That’s A New One

The weirdest thing happened to me the other night at the mall when I went out with my friend so we could buy Christmas presents for each other. I know it’s January, but we don’t live in the same town, and anyway, that really doesn’t have much to do with the story.

So we’re walking through the mall at a pretty good speed when all of a sudden, some guy walking the other way comes right up next to me and burps in my ear. He sort of leaned in a bit when he did it too so I know it was directed at me and not just a general burp that happened to get away from him as he walked past us. After taking a second to think about it, I did the first thing I could think of, that being to turn around and say something like “thanks man, that was a good one.”

The whole incident took about 5 seconds and it was all done without anybody stopping or even slowing their pace, but for a 5 second moment in time, it’s sure stuck with me. I guess that’s because I’ve never had that happen to me, seen it happen to somebody else, or even heard somebody tell a similar story other than Matt’s old one about getting spanked by some guy at a hockey game. Maybe I never thought I’d be able to compete with that one, I guess I was wrong.

There’s Gotta Be A Better Way

Reno, Nev. – Police received a call for help from a 50-year-old Reno man who said he couldn’t stop bleeding from a self-castration operation. Police and paramedics responded to the call and took the man to the Washoe Medical Center. According to hospital officials, the man had administered a successful castration on himself thanks to directions he found on the Internet. The man said that he performed the castration in order to lower his libido. Lt. Ron Donnelly told the Reno Gazette-Journal that “The man obviously needs some sort of counseling.”

Ya think?

Dinner Rolls Are Too Big

So this guy goes to see his Doctor to complain about his erectile difficulty. He tells the Doctor that this isn’t a normal problem. It’s really really bad and none of the traditional pills or medicines has worked yet. Not even the world famous Viagary. He’s looking for something a bit more unconventional now.

The Doctor tells him that there is this new treatment out but it’s still in it’s experimental stages and the man probably wouldn’t be interested yet.

Desperate for anything, the man disagrees. “Please” he begs “I have a new girlfriend and this has been just terrible and I’d like to be able to have some fun with her. I’ll try anything.”

“Alright.” the Doctor says and begins explaining the treatment to his patient. “what we do is take the muscle from a baby elephant’s trunk and implant them in to your penis and hope that they take hold and serve the same purpose as the typical penis muscles.”

The patient eagerly agrees to go through with it as he has no other options anymore. He goes through with the surgery and a few nights later he’s out with hsi new girlfriend having dinner. She’s wearing an unbelievably sexy outfit and he can feel some movement in his pants. He begins to feel pretty confident that this new treatment is going to work for him and he’s anxious to get home with this girl to try it out, but for now he has to get through dinner.

They continue talking and the movement and growth in his pants continues to the point where he has to reach down under the table subtly and undo his zipper to relieve some of the pressure. A few moments later, their conversation is interrupted when his penis quickly reachs up through the zipper on to the table, grabs a dinner roll and dissapears back in to his pants.

the two people sit stunned at what just happened. The woman after a few minutes of silence finally says “Wow. That was pretty impressive. Do you think you could do it again?”

The man sits for a moment before finally replying “Well, I think so…. but I’m pretty sure I can’t fit another dinner roll up my ass.”

Please Continue To Hold

Being put on hold when I call somewhere bothers me. Not because while I’m sitting there I’m thinking about how an office full of people sitting around drinking coffee are laughing it up at the expense of all of the people on hold, I don’t have to think that, I know that’s what they’re doing, just trust me on this one.

What gets to me are the little things that companies do to you while you’re on hold. Things like repeating the same hold message over and over again every 60 seconds. You know the one I’m talking about.

“Thank you for calling the Big Roy’s High Powered Sex Toys customer support hotline. All of our agents are currently busy assisting other callers. Your call is important to us and will be held in priority sequence to be answered in the order in which it was received.”

Sometimes there’s more to it, but you get the idea. And the longer you spend on hold, the more you can’t help but get the idea, because they keep repeating it until it’s hammered so deeply into your subconscious that without thinking about it you’re thanking ramdom people for their patience and telling your children that their good night hugs and bedtime stories may be monitored and/or recorded for quality control and training purposes.

Why do we need to keep hearing that message? Sure it’s nice to have some sort of a sign that we haven’t been forgotten, left in the wilderness that is hold with nothing to survive on but random stuff on the desk that we can play with, but there comes a point when it stops being a friendly sign from a higher power and starts being the corporate equivalent of your friends laughing at you because you fell on your ass on the dance floor the other night. They just keep rubbing it in, making you feel even worse about the situation than you already do.

I think that there should be some sort of rule that says that companies can’t play that message more than once every 10 minutes unless they have more than 1. At least then while we’re spending the next hour and a half on hold there’ll be some guess work and we can make a little game out of it. Something like Guess The Annoying message That’s Sucking Valuable Seconds Out Of My Life That I’llNever Get Back. I kind of like the sound of that, it’s catchy.

This rule would also include a provision that says that if your company uses hold music, then no matter how many messages you have, the once every 10 minutes rule cannot be waived under any circumstances because somebody might be humming along with the song and it’s really annoying when we get stopped in the middle of what little fun we have. It’s like when you’re in the grocery store and a song comes on that you kind of like or just feel like singing. You start getting into it a little only for some kid to come on the PA system sounding like she’s got the telephone jammed in her mouth telling bread products to pick up on line 3. That drives me nuts. I understand that bread products needs to take his phone call, but why can’t it wait until Billy Joel is over?

