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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Oh, it’s you again. Well, try to control yourself this time, will you?
Okay, kiddies, here we go. As promised, it’s Oyster Day! All hail Oyster Day! Hope you’re hungry, ’cause you’ve got a lot to get through. So go slip on your ‘fat pants’, unbotton ’em at the top, and sharpen up your shuckers (Why yes, that is a dirty sexual euphemism; thank you for asking!) — we’re goin’ in!
“That and a pocketknife will get you a blowjob.”
Twenty-two ‘oysters’ in all, lovingly prepared and offered up as an open-web response / addendum to the Festival of Clams (or something) featured at Am I Blog Enough for You?. My oysters are similar to clams; some are old saws, while others are reasonably unique. The important thing is to use these phrases in unexpected, and wholly inappropriate ways, usually for the purpose of annoying others. What could be more fun (and filling) than that? So dig in, folks — fill your plate and come back for more. It’s an All-You-Can-Stand Oyster Buffet! Just do try not to fill up on hush puppies, hmmm?
(Hee — I got through the whole intro without calling these ‘pearls of wisdom’ — go, me! It’s my birthday — go me, it’s my birthday. Hey-hey, ho-ho…)
1. “Stop. I’m gonna pee.”
Usage:
a. Used when someone else is trying to be funny, whether they’re succeeding or not.
b. Delivered in a flat, slow deadpan voice for maximum drippy sarcasm.
Example:
1. Person A: “Take my wife. Please! Get it? Please!”
Person B: “Stop. I’m gonna pee. No. Really.”
2. “That and X will get you Y.”
Usage:
a. X and Y are any nouns; for my money, the more unrelated, the better.
b. (Variation of ‘That and a quarter (or dollar) will get you a cup of coffee.”)
Example:
1. Person A: “Hey, I got an email!”
Person B: “That and a pocketknife will get you a blowjob.”
3. “Just like an X.”
Usage:
a. X is any noun referring to a collection of things; “man” or “woman” are preferred.
b. Spoken with great disdain for the subject, no matter the context.
Example:
1. Person A: “My dad’s having a retirement party tomorrow.”
Person B: “Tsk. Just like a man.”
2. Person A: “Look, the sun’s going down.”
Person B: “Humph. Just like a yellow dwarf.”
4. “Well, do what you’re best at.”
Usage:
a. Suitable for most 1st person, declarative statements.
b. Best used when speaker is admitting some sort of error or deficiency.
Example:
1. Person A: “Yuck. I just spilled coffee all over myself.”
Person B: “Well, do what you’re best at.”
5. “As the (ancient) Xs say, …”
Usage:
a. Useful to spice up the most common of sayings.
b. Also useful to misdirect attention from something truly odd or unique.
Example:
1. “As the Lithuanians say, ‘It takes one to know one’.”
2. As the ancient Mesopotamians used to say, ‘My hovercraft is full of eels’.”
6. “Nobody likes you much, do they?”
Usage:
a. Helpful for belittling someone prone to bragging or overt happiness.
b. Usually delivered with a disdainful look, maybe with hands on hips for emphasis.
Example:
1. Person A: “Hey, I got into State U after all!”
Person B: Nobody likes you much, do they?
7. “We, paleface?”
Usage:
a. Suitable for most sentences that begin with “We have to…”
b. Especially humorous when used on spouses.
c. Can also work with ’roundeye?’, ‘whitey?’, etc.
Example:
1. Wife: “We have to take out the garbage tonight.”
Husband: “We, paleface?”
8. “Soon you’ll be in a better place.”
Usage:
a. Suitable to combat / deflect any sort of personal complaint or bitching.
Example:
1. Person A: “Oh, no; I broke a nail.”
Person B: “There, there. Soon you’ll be in a better place.”
9. “When in X, do as the Ys.”
Usage:
a. X and Y are places; again, the more unrelated, the better.
b. (Variation of ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans.”)
c. Usually works best when Y is particularly lengthy.
Example:
1. Person A: “Look, this is a topless beach! Should we go?”
Person B: “Hey, when in the France, do as the Great Barrier Reefers, right?”
10. “When life hands you X, make X ade.”
Usage:
a. X is any noun, with the exception of “lemon”.
b. (Variation of “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”)
c. Also useful: “When life hands you X… wash your damn hands!”
Example:
1. “When life hands you shit, make shit ade.”
2. “When life hands you oozing scabs, make oozing scab ade.”
11. “I’ll bet you do/are/can/would, you little vixen.”
Usage:
a. Used to highlight statements with possible innuendo.
b. Best delivered with a raised eyebrow and suggestive leer.
c. Subject of sentence can be changed from “you” if appropriate.
Example:
1. Person A: “I’m could really go for a Popsicle.”
Person B: “I’ll bet you could, you little vixen.”
2. Person A: “Pork chops are my favorite food.”
Person B: “I’ll just bet they are, you little vixen.”
