I went to the high school swimming pool a few nights ago, to pick up the older boy from practice, and overheard a snippet of conversation between three teenaged girls huddled near the main doorway:
“And do you know how embarrassing it is to be at a cookout — at your teacher’s house! — and your dad gets so drunk he falls off the back porch?”
I just kept walking with no expression on my face, as required by the Mature Noncreepy Adult Code. But I really wanted to stop and ask a series of probing questions. I wanted the whole story. Ya know?
But, unfortunately, I’m at the exact age for snap “Chester the Molester” assumptions. So I just kept on walking.
I make an X “upper left to lower right, upper right to lower left.” What about you? I’ve seen people start an X from the lower-left, and that’s just so incredibly wrong.
Help me out with this, won’t you? We need an X consensus here. All this bottom-left action is bothering me a great deal. Please tell me none of you start on the bottom-right? I don’t think I could even handle such a scenario.
How do you make an X? Use the comments to verify my correctness in this matter.
The Angry White Guy has a funny post at Mockable today. Check it out here. Apparently my “Sometimes I Shit” update from yesterday didn’t go over very well? C’mon! That thing was hilarious. I’m shaking my tiny Duke head in disappointment…
Do any of you know if there’s such a thing as a Major League Baseball team podcast? I’d be interested in listening to a team’s daily radio play-by-play broadcasts for a small fee.
I think that’s the only way I’ll ever get into baseball again. If I could get the Braves (or Reds) games as mp3s, and listen at work, I think I might be able to reignite the passion. I’ve tried to force myself to watch games on TV, but it never works.
Is something like that available? I went to MLB.com, but there’s so much going on there, my brain almost short-circuited. What do you know about this? It seems like there would be a market for such a thing.
I think I’m going to start ordering cheeseburgers in restaurants, and sending them back because “the cheese is upside-down.” What do you think? All cooks have a great sense of humor, right? I think they’ll get a real kick out of it.
And I’ll close this one out (can you tell I’m struggling?) with another Question. I’d like to hear (read) your stories about falling down. When was the last time you bit the dust? Was it embarrassing? Tell us about it, won’t you?
And if you have any tales about other people falling, like the “dad” above who apparently did a drunken header off the back porch, hit us with those as well.
I slipped on the ice outside my Junior High once, and a thousand kids laughed uproariously. Without giving it even a second’s worth of thought, I stood up and gave everybody the finger. Everybody. In a big, swooping 360-degree circular motion.
And it went something like this: “HAHAHAHAHA(instant silence, furrowed brows).” It’s a wonder I didn’t get my ass kicked, but all I received was furrowed brows pointed in my direction.
Do you have anything to tell about falling down? If so, use the comments link below.
And I’m calling it a week, my friends.
Thanks for reading.
Now playing in the bunker
Grab your Surf Report shirts here!
None of my faceplants have involved alcohol. On the contrary, I can be completely sober and still end up on my ass. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that alcohol steadies me.
Last time I took a tumble was early one morning as I was walking downstairs to the kitchen. About 3 steps from the bottom, my foot slipped out from underneath me and I landed on my trick hip. After much foul language and a quick check to see if I was still intact, I remembered that I had given myself a pedicure the day before, and my feet were smoother and softer than a baby’s bum. Never would have guessed that my cracked heels had actually been providing traction on the carpet. Learn something new every day.
Xs the “normal” way, Os counterclockwise, cross my 7s, but slash my 0s only when needed for clarity. My 9s have a hook though and when dealing with the German side of the family, my 1s have a tail.
How do I make an x? Ring finger, one down from “s”. See… like this: x x x. Very easy, ain’t it?
(I maybe should read the other comments to see if I was in the first ten to make this particular unfunny smart comment. But, I’ll wait until after I push submit.)
Normal X’s. Stacked circles for an 8.
Do all the times I’ve tripped over dogs count as falls?
during halftime at the superbowl I ran home to get my browns hat (to show some Ohio spirit) and slid coming out my back door flat on my ass. It didn’t hurt, or if it did I was too hammered to realize. The alcohol probably kept me from breaking my wrists, actually.
I then scooted on my ass to the end of the ice. No one saw but It’d be ok if they did.
A few years ago at a qdoba in st. louis I made an abrupt u-turn near the drink machine and slipped and went down, hard, followed by my brisk tea or whatever. It was quite a mess. The girl couldn’t stop laughing, I wasn’t as amused but survived. The manager was the most worried. I’m not the sue type, though.
A few weeks ago during a playoff game I was walking up 3 steps at my bar in Newport, KY and caught the last step and went down, hard (again) on my face while carrying two pints of high life.
