Category Archives: funny

The Mythical High Performance Sock

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All my socks do is sit and plot their escape.

All my socks do is sit and plot their escape.

The day before I flew to India, a guy in the hotel’s guest laundry room told me that he’d almost gotten in a fight once when a pair of socks turned up missing. We all know that socks are the great self-emancipators of the garment world; they go Steve McQueen from the dryer all the time. Begging the question, why would anyone get so upset over the disappearance of them.

He must have seen the incredulity in my face, as he went on to tell me these were “high performance” socks.

I don’t know if got my second level incredulity as I thought, High… Performance… Socks? The things you wear on your feet to mop up sweat?

A sock is essentially a foot-shaped bag for your feet. As near as I can tell, the acts it “performs” are: 1.) warming the foot a little, 2.) drying the foot a little (theoretically)–though it can also keep the foot wet longer than it otherwise would be, and 3.) producing stink.

In the military we were instructed to wear two pairs of socks. The sock closest to the skin was a cotton sock, and the outer sock was wool. This rationale for this foot sauna was that the cotton sock would wick moisture away from one’s skin, and the wool sock would keep one’s foot warm even when wet. Incidentally, this works great if you are in a cold environment–unfortunately, we haven’t fought a war in a cold environment since 1953.

So when I thought about the “performance” at which these socks excelled, I assumed they must keep one’s feet toasty. Wrong! The material seems extra thin. So, they must keep the foot extra dry, perhaps they are embedded with talc or something like that. Wrong again.

Surely these socks aren’t better than average at producing foot stench?  No. That’s not it.

Then I realized there was an other factor on which a sock might be judged: its ability to get people to hand over money in exchange for it. An average pair of socks can garner $3 or $4, but high performance socks can get people to shell over $17 or more. That’s some high performance.

Now, I know someone out there will be wanting to tell me about the orthopedic benefits of said sock in supporting one’s arch. This sounds like sock oil salesmen shtick. Is there any fabric known to man that can support your body weight so as overcome in adequate arch support in your shoes? Unless you are Tinkerbell, I doubt it. Perhaps, these socks do have physics-defying properties; maybe we should use them to mend bridges.

Outsourced as a Guide to Indian Corporate Culture?

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As my wife and I prepare for our move to Bangalore, we are doing research to help us avoid inadvertent insult and blasphemy . We’ve learned such useful facts as: a.) don’t tug on a Sikh man’s beard, and b.) don’t buy a statue of the goddess Durga to use as a hat rack.

Source: Dipankan001 (via Wikipedia)

Durga Source: Dipankan001 (via Wikipedia)

These are just the kind of faux pas a well-meaning but uninformed American couple might make. (Oh, you say, not really?)

Every culture has its little proclivities that seem insane from the outside, but which are so deeply ingrained as to be invisible from the inside. (In fact, I had trouble thinking up such American cultural proclivities, but I believe they exist. Our norms are just so ingrained as to be hard to see. Of course, we are also a  diverse society, a young nation, and tend toward the irreverent in the social domain– all of which may make our cultural idiosyncrasies look a bit different from those of more traditional societies.)

We’ve been reading books like Culture Shock! India, which is one of a series of books that explain the various cultural idiosyncrasies of different countries. (I was first introduced to the series through Culture Shock! Cambodia, though I have read other such books about China and Japan.)  Such guides are extremely useful for explaining do’s and don’ts. However, they don’t necessarily prepare one for the corporate culture of India, which is a mix of Indian, Western, and   multinational business cultures. For insight into the corporate culture we turned to:

OutsourcedFor those of you unfamiliar, Outsourced was a sitcom that ran for one season (2010-2011) on NBC. The premise of the show was that the manager of a novelty company call center is moved from the US to Mumbai. He becomes acquainted with Indian culture as he must teach his staff enough about American culture  so that they can communicate with the customers they are on the phone with all day. Some of the humor comes from the exposure of a very conservative workforce to products that include dildos and slutty Halloween costumes, but much of it is just cultural tension more broadly. The show was popular with critics and Americans familiar with India. Unfortunately, that was not enough to keep it on the air, particularly when Americans who buy tacky crap and couldn’t find India on a map were the butt of the joke at least as much as were Indians. (Americans who buy tacky crap and are geographically illiterate are a large demographic within the television viewing public.) At any rate, the show was clever and well-acted.

One may scoff at the use of a sitcom as reference material, but the show seemed to be well-researched. For example, I know that its discussion of the famous Indian head bobble matched the description in the cultural guide quite well. The bobble is a non answer that can mean virtually anything. The video below gives a more detailed explanation, but the visual is not so good. From what I’ve seen, most people tend to do this action more with the top of the head staying relatively stationary while the jawline swings side-to-side.

