stupid

What is a reunion without first a union?

It’s that time of year again. You know, that time after Halloween when you begin taking down the sheety ghosts and throwing away the rotten, moldy, blackened, gnat-infested carcasses of the pumpkins on your porch and prepare to replace them with Christmas decorations. It’s that time when we begin winding down the year and getting ready to board up the tree houses for the winter, and start migrating inside where we can convene around fireplaces and football games. We also tend to have a lot more family reunions this time of year.

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  • Reading time:6 mins read

Here’s Your Sign

You always hear people asking, “Why do drive-up ATMs have Braille on the buttons? Do they think blind people will be driving? LOL”. But my question is far more simple. Why do ATMs have Braille on them? Do they think blind people will be pulling out cash? The buttons don’t have assigned functions and values, and their purpose changes with every option you select. So how would a blind person know when to hit which button?

It seems we as humans are advancing technologically into areas our parents’ generation only dreamed of. There’s that damn preposition at the end of my sentence again. But at the same time, we’re getting dumber and dumber. Think about it. Do you know any rocket scientists, personally? Do you know anyone who actually has contributed something to the technology revolution? It’s sort of just something that happens when we put our minds together. Yet, I don’t know any single individual who isn’t susceptible to being an idiot sometimes.

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  • Reading time:6 mins read

I’m not real proud of myself right now.

For one who considers himself on top of the technology game, I sure did just pull a major blunder. Now I don’t purport to know everything about everything, or everything about all the new tech coming out, but I do keep up with it fairly well. I stay abreast (God I love that word) of all the latest schlit coming out and I’m pretty well aware of the value of technology. I guess maybe I just lost a little of my touch. Or went dumb for a minute.

You remember my talking about getting rid of my iPhone, right? Yeah. I wanted to sell it. Then I decided to keep it. Then I thought maybe I should sell it. I went back and forth like a bi-curious virgin trying to decide which orientation to break chastity with. I know, that was a poorly worded sentence, and I ended on a preposition – but I thought the analogy was worth it. And speaking of analogies… Well, let’s just stick with the story.

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  • Reading time:5 mins read

The Dumbest Animals at the Zoo

The Fort Worth zoo is a very big place. It’s full of animals. If your goal is to see every exhibit, you really have to haul ass. If you monkey around at the aquarium, you won’t have time for the elephants. I mean, it’s a zoo out there. But really, I think the dumbest animals in the park are – well, you guessed it: humans.

There should be certain rulesets to which we all adhere when in a public place. For instance, when there’s a path that everyone is to follow, and one direction has, say five feet, then you don’t stretch your party across the entire five-foot path. There are other people who are interested in seeing exhibits, and might possibly be traveling faster than you and your party of hambeasts. Sorry, women, the beached whale exhibit is back by the entrance.

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  • Reading time:4 mins read

SpaceBrew in Hibernation Mode

Good morning, SpaceBrewers! Just a quick note to let you all know that we’re coming into the winter season here at the Brew. It sort of lines up with the winter season the weather patterns follow. But what that means is that we spend less time in front of the computers and more time in front of a fireplace, or wrapped in the stinky, rotting carcass of a Tauntaun.

In the end, and in the interest of sparing you all from minutae and random hogwashical white noise, we will be cutting back our writing to once a week apiece. I’ll be writing on Mondays, Haycomet will write on Wednesdays, and we’ll continue to write our award-winning collaborative column, Bacon Talk, on Fridays. So just basically cutting out Tuesdays and Thursdays gives us, well, something like two days we can relax.

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  • Post category:event
  • Reading time:2 mins read

You Can’t Trust the System

I’d like to tell you that this story is true, and that you need to believe it because I’m telling the truth here. This is not a work of fiction! But how do you say that at the beginning of a column, when the entire purpose of the site upon which you write is entertainment? A lot of what I write here is fiction. Heck, everything Haycomet writes is fiction. But this, my friends, is real. This is true. And it really happened. And I have witnesses.

