On a more serious note.

Given the general tenor of my posts here, most of you probably think of me as a fairly passionate individual, one with strong opinions and emotional reactions.  You may even assume these rule me.  While this blog does act as a release-valve for my snark and bile, I would be lying if I said the catharsis is entirely healthy.  In venting, I sometimes become even more enraged as I analyze every little thing that annoys me.  Writing these ranticles (rant+article=ranticle, get it?) fosters my cynicism and negative perspective on humanity.  So, if you are one of the regulars who still checks in here, you have probably noted how sporadic my posts have become.  It takes a lot of energy to stay this indignant and critical all the time, and I would prefer not to live that way.  More so than ever, I strive for what the ancients called ataraxia, a freedom from concern or distress over the things beyond my control.  To live in a state of Zen-like equanimity is my goal.

Well, I fail pretty fucking hardcore there.  I admit it: I am what I am.  So, here's a quick reference guide for things customers at my restaurant say or do that pisses me off something fierce.  If I'm starting to repeat myself on this subject, just tell me.

Waters with your nonalcoholic beverages – 90% of you do this out of pure habit, because I am inevitably bussing away 90%-full water glasses at the end of the meal, so stop it.  You already have a fucking drink, don’t get greedy.  Coffee or other hot beverages are the only exceptions to this.

 “I’m allergic to onions.” – Well, since an onion allergy is not a thing, no, no you’re not.  Not liking something is not the same thing as being allergic to it.  When I was a kid, I used to say I was “allergic” to girls, but that didn’t make it true (I think).  Same goes for those of you who do not have celiac disease, but claim you’re allergic to wheat gluten, except in the chips, which you are magically immune to because you really like them.

*Pictured: Not your death.

“Is a cup or a bowl of soup bigger?” – Are the bowls in your house freakishly small, or the cups strangely gigantic?  Because we define “cup” and “bowl” the same way normal people do: cup<bowl.

“How’s the _______?” – Awful.  It really redefines “sucks elephant dong” in a whole new way.  Seriously, you know we’re trained to give everything our restaurant produces a verbal blowjob, right?  Do you ask Coke if it’s better than Pepsi?  I mess with people by telling them something is grosser than moose taint when in reality it’s Christly delicious.

Nah, we put glass-shards in that.

“Oh, my goodness, no, I can’t have a drink, I’m driving!” – That’s why I didn't say, “Hey, want to get blackout brain-fucked on an endless stream of moonshine?”  Trust me, imbibing 16 ounces of piss fizz while eating your 1,700-calorie meal over the course of an hour is going to have a negligible effect on your probably-already-atrocious driving skills.  Prudes.  If you don’t want to drink booze, just tell me that, rather than make up some bullshit excuse why you can’t, like a first date who won’t put out.

“Can you make it with less juice/soda/sour mix?”  OR “I couldn’t even taste the alcohol in the last one.” – First off, I’m not an idiot, like you, so you’re not going to trick me into changing the booze-to-mixer ratio by asking for less of the latter.   We have set proportions that the company dictates, known in the industry as “recipes,” which account for our alcohol usage when inventory is taken.  I have to abide by them.  Second, the majority of modern mixed drinks are designed to hide the alcohol flavor, not accentuate it – just because you can’t taste much of it doesn’t mean it’s not there.  And you ordered a piña fucking colada anyway, ass-hat.

Trust me, you can't afford the brain-freeze or the added damage anyway.

“Yup, we’re ready to order.  Jim, you go first.” – Ready to order means you have decided on your meal and are reasonably sure everyone else at the table has, not that you have decided, yes, you want to eat here today.  You sure as shit don’t declare this then defer to someone else, as if the extra twelve seconds it will take me to get those other orders will buy you enough time to make your life-altering decision.  Women, I am looking at you especially, because you seem to have a gender-wide condition that causes you to automatically say, "Yes, as long as I go last."

Whining like a little bitch with a skinned knee and shit – I actually blame the industry for this one, because we have collectively taught you to do it.  You have learned that expressing the slightest disappointment with any component of your dining experience is apt to get you freebies of one kind or another.  It’s Pavlov’s dogs all over again.  Case in point: a few nights ago I had a customer who thought she was supposed to get curly fries, which we don’t make, with her meal, and proceeded to act as if their absence on her plate completely destroyed the entire night and quite possibly her psyche.  I mean, she acted absolutely crushed.  Over goddamned curly fries, even though she still got regular fries.  No alternative would do, no words would end her infantile sulking.  I'm sorry, I mistook you for an adult.

“I don’t want to complain, but . . .” – Then don’t.  Just shut up.

KP, out.

4 Old-Timey Songs That Are Far From Innocent

By now, you've probably grown tired of hearing Granddad Shmitz complaining that "they don't make 'em like the used to," "'em" being anything and everything from cars to prostitutes.  But if there's one thing the previous generation is morally obligated to hate most, it's all of the music that came after their own era.  So, they trash "the MTV" and insist that in their day there was real music.  Clearly, we should be looking into homes for Granddad Shmitz, if he thinks this Elvis guy was "realer" than Lil' Wayne, or that MTV has anything to do with music.

My workplace gives me excruciatingly ample opportunity to sample music from the past.  If songs like "Whack-a-Doo" and "Yackety-Yack" didn't make it obvious enough, songwriting in the old days did not exactly require a poetic command of lyricism, nor, necessarily, the English language.  You could just make up shit, fo' sheezy.  Go ahead and listen to these execrable oldies if you think you have the ironclad stomach and eardrums with testicles.  But what a lot of people seem to forget is just how scandalous, dirty, and sometimes disturbing songs from that golden era could be.  A few of them make Justin Bieber sound like . . . well, the neutered, underaged, cherubic pop princeling he is.

. . . he'll be legal, girls.

God, we've gotten a lot of humor mileage out of someone who was supposed to have a 6-month shelf-life.  Anyway, people like to think the oldies were even more benign than Biebs, but certain tunes sing a different, er, tune.  As you may have guessed by this point, it all boils down to sex.  You can chalk it up to generational naïveté if you want, but there is no way anyone could pretend the following songs were innocent in their day, and that only jaded hindsight makes them filthy and sometimes weird.

"No Particular Place to Go" - Chuck Berry

Maybe this is where rock'n'roll first got its reputation for its insidious corrupting influence on the American youth, despite sounding as dangerous as elevator bebop to modern ears.  Chuck Berry is widely considered one of the founding fathers of American rock, before Sex and Drugs became essential components, instead of merely unacknowledged backstage perks.  He's the guy who actually wrote and recorded "Johnny B. Goode," the timeline-altering song Marty McFly shocks his parents' prom with in the first Back to the Future (as if this reference has much more relevance than Chuck Berry to younger audiences).

He also suffered from a chronic delusion that all ceilings were, at most, 4' high.

