Least Favorite Things in Life

I really hate going to the dentist. I mean I really hate it. And not because it's particularly painful, or that it's ever really bad news. Hell, with my insurance, it's not even expensive.
So what is the problem? I've been blessed with very good teeth. I've had one cavity in my life, and never needed braces. My wisdom teeth never came in, so i've only had one tooth pulled. But damn those dentists and hygenists piss me off with their condescending talk. I end up switching dentists every several years simply because they piss me off.
The last time I switched dentists was because of an episode where we discussed flossing. The bitch was shredding my gums and ragging like a mother about how I needed to floss more often. Right lady, i will make flossing twice a day a high priority in my life. She has me in the torture chair administering her gum-slicing wire torture when she stopped and asked me to demonstrate how I normally floss. I responded that I don't normally do it while standing on my head. Maybe my gums don't bleed so much when I do it because i'm not suspended upside down for five minutes while trying to floss...f0ckers.
I received a bill in the mail this past week because I missed my dentist appt. Excuse me, I go twice a year, and I suppose since a trip to the dentist is as much fun as Christmas I ought to remember my appt. But I didn't. And, OK, I can understand it's a pain in the ass when people don't show up for their appts. But $40! Holy Fuck, that's a lot of money for doing nothing. It's not like there was an hour when suddenly there was nothing to do in the office. They ought to be paying me for surrendering my reservation to the next poor sap that's been waiting an hour. It's not like the focker is going to get his motor home repossessed, jeeeezuz.
I think if a doctor or dentist is going to charge for missed visits then they should reimburse at the same rate for the extra time you wait in the waiting room past your appt.

The Continuing Evolution of Christmas

I recently read a (news article) about some guy that stirred the wrath of all his neighbors with his radically new christmas lawn decoration - Santa Crucified on the Cross. 69yo Jimmy Wright claimed the 'artwork' was intended to express his sentiments

'Santa represents frivolous consumption. That's all he is. He shot Jesus right out of the saddle. He's the focus of Christmas.'

Personally, I don't make the connection but I do find it a bit humorous and I can certainly relate to his frustrations with society's 'Christmas spirit'.
All that the news can talk about is how Christmas spending is an economic indicator. This 'indicator' seems to be particularly difficult to read this year with the inception of The Gift Card. Yes, my friends, Christmas is now all about the Gift Card. If I were to write a letter to Santa this year, it would say:

Dear Santa,
Thank You for the Gift Cards this year.
Sincerely,
p0nk
p.s. The nearest Home Depot is 4 hours away, you fat lazy prick.

The days following Christmas (Boxing Day for you Canuckians) used to be about returning all the useless and broken crap, and the seven Dale Earnardt Jr wall clocks. Now it's about spending those damn gift cards.
People, it's one thing if you didn't want to take the time to buy something thoughtful for me, but why in the hell are you sending me to some god-forsaken hell-hole to try to find something i could use? Thanks a fucking lot! Cash may be considered tacky, but personally I would consider it a hell of a lot more thoughtful than forcing me to go to Ross Dress For Less to buy basketball shoes for one of the little p0nks.
...and speaking of the little p0nks, it's a damn good thing that i've got a week's vacation right now because between the Christmas hunting and putting together/repairing broken kids' toys, i'm pretty much busy 24/7.
Die Santa, you promoter of frivolous consumption!

Have a great one

One week paid holiday break. That's right! And I plan to do absolutely nothing. I might put a new album up on Monday, and on the wild chance that somebody would request one, i would put that one up too.
I have to say, I realize I have not been keeping up with daily rants, but it's been tough to pick just one topic to rant about. Here's a brief sample...
President NameThatReadsLikeAnEyeChart (kudos to RichPort for the moniker) from Iran welcomed a special envoy of Hasaidic Jews from New York who seem to be quite ethnic-identity confused.
DeathMatch III between moral compass Donald Trump and useless dike Rosie O'Donnell rages on. The publicity these two egomaniacs are getting from this spat would make for a great Reality TV show, except that The Biggest Loser as a title has already been taken, and quite frankly, neither of these two pathetic losers has much of a grasp of reality.
We're winning not winning winning not winning in Iraq.
Monica Lewinsky is in the news again, having finished her Masters from the London School of Economics...
Kim Jong Il is still playing us. Japan will probably go kick their ass before we realize North Korea is not serious about disarmament.
Fidel Castro is still not dead.
btw, watch for Club Hillary to expose the deepest darkest secrets of cool cat Obama as the Democratic Primaries kick off.

