Grumpy Book Reviews

Okay, I think I've fixed most of the template and commenting issues. If you're still experiencing any weirdness (above the ordinary levels), send me an email at diesel -at- mattresspolice.com

The launch of this new look coincides with the end of an era. A rather short, relatively insignificant era, but still, it's the end of it. I'm going back to work.

Yes, my retirement was fun while it lasted, but you know what would be even more fun? Being able to pay for all the materials I'm going to need to finish my house. Also, not getting foreclosed on.

So I'm going back to work -- nothing too serious or permanent, but I'm going to be doing some contract work. (And yes, the company that I'm going to be subcontracting for is that rather large, well known, oddly named company that owns a certain blogging platform and, I think, French Polynesia. Hint: It starts with a 'G'.)

Hopefully this won't impact my posting schedule, but my posts may be a little less ambitious for a while. Take, for example, this post.

Back in the heady early days of my retirement, I challenged my readers to suggest books for me to read. Based on these suggestions, I put together a reading list and have been working my way through it. I'm not going to make it through all of them by the deadline (which I believe was the end of November), but I've made some solid progress. I'm going to keep working my way through the list over the coming months.

For your reading pleasure and erudition, here are some highlights from the reviews I've written over the past year. The complete review blog is here, if you want to read more.

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

Eragon by Christopher Paolini

...The prose is hackneyed and tiresome. Paolini seems unaware that phrases like "for what seemed like hours" are both cliched and unhelpful for communicating anything to the reader. At one point a character speaks "in a language known only to him," which probably sounds ominous to a middle-schooler, but only made me laugh. His parents must be kicking themselves for paying for those lessons.
...

So far my favorite line in the book is "I fear that we will all wake up one morning with our throats slashed." Man, do I wish I knew whether the author was joking when he wrote that.
...

The main thing holding my interest at this point is the emerging sexual subtext:

"And I have outlived my youth; I'm not as strong as I used to be. Every time I reach for magic, it gets a little harder."
Eragon dropped his eyes, abashed. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," said Brom as he shifted his arm. "It happens to everyone."

...

The good news is that around page 300 the author finally breaks free from George Lucas' Jedi death grip and starts to tell a semi-interesting story. Paolini had the good sense to borrow the elements of his climax equally from Tolkien, Star Wars and the last of the Matrix movies, so that while originality remains beyond him, at least the narrative no longer felt like it was going to collapse from the weight of its own redundancy. Eragon remained utterly predictable throughout, of course. About 5 pages into meeting a particular character I turned to my 12 year old nephew (Everybody's 12 year old nephew has read Eragon) and said, "_____ is Eragon's brother, isn't he?" My nephew, who has read the sequel as well (in which this "secret" is evidently revealed), replied, "Yeah." Shocker!

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

Fast Food Nation is a well written, fascinating, and well-researched book.... Schlosser has a very engaging prose style. However, his goal seems to be to shock people into rethinking their affinity for fast food, and in that, he failed, at least in my case.

First of all, I'm a heartless conservative bastard, so his anecdotes about low-paying non-union meatpacking jobs and teenagers slaving away for minimum wage at stultifying, unskilled jobs have no effect on me. Does it bother me that unions can't seem to get any traction at fast food restaurants? Not really. Am I troubled that fast food workers get paid beans for making fries? Again, no. Ditto for the fact that McDonald's is putting traditional restaurants out of business in Germany. Good for them.
...

Yeah, yeah, the workers are illiterate and unskilled, don't speak English, and may not even be legally allowed to work in the U.S., so I should feel really bad for them. And yet... they're pouring over the border looking for meatpacking jobs. Sounds more like a problem with the Mexican economy than with the U.S. meatpacking industry.
...

To me, the only really troubling revelations in the book were regarding hamburger meat. Basically what I learned from this book is: Don't eat hamburgers from a fast food place. And for the love of all that's holy, don't eat hamburgers from a school cafeteria. And if you buy hamburger from the store, make sure you cook it really well. Because, well, there's a lot of shit in hamburger.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

You're probably at least a little familiar with the travails of Afghanistan: First the Russians invaded, which was bad enough. But when the Russians left the Taliban took over. The Taliban makes the Russians look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. After reading this book, I am hard pressed to think of a group that embodies evil more purely than the Taliban. Honestly, I don't think even the Nazis measure up. Occasionally I hear people use the term "American Taliban" to refer to the religious right in this country. People who use the term in this way are f***ing retards. Read this book. If you think Pat Robertson measures up to this level of depravity, then you should be in therapy.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

My expectations for Haroun and the Sea of Stories were pretty high -- as they would be for any author who has been both knighted and targeted for assassination for his writing. Maybe unfairly high. It's an easy read and an engaging story. I suppose it's not fair to expect anything more, although it irritates me when a book jacket is covered with hyperbole and superlatives that the book can't possibly live up to:

"In telling his tale, Rushdie borrows from sources as disparate as the conventions of the Bombay cinema; the films of Satyajit Ray; comic books and cartoons; Star Wars; and even the jingles on signboards along the highways of Kashmir... It is a performance that dazzles the eye as it erupts triumphantly out of the dark in a display of fireworks."

I mean, seriously? Fireworks? I don't know about all that other stuff, but I've seen Star Wars about a gajillion times and the only reference to it I could find was when one character utters a string of gobbledygook which includes the name "Obi." To me, that review sounds like an exercise in "How can I illustrate my cosmopolitan sensibility and broad liberal arts education?"

The Truth Machine by James Halperin

Rarely when reading a book do I have the urge to hurl it against a wall.

I'm used to reading sci-fi books that make outlandish and inaccurate predictions about the future, but I think The Truth Machine takes the cake. Supposedly the author interviewed a lot of really smart people about what was going to happen in the coming decades, which just goes to show how much smart people know.

