The Breakfast of Champions

A post inspired by co-workers eating chocolate cake for breakfast today -- here's a classic Bill Cosby bit on the topic. Seriously, if the only Bill Cosby you know is from The Cosby Show or Pudding Pop commercials, do yourself a favor and watch some of his stand-up from back in the day. He truly is the most gifted comedian/story teller of all time. Not even close. Richard Pryor is a distant 2nd (and I LOOOOOVE me some Richard Pryor) and here's why: his act is as funny to me now as it was when I was 6 years old and in the backseat listening to his tapes on the long trip to grandma's house and struggling to breathe between hysterical cackles. 

Enjoy,

Blaine

Bill Cosby Chocolate cake
Uploaded by Spookytime

Ricky Gervais wins the Internet

Ricky Gervais is funny. Elmo is cute.

Youtube win.

I Blame this on Watchmen

Last week while seeing "Watchmen" on Imax I was inundated with giant blue peen. Now, there is small green peen in the form of a youtube video showing some turtle doing sexy times with a shoe. Ugghhhh, and I just ate a salad for lunch, full of GREEN things. Barf.





Honestly, the close up was not necessary and what is up with the sounds that turtle is making?

Facebook Tag Your Friends with Disdain

Been on Facebook the past two weeks? Then you noticed a horrible new trend that made the "20 things" notes seem well-thought out and insightful.

Well your friends at Diary of Fools have created our own version that has some key upgrades.

(much better quality, larger version available for download here. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v27/Tajmccall/DOF-Facebooktag.png)

Post it, tag your friends, then immediately begin answering questions on why you'd think that of them. It's a good way to weed out your friends with absolutely no sense of sarcasm.

Go ahead, you know you want to.

DoF Classic: Blaine Fridley's Ironclad Break-up Techniques, Vol. I

Originally published Feb. 2008

Breaking up is hard to do. But withstanding the fallout of a break-up is even harder. The crying. The late night phone calls. The ill-fated attempt at "being friends". Worst of all is the break-up that doesn't stick, which usually comes as a result of a determined/dillusional breakee refusing to accept the estrangement and a weak-willed breaker who would do anything to stop the breakee's crying...including keeping a vegetative relationship hooked up to a feeding tube for several more agonizing months if it means they'll just shut-the-fuck-up already.

Throughout the history of mankind, those looking to end a relationship have searched for, and almost always have failed to find, a way to make a "clean break".

That is, until now.

In this semi-regular re-accuring feature, I will share with you the ironclad break-up techniques guaranteed to get you out of an unwanted relationship quickly and cleanly.

Ironclad Break-up Technique #1: "The Tuck and Roll"

Sometimes a bad relationship can make you feel like you're in a speeding car that has caught fire and is headed straight for Dead Man's Cliff. This technique is for you.

However, to execute "The Tuck and Roll" properly, you need to set the table with a few easy steps of preparation.

1. Erase your number from his/her cell phone
2. Get new email address
3. Relocate, relocate, relocate. This is key. Another city is preferred to avoid the dreaded "chance meeting".

Great! Now you're prepared for "The Tuck and Roll".

As we've already discussed, the hardest part of a break-up isn't really the act of telling your partner that you don't want to be with them anymore, so much as it is the severe awkwardness that follows directly after. If only there was a way to escape the second you've let the other person know you don't want to be with them, never to be seen again.

Well, accomplishing that is as easy as going for a Sunday drive with your partner.

And then jumping out of the vehicle as you announce that you'd like to break-up.

Typically, this technique is done with you in the passenger seat. But depending on how much you despise the person you're breaking up with, it can be performed with you in the driver's seat as well.

And there you have it. A clean break. No excruciating back and forth. No awkwardness. No muss, no fuss.

You're welcome.

Fuck you, Walgreen's.

I am so onto you it is, quite literally, sick.

