Sock Drawer

I was reading the label on a bottle of ibuprofen yesterday, and noticed that it said, "If you consume more than three alcoholic beverages a day, you should ask a physician whether this product is right for you." What kind of advice is that? They should just say, "If you consume more than three alcoholic beverages a day, cut it out. You've got a problem." I mean, a lot of people occasionally have more than three drinks, but when you're actually reading the label on a bottle of Tylenol to see if it's compatible with arduous drinking schedule, you've crossed some kind of line.

*****

If I ever remade the movie Blade Runner, I’d have Harrison Ford say to Rutger Hauer as he’s about to give in to his mortality, “Are you a replican or a replican’t?”

*****

I always smile when I see somebody pulling a trailer that was made from the bed of an old pickup truck. I love the kind of thinking that says, “Sure the engine, transmission, brakes, alternator, battery, carburetor, radiator, windshield wipers and radio are shot, but this old baby is still good for hauling some shit!” I wonder if these same people cut off the tops of their old socks to use them as wrist bands.

*****

Sometimes I bite my nails. The other day I did that thing where I accidentally pulled too much of the nail off and gave myself a nasty hangnail. Normally I would just clip it off with a fingernail clipper, but I was driving to work at the time and I don’t have a fingernail clipper in my car or at the office. So I just kept biting at this thing, trying to get to the bottom of it, but each time I just pulled a little more skin off and pretty soon it was bleeding and painful. And yet still I kept biting at it, as if I could take care of it if I just bit it one more time. Finally it occurred to me to put a Band-Aid on it so that I would stop biting at it. This worked like a charm, but sadly it also made me realize that if I ever get a vasectomy I’m going to have to get one of those lampshade things they put on dogs.

*****

It’s probably a good thing that Peter Parker wasn’t bitten by one of those trapdoor spiders, or Spider-Man would just wait in his apartment all day for bad guys to come to him.

*****

Speaking of superheroes, over Christmas vacation Mrs. Diesel and I have been playing a game called City of Heroes, a “massively multiplayer online game” where you can design and play your own superhero. Most of the time you wander around Paragon City looking for thugs to whack with your katana or sonic blast. When you click on one of the thugs, a little label appears over their heads, telling you what level they are – so you’ll know how difficult they are to defeat and how many experience points you’ll get for it. I was thinking about this when we got into bed, and I said to my wife, “I wish people in real life had labels over their heads like that. You know, something that said their name and what level they are and stuff. Because otherwise how would you know?”

“How would you know what?” Mrs. Diesel asked.

I responded, “You know, whether they’re worth killing or not.”

*****

A few days ago, I said to my wife, expressing surprise that she didn’t know some bit of trivia about me, “How long have we been married anyway?” To this she immediately responded, “1500 years. Next year you’re supposed to get me plutonium.”

Which explains why we get along so well.


UPDATE 3:44 PM: The polls are now open for this thing. You can vote once per day, and I'm going to need a LOT of help to catch up to some of the other finalists. We're like 2 hours into the voting and I'm already in Ralph Naderville.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: Sock Drawer | Sock Drawer | Sock Drawer Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

Most Popular Posts from December 2008

I know it seems like I've been doing a lot of "best of" posts lately, but several people have mentioned recently that they wished there was an easier way to browse through recent posts to see if they missed anything really good. I think I've finally figured out a way to do that. At the beginning of every month, I'm going to do a special "In Case You Missed It" post with links to the previous month's most popular posts. I'll keep the "In Case You Missed It" link visible at the top of the page so that you can always find the previous month's most popular posts. So...

My most popular posts for December 2008:

Whoops!
The moral: Quit cheating when you're 100 points ahead of second place.

A Handy Guide to the State of Michigan
Michigan, meet Florida.

What Are You Reading?
Funny you should ask. It's a little something I picked up called "Shut up, I'm reading."

And, um, that's about it. Three decent posts for the month. Yes, it's that kind of consistent quality that gets one into the finalists for Best Humor Blog. Speaking of which, voting begins on Monday. You can vote once per day, and if I'm going to have a chance in hell of competing against blogs that post four, maybe even five decent posts a month, I'm going to need every single one of you to vote. Repeatedly. For this blog.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: More of my most popular posts Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

I'm a 2008 Weblog Award Anomaly! Er, Nominee!

No caption contest today. Thanks to Blogger's publishing issues, my posting schedule is completely out of whack. I spent all day yesterday looking for more whack, but the stores were all closed.

I'd also like to thank the fine folks at Blogger for putting a halt to my posting long enough for several of my readers to pry their eyes off this blog and nominate me for Best Humor Blog at the 2008 Weblog Awards. Thanks, guys!



