Press Release Spoof

The previous post I made was a spoof of a press release I wrote at work in about 10 minutes. My intentions were to use it in our bi-weekly newsletter as a random joke, but at the urging of my office mate I sent a copy of it to Privateer Press prior to actually putting it in the newsletter. It was a good thing I did because I received a prompt response.

I'm not entirely sure how anyone could possibly be stupid enough to believe that anything in the article could even remotely be true (except for the part about PETA), but rather than risk it I bowed before the pressure (and the thought of an Army of Lawyers showing up at work) and we did not put the article in the newsletter. Instead I posted it here as Fan Fiction ... YAY freedom of speech!

For amusements sake, here is the response I got from P.P.

Hello Patrick,

At this time we would prefer that you do not put out any false news articles that use the Privateer Press trademark or trademark protected brands. Creating news articles such as this can confuse the marketplace as to the origin of their reporting and while your article is clearly for the purpose of generating some humor, some people cannot see the forest for the trees. We don’t want to have to answer for the humor you generate. We appreciate your support of our products but at this time cannot give you permission to proceed with this idea. If you have any questions let me know.

Privateer Press to the Rescue!!!

Living and working in southern TN means that the recent flooding in Nashville and northern TN has hit somewhat close to home. I was told over the weekend that the "newish" mall in Nashville, Opry Mills is underwater and that the aquarium there flooded. While the salt-water fish died because rain and rain water doesn’t actually count as salt water, the fresh-water fish were able to escape and are currently swimming among the mannequins and jeans and tee’s found in stores on the first floor of the mall. Not that the mannequins or clothes are swimming, just that the fish are swimming around them.

Among the fish currently swimming through the mall are several species of piranha, so needless to say, clean up efforts have been slow to begin.

However, help is on the way! Privateer Press, creators of miniature games like Warmachine and Hordes, have announced that they are sending a team of specially trained Cygnar Wildlife experts armed with a newly released weapon to help with the capture and containment of these dangerous, man eating schools of fish.

The weapons they are to be armed with are a combination shrink-ray, plastic-maker, and master-mini-painter. The purpose and function of these weapons is both economical and strange at the same time. Without going into too much detail, a Privateer Press employee, speaking anonymously, claimed the guns (made in the U.S.A) are said to simultaneously shrink and transmutate the piranha while sucking it into the barrel of the gun so the master-mini-painter can trim the flare and paint them for use in Privateer Press’s upcoming release of a new Monsterpocalypse expansion.

Members of PETA arrived last week and have been systematically feeding themselves to the piranha in an effort to make the fish too big to fit into the barrels of the guns and Protectorate and Khadorian protesters have gathered outside the mall and are claiming that the Cygnarians rigged the selection process and threatened head officials at Privateer Press into awarding them the contract.

I’ll be giving updates on the situation as they become available ……

Random Interlude

This is not the Part 2.

This is simply random scribblings.

I was sick today at work. Not sure what that was all about but I was sweating but chilled, upset stomach and generally not feeling well, so I left early. I'm not sure what they think about me leaving early at work but they didn't seem to have a problem with it. Especially since I've been told that if I am running a fever of over 101, I need to take my ass to the nearest ER as my leg may be infected and that would be very, very bad.

Can you imagine what it must have been like to be the guy who said hey, lets get a patent on small pointed sticks, they are great for getting the food out of your teeth. We shall call them Toothpicks.

I can't help but be envious of the person who was able to get a patent and make money off of little pointed sticks.

I consider myself a thinker much more than a doer.

I have a million and one ideas.

Know the actual steps involved in accomplishing maybe 100 of them

And have the motivation to actually do zero of them.

Instead of doing anything productive, I sit here nursing a broken leg and wasting time writing blogs, or playing on Facebook, or reading a sci-fi novel, or sleeping, or more and more here lately, I simply find myself sitting here thinking, just letting my mind wander, sometimes having day-dreams, sometimes just sitting here completely blank.

The Convention - ConNooga - happened Feb 19 - 21, and events have been going ever since then, revolving around my busted leg, and it wasn't until just a few days ago I got up enough motivation to actually write about what had happened.

