I guess it’s no secret that I like to complain. Sure, I’ve been known to build things up on occasion during upswings of optimism. But at heart, I’m just a cantankerous old crank who fixates on the tiniest of gripes — the pettiest of grievances. I am all too aware that the world is full of some genuinely pressing problems, but that’s never stopped me before from sweating over the little things. So here we go, kids. I’ve come up with a short new list of trivial things that either baffle me, or just plain piss me off. It’s just what I do. Listen up and pay attention.

• Awkward endings to news articles

  Did you ever notice that online news articles often conclude with inelegant, poorly written endings? I’m not even talking about bad wording or syntax; I’m talking about those awful, lazy, awkward conclusions that only have the slightest bit of relevance to all of the information that precede them. These terrible endings always include some bizarrely inappropriate, non-topical point of fact that seems more jarring and confusing, rather than informative. It’s almost as if the authors just ran out of time before they could wrap things up satisfactorily, so they just reached for the nearest piece of trivia that came to mind, and they jammed it in at the end.

  I admit, this may be an esoteric thing to complain about, but don’t tell me that you have never read a single online article that ended as badly as the following example:

  . . . .
  
  Having run out of bullets during the sixteen hour standoff with police, the unidentified gunman killed his oldest and final hostage — 94-year-old Maurice DeCampo — by savagely beating him to death with a Snuffleupagus stuffed toy. The gunman then turned the toy on himself, somehow managing to jam the trunk of the stuffed Snuffleupagus down his own throat, thereby blocking his windpipe. The gunman had died by asphyxiation before SWAT team members could secure the building.

  

  Snuffleupagus is the lovable, woolly-mammoth-like Muppet sidekick of Big Bird on the Emmy Award winning public television series Sesame Street.
  

Who the hell are the editors who are letting this sloppy bullshit slide? I mean seriously, are these journalism professionals actually trying to be terrible at their jobs?

“Bullshit” is a common American English expletive, often used as an interjection, which connotes disapproval due to unfavorable circumstances, or disapproval in relation to misleading, disingenuous, or false language.

See what I did there? Somebody from the Associated Press should be calling me any day now with a job offer.






• Regular strength first aid ointment

  
  
  

  Why does Neosporin offer both regular strength and maximum strength healing ointments? What market segment is Neosporin trying to capture with a product that has inferior healing qualities? I can picture some guy standing in the first aid aisle of a drug store who would be thinking to himself: “Well, I like the idea of treating my cuts with an antibacterial cream, but I’d like to bleed as much as possible before my wounds are healed.”

  




• Talking like Yoda from Star Wars

  Yes, Yoda is an awesome character. I dare say he was too good for the travesty that was the Star Wars prequels. He deserved so much better than that.

  

  Yet as much as I love Yoda, I can’t stand it when lame motherfuckers try to capitalize on Yoda’s awesomeness by speaking in the little green Jedi’s backwards vernacular. For a taste of what I’m talking about, try opening up a new tab on your internet browser and running a Google search for the phrase, “does not a Jedi make”. For some variety, try diversifying the results by searching for the phrases “does not a” and “make” within the same search. You’ll find plenty of examples of jackasses on the internet who think it is clever and cute to imitate Yoda’s signature cadence.

  I’m sorry, but there is nothing remotely cool about talking like Yoda unless you happen to be Frank-Fucking-Oz himself. I tend to group those people who attempt to talk like Yoda in the same category as those pathetic people who think they can do a dead-on impression of Austin Powers. Both endeavors are equally capable of making a rational listener cringe. Both endeavors are equally lame.

  Imitating Yoda’s speech pattern is about as cool as young Anakin Skywalker’s “Yippee” in Episode I.

  Yeah … remember that shit? Star Wars is fucking lame.

