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Phoney Christmas

I was flipping through some circulars in my 45-pound Sunday paper, and I noticed that cell phones have really gotten way too sophisticated for their own good.

I appreciate the bells and whistles, but I don't really need a cell phone that keeps the name and number of everyone I've ever known. I'd really prefer a hard copy of that. My address book never runs out of batteries, and I rarely risk dropping it into the toilet on road trips.

I just want a cell phone that can make calls to other people, and on occasion, receive them from those people. It doesn't have to glow, or ring with the sound of "My Humps". I don't need it to double as a laser pointer, a compass, and a TIVO.

I don't need a phone that automatically calls ahead for reservations, schedules oil changes, and surfs the internet for my own favorite types of porn without asking. My phone doesn't have to remind me of bank holidays, my blood type, or which lies I've told to friends.

I'd like a phone that has reliable service, even in areas with trees. It doesn't have to serve as a remote control, global positioning system, toaster oven, analgesic balm dispenser, English-to-Chinese translator, dildo, breatholyzer, magic wand, meat tenderizer, and fold-out-umbrella.

I just want it to ring, and be able to hear the voice of another person coming through the tiny speaker. That's all.

blogified by Reid @ 11/29/2005 11:49:00 AM  2 comments links to this post


The Problem With Telephones

I applied for a membership at one of those video stores, and I had to give them all of my personal information.

Well, not all of the personal information. Thank goodness they didn't start asking the really tough questions about sex, or I would have been there a while. And that girl behind the counter would have been quite impressed.

Anyway, the girl takes my information and turns around. A minute later she turns back and says, "I'm sorry, we can't verify your phone number."

Well, obviously not, shithead. If I just handed you my home phone number, and I'm still standing in front of you, I'm not going to be home to answer your call. It's not a matter of bad credit, it's a simple matter of physics. I venture to guess that if you were to knock on my door right now, I probably wouldn't be able to answer you there, either.

If I were filling out your application in my living room, your little phone quandry would be solved in a heartbeat.

As it is now, there's still a few bugs to work out.

So I accused her of not having a car, because she wasn't currently sitting in one, and the evening went downhill from there.

blogified by Reid @ 11/23/2005 11:51:00 PM  0 comments links to this post


Q-Factor

I have a box of Q-Tips in my house. What kind of profit is there in the manufacture and sale of these Q-Tips? A box costs maybe two bucks, and contains 1000 Q-Tips. I have four people in my house, which even in Texas accounts for no more than a total of eight ears. I buy Q-Tips about once a year. Where is the grand profit for the company? Seems like a faulty business model to me.

If they came perhaps one to a box, or a box cost $19, then I could understand.

blogified by Reid @ 11/18/2005 12:02:00 AM  0 comments links to this post


CMAs CYAs

The Country Music Awards were on last night. In spite of my outspoken feelings about country music being bad for health, society, and the economy, I watched a bit of it. My favorite part was when someone won an award and they began to talk too long, the band would play music to shoo them off. Of course, since they were the Country awards, the signal was the playing of a single lonely banjo. Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.

Toby Keith won best song for his latest American anthem, "I'm Gonna Take A Dump In Your Mosque." He just beat out promising newcomer Sara Lee Ann Marie Evans Womack Mellencamp, and her ballad "Drinking Whisky and Throwing Up Your Love".

My favorite part was their all-star salute to tobacco spit cups. Very moving.

blogified by Reid @ 11/15/2005 11:51:00 PM  1 comments links to this post


Dysentery Tonight

Last night, I flipped on Entertainment Tonight while eating. What can I say, I never tire of seeing them interview celebrities about major world catastrophes. If I don't hear what Charlize Theron thinks about the World Bank, I can't sleep at night.

Anyway, as a reality-show style experiment, ET was going to send cameras out into the New York City streets and follow a fat woman (their words) around to see how people react to her.

But, just to make sure the examination process was as shallow as possible, they didn't actually go out and hire an overweight woman to be their subject. They used their professional model, a tall, size 4, 120 pound woman who was wearing what appeared to be the 300 pound "Fat Monica" suit.

So they made this beautiful woman up to be overweight, just so she could be laughed at and made fun of. And then at the end of the show, she took the fat suit off and was desirable again, and everybody had a happy ending.

Except for the people who are still fat.

Because it's good to see how people react to fat women, without actually having to hire one.

What the Hell is wrong with us sometimes? Why is it that even when we try to make a step forward as a society, we still screw it up?

