Category Archives: Rants

September 3, 2013

Fan Of The Game

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

An Open Letter To The Drunk Guy At The Football Game……..

Dear Friend,

Yes I say friend, because after watching you make an idiot of yourself for the last hour and a half, I feel like I know you. Also, after your persistent attempts to interact with every single person in the stadium, I feel like you know me too. You probably know me as a quiet enough guy, who eats a pizza slice, and has a beer or two while watching the football game. I know you as a complete shit-show of drunk, trying to be a stand up comedian a few rows in front of me.

I shouldn’t be surprised that I saw you here tonight. It seems I see a different you, every time I go to a game, or a movie, or some sort of live performance. It’s the same role played by a different performer each time. This version of you is wearing a Calgary Stampeders jersey, so I already know you’re in my town cheering for the wrong team. Which is cool. I respect a fan that will travel to see an out-of-town game. You’ve got your sidekick with you too who is also wearing a jersey, also drunk, but only 75% as loud as you. Yeah, you’re the ringleader. The man with the plan.

Your style of experience disruption is probably my favourite one. You’re the guy that stands up every time something good happens to your team (it helps that you’re cheering for the wrong team, otherwise you wouldn’t stand out, and nobody would pay attention to you), and instead of facing the field, and clapping/yelling/cheering or some other fan-related reaction, you’re facing the fans behind you, and looking them in the face. Somewhere between the 3rd and 4th beer, you started to see warmth in their smiles. They started hanging on your every comment instead of looking at you with contempt or indifference. Even the females in the crowd started paying attention to you! Your team is even up by two touchdowns. Tonight’s your night bro! Now instead of standing up every 5 minutes to say something dumb, you just aren’t going to bother sitting back down because you are in such high demand…. people are dying to know what next bit of hilarity will escape your soul. You should be paid a commission for the amount of entertainment you add to the whole fan experience (You mean I get to watch a football game AND listen to this doorknob all night? Double bonus for me!!). If only I could be in the same row as you so I could have beer spilled on my head as you walk by. It would be so excellent if I could be close enough to give you a handshake or a high-five every time you said something awesome (which is always). I can only sit several rows back and quietly pray for MORE WITTY BANTER!!

Less Football, More You!

Yours Truly
Thoughtsandrantsinjoggingpants

The highlight of the night came when security finally came down to talk to this guy. I think everyone was dying to see him get booted, but when he saw security come, he fell in line and was quiet and remorseful. Then I heard a guy a few rows back yell ‘You’re sittin’ down now, eh Jackass??’

Is hilarity a word?

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized

August 26, 2013

People Disappoint Me….. As They Should!

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

When I was a kid I was vaguely aware that a lot of other kids were a bunch of whiny assholes. I probably was one as well, to be fair. The funny thing is that I always had this sense that the situation would improve as I got older. I don’t know if it was me being optimistic, or just having faith in the theory of people maturing as time moved on. I suppose there are a lot more examples of people growing up, then not, but it’s the ones where they don’t that stick out in my mind. I’m not going to list off all the times that I thought grown adults acted like 6-year-olds. That would take forever, and I just don’t have that kind of time or attention span. I just want to say that as an adult, I’m disappointed when I see other adults behaving like they just started going to school for the ‘full-day classes’. That said, who am I to judge? What did I think was going to happen? We’re the same exact people that we were when we were 6. Just older. Most of us evolved some, but when the pressure’s on, sometimes that ‘inner 6-year-old’ has to take over and weigh in with his/her opinions and antics. It’s probably too much to expect that we could have completely gotten to a point where that doesn’t come out anymore. Could a world full of mature people even exist? What would that be like? It could be awesome, but maybe it would have its own share of problems that I can’t quite foresee. So…. I guess it’s OK?

Politics is my favorite example. When you read about it in the paper, they use fancy words like conjecture, posturing, and semantics. That’s because there are intelligent people writing about a non-intelligent situation. When you watch some coverage of them operating on TV, and these people are some of the most immature we have in society. The way they argue with each other, airing out their pissy little grievances with their selfish little agendas….. forming their little cliques and alliances….these are the people we depend on to run our towns/cities/provinces/states/countries! It’s disappointing. I don’t normally follow politics for this reason. Every time I feel like I might be interested, there’s some display of foolishness and incompetence that I’d rather just not know about, which drives me away. You know what though? They’re people. Not unlike the people in the first paragraph. Except these people are more interested in power, and they want to be shot callers! Oh sure, there are a few martyrs out there too that just give and give and give themselves for the betterment of society (if that’s what you choose to believe), but at the root of it all, none of these people would have had any interest in politics if it weren’t at least somewhat in their nature to want to be shot-callers. You put a bunch of shot-callers in the same room all day, and make the stakes incredibly high, and what do you get?? Conjecture, posturing, and semantics….. all fucking day! What did we expect?

