Third World Prosperity… …Or So
Thought up: 11.8.03 – 10:04pm
Written: 11.11.03 - 5:47 pm
#24
This weekend I sat out on my front porch talking to one of my good friends about how we have it so good in this life. We’ve always got food on our tables, shelter from the elements, and taxes that are so fun to pay. There are a lot of people in this world that don’t have these amazing luxuries. There are people that can’t get a decent meal, and can’t have a roof overhead made from anything more than some bushes and leaves, and that’s not fair. I guess that’s why they have so many agencies that feed the hungry and the week in different areas of the world. I think these agencies are doing a very nice thing for people. It would be nice to see some of it actually pay off though.

I always see the downside to what has happened by nobody donating money, but clearly SOMEONE has to be giving money to these organizations, or else they’re not doing the job that they’re advertising! I don’t know how many years I’ve watched these ads on television, but NONE of them have ever shown me what happens when you DO actually donate to a kiddo. I mean, granted, you’re only giving up like $0.72 per day, but that will obviously help out the child to get nourishment. How about the celebrities of the world get together a group and hit the road collecting $ to save the children. I know there’re a lot of sick kids in the world, but there are also a lot of wealthy celebrities, and what better way to promote oneself than by helping children!

I’m gonna step out on my proverbial limb here and say that if everyone in the celebrity world, making a respectable amount of money ($100,000.00 or more) would give up 72 cents per day to help people around the world, we would all sleep a little better! They could even take it out per paycheck, much like the taxes and medical, and retirement and alimony, and student loans, and more taxes that come out of my check each month before I can even deposit the $24.63!

I know, I don’t make nearly the amount that some big name celebrities make, but I do alright I think. I’m pretty sure that with the $24.63 per month I could pay $21.60 ($0.72/day * 30 days in a month = $21.60) more to feed a lil’ guy that has nothing. I really enjoy top ramen, and I think I could live off it for a while. But this is where the downside comes in. If you START to donate to this because, you can’t quit. It’d be like just dumping a kid on the side of the road after a trip to the ice cream parlor and telling him to go find a new home. He’d have to go out on the market again searching for a new place to live. I can imagine my lil’ guy hanging out on some side street in a 3rd world country with a sandwich sign promoting that he’s back on the market for a donor. That’s just not very cool.

I’m fairly certain that it’d be better for both of us for me to find a better job. If I had a better job, I could help him out with that $21.60 without worries, and I could stop eating Top Ramen every day (Top Ramen in your body for 30 straight days has been proved to cause AIDS, so beware)! So, in all actuality, HE’D be the one helping ME out! So I think a BETTER way to attack this would be to to have a place in these 3rd world countries where kids could come to, (online, in books, whatever) where they could evaluate prospective sponsors. This would alleviate a lot of the hassle that goes into finding a child in an area that you want. The child would be the one selecting YOU! This way, I guarantee every child on earth would have a sponsor, and everyone would be $21.60 poorer, but it’s for a good because!

To make the process even more streamlined, the bill could come in the mail each month with the return address of the city sewage system or something. That way people would HAVE to pay it, because who wants their sewers backed up? Nope, not me! Kids would be happy, healthy, and warm all around the world, and sponsors would be glad to know that they’re really doing a worthwhile thing!

I’m sure, however, that there would be drawbacks. I would probably start to get really attached to my newly adopted child and want him to come to live with me in America once he was done sponsoring me, and forcing me into getting a better job, which would, in turn, get me a bigger house in which my buddy could come and live. Granted, once he came over to live with me, he’d have to get a job, but that’d be no problem since I had already paid for his schooling. But I assume this is the point where his family would get angry with me for taking their son away from them. They’d know that I was only trying to help, but would still want to be with their child. I’d receive several weeks, and possibly months of hate mail before they realized that it might be a fun adventure for the lil’ fella to come and live with me. He’d get a job at my firm, and we’d become successful business partners. I’d show him around the city, introduce him to all of my friends, and show him how to untwist Oreos.

Now, I’m not sure how long he’ll live with me. I imagine for the first few years he’s here, at least. Who knows, maybe I’d even get married and he’d still be hanging out at my house, but that’s no big deal. The Missus and I wouldn’t care, “he’s family.” I’d say, and that’d be that. Until I’m sure he’d want to bring his parents over to the house to live because they lived in a bad part of the world, and I’m not one to go against family, so I’d agree with him, and his entire family would come to live in the house.

I’m certain that I could have a really good time with them all. We have a lot of picnics and barbeques and whatnot. We’d play lawn darts, croquet, and Frisbee a lot. However, as wives often times are, she’d get fed up with my friends, and eventually give me the ultimatum: they go or I go! I assume I’d miss her a lot, but that’s the way it goes. I mean, it’s not like she’s blood or something like my son - and his mother and father and brothers and sisters from some far off foreign land!