It's like the meat substitute products they make that are supposed to be better for you than real meat. What's the only way you'll buy them? If they're pressed into the shape of hamburgers and chicken planks, we'll think about it.

Same with fat people. We'll watch them on television, but only if we can be assured that underneath the blubber, there's an attractive person we can see during the big reveal.

blogified by Reid @ 11/14/2005 12:27:00 AM  1 comments links to this post


Thanksgiving Carols

To begin with, I was in the store the other day looking for a Birthday card, and I saw a shelf full of Thanksgiving Cards. Who the Hell needs a greeting card on Thanksgiving? What do they say?

-- "Thanks for cooking for me and letting me pass out on your couch in front of the Lions game."
-- "I'm not sure how we're related, but thanks for the free meal."
-- "Happy Day, because neither of us are Indians!"

Anyway, the Christmas season is already here. First week of November is a good enough time to start playing the Christmas carols, I suppose. Got to get all of that Christmas crap off of the shelves by December 19th, when we start putting out the Valentine's Day stuff.

In all honesty, I don't think you should be playing Christmas music in the time of the year where Mary wouldn't have even been pregnant with the baby Jesus yet, do you?

And although we all enjoy checking out the time other people take to staple shiny stuff to their houses, lets be honest. If you are proudly displaying your Christmas lights in early November, it's a dead giveaway that you never took them down last year, Chester. Wait until after Thanksgiving, and just play along and pretend.

Redone holiday Christmas music is the worst. It was cool for a short period of time, but now, come on. Do we really need to hear the next generation of "Behind The Music" subjects and "Surreal Life" housemates mangling "Oh Holy Night" and "Jingle Bell Rock"? There's no Christmas rap songs. There's a clear reason for that.

On a related note, many of the Ethiopian famine victims in the mid 80's are actually living better than the people who sang on Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas" song. I swear I saw an Ethiopian Relief Album for Bananarama the other day.

blogified by Reid @ 11/13/2005 03:17:00 PM  1 comments links to this post


Mystery Meats

Random thoughts while waiting in line at the deli counter...

  • 11 Different Kinds of Ham: It's all made from the same pig. Once you get it on bread and cover it with mustard and cheese, will even the most discerning pallet be able to decide which is sugar-baked honey ham, and which one is light glazed smoked ham? If you're going to have ham for lunch, just pick a brand and eat it. Don't try and sexy up a simple foodstuff. It's a snack, it's not the DaVinci Code.
  • Ham & Cheese Loaf: How lazy can we get? If you've reached the point where you'll pay extra to have a stranger assemble your ham and your cheese to make your sandwich, maybe you could use the exercise of constructing the snack yourself.
  • Liver Loaf: Incomprehensible that this product would be on the market. The single most maligned food on the planet, and they try and make it more attractive by making it look like ham surrounded by a thick layer of lard.
  • Souse Loaf: What the Hell is this? What kind of animal is "souse"? Is it a biped? Is it dangerous? And what's so important about letting us know there's "gelatin added"?
  • Cotto Salami: Not sure what "cotto" is. Why couldn't they just say "Salami with green crap floating in it"? On second thought, maybe that's not the best marketing ploy. See? I'm always willing to listen to a better idea.
  • Smokin' Chipotle Turkey: Ah, chipotle, the white whale of foods. We needed to make up a new kind of food to get everybody interested again, so we came up with "chipotle". Before that, it was "angus," and "tilapia." Nobody grew up fishing for tilapia. Nobody had even heard of tilapia until about a year ago, and now you can't get through Luby's without somebody throwing one on your plate.
  • Luncheon Loaf: This is truly scary. No one really knows what this is. It's pretty vague. It's like when McDonalds offers you a "Fillet O'Fish", and since it's only two bucks, nobody ever stops to ask just exactly what kind of "fish" they're eating. Same thing with Luncheon Loaf. To begin with, "luncheons" are never pleasant. Lunch is a meal. A "luncheon" is a social gathering, where people pretend they always get dressed up to eat at eleven in the morning, and are forced to try and make a meal out of salad and finger sandwiches while some uninteresting speaker drones on about some charity project that could easily be attained if everyone in the room would simply donate their money to the cause instead of spending it on awful meals like the one they're eating. They would never serve "luncheon loaf" at an actual luncheon.

blogified by Reid @ 11/12/2005 09:15:00 AM  0 comments links to this post


Peaceful Movement

I'm a pretty open-minded guy. I understand that bad things happen in the world, and they don't always make sense. I don't mind traffic, occasional problems with my cable, or rain on my days off.