This left us wondering whether other elements of the show will ring true. The show introduced me to a new term, “holiduping.” This is when one’s employees convince a manager that a day is a holiday, when in reality it isn’t. To get the joke, you must know that Indians have enough work holidays to make US Federal employees say, “Damn, that’s a lot of holidays!” Furthermore, not all the holidays are national. There may be days taken off in Karnataka that are not in Gujarat, and vice versa. This can make it a challenge for new comers to keep track.

I’m curious as to the views of people in-the-know about how accurate Outsourced was. Most of the cast were Americans of Indian origin, but it doesn’t look like the same was true of the lead writers.

Sharknado: or, the Rock Band or Cheesy Movie Game

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Somebody on Facebook made an offhand reference to Sharknado the other day.  I had no idea what a “Sharknado” could be, except the mind-numbingly stupid idea suggested by the phonetics of the “word.” It turns out that is exactly what it was. Despite the fact that sharks exist in places like Florida and tornadoes exist in places like Oklahoma (not a lot of overlap there), the movie is about tornadoes that pick up sharks and throw them through the air at unsuspecting people. (The sharks are, of course, still alive and hungry contrary to everything we know about biological entities that get picked up in twisters.)

I once wondered why the “Sci-fi” channel changed its name to the “Syfy channel.” I now know that it must have been the threat of false advertising lawsuits that spurred this change. (Of course, this doesn’t explain why the “History channel” isn’t the Sasquatch Alien channel.) Sci-fi is short for science fiction. Let’s break that down. First, the reference to “science” means one would expect some speculative universe which is constrained by scientific laws–either the laws of physics as we know them or some reasonable set of scientific principles by which a universe could be held together. It is not a magic universe, as required by Sharknado. The target demo for science-fiction is geeks and nerds (said in the most complimentary sense of those words)–in other words, people who overthink (or, at least, think.) The target demo for Sharknado seems to be pubescent boys failing science and in need of an opportunity to masturbate to Tara Reid.

Second, fiction is a creatively-engineered story, and I’m not even sure Sharknado qualifies on this front either. The creative component seems to be limited to cramming two things that terrify people together into one word or phrase. This may work in some cases, such as with the term “divorce lawyer.” However, the two concepts that one smashes together have to have some credulity as a unified threat. The fact that motherf#$%ing Samuel L. Jackson couldn’t save Snakes on a Plane, should have made this apparent to all.

As a thought exercise, let’s try some examples:

1.) Which of the following terror-inspiring dualities are devices around which a movie plot could be built, and which are just awesome rock band names?

a.) Clown-Pirates

b.) Hobo-Scorpions

c.) Black Mamba-Teen Driver

d.) Bear-Proctologist

e.) Spiders in a Tuk-tuk

f.) Karaoke-Mugger

g.) Robo-gynecologist

h.) Newborn-Arsonist

i.) Mother-in-Law / Attorney-at-Law

j.) Anthrax-blizzard

By the way, if the Syfy channel comes out with any of the above movies or series, please shoot me an email so I can claim my Executive Producer credit. It’s more likely this will be the starting line up for Lollapalooza 2025.

Bear with bubbles

RANT ROOM: Robots Calling

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698px-Alt_TelefonThe phone rings. I pick it up. A robot starts talking in my ear. Well, not a robot, but an electronically recorded voice. I hang up. This happens about seven times a day.

I’m on a no-call list, but there’re so many loopholes so as to make its value questionable. First of all,  the politicians exempt themselves–of course. Only a politician could be so megalomaniacal as to think that a person who expressly requests not to be bothered by anyone by phone is secretly awaiting his robo-call.  Second, charities are exempt, whether it’s the March of Dimes or the Irritable Bowel Syndrome Defense Fund.  There seem to be more charities calling than ever. Or, perhaps, they’re like Phnom Penh urchins– if you give one of them money it induces a swarm. (Or, more likely, they make all the big money by selling contact lists to other charities.) Finally, any business that you’ve ever done business with is exempt  (even monopoly phone companies and utilities, for which you had no choice but a third world existence), as well as the parent companies that bought a company that you did business with once 20 years ago.

People who know me will tell you that I don’t even like to talk on the phone with human beings that I like, what hope would a machine have? Answer: “None.”

Now, let it be known that I’m not anti-machine. In 200 years, when they unfreeze my brain after the Terminator Wars, I’m not going to be one of the douche-bags standing on a picket like to prevent little T8-Y0 from going to school with the human kids and super-intelligent dolphins. I just resent someone calling me, intent on taking up my time, without even having the common courtesy to be intelligent–artificially or otherwise.

