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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Hey, folks. If my ghost town of an office today — not to mention the server logs for this site — are any indication, then most of you (in the U.S., at least) have taken advantage of the upcoming long holiday weekend to get the hell out of the house, away from the computer, and hopefully into something more interesting. To you, I say, ‘kudos’. Knock yourselves out.
As for me, I’m stuck at work. And might be back tomorrow, or even on Monday, when all good and upstanding Americans are supposed to be out getting sunburns, lighting fires under various gunpowder-containing objects, and consuming barbecued meat products.
(Man, that got sort of a Coneheads feel at the end, there, didn’t it? Weird.)
Anyway, in the spirit of weekend laziness, I’m not planning on working too hard here today — either at the office, or the weblog. And luckily for me, it’s the first of the month, so I’m off the hook. It’s time for the next Zoiks! issue, and we both know the drill by now, right?
No? Fine. But I’m only explaining this one more time, dammit. Write it down or something, would you?
So, here’s the scoop: every 1st and 15th on the calendar, a new issue of the Zoiks! e-zine arrives. Well, virtually arrives. On the web. You understand. It doesn’t come in a nice little plastic newspaper bag or anything, but it’s legit, just the same.
Now, in these issues of Zoiks!, you’ll find a half-dozen or so funny little ditties — including one from yours truly. And, since Zoiks! doesn’t keep online archives, I’ve decided to do it for them. Well, for them, for me, I guess, since I’m only archiving my stuff. It’s not like I’m being completely altruistic and shit, see?
So, here we go, then. Below, you’ll find my piece from the last issue of Zoiks! And if you want to read the current one — well, just head over to Zoiks! to check it out. And if, for some oddly disturbing reason, you’d like to see earlier pieces, then feel free to rummage through the archives. You might want to focus on the 1st and 15th posts — but I don’t have to tell you that, right? You’re a smart little cookie.
All right, then — let’s get this weekend kicked off, puppies. It’s par-tay time. Sayonara.
They Don’t Make the Old Days Like They Used To
I yearn for a simpler time. Life in this modern age can be frustrating and scary, with the global warming and bad cholesterol and high-definition reruns of ‘The Nanny’. I long for a more peaceful existence, free of the complications of the twenty-first century lifestyle. I’m ready to re-adopt a few of our long-forgotten traditions, to recapture the halcyon days of yore. Yesteryore, even. I’m not fooling around here.
First, I’d like to go back to using surnames to describe peoples’ professions. So, if I meet a Shoemaker, I’ll know he can help me patch the hole in my sneaker. If I run into a Baker, I can ask for a ‘doughnut hole’, without worrying how exactly he’ll interpret the request. And if a Parker happens to be around — well, maybe he can finally get my car into my garage spot. Plus, he might be turn out to be Spider-Man. That would be sweet.
While we’re at it, how about if we go back to riding horses to get around? Gas prices are high, pollution is terrible, and I for one have had it up to here with that big-eared ‘zoom zoom’ brat. Much better that we should saunter around the natural way, atop large domesticated hairy animals. We can ride twelve wide down the highway, trotting and cantering our way to the office. Sure, we’ll all need stables — and salt licks, and hay bales, and the amount of poop in the streets would escalate, just a touch — but it’s a small price to pay to be rid of our mobile metal monsters. And just think of all the glue and Big Macs we’ll be able to make with the ‘leftovers’.
It doesn’t end there, though. I think we should settle all of our differences the old-fashioned way, with a nice pistol duel. If it was good enough for the founding fathers’ generation, then why not us? Put away the fancy Glocks and rifles — those things won’t help you much, anyway, once we convert back to horseback travel. Have you ever heard of a ‘gallop-by shooting’? Me, neither. We’ll nip an awful lot of violence in the bud, if the would-be perps were forced to use ancient flint-lock piece to do their dirty deeds. Those things are more likely to blow off your fingers than to take out your opponent. I’d think twice before stepping off ten paces against the guy who dissed my baby’s mama, that’s for sure.
