Category: General Cerebral Leakage (Page 23 of 26)

When all other categories fail (or absentmindedly forget to be assigned), General Cerebral Leakage, fresh off his third tour of duty in the war against wise insurance providers, steps in to save the day!

Touched By An Angel

16 February 2020 / BJ / 0 Comments

7 Min Read

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone.
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.
Joni mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi” (1968)

In the year and a half that I took off between undergrad and grad school, I worked my first real job at a cellphone company. The great thing about a real job is that, if it is indeed a real job, you get health insurance.

About two months before I was set to head off to North Carolina to become a graduate student for the next 5-6 years of my life, it dawned on me that being a graduate student wasn’t going to be a “real job.” In other words, I was about to lose any semblance of meaningful health insurance.

Realizing what I was about to lose, I went off on a manic medical appointment making spree, tearing through my bucket list of check-ups and procedures that had been on my mind.

By some miracle I pulled off a trifecta, and after less than 15 minutes on the phone, I had somehow scheduled 3 doctor’s appointments for three consecutive days the following week. I was–and am still–way too proud of having achieved that feat in my lifetime.

Two of these were really run-of-the-mill: an eye check-up and a trip to the dentist’s office. The third one was a little more interesting: a consultation with an ENT (ear/nose/throat) specialist.

Well, it shouldn’t have been that interesting, and it didn’t really seem to be at the time. The pretense of the appointment was related to my lifelong bad habit of picking tonsil stones out of my tonsils in my spare [alone] time.

It wasn’t anything crazy like the tonsil stone videos you might find on YouTube–they were just little fellas. Quick tip, though: if you haven’t seen a video of someone harvesting¹That can’t be the right term, yet somehow feels the most right… their tonsil stones…you might want to pass on that offer. It’s about as bad as the cockroach-nest-in-the-kid’s-ear videos…

Anyways, I decided to be proactive and seize the opportunity to do something about my tonsils while I had the coverage, so my trip to the ENT was to see if I could get a tonsillectomy scheduled before the end of the summer. While the doctor said my condition was only a low-grade infection that I had probably had for quite some time, he agreed that I could get them taken out if that’s what my heart so desired.

Fast-forward a few weeks to the night before my first-thing-in-the-morning surgery. I was trying to be a good patient, so I had dutifully followed the no-food-or-drink bit, and didn’t consume anything after 10 pm. Of course I didn’t want to get dehydrated between then and after my surgery, so, thinking ahead, I drank a bit more water than I normally would have otherwise.

My mom was the one that would be accompanying me to the surgery and taking me home afterwards, and right on schedule, she picked me up and whisked me off to my date with destiny.

The surgery itself was pretty much run-of-the-mill: they knocked my ass out, and when I came to, I was slightly less of a man than I used to be. I was little ticked to learn that they had immediately disposed of the trophies with the rest of the medical waste, as I was hoping to keep them (or at least see them) like I got to with my wisdom teeth.

After I came out of surgery, they let me have a quick bathroom break before wheeling me off to the recovery room for a planned hour or two of rest and recuperation.

Well, it was supposed to be a quick bathroom break. I ended up setting up camp for a good 10 minutes, as I was pretty sure I had to pee, but instead just sat there having not a single drop of luck.

I thought that was odd, especially since it occurred to me that while I had drank plenty of water the night before, I had forgotten to use the restroom before going into surgery. So surely it couldn’t be that I didn’t actually have to pee, could it?

I tried sitting in there as long as I could, but the orderly kept nagging me and said I had had more than enough time to do my business and that I needed to get to the recovery room. They basically had to drag me out of that bathroom. A boy knows when he hasn’t peed enough. I can’t explain how, he just knows.

After about 10 minutes in the recovery room, the need to pee hadn’t subsided at all, so I made them take me back to the bathroom. But, it was just pretty much déjà vu all over again, with the exact same script as before playing out.

They told me I just needed to chillax, and I tried to explain to them that it was kind of hard to do that when I seriously needed to take a leak.

But, again, I found myself trying to relax in the recovery room against my will. The doctor had ordered me to just lay there and try to maybe nap some, and then in 40 minutes I could try again–if I really thought I needed to do my biz and take a whiz, that is.

They kept telling me that it probably just felt like I needed to pee, so I should be able to safely ignore the urge. I thought, hey, what do I know? and tried to take them at their word.

So I just laid there in the dimly lit room, so ----- miserable, trying to convince myself that my body was lying to me and that I should just get a little shut eye. I had the mental fortitude–I could do this. Only 40 minutes until I had another shot at sweet relief, right?

After about 30 minutes had passed, I started to be confident I could make it the full 40. Of course I needed some objective verification of the situation:

Me: “Hey Mom, how long has it been?”

Mom: “Since when?”

Me: “Since, you know…”

Mom: “Since you last asked how long it had been?”

Me: “Yeah, I guess. I thought it was patently obvious what I was asking.”

Mom: “Oh, about 5 or 6 minutes.”

Me: …

Me: “Fuck this shit. Call the doctor in here NOW.“

It was at this point when I realized that I had entered into the bowels–no, bladder–of hell.

After much pleading with the doctor, he finally ordered an ultrasound for me. I gotta say, given that I was a virgin,²You expected this footnote to completely contradict that statement or have some Mormom-type qualifier saying that butt-sex is excluded, didn’t you? Well, guess what? It’s actually as true of a statement as it seems. I hadn’t even gotten to second base at this point in my life, save for one time in 5th grade that was completely by accident. I hadn’t envisioned myself getting an ultrasound any time soon.

Or ever. Because, you know…I’M A ----- DUDE.³Okay, so we know that I don’t mean this literally. I just established that this was one dude who actually had never ----- , so ” ----- ” in the usage as “one who ----- ” is not what is intended here. In case that wasn’t clear. Which it’s probably not, thanks to every other word getting censored.

Well, anyways, it took waaaaay too long (~20 minutes) for the ultrasound tech to show up. The tech did her thing, and, as she came to terms with what she was seeing, she actually let out a soft audible gasp . “Oh my” was all she said at first.

That is not the response you ever want to hear from a medical professional.

She went and grabbed the doctor and he came back to double check her calculations.

The doctor:⁴Not to be confused with my friend The Doctor… “So…I guess you were right when you said you needed to pee. According to the ultrasound, you have over a liter of liquid in your bladder. That’s well over the capacity of a normal human bladder.”

Me: “No shit, Sherlock–or should I say, ‘no piss, Paddington’?⁵I’m indulging here. I didn’t say either of those. Though it would have been completely appropriate in that moment. What’s our move here? I’m dying, Doc!”

Doctor: “Well…we’re going to need to insert a catheter up your urethra. Are you okay with–“

Me: “Yes, I know how caths work. Shut the ----- up and stick it in my ----- for God’s sake!”

Anyways, as you can imagine, it’s not within the doctor’s pay grade to be shoving catheters in every Tom, Dick, and Harry that comes along…or should I say…nevermind. You know where that joke was going. Implied humor should suffice here.

About 5 minutes later, a nurse walks in with the godsend/catheter in hand. A young nurse. About my age. And kinda cute.

Sooo…yeah, that was an awkward moment for me. About to get my tally-whacker touched for the first time by a comely lass, and I can’t think of a more romantic setting.

The truth is, though, I did not give a flying ----- in that moment. You know, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and all that. Not having an exploding bladder kind of trumps everything else except for breathing, I would argue.

She gracefully and deftly got the tube where it needed to go, and then…oh, the sweetest relief a man could ever taste in this lifetime.

I CANNOT overstate the flood of emotions–and urine–in that moment. On the surface, this all may sound trivial and laughable even, but I’m here to say that not being able to pee is an incredibly ----- up situation that I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemas.⁶Yes, that’s a pun. Ha ha.

On top of everything else, the collection bag couldn’t handle all that I had to offer, and they had to pinch off the flow while they changed the bags out. I can’t be certain, but I want to say that the bags were 750 ml, and I filled up 500 ml of the second one, so about 1.2 liters in total (!!!).

About 20 seconds after the nurse completed her duties, I was struck by a sharp pang…of regret.

Throughout this, I was in something of a loopy state, a combination of exhaustion and coming down off the anesthesia. Add to that the weird high I was getting from the overwhelming relief the catheter offered, and my sense of humor was as mirthful as ever.

What I regretted was missing the opportunity for a couple of zingers I had come up with in the middle of the cathing process, but didn’t have the wherewithal or presence of mind to say aloud to the nurse.

I really, really wish I could go back in time and at least say to her “I could kiss you right now.” And the truth about that comment is that I could have. Not in a romantic or sexual way, mind you, but in the sense that you would want to kiss the angel who is delivering you from the pits of Hades.