This is especially important when the line you’re holding is playing a radio station. That stupid hold message always, and I do mean always comes on in the middle of either the weather, the news or some other semi-interesting story that I might want to hear. It happens so much of the time that I’m convinced they do it on purpose.

And speaking of music, why is it that the people responsible for creating the muzac we love so much feel the need to make elevator music out of songs that are pretty much elevator material already? I’m talking about songs that are already as mellow as they could possibly get. Stuff like “Rocket Man” and “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” by Elton John. Songs that you would have to turn off to make any quieter. On hold the other day I actually heard a muzac version of “Smooth” by Santana. What the hell is that? Sure it’s not the softest song in the world, but it’s still on every soft rock station in the universe 11000 times a day and the way that it was done defeated the purpose of what muzac is supposed to be all about. It was a soundalike version of the song. Same sounding guitars, same beat, same tempo, just no singing. What’s the point? Why not just play the original one instead of paying some company to create something like that. And if you happen to be somebody who creates things like that for a living or as a hobby, why that song? Why not at least be original while you’re ripping people off and muzac some Pantera or something? At least it would be a bit of a challenge and it would make people take notice. Whether that’s good or bad I’ll let you decide but it’s certainly got to be better than cloning songs that don’t need any tweaking to fit in with hold sequences and dentist offices. Doing that doesn’t make you look like an artist, it makes you look like a cover band that was too cheap to hire a singer.

Now back to those hold messages for a second. Why is it that when you call the My Internet Is Broken division of your ISP that they tell you to visit their website? What part of my internet is broken are they not getting?

But there is a bright side to being put on hold and left there for a little while. It gives you time to think, at least it does for me. I’m sitting there, not having to focus on anything and it lets my mind go off in all different directions, sometimes even coming up with something a little bit worthwhile. But as with the rest of the holding experience, something always has to ruin it. This always happens when you’re on the verge of coming up with something really great, like finally figuring out what the meaning of life is. It’s at that moment that they decide to rudely interrupt you by taking your call. I guess we can never win.

If You Can’t Beat ’em, Join ’em

Since I spend so much time making fun of the stupid things other people do, it’s only fair that I point out my own when they happen, and I think one just did.

Remember that email problem I posted about the other day? It’s been fixed because I’m smart, but from the looks of it it was caused because I’m not.

I’ve been out of town since last Wednesday afternoon when the problem started. I got here and realized hey, I’m not getting my mail, which sucked. I thought it was a problem with the provider, because it generally is. When it didn’t start working again in a few hours like it does most of the time, but then started letting me have some mail, I thought it was weird and annoying but still didn’t think much about it. But after a little while I started wondering if maybe I’d been hacked, or whether, and there was no way that this could be possible, I left my computer on at home when I left with my email program open. The same email program that I have set to log into the servers on a schedule and download anything there to my computer. Yeah, that mail program.

So after lots of waiting and cursing and a couple of calls to tech support I decided to change my password just to be safe. As soon as I did, guess what happened. If you said “you started getting mail again you stupid retard,” you’re absolutely right.

But at that point I still didn’t think I was stupid. I thought that I had either foiled a hacker by changing my password to something more complicated, or that it was a coincidence that things started to work right after I did that, because things like that can happen.

So to rule out the hacking thing I called the guy I rent my place from and asked him to go in and see if the computer was on. That was a couple of days ago and today he finally got back to me and let me know that yes, the computer was on and that he had shut it off.

I hung up the phone feeling like the biggest dumbass in the universe and rightfully so. It all made sense. I wasn’t getting mail because my home system was getting it for me. Of course I would get some of my mail, the stuff that I’d manage to collect before the home system did it’s next check. And of course things would start working again once I changed the password, because the home system wouldn’t know the new one and would therefore not be able to log in anymore. Christ, I’m such an idiot.

But on the bright side, at least nobody broke into my account, and anybody who was waiting for a response from me will probably get one once I’m back home. But God, I’m a tool. A tool who’s man enough to admit it, but still a tool all the same.

Why Stealing Is Wrong, And Why Tobacco Might Not Be

A 26-year-old man’s first mistake was allegedly stealing a tractor-trailer rig that had been left unattended with the engine running, police say.

His second blunder was mistaking the truck driver’s tobacco-spit cup for something refreshing, and taking a swig.

The tale of alleged instant justice had its roots earlier Monday, the report said, when the driver of a $60,000 Freightliner left it unlocked and running, with the keys in it, in the parking lot of Sears at Westfield Shoppingtown Vancouver. Inside the trailer was about $15,000 worth of merchandise.

The driver told police he went inside the store to wash grease off his hands.

When he emerged with clean hands, he saw someone making a getaway in the truck. Police soon arrived and learned from the truck’s onboard Global Positioning System that it was at Southeast 164th Avenue and Mill Plain Boulevard in Fisher’s Landing.

As officers converged on the truck Renteria-Martinez called 911 and said, through a Spanish-language translator, that he was choking and needed medical help.

Police said they found the suspect in the truck and took him into custody.

“Renteria-Martinez explained that he was driving down the road when he saw a cup. Without knowing what was in it, he took a drink and quickly learned that it was the rightful driver’s “tobacco spit,” according to the police report.

The suspect was being held on $20,000 bail in the Clark County Jail on Wednesday and is to appear in court Jan. 21.