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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
You know you’re not having a ‘good day’ when you find yourself standing in your living room at eight o’clock at night, saying out-loud and apparently rhetorically (because there’s no one else around):
‘Why does everything smell like pee today?!‘
Either my sniffer is on the fritz in some weird, perverted way, or I have some serious, barely-repressed bathroom issues to work through. Or a dog who’s getting much better at hiding her nasty bladder dysfunction.
In any case, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to think about it very much harder. Or talk about it, for that matter. I’m off to stuff orange wedges up my nose, and try to forget any of this ever happened. Citrusy goodness, take me away!
Permalink | 2 CommentsOkay, folks — I’m in a silly mood.
(No, really, even for me. Hide the women and cattle prods. I’m serious, here.)
So, let’s play a game. I just thought of this one earlier today, so we’ll have to see how it goes. Anyway, here are the rules, and they’re very simple:
I’ll write two sentences, each containing a blank.
(If you’re not familiar somehow with the concept of ‘blanks’, just keep an eye out for the big long underliney thingy. That’s where the blank is — where a word should be, but can’t be found. And has left a slimy trail of underlines on its way out. That’s pretty much ‘blank’ in a nutshell.)
Anyway, two sentences, each with a blank. Now, the same word will fill each blank, and it’s up to you to guess what the word is. Two blanks, one word. And I’ll post the answer below the pair, so you can keep score and see how you’re doing. Got it? Could I drag the rules out any fucking longer? No. No, I couldn’t.
(Oh, wait — yes, I could. Could do, and will. Because I want to mention — just to keep you cheatybirds from peeking, I’ll black the answers out. So, you’ll have to highlight the text to read them, once you’re ready to give up and admit you’re a little bitty baby girl who can’t guess the right answer.
And hey — take as long as you want. The blanks’ll still be there when you finally face the music. We’re not goin’ anywhere, here.)
All right, enough chitchat. Let’s give this baby a whirlypoo. Here’s your first pair:
‘Derek Jeter is a big, fat, stinky ___________‘
and
‘The ___________ next door likes to play with yarn and chase mice.‘
Got it yet?
Come on — this is a gimme. Ready?
Okay, but just another minute. I’m humming the Jeopardy thing here to time you…
All right, time’s up! The answer, of course, is shortstop. That’s right, shortstop.
(Yeah, the guy next door is a little senile. He chases mice. He knits. But he can still turn the double play, dammit.
And Jeter is stinky. Ask anybody. I’m just saying.)
All right — that was way too easy. Let’s try a harder one, now. Here we go:
‘Mary can fit three — three! — cucumbers at one time into her __________‘
and
‘The chicks all dig me because I really know my way around a ____________‘
(Of course, to be fair, I get to play around with my wife’s at home, so I get a lot of practice.
Hey, that’s a hint! You people got that one for free, too. I’m getting soft in my old age.)
Okay, so make your guesses now. No lines, no waiting.
Come on, now — just a wild guess. Anything’ll do, here. This ain’t Family Feud, you know. Get a damned move-on!
Oh — wait. Did I hear the answer, way back there in the back? Yes, that’s right! The answer is salad shooter. Very good back there — salad shooter it is. You get a gold star!
All right. One more before bedtime. Let’s get right to it:
‘People say Betty would lose her ___________ if it weren’t screwed on straight.‘
and
‘Mike told his friends, ‘I’ll be back in five; I’ve gotta hit the ____________’‘
So how ’bout it? You got this one? Need some time?
You sure? You’re ready? Okay, then. Obviously, the answer is cootchie. Yep, cootchie. I trust we all got that one. Always good to end on an easy one, eh?
So, that’s the game. I hope all of you scored three for three — maybe next time I can come up with some more challenging questions, eh? And maybe I can offer prizes for right answers — you might come away with a shiny new salad shooter, or maybe some stinky shortstop’s cootchie.
