Hold the Glimmer

Archive for the ‘You’re False.’ Category

Sorry Ma’am, I’m a Man

Posted by: on: May 31, 2011

Duke:  So I’m not going to dwell on this subject, because it was such a major disappointment to us all… but by now you know, The Rapture didn’t happen.  Or, according to good old Grandpa Harold, it happened – just not in the fire and brimstone and earthquakes and “form a single file line so you can be judged by the Great Scorer” kind of way.  However, the world is still going to end on October 21st, so don’t worry about picking a Halloween costume for the masquerade ball (you were going to dress like a slut with ears anyway).  Moving on…
 
Tracy:  HALT!  I am not merely “moving on” from this subject.  This isn’t a subject you can just throw away like a used paper towel or cover up like a drug run gone poorly.  Harold Camping negatively affected my life.  Do you realize how many flash mobs I created in Las Vegas last weekend, having to define and defend the Rapture?  Do you know how many people deemed me downright psycho, on the Las Vegas strip of all places?  Do you realize the extent of the conversation I had with my slightly too religious mother (I worship her, I swear I do.  More often than not, her purity is almost angelic and I question exiting her womb on a daily basis.  It’s just that- my mom is perfect.)  Harold Camping is not getting away with this by merely suggesting a new date.  I will not be duped into believing or accepting his apology.  I want an explanation.  I want an explanation now.
 
Duke:  ok ok ok ok ok.  ok.  alright.  okay.  You want an explanation – theatrics were expected, messiahs were promised, and like a little Jewish boy on Christmas, you were left with nothing but pencils and dress socks – I understand.  Think of all the schmucks who actually spent their retirement funds helping this old kook spread his message with billboards and pamphlets.  People moved entire families across the country so they could be closer to their leader (and have 3 extra hours of prayer before getting Raptor’d).  I personally spent a total of 5 work hours contemplating my impending doom, so let me know if there’s a class action suit we can get in on.  Anyway, as was expected, Mr. Camping was nowhere to be found Monday morning, May 23rd.  He took his time preparing his message, coming into the Family Radio station late that evening to deliver a somber statement.  And when he finally spoke to his congregation, via mass broadcast, he claimed that The Rapture actually had occurred.  But, it was a “spiritual” rapture (whatever the hell that means), and the world will still meet its demise on October 21st, as originally planned – without a doubt, you can bet your sweet asses.  Then, sounds of rustling could be heard from inside the studio, followed shortly by the cocking of a handgun, and the firing of a single shot… 
 
Have we beaten that dead horse into glue yet?  Now to move onto a much more spiritually pertinent topic – the stupidity of men in today’s advertisements.  Just to give you a little background, originally Tracy and I were going to continue on our noble journey through bad taste and shamelessly offensive entertainment by blogging to you (together) about a new idea for a holiday – National Slut Day (her idea, not mine) – live from our favorite dive bar / restaurant.  We had our laptops set up, munchies on the table, ideas flowing between bites… But, around the 4th round of Jack ‘n Cokes our focus began to waver… and around the 7th, I spilled our food (including assorted sauces and condiments) all over some poor Asian tourists who were just trying to discover hush puppies and root for the Miami Heat in peace (serves them right, that team is an abomination; Lebron should be tarred and feathered just for starting the “I’m taking my talents to,” cliche) but I digress…   
 
I’m a forward thinking, progressive type of individual.  I understand the struggle, ladies.  You want to be seen as equals – professionally, intellectually, spiritually.  It’s hard being labelled as sex objects, and seeing gorgeous bombshells on television and in magazines to whom you feel compared.  But can we just be real for a minute?  I’d rather be stereotyped as the object of everyone’s lust and affection, than as some idiotic oaf who is incapable of ordering a beer, remembering an anniversary, purchasing groceries, booking a hotel room, grilling a burger without setting the house aflame, or managing a fucking bank account on my own. 
 
No, you’re right.  I know, girls… I know.  Men are stupid.  We’re complete fools who would walk around drooling and mumbling to ourselves if it weren’t for you holding the whole of everything together.  Praise be to you all.  Sarcasm aside, I love women, you mean the world to me – genuinely.  You really do put up with a hell of a lot (but we’ll save that for another time, so don’t get all worked up on me).  All I’m asking is, how am I – as a man – supposed to be convinced to purchase a product or service from a company who has the audacity to call me a moron on national television? 
 
