“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I am certain that you have heard it before, as it is a very common phrase. There is great truth in this cliche, but there is also a major flaw and an omission which leads down, what I find to be, a very interesting line of thought. Explore with me.
Continue reading “Good Intentions Are Asphalt”Dont Back Zach Braff – PSA
This is something we can all support. I know I do.
The Joke Has Finally Landed!!!
I love to make people who work as cashiers laugh. I use a lot of spur of the moment stuff and a few tried-and-true bits to accomplish this. I have been trying for years to get a particular joke to land at the grocery store. I am happy to announce that this morning at around 6:43 success was achieved.
Pssst, You Look Stupid (Skinny Jeans)
Many people choose to follow trends that will make them look back in a few years and hopefully feel embarrassed that they were so dumb. We need to help such individuals out by pointing out to them that they look stupid. It may seem negative but it is actually done out of love. Plus it’s a joke.
Continue reading “Pssst, You Look Stupid (Skinny Jeans)”
TV Turn Off Week
Apparently we are right in the middle of what some group of people has decided was a good time for TV turn off week. There is also another one in September. Learning this today a great many questions popped into my mind, such as:
- Who is deciding when to do this?
- Can we take a vote as to when it should be?
- Did they pick the beginning week of the NBA playoffs for any particular reason?
- Did they pick the start of football season for the other week for any certain reason?
- Are they aware that all summer long there is only baseball, Nascar and golf which actually make it an extremely pleasant experience to turn off your TV?
Last summer I had a TV detox which was pretty nice until I wanted to watch the Olympics and my reception was bad because I canceled cable. I think a TV turnoff week is a good idea but it should be on your own time schedule when there are no playoffs. And go ahead and do more than one or two weeks per year. I think it is a great idea not for environmental reasons but for mental reasons. Seriously though not during the playoffs.
Problem Solved: World Hunger
We have all seen the sad commercials about hungry children and the struggling people who work hard but just can’t provide, or the commercials for the children who may not even have parents that have the bloated bellies from not eating. It is a real problem and I have a real solution. I think it would be really sweet if this solution was actually implemented but I highly doubt it.
I am thinking about calling my solution:
The Food Network Challenge
If you have ever watched the food network you have no doubt seen the enormous amounts of food that are made all the time. Now, if every Food Network show could be shot on location in a disaster area or at a soup kitchen or in one of the myriad of places where people are in need this would be a gigantic help to a lot of people. Many people would have no trouble putting up with a super-peppy chef so they could finally have a meal. No matter what, there are always people who need food so they will never run out of locations.
This could be a big positive for the station as well. First off, they would be seen as kind and caring. Secondly, starving people would not have to make fake approving faces with mmmm’s and oohh yeah’s. The home audience would see people eating the food and say, “Wow, that looks really delicious, I have never seen someone enjoy a meal that much. I should buy the recipe book.”
So, come on Food Network, do the right thing and at least make one show that does this. Then pick me up for my “Hobo Eats” show idea.
BMI Scam, or Not
“Eat right and get plenty of exercise and if you do you will be healthy”. That is what the health experts of yesteryear told us. Well today they have slightly modified it. A few years back they came up with a system called the body mass index or BMI (for the busy people among us). The BMI is calculated using a persons weight and height and will inform them if they are underweight, a proper weight, overweight, obese or “about to die”.
A second of thought should reveal the major flaw in this system. Think back to fourth grade P.E. class when Mr. Harris told the class that ______ weighs more than fat. The whole class was stunned because fat people are very heavy. If you could not fill in the blank it was “muscle”. Now if someone is muscular and calculates their BMI it will put them, at the very least, in the overweight category. In researching this, I entered the heights and weights of several famous people. George W. Bush, our most fit President ever, as he has been declared, has been deemed overweight. Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics had a number that was too high and Terrell Owens of the Dallas Cowboys is well on his way to obesity. Of all the heights and weights for professional athletes that I entered, only one fit in the normal range and it was Lance Armstrong.
In thinking a little more about the BMI and the people who came up with it, a very good question pops into my mind. Why do you need to have an index number tell you if you are unhealthy, can you not just look at your nasty body? The only situation I can think of is that someone is blind and cannot use their hands to feel the lard growing on them. I surmise that the BMI people came up with the system out of boredom, because they are nutritionists and Sesame Street has been doing their job for them for a few decades. “Eat vegetables. Stop shoving burgers in your face.” That kind of thing. Or maybe they thought that announcing a new way to calculate exactly how lazy and gluttonous we are would scare some people into changing.
On the other hand, as a former “obese/about to die” category member I will tell you this – “Use your eyes and your brain.” I was 325 lbs. and thought that my extremely high BMI number didn’t mean much because I had a good amount of muscle too. I didn’t take into account that a lot of that muscle was hanging over my belt. And who was I kidding I hadn’t lifted weights in years. (By the way, Dont worry about my BMI I used this video to trim down.)
