It would be nice if there were more signs like this. All Wal-Mart does is rolls back the prices, looks like they have got some catching up to do.
Category Archives: Humorous
Just for fun
A friend sent me a link to this little video. It should be safe for work unless your boss has absolutely no sense of humor. It made me laugh, so I thought I would share it with you. I hope you don’t identify with it nearly as much as I do.
So you think YOU have weird neighbors?
I am far from what would be considered an average, normal neighbor, come to think of it I don’t think there really are any average, normal neighbors. I may think someone is a nutjob based solely on the fact that he decorates his yard with old beer cans, while he would think I was a nutjob because I don’t. It is all very subjective…Usually.
I always thought that the woman who lived a couple of houses down from me while I was growing up was weird, just because she was a bit of a recluse and had roughly 14 million cats. As the years have passed I realize that that is just standard old lady behavior, perhaps a bit eccentric but completely normal when put on the giant pie chart of old ladies. There was another guy a block or so over from us (I think I wrote about this previously but I couldn’t find a reference to it, probably because I don’t know his name and spoke about it pretty vaguely) that threw all of his spare change into the drain gutter in front of his house. There were some neighbors that I literally never saw; I would see the cars leave the garage in the morning and arrive home at night but never once caught a glimpse of them. It seems weird neighbors are everywhere, probably even right next door to you.
The guy that I met yesterday might not take the cake as the weirdest neighbor ever, but I bet he got some door prizes. Hell, I am sure he would have won it all for best costume, the dude you feel most uneasy around, and the guy that gets the most flimsy excuses for why people have to leave when he enters a room. He seemed pretty harmless physically, but he gave off an aura that your mind interpreted as, “Body! Body! We must exit this space immediately! Let us leave now and never speak of this man again!”
The person in question is not my neighbor, quite thankfully. He will, however, be the neighbor of whoever buys the house that I have been working on in the next town over. The Real Estate company would do themselves a favor to do a Simpsons and just pay the guy to not come outside when there is a perspective buyer there. He is that weird. At least I think he is, but it is all about perspective, right? I am probably just as weird to him. Though I am not sure if his mind can process the word weird, or any other word that has more than one vowel, for that matter.
I have been doing work on this house for some time and had never actually seen the guy until yesterday. I was going to the house to do a bit of touch-up painting and to connect the plumbing lines that the contractor had neglected to do. The guy that was installing the tile and carpet was working on it though so I was not able to do any of the tasks I needed to (you can’t walk on the tile for at least 24 hours after it is installed, also he had removed the vanities and toilets from the bathrooms and they were the ones that I needed to finish). I spoke with Mr. Flooring Guy only long enough to find out when I could come back to finish off my tasks, which would have been today for the flooring being done, but the vanities and toilets won’t be back in until tomorrow. I was certainly done for that day. I made my way to the car.
Have you ever had one of those WTF moments? I don’t mean that in the sense that you text message WTF to someone when they give you a weird response, I am talking about a full on “what the fuck” moment. You see something that is so unbelievable that all you can think or say is “what the fuck?” That happened to me midway between the house and the car, in a big way.
I have been thinking about this all day and I still can’t figure out which way to go with it. The weird neighbor was the one that gave me a genuine “What the Fuck?” moment, but it was his attire that brought that about. The whole outfit was the reason for it, but there were three key pieces of it that had me holding back my laughter as I spoke with him, and backing away slowly. He had crossed the line between eccentric and insane, done a couple of laps around the slackers, then lapped the crazy people a couple of times before he dressed himself, by appearance at least.
Though I saw him top to bottom, I am going to describe him bottom to top. His feet were donning some fashionable, blue thongs flip-flops (the wife has told me that I can no longer call the footwear a thong because of possible misconception). Scroll up a bit (oh how I wish I hadn’t) and you will see military camouflage, unfortunately it is on a pair of shorts that look like ’70s era basketball shorts (if I would have looked hard enough I would likely have seen ass cheeks). He was wearing a very sensible long-sleeved sweater, well, it would have been sensible if it didn’t have a Raiders logo on it. That is pretty weird, eh? That was the normal part of his attire though, it only gets worse.