I’m a mess.
I tend bar on Saturday afternoons at a local place. It’s only 6 hours and it’s a decent gig. I watch sports, shoot the breeze and drink a fuck ton of free beer. A month ago I kicked this obnoxious asshole out of the bar for being…well, an obnoxious asshole. I knew him from high school, so I went out to the parking lot after he left to try and chill the situation. He was in his truck. I made the mistake of opening the door and this cocksucker FLOORS it in reverse. I go FLYING to the ground and all I can think about is MY tiny Duke head being crushed under the mud spattered tires of this yokel’s 8 year financed Ford.
I contacted the owners and they gleefully watched it on video tape. Making me speed up like stock footage of fucking Babe Ruth hitting a dinger in the 20’s and trotting the bases. Then they’d speed it down to Matrix style slow motion. To the point where you could see my cheeks flapping in perfect synchronization to my bulging gut.
OH and my ass crack was on display as I hit the deck like Ricky Henderson sliding face first into second.
Shane,
youtube, come on!
Nothing compares to biting it in front of a limo. I turned to see what esteemed personage would emerge from the stretch and oh-so-gracefully snagged a foot on the curb. I had enough presence of mind to turn into the fall and landed square on my back No clue who got out ot that limo ’cause I was too busy trying to breathe and then laughing my ass off, laying there on the sidewalk. I’m sure Whoever It Was wrote me off as just another crazy. Whatev…at least I didn’t pee on myself (seen that happen – not pretty).
Xs same as Jeff.
Eights both ways (what does that SAY about me??).
I write my X’s this way upper right to lower left ( / ) then upper left to lower right ( \ ). Call me backwards if you will.
I don’t think I could handle listening to Baseball on my Mp3. That would be like watching a game with your eyes closed. Boring and frustrating.
I can’t remember the last time I’m fallen or even a funny time but a couple weeks ago in the Wendy’s parking lot I was sitting in my car and this very proper looking woman slipped on some ice and fell flat on her back right in front of my car. My boyfriend slipped on the neighbors wet stairs going up to the porch and landed on his back, ass and legs on the steps, the top half on the ground. He just laid there staring up at the sky. I instantly busted out laughing…guess it wasn’t very funny since he hurt himself but damn it, I couldn’t help myself.
X’s: L to R; R to L. It’s just the natural progression while writing. O’s: Counter Clockwise.
Falling…oh yeah. I am usually a pro on my Fuck-Me-Pump’s…I wear them all the time, even in the winter unless Snowmageddon hits. I could run a marathon in 4 incher’s. So… A few years ago I was walking out of a shopping mall party supply store….It was around St. Paddy’s Day. It had snowed then promptly turned to deep dirty slush. I was already dressed to go out for the night…heels, hair, the works.
As I step off the curb, a corner of the sidewalk was covered by a puddle. What I didn’t realize was the puddle was actually a hole. My heel gets caught in said hole…I proceed to do a superman minus one shoe which is still submerged in the fucking hole. As I fell (& slid in the slush) forward (!) trying to catch myself my purse, which I was holding by it’s strap, whipped around with such velocity it sailed forward another 10 feet in front of me.
Two douchbag, zit-faced, 70’s porn hair, guys sat in a pea green piece o’shit car and observed the whole thing doubled over. I got up off my stomach soaking wet, limped over to get my submerged shoe, and walk the other direction to pick up my purse buried in slush and cinders. I tried to act like nothing happened but I was mother fuckin’ myself the whole way home.
Yayzoo Kreestay, bikerchick, I’m feelin’ bad for ya right now!
Upper right to lower left, then upper left to lower right.
X – Top left to bottom right, bottom left to top right
O – Counter clockwise from the top
S – Start from the top
I’ve been told all my life I’m doing them wrong but it just seems natural. Probably why my handwriting sucks…
I am left handed make my x’s left top down then right top down. O’s are done clockwise. Last time I fell was the same old scenario. Carrying laundry downstairs . I thought i was on the bottom step but was not. Landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs clothes strewn everywhere. No one cared or knew about it.
@Melissa, I do O’s counter-clockwise. I’m right-handed, always have been (I wonder if hand preference has any bearing on it).
I do X’s UL to LR, UR to LL as Jeff described, when writing. For cross-stitch, I do the UL to LR leg second so it’s on the top of the stitch.
@Greg, I cross 7’s (habit I picked up for some bizarre teenage reason in high school French class and have never bothered to break). I also cross Z’s when printing (picked that up in high school algebra).
