This is not how you Wednesday.

I decided to start my day off from work today in my favorite way ever—by waking up an hour earlier than usual, getting dressed, and driving 40 minutes to work for a mandatory 45-minute staff meeting. For extra fun, I followed that up by getting personally called out into the hall and bitched out for not dressing at least business casual for this meeting, which took place before we were even open, despite the precedent for not needing to do so that has been in place for my entire tenure there. Before I drove the 40 minutes back home, I stopped by the work room to grab a nice tasty cup of Folgers—totally the best part of waking up—upon which I promptly burned my tongue.

For lunch, I picked my wife up from work and took her across town to our usual lunch restaurant, to find that their heat was out. Since we didn't have time to go anywhere else, we stayed and enjoyed the cozy ambiance of not one, but two compact space heaters on this lovely 28-degree day. There's really nothing quite like paying to have lunch indoors in a coat and hat.

On the way back, we decided to stop and get some coffee to counteract the effects of mild hypothermia. "Hey, why don't we try that new place that we've heard great things about? It's right on the way," we said. "There's no way that we'll get there and find it surrounded by a chain-link fence because the entire mini-mall is slated for demolition. What are the odds that they're on hiatus until like August?" Fuck.

No matter—we just laughed it off and headed to an old favorite, also right on the way back. Things began to get even better when we found a rare open parking spot just off the square. So of course, as we got out of the car and I pressed the button to lock the doors, I was greeted by the sound of absolutely nothing at all happening, because Battery Light, Motherfucker!

At this point, as I was opening the hood to smack the battery (no, seriously, that's apparently what fixes it when this shit happens), my wife told me that I needed to just go home, lock the door, and not do anything, which is pretty much exactly what I've done because clearly I can't Wednesday.

"Fire!" isn't the only thing you can't shout in a crowded theater.

So, my wife and I went to see The Desolation of Smaug last weekend. Granted, it's been probably almost 15 years since I last read The Hobbit, but there were still quite a few things in the film that I just don't remember being in the book. Like Legolas. Or the incessant oh-my-Jesus-fuck-the-seemingly-awesome-magical-ring-is-actually-Sauron's-fucking-Horcrux foreshadowing. Or the guy who threatened to come back and kill everyone in the theater over an argument about whether or not he should shut off his motherfucking cell phone because the goddamn movie was starting and they'd already played at least two different "you will be asked to leave" warnings during the half hour of previews during which he certainly could have taken care of whatever the fuck it was that was more important than being considerate to the 200-300 other people who paid nearly as much per hour as my first job did to see the film.

I should have known something was up.

The other day I was watching Game of Thrones and eating some burritos before derby practice, and all of a sudden Sana jumped up on the table in front of me and started being aggressively affectionate—licking my face, giving me headbutts, and purring like crazy. She did this for like half an hour, until I finally had to move so I could get ready for practice.

When I went to put on my ankle brace, I discovered that she had thrown up on it. Recently. And then came and licked my face.

Thanks.

P.S. I also put this on a shirt so you can warn people in advance:

Aggressively Affectionate by causticsnark

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

In case you missed it, a couple weeks ago, the Texas state legislature almost passed the Barefoot Pregnant Women Act, but the bill died as the special session expired at midnight after a heroic filibuster by Senator Wendy Davis. The very next day, one of the biggest pricks in the history of ever the governor called another special session and told them to pass the exact same bill, which made it out of committee pretty quickly after the chairman cut off testimony and refused to recognize anyone opposing the bill, because democracy.

When the Butthurt Session began last Monday, thousands of people stood outside to register opinions and wait to testify. Those in favor of the bill wore blue, while those opposed wore orange:

It's like "Where's Waldo," except in this case, Waldo is actually a raging misogynistic dinosaur.

But wait—that shape looks awfully familiar:

"It's just the rebels, sir. They're here."
"My god, man! Do they want tea?"
"No, I think they're after something more than that. I don't know what it is, but they've brought a flag."

It's not exactly a stretch, given that, although something like 80% of the people in Texas don't want this bill to pass, protesters have been called "terrorists" and "an unruly mob," and the Governor himself said that "the louder they scream, the more we know we are getting something done." Why not just come right out and call them "rebel scum?" It's no more than you'd expect from people that essentially derive their mandate from an organization that was led by this guy:

"Your feeble filibusters are no match for the power of the Dark Side."

Anyway, it already passed the House earlier this week, so this afternoon the Senate will begin discussing Death Star HB 2. Since nearly three weeks remain in the special session, a filibuster is all but impossible, so it's unfortunately very likely to pass.

"There will be no one to stop us this time."

I'd like to think that a group of representatives who refuse to actually represent the people who elected them will eventually be thrown out of office, but even if that's true, what good will it be to all the women whose health—or lives—will be put at risk by this ignorant, misogynist, cock-driven farce of a pretense of giving a shit about women? It seriously makes me ashamed to have a penis.

What the Fuck Just Happened in Texas: TL;DR Edition.

You may have noticed that the interwebs have been blowing up over the past 24 hours or so with stuff about the Texas Senate and hashtags like #standwithwendy. Amidst all the tweeting and tumbling, I've noticed that there have been a few people who have no idea what's going on, probably because they couldn't seem to find anything about it on the news. I know that a lot of people don't have the time to wade through hundreds of posts on multiple sites  to piece together the whole story, so I've compiled a quick tl;dr guide to get you up to speed. You're welcome.

So, it basically started when Governor Dick Perry called a special legislative session and gave them last-minute instructions to pass an anti-abortion bill that would shut down all but five clinics in a state that's close to 800 miles across in both directions.

Here's what the bill looked like:

So Senator Wendy Davis announced that she intended to filibuster:

They told her that meant that she had to speak—without stopping—for 13 hours, and couldn't sit, lean, eat, take a drink of water, go to the bathroom, or stray from the topic:

She was eventually told to sit down after 11 hours because talking about sonograms (which are required to have an abortion in Texas) wasn't "germane to the discussion":

Every major news outlet while all this was happening:

Except CNN, who were all:

MUFFINS!

