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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
If I’ve learned one thing during seven-plus years of marriage, it’s that honesty is very important. You should always tell the truth to your husband or wife, no matter the situation or circumstances.
Still… there’s nothing that says you can’t take a moment first to decide exactly what the truth is. Everything’s relative, after all.
This is where my freshman philosophy class comes in so handy.
(Thank you, otherwise-worthless liberal arts education!)
You see, there have been some very smart people in the world who have believed — and have taken the time and effort to confirm, logically — that there is an awful lot of uncertainty in the world. And it’s this uncertainty that allows us spouses (oh, who am I kidding — men; husbands and boyfriends and fiancees) to both tell the ‘truth’ and manage to avoid being beaten about the head and shoulders with a purse or high-heeled shoe.
(Or worse, those big-assed sandally clog things — what the hell are those called? ‘Lady Birkenstocks’? ‘Birkenchicks’? Whatever. Anyway, those damned things are heavy!)
Observe how this truth-telling thing works, gentlemen. It may save you a lot of grief. Remember, for a statement to be ‘true’, all we have to do is convince ourselves that it’s true — and let’s face it: we’re not the sharpest cheddars on the cheese tree, if you know what I mean.
(And if you do, please tell me — I don’t know where the hell that came from. Yeeks.)
Anyway, here’s how I use the ‘truth’ to get by in my marraige. Hopefully, it’ll give you some ideas on how to improve your lives, too. Let’s have a look, shall we?
Example 1: Did ‘You’ Do It?
Let’s say you get home one evening, before your lady friend, and you find a six-pack of beer chilling in the fridge. And let’s further say that you’ve had a hard day, and you’re a bit parched, so you decide to have one. And then another. And another, until before you know it — suds gone. The beer has disappeared. Fine.
Now, your honey gets home, and — because she’s cool like that — she decides she’s in the mood for a brewski, too. So she opens the fridge, and finds… nothing. But she knows there was just beer in there this morning. So, her next move will be to come find you, whereever you’re sitting (or, by this point, passed out), and she’ll say, with hands on hips:
‘Hey, who drank all that beer?‘
‘Who drank that beer’? Who, indeed? Well, don’t answer right away, fellas — you really need to study this question in depth before you offer a response.
First, the question’s not really specific about which beer ‘that‘ beer is. Let’s be fair — she’s probably got a lot of things going on. She could be talking about any beer. You can’t be certain that you drank that beer, right? Even if she asks about ‘that beer in the fridge‘ — what’s the fridge, anyway? I know a lot of fridges, frankly, and ‘that‘ beer could be in any of ’em. Who’s to say, really?
Furthermore, you have to ask yourself — quickly, before she gets suspicious about what’s going on that little mind of yours — did you really drink the beer? Assuming you concede the point that the beer in question is ‘that‘ beer — and you don’t concede that, men; this is purely hypothetical at this point — but assuming that’s the right beer, how can you really know you drank it?
Let’s borrow a bit of information from philosophy (and, more recently, Hollywood) to help us out here. There’s an old thought experiment that asks this question: can we really, truly be certain that we’re living the life we think we’re living? Meaning, is it really ‘me’ that looks like ‘me’, and goes to ‘my’ job, and drives ‘my’ car, and drank ‘that’ beer? Isn’t it at least possible that we’re all just disembodied brains in vats somewhere, being electrically stimulated in a billion different ways a second to believe that ‘we’ are who ‘we’ think ‘we’ are? Is there any way you could possibly disprove that, without a shadow of a doubt?
Put another, perhaps more familiar, way — how can we know we’re not in the ‘Matrix’, or something like it? All of us living ‘our’ lives, when what we’re actually doing is lying in a vat somewhere, ‘dreaming’ our experiences into existence? Really, can you guarantee that’s not happening? ‘Cause I sure can’t.
Which makes it not only sly, but absolutely true for me to reply to the question above by saying:
‘Well, gosh, hon… I don’t know who drank that beer you’re talking about. Really, it’s a complete mystery.‘
I think you can see how powerful this technique can be, folks. To thine own self be true… but only once thine own self is convinced of whatever ridiculous thing that you want your self to believe. Pretty cool, huh? Let’s do another one.
Example 2: Is It ‘Really’ Going to Happen?
This is an illustration of what service providers call ‘managing expectations’. Let’s say that you’ve promised to do some particularly heinous, distasteful thing. Maybe you’ve agreed to clean the gutters on your house, or chaffeur your sweetie on a shopping binge, or do that weird, complicated thing she likes in bed, with the tongue and the toes, and that little gadget that looks sort of like a laser pointer with antlers. You know, the one you almost sprained your elbow doing last time. Yeah, that one.
So, of course, when you first tell your one and only that you’re on board for whatever nightmarish torture you’ve chosen, she’s excited. Giddy, even. But she’s a little wary, too — you don’t usually go in for shit like this. You didn’t put up nearly enough of a fight, and she’s not sure you’re going to follow through. You, of course, want the hell out of whatever it is, with a blazing hot passion. But you can’t go back on your word. So you’re stuck, right?
Well… not necessarily. This is where our old friend ‘uncertainty‘ rides in on the white horse to rescue us again. Let’s say it’s been a couple of days since you signed your soul away to do this… this thing, whatever hellish task it is. Now your lady’s checking up on you, to see whether you’ve gotten cold feet, and are going to try to wriggle your way out of it. (Which, of course, you are.) So she asks, innocently enough:
‘So, sweetie… you’re still going to do that <insert ghoulish nastiness here> this weekend… right?‘
Now, you can’t pretend you didn’t agree to do it, whatever it is. She heard you, and it was very clear, and she’s probably got it on frigging tape, depending on how shriekingly awful a thing it’s gonna be. So you’ve got no way out there.
