Congrats, Al and Joe
Once again, the results were a tie, this time between Al's caption...  and HeyJoe's caption.  You may both display the coveted In Your Face award.  LOBO came in third, with: "I told you I could make her mouth open by jamming my finger in her Occipital lobe. Pay up, sucker!" Personally, I was partial to y not i's Justin Guarini hand puppet line, but I'm a little crazy. One of these days I'll actually update the contest standings over there on the right. Have a swell Halloween and a super weekend. Meet me back here on Monday for a preview of Barack Obama's inauguration speech. Labels: Caption Contest Winners
Sock Drawer
 You know what I hate? Those hot air blowers that they have in public restrooms these days instead of paper towel dispensers. Everybody hates those things. And the manufacturer knows that people hate them. That's why they put those big labels on them justifying their existence. "These damn things save natural resources and are more sanitary than paper towels, blah blah blah." You know what also saves natural resources and is more sanitary than paper towels? A big sign that says "Please wipe your hands on your pants because we're too f---ing cheap to buy paper towels." ***** Speaking of paper towel dispensers, the other day I was wondering about those motion-activated paper towel dispensers. Do you think those things work for vampires? I hope so, because otherwise there are probably a lot of vampires out there who aren't washing their hands after using the bathroom. On the other hand, maybe that's why they wear capes. ***** I don't really mind going to the dentist, but there is one thing that bugs me about it. You know how they put that paper bib around your neck so you don't drool on yourself or whatever? That part is okay, but what I don't like is when the hygienist starts wiping her instruments on it and stuff. This is my bib, ok? It comes with the checkup. If you need a bib, I'm sure you know where to find them. ***** Everybody I know who has hardwood floors talks about how easy it is to scratch them. Yet every bowling alley that I've been to has perfectly shiny and smooth hardwood floors, despite people chucking bowling balls at them all day. What's their secret? If I ever get hardwood floors, I'm going to ask for the "bowling alley package." Unless the secret is wearing those funky shoes. Because that wouldn't be worth it. ***** I came to a sad realization yesterday: I can, with some difficulty, name the first five presidents of the United States. I also can, with considerably less effort, name five movies that feature songs by Queen. ***** I bet that if you had an iron fist, you'd get pretty sick of the phrase "ruling with an iron fist." What if you're just a nice old grandma, and all you do is make delicious apple pies with your iron fist? Labels: Sock Drawer
Vote!
Sorry, I got so busy yesterday that I never had a chance to post the caption contest poll. Here are your finalists:  HeyJoe said... Diesel: Hey, turn her a little more to the right. I can almost pick up the Howard Stern Show. y not i said... Diesel: Hey, no reason to be scared. It's only my Justin Guarini hand puppet. Avitable said... In the ensuing threesome between Bishop, Diesel and Olivia, it was much less MWM and much more MMW than you'd expect. Doug at Taunt Vortex said... Jack and Janet enjoy a rousing game of "electroshock therapy" with Chrissy, when they are rudely interrupted by the meddling Mr. Furley. Jeff Lee said... Diesel: "This is nothing. I can even do it while I'm drinking a glass of water!" Brad said... "That's right, I built my own Olympic beach volleyball player. Just try and top that, Sideshow Bob..." Al said... Even hooked up to Diesel's converter, Dunham still found the 2/19/09 transition from analog to digital television to be a far more painful experience than she'd ever imagined. McCafferty Himself said... Bishop comforts Olivia who cannot accept that there are no tickets left for the premiere of High School Musical 3. LOBO said... "I told you I could make her mouth open by jamming my finger in her Occipital lobe. Pay up, sucker!" Bunk Strutts said... "DingDingDing Went the Trolly..." "MAKE HIM STOP! PLEEEZE MAKE HIM STOP!" "ClangClangClang Went the Bell..." Labels: Caption Contest Poll
Your Visual Guide to Media Coverage of the Stock Market
If you're like most Americans, you're confused by the news media's coverage of the recent tribulations in the stock market. Short selling, P/E ratios, beef jerky futures ... what does it all mean? Now, thanks to me, you no longer even have to read the articles to understand what's happening in the stock market. This handy reference guide is all you need to interpret the most meaningful element of those articles: the ubiquitous pictures of harried stock traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. We start with the standard wide angle view of stock traders in motion. Pictures like these mean that thing are humming along just fine in the stock market. Watch as suited professionals bark orders confidently over each others' heads. "Buy!" "Sell!" It's American capitalism at its finest.    Then, something worrisome happens. Suddenly no one is moving. The once confident men look to the sky for a sign. It's going to be ok, right?    The number of men in the picture diminishes as the situation worsens. The increasingly isolated man feels an irresistible urge to touch part of his head.    As the situation becomes more bleak, the hand moves from the scalp or forehead to the chin.    When the hand is covering the mouth, the market is in full-on panic mode. The hand over the mouth can take the standard "I can't believe this is happening" form...    ...or the "I think I'm going to lose my chili cheese dog" form.    As the situation continues to deteriorate, the hand covers more and more of the face.   Sometimes two hands are needed.  Finally, the head droops downward and the hand covers the eyes, as Mr. Trader enters the final stage of a market meltdown: despair.      This is your signal to BUY. I recommend starting with a shotgun and some bottled water. Labels: Photos
Caption Contest: Fringe
I tried to find a good picture from Max Payne, but all I could find was pictures of Marky Mark in his underwear that made me feel funny inside, so I went with this scene from the show Fringe. That's me with Agent Olivia Dunham and the brilliant but somewhat unhinged Dr. Walter Bishop. You know the rules. Submit your captions in the comments. The top ten will be selected via the latest pseudoscientific methods and posted in a poll on Tuesday. Have fun, and have a swell weekend. Labels: Caption Contest
Ask Diesel about Language Stuff
Now that you’ve read my tirade against bad writing, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Holy crap, I need to get my act together. Otherwise I’ll have no one to blame but myself if Diesel was to berate me for my incorrect usage of the subjunctive tense.” Relax, friends. I’m really not a language Nazi. I’m not going to come over to your blog and crap all over it because you don’t know how to use an apostrophe. For one thing, it’s your blog. You can write whatever you want. For another thing, it’s a freaking blog. Nobody cares that much about it. Get over yourself already. In fact, many of you were kind enough to point out that my own writing is presently imperfect. Jeff noted that I left out the word used in one sentence. And Frode remarked: I don't want to sound rude or something...