But if I really had been with it, here’s how I should have answered the age-old question first posed by early-90s heartthrob Jamie Walters,⁷https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Do_You_Talk_to_an_Angel “How Do You Talk To An Angel?”:

Geez…Let me at least buy you dinner first.
A young man being touched by an Angel for the very first time

To be continued…

Content created on: 27/28 January & 15 February 2020 (Monday/Tuesday/Saturday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	That can’t be the right term, yet somehow feels the most right…
↵2	You expected this footnote to completely contradict that statement or have some Mormom-type qualifier saying that butt-sex is excluded, didn’t you? Well, guess what? It’s actually as true of a statement as it seems. I hadn’t even gotten to second base at this point in my life, save for one time in 5th grade that was completely by accident.
↵3	Okay, so we know that I don’t mean this literally. I just established that this was one dude who actually had never ----- , so ” ----- ” in the usage as “one who ----- ” is not what is intended here. In case that wasn’t clear. Which it’s probably not, thanks to every other word getting censored.
↵4	Not to be confused with my friend The Doctor…
↵5	I’m indulging here. I didn’t say either of those. Though it would have been completely appropriate in that moment.
↵6	Yes, that’s a pun. Ha ha.
↵7	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Do_You_Talk_to_an_Angel

No Cookies for Kesha

13 February 2020 / BJ / 0 Comments

5 Min Read

Ah, guilty pleasures. Everybody has them. Or at least should have them–it’s only healthy, ya know?

“But wait, what’s a guilty pleasure?” you (and the Elder both) ask.

Well, as I explained to my favorite first-grader last night:

You see, a guilty pleasure is something you really enjoy, but are too embarrassed to admit you enjoy it. For example, if I watched Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood on our local PBS station with you girls, then that’s cool. But if I secretly watched it by myself after you went to bed, well, I sure wouldn’t tell any of my friends I did that!
Grown-ass man who is merely making an analogy¹Just kidding. I know that this is an example, or a hypothetical situation, but definitely not an anAlogy. and does not, in fact, watch daniel tiger’s neighborhood when he’s alone

And often times guilty pleasures come with a side serving of regret.

You see, back in the day after the Boss Lady and I were married, but before we had wee ones, a couple of her close friends decided that for there joint birthday celebration, they wanted a themed party.

The theme? You guessed it: guilty pleasures.

Around that time I had discovered that she would listen to owner-of-an-obnoxiously-sultry-voice and nationally syndicated radio D.J., Delilah. In turn, I did what any loving husband would do and teased her about it endlessly. So, it was a no-brainer who she would be going as:

Figure 1. Now taking your calls: them bangs.

For my part, my secret vice was also directly related to the public’s contemporaneous poor taste in music. Though I almost hated myself for it, any time I was alone in the car, I would rock out to party-girl and pop-rock sensation, Ke$ha:²Image source: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25297496

Yeah. Her. Known for such hits as “Tik Tok,” “Blah Blah Blah,” “Your Love Is My Drug,” and “Take It Off”³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_(Kesha_album)–most of which are not only party-centric, but controlled substance-themed as well. A rocking good time for the ears, to say the least.

So there. I admit that I loved her music. Ke$ha’s love was my drug and her music my guilty pleasure.

But I couldn’t go to this party dressed up as her music…no problem, though, because, apart from an arbitrary marking on our birth certificates, her and I were practically twins, dare I say…doppelgängers?

I’m pretty sure you could see where this was headed even before you started reading this. Yes, you are correct: you better believe that I’m not going to pass up a socially-sanctioned opportunity to cross-dress. For me, Halloween in January will beat out Christmas in July any day!

That evening as we were getting ready, the Boss Lady got me half prepared for my role before realizing that she needed to hop in the shower if we didn’t want to be too fashionably late. So there I was just chillin’, waiting for her in nothing but pantyhose, a balloon-filled bra, a sexy af mini-skirt, and most of my make-up. However, I still had yet to don a properly-torn top, boots, and the blonde wig.⁴Not that I needed the wig. I had plenty of luscious long blonde locks as it were.

…and that’s when the knock on the door came.

I peeped out the window and saw a young girl from our neighborhood, probably about 9 years old, patiently waiting outside our door. My mind frantically raced…should I pull Natosha out of the shower? Should I just answer the door?

As the tiny-fisted knocks reverberated through our door and throughout the house a second time, the situation became even more urgent, as I realized why she was calling upon us at such an hour.

She was slanging that mid-winter’s crack that every American knows and loves and is chemically dependent upon: Girl Scout cookies.

Me: “Babe, I know you’re in the shower, but what do I do? WHAT DO I DO?!?”

TBL: “Just answer the door! I don’t want to miss my main shot at a freezer loaded with Thin Mints!”⁵(TM)

“I know, I know! I desperately need my Peanut Butter Patties⁶ibid and Samoans,⁷Almost ibid… too, but I haven’t finished getting dressed–not that being fully-dressed would help the matter any.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, they’re cookies, not a South Pacific people group? Samoas, not Samoans! A didn’t marry no ----- cannibal!”

“Don’t change the subject!”

“And you don’t make me answer the door naked!”

“Too bad! There’s no way I’m answering it–it’s just too ----- risky!”

…and that brings me back to regret.

Regret can be combined with Girl Scout cookies in many different ways:

regret not ordering any
regret not ordering enough
regret eating the whole ----- box of Thin Mints⁸(TM) in one sitting
regret not holding up the cookie delivery truck and robbing them blind
etc. etc. etc

However, in this case I thought I would change it up and illustrate-by-counter-example.

You see, during my first year of grad school, I was the only one of my roommates home when the local Girl Scout⁹Technically, not the same one from earlier. came by in the middle of one cold-ass winter afternoon. Not thinking much about it, my Midwestern hospitality kicked in, and I instinctively invited her inside to get out of the cold while I fetched my checkbook.

When she automatically declined with all politeness, I had a brief moment of clarity, realizing that I probably seemed much more creepy than courteous No biggie, though.

Well, sure enough when she came around again the next year, there I was, home all alone with no one to answer the door. And once again, I realized too late that I was inviting her in…

The point of the story is, I strongly recommend not answering the door when a Girl Scout comes a-knocking and you’re halfway dressed in drag. I guarantee you will experience nothing but the opposite of regret. Especially when you’ve got two strikes against you and you’re on the verge of becoming a registered sex-offender–in the eyes of the local Girl Scouts, at least.

And we all know that there is no higher authority under the heavens than She Who Controls the Cocaine Cookies…

Content created on: 12 February 2020 (Wednesday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	Just kidding. I know that this is an example, or a hypothetical situation, but definitely not an anAlogy.
↵2	Image source: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25297496
↵3	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_(Kesha_album)
↵4	Not that I needed the wig. I had plenty of luscious long blonde locks as it were.
↵5, ↵8	(TM)
↵6	ibid
↵7	Almost ibid…
↵9	Technically, not the same one from earlier.

Breaking Ephen Like A Stephen

9 February 2020 / BJ / 0 Comments

7 Min Read

Here’s a fun fact: not all Valentine’s Day stories are hot steamy messes of eroticism and romantic escapades. Now that I think about it…do any of them ever really turn out that way?

Well, reality check aside, you can bet your sweet heart-shaped ass that I’ve got a Valentine’s Day tale for you. Even better, I promise it will be safe for all ages to enjoy.

Back in the spring of 2004 I had just mostly graduated¹At some point I will tell the tale of how I accidentally graduated without realizing it. from Kansas State University, and was in search of any way possible to not use my physics degree while simultaneously eeking out an existence.

So I found myself in the hunt for some gainful employment, but didn’t have too much clear direction as to what type of jobs to seek out and apply for. One day as I was perusing the online want ads of the local newspaper, I saw a posting by a florist looking for delivery drivers for the three days leading up to and including Valentine’s Day, which happened to fall on a Saturday that year.

Seeing as how I hadn’t landed anything permanent yet, I thought it would be the perfect way to inject a little much-needed cash into my pocket–heck, I hadn’t made a proper grocery store run since mid-December!²I’m not sure if this is a story in it’s own right, but that streak actually lasted until mid May–a solid 5 months of a grown-ass man not buying groceries. It’s one of my more boastable accomplishments, and a strong contender for making it onto my headstone.

It’s not like I had anything else of note to do that V-day. Most of my guy friends were single at that time as well, so the only plans I had were to meet up later the evening of Valentine’s at a random Jamaican-cuisine-serving bar out in the boonies. We were calling it Bro-entine’s Day or Bachelor’s Day or something else obnoxious that I can’t remember off the top of my head.

Also, being the ever-over-thinking life philosopher that y’all know and love, I realized that this would be an interesting opportunity of sorts.

Let me reference the ultimate asinine life philosopher and personal idol of mine, Jerry Seinfeld. Those of you familiar with his eponymous TV show may recall the episode The Big Salad,³For a plot summary, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Salad. in which George buys a big salad for Elaine. His flavor-of-the-month girlfriend, Julie, is accompanying him, and when they show up to Jerry’s to deliver it, she is the one who is carrying it and ends up being the one who hands it to Elaine.

Elaine then proceeds to thank Julie–not George, who actually paid for it. Of course, petty hilarity ensues.