But… she’s not asking whether you agreed to do it. She wants to know whether you can say — with full certainty — that you’re going to do it this weekend. Well… babe, that’s a whole other story, now, isn’t it?
Seriously, consider how much you know about what the weekend’s going to hold. I daresay it’s not much at all. Next to nothing, really. You don’t know what the weather’s going to be, certainly — no one does, including those ‘Doppler Douchebags’ who try to tell you otherwise. So if the thing in question is weather-affected, all bets are way off. That’s an easy one.
But if you really take a close look at it, you don’t know much else about the weekend, either. Let’s say it’s the trip to the mall you’ve signed up for. Certainly, a little rain’s not going to slow you down.
(Though let’s be fair — I bet bowling ball-sized hailstones, or a plague of frogs, would do the trick. But let’s forget the Biblical shit for now. You can use that in a pinch, but we’ve got better ways out of this mess.)
Back to your level of confidence about what the weekend is going to bring. Can you know that you’re going to do the crappy thing you said you’d do? Well, of coursenot. Who’s to say when your legs will spontaneously fall off, or a swarm of rabid bees will descend on your town, or the sun will be swallowed up by a rogue black hole? There’s no way you could predict when any of those things would — or more importantly, wouldn’t — happen. So you’re perfectly in the clear when you tell your skeptical sweetie:
‘You know, I honestly have no idea whether I’ll get around to doing that or not.‘
Again, not a lie. And, if you’re lucky, just frustrating and vague enough to get you out of it altogether. After hearing that three or four times, your wife/girlfriend/significant chickie will get the hint, and realize that you’re probably not going to do the thing, after all. Expectation managed, and without resorting to non-truths. Congratulations. See how easy this is?
And I could go on and on, gents, but I think you probably get the idea by now. You don’t need me to show you how to get out of going to the opera (‘Can we really, exactly define what ‘the opera’ is? Nah.‘), or cleaning up your room (‘Do I honestly own the room? Can it really ever be completely clean?‘), or wiggling out of getting ‘caught’ sniffing your wife’s dirty underwear (‘Hey, I didn’t see you buy the things, honey — I don’t know that they’re ‘your undies’, now, do I?‘).
Um, yeah… okay, that last one hit a little close to home, didn’t it? I think I may have given away just a bit too much information about how I spend my Sunday afternoons.
(Hey, the time between football games can be very challenging to fill. Just be glad I have a hobby, would you?)
So I think I’ll consider this a job completed, and sign off for the night. I hope you folks have found something you can use in all of this. And when in doubt, men, just remember the one thing that’s always true — when in doubt, we really know nothing for sure. And that’s pretty damned hard to argue with, isn’t it, ladies?
Permalink | 3 CommentsMy brain is revolting.
I don’t mean that my brain is disgusting, mind you. I mean that it’s defying me and my attempts to use it.
(On the other hand, it is pretty revolting, too. All gray and squishy and full of words like ‘shit-cicle’ and ‘buttsnuggles’. Repulsive, really.)
Anyway, I can’t really blame my brain for checking out — not this time. It’s been through rather a lot in the last few hours. Here, I’ll show you. C’mon — it won’t hurt. And there won’t be any ‘buttsnuggles’ involved. I promise.
About 10:00pm last night:
I finally broke the bad news to brain that we are, in fact, obligated to travel for Christmas this year. Again.
This always throws brain into a funk — he holds out hope until the last possible moment that a blizzard will hit, or airline workers will go on strike, or someone will hit us over the head really hard, and we’ll get to stay at home and get some damned rest, for once. But it never happens. There’s no eleventh hour pardon, and we always end up doing the ‘dead man walkin‘ routine up a ramp and onto a plane.
(Much to the wife’s chagrin and embarrassment, of course. Hey, it might ruin Christmas for her, but I’m not gonna be the only miserable butthead all week. If I go down, she’s goin’ with me.)
(And yes, by the way, she also gets embarrassed when I walk around saying things like, ‘If I go down, she’s goin’ with me‘ out of context. The torture never ends, folks; it’s circles within circles within circles. Poor girl.)
Anyway, at ten last night, I took the hard line with brain, and finally made him get started on packing for the flight this morning. He sulked a little, and I think he cried, just a bit, but he finally got to work.
And then, he got me back. (Brain was always a vindictive little bitch.) He packed, all right — he packed my oldest, flimsiest boxers, and the socks with the holes and stains, and ratty T-shirts, and those jeans with holes where no holes should rightfully be. I had to go behind him and put all that crap away, and repack with more reasonable attire. And he sabotaged that, too! He managed to convince me that several pairs of my wife’s panties were really mine, and that her thongs would probably fit me, if I just used enough Vaseline. So now I’ve got all her underwear in my suitcase, instead of mine.
That’s the trouble with fighting with your own brain — he can tell you anything, and you have to believe it; he’s in charge of that, too, you know. I think I managed to get a pair or two of my own undies in there, but in a couple of days, I’m gonna have some tough decisions to make. Tough, painful decisions, I’m afraid. ‘Commando’ is a very real — and very drafty — possibility. Damned brain, anyway.
12:08am this morning:
Just after midnight, I tucked brain in for the night. Or rather, for the morning, and precious little of that. You see, our flight left this morning at six thirty in the morning. Yes, that’s a six before that ‘thirty’ right there. And our house is a half-hour cab ride or better from the airport, so the ‘wake-up poke’ from the wife came at a none-too-bright but tragically early four am.