I have come to the conclusion that if you get paid to play a sport that doesn’t involve a bicycle or bowling pins you can ignore the BMI. Everyone else can still ignore it because we have things like mirrors and small children to tell us we are fat.
Pssst, You Look Stupid (Boots Over Pantlegs)
Many people choose to follow trends that will make them look back in a few years and hopefully feel embarrassed that they were so dumb. We need to help such individuals out by pointing out to them that they look stupid. It may seem negative but it is actually done out of love. Plus it’s a joke.
Tucking Pantlegs into Boots
What You Are Saying:
“I don’t know what looks stupid, but the TV stars are doing this.”
Makes People Think of:
Dumb and Dumber after they bought some new clothes. or
Napoleon Dynamite
Insulted Person Says to Me:
“Hey, this is the latest fashion.”
My Reply:
“Uuuuuuuhhhhhhh”
Currently Rolling Over In Grave(s):
John Wayne
Crocodile Dundee
You are welcome.
Awards
I hate awards shows with a passion. It is like watching an entire industry give itself a big pat on the back or pleasure itself in some other way. Plus the fact that one movie or album gets proclaimed the best doesn’t mean anything to me. I usually hate what was picked anyway. I can’t understand why anyone wants to watch awards shows. The bad jokes, the political jabs and all the pretentious movies/music and millionaires; it is just too much for me to handle. Isn’t it award enough to get paid millions of dollars for playing dress up on camera or acting like you are a musician? Do they really have to get a trophy too? Another thing that really really bothers me is when one of the winners gets up and says something like, “If you keep trying, anything is possible.” The fact is that anything is not possible. Let’s crunch some numbers. 7 billion people in the world, most of them would like to win the award that was just given out. They only give it out once a year which means that in the average lifespan of a person they will give out about 75 of them leaving us a few billion short. Clearly it is not possible. Sorry Kevin Garnett you were wrong. “Anything is Possible” is a much easier phrase to say when you have just won something that the other 6.8 billion people in the world will never win. The next time the kid at Taco Bell repeats my order properly I will proclaim, “ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!!!!!” just so I can proclaim it with joy in my lifetime. But who am I kidding, those screw-ups at Taco Bell won’t ever get it right.
I do wish that I could watch the Razzies on TV. And I wish they were hosted by celebrities and had all the bad jokes. It is just nice to see the worst in something proclaimed and given a trophy. Sadly it is still not possible for all of us to win Razzies. Check out all the winners/losers.
I am very happy to see that Indiana Jones won for worst remake, sequel, prequel or ripoff. Very rightly so.
I have no idea who won any of the Oscars. But I will tell you that my “Movie of the Year Award” is split between “Iron Man” and “The Dark Knight”.
Bad Luck With Scooters
When I was a kid we would visit my grandparents every year or so. They always had a lot of really old toys around for everyone to play with. The hot ticket items that everyone wanted to play with were the scooters. We would ride them down the sidewalk in front of the house or around the sidewalks in the park behind the house. When I was about 13 I realized that I didn’t like playing on the scooters and I took stock of exactly why. I came up with many examples of why I should never play on Grandma’s death scoots again. I also figured out that scooters had been bad luck for me in general, but especially at Grandma’s house.
3 or 4 years old – I was sitting on one of the scooters when it slipped out from under me sending my head towards the pavement. My head started bleeding like crazy and I had to have stitches.
8 years old – Riding a scooter in the back yard my brother threw some rocks in front of it and jammed up the wheels. My hands remained on the handle bars leaving my front tooth to try to catch my fall. No more front tooth.
9 years old – Riding scooters and skateboards down a sidewalk on a hill in the park behind Grandma’s house. My brother and I were sharing the one skateboard that hadn’t been taken to the front yard. I went down the hill and crashed into a fence. The chain link fence stabbed into my ankle and If I tried to pull my foot it hurt like crazy. I wasn’t strong enough to pull it out with my bare hands. The skateboard was a few feet away from me and I thought I could slip it under the fence and get my foot out. I asked my brother to hand it to me but he took it and ran to the front of the house because he didn’t want to share it with me. It felt like a couple of hours that I was stuck under the fence bleeding on the pavement but it was really probably 20 minutes. My cousin had the other skateboard and he came out and we used the skateboard to pry up while we pulled the fence out of my leg and my leg out from under the fence.
11 years old – Riding in the front of the house I fell off the scooter and landed on my wrist folding it up under my body.
12 years old – Riding in the park fell off scooter and ripped off my fingernail.
In addition to the above I also had countless jammed fingers, skinned knees and gravel filled hands.
I was either extremely bad at riding on things or very unlucky. If I was bad at it I didn’t want to try to get better. I have watched a great many other kids wipe out extremely hard on scooters and it has only deepened my hatred for them. And those two wheeled “Razor” things, well I have officially named them “Death Scoots” and will never ride one as I believe it will be the end of my existence.