Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

No one could have predicted…

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

A consequence of cucumbers

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / We don’t give a fuck it’s not your birthday

Reader Interactions

208Comments

  4. 4.

    Geoduck

    I’ve always liked the little ditty they included in the Disney flick The Emperor’s New Groove:

    One, two, three, GO!
    Happy happy birthday, from all of us to you!
    We wish it was our birthday, so we could party too!
    Happy happy birthday, may all your dreams come true!
    We wish it was our birthday, so we could party too!

  7. 7.

    Cassidy

    Best B-day song? No idea. Best conception day song, though, is Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

  8. 8.

    Raven

    Happy birthday to you
    you we’re born in a zoo
    you look like a monkey
    and you smell like one too

  9. 9.

    Southern Beale

    I don’t think I’ve ever had a really bad birthday, at least not one that I can recall. I’ve probably blocked it from my memory if I did ….

    And I just looked through Wikipedia’s list of birthday songs and don’t think I’ve heard of any of them.

    Birthdays are kinda meh.

  12. 12.

    dr. bloor

    Thank you DougJ, Friend of Hamas, for planting the Beatles birthday song in my ear.

    I fucking loathe it.

  13. 13.

    Merfy

    I turned the big 4-0 last year, and my husband didn’t get me a gift and my in-laws failed to acknowledge it altogether. I’m still steamed.

    As far as songs go, I like “Birthday” by Kings of Leon.

  14. 14.

    Punchy

    @Cassidy: Conception? Huh? Doesn’t the dude in that song put the brakes on the sexytime at the last minute? Or has my Meatloaf acumen atrophied since….I dunno…6th grade?

  17. 17.

    JasonF

    Worst birthday? My wife just celebrated hers on Monday. On Friday — 3 days earlier — her (until then) best friend and her were arguing via Facebook. The friend decided to end the argument by calling 911 and reporting that my wife was suicidal. Paramedica arrived, and since she was home alone, they decided she could not be left unsupervised. A paramedic physically hauled her out of the house, severely bruising her arm and pushing her to the ground in the process, and hauled her off to the emergency room where she had to wait for hours until a psychiatrist came on duty to assess her.

    And I should mention that my wife has a history of mental illness (a depression-anxiety disorder, though not suicidal depression), and her worst fear — which the former friend very well knows — is being involuntarily committed.

    So my wife spent her birthday dealing with a) the physical pain of her injuries, b) the emotional pain of being betrayed by her best friend of more than 25 years, c) the emotional pain of having her home violated by the paramedics, and d) the emotional pain of having her worst fears validated.

  18. 18.

    Pappy G

    The Smiths – Unhappy Birthday

    href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VjbuM4i–A”>

  19. 19.

    ET

    When I turned 40 I was going to use a frequent flier tick to fly home (NOLA) for a vacation – free travel and no hotel. Unbeknownst to me my mom was flying my BEST friend in as my present and we were going to play in NOLA for a week. Then a hurricane came and put a stop to that. Not horrible in the grand scheme of things but that pissed me off.

    But on a more positive note when I turned 18 legal drinking age was still 18 so that was a fun one.

  21. 21.

    Yutsano

    On my sixth birthday I fell out of a truck. Spent the rest of the day in the hospital. Yeah, that was fun.

    @Southern Beale:

    Birthdays are kinda meh.

    THIS. AD. INFINITUM.

  22. 22.

    Raenelle

    About that glass is half-full optimism v. glass half-empty pessimism. That’s a consumer’s way of looking at things–contented v. need more. There’s really another option: your glass is too big.

  23. 23.

    mistermix

    As you well know I would never indulge in sentimentality or negativity about birthdays.

  26. 26.

    Rosalita

    @Punchy:

    Doesn’t the dude in that song put the brakes on the sexytime at the last minute?

    Nope…chorus at end praying for the end of time

  27. 27.

    Thoughtcrime

    For unhappy birthdays there’s:

    Happy Birthday Blues – B.B. King

    Unhappy Birthday – The Smiths

  28. 28.

    gvg

    My mother is the one who remembers dates. One year she didn’t keep us “informed” and my dad, sister and I all forgot HER birthday. It was still being mentioned in phone calls to relatives a year later. We’ve been VERY careful since.

    I don’t really remember dates though.

  30. 30.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    worst birthdays ever

    The day I turned 21 all my friends and family were out of town so I had nobody to got out drinking with (legally that is) later that day. I was woken up early in the morning by the phone ringing; it was my work calling and they called me in on an emergency basis because of a coworker who was out sick and an urgent job that was on deadline for that day. I ended up working a 14 hour shift on a Saturday, and then when I got off work the battery in my late-model car was dead and I ended up walking home 5 miles.

    Bad enough?

    best birthday songs

    Another trip around the Sun by Jimmy Buffet

  31. 31.

    Raven

    ON my 60th my wife flew my best friends in from Berkerley and Tucson. The knoked on the door about this time on a Friday afternoon and literally nearly fainted.

  32. 32.

    MomSense

    Growing up we moved every year right before my birthday so I never had a birthday party. I think I was a teen before I had an actual party.

  33. 33.

    SFAW

    @Punchy:
    I think you’re mis-remembering. He swore that he’d love her ’til the end of time, in exchange for her letting him boink her.

    I don’t think he’d be praying for the end of time if he hadn’t gone through with it.

  35. 35.

    Suffern ACE

    On my birthday sophomore year in college…there was a notice posted for a week prior that water would be shut off at 9:30am, I got up at 10:00am and had no water in the dorm. I went to my work study job anyway. I got a call around 3:30 from the folks across the hall that water was gushing out from under my door. To test that the water was really off, I had opened the faucet in my room all the way and hadn’t closed it. When we finally opened the door, there was about 3 inches of water above the carpet. Spent the rest of my birthday cleaning up and apologizing to people who lived downstairs and in the other rooms. Futons never really dry out, apparently.

