Haunting

Driving home yesterday, I passed the ultimate abduction van. It was freaky. It was a nondescript white van with plywood covering all of the windows from the inside and what appeared to be a bullethole in the back window/plywood. We'll not go into details about the driver, needless to say, he was one creepy cat. This made me think of something that always bothers me.

I find it to be very disturbing when you see a shoe in the road or on the side of the road. Especially along a highway. I can't think of a good circumstance under which a shoe ends up in the street. Whenever I see this, I automatically assume that someone was snatched right out of their shoe by vile thugs preparing ransom notes or maybe even by starving space aliens in need of a quick snack. Maybe the person was hit by a car and their shoe was thrown so far away that nobody noticed it. Maybe someone was kicking for their life as some villainous heathen drove off into the woods to eat candy corn out of their eye sockets. Something horrible like that.

Even if it wasn't the result of treachery, I still think that this shoe is going to be a bad story. Maybe someone set their shoe on the top of the car in a rush to get someplace, only to arrive and find that they are sans-shoe. That would be pretty terrible too. Or maybe someone's shoe fell out of the back of a truck. That's going to be a sad fella when the truck stops. Maybe those were their favorite shoes.

There are many people in this world that don't even have shoes. Maybe they're lucky; at least they don't have to worry about the fate of random strangers when they see a shoe in the road. They may just think "Hey......free shoe."

Brief Observations (No, not those briefs)

Isn't it wierd when you notice something new about yourself? Today, I came to the realization that, while I love peanuts, I really don't like the smell of them when someone else is eating them. There was a guy eating peanuts next to me today and it was everything I could do to not hit him in the head with a frozen chicken to make him stop. Luckily:
1) I had no frozen chicken and
2) he didn't have a lot of peanuts.

Today I also noticed that the elevator in my hotel is manufactured by Otis. This kind of creeps me out because EVERY elevator is made by Otis. All it would take is for one rogue engineer at the Otis Elevator Company to program a hidden subroutine that causes all elevators to abruptly come crashing down at 11:11 UTC on December 21, 2012. Avoid elevators on that date.

Useless Advice Mondays: It's a small world, airplane

Since I am (once again) on the road, and since my latest airline experience was legendary, I figured I'd include som travel notes for those who do not fly all that often.

1. You smell bad. I don't care what perfume it is, what deoderant, colone, etc. If I have to sit next to you for 4 hours in a coke can with rockets and wings, please...pretty please, use some restraint when you slather yourself in Stetson. I can't escape. When I get off the plane, I'm going to call somebody to bitch about how I had to sit next to someone that smelled like the were covered in a Diamonds by Liz Taylor placenta.


2. Bullshit, you knew that bag was too big to carry on. Don't act all shocked now when you can't get it in the overhead. Don't complain about how they're made the bins smaller. I've driven cars smaller than that bag. When you get on the plane with your cello, do not act like you're being singled out when they make you check it.


3. If you require 8 bins to put all of your crap in at the security checkpoint, you brought too much shit. Downsize. You're getting on a 1.5 hour flight. I know this because you sat right next to me (see #1). Do you really need 4 books, 2 blankets, a pillow, a floatie, 3 garden gnomes, a leafblower and an Irish Setter for a 1.5 hour flight?


4. Yeah I know, it sucks that we're delayed again. Listing to your dumb ass sigh as loudly as possible every time the flight attendant walks by isn't helping. I've done the math, I could choke you and shove a rolled up copy of SkyMall down your throat before anybody even got close to stopping me. Don't think I won't do it; I read this edition of SkyMall two weeks ago, I have no need for it today.


5. Crawling half way up my ass at baggage claim is not going to make your suitcase show up any faster. Take a step back Michael Jackson, give me some breathing room. You must be the same guy who was actually standing less than an inch behind me in the security line. You pissed me off then too.


6. Yeah, I am watching Borat as a matter a fact. Yes, it was funny as hell. Suprising, I found it more funny when I didn't have someone interrupting me to ask me if I'm watching Borat. If you identified it as being possibly Borat based on the scene where two naked guys are wrestling on a bed with their faces in the other's junk, you know what movie it is you sick bastard.


7. Wow! Really?!?!? You have an iPod too???? And you can't live without it?!?!?!? Who would ever guess that TWO people with iPods would end up sitting next to each other on a plane. Sonofabitch!!! Next thing you know, everyone will have those mobile phones!!

Whistlin' Dixie

I'm pretty much over companies using pop songs from years ago in their ads. It doesn't make me reminisce, feel a camaraderie with you or even vaguely like you as a company. All it does is piss me off when I'm trying to go to sleep and I have "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang going through my head. Damn you marketing firms. Damn you all to hell. On second thought, don't use any popular music. Advertisements should be relegated to the jingle-hell that they deserve.

Not only is it annoying when I'm walking down the hall humming 1-2-3-4 by Fiest (Apple, you sadistic bastards) but I really hate it when a song that I actually like is butchered and forever destroyed, like the dreams of all Green Bay fans, by some damn commercial. The most glaring example of this is the current set of ads for Jamaica (isn't it really weird to advertise a country??). I used to actually like Bob Marley's "One Love". Now, when I hear the real song, I find the lyrics in my head replaced with "Come to Jamaica and feeeeel allllllriiight". Fuck you Jamaica. I hate you. I'm never coming to Jamaica. Kiss my ass.

