I understand that at one point in time all the food that we ate was seasonal. Apples are only ripe at certain times of the year so that's when you eat apples. I get it. Then thanks to the miracles of modern science, farmin' upgrades and planes shipping stuff all over the globe in the blink of an eye it didn't really matter what season it was anymore. You feel like eating apples? There are going to be apples in the store. It might not be the exact type of apple you want but you will be able to get your apple on. These are the kind of advancements I enjoy. I'm glad that our culture has advanced to a place where this is possible and I think most people would agree with me. One would think that unless our ability to produce a food at a certain time of year is hindered that we would have all food at all times, right? Of course not. That would be too goddamned logical. Instead we have decided that some foods are "seasonal" foods and they are only available in small windows. It makes sense that July isn't a big season for chili but I think chili should still be available albeit in smaller quantities. The place where I get the most upset about this is in the rationing of seasonal candies.
I have an affinity for peppermint ice cream. OK, that's an understatement. Peppermint ice cream is my drug of choice. I fiend for it. I've actually considered letting it melt on the spoon and then injecting it into my arm but I don't even have the patience for spoons when it comes to peppermint ice cream, I just dive into the carton head first and go town. It is the finest of all ice creams and quite possibly the finest dessert known to man. This is a fact. When I was a child peppermint ice cream was available all year round for one simple reason; it's delicious. Then some jerk off in marketing at Edy's must have made some retarded algorithm and announced that they would make more money if they rationed peppermint ice cream to only being around at X-mas. "People will crave it all year and since it is made out of candy canes they'll associate it with X-mas and we'll make a heap of money," this heartless ignoramus must have declared with glee. So that's what they did and by doing so they effectively ruined my life. Sure, I've probably kept my weight down a couple kilos because the scarcity of that sweet pink ambrosia but that's not the point. WE EAT PEPPERMINTS ALL YEAR LONG. Every restaurant has peppermints in a dish as you walk out the door and no body ever bitches about those being around out of season, why does the ice cream have to be lumped in with Christmas?
Let's take a second to look at the other Edy's flavors that are rationed for the holidays. When you go to the grocery store these are readily available while the spot where Peppermint once was is completely empty. Egg Nog is one of the flavors. Actual Egg Nog sucks. The only reason people can tolerate it is by pouring copious amounts of liquor into it. No one is going to ever want to eat Egg Nog ice cream, hence there being dozens of cartons left. The other holiday flavor, Hot Chocolate. Yes, you read that correctly. Edy's makes Hot Chocolate ICE cream. What the fuck? How can they even take themselves seriously marketing shit like that? Hot Chocolate is not a frickin' flavor. It's a temperature of a flavor, a temperature that it cannot maintain if it is in ICE cream. It makes my brain hurt. There is no holiday known to man appropriate for that crap. Yet in order to have a whole seasonal line the marketing geniuses lump it in with peppermint.
It's not just peppermint ice cream that should be available year round in my opinion. There should be no seasonal candy at all. If I want to eat a Cadbury egg in October I should be able to. If I want to fill my kid's Easter basket with a candy corn that should be my right as an American. How can we call this the land of the free if I can't salute that glorious freedom by eating peppermint ice cream on July 4th? I demand an end to this lunacy. Until then I'm going to head back to the freezer and attempt to eat an entire year's worth of ice cream in the next 2 days.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Coming up a ply short
WARNING: The following blog may be the most important thing you ever read. And it's about poop.
The other day I found myself in one of the more uncomfortable situations a man can find themselves in; miles from home when my stomach was overtaken by a churning sensation. I was going to have to use a public restroom to take a dump. There is a brilliant scene in Zombieland that illustrates the complicated emotions that occur in a trip to the public restroom. A person is really at their most vulnerable when they are taking the kids to the pool regardless of whether or not a zombie apocalypse is happening. This feeling of vulnerability makes it so I am rarely 100% relaxed when in a public restroom thus making almost every experience a fiasco.
It takes very little to send me off the rails with rage and frustration when I'm on a foreign toilet. Weird noises and smells from neighboring stalls and a toilet seat that is either too hot or cold can halt the process dead in it's tracks and we certainly can't have that. Before the top button of my pants is even undone my mind is completely discombobulated. Luckily nature is able to take it's course and I let out a giant sigh of relief. In retrospect this sigh probably creeped out some fella with a similar disposition into constipation, oh well. Everything seems to be in the clear until I reach for some TP. Oh no. Good God no. Why?!
1 ply. I'd rather there not be any toilet paper than be forced to use the abomination that is 1 ply toilet paper. While you may have to go to some trouble the absence of TP is a solvable problem. 1 ply offers up a much more difficult dilemma. You can't just go to another stall hoping for salvation. If one stall is cursed by the 1 ply plague than they all are. 1 ply forces you into a sort of Mexican Standoff when you are at your most vulnerable. Do I choose to forgo wiping completely and make myself completely miserable and the target of possible scorn and humiliation? Or do I risk actually using the hellish stuff? Either way I am left wishing that I had never even left the house.
At home I have the super thick (yet fluffy!) 2 ply stuff that refuses to break down regardless of what it encounters and I assume that most other people do as well. You know why? Because I want as many barriers as possible between my hand and my ass. I know damn well that I'm not the only person that feels this way. If I had my druthers I would use 38 ply toilet paper but I'm sure some tree hugger would consider that "wasteful". I actually believe that 1 ply may actually defy all known physics, it may even contain the Higgs Boson for all we know. It is practically see through and appears to be flimsy enough that it would disintegrate if a breeze hit it. Yet when it makes contact with my delicate undercarriage it scratches and burns more than the harshest sandpaper. I may not be a man of science but I'm pretty confident that it is impossible for a material to share those properties.
