I just invented a new meme for the blogosphere. I think I’ll call it the Lucky Clipboard meme. Let’s see if it catches on:

Go to Google. Paste whatever’s on your clipboard right now into the search box and click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. Report your result IN YOUR OWN BLOG. (Sorry, but everyone’s been reporting their results HERE. How is my meme supposed to achieve world domination if it isn’t spread by posting about it in YOUR blogs?)

I got the BBC’s Teletubbies page. (Don’t ask.)

I just found another MSN search that led to these pages, my favorite one yet:

people that poop there pants and tell about it

That’s just so unspeakably sad on so many levels that it’s hilarious. You MSNers are some weird, twisted, spelling-challenged motherfuckers.

The best part is that I come up #8 on the results for that little gem. Made me poop my pants.

Before you actually read this entry, I should warn you that you might not want to. What I have to say might ruin TV and movies for you, it might even ruin casual conversation. Just as all you see on the road is blue cars after you buy a blue car, you will notice what I’m talking about when you watch TV or movies every single day. And you’ll probably think of me when it happens.

Still want to read? Okay, I warned you. Let’s go.

I have a screenwriting pet peeve. It’s a phrase that appears in every single sitcom, every 1-hour drama, every movie, every virtually anything that is scripted. It’s a phrase that is so ubiquitous that hearing it snaps me right out of whatever I’m watching. It’s everywhere.

What is it? “I can’t believe.”

I can’t believe you said that.
I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.
I can’t believe my eyes.
I can’t believe this is happening.
I can’t believe you’re leaving me.
I can’t believe blah blah blah.

It’s in everything and it annoys the piss out of me. It’s lazy writing, it’s passive, and it doesn’t make any sense. You can’t believe it? Really? You aren’t able to accept the reality of what is actually happening to you at this very moment? You think you’re hallucinating, maybe? Would you like me to call a doctor for you? I recommend a psychiatrist since you’re having trouble orienting yourself.

It’s even wormed its way into casual conversation. Think about it, how many people said they couldn’t believe it to you today? How many times couldn’t you believe it yourself? It’s a pox on the tongue of conversation.

But TV and movies is where I really have a beef with it. It really is in everything, and I do mean everything. Every single sitcom — and I mean every episode of every sitcom. Friends, for example: ten years of someone not believing something every single week. It’s in every drama. Every soap opera. Every movie, both theater and TV. It’s everywhere. Watch for it, you’ll see I’m right. I pointed this out to Beth and now every night when we’re watching TV we point at each other and intone “can’t believe” when someone says it. And someone always does.

Well, I’ve taken a stand against it. That phrase does not appear in a single one of my scripts. I’m doing my part to improve the TV and movie-going experience, even if none of the producers out there know about it yet.

And you… Well, you’re infected with the noticing of it now, too. From now on, every time you hear it you’re going to flash back on this entry and think of me and nod to yourself and think that, yes, Chuck was right.

Believe it.

My former co-worker Kevin won my movie quote contest the other day, winning him a guest entry spot here at the Lunchroom. I’m proud as hell to be his first. Here’s what Special K had to say:

After living most of my online life on the outside of the blog world looking in, I find myself with the somewhat difficult task of becoming that which I have only observed.

So the question I ask myself is what do I say in my first tender moments as I give up my online journal virginity?

Do I reveal deeply personal secrets? (I can’t name more than 2 Supreme Court justices… but I do know the names of the remaining Bachelorettes on “The Bachelor”)

Do I reveal something about my home life (I recently found myself sticking my nose full in my 6 month old’s diaper just to see if it really needed changing.)

Do I tell of my secret loves? (I have a man-crush on Phil Keoghan of the Amazing Race. I don’t want to make out with him or anything…but a nice long hug would not be unwelcome.)

Do I tell of my political views? (While I am an admitted Bill Clinton fan, the thought of his face on a coin that could potentially be in the front pocket of my pants makes me a little uncomfortable.)

So in the end, I decided that the only real and honest thing I could do was to tell something about myself…reveal a little bit of my soul.

I must have eaten something funny.

My farts smell like broccoli.

I’m doing it again. Procrastinating. But I suppose technically I’m not really procrastinating, I’m reaping the fruits of doing so earlier today. It’s 12:44 a.m. and I’m prepping for a class that starts in 7 hours and 16 minutes, when earlier today I was lounging around and doing a whole lot of nothing instead of prepping so I could be sleeping at 12:44 a.m. Procrastinating. Again.

It’s okay, I perform well under pressure. At least that’s what I told myself during Finals back in my 2.5 GPA days. Ha.

Anyway, I’m finally getting around to prepping — or am I? Because you’re reading this, which means I was typing it, which means either I’m one King Hell of a multi-tasker or I’m screwing around instead of working. The smart money is on option B.

