Finally getting caught up with The Office...

...after weeks of watching religiously and despite being WAY behind the times, coming in to work at 9am after a 2 hour commute, busting ass all day, staying late, kicking back with Season 5 Episode 1 where Jim finally proposes to Pam and then searching out Episode 2 only to find out it's been removed due to COCKSUCKING VIOLATION OF TERMS OF AGREEMENT AND NOT BEING ABLE TO FIND OUT WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED!!!! AAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH! FUCK!

"Air Fresheners"

Jesus. To the wonderful people working hard at Glade and other "scent-oriented" companies, I'm asking you: please knock it off!

I realize that you are exposed to scents all day long so perhaps your sense of smell has grown a little dull, much in the same way that listening to loud music all day would damage your hearing. Perhaps you don't realize that the rest of us still have a fairly sharp sense of smell. Perhaps you don't realize that I, like many others, can't stand to breathe in 500 acres of lilac bushes conveniently compressed into a small, handheld canister.

What I'm trying to say is, YOUR SHIT IS TOO STRONG! I'm here using YOUR shit to cover up the stench of MY shit and afterwards I'm left begging for the smell of MY shit because YOUR shit smells like shit. SHIT!

Whatever happened to "hints of things"? Hint of lilac, hint of seabreeze, hint of apple...
I feel like somebody's loading up a bazooka with a bushel of apples and firing it point blank right at my head.

Oh, and your ads with smiling soccer moms flinging open wide windows isn't helping.

Something smells funny in here and I don't think Glade has a label on it...

EEEWWWWWW!!!

Dear God, why?! Why?! I really hate how you can't unsee things.

You're probably a little confused. Why is the title an exclamation of disgust? Why do I want to apparently unsee Milo and Otis, such an innocent children's movie? Well, I'm here to tell you, friend.

<<< SPOILER ALERT >>>

Milo and Otis was a family favourite when I was a kid. Dudley Moore's charming narration and British Bob Saget-like animal voices could always coax a smile from my brother and I. Then I grew up and the our video just kind of disappeared and was forgotten about.

A couple weeks ago I read something online that mentioned the movie and I had one of those "OMGZZZ I TOTES FORGOT ABOUT THAT!!!" moment and decided that if I happened to come across it in the video store I'd check it out again for old time's sake. Well, I did see it in the video store and I did rent it.

Today I watched it and was having a nice trip down memory lane. Milo didn't die when he went over the waterfall in a box...Otis rescued his friend from a hole that he was trapped in...and then DEAR SWEET GOD WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?! THE CAT JUST SHIT OUT A KITTEN! IN EXTREME CLOSE-UP! WITH INCREDIBLE DETAIL!

I spent the next hour and a half periodically dipping my head into a bucket to expell my lunch of yogurt, Werther's Original, and caffeine tablets. My head was spinning. How could this be? It was like the filmakers wanted to drop an atomic bomb on my friendly, sunny mosey down memory lane. And then crash like 6 trains into it.

This was not in the script. I was supposed to watch this movie without crapping yogurt out my mouth. I couldn't remember ever seeing graphic footage of a cat dumping out the brood. Of all the times I watched Milo and Otis as a kid, I can't remember ever being completely grossed out. Was the scene cut from the copy I had? Have I just become a huge pussy (no pun intended) in my age? Either way, I'm now traumatized.

In closing, use your best discretion when watching Milo and Otis. It gets pretty rough. Apparently you get to see the dog laying egg as well, but I was too busy vomitting and crying like a little girl to notice. Speaking of which, fun fact: yogurt has pretty much the same consistency coming out as it did going in. The more you know.

Breaking My Playstation 2

Today I broke my PS2. Apparently I'm not good at fixing things.

My PS2 was always used mainly for watching DVDs. I'm not a big gamer although I do play the odd round of Barbie Horse Adventures. Mostly, though, it was used for watching Anchorman for the 700th time at 4:30am after a night at the bar. Well...to be fair, it would have been the 699th and a quarter time if that was the case. Don't you love waking up at 1pm with the DVD title screen looping over and over?

But anyway. A while back the PS2 started acting up with DVDs. They wouldn't play properly. The movie would freeze every few seconds and continue to do so until you got fed up and turned the system off. And recently it just flat out stopped reading DVDs. Games were fine, but DVDs were like poison.

I looked into it and concluded that the lens must need cleaning. So I got instructions on how to open up the PS2 to clean it. And today I set out to finally nip the problem in the bud.

Let me say right now that opening up a PS2 is way harder than getting those hard-shell packages open. I went at this thing with screwdrivers and vice grips and scissors and it took me well over half an hour to get it open.

