Hello, telemarketer

I got a free landline and cable with my Internet from SureWest.

Today, I found a cordless phone in one of my boxes and decided to give the old landline a try.  I enjoyed talking to my parents without worrying about frying my cell battery.  

However, I got two telemarketer calls tonight.  One was going to give me a free cruise, and the other was magazines.  My thought upon the second call: “Maybe I need to go ahead and put this phone number on the No Call List.”  

Then, I realized I need to interface this phone with the computer so I can mess with telemarketers’ heads and post the results here as MP3s.  Plus, I don’t know my phone number.

Stay tuned.

Get off my ass, Facebook

Dear Facebook,

I don’t appreciate the ad you served up for me today.

Your “targeted advertising” needs to make the girls in the ad a little more slutty looking before I fall for this trick. Have you learned nothing from MySpace on how to net some morons?

Peace,

Stooks

Drill, baby, drill

Can you believe the crowd at the Republican National Convention taunted Sarah Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter with chants of “Drill, baby, drill” this week?  What won’t the Republicans do?

A letter to God

Dear God,

Do you know how many times “God bless America” has been uttered this week?  Yeah, lots.  In prime time, too.  And it’s always at the end of the speeches, when everyone is paying attention.  And then we drop balloons or shoot off fireworks or some combination of the two.

According to my count, you’ve got lots of blessing to get to.  

Thanks,

Matt

The Palin checklist

Alaskan for oil drilling: Check

Penchant for power abuse: Check

Unaborted Down Syndrome baby: Check

Pregnant teenage daughter with parental support: Check

Son in Iraq: Check

Sexy Librarian glasses: Check

Boobs: Check

Aggressive foreign policy rhetoric: Give us some time. We just found this woman last week.

Bullying for tips

Mr. Goodcents is about as good of a sub as you can buy for the money.  It puts Subway to shame.  If you don’t have one in your city, I pity you.  That being said, Mr. Goodcents puts a tip line on your credit card receipt, hoping to guilt you into poneying up a tip for someone who prepared your food.  Fancy restaurants don’t offer a chef tip line on the receipt, so why would a sandwich shop?  Asinine.

Meanwhile, the Red Balloon karaoke bar has a tip jar for the DJ.  During karaoke Wednesday night, the bar’s other DJ got up to sing a song, and scolded the crowd for scant tipping.  First off, don’t you tip at the end of “service?”  Shouldn’t you tip when you leave, if you were to believe a karaoke DJ does anything to justify a tip?  I’m fine with someone bribing their way to the front of the karaoke list, but the dude is still just changing out CDs.

The tipping culture in this country needs a serious readjustment.

Old Man McCain

I’m not worried he’ll die in office.  His longevity concerns me, nonetheless.  If he causes the world to explode, he really didn’t have much time left, anyway.  It’s like letting a rapist go on a Girls Gone Wild photoshoot right before you castrate him.  Sorry, that’s the first analogy that popped into my head.

Cell phones continue to ruin society

As I was leaving Wendy’s for lunch yesterday, a young woman was sitting, Indian style, just outside the door.  She was on her cell having a loud, uncomfortable, bitch-out session with her boyfriend.

What the hell is wrong with people?  And you just know her and the douche on the other end of the phone are going to have ten dumbass kids together.

The Olympics are on. Do something awful.

Like a child distracted by jingling car keys, we’re all too busy creaming ourselves over Phelps to see anything else.

John Edwards cheated on his cancer-stricken wife during the Presidential campaign she encouraged him to run, even though she was in awful shape.

Russia worked up a massive boner and has been waving it in Bush’s face with its invasion of U.S. ally Georgia.

At least the opening ceremonies freaked out a lot of people.  You can pull off quite the scene when you force all your citizens to play their assigned role to perfection.