So, the other day, by which I mean sometime around mid-goddamn-January, I come down with The Grippe. Yes, I know this is an archaic term, but it fits...mostly because whatever microscopic motherfucker has taken hold in my lungs will. Not. Let. GO. I've actually torn my ridiculously well-insulated abdominal muscles coughing, my voice sounds like ten miles of bad road, and I can hardly sleep, because when I lie down, my lungs make a noise that sounds altogether too much like a teapot left on the burner at an enthusiastic simmer. I've been to see two separate medical professionals, and while their bedside manners were wildly divergent, the diagnosis was the same:

Disaffected, gum-smacking, 21-year-old Nurse Practitioner at lunch-break kwik-e-klinic inside major department store chain: "S'prolly a virus. Here, go get some codeine syrup, or sumthin'."

My incredibly-cool actual Doctor (from whom I sought a second opinion on day 10), while listening to my upper-respiratory function via stethoscope: "Wow. That is fucked...UP. Your lungs sound like the bastard lovechild of an accordion and a set of bagpipes!" And yeah, he really talks like that, which is a large part of the reason I go to him. Anyone can do the doctorin', but this guy's always good for some entertainment in the bargain. "It's definitely Bronchitis, but it doesn't seem to be the bacterial kind. So, sorry...No antibiotics. You'll just have to rub some dirt on it and soldier it out, tough guy."

However, he did write me for some more drugs. Namely, a steroid and an inhaled dilator to shore up my breathing, and help me get some sleep. So, off to Walgreen's I go like a good citizen to procure my controlled substances.

And WHY do I go to Walgreen's? Same reason so many other drones march dutifully off to other buyatoriums that start with "Wal-." The heady combination of ubiquity, convenience, and familiarity that most chains assume translates as "brand loyalty." Walgreen's has the sort of market penetration also-rans like CVS, Snyder's and Rite Aid can only have wet dreams about. Of course, with Walgreen's, there's also the added wrinkle that they're sort of a de facto extension of my doctor's office, inasmuch as they deal with the medication end. And going anywhere else involves giving someone new a lot of semi-sensitive info. So when it comes to faceless corporate giants being privy to the particulars of my medical history, I try to keep that shit to a minimum.

But. It must be said that Walgreen's, while easy, also pisses me off something FIERCE. They frost my cookies, big-time. This is because they are shamelessly running one of the biggest rackets in the entire Western Hemisphere. And that racket goes by a code-phrase:

"That's gonna be about twenty minutes."

That's the way their business model works: You drop off a prescription, and the friendly, helpful pharmacist (or a licensed representative of same) says, "That's gonna be about twenty minutes." And then you're left to your own devices. And, make no mistake, "twenty minutes" is an EXTREMELY carefully-chosen window of time they'll tell you to wait. It is totally arbitrary; a span specifically selected to sound like a reasonable amount of time to hang out. Certainly, too brief a window of time to leave and come back, right? So, what do you do?

You take the bait. You shop. You shop like the goddamned MORON you are. You shop like they know you will.

You cruise up and down the aisles, perusing the selection of (again, very carefully-selected) products, and you wind up picking shit out you don't really need JUST BECAUSE IT'S THERE.

Let it be known: the "twenty minutes" gambit is the BIG profit-building backbone of the Walgreen's corporate empire. You think Astra-Zeneca, Pfizer, and GlaxoSmithKline are cutting them a sweet deal on the good stuff? Fuck, no. So they make it up on the other crap. And the large-scale moving of the tertiary shit-on-shelves accounts for such a significant chunk of their overall business that it's no WONDER we never question it, no matter how ludicrous it is on its face. Of course it doesn't take twenty goddamned minutes to count to fifteen pills, you fucking mongoloids! Especially not when three-quarters of everything behind the magic barrier comes in bottles, pre-counted blister-packs, or patented, complicated dose-measuring mechanisms designed to jack up the asking price Big Pharma gets to charge for top-tier drugs! WALGREEN'S IS PLAYING YOU, BITCHES! And you, my friend, are literally buying it!

