Administrative | Reasonably Ludicrous

I have food poisoning. Which is all well and good except for the fact that it poisons not just my stomach, but my inspiration. As we all know, inspiration is the sous-chef of humor, and when the sous-chef eats a morsel of toxic orange chicken, the kitchen of hilarity is reduced to shambles, forced to serve second-rate blog dishes peppered with metaphoric excuses rather than jokes.

That’s why this week, instead of pulling the usual all-nighter to perfect something hilarious, we’re going to simply do a bit of housekeeping. I apologize for the lack of entertainment, but if you want a villain to blame, choose Panda Express.

Keep in mind that any laughter you may experience during this poison-addled post is purely incidental. However, if you need someone to lie on a couch moaning incessantly, or if by chance you have an excess of saltine crackers and no idea what to do with them, then I’m your man.

Now, onto the housekeeping. Firstly, we’ve won a few more awards over the past weeks, but until recently, I’ve been road tripping, and have had little time to consider addressing them in Thursday posts. Even squeaking out our usual Tuesday affair was a bit of a challenge, but at least I made friends with a lot of hotel night clerks who wondered why I was up until 6 a.m. in their lobbies.

Award Section of Post:

So long Middle School Bowling Champion medal. Move over Little League Sportsmanship trophy. There’s new kids on the block—even if they are inhuman, two-dimensional kids. That’s right; those new virtual children down the street are the Versatile, Liebster, and Kreativ Blog/ger Awards.

I’ve never felt so versatile, having received the award from both the hilarious Live Nerd Repeat and the alliterative Mommy’s Moments. And though I appreciate this symbol of approval, I think there’s been some sort of mistake. Reasonably Ludicrous isn’t particularly versatile. That word brings to mind images of a Swiss Army Knife or an Autobot, or maybe even Sandra Bullock that year she was in The Blind Side and All About Steve.

But so far all of our posts have been some sort of anecdotal story coupled with Sam’s art. Like a palm tree, we haven’t done a lot of branching out.

Then again, maybe I am versatile. I cooked some food one time, and I know how to skimboard. I can take care of cats reasonably well, and I’m pretty good at reading words. Maybe they’re not saying I’m versatile at blogging, but that, because of the stories I’ve told, they can tell I’m a blogger who is versatile: a versatile blogger!

Ah, well, that makes sense. Thanks guys!

As for the Liebster Blog award, Google Translate tells me that “liebster” means “dearest” in German. I guess it’s good to know that Reasonably Ludicrous is someone’s dearest blog, though I’m not sure I trust the superlative nature of this translation. After all, how can we be Live Nerd Repeat’s dearest blog if he gave the award out to seven other people? Seven!

And finally the Kreativ Blogger award, which came from Thoughts from a Jaded Heart. You see, the very title of the award is an example of itself, because they’ve spelled the word “creative” creatively. Very clever, award. Very clever indeed.

Some of these awards require you to share things about yourself. As any of my readers could tell you, this prospect frightens me, for I’ve never really put myself out there on the internet. Even so, I’ll try my best.

1. Once, when I was a baby, my parents spilled spaghetti on my head, scalding it. I think the heat burned the concept of spaghetti into my brain, ’cause I’ve loved it ever since. Science!

2. My favorite book series is George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and the fact that the HBO show exists make me unthinkably happy.

3. I have four more things to come up with.

4. I almost got an Astronomy minor, but my brain cannot comprehend standard physics (see # 1). I have no idea how blocks slide on frictionless ramps, and springs remain mysterious forces of chaos.

5. My family used to own a pet chicken. It was evil, and its favorite activity was the pecking of humans. That being said, at least it never gave me food poisoning.

6. After some deliberation, I have decided that I dislike food poisoning.

7. I once beat a chess FIDE master, but he was only 15 and I don’t think he was paying much attention. It was during lunch break and he was playing a lot of games at once.

We’re supposed to pass this award on to 15 other blogs, but in the name of being miserly and having already awarded most of our favorite blogs, and in an effort to slow down the rapid spread of this rather positive chain-awarding, we’ll just link back to our last two acceptance posts. Check out the blogs we nominated those times. They’re awesome!

Other housekeeping!

If you like to read Reasonably Ludicrous things, we’ve added an FAQ, which should provide not only sagacious insight, but mild question and answer–based entertainment as well.

I also created a Store page with descriptions so amusing that you may be tricked into buying something. But seriously, I’m not even trying to hawk merchandise at you. I’m just kind of proud of the write-ups.

In messing around with wordpress options, I seem to have accidentally created a Gallery of my favorite artwork of Sam’s. I’m not sure what it accomplishes really, but I like looking at it.

On the right-hand sidebar, I’ve added a new links section with just one thing. It’s a video my friend made, parodying the lyrics of party rock anthem via the glory of MS Paint. I think it’s pretty awesome.

Until next time, this is Reasonably Ludicrous, signing out!

Stay tuned for next week, in which Russ overcomes his disease and writes something with actual content!

But if you click this link, you’ll find out!

That’s right! In the name of Christmas, Consumerism, and Feeding Ourselves, we’ve sold out to the all-powerful Zazzle, crafting for your purchasing pleasure such wonderful items as the fabled PUN shirt and probably some other stuff, too. I slapped them together around 7am by appropriating Sam’s artwork without permission, then promptly fell asleep, so I make no promises concerning the quality of whatever enticing items you may find over there.

I’d like to say the whole thing was my idea, but mostly I just saw perennial teammates, nemeses, and competitors Peas & Cougars and Live Nerd Repeat do it, and like a gangster of the blogging world, I wanted a piece o’ the action. I witnessed the glory of their creations and decided it was time that I, too, made you an offer you couldn’t refuse, but instead of it being because of the threat of death, it’s thanks to the low, low prices! They’re not really that low—apparently orange shirts are ungodly expensive for some reason. I can only assume that the dye was squeezed from the wings of monarch butterflies with diamond-crusted wing-clamps wielded by a veritable army of elves cloaked in the hides of giant pandas.

When my imagination thinks rarity, it obviously goes to a very dark place that seems to be rather dangerous for animals.

Anyway, that whole cop week thing was an exhausting experiment for all of us. Nobody wants to read that much of my writing, especially me, so this is our post for this week, and we’ll come back in full force on December 20^th with a holiday post that will knock your stockings off, and, if you attempt to rehang them over the mantel, will knock them off again.

If for some crazy reason you do decide to throw away your hard-earned money on novel trinkets of little use, keep in mind that because of our laziness, you only have like 72 hours before the satellite countdown reaches zero and the aliens attack, Frank Miller rides into town, lightning strikes the clock tower, the bus runs out of fuel and drops below 50 mph, and shipments will no longer arrive in time for Christmas.

So give into the madness quickly, cause this train is about to leave the station, and you won’t be able to get on board until the next stop, which is as far away as the distance of simile, and that, my friends, is like traveling to Andromeda by ladder.