Category: Opinions
How Straight Men Can Watch New Moon Safely
Yes, you have heard right. Throughout the universe there live a small, but virile, population of heterosexual men who need to watch the Twilight Saga’s latest besmirchment of the classic vampire movie, New Moon. These aren’t the normal “I have to watch it because my girlfriend/wife wants to see it”, either. That is an obvious group of men which have been around for ages, since the first man fell asleep at an opera house, or a Barbra Streisand concert, or a cave drawing exhibition.
Monkey Business
I have never been fond of monkeys. As a matter of fact, I have thought of them as evil creatures ever since my childhood. They share a special place in my psyche with clowns, cats, and carnies. They just scare the piss out of me.
So coming across stories that serve to compound this view never helps matters.
Rest In Peace Already, Would Ya?
Celebrity deaths are a weekly or monthly event, and they seem to have taken on a life of their own. There are the careers of the celebrities in question, and then there are their deaths, which in many cases, are more worthy of a story than their original careers.
Pop culture rumors of celebrity deaths do not help either. For some reason, I seem to remember Ernest Borgnine dying three or four times, only to discover that he is still alive. A couple of years ago, I was not so shocked to learn of the heroin-induced death of Ronnie James Dio. The real shock came a few weeks later when I learned HE was still alive.
Of Life Insurance and Other Imaginary Wealth
I keep seeing these commercials for life insurance in between my viewings of the Patty Duke Show and Mr. Ed on my favorite converter box channel. I never really grasped the need for life insurance. I mean – Yeah, I understand that it would provide cash for people (survivors they are called, as if they were ever in danger of a heart attack that I would suffer) that I would be leaving behind. The problem there is that I need every penny to pay bills NOW. Besides, it just seems obscene to me to be socking away money for a particular moment in time wherein I would never be able to spend it – Ever! AFLAC, I get. That provides some money for real expenses like bills, groceries, cigarettes – you know – real things that are needed in daily life if, for some reason, I were unable to drag my miserable shape into the toy company and tap out a few package designs for any extended period of time.
Gawd Bloimy: A Course In Linguistics
In a time where the governments and the general public are hot on the heels of the banking corporations, trying to instill more transparency into their dealings, it seems one ATM machine manufacturer has other ideas.
Some bright spark in the marketing department of ATM suppliers, ‘Bank Machine,’ has hit upon the concept of offering Cockney Rhyming Slang as the language of choice for its users.
Quantity Vs. Quality
There are so many fast food restaurants nowadays that I imagine the competition for the American gullet is quite competitive. For some reason, however, I have noticed an awful lot of emphasis being placed on the sheer mass of the food product.
Granted, when producing a commercial, I am sure that the producers want to make certain that the product brand and size all lodge themselves into the minds of the viewing public. Burger King has managed to make a lot of clever, entertaining commercials, and they are memorable, without advertising that their food comes in some sort of bucket or is a whole “two pounds” of anything, although the name “Whopper” would tend to focus on the size, but since the term has been around for nearly forty years now, I will cut BK some slack. The Whopper and Whopper Junior father and son characters are hilarious, and that spot where they CG’d in the Burger King over some 70′s football game footage making that long arduous touchdown in slow motion was fantastic.
Dental Case
Bad teeth run in my family – I’ll just come right out and say it. I have to, anyway, as it is the basis for this column. After years of abuse by biting hard candy, stripping wire, opening paint tubes, and constantly passing chocolate and soda over them, I have been left with only six real teeth in my head. They’re all in the front on the bottom, making me look rather like a piranha fish when my plate and partial aren’t in. I can also make that scrunched-up “bitter beer face” when my teeth are out as my bottom jaw can close quite a bit farther than it could when teeth occupied that space. This is quite effective when I am playing the banjo, which takes me back to when my dentist first inquired about my plans for them.
Easier Than a Richmond Tobacco Party
I try not to get too political when I write my occasional column here at The Owl. I do enough yelling at nazis and pea-brained right wing clowns on Youtube, but I have been forced to talk about a subject that has over the years become very political – tobacco.
I can remember sneaking my first cigarette. I grabbed one of my parents’ Merit Ultra Lights, went up to my bedroom and lit it up. I coughed my lungs out, got dizzy and slightly nauseous, and I seriously cannot tell you the point where I went from that to “I need a cigarette”, but nonetheless – it happened, and now I have joined the ranks of so many other smokers in this country, including our current president.
Thirsty Work
This week the British Government, led by ‘Old Scrotum-Face’ Gordon Brown, announced one of the most offensive and ill thought out so called ‘policies’ of his rocky and tenuous career as Prime Minister.
The proposed plan has managed to target two of the most vulnerable (and therefore incapable of answering back)groups in our society…at the same time:
alcoholics on State benefit.
Hooray for Insurance
We have all grown accustom to getting the hideous things in the mail, but whenever I am home and I hear the footsteps on my front porch and the metal lid of my mailbox slamming shut it still curdles my milk.
I had the unfortunate experience of being involved in an accident back in October while I was driving back to work from the hospital where I had paid on a bill I had there. I stopped at a stop sign, proceeded because I thought it was clear, but hey – that’s why they call them accidents, right?
Anyway, I apparently blacked out briefly and when I came to there was a whole host of people standing around my car, asking me my name, the president’s name, what two times six was, to recite the alphabet, you name it. I counted two fire trucks, an ambulance, and four squad cars! My first reaction was “my God-How much is THIS going to cost me now”? Not, “Do I have a detached retina, or will I suffer any brain damage or blindness”, etc…
