Daily Diatribe Archive

Diatribe of 2/22/98 - Yes Virginia, people really are that stupid.

Where do they find these people? I mean are there really that many trailer parks in our country, crammed with double-wides packed sardine like in tornado drawing clusters? I of course refer to the people that parade across our screens during not only COPS but more importantly, The Jerry Springer Show (not that I watch this show, I catch snippets on Talk Soup). While the people (and I use the term in it's very broadest sense) that parade across the screen during an episode of COPS perform the important function of letting me know that my place really isn't all that messy, it's the people on Springer that really have me dumbfounded. Where do they find these yokels that don't even suspect that something is up when their significant other says "I have something very important I need to tell you, but rather than just tell you right here in the center of our spacious double-wide that we've shared with a biker gang for the last two years, I'd rather tell you on national television." If that little phrase won't set off the warning bells, nothing will. I think it shall ever remain beyond my ability to grasp the mindset of the people with that kind of tattoo to tooth ratio. Then again, that may be for the best.

Diatribe of 2/12/98 - The penultimate Hallmark Holiday

The trap is set and now it's only a matter of time before you plant your foot in the iron jaws that will nip your foot clean off. There's no way to dodge it, there are way too many years of socialization behind you to have even a smidgen of a chance. Of course you women are exempt from falling prey to this vicious beast since you are one major aspect of the trap itself. I of course refer to the Hallmark holiday referred to as Valentine's Day. Yes men, no matter how well you've done in the past, no matter how much effort you put forth each February, one of these times you'll slip up and BAM, it's doghouse time. Sure, you can say that you'll always remember, that you'll always buy the appropriate gifts, but when it comes down to it, you're a guy and you really don't give a rat's ass about Valentine's Day itself. Oh sure, you don't like getting in trouble and you'll always try to dodge the grim reaper of giftlessness, but all it takes is one little slip. Kidnapped by terrorists on the way home from work? Doesn't matter. You better still have some Godivas stashed on your person. Car was burned to a crisp in an unfortunate accident as you pulled those children out of a burning building? Was it really now? So where are my roses? Or, more likely, got loaded with the single guys after work and barely made it home but by god you're going to make it up to her tomorrow? Don't even bother. It's move over Rover time and you know it.

Diatribe of 1/28/98 - Therein lies the problem

They're venting their fury over there. A thing of beauty, isn't it? All three forms of one of the most poorly used words in the english language shown in their proper context. Yes, a thing of beauty. A thing of hope. A thing of increasing rarity. No. The much more common literary drink is the bitter cup of improper usage. Cringe along with me at the following: Their eating there lutefisk over they're. Does a phrase like this dredge up images of finger nails on chalkboards for you? Are you left quivering with unspent rage that can only be released through a senseless act of violence that will show them; show them all... but I digress. Maybe I shouldn't have used lutefisk as that particular word will bring forth my demons. Heck, lutefisk brings out the demons in most anyone even without some grammatical abortions along as seasoning. All right, you know the drill. Here are some basic rules on usage:
1. They're - A contraction of they are. 'Nough said.
2. Their - The possessive form of they. 'It ain't so theirs. I founded it!'
3. There - Specifies a place or location. 'Don't make me come up there!'
Not that I expect this to do any good. I don't suppose that many of the illiterati spend their time surfing the web, and for those that do, text isn't probably one of their primary goals.

