I hate office machine salespeople. They are evil. Why? Because they make money selling monolithic intricate, multi-function machines to idiot management bean counting types, who, having stale Jell-O for brains, eagerly sign up for 2,000 year leases. Or, until he next biggest model is sold to them.

Let’s look at the basic office machine tools. Fax machine. Copier machine. If you are IBM, NASA, or Fred’s Family Ferret Farm, these are two of the most essential tools you use every hour of every day. Nothing will bring NASA or Fred’s Family Ferret Farm to a halt quicker than a stinking paper jam or a fax machine on the fritz.

So, what do the nitwit evil office machine salespeople do? They sell management these humongous multi-function machines. They toss out the perfectly good fax machine, the perfectly good simple copy machine, and they replace them with this piece of equipment larger than a tractor that operates as a photocopier that prints on the front and back and in some cases in nano-size print on the actual sides of the paper! It will collate, alphabetize, and spray each sheet with Holy Water. It has built in staple guns, and it prints in duplex mode, landscape mode, convert to PDF format, oscillate and imprint secret identification codes into each sheet. (That part is true, see article here.)

But wait, this is not just a copy machine! No way! This is also a Network Printer!!!! Yeah, you can hook up computers in other rooms to print out massive reports with the simple click of a key. Of course, that means no one can use it as a fax machine or copy machine when the nitwit down the hall accidentally sent the entire corporate accounting history to the machine to print – in triplicate. Collated. Stapled.

The FAX machine will receive billions of faxes, store them in memory, and code them, sort by sender’s area code and on occasion, actually print one out; assuming the nitwit down the hall hasn’t run the entire corporation out of paper with his stupid report.

Some of the other wonderful squirrel-like features?

Because this is not a copy machine, but is every conceivable office, printing and miniature poodle MRI machine built into one, it takes three days to warm up. You want to make one copy on one side of paper? Call the janitor Friday night, have him turn on the machine, and if you are lucky it will be warmed up by Monday when you arrive.

Remember the old days, when you had a client/customer with you, and you would skip joyfully and briskly to the copy machine, put the original on the glass, smack one large green button, and a copy will come out? Hell, those days are long gone buddy. Now you go to the Gigantic Office Machine From Hell (GOMFH) and stare at the 137 multi colored and shaped buttons on the machine dumbly, realizing that if an alien space craft landed in the company break room you could figure out not only the controls of their craft but the language of the squat naked three boobed aliens well before you could ever discern how to make one copy from this God-awful machine.

Now, my favorite feature???? Ha! I am sooooooo glad you asked! You want to know what MY favorite feature is of these wonderful tractor-sized office machines? Well, I’m gonna tell ya. When they break. Which is every 73 minutes. You see, there are more parts and gizmos and delicate crap involved in these complicated, complex sensitive machines that the slightest thing can make them break. Why, just Velma, the fat gal from HR with the muskrat perfume walking by it can make several of the internal parts snapped in two and the entire machine drop dead. Guess what? No fax machine. No copy machine. No network printer. No dial-up internet astrology readings. The damn poodle can’t get his MRI!!!! The expensive tractor-like GOMFH is now just a huge room-sized piece of weasel snot!

God. I hate these machines. And the nitwit salespeople who sell them to our bean counting management.

Peace out people.

SCG

There were 3.2 million automobile accidents last year, and that was just at one intersection in Miami-Dade County. Transportation officials are at a lost to explain the cause for the dramatic increase. Obviously, they have not asked Some Cranky Guy, as I can explain it to them easily. It is a design flaw in every new car produced, combined with the prevalence of video games. You see folks, most drivers under the age of 40 and quite a few above that age, grew up addicted to video games. They have glued their heads to monitors for decades as their brain cells were sucked dry by magnetic impulses. Worse, the video games have become too realistic. And every time they crash or get eaten by aliens, they can just start a new game. No consequences. Now, add to that the fact that new cars are built so well these days that when driving even the cheapest model, there is almost no road noise or vibration, to the point it is difficult to feel that you are actually in the real world! And the controls, with power steering, power brakes, power windows, cruise control, power urinals built right in, why, it isn’t much more than a video game! What’s the difference?

