On the subject of me.

I am always happy to get an e-mail from someone that I do not know and the person is curious about me. I recently received just such an e-mail. It comes from Alli in New York. She did not clarify if that was City or State but I will just pretend it is City.

Alli wrote: Mr. B ( you can see why I think it is NYC, she called me Mr. B, how East Coast is that?)
I recently came across your blog and got hooked. You seem to be an odd person, an angry person and a somewhat heartless person in short... you remind me of several of the people I grew up with. That being said, I have a few questions for you. Were you abused as a child, hit alot? What trauma did you go through to become so jaded? I just want to know what makes you tick. Also you say that you are from MN but seem more like a person from my side of the country.

Well Alli, I don't often open up about my childhood but, since you asked, here goes. First off, let me just say that I was never abused as a child. I was hit, yes, and spanked, yes but that was not abuse. That was my parents trying to prevent the creation of a super villain. I am serious there by the way. There is something about my family bloodline that makes us, if we don't like you, not give one damn about you or your offspring. I think it's a Scandinavian thing. Therefore it is very important to instill a deep respect for pain in some children as soon as possible, I was one of those children. That respect for pain doesn't come through regular, severe beatings but sometimes you have to jog a kids brain to make him see things clearly. Now I am not heartless, I will help people out if they are polite about asking I just despise stupidity, rudeness and ignorance and will not piss a fire out on someone I find to hold these attributes to their breast. Okay, maybe if they are really hot, then I give them a bit more lea way. I am a human male after all. SO, why am I so jaded? I really don't feel that I am. I am not jaded, nor a cynic, I am a realist. I look at a situation or a person and I try to see what is beneath what they are saying or doing to find the real purpose or intention. It is a survival tactic in Minnesota, where what people are saying and what they mean are almost always opposing or off track. When you realize that almost 80% of everything people said to you growing up was a lie, it really opens your eyes as long as you are smart enough to get around the initial shock of being lied to throughout your childhood. I like it when people try to lie to my face now, it's like a game to pull the truth out of them but, since my parents did a good job of quelling my evil, childhood urges, I pull the truth out with my intellect and not a red hot set of salad tongs. That is not to say I don't sometimes want to use the tongs, I just know better. As for what makes me tick, I really don't know, it's little things, classic cars and classic cartoons. A really good pastrami on rye with hot mustard. I nice pale ale, Scotch Whiskey. A pickle in my Bloody Mary instead of olives. And, of course, the idiots I share this planet with. If it was not for them I would not be so angry and would have nothing to write about. Oh, did I mention beer and whiskey? Oh I did well just to verify. Beer and whiskey. Thanks for the letter Alli.

Okay, I gotta talk here!

You might know that I am a Green Bay Packers fan, yes indeedy. Every Sunday and some varying Mondays and Thursdays, also occasional Thanksgiving Days. I don my beloved 66 Ray Nitschke jersey and root for the Pack. I also usually get retarded drunk but that is another story. The end of last season was a gut wrencher for me. The bad pass that was picked off, ending the Packers inconceivable run toward the Super Bowl hurt. Then old faithful himself, Brett Favre calls it quits and tells the world he is retiring. It was a crappy way to end a heart breaker season.
That being said, you may also know that I am a rabid news fan. I really have a sick obsession with world news, politics, current events, what have you. I just enjoy it.
So what's my beef today and why do I bring up Brett Favre, the Packers and world news? Well, I'll tell you. As if you thought I wouldn't.

