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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
All right, it’s official. I now have twenty — count ’em, twenty — episodes of 24 on our TiVo. I’ve seen two, maybe three, early in the season, and taped the rest. They’re sitting there, on the TiVo, mocking me. They know I’m not gonna watch them. Hell, I know I’m not gonna watch them. But I can’t delete them, just in case.
I’ve spent the last — what, four months or more? — secretly, silently hoping that I’d miss a week, accidentally, and could delete the rest with a clear conscience. Maybe I’d just call it a wash, or maybe I’d break down in a few months and buy the DVD, but either way, I’d be off the hook. But of course, since that’s what I wanted, it didn’t happen — there was no TiVo glitch, I didn’t forget to save an episode once it taped… we didn’t even get that devastating hurricane or earthquake or ice storm that I hoped for to cut the power for a couple of days. Come on, dammit! How unlucky can I get?
Anyway, now I don’t know what the hell to do. I don’t even know whether the series is over — I’m completely out of touch with what’s happening with the show week to week. And to make it worse, I have friends who watch the thing — friends who want to talk about what’s going on in the show, and who’s exploding what, and who’s been shot, and whether Jack’s daughter is ever gonna get it over with and just get naked. And I can’t talk to any of these people, because I’m so far behind. Last I saw, Jack was stuck in the middle of a prison riot — that shit happened in October, for Chrissakes! I don’t wanna hear from these people what’s going on in May, or even February.
So clearly, just as a precaution, I can’t speak to any of these people until I’ve finished watching the season. It’s unclear when that’s going to happen, of course, or even if it’s going to happen. So it looks like I’m going to have to cut these people off completely. It’s sad, sure, but it beats accidentally hearing that one of the 24 characters has died, or been captured, or something like that. And frankly, it’ll probably be a relief to those people I’ve been trying to avoid talking to since last year. Now, I have to yell, ‘La la la la! I can’t hear you! La la la la!‘ whenever I run into them, which gets a little old for everyone. So cutting them out altogether is probably the way to go.
Luckily, I haven’t found anyone at work who watches the show, so I get to keep my job. And my wife is no further along than I am — that’s a relief, too. That’d be a damned dilemma, if I couldn’t talk to her. But just about everybody else I know is up on what Jack and the Palmers and CTU are up to, so they’re DTM now — Dead To Me. I guess I’ll pretty much be a hermit from now on, speeding to and from work, and talking to no one outiside my wife and coworkers. Oh, and our families, too.
Yeah, I forgot about them. Damn. That’s no good. Anybody know a way to get my in-laws interested in 24? This could be a real opportunity — help me out here, folks.
Permalink | 6 CommentsAloha, good people. Aloha, and welcome to another installment of Punchline Fever, the game where you provide the funnies. For our fresh new faces in the crowd, here’s how we dance this little tango:
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.
Sweet, simple, and it’ll only make you a little crazy.
(Like eating a pound of cane sugar, or spending an hour with Jessica Simpson. But I digress.)
Anyway, lest I start having daydreams about corny pop stars and mounds of sugar, here’s this week’s Punchline Fever! Enjoy!
Punchline Fever #15:
‘Joe never knew what a problem taking Viagra would turn out to be. It worked great in the bedroom, but he didn’t realize that the ‘effects’ could last all day. And that was rather inconvenient, given that Joe was a police officer; he tried to control his ‘excitement’, but still he kept ________________________________‘
That’s all you get this week, kiddies. If you want more of the same, you’ll have to go digging through the Punchline Fever archives. Or wait until next week, when I’ll set ’em up again, so you can knock ’em down. Now, don’t we make a great team? Happy Friday!
Permalink | 9 CommentsHey, folks. Shhhhhhh.
Let’s keep this post quiet, okay? I’m still running a few days behind at the office, so I’m supposed to be getting work done right now. Instead, I’m watching baseball, waiting for my greasy takeout Chinese food to get here, and talking to you. Hey, if I’m gonna slack off, I’m gonna go all out, you know? I don’t dick around when it comes to dicking around when I’m not supposed to be dicking around.
(Ah, yes, a ‘dick’ and two ‘dicking’s in a single sentence. It’s just that sort of highbrow cerebral entertainment that keeps you coming back, isn’t it? Yeah. You know it is, you pervy little monster, you.)
