All Rights Reserved
© 2002. No portion of my work may be used without my permission.
As you'll discover, my point of view is definitely different. Read my thoughts, learn a few things, have a chuckle.
One of my pet peeves is when experts don't know how to spell words in their own fields. Like authors who start their books with a "forward" instead of a "foreword." Or the businessman who wrote that he was looking for a "bonified offer" (instead of a "bona fide" offer). I've got a bone to pick with that guy! An editor once wrote an article in which he repeatedly mentioned that something "peaked his interest" when he meant "piqued his interest."
When they
speak, the same people produce other gems as well. To them, someone famous is
"infamous" and the coincidental is "ironic."
It's bad enough when experts can't write, it's even worse when they can't properly perform what they're supposedly experts at. Like the sloppy house painter you spend days cleaning up after. The bagger at the grocery store who puts the meat in the same bag as the produce and the frozen foods with the hot bread. The copier repairman who places the open toner cartridge directly on top of the copier then charges you for the half hour it takes him to clean up the spilled toner. The construction worker whose work is anything but workmanlike. The headline writers who keep Jay Leno in business. The doctor who amputates the wrong leg.
I just read
this gem in a resume: "cut operational costs by over 200%." In other words, she
eliminated all operational costs and then reduced them some more. Give this woman a raise.
The video game
Hey lady (subtle Jerry Lewis reference), if you didn't think you should buy it for him, why did you give in?
She justified her decision by saying something to effect of "he doesn't drink, he doesn't do drugs, so if playing this game is the worst thing he can do…" The kid said that the game did not make him violent or want to go out and commit crimes. An expert who was interviewed said that, while a video game may not make kids violent, it may push a kid who's already predisposed towards violence over the edge.
In my humble opinion, everybody is missing the point. The point is this: violent video games and many other things (like movies) trivialize violence, make us indifferent to it. Kids say: "yes, this game is violent but it has no effect whatsoever on me." That's precisely the problem. Violence should have an effect on you. It should make you recoil in horror, it should make you sick to your stomach, it should move you to action. When you're indifferent to violence, you don't work to put an end to it, you allow it to happen. Serial killers become instant media celebrities with their very own groupies. "Gangsta" rappers are at the top of the charts. Past wars are viewed as epic, glorious. People visit Civil War sites as though they were going to Disney. Violence and war are accepted as part of our Human nature. Civilian casualties are simply "collateral damage". Enemy casualties: "targets or positions destroyed." Violence, guns, wars: let's relegate these things to the past once and for all. We're glad the Dark Ages are behind us. We'll be equally glad some day when our barbaric, violent ways are behind us.
I drive a foreign car. When it needs an oil change, I often end up paying extra because of the non-standard oil filter it requires. Jiffy Lube was advertising its early bird special for $19.99 so a few days ago I called the nearest Jiffy Lube to find out the upcharge for the special oil filter. The employee said there would be none. I said: "even if you don't have it in stock?" He said: "even if we don't have it in stock. We can just go to AutoZone next door and get it. We will not charge you extra."
Just to be sure, I called again the next day, spoke to a different employee and he confirmed everything the first one said. So today, I took my car to Jiffy Lube, bright and early. The guy drains oil and then says: "we don't have the right filter in stock." I tell him: "I called yesterday and was told by so and so that you can get it at AutoZone." He answers: "I just called and they don't have it." After going and back and forth he finally tells me he will honor the early bird price if I can bring the filter.
I go across the street to a PartsAmerica store, buy the filter, and come back five minutes later. He says: "I'm going to have to charge you $45 because you've got an exotic car." "What about what you just said about honoring the $19.99 price?" I remind him. I don't even mention the $11 I've just spent on the filter which I didn't expect to have to spend per the assurances of three different employees. He rebuffs me with total disdain and arrogance. Either I pay him what he's asking or he won't do it. I ask to speak to the manager. He's not there. So I leave, swearing that I would never again let myself be jiffed by the lube monkey.
Today I went to Office Depot to buy a software package. There were two similar products by the same company. One was more expensive than the other but the packaging didn't hold a clue as to the difference between them. I asked an employee: "who is the software expert in this store?" She said she was the one and proceeded to read to me what it said on the boxes, as if I couldn't read. I told her I had already read the descriptions and just wanted to know the difference. So she started comparing the text on the boxes and finally declared: "they're identical." I retorted: "then how come one is more expensive than the other?" "I dunno" she said.
