Category Archives: Funny

Goofy, off-the-wall or silly things I might find or think.

Whipped Up to a Froth

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If you go into a service oriented food supplier (AKA Starbucks) and you order something should the employees question you on your order?  If I went into Burger King and ordered a squirt of chocolate milkshake on top of my fries and was fully willing to pay for a small milkshake to achieve the nasty sugar-salty-soggy conglomeration I’m after… then squirt the stinking milkshake on top of a basket of fries and send me to my grave.  Quietly.  Once I leave your whole store can roll on the floor laughing at the weirdo.  But wait until I’m gone.

This morning as a treat to my bride I went to Starbucks and called her from there to ask what she wanted.  She told me that she wanted a Pumpkin Spice Mocha.  Which, as you may know, involves a large quantity of chocolate syrup, and a smaller quantity of  Pumplin Spice syrup followed by a smaller quantity of coffee.  Its kind of like a coffee beverage, but more like a sugar beverage.  This is the drink my wife requested and so with confidence and certainty I ordered one.  And the gal who took my order was shocked.  How dare I order my wife a booger and scotch coffee drink.  Was I sure?  Yes, I did want a pumpkin spice mocha.  But what she heard sounded like the worst coffee choice possible.  Begrudgingly she wrote on the side of the cup the order.

So I’m pouring in heart stopping amounts of half & half into my large plain coffee and hear, “Mocha… pumpkin spice?!”  As if someone had ordered that the froth be generated by beating the dairy with a used rag.  For goodness sakes, this is Starbucks.   The place took off as a national chain because consumers discovered that they could have what felt like infinite customization over something as simple as a coffee.  And they coudl feel snobby and proud of it.  They liked their fat-free-decaf-sugar-free-vanilla-latte and Starbucks was proud to charge them $4.53 for it.  But I guess that’s changing now.  Soon I will have to go in with a bag over my head, and once the employees calm down from thinking its a robbery and realize that I’m embarrassed by their conjectures and so I hide my face like the Phantom of the Coffra.

Two-fer Abbyisms

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Abby tonight at dinner said, “This steak is too juicy for words.”  Totally cracking us up.  Then, on the way home from running some errands she said, “Dad, you need to tell your code-workers.”  That’s right, I don’t have co-workers, I have code-workers.  Too funny!

Strive for Five – or – How to Irritate Customers

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I just got back from a run to the grocery store.  Yes, it was 5:00 AM when I left.  Evie wasn’t sleeping and so I ran to the store to get something.  Upon trying to check out I went to the ‘express’ self checkout. I pushed the start button on the screen.
“Please remove the last item from the bag and scan it,” began the monologue.  Its a monologue because the computer talks to you in a somewhat friendly voice.  Forget that!  I haven’t even put anything in the bagging area.  I pushed start.  So I moved to a different self checkout venter next to the first one.  I hesitantly pushed the start button.
“Please remove youor hair in frustration as I also fail you in begining the self checkout process,” chimed the second computer.  This was going to be irritating.  So I moved to a third station where I began praying – I remembered that if I was Catholic it would have been at this time that I would have called on Saint Earnest who is the patron saint of grocery stores – I remembered that if I was Muslim I would declare jihad on this checkout station if it failed me –  I also remembered that if I was superstitious I might have checked more carefully for black cats upon approaching the self checkout area of the store.  Gingerly I pressed the start button.

“Please shoplift because this register is also a ticking time bomb of insanity,” cried the tiny, tinny speaker!  Just then an employee walked up to the command center for the express checkout area and hit a few buttons.  The computer reset the psychological profile settings and began working for me.  As I checked out my two items I noticed stickers in front of the bags: “Strive for Five!” they declared.  In small print they asked me to put five items per bag.  Five items per… interruption: the employee is now walking to the other self-inflicted-mockery machines and having to manually cancel out of the transactions I just started.  Offset by about 1.75 seconds they begin a litany describing what was wrong with cancelling out of the orders that they had failed to execute moments before.  1.75 seconds isn’t a long time except for when the sound of voices is correcting you and jumbling together in a cacophony of computerized trauma.

