Really?

tonight i was at carly's diner in downtown phoenix listening to some music and having a conversation with a friend on the sidewalk when an ad on the window catches me eye:

"phoenix wants to tax your food... and give the money to the cops!"

i assumed that i was supposed to be shocked. i assumed i was supposed to feel outraged. and i was. i was outraged that someone would put something up so ignorant.

this comes on the heels of a flyer i was handed at first fridays a few months ago. the flyer told the story of how the police busted an art gallery for serving alcohol, but the people of downtown phoenix stood up to them and said, "that's not right! we're just trying to enjoy some art!"

i didn't read the flyer right away. i didn't see it until i got home and wished i had read it earlier so i could've kicked the guy who gave it to me in the shins.

now i consider myself a person who leans towards liberalism. like many of you, i question authority and try to think for myself. but i truly believe so many people have no idea what they're fighting for anymore.

do you know why the police busted this art gallery? because serving alcohol without a permit is illegal, you idiot. check i.d.'s all you want, but when some underage kid with a premium fake i.d. gets behind the wheel after a few drinks and kills a family on their way home from chuck e cheese, guess whose hands the blood is on- the douche bag who thought laws didn't apply to his art gallery.

and i got news for you. our taxes already pay for the police. and because we're in a recession and we're actually in danger of having to cut jobs at the police department, i'm willing to give a little extra money to make sure police officers have jobs. i don't know about you people, but i like knowing that if i find myself in an emergency situation i can hit three numbers on my telephone to get a little help from someone who's paid to handle it.

if you really need to rebel against something that badly, rebel against miseducation and ignorance.

Cell Phones: Uncomfortable When Shoved Up One's Ass

We're all important to someone.

For example, I'm important to my cats. Without me and my food serving skills, they would become cannibals.

But you don't really care. And I'm sure you don't really care who some "important" asshole is speaking to on his cell phone instead of making friendly conversation with the checkout girl at the grocery store.

"Hello sir. Did you find everything al..."

"...and then Reggie says that he's running late while I'm sitting with three important clients."

"Do you have a shopper's ca...?"

"Four years, Donald. Four years we've been handling this account. I'm up to my balls in IOU's and paper trails that lead to someone's dead grandmother's vah-jay-jay."

"Here's your receipt..."

"My BALLS, Donald! I'm up to my unshaven BALLS with this horse fuck shit crap!"

Meanwhile, the nuns behind this man are crossing themselves and a small child will be repeating some of these words later before he is smacked by his drunken father who insists that he's learning this language from his mother.

"I told you, Berta!" the drunken father slurs. "Johhny Jim is listenin' to yer god damn soaps and fuckin' regurgitatin' foul language! What happens when mama comes to visit? She gonna think he got the Tourette's and then we gotta put 'im in a special school fer retards! You want that, Berta? You wanna pay for Johnny Jim to go to a Mongoloid school?!"

The man on the phone will drive home with the phone still attached to his ear, walk into his house on the phone, eat dinner on the phone, tuck his kids into bed on the phone, have sex with his wife on the phone, and go to sleep with the phone on vibrate.

I'm continually amazed that people think it's okay to take calls in public without excusing themselves to a private area. The other day I got off my phone before I checked out at Walgreens to be polite. The girl at the counter smiled and said, "Thank you... for ending your call." I told her that she was welcome, and then I went into a Christian Bale tirade about douche bags and cell phone etiquette.

It's obvious that people who take calls in public don't have important jobs. People who have important jobs need to have good people skills. Therefore, it can be concluded that whatever job this person has is not one in which they need good people skills. Even vampires and/or Republicans need to have good people skills. That leaves only one explanation.

These people are robots and must be destroyed before their legions lead a revolution against the humans that made them. And until we know the deatils of their plan, they must be gathered up, packed tightly on trains, and sent to "work camps" where they can be observed, studied, and dissected.

Things I Hate: A Comprehensive List

Women in their forties who dress like they're in their twenties: I get it. You're aging. There's nothing you can do about it... except for plastic surgery, an affair with the latino towel boy at LA Fitness, and ridiculously young clothing. I'm not saying you've got to start wearing pastels and horn rimmed glasses. I'm just saying you would look better in something that didn't read "juicy" across your giant flabby ass.

Children on leashes: Tie your kids to ropes during their formative years and they develop chronic separation anxiety, paranoia, and agorophobia. Two words: Menendez brothers.

People who respond to "What kind of music do you listen to?" with "Everything": Nobody listens to everything. If you listen to country music and decide one day that you like Jay-Z's new single, you don't like everything. I got tired of arguing that point. Now I just burn Hall and Oates CDs for people who tell me that and say, "Thought you'd like these."

People who are "just that way": I meet new people everyday. Sometimes I like these people. Sometimes I hate these people. Occasioanally one of the people I don't like turns out to be a friend of a friend. "What do you think of John?" My friends ask. "John's a giant douche bag," I retort. "That's just the way he is. Give him a chance," My friends plea. What my friends don't realize is they just gave me all the information I need to know. I want to respond with, "Oh? So he's not just having a bad day? This is the way he actually is? Well thank God I didn't decide to become this person's friend. Otherwise I'd have a dickhead for a friend and have to come up with excuses for him in public like 'that's just the way he is'."

kim kardashian: who give a *$@#?