I can’t say that I can find a downside to this except for the fact that I’ve got a fairly soft heart. I’d probably start whining a lot to my new family, and they’d eventually get sick of hearing me sob like a helpless boob. I’d likely call in sick to work one too many times and the boss man would tell me to take a hike. I’d be out of a job, a wife, and my new son would have to take care of me for a while, as I’d likely be on a drunken binge.

He’d send me to alcohol counseling, and I’d run off because I couldn’t cut it there, and I’d find myself running around the nation working odd jobs to pay for my drinking, writing back to my boy and his family in my house from time to time, and city to city until eventually I’d find myself in Central America broke as a joke. I’d wake up one day, and look at the beard on my face, the holes in my shoes, and the dirt on my clothes and think how I got where I was. It would all be that way because I was being nice to someone; someone in a third-world country that didn’t have anything to eat or anywhere to sleep, much like myself, who would, in turn, get on the same plan and find myself a sponsor.

Boy would that sponsor be surprised when he’d find out that I wasn’t really a starving 9 year old in Nicaragua! But I wouldn’t tell him until he bought me a plane ticket back to America (I know, it’d take a year or 2, but we’re fast-forwarding) and then when he’d come to pick me up from the airport, to avoid embarrassment, I’d dress up like a cow and leisurely walk out of the airport… “Moo,” I’d say a time or 2 to avoid uncloaking…

The Dilapidation Of Human Evolution
Thought up: 8.13.03 – 7:24pm
Written: 8.14.03 – 1:27pm
#16

Human evolution must have been filled with lots and lots of trial-by-error. Everything couldn’t have come so easy for everyone. We take the most common of things for granted, when, in actuality, it took someone like 3 years to learn how to pick their nose. Hell, I can bust out 15 or 20 pickings a day now! My grandfather told me back when I was young, that people didn’t even know how or where to pee for 3,000 years. They’d just “ride the yellow slip ‘n slide” down their legs for God’s sake. I couldn’t believe the man; I thought he must have gone mad!

Me: “What about toilets Grampa?”
Gramps: “Ah hell, they didn’t have toilets, they just went wherever they were, with no care for anyone around them! Dirty varmints!
Me: “What about the port-o-potties though? Didn’t anyone use those?
Gramps: “HELL NO BOY! Where’s your head! They didn’t even have clothes then! Let alone port-o-potties!

I concluded that I’d just leave it at that because obviously grampa had too much of the funny soda that night; for undoubtedly people got super embarrassed to be walking around naked; let alone pissing on themselves. But now that I’ve gotten a bit older, it makes a bit more sense, and that maybe Grampa WAS all there. We just take that stuff for granted, when in reality, it took a lot of people a ton of time to figure stuff out.
Nowadays, we look at something like a television and figure that someone whipped that baby right up in a factory using the latest high-tech computer driven machines and state-of-the-art software. We don’t even care to think about how long something like that took. Who the hell invented “factories” in the first place? Let alone televisions to be built in them. It’s funny to think that kids these days can’t ponder being without television. I’m really close to being in that generation, which is nice because I can’t imagine the fun they must have had in the Caveman Era…

Thorg: “Grog, what we do today for fun?”
Grog: “Unga bunga Thorg. Me think we play with rock again.”
Thorg: “We play with rock everyday Thorg, we should play with log instead.”
Grog: “SWEET! I forgot how fun log was!

Or even better yet when they’d be chasing women:

Grog: “Thorg, did you see the ass on that one!”
Thorg: “Oh yea Grog, it was super hot, so hairy and full of dirt, and since we haven’t invented toilet paper yet, a few other little treats!”
Grog: “I tell you what, if it wasn’t for the hair covering virtually every inch on her body, including her face, forehead, back and feet, I’d be all over that!”
Thorg: “Yea, me too! She for sure has the bushiest eyebrows of all the girls we know! You could damn-near twist that s*** up with some shoe polish and she could rock those suckers like Rollie Fingers’ mustache!”
Grog: “Rollie who?”
Thorg: “Nevermind, you’re too young to know him.”

Clearly the world was a different place. No cars, no cell phones, no computers… Hell, when I watch OLD movies like “Gladiator” they wore white cloth and just draped it around each other. I can picture some big tough gladiator walking in to the fabric store…

“Gee, that dress would look really nice on me! Do you have in it white?”
“Actually sir, that’s ALL we have it in. Haven’t you noticed? We all wear stupid dresses just swathed upon us. That’s because we live in the Bronze Age! What for another several centuries when we get to wear BIGGER dresses with Frou-frou bushy collars, knickerbockers, and white wigs! You think we look like idiots now! Just wait!
“Hmm, good point Julius, I think I’ll just take the stupid leaf head-band today is all, thanks.”

