People who put racing stripes on an extraordinary shit box

Here’s the rule: if your car isn’t fast enough to even be capable of causing a moving traffic violation, it should not have stripes, flames, a spoiler, or any type of exhaust modification. Period.

I was in traffic the other day when I saw a Mustang with racing stripes. I was far enough behind the car that I noticed its single tailpipe — the V6 version that burns through less rubber than an academic achievement fraternity (think about it…harder…aah! you got it!). Now, if you want to throw some stripes on your GT or your Cobra, or whatever Milwaukee’s Best soaked chariot you chose, that’s fine. At least those stripes signal that the car can move quickly and that you are the one who should be arrested. And in the case of the Mustang or a Corvette, those racing stripes are probably at least partially responsible for holding your plastic car together, which I can’t fault you for. You paid for the whole thing, so you may as well not scatter parts of it in front of Cracker Barrel billboards on 75 S.

Seeing this car gave me flashbacks of a number of cars I’ve seen with these types of decorations. Unfortunately, I neglected to get a picture of any of them, but I’m relatively confident I can get Google to help me out on a couple. Here we go:

Those are not race times on the passenger door; that’s a shopping list.

This actually isn’t a paint job. This is a PT Cruiser trying to kill its own driver.

Now, I want to be clear about something. I don’t think that any car is inherently ridiculous (ok, I lied). I think that people buy their cars like they buy their dogs. Cars are a reflection of your personality. The guy in the Porsche RS is a driver. The girl in the Prius cares about the planet (and not so much about the quality of her driving, or the planet, either, since the Prius is an ecological disaster with those batteries being shipped across the world). The dude in the Wagoneer has a sense of nostalgia and class. The girl in the Wrangler is fun and lets her hair down. The dude in the Volvo is saying, “Cars aren’t important to me.” . . .  with his car.

But consider what your dog would say about you if you bought a Pomeranian, put a muzzle on it, and walked to a Greyhound race with your speed-mouse in tow? How would your Attack Pug communicate your sense of self-worth and security? And people would almost certainly be disturbed if you put a sticker down the side of your dachshund that said…”dachshund.”

So, can we please end the nonsense identity crises with our cars? Buy what you want, buy what you care about. And then be realistic about your purchase.

The rest of us

I was struggling with what to write about today until just now.  Sometimes you come across someone who is just completely off the farm, and that just happened for me.

I have had about 4 tall glasses of water this morning and I’ve been peeing like a middle-aged mom on a road trip.  I just took my second trip to the room where people rest and here’s what I saw:

1. Man is washing his hands – ok, this is pretty normal
2. Man is about 5′3″ with enormous ears and a humpty dumpty build – I’m thinking this guy has got to be funny to witness, shame he’s on his way out
3. Man flicks wrists to get rid of water, skips paper towels – a bit unusual to leave your hands wet
4. Man walks over to urinal next to me – huh, peeing after the hand wash?  And with wet hands? Not on his way out, after all.
5. Man angles himself 45-degrees away from me – there is a divider: nothing can be seen, yet he feels the need to angle so far away he’s practically peeing on the wall.  If he aims himself back at the urinal from this extreme angle, there’s a serious possibility he’ll wee right into one of his pleats.
6. Man pees for literally 0.068 seconds.  Like a single shot of a water pistol you bought at Wal Mart hitting a wall.
7. Man zips his fly up so fast I almost yelped.  The zipper sounded like a Hollywood laser gun.  This zipper velocity is a risk no man I know would ever take – there is nothing on earth that warrants rushing the zipper.  We’ve all seen Something About Mary.
8. Man walks away from the urinal, and goes into a stall.  I start looking for hidden cameras and Ashton Kutcher.  What in the hell is happening in this bathroom?
9. Man closes stall door and locks it.  Toilet paper roll makes its signature sound. Once more.  Nothing.  Door unlocks.  Man walks out.  Man leaves bathroom.  No second hand-wash.

It took me about 20 seconds to notice that I had stopped peeing, I was spellbound.  I had just witnessed “bathroom in reverse.”

So today, it’s just the freaks vs the rest of the population.  Thanks for making our lives that much more interesting.

People who trust their own memory and instincts to get them through the week

Here is one of the big office truths: we are all morons incapable of remembering the simplest things.  Seriously.  All of us forget no less than 27 things we’re supposed to do every day.  9,742 a day if you’re a big idiot.

