But Oh Man, Those Chicken Fingers...

While I really do like Ikea (I'm a huge fan of Swedish efficiency), I have to give a stern clucking of my tongue to their new self-dubbed title, "the life-improvement store." Solve your problems through buying things!

Shit Sandwich

A little bit ago I posted something about how Jesus people go batshit for Chick-fil-A and I didn't think it was fair because they're just a fucking restaurant and who gives a shit? Well, I am not above eating my own words, so...

Fuck you, Chick-fil-A- You hard-to-capitalize, over-hyphenated, bigot-sandwich-slingin', no-Sunday-workin', lazy piece of garbage. You take your toasted buns and your awesomely salty pickles and shove them straight up your born-again ass. For those of you too lazy to read the article linked above: go to hell you illiterate bastards, it's like, under 100 words long. I mean, admittedly I stole this graphic from it, and the picture alone kind of sums everything up, but still. The point is, Chick-fil-A hates the gays. And I don't hate the gays. So therefore I hate Chick-fil-A. And Pennsylvania, but I've been playing that card for a while. Some day I'm going to start my own restaurant and only give free food to abortion clinics and unprotected ass-orgies.

Seriously though, I actually kind of like Chick-fil-A's food. I don't eat there all that often, but they're pretty tasty. It's just a shame that I won't be able to eat there without thinking about jack-booted, right-wing nutjobs curb-stomping people just trying to scissor under the full consent of the law. Oh well, commence tacking Chick-fil-A up with Wal-mart on my list of "places I never really shopped at a whole lot before but am now definitely too morally outraged to spend money at."

So in conclusion, if you have to eat junk food, you might as well smother it with something I do like...

Disgusting Fucking Sauce- I cannot emphasize enough how delicious this is and how desperately you need to try making it, regardless of how horrible the recipe sounds. All you do is get a pot and heat up:

1 can of chili sauce
1 and 1/4 cups grape jelly

until it all swirls together in a shit-colored mixture. Put that shit on meatballs, chicken, whatever the fuck you want. It's akin to some of the best and easiest to make sweet BBQ sauce I've ever had.

I would like to mention that other people deserve the credit for both showing me that Chick-fil-A article and how to make that sauce, but I don't want to sully their good names by listing them on this smutty hole, so just know that there are much smarter people than I behind this article.

"This is offensive."

I saw the new Gulliver's Travels today. This post will feature absolutely nothing about the movie itself, aside from the recommendation that if you're hard up for cleavage you could do a lot worse than Catherine Tate in a corset. What I will say, though, is that there's something I fucking hate, and it has a lot to do with...

Movie Previews- Not all previews mind you, and not even previews as a concept. I think they're a great idea, and half the time they wind up being better than the actual movie. What I hate is waiting patiently for a movie to start only to be made immediately aware, from the previews, that you are not this film's target audience. I began to suspect this today after the third preview in a row for a CGI kids movie. My fears were confirmed when the film opened up with a short cartoon about that dumb fucking OCD squirrel with dental problems from the Ice Age movies. Did you know they bothered to name that thing? I don't remember what it is, but it's something like Skitch or Scratch or Scatporn. Either way, talk about not letting a franchise just fucking die.

But the big picture here is that by the time we had gotten through the upcoming movie about the endangered birds who are prevented from fucking by dangerous bird-nappers (I shit you not) I began to suspect that maybe Gulliver's Travels didn't really want me there. The bird movie, by the way, is called Rio in case anyone was specifically looking to avoid it. Searching for "CGI bird movie" also reminded me of the existence of both Happy Feet and Surf's Up, so maybe we should re-think the whole "making movies about CGI birds" thing for a while, yeah? If anyone was curious, though, searching for "dumb fucking CGI bird movie" gets you a picture of Kiefer Sutherland flipping off a camera. So that's kind of fun.

And maybe I should have just made this post about Ice Age instead, but that short scat film I was talking about also credits Simon Pegg as one of the voices. Since the squirrel thing doesn't have any lines I'm not sure I believe that he was actually in it, but if he was, and if he's reading this blog right now, I just want him to know that he better be fucking careful because I love him to death but I'm only willing to forgive one film in every actor's career and I was already barely won over by Run Fatboy Run.

But I guess if I had to say one nice thing I'm going to bring it back to...

Catherine Tate's Cleavage- Fit for a king, apparently?

"...And on his grave stone I want it to read, 'Here lies Sir James Paul McCartney, a pretty cool guy until he wrote that fucking Christmas song."

It's time to stop living in denial. I fucking hate...

Christmas- I've got nothing against snow, presents, gingerbread, togetherness, or peace on Earth. Nor do I have anything against reindeer, Jesus (you know, on a personal level), Santa (or his much more awesome helper, Krampus), or gross commercialism. All I really hate is people cramming shit down my throat. I hate Christmas for the same reason that I hate The Beatles, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the book Wicked by Gregory Maguire. They're all perfectly fine things which have been utterly fucking ruined by people who won't shut the fuck up about them and become personally offended when I don't get as jazzed about shit as they do. Except Wicked. That book actually does suck.

But I'm sick of people calling me a Scrooge because I'm not totally fucking pumped for Christmas. I actually enjoy seeing my family, buying gifts for people if I think they'll really enjoy them, cookies, and tiny lights on strings. But I don't see why Christmas should get to appropriate all that fun for itself. That shit can be done year-round. Let's not limit ourselves one day a year to talk to our parents and enjoy soft, ambient lighting. But furthermore, let's not get all bent out of shape if someone doesn't particularly enjoy Christmas. God forbid you have a bad family life, or too little money to buy presents. If someone isn't smiling and jolly this December 25th, give them the greatest gift of all: leave them the fuck alone.