4’s are two strokes, pointy top. 8’s are the usual figure-eight motion. I used to cross 0’s when taking programming classes in college, but have given that up. I do 1’s oddly. Mine have the serif at the top like the typed version, and a horizontal base stroke.
Citizen X- we need your opinion on this, you should be the expert on how to properly make an X
@Seanette, French class is where I also learned to cross sevens and Z’s, too. I don’t remember where I learned to cross 0’s. I think it was in some research course, where I had to differentiate a zero from the letter “O”. All very scientific, (Ahem). Don’t do it now, but at least, I know what it means.
I do my swastikas starting from the top left and….oh shit, wrong blog.
I was looking for The West Virginia SS Report.com
X: top-left to bottom-right; bottom-left to top-right.
O and 0 counterclockwise.
I and J undotted in lowercase.
7 and Z crossed (upper and lower case).
The weird thing I do with writing – and this is why you read that thing about 7 right – is that I write numbers in cases too. If you look at oldstyle numbers – where 012 are lowercase height, 34579 descend (like gjpqy), and 68 ascend (like bdfhklt), then you’ll understand what I mean.
I find the best way to make an X is by filing the divorce papers.
FYI Jeff, there was an escaped circus zebra here in downtown Atlanta today. It was finally captured on the Connector, but not until after traffic had become backed up to the perimeter. This town may actually be too weird for me now.
Upper right to lower left, then upper left to lower right. I didn’t know that ther was any way to do it.
Debra, it’s karma, we fell exactly alike. Will you marry me?
“Stuart, Melbourne Australia” said: “Upper right to lower left then upper left to lower right…that’s an X!”
Well, your toilet water swirls the opposite way, too, so it’s not surprising you make your X’s backwards.
What’s black and white and red all over? A zebra on I75/85 in Atlanta.
Last time I fell was just the other day when I slipped on the ice. I skinned my knee like a 5-year-old. Pissed me off by tearing a hole in the knee of a good pair of pants. Last fall before that was many years ago, I don’t remember.
The X goes top left to bottom right, then top right to bottom left.
Now typing: from Bridgeport WV (business trip).
Bridgeport? Workin’ for Bombardier?
I haven’t really biffed worth telling. bummer. maybe tomorrow. anyway, my mother in law went down one night on the ice. we snickered away in her car until my father in law(God rest his soul) jumped out and helped her..then came in and chewed our asses. Reminded us it is ok to laugh, but make sure the person is ok first.
I think that was some of his best wisom. For real. I miss that man 🙁
doing the X Im lefthanded and do a ton of invoices the little old ladys cant see were to sighn so i pun an X on the invoice i actually start in the top right down to the bottom left then not lifting the pen stroke to the upper left to the bottom right…….if the invoice is real important i then make a clockwise circle around the X sighn here the bills in the mail. 30 days same as cash…
upper left to lower right, upper right to lower left.
It’s the “normie” way.
On X’s, I can go either way. Most commonly upper left to lower right, then upper right to lower left.
O’s CCW.
Best fall: We were at a local schoolyard with my kids, brothers, nieces, nephews and a couple of neighbors. The kids had their bikes.
The action moved to the other end of the school, so I got on a kid’s bike to ride it over. I’m 6’1″ and 230 lbs. I pedal over and put on the front brake and go flying ass over head over the bars.
I threw my back out, which is nothing new, and cracked/broke a rib in the process. I spent the next couple of days on my back, unable to sit up or roll over.
Oh yeah! Eating shit –
My landlord fucked up the sprinkler timer… it came on at 5am when the weather was well below freezing during the dark hours. The little set of steps between units at my triplex didn’t look icy but… boy howdy, it was.
I slipped, caught myself and wound up with some epic whiplash.
“And do you know how embarrassing it is to be at a cookout — at your teacher’s house! — and your dad gets so drunk he falls off the back porch?”
Nope, but I plan on my kids knowing.
X making: Agreed, upper left to lower right, upper right to lower left is how it’s done. Those who do it incorrectly should be weeded from the human population. I’m already stocking up on Zyklon-B.
Sending cheeseburgers back: That sounds like a great plan if your goal is to find out what semen tastes like.
Falling Down: The only good falling down story I know isn’t about me. Back in high school, about 25 years ago, we had an ice storm one winter day. My friends in I stood in the foyer at the main entrance watching people slip and slide on their way in. One of the business teachers, Ms. François, fell about half way up the main walk. We stood there laughing and laughing while she flailed around on the ground like a turtle on it’s back. It never occurred to us there was a problem when she didn’t get up, but we eventually clued in when the ambulance came. She broke her leg in 9 (yes 9) places. After that I made sure not to take any classes she might be teaching.