In the last couple of weeks it has become apparent that Brett Favre wants to play football again. At 38 years old, he still feels that he has a couple more throws in him. Now the fact that he has retired brings up many questions about what the Packers organization should do. GM Ted Thompson, a man that I and several of my fellow Cheeseheads Feel less that friendly toward, wants Brett to stay retired to "preserve his legacy". It could be understandable that the legacy of a man that played for sixteen seasons in this age of constant trades and money hungry players and agents, should be protected but the fact is that no matter what happens for Favre from this point on, his Green Bay legacy will remain intact. The more appropriate comment from Ted should have been " I want Favre gone so I can prove my legacy". Favres backup for the last three years, being Aaron Rodgers . Thompson's first major pick for the Pack and the slide rule by which he will be measured over and above all his other, rather impressive acquisitions. Brady Poppinga, A.J. Hawk, Donald Lee. Yet he will live or die by Rodgers. There is a lot of behind the scenes back an forth in the land of cheese and has been since the beginning of the Thompson era and a lot of vets were let go when Ted got to work. It seems to many people I have talked to that I young team is being built on the foundation laid by the veterans, passing the old guard to the new. That's fine, it's the way it's usually done in most sports but this time it seems different. People yammer about how Favre has been waffling about retiring for the last three years. Gee, you mean around the time that Thompson took over as GM ousting Mike Sherman? No one ever mentions the possibility that Favre might have been placed under pressure to retire by a GM that really wants to show that he is more than just the guy that picked Shaun Alexander. I never hear anyone talking about the big picture just what they see on ESPN.
But you know what bugs me the most? The fact that, in an election year, people are more wrapped up in ridiculous sports melodrama than worrying about the future of our country. Brett Favre's "waffling" pisses people off, yet they totally disregard John McCain's constant flipity flopping on policies, his bald faced lies and his pandering of the politics of our current President. People also seem to miss the fact that our country is being slammed into the poorhouse by Washington and its filthy ilk. As all houses of government in both major parties, twist and spin around laws and the Bill of Rights. Look at a sports blog and then compare to some news blogs and tell me I am way off on this. Look, it's okay for an athlete to flip flop, who cares, he thought he was done, burnt out. Any one of us would feel the same way in his shoes. He loves the game and wants to play. So what, let him. Now politicians are a different story. If you hold a stance and then shift it, People are most likely gonna get killed. I am just pointing out that there are bigger stories out there people and maybe you should pay attention to them while we still have the freedom to gather together at a public stadium and watch football.

By the way, if Favre does get released and Rodgers doesn't put out, that will be the end of the Thompson tenure at Lambeau. You heard it here first baby.

On the Subject of Phil Gramm.

A little late for this perhaps but I felt I must chime in on Phil Gramm's recent comment about us being a "nation of whiners". From a purely economic stand point and from the point of view of a person that has probably never even seen first hand poverty, he probably thinks we are whining. Look at Bush and Chaney, and that ilk and you don't see a lot of people that ever really had to worry about where their next meal was gonna come from or when their house would be taken away from them. So, to Gramm and his fellow Washington elite, we probably do seem whiney when we are pissed about skyrocketing food and fuel prices. Then of course you must take on the mental recession quote, basically saying that the fact that we need to scratch and claw just to stay even is really all in our heads. Wow, Phil you have achieved the status of universal ass hat. actually I may have to amend that to ass turtle neck because you really got your head up there. Look, I have a hard but good job. I make an above average wage for Minnesota. I live with a girl who makes, on the average, more than I do. Together, even three years ago, we would be living really well. Now, not so much. The rise in gas prices, the decline of the house market and the horrid increase in all other costs has made it so, even on two above average incomes, it is still hard to survive. The fear that it is the Gramm mindset that could one day be head of the U.S. Treasury makes me wake up screaming some nights. A person so disconnected with the world around him that he can't see how bad things are getting in this country. Well really, they can see it, they just don't care. Honestly, anyone who thinks their government has their best interests at heart should read a few history books and let the truth sink in. Opening your eyes only hurts for a second and every second of your life after that but it's a good pain and far better than the numbness of stupidity.
I am sorry, I have begun to rant. I really just wanted to say a few things to Mr. Gramm. I know he won't read this but just in case.
I do not feel that we are a nation of whiners. A nation of mostly pussies and a ton of morons and ignorant buffoons, yes, I couldn't argue with that. But whiners? no. I know you do not feel we need a minimum wage in this country, you like the idea of indentured slavery and fifty two people living in a one bedroom apartment because money is a burden we normal people just can't handle. I understand that you and your wife were involved in the whole Enron debacle and probably helped free thousands of people from that very same monetary burden. I also get that you and your cohorts would love to drop our country into destitution to turn this nation into an industrial complex were the rich ruled the poor with an iron fist. And that sir, is why I feel you are out of touch. So I want to do my part, I want you back in the loop as it were. Here is my offer. For one year, you and your wife come and live the life of my girlfriend and I and in return, we shall step into your shoes. You do our jobs, you pay our bills and we will do the same vice versa. I think that, by the end of one year you will really get a feeling for what it's like to be a person again, it might just knock you off of your ivory tower.
So that's my offer, after one year, if you still feel like Americans are whiners, I will graciously ask you to go piss up a rope, you elitist ass turtle neck.