But on the other hand, I really fucking love...

Irritating Christmas Shit- Ten points to the musical geniuses behind I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas, Dominic the Racist Christmas Donkey, and those Fucking Barking Dogs. I want to shake all of your hands for both having a sense of humor and trying to ruin the holidays for everyone. As if It's A Wonderful Life hadn't done that already. Fuck you, George Bailey. Every time a bell rings I say a swear just in hopes that it counterbalances someone getting their wings.

"Plus, they're closed on Sundays."

Today I heard it contested that Chick-fil-A was a good fast-food (or "quick-service" if you read their website) restaurant because they are a Christian company. If I weren't far too passive-aggressive and lazy to say something I might no longer have a job. Because if there's one (or one million) thing I can't fucking stand, it's...

Not Understanding the Difference Between Correlation and Causality- I get up roughly at the same time the sun begins to rise, though not by choice. So it is, therefore, safe to assume that my getting out of bed causes the sun to rise, right? Of course it is, but this specific situation just happens to be an exception to a rule. Just because two events happen in combination does not mean that they are casually related. Wikipedia fucking says so.

Chick-fil-A happens to have been founded by a Christian man who was, from what I can tell, fairly open about his faith. They also make fucking delicious chicken sandwiches. Believe it or not, these two things are not causally related. Just because someone is Christian it does not give them an innate ability to command chicken meat into a delicious sandwich. Call me a heretic, but I've actually heard that Jesus made some pretty awful fried chicken. That's why he stuck to bread and wine. Because above all else, Jesus understood sticking to your strengths. And marketing.

But more to the point, being a Christian does not cause you to run a quality business. Not being a greedy shithead does that. I mean, I don't know my history all that well, but I'm fairly certain some Christian institutions have been run less than scrupulously. By the same token, being an Atheist doesn't prevent you from cooking chicken properly. Or at least I don't think it does. Mine always burns, but that's just because the Holy Water I keep trying to boil it in bursts into flames when I touch it.

Not that I'm specifically setting out to pick on Christianity or Chick-fil-A. On Chick-fil-A's own website they specifically say that the decision to close their locations on Sunday is "as much practical as it is spiritual" because they just think their employees should have a guaranteed day off during the week. Good for them. And for the record, I don't think Christianity is any more or less stupid than pretty much any other organized religion. I'm just saying that I fucking hate when people give credit where credit isn't due. But on the other hand, I fucking love...

False Causality- When it's used for my own amusement, of course. For example, here's a graph of when I started watching Top Gear vs. how recklessly I drive:
Does watching Top Gear cause me to drive recklessly? Of course not, but it's fun to have someone else to blame. Similarly, a chart depicting how old I am vs. how frequently I masturbate:
From this graphic alone I could safely state that having an age in the double-digit numbers actually causes masturbation. And finally, for my last exhibit, I would like to show how many books I have read vs. how awkward I am in public places:Actually, I think I might be on to something with that one...

"The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen"

December 10, 1907- 1,000s of Londonites storm a park in the district of Battersea in order to protest a statue erected in memorial of a dog that had been operated on multiple times while fully conscious. The two women who testified that the professor at the University of London performed multiple surgeries on a live, conscious dog were successfully sued for libel.

Child Abuse Awareness Month is apparently in April, just FYI

Apparently everyone is changing their Facebook pictures to their favorite childhood cartoon characters if they are "against child abuse." This, if anyone wasn't sure, is fucking stupid.

Title goes here! I'm absolutely stealing this article from a friend who spent 15 minutes bitching about this to me earlier today, but I think it's worth repeating. Changing your profile picture on Facebook is not a reasonable action to claim stops child abuse. As far as I know, no charity is attached to this, so it's not like each switched profile picture raises money. And as my unnamed acquaintance pointed out, child abuse isn't exactly a divisive issue with some people strongly against it, some people strongly for it, and some people on the fence about it. Discussing your opposition to child abuse isn't likely to convert anyone who was previously all about hitting children. Which brings up the main point he was trying to raise- is there anyone out there who is for child abuse? Are people who beat their children even for it? I would assume they just think their own kids deserve it, but I doubt they're just doing it out of principle because they love the idea of hitting kids.

All switching your profile picture during a campaign like this does is allow you to feel smug, like you're making a difference without actually having to do anything. The phrasing of saying you're doing it "because you're against child abuse" is also loaded as all hell, and actually implies that anyone who doesn't change their picture is a chronic child abuser. So now you're also indirectly guilty of libel. How does that feel?

One could, if they wished to play Devil's Advocate, argue that things like this actually do help because they raise awareness of the issue. Linguists could argue that any time you talk about something like "stopping child abuse" you are helping to shift us to a public culture in which child abuse becomes more demonized and less likely to happen. But since no one takes that argument seriously when I make it in regards to not saying "gay" in a pejorative context, I'm not going to allow it here.

If anyone actually feels passionately about stopping child abuse there are probably plenty of organizations out there that would love to have your time, money, or both to assist them with their work. I found this one with a simple Google search.

So if you really care about an issue, shut the fuck up on Facebook and do something about it. What we're accomplishing with profile pictures and status updates is about as effective as spray painting "DON'T HIT KIDS" on a brick wall. Actually, it's probably less effective. Actually, I wonder if I still have any spray paint...

