Close Encounters

Of the shake roof kind.

I Have Friends

My friend came to town and attended a trade show.   At the trade show, he laid hands on quite a few goodies - things those of us "in the know" refer to as shwag.

He decided to share this munificent bounty with me.   What did he give me, do you ask?   Well, three boxes of mints and a Choking Hazard.

We've been friends for a long time   You can tell.

Mannah From the Mailbox

Whew!   Just when the wolves were closing in.   You're a blogger and one of your three or four regular readers has called you out on your inability to post consistently for more than a week at a time - which is a fair accusation; consistency is the hallmark of blogging (as well as the hallmark of a good bowel movement, but I digest digress) - and then the Post Office rides to your rescue with an incredible gem of unfortunate front-page layout.   Ahh, public services.



I haven't even opened this rag.   I pulled it out of the box, saw the cover and knew I had to snap a shot.   If there's anything even remotely as ridiculous inside, you can bet your browser it's going to show up here in the next day or two.   Anything to save me from actually having to work for laughs.

Severe Weather Alert

Like our countrymen in the east and north, Las Vegans are reeling from the effects of global climate flip-flopping*.   Below is a picture of some of the disaster wreaked recently by Severe Weather™ in my usually happy, unsuspecting neighborhood.



That is ice on the sidewalk.   Ice!   Had I not been paying attention, I could have stepped in it and stumbled and perhaps fallen!

I shake my fist in futile rage at the serpent which has swallowed the sun.

All the while I pray fervently to enjoy the serpent's death once again this coming spring when the virgin hare splits the beast's belly and frees the light.

Assuming, of course, our sacrifices are acceptable and I don't fall and bust my noggin on some accursed ice, first.

*First Gore invents interporn, thus summoning Climate Change Succubi which he then taunts with his Incontinent Douche Movie.   Where will he stop???

It Was just a Matter of Time

The state of Arizona, my home before Nevada, is jonesing for cigarette tax money.

Goose? Egg? Gold?

And what are the poor Madd Mothers going to do once no one drinks any more?

Milli Hurry

Measurement of inductance used as a speed limit.   I wish I'd had time to stick around and see people attempt it.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

One Funny SOB

I am awestruck by this blog.

I only wish I could be as soul-crushingly funny. There is something life-affirming about truly misanthropic humor.


(Click on the above sleep-porn image for an hilarious review of parking-lot carnivals)

(Thanks to Scum for the term sleep-porn)

Update: I have been informed by the ever-helpful scum that there is a heapin' helpin' of pop-up ads and humping .GIFs on the above-linked site.   As I explained to him, I am using Firefox and have accumulated a long list of ad-blocked URLs.   Therefore, my view of a page may be quite a bit different than someone else's without the same mix of ad-blocks.   YMMV in other words, and sorry if the link is annoying - I didn't see any of that crap when I first visited it, or I would've warned you about it.

How the world has changed.   This is so not like if I were to call you and scream, "Turn on channel nine right now!"   In the past, you would most likely see the same thing I was hysterical about.   No more, mon frere.

Viva la Technolution

A little background.

I can't tell you how much I hate most big businesses.   Especially those with monopolies or near-monopolies.   Like Microsoft, Verizon, Universal Music, Cox cable.

These companies routinely ass-rape their customers, simply because they can.  If Verizon is the land-line telephone provider in your area, where you gonna go?   Oh, sure, you can get a wireless phone or an internet phone (you might be forced to get Verizon high-speed access in order to get an internet phone), but you can't get another land-line phone.

Many of these companies have become so used to people being forced to give them money, that they have completely lost the ability to compete.   As in, provide better service or innovation.   It is completely beyond them.   Their response to customer dissatisfaction is advertising and lobbying.   If they can't get paid the way they used to, they go on TV and relentlessly lie about how wonderful they are.   If that doesn't work, and they see customers using technology to avoid them, they go to congress and try to get laws passed to restrict competition.