Then Senator Van De Putte called out the President of the Senate for ignoring parliamentary procedure and refusing to recognize her because he was trying to force the vote and didn't want to:

"At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over her male colleagues?"

The President impotently tried to quiet the cheering crowd after that burn:

But the entire gallery was like:

They tried to vote on it anyway:

The vote was too late to be legal, so they tried to change the journal to say it happened before midnight:

Just kidding. Those assholes aren't nearly cool enough to be the Doctor.

But the entire Internet already had screenshots:

So they had to concede:

The End.

P.S. I'm sorry for all of this.

The following is a true story. The names have not been changed. Fuck the innocent.

I promised a while ago that I'd tell the story about the time my friend and I were accused of running an actual mafia at school. This is that story. [Law & Order clang]

"Introduction"

It was probably 6 months after Columbine, in a school of about 330—that's K-12. If you've ever lived in a small town, you already understand that the primary form of entertainment is talking about other people because there's shit-all to do there. It's sort of like TMZ, but with people you've never heard of. Basically, what happened was that some asshat kid said something to his girlfriend about my friend and I being "crazy," and "like those Columbine kids." She told her mom, who worked at the elementary school. Her mom then told the high school counselor, who told EVERYONE HE ENCOUNTERED. Seriously, this douchecanoe ran around like some asshat Chicken Little warning everybody about the Richland Mafia, because two 17-year-olds in rural North Dakota (yes, that is redundant) somehow constitute an organized crime family.

"Because of reasons"

The whole thing somehow blew up into this grandiose story about how the two of us were plotting to show up with an arsenal and carry out a hit on...well, everybody, apparently. Nobody actually talked to us about it, but suddenly all but maybe three of the teachers were adding their own observations to the heap of bullshit collection of totally credible evidence, such as:

Exhibit A: "They dress in black a lot."
This was actually half true. My friend dressed in black a lot. I dressed in white a lot. This was mainly because my friend owned a lot of black shirts, and I owned a lot of white ones. I also dressed in orange fairly frequently, which was mainly because no one had ever explained to me that the fact that you really like a color does not necessarily mean that you should wear it. Ever.

As long as you're wearing bright, cheery colors, the world is a playground of fucking happiness.

Wearing black makes you summon Satan to shoot drugs up your asshole and murder everyone forever.

Exhibit 2: "They write in 'gang symbols.'"
If "gang symbols" means "anything other than the Latin alphabet," then this is true. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of douchenozzles running around inciting moral panic because they don't know that there are other languages, but the TV told them about these "gangs" in big cities where you have to kill people just to get in, and they identify themselves by writing weird. Actually, we were both very into language, and experimented a lot with creating languages and alphabets, which is exactly the kind of thing you do before you go out and murder everyone. By that logic, Tolkien was the fucking Godfather.

Yes, I know it's actually called "Quenya." You're missing the point.

Exhibit The Third: "They're not in any sports."

Anymore. We were in all the sports, but we were never popular enough to be given any playing time, so we said "fuck this shit" and quit wasting our time. Instead, we joined other activities where our talents would be appreciated. [Note: in small towns, this is how team tryouts work: years before you are born, when your parents are still in high school, everyone is divided into cliques. They all finish or quit school, move nowhere, and start having babies who, to save time, are divided into the same cliques. If you're in the popular clique, you get to be on the team and actually play.]

Exhibit Fuck You: "They get bullied, just like those Columbine kids."
Who the actual fuck looks at this situation and goes: "Wow, quite a few of our students are inexcusable pricks. We'd better consider suspending the people they're bullying in order to protect their God-given right to be assholes."?

Exhibit I Don't I Can't Even: "They locked everyone in the computer lab, turned out all the lights, and walked from person to person pointing a gun at everybody's heads, apparently as some kind of 'preview' of what they were planning to do later."
OK, so this one actually sounds pretty fucking serious because of the locking people in a room and, y'know, the bringing fucking weaponry into the school. Except that a) that room only locked from the outside, b) neither of us even owned a fucking gun of any kind, much less brought them to school and pointed them at people, c) what kind of fucking moron brings a gun to school and points it at people in order to tell them that they're planning to bring a gun to school and point it at people sometime in the future, and d) of the probably twelve or so people who were actually present at the time this allegedly occurred, not fucking one of them had the slightest clue what the hell anyone was talking about when asked about it later on.

Fortunately for us, the principal was not an asshat, douchenozzle, or any other form of dumb motherfucker. He had actually lent me his book on Norwegian runes after seeing some similarities in my invented scripts, so he was disinclined to acquiesce to anybody's request to suspend us for no fucking reason. Apparently, he believed that students maintain some level of actual rights at school. Pretty much, he asked us one time, for the sake of ritual, if any of this was remotely true. We, of course, said "no." He replied (paraphrased): "no shit." Then he told us that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to be seen wearing a trenchcoat to school any time soon, and let us go.

"Aftermath" (You can insert a curriculum-based pun here if you want)

During the course of this ridiculous drama, my mom (who worked at the school at the time) of course asked me what the hell this was all about and why somebody would just make up some story like this. When she saw how close I was to an aneurysm of confusion, she also called several of the people who were there at the time. When they had the exact same reaction, she wrote an open letter to the entire staff, which basically said "what the actual fuck is wrong with all of you? You owe my son and his friend a huge fucking apology."

I never got one. The closest thing I got was the day the counselor walked into my study hall on a day where I happened to be the only student in the room. He sat down backwards in the desk in front of me and started spouting some bullshit about responsibilities and safety or something. I'm not actually sure, because I wasn't fucking listening. I didn't even look at him; I just waited until he stopped talking, then waited a couple more minutes until I could tell he was getting really uncomfortable that I hadn't kissed his ass and forgiven everything yet. Then I just said "are we done here? I'm kind of busy," and he got up and left. I'm pretty sure I never talked to him again.

