The Transubstantiation of the Cheese and Wine

I get strong cravings for meat every once in a while. A perfect meal for me in this situation is a medium rare porterhouse, a baked potato, asparagus, and a glass of Château Puygueraud (any year). But sometimes I have this craving and just can’t get the meal together. First of all I don’t have any Château Puygueraud on hand and haven’t for over a year. Secondly, I don’t always have a good steak just lying around. Thirdly, I live far from civilization (if indeed such a thing does exist) and can’t go out and easily buy these items. So I must at times make do with a cheese plate and a different wine, often an American (or even Canadian) Bordeaux style blend. One of the best deals I ever had was 1998 Conn Creek Anthology for only $18 a bottle. I was flat broke and thus couldn’t justify buying more than the 3 bottles I purchased (which I also couldn’t justify). Well, needless to say, that’s all gone too.

To get back to the point, sometimes a glass of wine, a few pieces of extra aged Gouda and/or some Old Mimolette and maybe a slice of mango or apple do the trick. It is as though they have somehow transformed into that perfect meal inside me.

a new deodorant can of deodorant worms

Trying a new deodorant is a big deal for me, because I have allergic reactions to almost every deodorant and antiperspirants make me sweat profusely. My last deodorant had the slogan “developed with athletes” proudly displayed on the label. I often wondered how the athletes assisted with its creation. Were they the “scientists” who formulated it? Were they questioned to see what they wanted in a deodorant? Were they guinea pigs who were experimented on, perhaps without their knowledge, or were they just pulverized, liquified, or granulated to somehow serve as the base for the deodorant? Doesn’t really matter, because it worked okay. If it works, I don’t care how many dead sports heros are in it, and I don’t care how dumb the people are who made it. But I could no longer find that particular deodorant. My new deodorant looked as if it had already been opened and possibly used, so I examined the top to see if there were hairs or something in it, and written right on the top were the words “TAKE THE RISK”. I was thinking, would some dude rub this under his arm and then emboss these words to try to goad me into acquiring his unique variety of underarm warts? Now, you know I’m a risk taker when it comes to deodorant, because i need to try them out to find out if I’m allergic. I don’t need to be taunted by my deodorant, as though I’m not living on the edge already. Another slogan for the same deodorant was, “FOR RISK TAKERS, It’s the smell of telling your boss that he hasn’t had an original idea in 20 years.” That seems a bit unfair, because I am my boss, so If I wear this deodorant I’m telling me I’m not a very good boss, plus, I’m a risk taker, and I haven’t had any good ideas in a while, and apparently I don’t like me. Of course, I would have to assume that it was the marketers complaining that they had to do this campaign, because how could they have known that I might take the risk?

Well, I decided to go ahead and take the risk, I’m wearing the deodorant as I write this. It seems to be working okay, but I’m beginning to feel dissatisfied with my job, life, self, I would jump off a building but I would have to drive for more than an hour to find a building tall enough... There is a silo about a mile from here. Now I’m on a quest to prove something to this deodorant. But it is easier to be a risk taker now that I hate myself.

The tale of Lucifractus

Once upon a time there was a 3 sided semi-opaque semi-translucent boy with a glowing spine. He was just opaque enough that you couldn’t see all of his internal organs (which were shiny and true). He was very refractive, more refractive than other semi-opaque things would normally be, for instance, a sandblasted prism would not be nearly as refractive as he. His refractiveness was highly coveted by black marketeers and there were many attempts made to capture him, lobotomize him and use him as a chandelier. But in his refractiveness was his cunning, plus he could run equally swiftly forwards, backwards and sideways, and he made many daring escapes. Sometimes he would pretend to be part of a chandelier (which is ironic, incase you didn’t notice). At other times he would pretend to be a neon sign, and had even earned the nickname “neon spine”. Due in part to his personal charm and to a great degree due to his ability to recharge glowing golf balls by resting them in his shirt collar he became something of a local celebrity. All of the 24 hour business men knew him due to his consistent presence and visibility on the nighttime courses. He was the first ever in all history to simultaneously hold the titles “Very Glowy” and “Highly Refractive” at the state fair. It was this renown for taking part in simple community activities that eventually landed him the opportunity to be on Jay Leno. But Lucifractus was a proud little fella, and decided that even though Jay’s head could easily support his weight, he would wait until he was invited as a proper guest. His personal integrity gained him even more prominence in his small town but he was never again asked to go anywhere or do anything by anyone outside of his small town again. He lived a simple life, became a bee keeper, and sold honey on the street corner. Many wondered how a life with so much sparkle and promise could have made such a nominal ripple in the fabric of the patchwork quilt of our lives. The easy answer is, that’s what always happens. Call it pride, modesty, artistic or personal integrity...

The moral of this story is, “If Jay Leno wants to wear you as a hat, just let him.”

Marketing New Economic Hybrids

I’ve seen many third-rate products gain almost universal acclaim due to great marketing campaigns. You can probably think of a few billion of such instances yourself. One of the lamest and most offensive product endorsements you will ever be bombarded with is the marketing of a child by that child’s progenitor.

