It is NOT okay to...

Spit.

Sorry, it just isn’t. In particular there are two places it’s specifically wrong to spit:

1.) The bathroom
2.) Everywhere else

I swear to all things holy and just that at least one full third of the adult male population spits directly into the urinal in public restrooms while relieving themselves. What the fuck is this compulsion about? I am not the only one who can’t figure this out.

What's with the spitting in the urinal?

All of my coworkers spit into urinals?

Men's bathroom habits

I could go on. The point is, this is a universal phenomenon for which there is absolutely no excuse or explanation. The only reason to be spitting anywhere near a bathroom is because you’ve been vomiting so hard that you are actually bleeding from the eyes. If that’s you, I’ll give you a pass. Let me be clear about to whom I am referring here. These are the habitual spitters. These are people who walk outside and immediately start spitting. Then spit again. This goes on about every 15 seconds. I'm not even sure they are aware they are doing it. They can carry on a conversation with their spitting brethren alternating their spitting so that a steady stream of spit is constantly flying around and building up on the sidewalk.

Back to the Urinal Spitters.

“But I need to spit, so isn’t it better that I do it in the urinal?” Fuck you. You do not NEED to spit (with the exception of the aforementioned bleeding from the eyes scenario). You don’t sit at the table in a restaurant and spit on the floor or in a spittoon or in a little plastic cup, you wait until you are outside or in front of a urinal. Once there, let the festival of unnecessary expectoration begin. You are capable of controlling this so exercise a little self-control and dignity and behave like a human who is cognizant of the fact that we live a fucking society. Not everyone in this society is happy to wade through a river of your saliva.

My God. Who are these people?

There are some generalizations and stereotypes I would like to make specifically relating to the "Urinal Spitters" (you know who you are). Obviously the Urinal Spitter is a man. Though rare, I have seen women habitually spit outside, but never at a urinal. So this is a guy thing. There also seems to be a racial component to this. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a black, Asian or Hispanic man do this--this is a white guy thing. Once men reach a certain age this compulsion seems to fade. I see very few of America’s greatest generation spitting into a stream of their own urine. So the universe of common violators are white males typically ranging in age from 20-40. Of this universe I estimate that fully half are wearing baseball caps. If under the age of 27 these baseball caps are turned backwards. As men age the baseball cap tends to start turning itself forward. This demographic tends to be outwardly social but often displays a high degree of self absorption indicating they mimic the behavior of others in order to “fit in” (hence the identical baseball caps). Finally, with this display of spitting at their pee, I can only assume that this is an attempt to somehow show dominion over their own urine. Disturbing. Do you know what this profile is? Who else fits this profile? Go on, you’re thinking it…

Serial killers.

Yes. The bottom line here is the next time you see some 26 year old jock with an Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt and a Minnesota Twins baseball cap spitting at a urinal, you should immediately call the police. He is only one expectorating step away from going on a homicidal rampage.

P.S. - Failure to adhere to acceptable etiquette practices can have disastrous results. See: Male Restroom Etiquette

Your Participation Required

As a result of writing this blog I’ve realized that there are a few words in the English language that I almost yearn to use more often… “yearn” being one of them. Here’s a partial list of words that I don’t hear often enough:

• Conundrum
• Nonplussed
• Ennui
• Chagrined
• Umbrage
• Shenanigans
• Doppelgänger
• Confound
• Supercilious
• Tomfoolery (Thanks Michael F.)
• Screed (Thanks Michael F.)
• Rigmarole (Thanks Marc Conklin)
• Grandiloquent (Thanks Patina)
• Davenport (Thanks Sarah)

I’ll add to this as the days progress. This will serve as my online repository of words I should use more often.

Anything to add? Please remember, your participation is mandatory.

Who's Stupid Now?

I like to watch the TV news with the volume all the way off. Not because it’s too depressing, but it’s more fun that way. Like a game. However, this game is becoming increasingly boring. You see, the challenge is to try to figure out the content of the story by just interpreting the images and the expressions on people’s faces. It’s an exercise in perception. But something has gone terribly wrong over the last few years. There is simply no challenge any more.