Please Enter Your Password, Then Press Pound

My apartment was designed to double as a Cold War fallout shelter. Or it just has layers and layers of lead paint. Or it was strategically designed as some sort of media-deprivation experiment. Either way, it's the only place in this area that I get absolutely shit cellphone service. And that makes me mad.

Spotty Service- As much as I hate people being glued to their phones, having proper reception has its advantages. Like being able to receive important calls and proceed to live my life, conscious of what's going on around me. I can't say how many fun and exciting happenings I've missed out on due to not receiving a call or text, but I can only assume that the number is in the hundreds and my friends are all just too polite to tell me about them. And it's not even the fact that I'm missing out on shit that makes me the most upset, but rather the seemingly self-aware amount of irony my phone, whom I will refer to as Rodger for the remainder of this article, injects into the timing of when it finally delivers all of my back messages.

If my understanding of cellphones is correct, which I have no reason to believe it isn't, when someone sends you a text and you don't have any reception the phone holds the message in a parallel dimension only accessible by a licensed mobile phone carrier or possibly four British children with a dusty wardrobe. Periodically, I think, your phone is supposed to check in with Narnia to see if you have any waiting messages that couldn't get through earlier due to the lamp post being blown out or something. Which is all fine and good, and I honestly couldn't think of a better way to work it, except for the fact that my particular phone seems to take joy in waiting to check for messages until it's far too late to do anything about them. For example, if I'm supposed to await instructions to meet someone at some place at some time Rodger likes to wait until I'm already at said location to send me the message from four hours ago telling me that the meeting is canceled. Or if someone would like to kindly inform me of something awesome going on, like someone selling magic beans in the town square, Rodger withholds the information until the very last bean has been sold. So while everyone else is up in the clouds stealing golden geese and over-sized novelty hams Rodger and I are sitting alone in my apartment listening to old Our Lady Peace albums and thinking about what to do for the rest of the night. Rodger always wants to play Sorry! but first of all I think that game sucks and second of all he is a cellphone and cannot even move the pieces correctly.

But even within my impenetrable 36 chambers, I still enjoy...

Pretending to Guess Where my Phone is Giving Me Cancer- wait, no, hold on...

Listening as the Ring Tones I Once Didn't Mind Get More and More Grating with Each Passing Day- er, I mean...

Sitting with my Phone Under my Balls so that When it Vibrates it Scares the Living Shit Out of Me- Better, but still not quite...

Trying to Figure Out How to Capitalize Lengthy Title Lines? Fuck it, good enough.

Wibbley-Wobbly Timey-Wimey

The other night I had the opportunity to help out/be an active nuisance at an "Adult Prom" themed party. I don't mean that it was XXX-style "adult" but rather that it was just a prom for adults. So a prom with booze. Or rather, a prom where the booze isn't hidden. It was staffed by some terrific people, but a few of the attendees got me thinking about how much I fucking hate...

Nostalgia- Nostalgia is one of the most subtle and deadly poisons our fragile, human minds are susceptible to. I like to think that it's only natural to daydream about our pasts. We've all done things we're proud of, things we're ashamed of, and things we can't stop laughing about when we tell others. These are usually the best times we have. And it's great to be able to look back fondly on them. But the fact is, throughout our lives, these times are often few and far between. I'm not trying to talk shit on life here, I'm just saying that our memories do a lot of selective editing when we decide what we want to remember. So it becomes easy to feel nostalgic for the past, to start thinking about what awesome times you used to have. From there, the problem is, it's only a short jump to being discontent with your present. And from there it's only another small step to doing things you probably shouldn't. Like showing up to a prom-themed party in your daughter's dress so that the entire crowd can see your leather handbag-style cleavage and looking legitimately disappointed when you don't win Prom Queen (again). And, in related news, that's why the song "Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen can go fuck itself.

But, like all good double-edged swords, I still kind of enjoy...

Nostalgia- Who among us hasn't creamed their pants when they remember some cherished childhood toy for the first time in 10-20 years? Or sang along asininely to a favorite old song? Or sat around late at night with friends talking about all the stupid shit you used to get into? No one worth knowing, that's for sure. I'll be the first to admit that I get as caught up in the past as anyone else. I just hope that everything I do worth remembering eventually amounts to some sort of payoff. Maybe if, when I die, I could get a little montage of any dangerous driving, sex, and peeing on churches that I've done all set to, say, "Ace of Spades," then I could expire happily. Even more happily if that montage could then somehow be burned to DVD and sent to my friends and family. I hope you guys like partial nudity.

In Soviet Pennsylvania, Road Drives on You!

I always thought basic things like road etiquette were so trivial and well-known that they didn't really have to fit into the scope of this blog. Actually, no I didn't. You all drive like fucking assholes, and I'm going to write about it. Again.


THE LEFT-HAND LANE IS FOR PASSING, YOU HORSE'S ASS- It is not for checking out the scenery. It is not for swerving into in order to try and get around someone making a right-hand turn. It is not for talking on your phone if you cannot press the gas at the same time. It is not for being too fucking old and dusty to operate a horseless carriage. It is not for doing the exact same speed as the car next to you. It is not even for doing only one or two miles faster than the car next to you. It is never, ever under any circumstances for doing anything lower than the posted speed limit. The only times it is ever acceptable to do anything lower than 900 mph in the left-hand lane is if you are either slowing down to make a turn or literally dying behind the wheel. If you want to take a leisurely drive there is a perfectly nice lane on the right side of the road, and if you promise to stay in it I promise not to tail-gate you and say vulgar things about various women and children who are important to you. And speaking of lanes of traffic...