  36. 36.

    Served

    22. Unemployed. Family had “other plans” and I had just graduated college so all of my friends were gone too. So, I sat around all day moping and drinking.

  37. 37.

    Cassidy

    @gvg: Neither do I, but I only have to remember them long enough to plug into my phone’s calendar.

  38. 38.

    gelfling545

    Well, they were never terribly bad birthdays. I do remember resenting that my birthday was in July so I could never bring cupcakes to elementary school. Then, there were the years I was married & my ex could never remember my birthday. It was 2 days after his. Passive-aggressive? Nah, probably just coincidence.

  40. 40.

    Soonergrunt

    On my 17th birthday, I got an allergic reaction to something in some carmel-coated popcorn from a Mom-and-Pop sweet shop in Georgetown, Colorado. I woke up in the ER in Frisco, CO with a tube down my throat.

  41. 41.

    kindness

    @JasonF: Well I would say that your wife is the winner here but really, what devious and sadistic plan does your wife have for getting back at her ex-best friend? This is war don’t you know?

  44. 44.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    My birthday is in July. I like to spend it alone hiking in the woods until I’m damn well ready to come back to civilization.

    It would suck to have a birthday in December in a Christian-ish culture. That’s like getting robbed every year.

  48. 48.

    Schlemizel

    If you are asking for worst birthday song I can’t help you. If you want the worst birthDAY experience I can give you further evidence of what it really means to be a schlemizel.

  51. 51.

    raven

    @Soonergrunt: And 8 days after I came home at 19 I got popped for underage. Nineteen, two years overseas and that! And now I’m so happy I’ve been sober for 20 years! Strange world.

  52. 52.

    kindness

    My most fun birthday? Yea I know, not the thread. When I turned 18. Yea I was drinking but the drinking age in NY was 18 then and I had had my brother’s ID since I was 15 so that was no big. No it was the all nighter with mescaline & qualudes that was the kicker. That was fun.

  54. 54.

    SFAW

    @Merfy:

    I turned the big 4-0 last year, and my husband didn’t get me a gift and my in-laws failed to acknowledge it altogether. I’m still steamed.

    As well you should be.

    You could bring him around here, and we’ll smack him around on your behalf.

    Even forgetting a non-significant birthday is RIGHT OUT, as far as I’m concerned. Sorry you had it happen to you.

  55. 55.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    Worst birthday was self inflicted. #21, and I haven’t touched rum in the 33 years since.

  56. 56.

    Aloha

    Asking Me Lies

    This one by the Replacements is pretty much an annual listen. The B-day stuff is a little over a minute in…if you can’t make it that far, you’ll hate this. Sorry bout the ad.

  59. 59.

    ranchandsyrup

    Best/worst was my 21st. Was kidnapped walking to class by friends. They took me to the Office of Financial Aid where we all pulled out $200 Emergency Loans. Then we headed to the cas!no to play some table games. Guy at our table had a heart attack but the game kept going while they worked on him (including some rib cracking). Went to the bar and was handed a pint of gin that just was microwaved. That’s all I remember until I woke up after falling off of a 5 foot wall.

  67. 67.

    Valdivia

    @JasonF:

    I thought mine was sucky but yes this is really bad. Hope her friend gets what she deserves via Karma one day.

  68. 68.

    Bob2

    I hate birthdays and choose not to celebrate when possible.

    I think the worst one was I was a little kid and thought my parents forgot my birthday. They spent the entire day fighting and didn’t even say happy birthday all day…then 10:30pm rolls around there’s cake for my birthday. What?
    Two years ago, my parents remembered it was my birthday a month later because they forgot for real this time.

    The most entertaining one as a result is that I generally choose to work through birthdays now, and two of my friends showed up as a surprise and went to Applebee’s in my honor without me. Then they came back when I was home and told me all about it.

    The worst one my friend told me about was when it was his birthday and his nephew got upset because it wasn’t HIS birthday, and they decided to have his nephew cut the cake and gave his nephew one of his gifts instead.

  70. 70.

    Forkbeard

    I’ve got amusingly bad birthdays, and an actual terrible birthday that guaranteed is more depressing than anything you can think of.

    First, the funny one: The day I turned 26, I got a traffic ticket, broke my washing machine, and fractured my wrist. Luckily, these were all completely unrelated events and the evening party went well despite the cast on my arm and the water damage in the garage.

    But as for truly depressing: 4 days before my 21st birthday, my girlfriend died in a car crash. On my birthday, her surprise birthday gift to me arrived in the mail. Never been so completely wrecked by anything in my life. Still have that beer stein, actually.

  72. 72.

    rd-AR

    best birthday song ever?

    Your Sweet and Shiny Eyes – Bonnie Raitt

    “in my sweet dreams we are in a bar, and it’s my birthday, drinking salty margaritas with Fernando”

  73. 73.

    LanceThruster

    The Sheriff John “The Birthday Cake Polka” is the best, bar none.

