While waiting to pay two months worth of electric bills one day (I realized a while back that Xcel’s late fee is actually cheaper than King Soopers’ charge for processing the transaction each month. Add the extra interest from leaving that money in my bank account for an extra month and I’d be stupid not to pay my bill late…right? But I digress.) I happened to notice a brand of cigar called “Game.” Trendy gansta’ writing and everything; it looked like a Snoop Dogg album cover.

I was reminded of a conversation with Autumn about the inherent meaninglessness of the phrase “change the game.” Ironically, it’s consistent overuse in hip hop and rap has turned the very concept of “changing the game” into a tired worn out cliché.

I’m thoroughly convinced that anyone still uttering these words is simply whipping an idiomatic dead horse.

On a completely unrelated note:

While leaving King Soopers that day, I saw someone wheeling their cart full of groceries towards the boundaries of the parking lot. He edged ever closer to the yellow line on the ground, unaware that crossing it would activate the wheel locks on the cart. I decided to pull into a parking spot just so I could watch the moment where he found himself jerking to a stop. The confused look on his face was priceless. When he realized what had happened, he tried in vain to bring the cart back within the lot’s boundaries. Obviously this didn’t help.

Satisfied, I went home.

Godwin’s Law, as it’s called, states:  “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”

When referring to a humorous observation as a law, people tend to take it much more seriously than they should.  Is the adage true?  Well, technically, but no more so than if you were to replace Nazis and Hitler with Puppies and Kittens (In fact, I now decree that version to be Cutaia’s Law).

However, the more widespread this supposed edict becomes, the more people misuse it.  Recently, I saw someone in an online discussion bring up the Nuremberg Trials in an attempt to illustrate that a state of war does not excuse dishonorable actions by those involved.  Immediately, some Wikipedia reading know-it-all showed up with this to say, “Thank you for invoking Godwin’s Law[…]It’s not like that besmirches the honor of the holocaust survivors or anything, you witless turd.”

In the mind of the Godwin’s Law devotees, any mention of Nazis or Hitler is automatically inappropriate to the conversation at hand and somehow belittles the terrible nature of the Holocaust.  It never crosses the minds of these folks that these analogies might possibly be common because, oh I don’t know…World War II was a really huge fucking event in our history about which everyone has a reasonable amount of knowledge?

That’s the issue with accepting the ramifications of such a broad aphorism as absolute truth.  It causes people to avoid actually thinking about what’s being said, instead simply jumping to their own conclusion immediately.

Even worse is when the same people make the leap to Godwin’s Law anytime someone mentions fascism itself.  Fascism, after all, is not a concept unique to Hitler.  It’s a political ideology that comes in many levels of extremity.

There are arguably times when governments and politicians do things that would quite literally be classified as fascist.  The danger behind Godwin’s Law is that its biggest proponents seemingly (and perhaps unknowingly) seek to frighten people out of ever mentioning that possibility.

The Nazis didn’t just appear out of thin air, after all.  There’s a build-up required in order to work a country into a nationalistic, Jew-hating fervor.  Understanding that fact and pointing out trends that hint even slightly towards that direction is in no way a bad thing.  If you ask me, the only thing that would “besmirch the honor of Holocaust survivors” would be to let fear silence you into ever allowing anything even remotely similar to happen again.

A far more useful adage than Godwin’s Law, I would think, is one from philosopher, George Santayana:  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

People who wish to preserve the memory of the immense evil of the Nazis at the cost of squelching speech about the more minor evils of today’s leaders are doing their cause an incredible disservice.  They’re no more reasonable than puppies chasing their tails around in circles.

Oh, hey, look at that!  Cutaia’s Law…

Each Slurpee machine out there has 4 to 8 little lights on it…one for each flavor.  The machines always indicate that you should not pour any particular flavor when its light is lit.  Of course, whenever I want a cherry flavored Slurpee, the cherry light is always on.  It never fails.

I usually try waiting for a little while, hoping that the light will turn off before someone notices me staring at it, pretending I’m trying to figure out what flavor I want.  But I know what fucking flavor I want.  Cherry.

I’m guessing the lights just indicate when the mix isn’t properly frozen and I don’t really mind drinking a melted Slurpee as long as it’s still cold.  In all honestly, I could probably just pour away and enjoy the cherry goodness.

But then I think to myself, “What if it’s poisonous until the light turns off?”

“I guess I’ll just have banana.”

