TEN JACK TEN

I am not the millionth visitor to your website.

If a pair of pants has belt loops on it, then you should wear a belt with them.

Jesus would have remained childless, had no possessions or place to live, and wandered the earth preaching, healing, and performing mircales. Chances are, you won’t do that.

The worst advertisement for American cars is an American car more than three years old.

Microsoft will eventually drive the world to open-source software.

The Rolling Stones haven’t made a decent album since “Tattoo You.”

You will never sell anything to me by telling me I can finally get something I deserve. Heaven help us all if we get what we deserve.

Daytime television is designed to drive anyone with a bit of sense to get out of the house and get a job.

Robin Williams stopped being funny a long time ago.

You shouldn’t break a $100 bill unless you absolutely have to, because it will all get away from you after that.

Sony makes the best televisions. JVC is a close second.

Of course the media’s biased. Everybody’s biased.

Patience solves more problems than it causes.

Quality-wise, it doesn’t really matter which company you buy gasoline from.

Extended warranties are usually a rip-off, except for used cars and cutting-edge electronics.

The conventional wisdom is often wrong.

People who throw lit cigarette butts out of their cars should be dragged out and given the Rodney King treatment.

Any business founded on screwing the customer when you can get away with it deserves to be driven out of business by a business that won’t. American Airlines, meet Southwest. Blockbuster, meet Netflix. Car dealers, meet the internet.

The Simpsons hasn’t been very funny lately. In contrast, South Park hasn’t lost its edge.

Hardback books are overpriced, even at half off.

Wal-Mart is a miserable place to shop, and the buck or two more I might spend at Target is well worth it.

Every day of your life is a gift and should be enjoyed as such. Even if all a particular day does is get you to a better day down the road.

Children are not being taught how to behave themselves in public, and society keeps getting worse as a result.

R.E.M. started going downhill soon after they left I.R.S.

I have very few heroes, and most of them are people who have created something out of themselves through their own effort and force of will.

I tend to admire people who have qualities I lack.

When a band releases an album with old tracks that never made it to an album before, it’s a sign of trouble.

The highest compliment one human being can give to another is apparently “woooooooo!”

The price of being ignorant and uneducated is rising every year due to enhanced productivity by those who are neither.

Saturday Night Live hasn’t been very funny lately. In contrast, MAD TV hasn’t lost its edge.

If you are unable to accept people as they are, then you will have a very difficult time having satifying relationships with people.

Whataburger kicks ass. So does In-N-Out Burger.

Being on television must be the most validating experience a person can have, since people don’t seem to care how unflatteringly they are protrayed once they’re on the air.

Toys R Us doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing, and will probably be bankrupt within five years.

Brown shoes go with everything.

Whatever you’re saying or doing, somebody won’t like it.

Coca Cola Zero is a great mixer. So is Sprite Zero.

Socialism is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that human beings will somehow stop acting like human beings once socialism has been adequately explained to them. The only reason to advocate socialism is if you’d like to live off of the labors of others, or if you think you’ll get to be in charge. Now that I think about it, that’s probably why a lot of college students find it irresistible.

The Xbox 360 has the best controller of any console I’ve used.

People should be allowed to smoke in bars, but it’s just rude to do it in a restaurant.

SOS pads work surprisingly well. So do those Magic Erasers.

Television news is the least informative form of news because they are helpless without a visual image. Thus, important things that don’t associate well with pictures don’t get covered well or at all.

Half the population is below average. Half of that half thinks they aren’t.

The only way Oxi Clean fights odors in the laundry is by making the laundry smell like Oxi Clean.

People would be horrified if they knew how much random chance factors into the outcome of a lawsuit.

Don’t buy a house that faces west if you can avoid it.

There’s not enough of a difference between Sam’s Club and Costco to justify buying a membership to both.

Rap has finally overtaken Country as the least imaginative form of popular music.

If you don’t want to hear something you’ve said again, then don’t say it in front of your child.

The first priority of any politician is to stay in office, the second is to expand their power. Serving the interests of the electorate is probably around fourth or fifth, if it’s even that high on the list.

Nobody has any business drinking sugared sodas. A person can eliminate thousands of calories over the course of a lifetime simply by eliminating them from the diet.

Microsoft Word is the worst tool for writing on a PC that I have ever used.

If you want a console on launch day, you’d better pre-order.

Repeating a bad idea with more force and conviction doesn’t transform the idea into a good one.

A lot of low-fat products aren’t particularly worth it because they make up for the lost flavor with sugar or other sweeteners. After all, sugared soda pop is fat-free.

You shouldn’t say anything behind someone’s back that you wouldn’t say to their face. This can lead to saying some pretty blunt things to people’s faces.

People will try very hard to set themselves apart with their dress, language, and behavior, only to become very offended when they are treated differently.

