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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Every 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.
Permalink | 7 CommentsYou ever have one of those days where you just can’t keep your head on straight?
I’m not quite sure what happened, and I apologize in advance, but I’ve forgotten most of what I was gonna write about tonight.
All I remember is that I had some sort of perverted point or other, and then I was gonna go off on a tangent or two, and work my way back to the original deviant sex thing, whatever it was. You know, business as usual stuff.
Anyway, all I can recall is that I was gonna end it with this:
‘On a related topic, I’m seriously thinking about growing myself a big, fat pornstache.‘
But, you know, taken all out of context like that, it just sounds sick and tawdry, somehow. I think I need a shower now. And maybe a shave… just to be safe. I’ll… I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Ta.
Permalink | 4 CommentsAll right, boys and girls. I hate to do this to you, but I’m afraid it can’t be helped. It’s time once again for the weblog equivalent of a ‘clip show’. That’s right, it’s time to dig in for a third installment of ‘Look What Kinds of Ridiculous Searches Bring People to This Site‘.
Hey, don’t look at me that way. I’ve been here almost a frigging year, and I’ve only resorted to this crap three times. Cut me some slack, dammit. Now, let’s get on with it, all right?
Okay, here goes — these are some of these searches that various desperate, horny, and/or demented netizens have recently used to find this humble web abode:
All right, that’s enough for tonight. Sorry for mainly slacking off on a Sunday, but hell — what are Sundays for, anyway? You can’t possibly expect me to put out for real every night, can you? Can you? Can you? What kind of animal perverts are you, anyway? Bitches.
Permalink | 2 CommentsMaybe I’m just turning into a cranky, impatient, snarky old bastard.
I suppose that would make sense, given that I’ve been a cranky, impatient, snarky youngish bastard for quite a while now. Why the hell should I change now?
Anyway. One thing I’ve found that makes me cranky and snarky and that I have no patience for is people asking rhetorical questions. And then waiting for a damned answer. Oooh, that makes my eyeballs twitch.
Now, this is not a new phenomenon for me. I’ve railed against this ridiculous, pointless behavior for most of my life. To be honest, there was one member of my immediate family, who shall remain nameless (*cough* *kaff* mother… *cough* *cough*), that was way guilty of this nonsense. I spent the better part of my childhood having exchanges like this:
News Anchor on TV: …the would-be burglar required a rescue when he got himself stuck in the family’s chimney, and was unable to escape.
Unnamed Immediate Family Member: Tsk. That’s just stupid. What the hell is wrong with people?
Me: (Just let it go… leave it at that… let it go…)
*long uncomfortable pause*
Me: (Okay, good. That’s the end of –)
Unnamed Immediate Family Member: Well?!
Me: Um… what?
Unnamed Immediate Family Member: I said, what the hell is wrong with people?
And folks, there’s no good answer for that. Honestly, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with people. How the hell should I? Frankly, if I had to guess, I’d say that there’s probably all sorts of things wrong with people — some of them are crazy, others are brain-damaged… I imagine a lot of them are just plain ignorant.
But these are just guesses. There’s no way to know what the hell is wrong with people, so why ask the damned question? And more to the point, why demand an answer? We’re all allowed a few unanswerable questions now and then — ‘Why is the sky blue?‘, for instance. Or maybe, ‘Why is Jack such a raging asshole?‘. Or ‘Just who the hell do you think you are?‘
And that’s fine — I’m willing to give people a pass on those. Just so long as they don’t stand there, toe tapping, waiting for a damned answer. There are no answers! And if there were, then obviously I wouldn’t know them, would I? It’s just damned rude, if you ask me.
To me, the real crime is that this particular brand of bullshit shifts all the burden to reasonable people like me. See, I’m the one capable of having a normal, legitimate conversation, free of impossibly unknowable queries, and yet I’m the one who comes off looking like an asshole when I roll my eyes, or lash out, or savagely beat the questioner with a table lamp. Hey, I didn’t ask the rhetorical question — this shit isn’t my fault.
I think there should be a code word of some kind to get out of this situation. Whenever somebody asks you a question that you couldn’t possibly answer, and then pushes you for an answer, I think you ought to be able to say a single word that will let them, and everyone else around you, know what kind of asininery is going on. Something you wouldn’t accidentally use in other areas of conversation, like — I don’t know — how about ‘Asstweaker!’ Or maybe ‘Peeniepopper!’ Would you believe ‘Hamslapper’?
Okay, so the word itself needs some work. Still, the point is valid — there should be a word that is an answer, the answer, to all those questions that have no answers available. And it should be a word that makes everyone around immediately take notice, and stare all at once at whoever prompted the word to be screamed into the ether. That’s the only way these people will learn, folks. I’m just trying to make the world a better place is all. Who’s with me on this one?
Permalink | 3 CommentsWell, howdy, there, folks. It’s Friday once again, and that can only mean three things: we’re finally able to walk straight again after this week’s ‘Hump Day’, it’s only a few more hours before we can gather together and drink beer ’til we barf, and — best of all! — it’s time again for Punchline Fever!
For you new fish around here, let’s go over the ground rules:
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.
Catch all that? All right, then — let’s cut the yakkin’ and get down to the Fever!
Punchline Fever #14:
‘The ‘Noah’s Ark reenactment’ started out well enough, but it went downhill quickly. The animals made it onto the boat okay, but it all went gruesomely wrong when ______________________________‘
Well, that’s the scoop for this week. Now get in there and make with the yuks. Happy fevery Friday, folks!
Permalink | 7 Comments
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