I Feel Guilty About Being a Dick to Telemarketers

Because, you know, I used to be one. I know it’s just some poor kid or ex-con at the other end. But I can’t help it sometimes. Here’s how a conversation mere minutes ago went:

Telephone: Ring ring ring!

Me (picking up telephone): Hello?

Telephone (absolute dead silence): …

Me: …

Telemarketer (after dead silence becomes background noise): …hello?

Me: I hate autodialers. An autodialer immediately lets me know I don’t want to talk to you.

Telemarketer (stunned): Ummm…. I’m calling from VMS, and what we do is help magazine publishers with their circulations….

Me: See what I mean? I was right. I don’t want to talk to you. Thank you!

So I was a dick, and now I feel guilty. But at least I was an interesting dick, not just a screaming swearing dick. And I’m not afraid to own my dickness.

And yes, I know about the National Do-Not-Call list, but I just moved. I’ll consider this call a reminder to do that.

Dane Cook? Seriously?

So I know that Human Giant is getting too popular to be cool now, but hey, I’m too old to be cool anymore anyway. So I was reading this old Rob Huebel post, and saw this in the comments:

Sandy says:

It’s about time! I am a fan of the original Saturday Night Live (I’m 44) and haven’t been able to find anything this funny in a long time (with the exception of Dane Cook). I will be a loyal fan. Thanks guys!

05/19/07 3:22 pm

The thing that I find odd is not just this one person comparing Dane Cook to the original SNL cast, horrific as that may be, but that Dane Cook has a big following. The guy seems to have a lot of dedicated fans who go on and on about how awesomely funny he is. They say he’s the most original comedian working today, and that he’s a genius. But here’s the thing: He totally isn’t. He’s a talentless hack, and the only times he ever actually said anything funny was when he was doing material he’d stolen from other comedians, and even then he didn’t do it as well. And as if his material being unfunny wasn’t bad enough, it’s also completely fucking generic, safe, risk-free relationship bullshit.

But why the big following then? I have a couple theories.

Theory #1 – Imminent Death Syndrome

The enlightened among you will surely know that Imminent Death Syndrome is:

A rare disease where those affected are on the brink of death, every day of their lives. People can live with this condition for over 60 years. Peers and close friends of the diseased will go to great lengths to make sure the person is happy in his/her “last moments” by making them famous or giving great attention to their non-existent talents. Famous celebrities that suffer from IDS include Juliette Lewis, Leroy Nieman, Jerry Lewis, Anne Rice, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Hawking, Quentin Tarantino (the actor, not the director), Hootie and 2 of the Blowfish, the man who draws Ziggy, the man who draws Family Circus, many famous cartoonists, and possibly Jeff Foxworthy.

Theory #2 – His Fans are Ignorant of What Comedy Really Is

Everyone agrees that Dane Cook appeals to a young demographic. Those kids today. They’ve probably never heard a Steve Martin album, wouldn’t listen to an old man like Carlin, and probably couldn’t handle the raw truth of Bill Hicks if they had even heard of him.

No, they’re a bunch of kids who stumbled across an HBO special or his myspace page, and he’s all they know of stand-up. They think that if you stand on a stage and say a bunch of shit, occasionally with comedic timing, and throw in some goofy noises, well hell, that must be funny! I mean, everybody else wouldn’t be laughing if it wasn’t funny, right?

But I think that’s too simple an explanation. These kids have surely been exposed to people who are actually funny. The aforementioned Human Giant for example. They’re funny and all the cool kids like them. Sarah Silverman has a great show on Comedy Central and just hosted the MTV Movie Awards. She’s hilarious. And although he’s a right-wing redneck tool, even Larry the Fucking Cable Guy knows how to tell a joke.

Which brings me to…

Theory #3 – His Fans Are Fucking Morons

When I was in high school, my friends and I used to tell jokes that weren’t really jokes at all. For example:

Q: How many pancakes does it take to cover a dog house?
A: Five. Ice cream doesn’t have bones!

