Raise your hand if you’re old enough to remember that anti-drug commercial from the 80s. You know the one I’m talking about. Where the business guy is walking around in a circle, muttering “But I need to do cocaine! So I can work longer. So I can earn more. So I can do more coke!” It didn’t make me not want to take cocaine (not being an idiot had already taken care of that for me) but it did make me want to shoot my TV. I have the type of brain that seemingly likes to travel in circles like that, so I can’t get self-referential things out of my head once they’re in there. One time I spent days thinking about the expansion of the acronym PINE (which stands for PINE Is Not Elm.) Go ahead, think about it for awhile, I’ll wait.

Done? OK then, here’s another one. It seems Mr. Martin Batieni Kombate of Arizona got arrested for trespassing. He was due to be released on bail, but when the time came, he said he wasn’t going. So he stuck around the jail and… got arrested for trespassing. One naturally presumes he will continue in this way forever, much like the poor cocaine addicted businessman from the commercial. He’ll live out his natural life in the county lock-up, getting re-arrested every few days for the same crime.

Good work if you can get it, I guess.

Have you ever noticed that when a plane flies overhead, it sometimes leaves behind this cloud-like streak in the sky? Those are called contrails, short for condensation trails. They’re created when water vapor from the plane’s exhaust cools rapidly in the cold air and condenses into ice crystals. They look like clouds because they essentially are clouds–man-made cirrus clouds.  Pretty neat, huh?

Well, naturally, there are a bunch of wing-nuts who think otherwise. Where reasonable, rational people see contrails, they see chemtrails–sinister chemical and/or biological weapons being dumped on an unsuspecting populace for unknowable reasons by our own government! Now, I’m not exactly what you’d call a fan of the government, but I have a hard time believing that the same people who couldn’t stop a buck private from spilling the beans about, well, just about fucking everything, could mange to cover up the fact that they’re equipping every commercial airliner in the entire damn country with spray devices to sap us of our precious bodily fluids or whatever the fuck the crazies think.

Thankfully, the nutters have devised a strategy for clearing away the chemtrails.  It turns out, all you have to do is walk around your back yard with a spray bottle full of vinegar and spritz the air randomly, and in ten to thirty minutes, the chemtrails disappear.

No really!  They really think this! Never mind that ten to thirty minutes is just about how long your bog standard contrail hangs around anyhow.  Never mind that there’s no possible fucking way the vinegar you sprayed into the air in your back yard could even get to 30,000 feet in any appreciable quantity in that (or really, any) amount of time in order to do whatever it is it’s supposed to do to clear off the nasty chemtrails. And, never mind that it sometimes just doesn’t work (because contrails sometimes hang around longer than thirty minutes depending on atmospheric conditions,) it is an undeniable fact that vinegar kills chemtrails!

Honestly, though, I think that’s just a waste of good vinegar. I bet there’s an easier way to get the same results. So, I offer this experiment to anybody who believes that vinegar kills chemtrails. Next time you see chemtrails in the sky, go outside and shout “I’M A FUCKING IDIOT!  I’M A STUPID ASSHOLE!” over and over for about five minutes. I give you my personal guarantee^* that the chemtrails will disappear within thirty minutes! Unless they don’t. In which case, try again later!

—

*_{Void where prohibited. You must be of legal age to receive guarantee assurance. Offer not valid in CA, HI, or MA. You must submit video documentation of your failed attempt in order to make a claim. Persons making a valid claim will be summarily laughed at.}

I was sitting at a stop light this afternoon when I saw this:

Bacon-free WiFi? Screw that! I want WiFi with EXTRA BACON. Why would you even advertise that you’ve gone and taken bacon away from something? That’s insanity. Come on, BK, step up to the plate. Put the bacon back in your WiFi!

We’ve all heard of angry drunks, and happy drunks, and depressed drunks, and even manic drunks–but Paul M. Brock of Indiana may be the only “cannibal drunk” I’ve ever heard of. After being arrested for stealing a car, Mr Brock told police he was going to hunt them down and eat them. And their families. And their little dogs too!

I don’t know about you, but this seems a little overboard to me. I mean, let’s be reasonable here. What do the dogs have to do with this? Yes, apparently Mr. Brock was subdued using police dogs when he was arrested. However, it would appear to me that he was not actually threatening those dogs with ingestion–instead, he was going to go after the family dogs of the officers involved.

This is classic transference. Mr. Brock has no beef with these poor family pets! It is the police dogs he is angry with, the ones who took part in his arrest. There’s no reason to take it out on innocent little Spike or Snookums. That beagle didn’t do anything to you, Mr. Brock, so put the frying pan away.

