Posts tagged: Humor

My Best Worst Website Ideas

By , August 24, 2011

All the talk of late has been speculation as to whether another tech bubble is in the works. If so, there are no doubt dozens of venture capitalists running amok, eager to throw money at anyone with an idea for a website. Since I’m not the techie type, I’ll never get my hands on any of that money, but here are some ideas I’ve had of late for terrible web pages. I hereby donate them to anyone who wants them– go ahead and get rich with ’em if you can. It’s on me.

1. Bad Dating Site– Are you and your significant other constantly fighting? Beating one another? Cheating? This is the site for you! Monitor just how bad it is using our advanced in-site metrics. Share your lack of progress towards happiness with your friends using graphs and counters on your profile page. Proudly display “THIS RELATIONSHIP HAS GONE XXX DAYS WITHOUT AN INFIDELITY” and watch as the number grows each day, or resets to zero when you finally lose the will to resist your secretary’s advances.

2. Fiendbook– Are you embarrassed by your profile pic on the local law enforcement agency’s web page? Imagine Megan’s Law, but with social networking functionality! Interact with other criminals to boost your sphere of influence, and garner new partners-in-crime at the same time. Maybe you’re planning a bank heist and need a getaway driver. A simple search on our page is all you need. Or are you looking for the scoop on potential victims? Which local child is most prone to fall for the “lost puppy” scam, and which will eagerly hop into a windowless van if candy is promised? What area widow is poised to part with her former husband’s vast fortune? Does the owner of that corner market keep a gun behind the register, or can you waltz in with impunity and rob the joint? At last, a site that has the answers you seek.

3. Geolocation for Drug Dealers– If you sell illegal drugs, or merely use them, you will be interested in what we are offering. No longer will you have to stand for hours on the corner peddling heroin to junkies craving crack. Likewise, the days of being forced to smoke angel dust because you couldn’t locate the LSD you sought are over. Dealers can check in using our app on any GPS-enabled mobile phone and list what they have to offer. Users then know exactly where to go for what they need. It’s a win-win. As a built-in security feature, you have to answer the question “are you a police officer?” with a “no” before being allowed to log in.

4. Rate-A-Hooker– We borrowed some functionality from the above drug dealer app to enable prostitutes to check in at the street corner of their choice, but the real winner here is the John. Thanks to crowdsourcing, you no longer have to wonder “how much?” or “is she any good?” That’s right, once you’ve used her, you the user can rate and review her. Was she a five-star experience, or did her service seem lacking? What are her normal working hours? Does she have any diseases? No more guesswork for you, and no more disappointing “dates.” Special log-in section for pimps allows them to offer daily deals, group rates, or whatever specials they’re running, as well as track their hoes and make sure they’re out there earning that money.

5. Puppies2you.com– Everyone loves a puppy! But what’s the one problem with a puppy? That’s right, it grows up to be a dog. No one wants a dog! Puppies are so cute and funny and tiny and fluffy and omg they are just the best. Dogs are just kind of there. Worse, there are so many kinds of dogs, who wants to be stuck with just one breed for a decade or more? Fear not, for puppies2you.com is here to make everything better. Once a user signs up for our service, an adorable puppy is delivered to his or her door. A month later, we return with a new puppy of a different breed, selected by the user, to replace the old puppy. The returned puppy is taken out to our custom-built van, euthanized, and chopped into the new puppy’s first meal. That’s right, we recycle the old, unwanted puppy. We’re a green business! Everyone wins with puppies2you.com!

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Dateline – Las Vegas

By , August 29, 2010

(I wrote this last month while in Las Vegas, but never got around to posting it until now.)

Every time I visit Las Vegas I feel disappointed in the human race. Of all American cities, Las Vegas is the one that offers the closest to an “anything goes” existence, so this is apparently what humans create when allowed to do anything they wish. :(

Bad Bets

This town is full of slot machines– everywhere you go you find them. I can understand the fun of inserting a few coins so as to watch the bright lights and hear the fun noises, but the likelihood of winning a substantial amount of money is on par with having one’s leg bit off by a shark while simultaneously being struck by lightning. In fact, that is probably more likely to happen than a slot machine jackpot, yet there is never a shortage of slot players. People pour millions, if not billions, of dollars into the things every year, forever thinking they are on the fast-track to wealth.

All Boobs, All the Time

At least for females, the only requirement for being hired to work anywhere in Las Vegas seems to be “big boobs.” Everywhere you turn, there are women old and young, fat and skinny, ugly and pretty, wearing the standard-issue pushup bra and hot pants uniform of whatever casino you happen to be in at the time. They scatter these employees everywhere; one girl’s job is apparently to sit on the bartop and look cute, and another is paid to dance in front of a miniature stripper pole behind some blackjack tables. Las Vegas amplifies every bad aspect of mankind.