We had a handful of these, and we’d tell them at every opportunity. They made no sense, but the key was to laugh hysterically immediately after telling them. The person on the receiving end of these non-jokes had two choices. They could be honest and say “I don’t get it” or they could laugh and pretend to get it just to fit in. Which do you suppose was the more common outcome?

I think this summarizes a good deal of Dane Cook’s popularity. He’s marketed himself as the hip new edgy comedian all the kids are into, and these stupid fucking pack animals, the same type I fucking loathed in high school, go along with the crowd because everybody’s doing it. The most important thing to be is exactly like every one of your friends, and hey, they all think Dane Cook is the shit! Seriously, we wouldn’t all be laughing if it wasn’t funny, would we?

Theory #4 – His Fans Are All Thirteen Year Old Girls Who Dream of Giving Him Their Virginity in the Back of His Tour Bus

Yeah, that’s probably it.

What’s In My Comment Spam Today?

You see, I fucking hate comment spammers. And even though I catch every piece of spam they try to post here, they never stop trying.

So today I went through my spam filter. It had been awhile. There were 574 spam comments. But I can never just click the button to delete them all, I at least have to scan through them quickly to make sure there’s not a legitimate comment amongst them. I have delusions that people actually read this shit, even though my posts have averaged one a month lately. And that’s for a good month.

But looking at all these spam comments today, I noticed a pattern. And I don’t just mean that 90% of them were from the same fucktard that puts “ka-ka-sh-ka” in the body. No, the pattern I noticed was that the comment titles were all obviously search terms culled from somewhere. They were the exact phrases that people were punching into a search engine.

Now, it’s no big thing to pull out the search terms that led a person to your site. Most people come here searching for “nude celebrities“. But these fucking spammers, they seem to be capturing the search terms that bring a person to one of their sites and then using them as titles for more comment spam. The theory, I guess, is that if somebody searched for it once, they’ll search for it again, and maybe they’ll follow a link the spammer put in a comment on somebody’s blog.

Well, that’s fucking annoying, but I always say, “If life hands you lemons, squirt the juice into your enemies’ eyes.” However circuitous the route, the end result is that I get to see what a buch of random assholes are searching the net for. Unfortunately, it paints a pretty fucking pathetic picture of humanity.

So anyway, here’s what’s in my comment spam.

pregnant strapon femdom

OK, this dude (I assume it’s a dude) wants to be dominated by a pregnant female with a strap-on. “Femdom” means “female dominance” for those of you who’ve never been to asstr.org. But whatever, to each their own. Takes all kinds, different strokes, consenting adults, and yada yada.

asian doggystyle movie

Nothing wrong with Asian doggy-style movies of course. Long as I’ve been on the net, I’ve probably come across (or over) a few. I’m just amazed how specific the search was. A doggy-style movie with a Latina won’t work, nor will an Asian reverse cowgirl clip. Not even Asian doggy-style pictures are good enough. Nope, discriminating porn surfers demand Asian doggy-style movies.

aqua teen hunger force hentai

OK, now that’s just weird. I got no problem with the ecchi, mind you, but Aqua Teen? You want what, Meatwad panchira pics? Milkshake bukkake? You know, I take back what I said about different strokes and all that. Anybody looking for Aqua Teen hentai is a demented fuck, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

billy idol music

Really? People are looking for Billy Idol music in 2007? Huh…

imagine kingman spyder

It’s easy if you try.

bare foot jenna maniac

Look out Jenna! Some maniac is spanking it to your bare feet!

electric guitar musical instrument

zzounds.com has the best prices on guitars, but geartree.com is usually cheaper for accessories. Also, you don’t need to put “musical instrument” in there. Everybody knows what an electric guitar is.

perl black book

You know, I’d never heard of The Perl Black Book because where I come from if it ain’t in the camel book, in perldoc, or cpan, it don’t exist. But it sounds like it might actually be a good book. Thanks for the tip, comment spammers!

bumkins super bib

OK, my worst fears were confirmed when I looked this up. That is actually a brand name of a bib. Like for infants. People are looking for a specific brand of bib. I mean, fuck those bibs they got over at Shit-In-A-Box, my kid deserves a Bumkins bib! You fucking mindless consumer pricks, a bib is a fucking bib, and if you go out of your way to buy a specific brand of bib, well, you should just fucking die already.

