Bitchin’ out is bitchin’ good

 

In Louis CK’s latest HBO special (I know that’s not Louis CK in the picture above, so calm down), he talked about saying unthinkable things – horrible, unimaginable curses – at others, all from the safe confines of his car.

Worthless piece of shit.

Hey, FUCK YOU!!!

I hope you die!

Hell, I’d done the exact same thing only a week before.  I was in a multi-level parking garage, trying to quickly find a parking spot so I could dash into a clothing store to pick up some stuff.  Naturally, given the common denominator of humanity, the parking garage was full of imbeciles who were indecisive, clueless, or clinically retarded.  The words that came hurtling out of my mouth at all the shitty drivers were startling even to me.  I literally said out loud, “Holy shit, what did I just say.”  All because these awful drivers dared to get between me and some shitty linen shirts and a couple of pairs of trousers by about 12 seconds.  I’m a terrible person.

When I watched that Louis CK bit, it was cold comfort that I wasn’t the only one who could get offended by myself.

Then a week goes by, and more different circumstances can offer you an entirely different perspective.  Let me explain.

This past weekend, I went on a 20-something mile bike ride with my friend.  He’s a long-time roadie, and I’m a road noob, so it was good to have some company on a road ride as the New York weather began loosening its icy grip.  In fact, the weather was fucking spectacular by anyone’s standards.  Just the best day to be out riding.

With about two miles to go from the end of the ride, we were riding single-file along a high street when, from behind, I heard a persistent series of beeps.

*beep-beep*…*beep-beep*…*beep-beep*…*beep-beep*…* beep-beep*

As a rule, I fucking hate it when drivers blow their horn at me while I’m riding my bike.  More often than not, they’re being assholes.  But even those who think they’re being helpful by blowing their horn to let me know they’re there, it fucks me off to no end.  I’m attuned to my surroundings and I’m aware of cars in front of me and in the back of me – because I can hear the cars coming up behind me.  Blowing your horn to “alert” me does absolutely nothing but piss me off.

Anyway, back to this persistent horn.  I was already hugging the shoulder on the right, and who passed me but some crazy old fuck on a yellow three-wheeled Harley.  It wasn’t even a proper Harley.  It was a fucking tricycle.  And it was lemon yellow.  Motherfucker.  Naturally, I shot him my middle finger as he rode by.

[Picture at left was plucked off Google images for illustration purposes only; not the actual asshole in question]

The Harley fuckhead then proceeded to tailgate my friend ahead of me, and harass him with the same series of beeps.  The old fuck zipped by him and I caught up to my friend.

“I’m gonna fuck this guy up, I swear” I said.  (I wasn’t really sure what I meant when I said that.)

“’The fuck was his problem?”

“He’s an asshole is what his problem is.”

We approached the traffic light at the intersection up ahead and old fuck Harley was stuck at the light, but inching forward.  I sprinted towards the light and hollered out, “Hey, asshole, don’t you fucking go anywhere!”

I caught up to him.  “What the fuck is your problem?!  Go fuck yourself, fuckface.  Fuck you, fuuuuuuck you!”  I’d never stringed that many fucks in a row before.

His response?

*beep-beep*…*beep-beep*…*beep-beep*…*beep-beep*…* beep-beep*

I peeled off, turned right, and left him while the light was still red.

My buddy rolled in to help himself to a second dose of bollocking on this guy.  While I did a slow roll by and bitched out the Harley asshole, my friend was more patient.  And sadisitic, I think.  He rolled up next to the yellow Harley, stopped, and unloaded an ungodly serving of verbal beatdown for what felt like an eternity.

Every manner of profanity in the known universe was unleashed on this Harley asshole.  And I do mean every fucking word.  “Fucking” might’ve easily been the kindest word in that tirade.  That bollocking made Satan cup his ears, blush, and say, “Woah, dude, language.”  It was masterful.  It was fucking poetry is what it was.  I swear if he could’ve taken a shit on this guy, he would’ve.

Farther down the road, my friend and I collected ourselves to deliberate what had just happened.

“What the fuck was all that about?”

“I dunno, was he high or something?”

“Could be.  Ahh shit, part of me feels bad bitching out a crazy old man.”

“I gotta tell you, though… that felt good yelling at someone.”

“You’re right, it does feel fucking awesome bitching out someone when you’re totally in the right.”

