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I’ve got a great idea: Delaware should legislate the use of the “Clameur de Haro.” I originally thought that it should be enacted for the entirety of the US, but the more I consider it, the more it makes sense as a Delaware-only law, like how Delaware’s the only state that allows you to incorporate by simply putting “Inc.” after your name, or how it’s legal here to dump sulfurous gasses into the atmosphere as long as nobody’s allowed to smoke anymore.
If you aren’t familiar with the process of Clameur de Haro, here’s how it works. If someone is wronging you, you need to gather some witnesses (ideally by shouting “Hey! Witnesses! Come here!”), drop to your knees, put your hand in the air, and shout:
Haro! Haro! Haro! A l’aide, mon Prince, on me fait tort.
Which translates roughly to: “Haro! Haro! Haro! Come help me, my Prince, because somebody is all up in my BWEEZNASS.”
Then you just have to recite the Lord’s Prayer. In French. If you are unfamiliar with the French words, you can find them here. Once you have completed this task, the person that’s wronging you is required to stop, even if he or she is totally in the right, on penalty of fines and/or imprisonment. Of course, if you raise the Clameur without a valid reason, you are penalized as well (fines, imprisonment, and/or a sound thrashing with the branch of a sycamore).
Then you have to file your complaint with the Greffe Office, whatever the hell that is, within 24 hours. And until the courts have ruled on the matter, whatever your wronger (that sounds like a bell-laden laundry appliance, doesn’t it?) was doing cannot continue.
Wouldn’t this be great? Just think of all the possible uses:
- Keeping Rita from writing you a parking ticket
- Stopping people from going through the express lane with more than 15 items
- Calling a bar bouncer a fat nonce and then making sure he can’t punch you
- Preventing your wife from changing the channel while the Eagles game is on
We need to all write our state representatives immediatement and get them to work on this important piece of legislation.
A few tidbits:
- I wish I hadn’t spent $200+ dollars on “Party Pigs” for my beer because, frankly, they suck. They’re a nice a idea, because bottling beer is a huge hassle and I have a life to live, people, but unfortunately they don’t live up to the hype. They just don’t dispense beer very well. It starts out really, really foamy (like a real keg would), which I can live with, except that before the thing is even 1/2 empty it starts dispensing insanely slowly. Seriously, filling a pint glass takes so long you could time it with a calendar. The reason, as far as I can tell, is the expanding CO2 pouch inside starts blocking the spout, and there’s not a lot you can do about it aside from just taking the thing apart, which you can’t do without losing the beer (the pressure makes it go all over the place). For 40 bones a keg, I’d like to think I could get more than 2 beers out of it that weren’t absolute foam, you know? Weak.
- Charles is very fond of a TV show called “Caillou“, featuring a little whiny bald boy. It’s a pretty lame show, but Charles loves it; it’s full of crap wherein Caillou is afraid to go down the slide, but his mommy helps him, or Caillou is afraid of Santa Claus, but Santa turns out to be cool and likes Caillou’s drawing (when a real mall Santa would be half in the bag and have no time for smarmy baldies). The parents are astoundingly patient; when they ask Caillou to do something and he whines “But I don’t want to!” they commiserate and work out some kind of compromise, when any decent parent would just lightly backhand the brat and say “Just do it before I make you bleed.”
Why he’s bald is never explained, so Sarah and I have developed this enormous backstory centered on our belief that he has leukemia and they just don’t want to actually cover it. Anyway, as an example of the horrible, horrible things my wife and I can think up: Charles was watching the show, and Sarah and I were at the dining room table. I looked at the TV and noticed that Caillou’s mom looked a little thick, so I said,
“I think Caillou’s mom is pregnant.”
To which Sarah replied, “Yeah…you know they need that marrow.”
We laughed for a good 5 minutes, and then discussed whether that was going to get us into hell, or if the decision had been made years ago.
This morning, Charles requested eggs and bacon for breakfast. I said sure, why not! and started frying up some bacon which turned out to possibly be a bit old. Charles, being Charles, insisted upon “helping” which meant I was turning bacon with one hand and using the other to try and keep him from sticking his hand into the hot fat. Great times.
I said to Sarah, “I bet some toast would keep him out of my hair, do we have any bread?”
“I don’t think so…there was just a little in the bag, but I don’t remember throwing it away…”
“If that was the only loaf, I threw it away the other day,” I said. “I thought we had another lying around.”
“No, that was it.”
“Oh well.”