Microsoft, in an uncharacteristic moment of brilliance, invented “flags” for emails. Granted, in a more characteristic moment of dumbassery, they decided to let you use 5 different colors of flags (and concluded that one color is best again in 2007), but the flag is a wonderful, wonderful, underutilized thing.

Flags say, “Hey dumbass, don’t forget about me,” without the nagging boldness of an unread email.  While several people use the “Mark Unread” technique, it is clearly inferior: I know you’ve read that email 132 times and had to mark it unread every time saying, “Oh yeah, that’s important, but not right now.  Let me hide it in a population of other emails that will look the same when I come back and try to find this one.”  The problem is that you can’t tell the difference between these unread emails and your legit unread emails, so you’re just playing pop-a-mole with your emails until you get over your laziness and actually do one of these things you’re being asked to do.

But there is another whole population of people who uses no method of flagging emails whatsoever.  They will read an email, intend to follow up on it, and will forget about it for the rest of their lives.  Like an ad for a charity.  Not using a system is a guarantee that 65% of the people you work with think you’re a forgetful moron.  The other 35% are just as checked out as you are.

Start using your email flags and set up a filter that shows you just flagged emails.  Not only will you thank me, but everyone else will too.  And you’ll probably get a promotion out of it because you’ll finally be doing something other than panning for email gold every time you open Outlook.

People actively trying to get fatter

I’ve been on a bit of a health kick lately and when I was reflecting on lbs. past this morning (I’ve lost about 19 oz. in the last month – one step at a time), I realized something.  You’re either actively trying to get fitter, or actively trying to get fatter.  There is no in-between.  There is no actively trying to stay the same.

I know this because I’ve experienced both ends of the spectrum.  I have the, “Holy crap, I’m fat and lazy and have a resting heart rate of a hummingbird on meth and I’m in my late 20s and my dad is in better shape than I am and I’m going to die before my parents and miss out on the inheritance,” days.  Hopefully, those days are behind me.  Right now, I’m having the, “I am going to bike 100 miles a week for the rest of my life, have washboard abs, and not look like a Swiffer commercial where the thin, cute wife has a bald, fat husband with heart disease in a bright yellow shirt stretched over man boobs.”  Seriously, pay more attention to the next Swiffer ad.

When you’re in “get fatter” mode, you’re just telling yourself that you enjoy eating out and good food and who gives a crap if you have a little plump around you.  Then you realize that you can actually hear your own heartbeat after you finish eating a steak and you can see a vein in your leg pulsing as your heart struggles to get oxygen to your ever-expanding empire of fat.  Sort of like ancient Rome, your expansionist ways will ultimately be your undoing.

But my “get fitter” mode is also unrealistic, I fear.  I’m sort of like a kamikaze pilot about fitness, throwing myself at improving my health headlong and ultimately burning myself out.  They call people like me, “roller coaster dieters,” or something like that, because of the highs and lows.  Well, I’m back on the climb, folks.  Or is that the descent?  Which one is good?  It’s sort of like saying someone is off the wagon.  Or on the wagon…  Is the wagon good or bad?  Nobody knows.  We just know that when there’s a positive and a negative involved, we like to put people around something that rolls.

People who eat the huge peppermint patties

You know when you go to a gas station and they have the huge, cheeseburger-sized peppermint patties?  Who in the hell can eat one of those things?  It’s like a little mint pizza, and I get a wintery-fresh gag reflex just thinking about mint pizza.  Sorry.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll pop a little peppermint patty like a gorilla pops ants off a stick. They’re delicious little guys, but I’m definitely going to max out at 1.5 to 2 of them.  I could never deal with the peppermint frisbee: it’s just over the top.

After you finish your candy, you can tear the package open and have one of those shiny post-marathon blankets to keep your shoulders warm.

I just think that part of the magic of candy is proper sizing.  Candy makers have to size the candy just right so when you finish it, you’re either satisfied or you exercise poor judgment in buying another bar / bag.  Once you’ve started on that second bar, you realize your mistake, but you blame yourself, not the candy.  When you eat a large peppermint patty, you say, “Good Messiah, I’m not eating another one of these for at least 6 months.”  Candy’s fault.  Candy suffers.  Snickers has sold 2 bars in one day to one person, and York is going to sell 2 mint moon pies in a year.