That's pretty much the end of the story. I don't know if there's a moral or anything. I think this is the part where the screen just fades to "DICK WOLF," and you have to decide for yourself what the fuck it all means. The best I've got is that some people are assholes, so fuck 'em. Leave. Do awesome shit. Don't look back, until it somehow comes up that you were once accused of running a mafia, and everybody in the room is like "you have to tell that story!"

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

Some days are just assholes. By the time you get out of bed, they've already been awake for hours, coming up with ways to be a dick to you. Especially Thursdays. It's like their entire purpose is to make goddamn sure you don't take Friday for granted. Last Thursday was one of them. It started out like every other day, with the strident noises at ass o'clock in the morning.

Every. Fucking. Day.

Then some boring shit happened. I took a shower and got dressed. While I was doing that, apparently Thursday went to hide in the kitchen and waited to jump out and punch me in the face.

The last thing I usually do before leaving for work is put out some food for the feral cat colony we inherited when we moved into our house. Our own cats are obsessed with the food that we give to the ferals, but one of them can't eat it because she has a "sensitive stomach," so she can only handle Science Diet Food For Cats With Expensive-Ass Digestive Conditions. The other one will try to eat literally anything she can get into her mouth (seriously, anything—even shit like cardboard). They had already managed to tear a hole in the bag by reaching under the laundry room door. When I went to carefully pick up the bag so it wouldn't spill, the Gobbler jumped up and tore the hole wide the fuck open.

It wasn't actually the Russian
Blue that tore the bag, but I can't
fucking draw the caliby. It was
totally a team effort anyway.

Then, while I was distracted by the Purina version of Exxon Valdez (for those of you under 30, that was Deepwater Horizon, but with a boat), my lunch went into stealth mode, or maybe it found an invisibility cloak. I don't know, but I totally forgot to grab it before going into White Rabbit Mode and running out the door shouting "I'm late!" to no one in particular.

In all fairness, it may have just been hiding from the Vader spatula.

Of course, I didn't realize it until I was almost all the way to work, so there was nothing I could do about it except hope that it hadn't gone bad by the time my wife went home for lunch.

Yes, my seatbelt is actually wider than my body. Safety first, motherfucker.

And then when I got to work, I was all pissed about forgetting my lunch, so I forgot to grab my keys and badge and had to go all the way back up to the third level of the parking garage to get them. When I finally got into the building, there were notes plastered all over the place that said that IT had done some kind of upgrade the night before and now basically nothing worked.

The note basically said "here are all the things that aren't
working today. It actually listed "Etc." as a bullet point.
Then it listed one or two more things after that, because
they don't know what "etc." means. Or "upgrade," apparently.

For some unfathomable reason, we still opened. After that, I spent pretty much the entire rest of the day pretending to be Scotty from Star Trek. Every time someone asked me for something, I was all "Ah cannae do that, Captain!" It probably helped that I was also wearing this button:

I'm not entirely certain whose reflection that is on the left, but
my money's on either the Grim Reaper or Emperor Palpatine.

It was even better since our catalog is actually called Enterprise, but probably you don't care because you don't work here. If you did, you wouldn't be reading this right now because you'd be too busy dealing with whatever asinine bullshit this Thursday was trying to pull.

Seriously, fuck Thursdays.

How to Read a Book (Without Being a Douchecanoe): A Primer.

The other day, I was telling a coworker how I had to make some "How to Read a Book" flowcharts, and she was all "What? Do you need one of those?" because apparently that's not a normal thing that people say, ever, so then I had to explain that it's for Banned Books Week, which is an annual reminder of the fact that there are some people who are so bad at reading books that when they're finished, nobody else is even allowed to read them anymore, and then after that, I had to come here and write one gigantic run-on sentence about the whole thing because I apparently have some kind of vendetta against proper punctuation today. Also, for those of you who aren't good with context clues, it's Banned Books Week, so I'm going to continue to subject you to librarian rants about intellectual freedom and not being a dick to everybody else just because you don't like something. I warned promised you yesterday that this was coming, and here it is. You should be impressed.

How to Read a Book (Without Being a Douchecanoe)

Part One: What to Do if You Read a Book You Don't Like

At some point in your life, you're probably going to encounter one of the following:

• A bound volume of pages containing printed text and images
• An electronic simulation of the aforementioned type of volume
• A sound recording of someone reading text from such a volume

These–along with other formats that create a similar user experience–are what we call books. This chart will help guide you through the process of interacting with them without fucking over the rest of society in the process:

If you can't read this, click to make it bigger. If you can't read it because you're illiterate,it probably doesn't apply to you anyway.

Part Two: Help! My Child Is Reading!

If you were here yesterday, you already know that half the time this bullshit happens, it's not even someone who actually read the book; it's because their kid read the book, and they just heard that there was something bad in it. Then, because they're arrogant dickwagons who think their parenting skills are infuckingfallible they care about the children, they decide that nobody should be allowed to read it, anywhere, ever, so they go on an asshat crusade to remove it from any place they can find it. Guess what? Not everyone shares your values. This chart will teach you how to instill them in your own children without being a dick about it to everybody else.

PROTIP: If you land in the red box, a good way to celebrate is by buying every copy you
can find of the book at full retail price and having a huge book bonfire on an actual yacht.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And also ideas that we don't like. And albatrosses.

So, it's Banned Books Week, which means Librarian Rant, Motherfuckers!

Part One: Some Boring Statistics and Shit

First of all, there are probably quite a few people going "What? Ban books? This is America! Who the fuck does that shit anymore?"

Parents, mostly. Out of all the books that are ever challenged (read: bitched about in an attempt to ruin it for everybody), about half the time, it's parents who go "I don't want little Jimmy-Sue reading that; it's not wholesome!" Probably, they've never actually read the book themselves, but they heard it had a bad word in it or something. Then a bunch of other parents who haven't read it jump in and they form some kind of pitchfork mob and go storming into the next school board meeting demanding that the school board gets rid of the book, which probably they do. It never occurs to anybody to actually read the fucking thing, except maybe for the one part that somebody complained about, entirely out of context.

