OK, I guess Christmas is kind of officially over, since yesterday was Epiphany. We Catholics celebrated by moving it to Sunday, when it was completely overshadowed by a far more important event: my birthday. (Just kidding, God. A joke. Please don't strike me dead.) The Lutherans, however, celebrated last night they way they celebrate everything - with a potluck! Then they had the most enormous conflagration I had ever seen during their "Burnin' O' the Greens" ceremony, when they ceremonially burn the greens from Christmas. Since I get a rash from touching pine trees, it probably wasn't a very good idea to breathe in so much pine ash, but I did survive. Barely.
At home, my Christmas was wonderful, but it was ridiculous at work. My boss gave me food I'm allergic to, and everyone else gave me presents in inverse proportion to how much they ask me to do the rest of the year, so the worst slave driver gave me nothing. I got Christmas cards from the company that sells us coffee, a hotel who wants our business, and a former trainee who is a devout Moslem. Seriously, I sometimes feel like my life is being scripted by a sitcom writer. OK, Writer in the Sky, can the next plotline involve something more exciting, like winning the lottery?
Famous Hat
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Lost Llama Poem of Hardingfele
Hardingfele wanted to know why I didn't mention the llama poem she wrote for me when I blogged about my birthday party. The answer: I was going to devote an entire post to it. However, the poem has been lost and exists only in memory. Here's how it went down:
About a week before my birthday, Hardingfele asked me to make a wish list of the ePlush animals I wanted, which she then promptly lost. She did remember the llama was on it, being (as my faithful readers may remember) my favorite animal. (Of course I love rabbits too, but aren't they just really small llamas? Look at their ears!) She looked all over for it and couldn't find it in town, so she won it in an online auction and then wrote me a poem to let me know it would be arriving soon. Sort of an IOU, except it was a UGL - U Get Llama. Unfortunately, she did not save the poem but just printed it out, and I cannot now find the piece of paper.
Here is a reconstruction from Hardingfele's memory:
This plush toy is for Famous Hat
It's not as famous as Buddy the cat
It's in the mail to Tailor's mama
So in a week you'll get a llama
But for something called the "Lost Llama Poem of Hardingfele," that just does not seem epic enough. You would expect something on scraps of parchment or a few hieroglyphs scratched into a rock wall, e.g.:
In the days of the Holy King Loo,
In the land of Kensa Djitha,
When sinners and sages walked with the Gods,
And the [unreadable] sought the mysterious
Llama of Hardingfele,
There came from the East men of such appearance
As to frighten all who looked upon them;
And when the King saw them... (fragment ends here)
Canto V
Then there was much feasting in the Halls of Montsharaal,
And the Llama of Hardingfele [unreadable]
That was godes cynig!
Or, you know, something like that.
Famous Hat
About a week before my birthday, Hardingfele asked me to make a wish list of the ePlush animals I wanted, which she then promptly lost. She did remember the llama was on it, being (as my faithful readers may remember) my favorite animal. (Of course I love rabbits too, but aren't they just really small llamas? Look at their ears!) She looked all over for it and couldn't find it in town, so she won it in an online auction and then wrote me a poem to let me know it would be arriving soon. Sort of an IOU, except it was a UGL - U Get Llama. Unfortunately, she did not save the poem but just printed it out, and I cannot now find the piece of paper.
Here is a reconstruction from Hardingfele's memory:
This plush toy is for Famous Hat
It's not as famous as Buddy the cat
It's in the mail to Tailor's mama
So in a week you'll get a llama
But for something called the "Lost Llama Poem of Hardingfele," that just does not seem epic enough. You would expect something on scraps of parchment or a few hieroglyphs scratched into a rock wall, e.g.:
In the days of the Holy King Loo,
In the land of Kensa Djitha,
When sinners and sages walked with the Gods,
And the [unreadable] sought the mysterious
Llama of Hardingfele,
There came from the East men of such appearance
As to frighten all who looked upon them;
And when the King saw them... (fragment ends here)
Canto V
Then there was much feasting in the Halls of Montsharaal,
And the Llama of Hardingfele [unreadable]
That was godes cynig!
