A Poke in the Eye

2015-10-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

Trumpitis is a Real Sickness

There’s a new sickness in town and it’s called Trumpitis. It is comorbid with OWPS, Old-ass White People Syndrome. The symptoms include extreme denial, high blood pressure and racing pulse. Patients are predominantly white, over 50 and really fucking grouchy. This syndrome works by enlarging the Amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for emotion, and making it self-aware. The Amygdala then takes over the brain, overriding the ability of the patient to process information.

Trumpitis affects selective audial processing as well as vocalization and

Policy is Hard Y'all

cognition. The auditory cortex experiences a reduced ability to hear and process points of view that differ from one’s own. The hearing mechanism itself is not affected, but the auditory cortex s blocked by signals emanating from deep inside the brain. The Amygdala screens for key words such as “compassion” or “fairness” and blocks those signals from being processed by the brain. Conversely, phrases such as “send them all home” “Muslims are evil” and “Obama is a Socialist” pass unmolested. Also, Benghazi.

Trumpitis also causes the volume of the voice to increase to uncomfortable levels. This is known as “shoutiness.” This shoutiness drowns out everything and everyone within earshot. When the afflicted person believes they are losing an argument, or the cerebral cortex cannot process and argument, the brain issues a retort, typically a non-sequitur, at a massive sonic volume. The syndrome tricks the brain into thinking that the volume of the voice is more important than the

You go girlfriend!

words being said.

There is no cure for Trumptitis. Whereas many other Socially Transmitted Diseases can be cured through education, this disease causes a patient to eschew science or reason, and to consider any academic to be a pointy-headed leftist homo-monkey. Sadly, if left unchecked Trumpitis can spread globally. Unlike Putinosis, Trumpitis is airborne and non-specific in it’s propagation.

To stop its spread, we must be vigilant no matter your party affiliation. Every time someone tells you a “fact” you must counter with the real fact. Show them the science. Show them the Trump bankruptcy filings. Talk about how character counts and then count the number of wives Trump has had. It’s up to us.

On mobile phones in bathrooms

2015-10-13T07:21:00.001-07:00

According to Toynbee, civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. That being the case, the guy in the toilet stall talking on his phone is slowly slitting society’s wrists. Why on Earth does one feel the need to discuss matters of importance during a time of importance? Like texting while driving, it is impossible to accomplish either action well. The bathroom is as sacred a space as any cathedral. Eliade claimed that when one walked through the door of a church, the door become a portal dividing the world of the sacred from the profane. The bathroom is a cathedral, a place for contemplation and personal movements. It is not a conference room, nor a place to take conference calls. Yet there my coworker sits (I assume) babbling away to his wife about something completely banal. I personally do not want you to answer my call if you are indisposed in this manner. LET IT GO TO VOICE MAIL! I’ll harbor no hard feelings even if I am dying in a gutter somewhere. When Lucifer greets me with an Old Fashioned, I’ll tell him the story. I think he’ll back me up on this.

Your phone is nasty!

At the risk of sounding like Larry David, there are rules in a bathroom. You don’t talk to someone while standing at a urinal unless it is a carryover of a discussion that started beyond the door. You don’t start conversations with strangers no matter your level of inebriation. If there are three urinals and all are available, you must choose on the outside in order to preserve the “urinal buffer.” Always preserve the urinal buffer! Refrain from checking out another man’s junk. Conversely, do not show off you’re junk. It’s unseemly and eventually someone will have a much larger penis and embarrass you.

You do not speak to anyone in the stalls. Ever. The stalls are akin to a Confessional - an anonymous space for unburdening one’s self from secrets. As in the Confessional, the various sounds and smells emanating from that area are meant to be anonymous. While in the stall, you should never touch your phone. Never ever. That thing is nasty! If you’re not going to wash or disinfect your phone after you leave the stall, then don’t get on it. Most mobile phones are awash with bacteria including e.coli. You’re not going to miss anything while you’re in there. I know it can be boring, but a Hippie nutritionist once told me: “If you have time enough to read the paper, you need more fiber.”

America's Masculinity Crisis

2015-08-07T08:46:00.001-07:00

I'm not the most macho dude out there, I'll admit it. I've tried, but at 5'6" and 175lbs, I cut a more compact athletic figure than that of your typical white male. I grew up in a town where the worst epithet anyone could hurl at you was fag. It was the kind of town where being a good fighter was revered more than being the quarterback of the football team. No one wanted to fight me, I was a science nerd, band geek and drama jock, so kicking my ass would be akin to hunting three-legged sheep. That doesn't mean I didn't sleep with one eye open so to speak.

I thought that life after high school would be different, that once we age, we would mellow. Oh how I was wrong. The White America Male (WAM) has actually regressed to a point of silly macho viciousness. Challenged in his exalted place by women, minorities, homosexuals and other formerly marginalized exotica, he seeks out a new definition of masculinity based in old myths and half-truths. Those mythical tenets now guide their lives and actions contributing to a toxic stew of resentment, pettiness and downright hate.

I've observed that the new macho dude falls into one of three categories; the Tough Guy (TG); the Westerner (W) and the Southern Fried Redneck (SFR.) While each archetype is influenced by regional differences, you can find any of these creatures in any part of the country, or the world for that matter.

What are you lookin' at?

The Tough Guy's range encompasses the Noretheastern US, south to Baltimore, west across Chicago and to Omaha and as far south as Kansas City. The TG is a mix of street tough attitude, flinty and squinty stares and itchiness. He parses every glance and eye contact and is willing to fight at the drop of a hat. Look at him the wrong way and he's ready to throw down. Alcohol only exacerbates the problem. For the Tough Guy, life is a series of dog eat dog encounters and compromise is appeasement. TG's believe might makes right and that proclaiming any sort of sensitivity or empathy is tantamount to being a fag. Why you might as well be Caitlyn Jenner if that is the case.

The Westerner's range spreads across the western US from Omaha to Spokane, down the eastern side of the pacific Northwest and California across Arizona and New Mexico to West Texas. The Westerner is a hard scrabble man, who loves Jesus (although he hasn't read the bible) fears God and believes that America is under attack from a secret Muslim Fifth Column. To them, Obama in the White House is a clear sign of the end of times, and that America will be the only country God will allow to survive. They base their beliefs in a weird Christianity where Jesus doesn't turn the other cheek, he pulls out a Kimber .45 and blasts away. He's highly suspicious of anyone that isn't white or may be perceived as "different." The Westerner believes that anyone can pull them selves up through hard work and that the government only reinforces bad choices by providing any type of safety net. Also, the government is a Zionist plot.

PTL and pass the ammo

Finally, the archetype that is sweeping the country is the Southern Fired Redneck. Typified by maroons such as Toby Keith, Charlie Daniels and Mike Huckabee, the SFR portrays the most flamboyant form of macho this side of the Village People. Until recently, the range of the SFR was bounded by the South and Texas. Currently, the SFR can be found anywhere. They are easily recognized in their jacked up trucks with various stickers on the back proclaiming their hatred for the government, Obama, welfare, and love of hunting. They sport their goatees and baseball caps advertising their favorite gun brand, along with their ballistically impenetrable wraparound shades. They're a paranoid lot who see"threats' around every corner and believe America is the chosen land of God that was founded on the Bible and that Jesus was an American. They hold Red Dawn-based dreams of an invasion by Muslims or FEMA so that they can yell "Wolverines" and repel the invaders like their forefathers.

For all of these archetypes, talk is cheap and thinking is for pussies, action is where it's at. They like strong forceful leaders who don't hesitate to use violence to fix a problem. They hold diametrically opposed views that when highlighted are dismissed with "that's your truth." In short, they are a bundle of ignorant, ill-informed contradictions and I fear it will only get worse.

You're doing it Wrong

2015-07-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

In the past several years, the web had been flooded with badly written articles proclaiming “(X): You’re doing it wrong” where (X) can be as simple as ironing a shirt, making a root beer float, slicing a mango, picking your nose, etc. It’s as annoying as its insipid cousin: “hacks for making something or other better.” Americans are completely obsessed with optimizing everything we do. So much so, that we’re willing to shame other people for not doing it right.

A friend’s recent vacation Facebook post showed a plate of fried fish with a caption declaring he had caught the fish himself earlier that day. More than one commenter exclaimed that it was a “sin” to have fried it. Of course others piled on with recipes and “hacks” for making it perfect. My friend finally explained that the fish was so small it could only serve as an appetizer, therefore frying was the best option. His wife, who does not suffer fools, joined in by calling them snobs. This is exactly what I mean. You can’t do anything these days without some big-nosed asshat telling you that you need to do it differently. Everyone has an opinion and Google has made everyone an expert. But if I don’t ask for your opinion, please don’t offer it.

Do you like coffee? I like coffee, a lot, and I like to make it in a Chemex? Is it because it makes perfect coffee? No, it’s because it’s easy to use, gets me away from my desk, and looks cool. Besides I’ve lusted after one since I was ten years old. One guy told me I needed to use a specific boiling kettle for my Chemex. Fuck that. There’s a hot water spigot on the coffee maker which is filtered. I told him that at home I use a percolator. He then scolded me for that since the

She'd grow a beard if she could

percolator “boils the coffee.” Let me tell you something. I worked at Starbucks, so I know a little about coffee, and I know a lot about bad coffee. I’ve yet to have a shitty cup come out of my vintage 1960s percolator. I care very much about the taste of my coffee, but don’t give a fuck how it is made. Since I started using the Chemex at work, a lot of others have started as well. Why? Because they saw that it can be used as a tool in a totally non-pretentious way. They didn’t have to grind it and brew it over a scale like the bearded pretentious fuckwads you see on the web. You know, the hipster shitbirds who spend hours online arguing about infinitesimal details that make Aquinas and Duns Scotus look like punters. They take an ordinary object, reify it, then build an entire canon around it’s use.