The aspect of “eating” still boggles my mind more than any other human learned skill. I mean, who in the hell came up with the idea to actually “eat” something? Whoever this fella was needs to be given more adulation and praise than Mickey Mantle or Bob Hope. Because now, it’s one of everyone’s favorite hobbies (some more so than others). He started something that would bring worlds together! I guess what puzzles me the most is how one day he noticed that his stomach hurt, and needed to eat something. I guess this is the same for all animals, but especially for humans.

Other animals eat a lot of crap like trees, bushes, vegetables and whatnot, which is clearly not good - however, that’s probably what he first munched on. It must have happened something like this… [Scoobey Doo music intro] …The entire planet gets toasted when the meteor shower hit, and the dinosaurs croaked but one guy got trapped in the ice and thawed out after 37 years in the ice. He rolls out after a looooooooooong sleep, and took a whiz, like men do after a good night of zzz’s, and starts walking around randomly. He has ABSOLUTELY no clue what he’s doing. But decides that his stomach hurts, what does he do? Obviously he decides to climb a tree and pick some bugs out of his hair! He has no good place to put these bugs except in his mouth.

I’ve seen caveman bugs before and most of them are roughly the size of a Cocoa Puff. They grew them big back then. And after a while, he got to realizing that by eating bugs out of his hair, he bacame less hungry. Until one day he ran out of bugs, and decided to try eating some shrubs and trees, and those lasted for a while until he noticed that he wanted a hamburger or at least some SPAM (because guys dig that stuff). Upon realizing that he has neither, he started trying things that might taste good. He must have gone through anything he could find like dirt, cheetos, and rocks and found nothing.

o people stayed on a diet of bugs and shrubs until probably around like 1955 when Ray Kroc opened the first McDonalds in Des Plaines, Illinois. It was all downhill from there. I won’t get into it, but do want to make it a point to ponder as to how people first started eating animals though. I assume is has something to do with the video games kids are playing these days. According to recent statistics I just made up, 98% of kids that play video games eat. And of that 98%, 13% of the kids will eat a hamburger and not even care that the first hamburger was eaten by a simple man – a man with a fetish for knives, cattle, barbeque sauce and grills.

I guess what it all boils down to is that we all look at eras in a different way. People learn things at different speeds, but for the most part look back and tease the last generation or two. I do it to my folks, they did it to their folks. I think it’s a general consensus that everyone before say, 2 or 3 generations ago are just completely clueless, and deserve to be teased. In actuality, if they weren’t such ninnies, then WE would be the ones making all the stupid mistakes. We’d be wearing hideous clothes, and trying to eat random stuff like Tupperware containers, air-fresheners, and bowling balls…

Willing to Pay the Price of Stupidity
Thought up:  8.27.03 - 6:13pm
Written: 8.28.03 - 4:02 pm
#18

For whatever reasons, these past 2 days I’ve been thinking of buying myself some life insurance.  Why?  I have no real logical reasoning behind it; except for the fact that in college, I had a friend that gave a speech in class about how easy it was to get a policy for super cheap at our age.  I remember him saying something about how we could get something astronomical at the time, like $100,000 policy for the “low-low price of just $1.00 a day.”  At the time, even a dollar was a lot!  I barely had enough to buy a case of beer 6 out of 7 days, let alone a life insurance policy!

I was in college, I was dirt poor, I had bloodshot eyes, hoping to someday be a big-name Science Rocketist.  Believe it or not, I didn’t follow through with those dreams.  All that talk in class about molecules, astrology, birth control pills, and the adverse effects of alcohol in the school place really confused me in my drunken state.  I mean, most of the time I had a hard time waking up for the class, let alone actually LEARNING something.  But four years later, degree in-hand, I was ready to face the world.  Little did I know that 3 years after that I’d be thinking about life insurance one fine day…
So I hop online to check out the best places to search for this “Goldmine of Life.”  A couple different sites pop up.  One of the first ones being “Chinese life insurance companies aim for listing overseas.”  I have no need for that I figure, but it’s a gold mine somewhere, whether it be in China or not, it’s LIFE insurance.  I’ve played the game of Life I tell you.  If you’ve never actually “played” the board game “Life,”  don’t read the next couple sentences, they’ll mean nothing to you…

START NOT READING HERE IF YOU’VE NEVER PLAYED ————– You can really start needing that life insurance when you’re playing that game.  I remember spinning that wheel and having it pop off and run into my car, as well as my opponent’s car, and knock all the kids out of the car.  Sure enough you’re gonna get sued and you’ll need that money to pay for your opponents when their kid goes to college…  Or the square “lose your job, lose a turn.”  That one was always a doozey.  My brother and I modified the game after 17 or 18 games in a row.  The new squares that we colored in with such winners as “have hammer smash your car,” “flush driver down toilet” and my personal favorite, “melt one of your passengers with lighter.”  Oh, the younger years…

RESUME READING HERE IF YOU’VE NEVER PLAYED OR IF YOU’VE PLAYED AND JUST FINISHED READING WHAT YOU JUST READ THAT I TOLD THE PEOPLE THAT HAVEN’T PLAYED TO NOT READ——————— So the Chinese life insurance place is a really poorly laid out site that takes like 15 minutes to load in the first place and I figure if it takes this long to load their page, there is no REAL reason to buy from them, because by the time I’m dead, all of my kids and their kids’ kids will have already died.  Not worth it, I’ll look elsewhere.