THERE ARE LINES ON THE ROAD FOR A FUCKING REASON- You are supposed to drive between them, not over top of them. It doesn't matter if you're the shitheaded middle-aged white man in the Mini with the custom tags and racing stripes or the shitheaded middle-aged white man in the giant fucking Hummer, you're not supposed to straddle the line between two lanes of traffic just because you're indecisive about which one to be in. And if your car is too big to fit in one lane, cut some of it off. Even if you are a woman, your penis literally cannot, medically speaking, be small enough to justify having to drive a car that large and obnoxious. And furthermore...

THERE ARE TURN SIGNALS ON YOUR CAR FOR A FUCKING REASON- I know you already know which direction you're planning to careen off in, but that's not why turn signals were invented. They were created to let the rest of us know to get the fuck out of your way because you don't know how to fucking drive and are thinking about driving any direction except straight ahead. They are also simple and easy to use, requiring, at most, an extension of a finger and a flick of the wrist. There are absolutely no good reasons not to use them, except as acts of open aggression towards everyone else on the road. In which case I consider you fair game and will proceed to drive directly into you if your car is worth more than mine. The only good reason to not use a turn signal, I guess, is if you only have one arm, or no arms, in which case I don't know how you're driving but I'm no longer mad, I'm just impressed. But you could still try to use a knee or something. And finally...

BEING IN A STATE YOU DON'T LIVE IN IS NOT AN EXCUSE TO DRIVE LIKE A FUCKING IDIOT- I'm looking at you, Delaware.


In conclusion, I fucking hate everyone who owns a car, myself included. Driving licenses should only be given to people who can pass grueling, multi-year mental examinations. The exams should be so difficult that I know that I would never pass myself, but I'm not worried, because the satisfaction of knowing that the rest of you assholes are off the road will be enough to keep me warm on the long, cold nights we will surely have after the collapse of most of civilization as we know it.

Swiftie-Boat Kids for Truth

I can't believe I'm even going to say this, so I'm only going to say it once: Kanye was right. Taylor Swift is overrated. It's not that she's particularly horrible, as far as standard pop-country garbage goes. It's more that I feel like I'm missing something. Like everyone else knows something awesome about her that I don't. Like she's some sort of new designer drug that I don't know how to take. And with 12-year-old fans petitioning to be allowed to skip school to listen to her new CD, it's made me realize something: I fucking hate her. But in particular, I fucking hate...

"You Belong With Me-" Let's just, for one second, set aside the fact that T-Swift seems stuck on trying to convince us that she's some sort of ugly, high school misfit instead of a tall, blond stereotype. Instead, let's focus on the fact that this song is really fucking creepy. It's basically a three minute exploration of stalking that would make Sting uncomfortable. For those of you who are lucky enough to never have encountered the song and don't feel like listening to it, it revolves around Ms. Swift babbling on and on about how your girlfriend will never understand you like she does. In spite of the fact that you chose to go out with your girlfriend instead of her, you really belong with Taylor, and she's going to make sure the two of you wind up together by any means necessary.

She starts the song explaining that you, apparently, will not date her because she wears t-shirts. From there she informs you that your girlfriend is a total bitch who will never understand you like she does and proceeds to lap into some sort of coma where her eyes roll back into her head and she masturbates to the thought of you being emotionally beaten and shattered to the point that, in a desperate search for meaning, you drive to her house in the middle of the night, kick her door down, and the two of you tear off your clothes and understand the living shit out of each other. Which is all very well and good, as far as sappy high school masturbatory aids go, except for the fact that Taylor Swift just wrote a song calling my girlfriend a bitch, and I'm fairly certain they've never even met. From here I would like to point out that if this song were performed by anyone more threatening than a tiny white girl they would almost certainly be arrested on the spot and preemptively charged with kidnapping, attempted rape, and improper use of a romantic hook in expression of creepy fetishes.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that just in case there are any moms of teenage girls reading this blog (and god help you if there are) you should definitely not let your daughters skip school to get the new Taylor Swift CD because I heard that in the insert there are detailed diagrams of how to tie someone to a chair, along with weight-to-dose calculation tables for Rohypnol.

Which isn't to say that all songs about the expression of love through kidnap and murder are bad, because I fucking love...

"Saturday Night-" In this traditional, and far less creepy, love ballad, radio-friendly folk-heroes The Misfits explain that there are 52 ways to murder anyone. They don't give you any specifics, but the song strongly implies that they've tried them all out, and they all work pretty well because the girl always seems to wind up dead. You might not think this is all that romantic, until you learn that they no longer even enjoy the screams of dying maidens because they really miss you, and all the little things you used to do, like smoke cigarettes. Really, it was pretty selfish of you to go and die when they murdered you, because they're just a bunch of lonely romantics at heart. Their Saturday-night murder sprees don't even sound fun any more because they're all just so bummed out that you're not around to shine a little light into their cold, dark souls. I mean don't get me wrong, these guys are gonna keep killing ladies because they understand a thing or two about commitment and taking pride in their work, but they're not going to enjoy it any more, and I really think that even Nifty-Swifty would agree that that's the most romantic thing ever.

