That Time I Invented The Internet Meme

My wife started a blog earlier this year and she is very good at it.  If you are wondering if I am jealous of the Flipping Unbelievable blog, the answer is Not Applicable.

We have very different blogs with very different target audiences.  She traffics in offering useful information and I do not.  If she gets into the useless information game and becomes irreverent like Brain Litter, I will consider it an act of war but until then our blogs can co-exist in peaceful harmony. 

But I think she fired off a warning shot with this funny meme that she invented.

If you don’t recall, I invented the internet meme back in October 2006.  Don’t believe me?  Check it.

Happy Brett Favre Day!

OK OK, so I called them e-cards instead of memes and they are quite primitive compared to your modern-day internet meme but they are effectively the same thing.  Meme technology didn’t exist back then to transpose hilarious sentences directly on to photographs.  I had to create those beauties in PowerPoint, dink around with clunky text boxes, and save them as crushingly high-memory jpeg files.  I bet that original post took 5 seconds to load up back in the day, which is light years in internet time. 

Long story short, we live in a day and age where if you say something and believe it is true, then it is true regardless of facts.  I invented the internet meme!  What a time to be alive!

Babes, if you are going to use my technology against me, I will have to retaliate with an equally funny original meme of my own.  Behold!

Topical!  I’m also thinking this would make a great t-shirt conceptually.  Surely some hipster would gladly pay 10 bucks for this shirt after drinking one too many IPAs over there at Hinterland.

Michelle, maybe you could help me out with this?  You did a great job helping me with those Occupy Tipler hoodies I made for my deer camp way back when.  Maybe it would be funnier with some sort of Arabic font?  We’ll talk about it later.

This feels like a real solid business opportunity but I have been known to overestimate the demand for novelty t-shirts that only I think is funny.  I have a dusty old box full of shirts in the farthest nether regions of our basement to prove it.  

The shirts simply say “43,560” across the front, which is how many square feet are in an acre of land.  It is a real estate joke that I tried to profit from at a big real estate conference about ten years ago.  I made 100 of them and sold about 10.  It was a colossal mistake.

I would throw them away but the Dan and Kathy in me makes it physically impossible for me to throw away perfectly functional items no matter how outdated they are. Those t-shirts will remain in basement storage until the end of time or until I sell them.

Screw it.  I’m digging them out and putting them for sale again FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY. Sizes come in medium and large.  They are navy blue and made of 100% cotton.  $10 each or 50 for $15.

GET THEM NOW WHILE THEY LAST! 

The Happy Man And His Dump Truck

Remember when I said I wasn’t going to be writing about kid stuff?

I lied! Here is a blog about kid stuff!

Jackson posted up to our bed the other day with a new book in his hand. I had never seen it before but that is not unusual.  We have a cabinet full of books and I have no idea where they come from.  They multiply in there like rabbits when we are not around.

I know this because there are hundreds of books in there and I’ve only bought two children’s book in my entire life.  The first is a Frozen book which I bought to replace a library book that the kids destroyed. 

HOT PARENT TIP:  You can’t show up at the library with a destroyed book and a replacement book from Amazon.  You have to go through their channels proper.  Also, don’t try to Catch Me If You Can the bar code stickers off the destroyed book to paste it on the new book from Amazon.  The library is privy to some sort of super glue of unknown origin that makes this task impossible.  Don’t even bother.

The second book is Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, which is great.

Spoiler Alert LOL those shoes LMAO those shoes don’t stay white for very long.

Anyways, the book in question is called the The Happy Man and His Dump Truck and it is a re-printed Golden Book originally published in 1950. 

Upon first reading, I thought it was a cute little yarn.  This guy goes around town picking up various farm animals in his truck and then they go joyriding through the countryside.  A great time was had by all.  The End.

When the story was done, Jackson beeled off to God knows where and I went about my business but something didn’t sit right with me.  I paged through the book again and gave it a real close look and then I realized what was so deeply unsettling.  

Look at some of these illustrations.

My takeaway is that the moral of the story is:  If a strange guy offers you a ride in his rusty old truck, then hop right in because you are going to have a great time.

This guy.  

 This. Freakin. Guy.

This guy looks like he is ready to go hang out with Gags and Pennywise back home at the railyard. Is he half clown half hobo?  What’s with the Mom jeans?  Nobody knows. 

Did I mention he tortures the animals?  Look at this shit.  

He opens the tailgate while going top speed down a slippery country road.  This isn’t a yarn, it is a psychological thriller.  Look at that poor dog!

Now I get that this was written back when America Was Great.  Back then you could probably hang out at a railyard for hours, maybe even all day, without getting rape killed.  It was a different time. 

But in 2017, I don’t want my kids thinking it’s cool to jump into trucks with psycho clown hobos. This book belongs in the garbage. 

Unless Jackson wants to read it again.  He can read all the psycho clown hobo stories he wants if it buys me another five minutes of peace and quiet. I better keep it just in case. Entertaining kids is hard. 

One Space Two Space Rehashed

Last week, I posted in my Facebook status about two spaces versus one space when typing sentences in a document and let me tell you, it really got me thinking about blogging again.  That post got a LOT of traction, it came scarily close to surpassing the announcement of the birth of my twins. 

It is clear that people are very passionate about this topic.  I’m pro two-space and I’m not ashamed to admit it.  I don’t want to rehash this subject and reopen old wounds but suffice to say, I think I nailed it on the head when I commented that two spaces are luxurious space cushions to give your eyes a rest between next sentences.  Mic drop.  Discussion over.

I ran into Vang and Kyle Anderson last Friday at Golomski’s induction ceremony and they told me the one space two space debate would have made a good post for Brain Droppings.  I laughed so hard because Vang called it Brain Droppings. 

In his defense, that name is WAY better than Brain Litter.

But they are not incorrect.  I had a good premise and a great one-liner.  There would have been a paragraph about two space usage being the demarcation line between Millennial and Non-Millennial.   Throw some filler sentences in there and you got yourself a kickass blog post for the week.  It was a missed opportunity.

For whatever reason, I’m very proud of the space cushions line.  It could be a top 10 and that’s ultimately what Brain Litter was all about, to have a top 10 etched on my tombstone someday to record these jokes for posterity.  My other favorites are:

1.      “These Peter Jackson cigarettes taste like Frodo’s asshole” (Inside joke, you had to be there)

2.     “Don’t worry, it’s just a matter of time before the McRib comes back around to, once again, rear its ugly head” (Again, you had to be there)

3.     The space cushions thing above

I don’t know about the next seven.  Maybe etch that map I made of where all the cool kids sat in middle school?  That was a pretty great bit.  I don’t know.  Fine, we’ll call that number four.

The reason I stopped writing in 2014 is because I thought I was getting repetitive and I didn’t want to turn into a Dave Barry dad-joke machine about kids and being married.  If there is one thing I know, it is that people don’t want blog posts about families and stuff.  They want dick and fart jokes, observational humor, and stories about being single and the sexual misfires that go along with being single (see Brain Litter 2005 - 2009).

I can deliver on the first two premises but sadly, I can no longer deliver on the third.  I am firing away on all cylinders.  I’m dangerous! 

Anyways, I am going to keep hacking away at Brain Litter again until I get a true Top 10.  I‘ll try not to get into too much Dad humor but no promises. 

Thanks for reading!