Good toliet paper, no poop hands.

Have you ever noticed how commercials for some product never really talk to you about water their product actually does?  While I find most car commercials terribly annoying at least they get to the point…here is our car driving around in different weather conditions.  Doesn’t it look cool?  The products I am talking about are things like beer and toilet paper.  We delicately dance around the big picture points of their product while showing us a bunch of random crap.

Let’s take toilet paper.  Why on earth are you showing me a couple of cartoon bears in the woods with rolls of your bounciest double ply product?  First, I know bears don’t use toilet paper.  Second, If a bear did need to wipe his ass he would probably use a tree and wouldn’t try and find a softer more absorbent tree.  Why can’t we get right down to the point…

                “Charmin double ply toilet paper...It will keep you from getting shit all over your hand.”

Or a beer commercial

                “Look, it’s cheap and will get you wasted.  If your friend Sara drinks three of these she might just sleep with you.”

Snip Snip!

There is an ad on the radio station right now for the best new year’s resolution…get a vasectomy.    “It was the best new year’s resolution I have ever made.”  What?  The commercial goes on to tell me how I can get in and out in just over an hour and head back to work afterward with no pain. 

First, even if the procedure is not too painful, I don’t think I am headed back to work.  “Hey Adam, how was your lunch?”  “Great!  I had the flow of sperm cut off from my genital so I can no longer procreate.  What time is that staff meeting?”  I don’t think so, I would be headed home to watch the Lord of the Rings marathon to try and block out the fact that I just had a tube up my ding dong.

Second, is your new year’s resolution really to get a vasectomy or is it to stop getting hookers pregnant?  I think the snip snip is a means to an end so that the world no longer has to see your ugly children running around the playground without any pants on.  I get that this is the best way to prevent knocking someone up, but I can think of much better resolutions than this.

Happy New Year

Please put on some clothes

I saw the naked guy from the gym at Staples.

So I am standing in line at Staples waiting to check out and this guys walks by me that looks oddly familiar.  As he walked away I still could not place how I knew him.  And then like a bag of bricks it hit me over the head, he is the creepy hairy dude that walks around the gym locker room naked.  This is the guy that always manages to cough when he bends down to pick up his towel.  He has perfected the ten minute air drying technique that includes lunges and squats.  He has the towel, but refuses to use it to dry off or sit on while he sits down to put his socks on.  Yes, he puts his socks on first.

The guys finally circles back around to the checkout lane.  There is that second where he sort of recognizes me and gives me the dude head nod.  A week later I am back at the gym and naked dude has put two and two together and realizes that he saw me buying paper the week before.  For some reason he thinks this is an excuse to start up a conversation, and become friends.

I am no longer a member of that gym, or any for that matter.

Channeling...stupidity

So I was visiting my parents over the holidays and a week before I came down my dad told me that he had purchased a new TV and new cable service.  I knew this was his way of warming me up to the idea of helping him set up all the speakers, DVD player, etc.  A long tradition in the Miller household that I really enjoy for some reason.  The kicker was the new cable, and the comments about how hard it will be to learn all the new channels.  Little did I know what was in store for me.

Soon after setting up the system my dad started popping through the channels to see how good the HD signal looked, but no comments about learning new channels.  He quickly bounced back and forth, regular ESPN/ HD ESPN…wow.  Regular HGTV/ HD HGTV…WOW!  Regular animal plant/ HD animal planet…Holy Crap call the police this is so awesome I might kill someone.  But no comment about learning new channels.

Finally I said, ‘Dad I am surprised you learned all the channels so quick’. 

‘Well it is really easy, just add 500 to any channel and that is the HD version’.

‘Holy shit!  You have to be joking?’

‘No, isn’t that how yours is?’

‘Oh hell no, I have Comcast.  ESPN is 029/ HD is 173.  ESPN 2 is 030/ HD is 203.  This goes on and on, there is no rhyme or reason.  It is like they threw darts at the wall to pick channel numbers.’

‘That sounds dumb.’

‘yup’.

Can I bitch about flying?

I feel like this is a little predictable, unfair almost.  I try to find things in this world that aren’t terribly obvious and rant along nonsensically, but after four flights and two airports over the holidays there is just too much to let it go.  So here is the wonderfully obvious observations and suggestions to air travelers.

1.        If you are sitting in seat 30 please do not put your bag in the overhead compartment over seat 15.  Even on a full plane there will be enough space for your bag, yes during the holidays too.  But when you are stupid enough to put your bag away early, the person sitting in seat 15 wont think ‘I bet there is room for my bag at the other end of the plane’.  Then we all go to get off the plane and there are those people trying to walk the other way to get their bag, and it is YOUR fault.

2.       You brought way too much stuff.  The kid next to me thought he was a hot shot and had to pull everything out of his carry on bag.  First he talked on his phone till the very last minute, then he got out his ipod.  While in flight he pulled out some electronic devise he just bought in the airport but didn’t open it, just looked at the box.  Then he got out his laptop for 20 minutes to look at law schools.  Finally when we were getting off the plane he tried to jump ahead of a few people to get off when he didn’t have all of his shit together…yes I did push him back into his seat, ‘hold on turbo’.  He didn’t like that but the old timer behind him did.

3.       Yes every time you go to the airport you have to take off your belt, shoes, and jewelry.  Stop bitching about it.  If well prepared this should take mere minutes and might help prevent a crazy terrorist from blowing up a plane, worth my time.

As a side note, my plane was delayed because “they didn’t have a battery”.  Happy holidays.