"No Particular Place to Go" is a classic rock song from Berry, an innuendo-laden middle finger to WASPy prudishness.  But, looking back on it, the metaphor was about as subtle as a Carrot-Top joke.  The message is only subliminal if you drank a significant quantity of paint in your childhood.  "No Particular Place to Go" is, on its pomade-thin surface, about the phenomenon of "cruising," that curious tendency of '50s and early-'60s youths to aimlessly idle their chrome-plated Chevy Phallusmobiles around town, maybe because they were waiting for the Internet to be invented.  What the song is really about is the corollary to cruising: "parking," which meant taking country lanes and attempting to nail Mary-Sue-Ellen in the backseat, a rather modest aspiration, given that most of said vehicles had enough interior space to facilitate a Roman orgy.

Betty-Jo-Ann was a better bet.  Gosh, she's swell!

Don't believe me?  Think that's way too wild of content for the puritanical standards of an age when TV could, without irony, name a child character on primetime "the Beaver," yet demand that Lucy and Ricky sleep in separate beds?  Here is a quick sampling of the lyrics:

I stole a kiss at the turn of a mile
My curiosity runnin' wild
. . .
No particular place to go,
So we parked way out on the Kokomo
The night was young and the moon was gold
So we both decided to take a stroll
Can you imagine the way I felt?
I couldn't unfasten her safety belt!

Ridin' along in my calaboose
Still tryin' to get her belt aloose
All the way home I held a grudge,
For the safety belt that wouldn't budge

Yes, her seat belt was the issue, a strap that is notoriously-difficult to unclasp for the inexperienced.  And, naturally, no girl can go on a stroll with you if you can't unfasten her safety restraint!  (If you can't tell, I am winking and nudging you with my elbow every time I use italics).  You wily wordsmith, Chuck!  It was apparently sly enough to slip by the censors of the day, who were noted less for their open-minded leniency and more for being tweed-clad squares, or, as we would say now, complete dickheads.

"Hanky Panky" - The Raindrops / Tommy James and the Shondells

What do I have to say?  It's in the freakin' title.  It is the title: "Hanky Panky."  You do know "hanky panky" means "sex," right?  Because it means "sex," if you didn't get the memo.  And, just to drive home the point, the song was kind enough to remind you no less than eighteen fucking times that this baby does it.  No, I am not hyperbolizing, the line "My baby does the hanky panky" is literally repeated eighteen times in the song, which, for those who are keeping count, is eight more lines than the rest of the song combined.  Clearly, this girlfriend does the shit out of the hanky panky.  Not only that, the other ten lines are actually just these same five lines repeated twice:

I saw her walkin' on down the line
You know I saw her for the very first time
A pretty little girl standin' all alone
"Hey, pretty baby, can I take you home?"
I never saw her, never really saw her

You may also note that this anonymous baby is pretty obviously a hooker.  Some people will claim that "hanky panky" was just a dance back then, but those people are pretty obviously goddamn window-lickers.

Hey, you two, get a dance floor!

"Hanky Panky" was originally written and recorded in 1963 by The Raindrops, who hated it, then mysteriously re-released to much wider popularity by Tommy James and the Shondells in 1966, despite them being presumable window-lickers as well.  Why else would anyone cover a throwaway song even its creators disavowed?

Tommy James and Not The Beatles

You see, the multifaceted gem was allegedly crafted in 20 minutes to be a Raindrops' B-side (the crap side of a "recording disc" that's not intended to ever be played, yet for some reason must also have music on it) for a song called, naturally, "That Boy John."  Just in case you needed further confirmation of the real meaning behind their subversive music.  What an idyllic time!  Next.

"Knock Three Times" - Tony Orlando & Dawn

This is where all pretense was dropped.  Tony Orlando, in spite of having the name and appearance of a '70s porn star, was a musician who simply sang about porn scenarios.

"Dawn" was the collective name he gave the two vaginas in his band.

"Knock Three Times" was yet another charming entry in the category of Popular Songs About Casual Sex in an Age That Pretended Sex Didn't Happen.  All right, so it was written in 1970, beyond the original prescribed time-frame of this article, but who the hell is writing this, you or me?  As if you fucking know anything about Tony Orlando.  Did you know the women in that picture weren't even the real backup vocalists on the track in question?  Or that this song existed at all?  That's what I thought.  Point is, it sounds like a much earlier song and fits the rest of my criteria.

Hey, girl, what ya doin' down there
Dancin' alone every night while I live right above you
I can hear your music playin'
I can feel your body swayin'
One floor below me, you don't even know me
I love you
Oh my darling 

Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me
Twice on the pipe if the answer is no
Oh my sweetness
Means you'll meet me in the hallway
Twice on the pipe means you ain't gonna show 

If you look out your window tonight
Pull in the string with the note that's attached to my heart
Read how many times I saw you
How in my silence I adored you
Only in my dreams did that wall between us come apart
Oh my darling

REPEAT INDECENT PROPOSITION 

So, evidently, it was acceptable to write songs that were blatant invitations to strange women for anonymous fuck-buddy booty-calls via Morse code.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  To modern sensibilities, that shit is outright romantic.  It only gets borderline stalker-ish when Chest-Wig up there croons "Pull in the string with the note that's attached to my heart / Read how many times I saw you / How in my silence I adored you."  Then again, half of all love songs have vaguely obsessive-predatory undertones these days, so who cares?

*Pictured: Romance.

Hell, compared to the blunt messages of such recent hits as Enrique Iglesias' "Tonight I'm Fucking You" and Lil' Jon's older "Get Low," "Knock Three Times" sounds positively Nicholas Sparks-tender.  At least it is an open-ended request for a hookup.  It's not nearly as bad as the final oldie-but-scary on this list . . .

"Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" - Neil Sedaka

It was 1961, and pop singer Neil Sedaka decided, presumably on a strawberry malt-bender, that he needed to release an ode to his own yen for jailbait.  Or at least that's as plausible a theory as any, given that he produced "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen."  To grasp just what's wrong with this one, I am providing the suspect lyrics, which is virtually all of them:

Happy birthday sweet sixteen
Tonight's the night I've waited for
Because you're not a baby anymore
You've turned into the prettiest girl I've ever seen
Happy birthday sweet sixteen
What happened to that funny face
My little tomboy now wears satin and lace
I can't believe my eyes you're just a teenage dream
Happy birthday sweet sixteen
When you were only six I was your big brother
Then, when you were ten, we didn't like each other
When you were thirteen, you were my funny valentine
But since you've grown up, your future is sewn up
From now on you're gonna be mine, so
If I should smile with sweet surprise
It's just that you've grown up before my very eyes
You've turned into the prettiest girl I've ever seen
Happy birthday sweet sixteen

This is not an adoring paean of chaste adulation.  Coming from a then-20-something guy, it's not the pure praise of a proud father or even a creepy stepbrother.  The lines "Tonight's the night I've waited for" and "When you were only six I was your big brother" rule that out, unless this little ditty is even darker and more twisted than I'm suggesting.

