About ThisAbout Me
Email Me
Bookmark
Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Yesterday I told you about my pocket problems. There’s one that I forgot to mention, but that you may be interested in.
(In a sort of ‘Ooh, look at the monkey dance!‘ kind of way. The sacrifices I make for you people…)
Anyway, this one involves my cell phone. I always keep it in my front left pants pocket.
(Except when I’m using it, of course. For one, using the phone while it’s still in my jeans would be awfully challenging, given that I’m not friggin’ Gumby. I mean, I’m ‘bendy’ and all, but I’m not that bendy. I can gaze at my navel, but I can’t actually get my eyeball inside it. I can kiss ass, but not my own. I know about self-love, but… all right, let’s just stop right there. You get the picture.
Besides, I think I’d get some pretty funny looks if I walked around talking to my crotch. Or rather, yelling at, given that whole not-bendy-enough-to-reach thing. And the conversations would be pretty one-way — I doubt I could hear much of anything from two feet or more away from the speaker.
On the other hand, I could cement my place as the weirdest person I know.
(Yes, it’s frightening that there’s even anyone else in the race, isn’t it? Poopyhead.)
But just imagine me walking around having loud, difficult conversations, and apparently with my penis. Bent over all day, straining toward my nethers, yelling,
‘Hello?! Hello?! What?’
‘Speak up! I can’t hear you!’
‘You want to — what? Meet for dinner? Okay, where? Where? I said ‘WHERE‘?’
‘What? ‘Eagles sleep nude’? What?!’
”Little three boobs’? What the hell?’
‘Ohhhh! ‘Legal Sea Foods‘! Sure, I could go for some tuna.’
‘Tuna! Tuna! Tuuuu-naaaaa!! Oh, forget it.‘
Nah, I’d better not try it. I get enough funny looks as it is, without really trying very hard.)
Okay, where the hell was I going with this?
Oh, my phone. Right. So, my phone’s usually in my left front pocket. Fine.
Now, I should explain that my pockets are generally pretty roomy. This is a Good Thing™, given the myriad of crap that I stuff in them every day. But some days — today, for example — the distribution of crap in the pockets gets skewed a bit. More bits of stuff end up in some of the pockets than others. And generally when this happens, it’s my phone that ends up alone, with room to shimmy around whereever it pleases. And this is where the problem comes in.
You see, my phone isn’t particularly small. It’s not ginormous, either, but it’s fairly substantial. About as wide and as thick as a pack of cigarettes, maybe, but a little longer. Like a couple of dozen credit cards stacked together, plus an antenna. Or two big dog turds laid end to end.
(Yes, I know that’s gross, but you’ve got to blog what you know, right? And I’m not so sure about the cigarette thing or the credit cards. It’s been a long time since I’ve had much experience with either. Dog shit, on the other hand, I see every day. I deal with a veritable fricking flood of dog doo on a regular basis. It’s downright diluvial. Really.
Yes, you can kill me now.)
So, anyway, the phone tends to shift and slide in there sometimes. And on occasion, it’ll twist itself just the right way, and fall, fully horizontal, across the bottom of the pocket. Now, for those of you who aren’t men, and can’t picture exactly what the male genitalia might look like, I’ll tell you that this poky-phone situation is not comfortable. At all. At best, it’s unnerving. At worst, it’s downright painful.
(And if the antenna is intimately involved, it feels a lot like a billiard cue stick, if you know what I mean. And if you move the wrong way, your ‘two ball’ might just end up in the ‘corner pocket’. Yikes.)
So, when this happens, I do what any reasonable person might expect one to do — I reach down, and gently lift the end of the phone closer to my happy place — first up, and then away from ‘ground zero’. Then, with a flick of my wrist, I flip it to the outside until the phone is standing upright, on the far side of the pocket. In other words, right where I want it. No problem, right?
Well, maybe. But perhaps I should also mention that I tend to perform this maneuver without actually reaching into my pocket. Which means that my sly little move looks something like this to any close observer:
I reach down, toward my crotch, and find a bulge. I get two or three fingers underneath it, and slide it up a few inches. Then I flick my wrist, and the bulge near my crotch suddenly disappears. Or gets a lot smaller, anyway.
