L-I-N-G-O

I live in the Midwest…which generally means that the people around me murder the English language on a daily basis. One person in particular does it so much that we, her caring and sensitive co-workers, devised a game to play behind her back. We call it LINGO.

Originally, it began like BINGO. We created individual gameboards with phrases and words that have been uttered by our esteemed collegue. When the key phrase is spoken or typed in an email…the player would mark it off. Five in a row and the player would email the subject: LINGO.

Today, it’s much more simplified.

Anytime one of the magic words is spoken, one of the players must be the first to say: “LINGO.” This can and does happen at anytime during the day…like during manager meetings. We’ve attached a scoring system that is tallied at the end of the year.
-1 point for each instance
-Add a point for each email (spell check is on)
-Add 5 points for internal meetings
-Add 10 points for client meetings
Points double if two occurrences happen in the same sentence.

The number one misused word is “IDEAL”.

“I had no ideal she was gonna call me.”

“My ideal was to add a page to the report.”

“On the way here, I had an ideal about that meet’n.”

You get the point.

My personal favorite is “DISPURDUTION”. Go ahead, sound that out. She means, “distribution”…but she just can’t get it to come out of her mouth. I’ve corrected her hundreds of times and she still can’t do it. We work for a transportation and warehousing company…you almost have to say “distribution” a dozen times a day…she can’t.

I’ll be updating you on future transgressions and where my score is. Currently, I’m in the lead with 881 points.

NBA Garamimils

I hate Pro Basketball.

I live in a state that reveres this sport, but I hate it. The Olympics proved that our game ain’t what it used to be. I think the slam dunk is what started its downfall. Then came the crybaby stars.

But, that’s not what I want to talk about today.

The NBA is going to enforce a mandatory dress code starting with the regular season. Players are going to be required to wear business casual attire to all team and league functions.

No more saggy-baggy. No more bling. No more hats worn every which way.

From what I’ve read, the majority of the players don’t have a problem with it. Others are crying racism. It’s hard to not carry that flag when the league specifically targets “Chains, pendants, or medallions worn over the player's clothes” as being one of the no-no items.

However, in defense of the League, it’s not a racial thing. It’s about image. If the league was predominantly Caucasian and theses guys were all wearing sleeveless shirts and John Deer hats, I’m sure that they’d ban that too. It’s about promoting an image, and the image that they’re sick of portraying is that of the League of sloppy dressing millionaires.

The best quote I’ve seen came from Allen Iverson: ''I feel like if they want us to dress a certain way, they should pay for our clothes.''

He makes $19,000,000 a year. Allen, the league IS paying for your clothes…and you dress like a colorblind kid with Down Syndrome.

Unfortunately for our nation, sports figures are idols to most of our youth. As such, their actions and images are often copied by our ever impressionable teenagers. And it’s a health hazard.

That’s right, I think the CDC, EPA, and some other acronymed government regulatory department should get involved in banning baggy, ill fitting clothing. It’s a safety menace.

Case in point:

The other day I was exiting a McDonald’s, returning to work with my obligatory double quarter pounder extra value meal…when I noticed a guy attempting to run to his car. I say attempt, because is saggy drawers were hindering his progress.

Had I been drinking my large Coke at the time, I would’ve done a spit take. This guy could only get about a stride and a half into his failed attempt at a “run” before he had to reach down an lift his jeans back up to at least half-ass level. It was pathetic.

This guy’s saggy-baggies could have caused him great injury had he fallen down. He could have been hit by someone in the drive thru…he was in no condition to dodge traffic. More importantly, I could have choked to death on my 80% beef patties…had I been eating at them time…and so could have a number of innocent on-lookers trying to enjoy their meals.

If you wear pants that are 8 sizes too big because you WANT to, then you’re endangering the lives of millions.

Iverson! Your reign of terror ends soon!

As a side note: I personally would've loved it if the league switched Kilts for Khakis as approved gear. That would've made a real statement. Kilts are making a comeback.