Actually, this lecher is suggesting it, not me.

Putting aside horrifying possibilities of incest and child abuse, the very best this song can conjure is lusting after your buddy's newly-pubescent little sister.  The message is clear as an old-timey soda fountain drink without the syrup: "I've watched you grow from a child, like a wolf circling its prey, and now that you are bangable by the legal standard of our time, I'm going to fuck your still-impressionable brains out."  To add an extra dash of GHB to the recipe of sleaziness, this "love song" tells the female in question she essentially has no choice in the matter either; he's been waiting too long for her sweet sixteen to be denied now.  The song turns downright rapey.  What do you expect from a guy in that shirt (which looks suspiciously like something old-school Enrique Iglesias might wear)?

I got you a present: it's my dick.

Really, no other interpretation is possible.  Oldies, you are a bunch of perverts, just like we always thought.  Especially you, Uncle Neil.

KP, out.

If you think a monkey could do this job, you're underestimating the monkey

Perusing my previous entries, I see it has been a while since I last posted any new material.  If that is the case, it typically means nothing and no one has especially pissed me off lately, necessitating a rant.  As usual, when the demon of writer's block rears its ugly head (think Mola Ram, the bat-shit skull-hat dude from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but with Nancy Grace's face), I turn to that perpetual annoyance machine, Facebook.  More specifically, the advertisements that muscle my vital timeline posts aside and scream, What the fuck are we even selling?!?

This one only appears after 12 AM, on Comedy Central.

Whoa!  Not only do I need to have reached the age of legal adulthood, but also legal majority!  Even if I'm old enough to get shit-faced at bars, I'm still not mature enough to handle the epic badassery and pure wild intensity that is Battle Pirates on Facebook.  That is some hardcore gaming!  Or so this ad seems to suggest.  And of course it goes without saying that anyone over 42 would be in danger of a massive coronary from sheer awesome overdose.  Better stay away, Gramps!

Two-for-one deal!  See if you can spot the bogus ads!

First, Gillette: you are a razor-blade company.  You make appliances that cut the hair from my face (and other areas on special occasions).  That is the beginning and end of our relationship.  Unless it involves the sexy aftermath or copious amounts of squirting blood, no shaving "story" could possibly be of interest to anyone of the non-sociopathic variety.  The fact that it's Andre 3000's facial grooming anecdote adds approximately "Hey No!" appeal.  Do you like what I did there?

Second, AVG.  Most of you shiftless Internet-moochers probably recognize this as one of the leading free computer security software providers.  You may also notice this has almost exactly fuck-all to do with pitting human beings against predatory felines, as the link promises, a blurb more suited to one of Spike TV's "World's [Whatever]est [Whatever] Caught on Video" specials.  In perhaps one of the most bizarre cross-promotional strategies ever devised by people on significant amounts of cocaine, the video shows AVG's own "documentary team," which they have, building a protective cage out of 3.5 million toothpicks to serve as an observation post for watching wild tigers, all as a vague metaphor for how AVG's huge security network functions.  If I could make up shit like that, I would not be writing a free blog.

"No, seriously, Mitch, I have this fan-fuckin'-tastic
seasonal pun no one has ever thought of before!"

Actually, I don't really fault the makers of this one, but when I caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye, my immediate thought was, "Just another Dark Knight Rises knockoff image."

What, just me?

That may say more about my subconscious than anything else.  On the other hand, since content-tailored, targeted marketing is a major trend on the Internet, this may just be one of the subtlest, most insidious examples yet.  It wouldn't be the first time Facebook & Co. gleaned certain information about my mental state from my profile to exploit me . . .

Focus on the top one, not WoW: Kung Fu Panda Skadooshion.

In all seriousness, there is a definite excess of lightsabers on my sidebar overall.  This one in particular is really reaching for the connection, though.  Putting aside that (1) no Jedi could ever be without work in this dark universe and (2) that kid is way too young to be anything more than a Padawan, what reputable corporation would cater to me this way?  Do they think remedial alliteration instills respect?  (That would be your word of the day, ignorant masses.)  Or that I automatically want to associate with anything Star Wars-related, however remote the degree, out of desperation?  "Douchebags, you are."

Clearly, her response to, "Hey, you forgot your pants."

And if it's not lightsabers, it's tits.  If you thought lightsabers were relatable to anything, the pushin'-cushions are more versatile than Bear Ghrylls' Swiss Army knife.  Just ask Ms. Camel-Toe up there.  When she's not tapping into my meme-savvy hipster disillusionment with the tee-shirt she's schilling, she's promising me I can tap her with my "Single" status on Facebook.  All right, that metaphor broke down a little, but it was still pretty damned clever.  Naturally, it doesn't take Mark "If You Don't like 'Timelines,' Go Back to Myspace" Zuckerburg's filter algorithms to determine sex sells.

Nice crossbow.

This gem comes from another non-pornographic website I frequent where certain assumptions are going to be made about the target demographic.  Need I point out how hard it is going to be for her to operate that windlass, let alone aim the bow, with such overripe melons bursting from her ill-laced bodice?  (Eat your heart out, whoever writes those crap "romance"/girl-porn paperbacks.)  Hell, they even give you choices when it comes to which Final Fantasy ripoff, maybe-animated chick you can digitally bone to thwart the forces of evil, because that totally makes sense.

Where's Rikku's doppelganger?  I want to up her skill-tree level.*
*Joke will be understood by roughly .1% of readers

Speaking of fail on a level so epic no meme has yet encompassed it, there are those ubiquitous adverts for various "universities," "institutes," "academies," and "back-alley scams with websites on pirated servers in countries you cannot pronounce and, frankly, don't believe exist."  And, boy howdy, will they educate the shit out of you.  In much the same way you learned not to follow the links your so-called "friends" sent you for "goatse" or "two girls one cup."  But, honestly, if you can't see the false promises coming when the ads look . . . well, the way the majority of them look, you deserve whatever financial corn-holing you receive.  That, intrepid followers, is legitimate rape.

Her application to NASA reads:
Major in Space Studies
Minor in Swallowing for Career Advancement

Credentials nearly as credible as this ad:

For the record, I captured this image from my Facebook page only four months ago, which for the uninitiated is, give or take, six months after the release of the game in question.  If you are still signing up to beta-test a game that came out that long ago, you have about as much business in gaming as Jesse Ventura had in politics.  Does anyone remember him?  Professional wrestler who became the governor of Minnesota in the '90s?  Well, look him up.

KP, out.