People who can’t spell

Question: Do you know what word is always spelled incorrectly?  Read on for the answer.

Something you might find surprising is the lack of a tight correlation between intelligence and spelling.  There are plenty of smart people that just can’t spell, and unfortunately it dulls their ability to look smart.  That’s okay, because it makes me look that much better.  Boo ya.

Anyhow, I thought I would let you in on a private exercise I go through when I see common spelling mistakes.  It’s fun for me, and I hope it will be fun for you, too.  Let’s look at an example…

So, let’s say I see the following in an email:

Its rediculous that their going to France again this year.

In my head, I say:

The repeated diculous that is owned by it that again they possess a “going to France” this year.

In essence, I’m translating what they’ve said into a literal format, taking into account the spelling mistakes. Yay! Fun for the whole family.

The three points of Poseidon’s trident of spelling have to be it’s/its, your/you’re, and their/they’re/there.  Not other words are used in the wrong places more often than these three, and no misuse of words can make a person look dumber.  We also have whose/who’s, let’s/lets, and the slew of acronyms that people think possess something untold.  You do not own a bunch of CD’s.  You own CDs.  Actually, you hopefully own an iPod at this point. Way to skirt that one.

If you want to get ahead in this life, take some time to work on your spelling and make sure that you never go without fixing your spelling and grammar.  If the content is gold, it won’t matter if you don’t get these basics right.  Trust me.  I’m judging you.

TATTOPITW gives back.

Oh yeah, the answer: “incorrectly.”  You had to know that was coming.

People who hang out in the bathroom – “stall-kers”

There are few places in the world that are less comfortable for all involved than the bathroom.  I can’t speak for the women’s room, where it seems a live taping of Oprah is always taking place, but in the men’s room, protocol is to avoid talking, eye contact, friendliness, etc.  Of course, there is always that one guy who talks from inside the stall, but he’s an outlier.

Given this general level of discomfort in the men’s room, I’m always a little unnerved to see someone waiting in the bathroom when all of the stalls are taken.  Most people choose to turn back around and come back later, or even try another floor of the office building, but the few who stallk are definitely a different breed.  They’re either having a minor emergency, or they’re just strangely okay with hanging out in the bathroom and facing the inevitable event of walking right into the fresh aftermath of someone’s dietary mistakes.

The worst thing is when you’re the one being stallked.  That’s pretty embarrassing and I used to just say, “excuse me,” or something to that effect when passing the stallker, but I’ve figured lately that if these people are that awkward, I might as well keep it that way and say something to make them uncomfortable.  Lately, I’ve been testing the reactions to the following rendezvous statements:

• “Enjoy…”
• “You might want to give it a second.”
• I might make gagging sounds or a few coughs on the way out.
• “Beat that.”

Try one of these out this week and tell me what happened.

People who were not in the high school band.

nuff said.

People who do not lead a sad, lonely life

Last night, I went out to a fun photography meeting that happens every other Tuesday.  These are great: you get to take pictures of 2 or 3 models that they hire, learn about how to improve your photo-taking skills, enjoy meeting new (and often strange) new people, and have a few beers.  But about the meeting new people part.  There are few things I enjoy more in life than meeting a new, interesting person, and there are few things I enjoy less in life than meeting an awkward, unfriendly, or otherwise ridiculous person.

So, here I am taking pictures and drinking a few beers and meeting people, having a good time.  There’s this one guy who is going on and on about whatever at a volume that is reserved for only two things: bingo night at the retirement home or making sure that other people around you hear your whole conversation.  I’m pretty sure the conversation was about doing something unfriendly or making fun of a homeless person, which is not funny unless that homeless person used to work on Wall Street.

After listening to this guy go on and on like a flock of angry geese, I’m nearby and decide to do the right thing and introduce myself to him, just to make sure I’m not judging him pre-emptively.  Here’s what I found out in the next 3 minutes:

• He works at a prestigious company
• Most people wouldn’t understand what he does
• He is mean to the people who work for him
• He makes several hundred thousand dollars, and his boss made $3 million last year
• He doesn’t have any more time for me

A very stimulating conversation, indeed.  I did let him know that I write a blog and was once offered $50 / month to advertise on my site.  I think he was impressed and wants to be my friend, but instead of waiting to find out, I went and took a pee.  Guess I’ll never know.

