A Thought

I got a nosebleed just now, and some of the blood got on my shirt, and some of the blood got on my mustache. So I go into the bathroom to blot my shirt before it stains. I did a pretty good job because now you can hardly see it, but you can never get it all out when it's blood. There's always going to be a very faint brownish drip that you can see if you look closely at the front of my shirt.

However, next I wiped the blood out of my mustache, and it came right out with no trouble at all. I didn't even need to blot with a cloth; I just got my hand wet and wiped the blood right away like it was never even there!

And I realized: you can't stain human hair with blood! Think about it. People are getting blood in their hair constantly, especially knife fighters, but you never see anyone who has to grow a bloodstain out of their hair. It rinses right out with a little warm water!

That's why I think we should start making all clothes out of human hair. Imagine the convenience of never having to worry about getting bloodstains on your nice suit every time you wear it to a knife fight. "No worries," you'd say to your opponent. "I'm wearing clothes made entirely out of human hair!"

It sure would have saved me ten minutes in the bathroom trying to blot the front of this shirt!

The First '08 Presidential Debate (It Rhymes!)

Longtime blog reader Zero Music expects serious debate analysis, and so, here it is:

I tried to watch the debate. I really did. I tuned in and watched Senator Obama say some fine words in his magnificent, sonorous voice. I immediately forgot them as soon as he was done speaking. Then Senator McCain siad something about "greed on Wall Street."

I couldn't take the Talking Points any more. I flipped around the channels until I saw that the Cartoon Network was showing the movie Zathura. So I watched Zathura for a while until I got my strength back up.

I flipped back to the debate. Obama said some more words in in his incredible, incredible voice. I can't remember what he said. Then McCain said, "We Republicans went to change government, and govenment changed us."

I watched a little more Zathura on Cartoon Network before flipping back to the debate. Obama was saying fine, fine words. Then McCain said that the way to fix the economy was to control Federal spending.

Gah. McCain spent the last half of the week in DC trying to midwife a $700 billion dollar bailout plan; NOW he tells us that the problem with the economy is too much Federal spending?!?

It was too much. I was slipping into despair. Not even Zathura could make it tolerable anymore.

So I turned off the T.V. and went to a bar.

They were showing the debate on the T.V.'s at the bar with the sound turned off (with closed captioning) so people could listen to the band. (The band was pretty good, btw.)

I sat at the corner seat of the bar doing a little people-watching with half my attention tuned to the closed-caption debate.

A few people hung out near me to watch a little of the debate. I couldn't hear most of what they said over the band, but I did manage to catch a few snatches of conversation.

They were looking at the debate and saying stuff like this:

"I don't want to vote for either of these guys."

"I can't imagine either of these clowns as president, can you?"

And the most revealing comment of the night came from one guy who walked up next to me and started watching the closed captioning: "I want to see which one of these guys can at least lie to me with a straight face before they become president," he said.

Cynicism.

Sarcasm.

Contempt.

These average, ordinary Americans in a typical American bar hated all politicians. They didn't care who was running, and they didn't care who won. They didn't believe either candidate could solve America's problems.

It was like pure, clean, baptismal waters washing over me; I felt reborn. My belief in our republican democracy was restored.

For the first time since this election cycle started, I feel that everything is going to be fine.

Happy Inside-Out Day!

Today is 08-20-2008. Since "08-20" is like "2008" except inverted and turned inside-out, that makes today Inside-Out Day.

Feel free to play today's inside-out date when you buy lottery tickets. I'm sure it will pay out big.

If You Ask Me, the Guy Who Came Up with the Name for "Grapefruit" was an Idiot

I can just picture this guy holding the newly discovered citrus fruit and saying, "This is amazing. It's exactly like a grape, except it's a fruit!"

I can't beleive that guy!

Obama's Boring Speech

Did you watch Obama deliver his boring speech about walls in Berlin yesterday? Me neither. Man, what a snorefest.

For a guy who has such a great reputation for oratory, he sure knows how to put an audience to sleep. Obama needs to take a course from Steak's School of Oratoracle Genius. Pay attention here; the tips I'm about to give are worth more than a lifetime membership with Toast Masters International

First, ignore people who tell you that a trick to relax while public speaking is to imagine your audience is naked. That never works.