    THE BIRTHDAY CAKE POLKA
    From the TV Show “Sheriff John’s Lunch Brigade”
    “Sheriff” John Rovick – 1952

    Put another candle on my birthday cake
    We’re gonna bake a birthday cake
    Put another candle on my birthday cake
    I’m another year old today

    I’m gonna have a party with my birthday cake
    Come on and take some birthday cake
    Put another candle on my birthday cake
    I’m another year old today

    We’ll have some pie and sandwiches
    And chocolate ice cream too
    We’ll sing and play the day away
    And one more thing I’m gonna do

    I’ll blow out the candles on my birthday cake
    And when I do, a wish I’ll make
    Put another candle on my birthday cake
    I’m another year old today

    (Musical Interlude)

    Put another candle on my birthday cake
    We’re gonna bake a birthday cake
    Put another candle on my birthday cake
    I’m another year old today

    I’m gonna have a party with my birthday cake
    Come on and take some birthday cake
    Put another candle on my birthday cake
    I’m another year old today

    We’ll have some pie and sandwiches
    And chocolate ice cream, too
    We’ll sing and play the day away
    And one more thing I’m gonna do

    I’ll blow out the candles on my birthday cake
    And when I do, a wish I’ll make
    Put another candle on my birthday cake
    I’m another year old today
    (Happy birthday to you)
    I’m another year old today.

  74. 74.

    SFAW

    @JasonF:

    Lotta sick bastards in this world. (The “friend,” of course.) I hope your wife’s OK.

    And, not a lawyer, etc., etc., but I would think/hope there’s some law the “friend” had violated, for which the local police could pay her a visit.

  75. 75.

    cane giallo

    Well there was the birthday when my boyfriend at the time took me out for (Maryland blue) crabs for my birthday and broke up with me in the course of the meal. And because I was too upset to finish, he ate my crabs too.

    Or the one when I was at work and my husband took our son to the ER because he was vomiting uncontrollably and when I called the hospital they said there was no such patient. You kind of get panicked when your sick kid disappears.

    Or the birthday when I had to take some medication, which caused horrible cramps and also meant I couldn’t breastfeed my newborn. So I gave him formula, which made him sick.

    Or the time my husband thought it was more important to be at the REPUBLICAN!! convention that to celebrate my 40th birthday with me.

    I don’t like birthdays.

  76. 76.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @JasonF: The former friend, well, I got now words. I can only imagine how your wife felt. My good thoughts to you both.

  77. 77.

    Valdivia

    My turn–it’s my birthday today and just in time for it not only do I have a bum foot and can’t really get dressed like a normal person to celebrate but my boyfriend and I broke up in the course of a routine (maybe not so routine after all) about our plans of me moving to Shanghai. It does feel like a bad one but I’m heartened knowing I’m not alone on the sucky bday dept!

  78. 78.

    SFAW

    @Bob2:

    The worst one my friend told me about was when it was his birthday and his nephew got upset because it wasn’t HIS birthday, and they decided to have his nephew cut the cake and gave his nephew one of his gifts instead.

    There’s a part in “Shit My Dad Says” (i.e. the book) dealing with a similar situation.

  81. 81.

    SFAW

    @cane giallo:

    What is it with guys and 40th birthdays? Or maybe you and Merfy are just married to the same guy?

    You don’t look Mormon, though …

  82. 82.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @raven: Did that turn into a, um, buigger kerfuffle? something along the lines of “who you calling boy, motherfucker,” that ends with raven against a wall cuffed? Or did I make that up? If I did, I’ll submit that it’s fairly plausible as a scenario. Oh, and you have the best wife ever. I’ll have to remember that for Mr. Q’s 60th.

  84. 84.

    quannlace

    But on a more positive note when I turned 18 legal drinking age was still 18 so that was a fun one.

    For me too. I remembered feelling insulted when the counter guy didn’t ‘proof’ me when I bought a six-pack of Beck’s.
    Though whenever I was down at the Jersey Shore, I got carded till I was 28.
    ***************
    Somebody mentioned December birthdays? My sister’s on the 10th. So my Mom always kept all Christmas-y stuff at bay till after that. Still, in our family, December 11th is the official start of the Christmas season.

  87. 87.

    Chat Noir

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: Early December birthday here. I always envied kids who had summer birthdays because they could have pool parties and do fun stuff outside. It’s usually cloudy and cold and gloomy on my birthday. And when I was younger, people used to do the “it’s your birthday AND Christmas gift” thing. That sux when you’re a kid.

  88. 88.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Raven:

    In Illinois back in the (aka OUR) day, there were different legal drinking ages for males and females. I do remember their changing things around so that two days before my birthday I was looming forward to having a legal drink but on my actual birthday the new law had kicked in so I was illegal again for another year.

  92. 92.

    JasonF

    @kindness: @SFAW: Oh, charges are definitely being pressed, and we’re assessing whether to file a lawsuit (though the friend doesn’t have two cents to rub together, so probably not).

    My wife is pretty tough, so she’s doing OK. She is talking about redecorating the living room, since that’s where it all went down and she doesn’t enjoy being in that room any more. That’s OK with me — the cost of a fresh coat of paint and new carpet and furniture is a small price to pay for her peace of mind.

    And thanks to everyone for the kind wishes. I will pass them on to Mrs. F.

  93. 93.

    Rustydude

    Had a girlfriend of six months who broke off the relationship on one of my many birthdays. At least she treated me to free breakfast, but the rest of the breakup was rather nasty.

    And then on my 40th birthday, my mother broke her back in a freak accident – just hours before my entire family was ready to surprise me.

  94. 94.

    wmd

    I kind of enjoyed the party I had 4 months after I turned 33. I figured I was “long playing” at that point.

    Kids today won’t understand this.

  96. 96.

    BGK

    During my childhood and adolescense, every year my mother, for whatever reason, turned into a truly appalling, argumentative, volcanically angry person on my birthday, where anything would set her off. I suspected it was resentment at having to give birth to me by c-section, but she denies this. As the day got near, she’d try to make up for the previous year by making a big show of asking what I wanted to do, where I wanted to eat, et cetera, when I got old enough for these things to matter. On the actual day she seemingly deliberately sabotaged the plans in some way which should’ve been recoverable but instead turned her into a shrieking, red-faced maniac at “what I’d done.”

