Originally published here
I’m Not a Basic-Ass Cloud Looking Like a Boat or Some Shit
A sailboat? Seriously? A fucking sailboat? For the trillionth time, NO. I’m not some basic cloud looking like a banana or a sock. I’m a cloud that’s clearly taking the shape of the Hindenburg Disaster of 1937. How can you not see that?
You know the other clouds laughed at me when I said I was going to change the cloud game and learn all sorts of complex new shapes and forms. They said humans like simple shit and don’t want to be challenged. I thought they were underestimating your capacity for recognition, but I’m starting to think they might be right.
When that couple on the grass thought I looked like a swan, I thought it was pretty damn obvious I was a Susan B. Anthony coin on top of a refrigerator. When those hikers thought I was an umbrella, guess what? I was turn-of-the-century horse droppings on South Street in Philadelphia. Or when that little boy said, “Hey mom, look, it’s a zebra!”
I wanted to smack him across the face with my masterful protrusion, which wasn’t full of stupid stripes on some stupid zebra. It was the measurement marks on a wooden ruler attached to the men’s restroom key of a used bookstore.
And boy I must’ve been a fucking idiot when I started venturing into more abstract notions and concepts. When I was boldly developing new forms of cloud expression to give you tours de force like Pickpocket Awareness, An Infinite ‘Groundhog Day‘ Marathon on TBS, and Your Father-in-Law’s Hatred of Foreigners, you all thought I was a pom-pom, a duck and a lamp. And not a single day goes by without me still hearing those construction workers snickering about my resemblance to a penis, when in fact it was my magnum opus, The Uncertainty of Whether Someone Is in Costume.
I guess it’s time I quit lying to myself. The world simply isn’t ready for my gifts. Maybe a day will come when people start taking a closer look and my mastery will get the recognition it deserves. But until then, I’ll just be up here dumbing it down on some corner of the sky, looking like a boat or some shit.
From a tumblr I used to write where clouds were tired of being unrecognized so they just started spelling themselves out:
