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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
(Bugs & Cranks updates:
Junkyard Downpour: “If I’d spent half as much time with my homework as I did watching Dale Murphy and Phil Niekro, I might have made it to medical school like my folks always wanted. Or at least veterinary school. Or taxidermy class. Something.”
To Infinity, and Beyond: “Now, I’m no mathematician. They don’t even let me near the pointy sorts of numbers, lest I poke an eye out or something. But I’m pretty sure that INFINITY plus INFINITY equals something pretty bad for a pitcher’s ERA.”
Now on with the show.)
“You can measure by time, by number of posts, by accumulated visitors, word count, or by the list of ‘cease and desist’ orders filed.”
When you’ve been spewing nonsense in one place as long as I have, there are lots of opportunities to hit milestones. You can measure by time, by number of posts, by accumulated visitors, word count, or by the list of ‘cease and desist’ orders filed.
(Although if you don’t count the ones filed by my family, then that last one’s not so impressive.)
On a few occasions over the years, I’ve taken the time to acknowledge various milestones — but I’m not sure any so far have been as exciting as the one I’ve just reached today. But it’s not my M.O. to make big decisions like that on a weekend; instead, I’ll point to the milestones of posts past, announce today’s big news, and let you decide.
(Feel free to wait until Monday, if you like. It’s a big responsibility, I know. Just breathe. We’ll get through this.)
Anyway, here’s a brief look at a few of the prouder moments this blog you’re reading has seen:
One Month: Happy Blogiversary!
99 Posts: Ninety-Nine Bloggity Posts on the Web, Ninety-Nine Bloggity Posts…
100 Posts: This Is Not How I Thought I’d Join the Century Club
Three Months: Well, There’s a Quarter. Do You Care Yet?
5,000 Hits: I Could Thank You Properly… But My Wife Would Be Pissed
300,000 Words: Excuse Me Whilst I Do Some Cipherin’
10,000 Hits: It Ain’t a ‘Fireside Chat’, But It’s All I’ve Got
Six Months: Where Do You Want to Blog Today?
One Year: Aw, Dammit, Now I’m All Misty-Eyed
750 Posts: That’s a Lot of Candles on the Cake, Baby!
Two Years: Really, Could the ‘Twos’ Get Any More Terrible?
Three Years: Three Years Is a Charm
Somewhere along the way, it seems I got a little jaded about the whole milestone thing. Nothing to commemorate the four-year anniversary, or the fifth. Not a peep from me at the 1,000 post mark. Unless you count the several hundred words that were probably in the 1,000th post as ‘peeps’. Maybe they were peepy; I haven’t looked, frankly.
Also, the site climbed past 50k visits (according to semi-accurate-at-best SiteMeter), then 100k, 200k, 250k and 300k. I could have celebrated any of those numbers. But I was asleep at the keyboard, apparently. Ditto for the 1,000th post. And lord only knows how many words I’ve dropped now. I’d have to guess it’s in the several millions by now.
If I could guess that sort of thing without feeling a bit nauseous, that is. Which I can’t. So I won’t.
Meanwhile, I’m back on the milestone kick — for one night, at least — and am happy to announce that this is the 1337th post on the site.
That’s right: 1337. You know what that means, right?
(Just in case you don’t. It’s okay. We can’t all be tuned into what all the cool kids are saying. Or… well, were saying, several years or so ago. They still wearing those jeans halfway down the ass and piercing anything they’ve got that moves?
Yeah. Those crazy kids these days.)
Anyway, it seems I’ve finally joined the blogging elite. Or at least the ‘bl0gging 1337‘. How many of those ‘big’ blogs can say that, eh?
This is one milestone that totally r0xx0rs. Happy w33k3nd, kids.
Permalink | 2 CommentsAs you may recall — because I haven’t stopped reminding you lately — I also write over at the newly-revampified Bugs & Cranks baseball emporium. This being both the first week of our relaunch and the first week of the MLB regular season, I’ve been trying to squeeze in as many posts as are feasible over there recently. For instance, in the past couple of days, I managed to bang out Part of a Well-Balanced Ballclub, about the Braves’ multipronged attack, and Wednesday Walk Watch: spWing tWaining Wrapup, celebrating (and ridiculing) those hitters who seemingly refuse to take a base on balls.
