I can’t seem to get my head into the concept of doing “Year in Review” stuff a whole month before New Year’s… it’s like the media has decreed that nothing is going to happen in December. Just imagine if all the U.S. newspapers in 1941 had done their Year-End Wrap-Ups on December 6th…

Anyway, in a sincere effort to buck this trend, I am now going to flash forward to the biggest news stories of New Year’s Day Twenty Years in the Future!

• Ryan Seacrest admits being the result of a failed attempt to clone Dick Clark
• an outbreak of Floral Flu results in the total quarantine of the Rose Parade
• a dirty bomb is set off in Times Square but nobody notices
• the BCS moves all the Bowl Games to May at request of the TV networks
• a class action lawsuit for flying cork victims results in the banning of champagne
• and China attempts a hostile takeover of the holiday, but too many people accidentally date their checks “Rat” instead of “Monkey”

After all that, New Year’s Day is cancelled for the next five years: 2026, 2026, 2026, 2026 and 2026.

…and boy is Bond pissed. He should’ve shaken.

I’ve been criminally amiss in not openly participating in the HurricaneBlogging when every blogger and their cat have put up links to contribute to the big ol’ Red Cross. Maybe now I’m glad I’ve waited after reading this commentary from the head of another worthy org.

I know that he (and probably I too) will be taking some flack for pointing out the clay feet on a sacred cow [PENALTY: 5 YARDS & 2 FREETHROWS FOR EXCESSIVE CLICHE MIXING], but I’ve already put my money where my metamouth is ($20 more than I’d previously sent to the Big Red), and have copied a good banner for OpUSA from Mark Evanier’s blog…

I just realized that the following words all rhyme:
New York
fork
spork
cork
pork
dork
Bork
Bjork
Mork
torque

but not work, except when the late great Bob Denver said it in character as Maynard G. Krebs, he came close…

Anyway, any song lyric written to include all these rhyming words would automatically become my all time favorite. Really.

I have a theory that…
the reason Alien Abduction Victims are usually subjected to anal probing is because the first TV broadcast they successfully translated into alienese was “Winchell Mahoney Time”.

Yes, newspaper comics are so-o-o-o last century, and few are older than “Blondie”, but that’s the point: the strip is celebrating its 75th Anniversary with what must be the longest-running mass cross-over of various comic strips ever.

And it’s not just in the “Blondie” strip; lots of other residents of the Funny Papers are doing cross-references (Shoe), cross-cross-references (Wizard of Id), references that are more than cross, they’re cranky (Baby Blues), meta-references Beetle Bailey), meta-meta-references (Grimmy), inside jokes (Garfield), and more inside jokes (Barney Google), characters out of character (BC), characters out of place (Zits), and a bunch of old-old-old skool comics (Gasoline Alley).

Even references to non-comics icons from The Sopranos to the President.

(And, by way of clarification, this is really the 75th Anniversary of the “Blondie” comic strip, not the marriage of Blondie and Dagwood, which was chronicled in the strip three years later. They did not enter the usual ‘comics page perpetual time warp’ until the early ’50s when their two children had grown to teenage… which is good. If “Blondie” is lame as it is, how much more lame would it be with the Bumsteads in their ’90s?) Via Magnificent Mark Evanier

I sat down at the computer, all ten fingers poised over the keyboard even though I normally use only three of them typing, waiting for the Windshield Operating System to open all 38,000 files and become operative, while the sweat on my arm blurred the opening line for the Great American Novel I had written in laundry marker there when it came to me while on the exercycle and I began to wonder how many people at the gym now hate me for not showering before I ran out the door.

Yes, it’s Bulwer-Lytton time again. For the 23rd time, Scott Rice and the Department of English and Comparative Literature (compared to what, you may ask) at San Jose State University have, in their less-than-infinite wisdom, picked a mildly amusing run-on sentence other than any of the several I submitted as the winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, the only literary contest that counts, especially since that airline magazine has stopped publishing the winner of the Faux Faulkner Contest.

As much as “Dan McKay, Fargo, ND”’s entry comparing “her ample bosom” to “the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire… perched prominently on top of the intake manifold” is a humorous conceit, albeit one that is not all that original, there were several runner-up entries (all also NOT by me) that I enjoyed more.

“Captain Burton stood at the bow of his massive sailing ship, his weathered face resembling improperly cured leather that wouldn’t even be used to make a coat or something.”

