"A lot of people go to college for seven years."

Disease.  When you hear (or, in this case, read) this word, what comes to mind?

Ok, besides that.

Perhaps you think of the grim, cold confines of the terminal ward in a hospital.  How about the debilitating, trouser-shitting convulsions of a grand mal seizure?  Maybe you envision pox-ridden peasants being carted away by the wagonload during the Black Plague.  I know that's my favorite.  Regardless, the associations probably aren't all that great, and being sick is not something you aspire to.  To put it bluntly (my forte), disease is a bitch, just another way for God, Mother Nature, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, depending on your preferred delusion, to remind you, "Hey, bitch, you're mortal.  How do you like dem apples?"  So, why do so many people, Americans in particular, want to be diagnosed as ill?

What am I talking about?  Don't act like you don't know.  We have become a hypochondriac nation, obsessed with the idea that we simply must be suffering from a dozen-odd diseases and syndromes, despite the fact that we are one of the most medically advanced societies on the planet.  The average hour-long block of television programming contains roughly umpteen-million ads for various prescription medications, some for diseases so heinous the commercials actually refuse to say anything about those diseases.  I'm not kidding, I have literally seen ads that only say, "Ask your doctor about Fecalodin."  That's it.  No laundry list of symptoms, no mention of the malady itself, no clues in the ridiculously-sunny imagery of the advertisement.  Just the nagging seed of a fearful suspicion - Shit, what if I need Fecalodin, and don't even know it?  I don't want to have . . . whatever Fecalodin is meant to treat.  I'd better ask Dr. Chaparaka, he'll know, he comes from one of those brown countries where they have an ass-load of diseases.

The morbid fear/desire to be sick in the United States could probably be classified as a condition in its own right.  Hell, some Americans invent a new kind of crazy to be every day.

Yeah, you're a heat-seeking titanium cyclone of truth on a dinosaur.  That's what it is.

But those without enough celebrity clout to pull this off are forced to adopt real diseases, whether they have them or not.  Why does it itch behind your left ear?  What is that vague ache inside your head?  Why do you feel inferior and socially awkward when surrounded by prettier, more successful people?  There has to be a medically-valid reason, right?  Luckily, the pharmaceutical-media complex has an easy answer: you're all diseased!  It's pill-popping time!  However, I cannot blame the placebo peddlers, who are mostly just taking advantage of a situation, namely our society's fixation on its imagined illness.  I have read some serious research - which I will not cite here, because who the fuck are you, a special Senate commission? - which suggests that in First World Nations almost all real fears have evaporated as a result of us technologically eliminating the innumerable dangers we puny, soft, slow, weak homo sapiens once faced in the very scary prehistoric world.

Behold the pinnacle of evolution.  Good thing we killed off saber-toothed tigers a while ago.

Because we are hardwired to live in constant fear for our lives (that's called survival instinct), our uber-sized brains are having a hard time adapting to the cushy, Cheeto-fueled lifestyle we presently enjoy.  We actually seek out other things to fear, bogeymen our neurotic collective unconscious creates to fill the void once occupied by floods, woolly mammoths, thunderstorms, famines, packs of wild dogs, predatory super-ostriches, and more or less every other goddamn thing on the planet, because, let's face it, we were the real-world equivalent of Scrat the saber-tooth squirrel from the Ice Age movies, scurrying about frantically between a thousand and one things out to squash our very existence.

*Twitch*

Don't believe me?  Do you ever notice how these illnesses don't seem to affect Third World Nations?  When was the last time you heard about an epidemic of restless thumb syndrome or acute carrot allergy or chronic sleep disorder in Africa?  You know what they suffer from there?  Starving to death.  And AIDs.  And hippo attacks.  You know, real things.

On the other hand, we have our glittery, homogenized, sanitized world, where being diagnosed with a disease is actually becoming trendy.  It's part of what I call our culture of victimhood - a society-wide yearning to see ourselves as somehow disadvantaged, afflicted, or persecuted and thus special and deserving of others' attention and sympathy.  Where people once went out of their way conceal ailments such as manic depression (politically-corrected to bipolar disorder, then affective disorder, and probably soon basal alternating interemotive condition), they now proudly declare it to any and all who will listen, touting it like a badge of courage and endurance in a brutal, unfair world.

Hey, remember when Magic Johnson contracted HIV, and suddenly it was cool?  No?

I'm not knocking people who genuinely suffer from real diseases, mental or physical, but people who boast about it, or, worse yet, don't actually have the fucking disease.  And it's pretty hard to have a "disease" when it's basically made up.

Case in point?  So-called gluten allergies.  I have a sickness, too: I am sick to death of everybody and their inbred cousin claiming to be allergic to wheat gluten.  For those who haven't read an Internet health column in the past five years, gluten is a protein composite found in virtually all food products processed from wheat, rye, oats, barley, and related species.  You know, the staple crops on which human civilization is based, so, in other words, it's been part of our diet for a long time in one form or another.  Little did we know, we were actually eating poison the whole time.

