Tractor Safety

My brother was recently doing something industrious involving a tractor, a dam, the force of gravity, and a questionable incline. His resulting involuntary tumble and subsequent walk-away were a glorious anthem to roll-cages and safety harnesses. Y'see, big brother chose NOT to comfort-modify his roll-cage or harness, and it saved his stinking life, y' hear? Let this be a lesson unto all you ne'er-do-well safety device workarounders!

Here's a new robot's gills feature I call the "WEAK POST ALERT"

Today, and henceforth, this picture will accompany those blog posts that, due to lack of interesting content, I consider unworthy of your time.

Today's secret link.

Anagram madness

Jack sent me a link to a funny article that made me laugh, and sparked a series of emails to and from Jon Robert Host and Jack Ward Pendarvis. We made ourselves giggle for days, and congratulated ourselves for our fancy anagram signatures. How clever we were!


From Jack:
Why did I think of you? http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2007/8/10ryan.html



This was super funny and made me laugh many times....which was good, considering I had just hit my thumb with a hammer as I was writing a quick note in Spanish. Adios!
Senor "Throb Jot"


I thought about it, and my reply would have been much funnier if I had not written that I was writing the note in Spanish, and then just signed off with the 'Adios'. I should be sued for not being funnier and forced to put a silent H into my first name.Not funnily,

Sober John Tort



Help! I was trying to reply to your email whilst driving and I ran my new recreational vehicle off the road...

Sad RV Jerkwad Panic


Sorry so late in responding, but my position as a somnambulant automaton in this hillbilly town got the best of me.

Jethro Snorbot



Don't worry! I've been too busy to notice. For you see, I've been trying to think of a way to seem like a regular happy-go-lucky guy because my ancestor is so controversial and just having the same surname can be an impediment to making new friends in this fundamentalist town. Anyway, I've hit upon the idea of childish sleepwear emblazoned with my favorite old monster movie character. I plan to wear them all the time so that people will come to enjoy my sartorial quirks and forget about my family tree. I hope it works!

Signed,

Evan K. "Drac PJ's" Darwin


You think you've got it bad? I guess it's time that I come clean. The fact that MY unfortunate ancestors were used as footwear for the Norse gods has always been a source of personal shame. This is, I believe, at least partially responsible for my admittedly illogical insistence on the phonetic spelling of healthcare credentials. Enough bad news......I PASSED MY STATE BOARDS!!!!!

J. Thorboot, Ners



Congrats! I have similar good news. As you know, my given name has always worked well for me as a standup comedian, but after the incident where I ate an uncooked crayfish onstage, everyone gave me a mean nickname that lowered my self-esteem. Well, who's laughing now? That's right, I am very proud to announce that I, also, have PASSED MY BOARDS!!!

Vick "Rawdad" Japes, RN



I've been less than truthful with you. I tried to impress you with a history that is more glamorous than the sad reality. In sooth, my siblings had a very successful career in comedy. I was shunned as "not that funny", and so chose to spend my days in prayerful contemplative solitude. I find solace in the fact that I remained true to my Swedish roots in the spelling of our last name. Peace.

Brother N. Stooj


Brother,My cousin Vick passed along your email. Please rest assured that you are not the only one to suffer through an unfortunate name as a precursor to spiritual enlightenment. I thought my youthful habit of violently hurling fecal matter (my own and others') would haunt me forever. But that was before I became a Jesuit.
Sincerely,

Ken "Crap War" David, SJ




Father,
I must confess that I intercepted the following email as it passed though the convent's server. Mr. Hert has worked on the custodial staff here at St. Agnes' for several years. He and I have formed a friendship based on little more than the burden of our names. Perhaps we can all form a support group for ourselves.
Yours in faith,

Sr. T.O. Joonbreth

Dear Father David,I think you would understand me because people make fun of you too. My dad and his dad and his dad were all alcoholics, so I guess I understand my nickname, but it still makes me cry. Things were at least okay before mister Simpson got into all that trouble a few years back, but now I don't know what to do.

O.J. "Born Sot" Hert

Please count me in for the cruel nickname support group. I can't give my real name, only my initials, as I am usually a proper young lady and so ashamed of what I did with that fourth of July party favor.
signed,

C.W.D. ("Sparkin Vaj Dare")


I want in, too.
My humiliating day at the Williamsburg Howard Johnsons forever changed my nicknamian life......for the worse. Nobody else on my bus ordered the crab dip. It tasted SO GOOD.