“It was a dark and stormy night, although technically it wasn’t black or anything — more of a gravy color like the spine of the 1969 Scribner’s Sons edition of “A Farewell to Arms,” and, truth be told, the storm didn’t sound any more fierce than the opening to Leon Russell’s 1975 classic, ‘Back to the Island.’”ohmigod, I remember that record… from those ancient days when we called them ‘records’

“‘Why does every task in the Realm of Zithanor have to be a quest?’ Baldak of Erthorn, handyman to the Great Wizard Zarthon, asked rhetorically as he began his journey to find the Holy Hammer of Taloria and the Sacred Nail of Ikthillia so Baldak could hang one of Zarthon’s mediocre watercolors, which was an art critique Baldak kept to himself unlike his predecessor, whom Zarthon had turned into the Picture Frame of Torathank.”note: I omitted a grammatically extraneous ‘began’ from the middle of that entry, conscious that the B-L Contest does NOT give extra credit for typos

“Sphincter, the gladiator, girded his loins in preparation for today’s games, glad to be part of the season opener since he hadn’t been sure until yesterday that his contract would be renewed, given his slump during the Germans-versus-lions series but he knew that swatting Germans into the lion’s pit was trickier than it looked and he told the officials that they should look at his other stats, not just Huns batted in.”… or PUNS batted in.

“Wet leaves stuck to the spinning wagon wheels like feathers to a freshly tarred heretic, reminding those who watched them of the endless movement of the leafy earth-or so they would have, if only those fifteenth-century onlookers had believed that the earth actually rotated, which they didn’t, which is why it was heretical to say that it did-and which is the reason why the wagon held a freshly tarred heretic in the first place.”

“The night resembled nothing so much as the nose of a giant Labrador in excellent health: cold, black, and wet.” Best. Dark. And. Stormy. Night. Variation. Ever.

“Our fearless heroine (well, mostly fearless: she is deathly afraid of caterpillars, not the fuzzy little brown ones but the colossal green ones that terrorized her while she was playing in her grandmother’s garden when she was just five or six years old, which, coincidentally, was also when she discovered that shaving cream really does not taste like whipped cream) awakened with a start.” Parenthetical (you gotta love ‘em) digressions.

“The golden-haired dawn curled back the fading face of night in a perpetual coiffure like an Ace comb in God’s hand parting the day, making pompadours of mountains, crew cuts of Kansas wheat fields, and trendy cuts of the oceans’ rolling waves.”

“As soon as Sherriff Russell heard Bradshaw say, “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us,” he inadvertantly visualized a tiny chalk-line circle with a town sign that said ‘population 1,’ and the two of them both trying to stand inside of it rather ineffectively, leaning this way and that, trying to keep their balance without stepping outside of the line, and that was why he was smiling when Bradshaw shot him.”

“The assassin drew his dagger - a simple line drawing in black ink on rose-tinted vellum.”

I just hope I can get this out of my system before my next Professional Writing Assignment is due.

obligatory credits: Bryan Semrow, Oshkosh, WI; Kevin Hogg, Cranbrook, BC, Canada; SSG Kevin Craver, Fort Polk, LA; Robert Peltzer, Baltimore, MD; Alf Seegert, Salt Lake City, UT; Devery Doleman, Brooklyn, NY; Alison Heft, Lititz, PA; Gordon Grant, Savannah, GA; Keriann Noble, Murray, UT; Mike Bender, Portland, OR, more or less in that order.

I thought I was the last person on the Web to not have my digital life in order. Of course, I tend to hang around extraordinarily tech-savvy on-line groups at MetaFilter and elsewhere, for whom podcasting and moblogging was as easy as matching socks (for some, easier). And I did experience a documented decrease in my cognitive skills and memory during the parallel onsets of my heart condition and depression of the last few years. Last week, I revisited the the software that I used to run this blog on only a couple months before and shocked myself with how much I had forgotten.

Of course, I am also well aware of the compounding levels of complexity that technology is continuing to pile on, despite the now-decades-old mantra of “user friendly” being chanted with every new piece of hardware or software. (Hey, how’s that “paperless office” they promised in 1980 coming along?)