And he was too fucking right.  It’s soooo exciting to bitch someone out when you’re totally in the right, and they’re totally in the wrong.  I mean, the ability to justifiably yell at another human being without restraint – and without repercussion – might be one of the last underappreciated experiences you might ever have.  God, it’s so hard to put into words just how satisfying it is.  Delicious is the only word I can conjure up.  It so is.  And when you’ve had a taste, you want it all the time.

So much so that instead of letting my phone go to voicemail, these days I pick up every time my caller ID shows that it’s a telemarketer.  God, I so look forward to those calls.  *Ring ring*… HOLY SHIT IT’S A TELEMARKETER, NO ONE PICK UP, I GOT THIS!!!

I usually let them introduce themselves and just inch their way into their spiel before I cut in with,

“Excuse me, WHO ARE YOU?  Where are you calling from?  Why are you calling me?  I’m on the no-call list.  You’re not supposed to be calling me.  What did you say your name was?  No, I want YOUR name, and I want your company’s name.  I’m reporting this bullshit.  I want your name, I want your supervisor’s name, the name of your company, all of it…”

I usually don’t even get through half that rant before they freak out and hang up.

Mmmmm… delicious.

 

 

Literally the worst children’s book of all time

My kids read themselves to sleep every night.  That’s kind of a given, a habit that started with my elder kid, and now both kids do it, and it seemed to be a habit that was encouraged (read: required) by schools and all the other overachieving parents with whom I’m surrounded.  It’s just something you do.

Since my kids became literate human beings, I’ve started to slack off on the time I spend with them at bedtime.  In the past, I used to read to them, but now that they can hold their own, fuck it, they’re reading themselves to bed.  I got other shit to attend to.  Those chips and salsa aren’t going to eat themselves, after all.

In any case, for reasons I can’t remember, I decided to read a bedtime story to my younger kid this evening.  I wasn’t even three pages into the thing when I realized that this was the worst fucking book in the history of children’s books.

I guess at some point, this seemed like a clever idea to a bunch of grown-ups.  Grown-ups who thought that a book based on the idea that homophones are a funny concept for kids.  Sure.  Whatfuckingever.

And it might not be such a poor idea if the execution was slightly better thought out.  You see, the idea that homophones are worth a few chuckles is based on the premise that you get to see both sides of the homophone.

“Dad, my new cello song is ‘Begin The Beguine.’  Geddit, Dad, geddit?  That’s so funny!”  That’s the sort of shit I gotta put up with these days.

So, homophones.  That’s proper kid territory, right?  Fucking wrong.  ‘Cause this is the sort of shit you’ll find when you crack open that cover.

Oh, ah ha ha, geddit?  ZOMG, gorillas, right?  Hilarious!  No, fuck you – because now I gotta explain why the fuck this is ironic to a 6 year-old.  Ever try explaining guerilla warfare to a kindergartener?  Neither have I, and fuck if I’m about to start now.  Fuck you and your ape uprising.

Oh, great – so now the counterpoint to daddy pulling a RuPaul is that mommy and daddy have hot make-up sex after a big fuck-off row?  I’d have a far easier time explaining the former than the latter, for fuck’s sake.

Oh good, we’re right back to weaponry and warfare.  That’s always a hilarious subject, asshole.

“A new wing”?  Are you fucking shittin’ me?  What sort of bullshit entitled kids do you think I’m trying to raise here?  Mommy wants “a new wing” to the fucking house, and Dad’s response is “hmm, I’ll give it a think?”  How about, “Bullshit, we can’t even keep the old wing in order, you want a new wing?  Fuck that noise.”  Seriously, this Housewives Of The Overprivileged USA is fucking horseshit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m sorry, but I’m not explaining jail time to my kids.  I mean, they know what jail is, but there’s no reason they ought to find it funny.  Besides, who the fuck needs to go into jail time at bedtime?  Fuck. That.

 

Seriously, this writer is an asshole.  And his publisher is an even bigger asshole.  There are always a shit ton of books in contention in all our schools, and some are always on the verge of being banned, or already banned outright – Huck Finn, Little Red Riding Hood, you name it.  Far as I’m concerned, this stupid book needs to move to the top of the list.  If it didn’t belong to the library, I’d be all Fahrenheit 451 all over it.

