Cars, houses, underwear... whatever it is you're buying, it's not pre-owned. It's used.
Used.
It's not a bad thing to buy something used (unless it's underwear.) It is a bad thing to pretend that you're not buying a used thing, but a pre-owned thing.
For God's sake, society -- how much luxury do you need? Are we going to put precious metals and gemstones into everything?
I'm talking (this time) about the hand-rubbed silver dust in the woodworking of the new 2011 Infiniti M; the commercial brags about that "pure silver dust, hand-polished into the wood" and notes that you've never driven a car like that:
But if you're a status-seeking imbecile, you will drive a car like that -- and you'll do it for the sake of saying to someone "See that?" as you point to the woodwork, adding "That's silver dust, hand-polished into it."
Why? Why is there silver dust hand-polished in? For that specific purpose of telling people about it.
I hope someday I get into someone's car and they say that to me. And I hope that when they do, I will go ahead and punch that person. ____________________________________________________________
Animal Restaurant, in Los Angeles, as I understand it, from time to time, tries to sell the whole animal -- that's a new thing in foodery, a new disgusting thing foisted off on the rich as the thing to do. Among the things like head cheese they serve (by scraping skin and brains off the marinated skulls), a recent article in The New Yorker claimed that one night, they served thirty hearts in soup.
I'm going to be very rich, very soon. I'm going to find something, anything, laying around my house or, more likely, in the trash, and I'm going to first tell all the rich people I can find that the thing I found is absolutely not for sale. Then I'll tell them that they might be able to buy the garbage, but there's a waiting list and Kim Kardashian is ahead of them. Then, I'll finally tell them that I'll sell them a portion of the garbage, but only if they come pick it up and pay $100,000 for it.
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The other day Mike Mayock, who is, it seems, someone working in the world of sports, was on The Dan Patrick Show. As I listened on the radio, Mike Mayock said, in response to a question about Tim Tebow: "I've been on the phone all morning trying to figure out" who was going to draft Tebow.
Think about that.
We live in a society where not only can someone spend all his time calling football teams to find out whether they're going to draft a particular guy...
... but also where we pay him to do that...
... and then pay other people to talk about him doing that.
I wonder what people with real jobs think of things like this.
Meet Jeff Simmons and Alfonsa Quiroz. That's them off to the right - -and they hate people far more than I hate people. The difference is that while I just blog about why I hate people, Jeff and Alfonso do something about it: in particular, they and their friends squander massive amounts of resources on a dog while completely ignoring the many needy people around them.
See, not so long ago, the dog in the picture got lost. And that was terrible for Jeff, or Alfonso, or both, because apparently the dog reminds them of some stupid artsy movie.
So Jeff or Alfonso, or both, orchestrated a massive search: they used all their connections, including a sister in Chicago who designed a catchy lost dog poster (they put up 3,000), and a friend who'd run for city council emailing 20,000 people to help look. Oh, and they organized a calling tree to locate the dog. While they did that, "an army of helpers" was scouring the streets.
They found the dog -- he'd been found by another person who saw a poster and returned him.
Jeff and Alfonso, and the "army of helpers:" While all that effort was being squandered on a dog, did you ever stop to wonder how many people were in trouble that day? Did you ever ask your "army of volunteers" to also look for 15-year-old Letticia Lopes, who's been missing since last May?
Of course you didn't. Enjoy living with your stupid dog, and, hopefully, your shameful guilt.
Yesterday, I had to just stop in my office quickly to get a file and then head off to a hearing. I pulled up in back of the building, where a parking lot abuts an alleyway. The alleyway is used to drop off things for other businesses along the way, and has a back door that leads into our building.
That's when I saw this:
That truck -- dropping off three boxes, is parked right in front of our building's door. It wasn't dropping off anything in our building. The nearest place it could've been dropping things off was about 50 feet to the right of that picture.
But was it parked 50 feet to the right? It was not. It was parked directly in front of our back door, for no apparent reason whatsoever, beyond making me have to edge along the building between the truck and the brick wall and then shimmy in our back door.
Thanks, Mr. Truck Driver! _________________________________________________________________
Muslim extremists threatened the creators of South Park with death for depicting Muhammad as being a person dressed in a bear suit.