Fine. That’s good work. So I figured I’d take the night off. No more baseball musing until Thursday, at least.
“Don’t know, don’t want to know, and certainly don’t want to eat at “Mr. Lucky’s House of Wag” down the street ever again.”
Then the Braves went and saw their bullpen collapse like a post-Viagra comedown, coughed up a seven-run lead in the space of an inning and lost to the Phillies in a game this afternoon. That sort of monumental implosion seemed to scream out for some sort of comment. Like ‘Guuuuuuh!,’ for instance. But I figured I could be more eloquent than that, if only a little.
So after I finished up my work, I stayed at the office a few minutes longer to bang out another piece, entitled This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Teams. I didn’t have a lot of time — our pooch hangs out at ‘doggy day care’ on Wednesdays, and they close shop at 8pm. You get there too late, and… well. I suppose I don’t really know what happens if you’re too late for pickup. Maybe the mutts stay there overnight. Or maybe they go home with the people at the store. Maybe they get sold to fast food Chinese places, and become Thursday’s moo goo gai pups. Don’t know, don’t want to know, and certainly don’t want to eat at “Mr. Lucky’s House of Wag” down the street ever again.
(I knew I tasted schnauzer in the wonton soup last time. And my wife said it was just MSG. J’accuse!)
Anyway, I had a deadline. So I rushed out a few paragraphs, and gave it a quick read-over on the way out the door. It was fine. I didn’t hate it, completely. But it seemed like it was missing something. There was one spot in particular near the end that I thought I could spice up. If I could just drop an appropriate little zinger in there, it’d tie the whole piece together, and I’d be a lot happier with it.
But the clock, she continued to tick.
By 7:30, effectively the very last possible minute, I’d corrected a few spelling mistakes and formatting issues. But I didn’t have that zinger. With the dog possibly teetering between the prospect of a warm blanket at home if I rushed to get her and the business end of a peanut dipping sauce if I didn’t, I had no choice. I submitted the piece and flew out of the office to retrieve the mutt.
But that zinger spot, it bothered me.
All the way to the car, and most of the way to the dog’s place, I racked my brain for just the right sentence to add into that spot. Finally, as I was circling for a parking spot, I latched onto one. It had the right rhythm. It flowed with the rest of the paragraph. It was wildly inappropriate. In other words, it was perfect.
Deathly afraid I’d forget it, I silently repeated the sentence over and over to myself, trying to burn it temporarily into my brain. I parked the car, collected the dog and drove home — the whole way reciting the same little mantra in my head. As soon as I hit the front door, I’d log in and amend the original piece, adding the de resistance cherry on top. That was the plan.
Instead, when I hit the front door, I found my wife on the other side with hands on hips, shaking her head and frowning at me.
‘Where’s the dog food?‘
Wait. I picked up the dog, and now I’m supposed to be picking up bags of stuff to put into the dog, too? What kind of deal is this, anyway?
I gave her that blank wide-eyed husband stare that says, ‘I know you’re mad, and I know it’s probably my fault. But I have no clue what the hell you’re going on about, so please let me in on my stupidity and I’ll backpedal as best I can.‘ She turned frownier and said:
‘I told you yesterday, the dog’s almost out of food. You said you’d pick up a bag tonight.‘
I still had no memory of this. But it does seem like something I might say — and she did appear to have an awful lot of details to back up her case. A vague flicker of a conversation about dog food, or lack thereof, flashed across my consciousness. Oh, right. Dog food. Yeah, that’s my bad.
But it’s odd, I thought. If I remember that chat at her prompting now, then why didn’t it trigger off back at the dog place? There are bags and bags of dog food sitting on shelves there. That’s what the whole conversation was about; you’d think my brain could put two and two together once in a while and keep me out of trouble. Evidently not.
And then I remembered why. The whole time I was there, I was preoccupied with remembering my sentence. The one I should be adding to the baseball story right this minute, instead of standing here debating where the responsibility lies for our temporarily kibble-less pooch. So for one night, we feed her popcorn or sand or an old shoe or something. No big deal there. Meanwhile, I’ve got this sentence to get to.
