A Tale of Dignity

There was a clown named Lane who was so good at her profession that she became known as a respected philosopher and theologian. Each evening after her circus performances, she would gather in a tent with a growing band of followers to talk, laugh and tell stories. Her fame spread, as well as her strong effect on her followers, some of whom were seized by the desire to apprentice to her as clowns themselves. These students were so widely sought after that they began to filter forth from the circus trades into unusual professions. Eventually "Lanies" were working as teachers, plumbers, doctors, aerospace engineers, and pizza delivery drivers. A Lanie transformed his once-mediocre law practice and became a nationally prominent trial lawyer, noted for his ability to represent a case for either prosecution or defense. Another Lanie ran a brilliant and successful campaign to be elected a senator of Vermont.

Apart from their preternatural clowning skills and a trademark serious demeanor which alone provoked great laughter and merriment in almost any onlooker, Lanies were known for their nearly supernatural ability to tweak people on the nose. Despite the most stringent security measures, Lanies were generally able, through scheme and strategem and bare-facedness, to slip in and apply a solemn pinch upon the proboscis of most anyone. Presidents and pimps, banking magnates and Special Forces colonels and heads of drug cartels were tweaked on their noses, and many found that it was an experience strenuous to endure.

Some considered it a singular honor to have been thus distinguished, once they had recovered from the occurrence. Others of course did not relish the memory of the experience or its implications. Lanies were sometimes subject to varying acts of retribution, none of which even slowed them down. When publicized, such acts of course served to strengthen general endearment over a period of decades which, historians eventually agreed, were thus imbued with a welcome sense of perspective.

At length Lane lay dying, and chanced to have a most prominent visitor who spoke to her at length, a man of the cloth possessed of definite opinions of the Lanies and of the intent to reacquaint Lane with her Maker's desires for her before being required to explain the matter in person.

When he had finished, he and his retinue turned over their attention to the clown.

Lane took his hand with great care, looked him in the eye for a long moment, and said weakly, "My good sir, I have given my life to prepare for this moment."


And she tweaked his nose, and died.

What I'm Thankful For (sorry it took so long)

So I was thinking of calling this one "Study: Domestic Events Leading Cause of Domestic Violence"
or some such, but because it's Thanksgiving and because I so rarely express true gratitude in my blog posts lately, I now offer an enlightening quote from my workplace a couple of months ago.
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Since every night at work seems to spawn brand new and otherwise inexplicable levels of appreciation for twisted humor, tonight's Thing I Wish Wasn't Quite So Funny At Work occurred when a co-worker remarked conversationally, "I'm gonna be so glad when the baby comes." 

I'm thinking, yeah, what a happy day, sure.

'Cause when my wife's not pregnant, it'll be legal for me to, like, punch her in the face."

OK, well, certainly the normal course of life can lead to a disturbing combination of wishful thinking and felony assault, but yes, apparently some women are not nearly as in touch with their clear-headed side during pregnancy.

I don't recall feeling the need for domestic violence during my wife's pregnancy, but in this and other matters I may be a minority voice. So here's to you, sweetie, for being so wonderfully non-irrational while you were lugging around twenty five pounds of placenta and an additional life inside you.

Q: Why would you want a former Saturday Night Live writer in the U.S. Senate?

A: Gosh, why wouldn't you?*

But since that's an imprecise answer, allow me to elaborate:

http://www.minnpost.com/stories/2009/10/06/12247/senate_passes_franken_amendment_aimed_at_defense_contractors

* Okay, yeah - I can think of at least one reason now.

Old News (but bad news) for the Paranoid Community

I sure do enjoy it when scientists have the courage to stand up and act like regular people, even (and maybe especially) when they employ humor as they would any other useful theoretical construct.

http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet

Top 5 Tips for Getting A+ Certified

1) It should go without saying that you must associate with socially outcast nerds who aren't able to hold a human conversation without referencing a specific operating system.
2) Read your study guide in bed, noting bullet and feature points to your groggy spouse. Bonus if (s)he asks one or more pertinent questions.
3) Try out every example from the book as soon as you read it, using your spouse's PC. Bonus if they're watching you and not visibly apprehensive.
 4) Regale friends and co-workers with little-known minutiae from your study guide, much as you might observe that "Taylor and Taylor look like they use the same hairstylist."
5) Set little reminders on your Palm or Blackberry such as "NTLDR passes hardware info to kernel"
5) Relax in front of the computer-based exam, because you have most likely over-prepared.

Why is that wireless switch the size of a frickin pinhead?

Open letter to those laptop design engineers that keep squeezing the wireless switch into a smaller and smaller footprint on these laptop cases:

For the love of God, stop. You are destroying people's fragile grip on sanity by making it practically impossible to turn on the computer's wireless radio. Not everyone has 20/20, nimble little fingers with nails that come to a needle point, or the patience of a Fransiscan monk. People need to be able to find the bloody switch and turn the thing on, because they're trying to look up their flight information and the taxi to the airport is out front honking, or the baby is puking blue and it's 70 miles to the urgent care clinic, or the file on how to conceal your scent with puma urine is stored somewhere on your Hummer's NAS volume and the cat is already climbing the tree below you and your grip on that shaky branch with your other hand is none too secure, so even if you can find the wireless toggle you're going to have to operate it with your nose, tongue or front tooth.