I insisted that I really wanted to know the difference before I made a purchase, so she offered: "you're welcome to call the software supplier" and pointed to a phone. I called and got my answer. I tried to tell the employee so she could better help future customers. She wasn't the least bit interested and interrupted: "is there anything else I can help you with today?" It's funny how often the verb "help" is used with a certain tone of voice that gives it the most unhelpful connotations. For example, when someone says curtly: "may I help you?", they mean: "what the heck do you want?" or "what the heck are you doing here?" So when she asked what else she could help me with, I answered: "thanks, you've helped me quite enough for one day."
Another one of my pet peeves is when you go to a lot a trouble to have people over for dinner and then they don't even bother to send you a thank you note or call you afterwards to say thanks. Then, when you run into them a few months later and ask why you never heard from them again, they say with a sincere expression: "why didn't you call us?" Yeah, right, to thank Her Highness for honoring us with Her presence.
Why do people
say things that are redundant like: PIN number (i.e. Personal Identification Number number), new innovation (i.e. a new new
device or process), to continue on (i.e. to carry on on), UMB
Bank, the official name of a bank (i.e. United Missouri Bank Bank)?
It's kind of like Pizza! Pizza! Will they double my interest, interest? Or just the
account fees, fees?
I went on a cruise recently. There was a gentleman who worked for the Centers for Disease Control. He said his life's work was to get everyone to stop smoking because smoking is so dangerous for one's health. He said it with a straight face even though he weighed 350 lbs and never stopped eating during the whole cruise. He was all red and congested and could barely breathe. Apparently being obese isn't bad for your health as long as you don't smoke.
I was driving through a construction zone. There wasn't a lot of room between the constructions barrels on one side and oncoming traffic on the other side so I had to reduce my speed. A car tailgated me for several miles and kept swerving from side to side as if she wanted to pass, but there was only one lane. When the road widened to two lanes, the other vehicle went into one lane and I into the other. I glanced over and saw a woman with a cell phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Does she have a death wish or what?
Michael Jackson today dangled his baby son out of his fourth-floor hotel window. It struck me that the baby's skin was pink. Now I know that Michael has tried to transform himself into a white person but I didn't think he could change his genes too. Nobody seems to know who the mother of the baby is. Who in her right mind would give Michael Jackson her own son? All Michael will say is that it's not his ex-wife's. What's up with her too? She made two babies for him, took the money, and left. Can you imagine how weird it must be to be raised by Michael Jackson? When Jackson and his children go out, they all cover their faces. Even the dangling baby had his face covered by a cloth. Weird.
With all these babies Jacko is raising by himself, the King of Pop should be rechristened the King of Poop. An interesting tidbit: when he was interviewed by Reuters Jacko was wearing lipstick and makeup. He forgot, however, to wear a nose. Have you thought about suing your plastic surgeon, Jacko?
I watched the final episode of The Bachelor tonight. There was enough tongue action and spit swapping between the bachelor and the various women to make me want to throw up my dinner. Why don't they all share their toothbrushes while they're at it? The most revealing moment came when, in the final seconds, Aaron admitted that he had wanted Helene from day one. In other words, he pretended to be torn between her and the other woman just so he wouldn't torpedo the show. The other woman was used and her emotions played with, just so ABC could make millions. How romantic! She took it real hard and was an emotional wreck. I say pull yourself together and sue the cad.
It's funny when Aaron (the bachelor) says he's worked hard all his life. Yeah, right, keeping banker's hours at daddy's bank, I'm sure it must have been real hard. Did you see how much exposure he got for his bank and his restaurant? He would have had to pay millions for that kind of publicity. Looks like his fifteen minutes of fame are earning compounded interest.
Not to be
outdone, I got my own marriage proposal from a woman in
It's interesting how celebrity confers instant status. In other countries, class is determined by birth. Here, it's determined by how famous you are. So we're not really a meritocracy as we like to believe. A lot of people are famous but have done nothing meritorious. When you become famous, simply because you appear on TV or on the big screen, all of sudden people admire you, respect you. Opportunities become available that would never be available to John Doe – even if John Doe was more talented, smarter, and worked harder. It may not be fair but it's reality. That's why people will seek fame at all cost. If they can't get it, they will settle for infamy. In their view, anything is better than anonymity.
Yesterday, Bush was called a moron by a Canadian official. Today the Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, said that after lengthy deliberations, the Canadians have concluded that Mr. Bush is not a moron after all… at least not in the clinical sense. Chrétien explained that the official meant that Bush was stupid, not that he was mentally retarded. Well Jean, great job correcting that faux pas!
I was watching
a piece on Tony Curtis. At one point, he was in a hotel in
By the way
Tony's family is Christian. Many of us in this country have no clue that there are
Christians in the
But I digress.