Some will say, “But, Bernie, you’ve called me and said not a word that was remotely intelligent.”

To that I say, “Nuh-uh, stop being a jerk-head.”

I almost always meet the technical definition of “intelligent” (self-aware? I’m self-obsessed!) when I call someone on the phone, and that’s all I expect of others.  I would pass a Turing test because the evaluator would say, “Any machine would maintain a train of thought better than this guy. He’s all over the place. He must be human. Plus, he can’t do math for shit.” [If you want to weed the androids out of your life, ask them to divide 49  by 18. If they answer automatically and correctly to two decimal points, stake them through the oil pump. If they are one of those “Human Calculators,” they deserve it for betraying their kind–but I’m not speciesist.]

Still, this brings one question to mind, how lonely do you have to be to listen to a machine blather on? Obviously the companies using robo-calls have sufficient success to keep paying their phone bills. That means that some people have to hear the robot voice and say, “What the heck? Let me hear what R2-D2 has to say.”

Who does this? I’ve heard that some people have guilt issues with hanging up on people because they were “raised right.” I can’t claim to understand this. It’s not an affliction that burdens me. I will hang up on anyone who assumes they can make demands on my time without compensation in about two microseconds. Yes, I said it, Mom. (Just kidding, I’m really talking to cable companies, natural gas providers, credit card companies, etc.)

Still, even if one feels guilty about hurting the feelings of a person, why would the same guilt apply to machines–which do not have feelings to hurt.

I mean, does this person think the caller might be a T-101 calling from the future to warn him that a mean T-1000 is on its way to poke him to death with a memory metal finger? I guess that sounds reasonable… no, no it doesn’t.

Alternatively, do people sit around thinking, I wish someone would call me up and tell me what I want, because I have no idea.

Maybe I just don’t understand this mindset. No person has ever convinced me to make an impulse buy by yapping. I’ve never said, “Gee-whiz, you’re right, I definitely need this product or plan that I didn’t know existed five minutes ago.”

It has occurred to me that I might be taking the wrong tack by hanging up on these calls instantaneously. By doing that, I am helping them weed out an unlikely sale in as inexpensive a manner as possible. The next time a robot calls me, I think I’ll put the phone down next to the radio–playing easy listening, of course–and then walk off. I encourage you all to do the same.

10-LIST: Bangkok Tips

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10 helpful tips for visiting Bangkok.

1.) When seeking a massage and not a “massage” [insert wink], the older and uglier the masseuse, the better the massage. Alternatively, if your masseuse is gorgeous and/or wearing a miniskirt, you are in a brothel… and your masseuse may be a dude.

2.) Just because the religion’s core message is one of peace and tolerance doesn’t mean a Buddhist nun won’t put you in a hammerlock if you fail to make a donation at each and every Buddha you see. BTW, there are about 70 bizzillion of them.

3.) Tuk-tuk fares have no connection whatsoever to distance traveled. One day you may have a driver take you all over town for $1.70, and the next you can’t get one to take you three miles to Hualamphong station for less than $5. To be fair, it takes three days to travel three miles to Hualamphong–unless you’re on foot, then it takes about 20 minutes.

4.) You can’t get out of town without being taken to a silk suit “wholesaler” and a “state-sanctioned” tourist travel office; just get it over with. When you meet a local who is friendly, helpful, and seems to have no ulterior motive whatsoever, that’s when the hook is set. The entire country is in on it. The Thai Pledge of Allegiance even has a line to the effect of, “…and will faithfully divert tourists to silk shops and tourist offices whenever possible, so help me Buddha.”

5.) Trains always leave on time, but a train has never arrived less than three hours late in the history of Thailand. This begs the question of whether the time-space continuum is the same as in the rest of the world.

6.) The Grand Palace is open every day–even though you will be told twenty times a day that the palace is “closed today only”–often within earshot of a blaring loudspeaker announcement on a loop  that says, “The Palace is open everyday from 8:30am to 3:30pm, do not believe anyone who attempts to divert you!” Don’t bother pointing out the announcement, they’ll just tell you that some dimwit forgot to turn it off and that the Queen is having a Parcheesi festival with heads of state today. [They are very creative in their detail.]

IMG_1976

7.) The penalty for peeing on a wall is… nothing. The penalty for peeing on a wall under a photo of either the king or the queen is death administered summarily. This means you have a fifty-fifty shot of getting away with it alive.

