Dr Pepper Proves Book Larnin' is No Substitute for Common Sense

As you know, Dr Pepper is my muse. I therefore took it particularly hard when the marketing wizards at the Dr Pepper company turned out to be no more wizards than, well, than Dr Pepper is a real doctor. From the Buffalo News:

Less than a month after Boston's highways and bridges were shut down during a bomb scare touched off by an advertising stunt, a new marketing scheme has led angry city officials to shut down a historic site.

A clue in a Dr Pepper promotion suggested a coin that might be worth as much as $1 million was buried in the 347-year-old Granary Burying Ground, the final resting place of John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and other historic figures.

After contestants showed up at the cemetery gates early Tuesday, the city closed it, concerned that it would be damaged by treasure hunters.

Read the rest of the story here.

I did some digging (ha!) and found out that, astonishingly, this wasn't even the worst marketing gimmick the Dr Pepper people came up with. I present to you...

Ten Rejected Dr Pepper Marketing Gimmicks

10. Mysterious packages are left unattended at airports all over the U.S. If you find one of the packages and bring it on a plane, it will automatically open at 20,000 feet, revealing twelve glass bottles of Dr Pepper and a solid gold bottle opener shaped like a hand grenade.

9. Win a million dollars by finding the Diet Dr Pepper can buried under a mountain of ten thousand dead lab rats.

8. The "Forrest Gump" promotion: Get a picture taken of you drinking Dr Pepper within ten feet of the President and win ten thousand dollars!

7. One of the paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has been replaced by a fake hiding a hundred one thousand dollar bills. The false veneer can only be dissolved by a spraying it with a fine mist of Dr Pepper.

6. The "Movie Lover" promotion: 10 Dr Pepper cans in the U.S. are filled with highly corrosive acetic acid used for developing film, instead of Dr Pepper. Find one and win a trip to the Cannes Film Festival!

5. T.V. Commercial: A man lies on his death bed, unconscious. Close-up of a doctor's hands hooking up an IV, as a voice says, "There's only one thing we can do for him now." Zoom out: We see that the IV tube is connected to a can of Dr Pepper. Cut to a concerned nurse who says, "Are you sure that will cure him, doctor?" Cut to the doctor: "Cure him? I just figured if he's going to be a vegetable, he might as well be a Pepper!"

4. Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper -- now with a hint of nutmeg!

3. Free Dr Pepper for life for all type II diabetes sufferers.

2. A new beverage specifically designed to make people crave Dr Pepper: Dr Salt!

1. Picture this: Race car driver Jeff Gordon is at a gas station, refueling his car. Next to him is his 5 year old son. "Now for the secret ingredient," Gordon says to his son, with the air of someone imparting fatherly wisdom. He opens a can of Dr Pepper and pours it into the gas tank. When he's finished, he says, "And that's the secret of great performance, son." Gordon looks around, but his son is nowhere to be found. Finally Jeff sees him: His son is guzzling gasoline directly from the pump! They share a good laugh.


In doing research for this post, I came across this. I'd thank the person who put this together, but I'm guessing he's dead.


Speaking of stupid marketing gimmicks, have you heard of humor-blogs.com?

Inappropriate Card Day Recap / Oscar Cap

I'm over at the Snark again today, recapping the Oscars.

Thanks to everybody who participated in Inappropriate Card Day! It was the best one ever.

I got highly inappropriate cards from Angela, Chrissy, Robin, Lizza, Awaiting, Neva and G (I'm being pretty generous in my definition of "card").

Special thanks also to Logophile, Central Snark, TubaPants, Tan Lucy Pez, Jennifer and Arlene for doing their part to spread the good cheer/best wishes/condolences/whatever.

Here's the card my wife gave me:



...and the one I gave her:



Thanks for participating, everybody! I'll be back tomorrow with a post about the marketing geniuses at the Dr. Pepper company.

Happy Inappropriate Card Day!

Well, it's finally here. I hope you're spreading the love with someone you hate, or spreading the hate with someone you love.







While I was working on this post, I got an e-card from G! Lookit:



Ain't that sweet?

And if you don't know WTF this is all about, read the story of Inappropriate Card Day here!

Gotta go spread some cheer or whatever. Catch you later.


Humor-Blogs.com is always inappropriate!

Funniest Blog Post Contest Update

A couple of clarifications to my Funniest Blog Post Contest:

Remember, you have to submit a post, not a blog. For example, "mattresspolice.com/2007/02/brilliant-james-blunts-songwriting.htm" or just "Hey, Diesel, go to mattresspolice.com and find the James Blunt post." (Just an example; my posts are ineligible....) Why posts and not entire blogs? Because I think it's a lot easier to rank the relative funniness of blog posts than entire blogs. And one really funny post is a good indication of the author's ability.