I continued frying the bacon, while Sarah went to the gym to get her flex and floss on. Charles and I had eggs and bacon, played inside, played outside, played inside, had a couple meltdowns over puzzles and games and stuff because he’s 2, and then Sarah came home, with a bunch of bags of stuff from little shopping stops. I asked her,
“Did you get bread?”
Her responses are paraphrased because it was like 25 minutes ago and I can’t even remember my name for more than 8 minutes at a go, but she said, approximately,
“Why the hell would I get bread?”
“Because we were out of bread!”
“I didn’t go to the store!” she shouted, dropping bags from coffee joints, dollar stores, head shops, crack houses, etc.
“You could have!”
“Why the hell would I go to the store?”
“Because we were out of bread!”
“I only went to the coffee place for a breakfast sandwich!”
“A sandwich would be nice! I’d make one too, but we don’t have any #%&@ing bread!!!“
“Fine, after I finish my %&$#ing sandwich I’ll go to the @$%#ing store and buy you some #%$&ing bread!”
At this point the ratio of expletives to useful information went over the limits of a family website; basically we just started giving each other the finger and getting out our laptops to look up divorce lawyers.
I didn’t notice at the time, but that last post was my 600th entry on this so-called “web site.” I’m not sure what to make of this information, really; this has never been a “blog” in the purest sense, since any decent blog puts up multiple posts a day, or at least a week. Aside from the occasional period when I get ambitious and start throwing up a post a day (I mean that literally), I’ve averaged probably one post a week. So me getting to 600 posts is like Pete Rose getting to 160 home runs. Sure, he got there, but it took him over 4000 games. I’ve been doing this for like seven years.
Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t a “wow, I’ve been doing this a long time, maybe it’s time to call it quits” post. Eff that noise. I have no intention of quitting. In fact, I intend to try and ramp up my output.
I finally realized that if I want to become a writer (one of my many dreams) I need to actually write. And the surest place for me to do that is on my website, where I have 2 readers who won’t hesitate to email me if I say something douchey. It’s completely stupid to think “Wow, I wish I could make my living writing” when I have a captive of audience (of two people) checking my website for updates only to find, to their heart’s dismay, nothing has been posted. If I want to write, I need to, you know, write.
So I’m writing. How do you like it so far?
I’m not making any promises about daily output. My job doesn’t really permit me to do anything like that during the day, and my evenings are occupied with either a paying gig/rehearsal or chasing my tow-headed offspring around. But here is my promise to you: you will see more frequent stuff posted here. It might be a lengthy diatribe, it might be pictures of Sarah Palin making sweet love to an antelope, it might be a musical effort on my part. We will just have to see!
It might even just be a diary-type entry where I talk about stupid crap that happened to me during the day. So you can look forward to all sorts of useful information, on the offchance I become famous and you get on Jeopardy and one of the questions is “On this date, Matt Hearn stepped in poo, wiped it off on a park bench, and watched in horror as, before he could be stopped, his son sat in it.” (This hasn’t happened, but given Charles’s propensity for getting profoundly stained while in my care, it’s only a matter of time. And when it does, you’ll be the first to know. (‘Cause I certainly wouldn’t be telling my wife.))
That’s what I offer you. Poop stains and lies. Enjoy!
Over Thanksgiving, we watched “A Christmas Story,” featuring Peter Billingsley, Scott Farkus, and Bumpus’s Dogs. Great film, which even after watching it all the way through, my wife insists she’s never seen the entirety of. I noted a few strange things (warning: lists within lists a-comin’):
- Miss Shields, Ralphie’s schoolteacher, is kinda sneaky hot. Sure, she’s overweight and dumpy and middle-aged, but she’s got that stern schoolmarm thing going on. That doesn’t turn anyone else on? Just me, huh? Okay, nevermind.
- I don’t know what kind of insanely superpowered BB-gun Ralphie got, but I’ve had lead pellets bounce back at me directly from a wooden target placed roughly 15 feet away, and it was about as painful as getting flogged with a shoelace. Admittedly, lead is soft; BBs are steel (BB does not stand for “Brass Ball,” in case you were wondering). Plus, idiot-boy put his target over a piece of metal, whereas my ammo was bouncing off impact-absorbing plywood. Still. I’m just sayin’, maybe Ralphie could man up a bit and take a round to the face without flying backwards like he’d been hit by a bus. PART OF GROWING UP IS GETTING HIT IN THE FACE BY THE OCCASIONAL PIECE OF FAST-MOVING METAL.
- Did it never occur to the fire department that, instead of yanking or cutting Flick’s tongue off the flagpole, they might simply have poured warm water over it? He showed up back in class looking like they’d freed him with a bandsaw.