With the advent of the Interwebs, the trivial has become the commonplace. So many people have now glommed onto these consumer cults where they have to know everything about a very specific thing. Some call it “nerding out” I call it folly. It’s as if the world now suffers from a collective form of Asperger’s. There’s a forum dedicated to just about anything you can think of. Do you like to shave with a traditional razor? There’s a forum for that. They’ll even berate you for not mixing your own pre-shave oil and lack of straight razor.

The most obnoxious aspect of these forums is the signature of the poster. They feel they have to put everything pertinent in that tag line. Motorcycle forum posters give you the greatest of detail on their motor, brakes, intake, suspension etc, in their tagline. Then they spend precious time debating the merits of permutations of parts and geegaws. They no longer experience life IRL, they do it vicariously, so afraid to make a mistake. Even on cancer survivor forums. You’ll find people that list their ailment, treatment protocols and stuff in their signature like the specs of a musclecar.

Offering your opinion in this manner is a smug assertion that you’re sooooo much better. I should know, since I used to do it and I was an asshole. I wasn’t giving people advice or helping them, I was offering my opinion. If I thought the cigar you were smoking or the whiskey you were drinking wasn’t up to par, I’d tell you; usually with a scrunched up judgmental face. The Interwebs are pretty much my old personality with a bullhorn. It’s no wonder we’re a nation paralyzed by anxiety. Everybody is a fucking critic/expert on everything. And worse yet, they contradict themselves. Once piece of clickbait tells me not to rinse my dishes before putting them into the dishwasher, and then another tells me why I should. It’s a 24/7/365 sausage grinder than churns out nothing but misinformation and anxiety. A constant shitshow of judgement, from both sides of the fence.

Fuck it, let’s eat cake.

Jew is not a verb

2012-11-30T09:53:00.000-08:00

I've never been easily offended. Growing up I adhered to the old adage regarding sticks and stones. I've been called every name in the book and then some. Because I stood only 5’6” at most, wore glasses and was smarter than most everyone else (not bragging, simple fact) I endured a lot of taunts. There were the usual epithets such as four-eyes, shorty, little man, asshole, dick, etc. Along with that I heard queer and faggot, a favorite catch all in my shitty town for anyone that didn't adhere to the rigid white trash customs that seemed to abound. I heard others utter the usual racial slurs and always dismissed the speaker as being ignorant. In the words of the immortal Honey Badger, I don’t give a fuck.

I myself never used the word “Nigger." I had black friends in high school and have black coworkers and acquaintances. If I had ever used that word, my father and mother would have smacked me and would have been embarrassed to be seen with me. Using any of those words was seen as a sign of being poorly educated. (My parents are embarrassed enough by my prodigious employment of profane language.)

You see, my father is a Jew, and while technically that doesn't make me Jewish, being Jewish is more than a religion. I consider myself an ethnic Jew, much as some of my friends consider themselves to be Mexican even though their families have resided in this country for 150 years or more. And while I've never been sensitive about any other aspect of my life, I find myself being sensitive to the use of the word Jew as a verb. I rarely heard it growing up but I've heard it a lot in the past ten years. When it happens I don’t say anything I just stand there silently. At some point, though I work into the conversation that I am a Jew and let it go. I don’t know why I don’t just jump at them and punch them in the face, or at least defend my identity.

I just don’t know.

There's a HUGE chunk of hypocrisy when someone uses the term Jew as a verb. If a Christian does it, they are considered a "hard bargainer" or "shrewd businessman." But, if anyone with a last name that ends in -witz, -stein or -blatt does it, their a cheap Jew. Christians are frugal, Jews are cheap. In reality, my business dealings with Christians here in Texas make me avoid anyone with a fish symbol in their ad.

Bonus if you remember this cover

There can be only two reasons why anyone uses this term, or any other ethnic slur; naivete or ignorance. There’s a fine line between the two. Naivete is reserved for those who grew up without knowing any Jews, those who received a transmission from their parents, who probably didn't know any Jews either…at least they thought they didn't know any. Jews aren't always recognizable, especially those outside of the Northeast. There is no Jewish rock station, although many of the best rock and rollers are Jews (Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Slash, Gene Simmons.) Not every Jew is named Epstein, has curly hair and big ears. Jews don’t typically run around proclaiming their faith and trying to convert everyone. After all, who wants to be a part of a group that has been hated for 2000 years? Naivete, to some point, can be forgiven. Ignorance on the other hand…

Everyone knows that Jewish comedians
pull the levers that run the world

Ignorance is the ability to look at the elephant in the room and call it a giraffe.

Ignorance occurs when someone should know better, and should be able to discriminate between utter bullshit and the truth. Ignorance is looking the truth in the face and still denying it. (Please don’t start debating me on the subjectivity of truth; it’s too early for a Platonic dialogue.) Ignorance is for the uneducated and the closed minded. One would think that it is reserved for those who blindly believe what they are told in order to shift the blame for their laziness elsewhere. I was taught to believe that ignorance is not for the educated, or is it?

Two days ago my wife and I were talking with a person we both know fairly well. She is white, upper middle class, works a corporate job – the very epitome of a mother, etc. In the course of our conversation she asked if someone “Jewed us down.” I had no idea what to say. My wife told me that the remark elicited a rather uncomfortable pause and then the conversation went on. I didn't know what to say. I seriously doubt this woman have used the word Nigger in a sentence in front of a black person. Or Wetback in front of our Hispanic neighbors. But here she was using the only phrase that pisses me off. Although I’m not black, I can relate to what Dave Chapelle says:

Most Jews I know go out of their way to disprove this stereotype. They overtip so as not to look cheap. I've done this myself and been questioned for it.

“Hey Ryan, you gave that waiter a 20% tip on the meal!”

“Yeah, um they work hard.”

“But he kicked you in the balls!”

I don’t come from a wealthy family. Not all Jews are wealthy doctors or lawyers or financiers - don't believe all the bullshit on the Internet. My father was an MBA in steel-toed boots. He spent his life working outdoors running scrapyards. He was (and still is) a though motherfucker who spent his days in the freezing cold and the burning heat surrounding by mud, dirt and rusting steel. He could never get all the grease and grime from under his fingernails and his favorite overalls were practically flammable from all the oil and grease. His crews comprised blacks, whites and Latinos, and he didn't care what you were as long as you got the job done. I think am bothered by this because it is disrespectful to my old man. Maybe I’m actually disappointed that people still use this old trope, but it latter makes no sense since I don’t hold people in general in high regard, so I am left only with this as a sign of disrespect.

So from now on I will treat it as such.

E-cards suck!

2012-11-26T06:54:00.001-08:00

God! I hate E-cards. Not the fun ones like Hoops and Yoyo, I’m talking about the ones with the vintage illustration and the lame attempt at a witty bon mot that usually ends in “fuck you.” These things are everywhere and they are clogging up my Facebook feed. The problem is that one person likes it and then they share it and then I’ve got three or four copies of the same thing in my feed. These cards are nothing more than electronic gonorrhea masquerading as wit -- an attempt to channel Oscar Wilde’s spirit into a rationalization for being a narcissistic asshole.

While Dorothy Parker famously said:” if you can’t say anything nice, sit next to me,” the new maxim could be, if you want to couch your hatred for your kids, write an e-card. They’re hackneyed and annoying and I seriously doubt Oscar Wilde would approve. Does he even have a Facebook page?

Gift buying tips for the man in your life

2012-11-24T19:24:00.000-08:00

I was looking over the demographics of my facebook page and noticed that many of my followers are of the female persuasion, and since it’s the time of year when we buy each other presents and pretend we like everyone through a booze-induced haze, I thought I would share some tips for buying gifts for the man in your life.

Before we start with the list, let me give you the main tip; ASK THEM SPECIFICALLY WHAT THEY WANT. Women want men to find a gift for them based on all the hints they drop throughout the year, but men don’t really give a rat's ass.. I know it’s completely unromantic, but that’s just the way it is. So with that in mind, here’s a gift buying guide to help you get through the holidays.

Tools

Thanks Bob...Asshole

Men think they can fix anything if they have the right tool. I call it Bob Villa Syndrome. Their wives ask them to do something they saw on HGTV and the guy thinks “hey I can do that!” They don’t realize that the 30 minute show where Norm builds a Craftsman style desk with hidden compartments, actually took 400 hours and a huge workshop to build. They think, if that guy can do it, surely a smart guy like me can do it. Many a divorce has started this way.

My father is much older and grew up in time when you fixed things rather than throw them out, and he taught me to fix a lot of different things. In reality though, most men can’t fix much. It’s not their fault, their father’s didn’t fix much either. Either they didn’t have time, or didn’t care to bother with it. These sons of suburbia compensate by buying tools -- tools that sit around and gather dust.

There are still some men who make their living with tools. If your man is constantly working on something, and he asks for a tool, he means it. However, if he’s not mechanically inclined and asks for a tool, buy him something innocuous. If he asks for a compound power miter box so that he can build a piece of furniture, and he has no skills whatsoever, buy him a set of calipers. They’re bad ass, useful and he can’t fuck anything up with them or cut off a finger. The paradox is that he will be disappointed and his manly pride will be hurt.

Actually, don’t buy him tools.

Electronics

Electronics are at the top of many men’s lists, but be forewarned, the man who wants a gadget, wants THE GADGET. For example, I have a friend, we’ll call him Inspector Gadget. The Inspector knows exactly which gadget he wants down to the model number and he has thoroughly researched the pros and cons as well as looked at all the reviews. He has tabulated the reviews and the meta-reviews and through careful thought he has decided. His research is so detailed, the CIA wishes they could hire him.

