Tag Archives: Blog

Bullet Post 2: Return of the One-Liners

I sort of forgot how writing worked, but Sam has graciously taken it upon himself to retrain me. So far the process is showing promise, but it seems that it may take some time. Meanwhile, this bullet post should go partway to tiding you over, you hungry masses you. Hope you like one-liners!

••••

I thought about finally following my dream and doing stand-up comedy, but I was afraid people would laugh at me.

••••

That job in Human Resources takes on a whole new meaning when your employer is Soylent Green.

••••

I checked into my hotel and ordered some pay-per-view.

The clerk said a balcony was $300, so I just settled for A Room with a View.

••••

••••

I ordered a magazine from Guns & Ammo, but it didn’t fit into my semi-automatic.

••••

One time I lost my feather duster, so I just let my parakeet out of its cage.

After all, would it really want to be trapped in a house with no feather duster?

••••

Visiting the elevator factory was pretty disappointing. I only got one story out of it.

••••

Proverbs:

A hero is a man who is afraid to run away. Or maybe that’s just a misguided coward.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but what are a thousand words worth anyway? In this economy? Not much. Mostly thanks to all those dimwits who keep blogging for free!

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but maybe not three or four. It’s hard to equate really. I bet it’d be worth a lot more if it were some kind of hunting bird that could kill and retrieve the bush birds.

Actions speak louder than words, and the action that speaks the loudest is yelling.

40 Comments

Filed under Bullet Posts

We Can’t Seem To, Uh, Ward Them Off

Like a loyal animal you try to shoo away because you think it’s in their best interest even though you love them, they just keep coming. That is, our second blogaward just padded its way over to us on furry feet. Apparently our enemies’ attempts to encircle us in a blogo-ward have failed, and the “Tell Me About Yourself” commendation was able to break through the barrier and alight on our egos.

Which means that we’re slapping together another slip-shod shoddy slip of a Thursday post to acknowledge the kindness of one of our fellow bloggers. Thanks Book Snobbery! Now, it may technically be Friday, so I’m just going to pretend I’m posting this from Hawaii. Also, it has just been brought to my attention that a second award was able to pierce the force field. What I Meant 2 Say has bestowed a second 7×7 upon us. Huzzah! If we have two 7×7 awards, that’s 49 square units doubled, so 98 square units, which means our new award is 9.89×9.89. With all these awards, it’s starting to get a little crowded in this chainmail. But if we’re going to have any hope of defeating the Orcish brutality of the Uruk Hai of the blogging world who want to horde all the internet readership for themselves, banding together and donning the armor of these self-perpetuating awards is our best bet.

This particular “Tell Me About Yourself” award may not increase our Armor Class much though, for it doesn’t even seem like praise, per se. It’s not a “Best Blog” award, or a “Moderately Entertaining” award, or even a “I Read This and Didn’t Immediately Bleed From the Eyes.” Which is totally one of the craziest defense mechanism ever. Anyway, this award doesn’t seem to have any descriptors or qualifiers of any kind. It’s simply a command that I must follow, and I fully intend to climb down from the Mount Sinai of the blogosphere and obey it. It may be just a drawing on the internet, but ever since that one bush caught fire, I’ve treated every award’s demands as if it were etched on a pair of stone tablets.

So here come 7 things about myself. Hopefully they’re not too revealing.

