Sean Flannery

Of Average Height

Sean Flannery — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:18:51 +0000

Unlike most standup comics, I believe that political correctness has –on whole– done more good than bad. But, man, it has also made some conversations a lot tougher than they need to be.

This was such a conversation (from a previous job):

(Cindy, who works in HR, is talking to a bike messenger in the hallway, as I approach)
Cindy: “let’s see, he’s of average height… ah… he has glasses- they are a bit square framed… hmm- oh, he has short hair- well, I would describe it as short, but- oh, Sean! Sean, how would you describe Dwayne?”
me: “Dwayne?? He’s our only black employee.”
Cindy is aghast. The bike messenger (who is black), nods his head thankfully to me and starts walking to locate a man he can finally identify.
Cindy: “I’m not sure that was appropriate” (after the messenger leaves)
me: “Cindy, Dwayne isn’t just our only black employee. When I leave for a meeting or lunch, he’s the only American on this floor.”
(our eCommerce division was all Indian men at the time).
me: “Do you know how stupid we’d look if that messenger spent the next forty minutes examining the height of ninety men, 89 of which are Indian, only to eventually find Dwayne who –oh by the way, we didn’t mention but– is the black dude?”
(after a short, silent pause, a question hits me)
me: “how do describe me?”
Cindy: “I say you’re the one with blond hair”

Blog Problems

Sean Flannery — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:17:11 +0000

Sorry if you were reading this website or any of my feeds and weird, random posts reached you. There was a bug in my RSS feed and a few drafts, that only contained future ideas, were published. So, no, I am not purposefully publishing insane, half-complete comedy manifestos directly to the net. Yet.

Sorry about the confusion, if it reached you. I think the problem is fixed now.

Ungoogleable is slightly more Googleable

Sean Flannery — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:19:14 +0000

Ungoogleable was featured today in Gapers Block, a popular Chicago Web Magazine. The full article is here .

Also, the website now has an easier address to remember: ungoogleable.info, so, if you like the site, please link to the new address and check back often (as it continues to be updated daily).

If you have not checked it out, here’s an explanation of the site, with all the relevant links

Doescher’s Law

Sean Flannery — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:13:02 +0000

Ungoogleable was launched after a great, drunk argument I had with friends on the world’s gold supply.

BACKGROUND INFO: Most people believe that gold is rare, the same way diamonds and oil are rare- meaning that, it is scarce and therefore valuable, yet still found all over the world, and pumped out of the Earth daily. This is not, however, true. Gold is unimaginably scarce. Every day, for example, we pull-out a volume of oil that is 300 times larger than all the gold ever mined (308 mil gals of oil each day / 1 mil gals of gold, ever). National Geographic once noted that all the gold on Earth could not fill two Olympic swimming pools.

There is no way to know (like everything at a bar) how we got started on this topic, but I made the following comment:

You know, in all those spy movies, they use a convoy of trucks to rob Fort Knox, but the truth is: you could empty it with a brief case.
“What?”
Sure. There can’t be more than a couple of bars there. It would be like stealing two very heavy VCRs.
“What are you talking about, Flannery? There are rooms, ten feet high, filled with gold at Fort Knox. It’s an entire base, of gold!”
No… there isn’t that much gold, in the world.

Hell, I could probably fit all the gold in the world, in my car.

People are now starting to become angry: “what kind of car do you drive?” / “Honda Civic”. Fury. Strangers join the argument:

“what about gold coins? Jewelry?”
They’re diluted- not pure gold.
“they say the jewelry is all gold, in commercials”
Impossible. Pure gold bends like warm chocolate- you wouldn’t even want it, as jewelry

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFO: Unlike most people, when I encounter resistance during an argument, I actually increase the absurdity of my point, rather than tame it, in order to find a middle ground. People are normally so perplexed by this move –like a cop who just heard a driver insist on a harsher ticket– they drop all balance (dumbfounded, in fact), and the argument is then mine to close as I wish.

“what about the California Gold Rush?”
I could fit all the gold found during that rush in my mouth.

No one was able to find a google query that settled the question, so the debate continued until closing time; the old fashion way: with us yelling at each other. And, say what you will about the bad facts that were probably being thrown around that night, but –by the end of the evening– every one at the bar knew each others name… and a rough idea of their thoughts on metallurgy

When I arrived home, I started this email chain (Time Stamp = 2 AM):

Thanks, to Prescott Tolk, Adam Burke, CJ Sullivan, Nick Vatterott and (my beautiful wife) Jessica for letting me reprint this exchange…

Ungoogleable

Sean Flannery — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:07:22 +0000

– Settling a Bar Room Argument –
Ten Years Ago	Today

I hate Google. I consider it an arch nemesis; a kill joy. Google is the dork in the back of a class, who –just as everyone is enjoying themselves– reminds the teacher that a quiz is scheduled. Google is a teacher’s pet.

Why do I hate Google so much?- well, in a way, I am a victim of habit destruction. Google has invaded bars. Now, when a man runs his mouth at a bar (as I love to do), some vanilla with an iPhone immediately disproves him: “ah, no Sean, I’ve just googled it and ‘Ben Hur’ did not cost more to film than all five space shuttles cost”.

