Author Archives: Bill

Google Racism

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A while back Jena and I wanted some Chinese food and due to a recent switch to a dairy free lifestyle, she was concerned about those little donut things she loves having milk ingredients. I went to google “are chinese donuts dairy free” but right after I typed “are chinese” google decided it had an idea of what I was looking for.


Chinese fire drills are legal but only when conducted by a certified Chinese fire marshall.




Well, looks like I just invented a new game called –


Let’s See How Racist Google Auto-Complete Can be in Only Two Words.


People don’t know if Indians should celebrate Christmas because… what?


I’m not saying Google’s an Islamophobe but I just typed “are musl” and it was all “DID YOU KNOW MUSLIMS ARE TAKING OVER THE WORLD? SHARIA LAW! VICTORIA JACKSON WAS RIGHT!


Of course Australians eat Kangaroos. That’s what Vegemite is made of, right?


Of course Eskimos spend their lives in tiny houses made of ice blocks. They also “kiss” by rubbing their noses together. They also have 30 words for racist.


Wow. That one’s actually pretty bad, Google auto-complete. You’ve officially crossed over from cutesy “ignorant grandma” racism to full blown “guy with confederate flag shirt” racism. How can I end on a high note now? Oh, I know!


Are midgets not supposed to have night vision? Is somebody concerned about this? Look at all the suggestions on yahoo! answers. There’s seriously a bunch of answer sites dedicated to the midget/night vision thing. There’s even a facebook fan page dedicated to the fact that this exists on google.



Congratulations on being weirdly racist, google! I can’t wait to see the google doodle you make for the anniversary of Birth of a Nation.

Finally! A Reason to Huff Bras!

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It’s gettin’ all hot up in this hot zone.



Jena showed me this link the other day to a story of a new bra for sale that doubles as a gas mask. The mask was developed by Dr. Elena Bodnar who studied the Chernobyl disaster and found that “”if people had had cheap, readily available gas masks in the first hours after the disaster … they may have avoided breathing in Iodine-131, which causes radiation sickness.” She also envisions it being useful in terrorist attacks. “You have to be prepared all the time, at any place, at any moment, and practically every woman wears a bra,” – via the article via salon via Fox News (making this a fourth hand news article!).


I love the frilly lace. Just because you're being attacked by terrorists doesn't mean you can't feel sexy.




You can see more photos on the Emergency Bra’s website. There’s a whole slideshow of chicks wearing the bra and happy couples with it on their faces as they run around a beach that I guess is right next to a nuclear power plant or something.


While this is certainly a neat little innovation and I’m all for scientist turning the world into a weird James Bond porno spoof there’s a few problems with the emergency bra.


*The smallest bra size is 32B. Sorry, tiny tits but you’ll either have to carry around a gas mask all the time like some German club kid or die of radiation poisoning.


*Single guys are doomed. Sure, there’s two cups so in case of poison gas you can give one of your masks to your significant other

Actual shirt sold on the website. Way to rub it in, guy who's going to live because he has a girlfriend.


but what about single guys? If somebody has a hard enough time asking a girl on a date he might have some trouble asking to suck on her bra cup.


*Fratboy biological warfare. In the event of a bio attack, women can use their emergency bras to cover their faces and save them from deadly particles. This means they have to take their bra off. Sure, you can take a bra off with a shirt on but that takes a little longer and if your life is on the line you’re just going to rip that shirt off and now your boobs are out there for all to see. It’s only a matter of time before some frat throws an emergency bra party because somebody in the house’s dad works for Halliburton and can get his hands on some gas. The trend will catch on pretty soon and you won’t even be able to get a girl to lift her shirt up in Mardi Gras unless you have an envelope full of anthrax.


Thanks, Emergency Bra. Now I’ve got a box full of beads just collecting dust and Joe Francis is now stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

Customer Service.

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There’s been a lot of news stories lately about how Best Buy is going in the shitter. Whether it’s the Star Trib. reporting that they couldn’t fill customer’s online orders for Christmas (some placed on the day after Thanksgiving) or the fact that their sales actually declined in December. Forbes even put out an Op-Ed basically stating they’re pretty much going out of businness and not because online retailers are scooping up all their business but because their customer service is shit.



