Notes From the Holidays

Hopefully everyone had a terrific Thanksgiving holiday! Shockingly, there were some things that happened over the long weekend that made no sense to me:

1) During all of the football on Thanksgiving, there was a commercial that had people giving testimonials about something. Underneath their faces, a caption was displayed: "Real People, Not Actors". Hmmm. Couple things. First of all, even actors are real people. Second, this commercial didn't have a director? These were regular people who just happened to find themselves in front of a camera and nailed unscripted lines on the first take? You think maybe they were real people AND they were acting?

2) Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, I commuted from Chicago to Deerfield three times in three days. With a baby and two dogs in the car. To say the least, by Saturday morning my driving nerves were a little shot. That said, does the asshole behind me really have to start honking 0.2 milliseconds after the green arrow appears at the intersection?? Look dick, I promise that you are not in a bigger hurry than I am. If you are really having a panic attack that I'm not already slamming on the gas, how about you leave a few minutes earlier? God forbid you wait an extra 30 seconds to get back to Bubbie and Zadie's house for your seventh round of leftovers. Douche.

3) My wife wants a new pair of boots. They cost $325. I told her that unless they are made of unicorn dick, they can't possibly be that expensive. I have no real story here, but the reality of how rare and valuable unicorn dick must be, continues to crack me up.

4) For several months, there have been two assholes playing catch with a football in the street in front on my apartment. In Chicago, there are cars on every street. On my street, cars are parked bumper to bumper on both sides of the street. The problem here is that these guys suck at catch. One of them drops every third ball. What happens then? Right, the ball slams into someone's car. Here's what makes no sense. I can't do anything about it. If I go out there and ask them to please stop hurting cars, I basically show them that I'm a vagina. If I call the cops about the two dipshits playing in the street, the cops will hang up on me. It's fucking annoying to know that my car is going get hit with a football and I can't stop it. And if the two of you dick bags happen to read this, go to a fucking park already.

5) Last night, my wife and I ordered dinner from Penny's Noodle Shop. As always, we got chopsticks with our meal. For no particular reason, I happened to read what was written on the outside of the chopsticks. Here it is, in its glorious entirety:

"Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. Please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glorious history. and culture"

That's what it says. Presumably, at some point someone with a 1st Grade education has actually been consulted on the packaging for chopsticks. Additionally, I'm assuming that because this product is used in the United States, someone who actually understands English was involed in the original Chopsticks Think Tank. First and foremost, stop capitalizing everything! Next, don't build up "chopsticks" as "the traditional and typical _____", without telling me what you really think it is! And stop putting periods two words before the end of the sentence. Hey Chopsticks people, I'm all for America being the melting pot, but you make it pretty fucking hard to keep siding with you.

24

No, not the show. And for those of you that knew me in junior high, not the math game either. I'm talking about the last 24 hours. Not the best day. Here's why:

1) I'm hungover. When I was in college, hangovers were pretty common so I kind of got used to them. I think the problem is that I'm extremely out of practice. A bunch of my co-workers went out for Happy Hour last night. Somehow that turned into 8 hours of beer and scotch. I think I speak for my liver when I say, "OUCH! What the hell are you doing?? Do you think you're still 19? Do us a favor and act your age asshole. And while we're talking, why do you always end up with nachos on your shirt at the end of a night of drinking? Slob. And stop burping. Every time you burp, you smell like the alley behind a Binny's."

2) I'm broke. Remember in college when you would go out for dinner with about 35 people and after passing the check around and collecting money from everyone, you were about $300 short of the necessary amount? When I go out drinking now, that phenomenon has evolved. The bill was $200 and four people split it. I look in my wallet this morning and see that I spent about $250. I need Stephen Hawking to explain how in hell that is possible.

3) Fuck United Airlines! Can someone please explain to me how they're still screwing me years after they declared bankruptcy? Back in February, we booked tickets on United to fly from Chicago to West Palm Beach in December. In August, United had the decency to call and let us know that they were discontinuing all direct flights to and from West Palm Beach. Since they no longer serviced our destination city, we had to switch our nonstop flights into one-stop flights that end up in Miami; a two hour drive from West Palm Beach. This morning, I got a call that our return flight is now getting in at 7:15pm on New Year's Eve. Of course, that means that my dogs will have to spend two extra nights being boarded, which amounts to an extra $150. I'm expecting United to call me in a few weeks and let me know that New Year's Eve has been canceled this year; they're reposessing my car; and that I am long over due for a rectal exam. Bastards.