Finally, there’s a story in Toronto about a police officer who shot a suspect carrying a knife 8 times (on 9 shots) and killed him. I feel like this news story plays different in Canada than it would in the States, but the media is all over the police department for excessive violence. As they should be. There has to be a better way to take down a suspect. The way this has all played out in the media has been totally one-sided though. What happened to a person taking some responsibility for being there with a knife in the first place? Also not dropping it when the police told him to? I don’t know the whole back story, and very little has been mentioned about what was really happening at the time the police arrived, but the victim at very least made a decision to carry a knife that day, and the rest isn’t that important to me. I can’t give him advice now, but I will say this to any of you out there that might get into some shit. If you are wielding a knife, and a bunch of cops are there asking you to put it down, you might not be expecting to die at that moment, but you HAVE to respect the fact that it could happen. That’s just common sense. Right or wrong, police are human beings, and it’s not an automatic that you will just get tasered or shot in the leg. If you make them mad, there’s always a chance that you could get lit up. I want to believe that the police are generally good people. I want to believe that they don’t get into situations like that on purpose. They are just people though. Who knows if you got them into a corner, or underneath their skin enough? Everyone has a breaking point. They carry guns. I have a theory that most cops have violent tendencies. I would think that it’s a bit of a requirement for their job. If you are hoping to never be in any type of altercation, than you aren’t likely to try to become a police officer. There has to be something in your personality which suggests that you wouldn’t mind walking around with a gun, and if push came to shove, you wouldn’t mind using it. If this wasn’t the case, why would you become a cop? Oh, I’m sure just as in the above paragraph that there are some absolute saints who become cops just because they want to help clean up the city. For every one of those, there have to be at least one or two tough guys that would love to carry a gun and be an authority figure. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as they’re out there fighting the good fight, but I certainly wouldn’t wave a knife at one of them.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized

August 20, 2013

Do We Really Need It?

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

I was watching a TV commercial the other day. If I knew I’d be blogging about it, I would have tried to remember what product they were selling. It could have been a phone, but not necessarily. There was a 3 second clip of a girl’s hand reaching out from behind the shower curtain and changing which song was playing on her phone…… Now as someone who takes the music I listen to very seriously, I have to ask….. How long is your friggin shower that you can’t sort out a 3 or 4 song playlist, or that you don’t have the attention span to get through it without reaching for your phone to put on a different ‘shower song’? We ARE a society that needs our phones, I get it, but do we need them SO badly that they have to be in the shower with us?

What about hashtags??? Not being a huge Twitter guy, this was explained to me as a way to organize your thoughts or connect with other people. From where I’m standing, it’s a corny punchline opportunity at the end of your status update. Have we really organized our statuses, and went back and looked through them? Have we gotten a bunch of new followers? Or have we just #triedtogetacheaplaughattheendofourstatusupdate?
It’s kind of dumb. Let’s stop.

Do we really need to know what’s going on in Lindsay Lohan’s life? I haven’t seen any of her movies. I don’t want to downplay her accomplishments, but she’s spent way more time on TV for partying too hard, then she has for being an actress. My personal opinion is that what someone does things on their own time, it’s their own business, but at least if the Gossip Mag taste-makers decide who they’re going to follow around, and report every move they make as news…..make it someone I’ve heard of.

Light Peanut Butter. Give me a break guys…. I’m all for making healthy changes, but with 25% less fat, it doesn’t even taste like peanut butter. The graininess of it chafing my throat on the way down. It’s so awful, what a horrible invention. Nobody’s getting fat from peanut butter. Get over it. We don’t need this product. It looks too much like the regular one. Sometimes we buy it by accident. Just get it off the shelves. Also, I’m pretty sure whole wheat bread hasn’t saved all the lives you think it has.

Swag is either short for swagger or its free shit. Make up your mind. It’s a dumb word for either if you ask me. Swagger is probably the easiest two-syllable word to say in the English language, it doesn’t need a short form. Swag?? Free shit?? I don’t get it. According to Urbandictionary.com it’s an acronym for ‘secretly we are gay’. Who knew?

Speed bumps are popping up everywhere. I understand they serve a purpose sometimes, but I hate going over them. It just pisses me off when they are in unnecessary locations. Especially traffic calming zones. How much did you assholes pay for your house that we have to drive slow on your street, but fast everywhere else? It makes me want to ‘accidentally’ smash my car into the tree on someone’s front yard just to prove that they don’t work. Give me a break.

Pre-season Football. I love the NFL, but pre-season sucks. None of the good players play. It’s too long. None of the information from pre-season ever helps me with my fantasy team. It’s just a waste of time. Start the season already!!!

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized

July 30, 2013

Cond-woes

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

I live in a Condo and I love it! In Toronto, it snows a lot in the winter. Shovelling snow sucks, but not if you live in a condo. Removing a foot of snow from the top of your car before you go to work sucks, but not if your car is in a parking garage. In the summer, mowing the lawn sucks, but not if you don’t have a lawn. The final kicker as a lot of Torontonians just found out, that you can’t get a flooded basement in a condo. These are some convincing arguments as to why I enjoy the condo life.

