Who Do I Think I Am??

This one's about as dumb as it is funny.

THE PROMPT: "When was the last time you remember laughing so hard your sides hurt, your smiling muscles were sore, and your eyes were tearing up? What were you laughing at?"

What's up everyone? A happy "Funny Friday" to you all. Now, I can say with a lot of certainty that it's been a long time since I can recall having a laugh as good as the one described by the prompt. I'm sure it was probably during a time when the economy was better...when the economy's down, so is comedy. Laughs are harder to come by because the world is so desperately searching for something to lift their spirits so much that people almost become discriminating with what they spend their hard-earned laughter on.

As for me, well, let's keep in mind that my sense of humor differs vastly from others, shall we? And I don't doubt that I've seen or felt funnier things in my life, but in the last 10 or 12 years two events come to mind. Ironically, both are work-related incidents. Did I mention I found them funny? Cuz that probably means very little.

The first was probably about 10 years ago. I was working for the local consumer electonics retailer's computer division, and we had our own separate location at the time. We sold Sony laptops and desktops, in addition to our own brand of custom-built desktops. We also did repairs and offered commercial sales. Our sales floor had a big screen tv with a desktop hooked up to it. As part of the sales staff, we spent a lot of time surfing the internet and downloading music from Napster (when Napster was free and awesome). We did this in between pints of Sam Adams at the upscale pizza joint next door.

One day, after lunch, one of the builders was huddled at a workstation, laughing his ass off. I believe the website he was looking at was something like joecartoon.com or something like that. There was a series of three short, maybe 15-20 second cartoons featuring Rat Chicken. They were the dumbest, yet hilarious clips I'd ever seen at the time.

The premise of Rat Chicken is that he's a farm chicken who wears a rat mask on his head so that the farmer doesn't kill him. The first clip ends with another chicken teasing him about the mask, only to be caught and beheaded by the farmer, with Rat Chicken exclaiming, "No, you go to hell!!" Like I said, stupid yet hilarious...the delivery is everything. What made it better was that our office was primarily guys at the time, so for about the next day and a half, anytime anyone had a question or anything to say, the response was "Nooooo, you go to hell!!" And the laughter would not get old.

The other story is from a little place I like to call Walgreens, and it happened maybe not two years ago. This is more of a physical comedy gag, which will make it difficult to explain. Also adding to the degree of difficulty? It was a personal story, meant for no one but me to know. I kept that quiet for about 30 seconds.

Over our blue polo shirts we were allowed to wear hoodies. That wasn't a concession made by corporate so much as it was me wanting to wear a hoodie, and once I kept getting away with it more people started doing it. So my boy G-Stamm comes in to run the photo lab, and he's got a hoodie on. He's about my height, but he works out and stuff, so he's thicker than me. Some would say he's... stocky.

He calls me over to the lab and says, "So, my girl did the laundry yesterday..." As he opens up his hoodie, I realize that his polo is now about eight sizes too small...she shrunk it! He explained it was his only clean one. The sleeves didn't make it halfway past his biceps, which were trying to scream from suffocation. I don't know how he got his head through the neck opening. And his tummy...his poor, exposed tummy. I said not one word beyond "Holy shit!" Then I did the right thing. I proceeded to the managers' office, and told all the other managers on duty what I just saw.

Now, mind you, hoodies weren't official work wear. Within seconds, G-Stamm was being paged to the office. My boss very matter-of-factly asked him to remove the sweatshirt (I had already removed mine to go along with the gag) for some bullshit reason. After hesitating, he complied while explaining his situation. The other managers roared in hysterical laughter! We couldn't look at him the rest of the day without some kind of wise-ass remark. My favorite was the one about his girl's four-year-old son, and why was G wearing his shirt. I don't think much actual work was accomplished on that day, but I know we laughed our friggin' asses off.

Like I said, stupid, but hysterical. Sometimes that's the best way to laugh.

MUSICAL COMEDY BREAK!!

Ladies and genlemen, via the magic of Youtube, I present to you: Rat Chicken

VITAL STATS:

Intermittant-to-no wi-fi at best...better not be a weekend thing!

It's been a quiet, boring day of not muches, not quites and don't cares. That better not be a weekend thing either! Gonna see if I can try to stay out of trouble anyway...peace, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!