Sunday, November 27, 2011

Pepper Spray...Apparently It's Tasty

Welcome, shoppers, to the Thinking Hard Superstore Black Friday Shoptacular. You'll find aisles of endless deals...like a 400-inch flat-screen TV for just $1. And WE'LL pay YOU if you walk out of the store with ANY computer in our electronics department. Make sure you're armed and dangerous when our doors open at 5am Thanksgiving morning!

Yeah, it's like that. First, some stores opened MUCH earlier this Black Friday than before...mostly because they're not anticipating large holiday crowds because, y'know, the nation's broke. Some opened Thursday night. That pissed off some of the employees who work at those stores. They were upset that their minimum wage job was cutting into their family time. Some advice for those people: don't like it? Grow up and get a real job. Get a career. ANYBODY with an ounce of common sense knows that if you plan to work for any retailer over the holidays, you're going to work shittier hours and deal with more outrageously stupid shoppers. If that doesn't appeal to you, there are newspaper routes and janitorial positions elsewhere. Otherwise, suck it up, because you get Christmas off. (Disclaimer: I have worked retail and I worked retail over the holidays and I know from EXPERIENCE that it sucks...and that's why I pushed myself harder to get a career outside of retail sales.)

And let's talk about the Black Friday shoppers, shall we? We had an arrest for CHILD NEGLECT at a local mall because some stupid woman left her BABY and her 2-YEAR-OLD children in the car at 5am while she went inside to shop. By the way, it was about 30 degrees outside. Well, lady, if you were looking at saving money during the holidays, freezing your kids to death is one way to go... Also, RIDICULOUS amounts of shoppers got into fights at stores across the U.S. Many of those incidents happened at Walmart stores. I don't mean to call Walmart out here (because, hey, I shop there all the time and they have some REALLY good prices on DVDs and food), but come on, shoppers! Yes, some of us joke that Walmart is "Target Of The Damned," but you're not helping STOP that stereotype when (no joke) one of you PEPPER-SPRAYS the other customers in line, just so you can get to the cash register and pay for your stuff! Bunch of idiots that shop at Walmart...and I've seen a LOT of them. And if you ever want to see a retail employee that clearly is pondering suicide, ask a Walmart employee where to find their pet food department. It's like their eyes are just straight black. Hollow. Eerie.

Oh, let's step away from the checkout lanes to discuss pepper spray. Police used pepper spray to get some "Occupy Douchebagia" protestors to leave the University of California. To be fair, the cell phone video shows protestors sitting calmly among the police...and one officer just starts spraying people left and right. The only things missing are police kicking the students and Rodney King looking on saying "Wow, and I thought I had it rough." (google it) Now, I'm sure some of you might be surprised by this, but Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly dropped a comment on Bill O'Reilly's show this week that almost appears to DEFEND the police, implying it's not that bad to be pepper-sprayed. She called it a "food product!"...



After days of internet onslaught, Kelly backpedalled a little to say she wasn't diminishing the actions of police. She just meant to point out that officers were within their rights and what they did becomes more of an ethical question than a legal one. So, yes, Megyn (with a Y) Kelly, pepper spray is essentially a food product...much like pizza is a vegetable. In fact, some bullets in guns are made of iron, which is also present in our bloodstream, so SHOOTING people with iron bullets is more humane than other bullets and should be considered HELPING those people who have natural iron deficiencies in their blood. So, officers, fire away. Let's start with Megyn Kelly, shall we?

Speaking of crazy fucking women that are given WAY too much airtime on Fox News, let's talk about Michele Bachmann. The crazy-eyed GOP presidential candidate made an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and his house band, The Roots, played a catchy tune as Bachmann was introduced. Even Bachmann commented that she liked it...until she learned the name of it. It's called "Lyin' Ass Bitch." THEN Bachmann was outraged...



Mrs. Bachmann, if I may, you are exactly right. The Roots should NOT have played "Lyin' Ass Bitch" as you walked in. It was entirely inappropriate. They SHOULD have played Buckcherry's "Crazy Bitch." All I have to do is see you look into a camera and I KNOW that's more accurate.

