Yours Truly Christopher

Serial blog neglecter

2007-08-02T18:03:00.000-06:00

To whom it may concern,

This is my first missive in three months. I have an excuse, to which I'll get in a moment. First, I'd like to take you through a list of previously abandoned blogs.

Christopher's Bible blog: 6/13/2006-12/18/2006
This was an interesting idea in theory. I, with no particular rooting interest in the alleged historicity of the Bible, would read the book myself, inviting my fundamentalist and atheist friends to read along and harass each other about it. Cause of death: It turns out that reading the Bible without a rooting interest is not that much fun, even if you're trying to inspire bloodsport among loved ones.

Indie-Pop Words for People: 1/14/2006-7/12/2006
Eventually I'll get around to updating this blog again. It will be when something happens with my music "career" that would interest anyone other than my dad. This blog is an offshoot of menbah.com, which is similarly hardly ever updated - for the same reason.

Personal MySpace and music MySpace: also ca. 2006
To be fair, I never really intended to update these. After all, you have to have accounts just to retain your Interweb card nowadays. Still, it upsets some people that I never check in, leave little sparkly animated messages or pictures of scantily clad women, or any of the other annoying things you're supposed to do on MySpace. For all purposes, I'm not on it at all. I have a pretty big friends list on my music account, though.

OK, so enough morbid. What's my excuse for all this?

Ask Porkchop!: 3/29/2007-present
I update it more frequently than I did those others in the swingin'est of times, and I can write it at work without getting in trouble, because it's a Gazette blog. Of course, once you have a work blog, blogging at home just seems lame - and besides, I'm confident that I'll have plenty of other terrible blog ideas in the future.

Yours truly,
Christopher

Hussy tushy

2007-04-25T23:01:00.000-06:00

To whom it may concern:

Today I got a pornographically oriented spam e-mail. Its subject line contained the word "hussies." Now, I understand that the life of a porn spammer must be difficult. After all, you have to convince your victims to click their way to a site unknown to them, for the purpose of sharing some of their most intimate moments with you, all while avoiding spam filters.

Still, "hussies"? That might titillate me if it were 1940. Since it's not, the word just reminds me of something my grandma would say, which does not exactly send me reaching for my fly. The above image, one of the first that popped up on my Google image search (even with SafeSearch turned off), shows just how with-it a word that is.

It gets worse, though. A few weeks ago I found in my inbox a message titled "Miss Katie is a professional tushy school teacher." Naturally, all sorts of questions come to mind. Is there such thing as an amateur tushy school teacher? Is it a school for tushies that operates for profit, or a school for tushies hoping to go pro? Upon graduating, will I be able to tell my tushy from a hole in the ground?

In all seriousness, there are all manner of smutty words that describe the orifice back there. I'm sure you, gentle reader, have seen most of them in your e-mail account, so I won't list them here. "Tushy" is not one of those words. You know who has tushies? Little kids and dogs, that's who. I'm sure that I could find a site to cater to me if either of those sets of creatures turned my crank, but I doubt the link in the body of the e-mail would have taken me to one.

God, I hope not.

Yours truly,

Christopher

ps. It occurs to me that Rachel's assistant Tag also has a tushy. Still, mainly kids and dogs.

pps. If you do an image search for "tushy," for the love of all that's holy, turn SafeSearch on.

The candy man can

2007-03-29T13:50:00.000-06:00

To whom it may concern:

I never thought I'd write two consecutive Jesus-themed letters, but here we are. Today at work I read a fax whose subject was "Naked Jesus - genitals exposed - crucified." My first thought was that this was 2,000-year-old news, but it was better than I thought: they had omitted the word "chocolate," which made all the difference.

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From April 1 to April 7, the Roger Smith Lab Gallery at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York City will display a 6-foot-tall anatomically correct sculpture of Jesus in milk chocolate; the figure is depicted as crucified. Artist Cosimo Cavallaro titles his work "My Sweet Lord."
-----

Now, I enjoy a pun. Where I encounter puns, I appreciate them. I make my own; some people praise me for them, others wince. Such is the life of a punslinger.

One thing that cannot be said is that I have made a six-foot chocolate sculpture to back up one of my puns - and that is why Cosimo Cavallaro is a better man than I.

Yours truly,
Christopher

ps. Catholic League president Bill Donohue is said "All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don't react the way extremist Muslims do when they're offended - otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off."
He doesn't say what "more than their heads cut off" means. Funding, perhaps?

pps. UPDATE! - A later fax said that Cavallaro is inviting the public to eat the statue. It does not mention if they will serve it with hot cross buns.

HisSpace

2007-03-28T13:49:00.000-06:00

To whom it may concern:

Today I got a MySpace friend request. I hadn't paid attention to the wording before, but now it occurs to me that it would be really fun to get a request from Jesus. For your consideration, here's what such an e-mail would look like:

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Hi Christopher,

Jesus would like to be added to your MySpace friends list.

By accepting Jesus as your friend, you will be able to send Jesus personal messages, view Jesus's photos and blog, and interact with each other's friends and network!
-----

Of course, you would have to really mean it when you clicked on "Accept."

Yours truly,
Christopher

Local man loses weight

2007-03-27T12:52:00.000-06:00

To whom it may concern:

It's time for a new belt hole. When I started my weight loss efforts in December, I was on the second hole of my belt. Since then, the entire concept of belt holes, insofar as they concern my current belt, has obsolesced. I've cut a couple of new holes, and it's time for a third. That's, like, six inches I've eliminated from my equator. Cool.

When I started, my body mass index was 45.5. Now, it's 40.7. I have almost 90 pounds to go before I earn "overweight" status (29.9), which is pretty difficult to get worked up about. In any case, my real goal is to go up the Barr Trail to the top of Pikes Peak this summer. It seems hard to do, but last year a 76-year-old went to the top and back in under 10 hours, so at least there's that.

Last weekend, I was comparing weight loss results with some new acquaintances. One said he was on the Richard Jeni diet which, he reminded me, consists of "stop eating, you fat bastard." That's been my basic strategy too. For a couple of weeks I counted my calories, which averaged a paltry 1,600, and that seems to have been sufficient to lower my stomach's expectations. I spent a month on a strict vegan diet for reasons I'll likely detail in a later dispatch, and now some fish has crept back in, with help from National Geographic, which had 67 pages this month about overfishing, and listed sustainable seafood that's OK to eat when you're trying to save the world with your fork.

Anyway, all of it has helped - saturated fats just aren't on my radar anymore, and few would say that's a bad thing (cattle ranchers come to mind).

Yours truly,
Christopher

ps. A note on Richard Jeni: he was a funny, oft-overlooked comedian, and I've just learned he killed himself earlier this month, just shy of his 50th birthday. Alas, poor Yorick, and all that.

pps. In the "small world" category: I just saw a coworker's car, here in Colorado, with a Southern Illinois University license plate holder. I was born there.

ppps. No, you may not have my mother's maiden name.