Being an innovator is often less profitable than being the first guy to rip off the innovator.

We wouldn’t have problems with email spam or pop-up web ads if people would just stop responding to them. Thus, as is often the case, the problem is really stupid people.

Representing yourself in a lawsuit is a terrible idea, even though you have a legal right to do it.

Car batteries don’t last more than 3 years.

Don’t loan something to anyone if you’d be upset if it was never returned.

Having HBO, Showtime, or some other movie channel means you’ll end up watching the second half of a lot of movies.

People should be acknowledged and treated with respect, at least at first.

I could never be a sportscaster because I can’t act like all sports are equally interesting.

It’s not particularly impressive to mock Christians by putting those “Darwin” fish on your car or other such nonsense. There’s no risk involved. Mock Muslims if you’ve got real balls.

It’s not particularly impressive to profess your Christian faith by putting those fish on your car. It just looks like you bought your car from Jesus Christ Motors.

Seeing a movie in a theater isn’t really worth it anymore between the high expense and the morons in the other seats.

Anyone who’s smart and talented enough to do a good job as president is also too smart to want to run for president.

If you’ve been summoned for jury duty, bring a book.

Insurance companies are in the business of collecting premiums, not paying claims.

Light sour cream tastes fine once you get used to it.

There is no such thing as a low-carbohydrate Whiskey Sour.

Intelligence is not the same thing as common sense or wisdom.

People can get a lot of notoriety and/or make a pretty good living predicting disasters of all kinds, and nobody will ever hold it against them later when it’s clear they were wrong. Since it seems to be a traditional position in human society, I propose we call this position “doompimp.”

The music industry’s business model is not working. Which is good, because the music industry’s current business model puts the vast majority of the money in the hands of people who don’t make any music and won’t be missed by music fans.

If where I’m going is five hours away or less by car, it’s not worth it to take a plane.

As people get older, they become more of whatever they are.

Bribery is a perfectly legitimate parenting tool.

If you pretend to be a nice person long enough, you’ll become a slightly nicer person who’s really skilled at pretending to be nice.

I’m a reckless, and therefore bad, Texas Hold ‘em player.

The recent demise of Tower Records is yet another illustration of the principle that you cannot charge a premium price for a commodity item. It also shows the decline of the music industry’s ability to deliver a wide range of quality music over the last decade or so, resulting in the commoditization of music.

Newspapers, at least in their current form, are doomed.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Sony screwed up badly with the PS3, and they need to start getting out of the hole they’ve dug ASAP or they’ll be a distant third place in the console market.

Gift cards should be used as soon as possible. The businesses that sold them are counting on you to lose them or forget them.

You don’t have to finish everything on your plate, even if you paid good money for it.

The worst flaw of humanity is selfishness, followed closely by lust.

You don’t just marry the girl, you also marry her family.

Life really is one damn thing after another. Try to have a good attitude about it.

The NBA is diminishing its fan appeal by tolerating increasingly thuggish behavior by its players.

The value a child places on a toy is usually inverse to the price of the toy. If it cost $80, it’s amusing for maybe an hour or so. If it came free with a hamburger, it’s a treasure. The exception to this rule is videogames.

Movies about unhappy things with no positive resolutions aren’t worth my time.

The best TV shows are currently more entertaining than the best movies. Especially in high definition.

I’m OK with being cheap, but it’s important not to be stingy.

There’s nothing sold in a mall that I can’t find somewhere else or live without.

Every year I seem to do more Christmas shopping on the internet.

Optical mice are great. Scroll wheels on optical mice are great. Tilting scroll wheels on optical mice . . . meh.

What a company goes out of its way to not tell me about their product is just as important as what they do tell me about it.

Those springs that help your garage door move up can break.

Bob Stoops can’t win a bowl game.

Hewlett-Packard is trashing its good name by selling underpowered computers so overloaded with crapware that they can barely function. Does the money they save by only including 512m of RAM really make up for the crappy Windows XP performance?

Never underestimate a child’s ability to lose something so thoroughly you’ll never find it again.

Thinking is easy, writing is hard.

Cindy Sheehan is a terrible spokesperson for her cause because her voice and delivery make her discussion of life-and-death issues sound like someone ordering a taco at a drive-through.

UPS delivers to residential areas as late as possible in the day, unless you really want what’s being delivered, in which case they come by when you aren’t at home and leave a sticky.

Linux doesn’t deal well with writing to NTFS partitions, even though it can read from them just fine.

Windows XP refuses to format a drive in FAT32.

Time is just as much a commodity as money.

You’re not doing your child any favors by making up a name for it.

The only difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to government spending is what they want to spend it on. They both think they can buy the love of the electorate by spending money that isn’t theirs. And it works some of the time.

You’re never as sneaky as you think you are. Getting away with things usually means others don’t bother to call you on your actions.