So, I got delicious enjoyment watching home-made video of the Malibu fires.   Not from the fires, but from this:   I pay $50/mo to Cox for high-speed access.   They want another $40/mo for 70 channels of cable.   Teh Internets are far more important to me than the local Fox affiliate.   However, I decided to click on Fox news to get some information on the fire.   There were two video links off to the left.   I clicked on both.   Both started with commercials.   I stopped both before the commercials ended.   And then I went to youtube.   There must be a dozen home-made videos from people on site in Malibu.

Why in god's name would I pay $50/mo in order to watch fucking commercials from Fox on the internet?   This is the beauty, I don't have to depend on Fox and Fox's insane need to get compensated for every goddamned pixel that comes out of their ass.

Jesus!



Of course, youtube is fooling around with advertising, but, you know what?   If that advertising gets annoying enough, people will be gone off to some other choice.

(oops. Most of the links are for last year's fire.   Silly me)

Landscape Rock

If you've never driven the 215 loop around Vegas, especially to the west and north, you should do yourself the favor.   In direct contrast to just about every inch of highway in the rest of the country, Clark County, in the case of the "Bruce Woodsbury Memorial Parkway" has chosen, in place of boring old vegetation, to use ornamental rock to adorn medians and shoulders.

Specifically, white rock.   And lots of it.

In addition to its shocking visual uniformity, this white rock has the added feature of pretty much shutting down anyone who somehow manages - no matter how innocently - to wander off the pavement - immediately.   You don't get much of a chance to pull back out of disaster if you happen to drift out into la terra riscoso blanco.

(Think "Heat" tire-spikes, only without all the gunfire and malice.)

The very first thing you would notice would be the large black scraps of rubber, which used to be your tires, flying past your window as you cartwheel across the mock-moonscape.   Yay, fun.

Keep your insurance company on speed-dial and God be with you.

Peeve

You know what annoys the shit out of me?

Service-industry types with attitudes.

Like the kid picking up carts today at the Von's when I asked if they had the dry-cleaning service.   "Dry cleaning, well yeah, of course", like it was something that any dolt should have known ahead of time.

Or the "Greeter" at the Verizon shop yesterday, acting like she's patrolling the line outside Pure at midnight.   "I'll see if I can fit you in".

What these punks don't understand - and I don't quite know how a business can communicate it to them is - I am the customer.   I don't have to shop at Von's.   I don't have to use this particular Verizon store.   And, you are the customer-service person.   When I ask you a question, you are not supposed to act like you're doing me a favor by answering it.   If you want to be a prima-donna, then take acting/music/dancing lessons, get really fucking good and then spit on anyone that comes near.   But when you work at Von's for chrissakes, raking in shopping carts, you don't get to be all that with me.   I (and a lot of others) won't return to your punk-ass store, revenues will drop, the manager will have to make cuts, and, guess who gets let go?   You, or the cart-raker who's actually had customers come into the store and tell the manager what a great job he's doing?

And yes, you are too cool to be working for minimum wage, we can all see that it is beneath you - BUT YOU ARE DOING IT - for whatever reason, and no matter how much it brutalizes the celebrity, bling-bling image you have of yourself, you need to get with the service part of the program and stop treating people like morons because they don't have your extensive knowledge of the myriad of services provided by the Von's Customer Service Desk.   Don't condescend to me because my pitiful addiction to cellular communication caused me to have to stand in your line.  

If you're Microsoft, and your customers really can't go anywhere else, then you can be a dick.   But you're not.   And I can go to a dozen other Verizon shops within a six-mile radius and I can grocery shop at Albertson's (2), Smiths (3), or Whole Foods (1) (where, actually, the staff is nice)

Titillation

Tits.   Cans, cantaloupes, headlights, knockers, coconuts, tweeters, boulders, berthas, muffins, puppies, hooters, melons, tatas, boobs, jugs, tits.