Certeza sent us a blanket for the baby.  Apparently when given the option to add a personal gift message, he chose the following:

BABIES ARGHHEGHSHHDFHEFHEHSFFHESKJFHFHFEHSEHFYYRYYRAYYAWYRYWRYYAYYRYRYYRYARYARYYYYYREYRYKJYYYRYHHAH HAHAH A HRRRRYYYGGGHGYGYGYHGHGHHGHHHEYYYGHGHHG

I’m not sure if it gets any more awesome than that.  Thanks John.

Exact quote from the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, regarding the rough plane landing in Jamaica (emphasis theirs, not mine):

Of the 148 passengers and 6 crew members on board, seventy-six were US citizens.  Of those at least 40 were taken to local hospitals with minor injuries.  4 Americans were in serious condition.

There was no mention of the non-American statistics because hey, fuck them, right?  Why not at least have the courage to add, “And nobody gives a shit about Jamaicans,” while you’re at it, Katie?

At 7-11 this morning, I saw a woman standing in the corner of the store, head down, holding a chocolate muffin to her face.  She licked and nibbled away at the top part of the muffin like a squirrel eating an unshelled peanut.  It was very odd.

That’s all I have to say right now.  Go about your business.

I once had an idea for a video game.  In one of the game’s early boss encounters, you would fight just long enough to trigger an event where you become incapacitated.  As it approachd you to finish you off, an unseen helper would suddenly take a carefully aimed head shot from off screen, saving you.

The twist being that later on in the game a time travelling side story begins and you discover that you were the one who had saved yourself.

I suppose this idea was obvious enough that plenty of people had thought of it already, but it didn’t stop me from feeling extremely disappointed when I saw the exact same plot device used in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  In fact, I’m almost certain that the book was written before I had come up with my version of the idea.

I bring this up because I have experienced far too many cases of this phenomenon in my life.  I’d have to go back to remember them all because I’ve generally tried to forget most of them.  One question that remains for me, though, is this:  Does this happen to me so often because my ideas are mundane enough that anyone else could come up with them, or is it because my ideas are so great that they are bound to become famous when another more dedicated person has the same one?

What was my point, again?

Ah yes…Beard Watch.  For several Novembers now, I have been bringing Beard Watch to you, the viewer.  I started doing this way back in 2005.  A few days ago, however, someone alerted me to the existence of something called “No Shave November.”

Supposedly, “No Shave November” is some kind of popular American unofficial holiday modeled after some Australian moustache-growing-month-kind-of-thing.  Whatever it is, I can’t seem to find any record of this event prior to 2006 (after a thourough search* of Wikipedia revisions of the entry for ”November,” I finally found the date upon which the phrase “No Shave November” was first added, as well as a page for the “holiday” itself that was eventually deleted for the reason, “Obviously a hoax article…“).

The worst part?  Blogger, Brian Cromer, recently made a post about his past experiences with “No Shave November.”  He even took daily pictures à la Beard Watch, but waited until the end of the month to mash them into a video citing that daily updates ”would have been super boring for you, thus guaranteeing the loss of all my consistent readers.”

Well, all I have to say to that is:  Fuck you Brian Cromer!

Mainly, though, I simply no longer have an interest in continuing the tradition of Beard Watch.  I don’t want to sound like an anti-trendist here (i.e. “My favorite band became popular so I must stop liking them.”), but this whole business has just left a sour taste in my mouth.

And let’s face it…none of this helps with my eternal question.  Beard watch wasn’t a mundane idea or a great one.  It was just plain stupid.  So what the hell is going on?

It’s a conspiracy, I tell you.

*In my search of Wikipedia revisions, I also discovered that the most common edits were made by people adding their own birthdays to the page, changing words to “gay” and/or talking about how one thing or another sucks a badly mispelled version of a dick.

My website has, once again, lost the top spot in a Google search of the word “cutaia.”

This time, the victor in the battle for number 1 is some fucking mobster named Domenico Cutaia (or Dominick Cutaia depending on which part of the Wikipedia page you look at…that’s right, I’m getting beat by an unsourced Wikipedia stub).  Really?  A gangster?

First I have to fight off a couple of crooked mortgage brokers from Florida and now a member of the Lucchese crime family?  What the hell are you people trying to do to the family name?

I suppose I’m going to have to start updating the site again to get back on top.  Either that or I need to get started on a life of crime.  But then, I don’t want people thinking all us Cutaias are crooks.  Some of us make crappy websites, too.

I’ve watched this video at least a dozen times since I discovered it two weeks ago and it never fails to make me giggle out loud. I finally decided it was time to pass this joy along to the viewers of my website (all two of you).

Source: Break.com