Tip for dog lovers

My roommates’ dog Berry likes to chew on anything (too much teeth, not good for recreational purposes).  But Prewitt’s wifebeater has been available for chewing all week.  The dog sniffs the shirt, gets Prewitt’s scent, and leaves it alone.

Moral of the story: If you don’t want your dog chewing on something, piss on it.

Plants are overrated

A plant, whose existence would be meaningless, found meaning by messing up my existence.  Feel free to chew on that hefty load of profound before reading on.

I’m pretty sure you could power cars with the crud that seeps from this crap. I know I won’t need to buy Pennzoil for awhile.

Screw waterboarding.  If interrogators use poison ivy on terror suspects, you’d find Osama in seconds.  Okay, not seconds, but seconds after symptoms heighten 2-4 days after contact.  Do you think poison ivy grows in the Middle East?  Sand dwellers would freak at the powers of this mystery plant.  USA!  Note to CIA: Why haven’t you hired me yet?

Something good will come of this.  I will stop being a pissy little bitch about bug bites for maybe a whole week.

Dirty Band-Aid. Yum.

We went to Pittsburg, Kansas for a bachelor party last weekend.  A treat was waiting on the hotel air conditioner upon our arrival.

To repay the favor, we took turns soiling a condom and then slapped it on the mirror for the next guests’ enjoyment.

Not as good as The Dark Knight

Remember how terrible Batman & Robin was?  Thanks to Chris Casey for pointing out this nugget: “BATMAN AND ROBIN WORST MOVIE EVER.”

It’s missing from the montage, but my favorite line from that movie was when a police officer used his last breath to point out to the other cops that “Our lungs…(gasp)…are freezing!”

My 1998 Corolla

Dear everyone who feels the need to comment on my 1998 Corolla,

I’m aware of the problems with my car.  A brake light is smashed, I have to roll down my window to open the door from the outside, the sideview mirror is cracked, the washer fluid pump is broken, the cabin noise is high.

However, I get 32 miles a gallon and the thing never breaks down.  I’m driving this bitch into the ground whether you think my Corolla is the shiz or not.  It gets me where I need to go.  Oh, and girls slide out of their seats at the sight of me driving it.

Go wax your Hummer,

Matt

Left pinky to the rescue

For now on, I shall do any public restroom flushing or door opening with my left pinky.  I use the left pinky less than any other digit, so it seems like a smart idea to use it when touching areas with latent fecal matter.

Record Labels

I don’t root for the downfall of too many industries, but record labels can’t die soon enough.

Instead of embracing and capitalizing on web distribution, record labels pissed their leg and fought the web’s ability to move music.  They were too busy fighting Napster to invent iTunes.  They were too busy fighting iTunes to invent Pandora.  Now that artists can release their music on the web, the record labels have nothing for the future.

What a truly awful industry.

The Chinese Olympics

Have you heard?  The Olympics are in China.  China will regret this.  The focus of these games will be on how China treats its people, not on the tired storyline of records falling thanks to new technology.

Journalists and spectators from around the world will experience a censored Internet.  The Internet is essential to journalists.  When they can’t get to 50 percent of their favorite sites, they will expose just how bad China controls the flow of information.

China is in a great position now.  Publicity could bring them down a notch or two.

The war on the war on fast food

LA goes after fast food:

The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to place a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in an impoverished swath of the city with a proliferation of such eateries and above-average rates of obesity.

The yearlong moratorium — which the mayor still must sign into law — is intended to give the city time to attract restaurants that serve healthier food. The action is believed to be the first of its kind by a major city to protect public health.

Newsflash: Fast food restaurants are in poor areas because poor people can afford to eat there.  “Restaurants that serve healthier food” would be in these areas if it made economic sense.  Plus, almost every fast food restaurant has healthy menu items.

Can’t we let people be responsible for their own fat asses just once?  Maybe LA could start an ad campaign: “Don’t eat your face off, and you won’t be so fat you have to walk through doors sideways.”