12. “X monkeys!”
Usage:
a. Results in interjection.
b. Generally preferred that X=bitch, though dick, shit, etc. are acceptable
Example:
1. Yelled after being cut off while driving: “Bitch monkeys!”
2. Muttered after dropping a box: “Aw, fuck monkeys.”
13. “You know, there are places for people like you.”
Usage:
a. Can be used in response to most declarative statements.
b. Usually delivered with a disdainful look, maybe with hands on hips for emphasis.
Example:
1. Person A: “I was reading in the New York Times yesterday…”
Person B: “You know, there are places for people like you.”
14. “And how’s that working out for you?”
Usage:
a. Used in response to declarative statements about personal qualities.
b. Shorter, edgier alternative: “I’m sorry.”
c. Also, “Well, it takes all kinds.”
Example:
1. Person A: “Nice to meet you. I’m Canadian.”
Person B: I see. And how’s that working out for you?”
15. “Well, it’s about damned time!”
Usage:
a. Used in response to declarative statements regarding intentions.
b. Usually delivered with a disdainful look, maybe with hands on hips for emphasis.
Example:
1. Person A: “I’m gonna go get some coffee.”
Person B: “Well, it’s about damned time!”
16. “I have no recollection of that conversation, Senator.”
Usage:
a. Used to be non-cooperative when asked to confirm an event.
b. You may replace ‘that conversation’ with ‘the incident in question’, etc.
Example:
1. Person A: “Hey, remember when we took that trip to Vegas?”
Person B: “I have no recollection of the incident in question, Senator”
2. Person A: “Joe, do you have that five bucks I loaned you?”
Person B: “I have no recollection of any such transaction, Senator.”
17. “Well, if I could do that, I’d never leave the house.”
Usage:
a. Used in response to most any question.
b. Possible sexual innuendo in the question is helpful, but not necessary.
c. When replying to significant other, can use ‘then I wouldn’t need you’ after comma instead.
Example:
1. Person A: “Do you want to go grab some hot dogs?”
Person B: “Well, if I could do that, I’d never leave the house.”
2. Person A: “Honey, would you like to carve the turkey?”
Person B: “Well, if I could do that, I wouldn’t need you, would I?”
18. “I’m sorry. We have to take the contestant’s first answer.”
Usage:
a. Used to taunt someone unable to make up their damned mind.
Example:
1. Person A: “Hey, wanna loan me twenty bucks?”
Person B: [not paying attention] “Hmm? Sure. Wait, what? No, no way, dude.”
Person A: “I’m sorry, we have to take the contestant’s first answer.”
19. “It’s with all of the other ones.”
Usage:
a. Useful for derailing conversations that one is not part of
b. Avoid eye contact while delivering this line
c. Suitable for sentences that begin with “Where is…”
d. In extreme circumstances, one can use “It’s up in ya.”
Example:
1. Person A: “Where is the forecast report you promised me?”
Person B: [not turning around] “It’s with all of the other ones.”
2. Person A: “Where’s Main Street on this map?”
Person B: [not looking at the map] “It’s over there with all of the other ones.”
3. Person A: “Honey, where are my sunglasses?”
Person B: They’re up in ya.
20. “We don’t do that sort of thing around here.”
Usage:
a. Can be used in response to most declarative statements.
b. Can also be used to avoid answering direct questions.
c. Usually delivered with a disdainful look, maybe with hands on hips for emphasis.
Example:
1. Person A: “I’m going to the ballet tonight.”
Person B: “We don’t do that sort of thing around here.”
2. Person A: “Wanna go to the cafeteria for some lunch?”
Person B: “We don’t do that sort of thing around here.”
21. “Grandma did that, and we put her in a home.”
Usage:
a. Can be used in response to most declarative statements.
b. The longer ‘Grandma started doing that, and we had to put her in a home’ is also useful.
c. Usually delivered with a sad, knowing nod.
Example:
1. Person A: “I went to see that new Bruce Willis movie last night.”
Person B: “Yeah. Grandma started doing that, and we put her in a home.”
22. “From Hell’s X, I Y at thee!”
Usage:
a. X is any part of the anatomy; Y is any verb.
b. (Variation of “From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee!”)
Example:
1. “From Hell’s liver, I drink beer at thee!”
2. “From Hell’s pancreas, I waggle my finger at thee!”
And there we go! Oysters all ’round! Enjoy them with some garlic butter and a nice, cold brewski. Oh, before I forget, in maintaining the format of the original clam post, I owe you three (count ’em, 1, 2, 3) more gems that you can try at home. Amaze your friends, be the life of the party, etc. So here are three (En Espanol, por favor — uno, dos, tres. Gracias.) bonus oysters. Or as the Sumerian plainsmen call them: dessert.
1. Mock concern. This is always very annoying for the subject of “concern”. Should be delivered with a grave face, maybe with hand on the poor bastard’s shoulder as you console him/her about breaking a nail, or missing a train, etc.