(Hey, keep quiet. I don’t need your help in describing my bulge. And no, I’m not going to italicize ‘a lot smaller’. Get the hell outta here.)
Now, I’m not sure exactly what people might guess is going on… but it’s fairly safe to say that it isn’t good. It doesn’t help that many of the activities that often involve shifting pants — digging for keys, coming out of the bathroom, mooning the boss — are the same ones that cause the phone to jostle around. So people are already focused on my jeans when I make my little ‘adjustment’. So they can’t miss it.
(And they don’t. I can tell by the gapes on their faces.)
I don’t really have a good solution. I’m not so interested in a phone holster, or stuffing more junk in my pockets to hold the phone still. Something else would just poke me eventually — a pen, or my ID card, or something — and I’d be back to square one, publicly crotch-swiping all over again. I suppose I could try making the adjustment from inside the pocket, but I’m not sure that’s better. At least if people can see my hand, they know I’m not staying down there for the ‘long haul’. But maybe they just assume my ‘haul’ isn’t that ‘long’ to begin with. Or that I’m easily… um, ‘amused’. Or something. Ugh.
Anyway, I thought you should know. Not for me, you understand. I don’t get any pleasure out of embarrassing myself in front of you folks.
(Well, maybe just a little pleasure. I mean, I like it if you like it. Is it good for you? I know how you like to watch. Perv.)
But maybe this will alert you to the types of things — purely innocent, ‘routine maintenance’ types of things — that sometimes go on ‘down there‘. And maybe you’ll be just a little kinder, and less aghast, next time you see a guy fiddling around near his equipment.
(That’s an important distinction — he’s likely not fiddling with his equipment; it’s near his equipment. Get it right.)
Hell, maybe you’ll even be a good sport and help him out.
(Of course, then it’ll be ‘with‘ the equipment. Which really isn’t the guy’s fault. Look, if he’s at all interested in having your help in the first place down there, then the equipment’s gonna end up being pretty much everywhere. Suddenly, you won’t be able to swing a dead cat without hitting something naughty.
Not that you would, of course. Swing a dead cat. We don’t do that sort of thing in polite company. Even when ‘polite company’ involves helping out with a bad case of crotch crowding.)
So, have a heart out there. The next time you see someone groping his pockets, or fumbling in his drawers, or making with the hitchy-pants — don’t look down your nose at him. He’s having a rough day. Show him a little support. He’s is not an animal. He puts on his pants one leg at a time, just like you do. He just wiggles them around a little more, is all. So please, be kind.
Just… don’t ask to borrow his phone when he’s done. Really, you don’t know where that thing has been.
Permalink | 4 CommentsHey all — got a (semi-)serious one for your today.
A far, far better man than I (well, far, far more popular, at least… and probably ‘better’, too — I mean, how hard could that be?), Buzz, has suggested a little game called Blog It Forward, where everyone within the sound of his.. um, site… you know what I mean — is invited to showcase a blog that they particularly enjoy, respect, or envy for it’s yummy goodness.
Well, in my case, it’s all three. Maybe you’re way ahead of me on this one, but I just can’t stop reading Sundry Mourning. Not that I’ve tried, really. Sure, there’s a patch out there to help people quit, and there’s that icky-tasting gum, and… but this isn’t about me, dammit. It’s about Sundry. Here’s what I know:
She lives in the Seattle area, where the weather sometimes gets her down, with husband JB and dog Dog. (See, creative! Her dog is named ‘Dog’. No, it’s ironic! It’s clever… oh, never mind.) And she works at… Workplace.
(Look, if you didn’t get the ‘Dog’ thing, I don’t think I can explain this one to you…)
She posts pictures on her site, but it’s not a ‘fotoblog’. On the other hand, when it is something akin to a fotoblog, it can be very, very, very, very good.
(I still can’t read/look at that entry without laughing out loud.)
But most of all, Sundry is hilariously funny. And cool, yet self-effacing. And adventurous. And beer-drinking. And profane — oh, so very profane. In a good way.
(Of course!)
(Fuckers.)
(Hee.)
In other words, she’s all of the things that I strive to be here, plus lovely and talented and other good things to boot. And she makes it look easy.
