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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
De Doo Doo Doo De Blog Blog Blog
Hey, everybody. There’s nothing much going on here at the moment, as I’m working on my 100 Things About Me pages. Check those out if you like; I should have at least a handful going up every day.
In the meantime, though, I wanted to send warm thanks and a hearty ‘Hi-de-ho!‘ out to Dan at Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. He’s hosting the Carnival of the Vanities this week, and a little number of mine that I like to call ‘A Wall to Save Us All’ is included. So thanks to Dan; go bask in the collective genius of the latest Carnival.
(Hey, I said ‘collective genius’. Even if my post is crap, it’s still elevated by the good stuff. So there!)
Permalink | No CommentsHere we go, bloggers, here we go!
Okay, let’s see if we can really keep the post short this time. Those 100 Things About Me aren’t writing themselves, you know. And apparently, I’m not writing them, either. So I’ll keep this short and sweet, but I needed to share. It’s link-to-a-story time, kids; gather ’round. Uncle Charlie’s gonna write something that looks like it actually might belong in a blog. For once. Here goes nothin’:
The folks at the University of Florida evidently don’t know an alligator from a crocodile. Which is not all that big a deal for most of us, of course — I personally don’t know the difference, either. Just that there is one. And the distinction has never really been an issue for me, so I haven’t bothered to find out what it was, or give even the merest hint of a damn. Ditto the separation between ‘dolphin’ and ‘porpoise’, or Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. Or for that matter, the Barbi twins. Who among us really needs to know which is which? And why the hell would we care?
Ah, but this is the University of Florida Gators we’re talking about, so you’d think — you being an intelligent and reasonable person, of course — that someone at the school would have taken the time and effort to make a list of what makes gators, um, alligatory, as opposed to crocodilitatious. Personally, I’d have thought they’d have that info just lying around for when people ask, maybe printed on the campus phone list. You know, for emergencies.
But the very least they could have done would be to look it up before snapping a picture of some ugly amphibian and slapping it on the cover of their football team’s media guide. Right? I mean, it’s a simple chore, isn’t it? Even if they took a picture of the wrong snaggle-toothed, armor-coated beast, they’d at least catch it before printing off the guides and sending them out. Wouldn’t they?
Well, apparently not. The errant info books made their way to the media, and it seems that some newsman — those fucking smartass journalists, you know how they are — checked the Gators’ phyla as well as their facts, and found them wanting in the biology department. Another sad day for state schools, student athletics, and the sorry state of southern edumacation. The score in this round: Pigskin 7, Sheepskin 0. Ouch.
If nothing else, I’d have expected the football folks to have enough ‘mascot pride’ to do a little due diligence, wouldn’t you? After all, aren’t they and the hoopheads the only ones who really give a rat’s ass about the school mascot in the first place? You only see the cheesy costumes come out during games, or maybe pep rallies. So who better to know the details of the chosen school animal, or color, or tree, than the football department? Look, here in Beantown, we have the Boston College Golden Eagles. Not once have I seen them advertise with a Golden Cockatoo, or print up Pink Eagles in the game-day programs. It just doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult to stay on top of.
Speaking of birds, though, my favorite line from the story involved the Florida spokesman eating some serious crow. When asked about the mistake, he said, by way of excuse:
‘We asked for an alligator, we paid for an alligator and unfortunately we did not get an alligator.’
Well, that explains everything, doesn’t it? Maybe I’ll cut just a little bit of slack for the old U of F (‘F’ standing for the school’s grade in Taxonomy 101, apparently). Sure, it seems like a strange comment for the spokesman to make, but you know what? This may sound crazy, but my buddies and I had the exact same problem the last time we went to Vegas. Of course, we didn’t end up with an alligator or a croc for our money. Instead, we were ripped off even worse, and got stuck with a three-legged turtle, a newt, and a couple of bullfrogs. Which actually ended up working out okay for what we wanted, once we got the Vaseline into–
Hey! Look at the time! Whew! Well, this post has gone long enough, then, hasn’t it? *Yaaaawn.* Yep, I’d better wrap it up and get to bed without saying another word. Gotta keep these short, just like I promised. Yep, yep. Okay, then — nighty night. Nothing left to see here. You should probably move along now. Nice seeing you. Bon voyage, and all that. Or as the Greeks are fond of saying, ‘What happened in Vegas stays in Vegas. Especially when cold-blooded animals are involved‘. And who am I to argue with the Greeks?
