I’m going to be more right up front and honest about this potential conflict of interest than a dead man standing on Cialis.  When my wife and I got married in Ireland, it was covered by a local “look at us we’re a legitimate city” magazine called Upper Crust – that’s actually just the name my dad uses to make fun of it, but it’ll do.  I admit it.  Being the media whore that I am, I had to get all the free advertising that I could at that time because I had just opened my own law office (it’s not like I still wouldn’t call them now for a follow up story if we were getting a divorce).  Some of the very same pictures published in that UC wedding spectacular extravaganza are located on my MyFaceSpace page – and they can be yours for only .10 cents a download.  Anyway, as a result of allowing UC to write a story about our wedding in Ireland – which contained rather flowery quotes that summarized what we said without really saying what we actually said – we obtained a free subscription to UC Magazine for a period of time.  I read it when I get it because, I need to know where the “Have’s” around here: buy their swill, get their garden dirt, dry cleaning, insurance and think about buying expensive jewelry from one of those artist witness protection program participants (but never do).  Just when our prescription needed a refill, a local merchant re-upped us for another six months.  Good thing too.  I was about to start asking around how to “score” some UC, and that’s never good.

Since you undoubtedly missed it, the last episode was all about this dude (Jay Something or Another) who was described inside the magazine as sort of a weird cross between a fancified fast-food manager, and someone with Pat Riley fashion overtones.  Apparently this cat’s family has owned the Dairy Queen here since it was a Duchess and – like all monarchies, whether tepid or below freezing – someone must have died or cashed in all their Dilly Bars and headed towards the warm, ice cream cake melting temperatures of Florida.  As a result, Jay is now the new CEO of Dairy Queen.  The cover even called him “Dairy Queen’s New CEO”, which would lead anyone only a class or two short of their GED to surmise that this guy was the CEO of the whole burger, ice cream and blizzard shootin’ match.  Which is obviously a falsitude, or untruthiness as Dubya might say.

But if you read the story, you would agree that Jay seemed like an alright guy.  It wasn’t really his fault that every other restaurant his family seemed to get into failed.  I mean hell, how do you go from ice cream to Mexican food, which they apparently attempted at one point?  A fajita blizzard may sell well somewhere near the Tex-Mex border, but anywhere else the seasonings just ain’t going to jive with the creaminess of the cool.  Know what I’m saying?  Like you could have a ice cream chile relleno.  How are you gonna fry a breaded pepper with ice cream in the middle of it?  Are you gonna use the tops of ice cream sandwiches as chips, and let people dip them in cups of chocolate salsa?  Even in all that, like I said, Jay is obviously smart because (a) he stayed alive and has gotten into the family business, (b) he’s good looking and running with the free advertising and (c) he’s smart because the article said he bought a sailboat with the proceeds from the sale of airline stock he purchased years ago.  No doubt the cat is bright, and glad he’s the King of the Dairy Queen.  I’m all about a local family running a business, and making tons of cash; or just staying around here for years doing it, making themselves and everyone else happy.

In this month’s episode, the parents of Jay wrote a letter to the UC editor to say how great the article was; at one point they said their entire family was proud to have been profiled in “such a remarkable magazine”.  Uh, remarkable?  I’ll admit the fancy, glossy pages are nice, and all the advertisements do make me feel like stimulatin’ the economy by performing my own little personal bailout.  But “remarkable”?  Are you serious?  These peoples lives must be so boring on a daily basis if seeing their own family history glossified in a 8 x 12 format with stapled centers makes them feel like they’re reading Julius Caesar while wearing a toga with a stiff Spring wind.  Get out and live a little people.  They also went on to say, “We thank you for considering our family’s restaurant visions over the years to be newsworthy.  It was a fun article, and we enjoyed it immensely.”  I can tell you right now that in no way does the UC Magazine qualify as news.  Nothing about this thing screams hard hitting journalism.  I guess it could be if they had reported on some sort of new super secret blizzard technology Jay had came up with, but just because something is in print, that doesn’t make it newsworthy.  And who the hell describes an article as fun?  By the way they talked about it, you’d think they take a cut out laminated version of it with them to parties.  Maybe I should give that article to my son when he turns five.  “Happy Birthday buddy!  Here is an article about some guy with a greased wig like daddy’s who runs a Dairy Queen.  Now stop crying and go play with your friends.”