“……all reproduction or rebroadcast of the game without the expressed written consent of MLB is prohibited”.
sometimes upper right then upper left, sometimes upper left then upper right. what the hell is that!?
Excuse me miss. This semen wasn’t done right. It was created lower right to upper left. That won’t do.
It’s 1:30 AM….Dogs woke me up……now I’m wide awake. Now after seeing Bunker Cam I’m afraid to close my eyes….thanks. J.C.!!!
Broke my ankle last time I fell (3.5 years ago). Still have a plate and 8 screws in there (after 3 surgeries).
I just read what I wrote below and it sounds a little dickish. I really didn’t mean it to be — I’m not particularly a sanctimonious person. Oh well, take what you will and discard the rest.
I don’t pretend to be a member of the freakin’ Algonquin Round Table, but at this time of night it’s a small hoot to be a critic. Yeah, very small, but things get smaller with time.
Tyro: Perfect education. A degree in chem (I hope not direct experience) enables you to correctly use and spell Zyklon B (well, almost — the hyphen is typically used only if one is referring to the Norwegian black metal band), and misspell the singular gender-neutral possesive pronoun “its”. To be fair, your writing is cogent, clear and engaging. I thing that’s what makes the “it’s” stand out.
There must be 8-10 reporters today whose shift keys are kaput, and, according to the CDCP, that constitutes an epidemic — of slothfulness, apathy, ignorance, or hardware malfunction: hard to know which. So the “its” is teensy, but being a learner, I thought you’d appreciate its being identified.
Swami: You might want to look up “karma” in the dictionary. I think the only word that comes close to the basis for your proposal is “coincidence”, which isn’t as romantic as karma, which would be a problem were this a dating site.
bikerchick: Thank you so much for “I am usually a pro on my Fuck-Me-Pumps”. I’m quite familiar with the term, but the casualness with which you used it was almost musical.
Tilly: Sometimes misusing a word in the right place is useful and funny. Thanks for “…get crackalackin on peace…”. Just right.
JQ Brat: Let’s assume you’re young, else your comment “I don’t think I could handle listening to Baseball on my Mp3. That would be like watching a game with your eyes closed. Boring and frustrating.” would make people like Red Barber, Vin Scully, and thousands of other baseball artists trivial history. They’re not. I’m sure you can’t imagine how The Old Redhead and many like him actually broadcast more information about a game than you’d get were you watching TV, but they did. Red is in the Catbird Seat now, laughing his ass off.
bikerchick: I forgot to thank you for “Two douchbag, zit-faced, 70’s porn hair, guys sat in a pea green piece o’shit car and observed the whole thing doubled over.” That couldn’t have been more descriptive or funnier if you’d send along a video.
Amigos: A quick reminder that Saturday is the fifth anniversary of the tragic self-induced death of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. The bastard offed himself on my 55th birthday. Perhaps a quick list from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” would help in creating your celebration shopping list: “We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of
high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy
of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… also a quart of tequila,
a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls.”
If you have given up ether like I have, you might consider instead an oral reading among friends of the opening chapters of FALILV or some other appropriate Thompson work. Just an idea.
best as always
with the radio on,
jtb
Late to the party again, but it’s 8:35AM and I brought beer. Anyway…
JTB: The Good Doctor was shot into the air on my birthday, August 20th, and that night after my birthday party at the gun club, I loaded up a 18 shot homemade mortar rack and lit it off in memory of HST. I will indeed break out The Great Shark Hunt tomorrow, as well as a saltshaker full mystery powder (been saving up for this one) and about 30 beers. Though he is mostly remembered for excess, the bastard had a way with words. My favorite quote: “…there is not much evidence in history of either God or Justice. The best we can hope for is Truth. Not often, and a pretty thin gruel even then.”
X: upper left to lower right, upper right to lower left.
Falling down: I’ve been so heavily “medicated” for half a year that I wake up with mystery bruises, soft tissue damage and bruised ribs on a daily basis. I think the last 2 memorable ones were coming home to my old house at 5AM and collapsing onto the floor, cranking my head on the corner of the kitchen table. The person who was walking me home observed all this, and I woke up on the kitchen floor many hours later with a mild concussion.
Another one was walking equipment home from a gig after a snow and ice storm. I was carrying my Marshall amp head, hit a patch of ice and went ass over teakettle like Charlie Brown trying to kick that fucking football. I landed on my back and the Marshall (which is an old 70s tube model with a heavy ass power transformer) landed squarely on my chest. I am pretty sure I cracked a rib that time, but at least the amp wasn’t damaged. All in the name of Rock’N”Roll!