So I’d like to tell you the ridiculous story of how my pals and I ran into a series of events governed by Murphy’s Law, and were unable to get out from under his oppresive thumb. If I ever meet Harvey Murphy, I have a few words for him, I assure you. And alls we were doing was trying to have a little lunch.

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  • Reading time:8 mins read

More Ways to Screw the Customer

I’ve long been of the opinion that companies should listen to their customers. I know you all remember my column about Coca-Cola changing their formula. Well, I highly doubt a consumer requested that. Companies that listen to their consumers though, are the ones that will last. Like Dodge, when they listened to Dodge drivers and installed a step in the tailgates of their pickups. Who doesn’t want a tailgate step? Another example would be Microsoft, when they listened to consumers and made Windows 7.

Ahem. To a lesser extent.

But what about those companies (like Coca-Cola) that don’t listen to their customers and consumers? The ones that make changes that cause all kinds of havoc and ill schlit to happen? Those are the ones I want to talk about this morning. And one of them just happens to be a company I’ve already mentioned.

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  • Reading time:6 mins read

Can you feel yourself getting dumber?

Why is reality television so popular? I guess I should put quotes around “reality”, because, as we all know, almost none of it is really real, realistically. But “reality television” has become the standard for all programming on broadcast television now. It’s become so popular that Fox, in the extra cable packages, even offers an ‘All Reality – All The Time’ channel. Is this seriously what people want over drama?

See, to me, television has always been about being entertained. And what scares me is that people really are being entertained by this low-brow programming. Women competing to see who gets to be some dude’s next wife. Men competing to be the next ex-husband of some woman who’s not really even all that pretty. Why did I say pretty, instead of mentioning her personality? Well, obviously, that’s all it’s about, because it’s television! Lowest common denominator. Have you seen Idiocracy? Yeah. Think just like that. And that’s not the worst of it.

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Retirement Party: This Weekend

So when I heard the news that Brett Farve was finally retiring, I sighed and shook my head, then went to sit on the sofa with a beer. As I was in motion dropping into sitting position, a news flash came on saying he had changed his mind. Again. Now I don’t actually have television service of any kind, and the radio was not on. But a news flash surely did happen, and – well, I just knew he wasn’t really retiring. And now I’m kind of getting a little tired of his Barbra Streisand-like retirement hoopla. Dude, I don’t care how many times you “retire”, you’re only getting one party.

Seriously, how many times can one really ‘retire’ anyway? Take the Eagles, for instance. When Don Henley said, “We’ll get back together when hell freezes over…” everyone believed him. But does anyone believe you can get a snowcone in hell right now? From what I hear they’re touring again, and they’ve even got a new quarterback. Wait. Not that the Eagles. It’s like the ‘in’ thing to do right now is to retire, take a few months off, and come back acting like it’s a whole new gig. Sorry though, Poison. No one wants to hear your new stuff. They only want to hear Unskinny Bop and Talk Dirty to Me.

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Talking Pillows with Jessica Simpson

Greetings, SpaceBrewers, and welcome back to another edition of the Daily Brew, with Space. You know sometimes we have celebrities stop by the offices here at corporate, and we are usually very cordial with them; invite them in, sit and talk with them, give them bacon and coffee, you know, the usual. Other times we’re simply too busy to accomodate them, and have to turn them away at the door. We just don’t have time to see every single fan of the site personally, you know? It makes us sad, and in a perfect world, we would. But this isn’t a perfect world, is it?

Anyway, occasionally, some of our Hollywood friends will stop in and say hi, and we’ll set up our recording device and interview them as a courtesy to give them some momentum on whatever they’re currently promoting. Remember, for instance, when Michael Crichton stopped by the Brew to promote his new book? And the times Stephen Cannell did the same thing? Those were nice instances of when they stopped by and we made them feel accommodated. There have been others, of course, like when Charlize Theron stopped by and I interviewed her, but it got a little out of hand, she crawled over the table and we started making out right there. I had only asked her a few questions when the interview was suddenly over, and we’re suddenly naked right there in the front conference room, just going at it. Obviously, that’s not very appropriate for the site.

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  • Reading time:7 mins read