a girl at Mighty Taco thinks I am weird: a 5-year FLASHBACK blog!

(Originally posted May 30, 2008)

So I went to Mighty Taco to get some awesome lunch and there was this new girl at the counter waiting to take my order.  I asked for a steak fajita and she asked if I wanted sour cream on it.  I said "No, that's good," by which I meant "No, I don't want anything else."

I waited for my food and then sat down and took a bite and what did I find?  You guessed it, sour cream.  I checked my receipt and sure enough I had been charged 25 cents for sour cream.  I do not really hate sour cream or anything, I just usually don't think it's necessary on Mexican food.  Also I am not the sort of person that complains about mistakes like that.  If you are ordering fast food, you should know you're taking a gamble.  The workers there are not too smart and frequently ugly.  I personally don't complain in nice restaurants either because I want to be spoken of highly when the waitstaff are badmouthing everybody else in the kitchen.  I actually tip better if the waitress makes a mistake because I don't want her to feel bad.  She could spill a drink on my head and I would still draw a smiley face on the bill.

But anyway I still wanted to know how this taco cashier heard a "no" as a "yes."  Did she just hit a wrong button?  They probably have one for "sour cream" but not one for "no sour cream," don't you think?

Ultimately I decided that she must have misheard me.  I thought about exactly what I had said.  "No, that's good."  I said "No, that's good" and she hit the sour cream button, why would she do that?  The only explanation I could come up with was that when I said "no," she heard it as "oh," so in her mind the conversation went like...

Her: "Would you like sour cream?"

Me: "Oh, that's good."

...and she took that as a yes.  So now I am convinced that there is a girl working at Mighty Taco that thinks I say "Oh, that's good!" when someone offers me a food topping that I think is tasty.

I guess it would be kind of funny to do that all the time.

"Would you like some ketchup for your fries?"

"Oh that is delicious!"

Or at Olive Garden when they offer to grate the cheese onto your food I could say "Cheese is magnificent."

Most foods taste better when topped with something, there should be no shame in getting excited.


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Hung jury!

a main problem with our courts is that they do not work.  Some people have literally gotten away with MURDER, while others have been helpless to defend themselves against bullshit parking tickets and skateboarding fines.  Too many people are doing too many bad things, and it's impossible to keep track of all of them.

So in bad criminal cases, the last thing we ever need is a hung jury.  If you didn't know, a hung jury is when all TWELVE jurors cannot reach a UNANIMOUS verdict.  There's no majority rule, everybody on the jury has to agree.  As if 12 people can ever be expected to agree unanimously on anything.  We couldn't even settle that Chunky Soup "fork or spoon" debate.

Try asking any 12 people the same question and see if you get the same answer.  You could go to a meeting of the World Jellybean Council and ask "Hey, are jellybeans GOOD?" and odds are that at least one guy would say "I actually hate jellybeans, I just joined this to meet girls."

The latest case of a hung jury is that of the psychopathic MySpace hootch who cut her boyfriend's head off and then shot him, and now wants to sell t-shirts from prison.  Most of the jury thought she should be given the death penalty.  But not all of them!  So now THAT jury has been dismissed and they have to find another one.  12 new people who have not been predisposed to the case.  12 individual Bugs Bunnys popping out of a hole in the ground all like "Pismo Beach and all the clams I can eat!  Say, what's this about a sex murder, Doc?"

It's the WAY they select the jury that slows everything down.  Nobody is allowed to have extreme views about capital punishment, one way or the other.  Nobody is allowed to be extra-religious.  Nobody is allowed to eat jellybeans in the courtroom.  They pick the 12 most boring, unopinionated people they can find, and then wait to see which side of the fence they happen to fall on.  Instead, I think it should be more like Price Is Right.  Don't INTERVIEW the jury prospects, just call them down at random and START.  Don't require that the votes be EXACTLY unanimous, just close enough without going over.  Price Is Right moves quickly, unlike the courts.  Everybody runs down the stairs.

Click HERE.

How to steal from Best Buy

You CAN'T.  Don't even try, man.  You'll just make a fool of yourself.  That guy near the exit wearing the Best Buy polo shirt will yell at you.