    When I turned 16, had a part time job, and a hand-me-down Chevette, I told her I wasn’t doing anything but work on my birthday until…the sun went out or something. She wasn’t happy, but couldn’t really argue with her history of epically bad birthdays.

    Perhaps to atone for all that, and seeing as how I was in a pretty black mood at turning 40 a couple of years ago, she put together a rather exceptional day with family and friends, and convinced me to relent on my birthday ban. It would’ve probably seemed lame to all of you, but I enjoyed the hell out of it.

  97. 97.

    scav

    December 30th. Trapped between the sneaky one combined present a year trick and the there is no way you’ll ever get a real dedicated party either as a kid or adult. Ok, the last was a point of joy in my life, but I’m non-standard issue.

  98. 98.

    Ruckus

    @Forkbeard:
    Wow.

    I think you very, very, unfortunately win the thread. That sucks beyond description.

    I spent my 21st in boot camp so no drinking. Or anything else resembling normal life.

  99. 99.

    muddy

    @Amir Khalid: I’ll be 52 in August! I’m hoping it will be better than the usual round of bad news and frustration that always crops up to make the day “special”.

  100. 100.

    ? Martin

    TMBG – It’s Not My Birthday

    It’s not my birthday
    It’s not today
    It’s not my birthday, so why do you lunge out at me?
    When the word comes down, “Never more will be around”
    Though I’ll wish you were there, I was less than we could bear
    And I’m not the only dust my mother raised

  101. 101.

    Heliopause

    Thing is, you should always listen to the Beatles Birthday and Yer Blues together.

  102. 102.

    BGK

    @quannlace:

    For me too. I remembered feelling insulted when the counter guy didn’t ‘proof’ me when I bought a six-pack of Beck’s.

    Yep, even though the drinking age was already 21 by my time (though enforced laughably badly in early-90s southwest Florida), I was similarly disappointed. In my case, it was a bottle of Seagram’s gin, which I guess set the pattern for my drinking life.

  103. 103.

    Forkbeard

    @Ruckus: Yeah, it was kinda awful. It’s one of those things where hearing about awful birthdays since is kinda nice.

    And hey, it makes all the rest of my birthdays much nicer by comparison. :)

  104. 104.

    ? Martin

    No horrible birthdays for me. Lots of ones not much worth remembering, though.

    My 44th was pretty nice. Literally eating cake while Ohio got called for Obama and having all of my conservative friends freaking the fuck out.

  105. 105.

    muddy

    I got carded the day before my 21st birthday, and thought it was terrible that they wouldn’t let it slide. I went to buy the next day, and went in without a purse, and tried to look really shifty as though I was wanting to try the “I left my purse in the car” routine. I did my best to look super nervous, just dying to snap my ID onto the counter in triumph. No one asked and I was so so bummed.

    I still get carded occasionally at 51, but I feel this is waitstaff angling for a bigger tip at this point.

  106. 106.

    Hawes

    Set to a dirge:

    Birthday
    Oh, happy birthday
    People dying everywhere
    Sickness, sorrow and despair
    On your birthday
    Oh, happy birthday
    One day closer to death.

  107. 107.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @JasonF: I’m glad to hear Mrs. F is OK – that so has to suck on so many levels. It’s a fear I share, so I know a bit of where I speak. And I confess that I’m delighted that charges are in progress.

  108. 108.

    WereBear

    My 14th birthday was my mother telling me my parents were divorcing. My 18th birthday was me loading all my possessions into garbage bags and moving into a run down hotel.

    Things have looked up since.

  109. 109.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Valdivia:

    Gosh. It seems almost churlish to wish you a Happy Birthday today, given what you’re going through, but I hope the pain (physical and emotional) will lessen as time does its thing. In the meantime, {{{Birthday hugs}}} to you

  110. 110.

    Valdivia

    @? Martin:

    That right there qualifies for one of the best.

    I think I may still be able to turn this one around by thinking of it as a weekend and not just the day. I guess the glass half full thing of Doug is contagious. :)

  112. 112.

    Amir Khalid

    Does The River count as a birthday song?

    Then I got Mary pregnant
    And man that was all she wrote
    For my nineteenth birthday
    I got a union card and a wedding coat
    We went down to the courthouse
    And the judge put it all to rest:
    No wedding-day smiles
    No walk down the aisle
    No flowers
    No wedding dress

  113. 113.

    Valdivia

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    it’s sincerely so appreciated! I know time heals all wounds so I’m hoping by the next one ill just have a wooo hoo I’m drunk comment. :)

  114. 114.

    Original Lee

    I second the vote for The Emperor’s New Groove song.

    Worst birthday so far is a three-way tie, I think.
    1. Five years old, snowed in with snow so deep it’s over my dad’s head, and suddenly I’m having a birthday party for all of the kids in the neighborhood (including the teenagers). Literally thrown together in fifteen minutes, no presents, decorations, or cake, just a plate with a bunch of birthday candles, milk and cookies, and about an hour of charades. NOBODY wanted to be there and took it out on me. I later found out that a neighbor had died of a heart attack shoveling snow and the ambulance couldn’t make it closer than a mile away, so they shunted the kids elsewhere in order for the men to wrestle the body through the deep snow to the ambulance.

    2. I was in Germany on foreign study, and I thought it would be cool to get together with a group of fellow foreign students and some of the German students I had gotten to know and have a birthday cake at this pub we liked to go to after classes. Unfortunately, it turned out that my birthday was on the anniversary of a significant Hitler Event (I forget now exactly which one), and at the time, the Germans were just starting to talk openly about that whole period of history. So the whole day was occupied with speeches and TV programs and demonstrations and (even in class) discussions about how the Nazis had been able to take over the country, because the university students had not been taught this stuff in school. Their history classes ended with the Weimar Republic. As a result, the students who joined me at the pub were not inclined to celebrate ANYTHING and spent the evening morosely wondering which family members and friends of the family had been collaborators and getting very very drunk. Not jolly at all.