The customer is always right?

The customer is always right.

I do not know the origin of this phrase. Oh, I have searched but there is little to actually go on. It's just one of those things. I can't tell you much about it but I can tell you this, I hate it. Now, I know that if you are a shop-a-holic, which is a cutesy American phrase for an ass hat with far too much money and not enough brains, that you think the world of this phrase. I also venture to guess that, if you enjoy making a waitress or waiters workday a living hell, that you also enjoy this phrase. One thing I know for certain about this set of words, if you work in retail or the food service industry, you absolutely hate it. Yes it all probably started out innocently enough, some high end store in New York in the late Forties. A time when people still had the taste of the Great Depression on their tongues. I am sure some store manager told his staff " remember, the customer is always right".

There is actually a story about a guy named Ceasar Ritz, I believe it was, he owned a few hotels in France and told his staff "The customer is never wrong". If you think about it, that seams fine, if I owned a hotel that charged out the ass for a bed that other people used year round, I would try to keep my staff from arguing with the clientel over who may or may not be a thousand dollar an hour hooker. Other stories link the phrase to Macy's. Well Macy's too was once a very high end store and store managers would probably like to keep their high fallootin' high hats coming in to be treated as they felt they deserved and, of course, hand over the bucks. The funny thing is, I have connected the origin of this phrase to several, at least formerly, high priced stores toward the early part of the twentieth century. I am actually fine with that. If I go in to a Ferrari dealer, I would expect to be pampered and doted on, more so than if I had popped on down to Crazy Achmeds scratch and dent lemon stand. That's the thing about this phrase, it belongs in a high class, high money environment. It does not belong at Denny's or Target.

And there lies my problem with the phrase. Since its rather innocent and not so humble beginnings, all the way to our current day. This phrase has been taken, horribly, out of context. People wear this ridiculous phrase on their sleeve and, at the slightest discomfort, whip it out like a dagger at the worlds fattest, laziest knife fight. " What do you mean I can't substitute ham for eggs? Don't you know the customer is always right?", "Why can't I get a discount? I didn't spill juice on it, that was my kid. the customer is always right.", " I'm not paying fifty bucks for such a mediocre half and half. Go ahead and call our pimp, I will explain to him that the customer is always right." Okay that last one is a bit of fantasy but I just hope to get to see that one day. I think that person might learn a valuable lesson about when and when not to use certain phrases, or they might get killed, either way I'm good with it.

I have worked my fair share of retail jobs and have dealt with the troglodytic armies of backward thinking, mouth breathers that enter any store in our country and, I have been bombarded by this silly, overly repeated phrase so many times I am surprised I have never summoned some dark and unholy art to form the words into stone and beat seven kinds of hell out of each and every person that has ever said it to me. god only know how, during my short time managing a Gamestop, how the cage in my back room was not full of decomposing corpses with the words "custo" or "alwa" indented into their pulverized foreheads.

