Nice Little Monday Morning

What better way to start off the week than by having my cell phone vibrate 117 consecutive times at 7:30 AM, having been flooded with returned emails from defunct email addresses, indicating that my Gmail account has somehow been hacked for the second time in as many weeks?

Not only do I have to endure the annoying embarrassment of having promotional emails appear in people's in-boxes who I haven't spoken to in years, I also have the pleasure of spending my morning changing the password on my account, which inevitably leads to a phone call to Sprint to be able to keep getting emails on my Blackberry. Highly aggravating. I have to take an extra Crestor today.

Please, computer hackers, I beg you: STOP HACKING ME. None of my acquaintances are going to start drinking acai berry juice, or whatever the fuck it is you're trying to trick people into believing I'm pushing on them. Leave us alone. Go hack into a government site, someplace where you can really do some damage. Google actually alerted me to the fact that someone had accessed my account from Saudi Arabia. Don't you people have more important shit going on over there? Terrorism and uprisings, that sort of thing? Figure out how to put your technological prowess towards advancing those goals.

By the way, Google, crackerjack job you're doing protecting your users from this sort of thing. I have absolutely no appreciation for the decade of free email service you've provided me. You suck.

Oh, and for all you people actually responding to this spam, writing back to ask me if I've been hacked, allow me to answer you collectively: YES, I HAVE BEEN HACKED. Thanks for being part of the 5% of people I've ever emailed to think I may have actually intentionally sent you an email containing only a web address for vitamin supplements, and then creating another 25 emails I have to go through by asking me about it. Please, for both our sakes, next time you get an email from me with the subject heading "Hullo There!!!"...just delete it.

What a Twist!

I just spent the weekend with my family in Phoenix, my Least Favorite City in America (although to be fair, I haven't yet been to Cleveland, Detroit, or New Shitstainberg, Delaware). The locale itself was actually not the subject of today's ire; everything went swimmingly until my final meal before leaving.

It was breakfast, this morning at the hotel. The service was bad. Specifically, our waiter was very slow taking our order and bringing out the food. Worse than that, he was condescending. He made little feather-ruffling quips here and there, such as when my uncle ordered egg whites with broccoli, and he said "I have to see if we have that. That's not a normal menu item." It wasn't exactly the content of what he said, but they way he said it that chapped my lips. It was downright snooty. (Snooty? Snotty. Snotty?!?! Five bucks if you can name the movie.)

Anyway, later on in the meal, a busboy brought out the scoop of cottage cheese my aunt had ordered a half hour earlier, and she politely refused it, saying she was no longer hungry. When the waiter came back, my grandfather's wife informed him of this development.

"Oh, okay. I'll take it off the bill. Somebody had to be served last."

Can you believe that? He actually said that. "Somebody had to be served last."

I turned and looked up at him. "What an asshole," I said, chuckling in disbelief.

"Excuse me?" he said, incredulous. 

" 'Somebody had to be served last?' Are you kidding me? You're a fucking prick, man." The waiter didn't know what to say, so I continued. "You say that like you brought everyone's food out at once, happened to set her cottage cheese down last, and she complained about it. As opposed to what really happened, which is that you took a half hour to scoop some cottage cheese into a fucking bowl and trot it out here."

"I said I was sorry--" the waiter began to stammer.

"No you didn't. At no point did you attempt to apologize. You just said you'd take it off the bill. How does not charging someone for something they didn't eat constitute an apology?"

"I don't appreciate your language," the bastard sniveled, trying to assert himself. 

"I don't appreciate anything about you," I shot back. "Bring your manager out here, post haste!" The waiter muttered something and disappeared. Five minutes later, his manager came over to speak to me, a middle-aged British woman. I explained to her what had happened, and the waiter was fired on the spot. Then he went home and hung himself.

You might presume that the subject of this kvetch was our jerkoff waiter. But you'd be wrong. In fact, more than anything, I was annoyed with myself, as that entire interaction, after the waiter said "Somebody had to be served last," occurred only in my mind, several minutes after he had left the table, having not at all been put in his place, and with an inflated, unchecked air of self-righteousness. 

One of the many instances when I wish my life had a rewind button.

More Celebrity Lookalikes

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan vs. Gabe from "The Office"

PS - Good job not shutting down the government over abortion rights. USA! USA!

Most Recent Cool Thing I Said to a Dodger Fan:

"Sorry, I have to take this home and piss on it."

