I Absolutely Hate That New Dockers Commercial

I have nothing against Dockers themselves mind you. I have a few pairs myself for when I’m unlucky enough to have a job that requires business casual or when I’m looking for a job that doesn’t. Right now I get to wear jeans to work, which is good, because I’ve surely gotten too god-damn fat to fit into my Dockers.

So, if you wear dockers to work, I have nothing against you. I have been you, and chances are I will be you again.

But here’s the thing. This commercial features some yuppie fuck, quickly cutting to all the moments of his life where he gets to gleefully wear his Dockers. Fast-paced scenes of a typical life I definitely don’t want superimposed with the words “work”, “weekend”, “dress” and “golf”, each inside a neat little box. I’ll tackle them one by one.

Work

OK, I’ve covered work. Dockers are OK for work, if you have to.

Dress

You know what? If you can’t wear jeans, a t-shirt and a flannel there, it’s nowhere I want to be. The only time I’ll dress up is for funerals, weddings and job interviews, and in those cases Dockers ain’t cuttin’ it. Maybe sometimes for the interview, but far as I’m concerned that falls under “work”.

Weekend

You know what? If you wear slacks on your days off, I fucking hate you. I don’t care if you donate all your money to charity and adopt crack-babies in your spare time, I would still relish the opportunity to jam a salad fork straight into your eye. The only reason somebody would wear slacks on their days off is because they think it makes them look important, classy, or rich, and you know what? If you were any of those things, you wouldn’t fucking be trying to look it.

Now if you’re applying for a loan on your day off, I’ll give you a pass. Technically, I wouldn’t consider that a day off. And a normal person would get home from the bank and immediately take the fuckers off anyway.

If I ever choose to wear slacks on a day that I don’t have to work, please remind me, “Dave, this is when you said it’d be time to kill yourself”.

Golf

Now, I really wish I could say I don’t hate everybody who plays golf, but the trouble is I’ve yet to meet a golfer I didn’t fucking hate. Sure, I’ve probably met some closet golfers and not known it, and that’s fine. I have nothing against the game itself, and though the concept doesn’t do much for me I can see why some people might enjoy it. If you’re playing golf just because you tried it once and liked it, you’re probably not the typical cocksucker golfer that has to let everybody know he plays golf (and needs special pants for it). You know who I’m talking about. The asshole that fills his office (they almost always have an office, go figure…) with all kinds of golf shit. A cup of tees here, a statue of some cartoon character teeing off there. Their pock-marked balls next to their keyboard. What the fuck’s with that? You don’t see softball players filling their workspace with softball shit. Why do you have to advertise your love for golf to anyone who comes within 10 square meters of you? I’ll tell you why: It’s because you think it makes you look important/classy/rich, you pompous fucking knob.

Now, Tiger Woods seems like a completely decent guy, but I’ve never met him, so my statement (”never met a golfer I didn’t hate”) still stands. Also, I should point out that Hot-Shots Golf doesn’t count. Hell, I’ll even give you the Tiger Woods games, though I can’t see how it’d be much fun without cartoony hydrocephalic Japanese characters.

So now some of you are thinking, “Well gee Dave, if your so god-damn opinionated about slacks, what would you have for a commercial?” Funny you should ask.

“Dockers: Because your job won’t let you wear jeans.”

There you go. That’s all you need. Your customers will understand, sympathize, and give you points for being honest and knowing your niche. The last thing you should do is try to invent some fucking imaginary lifestyle that nobody wants.

A Prediction

Stephen Colbert, in honor of The Colbert Report’s one-year anniversary, is auctioning off the portrait that has hung over his fireplace since the debut of his show, all proceeds to be given to charity. In under a half hour it’s gone from $300 to just over $40,000 on ebay. Soon as he announced the auction on his show, I predicted it would sell for $75,000. I’m sticking with that. Check back in 10 days to see just how far off the mark I am.

And by the time I finished this post, it had already topped $100,000. No “I Called It” balloons for Dave.

Added on 10/20: And most of those bids were fake, as I started to guess when it topped $600K in under an hour. Throw them out and it’s down to a little over $5000.

Added on 10/27: Final price is $50,605.00. Not exactly the $75,000 I predicted, but still a pretty good showing.

Republican Talking Points Bingo

How to Play

• Make some friends
• Buy some beer (optional)
• Gather them
• Enter the number of players in the box over there and press the button
• Print the page that pops up
• Give one sheet to each player
• Turn on Fox News
• Mark off each talking point as you hear it
• The first player to mark an entire row (up, down, or diagonally) should call out “Clinton’s fault!” and be declared the winner
• Repeat until nauseated

Additional Rules

• Talking points inside quotation marks should only be marked if the words are spoken more or less exactly. There is play in this though. Obviously “Weapons of Mass Destruction” can be marked off if they say “WMD’s” and “Al Qaeda wants to kill your children” should count for “Terrorists want to kill your family”. You get the idea. It doesn’t have to be exact, but pretty darn close.
• Items not in quotes (which are also incidentally in italics) are more along the lines of talking themes. Obviously, any type of gay bashing will count for the Gay Bashing category. It’s not like they’re going to say “Let’s get back to the gay bashing for a moment, Sean”. Well, not often anyway.
• Any game-related disputes should be settled by voting with verifiable paper ballots. If paper ballots are not available, the strongest player should seize control in a (possibly bloodless) revolution.