His predictions veer wildly off track almost immediately, to the point of being humorously absurd. To give you an idea: In 2003 Al Gore is President, most people drive electric cars, oil is selling for $4 a barrel, the war in Bosnia is still going on, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not. Things get more and more absurd as the years go by.
...

The central idea of the book is the construction of a glorified lie detector, which comes into being through a series of contrivances reminiscent of the founding of Apple Computers, the creation of the Human Genome Project and the establishment of the X-Prize. Never in human history has any project been undertaken in this way, because none of it makes any freaking sense. The author manages to communicate his ignorance of corporate finance, computer programming, scientific research, and pretty much every other field he touches on.
...

The Truth Machine is a mildly interesting murder mystery drowning in giant sickening globs of technology porn.

New Rules by Bill Maher

Ironically, I don't really like humor books.* Also, I can't stand Bill Maher. I think he's an ugly, mean-spirited, whiny, self-righteous jerk.

So I will fully admit to being prejudiced against New Rules. I read about a third of this book -- enough, I would think, to have encountered something funny if there were anything funny to be found in it. I didn't laugh. Not once. I didn't even smile.

There were some parts where I was tempted to smile, like this:

No more TV gambling. First there was Celebrity Poker. Then there was Celebrity Blackjack. I saw one show that was just Cammryn Mannheim scratching lottery tickets.

Or this:



Actually, I can't find another one. I know there was something else that almost made me smile, but I just spent five minutes wading through tired jokes about Paris Hilton, tired jokes about George W. Bush, tired jokes about Pat Robertson, and copious use of the the f-word word in place of a punchline. I feel like I've wasted enough of my life on this crap.

Good job, Bill. You succeeded in publishing a book and getting fired from a TV show. Now go away.

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

In case you're wondering, right now I'm reading Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (sorry, Pavel, I substituted it for the book you suggested, because I already had a copy of this one). I'll let you know how it goes.


*You should still buy my book, though, because it's way better than most humor books. Seriously. Ask this guy, or this guy, or these ladies, or this chick, this dude, or several other of the fine folks at humor-blogs.com.

Welcome, Internet Explorer users!

If you're using Internet Explorer, you've probably had some trouble accessing my site since yesterday. Sorry about that -- I was in a hurry yesterday morning and committed the cardinal sin of not testing the new template in IE. I'm not sure why IE choked on it; the problem seems to be related to the Blogrolling script that I used to display the Adjutant Inspectors and Mattress Police Force. Of course, I used the same script in the old template with no problem. Chalk it up to a combination of Blogrolling's crappy script and IE being a temperamental little b*tch.

I'll have to find a new way to display my blogrolls, because Blogrolling is too flakey. I'll probably end up writing my own blogrolling script, because hey, I'm a web developer, so I can do that kind of stuff.

Speaking of which, I also don't really like Blogger's commenting system, so I wrote my own. So when you click on the comment link at the bottom of this post, it will take you to my custom-made commenting application. Let me know what you think. If it works out, maybe I'll release it for use by other bloggers. The comments for older posts are still there; you just have to click on the post title to view the post with the comments.

I hope you like the new template. The old one was getting on my nerves because it was too cluttered and loaded too slow. I've removed a lot of the crap and simplified the design. Also, I thought it would be funny to make myself look like a total badass because I'm a complete dork in real life. But I figured if Will Smith can go from being the Fresh Prince to Mr. Bad Boy, then surely I can make the leap as well. Pretty soon I'll be showing up in crappy adaptations of Isaac Asimov novels.



Ah, if only it were that easy to get rid of Martin Lawrence in real life.

Sorry about yesterday's post, by the way. I figured I needed a badass post to kick off the new design. Also, I figured you'd be too distracted by the template to pay much attention to what I was saying anyway.

Ok, my housekeeping is done. Meet me back here tomorrow for a real post. Oh, and leave a comment to try out the new system and let me know what you think.

Diesel out.

My name's Diesel. I'm a cop.

The first thing you should know about me is that I don't play be the rules. I never have. In fact, I'm not even sure what the rules are. I mean, I have a vague idea, enough to be certain that I don't play by them, but I have no in-depth knowledge regarding the rules.

I should add that when I say I don't play by the rules, I don't mean that my behavior never coincides with that which the rules prescribe; I mean that there is no intentional effort on my part to follow the rules -- although, of course, my lack of familiarity with the rules precludes any effort to intentionally flout them. My relationship with the rules can perhaps best be characterized as a combination of calculated disregard and apathy.

Also, although I stated that the fact that I don't follow the rules is the "first thing you should know about me," it is actually the third thing, which is why I first informed you that my name is Diesel and that I am a cop. In my defense, I provided these two facts merely as essential background information for my main point, which is that I don't play by the rules. If I had started off by telling you that I don't play by the rules without letting you know that I'm a cop, you might have gotten the idea that I was a dentist who pulls perfectly good teeth or something. And that's not my style.

I suppose I didn't really need to tell you my name, but I like people to know who they're dealing with, at least when they're dealing with me. When they're dealing with other people, it really isn't any of my business, although generally speaking, I think people should, whenever possible, let other people know who they are dealing with. It's only fair.

And I don't want you to get the idea that I'm unwilling to pull a healthy tooth, if it comes down to it. There's no reason that it would come down to that, but when you've been in this job as long as I have, you know that it's often very hard to tell what it's going to come down to, especially when you don't know who you're dealing with. Now in this case, you are dealing with me, Diesel. I've given you that much. But who am I dealing with? There's the rub.

