The Act

If you're anything like me, time-wasters, you've developed a very sophisticated and complex act to disguise the fact that, really, you're basically a basement shut-in hiding under a tarpaulin of fabricated social skills. You've learned these skills by watching people at restaurants and by listening closely to old men. You've been forced to the conclusion that you'll likely stay an outsider because you still don't understand the appeal of cell phone text-messaging.

So what do you do when your tarpaulin falls off or catches fire? Without the warm confines of your deceptive little facade, you're exposed to the world, and if you can't find some way of stitching the thing back together, you're going to have to take to lurking in the basment again.

You don't want that.

So here are some tips for those of us out there who lack instinctual social grace, and find ourselves suddenly robbed of our coping strategy:

• Obtain a cold or a flu of some description. This enables you to keep your mouth shut most of the time, and as a bonus, you get to spread germs. Serves all those smarmy "confident" people right, too. Eating candy you find on the floor of movie theaters or prancing in the rain are good ways to get started.
  
• Tell stories about your cats. If you don't have cats, make some up. It's not that hard, as most cats generally follow your standard "cat" mold pretty closely. "Yeah! Toasty got up on the counter today! Really! And then he just sat there and engaged in foot maintainance! Seriously! Holy crap!" Pretend to brush cat hair off your shirt and chuckle slyly at your crafty little bit of bamboozlement.
• Hide under the table and try to disappear.
• Bring your laptop with you wherever you go. Duck behind the screen and adopt an expression of strained concentration. "Constipated news anchor" is the look you're going for. If you're lucky, people will think that you're either a powerful businessman in the midst of making a lot of money and being powerful, or a deep and insightful writer who has been struck repeatedly about the face and head by inspiration. If you're unlucky, they'll think you need hospitalization. Half a game of "Battleship" can make a convincing laptop if painted properly.
• Hide under the table and make rocket noises with your mouth. This won't really help you much in social settings, but it's an awful lot of fun.
• Make up an impressive job title, and say it a lot. For example, I sort books for the library system. This is unimpressive. Add polish and lies, and you get: Multimedia Materials Relocation and Organization Specialist. Impressive. If you've got the time, you might consider making yourself a shiny nametag out of pop cans and bike parts.

I hope this has helped some of you out, time-wasters! These methods are FooDaddy Tested and Approved, I can guarantee you. In fact, I'm using the laptop method right now. I'm waiting for the fellas at the car dealership to change my oil, and in order to maintain an air of competence, I'm writing this post! So it's really a win-win coping strategy, folks. It's providing you out there in Not-FooDaddyLand with some entertainment, while over here in FooDaddyLand, I get to pretend to be useful.

I realize I may be sharing too much with you, and I'd apologize, except that I lack that kind of social grace.

Heh. This is good floor candy.

Cell Phones-N-Me

If earth is ever attacked by life from another planet, there will be no need to panic. The space creatures won’t be staying long. Why? The answer is two words: cell phones. Believe me, if I had a space craft handy, there are many times I would be very tempted to hop on board and light-year my way outta Dodge.

It isn’t that I have a moral objection against cell phones; I’d like one and have considered getting one. My beef is with the people using the cell phones. Why do people feel they need to be in touch with the outside world 24/7 and then complain constantly that they can’t get away “for even a minute?” It makes me want to shake these people and yell,

“Turn it off, you mindless wombat! Turn it off!”

Just a couple of days ago, I was standing in line at the grocery store (one of my least favorite locations), when this man standing behind me, and obviously possessing the IQ of a boiled peanut, answered his cell phone.

“Oh, yeah!” said the mentally-deficient legume. “I’m just standin’ in line at the grocery store.”

Is this really vital information? Does anyone’s extended family or friends need to know your location at every passing moment?