Whistle While You Die A Little Inside

Work sucks. According to 95% of official scientists, if work were supposed to be fun it would be called "fun" and not "work." Thank god local radio superheros B101 (101.butts fm in the greater Philadelphia area!) are here to lighten the mood! B101 is, apparently, the only fucking radio station that can legally be played within 500 feet of an office, but it's okay because their station has been chemically designed to make you feel good. It says so right on their home page. And that's why I fucking hate them. Because very little bothers me more than...

Bossy fucking radio DJs constantly telling me what to do- Being as I sit directly next to the only radio speaker in the entire office while shitting my pants over data entry, I have plenty of time to carefully and painstakingly analyze everything that B101's faceless song-pushers say to me, personally, between music and commercial breaks. The one thing that has stuck with me more than any other theme they harp on is that they want me to "just feel good" with a fervent intensity usually only found in drug dealers and sex industry workers. I have yet to figure out how listening to "Sexual Healing" and Jimmy Buffet while surrounded by awkward 40-somethings is supposed to make me feel good, but fuck if B101 isn't gonna keep trying until it works.

I'm not even terribly upset that the station doesn't make me "feel good" on a regular basis. I never expected the radio to have such wonderful, prescription-strength consequences. I'm more cheesed off that B101 has the fucking nerve to tell me how to feel. What if I want to feel sad at work? I'm still getting my job done, and last time I checked this is still AMERICA, where I have the right to slit my wrists all over accounting documents so long as no one gets hurt. The fact that these uppity, white-bread sound-pimps feel the need to bombard me with total crap for 8 hours a day is horrid. When they get presumptuous enough to comment on my day and how I'm certainly depressed but desperately need to feel better makes me angry. Angry and a little uncomfortable. Stopping songs to tell me how they sympathize with me sitting at my desk and how they know that I'm totally looking forward to lunch seems weirdly personal. And for your information B101, if that is your real name, I usually pack myself leftover shit sandwiches for lunch and only look forward to it because it's an hour out of my day that I can spend sitting in my car not listening to your fucking radio station.

Which makes me all the more ashamed to admit that...

There are two songs on this godforsaken station that I kind of like- The first being "Faith" by George Michael and the second being "Don't You Want Me" by The Human League. I'm not going to try justifying why these songs are awesome. It's not that I can't justify it, it's just that I feel like it should be so self-explanatory that if you don't understand their god-tier status then it's not even worth my time getting into it. The reason I'm so thrilled that The "Bee" keeps playing them, however, is two-fold:

1) It gives me roughly 6 minutes of music each day that I can actually enjoy singing along to, and

2) I'm fairly certain that my knowing all the words to both makes my coworkers uncomfortably question my sexuality.

So to whoever the flaming queen that keep slipping pseudo-gay 80s pop in between the Taylor Swift, Daughtry, and Lady Anti-Valium, please keep up the good work. You are my only ray of hope in this brave new radio world of musical Soma that I seem to have inadvertently stepped into.

Bachman-Turner Overtype

According to official internet resource office.microsoft.fart, Overtype mode allows you to "edit text" by typing "new characters over the existing characters." According to shoddy internet writer Me, it allows you to "fucking ruin everything you've been working on" by "screwing up the type and formatting of something you had already set how you liked it." In other words, if you set your cursor in front of a word and start typing, it deletes the word one letter at a time rather than just inserting the new type before it. In other other words, I fucking hate it.

A short, explanatory dialogue inspired by "true events"
Soulless Computer Voice:"Oh hey! It looks likes you're trying to edit something that you previously put a lot of time and effort in to, like say, a resume!"

Me: "I, er... yeah, I am. How did you learn to speak?"

SCV: "I know it looks like you're simply trying to update the 'Work Experience' section of that resume, but wouldn't you rather I start deleting things at random every time you press one key, effectively ruining the size, formatting, and content of this document and irreparably damaging your chances of getting this job/promotion?"

Me: "Oh god, no. Why would I ever want you to do that?"

SCV: "Did you say, 'do that?'"

At this point in the dialogue the computer goes ahead and enables Overtype mode, proper-fucking my entire resume as I try to add just one more job to it. The dialogue itself ceases as I proceed to cry like a schoolgirl while flames creep eerily up the monitor in front of me. An increasingly loud, mechanical laugh starts to echo from the speakers. I don't get the job. Twenty years down the line, I am a burnt-out junkie living on the streets and trying to sell bottles of my own fatally discolored urine as "lemonade." It goes without saying that I have no teeth left. On one particularly cold and rainy night, a limousine slows to a stop in front of me as I sit on a desolate stretch of sidewalk, fighting the shakes. The tinted window rolls down to reveal my old computer in the back seat, fabulously wealthy and surrounded by a writhing mass of beautiful, naked people, bottles of alcohol, and gold bullion.

"Hard luck, old chap," it says to me, having somewhere along the line downloaded itself a British accent, "maybe you should have worked a little harder on that resume!" The limousine peels out, splashing icy, dirty water all over my face and in my mouth, which had been hanging slack with rage ever since I saw the computer. The machine's faux-English cackling echoes and a champagne flute flies out the window, shattering on the sidewalk as it peels around a corner and out of my life forever. And that's why I fucking hate "overtype mode."

But I guess if I had to pick something, I kind of like...