Note: No amphibians were actually harmed — or even fondled — during the making of this blog entry. Any similarities to actual semi-aquatic animals, real or imagined, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
(Still, don’t tell Kermit. He gets all squishy when we talk about Vegas. Best to let sleeping frogs lie. Trust me on this one.)
Permalink | No CommentsNew and improved Blog™ — now with 58% more blather!
Hey again. Looks like I’ll be posting some shorter entries for a while, at least until I get my 101 Things About Me fleshed out.
(I just had to goddamned different, didn’t I? Oh, noooo, can’t just think of 101 things. No, that’s not hard enough for Charlie, is it? No, I’ve got to go and turn each thing into a post, too. Which is twice as many posts as the rest of this filthy blog. Which means that soon there’s gonna be three times as much pointless, unread shit here as there is now. Beautiful. Man, if I wasn’t already out of work, I’d be heading that way now. Is it too late to change the name of this thing to: What the Hell Am I Thinking?)
Okay, it’s not quite as bad as all that. My 101 things are finished, and I’m almost four percent done with the posts for each. Almost four percent. That deserves a cookie, or a beer, or something, doesn’t it? Sexual favors? Anyone? No? All right, back to blogging, then.
Lessee, what else have I got? Oh, yeah, here’s a good one. I don’t know about the rest of you folks, but apparently I live my life under one big stinkin’ umbrella of It Can’t Ever Be Fucking Simple, Can It?. And I don’t even mean the times that I make things hard for myself — I mean, I do that all the time, and I’ve learned that the only one who deserves a good, hard spanking for that is me. I’m still working on convincing my wife that I need nearly-daily spankings, but I’m slowly working on that.
(Well, recently, that’s taken a, ahem, ‘back seat’ to some ideas I have involving a French maid outfit, but the spanking thing is still on the list. And no, you uber-pissy freaks, I’m not gonna call it a ‘Freedom maid’ outfit. Get the fuck over it already, would you? Go hunt bunnies or something. Get it out of your systems, for Chrissakes.)
All right, so where was I? Ah, nothing’s ever friggin’ simple. Right.
I’ll give you a recent case in point, which is, oddly enough, technology-related. You’d think, perhaps, that since I’m a software engineer and a gadgety sort of fellow (I know how to program my VCR, for instance), then techno-crap might occasionally work around here without a hitch. Ah, but that wouldn’t be deliciously ironic, now, would it? Nature — or Fate or God or Santa or whoever you think is peering down at us — wouldn’t get its rocks off quite so jollily if I had a hard time with, I don’t knoiw, knitting, or spot welding, or animal husbandry. These are not things that I’m supposed to be good at, that I have on my resume, or that I claim to have any experience with.
(To be fair, I did attend college in Kentucky. So I saw some things happen to particular sorts of animals that could loosely — and I use the term loosely loosely — be described as ‘husbandry’. Or at least ‘pimpery’, or maybe ‘one night standery’. But I’m not sure that these sorts of ungodly practices are part of the official duties of true ‘animal husbandry’. I’ll have to check on that, and get back to you.
And just to nip any ideas you may have in the bud — no, yours truly was never involved in this sort of farmy tomfoolery. For one thing, I’m not from Kentucky myself. So I wouldn’t even know which beasticles qualified as, um, ‘good eatin’. So to speak. And besides, I have two long-standing rules that would disqualify me from this sort of nonsense:
Anyway, I was a latecomer to the game. By the time I got to school, all of the good udder was taken. And the last thing you want to do is come between a man and his, er, livestock. Those farmboys have pitchforks, and they know how to use ’em.)
Okay, way off topic, as usual. I did say this was going to be shorter, didn’t I?
So, back in civilization, I’ll tell you about a recent technological clusterfuck that I managed to stumble through. It happened a couple of months ago, soon after we moved into our house. I wanted to set up a wireless network, so we didn’t have to string eight thousand feet of cable all over half our rooms to hook up our computers. Fine. So I go to a local computer store, and I buy a USB wireless adapter for me, and an internal FireWire card for my wife’s Mac, and a wireless access point, or WAP, to send out the signals. So, of course, WAP is the first friggin’ sound I hear as I thump my head against the desk when I try setting it up. WAP! WAP! WAP! WAP! WAP!
