Dig: People Watching at the Airport

So I just went on a nice, relaxing vacation. Flew from GRR to ORD and landed in BOS. Stayed overnight in Boston and then proceeded to spend a week in (or is it "on"?) Cape Cod. Ate lots of seafood and drank some good local brews. For those of you who leave your houses (don't laugh - there are plenty of freaks who only journey from their mom's basement to their twin bed with the Star Trek sheets), you know that there can be a lot of downtime when flying. This particular trip didn't have too many long layovers but my trip home was the day after some psychos were planning to blow up a plane using liquid explosives so there was plenty of extra time for me to sit on my caboose. What to do while eating my Cinnabon and swigging my Starbuck's? Watch you, that's what- and I gotta tell you, you don't look so good! That's what I really like about people watching - it makes me feel good about myself and my lot in life.

Certainly, people watching at some club where Playboy playmates hang out probably would provide better scenery. However, I'm 39 with 3 kids living in Michigan so that just ain't gonna happen for me unless my wife gets a whole lot more understanding real quick. So I'm stuck with people watching at more mundane places like airports. While it's true that I once saw Pat Boone in the Minneapolis airport, he isn't exactly the same as getting an eyeful of Miss January.

O'hare is still the first or second busiest airport in the country and you get a pretty good cross-section of folks: White, Black, short, tall, fat, skinny, fat, fat, bald, hairy, fat and the occasional fat person. You know those reports that The Government puts out that says we are all fat? Well, they're right. And God help you if you have to sit next to one of them on a plane. Don't get me wrong, I blend right in with my Cinnabon purchase but I don't overflow too much onto the poor sap who is lucky enough to sit next to me. Based on some of the people that I saw, though, apparently there comes a time when you just don't give a shit anymore what you look like. You make the leap from pants with a belt to pants with an elastic waistband. Shoes with laces are just too much work so you become Velcro Shoe Man. Tuck in my shirt (a t-shirt with hot fudge stains down the front)? Not likely. And so what do you do next? Apparently, you go to the airport. By the looks of it, the Fat People of America (FPA) meeting is there and is held at gate B6. Snacks provided! Yep, feeling pretty good about my only-eight-pounds-over-my-goal weight!

Have you ever been part of The Family (not the Mob family, just a regular one) traveling through the airport? How many kids? How many kids under the age of 4? If you were the 4 year-old, you probably didn't care what other people thought of you. If you were the parent, though, you wanted to crawl under the carpet or disguise yourself with some Groucho Marx glasses most of the time. Families in airports are probably pretty good birth control, actually. If you are thinking about having kids but aren't really sure, hang out at the airport and see what your reaction would be to little Johnny screaming his head off in public because his dad refused to pay $6.25 for a hot dog. Would you pay $19.95 for a dumb-ass stuffed animal from the dumb-ass gift shops? Are you capable of pushing a stroller with a crying kid, carrying a backpack full of SpongeBob coloring books, holding the hand of the older kid all while having your boarding pass and ID at the ready for the next security checkpoint (no doubt staffed by a big fat guy)? You'd better be able to suck it up without yelling at the spouse or just make the appointment with Dr. Snips-A-Lot now. I saw lots of families doing the summer vacation thing and I'm sure several children were put up for sale as soon as they returned home. I was smart enough to leave the heirs to my fortune home with their grandparents. Suckers!!

Of course, a lot of people that you see in airports are traveling for work. I used to do that. You get pretty efficient if you do it enough. You can tell who the pros are because they move fast. They grab their nifty carry-on bag (contents: Blackberry, laptop, files for meeting, two pens, mints, newspaper/magazine, rental car agreement and receipts for expense report) and they're maneuvering around the fat people like the airport is one big Frogger game. I don't watch those people too much because they all look the same. Being a corporate suck-ass, I can pick out another corporate suck-ass a mile away and unless he is working on his blog, I have no use for him. Go back to your cube and fill out your report, Dilbert!

On the rare occasion that the planets align and you happen to catch the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders on a press junket, you can sometimes spot a babe. From my exhaustive research, though, I've found that the problem with babes in airports is that you can't really tell if they are babes or not. She might be a babe on the outside but once she loads herself up with carry-ons, cell phones, purses and a great big sour look on her face, she turns into Ruth Buzzi. You could take your favorite clerk at Victoria's Secret in the mall ("My wife is about your size, would you try this on for me so I can see if it would fit her?") and load her down with all the accoutrements of travel and the next thing you know it's the Roto-Rooter guy! Only if she has a lackie/boyfriend/husband (who secretly despises her) carrying her crap does she look as good on The Inside as she does on The Outside. Certainly, you would still have to listen to her bitch at said lackie to hurry his ass up but, at that point, your feelings toward him turn from bitterness and resentment to sympathy and you really feel like hip-checking her into the nearest luggage carousel thingy.

We don't have enough time in the day to talk about airport security, but I'm pretty sure that I see about a dozen terrorists while taking a tour of Concourse B. There was one dressed up as an old lady whose osteoporosis had turned her into a walking upside-down "U". I saw another one who was disguised as a 4 year-old kid crying because he couldn't get a hot dog for $6.25. I think he was in cahoots with the 6 year-old kid who was obviously using his GameBoy to take over control of the incoming flights from the air traffic controllers. And then there was the fat guy but I think he was actually part of the crack security team checking my shoes for explosives. The main reason why I think they are terrorists is because THEY ALL HAD CELL PHONES! Good God, what did we ever do before we had to go 15 minutes without talking to someone on the phone!? You may find this surprising, but my cell phone conversations usually are more of an exercise in waiting for the person on the other end of the phone to shut his pie-hole so I can get onto something more important. Like writing blogs about people watching, for example.

Again, why do I like to people watch in the airport? Because it makes my miserable existence look pretty shiny! Despite what appears to be intolerance and my general dislike of people, I like watching them in their natural habitat. All I need is one of those things that looks like a gumball machine full of People Chow and a handful of quarters and I'm good to go for an afternoon of amusement.

Hate: Losing Stuff

While it's true that I dig the show Lost, I hate losing stuff. I used to have a pretty good memory and I could remember where I would put my crap. However, as I've gotten older and have much more clutter in my life, I'm finding that I can hardly remember if I've taken off my underwear prior to hopping in the shower (true example from my 5 year-old. Hilarious!). It's just about a daily occurrence that I wander out to the parking lot at lunchtime to enjoy my favorite fast food value meal and I can't find my car that I parked approximately 5 hours earlier. How could I possibly forget where I parked my car? It's like the size of a ... car!

Speaking of cars, if I can lose the entire car, imagine how often I lose the dinky little keys. I usually carry my cell phone in my pocket along with my car keys but some days I get a little bitter about feeling like Carl the janitor from The Breakfast Club and throw all that junk on my desk or kitchen counter or some place. And then hilarity ensues as I search high and low for them. Before you suggest calling the phone ("Just call the phone, dumbass!"), I always have it on vibrate so as not to intrude upon the quiet of others around me - because I'm polite and not an asshole. I guess that's why God created two sets of keys with every car. He needs to work on creating duplicate cell phones though.

And don't even get me started on finding the clicker. If it meant that the clicker would magically appear in my grubby little mitts by hopping on one foot and singing a Clay Aiken song all while shaving my ear hair, I would gladly sing whatever that little leprechaun has on his greatest hits album. And before you suggest that I actually walk up to the TV and manually (he said, with disgust) change the channels, I suggest that you watch your tongue before I wash it out with soap! If God had wanted me to change the channel myself, why would He have invented clickers?! My legs are for running marathons (for which I've now registered) and my index finger is picking my nose so you just back off, Mister Man!

My most recent lost item is part of my bike rack. You see, last fall I used one of the straps to attach a faux shark fin to the roof of my car for the journey to Chicago to see Jimmy Buffet at Wrigley Field. I was the envy of all the saps on the road that day as they admired my nifty homemade shark fin with "Buffet or Bust" written on it. Unfortunately, I used one of the straps from my bike rack to secure said fin and now I can't seem to find the strap. So instead of putting my bike on the rack outside the car, I had to fold down the seats, remove the wheel, remove the seat and generally piss around with the whole scene instead of quickly loading up. Sure, I can call the nice people at Yakima and get a replacement strap but that friggin' thing is in my friggin' house some friggin' place and I am friggin' determined to friggin' find it! Like, how many places could it be? My little hovel isn't that big so why is it hiding from me? Damn strap!

For you golfers out there, I won't get into the whole deal about losing golf balls. If we're going to talk about golf, I'd rather talk about Tiger Woods' wife's boobs or Phil Mickelson's.

One thing I've learned about losing crap is the fastest way to find it is to give up looking for it. But you have to trick it into thinking that you don't care anymore and then it will show itself. Totally true of golf balls. Your first ball off the tee could have gone into the deepest talc mine (see, the ball would blend into the talc because it's white) coming to rest within inches of the molten core of the earth but if you just mention the word "mulligan", the ball will miraculously show up in the middle of the fairway. No way does that first ball want to get trumped by a mulligan! You could have had every intention of putting on your heat-resistant suit and rappelling down that mine shaft to retrieve your Top-Flite X-Out but don't let the ball catch on or it won't show up in the fairway. My next step with my missing bike rack strap is to break out the Yakima catalog and start dialing the toll-free number to order a replacement. I'm anticipating that the missing strap will magically appear in the microwave or some other completely random place.

Let's review:
Lost is a way cool TV show
Losing stuff sucks (it also sucks when people spell "losing" with two o's)
Stuff shows up if give up looking for it
Phil Mickelson has man-boobs
You lost another 5 minutes by reading my drivel about losing stuff. You should be peeved.

Dig: Lost

Have you been watching this show? Holy cow, it's good! It's like cold-beer-with-pizza-while-watching-the-red-wings good. Of course, that comparison falls aparat a little considering that the Wings lost in the first round of the playoffs, but you get my point. Last night was the finale and the two hour Lost extravaganza lived up to the quality of the rest of the season, which doesn't always happen.

Believe me, I'm not going to try to get into all the ins and outs of this show (on ABC - check your local listings for time and channel) because there are more twists and turns in this thing than your large intestine! Even better, it's not filled with shit like the aforementioned part of your digestive tract. Instead, I will present to you concepts that make it so good. Later, I will be going over other basics of English composition that I learned in that stupid English class that is required for all freshmen.

Creativity. Could I be more vague, you're asking. No, I could not be. However, Lost comes up with more weird stuff than you would find in all of the X-Files shows combined. Don't get me wrong, I dug Fox Mulder and Dana Sculley too but it got to be a little predictable after awhile. Maybe Jack and all the other castaways will eventually be as predictable but I don't think so. One of the things that Lost has going for it is that these poor bastards are on some mysterious island that doesn't necessarily have to conform to what goes on in the rest of the world. For instance, most other tropical islands don't have polar bears on them. The writers aren't constrained by convention so they go frickin' nuts with characters and situations. No rules, man!

Multi-Media. So Charlie was in a band called Driveshaft and the cool thing is that there is a website (driveshaftband.com) with tour dates, pics, etc. There is a site for the airline that owned the plan that crashed (oceanic-air.com) and the foundation (hansofoundation.org) that is running the whole dharma initiative thing (thedharmainitative.org). All of these sites are fully developed and have lots of hidden easter eggs and stuff. You could spend all day jumping from one of these sites to the next which are ALL FICTITIOUS! Those nice people at ABC went to a ton of trouble to make your Lost experience a lot more than just setting up shop on a Wednesday night for an hour. Very cool. I dig lots of TV shows but none of them do too much more than present their 30 or 60 minutes of drivel.

References. No, I don't mean like asking your brother-in-law to put in a good word for you when you apply for a job. I mean like referring to a book that is somehow related to the situation on the island. Even names are scrambled (anagrams for you English majors) from names out of history or literature or popular culture or something. One of the bad guys is named Henry Gale who supposedly crashed in a hot-air balloon. Henry Gale was also the name of Dorothy's uncle in The Wizard of Oz. Obscure enough reference that not everyone gets it but obvious enough to be cool. One of the things that the numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) COULD be is retired Yankees uniforms. Why in the world that would be true doesn't really matter - it's just cool that it is.

The What's-Around-The-Next-Corner Factor. I just made that up! That's the feeling of anticipation/anxiety/excitement of wanting to know what's next. This show is all about that. You'd better get your Chocolate Yoo-Hoo during the commercials because you don't want to have your head in the fridge during the show or you might miss Michael turning on Libby and shooting her in the stomach! Pee in a coffee can if you have to because you never know when Kate might find another stash of fake beards and stuff! Heck sakes, some of the commercials are for the Hanso foundation, for crying out loud!

So that's about it. It's a way cool show. There aren't may shows that I make sure I catch every week but I don't miss this one. I was a little disappointed when they killed off Shannon, the token hottie, but it's still a great show. I guess the big deal is that it makes my little walnut of a brain have to do some work while it's on. Catching obscure Seinfeld references wasn't quite as challenging as following/dissecting/analyzing the goings-on on Lost. Generally, I like to sink into the couch and pretty much just let a given show wash over me but Lost actually makes me think. Even if it is about Shannon, the hottie.

You'll have to wait until next fall for new shows to come back on again but I suggest you clear your calendar now.

I'm here to help!

Don't Get: Littering

So I'm walking the dog through the woods last night (or, rather, she is racing around through the woods like an absolute fool while I shuffle along on the trail) and I'm digging the whole scene. It's about 65 degrees and sunny, the leaves are starting to come out, I'm not at work (which is good, just by definition) and then I see an empty water bottle alongside the trail. You know - one of those clear plastic bottles that the manufacturer (do you manufacture water?) has tried to make look different than the other 150 brands of bottled water that are out there. It looked woefully out of place compared to last fall's old leaves, this spring's new leaves and the occasional flower popping up. About the only thing that the bottle was good for at this point was to provide blog fodder, so here we are!

So now I'm thinking about the dolt who was enjoying the same walk as I am but doing so while drinking some overpriced H2O. Heck, he may even have been walking his dog:

Dolt: Sure is pretty out here with the leaves and flowers and stuff.
Dog: Yep, I agree. I can smell all kinds of bunnies and squirrels and other woodland creatures.
Dolt: And this overpriced agua is really tasty and refreshing too!
Dog: Yeah, it might be nice if you shared some with Man's Best Friend...
Dolt: Sorry, Fido, I just polished it off so I'm going to chuck the bottle to the side of the trail.
Dog: What are you, some kind of idiot?! You're going to ruin this beautiful park with your garbage? Why don't you just bring your old couch and car battery out here while you're at it?!
Dolt: Just relax, Spot. And quit licking yourself.

Don't even try to make the argument that a dog "litters" every time he lifts his leg or drops a steaming lump someplace. That stuff is carbon-based and disappears with the first good rain. Skippy's water bottle will be with us for a long time. I feel OK throwing banana peels out the window as I'm eating my "breakfast" on the way to work for the same reason.

And what about smokers? Who ever said it was OK to just throw your cigarette butt wherever the hell you want to? I have to smile a little on the inside when I see smokers relegated to the freezing cold to do their thing. They huddle together for warmth and stand on the little cement pad around whatever door is designated as the "smoking area". Just how enjoyable can that cigarette be? The bad thing is that they think their butts magically disappear when they throw them into the snowbank. That's fine until it gets a little warm out and the snow melts. Is there anything uglier than the pile of nasty-ass cigarette butts left when the snowbank/ashtray melts? I think not. Eventually, those butts just kind of go away, but I'm not sure where they actually end up. Hopefully, they stick to the bottom of the smoker's shoe and he leaves a little trail of fire as he walks across the purple shag in his trailer, burning it to the ground in a conflagration that smells as bad as a tire fire burning out of control but I kind of doubt that happens. I also am convinced that when one of those idiots throws a butt out the car window that it will somehow become lodged in my gas tank and blow me up but that hasn't happened yet either so I've dodged that bullet for now.

Quite a few years ago, I was participating in one of those Adopt-A-Highway things and cleaning up crap alongside US-31 near where I work. One of the guys who was working alongside me was puffing away on a cigarette and where do you think he put the butt when he was done? Yep, that jackass threw it on the ground! I'm out there on a Saturday alongside the highway not unlike a low-flight-risk prisoner in hunter orange picking up garbage and this guy thinks it's OK to flick his butt on the ground in front of me! The voices in my head told me to push him in front of the next SUV coming down the road but my meds kicked in and I was able to restrain myself. Just like short people, stupid people got no reason to live, man.

Is this a nature or nurture thing? If you are comfortable throwing your Snickers wrapper on the ground, is it because your mom and dad threw their Chunky wrappers on the ground too? (Chunkies kind of represent the '70's to me) Or is it just because you could really give a rat's ass about the environment and garbage cans are for the weak? And what's the cutoff? Are Mr. Pibb cans OK to throw into the ditch but a pair of old Nike Waffle Trainers are off-limits? What about a mattress? Refrigerator? I'm guessing that if you litter with one thing, you do so indiscriminately. To you, one man's garbage is, well, every man's garbage. On an unrelated note, I think homosexuality is a nature thing.

Look, if you think littering is acceptable then I'm going to come to your neighborhood every Sunday night to dump my trash instead of putting it on the curb for Mr. Garbageman. I can save $13.00 per month and apparently you won't mind. But if you get all pissy with me about dumping my empty boxes of Cocoa Puffs and the yogurt that expired six weeks ago in your front yard, why don't you help a brother out and put your own crap in the garbage too? Yes, I know it all goes to a landfill anyway and the associated groundwater tastes a little "tangy" but we're not talking about that today.

Pick up your garbage and put it in the proper place so that American Indian doesn't have to have that tear coming down his cheek anymore! And quit smoking too!

Dig: Chinese Buffets

Are all-you-can-eat buffets just an American thing? If you go to Italy, do they have buffets? How about Canada? Canada is kind of just an extension of the US, anyway - I bet they have them. Buffets seem pretty American - lots of food that's been taken from another culture and with a focus on bigger, not better. But the thing is that there aren't any American buffets out there. I'm not entirely sure what would be in those stailness steel warming dishes at an American buffet actually (hamburgers? hot dogs? PB&J?) but I do know that there are a zillion Chinese buffets in the US and I dig them!

Buffets are pretty much all about quantity over quality. There aren't too many filet mignon buffets around and you don't see many ads in the yellow pages for a place with a name like The Lobster Trough. I'm not bashing Chinese food, but it must be pretty easy to make in volume and have it still be pretty tasty. Not super-fabulous delicious, but tasty. You know, the kind of food that tastes pretty good sober and tastes even better when you're drunk. The kind of food that you can't make at home for the same amount of money and effort.

Seems like most Chinese bufetts have the same dishes. You have three or four chicken dishes that have been pretty American-ized, a couple of pork dishes and maybe a few seafood dishes. Along with those "entrees", there are usually some rangoons, mushrooms, egg rolls and some potatoes of some kind. And, in case you have come to a Chinese buffet under duress, there is some non-Chinese food like ham or meatloaf or something. Throw in a few dessert items (including a soft-serve ice cream machine), a bunch of those stainless steel warming tables, a few booths and the occasional booster seat and you're good to go.

So, back to quantity over quality. Most of the food is good. Not much of it is excellent. When someone asks you about the place to go for the best food, you probably don't direct them to the Golden Dragon. However, if someone is in a hurry and is looking for some good grub without spending a boat-load of money, the old Dragon is the place to be! I'm guessing that the guy manning the Kingdom Chicken warming tray didn't go to culinary school - in China or anyplace else. But that's OK because you don't need no stinking chef for this place, just crank up the General Tsao's chicken machine and bring in the nice people with their money! The stuff is good enough to eat once a week and, for the time you are in their nice establishment, you can pretty well gorge yourself. God bless China, I mean America!

I'm going to tread a little lightly here so as not to offend, but do you have to be Chinese to work at a Chinese buffet? Whenever I go to one, I don't see too many white-bread folks like myself working there. Is there some discrimination going on that I should know about? And what where they doing prior to working at the buffet? See, that's the thing about opening a buffet of American food. America is a melting pot of people, right? So I couldn't very well just hire white people to work there. I'd have to hire a certain percentage of lots of different nationalities. But if the Chinese buffet is located in the US, then aren't those people Americans? I don't know about you, but this converation is making my head hurt and I don't really want to open that whole racism floodgate....

Kind of a short post today - I apologize. The more I wrote, though, the more I realized that there were quite a few things about Chinese buffets that I don't get so perhaps I should have published this under the Don't Get heading. Maybe I'll go load up on some Sesame Chicken and ponder this topic some more. And, if I need to do, I can go back and help myself to some Orange Chicken for some additional ponderin'!

Don't Get: The amount of time dedicated to the weather forecast on the evening news

Do all weather guys have pictures of their respective news anchors with hookers and lines of coke or what?! Are there some out-standing gambling debts or some underwear preferences that we don't know about? How do they get so much air time? Just how long does it take to say that it's going to rain tomorrow? Is there not enough real news to fill the 30 minutes (less 7 minutes or so for commercials which are probably neither effective nor entertaining) that we have to talk ad nauseum about the weather? For crying out loud, Weather-Dude, just tell me if tomorrow is going to suck or not!

OK, I feel a little better, but now allow me to continue. Never mind, I don't need your permission - the nice people at blogger.com gave ME the sign-on, not you.

There's a lot of crap going on the world every day. Some of it good, a lot of it not so good. A half-hour isn't much time to talk about all that stuff. If Peter Jennings weren't dead, he wouldn't sit idly by while some weather guy is giving a forecast, Pete would talk about all the silliness going on in the Middle East or Washington or New Orleans or someplace. He would talk about the news. And even the local guys (who probably lay awake at night fantasizing about becoming an anchor on the national news: "This is World News Tonight with Joe Blow") certainly could spend 23 minutes talking about news in their little corner of the world. There are enough robberies, murders and cats stuck in trees to go around.

There is a TV station in my world that brags about having the weather earlier in the newscast than the other stations in the area. Is that something to crow about? Is the weather really the most important thing going on in the world? Can I affect the weather? (In case you were wondering, the answer to all of those semi-rhetorical questions is "no"). There are usually a couple of little teasers about upcoming news stories and then they jump right to Junior talking about the weather: "Osama Bin Laden found in Topeka, Kansas - but first the weather". I'm sure that when the anchor cuts to the weather guy and goes off-camera, he immediately rolls his eyes makes that hand gesture of a guy bopping his bologna which, as we all know, is the universal sign for "blah, blah, blah".

OK, so now the weather guy is on. First thing he does is review yesterday's weather for some reason. Not sure why anyone cares about yesterday, but he must think it's important. Next thing he does is talk about some big-ass warm front in frickin' New Mexico or some damn place. He assures me that this matters to me in Michigan because of the affect it will have on a cold front or a high pressure something-or-other or a gulf stream or something. From there, he tells me about the high temperatures in various cities around the country and, if that weren't enough, I get to hear about the LOW temps as well. What more could a boy want?! Certainly, If I'm taking the kids to see the Grand Canyon, I would want to know about the weather in Arizona but isn't that why god made weather.com?

Finally, after all this dinking around about other people's weather, he zooms in his little map of the US to my neck of the woods (as Willard Scott would say). Often, he'll repeat the same mumbo-jumbo about high-pressure stuff and cold fronts and temperatures in the surrounding 100 miles. And then he'll break out the big guns, the ultimate gizmo for the weatherman - the doppler radar loop! There was probably more than one boner in weatherman school the day they got to play with the radar thing: Look, class, you can run it forwards and backwards! Light blue means a little rain, dark blue means a lot of rain! Those schlubs at the other weatherman schools got nothin' on us! (FYI - Penn State is a big weatherman school.)

After showing off the size of his radar dish (obviously compensating for something), Skippy gets down to business and lets me know that tomorrow will be partly cloudy (is that different than mostly sunny?) and will have a high of 76 and a low of 58. Terrific. That's what I've been waiting for. Now I know that I can wear my Motley Crue t-shirt instead of my Ratt sweatshirt. I don't even need him to be that specifc. I can live with "upper 70's". Is there much difference between 76 and 79 degrees? For that matter, "pretty nice day tomorrow" works for me. I think weathermen should just limit their forecasts to "nice day" and "crappy day". Play back the last conversation you had with someone about the weather. It probably went something like this:

You: "I hear tomorrow is supposed to be pretty nice."
Friend/Co-Worker/Life Partner/Stranger With Whom You Are Making Idle Chitchat: "Yep, that's what the weather guy said"

Please note that you didn't say anything about high-pressure systems or mention barometers or thermometers or richter scales or compare the size of a hailstone to a common spherical object such as a baseball, golf ball, bocce ball or grapefruit. If you get into the size of basketballs, then maybe we can talk, but until then it doesn't really matter.

One last thing. I DO get the weather channel. It is a channel/website completely devoted to the weather. I've marked it as a favorite on both of my computers. All I'm saying is that I'm sure there is a cat in a tree out there who isn't getting the press time he deserves because of a new record high in Death Valley. It's a desert, people! It's gonna get hot! One day, it will be the hottest it has ever been and whether it is 125 or 126 degrees doesn't really matter a lot. It's just frickin' hot (qualifying as a "crappy day")! I hate cats, but Fluffy deserves the air time and I just don't get why he has to get screwed over by the weatherman every night.

Hate: Stupid Commercials on TV

This may be another Beavis and Butthead type of post where the overriding theme is "I don't like stuff that sucks" but I feel it necessary to share with you my feelings on commercials that are so poorly made it makes me want to buy their competitors' products in an effort to drive them out of business. (That was a long sentence but I'm here to tell you that it was worth every electron.) My poor brain can hardly handle the daily tasks that my little life demands, but when I'm inundated with stupidity, a little bit of gray matter turns black and falls off. Next thing you know, I'll have things that look like little mouse turds falling out my ear every time I shake my head. And that's rarely good.

I should probably be thankful for commercials, shouldn't I? If I didn't mind limiting my TV viewing to just a few local channels with a considerable amount of "snow", I could be enjoying free TV, right? I couldn't watch "I love the '80's" but I could still catch some "Dancing with the Stars". And, for that matter, "Lost" is by far the best show on TV right now even though you can't argue with a good episode of "What Not to Wear". So I need commercials to pay for that free TV. Instead of paying a gob of money each month to the cable company, I would "pay" in the form of commercials. Seems like a fair trade, I guess. What's my deal, then? I'll tell you what my deal is. My deal is when those commercials are so friggin' stupid that my brain turns into mouse turds!

Let me tell you what I'm looking for in a commercial. If you're trying to sell me something just bring in some guy who isn't duded up to look like an expert. That whole "I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV" thing doesn't do much for me. Put a guy in a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and if I feel like he is honest when he is telling me that his product works really well or is better than the competitors', then I'm good to go and I'll buy his stuff the next time I'm in the market. Here's a possible script for the guy in jeans and a sweatshirt. The setting is an empty stage with a gray background (like you used to have in elementary school pictures, except hopefully the guy has a better haircut than I did when I was in third grade):

Guy in Jeans and Sweatshirt: Yesterday, I had a really bad headache and I took some Tylenol and my headache went away. I don't know about you, but it worked better than Advil for me. If you have a headache, you should go out and buy some Tylenol.

See how simple that is? Nobody posing as a doctor with the whole lab coat thing. No goofy pictures or graphics showing a time-release capsule blah, blah, blah. Just some guy who is digging his headache-free life. I don't need a backstory. Don't show me pictures of Junior rubbing his temples because his boss is yelling at him and his wife is bitching about the kids. The reason that this is more effective than any current headache commercials is because I don't feel like he is feeding me a bunch of hooey. This technique works for toilet bowl cleaners, cars, paperclips and refrigerators too. Less is more, people, and the less any salesperson talks, the better.

So that's easy. It's a little bit more difficult to create a commercial that is entertaining in some way. Headaches and Tylenol aren't exactly knee-slappers so you need a hook. You could either go the subtle route with some real Seinfeld-esque dry humor or go over the top with some Office Linebacker kind of stuff. Either way, though, you'd better make it good or I'll run from your dumb-ass product like I'm covered in gummi bears and being chased by a bunch of fat kids.

So instead of wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, have a guy wearing a two-sizes-too-small Superman outfit with a couple of holes in it, big fly-eye goggles and the actor has a big zit on his nose. He could even be holding a bowling ball in one of those cheesy vinyl carrying bags. The script can be the same, though. The temptation would be to have him say something about how fighting crime and life as a superhero really gives him a headache. That would be easy, but no funnier than him just standing there. Instead, just let him say the same thing as if he looks as normal as the jeans guy. Much funnier, and the next day around the water cooler people would be asking what the deal was with that acne-riddled superhero guy and the Tylenol. Also, for what it's worth, that goddamn Energizer bunny has driven me to buy Duracell batteries. Yep, I do know that that stuffed bunny is associated with Energizer - it just makes it easier for me to know which batteries NOT to buy.

Commercials have become so prevalent in our lives that we now have TV shows about commercials and let's not forget the hullabaloo around the commercials that played during the Super Bowl. I'm sure that whoever invented the commercial is wringing his hands somewhere talking about his master plan to shows those bastards at the network that his commercial for Tucks pads is better than this week's episode of Joey. He is well on his way to rule the world via toilet bowl cleaner commercials but I refuse to fall victim to his diabolical plan.

But I digress (which probably is no surprise to you).

My little walnut understands that television commercials do have a place in the universe. I'm just saying let's all try to make this li'l ole universe a better place by making those commercials more direct and with a little bit of entertainment value. Either get to the point and tell me that your product actually works or make me laugh and we're all set.

And if you can't do that, you can just use a babe in a bikini. I'll buy whatever the hell she is selling. In fact, put me down for a case.

Hate: Chafing

This topic actually came to me as I was adjusting the collar on my recently dry-cleaned shirt. I always tell them "No Starch" but my neck was all hosed up from rubbing against my crispy shirt all day long. Even though it was my neck that was chafed it was a real pain in the ass! My life is full of enough crap to worry about and I have to add neck-chafe to the list? Thanks a lot - like I have time for that! Maybe next time I'll be lucky enough to have a pebble in my shoe or a popcorn kernel stuck between my teeth that I can't seem to dig out with my tongue despite hours of trying.

Despite my neck issues, it's also no coincidence that a post about chafing appears right after a post about running. The two go hand-in-hand (foot-in-foot?). Part of the price of running a bunch of miles to maintain my Greek god-like physique is that oh-so irritating burning sensation created by skin rubbing on skin. Or skin rubbing on cloth. Or skin rubbing on plastic. Or just general rubbing of skin. Skin is pretty soft stuff, right? You would think that it wouldn't be a big deal. But, just like smoking crack, rubbing on skin should be done in moderation. When it's not, it leads to chafing which leads to Vaseline and from there everything just goes into a downward spiral.