(And lest you think there’s any silver lining to this story, and that ‘wake-up poke’ was that sort of poke… well, there isn’t, and it wasn’t. There’s no silver lining, people. The clouds are black, the sky is black, it’s raining shit, and the ground is on fire. There’s nothing good about it.
And anyway, even if it had been ‘that’ sort of ‘poke’, I don’t know that I would’ve been able to hold up my end of the bargain. Or my, um, ‘end’ at all, frankly. I was barely conscious at the time. I might’ve drooled as much as I usually do during sex, but it would’ve been more a matter of failing motor functions than snuggly passion. If any blood had flowed down there during those first few critical minutes, I think I’d have passed out completely. So it’s probably better this way.)
4:08am:
So, like a trooper — and after the sixth or seventh non-sexual finger-poke — I dragged my saggy brain and droopy ass out of bed and into the shower. I was in there for ten minutes or so — I can’t tell you what was washed, if anything, really. There was certainly water involved, and at one point, I had a bar of soap up my nose, but whether anything was actually cleaner after the experience, I really can’t say. Brain’s either blocked it out, or wasn’t paying any attention in the first place. Fat lot of help he is.
But I made it out of the shower, and combed my teeth, rubbed toothpaste in my hair, popped my contacts into my ears, and jabbed Q-tips in my eyes… hey! Goddammit, my brain was screwing with me again! Cut it the fuck out, dude!
(Hmmm… that does explain a few things, too. Besides the blurry, painful vision and that weird taste in my mouth, I’d been wondering why pigeons kept circling around my head every time I stepped outside. At least my follicles will be minty fresh all day. Meh.)
6:10am:
We boarded the flight out of Boston a few minutes before departure time. Nothing significantly shitty happened here; I just wanted to pound it home that we took a six fucking thirty flight. Goddamned ridiculous.
About 10:30am:
We arrived at our ‘destination’ (more on that later) six and a half hours after our ordeal began, thanks to a connecting flight and a short layover in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, in getting to our final stop, we managed to goober up the ratio of people to bags that we’d hoped to preserve. When we left, we had two people, and two checked bags. When we got there, and wandered around baggage claim, we found that we still had both people, but we were down a bag. Apparently, the other one had stopped to take a piss, or get hammered in the airport bar, and missed our flight. Lousy bastard bag.
So, we filed a claim for our lost luggage, rented a car, and drove to my wife’s mother’s house, not far from the airport. The plan had been to pick up a couple of things there, hop back in the Rent-A-Lemon, and drive to my parents’ place, about three hours away. Had all gone well, we’d have been there in time for a late lunch. Or an early martini binge, preferably. Either way, well before dark.
But, alas, all did not go well. Thanks to the missing bag, we were obligated to stick around for another couple of hours, until the next flight from Pittsburgh made it in, hopefully bringing with it our bag, and with that, our toothbrushes, blue jeans, and undies.
(Well, just her undies, I suppose, since it seems we’ll be sharing them this week. But you know what I mean.)
12:35pm:
We made it back to the airport for a not-so-quick, not-particularly-good, but exquisitely expensive lunch. Eighteen bucks for a burger, a chicken sammich, and two sodas? What the hell? Were all airports imported from midtown Manhattan, or what? I know you’ve got a ‘captive audience’, but jesus, people, settle down. There’s more ‘gouging‘ going on around those places than the ‘Poke in the Eye’ booth at the county fair.
(Yeah, that’s one of those times where I thought there’d be something good at the end of that idea… and there just wasn’t. I guess I just don’t know where the actual, literal gouging goes on in the world. A flu shot festival? At Pokey McStabby’s Knife Shoppe? A naked fencing tournament? I dunno… all of these have a very Simpsons feel to them.
Hey, that might be the best one of all — ‘more gouging than on a date with O.J.‘. Oh, sure, that’s years old, and I really meant the cartoon Simpsons when I said that a minute ago, but still — it works. Better than a ‘Poke in the Eye‘ booth, anyway. I told you my brain was against me today.)
Anyway, the next Pittsburgh flight finally came in at about one thirty, and we sat and watched the ‘Parade of Other People’s Crappy Bags‘ float past, waiting patiently for our own suitcase to emerge. A dozen bags, then two — many of them collected by their owners.
(As far as we know, anyway. Owners, strangers with weird ‘other people’s underwear’ fetishes; either way. It’s really none of my business.)
A couple of minutes later, the conveyor shut off.
Five minutes later, it started up again, with more bags from the ‘burgh. Ours was not there. The conveyor ground to a halt. Again, leaving us still bagless.
(Hey, hey, hey… dude. I’m talking about luggage here. Don’t get personal with the ‘bagless’ comments, all right? Keep it clean, skippy.)
We were just about to walk up to the counter and admit defeat, when a new crowd of people shuffled over to the baggage claim. From where, we didn’t know — Toledo, maybe, or Ithaca, New York. One of the Portlands, perhaps. It didn’t matter. It was a new hope, however slim, so we parked ass back in our chairs and waited for the conveyor carousel to start again. Finally, it did, and the third time was a charm — among the dinged-up Samsonites and weathered duffel bags, there was our baby. We would brush our teeth tonight, and wear clean underwear tomorrow! Huzzah!
2:12pm:
Finally, mercifully, we made it out of the airport, back to our rental car, and to the last leg of our trip — a three-hour drive to my parents’ place. I’m writing all of this from the car, while my beautiful, spectacular, equally-exhausted wife gets us where we’re going. I’m taking short breaks in between my dual jobs of rotating her favorite CDs into the stereo and keeping her awake to bring you this account of life on the road.