To me, the adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” is misleading.  I think it should be, “If at first you don’t succeed, try again, but differently.”  It might lack the ring of the original, but people with particularly awful personalities should learn that they remain friendless because of how they are trying. They shouldn’t stop trying, but they should definitely avoid trying again in the same fashion.  While I’d typically say on this blog that these people are destined to die alone with their cats, I’ll take a softer approach today:

They’re likely to die alone with their cats.

People who sign emails in ridiculous, awkward, or purely idiotic ways

This was an idea floating around in my head for a while, and I didn’t quite know how to articulate it until a good friend of mine brought up a great example.  Apparently, he has a co-worker who signs his email:

Cheers,
Phil “Summer’s Eve” McCracken

The catch (and why I embellished his name a bit), is that this guy is not British, and uses the word “cheers” in his closing statements.  The guy had been on a study abroad or long vacation in the UK and, “picked it up living with the Brits,” as I can imagine him putting it.  I’m pretty sure that there’s a direct relationship between people that use colloquialisms from outside their native land and the number of their friends who have other plans the same weekends they plan all of their parties.

So, this got me thinking about other ways of signing emails that have seemed a little “off” over the years.  The first ones that come to mind are the people who use a little too much love in their emails:

Hey Johnny,

I was wondering when we might be able to take a look at that presentation for ABC Corp.  Can we set something up for Thursday?

Warm Regards,
Dave

Warm Regards? Are you trying to set “something up” for Thursday night over bellinis at the W Midtown?  Not interested, thank you.  I do not need any of your regards, especially not your warm ones.

Yo Pete,

Why don’t we grab a beer at the sports bar downstairs after work?

Sincerely Yours,
Frank

I appreciate the overture, Frank, but I’m pretty sure if the other people in the sports bar knew I said yes to an email signed “Sincerely Yours” from a dude, we’d both get our asses kicked.  Unless figure skating was on at said sports bar.

There are also simple mismatches that can be found in corporate communication:

Dear Mr. Southbottom,

I have been notified that your payment for the FaxPro 9000 is now 60 days overdue.  Please remit payment immediately so we can return your account to a paying status and resume business.  Failure to send payment in the next 30 calendar days will result in a call to the collections agency and a lien being placed on your business.  And we might shoot your pet beagle, Smooches.

Best Wishes,
Bill Lumbergh

I love being CCd on one of these “we will kidnap your children” emails and seeing something like “Best Wishes” at the end.  Is that like a mafia tactic?

But the absolute best email signatures, in my opinion, are the “stock” signatures people have automatically appended to the end of every email:

Hey Al,

Did you see the ass on the new intern?  If I wasn’t already cheating on my wife, I’d let her have me every day of the week except Thursdays because that’s when I have to take the 4 year old to tee ball practice.

- Fred

Psalm 23:  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

or…

Patricia,

I’m sorry to have to be the one to inform you that you are being laid off, effective 5:00 pm today.  We have determined that while you do your best, your best just isn’t good enough.  Please be sure to leave the Swingline on your desk before security comes by to escort you out.  It’s been a pleasure working with you.

Oh yeah, we just got a call that your husband was attacked by a bear and didn’t make it.  And his life insurance doesn’t cover bear attacks.

Regards,
Frank

The harder you work, the luckier you get! Have a wonderful, lucky day!

The best thing to do with these pre-packaged signatures is avoid using them.

I’ll leave you with the final version of the classic email signature. I present the graphics designer vomit, and I see way too many of these on a regular basis.  If your signature is more than 16x as large as your average email, that is a bad thing.

People who say things that make you think they’ve been huffing acetone all weekend

I love metaphors.  I love them like a fat kid loves cake (thanks, Fitty, for that one).  Metaphors are the food that nourishes the soul of conversation.  They’re as precious as diamonds but can fail worse than Clay Aiken’s heterosexuality.  They can wrap bad news in Charmin and make the most boring concepts leap to life.  Ok, you get it.  Metaphor central.