You don’t have to have blond hair to be Blond

As promised, here’s one of the many stories of women I’ve dated in the past that may have been a bit, less than normal.

Once upon a time…

I used to live in Hawaii.

Before you start to shower me with pity for my hard-knock life, let me continue.

I moved to Hawaii straight out of High School. Young, dumb, and full of…er…ideas. A few months after I arrive, my brother, God rest his soul…even though he’s not dead yet…introduced me to a classmate of his. We’ll call her Pie. No, that’s not Hawaiian for “Tastes like Dessert”, it’s just pie.

Pie was a beautiful young Asian girl of 17. An honor roll student with aspirations of attending Harvard. What the hell she saw in me, I don’t know…chics dig older guys, I guess.

So, anyway, she and I had been dating for a couple of weeks. One weekend…our last as a couple…we go out with some friends to Waimea Bay at night. Waimea is on the North Shore and is an extremely romantic place to share spit with the partner of your choice.

We arrive and promptly split up into our various, “couplets.” Pie and I head down beach, for what I had hoped was going to be a GREAT night. Remember…I was 18, guns a’blazin so to speak. Pie was a bit shy and not so outgoing, so up to that point, we’d done little except light kisses. Cute, but not what I’d call passionate. There was quite a bit of lead up talk to that weekend that suggested we were going to reach a new level…right here, on this beach.

We find a nice spot to lay out the blanket and hold each other as we looked at the stars. It was a perfect night, cool breeze coming in off the glassy water, not too humid and no bugs. (Waimea is only a surf haven once a year, the other half of the year it’s flat.)

I start to act like I know shit about constellations…

Me: “There’s Orion’s Belt.” (If it weren’t for Orion Pictures, I wouldn’t know what the hell Orion’s Belt looked like.)

Me: “Oh. The Big Dipper.”

This continued for a few minutes, while Pie oh’d and awed.

Finally, she looked up into my eyes and said,

Pie: “Can I ask you something?”

Here it comes…what I thought would be the lead in to at least 5 or 10 minutes of booty rocking beach love.

The next thing out of her mouth still haunts me to this day.

Pie: eyes fluttering “Do stars really have five points?”

-pause- Take that in for a second. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Me: “What?”

Pie: “Do stars really have five points? I mean, they always show them with five points. Do you they, like, really have five, cause it looks like they have more.”

Me: giggle…then serious. “You’re kidding, right?”

Pie: “Well…no.”

Me: “You realize that they’re like our sun…right?”

Pie: backpeddling quickly “Well, uh, yeah…I mean from an art type of…”

But that was it, I laughed so friggin hard. I couldn’t stop. I had to get up and find each of the couples we came with to tell them what she said. Anyone that stupid needed to be ridiculed on the spot. Hell, I knew I wasn’t going to get laid…even if she still wanted to, I don’t think mini-me would have been up to the challenge. How could I? I’m dating an honors student who’s probably going to Harvard and she’s dumber than sack of wet mice. There’s no chance of me respecting her after that.

As you can imagine, the relationship didn’t last much longer. Two days to be exact.

Now…in hind sight…I probably could have handled the situation a bit more gently.

I could’ve said, “Hell yes they do...and they look better with your top off.”

Accidents and Why you should fear the road

Last Friday we had an accident in the warehouse. One of our delivery drivers was attempting to unload a truck and dumped the forklift in the parking lot. As the forklift was entering the truck, the truck pulled away from the building and the forklift fell out of the truck.

To someone who hasn’t worked around a warehouse, this may sound uninteresting. This is actually very remarkable. The driver came away uninjured. She "rode it out" from start to finish and only ripped the sleeve of her shirt. This is a 7,000 pound forklift…for comparison, that’s more than two Mazda Miatas. Additionally, this is a battery powered lift. The battery alone weighs about 2,500 lbs.