I am left to ponder just how much money is actually saved by purchasing 1 ply. Just how much can the difference be? I can't imagine it being anything sizable. Whatever is saved with the quality of 1 ply has to be negated by the fact that people use so much more of it at a time. At most it can only be a difference of a couple cents per roll. Is the pittance saved really worth torturing everyone who has the misfortune of using the restroom? There has to be some evil genius who doesn't care about shaving a couple bucks a year off of the budget but instead revels in the fact that every single person who uses the restroom will leave far more miserable than they were when they walked in. Or is it possible that the janitors of the world stock it in order to cut down on the number of people who use the public restrooms in order to save themselves a bunch of work? If this were actually the case I would tip my hat, it would be a brilliant tactic.
Let's tone it down a little, I'm not saying that the proliferation of 1 ply toilet paper is as horrible as human trafficking, but it's got to be in the conversation. If 1 ply wasn't stocked in the majority of public restrooms taking a shit in public would still suck, there's no question about that, but it would ease the situation a little bit. 2 ply would be like a steak and a cold brew for a last meal before being executed as opposed to the meal of spam and hydrochloric acid that is 1 ply. I think it's time that we occupy the nation's public restrooms and demand all the rights our founding fathers intended for us to have. We don't ask for much, just sinks that work, some clever graffiti and one measly additional ply to our nation's TP. I don't think that's asking too much.
The other day I found myself in one of the more uncomfortable situations a man can find themselves in; miles from home when my stomach was overtaken by a churning sensation. I was going to have to use a public restroom to take a dump. There is a brilliant scene in Zombieland that illustrates the complicated emotions that occur in a trip to the public restroom. A person is really at their most vulnerable when they are taking the kids to the pool regardless of whether or not a zombie apocalypse is happening. This feeling of vulnerability makes it so I am rarely 100% relaxed when in a public restroom thus making almost every experience a fiasco.
It takes very little to send me off the rails with rage and frustration when I'm on a foreign toilet. Weird noises and smells from neighboring stalls and a toilet seat that is either too hot or cold can halt the process dead in it's tracks and we certainly can't have that. Before the top button of my pants is even undone my mind is completely discombobulated. Luckily nature is able to take it's course and I let out a giant sigh of relief. In retrospect this sigh probably creeped out some fella with a similar disposition into constipation, oh well. Everything seems to be in the clear until I reach for some TP. Oh no. Good God no. Why?!
1 ply. I'd rather there not be any toilet paper than be forced to use the abomination that is 1 ply toilet paper. While you may have to go to some trouble the absence of TP is a solvable problem. 1 ply offers up a much more difficult dilemma. You can't just go to another stall hoping for salvation. If one stall is cursed by the 1 ply plague than they all are. 1 ply forces you into a sort of Mexican Standoff when you are at your most vulnerable. Do I choose to forgo wiping completely and make myself completely miserable and the target of possible scorn and humiliation? Or do I risk actually using the hellish stuff? Either way I am left wishing that I had never even left the house.
At home I have the super thick (yet fluffy!) 2 ply stuff that refuses to break down regardless of what it encounters and I assume that most other people do as well. You know why? Because I want as many barriers as possible between my hand and my ass. I know damn well that I'm not the only person that feels this way. If I had my druthers I would use 38 ply toilet paper but I'm sure some tree hugger would consider that "wasteful". I actually believe that 1 ply may actually defy all known physics, it may even contain the Higgs Boson for all we know. It is practically see through and appears to be flimsy enough that it would disintegrate if a breeze hit it. Yet when it makes contact with my delicate undercarriage it scratches and burns more than the harshest sandpaper. I may not be a man of science but I'm pretty confident that it is impossible for a material to share those properties.
I am left to ponder just how much money is actually saved by purchasing 1 ply. Just how much can the difference be? I can't imagine it being anything sizable. Whatever is saved with the quality of 1 ply has to be negated by the fact that people use so much more of it at a time. At most it can only be a difference of a couple cents per roll. Is the pittance saved really worth torturing everyone who has the misfortune of using the restroom? There has to be some evil genius who doesn't care about shaving a couple bucks a year off of the budget but instead revels in the fact that every single person who uses the restroom will leave far more miserable than they were when they walked in. Or is it possible that the janitors of the world stock it in order to cut down on the number of people who use the public restrooms in order to save themselves a bunch of work? If this were actually the case I would tip my hat, it would be a brilliant tactic.
Let's tone it down a little, I'm not saying that the proliferation of 1 ply toilet paper is as horrible as human trafficking, but it's got to be in the conversation. If 1 ply wasn't stocked in the majority of public restrooms taking a shit in public would still suck, there's no question about that, but it would ease the situation a little bit. 2 ply would be like a steak and a cold brew for a last meal before being executed as opposed to the meal of spam and hydrochloric acid that is 1 ply. I think it's time that we occupy the nation's public restrooms and demand all the rights our founding fathers intended for us to have. We don't ask for much, just sinks that work, some clever graffiti and one measly additional ply to our nation's TP. I don't think that's asking too much.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Whatevs, this blog is totes terrif.
It is well documented that I am a lazy man. Whenever there is a shortcut available in life I am the first to pounce upon it. In fact I take my laziness to such an extreme that it is no longer laziness as it becomes a sort of amazing innovation. If I'm on the couch and the remote is on the other side of the room I will spend ten to twenty minutes trying to construct a tool capable of retrieving the remote out of everything within arm's reach. While it would be considerably less energy to just stand up, take two steps, pick up the remote and change the channel away from Teen Mom 2 it is far less fun. And if I stay seated I ultimately feel as though I have done far less work and that I am a genius for using tools, I react the way a chimp would the first time he pokes a stick in an anthill and gets a delicious surprise.
I also understand that not all of the shortcuts people take in life are a bad thing. We live in a fast paced society where every minute counts, especially when dealing with other people. Yet there is one thing that irks me more than almost anything has ever irked me before; the shortening of words. Now, I'm not talking about saying "I'm" instead of "I am," that's perfectly reasonable. No, I'm talking about the horrific slang that people use these days where they can't be bothered to even finish the words they are saying. Yesterday as I was walking to the mailbox to send in a check for this season's failed fantasy football team (bunch of goddamn lollygaggers, choking dogs. I hope Vincent Jackson falls into a septic tank and drowns) I overheard a woman talking on the phone. The once sentence I heard her say single-handedly set the English language back 20 years.