Autosave- I really had to search the farthest recesses of my imagination to find something I like about Microsoft Office, and all I came up with was the autosave feature that seems to sort of sometimes work whenever it fucking feels like it. I have to give it props because on a small handful of occasions during college it did save me from having to retype an entire paper when my laptop crashed, but really I could probably count the number of times it worked correctly on one hand. From my experience, I'm better off writing papers in this Blogger word pad because that at least thinks to back up my work any time I stop typing just long enough to stick my finger up my nose.

Soap-Box: ACTIVATE!

I fucking hate...

The casual and derogatory use of the words "gay" and "fag"- In our culture, ideas are shaped through words and terminology. In order to understand something, we first have to be able to label it. The label we apply to a person, place, or thing shapes how we see it, framing it with all the connotations that word carries with it. Think of the example that has been brought up in recent years that a person waging war against an oppressive government can either be a "freedom fighter" or a "terrorist" depending on which side of their gun you're on. It is in this same manner that we come to label and understand homosexuals in our society. The word "faggot" carries with it oodles of negative connotation, and by applying it to gay culture we automatically frame it as something worthy of our derision. The word "gay" doesn't necessarily carry the same negative tone (it originally meant "happy," and that's nice and all) but dammit if we're not doing everything we can to give it one. Every time some angsty twelve-year-old calls a friend/parent/homework assignment/tv show/whatthefuckever "gay" in order to express displeasure with it the word "gay" is given a gentle little push away from being a relatively neutral word to one loaded with as much negative connotations as "fag." Now, seeing as gay culture is already barely tolerated in our society as is (hint: saying "I'm okay with gay people as long as they keep it to themselves" does not actually mean that you're okay with gay people), I really don't think it needs the added stress of having its existing labels turned into slurs. This is why every person, be they fat twelve year old or ignorant 20-30-something, that uses the word "gay" as a slur, or the word "fag" to refer to anything other than a British cigarette, makes me want to show them what a real hate-crime is.

Related only through talk of homosexuality, I fucking love...

Mondo Guerra- Say what you will about his bowties and short-shorts, this man has the biggest balls in the world for finding the courage to come out as HIV-positive on national television. There are special places in heaven reserved for people who refuse to hide who they are, people who refuse to let something negative define them, and people who are able to harness tragic events and refine them into works of art. As he has proven himself able to do all three, Mr. Guerra probably has a golden chair with his name on it right next to Jesus so that the two of them can sit in the early evening sunlight (it's always dusk in heaven) and talk about suspenders and Jerry curls.

America the Booty-full

Today, close personal friend and part-time lover M. Timecat and I explore the many facets of our patriotic sides.

I, for one, fucking hate...

American Currency- Old American currency was boring. While the collective monies of every other country on Earth were getting dolled up in their finest blues and pinks and purples, American money was dressing itself in the same drab greens, burying its fun side so deep in the closet that it took us until recent years to see even a splash of color. But I'm not here to harp half-assedly on paper currency. No friends, I'm here to harp spectacularly on the 1971-1978 Eisenhower dollar coin, pictured left. I have no problem with Eisenhower himself. Buttons from the time of his term as president (1492-1500AD) proclaim "I LIKE IKE!" and if people liked the man enough to make buttons about him then certainly he has every right to be on the front of a coin. But what's that on the back of the coin you ask? It's a bald eagle, flying with a sprig of some sort of plant, on the moon. This is significant because EAGLES CANNOT FLY ON THE FUCKING MOON. There is no atmosphere on the moon for them to flap their wings against. Furthermore, without the previously mentioned atmosphere, eagles (like their distant cousin, man) cannot fucking breathe. Without atmosphere, the eagle's eyes would explode out of its very head like a bloody space-firecracker. Also, without any Atmosphere CDs, the eagle has no hope of throwing a decent party. According to internet witchdoctor and general know-it-all, Wikipedia, the design is the insignia of the Apollo 11 mission and was designed by some dude named Frank Gasparro. I don't know Mr. Gasparro personally, but his name does sound like a digestive disorder and I'm going to put my foot down and say that he has absolutely no business getting anywhere near our money again.

Timecat, on the other hand, fucking loves...

American Psycho- "Movie = good. Book= best book ever? Back when I was a young warthog, I was wonderfully traumatized by the gratuitous sex and violence that occurs in the fictional life of seemingly normal guy, Pat Bateman. You know you never saw a movie where a guy bites off a chick’s snatch then drops a chainsaw down a stairwell on a hooker before this one, and you probably never will again. Then my eyes were opened to dangerously unsafe levels when I realized that this cinematic masterpiece was actually a novel, written by supercreep Bret Easton Ellis. I must compliment Mr. Ellis because to this day I do not think I have read a better written book, but I hope I never run into him in an alley late at night, because any guy who can think up a chapter where the main character sports the decapitated head of a woman on his cock while killing is not invited to tea time with me and Grand Ma-Ma. However, kudos are in order because with the incredible attention to detail and the ability to bring to life what I imagine is a spot-on rendition of the mind of a psychopath from the inside out, it is obvious that Ellis is a very talented writer. So with that being said, shine on Bret Easton Ellis, you blood-and-gore-covered diamond!"

Home is Where the Couch Is

I fucking hate...