- Why don’t men wear hats anymore? I mean, I know the story about JFK giving his inauguration address, or some speech of similar gravitas, without a hat on, and after that hats sorta petered out. But c’mon, dress hats are FANTASTIC. I’d wear one with suits and nice clothes all the time if I could find one that fits my head for a reasonable price. This also got me thinking of a bunch of other things that you never see anymore (and in fact haven’t really seen in my lifetime):
- Men wearing suits all the time, including to sports events and while gardening. Now you can get a seat in a Michelin 3-star restaurant wearing cutoffs and a T-shirt featuring a picture of Calvin pissing on Che Guevara. THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING, people.
- Drunken department store Santas. Time was, every Santy was soused to the gills and nobody thought anything of it; dealing with that many unruly children basically REQUIRED it. If St. Nick even has a beer at lunch these days he’d probably be stoned to death by a platoon of Soccer/Hockey/Polo moms while their nannies scurried the children over to the Build-A-Bear workshop so their little Christmas hearts don’t get broken by watching Father Christmas die a messy death.
- Nobody says “soused” anymore, either. And whatever happened to three-martini lunches? And surreptitious bottles of rye in big mahogany executive desks for a little on-the-job tippling? Nobody drinks rye, for that matter, with the possible exception of me and one other (and he knows who he is, the lush).
- A few things we DON’T need to bring back from the forties/fifties: pointy brassieres (those’ll REALLY put an eye out), polio, Joe McCarthy, and the various wars in Europe and Asia.
- Last thing: if my next-door neighbors had a pack of dogs that broke into my house and ruined my Christmas turkey, the dogs would be dead and the neighbor would be burying them in the backyard while I ate HIS turkey and drank all his rye.
When did I get so old? I mean, I’ve completed 3 decades and embarked on my fourth this year, and as a result my body is splitting apart at the seams. I remain surprised, on a daily basis, to wake up and discover that I still have most of my limbs.
Charles has a little red firetruck that he rides around in, which he operates with his feet, Flintstones-style. Unfortunately it doesn’t work over the broken, grassy ground of our backyard, so he insists upon being pushed around. 40-pound child plus 15-pound plastic firetruck plus Hearn hunched over trying to push it equals major back spasms, which eventually translated themselves into this weird pain in my leg; it felt rather like a nervy muscle cramp, so I attributed it to my low-carb, conspicuously low-potassium and low-calcium diet. It went away after a few days.
Last week I pushed him around again, and instead of the back pain step, pain started immediately in my leg. It was like the worst Restless Leg Syndrome of all times, and oddly enough, the pain was hard to localize. It was sort of in my butt, sort of in my leg, but there was nothing I could do to either exacerbate or alleviate it. Whatever it was, it kept me up all night. I got maybe 3 hours of sleep, filled with freakish dreams involving midgets, ponies, and them tap-dancing all over my leg.
The pain continued, in various guises, all week. Extra-strength Tylenol did nothing. Stretching did nothing. So finally over the weekend I asked a doctor friend of mine, and he said it’s probably sciatica.
Sciatica? What the hell is next? Gout? Senility? Priapism?
Turns out that apparently, if you sit on your wallet for long enough, it’ll pinch off a nerve in your bootyus largeus, which results in semi-permanent pinching. A few inflammatories, some walking, and switching my wallet to the other side will hopefully resolve the issue.
Otherwise I have to get ass-replacement surgery.
You! In the hat! Did you go vote? No? Why not? Go vote!
What do you mean, you don’t like either candidate? How can that be possible? There are something like 15 possible candidates for US President, along with running mates! If you don’t like one of the top 2, pick from the rest of the pupu platter!
You don’t feel like it? Look, voting isn’t a right. It’s not even a privilege. It is your DUTY. I would, frankly, not be entirely against having the government come door to door to make sure everybody votes, like when they do the census.
If you don’t vote, you are a dick. Don’t be That Guy, dude. Seriously.
Hey look, the Phillies are up 3-1 in the World Series. I must have blacked out for a few weeks. Is it good opportunity to drink liveblog the action? Yes. Yes it is.
- 8:53 pm – We’re coming to you late, at the top of the 2nd, because I didn’t think of starting a liveblog until just now. And despite the STRIKE on the word “drink” above, I am going to spend most of the evening tossing back Pink Gins to keep my nerves under control. Alcohol and night baseball: it’s a winning combination!
- 8:55 pm – If you’re just joining us, Cole Hamels got through 3 quick outs in the top of the first, and the Phils scored 2 on a bunch of hits and walks (I wasn’t counting, sadly; what am I, ESPN?). And Cole just got two more quick outs. This is shaping up Nice.