UC’s point in all this is for the exact purposes set forth in the letter to the puffer as stated by The Pages, who, by all accounts lovingly turned them all.  Hey, I’ll say this for them, you’d rather have your frosty family history thrown around in UC than on the pages of the local newspaper – because at least the UC doesn’t cover obituaries, or the district and circuit court docket.  The articles are meant to make the people who they are about happy.  They are meant to show everyone in the city, “Hey, this is me.  I’m this way and this is sort of person, so you should like me because of it.”  There is nothing really wrong with that, and it obviously has an audience since we received a “gift” refill after our original prescription ran out.  My own personal experience with it was different as I’ve said.  The pictures and all that were good, and the article was well written; but it was well-written because it said what would have been best for us to say if we were wordSmiths.  It’s not that my wife and I had anything bad to say about Ireland at all.  It’s just that after reading the story, you’d think The Cleavers had gotten married on The Emerald Isle.  I think I was quoted as saying something like, “All the people in Ireland are just so downright friendly and helpful”.  Not the actual quote, but I have never even gotten close to talking like that.  I would have said something like, “Man, them fewls in Ireland are tasty.  Werd.” – or something ignorant like that, so only people around me enough would have known what I meant.  In the end, local rags like the UC magazine can be a good thing.  Just don’t take them too seriously.  All you have to do is read it, and learn about what you should be buying if you want to be cool.

(Via)

I am busy preparing for a case, so this random communique will be rather brief – and won’t include any references to the Dire Straits album…except that one:

• Who nude that Patrick – the cartoon character who looks suspiciously like the “little man in the boat”, and hangs around with everybody’s favorite fashionably dressed kitchen utensil, SpongeBob SquarePants – would be the brains behind their insane operation?  Even though upon more repeated glances than cyclops trying to read the fine print with bifocals, the show appears to consist of nothing more than them doing dumb stuff, and going to the underwater equivalent of White Castle all the time.  Maybe the better question is, why is  an underwater cartoon restaurant seemingly based off a fart factory like White Castle.  But in its reincarnated cartoon version the place is called Crabbie Patties, or something that sounds more appropriate for that old, angry and smelly lady that wouldn’t talk and you never wanted to sit by in church. Not that I ever experienced anything like that in person…
• Not too long ago I experienced a colon cleansing meal at a certain hospital cafeteria, and I can honestly say that looks have never been more deceiving since that “Sheila” Crocodile Dundee tried to pick up in that bar was actually a bloke.  This particular one appeared to have somewhat swanky food, and multiple choices.  All the food groups were represented.  Hell, I’d never even heard of the “grain” group, but sure enough, there it was.  They even had sushi!  Oh yeah, if you’re ever going to eat something raw, what better place to do it than at a hospital?  I mean, you could open the stuff up, eat it, and start walking to the ER all in one swift motion if necessary.  What a country! The tempura shrimp roll I had sucked more than a dehydrated leech.  The rice on the roll was hard enough to patch the part of the sidewalk they were working on outside the window. I can confirm that the country fried steak was fried, but I’m not sure how much steak there was to it.  The hash browns looked liked greasy doll hair, with the occasional brown strand thrown in for coloring . Maybe Ragedy Ann was on the fry daddy that morning and didn’t wear a net, I don’t know.  I did eat half of a biscuit, and it wasn’t that bad – plus, the other half worked well as a coaster.  The tots were tatered, and they were high school cafeteria grade.  Not much more you could say about that.
• Does anyone know if there are separate office pools around the country for the Not Interested Tournament? If so, I imagine they’re probably like the college basketball equivalent to those hotel pools that are max 5 feet deep, and have so much cholorine in them that you look like you’re a leper from Nagasaki once you get out of it. Are there like meetings of people who remain anonymous that meet around town to talk about how embarrassing it is to follow a team that is in the NIT? The meetings would  probably be take place right after Militant Breastfeeders Who Advocate Toplessness.  Does an actual newspaper publish NIT brackets, or do you have to pay to get one?  I heard they don’t come out until like 5 minutes before the first game, because they don’t know who is going to be in it, or if it’s going to be played in a middle school, high school, or church gym.  Do they even have seeds in the NIT?  If so, do they start at 65?  What are the regions called – Got Screwed, Didn’t Have A Chance, Terrible, and Only Here for The Gate Money?

It is nothing new for celebrities to take legal action against companies when they feel their image/likeness has been used without their permission; but I would be very surprised if there is a precedent for the recent suit Lindsay Lohan has filed against the makers of a popular commercial.  Per an article on MSNBC:

Lindsay Lohan has sued E*Trade Financial Corp for $100 million, saying the “milkaholic” baby girl who appeared in a recent commercial was modeled after her.  Lohan alleged that the online brokerage’s use of the girl, also named Lindsay, in the ad improperly invoked her “likeness, name, characterization, and personality” without permission, violating her right of privacy…the 23-year-old actress sought $50 million of compensatory damages and $50 million of exemplary damages.  She has also demanded that E*Trade stop running the ad and turn over all copies to her.

First, how insecure/egotistical/self-conscious/paranoid/crazy do you have to be to see a graphically enhanced infant on a commercial for approximately two seconds (who says two words), and automatically think it is modeled after your “likeness, name, characterization, and personality”?  I don’t know about you, but I would be worried about more than just a lawsuit if I thought a baby had both my likeness and personality – either real or imaginary.  Now if the little E*Trade girl appeared in the camera frame with a face full of freckles, a cig hanging out of her mouth with a visible cocaine ring around her nostrils, and flashed her fire crotch to the viewing audience, I could see where Lohan might have a legitimate argument.

Now of the four things that Lohan is basing her claim on, the only one with any merit is that they both share the same name.  According to some site that I’m ashamed I visited, Lindsay has ranked as one of the top 200 girls’ names from the 1970’s to the 90’s.  Not to mention that there are over a dozen different variations in regards to how this handle can be spelled.  According to the census, there are over 143 million women in the United States alone; so let’s say 1 of every 250 girls born in the states is named Lindsay (or some derivation thereof).  If my math is correct, and it probably isn’t, that means there are currently over 57,000 girls/women in the U.S. with that name – now there’s a class action lawsuit just waiting to happen.  But according to Stephanie Ovadia, Lohan’s lawyer, Lindsay has “the same ’single-name’ recognition as celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Madonna.”  After reading this comparison, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that this no-talent, freckled ginger thinks a little too highly of herself.  As far as the baby name game goes, the stats on how many Oprahs and Madonnas there are in America were nowhere to be found - it’s probably somewhere in that fabled “one in a million” range. I am also not sure how the measuring stick for this sort of thing works in a court of law, but wouldn’t most jurors probably have a hard time putting the star of Freaky Friday & Herbie: Fully Loaded in the same class with a woman who is worth $2.5 billion dollars, and the most successful female recording artist of all-time?  That’s just like, my opinion, man.   

If by some chance Lohan does happen to win this lawsuit, I foresee a rash of future litigious actions being taken by other “celebrities” who now feel they also have a case.  Here are just a few examples that I could think of off the top of my head:

• Carl Weathers sues the creator of The Simpsons, claiming their character Carl is obviously a tribute to him.
• John Mayer will sue the Oscar Mayer Weiner corporation, citing several similarities between their hot dogs and his genitalia.
• Vin Diesel will take on several of the large oil corporations for modeling a grade of gasoline after him.
• Kanye West will file a suit against the Rand-McNally corporation for putting his last name on all of their road atlases, maps, and globes.
• Paris Hilton will file a lawsuit against the government of Paris, France for like, totally naming their city after her.

(Contains language and hilarious animated violence):

(Via)

Sleep apnea is either a disease, or a disorder where “pauses” occur in your breathing while sleeping.  In other words, you’re trying to suffocate yourself.  It’s like you’re involuntarily playing pulmonary chicken with yourself.  You’re choking yourself like a chicken, I, unlike everyone else, just said.

Other than just constantly waking up all the fucking time, a person can get official papers proving they are into the pulmonary equivalent of bondage by having a polysomnogram.  Polysomnogram does not mean a polygamist let you feel all of his wives tits, and rate them using a series of celestial bodies.  It does not mean there was an orgy of breast cancer awareness at the radiologist’s office.  It does not mean you had something about boobs stitched on a towel, or piece of clothing suitable for high falutin’ catered affairs.  It is simply a sleep study.  Sleep study does not describe a student snoring with their head down at a desk in the library at 2:13 a.m. during finals week.  It does mean you show up at the hospital late in the p.m., get all tethered up to primary colored wires via the application of the dermatological equivalent of super glue, and fall asleep.  Your sleeping is monitored via closed circuit sleep-v, and the wires essentially give a neurological polygraph proving you’re choking yourself (or that you’re lying about choking yourself).  When you wake up the next morning, a doctor comes in the room to tell you if you passed or failed, and what your score is.  A “clinically significant” apnea level is where you attempt to snore yourself to death 5 or more times during an hour.  Some in the unlearned and completely falsified knowledge community refer to this as being “attemptedly massively suicidal”.  It’s like your lungs stutter, and are trying to kill you like a fucking character in the “Director’s Cut” of Goodfellas.