Diatribe of 1/18/98 - Ol' Bessie done gone dry

The cash cow is dead, long live the cash cow. These simple ten words accurately describe the writing philosophy of many of today's top authors. When you've got something that works, beat it into the ground, excavate some room around it so you can get at it again, and then keep on beating it downward. One author whose works I've purchased in the past (and whose name shall go unmentioned) had a pretty good cash cow going. Yes sir, he milked ol' Bessie for a good trilogy which pretty much summed up the whole story and tied everything up into a nice package. Of course he couldn't stop there. Nope, he added two more books on to that to make a... what? Pentology perhaps? Anyway, after these five books, he hauled the same characters out of bed to once again parade around in the same vein for yet another five books. But it gets worse. Since those characters seemed to be pretty much tapped out (and can you blame them after all this time?), he changed a few names and superficial aspects of their characters, and trotted 'em all out yet again under a new guise. Maybe owing to the characters being pretty run down after trotting their way thought the original four thousand pages he thought he'd give a bit of a rest and only made them stagger through a pair of trilogies; but isn't it about time these guys got a rest? Bessie has long since gone sour and it's time to either turn her out to pasture or else crank up the barbecue because that storyline has so many forks stuck in it there isn't room for any more.

Diatribe of 1/7/98 - The herd mentality

Darwin was wrong and I can prove it. Well, maybe not Darwin himself, but those cretins who think that man evolved from the ape are operating with elevators that don't go all the way up. On what lofty scientific premise do I base my reasoning? Why that of simple observation. Yup, simple observation of many of the humans I see around me every day. I've been told time and again that yes, all the imbeciles I see day in and day out are indeed Homo Sapiens. No matter how much I'd like to believe that these buffoons are... but I digress. Back to observations. If you have ever seen large numbers of cattle or sheep congregated together you can easily understand what is meant by "the herd mentality". This same behavior can be seen in the more urban nature center known as the airport. I won't visit the horrors of boarding shudder, but will instead relate what was inflicted upon my person while waiting at the baggage claim carousel. Why do people pack themselves in so that it becomes impossible to pick up your bag let alone see it coming? Why don't they stand a step or two back? Why is some cretin willing to run over my foot with a baggage cart (which entitled me to pummel him for no greater than 4 minutes) when his bag wasn't even in sight? Three words: Great Aunt Bessie. So the next time you order a quarter pounder with cheese give some thought to the distant relative you might be munching on.

Diatribe of 12/21/97 - Scrooge had the right idea in the first place

To better embody the true spirit of the holiday season the lyrics should probably go: Fa la la la guilt la guilt la la. At least that's how I feel about the season. The only true motivator for getting all the horrible holiday chores done is the unparalleled guilt you have to deal with if you don't get 'em done. Christmas cards are of course the solid foundation that forms the base of the great guilt pyramid. As if it wasn't bad enough that your cards are already guaranteed to not arrive until after the New Year's day, but the day after you finally get them shipped off you get the fateful card from someone that you didn't send one to. That little guiltoid belongs right up there with Death and Taxes. And while the pyramid of guilt has enough twists turns and pitfalls to do Tutankhamen proud, my personal favorite is the yawing chasm of gift exchange. It proudly sits in it's honored place at the apex of the pyramid. Inevitably, the gifts you give and receive are guaranteed to be exact opposites of each other. The year that you find the perfect gift for Mom is the year she decides to give you those new fish shaped oven mitts and conversely that year that Sis gives you the perfect gadget is the year you went with the McDonald's gift certificates. Scrooge had the right idea in the first place. So leave the goose unbought and go back to bed. Tiny Tim didn't get you anything anyway.

Diatribe of 12/13/97 - What's reality got to do with it?

Since the movie Ernest Goes to Camp out grossed the dated and derivative Casablanca this obviously means it was a much better movie. The acting, the emotions, the sheer brilliance of Jim Varney can't be denied despite those naysayers who say he just a poor mans Jim Carrey. Now now, hold on to your high horses for a second there before you storm off in a huff. Could I possibly be serious? Well maybe, but not this time. It's just that I'm just pretty dang sick of seeing this kind of crap in the papers each time a new movie comes out. After each and every summer blockbuster is released you hear about how it was "The largest first weekend take ever for a movie!". What a noxious load of fertilizer. Excuse me Mr. Movie Statistics person, since your educational background apparently stressed how to properly pronounce the words 'Kurosawa' and 'derivative' you apparently never picked up on a little something called 'inflation'. Now if you'll excuse me I believe there's supposed to be a retrospective on the works of Ed Wood. I understand the man was brilliant.

