Caption Contest: Pulp Fiction

So I decided to go with a Pulp Fiction theme this week. At first I thought I'd use a pic of Samuel L. Jackson interrogating that kid, but I didn't have a picture of myself that really worked with it. I did, however, have a nice profile of Climber that worked fairly well. Look at how cute he is.



Stop yelling at Climber, you chia-pet gangster!

Anyway, I didn't want to subject Climber to your captions, so I did another one with me.



You know the drill. Submit your captions in the comments. Mrs. Diesel and I will pick our favorites and I'll post a poll on Tuesday.

And remember, you're captioning the second picture with the ugly guy, not the first one with the adorable blond kid.

Oh, and in case you missed my pathetic and semi-delirious book-hawking yesterday, here's a recap: Until December 14 you can order my book, Antisocial Commentary, for $9.95 with free shipping. I'll even sign it if you want. After that, the price goes back up to $11.95 + $3 shipping. Go here to order it. Thanks!

I'll have an update on humor-blogs.com 2.0 tomorrow.

Thursday Shout Out: You Guys (ok, and my book)

Man, what a week. Between puking my guts out, taking care of children who were puking their guts out, wrapping up a programming job for a client and working on a radical revamp of humor-blogs.com (which I'm almost done with), I haven't had a lot of time to attend to my blogging duties. Yet despite my truancy, you all continue to stop by and leave nice comments that make me laugh and feel all snuggly inside. Thanks for sticking with me. You guys rock.

Still, I can't help but feel like I've let you down -- And more importantly, I feel like I've let Huey down. Some standard-bearer for the Huey-Lewis-is-too-classic-rock movement I've turned out to be (Yes, I've had plenty of movements lately, but I don't think any of them were Huey).

I may not be able to make it up to Huey, but here's what I can do for you: For a limited time I'm lowering the price on my book, Antisocial Commentary: From the Secret Files of the Mattress Police, to $9.95 with free shipping. That's right: until Friday, December 14 you can get Antisocial Commentary at $5.00 off the normal price. In fact, I'll even sign it* for you if you want. If you order Antisocial Commentary by December 14, I promise to get it to you before Christmas. They make great stocking stuffers for people with absurdly flat feet.

Look, I understand if you missed your chance to get a signed, discounted copy when the book first came out back in August. I'm not here to judge you. Maybe you only recently learned to read, or you're just really, really lame. There are plenty of good reasons why you would rather that I devote my life to helping a software behemoth take over the world instead of writing pithy little essays that bring people together through the miracle of laughter.

But now you have a second chance, Jocelyn. (I've randomly picked the name "Jocelyn" to refer to people who make lame excuses for not buying my book even though I pretty much guarantee it's going to be the best $9.95 they've spent all year. It helps me to identify with my audience when I use a specific name like that.)

So just order the damn thing already. Seriously, I worked really hard on it and it's hella funny. And to top Joel Bezaire, author of Crummy Church Signs Volume 1, I'll donate all the profits to the cause of Huey. Well, ok, there aren't going to be any profits at this price, but I swear to you on the grave of Mario Cippollina that no matter how much money I lose I absolutely will not send Huey a bill. Like the man said, I'm takin' what they're givin' cuz I'm workin' for a livin.'

Let's see, what else? Maybe I should tell you a little more about the book. It's mostly about me and how great I am. I cover such topics as...

...how I came to be...

I have Woodstock to thank for my conception. My dad walked up to my mom, who was sitting on a blanket in the sun with flowers in her hair, and said, “Hey, are you done with that newspaper? I haven’t read today’s Peanuts. I love Snoopy’s little bird friend.” Well, it turned out that my mom hadn’t read it either, so there they sat, taking their break on a dumpster behind DOW chemical’s Agent Orange plant, reading Peanuts together. My mom took the vowels and my dad took the consonants, and just like that, it was love. Which was a good thing, because they had been married for six years.

...my positions on important issues...

I am strongly in favor of the War on Terror. In fact, I think the War on Terror should be drastically expanded to include all other unpleasant states of mind, such as Boredom and “the Heebie Jeebies.” I don’t think we should stop fighting until we are all happy all of the time. But we must stop before we hit Complacency, because the war will be on that too.

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

...how much I love my family...

We pulled in at a suitably crummy motel called the Aloha – presumably because for any sane person pulling into this place, hello would also be goodbye. If there was a Hawaiian theme, I didn’t notice – unless the toilets in Hawaii make a horrific screeching sound that sounds like a hippopotamus gasping for air through a saxophone.

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

...my exciting life...

I was accosted this morning by a large sea turtle. I had arisen early to steal the neighbor’s newspaper (I canceled my subscription when I learned the editor was a freethinker and a bigamist), and just as I stepped outside, I saw it. The turtle must have been a good 5 feet long and 3.5 feet wide (these are shell measurements), and I would estimate that it weighed at least 200 pounds. I certainly couldn’t lift him, and I’m hella strong. I attribute my exceptional strength to a daily regimen of vitamins and backgammon, although I’m also 1/32 Apache Indian, so that’s sort of an X factor.

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

...and all the other stuff I know about...

You may object that such a solution is not “politically feasible.” To this I respond: Did John F. Kennedy pause to ask whether his plan was ‘politically feasible’ before committing 400 American “advisers” in an unwinnable conflict in Southeast Asia? No sir, he did not! And yet, JFK is revered as a hero for his exploits as captain of PT-109, demonstrating that if you have to go on a trip with a Kennedy, the surest way to avoid drowning is, ironically, to travel by boat.

