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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
So, I’ve been doing some thinking lately. And I’ve decided that computers are the cause of the vast majority of my problems lately. Whether it’s the one upstairs that won’t frigging work, or the one in my day-job office that serves as a gateway to the crappy code and goobered-up database that I’m supposed to be fixing, it’s always computers at the very epicenter of the clusterfucks that swirl around me.
(Um, I wouldn’t try too hard to get a visual on ‘clusterfucks swirling around me’, by the way. I just gave it a shot, and it came out sort of like a cross between Twister and Caligula. Mighty unpleasant. I can’t recommend it.)
So, I’m thinking of boycotting these electronic bastards for a while, to teach them that I can get along just fine without ’em. It’s gonna be an adjustment, sure, but I think I can pull it off. The machine upstairs is on its own — it doesn’t seem to want to talk to me, anyway, so fuck it. I can play the ‘silent treatment’ game, too. See how the damned thing feels without that electric plug in its ass for a couple of weeks.
(Hopefully, about the same way I’d feel if I sat around with a power cord up my hiney-hole for a few days. Frazzled, paranoid, and thoroughly ready to straighten up and be reasonable.
At least, I imagine that’s how I feel. This is not the sort of thing I experiment with. Can’t waste good electricity, you know.)
As for work, that should be no problem. I must have thirty hours of meetings or more a week — it’s a shock that I’m able to sit at my desk long enough to get by knickers in a tizzy as it is. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take very damned long. But I can probably avoid my computer for a few days, anyway — I’ll sign up for a new committee or something, or go to all those seminars and talks and conferences that I’m supposed to be going to, anyway, but never have the time. Oh, the nonsense I’ll learn! Huzzah! Huzzay!
Of course, that leaves the matter of this little site here. I’ve already been slacking off around here lately, thanks to the cockamamie bullshit those computers have caused.
(You know, I’m not sure I’ve ever had to spell that word before. ‘Cockamamie’. That doesn’t look right at all. Looks like some sort of dog breed, or maybe a stripper name.
Hey, don’t laugh. Those girls pick some ridiculous bullshit sometimes. I once saw — I mean, *ahem* *cough cough*, I once heard of — a stripper who called herself ‘Estonia’. Niiiiiice. Name yourself after an Eastern European country. Very sexy, there, sweetie. How ’bout if I stuff a sausage down my trunks, call myself ‘Poland’, and hop up there and join you, eh?
Yeah. Turns out that’s exactly why strip clubs hire bouncers. Who’d have guessed?)
All right. Where the hell was I, anyway? All that stripper talk has got me distractipated.
Ah, computers. And writing for this site. And how to do one without touching the other. Righto.
So, I obviously don’t want to go without writing during my ‘puter boycott. I’m already pissed that I’ve had less time to hang out here, because of my various computery complications. So how to post without touching one of the filthy beasts? Well, I’ve got a few ideas about that:
#1. Posting by Proxy: The easiest solution, perhaps, would be to use someone else to tippy-type my drivel into a computer. I could dictate it out, they could enter it, and I’d never have to lay one fingertip on the keyboard. From my perspective, it’s a pretty sweet deal.
Of course, then there’s the matter of finding some poor sap who could survive not only reading this bullshit, but also hearing and writing it as well. Yeah — good fricking luck with that. I don’t see it happening, unless the local loony bin is willing to loan me a few of their droolers on a work release arrangement. And then, I’d have to put plastic on all the furniture. Suddenly, this option seems like an awful lot of work. Bah.
#2. Voice Recognition to the Rescue: So, if no one else wants to hear my crap, then why not cut out the middle man, and just tell the computer what I want written down? Sure, it sounds like a good idea. Lots of things sound like a good idea. Edible underwear sounds like a good idea — until you find yourself and your S.O. stuck to the suddenly strawberry-flavored sheets and picking pubes from between your teeth. Or so I would, um, imagine. You see what I mean.
