Tag Archives: Monkeys

February 24, 2014

Atlanta, This Is Unbeliebable!

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

Ok, so I heard people in Atlanta are marching in protest against Justin Bieber moving into their neighborhood. Wow. I have some thoughts on this. I’ve avoided commenting on Justin Bieber up to this point. It’s evident that things have been spinning out of control for some time now. They say you should write what you know. I don’t know Justin Bieber. I couldn’t even name one of his songs, and I’m only sort of aware of his hairstyles. I don’t know Atlanta either. I’ve been there a couple of times on business, but didn’t stay long enough to do much. This piece required a lot of research on my part (and by a lot I mean 20 minutes of Google search). The reason being is that I wanted to comment on this, but I don’t have any room in my ‘long-term’ memory for anything I hear about Justin Bieber.

During my research, I found out that Atlanta does protest a few things from time to time. The easiest protests to find on Google were…..

– A protest involving the George Zimmerman verdict.

– An abortion protest.

– A protest against the Police raiding a Gay Bar called the Atlanta Eagle.

– The People For Ethical Treatment Of Animals protesting Atlanta’s Pride Week kick off party being at the Georgia Aquarium because the loud Katy Perry music upsets the Whales (I am absolutely not making this up, but I am paraphrasing).

The most articles regarding Atlanta protests are about a group of residents in an upscale neighborhood protesting a potential move to Atlanta by Justin Bieber. The group claims that this move will lower their property value, which remains to be seen. They feel that it won’t be good for their children to grow up in the same neighborhood where Justin Bieber lives. One concern was that he might drive at high speeds while intoxicated (like he’s the only one in your neighborhood who could potentially do that). I think protests are funny anyways. I wonder if they think they could stop this from happening. Probably not, but maybe they could get on the news. Yeah, that’s something to shoot for.

After looking up Atlanta protest information, I still couldn’t form an opinion on this. I needed to brush up on my Justin Bieber information. This was way more fun. Just to name a few things, this guy was caught with drugs and a stun gun in Sweden…..caught flack for his comments in the Anne Frank house guest book….kicked a paparazzi….got his monkey confiscated……pissed in a mop bucket at a bar……is up on DUI charges. That’s actually way more stuff than I had realized. Pretty impressive rap sheet for someone his age. The thing with Justin Bieber is that he’s still only 19. When I list off the things that have happened to him, it doesn’t really seem that ridiculous to me. This guy has had more money than he can count since he was 16. That usually doesn’t end well from a behavioral perspective. Here are some of my favorite offences, and why I don’t think they’re that big of a deal.

1. He got caught with drugs and a stun gun in his car in Sweden…….. 90% of people who are famous at that age that aren’t being micro managed by their parents have drugs on them. Careless to have public possession in a foreign country? 90% of people who are famous at that age that aren’t being micro managed by their parents are careless. Stun gun??? If you had access to a stun gun with no foreseeable consequences at that age, wouldn’t you have one? I beliebe you would! It would be stunning!

2. He signed Anne Frank’s guest book……. In 3 sentences he said 2 nice things, and then 1 ignorant thing. I beliebe this one to be well-intentioned, but poorly executed. I thought the outrage over this was hilarious. Give me a break people. It’s that kind of attention that leads a kid to think…. ‘wow, I matter to people this much???’ Which just leads to more craziness. This is the case of the media making a non-story a great story.

3. He kicked a paparazzi……. He wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. Paparazzi for gossip magazines are probably the most loathsome, annoying people in the world. What celebrity worth their weight in hairspray hasn’t kicked a paparazzi?

4. He got his monkey confiscated…… Yeah, clearly not ready to be a parent. Also, monkey ownership is saved for the pop-elite, but I’m pretty sure Michael Jackson was well into his 20s before he got Bubbles. If you’re criticizing Bieber for having a monkey, get real! At the rate he’s experiencing life, there’s no conceivable way that he wasn’t due for monkey ownership.