The last set of Pirelli tires I bought will be the last set of Pirelli tires I buy.

Anyone who doesn’t think humanity isn’t essentially worthless should spend a few hours playing randomly-matched online games with voice chat.

Legos are overpriced, but they sure sold the hell out of them last Christmas.

I’m less inclined to buy a product if I know it takes an odd number of batteries.

Changing unsecured debt into secured debt is usually a bad idea, especially if you’re in the position of needing to change the nature of your debts.

Fry’s rarely has decent sales in November and December.

If you’re building a house, have every room wired for phone, cable, and CAT5.

No matter where I sit on the plane, the guy in the seat in front of me will lean his seat back into my face as soon as possible.

Even the hallways reek on floors where hotels have the smoking rooms. Better stay clear if you’re sentsitive to that sort of thing.

January is not the best month for a vist to Albuquerque.

Next to an adult bookstore, airport news stands appear to have the widest selection of skin mags. Dallas’ Love Field is particularly well-stocked.

Hotels jumped on the environmentally concerned bandwagon with regard to not changing sheets and towels in your room right around the same time they realized they could save money while appearing to be environmentally sensitive.

HBO is usually showing something that sucks or you’ve already seen.

Albuquerque’s downtown is near train tracks. These train tracks are used all night by trains sounding their horns.

I dislike being bored. I may actually be afraid of it.

Figuring out the character of a city can be as easy as reading the signs for pedestrians. In Albuquerque, there are signs warning you to look both ways, signs built into the crosswalks reminding you to “look,” and timers on the crosswalk lights counting down how many seconds you have before the lights change. In contrast, Dallas seems pretty indifferent to the possibility of your demise due to poor pedestrian choices.

You’re not any less of a man if you take a cab rather than drag your stuff half a mile through the cold.

It’s not a question of whether a hard drive will die, it’s when.

If art can have a positive or inspiring effect on people, then logically it can also cause negative effects.

After-church diners leave crappy tips and let their kids run around in restaurants, or at least they did 20 years ago. I’d be willing to bet that hasn’t changed.

Video game soundtracks have introduced me to more new bands in the last five years than radio.

Computers have wasted more paper than they’ve saved.

Sleeping is one of the best ways to recover from a cold.

The highest priority for a publicly traded corporation is to pay lots of money to the people who run it. The next-highest is to make money.

It’s easier to pay someone to come in and vaccuum, clean the toilets, and change the sheets than it is to fight with your spouse over who has to do it.

There is less news occurring in the world than there is news coverage to report it.

Listening to what someone says is usually far less informative than observing what they do.

You don’t own the house, the house owns you.

Dumb actions are not limited to dumb people.

If you don’t want kids, for goodness sake, you know how not to have them. If you don’t want more kids, you know how not to have them. Vasectomies are considerably cheaper than college tuition.

Good service is worth paying for.

Prilosec isn’t for everyone, but for those that need it, it’s life changing.

Right or wrong, I tend to think people whose lips can’t quite cover their teeth aren’t bright.

Men who get cosmetic surgery only end up marking themselves as vain people who now look kind of funny.

Once you are a parent, your life is no longer your own.

Smokers could get considerably more sympathy if they’d quit using the world as their ashtray.

There really is no friend like an old friend.

Feeling superior to others appears to be a fundamental human need. That’s why it’s so easy to convince people they are better than other people who do X or think Y.

Dignity is not compatible with parenthood. Or at least the version of parenthood where you actually take care of the children.

Radio ads should not be allowed to have the sound of either screeching tires or sirens.

Toting around a cell phone isn’t enough to set you apart anymore, so those that want to feel distinguished now have to constantly wear a Bluetooth earpiece. Well played, important cyborg!

Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. Ask an ER doctor about the things they remove from various human orifices.

Prostitution isn’t going anywhere, so it should probably be legal so it can be regulated and taxed.

Microsoft almost never gets anything right the first time.

Someone will buy a unique consumer item no matter how much it costs just to prove they can pay for it. This serves both an economic and a moral purpose.

There’s only one guy running the trash truck, the driver. He uses the mechanical arm to lift the trash bin over the truck to dump stuff out. He won’t get out of the cab of the truck if some of the trash misses the truck. This also means he won’t get out of the cab if you pile a bunch of trash bags over the top of the bin and use packing tape to hold the stack together.

I am at least focused enough to do 100 blog posts.

Stories about global warming hearings and conferences being cancelled due to ice & snow are always funny.

You know that middle-aged guy that drives around in a luxury car at least 25 years old that’s in poor repair and maybe has 4 or 5 antennas on it? You don’t want to be that guy.

Paris Hilton has a long way to go if she ever wants to meet the standard set by Anna Nicole Smith. Ms. Hilton doesn’t even have a body count.

Trusting the North Koreans is something done only by people who desperately want to claim they’ve accomplished something diplomatically. As opposed to actually accomplishing something.