Even Joel, who knows a little something about teh funny, gave it a thumbs up:

What I appreciate about Diesel's sense of humor is that he never goes for the quick and easy laughs...but the laughs come quick and easy to the reader.... If you are a connoisseur of fine humor, or if you just like to laugh...this book is for you.

To sum up, I'm like the Bill Maher of humor writers. Which is to say, whatever it is that Bill Maher is really good at -- perhaps being a giant ass -- I'm that good at humor writing. Also, I'm pretty much the humblest ever.

Ok, I'd better stop now. I'm still a little delirious from my illness earlier this week. I'm not positive, but I think I may have put on a puppet show starring a Cat5 cable and a laptop power cord at a staff meeting this morning. Their names were Catty and Powie, and they had differing views on the importance of power versus cooperation. I think I fell asleep before I got to the moral.

Anyway, buy the book. It's good. If you go to this page you can read all about it and even download the first few chapters. Then just click the big yellow Buy Now button and pay with PayPal. I think there's a box where you can specify inscription instructions. Otherwise just send me an email at diesel [at] mattresspolice.com and let me know what you want me to scribble on it. Give the gift of laughter to someone you love. And when you're done with that, please buy my book.

Wow, the room is spinning. Meet me back here tomorrow for the caption contest. Maybe around noon.

Ok, Jocelyn?



*All books will be signed upside down.

Projectile Blogging

Perhaps the least pleasant way to start a week is with a violent attack of Dianetics.* I was under the impression that my near-superhuman immune system had allowed me to sidestep the viral maelstrom that had recently laid waste to my household, but it turns out that I was foolhardy to finish my daughter's serving of pot roast after she had sneezed on it. Hubris, thy name is Diesel.

I thought the worst was over once the Dianetics had cleared my intestinal tract of harmful engrams, but man was I wrong. After the Dianetics came periodic bouts of Voldemort.** Yes, he-who-must-not-be-named treated me to seconds of that pot roast, not to mention everything else I had eaten the previous day. My life may not have flashed before my eyes, but I did get a good look at my recent digestive history. Apparently I eat a lot of purple stuff.

In my semi-delirious haze, my thoughts naturally turned to what is most important in my life: Coming up with a good blog topic. "Eureka!" I would have shouted if I had the energy to make sounds with my vocal cords, "I should do a post of my Top Ten Gastrointestinal Ailments!" The fact that this seemed like a good idea at the time should give you some indication of just how sick I really was. Fortunately I came to my senses and cut the list down to five:

5. The time I came down with a stomach flu the day before my final exams my sophomore year in college. On the plus side, I was able to reschedule 3 of my 4 exams for several days later, garnering some much-needed additional studying time (not to mention that it's easier to borrow the textbooks you never bothered to buy when your classmates don't need them any more). On the minus side, my religion prof wouldn't let me reschedule because he was a big friggin' Scientologist.***

4. The time I drank 2/3 of a 2 liter bottle of raspberry wine cooler and threw up in my garbage can. Wow, is there a phrase that dates someone more than "The first time I got really drunk, I was drinking from a 2-liter bottle of raspberry wine cooler"? Can't you just hear the Lost Boys soundtrack blasting from the tape deck of my friend's dad's car? I was 17 and I thought it was a shame to waste the rest of the bottle even though I weighed about a buck ten and was pretty wasted after drinking half of it. To my credit, this was the last time I ever threw up from drinking too much. Most of the kids in my high school weren't nearly that smart.

3. The time I slept on the bathroom floor after the Better Than Ezra Concert. My wife's birthday a few years back. I took her out to a surprise dinner and concert. The surprise? Salmonella in the clams vongole! This was when I perfected the "porcelain pivot," where the goal is to switch from Voldemort position to Dianetics position as quickly as possible. (Note: The "reverse porcelain pivot" is not recommend for amateurs. Or anyone, really.)

2. The time I ate tainted fast food after a trip to Disneyworld. College spring break trip. Late night stop at McDonald's. Then, six words that I now realize that you should take VERY seriously: "These McNuggets taste a little funny."

1. The time I threw up in my college roommate's brother's sink in Berkeley. This is one of those experiences that was so absurdly horrible that I'm almost glad that it happened so that I can blog about it.

A friend of mine from college, whom I'll call College Friend, was visiting his brother, whom I'll call College Friend's Brother, in a city about an hour and a half from my house, which I'll call Berkeley. The three of us got together for dinner and drinks. I hadn't seen College Friend for years. I had met College Friend's Brother a few times, but we weren't exactly friends. I had to work the next day, so the plan was for me to sleep at Brother's apartment and leave from there in the morning. Brother lived in a tiny apartment, so College Friend and I were to sleep in the living room. College Friend had an inflatable mattress or something and I got the coveted futon.

As I lay there my stomach started to feel a little queasy, but I figured I had just had too much to drink. I spent about an hour lying on the futon with my eyes open, trying to get the room to stop spinning. Eventually I fell asleep.

I was violently awakened by none other than Voldemort himself. I didn't even have a chance to sit up before the Evil One laid waste to the futon and surrounding area. I don't know if it was something in the steak I had eaten or what, but whatever it was, it wanted OUT.

I sprang up from the futon as quickly as I could and ran to the bathroom before he struck again. Unfortunately, I only made it as far as the sink. Pow! Voldemort sprayed the sink with his noxious effluent.

Fortunately, after these two brief eruptions, Voldemort left me alone. I didn't even feel terribly sick, although of course I wasn't feeling exceptionally proud of the type of houseguest I had turned out to be.