In any case, I only mentioned the bit about the dentist because it seems like a dentist who doesn't follow the rules is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Nobody wants a dentist who doesn't follow the rules. It's not a selling point for a dentist. But for a cop... well, then it depends, doesn't it? It depends, for starters, on what the rules are exactly, and as I've mentioned, I'm not likely to be of much help there. I'd love to be able to give you chapter and verse from the rules, but frankly that's not my job. Or maybe it is. Still, I'm not going to.

Oh, sure, a cop who doesn't play by the rules gets into his share of tight spots too. The difference is that dentists can't shoot their mistakes and plant evidence on them to make it look like a mugging gone bad. Well, I imagine they could, but it's not really their area of expertise. Anyway, you get the point.

Hey, I didn't say it was fair. You may not like it, but that's the way things are.

I don't make the rules.


Listed on humor-blogs.com.

Caption Contest Winners

Well folks, he did it again. Mr. Pink T-shirt, proprietor of Crummy Church Signs and author of the runaway bestseller Crummy Church Signs Volume 1, won the caption contest. And with the shortest caption ever, I might add.



Joel, you get to display the coveted In Your Face award. Again.



By the way, has anyone else noticed how much my face looks like those funny novelty glasses people wear?


It's just me, right? Ok, good.

Second place goes to crotch-obsessed Jocelyn with a typically bizarre, Jocelyn-esque entry:

That evening's game of "Guess Who's Sucking on Sammy's Glass Eye?" ended abruptly when Diesel-- daydreaming about the olive in his "martooni"--absentmindedly swallowed.

And coming in third is perennial bridesmaid and one-woman caption machine Theresa:

Diesel: Oh my god, I'm back in the early 60's! What if I run into my parents and I'm never born?

So it's a sweep by my Adjutant Inspectors this week. Very nice.

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everybody for playing and/or voting.

In other news, have you seen the Snark's new look? I got a wild hair the other day and decided to redo the template. I think it turned out rather nicely. Head on over and read today's hot and heavy post by Lampsha (aka G of Simply Said).

Ok, have a great weekend, everybody. I've got a special surprise for you on Monday, so meet me back here then.

Diesel out.


Humor-blogs.com has occasionally fondled Sammy's glass eye, but it never sucks.

A-y-y-y!

Do you remember the episode of "The Simpsons" where Disco Stu explains the sales potential of disco records to Marge? Stu points to a chart showing the sales of disco records from the years 1973 to 1976 and says, "Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue... A-y-y-y!"

I'm having a bit of an A-y-y-y moment right now. Generally my site averages around 300-400 unique visitors per day, with around 400-600 page loads. I know, a lot of you would kill for numbers like that, but you have to understand that it was a lot of work to get to this point. It's one thing to say that you'd kill for those numbers, but it's another thing entirely to go out to the freeway overpass every day with a burlap sack filled with mewing kittens.

Anyway, you see those two little icons at the bottom of this post? Yeah, those:

Stumble it!

Digg it!

StumbleUpon and Digg are "social networking sites," which seemed to be the big thing for a while. Maybe it still is. Whatever. Digg has never done me much good, but occasionally someone "Stumbles" one of my post and I get a few hundred hits out of it. And before you get too excited about adding the magical StumbleUpon icon to your posts, remember that only about one of twenty of my posts gets stumbled, and the number of hits I get from it is dependent on how many "friends" the Stumbler has in the StumbleUpon network. Basically, if a serious internet geek who spends way too much time making "friends" online really likes one of my posts, I get some traffic out of it.* And I should add that 99% of these visitors read a single post (if that) and then disappear, never to darken my IP address again. Since I'm really only interested in finding regular readers who will leave nice comments or maybe even buy my book, the net result of all this commotion is about on par with drinking eight MGDs in an hour and a half: A lot of Stumbling that culminates with me urinating in the orchard behind my house.

Sometimes there is an interesting snowball effect, however. In the past it's always burned out after I get around 1,000 visitors, but evidently my Straight Man post hit a chord (count the mixed metaphors in this paragraph and win a puppy!). One person Stumbled it, then another, and another.... So far, the results look like this:



I mean, holy crap, right? Even Saturday's traffic was about double for a normal Saturday, and it shot up like crazy after that. All because of a post that was just some goofy conversations I had with my wife.

Again, if you're a fellow blogger, feel free to add the Stumble icon to your posts (I think there are instructions at StumbleUpon.com), but don't come whining to me if you don't suddenly get thousands of visitors. This is truly a freak occurrence, and it only happened after a lot of hard work and dead kittens.

Still, if this trend continues, A-y-y-y!


*I don't mean to disparage you, Stumbler. I appreciate what you've done for me. But come on. Don't you, like, have a job or something?


Humor-blogs.com never urinates in my orchard.

Caption Contest Finalists

Ok folks, now that you've all bought Joel's book, here are the top ten captions. Vote for your favorite below. I'll post the results on Friday. And since I did a shout-out yesterday, I guess I'll have to do an actual post tomorrow. Sigh.

Joel B.:

Ol' Four Eyes.

al:

Diesel was ejected from the rat pack after suggesting that, instead of "groovy cats," they should refer to themselves as "valleculated felines."

Theresa:

Diesel: Oh my god, I'm back in the early 60's! What if I run into my parents and I'm never born?

Brad:

Who's the guy next to me with the terrible lighting?

Jocelyn:

That evening's game of "Guess Who's Sucking on Sammy's Glass Eye?" ended abruptly when Diesel-- daydreaming about the olive in his "martooni"--absentmindedly swallowed.

Mark Jabo:

The Pack agreed that, despite strides made by Sammy, it would be another 50 years before the entertainment world was ready to hear Diesel rap.

I Dive At Night:

Dean: Joey looks bad. I bet he's dead before any of us.

McCafferty Himself:

Everyone is in shock when Frank is voted off the island.

Candace:

Diesel decided to go for the One Cheek Sneak.

rjlight

Dean: "No, Sammy he might just make the cut. At least we got him out of the Jupiter t-shirt and he's learning how to scat."