So I find this other site that has everything to do with life insurance, and each line reads about how you have to be a non-smoker to even apply for the insurance.  So I get on and start typing in my info, and they ask me whether I’m a smoker or not; naturally I think to myself, well, I have had a smoke before, and I suppose I have one here and there when I’m having a drink with friends, but I wouldn’t consider myself a “smoker” per se.  But then I second guess myself and I get to thinking, “what if my house burned down, but I was in the bathtub soaking myself with tree sap, as I so often do, having a smoke and didn’t hear or see the fire burning, got solidified in the sap with the cigarette in my mouth and the insurance didn’t pay out?”

Would it all really be worth it then?  Because you know the insurance company is gonna try to pin about anything they can on you to not pay your beneficiaries.  That’s just what they do.  So if I click “non-smoker” I can never ever have a smoke again in my life.  I don’t think it’s worth it, so I click “Yes, I am a smoker.”
The next question asks what kind of coverage do I want?  I have no idea!  I’ve only been researching for a day, how about we just stick with the status quo, $15,000,000.  Check and click, and it’s on the way to processing.  Well, as it turns out they bust out a table that tells me I’m gonna need to pay almost $6,000.00 a MONTH to cover that kind of policy.  No thanks; it must be the smoking bit.  So I go back and change the checkbox where I claim to be a smoker and it shoots the premium down to something THEY must think is more manageable, $1,293.39.  Now how in the hell do they expect me to come up with that kind of money in the first place?  Yea, hello, I’m well worth $15,000,000.00, but not for the price of $1,293.39.  No way!

Upon further review, I didn’t know whom I would give the $15,000,000.00 to if I won in the first place, so I decided to get a little more logical and drop the price down to a $1,000,000.00 policy.  First as a smoker, $335.38.  No.  And then as a non-smoker, $67.19.  Now we’re getting in to the realm at which I’m willing to deal.  So I check the non-smoking box vowing to never pick up a cancer-stick ever again after signing up for this, and I click the “Next” button.  Well, the “Next” button sends me to this page of questions about my personal life.  Now I’d say that, for the most part, I’m a daring guy.  I like to do things a little bit “by the seat of my pants.”  And that’s why this page is freaking me out.  This page has a bunch of questions you’re supposed to check the box in if you’ve ever done or plan on doing ANY of the following:

1.    Are you into skydiving?
2.    Do you like parasailing?
3.    Speedboats?
4.    Drag race?
5.    Scuba dive?
6.    Hang glide?
7.    Ride in an airplane in any other capacity other than a passenger?  (What the hell does this mean?)

Me:  “Hello, I’m here to apply for some life insurance.”
Insurance buddy:  “Alright Sir, before we get started, let’s see…  …What do you do for a living?”
Me:  “I’m a pilot!”
Insurance buddy:  “Beat it!  We don’t allow your kind around here…”

8.    Work in a mine?
9.    Engage in high-risk activity?

Now what the hell are these all about?   These are just a couple of the asinine choices that I remember out there on the list.  I’m sure that they could add:

1.    Do you like to play with guns?
2.    Do you like to eat poison?
3.    Have you ever wanted or currently enjoy swimming while really really drunk?
4.    Have you ever tried to see how far you could stick a nail in your nose?
5.    Do you think your car can fly off cliffs?
6.    Do you have a fetish for women/men with STD’s?
7.    Do you believe in witchcraft?
8.    Do you take stupid bets that involve life-threatening circumstances?
9.    Flame-throwers in your ass?
10.    Have you ever, or will you ever want to strap bombs to yourself and blow up?
11.    Do you starve and beat your dog and pass out near him ever?
12.    Would you ever think about fighting a real-life ninja that has throwing stars, and all you have is a limp soggy noodle, 4 corndogs, 2 napkins, no clothes, blind-folded in a labyrinth?