Example: “You’ve been hurt before, you poor dear. I can see that.”
2. Over-explaining an old proverb or common saying. Again, extremely annoying for everyone but the speaker. Should be delivered pedantically, over-the-top, as though talking to a mentally deficient two-year-old.
Example: “You gotta put the biscuit. In the basket. In it. In.”
3. Horror out of context or proportion. This is a good way to console yourself when you break a nail, or miss a train, etc., and there’s no one around to mock you (see #1 above).
Example: “Oh, fingernail! Why hast thou forsaken me?”
So that’s it. I hope you’ve enjoyed this cornucopia of fruits de mer. I know I have. And now you know all that I know. (And hopefully much, much more. For your sakes, I pray that’s true.) So go forth, spread the word… and the ‘bitch monkeys’, and the ‘paleface’s, and the ‘little vixen’s. You have an important responsibility; you now have the power to annoy and cajole. Use it wisely. Life has just handed you oysters, my friends, and clams as well. I think you know what to do.
CRAP (see this post for the CRAP 411):
I almost forgot one of my very most favorite annoying phrases. See #11 for usage, as this can be used in exactly the same sorts of situations:
“I bet you say that to all the guys/girls.”
Example:
1. Person A: “Hey, you want some of my pork chop?”
Person B: “Aw, I bet you say that to all the guys.”
Oh, also, I meant to mention that if you’re trying out #16, it’s best to try to sound like Ted Kennedy, or — more recently, Bill Clinton. If you can, of course. It’s not required, but the association will get you that extra little rib-tickle.
Permalink | No CommentsI likes my blogs like I likes my women…
Hi all — I’m a placeholder. Just a placeholder, don’t mind me. I’ll try to stay out of the way.
Anyway, Charlie asked me to step in here and say that he’s sorry to anyone who happened to see the ‘Oysters, Oysters Everywhere’ draft this afternoon. ‘Somehow’ — or so he says — ‘somehow’, the draft got posted before it was anywhere near completion. Charlie blames it on the Blogger interface, which he says may have sprouted brains and posted it without his help. Hurmph. If you ask me, the fault is ultimately evolution’s, who may have gotten ahead of itself and granted Charlie opposable thumbs before he was really able to cope with the responsibility.
“If you ask me, the fault is ultimately evolution’s, who may have gotten ahead of itself and granted Charlie opposable thumbs before he was really able to cope with the responsibility.”
In any case, the oysters will be available soon — just imagine them slow-roasting in a pit somewhere, preparing to regale you with a veritable explosion of culinary delight. Or something. That’s what he told me to tell you, anyway, but I don’t see what oysters or any other food has to do with this crap… Who writes this shit?
(Man, I really have to get a better agent… did I type that out loud?)
Anyhow, that’s the story. Charlie’s a goofball, so he deleted the errant post and sent me in here to make excuses for him. Just like a man. Oh, shit, gotta go — he’s coming in now, with his lobster bib and his ‘How About Some Nook for the Cook?’ apron, and he looks pissed. Maybe it was the opposable thumbs bit… I dunno, these blogger types get so touchy. Peace out.
Permalink | No CommentsPutting the ‘more’ in sophomoric for almost ten whole days!
Hey, all. Not a lot of time for chit-chat right now. The ‘rents are coming into town for the weekend, so I’ve gotta get a full night’s rest. Or as close as I can, given that I’m sleeping in what feels like the inside of a microwave. I’m afraid that if the sheets get pulled over our heads, we’ll just inside-out like a popcorn kernel sometime in the night. I worship at the feet of the central air god, but my prayers are left unanswered and sweaty. O great Carrier, why hast thou forsaken me?
Anyway, consider this a maintenance report.
(Hey, I hate doin’ that shit in real life; maybe it’ll be more fun on the blog…)
“I worship at the feet of the central air god, but my prayers are left unanswered and sweaty.”
I finally found that the way to get titles on all of the old posts was to cut all of the existing text, type in a title for the now-blank post, save it, find it again, pull it up and paste the old drivel…. um, that is, the delicious satire and irony, back in and save it again. A painstaking process, to be sure, but rest assured that I’ll spare no expenditure of effort to bring you the finest quality meats and fish available. Or something like that — you know what I mean (you big lug, ya).
So. Now we have titles. Par-tay. Just thought you should know, in case they don’t jump right off the page to grab your attention. I think it adds some class to the old fleabag, don’t you?
Anyway, that’s about it, I suppose. I’ve got a couple of things lined up for the next few posts — how to (not) check your fly, I think, and I want to talk about bitches, sometime. (You can never have too much talk about bitches…) And whatever else falls out of my head and onto my pillow as I sleep at night.
(Well, besides the things I might need to put back in. Or eat. I know, ‘Ewwwww!’)