  




• People who mock the Chinese for mispronouncing the letter “L”

  I understand where the jokes about bad driving come from. And I get it that our slanted eyes make us look wacky and blind. I’ll even let it slide that there are those who talk shit about about Chinese people eating cats and dogs, because there are other ethnic groups out there that eat far crazier things. But Jesus, people, get a clue about basic cultural and geographical differences. China and Japan are completely different countries. I mention this because it’s primarily the Japanese who famously have trouble distinguishing their Ls and Rs, because there is no “L” sound in the Japanese language.

  

  Many westerners lazily assume that if one rule applies to a single group of yellow people, then it must be that way across the board. I assure you, though: the phonetic “L” sound is alive and well in China and Taiwan. Haven’t you people ever heard of the Shaolin monks, or Lao-Tzu, the father of Taoism? How about Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Ling Ling the giant panda, Lucy Liu, movie director Ang Lee, or even Chun-Li of Street Fighter fame? You stupid dipshits. That whole “Asiany” side of the globe isn’t exclusively populated by an interchangeable mass of “Chinese” people, you know.

  Now that I’ve done my part to dispel that popular misconception about the Chinese, why don’t I set my people back a few more decades by reveling in the self-parody of Notorious MSG?

  China White, bitch.

  




• The “Legitimacy” of Twitter

  I am hardly the first person to hate on Twitter, but I sincerely hope that I am not the last. Why the hell is this gimmicky website so popular? The concept of Twitter is asinine and shallow. If you have something to say, then why would you arbitrarily limit yourself to 140 characters? I liked the original incarnation of personalized online expression back when it was called “blogging”.

  

  Yes, I realize that young people in Iran launched a would-be revolution back in 2009 with the help of their incendiary tweets, but I believe many of those protesters sacrificed substance for the convenience and immediacy that Twitter provided. Imagine how much more impressive it would have been to read a whole host of blog entries decrying the corruption that enabled a tampered presidential election, versus bullshit like, “Protesting Ahmadinejad ftw. The Green Movement shall prevail! Gather @ coffee shop by 1400. Farrokh: Bring your bongo drums.”

  Honestly, am I the only American who’s irritated by the fact that Twitter has gained so much undeserved legitimacy, that our politicians are now embracing it as a viable means of communicating their thoughts to the public?

  For the sake of illustration, I have randomly decided to pick on Chuck Grassley, the republican United States senator from Iowa. On September 2, 2010, Grassley tweeted the following message:

  Great Qs @ Moravia Senior Hi They have good perspective on fed govt thanks to good teacher

  Notice the abbreviations. You understand what Grassley is saying when he talks about “Qs” and the “fed govt”, but it might take you second to realize that “Hi” is short for “High School”. It also doesn’t help matters that this tweet lacks any kind of punctuation, presumably due to the fact that Grassley was worried about capping out his 140-character limit. For the record, Grassley’s tweet is only 74 characters. I don’t know very much at all about Senator Grassley. My opinion of this elected official, however, has lowered considerably because he seems to have no qualms about communicating his thoughts in text like an illiterate, net-speaking teenager.

  Why are so many public officials enamored by Twitter? Why do America’s news outlets pay such deference to what famous people are tweeting? Reporters quote tweets all the time in their news stories, as if the American public has been clamoring to hear topical commentary by somebody whose online handle might as well be “xXbigdixmcgeeXx”? Fuck Twitter up its stupid fucking ass.

  Do you remember when actress Brittany Murphy died in December 2009? Apparently, more than one news outlet saw it fit to quote Ashton Kutcher’s eloquent eulogy tweet during that sad episode:

  2day the world lost a little piece of sunshine. My deepest condolences go out 2 Brittany’s family, her husband, & her amazing mother Sharon.

  I don’t think any further explanation is necessary for you, the reader, to grasp just how much I hate the previous two sentences. But I will say this: If, when I die, anybody ever tries to euologize me in 140 characters or less by employing that abbreviated, internet shorthand garbage, I promise you that my corpse will rise out of the grave as Zombie-KZ, and with whatever portion that’s left of my departed consciousness, I will hunt you down and punch you in the fucking face.