Often, skin to skin contact is quite a pleasant experience but that usually involves my own skin and someone else's. When it's my left inner thigh rubbing against my right inner thigh for a couple of hours straight, it's not nearly as nice as when one of my inner thighs is rubbing against someone else's (preferably female) inner thigh. And believe me, I'm fully prepared to test this theory by timing thigh contact for a couple of hours with a willing volunteer who meets the criteria as determined by me. I'd use one of those clocks that are controlled by a satellite in outer space to make it official and everything so that no one would accuse me of rubbing inner thighs for more than two hours.

But back to my pink, tender, slightly swollen inner thighs. Man, that hurts like hell! You have to walk all bowlegged so as not to worsen the condition and the only thing that makes it worse is..... a shower! The very thing that you want right after a long run only makes the chafing more painful. The shower feels terrific only for as long as it takes for the water to run down my chest, past my unit and to chafe-land. Man, that hurts like double hell!
Me after a long run: "My inner thighs are chafed and it hurts like hell!"
Me, again: "I sure could use a shower so as not to stink up the joint."
More of Me: "Dude, that hot water on my sensitive inner thighs hurts like double hell!
Me: "When will I learn?!"
Me, still: "Who are you talking to?"

Speaking of Vaseline, often it is offered to runners during a long race. I first experienced this a few years ago as I came up to a water station and there was a race volunteer standing there wearing rubber gloves holding a big dollop of Vaseline. I kid you not! It took me a second to realize that this kind person was offering me some chafe-be-gone. Talk about drawing the short straw! You know that guy was the butt off all the jokes from his little race volunteer friends!

Race Guy: "OK, everyone, let's draw straws to see who is going to dole out the Vaseline"
Volunteer #1(drawing straw): "I hope it's not me. I hope it's not me. I hope it's not me."
Volunteer #2 (after drawing straw): "Blast! I have to be Mr. Vaseline Man! I'll show them. I'm only going to offer my petroleum jelly to the cute girls. All the rest of those stupid-ass runners will have to suffer through their chafing!"
Volunteer #1 to Volunteer #2 (in a mocking tone): "Hey, Mr. Vaseline Man, would you lube me up?!"
Volunteer #3 to Volunteer #2: (also in a mocking tone): Hey, Mr. Vaseline Man, I hear Star Jones is running in this race. Maybe you'll get lucky!"
Newscaster: "Authorities today discovered two bodies hidden in the woods near last week's race course. Oddly, they were covered in Vaseline. Police are looking for a man described as 'really pissed off and holding a short straw'."

The jury is still out on whether chafed nipples are worse than chafed inner thighs, but I'm here to tell you that it doesn't hurt any less. Us runner-types can have this problem during long runs. I'm not going to get into the whole mechanics of why a nipple might be sticking out far enough to be chafed by a t-shirt but it happens. Even on warm days. There are band-aids out there that are designed/shaped specifically for the purpose of keeping your shirt from chafing your nipple. I have to believe that this is a niche market and one would think that your basic round band-aid would serve the same purpose but somebody felt the need to re-package a standard band-aid, mark it up a couple hundred percent and sell it in running stores. As embarrassing as it might be to wear these things, allow me to paint a picture for you: It's 45 degrees and raining. Nipple-chafing set in 30 minutes into a two hour race with sufficient irritation to cause just the slightest amount of bleeding. Now picture a guy whose nipples have been bleeding through his rain-soaked white t-shirt for 90 minutes. Sorry to do that to you, but nipple-chafing is serious business! Let me clean your mental palate by mentioning Baywatch (but don't think of David Hasselhoff) or the words "Amateur Night". Better?

So what to do about neck/thigh/nipple chafing? If you're not into Vaseline, there's a product out there called Body Glide. It looks like deodorant but it helps to keep various parts of your body gliding smoothly. Works pretty darn well, too. And weird as it may feel, invest in the nipple-aids. Nobody has to know. But I'm here to tell you that I will wear band-aids on my nipples before I wear a dicky to address my neck chafing!

Dig: Running

Look at me! Two positive posts in a row! For some reason we've had a lot of sunshine lately so maybe that's perked me up. Normally, this time of year is pretty dreary in Grand Haven with lots of snow, short days and general misery so it's way nice to see the sun.

Today's post is brought to you by the sore muscles, sweat and creaking knees that a healthy dose of running brings. I dabbled with running in college in an effort to not balloon to enormous proportions but it was a pretty half-hearted attempt. I was pretty into mountain biking for quite a few years as my main method of burning calories but almost exactly three years ago, I took up running pretty seriously. Putting in ten or fifteen miles a week, coupled with the Subway diet (cheese-less sandwiches with low-fat dressing and baked chips instead of fried) took about 15 lbs. off my fat little body. Even better, I didn't hate it. I was wearing the wrong shoes and was doing the old school cotton t-shirt thing but I've come a long way since then. The next summer I did a few 5k's and kept up the routine of running a few times a week. I got faster with each race and I became a "runner" at some point along the way. I've run two 25k's (15.5 miles) and a half-marathon (13.1 miles) and now I'm planning to do the Chicago Marathon on October 22. So I dig running.

I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, "This dude is fucked in the head. Running sucks!" And while it is true that I may be fucked in the head, I don't think that running sucks. And here are a few reasons why:

No one can do it for me. When I get home after my standard 5-mile run (to the first telephone pole past the school and back), I will have done it by myself. Every step of the way was mine. For that matter, I couldn't even coast downhill like when I ride my bike. Same thing goes for when I run 15.5 miles. As much as the cheering and following behind a babe in tight shorts helps, that babe ain't gonna move my legs for me. Certainly, there are plenty of people who run marathons every year but not everybody can or has so when I do I will be part of a pretty small group of people. Completing a challenge like this with no one to do it for you may or may not be important to you, but it is to me and this is my blog so you can just shut up. If I take the time to think about what I'm doing, I can feel pretty good about running a mile in 8 minutes and 41 seconds. A mile. In 8:41. When I'm getting to the end of my run and I'm really in the zone and I'm flying along at much faster than 8:41 per mile, I'm feeling pretty Rocky-esque (you know, like the scene when he runs up the steps to that museum in Philadelphia).

It's good to get the poison out. Most runners feel really good - when they're done. The first few miles are the hardest for me until I get into my aerobic routine. The middle miles are just a groove and the last few miles I'm really humpin' to get it done. The whole way, though, the latte's, Big Macs and chocolate chip cookies are just pouring out of my body. Ever sit next to somebody who was super drunk the night before and you get a contact buzz from the booze coming out of him? Same thing, except you can't get drunk on the McDonald's special sauce. The adrenaline continues to pump for a while after I return home and I feel pretty good about taking the previous 52:38 (a good time for me for 6 miles), to burn calories and clean out my pores instead of watching America's Next Top Model. Besides, there's something about Tyra that bugs me and I can't quite figure out what it is.

Time to myself: For those of you with kids, you know how little time you get to yourself anymore. That was the first thing to go when my daughter was born. (I'm making an assumption that you're holding up your end of the parenting. If you've worked out a deal with your other half where he/she does all the work with the kids, please call my wife.) I have important crap to think about as you are finding out by now: blog topics, dumb-ass people at work, get-rich-quick schemes, etc. and I need quality time to do my ponderin'. What better time than when I'm knocking out a quick 5 mile run? The MP3 player is only there for background noise and I'm happy to say that my little walnut can listen to Kid Rock and compose a blog topic all while putting one foot in front of the other for about 44 minutes. Even though I've created the family's monthly budget on the back of the bulletin at church in days gone by, I feel a little less guilty about doing it while I'm running than while I'm ignoring Henry, my priest.

I'm trying not to be a middle-aged fat-ass: I'm 38. I haven't been scanning the used car ads for a red convertible and I don't dig gold chains, but I'm not really looking forward to being 40. Fortunately, people usually think I'm much younger than I am, but I don't want to be the guy who looks 57 even though he's 42. My stupid friends from college would tell you that I've always been a little thick in the middle and I don't want to have to poke another hole in my belt in an effort to hold on to something I don't have anymore. Mind you, those dumb-asses might think I'm thick in the middle but I'm here to tell you that they're pretty thick in the head! Anyway, running is a way for me to burn off the calories and not let my body turn to a big pile of mush. Certainly, I could cut out the trips to Taco Bell but I'm not quite that committed.

I'm such a running nerd that I now track my miles on-line, have a whole bunch of "technical" shirts, shorts and underwear and I recently subscribed to Runner's World magazine. I'm finding that either you really dig running or you really don't. Plenty of people don't run - most with a legitimate reason like having bad knees - and don't get the whole running thing. When I was a more serious mountain biker (and subscribed to two mountain biking magazines), I never would have considered running. However, in recent years, it seems as though I've gotten older. Not quite sure how that happened, but my body now prefers the aerobic routine of running and my brain prefers the feeling of accomplishment of carting my 38 year-old body across a finish line. And pulling a Burley down a bumpy trail looks a lot like shaken baby syndrome to the nice people at Child Protective Services.

I'm anticipating that I'm going to be a runner for a long time even though I've only been doing it seriously for three years. I'm also thinking that I will get a little faster before the crunching in my knees causes me to slow down. If I want to keep in halfway decent shape, I'll need to keep it up because there are still a lot of value meals with my name on them out there. And even though I'm generally not very competitive with other people, I can still picture the 10 year-old kid who finished just ahead of me in my first 5k and that kind of bugs me. Him and Tyra.

Dig: Satellite Radio

So I have about a 30-minute commute to work. Not bad compared to you poor saps in LA or Chicago or someplace but it's still time that I have to give away each day. Here in West Michigan, there are precious few good radio stations so I would jump back and forth between three fairly cheesy "morning zoo" shows: Bob and Tom, Free Beer and Hot Wings (don't get me started on their names) and Kevin Matthews. I was a big Kevhead a long time ago but I become a pretty die-hard Howard Stern fan for the short period of time that he was on the air here in Biblethumperland so I've been missing him. Imagine my delight when he announced he would be moving to satellite radio! I'll talk more about Howard in a minute, but let's discuss satellite radio in general first, shall we?

I'm generally a pretty cheap bastard. That comes primarily from not having much money. This is true despite purchasing a slick new minivan recently (can minivans be "slick" or is that a contradiction in terms?) equipped with a DVD player and five sunroofs. This thing also came stocked with XM radio. And a free 3-month trial! Thanks, Nissan! "I'm sure there's no way that I'll want to part with $12.95 per month after my free trial, but thanks for the free sample of XM", I foolishly said to myself. Fast forward to the day the renewal letter comes from XM reminding me that my free trial is about to end and would I like to renew my subscription? I think you know where this is going. The Marketing folks at XM/Nissan succeeded yet again in signing up another subscriber after giving away $38.85 worth of satellite radio. I'm such a sucker!

