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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
So, the wife sent me for a bottle of wine tonight. Some sort of last-minute Christmas present, or some such thing. I dunno — I don’t ask questions.
So there I go, for just a bottle of wine. Those are the instructions. Slip in, grab a nice bottle to give away, and come straight home.
Yeah. Right. I’m gonna go in there, and come out with just a bottle of wine. For someone else. Who you think you’re dealing with here? That’s crazy talk.
See, because me in a liquor store is like a kid in… well, in a liquor store, pretty much. I mean, honestly, I get all googly-eyed and slack-jawed in those places over the same stuff I drooled over at nineteen — the frosty cases of beer… row after titillating row of exotic booze… posters of the Bud girls… oh, yeah. That’s the shit, people.
Of course, I also found that there’s a corollary to the old saw that you should ‘never go to the grocery store on an empty stomach‘. And I had just finished up a long day at work, spent hours and hours in meetings, and faced a long airline flight tomorrow and a week spent with teetotalling family and wild crazy in-laws. I was thirsty, people. And not for a juice box, dammit.
So, I was in wonderland there in the booze shoppe. I skipped around the aisles, pulling out wine bottles and leapfrogging over cases of beer. I did the ‘Tequila’ dance in the hard liquor section. I played ‘Sit ‘n’ Spin’ on kegs of lager. I frenched St. Pauli girl in the walk-in freezer.
(Well, okay — a bottle of St. Pauli girl. I forgot how frigging cold it is in those freezers. My tongue barely thawed off the damned thing before I left — I almost had to buy the bottle. Sticky little bitch, that Pauli.)
Anyway, in the end, I walked out with that bottle of wine I went for. Plus a backup bottle, in case my wife vetoed the first one. And a six-pack of beer, for dinner tonight, and maybe tomorrow afternoon. Plus, a bottle of champagne — hey, it’s Christmas, goddammit. I’m just getting my holiday spirit freak on; don’t judge me, man. ‘Tis the fucking season, and all that shit.
So, it all worked out. The wine passed muster, we’ll open the bubbly soon, and I’m halfway through the six-pack already. It’s turning out to be a good night, no matter what the next week may bring. So I’ve got that going for me.
And hopefully, you’ll hear from me again before next Thursday, when I make it back here to civilization. If not, then have a happy WhateverTheHellYouCelebrate, and I’ll catch up with you soon. But not soon enough — believe me. Smell you later, folks. Don’t miss me, now.
Permalink | 3 Comments(Okay. So I’m really stretching with these fever-related post titles. Sheesh.)
So, it’s Monday again. And, at least for a little while longer, that means it’s time for another go-round of Punchline Fever. It’s everyone’s favorite game! That involves leaving a comment. On this blog. Right now.
(All right, so that’s not much, really. Shaddup. I’m shakin’ what my momma gave me over here. Cut me some slack.)
Anyway, before we get all jiggy and shit with this week’s setup, let’s review the rules, for you newbies in da house:
1) I’ll sit around, day and night, thinking of a short but flexible setup for a joke.
B) I’ll post the best setup I can think of, but with a blank where the punchline should go.
iii) Then it’s up to you to come up with your best line, and leave it in the comments, for all to snicker over.
Them’s the rules. And here’s this week’s Christmas-colored prelude to hilarity:
Punchline Fever #24:
‘The whorehouse didn’t want to advertise too widely that they were open for business on Christmas Eve, so they came up with a password for the night based on a Christmas carol lyric. To get upstairs, all customers had to do was say ‘_________________________’‘
All right, kiddies. Thar she blows — get in there and grab her by the short and euphemistic curlies. And for even more curly, euphemistic fun, check out the main Punchline Fever page!
That’s all for now, kids. I’m out. Happy Monday!
Permalink | 11 CommentsFunny how Christmastime brings back memories, eh?
In my case, of course, they’re snarky, head-shaking, annoying memories, but still — ’tis the season.
So, let’s pull one of these mental gems out of the vault, and I’ll get your opinion on what I should’ve done while I’m at it.
Now, before we get to the specifics, I should mention that my mother’s side of the family has a Christmas Eve gathering every year. And the whole frigging clan comes out for it — grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, the works. In my family’s case, that’s still not an enormous boatload of people — maybe twenty or so. Still, it’s more relatives than you can shake a stick at — or, in fact, beat with a stick. Trust me. I’ve tried it.
You should also know that this charming little party is the only time each year that I see most of these people. The parents, I’ll run into another couple of times, and I’ll spend some extra QT with the grandparents, but for all the others, that’s it. That’s all we get of each other.
(And, in the overwhelming majority of cases, all we need of each other. There are very few people in my family that you’d want to have in anything other than ‘small doses’.