I am not the first person to have this idea (see here and here), but as far as I can tell I am the first person to actually make the game. If anyone knows of prior art, I will gladly acknowlege and link to it.

The talking points I used are a set currently being used in the right-wing media. Over time they will grow stale. If this turns out to be popular, I will do my best to keep them updated.

The randomness of the game cards would improve with more talking points. Mrs. FatDave and I were only able to come up with 31. If you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments, and I will add my favorites to the program.

This was inspired by the Right Wing World segment of The Stephanie Miller Show

Goofy Kid Songs

So I’ve got these 3 kids, and they’re all pretty cool. Their favorite movie is Yellow Submarine, and I couldn’t be prouder. Of course they’ll never be allowed to read the filth that spews forth from my keyboard.

So every night at bedtime, they get sung to. Generally they get a mix of The Beatles, Warren Zevon, sometimes some old Pink Floyd or Springsteen, and of course the standard kid song fare.

But ’round about the time my second son was two, I saw a PBS documentary about the life of Fred Rogers, better known simply as Mr. Rogers. I guess I really had absolutely nothing better to do that day. Anyway, they showed a really old clip of his show, back when he was on a local station somewhere and never actually appeared on-screen, just working as puppeteer and doing the voices. On it he sang a distorted version of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” that went like this:

Propel, propel, propel your craft
Over liquid solution
Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically
Existence is but an illusion

Well, I thought that was pretty awesome, and in no time added it to the kids bedtime song repertoire. I’d sing a couple normal verses of “Row Your Boat”, then one last verse the Mr. Rogers way. Eventually, my two-year-old learned to sing it along with me.

But I’m not one to be outclevered by Mr. Rogers, so I came up with this:

The microscopic arachnid ascended the drainage device
Liquid precipitation flushed the arachnid from the pipes
Solar radiation caused evaporation
And the microscopic arachnid repeated his ascension

And their current favorite (though not really a song per se)…

This little piggy got slaughtered
This little piggy survived
This little piggy ate cow flesh
This little piggy starved and died
And this little piggy peed all over himself

And let me tell you, that’s a laugh riot when you’re five years old. Or when you’re a really immature 36-year-old.

Smelly Fuck

I started a new job a few months back. Prior to this, I’d worked almost exclusively from home for over five years. That’s not really as great as it sounds, and in a lot of ways it’s nice to be back in an office environment.

Except there’s this one guy who works on my floor who completely fucking smells. Thankfully I don’t directly work with the guy, but I can walk down an empty hall and still know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this smelly fuck was there recently by the telltale B.O. trail he leaves. Imagine if you ate a giant Sam’s Club size jar of dill pickles, puked them all over a sidewalk and then pissed on them. Leave them there for three or four hours on a hot august day, and you’ll get a pretty good approximation of what this choad smells like. And strongly too. I swear, if this guy smelled any worse you’d be able to actually see the odor. If I’m heading to the men’s room and see this reeking fuckwad coming out, I keep walking. I’ll hold it in, thank you very much. The discomfort in my bladder is magnitudes more pleasant than the discomfort in my nose would be.

But here’s the crazy thing: This smelly fucker is a good looking guy. He’s tall and fit and has those chiseled facial features the ladies seem to love. He looks kinda like Brad Pitt. I know I sound totally gay saying this stuff, but come on, I’m not afraid to say I can recognize male beauty. I mean, I know what I wish I looked like, right? Anyhow, the guy could be a male model or something, providing the fumes didn’t damage the photography equipment.

And this fucker, blessed with good genes, can’t be bothered to wash his crotch and armpits every morning? Christ, I’m fat, balding, pale and hairy, but I’ve got the god-damned common courtesy to take a shower every morning before I go to work. Shit, I even brush my teeth and put on deoderant!

I figure he doesn’t know. He must not, because if he did he’d damn well do something about it. I wonder if he looks in the mirror and thinks, “Damn, I look good. How come I can’t get any pussy?” Because you smell like a fucking slaughterhouse, pal. I wish somebody would tell him. I can’t do it, I don’t even know the guy.

But here’s the worst part. Me and Mr. Pungent work on the 5th floor, and right below us on the 4th is customer service, which seems to be almost entirely staffed with hot 19 year-old college girls. Occasionally, I’ll get stuck on the elevator with this reeking bastard. That in itself is horrible, but then some hot 19-year-old girl will inevitably get on on the way down, and who is she gonna think the smelly fucker on the elevator is? The really good-looking guy or the fat son-of-a-bitch? In the mind of some hot young thing, I fucking stink, and I can’t have that.

So here’s what I do. If I’m waiting for the elevator, you know, already pressed the button, and he shows up I say “oh shit!” and pretend like I forgot something back at my desk. To make matters worse, the elevators are secluded between two closed doors, so if you go through one of those doors, you must be heading for the elevator. And of course the doors are solid, so you can’t see if anybody’s already waiting on the other side. This means sometimes I’ll walk into the elevator area and he’ll already be waiting there. In these cases, I say “oh shit!” and pretend like I forgot something back at my desk.

I’ll bet I’m not the only person to discover this stench avoidance tactic. I’ll bet this foul fuck thinks he works with a lot of forgetful people. No, we’re not forgetful. You smell like an outhouse filled with roadkill.