17 posts tagged “humor”

“What are you giving up for Lent?” has become about as meaningful as “What are your New Year’s Resolutions?” I have to be honest: I haven’t given anything up for Lent since I was a kid. I’m considering it, this year. What prompted this? I was repenting my gluttony (seriously - I’ve lost 43 lbs. and gained back 30 - that’s disgusting) and renewing my commitment to good nutrition and fitness (again) and looking for a SparkTeam that might help me figure out why I’d sabotaged myself after such significant success, when I ran across one called 40 Days and 40 Nights (for Lent). Not a member, yet?

What caught my eye was the mention of bread, and how giving it up had once led the team leader to lose a good chunk of weight.

And thinking back on when I first started losing weight, bread was one of the things I cut out cold turkey. I like bread. I especially like bread with butter on it. One piece leads to two. Two leads to a sandwich. With cheese. But I can eliminate bread and not feel too deprived; if I don’t taste it - don’t think about it - I can live without it just fine. I don’t feel particularly “deprived.” I think of it with longing; I’m tempted. But…life goes on. Maybe it would be good to give up bread again.

I remember the first time I “cheated” on the diet (I hate calling it a “diet” because it was really just eating healthy, making better choices, limiting portions) - I think it involved having a piece of pizza. And what is pizza? Yummy stuff - on bread. So pizza’s got to go, too. And fried foods. Popeyes. Because… well, because. Greasy food’s bad for ya.

Now, I realize that the giving up of pleasurable things is supposed to be penance for our sins - and maybe it is - but ultimately, I’m going to reap the rewards, in better health and weight loss. (I think there may be a deeper spiritual message in that, but I’m not sure I’m up to playing connect the dots. Suffice it to say that if penance were truly akin to punishment, I should be forcing myself to eat chocolate - or bread - until it comes out my nostrils…which, tempting as that sounds right now, after having had carrots and Lean Cuisine for lunch, ain’t gonna happen. I’m all out of low-fat chocolate, palm-kernel oil blobs, anyway.)

I like this notion of adding something for Lent. Some of the things I’m thinking of adding:

• Learn to make Simnel Cake and bring two or three to church on Mothering Sunday (not to be confused with Mother’s Day). (Here’s another recipe.)
• Exercise. Regularly. Or don’t eat the Simnel Cake!
• Be brave; get out there and “just do it.” Camping, book signings, volunteering, school visits (if they’ll have me)… Just do it.

So, what are you giving up for Lent? (Yes, you - feel free to add a comment. It’s not like a private golf course where you can’t step on the grass - c’mon in, chat a while.)

25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? 26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? 27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? 28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Matthew 6:25-29 (KJV)

I’d like to be crazy, sometimes. Crazy people are like the lilies of the field; it falls to God or others to take care of them. Notice how Matthew never mentions the industrious honey bee that ensures the lilies’ survival. Or the farmer who toils in the field to grow the grain the geese feast upon. Like it’s all manna from heaven…

But speaking of manna from heaven, if you ever run across grain that looks like coriander seed, is waxy-white in color, and tastes like fresh oil, eat it and be thankful. Smile, eat, and keep the retching down to a dull roar. Whatever you do, don’t ask for meat. Verily, that annoyeth the Lord.

…the LORD will give you flesh, and ye shall eat. 19 Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days; 20 But even a whole month, until it come out at your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you: because that ye have despised the LORD which is among you, and have wept before him, saying, Why came we forth out of Egypt?

Numbers 11:18-20 (KJV)

Hmm. You give your kids the best of everything: fruits, vegetables, milk, bread - and still, they prefer McDonald’s. So you say, “Fine. Let’s go to Mickey D’s. But you know what? You’re getting to be a big kid, now, so let’s get you three double Quarter Pounders instead of that Happy Meal. In fact, you could probably use a side of chicken nuggets and a couple of large fries, couldn’t you?”

“Oooh, can I really get all that?”

“Can you eat it all?”

“Yes!” The kid’s chest puffs out. They’re feeling all grown up. You can almost hear the chest hairs sprouting.

“Sure, then. But you have to eat it all. No wasting food, okay? Deal?”