These things so absolutely nothing

 

The close button in every elevator in the world.  Half the time the open button doesn’t even work.  But the close button?  100% of the time non-functioning.  Doesn’t matter if the door is just taking a little longer to close, or if you see your douchebag colleague running across the lobby to catch the elevator you’re in and the little spot of joy in your dreary morning is to pretend like you’re reaching for the open button to keep it open but you’re really thumbing the shit out of that close button to slam the door on the him – that stupid close button is there just there to mock you which you stand in this cabled box.

 

The “aroma” button on my coffeemaker.  This was designed for the express purpose of filling you with false hope.  It’s a coffeemaker – it fucking makes coffee and coffee already makes everything smell like coffee.  What’s the fuck could this button possibly do?  Make a bigger coffee smell?  I have no idea how it’d do that.  This is such a stupid non-functioning button on my coffeemaker.

 

 

Bay leaves.  The charlatan of the herb and spice world.  The whole fucking bay leaf industry is a fucking sham.  We all throw these stupid razor-like leaves into our cooking and think that they’re magically going to make our food delicious.  Here’s a test – what the does a bay leaf even taste like?  That’s right, you have no fucking clue.  You can’t tell if your spaghetti sauce had a bay leaf in it or not.  That bay leaf is entirely inconsequential to your cooking.  Yet, we’re all schmucks to go fishing around our gravy to pull this stupid leaf out so that no one accidentally chokes on it.  Fuck bay leaves.

 

The “no tokens” sign in NYC subway turnstiles.  There hasn’t been a fucking token in use in about 10 years now.  Just who the hell are these signs targeted to?  The packrat crazy guy living under the Brooklyn Bridge who suddenly just came upon a token he’d hoarded back in 1999 and suddenly decided to take a train ride up to Central Park?  How about you put up some useful information at these subway stations.  “Next train in 3 minutes and there’s a douchebag who’s with a recumbent bike in the second car from the rear.”  That’s useful shit that could come in handy.

 

Check engine light.  The single-most pointless indicator ever invented.  It tells you NOTHING.  All it does is freak you the fuck out and make you sweat bullets as wonder if your engine’s gonna just suddenly drop out from under your car.  Or if your engine bay will turn into a big ball of fire while you’re gunning 90 on the highway.  Or absolutely nothing will happen at all.  It’s fucking stupid.

 

Reclaiming the city from awful tourists

(source: Mark Armstrong Tumblr)

Unlike a lot of city dwellers who can’t wait to skip out of the town the minute the sweltering summer hits, I fucking love New York in the summer time.  Granted, I don’t live in the city, and if I was stuck in a smoldering shoebox in the city, I couldn’t be blamed for wanting to bail and glom on to my friends’ Hamptons rental at every available opportunity.

I live in the burbs of New York, and even though I spend every fucking day in the city at work, I love being in the city.  But with the onset of summer, I’m hastily reminded of the single-most grating aspect of city – the motherfucking tourists.

Motherfucking tourists are the fucking worst.

A couple of years ago, when I saw that picture above of the two-laned sidewalk, I thought my dreams had finally come true.  If I could vote, I would’ve re-elected Mayor Bloomberg as mayor for life.  Alas, it was a fucking stunt, and my dreams and hopes were crushed to smithereens.

What New Yorker wouldn’t relish some concerted initiative focused on making sure that tourists get and stay the fuck out of the way?

This morning I had to refill my subway metrocard.  Wouldn’t you know it, I get stuck behind two tourists.  They did everything you expect tourists to do – fumble around the touchscreen, going back and forth.  Which is understandable if you’ve never used the machine before.  But they were buying a shit ton of single-ride tickets, and chose to pay for each fucking ticket with motherfucking coins.  Coins.  Half a dozen single-ride tickets with goddamn coins.  Where the fuck did they score that many coins anyway?  There are no slot machines in the city, far as I know.  Pair of shitheads.

We need set up one subway card dispenser in some dark corner at each station.  If you take more than 10 seconds to buy your subway card from the regular machines, boom, you get locked out of the regular machines and you have to the shitty machine in the corner.  That’s fucking teach you.  Especially if you’re a New Yorker – stop buying your subway card like a goddamn tourist.  Subway card machines should be like the Soup Nazi.  You walk up, you punch the buttons precisely, you take your card and you walk away.  Quickly.  If you take more than 10 seconds, you gotta go to the dreaded tourist card machine in the corner where the wino using as a makeshift urinal.

