I'm Boycotting Bill Maher

I don't agree with many of Sarah Palin's views, some maybe, certainly not all. But I sure as hell admire the woman for putting herself out there knowing that scum like Bill Maher will try and demonize her the way he did by calling her a "dumb twat".

Bill, I won't refer to you as any body part, but how about this? The next time you run your mouth about another woman that you can't stand, do us all a huge favor and put a giant condom over your head so you don't spread that nasty disease that you're carrying. It's called pure ugliness. I hope someone finds a cure for you.

When Bill got wind of this post, he wasn't very happy. Here's what he sent me:

Wow, Bill. I thought you had more class than that. You've proven me wrong.

The Burger King Value Meal Scam

So, when you order off the value menu at Burger King you must pay $.01 extra. Why? If you advertise something as being a “value” meal, isn’t that misleading when it costs more to purchase the “value” meal than if you just ordered everything individually?

Indicated on the menu for the individual items:

Double Stacker $2.00
Medium Fries $1.99
Medium Drink $1.89

Here’s my receipt. I think I can do the math here, taxes and all:

I put a red box around the phone number on the receipt just so you know, don’t bother calling that number because you have to be “invited” to make that call. You have to have an “invitation” code in order to take their “satisfaction survey”. They need to get a programmer to change this, take this phone number off the receipt and ONLY print it on the piece of paper that spits out the “invitation” code. You know?

I’ll get back to the word “value” now. Where is this added value? I think Burger King receives value in it, of course, because they get an extra $.01. With this extra $.01 they steal from their customers, they are that much closer to reaching their ROI for the user-friendly cash registers they purchase so they can cut back on the “training” time it takes to show the new guy how to operate something slightly more complex, their brain.

Next time I go to Burger King I’m NOT going to order the #11; I’m going to order a Double Stacker and when they ask me if I want the value meal I’m going to say, “No, but give me a medium order of fries and a medium diet coke.”

I can’t wait to hear, “Ma’am that would make it a value meal.” I’m just that ready to be a bitch about it.

Winning, duh

I don't think seeing my work in print is a big deal to me. I would rather have one person really love what I wrote, that one person being me, rather than many who purchased it and thought it was just okay.




I used a publishing tool once to build a PDF of one of my stories: in Times New Roman 12-point font, double-spaced with one-inch margins. I was like, "Cool, looks like the same kind of writing in books I've purchased." Then I thought how awful it must be to have an editing job, hoping that your slush pile readers are sending you something really juicy...only to discover it's another one of THOSE stories! The horror of it all, not only does it read like all others, it LOOKS like a standard manuscript....ARRRRGH! Somebody shoot me, NOW.



All joking aside, it would be nice to become a published author some day, but I have a full-time job and a family that consume almost all of my time. The time and effort required to polish a piece of work for submission would be strenuous, which is the one thing I try to avoid. Even if I did all that work, a rejection would be like throwing salt into an open wound.



That's why I blog instead. I promise I won't create a Charlie Sheen "winning" entry for entertainment. I’ll post a video instead.

WINNING, duh.

Charlie Sheen's Winning Recipes from Charlie Sheen

Mercy Rules Are Stupid

I was reading about that one Coach McGill whose team won by over a 100 points in some girl's basketball game. I was shocked by the spread in points, but even more shocked by the scorn that he'd received. What the hell was that all about? Because he didn't do all he could to make sure his team scored less points than they did now he's some kind of bad guy?



So, did his team do too well, or did the other team simply not try as hard as they could have? Where's the motivation in getting kids to step up and perform if they know that the other team may beat them, but not by that much? Okay, so you lost, but they only beat you by 20 points rather than 100. That's our mentality?



"Too many people in the world right now allow the youth to not be as good as they can be, allow them to be lazy," said McGill. "Here, I'm giving them an opportunity to live up to the best of their abilities and be proud of what they're able to accomplish. If that's what I'm being blamed for, then OK, I accept it."



It would be nice if more coaches approached sports with this philosophy. Why isn't it okay to be the best, play your best at all cost? Isn't that what the spirit of competition is all about? Imagine yourself in a singing competition and the first person up really sucked. Are you going to go onto that stage and downplay your talent just so that your points aren't too far above the untalented? Of course not! That's just asinine. I wouldn't do it, and I certainly wouldn't ask my daughter to either.



