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Archive for December, 2007

December 20th, 2007 1 comment

This warms my heart every time I look at it:

Straight stolen from icanhascheezburger.com

But then, so does this:

Straight stolen from thewvsr.com

What does that say about me?

Categories: Uncategorized Tags:

December 18th, 2007 1 comment

Oh yeah. It’s heck of xmas, yo.

Categories: Uncategorized Tags:

December 10th, 2007 1 comment

This is the cold that never ends. It just goes on and on, my friends. Some germs got in my body made me feel filled up with fuzz, I can’t seem to get rid of them and it’s all just because this is the cold that never ends…

It’s not a BAD cold, it’s just ANNOYING. Just a sort of general ague that leaves my nose running, though I can still breathe through it, and my throat filled with various goos that I can’t seem to cough up. Plus my earache comes and goes, that’s an added bonus. I managed to fight through it for a Messiah performance yesterday, but that’s mostly because my solos were all in the first part, so I didn’t have to try and save myself for stuff towards the end. All the worrisome bits were done by intermission, which meant I could just stand up and sit down and periodically yell in baroque counterpoint, while stuffing cough drops into my mouth and yawning to drain my eustachian tubes. It was good times for all! Yes, yes it was.

The performance went superbly, actually; we had some new soloists this year, a tenor named Ken, and an old acquaintance named Gus singing countertenor. Dude sings like a lady! It’s awesome.

The rest of the weekend was spent completely ignoring my self-imposed dietary restrictions in favor of chips, fudge, and alcohol. These are a few of my favorite things, particularly when the chips are Grandma Utz’s, the fudge is handmade by yours truly, and the alcohol is in vast quantities. Plus my wife let me sleep in on Saturday for no good reason at all. If I could have figured out a way to not get called for work all weekend (despite not actually being on call; my job is really great) it would have been very restful.

I hope your Christmas shopping is in a better state than mine; my usual effort to make up for being a dick 364 days a year by spending too much money on friends, family, and charities is WAAAAAAY behind. I have some stuff, but need to make an inventory before making any further purchases so I don’t end up with a situation in which I have 17 items for my father and 3 for my mother. (This is hyperbole, you understand, but I’m pretty sure as of now I have 2 or 3 big presents for Dad and not one thing for Mom. Although I think Sarah has stuff for her; I’ll just replace her labels with ones that say “from your loving eldest progeny.” Just like every year!) Usually by this time I’ve already basically completed my purchases and just have to make with the wrapping, but it’s been a busy fall. BTW: people that want good presents make and update their Amazon wishlists. If you leave me to just buy you whatever I think you might like, well, that’s how people end up with CDs like this.

Categories: dear diary, wtf Tags:

December 7th, 2007 1 comment

I’m still sick, and it’s starting to become a Nuisance. For example, I have to sing in a Messiah on Sunday, and during last night’s rehearsal I developed what felt like an ear infection. Today it seems better, but I’m all clogged up again.

Is this God’s punishment for that time I wiped a booger on another chorister? Uh…my bad.

More heavenly disdain is being communicated to me by the fact that my /? key is faulty. In order to get it to work I have to push really hard on it; I think there’s a pretzel crumb under there, or a piece of salt, or maybe another chorister’s boogie.

I wonder if I could hook a vacuum to my head to relieve all the pressure. A few months back I bought a 16-gallon 6.5HP Wet/Dry Super Industrial Kickass Vacuum/Leaf Blower; the thing could suck the stain out of an Affleck end table (just like your mom! Ha ha!). I bet I could suck mucus out of my sinuses with it. Maybe I’ll try later.

Speaking of furniture, my lunch today consisted of a 220-calorie bowl of Kraft Easy Mac, which I got from a machine and heated up, and which tasted like wood glue. I think the Diet Coke I had with it was more nutritious. Dieting straight sucks, lemme tell you; I could’ve also run to the Wendy’s down the street and had 4 Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers, a “Biggie” Fries, and a “Biggie” Diet Coke for like $7 and then just gone back to work and had a nap. It would have been fantastic, and I wouldn’t have the raging headache I have.

Yep, it’s bitch bitch bitch bitch, all the time, at matthearn.com! Glad you’re here. Now go forth and sin some more.