Did you write "punctuation mark's" up there?
Good post anyways. I can't tell you how pleased I am that even someone with absolutely no sense of irony could still enjoy the post. And that's really my point: "Misuse" of language is okay as long as it doesn't get in the way of what you're trying to communicate. What I was railing about in that post wasn’t so much technically "incorrect" writing as lazy, sloppy writing – especially when that lazy, sloppy writing gets reproduced for hundreds or thousands of people to see. I mean, there’s just no excuse for a housing development to call itself “The Veranda’s.” If you can afford to build 300 houses, you can afford to pay an English major ten bucks an hour to look over your signs. Well, maybe not, in this housing market. It is understandable, however, that many of you revere me as a sort of godlike figure, and are therefore terrified of displeasing me, lest my wrath rain down upon thee. With that in mind, I have decided to start a new feature, which would be called Ask Mr. Language Person if that bastard Dave Barry hadn't trademarked that name when I was in junior high. Feel free to submit your language/writing questions in the comments. I have started things off with what I imagine will be a typically stupid question about the use of apostrophes. Whats your deal with apostrophe’s? Why do you care so much?The real question here, friend, is “Why do you care so little?” The apostrophe, despite having a name that sounds like a Greek temple where goats and virgins (and occasionally virgin goats) were sacrificed to Zeus, is really the humblest of punctuation marks. It has only two goals in life: 1. To stand in for the missing letters in contractions. For example, if you combine the words do and not to make don't, the apostrophe steps in to say, “Sorry, o isn’t here right now. Would you like me to have o call you when he gets in?” Of course, if the apostrophe fails to find its proper place and insists on standing somewhere else, say in between do and nt, it is summarily shot, falls to the floor and lies there bleeding until someone needs a comma. 2. To mark nouns as possessive. If you want to imply that one thing belongs to another thing (we high-falutin’ language types call these things nouns), you stick ’s on the end of the first thing. For example, Diesel’s kickass blog. Now --and here's where things get so fantastically complicated that it will be completely understandable if you give up entirely -- if the owning noun already has an s on the end of it, you put the apostrophe after the s, and don't add another s. Wow, I know, right? It's like trigonometry or something. The apostrophe is NOT used for making words plural. I don't know where you people learned this, but it's WRONG. The ONLY exception to this is if you're pluralizing a single letter or abbreviation. For example, The Oakland A's. And unless you're the sports columnist for the Tribune, the Oakland A's are not going to come up enough in your writing for you to get accustomed to using apostrophes in this way. For all I care, they're the Oakland As from now on. Not enough sports teams have an adverb as their mascot anyway, in my opinion. If you have read and understood this post up to this point, congratulations! You have now mastered basic apostrophe use, and are qualified to work as an elementary school secretary, copy editor for the local newspaper, or United States senator. The next section is for those of you who aspire to the much lower paid position of Professional Writer. Those of you who are not aiming for such a prestigious and poverty-inducing position should stop reading here. Advanced Apostrophe Use (Not for the Faint of Heart)The history of the apostrophe is a long and sordid one. In olden times, punctuation marks were rare commodities, often being carted thousands of miles across the Mongolian steppes to the medieval monks who worked diligently through the long medieval nights to illuminate manuscripts from antiquity. (Why they didn't illuminate during the daytime, when illumination was basically just pouring in through the monastery windows, is a mystery to this day.) The apostrophe, which could be grown in the rocky soil of the Burgundian lowlands, was, along with salted pork, the only commodity that was in ready supply, and the monks had learned early on that salted pork made for poor punctuation. Thus it was that the apostrophe began to be used both for contractions and for possessives, a commonplace that worked well for hundreds of years, until one day there was a disagreement between two monks about how one could make the possessive form of it, when it's was already being used as a contraction of it is. The ensuing quarrel resulted in a schism that ended with the heretical Possessivists fleeing underground, where they would remain, subsisting on a meager diet of mushrooms and lichen, while the powers that be decreed, somewhat irrationally, that to make it possessive, one had only to add an s, with no apostrophe. Thus did its become the standard possessive form until the early 1990s, when the heretics emerged to threaten the existence of Western civilization with their divisive teachings. The truth, which the Authorities have tried to bury for lo these many centuries, is that the use of it's as a contraction and not as possessive, is completely arbitrary. The controversy could have gone the other way, in which case pedants like me would be railing against people who use it's to mean it is. But