So Coach McGill had a small team, talented but small. Was he supposed to have his team toss the basketball back and forth, keep the ball away from the other team and let the time elapse rather than continue to score? That's worse. If you don't want to get humiliated, play your best and hope you don't get pummelled by a better team...or better yet, don't play sports! Not everyone is cut out for it, but if you want to play, I think you should strive to be better than you are, not worse so that you don't hurt other people's feelings.



According to Cameron Smith, "That commitment to excellence comes at a cost. In this case, it was the ego of teenage girls that was affected by the effective implementation of McGill's personal philosophy. Given that West Ridge is a school for at-risk youth, those egos in question may be even more fragile than most."



Really? So we care about egos of at-risk young girls, and so the answer is to not play hard to win...we should downplay our abilities so that they never realize how bad they really are or how good the other team really is? We are not supposed to be stroking the egos of our youth or coddling them, we are supposed to be building confidence and promoting teamwork. You do that by making them strive as a team and when they are defeated as a team, they will learn how much work they must accomplish to compete next time. You don't accomplish that by asking your children not to do their best in certain conditions, like when the other team is "really" losing.



Give them a chance to catch up? And if they are "at-risk" and their egos are more "fragile" cut them even more slack because we don't want them to be upset. Really? How about teach them the spirit of competition, which isn't about winning or losing as much as it is about learning to cope with the agony of defeat as well as learning to humbly accept the thrill of victory.


Coaches and teachers should do their best and make our youth better by teaching them the skills they need to play better. Don't rely on these stupid mercy rules to preserve the youth egos. Children are resilient, they will learn and bounce back. Seriously, I think these rules are more in place to help repair egos of the coaching staff.



I'm reminded of The Breakfast Club when Andrew mocks his father, "Andrew! You've got to be number one! I won't tolerate any losers in this family! Your intensity is for shit! Win! Win! Win!" I'm not saying that we should push our youth to be the best at all cost, but they shouldn't be asked to give up the fruits of their labor, which is the euphoria in winning from playing their best. Anything less than that is diminishing their self worth. Humility in winning is taught when the game is over, not during the game.

Top 10 Ideas That Are Teh Ghey

10. Approving budgets that include a 50% boost in executive salaries and 0 dollars toward marketing strategies. BP is experiencing the reverse of this right now.



9. Logging into a server where everyone can crack a cheat and level up to the max to see who haz the better skillz. What's the point in experiencing the journey, right?



8. Making Snookie a super star. Why is it so hard to ignore stupid people? We want to make them famous instead. The quickest way to get money back into the economy is to make stupid people rich right? Well, they're the only ones spending money and there's less of them, so that theory isn't smart. Why are they the only ones spending money? BECAUSE EVERYONE ELSE IS AT HOME, WATCHING THEIR STUPID SHOWS AND ADDING TO THE RATINGS THAT ARE MAKING STUPID PEOPLE FAMOUS!!!



7. Giving military discounts to ACTIVE DUTY ONLY personnel. Really? Are you going to turn down a double amputee in a wheel chair who fought in WWII just because his military I.D. reads "retired"? Please tell me you didn't just give that discount to a woman who is separated from her active duty husband (and refuses to get a divorce so that she can secure that active duty military I.D. card) and said husband has managed to avoid combat for the past 10 years despite America having been involved in two major wars!



6. Marriage is just a piece of paper. Really? It's funny what a piece of paper can do. My friend cheated on her husband, never worked a day in her life, took half of everything they owned AND took half of his military pension. Strong piece of paper I'd say.


5. Love is blind. No it's not. Life is just more tolerable when you have someone else with whom to share it. Only 5% of the population is attractive. The rest of us know our flaws. Love is accepting each other's flaws and being grateful that we're each willing to spend our lives together despite them. It's not like we look at each other and see Ken and Barbie! You don't love someone so much that you overlook his or her huge honker of a nose and see a pretty little button one instead, okay.



4. Composing a song that literally spells out something...think "Y.M.C.A." and "Living in the c-i-t-y". Seriously?



3. Donnie and Marie.



2. No need to learn spelling rules. We have spell-check in our word processing software. Okay, than tell me why their are mistakes in this hear sentence that will not be picked up by you're spellchecker.



1. The early bird gets the worm. So? We are not birds and I do not particularly like worms, raw or cooked. Now leave me alone and let me get back to sleep!


Signed,
Teh Ghey Analyst - Why? Because posting a Top 10 list is pretty teh ghey in and of itself. :)