If you are in a romantic relationship with a woman, and she says that you don’t have to do anything for Valentine’s Day, she is not telling you the truth. Even if she thinks she’s telling you the truth, she’s not. The same goes for Christmas, birthdays, and possibly Labor Day.

Work expands to fill the time available to do it.

I tend to vote for the party that pisses me off the least. Since I started doing that, the Democrats haven’t even come close to getting my vote, and the Republicans have been trying hard to achieve parity.

It’s probably not going to permanently scar your kid if he sees a bare boob on TV. But it’s much better if you don’t have to be in the position of explaining how that boob got there.

I’ll drive past many 7-Elevens to get to a QuikTrip.

You can set WordPress to publish things at a future time. Say, Thursdays at 9am.

It appears I like buying Japanese RPG’s more than I like playing them.

Telephone solicitors have forefeited any right to polite treatment simply by showing up for work.

If there’s a woman too ugly to be impregnated, I haven’t seen her on TV yet.

Assuming you don’t want to deal with bums, when you are approached you should (1) never break stride, (2) never make eye contact, and (3) never say anything that encourages further interaction. It helps to be wearing headphones, that way you can just look at your watch and tell them what time it is as you cruise past them.

And yes, they’re bums. “Homeless” is a superset of “bums,” not all people without a fixed residence panhandle.

XM Radio is a lot like satellite TV, there’s a bit of what you like, and a lot of what you don’t. And it’s overcompressed.

There is no way that an HDMI cable is worth $100. Any retail outlet that tries to sell one to you at that price is insulting you on several levels.

Senator McCain is a lousy Republican. He is, however, an excellent McCainist. Too bad the primaries are held by Republicans.

There are 10 federal holidays a year. Two months have 2 holidays in them, four months don’t have any holidays. These four months appear in a span of six months.

I’ll never get a tattoo because I’ve seen what they look like on old people.

A corporation is a legal construct. Thus, there is absolutely no chance that it “cares” about anything.

Dell has lost market share for a reason. They use cheap parts that constrain your post-purchase options, and their prices are low only for underpowered systems that won’t do what you need done very well. Once you spec them out properly, you might as well go to Newegg or Best Buy for a better price, unless you want to play the hunt-for-the 24 hour sale game.

This season of 24 isn’t as engaging as previous ones.

The people who made “Hannibal” can’t tell the difference between a thriller and a snuff film.

People who are literate, emotionally stable, and intelligent tend to forget that a significant portion of the population does not share or value these qualities.

It’s not possible to be a perfect parent. This means you have to develop the ability to apologize to your child.

As far as I can tell, all new PCs now come with a cheap, unusable keyboard.

A prosecutor does not have to obtain a conviction to forever change someone’s life. Even successfully defending against criminal charges is expensive, stressful, and punishing.

If a special prosecutor is appointed, then someone will be prosecuted.

Simon Cowell is almost always right about the contestants on American Idol.

We live in an age where the frontiers of our world have been explored. It’s a time where most opportunites lie in refining what already exists rather than exploring and creating new things. And yes, I know the internet is pretty new, but it’s mostly a new delivery method for the same old things.

The character of your life is defined by the choices you make and how well you execute them.

To pity someone is to automatically assume superiority over them.

“Morality” is an essentially meaningless term because nobody defines it the same way.

Craig Ferguson is more engaging and entertaining than Conan O’Brian.

The Cartoon Network has pissed away all of the goodwill it earned with shows like the Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, and Dexter’s Laboratory by pumping out crap that my kids won’t watch.

No joke can survive an explanation of why it’s funny.

Judges make bad litigators. They just don’t think that way anymore.

I wouldn’t get so pissed about my Xbox 360 dying if I didn’t enjoy it so much.

Theme parks are perfectly OK with the idea of charging full price for admission while operating the park at half capacity.

If you don’t ask a local resident where the good restaurants are, you’ll end up eating at tourist traps.

The only good thing about traveling with small children is being allowed to pre-board.

If you have a prescription, count your pills to make sure you’ve got enough to last until you get back from your trip.

Children’s ability to watch the same movie over and over is a valuable thing.

If you give your grandchildren permission to jump on an air mattress over the course of several nights, they will eventiually cause it to leak. The parents of said children, who thought it was a bad idea to begin with, will probably not offer to buy a new one, especially after discovering the existence of the leak in the middle of the night.

The latest version of the iPod is a better video player than the PSP. Storage space beats screen size.

Zoos are open when the animals they house are least likely to be doing anything.

The interiors of Chrysler minivans look cheap.

Get a direct fight if it’s at all possible.

Feeling is the opposite of thinking.

Most of the impatience I experience is related to transitional states. If I’m driving somewhere, I don’t want any traffic delays. If I’m in a checkout line, I want the damn thing to move. This is probably not the insight I think it is.