(And in the air, and in a dank baggage claim, and a stinky rental car… why does it smell like cheese? I mean, B.O. I could understand. Sweat, urine, heavyset tourist farts — all of these would be explainable, if pretty goddamned revolting. But cheese?! I don’t even wanna know. Man, the sick shit some people do in their rental cars…)
Anyway, we’ll get where we’re going by five pm or so, and I think we’ll get the night more or less off, having dinner ‘in’ with the ‘rents. Then we’ll get some sleep — I’m thinking about fourteen hours ought to just about do it — and get up to continue our whirlwind tour. I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow. Or hopefully, I’ll think of something more interesting instead, and won’t have to put you through that. For the moment, with my brain on strike as it is, this is all I’ve got for you. Sorry, this is the best I can do with a civil war going on in my skull.
So, I’d better wrap up here for now. I’ll get you an update, or more snarkiness, or something tomorrow. Right now, I think my wife may be flagging a bit; she’s starting to leak drool onto the steering wheel. So I’ll put in another CD and chat her up for a while, to make sure we reach our destination safe and sound. Hope you’re having more fun — and getting more sleep — than we are. See you again soon.
Permalink | 4 CommentsWell, folks, today’s post is gonna be a little edgier than usual, I’m afraid. I’ve got some piddly little shit to complain about, and that’s just what I’m gonna do. I’ve got a whole handful of issues giving me grief right now, and I’m gonna tick ’em off on the fingers of one hand, one by one by snarly, snarky one.
So if you’re all about the sunshine and the singing and happy fricking little rainbows… well, you’re not gonna like this one much. Or maybe you will — maybe I can find a way to make my petty bitching entertaining. Hey, there’s only one way to find out, right? So settle in, and check out my ‘Five Fingers Worth of Fucking Foolishness That Are Fouling Up My Fucking Mood‘.
(Catchy title, no? I’m gonna see if I can get that on a T-shirt, I think. A, um, really wide T-shirt, or maybe a towel. A beach blanket? Whatever.)
Anyway, get out your umbrellas, people — it’s about to get pissy around here.
One — the Pissy Pinky Finger:
Well, this one’s short, if not at all sweet. I actually started this post, and only had four things to bitch about. That’s before I wrote half of it, and had Internet Explorer unexpectedly close down on me, thus dumping my (not-so-)precious words, and about two hours of time, right down the shitter.
And so, I say — fucking again — thank you, MicroSoft, for screwing me with one of your half-assed, bug-ridden, nausea-inducing products. If the (misguided) people at work didn’t use IE, I can guarantee you I wouldn’t even have the damned thing on this laptop. And I’d probably run Linux on it, too, you lousy freaking codetards.
Where do I want to go today?
To Bill Gates’ grotesquely ostentatious palatial fucking compound in Redmond, or wherever the hell that asshole lives, so I can break my damned foot off in his ass. That’s where I want to go today. And I’m so glad you asked. Weenies.
Two — the Riled-Up Ring Finger:
All day, I’ve been wearing a shirt around with ‘shoulder nipples’ on it. You know, those little humps you get on shirts when they’re on the hanger all wrong? Well, this one’s got it bad — they’re like friggin’ horns sitting beside my neck. I keep catching one of them in the corner of my vision, and thinking there’s some… thing sitting on my shoulder. What would be there, I don’t know — but I’ve got a lot of scary ideas. Like, an enormous bug, or some small rodent. Like a squirrel, maybe, or a rabid chihuahua. Or an enormous pile of bird shit. Honestly, I can think of oodles of things that these little bumpy puckers could be, and not one damned one of them is good.
(Heh. ‘Bumpy puckers’. That just sounds dirty, doesn’t it? Now there’s a phrase you could have a field day with in limericks. Hee.)
All right, where was I? Oh, these little damned shirt bubbles. Right.
So, of course, when I catch a glimpse of one of these bastards, I wig out, because I’m imagining that the scorpion, or gerbil, or fruit bat, or whatever the hell my brain has explained it as, is about to get me. So I try to get it first, and whoop and flail and smack myself in the ear, and nearly knock myself backwards trying to shoo these things off my shoulder.
(It’s all highly entertaining, as my wife can tell you. Who’s friggin’ side is she on, anyway? Mine, or the fruit bats’? Damn.)
Anyway, in my more lucid and less paranoid moments, I’ve tried to get rid of these shoulder nipple thingies. But it’s impossible — I’ve poked at ’em, and stretched ’em out, and rubbed them down… I even tried licking one, to see whether that would do anything useful.
(In other words, I did just about everything I do to those other nipples, when I get the chance. Which is less often than it used to be. I’m guessing the stretching has something to do with that, but I’m not sure. I’ll get back to you.)
So there they sit, unvanquished. Short of washing the damned shirt, I don’t see any way to ‘denipplify’ my shoulders. And while I always thought that having an extra pair of nipples would be a big bucket of ‘woo hoo!‘, these little nippers are doing me no good at all. Even the licking thing didn’t help me any. I just got a mouthful of shirt fuzz. Guh.
I’m thinking of just going into the bathroom, jumping into the shower — with the shirt on — and letting the water run over me until these puffy little puckery bastards fall into line. Sure, I’d be soaking wet — and you might see my nipples showing through the shirt — but at least I wouldn’t keep slapping myself in the damned head all the time. Well, no more than usual, anyway. If you’ve been reading this shit for any length of time, then you probably know that there’s an awful lot of head-slapping going on around here, even on a ‘normal’ day. I don’t need any friggin’ more. Bitches.