Present company almost certainly included, but you’re already ass-deep in me. Hell, you’re a dozen paragraphs in already. Sucker.)
Anyway, that’s the background — party every year, whole family there, never see them otherwise. Fine. Now we’re on the same page.
So, the past few years, one of my aunts has hosted the soiree, which kicks off around six in the evening. And here’s what happened two years ago, on a chilly Christmas Eve:
I arrived at the party, with my wife and parents.
I hung up our coats, and walked into the kitchen, where aforesaid aunt was tending to something on the stove.
I greeted my grandparents, gave them each a hug, and walked back to my aunt to say hello. And here’s the very first thing she said to me in a full year:
‘Well, hi there! It’s good to… wow! You’ve really put on weight, haven’t you?‘
Now first of all, she was probably right. I’ve never gone and completely let myself go, but sure, I was probably a little heavier than the year before. And certainly bigger than back in high school, which might be the last time the woman had seen me for more than thirty seconds at a time.
But still… damn! That’s just fucking rude. And she’s not exactly goddamned svelte herself, dammit. Hell, I’ve got eight inches of height on her, but she’s in my neighborhood on the scales, I’m betting. Oh, yeah. She ain’t small.
What I still can’t figure out, though, nearly two years later, is what the correct response to that statement is. For the record, my response was to frown, walk away, and eat very little at dinner that night. Have I mentioned how much I fucking love Christmas, by the way?
Anyway, I don’t know quite what I should have said to her. But I’ve narrowed it down to a few choices:
I dunno. Any of those would work, I’m thinking. At least they’d be better — read: snarkier — than what I actually did. But I suppose this way, subsequent parties are a bit easier to get through. It’s all for the good of the family, I tell myself.
Still. That was bullshit. And I wanna know what you think the best reply would be. ‘Cause if sistah’s eyes got fat again this year, and she starts in on me… well, this time, I’m gonna be ready for her. Parties-to-come be damned — bitch gonna hear it. Oh yeah.
Permalink | 5 CommentsWhen I woke up this morning, I had a startling realization: I have no prison skills.
Now, don’t ask me why this came to mind, in my drooly, sleepy stupor. Maybe I was dreaming about prison (again — yeeks!), or maybe a police siren was wailing in my neighborhood as I was waking up. Or possibly, I was just semi-subconsciously flashing back to watching Shawshank Redemption for the umpteen-hundredth time on cable a few nights ago.
(And honestly, that’s a great movie and all, but was that thing ever in theaters? I mean, I was around when it was made, but I don’t remember any buzz about it at the time, really. Now, on the other hand, you can’t swing a dead cat around TBS without smacking into the thing.
It’s weird — like that, and Major League on USA just came straight out of the script and onto cable. And you never see either one on, like, HBO, either. It’s always basic cable, where a two-hour movie can get stretched out to a Wednesday-and-a-half with show promos and peenie-pill ads.
I even imagine — since I’ve only seen the ‘expurgated’ versions of these movies on cable — that there’s some raunchy, explicit, super-lubed sex scene that I’ve always missed, because the network censors cut it out. Or some sort of bloodbath, with gore and blood and body parts a-flyin’. Who would know, eh?
Of course… if that’s true, then I really hope it’s the senseless violence in Shawshank, and the steamy sex in Major League. Having seen both of them enough to memorize the scripts, I can’t imagine how the hell that would work the other way around. And lord knows we don’t need anything around here involving Tim Robbins’ shiny bare ass.)
Okay, what the hell was I talking about? I’ve lost track already.
Oh, right — prison skills, and my woeful lack thereof. I got it.
So, for whatever reason, it hit me today that I’m probably not cut out for prison. Which is no real shame, of course — it’s not like I’d been planning on going to prison in the first place.
(Doing something that could conceivably land me in prison… well, sure, I’ve planned a few of those. But I’ve also planned on getting away with them, which pretty much circumvents the whole ‘incarceration’ thing altogether. So I’m not sure that counts. And don’t tell anyone. Shhhhh!)
But if I’ve learned anything from watching prison movies for the past twenty years or so, it’s… well, clearly, it’s ‘don’t drop the soap’, actually. If there’s only one thing that’s gonna stick with me about prison life, that’s pretty much the big one. But that’s not the point here. Let’s try that again.
So, if I’ve learned two things from watching prison movies the past few years, it’s:
Seriously, think about it — in Shawshank, everybody had a purpose, and everyone knew what the others were all about. Morgan Freeman knew how to ‘get stuff’. Every prison — and therefore, every prison movie — has a guy who can ‘get stuff’.
And the ‘Sisters’ — they were there to do the raping and savage beating. Again, standard prison (movie) issue, from what I gather. And Tim Robbins’ character, after a bit of soul-searching, became the guy who ‘figures stuff out’. And later, the guy who escaped.