Like I said, I’m just a cantankerous old crank. The world is full of things that I love to hate, and thank God for that.

Posted by KZ on 09/03/10

One of my favorite stand-up comedians, Emo Philips, tells a relatively benign joke that kind of creeps me out whenever I think about it:

“I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.”

The connection between the brain, consciousness, and human identity is really a bizarre thing. The brain is this squishy, unassuming organ that resides in the head, and it processes countless actions per second. It is the source of conscious and unconscious thought. It dutifully delegates commands to regulate respiration, digestion, muscle control, and immune system defense. It performs all of these actions in perfect concert with each other, and yet it perplexingly remains a mystery to itself. If it weren’t for the benefit of research and education, a person’s brain could potentially remain unconscious of itself throughout an entire lifetime. The thought of that is strange and unsettling to me.

In Julia Sweeney’s one-person monologue, Letting Go of God, Sweeney aptly illustrates the tension between biological truths and human perception:

When I think of myself as my innermost being, I just don’t think of it as a body function. My brain creates this idea that my “self” is not it “self”. I mean, I think of my “self” as something separate looking out from my eyes, listening through my ears, pulling the strings that make my body move. And that’s because the brain is not able to perceive its own functioning. And this is true for all of us, by the way, right from childhood. When a child is told that it’s their brain that thinks … they don’t think that their brain is them. They think their brain is this thinking, computing machine, something that is added to their “self” to help them understand things. And yet the mind is what the brain does, just like pumping blood is what the heart does.

So what is consciousness, and what is self? And how much room is there left for the existence of a soul? I’m afraid those are questions that I’m just not equipped to answer.

The more I think about my own brain, it seems stranger, and more unfamiliar to me. Yet isn’t that a strange thought to have? My brain — the computing center of all my feelings and thoughts — is unwittingly disturbed by its very own mundane existence and processes. There is a cyclical conflict inside my own head that exacerbates with each revelation, and with each reaction to those revelations. I think of my mind, and I realize that it’s just a function of my brain, and it spooks me to think that there is an entity within myself that can be so intimately intertwined with my identity, and yet it feels so distant and unfamiliar. But then my brain pushes back, almost as if it were offended by the very thoughts that it just created, and suddenly I find my head folding and unfolding in a perpetual spiral of self-doubt and confusion. It all just makes me very dizzy.

I consider the sensation a mild form of madness, something akin to the distress that Linus from Peanuts feels when he becomes aware of his own tongue.

These are the kind of thoughts that keep me awake at night. It drives me crazy, because I know my brain knows better than to provoke a fight with itself right before bed. This is probably where all of the insomnia comes from.

“Good Grief” indeed, Lucy.

Posted by KZ on 08/29/10

Edric had some choice words to say about my previous blog entry. Little did he know that he was making the wrong choice when he decided to raise up on KZ without provocation.

Edric: that was disappointing. too much hype, not enough substance. i was expecting something funnier.

Kevin: i was expecting you to be funnier!

Edric: nice comeback, writer =)=)

Kevin: YOU are a nice comeback, writer!
…
Kevin: Nothing to say, huh? I’ll take your stunned silence as a concession of defeat.

Edric: oh…i’m sorry, did you say something? i was waiting for something worth responding to.
…
Edric: hah! now i stunned you into silence.

Kevin: oh, you’re still on that? that was so 3 minutes ago. you’re so 2000-and-late.

Edric: hatez

Edric: by the way, what’s up with you Zings and cats? get a real animal, like a dog.

Kevin: Awesome things meow. Cats meow; therefore, cats are awesome. Simple, really.

Edric: I never thought of it that way. You are a wise man, KZ. I especially enjoyed your sarcastic syllogism, which was humorously, intentionally, and satirically unsound. Might you have been teaching me a lesson by “coming down to my level”? Also, might I add that I appreciate the way you faithfully reproduce online conversations for the viewing pleasure of your blog readers? You report the truth with such competence and integrity. In short, you are my idol, KZ.