You know what, let’s make it a whole checkout thing altogether.  In stores – I don’t care if it’s a small drugstore or a massive department store – we need to have dedicated checkout lanes for anyone with bulky backpacks, athletic sandals, fanny packs, soccer jerseys, and/or Hollister shopping bags.  That shit’s a dead giveaway you’re goddamn tourist ready fuck things up for the rest of us.  Special lanes for you so that you can fumble for loose change in that fanny pack while the rest of us can get our shit, get out, and get on with our goddamn day.

And why limit those tourist and local paths to sidewalks?  Put that shit on crosswalks as well.  I’m not sure what it’s like in other cities, here in New York, most of us will fucking jaywalk a Don’t Walk sign if we feel we’ve got anything more a 50% chance we’ll make it the other side of the street before getting splattered by that mad yellow cab careering towards us.  I got shit to do, I can’t be standing around waiting for some light.  But what good is that when you’ve got a wall of German tourists standing like they’re trying to defend a free kick at the World Cup in front of you?  I say we make ‘em stand in a tourist-only crosswalk lane while the rest of us are free to put our lives in our own hands and dodge traffic all day.  Like I said, I’ve got place to go and shit to do.

And how the fuck do we get around the whole tipping thing when it comes to tourists?  I get that tipping isn’t a big thing outside the U.S. – some more argue that plenty of assholes don’t tip within the U.S. either, but that’s another story.  Anyway, I was in dark, dank bar in the West Village a few weeks ago – one of those bullshit “secret” bars that EVERYONE knows about.  Well, I sat down for a few brews and this Swedish girl walks up to order some drinks for her friends seated at a nearby booth.  “Can I have a beer?” she says.  First of all, that’s completely retarded question to ask at a bar.  In any case, the kind barkeep offered a beer suggestion, she took it, got three pints, paid for the beers, LEFT NO TIP, and walked away.  The barkeep didn’t seem too bothered by it – probably not the first nor last bunch of clueless tourists who wandered into his bar that night.  But holy fuck, can these assholes please get some crib sheet when they arrive at the airport on what proper etiquette is expected of them when they come to NY?  Shit, if I’m obligated to try and converse in a bit of French when I’m in Paris, you sure as fuck are expected to tip the people serving you in NY bars and restaurants, bitch.

Here’s what a cheat sheet might look like (and of course it’d have to be written in goddamn Comic Sans – if it wasn’t written in Comic Sans, how you would know it’s completely stupid?):

All of which is to say that Big Gulps aren’t ruining New York.  Not bath salts.  Not douchey hipsters.  Not Tim Tebow (OK, maybe a bit).  It’s fucking tourists.  Goddamnit.

First world problems

No free wi-fi at airports and hotels.  What’s this shit with making pay $20 a day for wi-fi in your bullshit pretentious hotel?  And I think it’s fucking criminal that neither JFK nor LaGuardia airports consistently provide free wi-fi (not you, JetBlue, we all know your terminal fucking rocks).  Airports and hotels are proper fucking ports of business.  Not just where parents who have lost the will to live are dragging their little shitbags Timmy and Tammy for a week at Disneyworld.  Timmy and Tammy are ingrates and don’t deserve wi-fi.  The rest of us, who are at airports under duress, travelling for work?  The least you bastards could do is blunt the hurt with a bit of free wi-fi.

Same shit at hotels.  Oh, you want me to pay $400 for some shitty room you painted white and hung a framed painting on the ceiling, but I’ve got to cough up another $20 so that I can send emails and post stupid Facebook updates from my room?  Dicks.

 

Paying more for gas with credit.  Why the fuck are gas stations the only establishment left on earth that can get away with charging you extra if you pay with a credit card?  No one else would fucking dare.  I buy a pack of gum at the drug store and I wanna charge it?  Same fucking price.  Even the little shitty Chinese takeout joint in my town won’t tack on superfluous charges if I wanted to charge my wonton soup.  Stop being dicks about it, gas stations.

