Category Archives: Humor

Compromise: Best Buy Shopper

I don’t care for Best Buy. Their policies require employees to lie about their ‘service accounts’ so at to try to manipulate into buying extended warranties. However, they had the absolute best price on a wireless router that I needed while here in Washington State. When I was paying for the router the gal who was checking me out (taking my money, not looking me over, in case you thought I was getting into trouble) asked me if I was going to have someone else install it. This Netgear router is so easy to install that people who know nothing about routers can plug it into their broadband modem and install it with great ease. I told her that I was going to install it and she stopped there. I could tell the question was priming me to see if I wanted to fall under their FUD attack. One thing I hate about companies now is that they’re trying to milk you for extended warranties, service plans and blatantly charging exorbitant fees due to potential failure of the components. They advertise, “Buy this Sony product, its the best most reliable product on the market.” And then immediately they come back, smashing you in the face with, “If this product goes out, Sony doesn’t cover X, Y, and Z.”

If I lived my life with that sort of fear I wouldn’t ride in cars, planes, trains, buses or ride bicycles (let alone try to learn how to ride my new Unicycle). I wouldn’t have had children with Jessica. Heck, I wouldn’t have married Jessica due to fear that the relationship would have failed. Can you imagine reaching for a knife to cut up some chicken and then having a FUD attack? I see things playing out like this:

Self, you can’t pick up that knife, if you drop it or slip you could cut your fingers damaging your tendons, nerves and skin. You could be permanently injured due to the knife. Wait! If the chicken is carrying food-borne germs and diseases I could cut myself and infect myself with somem fatal disease and then die due to the chicken in combination with the knife. Worse! I could cut the chicken, then myself, then drop the knife into my foot causing me to be pinned to the floor by my foot and die not being able to reach the phone to call for emergency help. Self, you better cut the chicken with the scissors after sterilizing them with bleach just in case they have other germs on them from cutting the wrapping paper. I don’t know where that’s been to…

And the lunacy goes on and on! The government, and even your own parents, probably, wanted to protect you with warnings of caution, but instead of mildly presenting warnings they told you things like, “Never run with scissors. Always pay your taxes. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Don’t run with your shoes untied. Don’t drink out of the milk carton. Don’t masticate, you’ll go blind. Don’t chase your brother with a hatchet ever again or we’ll permanently remove your hatchet privileges.” All of these have a bit of wisdom in them, but they’re just rules instead of principles which are applicable to broader ranges in life. Wow, I’m way off from where I started…

To put it simply: I love the router but I wouldn’t get an extended warranty plan on it because I’m buying it because its a good router. I wouldn’t buy a Honda if I didn’t think it was going to be a good car for my money. I wouldn’t buy a Kitchen-aid mixer if I didn’t think it was the best mixer on the market. I wouldn’t buy an Apple if I thought it was going to up and crash on me and give me a blue screen of death like some warmed over Windows 95 box. When companies try to hit you with a FUD, hit them back with some diatribe about how you’re afraid to touch anything on their shelves because what if someone didn’t wash their hands in the bathroom after making a messy situation of their hygiene, or sneezed or maybe accidentally drooled on the shelf. Further, you want them to sign a contract stating that they will take care of any medical attention that you might need do to getting sick within the next 48 hours from being in their germ infested store. See if they like being FUDed themselves. Oh, and make sure the manager is there to be embarrassed in front of other customers… it’ll be more fun that way.

Food History

I don’t know a lot about food history in the grand scheme of things, but I have one question: who decided that it would be a fantastic idea to eat ginger root? Who was digging in the dirt and said, “I’m going to stick that in my mouth. It looks just like an internal organ from a cancer infested critter. Tasty.” I enjoy the ginger root, really, but that’s not something that I would look at and say, “This looks like it should be eaten.” It’s sure no apple.

One of My Worster Mistakes Ever

Last night, in what is possibly one of the sins in life that could be compared to say, murder, being discovered to not be wearing clean underpants when you get in an accident or not flossing daily: I went into Wal-Mart for a quick pickup of a few items Jess had put on my shopping list that were not at Whole Foods Market. Woops! I said ‘Quick’ and ‘Wal-Mart’ in the same sentence. However, this is not about sins or quick, or a quick sin for that matter (see: teaching a 3 year old potty words).

