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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
With 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.)
Permalink | 4 CommentsFirst I write it on the walls in crayon; then I take my meds and type it in for you!
So, I had a plan in mind for this entry, and I may even get to it at the end, but I have to share something with you.
(‘Look, Martha; he’s changin’ the subject before he even starts now! Back in the old country, we’d call him a mo-ron.’ ‘
Shut up, Grandpa.’)
No, that’s not what I want to share. Frankly, I wish I could take that part back, but the electrons have already been zapped into place, and there it is. Deal. No, this is what I want to share. I got it yesterday from a friend of mine:
Saw this posting and thought you might be interested.
> 4 — Beer Drinkers Needed! Males 22-29 — Earn $75 for 2-hrs
> (Downtown Boston)
>
> Mon Jun 23rd
> Hey Guys! Do you like beer? I mean, do you really like beer?
> XXXXXXXX are currently recruiting young men to participate in a two-hour
> focus group discussion on one of the world’s favorite carbohydrates – beer.
> These round table discussion groups are taking place this coming Monday,
> June 30 in downtown Boston. Participants will receive $75- as a token of
> our appreciation. In addition, a $15-stipend is available for those of you
> needing to park downtown.
>
> As always, not everyone will qualify to take part in this research session.
> There are a few questions we need to ask you to ensure that your
> background and experiences match the requirements of this study.
> (Unfortunately, the questions cannot be e-mailed.)
>
> If you are interested in participating in one of these focus groups,
> please do one of the following:
>
> – Contact XXXXXX toll-free at XXXXXXXXX Ext 7. The best time to reach him
> is after 4:30pm weekdays.
> – OR –
> – Reply to this post with your name and a phone number where you can be
> reached in the evening.
>
> And if any of your buddies think they might be interested as well, we would
> be happy to see if they qualify to participate, so please pass along this
> e-mail to anyone you think might be appropriate.
Brian
Now these are the kinds of emails I appreciate, folks. Sweet, simple, and to the point. And what a point! ‘Please let us give you $90 to talk about beer.’ I mean, I’m gonna be hanging around talking about beer, anyway — bending the ear of any coworker or passerby or fire hydrant that will take the time to listen. And now I can get paid for it? Shweet! A whole new world has opened to me — like the majestic Monarch butterfly, I emerge from my cocoon and spread my wings to the winds of opportunity. Fly! Fly to the beer panel! O fly away!
And it’s downtown, too.
(Sorry, this is Boston — it’s dahn tahhhhhn, for any locals needing translation.)
“I couldn’t make this shit up if I had Robin Williams and Hugh Hefner on acid, working overtime and weekends to concoct ridiculous crap.”
So after getting all squinchy talking about beer for two hours, you can just walk out the door and practically fall into a Irish pub. That’s downtown Boston after 5pm, basically — dozens of people falling into — and later, out of — pubs. It looks like banana peel day at the clown college. It’s beautiful.
But of course, much like Pamela Anderson, it’s a little more complicated and annoying than it seems at first.
(So you’ve seen the latest on her, right? Besides being a cartoonish caricature of a booby blonde, as usual, now she’s got her own… cartoon. Where she plays a booby blonde. Who’s an exotic dancer. Named Striperella. I couldn’t make this shit up if I had Robin Williams and Hugh Hefner on acid, working overtime and weekends to concoct ridiculous crap. Oh, but my favorite part — Pammy demanded that there be absolutely no anima-nudity in the show. She’s got standards, you see — nay, a vision. This has to be a family show… about a super-hero snatch-flasher with lie detector jubblies whose chief crime-fighting weapon involves some sort of thighs-around-the-perp’s-head move she calls the scissor-ella.
(D’ya think she came up with that one all my her iddle self?)
So, anyway, Pam’s willing to unleash her own plastic protuberences at the drop of a hat, or to sign an autograph, or tip a waiter, or accept an award, etc., but her ‘anime alter ego’ has to keep her slingshot on at all times. Fine. On one condition: if Tommy shows up in that damned cartoon, and starts swingin’ it around all over the place, I’m going back to Scooby Doo. (Mmmmm… Velma….))
Okay, where the hell was I? Oh, yeah — the beer doohickey.
So, there are a couple of issues with this beer summit thing. First, the ‘few questions‘ concern me a bit. I mean, I can answer all the easy beer questions — I know which end of the bottle to open, and which hole of mine to stick it in for best effect (learned that the hard way, let me tell you). Anyway, I think I’ve got the basics covered. But their questions seem somehow more sinister — ‘Unfortunately, the questions cannot be e-mailed.‘ What the hell is that? I can’t think of a question that can’t be emailed, or even ‘e-mailed‘. Can you? Are they dirty, steamery questions, maybe?
(‘So if you needed to get a donkey drunk, for… some… reason… which brand would you choose?’)
Or questions of national import, perhaps, that must’nt fall into enemy hands?
(‘We’re thinking of getting al-Qaida hammered, so we can sneak up on them. Which beer do you think goes best with desert lizard and three-year old hummus?’)
Anyway, that’s not the worst part — if I can’t fake my way through a beer test, then what the hell did my nine years of college get me? No, the absolute worst part is this:
I am ineligible to participate.
It pains me to write that, of course. But I’m afraid I have a disease — a horrible, incurable disease — and its effects exclude me from the target group for this study. That disease, my friends, is the debilitating horror known as: oldness. Damn this infernal monster! See, I’m just a couple of planet rotations past the cutoff date of twenty-nine. So no matter how much I like beer, and how eloquently I can wax on about dewy hops and sun-kiss’d malted barley, the Guinness cascade and the perfect pour, the frogs and the High Life and the Swedish Bikini Team… they don’t want me. I’m too old to care about. I should go back and crawl under my shawl and gum my applesauce while the young bucks get to dictate the hot new trends in the brewing industry.
(And is that really what we want? ‘D00dz! How about… pepperoni beer? Or no, no — make little holes in the bottom of the b0ttlez and plug ’em up, so we can sh0tgun right off the six-pack. D00d — that would r0x0r!’)
Anyway, I think I’ve still got something to contribute to the discussion. And I think someone needs to be there to represent my ‘generation’ — someone to offset the script weenies and frat jocks sure to be in attendance. So there’s only one thing left to do — I gotta get a fake ID. One that says I’m 25 or so. Hey, if it worked at 16, it oughta work at 32, right? I just have to go about it a little differently than I did then — I’ll shave right before I go, and wear a baseball cap (backwards, natch) to cover my gray hairs, and I’ll make sure I’ve got my teeth Polydent-ed in tight. And I’ll have to find a dirty old T-shirt to wear. I guess the ‘REM World Tour ’88’ isn’t gonna cut it, huh? Well, I’ll just go buy something and age it… at Lazarus, or Chess King or somewhere, whereever the cool kids are shopping these days.
So, if you’re over 30 and still enjoy beer, even if it’s through a straw or an IV — wish me luck. The fate of our beer-swilling experience depends on it. And to the rest of you out there — stay the hell out of Boston on the 30th, dammit. I’ve got a great idea for a pepperoni beer, and I don’t want any of you stealin’ it…
Permalink | No CommentsOh, yeah? Well, my blog can kick your blog’s ass!
So today I got laid off, and it wasn’t quite what I expected. First of all, the terminology’s all wrong — in the end, I neither got laid, nor did I get off. Which was pretty disappointing, of course. I even went into my exit interview with a big peacock feather and a bottle of baby oil, but I got nothin’. Bupkis.
(Which is probably for the best — the guy processing me looked pretty stubbly, when you got right down to it. So I’m kinda glad we didn’t, um, you know, ‘get right down to it’.)
Anyway, it was all cool. Certainly, I wasn’t afforded the luxury of a golden parachute, but neither did the process feel like a big golden shower.
(Couldn’t talk ’em into that, either. Tough crowd this afternoon.)
Okay. Running screaming away from that image…
So, anyway, no golden parachute. Probably not a silver parachute, either. More like a plaid tablecloth that I can hold by the corners, and try not to look down. More than a firm handshake and a bag of doughnuts, certainly, but I’m not gonna be buying the Elephant Man’s bones or anything to celebrate, either. A fair deal for a fair job. (As opposed to others I know who’ve gotten fairly jobbed and just had to deal.) But the main thing, as it usually is on these occasions, is that most of us getting boot applied to ass today could see it looming before it actually connected. Our company — well, now, their company, those bastiges! — actually handled it fairly well, if you ask me. And you didn’t. No one did. Everyone knows better by know. But I’m gonna tell you anyway, so — nyah!
“The lookout sounds the alert, shrill and panicked: ‘Boss!! Bossss!! BOSSSS!!!'”
As I was saying, the higher-up muckety-mucks did a pretty decent job of making the situation pretty obvious, and easing us lower-down lackey-lacks into enlightenment. If you’re familiar with the old joke, then you’ll understand when I say that they essentially told us that the dog was on the roof, and then sick, and then dead before they broke the news about Mother to us. And if you’re not familiar with the joke, then none of that made any damned sense to you, you poor, pitiful soul. Oh, and I also just ruined a joke for you that you’ll probably hear sometime in the future. You can thank me later, really.
Of course, the one thing that we weren’t told by the powers-that-boot was the actual date on which our desks would be emptied out the window.
(I kid, I kid. This particular multinational concern has a bit of class. We weren’t even summarily escorted from the building. Well, okay, I was, but only after I got a little overzealous with the baby oil while the outplacement services girl was trying to give me her business card.)
(Hey, while we’re here — is there any other word in the English vernacular that becomes incoherent monkey babble when you remove its ‘-ment’? How in the rosy Hell do you ‘outplace‘ something? I mean, who uses that word? Outplace. ‘So sorry, old chap, but we have to outplace you now.’ Or, ‘If this keeps up, there’s going to be some serious outplacery around here!’ ‘Mildred’s been very upset about all of the outplacitatious behavior around the office lately.’ Who makes this shit up? And can I have the job? (No, really — I could kinda use the cash right now to patch up this tablecloth I’m dangling from…))
Now, where was I? Ah, yes — keeping the big You Ain’t Got to Go Home, But You Got to Get On Up Outta Here date a secret.
So, from what I’m told, this is common practice. And ‘Why is that?’, you may be asking. (Of course, for all I know, you’re asking, ‘What makes you think I care?’ Or, ‘Just where is Funkytown, anyway?’ Or even, ‘Who the hell is Mildred?’ These are good questions, important questions all… but I’m not answering those questions now. Those questions will have to take a number and sit among the lepers and screaming children a la at the DMV, and wait their turns. Right now, I’m answering this question:)
‘Why is that?’ (As if any of us even remembers by now what that is anymore…)
Anyway, the reason — so these giants of business and industry tell me — the reason that you cannot tell people the date on which they’re to be fired is that if you tell them exactly when they’re going to be canned, then they will simply render themselves scarce at the given time, making it much, much harder to actually perform the scheduled canning. It seems a bit daft to me, frankly — sort of an ‘if I can’t see you, you can’t fire me‘ proposition that, in the final analysis, turns out to be horribly misguided and non-truthy. But it does smack a bit of Darwinism, doesn’t it?
<David Attenborough voiceover>
Behold. These noble, majestic beasts are employee birds. They’re seen here relaxing in their natural habitat, known locally as the cubicle farm. They seem contented enough, pecking here at a keyboard, there at a coffee mug. Gentle creatures of the great Office Plains.
But danger is lurking. A fearsome predator is approaching the flock, and these defenseless, flightless creatures will have to call upon all of their wits and instincts for survival. Look — just there! An elevator opens and belches forth an employee hawk, the scourge of the humble employee bird. They’ve not yet picked up his scent — wait! Now! Yes — all activity stops as they sense the hawk’s presence. The lookout sounds the alert, shrill and panicked: ‘Boss!! Bossss!! BOSSSS!!!’
The employee birds scatter, this way and that, abandoning cubes and desks for the safety of the nearest fire escape. Fascinating! Pens and papers fly as the birds skitter to and fro, with a single chance for survival — escape the boss-bird without locking eyes with this most dangerous of foes. And just that quickly, the office is emptied. It appears as though the flock has been fortunate this time — hold on! No! Here’s a straggler, just stepping out of the rest room!
Oh, rotten luck for this poor creature as he turns the corner and runs right into the clutches of the enemy. He’s struggling, of course, but it’s all over now. Yes, the hawk has his prey in his hypnotizing gaze, and the death throes have begun. Now the pink slip is finally delivered, and it’s off to see the HR representative, as the circle of life marches on…
</David Attenborough voiceover>
So maybe today’s way is better, I don’t know. I’m still not sure that most rational people would consider the attendance equivalent of ‘La la la la la. La la la la la…’ to be an effective path to job security, but then this whole sentence really depends on ‘most rational people’ and ‘most people’ being fairly similar in scope, doesn’t it? Disprove that notion (with, say, a trip to your friendly local shopping mall), and the whole thing crumbles like a house of Toll House cookies. Which leaves us with the alternative — do your best to let folks know that something wicked this way comes.
(Or don’t, if you think you’ll still be able to sleep at night, you spineless weenie…. yep, redundant, I know. Weenies have no spines; let it go.)
But under no circumstances should you tell them when the evil will arrive, or from what direction. Which will leave them jumpy and irritable, which is exactly the state you want someone to be in as you’re trying to dropkick them past the front gates, of course.
So you lose the element of surprise (‘Boo! You’re fired!’), which will likely prevent the downsizee from going postal on that day; but you’re then running the risk that s/he is going to lose a lugnut and let loose with a Luger on pretty much any day leading up to the big one. I suppose it’s a wash. It’s Chinese water torture versus taking a Band-Aid right off(!) in one motion. Matter of taste, really, though neither is exactly Beluga, if you catch my drifticles.
Anyway, I guess that about wraps it up for that. I had a good run, some good fun, and a cinnamon bun.
(Which wasn’t good, so I’m not sure why I mentioned it. Why do people still insist on frosting perfectly good cinnamon buns with that pale, pasty orange Jello-flavored icing, anyway? It looks a lot like regular, old-fashioned good old American white icing (which is just unadulterated sugar, the way Nature intended), but then it’s just vile. Viiiiiile. Heinous, even. It tastes more like cheese than orange, for one thing. No, not even cheese — it tastes like cardboard that was once rubbed against cheese, maybe, but real cheese-taste is way too good to describe this dreck.)
I’m sorry. I don’t know where the hell that came from. I can’t even remember the last time I had a cinnamon bun. (Which is that damned icing’s fault, but I don’t know why that got all de-repressed and wiggly now. I’ll try to control myself in future…)
So. In conclusion (oh, for the love of Hilda, please let that be true…), life goes on. My number was up, and I got jobbed. Or rather, de-jobbed. Obviously. But I did have a good run. I survived as many euphemisms as I could — reshaping, restructuring, even the ever-popular downsizing. Just to be felled by desperate massive layoff measures. What are ya gonna do? Move on. Onward and upward. Buy a suit, and find another flock to hang with. Hey, I think I’ll take my baby oil to the entry interviews. And this time, I’m not taking ‘Ewwwww!!!’ for an answer!
Permalink | No CommentsIf you can’t find this blog in the dark, then you’ve got no business looking for it in the first place.
Just a quick note this time (hopefully) to commemorate this blog’s first Googling.
(If you co-memorate something by yourself, by the way, will you really remember it? And do you really want to get together with folks to co-miserate? It sounds dreadful. When you co-mend someone, are they really fixed? And why isn’t it called the co-missionary position, if you can’t get into it by yourself? Enquiring minds are mildly curious!)
Yeeeees, well. Charging forward, then.
Anyway, I checked this morning and ‘wherethehellwasi‘ now returns a site — this site! — in Google searches.
(It didn’t last night, nor yesterday afternoon, or morning, or the day before, or the day before that. I’m tellin’ ya, I tried. Over and over, like some demented kid goin’ to DisneyLand — ‘Is it there yet? Is it there yet? Is it there yet?’ I walked around for four friggin’ days muttering ‘Google me, Google me, Google me…’ under my breath. My wife gave me aspirin; the dog started running away from me. It was awful. The guys at the office rented a stripper to try and help out, but she told them that ‘Googling’ would be two hundred extra, so they cleaned her up and walked her home.)
So now, I’ve got the double whammy. Not only can I make myself giggle till I pee writing this crap (and I seem to be the only one doing so, at this point), but now I can spend what free time I have left over trying to Googlewhack myself. Which, oddly enough, involves neither a tub of Vaseline nor ‘Juggies’ of any kind. No. Though maybe it should, just a little. But… no. No, for those of you unfamiliar with Googlewhacking, here’s a whole site dedicated to the practice.
(Aw, my first embedded link-out. *sniff* My blog is growing up so fast! It’s my special blog!)
What was I saying? Oh, right, Googlewhacking myself. Of course.
“The guys at the office rented a stripper to try and help out, but she told them that ‘Googling’ would be two hundred extra, so they cleaned her up and walked her home.”
So, in a nutshell, Googlewhacking is trying to find two words that return exactly one result (One shall be the number of pages returned, and the number of pages returned shall be one!) when fed through the Googlehopper into the search bin. So the words should be largely — nay, nearly completely — incompatible, and to be a really successful Googlewhacker, you actually need to think like the poor sods who have actually managed to plop both words on the same web page. Alcohol helps the thought process along, though I think a couple of shots of antifreeze would better approximate the scrambled brains responsible for some of these combos. I’d give you some examples, but that would defeat the purpose, of course. If I write them here, and Google re-indexes me, then bam — now the combo isn’t a Googlewhack anymore, and the person who found it comes and gives me a big flaming noogie. And frankly, I don’t want that. My eyebrows still haven’t grown back from the last time. So you’ll just have to go see for yourself.
In the meantime, though, I can try it with this page, and that makes me Happy™. There’s some weird shit happenin’ on this page, and I’m determined to find a Googlewhack here — after the fact, of course, without meaning to write one as I go along.
(Try it yourself — play along at home. Left foot on red, right hand on blue; sink my Battleships, baby.)
I’ve tried a few combos, but I haven’t found that magical Googlebusting pair yet. Of course, bringing back other sites with the same brain-jacked word pairings is also a good way to prove to myself that I’m not the most fucked-up puppy out there in the kennel. Not quite, anyway. Some of these guys are just creepy. Here, check it out yourself — here’s a list of some things I’ve tried so far:
Google’s only indexed through June 20th entries, so there’s plenty more nonsense for me to sift through for goodies as soon as the site goes back through the Googlethresher.
(And if there’s one thing that gets me all slicked up and watery, it’s siftin’ for goodies. How’s that for a Big Wall moment, for those of you who’ve been following from the start?)
In the meantime, I’ve got to find a way to ‘accidentally’ get words like sanctimonious and patisserie in here. (Hey, that was easy!)
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I’m no fan of grocery stores.
(Actually, I typo’d that the first time and wrote ‘grovery stores’, which would’ve made the sentence a lie, a damned lie, and perhaps even a statistic. I’ve honestly never been to a Grover-y Store, but I imagine it’d be pretty cool as long as that damned Strangle-Me-Elmo bitch wasn’t there, too. Shouldn’t Oscar have been all up in his bidness by now? Somebody needs to stick their hand wayyyy up in that little red pecker’s neck and turn him inside out already. He’s like a little sunburned Pillsbury Dough Boy — all ‘Hoo hoo!’ and ‘Ha hah!’ But I digress…)
Anyhoo — grovery grocery stores. My typing is not what it used to be (three hours ago, even). As much as I hate to harp on a theme twice in one day, what with the foody thing I wrote earlier, grocery stores are on my mind, so that’s where we’re shovin’ off from, mateys. We’ll see what patch of jagged rocks we crash on when we get there.
(So, back to ‘foody’ for a tick. If I’ve got this right — and I’m not botherin’ to look it up, so presume that I do — then ‘foody’ is the quality of being food, or food-like. But ‘foodie’, on the other hand, is some flamboyant character who wears ruffles and scarves and affects some sort of quasi-European accent, if s/he doesn’t own one already. Oh, and likes food, yes. Definitely the food thing; that’s part of the whole package. Very important, no doubt.
“It’s strong enough for a man, but shaved into a butter sauce, it makes a nice couscous alternative.”
But I like the pattern — ‘-y’ means you are like something, but ‘-ie’ means you are a fan of it. Foody. Foodie. Cool! But I think we should get more words in on this. There are lots of words out there that aren’t quite doing it right. Like crappy and crappie. Okay, so crappie’s a fish, and I suppose fish do like to poop, and eat it, and spend their lives swimming in the stuff, so maybe that’s not the best example. But how about ‘sleepie’? How long do we have to wait to get that approved? Or ‘beerie’? Now there’s a word that needs a good home. Where are the wordsmiths when we need ’em, huh? ‘Beefie’. I’m just pullin’ ’em outta the air here; how hard can it be? Or ‘sexie’. Do I have to do everybody’s job around here?)
So. Where the hell was I? Grocery stores. All righty.
Yeah, so grocery stores and I have never really gotten along. I’m not sure why; all it has is food, and I like food. I eat it almost every day, sometimes two or three times.
(Is that wrong?)
But it’s just such a hassle to go to the store, and then find a cart, and walk down the aisles, and kick that old lady’s ass who also wants the last gallon of skim milk. And Jehovah help me if I’ve been given a list of some sort as a guide. Now, if I wrote the list myself, then it’s cool — I know what the hell I meant when I wrote it, and there’s only one kind of Chee-tos to begin with, so I’m on top of it.
But if my wife (or any other sane person) actually hands me a pre-made list? Well, these days I just save time and start bleeding from the ears right there on the spot. No need to go through the whole process again. It’s impossible to shop from someone else’s list — absolutely non-doable. Like a nun, it can’t be done. Take spinach, for instance.
(No, really, take it far away to some Fourth World country and burn it. And then bury it, piss on the grave, dig it up, yell at it, and throw it back in.)
Anyway — let’s say I’m sent to the store for the usual suspects — pomegranates, cod liver oil, utility shears, unagi… you know, the staples of everyday living. So, now let’s say I see spinach on the list, down there between the ostrich eggs and the Gold Bond. Well, what the hell do I do then? There’s fresh spinach, and leafy spinach, and frozen spinach, and spinach dips, and cans of spinach and spinach soup and spinach ice cream and spinach juice and spinach pasta and spinach waffles, and how am I supposed to know what ‘spinach’ means? Or ‘navel oranges’, for that matter? Or ’12 oz. can of Campbell’s tomato soup’? I’m just one man, for cryin’ out loud! So I play it safe — I just buy one of any product that could conceivably be referred to as the item that’s on my list. Or rhymes with it, or starts with the same letter. Or has a clown on the box. So I come home with three thousand dollars’ worth of crap that nobody wants, and suddenly Saturday afternoon is gone, and sometimes Sunday morning, too. Where’s the fun in that?
(I mean, if I’m gonna spend my whole weekend in a place where I’m expected to squeeze the occasional melon, then there at least ought to be some music and dancing and fireman’s poles around. Is that really asking for too much?)
What I really miss is this whole free-delivery Internet grocer thingamabob. That shit was cool! You sit at your computer — where you’re gonna end up, anyway — and click on your colas (or sodas, or pops, or Cokes, or fizzies, or whatever the hell you happen to call it in your neck of the planet), and your frozen microwave burritos, and your Ho-Ho’s, and then you hit send, and a few hours later some friendly dude who won’t let you tip him shows up at your door with a bunch of someone else’s groceries. It was like the Christmas present you always get from that senile aunt you have that lives far away somewhere — you never quite knew what you were gonna get, but it sure as hell wasn’t gonna be what you asked for. But it’d be delivered right to your door, you’d at least get it in the month or so after you expected it, and you could probably eat it if you got desperate enough. So we ended up with a lot of other people’s Brussels sprouts, and pickle relish, and Secret roll-on antiperspirant deodorant (which, incidentally, ended up being the best tasting of the three. It’s strong enough for a man, but shaved into a butter sauce, it makes a nice couscous alternative.) But sadly, all of the online grocers around here started charging a fee for the privilege of having your menu scrambled into a state of higgledy-piggledy by their parsimonious produce packers, so we moved on.
I suppose we’re better off, in the end. Now we get just the little packets of carcinogens and acrylamide that we want, not some batch of tofu crap ordered by the health goobers next door. Of course, now we have to look the cashier in the eye as Twinkie after Twinkie slides across the pricer and down the chute, like some hedonistic wet-dream waterslide. But my wife tends to take care of that. She makes the lists, you see — well, she has to. I’m not allowed near the kitchen anymore, since the… unpleasantness. (I still say that dogs can regrow toenails, but we’ll find out for sure in a couple more weeks. Maybe if they come back, the dog will stop looking at me like that all the time.) So I’m allowed to get my sippy cup out of the fridge, but for anything else, I need oven mitts and adult supervision.
(The former of which make it much harder to unroll my Ho-Ho’s as I eat them, I have to admit… and no, ‘unrolling my Ho-Ho’s’ is not a euphemism. Well, it will be now, but it wasn’t when I wrote it. Fun!)
So that’s that. Actually, my wife’s at the store tonight, and I think I hear her coming back now, with her grocery bags full of yummy goodness (again, not a euphemism). I’d better go find my wallet (unlike the lackeys from the store who used to deliver, she happily accepts tips, and happily kicks me in the shins if I don’t pony up). Then I’ll strap on my oven mitts and head downstairs to help. I just hope she didn’t get spinach waffles again…
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