Thursday, March 27, 2008

Dear Santa...



Send it! Send it NOW! I'll even put the tree back up.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Writers Strike

Thank goodness it is over, but did you ever wonder what those creative types did over the weeks when they were not busy devising plots for Lost or Heros?

Now I can not conclusively prove this, but the data in my Spam inbox suggests that they kept the lights on by coming up with and selling engaging taglines for spam.

The uncreative crap titles such as "Add 3 inches overnight" and "Size DOES matter" have been replaced with new and exciting offers including:

Enjoy a sizzling love life with your new instrument.

Whip out the anaconda in your pants and watch her eyes light up with excitement.


Having a larger rocket in your pocket gives you more confidence both in life and around women.

Imagine if you could have a 9 inch tool in your pants - NOW YOU CAN.

Very nice random emailers, very nice.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Why are you so angry?

I was in line behind some guy at 7-eleven today who makes ME look patient.

He went from under his breath grumbling to full on F-bomb dropping in a blink of an eye when the sales clerk took just a little too long to select just the right big bite for another customer. Finally he threw down $5 and yelled Gimme five on the van. I guess that's when things started to make sense.

1) Nobody likes to wait -- This was the step that primed the pump
2) He was driving a mini-van -- That is a powdered keg for almost anyone under 35
3) He only had five dollars for gas -- What is that, like a gallon and a half?

The combination of these three things pretty much set the stage for a FOX 5 breaking news event if I ever saw one.

I dunno. Maybe he was also having a bad day to boot. Perhaps a little too much St. Patty's day celebration, maybe he is the victim of some crazy rumor. The possibilities are endless.

Maybe some of you are asking, what kind of rumor could be that enraging? Well as an example, and I am not saying this rumor did get started, but it very easily could have, this past weekend we caught up with some old friends for 30th birthday party.

One of invities named "Matty" called to indicate that he had a blast at the DC 101Shamrockfest and was absolutely piss-bent and would not be making it to the party. I think the message went like this. HJBIOP fqoi ewrrivf qwioecn9pqper oernpwerv. Dill pickles.

About five minutes later, in a different conversation someone spoke of how their dog "Maddie" pooped out a sock earlier in the day.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see the potential implications of someone overhearing Mattie got bombed and Maddie pooped a sock.

I think that is precisely the type of rumor worthy of dropping an F-bomb or two at a slow poke big bite wrangler.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Monday, March 10, 2008

Meat-o-nomics

What started out as a rather innocuous what’s going on this weekend? Email evolved into what is quite possibly the most intellectually provocative string of replies my eyes have seen in this year 2008. I have taken liberties to summarize the thread and truncated the names to protect the innocent.

Without further ado I present Meat-o-nomics 2008…

G-man: Anything exciting going on this weekend?

P-vo: Dc tonight for happy hour to meet an old roommate. Working on an econ mid-term all day tomorrow. Tomorrow night going to dc to meet another old roommate then to adams morgan.

G-man: econ mid-term, eh? I got a good thesis topic for you.... Quantify the elasticity between El Crank (Spanish for the Crank—note Spanishification added by T-15) and the national hot dog supply.

P-vo: I wish all test questions were that easy. El Crank has an extremely high price elasticity of demand when it comes to the consumption of hot dogs, i.e. if there is a large change in price in hot dogs, the quantity desired changes drastically. I would consider there to be a price ceiling on this elasticity however, I can only imagine El Crank at the grocery store looking at a $10 package of hot dogs, shaking his head and exclaiming “$10 for a package of hot dogs! I’ve never paid $10 for a package of hot dogs!” At this point we would need to discuss the availability of and his propensity to consume substitutes…but that would be an entirely different lecture altogether.

El Crank: I don't think you can have an educated discussion about Economics without the use of Charts. See attached.


P-vo: What would have been real funny is if the curve were constructed out of an actual hotdog. It is interesting to note that the curve never touches the x axis, meaning the crank's demand for hot dogs never reaches 0, thus destroying the concept of diminishing marginal utility and utterly blowing my mind!


T-15: Asketh and ye shall receiveth!

Ok technically speaking that is not a hot dog. Likewise, technically speaking I am no graphics designer wiz.

Eitherway, a meat product curve is a meat product curve.




Friday, March 07, 2008

Big Mac Index

In a rather creative approach to understand the value of the dollar, some fatty economist devised a Big Mac index, showing what a Big Mac would cost around the world once you convert the local selling price into USD...

Five most expensive
1) Iceland - US 7.44
2) Norway - US 6.63
3) Switzerland - US 5.05
4) Denmark - US 4.84
5) Sweden - US 4.59

Five most affordable
1) China - US 1.41
2) Hong Kong - US 1.54
3) Malaysia - US 1.57
4) Venezuela - US 1.58
5) Egypt - US 1.60

In other news I have eaten at Mcdonalds in two of the 10 markets listed above and fully agree. I think I paid close to $16 for a McChiken "Value" meal in Zurich and about $3.50 for a McArabia meal in Cairo.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008