March 3rd, 2009
Somehow, it’s talk radio’s fault.
I picked up Glenn Beck’s 2003 book, The Real America, at CPAC. It’s a lot like listening to him on the radio. It’s a mixture of political opinion, personal stories, earnest appeals to our better nature, and humor. I was enjoying it for the first eighty pages or so until I got to Chapter 4: Everything You Need to Know About Partisan Politics. It’s one joke stretched over five pages. “Blah blah blah blah Clarence Thomas, blah blah blah blah Anita Hill, blah blah blah…” (you get the picture). I chuckled and was ready to breeze through the section until I read, “…can you find the one time in this chapter that blah is spelled backward?”
That started a fruitless, half-hour quest looking for “halb.” I read every line of every sentence at least half a dozen times, scanning for the backwards “blah.” Sensing my frustration (my muttering “what the @#$%!” may have helped) my girlfriend asked me what I was doing. I told her, and then she proceeded to spend fifteen minutes of her life looking for “halb.” It’s strained our relationship. She insists “halb” isn’t really there, and I’m convinced that Glenn Beck wouldn’t do that to his readers. A more irreconcilable difference between any couple has yet to be discovered.
So instead of composing anything remotely interesting this afternoon for my blog, I’ve been scouring the internet looking for the key to finding the elusive word. I typed in “halb” and “The Real America” on google. Nothing. I went to Amazon, searched inside the book, and typed in “halb.” Nothing. I even looked at Stu’s Blog (”Stu” is Glenn Beck’s executive producer). Again, no luck.
My current theory is that it’s a trick question, and “blah” isn’t said right up front. Instead, it’s cleverly hidden, perhaps spelled out over the span of a few words. Ex: “Blah blah blah Alberta is cold.” But then again, if I was on the right track, I probably would have found it already. As soon as I get some free time at work, I’m going to scan these five pages into a .pdf file and see if it’ll let me search for the elusive bugger in Adobe.
Perhaps that’s why hieroglyphics are so hard to understand. Maybe the Egyptians were just playing a joke on future civilizations. I can imagine Egyptian slave #1 saying to his co-slave: “So I’m going put these eyes here, even though it makes no sense.” #2: “Why”? #1: “Because no one will be able to understand it. It’ll be hilarious!”
Update: I just spent another fifteen more minutes looking for the damn “blah.” I could’ve had this thing posted already. I would like to write at least one intelligent post on a relevant issue before I leave for Vegas on Thursday (It’s for my job. Fine, don’t believe me) but apparently Chapter 4 doesn’t want that to happen.
I hate Chapter 4.