One more thing before I go...there's a DMV office in Washington, D.C., that EVERYONE should visit. You can get your driver's license...tax stickers...and even find out if you have HIV. That's right. The office gives FREE HIV TESTS. I presume it will also offer condoms to put over your stick shift.

-B-

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Job Hunting With Demi, Ashton and Bridget

(A special thanks to start this week's blog to Bridget Russo, for making these pictures possible.)

Hey everyone, I'll try to make this week's blog quick...Ashton's in bed waiting for me. Seriously, Demi's surprised Ashton cheated on her with a younger, less skeletal woman after six years of wedded bliss. I'M more surprised that it took Ashton a WHOLE SIX YEARS to think "Wow, 50's not looking so hot."

Big news this week involving Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger. You might remember him as the airline pilot who made an emergency landing in the middle of the Hudson River, saving his entire crew and passengers. It will CONSTANTLY be referred to as the "Miracle on the Hudson." (See also this blog, which referred to the whole media debacle as the Cirque du Sully) Well, this week, he flew a vintage-ish plane for charity. After he landed, another pilot took off to fly the plane away...but had to make a (wait for it) EMERGENCY LANDING at the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina. Holy crap, Sully! What's up with the planes you're in? You MUST be the world's most dangerous man! In fact, I don't think flying planes is a dangerous enough job for you. You've heard of the cable show "Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe"? I propose a show called "Dangerous Jobs with Sully...Don't Laugh at My Nickname or I'll Fly Your Plane." Seriously, can you imagine how he'd do at some other jobs?...


Knife salesman. Who better to sell you a set of the sharpest Ginsu knives in the world?? For an added bonus, his infomercial would show him juggling the knives...blindfolded...strapped to the wing of a plane in mid-air...with STILL enough ability to notice when the plane's pilot passed out, so he'd walk up to the cockpit and land the plane safely. In a river. Because it's kind of his thing now. And in his first interview after the averted disaster, his first comments would be "NOW how much would you expect to pay???"


The weird guy who sticks his head in an alligator's mouth. Okay, first, what kind of medical and dental do these guys get, because I'm sort of looking for a new job. Second, how has Sully NOT done this yet? He'd be perfect! The absolute calmest man to ever try it. Wait...is he wearing ALLIGATOR BOOTS? OH MY GOD, HE'S ALREADY DONE IT...AND THE ALLIGATOR LOST!! I envision his last words to that alligator were "Take that, you croc-sucker." Or not. Sully seems pretty clean with his language. I imagine in the cockpit of the Miracle on the Hudson flight, as the plane went down, he shouted "Holy...COW!" and then after the flight he apologized to his co-pilot about the language.


Rancher. Cowboy. Call it what you will, but the mere job has been the prime example for everything macho in the U.S. for decades. It seems like everyone who slaps on that 10-gallon hat suddenly becomes a chick magnet, never mind the alligator boots. Sully would probably still trade the cowboy hat for his pilot's cap. And can you imagine what he'd do to the guys who'd try to steal his cattle? He'd stop them in their middle-of-the-night thievery and say "Gentlemen, I believe you're lost. This is not your farm." And they'd run away in fear. Because Sully is that awesome.


UPS driver. Ladies, have you ever seen a man sexier than some of the guys they hire to drive the UPS vans?...what?...that's a woman??...ew. But think about it. He's the perfect choice. He had more experience with Brown than most people...did you CHECK the underwear of the passengers on the Miracle on the Hudson plane? It's a good thing they landed in a dirty river: "What? No, of COURSE I didn't crap my pants! I must've picked up something from the Hudson."


