Tuesday, July 23, 2002. Entry #177

It's kind of funny how things happen.

A year or so ago, I wrote a 'Rumination' for the fine and funny folks over at TopFive.com. Ruminations are little funny one- or two-liners, that may or may not be complete non-sequiturs, but are always offbeat. Things like: "I couldn't afford a real diamond, so I got my fiancee one of those new cubic spongeconium rings. I just pray she doesn't wash any dishes before the wedding." or "As I arrived home from work, I could hear the sounds of maniacal laughter and terrified goats coming from within the house. As I put my key in the door, I couldn't help but think, 'Here we go again.'" (Credited to Michael Cunningham and Brad Osberg respectively.)

I'd been receiving the mailing list for some time, but had never sent anything in to be considered. As most people know, I'm not so good at being deliberately funny, but I'm pretty good at being incidentally funny. I can crack people up over a dinner table, but an appearance at an open mike night would be a horrifyingly unfunny experience.

I was sitting on the train and saw a sign that read, "Jesus is the answer". I was inspired. I wrote up my rumination and sent it off. It was accepted and sent out on the list to thousands of people. Here it is in its humorous entirety.

"The sign said, 'Jesus is the answer.' Which is kinda weird, since my question was, 'What the hell's this stuff on my sandwich?'"

Not bad, huh? Kind of chuckle-worthy, but not something you'd expect to stick in anyone's head. So that was it for a while.

In March 2001, it popped up again. As I mentioned in my log of the time, I had been Googling my name out of curiosity, and discovered that some indy band was using my Rumination as a quote in their email signature. I thought that was pretty funny.

Fast-forward to now. Yesterday, I Googled my name again, and was pleased to find that 'What I Saw Today...' was now the #2 site relating to my name. Out of curiosity, I thought I'd look up my Rumination and see if that band was still using it.

As far as I can tell, they're not. But other people have picked up the slack. A search for "Jesus is the answer" what's stuff sandwich revealed a couple.

I was submitted as a cool quote to Kman's World where I'm snuggled between Rita Rudner and Tim Cavanaugh. A similar list on Prawth.net has me between Dave Berry and Mark Twain. I'm also smack dab in the middle of the home page of this particularly strange and funny girl, but unattributed, and slightly altered (Like it went through the Internet version of the Whisper game, where 20 kids stand in a circle and whisper a message from person to person to see how different it will be when it comes all the way around. Something like 'Mark likes to eat tuna', might just become 'Belly up to the sycamore' after 20 passes).

As well, a search for "Phil Bacon"+jesus+sandwich also reveals an appearance on a quote page on a site called 'The Mystic Spiral', an entry at ltwombat.com, a blog entry at serialdeviant.org(y) and one site that apparently went so far as to translate it into Portuguese.

(It's pretty funny if you ask Google to translate the page back into English. It comes out as, "the signal said?Jesus is the reply? What half quaint, it is given that my question was?Porque devil is a fly in mine sandwich?")

I sent an email to a couple of these sites expressing my curiosity at how they ran across my little quote. So far only Kman has responded, and said that a friend of his sent it to him, and he suspected she got it off a quotation mailing list. The attribution on the serialdeviant.org(y) entry says it came from a Shagmail list. Shagmail has both humor and quotation lists, so I must have been picked up on one of those.

Kman also inquired if I was a comedian. They all must think I'm famous or something.

This all amuses me to no end. Somewhere out there is a quotation database with my name in it. It doesn't matter what else I do with my life, because 500 years from now people will be able to look up my name and have a little chuckle.

Cool.

One Year Ago Today: I was still on hiatus, but in 1904, the ice cream cone was created by Charles E Menches during La Purchase Expo.

Two Years and One Day Ago Today: Festival - Where I rocked out with Great Big Sea at the Folk Music Festival.

Mom Rating: 4 out of 5. Mom will get a good giggle out of this one. She'll think I should strive for a better legacy though.

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Take me home, big fella