People carry their cell phones with them everywhere and leave them on, programmed with some asinine ditty that plays every thirty seconds or so when someone calls. And these conversations don’t necessarily last long, suggesting that the reason for the actual call was non-existent in the first place:

*inane carnival ditty*
“Yup? Hi. Nope. Just hangin’. ‘K, see ya’ later. Yup. Bye.”
*hang up*
*inane carnival ditty*
“Yup? Be home around five. Yup.”
*hang up*
*inane carnival ditty*
“Yup? Nope. Yup. Nope. Yeah. Bye.”
*hang up*

This drives me to the point of distraction and nearly causes me to lose all self-control. If people are going to carry on endless conversations, at least put it on speaker phone so I can hear the other side or, better yet, don’t use the phone at all in public, unless it’s an emergency:

*inane carnival ditty*
“Yup? No! You gotta be kiddin’! Her entire head? Just gone?!”
*hang up*
*inane carnival ditty*
“Yup? Okay. Tell me when the police cruiser leaves and I’ll sneak out the back.”
*hang up*
*inane carnival ditty*
“Yup? Listen carefully, Vinny, I’m only gonna tell yous once. Jimmy Hoffa’s buried at…”
*hang up*

You get the idea.

Really, if people would just be a bit more discerning, I’d have no problem with cell phones, but they practice no common sense. The technological little monsters are forever going off in restaurants, libraries, concert halls, check-out lines…am I alone on this? Or is anyone even paying attention? Hey! Get off that phone and read this!

Germs and Cheese Doodles

One of my fellow bloggers, the one who isn’t ashamed to be in the same state with me, has a cold. He was absent from work yesterday, and came in today sounding like a primordial amoeba choking on rotten peanut brittle.

I felt very sorry for him and attempted to lighten his spirits by regaling him with stories from my childhood, knowing he would enjoy the narrative. Soon, however, his cold appeared to turn into stomach flu and I was forced to suspend the verbal bio and retreat to safer quarters.

Later, he coughed as he passed by and, although he attempted to stifle the sudden output of germs by covering his mouth, a couple of the little blighters escaped and alighted upon a shelf near my left ear. The first germ, a confused looking creature with wide, staring eyes looked around worriedly.

“So, what’dya think, Pete?”

“Aw, relax, Balthazar,” said the partner, adjusting a dapper beanie cap. “All is well. Let’s just sneak into this guy’s ear and give him an ear infection. What sport, eh?”

I fixed the two little troublemakers with a disapproving frown. “Excuse me?”

They both jumped in alarm and emitted high, tiny, pitiful shrieks. “He sees us!” they screamed. “What are the odds?”

“About the same as that I’d be sitting here at work having a somewhat lame conversation with two microbes,” I said.

“Oh, think you’re too good for us, eh?”

I said nothing.

“Tryin’ to spoil our fun, what?”

“I just overheard you two coldly plotting to inflict me with pain and anguish. I resent the implication that I’m not capable of causing myself enough grief on my own.”

Pete looked at Balthazar with an exaggerated roll of the eyes. “Oooooh, he resents it!”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “And if you take another step toward me, I shall immediately fortify my immune system with vitamin C, echinacea, and hefty portions of cheese doodles.”

The two germs gasped in unison. “Cheese doodles! The bane of bacteria everywhere!” They burst into hysterical laughter. Once their chortling had subsided, Pete leaned toward me with a less than jocular glint in his eye.

“Don’t threaten us, human scum. We have the ability to make you very sick, indeed.”

“Ah, but you don’t! You forget that my body is defended by armies of stalwart defenders who are only too willing to lay down their lives in the line of duty.”

“You mean those wimpy little leukocytes?”
“White blood cells, yes. They will tear you to shreds.”
“We’re quaking in our Nikes,” Pete said.
“If we were wearing Nikes,” Balthazar added. “I personally prefer Skechers.”

I had to admit, if only to myself, that I was becoming a bit nervous. What if these two villains did manage to invade my body and slip past the defenders? I could be sick within 24 hours and my weekend would be ruined.

Glancing to the shelf just above the germs, I saw a bottle of cleaning spray left by the cleaning woman, who had been interrupted in her duties by a loud and insistent call from nature. Could I grab the spray and exterminate Pete and Balthazar before they deciphered my plan and attacked? My hand began moving slowly toward the bottle.

“Hold it!”