But back to the slightly less frightening prospect of me standing in my living room, slowly and carefully enunciating crap like that last bit into the microphone on the side of my laptop. Yeah, I can see how that would go:
‘… and picking pubes from — no, no, not cubes! Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. Puh. Yuuubes. No! Not ‘pud lubes’! Well… actually, sort of, kinda. But no. Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. PUH-yuuuuuubes. Pubes, dammit, pubes! What, is ‘pubes’ not in your dictionary?! What kind of bullshit program is this?‘
Yeah, see, that’s never gonna work. At that point, I’m still using a computer, even if I’m not typing. It’ll still be just as aggravating, and I’ll still want to punt the goddamned thing into a wood chipper. This idea’s never gonna fly. So, I guess it’s up to…
#3. Morse Code Madness: As far as I can figure it, this is my best shot. A morse code tapper doesn’t count as a computer in my book, so it’s fair game to use. And this way, nobody else gets involved, there’s no convincing some assbag software that ‘boobered’ is really a word — or ought to be, anyway — and I can still tip-ta-tip-tap-tip the entries in myself. It’s perfect. Well, except that I don’t actually know Morse code, or have a telegraph doohickey to produce it with, or any way to get those little dots and dashes converted into words, even if I could tap ’em out. Aw, bitches.
Well, that’s it, then. If I want to keep posting here, I’ve got to use a computer. Those mother-bitching machines win again. Work, home, free time — I can’t get the hell away. They just drag me back in. *sigh*
Ah, well. I guess that means it’s okay to waste a few hours playing Madden, then, eh? All I gotta do is get that crapmonkey machine upstairs running again, and it’s back to wasting time on my terms. I’d better get to work. Catch you folks on the flip side.
Permalink | 5 CommentsWell, hey there, folks — long time, no see.
I feel I should apologize for my unannounced — and unplanned, and frankly, for the most part, unwanted — hiatus over the weekend. I’d like to say that it was unavoidable, and regale you with some tale of international intrigue, or a life-and-death interstate jaunt, or maybe even an alien abduction. Sadly, I can do none of those. My intrigue tends to live right here close to home, the most life-or-death thing I typically do is decide which rugby to wear in the morning, and… well, I don’t live in a trailer park, so there’s apparently little chance the little green men are coming to probe me anytime soon. What they see in those mullet-headed Cro-Magnons, I’ll never know. Silly aliens.
No, my excuse is far more mundane and straightforward. It goes a little something like this:
I didn’t write on Friday night because I was out with a buddy of mine at a bar on Friday night. It was a fun Friday night, especially because there were free vodka drinks on Friday night. I had a good time on Friday night. Free vodka is good.
I didn’t write on Saturday or Sunday because I was out with a buddy of mine at a bar on Friday night. It was not a fun Saturday or Sunday, especially because there were free vodka drinks on Friday night. I had no fun on Saturday or Sunday. Free vodka is evil. Evil and very, very painful.
So, that was my weekend. I’d appreciate having no more mention of ‘vodka’ for quite some time now, if you don’t mind. Like a couple of decades — that would be good. As a matter of fact, the closest thing to a Russian liquid I want to see for a long while is Milla Jovovich ‘poured’ into a tight outfit in her next movie. Which, frankly, is way better than booze to begin with. But I digress.
And, as usual, I exaggerate, just a little. I was actually back to my abnormal self by midday Sunday or so. But instead of tip-tap-typing here, I decided to get tough and serious — and maybe even ‘rough and ready’, though somehow that phrase reminds me of scary pornos — about recovering the crap off my crippled hard drives. So I dug in, and spent a few hours getting ass-deep in data recovery doubletalk.
The good news — if you’re me, anyway… and if you’re me, this is just about the only good news there is, so listen up — is that I finally managed to retrieve just about everything I wanted. Standup clips, web server info, all my MP3s, even my High Heat Baseball team files. And there was much rejoicing. (‘Yaaaaaay.‘)
But life is not all perky bunnies and fuzzy nipples, folks.
(Um… yeah. I think I got those flipped around. Just switch the adjectives there, and I think we’re all good. Perky rabbits are fine, but there’s nothing good about fuzzy nipples. Trust me — I’ve got a pair myself. Ick.)
Anyway, I’m not out of the woods yet, is what I’m saying. I’ve got the data now, but I’ve still got to wipe the drives clean, re-install the OS, load a bunch of software, get the wireless card working again, and load the data back where it goes. I’m a little queasy just thinking about it. Not as queasy as I felt Saturday morning, perhaps, but still — there’s some tummy-rumbling happening over here. Not cool.
In the meantime, I’m also out… lessee, carry the one, tack on another thirty… about a hundred and fifty bucks for the software I bought online to recover the files. It took one to get the damned computer to see the drives, and two more to reach into the muck and pull out the shit I wanted. I should have just forgotten the whole thing and rented a hooker to help me forget about it. And that would’ve only taken a half an hour. I’ve really got to think these things through.
