Registering Alarm
We recently renewed the contract for another year on the house we rent. We politely inquired directly with the owner about cutting the property management company out of the deal because they’re stark raving assholes and don’t do jack shit, but she said no. I figured it would have been a good deal for her since she wouldn’t have to pay them for doing nothing.
They only handled one issue from us all year and that was a broken 35-year-old hot water heater. In our defense we do need hot water several times a year.
The owner felt she “didn’t have time” to manage the property herself. Eh? Wazzup?
Then the other night came a very alarming sequence of events.
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The Family Owned Rest-O-Taunt
The wrong kind of hunger.
Kids in restaurants: What more can possibly be added to the conversation on this grisly topic? What are the chances of any new pithy insights, useful anecdotes or even a side serving of a modicum of wit? Hell if I know, but I’m going to give it my best shot.
Every once a while a restaurant will make the national news because they do something daring like “banning” children under the age of six. That’s old news by now, even though the practice didn’t exactly become the norm.
So, unfortunately, we’re all desensitized to fine dine experiences that include the boorish behavior of other people’s kids. I dare say, bad form. Especially on top of all the other usual nonsense like cell phones, loud mouths, drunks and cigarette smoke.
But there’s a particular variant of this that was recently brought to my attention by the kindly staff at a local eatery the other night: When the kids aren’t just fellow guests but are owned, operated, sponsored and provided by the restaurant itself.
Duh, duh, duh!!!
I guess we could think of them as the amuse-bouche of upgrade comps. Now that’s a hot ticket!
Here’s To Good Fiends
I’m in the mood to sing!
Here’s to good fiends
Tonight is kinda special
Where are we?
What the hell is going on?
Crop circles in the armpit
Sinking, feeling
Spin me around again
And rub my eyes
This can’t be happening
Mm, what’d you say?
Mm, that you only meant well
Well of course you did
Mm, what’d you say?
Mm, that it’s all for the best
Of course it is
Mm, what’d you say?
Mm, that it’s just what we need
You decided this
Mm, what’d you say?
Mm, what did she say?
The beer we pour must say something more
Because from yelling my throat is sore
Your lips move and I can’t hear what you say
Leaving the small town for the big city did have one unfortunate side effect: We left all of our friends behind this presented a problem, especially since I stubbornly refuse to make new ones.
Thus, when old friends come to town, we’re excited to see them. “We should get together,” we say with genuine enthusiasm.
“Great. Meet us at the Chinese restaurant/karaoke bar, Saturday night, 9pm.”
Oh, shit. I want to die.
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Fires in the Works
It’s all (allegedly) fun and games until something like this this happens. Must satisfy impulses now. Regret can come later.
I am proud to be an American.
BOOM!
Whoa! What the fuck was that? And, more importantly, who’s going to help me change my diaper?
So let me get this straight. You love America, too. And to prove it you’re going to make something go boom boom. Do you mind if I get some background information? Are you the same guy from elementary school who got paper towels wet and threw them into ceiling lights until they blew up? Are you the one who was so fascinated with fire that he set his junior high school locker ablaze? Do you think shooting a gun up in the air is good clean fun? No, no, don’t tell me. Let me guess. All the same guy, right?
Just in case you doubt my cred to discuss this topic, please know that one time I visited the game store where my son the gerbil liked to hang out. Staff regaled with me with stories of my son’s exploits in the back parking lot shooting bottle rockets using his ass as the launch platform. So I think I’m qualified!
In 2012, 60-percent of the year’s fireworks injuries occurred between June 22nd and July 22nd, sending an average of 200 people per day to the hospital. … All six fireworks-related deaths that happened last year involved illegal or homemade fireworks.
–Source: All the Amazing Facts About Your Fireworks Injury (Gizmodo)
Fireworks are a product. I know for a fact that those who make them have a profit motive. What I secretly suspect, however, is that they also hate America and are out to conquer us one body part at a time. Yes, it’s a theory, but it fits the available facts, dammit!
There’s no such thing as a zero error rate in the manufacture of products. Stay with me here. I’m building a logical proof piece by piece (if you’ll pardon the expression). That means some percentage of fireworks legally sold in this country are inherently flawed. Use of those products is, therefore, a calculated risk. Fuck that. I’ll stick with the craps table. I deem that to be an acceptable level of risk, but hey, that’s how I roll. Your mileage may vary.
Some, like me, might argue further that just the existence of the product is an intentional design flaw, but I won’t go there.
I’ll just say, like I am often wont to do, “What could possibly go wrong?” Life is dangerous enough. Why do we deliberately go out of our way to do nonsensical things that have no logical purpose that increase the odds against us? That makes absolutely no sense to me.
At ease, people. Blow ’em up if you got ’em.
BTW, the fireworks we give to youngsters make a lot more sense. Sparklers. So pretty. And what are they? Pieces of metal burning at temperatures up to 2,000 degrees or about as hot as a blow torch.
What could possibly go wrong? (Oops. There I go again.) I can’t understand how sparklers are responsible for 12 percent of reported fireworks-related injuries.
The Ultimate Christmas Song
The other day I found My favorite Christmas song. I mostly noticed the lyrics but it did have, I thought, that quintessential now sound that says “Christmas.” Unfortunately it also contained twang.
Let’s try this once again, this time with reeling. Without further ado, here is my nominee for The Ultimate Christmas Song in the Non-Twang Category.
You can tell me “Merry Christmas” but I probably won’t hear you. For heaven’s sake, it’s loud with the Shop-Vac on!
It rubs the Jello pudding pops on its skin
Last night we watched a little TV. “Last Comic Standing,” to be all up and up about it. They’d show a few minutes of the entertainment, then a few minutes of commercials. I swear to God, it seemed like the mix was exactly 50/50. Probably not, but it sure felt like it! We finally got sick enough to turn the damn thing off and go to bed.
I guess we won’t know who made it through to the finals until later. Hell, maybe we’ll never know. Horrors! How will we ever survive The Not Knowing?!?!?!?!?
After the mind-numbing hell of the commercials, we’d finally be returned to the show. As the entertainment continued, there, at the bottom of our screen, the asshole characters from some future show would dance and cavort around like escaped mental patients, trying to remind us that there are other shows in the universe besides the one we were currently watching. I’d wager that fully one-third of the screen was consumed by this bullshit. Advertisers know that movement draws the attention of the eye. As usual they are subtle as ever. Look for a new troupe of epileptics to start hawking products soon.
That’s the rub, isn’t it? We all already know that. We know there are something like 3,000 television channels now. And we all know by now, we’ve been sufficiently trained, that we’ll never, never, ever watch a show on the telly without having details about the next shows shoved down our motherfucking gullets.
We get that. It’s a sad fact of life if you choose to watch the idiot box. It’s called that for a reason.
We know other things, too. Like that you’ll pump up the volume on commercials until our ears bleed. (See: CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW!!!) Subtlety doesn’t count for jack shit when you have the ability to sacrifice my quality of life in the pursuit of lining your pockets with a few more pieces of silver. Got it, old chap!
So today I’m on the internet and reading Google News. I clicked a link I found compelling and was taken to the Washington Post web site. I don’t know if they are especially notorious about this or not, but that’s the site where it happened.
Before I could get to the promise land of Content I was forced to watch a television commercial. That’s when it hit me.
I was being forced to watch advertising before I was taken to a web page that just happens to be crammed to the gills with … guess what? More fucking advertising! Talk about double-dipping. That’s like paying $5 for a gallon of milk at the register, then paying another $5 at the exit for the privilege of taking it outside of the store.
Some future shock predictions that we can look forward to:
- The ability to sell ad space on the inside of your eye lids.
- Advertising on the walls of your home.
- Logos visible from the surface of the moon.
- Whoring out the name of your city.
- Printing commercials on the surface of the food you eat.
- Subliminal advertising beamed 24/7 as radiation across the whole planet.
- Product tattoos on your forehead.
Don’t worry. It’s no big deal what you have to endure as long as some asshole is getting rich.
Meanwhile I finally went to a web site known as MyLife.com and attempted to opt-out from their bullshit. Mind you that I’ve never visited this web site before or signed up for anything. I clicked the “Unsubscribe” link in their email and found, amazingly, that I was already subscribed to all of this bullshit:
- New Member Alerts: Notify me whenever new members join My Groups.
- Birthday Alerts: Remind me whenever a contact has a birthday.
- Special Offers: Notify me of special offers for MyLife services.
- Tips & Tricks: Send me tips & tricks on new and existing features.
- Partner Offers: Send me offers from selected marketing partners.
Each and every one of these “notifications” was turned on by default, for a site that I’d never even visited before!
Someone kindly direct me to the “opt-out forever for everything” checkbox. MyLife? What a friggin’ joke.
Television advertisers ask: CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW!!!
This post addresses something that has bothered me for years. In fact, I blogged about it way back in the late 1990’s. OK, I admit, I didn’t call it a “blog” back then. But I did have a section of what I called my “home page” (aka web site) where I ranted about various things. The topic of this posting was one of them.
Ever notice how television commercials are louder than regular programming? I noticed it and complained about it over 10 years ago and it still bothers me to this day. And lately I’ve been noticing it get worse. A lot worse.
Shouts from the Abyss 
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