After an almost 9-month hiatus from the blogosphere, I suddenly felt compelled to return and blow my rhetorical nose once again into the Kleenex of humanity. If I was a pregnant woman, I could have had a baby by now. Not much has changed though, and that is a good thing. I did not have a baby, or become a woman. But I apparently forgot how to formulate thoughts, so please forgive the rusty-fingered babbling brook of my mind, as I try to find my feet once again.
So what’s new? Hmmmmmmm… (Strokes chin and the pretend cat on my lap, Goldfinger style.)
A few more classes under my belt towards the college degree – one left this fall and I’ll have my AS degree at least. Work is the same as ever; guitar is ablaze, and I kitted myself out with some cool new recording gear, dragging my 8-track old ass into the new-fangled digital world, in a bid to circumvent a few outlandish studio fees while I try to get enough material down for a demo. This is a lot of fun. I’m on a really big Django Reinhardt kick / pilgrimage lately, and the gypsy jazz sound is starting to emerge in the stuff I’m writing. It’s 4.30am, which is kind of weirdly serene and serenely weird – I woke up prematurely after a big Lobster and Ale dinner with a mighty, searing heartburn, only to find the Tums all gone. The horror!
Reading a really interesting book (aka a doorstop) about Francis Bacon, called “History of a Character Assassination”, but don’t feel like talking about that… or anything really. Just enjoying the nocturne, and wanted to say hello to the people I’m imagining may read this.
Anyway, that is all the nothing I have to say for now, so goodnight sweet world. I will catch you on the flip side.
Ohhh yeah – if anyone has any interest at all, I have a new and purged twitter account, @CCChris_Cox and my blog URL has changed ever so slightly, to http://TheUnderstatement.me . Ping me in a twit, tweet me in a ping, twang me in a peet or twong my pits and I will loyally follow you back! My old one was overflowing with autobots and Justin Beiber fans for some inexplicable reason, so I elected to rebuild from ground zero.
Adieu,
CC
Archive for the ‘Fun’ Category
Skin
Posted: September 8, 2013 in Entertainment, Fun, General, Ideas, Life, People to watch, Providence, RI, Rhode Island, WritingTags: Aliens, awesome, behavior, clowns, creepy, fun, funny, ghetto blaster, hi-five, joke, life, people, politeness, roller skates, skin, Tentacles, weird
I’m a witty guy in conversation, pretty offbeat, who routinely cracks people up when shooting the shit. And I glow and glimmer and blush and giggle when this happens. I love being laughed at, it feels great. So it probably shouldn’t unnerve me when people try to Hi-Five me for saying something funny and clever, but it does. I should be flattered, but instead I feel like my shorts just got invaded, and suddenly that person creeps me out a little, even if prior to their celebration of my hilarity I liked them just fine. If they gave me the verbal equivalent of the Hi-Five, I would react completely differently; my ego would purr. But Hi-Fives make me want to go home and shower. I needed to analyze why.
If something is funny, you laugh. Blow snot-bubbles if appropriate, maybe keel over, nod appreciatively or remark on the funny. But the Hi-Five feels strategic. Hi-Fives were designed as a way to celebrate a joint success, a mutual victory for the team, some goal accomplished by synergy, very often recognized while wearing roller skates. You can’t Hi-Five yourself very successfully – it takes two people at least. So when someone Hi-Fives my funny, it feels like they’re taking shared credit for my input, or implying the kill was pre-organized by the both of us, and it played out perfectly. Jesus man, get the fuck off my joke!
The type of people flinging hands in the air like they just don’t care fits a pattern too – it is never, ever one of the cool kids. Usually slightly lacking, sometimes with a strange odor, gravy stains on their shirt and a twinkle in their eye like they’re your next stalker – people who Hi-Five jokes are scary. They fail as adults, they fail as humans, they fail as communicators and they definitely fail as social butterflies, and the likelihood of us becoming besties is thus reduced.
Groupies have been around as long as musicians, and music is like magic. It transforms thin air and acoustics into widespread viral emotion, and so musicians were treated like magicians, and got laid for sharing their divine elixir. In the aftermath of a successful joke, people are warmed up because you made them laugh and forget their day; you interjected some much-needed levity into the woe, and we all appreciate this. Nobody has ever punched me immediately after laughing at me, but several have thanked me, complimented me and remarked on how they needed a laugh. For a brief moment, we the funny become Adonis of the Wit. If I could choose my own philosopher god name to be etched into the pantheon wall, it would be Rhetoricles. If I never achieved a single other thing in this world, I would want to be remembered for lightening people’s loads, and taking the edge off shitty days everywhere I traveled. And the Hi-Fivers are trying to be my groupies.