I have this feeling, I would guess that alot, most, if not all people have the same feelings, but I have this feeling that I'm meant for something more than my current station in life.

Yet I do nothing.

I see people waiting tables or working as gas station attendants, older people, and I think to myself, is this what you wanted from life?
Is this what you dreamed of being as a child?
Are you happy, or even content?
Do you look back on the things in your life and wish you would have chosen a different path?

Even at the relatively young age of 29, I look back often and wonder where I would be and what I would be doing had I made different decisions.

Some days I feel like I spend more time looking back than I do forwards.

My Adventure Part 1

I had thought about writing this as one of those stories with the ending told first and then I have some sort of flashback to the beginning and tell the rest of the story. Yeah, No, don't think I could pull that off, so I suppose I will tell this tale like any other.

The true beginning of my story is sometime back in October but if I wrote this out play by play and word for word it would be insanely long and I would probably have to be standing behind you with a stick to get you to read the entire thing. So I'll paraphrase, cut corners, leave out the vital parts and just try to move things right along in an semi-orderly fashion.

As I was saying, last October, I says to the boss, "Hey Boss, ConNooga is coming up in Feb. we should get booth, take all our damaged merchandise and sell it there for super cheap. The boss, being the business minded creature he is, shocked the hell out of me and said "OK"

Kind of a let down huh? All he said was ok, once you get to know him that simple 2 letter mangling of a word means alot because The Boss is not prone to long speeches, or even short speeches. I.E. He don't talk alot most days.

Anyways, Christmas hit and ConNooga was thrust to the back burner by game crazed customers and enough orders to wrap a BMW in (I'm assuming on that, as none of us own a BMW)

Christmas comes and goes and ConNooga pops its cute little sci-fi head up again and we start getting ready. It was about this time that The Boss decides to speak again and what he says has a rather profound and scary effect on me. He said, "Since it was your idea, Your in charge."

Teach me to open my mouth again won't it.

We get everything in readiness and off we go, into the wild. The land of Role play and Fandom Girls, Star Wars meets Star trek while watching Family Guy and rolling a 20 sided die to see who has to call and order the next pizza while shouting for mom to bring more Mt. Dew to the basement door.

We arrive and set up our booth (with a few minor complications) and amazingly we sell our first item before we even have the booth complete. I'm not sure the sale counts though, as it was to the ladies in the next booth selling Browncoat merchandise.

For the Record, those ladies and the S2P/Pinnacle booth across from us and the fairy wings booth on our other side were all very very cool people who did everything they could to help me out when I was in need. I hope The Boss lets us go back and I hope that they are the booths surrounding us again next year.

Things progress and we sell a few items but the first night of a con is usually slow for vendors. so we spent our time watching people dressed as anime characters and Jedi walk around and I took to asking passersby's if they wanted to buy a Giraffe. This may seem odd but one of the items we had brought with us was a 100 dollar 5 ft tall plush Giraffe. If nothing else it got people to stop walking because come on ... how often does someone ask you if you want to buy a Giraffe?



If you look close you can see the giraffe I was speaking of, the shelves we put everything on are 6ft so the Giraffe is slightly taller than 5 ft. The bloke on the computer is my colleague Noah. He is the resident IT wizard where I work ... kinda makes sense because he is messing with the laptop in the pic ... Go Figure!

As a random statement, This was Noah's first and after this adventure, most likely his last convention.

(That was foreshadowing ... kinda ominous and mysterious wasn't it)

We closed up shop and headed for our room, The wife had called as soon as she got off work and informed me that she was on her way. We head up front to collect her and get everything unloaded in the room. Then we proceeded to wander around talking to people, socializing, meeting people and randomly asking if anyone wanted to buy a Giraffe, Of course, no one did.

Around 10 we found a room party that had not yet begun but the doors were open, so we wandered in and offered to help finish setting up if we could score a drink. We helped them set up for awhile, took our drinks and began to wander again.

Around 11:30 we came upon a group standing in a hallway waiting for the doors to open for a different room party, they all seemed in good spirits and we could tell that they had already begun partying several hours before.