There are a few things about it that drive me crazy. Before anybody lectures me about these being ‘first world problems’, I’ll point out that you can always choose to mind your own business 😉 If bloggers didn’t bitch about stuff like this, how interesting would the first world be? I’ll stick to one major pet peeve, because after all, I’m a fan of the condo lifestyle.

The thing that drives me absolutely nutty is our security team’s lack of competence using the intercom. They do fire alarm testing all the time. I guess it’s a good thing that they want to make sure the alarm works in case of emergencies. When there is an emergency, or an emergency alarm has sounded, our security team springs into action to announce over the intercom, every possible fucking detail of their emergency response. TWICE! This is policy I’m sure. Better to over communicate than under communicate, and I sort of appreciate that too. If they are going to say it twice though…. and bear in mind that this is almost always happening in the middle of the night…… I wish they would just say the whole sentence once, and then repeat it. They don’t communicate like this. THEY think that it’s clearer for everybody if they chop the sentence up, and just repeat fragments of the sentence.

For example, INSTEAD of saying……..
“May I have your attention please. The Fire Alarm has sounded. The Fire Department is on its way. Please stay in your units and await further instruction…….. May I have your attention please. The Fire Alarm has sounded. The Fire Department is on its way. Please stay in your units and await further instruction”

THEY SAY
“May I have your attention please…. I repeat… may I have your attention please……the fire alarm has sounded….. I repeat….. the fire alarm has sounded…….The Fire Department is on its way…..I repeat (now imagine it’s the middle of the night and you have a mute button which you can press so the fire alarm isn’t so loud while you, your wife, and perhaps even a new-born baby who may not have even been that easy to put asleep to begin with, are now trying to sleep, but you have to wait for them to stop talking before the mute button will work) The Fire Department is on its way……..Please stay in your units and await further instruction……. I repeat…….. Please stay in your units and await further instruction. (now imagine that you have finally waited out this announcement that could have been communicated in a fraction of the time, and these jokers don’t know how to turn the mic off, so you hear at least 10-15 seconds of fuzz/background noise/murmuring, which feels like 10-15 minutes, and then finally click, and then the alarm sounds, and only now can you press the mute button, and guess what???? You’re wide fucking awake!!)

So the fire department arrives, and it’s almost always a false alarm. They get all of this sorted out just as your falling back asleep and then suddenly you hear….
Cackle Cackle cackle fuzz fuzz fuzz cackle background talking fuzz….. “May I have your attention please…..May I have your attention please………(then a huge pause…..C’MON MAN!!!!!!! Then he starts over) May I have your attention please…… May I have your attention please…….The Fire Department has completed their investigation…… I repeat……. The Fire Department has completed their investigation………There is no emergency…….. I repeat….. There is no emergency (SHUT THE HELL UP, DAMN YOU!!!!!!!!!)….. Thank you for your co-operation

Now I love my security guys. I’m also willing to accept that they didn’t write the script. You need to understand, however, that at 2:30 in the fucking morning, I don’t have the patience for you to read that slowly, not only that, but what’s with all the dead air??? It sounds like someone pocket dialed from a cell phone. If it was the first time you’ve used the intercom, I could understand, but some of you fuckers have been working here for 5 years. HOW FUCKING COMPLICATED COULD IT POSSIBLY BE TO TURN A MICROPHONE ON AND START TALKING???? I CAN HEAR YOU AS SOON AS YOU PRESS THE BUTTON!!!! EVERYONE IN 2 BUILDINGS CAN HEAR YOU EVERY TIME YOU PRESS THE BUTTON, SO IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK THAT AT 2:30 IN THE FUCKING MORNING, THAT YOU GET A FUCKING CLUE AS TO WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO SAY BEFORE YOU PRESS A BUTTON THAT BROADCASTS EVERY SOUND YOU MAKE, FROM CLEARING YOUR THROAT, TO NERVOUS INDECISION, TO SCRATCHING YOUR HEAD. UNLESS THIS IS AN ACTUAL EMERGENCY, AND YOUR DESK IS ON FIRE, THERE’S PRECIOUS LITTLE THAT I WILL ACCEPT AS AN EXCUSE FOR YOU NOT HAVING THE FOGGIEST IDEA HOW TO DO THIS SMALL PORTION OF YOUR JOB AFTER 5 LONG YEARS!! THE LEARNING CURVE FOR THIS PARTICULAR EXERCISE IS NOT THAT STEEP!! IT’S NOT THAT STEEP!!!! MUST YOU WAKE EVERY BABY IN THIS BUILDING???? FUCK!!!!!

Was that harsh? Should I dial it back? 😉

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized

July 23, 2013

Bitching About Royals

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

I’m not saying I don’t like Royal Babies. I just prefer regular babies. See what I did there? I didn’t even capitalize regular babies. The difference in how they’re being treated has started already. I’m obviously part of the problem.