Most accidents like this almost always end in injury…often in death. Remarkable.

What the pictures do not show real well is the battery acid pouring out of the battery. The battery dumped out about 20 gallons of acid on the forklift and concrete. I wasn’t too concerned about this until we had to get the forklift back on its wheels. To do this, without the help of a crane, you need to drag the lift away from the building, lay the forklift on its side, and then set it back up on its wheels. This process spread the acid around just a bit.

On the brightside, chics in Europe are paying top dollar for acid wash jeans.

For those of you in the rest of the world, I have a single message…that I’ll undoubtedly repeat often on this blog: You should cower in fear of every delivery truck and semi that you see on the road. I mean the pull over and wait kind of fear.

“Why, Kyu? I know these trucks are big, but why be that afraid?”

Because of who’s behind the wheel. Oh. My. God. If you’ve ever had to go inside the gas station to pay for gas and looked at the attendant behind the counter and wondered: “Was the GED that hard?” Or been to a McDonalds and felt very fortunate to not have been dropped on your head by the nurse, and your mom, and your brother-daddy like the guy running the McFlurry machine. These all pale in comparison to the brain trust that is the transportation industry.

The reason that the accident at our building happened is because the driver of the truck that was being unloaded didn’t chock his wheels or set his parking break. Essentially, he left the truck in neutral. You don’t have to have a degree in physics or phys ed to know what is going to happen in that situation.

And the excuse:

“You guys never unload me with a forklift. I didn’t think you’d do it this time.”

Oh…but there’s more than just this guy.

You haven’t lived until you’ve given directions to one of these guys. They all speak in exit numbers.

Driver: “What exit number are you at?”

Me: “The one that leads to my building.”

Driver: “You mean you don’t know?”

Me: “You mean your dispatcher didn’t give you directions? No, I don’t know the exit number…but, I also don’t know my company’s 9 digit zip code and I can still find the place.”

Driver: “Zip codes only have 5 numbers.”

Me: “Yeah, and we use street names here. Call your dispatch.”

Something you may not know. There is a great majority of over-the-road drivers, those are the trucks with the big sleeper cabs, that are Russian. There’s also a good contingent that are French-Canadian. Those calls go a little something like this:
(as a side note, I not supposed to get these calls, yet somehow these dopey bastards still find my extension.)
-ring-

Me: “This is Kyuball, can I help you?”

Driver: silence

Me: “Hello?”

Driver: “I pick-up, need…ah…to you…how?”

Me: sigh “You’re making a pickup and need directions?”

Driver: “I pick-up. Where you?”

Yeah…you get the idea. Conversations like this usually take 30 minutes. Time I’ll never get back.

And these guys, sometimes women, smell like they’ve been sleeping with a dirty-turd. It’s not just their body odor, no-no it's their breath too. They must snack on rotten goat-cock jerky. It’s a stink that just doesn’t leave when they do. It sticks around like tree sap on your car window. Other people who walk into it look like they got slapped then they check there shoes for dog shit.

One more observation: I know that there are driving schools out there. They advertise. If anyone who runs these schools happens to randomly read this posting, please consider adding a three-week course on backing up to dock-doors.

It never ceases to amaze me how guys can drive forward for thousands of miles at a time, but can’t back up to a building to save their life. We’ve painted lines on the concrete for these guys and they still end up hitting the building. I’ve backed up a trailer before, it’s not easy, but it’s also not my career and while it’s not 40 feet long, it’s the same principle.

So the next time you're zipping through traffic and you see a large gap between a semi and the one in front of him, think twice before you put yourself in center of a shit sandwich. It just might come with pickles.

Holy Smurf

Have you seen the new campaign by UNICEF? It’s a depiction of the Smurfs getting bombed. You can see it here.

This is appearing in Belgium right now…which is good, because if that were shown in the U.S. it would be the funniest ad on television.