Also, to be eligible the blog must have a link to humor blogs.com somewhere on the site. You can see a list of qualifying blogs at humor blogs.com (any of the sites listed on the right are eligible). If you find a funny blog that's not listed, tell the author to get with the program and add a link to humor blogs.com. Once they do, they'll be eligible. It's like magic.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One more very important announcement: Inappropriate Card Day is TOMORROW! Dig out those inappropriate cards today!


Mattress Tags: humor

There Can Be Only Four (Funniest Blog Post Contest)

You probably know by now that I run a little black ops project called humor-blogs.com. One of the goals of humor-blogs.com is to give some recognition to lesser known but very funny blogs. The problem with most blog directories -- even the ones that have some kind of voting mechanism -- is that they are biased toward sites that already get a lot of traffic. I'm working on a way to more objectively rank blogs, but until that's done, I thought I'd enlist your help in determining which are your favorite funny blogs.



To that end, I'm running a Funniest Blog Post Contest. The rules are as follows:

1. Submit your nominations for funniest post for the month of February 2007 to me, either by posting a comment here or sending me an email (diesel -at- mattresspolice dot com). You must include the url to a specific POST, not just the blog url. (If you don't know from urls, just send me the title of the post and maybe the date).

2. The post must be dated some time during February 2007.

3. All nominations must be received by midnight Pacific time on Thursday, March 1.

4. To be eligible, the blog must have a link to humor-blogs.com.

5. You may nominate as many posts as you like, from the same blog or different blogs. And yes, you may nominate your own post(s).

6. Posts must be original. Duh.

7. With the help of some disinterested (though not uninterested) individuals, I will whittle the nominations down to a manageable number, probably around 10. I reserve the right to disqualify any blatantly offensive posts (sorry, Fab).

8. On Saturday, March 3, I will post a poll in which people can vote for their pick for funniest post. The polls will close at midnight on Thursday, March 8.

9. My posts are disqualified. I know, so sad.

10. I will announce the top four vote-getters here on Saturday, March 10.

THE PRIZE

• The top 4 will be recognized here and on the humor-blogs.com home page.
• The top 4 will be added to the "Featured Blogs" rotation on the humor-blogs.com home page and the Featured Blogs widget that is displayed on an ever-increasing number of sites (including this one).
• The top 4 will be invited to have their posts included in the feed that appears on the humor-blogs.com home page. If any of the winners are already in the feed, I will work my way down the list of top vote-getters to get four new bloggers for the feed.

So what are you waiting for, a personal invitation from Adrian Paul? Submit your favorite posts today!

Blogger Code of Blah Blah Blah

I recently ran across something called a "Blogger Code of Ethics" on the web somewhere. What a great idea! It's about time somebody got us unruly bloggers in line. I agree with this Code 100%. Or maybe 74.3%. Still, I mostly agree with it. I've republished it below with a few comments of my own.

1. I will tell the truth. Man, wouldn't it be great if all bloggers told the truth? I strive to include some truth in almost every one of my posts. Lies are important too, of course.
   
2. I will write deliberately and with accuracy. Or hire a lot of monkeys.
   


3. I will acknowledge and correct mistakes promptly. I always do this. I think. I'll have to come back to this one.
   
4. I will preserve the original post, using notations to show where I have made changes so as to maintain the integrity of my publishing. This one is crap.
   
5. I will never delete a post. Even if the original writer of this post tells me to. I have my principles, after all.
   
6. I will not delete comments unless they are spam or off-topic. Somewhere, Joe comment-deleter is squirming.
   
7. I will reply to emails and comments when appropriate, and do so promptly. My responses may, however, be highly in appropriate.
   
8. I will strive for high quality with every post – including basic spellchecking. I wonder what basic spell-checking is. Does my post qualify as "high-quality" if I only mispell hard-to-spell words?
   
9. I will stay on topic. I have no problem with this one. But then, I'm an easy-going sort. I credit my 4th grade teacher for instilling me with those values. Of course, she also made me pay $12 for my share of a window that a classmate of mine broke. She said we weren't allowed to "play tag" behind the school. I wasn't playing tag, ok? And I wasn't the idiot who threw the rock. What was his name again? Damn, I'm blanking.
   
10. I will disagree with other opinions respectfully. This one's crap too.
    
11. I will link to online references and original source materials directly. That reminds me, I should give some credit to the author of this code of ethics. Just google "Blogger Code of Ethics." You'll find it eventually.
    
12. I will disclose conflicts of interest. This one's a must, especially if you expect to get picked up by a popular aggregator site like humor-blogs.com.
    