Ben R. ("HoJo Trots")




I'm not sure what all of you are complaining about. I purposely gave myself an awesome nickname, and you should too. I can't reveal my identity, because as a respected physician I can't let anyone know about my nighttime gigs at rowdy clubs, where my stage name represents two of my greatest interests.

Dr. W.V., AKA DJ Penis Car




You've got the right idea, Doc. I love my position as an occupational therapist, but I also love the night life here in merry olde England.....so much so that my nickname has afforded me the opportunity to "have my head in the lap" of nearly every Royal in London. I'm not ashamed to give my real name, but I do need my day job. Ha!

R.S., OT ("Throne Job")



I'm in the medical profession, too. But I just don't get it. What kind of saucy hints are you young gals and fellers making? Maybe I'm an old man, but I just don't get it.
confusedly,

Naive "Paw" Rack, Jr., D.D.S.


I wanted a job in the medicle world, but my family has had this brewery for genarations. I work in the IT departmint, and Dad says it dosn't matter that I didn't do so great in school. Mainly, my job is to fix all the PCs in the admenistration bilding. I have a trick that works amost every time. If that dosn't work, then I just call somebody else.

J.N. "Reboot" Stroh



Today's secret link.

New Items of Interest

My brother, Tom has a blog that he's re-activated after a well-deserved hiatus. Read it or face my wrath! ...see, that last thing shows how benevolent I am in my despotism. Jonny gives you a choice.

Kleptomanium Originalensis

I'm rather sick, I must say, of individuals who use my funny (or fancy) stuff, and try to pass it off as their own. I mean, I was doing the whole "Sir Something-alot" way before anyone else ever even thought of it, so I felt pretty safe naming my blog Sir Blogsalot and the Blogtones as I did. Turns out there's about 50 billion (numeric hyperbole-MINE!) Sir Blogsalots out there. I'm sick of it, and I may take legal action. Until I've spoken to my lawyer, my blog shall be renamed as above.


Now let's follow the etymology of the word "flodnick", shall we?
In 1982, I saw a fellow from the hospital lab who bore a striking resemblance to Hermy the elvin dentist wannabee. My colleague Alan and I didn't really care for this lab worker's given name Curtis, and we set out to provide a nickname (really more like something to call him behind his back). Having studied neither dentistry nor elvistry, and being as I had not seen "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in several years at that time, I remembered the aforementioned Hermy's name incorrectly as "Kirby". Regardless it worked for our purposes. Now our new little Kirby needed a last name, and "Kidnick" seemed to feel just about right, rolling off the tongue as it did (and does) with alliterative vigor behind Kirby. Thus was our laboratory friend labeled, and thus was the seed of "flodnick" planted...for kidnick became fidnick, and fidnick came to be used as a vocabularian placekeeper of sorts for speakers unable to remember an appropriate word, and yet unwilling to a) pause, or b) think hard enough to remember. "Hand me that fidnick, will ya'?" or "...so we went to the park and we saw 2 fidnicks in the lake."
The challenge was then for the speaker to provide enough contextual or situational clues such that the listener could easily interpret the "real" word. Fidnick became the root for many such words that followed including "fidnicity", "fidnickly", or simply "fid" to name a few. My friend Jack and I once wrote a song called Fidville Matinee.

I cannot be certain when fidnick became flodnick, but I believe it was in the late 1980's or early1990's. Standard etymological evolution, I suppose.

All of this rather boring history is here to serve my point that flodnick continues to serve well in fidnick's place, and has become so well-entrenched in the language of individuals within my own sphere of influence that others (typically rookie overusers) are routinely credited with the word's creation and development.

I've been working on this thing for TWENTY-SIX YEARS!

I may take legal action.

Today's secret link.

Blahg

I was just about to delete my blog for failure to blog; then I thought of my friend Jack Pendarvis. Jack already told me once not to delete my blog. I hear, And I obey.

I always assumed that I was the only person named Jon Host, especially with the added fanciness of no "h" in my first name. Well, come to find out there's AT LEAST one other guy named Jon Host. I thought we knew all the Hosts, but apparently they're all over the place. This other Jon Host...let's call him Jon Host - the lesser, went to UCLA and does something extra fancy somewhere. I don't like him one bit. He seems like some sort of overachiever whose antics up with which I simple will not put!

There are AT LEAST 2 other Lydia Hosts living in Australia. Maybe they're some sort of fancy wealthy cousins that I never knew about. Maybe they'll invoight us to come dayown unduh!

Today's secret link.