I find that what I’m really doing is prepping for awhile, then farting around online for awhile, then getting back to prepping. Not very efficient, but at least I’m making progress. So I guess I’ll try to be doubly productive: I’ll prep for a bit, then I’ll work on an entry to screw around a bit. Multi-tasking! Woo. Since I’ll probably end up writing about what I’m listening to on iTunes Party Shuffle while I’m working, I guess I’ll just start out that way rather than ultimately giving up and drifting into it.

Kid Rock – Cocky – Damn, but I like this song. They say I’m cocky and I say what / it ain’t bragging motherfucker if you back it up. I like Kid Rock a lot. I dismissed him at first, but he’s grown on me as I’ve come to respect him as a musician. The guy’s for real, he’s no one hit wonder.

Prepprepprep…

Springsteen – Night – Bruce. What else can I say? You have to stop and turn it up.

Prepprepprep…

Terri Clark – Girls Lie Too – I like Terri Clark. I think she’s cuter than hell, I like her voice, and this is the kind of country song that makes me like country: clever, good turn of a phrase, good hook.

Prepprepprep…

Jimmy Ray – Are You Jimmy Ray? – I mention this only because of the coincidence that this is caming up while I’m writing just a day or two after I wrote about it.

Prepprepprep…

Rush – Limelight – I love Rush. Love them. I saw them in concert once, back in the 80’s on the Moving Picture tour. I remember very little of it because there were … extenuating circumstances.

I was in high school at the time, a senior. My girlfriend was moving back to Switzerland after graduation, and for reasons that I can’t remember and which probably wouldn’t make much sense if I did, she somehow came to be living with my family for the last week or so before she left. Take one horny virgin teenaged boy, add a live-in girlfriend and lax parental supervision, and you’ve got a party! Woo! But not a great party. Because my girlfriend wasn’t about to just give it up. No, she had to torture me first. So I was at the best party in town but I couldn’t really … lets say “play with the favors.”

Meanwhile, my friends Alex and Rick and I, we have tickets to see Rush. So the day of the concert my girlfriend and I spent much of the afternoon alone at my house, on the couch, um, touching the favors. Petting them, shall we say. Until by the time Alex and Rick came to pick me up to go to the concert, certain party favors of mine were a distinct shade of blue. And painful. Oh, so very, very painful. Walking hurt. Getting in the car hurt. Riding in the car hurt. Everything hurt. I hurt.

We stopped by Rick’s dad’s house to hang out before leaving for the concert. While we were there, my blue party favors began turning purple. New levels of pain were reached and then surpassed. I was in sad shape. So Rick’s dad broke out a mason jar of moonshine and poured me a shot. That hurt too, but it also helped. So I had another one. And I think I might have had one more. Moonshine makes your memory fuzzy. And then he gave me a pill, too. I thought it was a painkiller, but looking back on it and knowing Rick’s dad it might well have been a Quaalude. I didn’t care what it was, I was hurting: I took it.

I began to feel better. A lot better. Human, even. And then as we got to the concert and found our seats, I began to feel sleeepppyyyy…. I remember taking a hit off a joint someone passed me. I remember drinking some wine from the bota bag we smuggled in. I remember struggling to stay awake. I remember forcing myself to hold my head up and look at the screen on the stage during Red Barchetta. And that’s all I remember of that night.

So I’ve seen Rush in concert once. Sort of. At least I can say I was there.

Oh, and my girlfriend and I finally had our party before she left. She insisted that I wear not one but two, um, “party hats.” And it was still a really short party. But the best I’d ever been to.

And now… It’s 1:30 and I still have to figure out what I’m wearing tomorrow when I leave for work in five and a half hours. I’ve gone further though the book tonight than I probably will get through tomorrow, so I’m calling it a night.

And fucking hell, now it’s raining. Great, I was going to ride the motorcycle in tomorrow. That just added half an hour to my commute. Greeaatt…

See ya…

Blame the Defective Yeti:

These are my URL ABCs:

• A is for A Small Victory – A funny Republican. They’re rare, but they’re out there.
• B is for Big White Guy – The adventures of a Big White Guy living in Hong Kong
• C is for Captain Ron – A recent blog find
• D is for Deadpan.net – Me!
• E is for Elise.com – I have no idea why I was here
• F is for Forums @ Craigslist – Talking smack on Craiglist! Fun!
• G is for GraceDavis – An Atkins family favorite
• H is for Hiptop MaM – The Man about Murfreesboro, gone Hiptop
• I is for Google images – The last search that brought someone to my page
• J is for Jobs @ Monster.com – Ye olde jobbe searche
• K is for Knebworth House in England – I was designing my coat of arms and needed a template
• L is for L.A. Craigslist – Bargain hunting
• M is for My Yahoo – My start page
• N is for News @ Google – News you can use
• O is for One Good Move – He thought these things might be clues
• P is for Peye @ Textamerica – My moblog
• Q is for Quotes @ lockergnome.com – Getting a quote for my movie quote contest
• R is for Roots Web – Where I found the header pic for my new design
• S is for Six Apart – Movable Type — so 10 minutes ago
• T is for Total Choice Hosting – My hosting company’s not-so-helpful message boards
• U is for Uberdork – The captcha doohicky plug-in I use on my comments page
• V is for VH1 – I talked about Jimmy Ray in an entry and had to find a link so you’d know who he is
• W is for Evaporation – El Steve. El Guapo.
• X is for Some forum – I have no idea what this is
• Y is for Your webmail – A default email setting in WordPress
• Z is for The Cat’s Whiskers – The person who coded my Coffee Cup blog theme