But, as I’m sure no one else recalls, I did once threaten (sort of) to offer up a list of useful phrases that you might use out there when dealing with the apes and baboons that inhabit our fair cities. You know, to annoy them, or to allow you to go on autopilot for a while, or to piss them off so they go the hell away. Those sorts of things. Really useful conversational English, not the crap they teach you in the TOEFL classes. (Mmmmmmm… tofu..)
But, just like class, I’m gonna need you to do a little homework first. I’ve found that someone out there has made a list of the sorts of things I have in mind, and he calls them clams. Me: useful phrases; him: clams. And of course, the Indians call them maize.
(See, that’s a clam. Aren’t you happy now? You know…)
Anyway, I’ve decided to take his manifesto as a personal challenge, and format my list in just the same way.
(Good thing the bitch-ass-bitch didn’t take any of mine. Luck-y. No, no, read his list — you’ll get it.)
So now you’ll have two of these to steal from, or to compare (and tell me how much better mine is), or to ignore completely. Double the dosage, double the high. Of course, my list will be full of ‘oysters’ rather than ‘clams’, so we’ll see what your palate’s in the mood for when the time comes. So get your bib on, bub, and start singin’ those chanties. We’re goin’ on a seafood run. Arrr!
Permalink | No CommentsHey, I don’t come up with this stuff. I just type what my dog is dictating.
I was at one of my favorite bars the other day. It’s really quite a nice place — they brew their own beer, and serve good food, and they have a deck, and friendly staff, and all the sorts of sunshiny little qualities that go into making it a nice place. But there are a thousand nice places around here, and they’re all pretty much the same, right? I mean, if you go somewhere and someone will give you the opportunity to pour beer down your throat — or better yet, do it for you — then it’s a nice enough place, in my book. They can play Elvis Christmas records on the jukebox, throw Barney on the television, and hook jumper cables to my nipples; I don’t care. As long as they keep slingin’ the swill my way, the place gets my vote.
So, no, the aforementioned amenities are not what makes this place one of my ‘Faboo Faves’. No. And the waitresses hardly ever hook me up to the jumpers, anymore, now that all my hair’s grown back. No, this particular bar holds a special place in my heart (and my liver, and probably parts of my colon by now) mainly because of a particular piece of equipment that they have in the men’s room. I’m not sure what the official name of the thing is (and isn’t that a scary thing to say about something you find in a men’s room?), but I like to call it the ‘I Will Get into Your Pants Tonight, and There’s Not a Damn Thing You Can Do About It‘ machine. Let me elaborate. Please. I insist.
“It’s nice to enjoy longevity, from what I understand, but can you really say you’re enjoying yourself when you’ve looked like a horse-trampled corpse for the past thirty years?”
So essentially, it’s a vending machine. Now, there have been vending machines in bathrooms for the past fifteen years or more. Not full-fledged vending machines, mind you — you’re not gonna walk into the john at a HoJo’s and walk out with a turkey sandwich. Well, okay, at a HoJo’s, you might — but you won’t have gotten it from a machine, I can tell you that. But the discerning male — and probably female, for that matter; I’m afraid I’m not often allowed into the splendor that is the ladies’ room to find out — has for some time been able to walk into a rest room and emerge with a pack of smokes or ‘novelty marital aid’, as it says on the packaging, whether it be a French Tickler or a Belgian Waffler or a Nigerian Nightmare or an Atomic Screaming Melvin.
(Okay, I may have made some of those up… On the other hand, mmmmmm…. waffles…)
(Hey, back to the ladies’ room for just a minute. (And no, I don’t say that to all the girls. Any more.) Anyway, now I have a chance to tell you about my second most favoritest bathroom graffiti moment ever, which tangentially involves a little girls’ room. But no little girls. If there were any little girls involved, then it wouldn’t be a ‘graffiti story’ any more, now would it? Perv.
Anyway, I was in high school, and we were having an ‘annoying little dweeb’ outing to a local eatery of some kind. (And no, at the time, we didn’t call ourselves annoying little dweebs. But we were, anyway. Mercifully, it hit us later in life, when we realized that all pimply, perky, pouty, precocious, poetry-writing, and in countless other ways ‘pre-useful’, teeny-somethings are dweebs, and Dexters, and loserly dorks. So luckily, by the time we realized, we were out of danger.
(By then, we were all cynical groany thirty-somethings who were just as useless, but now without the convenient excuse of youth. Bitches!)
So, to continue, a few of us — two guys and a girl — got to the place early.
(No, it wasn’t a pizza place, either. It was not ‘two guys, a girl, and a pizza place’, no matter how cute you thought that would be. Now shut up and let me tell the goddamned story…)
So we’re there early, and we’d called ahead and reserved a big table for the crowd, so they put us upstairs in a private area.
(See, I told you we were annoying. Don’t you just hate us already?)
So it’s just the three of us up there, and the girl among us needs to powder her nose, so she slips into the facilities.