I mean, who, HONESTLY is going to check ANY of those?  I SAW what happened when I checked that I smoke!  You bet your sweet ass I’m not gonna check any of those!  Yea, I’ve done most of them, but I don’t want to pay $10,000.00 a month to insure myself.  I finally decided after 10 minutes of HARD searching that I had no real reason to insure myself.  I don’t have any beneficiaries yet anyway.  It was a valiant effort, but what it boils down to is that if your life sucks, get life insurance…

Sometimes Dreams Need to be Smashed
Thought up: 3.31.04 – 8:51am
Written: 3.31.04 - 8:52 am
#29

So in my never-ending search for humor, I was browsing the internet trying to find useful invention information when I stumbled upon to a site that lists inventions that “never really caught on.” I figured I’d take a gander and see what kind of ideas people thought would be useful.

1. The Bird Catcher for Cats – Now, at first I assume this guy had all the best intentions in mind. Maybe his cat was old and decrepit and couldn’t get up the strength to chase birds anymore. Maybe his cat only had 2 legs, or 1 eye, or perhaps had a really bad case of pneumonia and couldn’t get out there with all his buddies and chase down critters. Either option sounds a bit peculiar to me though. Cats are built to chase things, and therefore, I assume it’d ruin it for them if they just had a bird all boxed up and ready to eat. Look at what has happened to humans since we’ve started having fast food and TV dinners! You don’t ever see any old caveman movies of anyone ever being fat. People were skinny because they were always out chasing down varmints for dinner. They didn’t have guns or knives or rocket launchers. They were stuck with feet, and tree branches and rocks. Now THAT’S a way to chase down a meal I’d say. Think if cats followed in our footsteps. Not only would they get fat, but they might start thinking they’re better than us, as if they’re not pretentious enough as it is. Before you know it, cats would be fat slobs sitting around the house demanding that the bird be plucked and served to them on silver. If I were a cat owner, I’d be a little wary about this one…

2. Apparatus for simulating a “high five” – In case you haven’t realized that you have no friends, here’s a handy little device to further your speculations.

3. The Smoker’s Hat – Yes, that’s right, the smoker’s hat. Someone FINALLY invented a way to make a smoker not feel left out at gatherings when they have to go outside to smoke! They can just sit and chitchat with friends and family and feel normal. No longer do you have to go outside to smoke – you can do it in the company of your non-smoking friends. Just by putting this tiny (3 ft tall) thing on your head that includes “an integral fan for intaking ambient air (contaminated and non contaminated) into the hat with this intake ambient air flowing in front of the smoker’s face, a filtration, purification and deionization system for removal of combustion products, such as smoke odors and positive ions from the intake ambient air, and an exhaust system for expelling the filtered deodorized, deionized and optionally scented air from the hat.” I think it might be a better idea to just go outside anyway because you’d look like a moron with this hat on, I’m fairly sure. Oh, praise the Lord, I can, while I’m at it, scent the air when I’m done smoking as well! Actually, I think I can scent the air just fine on my own. Thanks though.

4. Killer Bee Protector – At first you may think it to be some revolutionary spray that bees hate, but worry not, it’s not something that tacky and unoriginal, it’s much better! You don’t even have to spray anything on! It’s not a cream and it’s unscented. Well, I guess I can’t guarantee that statement. It may smell a bit like plastic, because you’re in a big plastic ball, much like the Greenhouse Helmet. But I suppose it might not smell like plastic if you bought it used on Ebay or something, because then it might smell like a giant hamster. The previous owner might have believed that nobody would come up with something so utterly useless and decided that it MUST be for his 56-pound hamster. But then you’re just playing the odds, so let’s go with it smelling like plastic. I think if a person is THAT afraid of killer bees, there are a few things that might work better. First idea – Don’t go around killer bees. Second idea – Don’t ever leave your house, and close your windows and lock your doors. Third idea – Poke out your eyes. It may sound gruesome, but at least you wouldn’t have to see any killer bees around and whenever you were bitten, you could just think to yourself, “Gee, there certainly are a lot of random pins falling from the sky today.” Granted you may die, but at least you wouldn’t have to be such a hypochondriac.

5. The Santa Claus Detector – I’m not kidding. This is a real invention. “A children’s Christmas Stocking device useful for visually signaling the arrival of Santa Claus by illuminating an externally visible light source having a power source located within said device.” I don’t even know where to start with this one. Let’s start with those that believe in Santa. If you do believe in Santa, stop reading now or else you won’t get anything next year. Santa is watching, and he knows if you’ve been bad or good. – Now if you don’t believe in Santa, take into consideration who buys the presents and puts them under the tree. Let’s say this thing really does what it says and “visually signals” when the presents are finding their way under the tree. That’s the last thing you need at 3am when you’re stuffing presents for your 3 and 4 year olds under the tree is a ridiculously annoying sound ringing in your ear and waking up the kids. You’re already tired as hell, stumbling around in your undies, putting stuff that cost too much money under the tree. You don’t need to be discovered by a “Santa Detector” in this situation. Secondly, and furthering my case, what child is going to have the money to purchase this device? A parent isn’t going to get a kid a noise-maker that’ll inevitably just ruin his/her illusion that Santa is make believe just like elves, gremlins and Eskimos.