Sorry, sorry, sorry

I know. It's been a week since my last post. I'm sorry. The truth is, it's a lot harder than I thought it would be to come up with new things to write about every day or two. Sometimes it's easy because I'm out in the world, observing all the stupid things that happen every day. But, some weeks I tend to be home more and I don't see as much. However, as it's been a full week now, I've stored up a few different things that I can mention:

1) The Biggest Loser. If you don't watch the show, then just skip to #2. If you do watch the show, then I hope you can agree with me that Vicky is the biggest bitch to be on television since Omarosa was on The Apprentice. As inspiring as the show can be, is it wrong that I hope she actually gains weight? As a general rule, I try not to wish for bad things to happen, but just look at her:
She is Satan incarnate! Every time she speaks, I want to turn the television off. Every time she gives one of those shit-eating grins, I want to slap her in the mouth. It can't possibly be a coincidence that she was on the brown team. What a complete piece of shit. I'm just saying.

2) So I'm at the gym yesterday and I see a guy walk over to one of the weight machines; with a full mountain climber backpack on. This was intriguing, so I keep an eye on him for a couple minutes. He takes the backpack off, fills it up with as many weight plates as possible, and then starts to lift weights for a few minutes. Then, with the backpack on, he goes and runs on a treadmill. SERIOUSLY?? People like this completely piss me off. These are the people that have so many high school credits that they start college as a junior. These are the people that have multiple post-graduate degrees and also write a book in their spare time. These are the people that make me feel guilty even though I'm actually at the gym. Jackass.

3) We had our groceries delivered last night from Peapod. I forgot to order oatmeal. Now I have a ridiculous decision to make. Do I place another Peapod order and only buy oatmeal? That seems crazy because I would be paying a $7 delivery fee for only one item. My otherwise cheap oatmeal would then cost more than a 4-egg omelet. Or, do I go to the grocery store to buy oatmeal? Well that seems crazy because if I was going to go the grocery store, we shouldn't have ordered from Peapod in the first place. I wonder what Jesus would do.

4) My daughter has a new trick. She wakes up at 5am and cries for the full hour until we have to get up. It's awesome. If she can learn to wake up at the exact same time everyday with Swiss-like precision, why can't she learn to wake up when we do? She's on my list.

** Note to my daughter: I still love you :)

Nursery Porn

Yes, you read the title correctly. My daughter is four months old and we have a huge quantity of books that we constantly read to her. One book in particular, caught our eye yesterday. Originally published by Barnes & Noble in 2003, First Rhymes is "A delightful collection of timeless rhymes - perfect for young children everywhere."

The book contains classic nursery rhymes that we all remember from childhood; Humpty Dumpty, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Jack Be Nimble, Old Mother Hubbard... you get the idea. Some of the rhymes are a little more obscure. If you had the book in front of you, I would direct you to page 38, to read a lovely little rhyme called "I Love Little Pussy":

I LOVE LITTLE PUSSY
I love little pussy,
Her coat is so warm,
And if I don't hurt her
She'll do my no harm.

I think I speak for all the parents out there when I say, WHAT THE FUCK?!? I have a few issues:

1) Who the hell wrote this? Could anyone possibly have been living in 2003 and not have heard the word "pussy" used to refer to a vagina? If you surveyed the 300,000,000 people living in the United States, I'm guessing that roughly no one would find this rhyme "delightful", "timeless", or "perfect for young children". I'm guessing that everyone would in fact find this rhyme "creepy", "pedophile-ish", and "hopeless".

2) What the hell does this poem mean? As far as I can tell, there are only two possibilities. First, this poem could have been written by a kind and decent person (albeit horribly misguided) who had something interesting to say about cats. In that case, the poem is clearly meant to minimize physical violence towards cats. Second, this poem could have been written a total sexual deviant who felt it necessary to warn small children against intentionally injuring other people's vaginas. Either way, I think the author needs to work on understanding their audience a little better.

3) How the hell does this get published? Shame on you Barnes & Noble. Here's a crazy suggestion. Have someone read the stuff you're going to sell in your stores, BEFORE you publish it. Additionally, I would suggest that this person have a background check and have at least successfully completed their freshman year of high school.

Priceline.com

Have you ever made travel reservations through priceline? It's relatively convenient, right? You know what else is convenient? Open-heart surgery. My wife made a reservation through priceline to stay at a hotel for one night this Saturday. Subsequently, she found a nicer hotel and wanted to cancel the priceline reservation. Being a wonderful husband (and a complete idiot), I offered to take care of this problem for her, especially because she bought the $5 "Travel Insurance" that priceline offers. Have you ever tried to change or cancel a reservation made through priceline? I would rather give myself a colonoscopy than have to deal with these people again. I'll summarize the process because it makes no sense to me:

1) When you make a priceline reservation online, you get a confirmation email. In the email, you are given your 11-digit "Request Number", and a phone number to call if you want to speak with a customer service representative. So, I called the toll-free number. The recording gives you two options: press 1 to enter your Request Number; press 2 to enter the seventh circle of hell. After pressing 1, I entered the Request Number. "We're sorry, but we do not recognize that number. Please try again." WHAT? You sent me the number in the first place! How could you not recognize it; you generated it! Do you think I made it up? Are there people out there with nothing better to do than randomly guess at 11-digit Request Numbers in the hope that they might stumble on to someone else's luxury priceline reservation that they can fuck with? The email should say, "here is a toll-free number you can call if you want to get dicked around for an hour and end up completely pissed off because your credit card was already charged, moron."