I rinsed out the sheet that had covered the futon, mopped up the floor with toilet paper, and cleaned the sink out as best as I could. Amazingly, neither College Friend nor Brother had woken up during my performance.

Sadly, no amount of toilet paper was going to restore my futon's innocence, and the sink was hopelessly clogged. I looked around for a plunger, Liquid Plumr, Dran-O, or any other suitably misspelled plumbing product -- perhaps Sync-Kleer or Barph-B-Gon. Unfortunately I found nothing stronger than Cool Mint Listerine. Now what? Leave a note saying "Thanks for letting me stay at your place... Don't use the sink because it's clogged with chunks of prime rib"?

I got in my car and began driving aimlessly through Berkeley. For all its reputation as a party town, you'd be surprised how difficult to buy a plunger at 3 in the morning. I drove and drove, eventually getting on the highway that would take me back to my house. I wished there was something I could do to rectify the situation, but there was nothing open. I would just have to go home and call College Friend's Brother in the morning to explain what had happened.

Then I saw it: A 24-hour K-Mart, right off the highway. There was even an ATM just inside. I went on a late-night shopping spree, hit the ATM, and then drove back to Brother's apartment.

I attacked the sink with an arsenal of plumbing products and after 20 minutes or so, I finally managed to get it to drain. By this time I was shaky and exhausted. Unbelievably, neither College Friend nor Brother had woken up during this ordeal.

I stood there for a moment, wondering what etiquette demanded of one after one has puked all over a college friend's brother's futon. Should I wake them? Leave a note? Send a "Sorry about your futon" condolence card? Lacking any suitable precedent, I decided that I would have to set the benchmark of appropriate response in such circumstances.

I left a clean sheet and $200 in twenties next to the futon and drove home.


*As this is a family blog, I will be using the pseudo-scientific term "Dianetics" in place of the word normally used to denote a violent, runny discharge from the anus.
**I think you can figure this one out.
***Ok, not really, but if he was a body part he would have been the one that spews Dianetics.

Laugh your guts out at humor-blogs.com.

Blech

Sorry, folks. Sick today. I hope I'll have something for you on Wednesday.

Later.

Caption Contest Winners

This week's winning caption came from Brad, who decisively spanked all competition. Brad, you may proudly display the In Your Face award.



Sparrow came in 2nd, with:

Nick recoiled as he caught a faint whiff of ape coming from Diesel's direction.

And once again, Theresa placed with her entry:

Diesel: You just gave her the pencil? Wrong move, man, wrong move.

I think this is the first time that two of the three top-rated captions were callbacks to previous posts. Nicely done, folks. Way to confuse the new readers.

Have a great weekend, and stay out of the malls. I'll see you back here on Monday.

Until then, remember to always ask yourself WWHD?

Humor-blogs.com just gave her the pencil.

Thursday Shout Out: God (A Thanksgiving Photo Essay)

Our front yard in August:


Our front yard today:


The house:


The urchins:


The urchins' mommy:


Thanksgiving reading material (and George):


Have you ordered your copy yet? I haven't read mine yet because Mrs. Diesel wouldn't let go of it. Judging from her chortling, I assume it's pretty gosh-darn funny.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for the caption contest results. And remember, Monday is the launch of Humor-Blogs.com 2.0. Feel the excitement.

This Thanksgiving, curl up with a nice warm cup of Humor-Blogs.com.

World's Foremost Authority on Sarcasm

Lately I've hinted -- not very subtly -- that I'm now working for Google. I'm technically not a Google employee, but I'm working onsite at the Google headquarters on some internal projects for them. I didn't want to say too much at first because I wasn't sure how much I could tell you without getting in trouble. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm tempting fate with this post, as I was once fired from a job over an email that I sent the day before the Thanksgiving weekend. I won't go into detail on that now, but let's just say that I came into work the next Monday and couldn't log in to my computer. Some people just don't appreciate the fact that I'm the World's Foremost Authority on Sarcasm.

Presumably, though, Google knows this about me, as they are the ones who gave me the title. If you look up "sarcasm" on Google, you'll see my picture. Well, ok, not my picture, but a picture I made. Seriously. Go to Google Image Search and type in "sarcasm." The number one result is a fake motivational poster that I made. Pretty cool, huh?



Google did a background check on me before they hired me, and I have to assume that the background check included, well, Googling me. You can find out just about every interesting thing about me by looking at the first page of results on Google: I'm a software developer, the author of Antisocial Commentary, the mastermind behind MattressPolice.com and Humor-Blogs.com, the treasurer of my church, and a finalist in the 2006 Wildfowl Carving Competition, Division F (Decorative Lifesize Wildfowl).

Er, that last one might be someone else with the same name. I don't recall carving any wildfowl in 2006, although in 1991 I did sculpt an uncanny ceramic replica of my college roommate watching TV. See? His name is George.

Anyway, I'll avoid saying anything bad about Google while using Google's blogging platform to talk about working at Google. I'm smart that way.

To be honest, I have nothing bad to say at this point. Working at Google is surreal. First of all, the campus is HUGE. I have a terrible sense of direction, which has resulted in me wasting about a day and a half over the past few weeks looking for my car. You wouldn't think that a company whose flagship product is an empty web page with a textbox in it would need fifteen buildings and ten thousand employees, but I guess someone has to run and fetch all those search results. ("Yes sir, I think we have 'donkey sex.' Let me just run over to the Donkey-Donut building a minute.")

