Don't "Just Get Out and Vote"

As I was driving to vote I started to think about the people who will be voting today.  After I stopped crying  I wondered if I even wanted them to go vote to begin with. There are so many people that have no idea what or who they are voting on. They just show up and cast a vote because people tell them to “just get out and vote.” I say NOOOO! Don’t just “get out and vote!” If you fail to follow any of the rules below… don’t vote.

There needs to be a test on the topics at hand before people are allowed vote.

Voting Rule #1: If you vote for the guy with the biggest and most signs, you should not vote. As I drove by the hundreds of election signs that are posted on every street corner on my way to vote today I began to wonder the purpose of these signs. The experts who are in charge of putting the signs up believe that the more signs you see the more likely you are to vote for that person. The unfortunate thing is that for many people, this works. “I’m voting for Bill because he had the most signs on the side of the road on my way to work.” “What policies does he support?” “I don’t know, but he had lots of signs… and they were red white and blue so he MUST be a patriot.”  If you are this imbecile, do not vote.

Voting Rule #2: If you vote because someone told you to go vote, you should not vote. I see a lot of commercials on television and on the radio telling people to "just get out and vote." This especially happens on young people media channels like MTV and others that appeal to the 18 to twenty somethings. The way I look at it is if someone has to ask or remind or otherwise motivate you to go out and vote, then most likely you have no idea what is going on and should, therefore, not be voting.

I think the picture says it all...

Voting Rule #3: If you do not understand that men and women have died to give us the right to vote, you should not vote. Remember that this is a privilege to vote and there are millions and millions of people on this planet that do not have that privilege. It isn’t a duty to vote it is a privilege. Don’t think of it as a job that you have to go out and vote. You get a chance today for your voice to be heard. Now after saying that... just because you have the chance to vote doesn't mean you should if you are uneducated on the candidates.



Don't let shiny objects distract you.

Voting Rule #4: If you listen to the television and radio ads put out by the pundits and take them as truth, you should not vote. 99% of all the information in those ads are so badly skewed that there is barely any remnant of truth left. I’m not even sure the names are correct. There is a large possibility that the man on the television may in fact be a monkey that had his face shaved.  Just assume that all "facts" regarding the candidates are completely false when listening to those ads and you should be safe.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.

So, if you are someone that falls into any of these categories (and I’m sure there are more I’m missing) please do not go out and vote today. Please do not listen to those “just get out and vote” ads and signs. If you “just get out and vote” we will have a mass number of uneducated morons at the polls today electing God knows who because of God knows what.

You do not want to be this guy two years down the road.

Besides, if you do not go out and vote then my vote will mean that much more.

The Muffin Top

Let me start out by admitting that I am no fashion mogul my any stretch of the imagination but I have seen things as of late that I cannot remain silent about any longer. Every decade has a few standout fashions: Leather jackets in the 50s, tie dyed clothes in the 60s, bellbottoms in the 70s, neon everything in the 80s, plaid shirts in the 90s, etc. Well now we have low-rise jeans. This really isn’t anything new as they had them in the 70s, but today we have a society of that is, on average, overweight. So if you put the low-rise jeans style together with overweight people you get a rather distasteful situation: The muffin top.

I'm not talking about the good kid of muffin top folks.

The muffin top occurs when a person, almost always a female, wears low-rise jeans but does not have the waist to pull off said jeans. The result is an overflow of chub that cascades over the top of the jeans like the Gulf of Mexico coming over the levies around New Orleans during hurricane Katrina. Everyone knows its going to burst and no one wants to be there when it does.

These jeans were not made for this kind of punishment ladies.

Listen ladies, just because the low-rise jean is the popular style does not mean you need to wear it.  If you cannot pull it off don't do it.  For the love of all that is good an holy do not do it.  If the Simon Cowell School of Fashion said that tight shirts were in you would not see me going out and getting one.  Why?  Because if I wore a tight shirt I would look like an injured porpoise trapped in discarded plastic desperately trying to get off the beach and back into the ocean.  People would walk by and throw water on me and yell, "Keep him wet!"