C’mon, how many people wanted to kill a Smurf? Smurfs were the Barney’s of the ‘80’s. My penultimate vision of the Smurfs had them caught in the cross-fire between G.I. Joe and Cobra forces.

The scene opens with Poppa Smurf teaching Smurfette the proper way to smurf his smurf and swallow his smurf while he ate her smurfy smurf.

The smurfalingus is interrupted by the scream of a squadron of GIJOE Mauler MBT tanks roll over the same horizon while Cobra H.I.S.S. tanks roll in from the opposing horizon into the Valley.

The ensuing battle ravages the Smurf village.

Meanwhile, several Smurfs are captured by Cobra forces and tortured for information. Destro becomes so incensed by the Smurfs constant smurf-like yammering that he has the prisoners dragged to a blue death from behind a STUN.

But, that’s me. I'd be a giddy kiddie to watch a truckload of Cabbage Patch dolls and Care Bears crash into the back of a School bus full of Strawberry Shortcakes and Polly Pockets, bursting into a fruit flavored happy-happy joy-joy flame filled pyre.

I guess the next ad we'll see will come from the ACLU. It'll be Fat Albert and the Gang getting beat down by the L.A.P.D.

Getting old sucks V1

I found a grey hair tonight.

Inside my fucking nose!

When the hell was someone going to tell me that you get grey hair everywhere? It’s not taught in public schools. I would have remembered that shit. Not in biology, history, or economics. NO WHERE in the classes that should teach you about grey hairs is it mentioned.

Oh…I’ve already wigged out about greys in my chest hair. I also had a tough time with greys in my pubics. And, don’t even get me started on where I’m growing hair now and how much of it there is.

But grey hairs in my nose?

Damn, I thought this shit would be easier on me.

“Why, Kyu, would getting old be easier on you?”

Well I’ll tell you, if you’d stop interrupting me.

I’ve got, what has been termed, the curse of the baby face. I didn’t have the pronounced jaw line that most of my troglodyte peers had in High School. For most of my life, people would mistake me for being 3 to 7 years younger than I was. Up until I was 27. No really.

When I was 21, I got into an argument with a liquor store clerk about my age. It was December of ’93, I was born in January of ’72…break out your calculators with me…that means that I had been 21 for 11 months. The asian clerk spent a good minute, minute and a half looking at me…then my license…me…my license.

“You not 21, come back next month.”

We argue a bit as I try to tell her how stupid she is and that I’m just a normal “of age” drinker whose looking to re-stock my wet-bar. With two 1.75L bottles of rum, a liter of vodka, two fifths of two different whiskeys, and a cold pack of Budweiser. Nothing weird or suspicious about that...right?

By then, a line had formed behind me and I was right at the point where my voice had risen to just below a scream. The manager came over and tried to rectify the situation. He looked at my license…at me...my license again as said:

“No…you no 21…come back next month.”

I made them find a calculator. I made them apologize to me and the 8 people behind me. I got $10 off my bill.

Back to my point…I look younger than I am. Well, I did for a good portion of time, until now.

I’m not freaking out about grey hair in general. What happens, happens, and I’m not going to cover it up with “Just for Men” or any of that other coloring like some middle-aged Al Bundy, pining for the good old days. If I go bald...I go bald...fuck it.

It’s life’s little DVD Easter Eggs that are throwing me off here. There will be more…I know…but, damn…grey nose hairs. That shit ain’t right.

Breakout the Turkey Basters

An Indiana Legislator, republican state Senator Patricia Miller, tried to suggest a law that would deny couples that aren’t married from producing kids with help from medical procedures.

That’s what living in the Bible belt will get you.

This was really a thinly veiled attempt by an ultra-conservative to keep gay and lesbian couples from having children and essentially regulate pregnancy. I’m still undecided on the gay parents thing as a whole, but I’ve got two in-laws who are lesbians and they’d make great parents. I’d be willing to make a donation to their family unit too…the old fashioned way…wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

What this Senator should’ve been concentrating on is not the people who want children…but the people who don’t care if they have children. I’m not referring to the Prom Queen who’s looking for an abortion. I’m talking about the single mom’s on welfare who can’t keep their legs closed. Those people fucking make me sick. You can’t afford to keep a dog healthy, but you’re going to raise 7 kids.