Last night I saw the headline, “Duck Hunter Rescued” flash atop the screen. Immediately I began asking myself the questions: “Where was he lost? How long had he been missing? Was the rescue daring or intriguing in some way?” This is just the sort of story that is fun because I have no historical reference for the participants or the situation. I mean, it’s not like a story where Bush is on the screen and I have to guess whether or not he is doing or saying something stupid. This one could be a real puzzler.

I was excited.

The next shot is of two guys sitting, press-conference style, one guy with his mullet flowing freely and one wearing duck hunting camouflage gear. “Who rescued who? I ask myself--forgetting for a moment that at least one of these guys actually dressed up in duck hunting gear for the purpose of giving this interview.

Camo guy looked very serious, he was obviously the rescuer, while mullet man was obviously the idiot who got lost. But how was this rescue effected? Then a slow, menacing zoom shot of an old Nokia 6010 cel phone lingered on the screen.

For the love of all things holy.

So this is it. Some idiot wanders into a field and some other guy sees him and uses his cel phone to “rescue” him? This was the “news”, the big dramatic story. How banal. What does this say about us and our news? Have we gotten so stupid that anything more complicated would not be possible for the average viewer to follow or understand?

Of course.

But the underlying issue here is much more sinister. We have officially lost the ability to discriminate between the routine and the extraordinary. Everything is equally important. Equally newsworthy. “Girl falls down steps and skins knee” is just as compelling a headline as “Iran nukes Israel”. I don’t blame the media for the ever-increasing dumbing-down of the news or TV in general. I don’t believe there is any conspiracy to create a country of idiots who run around buying bacteria-killing toilet paper at Wal-Mart and selling hamburgers to one another. Trust me, if people didn't watch it, it wouldn't be on. The inescapable conclusion? We’re stupid.

I'm not sure if we're getting dumber or if we were always this dumb but much less obvious about it. Maybe it's that we're no longer ashamed of being dumb. I just don't know. Maybe that's because I have also become too stupid to think my way through the problem. I am not sure of that either.

I feel a pattern coming on.

All this has the makings of a classic philosophical conundrum. "If a tree fell in the forest and no one was there to hear it, except for some functionally retarded duck hunter, would it make a noise?" The answer is yes. But it wouldn't be the noise of a tree falling. It would be the noise of some mullet-headed hick screaming in pain because he tied the tree to the bumper of his '96 F150 pickup to try to move it three feet to the left so he could build a better duck blind, thereby forcing the tree to fall on his truck crushing the can of Budweiser he had tucked in between his legs directly into his testicles.

If Charles Darwin were alive today, I would simply sit him down to watch the news and say: “Nice theory. So how do you explain this one Chuck? How come these people keep procreating?” He would remove his glasses with a pained expression and rub his temples while shaking his head and repeating… “Where did I go wrong? Where did I go wrong?”

Please -Check Here- to be Judged

I just hit my 90 day status as a new employee. This means I now have access the 401K, insurance programs, etc. This also means I have a bunch of new forms to fill out. I am routinely confronted with forms--as are we all. Forms for new insurance coverage, warranty claim forms, new customer forms, account registration forms, new credit card application forms… the list goes on. Especially online... websites of all shapes and sizes have forms. But since I have been divorced I have noticed a part of the form I never paid much attention to before: "Marital Status".

As someone in the marketing business, I understand the drive to know your demographic. But are there really more than two states of marital status? You are either married or you are not. Right? Why does my bank need to know I am divorced in order to grant me access to the online bill pay system? Isn't "Not Married" a sufficient answer? I can see this if you are registering for an online dating service (really the only circumstance under which you might actually lie), but I just want to see how my 401K is doing.


