Famous last words
The Wife twisted my arm about starting a blog. I wasn't interested.
"It would be good writing practice," she said.
Eh. I write all the time. It's my job.
"Your family and friends would enjoy it," she said.
Hmm. I don't have time.
"Your writing could reach a whole new audience," she said.
Sigh. I fear the Internet.
"DO IT," she said.
Um, OK.
So I came up with some topics I could write about, but I told her she
would have to set up my account because I did not know where to go or
how to do it. She looked at me as if I were a child who should be old
enough to tie his own shoes but cannot.
She sat down and started my account.
Filled with great ideas, I choked on the details.
"What's your username?" she asked.
I don't know.
"What do you mean, you don't know?" she asked.
I'm drawing a blank.
"Pick something."
I threw out a variation of my name, but it already had been taken by
another blogger, an ominous sign of things to come. Have I mentioned
that I hate the Internet?
The Wife took my suggestion and added some numbers to it.
"Password?"
Umm ....
"Just pick something."
I threw out the name of someone I don't like and added an insult,
something that would be easy for me to remember. Alas, I cannot remember my username, which is a variation of my own name. Genius.
"What's the name of your blog?"
Huh?
"Your blog; you have to name it."
Why?
"You just do."
Oh. Umm ...
Complete writer's block had set in at this point, not to mention brain
lock. I could not have told her my own Social Security number.
"PICK SOMETHING!" she said, hard lines set in her forehead.
Mr. Clean, I said, a nickname she sometimes uses, alluding to my
sparseness of hair.
"That's not very original," she said.
Again, I threw out some variations of my name. They already had been
used. This process, which should have taken seconds, had dragged on for about 15 minutes.
The Wife's TV show was starting. She was not happy.
"Pick Some-Thing," she said.
Cereal Killer, I said, but with a C. The kind you eat.
I don't know where that came from. It just popped in my head. It sounded funny, and I love cereal.
"Cereal Killer?" she asked. "Are you sure?"
Yeah.
At this point, I could have said Bachelor Bob and the Sad Tale of the
Dusty Condom, and she would have typed it. She had endured enough of my foolishness.
I thought I had picked a good, original name. She knew I had not.
So my first item was posted on the Cereal Killer blog. It was not until
the next day, while doing a Google search, that I learned that Cereal
Killer was the name of a rap song, a British movie and an Australian
band. That's right, I'm out of touch on at least three different
continents.
This is what happens when you let your Entertainment Weekly subscription run out.
I was appalled. And it got worse. At least a few people had written
not-so-funny stories about their love of cereal with the title Cereal
Killer.
How could I have chosen so poorly?
I wrote The Wife an e-mail with the troubling news.
"Yeah, I knew that," she wrote back.
Thanks for telling me.
She did, however, offer to change the name for me.
If only I could think of something else, which I could not.
Finally, The Wife offered Pchit as the blog name.
Pchit and The Wife go back a few years to when she was The Girlfriend,
The Ex-Girlfriend, The Girlfriend (Again) and The Fiance.
When The Wife is having a bad day/week, she sometimes plays dead. I am not making this up.
She will say something like, "I don't want to go to work. Pchit." and
throw a pillow or blanket over her head. Pchit, you see, is the sound
she makes when she fakes death.
Dead people don't make noise, I argued, when this trend started.
"What do you mean? Didn't you hear me? I said, 'Pchit,'" she said,
straight face, eyes closed.
I said, dead people do sometimes make noise when air escapes their lungs or gas escapes their, um, bodies, but I don't think they actually say anything.
"Pchit," she said.
How can you argue with that?
Some people have five-star days. Today, my wife had a three Pchit day.
As in, I received three e-mails that said "I don't feel good, and I want to
go home. Pchit," or words to that effect. Yes, sometimes she dies at work. Sure it's unprofessional, but it is only pretend death.
So we changed the name of the blog. Then I realized I probably should
have Google searched the word to make sure it wasn't a Method Man song, a Brit movie or an Aussie band.
It wasn't.
It was, however, a French term, but I don't speak or read French. I took
half a semester of French in college before dropping the insufferable
class (I later passed four semesters of Spanish, most of which I quickly
forgot).
Pchit, in fact, showed up in numerous French postings. I typed the word
into two French-English dictionaries online and found no matches. I decided it must be slang.
I hit the "translate this page" option on a few of the posts and was
able to deduce that Pchit, in France (native habitat of the
cheese-eating surrender monkey) is some sort of bathroom-related sound.
I was somewhat distressed that I had just named my blog such an
inappropriate term, but then I remembered that The Wife had maintained Pchit was the sound dead people make.
As usual, she was right.
Pchit.
"It would be good writing practice," she said.
Eh. I write all the time. It's my job.
"Your family and friends would enjoy it," she said.
Hmm. I don't have time.
"Your writing could reach a whole new audience," she said.
Sigh. I fear the Internet.
"DO IT," she said.
Um, OK.
So I came up with some topics I could write about, but I told her she
would have to set up my account because I did not know where to go or
how to do it. She looked at me as if I were a child who should be old
enough to tie his own shoes but cannot.
She sat down and started my account.
Filled with great ideas, I choked on the details.
"What's your username?" she asked.
I don't know.
"What do you mean, you don't know?" she asked.
I'm drawing a blank.
"Pick something."
I threw out a variation of my name, but it already had been taken by
another blogger, an ominous sign of things to come. Have I mentioned
that I hate the Internet?
The Wife took my suggestion and added some numbers to it.
"Password?"
Umm ....
"Just pick something."
I threw out the name of someone I don't like and added an insult,
something that would be easy for me to remember. Alas, I cannot remember my username, which is a variation of my own name. Genius.
"What's the name of your blog?"
Huh?
"Your blog; you have to name it."
Why?
"You just do."
Oh. Umm ...
Complete writer's block had set in at this point, not to mention brain
lock. I could not have told her my own Social Security number.
"PICK SOMETHING!" she said, hard lines set in her forehead.
Mr. Clean, I said, a nickname she sometimes uses, alluding to my
sparseness of hair.
"That's not very original," she said.
Again, I threw out some variations of my name. They already had been
used. This process, which should have taken seconds, had dragged on for about 15 minutes.
The Wife's TV show was starting. She was not happy.
"Pick Some-Thing," she said.
Cereal Killer, I said, but with a C. The kind you eat.
I don't know where that came from. It just popped in my head. It sounded funny, and I love cereal.
"Cereal Killer?" she asked. "Are you sure?"
Yeah.
At this point, I could have said Bachelor Bob and the Sad Tale of the
Dusty Condom, and she would have typed it. She had endured enough of my foolishness.
I thought I had picked a good, original name. She knew I had not.
So my first item was posted on the Cereal Killer blog. It was not until
the next day, while doing a Google search, that I learned that Cereal
Killer was the name of a rap song, a British movie and an Australian
band. That's right, I'm out of touch on at least three different
continents.
This is what happens when you let your Entertainment Weekly subscription run out.
I was appalled. And it got worse. At least a few people had written
not-so-funny stories about their love of cereal with the title Cereal
Killer.
How could I have chosen so poorly?
I wrote The Wife an e-mail with the troubling news.
"Yeah, I knew that," she wrote back.
Thanks for telling me.
She did, however, offer to change the name for me.
If only I could think of something else, which I could not.
Finally, The Wife offered Pchit as the blog name.
Pchit and The Wife go back a few years to when she was The Girlfriend,
The Ex-Girlfriend, The Girlfriend (Again) and The Fiance.
When The Wife is having a bad day/week, she sometimes plays dead. I am not making this up.
She will say something like, "I don't want to go to work. Pchit." and
throw a pillow or blanket over her head. Pchit, you see, is the sound
she makes when she fakes death.
Dead people don't make noise, I argued, when this trend started.
"What do you mean? Didn't you hear me? I said, 'Pchit,'" she said,
straight face, eyes closed.
I said, dead people do sometimes make noise when air escapes their lungs or gas escapes their, um, bodies, but I don't think they actually say anything.
"Pchit," she said.
How can you argue with that?
Some people have five-star days. Today, my wife had a three Pchit day.
As in, I received three e-mails that said "I don't feel good, and I want to
go home. Pchit," or words to that effect. Yes, sometimes she dies at work. Sure it's unprofessional, but it is only pretend death.
So we changed the name of the blog. Then I realized I probably should
have Google searched the word to make sure it wasn't a Method Man song, a Brit movie or an Aussie band.
It wasn't.
It was, however, a French term, but I don't speak or read French. I took
half a semester of French in college before dropping the insufferable
class (I later passed four semesters of Spanish, most of which I quickly
forgot).
Pchit, in fact, showed up in numerous French postings. I typed the word
into two French-English dictionaries online and found no matches. I decided it must be slang.
I hit the "translate this page" option on a few of the posts and was
able to deduce that Pchit, in France (native habitat of the
cheese-eating surrender monkey) is some sort of bathroom-related sound.
I was somewhat distressed that I had just named my blog such an
inappropriate term, but then I remembered that The Wife had maintained Pchit was the sound dead people make.
As usual, she was right.
Pchit.
posted by David at 9:55 AM
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