Sabbatical

In case you hadn’t noticed, FCN has been pretty much swamped the last couple of weeks. And I am using the word swamped in the Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike sort of way. We haven't posted very often and we haven't announced our light schedule very well. We have totally abused your confidence as readers, and for that I apologize with all the sincerity of my youthful heart.

There are a number of reasons for the dirth of postage. First, dereliction is hard work. Sometimes writing about our escapades gets the back burner (mind you, the escapades still happen, they just don't always get published for your titillation. It's a George Berkeley kind of situation). Second, these days school is very, very academic at this time of year. And I mean that in the most redundant way possible. Even a C student has to work sometimes to keep his grades up. Thirdly, F dropped out of school and has the emotional commitment George Clooney (Sarah who?). This means that we lost a very verbose contributor and the architect behind Desperate Student. Your classes miss you, bro! Fourth, it's the girls man. Mrs. L figures this is probably the biggest reason, and maybe she is right. Working the bellows in a meager social life is difficult enough without taking time out to blog about it.

Anyway, FCN needs to catch its breath and we don't want to string you guys out like voters in a two year campaign. So we're taking a little breather - sort of like Michael Phelps, but shorter and with smaller ears. We'll be back here at the beginning of November with lots of new content and, hopefully, lungs full of air. Yes, we will be windbags.

In the meantime, if you are interested in becoming a guest contributor for FCN, please fire us an email with a writing sample and your mother's maiden name. After we empty your bank account, we'll read the writing sample and laugh at you. No seriously, we are looking for some more authors to bring on board who share our commitment to laziness. If that describes you, we'd enjoy the addition to our team.

Thanks as always for your faithful readership. We look forward to blogging again in a couple of months.

F is for Freedom

I had intended not to post on this blog ever again, but after that libelous post last Friday I just couldn't stay silent. I do care a tiny bit about my legacy. I had hoped I wouldn't have to say this, but my hand has been forced. It's time for the truth.

I didn't abandon FCN. I was ejected. What C, N, and Chip conveniently neglected to remember in their last post on the subject was that, in a series of staff meetings all through May, my opinions were not only ignored, but actively suppressed. Eventually I found out why: because I had the distinction of having written the longest post in FCN history, topping 2400 words (none of which were swear words). The other contributors were resentful. I even heard one of them whispering when he thought I couldn't hear about how I was a stuck-up take-over hopeful. I guess they never really got over that one incident last year, either, even though I apologized from the bottom of my heart and everything.

The atmosphere around the FCN water cooler was growing increasingly poisonous. Last week I finally decided to broach the subject, and everyone hemmed and hawed and muttered into their mountain dews. I made a speech, complete with emphatic gestures in the air and a final cry at the end in which my voice broke. My fellow contributors were unmoved.

I wrote a dozen posts and put them in the queue, but whenever I tried to post them someone would take them back offline immediately. I tried everything I could think of. I even baked chocolate-chip macadamia cookies as a peace offering. N was let out of the hospital the next morning and doctors say he'll have no permanent scarring.

Well, what's a fellow to do when faced with insidious backstabbing? I couldn't stay. I wasn't wanted.

So I'm gone, and where I am now you can't hope to find me, unless you use the tracking beacon that was implanted in my brain because of a government experiment, but that's another story - and one that will probably never be told unless rFCN recruits me or something. Or maybe I'll start my own blog. I'll call it: Mental Atrophy Farm. Or: Six Years Under the Command of Captain Spooner. Or simply: I like Zebras.

But for now, only one thing is certain. I'm leaving, never to come back again. But I'm not one to leave on a bitter note. Let me offer my final adieus and thank yous, in no particular order:

C: If it weren't for you, my posts would look significantly less brilliant. So thank you for that. Oh, and your banner art is lame - do I really have to tell you that MS Paint is an embarrassment to the United States and border countries? Please. Download GIMP or something.

N: Well, the slow-release album ended before we could get your picture up. That makes me happy. Because you get less fame and glory. See what I'm saying? The things that make you sad make me happy. We're opposites. It's because I don't like you anymore.

Chip: I think you had this planned from the start, you dirty scum. You replaced me. I hope you get sucked into an escalator. I hope the chef puts a rock in your crouton salad. I hope you slip on a wet floor in front of your girlfriend and then you see a wet floor sign right next to you and you're all embarrassed.

Yeah. I just went there.

Mommy G: You always gave me a shoulder to cry on, a brownie to munch on, and a spatula for the other contributors. I'll miss you. Good luck with those wolves.

Uncle Wally: Maybe you should look into the fast food industry or something. They're always hiring. You know? Just a thought.

Em: I know you're embarrassed whenever I mention you. But I don't feel bad about that anymore. This post is for telling it like it is, and no goodbye would be complete without a shout out to you. Goodbye forever, Em.

Loyal Readers: You may be few, but you are strong. You'd have to be to read the sort of things we post here. I'll be sure to let you know if I join some other blog (like the Daily Kos - oooh - nice). So when I do, you can all drop everything and go over there. And FCN will flounder.

That's right, you backstabbing contributors. Flounder.

Flounder.

Flounder.

Storm's coming.

F abandons FCN

"Commitment" is a hard word. It's three syllables long and has a lot of repeating Ms and Ts, which renders the spelling arduous. The principle behind the term is similarly formidable. Commitment requires not backing down or giving up, even in the face of, well, artistic differences.