at some point society determined that it's should be used as a contraction, just as we determined that the word chair means "a seat, esp. for one person, usually having four legs for support and a rest for the back and often having rests for the arms." You can start using the word chair to mean "a small tuft of cat hair that blows past one's line of vision while one is watching television, thereby momentarily distracting one from the happenings of Desperate Housewives" if you like, but don't expect the rest of us to know what the f--- you are talking about. There's no moral issue here, as if God came down from the heavens and decreed that it's is to be used only as a contraction. The issue is one of courtesy to one's readers, and not looking like a retard. If you're interested in accommodating your readers (not to mention acquiring readers in the first place), it's a good idea to write in their primary language, using punctuation in the way that makes sense to most of them. Of course if you're writing for retards who don't know the difference, or you are interested in appearing to be a retard yourself, then you can disregard this advice. I trust that this post has been helpful to you. Please let me know how I can be of further assistance. Labels: Language
This is not a compendia of erratum.
Most people can't write for shit. I never realized this until I started my first "real" job, as a technical support representative for a big software company, when I was 25. As a philosophy major, I was accustomed to writing long, excruciatingly detailed essays on vital topics such as "Do I Exist, And If Not, Can I Get An Extension on This Paper?", and was therefore woefully unprepared for the world of bullet points, smiley faces and the indiscriminate use, of "punctuation" mark's. I was appalled to regularly receive emails like this one from coworkers:* I am plannign on being in SF from the 7th Sep to the 18th the first week I will be at a meeting but the second week, am hoping to spend a lot of time with you guys and just wanted to make sure you are all available from 7th -18th
I thought to myself, "Wow, doesn't this person realize how retarded he sounds?" The answer, sadly, is no. No one has ever told this person how retarded he sounds, because his coworkers are used to this sort of "communication," and many of them write just as badly as he does. As a 25-year-old know-it-all, I took it upon myself to raise the bar. I went out of my way to correct the grammar, spelling and usage of both my peers and my superiors. One time my boss told me to "keep her appraised," to which I responded, "You know I think you're priceless." My own emails were impeccably written and relentlessly analytical, not to mention long-winded and universally unread. What I eventually learned is that an academic environment gives you a false sense of the supply/demand ratio for carefully written, well reasoned, comprehensive arguments. In college, people keep demanding these papers from you, as if there were some massive shortage of undergraduate explanations for the fall of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, though, most people don't give a rat's ass what happened to the Ottoman Empire, and if they did, the last person they would ask about it is you. The people around you are only acting as if they care what you think because you are paying them thousands of dollars to pretend that they do. Then you get into the business world, and you start thinking, "Man, this placed is so screwed up. I can't believe the idiots who are running this place. Well, I'll fix them. This is what I was trained to do. I'm going to write a manifesto!" So you stay at work late for three weeks writing up this document that's going to change everything, and then you present it to your boss, at which point one of two things happens: If you have a good boss, he or she says things like, "This is great! I wish everybody would do stuff like this! We need to have a meeting to talk about some of this stuff!" And then six months later, nothing has happened. If you have a bad boss, he or she says things like, "This is great! I wish everybody would do stuff like this! We need to have a meeting to talk about some of this stuff!" And then you get fired, a la Jerry Maguire. I've had both kinds of bosses. Eventually you realize that nobody in the business world reads anything longer than five lines, so if you need to make a point, you have to do it right up front. If you have so much information that you can't possibly cram it into five lines, then you have to put the important stuff in bold, and put the really important stuff in red. Sometimes you have CAPITALIZE it too, if it's REALLY IMPORTANT. It's a lot like dealing with seven-year-olds. Human Inertia, my third worst boss ever, was particularly bad. He couldn't digest more than three bullet points at a time. I once wrote up a 2 page document outlining changes I wanted to make to our development process, and he scheduled a special meeting so that I could explain the "gist of it" to him. Yes, let's have a special meeting so that you don't have to spend ten minutes reading the thing I sent you. That's a good use of our time. I used to joke that I was going to draw a cartoon with Human Inertia receiving the Ten Commandments from God at Mount Sinai. He was going to be saying to God, "This looks great, but can you boil it down to three bullet points?" Once I caught on to the short attention span affliction of the business