As we were standing talking to them, one of the group stumbles into me. I don't know if he was pushed or lost his balance or what, but the end result was that he stumbled into me, knocking me down, he then fell on top of me. We got all untangled and sorted out and I realized that my leg felt like it was on fire. I could put no weight on it, couldn't even touch it. They (the guy that fell on me and a gentleman named Ryan Buckley who does interviews for http://www.infernaldreams.net) carried me back to the hotel room and I got The Wife to get me some ice to put on it. I thought maybe it was just really bruised and letting it sit the rest of the night with ice on it would make it good enough for me to still work the booth.

I woke up the next morning and could not feel my toes. Waking the wife up I made the ever dreadful decision to go to the E.R.

There I was told I had broken my shin in 2 places. They shot me up with Morphine, which didn't seem to help at all when they set my leg. The doctor that set the bone seemed very unhappy or pissed off or something, after he got through POUNDING on my leg to set the bone, I asked him if I had done something to piss him off. He, of course, said no, wrapped it in a toes to mid-thigh cast that probably weighed around 10lbs. and sent me on my way.



The Wife had gone home while I was in the E.R. to get crutches we had there and to make sure the kids were OK, she was still not back when they OK'd me to leave, so I called our warehouse manager to come save the day. He showed up and drove me back to the convention and carried me to our booth so I could continue to harass con goers as they walked by, only now I was saying things like, "My leg will feel better if you buy a giraffe!"

I never sold that stupid Giraffe but we did manage to make over 1,500 dollars which I think is excellent for our first attempt at having a convention booth and considering what all happened.

I want to point out that I probably would not have made it the entire weekend without the organizers of ConNooga and the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel staff doing everything they could to help me. They were very cool and they even found me a wheelchair to roll around in for the rest of my stay at the hotel.

And I also would not have made it without the help and donated pain medicine from the various people I met and talked to through-out the convention. We didn't realize there was a 24 hour pharmacy in Chattanooga and The wife got back too late on Sat afternoon to get my script filled, so when word got out what had happened and that I didn't have any pain meds people were coming by the booth to offer me pain killers and one girl actually offered to share some of her dope with me. I haven't smoked that since high school so I politely declined but I still thought it was a very kind offer.

The very best was when a hotel staffer came up while I was rolling around getting people to sign my cast and gave me a half full bottle of Crown Royal. Seems our waiter from dinner Friday night had talked to some of his co-workers and they managed to scrounge up the bottle from someones late night stash. I'm still using the purple bag as a sort of alcoholic man-purse to carry my stuff in as I fumble about on crutches.

It's not exactly the fame I would wish upon someone but by the end of ConNooga, I was a semi-celebrity, I even got interviewed by Mr. Ryan Buckley for his website.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgBrfvGeJYM

My part starts around the 58 second mark.

One last thing of note for the weekend, the Con Chairman asked if I would try to hang on to the cast so they could put it in the Charity auction next year. After all ... Every Sig on it was from someone at the convention or someone who worked for the hotel.

Stay Tuned for part 2 of My Adventure ... to be written as soon as I feel like writing again.

Disjointed Thoughts

I do not smoke pot. I don't have a problem with it, I just choose not to use it. I honestly don't see the point in it. I can eat some Twinkies and take a nap all on my own without the risk of being arrested.

The thing I don't understand about people who do smoke pot, is their willingness to sign their names to petitions trying to change the laws on drug use in the US. I'm not real big on Conspiracies and there is no Tin Foil on top of my head to keep the Aliens out, but it honestly seems kinda dumb to sign a "I Support Drug Use" petition which is then going to be sent to the GOVERNMENT.
Come on people ... honestly ... there is no need for a conspiracy or secret undercover stoner agents or any of that crap when you are sending them a document with your name on it.

Just a thought.

And another thing ... Trial by a jury of your peers. I've watched Court TV a few times in my years on this planet and I've never in my life seen an actual jury of peers. If the system were to be taken seriously, then, for instance, if a drug dealer were on trial for murder, wouldn't all the members of the jury also have to be drug dealers or at least in the same social class as the accused? How can it be called a jury of your peers when the people passing judgment on a drug dealer are doctors and lawyers and socialites and school teachers who don't have the faintest clue of what the accused goes through and has to deal with on a daily basis, much less be in a position to pass judgment on them.