Think about it...The non-prescription products in every Walgreen's fall into one of four categories:

1) Food. And not just food...Convenience food. Canned soups. Frozen shit. Insta-dinners. The kind of stuff that's cheap and fast, and that you're likely to be inclined to want to pick up to save all the time they've stolen from you, being as it apparently takes twenty minutes to take a bottle from a box, and put it into a bag with your name on it.

2) Cheap Entertainment. Paperbacks. DVD's. Magazines. There is no earthly reason for this shit to be here. That is, except for the fact that Walgreen's knows that you'll be wandering the store for quite awhile while they fastidiously count out one pill every 90 seconds and you're gonna walk past everything twice.

3) "Health & Beauty" products. Toothpaste. Cotton balls. Cosmetics. Weak-sauce over-the-counter pseudo-remedies. Stuff that helps them feel more like a pharmacy, and less like a seedy corner convenience store. Plus, it's all shit you tend to run out of at home. Not that the hippie to the left is necessarily gonna need what she's nabbing any time soon, but they also don't refuse to sell eyeliner to geriatrics, if you feel me.

4) CANDY, CANDY, CANDY. First, you have to chew good and slow on the incongruity of the fact that the same place that sells both sugary sweets AND insulin monitors knows that you're sure to be back for both sooner or later. If you think about it, that's kind of like a motorcycle dealership that has a special section in the back for crutches and discount body casting: the shiny, highly-marketed shit hangs out in the front all glossy and appealing, and the piper-paying wages-of-sin are just below the surface. Walgreen's knows that you can't pass up a 2-for-1 sale on Twizzlers. They know that a bag of store-brand Bridge Mix that's not-coincidentally the rough size of your lower intestines is a "gimme." Especially when you're wandering the aisles forever, waiting on a tiny bottle of pills to be painstakingly totted up and bagged by a glorified register-jockey.

And besides that, they know there's a pretty good chance you're going to have some kids with you. And if you've ever dragged a squalling brat past rows and rows and rows of brightly-colored bags of sugary bliss, you know only one of you is getting out of there alive. And yes, while Dr. Spock would have our parental hides for caving in and reinforcing bad behavior by buying the unbearable little shits something to shut them the fuck up already, anyone who has ever had to endure the stygian joy of a tiny, impossible-to-deal-with asshole pitching a howling, red-faced bitch in the middle of a public place knows the meaning of the phrase "pick your battles" more intimately than any army commander ever will.

Bear in mind, that's only if you're lucky enough NOT to need meds during one of the four candy-heavy marketing seasons of the year. Those being: Easter (defined as Valentine's Day through Memorial Day), Halloween (Labor Day through Thanksgiving), Christmas (Thanksgiving through New Years') and Valentine's Day (New Years' through Easter). During those magical run-up/holiday/clearance periods, the candy "aisle" sprawls over the entire front half of the store like a goddamned alien fungus that feeds on desperation and self-loathing.

Of course, as you're drinking in all of this shameless retailery as a more-or-less captive audience, you don't usually realize that it's never actually only twenty minutes you wait. It just never is, is it? In Walgreen's time, "twenty minutes" usually averages about thirty-five. That way, when you go up to the counter to ask them why it's taken them the better part of an hour to hand you your goddamned birth control pills, pills that come in for-chrissakes blister-packs in a shit-eating clamshell case and have for years, they can act flustered, like YOU'RE the unreasonable asshole. At that point, they may tersely claim they called your name on the overhead P.A., but of course, they never do. Even when you've specifically asked them to, and they say they will. Then they sigh, as if they're so put-upon and so overworked, and then they GO AND GET THE FUCKING PILLS. And they ring them up right there. They ring them up right along with your three pints of Ben & Jerry's, gallon jug of Lubriderm, copy of "Hair Today," family-size jeroboam of Extra-Strength Tylenol Migraine, pair of "As Seen On TV" Dryer Balls, and the My Little Pony with the lollipop ass-tattoo that little Keighleighh welled up a metric quart of crocodile tears over when you forgot yourself for three seconds and half-turned down the toy aisle. And lo and behold...you are the sucker again.