world, I started using it to my advantage. I would send out long, dull emails with some vitally important policy change buried in the fourth paragraph. By the time anyone realized whatever it was I was up to, it was too late to stop me, and I would just hold up my hands and say, "I sent you an email...." I've mellowed quite a bit in regards to the use of language since my 20s. I still grit my teeth when my boss sends me emails about "error's" he's getting in an application, but I don't say anything. I do, however, put my foot down when it comes to communications that are going outside of the company. I figure it's my responsibility to point out cases where the company that I work for is acting unprofessionally. I know that I'm not exactly a representative customer, but I can't be the only person out there who refuses to do business with an outfit that puts an apostrophe in the possessive form of its. (I'm dead serious about this, by the way. For example, there's a housing development near my house called "The Veranda's." With an apostrophe. Every time I drive past, I holler, "The Veranda's what?" I wouldn't buy a house there even if my only alternative was to sleep in a refrigerator box under the freeway overpass.) Working under the assumption that I'm not the only person who cares about these things, I refuse to go along with any improper punctuation that might make its way to a current or prospective customer. At Galactic Invertebrates, I was once asked to add a "Member's Area" link to the website. I refused, on the grounds that the area did not belong to a single member. I said that it should be Members' Area. The marketing person who was trying to get the change made sent me a link to a rule that she claimed supported her usage. I emailed back, explaining how she had misinterpreted the rule, and gave her several examples of the correct usage. For example, I said, one goes to the men's room (plural possessive, with the apostrophe before the s because the plural of man doesn't end with an s) or to the ladies' room (plural possessive, with the apostrophe after the s). Members' area follows the pattern of ladies' room. This sort of thing puts me in an awkward situation, because programmers are notoriously bad writers, and marketing folks are supposed to know how to write. Yet here I was, a programmer telling the marketing chick that she didn't know how to punctuate, period. I ended up enlisting the support of another marketing chick, but fortunately the conflict didn't escalate further. We compromised on Members Area. I rationalized that this was okay because the area didn't necessarily belong to the members; it was just an area for members. Really it should have been Member Area though. Like employee lounge or lifeguard station. The thing that most drove me crazy at GI was the way people used the word consortium. Or, more precisely didn't use it. The company's whole business was managing technology consortia. A technology consortium is a group of technology companies. The plural of consortium is consortia. One consortium, two consortia. Simple, right? I mean, it's not exactly standard English, but if a person spent 40 hours a week every week managing consortia, you might think that person would take 30 seconds to learn the proper use of the singular and plural forms of that word. You'd be wrong. Virtually everyone at that company acted as if consortia were singular, making the plural form consortias. We had customer service people talking to clients about how "this consortia is set up differently from our other consortias." It nearly gave me seizures. And let me clarify that I'm not one of those language Nazis who insists, for example, that the plural of podium is podia, or that the plural of scrotum is scrota (as in, "You can totally see those guys scratching their scrota behind the podia.") I'm fine with podiums and scrotums. But please don't start with the plural and then add an s to it to make it more plural. Orators don't stand behind podias scratching their scrotas, no matter how hot and itchy they are. I used to correct the speaker every time someone consortia incorrectly. It got to the point where people would be afraid to say the word in front of me. They'd say, "We've been having some issues with this consor..." and then they'd trail off and look at me. And I'd say "Consortium. Consortium is singular. Consortia is plural. One consortium, two consortia." And then two days later we'd go through the routine again. The problem was that the incorrect usage had become so entrenched that it sounded weird when someone used the word correctly. So when I wasn't around, everybody would shift back to the more "natural" usage. I guess that's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid that some day even copy editors and English teachers will drive past "The Veranda's" and not bat an eye. And I'll be out there, a crazy old man with a Sharpie, scribbling furiously at the sign and muttering about a time when people knew the apostrophe's place in the world. *This is copied and pasted from an actual email I received. I just changed the details. And yes, I realize that "to regularly receive" is a split infinitive. Bite me. Labels: Language, Work
Congrats, Brad and Midleah!
  Brad and Midleah tied for the best caption this week. (Brad's is the first one). You may both display the In Your Face award. Brad, you're going to have to make up a 5x banner. In third place was Hey Joe, with: Bond: James; Bond James.