I suppose the Internet is out, too — if there’s anything that screams ‘modern technology’, it’s the internet. So we’ll have to get our porn somewhere else, obviously. But also our communications — email goes out the window. Maybe we can Pony Express parchments to each other, or learn to send ‘leetspeak’ instant messages via smoke signal. Of course, if the spammers get their grubby paws on that technology, they’ll fill the skies with soot, selling their snake oil and combination butter churns/penis enlargers. And you thought pop-up ads were bad; at least nobody ever got black lung from one of those.
Finally, let’s start talking like the old-timers — sorry, I mean, ‘olde-timers’. All the fancy new lingo and technical jargon around today — let’s throw it all away, and replace it with words like ‘forsooth’ and ”verily’. Sure, nobody knows what the hell those things mean any more, but is that really any different than technoweenie talk like ‘phishing’ or ’emoticon’? If we’re going to be unintelligible, at least we can sound Shakespearean. That’s my attitude.
Would any of these measures make our lives easier? Perhaps. Maybe we should ask the Amish, before we go to all the trouble. They certainly seem happy, raising barns and riding in buggies and not smoking or drinking or dancing or… wow. If we’re really serious about going ‘retro’, I suppose we have to fall in line with all of that uber-observant religious mumbo-jumbo, too. I never thought about that. And there’s no way I’m getting up before noon on Sundays. So, never mind. Maybe the modern life isn’t quite so bad, after all. Verily.
Permalink | 1 CommentDowntown Boston, you win again.
Folks, I don’t have to tell any of you who’ve been here before — or managed to read this far, even — that I’m kind of a nimrod sometimes. And nowhere is my nimroddiness more evident than when I’m behind the wheel of my car, driving in downtown Boston. It’s just a recipe for disaster. And nimroditude, apparently.
Now, I’m not a bad driver, generally speaking. I don’t have accidents — or even cause accidents, as far as I know. I stay in my lane, don’t duck the wrong way down one-way streets, and generally keep my navigitory nose clean when it comes to following the rules of the road. I’m even in ‘good hands’. Are you?
Anyway, my biggest problem behind the wheel — besides that said wheel isn’t attached to a Ferrari of some kind — is my innate, instinctive sense of direction. Or rather, complete and glaring lack of one. I believe that we all have our strengths and weaknesses, and that a deficiency in one area is usually compensated for by a special talent in another. I’m not sure what, exactly, I was blessed with in return for my sense of direction — maybe it’s my startling good looks. Or my superior, finely-honed intellect. No? My uproarious sense of humor? No? Hrm… well, I can juggle. And roll my tongue; maybe that’s it. Whatever it is, it had better be damned good, because I couldn’t plot a route from my bedroom to the can without a map, a sextant, and a plucky Sherpa guide.
(Which really gets inconvenient when I have to pee in the middle of the night. Because who wants to fiddle with a sextant at three o’clock in the morning? And those Sherpas get cranky when you wake them up, too. Even the plucky ones. Yikes.)
Needless to say, for anyone who’s visited our fair city, navigating in Boston is particularly challenging. If it’s not the one-way streets — sometimes three or four in a row, all in the same direction — then it’s the rotaries. And if it’s not the rotaries, it’s the construction detours. And if it’s not that, then it’s the lobotomized orangutans at MapQuest sending you three miles north to catch a road south, then telling you to take an exit that hasn’t existed since the Eisenhower administration. I’m crippled enough here in my navigatory hell without that kind of help, thank you very little.
Anyway, the point is, I got bitten again tonight. I was going somewhere that I know how to get to — I even know where it is, which is a ‘half the battle’ that I don’t often win — but I wasn’t on the side of the city where I could use a route that I already knew. Plus, I was already late meeting my wife downtown for dinner. So, I ‘winged’ it. Nice. Good idea, there, genius. I might as well have hired a crack-addled turtle to strap me onto his shell and crawl me in the general direction.
(Do turtles do crack? I don’t know. Work with me on this one, people.)