Yes.                                    NOOOOOO!

Pick a fashion that works for your body type.  Just like for women at the beach you should not wear a bikini if you are gravitationally challenged and for men if you are not on the swim team get out of those Speedos.   It's like trying to shove a round beg into a square hole.  Didn't we learn that didn't work at age 2? 

If a button pops off someone may die.

This isn't a dig against people who fall in the “Before” category of the weight loss pictures as I have lived in that category for a number of years now.  I am merely trying to get people to take an honest look at their bodies and then take an honest look at their clothes.  Honestly… do they go together?  If your midsection is desperately trying to escape over your low-rise jeans like prisoners over the walls of Sing Sing, the answer is a resounding NO. For the love of God… NO.

The Good Samaritan

I wouldn’t say that I hate mornings but mornings and I just do not get along very well. Mornings to me are like that one guy at work that has an office down the hall and every time he sees you he spends 30 minutes telling you about how the podiatrist removed his bunion. You don’t hate the guy but if you ever saw him again it would be too soon. In my humble opinion God should have made the sunrise around 10 am and anything earlier is just unpleasant. This becomes a problem every Sunday morning when, after going to sleep around 2 am, I must wake up at the crack of dawn and drag my self out of bed and make it to church by 8:30 am. This particular Sunday morning was especially delightful.

I have a "good morning" waiting for you in my diaper.

My wife leaves early for practice as she sings in the church praise team so it is up to me to get the kids fed, make sure they have clean underwear on and looking halfway presentable in the morning as to not embarrass my wife. Everything ran rather smoothly for a Sunday morning which should have been my first clue that trouble was about to rear its ugly head and bite my face off.

The greatest fear of every mother.

About a half a mile from the church the car engine died suddenly. I managed to steer the car into the median of street as there was no shoulder on the road. Since I know absolutely nothing about cars I didn’t bother lifting the hood and taking a look at the engine. What’s the point? I may as well have been looking at the wreckage of a Boeing 747 and trying to determine what part was defective. It isn’t like I would know what I was looking for anyway. I have noticed most men do the “Lift the hood and stare at the engine so people think I know what I’m doing” routine but I decided to just skip that step and move straight to the “start walking” step.

"I fail to see how 150 of us can fit in here."

I gathered up my two boys, who are 5 and 7 years of age, and started walking down the side of the road. It was a busy morning on this road as so many people are on their way to church. There must have been at least 50 cars pass us by before finally, as we were about a block away from church, a mother of one of my Sunday school students stopped to give us a ride the rest of the way. It was only a block but it was a wonderful gesture.

I believe this may be more reliable.

After Sunday school I had at least ten people come up to me and mention that they saw my car broken down in the street and they saw me walking with my boys along the side of the road. The comments ranged from, “What happened to your car?" to my favorite, "Hey, I saw you walking down the road!"  A few guys even tried to diagnose the problem with my car by asking me what had occurred before the engine quit.

"Well.. uh..I tell you what you got there... You have an issue with your...
uh... car's dumaflache.  I had that issue one time back in '83..."

Of course the only question I wanted to ask them was, “So you saw my broken down car and you saw me walking along the side of the road with a 5 and a 7 year old but you didn’t bother to stop and give us a ride on your way to church?” Let me repeat that last part, “on your way to church?” I decided to be friendly and just smile and nod.

This makes me think of the story of the Good Samaritan in the Bible. You all know the story of how a man was beat up and robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. Person after person, including a priest, passed by and no one helped him but finally one man, a lowly Samaritan, stopped and rendered aid to the injured man. What an amazing story of mercy and how we are to look out for each other in times of need.