Also ...

Children are NOT our future, and I can prove it.

Children can not possibly be our future because by the time the future gets here ...
They are no longer children.
So HA!

Scratch N' Sniff

So I'm sitting at work a couple days ago, talking to Noah when a thought hits me like a brick thrown by an anti-abortionist.

Scratch N' Sniff Lottery Tickets

Now the way I see it, you could do this 2 ways.

1. Make them all smell good, that way even if you don't win anything, you still have something pleasant to sniff.

2. Have the smells determine if and what you win. If your card smells like Bananas, you win 10 bucks, smell cherries you win 50 and so on. However, if it smells like a skunk, you didn't win anything, plus you got a nose full of skunk stink.

It would make the lottery tickets that only wins you a dollar and smell like fresh cut grass a lot more appealing if you knew the alternative was getting a ticket that won you nothing and smelled like rotting flesh, or used babies diapers.

Moving

On Dec the 18th The Wife called the landlord's Office and reported that the ceiling in the kitchen was leaking. She was told that it would be taken care of. Then ... Nothing. Then about 2 weeks ago we got a leak in the basement spraying hot water. We called the landlord's office and reported that and also reminded them of the leak in the kitchen. Then the leak turned into a spray and I had to shut off the water from the hot water tank to get it to stop.

That was 2 weeks ago yesterday. Since then we have effectively been without hot water.

He sent a guy out here who "fixed" the pipe, only to have it bust and flood the basement the next day. Myself, The Wife, and Cell Phone Ears (our oldest child) spent over an hour mopping up water with towels.

So we called again.

Last Saturday The Landlord sent another guy out here who said we would have to wait until Monday before he could work on it, but in the mean time we could duct tape it and it would work just fine.

Sunday night we duct taped it hoping it would hold long enough for us to take quick showers ... HAHA, stupid us. It lasted about 30 minutes then flooded the basement with hot water again. Another hour spent mopping up water.

Monday I miss half a day of work because the other guy comes and spends 15 minutes replacing the defective part with another exactly like it. He was suppose to be here at 9am, he showed up around 11:45, then he asks me to tell the landlord he was there 2 hours working on it so he could make a little extra money. Yeah Right.

Tuesday night I'm laying in bed (in the basement) when I hear the oh so lovely sound of water spraying. I jump up and what do my wondering eyes see?? Water spraying through-out the basement. We moved what we could of our stuff out of the water and said screw the basement, called The Landlord and slept upstairs in the living room.

Wednesday, Called The Landlord again but no answer, left a voice mail.

Thursday it was raining and the drip in the kitchen is back, now the ceiling is turning a yucky blue/green color. Called and then sent an email to The Landlord saying that we still have no hot water, the kitchen is leaking and we are no longer going to pay rent until everything is fixed. No response.

Friday The Landlord sends out one of his guys to replace the galvanized pipes that are rusted and spraying water with copper pipes. Did not look at the kitchen, nor fix the other 2 leaks in the basement. While fixing the basement pipe he busted a hot water pipe in the main bathroom upstairs. Rent is 3 days late at this point. The Landlords office calls looking for the rent, we tell them that we are looking for a new place to live and will not pay any rent until every leak, crack and busted pipe is fixed. We now have hot water, just not in the main bathroom where the shower is.

Saturday ANOTHER guy shows up and looks at all the messed up stuff ... claims he can fix it all no problem but in reality he can only fix what The Landlord tells him to. Says he will be back that afternoon or Sunday to fix what he is told to. We go looking at houses and put in an application on one of them.

Sunday the 3rd guy still has not come back, it starts raining and the leak in the kitchen turns into a flood when the leak pops to reveal a hole under the ceiling paint more than an inch in size.

Monday I call the county health inspector. We are told that we were accepted at the new place. The 3rd guy comes back a little after 5pm, fixes everything but the roof / kitchen ceiling in about an hour.

Tuesday I turn in my formal complaint to the Building Inspector, got new tags on the van and got lost in the middle of downtown Cleveland, Tn trying to get to work from the courthouse.