Dear Anonymous Automated Online Form Generation System,

Mind your own fucking business! Listen, I am not particularly embarrassed about the fact that I am divorced. It wasn’t my idea. I feel I kept up my part of the “for better or for worse” contract. But it’s not something I am proud of either. It’s called a “failed marriage”. I was part of that. I was part of the failure. There’s no way around that one. Thanks for the reminder asshole.

Where’s the fucking check box for: “Married, but unhappy about it.” or “Married, but my husband is cheating on me and we sleep in separate rooms.”? Where’s the box for: “Re-Married for the 4th time because I am too emotionally needy to forge a life comprised of mutual respect and dignity.”? I’ll tell you where that it is. It’s in a database field filed under “None of your God damned business” – right where my divorce papers should be.

Like it or not there is a stigma about divorce in this country. I cringe at every late-night car financing commercial I see:

Bad Credit? – No Problem!
Bankruptcy? – No Problem!
Divorce? – No Problem!

One of these kids doesn’t belong.

In other words: “Are you a loser? Have you failed in the game of life? Are you a lazy, stupid drain on our otherwise productive society? If yes, I’ve got the product for you!” What the fuck does being divorced have to do your ability to finance a car? You either have the money and the credit or you do not.

Bad Credit?
Bankruptcy?
Syphilis?
Chronic Halitosis?
Child Abuser?
Crippling Emotional Dependencies?
Convicted Sex Offender?
Or God forbid… DIVORCED?

No Problem!

Yeah? Well I have a fucking problem. You can take your self-righteous, stigmatizing, homogeneous, stereotyping form and shove it up your ass.

Love,

Scott

P.S. – Bite me Ukraine.


You see, the thing is, these forms are like a little life-synopsis. They are the digital age's Cliff's Notes of "This is Your Life". These are the daily gauges of how many times you've been around the sun, how successful you are and your relative position in the world. I used to get to that question and proudly answer: "Single! Yes that's right, I am living the single life of a bachelor on the move. The world is a wilderness of hope and opportunity and I am ready to stake my claim." Then I proudly answered: "Married! Yep, that's me--a mature, responsible adult building a life with someone and creating the foundation for a strong family." Who the hell wants to say: "Divorced! Yeah... that was pretty fucked up right there."?

I'll tell you who. Pathetic narcissists with a sense of self-entitlement that only victim-hood can validate, or self-important misanthropes that pride themselves on screwing people over to get what they want.

Can I opt out?

Unashamed

I’ve been feeling disconnected lately. Not in any real specific way, but a general sort of feeling that I am outside looking in. You know that guy at a party standing in the corner all alone next to a house plant? I’m the house plant. When this happens it tends to manifest itself in little ways. You can’t find your keys, your shoe laces break, your car’s alignment suddenly starts pulling to the left and you leave your phone on the counter at the deli. Things just don’t work right. As if the Universe is trying to say: “You don’t quite belong here right now, I’ll get back to you.”

It’s exhausting.

I was thinking that I have no energy to keep my house clean or go to the grocery store and that’s just contributing to the malaise--the ever-ubiquitous self fulfilling prophecy. But I think it’s something more than just being tired or lazy. I think we’re all tired and lazy. The difference between those that fall into despair versus those that look the universe straight in the eye and say: “Put me back in coach. I’m ready to play again!” is the concept of shame. Shame is a powerful motivator. I don’t shower in the morning because I like to smell good. I shower because if I don’t, I’ll look (and smell) like hell and be ashamed of it. Shame is what makes you go to the grocery store and clean your kitchen when it would just be easier to order another pizza. I worry that I have run out of shame.

To demonstrate to me that even these thoughts are unoriginal, unimaginative and generally unimportant, the Universe has been kind enough to deliver the story I really wanted to tell today through someone else who does it far better than I ever could. As if to say: "Hey, we really don't need your insight today, we've got it covered. I'll get back to you"

Therefore I unashamedly provide this link: Time to Reflect - (T.D. Mischke's Blog is now inactive)

Read it.