6. Transparent color-coding of intravenous tubing and intravenous fluid reservoir – Just one remark here… Um, if you’re a patient and you see your doctor looking at the color coordination chart to see which fluids are going into you, I think you need to find a new doctor.

7. The Greenhouse Helmet – This one is clearly going to fail before it even gets off the ground, no pun intended. You can imagine the photo that the inventor drew for it. It’s a picture of a guy smiling in a big fishbowl-looking sphere. He’s just hanging out in there with several plants all around his head because they give off oxygen. Now I’m no biologist, but I’m fairly sure that plants don’t actually give off oxygen as fast as we breathe out carbon monoxide, so you’d need a lot of plants in your bubble with you! I can’t quite understand the point though; seeing as though you can buy a tank of oxygen that’s about 800% lighter, and just use the nose piece attachment to get MUCH more oxygen than 15 plants on your head can provide. Clearly the people that truly need the oxygen aren’t going to be able to carry 15 plants on their heads anyway. So obviously this invention is for the person that doesn’t want to look “stupid” when compared to the average oxygen user, by wearing a fancy-dancy greenhouse fishbowl on his head…

There will always be people out there that think they have an invention that’ll really catch on if it hits the right market, and I’m sure there are a lot that will succeed. I just hope that there will always be people out there that will keep making ridiculously useless products so the future of mankind has something to laugh at as well…

Sometimes Dreams Need to be Smashed
Thought up: 3.31.04 – 8:51am
Written: 3.31.04 - 8:52 am
#29

So in my never-ending search for humor, I was browsing the internet trying to find useful invention information when I stumbled upon to a site that lists inventions that “never really caught on.” I figured I’d take a gander and see what kind of ideas people thought would be useful.

1. The Bird Catcher for Cats – Now, at first I assume this guy had all the best intentions in mind. Maybe his cat was old and decrepit and couldn’t get up the strength to chase birds anymore. Maybe his cat only had 2 legs, or 1 eye, or perhaps had a really bad case of pneumonia and couldn’t get out there with all his buddies and chase down critters. Either option sounds a bit peculiar to me though. Cats are built to chase things, and therefore, I assume it’d ruin it for them if they just had a bird all boxed up and ready to eat. Look at what has happened to humans since we’ve started having fast food and TV dinners! You don’t ever see any old caveman movies of anyone ever being fat. People were skinny because they were always out chasing down varmints for dinner. They didn’t have guns or knives or rocket launchers. They were stuck with feet, and tree branches and rocks. Now THAT’S a way to chase down a meal I’d say. Think if cats followed in our footsteps. Not only would they get fat, but they might start thinking they’re better than us, as if they’re not pretentious enough as it is. Before you know it, cats would be fat slobs sitting around the house demanding that the bird be plucked and served to them on silver. If I were a cat owner, I’d be a little wary about this one…

2. Apparatus for simulating a “high five” – In case you haven’t realized that you have no friends, here’s a handy little device to further your speculations.

3. The Smoker’s Hat – Yes, that’s right, the smoker’s hat. Someone FINALLY invented a way to make a smoker not feel left out at gatherings when they have to go outside to smoke! They can just sit and chitchat with friends and family and feel normal. No longer do you have to go outside to smoke – you can do it in the company of your non-smoking friends. Just by putting this tiny (3 ft tall) thing on your head that includes “an integral fan for intaking ambient air (contaminated and non contaminated) into the hat with this intake ambient air flowing in front of the smoker’s face, a filtration, purification and deionization system for removal of combustion products, such as smoke odors and positive ions from the intake ambient air, and an exhaust system for expelling the filtered deodorized, deionized and optionally scented air from the hat.” I think it might be a better idea to just go outside anyway because you’d look like a moron with this hat on, I’m fairly sure. Oh, praise the Lord, I can, while I’m at it, scent the air when I’m done smoking as well! Actually, I think I can scent the air just fine on my own. Thanks though.

4. Killer Bee Protector – At first you may think it to be some revolutionary spray that bees hate, but worry not, it’s not something that tacky and unoriginal, it’s much better! You don’t even have to spray anything on! It’s not a cream and it’s unscented. Well, I guess I can’t guarantee that statement. It may smell a bit like plastic, because you’re in a big plastic ball, much like the Greenhouse Helmet. But I suppose it might not smell like plastic if you bought it used on Ebay or something, because then it might smell like a giant hamster. The previous owner might have believed that nobody would come up with something so utterly useless and decided that it MUST be for his 56-pound hamster. But then you’re just playing the odds, so let’s go with it smelling like plastic. I think if a person is THAT afraid of killer bees, there are a few things that might work better. First idea – Don’t go around killer bees. Second idea – Don’t ever leave your house, and close your windows and lock your doors. Third idea – Poke out your eyes. It may sound gruesome, but at least you wouldn’t have to see any killer bees around and whenever you were bitten, you could just think to yourself, “Gee, there certainly are a lot of random pins falling from the sky today.” Granted you may die, but at least you wouldn’t have to be such a hypochondriac.