“Yay!!! Deal!”

You know how this goes, right? The kid’s eyes light up. He’s in McDonald’s heaven. About halfway through the first Quarter Pounder, he’s full - but he knows he can’t admit that to Mom or Dad. He dutifully finishes it off, picks at a few fries, looks up to see if anyone’s watching. They are. Reluctantly, he picks up the second Quarter Pounder… By the third, he’s about got Quarter Pounder coming out his nose and ears, and he’s turned a lovely shade of puke green.

Morals:

• Waste not, want not.
• Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.
• Don’t be a little ingrate, you snot-nosed brat. (God had His bad days as a parent, too. I now feel a little better about the time William and I had that battle over strained carrots and he somehow ended up with a spoonful of them dripping off the end of his nose. At least he didn’t have a nose dripping off his FACE… Playing the leprosy card seems a little harsh, even for God.)

5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. 7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

Matthew 6:5-8 (KJV)

Or, as my dad used to say, “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.” My closet is my head. My conversations with God, one-sided as they often are, are between Him and me. My prayers, more often than not, consist of things like, “Oooh, cool rainbow! Thank you for that,” or, “Gee, I appreciate the vote of confidence here, but they’re always saying you don’t ask us to carry burdens greater than we can bear, and I think I just heard three vertebrae pop…”

Really. My needs are few, and I’ve already been given the means and the ability to take care of most of them without having to ask for divine intervention at every turn. Thank you for that. I keep thinking that Divine intervention is for things like…Darfur. Iraq. And a culture where it’s becoming increasingly commonplace for people to kill their babies and dump them at the side of the road. My needs, such as they are, can wait.

OMG, that's foul.

The Secrets to Winning Big

My mom used to win sweepstakes all the time. I mean that - all the time. A car, a ski boat, a trip for two to Spain, cash, a walk-on part on HBO's "Dream On" (including a trip for two and chauffeured limo service to and from the set)... One year, my dad had to say, "Please stop now" due to the tax implications. (I mean, a free car is nice, and all, but you do still have to pay the taxes on it.) People ask me, "What was her secret? How did she do that?" According to her, it's simple:

• You have to enter. You cannot win if you don't enter. Well, "Duh," you say. But you'd be surprised at how many people say, "Oh, I'm not going to bother with that. I never win, anyway." That, right there, raises your odds.
• You have to believe you're going to win. This is a toughie for most of us. You can't just think you might win. You can't rely on hope alone. You have to believe in yourself and a benevolent universe. "That new car they're giving away? That's mine. They might as well just give me the key now and have done with it. It's mine. I'll be driving it off the lot this coming Sunday."
• Be grateful, no matter what you win - no matter how big or small the prize. My mom used to get just as excited over a canvas tote bag or a six-pack of Coca-Cola (which she didn't drink, by the way - couldn't stand carbonated beverages, but could happily share with me or my dad) as she did over a car, a trip, or a large chunk of change. Always thank the sponsor and support them by buying their products.
• Be generous with those you love. Share your winnings whenever possible. One day, my mom had plans to go bowling with my dad. There was a radio contest running that night, and she'd have to miss out on that or skip out on bowling. She called and asked if I would listen for it - you had to be the ninth caller when they played a certain song, and you'd win $1000. With my mom's track record, I think of that as the $1000 bowling night; she was giving up $1000 to go bowling with my dad. (It never occurred to me that she might not have won it, had she stayed home. Never.) Anyway, I halfheartedly said, "Sure, why not, but no promises." (Wrong mindset right there, but she had enough positive energy for the both of us, right?) The deal was, I'd keep enough to pay the taxes and split the remainder with her (since of course I wouldn't have bothered, if she hadn't told me about the contest). Damned if I didn't win it, too.

So, there you have it - the secret to winning a fortune in sweepstakes. Simple, eh?

I love this. A colleague of mine took the photo on a recent business trip to Bratislava:

Bratislava Man Covering Hole

2 comments

Champagne and Strawberries = Vindication

Or, Have You Hugged a Forum Moderator Today?

