IT'S TIME TO GO...

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Today, I have made a small list of things that need to go.  They've outstayed their welcome.  You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

I'm a meme.

1. FLO the Progressive Lady.  It's time.  You've made us all laugh, but now you just piss us off.  From that annoying hairdo to the ten pounds of makeup you spackle on to the silly inflection in your voice.  You've done the heavy lifting, now go away -- oh and take the gecko with you.

DIABEEEEETUS!

2. Wilford "DIABEETUS" Brimley.  The fact that most of us thought you were already dead only makes it creepier when we continue to see your face shilling for Liberty Medical.  Please go away.  Please note -- I didn't say die.  I said go away.  Come to think of it, I'll settle for dead inside.

Not anymore!

3.  The Alpine Stair Lift.  "I was living in half my house!"  This advertisement drives me crazy.  Am I saying that disabled people don't have a right to go upstairs?  No.  I just don't want to see your ads anymore.  I don't know how much these things cost, but the best testimonial you can come up with is a man that says, "The Alpine Stair Lift is definitely less expensive than moving."  Guess what?  A lot of things are less expensive than moving.  Sex change operations are less expensive than moving.  

BLLLARRGH!

4. 3D Movies.  Yes, I said it.  They've got to go.  The technology still sucks, the glasses are annoying and they're a distraction.   Stop making 3D movies, stop making old movies 3D and definitely stop selling 3D tvs.  I sat down in front of one and within five minutes I wanted to hurl.  I don't need that kind of 3D action from my television set.

The river is not rising.

5. Phone Books.  Please for the love of god -- stop making them.  No one uses them, they pile up outside of apartment buildings and houses.  Why has this been allowed to continue?  I can't remember the last time I used a phone book to look up a phone number.  I'm pretty sure I was using a payphone at the time and they've since become extinct except for prisons and crack alleys.

I will update this list from time to time.  I encourage others to share their ideas in the comments section. 

WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH JEFF BEZOS' EYE?

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Wonky.

Come on -- we're all thinking it.   Jeff Bezos is the founder, president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Amazon.com.  By all accounts, the man is a genius ten times over.  Still -- the eye.  It bugs me.  There's something going on with that eye and no one ever brings it up. 

Less wonky, but still...

Bezos founded the company in 1994 after making a cross country drive from New York to Seattle, writing up the Amazon business plan while on the way.  Amazing.   Still -- the eye.  CREEPY.

There's glass in them thar hills, er maybe...

Lazy eye?   You decide.

His wikipedia entry does not mention a fluke accident or stroke.  It does however say that he tried to dismantle his crib with a screwdriver when he was just a toddler.

A simple Google research of the phrase JEFF BEZOS WONKY EYE returned a number of articles and web results, but none of them explained the problem with his eye.   There was a vague mention of a "lazy eye" by someone, but that was less than conclusive.  My favorite search result asked...

DOES JEFF BISOS HAVE A GLASS EYE?

We may never know.

THE K-CUP CONSPIRACY

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What exactly is a K-CUP and why are they so damn expensive?  A K-CUP is a small container of ground coffee used by the Keurig Brewing System. It brews a single cup of fresh coffee with little effort and no hassle. It's an amazing little machine. In fact, I have one. I use it all the time.

So what's the big fuss about?  Well, for one -- they're expensive.

A box of these K-CUPS can run you more than an entire large can of ground coffee. They've become all the craze. It seems everywhere you go, you can find different brands of K-CUPS, from Dunkin Donuts to Green Mountain Coffee to everything in between. A box of 24 generic K-CUPS will run you approximately $17.00. That works out to 70 cents a cup!

Maybe you like Dunkin Donuts coffee. Well, they sell a package of 14 K-CUPS for $23.00. That works out to a whopping $1.64 per cup for home brewed coffee. Are you kidding me? A quick look at the Starbucks website shows they have a selection of K-CUPS for sale, but oddly the site doesn't advertise a price. Hmmm. Suspicious.

Further searching on the web revealed the following prices. If you buy in bulk. That's (3) 10 packs for a total of 30 single cups, the price is $49.98. Let's just call that an even $50.00. That works out to be $1.67 per cup of their over-roasted, burnt tasting coffee. Oddly, if you buy their Sumatran blend in a 16 pack, it will run you $20.38 or a modest $1.27 per cup.

You have to admit, this is a license to print money. The fact that Keurig has managed to get Americans to pay coffee house prices for home brewed coffee is astounding to me. Of course, you're probably asking yourself, can you use your own coffee with the Keurig Brewing System?

Well, yes, you can, but that requires you purchase a separate adapter and filter for around $17.95. This is what I use when I make coffee in the morning. The catch, however, is that you use much more coffee per cup that you would using a conventional brewing system.

So, is it worth it?   It is for somebody.

Of course, they forgot the part where you feel like you got violated by a household appliance.

WRONG SOUNDING MUPPETS

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines a Muppet as "Any of a number of humorously grotesque glove puppets."

Despite our long and storied love for Jim Henson's puppet/marionette creations, there is an unspoken niggling that many have felt since the death of Henson in 1990. It now takes a half dozen or so people to voice the Muppets that Jim Henson formerly brought to life. Unfortunately, his most famous creation -- arguably Kermit the Frog -- suffers the most. Kermit does not really sound like Kermit. He sounds like a bad version of Kermit. This alone is troubling enough, but when you add in the others you get what Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane calls WRONG SOUNDING MUPPETS.

LINDSAY FOLLOWS DIRECTIONS. AMAZEMENT TO FOLLOW.

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Unnamed law enforcement sources have been quoted as saying that Lindsay Lohan is finally taking her probation sentence seriously. Why is this news?

It never ceases to amaze me that a person's bad behavior can be so consistently dismal that when they do something normal like follow directions, the world goes apeshit. The "new normal" is a phrase that comes to mind. It's also a way of lowering the bar. If people like Lindsay Lohan and presidential hopeful Rick Perry didn't make a career out of fucking up, then people wouldn't fall all over themselves when they simply don't screw up.

Thirty years ago, people like Lindsay Lohan would have dropped off the map and we would hear about her death in the paper and think. "Hmm. I also wondered what happened to her.."

Instead, we get a blow by blow report on every aspect of their meltdown. It's not because we care about her. We want to see her continue to descend to a tragic death. We want the dirt, the blood and the details. We're waiting anxiously for the report that she went on a bender, crashed a car, killed a pedestrian and overdoses while barricaded in her run down motel room in Azusa.

THE WAR AGAINST X-MAS

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Once again, I have been bombarded with chain emails and messages from people crying about the "War on Christmas." Instead of seeing the use of phrases like Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays as an attempt to be more inclusive, they see it as a full frontal assault on Christ and Christians. "They're taking the Christ out of Christmas!"

This year I received an old chain email telling me that...

"Apparently the White House referred to Christmas Trees as Holiday Trees for the first time this year which prompted CBS presenter, Ben Stein, to present this piece which I would like to share with you. I think it applies just as much to many countries as it does to America."

What follows (in the chain email) is a conglomeration of comments and phrases uttered by Ben Stein over the years. I won't bore you with it, but basically he says, "I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are, Christmas trees."

I have no axe to grind with Ben Stein, but they make it seem like he commented recently about the White House Holiday Tree issue when in fact these quotes are old and completely unrelated to anything.

What bothers me the most about these chain emails is that they don't even bother to check the facts. They just send them out to unsuspecting Christian people that read the headline and get their panties in a bunch. Then my ring wing christian family and friends forward the messages to me like they are Woodward and Bernstein.

Well, here's the truth of it. I checked the official White House Blog. Here is what I found. A headline that reads...

The White House Christmas Tree Arrives!

If you click on the above link, you will find a nice article about the White House CHRISTMAS TREE arriving.

In fact, there's a video, too. It's the first lady receiving the CHRISTMAS TREE.




The irony, of course, is that I wouldn't care if the White House called it a holiday tree. It's just isn't true. Not even a little.

AMANDA KNOX IS GUILTY OF SOMETHING

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Amanda Knox spent her first Thanksgiving home since the overturn of her murder conviction. I think I am one of those people -- of many -- that knows she is guilty of something. Not sure what that is, but when you add up all the circumstantial evidence, it might not add up to murder, but it definitely raises some eyebrows.

There is something cold and calculating in her eyes. Even in this seemingly harmless picture, there is a feeling she is scheming, plotting and it's not a Black Friday sale she's thinking about.

Pat Robertson is an idiot...

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I think the world will be a better place when Pat Robertson strokes out and dies. The following is a collection of Pat Robertson's dumbest quotes.

10. "Lord, give us righteous judges who will not try to legislate and dominate this society. Take control, Lord! We ask for additional vacancies on the court." –Pat Robertson

9. "Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history." –Pat Robertson

8. "I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you, This is not a message of hate -- this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor." –Pat Robertson, on "gay days" at Disneyworld

7. "(T)he feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." –Pat Robertson

6. "I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period." –Pat Robertson

5. "I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected him from your city. And don't wonder why he hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for his help because he might not be there." --Pat Robertson, after the city of Dover, Pennsylvania voted to boot the current school board, which instituted an intelligent design policy that led to a federal trial

4. "God considers this land to be his. You read the Bible and he says 'This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, 'No, this is mine.' ... He was dividing God's land. And I would say, 'Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the E.U., the United Nations, or the United States of America.' God says, 'This land belongs to me. You better leave it alone.'" --Pat Robertson, on why Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a massive stroke

3. "Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up" –Pat Robertson, on nuking the State Department

2. "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with." –Pat Robertson, calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

1. "It may be a blessing in disguise. ... Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. Haitians were originally under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal. Ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other." –Pat Robertson, on the earthquake in Haiti that destroyed the capital and killed tens of thousands of people, Jan. 13, 2010