Actually Satan's grist of death.

Since I work at a restaurant, I am more aware of this fad than most.  And, yes, it is a fad, I am calling it.  It's oddly, perversely popular to be gluten allergic/intolerant.  Until approximately 2006, I had never heard of people having a serious problem with wheat gluten.  Then, all of a sudden, it was the phobia de jour, the buzzword in dietary science, the favorite subject of superficial "health blogs" on every quack-medical website.  It is approaching the level of a public health scare as more and more people jump on the Gluten=Doom Bandwagon.  On a regular basis, I now have septuagenarians requesting the gluten-free menu.  So, my question is, what did you do before gluten sensitivity was "discovered" a few years ago?  Never eat out?  Live in agonizing pain as your defective digestive system rebelled against the tiniest presence of gluten in your food?  I have even had customers tell me which gluten products they can and cannot stomach.  "Oh, your flour-rolled tortilla chips are just fine, I eat them all the time, but I have to have the gluten-free menu for my meal."  Really?  Your allergy is that selective?  It has reached the point that I am not sure people even understand why they are avoiding this shit.  I suspect they think it's some new, healthier diet propounded by holistic, mind-crystal-wielding hippie healers or savvy, ultra-fit organic dietitians.

I am well-aware that there is a real illness called celiac disease, which renders the person incapable of properly digesting wheat gluten.  Sucks to your assmar, Piggy.  Fact is, that ailment afflicts less than 5% of the population.  So what are the odds I just happen to encounter three of those poor souls in the same restaurant, on the same day, during the same shift?  Do the math.  If you buy those numbers, I have a basement full of chimpanzees randomly cranking out Hamlet on typewriters, and I'll sell them to you for a cool million.  And as for gluten "intolerance," it is so vaguely defined scientifically that anyone who has ever had a slightly unpleasant experience sometime within 24 hours of eating gluten, including but not limited to poor judgement resulting in a regretted one-night stand, could conceivably claim it was an adverse reaction.  In reality, this could just as easily be chalked up to a logical fallacy like slippery slope, cause/effect confusion, questionable cause, or being a total dumbfuck.

As per usual, I am going to blame TV and the Internet for this phenomenon, since they are the repeat offenders when it comes to virally spreading bullshit in its many and varied forms.  Softcore medical dramas like Grey's Anatomy, House, or Royal Pains and the digital vector for rumor and pseudoscience that is the Worldwide Web have combined to convince every Tom, Dick, and retard Harry that he is professionally qualified to diagnose medical conditions with flair and cocksure confidence, typically within an hour-long time slot.

Pretty much the same as a PhD.

Though these outlets regularly take potshots at each other for instilling laymen (read: morons) with a false sense of intelligence, the TV shows scoffing at WebMD while online doctor-pundits deride and warn against primetime programming, the truth is they both achieve the same effect: your average civil servant or gas station clerk thinks s/he can claim to know they are bipolar, ADHD, gluten intolerant, etc.  The surrounding miasma of media coverage reaffirms this as TV stations, websites, and newspapers, hungry for viewership in a vapid atmosphere of consumers with a fruit fly's attention-span, rush to cash in on the latest thing, giving the public exactly what they want: another reason to piss and moan, "Woe is me!"  Well, get over it.  I may not be Greg House, but I can flippantly diagnose a dipshit with all the alacrity and caustic wit he displays, no PhD required.

Random, unrelated observations

I don't feel like organizing my thoughts into a particular order or tying them together with a theme today.  Live with it.  Instead, I'm just going to follow an ad hoc train of thought, a form of blog stand-up comedy, if you will.

Except Mr.  Pibb.  It's pretty much identical.

I am fairly well-convinced advertising agencies make a bid on a project, close their doors, discuss the product for five minutes while mocking the unfathomable idiocy of it and its producers (Shakeweight, anyone?), then get drunk and/or stoned out of their minds for three months straight.  Twenty minutes before the deadline, the team throws together a PowerPoint and bullshits some "marketing research" statistics.  Presto!  "Here's your new ad campaign.  That will be $750,000, please."

Anyone could do this.  As a matter of fact, I have an idea of my own.  I stumbled across this product while shopping for lye a few days ago:

Hell, yeah.

This is clearly the HNIC of laundry soap, the dolomite of detergents.  Pastels and flowers on the bottle?  Fuck that shit, queer-boy.  And who better to shill this product than the snake-fighting, lightsaber-wielding Bad Motherfucker himself, Mr. Samuel L. Jackson?

"Woolite Extra Dark Care.  Keep it black, motherfucker."