Diatribe of 12/7/97 - Reach out and Touch? someone (IYKWIM, AITYD)

When did touch replace dial as the method of indicating how to go about calling someone? Or maybe you haven't heard this usage yet. There's some radio commercial where they give the phone number by saying "Touch 555-7211" as opposed to the somewhat antiquated dial. While it may be much more accurate from an action standpoint, and while it also may be more technically correct, it definitely sounds much more incredibly stupid. Were people getting confused when they walked up to their phones and they couldn't figure out how they were supposed to dial something on a keypad? Were our nations children who have been velcroed away from being able to tie a shoe and digitized away from knowing how to read an analog clock being further confused by this outdated term? Well excuse me for living in the past but I don't see myself switching to a term that sounds like part of an ad for internet porn. I think our nations comics and sitcom writers have enough innuendo laden phrases and terms as it is.

Diatribe of 11/18/97 - If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

The next junk mailer/company/member of Human Resources that sends me literature about how I will receive great gobs of cash/extra value/improved benefits due to their surefire plan/upgrade/plan enhancements can expect a well placed foot squarely in their derrier/ass/hind quarters. A typical example rests before me. My e-mail provider, AT&T, has updated the pricing plan I was using because - gasp - I could have paid too much under the old plan under certain circumstances. Thankfully I will now instead be receiving "extra value" under their new plan. Of course the new plan costs twice as much but does save you money if you are on-line more than a certain number of hours per week. Excuse me AT&T, but by any chance were there a lot of people (including moi) who weren't exceeding the base number of hours thereby ringing up huge revenues for you? It might not be a called a price increase but if it walks like a duck... At least these cretins aren't in the same league as the HR villains. One more plan 'enhancement' and I may not have any health insurance at all. Of course these are the guys who could give Catbert lessons.

Diatribe of 11/4/97 - Know Fear

While the contemptible cretin that crosses your automotive path with nary a glance has been previously lampooned, at least this buffoon isn't acting with malicious intent. At least he has his native stupidity to act as his mantle of protection. At least he has an excuse for his bovine behavior. But what of his brethren, the min angle crosser? What excuse has he? None! These people bee-line their way down the traffic aisle of a parking lot starting at the near end with their narrow beam radar focused directly on their car (or pick 'em up truck); NO MATTER HOW FAR DOWN THE ROW IT IS! These people are always parked far enough down to block a veritable ocean of traffic while engaging in their leisurely stroll. But of course you ask, 'How can there be a crime without a motive? This heinous act can't be intentional, can it?' The pat answer is: 'Are you new to these parts?' But no, the real reason isn't that our min angle friends are too stupid to recognize that they're courting death, but rather that they revel in the shear power they wield over the hapless motorist. They know that most people will wait for them to clear the road. They KNOW that most people will realize that the delay is only a few moments and can deal with it. But I say let's not act like most people. Let us teach them the meaning of the word fear. Or at the very least teach them the laws of dynamics. Whaddya say?

Diatribe of 10/28/97 - Noisy enough to wake a Shakespearean ghost

Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and hot tub bubble. Fat drunken redneck, soiled trailer trash; twelve pack of budweiser, music by the Clash. A modern rendition of that Shakespearean classic - Macbeth? No. This is the little recipe that is cooked up most nights in the hot tub that lurks out yonder window. I used to think it was pretty cool having it right outside. Sometimes I'd imagine myself as the Jimmy Stewart character from Rear Window, watching little tableaus unfold before my eyes as they were brought into reality by my neighbors. Unfortunately, I haven't felt like old Jimmy in a long time. Now I feel more like Charleton Heston in the Omega Man. It's just not enough that people tend to get louder when they've been drinking. Oh no. The damn hot tub is so loud everyone kicks it up a couple of decibels to make sure that their sparkling discourse is audible over the din. Common topics of discussion include little pearls like: "I reckon those ol' mud flaps ain't got more 'en a coupla hundred thousand more miles in 'em. I think I'll pick me up another spare set." Makes me wish the trains would come through more often.