Much like the Gaydar kicks in when I see someone gay (three or more facial piercings and pants that have a zipper on the back will send that thing into the red zone), this guy set off my whackodar. My best guess is that he was voted most likely to bury bodies in the basement when he was in high school, and he probably followed through on that.
So, he was wearing the blue thongs flip-flops, camouflaged short-shorts, a Raiders sweatshirt, and a British Pith Helmet. He was also wearing a gun belt, which had an indeterminate pistol in it. I have never had rules about it previously, but I invented one yesterday: Always run away from the man in flip-flops, camouflaged short-shorts, a Raiders sweatshirt, a British Pith Helmet, and an unidentified gun. That is a good rule. Keep it in mind.
Thank the random fluctuations of time and space that he is not my neighbor. That guy was just creepy.
Jogging?
So as I was walking to the bank today, a monumental journey of about a block, I happened to walk past someone who was jogging, no shit.
I have always walked really fast, in fact if I am with anyone else I have to slow my normal pace quite a bit. Still, I walked past someone that was jogging. Isn’t the point of jogging supposed to be to move at a speed that falls somewhere between walking and running?
I am sure there are health benefits to any sort of physical activity, certainly for those whose only exercise otherwise would be walking to their car, then their desk, then back to their car, then to the couch. Does slowly jogging have any more effect on you than walking quickly? Seriously, I want to know this. She was not lifting her legs high as she went, not running on her toes (a friend tells me that running on your toes helps to build the muscles in your calves), she was just jogging along with strides about 1/3 of my normal walking ones.
It really isn’t my place to question the way someone exercises, of course I have never let that stop me before! Though really I just want to know if jogging slow is somehow better for your body than walking fast.
Funny stuff
I go to Boners.com about once a week to look at the new pictures. No it is not a porn site, though some of the images are definitely not safe for work. I happened upon this photo today, it is the funniest, yet most accurate thing I have seen in a while.
Are people really that fucking darn stupid?
Okay, people are sheep, the bible tells us that. Even if you aren’t into the whole religion thing, just look at the way that we all flocked to buy the latest Harry Potter book. Yes, we are all into following trends, usually without actually taking the time to think about it: Would the latest Harry Potter book have failed to exist if you weren’t there to buy it at midnight on the day it was released? Did you then go home and read the whole book before morning? -mind you that if you did you have a completely different sort of disorder which is equally as bad.- I’m just saying people are sheep; once the herd is pointed in a particular direction, they go that way regardless of obstruction (remember the ‘tickle me Elmo’ doll?).
That was a really horrible parallel to use for the point I am going to try to make, but it was the first thing that came to mind. I am just saying that people follow. Would we have millions of people driving ugly, dangerous, gas-guzzling SUV’s were it not for the for the pack mentality?
The tangent that I am going to spin off on today is in regards to car commercials. Not the insane, often impossible, images that you see on the television, but the ads (promotions) themselves. The new best offer of all time is employee pricing. I have been thinking about this for a couple of months, while listening to the advertising, knowing that it is complete bullshit, but, it keeps going and going. Now every dealership is offering the “employee pricing” to anyone that walks onto the lot.
I have never been in the auto business so all I have to offer is common sense, but sense of any sort is more logical than the latest dealer fad(fraud).
The fad several years ago was to offer you 5,000 dollars for any trade, which seems like a good deal, what they didn’t tell you was that the offer was only on cars that the dealer designated. You ended up paying far more than the MSRP on any other car, even after they took the 5,000 dollars off for your trade in. Good deal? No. Good marketing? Well, it worked. Should it be legal to market so falsely? I don’t think so, yet, they were able to get away with it by marketing a car at one price, then follow that statement with the phrase “exclusive of that offer”.
The current fad/fraud in the auto business is the ’employee pricing’. It started off with Chevy (I think, at least that was the first ad that I heard it on) and it has snowballed since then. Major props to Isuzu, who is still making fun of the employee pricing. Everyone else in the auto business is trying to offer the same ’employee pricing’ deal to every mark on the lot. And people are still falling for it.
