People who back into parking spaces

Look, toolbox — you can either back into the spot when you arrive or back out of the spot when you leave. Backing in is harder because you’ve got less room to work with and you don’t want to bang into a neighboring vehicle. If you back out, you’re backing into open space.

But the worst thing is that by backing in, you put your driver’s side door right next to my driver’s side door, so we have to wait for each other to get in and out of the cars . . .

According to the Krispy Kreme box on the receptionist’s desk this morning, they’re now making their doughnuts with zero trans fats. I read the other day that McDonald’s is serving zero trans fat french fries.

What the heck is a trans fat anyway?

This has got to be the biggest nutritional scam in history. Everyone’s advertising “zero trans fats” and yet I look around and people are fatter than ever, because this trans fat scam lets them convince themselves that eating french fries and doughnuts is actually healthy . . .

No trans fats in the doughnuts?! In that case, I’ll eat six of them!

One pill makes you larger . . .

A musclehead co-worker is talking to someone on the phone about nutritional supplements:

“It changes the metabolism of the . . . en-DOC-rine? . . . EN-do-CREEN? . . . system, so it releases more testosterone.”

Yeah, you should definitely take some of that. A product that claims to alter the function of bodily organs you can’t even pronounce. What could possibly go wrong?

In fact, you should go to the vitamin store right now and just gobble up everything they’ve got.

Did you ever read Alice in Wonderland? She finds a cake that says EAT ME so she eats it. Next thing you know she’s nine feet tall. Draw your own parallels . . .

Have you seen this program? My son clicked it on last weekend. The host asked a woman if she knew what a right triangle was.

“Yes,” she said. “The triangle on the right.”

I had to leave the room immediately. I felt like I was losing IQ points just watching it . . .

Welcome to EppsNet, where the writers are not on strike!

Striking writers are stupid. Pretend you’re a TV executive and your writers are on strike.

Oh dear! What will I do? I’ll have to show reruns and only get 90 percent of the dimbulb audience I’d get showing new episodes. Boo hoo hoo!

Television is the opiate of the masses, man! People will watch it no matter what’s on. They can’t live without it.

We’ve got TVs in restaurants, health clubs, cars, you name it. They’re ubiquitous!

The number of people like me — who think that if you want to eat dinner in front of a TV set you should stay the hell at home — is very small compared to the number of people who will not leave their homes if it means being separated from a television.

Hey scribes! People are going to turn off their flat-panel LCD high-def TVs — and do what? Read a book? Interact with their families?

Fat fucking chance!

Writers can stay on strike forever for all anybody cares.

That’s why TV shows are so stupid. They’re written by stupid people.

This just in

Stars Won’t Attend Golden Globe Awards

Golden Globe-nominated actors and presenters won’t attend the televised award show Jan. 13 because of the writers’ strike, the Screen Actors Guild announced Friday.

— People

Well then . . . that casts things in a whole new light! Actors will not attend the Golden Globes because they’d have to cross a picket line of angry wordsmiths and ink slingers.

OMG! I hope the earth doesn’t stop revolving on its axis and fling us all into space because actors are boycotting the Golden Globes telecast!

What are the Golden Globes anyway? Another excuse for actors to get together and suck each other’s dicks?

Rot in hell, thespians!

Mr. Penn, Mr. Spacey, Ms. Campbell — Thank you so much for coming to visit me. Muchas gracias!

Shortly after your visits, 80,000 Venezuelans will gather at the Central University to protest my attempts to expand my dictatorial rule. Eight of these people will be injured when masked gunmen open fire on them.

I of course will be shocked by this display of brutality — as shocked as I’ve been since Claude Rains discovered gambling at Rick’s Cafe.

The incident will no doubt raise questions in people’s minds as to whether you actually support the armed suppression of free speech, or whether you are just naive simpletons.

Regrettably, there will be a writers’ strike on at the time and you will therefore have nothing to say . . .

Tu amigo,

Hugo Chavez

My son’s playing freshman football, pursuant to which I received the following email (names changed):

Fellow Freshman parents,

Zelda and I are disappointed with the poor quality of the duffle bags the boys purchased at the start of the season. Rocko’s bag is already ripping and the zippers are becoming non-functional. As a result, we intend to buy him a much higher quality, replacement bag made out of extra heavy duty material from a Montana vendor. My firm has purchased customized travel bags from this vendor before, and our clients/employees love them. We also intend to have the bag (which will be slightly larger to accommodate a football helmet) embroidered with the T-Wolf logo and his name. This is what the bag looks like, sans logo:

If ten or more families decide to buy such replacement bags, the cost will be $285 each plus tax and the cost of name embroidery (I don’t think the latter will amount to much, but I’m looking into it). If the order is for less than ten units, then there will be a modest charge for logo. Two families in addition to our has already asked to be included them in this order. You can visit the vendor’s website at http://www.redoxx.com/.

Please let me know as soon as conveniently possible (i.e., by the game this Saturday) if you would like to be included in the order. If so, kindly also respond back with the spelling of your son’s name to be embroidered on his bag.

Thanks.

Go Wolves, Beat University!

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

In short, if you are experiencing similar problems, this would be a high quality replacement that should last for some time.

Yeah sure, I’m definitely up for spending $300 for a bag my son can stuff his football uniform into, particularly if your “firm” has a track record with the company.