The wisdom to be gleaned here is that people often subconsciously attribute credit to the person who delivers something–not the person actually responsible for it. This principle in theory should apply whether it be a big salad, good news, bad news…or, say, flowers and balloons.

So imagine all the warm, positive, and often “romantic” feelings a woman⁴Or a man, I suppose. might experience upon receiving a lovely bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates. Now imagine all those great feelings being subconsciously–and undereservedly–associated with my modestly handsome and youthful face, and perhaps even the sound of my voice.

In the short term, well…you know how they say “don’t shoot the messenger”? I liked to joke that in this case maybe I should be proclaiming to the recipient “Don’t kiss the messenger! J.K. Kidding…you can kiss me if you insist.”

But even better than maybe getting a kiss on the spot, was the Long Game that I was playing.

I need to invoke yet another episode of Seinfeld here, The Junk Mail,⁵For a plot summary, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Junk_Mail. in which Elaine inexplicably falls for a very ordinary looking guy, only to eventually find out that she’s so voraciously drawn to him because she recognizes him from a series of T.V. commercials where he plays “The Wiz,” a mascot for an electronics store of the same name.

The idea is that later down the road, if I happened to run into one of the ladies I had previously delivered flowers to while running around town, that they would be overcome by attraction and desire for me.

Now multiply that by the some-odd 50 delivers I would eventually make…yeah, that’s the closest to straight-up Evil Genius that I’ve came in my life. In theory, I could potentially have the legitimate need to “beat them off with a stick.” Too bad–spoiler alert–that investment never paid off…

Okay, philosophical digression aside, I responded to the ad, and as you all already know, after 5 rounds of interviews and 3 background checks, I scored the gig. Well, maybe it was more like half a round of interviews and zero background checks, but that doesn’t have the same zing to it, does it?

The first morning of the gig was a Thursday, and I showed up bright and early at 6:30. In fact, I was the first one there, even beating the shop owner.

He sheepishly greeted me, and explained that the demand for flower delivery before the regular work day started tended to be on the low side, so I might just be hanging out for an hour or so before things would start to pick up.

To my surprise, within about 30 minutes he told me to warm up the Camry, cuz I had my first delivery of the day! I was so pumped and ready to harvest all the undue adoration that I was sure was coming my way.

Except…well, I had better hope that the principles I laid out above wouldn’t hold for that first delivery. Because the last thing I needed was for a random group of friends and family to forever associate me with grief and loss and embalmed loved ones.

Yes, that’s right, my first Valentine’s Day delivery was to a mother ----- funeral home. And they weren’t even open yet, so I had wait around for 10 minutes, and then I had the joy and honor of being in a dimly light funeral parlor at 7:30 in the morning, where the dead definitely outnumbered the living. This was off to a swell start, indeed.

After that, though, the fun business picked up and, honestly, the next 3 days were kind of a blur, with me rushing about, making deliveries all over a 15-mile radius. The only one I really remember is the one I delivered to a girl that I had taken Public Speaking with 4 years earlier. The main reason I remembered her was because she was on K-State’s waterskiing team, and I recall being shocked to learn that we–Kansas State–had a waterskiing team. Anyways, at least we recognized each other enough that it wasn’t too awkward of an encounter.

The funny part about all of this is that I unwisely hadn’t clarified the terms of compensation beforehand, and it wasn’t until I was getting ready to head out for my final delivery run that I learned how much I would be getting paid. The deal was that I would get $5 for every successful delivery–which was actually a bit more than I had expected. I must have made ~45 runs because I calculated that I would pull in about $225 for my three days’ worth of work. It was definitely a pleasant surprise!

Though I was running a little late, I just needed to make 5 or 6 more deliveries, and then I would be able to go celebrate Celibacy Day with a cold beer, some jerked chicken, and the company of my homies.

I had gotten to the next to last delivery, which was actually a double delivery. Some thoughtful husband and father had ordered flowers for both his wife and his wrong daughter. I found it to be a very sweet gesture.

Now there are three important details here. First, I had parked across the street from their house. Second, since I had to deliver two vases, I had decided to carry them in the now almost-empty cardboard box that I had been using to safely and securely shuttle around my deliveries. Lastly, it had snowed a few days earlier, and so there was some hard-packed snow (now ice) against the curb, though the street itself was clear.

After making the delivery, I was walking back to my car with the empty box in my hands, and I needed to gingerly step over the strip of snow that was against the curb.

It was just wide enough that I couldn’t step over it, so I daintily hopped over it…

The next thing I remember is the box going flying in the air and my body shifting into a horizontal position about 3 feet in the air before gravity took back over and violently pulled me back to Earth face-down.

Apparently when I had hopped into the street I came down on some black ice, causing my legs to slip out from underneath me in very extreme fashion.

It really was a blur, but the main thing I recall is my right hand landing first, basically karate-chopping the street. It was lightly sore, but then again, so was the rest of my body.

Not being seriously injured, I picked myself up in embarrassment–though I’m pretty sure no one saw me–and picked up my box and hopped in my car. The final delivery was thankfully more uneventful, and I headed back for one last check-in with the florist to give them my total delivery tally.

I met up with my buddies and enjoyed a good meal with them, and I related to them how my little flower delivery adventure had gone, including the surprise twist at the end there.

That night when I got ready to hop in the shower, I discovered that, in addition to scraping my cheek and landing on my hand, I somehow had a long scratch down my chest. Nothing major…just odd. My theory was that I had slid forward as I landed, and that there must have been a little jagged bit of ice sticking up, slicing me gently as I slid across it.

As they say, fun times were had by all…

Of course it would have been wonderful if this here story ended with me incurring the most minimal of injuries and walking away from the experience with a cool wad of $225 in my pocket. That would have been great.

However, after a week, I noticed my hand was still a little achey, so since I was still enrolled in a photography class at the college, I took advantage of my access to the student health clinic.

The key point here is that “access” does NOT equal “coverage” or “insurance” or anything like that. Having my hand x-rayed on the first visit was reasonable, but had I known that I would be paying out of my empty-ass pockets for every ----- thing, I would have told the doc he could shove the follow-up x-ray somewhere only his licensed and trained proctologist could find it.

It turns that I had actually fractured the pinky-bone in my hand, and was prescribed a custom-formed plastic half-cast for a few weeks. So it was probably overall better for my health that I did have my injury checked out.

But after all was said and done, I got a bill in the mail for…$205.

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

After taking into account the gas I burned making those deliveries, I was exactly $0 the richer for the whole episode.

In the end I had broken both my hand and dead even.

Unfortunately, I was too ----- hungry to appreciate the irony–and the beautiful symmetry–of the situation.

But really, the point of the story is you couldn’t fault me if I were militantly pro-“Medicare For All.” Of course the version I would be promoting would be retroactive at least 16 years…

I really, really want my hard-earned $225 back–adjusted for inflation, and with interest, of course.

Hmmph. That’s interesting…maybe–just maybe–I am but a bougie capitalist after all…

Happy Valentine’s Day, all you money-lovers!

Content created on: 7 February 2020 (Friday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	At some point I will tell the tale of how I accidentally graduated without realizing it.
↵2	I’m not sure if this is a story in it’s own right, but that streak actually lasted until mid May–a solid 5 months of a grown-ass man not buying groceries. It’s one of my more boastable accomplishments, and a strong contender for making it onto my headstone.
↵3	For a plot summary, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Salad.
↵4	Or a man, I suppose.
↵5	For a plot summary, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Junk_Mail.

Killing Them Hardly

2 February 2020 / BJ / 0 Comments

7 Min Read

If it isn’t obvious by now, I’m particularly fascinated by dreams. I find that they provide an interesting–and sometimes terrifyingly honest–peek into our psyches. It’s like saying to your Innermost Self, “No, tell me how you really feel about me.”

The downside to recounting dreams to the rest of the world is that so, so much of them make sense only while you’re experiencing them; the narrative within the dream is consistent enough in the moment, but the second you wake up and and say that first detail aloud (even if just to yourself), you realize, “Hey that makes no ----- sense at all!” At which point it becomes much more of a fustercluck describing to someone else what that experience was like.

I think for this very reason I don’t share here nearly as many dreams I would really like to. I do it for the sake of you, Dear Readers. After all, haven’t you suffered enough trying to make sense of my stories that really happened?

Well, I suppose that’s enough foreplay–let me get to the dream that I’m eager to regale you with today. I was going to share this one with last week’s dream-themed post, but I ran over my self-imposed time-limit. Let’s see if I can keep it short and sweet this time around, ya?

It wasn’t but a week or two ago when I found myself in a classroom setting that seemed to be on the border between a university and a medical center. So far, this makes sense, as I have worked in such a setting for the better part of the last 15 years.