5. The Santa Claus Detector – I’m not kidding. This is a real invention. “A children’s Christmas Stocking device useful for visually signaling the arrival of Santa Claus by illuminating an externally visible light source having a power source located within said device.” I don’t even know where to start with this one. Let’s start with those that believe in Santa. If you do believe in Santa, stop reading now or else you won’t get anything next year. Santa is watching, and he knows if you’ve been bad or good. – Now if you don’t believe in Santa, take into consideration who buys the presents and puts them under the tree. Let’s say this thing really does what it says and “visually signals” when the presents are finding their way under the tree. That’s the last thing you need at 3am when you’re stuffing presents for your 3 and 4 year olds under the tree is a ridiculously annoying sound ringing in your ear and waking up the kids. You’re already tired as hell, stumbling around in your undies, putting stuff that cost too much money under the tree. You don’t need to be discovered by a “Santa Detector” in this situation. Secondly, and furthering my case, what child is going to have the money to purchase this device? A parent isn’t going to get a kid a noise-maker that’ll inevitably just ruin his/her illusion that Santa is make believe just like elves, gremlins and Eskimos.

6. Transparent color-coding of intravenous tubing and intravenous fluid reservoir – Just one remark here… Um, if you’re a patient and you see your doctor looking at the color coordination chart to see which fluids are going into you, I think you need to find a new doctor.

7. The Greenhouse Helmet – This one is clearly going to fail before it even gets off the ground, no pun intended. You can imagine the photo that the inventor drew for it. It’s a picture of a guy smiling in a big fishbowl-looking sphere. He’s just hanging out in there with several plants all around his head because they give off oxygen. Now I’m no biologist, but I’m fairly sure that plants don’t actually give off oxygen as fast as we breathe out carbon monoxide, so you’d need a lot of plants in your bubble with you! I can’t quite understand the point though; seeing as though you can buy a tank of oxygen that’s about 800% lighter, and just use the nose piece attachment to get MUCH more oxygen than 15 plants on your head can provide. Clearly the people that truly need the oxygen aren’t going to be able to carry 15 plants on their heads anyway. So obviously this invention is for the person that doesn’t want to look “stupid” when compared to the average oxygen user, by wearing a fancy-dancy greenhouse fishbowl on his head…

There will always be people out there that think they have an invention that’ll really catch on if it hits the right market, and I’m sure there are a lot that will succeed. I just hope that there will always be people out there that will keep making ridiculously useless products so the future of mankind has something to laugh at as well…

This doesn’t mean Jose is any less awesome, just more lazy it sounds to me…

So since I’m so much smarter than kids, and it is certainly needed to break down their self esteems and dreams of being mermaids, I got to thinking a few things about The Little Mermaid that didn’t seem right…

1. Why the f wouldn’t Ursula the Sea Witch just stay as the hot chick all the time instead of the fat and ugly sea witch? I mean, clearly she has the power to do so. I mean, just look at the difference here:

2. King Tritan refers to the humans as “barbarians”. Come on man, it’s the 21st century, get over the prejudice bit. Granted the show was made back in 1989 so maybe the racial tensions between mer-folk and humans was different back then.

3. So clearly Mer-people know how to write, Tritan wrote his name on the scroll, and I’d hope he would have taught his 16 year old daughter to do the same. Enter the deal where she give her voice in exchange for legs and to be with the Prince. Hell girl, write you damn name out and tell your story; the Sea Witch didn’t steal your hands did she?

I haven’t seen this one in my spam folder for a while, but it came in today so I had to share the comedy in it.  Mrs. Mary Johnson has a Westernized name, a japanese email address, and lives on the Ivory Coast!  It must be a tough go for her there!  All you need to do is give her your bank number and she’ll give you a bunch of money, how could this NOT work?

If you would like to give any money to me also, I’m poor and in the US, so you don’t even have to transfer money to me, just Paypal it to me and I’ll take it gladly!

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Miss Mary Johnson <mary_john_so_n004@yahoo.co.jp>
Date: 2008/3/20
Subject: I NEED YOUR HELP.
To: mary_john_so_n004@yahoo.co.jp

Dearest One,

After having gone through your profile, I prayed and decided to confide in you for this simple and sincere business bearing in mind that one has to take some risks at times to survive trial times.I am Miss Mary Johnson, The only daughter to the late Mr. Lambert Johnson of Sierra Leone who was a very wealthy Gold and Diamond dealer. My father was assassinated by unknown gun men after his return trip from Europe with my Mother. All the police efforts to track down the assassins of my late Father and mother has not been successful, Hence I decided to flee to a neighbouring country where I have been since as a refugee seeking asylum in a refugee camp there in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.