13. I will keep private issues and topics private, since discussing private issues would jeopardize my personal and work relationships. Greg Johnson! That was his name. If you're reading this, Greg, you owe me $12.
    

Humor-blogs.com abides by a code of ethics so strict that it makes Richard Nixon look like Spiro Agnew.

Imagine My Surprise

I've always been a shy, introspective sort. I had a hard time making friends as a kid, so I resorted to devising imaginary friends. Fortunately, I was quite imaginative and was able to construct entirely believable fictional characters with whom to while away recesses.

My best friend was Toby. Toby was everything you might want in a friend: generous, helpful, and just a fun guy to be around in general. He was athletic but he didn't rub your face in it, and he was a good student but not a brown noser. He was smart enough to stay out of trouble but mischievous enough to engage in the occasional prank. He was, as far as I could imagine, the best possible friend.

Things were going well with me and Toby. Too well, in fact.

As I mentioned, I was an introspective and creative child. I was the kind of kid who could never just let things be. I drove my teachers insane with my incessant questions. I was always asking "why?"

It was not surprising, then, that I soon started to wonder why Toby was hanging around with me. Surely a kid like Toby had his pick of friends. Why me? I was unathletic, shy, unpopular and frankly a little odd. What did Toby see in me?

Soon flaws began to appear in Toby's character. I came to suspect that he spent time with me primarily out of some sense of obligation. This became clear to me over dinner one night at Toby's house. Toby's family was very wealthy, occupying a vast hidden mansion in the woods behind my family's modest ranch house. I often went over there for dinner, because his mom made fantastic lasagna and they had a trampoline.

Toby's dad was a minister and was always talking about helping "the less fortunate." He let something slip that night that about how proud he was of Toby for "doing his part." He quickly changed the subject, but it was clear that he was talking about me. I was "the less fortunate." Not because I was poor or handicapped or something, but because I was me.

After that, things were different between me and Toby. The spell had been broken. Toby started hanging out with the more popular kids. He played basketball with them during recess. He would always ask me if I wanted to play, but he knew I would say no. I'd rather be alone than embarrass myself on the basketball court.

Then Toby got a girlfriend. Her name was Angela, and she was the most popular girl in school. They were too young to date, per se, but they spent as much time they could together. Toby was alway mysteriously "out" when I called. Eventually I stopped calling.

Toby got Angela pregnant during freshman year of high school. They moved to Alaska, where Toby's uncle got him a job gutting fish. I heard that Angela divorced him eight months after the baby was born. She and their daughter moved in with her parents in Michigan.

Toby called me three weeks ago. He said he was in Sacramento, and asked if I wanted to meet him. I drove up there and met him at Denny's. He had a beer gut and was losing his hair. He said he was working odd jobs, trying to get up enough money to start a landscaping business, but it was hard because his rent was so high. It turned out he had been living at a Motel 6 for three months.

I told him I had a finished room in my barn he could stay in if he wanted to. I had been thinking of putting in a bathroom, and asked if he wanted to help out with the project in exchange for room and board. He protested that he couldn't possibly impose on me, but not very convincingly. We swung by the motel, picked up his meager belongings, and headed back to Ripon.

Toby lives in my barn. He's a loser now, like me.



At least you'll never be lonely at humor-blogs.com.

Help Me Out Here

Once again, I'm over at the Snark, bitching about Hollywood girlie-men.

While you're here though, can I ask you a favor? You may have noticed I've made some changes to this site. One of these is a new section over there to the right that reads "Be a Helpful Citizen." What does this mean?

Well, when you click one of those little graphics, it helps this site climb the rankings in that blog directory. A higher rank means more people can find my blog, which increases the odds that I'll keep writing stuff like this and this for a while. That would be a good thing, right?

Most of the sites will log one click/vote per user per day. So if every one of you clicked on one of those links every time you visited this site... we could probably crash my server. I'm willing to risk it.

Thanks!

I'll be back tomorrow with a post about my imaginary friend, Toby.

World's Worst Dictator

Recently my wife was reading an article in Parade about the world's worst dictators. (Yes, this is the second post over the past week prompted by Parade magazine. I'm also reading a 700 page book about artificial intelligence, ok? It's called being a Renaissance man. Look into it.)

Like many people, I rely on Parade to provide me with some geopolitical perspective, not to mention hearty halftime meals for my Super Bowl party. (Actually, I rely on my wife for both of those things, but she in turn relies on Parade. And just because I couldn't tell you who played in the Super Bowl to save my life doesn't mean I don't need a hearty halftime meal, so get off my back.)

Anyway, it turns out that the world's worst dictator is some dude named Omar al-Bashir. He runs a little country club and spa called Sudan. You may have heard something about it in between Anna Nicole Smith's breasts. Er, in between stories about Anna Nicole Smith. And her breasts. Her non-biodegradable breasts.