The Forbes article goes into great detail about how the website is awful and going into the store is a nightmare. You’re confronted with employees who don’t have any answers to questions you may have but instead try to sell you some service that you don’t even want.


I really identified with that part of the article not because I’ve been harassed by “customer service” people trying to sell me useless bullshit but because I’ve been that “customer service ” person trying to sell people useless bullshit.


The last job I had for a major media company (doing the obligatory “not naming names” thing even though nobody reads this) I was a “cable tv support specialist” but really I was just a salesperson that kind of knew how to fix cable tv.


We sold three things, tv (which they already had if they were talking to me but could always upgrade), internet and home phone. I was told that my primary job was to resolve technical issues for people that called in but I never had a monthly quota for “resolved issues”. My quota, commission and job hinged on selling people internet and home phone.


The internet was easy enough to sell because I’m an internet junkie and the internet I was selling was the best but land lines? I might as well be trying to sell fucking pagers to these people. I haven’t had a land line in any place I’ve lived for nine years. I’m pretty sure you can say the same for almost anybody under the age of 35. Even though home phone is quite quickly going the way of the dodo I still had to sell as many phone lines as internet accounts.


We were given a bunch of little tips and tricks to sell the phone lines. “Probing questions” to ask, “features and benefits” to talk about, advantages over cell phones etc. One advantage over cell phones we were told to push on the phone line was the E911 service. E911 is a feature for home phones that allows your name and address to automatically pop up on the 911 dispatcher’s computer when you call. Not all cell phones have that or may have a previous address. We were told to ask if the customer had a family and if so, they know how safety is a priority yada yada. I flat out refused to use that tactic. I didn’t sell a lot of phone lines.


The point here is that Best Buy is not the only company to use cross selling and overly personal questions as a “customer service” sales tactic and this trend isn’t going to stop anytime soon. This tactic apparently works to some extent, that’s why so many corporations are adopting it and if Best Buy’s sales keep dipping it’s only going to get more and more aggressive. In fact, if any Best Buy executive is reading this, here’s a sales script you can adopt in the near future(if you don’t go bankrupt) that I whipped up for you, free of charge.


BEST BUY: Welcome to Best Buy. Before you look at anything would you like to get a protection plan for it?

CUSTOMER: Actually, I just want to buy some batteries so if you could let me through.

BB: I’m sorry but company policy states that I can’t let you in the store unless you’re completely aware of everything we have to offer for you to give you the best experience! So would you like a protection plan for those batteries? We have three tiers of protection for every –

C: What? No. I don’t want a protection plan for my batteries. They’re batteries.

BB: I understand where you’re coming from but if you just want to pay 4.99 a month we could-

C: Please just let me in the store to buy some batteries.

BB: Okay, don’t want the Battery Protection Plan. It’s not for everybody. Now I’m guessing you’re not buying batteries for your battery collection so may I ask what you’re powering?

C: They’re for a remote control. Please let me through.

BB: Hey, a remote control! Would that be for your Toshiba HDTV or your Nintendo Wii?

C: How did you know I own those?

BB: Did a quick retinal scan, pulled up your purchase history. This helps us to better serve your needs as a customer.

C: I just… wait. What’s that?

BB: Oh, this? Just a baseball bat I had lying around. I like to keep it with me to show customers the full benefit of signing up for our service protection plans. To better help illustrate this I’ll use this Toshiba HDTV, much like the one you purchased from us. Now we all hope that nothing ever happens to our home electronics but if you signed up for our service protection plan you could fix your TV at no cost even if somebody took a baseball bat to it! Allow me to demonstrate.

C: You know what? I’m just going to back away slowly and then run to my car and buy some batteries at the gas station.

BB: Okay then. Thanks for choosing Best Buy! We know where you live!

Yeah. You Didn’t Have the “Green” Thing Back in Your Day.