Three — the Mad-As-Hell Middle Finger:
One of my favorite ways to pointlessly waste enormous amounts of time with no real prospect of any significant reward pastimes is playing fantasy sports.
(For those of you who’ve been shackled to a radiator in a basement for the last few years, fantasy sports allows people like me with no athletic skill to live vicariously through professional athletes by drafting a team of baseballers, or footballers, or basketballers — and, more recently, golfballers, um… hockeyballers, and, er… racecardriverballers? — and tracking their progress throughout the season. Then we get together with other fat, old, jealous fools trying to recapture their lost youth sports fans in a league, and pretend that we know more than the other people involved. That’s fantasy sports in a nutshell.
And by the way — what the hell were you doing shackled to a radiator, anyway? Unless you live in ‘Neverland’, that shit’s just weird, man. Messed up.)
Anyway, I have devoted copious numbers of hours to fantasy sports. I’ve crunched numbers, projected performances, invented constants, and charted trends. I’ve built spreadsheets and databases and programs all dedicated to one single purpose: get the stats, analyze the stats, and spit out the names of the people who are going to kick ass next year, or week, or game, or whatever. Many Charlie-hours — we’re well into the Charlie-months territory here — have been spent deciding just exactly how to craft and manage and hone my fantasy teams.
And you know what?
I suck.
Okay, that’s not completely fair. I can hold my own in baseball and basketball — I’ve even won a couple of league championships.
(Yeah, and that and a creased-up dollar bill will get a stripper to shake her cootchie in my face.
How was that one? I thought I’d try that one out. Any good? No? Eh.)
Anyway, I’m okay in those sports — I win some, I lose some, and I like to think that the former is due to my diligence and superior analytical skills, while the former occurs only because of unexpected injuries, not having access to the information I want, or dirty, stinking cheating by other players. That’s what I like to think.
But now my world has been rocked. My upsides are down; my turvys are topsy. You see, I am absolutely lousy at fantasy football. I finish in one of two places — either dead fricking last, or in the topmost spot that doesn’t qualify for the playoffs. That’s it — in six years, that’s where I’ve been, and frankly, I can’t say which is worse. Both of them suck large, hairy, pimply ass-cheeks. And none of my analysis has ever been able to change that.
Until this year. This year, I’ve been distracted by this whole blogging thing. (Hey, you’ve gotta have priorities, right?) So this year, I signed up for a team, and did nothing. Nada. Squat. Bupkis. I even missed my draft — the software auto-drafted a couple of decent players, and some real stinkers, based on the default player rankings. I didn’t even change those defaults — I mean, I did nothing, people. No planning, no analysis, and no thinking whatsoever.
But I didn’t want the team to go completely to waste, so here’s what I did do — every Wednesday, when ESPN posts their ‘expert analysis’ of who’s gonna do well that week, I followed it. To the letter. If that meant picking up a new player, or dropping guys off the team, then that’s what I did. I mindlessly followed the advice, no matter how asshatted it seemed. I followed their hunches, and theories, and plain old guesses. A few of them worked out. A lot of them didn’t.
But you know what, dammit? I won. I won, and won, and kept on winning, not only making the playoffs, but winning the first round game! My ’empty-headed drone’ routine, where I said ‘yes, sir!‘ to each and every one of the pigskin prognosticators’ suggestions, got me where hard work and diligence and creative analysis couldn’t. Or didn’t, at least. And won’t ever again — how the hell could I go back to doing all that work now?
So I’m left with two stupid options — continue to play, and put zero thought into it (because you just know that if I ever ventured away from a pick, that’s when the guy would score fourteen touchdowns in one stupid fucking game), or just quit altogether. Either way, I’m admitting the one thing that no fantasy player ever wants to say: the ‘experts’ are smarter than I am.
Ugh! That hurt to even write it. The whole point of fantasy sports is to prove that you know more — more than the experts, more than the other people in your league, more than everybody. And now I know that I don’t. It’s a sad, sad day, indeed. I don’t even know me any more, man.
Four — the Irate Index Finger:
Okay, I really wasn’t gonna do this. Honestly, I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to be poopy about my blog review from the Weblog Review — especially after they were nice enough to send me an Amazon gift certificate for being a contest winner! — but you know… I just can’t help it. It’s been one of those kinds of days. Bear with me — it’ll all be over soon.
So, about the review. I have to admit that I’m not as upset about it as Jeff apparently was. But I do appreciate him going to bat for me — on his own site — to say that he thought I deserved a higher rating. (And I appreciate the Procrastinatrix, too, for a similar comment on Jeff’s post.) It’s touching — it really is. I had no idea that people would care so much! You guys kick ass!
But my beef isn’t really about the score, per se. Everybody’s got their own tastes — hell, some people even listen to country music, or watch soap operas. Some kooks wear lederhosen, for Chrissakes! When it’s not Oktoberfest! What’s up with that?
So it obviously takes all kinds. Some people would think my site’s a ‘one’.
(And many do, based on the ‘Reader’s Ratings’ listed for this blog on the Weblog Review site.)
I’ve got no problem with that. My issue is this — based on what I read in the review, I don’t feel like the reviewer really spent much time here. I feel like I got a bit of a ‘drive-by rating’, rather than the in-depth, probing assessment I was hoping for.
(Hey, I’m always in the mood for some ‘in-depth probing’. What can I say? I’m romantic and shit that way.)
Anyway, based on the review, I’m not sure what to think. The reviewer said a lot of nice things, and I do appreciate that. On the other hand, there were no negative comments, and while I sort of appreciate that, too, it makes me wonder what the rating was based on. A little constructive criticism would have been nice.