Stealing is very wrong.  But sometimes I can KIND of understand why people do it.  Robbing a bank, for example.  You rob a bank to get MONEY.  People want money because they can pay for things with it.  But instead of money, sometimes people steal other stuff.  Potato chips and wallets.  Have you ever really needed potato chips and wallets so desperately that you would COMMIT a CRIME?

What can you steal from Best Buy?  Anything good is locked up.  Cell phones and Madden are always locked up in that case.  Other, less-important things are readily available for theft.  Like "Everybody Loves Raymond Season 2."  Would somebody ever STEAL that?  Probably not.  I mean it was a good show and everything, but I can't imagine somebody viewing it at home all comfortable right after STEALING it.  "Ha ha, Robert."

Here are some people that did bad stuff:

My advice to you is to NOT DO BAD THINGS.  Or else you might wind up like THEM, except possibly not rich.


Click HERE.

Earthquakes: a 5-year FLASHBACK blog!

(Originally posted May 15, 2008)

If there's one thing everyone is terrified about these days it is earthquakes.  No one is quite sure where earthquakes come from.  Some believe they are caused by seismic waves underneath the Earth's surface.  Others think they are caused by all the dinosaur bones that are buried under there.

The most recent earthquake in history was in China.  China has a lot of earthquakes because it is so big (do the math).  Chinese people are known for being very smart, but even they have no answers for the earthquake crisis.  Even if they did it would be hard for them to explain it because not too many people speak Chinese.


Some earthquake tips:

- Don't try to call the police during an earthquake.  They most likely already know about it, and by the time you get them on the line it will probably be over anyway.

- Some pets are affected by earthquakes too.  If you have dogs or cats they may need to be consoled.  Frogs and turtles will be fine as earthquakes do not bother them.

- Be sure to loot through your own rubble before other people do.  You wouldn't want someone else recovering your diary, they might read it.

- Think positive!  Even if you suffer a lot of property damage, you still have your health and loved ones (*unless your legs or family got crushed).

- If your earthquake survival kit has canned goods in it, don't forget the can opener!


When an earthquake happens, all the news channels rush to the scene to interview the victims, which is stupid because they never find anybody with anything interesting to say.  It's always, "Well we were in the living room, and we heard a rumble, then some plates rattled in the kitchen, and then it just stopped."  Wow how captivating, you should turn that into a novel.  Earthquakes are usually felt by thousands of people, there must be some better stories.  Like a fat guy that fell out of a tree moments before the earthquake happened and thought he caused it, or someone that was about to lose at bowling but then didn't.


Click HERE.
 

Mother's Day in the Animal Kingdom

Animals don't usually get too much attention on holidays unless you want to eat them.  I think it's fair to say that they do not "enjoy" holidays at all.  Turkeys do not like Thanksgiving, that is FACT.  Dogs do not like being dressed up as reindeer or makeshift Easter Bunnies.  Cats hate everything.

So while all of the great human moms in the world get lavished with attention on this one special day of the year, nobody ever thinks about animal mommies.  They gave birth, too.  Sometimes to multiple offspring at once, and they don't even stoop to fertility drugs like Octo-mom.  In the case of mammals, the babies almost always want to "eat" right away, which of course means suckling milk.  The mother JUST gave birth, and is already being harassed to provide breakfast.  That's why we flip everything around on Mother's Day and take our moms to Denny's.  Just try getting animals to conform to that system, though.  They won't.

If you are not a mammal, but want to be a mother anyway, you almost always have to lay eggs.

So again, that's why we go to Denny's.  Let someone else provide the food for once.

Okay enough being gross, let's talk about KANGAROOS.

Kangaroo moms are my favorite animal moms because of the pouch thing.  What a great system.  Plus it looks neat in cartoons.  Mothers cannot carry their children in their arms 24/7, especially if you have arms like a kangaroo has.  So nature, with help from GOD, had to make adaptations.  Mother alligators carry their newborn babies in their MOUTHS.  Mother turtles and snails will often sacrifice their owns shells to provide temporary lodging for their adult children after they finish college.


Are any animal mothers bad parents?  It depends what you mean.  Does eating your own young count?  Hamsters do that sometimes.  Ever have a bad night's sleep after eating something you probably shouldn't have?  Imagine how Mrs. Hamster must feel.  Plus, wow, that seems like a lot of CALORIES.  Don't hamsters usually only eat hamster food?  Hamster FOOD as opposed to HAMSTER food...or maybe that's backwards.  At any rate, I imagine they just "wheel off" the extra pounds.