The reason that we re-upped is because XM is cool. In fact, I dig it. There are more friggin' channels on this thing than you can shake a stick at. And beleive you me, I've shaken a lot of sticks in my day! Certainly there are plenty of channels that I don't listen to. I'm not really into Rap or Hip-Hop (I'm pretty white bread) and I generally skip the Christian and Classical channels, but there are about 25 music channels that I regularly surf and there are a ton of talk channels and sports channels. Channel 150 is one of two comedy channels and how can you resist listening to Chris Rock do his thing while you're driving to the grocery store? Mind you, one must exercise caution when young ears are in the car but Chris is one funny guy and it beats listening to the usual formula of morning drive time radio or whatever 25 songs are in heavy rotation at the moment.

So back to Howard. Prior to leaving terrestrial radio (that's the same as "regular old radio", for you uninitiated) Howard had about 13 million listeners and you gotta figure he's going to bring a percentage of those folks with him to Sirius. He should, considering his 5 year, $500 million contract. Yep, a half-billion. Not bad, considering how ugly he is. One of those nice people that moved to Sirius is me. This isn't a post about digging Howard, but I do dig him so I ponied up the money for a years' subscription (12 months for the price of 11!) and plugged in my nifty new radio that I received for Christmas and away I went. Howard was the primary reason why I wanted Sirus radio for my car, I have to admit. However, I also just plain old dug satellite radio after listening to it in the super-duper minivan. Howard was just the guy that convinced me to do Sirius instead of XM.

Taking Howard out of the picture, Sirius and XM both have their strengths and I'm not sure which one is better. Both have lots of categories of music as described above and both have contracts with different professional sports leagues. For instance, Sirius has the NFL but XM doesn't, so I would have had to sit in my car to listen to the Steelers win today instead of my wife's minivan. XM has a contract with major league baseball and NASCAR (this is me not making fun of NASCAR again...) and the Big Ten. For my friend, Ron, Sirius has a gay and lesbian channel so that might be good for him.

Satellite radio allows you to check out new music without plunking down money for a CD that might be a little iffy. Again, I'm a cheapskate and just because I like the one song that I hear on the radio doesn't mean I'll go out and buy the CD. I can hear a little more than just the single that was released and then decided if I want to spend the money. And, because satellite offers so many oldies (by that, I mean '70s, '80s and '90s) stations, you don't have to be embarassed about listening to such classics as "Afternoon Delight", anything by The Outfield or "Mmmm Bop" because you don't have to actually lay the CD on the counter and look the clerk in the eye as you give him your money. You can tool on down the road and listen to Hansen-like music all day long without the guilt of buying their CDs. If anyone challenges you on what you were listening to, you can always just say you were surfing the channels and the last time you listened to this one, there was something much less sucky on.

Prior to hopping on the satellite bandwagon, my CD changer took a puke on me. I was working a friend to buy his because he says he never uses it. Why not, you ask? Because he has Sirius, he says. And he's right. He lent me his changer and said that he would sell it to me if I really wanted it but that I might find that I don't need a CD changer if I have satellite. And, by golly, he's right. I haven't listened to a single CD since Christmas. I guess that's only related to digging satellite radio in that Sirius is good enough to replace my CD changer - sorry if I got off track there for a minute.

So, there you have it. Satellite radio is cool. Much like cable TV, there is so much stuff on that you're bound to find something you like. Want to know how the traffic is shaping up in Seattle? Channel 156 on Sirius can hook you up. Miss the latest driving-in-circles event that NASCAR holds every weekend? Tune in to Channel 144 on XM. And let's not forget the high-brow comedy of Howard Stern on Sirius Channel 100. Just this week, he was asking Larry King's wife why in the world she wanted to become Mrs. Larry King #7 and who can resist that little tidbit of news?!

Don't Get: Advice Columns and Those Stupid Celebrity Q&A Columns

As you can see by my two recent Don't Get posts, I'm one confused guy lately. Every Sunday, I am further confused by the people who feel the need to seek advice from Dear Abby, et. al. and ask questions about various celebrities. Just like I don't think Yakov Smirnov (please see any website dedicated to '80's pop culture if you don't know who Yakov is) is really from the former Soviet Union, I just can't believe that there are actually people out there who write to these "columnists" (not "communists" - that would be a Yakov Smirnov joke) looking for advice. I won't bore you with too many examples of these columns, but I will give a few:

Dear Abby (dearabby.com): She and her sister, Ann Landers, started this whole mess. I'm not sure what qualifies them as advice experts, but I'd be willing to bet that it ain't a Ph.D. in Advice-Giving-for-the-Price-of-a-Stamp. The first "letter" on Abby's site as I write this details how a female business owner caught a male employee forging a check for $1k. Despite never having "a sexual relationship" with this yahoo (that's important, how?), she is wondering what to do. Believe me, it's not important what Abby says in response. The only correct reply to this letter is "Why the hell are you wasting valuable ink and paper with dumb-ass questions like this?! Shut the hell up and go home to your 15 cats!" Suffice it to say, all of the letters written to Abby have a similar dumb-ass quality to them.

Parade Magazine (parade.com): This is one of those throw-away "magazines" that clutter up the Sunday newspaper. There are usually just as many ads for the Franklin Mint as there are articles and, for that matter, the articles usually have something to do old people in some way. Anyway, on the inside of the front cover is "Personality Parade", a Q&A column written by some joker named Walter Scott. I can picture old Walt making up these letters while sitting on the can, shuffling over to his phone to dictate to his blue-haired secretary (not "administrative assistant") and then spending the rest of his day eating too much only to fall into a food-induced coma at about 6:30. Unfortunately for us Michiganders, "Tom Seelye" of "Detroit" recently wrote in asking who started the trend in Hollywood for male leads to wear aviator style sunglasses. I'm serious, folks, this was actually printed. No heavy lifting for Walter. No questions about cancer or world hunger, please - let's just focus on sunglasses. I'm struggling to make another smart-ass comment about this because I am weeping for the future of our great state....

USA Weekend Magazine (usaweekend.com): Just like Parade magazine this publication is best suited to wrapping fish. A recent dolt from the Show-Me state (that's Missouri, in case you are a dolt also) was looking for advice because her 16 year-old daughter wanted to get a boob job. Apparently, this chick has "saved the money needed and seen so many makeover shows that she is more knowledgeable about the procedure" than the mother-of-the-year is. Where to begin with these two?!
A: the girl is 16
B: she has learned everything from makeover shows
C: how did she get all that cash?!
Look, if you need some broad from USA Today to tell you that this isn't a real good idea, you frickin' DESERVE to live in Missouri! Perhaps instead of new tubes for your slut-daughter, you could put the money to better use by upgrading to a double-wide! As a matter of fact, why not send me the money and I'll invest it in something worthwhile like a 60" plasma TV. (Don't get me wrong, a nice rack is a beautiful thing but the kids at the local "alternative" high school don't deserve it whereas I do deserve a big TV.)

OK, last bitch about these things. Exactly how urgently do people need answers to these questions? One would hope that "Tom" could wait a while to hear back on the important topic of celebrity eyewear, but is the high school chick driving to the plastic surgeon as we speak? I'm guessing that if I ever needed help on a weighty issue ("My prosthetic leg is currently on fire and I'm confused over which type of fire extinguisher to use...") I'd be looking for a pretty quick turnaround time and because the world is full of stupid people, you gotta figure that there would be quite a few letters ahead of mine in the queue. Might I suggest a conversation with an actual person living in close proximity to handle some of your questions?

Other than the fact that it's a way for dumb-asses to see their names in print, nothing good can come of these things. Every Sunday these things suck me in to see what the stupid people are concerned about and it makes me a little stupider every time I read them and that pisses me off! Damn you, Tom Seelye!

Don't Get: Guns as Toys

Us WASPs had a big week this week. We celebrated the birth of our savior by giving lots of gifts to each other. We don't have enough electrons here to discuss the commercialism of Christmas (Christmercialism?) so I won't get into that whole scene but it was through this transaction of gift-giving that my five year-old son ended up with his first gun - two guns actually. Yep, five years old and the proud owner of two guns. Along with his remote controlled Jeep Grand Cherokee, some Lego stuff (how rich is THAT guy?) and a nifty telescope, Jack received a dart gun and some other plastic contraption with all kind of sounds and noises and a laser sight! Yes, these guns have orange tips on them so the cops don't think they're real, but it just doesn't taste right for a kid to receive a gun as a toy.

I live in the beautiful state of Michigan where hunting is pretty serious business. Every year on November 15, all kinds of folks head out into the woods to shoot deer. The preparation for this day begins immediately following the last day of the previous year's season and involves lots of camo, pick-up trucks and guns. I have no problem at all with this activity but, in case you hadn't guessed by now, I'm more into blogs than guns. I'm not into it but, if you are, by all means enjoy your time sitting in the woods. As a matter of fact, I'll be glad to eat some of the venison that you bring into work or family gatherings.

I have plenty of friends and family who participate in the whole November 15 ritual. I've shared my feelings about guns with a few of them and they assure me that they teach their kids to treat guns with the utmost respect. Always assume the gun is loaded, they say. You're darned right, you better be afraid/respectful of a gun! Gun as hunting implement, I get.

And as much as I know that I would totally curl up in the fetal position if I was ever sent off to fight in a war someplace, I also get the idea of gun as diplomat. My brother-in-law did more than his share of time in Iraq and I really respect him for doing his thing over there. I haven't quizzed him too much about what went on but I don't think he was in the fetal position. It's hard to spread democracy with your head between your knees. Crap goes on in the world that requires the diplomacy that only an M-16 can bring and I'm cool with OTHER people taking care of business. I think that George has a hard time admitting he was wrong or even adjusting the game plan but now that we're messing around over there, I'm behind the guys 100%. George didn't get my vote in either election, but whatever...

But hunting and war are different than toys under the Christmas tree. Jack now jumps out from behind the recliner and shoots. He crawls on his 5 year-old stomach under the kitchen table and shoots. He sneaks up on stuff and shoots it. I guess my concern is that if would ever somehow get a real gun in his hands, he wouldn't be able to separate the pretend shooting from the real thing. Believe me, he gets an earful from me if he points the gun at a person and I'm happy to say that he's learned that lesson mighty quick! Suffice to say that Jack isn't copying this behavior from me and believe it or not, I'm not dumb enough to think that I can shelter him from all this stuff. For that matter, I didn't just throw the guns in the garbage either. I think the jury is still out on whether completely hiding guns from a kid is better than having them around the house, so I guess the best thing I can do is to not promote it but also not treat guns like they're completely forbidden. This is really testing my parenting skills!