(Not to mention good — go find one of her self-pictures; you’ll see.)
Really, there’s nothing bad I can say about her site.
(Well… I can always say something bad. But in this case, it’s just that she doesn’t have the time to update six times a day — do you hear me, Workplace, JB, and Dog? Stop distracting her, dammit! — and that Sundry Mourning isn’t indexed on blo.gs, so I can’t see at a glance when she updates. Oh, and she’s funnier than me. Yeah, that’s bad, too.)
Anyway, that’s my ‘Blog It Forward’ homage, and I sincerely hope you take the time to go check out Sundry Mourning.
(Yes, in all of its yummy goodness.)
I’ll be back later with the usual crap, but I wanted to play Buzz’ little reindeer game first. (Go check him out, too, by the way. Two blogs in a day — plus me, of course — isn’t gonna kill ya.) Catch you later!
Permalink | 2 CommentsI’m becoming more and more concerned about my pants.
Not every part of my pants, mind you. The knees, for example, seem to be fine. I’ve got no beef with the cuffs, and the waistline — though bigger around than I think it really has any right to be — has been relatively well-behaved of late. These parts of my pants are not the problem.
Now, I realize that doesn’t leave much for me to be concerned about, so I want you to take any inchoate and inappropriate deas that you might be percolating, and nip them in the bud right now, because:
I am not concerned about my pant-crotch, nor my pant-ass. Let’s just get that right out in the open, okay? I may be concerned — infatuated, even — with the crotches and asses of other people’s pants, but not my own. Not right now. So this is not going to be a ‘naughty bits’ entry. It’s not even going to be a ‘parts of pants covering naughty bits’ entry. So straighten up, and settle down. You and froggy wanna go a-crotchin’, you’re gonna have to do it on your own time.
(Today, at least. There’s every indication that I’ll talk about crotches in some form or another soon. Tomorrow, maybe. The weekend, at the latest. Hang in there, crotch fans. You’ll get yours.)
No, the parts of my pants that concern me are the pockets. More specifically, all the crap in the pockets. I don’t know when the hell it happened, but somewhere along the line, I became a walking fricking supply closet. I put on my jeans in the morning, and they weigh a pound or two. Ten minutes later, when I’ve shoved all my shit in ’em, they’re like a damned anchor around my middle. It’s like wearing a sandbag kilt or something.
(Except for the ‘going commando’ underneath part, of course. Do you know how fricking cold it gets in Boston? My boys down there wouldn’t last ten minutes in this weather before climbing all up in my bidness.
Seriously, if I ever stepped out of the house in November with just a layer of denim covering up the goodies, they’d shoot so far up, I’d need a damned plunger to find them again. I’m talking way up in there. My Adam’s apple would look like a sack of golf balls; that’s how far up I’m talkin’.
And I said you wouldn’t get any crotch talk today. Damn. That one’s on the house, folks.)
All right, what the hell was I talking about? Oh, my pockets. Righty-ho, then.
I remember the good old days, not so very long ago. Things were simpler then. My life wasn’t nearly so complicated, and I had plenty of room in my pants.
(Ahem. You know what I mean. No comments from the peanut gallery. Dammit.)
Anyway, I can recall when all I carried — and all I needed — was a couple of keys and my wallet. That was it. Light shit, and in only two pockets. Oh, if only I could recapture that magic; what heady, intoxicating times those were.
But now? Well, things are different now. Let’s start with the keychain. Back in the day, it was sparse — a key to my apartment, maybe one for work, and one or two for my car. That was it. No frills, no extraneous bullshit keys — just what I needed, and nothing else.
Somewhere along the line, all of that changed. My current keychain is a confusing, bloated nightmare.
(Think Tom Arnold in a Shakespeare play, or Anna Nicole Smith defending herself in court.)
There are keys I’ve never seen before on there. Some of them have labels or writing on them — cryptic nonsense like ‘A-112’ or ‘2nd fl. vault’ or ‘Alex’s BR’.
(What?! How the hell did I get these keys? Where is this ‘vault’, and what the hell’s in it? Is that ‘BathRoom’ or ‘BedRoom’? And who the hell is ‘Alex’?! Is that a guy or a girl? Is my keychain living a double life that I don’t know about? And if ‘Alex’ is a guy… do I want to know about it? What the fuck is going on here?)