Mr. Rat:
I’ve been asking around town and can’t seem to find anyone with a Vincent Black Shadow they would be willing to loan or rent to me on Saturday. Just for a quick ride out to the Olympic Peninsula at 110 MPH. I guess I’ll have to settle for renting a Shark convertible and inflating the tires to about 3X spec for improved gas mileage.
Very glad to hear that another Reporter is going to honor Doc’s memory on his Day of Infamy. He was a bit of a Bastard, but when he was on, he created some of the best prose and reporting of the last 60 years.
Certainly The Great Shark Hunt is a fine choice. I raise a glass to you, RB, as well as to Doc. If you make it to the range, hit a propane tank or whatever explosive device you can get ahold of for me.
Gonzo Forever,
jtb
I have personally turned falling down into an art form. I don’t need to be drunk. I don’t need rocky or difficult terrain. Hell, I don’t even need obstacles to fall down. My last great spill, February 27th, 2009, left me in a brace that looks like the shin guard for an imperial storm trooper for the last year, completely unable to exercise or “bear any weight” on my ankle indefinitely. I was walking, sober, through a parking lot. I only made it four feet or so, before this pot hole JUMPED outta nowhere…ok, I may have been distracted by conversation and just not noticed…until I half-stepped in the thing, rolling my ankle, inadvertently knocking a bone out of place, and generally ruining my ability to walk for the last year. Brilliant.
Can you imagine what I’m capable of DRUNK? It’s not pretty, and usually involves a trip to the orthopedist.
How do you make an X what kind of fucking question is that?
RB – Good save. Never let Marhsall amp hit the floor. You will be haunted by every dead rock guitarist in the world and ridiculed by the living ones.
johnthebasket,
No worries about the critique, I find typos in my writing all the time and it drives me nuts. When I really want to beat myself up I pull out my thesis and look for the plethora of mistakes that were missed by myself, my reviewers, and my examiners.
I know there’s no hyphen in “Zyklon-B”, I just like it better with the hyphen. My real concern in referencing it was someone mistakenly thinking I was making light of the Holocaust. I debated using VX instead, but thought the reference might be a little obscure, or (God forbid) bring to mind that horrible Nicholas Cage movie from the 90’s.
FYI, my degrees were in Genetics and Molecular Biology, not Chemistry, but close enough for WVSR purposes.
I had to make a few Xs to figure out my flow, but I start in the upper right, stroke all the way down, then upper left and stroke down. However, I’ve noticed that when I write X by itself, I start from the upper left. Go figure.
JTB — maybe you can scare up a BSA Lightning, those are a little more common in your neck of the woods, right? That’s what Hunter was riding when he wrote Hell’s Angels if I recall correctly. I just may make it out to the range tomorrow, and if so a friend of mine and myself can mix up some pretty impressive.. um… ….impact sensitive targets. Glass raised right back at you and the Good Doc!
Shiny Rod — I would have had a aneurysm if anything happened to that amp! I’ve put it through hell and back, but it soldiers on, damaging eardrums year after year. Jim Marshall knew what he was doing back then.
Upper right to lower left, upper left to lower right…when they let me have a crayon here at the institution. Is it hockey season yet? What day is it today? Uh-oh…the nurse is coming… I gotta go…
Carol: I have a plate and a bunch of screws in my ankle, too. From a bicycle fall, about five years ago. Only took one surgery, though, thankfully.
Tyrosine,
Based on the aggregate of your comments on this site, I don’t think anybody would think you were making light of the Holocaust. I certainly don’t. As for knocking off some pesky grad assistants and those who make exes incorrectly, well, that’s another matter.
Maybe your knowledge and powers could be used to create some decent “wrap sauce” for Jeff. While it’s possible that McD’s sauces don’t contain any organic chemicals, they are most likely constructed of molecules of some kind, perhaps including VX to discourage the cockroaches.
Thanks for being a good sport about the ribbing. Feel free to grenade me when I fail to live up to my own writing standards, which happens more often than I’d like to admit.
best wishes,
jtb
RB,
Yes, I think you recall the BSA Lightning correctly. I believe it was a 650 which, at the time, was a high-performance bike. I used to ride a slightly smaller bike over the Cascade mountain passes; the sweet smell of Douglas firs would remain in my pores for weeks thereafter. However, I put the fuel in the tank and attempted to keep it out of my bloodstream during these long rides. Doc fueled up everything.
jtb