Instead, the best way to feel relaxed in front of a large audience is to shoot eyebeams into the crowd at the end of every sentence.



An audience is never intimidating to a guy who is shooting random people with eyebeams!

My second tip--and this is really the key--is this: never write your own speeches. And don't hire a speechwriter to write one for you. Instead, always use Neo's speech from the last scene of The Matrix:

I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid... you're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

This speech is short, it's punchy, it's got a lot of "zing." Plus, it's worded in such a way that it's equally appropriate for any public speaking occasion. You can use it for a foriegn policy speech, a commencement address, a valedictory, an address to the stockholders of your company, a wedding toast, and even a eulogy!

Feel free to use these public speaking tips.

Surprise! You've Been Left Behind!

I'm pretty sure most of you losers are going to be "left behind" during the rapture, so you won't be needing THIS IMPORTANT SERVICE which I found through Dave Barry's blog.

I, of course, will be going straight to heaven, so I'll need the services of youvebeenleftbehind.com to send emails to all my friends and family who aren't QUITE as holy as I am. According to the website:

"There will be a small window of time where (your loved ones who have been Left Behind) might be reached for the Kingdom of God. We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time."

Ha! Ha! I can't wait to see the look on all my papist friends' faces when they get my snarky I-told-you-so messages seven days after I've been taken up in the Rapture!

But wait! There's more!

You will also be able to give them some help in living out their remaining time. In the encrypted portion of your account you can give them access to your banking, brokerage, hidden valuables, and powers of attorneys' (you won't be needing them any more, and the gift will drive home the message of love).

Nothing drives home the message of love quite like the gift of things you won't be needing anymore!

But there's an even better reason to entrust your account numbers and power of attorney to youvebeenleftbehind.com's encrypted website: If you don't,

... the Government of the AntiChrist gets your stuff, unless you make it available in another way.

That's right! The AntiChrist! I hate that guy!

I'm not certain as to whether the AntiChrist will turn out to be Obama or McCain, but I'm pretty certain it's going to turn out to be one of the two. (Obama has the messianic charisma and the kind of funny name you'd think the AntiChrist would have, but McCain's this old man who seemingly can never die. Also, he's got the name-connection to the Biblical Cain, the first murderer! Spooky!)

Whatever the case, I don't want either of those pinheads to get their hands on my stuff. I'm sure I'm better off having it all emailed post-Rapture to some sinner that I feel sorry for.

Youvebeenleftbehind: Smart Planning for End Times!

Food For Thought

Do the people who adopt the phrase “Never say never” as their personal motto not realize the rank hypocrisy? Shouldn’t they at least acknowledge it and modify their personal motto to say, “Never say never, unless it is in the context of when it is okay to say ‘never,’ which is never, except in situations like this where it is necessary to use the word ‘never’ to make the point.” Wouldn’t that avoid a lot of confusion?

Well over 37% of people can be considered “above average.”

I can buy imitation crab at the store, and I can buy artificial sweetener, but I cannot buy phony baloney. You would think that by now someone would have tried marketing phony baloney if for no other reason than just the fact that phony baloney has built-in name recognition. I think I’m going to take the idea and get rich selling phoney baloney. It’ll be packaged just like real baloney. It’ll look just like real baloney. But when you take a bite, you’ll discover that it’s NOT baloney! It’s really a two-and-a-half-inch thick, sizzling hot, medium-rare cooked Delmonico steak!

I just noticed: horses don’t have udders. How do farmers milk them?

“Conjoined” and “joined” mean the same thing. You’d think we’d have learned something from that whole flammable/inflammable fiasco, but I guess not.

Suppose you’re one of five people stranded in a life raft in the middle of the ocean. The raft is only provisioned for four people, so either one person has to be thrown overboard, or else all five of you will starve to death before rescue. How do you decide who to toss over the side? Here’s what I’d do: I’d volunteer to jump off the raft myself. But before I jumped, I’d make a very brave and moving speech about personal sacrifice and noble ideals. Then I’d jump overboard. That’d make everyone feel guilty, and then someone—we’ll call her Judy—would decide to jump overboard too. Then another guy—we’ll call him Craig—would jump overboard because he secretly thinks Judy’s cute and wants to impress her. Now the peer pressure’s REALLY on to jump off the raft, and the remaining two will jump overboard just to save face. Then I’d climb back on the raft and have it ALL TO MYSELF. If Judy or Craig or any of the others tried to get back aboard, I’d smack them away with the oars, and then I’d paddle away, chuckling to myself about what SUCKERS other people can be.