Monk is a detective who is a neat freak and a germophobe. So
if Tony Curtis was like Monk, he would have said to the man who wanted to shake his hand:
"well, it depends. When is the last time you washed your hands?" Which brings up
a good point: the majority of Americans don't wash their hands when they go to the
bathroom. Some of them don't even touch soap and water on their way out. Some just use
water but no soap, which is totally useless. Others squeeze a drop of soap into their
hands and rinse it off immediately. It is a rare soul that uses proper hand washing
technique which entails working up a good lather for 30 seconds. At an infectious disease
conference, doctors were observed as they left the restroom. Remarkably few properly
washed their hands if at all. If the experts can't do it right, imagine what the rest of
the population is doing. And this is
Once when I went to the ophthalmologist, she wanted to remove my contact lenses. Since she had been foraging in her wastebasket for a piece of paper she was missing, I asked her to wash her hands. She was very indignant and said: "I did wash them." I shot back: "when, this morning?" She didn't seem to like that and removed my contacts without washing her hands. I found myself another ophthalmologist.
Another time, I
went to a restaurant in
Thank you Tony
for inviting me to the set of Monk. I will call you shortly.
The Bush daughters turned 21 today. They will finally, finally, be able to drink their first alcoholic drink (wink, wink)! Halleluiah! Let's just hope they don't ruin their first experience with alcohol by getting arrested for drunk driving.
According to a survey by a condom manufacturer, the French report having sex an average of 167 times a year. That's about every other day! The rest of the time, they are either thinking about sex or looking for a sex partner. What a colossal waste of time and energy! If they spent less time on sex and more time on providing better service and building better cars, they could become the world power they dream of becoming once again. Or maybe they exaggerated when they answered the survey.
Are you saying the French are braggarts? All talk and no action?
Nah... I'd
better stop before I blow my chances of becoming
Back to that condom survey for a second. It's a totally unscientific survey that the condom manufacturer conducts on its website. It's a publicity gimmick. Why would the media pick up this press release every year, mention the manufacturer by name, and give them so much free publicity? By the way, the survey reveals that the Spaniards took last place at 121 times a years. Last place or not, that's still a whole lot of lovin'! Humans as a whole ranked first again this year. Rabbits came in second at 60 times a year. So that explains why there are so many more Humans than even rabbits!
This evening, a guest on the Tonight Show showed Jay Leno a box of Japanese condoms. Jay commented that the box was "not very romantic" because it had some cartoons characters on it. As if condoms and romance weren't mutually exclusive in the first place. When you're worried about catching God knows what awful disease from the other person and you need to use a condom, sex has nothing to do with romance, now does it? "Hey, what's your name, let's get close tonight, I mean real close – but just in case, let's use a thin latex membrane to make sure we don't get too close." Yeah, that's real intimate.
Did you know
that Tiazzi, the Starbucks drink, means "my asses"
in Arabic? That's ass as in behind, rear end, posterior, booty, derrière. Now who has
more than one ass and why would anyone want to name a drink after his many asses? Isn't
that particularly problematic at Starbucks'
John has done some inspired things like introducing "Lebanese-spiced flatbread" (a.k.a. man'ousheh) and Lebanese hummus at Starbucks Cafés, the restaurant concept that Starbucks is testing. But why introduce the Lebanese word for asses? I concluded that it likely was a term of endearment that John's grandfather must have called his grandkids. He probably told them it meant "my beloved little geniuses" or something like that.
In the same
vein, did you know that
This is the last one, I promise. There is a doctor named Dr. Barbour. Barbour means booger in Arabic. His specialty? Why otorhinolaryngologist of course i.e. ear-nose-and-throat (ENT) doctor. For those of you who would enjoy a quick Greek lesson, "oto" means ear, "rhino" means nose, and "larynx" means throat. But you could have guessed that, couldn't you?
My thanks to Nadim and Nabil for the Lebanese "expertise" they provided.
Sharon Osbourne announced yesterday that she plans to launch her own talk show. She wants her first guest to be P. Diddy. She will ask him what it was like to "f*** J Lo" as she put it. Just when you think TV has sunk to its lowest, it sinks even lower. As the saying goes, no one has ever gone broke underestimating the taste of the American public. I'm sure the show will do great. As Jack Osbourne commented, every 13- to 18-year old boy in America will want to hear what it's like to $*&#@* J Lo. I'm sure she will be thrilled to objectified in this manner. I wonder where Jack picks up such foul language, hummm?
Today Kelly Osbourne revealed that two of the episodes of their TV series were staged by the producers for dramatic effect. Ozzy vehemently denied it, saying it was all real. Given that his brains are fried, how would he know what's real and what's not?