This is what happens roughly two-thirds of the time. Another quarter of the time, it's in a public library rather than a school, and they go to the local news rather than the school board, so that everybody can get all worked up over how those damn godless liberals are trying to corrupt the children with their books.

Part Two: "You can't read that! I don't like it!"

This is essentially the same as trying to get a McDonald's shut down because you're on a diet. Nobody forced you to go there, asshole.

Hey, let's all be afraid of ideas, because we wouldn't want to expose ourselves or our children to situations where they might have to fucking think! Also, let's ban mentioning anything unpleasant because knowing that something exists basically guarantees that you're immediately going to go and do it. This is why the media only ever report positive, life-affirming stories, and avoid topics like murder and armed robbery and war.

Here's an idea: parent, for fuck's sake. (Just your own kids, though—don't try to force your prudish bullshit values on everybody else.)

Part Three: Because of Reasons

There is a whole list of reasons why people try to get books banned. Usually, the actual content gets lumped under some generic term that does a shitty job of describing what you're missing out on. Fortunately, I've translated them for you so you can understand what's actually going on. You're welcome.

The top three reasons account for about half of all the books that get banned. I've listed them in order:

Sexually Explicit: The book acknowledges in any way that sex not only exists, but is something that people a) actually enjoy, and b) can do without a legally-binding contract. (cf. Sex Education)

Offensive Language means that one or more of the characters speaks a language other than English. (OK, that's not true. Actually, it means that the book contains certain combinations of syllables referring to parts or functions of the body which, when uttered or printed on a page, summon Satan to rip out your soul and defecate in the resultant void.)

Unsuited to Age Group: Occasionally, this means that somebody found a copy of the Kama Sutra in an elementary school's library. Usually, though, it means that the book's subject matter undermines parents' efforts to prevent their children from growing up by keeping them as innocent and oblivious as a six-year-old.

The rest I've done alphabetically. They are:

Abortion means that a character has or considers one, with little or no damnation as a consequence.

Anti-Family: 1) One or more of the characters in the book calls his or her parent on some kind of bullshit like abandoning all responsibility and forcing their children to take care of basically everything; 2) The book implies that a family can be defined as anything other than the "traditional" model of two heterosexual parents who were married in a church before ever having sex, and their legitimate offspring.

Homosexuality means that gay characters are referred to by names like "Jim" or "Steve," rather than "faggot," and are depicted doing normal-people things like going to work, rather than dying of AIDS and burning in Hell for all eternity.

Inaccurate means "I don't like what you wrote about me, even if it's true."

Nudity means that—you know what? I don't know what the fuck they mean by nudity. Maybe it mentions that somebody is naked in the book? Or describes body parts? How the fuck do you have nudity in print? Like an ASCII penis? This may be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of.

The Occult, or Satanism: This means that either one of the characters is an atheist, or that somebody performs some kind of magic without explicitly invoking the name of Jesus.

Political Viewpoint means "not mine."

Racism denotes that the book depicts white people behaving in a racist manner. This is offensive because racism totally doesn't exist anymore, and mentioning it might inadvertently summon it back again (sort of like Beetlejuice or Bloody Mary), which would force white people–even the ones who have black friends–to prove that they're not racist.

Sex Education means that the book explains to anyone under the age of 30 that babies are not actually dumped down your chimney by a mystical love albatross, but instead come from having sex. It may or may not also explain that there are means to prevent this from happening other than eternal celibacy.

Suicide means that a character ends his or her own life, and that the rest of the book does not depict their eternal torment in the seventh circle of Dante's Inferno, but rather shows the other characters attempting to deal with the aftermath of the suicide.

Violence actually does just mean violence. It's the same shit they show all over TV, but more dangerous in print because reading actually engages the parts of your brain responsible for imagination, while TV encourages your brain to shut down; therefore, reading about violence makes people more likely to commit violence.

So that's censorship, to the best of my understanding. Come back tomorrow and I'll bitch about it some more teach you how not to be a dick to everybody else just because you read something you didn't like.

The system is down, yo.

So, I'm about a million years (read: a couple weeks) behind on all the shit that's happened that I've been meaning to write about. I could tell you why, but you'd probably be disappointed, so just imagine that something really awesome happened, but it's somehow top secret because of reasons, so I can't tell you anything about it, ever. In fact, let's assume that's the case every time I get too busy/lazy/depressed to write for a while. It's better for everyone that way.

Anyway, last November, HTC rolled out a Ridiculously Important System Update Meant To Fix Shit That's Totally Broken For Real, That We Promise Won't Actually Just Fuck Up Everything About Your Phone for the Incredible. Yes, the Incredible One. Shut up.

You'll probably remember how, after I finally had to force the update to actually install, it didn't fix anything, and actually did fuck up my phone badly enough that I had to do a factory reset on the fucker.

Well, guess what came out relatively recently...ish? June, maybe? um, before today? RISUMTFSTTBFR,TWPWAJFUEAYP for the Incredible TWO! (Update two, not the Incredible Two.) Like the last update, it's so full of awesome that you'll have to do a bunch of secret hacker shit to even get it to install in the first place! But RISUMTFSTTBFR,TWPWAJFUEAYPFTI2(U2,NI2) is better than the first one, because it's newer!

I was super-excited that there was a new update, because my phone is an unholy pile of fail was having some minor performance issues. Like how roughly 60% of the time I tried to call my wife, it wouldn't actually bother to place the call, just fake it for a little bit and send me to voicemail. It would proceed to do this the next six times I called, until my GAD took over and could not be convinced she was not dead in a ditch somewhere until a) I finally got home and actually saw her, or b) my phone decided to stop being a douchewagon and put my fucking call through. Or how I would get a text from her and try to reply, but it would say "Invalid Destination Address, Asshat" and refuse to send anything.