I held an impromptu movie quote trivia contest recently with the prize being the right/honor/punishment/opportunity to write a guest entry here. My close personal friend and former coworker Gavin won, and then promptly dropped the ball and didn’t write me an entry. It’s been almost two weeks now and he’s barely updating his own journal, let alone writing for mine, so I’m farming the job out. I’m offering his guest entry to someone else — preferably someone who’ll actually write one.

I think we’ll have another movie quote contest to choose Gavin’s replacement since the last contest worked so well. I’ll even do you a favor this time and use a quote with the character’s name in it. Identify the movie this quote comes from and you’ll be the big winner. First place is a guest entry here. Second place is you don’t have to write one. No fair Googling. Go:

When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, looks you crooked in the eye and asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like that: “Have ya paid your dues, Jack?” “Yes sir, the check is in the mail.”

Hear it in .mp3.

Cholula hot sauce
Really really fucking hot
My tongue is in love

I’m going to try a new blogging exercise for this entry. After I finish typing this intro I’m going to set my watch’s timer for minutes/seconds of whatever time it is at that point (7:15 = 7 minutes, 15 seconds, for example), and then I’m going to start the timer and write until the alarm goes off. I’ll stop right there, put in any links necessary, and then publish whatever we’ve got as is. Deal? Deal.

Both Beth and my mom hate my last entry. They say it makes it sound like we live in filth. I dunno, is finding cat shit in the bathtub every day a sign of filth? I’d say there’s a judgement call to be made there. Look, our house isn’t a pigsty, but let’s face facts: we have pets. A buttload of them. And pets make mess. So we don’t live in filth but, sorry Mom and Beth, we don’t exactly live in a house where you can eat off the floor — or would want to.

I’ve been listening to Willie Nelson pretty obsessively for the last few days, a greatest hits album that I listened to pretty obsessively back in the 80’s. I picked it up the other night at our local Second Spin for cheap, used. Almost every time I’m there I also buy a mystery CD. I go to the cheapo bin and pick one at random. I figure for a buck or two I’ll take a chance that I might find something I like. This time I got something by a swing band called Speakeasy Spies. Not bad, but… Eh. I did find something good that way once. Once. It was the debut (and last, apparently) CD from a guy named Jimmy Ray. It had a few decent songs on it, but it sort of also belonged in the bargain bin anyway.

Right now on the iTunes I’ve got AC-DC going. I guess this is turning into a music entry. Writing under the gun, you write about whatever is

We have pets. Lots of pets. Two dogs: Billy and Suki. Six cats: Gable, Sparkle, March, Wanda, Cosmo, Nina. Assorted fish. It’s a zoo around here.

Having pets is great, we obviously must think so, but with a zoo like ours also comes … let’s just say moments:

• Finding cat poop in the bathtub daily
• Dogs snacking out of the cats’ litterbox
• Wet toilet seats from dogs drinking out of bowl
• Cats running half a step in front of you all the way across the house, forcing you to stutter-step around them the whole way
• Feeling the wet soak through the paper towel as you clean up fresh dog puke
• Cats peeing on clean, folded laundry
• Dogs puking up half-digested cat poop
• Cats peeing and/or pooping behind couches
• Dogs lying half on top of you while you watch TV — and farting
• Stepping barefoot into cold cat puke in the morning
• Hairballs
• Dogs barking at nothing every single night at 3 a.m.
• Near-daily refilling of the kitchen fishbowl because the cats drink out of it
• The stupid dog peeing on the living room carpet because he’s afraid of the dog door
• Ripped-up carpet in the guest bathroom from one of the dogs obsessively scratching at one corner of the floor
• Cat diarrhea in random corners of the house
• Half-inch deep chew marks on the wall where the carpet scratching dog chewed when she was a puppy
• Cats walking all over you while you watch TV and sticking their butts in your face
• Water all over the laundry room floor from dogs drinking from the water bowl
• Pet hair on everything you own
• Pet bail

I guess I should provide a happy list now, point out all the good things there are about having pets. Yeah, I’ll get right on that, right after I clean up whatever mess is inevitably waiting for me out there somewhere.