By default, WordPress pre-populates a new blog with a singular post entitled “Hello world!” It is meant to be deleted or appropriately edited, but I felt so inspired by these words that I decided to instead subvert this post for my own purposes. Joke’s on them, I suppose.
My experience with “Hello world!” is in the context of trying to pick up a new programming language. If you’re not familiar with it, “Hello world!” is the archetypical first coding project for most any language. It’s the most basic of tasks: getting your computing device to display the simple message “Hello, world!” Also, I’m pretty sure there should be a comma in there, so I added it just for all the English teachers reading at home. But I digress…
Now, some people have told me I have a modestly entertaining sense of humor. Well, right off the bat I’m going to ruin that idealized image of me by telling you a bit about how the sausage is made.
Between you and me, Dear Reader, an insane proportion of my humorous thoughts come from an embarrassingly simple line of code in my core system:
Well, technically that “one simple line” is wrapped up in 47 other lines of code, but hidden in there is Line 22, which is generating potential humorous phrases by simply substituting one or more words with their antonyms. Essentially, I make my living by being a contrarian. That’s it. That’s the secret.
So many things are absurdly funny if you merely pause long enough to consider their opposite. Nearly-free humor, just hanging there, ripe for harvesting. Honestly, I feel like a magician, explaining away all the best magic tricks of the trade, inviting shunning from fellow magicians. I’m just asking to get kicked out of…the Guild of Mildly Humorous Bloggers…? Not really sure who my cohort are here. I wouldn’t be so bold as to claim to be a “Comic”–you know, how comedians refer to themselves when no outsiders are around? But that’s beside the point.
Anyways, apparently such tactics find its way into my own coding work. Recently I came across some old code of mine in which I was clearly supposed to be doing the ol’ “Hello, world!” routine. But of course my stubborn ass refused to be so bougie and write the same overly-cheerful message.
Run my program and what do you get?
Goodbye, cruel world.
Damn that’s dark. Funny, but dark nonetheless.
Now, of course that’s not the end of the story. It’s just merely a waypoint on a longer destination. So, a point of the story, I guess?
At some point, I promise you I’ll put together a few posts explaining how this blog hath sprung forth from the loins of the universe, aka The Story of the Point.1That’s a Spoonerism right there. Better get used to seeing them in these here parts of the Wild Wild Web. Like any good hero tale, it involves me leaving a job with a regular pay check and risking it all to follow my heart.
Yup, my dream job is being a blogger. Because–and listen up, gentlemen–I know that nothing will get the wife more hot and bothered than a man who knows how to bring home the Bacon Bits.
Anyways, marital intimacy tips aside, the key detail buried in those last two paragraphs is that I’ve had the immense pleasure of leaving my 9-5 job behind, something many dream of doing but only a select few ever get to experience.
The point of the story is, I feel another slight modification to Hello World, and we’ll have the perfect way to kickstart this party:
Goodbye, Corporate World.
Your sorry ass won’t be missed.2Well, this is not 100% true. It’s more like this:
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“Fuck this shit.” … “Just kidding. Its still Thursday and I need these.”
Content created on 27, 28, & 30 July 2019 (Sat, Sun, & Tues)
Footnotes & References:
Humor is always just around the corner if you look for it. You just need a little change of perspective and *poof* the whole world is full of absurdity. We probably spend most of our adult lives ignoring the absolutely inanity of a lot of the stuff going on around us (children probably haven’t learned how to do this yet…). Just need to look around a little bit…
Speaking of commas, is “let’s eat out grandma” better than “let’s eat out, grandma” ?
Even the “d” should be blocked out.