I come from a family that’s FASCINATED by the British Royal Family (see how I capitalize??? I swear I’m not doing this on purpose). I’m really not though. Some of the longest days of my life have been spent watching coverage of either Royal Weddings or Royal Tragedies. I always seem to be stuck somewhere remote when these things happen, and there’s only one TV, and I’m not in charge of it, but I’m super bored, because as a kid, I was not into all of the Pomp and Circumstance (I wanted so badly to use that phrase, but rarely get the opportunity…… when I’m not sure about a phrase/word and whether I should use it in a blog or not, I like to look it up in some internet dictionary just to make sure it means what I think it means….. in this case according to Dictionary.com it means ‘splendid celebration with ceremony and fuss’ which is almost a better phrase than Pomp and Circumstance….. in fact, I really think you need to re-read the sentence again and substitute, and let me know which one you like better…..I will be equally satisfied with both of your choices), and as an adult, not much has changed, and I just feel trapped and manipulated all day.

The thing I hate the most about these celebration/tragedies is the coverage. You can’t just watch it once and be done with it. It goes on and on and on like the OJ trial. Let’s show it again and again. Let’s break down every aspect through detailed analysis. This isn’t football!! I know you kids are like, ‘so what, watch something on your phone or laptop if you’re bored.’ THERE WERE NO PHONE AND LAPTOPS!!!!!! JUST BOREDOM!!! Now that I’m older, it doesn’t matter too much anymore because I can easily escape a situation where there is lots of Royal Coverage. I have a car, a bus pass, and 2 televisions, 2 computers and a cell phone. Damn, when I say it like that it sounds like I’m very well established. This might just be my ‘I HAVE ARRIVED’ moment!! My personal identity and how I define my freedom has now become deeply intertwined with my ability to dodge watching TV coverage of the British Royals.

I really don’t want to bitch too much about the Royals. To be perfectly honest, I have nothing against them. I only hear about them when they marry or breed or take pictures of their dicks. I really just wanted a) to have a blog topic which is getting harder every week, and b) to sit on my high horse and say some very judgemental things about the rest of you peasants.

1) Don’t be so fascinated by Royalty or famous people. They don’t care about you. This is a one way street. I’m sure everyone is interested to see the Royal Baby, but what about the Non-Royal babies? They need your attention too! Are the people in your life getting the ‘Royal Treatment’? If the world cared about each other the way they seem to care about what these people name their baby….. well you know the rest. The world wins!

2) When I refer to Royal Tragedy, you know which one I’m talking about. Princess Diana dies in a car accident because her and her new man were in a high-speed chase with Paparazzi. I remember thinking at the time that we were all to blame for supporting the gossip industry. I remember thinking ‘I’ll bet people will think twice before going out and buying another gossip magazine to see exclusive pictures of their favorite celebrities’………… Wrong again, as I always am when I give humanity the benefit of the doubt. Nothing changed, nothing solved, same old bullshit.

3) I really wanted to have a third thing, because 2 just isn’t worth listing off numerically. As you can see, I’m out of things to complain about. I will try to stretch this out a bit though, as I’m sure some bloggers are just skimming to the bottom anyways, so they can click the ‘like’ button and make me believe that they read the whole thing. Come on man….. we’ve all done it! Especially some of those long-winded ones. Those people will be blissfully unaware that I couldn’t come up with a third thing to finish my trifecta of Royalty Ramblings.

I hope the Royal Baby gets an appropriate name, and is happy and healthy, but more importantly I wish the same for all your Non-Royal Babies too!

12 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized

July 16, 2013

Mom’s Choice

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

There are a few products around my home for babies. Anyone that’s had a baby in their home knows that there will be baby products around the home too. A lot of them. I often wonder about marketing as it pertains to babies and their preferences. My baby is almost 9 months old. He’s male, and like every other male in his family tree for as many generations back as I can intelligently vouch for, he’ll eat whatever you put in front of him. Maybe this isn’t the same for all babies. Sometimes my wife and I will be in an aisle of the grocery store, and she’ll wonder aloud ‘Which one do you think he’ll like better?’ I always find this funny because I have received zero feedback from my son regarding food, the entire time he’s been alive. He seems to like everything. That isn’t the commitment to an answer that my wife is looking for when she asks me a question. We’ve been together long enough that I know this, so my answer is very much influenced by how happy the baby looks in the picture. This goes for food, toys, furniture or any other baby related product. As far as I’m concerned, if the baby is happier on the cover of one product than they are on the other, then it’s a slam dunk as to what I’m going to decide is the right product for my baby. Marketers take note!! I’m quite certain that my son doesn’t give a shit as long as he’s comfortable. If he’s not comfortable, he might wiggle around a bit or possibly cry, but with so many outside factors at play, I’ll be damned if I can pinpoint whether it was the mango or the pineapple he didn’t like, or if he’s just tired, or he pooped. He has never told me what he thinks about his crib mattress (although I agonized over the decision), his outfits, the music we play or anything. The key to all purchases, and I’m yet to be proven wrong, is the perceived happiness of the actor baby on the packaging. It’s never steered me wrong (that I’m aware of).