No matter how good your product is no one will appreciate it without some sort of marketing. One of the best forms of marketing is word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is usually much more effective than other types of advertising because it generally comes from a friend, colleague or other familiar source. Word-of-mouth is also generally delivered with a great amount of enthusiasm because the person WANTS to talk about the product or service. They aren’t being paid or coerced to do it. They often don’t even have a clue that they are advertising. They are just talking about what they believe in.

I believe this is so with most parents, they believe in the product. They have to believe in it because it comes from their “factory”. They don’t want others to think they churn out shoddy progeny. There hasn’t been enough real-world testing to know whether the child will be capable of any appreciable tenure on the world scene, receive any acclaim or notoriety, or even assimilate into the proletariat cog-pool. So the parent starts an ad campaign early on to convince people that their flatulent little poo-ball has intrinsic worth beyond what appears to the “untrained” eye.

This is accomplished by parading the “outpouring of ones loins” around proudly so everyone can see. If the “loin-fruit” is more of a rotten apple, then photos are proudly displayed while horrific tales of anguish, perversion and sadism are refashioned into charming post-traumatic retrospectives in which the antihero is portrayed as truth incarnate. The facts are not fully glossed over, most of the gut-wrenching detail is on display. The parent/marketer does cover things up, but they need to keep the product real, so it is mostly the presentation that is altered, not the facts.

A common way to “happy things up” is to cap it all off with a colloquial buzzphrase such as, “boys will be boys”, “we just love him to death,” “he’s my joy”, “we were all kids once”, “if you had kids you’d understand”, “you did the same thing when you were a kid”, and “well, lets just see what your kids turn out like!!!”

Of course, you don’t have to let people know you have such a bad product. In fact, you could go back to the drawing board and figure out if you really should be in marketing. Maybe you’d be better served (as would all of us) if you just spent more time improving the product before you tell us all how great it is.

I realize that I truncated this analysis rather abruptly, but does anyone really have time to dissect and catalogue the intricacies of a collective irrational mind? Besides, you wouldn’t read it.

HOW TO WIN *EVERY ARGUMENT (PART III)

Here are a few more tips and tricks to try (just for fun) during your next argument.

Establish multiple definitions of key words. Listen closely to the opposing viewpoints and pick out the key words that they use to make their case. Take special note of the meanings they intend to apply to that word in this context, then start using these words to build your own case. Avoid using their definitions, imply this by your context but try to straddle at least two different definitions of these key words at all times. This will allow you to change the meaning of your statements “post factum” by making statements such as, “I was referring to (the word) in its classical sense” or “I was bringing up a hypothetical” or “I meant that as a verb” or even “well, if you want to get all technical about it I’ll just make up a new word for the concept” (then start replacing the word with their name, their children’s names or other topics they might find touchy).

Try footnotes. This is a variant of the afore mentioned method, but in this case the word choice is fully initiated by you. The research should be done in advance to find a few great misleading words. Although, pretty much any word should be vague enough because you can also add meaning to your words by “footnoting” them thus raising them beyond the scrutiny of context. Then, later you can explain that you had “footnoted” that particular usage of the word and were going to come back to it later. Or you can say that the word must be understood in context and you have to finish your entire thought before it can be properly explained. Try this several times during the discussion. Depending on the desired reaction, this can be particularly enjoyable if your proof seems to be negating itself.

Go with what you know. This is a cheesy way to argue, but many find it enjoyable. Every single little thing that the other person says, you just say, “I don’t know about that”, that’s it. You don’t need to know anything, and you just might win.

I’ll conclude this lesson with a story about an argument that I witnessed just the other day. A guy walks up to me at the gas station (while I’m filling the tank) and is just finishing what sounds like a very forceful argument, he seems to be making a good point. I assumed he was talking on his cell phone, but as he walked up to me and finished his point (which was totally coherent, yet unintelligible (brilliant style)) I could see that he was just some bum or drug addict. He had no phone, he wasn’t talking to anyone specific, he was talking to everyone. Taking on the entire world one blip or conversational fragment at a time.

As he completes his dissertation, he stares right at me and says, “I’m right! Well I sure don’t see you arguing!” Then he walks away saying, “yeah! That’s what I thought!”

I could have spoke up but then he would have probably said, “back off, this is between me and your hair!” So he won that argument just by being vague about who or what he was actually arguing with and what his beef was. Brilliant self preservation mechanism. And a reasonably respectable style.

* HOW TO WIN (almost) EVERY ARGUMENT (PART III)

HOW TO WIN *EVERY ARGUMENT (PART II)

Sometimes you need to avoid the argument to win. I know that may mean that you don’t win the current argument, but you have to consider your overall record. You need to remember that some people will actually kill you for being a winner or even starting an argument with them. I know that it puts a huge damper on your day if you don’t get to argue (especially if you belong to the “Total Jackass” school of debate), but you have to think of the big picture, there are many others out there waiting to engage you in verbal fisticuffs. Are you going to take away their joy because you want to match wits with a knife, gun or kick to the head?

Remember, no matter what your specific aim is, to teach, preach, or terrorize, argument is about destruction. You certainly can’t teach someone anything new until you have extinguished their hopes, banished their dreams, pulverized their expectations, subverted the foundations of their deeply held beliefs and deconstructed the psychological artifice that keeps them from listening to you blindly. Plus, sometimes you need to convince them that obvious truths such as gravity don’t exist (this will be discussed in part 8).

