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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
All right. I think we’re almost there with this whole ‘blog moving’ bag o’ crap. It hasn’t been easy, and it’s taken a tubload of fricking time, but I can see the end, finally.
Our little bloggy friend has survived two server moves in the last two weeks, plus a migration to Movable Type. All the old archives, and then the old comments, were ported over. Extras, like the 101 Things Posts, Punchline Fever!, and Quantum Terminology were ported from my local server. And finally, painfully, eye-crossingly, all the internal links to other posts were changed to point to the new versions. Whew!
Now, all I’ve got to do is recover a few comments (and get them working again) on the ‘extras’ pages, and pick up a couple of MT tricks to make maintenance easier. Then — finally, then — I can work on getting some new features built around here. In the meantime, I’ll try to keep everything held together with the rubber bands and chewing gum I’m using now.
(And yeah, I realize that nobody really gives a damn. But I did all this crap, dammit, and somebody’s gonna hear about it. You just happened to be closest. Tough luck, dude.)
Okay, on to something more interesting.
(And how hard could that be? A seminar on the intricacies of federal tax law would be more interesting than that last shit. Hey, at least I said, ‘bag o’ crap‘; you don’t hear that kind of thing from the IRS.)
So, I suppose I should have a go at talking about the NCAA basketball tournament. Many of you will already know that the ‘March Madness’ tourney brackets were announced this evening. Some smaller percentage of you will actually give a rat’s ass. For me, of course, it’s very exciting, seeing as how I’m a big basketball fan, and my favorite team is in the tournament.
(Which means that I do give a rat’s ass, I guess. Assuming I had a rat’s ass in the first place. Or knew where to get one — do they sell those at pet stores, maybe? Everybody’s always running around yakking about rat’s asses, but frankly, I don’t know where the damned things come from. Maybe you’re supposed to get the whole rat, and lop the ass off yourself; I don’t know. Seems like a lot of frigging work.)
Anyway, my Syracuse Orangemen are a number five seed this year. For those of you unfamiliar with how this whole hoops hoohah works, the teams are seeded one through sixteen, times four brackets. One seeds are at the top, and play the scrubby sixteen seeds at the bottom of the barrel. So a number five seed is pretty good, and gives the Orange a good chance to win a couple of games before bowing out altogether.
Of course, for those of you unfamiliar with the Orangemen, all that seeding crap goes out the window. Last year, they were a number three seed and won the whole damned thing. A few years ago, they were a two seed and lost in the first round. That’s why it’s called March Maaaaadness, you see. It’s maddening.
In any event, the next couple of weekends are going to be chock-full of basketball around my house. And beer, of course. Basketball and beer. The big tourney calls for some brewskis, right? And after that, it’ll be time for baseball. And, um, well, beer, too. You can’t sit in the stands at the old ball game without a nice cold beer. And then there’ll be football. Gotta have beer for football, what with the cold and the sports and the watching and all. And hockey — well, you get the idea.
But for now, it’s basketball. Sometime in the next couple of days, I’ll download a bracket and pick the games; then I’ll donate it and ten bucks or so to whoever’s running the stupid office pool this year. I’m not gonna win or anything; it’s just a hopeless, meaningless ritual that I have to go through. Like making the bed in the morning, or showering, or paying taxes. Ridiculous, when you think about it, isn’t it?
All right, that’s enough for now, I think. I’d better go have a look at that bracket now. I’ve got a lot of coins to flip to get that puppy filled out. Go, Orangemen!
Permalink | 2 CommentsAhhhh. That’s better.
Nine hours of sleep, two meals, and a couple of hours of basketball. Weekend, where has thy sweet sting been, bitch? Now this is the life.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to chit-chat right now. We’re off in a few minutes to hang out with some friends — there’ll be some laughs, and some drinks, and maybe some more hoops. Good times, good times.
But I don’t want you folks to feel neglected or anything, so I thought I’d pop in for a ‘quickie’. (Yeah, I’d elaborate on that further, but I think I already covered that ground a couple of posts ago, so I’ll let it slide. Wouldn’t want to recycle bad jokes quite so quickly, you understand.)
Anyway, I wish I could regale you with tales of conquest and weekend debauchery. But honestly, these days I’m just a boring old fart with a house payment. Sometimes life just isn’t as titillating as it once was. It’s good; don’t get me wrong. It’s more stable. Certainly, it’s nice to not have quite as many restraining orders to keep track of. But the downside is that the ‘highlight’ of my weekend so far has been a trip to Staples with the wife to buy a desk chair.
And frankly, that wouldn’t have been quite so interesting, had I not done my part to spice it up. Hey, it’s the least I can do. We all need a little excitement in our lives, right?
