Table of Contents

1. Cranking Up the Bass
2. Public No Work Crews
3. Blue Liquid Demonstrations   Read this exerpt
4. Red - 10 vs. Green - 0
5. Barbaric Expressions
6. Need a Trim?
7. Public "Gassings"
8. Highway Construction to Eternity
9. Baggy Pants and Bare Midriffs
10. Is Chivalry Dead?
11. Teachers Get No Respect
12. Loiterers In the Left Lane
13. The Scourge of Local Newscasts
14. Gum Where It Shouldn't Be
15. Not In My Yard!!
16. Take It Off
17. Personal Irresponsibility
18. Airlines (Need I Say More?)
19. Don't Insult Me!
20. Littering Losers
21. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
22. Indecipherable
23. Junk by Snail
24. Don't Vote, Don't Bitch
25. Stop Calling Me!!
26. Hey Doc, You're Late!
27. The U.S. Pony Express
28. Wild Ankle Biters
29. Speed Up Then Slow Down
30. Want a Little Movie With Those Commercials?
31. You Want It When?
32. Let's Renew
33. The Heartbreak of Typos
34. Inserts 'R Us
35. Eight to Five Home Services   Read this exerpt
36. Assembly Required
37. The Parallel Universe of Dry Cleaning
38. Crosswalk Hell
39. Child Pornography and Pedophilia
40. It's Not Music to My Ears   Read this exerpt
41. The Grocery Store Grumps
42. Catholic Betrothings
43. Public Disgustrooms   Read this exerpt
44. Is This Reality?
45. Triteness
46. Political Weirdness
47. Non "Art"
48. Hey Mac, You're Late!
49. What's Your Handicap?
50. Unprofessional Athletes
51. Waiting Room Time Warp
52. Do You Want An Interpreter With Those Fries?   Read this exerpt
53. Public Nose Picking
54. Dumb PLPs
55. The Snobpera   Read this exerpt
56. Extended Rip-Offs
57. Aaaaachooooo!
58. Charge It to My Room
59. Whatever Happened to the Three Rs?
60. The Graduation Gift Racket   Read this exerpt
61. Discrete Dining
62. Lima Bean Broccoli Eggplant Casserole
63. DVR Nightmares
64. The World's Greatest Frustration
65. Around and Around It Goes, Where It Will End Nobody Knows
66. Stupid Tourist Attractions
67. Garbage Sales
68. Creepy Crawlies
69. It's All In the Chaw
70. Disclaim It
71. Eating Disorders
72. Women + Facial Hair = NOT
73. The Imelda Marcos Gene
74. Dorknames
75. Faux Antiques
76. Country Club Living
77. Mmm, Mmm, Good!   Read this exerpt
78. Romance Smut
79. Dearly Beloved
80. Point, Click and Go Broke
81. The Christmas and Birthday Gift Scam
82. Rogue Car Alarms
83. Stinky Streets
84. The World's Greatest Discovery
85. Crack Displays
86. Water Buffalos In Our Midst
87. Hello? Hello? Speak Louder So I Can Hear You.
88. Let's Study That For $10 Million   Read this exerpt
89. Monkey Suits
90. Lunatic Cyclists
91. Steamer Trunks and Overhead Bins
92. Drunk Drivers
93. I'm Bored
94. We Interrupt This Program
95. Sappiness
96. We're All Going to Die
97. Yours For Only $19.95!
98. Cinematic Blabbermouths
99. Hell Phones
100. Your Virus 'Hacks' Me Off
101. Can Anyone Figure This Out?
102. I Can't See Squat In Here
103. Duplication Agitation
104. You're On the Air If You Dare
105. World Class Snoring
106. Voice Mail Hell
107. Multi-Tasking Drivers
108. Zip It Up!
109. Worthless Websites
110. No Money? No Problem.
111. Elevator Inetiquette.
112. Basket Case
113. Electronic Junk
114. Holiday Blather
115. Tightwad Tippers
116. P.U.
117. The Star Spangled Blunder
118. Map Madness
119. Sticky Fingers