Themed homes- While I understand that different people have different aesthetics, there is a certain amount of class in realizing where in the world you live and owning it. For example, throwing doilies on your coffee tables does not turn your NYC studio loft into a New England bed and breakfast. Or, more specifically to my locale, throwing hay down in your front yard and getting a mailbox shaped like a barn with a cow on the front of it does not turn your suburban box into a country ranch. It actually looks pretty fucking dirty. Similarly, I will never understand why people feel the need to pretty up their bathroom in the styles of lame, white-people getaway spots, like the beach or a mountain cottage. Decorative spheres of twine and seashells do not make your poop smell better. Although I guess to be fair, my bathroom is full of dinosaurs and unicorns and pictures of a dog on a bicycle, so I guess I did go for a theme with my bathroom and that theme turned out to be "things that are awesome." So really, I guess what I really hate are boring, white-people themed homes. Do not model your home after either a bed and breakfast, a country cottage, or a shore house (unless it actually is one of those things, and even then only do so reluctantly) and I won't want to take a shit in your living room.

But I do still fucking kind of like...

Awesomely inappropriately themed homes- Is your living room decked out like a graveyard? Do you have an office done up to look like the bridge of a spaceship? Did you transform your bathroom from an "ocean shore-house" to a "rat-infested pirate brig?" I doubt you have as I have yet to meet anyone who has, but seriously, these ideas are all gold. Let's get the fuck on this, people.

Friday Quickie

Today's article is short, but it's one that I feel strongly about. I fucking hate...

Invisible bugs- I think the only people who will truly understand what I mean by this are people with hairy legs and drug addicts. Every time I take a pair of socks off after wearing them for hours on end, the hair on my legs starts standing back up, making it feel like there are dozens of tiny, bastard insects crawling all over me. It would be enough to make me shave my legs just to get rid of it, but

A) I'm not 100% convinced it would solve the problem, and

B) I fucking hate stubble. Shit itches.

It is also entirely possible, as far as I'm concerned, that there really is a species of small, invisible insects that like to feed off of some hormone that your body secretes when you're really, really irritated. Just in case, I propose we task someone with developing a pesticide for them. The writers of Lost were good at killing off imaginary things, so I nominate them.

On This Special Episode...

Please welcome special guest hate-monger, M. Timecat. Today, Mr. Timecat fucking hates...

"How flimsy Playstation controllers are- Are you fucking kidding me Sony? You know how hard and infuriating video games are, you make them. You damn well know I am going to slam my controller on the ground as hard as I can when Madden fucks me over and makes the Browns beat me 49-0. Not only that, but it’s fucking bogus when you 'Ask Madden' and that fat bastard tells you to 'bang it up the middle with the fullback' even though its 4th and 12 on my own 10. Thanks for making me look like an asshole, John. I remember back in the day when videogames could be beaten by the average person and not just fucking losers who do nothing but play them 24/7 in their Grammy’s basement who would go into anaphylactic shock if their cocks came within 6 nautical miles of bottom-shelf pussy. When I was a kid, video games were way easier. How easy was Japan’s side-scrolling insult to all Italian people, which later became known as Super Mario Bros? Seriously Japan, in 1980 were you still that mad that Italy bailed on the Axis? Did leaving you as the only ones to face 'prompt and utter destruction' mean you had to make a game where every Italian character is a plumber and where the bad guys are 'Goombas?' Yeah well, I guess you can stay as mad as you want to about that one. Maybe that massive blow to Japanese culture and infrastructure is why you can’t design a controller that can survive your average angry white guy who sucks at video games.

But seriously what has happened to videogames? Back in the day the only thing you needed to do to win at videogame football was pop Techmo Bowl into your NES and then zigzag your way across the screen to gridiron glory. Now I have to be able to read a fucking Cover -2 defense or else Madden starts talking shit about how I need to get the ball out of the QB’s hand so you don’t get sacked. Fuck you, Madden, what do you know anyway? What’s that? Super Bowl Ring you say? Ok, well then maybe it’s my fault that I can’t convert 4th and 12s when John is calling the plays for me. I guess the only way to really be good at videogames anymore is to really be dedicated to playing all day and night and buying every expensive new consoles and the latest games. I wonder if that’s why poor people are so good at real sports…"

On the other hand, I fucking love...

How much easier non-sports games have gotten- Did we play the same games as kids? I have nothing but hateful memories from my childhood as I tried to express myself as an eco-conscious nature lover by guiding that stupid fucking hedgehog towards all those gold rings so that he could buy his hedgehog girlfriend a house and a car and earn a slim chance of mating with someone besides a fox suffering from birth deformities. Maybe other people found this shit easy. Maybe I just hadn’t developed fine motor functions yet, even by late elementary school. Nowadays though, videogames at least have save points so that you can quit playing them the 600th time a demonic dog-mannequin hybrid bites you in the ass right after you used your last health kit repairing the damage from an onslaught of shadow-infants just back from the Improvised Knife Festival. You can also save your game when you realize that Jesus fucking hell, you’ve been playing this game for six hours and have to be at work in another two. To me, this makes modern day gaming easier than classic videogames, and I fucking love it.

I do agree with the necessity for sturdier hardware, though. Back in the old days I could hurl a Sega Genesis controller at my parents’ Radiate-Mo-Tron tube television and the only thing that broke was my mother’s temper. Try doing that with these tiny joystick-laden bundles of nonsense and your new plasma-screen bullshit and see how far it gets you. If you ask me, two objects that can’t handle you smashing them together as hard as you can have no business letting you play Mortal Kombat on them. Fucking Goro.

Disclaimer: M. Timecat’s opinions do not reflect in any way my own, nor do mine represent his. Timecat has never given me any reason to believe that he spends his days imagining the married lives of hedgehogs. Similarly, I don’t even know what “banging up the middle with the fullback” is, but I snicker every time I read it.

