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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
A blog for all of your 2000 parts!
How’s about we try something a little different this time?
(No, really, c’mon — it’ll be fun. Okay, fine, I promise you won’t have to dress up like Little Bo Peep again. And no, I won’t blindfold you and make you smell things. What? No, it doesn’t involve whipped cream. Or honey. Or kielbasa.
(Not any more, anyway…)
No, look, it’s just a little good, clean fun, all right? For once. So just hear me out, and see what you think, and then you can decide whether you like it or not. Okay? There’s nothing sick or kinky about it; it’s just a simple party game that you can play with friends, and it doesn’t involve anything more than made-up words and maybe a couple of giggling fits. Well, a little beer helps, to lube up the old brain, but that’s it. There’s no stripping, or licking, or grinding, or spewing of any kind involved, all right? Just a harmless little game, so get over it, okay? Good. Now go put on these nipple clamps, so we can get started…)
“They may be able to handle vice presidential duties at a major corporation while in their sorry sotted condition, but for this game, they’re just so many useless piles of flesh.”
So here’s how it works. Actually, let me first offer up the blog equivalent of ‘Stop me if you’ve heard this one before’. See, I was introduced to this game almost ten years ago, and so I suspect that there are many others by now who’ve been exposed to it (or have exposed themselves to it, or even to the other people playing it — sadly, I don’t get invited to those sorts of parties any more…). Anyway, I whipped up a batch of web searches for the type of thing I’m about to describe, and came up with only one site, so maybe it’s still an underground type of thing. Or maybe I don’t know how to search correctly, like 98% or so of the web weenies out there. Or maybe this is just a stupid game, and it’s not worth all the damned energy and attention I’m now giving it. No matter, me pretties — we’ll soldier on, regardless.
With that said, here’s a cute little exercise that you can snicker about with your friends.
(And really, isn’t that infinitely better than being snickered at by someone and their friends while you’re trying to exercise? Or do yoga? Or ‘sculpt’ some part of your anatomy? Sadly, I’m not allowed in those sorts of gyms anymore…)
Anyway, the goal of the game is to come up with the best (read: rip-roarin’ rib-ticklin’est) nonsensical name for a car that doesn’t actually exist yet. Play an automotive advertising executive for a day!
(Just remember to take a long, disinfecting shower afterward. Tomato sauce helps, too, if you’ve done a particularly realistic job of role-playing, and are having trouble purging the stench.)
So there really aren’t any rules to this game, per se, at least not as I’ve played it. It doesn’t even really have a name, come to think of it, though I’ll see if I can materialize one by the time I’m done here. The only object is to formulate clever fake names, so it helps if you have four or more people to feed off each others ideas. Obviously, you’re gonna want plenty of beer as well, or an alternative liver-busting libation of your choice.
Also, as far as I know, there aren’t any winners or losers in this game (though as we used to tell ourselves around the campfire, ‘We’re all losers here’). Rather, it’s mainly a way to exercise your brain while feeding your buzz on an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon. Or on a Friday night, if you’re the stay-at-home type. Or for that matter, at nine o’clock on Tuesday morning, if you’re the raging alcoholic type, though you may find it difficult to round up fellow players at that hour. Well, players who are capable of sitting upright under their own power, or rubbing enough neurons together to be useful contributors, at least. They may be able to handle vice presidential duties at a major corporation while in their sorry sotted condition, but for this game, they’re just so many useless piles of flesh. Tsk.
There’s no right or wrong way to play this game-that-currently-has-no-name, of course, but I can detail a few common strategies, if you’re interested. Or even if you aren’t; your participation isn’t really required at this stage. Anyway, the naming usually follows along one of these threads:
So that’s about all there is to it, really. You get yourself and a few of your closest amigos two, maybe two-and-a-half, sheets to the wind, and then start trying to come up with a funny name, or preferably with the name that will cause your compatriots to spew beer out their noses and into the pretzel bowl.
(Okay, so I lied earlier — there is a little bit of spewing involved, if you do it right. And aren’t all of the best things in life that way?)
So, assuming this sounds like any fun at all to you (and it does; trust me, I checked), I thought I’d get you started on your journey with a few examples. Now, frankly, I expect you — each and every one of you bright-eyed little dearies — to brainstorm better material than what I’m about to post, for the following reasons:
So, without further ado, I bring you a small sampling of what you might expect if you too become a participant in… (*thinking, thinking*) the… um, the Fahrvegnaming game! (How’s that for a name on the spur of the moment, eh? Yay, me!)
And, ending the list on a high note:
Hey, while we’re at it, here’s the one site that I was able to find in my search for this type of thing. Hers are at least as good as the sad sober specimens I slapped down in this post, but I did the best I could without some heavenly hoppy help. So, that’s what I’ve got — please, feel free to get hammered and come up with better examples, and even post ’em in the comments if you like. Just be sure that you write the best ones down before you start working on that hangover, ‘k? Otherwise, you’ll forget which one it was that made you pee your pants, and brother, that’s just wasting good pee.