I don’t know how much simpler it could be to know that this is outright fraud; look at the MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) to the layman, of the auto that you see advertised on the television, go to the dealership to see the same vehicle, then notice how the MSRP seemed to go up by several thousand dollars while you were on your way. I guess the seatbelts must cost a lot of money? No fear though, they can get the auto down to only slightly higher than the MSRP once you have your ’employee discount’. Wow, pay more than normal now that I am an employee? I am on it! Wouldn’t common sense tell you that employees would pay the same, or possibly less, than the general public?
That must be a really humorous exchange down at the GM factory:
GM Exec: “You’re late.”
Employee: “My bicycle had a flat tire.”
GM EXEC: “You’re in luck, you can use our Employee Pricing to buy a new car.”
Employee: “But, I can’t afford to buy a new car.”
GM EXEC: “You should have thought about that before you slept in.”
Employee: “I have a wife and children.”
GM EXEC: “Don’t worry, they will get employee pricing too.”
Employee: “My children are too young to work, and my wife has to watch them during the day.”
GM EXEC: “Why not buy her a car? She could run errands while watching the children.”
Employee: “I can’t afford a car on the wages you pay me! You want more than 10,000 American dollars for a new car, you pay me 1.5 American dollars per day!”
GM EXEC: “I understand your position…You don’t want to spread the good name of the General Motors Company to others”.
Employee: “Kill me, just kill me now. Perhaps my wife and son could then live off of my death benefits.”
GM EXEC: “Sorry, you do not work within the contiguous 48 states, no benefits for you!”
Employee: “will you go ahead and kill me anyway… My son is starving, my wife is pregnant, if I come home without a paycheck I would be better off dead.”
GM EXEC: “You’ve forced my hand, I will offer you employee pricing on your next GM automobile purchase.”
Employee: “You don’t pay me enough to buy an automobile! My son has died of malnutrition, my wife had a miscarriage and died. Thank you, Sir, for destroying my life!”
GM EXEC: “I see that you are upset…”
Employee: (whips out a gun) “Taste hot lead, asshole! Employee pricing my ass! Die you son of a bitch, die!”
GM EXEC’S Supervisor: “I wonder where that assault rifle came from… Calling number 3482, I need a new ambassador…..”
Bush’s master plan
Is it wrong to enjoy the fake news about Bush’s agenda more than the real news? Maybe. I will say that the fake news is far more realistic. Take this weeks top story from The Onion.
Bush Vows To Eliminate U.S. Dependence On Oil By 4920
Well at least there is a definite time frame there, something you would be hard pressed to get the Bush administration to assign to any of their current plans. Hell if the United States was led by Bush, or someone with similar goals, that might be far too optimistic of a goal. There would likely be more money going into deep space exploration to search for other planets with fossil fuels (which through some loophole would become the property of Bush’s successors) than to trying to harness all of the limitless sources of power that we already have, Solar and Hydrogen power for example.
The Onion frequently hits pretty close to home with its stories. This one is a bit too outrageous to fit into that context, but it is only barely satire. Bush is at the helm of the country, steering it with the confidence of a great and knowledgeable leader. Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to realize that he is not a great and knowledgeable leader, and those around him only add to his confidence. My only hope is that his eight years of rule will not have soured the entire world to the U.S., and that, with more responsible leadership, the next generation of Americans will have a country to be loyal to, not a crater left by the simultaneous nuclear (nukular) bombings aimed here by every other country on earth. One can always hope.
There was one quote in that fake news article that made me write this post, one which I think is more truth than fiction;
The proclamation comes on the heels of Bush’s plans to pay off the national debt by the early 6300s, and win the war on terror by 7450.
Perhaps a bit too optimistic, considering the current administration, but certainly an achievable goal!
Hollywood movie porn names?; Onion horoscopes; Mom’s PC
• This is something that I have been kicking around, inside my mind, for at least a month. Are film makers really trying to get Hollywood to start giving out Oscars for the worst named film? The summer releases this year seem to indicate that yes, they are. Or at least my assumption is based on the titles of said films.