------------------------------------------------
Interlude: 3007 A.D.

Archaeologists are excavating Anna Nicole Smith's grave.

Archaeologist 1: "Hey, I found something."
Archaeologist 2: "What is it?"
Archaeologist 1: "Guess."
------------------------------------------------

So this guy, this "Worst Dictator in the World," has killed at least 180,000 civilians in Darfur and driven 2 million people from their homes. My question is, what exactly are they looking for in a dictator? I mean, this guy's no Hitler, but who is? Except Stalin, I mean. Stalin was pretty much Hitler.

But those two guys really skew the curve for the rest of the dictators. I think that you'd have to say, all things considered, that this Omar al-Bashir character is a pretty good dictator. I can see how he'd lose some points for limiting himself to sub-Saharan Africa, but you play the cards you're dealt. Give him some time.

You know who's a lousy dictator? Al Gore. First of all, he's kind of whiny and non-threatening. Second, he doesn't really run anything. Third, he keeps trying to "build consensus" and win people over with "appeals to reason." Let me tell you, Earth in the Balance is no Mein Kampf. And Davis Guggenheim is no Leni Riefenstahl. And, uh, Tipper is no Eva Braun. That's what I've heard, anyway. You know how guys talk.

Al Gore missed a key opportunity when he claimed to have invented the Internet. He should have claimed to have invented the Spanish Inquisition. Or something even worse, like syphillis. Tell me you'd risk crossing the guy who's in charge of syphillis.

"Dude, you look terrible! What happened to you?"

"Oh, man. I voted against Kyoto and Al Gore gave me syphillis."

And now he's gone and gotten himself nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. I know, I know, Yasser Arafat got the Nobel Peace Prize and he was a murderous terrorist bastard. But still, there's a cachet of pacificism that goes with getting the Nobel Peace Prize. It's unfair, especially since Al Gore doesn't deserve all the credit for preventing the Great Global Warming War. I mean, shouldn't some of the credit go to the millions of individuals on both sides who aren't fighting? There's no way that Al Gore could have singlehandedly prevented the war if all those people refused to work within the political process to find a solution.

Ah, but history doesn't want to hear about the faceless men and women who are ignorant of the conflict they could be participating in. Besides, the faceless are notoriously poor combatants. History remembers the Great Men with Faces, like Al Gore and what's his face in the Sudan.

Oops, gotta go. Anna Nicole's boobs are on!


You will submit to the iron fist of humor-blogs.com.

Mattress Tags: Sudan Al Gore Anna Nicole Smith

Blogger Layouts Question

Ok, so I'm stumped. You may have noticed I've been messing with my template a lot lately. I'm kind of old school when it comes to this stuff, so I don't mind mucking around in the html/css to get the page to look the way I want it to. I tend to stay away from all the fancy "widgets" and whatnot. At least, that's my excuse for why, as a guy who's been doing web development for 8 years, I can't figure out how to implement the new Blogger "layout" functionality.

You're supposed to be able to convert from the old template to the nifty new "layouts." It says so right here. Except I can't, because the part that is supposed to say "Customize Design" says "AdSense." Which, call me crazy, sounds like something entirely different to me.

I thought that maybe it couldn't convert from my crazy ass homemade template, so I replaced it with one of the standard templates for one of my blogs, and it still doesn't give me the option.

Has anybody else had this problem? WTF?

Saturday Dispatch: Medium Security Prison

There is one place you do not want to end up, and that is a medium security prison. From what I've heard, minimum security prisons are pretty posh, and you can potentially meet some pretty important people, like Michael Milken or Martha Stewart. Maximum security prisons at least carry a certain bad boy cachet. But nobody wants to read a book by someone who crashed a stolen minivan and ended up doing six years at Podunk Medium Security Facility. Medium security prisons are for people who either aren't very motivated or don't have enough of a life to bother escaping. I think we can dispense with the barbed wire. No way these guys are going to scale a ten foot wall.

Today's Dispatch: If you're considering a career in crime and you're not smart enough to go white-collar, make sure you swing for the fences.


This one's a real problem case. Lock 'em up in humor-blogs.com and throw away the key.

The Final Frontier for Wikipedia

In a bid to gain an edge in respectability over its stodgier rivals, Wikipedia today announced that it would be publishing a print edition of its online knowledgebase.

"We're elated to be able announce our plans to develop a hard copy Wikipedia," said Karen C. Nautkaaren of the non-profit Wikipedia Foundation.

The main obstacle to producing a print version of Wikipedia is its sheer volume. Wikipedia contains roughly twenty-eight times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica. The foundation plans to release it in 600 volumes, one per month over the next ten years. During that time, Wikipedia is expected to grow by roughly 700% and much of the existing information will become out of date.

