Our day...

Up at 2am

Take out trash/compost

Get on the Blueshuttle

Arrive at BWI

Watch asshole flyer fight with asshole ticket taker way longer and fiercer than anyone should at 3am

Fly to Raleigh NC

Realize Raleigh NC is a useless town because it's also only 10 degrees in full sunlight

Poop in Raleigh Airport's surprisingly nice bathroom

Get on a plane so old that it probably was used to bomb Union soldiers

Fly south

Realize the 50+ year old couple next to me are completely hammered at 9am

Drunk husband starts taking selfies with his passed out wife

Wife wakes up and wants to talk

Try to ignore them and read

The wife keeps drunkenly engaging me

Keep ignoring them

Fuck it

Decide to join them

Order gin and tonic

Try to join them

Fail

Try again

Fail

Try to remember what I set out to do in the first place

Realize i can't keep up

Listen intently as (can't remember her name) pours her heart and soul out to me about their kids

Watch her rum and cokes go from coke-colored to teaspoon-of-coke-in-a-glass-of-rum colored

Mediate a near argument between the flight attendant and 50+ year old marine husband guy over lack of rum

Rejoice when the flight attendant steals rum from first class (fuck them)

Help 50+ yro woman use the bathroom

Wait patiently for her to finish

Pull her out of the bathroom when she opens the door yelling WHY WONT IT FLUSH!?! while she punches the "Put Trash Here" flap

I use the bathroom

Realized after I come back from the bathroom that 50+ yro couple has (either deliberately or mistakenly) poured rum into my gin and tonic

Let bygones be bygones and finish the drink

Listen uncomfortably as 50+ yro woman rants about having to sit next to overweight people on plane

Nail a deadpan cold expression as i explain that my girlfriend isn't sitting with me because she's sitting up front in a special wheel chair because she's too big to fit in a normal seat

Tell 50+ yro woman I'm kidding just before she starts crying

Buy a micro can of Pringles for $4 because someone said "we should probably eat something"

Count the Pringles and realize they're over $.10 each

Realize the 50+ yro couple has eaten all my Pringles

Bribe the attendant for more rum

Realize we're landing and 50+ yro woman has passed out

Try to wake her to help put on her seatbelt, husband tells me "don't bother"

We land

We taxi

We sit

We sit

Husband starts demanding that they open the doors

Flight attendant reminds husband that there's children around him

He persists

I unbuckle my seatbelt

She tells me to put it back on

I beg to use the bathroom

Husband drops his "open the doors" cause and takes up my cause by repeating "let the guy pee" over and over

The flight attendant relents

I use the bathroom and slip her a $20 on my way out "thanks for not diverting the flight"

They open all the doors we get off the plane

It's warm

Last time I saw the 50+ yro couple she was staggering around at one end of the airport while her husband was staggering around the other end saying "I lost my wife"



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

House Republicans Read The Constitution

Good evening distinguished ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us in this historic moment. Let's get right down to it. So...where is the constitution? What? What? Speak up kid. Online? Do we have the internets here? We do? There's no computer up here. I can't hear you. What? What's an iPad? No, I don't- I don't have a laptop. No one printed it? Really? ....bear with us folks we uh, we didn't- oh, he printed it? Great. THIS? Good God, is this it? Is it double-spaced? That seems really long. Wow, front and back. That's great. -sigh- Settle in folks, I uh, we honestly had no idea it was this long.

Okay, let's do this.... We the people of the United States comma in order to f- What? Oh, okay, don't say comma. You're right, sounds better. Okay, we the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union...is that...that's perfect like God right? Yeah, I'm sure that's what they meant. Ah where was I -mumble- perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility...what the hell does that even mean? Uh, provide for the common defense, okay that part I remember. Promote general welfare-whoah, whoah, whoah, are you sure this is right? Welfare? Really? Okay then. Uh, and secure the blessings of liberty and our posterity and establish this constitution for the United States of America. Article one section one. All legislative powers heroin granted shall be- What? That's what it says, heroin. Look, it's right there. Ohhhh, herein. Yeah, that does make more sense. Okay, powers HEREIN granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. So far so good.

Section two...very wordy. Uh let's just make the bullet points on this paragraph "chosen every two years" and "you have to be 25 to get on this ride". Blah, blah, blah, Oh- Represtatives and direct taxes, this sounds important. Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term and excluding Indians not taxed and three fifths of all other persons. Well...this seems like a good time to take a break. I'll be right back. Are they booing me?

I Failed the BMW Test

I tried to buy a BMW a bit ago.