Which theoretically means that if you take anything and say it's Muhammad in there, they would get mad at you. Like if I posted this picture, which is a shot of the Prophet Muhammad in a Godzilla suit:
Then Muslim Extremists would be upset with me. Or if I posted this picture of the Prophet Muhammad joining the crowds celebrating the Allied victory in World War II:
They'd be upset with me. They'd even probably be upset with me if I posted the video proof that Muhammad works as a short order cook at a diner featured on Man vs. Food -- which I shouldn't show you, but watch carefully: at eight seconds in, you'll see the tip of the Prophet's head just over the host's shoulder, under the "G".
But they shouldn't get upset. Because remember, Muslim extremists (and other religious extremists, too): If your religion is so fragile and untenable that it cannot stand to be made fun of by a cartoon, well, then, it's not much of a religion, is it? I think Muhammad wouldn't condone death threats for being depicted in pictures -- but maybe we should ask him:
"It's the economy, stupid." Is that hackneyed campaign slogan still kicking around, and is that why every single news story has to be boiled down to how much money is lost from the economy because of this or that?
The latest is a rash of stories about the economic losses related to the volcano impact, like the entirely-facetious-and-almost-certainly-made-up numbers presented in this story about the loss of tourism money in New York City. That's one of the many, many stories which are simply making up theories about how money is lost by such things as cancelling the flights -- and basing their pseudo-scientific claptrappery on anecdotal quotes like this:
The tourism agency estimates that for every 1,000 European visitors who cancel their trips, the city will lose out on $1.5 million in spending on hotels, restaurants and museums.
First off, that's an estimate, and there's nothing to say what it's based on. Tea leaves? Nostradamus' quatrains? Who knows? Who cares?
More importantly, consider two things: First, that for each person who can't fly here from Europe, there's someone here who can't fly there. So where's the estimates of the economic plus of the people staying here? The article notes them only in passing -- to brush them aside from the foofooraw over (imaginary) economic losses:
There are a lot of cancellations but for every cancellation there is someone who needs to extend their room," said Eric Lauritsen of the Hotel Giraffe on Park Avenue South.Still, insiders note that many of the thousands of stranded travelers are at the end of their vacations, and minding their pennies.
So the article assumes that the people who are stuck here are penny-pinching tightwads - -while the people who would be here if not for the volcano would have let their Euros flow like sand through their wide-spread European fingers... and based that on unnamed insiders. (Were there people who didn't want to go on the record as saying the current pack of tourists are cheap?) What's the basis for that assumption?
The article also glances over the possibility that trips will simply be rescheduled:
"We can only hope that these people come back at a later stage," it quotes a source as saying. But has anyone asked the insiders what percentage of trips will be taken a few days later? What percentage of business trips will be made on April 26 instead of April 19? If people do opt to travel some other time, to New York, will we see an article about the Post-Volcano Economic Boom?
It's doubtful. There is no event in human history these days that cannot be cast into economic gloom-and-doom -- especially if we're going to let news sources speculate and make up numbers and call that a fact.
I doubt there's any long-term or significant economic impact. I'll just say that flat out: The businesses in New York City (and other destinations affected by the volcano ash) are going to end up 2010 as good as, if not better than they would have if the volcano didn't blow. And I defy anyone to prove me wrong later this year.
Ordinarily, I would hate the people who get excited about the "new" iPhone (because it's just a phone, and because you're dumb enough to keep paying all over again for incremental upgrades instead of waiting a year or two for it all to become standard), but in this case I'm making an exception, and here's why:
I'm not supposed to reveal this to you -- especially because Apple hates letting out secrets, but I got to test the new iPhone, and it's not at all like the one Gizmodo is claiming is the new iPhone.
Instead, the new iPhone is shown below. I've got some annotations on there to show you just how cool it is.
Do you like stuff? Do you think the stuff you like is The Best? So do I; that's why I write The Best Of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours. The only site around that dares to name The Best Superhero, The Best Olsen Twin, The Best Boardgames to Make Into TV shows, and more!
"I could sure go for some nachoes. Or perhaps a vaguely-pizza-like slab of bread. But it's so difficult to get regular cheese to melt, and it comes in those multiple packets where I can never decide just how much to use. I'll just have to starve... what's this? Hallelujah!"
...on TV, you'll see a disclaimer at the bottom that says "Professional Driver. Closed Course."
That is there, I assume, to warn away people who otherwise might try to drive their Land Rover through a landscape where the Hand Of God keeps changing the scenery.