Generally I ignore any "awards" this blog receives, because getting an award on the web these days is about as tough as getting syphilis in the men's room of a Bangkok strip club (and nearly as desirable). These guys, however, appear to be the real deal. They get thousands of nominations and painstakingly go through them to identify the best blogs. Mattress Police somehow made it onto the short list of humor blogs, in the esteemed company of these blogs:

• i am bossy


• The Bloggess


• YesButNoButYes


• IMAO


• Mother May I Sleep With Treacher


• The Comics Curmudgeon


• My Mom is a Fob


• Boobs, Injuries and Dr Pepper


• Jon Swift

The final decision is left in the hands of the voters, and according to their website the poll will be up on Monday. Winning this award could give this blog the shot of instant publicity that could really make things happen -- like the publishing of my novel. Did I mention I'm working on a novel? So starting on Monday I need you guys to make like busy little Bees* and vote for me like as if you had nothing better to do.

And if this is your first visit to Mattress Police, well, I'm sorry this post is so lame. If you're trying to figure out how in hell this blog got nominated, check out a few of these significantly less lame posts:

Can You Dig It?
A letter to the 19 year old kid whom I paid $8 an hour to dig trenches.

Human Inertia
My third worst boss ever.

This Post Was Not Tested on Animals
If my shampoo wasn't tested on animals, doesn't that mean it's being tested on me?

I will be back on Monday (also known as Vote for Me Repeatedly Day) with a brand new Sock Drawer post.


*Oh no he di'nt.

Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

The Dance of the Ten Problems

The Dance of the Ten Problems has become an annual tradition here at Mattress Police. At the end of the year I write down the ten biggest unresolved problems of the outgoing year on small pieces of paper and throw them in a hat. Then I put the hat on my head and dance around the house in my bathrobe to the strains of Journey's Separate Ways until all of the scraps fall out except for one. The last remaining problem is the one that I will solve, for the benefit of mankind.

If ever there was a time for the Dance of the Ten Problems, it is now. The problems that I solved during the first two Dances pale in comparison to the troubles we face now. At the end of 2006 I solved the problem of the U.S. occupation in Iraq by suggesting that we sell the U.S. military to the oil companies. The end of 2007 saw me addressing the weak U.S. dollar with a two-pronged approach consisting of (1) printing large amounts of foreign currency; and (2) pegging the dollar to marijuana.

This year's problems include the housing market crash, the stock market crash, the credit crisis and the fantastically large national debt. (Have you noticed, by the way, that the budget deficit that our government creates is referred to as the "federal budget deficit," but the cumulative total of all of these deficits is referred to as the "national debt"? It's like while they are spending it, the money belongs to Congress, but after they've spent it all and then some, the debt gets transferred to the "nation," like we're all in this together. Nice.)

There are so many economic problems that I have lumped all these matters together into a single problem called "money troubles" (not to be confused with the 1994 movie starring Harvey Keitel, Monkey Trouble). This allows me to put into the hat a number of less pressing issues, like global warming, the eradication of the rain forests and whatever is happening to Kathleen Turner's face.

Youtube won't let me embed the Journey video any more, but if you click this link you can sing and dance along with me. Or, at the very least, fast forward to 1:28 to see the inexplicable keyboard-on-the-wall scene.

----------------Dancing interlude--------------------

Okay, all of the problems have fallen to floor but one. And the remaining problem is (drumroll) ... the depletion of our non-renewable natural resources!

Boy, this is a tough one, but I'll give it a try. The first thing to do, of course, is to state the problem. The fact is that the earth has only a limited supply of certain resources, such as oil, coal, water, iron, and Dakota Fanning. The more we use of these things, the more expensive they get, until we we are forced to seek some sort of alternative.

One course of action, suggested by conservationists, is that we pursue alternatives to these resources so that we don't use them all up. The conservationist's strategy, in other words, is to avoid running out of a resource by pretending that we have already run out of that resource. For example, we could stop burning coal and turn instead to a far more expensive resource like solar power, in order to avoid a nightmare scenario in which we run out of coal and are forced to turn instead to a far more expensive resource like solar power. It's sort of like a fire drill, where the whole world acts on a hypothetical emergency -- except that once everyone is outside, the conservationists boards up the building so that we won't rely on it any more.

The problem with this solution, as anyone who has ever played make-believe on the school playground knows, is that the more people are involved, the harder it is to get them to go along with whatever imaginary game you're playing. Even if you get seventeen other kids to pretend that the jungle gym is a submarine ten thousand feet under the ocean, you know the eighteenth kid is going to come along and pretend to be doing the backstroke around the lot of you. You can't just pretend that building solar panels makes more sense than burning coal and expect the rest of the world to go along with you. In fact, if anything, they'll be more likely to burn coal because thanks to you decreasing the demand, the price of coal has dropped. The end result is that just as much coal gets burned -- although you do get that warm feeling that comes from making an unnecessary and pointless sacrifice in an effort to improve the situation.