Or, yeah… perhaps not. I’m all about ‘booby prizes’, but that’s a little much. I think we’ll just stick to the blogging, instead. Much better.
Permalink | 6 CommentsSo, here’s the thing I don’t understand.
(Okay, so it’s not the only thing I don’t understand. There are lots of things I don’t understand — advanced calculus, chaos theory, people who watch ‘Everybody Loves Raymond‘… but I’m just saying — this is one thing I don’t understand. Just one more for the pile.)
Anyway, here’s the thing: there are three large mammals living in our house — me, my wife, and the dog. There are other, smaller mammals — i.e., mice — that seem to also live here, or at least visit from time to time, but they don’t count, because we’re trying hard to kill the little fuckers. So, forget them. It’s just three mammals that we generally don’t want to die anytime soon, unless maybe one of them pees on the couch. So that’s one part.
Then, there are my pants. My pants are the other part. Large mammals living in my house, and my pants. Those are the two parts. Try and keep up, now — this is where it all comes together.
So, three mammals living in the house. And my pants, which may either be on my body or off. Those are the variables. And there are thus the following possible situations with regard to drool, in decreasing order of goodness:
1) My wife’s drool on my pants while I’m wearing them
Comments: This is exceptionally good. At worst, it means that she’s resting on my lap or my legs, sleeping — and drooling — peacefully. Which is very cute, of course. And at best… well, look, folks, let’s face it — there are only so many ways somebody else’s drool can get on your pants. Oh, mama!
2) My wife’s drool on my pants while I’m not wearing them
Comments: Okay, not nearly as good, except possibly from a kinky, weird ‘jeans-licking’ sort of fetish perspective. And I don’t think I have that particular fetish. At least, it’s never come up before. The hot fudge fetish, sure. The one with the busty twins and the fluffy pillows in a Jiffy Lube — yeah, that one, too. But I’m not sure about the ‘slobbering all over the pants’ one. On the other hand, anytime there’s a woman drooling and I’m not wearing my pants… that has to be pretty good, right?
3) My drool on my pants while I’m wearing them
Comments: Frankly, it’s pretty clear that this is rarely ‘good’, per se. If I’m drooling on my own damned pants, I’m likely in no condition to do anything useful with whatever it is I’m drooling about, whether it’s food, or booze, or a large mammal of some kind. Nuff said.
4) My drool on my pants while I’m not wearing them
Comments: Well, actually, pretty much see #3 above, except add to it that I’ve apparently decided at some point to take my pants off during the process. Nuffer said, I think. Nuffer said, indeed.
5) My dog’s drool on my pants while I’m wearing them
Comments: There’s no possible way this can be good. The dog’s either trying to eat my food, working on taking a bite out of me, or — most often — just drooling indiscrimately all over everything, with my pants just happening to be in the line of slobber. The only good thing about this situation is that if I’m wearing the pants, then I’m usually in a position to nip the drooly dipshit in the bud before they’re soaked completely.
6) My dog’s drool on my pants while I’m not wearing them
Comments: Again, see above. I typically see that this has happened in the aftermath, when my pants are slobber-soaked and dripping with drool. Some people might tell me to stop leaving my pants on the floor. Personally, I think I should just have the dog’s saliva glands removed. Either way — I don’t care. So long as the pants are finally safe.
So. Now that you understand the possibilities — and my strong opinions about which ones are preferable — my question is this:
Why — why, oh dammit why — do these things occur with exactly the opposite frequency from what I want?
Why is it that I find dog-slobbered pants lying around my room three or four times a week, and find myself wearing wife-slobbered pants once in a blue moon? And how is it that I drool on my own pants with haunting regularity? And for that matter, how the hell does the dog even have so much slobber to begin with? She’s the tiniest of the three of us, but that bitch could out-drool my wife and I together in a contest. Put a steak in front of the dog, and you could fricking surf the wave from the kitchen to the living room. Freaky.
