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Music reviews, editorials, gear reviews for the guitarist/bass player, journal entries, advice, funny crazy stuff and more. Updated roughly 2-3 times a week.
Bazooka-Joe's Incoherent Ramblings

Monday, December 19, 2005

A Tribute to Stupidity, Part 2

Yeah, I'm slacking this week. What can I say...it's Christmas. So I thought I'd share some semi-humorous headlines with you. I tried to sort these so they get better as you read. True stories, every one.
God bless and Merry Christmas!


And the "Marvin the Martian" Award Goes To...
When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.
"Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering 'kaboom'."


Yah, that's a doozy, alright.
The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat-cutting machine and, after a little hopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef's claim was approved.
"So would you like that in tens and twenties?"


Parking lot rage?
A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. So he shot her.
Officer: "So let me get this straight...you shoveled a parking space for an hour IN blizzard conditions in Chicago?"


Free Ride
After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.
"Y'all hop on in! We're going to...uhh...Disneyland. Yeah, that's it!"


A Special Kind of Migraine for Idiots
An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.
Do not play chicken with this man.


Come Rob Me Anytime
A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, he man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer...$15.
If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?


The Perfect PSA for Responsible Drinking
Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he'd just throw a cinderblock through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinderblock and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinderblock bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, rendering him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.
Please...don't drink and pillage.


A Coerced Confession
As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, "Yes, officer, that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse from."
"Son maybe you oughtta get yerself a good attorney, I wouldn't represent myself in court if I were you."


Your Way, Right Away
The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at 5 a.m., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.
What's the world come to if you can't even get Onion Rings for breakfast at gunpoint?


And the winner is...
When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his siphon hose into the motor home's sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying that it was the best laugh he'd ever had.

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 12:44 PM | 8 class clowns in the back of the class were bored from throwing pencils in the ceiling and paused long enough to comment on this post

Thursday, December 15, 2005

URGE: The Rich Geeks & The Cool Kids Collaborate?


Talk about your unlikely bedfellows. Microsoft announced Tuesday it would be teaming up MTV Networks Inc to create a new online music sales service along the lines of iTunes, called Urge. The name begs the question...the "urge" to do what? I find this to be a most ironic collaboration effort. Now, I’m stereotyping here so bare with me, but I went on tour with a Christian rock band 3 or 4 separate times since the summer began and I had the privilege of inundating myself amidst the MTV culture of no less than 15 different states from here to Tennessee. I met and talked with them at length before the shows, during, and especially after. Many of them churched, just as many not though. All of them treated us quite amicably though. I followed contractual obligations to dress and wear my hair like they do in an attempt to fool them into think I was ten years younger than I was. To some degree, it’s fair to say that while we were out, I felt like I was undercover. We hung out, I ate their food, I even stayed at several of their houses and I became much more familiar with the television stations that supposedly play music videos than I ever had before. First off, the name MTV used to be an acronym for Music Television. I don’t know if that’s officially still what it stands for but it should refer to Mature TV, as it plays almost no music and shows way too much skin. Secondly (here comes the generalization), the MTV culture that I had a chance to meet, whether they be punks, hippies, gangstas, Britneys, metalheads, or goths, pretty much all hate Microsoft and everything Microsoft stands for. They use terms like “corporate giant”, “evil empire”, and “the borg” as well as spin-offs of the name such as “Microsuck”, etc. I have at times, had my share of distaste for Microsoft and some of their products and services so I’m not completely without some compassion for their causes. Microsoft does tend to make it awfully difficult for ingenuity to develop a better mousetrap. And the current teenage generation of MTV watchers also sport their iPods in every color, shape and size as well as their $200 worth of iPod accessories.

Urge claims it is not an attempt to sway users from the Apple iTunes product, sighting a high majority of iTunes users being tied to the product due to their iPods. Coincidentally iTunes accounts for over 80% of the licensed music purchased online and iPods represent roughly 75% of the portable music market currently. MTV’s Urge is supposedly an attempt to tap the avid music downloader that does not own an iPod market. Microsoft of course has plans to bundle this service within its own Windows Media Player product. They’re banking on the fact that it is simply iPod owners that drive iTunes sales and hope that the market for avid licensed music downloaders that don’t have a portable player of some sort is a larger one.


