Irrelevant Cheetah

Hello there. I know you’re out there. I can hear you breathing.

How do I know, you ask? Because I just checked my blog stats, and I’m getting around 10,000 hits a month here. And while RSS readers account for a good portion of those, they don’t account for all of those hits.

Why do I call you ‘lurkers?’ Because even though my visits are going skyward, my comments remain woefully slim.

So come on. Leave a comment. You know you want to. It doesn’t have to be particularly insightful, or even funny. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be in English. And you know what? I’m feeling particularly generous. For this one post, I’ll even leave in all the spam comments about penis enlargement and NASCAR racing news and build-your-own furniture.

I just wanna know who visits so I can decide if I should clean the place up or not.

This post is lurking menacingly over at humor-blogs.com.

Well, montucky tagged me for a meme a few days back, and I haven’t answered yet. Not because I don’t think it’s a cool idea (it is) but because I’ve got another project going on which is keeping me busy for a few days. More on it later, I promise.

So the meme is a six-word memoir, inspired by Hemingway. The idea, as it seems to have morphed along the way, is to describe yourself/your life/your blog in six words. The rules (yeah, they’ve always got rules) are:

1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual if you’d like.
3. Link to the person that tagged you and to this original post.
4. Tag five more blogs with links.
5. Leave comment on tagged blogs.
6. Rinse. Repeat.

I gave this some serious thought, but after trying on various combination of styles and words, I finally decided on:

My Reality may differ from yours.

I’m no good at tagging people, so if you’re reading this and you’d like to give it a shot, let me know in the comments.

If I was a Starfleet officer, and I happened to be stationed in the transporter room, it would be the greatest thing ever. For one thing, I would never have to use the bathroom again.

Here’s how my internal dialogue would go:

Hmmm. I have to make a poopy. But nobody’s around, and my relief isn’t due for another two hours. Ha ha ha! I said ‘relief’! That’s funny! Isn’t that funny? Yeah, that’s funny. I’m a funny dude. Didn’t they say ‘dude’ way back in the twentieth century? I think they did, along with ‘awesome’ and ‘internet’ and –

Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah. The potty problem. I still have to go. I’ll just do what I did last time. Damn Rigellian snails go right through me, I swear.

Lessee… set transporter to ‘fecal material.’ I must remember to transport it behind the ship this time. Last time I forgot and transported it ahead of us, and it splattered all over the viewscreen. Nothing like frozen poo hitting the forward sensors at warp seven. Man, was Captain Kirk pissed. Ha ha ha! I said ‘pissed’! That’s funny! Isn’t that funny?

Okay, coordinates set… and… energize!

Then I would resume my duty, fresh and relieved. I would probably share this trick with my fellow crewmembers during a drink in our quarters, and it would catch on, and before long Starfleet would quit installing toilets in starships. Of course, the bottom would then fall out of the toilet paper market, since the United Federation of Planets would be a major purchaser of assorted toiletries, but it would be a small price to pay, I think.

This post is transporting its unmentionables over to humor-blogs.com.

“Excuse me, General Whatzit?”

“Yes? What is it, Colonel?”

“Sir, do you remember Satellite USA-193? The one we lost control of not long after it launched?”

“Yes. What about it?”

“Well, our experts are telling us that its orbit is decaying quickly, and that it will re-enter the atmosphere within the next few weeks. And the problem is, it’s not expected to break up completely.”

“So what? It’ll probably land in the ocean, right?”

“Well, sir, it might, but what if it doesn’t? There’s classified technology on board that craft. Not to mention the pictures of Jennifer Aniston’s boobs that you had us zoom in on and take last summer when she was at the beach.”

“All right, all right. Only one thing to do, it seems. Let’s shoot ‘er down.”

“There are a few problems with that, General. First of all, we threw a serious hissy when China did that last year. Said it would start a new arms race if they demonstrated the ability to shoot down a satellite.”

