Month: March 2002

I Am Funny

Matthew

Dear Editor, Big Seattle Newspaper

Hello, my name is Matthew Baldwin and boy, am I funny. I mention this because Friday I was reading the top half of the front page of your paper through the newspaper machine glass (normally I would buy your fine paper, but right now I am unemployed, see below) and I couldn’t help notice that you reported the outcome of one of the NCAA games under the headline “Gone-zaga!” Well, needless to say I had a big laugh over that, and then it occurred to me that this kind of humor reminded me of someone else’s. Several hours later I realized whose humor that “Gone-zaga” joke was most like: mine!

Let me give you an example. Last week my boss came into my office to ask me where the completed Benson-Shepard report was, and when I told him that I had forgot all about it and hadn’t even started he started to choke on the latte he was drinking. So I said (this is the joke): “Gee boss, you sure sound coughy today!” (Coughy = coffee = latte).

Anyway, my boss (who doesn’t have a funny bone in his body .. except his “funny bone”!) “let me go” last Friday, which is why I am now looking for work. And seeing that “Gone-zaga” headline made me realize what job I would be perfect for: Head Pun Headline Writer. Obviously you can’t expect some schmoe of a reporter to come up with comedy gold like “Gone-zaga,” which is why you need someone to sit around, full-time, and think up puns. That person should be me.

By way of example, here’s some headlines I came up with over the weekend:

  • Bush Nominated Appeals Court Judge Not Ripe For The “Pickering”
  • Senate May Get %15 From “Tipper”
  • Military Eb-boa-lient Over Operation Anaconda’s Success
  • “Vice” President Putting the “Squeeze” on Iraq
  • New Color-Coded Terrorism Warning System Causes “Hue” and Cry

Well, anyway — I could go on and on like this (and when you bring me in for an interview I will!) Please let me know when you would like to meet regarding this incredible opportunity to hire me — I’m just the “Pun-dit” you’ve been looking for!

Humorously yours,
Matthew Baldwin

Lawsuit at the Bottom

Matthew

I just ate some vanilla yogurt which boasted “Fruit At The Bottom.” Given the recent Wonder Bread verdict I think I have a pretty good case for a class-action false-advertising lawsuit. Drop me a line if you’d like to join.

By the way, I’ll soon be launching a second blog devoted entirely to my humorous observations about yogurt. I’ll announce it here when it’s ready.

Yates and the Death Penalty

Matthew

Andrea Yates got Life in prison. While reporting this on CNN, the Headline News anchor had this exchange with the reporter:

Host I understand the sentencing phase of the trial was a bit unusual, in that the prosecution didn’t call any witnesses.

Reporter: Yes. The prosecution got the guilty verdict they wanted, and decided not to aggressively pursue the death penalty because they didn’t want to appear bloodthirsty.

That last comment seems to be missing a pretty important prepositional phrase: the prosecution didn’t want to seem bloodthirsty to whom? The jury?” Having been found guilty, life in prison was the least Yates could get, so why not try and pursuaded them to go for the maximum punishment? And I can’t imagine they wouldn’t want to look bloodythirsty to the crowd in and around the courtroom, most of whom were not overly sympathetic to Yates’ case.

In truth, I suspect the prosecution didn’t want to seem bloodthirsty to the American people, and that a lot of folks who are ardently in favor of capital punishment are glad to see Yates get life in prison. Many in Texas and our nation would find the idea of executing a white, mentally unstable woman to be profoundly unsettling. And the less people that think about unfairly the death penalty to applied to different categories of people, the better its chances for continued popularity. Do you think the prosecution would be agonizing over their image if the defendant in the trial had been a black man? I don’t. Nor do I think he would have received life in jail.

I’m against the death penalty on principle, but just barely. In high school I was rabidly in favor of it, although I am unable to recall why. Oddly, my conversion to my current position on the issue wasn’t a result of my becoming more idealistic, but rather my becoming more cynical: I now have so little confidence on our judicial system ability to prevent the innocent from getting railroaded — either through error or abuse — that, to be on the safe side, I think we should avoid any irrevocable acts like execution. I suspect that many folks who were against the death penalty changed their minds when McVeigh’s number got called. And I think that’s great: what’s important isn’t so much a person’s opinion on an issue like this, but that they care enough to think about it and make a conscience decision. Indeed, perhaps the only good thing to come out of cases like McVeigh’s and Yates’ is that it give us all an opportunity to reconsider our opinions on crime and punishment. And I think that’s exactly what the prosecution in this case is trying to prevent.

Hebetudinous

Matthew

How to call someone an idiot without pissing them off.

  • “You speak your mind, and I’m in awe of your nugacity.”
  • “Wow, that’s an absolutely ingenuous idea!”
  • “I could have given this assignment to any of your coworkers, but your hebetudinous intellect make you a perfect fit for this project.”
  • “I can tell by your critical thinking skills that you must come from a fine Sottish heritage.”
  • “Come on, you’re made of tougher stuff. Grit your teeth and take it like ament!”