What amazed me was that a 2 liter bottle of Fresca no calory fruit soft-drink was 88 cents. A 20 ounce bottle was $1.20. If you do the math I could dump what I didn’t need down the drain and come out ahead just for buying 2 liters. I don’t think Coke is making its $100 billion on 2 liter bottles, but instead from those smaller bottles that people buy for convenience.

But enough about convenience. I think the Wal-Mart employees are working so slowly at the checkout lines because the ‘Wal-Mart Channel’ speakers are blaring Wal-Mart propaganda at them and their customers for hours on end. You can’t listen to, “We care about you and your family at Wal-Mart,” while making a $5.34 an hour as a cash register clerk and think, “Heck, yeah! Wal-Mart cares about me!” In fact if anything you can only think, “Turn this freaking thing off before somebody gets a load of damaged groceries for free!”

I especially liked that the Wal-Mart channel had a suggestion that people bring in photos and have Christmas cards made. One happy customer on the commercial said (and I’m not making this up) that people called her to tell her how professional they looked. Do you call people up and say, “Dang, Lucy, that’s the most unprofessional Christmas Card I’ve ever seen. If you send something like that out again, I’m never going to talk to you again!” I didn’t think so.

So, I learned a valuable lesson: buy cheap soda at Wal-Mart. But I learned a more valuable lesson: don’t shop at Wal-Mart period.

Eating Humble Pie, Er Sandwich

Yesterday at lunch I regurgitated some food trivia about the Sandwich. This simple staple was named after the Earl of Sandwich who would not quit playing cards to eat. He ordered his servant to bring him so meat between two pieces of bread. Thus he could hold his cards in one hand and his food in the other. This idea caught on with the other players who wanted what ‘Sandwich’ was having. Thus, the term was born. I told this brief story and got some funky looks from my sister-in-laws. What use was this bit of trivia?

About 32 hours later it became quite handy as the Cranium game we were playing asked about just this thing. The oposing team won and the girls learned that the trivia I store in my brain, spew out of my mouth, and make them listen to… can be useful for something. If I hadn’t have told that story the other team would most likely have gotten it, but since I had already shared it they were certain. Drat!

Worship the Turkey

I just read in an email: “Happy Turkey Day!” Which is like saying, “Happy Mashed Potatoes Day!” We’re not worshipping the turkey, are we? Where are you putting the focus? I’m here to be thankful to God for what He’s provided me with. Its not a day about turkeys is it? Even if you remove the current culture’s rather agnostic/atheistic views from the picture verses my radical Christianity** and go back in history the people were grateful for surviving and they were grateful, together, for what they had. Saying happy turkey day is useless… especially if you’re a vegetarian. Or worse yet: A Hindu. That’s like saying, “Happy We’re Going to Be Eating Your Great-Great-Grandma Day!”

Happy Thanksgiving folks, from the bottom of my un-PC heart.

**that’s supposed to be a joke, I consider myself radical, but not the way some people define radical

Vittles

This year we will be attempting the Alton Brown method of cooking our turkey. This involves days and days of brining the turky, and only hours of cooking. In theory this will be the best turkey dinner we’ve been involved with. In actuallity I think it will be yet another fine turkey meal. The best part is that we’ll have lots of family at the place, the worst part is that those same wonderful people will generate dirty dishes. My mother-in-law has been doing so much housework that I’m almost certainly going to volunteer to do the dishes after the meal, it is only fitting that if everyone else is involved with all of the other aspects I shall be the one to clean up the left-overs, clear the table, wash the table, wash the floor, wash the dishes and make sure I check all of the belly-buttons of the dishes for lint.

What sort of Thanksgiving traditions does your family have?

Yoga. No!!!

So… Nick posted about yoga on his blog this morning. And I left him a comment of encouragement, but also, I had to blog about this so that he might laugh, and that I might not effect his SEO with references to flatulance or any of the other lovely parts of my yoga experience.

You see, my wife is a yoga queen. She’s capable of all sorts of contortions, flexes, twists and positions that are apparently inidicative of being a flexible human being. She married me. I basically have three positions which I can assume: sitting, standing and laying down. There are brief times that I am not doing one of these, but they are merely when I am in between the transition from one to the other. She and I got a video of Yoga exercises to be done at home in the privacy of our living room. This was back in Texas. This was before Abby, I believe. So it has been some time. Jessica has been trying to get me to do yoga again since then.