  1. Sadly, I have almost certainly coveted my neighbor’s wife, but in my defense, you should’ve seen her. Oh man.
  2. I haven’t committed murder or adultery, but I’m not making any promises.
  3. My team won the co-ed Intramural Softball championship four times, and I wear the shirts ALWAYS, just to prove to that cute girl at the checkout counter that I’ve done something with my life.
  4. I’m actually SAM! I just hijacked this post right now. Whatcha gonna do about it, sucka?!! Russ can’t have all the fun.
  5. Jeez, what should I say? Damn, I didn’t think too far ahead on this one. I guess…I like to draw. That’s something. But that’s sort of obvious, huh? Man, I’m bad at this.
  6. Um….I’m terrible at the game 5 Fingers. I can never think of anything I haven’t done that would be fun to say in the context of the party. Like, I’ve never been to Africa, but that’s not the kind of thing you want to hear in a game of 5 fingers. You want something juicy! And then I just get self-conscious that what I’m about to say reveals something horribly embarrassing about my psyche.
  7. SAM GET AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER! Do I need to get out the flyswatter? Okay let’s make a deal. Since there’s an odd number of details we’re required to provide and an even number of the two of us, let’s make the last one into a sentence at a time story about our lives. We’ll take turns writing sentences and see what happens. I don’t guarantee its accuracy, but I do guarantee its creation method. Here ya go:

Once, when I was just a young lad, I found myself in a complicated situation. I wanted to play video games and watch cable television, but my parents thought such activities would rot my brain. I soon realized there was only one thing I could do to achieve my mind-rotting dream. I wrote to Santa Claus, telling him how stingy my parents were. That night, which happened to be the night before Christmas, I heard the pitter patter of reindeer hooves (a very specific and recognizable sound) on the rooftop. I immediately panicked, because I realized Santa did not know my house had no chimney. But I had an iron will and a similarly metallic shovel, and given just a few minutes, I knew I could dig myself a path to Mr. Kringle, and to video game fun. So I got on a stool and began stabbing the roof, with…my…shovel? I’d never expected such success, but the roof collapsed in a perfect rectangular prism, allowing Santa to shimmy down with nary an obstacle. I literally squawked with glee. At first, Santa seemed taken aback, but he must’ve been used to childish bird noises of surprise and delight, so he quickly recovered and handed me the most amazing present of all time. At least, I assumed it was. Santa himself had given it to me! But he made me promise to wait until morning to open it.

The next morning, I opened it.

It was socks.

You can see how that’s the kind of story that informed the rest of my/our life.

Now it’s time to pass this award on to some other unsuspecting blogs. To make it more flattering, I’ve tweaked it slightly. Here are the blogs I think deserve the “You Are Good At Telling Me About Yourself (I Presume, and Hopefully Your Post About This Award Won’t Make a Liar Out of Me)x9.89” Award. It’s up to you guys to tell the world 9.89 things about yourself, then pass it on to up to 9.89 more blogs you deem worthy.

  1. Allenavw. She’s a charming, risk-taking risk-taker, who, like Sam and me, loves alcohol. She praised us recently, so now I love her forever, and I have a feeling she’ll be good at revealing interesting details about herself because her about page pleases me. Also, she has some photos of herself that I find very compelling.
  2. The Problem with Young People Today is… I’m sure Crabby Old Fart (a.k.a. Mr. Mills) is already fully aware of how awesome he is, what with his huge following and everything. I trust that he’ll be able to tell us a great deal about himself because he has two about pages, and explaining the geriatric details of his life is pretty much his modus operandi.
  3. Boggleton Drive. I’m not sure ol’ Boggy will let us in on his secrets, but his amusing examples of grammar faux pas prove that he deserves at least a large percentage of the 98 square units of praise.
  4. The Ruminations of Jess. She’s so supportive! Her blog is highly amusing, and it includes quite a few personal stories and details. She can tell us about herself any time.
  5. Love the Bad Guy. Since she gave us our first award, it seems only fair that we reciprocate. Plus, I’ve already learned that she’s a garfield-collecting cat person, so clearly some of her secrets are out there.

There you have it! And so, like a virus, the award moves on to a new host, and I move on to bed, a place I find myself in all too rarely.

31 Comments

Filed under Awards

The Burdens of Internet Fame

Wooo! We just hit 1000 subscribers! In honor of this momentous readership event, and because everyone’s been so supportive, Sam and I would like to say thanks and take a look back at the Fresh Pressing that started this electrically unsafe daisy chain of fortune.