Keeping them honest, but without Anderson Cooper's tact or reserve

Well, friends, we made it to the other side.  As I write this safely sipping my custom-mixed Bloody Mary, I am grateful another dark time has passed.  Labor Day is over, and with it the iron fist of martial law too shall unclench.  What's that?  You didn't realize we were living in a V for Vendetta-esque police state for the past few weeks?  What's that?  You never saw V for Vendetta?  Children of Men?  Or 1984?  How about Judge Dredd?  No?  Well, the remake is coming out soon.  (Most.  Necessary.  Reboot.  Ever.)  The point is, they all have authoritarian-type, er, authorities in them.  Just like we had here in the real US of A for nearly a month.  Didn't you notice the public service announcements on TV, radio, the Web, billboards, those giant light-up road commission signs counties buy just to announce slogans on, and probably in newspapers, if anyone still read those?

See, a print ad is kind of like a video, only it doesn't move.

Judging by these spots, you would probably conclude the USA was candidly announcing their intention to launch a campaign of oppression worthy of an '80s futurist dystopian political sci-fi novel.  At first, I just dismissed these as the product of my particular state's overzealous approach to crushing any kind of alcohol-related merriment or tomfoolery, like the Puritan at an Irish wake.  But then I noticed nothing in the ads specified my state, and I actually paid attention to what they were saying, more out of polite curiosity than anything else.  I gathered that the purpose was to scare me straight and/or shitless come Labor Day weekend.

I have a number of quibbles with this video.  First, not to debate semantics, but those aren't actually "excuses" so much as "tactics to avoid detection," but nice try with the English.  Second, who the fuck thinks wearing a hat or not has any effect on their driving proficiency or level of conspicuousness?  Third, doesn't that guy with the hat and Jew-'fro look like a young Adam Sandler?  Weird.

Before any of you jump to the wrong assumption, I am not some sort of anti-authority anarchist, nor one of those people whose playlist endlessly loops "Cop Killer," "Fuck tha Police," "Killing in the Name of," and similar odes to angry stereotyping.  I don't rage against the authority the police represent, though I am wary of any ordinary, average human being empowered disproportionately.  And, don't mistake me, I am not advocating drunk driving at all.  As a matter of fact, I have even discouraged it in an article extolling alcohol.  But I am opposing campaigns based largely on fear, exaggeration, and lies.  Are more cops going to be on the roads in the weeks before Labor Day to build a subconscious public paranoia that may possibly slightly reduce the number of intoxicated drivers on said holiday?  Yes, if only because it's easier to hit quotas and make up municipal budget cuts with fines.  Is there some federal directive mandating a stealth operation coordinating every law-enforcement agency nationwide to catch any and every borderline-inebriated driver, as their media blitz suggests?  Of course not.

You see, because I paid attention in government and civics class, I know the USA is not a unitary democracy, where all power flows from the top (federal government) on down to the local level like the droid control ship in The Phantom Menace.  In Great Britain, for instance, all of the police forces, from the quaint, stick-wielding county constabulary to London's badass Mossad-like metro cops, draw their authority directly from and indeed exist at the whim of the central government.  Thus, if Queen Elizabeth decides it is now criminal to spread compromising photos of the Second String King, Prince Wanker Fratboy, no one further down the chain of command is in the position to argue.  Or something like that.  Parliament might be involved.

Obviously, Her Majesty made no such decree: that's the
front page of their #1 national newspaper.

Here stateside, on the other hand, we have a federal system that reserves an awful lot of powers for the individual states.  You may recall we squabbled a few times over this issue. And even though the side that said, "Yes, actually, the federal government can tell you it's not cool to treat other human beings as property anymore" won that war, we still let states and even their smaller constituent municipalities decide for themselves what is and isn't legal on a lot of issues.  So, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a federal agency, tells us there is a massive, coast-to-coast, inescapable dragnet of super-cops being deployed explicitly to crack down on drunk driving, I can call bullshit.

For starters, none of you look remotely like this.

Bureaucratic realities and red tape aside, where did the funding for this crackdown suddenly come from?  It is a logistical impossibility, given that most police departments are presently operating on annual budgets slightly less than that of The Blair Witch Project.  I happen to live in a state where some counties can no longer afford to have more than one state trooper on active duty at a time.  One.  In some extreme cases - the very rural ones where the main crimes are meth production, bestiality, and terrifying combos thereof - our staties may be expected to "patrol" two counties at once.  Right.

He only operates in Detroit.

Did you get a multi-billion-dollar boost in funding to pay dozens more officers?  Do you suddenly possess Predator-style camouflaging technology, à la the PSAs inundating the airwaves?  Or do you have a magic drunk detector that works like a radar gun?  Then how precisely are you going to be more effective now than you were two months ago?  For the love of the L'aaaw (as Judge Stallone would say), the actor playing a cop in that first PSA says it won't matter if you are committing no traffic violations, driving defensively, and being the All-Around Inconspicuous Motorist of the year, he'll still pull you over.  In other words, it literally doesn't matter if he has absolutely no material probable cause established or even reasonable suspicion, he'll just know you have been drinking and bust you.  Seriously?  I would like to see you defend that in court.  That's the kind of crap public defense attorneys, not to mention the legal system, love to spend hours on.

"Yeah, I can't find any precedence for 'spider-senses tingling' in this state . . ."

You know what's a lot more likely?  Some council of spin doctors in the NHTSA knew that, generally speaking, most police forces try to step up their presence around Labor Day, completely independent of each other and based solely on the simple fact more semi-functional retards drink heavily at that time, and decided to wag the dog.  "Let's just tell the people America turns into a militaristic police state around major drinking holidays!  The ad campaign is way cheaper, easier, and more constitutional than actually doing that, and it may theoretically produce similar results!  As long as it's for the greater good, we can lie our asses off!"

While we're on the subject, let's dissect those ads that unilaterally declare "Buzzed Driving is Drunk Driving."  Well, not to nitpick or naysay, but no, it's actually not, that's why we coined another term to describe it.  When the law decided to legally define what drunk means, it had to lay out specific terms that are verifiable for enforcement.  In all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam (as the NHTSA proudly proclaims, like some pompous, know-it-all dick telling you how many chapters his fraternity has), that means you can be charged with driving under the influence/operating while intoxicated if your blood-alcohol content is .08 or above.  So, it stands to reason, if your BAC is lower than that, you are not technically drunk, in the strict legal sense, just "buzzed."  Win.

But by now I am used to this sort of fudged thinking being used for the purposes of intimidation and furthering a narrow social agenda.  As someone who has gone through the process of being "rehabilitated" for an "illness" I didn't have, I can vouch for the levels of bullshit they attempt to get away with.  Aside from mandating treatment for alcoholism based on one incident in the first place, the methods of said treatment are laughably transparent.  Among other things, they tried to simultaneously claim that alcoholism is nothing short of a hell-sent scourge, a civilization-threatening epidemic worse than porn, and that less than 50% of "people" drink at all, ever.  As they showed us the widespread, multifarious live-destroying effects of booze with shocking statistics, they also told us that in fact most American citizens don't ever touch a drop.