Diatribe of 10/19/97 - How not to tell a joke

No joke is so good that it can survive being explained. Have you ever told a joke that you thought was a true laugh riot only to be met by puzzled looks and a few nervous twitters? Sure you have. (Some of us more so than others). If you then examined the joke carefully you might realize that unless that person also had a good background in veterinary science as well as a strong knowledge of the intricacies of the ADA programming language there would be no way for them to understand the joke. This is the reason that the only truly good audience for any joke is yourself. I don't even try to make sure other people will understand what I say any more. Just throw out some random references that maybe two other people on the planet might have a hope of understanding and then laugh yourself sick. Oh sure, everyone will assume you're a demented freak who's a potential threat to their safety, but you can't have everything. It sure beats the alternative, supplying the necessary background to make the joke you were going to tell humorous. Once you start down that path they won't just think of you as a demented freak, they'll know.

Diatribe of 10/9/97 - Friends? Sodding Bastards would be a better term

Sodding bastards. Of course this leaves you wondering which sodding bastards I'm referring to as our society is replete with individuals who could easily wear the shoes or sodding bastardom. I refer to the two well known miscreants that have elected to get jobs in the frozen northland. Off they go without nary a backwards glance. Oh sure, you hear the usual tripe excuses like: "I'll be making a lot more money" and "I've always said I wanted to live up north" or the tired "It was time for a change". But did either of these friends take a few moments to fully study all the ramifications of their actions? Was the scale neatly balanced or was this yet another 'duck and witch' type analysis? Oh no. I know which way the scales should have tipped. I know that the cool light of reason had little to do with the decisions that were oh so cruelly rendered. Buggers. Now I gotta find new drinking partners.
Good luck and best wishes guys.

Diatribe of 9/24/97 - Speedhumps of Plenty

Maybe the denizens of the neighborhoods where the evil speed humps dwell find them handy, but I personally don't get much enjoyment out of pretending to be Luke Duke in his own personal General Lee. What evil mastermind invented these things? The most likely candidate is some guy who was heavily invested into automobile suspension and shock absorber futures. What I'd really like to see is a remake of the commercial where they cut a diamond while driving around in a car to demonstrate just how smooth the ride was. Put the guy who invented the road hump in a car and have it go down a street filled with road humps. He'd get out of the car spouting blood from the nubby little stumps that were once fingers, just like the ones you find on the hands of any experienced woodshop teacher. Now that would be sweet justice.

Diatribe of 9/16/97 - This is fall?

Ah September. The time of year when the fall jackets are mined from the depths of the closet, the air takes a turn to the crisp come evening, and the leaves of the trees began there magical transformation into objets d'art. When crisp mornings bring thoughts of football and sweatshirts, and stand as a reminder to have the car prepared for the coming of ol' Jack Frost. Or is the case for those of us in south Texas it means that damn armadillo - Punxsutawney Roadkill - got run over by a Suburban and we're due another six weeks of summer. If fall is ushered in with the gentle sounds of air conditioners or the ever so gentle drip drip of sweat beads landing on my shirt then it must be fall. Although how this differs from the last 6 months of summer is beyond my ken to grasp. If this is supposed to be a magical time of the year then we need some stronger juju.

Diatribe of 9/9/97 - The Molemen Driveth

Where did all these Molemen come from? You know the people I mean. They're those the big eyed proto-monsters who can see in the dark but shy away from the light. You (meaning I) see them all the time in those sci-fi films whose accumulated budgets are almost large enough to support the dental floss allowance for a major action film. These characters can be found driving around in the blackest night with their headlights off, so accustomed to being able to see everything around them that they don't even realize their lights aren't on. Although it's always puzzled me that my lights don't blind them as every B-movie has convinced me they should. Of course some people say that these lightless wonders are yet another example of the low grade morons that grace our roadways. This particular brand of cretin manifesting their own special brand of stupidity by driving around in the dark, oblivious to all around them. Of course I personally find the Moleman theory easier to stomach. Whatever it takes to get me though the night.