But, even after resolving to write more in 2005, my word count does not nearly match the hours spent: Where I occasionally write professionally, I’m beginning to beleive that, if you put the freelancers on a time-clock, I’d be pulling down the lowest hourly wage per article. And, in order to keep this blog semi-alive, I’m regularly repurposing comments I’ve made at the Filter sites… usually when I realize I’ve spent most of an hour to assemble a couple paragraphs.

In order to bring it all under control, I have turned almost Luddite toward some technologies. My cel phone is a pre-historic model that almost outweighs my laptop, and I avoid practicing IM and IRC (except when dared to on the MetaChat messageboard, and then, only on a boring Saturday Night). Notice that my least favorite technologies involve instantaneous two-way communication… I feel the need to take a long time to carefully select my words (I know what you’re thinking… And this is the result?!?.

But I also am having increasing difficulties organizing myself technologically. (DISCLAIMER: I have always always always hated filing, an obstacle in my entry-level accounting work and the first thing I delegated once I began to progress professionally… that’s why I’m especially pissed about the false promises of a “paperless office”.) But I used to be more skilled at keeping an orderly hard drive and building a website map. Of course, drives are a lot bigger, and websites are more complex with CSS, RSS, ASS… I’m still not quite sure if I am continuing to get dumber, or am moving forward at a pace that just doesn’t keep up with the latest quantum leaping.

But I have found some solice in the online edition of that Evil Liberal Media Publication Newsweek (which, disclaimer-wise, is hosted at the same place that published my junk). It seems that “technology writer” Brad Stone isn’t keeping up either. He comes to the conclusion that “Maybe the intensive, time-consuming effort needed to manage my digital life is itself my digital life”, and those may be the most reassuring words I’ve read from a monitor screen in months.

Of course, I remember other writers making similar complaints published years ago, but they all came out at the time when I was still somewhere near the top of my game and at the top of the tech world, and could look down on the complainers and laugh. I just hadn’t seen as much of that argument recently, and had slowly grown positive that the problem had disappeared and it, indeed, was all me!

I could criticize Mr. Stone for using some of the more obvious Tech jokes (“If there are cables left over, perhaps I will network the toaster to the couch.” ” I have finally diagnosed the bizarre buzzing behind my PC. It is coming from my wife.”), but it’s not like I haven’t used boilerplate punchlines myself in places where they obviously fit. And this does appear to be one of those cases where some things have been repeated so often because they do have some truth to them. (As opposed to the things that are repeated so often because they are so UNtrue, they can only enter your head by brute force).

So, thank you, Brad Stone, you now join the growning list of men I admire named Brad, which, oddly, is quite a long list (even though Brad Pitt is NOT among them)… You know, that sounds like a topic for another blog post - how you keep encountering people with the same name who make a similar impression on you. There was a time in my life when every woman who caused me trouble was named Laura or Lori… but I’ll get back to that later. First, I have to patch my operating system, update my security settings, and back up my hard drive. And delete a few thousand emails from some woman named Laurie.

As a devoted toon-head, I feel obligated to comment on theWB semi-network’s decision to dump Looney Tunes character Michigan J. Frog as part of its logo. Actually, I had long considered M.J.F. a less-than-ideal symbol for whatever they’re trying to do in primetime, but not for the reason they gave to the press. WB Entertainment President David Janollari said “[The frog] was a symbol that was–especially in the extensive testing that we did–that perpetuated the young teen feel of the network, and that is not the image we want to put to our audience.” Michigan Frog - young teen??? I guess there is some really weird misunderstanding of the term “hip hop”, but, I mean, the frog has a top hat and a cane and dances to ragtime music. I thought the demographic for that style of entertainmet was more “old coot”. Then network chairman Garth Ancier came up with the Politically Incorrect snark that “the frog was on life support for a long time and then we got permission from a federal court to remove the feeding tube.” WB spokesman Brad Turell later tried to clarify: “I just got off the phone with Sander Schwartz at Warner Animation, who said that Michigan J. Frog is actually alive and well. He’s living in Bolivia under the witness protection plan.” Maybe theWB’s management needs to make use of the wit-less protection plan.
Maybe they’re in serious need of intervention with Froggy’s Magic Twanger…

There are reports that Mich (as all his close friends in the swamp call him) will be making appearances during the Saturday Morning KidsWB block, where they have, much to my delight, added Cartoon Network’s “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends”. However, the decision to schedule it between “Pokemon” and “Yu-Gi-Oh” is rather questionable. And their announcement to replace their weekday afternoon block of Kids shows (even though it is also somewhat “Poke-Yu-Gi” dominated) with reruns of “ER” and “8 Simple Rules” at the beginning of ‘06 doesn’t make sense to me either. Of course, re-purposing the Frog on Cartoon Network should be a valid option… again, I think he’d be a great mascot for adult swim, but I definately don’t think like the folks at TimeWarner. Which is not a bad thing.