As for me, it’s lunchtime now, so I’m gonna sign off, and think about some food. Hey, maybe I’ll head out to grab a bite to eat in my Nissan Gluteus Maxima. (*snicker*) Ah, good times. Good times…
CRAP (see this post for the CRAP 411):
Update on July 5 —
Heard on Car Talk on NPR this morning:
Hee! Oh, what the hell, as long as I’m here:
Okay, I think that’ll hold me for a while.
(And why the hell am I sober again while I’m doing this?! *fume*)
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It’s a cliche around these parts, but I’ll repeat it here, just in case the truism hasn’t seeped into your part of the world quite yet:
Boston drivers are the worst in the world.
Now, I used to make fun of other drivers. I’ve lived in three (count ’em, three — 1, 2, 3) states that border Ohio, and the taxpayers of that fair land are certainly among the most auto-piloting-challenged road retards on the planet. I give them high marks in several important areas — the Blue-Hair Old Fart factor, the Crossing Three Lanes to Make a Left Turn contest, and the Inadvertant Turn Signal Idiocy marathon, to name just a few. Certainly, Ohioans achieve impressive scores in these activities, and frankly, in all of the Drive Like a Lobotomized Chimp Olympics events. These folks are regularly clueless, frequently senile, and often drunk — or seemingly so — and therefore can never be counted out of any of the various competitions sponsored by the Ted Kennedy School of Driving.
“My friend, you put the mo’ in moron. Ku-dos.”
But they’re not the ‘Kings of Kar Abuse’. Nor the ‘Apex of Automotive Asininery’. Nor are they the honorary ‘Vogon Admirals of Vehicular Assault’. Nor even the ‘Primo Pissant Peckers of Pedestrian Plowing’. No, my friends, all of these titles, and many more, belong to the squirrelly driving denizens of the Boston Metro area. Ohio cannot hold a candle to these enraged, ape-like creatures. New Jersey — no chance. Manhattan? The taxis come the closest, but they’re not even in the same league as Boston school buses, much less the cabbies. Los Angeles, perhaps? In terms of pure firepower and homicidal fury, certainly. But for blatant disregard for the life and property of others, as well as ever-climbing heights of incompetent boobery, the drivers of Eastern Massachusetts win, driving-gloved hands down. They even have a name, which I sadly can take no credit for — ‘Masshole drivers’, or simply, ‘Massholes’. So take my word for it, folks — if you see an MA license plate behind you, or swerving wildly in front of you, or careening over the median toward you, then for spoot’s sake, give ’em room! Take an exit, pull over, flip your hazards on — whatever. Just don’t risk being yet another innocent victim when one of these Masstards (okay, I came up with that one… but it’s not nearly as good, is it?) tries to swerve sideways through a red light and fishtail their rusting heap of metal into the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru lane. Better men and women than we have stood in their way, and there are wreaths all along I-95 to prove it.
So why do I tell you this, especially when many of you already know such things?
(Such clever boys and girls you are, too! Living proof that slack-jawed Neanderthals aren’t the only ones who enjoy this site. Bravo!)
Well, I mention it only to preface — and perhaps explain — my vein-popping frustration in trying to get to work today. You see, during my little jaunt to the office this morning, I encountered no less than five — yes, that’s five — utter nincompoops masquerading as automobile drivers (and one pedestrian, just to show that not everyone in the city remembers to extract their head from their ass when they exit the vehicle). Please, if I may, let me give a shout out to my new-found peeps in the ‘hood. So that if you happen to run into one of my new friends, you can give them a hearty kick in the balls, or lack thereof. With love, from me, through you, to them. Nifty. Let’s begin, shall we? The roll call includes:
Anyway, those are the highlights of my odyssey this morning. And lest you think that this was some unique experience, some once-in-a-lifetime gauntlet I happened to fall face-first into, let me just say: no. No, this was pretty typical of a three-mile-or-so drive around Boston, I’m afraid. It’s nowhere near the record for this type of thing. Actually, local legend has it that a few years ago, some guy ran into no less than twenty-six separate and distinct Jell-o-brained jackasses on a single trip to the Boston Market in Somerville. They say that once he got there, he just snapped and went on a rampage, bludgeoning customers with drumsticks and drowning employees in the deep-fryer oil and the tubs of mashed potatoes. Not a pretty sight, to be sure. He finally ended the carmage by impaling himself on a rotisserie skewer and falling into the oven. From what I’m told, if you visit that branch late at night, and you listen really closely, you can still hear his ghost, muttering to himself as he spins his way through eternity: ‘…s’not a friggin’ turn lane… that light was red, dickhead… pick a goddamned lane, buttmunch…‘ You know, if you can believe the stories.
So that’s that, I suppose. There but for the grace of God go I. Who knows what any of us would do if that kind of concentrated nerve-twanging stupidity were funneled down our throat? Best not to risk it — if you live around here, then keep your vehicular excursions as rare and as short as possible. And if you’re visiting Boston, take the trains. They’re cheap, easy to find, and only rarely do they run red lights or try to pass on the right. And finally, if you’re one of those people — one of those belligerent Masshole bastards in need of a good thrashing with a Cluebat — well, Porky, you just watch your ass, and keep your bumpers the hell away from me, got it? ‘Cause I’m still worked up from this morning, and I’ve suddenly got a craving for mashed potatoes.
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I think I coined a phrase today.