Tell me you wouldn't buy that shit.  It should come with brass knuckles and a chronic blunt.  Another good slogan would be "Once you go black, you never go back."

On the subject of brand-loyalty . . .

Where exactly are you from?

If you can't quite make it out, this vehicle on a Michigan road has a Detroit Pistons sticker, two Denver Broncos stickers, and a Texas license plate.  Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaking of state-specific matters . . .

It was Wear Your Striped Shirt Day.

I encountered this poster at my local State Department office.  At a passing glance, there's nothing overtly wrong with it.  But, when you're standing in line longer than you would at a Harry Potter premiere, you get the opportunity to observe a lot about your surroundings.  Take a closer look:

Is this poster censored?

No, it's not.  Actually, it has been "updated," the specific year (2009) whited out by a crafty editor.  This is how low our education budget is - we can't afford new signage to tell parents when to enroll their children for educational tuition assistance.  And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the pictures were recycled from an even earlier time.  Little Johnny Bowlcut is probably writing his graduate thesis by now, or would be, if his parents had known when to sign him up for financial aid.  Apparently, we changed the old maxim from Children are our future to Children - Eh, Screw 'Em.

Then again, we may not have a future at all . . .

Be afraid.

WTF? Seriously, what the fuck is this thing? What is its purpose, besides inducing involuntary defecation in all who behold it? Take a closer look and note the scale of this metal monstrosity. That's a road leading up to it. I just saw Transformers 3, and I'm pretty sure I caught a glimpse of this mean bastard cutting up the Hancock Building like a gingerbread house. Or, then again, maybe not . . . because this would be the thing's disguised mode. This is what it looks like when it wants to keep a low profile. I seem to recall a Decepticon named “Buzz Saw” . . . and he was nothing like this.*  Imagine this sinister thing's unveiled Cybertronian form. In the words of Shia LeBoef . . .

"Optimus!!!"

*He actually turned into a giant wasp or hornet. Because that's super-inconspicuous and totally stealth.  "Hey, is that . . . oh, no, wait it's not a giant, alien killbot, it's just a stinging insect the size of a Cadillac.  No worries!"

And if you wanted more proof the world is approaching its much-deserved end . . .

There is no God.

I can only hope this is in fact a test of sorts, a cruel-but-necessary trap to eliminate the dumbest echelons of our society.  If you so much as attempt to shell out $19.99 for this DVD, you will be black-bagged, drug out back, thrown against the wall, and executed via firing squad.  No questions asked.  At least in a perfect world.

Likewise if you wear this.

While we're on the subject of people who should die . . .

No shit.

I am so tired of this "phenomenon."  Seriously.  I can't even muster an obvious preeteen-sex-fantasy-staking-gay-sparkle joke.

And the icing on the cake . . .

Also available: syringes of lard.

It's like the restaurant industry isn't even trying to pretend that they aren't trying to kill us.  "Go ahead, fatty, order it.  C'mon, tons-of-fun, you know you want to.  That inkling of disgust is being overridden by your compulsive eating disorder as we speak. Do it, before the FDA makes it illegal."

Oh, and one more thing . . .

Because traditional Italian cuisine just screams hobbit.

You might be a douchebag

Before anyone says it, let me acknowledge that, yes, this is hardly the most original topic for me to cover.  Thousands have tread the same ground.  You know who else did that?  Shakespeare.  Motherfucker didn't use a single original idea, and he still slays high school through doctoral-level English literature classes like a total Renaissance G.

What?  That's what methought, trollop.

That said, let's do this, America.

These days, the term "douchebag" is thrown about willy-nilly, applied to any male exhibiting mildly dickish behavior and even used ironically by obvious douchebags like Kanye West in their music.  I have heard the label generically applied to emo-kids, snobbish business-types, and even women (the proper technical term being "bitch, "cunt," or, if you want to groundlessly question her sexual habits, any derivation of "whore").  This cannot continue if we are to address the very real problem of epidemic douchebaggery.  Back In The Day, the word had a more specific meaning, coined to describe a largely new type of self-deluded, insufferable asshole the world had not previously seen, the origin of which remains a mystery to modern science.

I have my theories.

Unlike the wiggers, preps, wannabes, hipsters, and metrosexuals of yore (*bonus points if you actually remember those terms*), the modern douchebag does not seem to be actively imitating any existing subculture or precedent other than his own cohort of like-minded idiots.  If anything, he takes tiny elements from all of them, with a healthy dose of Gay, and a strange alchemical fusion occurs, creating some of the most laughably pretentious and ludicrous "human beings" to walk (or, more appropriately, strut) the earth.  These guys feel the irresistible compulsion to irradiate themselves to Chernobyl levels, wear clothing that makes a Macy's Easter Sale look ultra-masculine, and flash meaningless hand-signs whenever a camera is on them.

And the scariest part?