The great thing about my methods is that they are proven true for almost all styles of and motives for argumentation.

Of course there is no point in facing-off with a person who has no intellectual fodder to throw on the mixed metaphorical bonfire of brain-boxing. If you have some dummy throwing mind-feces at you, just let him believe he won, let him have his moment of “glory”, he’ll probably die soon by suffocating on a plastic bag. And when he’s gone, you and the plastic bag can get together and discuss your collective accomplishments.

Being right doesn’t mean you’ll win an argument, in fact, it may even be a hinderance at times. One of the best ways to win an argument is to know all the facts but not tie yourself down to them. This gives you the fluidity you need to assail your foe from any angle. You will sound more credible if you can appear to have an actual viewpoint, but it isn’t usually necessary.

You are probably thinking, “sure, it may be the best way, but I don’t wanna know stuff, I’m just in it for the hard-core noggin-scuffle”. Really, you don’t need to know much more than the fact that you want to argue to get in the game, in fact, that thought you just had, if expressed out loud could be considered an argument!

If you hope to become a professional fussbudget it is best to fact check, fact check, fact check, and to the best of your ability make sure you are always correct (fussbudgetry and pragmatism will be footnoted in part 8).

*HOW TO WIN (almost) EVERY ARGUMENT (PART II)

HOW TO WIN (almost) EVERY ARGUMENT (PART I)

There are many reasons to argue, and almost all reasons are valid. Maybe you argue for a noble cause; to raise awareness to issues that you feel are important, to alert someone of danger, to stamp out ignorance, to crush weakness, to expose feeble reasoning, to turn your frown upside-down, or just to chill. Perhaps you argue with motives that are questionable at best; to make someone else feel bad, to make you feel better about yourself, to justify your own reasoning by getting others to unwittingly agree with you, to get people to disagree with you in a way that allows you to discount their opinions thus validating your own, to dogmatically express your rage, to make someone cower so you can feel that there is at least one part of your life that allows you to exhibit power and exert some miniscule amount of force, or just to be a total jackass. No matter what your reasons for arguing, and regardless of whether you are a professional or amateur, everyone can enjoy this delightful and relaxing activity.

Arguing is fun and educates the other person. It sharpens the senses and rejuvenates the mind. It is generally very easy to win an argument because the other person is almost always wrong. In the event that the other person may actually be on to something, just be happy that most people who actually have a good point don’t generally have a clue how to argue. You can easily crush them by rehashing some vague misunderstanding that they had when they originally formulated the idea or with some unintentional mis-statement or even a speech impediment they have. Certainly, an idealistic person who has thought through their beliefs to the nth detail has convinced themselves so thoroughly that they are correct (and no one really cares, but they may be) that they have also duped themselves into believing that everyone will praise the truths they have discovered (or at least that someone will). Even if this optimism is the only flaw in their argument, it is plenty of ammunition to fully obliterate their assertion. All you have to do is bring up generalized impossibilities and pose them as though they are legitimate questions somehow connected to the topic of current controversy. A question like, “What about the links made by Dr. Leopald Thorstieg in his 1938 paper regarding IFE, you are familiar with IFE aren’t you? Well, all the research that I’ve seen confirms his findings. How do you explain that?” will totally disarm almost all of these turkeys, for the simple reason that they can’t have possibly heard about something that doesn’t exist. Along with this another great thing about almost everybody else, is that they argue against the person confronting them rather than just arguing their point. So when you bring up a hypothesis in a forceful way, no matter how contrived, fabricated or spurious, they tend to feel a compulsion to argue against that point and lose track of the original thrust of the discussion. If you think they have a valid point then it is your civic duty to utterly annihilate their presentation, this will help them to hone their expostulative expertise, and thus, in the future, when you feel that they are appropriately equipped to save the world you may wish to allow them to do so, you may choose to stand by and supervise though.

But how do you destroy a perfect argument? Especially when you know that the other person is 100% right? Easy. No one can be 100% right on everything, so just sit back and wait for them to say something you can easily capitalize on. It helps if you continually disarm them by finding things you can agree with, this is extremely easy to do when you are debating with someone who is right. NEVER, agree with things that will undermine your own contradictory stance, if the thoughts expressed by your nemesis are correct, you can generally gloss over them by reaffirming an acceptable and similar point that was previously agreed upon by both parties. Remember that you only need to vary slightly from the essence of your opponents gist, anyone who has thought through their reasoning so well as to seem 100% correct will easily be lured to defend the seemingly insignificant details. If you are almost constantly agreeing with them they will eventually tire and/or drop their guard and actually say something wrong. In any of these cases you can then take that one small comment and pretend that it is the platform of their entire logical framework. Your opponent may see through this tactic but if you are playing to an audience they will be on your side. Because of the audience, your opponent will be compelled to respond to your quibbles, once this process has been started you can’t lose, just keep agreeing, baiting and inferring. If they refuse to continue the argument, you lost, but the audience thinks you won, so in a way you did win, because you convinced a large group of people to believe you instead of the person who was right. And that’s no easy task, actually, I’m kidding, it is very easy to fool people, but you still did it, plus you made the winner of the argument leave in frustration and that’s worth something!