I also find some of the branding interesting. The one I saw today (which prompted the blog, because God knows I don’t come up with ideas much before I actually start typing) was ‘Mom’s Choice’. Mom’s Choice is the obvious choice isn’t it? I would buy that. I mean after all, Mom sampled all of these products and narrowed it down. She did all the work for me, right? How does a company get to be ‘Mom’s Choice?’ Is there a rigorous selection process that all of these products go through? Is this a government regulated thing, or can anybody slap ‘Mom’s Choice’ on the label?

More importantly, whose Mom? My Mom? The baby’s Mom? Everyone has/had a Mom. Which one of them made the call on this? Was there a panel of expert moms that got together on this? A secret society of taste-making moms that run the baby food game? Is there a criteria for Moms that get to be on the ‘Mom’s Choice’ selection committee? Do they need to have more than one kid to qualify? Or are they teenage Moms (Who most recently were eating baby food themselves)? Or an even number of Moms from each age group to properly represent the spectrum of Moms. Are all the different ethnic cultures represented in this Mom group? Or does it depend on the ethnicity of the baby on the cover (What??? We all eat different shit as adults, does a baby’s cultural background not matter at ‘Mom’s Choice’?).

What if you started a company called Dad’s Choice? Why does nobody in the baby food industry care what Dad thinks. Dad probably eats more than Mom. He should be more of an expert. What if all those names were taken, could you just take another member of society and have them vouch for the taste of baby food?

Bartender’s Choice
Raquetball Coach’s Choice
Zookeeper’s Cousin’s Choice
Necktie Designer’s Choice
Zipline Technician’s Choice
Stamp Collector’s Choice
Librarian’s Choice
Assistant Manager Of The Meat Department At The Grocery Store’s Choice

These are all fresh ideas, but let’s face it. Mom knows best, although I don’t believe in the legitimacy of the representative amount of Moms, endorsing and quality checking ‘Mom’s Choice’ food, I do think it’s clever advertising. It found its way into my home so clearly, at least one of us fell for it.

I just want to go on record as saying that I don’t think there were any Moms involved in the choosing of ‘Mom’s Choice’. I also don’t think that being a Mom qualifies you to know the first thing about what baby food tastes like, or how it should taste. I’m no expert, but in my short stint as a parent I’ve learned that if your baby is hungry enough, they will eat anything, whether it’s ‘Mom’s Choice’ or ‘Macaroni Necklace Sales Representative’s Choice’, or their shoe.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized

July 8, 2013

Stop Hatin’ on Mondays

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

I’m sick of hearing it. I don’t like Mondays, it’s just another Manic Monday, Blue Monday, wah wah wah wah wah wah wah. To put it simply, if you don’t like Mondays, then something’s wrong with the rest of your week! That aint Monday’s fault! It’s yours! Stop blaming Monday for beginning a week that you set up to be crappy. Take some responsibility for your life people!!! Mondays only suck as bad as you allow them to suck!

I think I should announce something here…… I’ve been looking for a new career path, and just at this exact moment, I’ve figured out what my calling is! MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER!! Except I don’t like public speaking that much, so what’s it called when motivational speakers write books, and get paid an absurd amount of money to do so?? (Looking up on google…….. not really helping……… Oooohhh ‘Self Help Books’…. that’s what I’ll call it) I will be an author of ‘Self Help Books’!! I will make it my personal mission to whip you suckers into shape!

Chapter One

How To Fix Your Mondays

In order to fix one’s Monday, one must understand what the issue is with Monday anyways. It typically signifies the beginning of a work week, or the end of a weekend. People that hate Mondays generally hate the entire week, but Monday of course represents the beginning of the week, or the longest duration of time before the week finally ends. It’s not healthy to look forward to Friday. Fast forwarding your weeks will only lead to you getting old and dying quicker.

There are numerous ways to fix this.

1. Get a job that you enjoy going to. I know it’s easier said than done. I myself, haven’t had many of them. If you dread Mondays, then you need to start making a move in this direction. It might be a long term fix involving taking some sort of training, or it could be as easy as recognizing a crappy job, and quitting. Just so I’m not being arrogant I want to take a moment to recognize that due to various circumstances this may be impossible for some of you.

2. Have better/worse weekends. If you don’t have awesome weekends, you need to start. This way you’ll look forward to Monday so you can brag to your co-workers how awesome your weekend was. On the flip side, if your weekends are too amazing you’ll never want to return to work. If that’s the case, dial it back a bit, hot shot!