Your Children are Stupid and Irritating

I went to Applefest in Bayfield, WI this weekend and watched a parade. It was your typical small town parade with a bunch of high school marching bands and 50 year old alcoholics, driving even older cars, throwing candy at the crowd. Nothing makes you reconsider your position on mandatory sterilization like a parade.

A parade is like a microcosm of our society gone awry. It’s like an overpopulated post-apocalyptic, greed-induced, anarchistic, capitalist frenzy of a freak show that makes “Beyond the Thunderdome” look like a PTA meeting. For some reason parents turn their “I’m Responsible for My Child’s Actions System” (IRM-CAS) down to zero. Granted, on a scale of one to ten (it should go to eleven), it’s usually on setting one any way. Zero being, you know, just that much more annoying.

“Oh look. Ethan is having so much fun stealing candy found on the street from other children. Just look at him spilling his oversized soda on that guy and repeatedly poking that lady in the face by waving his little plastic sword wildly in the air. See that old man in the wheel chair that got here three hours early to see his grand-daughter play in the parade just one last time before he dies? I’m sure he’s not at all annoyed by the fact that my little Ethan is now standing directly in front him with his big novelty cowboy hat blocking the view. Isn’t that cute?”

No. No. A thousand times no.

At this point many of you are chuckling and saying to yourselves: “I hate that. I’m glad my kid isn’t like that.” My friend, you just turned your IRM-CAS completely off. Trust me, your kids may be adorable to you, but to the rest of us, they’re loud, obnoxious little trolls designed to test our patience. Your kids, like everyone else’s, are self absorbed, single minded need machines with an unquenchable thirst for destruction. They’re like little Terminators, but instead of Sarah Connor, they hunt and kill the happiness of every adult stranger they encounter.

“But they’re just kids, what do you expect?” I know. I get that. Trust me, when I was five years old I couldn’t sit still for an hour or even explain, in the most rudimentary of ways, how general relativity or Newtonian physics affects our understanding of the universe. I was stupid and irritating.

Saying: “Well he’s just being a kid so it’s OK for him to scream and throw ice cream at passers-by.” is like saying: “It’s OK that I went to the playground, pissed myself and screamed obscenities from the top of the jungle gym because I was really really drunk”. It’s just not an excuse. Being a kid doesn’t somehow make you less annoying or stupid just like being drunk doesn’t make me less annoying or stupid. Trust me, I’ve seen video.

“Oh she’s so smart, she’s already reading at a 3rd grade level.” Yeah? Well I’ve got news for you… 3rd graders are idiots.

The Japanese are Fucking Hilarious!

I don’t know why, but there is something inherent in the Japanese culture that makes them the funniest people on the planet.

All I had to do was Google the phrase “Japanese Comedy” and the first thing I saw was hilarious: Elevating Loo . This is a culture worth admiring.

Remember the show Banzai? It’s not even Japanese, it’s British. But it was meant to look Japanese and that makes it all the more funny: “Interesting Penalty Shootout Conundrum! – One-legged kicker versus one-armed goalie. Who will win?!?!? Bet now.”

Awesome.

A couple months ago I spent 8 consecutive hours in a hotel room watching some show where contestants dressed up in costumes and attempted an obstacle course. Not very funny right? Wrong. Imagine some announcer yelling the play by play: “She goes for the rope-swing! Can she do it? Her daughter is watching! Oh noooo! She falls in! She brings shame and disgrace to her family!”

As a result of writing this, I think I have figured out why the Japanese are so damn funny. It’s the exclamation points!

De-funification

Today, I will post two articles. I understand the last post about the smoking ban has a lot of basic, almost knee-jerk arguments that a third grader with a plastic spork could poke holes in. It also contributes very little new or interesting to the debate. I present it however as a contextual reference for the real issue which I present now.

I want to have fun.