You Can’t Beat Arithmetic

Or can you? I’ve been splitting my time between the poker tables and the craps tables. Normally poker is where I win most of my money. Two days into this trip, I have won a satanic $666 playing craps, and merely $304 playing poker. One should not be able to win at craps, right? The mathematical odds are against it, or at least I think they are. I play a very conservative strategy, but still– human vs. math, math usually wins. And speaking of which,

We Aren’t Teaching Our Kids Math Anymore

For all the free and cheap conveniences one can find in Las Vegas, wireless internet is not one of them. The last thing a casino wants are its guests holed up in their rooms, online. They want us at the slot machines and gaming tables, so wireless internet is sold in 24-hour blocks for $8.99. I don’t mind a week without wifi, but I did have to send a few emails to clients, as well as post this blog, so I went in search of a more affordable option than what my hotel had to offer.

I told the young girl at the front desk that I only needed about an hour to an hour and a half online, so $8.99 for 24 hours would be overkill, and asked if she knew a cafe or other nearby place where I could find free or cheap wifi. She bit her lip and scrunched up her eyes, spent a moment deep in concentration, then her face lit up and she proudly gestured towards a computer in the lobby. “You can buy 90 minutes on that one” she explained, “and it only costs $5 for each 20 minutes you use it.” She was so obviously delighted with her cleverness that I didn’t have the heart to press the matter any further.

Arithmetical illiteracy apparently is not limited to front desk clerks in this town. I saw a sign advertising the “World’s Biggest 64 oz. Beer.”

Coffee, the Mysterious Beverage

I ordered coffee with my lunch. The cashier took my order, then turned to her manager in the back and asked her, “how do you make coffee?” The manager came up front and together they tried to puzzle out the methodology behind brewing a pot of coffee. They poked at the long-dormant machine, hoping it might spring to life on its own. I was only paying partial attention to them, but snapped to attention at the point I saw the cashier using paper towels in lieu of a coffee filter.

“You don’t get much call for coffee here, do you?” I asked the cashier.

“Not really.” She replied, still layering paper towels into the coffee machine.

“I’ll switch to Coke.”

“Thanks.”

(And there you have it, my belated report from sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. For those keeping score at home, the dice continued to defy the odds and I left with $952 in craps winnings, on top of what I won at poker. dub tee eff?)

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Tweetin’

By , October 7, 2009

So I have a Twitter. I update it rarely, but there it is. The point of this blog, however, is not to advertise my Twitter. Instead it is to express wonder at someone else’s Twitter. Looks kinda’ familiar, doesn’t it?

What the hell?

That’s my name, photograph, and city. But it isn’t me! Worse, that person is far better at updating, or “tweeting,” than I am. Look at all the interesting things he (she?) has to share! Note also that this peasprout has way more followers than me.

It is with some chagrin that I must admit– my impostor is doing a better job of being me than I am.

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Crazier Than a Bag of &#^@ Angel Dust

By , January 16, 2009

Tonight I went to the movies, and saw an entertaining and powerful, film. It tells the story of a man who started with nothing, but went on to became a huge figure in his community, and then the world. He achieved great fame seemingly overnight, and did his part to change the world, before he was tragically gunned down. It reminded me of another such film I saw last month– Milk. I suppose tonight’s film could perhaps be called Chocolate Milk, but instead it is called Notorious, and tells the story of Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. Notorious B.I.G., the greatest rapper of all-time. I saw it in South Central Los Angeles, hardly a place you’d expect to extol the praises of an East Coast hip hop legend, but it played to a packed house.

Peace out, Biggie. The world still misses you.

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Another Wild Saturday Night

By , July 2, 2005

My job usually keeps me busy on Saturday nights. For example, later tonight I’m putting on a casino party in San Francisco. As it happened, last weekend I had Saturday night off. I was spending it eating pie with two of my nephews when the phone rang at around 10:00 PM. It was Alice, a woman who used to work with my mother. She told me to turn on C-SPAN because they were showing my older brother giving some sort of speech. I dutifully trudged into the other room and turned on the television set. Sure enough, as promised, there he was; wearing a silly robe no less. It was a re-broadcast of the commencement address he gave for Seton Hall’s graduation this year. A moment later, the phone rang again. It was Ronzie, another family friend. “Your brother is on C-SPAN!” she shouted at me. No sooner did I hang up than the phone again rang– yet another friend reporting to me that they were watching my brother on C-SPAN.