Or, you know, something like that.
Famous Hat
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Mystery City Wants YOU!!
Today in the mail I got yet another ad for our trainees, letting them know there is a wonderful job opportunity...somewhere. However, this one really caught my attention because it does not want to say where it is. The front is a beautiful postcard photo of water and deciduous trees:
On the back there are tantalizing hints, but no indication of where this place is, other than somewhere in the United States. It gives the following clues:
Austin, Texas - a progressive city in a state where people drive their Bugattis into the lake and then blame it on pelicans
Tulsa, Oklahoma - just because they think nobody would believe there could be anything cool in Oklahoma
Minot, North Dakota - they're lying about the warm climate
Omaha, Nebraska - it's warmer than Minot!
Anywhere in the Panhandle of Florida or the Appalachian Mountains - they promise all your clients won't be inbred freaks!
Wherever this place is, it needs some more self-esteem. Come on, Mystery City, Mystery State! You can't be so uncool that you can't even mention your own name for fear of scaring off all prospective employees!
Famous Hat
On the back there are tantalizing hints, but no indication of where this place is, other than somewhere in the United States. It gives the following clues:
- Very progressive city
- Strongest economy in mystery state
- Warm climate
- Wonderful family-oriented community
- Two major universities
- Perennial hotbed of economic development
- Idyllic lifestyle known throughout mystery state
- Volunteerism is a passion here
- School system continues to lead the mystery state in test scores
- A number of national chains have recently opened because of area's prosperity
- A Tom Fazio designed golf course ranked #1 in mystery state by Golf Digest
- You can play golf all year long!
Austin, Texas - a progressive city in a state where people drive their Bugattis into the lake and then blame it on pelicans
Tulsa, Oklahoma - just because they think nobody would believe there could be anything cool in Oklahoma
Minot, North Dakota - they're lying about the warm climate
Omaha, Nebraska - it's warmer than Minot!
Anywhere in the Panhandle of Florida or the Appalachian Mountains - they promise all your clients won't be inbred freaks!
Wherever this place is, it needs some more self-esteem. Come on, Mystery City, Mystery State! You can't be so uncool that you can't even mention your own name for fear of scaring off all prospective employees!
Famous Hat
Monday, January 4, 2010
Season's Greetings to You and Ivfboo from SPAM!
Just when I couldn't think of anything to blog about, Hardingfele comes to the rescue with another bizarre piece of spam.
Subject: Season's Greetings!
Dear friend,
I supposed that you'd be intrigued by this.
It's helped me when I needed it bad.
http://ripoff.com
Hope this helps
This was actually sent to a Southern belle named Ivfboo, judging by the email address, so maybe Hardingfele got it by accident because she has no idea what "it" is that the sender needed so bad. Is it the same "it" as the "it" that helped the sender? For example, if we replaced the word "it" with "cheese," the email loses nothing:
Dear friend,
I supposed that you'd be intrigued by this.
Cheese's helped me when I needed cheese bad.
Hope this helps
Of course, that still raises the question of what "this" is. Does this=it? e.g.,
Dear friend,
I supposed that you'd be intrigued by cheese.
Cheese's helped me when I needed cheese bad.
Hope cheese helps
Or are they two separate variables? If this email were an algabraic equation, perhaps it would read:
x=intrigue if y=help when y=need and x=help
However, when we break it down this way, we can see that both x and y = help, so therefore x=y. Or maybe not, since this is a conditional formula. Following this logic, x=y only when need=zero, so if you are a needy loser, you can just forget about intrigue. Who knew spam involved so much logic?
Famous Hat
Subject: Season's Greetings!
Dear friend,
I supposed that you'd be intrigued by this.