Anyway, I’m in ‘stall’ mode. The longer I can stay busy doing something — anything — other than work, the less I have to think about the enormous turdpile of nonsense that I’m supposed to be working through. And that’s a dangerous frame of mind for me to be in, frankly. My brain wanders off into loopyhood plenty enough as it is, without knowing that it’s supposed to be coming up with shit to distract me with. Because it’s awfully good at distractions.
Look, here’s one now — do you think the ancient Egyptians ever got curious? You know, after all that hard work mummifying people, sucking their lifeless brains out through their cold, stiff nostrils, and pumping them full of concoctions of salves and oils and Horus-knows-what… do you think they peeked? Maybe snuck off to a sarcophagus from a few years before and cracked it open just a touch, for a look inside?
And if they ever did, don’t you think they saw how the flesh was all beat up and crunchy, and how the limbs were all shrivelly, and how the body was clearly no use to anyone who already had a smelly, wrinkly paperweight lying around. Don’t you think they saw all of that and exclaimed, ‘Holy chocolate crapsicles! This stuff ain’t working!‘
(Okay, so they probably didn’t say anything about crapsicles. If nothing else, it was probably pretty damned hot around Gaza in those days; I doubt they had any kind of -sicles at all.
Come to think of it, did they have chocolate back then and there? I dunno. Cats, yeah. Scarabs, sure. But chocolate? No idea. But what the hell good are scarabs and cats, if they’re not covered in chocolate? Makes no sense.
And ‘holy’? Well, yeah, whatever they said probably had ‘holy’ in it somewhere. Hell, they had seventeen thousand gods, or some shit like that. With that many deities running around willy-nilly, just about everything had to be holy, right? There was a sun god, a moon god, gods in the stars, gods in the river, gods underground, gods stuffed down their loincloths… sheesh. If they did have chocolate, I’m pretty damned sure they had a god made out of the stuff, too. Or made out of crapsicles and dedicated to chocolate. Something like that.)
Anyway, I’m just saying that if those guys took a look at their handiwork, maybe they’d have had second thoughts about the whole process. Maybe they’d have started using real preservatives, or vacuum-sealed freezer bags, or something.
Or maybe, just maybe, it took thousands of years for those corpses to start rotting. If those pharaoh-stuffing fools looked at the time, the mummies might have looked perfectly normal. For all I know, they unwrapped them and sat ’em up for tea socials and dinner parties. Hey, who knows — maybe those bodies look so bad now because their previous owners have been using them in the afterlife all this time. Who the hell are we to say?
And dammit… what the hell have I been talking about? Jeez, remind me not to write when I’m supposed to be working. This shit doesn’t even make sense to me. Egyptian gods of crapsicles? Damn. I’d better get to work. I’ll catch you tomorrow.
Permalink | 2 CommentsYou know, it’s weeks like these that I look back fondly on a few magical weeks I had this past fall. I was dynamic. I was sharp. I was radiant. I was… unemployed.
And now, not so much. Now, I’ve got a job. Deadlines. Responsibilities. Everything but a clip-on tie and a parking spot. And while I don’t pine for those halcyon days of jobless yore, exactly, that’s mainly because I don’t know what the hell halcyon means. Or how to pronounce it. Or how that ‘y’ got in the middle there; that just doesn’t look right at all. Goofy-looking word, anyway.
Still, there are times when I do miss the snail-paced, oozing sort of life that I had for those few fleeting weeks last year. I could stay up late if I wanted, doing nothing in particular. I could sleep until ten, or later. I discovered all sorts of new and exciting and mind-numbingly banal television shows. Eventually, I got really, really freaking damned bored and started doing chores around the house. For an entire month, I never had more than two pairs of dirty boxers in the house.
(And not because I was ‘recycling’ them, or turning them inside out and rewearing them for another couple of days. What do I look like over here — a graduate student? Nah. I don’t do that stuff any more. That’s nasty.)
The point is, I had a lot of free time. Time to brush up on my golf game, time to learn to paint, time to bike several miles a day, time to set up a woodworking shop, even time to shop at the mall with my wife.
Of course, I didn’t actually do any of those ridiculous things. Even with the time, I don’t have that kind of energy. One of my eyes just involuntarily drooped shut, just writing about that nonsense. Who does that crap, anyway? Painting? Woodworking? Shopping, fer chrissakes? At a mall? Oops. There goes the other eye. Hold on.
Okay, all better. Anyway, all I’m saying is that for a while there, life moved at a bit slower pace. Actually, at a much slower pace. Like a paint-drying, grass-growing, little-old-lady-in-a-Buick-on-the-freeway slower pace. And while that got a bit tiresome after a few weeks, I could really use a quick dose of sitting idly on my ass right about now.