Of course, that’s not as bad as it could be. The place that built the computer for me wanted a hundred and twenty-five just to look at it. Not work on it. Not find my files. Not deliver the damned things to me on a platinum-plated floppy disk. No. Just look at it. I don’t know how these fuckers got themselves such a sweet deal, but dammit, I want a cut! Hell, you could make a living doing anything if you can charge that kind of money just to examine the problem, no guarantees. Shit, I could do anything:
‘Hmmm… well, sir, it looks like it might be a hard drive failure. But hey, those things are always going down. Easy come, easy go. Speaking of which… you got your wallet with you?‘
‘Yup. That’s probably the alternator. Or the ignition. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the brakes, or the shocks, or that little pokey thing you stick in the oil tank. Who knows with these complicated cars these days? That’ll be two hundred bucks.‘
‘Well, gee, Mrs. Johnson, that sure looks like a broken arm. But what’re ya gonna do? It happens. Oh, and you can make the check out to ‘Dr. Charlie’‘
So, I suppose I’m getting off easy. On the other hand, I’ve been working on this shit for a couple of weeks now, so it’s probably going to even out, assuming my time is worth more than six pesos an hour. Which it probably isn’t, of course, but I’m trying to keep a positive attitude here. Don’t fuck it up for me, people.
Anyway, I thought I should mention — and then explain, in as long-winded a way as humanly possible — why I’ve been AWOL for the past couple of days. I suspect things will be back to normal now, minus a few hours here and there to nurse my computer the rest of the way back to health. That’s about the only blip I see rearing it’s ugly head in the next little while.
Assuming I stay off the vodka, that is. Damn. Now I remember why I’m a beer guy. That shit was not cool, dammit. Sheesh.
* By the way, in case you don’t recognize it, the post title is a lyric from a cool Beat Farmers song I like. I don’t want you getting the impression I do this all the time, or anything. I’m getting too damned old for that shit. Just for the record.
Permalink | 2 CommentsSome people judge others by how much money they make, or what car they drive. Others pigeonhole folks based on the color of their skin, or the country they’re from, or the clothes that they wear.
Well, not me. I say that’s foolish. And it’s simply wrong-headed to mentally label other people based on such trivial differences.
Instead, I’ve got a much better way to sort people out. I categorize people based on which words for ‘ass’ they’re willing to tolerate and use. It makes about as much damned sense as the other ways above, and — trust me — it’s far more entertaining. Let’s have a look at the buckets people can fall into, shall we?
1. The Mary Poppins type:
These people wouldn’t swear or curse if you snuck up behind them and yanked the sticks out of their asses. They’re generally uptight, repressed, and wildly uncomfortable in their own skins. And they’ll go to great lengths — great, ridiculous, annoying lengths — to avoid saying anything that might be embarrassing to themselves. Or others. Or any children that might be listening. Or Mother Theresa. Needless to say, I don’t understand these people at all. Many of them are probably Amish.
Common ‘ass’ terms for this group: ‘backside’, ‘tuckus’, ‘hindcheeks’, ‘sitter’, ‘fanny’, ‘posterior’
2. The Dean Wormer type:
This is the no-nonsense group — they’re only going to talk about asses when there’s a damned good reason, and there’s not going to be any fooling around. Just like the original ‘Dean Wormer’, they’re not into bathroom humor, lowbrow shenanigans, or any sort of artsy-farting around. And they’re the type of people who would actually use the phrase ‘artsy-farting around’. These people don’t like me. Most of them just shake their heads sadly at me now.
Common ‘ass’ terms for this group: ‘butt’, ‘rear end’, ‘ass’ (only when provoked), ‘rump’, ‘seat’
3. The Pauly Shore type:
These people are creative with their ass nomenclature, but not particuarly lewd or vulgar. Like the ‘Weasel’ himself, they’ll be silly, childish, and goofy with their ass talk, but you’ll rarely hear any actual profanities. I get along just fine with these people. Except when I want to punch them.
Common ‘ass’ terms for this group: ‘gluteals’, ‘booty’, ‘bum’, ‘pants-holder’, ‘groove thang’, ‘popo’, ‘heinie’
4. The Richard Pryor type:
This group can be — hell, is — pretty gross. But it’s a sort of matter-of-fact, ‘dirty because that’s the way I am’ sort of gross. They’re not trying to be rude, exactly — they’re just talking, and whatever comes out, comes out. They lay their ass words down, and move on, leaving Mary Poppinses aghast and drill sergeants disgusted. These are my peeps.