Cinderella Man is the first up. It is a gay porn take on the original Cinderalla story. The prince eventually tracks down his lover, based on the size of his cock ring? No, it turns out it is a story about boxing during the depression. I know that you can only name one boxing movie Rocky, but come on, Cinderella Man? What the hell were they thinking? Of course the critical acclaim and box office gross for this movie seem to show that everyone other than me doesn’t think it is gay porn, I will attribute that directly to their lack of cynicism.
Next up is a movie called The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I assume that this is supposed to be one of those chick flicks where women cry a lot. I don’t know, I don’t care. The title implies, to me at least, that the sisterhood that they speak of is not friendship, it is lesbianism. The traveling pants is a euphemism which implies that the women take turns being the dominant one.
Yes, I know that this is a very chauvinistic point of view, but it is so not my fault. The movie industry named the movies, they should have known that calling a man Cinderella might not be understood as a movie about a prize fighter trying to keep his family alive, and fighting only to meet that end. Similarly, using the word “Sisterhood” in the title of a movie sort of implies lesbianism, and when you throw in the “traveling pants” part of the title it really seals the deal.
I am certainly not a person that hates homosexuals, that being thin ice to skate when you have family members that are of that demographic, but were there no other titles available? Say, like, Dude That Beats the Shit Out Of Everyone, Helping To support His Family, well, that title seems a bit long, how about, “Poverty to Prince”? Why did Cinderella’s name have to come into this? With the crying chick movie it is not so easy. I can tell you right upfront, however, that most of the women would never fit into those pants even a year after graduation. Had they chosen a small necklace, or something of the sort, that would have been far more believable, and it would have added the bonus of being plausible. By that I mean that the women might continue to send a piece of jewelry around, while the pants that don’t fit would go into the recycle bin.
But, the big question remains. Which is the worst named movie of summer 2005?
It is Thursday, June 9, 2005
• I have been reading The Onion for quite a while, yet have never linked to it. Consider that situation remedied.
If you have never visited the site you should know that it is a must read. It is updated weekly, on Wednesday’s I think, with new content. It is news much in the same way that that George W. Bush is a level-headed leader with America’s best interest at heart: It is utter bullshit, but frequently hilarious. Some of the features may seem a bit campy, but when compared to what passes for actual news these days it’s not really that bad.
The horoscopes are probably my favorite part of the whole site. Not because they are always funny, not because they are usefull, but because they are never vague references that could apply to anyone. There is never anything like “Venus is passing the shadow of Mercury, therefore a difficult situation in your life will become a bit less difficult.” No, no, they are pretty damn specific. I have chosen a couple of samples from this week’s horoscopes to give you an idea:
Leo: (July 23—Aug. 22)
You must learn to stop screaming “Rape! Rape!” at the top of your lungs. Everyone can see perfectly well what you’re doing without the grandstanding narration.
Aries: (March 21—April 19)
You’ll be forced to run more than 50 miles by some cruel bastard who’ll rig your hat with a fiendish device consisting of a candy bar, a piece of string, and a six-foot stick.
The rest of the site follows the same lines. If you have never been, you must go. Funny, funny stuff.
It is Sunday, June 5, 2005
Mom’s New PC
My mother finally broke down and (with a bit of help from me) bought a new pc. It turns out that even people who don’t spend an enormous amount of time online still want their machine to run faster. In her case, having a 366mhz processor and 192megs of ram, it was a fairly inexpensive venture, well in the grand scheme of things anyway.
