Where the Hell Was I?

October 7, 2003

May I Have the Extension for ‘Maladjusted Shit-for-Brains’, Please?

Okay, so I haven’t offered you nice folks much in the way of hilarity today.

(Or any day, depending on your sense of humor. But I’m trying, damn you — I’m trying! Cut me some frigging slack, all right?)

I really didn’t intend to get all misty-eyed and weepy about Shampoo Solo closing up shop. And yet, there it is — my last post, all teary and wistful, and yes, weepy over the loss. Really, in general, I try to keep the heavy shit out of here, and make with the yuk-yuks pretty much non-stop. But I’m not made of stone, for Chrissakes. ‘Poo’s blog kicked ass, plus she linked me, and even interviewed me, so seeing her site go bye-bye was a bit of a shock for me. I hope you’ll all forgive me one heartfelt ‘goodbye, and good luck!’ every four months or so. And hopefully, I won’t need any more than that. There are few enough quality sites — and people — around as it is.

But now, it’s on to our regularly scheduled blather. And I think I’m going to mix it up a little bit tonight. Here’s the deal — I can’t help but notice that my very looooong posts don’t garner all that many comments.

(Or readers, really, but that’s a whole other ballgame. I’d have to actually be good to drum up readers.)

Now, I don’t want to write any less each day — I don’t want this crap swimming around in my head, you know — but I’m beginning to wonder whether thirty-eight paragraphs of uninterrupted fluff is just a bit daunting for the average reader. (Or even the below-average reader, which is the type most likely to be drawn in by my sex jokes and adolescent inuendo.)

So, I’m going to try something new. I’m going to hack and chop my posts into more manageable bits, at least for the next couple of days. Instead of sequeing ideas and shooting off topics, I’m going to stick each thing in its own post. I have no idea how many posts that’ll get me, or how long they’ll end up being. But I’m pretty sure that you’ll still be able to suck your daily dose of drivel out of it, no matter what your appetite. Let’s see how this works out, shall we? Don’t knock it till you’ve read it.

Why, lookee there! Here comes the first topic now, right on schedule! How about that?

I have the coolest office game ever.

Maybe you’ve already played this game. I didn’t steal my idea from anyone, mind you, but this is the sort of thing that I can easily see being discovered independently in all sorts of industries. So perhaps the word has already gotten around. But in case it hasn’t, here are the rules.

First, you need an office of some sort. I”d have thought that this would be an obvious prerequisite for an ‘office game’, but you never know what sort of loose interprettion people are going to take. So right up front, I’ll mention that you need an office. Preferably a fairly large one, with lots of people working in it. And hopefully a social one, too — the more people you personally know in your office, the more fun the game becomes.

You’re also going to need one of those voice-activated auto-directory thingamabobs on the phone system in your office. You know, the function that lets you dial a number and speak someone’s name into the phone to reach their extension. This is key; this directory dealie is the heart of the game.

Now, the rules for this game are very simple. Gather together an arbitrary number of players. The more, the merrier. Each person gets to come up with one word or phrase to say to the recorded auto-directory voice. The winner is the person, determined by popular vote, whose word returns the most appropriate person for whatever was spoken.

Needless to say, the words should be disparaging, insulting, and, if at all possible, dirty as hell. This simply makes the game more fun.

So, for instance, you might say into the phone, ‘Needledick‘. The voice might then ask, ‘Do you mean Stephen Glick?‘ At which point, you and your buddies have to decide how funny that answer is. Maybe Steve’s a good guy; hell, maybe he’s even playing the game with you right now. But maybe, this Glick guy really is a needledick — score! Laughs all ’round, and a shot at the grand prize. (Which is typically nothing, of course. Can’t you just live for the glory, like everyone else, dammit?)

There’s some strategy involved, of course. Maybe only you remember that asshole down in accounting named Rucker. That would be a major find. But maybe he’s pissed everybody off, so everyone’s gunning for him. You’d do well to look for a different insult that sounds like someone else’s name, just to set yourself apart. Maybe ‘dumbass’ could be ‘Thomas’. Or ‘fuckhead’ would sound enough like ‘Fred’ to work. Experiment. Try some combinations yourself. Hell, cheat for all I give a damn. This ain’t the Olympics, folks.

Above all, have fun. See who ‘incompetent boob’ and ‘waste of fucking space’ bring up in your office. Even these old chestnuts are worth a giggle if the person served up by the directory is deserving enough. Just pray it’s not your name coming up. This is just the sort of thing that could get a nickname stuck on you for life. You could be ‘Dimwit Dixon’ or ‘Flighty Freddie’ for years if you’re not careful with this. Watch your back. And feel free to cut the directory bitch off if you hear your name started. That’s your last line of defense before the gathered crowd turns on you. Choose wisely, and act fast. That’s the only way to survive, ‘The Phonebook of Phools Game‘, pholks. Er, I mean ‘folks‘. Good luck out there.

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Categories: Work, Work, Work

This Is Not the Kind of ‘Solo’ I Want, Dammit!

Well, folks, the blogiverse has lost a star, at least for a while. The venerable ‘poo — Shampoo, that is — has closed up shop. And things are a little less hilarious in her absence. Tis a sad day, indeed.

I haven’t met, or even corresponded directly with, many bloggers out there. Including ‘poo. But her posts were spectacular — her humor dry, her wit sublime. Certainly, I wouldn’t say I felt like I knew her, but she did make me care. And laugh, and dig through her archives just a bit.

(Sorry for the mess I left, ‘poo. I promise to vacuum next time I rummage through your attic.)

There are a few folks out in the blogosphere that I’ve had more or less direct contact with. Sue Playdee was kind enough to accept and publish my recipe for bratwurst. Hilatron posted my ‘guest post’ on getting fired from my job. And I’ve traded email or comments, or both, with Shelley, Lara, and Andy, among others. I even know who Jonathan is, though since we met before we knew the other had a site, he’s not technically just a ‘blog-friend’.

I enjoy a lot of other blogs, too, of course. My sidebar is full of witty folks and tittery tirades. (And, on more than one occasion, just plain ‘titty tirades’. Hell, I’m even guilty of joining in that particular fray myself.) But to most folks out there in Blogland, I’m just a lurker. A regular reader, perhaps, but an infrequent commenter, and an unlikely emailer. It’s not that I don’t care; I just don’t often know what to say — what to add to contribute something unique to the idea, or to show my appreciation. So, I generally stay pretty quiet and keep to myself. It’s high school all over again.

But the ‘poo holds a special place for me. Not only was her blog spectacular, but she helped contribute to mine. Perhaps she was just being polite (and following the rules) when I asked her to send me five interview questions. But she sent some damned good ones, with thought and mischief behind them, and then came back to read the answers. It’s a small gesture, perhaps, but supremely appreciated by a starting-out blogger with just a couple of months of drivel under his belt. It made me feel like I was ‘in the club’.

(Finally — whew!)

Now, I don’t know whether Shampoo plans to keep up with her blog reading, or if she ever checked in here much.

(Though she’s also one of a handful of people who have honored me by linking to my site. And that was before the interview request. And she kept my link up even after I answered her questions as goofily as I possibly could. Is that a pal, or what!?)

But ‘poo, if you’re out there, and you’re reading this, I just want to say ‘thanks’. Thanks for the laughs and the support, and for all the hard work that you put into your site. I sincerely hope that you’ll come back someday, and that the day is sometime soon. Do let us know if you get the itch to come back, okay?

Maybe one day we’ll even meet in person. I owe you a beer for giving me such good — and hard, dammit! — questions to answer. So maybe I’ll get to pay my debt someday.

(Hey, any excuse to get near the ‘best boobs in the world’, right, guys?)

So for now, Shampoo, rest well. Take it easy. Relax. We’ll do our best to hold down the fort for you while you’re away, living a less hectic and more private life. And if you decide to come back, we’ll be here, ready to snort orange juice out our noses and onto our monitors in response to some particularly hilarious bit of yours. (No, really — we live for that shit, no matter how gross it sounds.) So take care, and we’ll hope to run into you again someday. Best of luck, and best wishes. We’ll miss you, ‘poo.

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Categories: Bits About Blogging

October 6, 2003

‘Number One’ Just Got Easier, Gents

Hey, I’ve got a great idea for a new invention. And you’ll be the first to read about it. Aren’t you lucky?

(I’d run it past my wife, but she’s a patent agent, so she’ll tell me all about how silly it is, and how thirteen different people already have patents that I’d be infringing on. Worse, she’d be right. And if there’s anything I hate more than having a cockeyed stupid idea shot down, it’s having a cockeyed stupid idea shot down convincingly. So I’m telling you, and hoping that none of you know what she knows. Or at least that you’ll keep your yaps shut if you do. Can I just hold on to one dream, just for a little while?)

So, anyway, here’s the thing. I live in New England. And I don’t know where you fine feathered folks live, but around here, we’ve got some pretty interesting ideas about architecture and interior design. A lot of novel concepts have originated here — the ‘Cape House’ style, the ‘colonial farmhouse’, and the ‘saltbox’, for instance. And, as far as I can tell, the hardwood-floored bathroom.

Now, maybe I’m wrong about this being a New England phenomenon. Certainly, I haven’t lived in very many places — a couple of places in what I’d call the ‘Mid-Atlantic region’, and some rather interesting (and frightening) spots in the South. But in my admittedly limited experience, I never saw a bathroom with anything other than tile or linoleum floors. Or perhaps, in the seedier establishments, concrete. But never hardwood. Not even once.

So it was a bit of a surprise to me when I ran into these beasts in and around Boston. Certainly, the New Englanders love their hardwood floors. And so do I, frankly. But in the bathroom? Isn’t that going just a bit far?

Well, for a lot of folks around here, apparently not. I’ve seen several of these wood-bottomed washrooms in the few years I’ve been living in New England. I’ve seen them at parties, and at friends’ houses, and now, I even have one of my own. I can see it whenever the hell I want.

(Really. Hey, I’ll go look at it now if you don’t believe me. It’s right down the hall. Don’t make me go there.)

So what the hell does this have to do with the original topic? I’m glad you asked! It’s…um…well… what was the original topic again? Oh, my invention. Okay, I can do this. No problem.

Now, before we go any further, I want to make one thing clear — I like the hardwood floors in the bathroom. It looks great, and it’s easy to clean. No peeling like linoleum, or grime getting in between tiles. Aesthetically, it’s a dream.

But there is one problem, of course. One teensy piddling little problem.

Which is the problem, right there. ‘Piddling’, that is. Oh, it’s not an issue for the ladies. They can ‘squat and squirt’ as usual, with little regard for what sort of floor is beneath their feet. It’s awfully hard for a woman to sit on the can and accidentally spray the floor with urine.

(Not impossible, mind you; I’ve been to too many fraternity parties and seen too many hammered chicks to believe that falling off the john or rocking too far backwards and fountaining a whiz over the front lip of the bowl can’t happen. But that’s the exception, not the rule. Typically, if a woman wees on the floor — or the walls, or even the ceiling, if she’s got that kind of oomph — she meant to do it. Don’t let any sober woman fool you into thinking otherwise, gents.)

But it’s different for us guys, now, isn’t it? We’re shooting from three feet away or more. It’s not just a matter of letting loose; no, we’ve got to aim. With tiles or concrete underfoot, we can afford to be a bit, shall we say, cavalier. A spill here, or a dribble there, and none’s the wiser, right, fellas? That’ll dry, and no one ever has to know.

Ah, but hardwood is different. The moisture warps the wood, and the acid can stain it. The last thing you want is a bathroom floor with little bleached-out polka dots around your toilet. Seriously, questions will be asked. So, it’s a lot harder on us menfolk when putting the proverbial biscuit in the basket while standing on hardwood.

(Perhaps not quite as hard as getting the job done while we’re standing there with hardwood of our own, but that’s an entirely different matter. Our happy little friends basically only know two tricks, and they simply can’t concentrate on both at once. And while it’s inconvenient to have the floodgates slammed shut by a bit too much enthusiasm, I’m pretty sure it evens out in the end. No doubt we all appreciate that the ‘yellow tide’ is held back while Mr. Winkie is working on his other duties. Our faucets run in two colors, but they’re not ‘two great tastes that taste great together’. Or so I’m told. Ahem.)

So aiming definitely becomes an issue. You have to become a dead-eye master with your one-eyed monster. (So to speak. Even I’m a little embarrassed over that one.) But there are so many things that can go wrong. There’s the first-squeeze spurt that tends to overshoot the bowl. The after-shake dribbles, which sometimes fly off in all directions, as though each drop has a mind — and a preferred trajectory — of its own. And heaven help you if you’ve got a wrinkle or a hair or something blocking the path of the pee; the stuff will shoot out of you at wild angles, maybe even splitting into two or three messy streamlets. Forget the floor — I’ve almost pissed on my own chest before. It pays to do an equipment check before you get the show started. Absolutely.

But that’s not all. Oh, no. We’ve also got the ‘splash factor’ to worry about. Even with laser-like aim, we can accidentally litter the floor with dribbles and droplets flying upwards from the impact in the bowl. Who the hell made this so hard, anyway? And a lot of you people think God is a man? This is just the sort of crap that makes me skeptical.

So, where does that leave us? Well, it leaves me with some rather unattractive options. When I’m downstairs in my house and I’ve got to answer the call of nature, I’ve got three choices. I can schlep all the way upstairs to the other, tile-floored bathroom. But that sounds a helluva lot like work. So instead, I can hit the hardwood head, and have a seat to get the job done. But that just leaves me with all sorts of adjusting and shirt-tucking and shit like that to do, so that’s not so good, either. Plus, I’m on my ass long enough every day as it is, I think. I’d prefer to get a little aerobicizing in while I’m draining the lizard, if it’s at all possible. Some days, it’s the only exercise I get.

So, I’m left with door number three; namely, lining up my shot like a sniper or a trick-shot artist, and letting fly as gently as I can.

(Which is often not all that friggin’ gently. When you gotta go, you gotta go, you know.)

Of course, things don’t always go quite as planned, and then I’m stuck with a mess on my hands.

(Or the floor. Or sometimes both, but I don’t really like to talk about that. That’s just nasty.)

And so — finally — we come to my Big Idea™. Namely, a toilet curtain. You know those flimsy circular curtains that some people hang around their free-standing bathtubs? The ones they string around a bar high over the tub, so they can take an actual shower? Well, why not the same thing for the toilet? It wouldn’t have to be all that tall — maybe two or three feet over the bowl. It’d even be low enough to see over, so you could keep an eye on what you’re doing in there.

Not that you’d need to watch any more, though. With your handy Commode Curtain™ in place (yes, I changed the name already; alliteration is king, folks), you’re free to shimmy and shake and wiggle to your heart’s content. Prance while you pee, if you want. Do the Wee-Wee Watusi. Go nuts. Because all the ‘spillage’ will be caught and collected by the Curtain, and drained down the drain, and away from your precious floor. Just as it should be. No fuss, and no muss. How could this not make money?

Anyway, that’s my rather convoluted (and pretty damned gross, I have to admit) thought for today. Maybe I’ll get on the ball and have my wife check into the patent records for something similar. Maybe I really am the first to come up with this. How cool would that be? Maybe it’ll become known as the ‘Charlie Curtain’, or simply the ‘Charlie’. Which would… um, be quite an honor, I guess, if a little creepy. I’m not sure I really want every man in the country praising my name as he’s making slippy-slides into his toilet. Ugh.

So, as usual, I’ll have to rethink this whole damned thing. It’s probably just as well. My wife would never go for a contraption that let me unzip and let ‘er rip all willy-nilly like that. Which is pretty reasonable, I guess. Knowing me, I’d eventually get overzealous, and find a way to spray the walls or the sink, or the extra roll of toilet paper. Or I’d end up pissing on my own chest, just as I feared. And I don’t need any help with that, thanks. It’s pretty much just a matter of time as it is.

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Categories: Potty Talk / Yes, I'm a Pig

October 5, 2003

All I’m Asking for Is a Sporting Chance

I apologize in advance for any random expletives or outbursts that work their way into this post.

(Of course, I stand by the planned expletives and outbursts. Those will proceed as scheduled.)

I’m watching my favorite baseball team and my favorite football team at the same time. I’m doing so using a little TiVo trick a buddy of mine taught me, pausing the game on one tuner and watching the other until a commercial, then catching up during the advertising break. So far, I haven’t missed anything important — not a single at-bat, play, kickoff, or crotch scratch.

(All right, so I probably missed a few crotch scrathes, and quite a bit of the spitting. Hopefully, I’ve avoided many of the ass-pats, too. Is that (Fuck! Dammit! Down 4-0 in the baseball game now.) shit really necessary?)

But I’m catching all the good stuff… except for the fact that the ‘good stuff’ has been pretty teeth-gnashingly miserable so far. Shut out in baseball, and down thirteen points in football. Bitches.

(And bastards, dammit! A punt return TD called back! Fuckmonkeys!)

Anyway, I may be a little distracted tonight.

(Or distracting, depending on how hard it is for you to follow this shit. And I can’t imagine it’s easy.)

So bear with me — we’ll get through this together, okay?

Frankly, I’m a little surprised that these games are (Woo hoo! Touchdown, good guys! Rock on!) going so craptastically tonight. These things usually go in bunches for me — either the whole day sucks ass, or it’s all nice and tingly all over.

(A lesser blogger might suggest that it’s pretty much like oral sex in that way. Me, I’m above crude shit like that. Or beside it. Or right in the middle of it; I can really never remember which it is. But I digress.)

The point is, my sports teams seem to just know when I’m paying attention, and conspire to elate or disgust me. They must have some impromptu conference call or something, and flip a coin, and then decide to kick ass or throw their respective games. Really. No, I mean it. That’s the way it always goes. What other explanation could there be?

So tonight’s athletic incompetence (so far) is more than a little surprising. (Oh, shit. The baseball team’s making Bad News Bears plays on the basepaths. Whew! It didn’t cost them — and the umpires blew a call to let us score. Eh, I’ll take it. A run’s a run.) But early in the day, things went just swimmingly. Peachily, even. The Red Sox won, and the Patriots won, and our softball team (speaking of the bungling Bears) also won. So all’s well in Beantown today. Maybe someone else’s favorite teams are lining up for them today. Because my non-New England loves are frittering away their games as I speak. Er, type. You know what the hell I mean.

(And, just for the record, while my baseball buds were eking out an undeserved run, the football lads gave up another touchdown. Dagnabbit!)

So, maybe I’m not the exact epicenter of the universe, after all.

(Although I should be, of course. There is no cosmological theory quite as enticing as the Charliocentric Universe Hypothesis. Wouldn’t you agree?)

I was just beginning to think that the stars were aligning themselves for me, too. After fifteen-plus years of anxiety and frustration, my beloved Syracuse Orangemen went all the way in the NCAA basketball tourney. Surely triumphs in the other major sports wouldn’t be far behind, right? Um, right?

Wrong, or so it would seem. At least the losing’s a little easier these days. For one thing, I’m getting used to it.

(Did I mention I like the Hawks in the NBA? What a bunch of sorry sad sacks they are. Dominique Wilkins, where art thou?)

More importantly for my sanity, though, I’ve finally — like, a couple of months ago — learned that what I do has no effect on these highly trained, finely tuned strangers playing their games hundreds of miles away. And yes, for you non-diehard fans, I’m fully aware that this sort of obvious concept shouldn’t have taken thirty-plus years to sink into my thick skull. I’m fairly well versed in the concepts of physics and cause-and-effect, so in my brain, I suppose I’ve always known that I’m nothing more than an impotent bystander. An observer. Mere window dressing.

Ah, but in my heart, I allowed that my brain might — just might be mistaken.

(Hey, if you knew my brain as well as my other body parts do, you wouldn’t just assume everything it comes up with is reasonable, either. My brain is pretty full of shit sometimes. As is my blog, but that’s another beast entirely. Let’s focus here.)

And so, just in case, I used to do all sorts of ridiculous bullshit to ‘help’ my teams. If they were losing while I sat, I’d stand. If they started coming back, I’d stay on my feet for the rest of the game. (I once made the mistake of doing that during a five-hour multi-overtime hockey game. Dumbass.) If I clapped, it would be an even number of claps. Same with kneeslaps, joyous leaps, or even finger-crossings.

(Yes, all of the players on all of my sports teams just happen to obsessively prefer even numbers over odds. I don’t know why. Bunch of whacked-out neurotics, if you ask me. But, you know — that’s just me talking. If that’s what they want, that’s what I’ll do. Who am I to upset the delicate psyches of today’s professional athletes?)

So, in years past, those watching sports with me would see some pretty ridiculous crap. (Bitches! Interception returned for a TD! Crap salad!) If I was touching my nose when my team scored, I’d keep touching my nose. Hell, if I was picking my nose and they happened to make a great play, then I’d keep my finger up there all night. If it worked, I might jam one up the other nostril, too. Sure, I’d look like a dork — a mouth-breathing dork, pretty much by definition at that point — but if it got us a win, then so be it. I’m willing to take one for the team.

Or rather, I was willing. I don’t know whether I’m just older, or more apathetic (or plain pathetic), but I can’t do it any more. The jinxes, the rally caps, the willing my team to victory — it’s all down the toilet. Sure, I’m still pretty, um, animated during games. I bitch, and curse, and jump, and cheer, but not in any particular way or rhythm now. It’s finally gotten through to me — what I do, or don’t do, or pick, or don’t pick, simply doesn’t matter. It’s sad, really. Kind of depressing. (Wah!)

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the losses hurt any less. I still live and die with my teams; I just look less like a dork while I’m doing it. My in-game geekiness used to be off the scale; now it’s somewhere between baby-talking to the dog and my ‘Macarena’ dancing. In other words, not good. But not likely to cause my wife to divorce me, either. So that’s a solid improvement.

At least I never went so far as to paint my face for a game. Or worse still, my whole body, like some of the freakshows out there.

(Do you know how hard it is to get spray paint washed out of your crotch hair? Well, me, either. And I’d like to keep it that way, if you don’t mind. Unless the wife has some sort of kinky Goldfinger fantasy that I don’t know about. For that, I’d make an exception. But just for that.)

(Fuck! Another run against in the baseball game. Down four in the ninth. Guh.)

Well, it looks like neither of my teams is likely to mount a raging comeback tonight. My baseball team will be out of the playoffs, and the football team will sink further in the standings. Suck, suck, suck, suck, suck. Sure, it’s nothing to do with me, really, but that’s still hard to stomach. I want to do something to pull these losers out of the hole they’ve dug themselves. But I can’t. And that doesn’t sit well. I’ll be a pissy bitch all day tomorrow.

(Pissier, anyway, and bitchier, too. If such things are in the realm of possibility.)

And I suppose it’s fathomable that my teams will mount surging comebacks, and take these games, after all. It ain’t over till it’s over, right? But I’m not counting on it. Nor am I going to jam my thumbs up my nose, or clap exactly twenty-six times, to try to make it happen. Those days are over. These friggin’ guys are just going to have to find a way to do it themselves. But apparently, not tonight. *sigh*

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Categories: Wide World o' Sports

October 4, 2003

Just Think of It as ‘Blog Post Roulette’

Maybe I’m born with it; maybe it’s Blog™.

Q. Can a public service announcement be self-serving?

A. You bet your ass, it can!

Think about it. You think Sally Struthers makes us suffer through those ‘Feed the Children’ commercials just because she’s into the kids? Oh, come now. Sure, she probably cares and all, but she’s also angling for a gig in some Lifetime movie. Seriously, look at her career in the last twenty years. You think she wants to keep doing shit like Marie Osmond’s Merry Christmas? Please. That ‘cup of coffee a day’ crap is free publicity, which is the only kind she can afford these days.

Want another example? How about the Schoolhouse Rock folks? Now, you know they were all proud of themselves over those bits. They were showing off, bucking for promotions and jingle-writing spots. How else do you explain the stuff they chose to present? Conjunctions — harrumph! Nobody has problems with conjunctions; of all the parts of speech, they might be the most used and easiest to get a handle on. We really didn’t need an educational spot about conjunctions.

Ah, but it rhymed with shit, and so, that’s what they used. They could get funky with conjunctions, whether anyone needed the lesson or not. Heaven forbid that they tackle ‘gerunds’ or ‘dangling participles’. Important, sure — but what rhymes with ‘participle’? ‘Hearty tipples’? ‘Farty ripples’? ‘Party nipples’? Clearly, we’d have had a much different Saturday morning with that sort of material.

So, why do I bring this up? Well, I have a public service announcement of my own to make. And frankly, it’s even more self-serving than my examples. You see, you won’t be saving any children, or building any schools, or learning how bills become law from my announcement. At best, you might get a smile out of it, or a snippet that you can use yourself. And in the process, you’ll have to read a bunch of shit that I thought was clever.

(Um, at the time, anyway. The harsh light of day shines a bit unfavorably on some of these things now. You’ll no doubt see what I mean.)

Anyway, here’s the scoop. Things have changed a bit around here recently. Like, yesterday. And thanks to all of you — JadedJu and Suzette in particular, so far — who approve of the new design. So far it’s three ‘for’ (counting moi), and zero against. Those aren’t landslide numbers — yet! — but I’m pretty happy with the results. I think this layout’s a ‘keepah‘, as the Kennedys would say.

But, as you may have noticed, there’s no good spot for a tagline in this design. At least, not one as loooong as mine. So, I scrapped it. Easy come, easy go. Ah, but that brings up another little issue. You see, at the top of every post, just under the title, I’ve been including an ‘alternate tagline‘. I started doing this on my second (aka, next-to-first) post, and never stopped. I figured that I’d eventually get tired of my tagline and think of better ones, so why not just include them in posts? That way, I wouldn’t spend all my time futzing around with one meaningless part of the site, agonizing over which one I liked the very most bestest, and I could get on with writing the damned posts.

But now, there’s no tagline at all. And frankly, sometimes coming up with the alternate line for the day is the hardest fricking part of writing an entry. So, I think I’m going to retire this particular feature, and get back to simply telling stories about how stupid I and most of the people around me are. Oh, and my dog. Yeah, she’s a real shit-for-brains sometimes, too.

(Maybe it’s contagious. Who knows?)

So. I tell you all of that, to tell you this.

(This is the ‘Public Service Announcement’ part; hope you weren’t holding your breath all this time.)

Since I won’t be needing a tagline again anytime soon, I’m inviting all of you to use any or all of them that you like. Use them as your own mottos, or your blog names, or just work them into posts — whatever you want. Some of them are actually pretty good, if I do say so myself. (And some of them are pure crap that I scribbled down to get a post rolling. So sue me.) But all of them are yours now; go forth and spread the word to the six corners of the Internet.

(‘Cause we all know the Internet’s a hexagon, right? Right?)

As a matter of fact, I’m gonna make it easy for you.

(That’s just the kind of stand-up, do-right, and lots of other hyphenated words, kind of guy that I am.)

I’m going to repost each and every tagline I came up with — one hundred and twenty-four in all — right here, for you to browse and pick over, like some online trailer park yard sale. All I ask of you is this — if you use one of these, just drop me a comment. I like to know what my babies are up to. Hell, if you even like one, let me know. Or if you have some of your own that are better. Or you just want to say hi. Anything, really. I’m a comment whore; there’s no shame in that.

(And if there is, I’ll drink enough to drown it. Don’t you worry about me.)

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, comes the self-serving part. Well, some of that is obvious: I like to think that some of these lines are pretty cool, and that I came up with a helluva lot of them.

(Needlessly? Perhaps. Still, there they are. We don’t mock Stonehenge just because the druids didn’t know what the hell they were doing, now, do we?)

And so, I’m proud to show them off all at once, in a sort of tagline tour de force. Or, um, something. That might be going a bit far, even for me.

But — but, I say! — the self-servitatiousness doesn’t stop there! Oh, no — not by a longshot. Because, you see, I’m also going to take the time to painstakingly link each and every tagline to the post on which it appeared. Why? I don’t honestly know. It’s not like you can tell anything about the post from the tagline; they’re completely unrelated. If you click on any one of them, there’s no telling what sort of fracas you’ll end up in. Maybe something bad; maybe something good. You don’t know. But it’s another chance for you to make clicky-clicky on my little links, and read my shit, and that makes me feel good.

(In a strangely arousing way. You cheeky little monkey, you. Rawr!)

So, give it a whirl. Feed my ego. At least this is the last time you’ll have to read one of my taglines. You know, unless a really good one pops into my head. In the meantime, enjoy the show. And be glad it’s not costing you even the cost of ‘a cup of coffee a day’ to put up with this shit. Even I have my limits.

The Gallery of Taglines, ‘Where the Hell Was I?‘ Wing

Note: The very first post didn’t actually have it’s own tagline, so I’ve linked my original blog description to it. You wouldn’t want to miss one, now, would you? The lines are listed in the order in which they appeared.