Lightscribe is a cool technology, but it probably won’t catch on because it’s expensive compared to regular media, the images are monochromatic, take a long time to burn (about 20 minutes), and are low contrast.

Whatever gasoline and electricity cost, I’m buying them.

Turkey pepperoni is a strange mix of rubbery texture and artificial flavor.

You know a technology product has become part of your life when if it breaks, you would immediately go out and get another one. I can’t imagine my life without internet access, cell phones, microwave ovens, or DVRs. I think HDTV is next on the list.

I really enjoy comics and graphic novels, but I’d rather be seen in public reading an issue of Juggs than an issue of Batman. Same goes for Harry Potter books. This is an admission of pathological self-consciousness rather than an endorsement of Juggs.

Man is the only creature that talks himself out of acting in his best interests.

Those who advocate evolution as the sole valid explanation for the origin of the world we live in are often the most strident opponents of letting evolution run its course.

If all of your problems can be solved with more money, then you really don’t have problems.

A Nintendo DS game can survive a trip through a washing machine.

Rachel Ray is overexposed.

Rosie O’Donnell is both unpleasant and nuts.

Renting games is OK right up to the point you feel compelled to finish the damn thing before giving it back and end up spending 16 hours on it over the weekend. Then it just feels like work.

If you see something you want at Sam’s Warehouse Club, buy it. Chances are it won’t be there the next time you come back.

Leasing a car means obsessing about the number of miles you drive, if you’re the sort of person to obsess over things.

You can either work to build your own fortune, or to build someone else’s. Or, and I’m just throwing it out, you could get a government job.

When it comes to homosexual autobiographical essayist/performers, David Sedaris beats Augusten Burroughs.

Saturday Night live hasn’t just lost its edge, it stinks for 75 minutes out of 90.

I don’t trust Oprah.

When a band or solo artist puts out a double album of original songs, it usually means they’ve started to believe their own hype and can’t bear to edit down their brilliance to only one album of better songs. And yes, Bruce Springsteen, two simultaneous albums count, too.

There are only two ways to get money: earn it or have it given to you.

Nobody ever seems to think it’s important to make an economic case for recycling. It’s just assumed to be a good thing.

Interfaces and editors are nice, but sometimes you have to edit the HTML directly.

Katie Couric needed the Today show a lot more than the Today show needed her. This is not to say that the Today show has, at any point in recent memory, stopped sucking.

The police enforce speeding laws more often than reckless driving laws because it’s easier, not because speeding is more dangerous.

The fact that Troy Aikman wants to sell me a Ford does not make it any more likely that I’ll buy a Ford.

If you can’t handle disappointment, you can’t handle life.

John Grisham has no idea how to end his books.

Any time it rains in the Metroplex, expect your commute to take at least 50% longer.

It must be nice to be a weatherman or an economist because being absolutely wrong about what you are employed to do has no effect on your career.

Small town speed limits should be respected at all times.

Sony’s PSP has appreciably crisper sound than Apple’s iPod when playing the same MP3s, particularly in the low end. Too bad the PSP’s music interface and controls are crap, and storage is limited to 4 (expensive and sold separately) gigs.

Environmentalism has evolved into an intolerant pagan religion.

New Yorkers think they’re better than regular Americans.

Regular Americans properly regard New Yorkers as being full of crap.

Nobody’s going to do anything about Social Security until there’s a crisis.

Donald Trump has nothing useful to tell me about business success other than: it’s very helpful to be rich to begin with.

The only reason I still subscribe to the Dallas Morning News is their comics section. Which they won’t stop screwing around with.

Oklahoma’s a bit too fond of turnpikes, it’s not like charging admission to the state is justified.

There’s a special kind of stupid that only the very highly educated can produce.

Wireless DVD-player headphones from a Nissan will work in a Honda and vice-versa.

For no particular reason, I consider “geek” to be a more insulting term than “nerd.”

If you download a game onto your cell phone, it can’t be transferred to your next cell phone.

The words “global warming” and “hoax” are going to appear together in a lot of future sentences. There’s no way reality can live up to the predictions.

I don’t care for Scotch whiskey.

It’s amazing how much of television news programming is nothing more than the merchandization of human suffering.

The first half of a non-fiction book is often better than the second half.

Chili is good with mustard. Chili is good with sour cream. Chili is not good with both.

The easiest way to shut a child up is to put him on the phone and ask him to talk to a relative.

Comedy and aggression are closely aligned.

Middle-class Americans live better than 99% of the human beings who currently exist or have ever been born.

Being famous appears to be an unrewarding experience.

Some of the most troublesome people you’ll ever meet are the ones who insist upon the purity of their vision, and refuse to consider compromising it.

Corporate mergers are done to (1) eliminate a competitor, (2) increase market share, and/or (3) achieve administrative economies by firing a lot of employees.  None of these things particularly benefits the public.