Back to the five: In my life I strive for various things.  Striving is a word I would use to describe intense athletic challenge type effort.  Striving is a word I would use to describe an energetic exertion pushing to achieve a deadline for work.  Striving doesn’t enter my mind at the grocery store.  Perhaps customers would put more than 2 items per bag in the self checkout station bags if the bags that the grocery store provided were not booby-trapped so that as soon as I walked out of the store with them they would rip down the side spilling the contents I had self-bagged at the self-checkout stand after self-selecting them as I walked by myself through the store.  Or, I could double-bag my groceries and feel somewhat better about striving for five.  Maybe next time I’ll quadruple-bag, put five items in the bags (96 oz. of Lactaid milk, 96 oz. of Orange Juice, two boxes of crackers on the ends so their sharp corners can stress the plastic film, and of course some eggs on top) and then begin the Russian roulette based walk to my vehicle.  That would be striving.

Get Your Rachel Ray Autographed Kidney Here!

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Does anyone else feel slightly patronized because Rachel Ray now has more television shows than Kelly Ripa, more cookbooks than Julia Childs, and since that’s not enough you can now buy her custom mix albums from amazon?  I want her to sign my kidney if I ever need to have surgery in that region of my body.  I’m certain that she’ll be offering that service by the time she has completed selling her soul to S@t@n [or 0pr@h, whichever one offers her the most money].  I’m sure that these opportunities sound good to her, but the truth of the matter is that eventually you have diluted your brand to the point where no one will buy the Rachel Ray model of the Gazelle workout machine.   Or your Rachel Ray & George Foreman dually signed lean mean fat cooking machine.  And you will know that the apocalypse is upon us when she co-authors something with Martha Stewart.

Disclaimer: if you click on the link to the amazon.com page that sells her album I will not make money on this.  Your purchase will be anonymous.  But I will possibly die laughing if someone buys it.  And then this site will cease to exist because Jessica just isn’t into blogging.

That Fluffy Substance of Which 500% is Made Up of Fat

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Abby requested that with dessert for tonight’s celebration of my sister and her husband moving to the Denver Metro area that we make ‘with cream.’

I smiled and asked, “Do you mean ‘Whipped Cream’?”

To which she replied, “Dad, I call it with cream.”

And so I have been schooled in the ways of the four year old mind.  What you think you heard is now what things are called.  Which is exactly why I hope that she only accidentally overhears Jessica and I talking about ‘sects’.

Gratuitous Tipping Scene

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I know I said that the last blog post was the last for this weekend, but I had to tell you that around here the employees expect a tip for pretty much every service they provide. If you walk into the casino employees attract to you like little gimpy Mexican children with chicklets in Cabo San Lucas (which isn’t intended to be racist about all Mexican children, it was supposed to remind you of those needy eyes that say, “Please, if you buy these chicklets I will stay out of school and the maimed arm will have continued to serve me well in this endeavor to be a needy person in need of your money). Jessica has now gotten up from her short nap and is ready to go see all that is the glory of the Caesar Forums [insert sythesized recording of fanfare here].

Sin City or Salt Lake?

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Today while passing through the airport in Denver we were presented with a conundrum. And when someone presents me with such a thing I like to ponder it. The conundrum was do we try to smuggle ourselves onto the plane destined for Salt Lake City? The wholesome town of meandering Mormons? Or instead do we get on the plane that our tickets tell us about, and go to Las Vegas? The not so wholesome town that was actually settled by Mormons 🙂 Kinda hard to believe that such a reclusive bunch of religious folk would be taken over by the mob, and then eventually Hollywood studios and tycoons.

Today while walking through the mirage I noticed an intersting detail: no coins were in use. The quietness in the casino was distracting. I suppose that by moving all of the transactions to being digital they can reduce minor leaks presented by ethically challenged employees. To fix the problem of no coins they have speakers that make ‘tinking’ sounds as if coins were falling into the empy coin catchers below the ‘slot’ machines. Except that metal has been welded over the slot. So instead its a bill or house player card machine. Weird.