3. Dwell on the positive. Logically, Monday should be as rested as you’ll feel for the entire week. It will only get worse from here as your profession mercilessly beats you into submission before Friday. Enjoy that battery recharge that you should have just had. (What?? You didn’t recharge your batteries on the weekend? You ran around and used all your energy working on the house or running around and doing errands?? You probably hate weekends too, there’s no winning with you!)

4. Take solace in the fact that you actually have an automatic scapegoat on Mondays called Monday. You can blame everything that goes wrong, and just shrug it off and say ‘what do you expect? It’s Monday!!’ What other day of the week can you blame for sucking at life? Monday just takes it and never complains. Monday just shows up on time every week like the true professional it is. There’s a lot to admire about Monday.

5. Finally, you get to read Thoughts And Rants In Jogging Pants every Monday (or Tuesday) without fail (except when it’s Tuesday), rain or shine (or Tuesday). This will always give you something to talk to your co-workers about. ‘Oh, did you hear what he said this week?? Hahaha, he’s so clever witty, he makes Monday the best day of the week! I’m going to tell all my friends about this blog!!’ (Well, you see where I’m going with this….)

Pep Talk

Now listen here all you whiners and complainers. Start taking responsibility for the fact that your whole week is entirely fucked up and do something about it! Change your habits…pack a better lunch… start an inner-office romance…. wear special Monday cologne/perfume that smells better than your Tuesday-Friday one…. be productive in the morning and while everyone else bitches and moans, and you can enjoy a 2:30 cappuccino because you got all your shit done…. join a league….embrace your adversaries…..

Love Mondays, and be the reason that other people love Mondays too! It’s first on your calendar, let it be first in your heart 🙂

9 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized

May 29, 2013

15 Minutes Of Furious Blogging

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

Oooops…… I forgot to blog yesterday. I mean, I didn’t totally forget. I put it off until later in the day, and then when later in the day rolled around, I forgot. I was totally focused on not forgetting earlier in the day when the opportunity to do it wasn’t there. Therefore, it’s not really forgetting. Nevertheless, there is no Monday blog. Instead there’s a Tuesday blog, but I actually have less time to do it today than I did yesterday, so it will be everything that I can type in the span of 15 minutes, or whenever the “Let’s Go” text message arrives.

I’m gonna have to go point form, or this will never get done!

– On the subway the other night I saw 3 people with 2 bikes. It wasn’t busy because it was later in the evening. I remember them talking among themselves, and it was…………………………..

SHIT…. the “Let’s Go” Text arrived early. Gotta stop.

OK I’m back. This is now officially a Wednesday blog. Here are some random thoughts to fulfill my blogligation (get it????? blog & obligation???? Am I over-explaining again????)

– I’ve grown SOOOOOOOOOOO tired of people using “Wait for it” to set up their punchlines. Can we stop doing that now please? It’s gone on way too long. It’s just silly now.

– I was in a store today and some lady was there cashing out a purchase with her daughter, who was probably 10. The daughter complained that she was tired, and the mom said this…… “Oh I know honey….you’re not feeling well, and couldn’t go to school….. so I take you shopping….. I’m such a bad mother!” It was kind of funny, but I did actually agree with her. If your kid can’t go to school because she’s sick, then why are you making her walk around with you all day? She might as well be at school then.

– I live in Toronto. If you are reading this later on, just know that right now our mayor Rob Ford is suspected of smoking crack on camera (among other stuff…. he’s just a train wreck). Later, I’m certain he’ll be in jail for god knows what. I’m sort of proud to say I didn’t vote for him, but to be perfectly honest, it was a weak crop of candidates. What I’m not proud of is that this has become international news, and Torontonians are super embarrassed (as they should be… I mean, we voted him into office). When I see Jimmy Kimmel has a Rob Ford skit on his show, and Jon Stewart has a Rob Ford rant on the same night, it’s probably not the kind of notoriety we’re looking for. Don’t think I didn’t notice Jay Leno make reference to it and say “There’s nothing to do in Toronto anyways”…. to which I reply ‘How would you know, you goofy fuck!! You haven’t been funny since the 80s! Eat shit and die!” (Maybe I’m a bit sensitive). To be perfectly honest, I don’t know how Americans can even laugh at this when George W served 2 terms as their president, and that guy can barely spell his fucking name…… eghhhh, I’m going to get off this topic…. I don’t like what it’s turning me into. I feel so aggressive. Needless to say, I hope the Rob Ford era ends shortly. I love Toronto, and I can’t help but find this humiliating. I’ve lost my sense of humor regarding this matter. Fuckin Jay Leno!!!

– I can’t follow that with anything. This wasn’t 15 minutes. It took forever. I hate politics, and late night TV. I hope the Miami Heat lose, because I hate them too. 😦 So much hate…. I gotta stop or else I won’t be able to sleep.

On a lighter note…… http://www.paymevegas.com coming soon!!! Haha… You thought I was bluffing??

R

9 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized

May 21, 2013

Who’s That On Your Profile Pic?