All this has made me think of all the opportunities I have missed on the side of the road of life because I didn’t stop and assist someone. How many times have I been too busy to make time for someone else who may need my help? We all have to remember that we need to take time out of our busy days to stop and help those who are in need, even if that means sacrificing time and money. That is what a good neighbor would do and that is what Jesus would do.

Of course, then there are bad neighbors...

By the way my timing belt broke while I was driving and cause everything in my car’s engine to move at the wrong times and totally destroyed the valves in my engine.  It was like taking the teleprompter away from the news anchors... No one knew what do to next so ensued. On a side note if anyone wants to send me $1300 for car repairs let me know. After retelling this story I take it back… I hate mornings.

This guy seems legit.  I trust him.

The Great Cheeseburger Incident of 2010

Over the past few months I have noticed a very subtle change in my lunches that my lovely wife packs for me to take to work. At first it was just adding a nonfat yogurt but then, later, my chips were replaced by an apple and later, after a month or so, my cookies were replaced by a nonfat pudding cup. Finally my white sandwich bread was switched with some kind of conglomerate of nuts and twigs mixed into what appeared to be bread dough. I think my wife is trying to relay a message to me but I’m not sure what it is.

Slather some peanut-butter and jelly on this bread and we're in business!

Shortly after my delicious lunch was replaced with a less than tasty substitute my darling wife tried to sneak “healthy alternatives” into my meals. Instead of bacon or sausage, a tasteless patty made of an unknown substance showed up on my plate. It was greasy like a sausage but had no flavor and was spongy like I had taken a bite out of a Nerf football. I cannot believe this sort of thing was approved by the FDA.

Did someone drop this on the ground and forget to wash it off?

One fine evening I sat down to dinner and found that the butter for my rolls had been replaced with butter flavored spray. What is the point of this? I had to spray my roll 37 times and it still did not resemble anything like butter. Finally I resorted to taking the cap off and pouring the yellow substance on my roll but this only resulted in a soggy mash of dough.

I can believe it isn't butter.  What I can't believe is why anyone would buy this.

The straw the broke the camel's back was the Great Cheeseburger Incident of 2010. As my family settled down for the evening I fired up the grill and prepared to grill up some burgers. My sweet wife handed me the meat that she had already formed into delicious over sized patties. This was very nice of her as she is afraid to handle raw meat apparently believing that salmonella will kill you instantly upon contact. This should have been my first clue that something was a rye.

I'll take mine with small fries.  Don't want to get fat.

As I prepared my cheeseburger with all the fixings and condiments a little drool was forming on the corner of my mouth. I picked up what was easily a half-pound of cheeseburger I took a huge bite and… now let me pause here for a moment and remind my audience that cheeseburgers are the greatest food ever made, as I have talked about before. I believe that God had the Israelites in the Old Testament sacrifice bulls so that the priests would have the meat to make cheeseburgers.

"Who wants cheese on their burger?"

Anyway, back to the story. As I bit into my cheeseburger I immediately noticed that either my taste buds had died or there was something horribly wrong with my burger. It tasted like someone had replaced my beef with feet. I quickly opened my mouth, allowed the atrocity to plop onto the plate in front of me and then turned my gaze upon my wife. “It’s extra lean buffalo meat!” she tried to explain.

Excuse me, what's inside that burger sir?

I stood up, extended my index finger towards my wife, looked up towards the heavens and exclaimed, “Blasphemer!” half expecting the woman on the opposite side of the table to be turned into a pillar of salt. In unison both my boys emptied the contents of their mouths onto the table.

"Blasphemer!"

After I instructed the mother of my children on the essential components of a perfect cheeseburger, none of which includes extra lean anything let along buffalo, I tried to dispose of the left over "burger" by putting it in my dog's bowl.  He sniffed it, whimpered and walked away.  I love that dog.  I am quite certain that the woman that lives under my roof now understands that there are many things that I can let slide... tampering with my cheeseburger is not one of them.