Kevin: hellz yeah, i don’t make shit up.

Edric: remember the time i dropped my ice cream cone, and i cried for 12 hours?

Kevin: maybe i should take a snippet of this conversation and post it in a blog entry. i’ll make it look like i won, of course, because on the whole, i did.

Edric: such lies. =)=)

Kevin: get your own blog then, and fight back!

Edric: those lies of yours are unbecoming of a wannabe journalist. =)=)

Kevin: i pay no heed to the voiceless

Posted by KZ on 04/30/10

This dollar bill traveled all the way from Phoenix, Arizona to San Jose, California. I don’t really buy into all of that Where’s George bullcrap, but I had to give credit where credit was due on this one. There are some discoveries in life that are just too precious to keep to yourself.

The message written on the bill says the following:

Please return this bill to me
Gary
. . . . . . . . .
Phoenix, AZ 85053
I am very poor.

You may be a poor man, Gary, but I tip my hat to you for having the guts to write your address on a stray dollar bill. You are a far richer man than you may ever know.

By the way, just so we’re clear on this, I’m not sending this one back to you.

Posted by KZ on 04/30/10

Just a while ago, a community outreach program in my resident city gathered a bunch of volunteers to paint over the graffiti in my neighborhood. The neighborhood was a better place for it, but I have to admit that I was little sad to say goodbye to the muralistic masterpiece behind my apartment building, which will forever be hailed in the annals of awesomeness as the “VNG, Fack You, Thug Life” wall. Nothing gold can stay, am I right? Ponyboy knows what I’m talking about.

For nearly one whole week, the wall behind my apartment building stared out defiantly at all those punk kids with its clean, untarnished surface. It was gray, and dark, and severe, but hell, at least it was clean. That was a good week.

By the following week, some hardcore, schoolyard gangster decided that enough was enough, and so he cut second period and most of recess in order to spray up the neighborhood walls. I came home from work that afternoon to find that the recently reformed “VNG, Fack You, Thug Life” wall was now the “S … s … SC” wall.

Isn’t that one of the saddest things you’ve ever seen? Either the person responsible for this tagging has no confidence in his penmanship, or else he just has a huge stuttering problem, and he’s using this public medium as a forum for catharsis.

Fail, motherfucker. You fail hard. You’re not fooling anybody with those fancy manuscript lines running down the completed “SC”. I still see your rough drafts on the left, you stupid amateur shit.

I might have forgiven the kid’s attempt to advertise his dubious gang affiliation with criminals whom he’s probably never met, but only if his graffiti had been the slightest bit impressive. In light of the genius that was once the “VNG, Fack You, Thug Life” wall, I’m offended that I have to look at this half-assed garbage every day.

Fail, motherfucker.

F … f … FAIL.

Posted by KZ on 04/05/10

Kevin: You never understand my Simpsons references.

Diana: That’s because all of your references are stupid and obscure.

Kevin: They’re not obscure, they’re subtle. You know, like the “b” in “subtle”? You don’t really notice it in there, and you never, ever see it coming. It’s just a silent letter. It’s kind of funny when you stop to think about the word, actually. The letter “b” subtly epitomizes the very essence of the word, “subtle”. That’s a highly unusual thing, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t it fascinating how the letter “b” in a word like “subtle” can so perfectly illustrate the definition of the word that contains it?

Diana: . . . (sigh)

Kevin: You like that, Diana?

Diana: Nope.

Kevin: That’s always your answer. Do you ever like anything?

Diana: Not anything that ever comes out of your mouth.

Kevin: Well, that’s not very subtle. That’s like the “s” in “subtle”. Or the “t” in “subtle”. Or to a lesser extent, the “l” in “subtle”. Because you see, you hear the “l”, but it’s not as pronounced as . . .

Diana: Kevin, go away.

Posted by KZ on 12/26/09

I have a story for you, but there are two things you should know first.