I went through Dell to order her new machine, hoping to get the cheapest model available (as they have tv spots with 299 dollar computers). Turns out that there is a 99 dollar shipping charge on their pc’s if it is under 400 dollars, so I was forced to make upgrades. Which is good, I guess, since if you buy 100 bucks in upgrades you don’t have to pay for the shipping. The upgrades that I made were doubling the RAM (to 512mb) and adding speakers (so that she could still have sound on her old pc). Of course the advertised 299 dollar PC didn’t have an upgrade option on the RAM, so I had to use a 349 dollar model as a base. After doubling the RAM and adding the speakers, it was over 400 dollars, which qualified for free shipping…Golden…
There is one tiny thing that I misled my mother about though. I was trying to get her a pc for about 300 dollars, and failed by about 100. Yet, the pc that I bought for her came with a free 15″ flat panel monitor upgrade. I asked the sales guy and he said that it would cost 70 dollars for it if you were to buy it outright, so, I just knocked 70 bucks off of the total that mom owes me for her new pc. I was in need of a new monitor anyway, and I could get another one for the same price I am paying on her PC, so it’s really a wash (I also gifted her the 13.2″ monitor that we had been using on our old pc). Yet, I didn’t tell her about it in advance, and I kind of feel bad. But, if she wants that flat panel monitor, I can get it for her for the 70 bucks that I knocked off of the price when I bought it for her, so, no big deal.
I suck
The first week of the new posting type jobby has passed, yet I never added an update on any other day than Sunday. That means that there is no way I could possibly know if I like it better or worse than the old style. Oh well, I am about the only one that reads this anyway.
You steal the pizza, you do the time
Much like every other time I have made ultimatums regarding this site, today I had no intention of making a post, then along comes the following headline:
I can feel her pain, I really can. Pizza is made to order and then deliverd to your house. If the pizza joint doesn’t deliver then 1) they aren’t gonna have a whole hell of a lot of business, 2) They are going to rely solely on ‘walk-in’ customers, since 3) Why would you advertise in the yellow pages if people had to walk/drive to your place, while every other pizza joint on earth delivers. The woman in question, however, might have been a bit too nit-picky. (I am going to quote the whole story since it is short.)
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – An 86-year-old North Carolina woman spent two nights in jail after police said she repeatedly called 911 to complain about pizza delivery.
Dorothy Densmore was charged with misusing the 911 system after she allegedly called the emergency line 20 times in about half an hour.Densmore told police dispatchers Sunday she was angry that her local pizza parlour wouldn’t deliver to her apartment and demanded that they arrest the restaurant owner.
Instead, they arrested her.
But the five-foot, 98-pound woman wasn’t about to go quietly. She scratched, kicked and bit the hand of the police officer who came to arrest her, said officer Mandy Giannini.
Densmore is also charged with resisting arrest.
While it’s rare for someone to be charged for abusing the emergency line, Densmore kept calling even after she was asked to stop, said Giannini.
Giannini said the woman also complained to police that someone at the shop called her a “crazy old coot.”
Okay, seriously, the woman is well into her eighties (senility has probably kicked in a long time ago), but why didn’t she just call a Dominoes or Pizza Hut? If you call the loca pizza joint, and they say that they don’t deliver, they simply don’t deliver. Maybe if she was 22 and offering sex for a pizza delivery (and if she was you should be quite suspicious of S.T.D’s or A.I.D.S.) then the guy would think about making an exception.
The problem here is that the woman took on the whole ‘I am old, do my bidding’ persona. It might work with her family, but there is no sapient being on this planet that will do as she asks just because she is old…It seems to work inversely, in fact. Think about the options here, on the one hand you have the old lady that is mad that she can’t get a pizza delivered to her. On the other hand you have a nuclear (no it is not NUCULAR!) physicist who is trying to design a more efficient nuclear engine. Which person is more likely to get the pizza delivered to them? If you guessed Grandma you would be wrong.
Grandma needs to either put it back into her pants or show why she is the better bet for the long term. Unfortunately, Grandma just wants pizza, but they don’t deliver.
Old people suck. They vote Republican, almost invariably, then wonder why they actually have to pay for their meds. I guess, in a perfect world, once you are either diagnosed with a ‘condition’, or become really sick, you should definitely move to Sweden. Either that or vote for the guy that wants to help you. Never happens though…That damn, elusive, perfect world.