By the way... I'm still not sure what she was trying to tell me.  I'm sure it will come to me soon.

That Stinks

As I walked into the men’s restroom at work I was greeted by one of the most fowl smells that has ever taken the journey up into my nasal cavity. It was as if an evil mad scientist birthed a retched stench in a test tube, put it in a box and poked it with a stick for many years to get it nice and angry only to let it loose in our men’s room. I actually heard hundreds of my nose hairs suddenly cry out in terror and were silenced before they fell like rain onto the sticky bathroom tile. Who would leave such a trap?

Spock... use... Lysol!

This, of course, got me thinking about how smell works. Vaporized odor molecules float from the object giving off the smell, travel up your nose and dissolve into the mucus, or as they call it in the ear, nose and throat business… snot. Under all that snot mucus is receptor cells that detect the odor molecules and then send the information off to the brain.

Or as I like to call it... the nose.

Pause for a moment and take a deep breath. Feel the cool air travel through your noise, down the back of your throat and even into your mouth. The air fills the whole nasal and parts of your oral cavity. I love fresh air.

Here is how my parents let me get some fresh air when I was young.

Now let’s think about this more carefully. If you can feel the fresh air filling your nasal cavity and traveling down your throat and even into parts of your mouth and when you smell something you are actually detecting tiny molecules from that object then whatever you smell is actually going up your nose, into your mouth and into your lungs.



Go head, Chief... Pull my finger.

So basically when you walk into a stinky bathroom vaporized parts of the fecal matter and urine that are floating in the air are being sucked into your nose and are being deposited into your nose, lungs and even your mouth. Speaking of mouths, I think I just threw up a little in mine.

 

This is an actual lung of a bathroom attendant after just one year of employment.

So next time you are sitting next to that smelly guy on the plane remember that his body sweat has just sucked up your nose and has made a home in your mouth. Or that elderly woman who sits in the pew in front of you can’t hold in that gas (they don’t call it a pew for nothing) just remember that you are inhaling what actual particles that, just moments ago, exited her backside.

God bless the malodorously challenged.

I hope I have educated all those out there on what really occurs when you smell a distasteful odor. As for myself I knew instantly as I exited the bathroom and saw a workmate with a huge grin on his face that had soiled the men’s room. I shook my fist in his direction, “Curse you and your broken digestive system!”

The Worst Generation

They lived through the worst depression this country has ever known and still managed to survive. When the world called upon them to defend freedom they gladly volunteered themselves and took up arms. The men lined up around the corner at places to get a chance to serve their country as soon as they heard they were needed. The women went to work, many for the first time ever, and made the millions of tanks, planes, and bombs that would be needed to bring peace to the world. They those men returned home they were greeted with parades and treated like heroes. They truly were the Greatest Generation. Then they had kids. Dear God… What happened?

You have to love Rosie!

The Baby Boomers were born into a country of prosperity and peace. Television consisted of Leave it to Beaver and I Love Lucy. They grew up going to sock hops, drag raced their cars and drank chocolate malts with two straws as they starred dreamily into their best girl’s eyes. Then they became adults and all hell broke loose.

"Ward, don't you think you were a little hard on the Beav?"

Their country called for their assistance to fight for freedom and democracy so in response they protested, burned their draft cards and flocked to Canada like Canadian Geese flying north for the winter. Women burned their bras and stopped shaving because apparently being saggy and hairy made people take you more seriously. Huge groups gathered to get high and protest that their country went to “kill babies and burn down huts” in a jungle as their own soldiers were dying trying to defend freedom in a far off land. When these soldiers came home were greeted with a lonely airport terminal and the yells of, “Baby killer!”

Here is the Baby Boomer's version of Rosie the Riveter.

The Greatest Generation had a strong sense of right and wrong. They knew that Germany, Japan and Italy were wrong when they waged war on other nations in their desire to build their empires. Their morals led them to take up arms and defend those who could not defend themselves.

