Remember the good old days? You know, the days when you had the power to get back at the businesses and craftsmen who fucked you over. If your plow broke on the first use, you could just drag it back to the lazy, incompetent blacksmith and bust his teeth on it. If the milkman left you curdled milk, you could murder his family in their sleep - leaving him alive to suffer with emotional anguish (and possibly a mouthful of busted teeth).

Now that we live in the age of the 30 day money-back-guarantee, there's less teeth bashing and family killing. But what happens when things aren't broken - just fucking stupid? I've got a Motorolla RAZR, a phone that used to be a coveted status symbol but was pretty much reduced to the free phone you get when you start a new plan by the time I got it. I don't need a phone to "do stuff". I just want it slim enough to fit in my pocket without looking like I'm sporting wood.

But what do I really look for in a phone? I want one that doesn't fucking beep when you turn off the ringer. I guess whatever douchebag at Motorolla was in charge of squeezing out this sleek, angular turd didn't realize that any time you're trying to silence your phone is the WORST FUCKING TIME FOR IT TO MAKE NOISE! I don't know how many movies, plays or ballet recitals I've been to where I've had to take the battery out of the phone to discreetly turn it off without enduring sidelong looks of disdain from others who think I'm sending a message or "doing stuff".

I like Beeps. I really do. But I feel beeps the same way that 19th Century aristocrats felt about other races. They can be very helpful, but there are places where they simply don't belong.

I suppose advocating a rake in the teeth or anthrax in the mailbox of the RAZR project leader wouldn't get me the support of even the Iranian Judicial system, but I'd at least like to see him forced to live with two Cicada bugs chirping in his ears for the rest of his life. Or, as the offence really isn't the noise as much as an undeserved public embarrassment, maybe he should be forever followed by an invisible farting goat. Or an invisible goat with turret's syndrome. We can save the rake for the 19th Century aristocrats. Those idle rich racist fat-cats deserve it.

By the way, I haven't really been to any ballet recitals recently, if ever. God, that sounds awful.

 

You know the scene. Someone has just given a controversial performance or speech in front of a crowd. It's been shocking, ballsy and probably from the heart. There is silence in the crowd until one man stands up. He starts clapping slow and hard. CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! The rest of the crowd is awakened from their stunned silence and gives a massive standing ovation with whistling, cheering and hats in the air. Freeze frame. Fade out.

Who does that solo-clapping man think he his? We almost had a nice juicy riot on our hands and he has to take charge and turn it into a wank-fest. Why does the crowd think they have to agree? His judgment could be wrong. Maybe he just wants to get the whole thing to move along because he's got to go take a wicked leak.

This hokey, hack plot device actually has a lot of truth in it. People are such sheep. Most of us are more afraid of going against the flock than just about anything else! even hairy spiders. Here's a riddle to help illustrate it: What is the sound of one man clapping slowly with one hand? Hint: It rhymes with, "Meil Mitler".

 

I was running through Vons Supermarket with two minutes left on the clock before 2am. In California, all alcohol sales stop at the stroke of two for some reason. I guess the government thinks the drunks need a few hours to go home and abuse their wives.

I grabbed what I thought was normal Smirnoff with a red label and bolted toward the register, but it turned out to be a magenta label meaning I had watermelon vodka in my hand. There was less than a minute to swipe my card and complete the sale so I grudgingly, intentionally purchased this vile, fruity wonderland of flavor.

Watermelon Vodka, I'm sad to report, tastes vaguely of vomit. But it's not alone on the shelf. I've had run-ins with flavored vodkas before. Lemon or lime vodka tastes like a cleaning product. Any kind of berry vodka tastes like cough syrup. Orange vodka tastes like watery Screwdriver, cranberry like the worst Cape Cod ever. Vanilla is like putting your foot in your mouth and gnawing on the rubber.

I'm a classy guy, so I just get good old fashioned plain vodka and drink it from a coffee mug with melted otter pops or whatever flat soda's been haunting the back of my fridge for months. Not shaken or stirred.

 

What a copout wuss of a color. What the hell is Orange's problem? It's like it can't decide whether it's red or yellow. Whose favorite color is orange? Nobody's! You can't wear orange without looking like a big ol' prize winning pumpkin. And the fruit by the same name - I'll bet the orange used to have a real name but everybody just called it, "That orange one" to make fun of it and it stuck. We don't call Bananas 'Yellows'. All that the color orange is good for is fire and construction signs. Can you imagine if Prince released the album, "Orange Rain"? What if communists were called, "The Oranges" instead of The Reds? Does any country have a flag with more than a tiny streak of orange in it? Only Bhutan. And I'll bet the Drukpas Monasteries are ashamed to be represented on their flag by such a crappy color! (Thank you, Wikipedia)

Okay, Orange. It's not that I don't love you. In the same way that a father still loves his crack-addicted gay pornstar son, there will always be a place for you in my crayon box. I just love the other colors more.

