The Post that Explains Everything

The Dark Knight has now made a staggering $442 million. It's poised to overtake Star Wars as the second biggest grossing movie of all time (it'll take a few more weeks to sink Titanic). By contrast, the X-Files movie, released one week later, has made less than $20 million. That means that for every one person who has gone to see The X-Files: I Want to Believe, there are 22 people who have seen The Dark Knight. It's as if every state in the union except Minnesota picked The Dark Knight over the X-Files. This past weekend, six times as many people went to see a movie based on the music of Abba as went to see The X-Files. The legendary Chris Carter just his ass kicked by an aging 70s bubblegum pop act from Sweden. Sweden, people. If you were unlucky enough to wander into a theater showing The X-Files this weekend, you would actually have seen tumbleweeds blow past the screen.

Why is this? Well, because nobody gives a shit about the X-Files any more. Whatever fond memories we had of a quirky little show about a misanthropic FBI agent on a quest to discover the Truth about the paranormal were erased by four years of red herrings and pretentious philosophical discussions as Carter squeezed every last bit of life out of the show. Losing your two principal actors is usually a pretty good sign that it's time to wrap things up, but Carter just kept going. He's the kind of guy you see on Cops who keeps driving after all four of his tires have been torn to shreds by those spike strips, showering the freeway with sparks from the car's bare rims as the police helicopter hovers overhead. Keep going, Chris! You might make it!

This seems to have turned into Movie Week at the Mattress Police, but my point was originally going to be that you can only toy with people so long before they start to resent you. I've been thinking for a while that I really need to do a better job of explaining who I am and what this site is all about, because new readers must be terribly confused and veteran readers must be thinking, "Hey, whatever happened to the Huey Lewis petition / Grundir the Implacable / Diesel's campaign for president / Gibson Praise / Samantha's clone / etc."

As the X-Files entered its death throes, they used to promise that this episode was going to be the one that "explained everything." It never was, of course, and I was left to sit there like Homer Simpson, complaining, "That didn't explain anything." (To be fair, I never saw any of the episodes from the final season, so it's possible that they really did explain everything, long after I no longer cared.)

So here's my attempt to explain (almost) everything.

Why "Mattress Police"?

I like the movie Fletch. Also, the domain was available.

Why "Diesel"?

You'd know this if you read my book. The name started as a joke. When my wife was pregnant with Climber, I used to claim to want to name him "Diesel" because I thought it was the coolest name ever. A few years later I started working at a company where there was already another Rob, who was a real asshole. I would get introduced as "Rob," and I'd quickly clarify that "I'm not the bad Rob." I would then add, diplomatically, that there wasn't necessarily a bad Rob, but if there was, then I wasn't him. Eventually some of my coworkers took pity on me and decided to give me a nickname. They made the mistake of asking me what I wanted to be called, and I said, without a hint of hesitation, "Diesel." They went along with it, and soon everybody, even His Excellency Lord Monkeyhands, was calling me Diesel. You can read a slightly embellished, but more interesting, version of the origin of this name here.

So "Diesel" isn't some sort of blogging persona?

I don't know how to answer this. The question assumes that I have some sort of "real" personality, and that I adopt a different, artificial personality when I blog. The fact is that pretending to be someone else is an integral part of my personality, so if I forced myself not to write facetiously, I'd be doing the very thing I was trying to avoid: putting on an artificial personality. Sure, I can be "serious" when I need to be, but "serious Diesel" isn't any more my "real" personality than "happy Diesel", "depressed Diesel", or "sarcastic Diesel."

Ok, but if you acted the way you write, you'd be... insane, right?

Let me put it this way: In my first meeting with my current employers, I explained that the cougar, mountain lion, and puma were really just different words for the same thing. Not because it had anything to do with what we were talking about, but because I just thought they should know. At the first team meeting that I attended after being hired, I put on a puppet show starring a power cable and a Cat5 cable. Last Thursday I decided to be excessively friendly for about 2 hours. I went around slapping people on the back and saying things like, "Hey, Boss!" A few weeks ago I put a sign up on my office door that reads "Diesel Wellness Center" in giant letters. Beneath that is a small line of text that reads, "Appointments Only." When people ask me about the sign, I ask them if they have an appointment. At my wife's family reunion last week, I got bored so I amused myself by drawing a face on a bottle of bleach and then taking pictures of all of the family members with "Mr. Bleach."

