Really, People That Toss Umpteen Dollars Every Year Into The Financial Black Hole Known As “Vanity Plates”?
And for what? So that when you’re driving like a jackanapes, we have a specific name to pin on you instead of the usual “idiot,” “moron,” or worse?
Or maybe for easier purposes of identifying you later when you rear-end us or, better yet, attempt a hit-and-run? Maybe you think it takes less time for a policeman to look up your information when you get caught speeding, but at least have some silly phrase that identifies you to the DMV?
Oh, how I hope that people ask you all the time what your dumb and cryptic license plates mean, and how I further hope that it drives you all bananas for them to do so.
The only thing I’d ask you, though, is perhaps best expressed in the singular personalized plate that’d be worth getting:
Really, friend whose geekiness has finally collapsed on itself, causing a black hole that consumes all accountability?
Did I actually have to fight with you about going to the pirate festival because you had to be home to play World of Warcraft at 4PM? Have you truly pulled me this deep into nerddom just to desert me at our finest hour (of the summer)? Perhaps someone needs a refresher on nerd (whether closeted or declared) priorities. They are as follows:
Conventions celebrating things you don’t admit you’re into at work
Festivals celebrating any period of time other than this one
Fighting with fake weapons from any period of time other than this one – the bigger the group, the better
Researching/Taking classes/Reading about something that will never apply to real life
Video games and internet use, most often in combination
This post is not meant to disparage nerdhood. The highlight of my young adult life may well have been the year I started making friends at the nearby tech school who taught me I don’t have to be embarassed about the majority of my hobbies (again, majority, some of them have yet to be socially embraced). The rant here is that I think geeking out should be done correctly if, in fact, you’re going to do it.
However…
There is a level of geeksmanship here that I find particularly destructive and to which I must object. If you flake on your non-virtual friends to make good on an appointment in Video Game Land (known hereafter as VGL), you have transgressed against those who have stood by your side through the best and worst of times and you, sir, have a problem.
I’m not trying to go griefer on you, my uber friend, but Really?
(Here’s one for the carefully scrutinous ROTD fan [there are none] who realizes, as we here at Really? Headquarters [also nonexistent] most certainly did, that the last entry came a little bit later than would have been absolutely appropriate.)
That’s right, our attention now turns to the very tool that has allowed for the creation of this, your and everyone’s (no one’s) favorite site. We’re burning bridges at an alarming rate, and we couldn’t care less.
Anyway, most beloved of all online providers of “blogging” tools, here’s a question: What good is it that they can, at long last, fit a computer into a smaller space than a large gymnasium nowadays, if you, mighty WordPress, cannot even perform the most rudimentary of arithmetic problems?
Sure, the link in the admin panel indicated 99 entries, but of those (as revealed with a click on the actual number of 99 itself), two showing as a result were merely queued up; not yet posted. So of course we waited another two days before creating and posting the fancy-pants commemorative video edition that you’ve all (two of you, tops) no doubt enjoyed already. Some fat lot of good that ended up doing, WordPress–in compiling condensed titles for each of our entries in weekly groups of five (again, as observed so recently by you, our most favored readership), I naturally came to the numerical realization that this was not to be our 100th entry, but in fact our 102nd.
So, dear readers, if your eagle eye and/or mind for math and/or obsessive poring over the vaults at ROTD allowed you to perceive in advance that this very entry is the 103rd, you too can answer, in the positive, the question Am I smarter than a WordPress?
No, friends, this isn’t the epic first day we forgot to post. It is a milestone, though. After reading Tuesday’s Really, you’ve been with us for our first 100 Really?s. We could have done it without you, but we’re glad it didn’t come to that.
To celebrate, let’s recap:
But, Really, you’ve made the last 20 weeks of complaints worth every whine and sarcastic jab. Here’s to 20 more.
I understand. People like, nay, love, their coffee. I’m not one of them, but I understand that it is the case, even if I can’t comprehend the reasons behind it. The stuff tastes gross, stains your teeth, corrupts your nervous system, burns holes in your stomach, and makes your breath smell bad–and that’s just for starters. This isn’t about that heinous black poison, though. It’s about the mugs typically assigned as carriers thereof.
Can anyone tell me why a mug, unless, for example, specifically requested as one, is still considered a reasonable gift? Is there one among us that doesn’t have coffee mugs out the wazoo, often to the extent of having gotten rid of many, over the years? Thrift store coffee mug shelves constantly find themselves at a breaking point, but somehow thousands of these things (new and used) are bought, sold, given, and received every day, as if it’s still some kind of bonus to receive any tchotchke emblazoned with a company logo and name, let alone that ironclad emperor of the Trinket Kingdom, the coffee mug.
Outnumbered in my own kitchen perhaps only by butter knives, coffee mugs can, admittedly, be used for more than coffee. There’s tea, hot chocolate, cider, booze, pencils, thumbtacks, punch, popcorn, as-yet-hatless helper monkeys, and drops off of a highway overpass footbridge into oncoming traffic that continue to give them relevance. Still, it boggles the mind to think of all the coffee mugs out there; some being used, most either buried or queued up to be buried before very long, in some landfill someplace.
So what do you say, contributors to, and readers of, this very column? Is it time for an ROTD logo coffee mug? Really?
There’s something so important going on in the toy aisles at Target that you can’t slow down long enough to cover your dirty mouth before hacking up a lung all over board games, stuffed animals, and even a few of the very children who will end up playing with them?
If that wasn’t bad enough (and believe me, it was), you’re pacing all over the place at breakneck speed like an infection-breathing dragon. What started as my decision to subtly change directions to avoid your unsanitary self nearly turned into a mad dash to get away from you. I’m sure if I’d looked back I would have been treated to a condescending look as if you were to say “What’s wrong with him?”.