- 9:00 pm – Because Joe Suck and Tim McMoron may be the worst commentary team in the history of professional sports (more on this later), I’ve got a radio set up tuned to 1210AM so I can listen to Scott, Larry, and Harry. I highly recommend, if you happen to be in the North DE/Southeast PA area, you do the same.
- 9:02 pm – My wife might be mad later. The DVR was supposed to record Heroes, but Dancing With Stars is also on, and my DVR can only see 2 things at once. Obviously I’m not changing the tuner showing the game. So I made an executive decision: she watches Dancing With Washed Up Stars every other day, it seems, but we haven’t watched any Heroes episodes yet this season. Easy choice.
- 9:04 pm – Coincidentally, Larry Anderson is talking about going on Dancing With The Stars. I would pay cash money to see this.
- 9:06 pm – Jayson Werth needs a nickname to justify his ridiculous facial and head hair. Since he looks like he could be a pornstar, I’m going with “Furburger.” Jayson “Furburger” Werth. Win, right?
- 9:07 pm – Bottom 2nd, 2 out, and the aforementioned Furburger singles.
- 9:10 pm – Dang. The rain is coming hard; I’m about 25 miles south of CBP, hopefully it’ll take a few hours to get really nasty at the game. I’m not holding my breath. And of course, tomorrow I have a recording session and won’t be home until close to 11.
- 9:12 pm – Nice, Harry’s back on. He’s a good luck charm, like a Leprechaun or midget.
- 9:16 pm – Cole is looking kinda en fuego. He’s only struck out 2 guys in 7 outs so far, but he looks like he’s just daring them to swing. And then they do, and ground weakly to short, or pop out, or just whiff at the change.
- 9:17 pm – And of course the instant I press “submit,” he gives up a base hit. Luckily he then immediately induces the next guy to ground out to second, so I repeat: EN FUEGO.
- 9:18 pm – Political side note: somebody at the McCain campaign has big freaking brass testicles to be running ads saying Obama represents big government. Did they miss the last 8 years? The government is currently bigger than yo mama! And she so fat SHE ATE THE IRS.
- 9:20 pm – Onto my second Pink Gin. What’s a Pink Gin? I’m glad you asked! Dash of bitters, then a bunch of gin. It ends up sort of a brownish red, and is mega spicy. Highly recommended.
- 9:22 pm – Milo asked an important question: can they call a WS game after 5 innings?
- 9:23 pm – Eek…Scott Kazmir seems to be getting a little en fuego as well. This is displeasing, since I fear the middle of the Rays lineup is due.
- 9:29 pm – EEEEEEK. Deep double off the wall by Pena, followed by an RBI single by Longoria that just scooted by Jimmy. 2-1 Phils.
- 9:31 pm – Whew. Double play to end the inning. Aight, good guys, let’s put some guys on and get ’em home.
- 9:33 pm – It’s heartening to hear AIGDirect.com commercials on the radio, since that’s my beleaguered employer and all. It’d be nice to be, um, not laid off.
- 9:35 pm – If, and this is a BIG IF, my favorite team were to someday in the staggeringly near future win a World Series, I am concerned that I would then spend several hundred dollars on Paraphernalia. For example, I really want a World Series hat with earflaps. I would wear that all winter long. And one of those warmup jackets would be nice; preferably the one that Jamie Moyer is currently wearing.
- 9:37 pm – Dang. Ruiz gets a nice base hit, and then Hamels gets him out on fielder’s choice, and along the way got hit on the pitching knuckles. (It also hit the bat, sadly, so it was a foul ball, not an HBP.) So to recap, 2 outs, pitcher’s at 2nd, and his pitching hand hurts.
- 9:40 pm – The rain at CBP seems to be really coming down. Luckily, the decision to halt play is up to Commissioner Bud Selig, I think, and Lord knows he won’t do anything until Fox tells him to, regardless of danger to players or fans. So play will continue.
- 9:43 pm – Why the hell didn’t I play baseball in my youth? I would have been a spectacular pitcher. Left-handed, strong as an ox, reasonably tall, and dumber than Tim McCarver. I’d be Ryan Madson! Dang non-athletic musician parents all not forcing me to play sports and screaming at me for my inadequacies.
- 9:45 pm – Cole Hamels has been running on 3-2, 2 out counts for the past two batters. He’s sprinted off the base like 8 times now, since Furburger keeps fouling off breaking balls. And now Fur gets the walk; let’s see if Utley can do something. Some coach I don’t recognize is out to dry up Kazmir’s tears and bring him a change of panties.