From 1988 until 1994, I was a SysOp (old-fashioned term for “Moderator”) on Genie. Most of you are too young, or too new to high tech even to remember Genie, but for a while there it was a hot competitor of CompuServe, back before there was such a thing as Prodigy or AOL or Earthlink, and long before the days of DSL. (I won’t bore you with those old sob stories about how we chatted on an ASCII text based system at 300 baud and thought it was blazingly fast, or how in the early days of “chat” on CompuServe, it was called “CB” to make clear the similarity to Citizen’s Band Radio, which had been all the rage not so very long before that...)

I was a Senior Assistant in the Writers’ Ink RoundTable. Writing.com is the closest thing I’ve found to such a warm, funny, serious, playful, supportive, argumentative, kind, snide, silly, close-knit community of writers online since Writers’ Ink. It even has the same hierarchy of newbies, old timers, Assistant SysOps, Senior Assistant SysOps, and Head Cheeses (not to be confused with head cheese, most of the time).

This was an unpaid and thankless job, much like I assume being a moderator anywhere is, and mostly a labor of love and addiction. I had assistants reporting to me, and I assure you they were paid every bit as well as I. For the most part, we had a blast interacting with the members of the RoundTable (or “RT” as I shall call it henceforth, to save typing). We ran writing workshops, held online conferences with famous authors (including Anne McCaffrey, Tom Clancy, and Michael Crichton, just to name a few), and we posted endless messages about writing and not writing and ways to avoid both. For kicks on a boring Saturday night, we’d play the online version of “Truth or Dare.” Dares often involved such things as sending the hapless victim over to a serious conference in the Political Science RoundTable with instructions to impersonate a radical left-winger (or right-winger, depending on the night’s topic) or to wander into the Science Fiction and Fantasy RoundTable (our natural rivals, since they laid claim to the SFWA members) and start a virtual food fight while nibbling on pickled alien eggs. Or smack someone with a trout. <:}}||||{{  They think they invented it in the SFRT; I was online the night it all started. I know who smacked who with the first ASCII trout.

Okay, so you had to be there.

Point is, most of the time, we didn’t have “troublemakers.” Troublemakers are rare when they’re paying $6/hour for the privilege of being online at all. All that changed, however, when Genie introduced the $9.95/month all-you-can-eat plan, in competition with Prodigy’s ridiculously cheap offerings and flashy GUI interface.

Suddenly, we had “troublemakers.” We had people who logged on and couldn’t figure out how to log off again. We soon had people who logged on and wrote scripts to keep them from logging off again. (Unlimited bandwidth is nice; however, someone’s got to pay for it, and at this rate, it wasn’t the members. But I digress...) It was all good, until the day I met R.F. I’d love to tell you his real name, but the lawyers won’t let me.

R.F. was bored one sunny Saturday afternoon. (It might’ve been a Sunday, but that’s not important to the story.) R.F. began to post, in the Message Board, “Is anybody online? Wanna chat?” Nothing inherently wrong with that, of course. Except that when he didn’t get an answer quickly, he did it again. And again. And again. In just about every topic on the board. Everyone ignored him, of course. I mean, if you see 100 messages that say “I’m bored, anybody online? Anybody? Wanna chat?” from someone who hasn’t even bothered to introduce himself or join in any of the ongoing conversations, are you gonna bite?

He started posting this in an ongoing, collaborative story that a number of us had been working on for quite some time. And he watched the thread closely; any time a new addition to the story was posted, R.F. would chime in with “Anybody online? Someone talk to me!”

Several of us emailed and explained how the Real-Time Conference Rooms worked. (Every RoundTable had its own RTC “chat” area, and GEnie itself had a whole area devoted to social chit-chat with many, many rooms – much like a tiny version of today’s IRC.) For some reason, though, R.F. had fixated on us.

I was young and stupid then. I dragged R.F. into the RTC chat one afternoon, and spent nearly four straight hours chatting with him, explaining how our little community of writers worked, and giving him hints on how to fit in if he wanted to be a part of it. At that point, I sincerely believed that he was a clueless wonder who genuinely wanted to belong. He even made a little effort at staying on topic and joining in some ongoing conversations in the Message Board. I felt that high that Evangelists must feel upon learning that a sinner has heard their words, seen the light, and converted. Halleluiah!