You just might be one without knowing it.  Hard to believe, isn't it?  But, just like contracting AIDS, it can happen to anyone if they are not careful.  Except me.  I'm not a complete retard.  Since I am blessed with a discerning wit and an inexplicable humanitarian streak, I am going to help you, the masses, recognize and avoid the epithet that equates you with a vaginal cleansing product.  You're welcome.

Warning Sign 1: Improper Use of Sunglasses

This is a newer one, the latest development in super-douchey moves.  It's a real fashion statement.  The statement, unfortunately, is, "I need a curb-stomping.  Bad."  When not being used to block harmful solar rays from your precious baby-blues, your sunglasses belong in one of four places: (1) on top of your head, (2) hanging from the front of your shirt-collar, (3) in your breast-pocket, or (4) not on your person.  Otherwise, you are just asking to have them put a fifth place: up your ass.  It should go without saying that this is sartorially-reprehensible:

Don't look at me that way.

Yet I see men doing it.  Otherwise normal-looking men.  Personally, I find that terrifying, because it signals a societal acceptance of one of the stupidest trends I have ever seen.  And I lived through the 80s.  I even saw a customer at work with his sunglasses hanging from the back of his collar.  I consulted my Bible, but this is somehow not a portent of the Apocalypse.  I can only pray to Chic Jesus this does not catch on as well.  I mean, in all seriousness, what the fuck?  Who decided this was all right to do?  Oh, yeah, the Food Network's Orange County Choppers reject, Guy Fieri.

Do you really want to emulate this bag of cocks?

Warning Sign 2: Chronic Popped Collar Syndrome

It's cliche because it's true, kids.  You pop your collar, you become Insta-Douche.  From zero to douchebag in .50 seconds.  David Blaine himself will be astounded at your feat of magically-pretentious doucheification.  Truly, I cannot stress this enough, because I see it more than most any other sign, and not one goddamned swinging dick on the planet can make it look less than monumentally douchey.  Have I employed enough variations of "douchebag" in this paragraph to make my point clear?  The fact that I even have to point this out is physically sickening to me, and threatens to implode my mind.

Welcome to Douchebag City, population: your stupid ass.  Seriously, though, burn in hell.

You are not an 80s Corey, the Fonze, or Dracula.  Turn that thing down, because it's blaring, "mock the shit out of me" at full volume.  It's become an Internet meme to post photos of yourself with as many simultaneously-popped collars as possible, for the love of Prada.  What else do you need to know?  You can't pull it off, trust me.  The only time a popped collar is quasi-acceptable is on a coat or jacket, and even then, use with caution.  To be on the safe side, make sure you're wielding a pair of fully-automatic assault pistols, and possibly a katana, while doing it.  When in doubt, don't.  Your unborn children will thank you down the line.

Warning Sign 3: Excessive Bluetooth Usage

Remember 20 years ago, when Star Trek: The Next Generation was the coolest thing on TV and everyone wanted to look just like a roboticized zombie-clone member of the Borg?  No?  Maybe that's because it never was cool.  And it's not much cooler now.

"Dude, Borg-Picard is the shiznit!"

The idea behind Bluetooth technology is laudable.  It's intended to prevent car accidents by freeing up drivers' hands to operate iPods while cruising the back-lanes at 60 mph.  Or something.  The reality, of course, is that anyone who buys a headset, now that they are cheaper than Yoko Ono jokes, forgets how to use an actual cellular telephone and is assimilated into the Doucheborg Collective.  Remember Beeper Guy, circa 1991, or Righteously Self-Important Businessman With Zack Morris-Style Brick Phone?  That's you now, Bluetooth-user.  Congratulations.  The irony is, I get the distinct impression the people who spend the most time talking loudly into thin air, confusing bystanders and appearing mentally unstable, are the ones with the least to say.  Call it a hunch.

Are.  You.  Serious?  Douchebag hat-trick!

Speaking of which . . .

Warning Sign 4: Hat and/or Visor Abuse

It takes the right man to wear a hat in the first place.  Honestly, think about your male friends (assuming you have any) and you'll realize what most people already subconsciously do - some guys can pull off the hat look, others cannot.  It's a basic principle of fashion science.

Johnny Depp, for instance, wears the shit out of any hat.

But, even if you are a genuine Hat Man, that does not give you free license to wear headgear in any way you damn well see fit.  While a fedora like the one Mr. Depp is rocking above can be worn at a slight angle, because it's a fucking fedora, you should not attempt any similar cant with your favorite college sports team cap.  It's like the baseball coach's sign for "douchebag trying to steal any base" (ha, sports-sex crossover humor!).  This is doubly true for visors of any description.

Meditate on that, Buddhadouche.

In fact, let's just unilaterally declare visor usage is now and forever restricted to the links, the clay, and the felt, where it belongs.  That 3-month span of 1999 is over, after all.