It's helped me when I needed it bad.
http://ripoff.com
Hope this helps
This was actually sent to a Southern belle named Ivfboo, judging by the email address, so maybe Hardingfele got it by accident because she has no idea what "it" is that the sender needed so bad. Is it the same "it" as the "it" that helped the sender? For example, if we replaced the word "it" with "cheese," the email loses nothing:
Dear friend,
I supposed that you'd be intrigued by this.
Cheese's helped me when I needed cheese bad.
Hope this helps
Of course, that still raises the question of what "this" is. Does this=it? e.g.,
Dear friend,
I supposed that you'd be intrigued by cheese.
Cheese's helped me when I needed cheese bad.
Hope cheese helps
Or are they two separate variables? If this email were an algabraic equation, perhaps it would read:
x=intrigue if y=help when y=need and x=help
However, when we break it down this way, we can see that both x and y = help, so therefore x=y. Or maybe not, since this is a conditional formula. Following this logic, x=y only when need=zero, so if you are a needy loser, you can just forget about intrigue. Who knew spam involved so much logic?
Famous Hat
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Happy Birthday = Hot!
Yesterday I did not write a post because, frankly, I didn't do much of anything besides eat and watch movies. Lest you think this was a colossal waste of time, let me assure you that in fact it was a MARATHON - a Lord of the Rings marathon, to be precise. (Anyway, you got two posts on Friday, so it all averages out.) We sat watching the extended versions of all three movies from 10 am (pancakes) to almost 11 pm, with a cold cuts break around 1:00 and a pizza break around 7:00, and of course plenty of snacks and beverages at all times. (My contribution was cookies that tasted like Girl Scout Thin Mints, only they are adult-sized. As one guy said, "Girl Scout cookies on steroids!") During one break, someone brought a slice of cake with one candle on it into the living room, announcing: "Tomorrow is someone's birthday!" I figured they meant JRR Tolkien, but actually they meant me! I did not even know they knew it would be my birthday today! A birthday, by the way, which I am very proud to share with JRR, or as his friends called him, Ron. Most of us stuck it out through the whole thing, including one of the B-Boys, but Rich only came for the first movie because he was hosting a birthday party that night for someone whose birthday was back at the end of November. This sounds like a much crazier time than the marathon, complete with numerous party goers who did not even know the birthday "girl," a group who were going to put on a mummer's play that would "only offend Republicans" - until they found out about 50% of the people at the party were, and a strung-out woman who showed up right at the end of the night trying to make phone calls on Rich's phone to a nonexistent area code.
Today I had a very good birthday. After Mass the choir treated me to brunch, then Rich threw a party for me and tons of people came. A number of them must read this blog, because I would introduce them to each other with their legal names and then what I call them, and then they'd be like, "Oh, YOU'RE so-and-so!" They were joking that we needed name tags with both monikers on them. At some point someone referred to Cecil Markovitch as Serbian when he is actually of Croatian heritage, and he said, "We don't use that S-word around here!" (His other catch phrase: "What a feast!") This led to an impromptu game of describing our heritage in the most derogatory terms we could think of, like Hardingfele is a kike and A-Joz is a polack and of course Rich is a dago, but until the Banjo Player showed up, I was the only one in the room with any WASP blood. Seriously, it was so embarrassing to realize I was the only one who had ancestors who were slave owners. (At least on my dad's side they were a bunch of paddy macks fresh off the boat who never owned other people!) Luckily Banjo Player has both kike and WASP blood, so then I was not alone. Banjo Player said there used to be an entire magazine devoted to derogatory terms, I forget what she said it was called. I am still waiting for a really good derogatory word for white people in general, because I'm sorry, but "cracker" just doesn't cut it. There are some good ones in Mexican Spanish and Hawaiian that could be contenders.