I should probably pause here to assure any of you out there who are all lubed up at this point that the story does not — repeat, does not — take a Penthouse twist at this point. I know, I know… you got here by searching for ‘French Ticklers’, and I just started a sentence with ‘So it’s just the three of us up there‘, and now there’s a chick in the bathroom and so there must be some action coming. But no. I know how the story ends, and trust me — nothing happens. Okay? No backs get arched, no uglies get bumped, and no freaks get on. None of that — I was there, and it didn’t happen. Serious. So if that’s your game, then you go do what you gotta do — take care of bidness, if you must, and then come back here and we’ll forge ahead. ‘k? ‘k.
So, anyway, she wraps up what she’s doing and comes out, and my friend and I get a peek — just a little peek — of the room behind her. And it’s like a frickin’ fairy tale. Now, we know there’s nobody else in there, so we barge in, and take it all in. It’s breathtaking.
(The room, not the — um, atmosphere, that is. Apparently our friend wasn’t droppin’ number two’s while we were standing by, thank goodness.)
Anyway, it’s a paradise — marble sinks, marble floors, full-length mirrors, carved wood, couches, puffy clouds and deer and chipmunks… I swear to God I saw Tinkerbell flying around. And the place was huge — you could’ve had a World Cup match in there. Unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Well, of course, my buddy and I had to check out the men’s room after that. I mean, how could they possibly top that? Chrome- and silver-plated toilets? Godiva chocolate urinal cakes? Squash courts? A masseuse? We had to know! So we busted through the door with the big ‘M’ on it, and this is the magical grandeur that awaited us:
It could only be described as a bunker. A concrete bunker, maybe 12 x 12 feet, and with no paint and a ‘Yield’ road sign on the far wall. There was a sink, over which hung another sign (‘No Parking’, I think it was), a dingy stall, and two urinals. Over the far urinal hung a glass case, which held a sports page from sometime in the previous month. The paper was yellowed, though whether that was a result of old age or bad aim, I didn’t care to know. Over the pisser closer to us, there was a blackboard and a tiny sliver of chalk.
(Here’s where the graffiti part’s gonna come in… it’s foreshadowing, people. It’s a common literary technique. Really, look it up.)
So, the girls get their log-cabin-away-from-home, like some utopian rendering whisked out of a Massengill commercial and into this restaurant, and what do we menfolk have? A half-heartedly refurbished prison cell with street signs to keep us company, and the following wisdom left to us on the blackboard by previous visitors:
Oh, yeah, you’ll need this before we go on — the local college football coach at the time was Ken Huckaby, who of course, everyone called Huck. The school was Division I-AA and moderately successful at the time, which means that ‘Huck’ was just popular enough to help local hucksters (heh) sell the occasional used car. Oh, and to inspire derogatory graffiti. Which brings us back to our Wall of Shame, which blessed us with the following news flashes:
Now, I don’t know what all of that means, especially the last one — which dogs? And why? Were they Catholic dogs? No one but the author knows for certain, and he apparently ran out of chalk. But I do know this — if I ever go back to that restaurant, I’m pissin’ in the ladies’ room.)
Now, what the hell was I talking about? Ah, yes, the vending apparatus in the bar I was at. The Gettin’ in Your Pants box. It’s all coming back to me now.
So, this marvel of modern technology is a vending machine. A condom dispenser. But this is no ordinary rubber wrangler, no sir. No? No. It’s so much more. For you see, this machine has other wares for sale, as well, and as such, it represents a veritable one-stop shopping center for all of the modern man’s honey-ropin’ needs. Observe. Flanking the pickle-wrappers in this wondrous device are two of Trojans‘ alliterative chums: Tic-Tacs and Tylenol. And past the breath mints, bringing up the rear (so to speak), Pepto-Bismol.
Alone, of course, each of these meek and unassuming household products is of little use. Each has a purpose, to be sure, but mostly, these are the items that get shoved to the back of the medicine cabinet with the floss and the eyebrow wax, and rarely see the light of day. But together — and together in a bar, where at any time an actual woman might be present, single, drinking, and breathing (all at once!) — well, my friends, that’s when these little babies cast aside the geeky glasses and clip-on ties and merge to form an irresistable, unassailable, undefeatable weapon in the war to score some nookie. And for the low, low price of four dollars (a quartet of quarters for each priceless ingredient), you too can have the ace in the hole you’ve been looking for.
Think about it, guys. You storm into the loo with a pocketful of change, and return with four laser-guided missiles ready to shoot down any excuse your lady companion might have. I imagine the conversations go something like this:
She: Oh, you’re back. What took you so long in there?
He: Um, nothing. Just had to see a man about a dog. Or something. Anyway, how ’bout we go lather up the rooster?
She: What?
He: You know — feed the Garden Weasel. Take the O train. No? Hose down the daisies? Nothing? Unroll my Ho-Ho’s?
She: What?