 

“So…”  What is this verbal tic I’ve started noticing so glaringly over the past coupe of months or so?  Maybe folks have been saying it for much longer, but I’ve only just recently noticed it.  There is no fucking reason to start every sentence with that word.  “So I was watching Mad Men last night…”  “So how did you like that concert?”  “Soooo… where’re we going for dinner?”   What the fuck is that?  No, no “so”.  No fucking “so” anything.  At this point, this completely gratuitous prefix is all the signal I need to completely ignore everything that comes out of your mouth after that stupid word.  A friend recently raised it as a particularly irritating issue, and I thought I was the only one to notice this particularly grating behavior.  He lives in Vancouver.  This is a pan-continental epidemic that’s just gotta stop.  Right fucking now.

 

Bottled water.  What.  The fuck.  When the fuck did water cost more than beer?

Diaper Genies.  You can never ever get that smell outta your head.  Ever.  I’m a couple of years out from needing one in the house (for my kids, not me, you assholes), but just say “diaper genie” and that pong immediately fills my olfactory sense.  They’re a pretty awesome invention – making your own shit-filled sausages – but if they could fix the smell factor, the Diaper Genie would be greater than the iPhone 5.

 

3 Series drivers.  Why do 3 Series drivers consistently refer to their stupid little cars as “sportscars”?  Have these assholes never seen a sportscar?  How the fuck is your overpriced rear-wheeled drive Honda-equivalent a sportscar by any motherfucking stretch of the imagination.  An M3? Fine, I get that.  But none of these shitheads are driving M3s.  They’re driving little shitty 3 Series cars… and quite poorly, I might add.  Looking at the way you shitheads drive and park, you might want to chill with your delusions of grandeur there.  Your shitcart is not a sportscar.

 

Pointless rental upgrades.  I recently scored what I thought was a tasty upgrade when I rented a car in Boston.  I had booked some shitty little Chevy or what not, and when I got to the rental office, they didn’t have my car ready for me.  A bit of a Seinfeld “you-know-how-to-take-the-reservation-you-just-don’t-know-how-to-hold-the-reservation” moment.  But after a few minutes, I was told I’d been upgraded to a Mercedes.  Sweet.  Thinking it’d be some small C-class, I walk up to the lot to see a beastly, stark white GL SUV.  It’s the biggest fucking thing they made short of a tour bus.  This thing was ridiculous.  It was as big as a house, so full of driving aids I felt dumber by the minute sitting in it.  The thing had blind spot warning lights, rear camera, sensors of every sort – it was as if it was coaxing you to be as careless as you fucking want on the roads because “the car will take care of it for you.”  And it came with paddleshifts on the steering wheel.  Cool.  Except when you tug on one of the flappy paddles, it’d take about a week for the gear to engage.  What a thoroughly stupid, pointless car.

Sports TV you’d totally watch

By now, Ron Jaworski’s on-air “shit” remark on Monday Night Football is old news.  I hate the fact that it was even worth noting.  I’ll admit that even I tweeted about it the minute it happened.  I hate that we’ve had such puritanical standards pounded into us that certain everyday words that we hear get mentioned unintentionally on TV and we all react to it.  Who the hell doesn’t say “shit” in real life, for fuck’s sake.

The thing about it is, it wasn’t a forced “shit”.  Jaworski really got into the game – as he should – and started speaking his mind like a real person.

“Shit, you have to get rid of this ball just a split-second quicker.”  Too fucking right, Ron.  You fucking tell that shithead Michigan quarterback.  (Yes, I know that “shithead” is completely redundant when talking about a “Michigan quarterback”.)

Then I got an idea.  Probably not the first person in the world to come up with this idea, but who cares.

I’d pay a premium to be able to watch games – any game, most of all football ‘cause shit’s always happening – that carried R-rated commentating.  Imagine being able to choose between two simultaneous feeds: one that abides by our stupid broadcasting standards – say on ESPN – and another one that lets the commentators loose, as if you were in a bar with your buddies – let’s call it something like ESPN-R.  (Maybe The Ocho!  Finally, a reason to actually properly set up ESPN 8!)

But you’ve gotta do it right.  You can’t have swearing for the sake of swearing.  That shit’ll get tired in about a minute.  Maybe less.  It’s not about a bunch of guys on the air screaming profanity every 7 seconds.  It’s gotta be real, it’s gotta be genuine.  Anyone who listens to Howard Stern knows what I’m talking about.  It’s not even about the swearing, that’s almost secondary.  It’s about the brutal honesty of the commentary, the ability to follow a “real life” commentary.  When Jaworski prefaced his comment with “shit”, he was being real, that’s how the man talks.  That’s how people talk.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but if I have to pay a premium to listen to some sense of authenticity in my sports commentating, I’d do it.

