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:

Presentation

Nobody could understand the gibberish Bill stuttered, stumbled and sputtered through as he began his presentation on Catholic influences in France. Bill held his handwritten notes close to his body, as if gathering warmth from between the sheets. His eyes glanced furtively around the room, willing approval from a student body that was more nervous than attentive. Those that were scheduled to follow Bill's group were not paying attention, those who had already delivered were thinking of more pleasant things, like root canals.

Several days' growth of peach fuzz glistened with nervous sweat but, other than an unsteady hand, tentative voice and visibly shaking knee, Bill exuded no signs of nervousness. He was as put together as you would expect a college freshman discussing an arcane subject in a foreign language to be.

Bill sported his thin body in a way that was far from cool. A Led Zeppelin shirt or tight jeans would at least have rendered his frailty an air of purpose. As it was, it looked as if he'd forgotten to eat breakfast for the last two years. Or maybe he was a crack fiend on slim fast, we'll never know for certain. Bill's delivery was as anemic as his appearance. Words were missing where they belonged and inserted where they made no sense. Bill distracted us from his incomprehensibility by shifting his weight back and forth, like a human pendulum counting down the seconds until he could sit down.

When Bill's portion of the presentation was complete and the last grains of sand filtered through the professor's mental hourglass, he moved his thin figure to the back of the room, folded his pencil arms across his chest and began swaying back and forth. I tried to determine what song was going through his mind to inspire such dour movement and hoped against hope that it wasn't anything on my playlist, when Annie (yes, that Annie) productively cleared her throat and began to speak.

Annie's contribution to the presentation was as intense as it was confusing. Her normally zoned out features acquired new life in front of the language class and she waived her arms about with the dexterity of a Jazzercise employee. Unlike Bill, Annie managed to not look nervous. She seemed oblivious to the subdued laughter shared by the derelicts in the back row and, from my point of view, managed to get through all five minutes of material without making eye contact with anyone.

I wish I could remember what aspect of French Catholicism Annie spoke about, but I confess that I was too busy writing the above paragraph to catch much.

Annie's gruesome exercise in presentation aerobics came to a welcome ending as she joined Bill in the back of the room, folded her arms and began swaying in tandem with her teammate. Bill leaned in to give Annie a thumbs up, but things got awkward when Dré, who was speaking next, tried to turn around to see what the audience was staring at. Bill made an attempt at explaining his encouragement in French, but couldn't remember the word for "thumb." Dré's puzzlement was intensified by Annie's attempt at assistance when she wrongly introduced the word for "big toe." Bill thought the students were laughing at him (and maybe they were), so he stopped swaying and his face turned crimson. I don't think Annie ever got the joke, because she stood stock still with a blank look on her face, pointing a limp finger at a vertical thumb.

Dré soldiered on, introducing a religious interpretation that I found as offensive as it was inaccurate. Sensing his error, Dré tried to dig his way out, but only deepened the rut. The result was a tragic retelling of French history that lost even the advanced students. The professor made a eye contact with me and smiled. I felt better.

When it was over, the students broke out into one of the most enthusiastic golf claps since Geoff Ogilvy halted Tiger Wood's win streak. We were genuinely happy for the presenters as they smiled grins of relief and retook their places as far away from the whiteboard as possible. The professor marched to the front of class, said something unnecessarily gracious about the drivel we had just endured and introduced the next presentation...

Heart of Gold

You've heard the phrase. When someone is "without malice" with a "loving and caring" nature, they are said to have a heart so pure, it is made of gold. The line is delivered regularly in conversation in a seemingly complimentary way, but is it really a positive statement?

The most common application for "heart of gold," or HOG, is after a critical or deriding remark. The speaker feels that her comments will be perceived as "too harsh" or unnecessarily cutting and amends them with the addendum that "oh, but he has a heart of gold." For example, "Todd is a real Jerk. He lies all the time, never looks me in the eye and always wears that ratty cap with the sweat stains. But he has a heart of gold."

Translation: The subject's faults are not his own, but environmentally induced. He comes off as much worse than he actually is because of exogenous factors that are beyond his control. My dislike for him has nothing to do with the "real" person, but instead targets the things that make him unbearable. If only his golden coronary muscle would shine through the fog of the world, he wouldn't be such a jerk. But he is a jerk. He is an idiotic, poorly raised, fatherless animal with zero class and less style. If his face reflected his attitude it would be covered in warts and he would scratch at the itch with a piece of clay like Job. He deserves to rot in the darkest corner of a third-world country and never eat chocolate. But he has a HOG, for what it's worth.

Psychologically, we don't want to push someone down too far or risk raising the defensive ire of our conversation mates, so we moderate the phrase with an insult so camouflaged it is often embraced as a compliment. We are reticent to pound our nemeses into the ground, so we coat the tip of our barb with glitter that we hope will be strong enough to veil our malevolence.

This post serves to remove the glitter and expose the barb for all it is.

I've presented this theory to a few friends and family members to mixed reviews. A number of respondents have raised plausibility issues with their own use and contested that "I really like xyz [who I said had a HOG]; your theory can't be true."

When HOG is used, the speaker is not necessarily cognizant of his or her feelings toward the subject. In fact, the speaker may insist that her feelings are warm and fuzzy toward the individual and that HOG has "different meanings for different people." Don't be fooled.

HOG can reflect both a deep seated and surface disregard for a person. The feelings of malice that accompany its deployment may be buried deeply and motivate the thoughts behind the words with a dull ache of past pain. Or they may be symptomatic of a passing anger, a transient feeling that passes as quickly as glassless glasses.

Further, HOG is sometimes used when the personal dislike is found only at a subconscious level, where it is too deep to recognize. The speaker may not even be aware of her feelings toward the HOG recipient, but the use of the phrase lets others know what she is feeling.

As we've discussed earlier this week, females tend to put a lot more care into the words they choose than their male counterparts. We guys pick words the same way we choose shirts in the morning: if it's clean we'll use it. Guys will use lines they hear environmentally without regard to the nuances of the phrase or any implied meanings. We don't care if you think you've been insulted as long as you still feed us.

Girls, on the other foot (because hands get so old), put an inordinate amount of thought into the words they choose. In fact, picking a word for a girl is also very similar to picking a shirt.

Ultimately, HOG is a negative remark thinly veiled as a compliment. Guys may use it inadvertently (just as they will insult their girlfriends without knowing or intending to), but the phrase's proper place in the dictionary of popular vernacular is under the "insults" tab.

The next time someone "compliments" you on your HOG, mentally add four words to their sentence: "You have a heart of gold. Cold, hard and yellow." That will give you a more accurate picture of their meaning.

4th Do It Yourself Post

Men _______________ women, but women _______________.

Life Tip #62

If you do not know how to install a satellite TV system in your home, do not attempt to do so without assistance.

If you must attempt to install a satellite TV system in your home without assistance, don't use a handgun to punch a hole through your wall.

If you must attempt to install a satellite TV system in your home without assistance and use a handgun to punch a hole through your wall, make sure no one is on the other side of the wall.

If you must attempt to install a satellite TV system in your home without assistance and use a handgun to punch a hole through your wall without first checking for people on the other side of the wall, don't fire a second shot.