Games: Don

Matthew

Don is tricky, and no less so for being extraordinarily simple. The deck contains 30 cards, which are divided in two ways. First, they are divided by number: three cards in each of the denominations 0-9. Secondly, they are divided into six different colors, with five cards in each hue. There’s no correlation between these two division (e.g. all the 3’s aren’t green). Every players starts with 12 chips.

On each turn one or more cards are dealt into the center of the table, and all the players bid, auction-style. After all but one has passed, whomever bid the highest amount takes the cards. This continues until all the cards have been claimed. At the end of the game, players receive points for each color they have cards in: 1 point if they have one card in a color, 3 points if they have two cards in that color, 6 points if they have three cards, 10 points for four and 15 points if they nabbed all five cards of that color. Also, whomever has the most chips at game’s end gets a bonus two points.

That’s the entire game, and it would be a dull one were it not for two clever and insidious rules. The cards, you’ll recall, all have a number from 0-9, and all of the cards that a player owns are displayed face-up in front of him. When a player purchases cards, his bid money goes to the person who owns the most cards showing that amount. So if I win the auction with a bid of 9, the person who has the most 9 cards will get my 9 chips. (In the case of a two-digit bid, only the last digit counts, e.g. a bid of 13 goes to the person with the 3s). If no one has the target number, then the monies are distributed equally amongst the other players. Don, in other words, is a zero-sum, closed-system game: the starting funds (twelve chips per player) is a constant, with chips just being circulated rather than being paid to or taken from a bank.

The second sneaky rule — and this one is really maddening — is that, when bidding, you cannot bid an amount equal to any of the cards you own. (Here again it’s only the final digit that counts — if I have a 1 I cannot bid 1, 11, 21, etc.) This restriction, combined with the first rule mentioned above, makes collecting cards a precarious proposition. If you have lots off different numbers you stand to collect on an assortment of different bids, but your own participating in the auction will be hampered. And your opponents will exploit this: if you own a 4, 5 and a 6, you can be certain that the player before you will bid “13,” knowing that you’ll have to jump all the way to 17 if you want to stay in.

And entire game of Don takes about 20 minutes, and it’s simple enough to teach in about four breaths. It has a nominal “Mafia” theme (each color in the deck is said to represent a different district in Chicago), but, really, this is just an abstract but elegant auction and set-collection game. I’ll be playing a lot of this one in the coming months. I purchased my copy of Don from Funagain Games.

Red Cross and 9/11

Matthew

It’s been six months since September 11th, which means that we are seeing a spate of memorials and tributes. It also means that those of us who gave to the Red Cross in the days following the attacks are receiving our first wave of junk mail. I received a solicitation letter two days ago, and a “Red Cross Newsletter” (i.e. another solicitation letter) yesterday.

I usually throw away solicitation letters unopened, but despite recent controversies I still consider the Red Cross to be one of the Good Guys, so I opened the letter I received Monday. Inside was the standard “We need your help!!” plea and SASE, along with an article clipped from a newspaper. The article basically talked about how heroic the Red Cross was, and how lamentable it was that they were perpetually strapped for cash.

About a third of the way through the article I began to wonder where this story had first appeared, and then noticed that it was lacking a byline. In fact, the more I examined the “clipping,” the more it became clear that this was not a clipping at all, but just another piece of propaganda printed onto newsprint. They even went so far as to print a portion of a bogus furniture sale ad on the reverse side to further the illusion that it had but cut from an actual paper.

I may give to Red Cross in the future, but it’s hard to get enthusiastic about a charity that feels the need to deceive it’s contributors.

Husbandly Blunder

Matthew

I washed a white towel with a bunch of brightly colored clothing and, to no one’s surprise, it came out pink.

Upon discovering this, my wife sighed and said “It’s no big deal, but in the future could you at least try and make your husbandly blunders a little less stereotypical?”

Fox House Buying Tips

Matthew

My wife and are are in the process of buying a house. So today, while at the gym, I watched a segment on the FOX News Network in which the host interviewed one of the leading home sellers to get his opinions on home-buying in the current economy. Here’s what I learned:

FOX Host Well, let’s start from the beginning: is this a good time to be buying a house?

Some House Guy Given the current economic climate in the country, as well as the interest rates and unemployment levels, right now is —

Host — I’m glad you brought up interest rates. Prospective buyers want to know: are they going to go up? Are they going to go down? What do you think?

Guy If you look at what Alan Greenspan said yesterday and analyse the statistical data from the last six months, it seems clear to me that, in the near future, interest rates are certainly going to go —

Host — yes, but should people be getting fixed-rate loans or ARMs?

Guy Well, ARMs, or “adjustable-rate mortgages”, and Fixed-rate loans are usually comparable, but right now it’s clear that the loan you should be getting is a —

Host — okay, okay, we’re running out of time here, so tell any prospective home-buyers out there the single most important thing they should keep in mind as they go out on the market.

Guy Without a doubt the most important —

Host — of course. Our guest has been Some House Guy. Thank you Mr. Guy.

Guy Thank —

Host This is FOX News.