Warning Sign 5: Color Uncoordination

Take a quick look inside you pants.  Is there a penis there?  With gonads?  Ok, then give Don Johnson back his cotton candy pink V-neck so that he has something to wear under his white blazer.  I know I'm going to get berated for this, but I have a website on the Internet, so I am right.  Men, as a rule, should not wear pink unless they are actively soliciting anal sex.  Lighter shades of purple are questionable enough, but pink is just plain out, in more ways than one.  Can some guys wear it?  Yes, but why risk it?  Odds are, you look better in virtually any other color.  This may actually be more a case of effect than cause - wearing a pink shirt didn't originally make you a douchebag, but so many douchebags now favor the color that they have effectively decimated what little credibility it had.

Your rebuttal was going to be . . . ?

And, at the risk of sounding more than a bit queer myself, pink generally looks terrible with fake-bake tans and spray-on bronzers anyway.  Orange and pink don't mix, Mr. GTL.  For every one man I have seen who looks respectable in pink, I have encountered roughly three-dozen who redline my Douche-O-Meter.  Call me traditional, chauvinistic, or narrow-minded, but there is a reason gender-color identifications are beaten into our psyches from birth: when you wear pink, you look like a pussy.

So, with that said, I hope you are better-prepared to identify the signs of douchebaggery and take appropriate remedial actions.  Together, we can check the spread of this vile blight on our society, showing the world that, while the USA may be the leading producer of ignorant assholes, even we know it's wrong to take a bull's load to the face and use it as styling product.  And to any douchebags who may cross my path . . .

Here's my Situation. (go ahead, click my image, dumbass.)

Parents of the Year

For those who are new to this blog and not clever enough to scroll down to previous posts, I am a server and bartender at a large chain restaurant in a mid-sized Midwestern city.  If you have read my other serving-related articles, you have probably detected just a hint of . . . disdain for certain people.  By "disdain" I mean "aneurysm-inducing loathing."  And by "certain people" I mean "the majority of humanity."  But I have never truly delved into the profound depths of my vitriolic ire here, revealing my dark, misanthropic soul.

Let's do that now.

Who needs a muscular infarction to justify being a dick?  Serving the general public is much more painful, and Vicodin can only help so much.

To illustrate just how simultaneously pissed off and disenchanted with my own species I become as a direct result of workplace provocations, we'll kick off a new segment called My Favorite Direct and/or Vicarious Customer Interactions of the Day (or, for those into the whole brevity thing, Fucktarded Moments in Restauranting)

Moment 1

I am serving in the bar alongside the actual bartender, cleaning off tables after our initial lunchtime rush, when a man and his son walk in and proceed to seat themselves.  Let me begin by making something crystalline here: if there isn't a sign that reads Please Seat Yourself in a restaurant, don't seat yourself.  Crazy, right?  This is true in 90% of casual dining restaurants, even if a hostess does not instantaneously appear, like a genie in a puff of smoke, the moment you set foot in the door.

"Your wish is my command, impatient dumbass."

Even if you are "just going to the bar, " which most people seem to believe is some magical phrase that grants them unassailable authority, you can at least wait and ask a server or the bartender.  This may mean waiting up to two excruciating minutes in the foyer, but bear with us lowly peons who are busy serving dozens of other patrons who are just as important (or, more accurately, self-important) as you.  Unless you are literally bellying up to the bar itself, just let us seat you.  There is typically some logic behind it, such as the fact that we're running the fucking restaurant and you're not.

"Am I the only one who gives a damn about the rules anymore?!?"

But I digress.

After I go through the obligatory song-and-dance at the table, talking through my smile-gritted teeth, I get the kid a root beer and the dad a draft Bud Light.  The bartender then informs me that these people are regulars, and takes over the table.  Fine by me.  As I am taking care of other business, I cannot help but overhear the man reject his beer on the grounds that, "there's still beer left in the lines from last night," and this is somehow affecting the taste of said swill.  According to this brainiac, the tap has to be run for a minute to purge the leftover in the lines running from the kegs to the bar.  Never mind that (1) our restaurant has been open for almost three hours, (2) that the lines are presumably designed to accommodate this, (3) even if they're not, I always run out half a pint worth of foam before I bring a beer to a table, and (4) that I've never heard anyone say this, ever, including bartenders, this guy has a PhD in Yellow Fizzics.  First, you're drinking Bud Light.  Try not to sound too high and mighty.  Second, what precisely do you know about how the beer-lines work?  That's what I thought, Bill Nye.

But that was only a minor irritant, a fly in my ointment compared to . . .