Diatribe of 8/28/97 - Scam Supreme

No scam is more pure than the one you can't do anything about. Of course Emperor Gates is the king with his windows software, but it's good to see the little guy plugging away and making a dishonest buck every now and then. When this practice is employed by the dental community you can do naught but look upon the scam with glowing pride in a job well done. Of course you always have the option to refuse any service or treatment. You can walk away from the chair with a shrug and say, 'I'll just wait until my insurance allows me to see another dentist in about six months and we'll just see what that dentist has to say. I'll show you!' Ha! No, it's time to fork over the cash because, wouldn't you know it, your tartar just happens to "exceed the limits that your dental plan allows us to work on in a standard cleaning." I kid you not. That's what I get for wearing a tie to the dentist. From this day forth I'll remember the burlap and twine.

Diatribe of 8/14/97 - As Psychic as my Left Foot

As near as I can figure, one out of every eight americans is a psychic! I of course base this scientific factoid on the number of psychic hotline commercials I see on the ol' idiot box. Surely you've seen one of these ads. "Five free minutes!" "Free psychic evaluation!" An honest ad would probably go: "Why not just send us your money and save both of us a lot of time!" I know people are idiots, but to believe that there are psychics out there just waiting to solve all your problems, give you your lucky lottery numbers, and find you that special someone for whom you've been searching is just a tad hard to believe. If these people are such great psychics, why haven't they already pointed their talents at the lottery on their own behalf? I haven't noticed any signs at the Stop-N-Go saying "Psychics are prohibited from playing the Texas Lottery." Then again, perhaps there's some unwritten ethical code which these "psychics" live by and they work the phones out of the good of their hearts. Personally, I prefer the odds of getting money by putting teeth under my pillow at night.

Diatribe of 8/6/97 - Roadway Scavengers

When discussing predatory scavengers, different people are of course left squirming by different beasties. Some people get upset because dingoes haul off young children or don't like it when the hyena chases off the cheetah's hard earned prey. Other squeamish types are left feeling ill when they see a circle of buzzards chomping away at a wildebeest's swollen abdomen. I personally root for the school of piranha when they go for the shins of some annoying tree hugger. But of course none of these scavengers can compare to that most vicious of predators, the tow truck driver. As many scavengers do, they hang out in packs while waiting for a kill (accident). Then it is every truck for itself. Speed limits, traffic jams, and the fact that 12 other tow trucks beat them to the scene are no hindrance to this vile bottom feeder. They gather around a kill with the hope of nipping in and getting a good bite before one of their brethren has the chance. You often see a proud victor, the mangled kill (wrecked car) clutched tightly in it's jaws (hoist), making it's way to it's lair (garage), where unspeakable acts (overpriced repairs) will be wreaked upon the twisted corpse. Their twisted cousins, the trucks that tow illegally parked cars, will be visited another time when I can come up with a few even more gruesome metaphors.

Diatribe of 7/29/97 - Speed Limits are determined through random drawings!

As much as I detest Sammy Hagar and all things Hagar-like, I have to agree with him when he most eloquently sang (if I dare use any form of the word sing), "I cannot drive fifty-five. I will not drive it in my car, I will not drive it to the bar." Well, it should have gone something like that. But the point was, our speed limits are apparently set by people who don't ever actually drive on the road. You want an example? I got a prime example that many of you may have been subjected to. When you're cruising up HWY 146, the speed limit is 65 mph when you're on the divided highway. Traffic lights dot this road and there are many entrances with a steady stream of people apparently trying to become the star of some lawyer's commercial where he'll "get the money you deserve out of stingy insurance companies". Then when you get near Baytown and the road becomes freewaylike with ramps providing the only means of access and the brushes with death have begun to diminish, the speed limit mysteriously drops to 55. I must be missing something here. Perhaps this practice is encouraged to feed the starved coffers of our traffic courts. Nah, that's too cynical. It's probably because there's a lucrative billboard district in that region and the signs couldn't be fully appreciated at a reasonable rate of speed. Heck, it's probably billboards for those same damn lawyers. Or is that still too cynical?