Wed it starts raining about noon and I have to use my lunch break to rush home, clean up the flood in the kitchen and put a soup pot under the hole in the ceiling. It is now dripping a black/green slime as well as rain water. Go back to work and call the Building Inspector. Spent most of last night packing boxes.

Today we signed the lease on the new place and I met the building inspector. She inspected the house and basically said that if we had not already been in the process of moving then she would have had to make us move. She is coming back in the morning to take pictures. Said that she was going to have to get an electrical and a plumbing inspector out here before she could write her report. This evening the Landlord called again asking about the rent and to see if everything had been fixed, I told him the roof and kitchen had not but the other stuff had been fixed for the most part.

Basically it is like this ... Helen Keller did most of the electrical wiring for this house and the water heater / pipes in the house are so old that Moses installed them, then hit them with his staff to get the water to flow through.

A bit of Randomness

This particular entry has no specific theme and it's likely to bother or upset people of a gentle nature due to the rambling, scattered way my brain seems to work.

First on the agenda tonight ...

Prostitutes and Pornography

What the hell is the difference? Hookers get paid to have sex and porn stars get paid to have sex. The only real difference I can see is that the hookers don't usually have people watching them have sex.

I don't think it can be based on looks, most porn stars are pretty and I'm sure there are a few hookers out there that are pretty. Both classes of umm .. "working women" have their fair share of, shall we say, less than desirable features.

Is it the fact that porn stars have a camera and light crew and a director, while hookers only have a back alley dumpster or a car's back seat and a pimp?

Next is ...

Burger King and Diet Coke

When I was 18, I was an assistant manager at a burger king.
It would always amaze me when people that could barely fit through the door would come to the counter, order 2 double whoppers with extra cheese, a large fry and a Diet Coke.

Do you honestly think that drinking the diet coke is going to save your jello ass?
Instead of ordering a diet coke with your 8000 calorie mid-afternoon snack, why don't you take your ass to the gym ... or at the least stop using the handicap go-carts at walmart because your too damned lazy to walk.

Also on my mind is ...

Africa

I'm sick and tired of being politically correct about our "African-American" countrymen (and women). If you were born in this country or if you came here Legally and applied for citizenship then you are my countrymen ... meaning AMERICAN, not African American.
First of all Africa is a continent, not a country. South Africa is a country and I have yet to hear anyone say they are South African American. I've heard Irish American or Mexican American but I don't get this whole African American thing. How can someone claim an entire continent, made up of dozens of different countries and little republics, as their place of origin?

Honestly I think its kind of pretentious. I don't go around calling myself Italian American because my great great grandfather moved here from Italy. Or if I were to follow their example I would be European American. It irks me.

When you come right down to it, not a single person living here in America today is a native of this land. If I remember my history correctly, the first people to live in or on or around the North American area, 1000's of years ago, came here by crossing the ice bridge from Russia. so not even they can claim to be native because they came here from somewhere else too.

Regardless of whether your Asian American, European American, Middle-Eastern American or African American, your still AMERICAN, so lets drop the bullshit racial dividers and segregating pronouns and all just be happy to be AMERICANS and shut the hell up. And if I can't wear a kilt or toga to work then you should not be allowed to wear those silly ass robes and dingy little hats, the tribesmen in Africa wore hundreds of years ago.

Next up ...

Lung Cancer and Smoking.

Who the hell makes up the statistic's for all the crusading do-gooders? The MAD people will tell you that more people die each year from drunk driving than anything else. The anti-smoking crowd will tell you that cigarettes killed more, and the anti-war hippies just smoke a lot of pot and forget what they were saying.

Yes, smoking may cause health problems, so does driving too fast, eating too much red meat, drinking too much, using too much salt, not using enough salt, not washing your hands enough ... the list could go on for hours.

I smoke.
It's a personal choice.
I don't smoke in the house or around the kids.
Leave me alone and quit preaching at me.
And next time you decide to get up on your soap box and tell me how I'm killing myself by smoking, try putting down the super-extra thick burger, large fries and diet coke, first.

I'm tired, it's late and I have to work in the morning so I'll stop now, recharge my batteries, smoke a cig, and get back to bitching tomorrow.