    3. I was getting married in a few weeks, and due to various time and money constraints, the wedding was to be local to where my fiance and I lived. My parents used their birthday phone call to tell me they would not be coming to the wedding, despite having had six months’ notice of date, time, and location of said wedding.

  116. 116.

    Betty Cracker

    I had a horrible birthday a few years back. In the morning, I was putting away pots and pans (on my birthday, GAH!) when I dropped a cast iron skillet on my foot. Whilst I was hopping around and shrieking the most vile curse words imaginable, my very nice but SUPER Christian neighbor appeared on my doorstep with a birthday card. She heard every awful word I said through the screen door and was appalled by it — she was too nice to say so, but I could see it in her face, so I felt like a scumbag. I was afraid she would stop letting our kids play together (she didn’t).

    Later that day, my husband made me a lovely seafood dinner and Boston cream pie. When it came time to cut the pie, I retrieved a very large, heavy butcher knife for the job, and on the way to the table, I dropped it on the foot that had earlier escaped the cast iron skillet unscathed. I nearly severed my pinkie toe, but I refused to go to the hospital because I fucking HATE hospitals, so I just wrapped it up good in a towel and sat on the sofa whimpering.

    Ibuprofen didn’t begin to touch the agony of my throbbing feet, so my husband went digging around in the medicine cabinet and found some Vicodin he had left over from knee surgery. As it turns out, I’m allergic to Vicodin! So I spent the remainder of that wretched birthday sitting on the bathroom floor retching up half-digested seafood and pasta. Man, did that birthday ever suck!

  118. 118.

    Valdivia

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’m beginning to think bdays are dangerous and attract accident like a magnet! Just reading that made me squirm thinking of the cast iron. Yikes!

  119. 119.

    Anon For Reasons

    My sibling has had a remarkable string of bad birthdays: one year our blood relation was released from the workhouse where he’d been doing time for molesting his children, and another year our mother was in the hospital getting a lumpectomy for her breast cancer. If those events had been the same year, we probably would have celebrated it by opening a bottle of whiskey and turning on the gas.

  120. 120.

    Lirpa

    @scav: My hubby was bummed with his Dec. 30 birthday also, so when I met him I suggested we change his celebration to June 30 instead. He gets meatloaf and a cake in December and party with presents in June. He was altogether too excited about receiving his first summer clothing birthday present!

  123. 123.

    Flying Squirrel Girl

    @Thor Heyerdahl: This. Yes.

    Also, bad birthdays: On my fifth birthday I woke up covered in chicken pox, and could only ride my new bike around our tiny house until I hit a wall and left a black mark, then no more bike riding until I got well.

    I turned 21 the day the first Iraq war started, and all anyone wanted to do was stay home and watch the news.

    On my 25th birthday a friend threw a surprise party for me that ended apbruptly when my sister’s cat wiped her ass all the way across the living room carpet, leaving a 6 foot skid mark.

  124. 124.

    Valdivia

    @Yutsano:

    Gracias! Muchisimas. Now that I’m single and staying in DC (apparently) you have to come visit and we can paint the town red– :D

  127. 127.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @ranchandsyrup: Went to the bar and was handed a pint of gin that just was microwaved.

    I think the next thread ought to be: Which band could have/should have might have written this lyric? And what was the rhyme?

  129. 129.

    Yutsano

    @Valdivia: My grandfather just got a free trip to DC this summer! Unfortunately any vacation plans I had are pretty much shot for the rest of the year. Turns out I’ll be getting a new hip instead of a decompression and I’m not doing that until I’m a GS-8, which is after September. But after that I build leave faster. :)

  130. 130.

    handsmile

    @Valdivia:

    Oh my, well this one won’t be among the happier occasions, but perhaps it will furnish some gallows humor in the years to come. Of which I hope you will enjoy many happy and healthy and glass-full more!

    If it’s of any comfort, you’re “celebrating” this day with the likes of John Major, Richard Lewontin, Eric Idle, and Bernie Madoff. Also, Lucy Lawless, another warrior princess. :)

    Warmest wishes for a fulfilling year! And lots of cake.

  133. 133.

    pat

    My birthday is January 12 so what I didn’t get for Christmas I could ask for my birthday. Worked for me.

  136. 136.

    R-Jud

    Around 11:30 on the night of my 22nd birthday I woke up with agonizing back pain and chills, and staggered to the El to go two stops south to Weiss Memorial’s ER. I was new to Chicago, had no friends there to speak of, and had never been to an ER before. I also had a fever of 103.5, which meant that my personal view of reality was distorted into something directed by Terry Gilliam.

    When I went in, there was a flock of scrub-suited people trying to subdue a ragged guy who’d arrived on foot, but had been either shot or stabbed or impaled on something and was leaving a trail of blood as he staggered around bellowing and swinging his arms.

    People who approached me– either in passing or because they wanted to tell me something– seemed enormous and threatening, and I would shrink up in my chair like a threatened spider.

    As it happened, I had a raging kidney infection and was given IV antibiotics. I still remember shivering in my pajamas on the El platform after I was discharged, thinking that maybe I should move home and live in Mom’s attic for a while.

    The kicker was that I happened to fall ill during the five-day gap between the end of my insurance under my college health care plan and the start of my work plan. So the bill for that birthday was $9,000.

  137. 137.

    brantl

    I don’t like the Beatles one.

    Phillistine. Although it is a Paul McSuckney song, so there is that.

  138. 138.