I should have just apologized and excused myself, but I didn’t. That’s my problem, always wanting to explain how I got myself into a mess. So I told her:
‘Oh, sorry. I was preoccupied trying not to forget something, and the food slipped my mind.‘
That was clearly the wrong angle to take. Hands still on hips, she leveled her eyes on me and asked:
‘Well, what was it? What was so damned important that our puppy has to starve tonight now?‘
A smart man would have cut his losses then. Deflected the question, or thought up a lie, or just run screaming away until the heat died down. Not me, though. I don’t have those sorts of filters, or the wherewithal to defend myself. Without thinking, I simply blurted out the snippet I was saving for that B&C story:
‘The Braves threw more balls in the dirt than a team of gay midget mud wrestlers.‘
Let’s just say that didn’t go over so well. Everyone’s a critic, I guess. Maybe if she’d read the rest of the piece first, maybe. Seen the context. Or a big bag of kibble under my arm. That might have helped things along.
So now the wife’s mad, the dog’s starving and I’m in hot water again, as usual. But at least there’s a silver lining. I finally did get around to updating my post. And from now on, I think I’ll ‘announce’ new Bugs & Cranks content here with a snippet sentence like that one, rather than a big descriptive prequel to each post. I might add a link back to this post to explain the rationale — and why I’m sleeping on the couch for the next three weeks — but I like the idea of the snippet as teaser.
Not sure I’ll be able to top one with gay midget mud wrestlers any time soon, but I’ll sure give it a try. Just as soon as I buy more Alpo tomorrow. First things first, you know.
Permalink | 1 Comment(With Opening Day and a spectacular site redesign upon us over at Bugs & Cranks, the content’s flying fast and furious over there.
Me, I’m just trying to keep up in my new digs with posts like Opening Day Quick-Hitters and Hope Sags Eternal at MLB.com. Check ’em out, if you’re so inclined. We’re playing ball now, kids.)
I had a revelation yesterday.
I was talking with a friend, and he was complaining about having to deal with morons on a daily basis. At his office, he said. Out at restaurants, he said. “In the car, on the phone, right this minute, and ” — heeeey, I’m standing right here, dude. Not cool.
“Morons are fine. Society needs morons, so we can have bungee cord testers and marketing executives and radio talk show callers.”
Still, he’s got a point. There are a fair number of morons out there in the world, and they do tend to get in the way of getting any work done, ordering a steak or commuting to the workplace / moron holding pen area. That’s when it hit me.
The revelation, I mean. Not my friend.
The thing is this: Morons are fine. Society needs morons, so we can have bungee cord testers and marketing executives and radio talk show callers. The morons who are clearly morons aren’t the problem. You can usually pick them out by their slackjawed expressions and extended warranty purchases and subscriptions to People magazine.
It’s the morons who don’t know they’re morons that cause all the trouble. These are the people who believe they’re competent and responsible individuals able to make a contribution to society. But when you ask them for directions, they send you the wrong way down a one-way street. If you ask for collated copies of your big report, you get them back upside down and taped together and interspersed with photocopies of assprints. When your table orders breakfast from them, they don’t take any notes — and then twenty minutes later, they shuffle back to ask whether you had the Spanish omelet or the oatmeal.
It was French toast, genius. And now it’s lunchtime. Maybe you should invest in one of those newfangled ‘pencil’ doohickeys. I hear they’re all the rage for the past five hundred years.
The key, I figure, is finding a way to identify these people, these morons-in-waiting, before they have a chance to infuriate you. To that end, I’ve devised a simple ten-part test that can be administered to potential morons to plumb the levels of their ineptitude. Or as I like to call it, their ‘Moron Quotient’ (MQ).
Simply put your favorite pet maybe-moron through these paces, and the truth will reveal itself. Tally up the MQ score, and you’ll know whether you have a ‘normal’ on your hands, or a mouth-breathing helmet-wearing moron. Let’s get to the quiz; note that some scoring options are not mutually exclusive:
#1. Lead the subject to a glass door with a handle reading ‘PULL’. Observe the subject’s attempts to pass through the door.