Uh oh.  Look what I found out:

McDonald’s $1 Double Cheeseburger: 440 calories, 23g fat

Applebee’s Quesadilla Burger: 518 calories, 30g fat

Quick!  To the suburbs!  The middle class is getting fat at Applebee’s!

The LA City Council (photo credit: Baby Kermit)

Let’s overmedicate!

CNN: A 700 percent increase in Heath Ledger disease.

Deaths from medication mistakes at home, such as actor Heath Ledger’s accidental overdose, rose dramatically during the past two decades, an analysis of U.S. death certificates finds.

The authors blame soaring home use of prescription painkillers and other potent drugs, which 25 years ago were given mainly inside hospitals.

The next president will sign some sort of healthcare reform.  It should include something to fight our addiction to pharmaceuticals.  Prescription drugs are worse than street drugs in many cases.  If nothing else, shouldn’t we speak out against rich, white guys getting high with a doctor’s blessing, while everyone else gets arrested for it?

Smoke a joint and think about it.

FW: Bullshit

I heard it on the Internet that Barack Obama blew off American soldiers in Afghanistan.  A friend forwarded an email from a soldier who said Obama didn’t even look at soldiers during his visit last week.  He didn’t thank them for their service.

Then, I remembered a thing called “Google.”  I searched for the author’s name, and finally ended up on a Snopes’ page discounting the soldier’s account with numerous photos and first-hand accounts of Obama’s visit.

The soldier has retracted his thoughts from the email.

“I am writing this to ask that you delete my email and not forward it. After checking my sources, information that was put out in my email was wrong. This email was meant only for my family. Please respect my wishes and delete the email and if there are any blogs you have my email portrayed on I would ask if you would take it down too. Thanks for your understanding.”

Unfortunately, half the country gets 90 percent of their “news” from email forwards.

Barack Obama is a soldier-hating, secret muslim with the middle name “Hussein.”  His skin is also black.  Pass it on.

Trashy T-Shirt night at The K

Tuesday, I went to “Frank White Powder Blue T-Shirt Night” at Kauffman Stadium.  I had wanted to go, and Geoff came through with free tickets.

We entered the stadium and got our free extra large t-shirts.  They had a stand where you could go exchange the shirt for a medium.  I thought this was a good idea.  Two of me could fit into that XL.  My luck changed.  As I approached the exchange stand, they packed up and went away.  They were out of mediums.

It was a great crowd for a Tuesday.

A free t-shirt brings a special kind of crowd to the stadium.

The guy behind us said “I got it” every time the bat touched the ball – fair, foul, or foul out of bounds.  He had some other commentary that would have been harmless, had it not been for his annoying, nasally voice.  Think “slightly less annoying Urkel.”  That’s what this guy sounded like.  Oh, here’s another shocker: he was at the game by himelf.  I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to go to a game with him.  Fortunately, he was there just four innings.

I tried to get a picture of him by pointing the camera at myself, but it didn’t really accomplish the goal.  I think you can see the brim of his hat behind my neck.

I did manage to get an okay picture of the family to our left.

You can see a tattoo, but you can’t make out the spelling of “Asshole” on this family man’s right arm.  I’m guessing he had an 18-month-old girl as well as a four-year-old girl.  He might’ve gotten the “Asshole” tattoo before the kids, but what’s keeping him from wearing an Iverson sleeve over that thing?

I think this guy was the grandpa.

Once again, we were lucky this group went home early.  They left after five innings.

I went for a pee and some beer refills just before the seventh inning stretch.  It started raining on my return.  The grounds crew brought out the tarp and we headed for shelter under the bowl of the stadium.  I wasn’t ten steps away from our seats before I realized I left my Frank White T-Shirt behind.  I walked back to retrieve it, and it was gone.  I was away from my seat for 10 seconds – just enough time for some piece of trash to steal my shirt.

This was our view before we left for the night.

It was one of the worst visits to Kauffman Stadium of all time.  Shit on it all.