One more frog note: with Disney announcing its plans to “revitalize” the Muppet characters, maybe Michigan J. is just backing away from what would obviously be a bloody battle with Kermit. Frog fight!!!!

Blogger and MultipleFilterite THE_bone has contributed to MeFi a short stack of luscious links about Fake Dr Peppers.

Notice I included no . in the ficticious physician’s name. Yes, I am one of those elitists who takes pride in knowing it’s “Dr Pepper”, not Dr. Pepper, and “Cap’n Crunch”, not Captain Crunch…

But I like this suggestion from Dr Defective Yeti to call all similar sodas “tytolas”… just because I can’t think of a better name, and all my attempts at starting memes usually spread as well as the Bird Flu underwater…

Still, I testify as a semi-recovering Cherry Coke addict (4 days, 1.5 steps), I like Dr P and all his Medical Partners much better than Wild Cherry Pepsi, and I just wish Vanilla Coke was as subtle in its vanilla-ness as Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper (which is way too long a name for a soft drink, and I voted for Villaraigosa…).

And Diet Dr Pepper was the least Diet-tasting no-calorie soft drink I knew - until the latest Coca-Clone came out: “Coca-Cola Zero”. At first, I thought another version of Diet Coke was as much needed as a fourth nipple (the third is, of course, a good conversation starter), but upon tasting a less-than-half-price bottle of Coca-Zilch, I was mightily impressed at its Coca-Cola-ness (maybe they finally put Coca back into the flavor formula? It’s a rumor I’m starting. But nobody’s gonna spread it…).

I need motivation. When I am motivated (like by the EdgeCurve Caption Game below), I become a prolific funny-writing machine. Well, I got further motivation from Blog Goddess April Winchell (BGAW!) when she asked for ideas for new and semi-original acronyms to replace the ever-the-more-boring LOLs and WTFs. Of course, many of you have been thoroughly confused by my previous efforts to coin acronyms like:

• UGOTO: Uncanny Grasp of the Obvious
• WMWIO: Wake Me When It’s Over
• YCGTFH: You Can’t Get There From Here and YCGHFT: You Can’t Get Here From There
• WCIS: What Can I Say
• WHTFINED: Whatever Hits The Fan Is Never Equally Distributed
• TPMFT: They Pay Me For That and TPYFT?: They Pay You For That?
• TEFYTS: That’s Easy For You To Say
• IHARBFAT: I Have A Really Bad Feeling About This

So, I emailed her a 55-gallon drum of acronyms, and she picked out her four faves. Also among the rejected acros are:

• BGTIHA: Bernard Goldberg Thinks I Hurt America (a badge of honor)
• NTNOWS: Not Totally Naked Online, Wearing Socks
• MFMF: MetaFilter MF’er…
• W.S.R.E.: Worst. Simpsons. Reference. Ever.
• NHIAC: No, Harry, It Ain’t Cool

Plus the very useful semi-acronym “BUI” (Blogging Under the Influence of…), which can be used to construct the informative tags: “BUIMF” (MetaFilter), “BUIF” (Fark), “BUIIP” (Insta-Pundit), “BUIK” (Kos), “BUIk” (kottke), “BUILGF” (asshole) and of course, “BUIBGAW” (see above).

In case you’re wondering why I haven’t been blogging lately, NONE OF YOUR BLOGGIN’ BUSINESS! But if you were wondering what would bring me back to the blog, it’s to crow about my absolute domination of the EdgeCurve Caption Game. Well… I didn’t exactly win the latest game (of course, it has been less than 90 days since I won it before), but I did contribute a whopping (and maybe unprecedented - I’ve only gone back a few months) SIX “Honorable Mention” captions.