It's like a small city, except that the city is populated by the people that you used to make fun of in high school. (I can say that because I'm one of those people, so suck it.) And now they're running the world and getting paid very well for it. When the movers and shakers are in Northern California, they don't go to Sacramento, they go to Mountain View. Last week Barack Obama was there. The week before that, Tony Bennett and the guy who run the human genome project swung by (not together, but wouldn't you love to be a roadie on that tour?). And then there was that little surprise show by a band you may have heard of called Matchbox 20. And that's just since I started working there, in October. The campus is just down the street from Shoreline Amphitheater, and there's some question as to which venue has better concerts.

There are 16 gourmet restaurants on campus, and they're all free. That's right, if you work there (or even if you're a contractor like me), you can eat lunch and dinner for free. There's a hardware depot in every building where you can pick up an ergonomic keyboard if the standard issue one you have isn't cutting it. Oh, and maybe a new mouse. And a mouse pad. And a webcam. And some noise-canceling headphones. And a remote control. And a paddle game. And this chair. And that's all I need.

It's like working at one of those dot com companies in 1999, before everything went to hell. Massage chairs, a dry-cleaning dropoff, lounges with arcade games and fridges stocked full of soda... It's like heaven with cubicles. I know, it doesn't sound right, but now you're getting an idea of how weird it is.

I could go on, but I've probably said too much already. I should probably try to avoid upsetting the bigwigs -- at least until they've gotten to know me a little better. I mean, for all I know they don't realize that I'm also the World's Foremost Authority on "Harry Potter Satanism" and "Crack Whore Barbie."





Humor-blogs.com is located in the Hummus-Humus Building.

Vote!

Although the avowed purpose of this blog is now to get Huey Lewis recognized as the classic rock paragon that he is, pragmatic considerations force me to be your dancing monkey once again. Let me make it clear, however, that I am doing this only to further the greater cause. From now on, everything I do on this blog will be motivated by my loyalty to Huey. "WWHD?" will be my driving principle.

In this case, I think Huey would want me to get on with posting the caption contest finalists:

As predicted, the National Receding Hairline Association's inaugural meeting was poorly attended.

- Brad

Diesel and Cage debate exactly what attire is acceptable on casual Fridays.

- Mark Jabo

As the two men scaled the mountain of steps triumphantly and gazed down upon the civilians dozens of feet below them, it was clear what they must name the newly conquered hill: Widow's Peak.

- CrummyJoel

Diesel: You just gave her the pencil? Wrong move, man, wrong move.

- Theresa

Nic: Look at me when I'm talking to you.
Diesel: But there's a camera.

- rjlight

Diesel and Cage scout out locations for their Giant Vulva monument.

- Lonie Polony

Diesel: Relax, will ya? I'll only take out enough to show you what I mean by "big".

- crazy aunt bea

Nick recoiled as he caught a faint whiff of ape coming from Diesel's direction.

- Sparrow

A disgruntled Nick demanded a second round after losing to Diesel in their not so inconspicous game of "I squish your head".

- Zoning Out Again

Nick (thinking) : OK, if I take 2 steps forward and pivot 42 degrees, pushing Diesel with 27 foot pounds of pressure, I think he'll roll all the way down the steps and hit the water just as the monument's shadow is at its peak . . .

- Candace

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Listed on humor-blogs.com.

Interlude (From the Latin, meaning 'between ludes')

The polling site isn't cooperating this morning. Hopefully I'll have the caption contest poll up in a few hours. Until then, allow me to regale you with some updates regarding what's going on with this blog (in addition to its newfound purpose of getting classic rock stations to play Huey Lewis).

I'm continuing to improve my commenting application. The more observant among you will have noticed that the horrendously difficult math problems are not showing up any more. They should only appear for first-time commenters now. Also, if you're a humor-blogs.com member, your banner will now show up next to your comment (if you put in your web site url). I'm hoping to eventually give non-humor-blogs members the ability to display an avatar as well. Sorry, Theresa, you still can't delete comments....

I've also created a widget on my sidebar that displays the last ten humor-blogs.com members who have visited this site. Once I've got the bugs worked out, I'll make the widget available on the humor-blogs.com site. I think it's a nice way to encourage a feeling of community among the humor-blogs members.

This weekend, while you are all recovering from tryptophan-induced comas, I will be putting the finishing touches on a massive overhaul of the humor-blogs.com site. I never expected the site to have 380+ members, and it's definitely creaking under the strain. I won't go into details now, but the new site will be WAY cooler in pretty much every way. Look for some big changes on Monday.

Finally, for those of you who have been thinking about buying my book but just can't justify forking over $11.95 plus shipping, I'm planning a Christmas sale starting next week. I'm still working out the details of how cheaply I can possibly sell it, but suffice it to say that you'll be able to get it at a huge discount. As I've said before, I don't care about making money on this book; I just want to get it out there for people to read. So start thinking about people on your Christmas list who might enjoy a good read, and look for details early next week.

Oh, and come back later today for the poll....

Do You Feel Like I Do (About Huey Lewis)?

Update 12/21: If this is your first time here, this is what you need to know:

The avowed purpose of this blog is to bring back the genius that is Huey Lewis. In particular, I want Huey to get the airtime on classic rock radio stations that is being squandered on hacks like BTO and Foghat. If you would like to add your name to my petition, leave a comment on this post.

After you've done that, make sure that you vote in the Huey-pocalypse -- the final showdown between Huey Lewis and the forces of evil.

Help spread the News! Together, we can bring Huey Back to the Future!


And now, in case you're interested, here's the story of how all this started....