But something’s been bothering me lately.  I think the metaphor is too in-style.  People use them excessively, improperly, and in place of simple statements.  At best, people are taking about 100 words to say what could be said in 4 words (”It feels like a steaming lava sauna outside” vs. “It’s hot”), and at worst, it completely undermines an otherwise intelligent statement (”Using these colors on your web site is like eating leftover pizza with the tin foil still on.”).  If you’re a bad metaphor architect, I implore you to realize that just saying something isn’t a bad thing.  Just tell me it’s cold out, not that Chewbacca’s nipples could cut glass.  Tell me you’re busy, not that you’re being, “mortared from all directions”.  Tell me this is a summary, not a 10,000 foot view, a heads-up-display, a global view, a big picture, a wide-angle, a zoom-out, a landscape or anything else photographic.

In tracing the roots of this wave of metaphor popularity, our good friend, Dr. Phil, came to mind.  This guy has come up with some of the greatest televised verbal nonsense in history.

“Tryin’ to lose weight when you’re going through a divorce is like tryin’ to teach a duck to speak Spanish in a Canadian hospital.  I mean c’mon, people!”

I think that Dr. Phil really popularized the nonsense metaphor in the last 5 years, or so, and is responsible for a lot of people mis-wordsmithing their way through life.  I can’t say that this is always a bad thing, though, because the awkwardness that happens when someone realizes they just said a whole bunch of nonsense is just wonderful.  As I’ve said before, I have a real taste for watching people deal with the reality of their own awkwardness, so while I’d like people to start making more sense, it’s okay by me to watch the struggle every now and then.

Metaphors are a powerful and important tool today.  They’ve existed for thousands of years and have been the signature of every great thinker ever published.  Almost every great quote ever recorded is a metaphor, and I don’t see that stopping any time soon, although I do think that almost every stupid quote recorded these days is also a metaphor.  I guess, metaphorically, metaphors are a double-edged sword.

Well, I’ve got to wrap this one up like a Chinese girl’s foot.  I hope your day is better than a badger on a see saw.

People who are slick and suave in online situations (See: Dateline NBC)

One thing that all of this tweeting and facebook-ing and IM-ing and chatting and other ing’s has taught me is that people who are huge, huge, indescribably huge tools in real life are often total surfer motorcycle bar-fight ninja astronaut BADASSES online.

I used to work with a guy who was like this.  In real life, he looks like he’s only minutes away from saying, “Well, it’s been nice working with you, but I have to return to the Shire next month,” but online, he is one of the coolest people you’ve ever talked to.  I came to discover this because he added me to IM the day he started, and was chatting with me for a while before I met him.  When I met him, I had no clue who he was and literally didn’t make the connection between this person and the person I talked to on IM for a few weeks.  Sad, but true.  But if you think about it, do big tools talk about the same topics in their super badass second identities?  I figured not, which made me feel better because I really was sort of talking to two people.  They just happened to inhabit the same extremely strange body.

I got married young, so I never experienced online dating, but I’ve heard that this phenomenon is very typical in around match.com and the like.  Girl posts profile.  Girl meets boy.  Boy seems pretty cool.  Girl goes on a date with boy.  Boy is a complete freak.

I think this happens because in real life, you can’t copy and paste your verbal communication from a Men’s Health article written by the girl next door.  In the middle of your dinner, you can’t Google, “something funny to say after a girl compliments your glasses,” and then come back to the conversation 3 minutes later saying, “Sorry, the phone rang and I had to take it.  Damn guys at the Pentagon won’t leave me alone ever since I stole that fighter jet after performing open heart surgery on myself and Condoleezza Rice at the same time.”  These are, however, tools at your disposal when you’re chatting up some 7th grader online and earning your spot on Dateline NBC.

I don’t know if I really have any advice on this one other than to shave that 2″ long stray hair growing out of your left check and start talking to more people in real life.  Potentially seeing a mental health therapist if you’re one of those people who plays online games where people love “the real you” (who, is probably a person with a fox head, DD breasts, a lizard tail, and some sort of a weapon I’ve never heard of) isn’t a bad idea, either.

People who eat the caramel variety of sundae

There are times that I look at people and classify them in odd ways (if you can imagine that).  For example, sometimes I’ll look at a person and say, “Hey, I bet he’s a tater tots person or she’s a french fries girl.”  To my credit, I’m right 97% of the time (although I have no data to support that).

So here’s the rub: I find myself classifying people as “caramel sundae” people only when there’s something a little “off” about that person.  You know what I mean.  The kind of person who eats a caramel sundae just because it’s the type of sundae that other people don’t eat.  The nonconformists who have incidentally become conformists of a different kind, because there are so many of them.  They’re the long-haired dudes, the computer programmers into naked raves, the mixed-media artists who glue a pack of frozen turkey bacon to a canvas and call it a political statement and who have 7 fans / family members who acknowledge the brilliance of their work years after they die from snorting Pixie Stix.