I’ll start with the biggest culprit and main offender, breweries.  Before our night deteriorated into a haze of uncontrollable laughter, the last commercial I remember clearly from Thursday’s Bulls-Heat game involved a young man calling his amazingly beautiful girlfriend (that’s another thing, they pair these goofballs up with smoking hot model types, like this jackass could ever gain so much as an acknowledgement from a girl like that)  to tell her that he won’t be able to join her for dinner because he has the bar exam.  We’ve all seen this commercial, yes?  Cut to the shot of a bartender holding a bottle going “Alright, are you ready for your bar exam?  Here we go… the first bar means what?!”  Sigh… the first bar under the beer label reads, in white font set upon a blue background,  “Cold.”  You with me?  This is now a literacy test.  Thankfully, our lovable simpleton gets the answer right.  Now onto the next question, barkeep!  “The second bar means…”  to which Shit For Brains replies, “The Coors Light is SUPER cold?!”  …Congratulations, you just ensured I will never buy Coors Light – ever.  It’s bad enough these advertisers think we’re so hapless that we can’t tell if a beer is cold simply by picking it up, they’re actually making it the selling point of the product.  I mean shit, you ever seen a commercial for a tampon that tells you when it’s time to put in a new one?  “Hey Teresa, what’s that dinging sound?”  Teresa answers, “Oh honey, that means I’ll be right back…”
 
Budweiser had one a while back where a man comes home from a long day of work to find rose pedals strewn about his apartment, candles lit, and bud light in his fridge with a sweet note from his girlfriend telling him to come find her in the bedroom (where she’s waiting in his favorite lingerie).  Instead this meat head says “ooo beer!” and takes his Bud over to the couch where he just sits and drinks by himself.  Then it ends with him looking at one of the candles and saying “that’s a fire hazard” and putting it out with the bottom of his bottle.  Seriously, bro?  Yeah, little known fact – men like beer more than we like sex.  Right, and we secretly love soap operas and prostate exams too.  What if they did a reverse of that and a pretty girl came home to find her place all romantic-like, and on the coffee table was a box with the most to-die-for pair of shoes, a sweet note saying “I’m in the bed, come find me” and instead of going in, she just stood in front of the mirror checking out the shoes on her feet?  Well that would be pretty realistic, so probably a bad hypothetical…
 
I could make this whole post about beer commercials, but that wouldn’t give you the full picture of how stupid advertisement agencies think men are.  This one’s taking it back a few years, but before Carl’s Jr. started putting scantily clad Paris Hilton on top of a Bentley eating a burger (which I’m sure she threw up afterward) – they had that slogan “…without us, some guys would starve.”  I’ll give you two quick examples, because they’re just so amazingly baffling.  The first one shows a grown man wandering up and down the isles of a grocery store staring blankly at all the products he clearly wouldn’t be able to turn into food sustenance.  It ends with him in the meat section, looking down at a package of ground beef and poking at it with his finger.  The voiceover goes “without us, some guys would starve.”  Look, cooking isn’t easy – I went to college for long enough to burn a few meals myself.  But we’re talking about burgers here, folks.  70% lean ground beef (you want a little fat to burn up in the fire and leave the meat still juicy), mix in some salt, pepper, grated onions, a little turmeric (or whatever secret ingredient you prefer), shape em into patties and toss em on the grill.  It’s the easiest god damn thing in the world to cook – along side eggs, pasta, hot dogs, and sandwiches.  Gentlemen, if you can make these 5 dishes, you will never starve – and they are nearly impossible to fuck up. 
 
They had a similar commercial from that same time frame, the whole thing consists of a guy dropping an unpeeled, unpitted avocado into a blender – and turning it on.  Obviously this is a commercial for a guacamole burger, fellas – and the implication is that we’re too stupid to somehow access the innards of an avocado, mash them up, and mix in some peppers, onions, cilantro and salt (also on the list of easiest fucking dishes in the world to make).  It’s too bad Carl’s doesn’t sell soup, because I would have loved to see a guy put an unopened can of Campbell’s minestrone in the microwave and watch it explode, “without us, some guys would need fire and casualty insurance.”
 
Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe most of the men in the world really are that soft headed.  Are there guys who get an awesome haircut and decide it’s a good idea to bet their life savings on 33 black?  Do some husbands need high definition photos of produce from their Nikon 3500, printed on super quality magazine paper in order to know what to buy from Ralph’s?  Can we not decide how much to put aside each month in our alternate savings account so we can save up to restore Dad’s old motorcycle without someone holding our hand?  I mean, you can’t officially be considered a man until you’ve forgotten your wife’s birthday – and you will need a phone that can simultaneously talk and work the internet so you can lie while covering up the tracks of your douchebaggery to avoid sleeping in the dog house for a week.  “Oh you thought I was taking you to a fancy restaurant, Sweetheart?  Baby, when I said steak dinner I meant the new steak sandwich over at Sonic!  Glad you wore that sexy little dress though, we’ll skip the drive-thru and order inside this time so everyone can see how good you look.  Let them know it’s our anniversary.  Go on, super size it, nothing is too good for you, Sugar.  I’ll even buy you an ice cream flurry for dessert.”  Christ, men are worthless.  I don’t know how they even get us to wear pants outside the house.  We would lose our car keys in our own pocket if it wasn’t for that jangling sound reminding us they’re there. 
 