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Listed on humor-blogs.com.

Crummy Church Signs: The Book!

The caption contest poll has been pre-empted for something even more exciting this week: Joel from Crummy Church Signs has written a book!

I've said before that I think that Crummy Church Signs has the highest laugh-to-word count ratio of any website I've come across. I think it helps to have grown up with a church background to appreciate some of the confused theology and Sunday school cheesiness, but how can you not laugh at a sign that reads "The size of the tool doesn't matter in The Master's hand" ? (Joel's commentary: "But it's a whole different story if you ask Mrs. The Master.")

For a limited time the book is only $10.99 with FREE shipping, and Joel will autograph it for you! This offer is only available until Nov. 6 at the Humor-Blogs.com store. After that, the price will go up to the regular price of $12.99 PLUS shipping (and no signature...).

Joel sent me a draft a few weeks ago, and Mrs. Diesel and I were laughing ourselves silly over these signs.

Still not convinced? How about this: Joel is giving all the proceeds to charity. As Joel says:

With all the psychological damage that these crummy signs have inflicted upon the world, it's time for them to start doing some good. That is why I am donating 100% of my proceeds from the sale of this book to Compassion, a Christian advocacy group for underprivileged kids in third world countries.

Come on, how cool is that? You get a signed copy of a hilarious book at a phenomenal price, you get to support a blogger who provides endless entertainment both on his site and here (Joel is a perennial finalist in the caption contests), and you get to help poor kids. What are you waiting for? Buy your copy today!


I'll post the caption contest poll tomorrow. If you buy the book.

Compassion is our middle name at humor-blogs.com. That's what the "-" stands for.

Well, Sure, They're Not Fighting Now

Did you hear that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize? This surprised me, as the odds seemed to be stacked against him. After all, if a guy named "Gore" can win the Nobel Peace Prize, what's to keep a guy named Horrific Slaughter, Guts von Carnage, or even Yasser Arafat from winning?

To be honest, I didn't even know that the argument over global warming had escalated into a full-fledged armed conflict. As I wrote in my book when Gore was nominated, "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?"

On second thought, though, I suppose the lack of violence is a evidence of Gore's tireless efforts. Imagine how many people might have died if Gore hadn't kept a lid on the fighting. It is only right that we should recognize Al Gore for his role in forestalling global warming-related violence, just as George W. Bush was universally lauded for keeping Iraq free of WMDs.

And let's not forget that most of the world's hot spots are, well, hot spots. Iraq, Rwanda, Burma, Compton -- they're all located in hot climates. It stands to reason that the more hot climates there are in the world, the more terrorists, insurgents and dictators we will have. The only guaranteed way to cool down these hot spots is to reverse the trend toward global warming. Once these places have a more reasonable climate, their people will realize that there is more to life than lashing out with car bombs and box cutters just because they're a little edgy about the weather. As long as the Middle East routinely experiences temperatures over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, it will be filled with people who are ready to snap the next time somebody tells them that at least it's a "dry heat."

The true scale of the global warming threat has only recently been discovered. In fact, a mere generation ago the biggest threat seemed to be from countries in cold climates. We even called it a "cold war" because the Communists seemed intent on moving from their frozen potato fields into more hospitable climates like those of Southeast Asia and Latin America. But the Soviet expansion was doomed by America's secret weapon: Star Wars.

No, not the anti-ballistic missile program. The movies. Yes, just as the battle for galactic supremacy moved from the ice planet of Hoth to the desert world of Tatooine, the struggle for global domination moved from the frozen wastes of Eastern Europe to the sunny climes of the Middle East. Coincidence? Maybe, but what about the portentious thawing of carbonite-encased Han Solo and Leia's use of a "thermite grenade" in her plot to save him? All of these events clearly add up to one undeniable conclusion: I'm a HUGE geek.



The point is, people in moderate climates tend to not be much of a threat to us. When was the last time we really had to worry about Italy, Spain, France or Mexico? I know, Canada isn't really very dangerous either, but that's just because we've never really pissed them off. If Canada ever really gets upset, you're going to see a side of them that... ok, I can't keep this up. I had you going there, though, didn't I? Look at them up there, with their cute money with birds on it and policemen on horsies.

Anyway, Canada's harmlessness notwithstanding, extreme climates are, generally speaking, the source of most of the belligerence in the world. This is why our polar ice caps are so vital. We need that ice so that we can export it from really cold areas to really hot areas like the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. By evening out global ice distribution, we will make both extremely hot areas and extremely cold areas more hospitable to human life, so that eventually they are both marginally habitable, like Buffalo. And we'll finally be able to pull our troops out of Iraq, so that we can deploy them to more important places, like the North Pole, where they can help ensure the global dominance of Big Ice.

Oh, you may argue that my suggestions are not "politically feasible." You may contend that I'm "grandstanding," or "employing scare tactics." You might even argue that none of my ideas make sense "economically" or "scientifically." And you know what? You're right. And that's exactly why I'm not going to win a Nobel Prize in economics or chemistry any time soon.

If I play my cards right, though, I might just win me one of them Peace Prizes.


Humor-blogs.com is so cool it's on fire.

Caption Contest: The Rat Pack

If you're like me, you remember exactly where you were when Joey Bishop died. Otherwise you have a really bad memory, because, dude, it happened like five minutes ago. Maybe you should have that looked at.

Actually, I'm writing this at 7:55pm Thursday night, but I'm reading a story on The New York Times website about his death that is inexplicably dated 10/19. So I says to my wife, I says, "Hey, did you hear that Joey Bishop is going to die tomorrow?"

And she's like, "No way! Who's Joey Bishop?"

"You know, the last surviving member of the Rat Pack. Should we try to warn him?"