 

There's a saying that goes, "People who can't do, Teach." I'd like to add a second part that says, "People who can't teach, make online tutorials". It's so hard to use the web to learn how to do things. Let's say you're trying to learn some mundane task. Any common skill, like for example, let's say bomb-making. The problem isn't that it's hard to find a tutorial. The problem is that there's a bazillion of them and most seriously blow. (Catch the clever bomb reference?)

Some have bad info. Others leave out big pieces of the puzzle. They just start talking about grounding your fuses before they even mentioned what the fuse was supposed to be made out of. Others are preachy anarchist diatribes written by someone who sounds like a paranoid schizophrenic with a 5th grade education. Some are so poorly designed that you need a tutorial to learn how to look at the tutorial. So you go out, spend all this money on fertilizer and mobile phone batteries and just wind up blowing half your face off instead of that hole in the bank vault.

Are you considering creating an online tutorial or informative website of any kind? Unless you practically have a fucking degree in the topic you are going to write about, PLEASE DON'T! Unless you are a skilled teacher who can actually remember what it's like to not know the subject you're teaching, PLEASE DON'T! If you are not an expert in graphic design and interactive information architecture, PLEASE DON'T! If there is another tutorial anywhere on the web that is better than the one you are about to create, PLEASE DON'T! You're not helping. You're only creating a jungle of garbage that we'll all have to hack through to find the good shit.

 

It's not that I truly hate monkeys. After all, they're almost human. But that's the problem. They're almost human, but not quite, and that terrifies me. It's like they're zombies or mutants or trolls or Michael Jackson. I see all primates from baboons to gorillas as sub-human monsters. Curious George was always one breath away from tearing the Man with the Yellow hat's face off like a banana peal. You can argue that King Kong was just misunderstood, but how many natives did he eat before falling for that blonde? And what kinds of people have pet monkeys? Evil people. Just ask The bad captain guy from Pirates of the Caribbean, that motorcycle guy in Indiana Jones, and that yellow-eyed monster guy from the Thriller music video.

 

What is life? Well, life is really just a bunch of minutes you get to spend. You're forced to spend most of those minutes working, sleeping and sitting in traffic so the few you have left are absurdly precious. Why the fuck would anybody waste those minutes adding up boxes of numbers in a Sudoku puzzle? It's like doing your taxes... just for fun. Word-searches are even worse. If staring at a grid of random letters is 'entertainment' to you, then you are a truly pathetic individual. Even our Great American timewasters like television give you something to talk about at the water cooler. Nobody ever peeked over a cubicle and said, "Hey Chuck. Did you do that word-search in yesterday's Times? It took me forever to find the word 'apple' way down in the corner. Boy, I didn't see that coming."

The Jigsaw puzzle has got to be the greatest symbol of wasted life. They're not fun. Not even a little bit. If you think you enjoy jigsaw puzzles you're wrong. You just get addicted to the little payoff and false sense of accomplishment when you finally find that orange piece with the blue nob after scanning the floor so long you're neck hurts. You become so obsessed with finally creating the picture of that Bengal Tiger that you have no idea how unhappy you truly are. Forget crack and heroin. Puzzles destroy lives.

 

Cake isn't good. It's not awful, but it's really just a vehicle for frosting. Without frosting, cake is just shitty bread. I'm not talking about ice cream cake. This isn't about super-fancy specialty deserts that just happen to be shaped like cakes. I'm talking about regular cake. The kind from birthdays, weddings, retirement parties and bake sales. It's not impossible to make a good cake, but even the best cake isn't as good as the worst pie. Pie is awesome. Fruit, pumpkin, even meat and peas. Pies as so great that they can even make peas good. If I ever get suckered into marriage, I'll have a three story Wedding Pie. First floor: Pecan. Second floor: Strawberry. Third floor: Kittens. The third floor is just to cuddle.

 

I don't really like bananas but I buy them anyway because they're pretty healthy. Well, I once saw a banana commercial that said they were. The commercial mentioned all the vitamins and good stuff in a banana and showed an old man playing with his grandkid. He was old but agile and healthy, thanks to eating lots of bananas I guess. The problem is that if I buy more than two bananas at a time, they go brown and gross before I get around to eating them. Even a fresh banana isn't all that good, and a mushy one is fucking nasty. I don't like going to the supermarket more than once a week, so I always buy three bananas and just tell myself, 'This time it will be different. This time I'll make sure to eat all the bananas before any go bad.' I know if I buy four, then one will go bad for sure and buying only two would just be hardly any bananas at all. I'm not going to be on a swing set as an old man with only two bananas a week! So I buy three, and the third one always goes to shit. I try to eat it anyway. I peel it and choke part of it down before giving up. Fuck you, third banana!

 

Okay ladies. Cute skirt. Hot jeans. Now make a choice. I keep seeing this trend of chicks wearing skirts and jeans together and I'm philosophically opposed to it. Not only does it make it harder to beat girls at strip poker, but mixing a skirt and jeans is like making a tuna sandwich and then putting some peanut butter and jelly on it too. Why do you do it? Do you think guys will try to look up your skirt at your panties? Well, it's been a while since I've seen a creepy dude with multi-colored mirrors on his hobnail boots. Just cross your legs and you won't have to wear everything you own all at once.