Here at FCN, we've never laid much of a claim to commitment. "Lackadaisical" seems like a better description of our approach to life and we've never had a hard time changing course if it meant finding an easier path. But we demand a higher level of integrity from others. Nobody kicks us to the curb, leaves us out to dry, runs out on us or abandons our ship. No siree, sir! When the wind blows against your sales, we expect you to make good use of the jib to keep your sloop on an honest bearing.

This is more than a credo. It is a mandate; a directive so puissant, no amount of badgering can get us to renege. Ever. We expect others to never give up. Not after six pieces of pizza, three coke classics and two bowls of onion rings. Never.

In fact, we expect out of you and each other the same thing the Obamination sees in Billary: the can't quit attitude.

At least that's what I thought until last week, when I got a rude awakening to the realities of today's internet world. Apparently "yes" doesn't always mean what the Greeks said it means, because F gave the world a new interpretation of the term, and entered a another chapter in the FCN Manifesto, by packing his cyber bags and walking out on FCN.

That's right. No last post; no train of long goodbyes (or even a single adios). Just a forlorn and empty user where F used to write his funny tomes, cutting social criticism and relevant satire. It's an empty locker where Mean Joe Green's jersey once hung. It's a deserted and quiet Carnival after a night's frivolity. It's Seattle after Boeing left.

And now it's just me and N and, of course, Chip, our guest contributor. We'll do our best, but things won't be the same without you, F. If you are reading this, please come back. We need you. Heck, I need you. I'm a mess without you. I miss you so dang much. I miss being with you, I miss being near you. I miss your laugh. I miss your scent; I miss your musk. When this all gets sorted out, I think you and I should get an apartment together. Maybe I should stop talking for a little while.

No! I can't be groveling. We cannot reduce ourselves to sniveling dogs, circling the table for morsels that drop from our master's table. I will command. F? You come back and make a public apology. You have lost all credibility, like the time on the local news channel when the camera panned back and revealed the anchor was barefoot. You need to earn back your respect in the humor community. You grovel; cry and fill a cereal bowl with tears. Then we'll see about letting you back into our little club.

Please, man? I mean, you'll always have a place here if you want to return.

FCN readers, your consideration and condolences are appreciated during this particularly difficult time for the FCN team. We want to be cheery and happy, light and funny, but it's hard when you lose such an integral piece. Please use the comment section to remind F about how much he means to you and maybe we can get enough of an outcry to bring him back even if it's just to say goodbye.

Gotcha!

Give people a chance to speak their minds, give them a public forum and this sort of thing is bound to happen. A few weeks ago, FCN gave readers the opportunity to write their own posts on Wednesdays. We relinquished control over our very carefully policed post creation policy and let readers create their own content. We disregarded our own lengthy training and intense qualifications as bloggers and gave the faithful few the floor.

The result? Our own readers caught a slight discrepancy between fact and the reported reader statistic on our sidebar. The sidebar clearly says visitor #11 since 2006, a fact first noticed by Unique #11. Big Mo, Sarah and FCNisFake jumped on the bandwagon revealing what appears to be, at first rush of blood to the face, a bald-faced lie.

Let us start off by saying that we miswrote our stat counter script in December of 2006. We had heard reports of eleven readers but none came to visit during the "corkscrew-style" diagnostic test period which formed the template for future measurement. Now, it is possible in the most recent instance in which we discussed this that we misspoke with regard to, you know, the hit counter. The facts are clear from contemporaneous news accounts that we were entering a potentially dangerous situation, and we have written about this before, we have talked about this before and there you have it.

There were reports of visitors in the hills who never actually made it to the site. That is what we wrote on FCN, that is what we have said many, many times. And on this one occasion we misspoke, but it’s — the record is clear in terms what we have said before on this topic.

We had not slept for several hours straight, our schedules had been really hectic and our memory was clouded by the events in our lives. Our love lives were wrecks, we were sleep deprived and our memories were clouded. We regret having misrepresented the truth, but remain confident in the general facts.

A second analysis, this time looking more closely at the relevant data and ignoring information which would distract from the goal of an accurate count, reveals that the actual number of visitors to this site since December of 2006 is 12. Older evidence showing our unique reader count at eleven may have been fabricated - or even an outright lie - but other, unnamed evidence is incontrovertible. We promise. The total number of readers is 12. That you can take to the bank or stuff it in your mattress.



Or is it more like this:

Answering a Challenge to an FCN hypothesis

Last week, we published a post hypothesizing that women tend to use treadmills more than guys and that at any given gym, the males will congregate around the weights. Our hypothesis was based on extensive study in the FCN lab, anecdotal observation and results from that odd-shaped beep-beep machine homeless people use on the beach (yes, I do own a Zircon MT6 Electronic Metal Finder. Deal with it).

Despite the overwhelming evidence supporting our conclusion, one conscientious reader referenced anecdotal information that, at first very red blush, seemed contradictory. She argued that women tend to use the ellipticals more and that guys ride the treadmills.

Watch and learn, boys, girls and Roger Clemens, as FCN answers this challenge:

1) Deny, Deny, Deny

FCN categorically, absolutely and without exception, qualification or reserve denies the allegation. We declare untrue, universally contradict and reject any statement or opinion that stands in contradistinction to our earlier position. We do not retract, amend, change or shift our stance, but stand firmly resolute behind our primary findings. We issue no retreat, raise no white flag, surrender no credibility and admit no error. We disclaim, repudiate, contravene, negate, renounce and disavow all objections, stated or otherwise and continue to stand as stalwart and unmovable advocates of our original position.