The Hi-Five is also a warning to the onlookers, much in the way a tom cat might Hi-Five a tree with his urine. It’s an unspoken message to the rest that we have an inside joke going on, and although we all laughed together, they understood it a bit better, because they heard this one already when we came back from the gym and stopped off for a beer on the way home. Hi-Fiving jokes is like gatecrashing a party with a forged invitation, claiming more right than anyone else to be there because you have documentation to prove it. And in the moments following the Hi-Five there is an awkward silence, because some goofy nerd briefly acted like he was on spring break drunk wearing a speedo. Now they’re back in front of a room full of people, realizing the laughter died down quite some time ago.
Fun is to be shared; our sense of humor is the best attribute we have, which is why we encourage each other when silliness abounds. But physical contact has its place, and people who Hi-Five jokes are also the ones who touch pregnant women’s bellies without permission, or stroke your hand when giving you change at the store, or gently lick your T-shirt sleeve while you snooze obliviously on the porch in the late summer. And then herein, we get to the true root cause of my reaction, because do not shake my hand either, or grope my ass or ruffle my shoulder or punch my arm or gyrate against my neck – I don’t like spontaneous, unannounced physical contact. Whatever your gig, and however you feel, keep your filthy paws off my silky drawers. And please do not spread rumors that we are BFFs.
Nines are awesome
Posted: July 27, 2013 in Blogging, Entertainment, Fun, General, Hobbies, Life, Tech, Tech and LifeTags: 11:11, 99, Aliens, binary, fun, geek, harmony, life, magical, math, nines, numbers, numerology, Tentacles, Zen
Interesting observation when you look at the angle increments on a circle, equally divided down to the smallest integer intervals (45° apart):
0°, (Twelve o clock), 45° (1.30), 90° (3.00), 135°, 180°, 225°, 270°, 315° and 360° – all the digits of these divisions add up to exactly 9.
And when you multiply 9 by anything, the digits of the answer also add up to 9, (except multiples of 11 x 9, which have to be divided twice, as in: 11 x 9 = 99 -> 9+9 = 18 -> 1 + 8 = 9). or 22 x 9 = 189, 1 + 8 + 9 = 18, 1 + 8 = 9).
I plugged some randomly high numbers into a calculator to test the theory beyond what I can do in my head, and here’s what I got:
9 x 103 = 1107. 1 + 1 + 0 + 7 = 9.
9 x 358 = 3222. 3 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 9.
9 x 774456 = 6970104. 6+9+7+0+1+0+4 = 27. 2+7 = 9.
9 x 1155 = 10395. 1 + 0 + 3 + 9 + 5 = 18. 1 + 8 = 9. Incidentally, 1155 is 105 x 11: another multiplication of 11.
Going in the other direction, 9 is 3 squared. In binary, 3 is written as 11.
Happy Shepherd’s Pieday
Posted: April 5, 2013 in Blogging, Entertainment, Events, Food, Fun, General, Hobbies, Ideas, Life, Philanthropy, Philosophy, Providence, RI, WritersTags: behavior, biology, Cannibals, carnivore, chick peas, deadly serious, delicious recipes, geek, Gravy, mother, omnivore, politeness, re-entry, sarcasm, satire, science, Shepherd's Pie, Time Travel, vegan, vegetables, vegetarian, womb
I’ve always been obsessed with time travel, and then something startling – you might even say ASTONISHING – occurred to me today: I am a frackin time traveler. In late March 1976 I decided, “this womb is getting stinky”, and so I decided to bail. And holy cow, was April Fool’s Day an apt day to escape, because this place has got NOTHING on the womb – joke was on me BIG TIME. I turned round to crawl back in, but my biological mother was already in the bar, on her third vodka.
When I realized I was born for good, I decided to time travel forward by a few years, and try school. So I boosted about 5 years, and then quickly decided that was an error. So I curled up in fetal position in bed that night, and elected to go back to my fourth Christmas. But this time round, right before my brother bit that chunk out of my back, I planned to sidestep his sneaky chompers and watch him hit the deck in full lunge, maybe even land his face in a bowl of cereal. So I closed my eyes, set the dials and went back. Guess what? My plan worked exactly – there were cornflakes stuck to every wall in the house, by the time I was done with my deft ninjistics. He had no idea I knew he was coming, I almost felt bad for him it was so easy. Next day I was done with being a baby, and decided I wanted to be thirty-seven, hilarious, good looking, popular, talented, sardonic, and develop a wit that wove in and out of sarcasm like a sine wave. Or, a wit-weave-wave, if you are an appreciator of alliteration. So here I am, happy at last! I love my life.
Place smells great right now – I’ve got a Shepherd’s Pie in the oven. I kept seeing all these vegan and vegetarian recipes everywhere, so decided to be radical and try the cannibal version. I found a sleeping shepherd – I’ll spare you the details – but you can substitute the human for either ground turkey if you are a carnivore, chick peas if you are a vegivore or both if you are an awesomnivore. I put extra chunky onions in there, an extra carrot, peas, sweetcorn and some Coleman’s sauce. I’m salivating like Pavlov’s Dog round about now, so I’m going to go sign off, savage my postal delivery person’s leg and then hi-five my late lunch.
Have a nice weekend, cats!
CC