Draft In Drafted Cold So Run

At least I'm consistent about something, right?

Underneath A Glass Get You Said All

I know we're out here on the internet in front of everyone, but I'm going to take a minute to publicly call you out, AllState. I've been watching your commercials, and you've made Dennis Haysbert into a liar.

Last night, I was watching the Science Channel* and I saw your commercial where you said drivers save an average of $396 a year by switching to AllState. Fun. Festive. Probably technically accurate. Derived by some sort of diligent fiscal analysis, I imagine. But, here... allow me to write the rest of the script that wouldn't fit into your snazzy, convenient 30 second bullshit clip.

"Now.... when we say drivers save an average of $396 when they switch to us, we mean just that. That doesn't consider the thousands of people that see our rates (possibly you), realize they're way higher than what they're currently paying (provided you're not a caveman) and decide to not switch. They don't figure into our average. You know who does? Your cousin Lester. You remember when Lester stole his dad's car, then drove it the wrong way up on offramp and caused that 8 car accident up in Wellsville? And when the cops pulled him out of the car, they found 12 kilos of cocaine and 3 unlicensed handguns? And that his license had been suspended because he got 8 DUI's in one year? Okay.... Lester's car insurance was provided by Booger's Bail Bonds, Check Cashing and Insurance Depot down in Rayford, and he was paying around $700,000 a year. Once his mom came down to vouch for him after he did 7 years in rehab, he decided to switch to AllState. Lester saved $686,414 a year on his car insurance. Most people? They might save around $14. The longer version of this commercial is far less compelling. That's our stand."

AllState, you're making Dennis Haysbert mislead me. You've turned him into a liar. If I wanted to be lied to by a president, I'd move to Iran, grow 'the beard' and dress in a manner that most people would consider completely inappropriate for the weather. (Really? Scarves and afghans?) If I wanted to be lied to by a president, I'd form a 2-person club with my jerk friend Darren and elect him to a position of authority.

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* Just in case you're the type of jackanape that likes to laugh at dudes who obsessively watch the Science Channel, let me remind you that the world didn't suddenly decide to stop discovering scientific shit just because you graduated the 12th grade. Someday, your kids or nieces or annoying neighbor's kids are going to walk up to you and ask you to help them with their school project about nanotechnology. If you're not watching Brink, reading magazines or generally staying ahead of the curve, you're fucked. Also? Please stop voting.

Not Now Love Roof Rolling

Couple of quick notes here:

If you ever get mad at a company and you decide that you want to have something done about it... get on the internet and complain about it.  It might seem like a waste of time or a mere attempt at catharsis, but, listen.... as a guy who has worked for companies and on websites for his entire life... trust me when I say they're listening. These folks have entire departments designed around scouring the internet for negative press and forwarding it to people that matter. And those people that matter take an inordinate amount of stock in the things you have to say. Seriously. It's even a little frightening.

For example...

"AT&T's cell phone replacement policy is retarded."

Now... in a few days, some dude from AT&T is going to read that, forward a link to this post to some dude who's in charge of things (i.e. David M. AT&T III) and that guy is going to fire off an email to somebody in Marketing demanding that the issue be addressed. He's also going to spend about an hour doing lines of coke off of Cote De Pablo 's thighs and wondering what my problem with the Family Feud is, but rest assured, he will forward the link to someone that matters. Trust me. I've seen it happen.

Second note starts now.

If you've ever seen me in real life when I'm devastated, torn up and tired, chances are you've heard me say "oh, my car." This may seem asinine to the average person, but to anyone that's ever played Final Fight... it makes perfect sense.  And I'm fully aware that this makes me a nerd.

Third thing:

Sometimes, you look in the mirror and you find a random bruise on your arm. You may say to yourself, "how did I get that bruise? I wish I had Life TiVo so I could go back and see these things." You don't want Life TiVo. You just don't. There's a lot to rewind through that you don't need. For example, if your name isn't Dirk or Laci, you don't want to see yourself having sex. I'm sorry, you just don't. You also don't want to see how much time you're spending in the bathroom. Plus, if you've never seen yourself eating when your hungry, that's not not a revelation you really want to have laid upon you. Life TiVo sounds like a great idea, but only if you want to become annoyed with yourself. That is all.

(In case you were wondering, yes, I only wrote this so my blog would be updated.)

Track What Track Point of Together

In case you're wondering (and you're not), we've officially reached the point of the year where Phoenix is completely unbearable. 

