A Snot Across The Bow
I’ve always had the ability to sniff out Danger. Let me tell you, it does not smell good. Why do things always have to end up like this?
My mission today is to discuss Weiner and address the elephant man in the room.
I’m going to be straight with you. I’m a dude, albeit a feminized one. So I asked myself, what’s the hubbub about this man all about? Something isn’t kosher!
When I look at the face of Anthony Weiner blood rushes away from my naughty bits and leaves me with a bit of a headache. His face actually causes shrinkage.
Am I missing something? Not to put too fine of a point on it, but the Weiner is completely unattractive. I ask myself, if I woke up in the morning and found him laying on my body, what would I do? I’m forced to admit I would chew off my own arm just to get away. Trust me on this, not many humans meet that standard.
“Weiner” and “wiener” are two different things. Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never mix them up.
–Tom B. Taker
We call it “fugly.”
Unattractive. Unbeautiful. Man Medusa. Unseemly. Repelling. Unsightly.
And yet…
So what is it? What’s the attraction? Does he have the heart of poet? A horny poet? Does he understand women to such a degree that it turns them on? Does he hot chat better than the author of 50 Shades of Grey?
Or is it merely the money? Power? Celebrity? Is it all about the unquenchable lust for 15 minutes of shame? Is this what we have come to? That life is the ultimate substitute for reality TV like the game of Survivor?
I don’t get it. Luckily I keep an airsickness bag handy for times like these.
Demonically Repossessed
This is a true story…
It all started when I loaned a friend a hammer. A hammer is a tool typically used for driving metal objects known as nails into various materials like wood. Or so I’ve heard.
For the purpose of this story let’s assume I actually owned a hammer.
If we wanted to (and were sufficiently sick in the head) we could think of this loan as a transaction. The hammer represents the principle, my friend is the debtor and I must be, of course, the bank.
It isn’t too hard to assume my friend is a debtbeat deadbeat and never returned the bloody thing. Amazingly, even though I dunned him many, many times, and threatened to assess late fees of 1.5 percent on a monthly basis.
Finally that worthless so-and-so left me no recourse. After consulting my voluminous and most accurate scribbles documentation, I looked up his address and drove across town. I was literally seeing red. My goal? To retrieve the hammer and write the dude off as my friend.
I kicked in his door, tore the place apart, and, having found my precious hammer, I got the hell out of dodge.
The only problem? I made the totally understandable mistake of going to the wrong house. The hammer I repossessed wasn’t even mine. In my defense, it was of similar design. Oops. My bad.
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Kirk Blocked
Meanwhile, in 1964, the idea for a space exploration television series was already a glint in Gene Roddenberry’s eye. Who could have possibly guessed where this glint might lead? One night, early in 1970, a jackal howled at the moon and that glint was conceived as a new life form. A winning sperm penetrated a poor little ovum and nine months later, on October 12, 1970, Kirk Thomas Cameron popped onto the earthly plane.
Verily, I must go where the spirit moves me and today it has led me to Kirk Cameron. Ugh.
Far be it for me to question the motives of the Creator. Maybe he’s torturing me for a follow up to the Book of Job? The Book of Tom has a nice ring to it. Yeah, I’m willing to suffer a little for 15 minutes of Biblical fame. But not too much, okay?
Verily, like most incidents of torture in my life, it all started on Facebook…
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I can has grammar?
I wrote about improving my my grammar over tree years ago and I’m still haven’t learned a damning thing. I need more hats.
Ever go back and re-read your previously written blog posts? I’m a glutton for pain and humiliation so I often do. For me, reading my own writing can be a lot like seeing a picture of myself or hearing the sound of my own voice. It makes me throw up a little in my mouth.
So I try to re-read my own stuff, mainly to make sure it reads well and I don’t sound like a friggin’ idiot. And you know what? I always do sound like an idiot! Some of the grammatical errors and typos are so glaring that a reasonable person would be forced to ask: Just what the hell was he on when he wrote that?
A good friend taught me long ago about the three hats of writing, and I’ve always tried to wear those hats when composing my blog posts. It’s somewhat sobering that even…
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Groaning Pains: Matthew Perry Goes On to a Better Place; Or How We Learned About Drunk Driving
Mike Seaver did what to Chandler Bing? Read this post for the public version of events, aptly dubbed “Groaning Pains” and then check back on Monday for the behind-the-scenes dirt. Hint: It involves Satan so you know it’s gotta be good!
With the proper premiere of Go On this week and its promising ratings, it seemed like the appropriate time to revisit our Groaning Pains series, specifically Go On star Matthew Perry’s short stint as Carol’s ill-fated boyfriend, Sandy. In other words, it’s time to discuss how we learned about drunk driving (and that a guy could be named “Sandy”).