My take? I think this is one time that Microsoft is most definitely getting in the game with too little too late. Furthermore, Apple is one company that’s big enough, bad enough, and hates Microsoft enough to never, ever sell the market leading product to them (for those unfamiliar with their tactics, too frequently Microsoft’s tactic is to simply buy good software and put their name on it, and then proceed to ruin it in the next version release). The pop culture mecca and the business savvy geekdom have both got their work cut out for them. As for me, here’s one user that loves his iTunes, and is listening to his iPod as he types up his blog about why he thinks MTV and Microsoft’s odd coupling is simply comical on several levels.

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 2:16 PM | 5 class clowns in the back of the class were bored from throwing pencils in the ceiling and paused long enough to comment on this post

Monday, December 12, 2005

Pity da Foo

Well, I was recently contacted by an old friend via email that I haven’t spoken to for some time. And he opened my eyes to something insurmountably entertaining I had been completely unaware of. In his words:

“In case you've been jibba-jabberin' too much to learn the greatness of 'Mr T vs Everything': http://www.mrtvseverything.com/”

I can’t tell you the mixed emotions that flooded my mind the moment I found out there was a website dedicated to multiple hypothetical scenarios of Mr. T taking on “everything”, but that’s when I learned, it’s not just one site. Apparently “Mr. T versus” is taking the Internet by storm. Even Wikipedia has updated it’s databanks on Mr. T to include the cyberspace phenomenon. Of all the lame stuff to hit the Internet…finally something with substance and healthy cultural and entertainment value! Go ahead, Google-you-this (over 34,000 hits).


In these web-based comic-bookesque sites, Mr. T takes on rock bands, actors, politicians, cartoon characters, game show hosts, terrorist factions, Santa Claus, Star Wars characters, and referencing photos and dialog from A-Team to Rocky III to TBN. Hours worth of free entertainment. There’s even a guide to putting together Mr. T versus web pages. So go ahead, put those TPS reports aside and waste away your workday watching amateurish collections of photoshopped Mr. T skits.

I know I will.

And yes, as a matter of fact, I am working on Mr. T vs. Ronald McDonald.

UPDATE: Coming to a theater near you from the studio frequently with one foot in bankruptcy court and the other in the recycle bins of Dreamworks and Warner Bros., MGM, is yet another sequel to the Rocky saga. Mr. T will be in the 2007 release of "Rocky VI" as his previous character "Clubber Lang". But 'Clubber' is a commentator now 15 years after the release of Rocky III. Rocky VI is rumored to have several working titles including "The Legend of Curly's Gold", and "Grumpy Old Boxers". Sylvester Stalone turns 60 while the film is in pre-production.

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 10:25 AM | 8 class clowns in the back of the class were bored from throwing pencils in the ceiling and paused long enough to comment on this post

Thursday, December 08, 2005

It's a Boy!


...of course we knew it was a boy for months, but that's the stereotypical...er...I mean "traditional" headline you're supposed to put up for baby announcement blogs, right? And in step with the stereotypical new baby antics, here's the details and some eye candy:

Weight: 6 lbs, 4 oz. (small but fierce)
Length: 18 and 1/2 inches
Name: Zack
Attire: Zack is sporting a very simple but elegant hat piece from the masterminds at Osh Kosh in the "blue Christmas" fashion line, a favorite this year. The blanket is a medical center special, and the red onesey is a new look for this year for those newborns with autumn coloring. And of course the standard issue cloth diaper is a timeless classic that never really goes out of style.

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 12:39 PM | 4 class clowns in the back of the class were bored from throwing pencils in the ceiling and paused long enough to comment on this post

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Fear & Humor

Sorry guys no pictures tonight. I don't have the energy (and yes the camera came, and yes it's great, and yes the manual is in English!).

warning: this one definitely qualifies as "incoherant" and "rambling".