The primary career path for ex-cheerleaders is apartment management.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are going to have a tough time penetrating the market because marketing competing formats was stupid and because DVDs look just fine on an HD set.

ImgBurn is free and does what I want a CD/DVD burning program to do.

The broadcast TV networks aren’t doing themselves any favors by locking themselves into rigid “seasons.”

I will probably go my entire life without owning a German-made car.

Anyone who uses the word “sheeple” without quote marks or irony has instantly and permanently lost any right to be taken seriously.

Guitar Hero II is fun right up to the point where I have to stop reacting and start memorizing.

Well-written movies and TV shows don’t have “extra characters,” i.e., chatacters that do not advance the story.  This means that you can reasonably expect a character who appears to be “extra” to have something to reveal later.

If you get a gallon of shampoo, you’d better be damn sure you like it.

I find using coupons to be embarassing.

I find redeeming rebates to be irritating.

If I needed a lawyer to handle something for me, I’d call a lawyer who practices in the county where the issue would be tried and doesn’t practice that area of law and ask them who they would hire.

Nothing teaches humility like applying for a job.

I’m in a better mood if I make a point of listening to music every day.

I should not trust car salesmen, building contractors, politicians, or door-to-door salesmen.

By the time a slang phrase like “dissed” or “firefight” makes its way to regular use by journalists, the word is so stale it marks the user as trying too hard to be hip.  Nobody wants to hear Barbara Walters talking about her homies or Wolf Blitzer discussing how Congress delivered a stinging bitch-slap to the President.

More than half the time when I try to be polite to someone in traffic, I end up regretting it.

The 18-year-old version of myself would be disappointed with my career choice.

The current version of myself is disappointed with my 18-year-old self’s bad attitude and lack of motivation.

Both President Bushes have been disappointments.

Once you decide on a bunch of coordinated items you want from Ikea, some of them will be out of stock.  Ikea’s not particularly worked up about that.

Any country other than the US would regard Mexico’s policy of shipping millions of poor people illegally into their country as an act of war.

Drug companies, asian carmakers, and goofball mothers are all drawing from the same pool of names.  Just ask/buy Boniva, Amanti, and Safara.

TV shows featuring pranks on unsuspecting celebrities (or anyone else) have run their course.

I’m old enough to remember when MTV played music videos, and now I’m old enough to remember when MTV2 played music videos.

When real life demands your time, your internet life must give way.

Reading a bad book makes me want to write a good one.

The last thing I need is to start playing some time-sink of an online RPG game.

People disappointed with the last episode of the Sopranos must have watched the show for all these years without realizing the show was never about a payoff or a dramatic crescendo, it was always a character study.

Reality-show producers are never going to run out of people who are kidding themselves.

Sometimes I buy DVDs for the pleasure of owning them rather than to actually watch them. But I’ll probably get around to that later.

People often confuse tolerance with approval.

People often demand approval when all they’re reasonably entitled to is tolerance.

Every once in a while, there’s a moment where the preoccupations of life fall away and I feel completely at peace with myself and the world. These moments don’t last long, and I treasure them.

You can have your way or you can have me like it, but you’re not getting both.

When a performer commits suicide, it diminishes my future enjoyment of their work.

Jack Black’s acting range is limited to one character: Jack Black.

Sony hasn’t learned a damn thing from its failed proprietary formats Betamax, MiniDisc, UMD, Memory Stick, DAT, Atrac, and SA-CD.

One of the reasons I procrastinate doing creative things is because I think that I need to do them perfectly or not at all. I know it’s stupid, yet I keep doing it.

If governments didn’t have the ability to make a few people wealthy at the expense of everyone else, they’d be less corrupt.

One of the defining characteristics of modern liberalism is a desire to remake the world to suit their vision of what it should be.  If people need to be forcibly compelled to conform to this vision, so be it.

Complete elimination of passive voice from writing is silly. Sometimes the object of the action is more important than the actor, and sometimes you don’t want to come right out and call someone stupid.

The worst part of call-in talk radio shows is the callers.

Save receipts.

Never rule out the possibility that you’re entirely full of crap.

Whether a movie has won an Academy Award has no correlation to the question of whether I’d want to watch it.

Kids refuse to believe that being a grownup sucks most of the time.

There are no authors right now whose books I will automatically buy in hardback.

No good has ever come from the “deconstruction” of anything.  The word is essentially a synonym for “bullshit.”

Children are mimics. They learn by observing and imitating others, especially parents. That’s why good examples are important.

Nobody successful has ever said “I owe it all to smoking pot.”

Spammers are a lot more concerned about the size of my penis than I am.

Even if you aren’t a true believer, it’s hard to argue that the Ten Commandments are bad ideas.

The government’s inability to handle passport applications in a timely manner has severely diminished its credibility.