Diatribe of 7/22/97 - What attachment through yon modem crawls?

I'd have to say that twiddling my thumbs loses some of it's fascination after the first 20 minutes or so. While a little vigorous scratching and mindless staring into space each have their own little charms, they don't always manage to hold my interest like they used to. Whiling away the hours at work? No. These are my common activities while waiting for the attachment from hell to download. The .avi file of the dancing baby was pretty cute. The first time anyway. The guy running and putting his head into the horse's ... let's call it hindquarters, was also quite entertaining. On the first go around. However, the monstrous bitmap file of a simple map that could have been rendered into about 25 words was the work of a cruel cruel man. Hello! Is the general assumption that I've got a T1 line piped into my apartment? Hardly. Lay off the huge attachments and let me put my modem to the important task for which it's intended, my overloading of the inboxes of everyone I know. Are you trying to take over my mission?

Diatribe of 7/15/97 - No more Mr. Nice Guy

Allright. No more 'Mr. Nice Guy'. [Dramatic pause while the laughter dies down.] No really, I mean it. I'm giving up on playing the good samaritan. Or more accurately, I'm giving up on attempting to be the good samaritan. Twice this week I tried to point out to some nimrod in traffic that there was something wrong with their car. On both occasions I pulled up on the cars left hand side at a light and then proceeded to be amazed as they ignored my beeping horn, rolled down window, and waving hand. I can only presume that if I gotten out of my car and lain down in front of theirs I would have been killed with the changing of the light. I can only assume they thought I was some sort of car jacker and that any eye contact with me would have meant instant death. Or is just that everyone drives around in their own private little dimension that doesn't have enough room for aural and optical input. I guess to paraphrase Rod Serling that leaves only the dimension of mind. Hmm. That just might go a long way towards explaining some of the driving habits discussed (okay, ranted on about) in this august forum.
One person had a really wobbly rear tire and the other didn't have any brake lights. Are you happy now?

Diatribe of 7/10/97 - I had classes with you? Really?

Isn't it just like people to disappoint you thoroughly any chance they get? Here I happily go to my high school reunion with every hope and expectation of finding a bunch of overweight, balding, washed out has-beens, but instead am sorely disappointed by what people have made of themselves. What were they thinking? Did they think I'd flown 1200 miles to find happy, well adjusted and employed people? HA! The scant comfort I've derived from the occasion is found in the little stories I've concocted concerning those that were kind enough not to attend. I can picture it even now. My former classmate [censored] spent that evening in his run down apartment, swilling Schmidt (a truly heinous beer), with a turkey pot pie balance precariously on his enormous paunch, screaming obscenities at a TV whose volume is loud enough to register on a seismograph in the next county. Thank you [censored], thank you. It brings a tear to my eye even now just thinking of this selfless act.

Diatribe of 6/29/97 - Sigs of Shame

The recent advent of Microsoft Exchange as the designated e-mail package at work has me seeing red. And pink, and purple, and every other color that can be associated with a font. And the fonts! Every conceivable font plus some that would have been better served by being trapped in the point of a condom parade across my screen daily. You don't even want to know about the people that have digitally scanned their signatures and attach them to the bottom of their notes, words escape me and I'm left grinding my teeth while an occasional guttural ARRGGHHH slips out. It makes me long for the days when we had mail packages that didn't support signature files. The most 'warlordable' offense however has to be the bandwidth busters who have the thirty-two line signature file with an attached graphic of the company logo at the bottom. I can see it now. Contests will start to see who can have the most elaborate signature file with the eventual champion creating a file so large that it crashes every computer on the network. This just might be a worthwhile goal. I think it might be time to give Kibo a call.