This club got five stars on Amazon

Men will spend an inordinate amount of time seeking the best gadget at the best price. I believe it goes back to our Neolithic ancestors. Before the hunt, certain men would go out and scout the herd of mammoths in order to find the closest one with the most meat. They will then return to the camp and debate the pros and cons, rating each mammoth based on a five-spear system. Then they will steel themselves for the hunt. Modern man scouts his electronic mammoths via the Intertubes and uses his debit weapon to bring home the quarry. On second thought, don’t buy him electronics.

Motorcycle or Car Parts

If the man in your life is a hot rod or chopper guy, parts make a great gift. Keep it simple though ladies. Unfortunately no one has learned how to bottle the aroma of burning nitromethane, and I’m not certain any of you want to smell in on your man. Any garage builder worth his salt is probably asking for something very specific, so try for something in between. If he drives a slammed 32 rat rod and asks for some high performance Edelbrock cylinder heads along with a valve job to fit his oversize valves, buy him a shrunken head. If he has a Harley chopper and he wants an S&S sidewinder kit to boost his motor to 110, buy him some new footpegs. He won’t be disappointed and you won’t have to learn an entirely new language.

If that fails buy him a tool. This is the guy who can actually use them.

Cured Meats

Nothing says love like cured meats. Men love this stuff as much as they love sex and football. If they could figure out how to screw while watching the game and munching on a plate of thinly sliced charcuterie, they would. But don’t go running down to Hickory Farms to buy them a nasty ass beef stick. There are plenty of independent meat purveyors like Sausage World or Bier-Kamp on the web who use only the finest meats to make their delightful comestibles.

Pick up an assortment for the man in your life or subscribe to a meat of the month club. If your man is a Member of the Tribe, forgo this and go for the liquor.

Liquor

Liquor is always welcome, especially if it is a special bottle. I can remember that my dad always gave and received liquor, especially amongst his male friends. Every year we got one of those hideous Jim Beam hunting decanters, along with other bottles of BROWN liquor. The decanters would sit on the shelf all year and slowly drain until the following year when the stock would be replenished. For, men there are only a few acceptable liquors to give and they are mostly brown. There are only three acceptable white spirits to give, Gin, Tequila and Moonshine. Although I loathe Tequila, I have added to the list to accommodate my Latino friends. I personally enjoy a glass of good gin (rocks, twist of lime) but my main love is bourbon.

Why God, Why?

Vodka is nothing more than a conveyance for other flavors In the same way toast is just a delivery system for butter. Brown liquors being Scotch or Bourbon. A fifteen year old scotch or bottle of top shelf bourbon says “I respect your manliness.” This advice goes when buying liquor for your “gay bestie” too. Don’t assume because a man prefers the company of men, he will actually enjoy a bottle of whipped cream vodka. In either case, if you haven’t seen them order a drink, then a nice bottle of red wine will do, like an old vine Zin.

Guns

A great gift, but unfortunately you can’t buy a handgun for another person. It’s a shame, really, because nothing says “Merry Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/Diwali” like a Kimber Pro Carry .45 auto.

Knives

Every man should carry a knife. My dad did and most of my co-workers and friends do. It’s not for protection although it can handle that in a pinch, it’s for useful things like opening those plastic packages that stuff comes in. You know, the stuff that feels like it’s been arc welded over top of crazy glue. A good folding knife will go through stuff like Lindsay Lohan at a coke party, and the great thing about knives is that they come in all different sizes and price points. You can spend a money on a Kershaw model from Ken Onion, or buy a nice Gerber parafolder like the one I carry.

Bonus: Knives are something that you can buy him every year. It’s a twofer!

So ladies, if you're still in a quandary about a gift for your man, drop me a line on my Facebook page and Ill try to give you some advice. But don't act surprised if I suggest a gift card. After all, I am a man.

On Sentimentalism

2012-10-05T08:26:00.003-07:00

Every day I ride past a fire station with a large flagpole outside, and more often than not, the flags are at half-staff. What used to be reserved for heads of state and people who actually made a difference like Neil Armstrong is now used for people like Michael Jackson. A meaningless, hollow tribute with as much societal impact as the white crosses that mark the point on the road where someone died. More and more those flags bifurcate the poles on which they fly, and I have to search my mind for a reason.

Half-Staff? Really?

“Who died?” I say to myself.

America has become a nation of weepers. We cry at the drop of a hat anytime a sad emotion rears its head. The tears well, right on cue, when the music begins to swell and the manufactured scene of the down-on-his-luck immigrant working for chump change gets a petty scholarship from his white millionaire boss to attend university. We cry for all of those who died in the massacre of the week, even though we didn’t know them. What used to be a proud, stoic nation has become a nation of emotional, simpering buffoons.

Mourning is now a spectator sport and the period goes on longer than siting Shiva. I first noticed this upon the death of Princess Diana. People the world over, and people I knew, were devastated at her death. It’s as if Christ had returned only to be hit by a Guiness truck. The flowers, the adoration the outward mourning for someone so completely disconnected from the everyday life of her followers… it was odd and amazing. After that, I started to notice the candlelight vigils and the pop-up shrines for everyone from gunshot victims, shaken babies and others, many of whom died violently. When 9/11 hit, the cult of mourning became mainstream. For several years, it seemed that no program on NBC would go by without mentioning 9/11. The cult of mourning later morphed into a cult of Heroism and Jingoism , but that can wait until later.

We now wear all kinds of ephemera dedicated to someone or something to show our sentimentalism. The highways are littered with white crosses and we make sure we mark the anniversary of every little sad thing (especially if it happens in New York). Like the English of the Victorian era, we have developed a new set of elaborate rituals and memento mori so that we never forget. We romanticize certain deaths and bring in the old cant of the good death. Unfortunately this clinging sentiment doesn’t serve our best interests.

Hello, I'm a fucking idjit!

Sentimentalism is about more than death. It’s about not living life. Sentimentalism chains us to a rock of sentiment and emotion we drag behind us. We no longer look to reason to solve our problems, we look at our feelings. We seek out grief counselors for the most tangential of accidents. We call the pastor whenever we have a sad thought. Sentimentalism supports the phantasms of modern life. It creates a world where the helpless individual manipulated by the Gods is celebrated. Sentimentalism is Forrest Gump, the celebration of heart over stupidity. (Let’s face it, the guy was as dumb as a bag of hammers, yet he was celebrated for his plain speaking wisdom.) Sentimentalism mistakes ignorance for folk wisdom and elevates it to a level of pure reason.

Sentimentalism is easy. It allows us to feel the edges of our mortal coil. It provides a weird comfort knowing that someone else is dead and not us. The whole concept is about losing control and letting go.

I’m not saying that all emotions are bad, I’m merely saying that the extreme to which this has gone is counterproductive. In my mind, the ability to compartmentalize and prioritize our emotions has been just as important to the West’s success as the Protestant Work Ethic. You can’t run a country based on emotions, and unfortunately that’s where we are headed.

Kim Kartrashian Has Brain Cancer

2012-09-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

Kim Kardashain never fails to put her giant foot in that huge Kanye-fellating piehole she calls a mouth. Here's a quote from Ms.Kartrashian about how hard it is to be her because of her TV marriage.

"... I think that, with any decisions in life,like, I spoke to a girl today who had cancer and we were talking about how this is such a hard thing for her, but it taught her a big lesson on who her friends are and so much about life. She's 18. And I was like, that's how I feel."

DAYUM!
Baby's got back 40

Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Let me get this straight. You married some giant doofus on the teevee, got paid millions for it, copped a shitload of prezzies (which are probably in a storage shed in the Valley) and are telling me that it is just like cancer? Wow that's fucked up.

My memory of my bout with Hodgkins Lymphoma at age seventeen goes something like this: Needles in arms, blood drawn each week, throwing up, radiation sickness, saliva the consistency of glue, throwing up, head colds that can kill you, forearms like Popeye's from edemic swelling, not growing at all after chemo, being sterile, cardiac stent due to radiation after effects and more throwing up.

I fucking hate these things

I cannot recall a time during my year of living nauseatingly where I was showered with gifts for marrying Sasquatch and made my living from allowing a second rate rapper buttfuck me. Again, I cannot recall any lavish ceremonies, or food, (although I would have probably puked it up anyway) proffered to me by the Elfin Sorceress of Seacrest. Nor do I recall any camera people following me around the hospital while I talked with other kids who sometimes never made it past six years old. Maybe the chemo has left my memory hazy, it's another wonderful after effect of chemo. Your memory seems to be fine, however and here you are talking about how your marriage is just like cancer. It is not.

However, you are the cancer. You're nothing more than a glob of mutated cells feeding off the attention given to you by unknowing adolescents, knowing but ignorant adults, and an industry of sycophants who await with (mastur)bated breath the booming swoosh of your thundering thighs. And like a cancer you've metastasized throughout society infecting every possible media outlet and insinuating yourself into the lives of the innocents. And like a cancer, you make me want to puke!

We're All Doomed

2012-08-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

It’s been awhile since my last entry because I’ve had a tough time finding things that piss me off.

Scratch that.

There are so many things that are pissing me off, that I have to mitigate them a bit, lest the Missus get sick of my bullshit.

I told myself I would try to make this blog apolitical, but asking that is like asking me to stop eating cookies. I love cookies. Cookie monster ain’t got nothin’ on me. I love talking shit about politics, it’s practically a family sport. When my family gets together it’s like a bunch of Rabbis arguing over the Talmud or bunch of bears fighting over a fish. Sometimes we argue from a point of view that isn’t our own, just to make it interesting.

So, you ask, what is bothering me today? I’ll tell you what churns my gullet and chaps my hide; the elections. I’m sick of them already. To me, it’s just two different flavors of the same shit.

“Would you like peach flavored shit or strawberry flavored shit?”

No matter how you flavor it, it’s the same old shit. Faecal matter by any other name should smell so bad.

