Heart attacks!

Other than the Big C, heart attacks are probably my main health concern.  I have been fortunate enough in life to never have to deal with day-to-day health problems like dandruff and syphilis, so I only focus on the real sudden shit.  They say a heart attack could occur at any time.  I imagine it's like if you actually win at Bingo, except complete opposite.

See I keep seeing all these Bayer Aspirin commercials (or as immature schoolyard children call them, "Gayer" Aspirin commercials) in which it's suggested that the healthiest person in the world could just have a heart attack out of nowhere.  "I'm a marathon runner and I never thought *I* would have a heart attack but I did.  True story."  "I'm 30 years old and I had a massive heart attack in my driveway on Christmas morning."

It's never a big fat guy saying "I had just eaten the glazed donut burger at the ballgame with double mayo and all of a sudden I had a heart attack.  I was SHOCKED.  Thank God for Bayer."


There's always a sign advising people that are prone (yes PRONE) to heart attacks to not go on the roller coaster.  I wonder if some of those people do anyway.  "I'll chance it."  Imagine if you are afraid of roller coasters in the first place but then get stuck sitting next to a heart attack guy who drops dead at the first descent.  That's like EXPONENTIAL terror.

a lot of strange things can potentially happen while on a roller coaster.  You're all trapped in and helpless.  Even Fabio proved to be no exception.  He got hit in the face by a goose.  (For real.)

Sometimes people get stuck at the top of a roller coaster for a LONG TIME.  Like if there's a safety concern.  What if they have to go to the bathroom?  The solution might SEEM obvious, but keep in mind that some of them are women and they are usually the ones that have to pee.

Can you still go on the water rides if you are prone to heart attacks?  I hope so, those are fun.  If I ever have one I'm gonna go down the flume as soon as I get out of the hospital.  I like it when ladies lift their shirts up when they are aware that their picture is about to be automatically taken.

(I couldn't find a good photo of such an instance, but here is what Fabio looked like after the goose hit him in the face.)

Also if you ever DO suffer a heart attack in your driveway on Christmas morning, I hope it's while attempting to surprise your wife with a luxury car with a big bow on it.


Click HERE.

Smoking: a 5-year FLASHBACK blog!

(Originally posted March 25, 2008)

Smoking is not too popular these days, no not too popular at all.  I think it is somewhere between Iraq and that new Will Ferrell movie where he is a basketball player with an afro.  You are not allowed to smoke anywhere, and everybody knows that, but for some reason they still put up signs.  a "NO SMOKING!" sign at the MALL, who is that for?  Some guy that didn’t know walks in lighting one up and sees that sign all "oops" and puts it out?  I bet that never happens.

Smoking is bad for:

- The heart

- The lungs

- The skin

- The BRAIN

- Your jacket (it will smell like cigarettes)

- Your car (same)

- Your WALLET (it will get empty)


It’s not my job to tell people what to do but I feel that if you are a smoker you should probably quit.  Well unless you are certain people, that is.

1) Detectives

You kind of need to smoke cigarettes if you are a detective or else you just will not look cool.  You got to have something to smooth out the interrogation process.  Some detectives have tried questioning a suspect with just a toothpick in their mouth or while sipping on a Big Gulp but it is not as effective.

2) Musicians

"Cigarette" is an often-used word in good song lyrics.  I don’t want to hear someone singing about cigarettes that doesn’t personally smoke them, it’s like plagiarism.  Also musicians frequently need to "take five," during which cigarette smoking is basically mandatory.  You can’t spend your five minutes just drinking water or eating a bowl of cereal, the other musicians would think you were a real square.

3) Prisoners

Convicts and such don’t get to have too much fun plus their lives are kind of fucked anyway so I say go ahead and smoke.  Although I did hear that cigarettes can be used as money when you are in jail, so if you are in there be sure not to smoke too much!  You might need to buy something later on.

4) Monkeys

I know it’s bad for them too but a monkey smoking a cigarette is cute.  and if they start to smoke too many, you can just not let them have any more.  It’s not like they can go to the store and buy some.


*dId YoU kNoW*  The most popular method of giving up smoking is quitting COLD TURKEY?

*dId YoU aLsO kNoW*  The phrase "cold turkey" refers to a meal that is served with little or insufficient preparation?  So when you quit smoking all abruptly, it’s called quitting cold turkey.

*aNd*  a cold turkey sandwich is much better on toast than regular bread.  Fact.


Click HERE.

What's up with ladies sharing magazines?

Dang but if there's one thing women are kookoo for it's reading magazines.  Magazines with pictures of different ladies on the cover.  They love all the hair and sex tips.