- 9:50 pm – Dang. Bases loaded, Chase grounds the 3-2 pitch straight to the shifted 2nd baseman. On the plus side, the Phils are still a lock for “WS winner with worst RISP average.”
- 9:53 pm – Oh good, Jimmy loses a popup in the rain and Baldelli gets to first base for free. STOP MAKING THIS INTERESTING, DAMMIT!
- 9:56 pm – And Chase “Messiah” Utley gets an awkward double play to clear the bases! 2 outs! And the rain is getting really, really messy. And a quick K ends the inning.
- 10:00 pm – Rain is gross, and getting grosser. And it’s what, 45 degrees? Holy hell, it must be MISERABLE at the game. This, to my mind, is proof that there is a God: He’s saying “You can have your championship, Philadelphia. Maybe. But you’re going to suffer for it. Oh yes, but you will suffer.”
- 10:07 pm – My bad; it’s actually 40 degrees. Ouch. Howard and Burrell both walked, with no outs in the 5th, so they’ve yanked Kazmir. Here’s how this should play out: the Phils have a huge inning and go up like 7-1, at which point the rain gets crazy and everybody agrees it might be a good idea to just call the game at this point. Which is when I freak out.
- 10:12 pm – The great thing about listening to the radio and muting the TV, is that during the long break to try and dry out the infield, they showed Buck and McDumbass chatting, and since I can’t hear them, I can make up dialog:
Joe Buck – So hopefully we’ll be able to get this game in.
Tim McCarver – Yes, because if you don’t play 9 innings, it’s not a complete baseball game.
Buck – Ummm…yes.
McC – Also, they should do all they can to keep the mound dry, because if it’s not dry, it’s rather wet.
Buck – You might be retarded.
McC – How come we don’t hang out? You should come over for BBQ! I make my own sauce!
Buck – Really? What’s in it?
McC – Joe Maddon’s sex juice.
[crickets]
- 10:17 pm – After the pitching change, now the radio is like 5 seconds ahead of the TV, which is REALLY ANNOYING.
- 10:19 pm – Really? Again? 2 guys on base with no outs, and nobody scores? This is unbelievable. Excepting last night, the Phils are batting .002 with runners in scoring position.
(Important note: I made that statistic up. But it’s not off by much, I’ll wager.)
- 10:24 pm – Third Pink Gin.
Chris Wheeler Scott Franzke reports that a WS-clinching game has never been shortened by rain.
- 10:27 pm – Quick shot of Shane Victorino in center field with his hand in his pants. I guess he wanted to keep it warm, and wasn’t taking a mid-inning sex juice break.
- 10:30 pm – Hamels is making quick work of the top of the 6th; Ks Iwamura, and then Crawford grounds out to first. Keep it goin’, Cole.
- 10:31 pm – Dang, Upton dinks a 2-2 pitch to Rollins, who can’t get a handle on the wet ball. Upton at first for Pena, who is hitting altogether too well lately. And Upton has the look of a man who is going to try and steal 3rd from 1st on one pitch.
- 10:39 pm – This is regoddamndiculous. They didn’t call it for rain, and now the Rays have tied it up. So now what the hell happens? It’s now the middle of the 6th with a tie game! I predict they’ll stop play with a tie game after 6, and pick it up tomorrow, either here or in Tampa. Either way, it’s stupid. They had an official game after 5 innings and let the field turn into a swamp.
- 10:42 pm – Oh great, they’ve decided to delay the game. Which is a great idea, since the rain isn’t going to stop until 3am. It’ll be superb waking up tomorrow to find out if the Phils won. “Hey Daddy,” Charles will say to me in 2019, “did you see the Phillies win their last World Series before the team moved to Halifax, NS?” “No, son, the commissioner was a dumbass and decided to finish the game at 3am. So I was asleep.”
- 10:47 pm – Argh. They’re sending us to “local programming” while they try and wait out the rain. I’m going to to do the same; I intend to stay up as long as I possibly can, but no promises.
- 11:42 pm – Okay, they’ve suspended the game until at least tomorrow at 8pm (by which time I expect it to be snowing). Which is great, since I have a recording session scheduled until 10. Did I say that already? I AM PISSED TO THE POINT OF PERSONAL CONFLAGRATION. So I’m going to suspend the blogging until then as well. Hopefully I’ll be around tomorrow night when the Phrozen Phils win this one. If not, I’ll post something rude and angry about having missed it. See you then!
“[Man] had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth — but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.” – Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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