Common ‘ass’ terms for this group: ‘ass’, ‘pooper’, ‘asscheeks’, ‘sphincter’, ‘gas tank’
5. The Dice Clay type:
These people sling filthy banter, just for the sake of flinging it around. They’re lewd, foul, disgusting, and vulgar. And lots of fun to party with. Occasionally, something they say will make you spew your drink through your nose. Some of these people are my heroes. Others should be locked in a cage. Often, it’s hard to tell the two apart.
Common ‘ass’ terms for this group: ‘crapcatcher’, ‘shitshooter’, ‘turdlurcher’, ‘shitcutter’, ‘Hersheyville’
(And yeah… given that I just made up a couple of those under #5, I guess I end up in that neighborhood sometimes, myself. You caught me. Ya turdlurcher, ya.)
Anyway, try it out sometime. Listen carefully, to see how people refer to their posteriors. Or just blurt out ‘Nice pooper!‘ and see how they react. It may not be the most useful way to classify people, but it sure is a helluva lot of fun. And I’m not just blowing smoke up your shitshearer, either.
Permalink | 7 CommentsAh, September. That heady, happy, horny time of year when school begins anew and the education of our youth resumes in schoolhouses and on campuses across the nation. It’s a time for convocations and kick-ass keggers, early classes and late-night pizza, feverish all-nighters and… well, ‘feverish all-nighters’, if you know what I mean. Ah, what I wouldn’t give to be matriculating again right now myself.
(No, no, skippy — I said ‘matriculate‘. Ma-TRIC-ulate. Get yer noggin outta the gutter, there, Gilligan.)
Anyway, they say it’s never too late to teach an old dog new tricks. And I don’t know whether that’s literally true — frankly, I can’t think of too many things I’d want an old dog to do that would be terribly useful in the first place — but I do take the sentiment to heart. Just because I’ve been out of college for *mumble mumble* years doesn’t mean that I can’t keep furthering my education.
And so, in honor of the students flocking back to schools this week — like the swallows returning to Capistrano; or drunken, horny coeds returning to the dorm rooms of the ex-boyfriends they told themselves they’d never sleep with again — I’d like to share with you something that I’ve learned this young September. Maybe you can learn something from it, too. So here it is.
I learned that I can be a warm, sensitive husband, or I can be a loudmouth, one-of-the-guys beer-swilling sports fan. But I cannot be both at once.
Now, I’ve never had too much trouble keeping my ‘sports slob’ self away from my wife — sure, I yell at the TV sometimes (‘Throw the ball! Throw the goddamned ball!!‘), and might down a few beers during a game, but I generally maintain some level of non-Neanderthality when it’s just me and the missus around. I keep the obscenities to a dull roar, I don’t actually throw objects around the room, and I almost never paint any body parts in preparation for a game.
(And when I do, they’re usually not mine. And I say the dog looks good with blue and orange stripes down her back, dammit. She’s more than a pet — she’s a friggin’ mascot. Word.)
So, scaring my wife is not the problem. This time, anyway. No, what I learned is that I can get into trouble the other way, by letting my sweet, tender, creamy-centered side show among my jock-watching friends. Behold the conversation that did me in this past weekend:
Guy #1: Man, I don’t know. You think the Pats can pull off another Super Bowl this year?
Guy #2: It’s gonna be tough. Carolina’s looking good in the preseason. And Philly’s gonna be there, too.
Guy #1: Yeah. I don’t know if we’ve got the ‘D’ this year. We lost Washington, and Milloy before that, and now TBuck is gone…
Me: Ah, we’ll be fine. We’ve got Dillon now to run, and the defense is at least as good. Remember, we’ve got Shawn Colvin coming back — he was hurt all of last year, and —
Guy #1: Um… who?
MeColvin. Shawn Colvin. Linebacker, we picked him up from the Bears last year… remember?
Guy #2: Uh… you mean Roosevelt Colvin?
Me: Oh. Um, yeah. What’d I say?
Guy #1: Shawn Colvin. Isn’t that some pop star the chicks are all into?
Me (sweating): Er… well, uh, I don’t know. I think I was just getting confused between Colvin and… um, Shawn Springs. Or Sean Salisbury. Or, uh… yeah.
Guy #2: Dude. You are so married.