Pictured: The majority of American drinkers (and, presumably, my whole social circle).

No qualifications, no explanations, no provisos.  Because, you see, they want you to feel the alienation of social stigma, that what you are doing is not what the majority is doing, and don't you want to fit in, you dangerous weirdo?  The old Reefer Madness campaign springs to mind.

Well, sorry, you can't have it both ways.  If a catastrophic wave of drinking is the first sign of the Apocalypse, you can't also tell me almost nobody but me is doing it.  For the love of Bacchus, god of spirits, probably 80% of the adults I know drink.  Maybe not daily or even weekly, but they aren't teetotaling boors either, and what are the odds I just happen to know so many exceptions to the rule?  Sure enough, when I called out the instructor on these statistics, asking where she got them, who collected the data and how, and even what definitions they used to describe "people," I was met with flustered, indignant, and meaningless responses.  My treatment/indoctrination center could not provide a single parameter, specific, or source for the studies.

"Raise your hand if you've never drank alcohol!
All right, that's our focus group done, case closed."

Even as a college student who spent most of his statistics and research methodology classes sketching new uniforms for Captain America, I could tell someone was probably not being entirely honest, massaging the numbers to fit the desired outcome.  I smelled propaganda.  It is a classic media-spin technique, almost on par with "Just Making Shit Up."  Because, obviously, if you are comparing the number of drinkers to the overall population of the country, including millions of children, the numbers are going to skew against the drinkers, but that number is statistically irrelevant, or "fucking useless as a butter knife at a soup buffet," to use the expert parlance.  At the end of the program, the instructor had to admit everything came from a generic data bank that provided no details whatsoever about the studies it purported to represent.  Win again.

It is something I have come to expect in this nation, where drinking is starting to be demonized as a crime in and of itself, a shameful vice that needs to be weeded from our society, despite society arising from alcohol production, as I have pointed out before.  Remember how well that Prohibition thing worked out?  It has reached the rather ludicrous point where a CNN contributor asked whether it is acceptable, ever, to give a minor even a sip of alcohol, including in her article this quote:

"If parents have a liberal idea about alcohol, kids may get the wrong message," says Dr. Vivian Faden, director of the Office of Science Policy and Communications at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health. "Underage drinking can lead to injuries, fatal car accidents, risky sexual behavior, and there's also potential risk to the developing brain."

As opposed to the day you turn 21, when magically all of these negative side-effects vanish, as proven by the perceived necessity of the scare campaign I outlined at the start of this post.  Remember when your negligent parents let you taste their $9.00 table red and you became a hopeless, lifelong addict?  Of course you don't, you braindead degenerate drunkie.  That's because even minute amounts of alcohol introduced to your delicate physiology before majority, an arbitrary legal definition, target your brain like neuron-seeking missiles, turning you into a maladjusted booze monster by age 20.

Because you can never have "just one," kids.

Or so some would have us believe, despite the fact human beings have been drinking for thousands of years, and up until a few centuries ago, most did so on a daily basis from childhood onward.  These are the same people who wrote the health questionnaire I had to fill out at one of my doctors' offices.  It asked which best described my alcohol consumption:

(1) Never drink.
(2) Drink on special occasions.
(3) History of alcohol abuse in my family.

I am not even kidding, that is what it said.  Seriously.  Judge much?  And this was a hand-specialist's office.  I felt a strange tingling in one of my fingers right then, specifically the middle one.  All personal umbrage aside, this sort of blanket generalization is offensive to common sense and simple truth.  When your redefinition of something is so out of whack with reality, it is an affront to intelligent thought.  In yet another article (this one has a nice, dumbed-down video, too), CNN's Alina Cho pointed out how the latest revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - the standard psychiatric handbook for what kinds of crazy people are - is changing what "addiction" means, broadening its scope to the point that 40% of college students could be classified as alcoholics and as much as 60% of the population suffers from some form of abusive indulgence and/or dependence.

Would an alcoholic waste all that perfectly good rum?

Pornography, tanning, shopping, and even gaming are all potential fixations requiring professional diagnosis and therapy under these guidelines.  And why not?  It lets impulsive fuckwits write off their self-destructive behavior, maybe getting some pills or pity in the bargain, while the placebo-pushers line their pockets with extra green for supplying treatment.  Just to be clear, these are the definitions that will be officially accepted by the government and your medical insurance provider, and we all know how accommodating they are.  Can you see how this brand of grade-A anal leakage might make me sociopathically distressed?  At what point does someone raise their hand and say, "Um, wait, what?  Are you sure the problem isn't how we define 'the problem' here?"  Wake up, America, before someone tells you that you need prescription medication to do so.

Do you have trouble waking up?  Do you describe yourself as just not a morning person?  You may suffer from a potentially serious medical condition known as Interrupted Anti-meridian Functioning Syndrome That Might Eventually Kill You, or IAFSTMEKY, and require a prescription waking aid like Awakenar (tetramazaplaxinol) to help you get up.  Ask your doctor if Awakenar is right for you, before it's too late.  Make the most of your morning with Awakenar!

KP, out.

"Dinosaurs eat Man, Woman inherits the earth."

Cue the string section, pour a Scotch, and hold on to your testicles, it's time for another edition of the code we live by, the Gentlemen's Agreements.

Save your money

Testosterone is a cruel master, I know.  It is the dick-shaped cross we males bear.  But try not to let this chemical imbalance cloud your brain, at least when it comes to your finances.  If not for your own dignity and that of our gender, then to stick it to the women who exploit this weakness, knock it off.  Unless a woman is a confirmed penny-pony, stop paying for her beauty and feminine wiles.  Avoid businesses like Jude's Barbershop, Hooters, and basically any place you are paying extra explicitly to be surrounded by hot women whose job has absolutely nothing to do with hotness.  This goes double for any guy who tips the waitress excessively for leaning over the table.  If you are going to pay for sex appeal, just go ahead and pay for the sex as well.  Get yourself a hole for hire.  Then you don't have to go through the creeping stage where you act like a horny 20-year-old who has no clue how little chance he has with his intended victim.  And the venue being a bar does precisely jack-shit to change your odds, unless she is the one drinking, as opposed to you.  Even then, don't bet on it, Cialis Man.  I am talking about yet another manifestation of the many-headed beast that is That Guy.

I spy with my little eye something rapey.

If you don't make a conscious effort to curb this instinct early on, it will only become harder (no, not that - it gets softer) as you advance in years.  It never ceases to amaze me how many dirty old men seem to be under the laughable impression that, because they are mildly intoxicated, the women around them, all of them, are much more likely to overlook receding hairlines, outdated facial hair, and beer-guts (to say nothing of wedding bands) and just go for it with Mr. Touch of Gray.  Especially when the female in question is the server or bartender.  Yes, being a tease is often an implied, if not acknowledged, part of their job, but it is precisely that: a cock-tease.  A false promise with no reward except sexual frustration.  Why bother?  Are you that desperate for hollow attention from anything with a uterus?  That's worse than throwing money at a stripper to keep her pretending she's into you.

