Rocky Enters the Bible Study Arena

The inimitable Anthony Sacramone from First Things has provided a great piece of comedy writing regarding the new Rocky movie, Rocky Balboa. It seems as if this latest attempt to milk this tedious Hollywood franchise will spawn as many parodies and late night joke as the last 3 or 4 manifestations. But under the black comedy category:

[I]t seems that Sylvester Stallone has taken a page out of Mel Gibson’s Passion playbook in marketing the latest iteration of Rocky to evangelicals. Pastors and religious leaders have been mailed "Faith-based Resource Guides," along with DVDs and glossy inspirational tickets—meant both to promote the opening of Rocky Balboa and to emphasize the extent to which the Italian Stallion’s story is Bible-based: Jesus was the master storyteller! He used short, simple, everyday stories that packed a punch. Use these powerful Rocky Balboa resources in December and January to punctuate your sermons and talks!"

One small difference between this movie and the message of Jesus was that "large crowds followed Him" (Mt.4:25), i. e., he didn't have to scramble for market share. I won't go into the rather large differences which most probably exist between the Gospel of Jesus and this or any of the Rocky films .

You can't make this up, folks.

Tree, tree, tree, tree, tree.....

So you don't have to count, I'll just tell you that the word "tree" is used 24 times in this video. As funny as this is, it reminds me quite painfully of the mother of a girl I dated long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away....



...right down to the fake red hair. The money quote to me has got to be when he/she yells into the attic, "Hey, if it says 'tree' on it, that means it's decorations; it needs to come down!"

I think I could pull off a drag performance if I used that accent and had the cheap shades. And if my wife let me, of course. But it's not like I'd be stupid enough to even ask her.

Duck Tape

Kevin Stilley, who links to Muggle Matters, has a hilarious pic here showing yet another use for duck tape. That's one relaxed kid, Kevin.

(Yes, I know it's actually duct tape....)

But here's a last minute Christmas gift idea.

Fiscal Reporting Purposes: The New Corporate Excuse

This is so rich. It turns out if you have a really big important company you don't have to pay people who perform services for you, at least not on time. And it's all because of reporting policies – imagine that! This is all so well encapsulated in some emails I have that I'll just post them here. They're a bit modified, of course, so no one loses business or employment over it.

The first email was sent after said accountant returned my call requesting payment for a short consulting job (less than $5,000.00 worth of work) which I had an associate perform in October. At the time I called, the bill was 15 days late on a purchase order with NET 45 terms. I asked the person to respond via email since I received the call in the car.

"Per our conversation, your invoice #XXXXX dated 10/XX/06 for $X,XXX.XX, would normally be paid by our terms of which would be due December XX, 2006. Due to a Corporate Directive during the month of December, XYZ Company suspends vendor payments for fiscal reporting purposes. Our payment schedule will continue the first week of January 2007. I appreciate your concern and thank you for your patience. Please contact me if you have any further questions."

Gonna have to get me one of them thar' Corporate Die-rectives!! They come in handy.

I replied ever so politely and blind copied it to my contact at the client company. He was a bit embarrassed and shot me this apology and, uh, sarcastic yet accurate "translation":

"I think the translation goes something like this.

We don’t care about the cash flow of other businesses; we want to try to bogusly inflate our bottom line by a few nickels by not entering liabilities into the system and try to reach our goals by hook or by crook.

I wonder how many raw material vendors they are holding payment on? I think I am going to cut and paste her response and send it off to all of my utilities and car loan holders this month. Sorry about that, but it appears we are probably no different than any other billion dollar corporation that you deal with."

I felt bad for him since it was in no way his fault; I sent this reply:

"Thanks; humans invented greed, but it seems that large corporations sure are working night and day to perfect it. Don’t worry about me – I wouldn't be in this business if I didn't have a bullet-proof sense of humor about this kind of nonsense. Honestly, the accountant sounded oh, so sensible on the phone, but I requested this email. I’m glad – though amazed – that I got it; seeing it in black & white is nothing short of High Comedy. Your remark was my immediate thought also, i.e., to put off paying my phone and rent bill as part of a new 'Fiscal Policy Initiative'. We could guess how well that sh*t would float!

Rest assured that ____ was paid within a week of the excellent work she performed for XYZ Company. As for me, business is good and my kids will not be lacking any 'Figgie pudding' this Christmas, regardless of corporate Scrooges, multi-national Grinches or the morbid Mr. Potters of a shadowy Industrial Complex.

So please don’t be embarrassed on account of their treatment of 'the little guy'. The Whos down in Whoville will be sated with plenty of Roast Beast this year.

Merry Christmas!"

The only thing I'll add here is this. I've known cases where consultants have, maybe rightly, flipped out when they were not paid on time. Generally that doesn't help much. Hopefully we can find clever and creative ways to shed some light on these unfair practices and show these companies to be the schoolyard bullies that they are. I choose to do that with humor – it's legal ... right?

Merry Christmas Everybody!

HT to Big Dog for this animated video of White Christmas.



Here's the source for the video if you want to email the link around.