Of course I hadn’t picked up on the detail that I was the only adult in the classroom besides the teacher, though I was clearly one of the students. Actually I’m not 100% certain I was going all Billy Madison with a bunch of 8-year-olds, because I also got the distinct vibe that I wasn’t able to communicate fluently, so there’s a pretty good chance that I was in, of all things, a Spanish-speaking elementary classroom located on a medical campus. Making sense so far…

We were reading from a classic novel as a class, and as a character appeared in the story, the next student with the same gender as that character would be assigned their part for the rest of the story. I was sitting in the front row of the classroom, on the far left side save for two young Mexican school girls further to my left.

All that to say, as soon as the first male character–a young boy–had a speaking part, the orating duties fell on my shoulders. I remember having a real hard time getting through the line or two in front of me. ‘Twas but a real trip on ye ol’ Struggle Bus, indeed.

We read some more, and it wasn’t but a minute or two before my character had another line. However, this time I simply for the life of me could not read the words on the page.

So I improvised.

While my goal was to get me out of the situation with some light humor, my definitely-not-in-the-text zinger turned out to be something of an over-achiever.

I was expecting maybe just a chuckle or two from the crowd, but instead I ----- killed it.

I mean, I had everyone in tears from laughing so hard. The teacher was on the ground unable to breathe. It was ----- near a literal riot–one that lasted for a good 2-3 minutes. Mind you, that’s an eternity in comedy-land.

So though I wasn’t in it for the compliments, I gotta say, the response I got felt good. Real good. I sat there, with my eyes closed, literally basking in my own glory, letting my ego soak up every last drop.

I remember thinking to myself, “This must be what it feels like to be a comic¹Or comedien/comedienne to those not in the industry. when they tell a joke that just absolutely slays the audience…I think I could get used to this.”

My thought immediately after that, though, was “I gotta tell somebody about this!”

Since the Boss Lady–bless her soul–was the first person to come to mind, it reminded me that I was married, thus confirming that indeed I was a grown-ass man, in a classroom full of kids, in a foreign land. No, nothing odd about that…

At that point, the scene segued into later that night in the same classroom, where it was just me and few other random students doing our own unrelated things.

For my part, I was obsessed with writing down my unicorn of a one-liner before it escaped me. I found myself wandering around the room in search of a pen or pencil, when I came across the desk where I had been sitting.

To my delight, I found the scrap paper that I had been doodling on when I had uttered my epic phrase. Hilariously, the first thought that crossed my mind was, “I better save this–the historians are going to want to preserve this piece of comedic history.” Yeah, I know, a bit presumptuous, but it made complete sense in that moment.

On it I found a bunch of trigonometric diagrams and sketches, and scrawled at the top, the phrase “Uncle-Uncle B.J.” I have no idea why, but I found that phrase to be utterly hilarious as well. What can I say? I was on fire that day.

But at that point, I still hadn’t written the phrase down, and I just knew I was going to hate myself forever if I somehow forgot it. While my insurance policy was to just keep repeating it over and over quietly to myself, I just couldn’t take any chances.

Right about that time I had found a pencil, and just as I was about to jot it on my collector’s edition piece of scratch paper…the power went out campus-wide. Of course it would. How timely.

I remember having the sense that I, along with the other few students, really needed to make our way to another, safer, location on campus where everybody else was. That detail doesn’t matter too much, but my guess was that they were all at a football non-Americano²I.e. “soccer”.game.

We found our way out a side door and could see some stadium-like lights off in the distance, and determined that’s where we needed to head. Unfortunately, we were completely surrounded by a maze of tennis courts.

While the other students headed off to get lost, I stayed behind, desperately trying to write down My Precious words. However, given that I was using a pencil, laying on a not-so-smooth tennis court, and had virtually no light of which to speak, I wasn’t able to get more than about a word and a half down, so I had to resort back to muttering it to myself while I tried to find my way to somewhere–anywhere–else that had light and a smooth surface.

I eventually found another building, and so I let myself in via a nondescript side door, hoping that I wouldn’t be more lost inside than I had been outside.

But as soon as the door shut behind me, the loudest, most piercing alarm I had ever heard blew out my right ear drum, as I was still slightly turned with that side towards the door.

Simultaneously, as the power came back on, a blinding light/shock wave combination utterly blasted my right side.

The only thing I could think in that moment was “nuclear explosion?” and “welp, I guess this is my death.”

However, I remained conscious as it felt like the right side of my face was being melted off, so I shielded that side with my arms as best as I could, and kind of leaned into the curiously continuous wall of energy.³Ultimately, the best waking theory I have for what happened was that I had wandered into a particle accelerator lab, and I happened to be right in the path of the particle beam as it unexpectedly turned back on with the power. But it was never revealed in my dream what had happened, so I’m just guessing here.

This went on for about a minute, the whole while I kept thinking “Am I dead yet? No? How am I still alive? Okay…now am I dead? What? Not yet? Dear lord put me out of my misery already.”

Next thing I remember is opening my eyes to find that, no, I was not in heaven nor hell, but rather in (what I presumed to be) a burn victims’ ward of a hospital.

Two nurse-type ladies were with me and saw that I had came to, but continued to discuss me in the third person. I soon realized that one of them didn’t have any legs, so I wonder if they were not nurses, but rather victims of the unidentified blast as well.

One of them said, “Well, no, he sure isn’t dead, but we’ll see yet if he can handle being like this the rest of this life.”

Though I didn’t have a mirror, it become clear to me real quickly that I had suffered third-degree burns to my body, but especially to my head and face.

As I went to make a comment to one of them, much to my horror I discovered that my lips had been melted off, and I would never be able to speak again.

Noooooooo! The world must know of my turn as the Wittiest Man-child in the World!

I tried desperately speaking, whispering, grunting–anything–but I had been rendered a completely ineffective communicator. I’m not clear on this point, but I’m thinking the fingers on each of my hands must have been melded together, because you would think I would at least be able to write it down, right?

The remainder of the dream was mostly a Rocky-style montage of me going through vocal physical therapy, trying to regain my ability to speak. I was on a mission: nothing was going to stop me from telling me somebody how funny I had been that one time.

I don’t ever remember fully gaining the ability to speak. However, right before I awoke, the last scene involved me walking to some sort of rally with a group of prep-school teen-aged boys. The last thing I remember is approaching them, hell-bent on telling them the Wittiest Quip in the World. I just knew they were going to appreciate it.

As I neared them, I opened what used to be where my lips were, but before I could moan my line, I saw fear flash across their faces.

Oh, right. I forgot. I look like my face has bent by the flames of hell…

And that’s where the dream ended. It’s perhaps the most unfulfilled I have ever felt after awakening from a dream.

However, thanks to repeating it to myself over and over, I could remember what the line was, and could tell people in the real world!

Before I could forget, I turned to my phone and opened up my Notes app, where I furiously tapped out those words which would change the course of comedy forever:

In a young Dickens accent: "I'm sorry I don't have a very big Johnson, sir. I've never had much of a Willy on me."

Behold World, I have created the first-ever Dick(ens) joke.⁴Seriously, though, Dream B.J.?

Yeah, anyways, still not seeing how this could fail, I tried that out on the Boss Lady as soon as I got the chance…

Turns out, it wasn’t quite as funny in real life. Go figure.

It was definitely a bummer to realize that I may not have come up with the One Joke to Kill Them All after all…

But, hey, look on the bright side: at least I still got my big, beautiful lips, right?

Content created on: 29 January & 1 February 2020 (Wednesday/Saturday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	Or comedien/comedienne to those not in the industry.
↵2	I.e. “soccer”.
↵3	Ultimately, the best waking theory I have for what happened was that I had wandered into a particle accelerator lab, and I happened to be right in the path of the particle beam as it unexpectedly turned back on with the power. But it was never revealed in my dream what had happened, so I’m just guessing here.
↵4	Seriously, though, Dream B.J.?

Where Are My ----- Pajamas

30 January 2020 / BJ / 4 Comments

2 Min Read

Growing up, my mom tended to keep the thermostat in our house set on the lower end of the tolerable spectrum.

One winter, when I was about 4 or 5 years old, I couldn’t take it any more and demanded she at least buy me some warm pajamas.

Despite my melodramatic pleading for her to show the slightest hint of humanity, she wouldn’t budge.

So I resorted to sobbing and crying, hoping to effectively play the pity card. Yet, still she resisted.

I only had one card left to play at this point: faux anger. Now, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t threatening violence. And I’m pretty sure that the Phillips-head¹An unnecessary detail. Joke’s on you! screwdriver was already in my hand before the start of this particular conversation.

Regardless of why there was a screwdriver in my chubby little hand, I pulled a Daniel Tiger:

…minus the whole namaste anger-management breathing exercise bit.

I looked at her and proclaimed, “I’m so mad at you, I could bend this screwdriver in half!”

Calling my bluff, Mom retorted, “If you can bend that screwdriver in half, I’ll drive to New York²(from Kansas) tonight and buy you some new pajamas!”

Not one to back down from a ridiculous and improbable challenge, I gripped that screwdriver with both hands, stuck my bare foot in the middle, and straight-up bent that screwdriver in half around my foot.