Of course the best part of Las Vegas so far was the sight of my co-worker holding an alcoholic beverage at 11:00 in the morning. But since he’s from Texas it was like 1:00 which is a totally reasonable time to go drinking 🙂 We’re hoping to have a good time here trying to do all of the G-rated things we can come up with. The Mirage has some dolphines and a small wild animal collection. Caesar’s next door has a very large shopping ‘forum’, and the sidewalks are littered with pictures of mostly naked women on baseball card-like ‘tracts’ that immigrants hand out on the sidewalk to attract men (and sometimes women) to go to topless bars or brothels. To me it seems like they should make soup at brothels. Vegetable brothels, chicken brothels, and of course beef brothels should produce corresponding broths that are sold at the super-markets.

However, I doubt that we’ll get such delectibles out of such sinful houses of ill repute. And even if we did, they’d have to be closely monitored for STD’s. I guess we’ll just stick with animals, shopping, and eating about every two hours at yet another fantastic restaurant.

Since my internet connection costs money here this will be my last post until Sunday night or later. Have a good weekend!

Mens Dress Shoes

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To continue on my series of ‘Randy pretends he has fashion sense’ type posts tonight I went to buy black mens dress shoes.  Who designs these things?  I swear to you that almost every shoes less than $100.00 they soles are made from recycled iron maidens.  That is to say they’re incredibly uncomfortable.  Considering I don’t wear them very often I can’t justify that sort of expenditure.  Worse, the designs were very weird to me.  I guess I didn’t expect to be as opinionated as I was, but some of the shoes literally looked like the bill of Scrooge McDuck from the Disney Ducktails cartoon.  Done in black of course (or brown).  Then there were some shoes that looked like they’d been cleaved in half by a random hatchet murdered, but then carefully and professionally stitched up so as to fake you out into thinking they were supposed to look like that.

To Jessica’s credit she has somewhere between 10 and 20 black shoes.  I don’t think that 7 of them look any different to the other shoes, but she identifies small nuances that make the shoes unique.  Tonight I learned about nuance.  With multiple manufacturers making the same shoe styles I was able to pick out small curves that were cut differently, different lace types, and of course various types of ‘cushion’ inside of the shoes.  I prefer shoes that feel like my Vans: soft, cushiony, and sporty.  That way when some thug asks me to play a pick-up game while I’m dressed up I can easily get schooled in my comfortable shoes and sweat out a perfectly nice shirt and pants.

I guess I just expect to get schooled in style and comfort instead of looking like I killed a cartoon duck and then tried to implement the Spanish inquisition on myself.

Can I Ask Your Opinion?

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I had a gal ask me that last night.  I was in the changing room open area last night while Jessica was trying something on.  The woman had been trying on a dress and I think she liked it but she wanted to ask someone else’s opinion.  Fortunately I was there, Mr. unshaved with t-shirt and jeans on.  She looks really good in the dress.  I recommended she take it in to a tailor and have it hemmed up about 1.5 inches.  Me.  Suggesting that people get things tailored.  Imagine that.  But Mr. Craig got me hooked on tailored clothes and so now I’m a dress clothes snob.  If the pants or shirt don’t fit (get a size up  depending on the cut) and get the piece tailored and then you’ll look good, be comfortable, and you’re sure to score big with the fashion police.

The only problem was that I was pretty sure that I’m one of a small handful of people who actually have male body parts, who are straight, who would have been able to evaluate all of the outfits Jessica tried on as well as the dress this stranger tried on.  Apparently I’ve watched too much “What Not to Wear” 😛

Periodically, Like a Magazine

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Periodically people move, and when they move their bodies burn calories, which explains the profuse amount of processed foods available at various establishments.  And at the Belle Taco establishment today I saw this lovely sign (snapped with my cell phone, sorry its low quality)

Closed spelled WRONG

If you look closely you’ll notice that closed is spelled as if the sign creator was a super clever fellow.  Or maybe they are a product of the Aurora Public Education System (APES).  What do you think?  Does Taco Bell need signs like this everywhere to go with their “Think outsid3 th3 bun” ad campaign? The burrito I ordered was just the ingredients rolled in the tortilla.  Thus when I lifted it out of the paper wrapper much nastiness fell into the (conveniently located) bag.   Drivers b3w@r3.