The foundation announced an innovative plan for dealing with these problems. "We will release a revised edition of Wikipedia every three years," said Nautkaaren. "The second edition will overlap the first edition. When the first edition is nearly two thirds complete, we will release a third edition. The first volume of the fourth edition will become available two years after the last volume of the first edition is complete. Each edition will take roughly 50% longer than the previous edition to produce so, for example, we will begin 17 new editions while the fifth edition is still in production. I think. Anyway, make no mistake, this is a monumental undertaking."

Several frequent contributors to the user-created and maintained encyclopedia expressed a strong desire that Wikipedia retain its collaborative nature in the hard copy version. Todd Simmons, a 38 year old web developer in Pleasanton, California, summed up the feeling among the Wikipedia editor community.

"The other day I ran across an entry in Wikipedia that said that Blizzard had banned the Logitch G15 keyboard in Warcraft, when in fact all they did was ban a player who was clearly botting. He wasn't even using the G15. He was using the G11." Simmons shook his head. "Fortunately, I was able to correct the error. Imagine if that kind of misinformation were printed in thousands of copies of the article all over the world."

Wikipedia spokespersons said they would be taking corrections by mail and would be faxing daily corrections and updates to all subscribers for no additional charge.

Because of the uneven distribution of the expertise of its editor base, the Wikipedia hard copy edition will be broken down by subject area rather than organized alphabetically, like a typical encyclopedia.

"The organic nature of Wikipedia requires a unique organization system," Nautkaaren said.

So far, twelve volumes have been planned:

January 2008: Star Trek: Acamarians to Ferengi
February 2008: World History through the French Revolution
March 2008: Windows vs. Unix
April 2008: Quantum Physics
May 2008: Arts and Literature (non Sci-Fi)
June 2008: Star Wars: Alderaan to Calrissian
July 2008: Geek Humor
August 2008: Star Trek: Guls to Romulan Neutral Zone
September 2008: Britney Spears
October 2008: Eastern Philosophy, Kung Fu and The Matrix
November 2008: Video Games: Tips and Strategies
December 2008: Futurama



This post was found buried amongst countless tomes in the vast underground library of humor-blogs.com.

Mattress Tags: wikipedia Star Trek

Only 12 Shopping Days Until Inappropriate Card Day!

I'm a hopeless romantic.

I'm also hopeless as a gymnast and harpsichord player, if you must know.

I met my future wife at a college basketball game in January of 1992. I was playing center, and she was the captain of the cheerleading team. That's a ridiculous lie. I'm also hopeless as a basketball player. And while my future wife certainly had has the looks of a cheerleader, she's about as coordinated as... well, as I am.

We were both ushers. We worked the front door together. We bonded by reciting dialog from the Saturday Night Live 15th anniversary special, which we'd both seen far too many times. As things wrapped up, I asked her what she was doing after the game.* "Going home," she replied tersely. Ah, young love.

Fortunately (for me, at least), I persisted, stopping by her dorm room repeatedly over the next few days. She was friendly but a little cold. Her story is that I made her "nervous." Nerves don't explain the pepper spray though, do they? No, they do not.

Our first date was the week before Valentine's Day. This put me in an awkward position. I had been trying to ingratiate myself with this girl for a couple weeks now, and I wasn't entirely sure that she wasn't just humoring me. I wanted to do something for Valentine's Day that indicated I liked her without scaring her off.

I honestly don't remember what I ended up doing. I may have just called her, or gotten her some lame-ass card. But I remember feeling cheated by circumstances. I was in love with this girl, and I felt constrained not to demonstrate it on the one day that I should have been able to go crazy. Not that I'm a big fan of Valentine's Day; as a rule I don't like having my behavior dictated by the Hallmark corporation. But I would have made an exception for her, if I didn't think that I'd have scared the bejesus out of her.

My solution was to say, essentially, "Screw Valentine's Day. Screw Hallmark. And screw American Greetings too, while we're at it." I made up my own holiday.

On February 26, I slipped a card under my future wife's door. It was a "Happy Birthday Grandson" card. I wrote "Happy Inappropriate Card Day!" on the inside. And a new tradition was born.

Every year, my wife and I exchange inappropriate cards. One year she got me a sympathy card. One year it was a little kid's birthday card, with Bambi on the front. The caption was, "Kinda wobbly, aren't you?" I think last year I got her a card that said "Happy Father's Day from both of us." My best effort was the time I stopped at a gas station on the way home from work and got her a postcard with the windmills from Altamont Pass on it. "Wish you were here," I wrote.