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

An interesting discussion broke out recently over at the Ominous Comma about something that I said in my book, Antisocial Commentary.*

The discussion centered on this item from the introduction to the book:

For me the kiss of death for a humor piece is to start off trying to convince someone of a particular point of view…I don’t mean that humor is an effective way of making a point; I mean that humor is the point.

Brent, the proprietor of the O.C., notes:

To be honest, I don’t know if I agree with the Fossil-Fueled One on this point. For as much as I enjoy entertaining people as a Basically Agenda-less Humorist** I have to wonder if I couldn’t be doing something more beneficial. If I couldn’t somehow improve the world, or make some small difference by bringing some of my personal causes more fully into this, my pubic platform.

Actually, he said "public," but it's funnier without the "l."

In any case, the more I reflect on this statement, the more I realize that Brent is right. I should be doing more than just making people laugh. I have a pretty good-sized readership with this blog now, and as that modern day Augustine, Peter Parker, once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

So today is a historic day. Today I am embarking on a crusade of sorts, to use my blog power for a greater good. I’ve thought long and hard about what cause to take on, and I’ve settled on something that I think is a noble, but still realistic, goal. And that goal – my “holy grail,” if you will – is this:

I’m going to convince classic rock stations to start playing Huey Lewis and the News.

It’s long been known by me that Huey Lewis is an under-appreciated and misunderstood genius. Ballads like "Do You Believe in Love" and "The Power of Love" are classics of the earworm genre. "Workin’ for a Livin’" spoke timelessly*** of the working man’s plight, and the songs "Walkin' on a Thin Line" and "Back in Time" addressed the serious issues of the struggles facing Vietnam veterans and time travelers, respectively.

And yet, classic rock stations across the U.S. stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the genius that is Huey Lewis -- not to mention legendary bassist Mario Cipollina, guitar virtuoso Chris Hayes, and presumably someone playing the keyboard.

This, then, is my petition to the powers that be to add some numbers from the Huey Lewis catalog to the classic rock radio playlist:

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

To the National Organization of Deciding Who Gets to Be Considered 'Classic Rock'****:

For shame! Since the birth of the Classic Rock format around the time that somebody decided that Jane's Addition and The James Gang were perhaps two different kinds of music -- 1989, I think -- I have watched the Classic Rock genre slowly expand to include such offerings as Guns 'n' Roses, Metallica and Styx, but thus far you have refused to admit a true legend of rock & roll, Huey Lewis, not to mention his stalwart companions, the News.

How can you justify playing execrable songs like Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" or Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl," while neglecting crowd-pleasers like "I Wanna New Drug" or "Heart and Soul?" "Hip2BSquare" was the anthem of my generation*****, and yet you spurn it in favor of crap like BTO and Foghat. Look, I'll admit that "Stuck With You" can be a little grating after 30 or 40 listens, but it's hardly fair to hold a grudge because of that one song. Have you forgotten about Rod Stewart's "Forever Young" or the Van Halen album with Gary Cherone?

Please, I beg you: add "Workin’ for a Livin’" or "Heart of Rock & Roll" to your playlist. Come on, those are solid pop/rock songs. Certainly no worse than anything by John (nee Cougar) Mellencamp or 38 Special.

You wouldn't even have to eliminate anything from your current playlist. For example, I know for a FACT that no one has ever listened to Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel Like I Do"****** all the way through, at least not since he awed that group of easily amused stoners with his talking guitar back in 1975. Seriously, throw that CD in the player some time and just try to listen to the whole song while completely sober. It's impossible. So here's what you do: After the 68th time that Peter Frampton says "Do you feel like I do," right when you feel like screaming at the CD player, "That depends. Do you feel like jamming a meat thermometer in your ear?!", you mute it and crank the entire first side of Sports. And then you switch back to the Frampton song for the last 38 seconds. No harm, no foul.

You can do the same thing with the interminable interludes in "Riders on the Storm" and "Oye Como Va." The trick is to wait until the listener is thinking, "Holy crap, the entire run of Viva Laughlin didn't last this long. I'd rather hear two possums fighting over an accordion than listen to one more second of this." Then you pop in the Huey, and they think, "Hey, this is such an improvement that I don't mind that I'm going to have this song stuck in my head until I get my first postcard from my great-grandchildren on Venus."

I urge you to take action quickly. I have attached the signatures of [fantastically large number] people who do, in point of fact, feel like I do.

Respectfully submitted,
Diesel

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

If you would like your name to appear on the petition, please submit a comment, and maybe add a few words in support of Huey. I will mail the petition and comments to the NODWGTBCCR, or Clear Channel, or whoever's in charge these days.

And if you would like to offer some additional support for the cause, please write your own impassioned plea in support of Huey on your blog, link to this post, and encourage your fellow bloggers to do the same. Yes, this is a meme, and you know how I feel about memes. But this time it's for a good cause. Let's let the world know how we feel about Huey. Even Grundir the Implacable has a soft spot for "Doing it All For My Baby."

Look, I even made a neat little banner you can use. See how sad he is because his music isn't considered Classic Rock?



The code for using the image to link to this post is here:

<a href="http://www.mattresspolice.com/2007/11/do-you-feel-like-i-do-about-huey-lewis.htm"><img src="http://www.mattresspolice.com/images/huey.gif" alt="Huey needs your help!" border="0" /></a>

I should be able to enlist Renal Failure, who has made no secret of his affinity for Huey. And Logophile just gave me a Def Leppard shout-out, so I think I can count on her support. I'll drag Central Snark along too. And maybe Brent, Bossy, the Frogster, Sinister Dan and some of the other Humor-Blogs.com members.