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Several of my facebook friends shared this little meme-story on their walls recently. No author is attributed because fuck it, it’s facebook.


Borrowed ♥ “Checking out at the grocery store recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. I apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.” The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.” She was right about one thing — our generation didn’t have the green thing in “Our” day. So what did we have back then…? After some reflection and soul-searching on “Our” day here’s what I remembered we did have…. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles repeatedly. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day. We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day. Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn’t have the green thing back in our day. Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right. We didn’t have the green thing back then. We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then. Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then? Please post this on your Facebook profile so another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smarty-pants young person can add to this…”


How has this not been called out on it’s bullshit yet? Unless this shopper was 90 years old they probably had an electric dryer in “their day”. Also, I don’t know what grocery store they’re going to but I’ve been to hippie organic co-ops and nobody’s given me shit for not having a reusable bag.


Whatever. Here’s a more accurate portrayal of how this conversation would have went down.


“Checking out at the grocery store recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. I apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.” The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.” She was right about one thing — our generation didn’t have the green thing in “Our” day. So what did we have back then…? After some reflection and soul-searching on “Our” day here’s what I remembered we did have…. Back then we had mercury in our batteries and our light switches which we threw away into landfills because we didn’t have the “green” thing back in our day. In fact, we let school children play with mercury in science classes with their bare hands! We didn’t have hybrid cars, we were lucky to get 15 miles to the gallon but we didn’t bother to think about it because gas was so cheap. The gas also had lead in it. Our house paint also had lead in it because we didn’t have the “green” thing back in our day. The Grand Canyon was so choked with smog you couldn’t see across it because she was right, we didn’t have the “green” thing. Back in our day we dumped 20 million gallons of herbicides and defoliants on the jungles of Vietnam killing not only a ton of vegetation but people, birds, animals, whatever because we didn’t have the “green” thing back in our day. We sprayed our food crops with DDT and fished the blue walleye into extinction because we didn’t have the green thing back in our day. Back in our day Lake Erie was so polluted that it literally caught on fire because we didn’t have the “green” thing back in our day. Isn’t it completely plausible that the current generation laments on how wasteful we were because we didn’t have the “green” thing back then? Please post this on your facebook so another self absorbed nostalgia addict baby boomer can realize that older is not, by default, better.

How to Speak in Public Good

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I received a text message from my sister this morning. She’s an office manager at a growing company and has to do a ten minute presentation in front of a large crowd tonight and wanted some tips on public speaking. Specifically, the text asked “”How do you speak publicly without projectile vomiting everywhere?” (oh we Youngs certainly have a way with words).


You always hear that bullshit statistic about how public speaking is everybody’s #1 fear and #2 is death. Any performer will tell you that after a bad show the best compliment a pitying audience member will give afterwards is “I could never do what you do”. If you go to the ACME Comedy Company (or whatever big comedy club is in your city) open mic on the first night after New Year’s the list will be flooded with first timers who made a resolution to get over their fear of public speaking.


There has to be some explanation for this, right? Some evolutionary reason that people are afraid to speak in front of an audience. Every other weird quirk and fear always boils down to predator evasion. Goosebumps, sweat, even laughter. Maybe predators were attracted to the loudest member of the heard back in caveman times or something.


Whatever the reason, my sister asked for some advice and as a comedian who has spent years performing in bar basements, VFWs and VFW basements for crowds of up to and sometimes above 20 people, I have learned some of the secrets to speaking in front of crowds without going all Linda Blair Exorcist on them. Here’s what I shared.


Experience.
This one really didn’t help her since the presentation is tonight but it is important. If you want to get comfortable in front of an audience you’re going to have to put yourself up in front of a bunch of audiences. Not a performance went by in my first year of comedy that I didn’t visibly shake before, after and during. Everybody is nervous their first few times on stage and if they aren’t they’re sociopaths. Call the police because they’ve probably got a closet full of skin-suits.