I went for it. Just as my hand closed around the bottle neck, I felt Pete and Balthazar land on my nose, the rubber soles of their Nikes and Skechers making little squeaking sounds on the skin as they sprinting for my nostrils. I let go of the spray and grabbed my nose, but it was too late. I could feel the invaders clambering up inside. I tried to sneeze, but couldn’t, and knew there was just one thing to do. Leaping for the snack table, I ripped open a package of cheese doodles and violently shoved one into each nostril.

I collapsed onto the floor, exhausted, and listened in satisfaction as two tiny screams faded into nothingness.

“Craig?”

Looking up, I saw my boss standing over me, looking down as I lay on the floor with two baked snack items protruding from my nostrils. Smiling weakly, I struggled to my feet and backed toward the door.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was attacked by microbes.”
“And you responded by shoving cheesy junk food up your nose?”
“Well, they might be a little lame, but…oh, you mean really cheesy! Ahem. Long week. I should be going.”

My boss nodded slowly. “I agree.” She turned to go, but paused long enough to say, “Don’t forget to pay for those.” Then she was gone, leaving me to remove the cheese doodles from my proboscis and drop some change into the money jar. I was really looking forward to this weekend.

The Maroon Character

I read Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter in high school, and was given vocabulary tests based on all the goofy words therein. Don't get me wrong! I liked the book, especially the character Chillingworth because he was such a sneaky bastard.

But nobody much talks like the people in Letter because in today's society, using any word more complex than "microwave" will earn you a punch in the gut.

In other words...

Putting to use any locution bearing greater intrinsic multiplicity than that of "microwave" will result in the user receiving a concentrated impact delivered by the listener via a clenching of the fist and its acceleration along a vector teriminating at the user's solar plexus.

That sentence would get you shot if you used it in a chat room, and it's a testament to my smug complacency that I'd even dare to use it on the Internet, period.

Anyway. A parody! Enjoy!

The huge, featureless monolith stood on the corner of 28th and Byron Center, framed by a forsaken gray sky devoid of life. The school building, with its flagpole rusted and bent, looked to have never seen the light of day and seemed preternaturally ancient. It exuded an air of malignance, and the Kid sensed this. He looked upon the edifice with a physiognomy soaked with disdain. Taking a deep draught of the horrid, chill morning air that went hand in hand with the middle of the week, he trod inexorably toward the grim portal. Upon reaching the threshold, a sudden and intense fear regarding the completion of his homework the evening past gripped his mind, the icy touch forcing him to stop abruptly. Had this assigned task been completed according to its meticulous instruction? An inspection of the vast array of folders and loose paper in his backpack proved that, alas, this was not the case.

“Blast!” said he.

The Kid gathered his materials and, significantly lower in spirit, began his trek down the wide and straight Road to Doom, the school’s main corridor. Along the way, he tried to fathom the unspeakable retribution that he would certainly be dealt on account of his iniquity. “Mayhap if I were to grovel a bit, the castigation I suffer will be less deleterious,” he thought. The Kid stopped at his locker—a dank, narrow fissure—and began introducing into it the texts bearing no necessity for the first round of torture. He was just about to shut the door, when a dark shadow enveloped his soul, and he felt the propinquity of the school beadle.

“I trow this morn to be an appropriate one for thee and the rest of the undergraduates to immerse thine minds in the wonderful ambiance of Trigonometry, or any other subject pertaining to theorems and the like! What think ye, young sir?” he asked with a chuckle. The Kid turned to face the antagonist.

“Math stinketh! Nay, it causeth mine mind to writhe in the malaise that is its utter crapulence!” With this, the Kid flashed forth one of his trademark haughty grins.

Duly angered, the beadle responded, his voice dripping with crustiness. “Ah! Thou hath demonstrated thy contempt for the number-subject! Art I to conclude that thou hath no comprehension of the great potential for joy lodged within its depths? For thy sake I earnestly hope not! I doth take pity upon the foo who refuseth to take for himself opportunity in broadening his mathematical horizons!” Having said his piece, the beadle wrapped his cloak about him, and vanished into the throng of students like a fart on the wind.