Meanwhile, before the death of my parents, my late father told me that He deposited the sum of U.S $ 3.500.000.00 with a bank here in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire where I am residing now. I have gone to the bank with the official lodgement receipt of the money as issued to my father by the bank when he deposited the money and the bank confirmed that the money is with them. I have decided to invest this money out side Africa and I need you to assist me in receiving this money with your bank account while I join you for investment in your country.

I am seeking your assistance to enable me front you to the bank as my foreign partner who will assist me in receiving this money from the bank.

(1) To provide me with your detailed personal information which includes, your full names, Contact address, bank account information and your Telephone and fax numbers so that I can submit it to the bank authorising them to recognise and transfer the money into your bank account as my foreign guardian.(2) To serve as a guardian to this fund since I am only 23 years.

3) to provide a good business where this money will be invested since am since I am still a novice in the business world

(3) To make arrangement for me to come over to your country to further my
education and to secure a resident permit in your country.Moreover, I am willing to offer you 20 % of the total sum as compensation for your effort/input after the successful transfer of this money into your bank account and 5% for any expenses that might incurred during the transfer process making it 25% of the total amount.

Please get back to me .

Thanks and God bless.

Sincerely,
Miss Mary Johnson.

Coming Up With An Appropriate Title
Thought up: 9.30.03 – 6:32pm
Written: 10.1.03 - 4:36 pm
#21

Last night I must have sat in my work chair for 3 hours, mostly just chatting with friends and replying to emails and whatnot, but I had allotted this time as “come up with book title” time. No go. I got too distracted with everything that was going on. After about the first 45 or 50 seconds of deep thought, I went to my good pal Laura for some advice. I figured that she had read a few of my stories, and might be able to come up with something of bearing on the subject. Mostly we just chatted about why we were at work so late, and the wedding she was going to be attending. I didn’t think that anyone would read a comedy book about a wedding or staying at work late. Then people would probably again get confused with the annotation of “workplace” and “marriages,” and then perhaps they’d think it was marriage to a job, and from there, how to be single and have no friends because you’re married to your job. That’s not particularly the group of people I’m shooting to attract, albeit, people are people.

I called up my friend Toivola and asked him if he had any good ideas, and he told me that I’d need to re-read all of the works and find out how they all mesh together. From there, I could come up with a solid basis for what all of my stories had in common. I thought to myself,

“Wow! Brilliant idea! All authors should do that!”

As if I’d make a mushy romance novel and call it: How to stalk Tony the Tiger and other famous animal celebrities advertising food. Creative, yes, but I don’t know if it’s hitting your target audience. I got to thinking though, and what I decided was my target audience? I guess a target audience can’t be aimed at until you find the kind of people looking to read what you’re writing about. So that left me at a dead end, but it DID prove that there are a lot of people in this world to spout to.
I got to thinking again, which isn’t altogether that bad of an idea, and realized that it didn’t matter how I titled my work, but I figure I could grab the attention of a lot of different people judging on what I call the book. For instance:

Bluer skies on the other side of Mars. – Has a good ring to it. I’m sure that a lot of scientists would be very interested in such a book for about the first 10 seconds of it. Or perhaps a “Men are from Mars” bit on it would come. Not the audience I’m looking to hit, nor the scope.
How to get through 3 weeks in India without changing your underwear. – Likely to get a good group from the hippy generation interested, but above and beyond that? Plop.
The benefits of cheese on athlete’s foot. – Once again, doctors and scientists would be very amused, but I think it’d hardly be worth the waste of perfectly good athlete’s foot.
Illiteracy, how to tease someone that can’t read this. – Would get in good with a lot of people in poor regions of the world, that couldn’t buy the book anyway. Humph, scratch that.
All of the top-secret US Government documents – See you in jail?
Performing your own brain surgery in 3 easy steps. – Explains a lot.

These all were valiant efforts I put forth in “meshing” together my ideas. But in all actuality, my work is about randomness and stream of consciousness, and butter. So what better name than: Riding a Butter Tub Down the Stream of Consciousness.

Ud: “Now Ud, you’ve thought of some crafty things in your day, but boy, you’ve really impressed yourself here!”
Ud: “Who are you talking to?”
Ud: “Self, shut up, you’re embarrassing us…”

Click to enlarge

If you don’t want to read the whole story (why are you so lazy?) then I will break it down for you. The kid has an idiot godfather. The young man just wants to see some private parts; he is not on drugs.