Anyway, I’m just saying. I don’t mind being drooled on — it just needs to be the right kind of drool, at the right kind of time. And it almost never is. Who knew slobber could be so persnickety?
Permalink | 5 CommentsHey again, peeps.
Just a couple of ‘quickies’ before it’s nighty-night time. First, a bit of personal experience that you’ll probably soon wish I hadn’t decided to share:
I got a haircut today. (That’s not the icky part.)
I got a haircut today, and — in case you’re unfamiliar with the intricate ballet that is a barbershop haircut, I’ll let you in on some of the details. Near the end of a barbershop haircut, the barber (that’s the one what’s got the scissors, folks) will loosen the barbee’s (that’s the one in the chair, if you hadn’t guessed by now) paper neck guard, in order to shave the back of the barbee’s neck. This is standard procedure.
(And some would say the best part of the whole experience. I dig my barbershop, because they use some sort of hot foam that comes out of a little machine, and then shave it off with a real, live straight razor. It’s all very retro and manly — I imagine that’s the way cavemen must’ve shaved their necks, in fact.)
However, it’s also standard procedure to then readjust the neck guard, to cover the neck, should the barber decide to do any more hair trimming up top after the neck shave. It’s a whole little dance that gets done — cut the hair, then shave the neck, and then, if you’re touching up the hair, you have to reseal the neck with the little paper thingy. It’s right there in the manual, people. This isn’t the rocket science part of the haircut.
(Of course not. As we all know, the rocket science part of the haircut is two people trying to hold a polite conversation, while one is trying to hold his head perfectly still — so as not to get stabbed inadvertently in the eyeball — and the other is trying desperately not to talk with hands, in order to avoid said peeper puncturing.
And bonus rocket science points if you manage to repress a sneeze during the operation, or if your barber is Italian. Or cuts hair while he’s talking on the phone — which my old barber used to do. And that’s why I call him my old barber. He was scary enough without the multitasking, dammit.)
Anyway, the point is, today, my barber friend neglected — oh, the horror! — to replace the paper doodad sealing my severed hair from my bare neck. And then he trimmed. Trimmed, I tell you! This irresponsible behavior set in motion a nasty chain of events, at the end of which is the icky part:
Hair from my head fell on my neck.
Said hair, sitting on my neck, slid down the back of my T-shirt.
My T-shirt was tucked into my jeans.
The hair, finding no barrier from neck to ass, slid down the inside of my shirt and into my jeans.
Sitting here, right now, I thus have a considerable number of unconnected hairs pooling in my underwear. This causes me discomfort — both physical and mental, mind you — on many, many levels.
So, there you go. Hairs in my pants. I know you didn’t need to know that. And you know what? I don’t care. Because right now, I’m sitting on hair that used to be on my head. My own head hair is, as we speak, likely lodged in my ass crack. And all for the want of a properly adjusted paper thingy. ‘Tis a sad, sad tale, to be sure. And itchy. And kind of prickly, particularly on the left-cheek side.
(Wha? Too much? Oh, all right. Moving on, then.)
The other pre-bed tidbit I wanted to share is far less squinchy, you’ll be happy to know. I just wanted to mention that I’ve signed up for a little service/club/game called ‘Blog Explosion‘, and it seems pretty cool. It seems, so far, to be sort of a quid pro quo traffic generation tool, and based on the server logs for today, it seems to work in pretty much real time. Which is cool, because I can always get behind something that’s offering instant gratification, boys and girls. I’m all about that shit.
So, give it a looksee, especially if you’re looking for traffic for your own site. Oh, and if you use the link above (or this one –> Blog Explosion <--), you'll count (I think) as one of my referrees, which gets me... I dunno. Points, or something. I haven't really read the docs yet; I'm just going with the flow for now. But still -- it's worth something, so thanks in advance if you clicky-click your way through.