5. He pissed in a mop bucket at a bar……. Well before the era of YouTube I’ve seen many a guy piss in many a container not designed to hold such fluid. In fact I’ve seen worse. I remember a buddy of mine puking in a bathroom sink (yes he was less than 10 feet from a toilet), and when the bouncers were escorting him out of the bar, he was yelling “I’m not hurting anyone!!!!” Ask any security guy at any bar in the world if he hasn’t seen worse behaviour from drunks than pissing in a bucket. At least it was in a bucket!!! Now, I’m not saying people should piss in mop buckets because they’re too lazy or drunk to walk all the way to the washroom, but if he’s not famous, that’s practically a non-issue. Happens all the time.

6. Drove a car too fast when he was drinking……. He shouldn’t do it. No excuse for it. Who’s gonna tell him to stop? He’s bigger than he should be. You the public made him that way. He’s surrounded by a bunch of misbehaving ‘yes men’ who all have too much money, too much access, at too young an age, with not enough consequence. Oh and by the way America, maybe he watched all 6 ‘Fast & Furious’ movies that you’ve supported and glorified, or maybe he watches NASCAR every weekend like you do, and felt the need for speed.

My opinion? I don’t blame Atlanta for not wanting him in their neighborhood. Do you know how hard it is to clean eggs off your windows? I also don’t blame Justin Bieber for being the way he is. He was sent out into the world before he was mature enough to handle it. For the record, there are well-informed people at the peak of their lives that couldn’t handle the money, fame and scrutiny that he’s under. Nobody is trying to help him. He probably doesn’t know yet that he needs help. We’re just perpetuating it by paying attention to his every move. The more attention we pay, the more money he makes, and that delays his inevitable flame out. The general public loves a human pinata. People love to judge, but the reality is that most people don’t even have the option of being this kind of train wreck. You can’t just go buy a fast car, or a monkey, or a trip to Sweden, all while still a teenager. That’s a special kind of screwed up that we can only fantasize about.

I’ve also heard that America would love to send him back to Canada. That’s cool. I mean, I’m sure he wasn’t this messed up when he went over there, but nonetheless, we’d be happy to part with Rob Ford in a one for one swap. As far as my personal feelings go, I don’t really care about him or his music, but I thought I’d stick up for him since nobody else seems to want to (other than the Beliebers, but I’m talking about grown adults). I probably won’t follow the Atlanta Real Estate story beyond today. I just find it interesting that this guy gets worse media than murderers, rapists, wife beaters and others. I just think the whole thing is sort of unbeliebable.

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September 10, 2013

Adventures In Loose Leaf Tea

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

There’s a situation that went down today which is kind of embarrassing. The word of my foolishness is fast spreading, and I need to get ahead of this by telling my side of the story via my blog. This definitely isn’t the coolest thing I’ve ever done, but if I can’t write about it, then there was absolutely no point in it even happening.

The afternoon started innocently enough. My wife and I were having lunch together at a pretty nice restaurant, and I remember that the beer I ordered had inspired a blog topic I was happy to have as it was already mid-day, and if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that Monday is blog day come hell or high water. That particular blog topic will now have to wait until next week providing I still remember it, but I will remember it, because I’ve written it down. Here. Just now. In this paragraph. When lunch was over, we were walking out to the car. My wife had an appointment, but we had 10 minutes before we had to leave the shopping area we were in. She had a store she wanted to go into, as did I. So we went our separate ways for a few minutes.

The store I wanted to go into was called Teavana. I don’t know much about these stores, but they seem to have been popping up all over the place. I’m a little out of touch with current trends, but I’m guessing the popularity of loose leaf tea is growing in these parts. As it should. We’ve recently acquired a Tea Press, and a few bags of different teas to try. It’s a bit of a nuisance to be honest due to the brewing variance between different types, but the teas I’ve tried have been really good, and I’ve gotten into a bit of a habit of drinking loose leaf tea in the evenings now. I can’t tell why I like this. Maybe because it’s a superior product, but sadly it’s probably because I just think it’s cool.