Picture this: On or two NFL games a week – make them night games (so that’s NBC and/or ESPN, they’ll have to work something out), for the sake of “family”.  You put a bunch of comics in a booth, sports fandom not a requirement: Artie Lange, Norm Macdonald, and Louis CK, for example.  And you let them at it.   And each other.   Who gives a shit if they don’t do a play-by-play.  (Why the fuck do we need play-by-play commentary anyway?  Just fucking watch the game and you’ll know who did what to whom.)  But when Romo gets pounded into ground again, your commentators should be allowed to call him a fucking asshole and rip him a new one.  When Mark Sanchez throws his fifth interception is a game, Artie talks about how Plaxico Burress had better aim in a NY nightclub.  That sort of shit.  But way funnier (and cruder) ’cause I’m no comic, and they are.

The commentators get to say whatever the hell they want.

And here’s a bonus feature – live bets during the game.  You get to place bets against the commentators.  Do it all online.  The commentators make up the bets.  You put in your bet and it’s up to the commentators to take your bet or not.  Imagine all the shit you can bet on.  The over-under on Cam Newton yardage.  Whether or not Ndamukong Suh successfully detaches someone’s head from his shoulders.  Does Ochocinco make more than 2 catches.

Profanity AND gambling.  Unless your TV is built into a clown car filled with strippers, hauling a keg of PBR, this is likely the best TV your money can buy.

Do it.

Made up words

Here are some words that need to be scrapped from use immediately.  Largely because they’re not proper words.  Just strings of letters fuckwits have crumpled together to make up syllables which make them think they sound smart.

“Deplane”.  Pretty much every other week I’m on a plane these days.  And every other week, some flight attendant will remind me of just how much I fucking loathe them.  “Plane” is a noun.   Not a fucking verb.  “DE-plane”?!  What the fuck do you do when you get on a plane?   Enplane?  What if you get on, come off the plane, then get back on it?  Replane?  Do fuck off, flight crew.  The only time it’s alright hear the word “deplane” around any aircraft is if you see Hervé Villechaize in the vicinity.  But given that he’s quite dead, there goes that loophole.

“Pre-board”.  Another air travel gem.  Arguably one of the stupidest phrases ever uttered by someone in uniform: “We’d like to pre-board parents with small children”.  Do you even fucking understand what the prefix means?  You’re not fucking pre-boarding anyone.  Pre-boarding is what I’m doing right now: standing at the gate, stupid.  Standing: that’s what pre-boarding means.

“Incentivize”.  Brilliant marketing wankery.  It’s such a lazy yet crafty way to sound so fucking smart about something.  Just add the “ize” suffix to some multi-syllabic noun, and voila, you’re big and clever.  Every time I hear someone in a meeting say shit like “incentivize” or “dimensionalize” or something bullshit wankspeak, I want to punch them in the throat.

“Preventative”.  Holy fucking shit, this isn’t a word, it’s cheating at Scrabble with two extra tiles.  The word is “preventive”, fucknut.  What’s mind-blowing isn’t the proliferation of the word in pedestrian vernacular.  It’s the fact that it’s actually accepted verbiage in some highly-regulated companies (e.g. pharmaceuticals, etc.) – you see it in their ads, their press releases.  Way to go out of your way to perpetuate poor grammar and make people think that you have a stutter.

“Online”.  Not in the digital sense.  But in the single file sense.  What the fuck is wrong with “queue”?  It’s a great word.  It’s proper English word, one syllable, but it rocks four successive vowels in it (OK, two, but you get what I mean)!!!  Even standing in line is correct to say.  But “online”?  Where the fuck is this line on which you’re supposed to be standing?

“Offline.”  Again, not in the digital sense.  Another bit of business wankery referring to a side conversation to be had at another time and place.  “Let’s take this offline.”  No, let’s take this term and stab you in the eye with it.  That word does not mean what you think it means, Vizzini.  The only reason we even have that fucking word “offline” is because we needed something to mean the opposite of “online”, again, in the digital sense.  Where is this fucking line from which you want me to get off?  Fuck you and your lines.