So, don't fall for it, tools. Don't become a cog in the system! Don't be seduced by Walgreen's carefully-researched and perfectly-laid little honey-trap. Because that's what it is. A trap. So , the next time the pharmacist or conscripted surrogate looks you dead in the eye and utters the lie-on-several-levels of, "that's gonna be about twenty minutes," just do what I do. Look right back at them and say, "Okay. I'll just wait RIGHT HERE." Refuse to move from the register. Firmly, but politely decline to step aside so they can help someone else. Do not be swayed by the bank of comfy chairs they have placed near the counter so they can drag their heels while you watch your afternoon slip away. Stand bolt upright directly in front of the register, and watch them like a hawk until you get your medication. They fucking HATE this. Not only are you totally calling them on the absurd notion that it takes thirty-plus minutes to count out twenty tablets by observing the process directly, but you are making them nervous by being vaguely menacing...But not SO menacing that security must get involved. As an added bonus, you are not draining your bank account and padding theirs by buying SHIT YOU WILL NEVER NEED. EVER.

Trust me, try it. If you don't get your meds inside of five minutes flat, Uncle Mert will buy you a fuckin' Whitman's Sampler. You can pick it out. They're the next aisle over from the Massengill.

Your Headlines for March 11, 2009

Local

White Elephant Gift Recipient Secretly Excited About "Kate and Allie " Season 3 DVD

Sports

Cal Ripken Strains Hamstring, Bows Out of Yardwork
Wife: "Consecutive days on ass streak still alive and well" for baseball's Ironman

Breaking

God Watches Major League 3, Immediately Schedules Rapture

This Day in History: 1496

Christopher Columbus checks off the last name on his "People I'd Like to Rape" list, thus concluding his second visit to the Western Hemisphere. 

(Above)Columbus introduces the native population to wine, or as 

it's identified throughout his travelogue, "rape juice."

Thomas the Tank Vs. Hip Hop

An enterprising DJ realized the theme for Thomas the Tank was 93 beats per second, which means it goes with just about every hip-hop song ever.

Set the instrumental of the Thomas the Tank show theme against an A Capella track of a famous rap song and you're thinking 'ok this could be pretty amusing. The juxtaposition of a kids show and rapper, oh you clever irony!'

Well our pessimism and boo-hooery aside; these men win Youtube awards in fuckoffery of the highest regard.

First we start with Busta Rhymes. This is NSFW. So get your headphones out.


Snoop- Drop it like its hot. The video is also a nice touch.


50 Cent- In the Club. Probably the Golden Chariot of Thomas the Tank mash-ups.

There are tons more on Youtube. Some great, some stupid. All a giant waste of time, which is a beautiful thing.

The Intellectual Scrapheap: Not-So-Deep Thoughts from the Mind of Blaine Fridley

Growing up Catholic, one thing I always heard was that people are made in God's image.

As I stood in line thinking about this at the grocery store, I realized that this might be the most damaging blow ever handed to God's credibility.

You're tellin' me Yahweh spends 20 minutes after all his items have been rung up fumbling for his coupons too? And then spends another 15 minutes squabbling about the receipt and what Kellog's products are or are not eligible for coupon redemption? And then - after manager intervention - relents and takes another 5 minutes to go back to the cereal aisle to pick the correct size of Cracklin' Oat Bran? And then has the audacity to actually write out a check?*

Excuse me for saying so, but I don't think I like God very much.


[*Please, banks. Stop printing out checks. If your clients can't figure out PayPal or debit cards, just give them their money back along with a coffee can and a shovel.]

The Day I Lost My Faith in Humanity, Part XIV

By Knarf Black XIV, Former Exotic Pornologist

I realize that I'm pretty far behind the curve on this story, but it is in such jaw droppingly poor taste that it may have just soured me Japanese culture forever... and I let the whole tentacle porn thing slide.

