It's Just Lunch, and not ammunition for your alleged friends to use against you

Yes, I suppose that if you find yourself humiliated by your brutally cruel coworkers, who have absolutely nothing better to do while on the clock than to Google your name and then mock your online date profile, you might dump the idea of online dating and try "It's Just Lunch."

You might also consider a visit to Human Resources, where you could file a harassment complaint against the asshole choads who apparently never got their brains out of High School and think it's perfectly ok to goad and bully and shame someone into making adjustments in their personal life.

You might also consider dropping by the boss's office to ask why your coworkers have so much free time that they can just blow off their own duties in order to stalk you online.  Pretty sure there are at least a few paragraphs in the employee manual covering garbage like this.

If all else fails, you might just punch the living snot out of the smarmy dickweeds who have the mistaken idea that they have the right to barge in and piss all over your life without expecting any consequences at all.  After all, if they think that the kind of witless, cruel needling they engaged in on the playground is appropriate for a workplace setting (or adulthood in general,) surely they must concede that bloody noses are also part of the package.

I do appreciate the "South of Buffalo" disclaimer

Ok, here's the plan:

YOU!  Get out there and warm up the car!  Don't forget to adjust the seats for more legroom; there's nothing worse than trying to do this on the way BACK from Wild Wings, when we are all fat and sweaty and drunk and can barely breathe because we've spent the entire day jamming fat down our throats!

YOU!  Get there early and reserve the table closest to the big screen!

YOU! Order up the massive cheeseburgers with everything!

YOU! Make sure the baskets of wings keep coming to give us something to nibble on while waiting for the cheeseburgers!

YOU! Tell the waitress to keep the pitchers coming; the best way to assure that the food tastes good and that we keep ordering it long after we are full is to let us get a good beer buzz going!

YOU! Make sure you've got 911 on your speed dial!

YOU!  Interrupt anyone who tries to talk about anything other than the game on the screen over the course of the afternoon.  ESPECIALLY if they mention family, friends, or their jobs.  In fact, shut up ANYBODY who says ANYTHING that is not an order for more food or a high-volume, football knowledge-deficient comment concerning the game containing at least one curse word!

YOU! Suppress any desire to even think for one minute about how incredibly shallow and sad it is that we feel the need  to spend every damn Sunday afternoon filling ourselves with crap by rooting on a crowd of millionaires instead of being with our spouses and kids!

Spending weekends picking out new chew toys, or picking up new dog dirt. The joys of pet ownership continue to elude me.

Pet Smart Commercial # 1-

Another huge, gleaming white house with hardwood floors....jeesh, I really think I am the only person in the United States who doesn't live in one....

Ever notice that none of these commercials for pet products never advertise worm medicine or pooper-scoopers or those little bags dog owners use to put their little "friends" leavings in?  Ever notice that the dogs in these commercials are always immaculately clean and well-behaved?

And ever notice that the owners of these things are always blissfully happy in these ads?  I mean, really- what is this couple on?  It's a freaking dog.

Pet Smart Commercial #2-

I don't care how attractive they try to make it, I will never, ever want to share a house with one of these ugly, smelly, noisy, slobbering little attention vampires.  And I don't want a dog, either.

Advanced Medicine to keep you working, at all costs

Watching this guy constantly pop pills because he either can't admit he has a serious physical problem or considers it a matter of personal pride that he's never filed a worker's comp claim is more than a little depressing, don't you think?

I mean, just look at him.  He looks like your typical, out of shape, middle aged blue-collar worker who, thanks to wages which have been stagnant since the Clinton Administration finds himself struggling to cover long hours doing a job which really ought to be left to younger, healthier workers (more than enough time for them to become damaged, sore pill-poppers themselves in a few years.)  He GULPS down one over-the-counter pain killer after the other (loudly, of course- God forbid we don't CLEARLY hear this guy get his Tylenol down, we might think it was stuck in his throat, I guess.)  He constantly grabs at his aching body parts- back, knee, whatever is hurting at that moment.  And takes another pill.  With a GULLLPPP.

And sees nothing really wrong with any of this, except gosh it sure is a hassle to keep having to take all these breaks from inflicting unseen damage to his body and GULP down another pill.

Hey, buddy?  Here's a freaking clue:  your problem is not that GULPING down a pill every few hours is cutting into your Good Productive Worker Drone time.  The problem is that your job is freaking killing you, and you are trying to ignore it by masking your pain with drugs.  Two Advil instead of Eight Tylenol?  Yeah, I guess that's an improvement.  But know what would be even better?  If you took an entire freaking afternoon off and used it to see a doctor.  A doctor who might explain to you that Pain, while nothing any of us would ever actually welcome into our lives, is actually a kind of helpful way in which our bodies tell us that something is wrong.  And while there's nothing wrong with GULPING down an anti-inflammatory on the rare occasion, they really aren't supposed to be part of the freaking nutrition pyramid.  There's no Recommended Daily Allowance for Ibuprofen, ok?  And if there was, be assured that you regularly exceed it before lunch.  Get some help, because really- life is far too short and livers are far too fragile for this.