120. Speeders Beware
121. Hey Mister, Wanna Buy a Candy Bar?
122. Mugshots
123. If Only There Were a Pill...
124. Deadbeat Dads
125. Hey Buddy, Can You Spare a Dollar?
126. Murphy Lives In My House
127. What Am I Trying to Remember?
128. Bimbos and Buddies
129. Too Many Numbers
130. Chomp, Smack, Chomp
131. Sally and Bill vs. Megan and Tyler
132. Greeding Cards
133. Stupid Pro Athlete Tricks
134. Daylight Saving Monkeys
135. Slaves to Public Opinion
136. Just Say No to Snow
137. Stick 'Em Up
138. Worthless Rags
139. Christmas In September
140. Please Don't Squeeze the Sandpaper
141. Pokey States
142. You're a Winner (and a Loser)!
143. Insurance Scammers
144. Newspaper "Non" Delivery
145. Ice Hogs
146. Lock It Up
147. Bird Bombers
148. Lawbreaking Lawmen
149. Heavy Lifting
150. Pet Excretions
151. Triple Trouble
152. Hocus Pocus and Mumbo Jumbo
153. Forever and a Day
154. No Tricks, But Treats
155. Obscene Obsolescence
156. Flush It Again Sam
157. Basic Non-Services
158. Oh, the Pitty, Pitty Splatter of...
159. Vendo Rob
160. Airline Insecurity
161. Hapless Losers
162. Busing Blues
163. The Witch Doctor Is In
164. Wussy Parents
165. Please Spit Into the Wind
166. Doing Time On the Silver Screen
167. Oblivious Walkers
168. I Approve This Message
169. These Gangs Should Be Outlawed
170. There's Always An Expert
171. Fit For the Cutting Room Floor
172. Driven to Obscure
173. Nuts, Nuts and More Nuts
174. Un-Amusement Parks
175. Public Displays of Absurdity
176. Put That Out!
177. Rabid Dogs
178. Drug Dealers
179. Rake It, Mow It, Trim It, Hate It
180. Instant Insanity
181. You're Blind As An Umpire
182. Inflated Gas
183. Marco. Polo.
184. Extra! Extra! Extra!
185. Weather Resistant
186. Dragon Breath   Read this exerpt
187. Woof, Woof, Woof, Woof, Woof
188. Hot Flash News Bulletin
189. That's Sensational News!
190. Say Aaaahhh
191. Birthday Madness
192. Military Might
193. Clear With Scattered Showers
194. Dam Ice
195. Screening Mimi
196. Cowardly Weasels
197. Unscheduled
198. Noise Nuts
199. Teen Speak
200. Mr. Jerk
201. The Middle Ages
202. Exciting New Olympic Sports
203. Weak-Kneed Lily-Livered Judges
204. Translation Required
205. Speechifiers
206. Say Cheese (Limburger)
207. Why Do I Hear That Wailing Sound?
208. No Cuts
209. Turning Into Clods
210. Honking Habits
211. One Continuous Monster Rally
212. The United States of Nanny
213. How Do I Get This @%$# Thing Open?
214. Dear Mr. Peabrain
215. Dinosaurs Are Not Extinct
216. Nature's Nasties
217. BCS BS
218. I Don't Want Your Free Car Wash
219. Cussing Cads
220. Power to the People
221. A Few Little Limericks
222. Fashion Statements
223. Hey Baby, How About a Date?
224. You Have Messages
225. Ding, the Fight Is On
226. It's the Little Things That Can Kill You
227. We Need An Anti-Yammering Law
228. Sniveling Weenies and Arrogant Snakes
229. WAAA
230. A Death Wish
231. Sniffle, Sneeze and Cough
232. Bureaucratic BS
233. Disastrous Consequences
234. Talkin' Trash
235. Chronic Coughers
236. Wallet Downgrades
237. Mannerless Morons
238. Keys to Idiocy
239. Driving to Dumbsville
240. Hot Rodders
241. Drunken Spectacles
242. The Vacation Blues
243. A Sign of the Times
244. Pull Over of Pile-Up
245. It's a Jungle Out There
246. Unattended
247. Wardrobe Malfunction