They are bringing google into bars! We already work (as near drones) in a world of facts and forms, and dates and exact names- now they want to make bars that way. Bars –the last place where we can still have brassy, exaggerated conversations; even lie to each other– are under threat. Swagger is going the way of the dodo bird.

It was not, of course, always like this. Twenty years ago, every bar had a couple of men who were completely comfortable lying about their role in a war; drunks proposed solutions to the gas crisis based on half-memories of grade school physics; old men flat-out invented baseball stories- placing hitters inside stadiums that never existed during their career, hitting home runs that are impossible. And, best of all, disproving them was a social event.

Back then, the entire bar would join together –much like how the Amish build a house– to disprove a loud mouth. Almanacs were passed around; people introduced themselves after overhearing the argument; the bartender would even phone the library, for answers. You met people. You worked it out socially, spending the time laughing, talking. Now, some one types a dozen keys into a phone and shuts down the entire discussion, before it even started.

But, THERE IS HOPE. Just as the coyote now prospers (after changing its eating habits when its original habitat was lost), I too have adapted. I have moved beyond the world of exact dates and dollar figures, of country names and treaties, of public records and statistics, in my arguments. I have moved into the world of ungoogleable. I now combine real technologies, with unreal uses; I talk in quantities that are too big (or too small) to have been calculated; I put extinct animals into the present day, and current civilizations into the very far past. In short, I only argue –at bars– about things that can not easily be put into a a single google query.

I argue in the margins and shadows- where google can not find me. This blog chronicles that effort. One man’s journey, to argue in a world with google:

ungoogleable.info

Regular Conversation

Sean Flannery — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:01:10 +0000

112 versus 242

The first number is the number of times I have had to explain to my wife that men do not find Julianne Moore as attractive as other women find her. The second is, the number of times I’ve had the same conversation about Diane Lane.

(I think that Jessica –my wife– could hear that I lost my job, or wrecked the car, easier than the Diane Lane line; she still refuses to believe it)

Not Quick on Feet

Sean Flannery — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:58:50 +0000

I can’t claim to have the best celebrity doppelganger photo this week- but I may have the most personal relationship –on all of facebook– with the word “doppelganger”. It was part of the dumbest, least-glorifying lie I ever told:

– 9th Grade English (summer class) —

Teacher: “so it becomes kind of an exact copy… the Germans have a word for that…
‘don.. ?’ ‘dap…?’ …it starts with a ‘d’…

Me: “It’s ‘doppelganger’”

(the entire class turns around to look at me)

None of these people know me, as I’ve skipped 3/4 of our classes. The last thing I want to tell them is the truth –that I learned the word in a German philosophy book– because I’m worried I’ll look uncool. Thus, I respond with this gem-

Me: “I learned it in a rock AND roll song”

Even the teacher starts laughing out loud at this. At top volume, I have just pronounced the full “AND” in ‘rock n roll’. Even he –the teacher– has never heard that in his lifetime. It was like a bad Disney movie, where an alien attends high school in the body of a teenager- but all his knowledge of Earth is based off of old radio waves that just recently reached his planet.
I could have told them I read it in a German philosophy book, while wearing all black and leaning on a walking stick- and I would have looked cooler.

Intellectual Nirvana

Sean Flannery — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:30:41 +0000

Yesterday, I had to pickup groceries and realized, for the first time in my life, I could not name a single person on a single magazine they sold:

I walked home smug. “I have finally joined the intellectual elite”, I thought. “No longer do I have the time to learn these shallow celebrity names- I, like the rest of the elite, am too busy with complex, weighty thoughts.”

Then, this morning, I woke up forty five minutes late for work and thought, “Shit, I’ll only make it, if I multi-task; I have to get ready by doing two things at once”. So, without a putting a moment’s more of thought into it, I tried to put my socks on, while taking a shower. My brain simply picked to two tasks –at random– and combined them- no additional thought. My foot –thankfully– stopped this nonsense by immediately sending a signal to my brain- a sort of, “hey man this does NOT feel right” remark, as I tried to slip on a black tube sock, in the middle of a hot shower.

Well, it was a good, nine hour run, as a member of the intellectual elite. Obviously, when your best thoughts come from your foot, you are still some where in the middle of the country’s aptitude.

Upcoming Shows

Sean Flannery — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:51:24 +0000

I hope every one enjoyed the holidays. I’m finally back in Chicago and should start posting regular updates to the website again. I’m also in some cool shows this week:

Tonight:
PBR Presents, “Please Enjoy Yourself”
Underground Lounge, 8 PM
Saturday:
Red Bar Comedy Club- Opening Night
Inside Ontourage Nightclub, 8 PM, $10

Ivory and Ivory

Sean Flannery — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:52:02 +0000

I’m auditioning for “Joe Piscopo After Dark”, at TV variety show that will be shopped to networks. The auditions are a live comedy show, open to the public and at a fun venue, The Joynt, with Joe Piscopo. Stop by if you have no plans:

Some discounted tickets still available via my website at this URL,
http://jokesatthejoyntseanflannery.eventbrite.com/

(this Tuesday, 12/29/2009, at 9:30 PM. The Joynt is at 650 North Dearborn)