A Terrible Name for Your Child

A co-worker told me a story about a class he took in college. On the first day, the professor called roll. As he read off the list of names he reached one that gave him pause.

"Um," he said hesitantly, "I'm not sure how this is pronounced so I'll say it the way it's spelled. Is there a Shithead here?"

A girl stood up and said, "Professor, it's pronounced Shuh-theed."

Leering and Staring

At work we had to attend a sexual harassment prevention seminar. The speaker gave a Powerpoint presentation. One of the slides contained a list of inappropriate behavior, such as touching, gestures, leering and staring.

The speaker told us that in a previous class a creeper said, "What? Leering and staring isn't sexual harassment! I do it all the time!"

When met with shock, the creeper asked the speaker, "Come on, don't you leer and stare?" The answer was no.

At the end of class the creeper wrote "If you don't leer you're queer" on the seminar evaluation form, and signed his full name.

The idiot does not work for the department anymore.

Stupid Arguments

I witnessed a man and a woman debating the merits of holes of different sizes. (I have no idea how this started). The woman was in favor of small holes while the man preferred large ones.

Woman: "Yeah but large holes are like pot holes. It isn't cool to be driving and have your car go off the road because of some big ass hole in front of you."

Man: "Hahaha. And tiger holes, don't they have spikes on the bottom?"

Woman: "There's a low probability you'll step into a gopher hole but if you do you'll sprain your ankle."

Man: "Then you'd have to be put to sleep."

They both laughed and then discussed snake pits.

Barfight Sarah

My co-worker, who enjoys regaling us with tales of her "redneck" family, has a cousin whose nickname is "Barfight Sarah."

Her nose was broken during a tavern brawl, but she was too drunk to go to the hospital and have it set. Her nose healed in a crooked shape, and she had to get plastic surgery to fix it.

Barfight Sarah is currently pregnant with her second child during her first year of marriage to a much younger man that the family suspects is a drug dealer.

Kids, this is why you shouldn't drink.

Kids These Days

Dear Lazy High School Senior,

When your teacher told you to write an essay about a career you're interested in, and was nice enough to say, "Hey, I know someone who's associated with the field you want to write about and here's her email address" she did not give you a free pass to turn off your brain.

When the person you contacted said, "This is not my subspecialty, but you should talk to ____ and ______, and here's some really detailed career advice," you should probably respond with a "Thank you."

Also, if you send your contact a second email asking if you can job shadow her and she explains she can't because she's just a student writing her thesis, and reiterates that she's not even studying your subspecialty of interest, you should listen carefully.

This is because when you send your contact a third email asking her to fill out a questionnaire about the subspecialty she's not in, you look like an idiot.

By the way, telling your contact to "Do this ASAP because I need to turn it in at school tomorrow" will not elicit any sympathy.

Sincerely,
Snark

Craziest House Party Ever

My friend had a party and his roommate invited some very volatile people - a girl with a "reputation" and her new boyfriend, who had been paroled from prison several days before they met.

At the party they were "OMG so in love" after dating for about 48 hours, and spent much of the evening joined at the hip, cooing at each other, until Jenny decided to go talk to Bob in the front yard.

The Parolee turned out to be a meth head who started tweaking. He freaked out and began interrogating everyone at the party. "Where's Jenny? Did you see where she went? The bitch must be cheating on me! Jenny! Where the hell are you!"

People tried to calm him down and told him his girlfriend was outside. Shedding all the affection he had displayed only minutes before, the Parolee charged outside with a beer bottle and hit Jenny with it.

Enraged, she hit him back, until the two of them were laying the groundwork for assault charges. Other partygoers pulled them apart and held the Parolee down while he screamed "Jenny! You fucking whore! I love you! Jenny! You bitch! I love you! Jennnnnnny!!!!!"

