Everyone's Favourite Time to Hate

I make Roll up the Rim jokes. We all do (still better than my baseball average, am I right? Right?!) But I've been coming across more and more people in recent years who are well and truly pissed about the fact that they haven't won a car or TV or RV or AWAC or whatever the hell they want. Could they be right? Is it a coffee conspiracy?

They've never hidden the odds of winning, and in fact, in previous years, Tim's has actually printed them right on the cups. I guess there's a grade-six math competence issue in Canada, that probability unit is tough. Still, I'd always suspected they were hiding something.

Roll up the Rim to Win is a promotion, and it works. I infrequently buy coffee, I prefer my home brews, but I'll spend a buck and change to roll the dice with my java a few times a year. It's obviously conducted at that time of year to combat Lent, but because most people have come around and thrown Catholicism out the window (this year, I'm giving up Jesus), it actually has the benefit of not just keeping would-be-abstainers coming back, but of pulling more customers than normal. We all know this. The cups go from brown to BRIGHT FUCKING RED, as if to say, "HEY! Come in here! Come now! This is an obvious and effective ploy for your attention!" Those sneaky devils.

Anyway, I bought a cup this morning while I was oot and aboot, and came up snake eyes again. I'd long suspected I would never actually get a car, and then, after I returned home with my disappointment and groceries in hand, I found this smoking gun evidence, pulled right from Toyota's website *play music from Zeitgeist*:

The bastards didn't even charge me for my Corolla.

The Story of J.A.R.V.I.S; or, How I Sleep Pt. 2

Baby alligators make cute pets, but they grow up, son.

Once upon a time, there was a little table hugger

who liked to eat Molly's soup bones

and ball up into ugly shapes on the couch.

Also known as Viserys III, the Beggar King, he grew very quickly,

and copied absolutely everything Molly did, desperate for approval.

Seriously, everything.

Being black, Jarface enjoyed bass guitar,

and being German, enoyed standing up straight for long periods of time.

The elusive South African Jarfish was very hard to spot. Blurry, out of focus shots led many to speculate on his very existence and what the hell his problem was.

Usually, Jarya Underfoot could be found underfoot, causing people to trip and drop knives and dinner ingredients and F-bombs, but occasionally he was caught while drowsing, much like a Snorlax.

And he didn't give a shit who or what he fell asleep on, much like a Snorlax.

And then I used to have a couch. 

10 Reflections on the Sochi Games

1. Homophobia is extremely alive in 2014. The comment threads on Sochi-related articles around the internet are bone-chilling.
2. Ignorance is a vile fucking plague upon humanity. Anyone who chooses ignorance in the information age is an asshole.
3. Homophobia, unlike most other phobias, has the unique characteristic of being superbly hateful and violent in nature.
4. Google is suddenly the bravest company in the free world...???
5. The Olympics are boring.
6. The Olympics are pointless.
7. Russians can be rednecks, too.
8. Money, as always, comes before morale. 
9. The World Cup has superior entertainment value, and I'm a hockey fan.
10. Sochi itself looks like a beautiful city.

Happy Choice Day!

      I often tune into WMUZ 103.5 FM (The Light), a prominent Christian radio station based in Detroit, because it's fun to watch people talk themselves into corners. The Bob Dutko show is especially inflammatory, ignorant, arrogant, and hypocritical.

      Today, the issue is abortion. Apparently, it's the 41st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, which I didn't know because I don't track the dates that people were legally given the basic autonomy each human ought to possess as a rule anyway.

      The station is spreading piles of hooey and fear-mongering about infant-murdering and baby-slaughter (their terms), and I don't have the time or the desire to dig too deeply into the issues right now. The point of this post is merely a rebranding. I don't refer to pro-lifers as "pro-lifers," because that's not their position, as I see it. If the pro-lifers want to give people names other than those they have chosen, we can as well. I've adopted a term I heard from Matt Dillahunty, proud Texan atheist, on The Atheist Experience, a favourite program of mine: anti-choice.

      I don't know why anti-choicers nurse their grievance at Roe v. Wade like Southerners do the Civil War, but if they want to bring it up and hammer down their points of view on the issue every year at this time, that's fine. We can rebrand that too. Instead of using the case name, which really does make it sound like the issue might still be up for debate, let's just celebrate human rights.

January 22 shall heretofore be known as...Choice Day! Spread the freethought!

Happy Choice Day everyone!