Remember when we believed in something so much we would die for it?

As the Baby Boomers gradually took charge of our nation they would preach that anything goes and that everything is acceptable. There is no right and wrong. There are no absolute morals. If you believe that it is your right to invade a country who are we to say that you are wrong. How can a government ask someone who has no absolute morals and despises their government to go off and defend freedom? It isn’t going to happen.

It's depressing that this is the only absolute that people accept today.

The Boomers remind me of a group of teenagers. As we all know teens want nothing more than to do and say the exact opposite of their parents. If their parents have morals the teen doesn’t like them. If the parents think it is important go off and defend freedom the teen will protest such an idea. The biggest problem here is that teens eventually grow up… what happened to the Boomers?

Now we all know you cannot group an entire generation into one group and not everyone born during these years did and believed these things, but unfortunately for those who did not follow the rest of the lemmings off the cliff they often get lumped in with the rest and lost in history. Many of the wisest and most patriotic people I know are from this generation and they are not happy with what the most vocal of their cohort did. It must be depressing for them to be lumped into this crowd.

It would be funnier if it wasn't so true.

What I find particularly saddening is that in one generation we went from the United States “Saviors of the World” to the United States “Land of Mediocrity.” How many generations will it take to fix what just one generation broke?

What If We Have It All Wrong

As I was sitting on the toilet this morning contemplating the ways of the universe, as I do most mornings, I wondered if north was really north and south was really south. What if God was looking down upon us yelling, “No! No! You have it all wrong! That pole is north and that pole is south! You’re upside down!” This got me thinking on what else we might have wrong.

Speaking of having it wrong: This is not how you Facebook buddy.

Lets take a look at some of the multitude of things scientists have told us to be fact and then later we find out to be completely untrue. I will skip the first few thousand years of science, you know the earth is flat and the Earth is the center of the universe stuff, and move straight to the past hundred years.

DNA was discovered in 1869 but it wasn’t until 1952 that scientists finally discovered that it held the blueprints of life. What did science teach about DNA for the first 83 years? DNA was just another of the many molecules found in the nucleus of a cell that may or may not have something to do with heredity. You see back in the old days they believed that the cell was just a big blob of protoplasmic goo with a nucleus filled with different goo. Go science!

Basically a cell full of green snot.  Someone pass me my spoon.

For all intense and purposes John Dalton discovered what we know today as the atom around 1803 and science taught that it was the smallest particle there was and nothing was smaller (hence the term atom means the smallest particle of matter that cannot be broken down any more). Of course about a hundred years later they found out that the atom was made up of the electron, proton and neutron and just like that we have a new winner in the “I’m the smallest in the universe” contest and a new scientific fact was put into the high school science school books. To everyone's surprise someone found that there are even smaller particles called quarks.  Now science has promised that the quarks are the smallest particle in the universe so we need to trust them. They promise. Really.  At this point I would trust the boy who cried wolf over these clowns.

I would trust this guy over many scientists.

The Brontosaurus was discovered in 1874 and has been one of the most beloved dinosaurs ever since. Well, until they determined that the scientist who dug it up couldn't find the head so he just put another head he found a few hundred yards away in its place and poof... brontosaurus. Oops! Recently, in the news, we learned that the Triceratops never actually existed either. What they thought to be a Triceratops was actually just a younger version of the Torosaurus who, apparently, looks just like a Triceratops but bigger. You mean to tell me that in the over 120 years since the discovery of the two not one paleontologist could figure out that the smaller one might be the baby of the big one?  The five year old neighbor boy could have saw that one and he has glasses the size of coke bottles. So if we put a puppy and an adult dog together are they going to tell us that these are two different species? Apparently in paleontology they do.

Speaking of dinosaurs...

