{"id":34162,"date":"2025-08-11T07:21:29","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T12:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=34162"},"modified":"2025-08-10T17:34:37","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T22:34:37","slug":"the-memes-put-brian-j-on-the-defensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/11\/the-memes-put-brian-j-on-the-defensive\/","title":{"rendered":"The Memes Put Brian J. On The Defensive"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was only three memes at View from the Porch<\/a>, and yet I felt targeted.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Back around the turn of the century, I was a technical writer with prodigious output even though I am not a home-row touch-typist (even today). <\/p>\n

One Friday afternoon, my password came to the end of its 90-day lifetime, so I changed the password last thing before I left (never do this on a Friday, by the way, nor install wonky software that requires a reboot and might brick your machine and you can’t remember what might have caused it come Monday morning).<\/p>\n

On Monday, I was one of the first in the office as 7am start times were my wont back in the old days. I sat down in the empty office and tried to log in. I tried the password I thought I’d set on Friday afternoon, but it didn’t work. I tried again to see if I’d mistyped it. I slowed down and looked at every key as I typed it. Nothing.<\/p>\n

So I waited in an empty office for two and a half hours for the hardware guy to come in to reset my password again. He then noticed that something was wrong with my keyboard. On Friday afternoon, after I left, El Guapo had popped off a couple of keys on my keyboard and had, anomg other things, had switched the n and m keys, and I was not a touch-typist, so I looked at them when I typed the password, and I was not familiar enough with keyboards to spot what was off. Oh, the laughs they had at my expense.<\/p>\n

The story made it all the way to the C-Suite when the inside sales guy was on a trip to New York. Apparently, my name came up, and the originator of the Dosso Double-Snap (snapping one’s fingers twice when excited, a thing I still do today on occasion) told that story. Whereupon the company’s co-founder said, “He typed all that documentation with these fingers!” and wagged his index fingers in the air. To be honest, my method was kinda touch-typing, but not home row ASDF JKL;. I have gotten faster, and I can even type things I’m looking at, like book pages for book report quotes and whatnot. But, yeah, 3000+ pages of software manuals with mostly the first two fingers of each hand and the thumb sometimes for the space bar.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jeez, Louise, I’ve seen references to fedora-wearing overly chivalrous young men (they say “M’lady” or “My lady,” see?) at Founding Questions, too<\/a>, so I guess this is something of an archetype or more like a punchline, and when I see it, I cringe a bit inside. Literally, I figuratively cringe, not just recoil which is I guess what the kids these days mean when they say cringe<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Ah, gentle reader. I got my trenchcoat for Christmas 1993, and I got my first fedora a couple of weeks later at Donge’s down on Third Street in Milwaukee. I was more influenced by old movies with Bogart and Grant (still am, I’d like to think) than anything else–and fedoras had a brief resurgence amongst some people with television programs like Crime Story<\/em> and The Hat Squad<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And, ah, yes, I did have an inflated sense of chivalry due to my exposure to medieval poetry and whatnot. So I would have been–and I was–that demonstrative in that fashion (one such story coming later). I suppose I affected a bit<\/em> to portray a role to cover my natural shyness<\/strike> reticence. If you press me to admit it.<\/p>\n

But, jeez Louise, I couldn’t have been following some pattern in popular culture from the 1980s? Certainly not from the John Hughes movies–I had not seen them yet. I WAS NOT DUCKY.<\/p>\n

I’d like to think I was sui generis<\/em>, but apparently not. Ah, me.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, this weekend, I got a new Alpine hat because I was at a German festival over in Lawrence County. I have reached an age, apparently having reached a half-C, where I think I might look okay in a stubby-brimmed hat. Also, it was a fund raiser, but there were not many opportunities to lay out greenbacks for the Lions Club and its endeavours, so I had to invent reasons to give.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But I still where my classic wide-brimmed fedora or wide-brimmed Panama hat out, so maybe not, m’lady.<\/p>\n

There’s a third meme in the post, but I do not understand it. Otherwise, it might have been a trifecta of defensiveness. Or is it mocking my lack of understanding?<\/em><\/p>\n

The whole world is not about me. But the Internet is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was only three memes at View from the Porch, and yet I felt targeted. Back around the turn of the century, I was a technical writer with prodigious output even though I am not a home-row touch-typist (even today). One Friday afternoon, my password came to the end of its 90-day lifetime, so I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34162"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34167,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34162\/revisions\/34167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}