Unimpressed with his declarations of affection, Jenny left the party. The spurned Parolee decided to turn his aggression upon the other men at the party. To stop him from taking swings at anyone in the vicinity, 4 men held him down on the hood of the car while his meth rage boiled over. He kept roaring "Jenny I love you!" while trying to punch everyone in the vicinity.

While they were waiting for the police to arrive a carful of men stopped in front of the house. The 4 "Marauding Irish Rednecks," as my friend called them, spilled out of the car yelling, "Is there a fight going on?"

They were not invited to the party, and no one else knew who they were. They had simply driven around the town looking for a brawl to join.

The MIR launched themselves at the Parolee and tried to hit him. The other partygoers let him go so he could defend himself, and a 5-man tussle broke out on the front lawn.

The police finally showed up and pepper-sprayed the MIR. 3 of the men ran back into their car and drove away, leaving behind their friend, who was screaming in agony because of the pepper spray in his eyes. The Parolee also managed to escape.

The police questioned my friend as the pepper-spray victim staggered around in the background wailing. "Speak up son! I can't hear you over the noise."

Meanwhile, in a strange coincidence, the Parolee ran down the street to the corner store where Jenny happened to be. She had also called the police, which turned out to be a wise decision because as soon as the Parolee saw her they started arguing again.

He ran off when the police arrived but Jenny told them where he lived, which was within walking distance.

The police had her call him to make sure he was home, then went to his house and tased him in his living room.

It was the end to a very bizarre evening.

Scapel License

Overheard:

Idiot 1: "It's so not fair that it's so hard to get into med school!"

Idiot 2: "I know! There are probably lots of people that really want to go but can't get in because they have bad grades."

Idiot 1: "Yeah, like there are people I've met that maybe aren't that smart, but they're really caring and I think they would still make good doctors."

Idiot 2: "It's just as important to have a really nice personality. I wish those people got a chance, too."


No thank you. If you failed biology I don't want you operating on me.

Some People Never Learn

Remember the roommate who dumped her boyfriend because he was a philandering, alcoholic, compulsive gambler who threatened her?

They have rekindled their relationship.

I had trouble believing this until she started posting lovey-dovey pictures on Facebook again.

Ugh. Good luck dear.

Daddy I Want a Solid Gold Pony

My friend's sorority sister got married over a year ago. She planned her wedding, picked out a lavish gown and high-society caterer, then asked her father for $70,000.

He looked at her budget and said, "If you can cut the wedding costs down to $20,000 I will give you $50,000 cash for a down payment for a house."

Instead of considering the offer, or even negotiating for a $35,000 wedding and $35,000 cash, she said, "No Daddy. I want the whole $70,000 for the wedding."

He gave her the money and she had her party.

A year later, older and wiser, she now says, "I should have taken the house money."

You think?

Sorry J. M. Barrie

Overheard on the bus (during a conversation between two women in their 20s):

"I'm reading Peter Pan right now. It's really different from the Disney movie. There's all this stuff about Peter Pan being a baby, and not wanting to grow up. Did you know, the guy who wrote Peter Pan was a dwarf?"

"Oh, like those primordial dwarfs?"

"Yeah, the ones that only grow to 3 feet tall? I bet that's why he wrote Peter Pan. Because he couldn't grow up himself."

"Wow."

(I bet she thinks Mark Twain was a pro wrestler, too).

The Obvious Solution

I used to work as a lab manager at a previous job. I think the building manager in that facility misses me.

He sent an email telling me that someone at my old lab called him in to look a clogged drain. When he got there, that person showed him a sink with several inches of murky water in it.

The building manager reached in and pulled out a drain plug.

I don't think he's very impressed with my replacement.

Comfortable Bathing

I Have Hot Water.

Yes!

Mrs. Landlord actually showed up at my house yesterday to wait for the Gas Company guy, after I threatened to move out. I made it clear to her that her duty was not to just let the GC guy in, but to get me hot water. If the GC guy couldn't fix the problem, she was going to buy a brand new water heater that day, and have her husband or a repairman install it. I said, "I can stay here and pay rent for next month, or you can refund me half my September rent and deposit now. It's your choice. I can write you a check next month, or you can write me a check this month."