Before I go any farther, I’m going to put this in the terms of the greatest man to ever sport a jerri curl and blue jean overalls simultaneously.  “You’re goddamn right, I got this too.”  If you don’t know who Buddy Guy is, well Buddy, all I can tell you is that this Guy is one bad motherfucker.  He’s such a bad motherfucker, people go get DNA tests after they see him live just to make sho he didn’t fuck their momma cause it damn sure felt good.  Anyway, after you’ve been diagnosed as a Bedtime Strangler, you get fitted with something that’s a little bit Darth Vader and a little bit Scuba Diver.  This monstrosity is called a CPAP Machine.  No, you don’t have air tubes shoved up your genitals, and no stirrups of the gynecological or baseball variety are involved.  This is a machine that provides Constant Positive Airway Pressure.  Sounds like something that overcharges your for tiny bottles of liquor, and will give you worthless frequent breather miles doesn’t it?

The machine itself looks like a 1960’s vacuum.  Instead of a medical supply store you’d think some dude with a JC Penny suit, an old bowler hat, and an Eddie Haskel-like persona guilted and/or conned you into buying it so they would get the fuck off your stoop.  It also has an equally old school, smaller vacuum-like hose made out of see through plasticish elastic shit.  It looks like the last pair of drawers you thought you could easily rip off of who or whatever, only to cause them a low degree burn and you to question both your strength and dietary habits.  The shit looks flimsy as hell, but it gets you all the oxymoron you need to allow you to sleep through the night – while forgetting how ignorant it is that you try to pull the plug on your own breathe bags on a hourly basis.  The mask does have the “however you’d spell Darth Vader’s breathing” sound.  It also makes you sound like Admiral Greer when you talk.  If you open your mouth with the mask on, you can feel air pushing through your throat and nose.  It’s like getting an air dick shoved up your throat, and into your sinuses.

The hardness and tubular aspects of the mask also makes sleeping in any position other than “visitation style” impossible.  If you try to roll over on a side, you’re going to cut off the PAP and be tangled up and blue quicker than a Bob Dylan impersonator who had a net thrown over them while trying to escape the Looney Bin.  Sleeping face down is going to keep your head at a higher level, and give your face a long lasting imprint that’ll make all the boys in the band think you blew the biggest triangle player in the Tri Global area.  The goddamn thing only made sleeping impossible for me before I went back to trying to kill myself softly every night.  I wake up so much, there are some times when I wish that racist Fugee Lauren Hill would come and put me out of misery.  You can also try these rubber nostril implant like things that are attached to what looks like the straps you saw on braces in the movies.  They are to sleep deprived nerds what Lebron James is to basketball players.  I’m not even sure that made sense, but I haven’t slept in a while so what the fuck do you expect?  The nostril implants are referred to in the industry as “nasal pillows”.  Big, soft natural tits are what I think of when the word “pillows” is used.  Nasal makes me think of that branch of the military with those sperm-like uniforms.  Mix them together and I don’t come up with a soft, rubbery mechanism designed to fit comfortably in my nostrils to facilitate continuous breathing.  My math equals some member of the armed forces trying to facial my nasals.  Beyond the physicality involved with being able to sleep, you can tell I’ve got way too fucked up of a mind to handle any of this type of shit.

Well, if you can’t tell, I can’t go to sleep.  I wish I could get to sleep so I could start trying to strangle myself, because sleeping in between involuntary strangulation is still sleeping, no matter how you wrap your hands around it.  Sleep Apnea sounds like a minor mountain chain in the Himalayas by the way.  And Himalayas sounds like the name of a tranny version of that chick from Star Wars with the danishes on the side of her head.  Tranny makes me wonder which Transfomer is gay?  And with that inability to turn off my mind, I bid you a happy audios.