"Totes! Can you do me a fave?"
Are you fucking kidding me? You're a middle aged woman who should be capable of stringing together a complete sentence without sounding like a brain dead idiot, what the hell are you doing saying "totes"? Is favor really too hard of a word to say? I guess we've finally progressed to the point where even simple 5 letter, 2 syllable words take far too much effort to be dealt with, hooray. "Do me a fave?!!" How about you do me a fave and drop dead right now before you have a chance to further exasperate the problem by bringing a litter of moronic offspring into the world? We all know how I feel about "totes" and "fave" so I am giving you a list of additional "words" that make me hulk out and murder the person who said them.
I also understand that not all of the shortcuts people take in life are a bad thing. We live in a fast paced society where every minute counts, especially when dealing with other people. Yet there is one thing that irks me more than almost anything has ever irked me before; the shortening of words. Now, I'm not talking about saying "I'm" instead of "I am," that's perfectly reasonable. No, I'm talking about the horrific slang that people use these days where they can't be bothered to even finish the words they are saying. Yesterday as I was walking to the mailbox to send in a check for this season's failed fantasy football team (bunch of goddamn lollygaggers, choking dogs. I hope Vincent Jackson falls into a septic tank and drowns) I overheard a woman talking on the phone. The once sentence I heard her say single-handedly set the English language back 20 years.
"Totes! Can you do me a fave?"
Are you fucking kidding me? You're a middle aged woman who should be capable of stringing together a complete sentence without sounding like a brain dead idiot, what the hell are you doing saying "totes"? Is favor really too hard of a word to say? I guess we've finally progressed to the point where even simple 5 letter, 2 syllable words take far too much effort to be dealt with, hooray. "Do me a fave?!!" How about you do me a fave and drop dead right now before you have a chance to further exasperate the problem by bringing a litter of moronic offspring into the world? We all know how I feel about "totes" and "fave" so I am giving you a list of additional "words" that make me hulk out and murder the person who said them.
- Whatevs. Unless you are a 15 year old girl you probably shouldn't even be using the full word "whatever." Even the aforementioned 15 year old girls should be shot for using this.
- Adorbs. My girlfriend is guilty of using this at least once. If there is a second time I'm not sure our relationship will survive it.
- Terrif. We have the British to blame for this one and just like everything the British gave us other than fish and chips it is an abomination.
- ASAP. I understand that this is an acronym but it counts. I find this barely acceptable when written, if someone actually speaks it I want to shove bamboo under their fingernails.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
I live with a furry, soulless, hell spawn
When entering into a relationship one of the first things you have to overcome is dealing with the other person's baggage. Whether they are emotionally shut off, enjoy midget porn just a little too much, or have a parent crashing on their couch you will find a way to work through it if you really care about the person. In my relationship I assume that my girlfriend has to make a lot more concessions for my bullshit than I do for hers. Mostly because I'm a big bag of crazy. When I moved in a few months ago there was one thing that I had to find a way to cope with that I'm still struggling with to this day, Myrna.
Myrna is my girlfriend's cat. I'm very allergic to cats. This has been a little bit of a problem as I have been struggling to find medicine that does the trick so that I can breathe. I know that eventually I'll either just adapt or find the right medicine and it won't be a big deal. Unfortunately there isn't a medicine out there capable of curing my vast hatred for cats. To paraphrase the great philosopher Eric Cartman, I hate cats. I hate them so very, very much.
I could easily turn this blog post into a tired old dogs vs cats diatribe but what's the use? Some people have been brain washed into believing that cats are an acceptable companion and it's a waste of breath to try to convince them otherwise. I will address one common argument though. Very often a cat person will say the following: "Dogs are stupid and give affection to anyone for no reason. You have to earn the respect and affection of a cat and that's why they are intelligent little angels." Bullshit. The difference between cats and dogs in this department is that dogs aren't ill tempered assholes. Cats attempt to mindfuck you at all times. "Oh, you want to pet me? Even though having my belly scratched is the greatest thing in my pathetic feline existence I'm going to deny you the opportunity to shower me with pleasure simply because I can. This will make you want to pet me more and I'll keep playing hard to get. Until you are eating, then I will sit on your plate of food and demand affection." This is not showing superior intelligence as cat lover's would like you to believe. It's proof that cats are manipulative assholes hell bent on making you their slave.
Let's talk a little about Myrna specifically. She is a tiny little black cat, she was probably the runt of the litter. She's a rescue cat who was found in a crack house with a litter of kittens. After observing her for 30 seconds I came to the conclusion that she was a crack head, turns out she actually was. She's even missing some teeth because of her addiction to the rock. Or, you know, some other reason but I like to assume it's from sucking the glass pipe. In the middle of the night Myrna has what I refer to as "the midnight crazies." She will just run back and forth down the hall for no discernible reason. If she is caught in the act and you make any sort of movement toward her she absolutely loses her shit and starts running even faster. It's kind of endearing when it's not waking my ass up seconds after falling asleep.
The reason I'm writing about Myrna today is because she did such an adorable thing. She walked right up to me as I was sitting at the computer and rubbed against my leg. Then she barfed all over the floor. The barf was gross but was insignificant compared to the hacking sounds she made as she was doing it. Despite being the size of one of my slippers she was far louder than I have ever been even in my most violent Natty Light induced projectile heaves. I started to dry heave a little bit just from hearing the whole disgusting ordeal. Immediately after puking Myrna ran off to the other side of the house. The only reason she even came over to me was to barf in front of me. What kind of passive aggressive jerk stoops that low? I'm a wretched human being with minimal morals and I would never go up to someone, hug them, barf and run away. It takes a cold and calculating mind to perpetrate such a devious act.