In fact they like magazines SO much that they can never bring themselves to throw one out.  Yet they don't want to "hoard" them either.  They have to find a way to "make good use" of the magazine after they're done reading it.

Sometimes they will just tear out the PAGES they like and "save" them.  Like in a document-sized storage bin or accordion folder.  Another thing they do is clip out select words and graphics that they use to piece together some kind of inspirational girl-power collage.

But since they would have neither the time nor wall space to do that with EVERY magazine, they are usually left with just one option.  Give them to another lady!

They don't exactly "trade" though, you see.  It's not like what boys used to do with baseball cards.


Lady #1: I'll trade you...Oprah June 2011 for your Shape Magazine April 2012.

Lady #2: Pffft, as if.  Any SERIOUS offers?


No, it isn't like that at all.  Instead it's this weird used magazine ambush where they spring a plastic bag full of magazines on any unsuspecting female that enters their home.  "Here!  Some magazines you gotta read."  Refusal is not an option.  It goes against the code.

As a result, some magazines will make their way around for YEARS.  I recently witnessed a relative bestow a 2001 edition of Martha Stewart Living upon somebody's new fiancee.  "Welcome to the family.  HERE."  Thing has probably seen every continent.  Total whore mag.  Would you even want to TOUCH it?

Now I gotta ask, what do the magazine publishers think of this behavior?  Aren't they losing money?  Why haven't they gone crying to the government like the music industry did?  "SHARING IS WRONG!  Blah, blah."  I guess probably because they are ultimately slaves to the advertisers, and the advertisers love it.  They only have to pay for an ad once, and dozens of women see it.

If Betty Crocker weren't dead and burning in hell right now, she'd be rubbing her hands with glee.

Click HERE.

Easter Bunny = too fake: a 5-year FLASHBACK blog!

(Originally posted March 20, 2008)

Man oh man do I got a lot of problems with this guy.  First of all, why is the Easter Bunny so frequently portrayed as being a strange humanoid?  Why not just a regular rabbit?  It would be a lot more believable for something rodent-sized to sneak into your house, that actually HAPPENS sometimes!  Imagine if the Easter Bunny was real, this big clumsy oaf of a thing prowling around in your home in the middle of the night.  Would little kids even WANT that?  Creep-o-rama.

I don’t like it when the Easter Bunny is at the mall getting his picture taken with children.  Even a two-year-old can tell it’s just a guy in a costume.  He doesn’t look real like Santa Claus does.

and on that note, isn’t the Easter Bunny just a complete rip-off in the first place?  Someone decided it wasn’t enough for kids to get one magical visitor a year.  They had to make up this unnecessarily complicated giant-rabbit-hiding-eggs gimmick.  It’s a big bunch of CRAP if you ask me.


I looked it up and here is the scoop on where the Easter Dummy came from...

Okay you know how rabbits are always gettin it on and having tons of babies?  That is symbolic of springtime when the Earth is fertile.  The rabbits, or "hares," would build these nests to have the babies in and then birds would come and lay eggs there.  I guess the birds figured there was no need to build a new nest from scratch.  I personally would not want to hang out in a hole where a bunch of rabbits just got born but I guess birds don’t care about that.  They would lay their eggs, and since people weren’t too smart in old tymes they thought the rabbit did it.  The eggs are colored to represent the BLOOD of CHRIST.  They used to just color them red but over time they started adding more colors for variety’s sake, kind of like Froot Loops.  Catholic people were not allowed to eat eggs during Lent, so they would save them until Easter and then tell their children to build a nest in a hat and if they were good boys and girls the rabbit would come and lay colored eggs for them.  Well whoop-de-doo.

I guess it’s important to remember that kids in those times had a different standard of fun.  They spent most of their time working in fields and mines until they got polio and died.  The magic colored eggs gave them something to look forward to, and that is why we have the Easter Bunny.


Anyway I think any sensible person would recognize that the whole thing has been blown out of proportion at this point and therefore the Easter Bunny should be officially eliminated.  Maybe have the President go on TV and tactfully inform children that the Easter Bunny has died.  He could say "but he’ll always be with us in our hearts" or something like that.


Click HERE.

Ireland

With its lush rolling hills and heavy drinking atmosphere, how could any non-Hitlerish person dislike Ireland?

It is a beautiful land filled with shamrocks and leprechauns and Lucky Charms and girls.

HOWEVA (tm Stephen A. Smith), as with all good things, there has to be a catch.  There are parts of Ireland that do not agree on things.  Therefore there is "Northern Ireland" and "Regular Ireland."  There is no "Southern Ireland," because they are not Korea, I guess.