No, there's only one way to get everybody in the world to act like they've run out of a particular resource, and that is to use up all of that resource. My solution to the problem of dwindling natural resources, then, is to keep using the resources until they are all gone. If my calculations are correct, this should greatly increase the incentive to find alternative resources.

You may scoff at this solution, but I argue that it is eminently sensible. In fact, it makes more sense than the conservationist strategy. Conservationists want to stop using coal so that there will still be some coal left for the future -- a future in which coal is worthless because we're not using it for anything. My strategy, on the other hand, is simply to force people to find alternatives to coal by using up all of the coal.

It's not even really necessary to use up all of a resource. We just have to use enough of a resource to make it prohibitively expensive to use any more of that resource. For example, eventually we'll have mined all the readily accessible coal, and good quality coal will become harder and harder to find. Eventually producing coal will become so expensive that we'll have to find an alternative -- like oil. But then oil will get more expensive, and we'll have to find an alternative to that. And on and on, until all we have left are ridiculously expensive and impractical resources like solar and wind power.

This is where my plan and the conservationist's plan converge. Eventually, with either plan, we end up using expensive and inefficient alternatives to our preferred resources. The conservationist's plan is based on everyone on earth buying into a shared delusion that we've run out of resources, whereas my plan is based on everyone agreeing that, yep, there's no more coal. My plan may take a little longer, but it saves money in the mean time, and it also has the advantage that it will actually work.

The only way to ensure that everybody will use "alternative" fuels is to make them no longer alternative. It will be like when mainstream rock stations started playing the hell out of Nirvana's "Teen Spirit" and the phrase "alternative rock" lost all meaning.

So how do we bring about a situation in which our primary resources are so expensive that we have to turn to alternatives? Well, first we must use as much of these resources as is economically feasible. We should avoid reducing consumption, as this behavior will delay the depletion of our natural resources.

Another potential problem area is recycling. An efficient recycling process could potentially add decades to the longevity of many resources. Fortunately, though, most recycling schemes are so inefficient that they actually consume more resources than they save, and are therefore a boon to the resource depletion advocate. Not all recycling programs are equally effective resource drains, however, and you should be careful to do proper research to determine which programs are most likely to further the goal of resource depletion. This is more difficult than it sounds, because most recycling advocates haven't bothered to determine whether their recycling programs actually do any good. If you tell someone running a recycling program that you're trying to ensure that the disposal of your garbage burns as many resources as possible, they will probably just stare at you in confusion.

A good rule of thumb is that if a recycling scheme seems to make economic sense (for example, bringing your soda cans to an aluminum recycler in exchange for money), it probably isn't very effective at depleting natural resources. If, on the other hand, a recycling scheme is inconvenient and/or heavily subsidized by the government, then you've most likely happened upon a scheme designed to waste as many resources as possible. Subsidies are usually only necessary when the processes of separating, processing and transporting materials use more resources than are being saved by the program. If, on top of this, lots of people are trying very hard to make you feel guilty for not participating in the scheme, you've hit the resource depletion jackpot.

The beauty of my plan, of course, is that it is guaranteed to work eventually, whether you participate or not. Eventually we will all be using alternative resources, because those will be the only resources left. And when all that's left are alternatives... well, that, my friends, is Nirvana.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: A Crude Proposal | The Dance of the Ten Problems | A Small Proposal Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

Congrats, Scott A!

Hey, what do you know, I can actually publish posts again! So, first things first:


Scott A took top honors this time around. Scott A, if you had a blog you could post this fancy schmancy award.



In case you don't get Scott A's caption, he's referring to the fact that I'm working on a novel entitled Mercury Falls, which is about an angel. I may have mentioned this once or twice in the past.

Brad came in second with:

After that one heartwarming Christmas, Tiny Tim grew up to be a socially-awkward pain in the ass.

And renalfailure took third with my personal favorite:

Turns out Harvey wasn't a giant rabbit, just a giant somber dockworker with a drinking problem. Still, Diesel found this really exciting.

By the way, the current poll results may be different; I selected the winners several days ago when I was under the mistaken impression that I'd be able to post them in a timely manner.

Tomorrow is the first day of 2009, so you know what that means: It's time for the Dance of the Ten Problems! Yes, once again I will be solving one of the major outstanding problems from the previous year so that we can build a brighter future together. Unless Blogger decides to not let me publish again, in which case I will curse impotently at my computer all day.

See you tomorrow (I hope)!

Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com