Diesel: CUT! For the love of God, it's "Bond, James Bond." It's one line, how tough can it be? The competition was a bit lighter this week, because unbeknownst to me, my word verification thingy was broken, so no newbies could submit any captions. Sorry about that. Have a swell weekend. See you on Monday. Labels: Caption Contest Winners
The Bland One
Mrs. Diesel and I watch a lot of movies. We have the Netflix plan that allows you to have three DVDs simultaneously, and since it generally takes 2 days for the movie to wend its way to and from the fabled land of Netflixia*, this essentially means that we can watch a different movie every day of the year. Add to this equation the forty or so DVDs that we own, the occasional decent movie that pops up on basic cable, and every movie based on a Marvel or D.C. comics character that I drag my wife to see in the theater, not to mention the dozen or so shows we regularly Tivo, and you end up with way more crap than we can possibly watch. Despite this fact, Mrs. Diesel engages in a weekly ritual in which she compulsively scans the pay movie channels to see if they are having a free movie weekend. Every few weeks this activity will result in squeals of delight as she discovers a potpouri of free offerings on HBO or Showtime. She then pages painstakingly through the weekend's offerings, finding maybe a half dozen movies to record, most of which were in our Netflix queue anyway. Occasionally, though, she'll find some flick that slipped under our radar, which then languishes on our Now Playing list until some lazy Saturday evening when we've gone through every episode of every other program we record and neither one of us feels up to the monumental task of getting our asses out of our chairs to put a DVD into the player, and we end up watching one of these gems. That's how we end up watching crap like The Brave One, which stars Jodie Foster as a vigilante who goes around killing street punks after her husband, the guy who plays Said on Lost, is brutally murdered. It also stars Benjamin Bratt as the lone cop who suspects that there is more to this meek but beautiful woman than meets the eye, and ends up discovering her dark secret only to become her accomplice in the end. Wait, I'm thinking of Catwoman. It's Terence Howard, not Benjamin Bratt. Terence Howard is the lone cop who suspects that there is more to this meek but beautiful woman than meets the eye, and ends up discovering her dark secret only to become her accomplice in the end. I meant to write a review of this movie right after I watched it, but unfortunately I was too busy for a few days, and now I find virtually no remnants of it in my long-term memory. Looking it up on IMDB, I see that it was directed by Neil Jordan, who is known for directing The Crying Game and a lot of other movies that are about as dull as The Crying Game would have been without the surprise penis. Anyway, all I have left are some vague impressions: First, it occurs to me that playing Jodie Foster's husband in a movie is about as close as you can get to a cinematic death sentence. I gave Said 19 minutes, and I don't think he even lasted that long. Think about it: Flight Plan, Panic Room, Contact, Nell... she's always either an orphan or a widow. I think the last co-star who survived an entire movie with Jodie Foster was Christy MacNichol. Somebody needs to make a movie starring Jodie Foster and Mel Gibson as husband and wife just so the world will know which actor's costar-killing mojo is stronger. "If you die, I shall avenge you!" "Not if you die first, bitch!"** Second, this movie taught me that if your significant other is murdered by street punks, you should NOT go out and get a handgun. Jodie Foster's character lives her whole life in New York without incident, but once her husband is murdered and she gets a gun, thugs and lowlifes start coming out of the woodwork. The poor woman can't walk three blocks without running into a mugger or rapist who needs to be shot dead. There is one scene where she's running from a murderer, trips over a mugger and flies headlong into a den of rapists. Wait, is it "den of rapists" or "herd of rapists"? "Pack of rapists"? Whatever. It doesn't really matter, because I made that scene up. Still, the point holds: Don't buy a gun. If this movie has taught me anything, it's that guns are like bug-zappers for petty criminals: sure, you can kill them with it, but they wouldn't be hanging around in the first place if you weren't attracting them. Third, let's all agree that we've all seen enough movies where a character says grimly to another character at the movie's climax, "You have to shoot me to make it look like there was a struggle. It's the only way." No, dumbass, it's not the only way. Another good way would be to leave the scene before anybody shows up and then play dumb about the whole sordid business. You'd be surprised at how well that works, in all kinds of situations. Fourth, did I mention that a movie should have a point? No? Well, it should. Fifth, if you don't have a point, please for the love of all that's good in cinema, do not attempt to cover up your lack of a point by playing a maudlin Sarah McLachlan song during the denouement, in which the protagonist wanders, stoic and alone, down rainslicked city streets, giving us hope that maybe, just maybe, things are going to be okay. I like Sarah McLachlan about as much as a heterosexual male can, and I'm telling you that shoveling that mush in where the climax was supposed to go will only make things worse. I can't really explain why. It's like watching a godawful fantasy epic featuring Oscar winner Jeremy Irons as the bad guy. You keep thinking, "This should be good, but instead I just want to vomit." I hope this belated and somewhat muddled review has been of use to you. Next week, I'll be reviewing whatever forgettable crap-biscuit I watched last night. *Not to be confused with the cognitive disability that causes 1.4 million Americans to watch DVDs backwards. **That's Jodie Foster calling Mel Gibson a bitch. Labels: Movies
Vote! (No, really, vote! I promise I won't win!)