Zombies!!

This is a review I did of the board game Zombie!! for the company newsletter. I was quite happy with it and thought it might be good to re-post here. And now ... without further ado ...



This past Friday, Noah and myself traveled to our local gaming store in search of fun and adventure.

What we found, however, was a mall full of teens and tweens wandering around with their spikey hair, pants falling off their asses and cell phones seemingly growing from their ears.

Into the gaming store we went, there were a few people playing Warhammer 40k and probably a half dozen kids playing random card games, who’s names I won’t mention simply because I don’t want to. Nothing against those games but they are just not my cup of tea.

Not dismayed in the least, we journeyed to my car and after much digging, through hair combs, scrunches, shoes and various other unmentionables that my wife kindly left as gifts for me, we collected the games I had the foresight to bring with me. Munchkin, Munchkin Bites (yes these too are card games but they are an entirely different style of game, one of these days I may get around to explaining the difference), and Zombies!!. After a brief debate we decided to give Zombies!! a try.

As I had played twice before, I did my best to give Noah a quick rundown of the rules while I shuffled the cards and map tiles. Due to some sort of crazy luck I was able to get a decent dice roll (one of the few I got all evening) to see who got to go first and off I went.

Due to limited table space, we made a conscious effort to close off and contain our “Town” somewhat, thus leaving really only one direction in which to grow the board. I must say, it seems as though the creators made a few map tiles and got bored or in a hurry or eaten by their zombies or something because, other than the ‘named’ tiles, there is a surprising lack of different cards to draw. By the end of the game I believe our town had something to the tune of 10 movie theaters, 8 burger joints and probably 10 – 15 of the same nameless factory. I’m not sure if the expansions add any new ‘Regular’ tiles to the game but it would be nice to see something other than Bob’s Burgers or Movie Theaters.

Things were going well until I died, which was not a surprise to anyone, since dice hate me. It was then that Noah decided it would be a great time to play a card allowing him to place 10 zombies on any legal squares. So, of course, he surrounds me with zombies. Luckily I had a card in my hand called Alternate Food Source. The way we read the card, it seemed to say that a player was able to move through a tile containing a zombie without having to fight it. Makes sense, the zombies have another food source so they won’t attack you. It would have been great except for the fact that I played the card, then rolled a 2 (as usual), ending my movement turn on a space still surrounded by zombies. I managed to fight my way out of the crowd when … oh sweet irony … Noah dies and starts out in the town square I had just vacated, thus putting him smack dab in the middle of all the zombies he had surrounded me with.

At that point in the game we had already placed the Helipad and it became a race to the finish line, or the get-a-way ride as the case may have been. Noah had a distinct advantage though, he had a skateboard which doubles your movement. That combined with my inability to roll anything higher than a 2, enabled him to skate right up to the helipad. In a desperate attempt to escape fate, I played the one card I had that could possibly help, a card allowing me to make his movement for him. I promptly ran him into the nearest group of zombies I could find. Little did I realize that by doing so, I was allowing him to win another way, by collecting zombies. See, what I had forgotten was that when you kill a zombie, you collect it, if you can collect 25 zombies then you automatically win. By running him into the nearest group of zombies I gave him the few he needed to get to 25 and win.

Over all it was fun, although I doubt he will be playing that sort of game with me again, because I tend to be a little goofy. I have a very over-active imagination and it comes out sometimes. I spent about half the game making up back stories for the little zombie people, and making them point in certain directions because a girl zombie I named Harriet and a boy zombie I named Charlie, are in love but Reggie over there is also in love with Harriet and now he wants to eat Charlie but poor zombie Bob is in the way. Bob doesn’t love anyone, he just wants to get back to his burger joint to try making a new brain flavored burger. After that he was thinking about catching a movie at one of the 15 or so theaters in town. Hopefully they’re not all showing the same movie, if they are, then someones going to get eaten. But that’s a story for another time.

If that made you even remotely interested in the game you could either come over to my house and we can all sit in the living room floor and play it or you could head over to World at Play Games and buy your very on copy. And to show I'm such a nice guy here is a link straight to it ...

ZOMBIES!!