You know it's fantasy when you can't tell which one is the customer

Here's another "OMIGOD this car is AWESOME I don't even care how much it costs where do I sign?" commercial.  Which means it's just like every other car commercial which takes place during a test drive or features a customer standing around a showroom.

As usual, there's no actual "selling" going on, and we are treated to the antics of a blithering nitwit who has clearly never learned Rule #1 of Buying a Car- never, ever show enthusiasm for the idea of possibly Buying Today.  You are there because you've got some free time and you thought you might pop in to see if there are any deals.  You are looking at a Chevy, but you've always purchased Hondas (insert the names of other brands to suit your particular situation) and probably will again, you thought you'd just check in here, for variety.  When you take a test drive, the car is ok but you want to keep looking for a few more days.  You never act like you actually need a car, or even want one, but what the heck.

You never, EVER act like the people in these ads, desperate to sign on the dotted line for a car you've spent thirty minutes convincing the salesperson that you really aren't good enough for.

So, the question remains: Which of these idiots is the seller, and which is the buyer?

Walmart's Honeyed Trap for the Terminally Stupid and Socially Unconscious

Look, I get that Layaway looks really attractive this time of year, especially to the millions of alleged "Christians" out there who think that the best (only) way to celebrate the birth of the Lord and Savior of the Universe who 33 years later was Crucified for Our Sins is to buy as much cheap crap as possible and wrap it in pretty paper and stick it under a soon-to-be-dead tree.  But there is so much wrong with this concept.  I'll just hit on a few things that annoy me the most;

First- as Christmas gets closer, the sales tend to get better.  This happens because retailers get nervous as the Big Day arrives and realize that no matter how much they trim their profit margins, they are still better off doing that than trying to unload all this junk AFTER the holiday.  So putting something on layaway in the first week of October is actually pretty damned stupid- do you really think that Walmart is going to run out of that item, or that it's price is going to go up?  No, probably not, because that would require some actual thinking. Which brings us to....

Second, Layaway may have been invented with all of the best and most noble of intentions (yeah, like Aarons and Rent A Center were started because someone felt that people with crap credit had a "right" to laptops, living room sets and big-screen tvs.)  But now it's really just a come-on designed to encourage poor people to overspend.  Look, just pick out all the stuff you want but can't afford, we'll set it aside for you and you'll just pay a little per week!  With luck, you won't even NOTICE the bottom line (and if you are an Aaron's or Rent A Center customer, you are already good at ignoring it anyway) and what you've done to your family's food and rent security won't really hit home until the second week in January (around the same time you lug that browning tree to the curb.)   Bottom line- if you can only afford to buy something if you put it on layaway, you really can't afford to buy it.  Sounds mean, maybe- but not as mean as convincing you to go into hock so you show well for your kids.

Finally- hey, people?  This is Walmart.  Everything except the big bags of candy and maybe the shampoo is crap.  The low prices on electronics and clothing are covered with the invisible blood of the Asian children who slave to put it together so you can walk off with more stuff and the heirs of Sam Walton can afford another chain of South Pacific Islands and still leave enough cash when they're dead so that the next descendant who actually has to work for a living is born around the year 3500.   How about celebrating the holiday by doing something other than reveling in the exploitation of people you'll never see but who (inconveniently for your soul's sake) exist nonetheless?

And have no fear, they'll be Sharing it all with us

The good people at Apple decided that the best way to sell us on this month's version of the iPhone was to bury us with scenes we are all already very, very painfully familiar with:  Morons with no interest in maintaining a society and no idea of the concept of privacy blathering nonstop into their stupid-ass ubiquitous phones.

Oh, and loudly.  Because like I noted above, nobody really believes in privacy any more- and nobody seems to get that the whole f--ing planet isn't interested in listening to one-half of their---umm, "conversations."  That woman on Amtrak didn't get it four years ago.  That lump of dumb at the park didn't get it yesterday.  I'm pretty sure that the first thing cellphones do to users is switch off the Social Sensibility function of their brains.  The whole damn world is your living room, people- so yak away.

And as long as you aren't going to wait until you are not driving your car, or sitting in a library, or walking around a museum (and it's pretty clear to me that you aren't,) you might as well take your f---ing best friends into the surf with you.  Samsung is pimping it's Idiot-Proof phone with a series of ads featuring the same guy finding ways to break his-- I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Apple follows suit, though I must say I don't know why they'd bother, since so many owners see their phones as disposable already.

And I know you don't really need this advice, but I'll give it anyway- please never, ever wait until you have something to say before you make that call.  When you are in a crowded train or bus or a place where the last generation thought that quiet was kind of a plus, that's a perfectly reasonable time to whip out your iPhone and yell "WHASSUP" into it, don't worry if you've got nothing to add beyond that.  You are providing a real service to the people around you, who might have been stuck reading, or listening to music, or just reflecting on the day if you hadn't jumped in and announced that you are the Biggest, Most Thoughtless Dick In The Area.  We know you didn't do it to provide a service, but because the sound of the echos in your empty skull and the withdrawal symptoms you were feeling because you hadn't "connected" with anyone for several minutes in a row forced you to fumble for your idiot box, but we appreciate it anyway.  Really we do.