What I more frequently find is that I end up really hating these companies. Usually, the way this works is that I don't register the ad with the song. I'm just whistling "The Time of My Life" one day and really upset about it. Then the ad comes on that caused it and I yell at the TV "YOU BASTARDS!"

Aboard this tiny ship.....my ass!

WARNING: If you live with me, please do not read this post, it will only annoy you.

I have a problem today, and that problem is Gilligan's Island. I don't know why, but on my drive home last night, I got to thinking about yet another thing that bothered me about this show. Since most of you are not familiar with the many things Gilliganian that disturb me, I shall fill you in:

• It was a three hour tour, a three hour tour. Why the HELL did they have luggage? Who brings luggage on a three hour tour? You know who? Homeless people, escaped convicts, drug traffickers (although the "luggage" may be something else entirely) and people trying to disappear. If I'm getting on a boat for a three hour tour and I see other passengers boarding with luggage, I'm getting the hell off of that boat.


• They were stuck on that island for three seasons (actually considerably longer if you count the rescue episodes, but we won't go there). In those three seasons, the Professor wore the same thing every episode (as did the Skipper and Gilligan, who clearly were not in on the drug trafficking trade that the other four were). The professor wore a white button up shirt. A white one. It was always white. I can't keep a white shirt clean for more than 37 minutes and this dude kept his white shirt clean, after having shipwrecked on an island, for 3 years.


• How many people showed up on that "uncharted" isle? You have to think that if that many people showed up, it would eventually fall into the "charted" category. In one episode, the military is testing rockets by firing them at the island. That seems pretty fucking charted.


• Numerous things wash ashore. They use these items when possible. One of which was a case of plastic explosives. They used this to make golf balls, plates and even use it as a filling for one of Gilligan's teeth. There are several things wrong here. First, you'd think that someone (*cough* Professor) would have noticed what this was, I mean the dude's identifying insect species native to the island. They figure out that the stuff is exlosive when it dries. OK...wait. First off.....do you really want someone filling your teeth with some random substance that washed up on shore? Next, what made you think that this stuff would be suitable for golf balls and plates? Third, why did the plate make such a small explosion compared to the golf ball? Fourth, if I were Gilligan, I'd be a little more pissed about someone putting explosives in my head.


• They built huts, tables, chairs, a bike, washing machines, hell even a car out of bamboo but couldn't make a god damned raft? Jesus christ people. I can make a damn raft.


• I realize it was the 60's, but how many Mad Scientists can there be??? On a few occasions, they were vistied by mad scientists. WTF???


• It took 14 episodes for them to realize that they didn't have drinking water.


• Tell me Howell wasn't a child molester. I dare you.


• A space capsule splashed down in the lagoon. I'm no rocket scientist, but I'm only fucking guessing that NASA keeps track of those things. I seem to recall the thing splashing down in real life and there being a damn armada waiting for it. Instead, they just remotely blew it up. Really? That's the way they roll? The same can be said for the Jet Pack that showed up there, the experimental Air Force robot, the satellite that's supposed to be heading to mars, etc.


• What kind of batteries were in that damn radio?!?!?!


• Since when are Gorillas on remote Pacific Islands?


• Given all of the people that kept showing up (and leaving) the island, wouldn't you think that, at some point, somebody would have gone completely batshit on one of them and bludgeoned them with a stick? If I've been on an island for a year, and someone shows up with a boat, no amount of talking is going to stop me from caving in their skull with the first inanimate object I can find.


• The island is hit by a meteor, several hurricanes, even a damn tsunami. These assholes built huts that can withstand all of this crap.....people in Sacramento can't build houses that survive the wind.

I could keep going, but I'll just stop here. End Gilligan rant. I should also point out that I obviously watched this show way too many times.

Useless Advice Mondays: Life Lessons

Learn from the mistakes of others. If you can't do that, when your feeling blue, laugh at the mistakes of others.....that usually works too.

The other day, I was feeling kinda blue. The typical "life sucks", "what the hell am I going to do?", "Should I have really eaten that?", "I miss Bigfoot", you know, just a bummer. Then a thought entered my head that made me kind of chuckle. I've had this thought on several occasions, and it never fails to make me smile. I remembered what is probably the greatest example of instant karma in the last 10 years. I'll provide a link to the moment below. Burn it into your memory and refer back whenever you need a pick me up, because no matter how bad things are going, watching someone botch a once-in-a-lifetime chance is always going to make you feel better.

Here's a warm up for the video: It's the 2006 Winter Olympics, you're going down the final stretch in your snowbaording event with a seemingly insurmountable lead. Two fairly simple jumps left. All of a sudden, you think "I'm so damn cool, I'm gonna get a little slappy with this here jump. Take that Olympic tradition! The whole world's watching, I'm kicking ass. Wheaties box here I come......" and then:

Yeah. You get em tiger. (Just to make it clear, I am having a hard time typing right now because this makes me laugh my ass off eveytime I see it.)

So what's better than blowing your shot at an OLYMPIC GOLD MEDAL? Lying about it later and saying that you "got off balance and were trying to correct" yourself (she later admitted that she was trying to do a trick).

So whenever you're having a bad day, just remember this: At least you didn't just throw away an olypic gold medal because you got cocky. Karma's a bitch.