After a few weeks of wankery in which I would tell my phone to install the fucking update, then watch as it counted down from 10 and did nothing, I finally broke down and forced it to install. Here's what the update changed:

• Caused the phone to freeze every 5-10 minutes.
• Deleted all the apps, except the pre-loaded bullshit that is apparently so permanently encoded on the fucker that even it can't get rid of them.
• Disconnected my Google account.
• It would allow me to re-download the apps it deleted; however, it wouldn't actually run the motherfuckers.
• After re-downloading apps, a notification would pop up saying that an app that it supposedly couldn't fucking run anyway had encountered an error and needed to close. It then refused to close the app, waited two minutes, and repeated the whole goddamn cycle.
• It couldn't find the SD card. Again. Or still. I don't even fucking know anymore.
• It no longer did the cool weather animations, which may have been the only pre-loaded feature I actually liked.

But it did add an "App Associations" option to the Settings menu so I could change the default app to use for certain actions. Of course, it couldn't fucking run anything but the pre-loaded shit, but it was at least nice to know I could pretend to have options.

Oh, and my favorite thing of all: every time I restarted the phone due to the freezing and other assorted fuckery, it gave me this popup that said "UIDs on the system are inconsistent, you need to wipe your data partition or your device will be unstable." Instead of an option that said "OK" or "Then Show Me How To Fucking Do It, You Prick," my only choice was a button that said "I'm Feeling Lucky."

"Your system UIDs are inconsistent, punk."

After the hard reset:

• It can't find anything on the SD card from before the previous hard reset.
• It can't find anything on the SD card or its own internal storage from after the latest hard reset.
• Eight out of ten times I look at it, it's collecting "anonymous location data" because of reasons. If I turn this off, I can't use the weather app, and the map app does this.

I'll give it one thing, though—it's definitely incredible.

ASSHAT.

Dear Facebook:

You are an asshat. In fact, having attained Asshat Level 9, you have cracked into the Hipsters-Would-Loudly-Sigh-And-Recall-Your-Early-Days-If-They-Weren't-All-Still-Using-Myspace Tier of Social Media Asshattery. Roughly 80% of your interface is a failure pile of shit I don't want, but can't move, hide, or otherwise get rid of. I get that you can't control what other people post, so there will always be some amount of wankery, but for the love of God, please just give me the option to add myself to some kind of "No Wankery" list for all of the following bullshit:

Ask a Question: I thought that this was just a dipshit fad to go along with "hit 'share' if you agree/remember/are an asshat," but apparently it's a Real Fucking Thing. There's only one question that needs to be here: "Who gives a shit?" And only one answer to choose: "Not me." Please change this into a button that borks your entire computer.

A Million Fucking Ads: This is a whole pile of bullshit I don't care about. Over the course of several years, you've managed to show me a grand total of one fucking thing I actually cared about, and then I couldn't even go, so even that kind of makes you an asshole. Every time you show me one of these, I mark it as offensive.

Ad Manager: I don't have any fucking ads. I don't want any fucking ads. But apparently I need a fucking ad manager to remind me that I could always change my mind and choose to give you a pile of money to irritate other people with all my shit that they don't fucking care about.

Apps and Games: Apparently it was somewhat misleading when the only option that appeared when you clicked "remove" was "add to favorites," so I guess you changed that to "edit," but somehow "add to favorites" is still the only thing I can do. It's incredibly important and convenient to me that I be given no option other than to make something that I don't want to see in the first place even more visible.

Fucking App Requests: I've blocked literally 200 different fucking apps and games I've gotten requests for. What in the name of fuck makes you think I want this here?

Pokes: Seriously, why the fuck does this still exist? Fuck this forever.

Stalker Timeline: I thought the regular timeline was supposed to be a feed of all the shit my friends were doing. Apparently I also need a separate feed so I can follow Every. Single. Click. It's like the asshole who gets Twitter and posts about literally everything they do, from washing the dishes to taking a shit. NO ONE FUCKING CARES. At least I can hide this bullshit.

Top Stories vs. Most Recent: Who the fuck are you to decide what's most important to me? Why is it all stupid shit like "I put something in the microwave for dinner" that goes to the top of this list? For all the personal information you collect about everybody, you don't seem to know shit about what any of us actually care about.

Trending Videos/Articles: First of all, fuck you and every news site that forces me to "like" an article in order to read past the jump. This is an unholy cross between journalistic whoring and chain statuses. It's like a Ponzi scheme, but for news. Secondly, you tell me every fucking time somebody I know reads an article or watches a video. Why in the name of fuck would I need you to also tell me that a lot of people had read that article or watch that video? This is the online equivalent of someone saying "oh, wow, you're really sunburned!" And then slapping it.

Asshat Level: 9

Dear Twitter:

You're only a little bit of an asshat. Your Asshat Level is just 3—a mere third of the colossal wankery Facebook is putting up. It's like you're not even trying. Here's what you have managed:

Promoted Trends: If you have to pay to get it on there, it's not fucking trending; it's a goddamn commercial. It's like if my friends and I just saw The Avengers, and we're all talking about it, and then all of a sudden one of us screams "KOTEX!" for no fucking reason. Actually, no, because that would be hilarious. It's like if we were all talking about The Avengers, and then one of us tried to sell everybody else car insurance.

Promoted Tweets: Same fucking thing. This is the same kind of dickery you find scrawled inside bathroom stalls, except it's like you kicked in the door to my house and spray-painted "← FAG" next to a picture of me, and then when I called the police, they just said "well, you can either clean it off, if you're sure that's what you want to do, or you can take a picture and share it with all your friends!" Fuck that. I want you to make it fucking stop. Now.

Who to Follow: "Remember that one time when it was 107° out and you said "seriously, fuck this heat?" Well LeBron James plays for the Miami Heat, and we think you would totally give a shit about whatever asinine bullshit he has to say. Also, a friend of a friend of a friend is following one of their friends, so we're sure you care about that, too. Also, Kevin Bacon." Stop telling me what to do, you presumptuous prick.