FM modulators are worthless, particularly in the Metroplex.

Live Aid didn’t fix Africa.

Live Earth won’t fix the Earth.

Nobody seems to be sure what Live 8 was for, but it didn’t fix anything, either.

Rock concerts are a discredited mechanism for fixing societal problems.

Harrison Ford is no longer a credible action star.  See Firewall.

Bruce Willis just keeps on ticking.  See Live Free or Die Hard.  No, really, see it, it’s good.

Even if we assume the proposition that there’s no such thing as a stupid question, there’s plenty of questions that will make the person asking them appear to be stupid.

I like to make up my own definitions for slang terms.  For example, a “tool” is someone whose high opinion of himself is unjustified by any particular skill, knowledge, or expertise.

Al Gore is a tool.

Five days on a cruise ship is enough time to convince your brain that the natural state of the world is a gentle, side-to-side motion.  Leaving the ship for land does not change this assumption right away.Anywhere where there are tourists, Mexican vendors will offer the following items for sale:  cheap silver jewelry; poorly-tooled leather goods; overpriced and allegedly Cuban cigars; t-shirts with filthy jokes on them; carved marble suitable for any respectable trailer home; gaudy sombreros; cheap trinkets made with beads, clay, paper-mache, wood, scrap metal, or all of the above; and peasant-style clothing.

Mexico hasn’t changed in years and isn’t changing anytime soon.

Cruise lines probably break even on the fares and make their profit on alcohol sales, casino gambling, and photos.

The limits on duty-free alcohol shopping (capped at 1 liter for Texas residents) make it barely worth the time you’ll spend picking it up on your way off the ship.

I still don’t understand Craps.

A cabin with a window isn’t significantly more desirable than a cabin without one.

The majority of teenage girls have an incredibly vacant expression on their face most of the time.

Eating anything in Mexico is a bad idea.

I’ll probably do a cruise again.

XM’s alternative channels are a bit too fond of The Jam, XTC, and U2.

“The Departed” was overrated.

“Beerfest” was underrated.

Different liquors deliver a different intoxication experience. For example, beer does not equal rum, which does not equal vodka.

A plot recitation is not a movie review.

I’m running out of time to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

Nobody appreciates the simple benefit of good health until they don’t have it anymore.

Windows Vista is not a compelling upgrade just yet.

I drive faster when I’m listening to the Pixies.

Deejays are missing the gene that would allow them to percieve the loathing of their fellow man.

Pre-season football is like non-alcoholic beer: why bother?

July is my least favorite month, followed by August.

If the NFL and DirecTV weren’t so damn greedy, I’d still pay for their Sunday Ticket.

If you think about buying a certain cell phone for too long, it’ll go off the market. Maybe it’ll get replaced with a newer & better model, maybe it won’t.

I cannot concieve of a lower form of “pitiful” than contestants on reality TV shows where a group of women compete for the affections of one man.

You can blame just about anything on global warming, and a certain percentage of the population will believe you.

Many people confuse “being tough” with “being an obstinate moron.”

It’s rare for an artist of any sort to produce at the same quality level throughout an entire career.

If you save the codes from Coke products, you can get free stuff!

Beware of people who add needless complexity to things.  It’s much easier to hide your true intentions when you don’t have to be simple or clear.

The shortest increment of conversational time is the “Harvard Interval.” This is the amount of time it takes a person who graduated from, attended, or otherwise interacted with Harvard University to work that fact into a conversation.

Being a parent means worrying about your kids for the rest of your life.

Power, at its essence, is the ability to impose your will on other people.

Human beings crave power, and will not willingly abandon a source of power.

The guy that was perfectly willing to drive 65 in front of you will want to drive 80 next to you or behind you.

We live in a culture that tells us we are failures if we are not rich and/or famous.

I should avoid the Black Bean Chili Omlette at IHOP.

Content that would get a game rated “M” would only get a movie rated “PG-13.”

The worst part of the iPod experience is dealing with iTunes.

“Dogma” was the beginning of the end of my Kevin Smith fanhood.

At some point, looking for traffic before crossing the street not only became optional, it became uncool.

The only thing ethanol is good for is making corn farmers rich.

Comments are a bit much to ask of my readers (as wonderful as they are).

Most boxing matches disappoint me and go the distance.

Compared to ultimate fighting, boxing is dull.

I’m much happier if I avoid fantasy football.

Daylight savings time really messes with children’s schedules.

Firefox caches web pages, including the one that had the blog post that you worked on for hours and stupidly deleted half of.

It’s worth the money to keep an extra tank of propane around for the grill.

People tend to take their own experience and viewpoint and universalize it to the rest of humanity.

I’d rather order the one thing I know I really like on a restaurant’s menu than try to be adventurous and end up disappointed.

SD cards have won the flash-memory market share war.