Currently making headlines as the electronic boogyman de jure for crusading politicians, is the 2006 "rape simulator" PC game RapeLay. Despite the fact that its a few years old, has only unofficial "fan translations" into English, and is almost completely unavailable (outside of torrent sites) here in the states, the folks in charge began jumping all over it when various blogs discovered that it was available on eBay and Amazon marketplace.

This is a piece of software so vile and disturbing that it has made yours truly, a person who saw Irreversible twice, actually agree with the banhappy nanny-staters for once. The player takes control over a creepy-creeper convicted of subway groping (apparently endemic on the crowded cars) who decides to take revenge on his accuser by, you guessed it, raping her entire family. (The ladies at least.)

Not having a currently functioning PC, I can't take the game for a test spin, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to anyway. (Being killed seven days later by an enraged technophilic Yūrei is only one of many possible worst case scenarios.) The mere existence of a game has thrown the tattered remains of my faith in humanity on a pile of gas soaked rags, having to play through the interactive sex scenes to be rewarded by the victims' Straw Dogs style orgasms would toss a flaming Molotov cocktail on the pile before setting of a nearby thermonuclear device and snapping the necks of all the charred survivors within a hundred miles.

More info from Slate and Something Awful. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to cry in a fetal position for a while.

DoF Champions of Society: Debbie Schlussel

By Reno Gruber
Self-appointed parenting expert


Like most people this weekend, I treated(?) myself to the cinematic styling of Zak (sweet spelling, bro) Snyder's Watchmen. While I could go on about the greatness or not-so-greatness of the film (which fanboys and girls alike will seriously argue until we ourselves nuke each-other into oblivion,) the actual success of the graphic novel is not the champion we speak of. Neither is the amount of hype surrounding it. Good god the hypemachine was on 'forced-entry' for this one.

This installment is dedicated to a movie review. To be more accurate; dedicated to the writer of the most incindiary, specious movie review ever written. Well, at least a really fucking dumb one, anyhow.

(if you don't get hyperlinks, or are just generally new to computers, it can also be copied and pasted from here: http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2009/03/the_watchmen_li.html)

Debbie Schlussel (and her ironically amusing website debbieschlussel.com) has taken a stand. Her stand is against this movie, and the first line of her movie review is a subtle hint towards this.

"If you take your kids out to see Watchmen, you're a moron. If you see this movie yourself, you're also probably a moron and a vapid, indecent human being."

(DoF loves to point out the irony that she probably saw this movie first to come to such a conclusion, and giggles how well that description probably fits herself.)

I actually agree with the first sentiment. If you do take your children to see this without any prior conversation on what they are about to see, you are kind of a fucking head trauma patient. Not to say that it will "ruin" anybody. For example, my brother is about as level-headed a motherfucker as I've ever met, and my parents accidentally took him to see Poltergeist when he was about 7. Apparently they didn't really know what it was about, and they just kinda showed up at the theater that day. Oops.

My brother was scared by what he saw, and they learned quickly that before they take any of us children to the movies, do just a bit of research. He wasn't ruined, scared yes. Enough to teach two young parents a little lesson. It was this crazy notion of parenting your children. (It's since been either outlawed or ignored in favor of a social rating system to help asleep-at-the wheel suburbanites take as little responsibility for their own offspring as possible, but it was a good thing for a while.)

While this movie will no doubt send millions out to read the book afterward, most people do not have prior knowledge of either this graphic novel, or creator Alan Moore's catalog of work. If you do a 4 minute search on the net, you will quickly realize this is a grown-up comic. A comic for the kids who grew up on comics now that they have grown up. It is a commentary on the whole notion of comic books. (I'll stop the interpretation there because it's second hand knowledge, ol Knarf Black or Merton Sussex could probably wax nerd about for hours if you asked [ps. don't.])