-in response to a sweet girl in Dodger gear who noticed I was a Giants fan and politely asked me for the giveaway Dodger Snuggie I was carrying out of the game tonight at Dodger Stadium.

I Object

I was watching coverage of Barry Bonds's perjury trial, and they showed this illustration from the courtroom:

Honestly, is there anything more outdated than the courtroom sketch artist? Why is this still the way images are recorded from trials? In the 19th century, I get it. There was no other option besides having someone draw what was happening. But now?

Are cameras not allowed in courtrooms, for some reason? Wasn't the O.J. trial televised? The very fact that they have a guy illustrating these ridiculous cartoons and releasing them to the press is proof that we're supposed to see what's going on...kind of. Why does our judicial system still prefer this slightly less accurate, MUCH more costly and time-consuming medium to actual photographs?

Since our government has such a nostalgia for these antiquated sketches, I'm going to go down to the DMV and demand they replace my driver's license photo with this:

911 is a Joke in My Town

I was hiking up at Runyon Canyon yesterday with my friend and neighbor Jonas; Runyon is the popular little mountain a few blocks up from my building that the local yuppies and dog-walkers turn to for exercise. While we were up there, an LAPD helicopter repeatedly circled overhead. It seemed like they were looking for somebody.

On our way down, Jonas and I noticed an extremely suspicious person. He was clearly hiding behind a tree, watching the helicopter. After it circled once more and flew away, this guy took off jogging down the hill. At Jonas's insistence, we jogged after him, to see where he went.

We followed the guy back out to the street, where he continued to appear somewhat like a fugitive, glancing behind him, until he ultimately got in a car and drove away. Some 30 minutes later, as Jonas and I were on our way to a happy hour, he was obviously still concerned.

"Do you think I should call it in?" he asked me in the car. "Am I crazy?"

"Call what in?" I asked, having already forgotten about it. "That guy we saw?"

Jonas felt a yearning to perform a civic duty that clearly eluded me, but I told him to go ahead if it made him feel better about himself. Not knowing what else to do, he called 911.

Now, I've never called 911. Never had I needed to. But I would expect there would be some sense of urgency. Instead, our call was immediately put on hold, because "all operators are busy," and the message went on to suggest dialing 311 if it was a true emergency.

Really? 311 is the new 911? Did you guys know this? I thought 311 was just an enjoyable pop-funk band from the late 90's.

The voice recording was followed by about 30 seconds of what it sounds like when you accidentally call a fax machine: horrible high-pitched digital screeching. Jonas and I looked at each other in disbelief. Then, finally, an operator got on the line. It had been about a minute and a half since he dialed in. If I had called at the beginning of being raped by a rapist, I would have been raped already.

Jonas told the operator what we had seen. The operator clicked away on her computer, then said nonchalantly: "Um, I see that there was a helicopter over Western and Crawford............?"

Jonas let that hang, not really knowing how to respond. It wasn't like we were looking for confirmation of the helicopter buzzing Runyon Canyon. We were just trying to be helpful. Jonas told the woman that he was just providing a tip. She promised to "make a note of it," and we hung up.

I can't say I was ever truly concerned about the particular individual we may or may not have thwarted from further criminal activity yesterday. But after the way that 911 call played out, I certainly hope that I never have to rely on an employee of the Los Angeles government to get me out of any kind of legitimate jam.

Ma-newer

How come only horses and chickens get to refer to their excrement as "manure"? Why don't we say "dog manure" or "bird manure," or get to use this word for our own droppings? It's a much more pleasant euphemism than any of the other words we have: "crap," "shit," "dump," etc. I'm partial to "poop," but it's a little on the immature side, especially when you have to excuse yourself from a business meeting.


George Costanza has already proven the attractiveness of the word "manure" with his analytical breakdown to Marisa Tomei: "If you think about it, manure is not really that bad a word. I mean, it's 'newer,' which is good, and a 'ma' in front of it, which is also good. Ma-newer!"


The primary definition dictionary.com gives for "manure" is "excrement, especially of animals, or other refuse used as fertilizer." But you could argue that not all horse manure is used as fertilizer, especially those big green clumps I had to avoid when I used to bike around Venice Beach, thanks to those highly modern mounted police. You could also make the case that all feces, of all species, eventually returns to the earth, and thus every organism produces manure.


So going forward, I've decided to refer to my own waste as my manure. When I have to go, I'll inform people that "I'm off to make manure." And if you're interested, I'll be selling 10 lb. bags of it at Orchard Supply Hardware for $5.99. Garden season is upon us!