2) Attack mode

The commenter who raised this allegation identified him/herself as "Kirk," which is a male name of Norse origin meaning "church" which was given to some 975 boys in the year 2002. On closer inspection, however, we realize that the actual commenter's name is Kirsten, which is a female name of Latin origin meaning "follower of Christ" which was given to some 407 girls in the year 2006. Ah hah!

We don't have any more dirt on Kirk/Kirsten, but we will give you the address of his/her blogs so you can criticize everything s/he hypothesizes. She runs The Young Thinker, The Two Sisters and Corantolavolta, which is a male name of indeterminate origin which was given to nobody ever.

If all eleven readers load Kirk/Kirsten's blog at once and try to leave a comment it might shut down her server and keep her from digging up dirt on FCN's hypotheses.

3) Moral Testimony

FCN has long maintained the highest standards of academic and blogging excellence. We do not lie to our readers. Ever. Not once. Not at all. We try to ensure a comforting if not succulent blogging experience, drawing the reader in and providing a cyber-foot cushion for you as you read the latest content. We put our readers first at every turn and as your constant advocate we have never failed.

Given this pristine and untarnished record, it seems foolhardy to value the input of someone who lies about his/her name over the established and reliable moral standards of Funny Class Notes.

4) Misdirection

Still, Kirk/Kirsten's objection is a valuable remonstration in that it draws attention to the dangers of scientific error. We would be remiss if content of FCN were to in any way detract from the credibility of the scientific community and therefore pledge to post a link on our sidebar to a scientific website for the duration of the week. We understand the importance of science and want to do everything in our power to promote free thought and intellectualism.

If we had money to give, we would donate it. If we had time, we would pledge it. But we have a blog, so we'll link.

5) Slyly retool hypothesis

The fact is that women do use the aerobic machines more often then their male counterparts. Whether that machine is the treadmill, the elliptical, the stair stepper or that funky gizmo that spins really fast while making people sweat, women are more likely to ride it.

From this original hypothesis, we do not back down.

Notice: The Sky has not Fallen on our Heads.

The end of the day usually finds us FCN contributors huddled over our computers playing pac-man or chatting about our miserably failed love lives with people we've never met (presumably mass-murdering 50-year-old circus freaks). Last night was not one of those nights. The fact is, last night was special. The world nearly ended.

We know. We should have posted a warning to tell you to call your loved ones and say that one thing you had been putting off saying. But after extensive deliberation, we decided to keep quiet about doomsday and post an apology the day after. That seemed easiest.

Also, we didn't want to get too close to our computers. A friend of ours directed us to the following research:



We stared at the screen in stunned silence for a full thirty seconds after watching. Then we sprang into our Cloverfield Survival Plan (which doubles as an Asteroid Survival Plan in a pinch). The bulleted procedure is listed below. We followed it to the letter.

1) Get to the highest part of the building and look around.
2) Make a few wise cracks.
3) See something. If it is Cloverfield, it will be on the horizon obscured by buildings. If it is an Asteroid or a Nuke it will be in the sky. If it is Relatives, it will be on the road.
4) Person who was defamed most by the wise cracks says: "Did I tell you or did I tell you?"
5) Panic and run around for awhile.
6) Scramble, tripping, to the lowest part of the building.
7) Scream incoherently.
8) Person who was defamed least from the wise cracks says: "We can take this thing."
9) Any remaining person says: "Are you crazy?"
10) Run outside, preferably using the back door, preferably barefoot with shorts and a tacky t-shirt.
11) Stand in a circle facing out.
12) Wait until someone begins running in a random direction, at which point all others must shout: "Are you crazy? Come back!"
13) When the someone does not obey, the others must follow reluctantly, muttering grim prognostications.
14) Proceed in this direction until any noticeable event occurs. Examples include: a) Being stepped on by Cloverfield, b) being struck by an asteroid c) bumping into a Relatives, or d) getting lost.
15a) If the world has ended: post an apology on FCN.
15b) If the world has not yet ended: sprint in a different direction.
16) Find a place of ostensible cover. Gather in a loose group and pant frantically.
17) Propose a few hair-brained theories for the origin of the threat.
18) Dig a hole.
19) Get inside.
20) Fill it in.
21) Have everyone call their moms and let them know where they are and to call them if and when the crisis is over (how's that for a sentence?).
22) Wait.
23) Improvise from then on.

It worked perfectly. We ran upstairs and peered out the window. For a few moments, we said nothing. We made jokes at the expense of the anonymous contributor who found the video. Then we saw a red flashing light moving slowly toward us. Within moments, we were scrambling out of someone else's backyard pool yelling: "It's over! It's over!" The neighbors joined us because they had no common sense and/or like to play along and/or don't read FCN. All of us were barefoot (we scrupulously removed our socks on exiting the house in accordance with the plan).

Led by a neighbor, we ran out into the street and stood in a loose circle looking. The neighbor saw the light and pointed. We all squinted. Then the neighbor started running down the road. "Are you crazy?" One of us cried. "Come back!" But he was long gone.

"Must be the radiation from the thingie," I said. It passed as a wise crack. We followed the neighbor.

