Sure, boss.

I was watching TV the other day, and sometimes I wonder if advertisers think that the IQ of the average TV-watcher is at the same level as a turnip. I mean, they’d have to to produce some of the shit advertisements they do.

Here’s one for ya. Chef Boyardee however ya spell it. *checks so I don’t look like a loser.* They talk about how good it is for the family. They talk about how it has pasta and meat. Ok, I’m with ya, sort of. I mean it’s all right. But this is where it gets me. This woman says, “And I feel good about feeding it to my family because it has absolutely no preservatives!” Hold the phone right there, super mom. It’s in a can! How do you suppose you can keep meat, vegetables, and pasta in the cupboard in a can without it going south real quick? How do you suppose it got in that can? Are you a moron? Of course it has preservatives, unless I have completely lost my marbles. If so, please tell me so I can find them. That commercial always makes my head spin whenever I hear it.

In the same vein, there’s the slogan for Hamburger Helper. Hearty, Home-cooked Hamburger Helper. Nope, wrong, try again. It comes in a package. By that theory, KD is home-cooked. I just don’t know how they can come up with this stuff and expect us to swallow it. They might as well just walk up to us and say, “Yep, you’re all stupid. So we don’t even have to try. You’ll just believe anything we tell you. How about we tell you that the earth is flat and you were created by the magical powers of Harry Potter. Yeah, that sounds good. You fucks seem to like Harry Potter.”

Don’t get me wrong, I know advertisers have always thought of us as manipulatable numbnutses to some extent. That’s why they have simple, easy to remember jingles that we can all catch ourselves singing. That’s why they don’t make their ads long and complicated. But before, they used to try at least a little to make their shit convincing. Now it’s like they think they don’t have to try to be clever at manipulating us. They can just tell us bullshit straight up and we’ll believe them. And I’d be scared to see how many people actually would.

I really hope there are more of us who are thinking. Otherwise, how long will it be until some moron keeps cooked hamburger meat out in their cupboard and wonders why they get sick, all the while saying, “Chef Boyardee can. Why can’t I?” Does that sound nutty? Hell anything is possible these days.

Nooooooooo!

I have been hoping, praying, wishing that I could make it through the semester and miraculously there would be no snow, and I was really starting to think my wish came true.

But oh no. Life is not going to be so sweet to me. I heard my prof say that there was snow last night in Winnipeg, and it’s coming this way! Please please please be wrong. Please drop it all in Winnipeg, preferably on the roof of a house whose owner’s name I’m not going to mention. Those who know me know who this is. Leave it all in Winterpeg!

For The Man Who Has Everything

If you’re like me, you’ve got a few people on your Christmas shopping list who are impossible to buy for. Whether you have no idea what they like or you know what they like but they already have it, these huge pains in the ass have been the cause of much frustration throughout the holiday season since the beginning of time, or at least since some marketing genius thought up the concept of Christmas. But not this year my friends, not this year.

This year, get the gift you know the special man in your life who has everything or likes nothing doesn’t have, a
penis tie.
Yes, a penis tie. It’s not a tie shaped like a penis, it’s a tie designed specifically *for* your penis.

I know that right now most of you are asking yourselves “why in hell would anybody want that,” and the best answer I can give you is I haven’t a clue. But it appears that somebody does, and he’s planning to create and cash in on this new craze in time for Christmas. It’s all explained in the article, which is a good thing because honestly, words fail me.

What am I trying to tell myself?

I’m awake very early from a strange dream I had. Wow. What a strange dream. I dreamed that I was at a family dinner of some kind. Maybe Christmas. We were all eating and everything seemed fine. My one uncle who is into gore started talking about stories about accidental deaths that involved blades. We were all grossed out, and some of us were telling him to stop, but he just kept going. This is normal for my uncle in real life, which makes the dream all the more freaky.

The next thing I know I’m outside with a bunch of us and someone’s cutting down a tree. This was a bit weird. The blade flies somehow and hits me. Somehow it slices away part of my skull and exposes all my organs. But miracle of miracles I’m still conscious. All I can say is, 911, 911! One of my uncles calls, and my gore-obsessed uncle, without apology just keeps telling horror stories. And there I am, still conscious, blood everywhere, and I can feel the blood, that’s the weird part. People are scurrying about, not sure what to do. All they can do is keep new people from getting close and sprayed with blood. Then my mom’s standing over me, completely silent. That’s when I know I’m real screwed if I didn’t know that already. She just stood there. I’m still able to talk and I’m like I hope all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can put humpty together again. She just stood there. She said in a completely calm voice, they can’t. It’s impossible. I protested, “But I’m not in pain and I’m still conscious. Wouldn’t I be dead already?” She said, “That is a surprise, but your heart is soon going to stop pumping blood to your brain and your brain can’t take the strain of being uncovered for so long. Try to be calm and relax and just let things happen as they may.” I try to take this all in. I get visions of instead of an ambulance arriving, an undertaker. I get visions of being locked in a coffin and buried alive. I get visions of being stitched together alive. Then I imagine that it’s going to be a closed casket funeral anyway, who would want to see this? I laugh and say, “Well I guess I do everything weird, even death.” Mom doesn’t laugh. Most people have left. There are just a few of us now. Mom and dad are sitting on either side of me, and the tree-cutting guy is lying in a heap in the corner sobbing. He’s just in total shock and no one’s helping him. I start to feel dizzy and my eyes start to close. I take a deep breath, smell the air, make one last attempt at a joke, touch mom and dad, try and absorb everything about the world that there is to take in. Suddenly there are too many things to appreciate…and then I wake up!