    Valdivia

    @Yutsano:

    New hip? Oh my. I hope your recovery from that is quick and that PT is not as torturous as I imagine.

    @handsmile:
    Thank you. I’m hoping the fog of sadness will pass or get subsumed under a gin one :)

    The other sucky thing about my bday in years past when I truly observed the no leavened foods during Passover rule–the worst cakes ever!

  139. 139.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    My 65th is next week. Bummed? Hell, no. I didn’t think I’d make it this far.

  141. 141.

    cintibud

    My 50th Birthday I was surprised at how depressed I felt. Didn’t help that my wonderful wife forgot to wish me happy birthday that morning. Drove into work with the great Dar Williams/Ani DeFranco cover of “Comfortably Numb” on endless repeat.

    Ms. Cintibud called right after I got to work and wished me Happy Birthday and it was all better.

  143. 143.

    Gravenstone

    Not mine, but a dear friend of mine spent her 31st b-day (year ago 4/8) in the ER after suffering a stroke. Subsequent to that, she has suffered a half dozen spinal fractures (bone weakening due to the steroids they gave her) and spent basically half of last year hospitalized or in in-patient rehab. Fortunately, the neurological detriments were relatively minor and have been overcome. Physically, aside from the spinal fractures she’s back and able to enjoy her daughter (to whom she’d given birth 6 weeks prior to the stroke).

    On the plus side, she’s Canadian, so she and her boyfriend aren’t facing a life destroying raft of medical bills atop of everything else they’ve endured.

    So yeah, perspective and all that happy shit.

  144. 144.

    Flying Squirrel Girl

    @Ruckus: We still refer to it as the time Georgie tried to learn how to write cursive. My sister and I laugh about it being the best/worst surprise party ever.

  145. 145.

    LanceThruster

    Or how about from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Master Shakes “Spirit Journey Formation Anniversary.”

  146. 146.

    Birthmarker

    My worst day at work in my 27 year career was on my birthday. Involved an irate parent. My sister had a terrible day at work on her birthday one year, and after that just took off the day every year. Sounds like a plan!!

  147. 147.

    Yutsano

    @Valdivia: I don’t call them professional torturists for nothing. :) I’ll have to see if I get the Amazon or the fratboy sadist. Or if they do a dual clinical on me. Should be fun. If I play my cards right they might get a paper out of me.

  149. 149.

    Valdivia

    @Yutsano:

    Biggest grin ever. You make it sound naught like one of those German films they play at midnight in Europe. ;)

  150. 150.

    Bobby Thomson

    The correct answer is Levon.

    My youngest was born on my birthday so it’s not really mine anymore.

  151. 151.

    Maude

    @JasonF:
    I am late to the thread and my heart just sank to my toes when I read about your wife. Tell her she now knows what the word malice means.
    What happened to your wife is awful. The person who did this, what goes around, comes around. I’d rant for a good six months about this.
    I don’t know what else to say except your wife made it through and life will get better.

  152. 152.

    elmo

    Worst birthday ever was my last one. December 14th of last year.
    And no, not Newtown happening on the same day. My Dad died at around six in the morning.

  153. 153.

    Ruckus

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate:
    Only a little over a year behind you and have the same thought often. Have had a number of really close calls, missed being shot in head by about an inch at 20, being hit by a truck at 45(was not in a car by the way, those bumpers are hard), those are just some of the fun.

  156. 156.

    shortstop

    Some of these stories are hilarious. And Flying Squirrel Girl, we have the same birthday. Day, not year. Those fucking Bushes have been dragging us down for more than 20 years!

  158. 158.

    dance around in your bones

    Haven’t read the thread yet, so all apologies if this has been linked already:

    Wanda Jackson Happy Happy Birthday Baby

    My mother-in-law died on my birthday a couple of years ago. I loved her very much. She was 102 yrs old when she died. I remember thinking, great, now every birthday I have will bring up the memory of her death. Oh well. That’s life – and death!

    I hope whoever is having such a shitty birthday gets another chance next year to have a great one. Personally, birthdays don’t mean all that much to me anymore.

  161. 161.

    J (reader)

    Dang, some 157 comments and not a one about 50 Cent & In Da Club, from which DougJ’s post title comes. Nice pick.

    Crazy, but not nearly as crazy as realizing that song is now like 10 years old. Damn.

  165. 165.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    Viking birthday song (thanks to SCA)

    Happy Birthday! Huunngh!
    Happy Birthday! Huunngh!
    May the cities in your wake
    burn like candles on your cake
    Happy Birthday! Huunngh!
    Happy Birthday! Huunngh!

    Great for 6yo kids…

  168. 168.

    Tokyokie

    I don’t remember any particularly awful birthdays, but I’ve had plenty of lousy holidays. Probably the worst was the Fourth of July when I was living in Norway and dropped an acetylene bottle on my finger, requiring a trip to the emergency room and stitches and causing me to miss the American expats’ picnic on the beach. But the worst was that my mother, as consolation, made me my favorite dinner, fried chicken. Only she wasn’t paying a lot of attention and instead of pouring corn oil into the electric skillet, she used corn syrup. Ever had syrup-fried chicken? It’s even worse than it sounds.

    Of course the Easter when I had my appendix out and woke up during the procedure or the Christmas Eve on which our dentist’s cocker spaniel bit me on the face (again requiring stitches) were also negatively memorable.

  171. 171.

    Big R

    @JasonF: I sympathize. And I ask this not out of callousness, but in hopes that there may be an opening to restore the relationship your wife lost (and I’ll explain what I mean):

    Is there anything, anything that your wife could have said that could have been legitimately interpreted as being a suicide statement?