Well, okay, that’s currently only true in my demented little world, but that’s simply because I haven’t actually told anyone what the new phrase is, yet. But I’m about to. And you — yes, you, Mrs. Peacock! — can be the first on your block to hear the news and explain it to all of your friends. And other people’s friends, if you want. Hell, tell my friends — I obviously can’t be bothered, or I’d have told someone before now. Clearly, I need to dust off the old priority list and juggle some things around, no?
But I’ll get to that later.
(‘Stop procrastinating’ is deliberately at the very bottom of my priority list, and as long as I can keep it there, then the rest of the list is clearly moot. Or as the manager-drones like to intone, ‘non-actionable’. Weenies.)
Anyway, now I want to tell you about this new thing that I’ve been thinking of all day, so you can drink it up and go pee it into the meme pool.
(I’d do it myself, of course, but I’m banned from entering for a while. Seems the folks running the meme facilities tend to frown on someone floating a Baby Ruth in the pool and yelling, ‘Eww, look! Another Old Navy commercial! Pee–yew!’ So I can still use the meme sauna, and the meme tennis courts, but I’m afraid the meme pool is strictly off limits until the hubbub runs its course.)
Now, where was I? Oh, right. My new phrase.
“These are Things from Whence No Good Can Come. Like a Tom Arnold movie, say, or a gold lame G-string, size XXL.”
So, I was thinking about lose-lose situations this morning. Now normally, I’m a pretty ‘up’ sort of person, but somehow I stumbled into this rather grim topic of thought as I readied myself to face the world. And who can fathom how the newly wakened mind — particularly mine — works in the wee hours after dawn, before it’s been doused with its first dose of caffeine? Anything could have triggered this sad, painful thread about how it is sometimes impossible to win, no matter what option you choose or what course you take. Sometimes you’re just too deep into the muck, and no matter which way you turn, you’re guaranteed to get soiled. Or soil yourself, or both. But who could possibly untangle or interpret the stimuli, and the exact thought process that brought my mind to bear on such a weighty issue? It’s virtually unknowable.
Of course… if I had to guess at when I first started to ponder the vagaries of the no-win situation, I might venture out on a limb and say that it was probably while I was in the kitchen, soon after I got out of bed. With a mouthful of milk. Which came directly from the carton, which in turn was still pressed to my lips.
(Honey, if you’re reading this, I swear that’s the first time — and the last, no question — that I ever, ever drank milk straight from the carton. Truly. Scout’s honor. And I maybe didn’t even do it this time. See, it all depends on what your definition of the word ‘milk‘ is. I suspect this is just a communication breakdown… but we’ll talk about it later, okay? I gotta get back to blogging. Kisses.)
So, anyway, I’m standing there in my Garanimals PJ’s (with the footies, natch), just about to use the full payload of milk in my hopper to wash down a brownie, or whatever I’d just scarfed and called breakfast (hey, what am I, Jack La fuckin’ Lanne? So I had a brownie for breakfast; don’t act like you don’t do it, too…), and that’s when I discover that I’m in a bit of a pickle.
I should mention at this point that I’m horrendously near-sighted, and I didn’t have my contact lenses in yet, which means that I couldn’t really see much of anything more than, oh, maybe six inches in front of my face. But within those six inches, now, I’m the man; like an eagle, I am. Nothing gets past me — nothing. Including, but not limited to, the date on the milk carton that I’d just finished emptying into my gullet.
It took a while for the date to register, of course, and then another chunk of time for my brain to seize onto it, and remember the current date, and manage to compare the two with any degree of accuracy. So several seconds passed with me standing there, looking for all the world like a sleepy Satchmo with his cheeks blown out, trying to play this now-empty milk carton like some back-alley trumpet.
(Well, okay, except that I’m white. And he’s dead, which sucks for everyone. But besides those fussy-ass little details, I looked exactly like what I described. Exactly. Ask anyone.)
In any case, I now wish that I’d enjoyed those few seconds more fully, since those were the last ones I had before it finally clicked into place that I was drinking milk that had expired last Tuesday.
So. Here’s where we come to the lose-lose bit. As often happens in these cases — that is, where there’s absolutely no way out — I suddenly snapped into perfect lucidity. My senses were keen, my mind a steel trap… and my mouth suddenly a haven for millions of bacteria happily swimming in a sea of chunky green milk, where my mind couldn’t reach and my senses didn’t want to. So I was on my own again. In the few remaining heartbeats before instinct took over, I listed the options in my head. None of them were appetizing; I could:
Well, I watch Fear Factor from time to time, so I know the score. You chew little, think less, and swallow fast. You ralph, and you’re out. So I sucked it up, sucked it in, and gulped it down. The brownie that preceded it seemed surprised, but it surprisingly stayed put, at least so far. I’ve got a sandwich and some chicken parmesan sitting on top of the stuff now, so I hope there’s enough weight pressing down to keep it on the inside for a while. No matter what happens next, I’m pretty well assuming that it’s gonna hurt, one way or another, and probably soon. But I think I’d prefer it to keep travelling the same direction, as opposed to making a U-turn somewhere along the old Hershey highway. I didn’t get a good look at it on the way down (gee, ya think?), and I’d sleep much more soundly at night if I can keep it that way.)