So, I spent the first twenty minutes at the store playing with one of the employees. It went something like this:
Him: Hi! Welcome to Staples. Anything I can help you with?
Me: Well, yeah, as a matter of fact you can. Have you got file folders?
Him: Sure! They’re right over here in aisle —
Me: *ahem* I, uh, didn’t ask you where they were. I just asked whether you have them.
Him: Oh. Um… well, yes. We have file folders.
Me: Come on, now — say it right! Have you got file folders?
Him: *sigh* Yeah. Yeah… we’ve got that.
Me: Very good. Now. How about desk lamps. Have you got desk lamps?
Him: Yeah. We’ve got that.
Me: Paper clips. Any paper clips around here?
Him: Paper clips? Yeah. *heavy sigh* We’ve got that. Look, can I go now? I’ve got other customers to help.
Me: Dude, we’re just getting started. I’ve got lots of questions about what kinds of writing utensils you have, for instance. Let’s start with the ballpoint pens…
Eventually, that routine got old. But I think I managed to break his spirit first, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. From there, we moved on to a few rounds of chair-testing. First with the pants on — you know, just to weed out the pretenders. And then we picked out a few that we liked, stripped down to our skivvies, and gave ’em a whirl. And a shimmy, and scootch, and a cheek-wiggle or two. I think my wife may have even farted on one; I can’t be certain, and she’s not talking, but I swear that chair was unseasonably warm when I got to it. Downright steamy, even.
I think it’s important to test-drive your new furniture in real-life situations, though. So we went that extra mile, and spent the extra time in our undies, making sure we made the right decision. The other customers weren’t too happy — I probably should have remebmered to change out of the boxers with the hole in the ass — but in the end (so to speak), we found a chair we liked and brought it home.
So there you have it — that’s the extent of the excitement around here today. I put the chair together, and we’ve taken turns sitting and spinning on it in the office. Breaking it in, and all that. It was fun until I hopped in it one time, and found it to be… well, warm and swampy again, frankly. I don’t know what that girl’s been eating lately, but I can see that I’m gonna have to keep her out of my chair for a while. Either that, or let her read this — she’ll kill me for it, and then I won’t have to worry about sitting down ever again.
Either way, now it’s time for me to be off. Catch you crazies on the flip side. Aloha!
Permalink | 4 CommentsWell, that went… um, less well than before.
Certainly, much thanks and sloppy love to the folks who came by to try their hand at this week’s Punchline Fever. Unfortunately, it was less than a gaggle this week. More like a smattering. A sweet, hilarious, much appreciated smattering, but a smattering nonetheless. Well, we’ll give it another shot next week. Maybe next time, I’ll mention boobies or something. I don’t know.
Anyway, I am giganta-glad to have this week over with. You ever have one of those weeks where you stumble home on Friday night, bleary-eyed and exhausted, dragging your poopered ass-cheeks behing you?
(That’s ‘poopered’, by the way, not ‘poopy’. You got hygeine problems ’round back, that’s your own problem. Maybe move to the two-ply stuff. It costs a little more, but I think you’re worth it.)
In any case, I had one of those weeks this week, and I’m wiped out. (And just for the record, ‘wiped up’ as well. Ain’t no problem in my underpants.) And yet, I got next to nothing accomplished. I went to work every day, and I sat in my little meetings, and I typed on my little keyboard, and I wrote my little notes on my little sticky pieces of paper… but this week, it just didn’t seem to matter. I got the same shit on my ‘In’ list, and no shit on my ‘Out’ list, and there’s a whole fricking week of my life that I’m never gonna have back.
Okay, so it wasn’t quite that bad. There were a couple of pretty tasty lunches in there somewhere, and I zinged a few people at work. You know, when they needed it. Ooh, plus, I got to interview somebody, which is always a good time.
Seriously, interviews are the only time in life when you get to ask any sort of stupid, assheaded, blenderbrained question you want, and nobody can call you on it. We even do tag-team interviews, where two or more of us team up on a poor ‘candidate’ at one time. And I can still ask whatever the fuck I want, with total impugnity. I am King God during interviews — all will bow before my cryptic line of questioning!
Think about it. Is the fool in the suit looking for a job gonna give me a funny look? No. No way. He or she’s just worried about kissing ass, looking good, and making sure there’s no spinach between their teeth. I’ve been in that seat; if you get asked about how your grandma’s hairy nipples made you feel, then dammit, you figure it out, right there on the spot. You spin yourself a furry nana boobie tale, and hope it makes you sound smart. Anything’s fair game; it’s an interview.