(1) I hate redundant language. I hate it when people say “tuna fish”, or “PIN number”, for example. What used to bother me most of all, though, was when people said “ATM machine”. I mean come on, really? “Automatic Teller Machine Machine”? Ick.

But being the optimist that I am, I’ve come to understand that when people say “ATM machine”, I should give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they wouldn’t purposely utter something so idiotically redundant as “Automatic Teller Machine Machine”. If you’ve been to the websites I’ve visited, then you’d know that ATM can also stand for “Ass-To-Mouth.” Let’s just say in my world, when somebody tells me they’re going to the “ATM machine”, I’m always caught breathless by the shameless depravity of it all. Secretly, I’m also a little bitter that my bank doesn’t offer the same generous service at their own numerous locations.

By the way, Diana finds it really irritating when I refer to “Ass-To-Mouth Machines” in everyday conversation.

(2) Recently one night, Diana asked me to lend her some cash. I didn’t have enough in my wallet, and so I ended up driving to the local bank to make a withdrawal from the ATM.

So that’s where my story begins. I came home, handed Diana the cash, and told her that she’d better appreciate what I’d done for her, because I had just been mugged. She seemed oddly unmoved. Unperturbed by Diana’s cold silence, I pressed on with the full account:

It was dark when I got to the ATM, and I was all alone. So I thought, anyway. I had just inserted my card and punched in my PIN when this big dude with a knife came out of nowhere and pinned me to the wall near the ATM.

“Well, well,” he said, “Here we are at the Ass-To-Mouth machine. Hey boy, do you like ATM?”

I said to him, “Just to be clear, when you say ‘ATM’, you mean ‘ass-to-mouth’, right?”

“Of course, boy, what else could I have meant?”

“Oh.” I said. “Well then, no.”

Then the dude seemed really disappointed and lowered his knife a bit and said, “Oh, that’s too bad. Because I had a real hankering for somebody to fuck me in the ass and to put it in my mouth afterward.”

I realized then that I had misunderstood his intentions. He wanted me to play pitcher, not receiver. I kind of felt bad for the guy, so I ended up fucking him in the ass and going ATM near the finish. You’d think the dude would have walked away happy after that. But the thing is, after we were done, he stole my money anyway, and I had to withdraw more cash before coming home.

It was the strangest mugging ever.

Not one single laugh from Diana. She just continued to stare at me until I left the room. Why do I waste all of my good material on her?

Posted by KZ on 08/26/09

Kevin: so what’s up with you?
Casey: went for a jog
Kevin: wow, at 3 in the morning? safe neighborhood?
Casey: our township is rated one of the safest in the US lol
Casey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_Township,_Michigan
Casey: Based on statistics reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Canton was the nation’s 20th safest municipality with a population over 75,000 during 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006
Casey: plus who’s gonna fuck with someone 6’4 and 270 lbs?
Kevin: a 6’5 dude who’s 271 lbs?
Casey: fuck
Kevin: didn’t think about that shit, did you? you’re lucky to be alive.
Casey: bish

Posted by KZ on 06/13/09

I’m not one to make a big deal about art imitating life, but I must confess my admiration for those idiotic, ill-conceived, poorly executed attempts at self expression that unintentionally breach the realm of inspired genius.

Behind my apartment building, just beyond the narrow parking lot, stands a modest wall bearing graffiti that is both hilarious and tragic all in a single viewing. My girlfriend and I affectionately refer to this as the “VNG, Fack You, Thug Life” wall.

There’s a lot more going on here than you may realize at first glance. If you look closely enough at this wall, the graffiti reveals a story, told chronologically from left to right. I’ll break it down into seven simple steps.

(1) Somebody comes across an untagged wall and decides to claim this shitty, narrow parking lot behind a row of aging apartment buildings as gang territory. “VNG XIV”, he writes in red. Naturally, the entire neighborhood is impressed. All the ladies want to suck this guy’s cock.