What’s that? Yeah, I do actually. Two boys and a girl. Weren’t you supposed to be dying or something?

active desktop calendar

Umm, when you say active desktop, you don’t mean Active Desktop, do you? Because that was one of the stupidest fucking things Microsoft ever came up with. Well, that and the registry. And letting a web browser execute native code. And NetBEUI. OK, Microsoft has done a lot of stupid shit, but Active Desktop is definitely in the top third of the list. I’m just going to assume it was an unfortunate positioning of an adjective and a noun. Moving on…

savoy truffles lyric

Sorry, there’s only one savoy truffle. You’ll have to have them all pulled out after the savoy truffle, not a savoy truffle. And which lyric from the song would you like? The one I just quoted? Or how about “coffee dessert, yes you know it’s good news”? I guess what I’m saying is even though you have good taste in music, you’ve still got a thing or two to learn about pluralization.

anti blood empire flag

You need an anti blood empire flag? Just take the blood empire flag and put it inside a prohibition circle. Bada-bing, it’s the anti blood empire flag.

Of course, I’m so out of touch with the kids today, I have no idea Anti-Flag put out an album (see? I even still call them albums) last year called Blood Empire. I need my comment spam to keep me on top of what’s hip.

kia minneapolis

If you buy that Kia, you’ll be lucky to make it to Apple Valley.

perception philosophy

You know what I think of your perception philosophy? Wait, actually I think that’s pretty cool. Somebody out there is actually searching for something with a little depth to it. Yup, that’s one out of 574.

bible black game

No, this has nothing to do with King Crimson. It’s more Hentai. High school teachers using sex to gain occultist powers or something. When will the Japanese learn that porn doesn’t need a plot?

tea bag papers

Wasn’t that a Tom Clancy novel? The Teabag Papers? No, apparently there’s a whole genre of crafting I’ve never heard of before called teabag folding. And that just makes me giggle uncontrollably. I’m fighting the temptation to call Hobby Lobby and ask them if they have a teabagging section.

rolling stones music

OK, here’s everything you need to know about The Rolling Stones: The radio standards are pretty much the worst songs from each album, and it’s really only about a five-year span from 1967 to 1972. Their Satanic Majesty’s Request, Beggar’s Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street. Get those albums and that’s all the Stones you need. Oh, and you should totally see Gimme Shelter. And Rock & Roll Circus. And Cocksucker Blues if you can find a bootleg.

party boobies

The best kind of boobies? Party boobies, of course!

mental disability

It would appear so.

baby phat pants

Once again, I’m so out of touch with today’s youth that my comment spam was the first place I heard of what I’m sure is a popular line of pants for young girls with nice asses. While I’m tempted to say something here about rampant consumerism and corporate-crafted trends, well, girls showing off their butts is something I can really get behind.

cartoon dragonball sex z

OK, see, that’s dorky, but it makes a fuck of a lot more sense than Aqua Teen porn.

road roses

That was a late-90′s Twisted Metal copycat wherein scantily clad big-breasted women drove around in heavily armed generic muscle cars trying to blow each other up. It was an enormous failure, just like every other game that tried to add big tits to a previously successful formula but fucked up the gameplay because they thought gamers were a bunch of adolescent dweebs that would buy anything with boobies in it.