I couldn’t help but wonder why all these people were watching C-SPAN in the first place. I realize that “eating pie” is not exactly a night on the town, but hey, I’m just not used to having a free Saturday night. Why does the rest of the free world seem to be home watching C-SPAN? Am I missing out? Is the C-SPAN Saturday night line-up must-see TV? Isn’t it normally a rerun of the Assistant Secretary of the House Subcommittee on Corrugated Piping giving a speech about ditch-digging to an empty room? I have clearly missed a major shift in the viewing habits of the American public.

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Love Songs

By , June 13, 2005

You know how when you break up or fall in love, or you just miss someone, every song you hear suddenly makes so much more sense to you? As an example, on Saturday night I was DJ’ing a wedding and the groom requested a special song. I played it, and as I listened, the lyrics overwhelmed me:

I don’t know what ya’ heard about me
But a bitch can’t get a dollar outta’ me
No Cadillac, no perms, you can’t see
That I’m a motherfuckin’ P-I-M-P

It really sank in. To think I’ve been wasting my time in a relationship for all these years when I *could* have been honing my skills as a pimp.

And when the song continued:

I don’t know what you’ve heard about me
But a bitch can’t get a crumb up outta’ me
I drive a Cadillac, wear a perm ‘cuz I’m a G
And I’m a motherfuckin’ C-R-I-P

it made me harken back to my single days– you know, back in the last century. Yah, it’s been that long. But with my new Snoopy Dogg muse by my side, I’m sure I’m on the road to happiness all over again. Plus, I already own loads of blue clothes, so I’ll fit right in with my new Crip friends. Or do they wear red? I’d better find out before the first gangsta party! How terribly embarrassing it would be to show up wearing the wrong colors– I’d surely be soundly chastised for such a fashion faux pas.

Love songs…they suddenly become so coherent when you miss someone.

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The Satisfaction of Hard Work

By , February 11, 2005

People have been asking about the remodeling job, so I shot a quick video of Tim and I at work on my office.

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Hardwood Linoleum

By , February 10, 2005

I am currently remodeling the room in my apartment which I use for an office. One of the upgrades I have planned is to replace the carpeted floor with a hardwood floor. The first step in the process was to remove the carpet. Upon doing so, I discovered that beneath the carpet, some prior tenant had laid down faux hardwood linoleum tiles. I found that to be amusing, and began to chuckle at his feeble attempt to have hardwood, but I was stopped in mid-chuckle when I peeled away the linoleum.

Lo and behold, beneath the faux wood tile was a hardwood floor! In a positively Baudrillardian substitution, someone chose to cover an actual hardwood floor with a pretend hardwood floor. My feeling of superiority over the prior tenant rapidly shifted to one of inadequacy. He actually had hardwood, and purposely chose to hide it beneath a layer of faux hardwood linoleum. That takes confidence, and a steadfast commitment to one’s ideals and decorating philosophies. It is the interior decorating equivalent to sewing a Lacoste alligator onto a Prada shirt. Truly, this former tenant was a stalwart hero in the decorating realm.

Or maybe he was just a lunatic.

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Hodge Podge

By , January 5, 2005

Something amusing I heard in an episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer:

(Talking about Jonathan)
Andrew: That boy is our last hope.
Warren: No, there is another.
Andrew: Wait, really? Who’s our last hope?
Warren: No, I was just going with it. It was a thing. I… No, he’s our last hope.

Additionally, I’ve another internet quiz result to share with you:

Charon ushers you across the river Acheron, and you find yourself upon the brink of grief’s abysmal valley. You are in Limbo, a place of sorrow without torment. You encounter a seven-walled castle, and within those walls you find rolling fresh meadows illuminated by the light of reason, whereabout many shades dwell. These are the virtuous pagans, the great philosophers and authors, unbaptised children, and others unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven. You share company with Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Aristotle. There is no punishment here, and the atmosphere is peaceful, yet sad.

The Dante’s Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell – Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers) Very Low
Level 1 – Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) Very High
Level 2 (Lustful) Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous) Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) Very Low
Level 6 – The City of Dis (Heretics) Very High
Level 7 (Violent) Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) Low
Level 9 – Cocytus (Treacherous) Low

Take the Dante’s Inferno Test

I was really hoping I’d be on the glutton level. I don’t get what I did wrong.

Finally, while I’m at it, let me inform everyone that I am worth $2,771,706.00 on HumanForSale.com.

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The Christmas (Mean) Spirit

By , December 7, 2004

Yale: Here is your Christmas gift. I made it just for you.
*hands me a homemade blanket*
Me: Thanks! I love it!
*loves it*
Yale: Sorry it is so ugly. I wanted to make sure it matched your apartment.
Me: :(

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