So, an hour and a half later — after two circles around the Boston Common, giving up and parking in a garage I’d never heard of, and walking fourteen blocks to get to the restaurant, I finally made it. But I did make it, dammit. It was touch and go for a while — wandering around the streets of Boston, I more than once imagined that they’d find my dehydrated body on a curb some day, clawing at the pavement and muttering, ‘If I could just get to Beacon Street… I know the way from Beacon…‘
I’m not sure whether it’s more embarrassing that I had to ask directions — from three different people, wildly varying in the amount of useful information they had to offer — while walking from the car to the restaurant, or that we had to look up the garage on the web to negotiate our way back afterwards. I just know that this is one more case where a quick look at a map before getting in the car would’ve saved a lot of grief. And I know that I’m still a nimrod, when left to my own devices. And that Boston, once again, has reared its beany head and bitten me in the ass. Where the hell was that damned Sherpa when I really needed him?
Permalink | 5 CommentsAnd now, my side of the conversation I just had when I called the new Chinese restaurant that opened a few blocks away:
Me: Hi! I’d like to get an order for delivery, please.
Me: Okay, my address is <my address — let’s call it ‘123 Fake Street’>.
Me: No, no — not Cake Street. Fake, with an ‘F’. It’s okay; no problem.
Me: Oh, right — my phone number is <let’s say, 555-867-5309 here, but I gave him the real one>.
Me: Okay, so I’d like to have — what? Oh. Um, the cross street is Cypress Street. Right, Cypress.
Me: Um, I don’t know — about six foot three or so. I don’t know what that has to do with — uh. well, I’m thirty-four. Does that matter?
Me: Okay, great. So, I’d like to order the — wait, what? Oh, about five and a half inches, I guess, but — just hold on, now! That’s over the line, man. I’m just trying to order dinner here; what the hell does the amount of rainfall we’ve had on the lawn have to do with anything?
(And what did you think I was talking about, there, bub? That’s naaaasty. Perv.)
Me: All right, fine. So, I’d like a large wonton soup, and a — no, no, I said ‘wonton’, not… wait, do you even have ‘bonbon soup’? Really? Wow. Is it any good? No. No, I wouldn’t think so. Let’s just go with a large egg drop soup, instead, to avoid any confusion.
Me: Okay, then I need a house fried rice, a small steamed rice, and the happy family.
Me: Um, nooooo. Not the ‘happy ending’, just the happy family, thanks. Hold on — do you even have a happy end– no, never mind. My wife will be home soon. That would take way too much explaining.
Me: Okay, great. See you in twenty minutes. Can I get a total?
Me: What?! Ninety-three fifty? What the hell? No — no, I said no ‘happy ending’. Yes, I’m sure. Really. No, I’m sure your sister is very attractive — a Lucy Liu attitude with Tia Carrera curves, you say? Ah, but a Jackie Chan face — I see. Yeah, I think I’ll pass; what’s the total without that? Okay, seventeen bucks. Fine. See you in a few. *click*
So, that was an adventure. I hate calling new restaurants. Or any restaurants. Basically, I just hate talking to people. I should probably just get it over with and move in under a bridge somewhere.
On the plus side, though, the food got here a little while ago, and it’s pretty damned tasty. The soup was a bit of a surprise, though — often, places will offer a ‘small’ that’s about the equivalent of a cup o’ soup, and a ‘large’ that’s approximately bowl-sized. Well, I don’t know what these guys do for a ‘small’, but the ‘large’ I ordered is not bowl-sized. It’s closer to Lake Ontario-sized. I’ll be sucking down soup for a month. I just hope the guy on the phone didn’t get pissed off, and leave me his own ‘happy ending’ of sorts in the tub. As far as I can tell, eggs were the only thing dropped into it… but who knows, really? Maybe I should’ve gone with the hot ‘n’ sour. Yow.
Permalink | 1 CommentIs there anything worse than being at work when you don’t especially need to be?
Don’t get me wrong — I like my job. The people are nice, the work is interesting, I’ve got flexible hours, and — short of a pink ruffled tutu — I can wear whatever the hell I want.
(Yes, it’s true — I’ll never be a pretty, pretty ballerina. Not at the office, at least. But I’m coping. Thanks for your concern, there, sparky.)