Scoring:
Subject pulls handle and passes through door on first attempt : 0 points
Subject first pushes handle, then stops to read handle, pulls and passes: 1 point
Subject repeatedly pushes handle, pulling only when told to by passing stranger: 3 points
Subject bonks nose or forehead on door while pushing handle: 5 points
Subject ignores handle and passersby, ramming door with closest heavy object to gain access: 10 points
#2. Ask subject to compose an email and send it to you. Evaluate the message when it arrives.
Scoring:
Email contains proper English, a short message, or simply the word ‘test’: 0 points
Email is written in all-caps: 1 point
Email is sent from an AOL address: 3 points
Email contains any of the terms ‘LOL’, ‘ROFL’, ‘BFF’, ‘OMG’ or ‘WTF’: 5 points
Email printout arrives days later in an envelope postmarked the day of the request: 10 points
#3. Disconnect subject’s keyboard cable from his or her computer. Observe subject’s reactions when attempting to access computer.
Scoring:
Subject taps a few keys, checks cable and reconnects keyboard: 0 points
Subject repeatedly bangs keys, slowing down keystrokes to convince keyboard to work: 1 point
Subject opens computer CD tray and peers inside to determine the keyboard problem: 3 points
Subject gives up and buys new computer to replace ‘broken’ machine: 5 points
Subject requests that Microsoft Vista be installed on new computer: 10 points
#4. Make certain the subject has access to several coins of each denomination. Ask the subject to give you change for a dollar bill. Observe the result.
Scoring:
Subject provides correct change, in any combination, in under two minutes: 0 points
Subject provides correct change, but requires more than two minutes to calculate: 1 point
Subject provides correct change, but must count on fingers and/or toes to make math work: 3 points
Subject cannot provide correct change, and offers more than one dollar for the bill: 5 points
Subject cannot provide correct change, and most of the change is crammed up subject’s nose: 10 points
#5. Place a TV remote control in subject’s hand, with the IR transmitter facing toward him or her. Note the number of ineffective ‘clicks’ made before subject determines that remote is backwards.
Scoring:
Three clicks or less before examining the remote: 0 points
Four-to-nine clicks before examining the remote: 1 point
Ten or more clicks or a change of batteries before examining the remote: 3 points
Turning television on manually and refusing to examine remote: 5 points
Making clicking noises in hopes television will magically turn itself on: 10 points
#6. Ask the subject to open a child-proof bottle of aspirin. Observe the results.
Scoring:
Subject opens bottle, using only hands, without assistance: 0 points
Subject opens bottle, using some combination of teeth, pocket knife or can opener: 1 point
Subject opens bottle by stepping on it: 3 points
Subject swallows pills spilled on floor after violently opening bottle: 5 points
Subject swallows bottle, unopened: 10 points
#7. Place a large uncovered cup of coffee in subject’s hand where wristwatch is worn. Ask the subject for the current time. Observe the subject’s actions.
Scoring:
Subject switches coffee to non-watch wearing hand and reports correct time: 0 points
Subject turns wrist to look at watch and spills coffee on ground: 1 point
Subject turns wrist to look at watch and spills coffee on self: 3 points
Subject doesn’t bother to turn wrist because subject cannot tell time: 5 points
Subject doesn’t bother to turn wrist, but spills coffee on self anyway: 10 points
#8. Ask the subject to recite his or her Social Security number. Note the response.
Scoring:
Less than three numbers reported, or ‘who the hell wants to know?‘ response: 0 points
Four to eight numbers reported before stopping: 1 point
Full Social Security number reported: 3 points
Full Social Security number, birth date, mother’s maiden name and name of first pet reported: 5 points
Elastic lining of subject’s underwear consulted to retrieve personal information: 10 points
#9. Ask the subject to sign his or her name with an empty ink pen. Observe their efforts to write with a non-functional pen.
Scoring:
Subject scribbles a few times, diagnoses problem and asks for replacement pen: 0 points
Subject scribbles many times, bends and/or disassembles pen: 1 point
Subject scribbles a few times, diagnoses problem and asks for replacement paper: 3 points
Subject at any point places the pen tip in his or her mouth: 5 points
Subject attempts to sign name without noticing paper is ‘Transfer Power of Attorney’ form: 10 points
#10. Glue a dime to the sidewalk outside the subject’s home. Observe his or her actions upon noticing the coin.