“Oh, I don’t give a rat’s ass. They’re just commie bastards, anyway. And they’re not supposed to have that ability. Only us. Tell you what – we’ll tell everybody that we have to shoot it down to save people from the dangerous fuel. What’s it called again?”

“Hydrazine?”

“Yeah, that’s it. It’s toxic, ain’t it? We’ll say that we have to shoot it down to protect human life. A ‘toxic gas cloud’ might occur. Yeah, that sounds good.”

“But, General, it’s bullshit. The space shuttle Columbia had hydrazine on board when it blew up, and nobody was in any danger. And we had 9 other satellites re-enter the atmosphere last year, at least one of which had several hundred kilos of hydrazine, and we weren’t worried then.”

“I don’t care, Colonel. This will show the Chinese that we mean business. And it’ll give me a chance to practice my aim. I can only play Siphon Filter on my Xbox 360 so many times, you know?”

“Very well, sir. I’ll get the NASA administrator to attend the briefing. That’ll make this look like it’s on the up-and-up.”

“Very good, Colonel. Keep me informed.”

This post is releasing a toxic gas cloud over at humor-blogs.com.

That’s right - it’s the 16th today, which means that I’m posting over at the Stache.

My long-time readers might recognize the post, but it’s still a good ‘un, I think. Stop by and say hello, won’t you?

Waking up three hours before you actually have to get up, and getting to go back to sleep: WIN

Having to shovel six inches of new-fallen snow from your deck, walkway and driveway at 5:30 am: LOSE

Sledding on new-fallen snow: WIN

Sledding on new-fallen snow in a vehicle doing 50 mph: LOSE

Remembering an old friend’s birthday, who you haven’t seen in years: WIN

Learning that said old friend is now a cross-dressing taxi driver in Vegas with a “pet” donkey named Bruno: LOSE

Having a great idea: WIN

Having an idea that involves bees and uranium-232: LOSE

This post thinks humor-blogs.com is a winner.

This past weekend my life flashed before my eyes.

Well, not really. I just found myself in an extremely uncomfortable, frightening situation. It was one of those things that everybody fears, whether they’ll admit to it or not.

I was trapped between floors in a multi-story building.

See, we went to the mall this past weekend. It’s the big one in town, with five floors and maybe a hundred or so stores. They have a decent Radio Shack there that I wanted to browse, and J.C. Penney was having a sale.

We started our shopping adventure at Radio Shack. Understandably, my wife has little patience for my gadget fetish, and after a few minutes of watching me drool, she announced that she would take the Offspring to Penney’s while I finished coveting radio-controlled Hummers and surgically-implantable cell phones.

The two of them headed upstairs to Penney’s while I finished up at Radio Shack. I ended up purchasing a pack of LEDs and some batteries and marched off to meet them on the third floor.

Not five minutes later, there I was, in between the second and third floors, when the machinery ground to a halt.

I wasn’t sure what to do at first. I looked around, hoping things would start moving again. I think I even jumped up and down a few times. Nothing. Panic and bile rising in my throat, I tried to avoid hyperventilating while I frantically searched for a way to call for help. Once again, I was out of luck. There was no bright red phone, nor was there an “emergency” button.

It’s all right, I thought to myself. Somebody is bound to notice that I’m missing, and that things aren’t working the way they should be. All I have to do is be patient and remain calm, and I’ll be rescued. I had a bottle of water, and I knew that my wife could give my cell number to the paramedics if they had to talk me through any desperate escapes.

And sure enough, I wasn’t trapped for more than ten minutes before I heard the repairman’s voice, calling out to me as if from the Great Beyond: “Hey! Buddy! Get off the escalator!”

That was when I realized that when an escalator breaks down, it simply becomes stairs, and you can walk to the next floor. I breathed a sigh of relief, and made it to the third floor without further incident. When I emerged, victorious, onto the landing, I expected a round of applause and maybe a blanket and a cup of hot coffee. I was sorely disappointed.