In parting – yes, girls, it is sexist to only highlight your looks in advertisements.  But as often as you see women marketed as pure sex, they’re never shown to be complete idiots.  Men on the other hand are trashed on by the very corporations seeking our business… and somehow, they get our business!  Here’s a new idea for men’s shoes… they’re just normal shoes… BUT, they have pictures on the toes showing you how to tie your laces, just in case you forget.  Loop, swoop, and pull.
 
 
I hope you men out there were able to find a woman to read this to you.  Are you ready for your bar exam?
 
———-this bar means the post is over———-
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Apocalypse… Now?

Posted by: on: May 12, 2011

(Editor’s note: We aim to entertain, amuse, frighten, and offend. The blue font means you’re about to read something borderline insane… By Duke.  Got that glimmerheads?  Duke blogs in blue.)

 

“I don’t know how many of you people believe in astrology… Yeah, that’s right.  That’s right baby.  I am a sagittarius… the most philosophical of all the signs…  But anyway, I don’t believe in it. I think it’s a bunch of bullshit, myself. But I’ll tell you this, man, I’ll tell you this… I don’t know what’s gonna happen, man, but I wanna have my kicks before the whole shit house goes up in flames…”
-Jim Morrison
 
He was the Lizard King – the great prince of cosmic philosophy and mystic wisdom.  I’m just the chameleon trying to blend in – the kid with my head down in the back of class, hoping the cruel sadist of a teacher won’t call me up to the chalkboard.  But having my kicks has always been a top priority in life, especially now that I know the shit house goes up in flames in just a few days…  WHAT?!
 
Pull a little closer, because it’s about to get real…  Harold Camping, a ministry leader and retired civil engineer from Oakland, CA, has decisively calculated the date of The End based on prophecies from the Book of Revelations, and claims that “beyond a shadow of a doubt, May 21 will be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgment.”  Ho-ly shit.  TIME, NPR, Huffington Post, and even ABC News are running with this story like it’s the birth of Mariah’s twins!  After all, what does the media love more than celebrity offspring?  Right – death, destruction, and mayhem – ratings, baby!  Now, as a sinner and total non-Christian, I admit that this “Rapture” is a new concept to me.  So I did some googling, as any young man does when he’s searching for God… and came across the official website for the End of Days, www.wecanknow.com (pronounced “we can know, dot com”).  Go ahead, check it out, I’ll wait…
 
Back?  So, 9 days from today, approximately 200 million good little boys and girls will magically ascend into heaven, leaving the rest of us miscreants to suffer wars, plagues, fire and brimstone here on Earth until the end of the world… which will take place on October 21st (looks like there really won’t be a basketball season next year).  But wait, hasn’t almost every generation believed it would be the one to see the apocalypse?  I mean, every time the tribulations of mankind become seemingly insurmountable, isn’t there someone standing on a soapbox crying that the end is near?  Are things so bad these days?  I know the economy sucks, and we’re still in Afghanistan even though Bin Laden is dead, but come on – in 1914 the whole world went to war.  Then in 1929 the stock market crashed so hard they named the shanty towns built on broken dreams of investors after a poor schmuck who wasn’t even a year into his presidency (Hoovervilles, you don’t have to look it up).  THEN, in 1939, the world went back to war… AGAIN!  Man, that would have been a pretty climactic way for the Almighty to draw the curtains – He is one for showmanship and pageantry, let’s be honest.
 
“But Duke,” you exclaim, “nobody has ever mathematically predicted the end of the world based on the actual word of God!”  Oh no?  Harold Camping (yup, same guy) originally predicted that the Rapture would occur on September 6th, 1994.  Hmm… well… human error can get the best of anyone, so he went back to the drawing board with his Bible and his calculator until finally he grew a media empire large enough to spread his doomsday message.  Err… I mean, until he got the date right.  His “non-profit” broadcasting company, Family Radio, currently has a net worth of $122 million which is used to control radio and television stations across the globe.  The man has a following, so you may want to check if your surgeon really thinks you’ll need more than a few months to live before you go under the knife anytime soon.
 