So here's a shout-out to the people who read this blog that were there today: Rich, A-Fooze, A-Joz, Banjo Player, Tiffy, and Anna Banana II. Other people who were there but I don't think ever read it included both B-Boys and Mo-Girl, Cecil Markovitch, Kathbert, and a number of others I have not mentioned so no point in making up names to protect the guilty. In fact, every time the doorbell rang, I was shocked because I already thought everyone I knew was jammed into Rich's house. Anna Banana II made a delicious chicken, spinach, and sun-dried tomato casserole thing, and at my request (and for the sake of the vegetarians), Rich made spinach souffle that, in his words, "wasn't very souffly," but it tasted fine. He also made the traditional Black Magic cake, which Hardingfele frosted and inscribed with a mysterious inscription that seemed to read: "Happy Birthday = Hot." While I am not opposed to the sentiment, I was a bit puzzled by it, but it turns out she had written: "Happy Birthday F Hat." (As in Famous Hat.) Unfortunately nobody took a photo of this masterpiece, so I am unable to post it here.
I did not request any loot, but some people brought tribute anyway; Tiffy gave me an agate pendant, A-Fooze gave me a slice of tres leches cake (Cecil decided that meant "three leeches" cake), the one B-Boy and Mo-Girl gave me macadamia nuts, and Banjo Player gave me some refrigerator magnates that look like mints. (I also got wine, a high-quality chocolate bar, an unkalung Christmas CD, and a restaurant gift certificate from people who have not been mentioned previously in this blog, so I am not ignoring them so much as being lazy in not thinking up aliases for them.) If I neglected to mention you and/or your gift, it is a reflection of my advanced age (twenteen-something) affecting my memory, and not on you or your gift. I love all my friends! Thanks for the great birthday party!
Famous Hat
Friday, January 1, 2010
Famous Hat Joint: Tropical Song
Here is a bonus post for the New Year. This is my all-purpose tropical song which can be done in any tropical style. (I posted the lyrics here.) However, I would need some more musicians to do all those tropical styles, so the third verse is my roundup call for musicians to join my all-purpose tropical band. The second verse establishes my tropical cred, and the line in the first verse about "salsa bassoon" has to do with the fact that I apparently don't know the difference between bassoons and bass saxophones in salsa music. As you can see, this hat has clearly had one too many daiquiris and/or espressos!
One note: The words to the third verse have been changed to:
If you play steel drums, then I need you (tropical song!)
Especially if you play timbales too (tropical song!)
I need ukulele and slack-key guitar (tropical song!)
And a great horn section, wherever you are (tropical song!)
Famous Hat
Old School for the New Year
Happy New Year to all 5.6 of my loyal readers! I hope you had a good one. My New Year's Eve was fairly low-key; Botanist 53 and her two kids came to Rich's house and Anna Banana II made us dinner, then we watched a Star Trek fan movie and then toasted the New Year a bit prematurely with Frangelico - yum! Later in the evening Rich and I attempted to make another Famous Hat video, but we had some technical issues (and some good blooper footage!) so he is going to try to re-engineer things today so we can give it another go. By then it was just a few minutes until midnight, so we cracked out some non-alcoholic bubbly grape juice to ring in 2010, and then I headed home.
This morning I woke up around 6:00 am and decided to go to the Tridentine Mass. Why not ring in the New Year in old school style? It's a day of obligation so I had to go anyway, and I really like the Tridentine Rite but don't usually attend because 1) I sing at the 9:00 am Novus Ordo Mass every Sunday and 2) hellooooo, it's at 7:00 am. But since I was awake, I went.
What I'd really love (and Anna Banana II and Cecil Markovitch agree) is to have an Eastern Rite liturgy at Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety... or heck, anywhere within a 20-mile radius. I am madly in love with the St. John Chrysostom liturgy, but around these parts you'd have to attend some flavor of Orthodox (there are Greek and Antiochian in town) for that. Anyway, OLPS already has three kinds of Masses (Novus Ordo in English and in Spanish and then Tridentine in Latin) so when would they shove another one into the schedule? Also, are there any Eastern Rite Catholic priests around here? If you are an Eastern Rite Catholic priest who would be willing to celebrate the liturgy at OLPS, drop me a line. We'll fit you in the schedule somehow.
Famous Hat
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