2) After attemtping to enter the Request Number the fifth time, I hung up and went to priceline.com to look for answers. I was able to find a different toll-free number to call. I got excited as I was dialing, and then realized that the number fed into the same worthless automated system as the first number. Glad you people spent the money to set up a website that was so helpful. Maybe next time you could use some of that cash and hire people with it.

3) Through what I can only describe as a combination of divine intervention and sheer willpower, I actually managed to find the one telephone option that said it would direct me to an operator. After entering my wife's phone number, date of travel, city of travel, birthdate, maiden name, hair color, credit card used for the reservation, preferred pizza toppings, and dental records, I was put in the "queue". Fuck off. How about you say "line" like everyone else from the country I'm calling from. Calling it a "queue" in no way disguises how ghetto your customer service line truly is.

4) When Derrick actually answered the phone, I started crying. The conversation went like this:

Derrick: May I help you sir?
Me: I sincerely doubt it.
Derrick: Let me try.
Me: Can you tell me what "Travel Insurance" covers?
Derrick: We offer Travel Insurance?
Me: Let me ask you something. Does priceline have any living employees?
Derrick: Huh? Look, let me do some checking. (Ten minutes later...) You have to call the insurance company directly and file a claim with them.
Me: Of course I do. Thanks for everything. Really.

What's nice about all of this is that priceline has really gone out of their way to make travel even more agonizing than it already was. In addition to not having food on the plane, being charged for brining luggage and not being able to travel with more than a tablespoon of shaving cream... it's comforting to know that the average traveler can get shat on (obligatory William Shatner reference) in ways they never imagined.

FLU SHOTS DON'T WORK!

Yesterday, I got the flu shot for the first time in my life. Today, I learned that this might have been a horrible mistake. If we are to believe the woman that I just spoke with at lunch, then the unfortunate truth is that the flu shot is ineffective at preventing influenza. Rather than trying to put some funny spin on the conversation, I thought I would show you exactly how the dialogue went... because it made absolutely no sense to me:

Me (talking to the two friends I was with): "I just got my flu shot."

Brilliant doctor pretending to be a lowly cashier at a shitty restaurant: "I don't know why you did that."

Me: "I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it was to prevent the flu."

Brilliant doctor pretending to be a lowly cashier at a shitty restaurant: "They don't work. I don't care how you look at it."

Me: "Well, what if we look at it medically?"

Brilliant doctor pretending to be a lowly cashier at a shitty restaurant: "They don't work."

Me: "Ok, how do you know?"

Brilliant doctor pretending to be a lowly cashier at a shitty restaurant: "Because I used to never get the flu. Then one time I got a flu shot and three months later I got the flu."

Me: "I'm not positive, but I think science typically strives for a slightly larger sample size than just you."

Brilliant doctor pretending to be a lowly cashier at a shitty restaurant: (Blank stare)

Me: "Damn, I wish I had talked to you yesterday before I got my flu shot; the pain in my arm could have been avoided."

I'm not sure why this woman thought that it was ok to interject her slightly under-qualified medical opinion into my bitching and moaning. Additionally, I can't fathom why she believed that the "evidence" she presented was persuasive in any way. That's like saying toilets don't work because one time a toilet somewhere got clogged and didn't flush properly. Most importantly, if she actually believes that she's right, why isn't she out there spreading the word? That's just plain selfish.

** Note to my daughter: Don't believe everything you hear.

Crap!

Few things in life are more irritating to me than stepping in a big pile of dog crap. Invariably, when this happens to me, several things leap to mind:

1) I feel like I am the only person I know that actually steps in crap. Why do I think this? Because I NEVER hear anyone else complain about it. When I step in crap, I tend to bitch for weeks. I don't hear anyone else do this so I can only assume that everyone else is much better at avoiding the crap than I am.

2) Why am I always wearing shoes that have an infinite number of nooks and crannies when I step in crap? Why do shoe-makers even design shoes with that quantity of ridges? Are they taunting me? It is virtually impossible to clean crap off of the bottom of a shoe. Water doesn't work. Paper towels don't work. I think shoe designers sat down and tried to conceive of a shape that would be impervious to all de-crapping attempts. Especially when you factor in the arch of the shoe which renders the bottom un-scrapeable, they have done their job extremely well.