I sent the following response:

I’ve never seen a decent bag for only $285. I’ve been looking at this one from On the Fly:

It’s a little pricey (around $12,000) but it’s made of black alligator leather and if you’re concerned about durability, it will withstand a charging rhino.

Don’t ask me how I know that.

Best regards,

Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding

I didn’t hear back from the original emailer, but I did get a response from a philanthropic but somewhat dim individual:

I hope that was a joke. If not I think you are getting carried away about a bag that the boys are going to drag around through the mud. If you have that much money to throw away maybe you should donate it to children who can’t afford equipment to even play sports.

Just a thought…

Oh dear, I guess I was a little too subtle . . .

Doctor Links a Man’s Illness to a Microwave Popcorn Habit

— New York Times, Sept. 5, 2007

If you actually read the story, you see that the man’s doctor says that there “is not a definitive causal link” between popcorn and the man’s health problems.

You’ve gotta love the total overreaction to one case where popcorn may have caused a lung problem.

The Bush administration had better crack down on this pronto!!!

Frankly, I’d rather get a lung disease and die than live in a country where the government tells me I can’t eat popcorn! You can take my popcorn when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands!

I’m going to go pop up a batch right now in protest!

Have a nice day . . .

DemandDebate.com has new t-shirts for sale:

A guy brought a laser pointer to the dog park tonight so his retarded dog could chase the beam around like a nitwit.

He tried to get my dog to chase it, but the dog just looked back at him to see where the beam was coming from, which is the intelligent thing to do in that situation.

“The pug doesn’t see it,” the guy said.

“He sees it,” I explained, “but pugs are too smart to chase light beams.”

“What does being smart have to do with it?” Laser Guy asked.

“Would you run around the park chasing after a laser beam?” I asked. “You wouldn’t. You know why? Because it’s stupid. You can’t catch it. Chasing after a ball or a frisbee makes sense. I’ve done that myself. But running around after a light beam is just moronic.”

If there’s any justice, David Letterman will one day be recognized as the father of our era.

Like other great men, Letterman knew that Americans were dumb as rocks but still had their pride, so if you were going to feed them the intellectual equivalent of hogslop, you had better flatter their intelligence at the same time. . . .

Let the rubes in on the gag. Call the pet tricks “stupid,” make the showbiz flash-and-rattle even stupider than it needed to be, and cheerfully represent yourself as the hollowest of hollow men, and the suckers would applaud not only your twaddle, but the label on the twaddle that said it was twaddle.

— alicublog

During a recent trip to Las Vegas, we visited a junk shop, a.k.a. a Feng Shui emporium. My wife sketched out the floor plan of our house, after which the proprietor predicted — correctly — that the orientation of our son’s bed was making him stubborn.

See, I thought it was the fact that he’s 13 years old that was making him stubborn.

Probably a good tip for the up-and-coming Feng Shui professional would be to always predict that the client’s teenage children are stubborn. You’re not going to be wrong very often.

And always predict that the client has frequent disagreements with his or her spouse.

We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side. If you can’t state arguments against what you believe better than your detractors, you don’t know enough.

— Charlie Munger

Souplantation is our favorite family restaurant, but it really does give me the creeps watching fat people at all-you-can-eat buffets.

Tonight there’s a fat guy plodding through the bakery section, loading up on pizza, muffins, etc. He takes one of everything, except the things he takes two of. An obese woman decides that the bowls provided at the dessert bar aren’t big enough, so she brings over a soup tureen and loads it up with frozen yogurt, before slathering on the chocolate chips, peanuts and syrup.

Have you ever wondered why fat people are fat? Neither have I. But for everyone who’s ever said, “I don’t know why I can’t lose weight,” it’s because you’re eating everything that’s not nailed down.

Avoid swimming in sewer overflow

— Houston Chronicle headline

A lie told often enough becomes truth.

— Lenin

OH YEAH!? Not if I have anything to say about it, comrade!

Not only do lying liars rely on Lenin’s repetition principle, they rely on people being generally inattentive, uniformed and eager to believe anything consistent with their existing opinions.

I say that as someone who’s as inattentive and uninformed as anyone on most topics. But I do know a couple of things, and I set them forth herewith.

Continue reading Antiwar Myths About Iraq Debunked

My son informs me that we have to buy one of those old-fashioned telescoping pointers because he needs it for a presentation at school.

“Can you use a laser pointer?” I ask. “Because we actually have one of those.”

“They’re not allowed at school,” he says.

Continue reading Zero-Tolerance Watch

Just in time for Mother’s Day, Save the Children has published its seventh annual State of the World’s Mothers report on newborn mortality.

As usual, the U.S. takes a beating:

Continue reading HW Explains the U.S. Newborn Mortality Rate

. . . the proponents of intelligent design use a ploy that works something like this. First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist’s work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a ‘controversy’ to teach.

Continue reading How the Intelligent Design Hoax was Perpetrated

The NCAA has put together a list of colleges with “hostile and abusive” team nicknames, including the Illinois Fighting Illini, the Utah Utes and the North Dakota Fighting Sioux.

Remind me again why Fighting Illini, Utes and Fighting Sioux are hostile and abusive, but Fighting Irish, with a dopey guy prancing around in a leprechaun suit, is okay?