Man, I'm really excited about my blog's newfound purpose. Come on, folks, let's show those radio people that the heart of rock & roll is still beatin'!


* That’s right, people are actually talking about my book. Don’t you feel left out? It’s like that time when everybody in your class had seen The Empire Strikes Back but your mom wouldn’t let you go on opening weekend because it was Aunt Cecilia’s birthday and the next Monday everybody made fun of you because you didn’t get the joke when somebody said that you smelled like the inside of a tauntaun and then you hid in the supply closet and cried after recess and found the janitor’s special magazines that made you feel funny inside.
** The acronym for which, Grundir the Implacable has just pointed out to me, is BAH!
*** If you set aside the non-inflation-adjusted "two hundred rent."
****It's possible that the NODWGTBCCR doesn't exist, in which case I will deliver this petition to the nearest approximation I can find. Perhaps Interpol or Unicef.
*****Although if I were two years younger, it would have been "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
******According to Wikipedia, the title of this song is actually "Do You Feel Like We Do," which doesn't make any sense. And anyway, halfway into the article they change their minds, so obviously Wikipedia is written by monkeys.


Humor-blogs.com is stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream.

Caption Contest: National Treasure

Lately I feel like I should have the phrase "Sorry, I've been really busy" automatically prepended to the body of all my emails. I forgot how time-consuming this whole employment thing is. How the heck do you people get anything important done when you're working all day?

Anyway, sorry about not replying to comments and not making my blog visiting rounds. I'm hoping things will normalize a bit in the next week or so.

In any case, at least I haven't been too busy to do the really important things, like photoshop myself into a scene with Nicholas Cage in National Treasure. You know the drill. Submit your captions in the comments. Mrs. Diesel and I will pick our favorites and I'll post a poll with the top ten on Tuesday.

Have fun!



Listed on humor-blogs.com.

The Post Where I Make Things Right With the Touchy Females

So my last post got me called a misogynist, which is rather unfair, since I don’t hate women so much as I hate people in general. That’s why my blog has the sub-heading "Antisocial Commentary." I even wrote a book with that title. I’m not sure how that’s unclear. Am I not using a big enough font?

Ok, ok, I don’t hate people, at least not the way I hate Grey’s Anatomy, but I do find them to be grating and tiresome, like one of the later episodes of M*A*S*H where Alan Alda spent the whole time whining about the horrors of war rather than playing amusing tricks on Hot Lips Hoolihan. Except that unlike with M*A*S*H, you can’t just tune it out, because people keep poking you and telling you that it’s your nephew’s birthday and you should really be watching him open presents rather than sitting on the couch in the other room reading The New Yorker.

My in-laws are Dutch, and there’s a Dutch word for being sociable that I can’t spell which is pronounced huh-ZELL-uh -- but instead of making the h sound, you make a sound like someone choking to death slowly on a walnut. Khkhkhkhuuuuhkhkhkhk-ZELL-uuuuhkhkhhkhk. The Dutch are like Germans who have had their hunger for world domination replaced with a bad upper respiratory infection.

You have no idea how many times I’ve had to wipe the globs of sputum off my glasses from having that word spewed at me. I’m ALWAYS being chided that I need to be huh-ZELL-uh, usually by my wife or mother-in-law. “Diesel, put down that book and be Khkhkhkhuuuuhkhkhkhk- ZELL-uuuuhkhkhhkhk.” There’s even a noun form of it, in which you add an “-ite” sound to the end of the word: Khkhkhkhuuuuhkhkhkhk- ZELL-uuuuhkhkhhkhk-ITE. So if a group of old Dutch people are sitting together in a living room, sipping tea out of Delft cups and discussing the relative merits of their respective negro manservants, then they are enjoying a bit of Khkhkhkhuuuuhkhkhkhk- ZELL-uuuuhkhkhhkhk-ITE. To me, it sounds like a good name for those little chunks of white stuff that I occasionally cough up when I’ve got a sinus infection, but whatever. To the Dutch, it’s a good thing.

I’m of Dutch descent too, but my parents were second generation, so the word never got passed down to me or my brothers. Come to think of it, I don’t think we learned the concept of being sociable in any language. In fact, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’re probably thinking, “Wait, you have brothers?” Yeah, sorry about that. It just hasn’t come up. I haven’t spoken to either of them in six months – not because we don’t get along, but because, geez, what do we need to talk about that we can’t cover in a ten minute phone call once a year?

So my wife’s family is much more social than mine, and frankly it’s a bit hard for me to take at times. Don’t get me wrong – being married to Mrs. Diesel would be worth having the Manson family as in-laws, but occasionally I overdose on human contact and have to go hide under my bed for a few days.

I used to feel guilty about wanting to get away from people, but I’m feeling better about it as I get older. The first indication I got that it was okay for me to be this way came when my wife and I were first married. We took a trip to Canada to visit some of her relatives. We met several of her aunts and uncles, and they were all super friendly and hospitable, as Canadians tend to be, except for one uncle, who literally didn’t say a word to us. He just sat in a chair in the kitchen and read the newspaper, while we chatted or played games or whatever. Nobody even bothered to apologize for him, because they were just so used to him being completely antisocial. I slept in this guy’s basement for two nights, and he never said a word to me. I can imagine a lot of people being offended by his lack of sociability, but my reaction was, “Wow, can you do that? That is so AWESOME.” He and I bonded that day through a complete lack of human contact. I’ve been trying to get up the courage to be that guy for the past 14 years.