Categories: wtf Tags:

December 4th, 2007 2 comments

Let’s chat about humor for a moment. I’d just like to take the time to address a big problem in the world, and that is that a surprising number of people have a misconfigured sense of humor. Oh sure, some things are universally funny:

  • Fart jokes
  • Actual farts
  • Reference to the sex lives of the Amish
  • That story your dad tells every time he gets hammered about the time he took a dump in a mailbox
  • Any joke involving a priest, a rabbi, and a 300W rainbow-colored marital aid
  • Covered wagons, aka Dutch Ovens

The laughs never end, when those topics get broken out at parties. Particularly if the party as at my house, and the participants have drunk between 5 and 17 bottles of homemade Continental Pilsner apiece. But certain topics seem to make certain folks laugh, and other folks whine in great dismay.

For example: my wife is in the business of assisting the differently-abled. (They used to be called “handicapped,” and before that, “crippled;” by 2015 they’ll be called “Judiciously Improved.”) I fully support this, except that the Political Correctness Brigade has now weaseled its way into my very home. During my adolescence, it was perfectly acceptable, when someone did something stupid, to call him “retarded.” And mirth would result. Now, I have to expend great amounts of brainpower trying to not say that word in front of my wife and her coworkers. (In a similar vein, we were allowed to call anything we disagreed with “gay,” as in “Dude, homework is totally gay,” or “Bobby and Jimmy kissing behind the school was so gay.” No longer. The internet has invented a substitute word, “ghey,” which is totally gay.)

As far as I can tell, the word “retarded” is no less funny than it was in 1993. And yet nowadays people get their undergarments in a SEVERE bunch if you break it out anywhere but a hockey team’s locker room. This is a disturbing indicator of the path we’re on, in which I won’t be able to say things like “Dude, your new subwoofer has a totally fat sound” without some overweight ninny saying “What did you say? Fat? How dare you!” and then attempting to kick me in the nards but failing because her thigh-fat precludes any actual upward motion of her legs. (Note: this would actually be HILARIOUS to witness.)

And lest you think I’m just some completely irreverent buffoon that would laugh at a baby’s funeral, let me show you the depth of my intellect: I have seen the other side of the coin, albeit for a totally retarded stupid reason. Last night I was watching David Letterman, something I normally avoid because Paul Shaffer’s voice makes my ears bleed, and they were doing the top 10, which was something like “top 10 ways you can tell that gasoline prices are out of hand.” #3 was, “Anna Nicole Smith married a Texaco franchisee.” My initial response was “Damn, that’s cold. Her bloated corpse is barely cold yet.” But then I realized that, due to the Writer’s Strike, all the late shows are in re-runs until like 2009, and the joke dated from 2005 when Anna Nicole was still barely alive. Why did the fact that she’s dead make the joke seem less funny and more mean? It’s ridiculous. It should be the other way around; now that she’s dead, it’s not like she’s gonna hear about it and get pissed off. The joke is just as funny as it was in 2005, which is of course to say that it’s not funny at all and never was. (Brian will probably have a heart attack, but I’ve always found Letterman (and all the late-night guys since Johnny quit) to be pretty overrated when it comes to bringing the funny.)

I got to thinking about this, because a few weeks ago I set my Facebook status message to something like “Matt Hearn is wondering how people can confuse ‘they’re’, ‘there’, and ‘their’; is it because they have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?” Which you have to admit, if you don’t have FAS, is pretty funny. I still got some irritated messages about it. If you do have FAS, it might be perceived as insulting, but 1) if you have FAS and know the difference between those three words, then obviously the joke isn’t directed at you and 2) if you have FAS and don’t know the difference between those three words, then perhaps my little jibe will inspire you to go to school and study hard. It’s win-win! And if you don’t have FAS, but have a problem with sand in your vagina, just go to the bathroom and rinse it out. Stop annoying me because Uncle Gropey took away your girlish laughter.

It’s hard to avoid being insulted by certain jokes. I think the secret is not to flip out about it. If you hear a joke that offends you, just laugh along with the rest and tell your own insulting joke right back. Note: this may only work with minorities.