    Here’s why I ask (and you don’t have to answer; I ask for your benefit and hers, not mine): I had essentially the same thing happen to me. Only I was the friend, and the person playing the role of your wife told me that they were going to “end it all.” Given that they had expressed suicidal thoughts before, I didn’t play around and sent the appropriate authorities. Their response was to threaten me with a protective order. MAYBE, JUST MAYBE (and if not, that’s totally okay), your wife said something that alarmed her friend, who decided that the risk of triggering her was worth the potential benefit.

  173. 173.

    EriktheRed

    JasonF’s wife wins, but here’s mine:

    I have a mentally-handicapped son. Sometimes the poor guy has “bathroom issues”. A couple of years ago, I took my b-day off and it was on a weekday, so I was going to treat myself to a nice breakfast out and enjoy a peaceful day at home alone. Unfortunately, my poor boy got extremely constipated and we kept him home from school that day. It got so bad for him I took him to urgent care at the medical clinic where the doc just said keep giving him laxatives and wait.

    The good news is that his “issue” finally got solved that evening. At least Dad got to treat himself to some good stuff later.

  174. 174.

    Robert

    The roller rink cancelled my 7th birthday party while I was standing there because only 3 other kids showed up. My parents had to pay again for all of us, parents included, to be admitted and then they wouldn’t let us serve my birthday cake because of a no outside food unless it’s a birthday policy. That was my last birthday celebration. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  177. 177.

    Schlemizel

    got called away. So I didn’t enter the race before

    My folks decided since I was grown up I didn’t need a card. I planned a nice party with friends, several who said they would be there didn’t show. The girl I was serious about at the time did . . . with her new boy friend. Seems she had meant to tell me. One of my best friends from elementary school was driving back from California having just gotten out of the Army after being in Viet Nam.

    I had a fairly large fight with the now-ex GF and threw everyone out. Later my friends mom called me to say he had been killed in a motorcycle crash in South Dakota.

  180. 180.

    MattR

    @TR Donoghue:

    “Backwards Down the Number Line”

    A good choice. As much for the story behind it and the tradition it describes as for the song itself.

    Made a promise one to keep
    I can still recite it in my sleep
    Every time a birthday comes
    Call your friend and sing a song
    Or whisper it into his ear
    Or write it down
    Just don’t miss a year
    You decide what it contains
    How long it goes but this remains
    The only rule is it begins
    Happy happy oh my friend

  183. 183.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    I was in a troubled marriage. I was hoping that my birthday would provide a chance to try to resolve things. You know, there has to be dinner, entertainment, and cuddling, because it’s my birthday. So, maybe we can reconnect, and start the long road back to a healthy relationship.

    I worked night shift, so I woke up about 11am… to hear some assholes had flown planes into the World Trade Center.

    Given the three thousand people who died, and that I didn’t have any personal relationship to any of them, it’s pretty bleedin’ obvious that many people had a worse birthday than me that day, but I still think it ranks up there with bad birthdays.

  184. 184.

    Maude

    @Valdivia:
    You be grateful that man is out of your life. What he did was mean and you aren’t living with his meanness.
    Pat on shoulder for the hurt, but you don’t belong with him.

  185. 185.

    Valdivia

    @LongHairedWeirdo:

    A really good friend shares that day for a bday. It’s hard for her to this day.

    @Maude:
    Tears up. Thank you Maude. It’s one of those so complicated relationships that give you much joy but sometimes….he has now realized what a colossal ass he was being and sprung on me the news he will come to DC from China to hash things out. Grand gesture. And I’m kind if a sucker for that. I may have to ask Doug for a get my head examined thread :)

  186. 186.

    shortstop

    @Valdivia: Yes, yes! Holiday (birthday) weekend offers opportunities for redemption! This is the best way to make lemonade out of a crappy birthday, and it’s not that easy to do when said crappy b-day falls on a Wednesday. So you run with this, girl.

  187. 187.

    shortstop

    @? Martin: Priceless. I hope you switched to Fox for Rove’s meltdown just to drive the shiv — er, cake-cutting knife — in a little deeper.

  188. 188.

    The Moar You Know

    I threw my own party on my 31st birthday in my band’s rehearsal space, had kegs, dope, the whole nine yards. About two hundred people showed up and we played an epic gig.

    My girlfriend then hauled me home for some post-birthday coitus. She neglected to inform me that she’d invited two friends of hers to join in the fun.

    I wasn’t mad.

  190. 190.

    BD of MN

    my b-day is April 15th, and for more birthdays than I can remember, I spent it doing taxes and writing checks out to the IRS… (The past two years, however, I haven’t had a second, 1099 job, so taxes have been done in February…)

  191. 191.

    The Moar You Know

    @ranchandsyrup: The only shitty thing about the experience was waking up the next day and knowing that, no matter what, I was never going to have that awesome of a birthday again.

  193. 193.

    ruemara

    I haven’t had a real birthday party since I arrived in America at 5. The worst present I received, besides the usual none, was when my mother got a big purple shawl at a flea market a week after my birthday and handed it to me. I gave it back to her. I hate purple and I was 11, what do I need with a thickly knit purple shawl? Somedays, I think how nice it would be to be like other people and get cards and cake and stuff, maybe even have a party. I wonder what a surprise party would be like. My birthday was also the joyous anniversary of an assault by an uncle of mine when I was very young. To stop being upset about it, I learned to make my own party and that has helped, but I wonder if I’ll ever have family and friends that would make a party for me. It’s a secret wish, like getting a real Easter basket. Birthdays are sometimes easier to forget.