Moment 2

It's dinnertime.  A group of four come in, carrying an infant in one of those monstrous, fallout-proof car seats, and are promptly taken to a table toward the front of the restaurant by a server, where there is plenty of space to put the Transformer car seat in a nifty folding sling next to the table.  But, oh no, that will never do, as anyone with half a working brain would know, because sitting at a table in a restaurant, as opposed to a booth, is one step above being shoved into a gas chamber at bayonet-point in Treblinka.  Or so certain guests seem to believe.  They then assured the server they did not need the car seat or sling, and would simply "pass the baby around" for the entirety of their meal.

What's that I smell?  Oh, yeah, bullshit.

But, since the customer is always right, this charming quartet was escorted to a coveted booth right at the center of the action, just outside the doorway where most of the food leaves the kitchen.  There, they proceeded to chat it up and pass the baby around like an opium pipe.

For approximately ten minutes.

Then, one of them went back to the front of the restaurant and retrieved both car seat and sling, asking no one if it was acceptable, and set it up right next to their booth, in the middle of the most high-traffic aisle in the building.  During our dinner rush.  To give you a clearer idea of this brilliant setup, I have created a diagram:

*Not pictured: careless fuckwits.

I saw this happen, but, since it was not my table, I pretended not to care.  That is, until I saw their server attempting to set up a stand of scalding food without dumping it on the hapless infant.  At that point, I intervened for the sake of child, expediency, and common sense.  I said something along the lines of, "I'm sorry, folks, but this isn't going to work.  We have servers with hot food trying to get through here, and it's very dangerous for your baby.  And if there's a fire in the building, this is a major hazard.  It's actually against fire code."  All of this was undeniably true.  Was my tone less-than-conciliatory?  Probably, but that's because all of this was undeniably true.  In fact, it was patently, painfully obvious.  Anyone, including Wile E. Coyote, could have walked up, looked at the situation, and said, "That won't work."

These geniuses, however, looked at me with a mixture of confusion and offense, as if I had just told them an Aristocrats joke that wasn't blunt enough.  I could have been dry-humping an inflatable llama.  "You can put the car seat in the booth across from you," I suggested helpfully, "we aren't using it.  But your baby can't stay here, sorry."  You'd swear I was presenting them with Sophie's choice.  Reluctantly, they assented, and I returned to my own section of the restaurant, satisfied that I had taken a necessary step that nobody else wanted to risk for fear of offending.  Not Giving a Shit happens to be my specialty, my super-power, if you will.  With great apathy comes great responsibility.

Sure as murder will out, these guests left behind a hand-scribbled letter outlining a complaint they directly addressed to neither myself nor their server, let alone the manager.  For your reading enjoyment, I have perfectly transcribed their note here:

To the Red-Haired Little Kid:
Your arrogance and tactless pomp would better serve you, I think, as a used car salesman, or a local school board representative.  Please reconsider your career choice.
                                                  Love,
                                                    The people who did not seat themselves.
P.S. Your hair is a fire hazzard.


Seriously?  For taking the initiative to actually protect your child, from your own flagrant retardacy no less, you decide to leave me a passive-aggressive hate-note laden with middle-school-level taunts and far more condescension than I could possibly muster on the spot?  Wow, I'm crushed.  I am so wounded to know that I do not have the approval of four people whose collective IQ barely exceeds that of their combined shoe size.  That I should endure the written abuse of people who don't have the testicular fortitude to lodge a complaint in any meaningful way, presumably because they will then have to admit to their own flaming ignorance and gross parental neglect, is more than I can bear.  I'd better go hang myself.  The fact that I had to point out to you the danger of your child being potentially trampled should make me feel guilty.  Perhaps next time I'll just kick your baby over to make my point.

You totally thought I was going to go for a South Park image.  Naked baby-kicker in your face!

Oh, and hazzard is the county where the good ol' Duke boys live, ye mighty paragons of superlative intelligence and pithy wit.  I believe you meant hazard, a danger or risk.  Try using it in a sentence, such as, "I'd hazard people like you have a fair bit of incest in your lineage."  See, it's even a verb.  Biatch.

I feel like there might have been a time when my vastly superior intellect was known as "common sense," but that's probably nothing more than looking back through rose-colored glasses on a past that never was, such as Beaver Cleaver's 1950s America or the reign of King Ataraxes the Triumphant in the Golden Age of Atlantis.  Fuck you, nostalgia.

Mankind, your collective untelligence drives Carson the Flag Day Aardvark to drink himself into oblivion.  Congratulations.

This just in: my news ticker

Representative Weiner - Ha, irony can be so ironic!

Why is it that politicians always seem to think they can keep secrets about themselves?  If there is any profession that more or less dictates you broadcast your every thought and deed to the public, it's public office.  That's why it's called "public."  So what made Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Moronia) believe he could send poorly-staged, unsexy "sexts" to a variety of women with all the precision of buckshot?  "Hey, I'm an empowered, middle-aged, married, unattractive man.  Look at my penis!"  What was his logic?  What possible good did he foresee coming of this course?  Did he think it would get him some action?  As many, many politicians have proven since roughly the advent of society, there are plenty of ways to solicit BJs without resorting to the use of lewd messages and awkward attempts at softcore porn.