You can give an inappropriate card to anyone. There are no rules. Well, except for the fact that the card has to be completely inappropriate -- and not risque inappropriate; that's too easy. It has to be a card that would be perfectly appropriate for someone other than the recipient, preferably on a completely different day.

Last year I told some people at work about my holiday, and they thought it was fantastic. So I decided that this year I would release it into the wild, and see if it takes to its new habitat. This year, celebrate Inappropriate Card Day with someone you love.

Inappropriate Card Day is February 26. Start rummaging through your reject card pile today!


*We won, as a recall. Calvin went on to win the Division 3 championship that year. I like to think I had something to do with that.

Shamelessly whored out to humor-blogs.com.

Mattress Tags: Inappropriate Card Day

I'm Not Here...

...because I only post on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays now. Oh, and a short Dispatch on Saturday. Didn't you get the memo?

I'm over at the Snark, making startling revelations about presidential movies with homoerotic undertones, just in time for Valentine's/Presidents' Day!

I would also suggest you read my excerpts from James Blunt's songwriting journal below. It's rare that you get an opportunity to take a glimpse inside the mind of such a genius.

Brilliant! (James Blunt's Songwriting Journal)

"I wrote 'You're Beautiful' in two and a half minutes, after seeing an ex-girlfriend.'"

- James Blunt

Blunt said on VH1's The Vspot that he wrote this song about seeing his ex-girlfriend with a new man in the London underground. He says that they shared a lifetime in the brief eye contact.

-----------------------------------------------

EXCERPT FROM JAMES BLUNT'S SONGWRITING JOURNAL: Tuesday, January 18, 2005

2:37:30 PM

Train should be here in about 150 seconds. Maybe enough time to write a song???

2:37:36 PM

Possible song topics: Trains. Unemployment. Sodding London weather. Come on man, think!

2:37:42 PM

Isn't that Stacy?

2:37:48 PM

That IS Stacy! Who the f---- is she with???!!!

2:37:55 PM

Stacy be lookin FINE.

2:38:04 PM

Where was I? ... Trains, right. Maybe something about a little engine trying to get up a hill?

2:38:09 PM

Lucky bastard. What was it Mum said when Stacy broke up with me? "God's will." Well I hope the sodding angels are happy. Bollocks.

2:38:17 PM

Feeling very sad.

2:38:21 PM

VERY sad.

2:38:29 PM

Maybe write a song about how sad I feel. Free association time! Sad, sad, sad.... Think of something very sad. Clowns with frowny faces are sad. Sad clown. Clown crying. TEARS OF A CLOWN!

2:38:41 PM

F---.

2:38:50 PM

She looked at me! HI Stacy!!!! GOD I'M SO HAPPY.

2:38:58 PM

Don't think she recognized me. SO SAD. This is the saddest anybody has ever been.

2:39:06 PM

Sadder than Bruce Banner walking away at the end of The Incredible Hulk.

2:39:14 PM

Damn, now I have that song in my head. Bah-bada-Bah. Bah-bada-Bah BAH.

2:39:22 PM

LOL. Should write lyrics about Stacy and that sodding bastard set to Incredible Hulk theme. F---, that's brilliant!

2:39:31 PM

Train's coming! Write something. ANYTHING!

My life is brilliant.
My love is pure.
I saw an angel
Of that I'm sure
She smiled at me on the subway.
She was with another man.
But I won't lose any sleep on that
Cause I got a plan

You're beautiful; you're beautiful:
You're beautiful; it's true
I saw your face in a crowded place
And I don't know what to do
Cause I will never be with you

Yeah, she caught my eye
As I walked on by
She could see from my face that I was
Flying high
And I don't think that I'll see her again
But we shared a moment that will last till the end

You're beautiful; you're beautiful:
You're beautiful; it's true
I saw your face in a crowded place
And I don't know what to do
Cause I will never be with you

la la la la
la la la la
la la la la la

You're beautiful; you're beautiful
You're beautiful; it's true
There must be an angel with a smile on her face
When she thought up that I should be with you
But it is time to face the truth
I will never be with you

2:40:00 PM

Train's here!



Mattress Tags: James Blunt Bollocks

Syndicated on the humor juggernaut humor-blogs.com

So Here's the Deal

I have a confession to make. I don't actually write this blog. I mean, I type it, but I don't really write it. I just write what the Voice tells me to write. Shhhhh! Do you hear that? That fizzing sound. If you listen closely, you can hear the Voice. That, my friends, is the voice of wisdom, wit and erudition. It is, in fact, the voice of Dr. Pepper.

Yes, this blog is dictated to me by the effervescent utterances of the Scholar of Soda, the Professor of Pop, the TA of Tonic, Dr. Pepper, PhD. I owe my entire readership to the Doctor, and some time maybe you can all come over and split a six pack with me.