We both stood there in shock for about a minute before I made some smart-ass comment like “I’ll be waiting in the car…”

As you can imagine, I never got those velveteen pajamas that I had been promised.

But, Mom, if you’re listening (and I know you are), I just want to say, “Where are my ----- pajamas?!?”

J.K. Kidding. I’m a grown-ass man now, and can drive myself to New York to buy some Daniel Tiger pajamas…if they make them in adult sizes, that is.

Nonetheless, the point of the story is: don’t make bets you can’t make good on. And also don’t underestimate the strength of your Kindergartner.

Content created on: 29 January 2020 (Wednesday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	An unnecessary detail. Joke’s on you!
↵2	(from Kansas)

Kicked On A Plane

26 January 2020 / BJ / 2 Comments

5 Min Read

Here’s a fun fact: something you may not know about me is that I’m a Caucasian male.

Not to minimize the troubles I’ve had in this world–I’ve had my share of true sorrow, heartache, and hardship–but sometimes I have to take a step back and acknowledge how being a white dude has affected my life story.

And the point of this exercise is not to come to the conclusion “thank the Lordy Jesus that I was born with a lilly-white tally-whacker¹A regional American colloquialism for the male genitalia. in 20th Century U.S. of A!”

Rather, my hope is that my Tales from the Light Side will serve as a sharp and satirically self-deprecating contrast to the real issues that affect the many many people who don’t share the same demographics as I do.

Here’s to dreaming of world where all our kids can be plagued by asinine, non-existential dilemmas…

A few years ago, I flew out to Kansas to pack up my Beloved Mother into the largest UHaul available, and move her back to the small North Carolina hamlet I call home.

I was flying on Good Friday, so it was no surprise that the airports were hustling and a bustling. I had an early afternoon layover in Atlanta, where all that hustle and bustle caught up with Delta Airlines, as my flight to Wichita was overbooked.

Well, what do airlines do when the have too many passengers and not enough seats? They ask for volunteers to take a later flight, occasionally offering airline vouchers as compensation.

Now, I had heard about such things from one of my older brothers, who, being a single basketball coach, travelled often. Critically for him, he often had the flexibility in his schedule to take a later flight–and the $200-$700 in future plane tickets in the process.

I was always so jealous–y’all know how much I love being clever, and getting hundreds of dollars in travel for a few hours of your time always seemed like shrewd economics to me.

Anyways, after multiple calls for volunteers, the voucher reward had gone up to $600. For some reason, as I often have in life, I had initially automatically ruled out the possibility of me being one of the lucky ones to cash in on the opportunity. But once I heard $600, I started to seriously–and nervously–rethink my position on the matter.

I texted my mom real quick and told her about the situation, and asked whether it made a difference if I showed up at 7 pm or 11 pm. She told me to go for it…now I just had to work up the courage to actually take action!

I guess a little context might be useful here, and that is that unless I’m in a situation that I’m fairly comfortable in, I tend to be a shy, timid, uncertain and indecisive chap. So it actually would be quite the big deal if I had the cajones to put myself out there and volunteer for the later flight.

After about 5 minutes of self-pep-talking (and hoping/dreading that they would find all the volunteers they needed in the meantime), I finally worked up the nerve to stroll up to the check-in station²I’m sure that’s not quite the right term, but can’t seem to come up with the proper one in the moment. and casually ask if they needed any more volunteers.

I say “casually,” but I’m actually lying through my teeth. I’m pretty sure my voice cracked into a high-pitched screech mid-sentence, as if my testicles were just now dropping, no doubt confusing the airline clerk³Again, I’m pretty sure this isn’t the right term. in the process.

To my horror/relief, she said that yes, actually, they needed one more volunteer. So I replied with something suave and relaxed, implying that I do this thing all the time: “Uh, I, er, volunteer then. I want to be that last person. Please?”

She graciously smiled and took my info, thanking me in the process.

And then we awkwardly stood there, since clearly I didn’t know what was supposed to happen next.

Again, she was more than kind enough to tell me that I needed to hang out by the gate until boarding time, in case they had room for me on the flight after all.

So, I just chilled right by the gate first waiting for our boarding time to begin, then patiently waiting as all those non-$600-airline-voucher-having suckers boarded the plane.

As the line was slowing to a trickle, I heard the flight attendant call my name, saying that I was cleared to board.

Dazed and confused, I wandered on to the plane, slowly realizing what was happening.

At the same time I was realizing how much I did not want to be on that plane. I had finally worked up the courage to earn a coveted airline voucher, and now it was being viciously ripped from my hands. They might as well have been ripping my heart out while they were at it. Jerks.

I think this accurately describes my innermost feelings in that moment:

I was surprisingly emotional about the situation. As found my way to my seat, I actually had to fight back the tears.

Of course, it probably didn’t help that I had already bragged to the Boss Lady about scoring a $600 voucher, and now I would have to come home to her empty-handed. So not only had I disappointed myself, but I would be letting her down as well.

I was also surprisingly angry with myself, feeling like I could have at least put up a fight had I not been such a pushover panty-waste.

So I just sat there in my seat waiting for take-off, a whole hurricane of emotions and thoughts on the inside.

But as I did, I noticed that a couple of the flight attendants were confusedly counting seats in my area.

And in that moment, timid ol’ me said “Screw⁴This was supposed to say “fuck” here, but my Censorship plugin didn’t catch it. So here we are, using “screw” instead. Oh well. this. I’m the master of my own destiny, and if I have to manufacture a way off this plane, I will!”

Well, it wasn’t that dramatic in reality. But I did indeed take charge of my life in the moment, refusing be the victim of an on-time arrival at my destination.

I wasn’t going to let nobody kick me on to that ----- plane.

I persistently tried to get one of the attendant’s attention until they finally came my way.

“Excuse me, but were you expecting to find an empty seat back here? Because I’m pretty sure I’m sitting in a seat that rightfully belongs to someone else…”

After checking with the other confused attendant, it turned out that indeed, they had prematurely put me on the plane, and was extremely grateful that I was giving up my seat (again).

Once I got the official go-ahead to deboard the plane, I grabbed my carryon and strolled off that plane, ever so high on testosterone, adrenaline, and life. I was brimming with the confidence, like I had three tally-whackers…

And in an even more Caucasian turn of events, shortly thereafter I found out that for whatever reason the voucher would be for $800 instead of $600. ----- awesome.

Given that I now had 3+ hours on my hands to kill, I found my way to one of the nicer restaurants in the Atlanta airport and treated myself to a $70 meal. After all, I was still over $700 richer than when I woke up that morning. Plus, you gotta celebrate life’s little victories, ya know?

Several months later at the beginning of September, me and the family flew out to California for a cousin’s wedding. Thanks to my sweet, sweet $800 voucher, it only cost us ~$500 for the 3 of us to fly non-stop to and from LAX.

While there, one of our freer days happened to align with the first day of back-to-school for the students in Southern California.

Seeing a prime opportunity, I promptly used the funds that I didn’t have to spend on plane tickets, and dragged my family to local, notoriously over-crowded amusement park…on one of the least busiest days of the year.

Yes, my friends, in perhaps the most white ending possible for a story like this…

I went to ----- Disneyland.

Content created on: 22 January 2020 (Wednesday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	A regional American colloquialism for the male genitalia.
↵2	I’m sure that’s not quite the right term, but can’t seem to come up with the proper one in the moment.
↵3	Again, I’m pretty sure this isn’t the right term.
↵4	This was supposed to say “fuck” here, but my Censorship plugin didn’t catch it. So here we are, using “screw” instead. Oh well.

I Had A Dream…Or Two

23 January 2020 / BJ / 2 Comments

4 Min Read

Okay, so maybe the title is a little misleading, in that I’ve thrown in a bonus kid-centric vignette alongside the couple of dreams that, in telling them, seem to be a totally appropriate way to celebrate the recently observed Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

Enjoy!

A few weeks ago, I took our two girls, The Elder (6) and The Younger (2) to the grocery store as per our usual routine.

However, while we normally go right around lunch or early afternoon, this particular day we had gone closer to dinner time and the natives were getting restless with hunger.

As I was loading them up The Elder made a not so unreasonable request.

The Elder: “Dad, do you think we could snack on something on the way home.”

Me: “Sure. Like what?”

The Elder: “Oh, how about some of the nuts you bought?”

Me: “Um…oh yeah, the cashews? Let me get some out of the back.”

Moments later…

Daddy’s nuts! Daddy’s nuts! We want Daddy’s nuts!
The Elder and The Younger, chanting loudly in unison

Me: “Shhhhh! That doesn’t mean the same thing to an adult as it does to you!”

Frankly,¹Pun intended? I’m just relieved that happened in the privacy of our car and not in the middle of the store…

A couple of nights ago I had a dream that, for whatever reason, the Boss Lady needed to get vanity plates for her car.

Of course, there are many details of the dream that make no ----- sense–it was a dream after all–so I’ll try to keep it to either the interesting and/or relevant ones.