One day, it's lively, sunny and pleasant. The next day, you walk outside and you wonder if God left his oven open after baking cookies. It's so hot, I'm expecting to see Somalian pirates hijacking luxury cars on the road while I drive to work. It's so hot that I expect to see people falling to the ground in burning, smoldering heaps like vampires that didn't notice the sun coming up. It's hot, man. Wear a hat.

Totally unrelated, but worth discussing? The Family Feud.

I've been watching this show for close to 27 years now and I never noticed this until the other night.... when I was completely sober and not alone on my sectional couch in the dark watching GSN at 3 AM for no reason.

While one family is guessing at things and offering stupid answers that couldn't possibly have made the top 6 like "gelatin" or "Annapolis," the other team is over there discussing and strategizing. Then, when Uncle Denny gives his last stupid answer that's totally about to get a third strike and his idiot relatives are clapping in support, the other family breaks down into a full on rugby scrum where they frantically sort out what their answer is going to be.

Then host Richard, Ray, Louie, Richard or John would walk over to the other side, the scrum would return to the table and everyone would immediately start screaming out their suggested answer before the family leader makes the final decision on which  one they're going with.

Which makes me suddenly wonder... what the fuck were they talking about in the huddle?

The huddle breaks and now is the time to start spitting out useless answers like "snake! snake!" or "eating a pie! pie!!"? Shouldn't the leader know by now what everyone thinks?

Or were they in the huddle saying, "Hey, where should we eat dinner tonight? What's good in Burbank? Is there an Applebee's? I'm in the mood for something with cheese on it. ... Hey - are you wearing my shoes? You fucking bitch - I was gonna wear those shoes tomorrow if we won and got to come back for another taping! ... Well, what am I going to wear now? Slippers? It's not enough that you fuck your ugly boyfriend on my bed - now you've got to wear my goddamned shoes on TV? ... I'm sick of you, Jessica! You and your crippled looking boyfriend with the Ben Gay smell! My sheets smell like a goddamned hospital every night - you think I don't know what you assholes do in there!?... No! No, you're not studying! If you were, you wouldn't have gotten straight D's in everything! And you know what... oh, wait... it's our turn.... Richard, we're going with 'snakes'! Yeah! We're so smart!!"

I can never watch that show without questioning this again.

Magazines Make Believe Try Little

I found a link to a free subscription to MotorBoating magazine this morning. I immediately signed up and sent the link to all of my dude friends. You can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that it's actually just about boats. Who could possibly care this much about riding boats on a lake? How rich and white do you have to be before this becomes something you keep in your bathroom? Does your name have to be Percy? Can you never leave your house without a sweater tied over your shoulders? I need clarity on the matter.

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One day I'm going to see Helena Bonham Carter and she won't look like completely unleashed hell. I'm convinced of it.

I know I have no reason to believe it, based on the last 8 years of her movies, but she seems like a decent lady and I'm certain that at some point, she'll have to have at least a ten minute stretch where she doesn't look like dead leaves covered in chalk. I know she's married to Tim Burton, but just because he's a depraved weirdo doesn't mean she has to spend every waking second looking like the human version of a medieval disease. I'm sure they don't have laws against shampoo in whatever Neil Gaiman nightmare cocoon she sleeps in every night.

Also? Just so you don't think I'm being sexist, go ahead and replace her name in the previous paragraph with Robert Smith's and the same statements would apply. Even the part about Tim Burton. I've got my sources on this.

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People think it's cool to wear really nice shoes. I agree to a point. Sure, you look hella stylin' while you're tooling around the office with your fancy-dancy, shiny zapatos, but when I walk into the bathroom and notice those same distinctive shoes under the door of a stall that sounds like the guy in there has the unholy minions of the 12th Kingdom falling out of his ass? I bet he wishes he'd gone with the non-descript Doc Martens then.

"Nice shoes, Steve. So... did you eat the unhatched eggs of a vengeful demon at lunch today? Do I need to call you a doctor or something? Schedule some reconstructive surgery for you? You wanna run home and take a shower, man? Good god."

List For Sure Old Don't Know People

I'll start with this.... I was driving this morning, as you do, and noticed a car in front of me in traffic. It had a bumper sticker that read, I think, "Make your own reality - turn off your TV." There you go.

The thing to note here is that I said "I think." The bumper sticker was written with white text on a sky blue background in a really small, ornate font. I've got above average vision and reading it was a real task. This was an extraordinarily hard-to-read bumper sticker. It was the "medical journal" of bumper stickers, if you will.

One more detail? The person's rear bumper was wrecked. 