In the event that your opponent sees through this tactic and there is no audience you will need to have the stamina and presence of mind to keep nitpicking and then agreeing while countering with hard hitting vague questions. If none of these things work, it’s time to play dirty, it’s all blatant falsehoods of incomprehensible atrocity all the time, a person who really wants to help you (and/or the whole world) will feel like they are physically being attacked, they will eventually fall into a stupor during which they are disoriented and begin to question their own beliefs. They start to wonder how others (that’s you, but you have made it seem that there are many who share your views) could have such strong beliefs that seem so contrary to reason. Being logical people, they will begin to doubt their own reasoning and consider the notion that the obnoxious blathering you are bombarding them with has some possible merit. Now you have them where you want them, if you don’t care about the future of our planet, you can just move in for the kill (This will be explained in detail in part 8). But if you would still like to see if they can adapt to the psychological punishment you’ve just dealt them, you can let them live (conversationally speaking), after all the argument is over, for now. They are still questioning things that they were fully convinced of, and may have lost all will to fight, you did your job well.

There are really no losers in an argument because you always win an argument if you enjoy yourself. That’s the whole point of arguing. If you follow the directions laid out in this primer, you should enjoy your next argument.

A forensic look at evolution...

Lately I have been getting a lot of “enlightenment” from evolutants, these are guys who have evolved over a few millennia to develop massive egos. You’d think that coming from apes would make them a bit more wary of talking wildly to their superiors. But they look at it as a long string of promotions that somehow makes them better than those of us who haven’t seen a need to evolve. They point to the track record they have of getting huge promotions every few hundred thousand years. Some call these promotions “punctuated equilibrium” but If I have an employee that does nothing but forage for 200,000 years and then only moves when the food chain or a meteor “punctuates his equilibrium”, he’s getting sacked. Others insist that it is slow and steady evolution that wins the human race. But anybody is getting promoted if they plug away at the same old job for a few hundred thousands years. Eventually somebody will die, and you are the cool new protozoan on the block. Of course, a staying power promotion is nothing to brag about. I wouldn’t care if I was fast-tracked from amoeba to human in only 20 weeks on the job, I still wouldn’t brag about my humble beginnings. It just diminishes one’s credibility. It’s like when I was told that MENSA lowered their standards from the top 1% to the top 2% of IQ scores. Would you join a group of pseudo-smarties that keep shifting their standards? What if you were already part of that group? You wouldn’t go shouting about it, “look et me, me is part of a nashinol ‘tard club”. It would make you look like a stupid beast.

As for the move from amoeba to man, amoebas can live forever (they reproduce by splitting and essentially cloning themselves, the child is the parent, thus in a stable environment they never die), people die after a few years on the job, what kind of promotion would give you more cells and less life? Doesn’t seem like a promotion to me. I wouldn’t see a move from skinny general practitioner with an auto-renewable contract to fat brain surgeon who is just about to fold under a massive malpractice suit as a very good thing. Also, if more cells is a promotion, amoebas become trillions of identical cells pretty fast, plus, over the course of eternity they can be more cells than any dude can be in 70-80 years. Besides, I’m not counting, but those amoebas are still out in force doin’ their thing with no new job openings in sight.

My point with all of this is that if I had evolved, I wouldn’t be going around telling everybody. What is up with these “people”? I suppose that’s why these guys are so obsessed with their education. Resumés, diplomas, documentation, theses, all to get a job you could have had without all that extra work if you weren’t always yelling, “I’m a funny monkey!” all the time.

I’m a real man and a high school drop-out, I can say that proudly because I rejected a system created by “people” who keep their ancestors in cages to watch them throw poop and masturbate. I rejected that system on the first day of kindergarten (the first day I was introduced to it). It has all of the earmarks of a system designed by lower life forms that aspire to be real men.

They think that just because they can operate video equipment and televise their grub eating competitions that we’ll be impressed. Well it isn’t impressive to see humanoid life forms eating bugs and drinking blood because we expect more out of the animals who look like us. Try to get out there and live your life on your own merits, perhaps you can evolve gut osmosis that allows a six-pack of Bud Light to be placed on the belly and absorbed. Even though it is disgusting to drink, absorb, or become one in any way with Bud Light, I have to admit that I’d like to see more programming of that ilk on the tube. It is a bit tacky, but hey, that’s what you are.

What really gets me is, why do so many of these guys get into the sciences anyway? I’m just getting tired of hearing about how smart they are compared to their brother ape. I’m getting tired of hearing what great evolutionary employees they are due to their varied and extensive genetic pedigrees. If you have information just present the information, if you have skills and abilities just write me a bullet list. I don’t need need to hear how spider-grandmother helped your ancestors make fire, or that your uncle used to have gills, in fact, you can call it evolutionary bias, xenogenetic discrimination, heterophobia, or nepotism, you still aren’t getting hired by me monkey-boy!

Personally I don’t want to go to a doctor who might start beating on his chest mid exam or trying to eat ticks off my back, I would probably ask a duck-boy to do my taxes before I’d ask an ape-man to unlock the secrets of the universe, and I have no use for an employee that gets caught in a sneak attack by an ice-age every day before work.

New location, new hours!