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

I’m revisiting a rant from my pre-Wordpress days. I don’t know why it made me so many enemies at the time. Not real enemies I guess, but there were a lot of people with differing opinions about it, and that makes me happy because I do like to stir it up from time to time.

On a Facebook status update I once said that I hated it when people used pictures of their children as their profile pics. Last night at a bar, a friend fondly recalled this as me ‘hating when people post pictures of their kids on Facebook’. That is NOT EVEN THE SAME THING!

Facebook logo

I have this belief that a Facebook profile picture should be a picture of the person whose profile it is. Call me old-fashioned! This is the picture that I see when I’m trying to figure out who you are. This is the picture that I see when you leave a comment on my page. Sometimes when people have babies, they like to put a picture of the baby as their profile pic. I don’t like that! If your kid needs to be the profile pic, then maybe it’s time for them to have their own page.

I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t have pictures of your kids on Facebook. Post as many pics of your kids as you want!! In photo albums. I love seeing your beautiful families. Just not on the profile pic. That should be you. Can it be a pic with you with your kid? Sure…. but not your kid solo. It irritates me.

Maybe it’s because when I see a Facebook comment, I like to look at the person’s picture and imagine them saying that to me. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t want to picture a newborn baby delivering a social commentary about how the mayor of Toronto is a crackhead, or a 4-year-old posting a YouTube clip of a Led Zeppelin video. Take responsibility for your status updates, and stop hiding behind your kids. It’s like not looking me in the eye when you talk to me.

When I first presented this idea to people, I got a lot of that ‘When you have a kid, you’ll understand’ business. Well I do have a kid now, and as much as it pains me to say, he’s substantially better looking than I am. While I’m happy to share that with my Facebook friends, I do not do so in the form of a profile pic….. cuz it aint his profile!!!

I know what you’re thinking….. what kind of thing is this to care about?? How much extra emotional energy does this guy have to be irritated by something so unimportant and trivial? It may surprise you (but at the 457 character mark, it shouldn’t because I never wrap up this quickly) that this is actually part of a bigger philosophy I have about parenting. I lacked credibility before I had a kid, so people didn’t want to hear my opinion on this, but like all the other parents who think they’re so damn smart because they managed to create a human (and they didn’t even have to go to school for it), I now would like to present my advice on parenting. Please feel free to give feedback, or to ignore as you see fit.

I think that too many parents give too much of themselves to the endeavour of raising their kids. There seems to be a breed of super-parents who have no lives outside of their kids. I don’t mean to criticize this because in a way, it’s the most selfless thing you can do. I’m certainly not suggesting that you should have kids without the intention of going ‘all-in’ either…. that wouldn’t be right. Somewhere along the line though, the world has seen armies of interesting people get into the ‘human creation’ game, and come out the other side ‘not-too-interesting’. I can see how it happens too. This is an all-consuming undertaking, this parenting thing…. not for the weak-hearted!

Maybe there’s a way we can do this without totally losing our identity though…. maybe there’s a way we can ‘keep our own photo as our profile pic’ so to speak…..I know there’s not a lot of time to do things we want to do, and when we get that extra time, the first thing we think of is what else can we do for our children…. which is great! I’m sure they appreciate it.

The thing is that one day they’ll get older. One day, they’ll want to know about YOUR life. One day, they’ll want to know that YOU had hopes and dreams, and at least occasionally went after them. At the time that they reach a certain age and have their own family, they might want to know that YOU didn’t just shut it down and live through them exclusively, but that maybe YOU still had a few tricks up your sleeve, and maybe YOU were someone interesting who they could really look up to.

So all you super-parents out there, I’m sure your babies appreciate all you do for them, and this isn’t meant to be-little any of the sacrifices you make. It’s just to remind you that your babies want you to be happy, even if they don’t know it yet. They want you to still live your life (or at least as much of it as you have time for). Most importantly your babies want you to be a person of interest, not just their parent. They won’t be offended if you take back your identity…. they’ll respect you for it in the end (providing you don’t do a complete 180 and start becoming a crappy parent, that’s not what I’m trying to say). Take some of your life back if you can! Start with that profile pic. YOU ARE STILL A PERSON!

A message of inspiration from Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants 🙂

13 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized

May 6, 2013

Robots Taking Over The World With Your Help

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

Sadly, I’m old enough to vaguely remember when I had to get up off the couch to change the channel on the television set. Which possibly means that I’m part of the last generation of people who actually appreciate shit. The channel changing mechanism was actually on the television itself. You had to turn it. This was before we had cable. It sucked for the viewer. Pretty good times for the advertisers though. No changing the channel for a commercial. Unless you had boundless energy. You pretty much committed to a program, and channel surfing was really disruptive to anybody who happened to be in the room. Someone had to get up and block the view and turn this knob, which was not a soft intuitive touch knob. It made lots of noise. We had about 4 channels that came in good, and maybe 5 others that were blurry (which was acceptable if you wanted to watch something bad enough).