So, anyway, that was my frame of mind — and stomach, I suppose — this morning. And the whole rancid experience got me to thinking about how these sorts of things come up in all of our lives, every single day. Horrible, no-good-choice situations, or worse — the actual physical embodiments of no-win-ness. Places, things — even people — that seem to invite disaster and embarrassment at every turn. These are Things from Whence No Good Can Come. Like a Tom Arnold movie, say, or a gold lame G-string, size XXL.
(Which just coincidentally happens to be Tom’s G-string size, as I understand it. In fact, if I remember my Bible correctly, the third sign of the apocalypse calls for old TA to appear in a musical of some sort, wearing only said ballsling and his patented shit-eating grin, and grinding his way through a dance number. Something from ‘Annie‘, if I remember the passage just right, or maybe ‘Annie, Get Your Gun‘; the King James version is a little fuzzy on the details. Oh, but if that’s the worst thing that happens in the movie, then we move on to the next sign right away. But if for some reason Norm McDonald or Pauly Shore makes a cameo appearance, then we’ll apparently have six more weeks of locust plagues before we proceed. So have an umbrella handy, just in case.)
Now. Where the hell was I? Ah, yes, actually getting somewhere near the point. Tally ho, then!
So now I had a problem. Well, other than having just chugged a pint’s worth of milk that could legally marry in some states. Yes, besides that, I had another nagging issue, which was this: it’s fairly easy to identify the items and people that seem to be specifically designed to suck the goodness — the winning — out of life. And yet, one of our damnable human frailties is the inability to actually avoid these potholes and pitfalls at truly crucial times. Something deep in our collective cerebella switches off under pressure, and before you know it, pop! There you are, in a completely unforgiving, unwinnable situation. You find yourself eating blood sausage, maybe, or arguing politics with your boss. Maybe you’re wearing Spandex. Or leg warmers. Or watching the Jenny Jones show. Or — Moses help you — you’re on the Jenny Jones show.
None of these are good, folks. Not one healthy, socially acceptable situation in the lot. And worse, not one of these nightmare scenarios comes with an easily-executable escape plan. Once you’re in, you’re in up to your armpits, and you’ll be lucky to get out without getting a faceful of muck. Or pig lips, in the case of the blood sausage. And the Jenny Jones show, come to think of it, though pig lips are really more Montel‘s oeuvre. (Or do I mean milieu? Je ne parle pas Francais.) Anyway, the point is this: the only way to get out of these painful straits is to not get into them in the first place. And that’s where I think I can make my contribution.
See, I’ve decided that the biggest problem we face is that we don’t have a single term to describe all of these awful people, and places, and things. Even with the warning signs and alarm bells they set off, we don’t know what to call them, and so we walk right into them, over and over again. I’m convinced that the label is the key. I think bees used to be a much bigger problem, for instance, than they are now that we can say, ‘Hey, look out! Bees!‘ Before we had a name for bees, I think people just ran around willy-nilly, trying to catch them or eat them or dance with them, and getting stung in the unholiest of places in the process. After a while, we entered the ‘awarenesss‘ period, where we knew that these little flying needles were trouble, but we didn’t have a name for them. So we had a lot of, ‘Hey! Look out — it’s those flying, sting-y, um, yellow-ish — Ow! Um, winged — Shit! Er — Ouch! Dammit! Hey!‘ And then someone saw the light, invented the name, and today you can walk into any park or garden and yell, ‘Fuck! Bees!‘, and people will scatter like guilty children. These are truly magical times.
So I want to do my part to help, ’cause Lord knows I don’t contribute in any other way to society. Anyway, here’s what I’m thinking — all of these things we’ve talked about, the Things from Whence No Good Can Come, the way they work is not by spewing forth bad vibes and heebie jeebies. No, from my experience, these things tend to suck you in, along with all the goodness they can find. Take Michael Jackson, for instance. Not only is he a flailing psychotic rampage just waiting to happen, but there’s nothing good left for miles around him, either. His kid? Please! His palace / playground? Creepy. And his family? His dad’s a known piece of work, and then you got LaToya, and Janet, and Frito, and Geranium, and whoever the hell the rest of them are… not a normal leaf on the whole damned genealogical tree. it’s like the ‘Crack Whore Players’ production of the Addams Family. It’s a swirling vortex of non-goodness, and it’s exactly this phenomenon that needs a precise, concise name that we can scream to each other to get everyone running the other way.
And that name is: Evil Holes.
That’s what we all see, you see, but never had a name for. It’s the goodness equivalent of a black hole; a space so dense and crawling with evil that no good can escape. Once in its clutches, you’ll be sucked in and hurled through the other side, and you just have to hope it’s a smooth ride, and that nobody ends up puking. An Evil Hole can slurp us up three or four at a time (or in the case of a Ricki Lake Show taping, whole studio audiences in one fell swoop). We have to pass through this ‘awareness‘ phase we’ve been stuck in and graduate to the ‘abject fear‘ stage that Evil Holes properly deserve. Our only protection is a watchful eye, a strong set of lungs, and our newfound moniker for all that would belittle and humiliate us: Evil Holes. So please, folks — the next time you find yourself or a loved one in one of these situations:
sound the alarm. ‘Evil Holes! Evil Holes! Save yourselves, and run! Evil Holes!‘ Don’t allow yourself or your friend to fall too close to the event horizon, or the next choice to make is going to be unpleasant, and squishy. And may involve donkeys.
