Let's Rape Us Some Whopper Virgins!

In case you're one of the fortunate few who've missed it, Burger King is sullying the airwaves with an ad campaign where a Big Mac/Whopper taste test is done by people who've never eaten either, let alone a BK Smokehouse Cheddar Griller, Eggwich w/ Canadian Bacon, Egg & Cheese or King French Fries.

In the ads, Thai Hmong tribesmen, Transylvanian farmers and Greenland Inuits allegedly choose the Whopper over the Big Mac. They never tell us how close the margin of victory is, but Hooray BK!

I haven't been this proud of western civilization since we first introduced bourbon to Native Americans. Screw those whopper virgins. Who needs to live to 110 anyway? We need to bring their primitive vascular systems into the 21st century. Drape their bones in Hugo Boss, slap a blackberry in their hands and by all means, fill their wide-open veins with flame-broiled McGoo. If only Typhoid Mary was avalable as BK spokesperson.

I guess anything beats those creepy skulking-King commercials.

Retard Jeopardy!

I had a dream last night that I'm sure is common to a lot of people - I was a contestant on the show Retard Jeopardy!
Soon after drifting off to sleep, Don Pardo, in heels and a feather boa, introduced us:"Now entering the studio, an obsessive compulsive fingernail clipper from central Jersey, Michael G."
I enter the stage cautiously, unsure why all these people were in my living room. As I assumed the position at my podium, I noticed that my dogs are the only two in the audience who are clapping.
Don continued, "An elementary school principal from Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania, Ephraim Roth. And our returning champion, a clinical psychologist from Casper, Wyoming, Sylvia Bitterman."
Ephraim and Sylvia enter the stage holding hands and kissed each other on the cheek. They both walked over to Don Pardo and the three partook in a group hug. Ephraim and Sylvia then retreated to their respective places on stage. Everyone apparently knows each other.
Alex Trebek enters wearing a pink bathrobe, top hat and bunny slippers. He gets right to it.
"Hello contestants, let's get right to it."
There is only one category today - "Opposites Attract"."
In this category, contestants", Alex informs us, "We will give you a word, you must tell us its opposite. Sylvia, as returning champion, you begin."
"I'll take Opposites Attract for two hundred."
"Tall" Alex announces, sure he has a stumper on his hands.
I'm pretty sure I've got this one and am the first to buzz in.
"Michael?", Alex asks.
"What is Short?"
"Ooh, no, sorry."
Ephraim is the next to buzz in.
"Ephraim?"
"What is 'Not tall'?"
"Correct. Select again"
"I'll take Opposites attract for seventy-two hundred"
"The answer is... 'Fast'"
Thinking the first question was an aberration, I take my chances and again buzz in first.
"Michael?"
"What is 'slow?"
"Sorry, incorrect again. Sylvia?"
"What is 'Not fast'?"
"Correct, select again."
Although there was only one category, it seemingly had no end. I continued my routine of buzzing in and guessing incorrectly until Final Retard Jeopardy! mercifully arrived. My score was in the negative hundreds of thousands of dollars range, which they informed me I would have to pay before I left. Sylvia and Ephraim had battled to a virtual dead heat and placed their wagers.
"Today's Final Retard Jeopardy! category is 'State Capitals'. Good luck."

Easy.  "Montgomery," I thought, as I confidently scribbled my answer.

Vanna White walked over to the board and spun around the Final Retard Jeopardy! answer - "Alabama".
Sylvia went on to become a two day champion after Ephraim forgot to write his answer in the form of a question, "What is A?"
I awakened startled, but quickly reassured myself, "It was only a dream, right?"

SPAM, Now in HD!

I've learned to live with SPAM, much the way one learns to live with a malady such as high blood pressure or marriage. As long as watch my intake, I can lead an otherwise normal, happy and productive life. Okay, I can lead a life.

Yahoo! has become very efficient at redirecting e-mail with subjects like "Experience 4 Nights in Beautiful Cancun - Free !" into my Spam folder. Likewise, the third part SPAM filter we use at work has managed to repel all unwanted e-mail, unless it happens to be Cyrillic. Not sure what's up with that. Of course, I can't simply delete these without first copying and pasting them into Google's language translator. Hey, I may learn some new words that I can use in rush hour traffic. I occasionally review the daily summary of filtered e-mail, just to see be sure I didn't miss one truly meant for me. I'm always compelled to allow one particular malware e-mail with the subject "Michael what a stupid face you have" into my inbox, because, obviously, the guy knows me.