 

Blue Liquid Demonstrations

Rarely does a new law mean anything but more infringement upon our personal freedom. However, one law I would be in favor of is the banning of feminine hygiene product commercials on television. Cigarettes and tobacco products can't be advertised, so there is a precedent. Women should have access to information about feminine hygiene products, but only through the mail and in plain brown wrappers.

I can't stand it when I'm watching a really terrific show on television and the first commercial into the break begins extolling the virtues of "ultra-thin absorbent pads with wings, especially contoured for a comfortable fit to keep you feeling fresh so that you can enjoy an active lifestyle." Arghhhhhhhh! And, these ads tend to be sneaky. They usually start out with a good looking female model running along the beach or swinging a golf club or dancing in a nightclub.

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Eight-to-Five Home Services

Here's one that I know will strike a chord with you. It involves a highly sophisticated customer service technique. And yes, you are correct, there is a four-week long course that teaches companies how to deploy this concept correctly. It's called, "Eight-to-Five Home Services." What, you still don't know what I'm talking about? OK, how about going out and buying a new refrigerator. I'm talking one of those great big deluxe jobs with crushed ice and vodka martinis that come out of the door. This baby will freeze a side of beef and still have plenty of room left to chill two weeks of leftovers. In fact this refrigerator is so smart that it will start your car in the morning, wake up the kids, put the dog out and re-set all of your clocks when Daylight Savings Time ends. Ah, but I digress. One of the hazards of middle age.

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It's Not Music to My Ears

I looked up "rap" in the dictionary the other day. The definitions were: 1) to hit sharply and swiftly; strike: rapped the table with his fist. 2) To utter sharply: rap out a complaint. 3) To criticize or blame. Nowhere did I find that the word "rap" connotes any form of music. Maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe, just maybe it's because "rap" isn't really music! Now I realize that what's music to my ears may not be music to someone else's ears. But don't you think it's a stretch for "rap" to be music to anyone's ears?

I thought it might be interesting to trace the history of "rap," so I contacted the famous musicologist Alfred B. Morningdinger. He explained that "rap" did not originate in the black community as most people think, but actually got its start at a truck stop diner in Comstock, Nebraska (home of the Comstock Windmill Festival). Apparently Roy U. Whilst drove his combine to the diner and left the motor running because he was afraid to shut it down due to a loose actuator belt. Naturally, a loose actuator belt on a combine makes one heck of a lot of noise. To try and drown out the din, one Eugene P. Suggymethal put a quarter in the jukebox and decided to play a tune by that old silver-tongued crooner Ernest Evans (aka Chubby Checkers). The result was an awful racket where the loose combine belt was competing with the chanting of Chubby.

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Public Disgustrooms

Pollsters survey everything these days. I've seen polls for peanut butter, toothpaste, French fries, and whether or not the Cubs will ever again win the World Series. But I've never seen a poll identifying the best public restrooms in America. So, I thought I'd help the pollsters out and create such a survey.

1. What aroma were you met with on your last visit to a public restroom?
   a. Socks worn non-stop for 300 days.
   b. Skunk - dead or alive it doesn't matter.
   c. Dead trout.
   d. I don't know. I held my breath the whole time and then I
       passed out.
   
   
2. What kind of graffiti was written on the stall walls?
   a. Sex acts that are impossible to perform.
   b. Political name calling harkening back to the days of Richard Nixon.
   c. Weird stuff about something called "ludes" and dental work involving "uppers."
   d. I don't know. I had my eyes glued to the broken latch on the stall door.

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Do You Want An Interpreter With Those Fries?

What's wrong with fast food restaurants you ask? How much time do you have? Here's the primary problem with most fast food restaurants. Kids. Yes, the kids that work in fast food restaurants are 90% of the problem. Where do they get these kids?

I stopped at a well-known fast food place specializing in ice cream when returning from a vacation recently. Behind the counter the floor was filthy. Someone had just overflowed the soft ice cream machine creating a soupy swamp. A girl with neon green eyeliner brought out a nasty-looking mop and proceeded to smear it around in the swamp. Brown banana peels littered the counter and dirty utensils were everywhere. A boy with blue hair was trying to make a concoction that rhymes with "Wizard" and rather than clean the apparatus from the prior serving, simply re-used it so that all the prior goop on it ended up in my "Wizard." I swear I didn't see one single adult working behind the counter. All kids - and totally loony, too.