I’d always viewed the internet as a vast, unicorn-infested, cat-plagued, time-sucking mega-void that would chop up whatever creativity I was brave enough to offer it into tiny, troll-size bites, but I wasn’t about to let a few grammar-defying kittens stop me.

I knew damn well that I could be mildly, vaguely, intermittently amusing, not to mention the fact that Sam’s artwork is torn straight from the heavens. He declared that any representation of this truth would be self-serving, but luckily I have no such qualms.

And so, it was with a great sense of achievement that I wrote and published my first post, ate some microwavable mini-quiches, and promptly fell asleep.

I awoke to the sound of bells.

My first thought is that a bunch of angels, now armed with the bell-induced power of wings, are hunting us down for stealing their heavenly artwork, but it’s only the doorbell—the computer guy’s here to fix my internet.

I wriggle into pants (the last guy had filed an official complaint), boot up my computer, and briefly glance at my page views—WHAT THE GRAPH?! The number is so huge my atrophied English brain can barely comprehend it. I call Sam to make sure this is real life, but he’s either asleep or at the mercy of the battle seraphim and can offer no persuasive evidence. Before I can come to any conclusions, the doorbell rings again.

The plumbers! My apartment is soon filled with jostling servicemen, and the computer guy has shut off my internet. I have no idea what’s happening out there in the mega-void! The plumbers start sawing into my ceiling all over the place and suddenly it’s disgorging water in three spots with vindictive aplomb, and the now-soaked drywall is collapsing like the Soviet Union.

Long story short, after my internet was revived about an hour later, after the water-spewing pipes had been sealed off and the gaping holes in my ceiling were—well, those are still there. Anyway, after dealing with my assorted apartmental issues, I was able to resume my e-vestigation and found out I’d been freshly pressed…on my very first post!

Still in shock, I scoured my kitchen for smelling salts, only to realize that I live in the present day, so I gave up and proceeded to bask in the joy of one of the most exciting moments of my life. It was a singular experience, receiving ludicrously positive feedback from complete strangers. I still can’t figure out what they stand to gain! Since then, though view rates have naturally never come close to that chart-ruining outlier of a first day, the blog has grown as slowly and surely as a lesson-teaching tortoise, and for some reason, the people reading it seem to actually enjoy it.

And it’s all thanks to you! You, my readers and new favorite people ever, made this happen. You are the first wave of hope in a stormy sea of fear and slimy kelp, helping propel us forward on the journey toward the shores of moderate internet fame. And it doesn’t matter that I’ve already been offered dozens of jobs all over the tropics. I don’t care about the fact that scores of moon women have been throwing themselves at me, and so be it if the state of Rhode Island promised me a small herd of attack lions if I’d only drop everything and compose their official State Poem.

You know what? I don’t even care that Ex-Vice-President Al Gore offered me a position by his side saving baby albino whales from underwater greenhouse gases. I told him the world would have to wait, because by god, I’ve got readership now, and if he didn’t want me ignoring literally every other aspect of my life in the pursuit of becoming internet famous, then he damn well shouldn’t have invented the thing.

Now, it’s not all fun and games. Every week I’m filled to the brim with frothy, bubbling panic as I realize I’ve finally written the post that will prove I’m merely a fraud masquerading as a merry minstrel of the mega-void. Sleep has become such an unattainable fantasy that whenever I manage to snag an hour or two, I invariably dream of more sleeping. It’s like a boring, sedated version of Inception.

And now that I spend all my time alone in my room attempting to befriend the internet, my social skills are going the way of the red wolf—critically endangered in the wild, but thriving in World of Warcraft.

Yes, internet fame may require great sacrifice, but you’re worth it, readers, and you can bet your oversize bonnets I’ll be here for you this Tuesday, and barring serious injury or any non-fictional job offers, every Tuesday after that.

Like an abacus, you can count on me.

51 Comments

Filed under Observations, Stories