Boy I have never been so happy to be laying in my bed, not on some snow. How happy I am to see my head is whole and not in pieces. All I can say is, what the fuck? Is part of me saying I’m not appreciating things enough? I really hope this isn’t a premonition of some kind. Not that I believe in that crap, but woe. Is someone trying to tell me to live every day as if it were my last? Holy crap.

Well now that I don’t feel so frazzled, I think I’ll start getting things done. Nothing like a little death dream to get things moving.

McGreggor

A Scottish old timer is in Scotland, in a bar, talking to a young man. The old man says:

“Lad, look out there to the field. Do ya see that fence? Look how well it’s built. I built that fence stone by stone with me own two hands. I piled it for months. But do they call me McGreggor- the-Fence-Builder? Nooo..”

Then the old man gestured at the bar. “Look here at the bar. Do ya see how smooth and just it is? I planed that surface down by me own achin’ back. I carved that wood with me own hard labor, for eight days. But do they call me McGreggor-the- Bar-builder? Nooo…”

Then the old man points out the window. “Hey, Laddy, look out to sea. Do ya see that pier that stretches out as far as the eye can see? I built that pier with the sweat off me back. I nailed it board by board. But do they call me McGreggor-the- Pier-Builder? Nooo…”

Then the old man looks around nervously, trying to make sure no one is paying attention. He leans closer to the young man and says, “But ya fuck one goat…….”

Why, Daddy?

I heard something on the bus that just made me sad. I don’t even know if I can make this make sense to anyone else but myself, but I’ll try. I heard a little kid, maybe 6 or 7 sitting with someone who sounded like he was only in university, but I wasn’t sure, but the kid seemed to know him. They were talking, and the kid looked at a sticker on the bottom of his toy, and said, “Made in China. Wonder what it’s like in China.” At this point, the dude he was sitting with started into this big speal about how people in China work in horrible conditions and all the company ever cares about when getting them to work is about profits and the people are basically slaves. After a couple repetitions of “why?” the kid was silent for the rest of the bus ride. At least this is what I heard. Somebody please tell me why this little kid has to know that this sort of thing happens yet? And, does the guy really know that that toy was made in horrible conditions? Does he know for a fact that everyone in China works like slaves? Way to fill this kid’s head with your ideas of what it’s like in China. Holy wow the poor kid was not prepared for that reality, or this dude’s view of reality, bomb. Why don’t you just tell the poor little guy that there’s no Santa Claus, the easter bunny doesn’t exist and the tooth fairy is his mom. The hell with innocence and fantasy altogether.

Then I heard something about think about that the next time you play with your toys. Ok hold the pony. Somebody bought him those toys. If you did, then you’re real sick because you acknowledge those horrible working conditions, and then give that company more money. If you didn’t, how dare you turn him against his parents through his toys? Now he’ll go home and wonder about his parents. I’m all about opening somebody’s eyes, but like this? I guess this only happens in this hippy vegetarian city.

Maybe I misheard the whole conversation, but that’s what I heard. Maybe I’m just jumping to conclusions. But I couldn’t believe that he was telling him all that. IT’s one thing if the kid brings it up first, but to do it that way. I don’t know. I just found it unsettling. Maybe I’m a wimp. But it won’t leave me alone. Maybe it will now. What does everybody think? Does this seem normal?

Roundtable Time

Survivor Series is tonight and that means only 1 thing. Actually it means quite a few things but for our purposes it means that it’s time again for some of the Salty Ham staff to make our predictions. And true to form, we’ve done exactly that. If you want to check them out,
click here.

Salty Ham will also have live coverage of the show so if you aren’t ordering it, thieving it or otherwise getting the results, come on over and get them from me. You can look in the wrestling news section for the ongoing report, then just keep refreshing the page to see the latest happenings posted just as fast as my own abilities and technology will allow.

Cereal Killer

No, I’m not an idiot. I really do mean that cereal. Let me explain. I saw something on the bus that just scared me. It shook me to the core and made me question once again the safety of riding those huge machines with people packed in them like sardines and no seatbelts. I was riding happily along on a relatively empty bus. It came time to switch buses, and there was some delay between when we pulled in and when I would change buses, so I started talking to the driver. As she talked, I heard, crunch. Apparently so did she, and it was as startling to her as me. When she looked down to investigate, she exclaimed, “The last driver of this bus had a bowl of Cherios! There are cherios on the floor under the driver’s seat!”

First, I tried to envision how one, either passenger or driver could manage to eat *anything* while riding the bus. Those things don’t have the world’s greatest suspension systems, and the drivers love the brakes. I’d imagine the only end result of eating on the bus would be decorating your clothes with your meal.

Then I tried to imagine how a driver of the bus would manage to eat. I didn’t ask whether there was milk on these cherios. If there was, yuck what a mess. Anyway, she said that you would in fact need two hands on the wheel, like I thought. So if the guy was driving technically properly, this guy would have to be bent over the cherios eating them like some kind of animal. But then he wouldn’t be watching where he was going.

Then I was very thankful that I wasn’t either walking on the street or riding the bus driven by our cherio fan. It seems like a deadly combination. Please bus driver dudes, eat your cherios at home!