Despite this act of pure evil I am coming to like the cat just a little bit. Oh, who am I kidding, I like Myrna BECAUSE she is capable of pure evil. Despite the fact that I could totally wreck this cat's shit if we got into some fisticuffs I don't have the heart to do so. Today's little barfing act has proven to me that there is no level of depravity that Myrna will not stoop to. It was sort of like the scene in The Usual Suspects when Keyser Soze shoots his whole family. Today Myrna showed me what true will was and I am too terrified to ever close my eyes again.
Myrna is my girlfriend's cat. I'm very allergic to cats. This has been a little bit of a problem as I have been struggling to find medicine that does the trick so that I can breathe. I know that eventually I'll either just adapt or find the right medicine and it won't be a big deal. Unfortunately there isn't a medicine out there capable of curing my vast hatred for cats. To paraphrase the great philosopher Eric Cartman, I hate cats. I hate them so very, very much.
I could easily turn this blog post into a tired old dogs vs cats diatribe but what's the use? Some people have been brain washed into believing that cats are an acceptable companion and it's a waste of breath to try to convince them otherwise. I will address one common argument though. Very often a cat person will say the following: "Dogs are stupid and give affection to anyone for no reason. You have to earn the respect and affection of a cat and that's why they are intelligent little angels." Bullshit. The difference between cats and dogs in this department is that dogs aren't ill tempered assholes. Cats attempt to mindfuck you at all times. "Oh, you want to pet me? Even though having my belly scratched is the greatest thing in my pathetic feline existence I'm going to deny you the opportunity to shower me with pleasure simply because I can. This will make you want to pet me more and I'll keep playing hard to get. Until you are eating, then I will sit on your plate of food and demand affection." This is not showing superior intelligence as cat lover's would like you to believe. It's proof that cats are manipulative assholes hell bent on making you their slave.
Let's talk a little about Myrna specifically. She is a tiny little black cat, she was probably the runt of the litter. She's a rescue cat who was found in a crack house with a litter of kittens. After observing her for 30 seconds I came to the conclusion that she was a crack head, turns out she actually was. She's even missing some teeth because of her addiction to the rock. Or, you know, some other reason but I like to assume it's from sucking the glass pipe. In the middle of the night Myrna has what I refer to as "the midnight crazies." She will just run back and forth down the hall for no discernible reason. If she is caught in the act and you make any sort of movement toward her she absolutely loses her shit and starts running even faster. It's kind of endearing when it's not waking my ass up seconds after falling asleep.
The reason I'm writing about Myrna today is because she did such an adorable thing. She walked right up to me as I was sitting at the computer and rubbed against my leg. Then she barfed all over the floor. The barf was gross but was insignificant compared to the hacking sounds she made as she was doing it. Despite being the size of one of my slippers she was far louder than I have ever been even in my most violent Natty Light induced projectile heaves. I started to dry heave a little bit just from hearing the whole disgusting ordeal. Immediately after puking Myrna ran off to the other side of the house. The only reason she even came over to me was to barf in front of me. What kind of passive aggressive jerk stoops that low? I'm a wretched human being with minimal morals and I would never go up to someone, hug them, barf and run away. It takes a cold and calculating mind to perpetrate such a devious act.
Despite this act of pure evil I am coming to like the cat just a little bit. Oh, who am I kidding, I like Myrna BECAUSE she is capable of pure evil. Despite the fact that I could totally wreck this cat's shit if we got into some fisticuffs I don't have the heart to do so. Today's little barfing act has proven to me that there is no level of depravity that Myrna will not stoop to. It was sort of like the scene in The Usual Suspects when Keyser Soze shoots his whole family. Today Myrna showed me what true will was and I am too terrified to ever close my eyes again.
Monday, December 12, 2011
The lost art of competency
When I was growing up the local Lucky Supermarket mostly hired mentally challenged people to bag the groceries. It was one of the two jobs where mentally challenged employees were routinely seen, the other being working at McDonald's. This is still a fairly common practice although it seems to be less prevalent as it was in California. In all the years of having my groceries bagged by a mentally challenged fella I can count on one hand the number of times they screwed up. For the most part they have always done an excellent job; bags not too heavy, double bagged if even sort of heavy, heavy stuff on bottom, light things on top and food separated from hazardous things. I bring this up not to give kudos to baggers I have encountered in the past, although they do deserve a tip of the cap. No, I am discussing this because 94% of the time that I have had someone with an IQ in triple digits bag my groceries they have thoroughly failed at their job.
The Jewel that I frequent does not appear to employ anyone as baggers except for lazy ass teenagers and idiotic old women, so the success rate is hovering around 6%. Bagging groceries is not a difficult job. There are 4 or 5 things you need to do (listed above) and that's basically it. I admit that there is a small amount of skill involved; less than a cashier and more than a ditch digger. Other than being general manager of the Bears no job offers more job security for those who consistently blunder their few tasks.
I hate to bitch about such a trivial thing. Actually, that's a lie. I thrive on it. In actuality this isn't trivial, this shit is of the utmost importance. I have to walk 4-5 blocks and take the train after I go to the store. If the bags are overweight they break. Like they did on the bus today. Everything goes all over the damn place including an onion that rolled most of the way to the back (impressive!) and I have no other recourse but to shove everything from the broken bag into the other bags that are in just as much danger of breaking. So I get off the bus and what happens about 10 feet away? Another bag breaks. GODDAMNIT. About this time I'm running out of bags so I am forced to carry everything in my arms for the block until I get home. The incompetence of the moronic old woman that bagged my groceries turned my joyous trip to the store in to a throwdown war hell ride. If she put 1 less thing in each bag the problem is averted.