We would change our clothes into the attire of people who were going to work out and then start the video. The problem is that, as many of you know, yoga is partially flexibility. I am about as flexible as a wet noodle. Well, a noodle formerly known as wet. So a once-wet-but-now-dry noodle. So I would sit on the floor, start the positions, nearly give up due to not being able to reach my toes with my legs not bent, be repremanded by Jessica and then make it about 1/3 of the way through the 30 minute video. For those of you keeping track, that’s 10 minutes. Ten minutes of flexing my body in ways it is not used to being stretched.

One of the claimed benefits of yoga is that it helps your body detoxify. Well, my body apparently stores up toxins in a gas form. About 10 minutes into the video I would start ‘passing wind.’ And then with each change of position I would continue to do so. This is one of the single most powerful non-yoga arguments I can come up with for men. It is very difficult to streth into a position that requires muscular control and balance while also trying to have control over other muscles that may prevent the room from being uninhabitable. So, once things would start ‘detoxing’ we would be either laughing or crying but the yoga would be heavily interupted.

Is it just me? Am I the only one who gets gassy due to yoga? It may be possible, but I’m hoping that I’m not alone, unless I’m doing yoga, and then I should be left alone.

Idiots with Idioms

Have you ever found yourself in a sticky situation where a word or phrase has two meanings and after you say something you think, “Drat! I’ve now insinuated something that I was not trying to insinuate.”? Last night I really screwed up and used the term ‘nailed’, which can mean to hit something dead on or accurately connect with something or someone, in a context that could alternatively implied another definition: to have intercourse with. Nothing like slipping up at Bible Study when you’re trying to convey something good and instead deliver an innuendo. Doh!

Horrible Examples of Hypocrisy

So this evening I was watching Scary Movie on NBC and a commercial comes on with Megan Mullally. In the commercial, which is supposed to be a public dis-service announcement, she tells people that its what is on the inside that counts. If you’re not feeling good about yourself on the outside then you need to find who you are on the inside.

Doh! This woman is on a TV show about physical attraction between straight and homosexual people, she’s been touted as one of the more voluptuous women over 40 or some other such label. She has apparently lost some weight to feel more attractive… and yet she needs to tell people that even though they can’t be like her, they should be happy with who they are inside. Lame.

I find public service announcements to be absolutely insulting. Other fine examples of these things are people saying that our public schools are going down the tube due to President Bush’s signing into place the ‘No Child Left Behind’ act and then having someone on the television tell me that I should stay in school to have a fulfilling and meaninful life. We have shows that require actors and actresses to do crazy (and theoretically funny) things because they’re drunk and then those same actors and actresses do public swervice denouncements saying, “Drinking doesn’t make you cool.”

Continuing on with Molly, I think that television has clearly enunciated the fact that sex sells. I have to laugh at the idea that every other commercial seems to have at least one element that involves sexuality and then they put one on that’s suppose to counter that. I think Molly should have been wearing sack cloth and ashes instead of a slender, form fitting outfit to tell people that looks don’t matter. Looks don’t matter on television like being dumb (without speech) works on radio. I think this is going to really impact America’s culture – we’re all going to feel better about ourselves because a television star told us to.

On the upside I feel better about myself because I’m not telling everyone else to feel better about themselves. In fact, I don’t feel good about myself sometimes, and that’s good, it shows that I recognize areas of my life that need improvement. By being content with parts of me that are goofy (and trust me, there are plenty of those) they’ll stay that way. I don’t sit and dread them, but I also am not going to just say, “It doesn’t matter, I’m perfect just the way I am.”

Oh, and by the way, you should feel good about yourself because you’re created in God’s image. Or, maybe you should feel better about yourself because you weren’t watching Scary Movie on NBC 😉

Dominated

Our house is now dominated by baby stuff. My bedroom, once a sanctum of marriage is now an even more crowded room with baby stuff covering surfaces to make sure that any time during the nightly nursing process we can take care of this. Our basement has Abby’s toys on one side and Evie’s vibrating seat and swing on the other side, flanking the TV. The kitchen has a vibrating seat to hold the pumpkin girl whilst we eat, the living room has somehow escaped unscathed. My office also holds no baby things, but the computer surely is now loaded with many pictures (only some of which are worthy of internet distribution, in case people *cough* Shari *cough* are wondering where new ones are).

Evie has now dominated the landscape of what was once a simple domicile. I love her though, so its OK to lose the house to gain a beautiful daughter.