My point is that while I take issue with the “misogynist” label, I’ll readily admit that I’m not big on people. I guess that in the end, I’m a bit of a loner, and I’m learning to be okay with that.

Plus, the chicks dig it. They’re easy that way.

Find plenty more touchy females at humor-blogs.com.

Can We Talk?

One of the great things about language is the fact that you can use it to communicate with other people. For example, I might say to you, "Hey, could you hand me that pencil?" And then you might, if you were so inclined, hand me that pencil. And that would work out great for me, because in this particular example what I was attempting to communicate was that I wanted you to hand me that pencil.

This may seem rudimentary to roughly 12% of my readers, because thus far my focus has been on normal -- which is to say male -- communication. My female readers, on the other hand, are thinking, "Good grief, can you imagine the CHAOS that would ensue if people were to just hand each other pencils whenever they asked for them?" Let's look at an example of female communication:

Woman: Hey, can you hand me that pencil?
Man: (Hands pencil to woman) Sure.
Woman: (Bursts into tears).
Man: Pretty disappointing pencil, huh?

You see, in this example, Woman actually had no interest in the pencil. She was simply trying to make an emotional connection with Man. Here is the same conversation, translated from Womanese into normal human speech:

Woman: It's strange that it's the times when we are so close to each other physically that I feel so distant from you, because it reminds me of when we were dating and we used to just sit together and we'd look into each others' eyes and feel a deep, unspoken connection that seemed to transcend time and space, and now, as we sit here, reading the newspaper, bound by our shared lives, I see that connection becoming ever more tenuous, and I wonder if our material ties are ironically pushing us apart on a deeper level -- so that a mundane request, once laden with meaning, has become only a base expression of human need. Please, oh please tell me you understand what I mean.
Man: (Hands pencil to woman) Sure.
Woman: (Burst into tears).
Man: Pretty disappointing pencil, huh?

Man's big mistake in this example was ignoring all of the words that Woman didn't speak before her spoken request for the pencil. If he had paid more attention to the message that Woman didn't communicate, he could have avoided a lot of crying and a trip to Target to buy ball point pens.

Now let's look at another example.

Woman:
Man:
Woman: (Bursts into tears)

In this case, Woman wanted a pencil, and can't figure out why, after 14 years of marriage, Man won't just give her a pencil without her having to ask him every single time.

Of course, none of this is news to you if you've read my best-selling book Men are from Mars and I Shouldn't Have To Tell You Where Women Are From Because After 14 Years of Marriage You Should Just KNOW Without Me Telling You. Or if you, like me, have been married for 14 years.

Now Mrs. Diesel is pretty cool, for a chick. I've pretty much trained her over the course of our marriage to understand that sometimes a pencil is just a pencil. She has pretty much stopped getting upset at me for failing to notice that she has been deliberately trying not to communicate some problem to me over the past three hours. Still, she occasionally forgets that I don't speak Womanese.

For example, this past Saturday she asked me if maybe I had spent enough time on the computer that day and wouldn't I rather help her with dinner? Keep in mind that I had already mowed the lawn, weeded the flower bed and swept the floor that day, among other chores.

I got a little testy, and told her that if she wanted me to help her with something, she should just ask me to help her, rather than insinuating that I'm wasting time on the computer. She responded, of course, that she shouldn't have to ask me.

And this is where we get into the truly baffling part of female communication.

Sometimes Mrs. Diesel and I will be just sitting in the living room, reading or whatever, and she'll say, "Talk to me." And I, because I'm a guy, say, "Talk to you about what?"

And then -- because, as I mentioned, she's pretty cool for a chick, she rolls her eyes and goes back to her book, rather than bursting into tears.

So, to recap, this same woman who can't bear to waste words asking me to help her with dinner now wants me to just spew words in her direction, for no reason whatsoever.

The conclusion that I've come to is that for a woman, communication is cheapened when you fill the words with practical meaning. Women feel about words the same way they feel about plants: They want the pretty parts chopped off and put on display, even if it means that they wither and die without having accomplished anything. Giving a woman words that are connected to actual content is like giving her a potted plant. Sure, it's nice, but it doesn't say "I love you" the way that killing the plant and disposing of the ugly bits does.

Still, Mrs. Diesel and I have each made some concessions to each other's mode of communication. For example, I have no doubt that she'll have no problem telling me exactly how she feels about this post.

And I'm off to buy flowers.


Update 2:55pm - So I'm sitting here trying to figure out why some women seem to be reacting so negatively to the last paragraph, and then I realized that my pronouns are ambiguous. The sentence...

Women feel about words the same way they feel about plants: They want the pretty parts chopped off and put on display, even if it means that they wither and die without having accomplished anything.

...should read...

Women feel about words the same way they feel about plants: They want the pretty parts chopped off and put on display, even if it means that the plants wither and die without having accomplished anything.

All I meant is that women tend to like pretty but impractical things like flowers and jewelry, not that women tend to wither and die without accomplishing anything. I mean, obviously women do tend to wither and die without accomplishing anything, but that's a topic for a whole 'nother post.

Well, I'm glad I cleared that up. Women can be so touchy.


Humor-blogs.com: (bursts into tears)

Caption Contest Winners

This week's winner was McCafferty Himself, with a caption that may or may not have been an intentional reference to the motto of the Jupiter Tourism Bureau, as displayed here by best-selling author* and caption contest loser Joel Bezaire:



If you want to be as big a loser as Joel, get your t-shirt here!