The classic sundae is, of course, hot fudge.  If you’re a hot fudge sundae eater, you are a gathered person with good taste who doesn’t pair the bright orange cummerbund with your tuxedo, but who realizes it’s better to be sharp and blend in than to get cute with it and have people point at you from across the room.  The caramel sundae eater, in essence, is a caramel person because they do not want to be a hot fudge person, which is just ridiculous and puerile, like a suburban teenager buying clothes from Hot Topic just to piss her parents off, when she’d rather just get J Crew in the first place.

I have tasted both, and here is what I have concluded:

• Hot fudge is the vastly superior flavor, and is immensely classy
• Caramel’s first bite has a lot of promise, but by bite 5, you want to throw it at someone.  It’s like a sugar lick
• If you eat a caramel sundae slowly, it will start to harden back into the horse hoof from whence it was made
• Hot fudge retains its structure as it cools, and can even be put in the freezer overnight for later enjoyment
• If you leave a spoon in a caramel sundae and store it in the freezer overnight, that spoon will become Excalibur, extricable only by a natural-born king

Now I have to clarify: I do like caramel.  I’ll pop Rolos like you wouldn’t believe.  But when it comes to what goes on my soft serve, Caramel has to know its role and disappear back into the purses and pockets of retirees.

Regular old folks who are comfortable with sporks

Have you ever really thought about how deep and wide the class struggle really is? You can see the differences everywhere: your clothing, your shoes, your home, your pets (we all know you have a dingy-ass dog that you traded for a bicycle tire or something), and yes, even your utensils.

Escargot tongs: let them know that you’re so rich, you’ll eat stuff that would make them want to puke.

I honestly have no idea what this is for, and I don’t want it in my house.

If you’re not born into wealth, you might never crack a nut or a crab claw.  You might never put ice into a glass with something other than your hand. You’ll probably never understand the concept of a napkin made of a material finer than any of your suits, or why a plate that measures 18″ across is used to serve half of a cherry tomato with a blade of grass as a side.

If you are born into wealth, you’ll probably never eat off a plate with ridges that keep your food separated, especially if that plate was what your food was just cooked in.  You probably don’t realize that cups can have tops or that your fork can come in a handy plastic bag with a one-ply napkin and some salt & pepper.  It doesn’t make perfect sense to you to unplug the crock pot and put it in the middle of the dinner table, if you even know what a crock pot is.

There are several well-known sayings that aim to unite the classes; messages usually including: everyone is born, everyone dies, and everyone eats.  But some are born with a silver spoon, some die and are buried inside silver caskets, and some eat off of silver escargot tongs.

Everyone does, however, put their pants on one leg at a time.  It’s just that my legs are tanner than yours from laying out on the bow of my yacht.

People who write a blog for 6 months and quit when they don’t get rich and/or recognized at the grocery store

So, what kind words you all have had for me.  Here I am, dragged into a Mexican prison on April 4, 2009, tortured, fed Comet (it does make you vomit), made to bag cocaine in a corrupt government operation in Juarez, and when I get home, what do I see?

Hey TATTOPITW, why did you quit on us?

Hey TATTOPITW, where did you go, you big loser?

Hey you big douche bag, did you run out of creativity with your stupid little blog that I can’t live without?

I hate you, TATTOPITW, and I hope you’re in a Mexican prison being fed Comet.

Well, aside from that last guy, who was strangely correct, you’re all jerks, but I read the bible 8 times in that small prison cell and I forgive all of you.

I want to get back to writing to get past those horrible memories, suppress those flashbacks of chickens trying to peck my eyes out and watching reruns of Perfect Strangers – you have no idea what you’d be willing to do after letting Balki Bartokomous penetrate your inner thoughts.

The face I wake up to, screaming.

So, while I wish I came back to a supporting fan base, I can accept your frustration and just ask that we all move on.  I might not be able to write with the speed and frequency I once was (I had one of my hands sawed off and that damn chicken did manage to scar my right eye), but I’m back in the States where Balki is unwelcome and my safety is assured.

I missed you all.  Thanks for the warm welcome.