Still, if I don’t need to be at work — particularly early in the morning, when I often feel I don’t really need to be alive — then I’d rather not. There’s plenty to do, of course — and I’m fairly confident that it can be done most appropriately between eleven in the morning and seven at night. If I’m the one doing the ‘doing’, that is.
But I’m a standup guy, too. I’ve got certain ‘ponsibilites at work, and you might say I take them ‘in stride’.
(You might say that, at least, if you’ve forgotten that the phrase ‘like a big fat whiny baby’ exists. Frankly, I prefer the former, but I can’t tell you people what to think.)
Anyway, last week I was asked to be at work at nine this morning — that’s nine, people. In the a.m. Nine. N. Ine. Somebody had to be around to meet the new hire, and he is going to be working with me, so that apparently dealt me the short straw. And I’ve got somewhere the rest of the office can shove that short straw, and a few thousand of its closest friends… but did I say that? No.
No, I kept my trap shut, hit the sack early last night, set the alarm, and tried to go to sleep before midnight, for once. Which is crazy! It was still fricking daylight outside, I think. Who does that?
One fitful night later, I awoke to the lilting, lyrical ‘ENH! ENH! ENH! ENH! ENH!‘ of the alarm. It was a quarter till eight. I’ll sometimes wake up around that time, on a regular day. And on those mornings, I’ll roll over, look at the clock… and laugh, laugh, laugh myself back to sleep. Quarter till eight. Whatever.
But today, I dumped my draggy ass over the side of the bed, fell into the shower, and eventually made it to work. I think I dressed in between, somewhere. Tutus were not involved. Thanks so much.
Anyway, long story ever-so-slightly-less-long, I made it to work, right at nine, expecting a phone call that the new guy was there. No call. So I waited. And waited, and waited. Finally, at nine thirty, I went to the lobby to check on him… and found that he was scheduled for training all morning. Until noon. Nine thirty till noon. See how ‘nine a.m.’ doesn’t come into that sentence anywhere? And how I could’ve spent another hour or more in my bed, drooling and twitching? Maybe even sleeping. Bitches.
Eh, that’s all right. I hit the wall around five, and slipped out a few minutes afterward. And I can always mosey in around three in the afternoon tomorrow, to make up for the ‘early morning that wasn’t’. Plus, there’s sort of a silver lining — by actually leaving the office before dark today, I didn’t have to go through the drama of getting my car out of the new garage.
See, we moved our office a few weeks ago, and also switched garages. The old one was nice — six levels above ground, attached to a movie theater and serving an office block. They had car washes and a daycare next door — there were always people coming and going and having a good time.
The new garage… well, not so much. The new garage is a couple of blocks away; a single underground level beneath a building that — as far as anyone can tell — the contractors have given up on actually building. There’s a bunch of chain-link fencing at street level, and some nasty-looking first-level steel supports, but that’s it. And the garage below isn’t creepy, exactly — it’s well-lit, and clean and all — but it’s eerily deserted most of the time. Few cars and fewer people, and your footsteps echo around the whole place. It’s the sort of garage you usually see somebody getting whacked in at the beginning of a Law and Order episode. Which tells me that I either need a new place to park, or I need to stop watching so damned much Law and Order. Probably both.
Anyway, that was my Monday. Not the most exciting day in the world, but we got a few paragraphs out of it, no? And you got to picture me in a pink tutu, drooling and twitching, and getting whacked in a parking garage.
Well, not all at the same time, of course. Not until just now, anyway. You can thank me for the mental image later. And now your Monday feels just as icky as mine was. Welcome to the party, folks.
Permalink | 1 CommentI’m not really a ‘newsy’ sort of guy, normally. A couple of headlines here and there, maybe, but that’s all. I can stop whenever I want to. Honest.
However, when it comes to comedy… well, I’m a whore, basically. If there’s some remote opportunity that I can write something funny — in a dusty corporate newsletter, or about funerals, or in Swahili; it doesn’t matter — then I’ll do it. I’m bold like that. And persistent. And desperately needy.
Anyhoo, I bring it up because just such an opportunity arose a few weeks ago. My comic friend Jenn let me know about a call for jokes based on recent news events. If they liked the first batch, they might ask for more later. Not that I’d actually read any recent news at the time, but I figured, what the hell — it never hurts to try, right?