I did, however, receive several eye-rolls, which aren’t nearly as heart- or soul-warming. I guess I should take what I can get.

This post is stuck on the thirteenth floor over at humor-blogs.com.

Being, as I am, deep into the last rewrite of my novel, I’ve been kind of unaware of my surroundings. Perhaps because of this, last night I had another visit from my resident writing critic:

The first thing he told me was to “keep the scene with the cows.” Since my book doesn’t have any cows, I’m thinking he had me confused with James Patterson.

Then he tried to convince me that any book that stars a moose as its main character is sure to be a bestseller.

I tried to make him understand that the chicks don’t really dig moose, but he wouldn’t listen. We exchanged our differing points of view in a civilized fashion, and then he ate my bushes.

After I’m published, do you think I’ll rate a better class of critic?

This post is critiquing the others over at humor-blogs.com.

Due to my recent brush with death the flu, I was in the grocery store the other day, purchasing some over-the-counter aids to remaining upright and mucus-free. I put the items on the conveyor belt and fumbled in my pocket for my frequent shopper card. It’s important that I get my reward points, you know.

“Date of birth?”

This caught me off guard. “Excuse me?”

The cashier looked at me tiredly. “I need your date of birth. For the cough syrup.”

“Are you kidding me? For Dayquil?”

She shrugged. “’Fraid not. You know how kids are nowadays. Cough syrup, Sudafed, you name it. I can’t sell to anybody under 18.”

Without warning, my mind flashed forward. I was looking at a vision of a bleak, apocalyptic future:

Lightning crackled overhead as Agent Stark huddled against the side of the building, trying to eke what shelter he could from the ruins. A war skiff whisked overhead, close on the heels of the lightning, but he remained unseen – at least for the time being.

A Daked patrol wandered by, oblivious to the damp, hunched form. As he observed their orange-stained lips, Stark shivered, ruminating on the origins of the Dakeds. A colloquialized version of “Dayq-head,” it referred to those youngsters who had started hopping themselves up on Dayquil back in the early 21^st century. Nobody had realized back then that frequent use of what was thought to be merely a cough syrup would enable the adolescents to overthrow the planetary governments in control at that time and force their twisted idea of anarchy upon the population at large.

Stark was part of the resistance movement, and he had been standing still too long already. As soon as the patrol moved out of sight, he hunched his shoulders and oriented himself. He knew he had little time to spare before the package he had delivered to Daked headquarters did its dirty work.

“Sir?”

My mind snapped back to the present. I gave her my birthdate and continued on, lost in thought. I had never realized that the onslaught of Armageddon was being held back by the selfless acts of cashiers everywhere, refusing to sell Dayquil to those who would abuse its powers.

This post is coughing up a lung over at humor-blogs.com.

I had something funny in mind when I started writing this. I was going to complain for a while that I’ve been flat on my back for a few days with one helluva flu, but that thanks to vitamin C and Echinacea enemas I have managed to arise from the (nearly) dead and continue to wreak havoc upon those in my immediate intellectual vicinity.

But then I realized that there’s nothing funny about the fact that over the past three days I have lost the equivalent of a humpbacked whale’s weight in snot.

There’s nothing funny about packs of orphaned children huddling around my forehead to keep warm on these cold winter nights. (-20 last night! Yeesh!)

There’s nothing funny about the fact that if I weren’t sleeping sitting up I’d probably drown in my own mucus.

There’s nothing funny about the fact that were I to have visited (and commented on) any of my usual blog-haunts, you would have been left scratching your heads, wondering “Who is this ‘glof’ person and why is he babbling about tonsillectomies and whether Margot Kidder can dance Swan Lake?”

And finally: There’s nothing funny about the fact that I don’t get sick leave, and the fact that I am well enough to return to work means that I am well enough to work this weekend and make up the time I missed thanks to señor influenza virus.

No, there’s nothing funny here at all.

As you were.