So remember the name — ‘Evil Holes‘, and don’t be afraid to scream it like a banshee with a beard of bees. You’ll be glad you did, and you may just save a life. Or at least a curdly stomach. I only wish now that I’d thought of all this before I opened the fridge this morning. One of you might’ve spared me a lot of trouble, not to mention a fair amount of stomach lining. Speaking of which, I think I feel the milk calling now. And it’s angry. Eep!
CRAP (see this post for the CRAP 411):
Can someone please explain to me why in the name of Gordon’s Fish Sticks any man would ever — ever — agree to appear on a daytime talk show? Anyone? Hmm? Bueller? No?
I mean, c’mon, folks, I don’t watch that asanine drivel — I truly don’t, and place it above only soap operas and perhaps America’s Funniest Home Videos on my list of Shows Starring People Who Desperately Need Flaming Pokers Shoved Up Their Recta. Really, I feel strongly about this. I do. But even I, in my relative ignorance of these shows, know — just instinctively, in a ‘snow cold’, ‘stove hot’, ‘sex good’ kind of way — that there are only three reasons for a man to be asked to appear on one of these shows:
And that’s it. There are no other options, and none of these is a damned picnic, let me tell you. And yet, these gullible lemming bastards get fed a story — ‘You’re up for Dad of the Year‘, or ‘Your wife wants to renew her vows’, or ‘Montel wants to talk to you about fishing’ — just ridiculous, wholly implausible lies, and these slack-jawed, slope-browed cretins eat it up with fries on the side. And then they actually show up on the set, fer Chrissakes. Look, my dog has an IQ roughly equal to the number of teats she sports, but even she knows when she’s within a mile of the vet’s office, and that it’s a Bad Thing™.
I’m sure that these guys are contractually roped in at some point, but don’t they have to see their fate coming a mile away? How many brain cells could it possibly take — ‘Hmmm. Man come. Man get ridiculed, cry like baby. Next man come, fight with bearded woman, leave with concussion. Next man come in fishnet stockings, cry, get punched by biker, then cry again. Hmmm. Next man — me! Ooh! Me excited, me excited! Gonna tell Montel about favorite bait shop! Fun fun!‘
I don’t know. These guys get what they deserve, I suppose. I just hate to give the women out there just one more reason to point out how goddamned stupid we are sometimes. Especially when the evidence is plopped on national television, to be watched and taped and TiVo’d and beamed to a million little green men out there somewhere. Just imagine how the Alpha Centaurians are gonna react if the first glimse they get of Earth culture is Gummy from the holler tryin’ ta keep his cousin Hattie Mae from his other cousin Elbert, ’cause a whatta ‘I sawed her first’. Lemme tell you, folks, those extraterrestrial bitches’ll tear our ice caps off and shove ’em up our Marianas Trench so fast our Andes’ll spin. They’re not fuckin’ around out there in space, you know.
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I’m not quite sure how I got the way that I am. I mean, I know how I ended up on the planet, of course. I got the ‘birds and bees’ talk, just the same way that most people got it — from a gaggle of 13-year-olds who didn’t know any better than I did at the time, and got most of the important bits about sex horribly, horribly wrong.
(Only a small percentage of folks will want anything — much less something wet and squirmy — stuck into their ear, for instance.)
Of course, it probably wasn’t helpful that I was 24 at the time… maybe I just didn’t understand all their ‘kewl kid’ code, and something got lost in the translation. No matter — I’ve been straightened out, so to speak, and now I’m on the right path. There are very few situations left in which I’m unsure of where to put my wet, squirmy things, and I think that’s solid progress. Solid progress, indeed.
But I’m not sure that’s really what I was talking about. Moving on…
So, I have a pretty good idea of where I started from.
“I think they eventually squirted some WD-40 in there and charged in with a plunger to pry me loose, but I accomplished my mission.”
(And, of course, if there was ever any doubt as to the nature of my initial entry to the world — like if I thought I’d sprouted from seeds or been dropped here by aliens or rogue Scientologists — I only have to ask my mother how many hours of labor she endured for the privilege of having to listen to my ‘smart mouth’ for the rest of her life. It’s somewhere on the order of thirty, though the actual number creeps slowly upward as the years go by, as though it’s a tall fish tale, and I’m the marlin. Or more likely, the largemouth bass. Or crappie.
(Oh, go ahead, say it, ya dildo — ‘The tuna. Charlie the tuna.’ Happy now? Ha-de-fucking-ha.)
So, anyway, it’s pretty clear that I was launched into this world as we all are — with plenty of screaming and sweating and blood. You know, the way rock stars usually end up going out of it. Or like an ER episode.
(Is it just me, by the way, or are the producers of that show just trying to depress the living shit out of the entire country now? I mean, I watched the first couple of seasons, and it was ‘edgy’ and ‘gripping’ and all those other words that Hollywood made up to use in movie reviews, but have you seen this show lately? Now every show is like a frickin’ Shakespearean play — it seems to go on for-ever, it’s filled with language that nobody understands, and everybody dies at the end. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Ming-Na and Maura Tierney are men just dressing up to play their roles.