And that’s all for now, folks. I’m off to bed, where I’m hoping the ‘leftovers’ from my haircut will work themselves into a spot more amenable to restful sleep — like onto the sheets, or into my socks, or something. Otherwise, I’m gonna get the bathroom floor all accidentally hairy when I take a shower in the morning. And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s being accidentally hairy. Blech.
Have a great weekend, folks.
Permalink | 4 CommentsSo, I’ve got two things to discuss today — one of them involves a two-pronged attack, and the other includes a four-pronged plan. That’s six prongs, people — six prongs! You don’t get that kind of shit anywhere else. Not other blogs, not news sites, not the Wall Street freakin’ Journal. They got three, four prongs a day, max. Unh-uh.
All right, so first the two-prongy thing, and that has to do with the onerous issue of comment spam. I hate comment spam. If I were in charge of the world, there’d be an extra-special circle of hell reserved for the slimy assbaskets who engage in such behavior — right between the bastards who don’t use their turn signals and telemarketers who call before ten in the damned morning. And I’d tell people, right up front:
‘Hey, you want to try to use my personal site as an ad for whatever shit you’re peddling? Well, go ahead, then. But let’s see how you feel about the issue after a few eons in a Bactine bath with leeches glommed onto your privates. That might just change your happy little tune, there, sporto.‘
Fucking bastards.
Anyway, that’s where my prongs come in.
(Oh, and believe me, if I could get really get my ‘prongs’ into these cheesebags, I would. I’d tack the bastards down like an insect collection, for all the other kids to ‘Ewwww!‘ about. Losers.
But it’s not those kinds of prongs that I meant. I get a little excited sometimes. So sorry.)
The point is, for the past few months, I’ve employed a two-pronged attack for fighting off these douchemonkeys, and keeping their slime trails off this site. First, I installed MT-Blacklist, which I’d recommend to anyone using MovableType (or any other code it supports). The time it’s saved me by letting me quickly delete goofy-assed ads disguised as ‘comments’, or by rejecting them altogether, must run into the order of weeks by now. Maybe months. I’d be, like, sixty years old without this thing. Very cool.
And believe me, it’s getting a workout. A week or so ago, I had no less than — are you sitting down for this? — three hundred and twenty-two ‘spamments’ rejected by the software from the same address in one day.
(Yes, I counted. No, I don’t have better things to do. Yes, my life is a hollow shell of what it should be. Blow me.)
Now, folks, I’m a fairly optimistic guy — sometimes to the point of near-delusion. But I can’t imagine any situation where I’d get rejected — by a website, or a woman, or a credit card agency — three hundred and twenty-one times, and then say to myself, ‘Eh… just one more try. This time, it’s gotta work!‘ So, not only are these cluetards annoying, they’re apparently also a bunch of fricking morons. Their mothers must be so proud.
(And yeah, I know they must have some sort of automaterated doohickey or other that makes the actual requests. Nobody’s quite that stupid. But I still like to think that most of them are close to that stupid — bunch of mouth-breathing, names-in-underwear, pants-on-backwards, Hee-Haw-hooting hosebags, if you ask me.)
Anyway, the thing is, I get tired of seeing all those rejected comments in my logs every damned day. And so, I instituted my second anti-spamment prong: the IP exclusion.
See, MT will let you specify certain IP addresses that are simply forbidden to even attempt to comment or trackback to your site. So, whenever I noticed the same address coming up more than once in my logs, I nuked it. And the requests from those addresses stopped showing up. Beautiful.
(Of course, they were immediately replaced with six or seven other damned addresses, because these people apparently spread their satany seed like fricking rabbits. But, I could always nuke those, too. And then a half-dozen more would ooze into their place. And I’d nuke them. And they’d come back. Nuke, swarm, nuke, swarm.
It’s like having goddamned tribbles around, you know? Assbags.)
Well, long story ever-so-slightly-less-long, I eventually got up to about 250 addresses. Yes, you read that right — just around two hundred and fifty distinct crapmongers have repeatedly tried to bury their filth within these pages in the past six months or so. And I know I’m not alone in this, or MT-Blacklist wouldn’t exist in the first place. Amazing.