So she had to get vanity plates. Don’t know why it wasn’t optional, but whatever. We found ourselves in a…billiards parlor? I’m pretty sure that’s not what it was, but that’s the closest I can come to describing it.

We were there with 3-4 other people, most of whom we either knew at some point in our lives, or perhaps recognized from T.V., and we had formed a committee to tackle the dilemma at hand.

…along with an antique fortune-telling gumball machine. Yup. I’m pretty sure one of those was there, too, and was an integral part of the brainstorming process.

All that to say, we already had one pretty solid suggestion on hand,²Images generated at https://www.acme.com/licensemaker/

when inspiration hit me like a ton of bricks. As I went to blurt it out, the 55-year-old woman in the committee barely beat me to the punch, word-for-word.

I was like, “That was literally exactly what I was about to say! OMG, you stole the words out of my mouth!” Apparently, I desperately wanted credit for the idea.

Upon waking up, though, I realized that the debate over who got credit for option #2 was a moot point. After all, it was my dream, and we’ve already settled the debate over who gets credit in such situations.

Me. T’would be yours truly who gets sole credit for option #2:

I guess my subconscious decided to make no bones about the reality of the financial dynamics in my marriage…

When I awoke in the morning, I couldn’t wait to tell the Boss Lady about my witty AF dream. I was even more excited to see which one she would hypothetically choose.

While she chuckled at both ideas, she has been coy about which one she would actually go with, if forced to decide between the two.

Which is probably all for the better. As you may have noted, the simulated license plates from above are based on a vintage design from a bye-gone era when verbosity and vanity were not forced to be mutually exclusive. Sadly, modern North Carolina license plates are unable to contain the genius vanity-plate making skills I bring to the table.

In reality, her two choices could only be realized as:

or…

Huh…I think the idea gets a little lost in translation…

Damn me, and my unrealistic dreams.

In our last vignette, I hearken back to a dream I had several years ago, one which I tweeted about into the void of Twitter from a secret, follower-less account.

In it I was hanging out with a friend of from college. Since he still lives in Kansas, and I in North Carolina, we only see each other every couple of years.

In the course of catching up, I found out that [the dream version of him] had left his wife for…his mother-in-law.

Needless to say, I was shocked.

I was even more shocked, however, at how much sense his logic made:

Yeah, but I get to live in a really nice house.
dream version of my friend who literally shacked up with his mother-in-law

Content created on: 22 January 2020 (Wednesday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	Pun intended?
↵2	Images generated at https://www.acme.com/licensemaker/

But I Still Love Technology-The Other Odds

12 January 2020 / BJ / 0 Comments

9 Min Read

Editor’s note: This is the companion post to But I Still Love Technology-The Evens/Number Five, and, with their powers combined, form a complete version of The Top 5 Times Technology has Screwed Me Over at the Point of the Story. If you haven’t read The Evens yet, you can do so here. For Number Five, click here.

Editor’s additional note: This countdown list is admittedly a bit meta–i.e. a blog post about adventures in blogging. As such, it may be of particular interest to those who are starting up a blog themselves. For the rest of the world, I hope that I’m not getting into the weeds so much that you can’t appreciate the stupidity/frustration/absurdity of these situations. Enjoy! (I’m hoping you do, at least.)

To reiterate what I’m up to:

In the process of getting the Point of the Story up and running, I’ve had a few, er, “technical difficulties” that should serve as a reminder that, while technology and automation can be pretty great, without proper human guidance they can lead to some real shit-shows/comedies of error.
And that–spoiler alert–is the point of this story. Let these serve as cautionary tales to those who dare put their social lives in the hands of a hand-less machine.
But I Still Love Technology-The Evens (2020)

Without further ado, I present to you:

The Top 5 Times Technology has Screwed Me Over at the Point of the Story.

#3: That time my blog thought it was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Back when this fiasco originally went down, I had shared some of it via the Point’s Instagram and Facebook pages, so this might sound familiar to some of you.

Over the summer, I had spent a couple of months putting the Point of the Story together before releasing it into the wild. One of the first things I needed to do was set the time zone for my server.

No problem! It was an easy decision to select Norfolk, thinking “Hey, perfect! That’s only a 3 hour drive from here!”

After that, the first order of business was to put up a “Coming Soon” page–replete even with a countdown timer–for anyone who tried to visit it before the Appointed Time Unto Which All Would Be Made Known.

And that Appointed Time, which all future historians will know by heart, was Thursday, August 29, 2019, precisely at 10 p.m. EDT.

When that day rolled around, and shortly before we went live, I had texted my good friend, known in these parts as “The Doctor,” and asked if he would test things out once the clock struck 10. You know, make sure all the links were functioning and that it wasn’t a general shit-show, etc., etc.

However, around that same time, when I tried going directly to a particular post from a different computer, I wasn’t seeing the “Coming Soon” screen as I had expected. So I pinged the good Doctor to check on it for me:

(Tries tweaking some settings, hoping to somehow get a different result…)

That last line there is an example of “careful what you wish for,” because that was one hope that was definitely fulfilled…apart from the Doctor’s testing, I don’t think I had a single visitor that first day. Womp-womp-womp!

Anyways, as you can tell, I had a prime suspect in mind as to what was causing my woes. Apparently I hadn’t caught on to the fact that the timezone menu was segregated by region:

So yeah, it turns out that there was another Norfolk–the Pacific kine, in fact. And apparently it’s living 16 hours in the future. No wonder the floodgates to the Point were opened early. The ----- thing is happily living its life under the delusion that it’s out in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Ocean.

So, one would think that since I had a number one suspect in mind as to what was causing me yet another time-traveling woe, that I would be able remedy the problem lickity-split and go on my way. Right?

Of course I popped on over to my WordPress dashboard and set my server time to New York City. I figuratively dusted off my hands and said to myself, “Welp! Mission Accomplished! I made quick work of that pesky problem!”

Yet, to my dismay, I kept suffering from premature blog-post-jaculation. Without fail over the next 2 weeks, instead of being published on Sunday morning at 7:15 am, my latest posts would go out to the public at 3:15 pm on Saturday–whether they were in final form or not.

For the sake of those who would come after me, I feel it is of utmost importance–albeit boring–that I reveal just what the hell was going on with my server time, and how I finally fixed that bastard for good.

Eventually, eventually, eventually, after much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth, I found the answer in the stupidest of places.

You see, there is very popular and powerful WordPress plugin called Jetpack that almost everyone uses. It’s got what every blogger/webmaster could ever need for basic site analytics, security, backups…and more!

Well, it turns out that for some reason, Jetpack also lets one set a server time, and who the ----- knows why it’s not automatically the same as what one sets in their WordPress dashboard.

In Summary, the wrong “common-sense” way to set your server time:

…and the correct elitist, No-You-Don’t-Know-What-You-Want-Let-Me-Fix-That-For-You, way to set your server time:¹At least in the case where you’re using the otherwise useful Jetpack–made by the WordPress people themselves (hence why the setting is hiding at wordpress.com.

The point is beware of all the fancy “helpful” plugins you may be tempted to install. You never know which one of them asshats–ahem, I’m looking at you, Jetpack–might be a control freak, overriding your settings and then hiding the One True Setting in some obscure place.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

#1: That time I tried to solicit an erotic photographer on Facebook.

So far, the dumb predicaments that errant technology has put me in have been without much real-world consequence. However, there has been one glaring exception to that rule.

A while back I told a tale of attempting to land a Craigslist gig of debugging a treasure hunt, as recounted in Blog Like Nobody’s Reading.

For those of you have read it–and those of you who just now hopped on over there to read it–you may recall the bonus story I just could not resist including.

In it I shared the tragic tale of some poor chap who had a perpetual Craigslist ad in the Gigs section, who for the life of him could not find someone to take erotic photographs of him at the behest of his wife.

You know, nothing fancy, just something low-key and tasteful like this:

“Lover Boy! You are a Lover Boy!”²Source: https://giphy.com/gifs/hulu-seinfeld-l0MYGEgd1I8ueXG8w

And since I know you’re all dying for an update on his status, I came across his ad AGAIN just a few days go, meaning that he has been critically under-erotically-photographed for at least 7 months now.

It’s somehow one of the saddest yet most hilarious things I’ve personally witnessed on Craigslist. So of course I couldn’t deprive the rest of the world of the chuckles to be found upon reflecting on his situation.

But as I’ve already well established, Karma is one bad-ass beach and pity anyone who should provoke her justice.

Things started to go sideways for me when I first had the idea to even include this beautiful vignette. Originally, in an early draft of the post, I had rudely interrupted myself in the middle of the main story and dropped it right in there. You know, train-wreck-of-thought/stream-of-consciousness and all that jazz.

And of course I had to include the critical piece of evidence, a screenshot of the ad. Again, to be clear, this is NOT my ad, NOT my words, NOT my marriage that is hinging on some tasteful male erotica:

Although later I would move that story to a bonus addendum at the end of the post, I had set the post up to be published while it was still in its first draft form, in case I didn’t have the chance to go back and revise it before my self-imposed deadline. So at the time, this screenshot was the first picture in the post, a detail that would come back to haunt my lily-white ass later on.