Breathing.
It sounds stupid but when you’re nervous you don’t focus on your breath and you’re probably taking short, quick breaths and just making yourself more anxious. Any yoga hippie will tell you that deep breaths help a lot in calming you down. It slows your heart rate, gets oxygen to your brain and when you’re focusing on your breath you’re not focusing on the stuff that will just make you nervous.


Disdain.
This one’s the hardest but, in my opinion, the most important. The reason you’re nervous to speak in front of people is because you want their approval. The best way to beat this is to no longer crave their approval by thinking yourself above it. I’ve said this to numerous new comedians and said it to my sister this morning. “See the audience? Fuck those guys. Fuck ’em. You don’t need them. They need you.” It seems counter intuitive because the whole reason you’re stepping on stage is because you want them to think you’re funny / liked your business proposal / be moved by your eulogy etc. but if you don’t care about what they think you won’t be worried about them not liking you and you can get on with telling your jokes / submitting your business proposal / deliver some final words for uncle Bob etc. If they don’t think you’re funny / a good businessperson / paid proper respect to uncle Bob etc. fuck them. Their opinion doesn’t matter. You’re on that stage because you’re supposed to be up there and fuck anybody who thinks otherwise.

This is why that old cliche of “imagine the audience in their underwear” exists. If they’re sitting there in boxers and granny panties they seem silly and not worth the anxiety.

None of this is obviously true. You’re on stage because you want the audience to like you but if you can convince yourself otherwise you’ll find yourself considerably less nervous.


wikipedia had three pictures under their "audience" article and all of them were of people not having a good time

Seriously, fuck those guys. What do they know? Assholes.

Are You There, Michele Bachmann? It’s Me, God.

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Dear Michele Bachmann;


Hello, it’s your Lord God. Listen, I heard recently about how you mentioned that a miracle was going to happen at the Iowa caucuses tonight and “we know who creates miracles”. While I’m flattered by your constant, borderline creepy praise I feel like you need to know that you shouldn’t get your hopes up. There will be no miracle tonight in Iowa. Not for you, anyway.


I really like to help those who help themselves and you just seem to do nothing but shoot yourself in the foot. Whether it’s constantly spitting out misinformation about the founding fathers ending slavery and the Soviet Union is rising or campaigning against energy efficient lightbulbs because they’re closing down factories which they aren’t, you’re really not helping yourself at all. The times you do help yourself, like when you practically rigged the Iowa straw poll by buying people’s tickets and providing bus rides and entertainment to get people to vote for you aren’t really what I meant by saying “help themselves”. I may protect fools but I don’t hand them presidential nominations.


Frankly, your obsession with me is getting weird and this is coming from a God that has billions of people pray to him daily. I’ve never spoken to you and never directly helped you before so I don’t understand why you’re giving me credit for not only things that happened to you, but things that haven’t even happened yet and never will (like you winning Iowa tonight).


I’ve never actually said this to anybody before but I think it’s time you started worshiping other deities. There’s lots of other gods out there and I know I said “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” but times change and back then I didn’t anticipate somebody as… clingy as you. You could worship Allah. He’s so down for the fanatical devotion you have to offer. He even requires you to pray five times a day and from what I’ve seen from you that can get done by lunchtime. What about Hinduism? I’m not actually not sure what they believe in (I’m God, not Wikipedia) but you never see them pushing their beliefs on other people so that might be best for you. You could even be an atheist. I know that the concept of me not existing is frightening to you but you’re really full of yourself so you’d fit right in with the other atheists.


Why don’t you start your own religion? You could start one that deifies the founding fathers! You already practically worship them and your knowledge of them is about on par with your knowledge of the bible (nearly nonexistent) so it’d be a smooth transition for you.


Whatever you do, please leave me alone. I’m seriously considering getting a restraining order on you.


I have to go now. I promised I’d play catch with Tim Tebow this afternoon.


Love,
God.

seriously leave me alone.

New Year’s Resolutions Are Bullshit.

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Oh shit it’s gonna be 2012 in a couple of days, kids! Come Sunday everybody will be all hungover and talking about all the improvements they’re going to make in their life this year. 2012 is gonna be the year that we’re all going to do it right! According to wikipedia, the five most popular resolutions this year are

*Be financially-savvy.
*Read at least one book per month.
*Eat properly.
*Get enough sleep.
*Keep a journal of awesome moments.

