ChrisMohney.com

Rejected by McSweeney's: Gross Roof Love

Pursuant to this, here's the second in an already tiresome two-part series. This bit was actually rejected out of a larger bit that was itself accepted. I suggest you read the full version before consuming the apocrypha below, which I believe they wanted taken out because it was "too gross."

-------------------

SUBJECT: Lisa T.

Top floor. Frequently has friends over, and they all sit on her balcony and chain-smoke. Most of their cigarette butts are tossed into the courtyard below, to land outside my apartment. Some even land on my porch.

Q: Hi there. Lisa, right?

A: Yeah, hi.

Q: Top floor?

A: That’s me. You’re …

Q: Chris. I’m right here, on the ground floor.

A: Right, right.

Q: You smoke Camel Lights?

Rejected by McSweeney's: Unexpected Workplace Comeuppance

This past weekend, my PC succumbed to a virus attack that left it partially deranged. I was able to copy off all my files, but I had to lobotomize the computer and reinstall everything. While copying over my documents, I found three pieces that were rejected by McSweeney's online humor mag. What do you want from me -- I was in grad school, I had nothing else to do. They did take a couple bits, just so you know how cool I am. Anyway, one of the three documents was corrupted from age and stupidity, and another rejectee is actually just a part of one that was, in the larger sense, accepted. But here's the third wholly rejected piece, "Unexpected Workplace Comeuppance." It amuses me in a nostalgic way.

-------------------

The maintenance man will not stop talking about his gun collection. For what must be the hundredth time, he explains that his favorite Sig Sauer pistol had a rough action when cycling a round into the chamber, and that rather than take it apart and polish it, he tried a new method his uncle had recommended. He packed the chamber with smoker’s toothpaste and dry-fired it one thousand times.

Ritalin Reading Clip + Bonus Misshapes Tedium

Thanks again to Lindsay Robertson and Gabriel Delahaye for letting me onstage during last week's Ritalin Readings. It was much fun, and the other readers were uniformly excellent -- far beyond my abilities, as is only natural. Gabe has the full podcast of the evening, and I encourage you to enjoy it all. For my impatient friends and Aunt Petunia, here's a clip of just my own four minutes in heaven. Inside-blogball alert.

And if that wasn't enough -- and in honor of this, which I think marks the expiration of the statute of limitations -- after the jump, enjoy a series of emails between myself and one of the Misshapes (and others) while I was at Gawker. It's much longer than funny, but if nothing else it gives one a depressing glimpse of what it's like working the turnstiles at such a freak parade.

Reading at Ritalin next week

I'm doing 4 minutes of heaven at next week's Ritalin Readings, 9 p.m. Tuesday April 24, at Mo Pitkins, home of the fried mac and cheese. Only a half portion in the upstairs performance room though. What the hell? Tickets are $6 and will be available a day or two in advance. They will also sell out immediately because the headliner is Golden It-Man Dana Vachon. I expect to see a lot of bored watch-checking during my 240 seconds as the fans wait for the marquee act.

Update: Tickets now on sale.

Show Me Your Head

In honor of last night's episode of 24. Perhaps the best line spoken by a television action hero, made all the better by the thug adversary's immediate compliance. Jack Bauer then shot him in the head, of course.

Back at Gridskipper

Yep, it's true. I'm once again editing Gridskipper, Gawker Media's urban travel blog. Previous editor Joshua Stein was gutted, boned, and jointed, and right now his meaty shanks adorn the smokehouse. He should be seasoned good for jerky coming summertime. Gonna put down hickory chips to bring out his natural flavors. By which I mean, he's now going to work some kind of city-metro beat at Gawker, and good luck to him. If you got something say about cities and the going to of same, let me know.

My Top 10 @ Valleywag

Done with guesting at Valleywag, which was certainly a change of pace. That's a very tough beat to work, especially with Nick Denton's emphasis on hardcore tech biz news that is often impossible to access or opaque to interpretation for those outside the industry's medium-inner circles. Still nobody hired as permanent editor, so if you're interested, talk to the man.

I, of course, focused on the tawdry. Per the same list for Gawker, here's my ten most-read posts on Valleywag. No real surprises -- sex and Second Life were fan favorites (I'm excluding the Vlog Hot poll or anything I collaborated on or edited for someone else). Only real surprise was a ho-hum story on a former postmaster getting eased out as an exec at Netflix, which got widely linked by fansites dedicated to the U.S. Postal Service. I wish I was kidding. Anway, the list:

Sex shopping in Second Life

Flickr snafu slings porn

HOWTO: Achieve blog nirvana

Genitals, guns, and merchandise in Second Life

George Lucas to Digg: "I am your father"

How much sex in Second Life?

What is Yahoo Pipes?

Postman not ringing twice

A tour of Second Life's big empty

Plague of microcells agitates microwaved masses

Attention, Hell-Mart Shoppers

You know, I like Cormac McCarthy as much as anybody, but:

The world soon to be largely populated by men who would eat your children in front of your eyes and the cities themselves held by cores of blackened looters who tunneled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye and carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell.

Dude needs to relax.

Guesting at Valleywag

I'll be guest editing this month at Valleywag, Gawker Media's blog of Silicon Valley news and gossip. Feel free to drop by and taste the extra-crispy love.

My Top 10

I was pleased to note this just-concluded January was in fact Gawker.com's highest traffic month ever. As a curiosity, I also checked on the top 10 most-read posts I personally wrote while at Gawker (listed below), as ranked by Google Analytics. I typically left the big stories to the main bloggers and picked up on more fringey topics, and/or those subjects I found personally interesting. Occasionally I did fill in on breaking stories when others were busy (such as Boy George picking up garbage, or the Cory Lidle plane crash). The Second Life rape-play post was probably the biggest surprise in popularity terms, as at the time, I just considered it an amusingly bizarre one-off.

Bad Lingo: Blog-Media Clichés

Boy George Is Your Garbage Man

Worst Magazine Covers: The Gallery of Lame

'Playboy' Plaything vs. 'Post'

Second Life: Rape for Sale

Who Got the Saddam Video? You.

Shocker: Forbes Recommends Trophy Wives

Cloney-Hands Man Revealed

Field Guide: Julia Allison

Cory Lidle's "High-Risk" Lifestyle