Mrs. Landlord came over in the morning and I went to work. When I came back, there was a service report from the GC guy on the kitchen table.

It turns out it was a simple pilot light problem. That's what I told them last week.

If they had listened to me last week, when I said, "I think it's the pilot light and I'm willing to take Friday off work to wait for the GC," we wouldn't have been in this mess.

Instead, they dragged their feet and lied to me. In the end, Mrs. Landlord had to take the day off work, drive 170 miles round trip in her giant gas-guzzling SUV to my place, sit in the hot house (without AC) and be so bored out of her mind she cleaned my kitchen.

I have no sympathy for her. She brought this on herself.

The Hot Water Rant

I am officially sick of living in my place. I have not had any hot water since September started.

Warning: Depressing post ahead! Skip and wait for the next post for something cheerier.

There was a gas outage in my area during Labor Day weekend, while I was gone. (This was not the landlord's fault . . . yet).

I realized on Tuesday the 2nd that I had no hot water. I found out that the Gas Company was in the process of restoring services to everyone.

I waited for them to get to my neighborhood. By Thursday I realized something was wrong and I called the GC saying they skipped me. Because I was just a tenant, and not an account holder, they said I could not request service, and my flaky landlord had to make the call. (I can understand this policy any other time, but this is just stupid when the GC knows for sure there is a problem in the neighborhood).

I called the landlord's daughter on Thursday since she was in charge of the GC bill, and left a message. She emailed me Friday saying she was going to contact the GC to send service people.

Then silence.

On Sunday I called Mrs. Landlord. She insisted her daughter didn't tell her there was a problem, but said she will call the GC on Monday morning to make an appointment and call me.

I ended up calling her Monday night, and she said the GC is coming Tuesday afternoon.

I realized she lied about calling when her husband showed up instead. He couldn't figure out the problem, and asked me for the GC account number so that he could call.

Um, no. I don't have it. That's why you're here.

He called his wife and daughter and they ignored his calls. (Gee, now you know how that feels Landlord). He hung around for a bit, desperately making more last-minute, half-assed repairs before some homebuyers showed up that evening.

His wife eventually called, then talked to me, saying that it was not a gas problem, but a problem with the water company. I thought this was ridiculous. She insisted she called some "association" that collected "hot water fees" for the area, and they promised I would have hot water that afternoon.

That evening, I was still taking cold showers. I called Mrs. Landlord, who did not pick up the phone.

Today, Wednesday, I called Mrs. Landlord again, and was told the number was disconnected.

WTF!?

I got ahold of her at a different number. She said she would call the "association" again.

She called back later and said, "I think it is a Gas Company problem. Can you call them?"

1. I told you that a week ago.
2. I tried. I'm not an account holder, remember?

She whined about "having to make all these calls" for me, but did call the GC.

She then informed me that they are coming tomorrow (Thursday the 11th), but did not know what time.

Excuse me? You don't have an appointment? I took Tuesday afternoon off at work to wait for the imaginary GC repairman you lied about, and now you want me to take Thursday off too, and wait at home all day for someone you might be lying about again?

I told her I am going to work and she is taking the day off tomorrow to come wait all day at my house.

If I don't have hot water when I come home tomorrow, things are getting very ugly.

Be Careful When Screencapping

One of my friends works in a office where a secretary has an addiction to screencapping. When there is something she wants to show someone, instead of utilizing copy/paste to transfer the text into an email, or even providing a URL, she decides to press the "Print Screen" button.

She then makes a .jpeg and sends it as an email attachment, which requires everyone to download the file and use an image viewer to see a slightly blurry picture of her screen.

Everyone was suitably annoyed with this practice, until she slipped up.

She was running multiple applications, and sent a .jpeg that showed some of the other items she had on her taskbar.

One was an internet browser labeled "Sex Acts."

Um, Not Sure You Get It . . .

Overheard on the bus, about 8:30 AM:

Guy: "Where are you going?"
Girl: "Physics class. I failed it so I have to take it over the summer."
Guy: "Oh that sucks."
Girl: "The lecture started at 8, but I already took the class so I know the stuff, you know?"

Fire Makes People Stupid

My friend "Lana" works on the 32nd floor of an office building. Recently, there was a fire on the 26th floor and everyone had to evacuate.

Lana is in the marketing division of a large cosmetics company, and according to her, the majority of her co-workers are stylish women and gay men. No one reacted well when they realized they had to walk down 32 flights of stairs.

The women who wore stilettos to work moaned all the way down to the ground floor. When I asked Lana, "Why didn't you just take off your shoes?" she said it was because the floor was dirty.

It's a freakin' fire! Who cares if your pantyhose get ruined? Toss your damn Manolos and get the hell out of the building!

One of Lana's male co-workers whined, "Oh my god! Why aren't the elevators working? I keep pressing the buttons and nothing happens!" Someone had to explain to him that the elevators shut down when the fire alarm goes off.

However, the biggest idiot award goes to Lana's boss. He decided that since the fire was on the 26th floor, he would be safe as long as he made it to the 25th floor. (He didn't consider the possibility of the floor above collapsing).

Lana's boss went down to the 25th floor and refused to walk any further. He met up with some other morons and had dim sum while the building was evacuated.

Wedding Brawl

I have 3 weddings to go to this summer, and the first one is in about 3 weeks. Two weddings will bracket my final exams. This weekend, I'm helping a friend pick out a wedding dress. The madness is about to begin.

Bridal season is starting, and I hope it is a lot less drama-free than a wedding my co-worker told me about. I hope this doesn't happen to any of you.

At my co-worker's cousin's wedding, the wedding party had too much to drink at the reception. Fueled by alcohol, the groom became convinced that the bride was fooling around with the best man. The two men began arguing, and decided to settle their differences in the parking lot.

The bride tried to intervene in the flurry of fists, and was accidentally punched. The bride's stepmother, enraged that someone beat her daughter, ran as fast as she could across the parking lot, while her bra struggled valiantly, but failed, to hold in her ample bosom.

Upon seeing his wife in the altercation, the bride's father joined in, resulting in a bride/groom/best man/mother and father of the bride fistfight.

By this time, all the wedding guests had left the reception to watch the effects of too much hard liquor. At least one guest was on her cell phone narrating the fight to someone not present, saying "You won't believe what I'm seeing right now . . ."

Not Everyone Can Win a Pulitzer

I am part of an online community where people post their creative endeavors (such as drawings, photographs and crafts).

Recently, an aspiring novelist posted that she wrote a book, and was looking for an illustrator. She planned to select an artist by running a contest where entrants submitted drawings of her characters based on rather bare descriptions such as "boy, 14, kinda short." Everyone was allowed 6 short days to draw 4 characters and to provide sample storyboards.

The "prize" for the contest was the privilege of illustrating the writer's book, and "publication" in a magazine no one had ever heard of.

Understandably, the artists were miffed that she was asking for someone to give away a substantial amount of work for free. They were even more annoyed when it was revealed that the "magazine" was really a personal webpage desperately trying to be a webzine. Furthermore, someone pointed out the the webpage was soliciting donations for upkeep costs, even though it was hosted on a free server like Geocities.

What really took the cake was that she posted a sample of her story that can only be described as incredibly atrocious. It made little sense, was misspelled and mis-punctuated, had cavernous gaps in logic and displayed a parade of characters that could only be differentiated because they had different names. She obviously didn't bother using spell-check at all. One of the moderators even asked the poster if this was a joke, since it looked like it was written by an illiterate monkey on crack.

The nice people told her to collaborate with a friend if she couldn't afford an artist, while everyone else told her to take her contest and shove it. The post was deleted and we all proceeded along our merry way.

However, rather than slinking away quietly, she insured the community would not forget her. Several days later she made a new post that I've paraphrased (made coherent) here:

"I apologize to the community! A couple days ago my friend played a cruel joke on me and posted an awful script that I didn't write! And also, all of you making fun of my site and saying I'm begging for money, it's hard work making scans of manga! But my friend hacked into my account and made that post! It wasn't me! I wouldn't write like that! See, to prove it wasn't me, here's a sample of my real writing!"

It was followed by a paragraph a bit better than her last endeavor:

"T'was at last striking midnight, the fourth night of Izumi's ceasing paitence. She lived here, in Japan all her life. Daughter of a fine a foriegn woman and an aristocrat. Yet not even a drop of the delicous warm liquid she desired. Red as pure wine and yet tastier than ever be imagine. Because it is the liquid the run through every mortal's body. No matter what species, making every mortal prey. Blood, sweet Blood."

No one believed her back-pedaling, and told her this post wasn't doing her any favors. They advised her to shut up and lay low. She then started insisting, "I showed my teacher and she was like oh my god this is the best story ever and she was going to call a bunch of publishers until I told her not to but because of this story I got extra credit in my class and I have the top score now and you really have to believe me and I need strangers on the internet to validate my existence and make me feel better because it turns out I'm only 13 but I really believe all dreams come true and I'm going to be really famous!"

Kid, you need a dose of reality. The fact that you're 13 explains some things, but is no excuse. I found a story my sister wrote when she was 8, and it showed much better character development, plot, grammar and spelling than yours.

1940s Hygiene

While discussing banned pesticides, my professor said that as a schoolchild in the 40s, he and his classmates were sprayed with DDT.

Yes, I did say DDT.

A truck with DDT arrived at his school after a breakout of head lice, and everyone lined up for a dose of poison that can't even be sprayed on crops today.

He seems remarkably blithe about the whole thing. "Nothing happen to me . . . It was a good experiment."

Yes, this is the same professor who used to wash his hands in benzene.

Citibank, Stop Stalking Me

I am no longer a customer of Citibank. I haven't been a customer for over a year. However, they keep spamming me with Citibank-related emails. Clicking on the "unsubscribe" link is futile, because it takes me to a page asking me to sign into my customer account (which I no longer have) to revise my subscription details.

How's that for a Catch-22?

Hey Citibank, bug off! I'm not coming back to you! I should have figured out you have crappy business practices when I originally opened my account.

I signed up for your free checking account. Later, I noticed you were taking $9.50 of my account each month for service fees. Why the hell should I pay you $114 a year for the privilege of holding my money?

When I called to enquire about the fees, you told me, "You don't have a free checking account. You have the paid account."

No, I have the free checking. I even have a letter from you that says "Congratulations for signing up for a free checking account!" Would you like me to fax it to you?

The CSR kept insisting I signed up for a paid account. Eventually, he referred me to a supervisor who asked, "So would you like to switch to a free account?" and implied I was a flake who changed her mind.

I told him I was not "switching," because I never had the paid account in the first place.

"But it says here you have a paid account."

I should have ran then. But I stayed. And you decided to drive me away.

I got sick of your repeated marketing phone calls while I was a customer. I kept coming home to find messages on my answering machine, or that you left with my family members that basically said, "This is Citibank calling. Call us back and we'll tell you what we want."

Freaked out that I was a victim of identity theft, or my account was overdrawn, each time I'd call you, get transferred, get put on hold and eventually, talk to a thickly-accented CSR who would tell me, "Uh, there's nothing wrong with your account. I don't know why you got a call."

Finally, one day I was home when you rang me. It turns out all this time, you were calling to get me to sign up for stuff I didn't need or want.

Go away.