I’m sure you can’t wait to get home and snot all over your kids so you can send them off to school and infect scores of other victims so I’ll leave it at this: you, like the anti-receptionist guy and the red light racer before him, are no more important than any of us, quite possibly less so. Get your germs, your disguistingness, and your crappy excuses about why you have to be out infecting everyone out of our collective faces.
Your make-up assignment will be a ten page essay, single spaced. The topic: Really?
Really, Local Purveyors Of Books Rented Temporarily And Without Cost?
Much like Old Man Strikes-And-Spares, you’ve got what could hardly not be a pretty decent life. You’re surrounded by books. You’re frequently found without too much to do. Certainly the stresses afforded by the food industry or corporate America (or both, combined, heaven forbid) make their way to your place of work with infrequency.
Why, then, are your attitudes consistently bad? Ostensibly you wouldn’t be in the business of books if you weren’t somewhat literate. Maybe you can find a certain solace in your working for a reputable, or at least honorable, establishment, once in awhile. I don’t need to be made to feel bad because I share a love of books and learning with you, nor because as a patron of the library, I’m partly responsible for your having a job to begin with.
I’m not asking you to be all smiles and sunshine. Heck, that’d probably warrant an entry of its own, here. It’d be nice for you to acknowledge that you’ve actually got it pretty good once in awhile, though. Some of us happen to know that the pay-to-work ratio is pretty dang high for, and would accordingly give our eye teeth to be, librarians. I sincerely hope it gives you pause when next time you’re checking in my returns and the due-date card has been marked with a stamp of a different color: R E A L L Y ?
If you’ve been following along, you know by now that using a public restroom is an uncomfortable time when you can expect nothing but bad things. As a society we have chosen mankind’s most vulnerable moments to push everyone together in one room and hope for the best. Often it’s only a few partial walls and a swinging door protecting you from the strangers outside.
So why is it that we can’t put a little more work into the design and construction of these stalls?
You’re looking at a model of the average row of public restroom stalls. This is it. You won’t be protected from anything that can make it’s way over, under, or perhaps even through the cracks between the doors and walls. People will walk by and, invariably, look at you through the crack as they pass to see if you’re looking at them (which, invariably, you will be).
There’s another obstruction. This one will hinder you to no end, even if you’re the only person in the restroom. It may indeed be the stupidest fact in the history of civilization.
There are stall doors out there that don’t even open past the toilet. Way more than there should be.
How are you supposed to get in there? Climb over the wall to get in and stand on the toilet to get out? Someone else might just as soon climb in after you thinking they were the only one with that brilliant idea. Not only does this create unlimited awkwardness but the potential for bathroom-goer injury is enormous.
Next time you find one of these, feel free to kick the door off its hinge. Let bypassers stare as you etch a note into the stall wall with the least important key on your keyring:
Really, woman inside the gas station convenience store who is oblivious to the existence of a “rest of the world”?
I knew you had a weak link in the brain chain when you pulled out a checkbook to pre-pay for your gas and purchase a carton of cigarettes. You tell the caller on your cell phone to hold while you tap the pen on the counter to get the ink rolling, and ask the cashier to whom you should make the check. “Circle K,” he replies. “Circle K?” you ask, “How do I write that? Do I draw a Circle with a K next to it?” and “Is K spelled K-A-Y, or just K?”
When he asks for your ID to compare addresses, you mention you have recently moved, and turn to an off-duty uniformed police officer in line with myself (and several others now) to discuss the time limit to get a new license.
We all observe as you manage to scrawl the rest of the necessary check information, and we witness as your check is swiftly declined. All this while, you remain on the phone, asking the cashier to wait while you run to your car to see if you can dig out enough change for a box of cigarettes – never mind the gas for your car after all (or the other nine packs of cigarettes).
As you return from your car, you glance at the queue which is now snaking through the aisles, over a dozen long, and exclaim to the person on your cell phone, “Wow! There sure are a lot of people here!”
I now face the realization that the last ten minutes of my life actually happened, and were not, in fact, a prank perpetrated by Allen Funt or even Ashton Kutcher–pray as I might for one, or better still both of them, to appear and just please remotely validate my recent existence. Is it so much to ask that when a display of such extreme idiocy and callous, unabashed oblivion occurs, a television host will at least appear at any moment, letting all those involved know they’ve just been Really’d?
Really, waitress who was supposed to surprise me with her smart, down-to-Earth personality and convince me that we made a brief connection in hopes of scoring that extra five dollar tip?
A while back, a couple of friends of mine asked me to meet them at our local Hooters after work to catch up over some drinks. Personally I’ve always felt a little weird at Hooters but I did want to see how my friends were doing so I agreed. Once there, we decided to stick around awhile and have something to eat. The following is an account of my conversation with the waitress.
Her: What’ll you have, sweetie? Me: I think I’ll just have the buffalo chicken sandwich with some fries. Her: Okay, what kind of sauce on that, hon? Me:Uh, what have you got? Her:There’s mild, medium, hot, and nine eleven sauce. Me:You uh…WHAT?!? Her: What? Me:What was that last one? Her:Nine eleven sauce. Is that what you want? Me: What?!? NO it’s not what I…wait a minute, you mean 9-1-1 sauce. Her: Right. Nine eleven sauce. Me: Okay, do you realize why you shouldn’t say it like that? Her: …no… Me: …Then uh…forget it let’s just do hot.
Without any further opinion and having just presented the unaltered facts, someone tell me: REALLY??
Posted by Really? Of The Day 
Posted by techforthemasses 
Posted by Really? Of The Day 