But alas, it’s not gonna happen. Too much work, too many deadlines, too many meetings, and way too many people looking over my shoulder, saying, ‘How’s it going?‘ and ‘Aren’t you finished?‘ and ‘Hey, didn’t they fire you a couple of weeks ago?‘ Yeah, right. At least then, I could sleep in once in a while.
On the other hand, I suppose I’m better off now. That whole ‘getting money’ thing is nice, for certain. And it’s probably a good idea for me to have a few hours a day in the company of other people, to keep myself reasonably socialized and make sure I don’t revert to self-grooming or moving into a cave or running around naked flinging poo, or anything like that.
(Yes, I’m implying that running around fully clothed and flinging poo is okay. Or standing still while flinging poo naked, for that matter. Possibly even running around naked and carrying poo, just so long as you don’t throw it. Dropping it might be all right. Or hurling it underhanded — does that count as flinging? How about if you just let it slip out of your hand onto someone’s shoe? Or maybe —
Hey. How the hell did we get onto this subject, anyway? Why does nobody stop me when this happens?)
Anyway, I forget what the hell I was saying. My memory’s not so good these days — it’s probably all those early mornings getting up and schlepping into the office that are shriveling my brain. But what are you gonna do? How else can I earn money to pay for beer and Chiclets? And as long as there’s time to blog, who needs any more, right? Hey, I know how to prioritize. Don’t you worry. Yeah.
Permalink | 2 CommentsEvery once in a while, my principles come back to bite me in the ass.
Which is really damned annoying, of course, because I don’t have many principles to begin with. You’d think, with just one or two of the things lying around, they’d learn to stay out of the frigging way and be good. Hell, if I were them, and I’d seen so many of my kind yanked out and thrown away, I think I’d be just a tad nervous. Certainly, I’d try to keep my nose clean, my pants zipped, and not cause any undue hubbub.
Sadly, my few remaining principles don’t seem to share my caution. The bastards.
The latest of my personal policies to get all up in my business is this one: Many years ago, I decreed that once I start wearing shorts for the summer, then I’m not going to stop wearing shorts until the fall. See? It’s a principle. Seriously.
Of course, this little nugget didn’t come to me in Boston. No. When I came up with my principle — also known as the ‘Summer Shorts Manifesto’ — I was living in warmer climes. So all I had to do was wait until… oh, I don’t know, let’s say ‘late May’, to start wearing shorts, and then I’d be good to go until September or so, naked knees and all.
But Boston doesn’t work that way, folks. Boston weather is unpredictable, frequently messy, and often violent. Like a drunken longshoreman, maybe, or the after-effects of a bean burrito slathered with atomic sauce.
(Only cloudier. Or not, depending on the state of your digestive tract. Or possibly your ‘longshore’, assuming those are actually two different things. That’s never been made clear to me.)
Anyway, moving here to the near-Arctic hasn’t caused me to give up this little principle of mine. A lesser man might have punted, and decided that the temperature outside should dictate whether his thighs should be covered. Yes, a weaker man might’ve gone that route. As would a wiser man, probably. Not to mention a smarter man, a richer man, a younger man, a few hairier men, and that guy down the block with the lazy eye. And, more to the point, of course, a warmer man.
Come to think of it, just about any man — or woman — would probably have come to the conclusion that sub-fifty degree weather calls for long-style pantaloons. But not me. I’ve got principles.
(Hey, I never said I had good principles. They may not be the best, or the most important, or make any damned sense, but they’re the only ones I have. The only ones I can remember, anyway. That’ll have to do.)
In any event, I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’m not budging. I pulled my short pants out of the drawer a couple of weeks ago when the mercury bubbled into the eighties, and dammit, I’m not putting them away until football season. Sure, I’ll bend a little — I’ll wear long-sleeved shirts, if I have to. I’ll wear wool socks with my shoes. And lord knows, I’ll slap on a hat, to keep that top-of-the-noggin heat in. But slip into a pair of jeans, in May, or June, or even August? No. Not gonna happen.
So, there you go. One of the few times that I buckle down and stick to my guns, and what does it get me? Chilly knees and a lot of funny looks from people in scarves and jackets. I don’t know how the hell people do this crap. Who can afford to have principles these days?
Now somebody get me a shawl, dammit. I think my ankles are frozen. Bah.
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