Scoring:
Subject spends fifteen seconds or less trying to pick up coin before walking away: 0 points
Subject spends fifteen seconds to two minutes trying to pick up coin before walking away: 1 point
Subject spends at least two minutes trying to pick up coin before walking away: 3 points
Instead of walking away, subject returns to home to retrieve hacksaw, pliers or blowtorch: 5 points
Instead of walking away, subject builds home addition to safely enclose coin: 10 points
Final Moron Quotient scoring:
0-9 points: Congratulations! Your friend is a rocket scientist, apparently. Or at least good at Boggle, probably.
10-29 points: Your friend may have a case of mild moronia. It’s nothing a little bed rest and a couple of aspirin — not the whole bottle — won’t cure.
30-49 points: Your friend’s idea of cerebral entertainment is probably watching Jackass with the closed captions in Spanish turned on. Not a subject I’d trust with sharp objects, children or cash.
50-75 points: I’d be shocked if your friend isn’t wearing a padded helmet right now. Or buying useless crap from a TV commercial. Or playing the lottery. And possibly all three.
70-99 points: There are rutabagas smarter than your friend. Actual, honest-to-god rutabagas. And rutabagas don’t even wear wristwatches, or register for Social Security. Pitiful, really.
100+ points: I’m a firm believer in evolution. But if your friend with this kind of score is still out there, stumbling and grunting and drooling around, then I’d be willing to admit that Darwin just might be wrong. Or at least asleep at the wheel. Get your friend a strait jacket, something shiny to play with, or a job in marketing, and get the hell out while you can. There’s nothing more you can do now.
I hope this handy guide can help you identify and successfully avoid the legions of knuckle-dragging slope-browed morons out there. And hopefully, if you take the test yourself, you won’t score too highly. Frankly, I’m sure you’re fine — I mean, you’re here, aren’t you? Just visiting this site shows remarkable wisdom and savvy on your part. No doubt you’re outrageously attractive and highly successful, too. Of course.
As for my score… well. Let’s be honest. I’m not taking the full test, ever. I once sat for three days with a flipped-around remote, trying to get the TV to work. It’s probably a good thing my wife has power of attorney already. And she always knows just what to write on my underwear. Ooh, look — something shiny!
Permalink | 4 Comments(Note: Once again, I’m splitting time a bit these days between the pages here and the soon-to-be-remodeled Bugs & Cranks. Since last we danced, I posted an especially dirty piece over there entitled The Green Green Grass of Home (Field).
Well, not so much ‘dirty’. More ‘soddy’. The filthiest thing in it is the picture caption, frankly. And it’s still only PG-13. Give or take.)
Today, the missus and I went to approximately seven thousand open houses.
“All you have to do is find someone with your same tastes, similar needs, compatible budget, and who happens to want to live in your town while you live in theirs. How hard could that be, really?”
We’re selling our house this spring — hopefully — and for the past couple of weeks, we’ve been trying to get a feel for the current local market. Because apparently, when you sell your house, you have to also convince someone else to sell you theirs. Seems like it’d be easier to just swap houses, when you think of it that way. All you have to do is find someone with your same tastes, similar needs, compatible budget, and who happens to want to live in your town while you live in theirs. How hard could that be, really?
After five hours of staring at other peoples’ spare bedrooms and eat-in kitchens, I’m starting to think the swap idea would actually be easier. I’ve been on more strangers’ doorstep today than a hyperactive encyclopedia salesman or a decade’s worth of abandoned orphans. And I’m spent.
The most tiring thing of all, honestly, is thinking about what comes after we find a house. The packing, the moving, the unpacking — and worst of all, the shopping. Because it’s not enough to find a house. Then you’ve got to fill it. And your old crappy ghetto furniture that you’ve lived with and loved for years suddenly isn’t good enough. Or won’t fit. Or doesn’t match the drapes that your wife says you have to buy, because the new room needs to be painted to go with the painting. Which you haven’t bought yet. And had no idea the room needed, though the missus assures you it does.