We can only hope this is a real transcript.  Hope, and pray.

Then, when he is inevitably busted, on charges of Complete Dipshittery, he cries like a little bitch and whines that he doesn't want to resign.  While I will grant this kind of scandal says absolutely nothing about his ability to bicker with other middle-aged white men, it's pretty much a deal-breaker careerwise.  If you aren't President, Speaker of the House, or a Kennedy, you can't withstand this kind of fire.  Time to take a closer look at that employment line you politicians like to talk about so much.

Celebrity cyber-sluttery can go one of two ways . . .

The right way.

And the wrong way.

What was his campaign slogan anyway, "Vote for Weiner"?  I have to think he was elected in the first place as a kind of joke, like Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but then people woke up the next morning and said, "Oh, shit, what did we do?"  It's the political equivalent of a one-night stand.  Except there is no Plan B.


Casey Anthony Trial - Bitch did it.

Bitch did it.  To reiterate, bitch did it.  End of story.  That should have been the prosecution's opening, closing, and only statement.  I'm all for justice and procedure, but how did this take almost three years to come to trial, let alone last more than twelve seconds?  She basically Googled "Murdering children and covering it up afterward," her car trunk smells like dead toddler, and there is abso-fucking-lutely no other reasonable way to explain her daughter's death.  I've seldom wished more fervently that the Boondock Saints would just bust into the courtroom, recite what is universally recognized as The World's Most Badass Prayer, and give this cunt a set of copper contact lenses.

Weiner wishes his crotch-shots looked this badass.

How is Casey Anthony's position even defensible?  She killed her own child not out of some strange my-child-is-a-demon-possessed-alien psychosis or a violent fit of menstrual rage, but because . . she didn't want to have a kid.  She researched, planned, and executed the murder with the cold clarity of Hannibal Lecter, just so she could restart her budding Girls Gone Wild career.  That's so horrifically creepy, it has to qualify as a mental disorder in and of itself.

Anthony Syndrome : an extreme form of dementia characterized by robot-like emotional detachment coupled with pedicidal tendencies (after the fucked-up, psychopathic bitch Casey Anthony, who killed her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, so she could go back to drinking, partying, and presumably having more indiscriminate, unprotected sex.  Seriously.)


GOP Debates - Old white men don't like Obama

Even a flashy set pilfered from Deal or No Deal could not make the Howie Mandel-less Republican debate in New Hampshire more interesting than the average colonoscopy.  The Token Black Guy and Non-Palin Woman squared off with the Real Candidates on such issues as quotable sound-bytes and rocketing Hispanic children into the sun.

Can you spot the real Republican presidential nominee in this picture?  (*Hint: He doesn't have a  yellow tie or a vagina.)

As part of their overall Alienate-Everyone-But-Our-Diminishing-Base strategy, the candidates explained how they each have a quick, easy way to "resolve the housing crisis" that they have just been sitting on, waiting to be asked, and how much fun it will be to deny medical and educational services to dark children so that more of the numerically-superior, Republican-voting white trash, hillbillies, and other NASCAR-enthusiasts can leech off the system instead.  In the media, the debate was met with a resounding "meh."  You can check out a video clip below:

No, your computer isn't buffering, they're really just that stiff.

Lady Gaga - You're still here?

I don't care what the song says, nobody was born this way.

An Official Declaration of Holiday!

Screw the sun and its overhyped solstices, Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning of summer for most Americans, or at least those who haven't chosen to live in the frigid, Palin-producing wastes of mythical Alaska or the fabled southern land of perpetual sunshine and gerontocracy, Florida (that's the word of the day, kids!).  But whenever Memorial Day approaches, I am also reminded of a very poignant fact: summertime has a distinct shortage of A-list holidays.  Memorial Day is kind of the last big one until Independence Day, and, while it is laudable and important, it is not exactly the happiest of holidays.  Because it's actually grounded in something indisputable and serious - many people have lived and died for our country - it hasn't been wrapped up in a furor of superfluous buildup, commercialized folklore, and cheesy theme songs.  The most we get are inexplicable furniture and vehicle sales.  And I'm betting Macy's has some deals, but, since I possess a penis, I cannot vouch for that.  Sure, we've got Fathers' Day, which is nice and all, but it's one of those holidays that, due to its specificity, cannot rank with Santa Claus' Birthday, Holy Rabbit Day, Indian Relocation Day, and Hot-Chicks-Dress-Up-As-Slutty-Versions-of-Every-Conceivable-Profession/Stereotype/Fairy-Tale-Heroine Day.  Everyone can get into those celebrations.