I’m a firm believer in eating only those people and dogs who have wronged you. Shame on you, Mr. Brock.

However you say it, it sucks:
 

 
Yes, that is indeed Nickelback doing a cover of the Flock of Seagulls song “I Ran (So Far Away).” I think if you go to Google and type in “things that suck” this video comes up as the first three hits. Okay, it doesn’t, but it goddamn should.

And yet… I’ve watched that thing like four times now. I can’t stop watching it. I’d say it’s like a train wreck, you have to look even if you don’t want to–except, it’s not like that at all. I kind of like the singer’s voice (it’s not the usual Nickelback asshole, it’s one of the other dudes in the band singing) and they actually make the song groove OH FUCK I THINK I LIKE SOMETHING NICKELBACK DID! ALSO FLOCK OF SEAGULLS! AHH!! I AM SCARRED FOR LIFE!

I spent the holidays visiting family, and as a result I got a crash-course education in this relatively new genre of reality television I like to call “buying and reselling shit” or alternately “free market economics 101.” The best known of these shows is probably “Pawn Stars”, which follows the exploits of a family of pawn brokers (grandfather, father, and son) as they buy stuff from people and resell it for about twice what they just paid. The best part about Pawn Stars is how during an appraisal the stars will bring in an expert to value the item in question.  Right in front of the customer, the expert will put a dollar value on the item. The pawn broker will then immediately offer to buy the object for around one quarter to one third the stated value. After some haggling, the broker and the customer either agree on a figure (almost never is this number more than one half the expert’s stated value) or the customer will simply decide not to sell at all.

Many people find this distasteful or even somehow wrong, and despite my decidedly libertarian leanings, after enough repetitions of watching this process, I can at least sympathize with the position. It sure doesn’t feel right, on a gut level, to pay someone $50 for something you intend to turn around and sell for $200. However, with a little thought, it’s easy enough to see what’s at the root of this feeling, and it’s basically a misunderstanding of the word “value.” The golden rule of free market economics is that something is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. There is no magic “intrinsic value” to be found anywhere. A thing is worth a dollar if and only if I can get someone to buy it from me for one dollar. It follows that value is subjective. Something I might be willing to spend $10 on might not be worth a plugged nickel to you.

So when the expert gives his appraisal, the “value” he is quoting is what he would expect to find the item priced at in a retail store, such as a thrift store or pawn shop. Or, in the case of more high-dollar items like antiques or collectibles, what the item might be expected to fetch at auction. So of course the pawn broker isn’t going to give you $100 for an item he expects will only sell for $100 after sitting in his shop for awhile. For him, the value of the item is the dollar amount he can pay and still be able to sell the item at a profit that allows him to pay his overhead (lease/mortgage, staff salaries, utilities and such) and still come out a little ahead. Nobody should walk into a pawn shop expecting full retail price for whatever it is they have. If you have a comic book you figure to be worth $1,000, don’t expect more than about $500 from a pawn broker, at best. And honestly, in today’s world, unless you needed cash absolutely instantly, nobody except a complete fool would take a rare collectible to a pawn shop to sell it. You’d list it on eBay or Craigslist, and likely get close to full “retail” value for it if it’s really a sought-after item. The power of the internet has brought the marketplace to you, rather than you having to sell to a middle-man. In a sense, you are acting as your own pawn broker, and thus getting to keep all the profits for yourself.

However, some people still find this distasteful. And the situation only gets worse when you add old people into the equation. The show “American Pickers” follows two antiques dealers as they drive around looking for junk piles to rummage through. What they tend to find are older, often retired or semi-employed people who have a lifetime worth of crap piled up in the garage or the shed or barn. They then paw through these items, pick out the good stuff, and offer to buy it for a fraction of what it’s “worth.”

The big difference between this and “Pawn Stars” is that in this case, the dealer came to the customer, not the other way around. When a customer walks into a pawn shop, he generally knows what he’s getting into. The rules of the road are pretty clear, so to speak–you have something you want to sell, and this guy here is in the business of buying. When someone shows up on your doorstep asking to look through your junk, the situation isn’t as clear. To be fair, the guys on American Pickers have a flyer they give to people which likely identifies them as antiques dealers looking to buy stuff–but since they don’t actually show the flyer in the show (that I’ve seen) that’s just a guess.

The big difference, though, is that often the people doing the selling haven’t the first clue what the retail value of their item is. Generally when you have something you intend to sell, you take some time to figure out what you should ask for it. You don’t want to ask $100 for something that usually goes for more like $30, because it likely wont sell and you’ll be wasting your time. Similarly, you don’t want to ask $100 for something that generally goes for $500, because you’ll be short-changing yourself.

