Monday, December 12, 2005

The Meme Stops Here! (maybe)

45-Caliber Justice: Stoopid Meme.

Blogger Memes are like chain letters. You know, pass this along to five people within five days or you will have five years of bad luck. Yikes. Frankly, I've HAD five years of bad luck, and I survived them, so that don't scare me none (as my hill-william family would say.)

Jason at .45-caliber justice (see above) was 'kind enough' to tag me for this one, and as I've said on similar occasions I just can't resist either Cosmopolitan Magazine Surveys or memes. Simple common decency should give me strength, but the spirit is weak, so here are

Five Weird Things About Me

(1) I really am a geek. That's small-letter geek, not Major Geek and certainly not Alpha GEEK! I started computer programming in 1972, which indicates that I represent 23 years of mediocrity, and counting. People actually pay me to do this stuff. Oh, not for blogging, or posting pictures. They pay me to write application programs, like "write me a program that generates a report on how many widgits I sold last year, how many components I bought, which and for how much, and by the way include last-in-first-out tax accounting." The funny thing is, I don't really enjoy programming. It's just that it's such an easy job, and I can work indoors while I'm sitting down and I get coffee breaks and everything.

(2) I assign nicknames to EVERYBODY! This is probably the weirdest thing about me. It's not that I can't remember your real name, it's just that ... mmmm ... I can make up better names than your mother could. Perhaps your mother was just to conservative to call you BigDawg, or G-Man, or Norm the Ungrateful or WhiteFish or Harold the Barbarian or (my personal favorite) SWMBO! I got started in the army. I was an infantry platoon sergeant in Viet Nam (no, I never did see John Kerry there) and I quickly learned that everybody had a nickname. Assigning nicknames to the new guys was one of my unofficial duties. "Whitey" was a guy with very light blond hair, even though he wanted everybody to call him "Ghost". Doesn't work that way, pal, I'm the boss of this platoon. "Teddy" was a guy with wire-rimmed glasses, after Theodore Roosevelt. I won't tell you the nicknames I gave the various platoon leaders (Lieutenants) who came through during my sojurn, but they were uncomplimentary. I never met a second lieutenant I didn't despise, although I did know a good First Lieutenant. We called him El-Tee (Lt.)

(3) I'm a gun blogger, more or less, and I can't tell you how many guns I have. I know there are more than a dozen rifles in the house, and less than a dozen pistols, so it shouldn't be too hard to keep track. I don't care enough to bother. Sure, I have it all written down somewhere, with serial numbers & descriptions and with photos too for insurance purposes, and if I wanted to I could probably name them all and describe them. But who cares? If I need a gun for a special purpose, I can go rummage around and find one that can be used. Heck, there are 3 or 4 of 'em in this room, but I don't know what all of them are.

(4) The room where I keep my PC is called the "Hell Room". I've always had a Hell Room. That's where all the overflow "stuff" is kept. But since I've started spending much of my evenings working on the computer, and moved into a place with a 2nd bedroom where I could set up my roll-top computer desk, that has become the Hell Room. I've got a big red-leather reclining chair that you can't sit in, because it has 'stuff' piled upon the seat. There are boxes of softwaer, broken DVD players, magazines, gun stuff and an external DVD writer sitting on the floor. Nobody can ever steal my computer. Even I can't get to it without difficulty, and if you don't know the path from the door to my chair, you probably won't be able to leave the room once you get in.

(5) I really DO do things just to irritate people. Almost everyone who knows me is aware of that. Just ask my sister, she'll tell you. For sixty years, she has been trying run my life, and when I don't do what she says, she says "You just do that to irritate me, don't you!" That's probably why I write, too. It doesn't matter what the subject is, or whether I know anything about it, or even whether I have an opinion. Give me a subject, and by the time I'm done I'll have an opinion and I'll be convinced that it's the only RIGHT opinion, too. Some people find that irritating, and even more irritating is that I not only will write about anything, I'll take forever to say something that can be said in a dozen words or less. Try this: go back over these points, keep the first sentence in every paragraph and throw out the rest. It's a better read, right?

Okay, you've suffered enough.

When I started to write this, I thought I would just let this branch of the meme die a dignified death. I've changed my mind. Instead, I'll pass this on to some people who deserve better, even if they have already responded to it.

Mr. Completely
Vile Bill
Cowboy Blob (who LOVES memes!)
Wadcutter
Lay Lines

I do this, of course, only to irritate them.

Heh heh heh . . .

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