Kelly Osbourne wants to be a singer. She performed on the Tonight Show last week. Man! She wouldn't have passed the first auditions of American Idol. Simon says: "Kelly, nothing would please more than to say you're NOT going to Hollywood. Unfortunately, you're already there." Celebrity is the ultimate trump card.
Sharon Osbourne says she uses foul language because that's how she gets respect as a business woman. Whose respect? If this woman tried to negotiate a contract with me and started using that kind of language, I would take my briefcase and walk out the room, even if I had to forgo a contract worth millions.
Good news: women have finally achieved equality… bad news: …in the number of AIDS cases worldwide. Why is it that women emulate men's worst behaviors: aggressive driving, casual sex, boozing? When I see someone tailgating, weaving in and out of traffic, speeding, cutting other drivers off, nine times out of ten it's a woman. What's up with that ladies?
Thanksgiving! I have much to be thankful for today. I have escaped from Cubicleville and have already managed to replace over half of my former income thanks to your generous donations and several consulting assignments.
What kind of consulting?
I thought you'd never ask. I help companies cut their costs, increase profits, and improve customer satisfaction. I also use my creativity and broad cross-industry knowledge to help them brainstorm new product or service ideas, and strategies for the long-term. No more commuting, no more office politics, no more "power" ties that choke off blood flow to my head. Most days I work in the comfort of my home office, "in my fuzzy slippers" as a man I know used to say. Since I don't have to pay for gasoline, wear and tear on the car, dry cleaning, lunches at restaurants, etc. and I can deduct my home office expenses and other expenses, my purchasing power has hardly changed. My quality of life on the other hand has improved dramatically. If the sun is shining, I can go out and skate in the middle of the day. I can take a spur-of-the-moment vacation without waiting for someone's approval which invariably comes too late. No more long commutes, no more worries about downsizing, bosses from hell, the rat race and all that jazz. I must have been crazy to put up with it all. They don't call it being a "wage slave" for nothing.
I've been approached about writing a column as well as publishing a book with 365 Inepto cartoon strips, one for each day of the year. We'll see how those things pan out. In the meantime, keep those donations coming and I thank you for your generosity. Write to me and tell me what you are thankful for on this Thanksgiving day.
The only people
who are not thankful today are the Native Americans. Had they known how the Europeans
would treat them, they might have decided to lace that first Thanksgiving meal with poison
– or at least a strong dose of milk of magnesia. We can't be proud of ourselves for
exterminating the Native Americans, introducing scores of deadly diseases, obliterating
99% of the prairies, damming up all the rivers, fouling up the air, cutting down old
growth forests, replacing open spaces with concrete jungles, extinguishing countless
species, and overrunning the land with hundreds of millions of Humans. On the upside, we
have Hooters, so who can complain? We managed to go from unspoiled Nature to
coast-to-coast sprawl in just a couple hundred years. To give you an idea of how fast and
dramatic the change was, if you used time-lapse photography from space and captured Earth
(and more specifically the Western hemisphere) from day one up until today and played the
result as a one-hour movie, you wouldn't see any Human-created change for the entire movie
and then, in the very last millisecond, the screen would light up with cities, roads,
farms, Humans. Boom! Just like that. Even faster than a Dennis Rodman divorce.
Native Americans respected Nature and lived in harmony with it and then we came to "civilize" them. They are the ones who could have taught us a few things about living. I bet they led much happier lives than hundreds of years of "progress" have afforded us. Sure, we live longer and technological advances have allowed us to produce billions more of us but let's not confuse quantity with quality – the way Chinese buffets do. The Native Americans never had to contend with smog, traffic jams, the Anna Nicole Show… They would get a good laugh out of seeing us torture ourselves in the gym: doing our best imitation of Sisyphus, lifting heavy weights just to set them back down only to lift them back up again, running on a treadmill but going nowhere. What a fitting metaphor!
How do Native
Americans feel when Christopher Columbus is hailed as having "discovered"
Surgeons in
The arrogance of youth: I remember when I was interviewing a new college graduate for a job where he would be selling expensive equipment. He said: "I'll be selling stuff worth all this money and all I'll be getting is $60,000 a year? Where is the rest of the money going?" Needless to say, he didn't get the job.
We spent $12
billion on the war in
I came across
these two names that caused me to do a double take: Nate Light
and Gill Bates. These are real names of real people. Conan O'Brien should invite them on
his show: "tonight on Late Night: Nate Light plus Gill
Bates on Bill Gates." Oh and Conan, if you need a comedy writer, give me a buzz.
All Rights Reserved
© 2002. No portion of my work may be used without my permission.