He: Sorry, just trying that last one out. Anyway, dinner’s done — why don’t we just make each other dessert, eh?
She: Wha… oh. Oh! I see… oh, well, I don’t… um, well, I’d love to, really, it’s just that… well…
He: (reaching into pockets) Yeah? C’mon, what is it? I gotcha covered.
She: Well, to be honest, I’ve really got a bit of a headache.
He: (slamming Captain Tylenol on the table) Okay, done. Let’s go.
She: Welllll… you know, the pasta was sort of heavy. I’ve really got a bit of a stomach ache, too.
He: (bringing Dr. Bismol to the rescue) Yeah, I thought you might. All right, can we go now?
She: (thinking hard) Um…uhh… well, you had all that spicy food. I mean, I just don’t think I could, with the garlic breath you must —
He: (shaking the Tic-Tacs at her) Hmmm? You were saying?
She: (really sweating now) Er… well, there’s the matter of… surely you don’t have… no, you couldn’t have protection, too…
He: (slapping his Trojans on the table) Check! And checkmate! Your place or mine, doll?
She: (playing her last card) Bitches! Okay, okay, wait — what kind of condom is that? Is it any good?
He: (without even looking) Why, it’s the very latest model — a Canadian Mounter.
She: (getting up from the table) Shit. Good enough — let’s rock.
And that’s it.
(Thank you, Ridiculous Innuendo Skit Players, thank you. Take a bow. Yes. Thanks.)
Four dollars is all it takes, gents. If you can get to the doorstep, then you can’t lose. Find yourself one of these all-in-one handy-dandy kit dispensers, and you too can close the deal. Or not. I don’t really know. For all I know, you’ll spend your four dollars, go through the drill and get a slap in the face for your troubles.
(Especially if you use the Garden Weasel line, methinks.)
But hey, look on the bright side — you can take the Tylenol to dull the pain of your bruised cheek and battered ego, and some Pepto to ease that empty feeling in your stomach. Dump your Tic-Tacs into your Trojan and throw that party hat onto little Willy Joe, and you’ll at least have a maraca to entertain you for the evening. And that’s worth four bucks right there.
So try it out, and let me know how it goes. Be ready for anything, and use your weapons wisely. And above all, remember: ‘No‘ always means no, but ‘Not tonight, I gotta headache‘ just requires a little ingenuity to fix. Well, that and a change machine.
CRAP (see this post for the CRAP 411): And by ‘Barney’, I mean either the dinosaur or the ‘Miller’; neither one raises my tent in the slightest… though Abe Vigoda is impressive in maintaining his not-dead-ness for so long. That dude’s been around since the Mesozoic Period, so technically he’s even older than the pudgy purple PBS pecker we started off talking about. So kudos to Abe, I guess. It’s nice to enjoy longevity, from what I understand, but can you really say you’re enjoying yourself when you’ve looked like a horse-trampled corpse for the past thirty years?
Permalink | No CommentsWith all these electrons whizzing around all over the place, shouldn’t we have more umbrellas?
Ah yes, a little bathroom humor in the tagline. Me likey. Nothing but highbrow entertainment around here, boys and gals. Let’s make Sir Alec proud!
Okay, so I thought I’d try introducing a new feature for the blog. (It’s all very exciting, I can assure you.) The feature is called ‘Cutting Room Assorted Pieces’. But, as with most things around here, you can just call it CRAP.
(‘Audience members, this is CRAP.’ ‘CRAP, these are the four people who actually read this demented, ah, crap. No offense.’)
So, let me tell you about CRAP, and what CRAP means to me. As the non-acronymized name (hopefully at least vaguely) implies, CRAP will be a small — and sometimes non-existent! — collection of ravings and rantings and thoughts (oh my!) related to the current topic, but that I just couldn’t finagle into the log entry. So, stuff that just wouldn’t fit, or that would’ve spun the entry in another direction (I know, I know — something that would take things off topic? The horror…), or that just wasn’t very good, but now I can’t sleep at night until I get it out of my head. In a word: CRAP.
“Fat yam. Who the hell would read ‘FatYam’? Sounds like some chubby Korean kid no one wants to play with in kindergarten.”
It seems like something that will vary pretty dramatically from day to day, depending on how caffeinated I happen to be at the time, how rich (and creamy, and nougat-covered) the topic of (non-)interest is, and whether I’m capable of making any damned sense. I’ll stick whatever I have, if anything, at the bottom of each post, just to leave a little extra tangy zing of an aftertaste in your mouth. You know, like a high colonic does. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t, I dunno. I’m just flingin’ cats at the wall until something sticks, friends. We’ll see how it goes in the long run.