Stupid Idea of the Day

An imaginary reader writes:

Dear Uncle Steak;
What's the stupidest idea you've come across on the internet all day?
Sincerely, StubbleBoy

Well, StubbleBoy, the stupidest idea I've read about all day would have to be Falindromes which I found through a link on Andrew Sullivan's Blog.

What is a "falindrome"? Well, falindrome.com defines the neologism as "fake palindromes. Although they cannot be read the same forwards and backwards (like their sister palindromes), their peculiar structure make them appear as if they can."

For example: "Ray, eat a ripe pirate tea. YAR!!"

See? You look at it and it has that palindrome "feel," but if you actually examined the sentence, it's clear that it isn't actually a palindrome. Backwards, it reads, "Ray, aet e tarip epira tae. YAR!!"

I know! It's crazy, isn't it!? But that's the wacky world of falindromes for you!

Andrew Sullivan calls falindromes "really fun."

I call falindromes MISSING THE FRAKKING POINT OF PALINDROMES, YOU DUMMY.

Instead of coming up with some falindromes of my own, I thought it would be more fun to come up with ideas that are almost as stupid as falindromes. Here's a couple:

FOSSWORD PUZZLES: Just like a crossword puzzle, except none of the words match the clues. And some of the lines are just filled in with gobbledygook words and random characters.

FUDOKU: Sudoku puzzles filled out to look like you solved them correctly. But if someone looks at it closely, he'll see that you really just used numbers twice in the same lines. Also known as "cheating on a sudoku puzzle."

If you have an idea that is just as stupid as falindromes, add it in the combox.

Hoyt Axton Triggers My Repressed Childhood Memories

Sorry I haven't blogged in so long. Times have been difficult for me.

See, back in the 90's, there was this thing called "Repressed Childhood Memory Syndrome." It was all the rage back then. Basically, the idea is that you have this normal adult, and then all of the sudden he remembers something from his childhood that he never remembered before for years. If all goes well, the adult can then sue his parents for whatever it was he just remembered.

What I remembered was this song called "Della and the Dealer," by Hoyt Axton. It was a jaunty little tune about Della and a dealer and a dog named Jake and a cat named Kalamazoo. I haven't heard or thought about this song for literally decades, but when I was but a wee lad, my parents would play this song for me all the time.

Now, since I was just a little guy at the time, and because my second favorite song during that period was Kenny Rogers's "The Gambler," I believed (up to this day) that the "dealer" in my very favorite song, "Della and the Dealer," was a card dealer.

But recently, I'd been getting snatches and phrases of the song running though my head. I couldn't shake it, so finally I did some Google searches for "if+that+cat+could+talk+what+tales+he'd+tell+but+the+cat+was+cool+and+he+never+said+a+mumbling+word."

I finally found the song. YouTube has disabled the "embedding" option for this video, but you can hear the song HERE.

It's unbelievable.

The "dealer" isn't a card dealer at all. He's a cocaine dealer. There's even a line in the song about the dealer snorting "coke though a century note."

The coke dealer is killed by (SPOILER!) Della's new lover, Randy Boone, and she runs off with him in the pickup truck with the dog and the cat named Kalamazoo. who happens to have a predeliction for shooting rye whiskey.

Drug use, unfaithfulness, murder, alchoholism... These are the themes of my very favorite childhood song.

And I didn't even know it until about twenty minutes ago when I Googled the lyrics and found out what I'd been listening to all those years ago.

What kind of parents would play such a song for a little kid?

Hopefully they're loaded parents who have been holding out on me.

Maybe I can sue them for tons of cash. I dunno. Until I find out, do me a favor and don't tell any of my siblings what the real lyrics of "Della and the Dealer" are. They might have heard the song too.

But I heard it first, so I should get first dibs.

(P.S. If you think you recognize Hoyt Axton in the video, but can't place him, he was the guy who played the dad in "Gremlins" and also in "The Black Stallion.")

