Owner: Joel Klebanoff's Ramblings URL:http://www.joelklebanoff.com/joelsblog Join Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 18:14:37 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Random ramblings and humorous insights for people with way too much time on their hands, from Joel Klebanoff, the author of BYTE-ing Satire.
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Age State 2007-09-19 18:06:41 They say that age is just a state of mind. Unfortunately, I'm approaching the age when the state of my mind is inadequate to remember what they say, let alone process that information. Read more:State
Eating Floored 2007-10-03 21:27:02 Some people boast, "you can eat off my floors!" I don't get it. How did that get to be such a huge point of pride?You can eat off my floors too. I wouldn't recommend it because you'll likely become deathly ill as a result of the experience, but you can do it. The filth is not piled so high as to present a physical barrier to eating off my floors; at least, it's not an insurmountable physical barrier. And I won't try to stop you. Although, if I don't know you, I will charge you a hefty service charge should you feel some demented need to treat my floors as a restaurant.While we're on the topic, what kind of life are you leading if you're spending your days preparing your floors as a place setting for your guests? And, what kind of host does that make you? I'm not criticizing. I'm just asking.
Clear Sight 2007-09-30 07:43:07 My philosophy on household hygiene is, if you can't see it, it doesn't matter. That's why I always remove my glasses on those exceptionally rare occasions when I undertake a cleaning chore.I pity the poor souls cursed with good eyesight. How burdened their lives must be. Read more:Clear
, Sight
Gratuitous Naked Sex Talk 2007-10-20 20:36:46 We live in a perverted world. Some people who are experts in building Web sites that attract a lot of traffic from search engines will tell you that, if you really want to get search engines to send a lot of surfers your way, you should include in your Web pages text that people search for frequently. Sadly, this includes words and phrases such as porn, sex, hot sex, breasts, boobs, penis, naked, hot pictures and hot videos, not to mention XXX and other similar terms.What a sad commentary on contemporary culture that is. Don’t get me wrong; there is nothing wrong with a healthy interest in and appreciation of the naked human body and sex (between consenting adults, of course), but to include gratuitously terms like porn, sex, hot sex, breasts, boobs, penis, naked, hot pictures, hot videos and XXX in your Web pages when those terms have no relevance to your site's subject area is ludicrous. It is shameful that you can publish an exceptionally well-written, information-packed, int
Beating Anger 2007-11-02 13:43:29 One job I don't think I'd ever consider doing is anger management therapist. That's got to be an occupation where it would definitely be wise to make customer satisfaction job #1. "You aren't pleased with the results of your therapy to-date, Mr. Smith? Well, yes, of course you can get your money back. It would be my pleasure. If you'd like, I'll also sign my house, car and stock portfolio over to you. Now, please put down that baseball bat."I'd think that the best way to evaluate the job skills of an anger management therapist would be to count his or her bruises. Go with the one who has the fewest.And anger management group therapy? Who came up with that concept? Yeah, that's a really fine idea. Gather together a bunch of people with hairpin-trigger tempers — a few of whom may be world champion sociopaths, shove them all in the same room, charge them money to be there and close the door. Then again, it's probably a particularly effective population control tec
Shooting Dogs 2007-10-30 12:33:27 I just saw a news item about a guy in Iowa who went hunting and got shot in the leg at close range by his dog. Here's the scoop: The guy shot a bird, put his shotgun down and went to fetch his freshly killed bird. (I guess his dog doesn't do fetch.) The guy's dog stepped on the shotgun, pulling the trigger and shooting the hunter.Now there's a guy who should really think about getting a new best friend. Being a little more careful with guns wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
You Are Mine! 2007-11-07 20:02:12 I don't know why I hadn't done the arithmetic before now, but, after renting several days' worth of dedicated processing on a major university's supercomputer, I just finished calculating the sum of all of the earnings that I'm going to make off the surefire—only the surefire ones, mind you—stock tips that have landed in my email inbox. The total comes to more than the entire global money supply. So, despite it not having happened yet, I'm soon going to own you and all of your material wealth.Just to be clear, by "you" I mean everyone on the planet. And by "your material wealth" I mean not only your personally-owned possessions, but also those held by your governments, by the nonprofit organizations you support and by the companies you own privately or that you own shares in.I mention this as fair warning. Prepare yourselves because I plan to make some major demands of my subjects, or, should I say, my possessions.