When Friends premiered back in 1994 we may have been the only eleven-year-old in the country who thought to himself “there’s the guy who was in the Married with Children backdoor pilot and there’s the guy who was Carol’s boyfriend on Growing Pains that died from drinking and driving.” The former is Matt LeBlanc, whose Married With Children character Vinnie Verducci – Joey Tribbiani’s spiritual predecessor – was spun off with his father Charlie (the immortal Joseph Bolonga) into the very short-lived series Top of the Heap, and the…
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Coffee Math
Warning: This post contains math. This is not a drill. For those not mathematically inclined you now have sufficient grounds (meh!) to leave us…
To do math, first we’ll need some coffee. To drink that coffee, we’ll need a vessel of some sort. Perhaps a mug.
Ah. I just burned my face. Now we’re ready for some coffee math!
Today’s lesson is that things are not always as they seem. For example, look at that beautiful assortment of bags of pre-ground coffee on the shelf. Wonderful, ain’t it?
How much are they? $7.99 a bag? $8.99 a bag? $9.95 a bag? $12.95 a bag? According to the Walmart.com website, a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee (in my experience one of the most expensive) is $7.28 per bag. You’ll even get free shipping if you order $45 worth (or other stuff).
Most of the bags of coffee you see, including this bag of Dunkin’ Donuts, are 12-ounces in size. Wait? What?
Why?
Personally I think it is to make apples-to-apples comparisons in pounds more difficult. So how much is that bag of coffee per pound?
First, we calculate the price per ounce. Since “per” is another way of saying “divide by” the formula is simple:
Price ($7.28) per Ounce (12)
$7.28 divided by 12
Answer: $0.61 (61 cents per ounce)
Next, we multiply the cost per ounce by the number of ounces in a pound (16).
$0.61 cost per ounce * 16 ounces in a pound
Answer: $9.71
Aha! That coffee costs $9.71 per pound.
Why? Wouldn’t one-pound bags make a lot more logical sense? Since that’s a unit we already know and love? A unit that we’ve been raised with since the moment of our birth?
Perhaps I’m just in a black mood, but I think they like 12-ounce sizing because it makes the consumer feel the price is lower. “It’s only $7.28 a bag,” we are wont to say.
“$9.71 per pound” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. All of the sudden we’re talking upwards of a $10 note. Yikes. Consumer no buy-buy. Game over.
My wife just brought home a bag of coffee from a local shop. And guess what? It was in a one-pound bag and only $8. Now that’s refreshing. Sorry, Walmart. Your price sounds lower but it isn’t*.
* Disclaimer: Identical brands of coffee were not compared.
Tom the Half-a-Life
Is the #beer mug half empty or half full? The answer depends on the existence of a serviceable keg nearby. #philosophy #perspective
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Tom B. Taker (@shoutabyss) July 25, 2013
Half a beer, philosophically, must ipso facto half not be. But half the beer has got to be, vis-à-vis its liquidity – d’you see? But can o’ beer be said to be or not to be an entire beer when half the beer is not a beer, due to some recent imbibery?
Positive? Negative? Is the beer mug half full or half empty? Beer isn’t just something that you drink. It’s something that you do.
I thought I knew beer. It was something I drank once in a while. Nothing special, nothing to write home about. But then I moved to Portland, Oregon, the microbrew capital of the world.
In July 2011, representatives from the Oregon Brewers Festival declared Portland had 40 microbreweries located within the city limits, more than any city in the world and greater than one-third of the state total.
Suddenly I was awash in the stuff. I was drinking a “pint” almost every day of my life. Sometimes more.
Sure, it was nice. The formula is simple:
More Beer = The Good
There was, however, a problem. A big problem. (Surprised?) I don’t like generating cans and bottles. For one thing, in Oregon, you pay a five cent tithe per container. For another, you gots to lug ’em around and shit. And I despise going back to the euphemistically-named “redemption centers” to get those nickels back. Unless you love hacking and slashing your way through a literal jungle of flies with your handy machete. So we’d end up just tossing the empties in the recycling bin, essentially a cash donation to The State. For some reason that gnawed at the very fiber of my existence.
Then, by chance, it happened. I learned of something called The Growler.
I just learned about a wondrous object known as the #beer #growler. To think, up till now, I've only been living half a life! #diminished
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Tom B. Taker (@shoutabyss) July 15, 2013It was at that moment I learned that I had been living only half a life. (Prior to that I was merely radioactive.) As is often my wont, I celebrated by bursting into song…
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