The one thing that bothers me is not being able to take a crap in my own house without being looked upon as a leper.

Quick explanation. In our house, we have a bath and a half, right next to each other. There is a wall there, it's not like I bought Chuck Barry's old house or anything. But the two are very close. The front bathroom is usually used by my mother-in-law, the second one by my wife.

If you've done the math on that one, it correctly indicates the best place for me to go to the bathroom is the back yard.

And so, being an adult male with a diet roughly equivalent to a puma, there are occasions where I need to have a seat and read a few hundred pages of something. Since I'm pretty much banned from the front, "company's-coming" toilet, I'm invariably on the second when I hear the voice at the door.

"Are you taking a poop in there?"

Uh, yes. It's a bathroom. That should be okay. If you were asking me that, and I was sitting in the kitchen, there would be a problem. This should be fine.

Apparently, I'm not supposed to have a movement ever. It's common knowledge that I eat a lot of red meat, you would think they'd be able to cut me some slack.

"It always smells in there." Of course. It's poop. Doctors will tell you it's far better to expel something from your body that smells like that and flush it away, than it is to hang on to that substance inside of you until you can reach a predesignated "safe house" to relieve yourself.

It's the same way when you are at Sam's, and you buy the giant wheelbarrow-sized block of toilet paper, and people look at you funny. Hey, it's an easy financial decision. Toilet paper doesn't spoil.

And everybody craps.

blogified by Reid @ 11/11/2005 08:45:00 PM  0 comments links to this post


Brokeback Mounting

There is a movie coming out in December called "Brokeback Mountain," which everyone knows (or will know) as the "gay cowboy movie."

On behalf of comedians everywhere, let me say "thank you."

This movie, which a grand total of 11 people will see in the theatre, is the new cultural touchstone. Comedians everywhere should send the movie studio a stipend. This easily parodied concept is like Ishtar, and Bob Dole's Viagra commercial, and the "I've fallen, and I can't get up" lady all rolled into one tasty little comedy burrito.

Again, thank you, each and every one of you involved in the gay cowboy movie. When it comes time to do the movie where the clown gets raped, we'll speak again.

blogified by Reid @ 11/10/2005 03:04:00 PM  5 comments links to this post


Suddenly...Hope

Best. Story. Ever. And a good example of why men will always be idiots.

Two Carolina Panthers Cheerleaders were arrested after having sex with each other in a barroom bathroom.

This is it, ladies. This is the dream all men share. For every woman who is trying to get her man to pay attention, and stop dreaming those impossible fantasies of free lovin', this is the true-life story that will always sustain us.

-- Every time your man asks you just "how good a friend" your best friend is...
-- Every time you look at the cable bill and think "why the Hell are we paying for Cinemax?"...
-- Every time you hug a friend, and find him staring at you like Beevis...
-- Every time you find him inexplicably watching a WNBA game...

It's because of these two women, and what they represent.

It's the impossible dream, and we fully acknowledge that. That's why it's called a fantasy, ladies. From this point forward, every time you're totally frustrated with our single-mindedness and insistance that somewhere, someplace, at sometime, things like this have happened, we will smile a sly little knowing smile.

All because one time, two drunken cheerleaders had sex with each other in a bar bathroom.

And now, we all have hope.

Hey, nothing wrong with being shallow, as long as you're insightful about it.

blogified by Reid @ 11/07/2005 11:49:00 PM  2 comments links to this post


Irrelevant Tangents

There's a store in Dallas called "Condoms To Go". Of course they are. You're not going to use them there, are you?

McDonalds is now having the "McRib Farewell Tour". I knew the FDA would eventually catch up with them.

After working in news for three years, I am convinced that there are two phrases that signal you are about to see a really awful, horrible story. They are "common-law wife," and "experimental aircraft". If you hear those, pull up at the TV and watch. It'll be spectacular.

I was at a concert last weekend, and the band implored us to hold up our cell phones in tribute to the music at one point. As I watched 20,000 people all hold their phones alight, I remembered the days when fans would hoist joints and lighters. Now, we hold cell phones. Then, we were getting high and rebelling against authority. Now, we're just waiting for nine so we can use our free night and weekend minutes to call our buddies and talk on the phone during the concert.

I believe laughter should be the basis of every romantic relationship. Just not at the point of insertion.

blogified by Reid @ 11/03/2005 03:18:00 PM  2 comments links to this post