as seen on edgecurve.com
“This revolutionary treatment for reverse curvature of the spine IS covered under most insurance plans.”
“You refuse to wear a sweater with horizontal stripes, you have to pay the penalty…”
“Coming up on ESPN7, “Extreme Rock Paper Scissors”…”
“It’s a male coming-of-age ritual that my people have practiced for thousands of years, explaining why adult women outnumber adult men by about 5 to 1.”
“Shocking new pictures out of Guantanemo Bay show not only that prisoners were abused, but also that our equipment was badly outdated.”
…and from the ‘Personal Weakness for Inside Jokes’ department…
YES, IT’S THAT BAD
“Well, they asked me if there was something I’d rather do than judge the next batch of EdgeCurve Caption Game entries…”

I am linking to this news article for the same reason the N.Y. Times published it, and the same reason the story has been covered by various serious and not so serious media. No, not because it involves alternative fuels, the Shell Oil Company or Canada, but because “Corn Cob Bob” is so damn cute! (At least I have the good judgement to reduce the size of his picture a little) I mean, if he were adopted by the Iowa Cornhuskers football team, he’d be a shoo-in for the All-America Mascot Team (but then, considering who’s sponsoring it, I wouldn’t be surprised if David Spade made the team). How did this post suddenly become about a credit card company? Back on topic, let’s all sing The Corn Cob Bob Song! (Just warn him to stay away from the outhouses at some of the more distant Canadian outposts, if you know what I mean)

It seems to be getting harder and harder to tell the difference between a crazy person talking to himself and an allegedly normal person having a conversation on a headset phone. Except in the case of the guy standing at the sink in the Men’s Room which I had just gone into to use the toilet; he was trying to start up a conversation with me after hearing what he considered “an alarming noise”. (What constitutes “an alarming noise” in the toilet, anyway? Could this minimal confrontation be any more humiliating?)

An especially good day for strange news and the snarky headline/one-liners at Fark:

Scientists develop earthquake-proof mud hut. Up next — tornado-proof trailers
Ringo Starr wanted an invitation to play with Paul McCartney at Live 8, upset he didn’t get a little help from his friend
Building near Ground Zero in New York allowed to store 80,000 gallons of diesel fuel. For some reason, neighbors have a problem with this
Hay in truck catches fire. Idiot trucker tries to swerve to put out flames, then hay drops off truck setting six miles of freeway on fire
Local fishermen turn out to be actors hired by the government to cover up a fishless lake
Middle class can no longer afford to buy homes, Lemur Death Squads to blame
Jesus potato chip sells for $2.25 on Ebay as Golden Palace fails to notice bid
Study shows workers waste two hours a day surfing the net, spacing out. Farkers too disgusted to comment at misuse of word “waste”
Rube Goldberg charged with homicide in the death of a man killed by a street sign which fell after it was a hit by a car driven by a man who had been shot in the head
Scientists determine that the average time from sexual penetration to SportsCenter is exactly 7.3 minutes
Japanese space researchers blast $150 million worth of equipment into a black hole in an effort to find Jimmy Hoffa and a balanced budget
Town officials move to shut down maid service that they claim is a front for prostitution. Company slogan “We’ll leave your junk polished” apparently inappropriate
AAA begins testing senior citizen’s driving skills, ability to get in car without closing the door on their coat belts
Snake dies of priest bite
Women sue church after promised face-to-face meeting with Jesus falls through. Women told to stand at end of 2,000-year-old line
Hippie couple builds eco-friendly house out of straw bales, claim to be unafraid of the Big Bad Wolf
Man nearly bites the bullet after finding ammo in his canned pasta. Uh-oh, spaghetti OUCH
Scottish man plays ultimate game of Frogger: Streaking + British Grand Prix = Mandatory Fun
“You know, you can put cameras out there and record the magnitude of a storm without sticking Anderson Cooper on a balcony… telling us how much flying sand hurts when it’s hitting you at 135 mph”
Icepick used to kill Trotsky for sale. Russian capitalism is a good thing.
Cops investigating noise complaints mistaken for male strippers. Had to show their nightsticks to calm the female partygoers
Hillary Clinton plays the Alfred E. Neuman card on Bush for his “What, me worry?” leadership style. Sadly, only farkers over 30 will get the reference
On trial for stealing a cell phone, convicted felon tells jury they can throw him in prison for life for all he cares. Jury obliges
Alberta might secede from Canada. Finally, a country worth emigrating to

Hilarity has ensued. I mean, these are better than the average assortment of Farkheads, or do I need to adjust my medication?