Category: Observation

Observation

TV Challenge

The wife and I were watching some TeeVee last night when she challenged me to find something good to watch that wasn’t a) reality tv or b) a home improvement show. I know that technically a home improvement show is reality tv, but the home improvement format has been around long before Survivor® and it’s ilk reared their demon heads, so we consider it a distinct tv flavor.

We had just finished watching the Amazing Race and had enjoyed that show, so don’t think that we consider reality tv unwatchable. The wife just wanted to challenge me. I proceeded to click around looking for a good show to watch. I clicked and I clicked, but every single show I landed on fit into the above 2 categories. Every single one. It was hilarious. There is nothing on television these days except reality tv or home improvement shows.

I quickly gave up. I landed on the following show and we watched the whole damn thing (please help us).

Dog the Bounty Hunter

A Simple Request

Dear EnormoCorp®,

When I call your customer support number and your automated phone system asks me to enter some information with my keypad, will you do me a favor and ACTUALLY USE THAT INFORMATION?!!!!

There is nothing worse than entering the number, screwing something up, entering it again, then going on hold for a few minutes only to have a customer rep come on and ask for that same information. Didn’t I just give you that?

Can I get a WTF, internets?

Bad Day

What is it with December 26th? On that date in 2003, Bam, Iran had a major earthquake, killing 43,300 people and leaving 90,000 people homeless. And then one year later the Indian Ocean earthquake and subsequent tsunamis kill more than 160,000 people.

I’m going to spend next December 26th under my bed, wearing a football helmet and hazmat suit.

Baby Shower Drunks

The wife and I had a busy, but fun weekend hosting a baby shower for our friends Johnny and Darolyn. It wasn’t a traditional baby shower, since we had a keg. I guess something about an impending birth makes people really excited (and thirsty for beer).

It inspired me to write a haiku:

baby shower drunks
decide to talk politics
later feel stupid

SUV – NOT Safer

I read this article a couple of months ago in the New Yorker and was happy to find that it was online, so I could share it with those I love, i.e. You. (awww)

Anyway, it’s a really interesting article about the false security of driving an SUV. People say they drive these behemoths because they feel safer in them. Well, guess what, they’re not.

In a thirty-five-m.p.h. crash test, for instance, the driver of a Cadillac Escalade – the G.M. counterpart to the Lincoln Navigator – has a sixteen-per-cent chance of a life-threatening head injury, a twenty-per-cent chance of a life-threatening chest injury, and a thirty-five-per-cent chance of a leg injury. The same numbers in a Ford Windstar minivan – a vehicle engineered from the ground up, as opposed to simply being bolted onto a pickup-truck frame – are, respectively, two per cent, four per cent, and one per cent.

Read the article

My Car

How come my car’s instrument panel lights up with a cute icon representing the washer fluid and beeps constantly indicating I should refill said fluid while neglecting to tell me that my right brake light is out? This car’s priorities are definitely way out of whack.

Life is Hard

This has to be the saddest story I’ve read in a long time. The pictures alone are just heartbreaking.

I don’t appreciate what I have some times. You can argue that this girl squandered what little she did have, but she certainly got a pretty raw deal. I can’t really blame her for getting into the whole drug scene. She definitely has some pain to deal with. You can argue that her brothers had the same deal and they turned out fine, but (and this is crucial) apparently they weren’t sexually abused by the stepfather. You add that on top of an already depressing situation and you get scenarios like this.

I hope she makes it, but have little hope that she will.