Then we heard a honking horn and a bright light lit up in front of us. We didn't stop to think. We ran, screaming incoherently. I dimly remember crashing through a window and over a couch on which people were sitting watching a movie and eating popcorn. Eventually we reached a city park and stopped, gasping for breath.

"There's only one thing left to do," I said. My fellow contributors, the neighbors, and the two dozen people who had joined us in our flight nodded in unanimous consent. We tore apart the monkey bars and used them to tear apart nearby cars, the pieces of which we used as shovels. We dug a nice big hole, then climbed in and pulled the dirt over us, using the monkey bars as breathing tubes. Then we called our moms, even though the reception was terrible. A few hours later, our moms talked us into coming back out and we went home, covered from head to toe with dirt and sweat.

Well, the world didn't end, so it was worth it. The plan worked.

You're welcome.

A Public Apology to Em

There are many different levels of journalistic excellence. Each one stipulatse a host of different behaviors. Some publications require careful peer review of every jot and tiddle. Others refuse to print news that would place people or countries in danger. Others require that everything printed by fact-checked. Others simply ask their writers not to blatantly fabricate facts that they'll get burned on later.

Well, FCN has no such standards, and in a recent post, we misquoted Em. Okay, we didn't just misquote her. We arbitrarily put words in her mouth. We didn't even ask her for her opinion. We didn't even give her the chance to say something we could use. We didn't take that risk. We just openly fabricated an interaction with her and posted it, knowing full well she'd probably read the post and burn us on it.

Well, guess what. She read the post and burned us on it. She totally aggravated the author of the post in question by refusing to dance with him last weekend. In the ensuing argument, she made him promise to do the following:

1) Not embarrass her again on FCN.
2) Not post a public apology the next Monday.
3) Repent.

Well, all three of those stipulations just got broken, and we just want to say publicly: Em, we're really, really sorry about putting words in your mouth and lying to you like twenty times in one weekend. Our misrepresentations and deceits rank among the most banal ever put together by media publishers. They are worse than the fabrications of Jayson Blair and make Steven Glass look like an amateur. They are right on par with Jimmy's World and Gary Hart's "go ahead and follow me." Next time will be better. Honest. Unless we forget, or unless it's a Thursday, or unless we recently had chocolate or anyone in the room is wearing green.

In addition, we publicly commit to do the following:

1) Not embarrass Em again on FCN.
2) Not post a public apology next Monday.
3) Repent.
4) Hold ourselves to the highest possible standard of journalistic excellence, including peer review and actual interviews with people.
5) Unless we forget, or unless it's a Thursday, or unless we recently had chocolate or anyone in the room is wearing green.

Please forgive us, Em. Please?

Post #366

For the last 377 days, we were eagerly anticipating an event that can never really be duplicated in the blogosphere: our first birthday. There's something about making it one whole year that establishes a blog; it gives us credibility. We've posted every day for the last year, more or less, and we've provided quality content every time, more or less. Okay fine. Mostly less.

But in any case, we're still around. We haven't grown much, but we sure haven't shrunk (probably because there was nowhere to go but up). We've added family members Uncle Wally and Mommy G. We've got much-loved readers like Adrialien, Chris, Trevor, Em, Batman, the dudes from rFCN ... even Anonymous, who really seems to get around. We've had our share of scandal and revolution. The steady downward spirals of our love lives have been carefully documented. We made contact with extra-terrestrial beings. We interviewed various leaders. We apologized 11 times. We almost drank enough Coke. We unveiled dangerous conspiracies. Heck, we even ate a whole mess of tacquitos.

Through it all, we've grown stronger as people, closer as friends, and more committed to our founding ideals of

Okay, it was clear that the above paragraph wasn't going anywhere so I jumped ship. Let's start over:

Through it all, we've posted a lot.

Well, sadly, after all that anticipation, we went ahead and missed our own birthday. We should have posted last November 4th, the day we first came to blogger. We could have blown candles and wallowed in nostalgia about how far we've come. But we totally blew it. After all that anticipation, that day was passed with no heralding whatsoever. We didn't even post that day! Sad, sad, sad.

So now, all we can do is do what we've always done.

We can apologize. We messed up again. Our first birthday is gone forever. But next year, we'll get it right. We promise. You can trust us. This time.

I'm Sorry*

There was a bit of a ruckus here at FCN headquarters yesterday evening. Contributor C, Contributor N, Mommy G, Uncle Wally, Saint Nicholas, and Elvis (I know - crazy, huh) made a very dramatic entrance through the front door and dragged me, kicking and screaming, away from the keyboard.

We had a long talk, which was punctuated by utensils found in Mommy G's kitchen. I was determined not to cave in to my former colleague's persuasions, and my resolve held firm for about thirty seconds. When C and N broke out the corkscrew and juicer, I caved. In other news, a recent online test indicates that I am ill-suited for clandestine operations.

I told them everything, as if they didn't already know. They made me apologize, which was humiliating. Then I had to stay up very late with Uncle Wally putting FCN back the way it was, which was no easy task, let me tell you, especially when you're not allowed to seek aid from caffeine. Finally, I was made to write this post, and publicly apologize for doing what any one of you would have done under similar circumstances. So here goes.