If you liked my little review and want to read some truly excellent board and card game reviews head over to Drake's Flames located here:
http://drakesflames.blogspot.com/
(Note to M.D. .. I can take down the plug if you want me to, I just really like your reviews and didn't think it would hurt to inform others of the site.)

Sanctity of Marriage

Everyone else in the house is upstairs watching a movie, so I'm in the basement writing. Please forgive the spelling errors as my hands are so cold they slightly hurt.

A few weeks ago on Facebook I noticed that everyone was joining a group or club or whatever it is titled "If you don't believe in gay marriage, don't get one." I thought this was rather funny and posted a comment about it, and I thought I'd also post a comment about it on here.

I think if people want to get married they should be allowed to. They eat, drink, sleep and live together, why not allow them to make the same mistake straight people are allowed to? If they want to get married and be miserable like the rest of us ... MORE POWER TO THEM.

The hardcore crowd will start, at this point, bringing up sanctity of marriage ... "Oh what about the sanctity of marriage? They will destroy the very fabric of our reality if they are allowed to say a few words and put a circular piece of metal on each others hand." BULLSHIT.

The sanctity of marriage lost its bearings and went out the window with the advent of Drive Thru Elvis Chapels and same day divorces. How sanctified is an institution when you can pull up in your car to the window of a building, repeat a few words spoken by an over-weight, oily haired, guy in a sequin jumpsuit, and then drive straight to the nearest courthouse and have it annuled?

Honestly I'm not for it or against it, I really just don't care and I don't understand why otherwise sensible people get all worked up about it. If people worried more about their own lives and less about what the neighbor is doing (or who the neighbor is doing). then things would be alot better in this country and the world for that matter. Really folks ... if gay people want to get married and be miserable like the rest of us, who are we to deny them that choice?

And before we return to our regularly schedualed programming, I wanted to leave you with a couple pictures of the "sanctity of marriage".

Smells = Colors = Seasons = Items

Long ago I worked for Huish Detergents. Ever since then, this basic question has bounced around my mind.

How can a laundry detergent or dryer sheet or even a candle claim to have the scent of "Mountain Streams" or "Ocean Breeze"?

I have YET to find one that claims to have a smell like "Ocean Breeze", that is even close to being honest.

For starters, what does a mountain stream smell like? Grass, trees, dirt and bear shit?

According to these companies they obviously smell like something made in a lab with perfumes.

And I have yet to find a bottle of "Ocean Breeze" that smells of salt water and dead fish.

Also, whats up with these perfumes that are called colors? What exactly does Blue smell like, or Lavender or Pink (the color, not the singer)?

I know, I know ... no one really cares as long as they smell good, right? It just bugs me a bit, whatever happened to Truth in Advertising? Is it as dead and gone as the concept of an honest politician? I believe it is.

I just try to call them as I see them. You can call a pile of dog shit "Ice Cream", it's still gonna taste like shit.

Fashion Victims

It is now January the 2nd. The temperature outside is roughly 26 degrees and the high yesterday was 33 degrees. Yet I can not tell you how many people I saw walking into walmart wearing the most insane clothing despite the temperature outside. I don't know what the deal is with the shaggy/furry boots girls are wearing these days but they suck ass. They look ridiculous and worse yet, these girls wearing them think they are hot shit and at the height of fashion. Makes me want to throw up in my mouth and spit it at them like it was the acid spit from Aliens.

They look retarded ... and cold. Hell, if they really were retarded(mentally challanged) and had to wear the helmet, at least then they would be warmer than they are with their silly boots and short skirts and tee shirts.

Honest to god, a few days ago I saw a girl walking into a store in 20 degree weather wearing those silly boots, a mini skirt, a short sleeved button-up tee shirt and a scarf. No jacket, no personal space heater ... nothing but some fuzzy boots, a scarf and some super hard ass nipples to protect her dumb ass from the cold.

What the hell is wrong with people? Are we so desperate to look good and be at the height of fashion that we will give up personal health and the ability to be ... not warm, but not quite frostbite cold while walking from the car to the store. Or are these girls simply so stupid that they believe "Well, if I look good then ... nothing can stop me"