You see the phrase is not meant for every one, it is meant for more expensive places with more valuable fair. It is never to be used in a food shelf line, as I am sure it has. It is meant for Chez Pierres, not Bob's Burger Hut. The Carlton, not a hotel that charges by the blood stain. You use t when you buy an Audi, not when you are trying to get your hands on your neighbors '76 Pinto wagon. It is a phrase that was made for the upper ten percent, yet it is exploited by the lower thirty. For many, it is the only string of words they can put in sequence because of the years of cousin on cousin marriage and fetal alcohol syndrome. And, they use it to death.

Look I am no fan of the upper ten either, they are bastards to a man a far as I am concerned. Yet I can not tolerate the miss use of a phrase as powerful and annoying as this. So join me gentle reader and the next time you find yourself in line behind the great, sweaty girth of one of these customer service lampreys. Take a moment to stop and just, I don't know, start them on fire. They would most likely burn for days and you could use that energy to power a lamp. Just a thought, g'night.

On the Subject of knockers.

So I am watching this news show about "extreme" body modifications and they have the typical folks that they tend to have on these shows. You get the girl with the cat whiskers and the guy with, what looks like a starfish, under his forehead. All the regular people that, at one point though, "This will set me apart, I'll do it", which is a viable idea, until people start copying them. One cat girl, that's kind of cool, two cat girls, that's just the beginning of being over done. They, of course, interviewed tattooed people as well. I do not think many tattoos fit in as body modifications. They are more like paintings on a wall. Some are bad, some are good and almost everyone has one now so they do not really count as an "extreme" body mod. The thing that struck me about the show was this. Toward the end they had women that had had breast augmentation, I'm not talking about any giant 55 double F's or anything. they just had normal woman that had gotten their breasts enhanced. It seamed so odd to me. Do some people really think that breast enhancement is an "extreme" body change? Have they never been to Venice Beach or La Jolla shores on a sunny day? A body mod is usually something that sets you apart from most people and makes many others standoffish when you are in the vicinity. Breast enhancement does something completely different. Small breasted women can suddenly fit in with their larger breasted counterparts and fit into those "really cute" blouses they couldn't wear before. Overly large breasted women can do the same, in reverse and finally not be shunned for their prodigious mammaries. At any rate, having your tatas redone will usually add to the level of your personal and public acceptance. Having a two foot length of ceramic anal beads surgically embedded into your flesh, most likely, will not help you get that promotion you were hoping for. I'm not even sure why I watched that damn show, maybe I was bored, maybe I was drunk, maybe both. At any rate, I had to turn it off, it was just getting too stupid. I know the folk that keep making those shows, probably won't read this but if they do, I just wanted to say, body modification is something that is done by a very small portion of the planet, were as breast augmentations can be found on women all over the world and, in Vegas, a lot of guys too. it is a widely accepted practice and probably the single most performed operation in the world. It doesn't belong on your shows unless you are doing a piece on Voom Voom McKnockers the woman with breasts the size of a slightly under developed bison, then you can do that show. Regular woman with normal breasts are great but they do not belong on your show. Don't worry though, as time goes on and the world gets more boring, body mods will get weirder and stranger and more bizarre, until only a small amount of the world population will have the most odd of the mods. Fads like this will come and go, they will seem common place one day, yet the next, they may all but vanish but titties will never go out of style, not ever that you can take to the bank.

George Carlin has left the building.

It always comes in threes, doesn't it? The day after I write about the worlds loss of Harvey Korman and Tim Russert, another one of my favorites slips away. I shouldn't even say one of my favorites, I should say "The greatest gift to comedy that there ever was or will be". George Carlin died of heart failure yesterday. It is so hard to describe what Carlin meant to me, in a way, he was my muse. If I was blocked and couldn't write I would pop on some Carlin to clear my head and knock the dust out. George made me want to do stand up comedy and he was the most influential person to my short lived comedy career. He kind of showed me that words are wonderful weapons and, if used properly, could build up or destroy, just about anyone. I had the pleasure of seeing him live a few years ago and couldn't get passed security to actually talk to him. He was amazing, I would have loved to meet him. Usually I try to avoid meeting entertainers I respect because, when you meet them, you invariably lose all respect for them. Carlin wouldn't have been like that he was too real, even on stage, you knew he was just being himself. I found this quote from him,

“I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn’t really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people,”.