(2) Later, a second tagger comes along and scribbles out the first tagger’s gang markings. Because this individual uses black paint, he will be referred to as the “Black Paint Tagger”.

(3) The Black Paint Tagger scrawls “Fack You” on the wall.

(4) The Black Paint Tagger decides that his pronoun usage is too ambiguous, and thus attempts to clarify his statement by drawing an arrow that points toward the scribbled out gang markings. “I’m not saying ‘fack you’ to the neighborhood as a whole,” the Black Paint Tagger seems to be saying. “My statement is directed only at the person who tagged on this wall before I did.” Communication is key.

(5) The Black Paint Tagger, feeling that “<== Fack You" isn't enough to fully convey his message, steps slightly to the right and jots down the phrase, "THUG LIFE". Notably, deceased rapper Tupac Shakur had "Thug Life" tattooed on his stomach, and he just barely pulled this off because he was one of the greatest rappers of all time. The Black Paint Tagger, on the other hand, somehow transcends the cringe-worthy lameness of this hackneyed phrase and lades it with brilliant rhetorical landmines that explode in a tangled cacophony of life-altering mindgasms.

(6) The Black Paint Tagger garnishes his creation with with some odd looking hieroglyphics, which he ultimately deems unreadable before he scribbles over them. Through this process, he has, unavoidably, partially dissed himself.

(7) A friend of the Black Paint Tagger approaches from behind and aptly points out that the F-word has been misspelled. Dismissively, the Black Paint Tagger makes a halfhearted effort to convert the “a” in “Fack” into a “u”.

And thus was born the “VNG, Fack You, Thug Life” wall. The world has never been the same since. Frankly, I don’t want to live in a world where this wall doesn’t exist.

Posted by KZ on 03/21/09

While roaming the streets of coastal Bay Area town one weekend, I spotted a delivery van for a seafood distribution company with a particularly terrible marketing slogan painted on its side:

Ugh. Grammatically speaking, the ellipsis (those triple dots, “…”) can be used to either insert a pause into a statement, to trail off thoughtfully from an unfinished point, or to indicate that a word or a phrase has been intentionally omitted from the original text. In the context of this slogan, there really isn’t a legitimate grammatical reason to use the ellipsis as a pause. “Our quality is your reputation” is all that needs to be said, so why bother breaking up the rhythm of the sentence? Dramatic tension? Anybody who would be even remotely excited and titillated by this cheesy and grammatically deficient sentence structure would have to be living a sad and bankrupt life marked with loneliness, light jazz, and a surplus of knit booty socks for the legs of their end tables.

Having said that, I have no choice but to conclude that something has been omitted from the original slogan. My question then becomes, “What exactly does this company have to hide?” They’re clearly hiding something, judging by that guilty looking ellipsis staring at you from the midst of all that italicized intrigue. The following is a list I created of some of the possibilities for the original slogan.

• Our Quality, Motherfuckers, is Your Reputation
• Our Quality, Mein Führer, is Your Reputation
• Our Quality, Lord Xenu, is Your Reputation
• Our Quality, Emperor Kahless, is Your Reputation
• Our Quality, You Dirty Minorities, is Your Reputation
• Our Quality Fish Flavored Soylent Green is Your Reputation
• Our Quality Crack-Laced Crab Cakes is Your Reputation
• Our Quality Four Dollar Hooker Service is Your Reputation
• Our Quality “Happy Ending” Massage Program Involving Fish is Your Reputation
• Our Quality Control Program, “Leave No Dead Fish Unfucked”, is Your Reputation

I’ll be polite and stop it there. But you have to admit, it’s kind of fun dreaming up all of the possibilities for the original slogan. Submit one of yours in the comment box today! You’ll be glad you did. Hell, you might even be included as a defendant in the inevitable defamation lawsuit coming my way. That’ll be an interesting day.

Note: The moral of the story is to never use the ellipsis irresponsibly unless you’re prepared to live with the consequences.

Posted by KZ on 02/06/09