Home Schooling 2007-11-16 09:58:53 I've never understood the rationale behind home schooling. It must be extremely frustrating. My experience has been that homes are exceptionally slow learners. Read more:Schooling
, Home Schooling
Praise Dog 2007-11-20 14:15:48 I was wondering, do deeply religious dyslexics praise the glory of Dog? If so, when they are any prig to Dog, do they ape Sir Dog for bless gin them with their Axis Deli? (Translation: If so, when they are praying to God, do they praise God for blessing them with their dyslexia?) A more important question is, will I burn in hell for this post? I'm a devout atheist, but, just in case I'm wrong about the whole God thing and I will burn in hell for this, I'm going to start carrying a lot of hot dogs (no God pun intended) and marshmallows around with me all of the time. One never knows when one is going to die, so I want to make sure I have them with me when I go. Hot dogs and marshmallows will come in handy if campfires are going to be a major part of my infinite future.Damn! I guess I'm going to have to learn the words to Kum Ba Ya too. Read more:Praise
Relatively Apish 2008-01-23 08:51:50 All kidding aside, if you walked into a room already populated with a person and a chimpanzee, you would have no problem distinguishing between the two. Nonetheless, most scientific studies on the differences between human and chimpanzee DNA show a variance of somewhere between 1.2 and 2.7 percent. Despite there still being some expert debate on where in that range the number actually falls, regardless of who wins the argument, it is clear that the genetic difference between us and our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom is startlingly small. This goes a long way to explain the quality of television programming over the years. Read more:Relatively
Product Review: ReligioMatic 2007-12-25 07:45:17 Our choice of religion is usually arbitrary. It's typically the result of an accident of birth (not to suggest that your conception was an accident, but, then again, it might have been) or a chance encounter with a charismatic preacher. The truth is that most people adopt a faith for no better reason than it's the one into which one or both of their parents indoctrinated them.
At the core of your being you likely sense that "because that's what my parents believed" or "because that's what Reverend Shyster, the five-time winner of the huckster of the year award before turning his skills to the religion business, said is the path to heaven" is not an adequate rationale for internalizing an all-encompassing personal philosophy. However, selecting another faith is exceptio
Seizing Opportunities 2007-12-20 10:49:56 Life frequently places valuable opportunities in our paths. Unfortunately, many of us are insufficiently attuned to our environment to spot them. Others recognize the prospects, but they are so committed to the rut they have trod for themselves that they are afraid to take so much as a step off their set course even when doing so promises enormous rewards. Still others are too afraid to take what they perceive to be a big risk or they are too lazy to make the necessary effort.
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy that says, when life presents you with a golden opportunity you should do everything in your power to seize it and use it to its greatest advantage; even if that means taking an enormous diversion from the normal course of your life. Make the extraordinary effort. Climb out on a Read more:Opportunities
Household Hygiene 2007-12-12 08:27:30 You often hear people complain about how much effort they have to put into cleaning their homes. They should stop their moaning because all it takes to make household chores much less burdensome is a simple change in attitude. I'm not talking about the bobble-headedly sanguine outlook of "just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." No, I'm proposing an attitude adjustment that will have a much more tangible effect. For example, I figure that dust forms a natural protective coating on my furniture. Looked at from this perspective, it would be foolish of me to remove it. Needless to say, I don't bother dusting. I'm not stupid.
In addition, if I drop food on the floor, I don't rush to clean it up. The insects that inhabit our homes evolved to live off our droppings, among Read more:Household
, Hygiene
Religious Wars 2007-12-10 08:49:29 Because of troubles in the world today and those of the last few years—not to mention the last few millennia—there has, of late, been much examination of and debate about "religious wars", "holy wars" and "religious terrorism". Or, frequently, the name of a particular religion is substituted for the word "religious" in the latter phrase.
This terminology is excruciatingly unfair and must stop. It is extremely insensitive to the feelings of people with deeply held religious beliefs, most of whom would never think to use force to impose their spiritual views on someone else. (Except, of course, on their children. And, I ask you, if parents aren't allowed to cram their religious views down their innocent children's little throats, then who
The Best is Yet to Come 2007-12-08 06:50:11 When I'm driving in my car (which I've always found to be the best place to drive; much better than, say, in my living room) and when I'm working (which is not to say that I work while I drive; those are separate circumstances; I have enough trouble keeping my mind focused on my driving as it is), I usually have the local all-Jazz radio station, Jazz.fm91, playing in the background. I was listening the other day when a Jazz standard, The Best is Yet to Come, came on. That song was written in 1959. The music is by Cy Coleman and the lyrics are by Carolyn Leigh. As far as I could find on the Internet, it seems to have been first recorded in 1962.
Many vocal legends, such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, have recorded versions of The Best is Yet t
Child Abductions 2007-12-06 15:09:28 When I was a kid even the most concerned of parents didn't worry all that much about child abductions. It just wasn't perceived to be as big a problem then as it is today. Once we achieved some small level of responsibility, and we learned and understood the wisdom of the rule about looking both ways before crossing the street, our parents generally allowed us to explore within our neighborhood, play in the local park with our friends and walk to school, all without adult supervision. Parents then, particularly the more neurotic among them, still worried about things like us getting run over by a car if we chased a ball into the street or our breaking a limb if we fell off our bicycles, but, for the most part, our getting abducted was, at worst, only a very infrequent fear of our parents.
Literature Pedagogy 2007-12-04 13:01:30 I don't know what brought this to mind lo these great many years later, but I hated the way they taught literature back in the Mesozoic Era when I was a high school student. The accepted pedagogical approach back then was to analyze every word and phrase on every page to expose the myriad enigmatic, yet profound hidden meanings that the teacher assured us were planted there—meanings that I have no doubt the author would be astonished to learn were in his or her work.