3) I would rather go out and buy a brand new pair of shoes than go through the agony of trying to clean the crap off my shoes.

4) Have you ever tried to clean crap off of your shoes? It's not like you can just run inside and clean them off; you'll get crap on the carpet in the hallway and then on the floor. So, what do you do? You try to clean them with whatever is around. Of course, there is never an appropriately sized stick, so I end up using twigs that break immediately, leaves, or rocks and berries. Not only do I feel like I'm on an episode of Survivor, but I have really only succeeded in pushing the crap deeper into the ridges on the shoe.

5) I would rather be barefoot when I step in crap, than be wearing a pair of shoes with ridges. At least I could easily clean off my feet.

6) After swearing for fifteen minutes and unsuccessfully trying to clean off my shoes, I notice that there are little red and yellow pieces of plastic in the crap. Hmm, my dog eats a toy that is red and yellow. That means I stepped in his pile.

CRAP!

Daylight Savings

Now that the election is over, maybe we can get back to talking about some of the really important things that have been neglected and/or overlooked for far too long. Last Saturday night was when everyone should have set their clocks back one hour for Daylight Savings Time (DST). It was my wife that helped me see that a few things about DST make absolutely no sense:

1) DST is essentially the practice of setting our clocks back one hour in the fall and setting them forward one hour in the spring. The original rationale for doing this was that there would be more hours of daylight for outdoor leisure activities and that businesses (especially agriculture) would benefit because consumers/workers are out more during the day. I wonder if anyone considered the possibility of simply waking up an hour earlier or later? Rather than suggesting that people simply set their clock differently, people actually thought it made sense to coordinate an international campaign to officially change time twice a year? Every year?? Here's a thought: maybe every person could also pick their own time zone. That would probably be easier than doing it geographically.

2) Arizona and Hawaii do not participate in DST. Really? 48 states, almost all of Europe, and countries on every other continent take part in DST. For some reason, Arizona and Hawaii thought they would make the otherwise-simple process of shifting time twice a year, a little more complicated. If you travel to Arizona throughout the year, not only do you have to remember whether it is one or two hours behind Chicago, but it also depends on what month you travel because sometimes they are the same time as Chicago because they opt out of DST. Great system. Maybe you guys in AZ could start your alphabet with the letter N instead of A for six months of the year? Assholes.

3) According to Wikipedia, the prominent English builder and outdoorsman William Willett conceived DST in 1905 during a pre-breakfast ride, when he observed with dismay how many Londoners slept through a large part of a summer day. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk. His solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later. He lobbied unsuccessfully for the proposal until his death in 1915. He actually lobbied for this?? I wonder how many hours he spent lobbying for a one hour shift in time. Am I the only one who thinks this guy was a complete idiot?

Voting

After what feels like an eternity, Election Day is finally here. In case some of you aren't sure what the implications are, it basically means that after today Saturday Night Live will be stupid again; Sarah Palin will return to Alaska; "Hanging Chad" will disappear from everyday vernacular for another four years; and I won't have to dread voting again for a long time. I voted this morning at 7:45am and there were several things that made no sense to me:

1) I waited in line for about an hour. It then took me about three minutes to vote. It doesn't take Pythagoras to understand the problem here. Why should this possibly take so long? It's not like the polling place could underestimate demand. They have a list of everyone that will be coming! It amazes me that in over two hundred years, we haven't been able to figure out an efficient way for people to choose between two people.

2) Not sure about your Wards, but in my Ward, we didn't have electronic voting. We had a paper ballot and we had to use a "special pen" to fill in an arrow. It amazes me that in an age of iPhones, wireless internet, handheld GPS and Tivo, the only way that I can vote for the President is to use technology that has been around since the Sumerians invented Cuneiform. Maybe we should just write the candidate's name on a small piece of parchment and attach it to the leg of a pigeon and see what happens.

3) I had no idea how many judges there were. I must have colored in about a thousand arrows for all the different judges. I find it very hard to believe that the court system is so clogged with that many judges out there.

4) Why can't I just vote online? I can transfer money or pay my credit card bill from my cell phone from anywhere in the country. Those websites are encrypted and totally secure. Why can't I just register online and create a password so that I get emailed a link that lets me click one of two bubbles and cast my vote. It should take thirty seconds. It makes no sense to me that I can order brand new shoes from Zappos and have them arrive tomorrow with free shipping, but voting for one of two people takes over an hour.

Oh well, at least it will all be over soon :)