But it’s not just the keys — oh, no. The keychain is apparently some sort of inanimate pack rat, because I suddenly have all sorts of baubles and doodads that aren’t keys on there. There are two — not one, but two — grocery store ‘savings cards’. Two! Folks, I’ve stepped foot in a grocery store maybe two times in the past decade. And when I do go, my only goal is to get the hell back out ASAP. Screw the coupons, to hell with ‘comparison shopping’, and fuck the savings cards. Just bag my damned Ho-Ho’s and get me the hell out of there.
(And no, ‘bag my Ho-Ho’s’ wasn’t meant as a sexual euphemism. Just in case you’re wondering. Next time I use it, it’s gonna be. But not this time. I just didn’t think of it in time.)
Anyway, the grocery store crap is just the beginning. There’s also one of those keyless remote thingies for the car, and a bottle opener (okay, so that’s mission-critical equipment; I can’t complain about that), and my Guinness Society pint-shaped pendant. I’m a troll doll and a scrunchie away from having the keychain of a fourteen-year-old freaking girl. How the hell did this happen?
If it were just the keychain, that wouldn’t be so bad. It’s just one pocket, after all. Sure, it might make me leeeean forward and to the right all the time, but I could deal with that. At least I’d always be able to see whether my shoes are tied.
But the keychain’s just the crappy tip of the shitberg. All the other pockets are stuffed to the gills, too. I walk around with a wallet (stuffed full of crap, unless by ‘crap’ you mean ‘money’), a cell phone, sunglasses, a pack of gum, loose change, a pen, a back-pocket notebook (for writing down all the funny things I think of during the day… and yes, it’s currently empty, fuck you very much), and — usually — a small wad of dollar bills.
(In case you missed it, I started collecting the bills a couple of months ago to build a TiVo fund. Well, now I have TiVo, but I’ve still got these stacks of dollar bills piling up. So I carry them around until I remember to put them on the pile at home, or add them to the stash in the car. Or until I wander accidentally into a stripper’s convention at the deli across from my office. Which, um, has never happened. But by God, when it does — I am so ready. I even crease a couple of bills down the middle, just in case. ‘Be prepared‘, that’s my motto.)
And that’s just the crap in my pants on a ‘normal’ day.
(Um, the crap in my pants pockets, that is. There’s no crap in my pants on a ‘normal‘ day, of course. My birthday, maybe. St. Patrick’s Day, sure. Oh, and Arbor Day… but that was just the once. I’ll never look at a poplar the same way again. But I digress.)
Some days, though, there’s even more stuff to jam in there — receipts, ticket stubs, restaurant silverware, small children… the list goes on and on. One day, I’m going to have a blowout — the pocket seams are going to all give at once, and all the keys and money and shit are just going to fly off of me like candy dropping from a pinata’s ass. That would suck.
So, I’m not sure quite what to do. Somehow, my life got complicated. So I need all this shit around, close at hand. But I’m also rapidly approaching the point where I can no longer carry all the crap I need. So what then? I’m not going the ‘man-purse’ route, or strapping on a ‘fanny pack’.
(Sure, you can’t tell based on this blog, but I do have one shred of dignity left. And I’m not giving it up just because I need a place for my house keys. I’ll sleep on the damned lawn before I go there.)
Maybe there’s no good solution. Maybe I’ll have to start wearing shirts with extra pockets, or those commandoesque, thirty-seven-pocketed cargo pant dealies. Keys in the hip pocket, cell phone in the ankle holster, wallet in the ass-crack compartment… yeah, I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have even more places in my clothes where I can forget shit, and get it ruined in the washer. (I lose more pre-creased dollar bills that way.)
I suppose I’ll just keep making do with my current system. I just hope I don’t get a little MP3 player for Christmas, or develop one of those Altoids addictions you hear about in the papers. I don’t think I’d have any place to store those things when they’re not in use. I’m at full capacity as it is. There’s no more room in the trousers-inn. My jeans are standing room only. My pants are violating the fire code.
