better quit before i recycle your face

there is this old guy that lives a few houses over. he is kind of weird. he goes by many names in our house, but we most often refer to him as "abraham lincoln". i've noticed that he parks in front of our house a lot, even when the spots in front of his house are empty. he has a son that louise, dave and i refer to as "fake louis" due to the fact that he kind of looks like louis and drives a similar car. his son does the same thing. many times i will get home at the same time as one of them, only to see them park right next to me, while there are plenty of empty parking spots directly in front of their house, get out of their car and walk the couple of houses over to get to their house. now this never really bothered me. i always thought it was weird, but there is usually plenty of parking in front of our houses, so whatever...

now that louis has moved out, dave and i have been left to handle the house recycling. the last few times we have left out our recycling bin, we received a warning note telling us that they will not take our recycling if we put plastic bags in it. i just assumed that we accidentally put some bags in there, so i made it a point to make sure and check the bin before we put it out. a few weeks ago we got the note again and i was like "these recycling guys are crazy." i know for a fact that there were no plastic bags in there.

then one morning after i had taken the bin out for collection, i was making breakfast when i happened to look out the window and see abe bringing a bunch of plastic bags filled with cans and dropping them into our bin. wtf? why? now he is like 3 houses down, and if for whatever reason he wanted to put his recycling into someone else's recycling, that meant he skipped over a couple of the other houses' bins with the specific intention of putting his cans in our bin.


well now i realized that that's why we kept getting those warnings. so i went outside, emptied the cans into our bin and put the plastic bags on his front porch, hoping it would send him the message that we were onto him. well the bags were still there 4 days later, so i think any potential message was lost.

we got home late last night, so dave went ahead and put our bin out for collection. he told us that abe lincoln struck again! dave went outside like an hour after he put the bin out and noticed a plastic bag full of magazines were now in the bin. dave took the magazines out and placed them in a common area in between our houses that is yet another spot that you can put your recycling. what a weirdo.

this morning as i was leaving to go to work, i noticed another mysterious plastic bag in our yet to be collected recycling bin. apparently not satisfied with putting just his magazines in our bin, he decided he would step it up for a second round and put a giant bag of cans in our bin. so i took out the cans and placed them next to the magazines. i am not sure if the recycling guys will pick them up or not, but abe needs to stop.

this is one of those issues that's tough for me because i really shouldn't be that annoyed by it. it's not a big deal at all. i mean, besides the threat of not having your recycling picked up because some weirdo puts plastic bags in there. but it really is very annoying. it's such a mundane issue that really makes no difference in my life and yet i am bothered by it.

i guess the recycling combined with the parking issue together make a semi-viable complaint or else a questioning on why? why us? if you were living directly next door...maybe. but you don't. you can order a recycling bin for free from p.g. county and even if you didn't want to be bothered, you could leave your recycling outside without the bin and they will still pick it up. or if you didn't like that idea and were worried about your recycling getting lonely, why not put it in the bin of one of your neighbors? or in the common pickup area almost directly in front of your house? you bypass their bins and walk over to our house and put your shit there. why? it seriously boggles my mind.

because it is an issue that appears to be of minimal importance and because they don't know that we know, i will feel sort of silly going up to them and asking why or telling them to quit doing it. i also might not want to know why they have chosen our house. hopefully they're not stalking one of us (and if they are...hopefully it is jessie) instead i plan on being passive-aggressive and post a note on the bin saying something like:

To Whoever Is Putting Their Recycling In Our Bin,

If you do not have a recycling bin, you can order one for free here:
http://www.co.pg.md.us/government/agencyindex/
der/about_recycling.asp

If you still need to put your recycling in our bin, for whatever reason, please note that they will not take plastic bags and have refused our recycling in the past because of this. PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOUR PLASTIC BAGS IN OUR RECYCLE BIN!!! Thanks.

phil thinks that the exclamation points and all caps end to the note are a little too much. i'm not sure yet. i want to make sure that they notice it. but it might be too dark anyways when we put our bin out, so i dunno. maybe i can print it out on some crazy neon paper, or i can wait until the morning to put it out, hopefully getting it out there before the collection guys come through our neighborhood. we shall see.

that's not funny part 1

i was considering compiling a list of celebrities that i hate, but soon realized that most of the celebrities that are targets of my hate tend to be the ones that think they are very funny but are clearly not. other hateables include too-obvious celebrities that erryone else hates as well as most politicians, but i am focusing on "entertainers" who so desperately want to be funny, but alas are not.