I’ve already been to bed once tonight. While I was laying there a realization struck me and is now keeping me up in disgust until I can get it out and “on paper” as they say. My wife’s in the beginning stages of labor tonight (still). It’s a slow process and there’s a lot of downtime. We went to the hospital today and after a half-hour check, they sent us home with notification that the baby’s not ready yet. Some would look at this scenario with various glass-half-full or rose-colored-glasses thinking. But I don’t deal very well with disappointment. And that got me thinking, as I laid there in bed, that I let the fear of disappointment keep me from doing some things and this…well, this is one thing that I can’t escape from it or avoid it. I have to face it, buck up, and put my smile back on. For my wife, if for no one else or no other reason. I suck at that. Sure, faking it is probably a good thing to suck at, but I’m referring to the genuine attitude of getting back on the proverbial horse and trying it again.

And then it hit me, it’s not just disappointment I’m afraid of as my eyes pierced the cold black darkness from the lonely bed. I’m afraid of a lot of things. I’m afraid of broad, generic concepts like disappointment, failure, rejection and I’m afraid of silly specific things like spiders and ghosts.

Rabbit Trail: Coincidentally when Jesus was resurrected (Mark 16:13) he appeared to them on Easter, and they thought he was a ghost. So he invited them to look closely at his hands, feet and side and to “handle” him. Jesus even had to ask for food and eat before them (Luke 24:36, John 20:20). Notice that he didn’t dismiss it as childish folklore, instead he went to the effort of proving he was not a ghost. I’m not saying I believe in ghosts…it’s just an observation.

Anyway, where was I. Oh yes fear. I’m pretty much disgusted at this moment how much I allow fear to choke the fun right out of life. Taking risks, even safe ones is difficult for me. I use words like “pragmatic” and “realist” to describe myself. But let’s face it. I’m a negative, pessimistic cynic and I think I’m getting really tired of living that way. I walk around quoting Murphy’s Law as if it were some sort of montra. “Whatever can go wrong…will go wrong” and “if I take the umbrella I won’t need it, but if I don’t, then I will” so I walk around holding proverbial umbrellas everywhere I go because I think, deep down, I actually believe there’s a cosmic balance of bad and good luck and I’ve somehow been elected as the bit-bucket-like dumping grounds for all the bad luck remainders abandoned after the even divisions have been divvied out. Pretty twisted, right?

Take my view of heaven. Now, there’s what I know to be true because it’s in the Bible and then there’s all the other stuff where I have to fill in the blanks. Admittedly if my knowledge of the Bible was greater, or even what it should be I’d have fewer blanks to fill. And I’m working on that. Emotionally, I react to heavenly concepts as if heaven were an enormous business. But bigger. Like if you took every piece of the United States federal government and put them all on one large Disneyland-esque campus. And that would make God something like the President…or Mickey Mouse depending on how you look at it. And Jesus some sort of a Vice Mickey. Bordering on blaspheme here I think, but it’s late so hopefully God’s getting some sort of humorous kick out of my absurdity and has put his smiting rod back in the gun safe. Anyway, if my view of heaven is screwed up to the degree that I think of it as a very large corporation or a government entity, then you can imagine how my fears of the way it is run are. Sure God is perfect, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc, etc. But what about his middle managers? His secretary? And his angelic case workers? They’re not, right? And whose client am I? The slightly narcoleptic junior apprentice case worker with a light gambling addiction? What if my salvation paperwork was put in the wrong pile? What if my file’s missing completely or has a coffee ring stain on the triplicate carbon copies that go to St. Peter? What if the clerical assistant for my particular division of souls is run by an angel like Roz on Monsters, Inc? What if the I.T. angel that maintains the databases in heaven had a bad day and there was some kind of accidental linkage problem in the SQL relations and my metadata was crossed with…I don’t know…Ted Bundy’s or something?!

Of course these are all ridiculous notions. I know they’re flawed and full of stupid inaccuracies, but that’s the kind of stuff you think about as you’re laying in bed wondering how much sleep you’re going to get before your wife’s water breaks all over you.

And if it doesn’t…do I still have to go to work tomorrow?

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 11:11 PM | 4 class clowns in the back of the class were bored from throwing pencils in the ceiling and paused long enough to comment on this post