The next day, I was chagrined to see more drivel from R.F. “Why won’t anyone talk to me?” Fed up, I deleted his messages. He’d been welcomed, cajoled, ignored, warned... well, fuck it. Delete, delete, delete.

Next thing you know, I have mail. R.F. is going to report me to the New York Times, the L.A. Herald, the AP Newswire, CBS, NBC, ABC, the BBC... basically, anyone who’ll listen, and tell them how I’ve single-handedly stomped on, trampled on, mutilated and spindled his First Amendment Right to Freedom of Expression.

Yeah... whatever.

Fortunately for me, I was in law school at the time. I was not a government entity, nor was GEnie a public forum. That pretty much solved that worry. I had the absolute right to delete his ass and even lock him out of the RT, if I chose to be snotty about it. The contract holder for the RT, and GEnie itself, might have something to say about it (along the lines of “be nice to the nasty customer, because he IS a customer”) but basically, R.F. didn’t have a leg to stand on. I wrote back something to the effect of Fine, yeah, you do that – and next time you write to me, please cc: my boss. I’ve already sent him copies of all our previous correspondence.

And then I watched the news just to be sure...

Oh, yes, I did.

Somehow, and I don’t remember all the details now, R.F. managed to make a sufficient nuisance of himself that I ended up having to lock him out of the Writers’ Ink RT altogether. By then, I didn’t even care if my name was on the evening news. I’d had enough. I was tired. I was tired of trying to bring the lost wolf in sheep’s clothing into the fold, and tired of arguing with him about the First Amendment, and tired of being stalked and hounded in the RT at every turn. So I just slammed and barred the door. Next time he logged on, the electronic bouncer kicked him to the curb.

I’d never locked anyone out before. Never. I felt bad. My hands shook. But it was quiet, and things quickly settled back down to normal, and a number of people thanked me for taking decisive action.

Then I got a phone call one morning, on my way to work, from the Boss. Oh, what a softie he was! (This guy had the patience of a saint, I tell you. He’d back his assistants against all comers, but he was always the diplomat.) “I called R.F. on the phone last night. We had a little ‘man-to-man chat,’ and I think he’s straightened out now. He wanted back in, and I really think he understood what was expected of him. I’m confident he’ll behave himself now, so I let him back in.”

What? I thought. Oh, shit on a shingle. “Well, you’re the boss. If you’re sure...” I reminded him that I was going out of town, on a family vacation, and would not have a PC with me. He’d have to keep an eye on things and deal with R.F. personally, in my absence, should he start giving other staff members or member members a hard time.

I called my assistant long distance and explained. I heard a protracted groan on the other end of the line. “You’re kidding, right? They had a ‘man-to-man chat’? Is that even possible with R.F.?”

“Look,” I said, “if anything happens while I’m gone, you guys will have to deal with it. I’m betting R.F. does something to get himself locked out, or at least make S. wish he’d never let him back in, before I get back. And I’m dying to know what that is. So here’s the deal. If S. has to lock R.F. out again, I want you to call our hotel and order a bottle of their cheapest champagne sent to me by room service. That’ll be our code. Since there’s nothing I can do about it from there, I might as well drink champagne and get some kick out of it.”

We got to the hotel about three days later, and there was no message. No champagne greeting upon our arrival. All was well. Or was it?

A couple of hours after checking in, there was a knock on the door. My husband had gone downstairs for a drink with a friend and former coworker, and my daughter and I were getting ready for bed. I pulled a robe around myself and peeked through the peephole. It was about 9:00 PM! Who would be knocking? Ahhhhhh. Yes, room service. A very nicely dressed waiter bearing a silver tray, upon which was a silver ice bucket bearing a bottle of champagne, and – what the hell? A huge, crystal bowl of strawberries. Fresh, luscious strawberries – probably forty of them – each as big as a small plum, and each one utterly perfect and unblemished.

Oh, dear God, what had R.F. done now? There was even a card, “signed” by R.F.!! “Having a grand time, glad you’re not here!” I took the tray, and immediately called my assistant, K.

“Okay, what’s the scoop?”

