I’ll be out of town from tomorrow (Saturday) until late Tuesday. I’ll have no Internet access, and only spotty phone service; if anyone needs me, you’ll just have to do without.

Can’t wait.

Just as I was getting ready to leave work today, I got a text message from a number my phone didn’t recognize: “Let’s trade pics.”

Ever-obliging, I wrote back: “Well, OK, but who is this?”

Response: “Tristan.”

Tristan? I used to know a dog named Tristan. He didn’t send text messages very often, though, and I think I heard he died a few years back. So I answered: “I think you may have the wrong number, Tristan.”

Tristan replied: “Oh but can we still trade pictures..I am horny.”

I was driving home by now, and I’m not really coordinated enough to use my phone and drive at the same time, or else I would have sent a humorous message along the lines of “Maybe you could trade picures with the cops.” A few minutes later my phone rang from a number that had caller ID blocked. Figuring it was “Tristan,” I didn’t answer.

Apparently Tristan got my voicemail. He didn’t leave a message, but about 30 seconds later I got a final text message:

“Sorry Sir.”

At the Second Annual Memphis Zombie Massacre last night:

Damned if I know. Even though this Scottish guy is playing a song from 1927 — and playing it on a ukulele, no less — this is about the most awesomely fucking punk thing I’ve ever seen:

I love that he has “UKE PUNK” written on his hand. And, of course, the sight gag at the beginning about trying to tune his ukulele to a kazoo. The whole thing is perfectly deadpan and serious, which is the central point of punk:

If you tell a joke involving irony and then make it clear that you know it’s funny, it stops being funny. If you tell the joke and act like you take it seriously, it’s funny.

But… if you tell that same joke, but pull it off with perfect aplomb, it goes the other way. It not only stops being funny — it stops being a joke. It becomes a statement. In other words, you don’t just “act like” you don’t think it’s funny; you genuinely take it seriously. If you do it with the proper sincerity, it will work.

Example: “When I’m Sixty-Four,” by the Beatles. That song, in the hands of any other band I can think of, would have come off as an ironic novelty. But the Beatles, mainly thanks to Paul McCartney (who wrote it when he was fourteen, by the way), pulled it off and made it, instead of a novelty gimmick, a sweet and touching love song.

Back to these Glaswegian ukuleleists. These guys (the dude in the above video, who looks like me, and one who looks like Mark Borchardt) are pulling off the stunt too, pulling it off so beautifully that it doesn’t seem like a stunt. Not convinced? Check out the two of them playing “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker”:

I’ve just watched a bunch of these dudes’ videos; here are some other favorites:

Blitzkrieg Bop

Lonesome Tears (I’ve always loved that song anyway)

And, wonderfully, Memphis, Tennessee (which he rather charmingly misidentifies as a Chuck Berry song).

Fuck yeah. I need to play my ukulele more often, though at this point I’m pretty sure that I’m genetically precluded from playing at these guys’ level.

Get Fuzzy is just about the only comic that’s actually made me laugh since Bill Watterson retired. This is totally brilliant. (I took it to my site because the archives don’t stay up forever.)