(For those of you unfamiliar with the customs of Shakespeare’s time, and didn’t at least see Shakespeare in Love, I’m not suggesting that those two lovely — okay, fine, actually fairly hot — ladies aren’t ladies. What I mean is that way back when Shakespeare wrote — in the ’50’s or ’60’s, I think — they wouldn’t let women actually act. On stage, anyway, though they were still allowed to put on their ‘Oh!’ face in the sack, even if the fish didn’t happen to be fryin’ that night. So don’t get upset about the ‘really a man’ thing. They’re not, and I’m not actually saying that they are, okay? Laura Innes — well, the jury’s out. But the others, no. They’re not men. Let it go.))
All right, what the hell was I saying, anyway? Oh right, how I got to approxitudely where I am today.
So, I presume I had a fairly normal childhood. I don’t remember too many haunting traumas… though to be fair, I don’t remember all that much of my childhood at all, so I’m probably repressing a fair amount of nightmarish horror. I fully expect to run into that trigger any day now — a wire hanger, or a hypodermic needle, or a branding iron, maybe — that will send it all flooding back, and I’ll ball up into a fetal position and desperately try to swallow my tongue.
(Oh, don’t look so ashen, people. I’ll recover — a couple of years of electro-therapy and a nice creamy lobotomy, and I’ll be back. Straightjacketed, of course, and typing this crap with my nose from a padded room somewhere, but I’ll be back. Oh, yes. I will be back.)
Anyway, I can’t think of much in my early past that would have made me so cynical. Well, there was the time that my father scarred me for life — literally, and the only scar that I still have — but that’s a story for another time. And he denies actually doing it, so I’m not sure it counts.
(I mean, who you gonna believe? Him, a then-thirtyish father figure, husband and breadwinner for the family? Or a four-or-so-year-old-at-the-time, drooling, snot-nosed kid who doesn’t even know his multiplication tables yet? Still. Anyway, one of these days I’ll let you be the judge, and determine who’s fault it is that I’m so horribly disfigured, even to this day.
(I needed six stitches! Six! And on a four-year-old, isn’t that like half a body? I mean, that’s like sewing an arm back on or something… Six! Drop that jaw, dammit — six!))
Anyway, I don’t remember being particularly smacked down by Fate in my formative years. Oh, there were bad times along with the good, of course. I never got my pony. Or later, my inflatable Tiffany doll. And that kinda sucked.
(Well, the Tiffany doll would’ve, if you could believe the advertising on the box, but apparently we didn’t do that sort of thing in my family. It just gave the neighbors ‘more ammunition’, from what I gathered.)
Oh, and I did briefly live in a disaster magnet — er, trailer park, when I was really, really young, maybe two or three.
I doubt that had much effect, though — I only have one memory of being there, which is getting randomly stung by a wasp while riding down our street on a plastic green caterpillar with wheels. I even saw it coming, too, the little pecker. I was mindin’ my own business, just ridin’ my ‘pillar through the park, when I looked to my left — see, details! Little personal details that give the story authenticity; you don’t get that kind of shit on Slashdot — anyway, I definitely remember it was my left, and I saw this insect flying at me.
Now, I’d never been stung by anything — a bee, a wasp, gambling on cockfights, nothing — so I didn’t actually think about this little bastard having it in for me. I thought it was a fly or a beetle or something, and just sort of watched it fly towards me, blissfully unaware that it might actually zip over and stick its ass in me. I mean, who does that? What experience up to that point in my life could prepare me for something to just mosey up and stick its ass completely inside me, as though it were just saying ‘hello’? Sure, Aunt Gracie used to jam her boobs in my face (or vice versa, I forget), and aptly-named Uncle Willie had his, erm, issues, but nobody ever went around trying to shove their ass physically into my body. No one.
So of course, I was completely taken aback when this wasp — this little bitch-ass insect — just keeps comin’ full-bore towards me, bumps into me, and then just stings the shit out of my arm, without so much as an ‘Excuse me’ or a ‘Hello old chap; it appears as though you could use an arm-assing, and I believe I can help you out.’ Nothing. No warning, no provocation of any kind, just ‘squeak squeak squeak’ on the caterpillar one minute, and then wham!, some bug’s hairy butt inside me the next. To this day, I don’t know what I did to piss him off. Maybe he was aiming for the caterpillar. Maybe he woke up on the wrong side of the hive that day. Or maybe he thought I was looking at him funny.
(I found out a couple of years later that I needed glasses, so in fairness, I probably was peering at him all squinty. But that’s no excuse.)
Anyway, he hit me, and then buzzed off. And my arm hurt, or course. So I cried, naturally. Like a baby. I cried and ran and cried and ran, and abandoned my cater-vehicle where it stood, and ran for the safety of… trailer.
(How’s that for adding insult to injury? Ya get assed in the arm, and then gotta run for yo momma’s and daddy’s trailer… that’s just wrong on so many levels…)
So eventually, I was fine — we iced down my arm, and I stopped blubbering, and even went back to get my caterpillar. With a broom, of course, in case that coward bitch came back for another piece. But he didn’t — I never saw him again. And soon the swelling eased, and we moved to a proper house, and things got pretty normal.