Yeah, dawg, I'm sure she likes you for reals.

Truly, there are few spectacles as pathetic and disgusting as fortysomething men at a commercial sports bar none-too-subtly coming on to the bartender who is just out of braces and saving up for her first year of college.  Just because she's not jail-bait doesn't mean she is on the menu.  And if you "know that" and are just partaking in sexual harassment "for fun" . . . why?  I don't shamble around shady neighborhoods in urine-soaked rags pretending to be another one of society's dregs for private amusement, so why would you?  Perhaps because you are a scumbag.

She was five when you punched your V-card.

Her coy replies and half-smiles are not flirting, they are her way of tactfully telling you to fuck off back to your 10-year plan and loveless marriage, you pervy sad-sack, because she is already banging her coworker of consenting age in the cooler every night.  Trust me.

Bro-toos

This is going to be a touchy subject for a lot of you, my brothers-in-ink.  The tattoo is a risky thing, and I am not talking about hepatitis or rare forms of heavy-metal poisoning.  Those just make tattoos more badass.  A tattoo, at least if you are a man, is supposed to say something about you - don't let that something be I am a chotch who all should revile.  Chinese lettering, generic tribal patterns, and barbed wire are now the brands of douchebaggery.  It's like a lilac polo with a popped collar you can never take off without a laser skin-peel.

If you see nothing wrong with this pic, just skip this entire subsection.

I would think the interwebs have sufficiently spread this Gospel to the point everyone knows it and all reputable tattoo parlors should by now refuse to produce such work, but freshly-minted douche-nozzles sporting bloody kanji keep proving me wronger than hentai (NWSF, tee-hee!).  It doesn't make you tough, interesting, or multicultural, it makes you a tattool, if you will.

To a lesser extent, the placement of your tat should also be taken into account.  If you already have ink in half a dozen places on your body, don't sweat it when you get your next one, so long as you avoid the stereotypically-feminine regions (feet, lower back, crotch . . . God, women are masochists).  But if, like me, you are particular about how many tattoos you are going to get, consider carefully where you place that Tasmanian Devil.  Longtime comedian, anger-management failee, and social commentator Denis Leary has homed in on the calf as the location most likely to indicate a strong potential for toolage, which he describes in his Denis Leary & Friends pretty accurately.

"You got a tattoo, a Chinese symbol on your calf, which you think means 'infinity,'
but actually in Chinese means 'kill me first when you invade America.'"

Not that everything Leary says should be immediately enshrined in the Constitution, but he makes a fair point.  Having the calf tat doesn't actually make you a loser of Pauly D proportions, but odds are strangers may make that assumption by association.  Why chance it?

Cool it, turbo

Nothing screams "I am sexually insecure about something!" like revving your engine for attention.  No, it doesn't matter how sweet your ride is, though, at that point, it's probably already pretty obvious you suffer from compensatory syndrome.  The fact that the motor inside the vehicle you are operating can make loud, obnoxious sounds in no way reflects positively on you, even less so when said transport is a tricked-out 1997 Pontiac Sunfire.  Same goes for peeling out of the 7-11 parking lot.

"Whoa, did you see that?  His dick must be enormous, rivaled only by his monstrous libido!"

It's called a burnout for a reason.  You are impressing no one, save perhaps your fellow asphalt monkeys.  The only legitimate reason to rev your engine when not performing maintenance is to challenge another macho motorist to a pointless, ego-fueled, criminal, dangerous road race between traffic signals, and only then if it is a reasonable matchup where the outcome is debatable and acceptance of the gauntlet likely.

"Hey, Old Man River, you want to race?!?  Huh?  What?  Yeah, that's what I
thought, fag!  Score one awesome point for me!  I am fucking sweet!"

Nothing seems to bring out this behavior like the midnight premiere of a Transformers or Fa5t as Fuck movie, which is why the police generally camp just outside the theater lot on those nights.  Believe me, risking a reckless driving or speeding ticket does little to boost your rebel credentials.  Try trolling dark alleys for random muggers, Billy Badass.

That is all for now, gents.  KP, out.

And the Morons did rejoice, for they knew not Their Idiocy until the Blogger didst call it out

And the list goes on.  Continuing from my last article, here are the rest of my new Seven Deadly Sins.

Obliviousness

It's not easy to be as smart as me, I get it.  I do not ask that of you, muddled masses.  You don't know what World War I was fought over, how photosynthesis works, or that Jesus didn't actually write any of the Bible, let alone in modern English (though he did write a new introduction for the 50th Edition of the King James Version).  All I want is for you to take a good look around and think, and not only on special occasions.  Make it a regular habit, a continuous process, if possible.  It is not so much about being smart as observant.  More than half of the dipshittery you see people do (outside of reality television and the Internet) is not so much a result of pure ignorance as simply not paying attention to things around them, such as semi-tractors.  Or other unexpected obstacles:

As per usual, the two places where I see this sin most egregiously committed is on roadways and at work.  For instance, I was attempting to perform the simple act of legally parking my wicked-sweet Cobalt at the local mall.  In theory, a task the well-trained orangutan should be able to see through, despite a congenital inability to parallel park (I must have an Asian great-great-great-grandmother . . . natch).  But, lo and behold, I am hindered by someone else's inability to assess this shared paradigm we call "reality."  The motorist - and I use that term in the sense of "temporally-displaced Victorian-era driver who has no bastard clue how to drive because cars are a new thing," mind you - ahead of me stops to turn down the first of a dozen lanes within a massive parking lot.

. . . and now for an almost-totally unjustified, gratuitous steampunk
faux-deguerrotype of a female driver, who happens to be kissing another.

S/he decides to (1) allow five other drivers to turn into the lane ahead of him/her, and (2) follow these five vehicles down the very same asphalt aisle. Stop and consider: what are the odds there are six open spaces off of this particular lane? Why wouldn't you just go on to the next lane to search for a space?  *Hint: Because you aren't thinking more than required to keep the lungs pumping, that's why.  I am starting to suspect vehicles have some sort of direct adverse effect on people's intellect and perspicacity, like maybe the gasoline fumes are leaking into the interior or the engine noise is at the perfect frequency to vibrate their brains loose in their skulls.  Just a theory.  Get on that study, Department of Transportation.

But that act of obliviousness pales in comparison to what I regularly witness at my workplace.  And I am not just talking about people who will ask what a dish consists of while literally pointing at its exact description in the menu.  First, a little background to provide context for the fucktardation I am about to break down.  The restaurant I work at is one of those clever types that decided years ago, rather than be a sit-down alternative to fast food, it needed to be both a sit-down alternative to fast food and also fast food.  It was a really savvy ass-grab at a supersized, more bootylicious market.