Don't worry, this is NOT the place where I get on my soapbox and prattle on about violence on TV or XBox games and try to blame society for somehow teaching my kid how to "cover" his buddy. All of that is true, but this isn't the place where I will be doing that. (How is it that so many of us aren't active gun users but we "know" so much about guns?) I'm not necessarily a big fan of Michael Moore, but I AM necessarily not a big fan of Charlton Heston.

So you see, I don't really have a problem with guns, per se. I have a problem with a gun as a toy. It just doesn't make sense! In what way is a gun a toy? Toy = Legos. Toy = Skateboard. Toy = Train Set. Toy does not = Gun. How is shooting a gun something that I would want my little kid to think is fun? Guns are very powerful and demand the respect that my hunter friends say they have. Legos only hurt when you step on them.

Hate: Bad Service

Perhaps you've been able to tell by now, but I'm an impatient sort. I don't want you in my way at the grocery store and it bugs me when my wife digs around in her purse/steamer trunk for the car keys. I don't have enough time in the day to do all the things that I want, so waiting for other people isn't something that I enjoy. I've become especially impatient and intolerant of bad service because, in the end, it means that you are just sucking more time right out of my watch and that just takes away from being able to do the important stuff in my life like, you know, sitting around.

This topic was prompted by a trip to the mall with my lovely bride last weekend. I know what you are thinking. Yes, I went to the mall a week before Christmas. Yes, I should have been more patient and tolerant in light of the whole Jesus thing. Yes, I should have known that everyone in the entire world would be at the very same mall bothering me. Anyway, I experienced some pretty crappy service and I just had to share my feelings with you . Can't a brother just expect the lackies earning their $6.50 per hour (plus a 10% discount from the store!) to do their jobs?!

We were looking for a gift for her dad. Some kind of goofy things that you strap on your shoes to prevent you from slipping while you walk. We could debate whether this gift was going to be any good or not (Amy has the very same thing and has yet to use them but she wants to get a pair for her dad?) but that would take time away from talking about the Employee of the Month at Dick's Sporting Goods.

So we're kind of wandering around looking for these things. We have that look about us that just screams "I hate everyone here and if you could just point me in the right direction, I'll be happy to spend my greenbacks on your overpriced crap so I can then stand in line with the rest of the sheep". Finally, I make eye contact with Skippy and ask him if they carry these stupid things. I knew I was in trouble when he kind of scrunched up his face like he had bitten into a bug and repeated what I asked him. I could hear the little gears turning in his little melon and then grind to a halt as if someone had poured a bucket of sand in there. With great confidence, he announced that, despite the enormous catalog of inventory that Dick's carries, they do not have such an item. While unfortunate that I would have to traipse off to another store, it was even more unfortunate that I saw an entire rack of these goofy things not 50 feet from where Junior had just told me that they weren't! (If that didn't make sense, it means that Dick's really does carry these things and the high school punk had no clue but lulled me into a false sense of security by speaking "confidently".) So off I went to buy the boot traction things and Sporto no doubt went off spreading more bad information. I know that I shouldn't expect much from a chump making $6.50 an hour but come on! If that's what you signed up for, at least do your friggin' job! Maybe Dick's is a little overwhelming for him. Perhaps a place like Hot Topic would be more his speed where the junior high girls aren't as demanding as impatient bastards like me .

Here's another example - and much shorter! I was at Starbuck's (imagine that!) in Meijer's the other day. As we all know, my VentiNonfatNoWhipMocha costs $3.76. Because I didn't want to get a whole bunch of change back, I gave the chick a fiver and a penny. The problem was that I gave her the penny AFTER she had already rung up my mocha goodness. Good God, you'd think I asked her to perform some sort of calculus right on the spot! See, normally her nifty little cash register would have told her to give me $1.24 but now I had given her the extra penny and she froze up like she had stepped on a rusty nail when she was a little kid and the lockjaw had just now set in. She kind of made that bug-biting face and let me know that she "isn't very good in math" and looked pleadingly at me to take back my penny. Standing my ground, I gave her the penny and let her know that the change should be a buck and a quarter. "Not very good at math", she said. She should have said "I'm pretty stupid and I can't think for myself so please don't mess me up by giving me money after the cash register tells me what to do." Again, this transaction took valuable seconds away from watching another video of a guy getting hit in the nuts by the fat kid on his little league team and who wants to miss that?

OK, last example. Most of my monthly bills are automatically deducted from my vast fortune every month insteading of mailing them in. One of those bills is from the evil cable company. Don't get me started on these guys but one month they screwed up and didn't get their grubby mitts on my money. So what do you think they did? They took twice the usual amount the next month. So I got on the horn to the idiots at Charter Communications and asked them what the deal was. It seems that they had a software upgrade that went awry and they weren't able to take their money in the first month so they just helped themselves to my loot in the second month. Huh? What? Does that seem fair to you? You snooze, you lose, man! Let me just say here that you don't want to screw me in the money department. I don't have that much in the first place so I get pretty protective of it. I proceeded to chew on the ear of the Charter person until I thought I was going to have a grabber - all for about $100 that they were entitled to in the first place. Yes, I fully acknowledge that it was no big deal for them to delay their debit a month and the mortgage company wasn't going to change the locks on my house, but that's not the point. The point is that all this crap is done electronically and there is no reason why my little life should be affected by your electrons going haywire. If you have a software "upgrade" (now they can play solitaire and minesweeper online!) have a backup plan, you dolts! People do this stuff all the time. That's what IT nerds are for.

For those of you who think I'm just a whining pain in the ass, allow myself to explain.... myself. This country is becoming more and more service orientated (love that "word" almost as much as irregardless!) and yet I get crappy service! What's up with that? I work in the automotive industry so I see plenty of manufacturing jobs moving to our amigos in Mexico and our (whatever the Chinese word is for "friends") in China. This is done usually because the labor is cheaper and, if those folks can make the same widget with the same quality, then more power to the capitalists who want to reduce their costs. If the punk at Dick's was smart (of course, by definition, he isn't) he would strive to be the best darn flunkie he could be or we might ship his service sector job over to India like Microsoft has done.

Please stop before you try to explain global economics to me. I don't care about the globe. I'm mostly interested in me. Please improve your math skills. Please improve your knowledge of the company for which you work. Please program your software so that it does what it's supposed to do. And, for the love of Pete, quit sucking the time out of my watch!

Dig: America's Funniest Videos

What a concept: Put out the word out to the American public that you want to make an entire TV show out of their home videos. Genius! Everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame, right? Even better if I'm the producer of my own little film! After collecting countless hours of video from countless family gatherings, and stupid pet/human tricks, I'd be glad to send it straight to your living room so you can share in my glee! I'm sure you'll enjoy movies of my grandma's bridge tournament as much as I do!

So what does it take to produce such a great addition to American culture? As it turns out, not a whole lot. Get a B-List (C-List?) host, a set with lots of "video" related items (monitors, "film" on the wall, old TV sets), an audience of 100 nice folks visiting Hollywood on their summer vacation and a check for $10k and you're good to go. When Friends was on the air, each cast member was getting like a zillion dollars per episode or something like that and there were multiple sets, so each episode cost a good chunk of money to put together. How much can AFV cost? Including the $10,000 for the winner, the budget has to be about $10,005.78 per episode. And most of that comes from the extra garbage cans they had to buy to throw away those big old bulky VHS tapes! The version of the show with Daisy Fuentes might cost slightly more for her outfits but I would argue that getting Daisy into a slinky little number to introduce the next video of Uncle Bob splitting his pants while bowling is worth it.

So while we're comparing this stroke of genius to Friends, I gotta tell you that I laugh out loud a lot more at a little kid hitting his mom in the head with a stick when he misses the birthday pinata than when Joey makes yet another inane comment about his next audition. I've heard actors and writers say that a comedy is much harder to produce than a drama. And certainly, a lot of it depends on the delivery. If you tried to write a script for the little kid to hit the candy-filled donkey twice and on the third time whack his mom in the head, it just wouldn't work. But when Junior is swinging for the fences (or the Jolly Ranchers) and clocks mom in her melon, you can't fake the humor when mom drops like a ton of bricks and Skippy goes back to the pinata for the candy. You just can't write comedy like that! The only thing that Friends has over AFV is the babes - unless the now-unconscious mom happens to be a hottie but that's rarely the case.

Sorry to throw another list at you, but allow me to expand a little on some of my fave types of videos that are presented on the show:

Guy Getting Hit in the Nuts: You can't go wrong with this one, folks! And there are so many variations. You got your basic "dad teaching kid how to hit a baseball and the kid hits one back to dad right in the nuts", the ever-popular "dad wresting kid on the living room floor and kid kicks dad in the nuts" and of course, the "golf/billiards/softball game with ball somehow hitting guy in nuts". The reaction is always the same, though: guy drops everything that he is doing, grabs his nuts and drops to the ground. Every guy in the audience winces and does a sympathy nut-grab but they're all laughing because it ain't them that feels like their stomach is bing pulled out sideways. Now that's rich! If there was an All Guy-Getting-Hit-In-The-Nuts channel, I'd pay $9.95 a month for it! AFV is good at stringing together about 20 of these videos together and setting it to music, often Yakkity-Sax (you know, the theme to Benny Hill). Funny saxophone music and crotch shots? That's pure gold!

Cool Sporting Feats: These have quite a range to them. Anything from buzzer-beating half-court shot to a multiple-lateral kickoff return for a touchdown (a la Cal vs. Stanford) to a dragster bursting into flames as it races down the track. Those things are just sweet and the reason I dig them is because they don't happen all the time. Yet, for some reason, somebody had their nifty little Sony out and captured the whole thing on video for me to enjoy in the comfort of my living room. Ever see the clip of the homerun ball that hits a dude right on his head as he is riding by on his bike? What's up with that?! That's your basic bad luck, people - thanks for sharing!. How about all those nut-jobs doing crazy stunts on their motorcycles a million feet up in the air? That's messed up - yet so cool! Lastly, two more words for you: Joe Theisman. How many times have you seen that nasty clip of his leg getting bent the wrong way? It's so nasty and yet if it were to come on in the middle of whatever TV show you are glued to, you know damn well you'd watch it. Joe would totally have won the ten grand on AFV if he had submitted the tape.