In the short run, though, there’s this: I figured that before I got too far along — in either the list of topics or my dementia — I should backtrack and purge the remnants from the Story So Far™. So, I’m gonna open up the vaults and dust off the chestnuts that just missed making it into the posts that I’ve written to date. Or the stuff that I thought would get me arrested. Or I’ll make new shit up as I go along — what do you care how it gets there, anyway? Why am I even telling you this? In any case, I’ll list whatever I have below, all jumbled together in its gooey sweet goodness. But be warned, young Jedi — I can guarantee you that this shit will make even less sense than the usual babbling blither. Yes, it’s possible. Trust me.
(Want proof? Spend ten minutes with a Scientologist sometime…)
(Actually, I wanted to index everything by post title to make things a little less schizo, but that didn’t work out. See, to index by titles, you have to have titles. Which I didn’t. So I tried entering some — ‘A Wall to Save Us All’, for instance, for the second-ever post. (Why is it there’s no next-to-first, by the way? ‘Last’ gets a next-to-; who the hell did ‘first’ piss off? Did they just throw ‘last’ a bone ’cause he’s, you know, at the end of the line all the time?) Anyway, I entered the title, and hit ‘Post’. And the BlogGods told me:
Humph. You no good enough for titles. Grocery stores and dog noses and ‘Things Not to Hear’. That no blog, mortal. That a weekend at Grandma’s. No title for you.
And, right on cue, my title did something that looked very much like not showing up. So I edited the post again, and sure enough, no title. I typed it in again; BlogGods say:
Don’t push BlogGods, foolish one. No titles until you write something funny. Like Phyllis Diller. BlogGods like Phyllis Diller. Why can’t you be more like? BlogGods have spoken!
And, again, no title. So, screw it. I’ll drop da beat on the ‘CRAP’ today, but I ain’t down wit da titles. Word. You know — to ya mutha. An’ shit. (How was that? Did I say it right, um, ‘G’? G? G? Hello? Aw, gee…))
(News Flash Update: Apparently throwing in the Phyllis Diller line below was just good enough to redeem me in the eyes of the mighty BlogGods, and I now have titles! So I’m going back now to index all the crap below with said titles. So if you’re reading this post for the first time, then you can disregard the intent of the above few paragraphs. (Feel free, of course, to retain any hilarity that you may have extracted from it. That’s yours to keep, just for listening to our sales pitch today.) And if you’re re-reading this to check for updates like this one — good God, man, get a fuckin’ life!)
So, cruising right along, assuming that there ever will be any new readers, what I’d like to say to them is this: don’t start here. No touchy, soldier boy. If you started with posts later than this one, congratulations! We’re both older than we were when I wrote this post, and at this point, that has to be considered a minor miracle of survival, given what we’re doing with our lives these days. I mean, just look at us! Please!
Anyway, if you started with posts earlier than this one, then some of this — not all, mind you, but a little — might actually make some sense. Or at least sound familiar, though obviously foreign and incomprehensible. Like Spanish to Brazilians, maybe, or plain, simple English to a telemarketer. Or Oprah to men. You get the idea. So, I’m proud to bring you this long-anticipated blog feature debut.
(I’d say eight paragraphs is pretty long, wouldn’t you? I bet it seemed to take an eternity to get here… and man, that’s twenty minutes of your life you’ll never get back, too. Tsk.)
And so, without further ado:
‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you — CRAP.’
(Please do hold your applause until the last item has been read and digested. And no flash photography at any time. Thank you.)
CRAP (A Boston Compendium in Three Acts):
The most annoying thing about the winter weather in Boston is the preponderance of cars manufactured where snow is apparently not an issue. Or heard of. Or even believed in. After three winters here, I’m convinced that BMW engineers regard snow as some sort of Christmas-time fable propogated to scare children, or excite them, or depress them, or something.
(Anything to distract the little piddlers away from the bratwurst and milk left for ‘Santa’.)
Anyway, I’ve yet to see a Boston Beemer do anything even remotely useful in the snow, except serve as a convenient — and utterly effective — barricade against actually driving to work, on those days when one of the bastard BMW owners who park in our lot tries to dig out before I do.
CRAP (A Boston Compendium in Three Acts):
Another odd phenomenon that seems to be fairly well quarantined to the Boston area is the funky way that the towns around here are pronounced. Now I made a resolution, long ago and in a saner time and place, to not question these sorts of things, and just ‘go with the flow’. And to a point, I’m able to make good on the promise I made to myself, lo these many years hence. So I’m proud of myself, and usually partake of a reward when I can just ‘let it go’. So I might award myself a beer, say, or a tasty greasy burger, when I don’t question why New Englanders say ‘Quincy‘ with a ‘z’ sound instead of an ‘s’ type of noise. Or maybe I’ll buy myself a new CD when I can manage to forget that some people here live in Peabody — that’s Pea-body, as in Sherman and Mr. Peabody, if you’re old enough to remember the Way-Back Machine — but they think they live in PiBiDee. Or PeBeDe. Or something. Say the word as fast as you humanly can, and you have the basic idea. It’s as though they regret so much their decision to live there that they feel they have to expel the name like a sneeze or something, just to get it the hell out of their mouths. PiBDee. PBD. P. Poor bastards.