Yes, I am using pretty much any excuse to include a picture of a hot chick in every post now.  Who's complaining?

By their very masculine nature, men are required to gruffly brush off Fathers' Day, otherwise known as Just Leave Me Alone Day.  During the summer months, all we get is Grill and Blow Shit Up Day until Labor Day rolls around.  And that's pretty much all of summer anyway, isn't it?

What we need during the hottest season of the year is a hot celebration to rival the titans of the so-called "Holiday Season."  We could try to invent a new one, but many people have tried that over the years, leading to such classics as, I kid you not, Sewing Machine Day, Smile Power Day, Take Your Dog to Work Day, and Meteor Day.  When was the last time you celebrated Meteor Day?

Bet you didn't even know this was something to celebrate.

No, better we take an existing, long-established holiday that has been historically underplayed and inject it with some much-needed adrenaline to the heart, Pulp Fiction-style.  My proposal?  Flag Day.  Nobody remembers Flag Day.  Like a middle child or any adopted one, it's the overlooked member of the Patriotic Holiday Family.  Kind of weird when you consider a lot of Americans periodically try to pass goddamn constitutional amendments concerning treatment of the flag.  If you're really interested, and by "interested" I mean "bored as fuck," you can read all about the history of Flag Day in the U.S. here, but trimming your fingernails with needle-nosed pliers while watching Jersey Shore would be an equally effective form of sadomasochism.  In a nutshell, Flag Day celebrates just that: the creation of Old Glory, the Star-Spangled Banner, the Red-White-and-Blue, the Stars and Stripes, the Big Rectangle With Alternating Red and White Stripes and a Blue Canton Containing Fifty Five-Pointed Stars.  By extension, every June 14th is an opportunity to reflect on the ideals and meanings symbolized by our national standard.  You know, pretty much like all the other patriotic holidays.  So why is it forgotten?  Maybe there's just too much residual pot-smoke in the air from all the kids getting out of school for the summer, otherwise known as "summer magic."

But all that ends here, my fellow Americans.  Like King Arthur rising from the dead to defend England in her darkest hour or the HMS Titanic rising from the abysmal depths to carry on her bloody piratical legacy, Flag Day shall rise to take its rightful place as one of the chief holidays.  The only way to ensure this happens is to sear the notion of Flag Day in the hearts and minds of the younger generation, filling their heads with confusing-yet-patriotic imagery and avaricious anticipation.  Hence, I reveal to you the true history and tradition of Flag Day, as invented by me . . .

It's even sweeter than this, if you can wrap your mind around that concept.

After Betsy Ross, George Washington, and a then-unknown Vin Diesel presented the newly-sewn flag to the Continental Congress, a hasty Masonic ritual was performed on the banks of the Potomac River to invoke the Great Architect and receive His blessing.  It was successful, naturally, granting any nation that held the Stars and Stripes +1000 Hit-Points, a 75% Defensive Magic boost, the Kraken's Fury Power-Up, and Leader of the Free World status (with all the associated self-righteous dictates and pretensions entailed).  This was, of course, a vast improvement over such antiquated relics as the Ark of the Covenant, Excalibur, the Spear of Destiny, or the One Ring.  It ensured America's ascendancy to unrivaled awesomeness, while simultaneously generating a network of powerful ley-lines that would serve as the blueprint for Washington, D.C.

And an aardvark was there.

Yes, an aardvark.  No one knows precisely why.  That's just one of the mysteries of Flag Day.  Do not question it.  Whether by some reflected holy light or possibly eating the ant that happened to be crawling across the flag at its moment of sanctification, that lowly aardvark became a special creature, indelibly associated with Flag Day.  He still plays a vital role in the modern observation of this historic anniversary.

Why an aardvark?  Why not?  Did Jesus have a pet rabbit?  It doesn't have to make any sense, as long as it's marketable, and what could be more marketable than this?

Yes, this is a real animal.

Of course, we can't have kids envisioning this creature, God's only attempt to top Himself after the creation of the platypus.  But just hand this bat-shit crazy critter over to the advertising spin-doctors and you get . . .

Awww.

Presto, a new holiday mascot is born!  Meet Carson the Flag Day Aardvark, paragon of American virtues.  Each June 14th, he steals into homes across this great land via basement windows and coal chutes to shit chocolate-and-nougat bars throughout the house, transforming clumps of lint into novelty miniatures with the power of his steely gaze.  And he flies.  We celebrate his coming by dressing up as our favorite Founding Fathers - exempting, for obvious trademark reasons, John Jay - and exchanging white elephant gifts, reciting jingoistic poetry around the flagpole (that's the other word of the day, morons!).  What starry-eyed, corn-syrup-fattened child wouldn't look forward to that?

That's the kind of holiday June needs.  It's the kind of holiday our flag deserves.