"In the first sentence of the third paragraph on page 132, why," the teacher would ask, "do you think the author described his protagonist as having eaten chicken for dinner?" After the class admitted to being stumped, the teacher would launch into a half-hour dissertation on how, because chickens ar Read more:Literature
Product Review: FatDolly 2007-12-02 09:04:49 The dramatic increase in obesity is becoming a crisis, possibly even a catastrophe. Medical experts tell us that, unless the fat trend is reversed, we should expect to see the already growing rates of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, arthritis and other obesity-linked diseases soar even higher in the not to distant future. I don't want to belittle these health concerns, but the biggest ongoing problem that morbidly obese people face in their day-to-day lives is a simple one: How can someone of average strength lug around blubber weighing more than the total poundage of a family of eight less slenderness-challenged people? Well, finally, at least that problem is a thing of the past thanks to FatDolly, the revolutionary tummy transport device from Lardly Incorporated.
FatDolly looks like an
Limbo 2007-11-30 08:31:21 In the spring of 2007 the Vatican revised it's views on "limbo," the place that the Catholic church used to believe was the ultimate destination of babies who were stillborn or who had died so shortly after birth as to have not been baptized. Until only recently, the Vatican contended that these babies went to limbo, because, as they had not been baptized, they weren't allowed into heaven despite never having had a chance to choose to be anything but pure and innocent.
The Vatican now says that limbo probably doesn't exist. According to current Catholic thinking, instead of going to limbo, unbaptized babies are likely accepted into heaven by a merciful God who wants to save them.
Some of the implications of this change in doctrine are only now coming to light. Because the Vatic
Extending Toronto's Population 2008-03-25 12:47:00 Here's a little known fact about my hometown, Toronto
, Canada:
If you took all of the residents of Toronto, had them lie down flat on the ground in a straight line aligned east to west, with each person's feet just brushing the top of the head of the next person to the east, you'd have one hell of a lot of exceptionally pissed off people and a few people who got off on that sort of thing. Read more:Population
Navigating to Tranquility 2008-04-05 20:57:52 I'm a downtown dweller, work out of my home and live the life of a hermit, so I rarely drive. Consequently, I never thought it worthwhile to buy a GPS navigation device for my car, a 1972 Ford Pinto that still has that new car smell and the original tires, without any tread wear. I did, however, recently use a GPS unit in a rental car when I was out of town. These things — GPS navigation devices, not rental cars — are incredible. Without it, I would have gotten lost. The thing was even able to tell me when there was heavy traffic ahead.
I read somewhere that this traffic information comes from a few sources, one of which is the units themselves. There are a whole bunch of these things on the road and the companies that supply the service are able to monitor their movement. (T Read more:Tranquility
Owning Canada 2008-04-14 10:16:16 I just received an email from my business school alma mater. The note promoted a reception in honor of the launch of a new book, titled "Who Owns Canada
," by Diane Francis, Editor-at-Large and Columnist at the National Post, a Canadian newspaper.
What a waste of time and paper! It is quite clear who owns Canada. I do.
A couple of weeks ago I received a very enthusiastic, yet frantic, email that offered to sell me Canada for just $199.95. It seems that the previous owner of Canada has some close relatives who have been unjustly imprisoned in Nigeria. The seller is desperate for any cash he can get his hands on to pay ransom to the corrupt officials who are holding his relatives.
The sales offer contained a number of spelling errors — which was a good thing because otherwi Read more:Owning
Wonkified 2008-04-29 12:17:51 I did a Google search and found it used elsewhere, so I can't claim originality, but I'd like to nominate "wonkified" for official adoption as a word in the English language. I'm sure that once whoever is responsible for adjudicating these things accepts the wisdom of my suggestion, people will find a number of valid uses for the word, but my recognition of this shocking linguistic lacking came about as a result of my use of Microsoft Windows.
I've found that if I leave Windows open for too long without rebooting and, not necessarily simultaneously, use too many programs over that time, things start randomly malfunctioning. There doesn't seem to be any way to identify what constitutes "too long" or "too many."
It's also not possible to predict what will go w
Computer Work 2008-05-13 08:57:37 My day job is writing. MC Press published a collection of my humorous rants under the title BYTE-ing Satire. You don't have to look very far on this page to find a link to buy it at Amazon. Be that as it may, what I do mostly is write marketing material — articles, white papers, brochure copy, case studies, etc. — for business-to-business software companies. My clients seem to think I' Read more:Computer
My Religion 2008-06-08 13:13:59 I used to be an agnostic. Then I was touched by The Eternal Nothingness. Now I'm an atheist. I find it spiritually fulfilling and the services are short.
By the way, consider this: The acronym for The Eternal Nothingness is TEN. Most humans have TEN fingers and TEN toes. Most human societies use TEN as the basis of their counting systems. And what do people advise you to count to before doing any Read more:Religion
The Best Government 2008-06-10 08:18:16 I firmly believe that the best government is the least government unless, of course, the government is doing something that specifically benefits me. In that case, more power to it! Read more:Government
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