"Let me check the handbook."

So she hauls out the Handbook for Celebrity-Related Space-Time Continuum Manipulation.

"How old is he?"

"89."

"Hmmmm. Doesn't look good. Was he ever in a movie with Judy Garland?"

"I doubt it."

"Nope. Can't warn him."

"Screw the Handbook!" I said, grabbing the phone book. "Why would the Lords of Time and Space have given us this chance if they didn't want us to save him?" I looked up Joey Bishop and dialed the number.

After several rings, a weak, raspy voice came on the line. "Hello?"

"Mr. Bishop?"

"Y-yes."

"Mr. Bishop, you're in grave danger. The New York Times says you're going to die tomorrow!"

There was some wheezing and then a sound like a phone hitting laminate flooring. It sounded like the kind with the built-in foam backing, but I can't be sure.

"Oh, wait. It's tomorrow's paper, but it actually says you died yesterday."

There was no reply.

"Does Joey Bishop live in Modesto?" my wife asked.

"Why?"

"Because that's the Modesto phone book."

"Oh. Crap. I think I just killed Joey Bishop."

"What?!"

"No, it's ok. I killed the Modesto Joey Bishop. There's probably one in every city."

"Not any more."

"No, not any more. But we can probably borrow Stockton's if we ever need one. Anyway, the Joey Bishop who was going to die tomorrow died yesterday, so there's nothing we can do, unless we can get The New York Times to write a story about it the day before yesterday. Curse you, Lords of Time and Space!"

In any case, by the time you read this, Joey Bishop, last surviving member of the Rat Pack, will have died. And what better way to remember him than by... um, photoshopping my face over his. Wow, this is turning into a morbid post.



Anyway, you know the rules. Submit your caption in the comments. Mrs. Diesel and I will fight each other to within an inch of our lives to select our respective favorites, and then I'll post a poll on Tuesday.

Oh, and in case you're interested in the real Joey Bishop, this is what he looked like back in the day:



Read more about Joey Bishop here.

The demise of humor-blogs.com has been greatly exaggerated.

Thursday Shout-Out

So I'm over at Central Snark today, whining about how Stephen Colbert is totally ripping me off. The Snark den mother, Snuppy aka Neva aka Crazy Aunt Beatrice, has been having a rough time of it of late, and to make matters worse, interlopers like Joel from Crummy Church Signs and I have been ruining the good name of the Snark. Anyway, even if you don't want to read my stupid post, stop by Central Snark and wish Crazy Aunt Beatrice rest and safe travels as she travels across the country for a funeral and then returns home to her son who is recuperating from a serious car accident.

In other news, I have decided, in response to your feedback, to put Grundir the meme-wraith on temporary probation. He's out in the barn thinking things over now. I may call upon his services in a week or two if I get tagged for anything. In the mean time, he still has a few meme-quashing requests outstanding. If you've requested his services, don't worry, he should be able to get to you in the next day or two.

Well, this is supposed to be a shout-out, so let's see what else I can come up with. Renal Failure's post on prostitution in Vancouver was pretty funny, as was Dorky Dad's good-natured ridiculing of his wife's Fist of Death. And you should really check out the cartoons of new Humor-Blogs.com member Mike at See Mike Draw. Great stuff.

I'm going to put some real effort into tomorrow's caption contest pic, so that stupid anonymous commenters with very small penises can't bitch about the lighting being off. See you back here tomorrow!

Straight Man

Whew, I feel better. Don't you? I thought I'd post something a little more light-hearted today.

As you might guess, Mrs. Diesel and I have some odd conversations. Usually they start with me asking some bizarre question, apropos of nothing, and then her humoring me until I get bored and move on to something else. Or she tells me to stop annoying her.

On the way to church last Sunday...

Diesel: You know that frog on the commercials, the one that tells kids not to swim in the canals?
Mrs. Diesel: Splasher?
Diesel: Yeah, Splasher. Isn't that kind of unfair? I mean, he's a frog, so he gets to swim in the canals, but he's like, "Hey you, kids, get out of my canal!"
Mrs. Diesel: What would you suggest then, if not a frog?
Diesel: How about a cat? The cat would be like, "Man, you do NOT want to go in that canal."
Mrs. Diesel: But people would just think the cat was biased, because cats hate water.
Diesel: Yeah, but he'd be like, "Trust me, do NOT go in the canal."
Mrs. Diesel: I think you need a more objective animal.
Diesel: How about a dog? The dog would be like, "Sure, I like water, but I don't swim in canals, and neither should you." They could use MacGruff the Crime Dog. He'd be like, "Take a bite out of crime. And stay out of canals."

...

At Del Taco, where Mrs. Diesel has just pointed out the "Toddler's Only" (sic) sign at the play area to our children...

Diesel: What is a 'toddler'?
Mrs. Diesel: One who toddles.
Diesel: What does it mean to 'toddle'?
Mrs. Diesel: To walk, sort of unsteadily.
Diesel: But nobody ever says that. Why do we call them toddlers if we don't ever talk about anyone toddling?
Mrs. Diesel: British people do.
Diesel: Ok, but we don't. We use the word 'toddler', but not the word 'toddle.'
Mrs. Diesel: True, we don't.
Diesel: Do you have to toddle to be a toddler?
Mrs. Diesel: Yes.
Diesel: So what about a three year old who is paralyzed from the waist down? Is he a toddler?
Mrs. Diesel: No.
Diesel: So he goes from being a baby to being a child without ever being a toddler?
Mrs. Diesel: Right.
Diesel: What if his legs start to work when he's 40, so he can walk, but not very well, because he hasn't had any practice. Then is he a toddler?
Mrs. Diesel: No.
Diesel: That seems unfair.

...