Dreams; Joke email
So yesterday I came up with a new idea for a side bar feature. You can see the evidence of that on this particular page! The new addition is, “Is It Porn?” The idea here is that you have to look at the name of a website and try to figure out who made it to get it registered first, either an actual business, or a porn site. The one that is currently there, the side-bar, was exactly the reason that I decided to do it in the first place. If you would have asked me a couple of days ago if I thought that Was.com was legitimate or a porn site, I would have thought it was definitely porn. That led me to try a few other common words, which really shouldn’t be porn, but about half of them were. So, I started thinking that there should be a guessing game involved in the process. While I currently only have a link to it (the first one), in the future I will likely place some ‘secret text’ below it so that you can see if you were right without having to download all the spyware and crap that you get from your average porn site.
• Yesterday’s call for email didn’t result in anything. Though when the wife asked for me to clarify exactly what I was asking later this evening, she decided that what I was asking sounded like normal dreaming. Now, see, I can only actually gain control of the dream perhaps 5% of the time, the rest of the time I am just dreaming and reacting to what happens in the dream world. When she, my wife, asked if I was able to make people appear and disappear once I had ‘control’ of the dream, I could answer it only partially true. I can make people appear, I can make things happen (not just things by my hand, but with other things in the dream) that change the surroundings and the people in the dream. It is certainly impossible to explain, but if you have ever had the type of dream where you can make people/animals/objects appear, then you remember doing that in the morning, you might be having the kind of dream that I am talking about.
I also say that I can do that in about 5% of my dreams, yet I think that might be a bit of a high end estimate. Possibly 50% of the times that I am dreaming I realize that it is a dream. Of that 50%, I may only be able to wake up or take control half of the time. Of that number, I would guess that the percentage of times that I simply wake up would be in the extremely high nineties. To stretch that one a bit further, I can take control of a dream roughly once or twice a month. That is not counting all dreams had in a night as one dream, but counting the times when I am able to take control. If I have five or six dreams in a night I may never be able to gain control of them, this could go on for weeks. If you have never gained control of one of your dreams, you will just sit there wondering WTF I am talking about, yet, if you have ever done so (gained control of a dream, that is), I would really like to Hear from you. Trust me when I say that you will know if you have ever done it.
No more on that subject today, I have more information to gather.
• The wife is a wonderful source of those CC emails that you really wish you never got, but only because you think that they are virus-ridden. For some reason or another, the last couple of emails that I got from my wife made me laugh. One for obvious reasons, one less so. At any rate, I am gonna post them both here, after clipping the names, email addresses and phone numbers of course:
George Bush met with the Queen of England. He asked her, “Your Majesty, how do you run such an efficient government? Are there any tips you can give to me?””Well,” said the Queen, “the most important thing is to surround yourself with intelligent people.”
Bush frowned. “But how do I know the people around me are really intelligent?”
The Queen took a sip of tea. “Oh, that’s easy. You just ask them to answer an intelligent riddle.” She then pushed a button on her intercom. “Please send Tony Blair in here, would you?”
Tony Blair walked into the room. “Yes, my Queen?”
The Queen smiled. “Answer me this, please, Tony. Your mother and father have a child. It is not your brother and it is not your sister. Who is it?”
Without pausing for a moment, Tony Blair answered, “That would be me.”
“Yes! Very good,” said the Queen.
Bush went home to ask Dick Cheney, his vice president, the same question. “Dick, answer this for me. Your mother and your father have a child. It’s not your brother and it’s not your sister. Who is it?”
“I’m not sure,” replied Dick. “Let me get back to you on that one.”
Cheney went to his advisors and asked every one, but none could give him an answer. Finally, he ended up in the men’s room. Recognizing Colin Powell’s shoes in the next stall, he shouted, “Colin! Can you answer this for me? Your mother and father have a child and it’s not your brother or your sister. Who is it?”
Colin Powell yelled back, “That’s easy. It’s me!”
Cheney smiled and said, “Thanks!” Then he went back to speak with Bush.
“Say, I did some research and I have the answer to that riddle. It’s Colin Powell.”
Bush got up, stomped over to Cheney, and angrily yelled into his face, “No, you idiot! It’s Tony Blair!”
Okay, so I am going to post only the one, as I realized the other one would not work quite as well in this format.