A neat feature on WordPress is that you can connect your social media accounts–Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.–and have an announcement go out on those platforms concurrently with your blog post when you have it scheduled to be published at a certain time (as I regularly do):

Automation sure is great, isn’t it? Thanks, Technology! Because of you, I don’t have to wake up at 7:15 on Sunday mornings and hop frantically from WordPress to Facebook to Twitter just to blast out my latest liturgical³I’m pretty certain that that does not mean what I’m trying to make it mean, but just don’t have it in me to do 5 second of internet research. offering.

If I recall correctly, I stayed up until around 3 in the morning the Saturday night/Sunday morning before Blog Like Nobody’s Reading was set to be published, indubitably trying to get it ready to be unveiled to the world, as is par for the course around here.

And thanks to all the publishing bells and whistles WordPress offers, I could get some much needed rest and sleep in late, knowing that all would be shared at the appointed time without any need for further human intervention.

It wasn’t until around noon that Sunday before I decided to check in on my Facebook post to see if was getting much action from my followers.

To my dismay, this is what I found being planted in their Facebook feeds:

Did ever express to you my insistence that context matters matters matters? If not: click here or here.

And now how meta is it that we have ourselves a real-live example of its importance, in the flesh!

Not only did stupid WordPress/Facebook decide to grab the first image from the first draft, but it decided to nicely crop it such that, even if you happened to notice the link and preview at the bottom of the picture, it sure looks like I’m straight-up pleading with everyone I know on Facebook to please, please, PLEASE, oh please take some nudie pics of me.

After this, this will be the image of me burned forever in their minds:

*Face-palm-emoji*

Although, I’m not sure whether I’m relieved or disappointed that no one took me up on my offer…

Anyways, as you can imagine, I immediately tried to edit it and change the picture, but you wouldn’t believe how unimaginably impossible that was. After 30 bonus minutes of that inaccurate solicitation continuing to pepper people’s Facebook feeds, I finally had to give up and just delete it, and post a new one altogether.

The lesson I learned here is trust nobody: if you want to embarrass yourself right, you’re going to have to do it yourself.

And that is also why you always see some poorly cut-and-pasted image with my Big Lip logo plastered on it accompanying ever ----- post I publish. No matter how tangentially related to the story, I always make some picture to be set as my Featured Image (another WordPress setting–I’ll spare you the screenshot for now), that way I know exactly what will be showing up in people’s Facebook and Twitter feeds.

After all, I have a meticulously manicured public image to maintain…

Content created on: 4/6/10/11 January 2020 (Saturday/Monday/Friday/Saturday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	At least in the case where you’re using the otherwise useful Jetpack–made by the WordPress people themselves (hence why the setting is hiding at wordpress.com.
↵2	Source: https://giphy.com/gifs/hulu-seinfeld-l0MYGEgd1I8ueXG8w
↵3	I’m pretty certain that that does not mean what I’m trying to make it mean, but just don’t have it in me to do 5 second of internet research.

But I Still Love Technology-Number Five

9 January 2020 / BJ / 0 Comments

5 Min Read

Editor’s note: This is a companion post to But I Still Love Technology-The Evens & But I Still Love Technology-The Other Odds, and, with their powers combined, form a complete version of The Top 5 Times Technology has Screwed Me Over at the Point of the Story. If you haven’t read The Evens yet, you can do so here. The Other Odds will be forthcoming in a few short days.

To reiterate what I’m up to:

In the process of getting the Point of the Story up and running, I’ve had a few, er, “technical difficulties” that should serve as a reminder that, while technology and automation can be pretty great, without proper human guidance they can lead to some real shit-shows/comedies of error.
And that–spoiler alert–is the point of this story. Let these serve as cautionary tales to those who dare put their social lives in the hands of a hand-less machine.
But I Still Love Technology-The Evens (2020)

Without further ado, I present to you:

The Top 5 Times Technology has Screwed Me Over at the Point of the Story.

#5: That time I accidentally warped the fabric of space and time.

Shortly after debuting the Point in late August 2019, I was chatting up one of my friends, “Sonny B.,” whom I was hoping to include in an upcoming post, Shotgun Wedding, set to be published September 15th.

To my delight, she had been binging my content, and after she told me what all she had read, I pointed out that the only post she had missed was Bum Sandwich, which was the next-to-most-recent post of mine.

However, she didn’t know what the hell I was talking about…

Now, I don’t have a screenshot to demonstrate this, but I’ll recreate the issue just for y’all.

Let’s just say you type in thepointofthestory.com directly, and go to our homepage. When things are amiss, instead of getting the latest post (“The Evens” post), you see a very judgmental ----- Clark¹Did “D1ck” just get censored?!? I bet it just got censored, didn’t it. ----- this ham-fisted Censorship plugin! instead:

Here, I’ll zoom in so you can actually see it:

As you can see, January 5th, 2020 is clearly “more recent” than December 29 or 31, 2019.

Apparently, I had managed to break the fundamental linearity of time as we experience it…

Part of the reason this was particularly frustrating is that potentially my new posts would never show up on the home page, leading most visitors to believe that I’ve stopped posting–and in turn losing critical new readers! (No one wants to read a stale blog, right?)

Anyways, no matter how much I tried tweaking the publishing date, unpublishing/republishing, etc. I could not get the most recent post to show up.

Well, I spent at least a good two weeks of Googling “WordPress posts out of order” and other similar searches to absolutely no avail. I could not find any evidence at all of anyone else in the rather-large WordPress community (millions+) ever having this problem.

Seriously?!? Not one other person had had this egregious problem?

Over and over, all the posts said the same thing: get your dates straight, and all should be copacetic, as this, and this alone, determines “post order.”

As you can (maybe) see in the screenshot of my Posts dashboard, The Evens have the correct date and everything, yet will still show up in the wrong chronological order…arggghhhh! This Universe doesn’t make any ----- sense any more.

I even bravely forged my way into the underlying code, and the function that was mis-fuck-tioning (translated simply into lay-terms) was simply “get next post” or “get previous post.” There was nowhere where the stupid thing could be breaking especially just for little ol’ me…could there?

One evening, when I was staring blankly at this dashboard in daze of hopelessness and despair, I noticed something tiny yet oh-so-slightly off:

It may not seem like much, but that’s my cursor showing up as a 4-directional arrow instead of your regular old pointer arrow.

Suspecting that this was a clue to this ridiculous madness, I clicked on the trouble-making post, and sure as shit, found that I could drag it and freely re-order the posts in such a manner.

I dragged that little bastard to the top of the list where it should be if it were chronological (i.e. FIRST), reloaded my homepage, and held my breath:

HUZZAH! Problem solved! Insanity averted!

But one mystery remained: why was nothing of the sort ever mentioned when I went in search of an answer on Google?

Well, it was on account of a perfect storm of being too clever for my own good coupled with my naiveté when it came to how WordPress functioned.

Long story short,²Who are we kidding, that ship sailed LONG ago. when I was trying to figure out how to make The Complete First Season binge-able from oldest to newest, I had installed a plugin that gives the blogger a bit more control over the order of posts, Simple Custom Post Order. What I didn’t realize is that most people using WordPress don’t have this god-like power to arbitrarily re-order their posts willy-nilly, i.e. the ability to click ‘n’ drag is not normal behavior.

Thinking that publishing them at the appropriate times would make the posts appear in the appropriate order, I was unaware that–under these new rules that I accidentally set up just for me–I needed to drag the newest post to the top of the list.

In summary, it was something of an unforced error due to having given way too much power someone way under-qualified to handle it responsibly.

Interestingly enough, my calendar-rearranging issues was obfuscated by another confounding screw-up. Later in that same conversation with Sonny B., she kept referring to the post which included her–which I had not published or otherwise shared with her.

I was simultaneously confused and impressed by her clairvoyant abilities to read a future post:

It turns out you can’t always blame the machine for bouts of unwanted technological tomfoolery.

Sometimes, there’s just a dipshit behind the wheel who can’t read a calendar…

Content created on: 4/6 January 2020 (Saturday/Monday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	Did “D1ck” just get censored?!? I bet it just got censored, didn’t it. ----- this ham-fisted Censorship plugin!
↵2	Who are we kidding, that ship sailed LONG ago.

But I Still Love Technology-The Evens

5 January 2020 / BJ / 2 Comments

7 Min Read

Although we’re officially into the new year, and the time for countdowns is behind us, there was one last Top 5 list that I wanted to share.

In the process of getting the Point of the Story up and running, I’ve had a few, er, “technical difficulties” that should serve as a reminder that, while technology and automation can be pretty great, without proper human guidance they can lead to some real shit-shows/comedies of error.

And–spoiler alert–that is the point of this story. Let these serve as cautionary tales to those who dare put their social lives in the hands of a hand-less machine.

