariously inappropriate party game, and its "boring business company" spinoff,  Blackbox, Schwartz  sets the creative vision for her companies' games, projects and subversive PR campaigns.

Believe it or not, there's more to her design responsibilities than laying out black-and-white game cards that read, "Toni Morrison's vagina" and "Watching an orphanage burn" in Helvetica Neue Bold. 

Posted By Margot Harrison on Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 3:00 PM

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Courtesy of Vermont College of Fine Arts

Major Jackson with the Vermont Book Award

On Saturday night, at a gala on its Montpelier campus, the Vermont College of Fine Arts awarded the second annual Vermont Book Award to poet and University of Vermont professor Major Jackson for his latest collection, Roll Deep.

The widely published Jackson is the Harvard Review's poetry editor and the recipient of a slew of literary honors; his book Leaving Saturn was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

A lengthy 2004 Seven Days profile of Jackson by David Warner describes his work as "lin[ing] up between Langston Hughes and hip-hop." The piece quotes the poet's then-department head at UVM, Robyn Warhol, as saying, "I'm convinced that Jackson is going to be one of the voices they study when poetry of the early 21st century is written about."

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