Alright. If the way you’re going to improve your life is by sleeping more you either have no problems or hate putting effort into things and keeping a journal of awesome moments sounds exactly like something a person that is the exact opposite of awesome would do.


New Year’s Resolutions are supposed to be making an actual change in your life for the better, not napping. If you want some actual resolutions here’s some suggestions.


Become addicted to crack. Beat crack addiction.
I feel like if you can overcome crack addiction you can overcome pretty much anything.


Beat up Chuck Norris.
Think about it. He’s 71 years old. I’m pretty sure you can take him by now.

This picture was taken in 1910. That's why it's in black and white. He had to stand like that for ten minutes for the camera to take the picture.




Get a Guinness World Record in something.
Breaking a world record sounds pretty hard but you can probably just make a world record nobody’s thought of yet like “most pencils in nose” or “longest bellybutton” (I actually don’t know how you’d go about making your belly button longer). this guy holds the record for most records set at over 300 and most of them are just stuff like “underwater pogosticking” and “doing front rolls (somersaults) for 12 miles”.


Build a Zepplin
All you need is some helium balloons and a lawn chair. That’s what Larry Walters did. Be careful though. He ended up committing suicide several years later so maybe he saw something up there in the clouds…

I have actually wanted to do this for a long time.




So there you go, people. Do any one of these or, even better, do them all! When your local newspaper reports that “Former crack addict and world record holding balloonist (insert your name here) assaults Martial Arts legend Chuck Norris” you can cut it out and put it in your journal of awesome moments. Have a happy new year.

Some Pictures From My Phone!

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So I got Punch-Out! for the Wii and was all set to do a blog about how incredibly racist it is (the Lisa Lampanelli “it’s okay because I’m racist towards all races” racism) but after a bit of googling I found that it was pretty well worn territory.

Seriously after I TKO'd Piston Hondo I'm surprised he didn't pull out a fucking katana and commit seppuku.




Well, since that horse has been beaten to death here’s some pictures from my phone!



Master hypnotist and Boris Karloff impersonator Brad Garrett!

It’s like the photographer asked him to do a big line of coke right before the picture was taken.


Actual size.

I walked up to it and a british guy with a bowtie stepped out and asked if I wanted to travel with him.



MISMATCHED STEAK KNIFE WOLVERINE!




Fucking creepy.

At a friend’s house. Creepy as hell but wait! There’s more! Let’s zoom in on this.


Oh shit.

He’s reaching for the knife!


Sex-Murder is the worst kind of murder. Murder by sex.

I saw this on the magazine rack at Savers. It’s like if episodes of Law and Order: SVU were written by the people who worked on The Weekly World News. I kind of regret not buying them but I doubt anybody’s snatched up those literary treasures.


The Cover for my new detective novel, "The Mystery of the Murderous Mariachi Mannequin".

At least he’s not a sex-murderer. I hope.


If you’d like to see what I was taking phone pics of in 2006, check out this old myspace blog!

Kim Jong-Il: A Look Back

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Today marks the funeral for Kim Jong-Il, the Supreme Exhalted Glorious Infallable Handsome leader of North Korea. According to his official biography, his birth in 1942 was foretold by a swallow and heralded by a double rainbow in the sky and the birth of a new star in the heavens. The Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s state run and obviously objective news service, reported that during his death “a fierce snowstorm paused and the sky glowed red above sacred Mount Paektu.”. Here’s some of the other highlights of his life according to KCNA news.

KCNA file photo of Kim Jong-Il, 2010


1950: Attended Hogwarts Academy and defeated Voldemort.

1954: Won the Korean war single handed at the age of 12. Decided to not tell the South Koreans out of a sense of humility.

1972: Beat the Harlem Globetrotters 120-0 (all dunks) in an exhibition game played on an active volcano.

1982: Scored 1,064,501 in Donkey Kong.