People of the world, please forgive me for the way I somehow wronged you by foisting my own ideas on you through the perfectly legal and ethical means of writing on my own blog, as I was asked to do by the people who are now forcing me to write this. I realize now that the new FCN is vastly inferior to the old one for reasons that are completely beyond my comprehension and gladly embrace the tried-and-true formula which has proven to be such a miserable failure in the past. I am filled with remorse for the way I deceived you and the rest of the FCN team. Apparently, deceiving means pouring my soul out on a public website, and for some reason, my fellow contributors feel they have the moral authority to chastise me for lying. I am so, so sorry from the bottom of my heart and beg your forgiveness, also from the bottom of my heart, which is where I keep my most sincere sentiments.*

So that's said. As of now, all the old ways and rules of FCN are back in state and you will never hear me complain about it again. I've had my say. Now I'm going to go sit as far as possible from Mommy G and cry for a little while.

------
* not!

Oops! We did it again.

If you've read FCN for very long, you already know that we're shameless liars, and probably have at least a sneaking suspicion that we're blooming morons. What you may not have noticed is that we're traitorous turncoats. We're indecisive. We have no follow through. We're windbags. Let me explain.

A few months ago, we vowed to take to the straight and narrow. And then we started right back up again in our irresponsible ways. In a recent post which supposedly lauded the magical awesomeness of Coca-Cola, we deviously snuck in the following line:

Coke, glorious Coke!
Don't care what it looks like --
Flat!
Too foamy!
Smoked!

Mommy G was quick to notice that Coca-Cola is not to be smoked, and, in her unique way, guided us back toward the path to righteousness.

We try to be a humor blog. We like to think we're pretty funny every now and then. But drugs are no laughing matter. Drugs do terrible things to you, like slaughtering your grammar which one of reasons we quit in the first place? There are plenty of other things to poke fun at - instructors, each other, American politics, the weather, your hair. There's no excuse to start goofing off on such a serious issue. Drug jokes interfere with the public dialogue surrounding an issue of grave import to everyone. There are some topics that are just plain out of bounds.

We, the FCN team, would like to use our last vestiges of credibility to say that we know we messed up and we beg moral relief. Our behavior was irresponsible and inexcusable. We don't ask you to forgive and forget, only to cut us some slack and realize that we all make mistakes every now and then. We'll do our level best to never, ever, ever let it happen in the future.

EDIT: This is another fellow contributor. An issue came up in the last FCN staff meeting that could stand to be announced here. FCN just keeps falling off the wagon. We're like bad dieters. The longer we stay on board, the harder we fall. Perhaps this whole Funny Class Notes thing wasn't meant to be. In the interest of public safety, maybe it's better that there be no FCN. Your thoughts on this issue will be read in the next staff meeting for a good laugh. Thanks.

Excuse

We were going to have a post for tomorrow - we had it written, proof-read, edited and even had a really cool graphic of a hairy ape doing the Hokey Pokey picked out - but we ended up not posting anything. We want to assure you that this reality was not our fault. We fully intended to post, but the circumstances of life preempted that result and you were deprived of content as a result.

Here's our excuse:

One of our writers - the one who was "blessed with the opportunity" to write the day's post - got up and went to his computer. There, faced with a blank word processing screen, he lost his inspiration. It wasn't his fault that he lost his inspiration, it just happened. He told us later that the chirp of the birds outside, the hum of the computer tower and the wind against the window blinds combined to form a cacophony of sensations, blocking out any humorous thoughts. We think writer's block had something to do with the abysmal state of his love life.

Our writer picked himself up out of his chair and, in a way that hit me as very feminine, marched outside to gain some "new ideas." Once outside, all heck broke loose. The ground opened up and swallowed part of the backyard, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the lawn. Fire poured out of heaven, blasting the mailbox and creating a small regional disturbance. There was a natural disaster. A hurricane. An earthquake. A tornado. A giant thunderstorm with hail, sleet and so much rain that the ensuing flash flood filled up the gaping hole and drowned several domesticated animals. If only our writer had thought ahead to poor some concrete, he would now have a swimming pool.

In an attempt to mitigate the damage of the flood, our writer brought out a portable shop vacuum. Unfortunately the water had covered the electrical plug and when our writer tried to fire up the machine, a short circuit was created, cutting off power for the entire neighborhood. He wasn't trying to be malicious - in fact his goals were purely philanthropic - but he ended up doing some real damage. PG&E arrived quickly, but not before the entire street had lost power. One man, a neighbor who commuted to work in an electric car, was so irate at the delay that he smashed in our writer's front window.

That's when the fire and brimstone from the already broke loose heck started to rain down.

An investigative unit was sent over from the police department to look into the origin of the crisis in our writer's neighborhood. One of the patrol men was a K-9 officer and his dog leaped out of the back seat of the squad car and, before the vehicle had made a complete stop, chewed up our author's paper draft. He didn't really eat it, but he masticated it so totally that it was no longer of use to intelligent beings. It might have had some utility as fire starter, though.

Over the next few hours, we got a series of frantic phone calls from our writer informing us of his amazing morning and advising that he wouldn't be able to do the post.

Please don't judge us based on what we cannot help. We couldn't stop the K-9 dog or hold back the lightening. We were complete and total victims of a reality that we had no part in causing.

We are, of course, terribly sorry. In a way that doesn't admit culpability or open the door to liability, we apologize. We regret any heart feelings we might have caused and are sincerely sorry you feel the way you do. We swear by all the Greek gods that it will never happen again. Ever. Cross our hearts and hope to be derelicts for the rest of our lives. It was just this once - a momentary lapse that in no way reflects our genuine attitude or devotion to you, the readers.