See, I thought I’d do the smart thing, the clever thing, and buy a USB card and WAP from the same company. Namely, SMC. Aha, I thought to myself, these two will talk to each other right out of the box, and then if the Mac card doesn’t work, I’ll have yet another opporunity to bad-mouth Macs to my wife. Mwaa ha hah! Mwaa ha hah! Mwah!‘
(Okay, fine, there was quite a bit more ‘Mwaa hah‘ing after that, and the other customers in the store started staring at me, but I’m trying to keep this at a reasonable length. Work with me here, would ya?)
So, anyway, I bring the shit home, set it all up, and what happens? Well, of course the WAP — which I configured using my own very-non-Mac-like computer, I might add — chirps happily back and forth to the Mac, sending packets whizzing back and forth around my head and generally getting along quite nicely. And to the USB adapter, it’s own SMC cousin, sitting three feet closer, and configured by the very same machine that breathed life into the WAP itself? Nothing. Not one damned peep. Complete radio silence.
All right. Fine. I’m used to this. Remember, It Can’t Ever Be Fucking Simple, Can It? So I started fiddling with stuff. I changed from the custom IP address I really wanted to use back to the default. Mac fine, my machine mute. Okay. I downloaded new software for the USB adapter. Same thing. I took the adapter off the USB hub and plugged it directly into the machine. Nothing.
That’s when the little twitch I get over my eyebrow began. I kept trying things — oh, I got creative, all right — but now it was personal. I unplugged and replugged. I uninstalled, reinstalled, and reconfigured.
I motivated (‘C’mon, you lousy shit. I know you can do it. You know you can do it. Now frickin’ damn do it!‘).
I begged (‘If you just work, I’ll set you by a window. Look, grass! Trees, for Chrissakes! What do you want from me?!‘).
I used reverse psychology. (‘Fine, ya lousy hunk of shit. You like that damned Mac so much, why don’t you marry it?!‘).
But mainly, I cursed. (‘So fuckin’ help me God, if you don’t get your damned shit together, I’m gonna tie this cable around your fuckin’ throat!‘).
In my frustration, I even made up new words. (‘You butter-shittin’ heiney-lover-munchy-fuckin’ dingle-humpin’ prickety-ass ho!).
And then, of course, I wept. Wept and cursed, cursed and wept. This went on for about three days. Finally, I called customer support.
(Hey, I’m a man. Three days of unmitigated vein-throbbing fury is about right before admitting defeat, right, guys?)
I had three conversations with customer support — all of them can be summed up with these four lines:
Him: Can I get your (account/registration/social security/phone/etc.) number?
Me: Yes, it’s (whatever the hell he was asking for).
(Repeat above steps around thirty-eight times)
Him: Okay, did you try (downloading software/reinstalling/resetting/banging your head with a frying pan/etc.)?
Me: Yes. Yes, a thousand times, yes.
(Repeat above steps approximately two hundred and thirty-five times)
Which is to say, the diddledick on the other end of the line knew less than I did. So now I had struggled with the damned thing, lost, admitted defeat, and shamefully called in outside help… only to be stuck right back where I was. At that point there was a little more cursing. Mainly weeping, and gnashing of teeth, but I think I managed some curses in there, too.
Anyway, to make a long story…um, actually quite long, I suppose… I finally figured out the problem. On my own, thank you very much. It turns out that the software that shipped with the WAP — not the adapter, but the WAP itself — was out of date, even though the product was nearly brand new. So out of date, in fact, that the good folks (read: Satanic buttmunching asswipes) at SMC had seen fit to ship USB adapters that were 100% incompatible with this less-than-a-year-old-but-entirely-useless-to-me WAP software. Folks, if there really is a Hell, I can only hope that there’s a special circle cordoned off for these sons of bitches, and that the circle involves piranha, and blenders, and colonoscopes, and… and… well, I don’t know what else. I’ll make a list. But it had better be fucking bad, whatever it is. Frigging morons.
So, I downloaded the WAP firmware, and the damned thing worked, finally. The worst was over. But of course, it’s never truly over, now is it? No. Nature’s got to get in one last nipple-twister or two, just so you don’t forget who’s the boss around here. So of course, everything worked just peachily when I added encryption to the network, to keep our neighbors from scamming our feed. Everything, that is, except keeping that damned Mac online. It simply wouldn’t connect. I found tricks and tips and step-by-step instructions — a ‘$’ before the password, only use so many letters, or all digits, or no digits, or put on a tutu and dance the lambada when you reboot. Nothing worked. The one machine that had worked from day one simply refused to play ball. So I hacked it to little tiny bits with my bare hands, and knelt among the shards, with a foamy, maniacal grin on my face.