Wedding Videos: I'm not talking about the videos where everything goes right. I'm talking about the ones where the groom passes out at the altar. Or the ones where the mother of the bride leans over to light a candle and her hair catches on fire. And who can resist the bridesmaid who gets all boozed up and gets all out of control on the dance floor and ends up wiping out with her light blue prom/bridesmaid dress over her head! This is quality entertainment at its finest! Sorry that you spent a million dollars at your wedding and the only thing that people remember from it is the divorcee' throwing elbows to catch the bouquet! Even better, it's all on video! On a recent episode of AFV, the bride forgot that she was wearing a microphone and leaned over to the poor sap who was marrying her and announced that she wasn't wearing underwear. Underwear itself is funny. Letting the world know on your wedding day that you're going commando is a riot!

Wipe-Outs of One Type or Another: Guy makes birthday cake. Guy lights all 68 candles on cake. Guy steps on cat. Guy falls face first into cake catching hair on fire. Kid puts out fire with with pitcher of Kool-Aid. How is that NOT funny! Give that man $10,000!

OK, so maybe it ain't Shakespeare. It probably ain't even Aaron Spelling (of Melrose Place fame). And I certainly won't comment on the hosts (except to further stress the hotness of Daisy Fuentes). But you want to make me laugh? Forget about Chandler Bing. Give me a fat guy (fat guys are always funny) doing bellyflops in his above-ground pool causing the sides to collapse flooding his kid's birthday party! Now THAT'S funny!

Don't Get: Fantasy Football

I have a few friends who do the whole fantasy football thing. I don't. Mostly because I don't get what the attraction is. There are fantasy leagues out there for just about every sport, I'm sure. You could maybe talk to me about a fantasy hockey league for a few minutes and I could get a warm feeling in my heart for the Red Wings, but do NOT waste my time on a NASCAR fantasy league. Other than admiration for the marketing genius who somehow got NASCAR into the mainstream, I have no interest in NASCAR. Again, nice work on building an empire out of driving in circles, but don't let me interrupt your pork rinds and PBR.

Maybe you're like my friend Warren who is a huge sports fan. Doesn't matter what sport. You want to know Bill Buckner's lifetime batting average? Warren can hook you up. He even knows who came in second in a given sporting event. I had to type "super bowl 23" into Yahoo to find out who played, but Warren could tell you that San Francisco beat Cincinnati by scoring two touchdowns in the fourth quarter for the win. So he's a big sports fan. I got it. He's also about the world's nicest guy. He's the kind of guy who would jumpstart your car for you at 3 in the morning and even bring treats from home for you. Thanks, Warren!

But does being a big sports fan mean that you are automatically a big fantasy sports fan? One of my other friends (who is an idiot) says that this fantasy football business is just a big male bonding activity. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with football, he would say. At that point, I would say to him that he is an idiot (mostly because I just like calling him an idiot). He digs the coming together of a sport that he digs and the internet which he also digs. That's fine. If you dig two things and you dig it even more when those things come together, then I say be my guest. I guess I just don't dig something over which I don't have any control (the NFL) enough to worry about it. I do dig the internet but its usually related to stalking people and the penalties are getting pretty stiff for that kind of activity. Want to bond with me? Let's skip the football talk and get right down to drinking beer! Can't drink as much when you're blathering on about Tom Brady's completion percentage.

I'm sure my manhood will be challenged by those of you who enjoy fantasy football. Be my guest (again). And while you're at it, you can kiss my ass. I just need to know why it is fun to create your own football "team", compare how they do against other "teams", trade "players" for other "players" and then celebrate a "victory". Please note the quotation marks. I've placed them there to emphasize that these are not real players, teams or victories. It's pretend, people! Just like my son pretends he's Zorro. Or Darth Vader. Darth Vader is cool and all, but until Junior gets his own light saber and can demonstrate his use of the Force, I'm not falling for it.

If you're really into football, maybe you should PLAY football, not just fantasize about it. If you tell me that the reason you are into fantasy/pretend football is because you are old like me, that's fine. I'm down with that. Your body can't take the punishment that comes along with a chop block or an open field tackle? Then maybe fantasy football IS for you. I'm just not sure where to draw the line. Why football? Work can sometimes dish out some mental punishment. Why not have a fantasy work league where you write a fantasy resume, accept a fantasy job and cash a fantasy paycheck? Might be a little tricky to pay the bills with those fantasy dollars but it's a good way to avoid doing actual work.

Or if you're like Warren and just generally a big sports fan, why not collect baseball cards? Maybe you will stumble onto a Honus Wagner rookie card and sell it for a boatload of money. I suppose you can gamble with fantasy sports to make a few bucks, but there's always the chance that you will have to resort to volunteering for medical experiments if you pick a bad "team".

Maybe I need to find something to be that passionate about. I'm pretty passionate about sitting on my ass. I also dig watching TV - while sitting on my ass. Are there fantasy Watching-TV-While-Sitting-On-My-Ass leagues?

Could it be that I am in the wrong here? Could be. And monkeys might fly out of my butt. I just don't get it. Looking forward to your comments.

Dig: Taking the Day Off

So my wife is a teacher. For most of the day yesterday and a good part of last night, it snowed and blowed ("blew" doesn't rhyme) so she was rewarded with a phone call at about 5:30 this morning with her two favorite words: Snow Day. For those of you folks in Arizona or Africa or someplace who aren't typically eligible to receive a ticket in the Snow Day lottery, a Snow Day happens when the superintendant of the school system determines that the roads are too dangerous for buses to be out and about and therefore the future of our country gets the day off from learning. My wife would tell you that if you see "blowing and drifting" in the forecast, you're golden. Well, there wasn't much snow to drift, but it sure was blowing so the roads got pretty slippy, as my grandma used to say. It was really crappy driving home from work yesterday so I was pulling for her to get the day off. Mind you, she's stuck with our three brats all day but she can put them into SpongeBob-induced comas if necessary. So that brings me to something that I dig - a day off.

I've never been to prison or held hostage in a 7-11 robbery gone bad, but I am a middle-management corporate suck-ass father of three and husband of one who seems to get more work thrown at me with not enough time/people to do it. So the freedom that comes at the end of the day prior to taking the day off is the kind of freedom that I'm sure Martin Luther King was talking about. Assuming you aren't taking the day off to get a root canal or an audit from the IRS or a visit to the proctologist, you can petty much just take that big old weight that you carry around on your shoulders, hand it to the poor sap who has to be a contributing member of society while you turn into a slacker for the day and just skip on out into the sunshine. Yes, the sun always shines on the day off. You could be living in Seattle, where it rains all the frickin' time or here in Michigan where it snows half the year but the clouds will part for a brief moment allowing the sun to shine through and the angels to sing. As soon as you go into day-off mode, life is good and you are untouchable.

Again, as long as you don't have anything to do relating to gloved fingers and Vaseline (unless you're into that sort of thing), you have the whole world in front of you. Want to stay up late watching stupid shows on cable? Go for it! Booze it up so much that you do a little drunk dialing during David Letterman? Be my guest, 'cause you don't have to work tomorrow! Just don't get so drunk that you forget to turn off your alarm, because if you get up at the same time on your day off that you do on days that you go to work, you need counseling. Days off are for sleeping in. I recognize that there are people out there who enjoy getting up early. But those people clearly have issues that we simply don't have time to discuss here. Sometimes I have grand plans to get up at 6, run a quick 10 miles by 7:30, re-shingle the roof by 10, feed the poor by noon and then spend the rest of the afternoon working on my doctoral thesis. However, this doesn't usually happen and I am content to spend my day off only getting so far as to use the oven instead of the microwave to cook dinner.

Having a day off is like finding a $20 in your pocket that you thought you lost the last time you went to the casino. That's free money, baby, and a day off is free time. Time that is normally given to someone else. If you're like me, you spend most of your life at someone else's mercy. Work, kids, wife, bills, and just generally The Man. Well, The Man won't get me down on my day off! You want something out of me on John Day? Tough luck, Junior, I'm not punched in today! Don't try to call an 11:00 meeting, because that's when I'll be playing Plinko with my friends on The Price is Right in hopes of getting to the Showcase Showdown! And I hope you don't expect me to go someplace that is offended by unshaven people in sweats and old baseball caps, because I don't get all dolled up on my day off. If you need me to do some research on the Great Wall of China, you might be in luck if there is something on the National Geographic channel. If not, you're S.O.L.

Appropriately enough, one of my fave movies is Ferris Bueller's Day Off. There is a scene when Ferris, Sloane and Cameron are at the Cubs game and Ferris says to Cameron something about normally being in Phys. Ed. at that time. They both give a little laugh like they have totally gotten away with something. Certainly, they HAD gotten away with skipping out of school, but even for us yahoos who have to have our vacation time approved by HR, there is still that feeling of "everybody else is at the salt mine being good little worker bees and here I am in my favorite sweatpants scratching myself while I watch reruns of those reality show whores on Road Rules vs. Real World." The ONLY natural response to that feeling is that cheshire-cat, smug little Ferris Bueller kind of chuckle to yourself. You've been making deposits into that bank of time all your life and now it's time for a little withdrawal. Hand over my time, little Banker-Man, I'm going to piss some of it away! And don't even think about judging me for "wasting" a day off by doing nothing. This time is mine. It's bad enough that I don't get to earn interest on it, but I'll do whatever I want it with it, thank you very little.

And that's the bottom line here. My time is valuable, people, and there's a lot of crap I want to get done. One of the things that I want to do is sit on my arse. Yep, I go to work and meetings and stuff. Yep, I do the dad and husband thing. Sorry, I haven't gotten around to my Ph. D. yet. All I'm saying is cut me some slack and allow me to enjoy that feeling of sweet freedom that Tim Robbins felt at the end of Shawshank Redemption. The rest of you schlubs keep making those little hash marks in your cells/cubes. If you need me, don't call, because John Day ranks right up there with fishing out the secret decoder ring from a box of FrankenBerry cereal.

Hate: Women's Purses

Ladies, I apologize if you don't carry around a purse the size of Montana stuffed with lots of crap like my mom and wife do. Also, if you have just a couple of purses, then this post isn't for you. I haven't had a lot of experience with different women's purses so I'm basing my hate on a sample size of two. Because I like to make broad, sweeping generalizations, however, I'm going to include all females over the age of 16 in this discussion. If you feel like you are being wrongly accused, feel free to go watch a movie on Lifetime or watch Dr. Phil or admire your Longaburger basket collection while I vent.