Columbus! Somehow the above excuse doesn't ring true. But maybe our earnest faces and moist cheeks will compensate for the fantastic nature of our justification. You tell us, was it persuasive?

One Bar of Soap Later...

Apparently drug content isn't the only thing we're out of line on.

The loving FCN readership has brought to our attention another urgent matter of public decency: Use of the word #3(<, also known as -&{X, which is another word for :-:[-<{, as in: "What the }{=-©ɮ!" This word is a very innappropo. It's not the sort of word polite people use in polite conversation with polite company. The fact is, )-((-(( is a place for people who don't believe in 60$]-[, also known as C-()5/~/, which is another word for (_+[]z(-). We at FCN have gotten much too cavalier and familiar with this very serious word, deploying it casually in a few recent posts. That kind of language ends today.

We, the FCN team, solemnly $\/\/342 never to use the word }~{£¢K again, as long as this blog endures, so help us, and we offer heartfelt apologies to all who had to suffer through the degrading language of previous posts. It won't happen again. FCN has turned a corner. \_:_/00+ vv()()--!

FCN says: Don't Do Drugs

It's been brought to our attention by someone who actually knows about proper behavior that FCN's recent spat of drug-related content is inappropriate, to say it mildly. Desperate Student has been peddling c0c@!n3 on the street corners, an unnamed writer has been snarfing p3y0t3 down like breath mints or ibuprofen, and the blog has, in general, approached a very serious issue with a sort of gung-ho cavalier attitude that is thoroughly unbecoming. Or, it might be said, becomming of Mick Jagger but not a respectable member of society. 

We at FCN can't undo what's been done, but we can work to make it better. And so, we vow that from this day on, we're going Cold Turkey. We're discontinuing all drug usage unless it is prescribed by a licensed professional. No more trafficking, no more snarfing. We're on the straight and narrow from here on out.

We would like to offer a sincere apology to anyone in the FCN community who was offended by our attitude and actions (which could theoretically have been all six of you). Our lack of discretion on this issue is as embarrassing as it is pathetic, which is probably how it made it onto FCN in the first place. And of course, we offer a special apology and thanks to our sixth reader, SB, who lovingly but very, very forcefully guided us in the right direction. We promise to take this lesson to heart.

The FCN team don't do drugs.

Please check your calendars...

If you didn't fall for yesterday's post, please enjoy a hearty laugh and a pat on the back.

If you did fall for yesterday's post, you please endure a hearty laugh and a pat on the back.

Shutting down was our way of putting a goofy fish on your back. This post is our way of removing it.

Our practical joke, though entirely unoriginal and completely hokey, was inspired by a similar one conducted by Google. Some years ago, Google announced on April Fool's Day that it would offer over 2 Gigabytes of storage to users on its Gmail service. That's more storage than an Ipod Shuffle. The internet world was stunned. Offering that much room was an unprecedented act of web generosity. To think, no longer would spam deletion be necessary. No longer would the email entry page warn of impeding capacity issues. No longer would hard drives be necessary.

But then reality hit, it was April Fool's Day. No one could give that much space away free. Saddened but enlightened, Gmail users returned to business as usual without astronomical amounts of free storage space.

Yesterday, however, Google broke the trend of introducing false plans as a joke and actually brought out a real idea for users to evaluate. We here at FCN loved Google TiSP (BETA) so much that, beginning tomorrow, we are publishing our webpage exclusively with TiSP. Maybe it will work for your home as well?

Happy April fools!

P.S. We owe a big thanks to everyone who felt a tinge of sadness at the prospect of losing FCN. Your emotion, though entirely irrational and misdirected, did do a little to brighten our day. There was someone who was sorry to see us go, wasn't there?

A Priori Apology

Not to be overly cynical, but what is life, but an endless string of retractions, corrections and apologies? When we're born, we are too young to feel any remorse, but penitence is soon spanked into us when we misbehave as toddlers. As teenagers, we make more mistakes than good decisions and apologies are cheaper than restitution, so we beg our way through a multitude of faux pas. Even as adults, our life follows the same cycle; apologies to the in-laws, neighbors, boss. Even the milkman gets a token expression of regret (“Sorry about the accident; the milk actually looks pretty good spilled all over the interstate, doesn't it?).

As Descartes would say, “I think, therefore I am sorry.”

No matter how much you try to avoid it, an apology is invariably just around the corner. Here at FCN we experience the apology routine with all the regularity of any other poorly adjusted bunch of derelict students. At any one point we are either offending someone, begging their forgiveness or, very rarely, offering forgiveness of our own. It's an endless cycle we always find ourselves on the cusp of.

This fact holds true beyond the interpersonal realm. In blogging, for instance, especially humor blogging, people take offense almost as often as they laud a post (not more often, thank goodness). But when someone is offended, they are ten times as likely to voice their disconent as someone who actually liked FCN content.

You should see some of the hate mail we get! I think one of the faithful FCN few terminally deranged; an amaranthine wart on our small but loyal readership.

Take, for example, the following piece of message whose vitriol was directed at yesterday's post:

FCN,

I think you guys are a bunch of scum sucking pond dwellers. Your post about eating Taquitos (3/21/07) was offensive both for the way it characterized Mexican-Americans and the inference it made about those who struggle with compulsive eating. How terribly insensitive of you!

