The Best Secret Santa Gift Ever: Three Cheers for Manhole! A comedy article
by Shellabration in 1024x768 76,640 24 01/14/2010 07:30 AM 1295 views
Ladies, gentlemen, and internet freaks: this is the moment you have been anticipating.
I am proud to present the unveiling of Manhole's 2009 Secret Santa Creation. If you thought last year's was good, well, hold on to your drawers and have a seat, because this year's gift absolutely blows that away.
In late November, I received the first clue:
Holy crap! Included with this was a note saying that my Secret Santa Gift had a weird sense of humor and had insisted that this be sent. This started some wild speculations on what the gift could be. Whatever it was, I knew it was going to be good.
Fast forward to about a week before Christmas, when I received another package. In it was a lovely note letting me know that my Secret Santa had run into some technical difficulties. Also included was some of his homemade hot sauce:
Jalapeno and habanero sauce. The specially made label said, "Distributed by Manhole Industries."
Sorry for the crappy, blurry photo. My camera was seriously pissing me off. But now I knew that Manhole was my Secret Santa! How awesome is that?! I really lucked out.
I have since tried both of the sauces. I put a little of each on some nachos. The jalapeno tastes amazing and has just the right amount of kick. The habanero tasted great until about five seconds after I put it in my mouth. Then: FIRE! Goddamn, that's hot. It seriously kicked my ass.
Note to self: Always wash hands after handling jalapeno sauce. Do not rub eyes. Dumb ass.
Last week, I got an e-mail from Manhole letting me know that the gift was on its way. And then Tuesday morning, there it was. Hooray! I ripped it open immediately. Here is what I found:
It's a Big Mouth Billy Bass modified especially for me! Included was a very detailed instruction manual. Manhole was even kind enough to let me know which features are not kid-friendly. What a guy! (After listening to everything, I decided that it doesn't contain anything worse than my kids have already heard on basic cable, so I've let them listen to everything).
Since my kids were extremely excited about seeing the gift as well, I waited until they got home from school before I turned it on. (Did you really think you were going to get out of this thread without hearing about my children at least once? Dream on, sucker!)
As my son was inspecting it, he noticed the coil in the back that was labeled, "Flux capacitor". He said, "That's what makes time travel possible!" He is a huge fan of Back to the Future.
Again, sorry for the blurry picture. My camera was not being very cooperative. Like a man, it always seems to know when my hormones are at their most unstable, and chooses that particular time to pick a fight.
Mr. Fishy (my kids named it already) plays ten different clips, each about a different GABber:
1) The Incredibly Sexy Straw talking to Zack Slater, that big hunk of man on All My Children. Straw and I are both big fans of the show and Zack. 2) The Smashing Trixxie 3) Our Poor Poor Pubah 4)Your Future Overlord Manhole 5) Stupid Noob Frostsock 6) The Always Funny Suicide Ranger 7) The Kick Ass Jeeni 8) The Honorable Phla 9) Our Beloved Artist Uncle Phuc 10) The Lovely Shell Belle
Here it is in action:
Thank you so much, Manhole! You went way above and beyond on this one, and I appreciate it so much! You rock!
When Manhole posts in this thread, please orb the hell out of him. He deserves that and more. Plus, my hormones are unstable and someone could ger hurt if they don't do as I say. Grrr.
Heh. Awhile back, Manhole asked for people to send him clips of them saying something funny. The only one who responded was Jeeni, so many thanks to her! The Uncle Phuc clip was from the old Zug album, and Manhole had luckily saved the file to his computer before the album went bye bye.
I did Phla's voice. And mine, of course. Everything else was clips from a song or show.
This gift rocks socks and I'm incredibly jealous. I would have humped Manhole's face for being so smart and cool, but since he never asked me for a voice clip, I'm going to sex up Straw instead.
Now that I think about it, this was probably his plan from the beginning. Curse you Manhole and your wily, nerdy ways.
Thanks for the awesome thread Shell! I'm glad you got your gift to work without locking up or formatting itself! It took about three months of my off time to design and build, though in the end it seemed like a full time job.
I hope to get a blog up soon and feature it on some of the underground hacking sites. There, you will find much more detail with source code, schematics, ext...
I don't have any ideas for the SS10 yet, but I definitely would like it to have touch screen technology - it has gotten way cheap. And I would like it to fart as well.
OHHHHHH. I thought what you had done was send people individual messages asking for assistance. Now that I know that it was just a random post inside a thread, I'm not upset. Not that I ever was every really upset before, just less likely to hump your face.
Kudos to you for making such a great gift, and for taking so much time to custom-build it for Shelle.
1. Straw refers to Manhole as her husband in her clip. Did those two crazy kids get married and I somehow didn't know? Not that I expected to be invited to the wedding, but I might have sent a gift if someone had told me.
2. What does Manhole do for a day job? 'Cause if it isn't some kind of engineering, I hope it pays better than engineering. Or that he's a porn star.
We were married on Oct 31st. I'll let Manhole tell you what he does, it's all greek to me. Not in a Tony the Greek way or a gyro stand way, but in a my eyes glaze over when he tells me about his work way.
Holy crap, Manhole - that absolutely rocks. Amazing!
Aw, bummer people didn't see your invitation in the Secret Santa sign-up thread, but loved what you did with everyone's - especially loved yours, Pubah's and the one you did for Shelle! I'm going to be singing Ghost Busters all today!
Oh, that's awesome, Straw. Congrats to you and Manhole! My husband and I got married on Halloween too. Did you dress up for the occasion? We just dressed nicely & went to the JOTP. We visited hubby's sister right after and she asked us if we were dressing up as Jehova's Witnesses and didn't believe that we got married.
You really got married?! Really? I didn't know! My cross-stitching hand is getting itchy, telling me to stitch something extremely sappy in your honor. Wedding bells. No, lovebirds. No....
Wait a minute, I've got it! A picture of a manhole with a straw sticking up out of it. Perfect!
Heh. I think I noted in another thread that we met through other means, and I introduced him to GAB and he decided to give it a try. So we're a GAB couple in the sense that we both GAB, but we didn't meet through GAB.
Jeeni - we too got dressed up in clothes that one might mistake for Jehovah Witness garb. We had an officiant meet us at our favorite park and had a simple ceremony with just us and my daughter. Then we changed clothes and took my daughter to her soccer game. We had lunch at the mall food court. Then she changed into her Padme costume to go do candy and game stuff with her dad, while we embarked on our favorite activity - thrift store shopping.
Well, a belated congratulations to you two crazy kids! Even if you didn't meet on GAB, you're still entitled to my wish for many years of happiness together.
I thought I had lost these pictures, Straw stumbled across them. They're closeups of the hot sauce I made for Shell - you can read the words in these pics.
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