But you know, the more I think about it., maybe that was the turning point in my life. I mean, looking back, I just don’t see how it’s possible to be running, screaming and crying with a freshly-stung, still-assy arm, toward a trailer, ’cause that’s the best option you’ve got, and not believe that the entire universe is lined up against you. There’s nobody on your side in that situation, and even if there’s a mommy on the other side of the double-wide door, those few minutes it takes for your pudgy little feet to pitter-pat all the way back home have got to take a toll. You’re changed forever — in that moment, with tears and snot and sweat running down your face, and the rows of trailers jiggling in your view as you careen past them, you have to see it: the world hates me. There’s no other rational conclusion a two-year-old could come to. After that kind of experience, you know you’re on your own. It’s us versus them, and your only weapon is to ridicule them into submission before somebody comes around and asses you again.
Wow. I’d never realized. Well, thanks for reading, and for letting me pinpoint the moment when the light befell me, and I finally saw this world for the ass-or-be-assed minefield that it truly is. If you’ve never had the sort of life-changing experience that I’ve just described, then consider yourself lucky. You’re still living in the Matrix — your world may be filled with sugar and spice and gumdrop goodness. I envy you your ignorant bliss. ‘Cause I know better — in the real world, people are as likely to ass you as to give you the time of day. And Mothra help you if you squint at ’em the wrong way. But now you’re armed with the knowledge to fight back, to see the true nature of the world around us. I’ve given you the red pill. Take two, and get pissy in the morning. It’s the only defense you’ve got against them. Good luck, stay away from trailer parks (like that oughta be hard), and watch your ass out there. Not to mention the asses of others — that’s the real danger.
Oh, and if you happen to be that wasp that accosted me almost thirty years ago… you’d better be watching your back, bitch. I haven’t forgotten, and I know what you look like. You’d better lay low, or I’ll rip you a new one and break you in half, ya little peckernose. There’s some payback coming, ’cause I finally have someone to blame — you did this to me!
CRAP (see this post for the CRAP 411):
So I can’t be sure exactly how long it took me to ‘shoot through the poop chute’ and into the world (okay, fine, so that’s not entirely anatomically correct…still, you’d have a hard time convincing me that a lot of people out there weren’t born via assholes, given that they’ve grown up to be such impressive representations of the species). Suffice to say that it was long enough to discourage my parents (read: mother) from ever wanting to give the experience another try. Which is just how I wanted it, of course.
See, I was a crafty little fetus, and I knew even then that I didn’t want to have to share my Lincoln Logs with another snotty little brat or brat-ette. I wanted to fly solo, baby. So I dug my stubby little fingers in, and held on for dear pre-life. I lasted more than a day, too, if you can believe the hospital records and the police reports. I think they eventually squirted some WD-40 in there and charged in with a plunger to pry me loose, but I accomplished my mission. And to this day, I haven’t had to share my Lincoln Logs (or Legos, or Etch-a-Sketch) with anyone. Well, okay, truth be told, my wife does Bogart the Silly Putty every once in a while… but after thirty-plus years on the planet, I suppose I have to compromise a little now and then, right?
Permalink | No CommentsBecause it’s the right blog to do. And a tasty way to do it!
Dear sir or madam (but almost overwhelmingly assuredly sir, in this case),
Hello. You don’t know me, but my name is Charlie. I recently started a blog. Or maybe it’s a journal, or even an online diary; I don’t know. Anyway, it’s like a lot of these sorts of things, I suppose. I post entries from time to time, and occasionally people read it. And if they can manage to keep the first paragraph or two down, they might read some more. Pretty standard stuff, I suppose. Hey, I suppose if you’re reading this, then you know a little bit about it, since I’m posting this letter to my site. So you can decide for yourself what it’s all about. But that’s not why I’m writing, exactly.
I’m writing to ask a favor of you.
See, I understand that you’re a porno phreak. (Any non-porno phreaks are phree to read the rest of this — hey, it might even be phunny — but keep in mind that I’m not really talking to you. My intended audience is really the phucked-up nasty horndog I was addressing earlier. And if you happen to be that horndog, then I didn’t really mean that last bit. Nothing personal. Keep reading, please, Mr. Monkeyspanker.)
“You’re a mis-represention artist. A nipple-drawer. A dirty old pixel-jockey.”
Anyway, you’re into porn. Or pr0n, whatever the kids are calling it these days. No matter. And I gather that you’re a bit of a whiz with Photoshop, or something similar. Perhaps you earn extra cash by ‘touching up’ stills of Britney Spears to ‘expose’ her goodies. Maybe you’ve ‘transplanted’ Julia Child’s head onto a hot, oily naked bod for kicks.
(That’s sick, by the way. Nobody wants to see that. People searching for ‘Julia Child’ and ‘breast’ are looking for chicken recipes, not the itchy willies you’re gonna give ’em with pictures like that. But keep reading…)
You’re a mis-represention artist. A nipple-drawer. A dirty old pixel-jockey. Fine. I don’t care. What you do in your spare time to jangle your change is none of my concern.
