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November 23, 2008 - Sunday

 One More For The Road…

Well, all right, I’ll put up one more entry before I slink out the back door. I just wanted to say “thank you” to everyone who’s stuck by me as a reader over the years, and I especially wanted to say thanks for the kind comments you guys left after the last entry. I was really touched by them. Thank you all, very much.

As for what’s to become of the deadpan.net world… After thinking about it for a couple of days, I don’t know if I’m going to take it all down after all or not. I’m still leaning that way, but procrastination is a powerful tool and I want to archive it all offline first as html and I’m having issues configuring the software to work with my server and, well, procrastination. So, yeah.

In the meantime, how about one last anecdote so I can go out with some twisted kind of style?

I woke up this morning in the oddest way ever. I was dreaming — and you know how dreams are. In the dream, I had walked up to some friends who were standing on an apartment balcony and I started talking to them, and I was sort of hanging off the outside of the balcony as I talked. Hanging there like that reminded me of a joke, so I started telling it to them. In the dream, this joke was so funny that I was laughing as I told it, so in my sleep I started smiling and laughing. And that’s how I woke myself up: smiling and chuckling.

Now, in my dream I felt that this joke was a little edgy for a straight-laced crowd, so you wouldn’t tell it to just anyone, but it was totally the kind of joke you’d tell your “cool” friends. And when I woke up the joke still seemed socially acceptable because the dream attitude was bleeding over into the waking world. You know how dreams are.

Well. A few minutes later I told Beth about waking myself up and started telling her the joke, and it wasn’t until I started actually speaking the words that I realized how horrifically inappropriate it was for ANY setting. I almost even offended myself, a little. It was a HORRIBLE joke, hugely offensive, and it was shocking to me how it had seemed perfectly fine until I actually started telling it.

Don’t worry, of course I’m going to tell it here. Because, what, you thought maybe I wouldn’t? Please.

So this priest is up on the pulpit, giving his Sunday sermon to a crowded church, when an aborted fetus crawls up the side of the lectern. It climbs up and over the edge and surprises him face to face. The priest flies into a rage and punches the fetus in the face as hard as he can, knocking it off the lectern. It flies through the air and off the altar and lands in the church aisle. He chases after it and kicks it down the aisle toward the back of the church, kicking it repeatedly with huge, wild field goal style kicks, cursing it as he goes and yelling “Damn you to hell! Damn you to Satan! Go back to hell, evil spawn!” Stuff like that. And as he winds up to give the aborted fetus one last giant kick that will send it flying out the rear doors of the church, the baby says–

And that’s when I woke up.

Wow. Just… wow. I can’t believe my subconscious came up with that joke. Or that it thought it was a joke. Or that it thought the “joke” was only just a little bit edgy. Or that that attitude seeped over into my conscious, waking mind. Or that any part of me thought it was funny. It’s mind-boggling.

And the worst part? I blew the punchline.

Thank you, and goodnight.


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4 responses to “One More For The Road…”

  1. treppenwitz says:

    Sorry I missed your previous post. I was on my way back – physically and mentally – from a business trip to India.

    I agree with you (and Jim) that blogging is pretty much over as a phenom. And I can respect your reasons for taking your life private.

    But don’t for a moment compare yourself to some ‘urban outdoorsman’ who monologues down by the supermarket when nobody is nearby. The only difference between that guy and a normal joe having a normal dialogue is the presence of just one listener. Heck, in this age of bluetooth earphones I’m not so sure thee aren’t more crazy monologuists than we suspect.

    What I’m trying to say is that there are a few of us who have roughly matched our chuck-checking frequency to your posting tempo… meaning whenever it crosses our mind. Personally, I try not to check every day for fear pressuring you to post.

    I still go back and read you phone booth saga at least once or twice a year to remind myself where the bar really sits for the rest of us ‘johnny come lately journalers’. If you really plan to take that down, please give me a chance to archive it. Heck, I’d even volunteer to host it as a tribute to what kind of power the net once held, and to the giants who once roamed there.

    I’ll miss you Chuck. Even when you went underground for a few weeks or months at a time… the certainty of another post was like knowing an old school or army buddy was just a phone call away; comforting.

    You may go dark, but I’ll still think of you as my blogfather. And I will wonder – from time to time – if you and Beth are doin’ alright.

    Thanks for all the great years… and thanks again for setting the bar so high.

  2. Chuck says:

    Thanks, David. No matter what I do with the rest of the site, I think I’m going to leave “Mission: Hang It Up,” uh… up. I’m inordinately proud of the fact that I once drove 3 hours into the desert with a perfect stranger to hang up a pay phone. Besides, that’s as much Steve’s story as it is mine.

  3. mr. amaya says:

    Thanks, man. That was cool to say.

  4. Bryan says:

    Please don’t disappear completely. If you look at your stats, I’m one of the freaks who checks in almost every day.

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