Sleep, strangle and the Bangles…

(Contains language)

I know less about religion than being an overweight, gay, vegetarian with a lisp.  Alright, so I know about the overweight part, but I ain’t got a fucking clue about the other ingredients.  I have been theorizin on a lot of the theories behind Easter lately.  I don’t really know what has made me think about what I don’t know, but when I know, I’ll be sure to say how I figured out that I knew it.  Beyond never buying into organized religion – I mean church and not some puss form of a sports league – I’ve especially never bought into ANYTHING other than medical problems limiting the style of chow you shovel down your alchy-hole.  If a doctor isn’t tellin’ you to lay off something because your blood has the viscosity of gravy, or your ass is one cheeseburger away from its own congressman, eat what you want.  You only get one life to be a fat ass, and you should make the most of it IF you’ve decided to take the fat cart down the path of life.

Quickly, if you’re so fucking fat that you have to ride an especially equipped and dumbed down Vespa to make your way around the goddamn grocery store, what does that say about you?  If you’re that fat, the gravitational pull surrounding your body should enable you to pull shit off the shelves when you get within a foot or so – like some kind of “Fat Force”.  The Force is strong in that fat one.

Anyway, why is a ham the choice for religious feasting to celebrate Jesus’ RSVP’ing dinner?  I thought he had some kinda connection to Jewish people or something.  My whole theory on Jesus’ – is that the proper way to say Jesus possessed something? And I ain’t talkin’ about pre-exorcism here people – bein’ down with the Jews is based on what I learned from a Kinky Friedman song called, “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore”.  Damn good song.  Listen to it, and once you get passed what you initially think is a whole mess of racism, you’ll see the after school-like message contained therein.  But – to get back on Target like a discount retail chain – why would whatever flavor of whoever want to flog swine in honor of His Holyfullness comin’ to grub out, if the mere presence of the fare was going to piss them off?  Only thing I can think of is that ham was the cheapest of all the dinner meats, and the sacrileligiosity of it was eclipsed by its cost effectiveness.  What the fuck is a motza ball anyway?  I originally thought it was some sort of spherical meat like object made by a person from Sweden with bad teeth and a lisp.  Apparently, it is something made out of something other than meat, and it tastes like something else entirely different.  They have the color of dried dog turds.  Not quite chalky enough to write with or mistake for crack, but just the right color to keep you from stepping in/on it.

If one of the basis of you getting into your version of Valhalla is your diet, you should give up on that shit and risk going to hell for eating what you want.  Can you imagine being in the chow line waiting to take a number to get deep fried for the rest of eternity, and pulling the number right after Hitler and just before John Wayne Gacy?  That ain’t nothin’ to clown around about.  I say shave your Charlie Chaplin mustache and tell the powers that is to suck your nuts, cause what you ate shouldn’t have relegated you to the same fate as a couple of first ballot Evil Hall of Famers.  Timothy McVeigh says, “I’m in here for blowing up a federal building, and killing a bunch of people.  I deserve to die and go to hell.”  Jack Jacobson says, “Yeah.  I know where you’re coming from.  I ate a pig in a blanket, and a fucking corn dog during Sha Na Na.  I knew I shouldn’t have had that extra glass of Manischewitz either.”

What is this whole shit about not being able to eat meat on Fridays?  You go from considering the swine a sacred bounty worthy of all those who arise from the dead, to telling all your believers to lay off meat on Fridays for some goddamn reason?  Even if the cow, lamb, turtle, squirrel or Sasquatch was tortured before you ate its flesh, you had nothing to do with that shit.  Culpability doesn’t start with digestion – unless you’re fucking Jeffrey Dahmer, or a member of a rugby team who survived a plane crash.

As a result of the almighty makin’ all these menu choices, believers keep themselves from going to hell by eating fish-like sandwiches from McDonald’s.  I think you can get two, medium fries and a vat of the beverage of your choice with a #3 McHeaven Meal.  At what point in the drive-thru line do you start to question your faith?  When the garbled, Stephen Hawking with a crick in his computer voice comes over the speaker asking in tongues what Jesus wants you to eat?  Or is when you realize salvation comes in small, medium and large sizes?  When the hell is someone going to quit worrying about going there, and start questioning what kind of a fucking fish is square?  They all end up breaded, but I ain’t never seen a free swimming square fish.  Basically, the crux of a heavenly mandated meal should not look like something conjured up from forcing a bunch of random fish flesh through a fucking Play-Doh mold.  I guess if you were fishing for one of these seasonal square fish, you’d just have to put a glob of tartar sauce on your hook – because you never see one that’s not covered in that shit.

Well, I’m getting back in the orientation line in hell.  Mussolini is bitching about having to save my spot, and fucking Ty Cobb has already fired off a couple of rounds in my direction.  Love, peace and here comes Jesus week…