How I Sleep:

For Your Consideration: 3 Pictures

This image shows the roof of the store I work at. The building is not conducive to life. It has all metal siding, with gravel-on-tar roof; there's no good reason why anything should be growing here.
I think this little plant is the coolest thing in the world, and it always makes me smile when I look at it; it's a testament to the power of nature and the persistence of life in general. It reminds me of "The Rose that Grew From Concrete" by Tupac, an old favourite poem.

This is a church I walk by all the time. I forgot I had this picture, but it, too, makes me laugh every time I look at it. I walked right up to the people on the front lawn and told them "the Jews did it."

This is just a cute sleepy puppy sawing logs on my chest. That's all.

When Vegetarians are Assholes or; Why I Dread Pizza Parties

      "Hey, we're ordering pizza for lunch, what do you want on it?"

      The question from hell!

      We're all been there: you're so excited that the meal is going to be pizza at work/a fundraiser/a group hangout/your bris and in the crunch, you don't even care what's on the pizza. You don't want to be boring and just say "cheese and pepperoni" but really, all you want is cheese and pepperoni. Bacon would be great, but the classic approach is best and easiest. Maybe you say meat lovers to look manly (hard to seem masculine and say meat lover in the age of "that's what she said") or Canadian to keep it interesting, or extra cheese because you're fat, but most likely you say "I'm good with anything!" because you're a decent and considerate human being. But...you didn't want this...

• Mushrooms...you know that's a fungus, right?
• Tomatoes. You're aware this entire thing is covered in smashed tomato, right?
• Onions. My breath is going to be bad enough after this garlicky mess, thank you.
• Peppers? It's not Mexican night.
• Olives. Olives! You fascists.
• Right, I get that it's a vegetarian pizza and all but...where's the meat?

      There's always some goof who ends up getting vegetarian pizza in a group order, and nobody but them wants it. You go to take your share, and *gasp* the pep-and-cheese is nearly gone. Again, trying to be courteous, you only grab two slices, because you know someone else wants the good  pizza, but you're hoping that you can come back for seconds. Never. There's never more of the good pizza! So you grab some of that baked salad and try to pick the toppings off to make it palatable (maybe it will just taste like cheese pizza, you tell yourself), but it never does. The vegetables have ruined the cheese and sauce! So you starve! You go hungry because of the misappropriation of community funds! Taxation without representation! Give me cheese wheels or give me death!

      Which is not to mention that more of the veggie pie ends up going to waste than not, so these people who scorn our murderous topping choices need to fall off their high horses and break a neck or two because the real sin here is the wasted pizza, and the vegetables that could have made a delicious salad.

      OR there's some dinkweasel who always wants Hawaiian, so aptly called because there is, hilariously, pineapple on it. I don't know if Hawaiian people like Hawaiian pizza toppings  (doubtful, because so few others do) but I do know that I've wasted hundreds of dollars over the years on communal pizza ordering that went into some soggy fruit being baked into my pie. Who likes fruit on pizza anyway?

      Why is THAT guy always in charge of ordering the pizza? I sometimes wonder if they don't do it so they can scoop the leftovers, or get a bigger portion, because nobody else wants it. And I'm ignoring the strange new combos that have popped up, like chicken and broccoli (great together off-pizza) or spinach and feta (ditto!) that we sometimes have to deal with, because these are the classic examples.

      I know the gut reaction to this is "Hey, I like things besides cheese and pepperoni on my pizza." I do too! But check the stats. This is about group orders. That one box of C&P will be empty after lunch (or before you even get to it); the Hawaiian  slices will be about 1/3 gone, but a lot of the pineapple will be thrown back into the box; and the vegetarian will have maybe, MAYBE, four slices gone.

      Or, try the Pizza Hut lunch buffet (excellent value for your appetite). They can't bake the cheese and pepperoni fast enough to replace it, but that one veggie pizza will sit through the entire lunch period. Every fifteen minutes you can walk back up and stare at it, and hate it, like it hates you. Now your meal is ruined, all because some mook piped up and said "Ummm, excusthe me. I don't eat meat."

      You selfish bastards.





      Once, in the wee hours of the morning, after many, many wobbly pops, some friends and I ordered Chinese food. When the delivery boy got there, inexplicably, everyone had gone to bed, but I was left holding all the money everyone chipped in, and I was very much awake. I ate EVERYTHING, and called it karma.