Santa Outlives God

This has to be one of the most twisted ironies of the Political Correctness movement.
Story here->UK teacher tells kids truth about Santa

Teacher catches hell for telling 10yo kids that Santa isn't real? As one parent said...

"What gives the school the right to decide when children should know the truth about such a harmless matter when knowing the truth does take away that little bit of magic?"

Seems to me these same people are pretty adamant that schools teach the 'truth' about evolution. So what happens if Johnny wants to believe that Christmas is about baby Jesus? Magical Santas are OK, but Jesus is not? Smurfs, Barney, Teletubbies, cocaine, & illicit, unprotected sex is all going to be part of my magical world and no damn school is allowed to teach otherwise.
No wonder the youth of today are so f'd up.

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that's right. i have nothing witty or obnoxious to report today. I'm tired and just trying to get through the week with as little thinking as possible. I have spent several days trying to figure out how to burn multiple episodes of 'The Office' onto a DVD in a format that the typical DVD player can play to the TV, to no avail. So today is going to be old Scorps, UFO, & MSG (20 pts to whoever can name the common denominator) turned up loud and mindless web surfing.

Person of the Year

Time Magazine's long honored annual tradition of "Person of the Year" this year bestowed the title on a 2" piece of aluminum foil. Damn, even I am not that cynical!

OK I admit, the cheesy gimmick was intended to be a mirror and they're saying that the person is everybody. But I beg to differ. Although I have yet to bring about world peace, end poverty, find a cure for aids or walk on the moon; I do try to make my little corner of the world a better place. And no doubt there are millions who do better than I, but alas would not boost sales of Time Magazine. Hollywood is a cesspool of debauchery. Athletes are more interested in slamming steroids and bangin' in the hood. Politicians are exploiting their influence for money and illicit sex. Tough to find a "Person of the Year" amidst the popular icons of today. Granted, there are a few who do some good. But if I knew how to change fonts on here, the word "some" would be in the smallest font available, because the relative good compared to their capability is miniscule. I would love to hear about somebody who makes $1 million a year but gives $950,000 of it to charity, but I haven't. So this year, I am nominating Mike, our mailman, for person of the year. When my kids run into Mike at the grocery store, Mike will stop and talk to them by name, ask them how they're doing, etc etc. Mike makes a difference where he can.

I promise not to get all techie on here, this rant is about customer service - more specifically the lack thereof - when it comes to technical issues such as my new ISfuckinP. It never fails that when you have a good arrangement working, somebody has to come along and fuck things up. For a number of years I was happier than a pack of black squirrels in a dog pound until SuddenPlink took over operations.
Now I hate phones almost as much as Angry Ferret, so initially I made my request via email for them to please look into their configuration and see if they can determine why on earth that last packet of my DCC Sends are getting lost. The response was a form letter assuring me that nothing has changed.
Nothing has Changed? If nothing has changed why do I have a new IP address and my domain name resolves to suddenlink instead of the previous ISP?
So last night I finally made the dreaded call. After wading through 4 levels of phone menu options, I reached a live person - live = had a pulse. I don't remember what this 1st guy's name was, so let's call him Darryl. After 10 minutes with Darryl, I was able to convince him that I didn't need help setting up my email or virus protection. Darryl passed me off to Estelle. Estelle was also very friendly and I was quickly able to convince her that I was not having problems with my browser. Estelle passed me off to Jay. Jay was a piece of work. I suspect Jay bluffed his way into the job and spends his days playing Doom online. No offense Jay, I'm sure you're quite proficient at whatever it is you do, but do you think you could forward me to somebody higher up the tech chain?
I never caught the name of this 4th guy, I don't think he likes talking on the phone and I suspect he was annoyed at my interrupting his efforts to hack into CIA headquarters. His response was that I need to configure my router to block port 40 and if I don't know how to do that myself I should contact the router manufacturer.
I was skeptical of this solution, but god damn at least somebody knows what the fuck a router port is, so what the hell, i'll give it a try.
And of course, it didn't do a damn bit of good. Fuckers.

Insult + Injury = More bad news for Kanye West

As if he wasn't disgraced enough with his tantrum at the MTV Europe Music Awards, Kanye West is being served a second helping of humble pie by Robert "Evel" Knievel in the form of a lawsuit for intellectual property copyright infringement (arrange those last four words in whatever order makes sense to you).
"The guy just went too far using me to promote his filth to the world." says Knievel. "That video that Kanye West put out is the most worthless piece of crap I’ve ever seen in my life..."

