The Sporadic Curmudgeon

a single hour
species rise and go extinct
friday afternoon

In an earlier post I mentioned a monster report I was assigned to write at work that had 148 columns. I just got it finished. On a 1024 x 768 monitor, it’s nineteen screens wide. After taking away 20 pixels/screen for 20 screens (just to be generous) this report is 19,056 pixels wide. It’s also 5 screens tall. Removing 250 pixels per screen for browser junk, it still gives a total of 49,355,040 pixels for this one single report. It’s also AJAX enabled, which means that when the marketing golems that commissioned this beast click on any of the rows it will get even bigger. At least it’s only for internal use.

Over forty-nine million pixels.

I apologize to everyone on the internet. I swear, I was just following orders.

I feel dirty.

Disgruntled update: Believe it or not, they just had me add six more columns to this monstrosity. Ay, Caramba! Maybe I should charge admission just to see the damned thing: “See the Amazing Colossal Report!”

A Pakinstani prisoner claims he woke up one morning to find a lightbulb in his anus. It was surgically removed several days later in an operation lasting an hour-and-a-half.

Mohammad, who is serving a four-year sentence for making liquor, prohibited for Muslims, said he was shocked when he was first told the cause of his discomfort. He swears he didn’t know the bulb was there.

…

The doctor treating Mohammad said he’d never encountered anything like it before, and doubted the felon’s story that someone had drugged him and inserted the bulb while he was comatose.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I know quite a few people who’ve had a stick up their ass for years without being aware of it. The conversation in the operating room must have been something else:

“How many Pakistani prisoners does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

“I see light at the end of the tunnel!”

And, of course, the ever-popular “righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.”

I’d been handed an assignment to create a report from a database that has, I kid you not, 148 columns. Some of the column names were very long and repetetive. I asked my supervisor for a good abbreviation to use. Lex*, a coworker, text-messaged me with a suggestion. The following interchange took place. I am “doctor_x”.

[14:01] lex: wtf wtf wtf

[14:01] doctor_x: wtf?

[14:01] lex: as the abbr

[14:03] doctor_x: I LIKE it

[14:03] lex: lol

[14:03] lex: it is probably a trade mark

[14:04] lex: so you may not be able to use it

[14:04] doctor_x: Maybe I should use KMN for “Kill Me Now”

[14:04] lex: that works

[14:04] lex: I got scissors

[14:05] lex: and i mean rear naked choke

[14:05] lex: i = a

[14:05] doctor_x: okay, those last two threw me. What the HELL are you babbling about?

[14:06] lex: scissors to kill

[14:06] doctor_x: Yes, but what the hell does “and i mean rear naked choke” mean?

[14:06] doctor_x: and “i = a”?

[14:06] lex: and a rear baked choke

[14:07] doctor_x: It’s like almost english

[14:07] lex: engrish

[14:07] doctor_x: and a rear baked choke. that was a clarification? are you HIGH?

[14:08] doctor_x: purple giraffe missouri flakes

[14:08] doctor_x: haiku brookstone amplitude fodder

[14:08] lex: and a mean rear naked choke

[14:08] lex: there

[14:08] lex: you know what that is?

[14:08] doctor_x: OK, that actually came close to making sense.

[14:09] doctor_x: and it scares me

[14:09] lex: it is just some one wrapping one of there arms arround your neck

[14:09] doctor_x: ah.

[14:09] lex: and choking

[14:09] doctor_x: OK. And I’m assuming there were some typos involved earlier.

[14:09] doctor_x: Unfortunate typos

[14:09] doctor_x: Weird typos

[14:09] lex: some

[14:10] lex: that is an understatement

[14:10] lex: although n with b is understandable

[14:10] lex: a with i

[14:10] lex: wtf

And the lesson is, if anyone ever comes up to you and claims that computer programming doesn’t cause brain damage, look them straight in the eye and say, in a clear unwavering voice, “And I mean rear naked choke. I equals A.”

* Name changed to protect the moronic.

I absolutely loathe musicals. In my opinion, the only good musical ever staged is Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and that’s only because it features the Great Redeemer plot device, cannibalism. So you can imagine my dismay this morning when the radio announced that the absolute worst of the worst, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical war crime Cats, is coming to Las Vegas.

This grotesque approximation of a play is supposedly based on the work of T.S. Eliot, who presumably is spinning in his grave so fast they’ve hooked an electrical generator up to the corpse. Rumor has it that it was only written to provide aging homosexuals sadly lacking any discernable talent with employment. To quote Mystery Science Theater 3000, “Oscar Wilde would think this was too gay.”

“Take your family to see it!” the radio commanded. “They’ll remember it forever!”

I’ll say. I see a vision from the year 2018:

… and then he dragged me to see Cats! Oh my God, Doctor. Cats! Oh my God oh my God oh my God…

(psychiatrist pats my daughter on the arm, shaking his head sadly)

Somebody call Animal Control, quick.