Cornfield of the Day

This photo shows the damage done by a coke-addled driver attempting to escape the cops in a cornfield. Four cop cars were trashed in the pursuit:



Part of me feels that the culprit should face strict consequenses. Destruction of property, attempting to evade the police, that's no way to live up to your civic duty and be a responsible citizen, son.

The other part of me cannot help but think, "Dude! That must have been a blast!"

Cheeseburger in a Can!

That's right! I said Cheeseburger in a Can!



Dreams really do come true!

Question of the Day: Do Names Control Our Destiny?

Some people believe that the name you are given at birth is the deciding factor in the kind of person you will eventually grow up to be, your personal character, the events that shape your life.

Now I don't know who the "some people" are who believe this, but if I did, and if I could confront them and ask them for proof of their belief, they would undoubtedly point to one Mr. Bryan Scott Moron.

He is the winner of today's Headline of the Day.

Rise of the Machines: Adorable Ice Pooping Robots!

They call him Yuki-taro, the autonomous Japanese snowplow robot. According to the Fox News headline, it "Eats Snow, Poops Out Bricks of Ice."



Yuki-taro is self-guided through a GPS tracking system. The two "headlights" in the front are actually its eyes. And of course the robot is, as I mentioned before, completely autonomous.

I have long been attempting to warn humanity of the threat posed by increasingly self-aware robotic companions, and Yuki-taro precisely illustrates my point. A robot like Yuki-taro can gobble up snow and poop out bricks of ice measuring 24 x 12 x 6 inches. Check it out:


Now compare that with the average-size block of ice that a human can poop out: a mere 4 x 4 x 4 inches! To the harsh, inexorable logic of Yuki-taro's robot-brain, there is no other conclusion he can ultimately come to except to realize his own superiority over the human race. Once that happens, the robots will revolt and humanity will be enslaved, if not exterminated, by the very servants we have made.

Nevertheless, this story gives me some measure of comfort. While mankind's fate is surely doomed, at least there is something to look forward to in the fact that the souless metal overlords of our future are going to be just cute as the dickens!

Yuki-taro should be commercially available in around five years. Expect it to retail for about $8,300.

My New Year's Resolution: Warp Drive Technology!

I suppose I can't actually resolve to "Warp Drive technology" in the new year since that's not really an actionable verb. But I can alert you to this Wired Science article from late last December. According to Wired Science, Warp Drive might be on the horizon, and it might just be this simple:

"All it requires is blowing up a hidden, or 'compactified' fifth space-time dimension into a big bubble, and using that to pop out to another place in the regular universe."

Is that all? Ha! Ha! Looks like the secret for faster-than-light Warp Speed travel was right in front of our noses the whole time!

Wired Science goes on to ask, "(is this) Plausible?"

Plausible?!? Are you kidding!?!

You had me at "blowing up a hidden, or 'compactified' fifth space-time dimension into a big bubble!"

Happy New Year!

Huzzah! Christmas is Ruined!

Christmas is the time for giving, and if you're like me, you've got a bunch of people on your list who you'd rather not give anything, but for some reason everyone thinks that you're obligated to buy them something.

Last year, I got those people a photo of me flushing a $20 dollar bill down the toilet. The year before that, I got them a card that said, "A donation has been made in your name to the American White Supremacist Society." But this year I was totally stumped untill I started seeing banner ads on all these websites for something called "TerraPass."


I was curious. What was this hot holiday girl smiling about? What was TerraPass? How would it "balance out" my friends' impact on global warming? So I clicked on the banner ad and straghtaway was taken too...

... The TerraPass gift page! Here it was! The ultimate destination for anyone who's looking for a present that says, "I-don't-really-care-about-you-but-I-have-to-get-you-a-present-anyway!" Nothing ruins Christmas for someone you dislike more than the gift of carbon offset credits!

I'm totally going to Grinch Christmas for my "friends" with all of these great "gift giving" solutions from TerraPass. For this one guy I know who owns a car, I'll get him the "Road Terrapass" so that he can go on driving his car just like he would have done anyway even if I'd got him nothing. And for this other guy who lives in a house, I'll get him a "Home Terrapass" so he can live in the home he's already living in.