My real problem with this whole notion of a fully calculated doomsday… is that he came up with the algorithm based on numbers he assigned, out of his ass, to occurrences referenced in a fairy tale.  Yes, I said it, fairy tale.  Religion is fine, faith is great, belief keeps hope alive – I’m totally with you, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.  But, like all fairy tales, they were written by human beings as a means of convincing children and simpletons that there are rewards for being a good person, and consequences for being a bad one.  You know, because being a good person for the sole purpose of doing the right thing just isn’t enough.  People need incentives, which was especially true thousands of years ago when it wasn’t common knowledge that murder, rape, theft, and dishonesty are counterproductive to societal advancement.  I do believe in God in the sense that there’s some force tending the light at the end of the tunnel.  I do not believe He’s ever written a book – men wrote those books to control the behavior of brutes and barbarians, and they’ve served that purpose well – not counting the wars that have been fought over their claims.
 
It’s almost comical the responses some of these back peddling yokels come up with to cover their bases.  MSNBC spoke to one of Camping’s followers from North Carolina who claimed, “If May 21 passes and I’m still here, that means I wasn’t saved.  Does that mean God’s word is inaccurate or untrue?  Not at all.”  Alright, fair enough, if you’re still here then you weren’t saved.  But the assertion still stands that 200 million people, or roughly three percent of the world’s population, will ascend to the Pearly Gates.  So, if there isn’t an astronomical hike in the number of missing persons, and nobody is seen floating into the sky by the 22nd, then can we agree God’s word is inaccurate?  How about when we’re still around to celebrate Halloween?  Do we get a public apology?  Will Family Radio sell off its assets and give $122 million to science, or better yet… the poor?  Shit, I probably have a better shot at 4 foot 10 inch White Jesus coming down from the heavens and choosing me as the first person to join him in the kingdom of glory and uneventfulness.  Say your prayers, kids.  I’ll stay behind for the five month blowout orgy before we all meet again in Hell.

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Chase. This.

Posted by: on: March 23, 2011

I’ve spent the last 79 minutes trying to figure out how to deposit a check via Iphone.  I’m positive you just read that and thought “oh right, 79 minutes…more like 3.”  If that’s the case, you clearly don’t know me well enough.  “Trivial details” are my middle names, followed closely by “obsessive” and “compulsive.” When I say 79 minutes, I mean 79 minutes.  Or, I’m under exaggerating as to not be assumed even more psycho than usual.

It’s not that I’m stupid or technologically inept, it’s that my bank (rhymes with face, race, pace, lace, mace…) has a problem with advertising.  Have you seen the commercial where the perfect bride and groom are snuggled up in their post coital plushy expensive bed, looking over their new found wealth through marriage and debating how they’re going to get the millions of thoughtless wedding presents (read: checks) into their bank accounts before they whisk away to Bali, only to realize their bank now offers easy snap shot deposits with same day account approval? They pull the sheets closer and take a picture of one check, most likely valued at $17 (sheets tell all about a person), giggle and smile at each other as if they just stole a paraplegic kids popsicle (“he can’t catch us!!!!”), flagrantly throw the check off their love den bed, and repeat process again.

Well, I wasn’t entirely anticipating that outcome for a few reasons; mainly because I’m not married nor anywhere close to it, I would never smile so deviously as to assume hurt on a paraplegic, and I have really nice sheets.  But, I was definitely anticipating ease and this process has been far from it.

The easiest of tasks is to take a picture, right? WRONG….and here we go again with the false advertising.  Remember that beautiful wedded couple taking pictures in bed of their checks (not a porno…not a porno…)?  Well, the instructions clearly state the check must be flattened and gently placed on a dark surface, as to prevent any color issues when capturing the image.  HOW DID THEY DO IT?! I took 23 different pictures with different dark backrounds WHILE standing up (as instructed to do…because for some reason taking a picture of a check on an oak desk while standing as opposed to seated has a drastic impact on said uncapturable image ((…callin your bluff Chasey…)) yet all THEY had to do was lay back in bed and snap away!?!?  Needless to say, it took 24 pictures and one approval.  So easy Chase, so so easy….

—-Can I just switch topics for a minute here?

I thought Elizabeth Taylor died after The Flintstones movie? Haven’t we been mourning for years?

—–And we’re back…

So, the 24th attempt at said picture was “approved”, but with the ominous warning of “Cannot display amount on check, please enter manually.”  Personally, I’m under the impression that approved means approved.  Approved means “all things good”.  Approved means “this is correct and ok”.  Approved does NOT mean “this kinda works, but this kinda doesn’t.”

So, like any normal sheep, I follow directions and enter the amount only to be told “the amount does not match.”  Well HOW THE FUCK COULD IT IF YOU JUST TOLD ME YOU CANNOT DISPLAY AMOUNT. I AM HELPING YOU AND GIVING YOU THE AMOUNT.  What kind of technology is this?!  You’re forcing me to wait in line with those people just to deposit a check? Ya, well, I don’t stoop to those levels, Chase.  I don’t stoop.

Guess what I just found out?  You can get panic attacks from writing experiences and I’m officially doomed as a writer. Happy Wednesday.

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