Frankly I am not that concerned about bar owners losing money, waitresses getting lung cancer, rising health care costs or any of the issues typically brought up. The real result of this ban is that everyone (and I mean everyone) will have just a little less fun. Most people don’t smoke. Most people in a given bar on a Friday night don’t smoke. But these non-smokers choose to go to these smoke-filled bars for a reason. That reason is fun. Smokers are more fun. They drink more, stay later, tip bigger, buy more rounds for strangers and are generally the loose cannons of our society. We like that about them. But when you hear: “I think the smoking ban is good because we have the right to breathe clean air” what they really mean is: “I want to go out and have fun like them but don’t like the consequences of smelling bad.” Sorry kids, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Yes, you may smell better when you get home at 10:00pm from that “wild” Saturday night at Bennigan’s, but I promise that you also had less fun, no matter how much you try to rationalize it.

Bars are places we go to be naughty. Yes, drinking and smoking are bad for us—that’s the fucking point. I want to be able to go to a strip club and get a lap dance and drink straight whiskey while smoking a cigar and a cigarette at the same time as I am eating a steak the size of my head.

This isn’t a public health issue or a private property issue as much as it is the opening salvo of a new kind of class war. This is a group of people who don’t like something and then use the force of the State to inflict their lifestyles onto others because seeing others have more fun than them makes them angry and regretful. Ask ten people in favor of this ban why and look them in the eyes when they tell you’re their “legitimate” reasons. I guaran-god-damn-tee you that eight of them won’t look you back in they eye when spew out their reasons… all of which rhyme with, and are, bullshit.

Minnesota Freedom to Breathe Act (Smoking Ban)

For those of you who know me, you can infer from the headline that I am about to launch into a tirade of biblical proportions. The “Freedom to Breathe Act” went into effect at midnight Oct. 1, 2007 creating a statewide indoor smoking ban. I am against this law. But rather than embark on a self-indulgent treatise about personal freedom and liberty (which I promise I will do at some point), I have decided to state the arguments in favor of this legislation and offer a dispassionate rebuttal for each.

The public health interest outweighs the property rights arguments.
This is like suspending habeas corpus or wire tapping every American because some of them might be communists. Sure, maybe some of them are. Are we really saying that second hand smoke is more important than property rights? Really? Are you sure?

Smoke-filled bars pose a significant health risk to patrons and employees.
We already have workplace air quality standards set by OSHA. I challenge anyone to find a bar (even the smokiest in town) that did not comply with OSHA clean air standards before the ban. What about loading docks, coal mines and back yard BBQ’s? The mother of all passive smoking studies, and probably the largest that will ever appear because of its enormous cost and effort, came from the labs of research professors James Enstrom of UCLA and Geoffrey Kabat of the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Published in the prestigous British Medical Journal in 2003, this 39-year analysis of 35,561 Californians found no “causal relationship between exposure to [passive smoke] and tobacco-related mortality,” adding, however “a small effect” can’t be ruled out. That’s a lot different than saying it’s the 3rd largest killer in the U.S. as some claim.

In other states, bars and restaurants saw an increase in business after the ban.
Well let’s ask the bar owners and these poor victimized servers in MN what the effects have been because it's not just the sales numbers. I quote a post from buzz.mn: “As a server in Minnesota who has worked both before and after the smoking ban, I can personally attest to the financial difficulties this has caused people in my line of work. I never see this addressed, so I'll go ahead and say this. And let me begin by saying that I don't have any hard proof and that I realize this isn't absolute by any means, but as a server you do see trends. In general, people who smoke tend to stay longer, spend more money, and tip better. Quite frankly, if smoking is keeping away people who are so uptight that they can't stand a little smoke IN A BAR, I don't want your 8% tip after you've spent the whole time complaining and trying to get money taken off your bill.

