There comes a time when a nice clue-stick works well. You’ve been sitting at the keyboard for hours on end looking at lines of code that have become little more than a gray blob on a white background. Whack. Is it an ostrich? Is it a blimp? No, it’s a nice clue-stick. It is almost worth the concussion to have the answer, now isn’t it? Being election season, one of those seasons for which you cannot get a license and shoot the subject of the season, a nice clue-stick would be nice to have in hand. Didn’t we get the same promises 2, 4, or 6 years ago? Couldn’t we save a few trees and just hand out last season’s posters? Some of us remember the promises that we got when we were first tricked into voting for the faces attached to the names on those posters. Wouldn’t a nice clue-stick come in handy on election day? Why is it that nobody remembers the little guys when we’re not the numbers attached to getting those huge paychecks? In all of this, there comes a time when the handy clue-stick just doesn’t have the reach that you need. After all, there are people who only pretend to listen to us every six years or so. And then there are the people trying to sell you the things that you already have a closet full of. If only they would get a clue. There has to be a way of helping people such as these to get a clue. Welcome to the domain of the clue-by-four. Now, somebody actually has a trademark on the clue-by-four. Since the trademark was not issued until something like 8 years after the Internet’s first reference to the term ‘clue-by-four,’ this guy seems to need the other end of the clue-by-four. That’s why I’m not looking up the ascii code for a trademark symbol for this tirade. Personally, I do not believe that even the trusty clue-by-four would have enough mass to help clear the trash from my inbox. My filters are bordering on taking out thirty-megabytes of messages hawking junk so bad that it is not worth a legitimate advertisement. A clue-by-four does have its limits. Christian charity would not allow me the use of a clue-stick heavy enough to handle some people’s cluelessness. But, for those of us with, at least, human brains, a clue-by-four is the largest that we will ever need. Pun-abuse? Have a clue-by-four. Somebody keep calling you ‘Satan’ in public places? A good clue-by-four and some dental work will take care of that. Clue-by-fours also come in handy when you cannot get the opening sentence for a tirade that is due online in twenty minutes. I always keep a good stack of clue-by-fours around just in case I get a large website to design. There is nothing like a good clue-by-four to clarify mismatched html tags in a megabyte of code. After using up a few clue-by-fours, you may find that you can suddenly type without holding the shift key down for two or three letters at a time. And then there’s the whole clue-by-four induced nap thing. You will also find that they are good for gnawing on. How many calories are in a clue-by-four? Well, with a clue-by-four, you will always have a clue. They have the kind of taste where you know that the clue-by-four must be good for you. What would the world be like in the absence of the clue-by-four? How did we ever get along with mere clue-sticks? The world may never know. But then again, thwack, we may have a clue. It is good to have a clue.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 1st, 2006 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Comics, Mulligan Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.