Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Stream of Consciousness (Trickle of Comatose-ness)

The FreeCreditReport.com band needs to go away now and play somewhere else. Please hang it up. Those smirky bobbing heads make me break out in “bad band hives” every time they pop up on my TV screen. Catchy? Maybe. I'm sure they were a real band once with real band dreams and real band songs. Now they are homoerotic clowns. How about FreeSmirkRemoval..dot…web…dot net…

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I don’t understand why women today need to wear gigantic oversized sunglasses that make them look like extras for “The Fly Buzzes Broadway!” Everywhere you look; huge black plastic circles stuck on ladies faces while they walk down the sidewalk clutching Starbucks cups. I believe that Martians were ready to invade us until they saw these women. For this reason alone, they turned around and flew back to Mars. “I don’t want to get any crazy on us,” one Martian was quoted as saying. “That shit never comes off.”

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Speaking of coffee, I also noticed that coffee mugs are getting bigger and bigger in sensitive TV shows that feature women having serious discussions about womanly things. You can’t help but notice as one rounds the corner with a humongous mug cradled in her tiny hands. How much coffee is in there? 3 cups? 1 gallon? Does one person really need that much tea in one sitting? Again, Mars, I don’t blame you for hightailing it out of here. The caffeine intake here is staggering.

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I was watching “The Biggest Loser” the other night. For those who don’t know, this is a television show that gathers up approximately 20 people who are enormously overweight and then chronicles a series of humiliations (ie. Falling off treadmills, having donuts dangled in front of them, close up camera shots of them vomiting during their first workouts, etc.) as they work their way to a healthier life. I can see that NBC is catering to the supposed intelligence of the people watching the show in the way it is produced. The premise of the show is repeated by every person on the show at least ten times each, per person, per show.

“If I don’t lose weight, I’m going home!”
“I need to get on the scale and see a weight loss, or I could go home!”
“I’m here to lose weight and that is exactly what I’m going to do.”
“At tonight’s weigh-in, I will weigh myself and then possibly go home!”
“I will go home if I don’t lose weight!”

Do the producers of this show really think the audience is so stupid that they don’t understand the simplest of simple premises? Lose weight. Vote. Someone leaves. The End. Oh, and each episode is TWO HOURS LONG. Two hours of repeated premises, vomiting, pizza locked in cages and spinning fatties rolling off of treadmills that are moving faster than an Olympic runner’s feet. NBC fever, catch it!

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I have an extremely hard time with small talk. I can’t execute it well. I believe it is an art; an acquired skill, and one that I have not acquired. Some people have a talent for this and they can smoothly run through all the standard small talk bullet points easily and freely and genuinely seem interested. I cannot do this. In reality, I am OK with thinking up the standard small talk questions. I have the hardest time responding to small talk with enough content to keep anyone interested for any period of time. Plus I usually glare at the person with my eyebrows knitted together and try to make the fiercest frowny face I can make until they inch away slowly. Here is a conversation I have had 132 times:

“How’s work going?”
“Eh, it’s going OK I guess.”
*silence*
“How are the kids?”
“Getting big!”
*silence*

Just typing this I want to dig out my eyes with an ice pick I’m so uncomfortable. I probably should just stay in my house all the time.

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I was watching “Celebrity Rehab” the other night (one of my favorite shows). Heidi Fleiss is on that show rehabbing herself (and doing a poor job). Her lips look like someone kicked her in the mouth with hornet boots. Plus, she lives with birds. Only birds. She dated Tom Sizemore who is also on the show. I think she ran a whore house at some point in her life. Would you purchase the valuable time of a whore from this woman? If she is the whore-master, imagine the whores at her command? I imaging summoning a "Heidi Special" from the back room would be like the scene in Lord of the Rings where the Orcs are being created from mud, shit and transparent mucus membranes. I don’t know what else to say about her.

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Every time I get a hair cut, someone in my office (actually the same ass of a someone) comes to my desk the next day and says “Hey, where did your hair go?” and then laughs out loud. Every. Single. Damn. Time. It is times like these I wish I could force an evolution like the X-Men and develop lightning eyesight and electrocute this person. Also: Fire Breath and Laser Feet. I don’t know what Laser Feet would do, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have to answer the same inane questions about the amount of hair I currently possess if I had Laser Feet.