Guys - if I may speak here - Tits, we love 'em.   We get inspired by the sight of them.   We check 'em out, we sometimes follow them around, we point them out, we describe them to each other.   It is every heterosexual, non-right-wing-Christian male's pure desire to fondle them (attached to an accomodating female) as often as possible.   They are the adult equivalent of childhood's toys for boys.

But did you ever stop to wonder, why the attraction?   After all, we are talking about bags of mostly fat, hanging off a human body.  Think about that a moment.   Tick...   Tick...   Tick...   Bags of fat, hanging off the human body.   What other places on the human body would suspended bags of fat be considered attractive?   Not many.   Imagine, if you will, a couple of 2lb lumps of flesh hanging off Natalie Portman's elbows...  

Yeah, I know, now you have to go wash your brain.   Sorry about that.

Back?   Okay, to continue, plenty of guys have tits as well, and there are some seriously over-large women with stupendous tits, mammoth tits.   I don't see dudes hanging out of car windows getting a second look at either of those.

And really, in the grand scheme of things, what are tits good for?   Oh yeah, you can play humps and ladder with them for a while, but that's not really where any of us want to finish, right?   Right?   And yeah, they make clothes look good, but their real and only function in life is to suckle infants.   That's it.   They are utility organs, and, wait for it... not really necessary for sex!   (Just in case you didn't know)

So here it is.   This is my theory.   Tits are teasers for sex.   You know when you smell bread being baked or meat being grilled, and your sub-brain kicks in and tells you, "Hey, we might get to eat!", and you immediately get hungry?

Well, when we see miracle-bra'd fleshbags, full of fat, in the right places and the preferred proportions, that very same sub-brain starts screaming, "HEY, WE MIGHT GET LAID!!!"

And we immediately get, uh, hungry.

...heaven forbid we see nipple, or cleavage even.   Sigh.   We are so owned.

Good Eggs

Unfortunately, the children were born with brain damage

Help With the Math

Just stupid today, I guess. Does this mean that nationwide, there are approximately 9.6 men for every 10 women?

"According to Census 2000, 281.4 million people were counted in the United States — 143.4 million of whom were female and 138.1 million male.   The former made up 50.9 percent of the population, compared with 51.3 percent in 1990."

"The excess of the female to male population dropped to 5.3 million in 2000, compared with 6.2 million in 1990.   This resulted in the male-female ratio (the number who were male times 100 divided by the number who were female) increasing from 95.1 in 1990 to 96.3 in 2000."

Because, if that's the case, I'm moving to DC.

It's 8.9 men for each 10 women in the nation's capitol.   I could get 1.11 women there as opposed to just .77 of a woman here in Vegas.  

And, with just another .89 of a woman, I would have a threesome.



But wait!   I just realized, Vegas is a resort town - so the population at any given time isn't accurately reflected in nationwide census stats.  

I wish the Census Bureau would whip up a "Most Likely to get Lucky (male) Map".   Now, that would be a good use of tax money.

What if We All Became Niggers?

What if everyone were to call everyone else, "nigger"?

Would that fix it? [Flash]   Would that make it alright?

Could we somehow pile enough usage onto history to raise us up beyond this point?

What if we could put all the colors into the word?

Or, what if we could take all the color out of the word?

Rather than avoiding the word, referring to it by its first character, what if we were to beat the shit out of it and put it to rest?

You know how when you repeat a word over and over and over and over it loses meaning?   Could we do that as a society?   Or should we just bury [mp3] it?

Just so there's no doubt here, La Vida Vegas believes, racism is stupid!

Five Dollars

I believe in God.

That's fine. You can believe in as many mythical beings as you like.

No. God is real.

Prove it. I have a five-dollar bill in my pocket. I can prove it, by pulling it out and showing it to you, see?

God is real, just read your bible.

I can write a book that says I have a five-dollar bill in my pocket - that proves nothing unless I can produce the bill.

Millions of people believe in God.

Some people may believe I have a five-dollar bill in my pocket. Unless I can whip it out, they're all chumps.

God changes people's lives every day.

My five-dollar bill changes people's lives every day. Prove me wrong.