I know that I could be the guy who looks at her with eagle eyes as she bags everything so she doesn't fuck it up but I made the mistake of assuming that there would be at least a shred of competence in her pea brain. It seems that whenever I make that assumption it bites me in the ass. Is it too much to ask that people do a mediocre job? I'm not demanding A+ work here, I'd settle for C-. Instead every time I get treated to a showcase of ineptitude. If the moron who bagged my groceries tried to do the worst job possible I'm pretty sure my bags would finally be correctly packed. I can't imagine her being able to accomplish a single task she attempts, this woman is only capable of complete failure. She is the Marion Barber of Jewel employees.
I can't stress enough that this job is always done successfully by the mentally challenged. Why can't people who are blessed to not have a handicap accomplish this simple task? Using our good friend logic one should assume that they would do an even better job. Sadly we don't live on Vulcan and logic fails more often than not here. I don't know if it's laziness, lack of training, general idiocy or a combination of all three but something needs to be done about it. I say we start by going to the bagger's homes and packing all of their prized possessions into one flimsy plastic bag. Then we'll hold it off the top of a tall building and jostle it around for a while. When it breaks and all their precious valuables crash to the ground maybe they will learn a little something. If this fails I'm afraid we'll have to go directly to the Kornheiser solution: heads on pikes.
The Jewel that I frequent does not appear to employ anyone as baggers except for lazy ass teenagers and idiotic old women, so the success rate is hovering around 6%. Bagging groceries is not a difficult job. There are 4 or 5 things you need to do (listed above) and that's basically it. I admit that there is a small amount of skill involved; less than a cashier and more than a ditch digger. Other than being general manager of the Bears no job offers more job security for those who consistently blunder their few tasks.
I hate to bitch about such a trivial thing. Actually, that's a lie. I thrive on it. In actuality this isn't trivial, this shit is of the utmost importance. I have to walk 4-5 blocks and take the train after I go to the store. If the bags are overweight they break. Like they did on the bus today. Everything goes all over the damn place including an onion that rolled most of the way to the back (impressive!) and I have no other recourse but to shove everything from the broken bag into the other bags that are in just as much danger of breaking. So I get off the bus and what happens about 10 feet away? Another bag breaks. GODDAMNIT. About this time I'm running out of bags so I am forced to carry everything in my arms for the block until I get home. The incompetence of the moronic old woman that bagged my groceries turned my joyous trip to the store in to a throwdown war hell ride. If she put 1 less thing in each bag the problem is averted.
I know that I could be the guy who looks at her with eagle eyes as she bags everything so she doesn't fuck it up but I made the mistake of assuming that there would be at least a shred of competence in her pea brain. It seems that whenever I make that assumption it bites me in the ass. Is it too much to ask that people do a mediocre job? I'm not demanding A+ work here, I'd settle for C-. Instead every time I get treated to a showcase of ineptitude. If the moron who bagged my groceries tried to do the worst job possible I'm pretty sure my bags would finally be correctly packed. I can't imagine her being able to accomplish a single task she attempts, this woman is only capable of complete failure. She is the Marion Barber of Jewel employees.
I can't stress enough that this job is always done successfully by the mentally challenged. Why can't people who are blessed to not have a handicap accomplish this simple task? Using our good friend logic one should assume that they would do an even better job. Sadly we don't live on Vulcan and logic fails more often than not here. I don't know if it's laziness, lack of training, general idiocy or a combination of all three but something needs to be done about it. I say we start by going to the bagger's homes and packing all of their prized possessions into one flimsy plastic bag. Then we'll hold it off the top of a tall building and jostle it around for a while. When it breaks and all their precious valuables crash to the ground maybe they will learn a little something. If this fails I'm afraid we'll have to go directly to the Kornheiser solution: heads on pikes.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
You will get nothing and like it
Being homeless must be a horrible and hellish existence. As someone who has always had a roof over their head and a full (probably over full) belly it's hard for me to imagine what that life must be like. That's why I was dumbfounded when my delicious leftovers were taken and just as quickly discarded by a picky bum.
I was reminiscing about this the other night and it got my blood boiling all these months later. Here, let me paint the scene for you. I went out for fancy Indian food. It was fantastic and plentiful so I had a bag full of leftovers. As I was about to enter a drinking establishment to tie a few on a homeless man came up to me and asked for some change. I asked if he was hungry and if he wanted my leftovers. He gladly accepted. Before I gave them to him I warned him about what it was. "Dude, these are kinda weird. It's an Indian lamb curry and eggplant, I know it's an acquired taste, I can just give you a buck if you prefer," I explained. "Man, I'm hungry! Food is food," he responded. So it was with a tinge of regret that I handed my food over to him. I know, I'm a dick, but I love Indian food and that was going to be a damn delicious lunch the next day. I guarandamntee it would have tasted better than the shitty turkey sandwich I just finished. I walked into the bar and proceeded to drink my face off as I am wont to do.
A few hours later I exit and what do I see splattered all over the sidewalk? My leftovers. None were eaten, they were just tossed on the ground directly next to a garbage can. If they were thrown 2 inches to the left I wouldn't have noticed them and gone home thinking that I had done a good deed and feeling a little less guilty about the Malort and Pabst swilling around in my stomach. No, it couldn't be that easy. Instead I saw that my delectable lunch for the next day had been discarded by someone who promised me they needed food. I understand that this rant reeks of privilege but I don't care, I was rankled. No, it was more than that, I was super fly TNT pissed. I had acted out of the kindness of my heart to try and help this man, this man who said he wanted food more than money when offered, and he rubbed it right in my face that my help was not welcome. If he wanted money for drink or drugs it was offered, dammit. Instead I gave him a feast fit for a Raja and it was thrown on the ground.