The poncification of food.  Not a word, per se.  The missus has been heading up the organization of her high school class reunion of late.  One of the venues provided her with a catering menu.  Apparently, in some effort to poncify themselves, they’ listed such culinary delights as “breast of chicken”, “fillet of salmon”, “prime rib of beef”.  Are you fucking shittin’ me?  Listen, separating the animal and its cut with a conjunction doesn’t mean you get to charge me a 50% premium for that same shitty dried out piece of chicken which I invariable know will taste like the sole of Doc Martens with a slight lemon zest.

Shit of bull.

Three for Thursday

People who think they’re too cool to capitalize.  Typically these  “faux-eccentric types” are the ones who feel like they have license to do this.  You know, the sort who think that crowdsourcing isn’t just asking the unwashed masses to do your shitty work for you (it is).  Good job on dive bombing your bar of creativity by thinking that simply not using your shift key qualifies you as being “inventive”.  Or simply exploiting your sheer, unbridled laziness by cloaking yourself in some pretentious veil of cool, that you’re above the rudiments of punctuation. Here’s a clue: none of it’s working, and you’re coming across loud and clear as some illiterate dickhead.  Not one person is impressed.  So knock it off, doucheface.  Using proper punctuation is as basic as brushing your teeth.  It’s not that hard.

Tedious, self-aggrandizing Facebook updates asking you to spread a “cause”.  It typically involves some long-winded, self-validating bullshit paragraph about some bullshit that you, as the reader, couldn’t give a shit about, and then it ends with some pathetic plea to have you repost that stupid update.  “If you agree, please post this in your update.”  Oh, for fuck’s sake – WHY!?!  Who gives a shit if I agree with that stupid shitty paragraph you cut-and-pasted in your update.  Do you really give a shit if I agree with that stupid statement which you were too lazy to even come up with your own so you just cut-and-pasted it from some other retarded lemming’s Facebook update?  If I were shallow-minded enough to repost that shit you posted on your update, would it make one lick of difference to anyone?  That’s right, it fucking wouldn’t.  So, WTF, you mindless lemming.  “Post this on your update if you agree that cancer is shitty.”  Well, of course cancer is shitty.  What’s that request supposed to do – guilt me into the belief that if I don’t post that retarded paragraph on my Facebook status, I actually believe that cancer rocks?  Fuck.  Off.  I have half a mind to post this who paragraph in my Facebook update.  “If you think your friends are retarded for posting stupid shit on their Facebook updates, please repost this load of bollocks.”  Go on, I fucking dare you.

Hoboken’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.  I don’t give a shit if this comes more than a month after the event.  It’s retarded.  St Patrick’s Day is only meaningful on St. Patrick’s Day.  March 17.  Two days after the Ides Of March.  That’s it, no other time.  There’s no St. Patrick’s Day season, like you do the Easter season or Christmas season (which apparently starts right on Labor Day these days).  The day before St. Patrick’s Day is completely meaningless.  As is the day before that (fuck the Ides Of March, just ask Julius Caesar).  There’s no festivity after St. Patrick’s Day – the way Boxing Day only exists because Christmas Day does.  So St. Patrick’s Day is one day and one day only.  The fact that the city of Hoboken are retarded enough to think that it’s perfectly fine for them to throw some stupid St. Patrick’s Day parade some two weeks before the actual event – especially being a mere five miles from the actual site of a good and proper St. Patrick’s Day Parade – on the actual fucking day! – shows just what a bunch of retarded douchebags have been wandering Hoboken all these years.  The only redeeming thing about this stupid annual tradition of celebrating an event well in advance of the day of the event is that the drinking and debauchery is completely fucking out of control.  The fact that this stupid parade made the news this year because of the city’s efforts to curb the drinking and debauchery, only to lead to record-levels of drunken madness, may be the only reason to validate this otherwise completely retarded event.  Next year, I want a car fire and someone driving a fire truck into the Hudson, Hoboken.  Otherwise, no more stupid St. Patrick’s Day events.

AM Alliteration

An email conversation this morning:

ESS: Oh noes, I can haz flight? Is cancelled, oh noes!

ELL: What? Weird! Why?

DES: It’s a bit early for alliteration, no?

BEE: Never. No way. Not a chance.

ESS: No designated driver Des due to Delta delay. Damn! Darn! Drat!

BEE: What a win. Worthless waste to wrangle a wreply.

All this before 8:30am. So many comedians at such an early hour. Kill me now.

DES: I’m gonna post this on the blog.