  194. 194.

    merrinc

    @BGK:

    I can relate to this, somewhat. My mother seemed pissed at me through most of my childhood but she really went into angry overdrive on my birthday. The way she carried on about the inconvenience and unneeded expense, you’d thought it was my idea to be born on New Year’s Day. (Aside to all you Christmas birthday folks: I contend mine is worse because people are not only broke and sick of celebrating, they’re hungover too. I’m lucky to get a phone call on my birthday, let alone a gift.)

    I was really surprised when my 8th birthday cake was unveiled because it was HUGE and oh so pretty with lots of big lavender roses (my fav) but the excitement quickly dissipated once she began a very long, tedious lecture on how we really didn’t have the money to pay for the bakery’s stupid mistake and how selfish I was not to realize that. Because, of course, I had called up the bakery and ordered it myself, just like I had arranged my timeframe for conception/birth.

    Still got a picture of that cake, too. With my baby sister propped up beside it. She was always the pretty one.

  196. 196.

    Helen Bedd

    If anybody cares, I’m hitting the big 6-4 tomorrow, so you know what Beatles song I’m going to be hearing all day…

  198. 198.

    Ruckus

    Not a bad bday story, just the opposite.

    My ex invited a bunch of people I worked with to a party at a restaurant. Good food and a stripper doing a bday boy lap dance for desert. One of my ex’s many redeeming qualities is that she is very good(and practiced!) at practical jokes. Fortunately I was rarely the butt of them.

  199. 199.

    JasonF

    @Big R:

    I sympathize. And I ask this not out of callousness, but in hopes that there may be an opening to restore the relationship your wife lost (and I’ll explain what I mean):

    Is there anything, anything that your wife could have said that could have been legitimately interpreted as being a suicide statement?

    Here’s why I ask (and you don’t have to answer; I ask for your benefit and hers, not mine): I had essentially the same thing happen to me. Only I was the friend, and the person playing the role of your wife told me that they were going to “end it all.” Given that they had expressed suicidal thoughts before, I didn’t play around and sent the appropriate authorities. Their response was to threaten me with a protective order. MAYBE, JUST MAYBE (and if not, that’s totally okay), your wife said something that alarmed her friend, who decided that the risk of triggering her was worth the potential benefit.

    Great question, and no need to apologize.

    So, my wife is very outspoken about mental illness and suicide prevention, and she is constantly telling people that when someone is in trouble, their friends should call the police if they need to. So she would applaud you.

    The incident happened in the wee hours of Friday morning. On Monday — three and a half days prior — she had made some posts to Facebook about wanting to hurt herself. I helped her through it, as did a number of her friends, and by Wednesday, she was through that bout of depression. She made that clear on Facebook, thanked her friends for helping her through it, talked about all her plans for the future and how glad she was to have these great things to look forward to.

    Late Thursday night/early Friday morning, she connected up with the best friend and said, in essence “Hey, I was really hurting earlier in the week. How come you weren’t there for me?” The best friend replies, in essence, “You’re hard to help and I have other stuff going on.” So my wife replied “OK, if you can’t help, I understand, but if you see I’m in trouble, you should call JasonF, you should call my sister, or if all else fails and you think I’m going to hurt myself, you should call the police.” That’s when the friend called the police.

    That was at 3:00 a.m. Here’s how I know the friend was just being a jerk, rather than expressing legitimate concern. She did not call me. She did not call my sister-in-law. She did not follow up with the police to see if my wife was OK. When my wife got home around 10:00 a.m. and started posting to Facebook about what had happened, she did not respond in any way. We did not hear from the friend at all until 6:00 p.m. when I called her and told her she was to have no further contact whatsoever with my wife, and at that point, all she had was excuses, not concern for my wife’s well-being.

  203. 203.

    Anne Laurie

    @LongHairedWeirdo:

    I worked night shift, so I woke up about 11am… to hear some assholes had flown planes into the World Trade Center.

    That was the Spousal Unit’s birthday, too, and a nice round-number one to boot. He slept in because it was also the day after he’d been laid off, at the height of the local tech-industry depression.

    I made the mistake of leaving him a message: “I’m on my way home, but you should turn on the tv.” First thing he saw was the abbreviated tower with the dark smoke plume, which looked (in his newly-awakended state) like the Prudential Tower, down the street from where I worked.

    On the other hand, a dear friend (our wedding officiant) who worked in the WTC also slept in, because it was his birthday too. So we figure the kharmic balance was maintained!

  204. 204.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    @Anne Laurie:

    On the other hand, a dear friend (our wedding officiant) who worked in the WTC also slept in, because it was his birthday too. So we figure the kharmic balance was maintained!

    Well, I am glad to hear birthdays caused *some* good news on that day!

  205. 205.

    tmf (formerly tesslibrarian)

    @Valdivia: It’s my birthday today, too. Sorry yours is terrible; when I turned 38, my husband chose to go to a coders conference, even though it was right around the time our vet had told us to check to see if our cat’s tumor was starting to come back. Sure enough, I found the lump (which was a death sentence), and our other cat vomited blood for the first time–she’d be gone by May, just two days after we found out my mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer. So much was crappy that year, I don’t even isolate out the birthday, but admit that when I have one (like this year) that’s mostly meh, I’m actually a little grateful. Never sure if that’s maturity on my part, or just giving up.

    Anyway, I hope you have a good birthday weekend. After a screw up with our dinner reservations tonight, I’m hoping to salvage things on Saturday and Sunday as well.

  206. 206.

    JustRuss

    My worst birthday: Worked all day, got on my motorcycle to go home, put on my helmet…and found someone had put gum in it. I commuted on a bike for several years, and that’s the only time that ever happened.

  208. 208.

    The Golux

    Extraordinarily late as usual, but did you know that “Happy Birthday” is still under copyright?

    That’s right, legally you should pay Warner/Chappell royalties if your restaurant employees sing “Happy Birthday” to a customer.

Comments are closed.