Shouting Into the Void

The Tea Party Gets Its Just Desserts

At my old job, I’d talk to Tea Party idiots all the time. Since we had to take calls from people if they followed up on stuff, I was able to see the deterioration of their lives in a very concrete way.

The themes of the calls usually went as follows:

Call 1: Obama is the worst and everyone besides me is leeching off the system! Why do I have to pay so much in taxes!

Call 2: I just lost my job. Does my employer have to keep giving me health insurance?

Office Xmas Parties

Have fun at your “work is forcing us to hang out, so I drink to loosen up, cheat on my wife in the supply closet, have to get a divorce, now my kids are from a broken home” parties.

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2014 Royals Game 7 Live Blog

8:11 PM: How interesting that we must now vanquish a former Royals prospect in Affeldt to put some runs up on the board.

8:13 PM: Bumgarner coming in to the game. It's like if Scrooge had to kill the ghost of Christmas Past.

8:19 PM: Yost and Bochy both look like they're trying to concentrate on what their wives are saying.

8:20 PM: After his last run, Butler should be upgraded to Healthy Breakfast or Balanced Breakfast.

8:23 PM: That was a shameful run. Butler is hereby downgraded to Vegan Breakfast.

Marketing

I'm now part of the Marketing team at work. It's not a new job, just my team getting shuffled over here. I'm going to need to watch the subliminal advertising episode of Saved by the Bell tonight.

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Timely Advice

Since my sister in law writes erotica, the subject of menage a trois came up at dinner last night. My nephew asked what it meant.

I said, “Don’t do it, kid. You never want to disappoint two people when you can get away with just disappointing one.”

Knowledge Bowl

I was in high school and on the Knowledge Bowl team. One afternoon, we drove to a qualifier for all the schools in the state. I was sick as hell that day. I had a blanket, was chugging chicken soup and popping lozenges like Tic Tacs.

The qualifier was at a high school, so each team was in a different classroom. Once we began, the judges gave us questions as they would in a real competition. At some point, the question "Who is known as the Magnificent Miss M?" was asked. I said, "Bette Midler" and proceeded to pass out. My only familiarity was seeing the trailers for her movies.

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Tattooed Tears

If I went to jail, I'd get a waterfall tattooed on my face. If someone asked about it, I'd say, "The human body cannot produce that many tears." It would make me a boss from Day 1.

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Late Night Hotel

I was once on a road trip with another dude. We hadn’t booked a hotel for that night, and found that all the hotels in a 50 mile radius were rented out.

We finally found a room with a single bed. My friend looked apprehensive and looked like he was going to turn down the room because he was not wanting to sleep in the same bed as another dude. I was angry and screamed, “I have no interest in trying to have sex with you! If you’re going to try and have sex with me, make sure you don’t wake me up!”

Needless to say, we took the room.

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Leaving Early

I went to KU in the late 90s. I remember during second semester of my freshman year, a few times a week when I was walking back from a morning class to the dorm, I would see a car in the loading area. There would be a shell shocked, sad looking, soon-to-be-former student loading their things with their stern looking parents into a van or station wagon. It always made me sad for the rest of the day.
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Law schools and income based forgiveness

This practice will likely extend into a system where elite students who plan to go into the private sector are recruited and promised loan forgiveness, while tuition skyrockets ever higher for students in the middle and at the bottom of the class. There is no upper limit on how much one can borrow with a Grad Plus loan, so as long as there are naive students willing to pay to go to Georgetown, the school can keep raising tuition to infinity.

The Day I Lost Faith In Our Justice System

When I was a young boy, my family used to go to Bangladesh to visit falling every summer. In 1987, I was accused of stealing some money that had gone missing from my mom's purse. She did everything short of water boarding me to get me to admit that I was a thief. The next day, she pulled out one of her purses and the money was tucked away safely inside. When I expressed my desire for an apology, I was told that I was lucky to still be alive.

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Authenticity

It's easy to be snarky and cynical. Hell, that's my default mode. But, we all need to take a few minutes each day to think about how amazing and wondrous the world around us is. We are all able to live in the best country on Earth, we have our health (most of us), and there are people out there who care about us. To get mad at little things like someone cutting us off in traffic or someone getting the last Diet Coke out of the vending machine is a drop in the bucket of life. I'm going to start trying to brush these things aside and look at the brighter side of things.

Datin' Moore: Applying "The Process" To Your Romantic Life

Hi Dayton,

I've been seeing my boyfriend for the past three years. Recently, a young and hot new guy started working the same shift at the fast food restaurant where I work. We flirt all the time, and he has recently made his sexual desire known to me. My current guy is steady, reliable, and makes me feel like a queen. My current boyfriend and I are great together, but I can't help wonder what things would be like with the new guy at work. Should I stay with my current guy or leave for greener pastures?

Sincerely, Torn in Tulsa

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