Most people can’t actually feel the difference. Until they implant the front portion of their very real car into an oak tree and no matter what they do, they can’t locate the reset key. End of game. Blink.

The solution? Well, I fault the automobile manufacturers, not the video game people. When you drive a car, you are inside a pile of metal, plastic, wires and glass propelling yourself down a concrete/asphalt roadway at speeds upwards to 80 miles per hour! And once you leave the mall parking lot even faster! You really should feel like you are in a car, not in a video game!

Now, when I do what every typical red blooded American man does from time to time, reminisce about all the cars that have been in my life, I realize the solution. You know, when I was driving my cars I never confused the experience with a video game. How could I? Every few seconds I was pulled back to reality!

For instance, my first car was a 1960 Valiant, slant six. Sweet! Except this was the 1970′s and every time I executed a left turn traveling a tad too fast, the battery slid out of it’s rusted container and fell into the steel fan blades, sparks shot from the hood and a noise not totally unlike Ethel Merman having sex with a burrito emitted from the engine. Folks, there is no confusing that experience with a video game.

Or take my 1961 American Motors Rambler. Please. Sweet car, great car, but every now and then the driver’s seat would flip back and I would find myself speeding down the highway laying flat on my back staring up at the ripped headliner. And screaming my lungs out!

The 68 Buick had two neat features. First, the trunk would pop up if you flipped a switch on the dash. Back then that wasn’t standard. I would go down the highway flipping that switch all day long. The other feature was that occasionally when I was fast approaching a red light at a busy intersection I would apply the brakes, and this red liquid would shoot up out of the side of the hood and splash across my windshield. No, it wasn’t window washing fluid. It was brake fluid. But thankfully, this alerted me to the fact that my master cylinder was on the fritz again, and I had time to open the door and tuck and roll into the weeds before the car crashed through the intersection.

I owned two snot-orange colored Fiats. Two seaters. One was for parts. And that wasn’t enough. I had a poor battery connection, so my brother taught me this neat trick – hammer a steel nail between the battery cable and the battery post to improve the connection. It worked like a charm; the car never had a starting problem! However, when an electrical fire developed while the car was in the shop for minor repairs, my mechanic tried frantically to pull the battery cable away from the battery, only to discover that some yahoo had nailed it to the battery! He managed to push the fiat out of his garage before it burned his entire business down. He also banned me and all of my cars from his establishment.

Even today, I drive a 1998 Ford Ranger pick-up truck with over 125,000 miles on it. I love that truck. It is all manual. Manual windows, manual locks, manual shift, manual breast pump. Nothing automatic on that baby! And you know what? When I am bouncing down the highway with 68% of the parts rattling like they got the Holy Ghost and my head banging against the ceiling from time to time – there ain’t no forgetting the fact that I’m in a vehicle driving down the highway. No video game affect there folks.

Peace Out People.

SCG

Sometimes I like to daydream about God’s workshop and the employees that were creating the bodies for us to inhabit. This is of course, well before the earth, the sun or Geraldo Rivera were created.

Picture a beautiful garden, with trees, flowering bushes and plants, a crisp deep blue sky and a quiet stream babbling through the middle. And a huge conference table smack dab in the center, with a bunch of Angels gathered about, and God at the head of the table.

“OK, how’s it going?” God asks with a voice like thunder. (What, you expected Woody Allen?)

“Well,..ah…we’ve had some serious setbacks.” The Chief Engineering Angel reports. “In fact, we are way over budget and are going to miss the deadline.”

God’s thick caterpillar eyebrows bunch together. In fact, they were bushy caterpillars. God’s got a warped sense of humor sometimes.

” Say what?” He booms out across the conference table. The Design Team winced. Mostly from God’s saliva. When you are The God, the One and Only, and you boom your voice out across the heavens, a substantial amount of Holy Spit is involved. Can’t be helped.