I'm not going to go ahead and assume that the bumper was wrecked because some person like me was obsessively trying to read it and ended up rear ending the guy, but I will use this as an opportunity to ask the question... why would you get a hard-to-read bumper sticker? If you know the main purpose of bumper stickers is to give other motorists reading material, does it make any sense to get one that's going to challenge them to the point where they're endangering yourself and others because they can't keep their eyes on the road? Does it occur to the person at the point of purchase that the thing they're buying seems nice, but ultimately does more harm than good? Is there a common sense filter that they run through before they get to the finish line? Am I asking too much?

(That was the set-up. This is where I segue into the real story.)

I hear a lot of commercials on the radio for this product called Your Baby Can Read . In short, you go through a process where you teach a baby (3 months old, 15 months old, whatever) how to read words years before they'd learn how to read on their own. There are flash cards, pictures and testimonials from proud women saying "Evan is 19 months old and he can read 500 words. Your child can't do that. He's probably autistic anyway." (Yes, I made that last part up.)

So, here's the question for the folks who buy this thing: So, your 15 month old kid can read.... now what?

I know... there's some pride in knowing that your kid is almost literate, but what does it mean? You're now the proud parent of the world's most useless literate person? I mean... you do know that a 15 month old child, quite literally, cannot wipe its own ass, right? So he can read? You gonna make the motherfucker get a job or something? 

You have wasted your time and life on something that was going to happen anyway. You woke up at 3 AM, stood on your lawn and did a special magical dance to force the sun to rise. You kneeled next to your stove and offered a sacrifice to the Ramen gods to help them make your cooking water reach a boil. You met Matthew Fox at a party, gave him a blowjob in the coat closet, then paid him $500 to forget your name and never, ever call you. 

A 15 month old kid doesn't need to read. You know what he needs? Cookies. A plastic sheep that he can stick in his mouth and suck the paint off of. Someone to wipe his aforementioned unwiped ass. You to turn your back long enough for him to steal your cell phone and mash the buttons. Milk, for the aforementioned cookies. You, overachieving parent, are a fucking idiot. I look forward to reading your "My 15 month old child can read bumper sticker" in a really tiny font.

What next? "My Evan learned to drive at the age of 2. Sure, he ruined our lawn by parking the car on it 17 times a week, and the car smells like stale feces because he's a disgusting pre-human animal with no concept of cleanliness. And sure we're always out of gas because he drives back and forth between the zoo and candy store like he's Rain Man or something. And, yes, our car insurance is about $35,000 a month because we're stupid enough to put a fucking 2 year old on our car insurance and the lady at Geico was like, 'seriously, a 2 year old?' and I was like, 'yeah, but he's smart and he can read' and she was like gasping while furiously typing on her calculator for 10 minutes and apparently there's some law about how kids can't drive until they're older or whatever but I'm not concerned with reality because my mother never loved me. But whatever. My baby can drive a car. And yours can't. Because he's autistic."

(Again, I made that last part up.)

Children Skies Death From Above

I watched the Ten Commandments with my mom this weekend for the 1,228th time, which means two things:

1.) I, apparently, had 4 hours to kill on something I had no desire to do. Who knew?

2.) In 4 hours, I can safely drink about 9 beers and completely neglect 2 children.

Anyway, during the course of the movie, my mind wandered quite a bit and, as a result, I've added 3 impressions to my Twitter-borne Henny Youngman resume.

The first is a fish that happened to be swimming in the Red Sea when Moses parts it. Ready?

"What the fuck?!!?"

There you go. The second is a horse in the pharoah's army when he's halfway across the sea and the water starts pouring back in.

"What the fuck?!!?"

Wait... that one has more.

"I could probably swim out of this if I wasn't wearing iron armor for no reason. Do you think pharoah knows we were going to fight tired slaves who had towels as weaponry?"

Almost done.

"You know... the guy made a giant pillar of fire a few minutes ago. I'm a horse and I knew this was a bad idea."

And the ending.

"Glug glug. Whinny. Neigh. Glug."

Last impression. A guy at the foot of Mount Sinai dancing and drinking in revelry because he decided to worship the golden calf in the 18 minutes that Moses was gone right after Moses comes back to destroy the idol.

"Look... look.... can we talk about this? I know he's just a golden calf that we seriously invented ourselves a few hours ago because we needed something to worship and you weren't here, but this Baal god? He's got some good ideas. First of all, flat tax and a return to fiscal responsibility. No... no... wait... seriously... hear me out! It's not just because I was sucking 3 women's breasts a minute ago! I really"

That is all.