By now, disposing of junk snail mail and SPAM has become routine, but my cable company, Comcast, recently started SPAMMING me in a new way - into my cable box. I know when I've been SPAMMED because there will be a little red light on my cable box, notifying me of the new "message". This message is an invitation to watch an upcoming WWF or Ultimate Fighting pay per view event. They haven't offered to enhance my manhood yet, but I'm sure that's just around the corner.

Unlike e-mail SPAM, I have no protection against Comcast SPAM. And I can't ignore it, because until I clear the messages, the little red light will continue to taunt me. I stop whatever I'm doing to get rid of the red SPAM light, but I wonder where SPAM will hit next? Will my next roll of Charmin contain those little cards that fall out of magazines? Will I tear off eight sheets and have an ad for Bob's Steakhouse fall into my lap? Tear another eight sheets and find an offer to save a dollar off my next purchase of Ex-Lax?

Let's get it over with and hide SPAM everywhere.

And don't forget to click here for a great deal on Zoloft!

Duck! A Vent!

This really isn't a vent, it's just that I amused myself so with that headline, I had to leave it in.

The actual, significantly less clever headline, should be something along the lines of “Watt?? That's An Out(r)age!”

The other working title is, “My God, this is boring.” Whatever the title, here it is:

I'm pretty certain my power company's infrastructure is mostly made of linguine. I won't mention the power company by name because it may Jeopardize Current Profit & Loss. But every time the forecast even CALLS for rain, the power goes out. Yesterday, it poured.

The first hint of trouble came yesterday afternoon as I was sitting outside around 5:30 when the skies suddenly darkened with flying monkeys. I told myself it was merely their springtime northern migration, and went back inside. That was a mistake.

At 6:15 the power went out with the dreaded, all too familiar “POP”. As the basement flooded with darkness, the boys emerged upstairs like rats on the Andrea Doria. The dogs, too, hypersensitive to the ultrasonic fluttering of monkey wings, ran into the living room in search of some explanation. I had none.

We sat on the couch, passing the time until I needed to take my daughter, Alex, to her Babysitting gig in the next town over. We were confident that the power would be restored by the time we returned, if not sooner.

After dropping off Alex, the boys asked that we go for a drive, obviously not wanting to leave the haven of functioning electronics, bright lights and XM Radio. But even after milking the ride home with a stop at the gas station, we returned to find our little piece of the development still without power.

Inside, I lit a candle and taught my son Michael to play solitaire – using REAL playing cards. After a while, we both learned that double-clicking on an Ace does not move it up top, and saying “undo” has no effect on your last move.

While Michael arranged red jacks on top of black queens BY HAND, Paul and I amused ourselves by making our 400 pound Rottie-mix, Remi, chase the circle of flashlight. We were all embarrassed for her when we stood the flashlight on end and pointed the beam onto the ceiling. Yet, somehow I felt vindication, watching this sealionesque dog jump at the ceiling, considering her gnawing of our new coffee table, our old coffee table, our new kitchen set, our old kitchen set, the patio furniture, the patio, even the new smoke detector that previously sat in the box on a table in our hallway. Now every time she flatulates, the fire department comes.

By now we were getting a bit antsy. I had tried willing the power on several times, to no avail. Suddenly I heard a rumbling on the back porch. Fearing a wayward flying monkey, I distracted Remi from the flashlight long enough to make her go first. Peering outside, we saw that the angry winds had grabbed hold of the patio umbrella and were trying to take it and our wooden table northward.
“Why couldn't it have been a monkey?”, I thought.

I ventured outside and grabbed the umbrella, trying to slide it out of the hole in the center of the table. The wind calmed long enough to let me get the base of the umbrella out of the table, then gusted to several thousand miles per hour. Let's just say, if you live below the skies of central Jersey and happened to hear the ominous overhead caterwauling of:

A Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way

Don't be alarmed. It was me.

Seeing how it was also “spring ahead” night, Michael suggested calling Domino's at 1:59, knowing there was no way they could get us our pizza by 2:14. We explored devious abuses of Daylight Savings Time, until Alex returned home at 9:30. We chatted for a while about flying monkeys, Domino's pizza and what the elementary school looks like from the air. But since her babysitee forgot to pay her and it was clear the power would not return, we all decided to call it a day.

And to think, two hundred years ago this was EVERY day.

What the...?

What the...?