And don’t give me that sob story that they’re only on government handouts because the father won’t pay child support. You fucked a turd, now you’re living in shit. He wasn't a deadbeat when you were reginding his cam shaft in the bathroom of the Waffle N Steak.

“They don’t know any better, Kyu. They aren’t educated enough.”

Bullshit. Common sense should kick in after the second child:

Oh…if I keeping getting naked at the crack house, I might get knocked up again. Maybe I should keep my legs closed this time and just suck cock instead.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that if you’re living off the rest of America, then you should have limits to what you are allowed to do:

If you’re on welfare and you don’t find a job in six months, you can’t have more than two kids. If you do, then the third kid gets foster care. You have another one after the third, and the State cuts your tubes.

Oh…before you estrogen farms get your panties in a knot. I’ve got regulations for the Johnny Appleseeds of the world too:

If you put your cock into a woman on welfare and she has a kid by you and you don’t have a job or can’t pay child support, they you get your man sack snipped.

I shouldn’t have to pay for you to have kids. I have a hard enough time supporting my own. If you’re going to live off me, then I should have some say in what you do.

Living off me makes you a dependent. I wonder if there’s a section for that on Turbo Tax®.

DEPENDANTS: 4,000,000

Ah hell. Getting 4,000,000 social security numbers and typing in those names would be a bitch. Maybe I could hire out a firm in India to do it.

Anyway…Patty dropped the issue because the Democrats had a field day with the George Orwell analogies and most of the state thought she was Coo-Coo for Cocoa Puffs. However, she didn’t leave out the possibility that she'd bring it up again in January when the state general assembly reconvenes.

I’m so proud to be a Hoosier.

Remakes Blow

Ok…not all remakes blow. But a good majority do.

Case in point: The Nightstalker. The remake of Kolchack The Nightstalker.

This show sucks, and I haven’t even watched an episode of it.

“Then, Kyu, how do you know it sucks?”

Because, jack-hole, Stuart Townsend is the new Kolchack. He’s an ok actor, but he’s not Kolchack. Look at him…he’s too pretty to be Kolchack. The original story was of some bumbling, skeptical journalist who got into situations because of bad luck…then out of them because of dumb luck.

He didn’t have a Scooby Gang to bail him out. He didn’t have some driving motive to find a killer…he just wanted a good story. And he looked like this. Darren McGavin was the ultimate bumbling hero.

Hollywood has run out of ideas. The stories are rehashes. No one wants to try to come up with something new.

This is just like the new/old cars that they’re manufacturing now. The biggest rip off is the new Charger. What the fuck is this? A FOUR door Charger? You can’t put four doors on a Charger? Nothing on this car is a Charger except the name. The original Charger had a uniqueness about it. This new one looks like the rest of the four door sedans out there. Like a big plastic tampon.

Save some oxygen for me

Let them die.

The Feds are debating the right to die issue. It’s a side topic these days, but they’re looking at it again.

This is one of the many things that are wrong with this world. There used to be, back in the old days when you clubbed a girl and dragged her to your honeymoon by her hair, a natural thinning of the herd. Those too weak or stupid died horribly and the rest of the pack grew stronger and smarter.

No longer. Now the government steps in and “protects” the mouth breathers by regulation and control. Prime example: seat belt laws.

The states and feds want people to wear their seatbelts to protect them and reduce the cost of health and auto insurance. So, they make it against the law to not wear your restraints.

Does this really solve the issue? No, not really. The same can be said for speed limits…people only follow the law if there’s a cop around.