I totally respect it when someone begs for change and turns down food, that's fine. Be honest about what you want and I'm not going to care. Hell, it works both ways. I remember a bum telling me he needed some cash to get drunk so I gave him a dollar or two. I then joked that I better not see him eating anything later in the night, he laughed and said he wouldn't waste money on food. See, I respect that. I don't want to be deceived, that's all. I still give away my leftovers from time to time, I figure it's the bare minimum I can do. But I'll be damned if I ever give away fine ass Rogan Josh ever again. If I ever wanted to prove to myself that I was a glutton who held a grudge I think this post will more than suffice, it's insane that my mind remembers things like this and not anything useful. Although I can name all the Czars of Russia in order so at least that is still lodged in there somewhere, which is nice.
In conclusion, to all of the homeless reading this on their laptops somewhere, please eat the really nice food I give you. Or at the very least hide it when you are disgusted by it. Thanks!
I was reminiscing about this the other night and it got my blood boiling all these months later. Here, let me paint the scene for you. I went out for fancy Indian food. It was fantastic and plentiful so I had a bag full of leftovers. As I was about to enter a drinking establishment to tie a few on a homeless man came up to me and asked for some change. I asked if he was hungry and if he wanted my leftovers. He gladly accepted. Before I gave them to him I warned him about what it was. "Dude, these are kinda weird. It's an Indian lamb curry and eggplant, I know it's an acquired taste, I can just give you a buck if you prefer," I explained. "Man, I'm hungry! Food is food," he responded. So it was with a tinge of regret that I handed my food over to him. I know, I'm a dick, but I love Indian food and that was going to be a damn delicious lunch the next day. I guarandamntee it would have tasted better than the shitty turkey sandwich I just finished. I walked into the bar and proceeded to drink my face off as I am wont to do.
A few hours later I exit and what do I see splattered all over the sidewalk? My leftovers. None were eaten, they were just tossed on the ground directly next to a garbage can. If they were thrown 2 inches to the left I wouldn't have noticed them and gone home thinking that I had done a good deed and feeling a little less guilty about the Malort and Pabst swilling around in my stomach. No, it couldn't be that easy. Instead I saw that my delectable lunch for the next day had been discarded by someone who promised me they needed food. I understand that this rant reeks of privilege but I don't care, I was rankled. No, it was more than that, I was super fly TNT pissed. I had acted out of the kindness of my heart to try and help this man, this man who said he wanted food more than money when offered, and he rubbed it right in my face that my help was not welcome. If he wanted money for drink or drugs it was offered, dammit. Instead I gave him a feast fit for a Raja and it was thrown on the ground.
I totally respect it when someone begs for change and turns down food, that's fine. Be honest about what you want and I'm not going to care. Hell, it works both ways. I remember a bum telling me he needed some cash to get drunk so I gave him a dollar or two. I then joked that I better not see him eating anything later in the night, he laughed and said he wouldn't waste money on food. See, I respect that. I don't want to be deceived, that's all. I still give away my leftovers from time to time, I figure it's the bare minimum I can do. But I'll be damned if I ever give away fine ass Rogan Josh ever again. If I ever wanted to prove to myself that I was a glutton who held a grudge I think this post will more than suffice, it's insane that my mind remembers things like this and not anything useful. Although I can name all the Czars of Russia in order so at least that is still lodged in there somewhere, which is nice.
In conclusion, to all of the homeless reading this on their laptops somewhere, please eat the really nice food I give you. Or at the very least hide it when you are disgusted by it. Thanks!
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
If you read any of the 48 million articles against the BCS make this one of them
When I started this blog I wanted to avoid complaining about the sort of things that everyone else complains about. You can go anywhere to hear someone bitch about traffic or the weather. I consider it a point of pride that this is the number one place on the web to hear complaints about folding women's underwear. Every once in a while something comes along that is so heinous that I can't help myself from jumping on the bandwagon and spewing hatred at a vastly popular target. So allow me to become one of the millions of other people to say that the BCS is the worst thing to happen to America since prohibition.
Since it's inception there are two things that the BCS has been enormously successful at; making money and pissing people off. Not a year has gone by where a significant number of college football fans haven't been screaming for the end of the BCS. For every time the BCS has gotten something right (the epic Texas/USC game for example) there are at least 5 blunders. A lot of fans believe that college football needs a playoff to decide a national champion and I'm sure they have many good points. Personally I don't feel this way, frankly I never saw that much of a problem with the old system. Most years there was a team that ended up being better than all of the others and voting on a national champion wasn't that difficult. (Assuming they win their bowl game, regardless of who it would have been against, this year's LSU would have been a unanimous champion) A playoff would be able to eliminate all of the ambiguity about who the best team in the country was, well, that is if the right teams were even allowed to compete in the playoff.
Here is where the hypocrisy of the BCS is most evident. Due to the conference tie ins they have always shunned teams not from one of the 6 BCS conferences, most notably Boise St. Schools like Boise don't have a prayer of playing in the championship game unless the are undefeated and frankly they probably won't make one of the lesser BCS bowls either. This year Boise went 11-1 and their only loss was to TCU in a game that went right down to the last play of the game, when Boise missed a 39 yard field goal. That's it. That's their season. They get the honor of playing a 6-6 Arizona State team in the Las Vegas Bowl. It doesn't matter that they went to a "neutral field" and throttled Georgia. (You can easily make the argument that his was a far better road victory than anything Alabama had) It didn't matter that TCU is a damn good team in their own right. Once Boise, Houston and TCU chalked one in the loss column their chances for playing in a BCS bowl were eliminated. Why would we expect anything different when a playoff is created?
Excluding smaller conference teams from the overall championship is shameful but good points can be made about the easier schedules they play and I'm willing to concede this. Although I do get sick of hearing about how great the SEC (pronounced ESSSS EEEEEEEEE SEEEEEEEEE!) is. Have you taken a look at the bottom of that conference? Kentucky, Ole Miss, Miss St and Tennessee were some of the worst teams in the entire country this year. I'm pretty sure Miss St would have only won 2 or 3 games in the WAC and I guarantee Mt Union would blow them off the field. I digress. The thing that I really hate about the BCS is how the smaller conference schools are kept out of all the BCS games. This despite non BCS schools having a 5-2 record in BCS games, which is a little misleading since Boise St and TCU played each other a few years back. I would like to think that there was some devious reason that these schools were kept out of these games, that there was a secret cabal working against them out of fear that if the Boise States of the world rose up their football dominance would wain. That's not the reason though, at least not the primary reason. It all comes down to money.