Speak English, you wankers

[Originally posted September 2010]

The U.S. and the U.K.  Two stupid countries divided by a common ocean.  No, that’s not it.  Well, it IS it, but it’s also lame joke ripped from Eddie Izzard.  No, of course I meant “divided by a common language.”

In any case, I recently saw a collection of retarded signs held up by even more retarded Tea Party activists.  This moment of brilliance caught my eye:

If West Virginia’s answer to F. Scott Fitzgerald is going to hold up a sign insisting on English being the medium of instruction and communication in the U.S., then I want to see the inclusion of some good ol’ proper English words into the American vernacular.

That’s right: it’s time we spoke some goddamn English.

As long as I’ve lived in the U.S. I’ve been ridiculed for using certain words built into my vocabulary from my colonial upbringing.  I don’t even think about it, these words are there, they just come out.  But to the American ear, they seem to come out wrapped in a thick coating of pretention and batter-fried unwitting self-righteous mockworthiness (that’s right, I just made that word up – suck it, Sarah Palin).

Fuck it, you wanna make stupid demands about speaking English?  Fine, I’m gonna insist on a few demands of my own.

Terms for immediate inclusion into the American vernacular:

1. Bollocks: What a great word.  It literally means “testicles”, and you use it to say something’s crap.  ”What a bunch of bollocks the Jets are.”  ”The ending of No Country For Old Men was complete bollocks.”  See, it works.  It feels great to say it.  Use it.  Use it often.
2. Cheers: It’s a superb phrase.  Use it to say ‘hi’, use it to say ‘goodbye’ (a bit like “aloha” but less likely to get you punched in the face for being an imbecile), use it to say ‘thanks’, use it when it’s the only polite thing you can think of saying if you’re sharing a conversation with a nitwit.
3. Brilliant: It’s flattering, it’s a nice, refreshing change to calling everything “cool”.  Aren’t you kinda sick of “cool” by now?  I know I am.
4. Rubbish: See bollocks.  Freshen up your dialogue with a little rubbish, why don’t you.
5. Pear-shaped: I love this one.  What a great alternative to saying “it’s gone straight to hell” or “it’s completely fucked up”.  It takes a bit of work to make sense of this one – if you imagine a perfect circle as being a good thing, then going “pear-shaped” is when it’s gone crap.  Pear-shaped.  What kind of a loon came up with that one.
6. Fortnight: A personal favorite.  This one has real utility.  It means two fucking weeks.  That’s it, it doesn’t mean anything else.  Two weeks.  It’s way fucking better than shitheads who use bi-weekly or bi-monthly.  I can never tell if bi-weekly or bi-monthly means two weeks.  What’s the “bi” in reference to?  The frequency or the time period?  ”Fortnight”?  Never a doubt.  Everybody start using fortnight today.
7. Wanker: Somehow it just feels more polite than calling someone a “jerkoff”, even if the sentiment remains unchanged.  Plus, I’ll bet you can say it front of kids.
8. Shite: Same reason as wanker.  ”The Mets are shite.”  See, you get the idea, but I’ll bet you’re nowhere as ticked off as if I hadn’t added the “e” at the end.

And while I’m at it, here are some terms that should NEVER make it into the American vernacular.  If you do use any of these, you’re pretty much an asshole who’s trying too hard and you probably deserve to be throat-kicked:

1. Crikey: Thanks for doing us all a HUGE favor, stingray.
2. Pukka: Seriously, it’s a stupid word.  It sounds stupid, it’s spelled stupid, and even when you say it sounds anything but complimentary.  Stop using this stupid word, poms.
3. Arse: Sorry, but this is way too much work.  The terms “ass” and “asshole” are already in a good place – they flow off your tongue, they’re almost melodic.  The gutteral “arse” sounds like a drunk German ordering caviar.  There’s no need for it: just stick with “ass”.

Honorable mention:

Twunt: This is a gem, first heard it from a buddy of mine, Ian.  No idea if he invented it (doubtful), but it was so good, so obvious that I’m personally a bit disappointed I didn’t think of it.  A beautiful blend of two words that register about a 4 on the vulgar scale in the U.K., but about a 900 in the U.S.

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got right now.  I guess in the end, I don’t give a shit if people get up in arms about whether or not you need to speak English in the U.S.  I just want to use some of these good ol’ (proper) English words without a lot of grief for it.  ’Cause that’s bollocks.