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Every time I go to the supermarket, someone stops their cart in the middle of an aisle blocking all possible human foot traffic while they carefully examine the ingredients contained in a ketchup bottle. Then, when you ask them to move, they always look surprised (“Oh, I’m sorry!”) and make a big show of dragging their cart off to the side. Coincidentally, every time I go to the supermarket someone’s cart (not mine) ends up with a busted wheel and a disgruntled shopper sitting inside covered in Corn Flakes wondering how they suddenly ended up there and how their feet and legs got bent at such odd angles. I am anti-social.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Urgent Questions: Volume X

Why is it that my car is constantly driving itself to a strip club called “The Pumpkin Patch” all by itself with me in the driver’s seat? And who put a stack of a hundred dollar bills in my pocket? God, are you there, it’s me Margaret.

Who came up with the phrase ‘Get off my lawn or I’ll slap a restraining order on you so fast your head will spin’? I find it to be such a whimsical phrase, with just the right touch of melancholy and hope.

If I tell you a secret about a recently discovered link between sausage links and orgasms, will you promise to tell Jimmy Dean? He’s in the phone book. He won’t take my calls, or I would just call him myself.

Did you know that Rudolph was originally a blue-nosed reindeer? He was, until market researchers told Santa that red inspires a much more positive response in the 0-6 year old demographic. So, Santa had Rudolph genetically altered in a series of seven painful operations that took a total of 35 hours. That is why toddlers scream and wet themselves whenever they see Santa: Complete fear of genetic alteration and mindless pandering to demographics.

If I buy a gun, wear a coonskin cap and tell everyone I’m Davy Crocket, king of the wild frontier, can you just please play along and stop rolling your eyes? I think we could totally get laid tonight if you just stick with the plan.

Coke or Pepsi? Well, first of all, Coke is illegal. That being said, I bet you never heard of anyone doing lines of Pepsi off of a hooker’s stomach, have you? Question answered.

If a Balloon jumped out at you from a dark alleyway and tried to turn the tables and blow you up, would you try to pop it with your fingernail, or would you flim flam the floojy flazit? (You never know how much you rely on spell checker until it’s gone. Wow.)

If Billy has 13 caterpillars and Lucy has 16 caterpillars and Reggie has 20 caterpillars, then where the hell did all these caterpillars come from *slapping at my hair*?

If you have a 5 pound bucket of Hog Fat, and a 5 pound bucket of Chicken Feathers, which bucket would taste better dumped on top of a 5 pound bucket of SHUT IT?

If your mail gets sent to Johnny’s house, and Johnny’s mail gets sent to Richard’s house, and Richard’s mail gets sent to Sally’s house, and Sally’s mail gets sent to your house and…Holy Crap, does Sally really subscribe to ‘Duck Digest Monthly’? What could that magazine possibly be about, besides ducks? What was the original question?

If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, how much is a bird in your pants worth? Is there a conversion chart?

Have you ever wondered where wishes go when they leave your brain? I like to think they go to the “Wish-A-Torium” where angels sort them and label them and box them up and put them in a “Wish-Warehouse” to rot away and die. Call me a simple-minded dreamer, but I have always believed this.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Anatomy of a Blizzard

I live in New Jersey. This past weekend we had a little snowstorm. Our part of NJ was forecast to get 3-6 inches, and ended up with about that much. I want to give you a kind of timeline in the evolution of a “Blizzard” in my part of the world. All timelines are approximate. All insanity is real.

5:00 pm BB (Before Blizzard): Watching TV, the newscasters start yammering on about blizzards and snowstorms, etc.:

“The Storm of the Century is on the way! How can you avoid the latent cancer contained in each snowflake? We’ll tell you at Eleven.”

“Nor’easter on its way to blanket the Northeast over the weekend, get out your shovels! Why will the citizens of one state be murdered as a result? We’ll tell you which state and why at Eleven.”

“Snow will be falling at record rates this Saturday afternoon. We’ll tell you why flashlights and generators are likely to explode in your face violently at the worst possible time. Also, snowy recipes at Ten!”

“Was Frosty the Snowman gay? A Boston man says, ‘Yes he was’ and says he has the pictures to prove it. Details at Eleven.”

“Can snow shovels be used to carry babies to the emergency room? We’ll show you how at Eleven.”