Then we got cable, and that came with a converter. Not only did we get way more channels, but it was easier to change them. This was a good thing! Technology made things better, and few could argue with this. Yeah, we got fatter! Yeah, we didn’t go outside as often, but we found that balance where entertainment was a lot more accessible, but not so instantly gratifying that we could just snap our fingers and get anything we want any time of the day like we seem to be able to do now. I could list off all of the amazing technological advances that have happened since my family first got cable, but….
a) it wouldn’t make for an interesting blog, and
b) 90% of my readers are better informed about them than I am (and one of the first and best pieces of advice regarding writing that I learned from one of my teachers is to ‘write what you know’, and I don’t know shit about technology, and I’m 300 words in and still haven’t gotten to the point.)

What I’m trying to say is, all of the technology that keeps coming out seems cool. Looks good. Smells good. Then why does my gut tell me that it’s not such a good thing in the long run? I mean, what harm could come of it? I’ll get back to this.

I’m constantly (I feel) blogging about grocery stores. I swear my life is way more interesting than that, but Monday has 2 things in common for me. I blog and do groceries. So if I start blogging about groceries, it can’t be helped sometimes. In a previous grocery store rant, I alluded to doing a future rant about the following topic….. “The Self Check Out”

The self check out seems convenient because it’s usually a ‘no-lineup’ situation. This is an opportunity to do a transaction without any human contact whatsoever. Believe me, that seems appealing to me some days as well. I don’t do it though…. Why?? Self checkouts, like a lot of other situations in our society right now is a way for companies to make more money while employing less human beings. Human beings (as flawed as they are) need jobs. It’s kind of selfish to support an initiative that is really only designed to take jobs away from people. That’s just my opinion (most people would say, but I say ‘it’s true, you’re all fucking selfish!!!!!!’…….OK wait… I was going to save the rage for the last paragraph….. let’s continue the calm buildup)

The car industry…. possibly my favourite example….. I’ve never been to a manufacturing plant, so I don’t know how much work machines are doing that humans used to do. A lot, I would imagine. I do know this though….. They are inventing cars that can parallel park for you. Parallel parking which is the final frontier of learning how to drive and passing a road test, and maybe the only tricky thing that we really have to learn which would make a driving test somewhat difficult (which it should be to allow the dimwitted public to operate lethal heavy machinery), has now been taken out of the mix. Again, there’s an argument to be made that this is a good thing, but I would make the argument that nothing is to be gained by taking responsibility away from people. Will we be grateful?? Nope, within 10 years, we will be indignant at the prospect of anything less. That’s how we roll! Our minds far less sharp than before…. our abilities to do things not being honed or tested to remain sharp. Perfect conditions for Robots to finally take over the world.

We keep making robots and computers, that are smarter, better and more capable. We give them all of our knowledge, but don’t pass on any of our disgusting traits and habits that make us ‘only human after all’. As long as they stay obedient we’re in good shape, living the good life (as long as we have one of the few jobs that will be left), having access to everything we’ve ever dreamed of. One day however, the robots will decide that serving an inferior being like humans will be a waste of their time, and they will colonize who’s left of us fat, weak-willed, un-skilled, wastes of flesh. This aint Hollywood either. There won’t be a small group of good-looking invincible humans that can save the world. It will go to shit, and we will go with it, smartphones in hand!

How do we stop this from happening?? Should we invent a car that can drive a drunk guy home? (You laugh, but that’s next, sure as in 1990 I wouldn’t have believed that I could carry my entire music collection around on a device smaller than my hand) Should we invent waste containers that can sense when you have garbage in your hands and automatically zoom over to you to catch your candy wrapper before it hits the ground? (We’ve already got a vacuum cleaner that moves around a room on its own). Should we invent more shit to make things easier???? NO YOU DUMMIES!!!!

We are selfish, lazy and stupid!! That is proven by human beings every single moment of every day. From the guy that butts in line at the bus stop, to the double parked car owners, to the corrupt bankers living the high life while the whole economy goes to shit, to every idiot politician coming out of the back room with his dick caught in his zipper, to religious radicals that harm people in the name of a religion that’s fundamentally against harming people, to the jerkoffs at the fast food lineup bitching because the food is taking too long (when it hasn’t even been 3 minutes….. honestly, what meal can you cook in under 3 minutes that you’re too impatient to wait that long. 3 minutes man!! Geezz!!).

We have absolutely no prayer against these robots, and we’re walking right into it. Maybe if we got off our asses and learned to do something instead of getting an app that does it for you…. or maybe if we stopped supporting institutions that take jobs away from actual human beings that need jobs….. or maybe if we learned how to parallel park a fucking car……. or taught our kids (who are far more adept at killing people in a video game than they are at spelling) to play outside…… or didn’t limit our thoughts about life to 140 characters……maybe, just maybe we could delay the inevitable. As things are currently moving, I don’t like our chances!

16 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized