New bank idea

With all of the renewed interest in religion from the possibility of a "Mosque" being placed 2 blocks from the remains of the Twin Towers I figured now would be a good time to cash in. Specifically I would be cashing in with my new bank called Jesus Saves National Bank.



I mean really can this idea go wrong. It combines the things people in this country have an unhealthy love for, money and religion. Not only do we promote Jesus but we promote saving which may help with all the overspending in this country. Hell we could even hold church services on the premise on Sundays since banks are never open on those days. Honestly we are getting a 2 for one here and utilizing the space to the maximum use. Who wouldn't want to have church service in a bank. I could see it now, Bill Gates sitting side by side with Steve Jobs talking about their love of religion and money.

The checking accounts could have 3 different tiers, The Son, The Father, and The Holy Ghost. The Son could be that free liberty account that all the banks have that just require at least $10 in it. The Father could be the account with like .5% interest attached to it and require at least $1000 dollars. The Holy Ghost could get the high end treatment of requiring $10,000 in it at all times and give CD rates for savings on it.

And with all the controversy over this "Mosque" we could just place this starter project 1 block away from the remnants of the Twin Towers. That will be sure to piss those Muslims off because we one upped their asses. Who's the winner now......America cause we are bat shit insane so suck on that!

Crazy people at the bars in Des Moines

So I decided to go on vacation in Des Moines so I could see a Phoenix concert. The concert was amazing, but the after concert bar fun was a bit odd to say the least.

After the concert I met up with my friends and we went to the bar on the second floor of the building we were in. Things were going great and it was quiet in there to begin with and I started off with a couple of drinks. Unfortunately my friends had to drive back to the Quad Cities that night so they left me to hang out and relax for a while. I shuffled my way up to the bar and ordered another Captain and coke and watched some TV. About 15 minutes after I sat down though some guy walks in and buys a couple of packs of smokes from the bartender and then orders a couple of shots and introduces himself to me. He hands me a shot, which is just weird for me since I wasn't expecting to talk to much of anyone while there. He ends up asking me a few questions and we start talking about random junk. It comes up that I know some Japanese so I end up teaching him how to say shut up in Japanese. He also asks about my hat. I mention that it is 12 years old and he asks if he can see my hat. He then proceeds to sniff the inside of my hat and asks if I have washed it in the 12 years I have owned it. This is a really creepy question to say the least. At this point I have to start figuring out a way out of this situation because what normal person goes around sniffing peoples hats. To make matters worse he asks if I like to party........Yea umm no thanks I think I can skip out on hanging with super creepy guy and his druggy friends. I believe this is how various horror films start and I wasn't planning on dealing with crazy people. Finally he heads on out and I am now back in my peaceful situation listening to the music in the bar and enjoying another Captain and coke.

Next on the list of odd people in a bar to meet was the really really drunk guy. His name was Nate and his slurring was so bad that I could not understand hardly a word he said. To top it off he was just carrying around a pitcher of beer. Apparently he also wanted to be my new friend. After the last run in with creepy dude #1 I was not going to be having any of this and told him I had to go. I quickly went to go see if it was fine to leave but it was now pouring outside and this was not going to happen because walking 5 blocks with sheets of rain coming down is less pleasant then being in a room with creepy drunk guy. So I sat back down and got a Bud Light and listened to some more music.

Nate unfortunately found a new victim to cling to. Her name was Brittany and she had a look of distress and I had the knowledge of this being super bad because this guy wasn't giving up on her. So I made my move to go sit next to her and talk to her asking if she needed help with good old Nate. There was an emphatic yes and I decided to start up a conversation with her to let Nate know she was distracted. This did not stop Nate from trying to work his mojo though. She was putting up with him for the time being though because she was finishing off his pitcher of beer for him. I ended up finding out she told her friends she didn't even want to go to the bar she was at, but they drug her there anyways.Then they ditched her to deal with Nate. Obviously some awesome friends. So I ended up hanging out and deflecting Nate from her for about an hour till the bar closed.

Nate was way out of it at this point and had no clue what was going on. He ended up grabbing some guys drink off the bar and started to drink it, which prompted the guy to come over and confront Nate. At this point we tried to get information from Nate about how he was getting home and how he got there. He mumbled something about a bike so we asked if it was a motorcycle or a bike. He had no clue what we were talking about though and kept asking if Brittany wanted to go home with him. Finally one of the owners comes over and lets us know he was taking Nate out and putting him in a cab. I had a feeling though he was just throwing him out. The other guy that confronted Nate yells at him that he had better put the guy in cab and not just tossed him out. He said that he had. I highly doubted that. I head on out with Brittany and we say our goodbyes at the door and I just end up hanging out with some Phoenix fans who were waiting for them to come out of the bars.

I end up talking to some of the guys who moved all of the bands stuff to the trailer attached to the back of the bus. They were just pissed that there were no drugs around town at the time. I guess I should have introduced them to the creepy guy I had met earlier because he must have had some. These guys were pretty cool though. Phoenix finally came out and all but the drummer ignored the people hanging outside waiting for them. He signed a couple things for people and chatted for a little bit while the rest of the band head to the bus. He ended up being a pretty nice guy overall. Finally I decide its time to head to my friends place where I am crashing.

I get there and she gave me a house key to get in. It must have been a brand new key because it was not turning in the lock. I ended up spending 10 minutes outside the door and even left a message that I would probably be crashing in my car cause the key didn't work. Finally I get the key to turn and manage to get in at 2:30 in the morning. What a crazy night.

3 wheeled motorbike?

Lately I have been seeing this guy riding around town on a motorbike but it has 3 wheels. 2 in the front and 1 in the back, sort of like a reversed big wheel. Every time I see this monstrosity of a bike all I can do is snicker to myself because I am sure he thinks he looks bad ass on this thing.

The bike itself is yellow with flames coming off the front of it and it's ridden by a 50 year old man. He even likes to ride around like he is a biker with the whole sleeves cut off his t-shirt and sometimes with the bandanna and the aviator shades. This is the most ridiculous site because how can one look bad ass when they are riding a reversed big wheel.

I honestly think he should just give it up and put one of those children's bike horns on the front with streamers off the handles. That would be a ton more appropriate then the stuff he wears and the flames on the bike. Hell a pocket protector would probably be more of his style with a bike like that. He will never be as hard core as the guys that ride real motorcycles and he should probably start realizing that fact now rather then later.

Another stupid vehicle that I saw today on my way to Whitey's for some ice cream was a souped up 4 wheeler at a vehicle shop. The 4 wheeler had 20 inch rims on it. Who the hell puts 20 inch car rims on a 4 wheeler? Are they just stupid as hell? Do you plan on rolling around town on your pimped out 4 wheeler trolling for women? I honestly think the only thing that is going to happen is that people are going to laugh at you for putting 20 inch rims on a 4 wheeler. I think doing something stupid like that would rank right up there with lowering the suspension on a Yugo and pimping it out. Maybe next we could pimp a Gremlin out with a $10,000 dollar speaker system and call it a day.

Stop chewing on food while talking on the phone.

I was going to post a serious post today, but my biggest pet peeve reared its ugly head today again at work. People eating while talking to you on the phone. Its pretty much like shitting while you are the phone but noisier and much more rude. I mean really how hard is it to down the god damn bag of potato chips for 5 minutes while you tell me what you want in your ad. Will you wither away and die if you don't constantly eat every waking moment of your life? If that is the case then type me an email because I don't want to listen to you chew your cud while you talk about how you want to sell your dog skippy.

Hell your dog is more sophisticated then you are. Do you ever see your pet dog bark at you with half a t-bone sticking out of its mouth? Personally I have never seen my dog do that. You know what she does? She puts the god damn bone down then barks. Maybe you should follow your dogs lead.

Maybe this how the country is becoming so obese is that we have rearranged our prorities of chewing on random shit over being polite. Fuck if you put down the side of ribs while on the phone you might actually have time to digest some stuff and become full and maybe not want to eat anymore. Yea I seriously don't want to listen to you masticate while on the phone with me. It pisses me off and then I have to write shit like this because of your narcissistic thought process of me, my fat ass, my Ruffles, my Diet Coke, and my ad.

Yea I know it may be lunch time at the office, but it doesn't mean you have to share it with me. I just want to write down the phone numbers of all these people that pull this shit and then go get a big bowl of cereal and start chomping away and call them back. Then when they get all pissed off because I am eating food in their ear then I can say, "Yea bitch now you know how it feels." and then I would hang up the phone. Or maybe whenever someone calls me while they are eating I can just turn a recording of someone eating food in the background and turn it way up and when they ask about it I can tell them, "Oh it must be the echo from your phone." Probably a great way to make them feel like a jackass.

So seriously if you are an eater while on the phone, you can just fuck off, seriously. Put the Hagen Daz down and have a conversation or get the fuck off the phone.

Our future leader or how it can take 40 minutes to set up a gmail account

Lunch today was a special case of dealing with the most special of special education students and saving my friend from having to deal with him. I walked in to my friend helping one of the regulars, a normal looking kid, at the LAN center I work at set up an email account. He was setting up this account as a gmail account which is a pretty simple process for most people taking mere minutes of time if you have a brain larger then the size of a walnut. Unfortunately this was not the case for our intrepid 14 year old hero of this story.

When I walked in we had already arrived to the setup your email page and he had gotten as far as putting his name in the top 2 fields. According to my friend getting to this point had already taken 17 minutes of time. The reason for this is that it had taken him 7 minutes to type in the words www.gmail.com. I believe my cat could get that typed into the web address field faster by randomly mashing letters on the keyboard until it got it right. Of course this would be after it took a 4 minute nap on the keyboard during this process. The next 10 minutes of putting his name in was also a daunting task for him. Apparently his memory of who he was had flown off into space and he had to be fired via a rocket to gather the letters and bring them back to earth to place them into the fields so that gmail could know who he was.

Now after this whole process is where I show up with my KFC in hand so that I may have a peaceful lunch watching my buddy shoot some stuff with Terrans on Starcraft 2. Instead I walk into Apocalypse Braincells, a place where neurons have been nuked by stupidity. At this point he is stuck on creating an email handle and asks us what that means. I tell him that he needs to create an email address that he would like to use. The first one he made was declined because it was already in use and he had to ask what does he do now, not realizing the obvious answer is to try another email address. I had to point this obvious fact out at this time and also point out that the text on the screen tells him exactly what to do in these situations, a fact that is constantly lost on him through the entire process. Finally we arrive at a suitable email address that he can use.

Next comes time to create a password, which he asks how to do that, again not reading the words on the screen telling him to make a password with 8 or more characters. I ask him to read what it says on the screen. He repeats what it says and then with a serious look asks if the password has to be 8 characters or can it be 1 character. I had to explain to him that really 8 characters long really does mean 8 characters long. This explanation causes him to pause for a couple minutes while he thinks and then asks what characters it should be. I told him he should come up with a password that is personal to him and he again asks well what characters should I use. Finally I realized what he was getting at by looking down at the comic book he had next to him at the computer. In his mind 8 characters meant that he had to come up with 8 different comic book or video game characters to make his password. This is where face meets palm Captain Picard style. I had to explain to him that a character was like a letter/number/symbol on the keyboard. This causes me to think that really this kid is just a 99 year old in a 14 year old body, like maybe aliens swapped his brain with Old man Gary down the road or something. I mean don't they teach this shit in computer basics in grade school these days?

Finally we get past the password stage after 8 minutes of painful explanations and its off for the secret question round. Fortunately this section was multiple choice, but then requires an answer to this question. He chose the question of what is your mothers phone number. He looks at me dead serious when he is typing and asks if he needs to put spaces in the phone number. At this point I am getting a bit annoyed and ask him if he has seen phone numbers in a phone book and how those look. His response is yes they have dashes in them. I of course had to inform him then he should make his phone number look exactly like those. His response was "Oh yea". At least this section only took 4 minutes of excruciating pain to complete.

Finally we get to the final section of birthday. Now this is normally a simple thing for most people because we tend to know the month, day, and year we are born. His first response to this question was how do I put in my birthday? Me: "Did you read the instructions?" Him: "Oh"..........."so how do I put in my birthday?" Me: "You see how they have the date underneath the field in the example.....just like that" Him: "Oh ok. What number is the month for December?" REALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF!!!!!!!!!!! ARE YOU RETARDED KID??? WERE YOU EATING PAINT CHIPS BEFORE YOU GOT HERE? DID YOUR MOTHER THROW YOU IN A POOL FULL OF ASBESTOS WHEN YOU WERE A BABY? Shit I know they teach that shit in kindergarten or 1st grade or something simple like that. At this point I couldn't believe he wasn't walking around with a white helmet on. Of course my friend pipes up with the exasperated "12". Now if this was the only question he asked about his birthday we might be ok, but nope Einstein had more questions ABOUT HIS OWN BIRTHDAY! The example under the picture looks like this "01/01/80". What he ended up typing was "12/7/95". We promptly tell him he needs to add a 0 in front of the 7. The new birthday then looked like this "120/7/95". No we go 0 in front of the 7 to look like the example. We then get to see "1207/95". No you need the slash. Finally we get this right and we have "12/07/95". Sadly the whole birthday debacle was not over. He proceeds to ask "So I am 14 is 95 right". I am so annoyed at this point I blurt out, "I don't know when you were born, you and your mother know that information not me and seriously you don't know when you were born? Yes 95 is right right." After these 8 painful minutes of the birthday debacle I wanted to punt kittens and puppies, but not newborns because I don't need any other retarded children coming into the LAN center to make my day this painful.

If only it ended there. He has to put in the security word. At this point I am frothing at the mouth and may feast on this kids soul like a starving demon. Me and my buddy just end up reading it to him. He types it in very slowly while we repeat the letters 4 times for him. We get him finally to press the accept terms and conditions button and it seems he typed in 2 different passwords when it asked him to re enter the password. We told him he has to type the same password 2 times in the fields. He gets through this part a bit less painfully because I think he realizes we may actually kill him if he takes another 7 minutes to do this.

Finally the button is pressed and its time to verify he is a real person because gmail hates people. We have to verify his account by phone and give him the phone number to type into the field so that they can call him and give him a code to put in to finish the setup. My friend grabs the phone and gives him the numbers which he of course has to respond with "with spaces?" I say "do the instructions show spaces?" Him: "No" Me: "Then whats the answer?" Him: "No spaces." Yea about fucking time genius, Einstein ain't got nothing on you. Finally the phone rings with gmail giving him the code and my friend pushes the answer button and gives the phone over and the kid looks at the phone and hangs it up. WTF? Really are you that stupid that we just went through all of this so you can look at the phone and hang it up? He then states "I don't hear anything, is there supposed to be something, I pressed talk." My friend: "No you just hung up the phone, now press the button that says reverify." Him "What button?" Me and Friend "The big blue button that says reverify....No not that one, the big blue one. NO! THE BIG BLUE BUTTON." Apparently all the other buttons on the page looked more enticing the really big fucking BLUE BUTTON. We get him to finally press it and we enter in the phone number again. This time my friend keeps the phone and answers it, while I have to tell the kid he needs to type the numbers I say into the field. My friend starts giving the numbers and the kid is just staring at us like we are speaking Swahili to him. I look at him and go, "You need to type these numbers in." Him: "Oh." Me: "So start typing them please.....1 2 0 3 6." Him: "what?" Me: "1.......2.......0........3......6. Type it in. 1........2........0.....3......6" Him: "What?" At this point I gave up and just typed it in because this was going to be another game of bash the seal with the baseball bat....its really not fun for any party involved.

Yay email account created.....40 minutes after the start of wanting to create one. Sadly when the email account popped up he goes "What's this?" *Sigh* "Its your email account." Him: "Well where does it say my email account name?" Friend: "At the top of the page." Him with cursor in the middle of the page "Here?" Friend: "No at the top (points finger to the top where it is)" Him pointing mouse to another random spot on the page: "Here?" Both of us now: "NO at the top (both pointing to it). Now write it down and the password you used." Him: "Hey look I found a piece of paper." Congrats you moved up the chain primitive primate. Finally he writes it down and his password and gets up and informs us that its time to go make his Xbox live account at home.

We then both go "Ok cya later." knowing what is in store for his poor mother. Unfortunately it seems he was also going to bring his older brother into the equation since he goes "If I have any problems I will just ask my older brother since he has an xbox account." At this point we chuckle a bit and feel a ton of relief knowing that he shouldn't be bothering us anymore that day.

All I can say about this story is that the movie Idiocracy is no longer seeming like such a far off future for the human race if this is the examples we have in the youth of today.

It not your fault for packing on that extra weight.

So we all know that Earth spins like a top and rotates around the sun. We also know about global warming and the cold seasons feeling shorter for most of us. I figure that this is probably due to an increased rotation around the sun. For us science geeks and well most everyone you know that if you spin stuff around really fast it will try to get fatter in the middle to put in easy terms. Now you are probably thinking, well how does this deal with my weight issues.

The first theory is that the Earth is speeding up on its trip around the sun slowly. This obviously means gravity is going to want to push things to our wastes just a bit easier. Which also brings about our great straight to the hips argument because that is where everything is going to go. Included in this phenomena is man boobs and women's sagging boobs as we age. I am here to say its not your fault that these things happen its all that rotation around the sun that is fault. Trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, pure lard, ya that is all bullshit its the planet's fault not yours. Seriously don't believe the hype from these crazy nutritionist who claim that whole grains will fix your weight problem or that some crazy atkins diet will pull through for you.

As you can see its quite obvious the world is spinning out of control and squishing our bodies into the roundness it so desires. Maybe Earth got a peak into the bible and starting thinking hey humans were made in God's image, well fuck that if I make em as round as I am then they can start worshiping me because they would look just like me. This is most likely the real reason for the emergence of our rotund friends. Glandular problems that cause obesity are just Earth using other methods other then rotating really fast to cause a change in image to look like it.

Its obvious now that one thinks about it that we may be fighting a losing battle, but I may have a solution to our problem. Since the Earth itself rotates in an Eastward direction we need to counteract this for our own sake. We all don't want to look like mini planets. My proposal is that when jogging we all must jog towards the East to counteract the planets rotation and help our friends and ourselves from the change in appearance to planetary objects. By running East in mass groups we will hopefully force the world to slow down enough so that its rotation slows down and might stop some of the momentum around the sun as well. We should plan these days out in advance so that we could get the maximum slow down potential. I am thinking every other day for at least an hour. I also want to point out we should be bringing a compass to these events so that we can make sure we are heading east. We wouldn't want someone to get confused and head West and screw the whole project up.

I feel only by doing this will we be saved from looking like the planet and its attempt to take over organized religion. Think about yourself and think about your friends and you will see this may be the only hope we have.

Odd Classified ads I take

So for those who know me and read this blog you know I work for a newspaper taking classified ads from people all day long. Every now and then you get the crazy ads that you just wonder what the hell is going on. I have had a number of ads that just seem to stack up over time where I go what the hell was this person thinking.

Just today for example I took an ad from a lady for a lost turtle. I mean I have seen turtles, they aren't super fast and are fairly lazy. I mean you would need to not pay attention to the turtle for about 2 years for it to get away. What astounded me the most was that this was not the first time that she has lost this turtle. This was actually the second time in 4 years she has lost it. I guess the first time she found it and put it back into its spot and then must have forgotten to pay attention to it other then to feed it for another 4 years and it managed to shuffle away again. As one of the other ad reps said about turtles though which made me laugh was that "They're slow, but they're crafty." I guess this is how the concept of ninja turtle must have come about. Some person lost their pet turtle and found it hanging out with a couple of other turtles and a rat. They started thinking damn turtles are crafty they must have learned it from this rat.......OMG what if turtles are actually ninjas. And that is how the ninja turtles came about.

Another great ad I received the other day was full of misspellings and just made my day. The ad read exactly like this "1 mail cat 8 years old and has raibey shot and has been fixt and 1 F.M. cat 7 years old and is not fixt." This just made me laugh so hard when I got to thinking about this guy giving away these 2 awesome cats. I mean 1 works for the damn post office. Who wouldn't want a cat to bring them their mail. The other works for the radio station and could probably play all your favorite songs for you when you would like. With these 2 cats I would never have to check my mail again and always hear the best music. These 2 cats would be an unstoppable force of awesome.

Another one of my favorite ads is an ad for a skill saw that was sent to me. The ad read "Skilsaw, circular 5 1/2" blade used once by unhandy woman, $50." This just cracked me up. You could always take this 2 ways.....the one time she used it she lost her hand or she was just really inept with this tool. 1 is kind of gruesome and the other is just so funny because she is so afraid of it that she has to sell it.

Of course throughout the day we get tons of people who don't listen to a word we say when we answer the phone about being the classified department and that they want to cancel their paper or put it on hold, which is followed by us telling them we don't do that and transferring them. We also get a great caller who we call the laughing lady because she regularly calls and laughs while she tells us all about how much she hates the articles we run in our paper. Most of the time is about a picture of an African American or Cuban or about us calling this a recession. Apparently she is really racist, but finds it funny. Fortunately we have learned how to cut her off and send her downstairs to deal with customer service.

So pretty much this is the silly things I get to deal with on a regular basis.