“You see…” pipes up the nerdy faced angel with the thick eyeglasses. “Since you won’t allow us to give them more than a 1 watt brain, well, we had to automate most of the bodily functions.”

“Go on.” God rumbled.

“Breathing for one. The first prototype lasted about 180 seconds, then dropped dead. Never took a breath. So, we had to design the body to do that automatically, as well as a number of other basic functions.”

“What else” Asked God.

“We had to invent hunger.” Said the Chief Engineer.

“Hunger?”

“Yeah. and thirst. The second prototype lasted about three days than dropped dead. Never ate or drank anything. So, we invented thirst and hunger to propel them to eat and drink.”

“Yes, well, that wasn’t all!” Shouted the nerdy angel with the thick glasses again. “We gave them thirst and hunger, but the third prototype ate rocks and sticks and weasel shit. He died the next day.”

God looked toward the sky, drumming his fingertips on the table. “So, what did you do then?”

“Ah, that was my idea!” Chirped up a tall skinny Angel. “Taste buds! I invented taste buds!”

“What the hell are taste buds?” God asked, growing impatient.

The Chief Engineering Angel shushed the skinny Angel and reported. “On their tongue, we invented and placed millions of sensors that are wired to the brain. And we programmed them to send negative data to the brain if they ate weasel shit or rocks, and positive data if they ate peaches or strawberries.”

“So, the hunger made them eat, and taste buds made them not eat weasel shit?” God asked.

“Precisely!” Shouted the nerdy angel and the skinny angel in unison.

God opened a file folder and flicked through a few pages. “You are 957% over the estimated budget!”

“No Sir.” Replied the Chief Engineering Angel.

God raised his eyes above the report. The caterpillars crawled down into his left ear. Immediately, real eyebrows grew in their place.

“Explain.” He ordered.

“Well, Sir, we are actually a tad more overspent than that report indicates…”

The puffy white clouds that were floating in the blue sky froze, then zipped to the nearest horizon.

“What?!” God boomed. Trees uprooted and tumbled through the valley.

“Well, you see Sir, I mean, well……..sex.”

“Say what?”

“We had to invent sex.”

“What in My Name is sex???” God asked.

“The humans wouldn’t procreate!” Snickered the nerdy angel. “In fact, the male and female ones didn’t even want anything to do with each other. After awhile, they grew old and died, and we had an empty garden again.”

“I repeat….what is sex?” God inquired firmly.

No one replied. The angels just sat about the table looking very uncomfortable. Finally, God’s stare settled on the Chief Engineering Angel.

“The males refused to do anything with the females.” The Chief Engineering Angel said, defensively. “The females were so much smarter than the males, they didn’t need them at all!”

God sucked in a really deep breath. “For the last time angels – what is sex?”

The Chief Engineering Angel explained Sex to God. At first, God twisted his face in disbelief. The Chief Engineering Angel then pointed to the bushes behind the table, where a male and female human were going at it like two runaway locomotives.

“Holy crap!” God said.

“How much did that function cost?” He asked.

“Well, we had to restructure the females first. We had to reduce their intelligence, otherwise they still wouldn’t have anything to do with the males. Then we had to invent lust, desire, physical attractiveness and hooters.”

“What!?”

“Hooters.” The Chief Engineering Angel explained. “The males demanded them because it would be several thousand years before football would be invented, and they said they needed something to distract them until then.

God shook his head back and forth. “All I asked you to do was to create containers so that these souls could occupy them on the Planet Earth.”

“Yes sir.”

“And this is what you come up with?”

“Yes sir. And all of it is clearly documented in the notes there, with receipts and detailed explanations for every function and item created.”

“What the hell is this!” God demanded, holding up the last page with the description of attorneys.

“You created Attorneys??? Attorneys?” He shouted and sprayed them all.

“Why the hell did you do that!” He continued. “You’ve skunked up the entire planet now!”

“I can explain that Sir.” Squeaked the Chief Engineering Angel.

“Do so!” God commanded.

“Vern over there…”pointing to the nerdy angel, “he ordered too many assholes.”