And whoever else is in there with me grilling the person can’t say anything, either. Maybe I’m one of those people who ‘thinks outside the box’. Who’s to say that finding out how a prospective employee feels about pants made from stitched-together cinnamon buns isn’t valuable? I’m sure it says something about teamwork, or initiative, or sheer, raving insanity. Something important, anyway. It’s all about the lateral thinking.
So that was fun, at least. But the rest of the week was just one bewildering clusterfuck after another. I’m pretty sure there was a guy standing outside my office, giving out numbers to people waiting in line to walk in and yell, ‘Booga! Booga! Booga!‘ at me. (Ooh, hey, come to think of it, I should try that. We’re interviewing another couple of people next week.)
But now it’s all over. For the next forty-eight magial hours, there is no work. There’s only sleep, and beer, and Selection Sunday for my Syracuse hoops squad. Yeah, yeah, plus sixty-odd other teams, but really, they’re not important. It’s all about the Orangemen. And the lateral thinking. Orangemen, and lateral thinking. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
All right, I see that my exhaustion is catching up to me. I’m starting to run this entry like an interview. And around here, I don’t hold quite the same sway as in the little room where I can dangle the prospect of gainful employment over someone’s head. So I’d better wrap this up before the peanut gallery pipes up and gives me a hard time. That’s the last thing I need this weekend. I’m hitting the sack. Maybe I’ll make more sense tomorrow.
Hey, shut up! I can dream, dammit!
Permalink | 3 CommentsHey, kids and kidlets — time once again for another round of Punchline Fever! Let’s get right to bidness. First, the 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.
And that’s how the game works, folks. Here’s your challenge for the week:
Punchline Fever #4:
‘Certainly, Martha Stewart’s gonna have the classiest cell in prison, with designer sheets on the cots, and a crocheted splash guard for the toilet-hole. But I wonder whether she’ll go so far as to ___________________________.‘
There you go — zing away, nice people!
(Quick note: I’m still working on getting the comments here to show up on the main ‘Punchline Fever!’ page, so please bear with me on this week’s (and last week’s) entries in that regard.
But feel free to leave a punchline here for this week, or on last week’s entry directly, or on the main ‘Fever!’ page for weeks one and two.
I’ll have all of this sorted out soon; sorry for sending you around all willy-nilly to get in your punchlines. That’s outrageous! Happy Friday!)
Permalink | 8 CommentsHey, all. Nothing funny to see here tonight; I’m just taking care of some bidness. You want funny (or my idea of same, anyway), you can head back to my last post, or wait for tomorrow’s Punchline Fever! entry. This one is strictly for props, kudos, and howdy-dos.
(No, not that kind of ‘howdy-dos’, ya pervert. Put that egg beater away and stop drooling.
Jeez, there’s one in every crowd.)
Anyway, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get to it:
First up, I’d like to (belatedly) throw my two cents down for the latest edition of Blog It Forward, as decreed by the venerable Buzz. (And when Buzz talks, there will be listening!)
So, I’ve got two sites to share with you, both old favorites of mine. The first is Nef’s Blog, penned ably by our good man nef.
(Or ‘nefarious’, for long, if that’s the sort of thing I’m allowed to say in polite company. You never know who’s going to get upset over ‘for long‘.)
Anyway, nef writes himself a nifty little weblog, and has — more than once — made me giggle, snort, and (more likely) curse the day he was ever born because he’s turned me on to some infernal damned online game that I simply can’t stop playing until I finish. Or the sun comes up, whichever’s first. Nefarious, indeed. Be sure to check him out.
Secondly, I fear that I’ve been remiss in not calling out my compatriot from across the continents, the cheeky devil down under, a veritable bacchinalian Australian (yeah, look, even I don’t know what that means…), the one, the only, the incomparable Monkey. She’s got herself a cool new design of late (though we’re still begging her to put her little monkey piccy back on it), and remains the greatest invention since the two-ply bathroom tissue. If you’re not reading Monkey, well then, you’re simply not reading. Go see Miss Monkey, and tell her I said ‘G’day.’
(Yeah. That oughta rile her up. Hee!)
Okay. Next order of business. This week’s Blogger Idol picks. Early? Yes. Better now than later? Probably. Gonna happen, no matter what? Absolutely. So let’s do this funky thang:
Finally, for all who are interested, I’ve (finally) managed to post clips and info from my last two standup shows. You can get at ’em from the sidebar links, or you can simply click here and here. Come on! All the cool kids are doin’ it.
And that’s it — I’m off to bed. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Punchline Fever! Until then, sleep well, stay clean, and don’t forget to spay or neuter your pets. Or something. Good night!
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