What if I sweetened the deal... using "sweetened" very very very loosely... and said that this particular coffee is pooped out by a cat?
(Hint: That's disgusting.)
Civet cat coffee -- billed as "luxury coffee for a noble cause" because their first slogan ("You're drinking poopy water") didn't spur sales -- is available online for $320 per pound. (It comes with a "free" gift bag, for those people who are unfamiliar with the actual meaning of free.)
The beans are harvested by having civet cats eat them, then poop them out. The website describes it this way: The beans pass through the civets undigested, but enzymes in the civets’ stomachs break down the proteins of the beans resulting in an incredibly smooth, luxurious gourmet coffee.
That's for people who are unfamiliar with the actual meaning of undigested, since breaking down the proteins is digestion.
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If you're the type of person who would order the flowers for your wedding to be flown in from the Netherlands, you're a jerk and I hate you.
And if you're the type of reporter who thinks that it's news to report that people won't be getting their wedding's "Dutch tulips, peonies, and daffodils" flown across the Atlantic Ocean this weekend, then you're stupid and I hate you.
That was how I began my day today: Hearing a dumb reporter on CNNHLN (Susan Hendricks) think it was news that the volcanic ash blocking transatlantic flight meant that overspending stupid people wouldn't get their flowers for their weddings this weekend.
Boo friggin hoo.I have tulips growing in my yard. Why on earth would you ever need to fly a flower across the ocean... let alone report on the inability to do so?
I likes me some music, and I likes me some sports. Why aren't the two together more often? is a question I ask not just about music+sports, but about other combinations, as well.
Last Friday, April 9, the Madison (WI) police department began an intensive new program in which they dispatched uniformed officers to roam parking lots issuing "tickets" to cars they deemed to be at risk of being broken into -- leaving little pink notes about having valuables in plain sight and the like.
Meanwhile, there are still two unsolved downtown murders in Madison, and in the first week of the "Let's keep cars safe program" Madison precincts received reports of 11 robberies, 3 batteries, 1 sexual assault, 1 enticement/kidnapping, a residential burglary... oh, and one theft from car.
Maybe the police could, I don't know, keep me safe from being kidnapped and murdered, and let me worry about whether someone's going to steal the Kajagoogoo tape from my car?
What type of person can't stop themselves from texting-while-driving... unless they swear to Oprah that they won't do it?Who promises anything to Oprah in the first place? What's wrong with you? Oprah has no authority!
I'm envisioning now a whole new (scarily stupid) world of pledges-to-celebrities:
I promise Ellen I will not DVR episodes of Glee with no intention of watching them.
I swear to Dr. Phil that I'll save him some Pringles.
Yesterday morning, I was just finishing up getting ready for work when a commercial came on for the new "Lysol No-Touch Hand Soap System."
A soap system that solves a problem that never existed and still doesn't.
The "No-Touch Hand Soap System" caters to people who don't understand things (i.e., people) by first making the claim that soap pumps are "germy." So when you touch the pump, you see, you get germs on your hands.
The No-Touch "system" then solves that problem by dispensing soap without you touching it.
Clever, right?
Unnecessary, right?
Getting germs on your hands from touching the soap dispenser isn't a problem, unless you either touch the dispenser but then skip washing your hands, or if you wash your hands, then touch the dispenser. If you don't do either of those things, then it doesn't matter what germs you get on your hands from touching the dispenser, because you wash your hands immediately after touching the dispenser. ________________________________________________________________
The "rock" "band" MGMT released their first album on a major label a while ago, and apparently a lot of people liked the monotonous drone of a New Order knockoff... so many that MGMT now gets to tour and stay in hotel suites described as being the size of a "tastefully furnished" "small country," in which suites they have all the food and drink they can eat -- more than that really.
If you don't want to be famous, don't release an album on a major label and tour to promote it. And if you don't like the trappings of fame, don't stay in a fancy hotel suite filled with chocolate mousse.
But if you go ahead and do those things, then shut up about how you don't like them.
Friday, at work, I had to wait while the coffee brewed, so I took advantage of that delay to also rinse out my coffee cup. I rinsed it in hot water and then filled it with hot water and let it sit while I went back to turn on my computer.
A few minutes later, when I went back to the breakroom to get my coffee, someone had put a dirty spoon into my cup.
Not into the sink, right next to my cup. Not into the dishwasher, right below my cup. Into my cup.
And it wasn't just dirty: It had stuff caked on it.