Window washer. One of my favorites. C'mon, this suits Sully so PERFECTLY. Consider this: window washers spend most of their days HUNDREDS of feet in the air. For Sully, that would be like going from riding the Regurgitron 5000 roller coaster to the Ladybug kiddie ride! And as a pilot, he has to pay close attention to meticulous details, just like a window washer making sure he didn't miss any spots...as well as making sure the brakes are set on the platform hanging hundreds of feet in the air. And don't have any safety concerns for Sully. If the platform starts falling, he'll find a way to land that thing in a bucket of water.

Finally, the job with the most potential danger of all...


Look, there's GREAT potential for screaming kids at any ice cream parlor. And even though the PASSENGERS of Sully's flights are WELL-accustomed to the hollering and bawling of small children (parents, PLEASE give us ear plugs...it's the humane thing to do), Sully himself is not. He's locked in a soundproof cockpit with a headset on, listening to air traffic control chatter. In fact, I imagine he considered a career as a flight attendant, but decided to be a pilot instead JUST so he could avoid hearing the screaming young'uns. (Great name for a band, by the way...Screaming Young'uns) So if he dared work at an ice cream parlor, he'd practice the one skill he'd absolutely need to prevent a child from crying. Picture this: a child orders a single scoop of Rocky Road ice cream. Sully scoops it up and politely hands it to the child. The child takes one lick of the ice cream...and bumps the scoop off the cone, sending it plummeting to the floor. Sully, wasting no time, goes all Matrix-like and DIVES over the counter, reaching out his arm just as the ice cream barrels toward the linoleum. And at the last possible second GRABS the scoop and places it back on the child's cone, thus averting disaster. Because, you know, that's how he rolls.

Before I leave you today, a quick update on the Penn State scandal...and quite a shocker on national TV this week:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jerry Sandusky Phone Interview
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Bob Costas would later recount that he had planned a sit-down interview with Sandusky's attorney and about ten minutes before air time, that attorney said "What if I could get Jerry on the phone?" Attorney for Jerry Sandusky...the one job even SULLY isn't crazy enough to do.

-B-

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Three Quick Punchlines...

If an older woman is into younger guys, she's called a Cougar.

1. If an older GUY is into younger GUYS, is he called a Nittany Lion?
2. If a black pizza entrepreneur is into women looking for jobs, is he called a Republican Presidential Candidate?
3. ....um...hang on, I'll remember it...the EPA?

That's right...BIG week in news for us here at Thinking Hard. We pretty much had a giant newsgasm. And who would've thought that the big story to start the week would be so easily forgotten? GOP Presidential Candidate Herman Cain is being accused now by four women who say he sexually harassed them and even tried to push one's head into his lap to...um..."examine his zipper." At least two of them were paid off several years ago and still came forward. STILL not enough to knock him off the top of some of the latest GOP polls. That's basically like the republicans saying "Hey, that's a lot better than what I did with my teenage stepson last night."

And that leads us right into another big news story...the sex scandal that rocked Penn State. Seems quite a few years ago, a grad assistant caught one of the football team's coaching staff raping a player in the showers. So he reported it to coach Joe Paterno...who reported it to HIS superiors...who did nothing. In this entire chain of command of "good ol' boys," NO ONE CALLED THE POLICE. It's like the Catholic Church. Now, don't get me wrong...the offending staff member (perhaps I should use neither "staff" nor "member" in this story) lost his key to the boys' locker room. Wow. It cost the National Restaurant Association more to sweep the Herman Cain stuff under the rug than this ACTUAL CASE OF RAPE. So, as you can imagine, the students at Penn State took to the streets of the campus to defend the victim...Joe Paterno. That's right. In a tribute to the true classiness of Penn State, they RIOTED after the university fired Paterno this week, not making any comments about how they feel bad for the REAL victim (the player) but instead taking up for the man who THEY believe was the victim (Joe Paterno). Hell, even that idiot Ashton Kutcher tweeted his support for Joe Pa because he thought the coach was being pushed out because of his age...and not, y'know, because he helped cover up a rape case on campus. In the midst of the melee on Penn State's campus, students even tipped over a live news truck, which the station later reports could have started a large fire/explosion because it started leaking gasoline. So, with a couple of exceptions, to the entire campus of Penn State...Fuck. You. You whiny, bitchy bunch of pussies who think football is the only thing that matters. You uninformed, poorly educated miscreants. You pieces of shit. I wonder how YOU'D react if someone you trusted (i.e., a coach, a father, a priest) betrayed that trust in the most horrible way possible by inserting his penis into your body without ANY agreement on your part...then you kept it quiet because of the way others viewed your attacker. I find myself often disappointed by the human race's desire to continue procreating and adding more people to this planet, but you, Penn State students, you make me think of the 4-year-old children I hear screaming and crying in the store because they can't have a little toy, totally oblivious to the fact that their mothers can't afford the toy and can barely afford FOOD to put on the TABLE. But I guess some thanks are in order. Thank you for proving that this new generation is a generation of selfish fucking bastards with absolutely no regard to their common man. Football above all, right? Assholes.