Younger, more patient me came to accept the fact that every once in a while, you just have to stop and ask, “What the...?”. The problem older me has with this is that I seem to be asking this question far too often. I don't know if it's that I'm more observant, more curmudgeonly, or if everyone else on the planet has plum given up. Maybe it's a combination, but I'll let you decide as we relive a very recent, very typical Saturday afternoon I spent running errands with the kids.

First stop – the grocery store.
Now, I can accept the fact that shoppers in my local grocery store move as randomly and haphazardly as ping-pong balls on Mega-Millions night. I can even accept my shattered kneecap caused by the shopping cart of the woman who decided to make an abrupt U-Turn without signaling. Sometimes you remember that you forgot Cheez Whiz four aisles back. But what I'll never understand is this guy's inability to nest the little blue baskets under the conveyor belt. This is a blatant and hostile act that takes more effort to accomplish than if he put it away the right way. What the...?

Did he ride the short bus to school after failing the square peg-round hole test, this boy with skewbasketosis? Ultimately to be fired from his job at the paper cup packaging plant because he could only squeeze 9 cups into the 50 count bag? What must the bowls in his cupboard look like, all asunder?
As usual, I pull the stack of baskets out and rearrange them. Wegman's can thank my OCD for this.

My kids begin to whine that they're hungry. I remind them that I fed them last week, but they persist. I agree to stop at a nearby Dunkin Donuts for bagels and hot chocolate.

As we exit the super market parking lot, I'm struck by

the sign I see spiked into the ground. WE BUY SCRAP GOLD.
Scrap Gold? Is that like scrap diamonds or scrap cash? Or are they expecting to be paid
a visit by the kid who stocks the shelves at
Fort Knox, hoping to claim some of those gold bars that have survived past their sell-by dates? What the...?

As we arrive at Dunkin Donuts, we see all that is left are the NOINO bagels (noy-no). Fortunately, a fresh batch of plain bagels have come out of the oven, and rather than risk a NOINO, the kids opt for those. What the...?
One thing not seen in this picture is the Tips jar. Why does everyone feel they are entitled to tips for doing their job? I can see tipping a waiter or call girl, but someone who essentially functions as a cashier? If this Dunkin Donuts didn't exist, I could simply drive two miles down the road to another one. If we customers didn't exist, however, this Dunkin Donuts would go out of business (depriving the world of NOINO bagels). I decide to make my own tip jar and carry it around with me.

Their tummies now full, it's off to our last stop of the day – Barnes & Noble to buy a few more books for my sixteen year old daughter. We stop at the TEENS section where I begin flipping through some of the new releases prominently displayed on a table.
One of the books that catches my eye is “Baby Names”. At first I thought it was a cutesie named book that didn't just list all the possible names for boys and girls. I was wrong.

What other titles will be popping up on the Teens table? “How To Score the Best Crack”? “When Dropping Out is Best for You”? “What Do Parents Know, Anyway?”? What the...? I took a picture with my cell and figured I'd show it to the clerk, just for kicks. I knew the conversation would go one of two ways: We would both get a good chuckle out of it and they would find out why the book was there, or they would be a humorless sourpuss and spout some corporate gobbledygook about not being at liberty to comment.
It was the latter.

Perhaps she mistook me for Mike Wallace or Morley Safer.

I wonder if "Morley" is in the Baby Names book?

On the way home, I see the gas gauge is getting a little low, so I decide to fill up. As my head is awhir with thoughts of NOINO bagels and scrap gold, I pass a van belonging to a Brooklyn seafood wholesaler whose address is 155 63ST ST. Sixty Thirst Street!

I try to get closer to get a picture of the door, but the van eludes me with Nessie-like skill. I regret that I can't stop them and tell them that the prized ST is reserved only for one, with two earning the silver with ND, three gets the bronze with RD while the rest of the field settles for TH. I decide that the system is too complex, particularly for those in the fish mongering field, and perhaps NOINO slinging Dunkin Donuteers, and think it best if all number ordinals be TH. Firth, Seconth, Thirth, etc. Perhaps I should run the idea by the woman at Barnes & Noble.

I ask the attendant at the Valero Station to fill it with regular as I get out to check the pressure of my left front tire. As I crouch down with my gauge, I notice smoke wafting under my car. There's a cigarette butt, still aglow, inches from me and dozens of shiny little puddles. Bluebasket Boy from Wegmen's was here, no doubt, and he's trying to kill us all.
What the...?