I used to eat my first meal of the day at about 11:00am or so and would often eat my biggest meal of the day as late as 12:00am. Since moving into the country my sleep habits have changed considerably. I still don’t get very much sleep, but I sleep a bit more and I fall asleep at least a couple hours quicker than in the past. I eat breakfast at about 6:00 to 7:00am and my biggest meal of the day is at 3:00 or 4:00pm. I often have a beer with lunch, but sometimes I’ve switched and had my beer with breakfast. But since I don’t feel like drinking after 6:00pm very often anymore, I guess it’s just a natural rotation. So I have completely shifted to buffet hours. Add to that crazy Andy Rooney oldguybrows, weather predicting shoulder, bad hips, thinning greying hair, floaters in my eyes, high blood pressure, forgetfulness, difficulty hearing, almost paralyzing fear of the sun, sleeping in a coffin, and a few other odds-n-ends, and I finally have the whole old guy package, plus a great start on the vampire package sans retirement plan and thirst for blood.

The win win of firing...

If you have ever fired anyone you know how fun it is. You are just cleaning house and slashing and burning dead wood. You are making the workplace cleaner more beautiful, and most importantly, more efficient.

If you have ever been fired you know how invigorating it can be. It is like all of the hard work has finally paid off, and not only do you get to leave, you have to leave. All of your work has to be done by someone else. No matter how badly you know it will be screwed up by whoever thinks they can “fill your shoes” they won’t even let you help! It is like being set free from slavery. It is almost like being set free from the confines of the flesh and mortality. I think that’s why some people come back and gun down the whole office after being fired. It seems too good to be true, so maybe it is a dream and you can kill without consequences. That’s probably not a good way to test whether you are having a dream or not.



One guy I fired once actually described how he was going to kill me from the roof of the neighboring building. I actually wanted to keep him around to train others in how to use software but whenever he was a teacher he got obsessed with power and forgot to actually teach anything. It was frustrating, because he knew his software very well, and was a very good artist but not a good commercial artist, because he always wanted to interject his own ideas into simple designs that just needed to be done as described.

I’m all for creativity, but when creativity takes 5 hours and looks like "$#!t", and getting it done would have looked like “what I asked for” then somebody who isn’t me gets the boot. I feel bad that I didn’t get to fully enjoy firing this guy because of the death threats. He was certainly crazy enough to do it too, but that just shows my commitment to quality.

Some of the best times in my life were times that I was fired. Actually, I can only think of one time right now, seems like more. I know people say, “you weren’t fired, you were laid off”, but to me getting laid off sounds pretty wimpy, plus, it makes the company sound like professionals. They can’t possibly be professionals if they even entertained the idea of “letting me go”, Oh, just thought of the other time I was fired. Both of those companies went out of business very shortly after my leaving. One I could have saved, the other was hopeless due to a shady IPO and many other bad business practices.
Once the president (of the company I was working for at the time) asked me to help him fire one of the receptionists at the front desk. I thought to myself, “what? is he scared to do it himself?”, but I didn’t say anything because I wanted to be included in the firing. I did tell him that I didn’t think she should be fired. I was asked about this later by one of the tech support guys. He said, “so what would you do if he asked you to fire me?” I said, “I would disagree, but I’d can you.” He was in shock that I could enjoy firing people so much that I would fire people who shouldn’t even be fired. I could have said something about how sick it was that he was cheating on his wife, but then he would have found out what a total jackass he was and that would remove a whole level of the enjoyment I would have had in firing him if that eventuality ever did arise.

Of course, I would never make the choice to get rid of someone ideal for a job, I’m just there to help other “managers” liquidate their valuable employees when they are too weak to do it. But for anyone else, make a stupid decision and follow-through, that’s what I say.

Business killers

I don’t have a problem with anyone making a buck. People buy, sell and trade goods and services. That in itself inflicts no harm. The problem I have is when the people doing this turn evil. Unfortunately that happens all too often. People will often think of drug dealers, murderers and rapists as evil, but rarely do they think of corporations as evil, sure, many think of Walmart as evil. But Walmart is an easy target because they are so big and evil. The government seems to think Microsoft is evil, Disney is most certainly evil. I’m not saying that everyone working in these places is evil, and even with evil there are degrees.



But I don’t want to support evil. So if I need to buy an axe from a murderer I will choose the local mom & pop murderer who has only killed one or two people, not the big name brand serial killer, because he seems more evil. If I need to buy some cellophane baggies from a drug dealer I will go to the local, small town drug dealer who has to keep a day job to stay financially solvent, not the Columbian guy with the Bentley. And if I need to buy duct tape from a rapist I will go to the “harasser” I read about in the our small town paper who is still trying to break in to the rape scene, not the well-known national news celebrity rapist.

I’m not saying I’ll never buy an axe from a serial killer, If he has the best prices on axes and the axes are good quality, then I will probably buy his axe. But where possible, I would like to bolster small business and the entrepreneurial spirit. A case in point is that I recently went to Walmart for the first time in several years because it was the only place within 50 miles that had a metal dog kennel. I tried all the local perverts, lowlifes and degenerates but none of them had a dog kennel for sale.
My point in all of this is that I’m not a snob. I will buy from the people who are raping and killing the world, but I prefer to give my money to the wannabe’s.

Oops! I did it again. I was wrong!!!!