Oh, wait. That’s what I wanted to do. Right. What I actually did was to mutter, ‘Fuck it‘, turn encryption off, and warchalk my own sidewalk so all of our neighbors can suck their porn down through our big hairy fat wireless pipe. Yeah! That’ll teach ’em to piss around with me!
So, anyway, that’s my wireless story. So much for short posts, eh? Hey, at least I’m still four percent done with my 101 Things links. Oh, right. Almost four percent done. Harrumph. No rest for the weary blogger, I suppose. Guess I’ll have a look at that next, then. First, I need a beer, though. Just reliving all this wireless nonsense has got me all frothy and twitchy and bothered, and not in a good way. Hey, maybe I’ll sniff a couple of local network packets before I get going again, too. There’s a lot of activity on the WAP; I’ll bet the guy up the street is downloading farm animal pics over our connection again. He’s from Kentucky, you know. Sick fuckin’ bastard. Probably works for SMC, too.
Permalink | No CommentsOne o’ these days, Blog — pow! Right in the kisser!
Howdy, all. Short, late note this time, but I realized, just a tad tardily, that I’ve been blogging now for forty days and forty nights. And how could I let something of such Biblical proportion slip by, eh?
Yea, sayeth the author, yon blog is my ark, and shall protecteth me from the rising waters of ridicule. And verily willith it shield me from the furious waves of they who giggleth, not with me, but at. Smiteth down the unwashed heathens with wit, and with irony, o blog, soeth the restest of us shalleth liveth in peace forevereth more. Amen. Eth.
(Tee hee. Any time I see something written in ‘ye olde Biblical style’, I can’t help but picture Sylvester the Cat trying to wrap his slobbery, lispy mouth around all those ‘eth’ words. Thufferin’ thuccotash!)
Anyway, forgive the oddities above. It’s mighty late, and I’m in need of sleep. Pay no attention to the drivel you see. I mainly wanted to slip in the forty days comment — it’s already forty-one or forty-two, so I couldn’t wait much longer. Oh, and I wanted to post the first link to my 101 Things About Me page. Most of the links aren’t filled in yet, but I’ll be doing some work there in the coming days.
(Hopefully days, and not weeks!)
Anyway, check it out. I’ll eventually put a link on the sidebar here, but only after I’ve put a little more meat on the entries. Until then, it’s pretty much a list like anyone else’s — long, startling, and, in the end, scary. (You can make your own John Holmes jokes here, folks. I’m too tired.)
So, that’s it. If you want to leave me any comments on the list, you can drop ’em here.
(The list is on a different server, and with no comments hooked up to it.)
I’ll drop in again after I’ve had a few hours of shuteye. Until then… well, I suppose it was put best in a movie, as most clever things are:
‘In the meantime, rest well, and dream of large women.‘
Nighty night, folks. And have a pleasant tomorrow.
Permalink | No CommentsYou can be a fly on my wall if you want, but you’ll have to take a number
Well, here we are again, eh? I’ve decided that given my ever-advancing age, I should make a concession to my olditude and conform to something. (You know, other than allowing my ass to conform to the seat of my office chair. Nobody really needs to know about that. Though, of course, now you know about it. Funny how blogs work sometimes, isn’t it, kids?)
Anyway, I’m not normally one to do the ‘vogue‘ thing, or follow the latest ‘chic‘ trend, and not just because you have to make a funny face to say either of those words. Nor is it because most of those trends involve skimpy clothing, and my ass would probably have a hard-time fitting into the low-riders all the kiddies are wearing these days. (Man, what’s up with me today? Read my ass blog! Extra, extra — see me write about my ass. It’s all ass, all the time!)
But moving away from my ass — slowly, gingerly, so as not to startle it — I don’t normally do the ‘in‘ thing. First of all, by the time I hear about it, it’s no longer in.
(Hell, look at me now — blogs are so 1999.)
And anyway, I usually can’t be bothered. For one thing, I was born with this inherent, crippling, recurrent laziness, which makes it sometimes very difficult to get off my ass and join the herd.
(Sorry, there’s my ass again. Last time. I promise.)
And for another, the herd are often collectively morons. Look, if I have to wear my clothes so that six inches of underwear peek out the top of my pants, I’m just gonna pass, okay? Maybe it’s just me, but when you reach the point when it doesn’t really friggin’ matter whether your fly is open, because the flap on your boxers is peekin’ out above your belt anyway, then you’ve got some serious thinking to do, and not just about your fashion sense. I’d appreciate it if you’d also take a quick look around your life, and find some way to ensure that you don’t pollute the gene pool with your seed, okay? We don’t serve your kind around here, dude.