 Rickey Henderson said... "Octopussy? No Mr. Bond, this is just a woman who happens to own eight cats." Doug at Taunt Vortex said... Things get tense on the set when Diesel, in his Directoral debut, accuses Daniel Craig of being Neil Patrick Harris. Brad said... "I know you don't like it, Daniel, but the script's the script. The character's name is Areola Vaginatush, and that's that." Mike said... "Okay, I got one tuna melt, one ham and chesse and one veggie deluxe with extra pickles." John J Savo said... "Damn it! I know he looks extra slimey for a Bond Villain, but you have to take this seriously. Now, let's try again from Bond's line, 'What is a pink-shirt-wearing-faggot like you doing with such a beautiful transexual?'" Alex L said... "Sir, I supremely doubt your name is I. Ron Sphinctor, could you please sign it properly!" Bunk Strutts said... "Did you want our Signature Banana/Avocado Sauce with that?" Midleah said... "Hi there! Would it be alright if I left this copy of The Watchtower with you?" BRWombat said... You know I'm honored to be your stand-in, Mr. Craig. But can we discuss this part of the script where it says, "Bond stand-in bursts into flames and dies a horrendous death"??? HeyJoe said... Bond: James; Bond James. Diesel: CUT! For the love of God, it's "Bond, James Bond." It's one line, how tough can it be? Labels: Caption Contest Poll
A Vote for Me is Vote for Not The Other Guy
All this talk about politics has made me nostalgic for my first presidential campaign, back when I was 20 years old. I was a political science major at the time, because I hadn't realized yet that philosophy was even more abstract and impractical. There was an election for student senate president at the college I attended, and a guy named Peter something-or-other was running unopposed for the office. He was currently serving as the treasurer, and everybody seemed to assume he was a shoo-in for the top job. "This will not stand!" I hollered to the three other staffers who were still lolling about the offices of the student newspaper at 10pm, the night before the election. "This is America! You can't have candidates for high office running unopposed!" I decided then and there that I would start a write-in campaign. I might not win, but at least I'd make Peter whatever-his-name-was work for his win. This was in 1990, before digital photography and sophisticated desktop publishing, so a friend and I used the office copy machine to make a hundred campaign posters with inane slogans like "The name you can trust" scrawled next to a grainy, virtually unrecognizable 500% magnification of my driver's license photo. We ran all over campus, plastering these things on every wall next to every poster of Peter whosit. Now anyone who has ever met me could tell you how ill-disposed I am to be in politics. I have a very low tolerance for bullshit, I'm a total know-it-all, and I have a tendency to blurt out rude, absurd, or blatantly offensive statements just for the fun of it. And I've actually mellowed over the past 18 years; back in 1990 I was nearly insufferable. So the odds of me winning this election, even if I had started campaigning weeks earlier, were virtually nil. The student body was about 4,000 people, and as of the morning of the election maybe 8% had any idea who I was. Of those, probably half thought I was the biggest asshole on campus, and would have voted against me if the other candidate had been Idi Amin. And of those few people who actually knew and liked me, probably 95% would have been terrified to have me in a position of authority. You'd be surprised how hard it is to pull off a definitive second place finish in a two man race under these circumstances. And as if being virtually unknown, not well liked among the segment of the electorate who knew me, and not having me name on the ballot weren't handicap enough, the current senate president went around tearing down my posters the morning of the election. It was a rule, you see, that any signs put up on campus had to be approved by the senate. She could tell they were unapproved because they didn't bear the student senate seal. Of course, the student senate seal was kept in an unlocked desk about 20 feet from my campaign headquarters, and if I had known that she was going to be such a humorless bitch about my pathetic little campaign, I'd have gone to the trouble of forging senate approval. Oh well, you live and you learn. Undaunted, I got up well before noon that day and skipped two classes to campaign hard. I called everyone I knew to urge them to vote for me. Because I was clearly unfit for the office, my only hope for getting votes was to convince people that I had no chance of winning. "It's just for fun," I'd say. "There's no way I'm going to win. My name's not even on the ballot. You have to write me in. I'll be lucky to get 5% of the vote." I have to admit that it was a little demoralizing to realize just how frightened my friends were of the prospect of me holding political office. I had to basically guarantee them that the odds of me winning were statistically insignificant, and even then I could rarely get a firm commitment. The problem, I think, is a characteristic that very few people possess, which I will call anti-charisma. Anti-charisma kicks in when you're basically an asshole and everybody knows it, but you're an asshole is a way that makes people think that you appeal to a broad spectrum of other assholes. Newt Gingrich and Hilary Clinton both possess hefty amounts of anti-charisma. Almost nobody likes either of them, but a perception exists, for some reason, that some large group consisting of people other than me must like them. You see, I had gotten to be such an insensitive jerk that it was difficult for people to fathom that I was as big of a jerk as I seemed. They assumed that there was something that they were missing; that deep down I must be alright because nobody could get away with being that much of an asshole all the time. The truth, of course, was that I really was that much of an asshole, and I could get away with it precisely because people people didn't realize that the asshole scale went that high. The lack of imagination of ordinary people is a prime enabler of assholishness. My friends saw how I got away with being an asshole, and were therefore skeptical of their fellow voters' ability to appraise my assholishness. So even the people who might have voted for me out of pity tended to vote against me on principle, in case they were the only ones standing between me and political power. With a lot of hard work and assurances that I wouldn't take the job even if I were elected, which I wouldn't be, I swear to God, I managed a pitiful second place finish, garnering around 4% of the votes -- thanks mostly to historically low voter turnout. I didn't even have the satisfaction of being a spoiler. That first campaign was definitely a learning experience, though. And who knows, if I had started my campaign a few weeks earlier, gotten my name on the ballot, and printed up some nice-looking official campaign signs... I might have scared away that 4% too. Labels: Full of Myself, Politics
Caption Contest: Quantum of Solace
You know the rules. Submit your captions in the comments. The top ten will be posted in a poll on Tuesday so that Diebold can make a final decision. By the way, if you're wondering where all of your comments on previous posts are, don't worry, they're not gone. They're just hiding. I changed the way the commenting module matches up comments with the post, so that is uses the post permalink rather than the Blogger post ID. Hopefully I can figure out a way to translate the existing post IDs to permalinks so that your comments will come back. Labels: Caption Contest
Busy as a Gopher
Hey guys - Sorry I haven't been around much. Still very busy with work. Things should lighten up by next week or so. I've made a few more fixes to Humor-Blogs.com based on the feedback I've gotten. If you've tried to give me a smiley recently, you've probably noticed that my site profile loads really slowly. That's because of some really badly written javascript that I'm using for the commenting feature. I've made some improvements to it, but it's still a little slow. I'll try to get it working better this weekend. In the meantime, thanks to everybody who has actually waited for the damn thing to load so you could give me a smiley. Please let me know if you notice any other problems with the site. I actually do read your suggestions and often make changes based on them. I'll see you back here tomorrow for the caption contest. Labels: Humor-blogs.com
Hey, can I borrow $700 billion to reassure you that my finances are sound?