Ok, where was I? Oh yeah, caption contest. Congrats, Mr. Himself! You may display the coveted In Your Face Award.




Brad came in second with:

"You had me at hello...then you flung feces.."

And one-woman commenting machine Theresa brought up the rear with a clever riff on The Princess Bride:

Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one was not one of them.

Thanks for playing and/or voting. Hopefully next week's picture won't be nearly as disturbing. And I promise not to post any more pics of ear-rats -- although in my defense I didn't make that picture. They really did grow a human ear on a mouse. (I thought it was a rat, but it was apparently a mouse. It's kind of hard to focus on what kind of rodent it is when it has a giant human ear sticking out of its back.)

Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.


*Well, he is the best-selling author at Humor-blogs.com. Jerk.

Thursday Shriek-Out: Humor-Blogs.com

Greetings, flesh-bags! I am Grundir the Implacable, Nazgûl and Meme-Wraith. My master, Diesel, is too busy serving the kingdom of Googûl to deal with the likes of you. Although this site has been largely meme-free for the past several weeks, my lord Diesel has released me from my undisclosed location in his barn in order to deliver the customary Thursday 'shout-out.' As I have no corporeal form, it is difficult for me to shout, so my words tend to come out as a ghastly shriek. Sorry about that.

Bah! Why am I apologizing to you, when you should be cowering in fear of me? That doesn't sound right. Cowering in fear. Of me. Cowering of me. In fear. Prepositions are something I have always had a problem with.

In any case, I am here to urge you to visit Humor-blogs.com. Why? Because you will laugh your corporeal ass off, that's why. Also, my master's site has inexplicably slipped to third place in the rankings, and he needs your help to get back on top of Joel. Er, you know what I mean. It's unseemly for my lord Diesel to be listed third on his own humor blog directory. Every visit to humor-blogs.com will help improve my master's score.

So visit Humor-blogs.com today. And tomorrow. And every day this week. And next week. And on and on, until your quivering flesh lies still, rotting amongst the barrow wights.

My master will return tomorrow with the caption contest winners. Make sure you vote.

Oh, and visit humor-blogs.com.

Bah!

Lend Me Your Ear

Mrs. Diesel and I were lying in bed on Saturday morning, having been awoken by the sound of our children squealing and pounding on things in the next room. The kids routinely get up two hours before we do on weekends so they can get a head start on making our house into a disaster area.

"I think you're cute," I announced to Mrs. Diesel, as I studied her features. "Even your weird little nose is kind of cute."

"My weird little nose should be growing on you by now," she replied.

We both snickered as we pictured her nose growing on me.

"Like how they grew a human ear on a rat," I said.

"Who is 'they'?"

"The evil scientists."

"What makes them evil scientists?"

"Well, they -- "

"Grew a human ear on a rat," she said.

"Exactly." I said.

"Why would they do something like that?"

"I think it makes the rats easier to handle in the lab. They probably got tired of trying to grab the rats by the tail."

"The human ear has long been considered an excellent handle," she noted.

"Think of what a time-saver that would be," I said. "One scientist would be like, 'hey, Bill, can you hand me that rat?' And then Bill would just grab the rat by his ear-handle and toss it to the other scientist."

"Uh huh."

"And the other scientist catches the rat and says, 'Thanks, Bill. Conducting inhumane experiments on rats is so much easier now that the rats have handles on them.' And then Bill is like, 'Shhhh! The rat can hear you!'"

"You know," Mrs. Diesel said, "Just because the rat has a human ear, that doesn't mean it can understand human speech."

"Mmmm," I said thoughtfully. "That's true of so many things with human ears."

"I wonder how the rat feels about having a giant ear sticking out of its back."

"The rat is probably like, 'Hey guys, can you keep it down? It's so loud in here. Not so much on this side, but over here it's like, wow. Really loud."

While we were having this conversation, the noise level continued to escalate in the next room.

"Speaking of which," Mrs. Diesel said, "We should probably get up and tend to the children,"

"Yeah," I said. "In a few more hours they'll be fashioning crude spears to hunt ear-rats."


I have humor-blogs.com growing out of my back.

Vote!

Wow, this was a tough one. Apparently the sight of me kissing a chimpanzee was enough to get my readers' creative juices flowing, so to speak. There were over 130 captions, and a lot of them were really good. It was so competitive this week that even Joel didn't make the cut. You should still buy his book, though, especially since today is your last chance to get a signed, discounted copy.

There were a lot of newcomers among the finalists. Here are the ten captions that I finally settled on:








"You had me at hello...then you flung feces.."
- Brad

Diesel (thinking): I sure hope this isn't Cornelius tricking me....again.
- y not i

After the joint's umpteenth trip around the circle in a rousing round of "Pass the Marijuana Smoke from Mouth to Mouth" Diesel began to realize that maybe, just maybe, he was already high enough.
- Tina

Diesel: Don't get me wrong, Zira, I love that you have opposable thumbs ... it's just that you can't swing on it like it was a tree branch.
- Mark Jabo

Diesel is hoping that what happens on Planet of the Apes, stays on Planet of the Apes.
- McCafferty Himself

Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one was not one of them.
- Theresa

Zira: "Did you know I can peel a banana using just my lips?"
- Jami

"She needs just a pinch of oregano. And cheese. Lotsa cheese."
- Kim

Diesel: "Yes, I am Homo Erectus."
- Lord Likely

Ziras cries of "I need an adult" went unheard, and the most brazen case of monkey fondling in years went on uninterupted.
- Pope Terry

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Humor-blogs.com is always up for some hot monkey lovin'.