Hence, our entire menu of entrees created to be served in-house is also available as carryout or "to-go" food, for the uninitiated, which can be ordered like pizza via phone, or online (never do this), or simply on the spot.  In which case, why don't you just sit down and eat it in our restaurant while it's still fresh?  It doesn't cook any faster because you ordered it as takeout.  Oh, right, so you don't feel obligated to tip me, you cheap bastard.  But that's not even the kicker here.

"What do you mean you don't have time to list off and describe
every item you make to me?  Why would I have thoroughly
perused the menu and decided what I want before I called you?"

This hot brainwave led to a boom in restaurant carryout sales that lasted all of six months.  As a result, you now see the ubiquitous secondary takeout entrance to virtually every chain eatery, which usually leads to a special window or counter for this express purpose, that absolutely nobody thought was necessary ten years ago, because we already had freaking drive-throughs.

Well, that window has been closed at my place of employ for over three years, because we do not get enough business to justify paying someone to man (or woman) that counter exclusively.  Instead, the bartender (me) handles all of the to-go transactions from start to finish.  Rather than seal off our side-door, we just hung a sign up in that service window at eye level.  This sign reads, All to-go orders are being handled at the bar at this time, with a helpful arrow pointing to the bar, which is a mere six feet to the right, just beyond the carryout entryway, clearly visible and quite obviously a bar.

And you would not believe the number of shit-thick mouth-breathers who will stand at that closed counter, looking straight at the sign, and wait to be assisted, like a vacant-eyed dog expecting a Snausage from the guy on TV who said "Sit" in a commanding tone.  Except the dog can be forgiven, on account of being a fucking dog.  What's your excuse?  How do you not put two and two together?  To better illustrate the idiocy of this situation, I have created a convenient graphic:

"Ah, a staring contest is it, painted piece of wood?  Challenge accepted."

That's fuck-stick number 5,920 standing in front of the counter, staring at the sign, and that's me behind the counter using the computer, studiously ignoring the shit out of him to see how long it takes for Brainiac to calculate his odds of getting carryout food from me.   Somehow, you were able to follow the signs that led you to this restaurant, through the door marked "To-Go," to this very window, and now all of sudden you are, what, illiterate?  The answers you seek are literally written on the wall, in bold letters and plain English, no less.  I know it's dark up there, so try pulling your head out of your ass far enough to see what's going on directly in front of your (stupid) face.  On another occasion, when no one was standing immediately at the counter, a guest literally moved the sign aside so as to ask the servers he could see working in the kitchen beyond where to pick up his takeout food, I shit you not.  There is simply no excuse for this.  If you are going to be oblivious to reality, do everyone a favor and stay the hell out of it.

Laziness

Yes, I am including one of the old Seven Deadly Sins in my new list, but because it's "Sloth," the very sin of laziness, I get a pass. That's called irony, look it up. Anyway, "Sloth" makes it sound deeper than it really is, more biblical in its scope, when it is really just this.

No, not this.

Segue scooters, Rascal carts, electric muscle-stimulation patches, and human conveyor belts at airports are the bastard offspring of this sin. You don't even get rockstar credit for indulging this vice, unless your torpor is induced by routine heroin benders. But, because of its very nature, people tend to indulge it, since it is easy - it is defined by its lack of effort on your part.  When your "lazy Saturday" becomes "lazy August" you have officially crossed the line between defying the hectic pace of modern life and just being a useless tosser.

She couldn't even be bothered to put on a top.  Slattern.

Laziness in its varied guises is probably the one sin on this list I have the strongest personal disdain for, precisely because I am susceptible to it, the allure of the proverbial easy path.  And, as Yoda warned us, that's the Dark Side.  It is that sly little voice in your head that whispers, "No need to pick up that gum wrapper you just dropped on the floor right now.  It'll still be there tomorrow," or, "Whoa, hey, why take the time to untie your shoes when you can just pry them off?"  A million little sins such as this add up over time, until you find yourself lounging in your sweatpants and Velcro sneakers watching back-to-back reruns of Two and Half Men because you couldn't fish the remote control out of the refuse that surrounds you.  And there is simply no excuse for that.  Watching Two and Half Men, I mean.  Oh, do you like that pile of laziness in shit form?

Look at all the fucks I don't give.

By no means is this limited to your home-life.  I have commented on this before, but it bears repeating: you would rather circle the parking lot for an extra ten minutes until a spot twenty feet closer to the door opens up, or wait just as long to snake that space as another vehicle is backing out, thus holding up all traffic behind you. Trust me, your plus-sized ass could use the extra exercise.  If you were really worried about expediency, as opposed to expending calories, you would realize you can park and be done with your five-minute Wal-mart stopover faster if you aren't so concerned whether you will suffer coronary thrombosis covering the distance between the lot and the cheap guns/Toby Keith merchandise/American flags aisle.

The same goes for would-be customers who call my restaurant and decide not to order to-go food when I inform them I will not walk it out to their vehicle for them.

Trying to Be Funny

Technology is, once again, the culprit behind this insidious trend.  By giving everyone an outlet, a showcase for whatever information they feel like sharing, it supplies them a false sense of validation.  It's the pretend celebrity status syndrome I condemned last post.  Specifically, it has deluded a lot of unfunny people into thinking they are a fucking laugh-riot.

Though in some cases I think that's a medical condition.

I hate to break it to you, but you are not amusing, at least not intentionally.  I know it's "in" to be funny right now, but some us have been working at this for a long time, figuring out the subtleties of humor and honing natural instincts for dick jokes, and it shows.  That is why we are good at it, and you are the Dane Cook of the Worldwide Web, only not so infamous for blowing harder than Superman.

What, you thought I was kidding?

Wannabe Internet jokesters have taken this to new hellish depths.  This often takes the form of a "meme," which originally meant . . .

"an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."^[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.^[3] 

The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "something imitated", from μιμεῖσθαι mimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμος mimos "mime")^[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)^[1] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion and the technology of building arches.^[6]"

. . . but which now means "basically any picture with overlaid text, intended to be a joke, that retards exchange online."  Do not mistake me, some of these can be brilliant.  That, however, is becoming ever rarer as more and more people try to emulate the good ones, ironically failing in epic fashion when they attempt to make a "Fail" meme.  These typically feature one of a handful of stock images - a Jurassic Park velociraptor, lolcats, Fry from Futurama, a random canine, the trollface, Willy Wonka, or that angry baby with the upraised fist - often against some variation of these standard pinwheel backgrounds:

Just add your own shitty photo and, presto, instant joke!