There are some things that are probably unwise to show a child. Why would you? They wouldn't get it. This movie is an intensely layered study on society both real and illusion. Kids rarely know anything besides their own immediate experience. The whole movie would be lost and it would just be blue dicks and sawed-off arms. So in that I agree with Mrs. Schlussel.

Her point, however, is that the Hollywood machine is directly marketing to small children with action toys. Well, sadly Mrs. Schlussel, those are for adults too. (sorry fellas, you know who.) It's called nostalgia. We all recreate our past in some way. Probably like when you try to shoe-horn yourself into an old dress. It reminds us of a simpler time. It's nothing to be ashamed of. These figures - as far as i'm aware - will be expensive and probably only available at most comic book and novelty shops. A quick internet search shows you that it's not Target or Wal-Mart selling them, but specialty shops for this segment of the population. If Target does sell them, it would be due to popular demand in time.

As I hate the drivel Hollywood dishes at us, its the conscious decision we make with our wallets that have this effect. It's like blaming the whore for making more money wearing trashy outfits instead of the Jaclyn Smith collection. It's her job to make money. If people are responding to the trashy outfit is that a comment on her, or the market of unsatisfied men who want to fuck a stranger for a small fee?

We're left with this society we've created; you can blame Hollywood, bad parenting, the death of the nuclear family, fear-tactics employed by the government, religion...but ultimately, it's on us. If a kid goes out and watches this movie, then commits an act, do we really think a movie hit a magical switch in his brain?

There is a confluence of events that lead up to the disassociation of society that people like Mrs. Schlussel blame Hollywood for. I hate her just for making me defend a shitty fucking industry like Hollywood.

Are we really so simple to think that one thing leads us to temptation, or that one act will deliver us from evil?

Yes, the movie is fucking violent. It is something that would take too much explanation to a child in my eyes, so one I was responsible for wouldn't see it. But I can promise you that if you're vapid and indecent, it's not because you watch this movie, or saw it as a child. I can even tell you that it's not even because you read Mrs. Schlussel's blog every day, although that would help in time. (Do yourself a favor and read the comments, especially where she goes after her own readers like a rabid pit bull without the ability to actually respond to their points. It's pretty amusing/maddening.)

People (like Debbie,) suck dick. People suck for many reasons. People however usually don't just decide to suck, they have a string of outcomes that leads to their suck-dickedness. Sometimes it's a justified outcome. Sometimes you just get a shitty break and your bleak outlook turns you into a dick. But remember, people suck dick. So there's always that.

Hot Sh!t: TubeTilla-

The Internet truly is an amazing bitch. Not only can you find any morsel of vital information in seconds, but more importantly you can listen to all the music in the world for free.

The only whorish thing I find is that most of the good stuff that's easily accessible is something you need to go to each time you listen to it, most notably YouTube.

Then Reno had a genius switch: what if I combined the internet's sexy ability to find answers and apply it to my little quandary?

Ladies and gentlemen, Tube Tilla.

This little video explains it, but basically you download and install it from Tubetilla.com and copy the URL of the YouTube video. You then select the file you want (WMA, MP4, MP3 etc) and hit convert. Bam, the thing is done and you now have your video of that dope song you like in your library.

You're welcome, sexy readers.

The DoF Friday Funk: Red Hot Chili Peppers

RENO UPDATE: THROUGH THE POWER OF THE INTERWEB, LAST WEEK'S FUNK THAT RENO FORGOT NOW AVAILABLE. BOO HIM LOUDLY.

Two of the funkiest jams by the Peps. Enjoy.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Sir Psycho Sexy

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Hump de Bump

Obama:

(Negligible) Change You Can Believe In Become Embittered By

'Member a while back when I wrote about how laughable the notion was that ANYBODY from the Democratic or Republican Party would bring true change to our country? No? Read it here if you're in to half-baked political rants. And then you should watch this chilling side-by-side from Tuesday's Daily Show comparing Bush's and Obama's strategy in Iraq:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mess O'Potamia - The Iraq War Is Over

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Everybody together, now: Vomit. Weep. Repeat.