Welcome to this special edition of Mattress Police - Antisocial Commentary. Recently we have seen the dollar gaining on foreign currencies and gas prices falling sharply, while the economy grows at a rate of 3.9% and interest rates remain historically low. As you'll know if you watch The News(TM), all these factors point to an inevitable FINANCIAL MELTDOWN. To guide and reassure you during these difficult times, I will be answering your questions regarding our economic situation. Well, not your questions, because I haven't really taken the time to fully assess the situation and I frankly don't care what you think, but here are some questions. Things don't really seem that bad. Are we really in a financial crisis?Oh hells yeah we are. Nobody is loaning money to anybody for anything any more. Our whole economy is built on credit. If nothing is done, all business will come to a screeching halt. There will be mass unemployment, breadlines, a resurgence in ragtime music, flappers running through the street, etc. What is a 'flapper'?A flapper is a fish-like creature that is roughly the size of a Chinese soccer ball. It has human-like legs that it uses to run through the streets during times of economic crisis. Are you saying that the flapper's legs are each like a human, or that it has legs resembling those of a human?You and I both know that this isn't really what you want to ask. You're concerned about the impending FINANCIAL MELTDOWN and you are feigning interest in giant amphibious fish in order to distract yourself from your shrinking 401(k) fund. Ok, then answer me this: Are you saying that even an established company that is trying to borrow money to build a new manufacturing plant won't be able to get a loan?Let me put it this way: Recently there was a report that McDonald's had to delay putting cappuccino machines in its restaurants because it couldn't get a loan. McDonald's. Who wouldn't loan money to McDonald's? What kind of interest rate are we talking?Maybe eight, nine percent. Hey, that's pretty good. It sure beats losing 10% in the stock market overnight. Can you put me in touch with the guys at McDonald's who want to borrow money? I've got about eight hundred bucks left in my IRA that I'd be willing to loan them.I think you're missing the point. Lenders are hoarding their cash, putting it all in t-bills rather than loaning it to companies like McDonald's. They're afraid of not getting their money back, so they're putting it in the safest place they know of: the U.S. Government. But if everybody does that, then economic growth will stop. That's why we need a massive bailout. You mean to give people the confidence they need in the basic soundness of the economy to start lending again?No, to undermine the financial solvency of the U.S. government by taking on fantastic new amounts of debt. If we spend enough money on this bailout, the U.S. will be on the verge of bankruptcy and no one will dare to buy government bonds any more. And then loaning money to businesses starts to sound like a pretty attractive alternative! That's brilliant!Thank you. Also, the dollar will crash, making our products cheaper in other countries, which also helps our economy. Neat!Yeah, and the really cool part comes when we decide to default on all our debts, thereby destroying China. It sounds like this $700 billion bailout is just what the doctor ordered! Is there any downside?Virtually none, thanks to the Progeny Proximity Principle, or PPP. What is the PPP?It's the principle that people care exponentially less for the fate of each succeeding generation of their offspring. For example, let's say that you care about your own child about 70% as much as you care about yourself. Generally, you will then care about your grandchildren about 70% of 70%, or 49% as much as you care about yourself. By the time you get to your great-great-great-grandchildren, you care about them about as much as you do about, say, the average Peruvian or Lithuanian. Which is to say, you don't really give a shit about them. And those people -- those nameless, faceless distant offspring of yours -- are going to be the ones who have to pay back the $700 billion, plus interest. Gee, you're right! I totally don't give a shit.Nobody does. It's what makes our economy work. How much is $700 billion anyway? I can't really wrap my brain around that number.With $700 billion, you could buy Venus. The planet?Yes. Wow.Or imagine that somebody invents a machine that can make you live forever, but each additional year costs you a billion dollars. If you had $700 billion, you could live for 700 years, plus however long you were going to live anyway. So, like, 780 years maybe, if you're not a smoker. Wow. But then I might live to meet my great-great-great grandchildren, and I'd have to explain to them what I did with their money. Yes, but then you can remind them that you fought for their freedom in the war. What war?Whatever war they haven't studied yet in history. And if you get really desperate, you could always sell Venus. Yeah, I would probably need that $700 billion back.$700 billion! Wake up, pal. Venus isn't worth what it used to be. You'd be lucky to get $350 billion for that ball of rock. Wow, interplanetary real estate has really taken a dive.Only in some areas. Personally, I'm wishing I had grabbed Uranus when I had the chance. Labels: Jerks, Nonsense, Politics
Physician, Go F--- Thyself