You want people to wear their belts? Then the insurance companies should put in an act of stupidity clause. If you’re injuries are the result of an accident and you were not wearing the proper restraint, then you are an idiot and are not covered. Have a nice day.

Something else not directly related but is still fun: bring back the predators to North America. I read a few months back that some ecologists were suggesting that large plains animals such as the lion, the rhino, and the elephant should be re-introduced into the “wilds” of the plains states. This is an unbelievably awesome idea.

Tourism might lag a bit for the Corn Palace in Nebraska if Simba started eating the faces off the kids or Jumbo goes into heat and starts haunching on Winnebagos. But at least you wouldn’t hear anymore about the puss-wads trying to pet the bison and getting gored. You’d see stories of Johnny Cocko trying to feed a Big Mack™ to some 2 ton rhino who goes ape shit over the sesame seeds and impales Johnny on his McHorns.

These are the thoughts that run through my head in traffic as I try not to ram the douche bag in front of me who souped up his ’89 Honda Civic Rice Rocket with parts from Wal-mart and drives like Mario Andretti…the Mario who wrecked his shit at Indy in 2003.

Granted, it’s not these morons that want to die. But, if we open the door for assisted suicide, perhaps in a few years we can start scaling back our regulations that keep jack-pipes like Paulie Shore and Ashlee Simpson alive.

Seattle: no place for a dollar.

Apparently, Seattle has a hard-on for everything liberal, except strippers. The Seattle city council voted 5 to 4 to crack…hehe get it?...down on strip clubs. They’re instituting a new ordinance that will turn strip clubs into Hooters®.

This new ordinance requires that there be at least four feet of separation between the skanks and the pervs. No more dry humping to music. There also will be a 3 foot rail installed and lighting your physician would be proud of. No more tucking a buck, either. So, basically everything we know and love about strip clubs is banned in Seattle.

Frankly, Seattle doesn’t jump out as a hot spot for strip clubs in the first place, but you’d think that a place with that many hippies would be a little more slack on the naked thing. Of course, when I think of Seattle I think of rain 300 days of the year, people who don’t bathe, and lumberjacks…but, I don’t get out much.

This doesn’t affect me much as I’m not a big fan of strip clubs. I’M NOT GAY!!! I just don’t feel like paying some chick a buck to tease my cock like a 16 year-old cheerleader and end up NOT sucking my dick.

“Oh thanks Trixie, here’s another buck for not letting me put it in you. Can you shake it a bit more to the left? That one’s not the same shade of blue as the right one. That’s great, here’s another dollar.”

Still, it’s just not a strip club if you can’t tuck our national currency into the G-String of a coke whore. It’s simply un-American.

Fucking hippies. Where’s there sense of national pride?

My new favorite song

I just recently downloaded, legally, the Bloodhound Gang's Album (yes I still call them albums) Hefty Fine. These guys are definitely an acquired taste, but funny.

As you'll find out in later posts, previously to meeting and marrying my wife, I have a history of hooking up with psychotic bitches. No...not women, bitches. The kind of women that give seeping anal sores a good name.

But, I digress. These guys have written the ultimate break up song. Oh, there's others that rate...but this is the best.

Lyrics below:

chorus:

Ain't my job

To fuck you on your birthday

Ain't my job

To fuck you on your birthday anymore

repeat chorus

Maybe you got screwed

but i dumped you 'cause you ain't nothin' but trash

I put out despite the fact that you're like a Hawaiian punch moustache

Right under my nose thinking i'm so colonel klink oblivious

But how could i nazi? you got off scot-free 'cause i know this means it

repeat chorus

If i want to be repeatedly shit on i'll go make dutch porn

When roughly translated even your naked truth means squat and what's more

I'm missing you like a hijacked flight on september 11th

I don't know who got on you but i'm not wrong in thanking them since it

repeat chorus

Maybe it ain't your birthday but then again

Ya know i wouldn't give a fuck

When what i shoulda got is over ya sooner so now I'm just gonna wrap it up