Asshat Level: 3

Give a man food poisoning with a fish, and maybe he'll stop coming to your restaurant. Or die.

This actually fucking happened last week, and I had to write about it because it's still not legal to punch a stranger in the face, no matter how much of a fucking cockbite douchecanoe he is writing is good therapy.

So, this 50-something in an Army hat comes up to me looking like a reject from the Clive Cussler collection. Seriously, he had the floral shirt, the shorts, and the tall white socks. If he'd just had a lei, he could have been in Hawai'i (you can fill in your own joke here if you want). Immediately, my blood pressure rockets up to a million over fuck-you because I've dealt with this fucktard on several previous occasions. Let's review:

Sometime in January When I Wasn't Writing Much Because of Reasons:
Captain Asshat comes up to me and demands that I find something for him because the catalog is stupid. [Spoiler Alert: It's not the catalog.] Dipshit me decides I'll show him how to use it! Teach a man to fish and all that empowerment shit. When I get over to the catalog with him, I discover that he's stretched the mouse all the way across the keyboard to the left side, and stands at about a 60° angle to the screen while typing with one finger of his right hand. I immediately begin to regret my decision.

Still, I've apparently got some kind of obligation to try, so I start explaining how you have to use the little letter buttons to make words that tell the machine what you're looking for. Except I use my superhuman capacity for restraint to do it without being condescending. At first. I type in the author he's looking for and click 'Search.' Miracle of miracles, it brings back all the books by that author!

Corporal Cockbite: But I want audiobooks.
Me: OK, just click at the left where it says 'Audiobooks.'
CC: I have to do this every time? Every time I want something I have to do this?
Me: Well, if you want to search by a specific format, you can just click 'Advanced Search' and—
CC: No, you can do that. I can't do that.
My internal monologue: Then you, sir, are an idiot.
Me: pokerface.jpg

Eventually, I find him a couple things he's interested in (side note: they're not audiobooks) that don't happen to be checked out at the moment, and I begin seriously hoping he's capable of finding them on his own because even superpowers have limits, and I think I've just found mine. [Another spoiler: he's so not.]

Lieutenant Douchetard: How the hell am I supposed to know where this is?
Me: Well, you have to read. Right there, where it says 'first floor.' That means it's on the first floor.
LD: This is so stupid.

Then he proceeds to bitch at me for a while about how there's got to be an easier way, and probably some other stuff, but I've stopped listening because I'm wishing we still had an actual card catalog that I could make him dig through because, y'know, computers are hard.

No, seriously. Shut the fuck up.

Late April, Maybe:
Major Asshole shows up again. He's found a book he wants, and he knows it's on the fourth floor, which makes me feel sorry for whoever was working on the first floor about ten minutes earlier. He walks over to where he wants the book to be and doesn't see it after five whole seconds of looking, so he demands that I show him where we've hidden it. I look it up in the catalog and discover that it's a made-up story involving real people who actually lived in the past, and I tell him it's in Historical Fiction.

Private Wanker: Why the hell do you do that?
Me: Quoi?
PW: Why do you put the books all over the place like that?
Me: You mean in different genres?
PW: I mean you should put all the books by one author together. This is stupid.
Me: Most of our patrons like to read in a specific genre, and this makes it easier to find them.
PW: No, it's stupid. You've got one book in Mystery, and another in Historical Fiction. If he wrote a romance, would I have to go all the way over there?
Me: No, because you're standing right next to Romance. But yes, if he wrote a romance, we'd put it in the Romance section. Assuming it hadn't caused the universe to collapse.
PW: That's stupid.

Then he decided he didn't want the book because he didn't want to have to walk all the way over to the Historical Fiction section to get it. Instead, he walked DIRECTLY FUCKING PAST IT ANYWAY JUST TO GET TO THE ELEVATOR SO HE COULD LEAVE WITHOUT THE BOOK.

Last Friday:
This is where you came in. General Fuckhead literally throws a scrap of paper with a title written on it down on the desk and says "I'm looking for this book and I can't find it." It's in Historical Fiction again. He just came from Mystery. I don't even wait for him to follow me or start bitching, I just go to the shelf and grab it. When he finally decides to walk over, he sees that it's a mass-market paperback size, so he goes "I don't want that crap, I want a book." It shouldn't surprise me that he doesn't recognize one.

Ce n'est pas un livre.

Then we have the exact same...er...conversation we had a couple weeks ago, plus this:

Sergeant—You know what? Fuck it: None of you people understand this. You know what I think it is? It's a make-work project for librarians so you can have a job.
My inner Sith: I find your lack of faith disturbing. forcechoke.exe
Me: Oh, I'd love to let you talk to our director about that.
SYKWFI: No, I don't want [grumble grumble]. It's like talking to a deaf wall.

This is a deaf wall. Or, as most people call it, a wall.

This is not a deaf wall. If the walls in your house look like this,
FUCKING MOVE before you start getting messages written in blood.

Of course, he walks off still bitching to the air about how stupid everything is. The complete inability to do anything for himself kind of makes me wonder how he ever survived in the military. At least without getting fragged.

See Also: The woman who bitched about how we're sure putting her tax dollars to good use because we were closed on A FUCKING FEDERAL HOLIDAY.

As long as "your way" happens to match our whims at the moment.

So, I went to [REDACTED] for lunch today because it's the only so-called "fast food" place that offers a veggie burger. During the 10 or 15 minutes I was waiting in the drive-thru, apparently Lewisville Lake exploded and came firing through town sideways, aimed mainly at my driver's side window, which added an extra element of fun to this conversation:

Failburger: What would you like today?
Me: Veggie burger combo and a Coke without ice, please.
FB: Do you want cheese?
Me: Yes. And mustard. But no mayo or tomatoes.
FB: Veggie burger with cheese and mustard. No mayo or tomatoes. What kind of drink do you want?
Me: Medium Coke, no ice.
FB: Did you want a drink?
Me: Yes, a medium Coke, no ice.
FB: Medium Coke?
Me: Yes. No ice.
FB: OK, I totally got that.
[About 8 minutes later, when I finally get up to the window]
FB: Here's your Coke.
Me: All your ice are be in my drink.
FB: Yeah, I heard you say "ice" like six times, so I figured you probably wanted a lot of it. I could get you another drink, but somehow it would take like five minutes because I'm the only one working in the whole store at 12:30.