On the other hand, I never heard anything back, which I’m taking as a reasonably bad sign. I’m pretty sure this is one of those things that’s like asking a girl out on a date. If she doesn’t call back, you’re not gettin’ any. It’s maybe not exactly as bad as a ‘Not on your life, and get that thing out of my face‘, but it’s pretty close.
And so, since the intended audience doesn’t seem so interested — and since I don’t have anything else queued up for today — their indifference becomes your… well, something. Entertainment? Disgust? Latest written-word nightmare? I can’t say for sure — but there’s only one way to find out. Who’s up for a few yuks built from month-old headlines, eh? Doesn’t that sound tasty? Then read on, baby. It’s comin’ at ya now.
“The U.S. Army announced on Thursday that it would begin offering tours of duty as short as fifteen months, in an effort to recruit soldiers interested in shorter commitments. An Army spokesman revealed that if the current plan is not successful, there are other campaigns in the works, including ‘Operation Summer Job’, ‘Bernie’s Weekend Boot Camp’, and ‘One Afternoon’s Not Going to Kill You… Probably’.”
“Minnesota Vikings running back Onterrio Smith is under scrutiny by the NFL because a kit used to beat drug testing was found in his luggage at a Minneapolis airport last month. Smith maintains that he was simply transporting the apparatus for his cousin. No word from Smith on the other items found in his bag, including several reams of rolling paper, assorted roach clips, a Ricky Williams Fan Club membership card, and a button reading, ‘I Heart Weed’.”
“Microsoft founder Bill Gates has pumped two point three billion dollars into education programs since the year 2000. Unfortunately, all of the money was aimed at replacing teachers with small, animated paper clips.”
“Leaders in the U.S. Senate worked feverishly on Sunday to craft a compromise which would avert a looming struggle over President Bush’s judicial nominees. Key Senators from both parties met to discuss their options and find common ground. Meanwhile, President Bush employed his own methods, playing ‘one-potato, two-potato’ in the Oval Office. The president predicts that all of his nominees will be confirmed, as long as the Senate voting procedure starts with ‘rightsies’.”
“The surging New York Yankees have won eight games in a row, thanks in large part to first baseman Tino Martinez, who has eight home runs in his last eight games. After Sunday’s game, Martinez would not comment on whether his recent production coincides with his new pregame ritual of licking spilled steroids from the bottom of Jason Giambi’s locker.”
“In Kansas last week, the state Board of Education began a new round of hearings challenging the teaching of evolution in state schools. It’s unclear at this time whether the Board is rejecting the idea that humans evolved from dumb, hairy apes merely on principle, or whether it’s because they actually haven’t yet done so themselves.”
“Comedian Dave Chappelle, currently on hiatus from his Comedy Central series, ‘Chapelle’s Show’, surfaced on Sunday to refute rumors surrounding his mysterious absence. ‘I’m not crazy, I’m not smoking crack,’ Chappelle said, then went on to explain, ‘The network just gave me a huge bonus, and all I did was close up shop and leave the country. So which one of us did you think was smoking crack again?'”
“In basketball news, the NBA referees’ association has asked the league to work harder to defend them from criticism, in the wake of comments made by Houston Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy. When reached for comment, a spokesman for the officials indicated that if the league doesn’t respond, the referees will have no choice but to ‘run crying to their mommies’.”
“New NASA Administrator Michael Griffin lobbied the Senate on Thursday to speed development of a new generation of spacecraft. When pressed for details, Griffin responded, ‘I’m not sure what we need yet; let me see who wins in that new Star Wars Sith movie, and I’ll get back to you.'”
“In golf news, Tiger Woods missed the cut by one stroke this Friday at the Byron Nelson Championship. It was the first time Woods had missed a cut in his last one hundred and forty-two tournaments, spanning seven years. While disappointed, Woods on Friday also looked forward to finally spending a quiet Saturday night at home: ‘I think I’ll watch SNL; is that Eddie Murphy guy still on there? That show sure is funny!’ Our condolences go out to Mr. Woods, for what was surely his second bitter disappointment of the weekend.”
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