At the same time, the reviewer really didn’t say a lot, if you really read the review. I try to do things a little differently around here than most other blogs, and I’m not sure the reviewer really dug in far enough to notice. (Hey, if some goober searching for ‘Stripperella naked‘ doesn’t ‘dig in’ very far, that’s one thing. I suppose I was just hoping for a little more from a dedicated reviewer.) Good or bad, it would have been nice to see that the links to my standup sets, and my one hundred posts rather than things, and the LinkFilter extras, didn’t go completely unnoticed. I’m kinda proud of some of that stuff.
(And some… uh, less so. Still!)
So I’d have appreciated a ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ or something about those things. Something — ‘love it!‘, ‘hate it!‘, ‘put on some damned pants!‘ — just, you know… something.
So I think I’ll wait a couple of months, and then ask for another review. Hey, maybe I’ll even pay for a review next time — those get done faster, and maybe that’ll get me more than one person’s perspective. That’s all I want, folks — the more opinions, the better. And don’t forget — all of you guys are reviewers, too, and the most important ones, as far as I’m concerned. If there’s something you want to see — you know, short of naked piccys of me, or my wife, or me and my wife — lemme know. I’ll do what I can to deliver — help me help you. I’m just here for you, you know.
(Oh, and if you want nude snaps of the dog, I think I can help you there. We’ve got whole photo albums of those, and they’re very tastefully done. Well, most of them. The set with the edible undies did get a little risque… and come to think of it, the ‘money shot’ closeups in the ‘black teddy’ series were a bit graphic. But still — there are plenty of others. We can work something out.)
Five — the Thavagely Thour Thumb:
Well… you know, I had this big bitchy rant all ready to end this thing, all about what a pain in the ass our Christmas is every year, with the travel and the planes and the driving and the crippling exhaustion… but all that changed a little while ago. The whole flavor of this Christmas break changed — I won’t get into why, but let’s just say that the rant seems… inappropriate now.
(And not in the usual way — I’m all about being inappropriate in the usual way… but this is a little different. It just wouldn’t feel right. I wouldn’t mention it at all, but I’ve got nothing left for the ‘thumb’, to finish out this post. At the same time, I still have very mixed feelings about Christmas — I’m just not gonna bitch about them right now.
Still, I didn’t want you to think that I’d suddenly been permanently de-Grinchified. I’m sure I’ll eventually prove that theory wrong for you. So it’s certainly not the case that my heart suddenly ‘grew three sizes’, or anything like that.
Hey, if anything is gonna grow three fricking sizes, my heart isn’t gonna be on the top of the list, if you know what I’m sayin’.
What? Why’re you looking at me like that? I have a small pancreas. My pancreas! What did you think I meant?
Oh, nice. Very funny. Ho ho friggin’ ho. Bite me.)
So, I’ll just say this — the wife and I do have to get up at — or stay up until — four in the morning to catch a six am flight. And then we’ll spend a week shuttling between two cities that are two hours away from each other, trying to see everyone and do everything that’s expected of us. And finally, we’ll fly home, exhausted and battered, in dire need of a real vacation. The schedule gets us every time.
But this time, I’ll be able to tell you about it, as it happens! So look for ‘updates from the road’ over the next week, and cut me a little slack if I miss a day here and there. I’m gonna try to stick to my ‘post every day, whether I need to or not’ policy, but ‘net access at our respective parents’ houses is spotty sometimes. So I’ll do my best. And be certain — absolutely rock-solid sure — that whatever I’m doing, I’d rather be blogging. Much rather.
And now, I’m gonna go pack my bag. Man, four in the morning is gonna get here in a hurry. Damn.
Permalink | 9 CommentsWell, shit. I’ve tried to start three different posts today, and they all went a big fat bunch of nowhere. So, you know what — screw it. It’s about time I got back to the roots of this blog, and threw a bunch of unrelated, random, schizophrenic shit at you. So that’s what I’m gonna do. Don’t expect coherence, folks; as a matter of fact, don’t look for any damned sense at all.
(And if you think I’m bluffing, you should know that I also managed to find Monty Python on BBC America, and I’m watching some of that TiVoed goodness right now. Currently playing — ‘Owl-Stretching Time’. Strap in, folks — this may get a bit silly. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)
Is there anything more mind-numbingly, suicide-inducingly boring than folding socks?
(And if you say, ‘yes, this blog‘, then you’re cut off. Don’t be a smartass, dude.)
Anyway, I’ve just been folding socks, and I’m ready to tie a few together and choke the life right out of myself. Maybe it’s because all my socks look almost — but not quite — alike. And there are six or seven styles — some have yellow toes, and others have gray toes, and some are just a little longer… other than my fishnet stockings, I can barely tell any of them apart.
Er, that’s my wife’s fishnet stockings. Of, um, course. Moving right along.
Matching these socks is like… I don’t know, pairing up jumbled-up pictures of centerfold boobs cut out from a Playboy, or something. Only without all the magic and involuntary ecstatic shivering.
(Hey, come to think of it, that would be a pretty fun game. Just snip out a bunch of lefties and righties, and mix them together, and then try to figure out which ones go with which. Cool! Wow, I’m glad I thought of that! Next time it’s time to fold socks, I’m doin’ that instead! Laundry just got sexy! Woo hoo!)
I’m an only child. This is in stark contrast to my father, who was next-to-last of eleven kids. Eleven kids, folks — they could have played basketball against each other — full-court, full-squad, honest-to-God games, plus one left over to sub. Or ref, or pretend to be Spike Lee or Jack Nicholson. In any case, it’s a frickin’ boatload of children.