In the midst of prying and crying and screaming and swearing I managed to cut myself on a sharp edge on one of the pieces inside. It started to bleed and I thought to myself, "Oh no, oh shit, oh boy. This is bad, this is bad." I became worried and drove myself to the emergency room. Panicking, I entered the hospital and I was rushed immediately into one of the rooms where a doctor looked at my hand.

I still haven't been able to figure out why, but the doctor seemed none too pleased with me. I was still a little shaken from my accident so I didn't quite absorb everything he said. But "asshole" and "for real emergencies only" were tossed around quite a bit. Whatever. I think he was just jealous that I left with his last Flinstones Band-aid wrapped around my pinky. And why was that kid with the two broken femurs glaring at me as I passed back through the waiting room? Jeez, lighten up.

After I returned home I continued to try and fix my PS2 only to have it conk out completely. Nothing works. I think I must have damaged the ribbon that connects the reset and eject buttons to the rest of the system. It's fucking balls.

Now I have no DVD player, no video game console, and a wound on my right pinky (which apparently isn't that serious but it so totally IS!). Plus I have to live with the knowledge that I can't fix things for shit and as such, can never be labelled as a real man.

Fuck.

Weird-Ass Baby Names

Is it just me or have celebrities gone clinically insane? I can let the occasional Candy or Trixie go. I still think they're kind of weird shortened versions of normal names (Candice and Beatrix) and they sound incredibly stripper-y, but I can let them slide. Some of these celebrity baby names though...good fucking gravy.

How can anyone think Fifi Trixibell or Pilot Inspektor is a good name for a kid? It's a good thing that these people are famous and have a lot of money because holy shit, are they going to be spending a fortune on their kid's therapy. I have a friend who shares his name with a famous gay musician and he's told me more than once how annoying it is to be associated with this musician ALL THE TIME despite the fact that he makes good music (or so I think). The funny thing is, my friend wasn't even named after this musician. It's just a rare enough name that people associate it with just this one musician.

It's kind of like being named Elvis when your parents weren't even fans of Presley. They just liked the name. But who else is named Elvis besides Presley and Stojko? Nobody. So you're stuck with people associating you with them for the rest of your life. I'm getting a little off-topic here though.

I mean, are you thinking of the kid when you name it something completely stupid? Maybe you think it's funny and cute, but how funny and cute is it going to be when li'l Hopper goes a-hopping right off the top of a building because he just can't take one more fucking day of all the tormenting?

Really, if you want to be clever and creative, paint a picture and come up with one of your dumbass names for it. But don't take it out on the poor little fuck. Tired of Jim and John and Mike and Mary and Stephanie? Fine. Don't get stupid about it. Name them one of these old-fashioned names that has gone out of style. Walter, Bertha, Priscilla, Milton, Abraham, Betty, Charles, Edwin, Harriet, Martha, Gene, Henry, Grace. Sensible names and they stand out because everyone else thinks Madison and Dylan are clever names. They're not.

I have to say though that Penn Jillette named his daughter something that truly made me laugh even though it's still dumb: Moxie CrimeFighter. It's almost like he himself thinks these over-the-top names are completely insane and wanted to satirize them by saying "You think Apple and Brooklyn are good? Check this shit out!" It sounds like a saucy superheroine's name. Clearly it's just Penn's humour but Bluebell Madonna (Geri Halliwell's kid) is not humour. It's just an empty-skulled has-been who thinks she's naming her daughter something precious and unique. Well, it's sickening.

All I'm trying to say is that shrooms and child-naming don't always mix.

Paid Programming on the Radio

Jesus Christ, is this shit boring or what? The younger folks may not even be aware of this, listening to their iPods or iPhones or whatever spooky device they get their music from. Help me out here, I'm so utterly out of touch! Anyway, this paid programming is not meant to sell anything like TV infomercials. It is usually a half hour segment, usually happening on weekend mornings, dedicated to discussing some of the most boring crap ever.

I can think of lots of paid programming shows that air regularly on all the AM stations I listen to (because I'm 23 and I'm that fucking cool). Out of all of them, I can't think of a single one I enjoy listening to. Let's see. There's a computer/software/virus protection show, a gardening show, a car show, a Christian show, a "woman's perspective" show, a travel show, a home improvement show... Shall I continue? Please say no. This is so god damn boring.

The worst though, the absolute worst show...the show that makes me want to set fire to myself to lessen the agony...is called the Buddha Lounge. This show is perfectly dreadful. It makes me fully understand why people hate hippies. By hippies, I don't mean the traditional counter-culture people, but the people that seem to get associated most with the term these days. I'm talking about these pansy-ass, pussy-ass, gentile, "alternative-lifestyle", yoga-practicing, organic-food-eating, meditating people. These are the people that make up the Buddha Lounge.