When I walked into Teavana, I saw their sample dispensers outside the front door. This was an outdoor mall, so the bees were going to town on these dispensers. I decided against having a sample. I went in thinking I would get a couple of new teas to try. Not because we need them. I have a few in the queue already, but I keep thinking ‘when’s the next time I’ll see a tea shop?’ even though I’ve been seeing one pretty much every week. The staff were friendly and eager to help me right off the bat. I told them the truth. That I was new at this, and looking to try a couple of new teas. I also mentioned to stay away from fruit/citrus varieties because my wife thinks they taste like “hot juice”.

I have to preamble this next part by mentioning that I’ve worked in Retail at various points in my life, and have a a lot of respect for a great salesperson with amazing customer service. You would think I’d be numb to this, but I see it done really well so infrequently that I’m actually quite succeptable to their charms, and will buy just about anything that they sell as long as I like the sales pitch. The guy at Teavana was amazing. He totally took charge and pulled out 4 of his favorite varieties. He started telling me about the different ones, and let me have a whiff of the aromas. One of them we’d already tried, and one of them didn’t smell that great to me, so I settled on the other two. I was kind of zoning out and looking around the store at all the accessories when he was explaining some of the teas. I could have sworn he said that one of them was hand picked by Monkeys that were trained by Monks to pick tea. I was caught up. These are gonna be awesome. Then the salesperson was asking if I wanted X amount in order to get a quantity discount. Again, not paying too much attention to the details of the transaction, but just taking in the atmosphere of the store, and thinking about drinking my monkey picked tea later on, I was like ‘yeah man, get me the quantity discount’. I was on some sort of purchasing high. I can only assume that people feel this way right before they buy fur coats. So he scoops this tea into a couple of bags while trying to up-sell me an airtight container, and a tea press and who knows what else. ‘I’m good man, just the tea’ I say, as I’m marveling at this guys sales techniques. He rings it in and says $201.00. Then it hit me…….WHAT IN GOD’S NAME AM I DOING BUYING $200 worth of tea??? I’m really embarrassed at this point, because my wife is now in the store, and I don’t know if she heard that, but as much as I love this guy as a sales person, I just can’t take $200 worth of tea.

To say I don’t know where it all went wrong wouldn’t even be true. I could act like the victim here, but the truth is, this transaction spiraled out of control due to my lazy mind thinking about things other than what I was doing, and while this guy did talk really fast, I was making no attempt to do a mental tally of the cost of this tea adventure. All I kept thinking was, ‘It’s Tea, how much could it possibly be?’ So I had to back peddle and tell the guy that I couldn’t take that much. I apologized and asked him to cut the quantaties in half so I could save face a bit. Unfortunately that still meant that I was spending $100 on tea which was still wildly unreasonable, but at this point I’d committed to it and was willing to take it as a loss. My wife was a good sport as the transaction was happening, because she would have been well within her rights to step in and get that total down to $40. She instead decided to take it out on me by laughing at me all the way home, and for the rest of the day leading up to this very minute. She’s told all of her friends about this encounter, and they are all having jokes at my expense.

‘Laugh all you want’ is my attitude. I’m going to be enjoying my monkey picked tea in the dark, by candle light, with cucumber slices on my eyes, listening to Miles Davis, basking in the unparalleled bliss that can only be achieved through purchasing $100 worth of loose leaf tea on a Monday afternoon. Any of you mouth breathing, simple minded, diet coke drinking haters that have a problem with that will never know the true secret to peace and happiness!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not buying that?? Fine! I screwed up. The worst part is that through further research I found out that monkeys picking tea is only legend, and today just terminology for premium quality tea.

Get your laughs in.

Illustration of the legend of monkeys harvesting tea - from Wikipedia

Illustration of the legend of monkeys harvesting tea – from Wikipedia

19 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Humor, Uncategorized