God threw the report down onto the table and sat back in His chair. Vern crawled under the table.

“So…..” continued the Chief Engineering Angel, “We tried to return them, but there was a restocking fee, and a pretty hefty one for assholes….so, instead of returning them, we just invented attorneys. No one will notice that they are really just huge assholes with shoes.”

God stared at them for a generation or two. Then He rose from the table slowly, stared at them some more, and then shouted “Get out! All of you! And take those fucking humans and those assholes with ya! Out of my garden!”

#####

I’m sure that’s not what really happened….

Peace out people.

SCG

Here is a story about a beagle in Ocoee Florida, near Orlando, that saved her master’s life. The beagle attended a $9,000 training program to learn to tell when her master was in trouble. When her master passed out recently, the beagle quickly ran to the bedroom, climbed onto the dresser, picked up the keys to the truck in her beagle mouth, scooped up the jewelry there, and drove the truck to the nearest pawn shop where she hocked the diamonds and rings and proceeded to Petsmart where she bought herself a French Poodle. No, wait, that’s not quite right. She actually dialed 911 on a speed dial phone. Big freaking deal! You call that a story?

Let me tell you about the BFH I had once! (Beagle From Hell). I got married and this 193 year old miniature beagle came with the wife, along with a daughter, some parrots and someone to alert me when I leave my shoes in the living room. What a deal! Anyway, this Beagle From Hell was actually channeling MacGyver through time. I’m telling ya, this was not a normal beagle. For one thing, the BFH weighed just 15 pounds, but every morning 32 pounds of BP (Beagle Poop) awaited me on the floor. And carpet. Sometimes the couch. Once on a lamp. This beagle was scary, folks.

By the way, let me tell you what is real entertaining. Getting up at 2 AM and stumbling about in the dark toward the kitchen for another round of Alka Seltzer and then stepping into a pile of BP. And slipping. And falling. On your ass. In Beagle Poop. Let me tell you, I used curse words that have not even been invented yet.

Talk about tricks? We would get two of those tension dog gates, two of them, and put them one on top of the other so there was an obstruction more than five feet tall, blocking the kitchen off. Tight against the wall. We would come home to find the refrigerator door wide open and whatever was on the first two shelves spewed all over the floor. I mean all over. We never did figure out how the damn dog got over the two gates, got the fridge door open, and then got back into the living room. We knew it was the beagle though, as she would have diarrhea for three days afterward. Everywhere.

We finally resorted to three huge strips of two inch wide duct tape to keep the damn MacGyver wanna-be out of the fridge.

This dog was old too. I mean it had grey hair. I’ve never seen grey hair on a dog. This beagle had lumps and bumps and weird growths. I wouldn’t call it fur anymore, more like brillo pad shavings.

Bad breath? Oh my God, this beagle had breath that would stain the ceiling fans. The top sides of the ceiling fans.

I bet you are asking me what in the world could be worse than this BFH? How about irritable bowel syndrome? Yeah. The damn beagle had IBS. And like a lot of really, really old people, this beagle wasn’t ashamed of farting in public. Holy death smell batman, these farts hung in the air for hours! Flies would soar half way across the room and then spiral to the ground! It would make the hair fall out of your nose!

Need I even say that she was blind as a milk crate? But her cold wet nose could still find your crotch in the dark. Lovely.

The dog died three times, but Satan refused to admit her, so sent her back. I swear, one time she was dead and stiff. An hour later, she was yapping, walking into furniture and shitting in my shoes. She must have had an OBE. (Out of Beagle Experience).

So, a stupid little beagle being trained to smack a paw on a speed dial button on a phone ain’t much of a trick if you ask me. Let me see that beagle climb two pet gates, rip duct tape off a refrigerator door, pull out a whole ham, scarf it down, climb back over the gates and then have an episode of IBS on the carpet. Now that is one gifted beagle!

PS – we actually DID love this dog – and she actually DID have other, better moments, especially before she became 193 years old. (PSS – my wife made me write this part……)

Peace out people

SCG