Please, get a grip and help us out here, you design engineers. Save real estate by making the keyboard smaller or something. Put the wireless switch where we can find it, properly sized for human fingers. Preferably retired people's fingers. Suffering from Parkinson's and ongoing dementia and an overactive bladder. Just think it over please.

If Snark Were Porn...

...this woman's site would have earned enough in subscriptions for her to buy her own island:

http://wonkette.com/411020/

I mean, wow. And the comments are gold - better than the freakin' content. It's like Slashdot, only goal-directed.

I hope this 9-11 coverage is indicative, because I didn't have time to look further. But after skimming the site, don't even think of missing these standout art samples:

http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s129/PeaceNikki72/2064728100_5539fd72ee_b.jpg

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/4946/godblessamurika.jpg

A Disgusting Lack of Material?

You could say that, but you'd be wrong. Sadly, I've been writing lots but it's not quite ready to post. I did notice I've accumulated a number of comics at work that aren't too unfunny. Perhaps they'll make their way on here eventually.

All right, you can tell I'm holding out, and you're right. I've got one that's not really ready, but let's just see if it can flap its leathery little wings and fly ...

The inconvenient thing is that it'll appear above this entry, but it'll be read before this entry - unless I warn you first. Hm, yeah. I'll do that.

(edit edit type type ponder ponder)

Okay, on second thought, neither of the pieces I was considering posting tonight are postable yet, although for different reasons. I'll try to work at least one of those out sometime in the hopefully-not-unreasonably-distant future.

Overheard by a church billboard

Billboard: "Log on now, and download your concerns to God"

Man 1: Actually, they mean UPload.

Man 2: Most people have noticed their service is a lot better for downloading than uploading.

Man 1 (an atheist for years): That's why I got out.

The hottest new sex move for guys

Literally taking a page from a recent Cosmo - OK, several pages - this blog entry proposes to deliver the best new sex move for the average red-blooded American man.

Well, you heard it here gentlemen - your new sure-thing move is this: buy your significant other a subscription to Cosmopolitan magazine. Huh? you're surely saying. How is a magazine devoted to all things at once female AND shallow going to help you get your wick dipped in the near term? Of course the brighter bulbs among you readers already know what I'm talking about. For explanation, I'll just quote a couple of choice bits from the cover of the latest issue, labeled "The Sexy Issue" - and those same bright readers will note that I am not making anything up:

"Get Butt Naked: 50 Things To Do Bare Assed"

"Sex He Craves - We Help You Discover His Most Dirty-licious Fantasies - So You Can Deliver The Naughty Goods"

Now the bulbs are lighting for the rest of you, no? You're surely not imaging things; Cosmopolitan appears to be trying to help us get lucky tonight - and if you've been paying any attention at all, you've noticed they've been at it for years. And, well, even if they've been ineffective in your specific case there's no reason to give up. Maybe your wife, girlfriend, co-worker with benefits or whoever just isn't subscribed yet - or has overlooked the option of reading her copy online, where she'll find "30 Things To Do With A Naked Man - Step 1: Break Out The Blindfold". If she scrolls down the home page she'll also encounter the Sex Position of the Week, which is currently "The Head Game." According to the diagram it'd be mighty hard on the female's neck and spine, but wait, there are accumulated weeks of alternatives: "The Face-to-Face Fandango," "The Love Seat," "The Amazing Butterfly," and "The Spider Web," to name a few, plus "If you like this week's position, try...The Head Over Heels"

It is of course beyond the scope of this blog entry to ask why, how or during what presidential administration this salacious slide into ribaldry might have befallen such a mighty flagship of fashion. My point, for all you mixed metaphor fans, is that there's a silver lining here you can drive a truck through. The "Give A Gift" link is at the bottom of the Cosmo home page, and if you're thinking "tis better to give than receive," methinks, gentlemen, you have surely gotten the message.

We can't be without some relevant links:

"The Cosmo Headline Technique for Blogging Inspiration"
http://www.copyblogger.com/cosmo-headlines/
"Here’s a technique that may work for you, and you’ll owe your success to that bastion of respectable women’s journalism, Cosmopolitan."

A National Women's Studies critique of Cosmopolitan (Abstract)
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/3/4/8/3/p234834_index.html
" Cosmopolitan U.S. is behind the times sexually speaking in that it avoids discussing homosexuality, abortion, and sexually transmitted diseases, while its international counterparts engage openly with these issues."