The Ol' Ballin' Chain

I fucking hate...

Listening to people bitch about their marriages- Never mind the fact that it's disrespectful to your spouse to sit around whining about them when they're not there. Never mind how rude it is to tell someone, upon hearing that they're engaged, to "run while they still can" weeks before they make one of the biggest commitments of their life. Never mind the fact that all across the country there are same-sex couples fighting tirelessly to publicly proclaim their love in the same fashion that you're shitting all over with your ceaseless torrent of petty criticism. The real reason it irks me so much when people go off on stereotypical tirades about their husbands/wives is that it's pure, played-out comic horseshit. There is nothing funny, entertaining, or remotely of value for me to listen to you talk about how your spouse is messier/cleaner than you are, like you've hogged the stage at a shitty open-mic night. If you want some cheap laughs about how boys are from Planet of the Apes and girls are from Pretty Woman, get a spot on Comedy Central. If you want some legitimate advice on what to do when your partner drives you nuts, get a therapist. But whatever you fucking do, don't think for one second that I want to hear about it. Comments like, "Whenever I clean the garage Bob goes right back out there and messes it all up again! Men!" and, "It doesn't matter how much money I put in my savings account, my wife'll just redeposit it at the mall! Am I right?" do not endear you to me. Although they do make me want to give you a high-five. Directly in the face. With a brick.

But I fucking love...

Mutual sass in relationships- For every sorry sod I have to listen to who prays for the sweet release of death to take either themselves or their "loved" ones out of the shackles of marriage but doesn't have the balls or brains to do something about it (divorce and murder ain't hard folks, they both just take good lawyers), I do get some relief from watching couples who clearly know how to make each others' lives a living hell, and love every second of it. It seems like all relationships involve a healthy amount of irritating the shit out of each other, but the couples I can respect are the ones who do it right in the other one's face and don't try to sneak around whining behind their back. There's got to be a reason that some of the longest and seemingly most happily married couples I witness on a daily basis are openly hostile to each other in entertaining ways, and I can't imagine it's all for my viewing benefit. So go ahead ladies, tell him that shirt makes him look like a horse's ass. Or gentlemen, feel free to let her know that you don't give a shit about going shopping. Just make sure you're talking to each other about it, and not to me. Never, ever, ever to me. Or, you know, just don't get fucking married in the first place.

*Please note, Google Image searches of "marriage" turned up nothing but boring white people, so I decided instead to search for "animals doin' it" and put up results from that. I hope it helped.

This Town Ain't Big Enough For All Six or Seven Of Us

I fucking hate...

Having split identities- I'm a lazy man. A lazy, lazy, etc. It's not so much that I hate physically doing things as it is that I hate devoting mental exertion to thinking about how to do things. As such, one of the more irksome points in my life as a post-college resource-hog has been the need to create a "professional" image for myself in the workplace. Immediately after graduation, I think I took a lot of appropriate steps: I bought some ties, I cut the dried semen and whiskey out of my hair, I started bathing regularly. I even took down the Myspace where I pretended to be a girl in order to disappoint local perverts and, hopefully, confuse them on a profoundly personal level. As soon as a company hired me, I put my facade into practice. I began showing up for work on time, in neat dress, and with a kind, unassuming smile. By all accounts, I seemed a perfectly pleasant, well-adjusted young man. The illusion was complete.

Unfortunately, my work persona falls in direct conflict with the way I prefer to live my life on my own time. I hate waking up before 10am. I hate wearing sensible colors and clothes that don't cling tight enough to show the outline of my balls. Showering, and washing my hair in particular, makes me want to shake with such titanic fits of rage that I was briefly employed as an eco-friendly paint mixer. I also hate being nice to people who are mean, listening to boring stories, and making coffee for strangers. This creates a disconnect, then, between my personal and professional selves. Which was fine for a time. I went to work as one person, got through 9 hours of that, metamorphosed back into my real self through a baptism of rage on the drive home, and was ready to be fun and sassy for the evening.

Except cracks have started to show. Sometimes at work I slip up and imply that I might still be drunk, or make lewd, aggressively homosexual innuendos around people I think it might bother, or suggest how much I would like to light someone's house on fire. Worse yet, sometimes my Labor Face slips out in my personal life. I find myself organizing my money to make sure the bills are all facing the same way, or accidentally putting on the television and being boring and white all night.

Which might not even be so disastrous if I then didn't have to factor in online personae as well. How do I maintain a mental division when I also have to take the effort to sign onto message boards and be a condescending know-it-all? Or log into a Steam gamer tag and be so purposefully obtuse yet such a good shot that I give the impression of being some sort of mute, idiot-savant? This double-triple-quadruple life is tearing me apart.

And yet at the same time, I kind of love...

Getting away with it- There's some sort of sick, double-agent appeal to knowing that I can be such a bastard at certain times of the day, and such a goody-goody at others, and pass successfully as both. And every time a slip between the two goes unnoticed, whether it's forgetting to shower here or singing off-color songs under my breath there, it feels great. Like I shoulda been an actor, or low-level, local politician. I suppose this could all be a normal part of the "adult" life I'm still adapting to. Either way, I think I'll be okay as long as I manage to avoid any major screw-ups. Like going into work with a flamethrower looking to play capture the flag. Or coming home and issuing loans to my neighbors. Or logging into Team Fortress and failing to be taken seriously as a writer.