Awaiting your apology,

A Loyal Reader

And to think, the best insult she could come up with was “scum sucking pond dweller!” Most hate mail is much more creatively colorful.

We here at FCN are very frugal with our time. We can't just go around answering everyone who thinks we live at the bottom of lakes and streams. The latest in Halo technology, sleep, food and the fairer gender are perpetually occupying our energies and it really cramps our style to have to say “I'm sorry” to the first Jack with a complaint.

In the real world it's often true that simple nod will substitute for a ten minute teary eyed conversation and make the violated feel whole again, but the impersonal cyber-existence of a blog makes such expressions useless. For some reason many folks just don't feel “made new” by a Facebook poke.

Fortunately, the Internet has enabled us to apologize for bad actions before they are ever committed and avoid the laborious task of cleaning up our messes after the fact. The following A Priori Apology template should be sufficient to the task:

Dear ___________,

We are terribly sorry for _________________________________. We in no way intended to offend your ____________________ and sincerely regret your __________________. We will, in the future, make every attempt to satisfy your desires and steer clear of any subject matter or terminology that will cause you anxiety. Please accept the attached discount for prescription strength Vicodin as a token of our remorse and a sign of our willingness to improve.

Yours,

FCN

In the case of the young woman complaining about our Taquitos post, this apology read:

Dear Awaiting,

We are terribly sorry for offending you with our reference to our hard working neighbors to the south. We in no way intended to offend your sensibilities and sincerely regret your thin skinned personality. We will, in the future, make every attempt to satisfy your desires and steer clear of any subject matter or terminology that will cause you anxiety. Please accept the attached discount for prescription strength Vicodin as a token of our remorse and a sign of our willingness to improve.

Yours,

FCN

Of course, if that doesn't work, we'll have to unplug ourselves from real life and deal with the problem personally. But the A Priori Apology should take care of most cases.

Honesty Quiz Was a Lie

It's true. We lied.

We at FCN really, really wanted to have an Honesty quiz. We really, really worked on it. But when the time came to post, we found ourselves empty-handed. We didn't have anything worthwhile to give you, the FCN reader.

So we did the only thing any self-respecting FCN writer would do. We lied through our teeth. We made something up. In a poetic irony (or maybe it's something else; I got a C- on English 1A), we lied to you about honesty.

The test is quite simple. It presents a series of twenty statements. Agreeing with self-elavating statements (like "I tend to be punctual" or "I eat my vegetables") increases your dishonest rating. Agreeing with self-deprecating statements (like: "I pirate stuff online" or "I read FCN regularly") increases your honesty rating. There might be something to it, but it most certainly is not scientific.

Below is the original quiz announcement, edited for accuracy:

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it gives us great pleasure to unveil to public consumption for the first time the FCN Honesty Test. It ... [comes after] extensive testing in the FCN labs in which dozens of rats were brutally murdered. I mean, they didn't just die, they died slowly and painfully, screaming for mercy as they writhed on the table. Their deaths were ... in vain ...

To find an ... evaluation ... simply answer the 20 questions at ... http://quizfarm.com/test2.php?q_id=298674 ... [W]e're cheap ...

Two quick warnings: first, the percentages of honest and dishonest may not add up to 100 ... [We are] dishonest ... It's all very [simple].

Second ... it won't do you any good ...

“Merry Christmas”...Indeed!

In response to my post about wanting to celebrate Kwanzaa this year, I got a very thoughtful (read: long) email from an FCN reader on the importance of Christmas, reminding me that celebrating our Savior's birth is much more important than remembering “heritage.” She further rebuked my post, saying that I was detracting from the Christmas spirit.

Frankly, she’s right. To the three other readers out there, know that I am not really intending to celebrate Kwanzaa. The post I put up yesterday was the result of hours of counseling with socio-noneconomic, cultural and ethnic therapists who are trying to introduce human-like emotions to my psyche. They went on a Kwanzaa tangent at my last session and somehow they got to me, causing my inadvertent Kwanzaa support. Please be comforted by the fact that I am still going to celebrate Christmas this year.

In fact, my family and I decorated the house for the occasion yesterday. We pulled various suspicious items from storage and organized ornaments for hanging. Maybe organized isn’t the right word. We opened up the dusty crates that house the ornaments eleven and a half months a year and dumped their contents out over the tile floor and then used a bottle of Elmer’s glue and some string to repair the most precious memory filled decorations. Then we hung dull colored, but highly reflective ropes at awkward angles and scattered shiny confetti around the house.

When we were finished there were about as many decorations on the floor as the wall, so we brought out a vacuum cleaner to clean up the mess. We emptied some of the contents of the vacuum cleaner bag on the tree immediately, the rest we put in the decoration crates for storage until next Christmas.

It's amazing how a few hours of work can bring holiday cheer to an otherwise calm household. Decorating turns my normally docile family into a horde of perfectionist fiends who must have the house just so. One brother feels confetti should cover the mantle, another wants it to “flow” out from under the coach; I like it in the fireplace. Loud Christmas music is a dangerous catalyst to our frantic resolve and we move around as if we are on a reality TV show.

The best part about yesterday was setting up the tree. A few years ago, my father decided that purchasing, transporting and setting up a real pine was too much work. I personally think the decision had something to do with the average eight months it took to remove all the pine needles from the carpet after Christmas, but my father said something about having to water it every morning. Our last real tree was unceremoniously dumped by the side of the road and my brothers and I watched mournfully as the garbage man hoisted it into the compactor and drove away.