Two weeks ago I seeded our lawn. For several days thereafter I was giving Mrs. Diesel daily reports on the germination status of the seeds. One day the seed really started to be taking off, so I walked into the living room where Mrs. Diesel was paying bills to give her an update.

Diesel: It looks like about half of the seed has made a decision to germinate.
Mrs. Diesel: (Distracted) That's great.
Diesel: You know, they've put in a lot of hard work.
Mrs. Diesel: Uh huh.
Diesel: I think they would appreciate it if you would come out and say a few words.
Mrs. Diesel: (Impatiently) Paying bills.
Diesel: They've been working really hard, and it would really mean a lot to them.
Mrs. Diesel: (Glaring)
Diesel: And I, uh, kind of already told them you would be coming out.
Mrs. Diesel: Get out.
Diesel: It doesn't have to be a big long speech or anything, but I think they would really appreciate it...
Mrs. Diesel: Get on the other side of that door NOW.

About an hour later I noticed Mrs. Diesel walking out to our driveway to survey the sprouting lawn. I hurried over to stand next to her.

Mrs. Diesel: (Clears her throat and raises her right hand to greet the seedlings.) You've all, uh, done a great job here, and I just wanted to say how much we, uh, appreciate all of your, um, hard work. I know it, uh, hasn't always been easy, and I want you to know that you've, uh, exceeded all of our expectations and, well, you've just done a great job. So, uh, carry on.
Diesel: (Looks quizzically at Mrs. Diesel) You know they're asleep, right?

At this point I had to run for my life.



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Help Me Help You

A few weeks ago I mentioned to fellow blogger and ex-standup comic* Suzy Soro that I don't have a blogging "persona." Sure, I go by the name "Diesel," which makes it sound like I'm compensating for my weak chin by pretending to be some kind of tough guy, but I carried that nickname over from real life. I didn't create a Diesel persona for the blogosphere.

Suzy disagreed. "You definitely have a persona," she said. "It's 'very smart Internet guy with self-deprecating humor.'"

I'm not sure where she got the "very smart" bit from, but the fact that Suzy thinks its part of a fictional persona presumably leaves open the possibility that in real life, I am in fact a moron. Similarly, perhaps I'm a humorless prick right up to the point where I log into Blogger and become Mr. Witty Self-Deprecation.

Actually, Suzy is right. To some degree my blogging persona is an amped up version of the real me. But mostly what separates the online Diesel from the offline Diesel is what I leave behind when I enter the blogosphere. You see, in real life I'm a bit of a pedantic crank. I periodically launch into animated tirades about politics or religion or whatever, subjecting those around me to tiresome explications of my worldview. I'm ruthlessly analytical, and I'm just about impossible to beat in an argument. That's not to say that I always win; it's more accurate to say that I'll keep finding loopholes in any contrary position so that I can keep arguing forever, like the knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who keeps fighting even after his limbs have all been severed.

This fiercely argumentative nature almost propelled me into law school when I was in my 20s, but I think on some level I realized that this course of action would only legitimize and exacerbate a pretty serious character flaw. That's why almost all lawyers are assholes: Rather than dealing with the fact that they are pedantic, argumentative jerks, they go to a special school to be more effective pedantic, argumentative jerks.

When I started blogging, I decided to leave out that part of my personality. I figured that there were plenty of serious political commentators out there already, many of whom were better informed than I was. Besides, when you argue about serious issues, it's really easy for people to misunderstand you and get their feelings hurt -- or, for that matter, to understand you perfectly and get their feelings hurt. I didn't want to spend my time worrying about who I was offending, and explaining and re-explaining my positions ad nauseum. And I wanted to force myself to let go of the idea that I needed to bring people around to my way of thinking. Make 'em laugh, I thought. Maybe hit 'em with a serious idea once in awhile, but rule number one on this site has always been Make 'em laugh.

I think it's worked out pretty well. You get to laugh, and I get to not take myself so seriously. Because trust me, I can be a pretty intense person, and it's good for me to be forced out of my circle of obsessive analytical thinking.

But I have to tell you, some days it's not easy to maintain my good-natured "persona." I don't get offended easily, but there are a few sure methods of pissing me off. And by "pissed off," I don't mind the kind of mild grumpiness that results in a delightfully sardonic post. I mean pissed off. A few of you have witnessed this side of me in my comments on a few blogs lately, which is what prompted this post. I think we can all agree that the delightfully sardonic Diesel is more fun than the pissed off Diesel, so I thought I would post a few simple guidelines that will help you to not piss me off:

1. If you're going to write a blog post comparing someone to Hitler, that person had better have killed at least a million people. Otherwise you're insulting the memory of the millions of people methodically slaughtered by the Nazis and the thousands of brave men who risked their lives to stop them. Get your head out of your ass and open a book.

2. If you're going to write a post calling some historical figure a "hero," make sure that that person wasn't in fact a repressive dictator or terrorist who murdered scores of people in cold blood. Good examples include Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

3. If you're going to bash George W. Bush, try picking a tack that hasn't been used 100,000 times before. I get it, you think he's stupid. I'm not defending him, but holy crap come up with some new material already. A few months ago I read a post referring to him as a "drunken frat boy." Really? You have to go back 30 years to find something you can insult him for? He's basically admitted that he's a recovering alcoholic, so extra class points to you for picking on him for that. Also, stop saying that he was never elected. You can quibble about the first election, but he was overwhelming elected by the popular vote in 2004. Try picking up a newspaper, dumbass.