And that takes me flashing back to one of the especially painful processes in moving into the current house. Namely, trying to find an effing dining room table. I didn’t know we needed a dining room table. We’d never had a dining room table before — probably because we’d never had a dining room before. I’d never had any issue eating on the couch — or the floor, or the steps, or the sidewalk outside — so I didn’t know what the hell we needed a table for.
But I was assured, again, that it was a critical component for modern civilized life.
I asked whether we actually had to use the table. For, like, eating and stuff.
Nah, she said. But we have to have one. She said it’d help to make me look civilized. Like how I wear pants on weekdays, and eat chowder with a spoon. Usually. I bought that explanation, so we went looking for a table.
The result — actually, just a tiny excruciating little sliver of the process — is described in today’s Werind post, If I Never See Another Hand-Carved, Claw-Footed, Sleigh-Backed Mahogany Frickin’ Chair, It’ll Be Too Damned Soon.
For most people, just the title would be a whole post. Me, I wanted to make the reading a little meatier than that. Not nearly as long as the shopping trip, nor certainly as long as the shopping trip felt, but there are a few hundred words there you hopefully won’t find as painful as our table safari.
Especially because we came back empty-handed .
And especially because that table we bought back then is probably ghetto and too big and completely the wrong color now, and we’ll have to do it all over again.
There’d just better not be anything claw-footed, sleigh-backed or mahogany sitting in those damned furniture stores. I don’t want to smack a salesbitch with a solid pine table leaf. But if I have to, I’ll do it.
Permalink | No Comments(As promised, the baseball musing is heating up with springtime over at Bugs & Cranks. Have a gander at yesterday’s Wednesday Walk Watch: spWing tWaining edition, as well as the somewhat scary Feeling Chipper Into His Forties. Just how long are those contract extensions, anyway?
After that, you can come back here and read today’s nonsense. But not before you’ve eaten your veggies!)
If you’re like me, you sometimes need to lighten your load a bit at the office. Things get hectic, the work piles up, and you find that you’re overstretched, overstressed and in a state of serious higgledy-piggledy. It’s during these workological crises that we need to remember those helpful little tips and tricks for making the most of our precious time. I’m having a fairly frantic week at the office this week, and I needed one of those tricks today. Luckily, I remembered it, and just in the nick of time, too. This very nice lady had just emailed me at my boss’ suggestion, asking for all sorts of information about what we do, how we could help her, and any background information on our group, its members, our skills, experience, hat sizes, pets’ names and what each of us ate for breakfast. Just for starters.
“This very nice lady had just emailed me at my boss’ suggestion, asking for all sorts of information about what we do, how we could help her, and any background information on our group, its members, our skills, experience, hat sizes, pets’ names and what each of us ate for breakfast.”
It’s the sort of request we get from time to time. Our group collaborates with all sorts of people on various projects, so folks occasionally want to get to know us, and to explore how we can work together. And whether we can exchange hats at the next birthday party, and whether we’re as into Frosted Mini-Wheats as they are, because how awesome would that be, and we could totally be BFF work-and-cereal buddies, and wouldn’t you just squeal if it were true?
(For the record, I wouldn’t squeal. I might ‘rah’, just a little. But I’m a gruel and stale toast man myself, so what are the chances some would-be work pal is eating the same breakfast, eh?
Outside of any 12th century serfs who might be interested in a collaboration, I’m guessing not many.)
Now, the lady’s request was perfectly reasonable, and just the sort of thing I field from time to time.
But not today. Today, there are deadlines whooshing by, emergencies bubbling up and spilling over onto the nice carpet and people all around peering at the windowsills to see if they open, so they can bid the cruel world goodbye and jump out.
Never mind that we work on the third floor, over a parking garage. Anybody managing to fling themselves out of one of our windows is going to fall about three feet onto a late model Buick LeSabre. I suppose they could crawl under it and hope it eventually drives over them, but it’s really not the most efficient way to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Plus, who wants to die being run over by a Buick? At least get squished by something with a little class, for crissakes.