NORTHERN Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom.  The rest is not.  The United Kingdom is a difficult thing to explain.  Mister Magoo himself would be flabbergasted by it.  First of all, you have England, which is like the fuddy-duddy big brother looking after a bunch of sibling brats.  Scotland is the fun-loving and care-free younger brother.  It's like that TV show "Wings" where one brother was older and responsible, and the other was just a dick to everybody.

There is also "Wales."  Wales is the kid brother with A.D.D. that you hide in the basement, but you still genuinely love him.

Anyhoo, Northern Ireland is supposedly included too.  To continue the metaphor, having Northern Ireland in your KINGDOM is like having a sister with nice boobs.  You WANT people to like her, but only if they have good intentions.

Sometimes, between the two different Irelands, there is violence.  It is usually politically-motivated, not alcohol motivated.  Spectacular irony.

Enjoy St. Patrick's Day, everyone.  Raise a pint or two for decent "fellas", like me and that new Pope.

Click HERE.

What's with this big q-tip backlash: a 5-year FLASHBACK blog!

(Originally posted March 13, 2008)

Q-tips used to be stone cold the number-one way to clean your ears but now they say not to do that anymore.  I guess people were sticking the q-tips in too far and it was causing tons of problems like the tip falling off in the ear or the ear drum getting straight-up poked.

I am gonna go on the record and say that I will still use q-tips for ear-cleaning.  I will just be tons careful.  If something bad happens it will be my own fault and I will not sue the company.

Fun fact: At least four people have been KILLED from sticking q-tips in the ear!  (Did they hit the brain?)

Even though they say you can’t clean your ears the q-tip company says you should still buy their product and use it for other things.  They claim q-tips have many uses including:

- Cleaning a record player

- Umbilical cord care

- Miscellaneous dabbing

I gotta say those are not things I do too much.  Unless other people are way different I figure q-tip sales must be way down in the toilet.  You get about a million in a box and it costs like 99 cents, how can they be making money?  There aren’t too many record players around these days.  Also the company kind of shot itself in the foot because they designed the q-tip so that it could be used twice.  That cuts their profits in half right there.

Maybe the answer is CRAFTS.  a q-tip skeleton for Halloween would take up like half a box if you made it all intricate.  a q-tip chandelier would be delightfully wasteful as well.


Click HERE.

Stupid Monopoly cat

In case you somehow didn't hear, the corporate STOOGES at Hasbro have once again proven to have no integrity and have tainted their most popular game.  The beloved iron, an "original six" game token, is slated to be replaced by...a cat.

This decision was made based on the results of an INTERNET POLL.  a PUBLIC internet poll, the kind where there's nothing stopping someone from voting multiple times to help skew (yes SKEW) the results.  Now you may be asking, "What kind of person would bother to take the time to DO such a thing?"  Gee, I dunno.  Maybe someone with a lot of time on their hands.  Maybe someone who is at their computer a lot.  Maybe a GOD DAMN SHUT-IN THAT LIVES WITH A BUNCH OF CATS.

Monopoly tokens are sacred to lovers of the game.  People don't pick the thimble because they like thimbles.  It's because they like THE thimble.  Nobody likes top hats, but people like THE top hat.  Those voting for the cat were surely not Monopoly fans.  They were cat people.

Wretched, bathrobe-wearing cat people.  The kind who have never thrown a frisbee to a happy dog or been on a waterslide.  They live and work amongst us, trying to blend in, but are easy to spot.  Take note of people's keychains.  Keep an eye out for Garfield comic strips taped up in the cubicle.

Hasbro did not take this vote seriously at all.  If they had, they would have summoned a council of former Monopoly World Champions and held an emergency summit to determine the fate of the iron and the possibility of adding a new token to the game.  If the decision was then made to do so, it should have been a lot like this thing that's going on with the Pope.  You don't let just ANYBODY vote on a new Pope.  It's too IMPORTANT.  There would be nothing wrong with the Vatican website setting up an online "Pope Poll" to gather the public's OPINION, but you would never let them just wave somebody in like happens in high school elections.  It can't be a popularity contest.  It's the Pope.

So what can hardcore Monopoly enthusiasts do at this point?  Well first of all, hold on to your irons!  Don't lose that thing, keep it in a safe place.  Bring it to your next Monopoly night to SPITE anyone that opts to be the cat.  It will add to the game's intensity.  The cat and iron will always be enemy tokens now.

When you win you can say "Cats have nine lives, but the IRON will live FOREVER" and throw a few Monopoly dollars in the person's face.

Click HERE.

Some thoughts on people in the community: a 5-year FLASHBACK blog!