I hate being wrong. But I freely admit when I’m wrong. It is hard work trying to be right all of the time and sometimes it totally breaks down. The following is an embarrassing case in point, starting with the background of how I became wrong.

I’ve been around manipulative brats all of my life. I know how they work. I couldn’t quite get a perfect grasp on this behavior until I was an adult and had the chance to catch them off guard enough to let them know that I’m not falling for it, thus gaining a certain amount of respect. Enough to get them to stop altogether or pause and give me a knowing look. Sometimes they have even explained in minute detail how they cry or throw a fit or in other ways control their parents. This is from kids as young as 2 years old. Some of these kids only speak in baby talk to everybody else, but have explained these facts to me concisely and vividly, like showboating serial killers.

So, in the past my accuracy has been 100% in identifying and targeting a brat to help. I really think that you need to target the individual child if you are going to accomplish anything. When I was a kid I never wanted to be a brat, and I appreciated the angry and rude comments that people made to me when they thought I was being a brat because they were telling me useful information. Not that I was a brat, but I was perceived that way by others. Many also thought of me as stupid, ugly, loudmouthed, obnoxious, irritating, boring, lazy and a show-off know-it-all. These were all untrue, except for maybe the “loudmouthed” thing, I have always talked loud. I often noticed that the majority of people where I grew up seemed to hate me but were quiet about it. Well, they were quiet about it to my face. I would constantly be hearing rumors about me, and this is all when I was under 5 years old. It was very disappointing that people wouldn’t express their feelings to my face. I knew from getting hit in the face with undeniable demographic proof that the product “me” had little or no market appeal and I was in serious need of re-branding.

Now, I know that most brats don’t want to hear everybody’s opinions (and, as I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t a brat), but like a serial killer they are waiting eagerly for the moment that they are caught by what in their mind is a Sherlock Holmes type who will appreciate all they have accomplished in their Telletubby sized life of crime. They aren’t concerned about any demo except Mommy (and/or Daddy), and they know how to keep the hype machine rolling.

Knowing that you can’t speak to parents because they just get defensive and that the direct approach to the child is the only thing that works (because you need to speak to the boss if you want to get anything accomplished), I have often approached a brat in such a way as to startle them into seeing that there are others that are on to what they are doing.

The other day I was at a local shopping and eating establishment getting some lunch, and this kid is clearly having a tantrum. This goes on for several minutes, in fact it carries throughout the entire lunch. The kid was fussing and crying, and simply would not stop. Sure, it slowed down every so often, but it just went on and on. The mother was just acting like nothing was going on and catering to the child like all mothers of brats do. So, as I was going to throw away my lunch packaging fragments, I decided to just walk up to the kid and tell him to shut up. So, that’s exactly what I did. Well, as I mentioned before I do tend to speak loudly, and it was more like a lion roaring than the simple (I know what you’re up to) statement I was trying to make. I attribute about 50% of this resonance to the concrete everywhere which echoed.

Almost everyone there started clapping and cheering. They were thrilled that I had done this. I began to suspect something was seriously wrong when so many jumped on board with what I had done, especially since it came off as much more extreme than what I meant to do. But I realized that I had made a big mistake when the kid started crying again. Not a tantrum cry or a I’m going to make you squirm cry, but the same monotone cry as his previous post tantrum cry. He wasn’t phased at all by my “ah ha! got you” approach other than a minor break in the routine. I’ve never seen this before, but I became instantly aware that this kid probably has some sort of neurological disorder that makes him cry. Needless to say, I felt sick about this misunderstanding, even though there were still grateful people all around, even an employee (a very understanding looking woman) thanked me for what I had done. I had already started to realize what I had really done and it just made me feel that much worse receiving all this acclaim.

I knew that I had misjudged the situation, and thus my reaction was totally wrong. I had found out that many people (men women and children) were secretly wishing they could do the same thing and because I actually did it, I had reenforced in their minds that that was the right thing to do. I still have to say, in most cases it is the right thing to do. And as I had already expressed in a different way, the little brats know that it is done out of concern. Even so, I won’t ever do that again.

It is more embarrassing to do something stupid and have so many people on your side cheering than it is to get beat up for doing something stupid.

All that being said, I have a horrible nervous reaction to crying. I can’t take it. Maybe it is because when I was born until a few months later I cried constantly. I don’t remember this far back (my earliest specific memories are from a year and a half old), but my parents remember. I know that I was in pain, and I vividly remember that I hated being a baby.

In all of this I still think it is worthy of note that this woman took her kid to a public place to make people hate him. Nobody knew the kid, nobody knew his problems. But you know that the kid sensed the hatred people were feeling for him. He was clearly not enjoying himself, and he didn’t even eat. He threw his pizza on the floor before I walked up to him. If it was my child, I would have at least told management, so I would have some understanding allies, not for myself, but for the kid. More likely, I would announce to everyone near me what was happening and ask them to tell others, as they came in, thus raising awareness to the fact that such a situation even exists. And insulating the child from angry stares to instead be greeted with understanding eyes.

She clearly was not phased about making a scene, because it was a huge scene, a spectacle. Whether she thinks she’s helping that kid or not by not explaining it to people proactively, the kid has to be painfully aware of the issue. I don’t care what his aptitude is or his “IQ”, that kid knows his life sucks, and it would be a major relief to him if she would let him off the hook when she takes him out in public.