(Okay, that last one doesn’t make a lot of sense. Still, I was taught that it’s always a good idea to get ‘my pants’ and ‘violating’ in the same sentence, if you can. Add in ‘fire’, and it’s a must. My hands are tied. I can’t buck the system, people.)
Anyway, keep an eye out for me. I’ll be the one with the bulging pants.
(Yeah, I say that to all the girls.) But my pants will be bulging — and quivering, and quite possibly throbbing — in all directions, not just in the front. So be on the lookout. And if you hear the seams start to rip, or a loud crrreeeeaaakkk, take cover. My pants are about to blow, and you don’t want to get caught in the middle of that. Just do me a favor — once the explosion is over, help me track down my essentials, okay? Just the house key and the bottle opener — I can do without the rest of it and start over. I’d really appreciate it.
And if my gratitude’s not enough, there’s a center-creased dollar bill in it for you. Just pray that you find it first, or I’ll give it to you my way. And ‘my way’ is not gonna be in your pocket. I think our pockets have been through just about enough, don’t you?
Permalink | 1 Comment(Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m backdating this post by about sixteen hours to slip it in the Tuesday slot. You caught me. Bitches.
Look, you should be happy… assuming that you actually want more of this crap.
(You poor, misguided soul.)
I just couldn’t bear to leave you with this dreck as the sum total of yesterday’s stuff. Sure, I did the ‘bare minimum’, but folks, it just isn’t enough. You deserve so, so much more.
And here it is. Be careful what you wish for.)
Well, that was unceremonious.
I had just assumed — I may have even been told, though it’s just as likely that I made that part up — that all the pieces would come together at once. That there would be an orderly progression of events, a synchronization, a process. How wrong I was.
(And maybe lied to; I really can’t remember. So I’m not sure who to be pissed at. Dammit!)
Anyway, I thought it would happen like this:
So. That’s more or less how I thought it would go. And lest you think me overoptimistic or unreasonably expectatious, let me assure you that I was ready to settle for something a bit less extravagant. A one-room office, for instance. Sparkling wine. Drew Barrymore. I’m not demanding, folks. I’m willing to do with less.
But I was unprepared for what I actually did get. Which was, basically, evicted. You see, in the four-part list above, number three (i.e., having people who are irrelevant to me get the hell out of my way) failed to happen.
(As it almost always does. Oooooh!)
But number two — Mr. Desk Man returning from his vacation to reclaim his spot — did not fail to happen. And he was there first. He’s got papers and shit in those glued-shut desk drawers to prove it.
And so, I was out of luck. The music stopped, and I was the dumb bastard without a chair to park my ass in. So here I am, in an open, semi-public ‘shared’ computer area, firing off emails and studying the intranet (and blogging) in front of anyone who wants to walk out of their office and laugh and point at the monkey-man in the middle. And that’s the way it’ll be for the next two weeks.
It’s ridiculous.
It’s demeaning.
It’s preposterous.
(But most of all — it’s putting a pretty goddamned heavy damper on surfing for porn at work. And that’s just not right. How the hell am I supposed to stay awake now?)
Anyway, there’s not much I can do about it, apparently. I tried saying, ‘Well, if you don’t have a place for me, why don’t I just take a few days off, then? I can stop by after Thanksgiving to see how things look.‘ That didn’t fly, of course. But I don’t see why the hell not. If a class is full, they don’t make you show up for it anyway. When a bar is at capacity, they have you wait outside until there’s space. When a flight is booked solid, they… well, um, actually, they usually sell twenty or thirty more tickets, ‘just in case’. The bastards. Screw the airlines. Bad example. Forget I mentioned it.
Still, I think the least these people could do is to let me have a couple of days of paid vacation, right? Look, it’s not my fault they’re unprepared. I’m here, I’m (almost) sober, and I’m ready to work.
(As ready as I get, anyway. All that really means is that I’ve managed to glom contact lenses onto my eyes, and put on some pants. Not my own pants, necessarily; just pants. I’m not so picky about the pants.)
So here I am — freakshow public computer boy, typing and surfing and clicking for these fools’ entertainment. Screw this, man. I didn’t sign up for this shit. I’m taking my laptop, and I’m going to the can. I don’t know how much work I’ll get done on the toilet, but at least no one will be watching. Or listening, or seeing me walk out of the john with my laptop under my arm. That might come across as a little bit eccentric. People might even think that I took the thing in there to surf for porn in privacy. That wouldn’t be good.
Hey, just because they’re right doesn’t mean it’s good. And if they’d gimme a damned desk, we wouldn’t have to do this little dance, now, would we? Clearly, it’s all their fault. Now, if you’ll excuse me… I’ve got some (ahem!) work to get done. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Or when my legs fall asleep. You know, whichever comes first.
Permalink | No CommentsHum de hum de hum.
Folks, I gotta warn you — I got nothin’ tonight. No topic, no plan, no ‘hey, guess what funny shit happened to me today‘. Nuttin’. But here I am, on schedule, and I’ll do my best to entertain you. The spirit is willing, folks. Stick around, and we’ll see what the flesh is up to.
(Okay, forget I mentioned ‘the flesh’. I may have nothing to talk about, but I’m not gonna resort to flashing flab at you nice people. I don’t mind trying to make you unsnort milk through your nose, but I try to avoid any actual audience ralphing. No, no — you can thank me later. It’s just my way of showing that I care. By, um, not showing you much of anything at all. Trust me, you’re better off.)
So. Off to a rousing start, no? Well, look, it’s not my damned fault, all right? I can’t help it if nothing funny or weird or interesting happened to me today. That’s what I get for finding a damned job, I guess. I remember the good old days — this summer, that is — when I could just stay home all day and try all manner of dangerous, ridiculous shit, so I’d have something to write about. Grease on the floor, small animals in the blender, gratuitous nudity on the roof — really, it didn’t matter. If I thought it might make a good story, then I was there, dude.
(And soon after, I was in the hospital, or the police station. Just another case of ‘the man‘ holding me down. Or, um, reattaching my various appendages. Hey, sometimes ‘the man‘ comes in handy, all right? Don’t hate him because he’s cruel.
Oh, wait, no. I take it back — hate him. Hate ‘the man‘. That’s why he’s there. The dickhead.)
Okay, where was I? Ah, looking for something risible to regale you with. Right. Well, then. I’d better get on that.
(Hey, while I’m at it, how are those ‘Word of the Day‘ thingies working out, anyway? Worth the effort? Irrelevant? Distracting? Dead sexy?
Sorry… I always throw that last one in there, just to see if someone will bite. Or lick, or nibble. Whatever.
Yeah, it never works. Dammit. Look, just tell me whether you like the damned words or not, all right? I got other fish to fry here.)
Maybe I was just too damned tired today. I’m still not used to getting up for those nine am meetings. Maybe all sorts of interesting and weird crap was going on around me today, and I just sleepwalked through it. I don’t remember any crocodile jugglers or amputee strippers, but maybe I just missed them. I was really tired, after all. But you’d think someone would call that shit to my attention, wouldn’t you? Seriously. I shouldn’t have to miss the good stuff, just because I’m all tuckered out.
I think it’s more likely that it was just a dull, boring day. And so, here you are reading a dull, boring entry.
(Sorry, folks — I’ve gotta play the cards I’m dealt here. You want excitement and hilarity around here, then you’d better help out, dammit. Do some sort of funny dance for me, or dump food on someone’s head. Or run around with no pants on. C’mon, make yourselves useful, would you? Go give someone a class five swirly, then send them into the boss’ office. Or rub tabasco sauce on your crotch and visit the dogs at the pound. Anything, people. Give me anything. Please?)
Well, this isn’t getting any better. I promise I’ll have something more for you tomorrow. Surely something will happen tomorrow. And if not, I’ll make shit up. That’s really the only alternative I have at this point. I tried the hot sauce crotch trick, and all I got was sneezed on by a bunch of dogs. And while dog snot all over your legs is many things, it’s not funny. Not when it’s my legs. Yours, maybe. Mine, nuh-uh. So I’m not goin’ there. But maybe I’ll throw another hamster in the blender and climb back on the roof again in the morning. Things are getting desperate.
Permalink | 1 Comment
![[Subscribe]](/blog/images/subscribe.png)