But the one instance of this that I simply can’t get over, no matter how lofty the prize I set for myself, is the mysterious case of the often — but not always! — silent consonants. Follow along; I’ll show you. C’mon, it’ll be fun. Hold my hand; I’ll take you there. Here goes:
So we’ve got Worcester, which becomes (you steak fans out there will get this one), of course, ‘Wooster’. Except that’s not really true. Not even close. I’m simplifying for the sake of clarity, but now let me complicatify for the sake of showing how ridiculous this whole thing really is… you need a frickin’ book on tape to ask for directions in this place, ’cause God help you if you get it wrong around here. They’ll look at you like you just sprouted out of the ground with flippers for arms and big testicle ears. It’s that important, like saying ‘Wooster’ — or heaven forbid, ‘War Chester’, would rip the very fabric of space-time around them.
So, anyway, obviously, it’s not ‘Wooster’. R’s have a very tough time making a living in New England, and this city’s name is no exception. The first ‘r’ gets ignored completely, as we’ve already seen, along with a ‘c’, and an ‘e’ that they dragged screaming along with them. There’s only half the word left, for the love of peanuts, but still they kick that last ‘r’ out. And then, just for laughs, they mangle the ‘o’ into some other kind of whispery vowel sound, much like they bully the ones in PBD.
(See? See all those vowels not in there? There aren’t really vowels per se in New England place names, just the empty spaces between consonants. It’s all very Zen, I’m sure.)
Anyway, this ‘o’ gets off easy compared to some. Ever heard of Leominster? Nope? Me, either, but I sure get ‘Le Minster’ a lot. That poor, sorry ‘o’, just singled out and booted right from the pronunciation. Like so much punctuation. What a waste.
All right, where the hell was I? Ah, Worcester, or thereabouts.
So, anyway, it’s not ‘Wooster’. It ends up being a lot like ‘Wistah’, again at 78 rpm speeds or better. But fine. I can cope with ‘Wistah’, as long as there’s some sort of pattern. Show me the way, and I’m there. So I find that there’s precedence for this letter-wasting chicanery: We’ve also got a Gloucester. And what does it become? ‘Glostah’. Fine. We’re on a roll. Whee-frickin’-hee. Next up: Dorchester. So of course it’s: ‘Dorchester’.
(Mommy.)
Not ‘Distah’ or ‘Dooster’ or ‘Dstr’, like they had me convinced it oughta be. No. ‘Door. Chester.’ That’s where they lose me, and I huddle in a corner until it’s safe to come out. So I gave up (again) a long time ago. Now, I just have this local guy that I’ve hired to do all my pronouncing for me when it comes to places, or people’s names, or Hahvahd Yahd. It’s easier that way, and now people don’t look at me like I’m retahded.
(Yes, that last line is a shameless lift of a punchline from an old Steve Sweeney bit. Nothing in the world would work better there, so that’s the hash I’m slingin’. So sue me. Unless your name is Steve Sweeney, or you are affiliated with the non-plantiff — read that again,
CRAP (“Hey, was that ’30 Seconds to Fame’ just now?”):
Actually, it’s good that we’re kept on our toes by our loved ones (or our lived-with ones, at the very least). These checks and balances are necessary to keep us sane, and whole, and good. (Stay good! Stay good!) Man, if we were left to our own devices, free to wallow unfettered in the filth of the seedy underbelly of cable television, I can’t even begin to think what would become of us. We’d be unshaven, unkempt, illiterate boobs, balancing popcorn kernels on our noses while oohing and aahing at The Osbournes. Or Anna Nicole. Hell, we’d be Anna Nicole — you don’t think she got that way listening to NPR, do you?
CRAP (A Wall to Save Us All):
Don’t forget ‘boinkable’ vs. ‘sleeping’, ‘boinkable’ vs. ‘Jell-o’ and ‘boinkable’ vs. ‘Phyllis Diller’. And great Poseidon save you if you can’t figure out that a sleeping Phyllis Diller is off-limits. Even if she is wearing a Jell-o bikini. *shiver*
CRAP (Boston Bears a Blog):
Of course, my other choice of name for the site, ‘Funnier Than Yo Mamma‘, was absolutely crawling with problems. For one thing, it seems a little unwieldy. Which is sometimes okay — the thing that SCUBA stands for is a mouthful (‘Suffocation Caused by Unreasonable Breathing Anxiety’, I think it is), but they made it work. Scrunch this title down, and what do you have? FTYM. Fat yam. Who the hell would read ‘FatYam’? Sounds like some chubby Korean kid no one wants to play with in kindergarten. Besides, what if it turns out that this isn’t funnier than yo mamma? Or my mamma? Or Mama Cass? Urg. Best to just get offa mommas…. (I’ll leave that one for you to finish. Consider it a gift. I set, you spike. Enjoy.)
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