When I was a youngster learning how to multiply and divide the most important rule was that you could not divide by zero. If you did apparently the whole universe would collapse around your pencil and your mother would cry as you were sucked into the very black hole you created. I half expect them to tell me, any day now, that this is now possible and that they were wrong all along.  They will probably tell is that the Tyrannosaurus was dividing by zero and that's what wiped out the dinosaurs.

This guy divided by zero and look what happened to him.
His mother is now in a nursing home crying her little eyes out.

I have noticed that the longer I live the more I see how science is not the huge rock of facts that we are all taught it is. Science, as it stands today, is just a group of people in white coats that like a particular theory and then teach the rest of the population that that theory is fact. If you mention that said fact is just a theory and should not be taught as fact you are obviously not as intelligent as they are and should be publicly flogged in the town square with an organic carrot.

I ordered a few science books and this is what arrived.

All of this makes me wonder about what else in this universe we “know” today as fact and a few years down the road we will just be told it wasn’t true… like cheeseburgers being bad for you. I’m still waiting on that one to be changed.  Someone needs to get on that one.

Zero to Hero and Back Again

I have experienced many humiliating moments in my lifetime. So much so that not much embarrassment can penetrate the thick, leathery wall that hides what is left of my soul. One especially mortifying experience is feeling the exuberance of being a hero and to have the moment stripped away leaving only the sting of humiliation as you stand in front of the crowd. I liken it to Superman flying through a window of a burning skyscraper to save a baby that a mother on that street has been screaming is left inside. Moments later he reappears smiling and waving at the crowd until everyone realized that the only thing he rescued was a Baby Wets-a-lot doll. Poor Superman.

Speaking of embarrassment.  Poor high school drop outs.

This is the very ordeal that I endured one day when I was working at Disneyland. As many of you know I worked my way through college by working at “The Happiest Place on Earth” and spend many a day walking around the Park making sure everything was going smoothly. If you have ever visited the Park you know that there are parades that run through the center of it at various times during the day in which thousands of excited people line up with their kids to get a good look. It was during this time, as the masses gathered to watch the Hercules parade, which my rise from zero to hero occurred.

It's the Happiest Place on Earth!

I received a call on my radio that there was a fire in a trashcan. This was a common occurrence because smokers often times forget that a cigarette burns and when you place a burning object into a container full of paper it will start on fire. Difficult concept, I know. By the time I arrived at the trashcan smoke was billowing out of it. I quickly opened the side of the trashcan, pulled out the plastic receptacle and through the smoke I put my leg inside and started stomping. After a few moments the smoke stopped and thunderous applause started. Everyone around praised my quick reaction and I heard, “Nice job!” and “My hero!” all around me. I smiled and nodded as if to say, “All in a day’s work.”

And for the sake of my newly polished shoes don't throw them in poopie diapers.

On a side note I learned to not use a fire extinguisher on trashcan fires a few months before. In that case I pulled out the trash receptacle and blasted the smoke with a full tank of fire retardant only to turn around to a fire fighter holding a Dixie cup of water. He shook his head and walked off muttering something about having to refill the extinguisher.

In case of fire hide in this corner.

Anyway, back to the story. As I was nodding and waving to the crowd I took my leg out of the smoldering bin. It was then I heard the cheers turn to laughter. I quickly looked down to see my finely polished shoe, and stuck to my finely shoe was a half burned poopie Snug-Fit Huggies diaper. Yes, when the cigarette fell into the trashcan it ignited a poopie diaper which I quickly stamped out. The crowd, who just moments ago where chanting my praise, was now pointing and laughing as I desperately tried to shake off the surprisingly sticky diaper.

I'm a hero!  Yes!  Wait... what?

It was then, walking back to the locker room with every other step making a squish sound, I realized that my hero status had disappeared quicker than a Krispy Kreme donut in my hand on Sunday morning. I now realize that short of wetting myself in front of hundreds of people there really isn’t much that will embarrass me. This will really come in handy when I drop my future teenagers off in front of their high school while blaring show tunes.