(Okay, I’m a little concerned about the Julia Child thing, and I would have to draw the line at you morphing the Two Fat Ladies into the Barbi Twins somehow… but I’m going to assume even you aren’t that sick. Plus, I’m desperate.)
I could still use that favor.
See, if you’ve looked around here at all, you’ll see that there’s a conspicuous lack of photos of ‘gonzo racks’. Or ‘sweet ass’. Or ‘money shots’ of any kind. In fact, there are no pictures here at all; it’s a log, mainly, of the asanine shit that runs through my head and out my fingers onto the screen. And while I’ll admit that the occasional gonzo rack might swerve in and out of the traffic buzzing in my cranium, it usually doesn’t associate with anything that I’m actually writing down at the time. Usually. But all rules have exceptions, and that’s where you come in.
You see, a few days ago I launched off on a tangent about Stripperella. As I’m sure you’ve, ahem, gushed over by now, that’s Pamela Anderson’s new cartoon series, in which she plays a stripper-by-night, superhero-by-later-at-night character with all the right, er, moves.
(As an aside, maybe it should be called Pam’s new old cartoon, because if I’m hearing correctly, it’s already been cancelled — the six episodes that were already created may be aired, but then Stripperella’s hanging up the pasties forever.)
Anyway, I didn’t notice anything different around the old web site for a couple of days after the bit I wrote, but then it happened.
They started coming.
This is a new blog, you see — less than two weeks old. Oh, I’ve told a couple of friends about it, but nobody much visits. At least, that was the case, before the entry with Stripperella got indexed by Google, et al. I first noticed on Friday — by noon, more people had visited my humble site than on any day before. By the end of the day, I’d had as many hits as in the entire history — about ten days’ worth — of the site. And why? It was all Stripperella. Well, to be fair, there were a couple of hits that appeared to genuinely belong to folks looking for my particular brand of insanity. And, if I were to be completely honest, just having the character’s name here wouldn’t have caused much of a stir, I suppose, if other posts hadn’t coincidentally contained words like ‘naked’ and ‘topless’ and ‘breast’. So I suppose I am partially to blame, after all. But still.
So here’s the thing. I looked in my site’s logs, and there have now been almost as many people finding my site by searching for ‘Striperella’ (4) or ‘Striperella naked’ (14) or ‘Striperella topless’ (2), etc. than those finding it by actually using a bookmark or hopping here from a more appropriate directory of some kind. And if you’re paying particularly close attention, you’ll notice in those search terms I listed that I actually even misspelled ‘Stripperella’ by accident. So you can imagine the waves of traffic I’d get if I ever actually typed it in correctly. Um, unwanted waves of traffic, of course. Of course. And God forbid that I would inadvertently place ‘Stripperella’ somewhere close to words like ‘topless’, ‘naked’, or ‘breast’. Or in the same sentence, even. That would simply be tragic. Not to mention phrases like ‘gonzo rack’, ‘sweet ass’ or ‘money shot’. It’s just a good thing that I’ve never posted language like that in my blog, let me tell you!
So, to make a long story short, I’d like you to help me reduce all of this inappropriate, unwanted traffic.
(After all, what is there here that some sort of online perv would be interested in? This is a family blog, goddamn it, and I’d rather hump a camel than to have anything change that. Or maybe I just have this camel-humping thing. Not sure.)
What I’d like you to do is this — grab a picture of the ‘real’ Stripperella. Off a web story, from a TV still, I don’t care. Import that puppy into Photoshop or something — whatever it is that you use — and unleash those, ah, puppies, as it were. Strip Stripperella down, and leave not a single fleshy pixel of her animated body clothed. Retouch, morph, unblur, fill — whatever. Ply your craft. Work your magic, baby.
And then, when you’re done, post your anima-Pam creation in all of her unfettered glory. Plaster her on newsgroups and chat sites and search engines across the globe. Meta-tag the fuck out of that thing; make your porny piccy the top hit for ‘Stripperella’ and anything. Search for her and ‘naked’ — it finds you. Her and ‘breast’ — ditto. ‘Toaster’ — bingo. ‘Nuns’ — bam! You get the picture. Aim high — knock Cindy Margolis and Danni Ashe off of their lofty perches. Shoot for the moon, baby. Be all that you can be. And in the process, siphon the porn monkeys away from here, and let us get back to our good, clean fun.
So, that’s my request. Thanks for taking the time to read it, and I hope that you’ll give my proposal some serious thought. You could be famous, you know — ‘The Man Who Stripped Stripperella’. It’s beautiful; I’m teary right now. No, really. And in doing so, you’ll return this site to its peaceful anonymity. Which is all I ever wanted, of course. There’s nothing I hate more than a site engaging in shameless self-promotion of any kind, in some misguided attempt to draw in eyeballs. So just make sure that you use your site when you post announcements like:
Stripperella Completely Naked — Topless, Bottomless, Completely Nude!
Because I wouldn’t do that sort of thing around here. Never.
Thanking you in advance,
Charlie
P.S. This is a little embarrassing, but — now that everyone else is gone, could I actually get that ‘Naughty Julia’s Secret Steamy Recipes‘ URL from you?
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