While I’m sincerely disgusted by the rhetoric from both parties, I’m even more disgusted by the ignorance of the American populace. Those who know me, know this is a recurring theme in my work. I make no bones about my misanthropic bent; as a matter of fact I wear it like a badge of honor. I am never surprised by the stupidity and ignorance that flows from the pieholes of the bipedal cattle that inhabit this country; yet every time a spokesperson for the genetically damaged opens their mouth I act as if this is something new, as if this utterance has shattered my entire worldview.

She ate the Ubermensch

Every year, it seems the electorate becomes dumber and dumber, and worse yet, we celebrate the stupidity and ignorance of the common man. Americans laud the supposedly wise, sagacious everyman, who knows the world through an innate lens of practicality, who stands in opposition to the effete intellectual who processes the world through theory and method. The common man is born with an innate sense of right. His moral compass is installed by God at birth, he does not spend time in the impractical pursuit of thinking, he is about action!

Practicality is valued more than intellect. Practicality is “useful” whereas intellect is daydreaming and theory. Practical knowledge is conflated with applied knowledge.

By nature some people are more easily manipulated than others. Those that wield the Noble Lie know that it is a weapon that works best on those that are frightened and dumb. Like the animals that cower at the sound of thunder, or Unfrozen Caveman Lawyers. The wielders of such power rely on the ignorance of the masses. The hatred of intellectual life or book larnin’ gives the Liar the medium in which the lie will grow. Ignorance is the Agar in the petri dish of mass opinion, it feeds and strengthens the lie allowing it grow and spread. The Lie is an infection of the mind spread through close contact. The lie mutates like a virus, modifying its genetic makeup to better suit the host.

The only way to kill the virus is through intellectual integrity and truth, but in our current age of internet bullshit, plastic fuckery and simulated intellectualism, it’s difficult to kill off the half-truths and lies. Then again, many of those being lied to would have it no other way. The lie gives comfort and verifies what they already “knew.” The Lie gives them the feeling of being superior to the experts and the pointy headed intellectuals. The Lie helps them sleep at night by verifying their delusions and quieting the voices in their head that tell them are slowly going mad. It changes their biases and prejudices into accepted party platforms and gives them the ability to relax and escape from the real life that surrounds them.

There’s no way to argue with these people or try to show them the errors in logic or truth, they pass it off as being “you truth” or they want to “agree to disagree’ which really means fuck you, you’re wrong.

And that is why we are doomed.

Don't Read the Comments

2012-08-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

Don't Feed the Troll

For some reason, in the late 1990s someone thought it would be an excellent idea to allow the readers of internet articles to post comments. I recall many of the old line newspapers proclaiming that this interactive forum would encourage debate and strengthen democracy. Well it hasn't. As a matter of fact, it has become nothing more than a cesspool of vile, insipid fuckery populated by paid anonymous shills, trolls and other assorted mouth breathers. No matter the subject of the article, you can bet that some commenter will talk about Obama and his birth certificate or Socialism or other nonsense.

Is the article about Kim Kardashian? Then someone will comment on how Obama's policy towards Hollywood has allowed her ass to grow to enormous proportions.

Is it about flesh-eating zombies? Then someone will say that Obama eats the flesh of babies since he is a secret Mooslim and worships Lucifer.

No matter what the article is about, some dumbfuck will weigh in with a comment that rivals the inanity and non-sequiturs of Joe Biden.

The bestest, most craziest motherfuckers of all are on the comments section over at Prison Planet. For those of you unfamiliar with that site and its owner Alex Jones, it's best described as a place where paranoid and delusional thinking are your ticket to entry. You say you believe that the 1% are actually reptilian space aliens? Come on in.

Patron saint of dumbfucks

Or maybe you believe that the Jews/Freemasons/Illuminati/OpusDei are planning to depopulate the world and enslave the rest of us? Welcome.

Did you think the Olympic opening ceremony was an Illuminati-conceived spectacular to welcome the Babylon Child and an aeon of Luciferian slavery? They've got a place for you.

Prison Planet is a home for Preppers, Truthers, Birthers, Libertarians, Pro-lifers, Climate Skeptics, Pro-Gunners and just about every other paranoid faction you can think of. In their minds, Obama is evil, Spetznatz forces are setting the wildfires out west, the Pope is a Luciferian paedophile and anyone who disagrees with them is a Monarch programmed member of the Matrix. Ron Paul is a God and the Free Market is what God intended for us all to worship. It's a site that combines old-school Goldbug craziness with post-Nixon high-tech paranoia. Other sites like Lewrockwell.com and jeffrense.com spew a special type of weirdness obsessed with ridding America of the “State” and its coercive minions, but Prison Planet is conspiracy central. It’s a clearinghouse of all that is paranoid.

These sites are all cluttered with advertising for “natural” crap like vitamins and drinking water filters, colloidal silver and the ubiquitous dried food suppliers. They circulate “truths” about the effects of Aspartame, vaccines and GM food. They perpetuate myths around 9/11 and how it was a false flag operation designed to put America under control of the New World Order and the UN. .According to them, the Aurora shooter was obviously a Monarch slave programmed and deployed by the government as a reason to rescind the Second Amendment. Everyone on these sites is obviously a scholar of the Constitution and knows EXACTLY what this country’s founders wanted. Their comments prove it.

In the past, these knuckleheads would only be able to discuss their crazy views at the monthly gun show or in the halls of the American Legion. Nowadays, though they spend their time in the blue glow of the computer, concocting ever crazier theories about moon Nazis with bases under Antarctica. Secret alien rulers that persecute the greys, and ever morphing conspiracies involving the Pope, the Queen, the International Jew, reptilian aliens and Katy Perry. Their ranks are growing and the concept of discussion is being tainted by their views. The Tea Party itself is chock a block with these nouveau Know Nothings. They reject science and reason in favor of their own Volkish views and what fits their paranoid fantasies. Even in the face of facts they will claim that “those are your facts” in a fit of semantic ballet that would make Chomsky blush.

If you disagree, then you must be “asleep” or plugged in to the Matrix. Reason is a faculty you check at the door when you enter this rabbit hole, and once you’re in, it can be tough to get out. Over time you begin to think that there may be something to all this. Maybe the Bush family (known for being war profiteers) did cause 9/11. After all, wasn’t Bush the Elder complicit in the Iran contra deal? That was a conspiracy designed to circumvent Congressional rulings and US law. Conspiracies around highly placed Satanic paedophile rings don’t seem so weird when a place like Penn State covers up crimes.

It's all fun and games until someone loses a testicle

Hmmmmmmm

Maybe they are right, maybe I’m asleep.

2012-08-01T08:58:00.003-07:00

I remember a time, when talk shows involved intellectual discourse and people who held up the idea that an intellect was someting to strive for. Now, it's all sex tapes, baby daddies and grown men wearing diapers.

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Chik Fil A and teh Geighs

2012-08-01T07:53:00.001-07:00

I’m an American, but I’m not a flag waving Jingo like a lot of so-called Patriots. I’ll sing the Star Spangled Banner, but won’t stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. That being said I believe in the one thing that separates this country from others…freedom. As such, I support the freedom to own the biggest fucking gun I can carry, the freedom to buy liquor wherever and whenever I want, and the freedom to express my opinion without fear of being thrown in jail or harassed by government thugs. That being said, I believe in the freedom to swing one’s arms as long as you are not hitting someone else’s nose.

Last time I checked, this guy didn't hate anyone.

Unfortunately, some people in this country believe that freedom only extends to a privileged class of Believers and that they have the right to dictate the freedoms we enjoy whether we believe their superstitious nonsense or not. Paradoxically, these are the same people that decry the lack of freedom in other countries governed by theocratic dictatorships. They want to spread Democracy (i.e. Christianity) abroad, yet they consistently seek to suppress individual freedoms at home. These are people who can hold diametrically opposed views, yet find nothing wrong with that fact.

I believe that homosexuals should be allowed to marry and be conferred the same rights of survivorship and inheritance that heterosexuals enjoy because I believe that the State has no business meddling in the private lives of the individual. In my mind there are two components to marriage: civil and religious. The State’s interest in marriage is only to enforce the contractual aspect of marriage. End of story. The state has no interest in deciding whether a contract is valid based on the sexual proclivities of those that enter into the contract. The religious aspect is a private matter that is up to the various denominations. If a church declines to recognize a marriage, that is their choice. A church may choose to split over the matter, but religious schisms are nothing new, ask any Orthodox Christian, Shia Muslim, or Reformed Jew.

While I believe in the freedom to marry for LGBT folks, I also believe there is a limitation to the government’s ability to compel a private enterprise to conform to attitudes that are not aligned with their own ideals. Boycotting by private citizens is one thing, everyone has the right to spend their money in whatever manner they choose, but a city trying to force a business out of their region goes beyond their purview. At the same time, the State cannot compel a private business to change their views on a subject, nor should they insert themselves into the fray. A Christian organization that refuses to cover birth control can be compelled since they enjoy tax exempt status, but a private tax-paying organization cannot. Cities can choose not to conduct business with a company based on their views, as they did in the era of Apartheid , but they cannot run them out of town, nor can they deny the right to conduct business within the city limits. That’s the other side of freedom.

Welcome to ''Merica

2012-07-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

There are two places that serve to reinforce the fact that the masses of America are mindless fucks: the Mall and Wal Mart.

Huh-wha?

I avoid the mall near my house like the plague. It’s filled with over-entitled teenage zombies, shuffling along with their faces glued to their phones texting their moronic friends across the hall. Oblivious to anything other than themselves and driven completely by hormones and FOMO they move en masse through the temple of consumerism like packs of feral dogs, stopping only when they hit sensory overload, or Starbucks. The Mall is nothing but an artifice of reality where everyone is made to believe they are special, yet lacking. It simultaneously inculcates a sense of envy and inferiority and drives the psychic engines that make people want to buy. Plus it’s noisy as fuckall.