As one of the millions who was gathered around the TV that day in 1974 when Knievel took the dive, I was not so impressed with him then. Rocket-powered "motorcycle" goes straight up and then drops straight down the canyon. WTF? Clearly he had no intention of seriously attempting it. But hell, anybody who has broken as many bones as Evel Knievel has, deserves a little respect. And I applaud anybody who can call out these thug-babies.
Kanye, go jump off a cliff...and take Pammy-Sue with you.

couple links to stories:
The Smoking Gun

news story with great quotes

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...

are much more romantic than that bag of popcorn that was cremated down the hall. I don't know who you are, I suspect some temp filling in during registration. Congratulations, we now have an excuse on which to blame low enrollment. How in the hell (speaking of ungodly burning smells), did you manage to create such havoc with a microwave bag of popcorn? That is some serious talent, I can see why you are trying to join the workforce, you apparently lack the skills to be a homemaker. Your next career move should be in law enforcement and I will personally vouch for your ability to swiftly evacuate large buildings. McGyver himself could not concoct a tear gas that potent with a simple microwave oven and bag of popcorn.
The entire staff here at this fine institution of higher education congratulates you.
Merry Christmas.

ps I hope you don't plan to string cranberries and popcorn for your christmas tree or I will have to alert the state of Maine.

On The First Day of Christmas...

On the one hand, we have economists giving us gloom-and-doom reports because Christmas spending is down. And on the other hand, we get these amusing 'medical alerts' about shopping addictions. Shopping Addiction: A Serious Problem (12/9/06)

There's an 'addiction' for everything now days, and personally I'm finding this politically correct trend very disturbing. Of course all of these so-called addictions bear the same symptoms; low self-esteem, adrenaline rush, guilt... they even talk about levels of dopamine and seratonin to make this crap sound like a legitimate scientific medical condition. (Web MD article)

"People just can't help themselves..." as if to suggest this is genetic or some kind of mental disorder. Give me a fucking break! it's called self-discipline. I'm pretty sure the guy out there having sex with road-kill displays the same kind of symptoms. People can help themselves. exercise a little self-control people. Stop looking for excuses to shirk your responsibility, or I will be forced to visit your house and set your cat on fire... it's this addiction i have ...

'Tis The Season...to screw the gullible.

If you have noticed a recent surge in email spam, you're not mistaken. A recent news article Spam is back with a vengeance as filters lose effectiveness reported that:

"...unwanted messages now account for 91 percent of all e-mail, and over the past 12 months the daily volume of spam rose by 120 percent"

I've often asked myself, "Why do they do it? Do people really make money of this spam crap?". Sadly the answer is yes. Here are 3 recent stories:
Fraud Alert Friday: Social Security email scam (12/8/06)
Holiday Email Scams (12/8/06)
Manawatu mum, son lose $200k to Nigerian scam (12/7/06)

people are still falling for the Nigerian scam?!

I think it's time for some new laws. We have gun control, we have seatbelt laws (you don't even want to get me started on this issue), it might just be time to require people to get 'computer safety certified' before they're allowed to have a computer. Consider this, not only would it protect idiots from screwing themselves over, but it could also reduce the number of sickos/pedophiles/assorted stalkers from trolling the net. If we made people understand that the Prince of Nigeria is not really that generous, that your dick can not grow 2" by wearing a magic patch, and that Microsoft does not pay you money for every email you send, then maybe, just maybe, we could make make spamming an unprofitable venture.

Sensitivity Training 101

here's a little news gem that has been tucked away in the back pages for the last week.
Iran To Discuss Evidence Of Holocaust

President Ahmadinejad, again showing what an open-minded individual he is, has called for a conference of 'leading experts' to discuss the evidence of whether or not the Holocaust really happened. And in case you doubted his sincerity he added this jewel of a quote.

The proof of Iran's lack of animosity toward Jews, he said, was Iran's 25,000-strong Jewish community.

Right... I think Hitler had a number of those Jewish communities as well.

Not one to be outdone, look for Kim Jong Il to host a panel to discuss evidence of whether we really put men on the moon.

it's all about me(me)...

I normally hate Meme's. I'm even embarrassed to use the word "meme", as it suggests that I know what the hell it means. I just know that this is a meme.

