My Valentine's Day gift: A Nomad Zen Xtra 40GB jukebox. I am a lucky, lucky man.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you live in Chicago. It is approximately a million degrees below zero outside, and you would like to start a fire in the fireplace. Do you:
A) First check the flue, opening it if necessary, or;
B) Assume that the flue must be closed because you had a conversation with your spouse some weeks ago in which it was determined that you were going to keep it shut when not in use. So you use the poker to flip the flue-handle thingy to what must QED be the “open” position, and fire that baby up.
If you answered A, congratulations! That is the correct answer.
If you answered B, then here is your double-or-nothing bonus question. Upon smelling smoke in the room and tracing the source to the fireplace and your nice, warm fire, do you:
A) Get down on your hands and knees, look into the fireplace, and use the poker to reopen the flue, or;
B) Get up on a chair to unplug the smoke detector, open a window, and place a frantic call to your spouse’s cell phone to summon him home to fix the problem before a neighbor calls the fire department.
If you answered A, congratulations! That’s correct.
If you answered B, then I completely understand how you could make such a mistake, especially when your ass of a husband left the flue open. It’s really all his fault, and I would never dream of making fun of you, because I am a kind and sensitive man.
NOTE: This post is based on a purely hypothetical situation, which is entirely fictitious. Any resemblance between this 100% made-up story and actual events which transpired in my home this evening is purely coincidental.
From blogging, that is. When I found myself unable to write about how our President seemingly can't find anything he doesn't want to throw billions of dollars at, I knew the tank was empty. All out of desire to write, all out of free time. If/when they both return, so will I.
Grief counseling will be available for those who need it. See your local liquor store for details.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the angriest page in blogdom. Many are the people, places, and things that have pissed me off in recent days, some serious and personal, some trivial. In no particular order:
- Watching playoff football this past weekend just makes it all the more clear that the Chicago Bears are not just a player or two away from being a playoff team. They aren’t even playing the same sport as the Colts, Patriots, Eagles, and Panthers.
- Anybody who says of Peyton Manning “Yes, but…” needs to STFU. He’s playing like a Hall-Of-Famer, and he deserved league MVP all by himself.
- If the Colts had played the Bears this year, but replaced the Colt defense with Folgers Crystals, the Colts still win and the Bears still have to punt at least five times playing offense against eleven cups of weak decaf.
- If anybody in the league is dumb enough to hire fired Bears coach Dick Jauron after he kept John Shoop as offensive coordinator through three years of failure by design, couldn’t figure out what players to put on the field, and couldn’t manage the clock (to pick just three glaring flaws), then they get what they deserve. Nice guy, bad coach.
- The Wisconsin jackoff who is suing his cable company for making him fat needs to STFU. The Londoner who was asked by a newspaper his opinion on the story and responded that he thinks all Americans are stupid needs to STFU and reflect on the stupidity of drawing conclusions about a population of three hundred million based on a sample of one.
- Physicians who don’t want to practice medicine need to find themselves another occupation, such as banking or accounting or panhandling, in which their pesky on-call pager never goes off just because they have a patient lying around an emergency room for hours in agony because the ER staff doesn’t know what to do and the highly paid specialist is off alphabetizing his mutual funds or whatever the fuck it is he does when he can’t be bothered to practice medicine just then. The patient was my wife. Can you tell I’m livid? Long story, not going to go into it. But once we don’t need this doctor any more, he and I are going to have words. More to the point, I am going to have words and he is going to listen in respectful silence if he wants to end the conversation with as many teeth and unbroken limbs as he had going into it. I’ve got a little black bag full of ass-whup with his name on it.
- If you are hacking up a lung on the train but not covering your mouth while you do so, and if I fail to kill you for it, it’s not because you don’t deserve to die. It’s because I’m too busy plotting the death of someone even more annoying than you. Count your blessings. And cover your damned mouth.
- Would it kill you to read the fucking manual instead of sitting at your desk with your mouth open staring at the wall waiting for me to come around unbreak whatever it is you just broke? If it would, would you read it anyway?
Now I must go be happy.
UPDATE, 1/14 8:50 AM: Sorry to have been ambiguous, but Mrs. Green is okay. I can see now I didn't make that clear when I was ranting. Add self to list of people pissing me off.... check.
Just when I thought I was completely and utterly out of things to say, life provided me with some new material. Maybe I'll have some time to write today.
But before I get down to doing my paying job, I have to tell you that I got an email from another scammer, this time from Togo. I replied, hoping to dredge some more comedy from this theme, but my reply bounced! What's the frigging point of running an email scam if you aren't going to keep your account active long enough for people to respond?
Sheesh. They don't make crooks like they used to.
It should be obvious to any semi-intelligent observer that homosexuals must not be allowed to marry. Marriage should be reserved for drunken idiots who want to marry as a "joke" at a Vegas wedding chapel. You know, like Britney Spears.
Letting gays marry would clearly devalue this sacred institution. Only heterosexual married couples, nearly 50% of whom do not divorce, can be entrusted with such a grave responsibility as holding together the very foundation of our society.
I'd like to expound further on these points, but I'm having an affair with a co-worker, and it's almost time for our Tuesday "meeting" in the supply closet.
Setting an alarm is a two-step process. First, set the alarm time. Second, turn the damned thing on.
Performing the first step while omitting the second may lead to you waking two hours after you wanted to.
The alarm clock is tricky, but master it and you need never be late for work again.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." - Samuel Johnson