Without further ado, I present to you:

The Top 5 Times Technology has Screwed Me Over at the Point of the Story.

J.K. Kidding! Before I present it to you, further ado is in order.

I promise that this is indeed a Top 5 list. However, since apparently I have zero ability to keep things short and simple, I decided to break it up into two posts out of respect for the Dear Reader’s time.

This week I present to you The Evens (#4 & #2)–be looking for The Odds (#5, #3, & #1) next week!

#4. That time I pretended I could time-travel.

No, I’m not talking about the time I took artistic liberties with a personal narrative in A Degenerate Family Christmas. This really happened–sadly much more boring, though.

You may have noticed at the end of many of my posts a time-stamp indicating when I actually created the content. For example:

Content created on: 23 October 2019 (Wednesday)

WordPress has many handy bits of code to make it much easier to efficiently build websites, one of them being “Reusable” blocks as seen here:

So of course I thought this would be perfect for always dropping the content’s creation date at the end of my blog, with the same formatting, etc. and only changing the date(s) as appropriate.

Every time I created a new post, I would add the “Content_creation_tag” block at the end and change the dates. Easy-peasy, done and done! Right?

It wasn’t until late October and after publishing 4 months worth of posts that I noticed something odd in an older post:

So…I guess a future me somehow wrote the post on the 23rd and sent it 3 days back in time to be published on the 20th? Wow. Sometimes I even impress myself.

But it turns out that’s only the beginning of my time-travel skillz:

BOOM! I can send information back at least 10 days in time. Ironclad proof, right here, ladies & gentlemen!

Upon closer inspection, it appears this is a skill I only developed exclusively for the month of October:

Poop. I really thought I had something special going there.

I’m J.K. Kidding of course–I don’t really believe I was able to manipulate the laws of physics so stupendously.

What it looks like is that my usage of the Reusable block–and ergo, these shenanigans–only started in the beginning of October. Though I could have sworn that I had been using them much longer than that…I’m starting to feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Obviously what was happening was that every time I updated that block with the creation date of a new post, it would retroactively update the older instances in the previous posts with that same date.

The bad news is the original dates were lost in the process (not that it matters that much), and I’ve been way to swamped with more important things to try to go back and correct this one stupid little detail.

The good news is that in putting together this post I discovered that Google’s all-seeing eye still remembers those posts as they were in their heydays:

But wait…

Arrrgggg. ----- this shit. I know for a fact that that is not accurate information for that post (which when visited, of course, says 23 October).

For the record, I’m basically live-blogging my research here, so you’re getting to see my sanity ----- with by technology in real time–again.

I give up.

This whole “content created” baloney is soooo asinine. I’m done wasting your time and mine on it.

Moving on, then…

#2: That time I tried to censor the contracted form of the F-bomb.

All y’all long-time readers of the Point know that swearing and the self-censoring thereof is a central theme around here.¹See, for example: The Alpine Stranger and/or Hello, Mother F*ckers! For the sake of expediency, I have been using a WordPress “Censorship” plugin that will take a list of black-listed potty words, and then any time they show up in a post or comment, those words are replaced with dashes (i.e. something like “- – – -” will show up in place of the world-famous f-bomb).

In theory, this approach would allow me to change how the blog is censored in the future–or to turn it off all together–without having to edit every ----- post I’ve ever written. Also, it let’s me cuss to my heart’s content when writing, while minimizing the number of minor strokes my dearest mother experiences when reading my handiwork. Everybody wins, right?

Anyways, the Censorship plugin doesn’t quite always do its job. There is one particular off-the-rails example that I need to show you, because the absurdity only happens behind the scenes.

I believe it was when putting together A Pound Casual Asshat that I felt particularly compelled to write:

If all that seems like an atypically optimistic outlook coming from yours truly, then I applaud your keen sense of What the Fuck’s Up (emphasis added).
A Pound Casual Asshat (2019)

As of this writing, you should be able to see an uncensored version of the f-bomb.²There is an off chance that I’ve implemented my own censorship plugin by the time you’re reading this, in which case it may be properly censored.

And before that, included in my original batch of posts, was A Most Excellent Life Lesson, in which I employed the classic possessive form of the f-bomb:

Oh, for fuck’s sake people…CONTEXT! (again, emphasis added)
A Most Excellent Life Lesson (2019)

Well, interestingly enough, for the life of me, I could not get Censorship to detect and censor “fuck’s”.

Mom, I feel like you deserve to know how valiantly and bravely I wrestled the machine to try to protect you.

For those of you with a bit of coding/computer science background, you may know that the humble apostrophe–aka a single quote–is often a special character which is interpreted as signifying the beginning or end of some exactly quoted text, as opposed to be taken literally as an apostrophe that should appear in the text.

In most cases, special characters can be made literal–as I needed in this situation–by putting a so-called “escape character” before it. This is typically a backslash (“\”).

So when Censorship didn’t bleep out “fuck’s” after I had add it to the blacklist, I tried escaping the apostrophe, and thus typed into the software as “fuck\’s” (without the double quotes).

When that didn’t work, I added several variations, hoping to empirically find something that would work and spare my poor mother’s eyes of beholding the horror of “fuck’s.”

Well, something in the Censorship code tells it re-process all the potty words every time one is added. Each time it does this, it tries to be smart and add an escape character in front of any special characters it finds.

Guess what? The backslash is also a special character–it is the escape character, after all. Pretty ----- special, I would say.

The best part is that it has no way to know which backslashes it had automatically inserted the last time a word was added to the list. Therefore, each time it doubles (at least) the number of ----- backslashes it thinks it needs to look for.

Let me just show you how ----- out-of-hand it has gotten–just consider the fact that I had to take two screenshots and then turn them on their sides just to present the following to you in any comprehensible manner:

That’s 256 backslashes in the longest instance, for those of you keeping score at home.

I’m pretty sure if I add just a few more words to this list, that that initial instance of “fuck’s” will break my entire website…

Actually, according to my math, if I add 12 words, that “fuck’s” alone will be 1 MB, and 10 more words after that it will be 1 GB.³Uncompressed–this particular type of information can be compressed with almost infinite efficiency. Another 10 words and the Censorship code running on the server hosting this website will attempt to compare a 1 TB (1000 GB) string against every word of every post it loads. OOF, Le OOF.

In America, you censor “fuck’s,” but in Soviet Russia⁴I wrote whole post on this topic: In Soviet Russia. Read it today! the Censor ----- you.
Wait, wait, that’s not how the joke is supposed to go…
…but in Soviet Russia “fuck’s” censors you.
Screw it–they’re both accurate descriptions.
My inner Yakov Smirnoff going off on a tangent

Don’t forgot to tune in next week as we hit #5, #3, and, of course, #1!

Content created on: 3/4 January 2020 (Friday/Saturday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Category: General Cerebral Leakage (Page 23 of 26)

Touched By An Angel

Like this:

No Cookies for Kesha

Like this:

Breaking Ephen Like A Stephen

Like this:

Killing Them Hardly

Like this:

Where Are My ----- Pajamas

Like this:

Kicked On A Plane

Like this:

I Had A Dream…Or Two

or…

Like this:

But I Still Love Technology-The Other Odds

The Top 5 Times Technology has Screwed Me Over at the Point of the Story.

#3: That time my blog thought it was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

#1: That time I tried to solicit an erotic photographer on Facebook.

Like this:

But I Still Love Technology-Number Five

The Top 5 Times Technology has Screwed Me Over at the Point of the Story.

#5: That time I accidentally warped the fabric of space and time.

Like this:

But I Still Love Technology-The Evens

The Top 5 Times Technology has Screwed Me Over at the Point of the Story.

#4. That time I pretended I could time-travel.

#2: That time I tried to censor the contracted form of the F-bomb.

Like this:

Search this blog

Previously, on “The Point of the Story”…

The latest word on the street

Dig into the vault for lost treasure

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)

↵1	See, for example: The Alpine Stranger and/or Hello, Mother F*ckers!
↵2	There is an off chance that I’ve implemented my own censorship plugin by the time you’re reading this, in which case it may be properly censored.
↵3	Uncompressed–this particular type of information can be compressed with almost infinite efficiency.
↵4	I wrote whole post on this topic: In Soviet Russia. Read it today!

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

or…

Share this:

Like this:

The Top 5 Times Technology has Screwed Me Over at the Point of the Story.

#3: That time my blog thought it was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

#1: That time I tried to solicit an erotic photographer on Facebook.

Share this:

Like this:

The Top 5 Times Technology has Screwed Me Over at the Point of the Story.

#5: That time I accidentally warped the fabric of space and time.

Share this:

Like this:

The Top 5 Times Technology has Screwed Me Over at the Point of the Story.

#4. That time I pretended I could time-travel.

#2: That time I tried to censor the contracted form of the F-bomb.

Share this:

Like this:

Search this blog

Previously, on “The Point of the Story”…

The latest word on the street

Dig into the vault for lost treasure

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)