Unfortunately, the Doctor and I are having a disagreement of late. The Doctor's specialties, you may know, are tooth decay, obesity and type 2 diabetes. I've decided to pursue another line of study. I hope to answer the age-old question "Can man get to the age of 40 without buying any pants with an elastic waistband?"

All of this to say that I need to cut down on inspiration a bit. Which means that I need to cut down on posting. There's no way around it; No Pepper, no post. And you do NOT want to see the kind of whacked out sh*t I post on Diet Dr. Pepper. So don't even bother to suggest that crap.

So here's what I'm going to do: I will post an entry on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Saturdays, I will post the Saturday Dispatch -- A very brief post of the type that I used to post to the now defunct Mattress Police Dispatches blog. I will, of course, continue to update Central Booking as I work my way through the reading list, and I will continue to update Deep Cover every second Tuesday of any month that has an 'e' in it. Got it? Cool.

In other news, I finally wrote up my thoughts regarding The Kite Runner, an excellent novel suggested by Ann from At Home with Ann. Check it out, as well as my assessments of Fast Food Nation, Eragon, and more at Central Booking. As you can see, I'm currently reading Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstader suggested by Wolfe from Wolfe's Musings.

I'd also like to say thanks to everybody who has joined the humor-blogs dot com juggernaut. I'm extremely excited about the momentum that this little project is generating, and I've got a lot of cool stuff planned for the future. New participants include SinisterDan from The Reasonable Ego (who seems to share my philosophical bent, although he's bent in a slightly different direction), A Tyke's Progress and A Goddess In The Land Of Pink.

If you have a funny blog that you'd like listed, please let me know by posting a comment here or sending me an email. I've had to turn down a few blogs (even some that I really like and that contain a lot of humor) simply because they don't strictly qualify as "humor blogs." I don't really care if your thing is toilet humor or acerbic political satire, but your blog needs to be primarily devoted to (at least trying to) make people laugh in order to qualify. Them's the rules.

See you Monday with a brand spanking new post on the genius of James Blunt.

Diesel out.

The Straight, the Narrow and the Raunchy

He wore a checkered blazer. Not exactly gaudy, but not exactly stylish. His hair was gelled but slightly mussed. Overall, he gave the impression of a man who cared about his appearance but not enough to shower regularly. If this weren't 1993, I might have thought he was an aspiring metrosexual. If this weren't Grand Rapids, Michigan, I might have thought he was French.

I did not, of course, assume that he was gay. In the early 90s political correctness ruled the day, and I had been taught that a slight build, an effeminate manner, odd clothing and a pronounced lisp did not constitute adequate evidence that one was homosexual. In fact, the rule at that time was that unless you actually saw someone performing a sexual act with another person of the same gender, you were to make no assumptions regarding their sexual orientation. And even then, you were really supposed to keep an open mind. And you certainly weren't allowed to assume that such an individual was some kind of sexual predator simply because he was a little oily and was wandering through a working class residential neighborhood for no apparent reason. I really had no basis to make any judgments about him whatsoever, as our relationship was limited to that of driver and passenger.

I was the driver, in case you're wondering. I had been putting up posters around town for some event or other; I don't remember what it was but I remember they paid me $7 an hour to drive around putting up signs. I had just tacked a poster to a telephone pole and was walking back to my car when he approached.

"Excuse me," he said, overpronouncing the s to an almost comical degree. "Could you give me a ride?"

I told him I was working, and didn't really have time.

He persisted. "Please," he pleaded. Again with the s. Think Jack from Will & Grace mixed with Truman Capote. Come to think of it, it might be better if you didn't.

"Please. I live just down the street."

"I really need to get back to work."

"It will just take a minute. It's not far at all. Please."

Finally I relented.

"Ok, where is it?"

"Just down the street," he said, getting into my 2 seater 300ZX.

While I drove he thanked me profusely, remarking about how glad he was that he didn't have to walk through this "raunchy" neighborhood. That's the word he used.

"It's just so raunchy," he said again. "Don't you think so? Isn't it raunchy?"

"Yeah, it's pretty bad," I said. "Now where did you say your place was?"

"It's just up here," he said. Then he talked some more about how "raunchy" the neighborhood was. He asked me again whether I too thought it was raunchy.

I became dimly aware that his desire for me to use the word raunchy went beyond the need for me to confirm his assessment of urban blight. It was as if he was prompting me for a password, like in spy movies where one spy asks, "How's the weather in Liechtenstein?" and the other spy says, "Dry, except on Tuesdays." All I had to do was offer him that word, that shibboleth, and a whole new world would open up to me.