I just picked a dealership at random and started walking around the lot until I found one I liked. It was a Series 3 Coup with silvery tint on the windows. It was a very nice car. A salesman approached me and we struck up a conversation. Eventually I told him I wanted to take a test drive and he said that'd be great. But he surprised me when he asked for my "BMW certification card". I told him I'd never heard of such a thing which prompted him to apologize profusely but he insisted I have a certification before I could drive the car. "It's no problem sir" he told me, I could take the test and get certified on-site. So he grabbed a clipboard and keys to the Series 3 and off we went. The drive was mostly uneventful. The car handled great, it really was a remarkable piece of machinery. But as we pulled back into the dealership lot I could tell something wasn't right. After I turned off the car the salesman looked me in the eye and said "I'm sorry sir, you failed the certification test and I can't sell you this car." I was stunned. What could I have possibly done wrong? "Well sir, I noticed that you have an iPhone and it rang several times during the drive but you didn't answer it once. This resulted in you having both hands on the wheel almost the entire drive. Then there was your focus, you really stayed between the lines the whole time, almost like your attention was really all about the drive. It was as if you acknowledged that there were other cars around you and drove amongst them with consideration for them. That was the other thing, you actually yielded to another vehicle, that totally blew me away. And at one point, on that narrow country lane, when you passed that bicyclist you moved over to the left. At first I thought you might not be paying attention so I started to add points but when I realized you did it intentionally to give him more room I had to subtract points. I also noticed a disturbing level of turn signal usage throughout the drive. I mean, you signaled for every single lane change and every single turn, I tried counting them but I really just lost track after a while. I don't want to make you feel bad but you did almost everything wrong on this test. Even when you pulled back into the parking lot you only took up one space and you parked nearly perfectly within the lines of the parking space. I'm sorry sir, but BMW has spent decades building a level of trust and expectation with our customers and the general public. We have an image to maintain and I hate to say it but you're just not enough of a douche to buy a BMW with tinted windows. I truly am sorry."

Soccer is Too Pedestrian

Why hasn't soccer caught on in the US? Because it's boring. Wait, before you stab me in the face and scream "GOOOOOAAAALLLL" hear me out.

The problem with America and soccer starts with the size of the field. It's just too big. There's way too much mundane shit between initial ball possession and scoring. I mean, let's face it, the average distance a soccer player covers between kickoff and a goal is a lot farther than most Americans are willing to walk in a week. Hell, most people would collapse and starve if you told them you had to walk from goal to mid-field for their next cheeseburger. No, watching soccer is like watching anthological full contact karate. Instead of watching two well trained masters squaring off across a mat the contestants start out asleep in bed in their respective apartments. The action begins with them stretching, then yawning, then rubbing their eyes, and then...they get out of bed! There's some non-action as they brush their teeth, take a shower, dry off, and drink some coffee. But stuff picks up when they go looking for their car keys and catch "local on the eights" on the weather channel. Then they run a few errands on their way to the dojo, and right after they pick up their dry cleaning and grab a latte at Starbucks they realize they have a match in 20 minutes so things get pretty exciting. The pace picks up as they pull into the gym parking lot and and grab their bag out of the trunk. You're on the edge of your seat as they display their gym membership card and sprint into the locker room to change into their gi. EVERYONE is on their feet screaming as the contestants make their way to the mat and settle down into their stance, ready to pounce. They glare at each other, faces twitching in anticipation of the battle that awaits them. Carefully and deliberately they step towards each other. One draws back with clenched fist, the other recoils and prepares to block. Suddenly, limbs fly in all directions and in less than a second they make contact. Then the referee blows the whistle and both contestants go back to their dressing rooms. They take a shower and go home, ready to repeat the whole thing tomorrow.

There you go, for most Americans that's the equivalent of the first two hours of every soccer game.

I only vaguely remember writing this...

I was pretty lit...

Dwarves live in my freezer. Not normal dwarves though, these are cryo-dwarves. Every day they trek up north into the mountains and seek out a river of ice, a glacier. Wearing mammoth skin gloves and clutching tiny steel hammers they descend on the glacier seeking only the clearest of the ice which lives deep in the heart of the swift moving center of the river. Humming nearly subsonic, epic poems of their ancestors they laboriously chip away at the opaque, concrete like ice. They breathe in tandem, exhaling together in one great cloud of steam coalesces and freezes on the walls of the trench slowly rising around them. The first band of marbled blue-white ice uncovered beneath them signals the midday break. They rest their weary muscles and comb the ice from their beards while the greener of the group prepares lunch. They feast on succulent pearl onions grown in the salty soil of the subterranean and eat slices of cheese made from leopards milk. They talk about the condition of the ice today and the need for new hammers. The end of lunch comes too soon, signaled when the eldest among them rises and makes his way toward the trench. They fall back into their rhythm of digging and soon the blue-white bands of ice give way to the crystal clear treasure beneath. A mammoth draped with saddlebags lumbers to the side of the trench. The dwarves each load up with as much ice as they can carry and make their way out of the pit. They move south, as swiftly as an ice laden mammoth can move back toward my freezer. Once secured in my freezer they set upon each piece of ice with a precision caliper and carve perfectly uniform crescents that are stacked and secured with great care.

I approach the freezer, empty glass in hand. I humbly press the container against the ice lever, a deep rumbling comes from deep within the freezer. I wait patiently as the rumbling continues. A few shards bounce and klink their way to the bottom of my glass. The rumbling continues.

Unsung Heroes of the Electronics Industry Part 4

Allison Nash

Allison is a niche market specialist for a well known company that manufactures trendy electronics for American consumers. Allison spends her time studying market trends and ideas gathered from internet forums to determine exactly which features consumers want in their gadgets. She has to make risky decisions about what features to include in gadgets to make consumers buy it while making sure other features are hinted at being included in next years model. If you've ever been frustrated by the lack of an FM receiver in that popular new mp3 player you really want you can thank Allison.

Unsung Heroes of the Electronics Industry Part 3

John Sellers

John is a wireless signal optimization engineer for a major wireless phone service provider in the United States. He is considered a specialist in finding the perfect ratio of power input to signal output for cell phone towers to enhance coverage in rural areas. This allows his company to add an extra pixel of coverage on their marketing and advertising maps without having to spend additional money building more cell towers. If you've ever wondered why when standing in your back yard your phone shows two solid bars of coverage yet you still can't make a phone call you can thank John.