(Hey, speaking of flies, and the checking thereof, is it so hard for people to figure out how to discreetly check whether their zippers are still flying high? Sure, it’s not the most heinous faux pas in the world to finger your fly in public, or to stare down at your crotch as though Mr. (or Mrs.) Happy is going to start performing tricks. But it’s not pretty, either, and more to the point, it’s not necessary.
Look, most people seem to want to be furtive about it, and come up with these wild, hare-brained schemes to ‘secretly’ double-check the barn door, but they all fall into the We Know What You’re Really Doing, Buttmunch category. Yes, I’m talking to you, dude, when you ‘miss’ your pocket with your hand and just ‘happen’ to brush your zipper on the way by. And you, young lady, when you pluck invisible, non-existent ‘lint’ from the bottom of your blouse, so you can sneak a peek at your pants. And you old folks who ‘smooth the pleats’ in your pants, but start the process at your crotch (where there are no pleats, and frankly, probably little else at this point). Will you people never learn? Have you no sneaking skills? Who raised you, anyway?
Look, there’s only one time-tested way to check your fly, folks, and if it means that I don’t have to watch these people play their slappy-hands, don’t-look-straight-at-it, pretend-you’re-staring-into-your-navel games any more, then I’ll tell you the secret. But just think about it for a minute, would you? When is the only time, in public, when you’re natually staring downward, and no questions will be asked? Hmm? Anyone? That’s right, when you’re tying a shoe. You can bend down to one knee, pull the shoe of ‘interest’ right underneath you, and steal a glance at your zipperoo unnoticed. Your shoe doesn’t even have to be untied; people have ‘loose’ shoelaces all the time, and they look the same as ‘tight’ laces, so nobody’s going to give it the first thought.
Plus, you may even get a chance to zip up if you do find you have a ‘Code Red’ down there, because nobody actually watches other people tie their shoes. It’s like looking at strangers in the elevator; it’s just not done. Think about it — the last time the person you were with had to tie their shoe, what did you do? Well, you talked to your other friends, if any were around, or you stared off into space. There’s something creepy about talking to someone — or even looking at them — when they’re hunched down there at thigh level like that. People are going to look anywhere else but at you while you’re ‘tying your shoe’, so you have a couple of seconds to reseal your deal, so to speak, if you find a problem while you’re down there. It’s the perfect solution.
So that’s the only time when it’s safe to sneak a peekerino at the old pants to see whether your elevator’s still in the penthouse, or whether it’s shimmied down to the basement. The only time. Got it? Otherwise, you just look like you’re trying to frisk yourself, or copping a quick self-feel, or you’ve got a hamster in your pants that you need to check in on. Save yourself the trouble, and bend down for the shoe, okay? We’ll both be a lot happier.
Now, of course, there are risks with this method. If you’re not wearing shoes, for instance, or even shoes without laces, then you’re going to look pretty goddamned silly bending over to adjust your sole, or massage your ankle, or floss your toes, or whatever lame excuse you happen to come up with. So at least make sure you’ve got the proper equipment to play this particular game, okay? Also, for you male types out there, there’s an added risk. See, if your fly actually is down, as you suspect it might be, and Mr. Winkles isn’t properly, um, restrained, by your undergarments (or lack thereof), then the act of kneeling to ‘tie your shoelace’ may unfurl your flag for all to salute, if you smell what I’m cookin’. Which would leave you in a bit of a…um, pickle, as I think it’s called. So be careful. Always keep a leg between you and any bystanders, just in case your Biggie Smalls decides to make a cameo appearance. Don’t let the solution be part of the problem, men. Just be cool, and no one will be the wiser.)
Okay, where the hell was I? I got distracted again. Oh, conforming, right.
So, anyway, I’ve decided to give in and write a 100 Things About Me, that I’m moving off to a separate page. As soon as I’ve got a few there, I’ll add a link to it here, and also link to others’ similar lists. It seems that all the cool — er, sorry, kewl bloggers are doing it, and so I’m gonna do it, too. Why? Because I’m old now, and I shouldn’t be thinking for myself any longer. Or soon, feeding myself, or even going to the bathroom alone. But that’s an entry for another day. For now, I’m gonna go work on my hundred things. Which should only take about three weeks and forty thousand words to finish. We old folks tend to ramble on and on, you know.
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