Inspiration

Long-time readers of this blog (all two of you) know that I stick to a schedule. There are good reasons for this, all outlined in the linked post. However, the pertinent part of that post for today's purposes are near the bottom of that post: if I have to stick to a schedule, how do I ration out my funny stories so as to not run out? I don't want to end up in a situation where I post a bunch of funny stories, and then one day, I find myself staring at a laptop with nothing amusing to write.

Well, as it turns out, the answer to this problem seems to be checking my email. Somehow, I have managed to gather a group of friends that consistently provide snarky and/or amusing stories. And they frequently email me about these post-worthy stories. On days when I find myself needing inspiration for the weekly blog post, I usually end up checking my email to see if there's anything worth writing about in there.

In hindsight, this should come as no surprise. After all, my inbox was what led to a room full of adults laughing at me about an email titled, "How to Make a Baby." Still, I find myself amused by both the variety and ingenuity displayed by the emails I receive. Just to give you some idea of the gems that are lurking in my inbox, I received the following two emails this week:

• "I finally taped that weird noise that 5AM! Listen, this is what it sounds like."
  
  Okay, so this is going to need a little bit of an explanation. My friend who objected to punctuation was hearing a weird noise at her place. She described it as something like a grating/mechanical sound, but didn't know exactly what it was. It played at 5AM fairly consistently for a few weeks, and no one could explain what it was. The maintenance folks, housing authority, and her neighbors were all equally stumped by what it could be. So, she was told to try to get a recording of the noise. At 5AM. Now, I'm actually up that early, but it's not something I'd suggest to someone else.
  
  Mind you, she actually did try getting up that early to record the noise a few times, but the noise would magically evade her every time. One time, she didn't turn on the lights, and then she heard the sound, as usual. I don't really believe in ghosts or the like, but at this point, using the word "haunted" might seem apropos.
  
  Regardless, the email contained a copy of the recording. Frankly, I think the whole episode could have been its own blog post. Among other things, it also involved lecherous maintenance men, races to see who would get to work first, and discussions about how best to research unexplained deaths in one's home. Remember, this was all covered by one email I received.
  
• "So here are the winners of the baby pool. He was born on X, weighed Y pounds, and is called Z."
  
  I know how that sounds, but it's actually far funnier than just base debauchery or unscrupulous betting. A friend of mine was pregnant. She and her husband have ridiculously good senses of humor, so they decided to have some fun. They sent out a survey thing, asking people to guess the date on which the baby would be born, the weight, the baby's name, and even the gender. Yes, the gender. Because as it turns out, they had a prognosis, but doctors have been known to be wrong before. This was all succinctly and hilariously explained in the survey.
  
  So, when they announced the birth of their son (turns out the doctors were right about the gender, after all), they had more than just the usual pictures of the family. They had the results from the survey. And since they had been encouraging hilarity by sending out the survey in the first place, they received plenty of witty responses. Put it this way: I guessed that the name would be Muad'Dib, and that wasn't even close to being the best, or funniest response. My personal favorite was "Bourbon," which had the added benefit of being useful for either a boy or a girl.
  
  Again, this one email probably would've been worth its own blog post. I would've had to do quite a bit of anonymizing, but it would've been totally worth it for a story that funny.

  So, as it turns out, I have this fountain of stories from which I can draw to write blog posts. Unless I suddenly lose a bunch of these friends, I think it's safe to say that I'm going to be able to keep up with my self-imposed schedule of one blog post per week. I get at least that many funny emails on a regular basis.