Your Taste in Music:

Classic Rock: High Influence Progressive Rock: High Influence 80's R&B: Low Influence 90's Pop: Low Influence R&B: Low Influence

How's Your Taste in Music?

Deja Vu all over again

Somalis rally against U.S. peacekeeping plan

There is so much insanity going on in the world right now, it's rather difficult to isolate just one item to rant about. But this item jumped at me because it has garnered such little attention.
A brief synopsis of our current position in world politics:
1.) We currently have several hundred thousand troops in the middle of the fucking Arab desert called Iraq, getting killed while trying to prevent these fucktards from killing each other.
2.) We have a madman in the neighboring country openly developing nuclear weapons so he can wage war on America and Israel - we're doing nothing.
3.) We have another madman in North Korea doing basically the same thing - we're doing nothing.
4.) Cuba is about to go down the shitter as Castro is in his last days - we're doing nothing.
5.) South America is swiftly turning communist, embracing fundamentalist islamic terrorists, and is openly hostile to America - we're doing nothing.
6.) Lebanon is on the verge of civil war as the Hezbollah is preparing to stage a coup with the backing of Syria - we're doing nothing.

by all fucking means, lets go back to Somalia. After all that went so smoothly last time we were there. < /end sarcasm>

I have an eye appointment today. My "annual" eye appointment that I get around to making every 2½ years or so. I hate my eye exams...worse than my 6 month dental checkups where I get to be told how I need to floss more. I want to say, "Look bitch, I'm 44 years old, we both know that changing my dental hygiene habits at this point in time is simply not going to happen, so just save the smarm for your next patient".
My eye exams go like that too. My eyes are pretty f'd up. I wear contacts and I have always pretty much gotten by despite years of sleeping in my disposables. About the time my doc told me i needed to quit was about 6 or 7 years ago, at which point I promptly f'd myself royally in the following manner:
As many of you know, the p0nks are a procreative bunch, and shortly after the birth of p0nk #5, i was tasked with the mission of reviving one of the most important inventions known to parents - the baby swing.
The baby swing is a great invention because it is the only legal way to render a baby unconcious by sloshing his little brain back and forth until he slips into a G-force induced coma. And it is relatively effortless, set the baby in said swing, wind up the heavy duty spring just to the point where you think one more click will cause said swing to explode with the force of a quark explosion and send everyone into orbit. Just give the swing a tap and enjoy 20 minutes of peaceful bliss.
We had loaned this goldmine invention to some friends of lesser fortune, and I soon discovered that they had managed to break something within the magic box otherwise known as the spring mechanism.
Now, I consider myself smarter than the average baby-producer, I had college physics and calculus for xrist' sake, I understand the principles behind a 300 megaton spring. I wasn't going to let something like a simple sticker on this magic box intimidate me into dishing out another small fortune for one of these things.
So throwing all caution to the wind I did in fact attempt to disassemble said unit.
And, I even succeeded... several times in fact. Carefully releasing the last ounce of spring tension before tearing the unit apart, attempting to realign the gear-lock mechanism, re-assemble, windup, test....repeat.
It was halfway through the 3rd disassembly that I suddenly remembered, "Oh shit, i forgot to release the tension. I'm now holding this ticking time bomb in my hands, trying to decide if i should try to put the screws back in it or just heave the thing as far as i can.
Then it happened. Holy Mary Mother of God, I didn't even have time to blink. Son of a bitch blew up in my face so fast i never saw a thing. All I knew was that my left eye suddenly felt somebody had just shot a searing hot poker out of a cannon and straight into my eye. After realizing that I was probably going to live, I felt around my face to get an idea of how disfigured i might look so as I didn't shock anybody that might be responding to my screams.
When I could finally pull my hands away from my face, I tried to open my eye and saw nothing - pitch black. Yes friends, it was time for another visit to the emergency room of our small town hospital where they have an entire wing dedicated to p0nk family medical records.
I'll try to shorten this story up... After a couple months of convalesence, i was able to return and get a new prescription. At first, we all got a good laugh because the blunt force trauma to my eye had flattened the cornea to the point that I was now seeing nearly 20-20. Radial-Keratonomy hillbilly style. Unfortunately, it was not a lasting result, and my eye has now digressed to the point that the internal scar tissue nearly has me blind in that eye. So now every eye exam I get to hear lectures about how to take care of my eyes.
"Thank you Dr French for reminding me what an idiot I am. See you again in 2 years."

Have a good weekend everybody.