She laughed and asked me to give her a minute to catch her breath. “Well, the minute R.F. got word you’d left town, he started posting messages all over the board with the lyrics to ‘Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead!’”

“Hah! But that surely wasn’t enough to get him locked out.”

“No, it should’ve been, but of course it wasn’t.”

“Well, what did it?”

“He posted a message in the main Message Board topic consisting of a thousand blank lines.”

I didn’t get it at first. “1000 blank lines? So? What was the point of that?”

“Think about it. Most of the members log on at 2400 baud or less. At 2400 baud, it takes about 5 minutes for a blank message that size to scroll across the screen. By that time, most people think their PC has just locked up, so they force a disconnect, reboot, and log on again.”

“Oh, God.”

“Wait, it gets better. Because they never finished reading the message, it’s still marked ‘unread.’”

“And it happens again.”

“You got it. People have been calling customer support, thinking it’s a system problem.”

“So S. locked him out?”

“For life.”

“So much for their little ‘man-to-man chat.’ S. must be terribly disappointed.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“Okay, that explains the champagne, but K., what’s with these incredible strawberries??”

“Oh!” K. laughed. “That’s on the house. Paid for by the hotel. When I got room service, I explained the whole story to them. They agreed that the champagne was good vindication, and threw in the strawberries for free!”

* * *

Don’t think I learned my lesson. Oh, no. I went on to run a forum on another network, and later took a real, paying job with them as a Product Marketing Manager.

That company went bankrupt four months later. My boss assured me that he wasn’t disappointed in me and that “Jesus Christ himself couldn’t have saved it.”

As if that weren’t enough, I went on to run another forum on the Internet for just over a year, until they realized they didn’t have to actually pay their Moderators – they had people lined up begging to do it for free. (I think the word I’m searching for here is “masochists,” but that would be admitting I was one, wouldn’t it?) There are various reasons for wanting to be a Moderator – some involving “phenomenal cosmic powers!” but most stemming from a much simpler desire to be active and helpful members of a community they’ve come to love.

Would I ever do anything like that again?

Please don’t ask me. I’m weak, and they don’t have a Twelve Step program for online addiction yet.

* * *

Ironically, not long after posting this the first time, I was appointed a Moderator on Writing.com (and I still am one there). You just can’t kick some habits.

* * *

Send a note of appreciation to your favorite Moderator(s) today. Sure, it’s a prestigious position and lots of fun, most of the time. But if you’ve never been one, you have no idea the shit they put up with and how very much it means to have a little note saying “Gee, you do a great job around here. Keep it up!”

Snippet of a ridiculous conversation, wherein big sister K. (eighteen) attempts to explain to her little brother, W. (ten) "where babies come from." Fortunately, he already knows. "Now, you listen and straighten your sister out if necessary," I say.

We've reached the point in the story where the man and the woman are about to do the deed. K. remembers to mention the importance of condom use.

"You mean the glove?" W. asks, holding up his thumb and forefinger in a gesture that looks like he's indicating about an inch and a half.

"Oh, you poor boy - are you worried about size already?" K. starts giggling. "The man gets bigger--"

"How?" He looks so innocent. So sincere. Surely he's not baiting his beloved sister...?

Ooooh. Now she's struggling. Hard. Not to laugh. "Well, sometimes they read a book..."

"Read a book?" I blurt out. "Read a book? During se--"

"Shhh! Who's explaining this?" She gives me the stern, indignant look. I must be getting better at the look, because she's perfected it.

"But during sex? I have never heard of a guy reading a book during sex." I roll my eyes and mutter, sotto voce, "A woman, maybe..."

"Like your mother," K. says to her brother.

"I do not read books during sex!"

K. looks down her nose at me, disdainfully. "Hey, you read books at baseball games - I have to assume you'd read during sex." I wonder if she thinks tech writers read how-to manuals during the act.

Reminds me of the time it dawned on her that her father and I had (shhhhhhhhh...) had S - E - X. "But you only did it twice, right?" she asked, her eyes filled with horror at the thought.

"No, Sweetie," I confessed. "To have two such perfect children as you and your brother, we had to practice. Lots."

Muahahahahahahahaa...the look on her face was priceless.