Actually, the above backgrounds seem to be reserved for the truly heinous attempts at hilarity directed primarily toward forum trolls, really dumb amoebas, and smarter end-tables.  Whether or not they use these elements or "go rogue" on Photoshop, the majority of the netizens producing these memes could suck a golf ball through a garden hose.  They fundamentally misunderstand this kind of humor, which only works if it either (1) makes a comical observation or reference that will be widely understood, or (2) goes all-out absurdist.  This has gotten bad enough that you can now find scores of meme-generators across cyberspace, all designed to reassure losers they can be funny, too, if they only use a program to help package their pithy wit.

Ha . . . good one?  Oh, I get it, it's funny because you suck at life!

For the sake of comedy and human society at large, I think these generators should be heavily moderated by certified, licensed comedians and come with a built-in, automatic "Abort" feature that kills any memes of questionable merit.  You call it censorship, I call it necessary evil.

However, the Internet cannot be blamed entirely, because I have seen this phenomenon other places.  For instance, my job.  Again.  Go figure.  I am not referring to the twats who use servers as a captive audience for their knockoff George Lopez shtick, annoying as they are.  I mean our own internal promotion copywriting department.  I don't know whether it is an in-house operation or a subcontracted firm, but either way, the geniuses have taken a cue from the Taco Bell sauce packet guys and the copywriters for Burger King's packaging.  Seriously, this sounds weird, but if you never have bothered to look at what is printed on your Whopper box (probably because you are one of those oblivious twits), try it next time.  These are surprisingly pretty funny, given that they are, y'know, jokes on sandwich wrappers.

This totally makes up for you for slowly poisoning me to death, creepy Burger King!

Did these need to be funny?  Of course not, especially given that I already bought the product, so the classic humor appeal is meaningless at this point.  But I still appreciate that as long as they're going to write shit on their packaging, they figure it might as well be witty.  And it works because it's dry, slightly offbeat humor that even includes minor innuendo.  In short, the guys who write these understand modern comedy (Kentucky Fried Christ, I envy the jobs of burger copywriters now.)

Then there are the craze-humping lemming scribes who whore themselves out to the chain I work at.  Their job is to generate the cheesiest, stupidest menus they can, laden with humor a dyslexic 5-year-old could pen, or at least I hope that is their job, because they are absolute prodigies at it.  The level of incompetence beggars belief.  For example, they think they are being up-fucking-roariously hysterical when they shit out a line like, "Your Mouth + Our Reuben = BFF."  Wow, clever.  And you even managed to squeeze a "hip" "new" bit of texting lingo in there.  The kids are really going to know we're the bee's knees with wordplay that shrewd.  Or how about this gem: "Tasty.  Tastier.  Tastierest."

Ow, my intelligence.

I mean, really, tastierest?  Tastierest?  Somebody not only wrote this, presumably blazed out of their gourd, but had the gall to submit it afterward, then got it approved by a succession of superiors.  What blood-pact made in what H.P. Lovecraft-inspired circle of the netherworld allowed this to happen?  But the coup de grace would have to be . . . "Sprinkled with awesome."  I am not joking.  Sadly, the hacks writing this are.  I can't tell you how many times I have been asked what the "awesome" in question was in total earnest, only to look at the floor, shamefaced, and admit I have no idea.  If you're going to stoop that low, the menu may as well read, "Hey, cockstains, shovel this crap into your craw," for all the credit it gives our patronage.  You can't fake clever, so stop trying.

Which brings me to my final point for this article, the sin de jour of the United States of 'Merica . . .

Ignorance

Shocker, right?  I'll bet you regular readers never saw this one coming.  Do I even have to explain why ignorance is bad?  It is the root of most of the other sins I listed, or at least a contributing factor, and probably 90% of my posts boil down to me raging against someone else's willful stupidity.  Just browse through my prior posts to see examples.  Everyone is guilty of this in some capacity, and it's not always a terrible thing.  It is, for example, what keeps me from questioning how the hell Taco Bell can offer me so much awesome in a convenient box for a paltry $5.00.  Seriously, there is no conceivable way it should be that disgustingly delicious, so there is no way I want to know what I am really eating.  There are some things you are better off, or at least a lot happier, not knowing.

It's rats, isn't it?  As long as it's not rats . . .

Aside from cases like that, however, you should try to inform yourself, stay aware.  Remember when I said I don't expect everyone to operate on my level?  I was not being a pompous dick.  All right, I was, but the point remains: you don't have to be a genius not to be an idiot.  Look at two of my literary heroes, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson.

These guys.  "Literary" means they were in books first, by the way.

Watson isn't as smart as Holmes, obviously, but he still manages to contribute to society.  He helps Holmes solve the crime, catch the bad guy, and, depending on the fanfic, celebrate accordingly afterward.  I mean, for logic's sake, he is a medical doctor who looks dim in comparison to his friend, although to be fair I think Victorian medicine still advocated leeching.  So what if he doesn't know how to identify 41 types of tobacco ash?  He is competent, and that is all I ask of you, America.

The culture of ignorance is a strong one, though, fueled by a perverse pride in not knowing things.  We parade our intelligentsia on television freak-shows like Jeopardy!, as if a basic grasp of high school-level geography, science, history, and literature is akin to witchcraft.  I think perhaps this is why nerds, dorks, and all of geekdom are marginalized and ridiculed, rather than lauded.

Well, okay, and this.

But I learned a long time ago, you can't be a smartass if you aren't smart.  And, unless you cheerfully submit your generative organs to repeated trauma à la Jackass, you cannot be very funny without genuine wit.  I am not sure if I started being smart and my sense of humor developed from there, or realized I needed to be smart to be funny and boned up on the knowledge.  It's hard to say which came first anymore, the old chicken-or-the-egg conundrum.  See, if you aren't marginally-informed, that makes no sense to you, does it?  Kind of like that Soylent Green reference?  You didn't get that one either?  Exactly.

Brought to you by ignorance.  And sloth.  Probably obliviousness, too.

This sidebar is a perfect illustration.  I am not sure which is worse, the fact someone made this advertisement on the assumption it would work, or that some people probably do actually fall for it.  All linguistic mutilation aside, that is Canadian TV actress Emma Roberts, niece of Julia Roberts, who I am fairly confident is not this company's spokeswoman, nor is she herself trying to pick up guys online.  If you are a crappy Internet Slovakian con-artist hoping to swipe yourself a nice steaming slice of the American pie, either (a) remedy your own ignorance by learning passable English and snapping a photo of an anonymous girl, or (b) recognize your own ignorance and pay someone else who is better-equipped to devise your ads targeting Americans.  A little brain-juice goes a long way, trust me.

It does take a modicum of effort, so you will first have to overcome the second sin on this page.  It was laziness, in case you can't trouble to scroll back up.  Not off to a good start, are we?  Just . . . try a little.  It may take some extra time, but the investment is worth it.  Because I refuse to believe the human race is as stupid as it acts.  Not to sound like a bad '90s PSA, but knowing is half the battle.  The other half is not sucking.

KP, out.