The unwashed masses with their offspring shuffle up and down hallways pushing their oversized strollers as if God made them the Queens of the road. The women push the strollers while the men are dragged along like Kunta Kinte, checking their smartphones for the latest scores for the Game of which there is always one to follow. Dead behind the eyes from bringing home the bacon to their ungrateful brats, they long to be at a breastaurant or drinking beer in front of the teevee wasting brain cells in the name of supporting the team. It’s a horrible place filled with nothing but bourgeois terror and tweenage curs, although it could be worse, it could be Walmart.

Walmart makes me want to run amok with a machete. If the mall is geared toward America’s future repeat offenders, Walmart is for those who have already arrived, and are damned proud. Walmart may be convenient but shopping there is like being beaten with a bag full of hams. It’s always crowded and chronically understaffed which only adds to the “experience” and that experience makes me want to kill just about every motherfucker in there.

Walmart is the place you are more likely to see a Tranny than anywhere else and I’m not sure why. In a lot of small towns, It's the only thing they have going, so putting on a wig, lipstick and size 13 heels to go there seems like the thing to do. It’s a place where the workers seem to have been hatched from some bio-engineering program that removes any sense of self from them. They look at you, coal-eyed from dealing with the idiots that shop there, only taking short bits of time to acknowledge you exist. Target isn’t like this. Is there something I don’t know about Walmart? Do they have a special room in the back of each store where a voodoo doctor administers Scopolamine powders to the workers at the beginning of each shift? I want to know.

But the workers are only a small fraction of the equation. It’s the people that make me want to kill. Take for example the twentysomething mouthbreather with his shirt proclaiming “Don’t Sweat my Swag.” Really, how about I sweat your swag by holding your head in a deep fryer? Or maybe the bubbleheaded woman who is stopped on the wrong side of the aisle and repeatedly ignores my attempts to get her to move. Finally a young man on the correct side moves his cart and apologizes. I loudly proclaim that he is not to be blamed and proceed to mutter loudly to the effect that the fat motherfucker should have moved. People just don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves. Parents let their brats run wild in the store tearing shit up while they gaze at their phones unabated. The store near my office is the worst. Filled with the sweepings off society’s floor it looks like a scene straight from Idiocracy. Fat and tattooed, the inhabitants roam around looking at the latest Tapout t-shirts whilst yakking to some unseen being about how drunk they were the other night and how they are going to kick somebody’s ass, and those are the women. Unfortunately this is the new normal. A fetid, stinking, sun-baked corpse of a civilization rotting from the inside, the smell of which rivals that of any declining empire heretofore.

But at least the prices are low.

On Cubicle Etiquette, or…STOP FARTING!!!

2012-06-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

I work in your typical engineering environment, which means that unless you are of a certain higher level, you work out of a cubicle. Most cubes are about 8’ square, or 64 square feet. Because I am higher up the food chain, my cube is 8’ x 12’. A senior manager has a larger cube as well as a turnaround desk and a closet. Im not sure what the closet is for since no one wears a jacket or coat anymore.

Gangsta!

I’ve worked in cubes with tall walls, and seen people working in 5’ x 5’ cubes with 36 inch high walls. At one time I had an office with a ceiling and a door…that closed. There are some in my office that work in “bullpens” where four workers each have a corner of one big cube with a desk in the middle.

Roomy

For comparison, the average prison cell in the US is 6 x 8 feet.

If you stand on your chair and look over the wall it looks the stockyards near where I grew up. Row upon row of cubes inhabited by bipedal ruminants, chewing their corporate cuds and spitting out nonsense. Mindless drones posed in front of LCDs, illuminated by fluorescent kill lights doing everything they can to endure the lack of privacy.

You gotta problem?

In this environment, much like prison, you are thrown into a close quarters situation with people you don’t know, and don’t care to know. Etiquette and unwritten rules abound. In prison (or in Council Bluffs, Iowa) you don’t make eye contact for too long lest the other person believe you want to fight. Likewise, in the corporate world there are unwritten rules based on the need to share space.

Conference Calls

Few things piss me off more than the idiot who takes a conference call from his cube. If you think listening to someone’s conversation on a mobile phone is annoying, try listening to some asshat in his cube yakking away on a conference call. These sociopathic assholes blather on and on punctuating their conversation with a ~~phony~~ hardy chuckle or laugh. Even worse, they will put the other party on the speaker so that everyone can hear just how important these enema bags are. It’s as if they want people to complain so that they can claim they are important enough for an office. How I wish I could use Maxwell Smart’s Cone of Silence. Actually I’d rather use Patrick Bateman’s Plastic Exit Bag to suffocate them.

Rule #1: Take the call in a conference room or just shut the fuck up!

Oh how I hate you!

Private Calls

The veal pen environment leaves you with zero privacy. I am roughly eight feet from a person in any of the Cardinal directions. This means I am privy to all of their conversation, no matter how personal. I hear them speaking to their doctors about their prostrate, I hear them talking with their elderly fathers in the nursing home and I hear them talking to their wives about all manner of things. If I need to make a private call, I use my mobile. I personally don’t care what they are up to, I just don’t want them to know my business.

Rule #2: Take the call on your mobile somewhere other than your cube, or shut the fuck up!

Nom, Nom, Nom

Eating
Oy, the eating! We Americans work too much. Scratch that. We spend too many hours in the office. We eat lunch at our desks and some of us eat breakfast at our desk. I’m guilty of occasionally grabbing a nosh at our cafeteria and eating at my desk. We all do it. But when it comes to eating at your desk, there are two things that piss people off more than anything: Loud eaters and smelly food.

Loud eaters go way beyond the occasional lip smacking annoyances, they are aural terrorists, clanking and scraping and slurping their way through their meal like they had just been rescued from two weeks in a lifeboat with no one to eat. I try to quietly. Thanks to the Missus I know exactly how noisy Stacy’s Pita Chips really are. She claims that when I eat them I sound like an overloaded wood chipper. Some people though, insist on consuming an entire bag of Kettle cooked chips while slurping soda from their 64oz handkeg. It just makes me want to stab them with their own fork.

Mmmmm Cubicle Bear smells Thai food

Smellly food just sucks. In the engineering world, you have people from all over the world eating things that smell strange to us but delicious to them. I like exotic food within reason. I like Indian, Pho, Greek, Persian and Thai, but some of it smells like ass. The worst smelling stuff comes from Dickey’s BBQ. Some of the foulest smelling BBQ I have ever been forced to smell. I imagine some people are turned off by American food, like he smell of a char-grilled burger to a Hindu, or bacon to a Muslim. I’ve never asked any of my friends if the smell of American food bothers them. So, if you’re eating smelly food, take it somewhere with better ventilation.

Rule #3: Don’t eat loud food

Rule #4: Drag your ass out of bed early enough to eat at home

Rule #5: Don’t eat smelly food of any type, or shut the fuck up!

Mobile Phones

Everyone has a mobile phone but some people seem to forget that they are mobile. They leave them on their desk when they go to a meeting and eventually their overwatched and understimulated child calls and I am forced to listen to the stupid ringtone they find “cute.” One VP has Bad to the Bone as a ringtone, which is equivalent to Justin Bieber having Ace of Spades as his. Every time I hear it I laugh (to myself of course, I’m not an idiot.) One guy has Cinderella by some Chapman guy as his wife’s ringtone. It’s a maudlin, saccharine piece of musical detritus that makes me want to stab him in his eardrums.

Rule #6: Don’t leave your phone on your desk

Rule #7: Put your phone on vibrate so we don’t have to listen to your fucktards ringtone or

Shut the fuck up!

WTF are you doing here, bitch?

Sickness

For some reason, people think they need to come to work when they are sick. Now, I’m exempting those people who work hourly jobs because if they don’t work they don’t get paid.

However, in my office we get plenty of sick leave so there’s no excuse. I swear to God that if one more motherfucker shows up coughing up a lung, I’m going to reach down their throat and pull one out. You know the people I’m talking about. They think the world can’t go on without them so they come in fully infected with Ebola. In reality, they don’t want to use their sick leave. Time and again I’ve told people: Stay at home if you sound like you have something that is communicable. Maybe I should have used easier words to understand, like: If you’re hacking anything up or have a fever, stay the fuck at home!

Rule #8: If you’re sick, stay the fuck at home!

Farting

I’ve saved the best for last. One of the reasons we work in “flexible offices spaces” or whatever the fuck you want to call it, is that it’s cheaper to run the HVAC systems when developing the space. With that in mind, the air becomes a shared resource, and not a very good one. I’m old enough to remember when airplanes had a smoking section. It was usually about ten rows in the middle of the plane. What a fucking joke. The smoke went everywhere, but somehow the airlines were convinced they had solved the problem. I’m also old enough to remember when you could smoke in the office. I only caught the tail end of that but I can still remember smelling of stale cigarette smoke when I emerged from the VPs office.

Today there is a menace much worse and far nastier. A menace that, unlike cigarette smoke, is invisible to the naked eye, yet packs a smell that sickens. It creeps along on little cat feet assaulting the olfactory functions on anyone it touches. It is: Farting. As I write this, someone (I know who ) has farted. They are stealth farters, silently introducing their intestinal Zyklon B into the atmosphere like an Olympic diver. They think no one is on to them, but everyone knows. The Missus tells me I should stand up and yell “what stinks” but I can’t do it. The cubicle culture emasculates us and forces us to play nice too often.

Everyone knows the foods that cause their flatulence. Therefore, they should avoid eating them while at work. Eat them at home where you can walk around your house farting like a train horn and basking in the ambiance. Go crazy and wait until you’re in bed and fart under the sheets so that your partner doesn’t know until they move the covers. Walk around in a store spreading those SBD farts like a human cropduster. Knock yourself out, just don’t do it at work.

Rule #9: STOP FARTING!!!!!