I decided that no matter what happened over the next few minutes, I absolutely would not under any circumstances utter that word. I considered having it surgically removed from my vocabulary.

Eventually he changed the subject.

"So, where do you live?"

"In an apartment, a couple of miles from here. With my wife."

I had raised the ante, countering his ambiguous raunchiness with a firm claim to heterosexuality. By the way, if you are a straight male in a situation where your sexual orientation is in doubt, I highly recommend tacking "with my wife" to the end of your sentences. Try it sometime. You can say the most outrageously effeminate things, and as long as you follow it up with that code phrase, no one will think you are gay. For example, someone might ask you if you have any big plans over the long weekend, and you might respond, "Oh, I'm probably just going to stay inside and make taffeta dresses for my teddy bears. With my wife." I'm telling you, it's like magic.

My passenger changed tacts again. Back to plan A. "I'm just so glad you picked me up. I just hate walking in that neighborhood. It's really raunchy, don't you think?"

"Ok, I'm going to drop you off here."

"Oh, it's just up up ahead." I was learning that it was always "just up ahead," like an oasis on the horizon.

"Yeah, but I'm going to drop you off here."

"Ok."

I pulled over.

He thanked me profusely again, noting once more how raunchy the neighborhood was.

I muttered something roughly equivalent to "You're welcome."

Then he did something that marked a quantum leap beyond innuendo, rendering both his orientation and his intentions unmistakably transparent. In fact, he did two things.

The first thing was to reach over with his left hand toward an area of my anatomy that I have reserved for use by people lacking adam's apples and medical professionals who for whatever reason want to hear me cough. He grabbed me in a way that clearly indicated a lack of medical training.

The second thing he did was to use the word raunchy again, but in an entirely different sense. He said, in a tone that indicated that we had finally reached the point in our relationship where I could be trusted with this information:

"Only, you're so raunchy too!"

There are times when rational thought gives way completely to instinct. I don't recall making a decision regarding what I did next. I just did it, without thinking. In fact, I did two things.

The first thing was to reach over as quickly and decisively as he had, my hand falling toward a precisely determined location. I squeezed and pulled. Then pushed. The passenger door flew open.

The second thing I did was to use the word f____, but not in the sense he would have liked. I said, with the firm conviction that our relationship had progressed to the point that I could trust him to understand what I meant:

"Get the f___ out!"

He did. In fact, he got out and began running. This latter may have had something to do with a little blue sports car pursuing him down the sidewalk.

I wouldn't really have run him over, of course. But it felt good to give him a scare. I was so angry that I was actually trembling. I remained angry for a while.

That was 14 years ago now, and I haven't been angry for some time. I think about that guy once in a while. I wonder if he's dead from AIDS or a drug overdose. Or just plain suicide. In retrospect, I think he may have been an aspiring male prostitute. How sad does your life have to be that you aspire to be John Voight in Midnight Cowboy -- and fail?

What turned this guy into such a wretch? The simple-minded would say that he started down a path that led inevitably to depravity. The politically correct would tell you that his homosexuality was completely independent of his depravity. They might even tell you that he wasn't gay; just desperate.

The truth, I think, is somewhere in the middle, as it usually is. Something twisted this young man, made him into something he was never supposed to be. I don't know where he is now, but the path he was on didn't lead anywhere nice.

The last time I saw him, he was running for his life, abandoning the sidewalk for a grassy embankment. I suppose he got back on the path after I drove away.


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Creature Comforts

So if you've been around here a while you know about my odd children and their propensity for taping informational signs to objects around our house. Since I've got nothing else to post right now, I thought I'd treat you to another example.

This one requires a bit of explanation. I tend to sit for long periods of time at our kitchen table, on a hard wooden chair. Since I don't have a lot of, er, natural padding, I usually put some kind of pillow on the chair. We have a stuffed cheetah that works nicely. Yes, I sit on a stuffed cheetah. Stay with me.

Recently it was "pajama day" at my kids' school, which meant... well, hopefully I don't have to explain that part. In addition to wearing their pajamas, the kids were allowed to bring a stuffed animal to school. My 7 year old son chose to take the cheetah pillow. Thoughtfully, he replaced it with another pillow, evidently named "Wampy" (pronounced "wompy"). I can only assume it was named for its wamping properties.

I found the following sign taped to my chair:



A close-up of the sign. (Sorry, it's a little fuzzy.)



In case you can't read it, it says:

"I'm going to bring cheeta to sckool for pj day. So I will replase it with wampy."

Ain't that sweet?

Snark, Snark, Snark, That's All I Ever Hear

It's Tuesday, so I'm over at Central Snark again, bitching about why I didn't like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, among other things.

I'll be back with a real post tonight. Promise.