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The Snobpera

The Opera. Those very words make me shudder. I must confess. I have had a bad experience with Opera and thus my fear and loathing. Yes, on a vacation one year I spent ten days in a condominium listening to a neighbor playing opera from morning to night. I couldn't find the clod (and it's probably a good thing) so I suffered day in and day out. As a result, I decided to do some research on the Opera and am pleased to offer a modern day translation of the classic opera, Daus Mogifica Trotto a Fresca.

Ab ovo cogito ergo sum habeas corpus in vino veritas
Habemus Papam caveat emptor non prosequitur per diem
Bibere venenum in auro facile princeps lapsus linguae
Quantum meruit omnia vincit amor deus absconditus

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The Graduation Gift Racket

I hate the month of May. This is the month that my mailbox overflows with "Give Me a Gift" announcements. Yes, it seems like every kid in America graduates from high school AND college every single year. School kids and their parents spend enormous sums of money to purchase fancy graduation announcements that are then sent to every person they know well, know slightly and don't know at all. These announcements are amazing. They have gold embossed school crests and raised lettering. They are printed on an expensive, heavy paper stock that required the sacrifice of a single tree per announcement. And, they arrive in seven different envelopes of "graduating" sizes.

I'm glad kids graduate from high school and college. That means they will get out of the house and go sponge off of someone else (presumably a spouse or a roommate). I'm just not sure how all of this equates with asking me for a gift to celebrate this occasion. In fact, these newly minted graduates ought to be writing a hefty check to Mom and Dad for feeding, clothing and housing him or her for the past 18 to 22 years. If I knew that the gift request was for the purpose of accumulating enough money to re-pay Mom and Dad, I might be a bit more inclined to go along with this racket. But I have a sneaking suspicion that Mom and Dad aren't going to see any of the loot.

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Mmm, Mmm, Good!

Gross, disgusting and sick. That's what I call it. I'm talking about the way some people eat. I can't imagine they were taught some of the things that I witness. Yet it's obvious that they've been feeding their face this way for quite a long period of time. Let's examine a few of the more repugnant techniques that can be observed on a daily basis.

The Loud Swallower - I swear I don't know whether some people just have a small esophagus or try to swallow too much at once. But they sound like an old hydraulic elevator as they attempt to force whatever they just chewed or drank from their mouth into their stomach. Every swallow tends to magnify the loudness until a point is reached where you can't hear yourself think.

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Let's Study That for $10 Million

Do you know how much of our tax money is spent by politicians and bureaucrats who commission studies of some of the most ridiculous things imaginable? In 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 212 to 210 in favor of funding $2 million for the following studies:

Grant Number RO1HD043689: "Mood Arousal and Sexual Risk Taking." An excerpt from the grant abstract: "In a series of laboratory studies, mood and sexual arousal will be induced and their individual and combined effects on sexual risk taking will be examined."

Grant Number RO3HDO39206: "Study on Sexual Habits of Older Men." This study seeks to determine whether older men experience a decline in sexual behavior and if that decline is associated with sexual dissatisfaction, "especially with behaviors (such as masturbation) that may be substituted for more rigorous activities."

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Dragon Breath

There are some of you who are stumbling through life oblivious to the fact that your breath smells like you ate something out of a cat's litter box. If you eat an onion or a jalapeno pepper every once and a while and have a little problem from time-to-time this isn't about you. But for those of you morons who are clueless about your chronic condition I have been elected to gently share this with you and give you some kind suggestions as to what you can do about it. For starters, you should try to kill yourself. If this doesn't work take the following steps.

1. To find out if you have breath that smells like a camel fart take this simple test. Put a plastic bag tightly over your head and breathe normally. If you begin to feel lightheaded (or if the plastic bag melts on your face) it's a good bet that some drastic action must be taken quickly.
2. Do not attempt to use mouthwash, breath spray or mints for this will only mask the root of the problem.

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