Also, I discovered that "what would you like today?" was just some kind of small talk, or maybe a survey. It apparently had no bearing on what I was actually going to get. I asked at the window:

Me: You got the no mayo or tomatoes, right? And the add cheese and mustard?
FB: Yes.
FB: bitchglare.jpg
Me, checking it anyway: Um, actually, you got the exact opposite of that. But at least you took 15 minutes to do it, so now I don't have time to wait for you to fix it.

It's sort of like when your parents take you to the mall to see Santa, and you tell him everything you want, but they've already bought all your presents, so the only way you actually get what you asked for is if it happens to be among the stuff hiding in their bedroom closet.

"I want a veggie burger with cheese and mustard, no mayo, and no tomatoes."
"You'll shoot your eye out!"

We don't like to call it a "timeshare"; we prefer "vacation ownership."

Last Christmas, my wife and I put our names in one of those "you-could-totally-win-stuff-if-you-just-give-us-more-personal-information-than-you're-comfortable-with-and-let-us-harass-you-about-super-special-deals-until-the-zombie-apocalypse-happens-but-actually-even-after-that-because-then-a-zombie-shambles-up-to-your-door-and-instead-of-being-all-'bra-a-a-a-ains'-it's-like-'de-e-e-e-als'" things because we're fucking stupid why not? (Just keep reading; I'll answer that. Also, that's way too damn many hyphens.) Anyway, after that, we pretty much forgot about it, which probably would have been the best possible ending for the story, but when you're the kind of person who gets picked up by the short bus while hitchhiking (no, seriously), that ending is never a real option anyway.

It should be a sign when you get a letter that tells you that you have to call a phone number that tells you that you have to drive to the Happy Dipshit Resort in fucking Flint, Texas and sit through a 90-minute presentation in order to claim your prize. It was, but we chose to ignore it because who doesn't want a free trip to Vegas? Us, ever again.

Chapter One: "Mistakes Were Made."

At first, it kind of sounds like fun: you pack some snacks and drinks and take a few-hour road trip. And at the end, FREE TRIP TO VEGAS! Since no one has ever been to Flint on purpose, I drew you a map:

On your way there, you will pass:

• A rather seriously misnamed "mobile home" on blocks, with about 15 equally immobile cars in the yard.
• A restaurant called Maggie's with a sign out front that says "COED." (Don't try to tell me East Texas isn't progressive.)
• Some cows and trees, spaced very far apart.

Trust me, all this will come in useful later when you suggest that there's nothing to do in Satan's Asshole Flint, and your Vacation Ownership Representative gets all pissy and spits back "do you even know this area?" Yes, we drove through THREE FUCKING HOURS of it on the way here.

Immediately upon entering the building, two things become apparent to us:

1. This "resort" is exclusively for people who will never be invited to a country club.
2. We have made a huge fucking mistake in coming here.

There are screaming children all. The fuck. Over. We find the area that seems to have to fewest unsupervised banshee spawn and sit down by a table, except it's not actually a real table; it's a carpeted checkerboard with legs. A child comes running up, pushes past me, jumps one piece all around the board, then runs off again. In one corner of the room, there is a TV that cost more than most of the people here make in a month playing America's Funniest Home Videos on an endless loop. THE BOB SAGET VERSION. Next to me is Jake from Evil Dead II. Across the checkerboard from us is a skinny, bearded old man who looks like he would be more comfortable playing a banjo shirtless on the front porch. It's like a Cracker Barrel threw up in here. Jake asks me if we got VIP tickets, as though this were not asshat wankery, but a real thing that conferred some type of privileged status. This is most people's version of hell.

Forty-five minutes after being told we'd be going in right away, we're sitting in the Bullshit Lounge waiting for our Vacation Ownership Representative to show up so we can get this the fuck over with. We were expecting some Slick McDouche wearing a Rolex, so you can imagine our surprise when instead he turns out to be the self-proclaimed "best skateboarder in East Texas. No, seriously, just mention his name in Dallas and you'll see." What we'll actually see in a few minutes is that he should probably wear a helmet more often.

Chapter Two: "Something Witless This Way Comes."

Roughly the first ten minutes of our 90-minute* presentation involved rolling up every socially awkward sitcom character in television history into some kind of Mega Wank with logorrhea and a tenuous grasp of geography, and allowing him to ramble endlessly in the kind of way that would have given Miss Manners a seizure. The proper response to finding out that someone you're talking to has lost the relative you just asked about—no matter how far in the past—is to feel slightly embarrassed and say "I'm so sorry for your loss." Somewhat less acceptable is pontificating for FIVE FUCKING MINUTES on the deeper meaning of death. Seriously, he would not. Stop. Talking. About it. Twice we thought he was done, but then he started up again on some new tangent about "a better place," or some other clichéd bullshit. Then he asked us about past vacations and used some really sketchy match to show us how much money we would waste over the next 20 years. Also, he asked us where the Mediterranean was. "Um, it's between Europe and Africa. Unless we're playing Carmen Sandiego. Then it could be anywhere."

*Individual experience may vary.

A skeptical Jake appears!

Timeshare Salesman uses SKETCHY MATH!

Other things you don't do when you're trying to sell someone something (sadly, an abridged list):

• Use the phrase "man cave." Especially when describing the bathroom, and in conjunction with the phrase "do some paperwork."
• Proceed to shut your prospective customers in said bathroom together, then jump out from behind a wall with the "Surprise!" face and jazz hands when they come out.
• Use any of the following words or phrases: "jizz," "shitting bricks," "fuck."
• Smell like pot. Or try to blame it on the maintenance staff.
• Get defensive and try to argue with your prospective customer about how much they'll enjoy whatever the hell it is you're selling.
• Fuck around for so long that you take FOUR FUCKING HOURS to get through a 90-minute presentation, especially when another salesperson laps you more than once.