Most people would agree that if you intend to sell something, you should do your homework first. If you put something on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $100 and it gets snapped up instantly and re-listed for $1500, well, you didn’t do your homework. Some people would still argue that the buyer acted immorally or was somehow “wrong,” but these people are what we call idiots. There’s no burden on the buyer to do the seller’s homework for him. However, what about the specific case of a person who isn’t looking to sell–someone just comes up to him and offers him $100 for his pocket lint?

Well, most of us would probably go through some kind of mental process similar to this: “$100 for pocket lint!? Is this guy nuts? Holy crap, I better take his money before he wises up! …wait a minute though, what does he know that I don’t know? Maybe I should google ‘pocket lint’ and find out if it’s suddenly worth a ton of money for some stupid reason…” Either way, though, you’re often unsure what to do. Take the $100 now, and worry about finding out if you got duped later, or spend the time to find out if you’re getting duped and risk letting the person come to his senses in the meantime?

This is basically American Pickers in a nutshell.  Some guy comes to your door, and offers you $50 for a rusty tin can he found in your shed. Grab the money and run before he wises up, or risk losing the $50 because you took the time to go do some research to find out what rusty tin cans go for these days, and meanwhile the weird collector wandered away?

There is a certain class of people for whom this kind of thinking is especially difficult, however. We call these people “old people.” Old people don’t always think well in the first place. And even when all their gray cells are still in working condition, they often don’t have the tools at their disposal that other people have, because of a lack of knowledge about technology. This isn’t to say that all senior citizens are computer illiterate. Of course they’re not. But they do, as a group, tend to have less understanding of and ability to use things like Google in order to do a quick sanity check on the price of pocket lint.

So in this case, many people would consider that the pickers have an unfair advantage. They not only have knowledge the seller doesn’t have, but they have knowledge the seller has no reasonable means of acquiring. Add in the extra taboo of “taking advantage of the elderly” and you have a show that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. And honestly? I couldn’t do what these guys do. I don’t consider it wrong or even immoral, and yet… something about it just doesn’t seem right to me. If I saw something in an old man’s barn that would sell for $400 on eBay, I’d be more likely to tell the old man that than offer to buy it for $40.

But that’s just me. What do you think?

I went to pick up a bathroom scale at Bed Bath and Beyond today. As I was checking out, the lady asked me “Will you be needing a gift receipt?”

…

I narrowly avoided laughing out loud, but only just. Can you imagine the look on your lady’s face when she unwraps that wonderful gift on Christmas morning? Nothing says “I love you” like saying “you need to lose some weight, tubby!”

Bill Romanowski spent most of his NFL career hurting people–both opposing players and sometimes his own teammates. Turns out, this may in fact have something to do with the man being completely insane. Check out this video:

Now, let me be the first to admit that I love me some bacon. And yes, I do happen to buy my bacon at the supermarket. Still, call me crazy and all, but I don’t happen to think the best way to motivate NFL players to play harder is to force them to hunt boar with knives. Nor do I think motivation is as easy as getting in someone’s face and yelling at them to “throw touchdown passes.”

Romo does, though! He rants for awhile about how NFL players need to be BOAR HUNTERS instead of being “safe” and buying their bacon from Safeway (get it??  HA!) Then he kind of manhandles his cohost for awhile, screaming in his face about touchdowns and tackles and such. I’m not sure, but he may be having some kind of flashback. Either way, I’m fairly certain he needs to lay off the roids.

This one seems pretty straightforward at first.  Woman buys new SUV, then brings it back, claiming it smells like somebody died inside. Turns out, hey, the thing has been stolen three times and was in fact used to transport a corpse! Woman sues dealership for failure to disclose this.

But then I thought about it for more than just the two seconds I usually spend thinking about things like this. Put yourself in this situation. You’re in the market for a (presumably) used vehicle, so you head to a local dealership and the salesman shows you a SUV in your price range. Except… hoo boy, what is that smell? This is the first point where I probably would have just left. There’s plenty of dealerships around, even in Michigan (I’m told they even used to make cars in Detroit–can you believe that? Detroit!) so I’d just go down the street to the next one.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that you did not leave. Hey, it’s just a smell, it can be gotten rid of, right? At this point you demand that the dealer fully clean and detail the vehicle before you’ll purchase it, right? Well, the article doesn’t actually say she didn’t have them attempt to clean the vehicle, but it’s fairly clear she still bought the car even though it smelled, after being assured it was only a dead animal that was causing the smell! Only a dead animal!

No, see, that’s where I draw the line. Sorry.