1990: Was given the nickname “Dear Father” by Korean media after he made all the women in North Korea pregnant.

2002: As part of his 60th birthday celebration, ate 7 saltines in one minute and washed it down with a gallon of milk in a half an hour. Had a tablespoon of cinnamon for dessert.

2005: While lecturing in Paris, is framed for murder and discovers through a series of convoluted clues in Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings, the location of the holy grail.

2011: Dies.



For more DPRK sanctioned information on Kim Jong-Il’s accomplishments, just go to chucknorrisfacts.com and replace “Chuck Norris” with “Kim Jong-Il”.

Happy Festivus and Holiday Greeting Butthurt

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Today, according to Wikipedia, is Festivus. Festivus was an “actual” holiday made up by the dad of one of the writers for Seinfeld. The actual Festivus and the Seinfeld one are pretty much in name only but let’s not let that stop us from erecting the Festivus pole, airing our grievances and wrestling on the floor. A Festivus for the rest of us but enough about that. Let’s talk about Christmas.


I celebrate Christmas. I really don’t consider myself a Christian (I consider myself a conscientious objector when it comes to religion) but most everybody in my family is Christian and I like presents and cookies so fuck it. Merry Christmas. Or happy holidays. Seasons greetings. Whatever.


It seems like I can’t win with some people on how I wish them a happy whatever (I’ve actually started using “happy whatever” as my holiday greeting). This stupid issue about people being offended over holiday greetings has gone on so long that it’s been satirized in fucking cellphone commercials

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73vcbde8Cb8?rel=0&w=420&h=315]

That was from four years ago and I still see news stories on Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays bullshit.


It really sucked when I worked in customer service. I was always encouraged to say “Happy Holidays” but would always offend a few old people (it’s always fucking old people) because I didn’t wish them a Merry Christmas. Here’s how the end of a typical conversation would go down.

ME: Thanks for calling whatever company I’m working for at the moment and Happy Holidays.
CUST: Happy Holidays? It’s Christmas! You know, you people used to be able to say “Merry Christmas” before you went all PC. Don’t you celebrate Christmas?
ME: Yes I do, sir.
CUST: Then why don’t you say “Merry Christmas”?
ME: Well, I can’t be sure if you celebrate Christmas, sir (I actually had to have a meeting with my manager once because I responded by saying “you could be a Satanist for all I know”. Turns out you don’t get in less trouble if you piss off the customer in a funny way).


It goes both ways, too. I’ve offended non Christians by saying “Merry Christmas”. It’s a fucking zero sum game with you jackasses.


Here’s the deal. When I say “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Holidays”, “Merry Whatever” or “Hanukkah Mattata” (my personal invention. Trying to get it to catch on. Spread the word), I’m just trying to be nice. That’s all it is. Anybody giving whatever kind of holiday greeting is just trying to be nice and the people who are offended are all missing the fucking point. I’m just trying to be nice to you.


It’s alright, though. I’ve come up with a solution and anybody who has watched stand up comedy before knows that comedians always have the best solutions for social issues. The next time I offer any holiday greeting and somebody bitches at me because I didn’t offer their specific holiday greeting, I’m going to hug them.


No words. I’m just going to walk up and hug them super hard. Both arms. Not even the “guy hug” where you pat them on the back while you do it. Full on hug. Just gonna keep on hugging until I get a reaction. Sure, I’ll probably get a few people that shove me off and call me a fag or something but I’m guessing most people will be too thrown off by the surprise hug to react at first. After they realize what’s happening to them they’ll probably start crying. It takes a lot of hurt inside somebody to bristle at a stranger offering a nice greeting and once that all finally comes to the surface there’s gonna be tears. I’ll just hug them harder and say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” or “Hanukkah Mattata” (seriously I think Hanukkah Mattata could work. Please use it as often as possible).


I want you to do this, too. The next time you offer out a holiday greeting to a stranger and they get all pissy with you just hug them. I honestly feel like if everybody does this we can eradicate Holiday Greeting Butthurt in our lifetime. Then we can all get back to celebrating Kwanzaa in peace.