There was a certain quiet in our house after the last pine left; somehow, we felt, a fake tree would never quite cut it. The tree is a symbol of Christmas. And a fake sign of a symbol of a real event rings hollow.

By the time the next year rolled around I had forgotten all about the real pine and put up no protest when we visited our first specialty fake tree boutique (actually it was Wal-Mart). We ended up getting a spring loaded “tree” that opened up like an umbrella. The product – we purchased “heirloom strength” – was guaranteed to unfurl at least 20 times, theoretically lasting more than 20 Christmases. Unfortunately, I opened the new fangled thing at least that many times while trying to figure out how to put it up the first time. We ended up leaving it, in all its heirloom strength fakery, on the sidewalk after the holiday, just like a normal tree – an expensive spring loaded plastic normal tree.

The next year we looked into miniature trees. These are exceptionally small fake trees that look like the victims of a terrible birth defect. “Miniatures” are wrapped in red to hide their pitiful roots and are infused with a pine scent that usually turns into the smell of a happy meal forty-eight hours after purchase. Unfortunately, but they are too small to hold many ornaments. The one we got was artistically titled “Petit Noël” and came “pre-lighted.” It was also covered in “snow,” tiny shards of white plastic that, if viewed from blurred eyes at a distance, looked like cat litter. So many people guests in our house were curious where our tree was and, after pointing several times to the ugly pile of white sitting next to the hearth, my family decided on reform.

This year we have a fake tree that takes a few minutes to set up, but looks perfectly triangular when in place. It has built in color rotating lights and a motion detector that shouts “Merry Christmas” if you get too close. The chief feature of the tree, a fancy star that only turns on as nighttime approaches, broke when we pulled it out of the box, but we imagine it works anyway and are compensated liberally by all the “Merry Christmases” the thing shouts.

We took our time, yesterday, emptying the vacuum cleaner over the tree and spreading the dust around to look like snow. The branches are stiffer on fake trees and we were able to hoist large quantities of grime on the greenery before they began to sag.

I learned something about Christmas doing all this decorating: It really doesn’t matter what you put on the walls or how you remember Christ’s birth; as long as the message points to the Savior and the ornaments tell the Christmas story, nobody cares if they are done “right.”

Now, as I look around the family room, it really feels like Christmas. The stockings are hung upside down to keep dust from collecting inside and the confetti burns brightly in the fireplace, but the Christmas story is evident in the crumpled ornaments on the dusty tree. I sigh happily and begin to unravel the garland that is mysteriously wound around my neck.

An Apology

A torrent of readers have contacted us since we posted our press release about the Bureau of Savage Affairs, to demand an apology. Most have reached us through email to complain about the “racist” and “hegemonic” outlook this site is propagating against savage indians. The emails got to be so many that we weren't able to conduct normal correspondence. One FCN member even lost an email from his girlfriend in the mess and has since taken extraordinary measures to rectify his relationship, including forcing me to write this apology.

I lost my temper while writing the news story. I was in class trying to write and I got heckled and I took it badly and went into a rage and wrote some pretty nasty things about Native Americans; a lot of trash talk.

You know, I’m really busted up over this and I’m very, very sorry to those people in the reading audience, the blacks, the Jews, the Hispanics, the Indians, the Chinese, the whites – everyone that took the brunt of that anger and hate and rage and how it came through, and I’m concerned about more hate and more rage and more anger coming through, not just towards me but towards a red/white conflict. There’s a great deal of disturbance in this country and how savages feel about what happened in Little Big Horn and in the late 1800s, and, you know, many of the writers and reporters have tried to handle this and for this to happen, for me to flip out and write this crap, you know, I’m deeply, deeply sorry.

And I’ll get to the force field of this hostility, why it’s there, why the rage is in any of us, why the trash takes place, whether or not it’s between me and the folks at the BSA or between this country and the Indian nation, the rage...

You know, I’m a writer. I push the envelope, I work in a very uncontrolled manner. I do a lot of free association, it’s spontaneous, I write in my bathrobe. I don’t know, in view of the situation and the hubbub in the press conference, I don’t know, the rage did go all over the place.

It went to reach everybody who read the post. But you can’t – you know it’s, I don’t – I know people could, Indians could feel – I’m not a racist, that’s what so insane about this, and yet it’s said, it comes through, it fires out of me, even now in the passion that’s here as I confront myself.

Oh yeah, and I'm sorry for saying “crap”

Correction

A recent post about the 1 month anniversary of LLFCN had two notable errors:

First, yesterday was not the 1 month anniversary. Today is.

Second, LLFCN does not have one hundred and forty-three members. To be honest, we only have one.

We realize that this is the second time in as many weeks that Funny Class Notes has had to make a severe retraction/correction/apology, and we also realize this puts us in the Very Unreliable category. In fact, it puts in the Shameless Liars category.

But we also want to say that we know we've been bad, and we are really, really sorry about it. We wouldn't blame you if you closed this window right now and walked away from FCN forever. And we realize you have no reason to trust us when we say this, but from now on, we're committed to greater transparency and accountability with our posting. Starting today, for instance, we will have a public hit counter so it will be impossible to lie about our traffic.

Again, we want to stress that we are really, extremely, super-sorry. We've been bad little boys and we promise not to do it again if you give us one last chance.