That was his answer when a reporter asked him about why he quit working with Jack Burns in the 60's
( It is also a quote that is on my writing room wall, I just want to explain that, those words go through my head before I set foot on a stage to do comedy. I want to make people laugh but I don't want to lower myself to do it. George did help me remember that.) Burns and Carlin had both gone to see Lenny Bruce and Bruce changed Georges perspective on comedy. Carlin could not go on doing clean comedy, even for the paycheck. That is something that, if you can't respect, then you are a douchebag . The world is full of hack comics that just regurgitate the same garbage over and over, tons of noise and very few voices. Now there is one less. I think of all the entertainers in this world, Carlin is the one I deified, gods shouldn't die but, sadly, sometimes they do. Sure he was losing a step in his last few appearances but he was still good, I was gonna get to see him again this October and I was giddy like a dork about it. George was one of a kind, no one could twist words like he could. I am a huge fan of alliteration and you can pretty much hand the to him. After all the plastic people and the newsies have had their time telling us what Carlin meant to them and after the media thoroughly bastardizes his image by calling him buzzwords like "edgy" or "envelope pushing". After the week long newsie love affair with him, wherein people praise his name, even though they couldn't quote a word. After all that, I know myself and several true fans will still be looking toward his bits for inspiration, hell, just for the will to leave the house and piss someone off, which is a reason to leave the house that I live for. Today I am going to walk into a convenience store and shout "Is today Thursday?" and walk right out. That is in tribute to George. I will also use most of the "Incomplete list of impolite words" to describe a person in line at Dairy Queen. As long as I live, I will remember two important quotes.

" Think of how stupid the average person is, now realize that half of them are stupider than that."
and

" I think it is the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately"

Two thoughts that get me through the day. Well George, I don't know if there is an after life but I do hope that if there is you finally found a place for your stuff. The world will miss you. For your sake I hope the Catholics are wrong but if not, I will at least get to meet you in Hell, so that's a bright point, right?

Death

I just wouldn't feel right if I didn't put down some words regarding a couple of recent deaths. This will nor be horribly sarcastic like my usual writing because it is about people that I respect. In less than a month two people that have shuffled off their mortal coil and joined the choir invisible. Harvey Korman of movie and television fame, too me best known for playing Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles, recently died at the age of eighty one years old. Korman had been suffering from an aortic aneurysm for several months. I have to say even my dark heart was saddened by his loss. You always hope that one day you might be able to shake hands with a legend like him before it's too late. It's about as big a pipe dream as being kidnapped by a bunch of Victoria Secret models and being forced to be their naked sponge bath slave and, just like that scenario, it never really happens. Harvey Korman always made me laugh and I was a huge fan of his since I was a kid and would watch him and Tim Conway on the Carrol Burnett Show. Hilarious, One of a kind and a true comic genius. The world will miss Harvey Korman just please don't forget him.
The other tragic death recently was another favorite of mine. Tim Russert of Meet the Press died of a heart attack at the age of fifty four. Now you might have guessed that I am a news addict and you would be right. I have logged several thousands of hours on global events and when it came to American politics, Tim was one of my favorites. I think it is because I felt he was relatively genuine. He was not another out of touch, blow hard (O'rielly and Limbaugh, I refer to you. Oh and if I misspelled their names I really don't care, they are not worth the time it would take to spell check it). Mr. Russert seemed very easy going and real when he reported discussed a topic, like a normal guy talking about something during a commercial while he waited for the game to pop back on. I was pretty knotted up when I found out about his passing and, if you know anything about me, you know that the death of public figures rarely bothers me. Tim was different, I never met him but I liked him and I am pretty hard to impress. I will miss him and his, let's call it, easygoingness.
That's all, just wanted to say that, I am sure you know about all that anyway but I just wanted to say a few things.



Come on, tell me these guys weren't awesome.