The BCS always says that it's about making the best games possible and that is an outright lie. If it was Houston and Boise would be playing in BCS bowls this year. Instead Va Tech and Michigan got at large bids. Are you kidding me? Michigan and Va Tech are fine teams but let's be honest they would get blown off the field by Boise St. Case Keenum and Houston would put up around 90 against Michigan's horrific defense. So if the teams aren't being chosen because of superiority on the field there is only one explanation, money. Va Tech and Michigan travel extremely well and have hordes of well to do fans who will spend loads of money at the bowls.
This is the root of what makes the BCS such a sham. The old bowl system never pretended to be about anything other than making money. At the end of the day if you thought BYU was still a great team despite them not being invited to a big money bowl like the Rose Bowl then it was no problem to still vote for them in the final poll. The BCS introduced itself as a solution to the problem of the best teams not playing each other because of bowl affiliations, the whole purpose was to get the best teams playing each other. Yet they decided to keep a system where excuses could be made to get the teams that would draw the most people and make the most money while selling it to the people as something completely different. Nothing has changed. If the name on the front of the jersey says USC or Alabama there is a vastly greater chance you will be playing in a BCS bowl than if it says TCU or if your turf is blue. And that's not right. The only chance a team like Boise has is to quit it's conference and go barn storming. Play 8 road games a year against SEC teams. Force them to no longer have the power to ignore you. Of course this would never happen even if Boise had the balls to do it, no one would schedule them. Those non conference games are already reserved for La Tech and the Citadel.
It's time we just blow up the whole BCS. I don't care if we revert to the old system or start a playoff, I'm just sick and goddamn tired of the hypocrisy.
PS - Oklahoma St was hosed. I wanted to get to this point but I've rambled long enough, Alabama had their chance against LSU at home and blew it.
Since it's inception there are two things that the BCS has been enormously successful at; making money and pissing people off. Not a year has gone by where a significant number of college football fans haven't been screaming for the end of the BCS. For every time the BCS has gotten something right (the epic Texas/USC game for example) there are at least 5 blunders. A lot of fans believe that college football needs a playoff to decide a national champion and I'm sure they have many good points. Personally I don't feel this way, frankly I never saw that much of a problem with the old system. Most years there was a team that ended up being better than all of the others and voting on a national champion wasn't that difficult. (Assuming they win their bowl game, regardless of who it would have been against, this year's LSU would have been a unanimous champion) A playoff would be able to eliminate all of the ambiguity about who the best team in the country was, well, that is if the right teams were even allowed to compete in the playoff.
Here is where the hypocrisy of the BCS is most evident. Due to the conference tie ins they have always shunned teams not from one of the 6 BCS conferences, most notably Boise St. Schools like Boise don't have a prayer of playing in the championship game unless the are undefeated and frankly they probably won't make one of the lesser BCS bowls either. This year Boise went 11-1 and their only loss was to TCU in a game that went right down to the last play of the game, when Boise missed a 39 yard field goal. That's it. That's their season. They get the honor of playing a 6-6 Arizona State team in the Las Vegas Bowl. It doesn't matter that they went to a "neutral field" and throttled Georgia. (You can easily make the argument that his was a far better road victory than anything Alabama had) It didn't matter that TCU is a damn good team in their own right. Once Boise, Houston and TCU chalked one in the loss column their chances for playing in a BCS bowl were eliminated. Why would we expect anything different when a playoff is created?
Excluding smaller conference teams from the overall championship is shameful but good points can be made about the easier schedules they play and I'm willing to concede this. Although I do get sick of hearing about how great the SEC (pronounced ESSSS EEEEEEEEE SEEEEEEEEE!) is. Have you taken a look at the bottom of that conference? Kentucky, Ole Miss, Miss St and Tennessee were some of the worst teams in the entire country this year. I'm pretty sure Miss St would have only won 2 or 3 games in the WAC and I guarantee Mt Union would blow them off the field. I digress. The thing that I really hate about the BCS is how the smaller conference schools are kept out of all the BCS games. This despite non BCS schools having a 5-2 record in BCS games, which is a little misleading since Boise St and TCU played each other a few years back. I would like to think that there was some devious reason that these schools were kept out of these games, that there was a secret cabal working against them out of fear that if the Boise States of the world rose up their football dominance would wain. That's not the reason though, at least not the primary reason. It all comes down to money.
The BCS always says that it's about making the best games possible and that is an outright lie. If it was Houston and Boise would be playing in BCS bowls this year. Instead Va Tech and Michigan got at large bids. Are you kidding me? Michigan and Va Tech are fine teams but let's be honest they would get blown off the field by Boise St. Case Keenum and Houston would put up around 90 against Michigan's horrific defense. So if the teams aren't being chosen because of superiority on the field there is only one explanation, money. Va Tech and Michigan travel extremely well and have hordes of well to do fans who will spend loads of money at the bowls.
This is the root of what makes the BCS such a sham. The old bowl system never pretended to be about anything other than making money. At the end of the day if you thought BYU was still a great team despite them not being invited to a big money bowl like the Rose Bowl then it was no problem to still vote for them in the final poll. The BCS introduced itself as a solution to the problem of the best teams not playing each other because of bowl affiliations, the whole purpose was to get the best teams playing each other. Yet they decided to keep a system where excuses could be made to get the teams that would draw the most people and make the most money while selling it to the people as something completely different. Nothing has changed. If the name on the front of the jersey says USC or Alabama there is a vastly greater chance you will be playing in a BCS bowl than if it says TCU or if your turf is blue. And that's not right. The only chance a team like Boise has is to quit it's conference and go barn storming. Play 8 road games a year against SEC teams. Force them to no longer have the power to ignore you. Of course this would never happen even if Boise had the balls to do it, no one would schedule them. Those non conference games are already reserved for La Tech and the Citadel.