I remember asking my dad about it one day, back when I was a kid:
Me: Um, Dad — you were one of eleven, right?
Dad: Yep, that’s right.
Me: So… we’re what, Catholic, then?
Dad: No, son. We’re not Catholic.
Me: Part rabbit, maybe? Like, we got bunny DNA in our systems from some horrible farming accident, or by sitting on the wrong toilet seat?
Dad: Um… no.
Me: You’re not saying… grandpa was a ‘bunny lover‘, are you? I mean, cows, sure, with the udders and the fuzzies and the moo-ing… but rabbits?
Dad: No! Look, son, we’re not ‘part rabbit’. Let it go.
Me: But… but… eleven kids? Dude! What’s up with that?
Dad: Well, it happens, you know?
Me: Dad, I’m twelve. I know what happens. I even know how it happens. But there’s nothing in my short life experience that indicates how it could happen eleven fricking times, man. That’s crazy.
Dad: Well, times were a bit different then. I think they were sort of… you know, bored.
Me: Bored? Shit, Dad — bored is one thing, but eleven kids? Christ, couldn’t they have read a book, or taken a damned walk, or — I dunno — played some freaking Nintendo, or something?
Dad: Son, there was no Nintendo back then.
Me: Well, Christ, there should have been. Eleven kids… shit! Let the woman rest, for goodness’ sakes.
Dad: Riiiight. Not to change the subject, son, but you’re adopted. You know that, right?
Yeah, Dad always was a kidder. And I’ve always been told it’s just a coincidence that I have the mailman’s high cheekbones.
Still, eleven children has got to be a pain in the ass to put up with. And the younger ones, like Dad, have it tough, too — it’s like having five or six parents, with all the older kids telling you what to do, or sending you to bed, or making you run errands. It’s gotta be like being a gofer in a sweatshop or something. No wonder Dad’s a little wonky sometimes.
I went to a party last night. Really, a real party — one of those dress-up adult parties.
(Well, okay, not one of those ‘dress-up adult’ parties, like in Eyes Wide Shut, or anything like that. We didn’t put on costumes, or lingerie, or oversized puppet heads and get all ‘adult‘ on each other. Stay in my world here, all right? I mean, I’m with you — those kinds of parties would be much cooler, but that’s not what happened. Let’s not get ourselves all lubed up unnecessarily, ‘k?
Well, maybe just a little… mmmmm… oversized puppet heads… yeah, baby!)
Anyway, I had to come home and put on a suit for this little soiree. It was some holiday shindig or other thrown by the law firm my wife works for. So, yeah — four hours in a monkey suit, surrounded by lawyers and listening to Christmas carols — that’s pretty much the third circle of Hell right there. But there was free booze, and nobody knew who the hell I was, so it really wasn’t all that bad.
But what I kept thinking to myself was this: what the hell do women do with their hands at parties like these? I mean, it’s a big company thing, so everybody’s a little nervous. Throw in dozens of overdressed uppity bastards and pompous stuffed shirts, and everyone’s gonna be a bit antsy. It’s perfectly natural.
And this is one of those areas where guys have it much easier than women. Because when you get nervous, you start fidgeting, and wondering what to do with your hands. And men’s suits have pockets, which is a damned life saver. I spent all night last night putting my hands in, and taking them out, and putting things in there, and taking things out — I did the ‘Pants Pocket Hokey Pokey’ the entire time I was standing up. And it saved my ass — otherwise, I’d have been clasping my damned hands, and unclasping them, and folding my arms, and unfolding, and putting my hands on my hips, or other people’s hips, or heads, or boobs, or god knows where else. The pockets keep the little guys out of trouble.
(No, not those little guys. The zipper keeps those little guys out of trouble. Amazing how many helpful accessories a pair of pants can have, isn’t it?)
But the women don’t have the same advantage — their hands are out there, just flapping around, with no container or anything to put them in when they’re not in use. You’d think some designer would have come up with a holster or something for dresses, so they’d be on a level playing field. But no. I simply don’t see how they manage. My hands would have strangled me by now, if left to their own devices like that. A long time ago. No doubt.
Well, that’s all I’ve got for now, folks. Hope you enjoyed the snippets of silliness. Hopefully, I’ll be more focused and coherent tomorrow. On the other hand, I’m about to head out to a party — no dressing up this time — so I’ll be drinking for the next four or five hours. Hell, I might be worse tomorrow. Might blog in Japanese, or Spanish, or something. Or just pound my forehead on the keyboard for twenty minutes, and post whatever the hell comes out. We’ll just have to see. Until then, this is what I’ve got. Enjoy!
Permalink | 3 CommentsI just used the bathroom here at the office.
Now, I tell you this not to gross you out — I’m not gonna describe the results, or wax poetic about the appearance of what came out of me, or tell you that I sweated and cried and made jungle monkey noises during the process of expelling it.
(All of which may or may not be true. But I’m not gonna tell you that, either. You don’t wanna know, really.)
No, I bring up my little romp in the rest room simply to tell you how sucky the toilet is in this building. I mean, I went into the stall for a nice round of ‘plop plop fizz fizz‘, and it just ended up wrong. All so terribly, terribly wrong.
(Like using a commercial jingle to describe a bowel movement isn’t ‘wrong’, in and of itself, right?
Hey, look, it could be worse. I could have used a different jingle, you know. How would you like to think of one of these, next time you’re gettin’ all squinchy on a strange potty somewhere:
‘Made from the best stuff on earth.‘
‘When in doubt… shout it out!‘
Or my personal favorite:
‘Roaches check in… but they don’t check out.‘
Mmmm… tasty!)