Say It Ain't So: "Cosmopolitan Magazine not the answer for your sex problems"
"Sometimes the proposals I read lead me so far as to question whether anyone who works for Cosmo has actually had sex."
http://www.uwire.com/Article.aspx?id=3805938

Re: The customer-created product review page

What bloody good are product reviews on the web?

No one posts anything neutral, or indeed helpful. Our household has completely lost faith, interest and the desire to assign sentience to some of these people who write product reviews.

It's like:

Your child will love Froopie - he's your toddler's furry electronic pal!

Review 1: I loved this product. Three weeks after my toddler got this, he got accepted to Harvard Business School and won the Nobel Prize for Literature. And when burglar broke in and tried to steal our stereo, our Froopie gnawed off his feet. I am so going to buy this for my niece!

Review 2: This product is terrible and I would never buy it again, even if it was on sale. When my mom got it for my son Jubal's first birthday, it attacked and put him in the ER with 40 stitches and a broken clavicle. And before that happened I am pretty sure several minor demons came out of it and possessed my hamster and goldfish, because now they won't stop setting parts of the house on fire with their eyes. I wish I kept the receipt for this stupid thing!

Please, if you're reviewing a product on the web, put something in there to indicate that you're aware of the ludricrous quality of every other review before yours - something sardonic and tongue-in-cheek perhaps, and then just keep to the facts. As you can imagine, I'd be more than a little put out if I'd listened to these idiotic review rants and then discovered that I'd just exorcised my hamster for no reason (not that I'm complaining. Me? Never!)

We Have Met The Enemy...

...And He Is Ants!

(Original title: We Have Met The Enemy...And He Has Extremely Plausible Deniability!)

So you're sitting across the table from a guy and talking about a job. You aren't talking about getting the job, but not getting the job is most assuredly on the table. The job isn't exactly challenging, respectable, interesting, or remunerative, but it's a job. It stands shining before you both, clad in shimmering respectability, brilliant most of all in its contrast with that other figure standing before you, Unemployment. This is a drab and sullen shape, not even definably human, with lumpy, unscheduled features, unstructured bones and a hungry, helpless look that makes you clutch at your billfold.

The guy across the table doesn't glance at these figures and neither do you. It's obviously bad luck.

So it's also obvious he sympathizes with you. You'll do. The conversation becomes less goal-directed and you put a question to him about working there. It's great, nice bosses, plenty of upward mobility. You decide leave the guy with his apparently favorable impression of you and ask the rote HR questions of the HR person you've been dealing with, so you thank him for an enjoyable interview.

When the HR person gets to you, she seems distracted, distant, as though worried about something else but hiding it, well as able. You learn a few things and confirm a few things, and she tells you there's no training for at least a couple of weeks, so wait for a phone call and if you're still interested, they'll train.

Perfunctory, desultory, not what you would call laudatory. Your week hasn't precisely been champagne and caviar, and you may be getting the brush off from the local Taco Bell of your profession.

Hm. Yeah, now you REALLY want to come work there. Maybe someday you'll get back to making what you did in my last job, which was, ah, low. Not that you're complaining. You? Never!

You're just concerned that your resume, which suggested that you're overqualified for the job, and your relatively strong interest in getting promoted quickly, cast you as an uninteresting go-getter without soul or indeed any valuable talent other than "job seeker skills." Did this fleeting impression waft in attached to your person like a trail of toilet tissue with the end tucked to your trousers? Whoops, professional foul.

Nope, that didn't happen. So why did you seem to become Somebody Else's Problem during the second conversation?

(A well-dressed couple walking along the road)

MAN: Oh, look honey - it's a person enraged at himself for not being successful at selling out.
WOMAN: Oh dear. Thank goodness I'm not having HIS children.

Then someone else representing another Otherwise Promising Possibility calls back in answer to your three voice mails (she seems to have been on vacation for two of them) and lets you know that if you don't hear something by Wednesday, you won't hear anything.

Ah, yes - here are those hard times again. The ones you have to get through, remembering that you don't have any life insurance to speak of and driving into a bridge abutment wouldn't clarify the murky future that much. Sure, yes, it would address those lying-awake nights, the physical discomfort associated with letting your mind skip barefoot through the field of jagged glass that was your day. But lemme get a little medieval Buddhist/Princess Bride on you, Princess: "Life is pain, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is selling something."

Look on the bright side. Maybe it feels like there's ants crawling on your skin because there's ants crawling on your skin. And on the counter and the cupboards and the floor by the trash can. It's spring and that's what ants do; you're not gonna stop 'em. Environmentally speaking, it's hardly even smart to try.

Oh, you want to persuade 'em to go somewhere else by straightening this place up a bit?

That's worth a go; there might even be a whiff of plausible deniability in it for you afterward.
And your eyes are on your work. You're not even glancing up at those two figures on the road there.

They might even go away for a while.

It tastes as good as it is bad for you.

They deserve to hear it and they probably never will - at least not from me.

So here's to pure wish fulfillment adulterated with a dose of phosphoric sunshine.

Belly up to the Caustic Soda Fountain; the refills are free.