(Not to give away the ending or anything, but shit, people — if you haven’t seen the movie by now, then you’re never going to. Either you don’t want to, or you’re living in a gloomy cave soemwhere without cable, or probably electricity of any kind, and you’ll never have the wherewithal to see it in the first place.
Of course… if you really are spending your life hunkered in an unlit cave somewhere — and I’m assuming the ‘hunkering’, since that’s what people seem to do in caves — then I’m not sure how you’re reading this right now. Seems unlikely. But maybe you have a Blackberry; what the hell do I know, eh?)
The problem for me, is — I’m not any of those guys. I don’t escape things, and I wouldn’t have the first clue about how to ‘get’… ‘stuff’. Why would you even want ‘stuff’? I’d be so bad at that.
And the raping, and the beating? Oy. So tiring, it sounds. Not for me. Not at all.
So that’s when it hit me — who the hell would I be in prison? I racked my brain for other options, and still came up empty. For instance, I couldn’t be Brooks — i.e., ‘crazy old guy who keeps a bird, and ends up hanging himself’. I mean, really… who wants a damned dirty bird around all the time? I think I might be allergic, anyway. And that ‘hanging’ thing sounds like it would chafe. No, it definitely wouldn’t work. Next.
I thought maybe I could be ‘new mysterious guy’ — and sure, I could probably pull that off for a bit. But that’s only gonna work for a while, and you’ve got to back that up with something — you can’t spend your whole prison career being ‘new mysterious guy’; it doesn’t work that way.
I might have a shot at ‘guy who cries the first night and gets the shit kicked out of him’; that’s probably got potential. But truly — if I’m really honest with myself here — I think that first day of ‘going to prison’ would be so exhausting that I’d be asleep before my head hit the stains on the bunk bed pillow. That’s got to be a whirlwind day, and I just can’t imagine having the energy to stay up late getting my ribs kicked in. I’m just not that committed, I think.
Which leaves me with… well, nothing, really. And it’s not just Shawshank — I’ve been through lots of movies in my head today, and I’ve got nothing in any of them. Cool Hand Luke, no. There’s a ‘get stuff’ guy, and a ‘prison enforcer’ guy, and then Luke, the ‘stubborn risky’ guy, and none of those really suit me. Then there’s The Green Mile, which, really, only has ‘asshole guy’, who’s very probably in the ‘raping and beating’ group, and ‘big magical black guy’. I can’t pull that shit off. One at a time, maybe — but ‘big’, ‘magical’, and ‘black’? Damn. That’s a tall order, people.
(And where the hell did that character come from, anyway? You don’t see that kind of shit in the other movies — I’m not even sure every jail has one of those. I sure as hell don’t remember that in Oz, and they had everything.)
So, I guess that’s it — I’m gonna just have to not go to prison. It’s almost a relief, in a way — I mean, who knows what to pack for a trip like that? It gets so confusing! But on the other hand, I’ll never get to make a daring escape, or lead a bloody riot, or learn how to whittle a shiv out of an old toothbrush. These are valuable skills, people, and I’m missing out!
Anyway, that’s what’s been on my mind today — how I’d pass the time in prison. And now that I’ve spent a couple of dozen paragraphs on it, maybe that’s the answer — if I ever got thrown in the clink, maybe I’d be the guy to come up with the legalese doubletalk on other inmates’ parole applications. Hell, I’m good at going on and on without saying anything, really — or even having a topic, to speak of. Maybe that’d get me in good with the cool kids, and the guy who gets stuff. Somebody has to watch your back in the exercise yard, you know. That shit is important!
Permalink | 4 CommentsSo, I did a bit of tinkering around with the ol’ blog a couple of days ago, and in the process, I discovered something about myself. I’m a fricking loony.
(Okay, okay, so I already knew that. Fine. And everyone else knew it, too. You win. Just let me tell my damned story, would you? We don’t need extra smartasses around here — when I need you to fill in, I’ll make the call to the bullpen, dammit. Lousy vultures.)
Anyway, like most people who’ve been blogging for more than ten minutes or so, I’ve been having trouble with comment spammers. I’ve mentioned this before — I’m too busy pretending to work and not get fired to check exactly where, but it’s come up before. I’m sure of it.
(So I won’t rail on and on about how these people are shameless, unrepentant douchebags that should have rabid fire ants vacuum-packed up their asses and then hung upside-down by their toenails until they see the error of their ways.
Or how I think it’s fair that if they want to use my weblog as their personal ad space, then I should get to use their foreheads as my private-use urinal cakes.