Diatribe of 6/25/97 - Flashing Red Lights

*Red Light* You treat it the same as a stop sign gnat for brains. If I could beam a message directly into the intensely hardened skulls of a few of our more educationally challenged drivers this one would be right at the top of the list. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that this particular latent fatality has been cropping up more and more of late. It generally manifests itself in one of two ways:
1. Sitting at the light and waiting for it to go green.
2. Running the light as if it were green.
Is this one of those things that just never gets drilled into some people's heads? Do they just naturally assume that everyone else at the intersection is doing the wrong thing? The philosophers need to lay off defining man's ultimate role in the universe and start spending a little time trying to figure out what's going on between the ears of these particular motorists. Now there's a topic with a little metaphysical meat on it's bones.
And yes, I do feel very dirty for having used that HTML tag.

Diatribe of 6/19/97 - Zoom-Pow-Splat

Zoom! Pow! Splat! The campy words flashed to the screen as Adam West appeared to knee Burgess Meredith in the groin? No. This is what would happen most mornings at work if I paid just a little less attention. One of these mornings I'm going to Zoom into the parking lot a little carelessly and it'll be Pow - Splat as I mow down the cretinous, buffoonic, imbeciles that wander blindly across the entryway with nary a glance for traffic. Sure I'll tell the lawyers it was an accident, but in reality I'll actually be doing my Darwinian best at 'thinning the herd'. I'm sure you've noted these people's actions? They seem to wander mindlessly through the parking lot (tripping along to Flight of the Bumble Bee) thinking nothing (literally) of blindly meandering across the entrance used by incoming traffic. While there might be a few people out there worthy of a beeping sound when they back up, I'm pretty sure most people would lose in a human/automobile collision. I doubt there's motivation behind this action, probably yet another example of the shining brilliance so prevalent in the population at large. Thinning the herd might not be such a bad thing to do. Then again, maybe I'll keep using my brakes. It would be pretty cruel of me to be the cause of an accident that would require all my coworkers to watch yet another safety video. There's mean, and then there's mean.

Diatribe of 6/12/97 - Ye Olde Towne Shoppe Inne?

When you see a sign for a business of the format "Ye Olde Towne Shoppe Inne" doesn't it make you want to walk in and say something along the lines of "Verily and forsooth. Doth ye perchance skeedle in furburdles colporteur?" If they want to speak nonsense I think it's my inalienable right - nay - my civic duty to come back with more of the same. As the T-shirts used to say, if you can't dazzle them with brilliance you might as well baffle them with bullshit. This might be emotionally satisfying, but it doesn't answer the fundamental question of who exactly the target audience for these grotesquely named Shoppes might be? Does some silly noun with an extra consonant and an extra e attached appeal to some small subset of humanity that is both rich and stupid? While these two sets do often intersect I'd really like to believe that the union of these sets isn't large enough to keep the plethora of 'Olde Innes' in business. Perhaps it's time to mount an expedition to a 'Ye Olde Establishmentte' or two just to see what the appeal might be. What are the odds that these places really do conjure up images of old english elegance and charm? I figure the odds are roughly the same as that of finding a chest of forgotten pirate treasure in the back of my freezer.

Diatribe of 6/4/97

"What light through yonder window breaks? No really. What is that damn light off to the east. ... The sun? Oh yeah, that bright thing that always seems to be hanging around." Ah, sweet senility. Isn't life one heck of a pratical joker? As if it wasn't enough that your health, eyesight, and virility all disappear with the passage of time, your mind also fades from it's once razor sharpness (or sporklike dullness as the case may be). I guess it's just another aspect of life's rich pageant (or perhaps more accurately 'rich joke'). By the time you've gained the wisdom of experience it's more than offset by the infirmity of dotage. Then again how hard is it to remember that you've got that social security check coming and by gummee it better not be late 'cuz the gals are headed to Vegas. None for me thanks. When my time comes I'm going to go in the full bloom of health with my faculties still in tact. At least that's what I expect my nursey to tell me, I don't care whether it's true or not. Death be not proud!
By the way, Happy Birthday Mom!

Go back to where it all began or perhaps you might want to peruse the Diatribe index.
Or you could visit Volume I , Volume II or Volume IV of the archives.