I feel bad for this kid because I know how bad it is to be raised by parents who don’t understand marketing. Even worse, for an enduring moment was part of this campaign. And as I mentioned before, I hate being wrong.

And if this kid fooled me into writing this embarrassing tell-all, then kudos to him! He is going to be the best serial killer of all human history.

Rejected Names for Toxins and Diseases

Pleasuredome Rejected name for Marburg Virus

Got Milk? Rejected name for Anthrax

Independence Rejected name for Botulism

Snack Attack Rejected name for E. coli

MMMM Plague Rejected name for Plague

Okay, this whole idea didn't really work, but that doesn't mean it isn't blog worthy.

Home remedies...

If you are feeling under the weather right now, take heart. This blog describes a simple remedy that you can try. Drink a bottle of George T. Stagg. First of all it is really good, secondly its 142 proof, thirdly it is reasonably priced. It has been proven through clinical tests that it will kill the beast that lurks within. You see, many viruses hang out in the lungs. This is the virus hotspot. It is kinda like a virus night club where they can meet other strains of the same virus and “hookup” or mutate, as the kids like to say. If the music is right and the dancing is all night, they can sometimes propagate a strain so unique that it will re-infect a host that was by now immune to the original pranksters (microorganisms, you know who you are). Anyway, the strange thing about these little lung parties is that booze is a bit of a downer. You see, a virus feels less and less sexy the more it is soaked with alcohol. And what’s great about our bodies is that they fast-track alcohol. It zooms through our systems into the blood and throughout our bodies and is respired through our lungs. That’s how a blood alcohol test works, and that’s how virus parties get busted up. You don’t need to be a genius to see that its hard to party when you’re dead.

Every blog is obvious nowadays....

Last night I saw an AARP commercial that had a Buzzcocks soundtrack. The song was "Everybody's Happy Nowadays". I was in shock for a split second. Then I realized, "that's right, the Buzzcocks are old." Well, I wasn't the only one to have this feeling. I looked around and there are many blogs and columns with similar observations. It is bizarre to think that such a perfectly placed tune would seem so anachronistic. Did the marketers really just stumble upon this idea, or is this really brilliant marketing to make old people who still think they are young panic and come to their "senses"? If that's what they are trying to do, I have to admit it is working on me. I've always felt old but I figured that meant I was going to die young. Well, here I am getting as old as I feel. Almost every somewhat astute, clever, witty or chuckle-worthy thing I wanted to write here was already written days ago by someone else. This makes me feel old and dumb. Thanks a lot AARP marketing people, I get it, people who were once young are now old. Life sucks, no future. I get it. I'm going to die now so leave me alone! Anyway, AARP marketing, if you had to use a Buzzcocks song, why couldn't it have been "Oh Shit"? At least then we could all have a little laugh and say, "Dude, sux to be old!"

You won’t shake my hand because I’m Brazilian?

I used to live in an apartment in Phoenix right near a mall. It wasn’t anything fancy, the hot tub didn’t work. The pool always needed repair. There was a squash court and a decent exercise room. So, it was okay, but nothing fancy. The apartments across the street were pretty beat up though so we stood out as being “up-scale”. It naturally followed that all of the kids (and adults pretending to be kids) selling magazine subscriptions would flock to our apartment building in search of much needed funds. I always try to listen to every idiot who comes to my door, just in case someone happens to have something I need. So far this has never happened, so I am all the more intrigued when a new loser comes to my door. Could this one possibly be the one with something worthwhile to say or sell?

As I already mentioned, so far it hasn’t happened. So this story is about one of those times.



One day a guy comes to my door and spouts out a barrage of artificial pleasantries and puts out his hand for a shake. I say, “can you get to the point?” He says, “you’re not going to shake my hand?” I replied, “Just get to the point!” He then thrusts his hand inside my door so the light can hit it and turns it around so I can see a 360 degree view and says, “Are you afraid of that? You won’t shake my hand because I’m black!"

Of course, that never crossed my mind. I didn’t know that he considered himself black. It would be just as foolish to assume someone is black because they have dark skin and curly hair as it would be to assume that someone was white because they have light skin and straight hair. Here’s why I have good reason not to assume someone is black (I don’t need it, but I have it): Many people who are very dark and have what many would consider “African-American” features would have to trace their ancestry so far back to get to africa that they might as well be pure white (which of course isn’t even possible). My point is that there are many “black” people who aren’t from Africa, at least not for the last few hundred years. And there are many “black” people who would get pretty upset if you said they were black, because they are not from Africa, or they are not comfortable with that label. They would honestly see it as a prejudiced statement, which it may be, depending on how it was meant. They could feel that you unfairly labeled them without even asking where they were from, Cuba, Australia, Haiti, Brazil, or almost anywhere. There are also many white people who can easily trace their history back to africa. But I am getting sidetracked by a meaningless point.

The point was, I didn’t know and didn’t care what his background was. Since he came to my door he needed to properly introduce himself and his topic before I decide whether I like him or not. I could have said, “You only want to shake my hand because I’m white.” But I chose to shut the door on him and let him think I was a prejudiced jerk. I figured, what better way to get back at him than to not clue him in that he was the one that was prejudiced, and a total idiot.