Or how, if I could just get my hands on an address of where one of the fucktards lives, I’d load up a dumptruck with Hefty bags full of elephant shit, deposit it onto their porch, and light the pile with a goddamned flamethrower. Preferably with them under it.
No, folks — I won’t go into all that, because you’ve heard it all before. And I’m over it, really. No, really. Honest. Just get me that street address, and we’ll put it to the test, baby.)
Anyway… where the hell was I, again?
Oh, right — fiddling with the blog. Carrying on, then:
So, one of the ways I’ve used to combat these mouthbreathing assbags is to simply change the name of the script used by you regular, friendly, appreciated folks to leave comments. See, most of these spammenters are a couple of testicles short of a nutsack, and so, just taking away the comment script name they’re looking for stops ’em dead in their tracks.
(I imagine shiny objects would work, as well — these people just aren’t that bright, bless their twisted, impotent little souls. But honestly, I can’t even think of a shiny object that I’d want to distract them with that I wouldn’t also feel the need to shove up their asses until they could taste the shine on the roofs of their mouths. So I fiddle with the comment script. Much easier, and less messy, too!)
Anyway, my first go-round with this little trick was a few weeks ago. I changed the script from simply ‘comment’, as it ships with MovableType, to ‘barcelona’. It was the first thing I could think of — maybe because I’d just recently written the entry about my high school Spanish class (which normally, I’d link to, but again — trying not to get fired here), which mentioned the character Manuel from Fawlty Towers. Who was from Barcelona.
(Yes, that’s a fricking long-ass way to go.
And yes, that’s how my mind works, most of the time. Don’t ask me why. I’m special. Quite possibly in a ‘short bus’ kind of way. Meh.)
So, I have no idea why that was the very first thing that popped into my head. It’s not like I’d just finished writing that post — that had been a day or three before, and I’m sure all sorts of words had been thrown at me in the interim. Why ‘barcelona’ seemed like a good idea at the time… who knows?
It gets better, folks. Stick with me here.
So, that was a couple of weeks or more ago. And between that, the MT-Blacklist plugin, and my handy banned IP list, that kept most of the spam wankers at bay.
I say ‘most’ because, about once a week, my inbox gets treated to a dozen or so emails for the latest crap-ass casino, or loserly ‘buy prescription drugs in Guatemala!’ scam, or some spoogetacular porn site that thinks there’s still a market niche for hot donkey-blowing pics.
(Which can’t possibly be true, this many years down the road, right? I mean, really — if mule molesting is your thing, then surely you’ve found your fix by now. I’ve been getting spam emails about that shit for years — what could you possibly offer, at this point, that offers a new angle?
As a matter of fact, I daresay that donkey blowing is completely saturated these days.
I dare say it, but I won’t. ‘Cause that’s nasty! ‘Saturated blown donkeys’! Ewwwwwww!)
All right. Wafting gently back to the point, then.
So, a few dickheads still get their ads in, but the cleanup time is five minutes or less with MT-Blacklist, so it’s no biggie. Still, if it happens more than about once a week, it’s just too goddamned annoying to deal with, and that’s what happened this week. I got hit twice in three days or so, and decided to change the comment script name again, to keep the bullshit to a dull roar for a while.
Which meant I needed another name.
Something unexpected. Something different.
And something off the top of my head — I didn’t want to work too hard on this thing; I just wanted to watch the spammers flounder for a while.
So, again, I used the first word that popped into my head. Only this time, I have no idea how it got there. Or at the time, that it even existed before. (Though it did — more on that in a moment.)
Anyway, long story ever-so-slightly shorter, should you decide to leave me a comment in the next few days, you’ll find if you check your site bar that the script you’re using to do so is called:
badgerpants
That’s right, people — badgerpants. Badger. Pants. I was on the hook, under pressure to think of a word — any word, real or imagined, in any language on the planet — and I came up with badgerpants.
I think that speaks volumes about my mental faculties, or lack thereof, right there. Not to mention the fact that I devolved from ‘barcelona’, which is at least a very nice town, from what I understand, down to ‘badgerpants’, which is… well, it’s… damn. I don’t even know what it is.
So, I looked it up, which is how I know the term predated my little epiphany the other night. And I found two more or less reliable references to ‘badgerpants’, using Google:
So how did I get ‘badgerpants’ on the brain? No idea. Perhaps someday I’ll look into professional help to sort it all out.
(And soon, I’ll have plenty of time, I’ll bet. If there’s anything I’ve linked to that’ll get me fired, it’s that damned disturbing image. I am not gonna sleep well tonight, folks. Yeeks!)
Until then, just remember — if you leave me a comment, you’re only encouraging me. And who knows what the next random word out of my mushy brain will be when I change the script name again? Stay tuned for that one, folks. It oughta be a doozy.
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