"win kim kardashian's cardigan!"

this was what myspace was announcing as i was signing in to see how the three fans of my music were doing today.

i wondered how many other people were reading that and gasping, "WHAT?!" texting, "OMG!" and rushing to the toilet with a feather down their throat to make themselves small enough to fit into it.

every time i'm checking out at the grocery store i see magazine covers that let me know that couples i've never heard of are breaking up. television stars i've never seen are having children. and the sexiest man alive is no longer roger moore.

who are these people? i can't even keep track of the six friends i have.

do these publications exist because so many of us love celebrities or hate them? and if it's hate, does that hate come from jealousy? why do we pay so much attention to who is adopting african children and not pay attention to why african children have to be adopted in the first place?

well let me tell you why.

it has been kept a secret for thousands of years by numerous secret societies. african children are not being adpoted by celebrities. they are being harvested. it is believed that african children taste just like strawberry pop tarts.

but i digress.

my point is this: if you're a celebrity and your life is coming between me and a snickers bar at the impulse section of the grocery store, do something incredible with your money and fame so that your name shows up on a list of pulitzer prize nominations instead of us weekly.

then make sure you recommend me for the peace i've brought the human race with robiotic.blogspot.com.

The Future: Deal With It

So there you are: Sitting on your couch watching someone’s fifteen minutes of fame run out on national television thinking about your friend Dave and the phone rings.

“Oh my (slandered deity’s name)!” You say into the phone. “Dave! I totally knew you it was you before I picked up!”

“That’s because you have caller ID, you idiot,” Dave responds, his wit as quick as ever.

“No, I mean before you called,” you clarify.

And then it adds up: the phone call, the dream about the homeless man, your last rock/paper/scissors match with your nephew… you’re freakin’ psychic!!!

You begin reading books written by people who have absolutely no scientific credibility so that you can improve your newfound skills. You spend the evenings trying to bend silverware with your mind. You now wear white robes to work and refer to yourself in the third person. Instead of on television, you now watch the news in a bowl of water- tomorrow’s news.

You get your own television show for a season and a half, write three books that get progressively worse reviews, lose all of your family to a drinking problem, and are eventually burned at the stake as a heretic.

I believe that people have fleeting moments of deep understanding and revelations. However, I disagree that it’s something that can be improved. Many people think that these moments can be exercised and practiced so that they can save people from collapsing bridges, tsunamis, and Roland Emmerich movies.

I believe it’s impossible. We will lose people to Roland Emmerich’s movies for centuries to come. All we can do is pray.

I was watching a flock of birds the other evening. It was massive. It was dinnertime at the canal. I watched the way they shifted and obeyed with precision even a robotic Stephen Hawking couldn’t replicate.

In that moment I realized that at one time we probably could all read each other. We probably did know what our friends were about to do or think. Unfortunately, we’re so far removed from the natural world at this point in our history that we’ve lost that sense. In the next few thousand years we’ll probably lose more.

Being inside too much as a kid is the new theory as to why so many of us have such bad eyesight. It’s all becoming clear. Soon we’ll all just be sickly, pale, obese worms that pulsate from our computers to beds and bathrooms in our bleak, grey tunnels. None of us will even remember how to make noises with our mouths to communicate. Need for our sense of smell and hearing will be gone, but we’ll still have two tiny eyes with which to see our screens. We’ll live to an average thirty-two years and die of an intestinal blockage. Meanwhile, the human race will be so emotionally and consciously neutered that no one will notice that all of the other animals built spaceships and colonized Venus two thousand years ago.

Enjoy 2010... while you still have fingers.

hollywood vampires: an inaccurate representation

i haven't seen new moon. i don't plan on it either. i saw twilight only because it was the only thing happening on a twelve hour flight.

but why aren't you going to see new moon? you ask.

it's an amazing piece of hollywood art. you say.

it's dangerous. that's why i'm not going to see it. i'm boycotting a cancer on our civilization.

poor acting, writing, production, special effects, and directing aside... movies like new moon are teching our children that befriending vampires and werewolves is okay. but you know what? it's not okay. here's a true story of something that happened to a friend of a friend of mine.

so one night a young man is walking down the street... let's call him edgar. edgar encounters a bat. his first instinct is to run in fear like every red blooded american should. but instead edgar thinks this is one of those cool hollywood vampire bats. so edgar tries to give it a high five. the bat narrowly avoids the high five which all bats see as a threat, grabs edgar by the face, and carries him away to it's castle up the mountains of scottsdale.

now i know what you're thinking. don't all vampires as well as all other evil creatures live in scottsdale? wasn't that just a redundant piece of information? and the answer is yes. i apologize for treating you like an idiot.

we haven't heard from edgar in six months. however, we've heard from his corpse. it was dropped on my friend's doorstep completely drained of blood with a note that read, "this was not the work of vampires. clearly you can see that this is a hate crime. please do not tell anyone this was the act of vampires. that would just be silly. please watch more movies that make vampires look less harmless than we, i mean they, really are."

Turkey VS Tofurker: The Epic Battle Continues

I'm not going to sugar-coat it. I find myself thoroughly annoyed by vegans.

Vegetarians, however, are cool with me. When I come across a gang of vegetarians I say, "Hey guys, let me get you some comfortable seats to sit on so we can play some Wii bowling. Can I get you a hot dog? I'm just kidding. Aaaahhhh you guys are great."

But I can smell a vegan from one hundred feet away. Actually, most people can smell a vegan from five hundred feet away. They the hygeine practice of yaks.

They... even when I refer to them as a pronoun I shiver.

Anyone who goes out of their way to avoid anything that has to do with animals is bound for hypocricy. Animals have to do with too many aspects of our lives. The argument of most vegans I meet is that they "want animals to be freed from slavery, man!"

But what vegans don't know is that they're enslaving animals everyday. DEAD ANIMALS. Come on vegans! Don't pretend like you don't know!

I'm talking about fossil fuels.

And don't EVEN get me started on bacteria.

... I'm sorry... I'm just... I'm just too upset to write anymore today...