People who walk other animals

If you live in a reasonably large city, you’re bound to see some ridiculous things happen, especially if you step foot into a city park.  Truthfully, I had this idea sent to me by someone a few months ago, but for lack of personal experience, I shrugged the suggestion off, all the while hoping that I might one day witness the sacred “cat walk.”

The only three letters in the engligh language that can describe this are W, T, and F

Now, we’ve all seen movies where some rich dude takes a tiger for a walk, or some poor girl living in a huge, cluttered New York apartment takes her ferret out for a walk (how do poor female artists in movies always have huge Manhattan lofts?), but I haven’t actually come across this in real life until recently.  And it was a real blessing to my eyes.

So I guess the idea here is that there is only one animal that is appropriate for walking, and that’s a dog.  And I mean a real dog.  If your dog’s legs are less than 4″ long or 1″ thick, you don’t have a dog, you have a genetic Pollock that had to be classified into the dog family for lack of biologists creating a “food for real animals” category.

Don’t mistake this for two types of behaviors.  This really is two types of people.  The type of person (normal) who would walk their dog for exercise / female attention, vs. the type of person who is so out of touch with reality that they think walking a parakeet is any less crazy than dressing up like a ballerina and whirling a baton around Piedmont Park.

People who say “pail”

So the example here is illustrative (did I just say the example is an example?).  It extends to many things:

• “soda” vs. “pop”
• “cart” vs. “buggy”
• “dinner” vs. “supper”
• “line” vs. “queue”
• “bitches” vs. “hos”
• “Setting money on fire” vs. “US Automaker Bailout”

In each case, there is the normal way of saying something and the stupid way of saying the same thing.  This might be over-generalizing, but I’m pretty sure that people who use the words “pail,” “pop,” “buggy,” and “supper” were either raised by a family whose collective grins revealed 5.2 teeth, or they were born in Minnesota.  Deciding which of these things is worse is something I’ll leave up to you.

Just a taste of my condescending attitude to get your day started…

People who have been educated into fear

So I’m going to let you all in on a little secret today.  I’m a huge dork.  Big nerd.  Yes, me.

Last night, I went to see a great show (Cut Copy) at a Masquerade, a venue here in Atlanta that is far less gay than it sounds.  It’s actually an old factory/warehouse where many people undoubtedly lost their limbs in the very threatening looking mess of gears and rope that apparently used to do something.  The building is old, very cool looking, but old.

So when a group like Cut Copy gets a crowd of a few hundred people jumping up and down in unison, the building – which is old, by the way – feels the stress, which was communicated back to me last night by the floor in front of the stage flexing no less than 4-5 inches underfoot.

The average person may say, “Wow, that’s really weird.”  To someone like me who took engineering classes in college, it says, “We are about to die.”

Here’s a look into my head, in the middle of a very good show:

Because my mouse drawing isn’t too good, that is me, mentally back in engineering class trying to solve for how much weight you can put on a beam before it breaks and we all die.

I found that a couple of beers could wash the engineering classes away, so I pursued that avenue.  Seemed to me that if someone nearby had known that I was having my own private Statics class in my head in the middle of this concert, they would have slapped me, and rightfully so.

I can imagine that lots of people go through this all the time: airplane engineers know all the things that can bring a plane down, train engineers know that we’re riding on 2 inches of faith, drug scientists know that if one molecule goes wrong in the batch of Advil, 100,000 people will probably die, trampoline engineers know that they’re probably going to kill a few children with their miscalculations – but consider it all worth it for those times when a cheerleader hops on for a try.

So where in your life do you know enough to be scared shitless?

People who dress to express disdain for the job they have

Ever heard the one about how you should dress for the job you want, not the one you have?  I don’t believe it happens this way.  I think there are those people who dress for the jobs they want, and the rest of the people dress to express total apathy.  If there is a range of footware that goes from leather lace-ups to flip-flops in your office, you know what I’m talking about.

There’s a reason that people ask you if you’re a glass half-full or a glass half-empty kind of person.  Nobody says, “I’m a glass at 50%.”  You either look up or you look down, and the way that people dress at work is a key expression of this.

If I work really hard, I can become Vice President some day!

If I work really hard, maybe they’ll let me plug in the yellow cables!  F, I hate this job.  If that bitch who’s sleeping her way to VP calls me about her Blackberry not working in the subway one more time, I’ll kill her.