My outrage has become resignation

2012-06-01T07:17:00.002-07:00

The Missus called me today and told me that we received a bill from a “Doc in the Box” that she had to see a while back. IT was late on a Sunday and we had no choice. The charged us over $300 plus another $50 for coming in after hours. WTF? If you put a sing out that says “24 hour care” how can I be coming in after hours you dumbfucks? My cardiologist who is a member of the American College of Cardiologist and one of the best in Dallas only charges me $300 and he throws in an EKG. Every time I turn around, someone is charging me a fee for this or that. No one tells you up front what the final cost will be. It’s a fucking game to them. Call it “let’s see if they give a fuck.” I used to think that this kid of tomfuckery was due to there being too much money in circulation, but it just boils down to pure. fucking. greed.

Not only do these shitbirds not tell you about all the hidden charges they rarely deliver what they’ve promised in the timeframe promised. Their motto is: “get the business and will worry about delivering it later.” This happened to me when I was getting my pool renovated. The guy promised it would be finished in two weeks. It took more like four weeks, and then the dumbasses chipped some of the stone. They then came back and pulled the stone and put in a new one. It didn’t match. This wasn’t some cheap two guys and truck deal. This was the top pool builder around. And yet, the fuckery continues.

Another example is the Freemium model. A hardcore gamer friend of mine remarked that iPad and Iphone games are moving to a model where they give the game for free or low cost, but you have to buy tokens and other crap to actually play the game. You don’t know this until you’ve spent $0.99 on the game, so you either pay or leave. But they still have your dollar. Fucking assholes.

Everything Apple is expensive, but what really gets my goat is the price of the fucking add on stuff. It’s bad enough I drop 700 beans for an iPad, but then I find out that any case I like is at least 50 bucks. WTF? This shit is all made in China by political prisoners and exploited villagers, so what gives? Iphone cases for $40?

It’s a fucking piece of plastic!!!!

The apple folding magnetic thingy is $70. I calculated that the operating margin on the iPad is roughly 51% which means the actual profit margin comes in around 37%. Holy smokes that’s a lot of profit! The case however is different. It has some sort of rare Earth magnets or whatever the fuck. Still, I figure the margin on that prophylactic piece of plastic has to be at least 200%. Their cables are more expensive than Monster and people will buy them rather than go to Frys and get something cheaper.

It’s everywhere and I’m giving up. I try to fight it but what can I do? I can’t go live off the land in Maine or whatever, I’m too lazy and I do like a level of material comfort. I know it’s what the corporations want. They want to lull you into a sleep of reason while they pick your carcass clean, but

I can’t fight it anymore.

I’ve become numb to it all and distracted by my iPad.

SkyMall catalog WTF?

2012-05-17T09:00:00.001-07:00

If you’ve flown on a plane in the last hundred years, you will have encountered the SkyMall catalog. Back in the go-go 90’s they used to tout that you could order something via the Airphone and it would be ready for pickup at you destination when you arrived. It’s basically a catalog of stuff that used to be sold through the Sharper Image before it was bought by China and turned into a showplace of craptastic electronics with malfunctioning circuit boards that eventually burn down your fucking house.

Like a toupee for you forehead.

My favorite section is the medical and health devices. One of the newest offerings is Clip-on Bangs. Yep, they clip right on so there’s no need to commit to a hairstyles. They come in 8 different colors so you can mix and match to suit your mood. There’s a hair removal device for men that uses heat to remove unwanted hair. I guess it’s better than waxing although it carries the following warning: Do not use near the nipple or genital areas. What? That’s the place I want to use it the most. If I can’t buzz my junk, what’s the point?

Perfect for Major Tom

The Massage and Circulation section has some pretty great stuff an also the usual suspects. The Head and Eye Massager looks like something the CIA cooked up to read minds. It uses high frequency magnets to stimulate various areas on the head. Sounds great, but wont that pull out the same implant the CIA put in my head. I’ll have to ask. The head is a popular massage point since there are several options. I like a good cranial massage, I’m just not sure about the magnets.

It's for my "neck."

There are also a number of foot massagers and leg massagers, but conspicuously absent is the traditional “personal massager” that has been popular for about 100 years. You know which one I’m talking about, it’s shaped like a cucumber and runs on batteries (although some now use USB ports.) Did you know that theses were originally marketed to women as masturbatory devices because doctors were tired of doing it for them?

One of the standout sections contains the electronics. There’s the typical selection of legit cameras and such, but there’s also a burner for LPs and Cassettes. Hmmmm. I can understand wanting to burn that classic pink vinyl Avengers LP to CD, but do you really want to burn that awful mixtape you made for your high school sweetheart when you were going through your Bon Jovi phase? Not to mention the fact that this is the fucking ugliest thing I’ve seen since audio equipment actually looked like this. I guess it goes well with the ceramic Black Panther collection.

But it's art

Of all the gear in this catalog, nothing, NOTHING beats the unmitigated crap in the Design Toscano section. Be it the leg lamp from A Christmas Story to Swords and cultural detritus from the Lord of the Rings, this group has made its money reproducing kitsch on a scale unseen in our lifetime. They even have a gargoyle toilet paper holder. I don’ know how I feel about that. I like my TP non-threatening thank you. Most of this crap has to be seen to be believed. Scary Carnivale masks, British telephone boxes, and weird soft-core statue of Pharoah’s consort that remind me of Jeff Koon’s porn-Lalique work in the 1980’s.

And yet even in this whirlpool of bad taste, there is a shining light of cultural weirdness: The Meerkat Clan statue. Yes, it’s the truth three of the clan are crossing a stream on a log. One is patting the other on the back in a gesture of comfort while the third is standing up and looking around. It’s a touching scene straight out of Meerkat Manor, but I can’t help but wondering what has spooked the standing meerkat.

What the fuck is THAT!!!!

Maybe he saw the gargoyle toilet roll holder.

Y U Haz no Humor?

2012-05-10T11:40:00.003-07:00

Not Funny, motherfucker!

In a previous post I told you about the card game we played at the Ginger Man. Even though the “kids” we were playing with were about 15 years younger than us, we had a lot in common. They had a sense of humor for one. They were also a bit shocked that we had one. I’m not certain whether it is our location or just the way things are these days, but it seems like no one has a fucking sense of humor. I use humor a lot. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, or maybe I just don’t give a rat’s ass, but I can’t understand people who get a dull blank look in their eyes when I crack a joke. The Missus and I have had this discussion a lot. It seems that people are either in a bubble, or just plain stupid. Maybe they think it childish to joke around. After all this country is being run by a secret Mooslim and homersexual cabal and is decaying every day. Or maybe they’re too fucking macho to be funny. Hell I don’t know.

Lenny Says: Fuck those people
with no sense of humor

I want to ask people why they lack a sense of humor. Were they hit in the head as a kid? Did they suffer some kind of humor related trauma as a child? Did Don Rickles call them a hockey puck on a childhood trip to Vegas? Are they German or something? Enquiring minds want to know. In my house, comedians were a thing of wonder. The great ones like Rickles and Alan King and David Brennar and Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce. Buddy Hackett, Phil Silvers and Steve Martin, even Sam Kinnison. My old man loved comedians and we would watch Johnny Carson every night for the monologue and the guest comedian.

Patron Saint of Snark!

Maybe it’s because our standard of humor has changed. We would rather watch Youtube videos of guys getting punched in the nutsack than tell jokes. (Ow my Balls!) Along with comedy, the concept of wit has changed. Wit used to about being clever, about punning or flipping a situation to make it humorous and possibly insightful. My family is incredibly witty. When we get together it almost becomes a contest. Our current culture, however, confuses wit and snark. Snark is easy. Snark isn’t as well-read as wit. Snark is wit’s dilettantish cousin.

Don’t get me wrong, I came out of the womb snarky. When I popped out of my mother’s baby cave, my first words to the doctor were:

“Oh my God, this place is a dump!”

I write snarkily because people like it, and wit is seen as elitist these days, and anything elitist is bad because it doesn't represent true Americans for whom Larry the Cable Guy is the equivalent of Oscar Wilde.

But to some people it doesn’t matter, they simply have no sense of humor, and it seems that it’s getting worse. I sometimes wonder if people don’t take me seriously because I use humor in the workplace. Hell, when you work a corporate job and witness all the douchebaggery and dumbfuckery that goes on, you have to laugh about it or you’ll go out of your skull.

To a lot of “executive” types, humor is not seen as an asset. Unless they are telling the joke. Let me tell you something about the executive types, they are always the funniest ones in the room, and it makes me crazy because they truly aren’t. I don’t know how many meetings I’ve sat in where I’ve had to force a guffaw with a self-administered Heimlich maneuver. Executives are rarely funny because they’ve spent their entire lives being “serious” and business-like. So sit there biting my tongue, forcing out the chuckles.

I just think it’s a symptom of the uptight culture we live in. We don’t talk anymore about things we CAN do, all anyone yaps about is what you CAN’T do, and frankly I’m a bit tired of it. People need to get a grip and stopping taking themselves so seriously. Shatter the bubble, get their heads out the Twitterverse, the Textingverse and whatever excuse for escaping reality and human interaction they are using and wake the fuck up. If they don’t, the Missus I will make sure they do.

Self checkouts make me CRAZY!

2012-05-08T07:04:00.000-07:00

Self checkouts make me CRAZY!

You can’t swing a dead cat in this town without hitting a store with a self-check lane. They are everywhere: Home Depot, Lowes, Kroger and Walmart among others. Most of these stores clearly denote the limit of items in these lanes. They also clearly identify the place at which you are supposed to queue for entry. Walmart, in its infinitely fucked up wisdom decides not to put anything of the sort near their self-check lines. The result? A ton of people backed up behind some big-assed yahoo dressed in tight shorts, flip flops and half-bleached hair, with a couple of their mouth-breathing offspring. It pisses me off to no end that these brain damaged zombies care about nothing but their own selves. I’ve observed this over time and I find that these inbred heathen fall into one of four categories: Ms. Bigass Cartfull, Mr. Coin Purse, Mrs. Shitforbrains, and extreme couponers.