It's time we just blow up the whole BCS. I don't care if we revert to the old system or start a playoff, I'm just sick and goddamn tired of the hypocrisy.
PS - Oklahoma St was hosed. I wanted to get to this point but I've rambled long enough, Alabama had their chance against LSU at home and blew it.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Oh great, I have bubonic plague
When the internet was a toddler a bunch of doctors go together and came up with a brilliant idea, WebMd. I figure that this website was created for two reasons. The first reason was to serve as a sort of yellow pages for doctors and for this it works perfectly well. The second and far more nefarious reason is that it was created in order to make people think that they have to go to the doctor because they are 10 to 15 minutes away from an abhorrent demise.
Admittedly I'm a little bit of a hypochondriac especially when I'm up in the middle of the night. Every time I find a potential medical problem I breathlessly type in WebMd and head to the symptom checker as fast as my mouse can carry me. I type in my ailments.
Small red sore.
Hurts.
On leg.
In a flash WebMd gives me a few potential ailments that match my symptoms; shingles, chicken pox, measles, herpes. Then at the very bottom of the list they have ingrown hair but of course I don't get that far because I have already completely lost my shit. I'm trying to figure out how the hell I got herpes despite not having sex with any thing in years. I start to try and pinpoint the blame on various friends of mine who have used my toilet. I plan how I'm going to break it to my parents that their son is a filthy degenerate and carrier of disease. I assume that I will never date again. I contemplate my life of complete hermitude (I'm pretty sure that's not a word, but it should be) now that I will be shunned by all of society for being infected. At no point do I stop to consider that the sore is on the outside of my thigh and obviously has a hair growing out of it, thus making it an ingrown hair. Why would I use simple logic in this situation when my computer has already told me that I am contaminated with herpes, measles, chicken pox, shingles, leprosy, and worse? COMPUTERS DON'T LIE.
This is what happens every time I go to WebMd. Any symptom I have instantly connects to the worst possible disease in my mind. Here are some possible diagnoses I have mistakenly made in the past.
Frequent Ear Infections = AIDS
Sore Arm = Heart Attack
Difficulty Sleeping = Lead Poisoning
Leg Swelling = Kidney Failure
Headache and Clumsiness = Brain Tumor
Of course the actual explanations were getting water in my ears, sleeping on my arm, drinking a pot of coffee at 7pm, a spider bite, and a hangover respectively. Yet I freaked out and assumed that I was on my last legs and about to keel over with some hideous ailment. I understand the usefulness of a site like WebMd but for me it is the root of all evil. Well, maybe not that bad, but I really should put a parental block on it to save me the anxiety. Life was so much easier back before the internet, I want to go back to the dark days. I don't mind the shame of buying pornography in public or the hassle of having to use a map. Of course I would have to print out copies of this blog and send them to you using snail mail and we all know that I would be too lazy to do that. And without this blog the world wouldn't know what a brilliant and gorgeous individual I am and my ego would shrink, I can't go back to that. Counting page hits is all that holds my self esteem together and I can't live without it! I guess I'll just continue to assume that the little tickle in my throat is the first sign of Ebola, I hope some of you will visit me when I'm in contamination. Cough cough. . .
Admittedly I'm a little bit of a hypochondriac especially when I'm up in the middle of the night. Every time I find a potential medical problem I breathlessly type in WebMd and head to the symptom checker as fast as my mouse can carry me. I type in my ailments.
Small red sore.
Hurts.
On leg.
In a flash WebMd gives me a few potential ailments that match my symptoms; shingles, chicken pox, measles, herpes. Then at the very bottom of the list they have ingrown hair but of course I don't get that far because I have already completely lost my shit. I'm trying to figure out how the hell I got herpes despite not having sex with any thing in years. I start to try and pinpoint the blame on various friends of mine who have used my toilet. I plan how I'm going to break it to my parents that their son is a filthy degenerate and carrier of disease. I assume that I will never date again. I contemplate my life of complete hermitude (I'm pretty sure that's not a word, but it should be) now that I will be shunned by all of society for being infected. At no point do I stop to consider that the sore is on the outside of my thigh and obviously has a hair growing out of it, thus making it an ingrown hair. Why would I use simple logic in this situation when my computer has already told me that I am contaminated with herpes, measles, chicken pox, shingles, leprosy, and worse? COMPUTERS DON'T LIE.
This is what happens every time I go to WebMd. Any symptom I have instantly connects to the worst possible disease in my mind. Here are some possible diagnoses I have mistakenly made in the past.
Frequent Ear Infections = AIDS
Sore Arm = Heart Attack
Difficulty Sleeping = Lead Poisoning
Leg Swelling = Kidney Failure
Headache and Clumsiness = Brain Tumor
Of course the actual explanations were getting water in my ears, sleeping on my arm, drinking a pot of coffee at 7pm, a spider bite, and a hangover respectively. Yet I freaked out and assumed that I was on my last legs and about to keel over with some hideous ailment. I understand the usefulness of a site like WebMd but for me it is the root of all evil. Well, maybe not that bad, but I really should put a parental block on it to save me the anxiety. Life was so much easier back before the internet, I want to go back to the dark days. I don't mind the shame of buying pornography in public or the hassle of having to use a map. Of course I would have to print out copies of this blog and send them to you using snail mail and we all know that I would be too lazy to do that. And without this blog the world wouldn't know what a brilliant and gorgeous individual I am and my ego would shrink, I can't go back to that. Counting page hits is all that holds my self esteem together and I can't live without it! I guess I'll just continue to assume that the little tickle in my throat is the first sign of Ebola, I hope some of you will visit me when I'm in contamination. Cough cough. . .
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