All right, what the hell was I saying again? Oh, the stupid toilet stall. Right.
So, right off the bat, I could tell things weren’t going to go well. (Not ‘poo-flingingly‘ unwell, perhaps, but still — not well.) See, the stall in this room is really, really narrow. Once inside the door, I could barely face the toilet without scraping my shoulders on the sides of the enclosure. And trust me, there is never a time when you want to be in a bathroom stall, and thinking about anything ‘scraping’ anything. Ever. So that’s bad, right away.
The stall isn’t very deep, either, so as soon as I walked into the thing, I was in danger of banging my shins on the toilet bowl.
(And while I’d like to be able to say, ‘You never want to be in a bathroom stall, and think about ‘banging’ anything‘… um, well, let’s just say that I was taught at a very early age that Victoria’s Secret catalogs make spectacular bathroom reading material, and leave it at that. Ahem.)
Anyway, given the cramped quarters in there, I had to do this shimmy-wiggle to get past the inward-swinging door and close it behind me without stepping in the frigging toilet bowl. At least, I assume I’d have to do so — apparently, my ‘shimmy-wiggler’ is on the fritz, however, and I ended up dunking a loafer in the drink. At least the water wasn’t yellow. Much.
So, finally, I got turned around, and ‘assumed the position’ to get down to business. That’s when I discovered another problem with the stall — it’s so tiny because one side of it has been chopped off — it wasn’t originally designed that way. So the toilet is off-centered in the space. Now, you might not think this would be so disorienting… but you’d be wrong, you know. Oh, so very wrong. When you’ve got two feet of space on one side of your naked ass cheeks, and only about three inches of space on the other side of your naked ass cheeks, it’s not a good feeling. Not only did I learn that my ass is highly claustrophobic, but also that shitting in such an orientation makes me feel like I’m constantly sliiiiiiiding toward the closer wall.
Now, I knew it was just a psychosomatic thing, that the sensation wasn’t real. But when there’s even the slightest chance of pooping directly on the floor — unless that’s what you’re intending to do, you sick bastard — you take every precaution that’s available to you. So, I braced myself, and I can only imagine how ridiculous I looked doing it.
Picture this, if you can — I’m sitting there, in this… closet, pants draped around my ankles, leaning into the wall closer to me, and bracing myself along the far wall with the arm and leg on that side. All the while trying — and generally failing — to keep my ass centered over the hole in the toilet, while sliding back and forth over the seat.
(Yeah, by the way, I wouldn’t use that bathroom next, if I were you. My ass cooties are all up in its bidness now.
And while the seat is likely to be nice and toasty for a while, thanks to my heat and a lot of friction, remember the old saying:
‘The only thing worse than a really cold toilet seat in the comfort of your own home is a really warm toilet seat anywhere else.‘
Fear the heated seat, folks. Fear it!)
Anyway, there I was, doing my best to…um, ‘put all the biscuits in the basket‘? No? Still too graphic? Sorry — there are only so many ways you can describe this sort of thing. I’m trying my best here.
But there I was, playing ‘toilet target practice’ (better? A little? Okay.), when I noticed the last problem with this stall — the gap between the door and the frame was way too big. Way. No, seriously — way. I’m not kidding.
So, I like to think I’m like most of you out there, in that I like just a little sliver of daylight between the door and stall, so I can get an idea of what’s going on out there in the bathroom proper. Hey, if a brawl, or a circus, or a Playmate pillow fight happens to break out near the sinks, I wanna know about it.
(Especially if the Playboy chicks start ‘using’ the automatic hand dryers, when they’re done with the pillows. Yeah, you know what I’m talkin’ about.)
Anyway, you’re a lot closer to the door when you’re inside the stall, so it’s good to have a little gap to peer through. But if that gap is too wide, then at some point, you have to believe that people ‘out there’ can see in , and spy on you with your undies wrapped around your ankles, panting and puffing and reading the paper (or that Vicky’s Secret catalog). Nobody wants that!
And the door-gap in this stall was about as big as I’d ever seen! There was a finger’s width — maybe two! — between the stall door and the frame.
(I’d be more specific, folks, but I swore off sticking my fingers into anything in a bathroom stall a long time ago. Sure, call me a wuss if you like. But three arrests and a restraining order will do that to you. I’m just sayin’.)
Anyway, that was the last straw for me. Sure, I’d plop my ass on the lopsided toilet in that cramped little space, and flop and tumble around like a hooked fish, trying to find my equilibrium… and then I’d even (apparently) tell you about it — but I was not going to be walked in on by some bastard who could actually see what I was doing from outside the stall. That’s just wrong. So I finished up, wiped down, hiked trou, made with the zippies, and got the hell out of there, before any witnesses could observe my madness.
So, I suppose I got away more or less unscathed. Still, that bathroom stall sucks ass. And I’m not at all sure that I’m ever going back — I might just have to find a public bathroom, or a trash can, or a tree, next time I’m at the office, and I’ve got to desperately make a number two. I just don’t think that I can use a toilet that has so many things wrong with it. It’s too traumatic.
So let this be a warning to all of you — these bass-ackwards, peepshow-allowing miniature rest rooms are out there; don’t get sucked into using one yourself. Trust me, you won’t feel right afterwards… or during… or when blogging about it to the world at large. It’s creepy, really. Don’t let yourself get into the mess that I did. Remember — no good can come from an undersized, lopsided, open-gapped crapper. Those are words to live by, my friends. Words to live by.
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