Here's the inherent problem. By and large, the vast majority of the people who really, truly support the service industry either smoke or don't really mind it. These smoking bans are aimed at the people who venture out of their town homes once a month for a glass of house wine and a chicken caesar salad. Great, you have a right to go out too. That's why there are non-smoking sections and non-smoking establishments. But those people aren't the ones who are spending real money at bars and restaurants.”
- Lynne36

This will help people quit smoking, which is good.
No it won't. As always, follow the money. The surgeon general proudly declared that no amount of second hand smoke is safe, then quit and went to work for one of the world’s largest manufacturer’s of nicotine replacement products. Blue Cross Blue Shield of MN and the state jointly sued the tobacco industry for the big “tobacco settlement”. Then we needed a health impact fee. Where’d that money go Blue Cross? There is no compelling evidence (beyond what I can only call junk science) that indicates passive smoke has a causal relationship with lung cancer or anything else for that matter. It’s a matter of carcinogen amounts. Normally our bodies can diffuse the carcinogens we take in on a daily basis because of their small amount. Passive smoke falls into this category, in much the same way as standing on a street corner and breathing in the exhaust from a Toyota Prius as it drives by. And no… it won’t cause any significant number of people to quit smoking. Trust me.

Smokers cost us taxpayers millions or billions of dollars in health care costs.
Contributions to the tax base by smokers as well as the tobacco settlement outweigh costs of health care shouldered by the rest of the rest of public. Smokers contribute more to health care revenue by orders of magnitude than any other class.

We need to protect children from the dangers of tobacco use.
What the fuck are they doing in a bar?

We have a right to go to smoke free places too.
Before the smoking bans in the metro, there was about 143 bars and restaurants (in the city of Minneapolis alone) that were already non-smoking. Statewide there were over 450 smoke-free options. So if you want to go out to dinner or socialize with friends in a smoke-free environment, take your pick.

Suburban Bovine Dysphoria

I attended my girlfriend’s 10 year high school reunion this weekend. A disappointment to say the least. There was a pretty good band playing, not a single person danced all night (with the exception of my girlfriend and I). In fact, only a handful of people even ventured more than 8 feet from the bar all night, which was around the corner from the tables and dance floor.

Essentially it was a group of a couple hundred people who didn’t like each other crowding around a bar in the middle of International Market Square. There wasn’t a single cat fight and no one got so drunk they couldn’t stand. While at the same time, there was not a soul in sight who seemed even remotely interesting to talk to. The hostility was so guarded and contained you could barely whisper and it would vanish into thin air. It was like a passive aggressive convention combined with an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting gone horribly wrong. Lame.

I was trying to figure out why this group of people seemed so boring. Then I remembered something I felt when I first moved to the Twin Cities.

This was a reunion for people who grew up in Maple Grove and Osseo. For the most part, these people all still live in the metro area. Their name tags read like a suburban sprawl guidebook: Burnsville, Hopkins, Maple Grove, Fridley, Apple Valley. To be honest, I couldn’t even tell you where these suburbs are. I’ve lived here 18 years and I still have no idea which direction Apple Valley is from Minneapolis.

I am speaking to you suburbanites now. Help me understand this bizarre phenomenon. What makes you think that you are somehow different from one another? Like you’re from different cities and as a result have a unique identifiable culture?

You don’t.

You are all from the same city. The city is Minneapolis/St. Paul, or better yet the Twin Cities. That’s where you are from. Not Maple-Pine-Grove-Park-Valley-Dale. You’re about as different from one another as two cocker spaniels from the same litter. Sure, maybe one of you has a brown spot over the left ear, but when you get together you just drool, run around in circles and wreck the furniture. I’ve never seen so many people drop their drinks and then walk through broken glass in my life.

For some reason however, this stratification seems desperately important to you. Maybe it started as high school rivalry. I don’t know. I don’t even pretend to understand it. It seems that without someone from a different suburb in your midst you have nothing to say. As though, being from the same suburb means you all share the same script and therefore have no need to read it to one another. The point is, when you get a group of people together all from the same suburb, they turn into cows. They huddle together on one side of the field, drink miller light from a bottle, and occasionally shit on each other.