“What a creepy personage,” thought the Kid.


I hope you enjoyed that, time wasters! Now, if you could please not tell the Internet that I've been "spelling" and using "words" and stuff.

Duelling Cliff Notes

Hey, if the Stupid Blogger can write Cliff Notes on old classics, then so can I.

In fact, the Old Classics were once my only forlorn hope of getting a date. For some reason, I thought that being intelligent and sensitive was a pretty solid strategy for competing with more athletic types. Turned out that my target audience was much smaller than originally projected. Well, actually, the target audience (all of unmarried womankind) remained the same, I just realized that there was a pretty small percentage of them who thought that listening to me talk about The Old Classics was a better deal than watching some lanky stud slam dunk a basketball.

Anywho...here's my first Cliff. By the way, Stupid, stuff this in yer pipe. I'll bet this was your next Notes. Actually, I shouldn't do this one because it's such a short book already. If you are such a lazy jock that you can't read the full-length version, then I don't want to even know your name.

The Old Man and The Sea
by Ernest "I. Write. Short Sentences" Hemingway

Sunrise came early. The old man put his paper down and looked at the young boy. Strong.

A day for fishing. The old man had not caught a fish for many weeks. The village was laughing at him. His girlfriend from somewhere in New Jersey was thinking of going back to her truck driver husband.

Out at sea. The fish swam. It leaped above the water and the sun shone on its tall dorsal fin like a full sail of polished bronze.

The Old Man looked at the boy again. Insolent. He looked like he'd rather be disfiguring a public monument with South Pacific gang symbols.

The Old Man decided, "What the heck? I can take this brat out fishing. If I get bored, I'll drown his sorry, pimpled butt."

(Cliff Notes footnote: it's also not out of the question that the Old Man was an unregistered sex offender who was violating the terms of his parole by even making eye contact with the boy)

So, the old man goes out to do battle with his own fears of mortality and incompetence (incontinence?) in the form of a big fish.

He and the boy crawl into his 36' Criss Craft Cabin Cruiser with twin diesel 310 hp motors, GPS, digital sonar fishfinder, a built-in Jacuzzi, and multiple downriggers. Hardly seems fair to the Fish, actually.

(Cliff Notes footnote: Foo Daddy, you should be writing this one. feel free to do a re-write. I couldn't bring myself to try to make the Old Man talk like your emerging classic character.)

The odd pair cranks up the huge boat and cruise out in complete comfort. The old man keeps muttering and swallowing multi-colored pills. He also swills cheap tequila and screams querulous orders at the boy, who flips him the double bird alot.

Well, as the day wears on, the Old Man falls asleep on the deck with his gray-haired belly sticking up into the tropical sun. The young boy takes digital pictures of this undignified situation, doctors them with Photoshop and then uploads them to questionable amateur websites using the yacht's satellite phone at enormous cost.

After hours at sea, the old man wakes up with second degree burns on his bloated abdomen. The young boy had become so bored that he actually dropped a line into the water. The old man watches him for about an hour and only rolls onto his feet when the boy yells out, "Senor! A fish. On the line!".

"Probably nuthin'," says the old man, but he still staggers down and tests the line.

"Well, mebbe sumthin'", he allows.

(Cliff Notes footnote: OK, this is almost as long as the real book, so we're going to wrap it up pretty quickish now)

The old man lets the boy fool with the fish for awhile so he can take a whiz off the side of the boat. A little later, he elbows the boy aside and yanks on the line.

Of course, in his semi-drunken state, he miscalculates and pulls too hard. This breaks the fishing line. The old man curses the boy roundly and crawls back up to the forward deck where he writes a longish lie about his struggle with a great fish.

As the sun goes down, they putter back into the village--but not before they stopped another boat and paid a ridiculous price for one of their fish.

The village people hail him as a hero because his sunburn is so great that it's obvious he struggled mightily to break his long losing streak.

The old man also bribes the boy handsomely and gets ripped on the cheapest possible tequila later at the saloon.

The End.