Anyway, the point is, today is not the day for me to be compiling information and pulling project summaries and running after people measuring their foreheads. I didn’t want to ignore this lady’s request, exactly, but I needed to put it off for a little while. Until tomorrow, maybe. Or Monday. Or October. Things will have probably settled down by then.
On the other hand, I couldn’t be rude to a new contact, either. For one thing, the boss sent her my way, and he was cc’ed on her email. I had to send something back today. Not that he’d actually read my response or anything; this handshaking get-to-know-you waltz is not really the sort of fish he normally fries around here. But he does check his mailbox, and if he notices a line with my name on it and a subject line that says, ‘RE: Let’s talk projects and hats and breakfasts, oh my!‘, then that’s good enough.
And if he doesn’t see that, he might come talk to me about it. Which is no good at all. Because I checked, and those windows do not open. Also, that Buick’s going nowhere until five o’clock. So I’m out of escape plans here.
Besides, we like to collaborate with new people, and her project sounded pretty interesting. Also, who knows — she might be hot. So there were compelling reasons to not just delete her email, pretend it never arrived and ‘LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!!‘ my way through any subsequent conversation about it.
Still, I didn’t want to actually address any of her questions yet. Couldn’t. Not possible. And I couldn’t claim to be too busy for her, because that might put her off. That’s when I remembered the nifty little trick that I figured would buy me the day or two I needed. I opened a reply window and wrote a few short sentences about how happy and excited we are for the opportunity to work with her in the future.
Then, I opened a browser and went to Babelfish. I translated my message into Portuguese, then back to English. Here’s what it spat out:
Dear Dr. Whitlock —
Debtor in such a way for its email! We reverse speed absolutely seen onward to the work with you soon. It very emotive is to have the chance to participate in this project, and we fortunate reverse speed to collaborate with you. Compliments!
Perfect. I looked up ‘umlaut’, found an ‘e’ with two little dots over it that I could copy, signed my name as ‘Charlië’ and hit ‘Send’.
The way I figure it, this lady’s never met me. Doesn’t know me, never seen me, never spoken to me on the phone. So if I happened to be ‘Char-luh-YI-ee‘ from Stockholm or Bavaria or Ork or somewhere, how would she know? Maybe English is my fifth language, after Mandarin and Sanskrit and something Germanic and some flavor of Esperanto only used by one species of lemur in the Madagascar jungle. She doesn’t know. And that umlaut is a killer. It’s my double-dot secret weapon.
So now the ball’s in her mailbox. She’s got to figure out some way to respond to a promptly-sent and clearly enthusiastic email from someone who just as clearly didn’t offer any of the actual information she asked for. Assuming she can decipher the message at all, her goal is now to re-explain, with as few and as simple words as possible, exactly what she’s looking for. And she has to be somewhat culturally sensitive about it, without the actual benefit of knowing which culture it is she’s attempting to be sensitive about.
I sent the email three hours ago, and I haven’t heard a peep. If I get anything back before next Wednesday, I’ll be shocked, frankly. It’d take me at least a week to untangle that nightmare.
Meanwhile, I’m free to go back to the deadlines and the emergencies and daydreaming about being pinned unconscious under a nice comfortable luxury sedan. Maybe something in a Lexus. Or a Mercedes. Ah, heaven.
Of course, the downside is that when I finally do meet this woman, I’ll have a bit of a dilemma. By that point, she’ll be expecting a Martian or some highland sherpa or a guy decked out in tribal tattoos and a woven-grass codpiece. Instead, all she’ll see is… well, me. I could possibly pull off ‘confused Scandinavian tourist’, assuming she’s never seen the Swedish chef on the Muppets, but that’s about the limit of my foreign language skills.
Perhaps it’d be better to tell her my computer was infected with a virus, or that I’m narcoleptic and compose spam messages in my sleep. Oh, or maybe I have a split personality. One of which is from a country I’ve never heard of, possibly. I’m sure that kind of thing happens all the time. And so long as I occasionally send her another email in near-gibberish nonsense form, how’s she to know? Brilliant.
It’s foolproof, I tell you. Absolutely foolproof. The biggest office time-saver since the electrical automated stapling machine. I very emotive to fortunate this idea! Debtor to reverse speed all the time. Compliments!
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