Boxwine. 'nuff said.

Ms. B Cartfull is the one who rolls up to the scanner with a cart overflowing with just about everything in the store except a kiddie pool. She is way too busy to stand in line and she doesn’t give a rat's furry ass about anyone else so she decides to make everyone else miserable. No manner of evil looks can discourage this woman. Like a Kardashian watching her own sex tape being projected in Times Square, she holds her head up and ignores the “haters” seething behind her.

She then starts the painful process of attempting to scan and bag 100 bags of crap, two bags at a time. It doesn’t help that she’s as coordinated Lindsay Lohan on an Oxy high. She takes FOREVER and even the walmart dude is giving her the dirty looks. But she doesn’t care. At least she pays with a debit card, which is more than I can say for Mr. Coinpurse.

Mr. Coinpurse brings only a few items, but when it comes time to pay, Mr. Coinpurse insists on using all the change he has in his coin purse. Even if he's buying a digital camera. I’ve stood by while people inserted coin after coin, sinking me further and further into a numismatic hell. They pull out the coin, look at it to confirm that it is the right denomination, then fumble to insert into the slot. Again and again this goes on like a slow flogging. The paradox is that you can’t really berate them because they are usually older folks and if you did it would be like nut-punching the Pope. It just ain’t done. But in reality I think they know what they are doing and just want to fuck with me.

Where's that barcode?

Mrs. Shitforbrains. What can you say. This is a woman who just can’t seem to understand how the scanner works. She will scan an item three thousand times before she calls the supervisor over. I’m not certain how she operates a moving vehicle since she possesses the IQ of spoiled cheese. She moves slowly at an ever slowing pace, lumbering along one item at a time. She is not cognizant of anyone else in line she isn’t really cognizant of anything, except her phone which is pressed between her shoulder and ear as if a piece of leathery skin held them there. BLAH BLAH BLAH she bellows, unable to scan and talk without thinking. She makes me WANT TO SMASH!!!!

Finally, there are the Couponers. The extreme Couponers have been banished from most stores, but a few manage to sneak through. Now, I understand the use of coupons and would use them more if I had a family and ate a lot of Jeno’s Pizza Rolls (mmmmmmmm), but who really needs fifty tubes of toothpaste? If they were sending them to our troops, I would gladly be inconvenienced, but most of them are not. These morons show up at the self-check thinking they will be undetected by the coupon cops. After the end of their scanning session, they whip out a folder filled with coupons that rivals a telephone book. They then proceed to start another session of scanning. I quietly grind my teeth and seethe behind them envisioning their evisceration at my hands.

For some reason, they think it’s a great idea to have 225 toothbrushes or fifty gallons of mouthwash in the special room they created in their basement.

I want to walk up to them and give them a business card for TLC and tell them:

Pick one: Doomsday Preppers or Hoarders., and no you can't choose both.

Weekly wrap up

2012-05-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

Damn my 'roids itch

It was a big week in assholiness and fucktardery. There was a bunch of gay bashing going on by a bunch of hateful loonies that call themselves Christians. One of them is a Bible-toting mouthbreather in North Carolina who thinks if if your son acts a little fay, you should smack the shit out of 'em. Personally I think that any adult that advocates smacking a kid and uses the bible as a reason should be chainwhipped by a pack of angry bikers.

How can your hate this person?

Add to this, a group calling themselves the Million Moms (which is probably financed by two old white guys) has come out against JCPenney (or JCP as the kids say) for having what appears to be a same-sex couple in their ads. First they went after the ads with Ellen, which is like kicking a puppy, and now this. My pops always said there's a fine line between naivete and ignorance. This is just plain fucking ignorance with a capital F. Then again these people believe you can catch the Geighness from being around them. Sort of like catching a cold, or Tuberculosis. Everyone knows that boys can only catch the Geighness by drinking Evian, watching Joan Crawford movies and singing a lot of Judy Garland songs. For girls it comes from too much softball, which we know is the Devil's game; and pants. PANTS for God's sake. DO NOT LET YOUR GIRL CHILLUN WEAR PANTS! They are of the Devil.

Also on the shitbird front.

'Nuff Said

Ted Nugent opened his gaping piehole and provided further proof that the motherfucker is not only a douchebag, but someone who would be better off back in the good old days when women stayed home and cooked breakfast and the Darkies stayed on their side of town, singing Negro spirituals. Everytime he opens his mouth, a stench-filled ball of ignorance-infused faeces emerges. Ted Nugent is a Dragon who spews a mixture of bile, vitriol and dogshit instead of flames.

Plus his music sucks.

On a sad note. MC Adam Yausch passed away. I was always a fan of the Beastie Boys, mainly for their ability to go out on a limb and try new stuff.

Fly free my fuzzy friend!

Also, Falling Bear, the Colorado bear that became an overnight meme was hit by a car and died. How does some not see a big fucking bear in the middle of the road?

Maybe it was Ted Nugent.

On Men's Grooming

2012-05-03T07:11:00.000-07:00

I've noticed some peculiar grooming habits amongst men these days. I’m not referring to the Brozilian or the new habit of waxing in places that should only be seen by a proctologist, I’m talking about things like long fingernails and oddly placed hair other things that men should be made aware of.

I don’t know where the long fingernail thing came from. Back in the 70’s and 80’s men used to grow a pinky nail long so they could scoop up some blow instead of using a coke spoon. It was convenient and also functioned as a shibboleth, a signal to let everyone know they were part of the gold chain and cocaine crowd. This wasn’t just some effeminate affectation; the pinky nail was a tool. It was functional. Plus, the kind of man that grew a nail like that usually wore pants so tight that a coke spoon in his pocket would show like visible panty lines.

Fucking nasty!!!!

I know my father’s generation wouldn’t ever have considered long nails. They actually worked for a living around dirt, grease and other nasty stuff. He worked in a salvage yard and was constantly cleaning his nails even though there was very little there, but nowadays I see all kinds of guys with long nails, and they don’t have waxed eyebrows and night jobs that involve makeup and feather boas. These are regular working professional guys. And I don’t mean a nail with a bit of the white showing, I mean long nails, as in 5mm long, and not just the pinky. I may not be the butchest guy in the sports bar, but this weirds me out. Whenever I’m talking to one of these guys, I can’t help but stare at their nails. I keep thinking: Why are they so long? Do they like to scratch their nuts with them? Do they play classical guitar? (a frequent excuse.)

Frankly, I don’t think drag queens keep nails that long when not on stage. They probably use Lee Press-Ons so they can take them off when they work their day job as a welder or auto mechanic. Either way, I think the ladies need to have a frank discussion with their men about this, because I’m sure as hell not going to do it.

I'm sorry, did you say something?

Another thing some spouses need to talk with their men about is ear hair. The Missus and I worked with a guy, we’ll call him Mr. Furry, whose auditory follicles were so long and dense that it looked like a guinea pig was backing out of his ear. These parti-colored tufts made themselves known to anyone with an eyeball, flaunting their density and silkiness like a beaver with a new winter’s coat. During meetings, my wife would sit next to Mr. Furry and stare at his sound-trapping furballs, fighting the temptation to pluck them with every molecule of her existence. I could see her gazing at the fur, wanting to reach out and tear a handful from his ears with a triumphant pull, as if snatching the brass ring from astride the horse of a carousel.

But she didn’t and to this day people tell me it has gotten even worse. I imagine I’ll run into him at a trade show and he will look like a 6 foot tall version of cousin It, resplendent in his ear hair-woven finery.

Hellooooo Ladies!

While ear hair is certainly annoying, nose hair is nothing to sneeze at. I personally have to keep at it lest it completely block my air supply. My father’s nasal hirsuteness is legendary. He is one hairy motherfucker. I don’t think he has ever plucked, tweezed or snipped the hair that emerges from his nostrils. It emerges from his nasal cave like Punxsutawney Phil, searching for his shadow and greeting the crowd, except everyday is Groundhog Day. If he looks up his nostrils look like two mink-lined garages. I've wanted to buy him a trimmer for ages, but to me it’s the equivalent of buying someone a stick of deodorant, it’s just not done. Unless it’s anonymous.

Men's grooming is a very sensitive subject that can only be broached by a man’s partner. Most men believe they look just fine when in reality they have enough ear hair to make an Alpaca jealous. That's why they need someone to intervene. You can’t expect one of his friends to intercede during a drunken happy hour without a fight. No man will tell his friend that it looks like he tried to snort a hamster. No, a man will simply sit and stare at his friend's follicles, imagining the type of creatures residing in that follicle forest. It's not something we are good at doing.

On the contrary, it must be done by you.

Upsellers

2012-05-01T08:36:00.000-07:00

What kind of crap can I sell you?

You know what pisses me off?

Upsellers.

You know who they are; they’re the assmunchers who always want to sell you more than what you are buying. They’ve always got something positioned at the counter, ready to capitalize on your impulses.

“Would you like a slice of our four day-old dry as a bone overpriced lemon cake to go with your latte?”

“Would you like to extrabigasssize your type II diabetes meal?”

“ Why not take home a five gallon drum of Coke to go with your 125 piece wing-ding deal”

Upsellers are everywhere, and they annoy the hell out of me and they REALLY annoy the Missus. They’ve always got some cheap geegaw sitting on the counter, ready to be pimped out as an impulse buy. I’d like to tell them that if I wanted to buy that hunk of overpriced plastic Sino-crap, I would have picked it up and brought it to them. Am I that fucking stupid that I don’t know what I want? Deep down I guess I really didn’t know that I wanted an LED-encrusted, frog-shaped beer cooler with built-in umbrella and solar Ipad charger. Stupid me!