*sigh* Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Now, let's hit that third big news story of the week, which was, uh...um...er...

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2012 - Mercy Rule Edition
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(side note: even though I was ready and waiting for the Rick Perry jokes here, I still fell for the intro about the three funniest movies Adam Sandler has been in...and only being able to name two...because Sandler hasn't done anything TRULY funny since Happy Gilmore...and Jack & Jill has "giant turd" written all over it)

And now, the bonus. Here at Thinking Hard, we offer you the big stories...but we also offer you a story or two you might not have heard about. This time, it's a story out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. A reporter thought he stumbled onto the story of the lifetime...a puppy mill was raising dogs not for pets, but for food. The reporter thought he found a connection that the mill sent the dogs to New York's Chinatown. He even called one place and asked if they sold dog meat...and the person on the phone said yes. Turns out, there was something a little lost in translation. The person on the other end of the phone thought the reporter said DUCK meat, which the business DOES sell. But it does NOT sell DOG meat. Apparently, the puppy mill DID send some living dogs, but the shipment was intended for a PET STORE and the address was just incorrectly labeled. The New York Health Department investigated and found no evidence of dog meat being sold. So, the reporter is in the DOGHOUSE and has a little egg on his face. Tell you what...let's allow people in Taiwan's popular news agency to make things a little worse for him:



Delightful. I think that reporter needs to book a trip to a secluded island for a while. He can fly RyanAir, which announced this week it's looking at offering in-flight porn. But only in the COCKpit.

-B-

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Kim Kardashian's Single Again!

...so, you know, if you're a professional athlete who makes a shit-ton of money, is at least PARTLY african-american, and is blind, deaf AND stupid (gotta be all three), she's available.

Something that should be noted off the top of this thing: Andy Rooney has died. The LONGtime 60 Minutes correspondent passed away Friday...thus proving that the only thing keeping him alive all these years was bitching about random shit in a public forum. So that means I'LL be around for a while yet.

Also, let me get THIS out of the way...if you see me in a bar or a club or something, I'm 6'8". This should save you any time of walking up to me, shouting near-incoherently "How tall are you???" and then walking away when I tell you. True story. I don't think that chick knew how to respond.

Hey, it's (off-year) Election Day this Tuesday! That means many (okay, just a few) voters will hit the polls this week to support their (mayoral, city council or school board) candidate! Go team! Okay, let's not kid ourselves...this year's Election Day means shit. It's NEXT year's Election Day that's the big one. Will Herman "Would you like fries with that shake...wait, come back, what'd I say??" Cain be the GOP's pick for president? Will it be Mitt "Seriously, I'm only giving this one more shot before going back to my used car lot" Romney? Rick Perry seemed pretty popular...until the speech in New Hampshire:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2012 - Ruh Roh Edition
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You might have noticed Stewart taking a jab or two at Herman Cain...that apparently upset one of New York's most upstanding citizens:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Conservative Minorities vs. Liberal Minorities
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Today's lesson: our blacks are better than their blacks. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go ask Justin Bieber to impregnate my sister.

-B-