4. Don't tell me who I am or what I believe. When you tell me that conservatives are greedy, selfish bastards, guess what? That's me. When you talk about how stupid Bush voters are, hey guess what? Me again. I'm not thrilled with the kind of president Bush has turned out to be, but don't think I'm stupid just because I didn't vote for your pompous ass of a candidate. Oh, and when you slam the "religious right"? Hey, me again! In fact, I happen to be the treasurer for an extremely conservative Christian church, and there's nothing I love more than spending four hours counting a hundred thousand dollars worth of charitable contributions from our members and then coming home to read some idiot blogging about how conservatives only care about themselves. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the reason we don't want to fund your stupid government programs is because we're already giving a lot of money to programs that have proven to be a lot more effective than government bureaucracies? Blog all you want about your own opinions, but don't pretend that you know someone because of where they go to church or what box they check on a ballot.

Let me make it very clear that I have no problem with differing opinions. I don't think I've ever made fun of someone on this blog just for having a different opinion from my own. I make a distinction, however, between the voicing of an opinion I disagree with and the exhibition of willful ignorance. I skewer fundamentalists because I think they ignore the reality around them in favor of dogmatic nonsense, and I feel the same way about people who call George W. Bush a Nazi. Maybe it makes you feel better to demonize the man in this way, but that doesn't excuse the deliberate dissemination of gross historical inaccuracy across the internet. Once you hit the age of seven, you're expected to take some responsibility for your words.

Whew. Ok, that should do it for me for a while. Now I can go back to being cheerfully absurd Diesel for a while.

Just don't piss me off.


*Corrected 12:18pm. Sorry, Suzy. I thought you were retired like me....


Listed on humor-blogs.com.

Heroes Caption Contest Winners

This week Crazy Aunt Bea pulled off an amazing upset with her disturbing-yet-hilarious caption. Crazy Aunt Bea, you get the coveted In Your Face Award.



In second place was newcomer Kev, with this caption:

Diesel: "Don't worry, I have one of those Tide to Go stain removers in my pocket."

And rounding out the top three was the Frogster, with:

Claire: Yes, your superstirring power is most impressive. Now can you use your superscrubbing power to get the spaghetti sauce off my ceiling?

Congrats and thanks for playing, everybody. Have a super weekend. I'll see you on Monday.

Listed on humor-blogs.com.

Oh, the Suspense!

Sorry to flake on you, but I don't have time to post the caption contest results this morning because I've got to leave for the Bay Area in about six minutes. I'll have to do it later today.

The good (bad?) news is that gives you a little more time to vote. Tell your friends!

And make sure you weigh in on the fate of Grundir the meme-wraith.

Catch you later.

Thursday Shout-Out: Three Scary Monsters

Long time Mattress Police supporter, Humor-Blogs.com member and funny guy Mr. Fabulous is up for the Best Humor Blog award once again. Vote for him here. I know, I know, you want to vote for me, but you can't. I haven't been nominated, and if I had I would just throw all my support to Fab. Because, well, he has a chance to win.

In other news, have you been following the drama at Central Snark? You should be. As you know, my Nazgul minion Grundir the Implacable has been traversing the blogosphere dispatching memes and hobbits with his razor sharp wit and broadsword, respectively. Not content with memicide, he even decimated some Crummy Church Signs. But no amount of violence seems to soothe Grundir's blackened soul, and on Monday he showed up at Central Snark, whining about how hard it is to be neither truly dead nor alive:

What weighs heavily upon me these days is the little things, like the way small children look upon me when I’m at Target. I know, I should not let it trouble me so, but it wears on one, being constantly treated as if I am some sort of monster. Bah! I hear your protests. It is immaterial that I am, in fact, some sort of monster. (Get it, immaterial? I slay me!)

This was evidently more than some people could take. No longer satisfied to borrow Grundir for his own purposes, Joel from Crummy Church Signs hired his own socially inept henchman, a Wookie named Kalfu'ur, to "investigate" the misuse of alter egos throughout the blogosphere. A "quote," from Kalfu-ur, such as it is:

(Unintelligible Wookie War-Bellow)

Kalfu’ur stop silly alternate personas! Kalfu’ur not understand them! They not same as when Chewbacca, Magnificent One (May His Fur Always Be Ruffled) pretended to be prisoner in order infiltrate Death Star. Or when He pretended to be prisoner in order infiltrate Jabba’s Palace. (What can Kalfu’ur say? A good plan is a good plan. He “Magnificent One” for a reason!) There no princess in Inter-net! There no carbonite-encased friends! There no handsome bounty for alternate personas!

(A second unintelligible Wookie War-Bellow)

This led to a heated discussion in which Kalfu'ur was accused of being a prime example of the very thing he was supposed to be stamping out. The argument rapidly devolved into a barrage of vicious insults, with Kalfu'ur accusing Grundir of being unable to defend Mordor against midgets and Grundir suggesting that Kalfu'ur was just grumpy about his dingleberries.

Lampsha (also known as G, Queen of Humor-Blogs Reviews), stepped in to mediate, resulting in a riveting panel discussion between the two creatures. Although they were in agreement that "small, furry creatures are the bane of great evil empires everywhere," the discussion doesn't seem to have done much to improve relations between our minions. The low point was probably when Kalfu'ur quoted REO Speedwagon. Now people are talking about a "cage match," and I just don't know what to do any more. You try to raise your evil minions right, teach them evil from just plain wrong, and listen to their tortured howls of misery and regret, but I guess in the end they have to choose their own path. Read the discussion here and tell me what I should do with Grundir.

Opinion Polls & Market Research

I'll make a decision based on the results and let you know sometime next week.

And be back here tomorrow for the caption contest results. Get your vote in now!

The Rhythm of Love

As a child of the 80s, I have a deep and inexplicable love for cheesy rock music. While I enjoy bands from the 90s and the naughties*, nothing beats the endorphin rush I feel when I hear the opening strains of "Urgent" by Foreigner, Journey's "Stone in Love," or pretty much anything by Def Leppard. I recently made a startling discovery about this musical genre, however. I'm sure you'll find this hard to believe, but it turns out that almost all of this music is about sex . I know, it makes you look at Kiss's "Lick it Up" or ZZ Top's "Tube Steak Boogie" in a whole new way, doesn't it?