8.) If you are prudish, avoid Chinatown as porn is sold from kiosks in the street. Alternatively, if you are looking for cheap porn, tasty dim sum, or cheap plastic items emblazoned with “Hello Kitty” clipart make sure to allow a day in Chinatown. You might be wondering who would flip through vast troves of skanky and, in some cases, freakish porn in the middle of a thronged pedestrian thoroughfare presumably traveled by friends and family, the answer is, “more than you’d think.”

IMG_3837

9.) Be friendly, but–remember– if you tousle a child’s hair you will be asked to leave the country immediately.

10.)  Contrary to what you have heard, Bangkok is not one big red-light district. Its 429 separate, reasonably-sized  red-light districts are spread evenly throughout the city for your convenience.

Despite my sarcasm, Bangkok is a fun and fascinating city that should be visited by all. You’ll learn a lot from those discussions with locals, even if they do wind up with you buying a necktie just to get out of a silk shop.

10 Tips for Averting Tiger Attacks

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As with mean drunks, never interrupt a drinking tiger

As with mean drunks, never interrupt a drinking tiger

I was working on a short story that involved a tiger attack, and–knowing almost nothing about the subject–I did a little research. I found some fascinating factoids. Here are some important tips to keep in mind in tiger country:

1.) Avoid squatting postures as it’s thought that many tiger attack victims are cases of mistaken identity. That is, sometimes an individual crouching to do his business or whatnot is mistaken for a tastier species. Apparently, tigers don’t realize that humans are the only creatures that wear clothing. Despite attempts by missionaries to educate tigers on biblical stories such as that of Adam and Eve, tigers continue to see themselves as god’s favorites.

2.) Avoid wearing leather, it makes you smell and taste like cow. While cows are sacred in India, tigers have denied receiving that memo. Or perhaps tigers are like members of PETA and are attacking those wearing animal hides to make a bold statement… but I doubt it.

3.) Avoid carrying meat in your pockets. Enough said.

4.) If one is attacked, don’t immediately counter-attack. Some tigers are just trying to express their passionate feelings on the subject of breakfast cereal, and one would not like a needless fight to ensue. One should only partake in needless fights when one has a good shot at winning– no offense to any one who has ever fought Manny Pacquiao.

5.) Don’t leave your dead out and about. Apparently, human is an acquired taste that tigers will find a fun exotic treat once they get used to it. We are the Rocky Mountain Oysters of the tiger world.

6.)  Be aware of your surroundings, and–as with Zombies–CARDIO-CARDIO-CARDIO. Tigers can run at speeds of up to 35 miles per hour (56km/hr.) for short bursts, but have the stamina of a pack-a-day smoker. If you can keep them from getting close to you, they’ll lose interest.

7.) Stay in the city. Tigers almost never go into the city because they tend to attract unwanted attention. The average tiger weighs about 400 pounds (180 kg.) and the orange and black stripe pattern that camouflages surprisingly well in wild sticks out everywhere except Paul Brown Stadium or the lingerie section of an inner-city K-Mart.

8.) If you are attacked, the tiger will leap up and put its fore paws on one’s shoulders to push one over onto one’s back so that the cat can leisurely crush one’s neck in his or her mouth. When the tiger rears up on its hind-legs you may either try a kick to the crotch or to engage the predator in a foxtrot. The former offers a 1 in 10,000,000 chance of success. The latter has never been tried before, and so no one can rightly speak to its likelihood of success, though it’s suggested that one not try to lead (You must recognize that–at that point– you are the tiger’s bitch.)

9.)  Because humans aren’t ideal tiger food but we are slow, weak, and are skilled in disciplines like “managerial analysis” rather than hunting or survival in the wild, man-eating tigers tend to be the old and infirm cats that find gazelle and antelope both too fast and jungle savvy. Because only the oldest of cats tend to attack, a sure strategy is to get your attacker talking about how things were back in his day and how the current generation of tigers are all misfits and hooligans.

10.)  If you’re attacked, make loud noises and violent “shooing” gestures with your arms. You’ll still be eaten, but you will appear quite brave on the video in comparison to those who go fetal and poo themselves.

Best wishes and be safe out there.

DAILY PHOTO: Improper Use of Flames on a Car

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Taken in the summer of 2011 in Obuda, Hungary.

Taken in the summer of 2011 in Obuda, Hungary.

Seriously?  Well, at least it’s a small flaming ball on the side.

There’s No Such Thing as a Silly Question? LIAR!

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I’m shocked by how easily a piece of “common wisdom” can become accepted despite being patently and demonstrably wrong. The best example may be, “There’s no such thing as a silly question.”

Oh, yeah:

“Do you wear spurs when you ride ostrich in the avian rodeo?”

“If you had to wear shoes made of cheese, of which cheese would you want them made?”