Certain female spiders and scorpions will immediately devour their MATE upon becoming impregnated.  (Oh those pregnancy cravings!)  How do they know so soon, though?  What if the male scorpion was shooting blanks?  "Whoops-a-daisy!  Onto the next one."  Is the absence of a father figure good or bad for the babies?  Animal dads are almost always deadbeats.  They don't understand things like weekends or Christmas.

The word "MOM" would look so cool if a baby spider could spin it as a special Mother's Day web, or if a baby scorpion could pee it out in the form of scorpion poison.

Click HERE.

Tipping

Is there any facet of society more complex than tipping?  You have to know WHOM to tip, WHEN to tip, how MUCH to tip.  and everyone has a different opinion.  It's impossible to not offend somebody sooner or later.

In restaurants, it's usually a matter of percentage.  What does a 15% tip mean to YOU?  Is it the standard, or the minimum?  I personally don't believe in trying to teach the server a "lesson."  If they make a mistake, I don't adjust the tip accordingly.  "I was gonna tip 20% but since I had to ask TWICE for ketchup it's down to 18% now.  That'll show 'em."

Some people actually do that, though.  They take "points off."  They use CALCULATORS.  What's to be gained?  "NEXT time I get Bethany as my server she will be DAMN SURE to get me that ketchup the FIRST time.  If not, I'm prepared to go down as far as SIXTEEN percent!"

Like you're ever going to see Bethany again, first of all.  and also she isn't going to get the message, she's just going to be left thinking that you are a cheapskate asshole.  Which, honestly, if you are taking "points off" for little slip-ups like that, you pretty much are.

and now I know what you will say.

"It's not the money, it's the P R I N C I P L E."

Oh my God, shut-up.  If you actually brought a calculator to a restaurant, it's the money, you cheapo.


But then there is also this problem where a server gets offended if you tip TOO MUCH.  For example, let's say that the bill is $42.  a decent 20% tip would be $8.40.  So then what do you do?  Leave $50 and FORTY CENTS?  The server would probably get all mad about the forty cents.  "WTF is this?  SPARE CHANGE?"  You could round it DOWN to an even $50 instead, but that brings you just UNDER 20%, making you a cheapskate.  But what else can you do?  Round UP to an even $51?  That extra single is almost as bad as leaving coins.  So how much are you supposed to leave?  $52?  $53?  MIGHT AS WELL ROUND UP TO $55, IT'S ONLY AN EXTRA COUPLE OF BUCKS, RIGHT?  Except then you will have tipped more than THIRTY PERCENT, which could potentially enrage the server in a DIFFERENT way.  "I don't need your charity, I thought we were FRIENDS."


an even bigger problem is when you can't tell if someone is open to accepting a tip at all.  Like, don't try tipping a janitor after he finishes mopping up a hallway real good.  Chances are he'll be offended.  "You think I need MONEY?  Just because I'm a JANITOR?  Well I DON'T.  I mean I do, but I only need the REGULAR amount, you JERK."

All parking valets get tips.  So do bartenders.  But there are so many other people that provide "services."  Who gets a tip and who doesn't?

What about people that bring things to your home?  If someone delivers a pizza, you always give them a tip.  If they deliver mail, almost never.  But then there's also a lot of in-between things.  Are you supposed to tip if you order a new DESK?  and someone moves it into the house for you?  If so, why?  Because it's heavy?  What if it's something that isn't heavy, like balloons?  Some people tip after haircuts, but nobody tips their dentist.  Is your hair more important than your TEETH?  They are both integral parts of the head.

Also, how come tips are okay but bribes are not?  Is it just the timing?  Imagine "tipping" a police officer AFTER he already agreed to let you out of a traffic ticket.  "Thank you officer, and here's a little something for your trouble."  Can you tip a judge moments AFTER being found guilty?  "Thanks for keeps things fair and speedy.  Buy yourself something nice."

Can you tip Bill Clinton?  He's not President anymore.

"Thank you for eight years of service, I appreciated it.  Here is even MORE money."

"Very good, sir."

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