I don't know why I do this stuff. It just makes me happy.

You sometimes joke about taking Prozac so that you won't end up shooting yourself in the head. Isn't that in bad taste?

No, because I take Prozac so that I won't end up shooting myself in the head. Seriously, I have a history of severe depression and if I didn't believe that God has some kind of purpose in mind for me, I'd probably have killed myself long ago. Thankfully, Prozac frees me from having to decide not to kill myself several hundred times a day, so I can focus on other things.

How on earth does your wife put up with you?

Well, it helps that she has an excellent sense of humor. Other than that, I can't really explain it.

What is the point of this blog?

It's good writing practice, I like to make people laugh, and I'm hoping to build my readership to help my odds of getting my novel published. I self-published my first book, a collection of my better blog posts, and I'm thrilled to have sold about 150 copies, but I'm aiming for the big time with the novel.

What is this Humor-Blogs.com thing?

It's frustrating to try to get the word out about a blog like Mattress Police, because search engines return results based on words that other web sites use to link to a site. So someone looking for information on mattresses or diesel engines has a pretty good chance of coming across this blog, but someone searching for funny blog posts will never find it. Humor-Blogs.com was designed to be a conduit that directs people to this blog and other funny blogs. There are other blog directories out there, but frankly they all use pretty crappy ranking algorithms, so the "top ranked blogs" usually aren't even very good. Humor-Blogs.com uses the fairest ranking system I could come up with, which explains why Mattress Police is generally in the top five. Seriously, I'm not cheating. I swear.

So... Are you a programmer? Or a writer? Or a graphic designer?

Yes.

Do you really work at Google?

Yes. I actually work for another company that Google has hired for certain projects, so I'm not a Google employee. I do, however, work on site at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

Are you really the treasurer for your church?

Thankfully, not any longer. I was possibly the worst treasurer in the history of mankind, and that includes Judas.

Who is Grundir the Implacable?

Grundir the Implacable is a Nazgul -- one of the nine ring-wraiths or "dark riders" who once served Sauron, the evil overlord of Middle-Earth. After things started to go badly for Sauron, Grundir came to me looking for work. He keeps my estate free of gophers and hobbits, and dispatches memes for me. He first appeared in a guest post I did for SayNoToCrack over a year ago.

Where is Grundir These Days?

Grundir is starting to annoy me almost as much as the memes he dispatches, so he's been making himself scarce lately. He most recently exercised his meme-dispatching services at Sci Fi Catholic, where he explained the origin of his hatred for hobbits:

My hatred for hobbits precedes my death and transformation into a Nazgul. I hate all diminutive humanoids, truth be told. I think it started with my father, who was an exceedingly cruel man. He was not actually short, but he was always very distant, which made him appear much smaller than he was. He used to urinate into wineskins and then toss them at my head from the roof of a neighboring cottage.

What's going on with your campaign to get Huey Lewis played on classic rock radio stations?

Unfortunately for Huey, I have a short attention span and not much follow-through. Also, I'm not sure what to do with a petition that had, at last count, 75 signatures. Huey deserves better.

So you're serious about liking Huey Lewis?

I find your question insulting.

What is M.I.A.S.M.A.?

M.I.A.S.M.A. is the Mattress Police Institute for the Advancement of Scientific Missions of Awesomeness (the 'P' is silent). Its goal is to improve science by subjecting all scientific theories to a rigorous review by a large number of unqualified individuals. Read about its inception here.

I applied to be a member of M.I.A.S.M.A. but never heard back. Am I in or what?

Sure, why not?

Why don't you respond to my emails?

Either (1) You're annoying me, or (2) You fell victim to my notorious inability to manage details, like responding to emails. It's pretty much 50/50. Send a follow-up email if you're feeling lucky.

What's going on with your campaign for the U.S. presidency?

The important thing to remember here is that I'm running in the 2020 race, so there's plenty of time for this shtick to grow thin. Be patient.


Ok, I think that covers just about everything. Let me know if there's anything else you desperately need to know.

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