Sheepish Update: I actually misquoted MST3K. The correct line, which was uttered during the screening of a particularly disturbing short film named Mr. B Natural, is “Oscar Wilde only wished he was this gay.” Serves me right for posting before I’ve had time to sufficiently marinate my brain in caffeine.

Have you ever wondered where the motto of the United States Postal Service comes from? You know the one:

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

I’d always assumed it was something our first postmaster Ben Franklin scribbled on a cocktail napkin while taking a breather from impregnating half the female population of France. Boy, was I wrong.

While reading a wonderful book my wife got me for my birthday, Travel In the Ancient World, by Lionel Casson, I came across a description of the ancient Persian courier system, which was the model for the Pony Express in 19th Century America. And lo and behold, who was the Greek historian that described the system? None other than my longtime personal favorite, Herodotus.

I’ll set it up for you first: the Persian king Xerxes had thought that those pesky Greeks would be a pushover and invaded. On September 28, 480 BC the Greeks handed his ass to him on a plate in the naval battle of Salamis. Xerxes decided to send the embarrassing news that he’d lost most of the fleet back to Persia by courier. Here’s what Herodotus has to say about it in The Histories, which is the very first history book ever written. I’m using the Macaulay translation because I’m too lazy to type the text from the Casson book, and Macaulay’s version is available online at Project Gutenberg (Volume I and Volume II). So let’s cut and paste, kids!

While Xerxes was doing thus, he sent a messenger to the Persians, to announce the calamity which had come upon them. Now there is nothing mortal which accomplishes a journey with more speed than these messengers, so skilfully has this been invented by the Persians: for they say that according to the number of days of which the entire journey consists, so many horses and men are set at intervals, each man and horse appointed for a day’s journey. These neither snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness of night prevents from accomplishing each one the task proposed to him, with the very utmost speed. The first then rides and delivers the message with which he is charged to the second, and the second to the third; and after that it goes through them handed from one to the other, as in the torch-race among the Hellenes, which they perform for Hephaistos.

So there you have it: a direct connection between Xerxes, Herodotus, Buffalo Bill and Cliff Claven from Cheers. Thank you, and good night.

It’s an unfortunate fact that as humanity bulldozed its way to the top of the food chain, a lot of other perfectly good species ended up paved over or in lunchboxes. Some of these animals, such as the undeniably cool Sabertooth Tiger, we’re probably better off without. Night shift at Long John Silver’s would be a death sentence. A visit to the beach would require mountain-climbing gear and a hazmat suit. And don’t even get me started on Dire Wolves.

There are other extinct species, however, that we really, really like. Mastodons and Wooly Mammoths, while certainly dangerous, would still be nice to have around. But pretty much everybody’s favorite ex-species is the Dodo of Mauritius. Since becoming extinct sometime between 1662 (the last confirmed sighting) and 1715, they have become an indelible part of popular culture. Lewis Carrol featured a Dodo in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland illustrated by John Tenniel, the phrase “dead as a dodo” has been in common use for at least a hundred years, and the silly-looking birds made a hilarious appearance in the animated film Ice Age.

In spite of this, very little is actually known about the birds. That is about to change in a big way. Scientists in Mauritia have unearthed an entire layer of complete dodo remains in a sugar plantation. The site has been undisturbed for centuries, and with modern techniques they expect to learn a lot of new information.

There’s been talk of cloning the Wooly Mammoth. Bah. We didn’t kill them off; climate change and hungry Homo Erectus did that. But the dodo vanished on our watch, and in modern times. If any extinct species deserves to be resurrected, it’s the poor, dumpy, silly little Dodo.

A few years ago while heading north from New Orleans I spotted a sign for a venue with perhaps the worst name of all time: The Scuttlebutt Gentlemen’s Club. For reasons I’d rather not go into right now I’ve come up with a list of other ill-advised strip club names:

1. Goiter’s
2. Skanks for the Memories
3. The Pit Stop
4. Spitshine’s
5. Scratch-’n-Sniff
6. The Velvet Udderground
7. Saggies
8. The Baggage Claim
9. Floppers
10. Dinky’s
11. Wattles
12. The Limp Swinger’s Club
13. Gimpy’s
14. The Love Stump
15. Nickel Slots
16. Crabby Cove
17. Kissin’ Cousins
18. The Sausage Grinder
19. Toothless Annie’s
20. Bunzilla
21. Grandma’s Place

a lengthy meeting
explain the self-evident
steep bell curve angle

Usually when I’ve coined a new word, or come up with a smartass definition of an old one, I send it off to my friend* that runs The Devil’s Dictionary X. Sometimes, if I’m funny enough, he adds it to that worthy work.

Yesterday, however, I came up with a new word that is actually useful, and am therefore going to take credit for it myself:

Demoticon:

To add spaces between letters and/or punctuation to keep your text-messaging client from turning them into an annoying little image.

Example usage: “I demoticoned that last sentence because for some damned reason the ‘(x)’ kept turning into a tiny picture of a woman.”

* I suspect he wishes to remain anonymous. I haven’t asked him. I know if I’d published some of the vicious material he has, I’d sure want to keep a low profile. That’s an endorsement, by the way.