jay leno

why?
this horribly unfunny dynamo has hosted the tonight show and done so with the most vanilla, obvious jokes, spinkled with some random issues of manhood and not being gay. his high-pitched, nasally voice reads joke after joke that anyone under the age of 60 should be ashamed to laugh at.

well on the other hand...
he seems like a genuinely nice guy. i have a feeling that if he was some guy that you worked with, he wouldn't try to force his "comedy" and actually be an ok guy. he tries so hard, which makes everything seem kind of sad and much more amazing in it's spectacle, sort of a comedy train wreck where many viewers are stuck in channel surfing rubbernecking.

hatred level - 6

dane cook

why?
if i was a biologist, he would be classified as douche-sapien. he steals jokes, is a spaz on stage and along with leno, tries so hard, but strikes out every time. his comedy is a combination of dumbed-down frat guy stylings, mixed with completely random "observations" that have the approach that they are so "out there", that they become funny. not clever. awful.

well on the other hand...
he made it happen via myspace, and was probably the first one to do so with this level of success. it's tough to come up with too much positive. i will let the fake video below sum things up.


hatred level - 8

carlos mencia

why?
this guy is awful for a number of reasons. he uses his "mexican" heritage as a way to make incredibly racist and insulting jokes. he's half german and his real name is ned holness. it's one thing to have jokes that are racially insulting, but his comedy tends to also insult the intelligence of his audience. along with dane cook, he has been known to steal jokes from lesser-known comics.

well on the other hand...
science has proven he's just not funny, plain and simple.






hatred level - 9.5

this is a long, boring, not well-supported/constructed/thought-out rant that is just for me

I was driving to work this morning, sitting in annoying city traffic, when I read an interesting bumper sticker. It read "I was against Bush before it was cool." Now I am super liberal, anit-Bush, blah, blah, blah...but this bumper sticker annoyed me for numerous reasons. This rant is long and kind of lame in that it was sparked by something as inconsequential as a bumper sticker, but oh well.

Let me make this clear, it is not "cool" to be anti-Bush. Now everyone is anti-Bush. If you go to any elementary school and ask kids about the president, 90% will give you the same mindless, programmed comment about how we shouldn't be in Iraq and how Bush is dumb and a "bad president". It is a safe, culturally agreed upon thing to say now. This is a big change from say 2001, where most people were supporting the president and by extension, their schools and kids echoed that same sentiment. 6 years later, with thousands dead, shady dealings and appointments, an enormous list of fuck-ups, and a general sense of an evil agenda, it could have been considered "cool" back then as it was not a mainstream sentiment, but certainly not in 2007.

Back to the bumper sticker. So let me ask this guy a few things? You say that you were anti-Bush before it was cool? So you were against him when he was governor of Texas? Or maybe you were really ahead of the game and hated the way he owned the Texas Rangers...Do you have a problem with people agreeing with you now? If it is that important that you be recognized for your being ahead of the general consensus (maybe) as far as questioning Bush..goodie for you. In something as important as fighting the evil regime of Bush, should you waste valuable bumper sticker space so that you can feel superior over others who are supporting the same cause?

I have been on both sides as far as appreciating things earlier than most and later than most. I understand the feeling where you like something that seems unnoticed, not yet appreciated and "cool", only to see it reach mainstream audiences and you get into eye-rolling conversations where some idiot is like "dude, you gotta check out this band ________, they're pretty underground, so you probably haven't heard of them, blah, blah, blah." This type of encounter is disheartening and can sap your appreciation for said band, movie, book, whatever. It's like someone invited the obnoxious frat guys to your secret nerd club. I understand this and have encountered it, but complaining about it makes you look like a complete ass, and not a "that guy is hilarious, he's such an ass", more of a "that guy is an ass and a douche and i kinda want to punch him." After the initial thought of "I don't like that this guy and I enjoy the same type of music", I am glad that this band or whatever is getting the appreciation and recognition it deserves.

I have also dealt with some elitist assholes who criticize others and try to make you feel lame along the lines of "oh, you're just now getting into _________, haha, man i was into them like 6 months ago!" Shut the fuck up.

So, yeah, everyone and their idiot kid is now anti-Bush, and it is not "cool". It is mainstream in fact, the opposite of "cool". So your bumper sticker and aforementioned statement is not only douchey, it is completely incorrect. I guess your bumper sticker could have said "I was against Bush while it was cool" or "I was against Bush before it became mainstream" or "I was against Bush before it became the MTV of political statements". So congratulations on being wrong (not in hating Bush, but as to what is cool) as well as being a big ol' elitist d-bag.