Whether they're talking about Feng Shui or spiritual vibes and energies, they make me want to puke because they always speak in sort of a hushed manner. It's hard to describe, but if you group together the words "yoga", "lifestyle", and "pansy" into sort of an idea to describe the way someone speaks, you're on the right track.

Enough Buddha Lounge bashing though. The point is that all of these shows are excruciating. They all have people phoning up and asking for advice. Who listens to this shit? I couldn't care less about other peoples' difficulties in the garden or the hardships they're running into with their plumbing. Snore. SNORE. SNORE!!!

Unfortunately these shows will continue though because the station makes money off of them. I just wish a cool one would finally come along. Like "The Suicide Hotline Show!" Or "The Kick Tim Geithner In the Balls Over and Over and Over Show!" Well, maybe that one's better for TV. I'd watch it though.

Cell Phones

I am a 65 year old man living in a 20-something year old's body. Some people say I'm living in the 60s. To some extent that's true, but I'm not a "Heeeeyy man...groovy." sort of person. I'm just kind of living in the past. I'm a young person who hates young people. Well, not all of them. Some of them are pretty sensible. But to get onto tonight's topic, some people can use cell phones responsibly, but (it seems) the majority of young people cannot.

PUT. DOWN. YOUR. FUCKING. CELL. PHONE.

I don't know how I can surpass that intensity on the internet. I feel like I'm still not getting the message across. Just put the fucking cell phone down for the love of God.

I can see how cell phones can be useful, don't get me wrong. Like when a jackass comes a-shooting up your American Citizenship class. Cell phone...pretty fucking helpful.

These empty-headed young people though...there are too many of them that flat out abuse their cell phones. Jesus Christ, every 10 minutes they're on their phones checking for messages or some shit. I really have to cut into the internet on cell phones. Why? Why? Again, unless you're being attacked by a crazed gunman and you have to get a final Rickroll in as you grasp for your final breaths, what is the fucking point? Wait until you get home to waste your life. I'm pretty sure Harry Truman never said, "God, I'm just going to lose my shit if I don't get on MSN like fucking IMMEDIATELY."

What is with this need to always be clicking phone buttons? People are so impatient. Everything has to be instant, real-time, high-speed, gimme gimme, now NOW! Fucking relax. People from 1910 are awesome. Why? Because they wrote letters with (HEART ATTACK WARNING!) a fucking pen and paper! And they expected that it would be a little while before they got a response to what they wrote. And when they got that response it was meaningful because they knew someone had taken the time out of their day to write them back. It wasn't some dim-witted 15 year old kid typing "LMAO" into his phone, standing next to the speaker at an Alexisonfire concert.

What am I trying to say? I get cell phones. I can see how they can be beneficial. But, goddamn, Louisiana trailer-park women with alcoholic husbands don't see the kind of abuse that kids give to their phones. Lay off the phone for five minutes and maybe you can look a few inches above your screen and finally see the face that goes with the voice that's been talking to you for all these years. Holy crap, that's me! I know, I totes sound different than I look!

I think I may have just discovered why nobody under the age of 50 pays any attention to me...

Twitter

Honestly, I think the biggest thing that's really pissing me off about Twitter is that nobody can SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT. I have other issues with it which I may choose to elaborate on later, but mainly I just want people to enjoy their stupid Twitter in their own homes or offices or on their phone and I don't want to hear about it every 5 minutes.

It was the same thing 2 or 3 years ago with Facebook. This was when I was in college and at this point I can barely even remember what I went to college for, but I still remember in great detail the endless drone of Facebook talk.

"Are you on Facebook? I'm on Facebook. Why don't you get a Facebook? Facebook is awesome. Facebook is so facebooking awesome that I took a picture of Facebook's home page and posted it on my Facebook. That way anyone who comes to my Facebook will see how much I love Facebook and how facebooking awesome Facebook is.
....I can't wait for Twitter to become topical."

I know Facebook is still pretty damn huge, but the difference is now I live far from people in a cave because I hate everyone who has ever lived...ever. So I don't hear about it as much as I used to, thus it doesn't get on my nerves.

But Twitter is now like Facebook was 3 years ago. Nobody will leave it the fuck alone. It's splattered all over the media like a cyber-beer-shit. "Join the news! We're now on Twitter! Join Discovery Channel! We're now on Twitter! Join me, the Pajamagram Asshole! I'm now on Twitter! And so are Pajamagrams!"

To me it seems like we've got a bunch of children running around calling themselves adults and actually believing they are. Everyone wants the latest toy to show off. Things were working just fine before Twitter and now everyone has to have one. Johnny had fun playing with his G.I. Joe set with all his friends until Max from across the street got a Power Man. Now it's "Fuck you, G.I. Joe!" and everyone's running around with Power Men. And G.I. Joe slinks off and develops a drinking problem because he had the world and it was all taken away and he didn't even do anything wrong. People are just stupid.

It's the same thing with cell phones, and iPods, and BlackBerrys, and penis piercings. Nobody needs one, they just want a toy to walk around and play with.

Before Facebook it was Myspace. Going back to high school here. Everybody had to have a damn Myspace except me. And then I finally got one to share my music with people who might like to hear it. I signed up and looked around and it was a God damn ghost town. Everyone had moved to Facebook.

Being on Myspace is almost laughable now. People ask if I'm on Facebook and I say "No, but I have a Myspace that I never visit and never really did." And they cock their head to the side as if to say, "Myspace? Is that something online? Never heard of it." Cool people are on Facebook. Myspace is now for old people, underdeveloped nations, and creepy people who took it way too seriously when it was at the height of popularity, formed an unhealthy obsession, and who are still on it for most of the day.

But here we are, and I'm stuck with hearing endless comments about Twitter. And I mean, for something to become so huge they could have at least come up with a better name. "Crack" would have been great. This entry would not exist because I'd be too busy laughing at everyone proudly declaring they're on Crack and asking others if they're on Crack. It would also be easier to explain to a curious child why the adults have completely fucked up the planet in the way we have.

Twitter sounds too much like Shitter. And tweeting? Lame. We're all gay little bluebirds flying around chirping at each other now. People, stop wasting your time with pointless bullshit and focus on what's actually important: getting the fuck outta my office frequently.

The Kelsey's Cheers Card

I went to Kelsey's tonight for dinner. I also give way too many people free advertising on here.

Now usually when I eat out at a restaurant I'm used to enjoying the meal and then having the waitress bring the bill along with a couple of candies for the road. Kelsey's is doing something a little different these days though because the last two times I've been there I've received the bill, the candies...and a small card that says "Cheers" on the front. On the inside is a thank you note and the waitress's signature.

Now I understand that they're trying to be a friendly restaurant that wants their customers to feel appreciated, but the Cheers card just seems to be a little overboard. I get the hint that they care (or are at least being told by management to pretend to care). They're constantly coming by my table asking me how everything is. They smile. They're friendly. I got it.

The card just seems like a waste. I'm not really sure if I'm supposed to take it home or not. It almost seems like a gift. You wouldn't get a birthday card from your grandfather and then throw it out at the same party. I feel like I'm being a bit rude leaving the Cheers card behind. I feel like the waitress will come back later in the night, see the card still on the table, and feel heartbroken that I didn't like the gift she gave me.

But what am I going to do with it if I take it? It doesn't have enough sentimental meaning to keep around like the card from my grandfather. I'm not going to go home and keep it on the mantle for a couple of weeks. What most people would do is throw it into the trash. Outside the restaurant just in case our well-meaning waitress should happen to be watching. Wouldn't want her to cry.

Either way it's going to end up in the trash pretty damn quick. If I take it, I throw it out. If I leave it, they throw it out. And they give away several of these cards every night. I'm not usually a waste-not, want-not kind of guy, but this is just unnecessary. I don't like the thought of how much paper is being processed and then thrown directly into the trash.

Honestly, Kelsey's, a simple thank you and a smile will do at the end of the night. Really.

Calendars That Start On Monday

Good news, folks! Sometimes limited free time and creative juices make you say, "Fuck it." I missed yesterday so today I'm giving you a double shot of rant! Check back later on for another update!

Now on to...calendars that start on Monday. Makes you shudder, don't it? Perhaps you're lost. What is a calendar that starts on Monday? Well, my inquisitive friend, let me explain.

A normal person's calendar runs:
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday

However, somewhere along the line some yuppie (I'm only guessing, but it had to have been) figured working people might find his work-week-based calendar more helpful:
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

It is not helpful. Not to me, at least. My whole life I grew up with Sunday leading the charge. Sunday was the start of the week. Sure it was part of the weekend, but everyone kind of silently agreed that Sunday was the first day of the week.

And then suddenly I'm an adult with a job and I have to start working with calendars where my friend has been relocated? Balls! It just throws everything off and makes things more confusing.

When I look at a calendar, I'm not looking at the days of the week, I'm looking at the dates. The days of the week are in my head. Monday is second from left, Wednesday is spot on in the middle, Saturday is second from right, etc.

And then Calendar 2.0 comes along and THURSDAY IS NOW IN THE MIDDLE?! MADNESS! And then I have to spend my time lining up days and dates with my finger because my primitive brain can't cope with this earth-shattering change.

Seriously, is there anyone who finds the Monday calendar more user-friendly than the Sunday? Sunday is the first day of the week and has been ever since I can remember. When you make Monday the first day of the week, well, now you're just playing God and I worry about the repercussions of doing so.