Being the good husband that I am, I was cleaning out our front closet recently. In addition to the various hats, mittens, jackets, shoes and backpacks stuffed in there, I found TWELVE purses. One short of a baker's dozen! Innocently enough, I suggested to my wife that she had too many purses. She looked at me, blinked a couple of times and then walked away. Having a lot of purses must make you deaf because she obviously didn't hear me. Either that, or she finds nothing wrong with having that many purses and did everything but say "I find nothing wrong with having that many purses. Shut up. Go make yourself useful by taking out the garbage."

So we have the issue of just the sheer number of purses. We also have the issue of their size. Certainly, the size of the purse is related to the amount of crap that is stuffed into said purse. We'll address that next but I'm going to write to my congressman (if I knew who it was) suggesting a tax on any purse larger than twice the size of a man's wallet. I think I'm being generous here. There really is no reason for chicks to carry anything bigger than my leather tri-fold but I didn't want to appear insensitive. (Just between you and me, though, I AM insensitive but I don't want to APPEAR insensitive. Big difference.) Similar to the "sin" taxes on cars that get crappy gas mileage, I'm proposing that a purse that is deemed too large will carry a $100 tax that will be used to build more golf courses. Girls, if you would like to carry around a big-ass purse, that's fine. The consolation for me is that every time you do, I'll be that much closer to enjoying a little pasture pool with my buddies. It's a win-win! Some people might suggest that the money be used to fund something stupid like schools or roads or blind people or hurricane victims. I'm going to take a strong stance on this one, though. Just don't tell the blind people or the people living in squalor in Louisiana. Or is "living in squalor" and "Louisiana" redundant?

The thing that I hate most is the amount of useless crap that is found in a given purse. Archeological digs don't turn up as many ancient artificacts as what you might find in one of my mom's purses. Just last week, the FBI stopped by to look for Jimmy Hoffa in one of her purses! It's a bottomless pit, people! In addition to the paper money (all singles, in our case) is a forest of receipts. I can assure you these are receipts for stupid stuff. Nothing cool like ipods or plasma TV's. These are receipts for pillow shams, decorative figurines and groceries for the family. You know, dumb stuff. If I have a receipt in my wallet, it would be for beer or a new transmission for the car or something manly like that. After I drink the beer, there is no reason for the receipt so I dispose of it properly. My wife, however, has receipts from 1983 in her purse! She will have the receipt for the slippers she bought in 1994 but do you think she has the receipt for the crappy plastic kids toy that broke after the first day so we can take it back to the store to get our money back? If you said, "ain't no way", you are absolutely correct.

My wife's purse and my mom's purse both smell the same. Due to the large amount of gum wrappers, wadded up dollar bills and the leather from the purse itself, the smell that wafts out of the purse when it's opened up to buy another pair of shoes or man-bashing book is enough to bring any man to tears. Imagine the smell of a cow rubbed all over with dollar bills handled by coal miners, ditch diggers and outhouse cleaners then "freshened" with a million wrappers from Trident Cinnamon gum or Wrigley Big Red. Throw in the smell of lint and old lipstick for good measure and you have the makings for something that Sadaam would feel guilty about using against the Kurds. My wallet, despite resting on my right butt cheek all day long, smells better than the purse from hell!

While I'm in a pissy mood, let's talk about the idea of me carrying your purse for you. I know there are men out there who carry purses. I also know there are men out there who prefer Ken to Barbie, if you know what I mean. I honestly don't care which team you play for but please don't carry a purse. There is no good way for a man to carry a purse either his own or his wife's. What am I going to do, sling it over my shoulder? Carry it by the handle where it will inevitably clash with my shoes? I don't think so! The best way to do it is to tuck it under my arm and kind of carry it like a football. Obviously, the whole time that I am in possession of the "football", I will have to avoid eye contact with anyone. Every once in a while, I might get a knowing look from another poor sap of a husband but usually I'll just get stares from small children as they are whisked away, eyes shielded, by their concerned parents.

So there you have it. Ladies - it's time to man-up and start carrying a wallet in your back pocket. All you really need is your driver's license, $50 and a credit card (No, that does not mean you can rack up a huge balance on the credit card!) The rest of the crap that you carry can be strewn about your minivan for all I care.

There, I feel better now.

Hate: Overpriced Things

Many of the things that I will be sharing with you in this whole blog thing will probably be painfully obvious. I'm guessing that this is one of them. Just like Beavis (or was it Butthead?) said: I don't like things that suck!

As I said in an earlier post, I am addicted to mocha latte's from Starbucks. I love them. If I could, I would marry a mocha latte'. I would buy it a ring, walk down the aisle with it and exchange vows with it. After a nice reception and dancing to the chicken dance, we would jet off to the Mediterranean for a week and then settle down for a nice little life. However, besides that I hate the frickin' chicken dance, I couldn't afford it. I've already resigned myself to the fact that my kids will be going to community college because I spend so much money on VentiNonfatNowhipMochaLatte's. Imagine how much I would spend if I was married to it! If those things weren't so damned overpriced, though, my kids could still attend a good college. Which brings me to today's silliness.

I work in the auto industry, the most screwed-up industry in the world. Understanding and reducing cost is a big part of my job and one of the things that I've learned is that cost and price don't have anything to do with each other. Boys and girls, how much do you think it costs to make that beloved mocha latte' of mine? Let's just make some big broad guesses, shall we? For the purposes of today's discussion, we'll leave out the cost of the herion. Milk = 25 cents, mocha goodness = 50 cents, cup = 10 cents, lid = 5 cents, java jacket = 5 cents. According to my cypherin' that adds up to a cool 95 cents. Ok, maybe I have to add in 25 cents to send to Mecca (that would be Starbuck's HQ) for various marketing and overhead crap. Now I'm up to $1.20. MSRP on this stuff is $3.55. That means that Mr. Starbuck is getting $2.35 in profit for every one they sell! Good God, people!! Perhaps the UAW wokers at Delphi should start making mocha latte's instead of poorly-designed, poorly-manufactured widgets for the overstuffed, backwards-thinking, fat-cats at GM! Imagine a whole factory churning out mocha latte's with 200% profit margin on every one. Mind you, Delphi would surely screw it up given enough time, but for a while that would be a sweet gig!

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of capitalism. This is true despite some graffiti that I saw in Ann Arbor way back when I was in school that said simply "capitalism, schmapitalism" that still makes me chuckle today. I also understand the whole concept of supply and demand but I'm not prepared to pull a Rosa Parks and boycott Starbuck's. She is a bigger man than I am in that regard and she's dead and a woman besides! If you can make a buck or two or three, my brother, you just go right ahead. I just don't like it when it's so obvious. If you're going to screw me, at least turn out the lights so I don't see you doing it!

What's worse than getting hosed by overpriced stuff is when the price of really overpriced stuff goes down so it's only overpriced instead of really overpriced. I have one word for you: gasoline. It's a great day when gas is ONLY $2.25, isn't it my fellow sheep?! Hey, everybody,I got a great deal on gas today - it was only $2.19! Huh?! What?! Exsqueeze me?! Since when is that a good deal? I'll tell you when - When you compare it to the hosejob we were getting when it was $2.99, that's when! Our European friends have no sympathy for us because they've been getting hosed for years. I'm sure Jean-Claude is having a laugh over his croissant at us Yankee dogs having to pay that much for a gallon of petrol. Bite me, Jean-Cleaude!

I actually went to http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/margins/ to understand the price breakdown of gasoline. According to this highly informational website, the two big components of gas PRICE are refining and crude oil. (Please see above where I mention that cost and price don't have anything to do with each other...) Makes sense. A couple months ago, those poor bastards in New Orleans had to dodge flying oil rigs which cut into the daily production of crude oil - I understand that. Apparently, though, the big oil companies are able to still eke out a little money at this game because both British Petroleum (BP) and Exxon Mobil (XOM) are back to trading at the same price as they were prior to the Hurricane-o-Rama. As a matter of fact, for the first month after Katrina hit, both stocks increased in value. If you're a stockholder, you'll be happy to know that both are trading about $20 higher than where they were 2 years ago. If you're just a schlub like me driving a bunch of miles to work every day, you might not care so much.

I'm convinced that the CEO's of the oil companies got together and created those hurricanes themselves. I can just picture them setting down their brandy snifters just long enough to wring their hands together as they discuss ways to create an "emergency" so they can drive up prices:
Oil CEO #1 (while wringing hands): I need more money. $1000000000000 isn't enough!
Oil CEO #2 (in full hand-wringing mode): I'm as rich as God! Too bad I can't control the weather like God does."
Oil CEO #1: That's it, by Jiminy! I'll have one of my minions create a few hurricanes!
Oil CEO #2: Great idea! Just don't let that punk George Bush screw it up! He'll have everyone out buying hybrids. That boy seems to have forgotten how he got his money to buy his presidency!
Oil CEO #1: Good point. I'll make sure that it hits New Orleans. Lots of Black people there and you know how George hates them!
Louis Farakhan: Yeah, and George blew up the levees too!

Believe me, I don't know what the "right" price is for that delicious mocha latte' that I drink or for the gasoline that my car drinks. There are some things that are priced correctly, I think. I just can't think of any right now. Maybe something that falls off the back of the truck or that your friend gets for you through his brother-in-law's cousin's girlfriend's step-father. I have a friend who hooks me up for seats to the Detroit Pistons games. I could give a rat's ass about the Pistons but when it says "Comp" where it usually says $37.50, I know the price is right! I have another friend who is a bartender at the Rosebud in Grand Haven. He usually throws a beer my way when I come in. Do I think that the tasty Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is worth $3.50 out of the tap when I can get a six-pack for $7 at the grocery store? No sirree, Bob. Do I think that it's worth free? Damn skippy!

Let's review: I hate overpriced stuff. I like capitalism. I hate getting hosed. I like taking advantage of my friends when they give me free stuff. If you own an oil refinery I'll be your bestest friend! In the meantime, I'm going to load up on a bunch of plastic bottles that cost 5 cents, print some labels that say "John's Water" for 2 cents, fill the bottles at my kitchen sink for a penny and sell it to Louis Farakhan for $1.25 a bottle. If he buys a gross of them, I'll knock it down to a buck apiece. Due to this dramatic loss of revenue, I'd have to skip the week in Aspen this year but I'm willing to cut old Louis a deal because I'm just a hell of a guy!