A mother brings her son to the doctor. It seems that the boy has been acting strangely, and although he says he feels fine, the mother is concerned. The doctor, who is a very busy man, briefly looks over the boy. The boy is acting somewhat agitated and hyperactive, but otherwise seems healthy. The doctor concludes there is nothing wrong with him, and sends them home. A few weeks later, the boy's condition has worsened, and the mother brings him back to the doctor. While in the doctor's office, the boy can't sit still and talks incessantly. The doctor asks the mother if he is having trouble in school, and she tells him he's not; his grades are fine. The doctor concludes that if the boy functions fine in school, there is no reason to do anything. He sends them home again. Several more weeks pass, and the mother once again brings the child to the doctor. By now the boy is literally bouncing off the walls, yelling and screaming. The doctor tries to subdue the boy, but the child is like a wild animal. He hisses and snarls, and his arms and legs flail crazily. "It's probably just a phase he's going through," says the doctor. "Kids do this sometimes, and usually the best thing to do is to just let them..." Suddenly the boy freezes in mid-flail, a terrified look on his face. His eyes roll up into his head and he falls over backwards onto the floor, unconscious. "Oh my," says the doctor. "What? What is it?" says the mother, rushing to her son's side. "Can't you see?" says the doctor. "Clearly there is something very wrong with this boy." The doctor steps toward the door of the examination room. "Where are you going?" demands the mother. "In a case this severe, I need to consult with my colleagues." The doctor leaves, closing the door behind him. After several agonizing minutes, the doctor returns. "Good news!" says the doctor. "What is it?" says the mother. "My colleagues and I are fairly certain that your son's condition can be cured with a ridiculously expensive, and very risky surgery, the likes of which has never before been attempted in this country!" " Surgery?" exclaims the mother. "For what? You haven't even taken the time to examine my son. How can you even know what's wrong with him? Ten minutes ago, you were convinced he was fine!" "With respect, ma'am, this isn't the time to dwell on the failings of the past. Do you want your son to get better or not?" "What kind of question is that? Of course I want him to get better. But given the fact that you've done absolutely nothing to help him in the past, and that you have, in my opinion, been criminally negligent in your oversight of my son's condition -- not to mention the fact that you haven't taken the time to conduct even a rudimentary examination...." "Ma'am, when your neighbor's house is on fire, it's not the right time to say, "Old Joe, he was always smoking in bed.'" "What? What the f--- are you talking about? That's a terrible analogy. But while we're on the subject, what would be the time to smack old Joe for smoking in bed?" "After you've bought him a new house." "Gee, that works out pretty well for old Joe, doesn't it?" "The fact is, my colleagues and I have, based on a quick and admittedly panicky assessment of your son's condition, concluded that his best chance for recovery lies in a dangerous, insanely expensive, and unprecedented surgery. So that's what we're going to do." " What? How can you already have decided on this, without even taking the time to fully explain it to me?" "Well, in all honesty we aren't all in agreement yet about the surgery." "Aha! So there are other options being discussed." "What? No. This is the only option we've considered. The reason we haven't been able to get a consensus yet is that, well, a few of our doctors...." "What?" "Well, let me put it to you this way. Have you thought about getting your son a bow and arrow set?" "A what?" "You know, for target practicing and whatnot." "What on earth does this have to do with my son's condition?" "Oh, nothing. Absolutely nothing. But one of our doctors is worried about his job, and he was thinking that if he was able to give your son, you know, a really cool bow and arrow set, it would look good on his next review." "You must be joking! First you tell me that my son's only chance is this radical surgery, and now you're trying to sell me on a bow and arrow set?" "It's very important to Dr. Wyden. He won't go along with the surgery unless we throw in the bow and arrows. Also..." the doctor pulls a handwritten list out of his pocket. "Let's see... Dr. Watson wants to get your son some DVDs... and, oh, this is nice: Dr. Bean wants to get your son a wool sweater!" "A sweater? What does that even have to do with medicine? Are you people all insane?" "Look, this is just the way our office operates. We need a majority of doctors to agree on any procedure, and sometimes you can't get a doctor to go along unless you let them do something that lets them show what a good doctor they are." "I would think that saving my son's life would be evidence that you're good doctors." "That's one way to look at it. A bow and arrows is more concrete, though." "So... you're basically bribing these doctors to go along with you. Do these doctors even think this surgery is the right thing to do?" "Who can say? The thing is, none of us want your son to die. That would look really bad. On the other hand, if your son lives... well, maybe it was because of the risky, expensive surgery we're pushing, or maybe it was because there was nothing really wrong with him in the first place. So, you see, there's no guarantee that we'll get any credit for it. On the other hand, if your son walks out of here with a bow and arrows and a really sharp sweater, well, everybody wins." "I think I need to find a new doctor." "Good luck with that. So, do you want your son to live and get a nice sweater or not?" Labels: Fiction, Jerks, Politics
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