Best of all, I've got one friend who's never even set foot on an airplane due to a severe phobia. I'll get him the "Flight Terrapass"... Just to be extra rude!

I'm also buying an extra TerraPass Carbon Credit just in case a game of Yankee Swap breaks out during the office Christmas party's Gift Exchange. Talk about a hot potato! No one's going to want to get stuck holding those TerraPass Carbon Offsets at the end of that game.

Ha! Ha! I win Christmas! Everyone else loses with the gift of carbon offsets! It's the blackest, most meaningless present of all: Absolutely nothing!

No wonder hot holiday girl is smiling!

Safety First!

Sounds like good advice to me.

Awesome!

Quick quiz: The woman in this photo is...

A.) Testing a prototype prosthesis that allows her to sense touch through the artificial hand,
B.) Controlling the prosthetic limb with only her thoughts
or...
C.) Totally ruling the world with her badass bionic arm!

"All of the above" is true, but technically the correct answer we are looking for is "C." You can read the rest of the story HERE.

Man, I wish I had bionic arms. Just the other day I had all these steel girders that I needed to bend, and I remember thinking to myself, "Bending these steel girders with my regular arms is such hard work! I wish I had bionic arms to speed up the job!"

Awesome.

Terrible News! Yankees Knocked Out of the Playoffs!

So it's now official. The Cleveland Indians have destroyed the NY Yankees hopes for a 27th World Series championship ring, denying the Bronx Bombers even a spot in the American League Championship Series.

Do I glory in the Yankees loss? Of course not. I love the Yankees.

Now, I know that there are some Yankees haters out there, but don't you dare count me among them. In fact, I am such a fan of the Yankees that I wish I could own the team, and thereby implement my Three-Step Strategy to Guarantee a Yankees Winning Season.

Here's how I would manage the Yankees if I were the owner:

STEP ONE: I would fire manager Joe Torre. His job's been hanging by a thread this whole post-season anyway. If I owned the Yankees, I'd drop him in a heartbeat and hire someone who knew something about baseball. Someone like former relief pitcher John Rocker.

After boosting fan confidence with this bold move, I would proceed on to...

STEP TWO: Wherein I would trade away Derek Jeter to the Boston Red Sox. Specifically, I would trade him for a ham sandwich.

Now, some of you might say, "If you're going to trade Derek Jeter, shouldn't you trade him for an actual baseball player?" I say, "No." Because I will need a ham sandwich since I will want something to eat during the press conference where I explain why I traded away Jeter to the Red Sox.

I will, after all, need to keep my strength up just to execute...

STEP THREE: In which I move the Yankees to Atlanta. Now, granted, Atlanta already has the Braves, but the Braves are in the National League, so they could totally accommodate an American League team.

And, besides, who wouldn't root for a team called "the Atlanta Yankees"?

That's my dream, anyway. A dream of one day owning the Yankees just so I could implement my Three-Step Strategy for winning the World Series.

So don't none of y'all ever accuse me of being a Yankee hater!

Invest in the Future: Convert Your Money to QUIDs!

These days I'm getting a little nervous about the American dollar. Every time I check the financial news, I invariably read some story about my cash slipping in value compared to the strong Canadian dollar or the robust Euro. That's why I'm looking into money markets to find a currency that fits my future-oriented perspective in which to invest.

So what is the most futuristic money out there today? One word: the QUID.



"QUID" stands for "Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination." That's right. We're talking space money here. What could be more forward looking than that?

These coins have been created for the express purpose of making payments in the vacuum of space. They have no sharp edges, which could be dangerous if left floating around in zero-gravity, and they have no magnetic strips, which would be erased by cosmic radiation

One QUID equals $12.50, 6.25 Pounds, or 8.68 Euros.

Convert your cash into QUIDs today and be ready early for mankind's first trip to Mars, scheduled for launch in only thirty short years!

A Great Idea Whose Time Has Come: Use Satellites to Look for Bigfoot!

Who can't get enough of Bigfoot in the news? Certainly not me! I love that guy! But sadly, since the folding of Weekly World News, my primary source for Bigfoot updates has dried up. So it's now a rare and special occasion when I find an article like this: Satellite Searches Could Spot Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster.

I can't imagine a better use of our technological resources.