Apparently, though, Movable Type itself has some trouble dealing with such a large IP blacklist, and — if recent behavior is any indication — eventually just decides that nobody is allowed to post a comment. I got emails from people who couldn’t submit, finally checked it out, and found that I couldn’t submit, either. To my own site! Whatchu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?
So, I blew away all the IP addresses I’d accumulated over the last half-year or so, and that seems to have fixed it. The moral to the story being, if you’ve tried to comment in the past couple of days and been denied, please — oh, please — consider it a temporary ‘blog fart’ and try, try again. I miss the comments, folks. The real ones, anyway. Just don’t try to write in, selling penis enlargement pills or some shit like that. You’d never get past the blacklist, anyway. And if you did, your comment would have a shelf life of maybe twelve minutes, so please don’t bother. I don’t wanna have to start a new IP shit list, all right?
So, on to thing two — the four-pronged affair. There’s actually less to say about this matter at this point, so I’ll try to be brief and to the point:
Two days ago, I noticed a link incoming to my site from another weblog. Upon investigation, I discovered that the link was actually a broken link that mistakenly pointed to my site, when it was meant to go to another.
(For you HTML-savvy types out there, it was a case of a missing ‘http://’ in the link. So, instead of specifying the intended site, the link actually mistakenly pointed to the local site, instead. Which was mine. Except the link was on someone else’s site, and therein lay the problem. See?
And for you non-HTML-savvy types, here’s the short version: Somebody lifted my shit.
Heh. Sometimes it pays not to be all technical and shit, eh, folks? That second version was much more straightforward.)
Anyway, what had apparently happened was that another blogger had found one of my posts, copied it to their site, edited a few bits here and there (but not many, and not including the broken link — luckily for me, or otherwise, I’d have never known), and then published it as their own. I’m talking plagiarism, folks. Pure and simple, and not appreciated in the slightest. So, I put into place a four-pronged plan to right the wrong:
Prong 1.) Send an private (and courteous) email to the author asking that the post be removed, or that a link back to the original post be added as acknowledgement. Hope that the author was mistaken, or has a change of heart on his or her own.
Prong 2.) Post a comment on the offending post, asking that the post be removed, or that a link back to the original post be added as acknowledgement. Hope that the author’s readers will react, and gently nudge the author into compliance.
Prong 3.) Post, in detail, about the situation on my site, naming names and displaying righteous indignation about the whole sordid affair. Hope that my readers will react, and gently — or not-so-gently — nudge the author into compliance.
Prong 4.) Take the matter up with the offender’s weblog host, asking them to forcibly remove the offending material, or remove the offending site altogether, offering clear evidence of the heinous crime and proof of non-compliance. Hope that the post in question is actually worth all the damned trouble.
(I should probably point out here, of course, that I got most of these very good ideas from the eloquent and capable Julia of Tequila Mockingbird, to whom the same poopy thing happened. Her post behind that last link also has more info about protecting your online work and intellectual property, and inspired me to get myself a spiffy new Creative Commons license of my own. Thanks, Julia!)
Luckily for me, however, my saga didn’t get nearly as ugly as hers, which escalated through Prong 4, as I recall, and in which the word ‘lawyers’ was bandied about. (And rightfully so — her post-pilferer was quite a persistent little pup.)
In my case, I got as far as Prong 2 last night, and woke this morning to find the offending post removed altogether from the site, so there was no need to get nasty. Or to sic you nice folks on another site, assuming you’d agree to be so sic’ed in the first place.
So, happy endings all ’round. Comments are back, my shit is still mine (as far as I know), and we can all head into the weekend holding hands and singing together, and secretly trying to cop a cheap feel, as long as we think we can get away with it. Ah, these are heady times. Until the next post, folks — have a great weekend, and go, go, go, Red Sox. Later.
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