Besides, I don’t consider myself “white”, I’m more of an “autumn breeze” or something atmospheric like that.

Just say no to hormone pie

It is so difficult to tell how old people are these days. I met a guy the other day who was 43 but he didn’t look a day older than foetus. I also saw a woman on TV a few weeks back who was 11 years old, but she was a woman. Not only that, she was a soccer mom. I used to be able to look at someone and pretty much guess their age. A guess that would be accurate to within a year or so anyway. But these days you can’t tell. I heard about a crack baby that was pregnant with its own mother. I know, that doesn’t make any sense at all, but the fact that someone would believe it, even for a split second, proves my point. As one final example consider Lindsay Lohan. With her it is pretty clear that her premature over-aging is due to drugs and hard living. But there are still some people in this world who don’t do drugs. I think the bigger issue is all the hormones in everything. There are hormones in pie, steak, eggs... Just about everything is chock-full of hormones. I don’t really have anything else to say on this subject. But my pumpkin pie was just baked fresh yesterday and it seems to be pregnant. There haven’t been any other pies anywhere near it. Asexual reproduction of baked goods has to be caused by hormones right?

Be prepared now, for when leo shows up!

Hey Kids. I know it isn’t likely that Leonardo DiCaprio will ever show up at your school. But isn’t it good to be prepared, just in case. With a celeb like leonardo you need to take control reight away or he’ll start to think he’s better than you. The best way to take it out of him in the class or on the playground is with name-calling. Here are just a few names you can call leonardo that will have him crying for mommy.

Le Andriodo C3PO

Leonardo The Crappio

Leonardo DiVinci Code

Leno-Malto Critiquio

Renaldo El Creepio

ANAL-COMPULSIVE SYNDROME

Just because I’m neat and tidy people have often times called me anal-retentive. I guess they think I’m keeping all of the poop inside me so that I don’t make a big mess all over the place. They fail to notice, however, that I make trips to what is called a bathroom or restroom (depending on whether I am in a domestic or public setting) to release the (emotional?) baggage they like to think that I have been carrying with me since childhood. So, the simple reason that I don’t have mounds of crap all over the house isn’t because I am retaining waste, but that I deposit the waste in the proper receptacle.

Spending any time with certain ones of this inclination should make one wonder if they indeed realize that there is a toilet in the house, and if they know what it is all about. Many of these ones, it seems, are teaching their children to be “anal-expressive” or “anal-distributive”. Some even seem to think it is natural and thus harmless. A dog won’t defecate in its own home, a cat covers up its fecal “expressions”, but your 3 year old turd-factory “drops a deuce” on the floor and you race for the video camera. Maybe you should teach your offspring to be a bit more “anal-selective” or just teach him that there is a porcelain target in the john.

While all of that is irritating the natural evolution of speech has emboldened these wordsmiths to raise the bar, so to speak, and make this concept even more horrifying by truncating it. This isn’t just your mothers anal-retention anymore. You’re ANAL. No, nothing else, you are just anal.

What could that possibly mean? Dictionary(MW) (look up anal) def #1: “of, relating to, situated near, or involving the anus”. Well, how closely situated to an anus does one need to be? I happen to have one on my person, is that close enough? Does that make me anal? I would like to think that it might have to do with a specific anus other than my own. In that sense I am what you would call anal-rejective, I would flee from said anus so as not to be associated with it in any way. Of course, if this refers to each persons proximity to ones own anus, then we must all be anal, which seems to negate any value the word would have as a descriptor.

Well, the loving, accommodating, adaptive and downright useful dictionary has seen fit to absorb yet another cherished colloquialism into its universal repertoire even going so far as to equate the word anal with neatness. However, in the Webster’s New International Dictionary Circa 1909, there is no such reference.



I also have a 1957 Dictionary (TB) that includes only 1 definition: “of, or near the anus”
This is a great point to remember for those who think the dictionary is an authority on language. WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! The dictionary is a record of common usage. It doesn’t tell us how to properly use words, it tells us how they are currently being used.

What do you say back to someone who calls you “anal”? There is a hyphenated word for such people, and that word is anal-compulsive. These anal-compulsives exhibit symptoms that are very much like the most well known feature of Tourette Syndrome, blurting out words that are really quite inappropriate, but they go one further, they do it to make you think you have the problem. Looking in at their pathetic state, it is easy to see what is happening. They are situating themselves closer to the anus, thus becoming more anal.

All of this mental manure was spread by people obsessed with Freud’s idea of an anal stage of psychosexual development. According to Freud, there is an oral, anal, and phallic stage that children go through.

To snorbp a quip from Wikipedia’s Anal-Retentive write-up: Freud believed that conflicts with parents and delays during toilet training can cause a child's development to stop at the anal stage, the personality then becoming fixated on anal control, which later manifests itself as a compulsive concern with order and cleanliness. A developmental delay at this stage is therefore called anal-retention.

I hope nobody starts calling me phallic, but that might still be better than anal.

I read quite a bit of Freud when I was a kid, and although it is very interesting reading, I’ve always thought of it as science fiction. Although, I must say that it is beginning to seem more correct as society degenerates around us, with people becoming more reactive and animalistic. Overall, though, I thought of Freud as an ass, the sort of ass with an anus that I had no desire to be situated near, so I had to stop reading.