Let this be a lesson to all you guys out there. There’s a time for sappy, sugary sweetness with your lady, and there’s a time for pigskin, pork rinds, and pop-top beer cans. Don’t get them confused. If you’re gonna make like ‘Romeo’, you’d better make damned well sure you know whether you mean the sweet-talking Shakespearean Montague, or the smash-mouth, tough-as-nails, take-no-shit Crennel.
(Um, that’s ‘Romeo Crennel’. Defensive coordinator for the Patriots.
Yeah. I went a long-ass way for that one, didn’t I? Poopstain.)
Anyway, you get the point. And I learned my lesson. From now on, I’m keeping my Romeos — and my Colvins — straight. I damned near got a wedgie for my last brain fart, and I’m not doin’ it again. Even if it means hiding all my wife’s CDs. ‘Cause lord only knows when New England’s gonna draft some kid named ‘McLachlan’, or ‘Merchant’, or ‘Barenaked’, and I’ll be in this damned mess again. God, that’s embarrassing.
Permalink | 2 CommentsYou know, I hate spammers — I hate them with a white-hot searing passion, just like the rest of you probably do. I generally think they should all be stripped naked, dipped in beaver pee, and thrown into a big pit full of spikes and rubbing alcohol and rabid gonad-nibbling weasels. I’m sure many of you feel the same way… more or less. Possibly without the weasels.
Anyway, much as I loathe the annoying bastards, I’ll be damned if sometimes they don’t provide a bit of entertainment, albeit inadvertantly. I’ve been getting some fun ones lately, many of them with the subject line mentioning some chick’s ‘ponanny’.
Now, first of all, I don’t know exactly what’s going on with this girl’s hoohah — something’s getting crammed into it, or shooting out of it, or maybe it’s drinking a glass of water while the dummy sings… I don’t know. I really didn’t read that far.
Frankly, I had trouble getting past the word itself — ‘ponanny’. I’m more or less familiar with the term, but it’s not exactly a common genitalial euphemism, at least not in the circles I run in. I don’t know about you folks. Maybe you’re in some sort of ‘ponanny circle’ or other. But not me.
Anyway, it got my attention, just by being there. Didn’t get my attention enough to make me open the stupid email, of course, but I was drawn in. Curious. Piqued, even.
It was around that time that I realized that the spelling looked all wrong, too. To be honest, I’ve never seen it written before, but it just didn’t look right. ‘Ponanny’ — I’d say that like this: ‘poh-NEH-nee‘. ‘Ponanny’. Sounds like a penniless babysitter — ‘I can’t pay for that! I’m just a po’ nanny! I’m just a po’ nanny!‘
Or… um, not. Yeah. That might be stretching a bit. But you get the idea. Po-nanny.
See, but the way I’ve always heard it, it would sound more like ‘poo-NAH-nee‘. I’d pictured it with a more… exotic spelling, like: punani. Now isn’t that more exciting? Punani. Pu-nani. No mention of nannies, or anything. Much better. It looks like a word we borrowed from some other language — from somewhere in India, maybe. ‘Punani’. Yeah. Definitely Indian. Which would make you think that ‘punjab’ was the male equivalent. Which it isn’t, but it sounds like it could be. I can almost hear the Baliwood porn dialogue now:
Manjula: ‘Hey! Sanjeev! You’ve got your punjab in my punani!‘
Sanjeev: ‘Oh, no, no, Manjula! It is you who has your punani all over my punjab!‘
Manjula: ‘Siva be praised! Two great tastes that taste great together!‘
Sanjeev: ‘Oh, my, yes! Let us now lie together in the ‘Emerald Lotus’ position — that’s page thirty-four in the Kama Sutra, you know — and then dance in celebration with all of our friends in the village! Huzzah!‘
(Okay, so maybe it wouldn’t go like that. How the hell should I know? How much Indian porn do you think I watch?
Um… don’t answer that. Matter of fact, don’t even think very hard about it. Please.)
So, what the hell was I talking about, anyway? And how did it end in porn? And why does everything I talk about here end in porn? Meh.
Anyway, I think the point was that spam isn’t always all bad. Spammers still suck ass, but the mail itself can provide a giggle. Or a chuckle. Or an outlandish, fevered concoction of an unlikely sex scene in a movie that’ll never see the intercontinental light of day. I don’t know what it all means, really. All I know is that now I’m hungry for Indian food. I think I’ll go for the jungle curry. With emerald lotus sauce. Rrrrrowr!
Be good, people. I’m out.
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