To whom it may concern

Every once in a while, I find a notice posted at a business client to be extremely funny. Usually this is because the poster(s) of the notice freely inserted crude colloquialisms for bodily excretions into an otherwise professional-looking document. Such is the style of a document I discovered at a company which I will refer to as XYZ Company. I decided to leave in the misspellings and grammatical errors in the interest of authenticity. The notice reads as follows:

To Whom It May Concern

I know that times at XYZ Company have been difficult these last few years and a lot of things have changed. All I would like to ask of you, no expect of you is that you do not take your anger, frustration's or your lack of hygiene out on the bathrooms or its surroundings.

Obviously we have a hand full of sick fu#$'s that don't think that there is anything wrong with shi#$*g on the toilet seats, wiping boogers on any surface then can find. Also if you think that a toilet is not working don't use it, we don't care to see your business. We have a lot of garbage cans in the bathrooms so put your garbage in them and not on the floor.

If you find yourself in the lunchroom treat it as one not a place to leave or throw your unwanted food or wrappers.

If you have any questions on what you just read, please quit your job and don't socialize with other people. Thank you from all of us.

Interestingly enough, I was told that a lot of the behavior stopped after the posting. Maybe criticism from peers is a good deterrent? Unclear, but worth considering for management in any business.

Snogging Subcommittee, more like!

I'm working on the famous true story of New Year's 1989 featuring Nate and I with rock & roll hair down to our behinds going in to an independent Baptist church in Mercer, PA, but until then this is a must watch.



Transcript.

Dancing Skeleton

When you got moves like this, who needs a good-looking face? Or any face?

"Emotard"

My wife and I have been reading a great book, The 5 Love Languages. It's very insightful, but I, as usual, have to make a lot of love language jokes to supplement the insights. For example, when the author used the phrase "emotionally retarded", it immediately evoked an abbreviation from my brain.

"Honey, as a male I know I can be a real emotard," I delivered with a straight face to Lissa which almost caused her to go into a laugh spasm.

"Don't ever say the word emotard ever again," she warned wiping tears from her eyes.

I did look it up, well, Googled it; generally "emotard" is a derogatory term which is already in use. It refers negatively to practitioners of the music style "Emo" which, as far as I can tell from my brief research, seems to be short for "emotional" embrace many styles of alternative, punk and hardcore punk, but rebranded sometime in the early 90's since a lot of people thought punk music was dead.

But for older fogeys who don't run in the cool circles nor follow the hip kiddie trends and jargon, emotard seems like a great slang word for "emotional retard." But I can't use it at home -- that's probably a good thing.

Burger King Outsources

Ipecac Attack

This is too funny. Thanks to my friend, Nate, for telling me about this great video.



Money quote: "This is reality TV -- you're actually vomiting!"

Absurdist Bumper Stickers

I read a particularly stupid bumper sticker the other day. It said "E Pluribus Meow: In Cats We Trust". I mean, most people know that "In God we trust" is not the translation of e pluribus unum which means "from many, one". And the replacement of God with any species of animal, let alone domesticated felines, for any type of national or communal reliance is probably highly suspect even among agnostics.

I decided I should come up with some other stupid bumper stickers, see what you think. They are all based on actual stickers I've seen.

10. My other bumper sticker is on my wheel-barrow.
9. Pro-Union, Pro-American, Anti-Constipation
8. My other car has more stickers on it.
7. I was an honor student too and look where it got me.
6. If you can read this, you know this car is using BIODIESEL.
5. My collie is an obedience school honor student.
4. Let someone else take your internal organs to Heaven.
3. Play the Dukes of Hazzard theme backwards and you'll go flying out the window.
2. Sean Meople Puck

...and...

1. I could tell you what my other car is, but I'd have to kill you.

Which kind of guy am I?

I mused out loud earlier, being in my Harvey personality, before Mrs. Flautbert told him to shut up (I'm a regular Sybil), to my wife and I said:

"Honey, there are too types of guys in this world. One type of guy is the type of guy who brags about how much he spent on this thing, you know, and that and the other. The other is the type of guy who likes to brag about how little he spent on whatever. The question is which type of guy do you think I am?"

She did laugh a little at that, albeit siliently, then I believe she immediately perceived the pure rhetorical value of the question and said nothing in response.

My wife is funny

My wife, who is very beautiful, is also very funny. I know you already assumed she has a sense of humor since, after all, she did marry me.

But tonight we were eating at Friendly's up in Westlake and she mentioned that my mother-in-law had earlier reported the hometown news that Grove City College is buying the Grove City Diner in Grove City, PA. I immediately lit up.

"That means they're going to..."

"Probably tear it down," she said. "Yeah, there are going to be a lot of homeless cockroaches in Grove City."

That was the money quote! "Hey, did you just make that up?" I said laughing.

She said she had. That was choice. You got to understand how bad the diner was. She used to work there in high school.

I had another friend, Scott, who worked there when he was in high school. He was funny in his own way. He told me about how one owner had posted a sign on the Coke dispenser which read "DON'T MESS WITH THIS G*D D*MN MACHINE". I think he was probably the tenth troglodyte to run the joint. "I don't care if you use profanity sometimes," Scott said, "but don't write it on the Coke machine I have to use!"

Botched Jokes

This is a little site I'm working on where I'll put some comedy writing, you know, botched jokes et cetera. Being that I'm one of the bungled and the botched that seems to make sense.

I'll try to keep it all PG-13.