It took me a while to put it all together, but my first clue came when I was a teenager. I was paging through one of those "Rock Music is of the Devil" books at a bookstore, and came across the assertion that the title of John Cougar Mellencamp's "Hurts so Good" was "a clear reference to sadomasochism." The remarkable thing about this claim -- in addition to making Mr. "Pink Houses" the S&M poster child -- is that the author managed to pick one of the tamest songs of the 80s to pin his case on. I mean, did this guy even bother to check out Prince's "Darling Nicky" or Van Halen's "Black and Blue"? Do some research next time, you friggin' hack.**

The cultural standards of the 1950s forced rock & roll lyricists to tone down the sexual content of their songs, and rock musicians of the 60s and 70s seemed to think they had to elevate rock music with political messages or references to acid trips. It was during the 80s, however, that rock musicians realized, "Hey, we can just sing about sex! Why didn't we think of this before?!" The result was a seemingly endless parade of rock songs that appeared to be written by and for fifteen year old boys. Often these songs -- like Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher," which is about, um, a kid who is hot for his teacher, were completely lacking in innuendo. The more astute lyricists of this group employed double entendres and sometimes even metaphors, with a range of subtlety that generally ran from "hammer to the head" to "sledgehammer to the head."

AC/DC was a pioneer in this field, having already started writing songs like "Love at First Feel" in 1975. Take their song, "Big Balls," for example. According to Wikipedia, "Though the song is ostensibly about a person who hosts social balls, the majority of the lyrics are innuendos about sexual activities and testicles." Using that explanation as a sort of Rosetta Stone, one can glean an entirely new meaning from the following lyrics:

Some balls are held for charity
And some for fancy dress
But when they're held for pleasure
They're the balls that I like best
My balls are always bouncing
To the left and to the right
It's my belief that my big balls
Should be held every night

So you say it's actually about testicles? Fascinating. I had no idea.

Then there are songs that are clearly about sex, and yet so lyrically confused that it's impossible to connect the melange of metaphors to anything concrete, such as Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me."

Listen! Red light, yellow light, green light, go!
Crazy little woman in a one man show
Mirror queen, mannequin, rhythm of love
Sweet dream, saccharine, loosen up
You gotta squeeze a little, squeeze a little
Tease a little more
Easy operator come a knockin' on my door
Sometime, anytime, sugar me sweet
Little miss innocent sugar me, yeah
Take a bottle, shake it up
Break the bubble, break it up
Pour some sugar on me
Ooh, in the name of love
Pour some sugar on me
C'mon fire me up
Pour your sugar on me
Oh, I can't get enough
I'm hot, sticky sweet
From my head to my feet yeah

So... this song is about a guy waiting at a traffic light, where he see a crazy midget who turns out to be a mannequin looking in a mirror. The crazy midget follows him home, where she shakes his bottle until the bubble breaks, lights him on fire and pours sugar on him. Well, that's clear enough.

My favorites are the lyrics that sound cool when you sing them but make you sound like a desperate and possibly retarded fourteen year old when you speak them in a normal tone of voice. I mean, has the line "There's something about you girl / that makes me sweat" ever worked for anyone? I know if I were a woman I'd like nothing more than to hook up with a guy who sweats profusely whenever he sees me. A runny nose and uncontrollable farting would seal the deal for sure.

When I was in college, my friends and I used to entertain ourselves by working the lyrics of these creepy misogynistic songs into everyday conversation. For example, I might walk into a room and announce, "Here I am, rock you like a hurricane." Which doesn't make much sense, but that was kind of the point. One time I was inspired by Mötley Crüe to ask the guys across the hall in my dorm to call me "Dr. Feelgood." I added, by way of explanation, "You know, just when other people are around." This would be not be the the first or last time that my dry sense of humor would be mistaken for mental illness.

The all-time champion of creepy/desperate lyrics has to be Eddie Money, with "Two Tickets to Paradise." I know, you're thinking, "But I always thought they were going to... Hawaii... or something." No, they're not going to Hawaii. This is Eddie Money, remember?

Got a surprise especially for you,
Something that both of us have always wanted to do.
We've waited so long, waited so long.
We've waited so long, waited so long.

I have a live version of this song that starts with Eddie announcing knowingly to the cheering crowd, "I've got something in my pocket...." I'm not sure what he was referring to exactly, but I have a pretty solid guess that it's attached to a creepy old guy. This song was creepy back in 1977, and it gets creepier with every state fair season that goes by. I mean, can you imagine being the lucky girl dating Eddie Money?

Eddie: Hey, babe, I've got a surprise for you.
Girl: Really? What is it?
Eddie: It's something that we've always wanted to do, and we've waited so long....
Girl: What? Are we finally going kayaking like you promised?
Eddie: No, but we are going on sort of a trip.
Girl: A trip? Wow? You made reservations and everything?
Eddie: Got the tickets right here in my pocket.
Girl: Oh, Eddie, I'm so excited! Where are we going?
Eddie: Well, come here and get the tickets.
Girl: Ok.
Eddie: That's it, right there in my pocket.
Girl: Hey, there's nothing here but a condom and your.... ew!
Eddie: Surprise! We're going to have sex in the backseat of my Thunderbird!
Girl: Man, I should never have broken up with Billy Squier.


*Still hoping this will catch on before 2010.
**Speaking of research, I just browsed through John (Cougar) Mellencamp's Wikipedia article, which is packed with interesting information and concludes with this fascinating tidbit: "John spends most of his free time sucking up to race baiters and the liars in the news media. This is proven by his latest song 'Jena'." Gotta love a user-edited encyclopedia.


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