This week: Fool Me Once Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.
—Mark Twain
Yet still when the famed first of April returns... I dread the approach.
—Matthew Gregory Lewis, "Grim, King of the Ghosts," c.1802
We're fools whether or not we dance, so we may as well dance.
—Author unknown |
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Earlier this month, upon noticing that my current laptop has one foot in the grave, I ordered a new gaming laptop.
Bear with me here; this is relevant. Kind of.
I looked at several different options for replacement, and ended up deciding on one from the same company. My lawyer says I should avoid naming the company, but it rhymes with Hell.
After going through all the alphanumeric soup of options -- SGI4800 this, NCC1701 that, whatever, I can't tell which one's better -- I ended up calling Hell and ordering... something.
A couple of weeks later, it showed up at my doorstep, and I managed to snag it before some porch pirate did. Excitedly, I opened the box with all the care you'd see on one of those unboxing videos (I assume; I've never actually watched one).
This is when I discovered that the power supply included a plug that would work nicely in Belgium, but not here in the US.
Now, while I have every intention of going to Belgium once they figure out things like travel policies and World War III, I'm not so sure I'd want to schlep a whole laptop with me. Besides, I need to set the damned thing up before the one I'm typing on now kicks the bouquet. So it was time for another call to Hell.
"We can send you a power supply with a US plug, but it'll cost 50 rupees. I mean, dollars. Fifty dollars." (I might be paraphrasing a little.)
"Um." I said, or tried to. "I live in the US. When I ordered the computer, the helpful sales associate made me swear on my mother's grave that I lived in the US, and that the computer was intended for use in the US. The keyboard is US standard -- I checked -- and I don't know why I should have to pay for Hell's mistake."
"Let me transfer you to Sales."
So they did. And then Sales transferred me to Tech Support, who transferred me to Service, who transferred me back to Sales, each time leaving me on hold for anywhere from one to ten minutes.
Finally, I got someone who admitted they could send me a new US-style plug free of charge (pun absolutely intended), and that I'd have to return the Euro one.
Total time on phone: just a few seconds short of one hour. I tried to hold on for those extra few seconds, so I could honestly say it was an hour, but they hung up on me and the timer stopped. I don't know why; everything else I joke about is exaggerated for comic effect.
All of which is to say that all this reminded me that April Fools' Day is again approaching. Because it occurred to me that it might have been an honest mistake (one which, to be fair, might be rectified soon, though I don't know because as of this writing the new plug hasn't arrived yet, and for all I know it'll be Chinese standard)... or it could have been an April Fools prank. Because if I swapped out someone's power supply with one that only worked in a different country, well, that would be a pretty funny April Fools prank.
The problem is, April Fools pranks are only funny when they are played on someone other than me.
See, people find out I write a Comedy newsletter, and Comedy stories, and Comedy poems, and tell sometimes-inappropriate jokes in Real Life, and their minds immediately jump to the conclusion that I find April Fools jokes to be hilarious. And sometimes, to be fair, I do. But here's a handy guide for whether such a prank is funny or not:
Funny: A prank played on someone who is not me.
Not Funny: A prank played on me.
So I do the only appropriate thing I can think of on April Fools' Day: I hide from everyone.
And where is the best place to hide? Well, everyone knows that I hate being out in "nature." To paraphrase the great sage Calvin, in dialogue with Hobbes, the problem with nature is that everything is either stinging you or oozing mucus on you.
And yet, I will willingly endure the stings and mucus of outrageous Nature in order to avoid anyone who thinks it's funny to play a prank on me.
There's only one problem: I don't have the right plug to take my laptop out in the wild. |
A few impractical (as opposed to practical) jokes for your reading pleasure:
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Last time, in "Pessimism is Comedy" , I extolled the virtues of pessimism.
Just as I expected in my eternal pessimism, no one submitted any comments on the newsletter.
So that's it for me for now -- see you next time! Until then,
LAUGH ON!!!
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Comedy: March 30, 2022 Issue [#11284]
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