Best Buy is a great example. They’re always trying to sell those Monster cables with anything you buy. Part of my business is making cables and let me tell you, there isn’t much difference amongst them. It’s a piece of wire with some stuff on each end. I think BB’s tactic is to try to emasculate you if you’re a man with sentences like:

“Well sir, you’ll really get an optimized sound quality from these, I‘d hate to see you spend this much on a television only to compromise performance with cheaper cables.”

As if embarrassing me in front of the Missus will do it. (This is a woman who once jumped out my car and screamed obscenities at some Persian douchenozzle that I was about to pummel.)

I usually politely decline the gold-plated stereo snakes, but what I really want to say is:

Suck it electromonkey!

“Hey fucker, I’d hate to see your sexual performance compromised by me putting my steel-toed boot in your balls! Now scurry away electromonkey before I end your family bloodline.”

My favorite upsell attempt was when I bought a $3.99 flashlight and the chick behind the counter asked me if I wanted an extended warranty for an additional $0.99. I looked at her and she grimaced as if to say: “I’m sorry but the corporate fucksticks make me say this because they don’t have to stand here and look like an ass.” She’s right.

Retail is notorious for this. The suits are always trying to push something or suggest something that goes with your purchase. Most of what they are pushing is what we call SMI - Slow Moving Inventory. It’s the crap they ordered too much of and now they need to get rid of it. Rather than demanding that the wage slaves hock this unmitigated junk on customers, why not fire the duMBAss that ordered too many platinum-plated nose trimmers.

All Hail the Princess Mom!

2012-04-27T07:47:00.001-07:00

The Princess's Carriage

My niece recently wrote a post on Douchebag Dads. It’s a nice skewering of those fuckers who are paid lots of money and act like a bunch of privileged pricks. I deal with a lot of DDs. How do they play golf on Tuesdays? They’re salesmen. Those motherfuckers get paid oodles of cash for taking clients out to "dinner" which usually involves at least one girl named Montage and one named Cherry.

But I digress.

A Daily Dose of Nastiness

However, it got me thinking about their female partners: The Princess Mom.

The Princess mom drives a gigantic, expensive SUV, usually a Land Rover or a Suburban while texting her “gurlz” about their upcoming Wine Night with one hand and sipping her Venti decaf soy five-pump raspberry no-whip extra horseshit mocha from Starbucks with the other. She doesn’t pay attention to the kids in the backseat, she just pops in a DVD of whatever cultural ratshit the kids are into these days because she can’t be bothered to interact with them. That is if she doesn’t have a nanny. Besides, mommy has to talk to her gurlz (not her silicone funbags) about their upcoming trip to Cancun and where they can score some weed so they can party like they did at ASU.

Her skin is always a golden hue as if she just returned from Acapulco and her lips are plumped up like a kosher hot dog. She gets “push presents” for popping out the kids and is probably munching the rug of the next door neighbor’s wife or blowing the hot looking guy that cleans her pool. She wears WAY too much jewelry and spends her time at the tennis club/gym/pilates studio/yoga farm/gyrotronics chamber trying to stay in shape for a husband who is always “at the office.” She goes to Whole Foods to make it look as if she knows how to cook. Goodness knows she doesn’t eat. She needs to stay in shape for her fuckstick husband and to keep her monthly “upkeep allowance” for Botox and Juvederm. Besides she just bought a pair of $500 bedazzled True Religion jeans at Nieman’s to show off her waxed and vajazzled lady cave. Anyway, her trainer is ripped and HOT and any time spent away from the kids is a good time. She wishes her husband looked like Ramon at the gym rather than a balding khaki–clad Jim Belushi.

Fantasy vs Reality

The Princess Mom annoys the shit out of me by using the word gift as a verb and saying a-MAH-zing while they discuss how smart their brain damaged, smack-addled progeny are, or how much it costs each year for said offspring to attend private school, at which both will have their first gay experience. She hasn’t worked a real job since she got out of college, knows all the best plastic surgeons and debates endlessly about shoes, bolt-on breasts, her tennis coach, her frenemies and cupcakes/macarons/whatever food fad is going at that day. She keeps Xanax in a PEZ dispenser, and likes to wash them down with swigs of box-aged Chardonnay she buys at Costsco by the pallet. She keeps it in her eco-friendly aluminum water bottle she bought at REI.

She know as some point her looks will fade and her husband will dump her for another woman, but by then, the kids will be grow. But that’s okay. She’ll take him for half of everything, be sad for about a year, and then hook up with Ramon.

No One Over the Age 25 Should be Referred to as Boyfriend or Girlfriend

2012-04-19T18:35:00.001-07:00

Hardly a boy or a girl

When you get to your mid forties, you end up with a lot of friends who are no longer married but in long term relationships with others. Some of them live together, have children together, and even own property together. Some are geigh and some are straight. The problem is what to call their significant other. I positively cringe when someone says “he’s bringing his girlfriend” even though he’s 45 years old and they’ve lived together for years. No one over the age of 25 should refer to their significant other as boyfriend or girlfriend. It sounds silly and juvenile. It’s almost as stupid as, well, significant other.

But what do you call that person who has spent a great deal of time with the other person and is practically married, yet doesn’t have the paper certifying them as a spouse. They may or may not live in a state that recognizes common law marriage, or they may be geigh, which means that they are pretty much out of luck in most states. (Every time I hear common-law I think of the supercheezy Russ Meyer flick.)

I put this question to my friends the other night. We were sitting in a bar in Kansas City talking shit like some kind of lowbrow Algonquin Round Table so it made sense to ask.

"My personal opinion is that they should be called partner." I said.

“Too queer” replied my friend Cain, which is ironic considering he’s gay and has been with the same guy for fifteen years. “It’s sounds as if we’re back in the 1980’s and I’m reading the obituary of some closet case.”

“Then what?” I replied.

“How about co-habiter?” or “cohabitational conspiracist” Cain put forth.

Badass Gyno-Americans

‘Oh my god, Cain, that’s as bad as when you called the Women’s Studies majors, Gyno Americans.” I said. (In the early 1990’s the women’s studies majors wanted to take the man out of woman and used the term womyn, so Cain cobbled together a hyphenated moniker free from any semblance of testosterone.)

The once-divorced, currently co-habitating Jillian replied that we should keep it as it is since we were describing the

relationship.

“They are boyfriends and girlfriends, just older.” She said. “It works for me. Besides partner is too clinical. It sounds like they own a law firm,”

I reiterated: “But grown women use the term for their platonic friends which annoys the shit out of me solely on the basis that it is so fucking twee and makes them sound like 8^th graders at a slumber party.”

“We have to have something different. I can no longer endure the idiocy that these terms engender!” I pronounced through a mist of Pappy Van Winkle.

Sidekicks?

Everyone went silent. There was a joke about buddies but since it’s also the name of a gay bar in Kansas City it was taken off the table. Sidekicks was out for the same reason.

We never came up with a suitable label for these people, but we need one. If the Geighs can’t marry, and if more people are choosing not to get married, then we need a name that suitably describes the relationship. Girlfriend or boyfriend sounds as if they could one day throw back your silly class ring in a fit of pique and storm off with the quarterback of the football team.

I've thought about old lady, but my own wife gets pissed when I refer to as that.

Oh no you didn't!

Helpmeet is an old word from a bad biblical interpretation. It’s big among weirdos like the Duggars and their Jesus army. Ironically it turns up in a lot of Jim Thompson’s crime fiction, but it sounds more like someone who gives you a sponge bath after an accident or helps you lance a boil than a spouse.

Whatever the case, we need a better word to describe these relationships. I refuse to refer to a 72-year old man as someone's boyfriend. It's just un-fucking dignified. We need to put a stop to this madness immediately, otherwise we’ll all continue to sound like a bunch of 8^th grade girls at a slumber party.

Ow my Balls!

2012-04-13T07:20:00.002-07:00

Everything is super when you're smooth!

An old friend recently pointed me to a link about male waxing, specifically the waxing of the nether regions where no razor should boldly go. With names like the Boyzilian or the Brozilian, services previously reserved for women are now being performed on men. (Ed:The article appears in New York Times which we all know has a secret liberal agenda to emasculate all men and turn them into geigh mooslim intellectuals.)

Go out to Braun's website and check out their trimmers. They advertise them with rawk music and a tough-looking twink prancing around his urban loft.

Okay, so now you know the setup. Here's what I have to say:

What the FUCK?

Shaving body hair has been around forever, especially with the teh geighs, but now smoothing has gone mainstream. (Full disclosure: I used to shave my legs when I raced bicycles.) Porn stars used it as a trick to make their dick seem bigger, but I don't care. There is no way I'm going to allow some Asian lady or skinny twink to put hot wax on my taint, only to have it ripped off along with the hair! No fucking way! I live by few rules, but keeping hot wax and sharp things away from my testicles is one of them.

Apparently some men are being pressured by wives and girlfriends to do this.
Here's a thought: Get a new girlfriend! If a woman tells you there's too much brush around the tree, get a pair of trimmers made especially for it and trim away, just don't wax it. Waxing is only a half-step above the S&M practice of applying duct tape to a patch of hair and ripping it off.

To deal with the pain, some men take an Advil beforehand (aspirin is not advised because of its blood-thinning properties) or have a glass of wine to relax. At Strip, a Crayola-colored stress ball is left in each treatment room for clients to squeeze as necessary.

An Advil and a glass of wine? Fuck that, I want a shot of Pappy Van Winkle and a Percocet. And you can shove the stress ball!

But wait there's more!

Apparently not satisfied to with only allowing women to stick crystals on the pubic regions, men have come up with Pejazzling. As part of the pejazzling process, crystals are affixed to the newly smoothed skin. Seriously?
Isn't that what condoms with nubs are for?

If you were a real man and wanted some cockbling, you'd get a Prince Albert.