(Originally posted March 7, 2008)

1. Waiters

I gotta say it's a pretty good system we got going with waiters, where it's basically understood that if you're decent to them they won't mess with your food and vice-versa.  I know that some unfortunate people still have not been clued in to this agreement, but that is their own fault at this point.  Pick up a newspaper once in a while!  All you have to do is smile and not complain and your dining experience will almost always be spittle-free.  There is also the bonus privilege of sharing a laugh at the expense of the uninformed.  Many times I have exchanged a knowing wink with a server on his or her way to a grumblesome table with a platter of rigatoni that has surely been peppered with fine scraps of toenail clippings or eyeball crusties in hand.


2. Midgets

I know it ain't too fair to pick on midgets since they are kind of disadvantaged in life but come on, why don't they like being called midgets?  That is totally the best name for them.  It's catchy, descriptive, concise, a real champion term.  Instead we are supposed to call them "little people."  I will cold guarantee that more than half of midgets hate being called that.  It makes them sound like toys, like those old Fisher Price people that had no arms.


3. The Mailman

Do you think mailmen are allowed to make jokes about the killing sprees?  Like when no outsiders are in earshot?  I wonder if a mailman ever brought in a target that got all shot-up at the gun range and put it on his supervisor's door as a joke.  "Just practicing, heh heh."  Also, do you think they enjoy the stereotype of having a lot of sex with people's wives during the day while the husbands are at work?  They probably say that they don't but I bet there are a lot of secret high-fives around the post office.  I imagine a lot of good-natured comradery.  "Hey Mel, did you sex up a lot of women while on your route today?"  "Oh well you know I got to pick up the slack for those of our co-workers who have been shot."  That sort of thing.


Click HERE.

Cures for the hiccups

The most common one is scaring the person.  If you see somebody suffering from the hiccups you are supposed to blow air into a paper bag and pop it right behind their head.  I guess sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  There isn't much available data.  There are other acceptable methods of attempting to scare the person, such as yelling "BOO!" or tossing a lit firecracker behind them at a safe distance.  There are also unacceptable methods, such as jumping out of a closet with a scary clown mask and knife and screeching "STOP HICCUPPINGGG!!!!!"  That could cause a heart attack and/or spontaneous peeing of the pants, both of which are worse than the hiccups.

Another popular remedy is breathing into a paper bag.  (What is it with hiccups and paper bags?  Such naturally organic enemies.)  Breathing in and out of the bag is supposed to cure the hiccups, but it doesn't always work.  I came up with this great technique where you linger behind the person breathing into the bag, then wait for them to fully exhale, then rush up and clap your hands over the bag real quick so that it pops and scares the hell out of them.  I call it the "Double Dutch."  I've only pulled it off once in life, but it worked.  That girl sure was mad, though.  I wonder who she was?

Other alleged "cures" include eating sugar, holding your breath, standing upside-down, leeches, and prayer.  None of these are confirmed to work.  See, it's tough to do research on hiccup cures because there's really no way to INDUCE hiccupping.  There is no National Hiccupping Institute, which surprised me, considering who's currently in office.

The only way to find a sure-fire cure seems to be through field research.  I have some ideas that I think might work, but since there are so rarely hiccupping people near me (I don't go out much), I need some volunteers to test them out.

The first idea is to have the victim stare into the sun.  Everyone knows you are not supposed to stare into the sun, but my theory is that if you do it just for a LITTLE while the human brain will instinctively shift its focus from esophagural irritation to the much more important protection of the retina.  Again, it's just theory, so be careful if you try it.  If the patient is staring into the sun for a long time and still hiccupping/screaming, please abort the experiment and immediately cover the hiccupper's head with a shroud of some kind, or if you don't have one, a paper bag.  (THAT thing again.)

Another idea is to suggest to the patient that the hiccups can be cured by swallowing a spoonful of dog or cat food.  (The mushy kind.)  The person will not want to do this, so it will take a lot of convincing.  Tell them it's a family secret you inherited from your "Grandpappy" or somebody like that.  They still won't do it, but guess what?  After talking about it for awhile, the hiccups will have gone away all by themselves.  Again, that's my THEORY, at least.  Plus, it wasn't pet food, it was a cold spoonful of Campbell's Chunky Chili all along.  Then you both have a good laugh, and the hiccups are all but forgotten.  Plus you get to eat the chili.

I also think that maybe the hiccups could be cured if you were to inhale the air from a helium balloon.  That thing that people do intentionally so they can talk all funny with the really high voice immediately afterwards.  Might work, might not.  That's what makes it an experiment.  and if it somehow DOESN'T work, think about how funny those hiccups are going to sound right after inhaling all that helium.  Be sure to have a camera rolling because you may have just captured America's Funniest Home Video!

If you win I expect a portion of the proceeds to go to my favorite charity.

Or else.

Click HERE.