“Do you have purple-glazed doughnuts in honor of the St. Crispin’s Day unicycle rally?”

“May I twirl my way into an eternity of dandelion lunacy?”

I can do this all day.

Are you seriously going to tell me that none of the above questions is at least a little bit silly. As a person of silliness, it enrages me… well maybe not so much “enrages” as has no discernible effect… when people deny the potential for silliness. Folks, it’s all around us. So, the next time you say that there is no such thing as a silly question, my response is, “Do you really think you can make that stick like the Archbishop’s bugger to the side of an albino wino?”

FLASH FICTION: Bob Newhart with a Gun

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Attribution: Jim Wallace (Smithsonian Institution) Bob, Bob! Why do you want to kill me? Bob.

Attribution: Jim Wallace (Smithsonian Institution)
Bob, Bob! Why do you want to kill me? Bob.

In my dream I remember running, running away from Bob Newhart, a revolver gripped tightly in the comedic actor’s hand. I don’t know whether it was supposed to be Bob Newhart the person, or if my subconscious thought that Bob Newhart was the best actor to convey life’s dark comedy. I knew why Newhart was chasing me.  I worked in a machine shop and had a less than reliable partner who had apparently made a wild promise that our little shop could never deliver upon. It must have been important to Newhart. So I understood why Bob Newhart was mad and I accepted it. If it was me, I might be homicidal too—because I just rage that way sometimes. Still, I didn’t want to die because I was associated with a dodgy rogue. I guess that’s what the dream was about.

There was a kid with me–not my kid–at least I don’t think the dream ran that far afield. I’m willing to accept that my subconscious would see me as a machinist—a career unlike any in my bookish résumé. Furthermore, I can fathom that my subconscious imagining Bob Newhart wanting to kill me with a snub-nosed revolver—even if for something that was not my fault. However, I can’t imagine my subconscious thinking I would have a kid.

Anyway, Newhart saw us as he was maniacally driving a car toward the machine shop. We, the kid and I, were walking down the sidewalk away from the shop, having just closed up for a glorious summer afternoon in the way of slackers everywhere. I don’t know where my shady partner was, the unreliable always escape unscathed—maybe that’s what the dream was about.

I saw the murderous gleam in Newhart’s eye, and turned to run back to the shop. I grabbed the kid by the arm and tugged him in that direction—maybe I do have some paternal instinct. My plan was to get into the shop, lock the door, and call the unreliable person to come and get shot by an enraged Bob Newhart. However, in the panic of thinking that Newhart, who had done a bootlegger-180 with his car and was now driving straight for us, was going to crush us under the car, I forgot to lock the door behind us. (Or maybe there are no working locks in dreamland.) Locking the door was, after all, the one good part of the plan. (I don’t know what I had been thinking about calling the unreliable person, unreliable people never show up when you call them–they show up at 2:30am on a Sunday morning wanting to borrow $20 and a condom.)

Anyway, Newhart parked legally, but when he got out I saw the snub-nosed revolver in his hand, framed perfectly in the window in a way that can only happen in dreams. I ushered the kid around a partition wall that separated the small storefront from the shop beyond.

Newhart was walking like one of those geriatric mall-walkers, or like a man who’d drunk a 32 oz. cola and driven six hours only to get to a rest-stop restroom that was probably locked. When Newhart threw open the door, the little bell tinkled cheerfully—the bell clearly didn’t know what was about to go down. As I rounded the partition wall, pushing the kid into the darkened shop, I picked up a steel pipe. Despite the perennial advice that one should never bring a steel pipe to a gunfight, I felt a cool calm wash over me. (Maybe it was that I knew gun-toting men Newhart’s age usually shot blanks in their dreams.) Anyway, I hid in wait.

Then I woke up. I’ll never know whether Newhart shot me or whether I bludgeoned one of America’s beloved comedic elder statesmen to death with a steel pipe. Maybe both would have happened. Maybe neither. I know if I go back to sleep, the dream won’t resume. They never do. I’ll never know. Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe that’s the point of the dream.

DAILY PHOTO: Trabant 601-E with Optional Roof Keg

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Taken in the Summer of 2011

Taken in the Summer of 2011.

It’s a monumental challenge for a police officer to spot an open container unless the offender happens to be driving the wrong way down the sidewalk backwards while asleep, or one’s car is wrapped around a telephone pole upside-down. However, if you get the Keg-o-matic 2000 dispensing system installed on your car, are you really guilty of having an open container? The hose that attaches the device to one’s lips is the only part actually inside the car.

NOTE: This blog neither condones nor celebrates driving while intoxicated. I just thought this car, which I saw in rural Hungary near the border with Slovakia, was amusing.