I’m fighting off a cold. It’s not helping that I have to be at work at the crack
of dawn to train my European colleagues on the software we’re releasing next week.

Not that I don’t appreciate German humor or anything. For example, I was explaining
a new module our software has, one which lets you create new benchmark centers
cost centers, and organizations. The German manager was duly impressed.
“So Evan! Ven I klick on ze button, do I alzo aquire ze budget
for ze new center? Ho ho ho!” The best I could manage at 7am was a feeble,
“Sure Ruediger, that’ll be in the next release, I promise.”

Even the French were better-behaved.

Since I don’t have cable TV, I’ve had to amuse myself in other ways. Recently
I’ve been plowing through the archives of
The Brunching Shuttlecocks. I swear, their
stuff is as good or better than The Onion. Take, for
example, the Everquest FAQK:

Q: But I can at least put myself into the shoes of an adventurer, righting wrongs and
fighting evil?

A: Sort of. The evil in question reappears in the world after you vanquish it, often
within mere minutes. and the world as a whole never changes because of anything you do.
So in that way it’s less like being a fantasy adventurer and more like being a social worker.

But I’m running out of Brunching. Fortunately there’s Andrew Sullivan, who,
after seeing Lord of the Rings for the first time, concluded that
George
W. Bush is Frodo Baggins. Which makes the United States the Shire. And
George Sr. is Bilbo, who “had his own little adventure with the dark forces, but poor
Frodo is stuck with the legacy.” Ah, I dunno. It made me chuckle.