leather prada purse

Poor pathetic woman. You’ve got to have that fancy purse to gain the respect of your peers? Well you know what? If that’s what your peers respect, they’re fucking retards. Spend that money on a book, or piano lessons, or fuck I don’t care, ice cream. Do you think buying expensive trendy shit is going to make you happy? Don’t you realize that next year you’ll just have to buy whatever new expensive shit they tell you is cool once the Prada handbags are passé? Or do you hate yourself so much that the only thing that makes you feel better is showing off that you can afford expensive shit? Whatever the case, you, madam, are everything that’s wrong with this country.

funny black people joke

Here’s a good one I heard on Something Awful:

A black man is going to get a vasectomy. He shows up to the doctor’s office wearing a suit. The doctor says “Why are you wearing a suit?” The black man says “I just got back from a funeral”

Man, you won’t hear Imus telling that one!

baby clothes john sean

OK, forget what I said about the Prada woman. You are everything that’s wrong with this country. Sean John baby clothes? Are you fucking kidding me? You’re going to pay how much for shit your kid’s going to outgrow in a month? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but babies grow fucking fast. Tell you what, why don’t you take the money you were going to spend dressing baby up like a little gangsta and give it to me to buy pot with. I’ll feel better and you won’t look like a douchebag. Everybody wins.

johnny rubber

Johnny Rubber was a mascot for Trojan Condoms that never made it out of market research. Rubber Johnny, on the other hand, is seriously fucked up.

nickelodeon hentai

Wow. Just…wow.

hair picture pubic style

Just go buy a penthouse. You’ll see the landing strip, the Brazilian, even the little Hitler. Beyond that, just use your creativity. Shave your pubes into a heart, a lighting bolt, Idaho, or the logo of your favorite football team. Once you get really skilled with the clippers, try to do a Bart Simpson. You’ll be the talk of Cindy’s sleepover.

replica michael kors handbag

Oh, are you fucking kidding me? Looking cool to your shallow friends is just too expensive, so you go looking for fake expensive shit? Because they’ll never notice the shitty craftsmanship or that it actually says “Michael Kros” or some shit. You’re pathetic on so many levels it’s not even worth trying to understand your lack of humanity.

red hot chili papers

Tom Clancy’s sequel to The Teabag Papers.

used chain link fence

Because nothing tells your family how much you love them like used chain link fence.

baby phat replica handbag

No, that’s not a joke. That was really in there. All I did was save it for the end. But I suppose it had to come to this. People trying to buy some kind of identity, young girls with nice asses, and people unable to afford the identity they so desperately think can be bought have all converged into this one unholy string of text that somebody actually searched for. And a comment spammer picked up on the search and stuck it into my blog comments. America, you had one hell of a ride, but this can only mean it’s over.

What’s Pissing Me Off Today

You know what’s really pissing me off today? Applications that, when you paste copied text into them, try to keep the formatting from the original source. You know what? I never want the text I copy to maintain its original formatting. Never. I want text to just be text. If I want it formatted somehow at its destination, I’ll format it when it gets there. At least give me a fucking “paste without formatting” option on a popup window or something, because I’m pretty damn sick of copying text, pasting it into a plain text editor to get rid of the formatting, then re-copying it from there before I paste it to its destination.

Oh, and you know what else? Web sites that play music. Nothing will make me leave a site faster than when it starts playing music. Firefox takes care of the popups for me, I can deal with porno banner ads, but if your page starts playing fucking music, especially shitty midi music, I’m fucking gone. I didn’t even read your h1‘s. Understand? Your losing readers because of that crap. It’s in your interest to not do that.

And hey, bloggers! That’s right, you there. Think you could fucking put dates on your posts? Just because sometimes I want to know if what I’m reading was written yesterday or five years ago. Oh sure, you might have dates on your main page, but do you have them on the individual post pages? No? That’s a shame, because that’s what google’s going to turn up. Have a look at your template(s) and see if you can figure this one out. Maybe you template designers could do your part too, huh?

Other than that shit, I’ve never felt better.

You Know Who Should Be Lined Up and Shot?

Fucking comment spammers. Let it be known that I hate every last one of you bottom-feeding fucksticks and would jump at the chance to piss on your mothers.

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.

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.