I tried to keep an open mind. I really did...ish. Unfortunately, even my patience runs out after the first couple of hours, so I just gave up and started fucking with him.

After making us list "five places you absolutely want to go sometime" for about the sixth time:
VOR: "Are you ready for this?" [He opens the door onto a tiny patio.] "Behold, your view of the beach in Fiji!" [It's a fucking parking lot.]
Me: "You've got a lot of cars parked in your ocean. All that salt water can't be good for them."

While showing us the camping area:
VOR: "You can even stay in a Lincoln log cabin!"
Me: "Is it made of real Lincoln Logs?"
VOR: "It's a Lincoln log cabin."

Chapter Three: "You Will Deny Me Three Times."

Finally, we return to the Bullshit Lounge for the coup de grâce (we fucking hope)—twenty more minutes about some three-letter company whose name I can't remember because my brain had actually shut off at this point, but which represents THE ULTIMATE INTERNATIONAL VACATION OWNERSHIP EXCHANGE PROGRAM! He flips through his encyclopedia of resorts, apparently intent on showing us every single one of the 5000 fucking places in the world we could stay for just $199 a month (not including meals or airfare) and circles his sketchy math a few more times, conclusively proving how fantastic it is. Meanwhile, my wife has turned into a Salvador Dalí painting on my shoulder. I actually say "yeah, circles don't impress me all that much." And anyway, we all know the steps to this particular dance.

1. Skate or Die makes us a terrible offer, in the hopes that we're absolute fucktards who actually bought any of the bullshit he just fed us interested. We're not.
2. He calls his "supervisor" over to see if she can offer us a better deal because she "has more authority to make a deal" than he does. She turns out to be a reanimated version of my Grandma Leone, with Flo-Jo nails. She tells me I have a "good Bible name" and makes an offer that cuts out about 75% of the "benefits" and about 15% of the price, and we suggest 5000 places she can stick it.
3. Zombie Grandma Flo-Jo sighs at us and goes to have a cigarette talk to her supervisor to see if she can get us an EVEN BETTER deal, which is "really not very likely," but "it can't hurt to try." Meanwhile, Stoney Hawk asks "do you guys know what you just said no to?" Yes, in fact, we do, and it's not unlike syphilis.
4. Magically, all of the benefits are restored, and the price drops to half of the original offer. This is presumably meant to be a fucking steal, so I carefully look at all the numbers, count on my fingers while mumbling to myself, and say that I think it sounds like a great deal. Then I look Grandma Pall Mall right in the eye and say "no" LIKE A MOTHERFUCKING CHAMP. Everyone walks away without even thanking us, and I tell Captain Cannabis "thanks for playing."
5. The Regional Supervisor, who is totally real and has nothing fucking better to do on an entire Saturday than frown at strangers who don't want syphilis, sends us to another building where we have to wait another hour  to be treated with full-on dickery for insisting that there will actually be room for both of us to come back to the prize room, even if one of us has to stand. Also, you can only take the free Vegas trip in the middle of the fucking week, in the hopes that you just won't go and then they won't have to pay for it.

Timeshare Salesman uses CIRCLES! It's not very effective.

But then, on the way home, we decided to stop at this tiny Mexican restaurant that had a little trouble with signs, but also gave out free margaritas on Saturdays. Apparently the moral of the story is that I will give away ten hours of my life for free booze and a trip to Las Vegas.

Good thing I brought my ASIA card.

FREE.
Also, I didn't have to wait four fucking hours
to find out I could only drink it on a Tuesday.

If you say "online resources" again, I will punch you in the throat.

Remember how, in ancient Greece, if you were an insufferable douche, the people could get together and vote you out of society, Survivor-style? It's time to adopt that again. For the good of society. Among the first ones to go: people who ask you for help because they don't have a clue what they're doing, then proceed to ignore everything you say and just do whatever the fuck they were doing before you got there. Imagine a world where I never have to have this conversation again:

Her: I'm trying to find out how to search your website to see if you have something.
Me: OK, you'll start, of course, by going to our website. [I give her the URL]
Her: OK
Me: You should see a link to the catalog in the upper right-hand corner.
Her: I see "hours," "online resources..." Should I just go to "online resources?"
Me: No, that's not the right page. Look above that and to the right. It should say "Go to Catalog."
Her: I don't have what you have. [I assume that by this she meant the ability to follow simple instructions instead of banging around on the keyboard like a monkey writing a draft of Hamlet] Should I just go to "online resources?"
Me: No. You should see a search bar up in the corner. Just above that is the link you're looking for.
Her: I see the search bar, but there's nothing above it. Here, I'll go to the next page. [She starts reading off every link she can see on the page]
Me: What? Next page? There is no next—I have no idea what page you're on.
Her: I'm on page 3...
Me: Page 3? What the f—did you just do a Google search for the website?
Her: Yes.
Me: picardfacepalm.jpg

Also on the list:

• Hipsters
• Anyone who makes a commercial with a talking baby.
• People who say "I'm computer illiterate (tee hee!)" like it's a point of pride. Especially when they actually mean "do everything for me."
• Every website with a flash intro that you can't skip or obnoxious background music that plays at 900 dB.
• Anybody who refers to a room in their house as a "man cave." The correct term is "penis parlor." Also, you're a douche.
• Hipsters (again).
• The person at our old apartment whose car alarm would go off for about three hours straight every Saturday morning.
• The Corn Refiners Association. (I'm not going to stop drinking soda, but seriously, stop calling high fructose corn syrup "natural." You're assholes, and it insults everyone's intelligence).
• I would have put that creepy-ass mascot from Burger King on here, but apparently that's already happened.

This is by no means everybody. Who's on your list?