New Blog/Old Tricks

Welcome. I know that saying this will make it seem like I don't know what I'm doing, but that's alright because I really don't know what I'm doing.

Here's the story:

Back in my USAF days, I worked on a watch floor. This meant regular mid-watches, often with little or nothing to do (don't start in on the self-improvement crap, or I'll get very cranky). Out of the dull stretches of the wee hours grew a weekly gathering/editing/resending tradition that I called "Tad's Happy Funtime".

From day one of the existence of email, there have been bad jokes circulating, and I made it part of my personal mission to collect them and distribute them to others who, like me, were sitting before a CRT screen at 2a.m. wondering how long they could hold their urine without doing permanent damage to their kidneys.

After a time, finding new material to forward became harder. Either I had seen it and sent it, or seen it and deleted it in disgust. Eventually, I began to include more of my own brain scribblings and meanderings... and much to my surprise, this was a bigger hit with people than the stupid jokes, lists of "actual quotes", Onion articles, and other violations of taste and UCMJ regulations.

Upon finding myself in the civilian world, several friends urged me to keep up THFT, and I tried half-heartedly to do so. Finally, James started up a Blogger.com account, called it "Tad's Happy Funtime", and begged me to start posting. We put up a number of stories there (happyphuntime.blogspot.com), and also started a seperate account just for our toilet humor (cornerstall.blogspot.com). But it was hard to keep up with, and I didn't really see the point. Eventually, I just stopped going there.

Then came MySpace. I've been putting all kinds of goofy crap up on there, including some stories I wrote for a science fiction contest sponsored by my favorite Podcast (Escape Pod). The trouble was that I wanted to be able to share some of these writings with family and friends who weren't on MySpace.

And so, I have returned to Blogger.com in order to make my favorite snips and tails available for the public at large. If you care to see any of the older items, please visit the "happyphuntime" site, and skim through the archives. Newer stuff will show up on a strict schedule of "when I feel like it".

Either way, I'm not here to sell anything, change any minds, or make any enemies. I'm here to help anyone who is stuck in the watches of the night, staring at a screen and wishing there was something to read that can take the mind off of a swelling bladder for a while. I'm here to share. I'm here to reminisce (albeit imperfectly). Most of all, I'm here to help you take life a little less seriously.

It's only life, after all.