7:00pm BB (Before Blizzard): As usual, following the announcement of the impending pile of snow to be dumped on our doorsteps (3-6 inches), the supermarket down the road from me was immediately under assault. The aisles were full of people with gallons of water, stacks of toilet paper, multiple dozens of eggs and stacks and stacks and stacks of paper towels. What do these people think is going to happen when six whole inches of snow falls on us? Are they going to stand in their kitchen looking out the window while drinking gallons of water and crapping themselves repeatedly? Gotta have 356 rolls of toilet paper, just in case! Oh, don’t forget the healing power of omelets! I can understand if you live in the backwoods of Kentucky and you routinely lose power for months at a time, but the suburbs of New Jersey with six inches of snow? A half hour of shoveling and you are back on the road (presumably to get more toilet paper to clean up the mounds of feces that snowstorms inevitably bring with it).

11:00 pm – 7:00 am DB (During Blizzard): Sleep for me until about 6 am, and then out to start the snow blower. Up and down my street, the sounds of snow blowers starting and big clouds of snow shooting up into the sky. Neighborhood men all blowing snow (no jokes) early in the morning really gets your blood pumping.

Camps are divided into two: ‘Just get enough snow cleared so I can get my car out of the driveway’ and ‘Get every snowflake off of my driveway and sidewalk so I can win the snow blowing competition that no one else realizes they are a part of’.

8:00 am AB (After Blizzard): The driveway and roads are clear enough to take the family to breakfast while wondering aloud what all of those panicking idiots are going to do with their 20 gallons of water and 345 pounds of toilet paper.

There you have it. Hours of build up and panic with no payoff. Kind of like my senior prom night.

Monday, February 1, 2010

The Grammys

Someone told me the Grammy Awards were handed out last night. I stopped watching these quite some time ago. I do still like to watch the Oscar awards only because Actors are some of the looniest people on earth and more often than not they give good speeches.

Can anyone explain awards shows to me? Specifically, why awards are given out for things that are subjective? For example, here are the five nominees for “Best Word of All Time”:

Haberdasher
Conifer
Hovercraft
Borscht
Rastafarian

Now, I’m sure you could tell me which of these five words is your favorite, right? We all have favorite things in life. My favorite here is Haberdasher for obvious reasons. But is Haberdasher the best word? Does it have some quality the other five words lack? Of course not. The same goes for music or artwork or movies or anything else that is entirely subjective. Everyone can pick a favorite, and the overwhelming majority of people may have the same favorite thing, but that does not make it the best, or make it deserving of any type of award. I always enjoy the many articles analyzing the Oscar awards before they happen. They always divide up the nominees into “Should Win” and “Will Win” categories. Their reasoning is insane at best bordering on demented.

“E.T. The Extra Terrestrial SHOULD WIN the best picture award due to its sentimentality and amazing special effects. Gandhi WILL WIN the award because of its social commentary and brilliant acting on the part of Ben Kingsley.”

Yes, a human being was paid to write the sentence above. Better yet, an editor read this statement and thought it was a brilliant commentary; a sentence comparing a movie about an alien puppet to a movie about a great world leader from India. As if special effects somehow relate to a commentary on the life of India’s greatest man. Somehow it is acceptable to compare a film with a cute alien who eats Reese’s Pieces to a film with no visible aliens and come up with a valid commentary on which one deserves an award? It is one of the great American time wasting endeavors of all time. Don’t get me started on AFI’s 100 greatest movie list they put out every year. (Hint: Number one is almost always the Godfather, even though there are no other mafia movies in the list. No aliens in that movie either).

Anyway, I would like to hand out some of my own Grammys to counteract the silly awards given out last night. I think the problem is that the categories are too broad. Best song of the year? Do you know how many songs were written and recorded last year? I would guess one hundred billion (plus or minus 5). How do you compare a classical song to a pop song to a country song to a rock song to a Zimbabwean who raps while tap dancing and beating a tin drum with his penis? If you can do it, you are a better person than I (the comparison thing, not the penis thing).

The categories need to be narrower to give them more meaning. Like:

“Cutest Irish Voice coming out of a 50 year old head”
“Best transvestite trying to look shocking when actually looking like a mentally challenged 12 year old who got locked in her mother’s closet overnight”
“Least whiny country song not about beer or divorce or death”
“Best use of tin whistle”
“Best duet by over 40 year old males who still have most of their hair and do not currently take drugs”

See you at next year’s ceremony…
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