It’s not worth it to try to compute exactly how much time you’ll need on a parking meter and only pay for that amount of time.  Parking tickets are a profit center for cities, so toss in another quarter, big shot.

I’m done buying Motorola cell phones.

A downtown area’s one-way streets confuse and frighten out-of-towners.

When I’m really concentrating, I ignore thirst and hunger.  Actually, that’s the only time I ignore them.

A little consideration is too much to ask of most drivers.

Almost all cell phone games aren’t worth your time between the tiny screen and bad controls.

I wouldn’t like living in a small town and having everybody know my business.

George W. Bush makes a lot of bad personnel decisions.

Press conferences in which a person repeatedly announces “I am not gay” are not effective methods of convincing people that the person in question is not gay.

It’s completely unsurprising when weight-loss pills are advertised as being effective when used along with diet and exercise.  Daily five-minute sessions of banging your head against the wall are similarly effective for weight loss when used along with diet and exercise.

The metroplex’s AM radio stations believe that I’d rather listen to some undistinguished local buffoon conduct a talk show than a straight-up newscast or national talk show.  They’re wrong.

I’m pretty old in internet years.

A credit card with an annual fee is not worth having.

When driving on the metroplex’s highways, you have the choice of tailgating the driver in front of you or having jackasses constantly change lanes to cut in front of you.

The Texas Rangers have a longstanding tradition of overpaying for hacks and burnouts while setting their best talent free to blossom on other baseball teams.

Pants labeled as being of the same size can and will fit differently.

Cable modems don’t last more than about three years.

After doing 350 of these, it’s getting harder to avoid duplicates.

Anybody can sue anyone for any reason, whether it stands up in court is an entirely different issue. As a result, the publicity given to lawsuit filings is usually unjustified.

Spammers are of the belief that the presence of a middle initial will somehow fool me into opening their mail.

Budget shipping from Amazon.com shows up sooner than you think it will.  Budget shipping from Buy.com shows up later than you think it will.

The erectile dysfunction drug industry is keeping the NFL and XM Radio on the air.

“My Name Is Earl” has beaten out “24″ as the best show on TV right now.

If you wipe the rubber blade after every stroke when you clean your windshield at the gas station, the results will be much better.

You know you’re getting older when the women on the covers of Town & Country look more interesting than the girls on the covers of Cosmopolitan.

Jennifer Garner’s relationship with Ben Affleck has tainted her in my eyes.

DirecTV takes away your ability to order pay-per-view movies if you leave the phone line unplugged.

Bagged salads go bad really quickly.

The Nobel Peace Prize is consistently awarded to people who talk a lot, but don’t actually do anything useful.

Basting with a little olive oil keeps chicken breasts from sticking to the grill.

Youth football is all about the running game.  Passing, with a few exceptions, comes later.

The Fox News Channel has an infinite supply of newsblondes.

Most podcasts take twice as much time as necessary to say what they’re saying.

It’s silly to say you “believe” in evolution, since it’s a scientific theory rather than a belief system, and whether you believe in it or not has nothing to do with whether the theory is correct.

No TV show integrates social commentary and comedy better than South Park.

I’d play on the Wii more if it supported high definition.

A lot of videogames that let two or more people play at the same time suffer from the “Gauntlet Effect,” which limits the entire group’s progression to the cooperative abilities and attention span of the least focused member of the group.

The bigger the age gap between the vidoegame players, the more pronounced the Gauntlet Effect will be.

My left shoe becomes untied far more often than my right.

TNT and its sister networks think that HD programming is just SD programming blown up, stretched, and cut off on the top and bottom.

Oversized whole wheat hot dog buns make excellent hoagie rolls.

Nobody ever finishes watching a move and says: “You know, I liked it, but they really didn’t say ‘fuck’ enough times.”

Rachel Ray has gained a little weight.  And I like it.

Any time a business has “USA” in its name, consider it a warning sign.

The best seat for me to watch an NFL game is the one in my living room. College games, on the other hand, are worth the money to be physically present.

If they weren’t narcisisstic, arrogant jackasses they wouldn’t have run for the Senate in the first place.

About 10% of the time, the drive-through fast food worker will give me a sugared soda instead of the diet one I ordered.

R-rated movies from Netflix tend to sit around until I wise up and send them back to get something I can watch with the kids in the room.

The solemn duty of all weather broadcasters is to cause widespread public panic whenever possible.

Failure to treat others with respect is a sign of immaturity or insecurity, or both.

Do not mix negative emotions with vodka. Just don’t.

Government’s preferred response to a slow economy is to spend more money. Government’s preferred response to a booming economy is to spend more money.

Non-gamers view videogames and the people who enjoy them with equal parts condescension and suspicion.

Nothing focuses my attention like a deadline. No deadline, no discipline.

When you show up at the ER in an ambulance, you get to go to the front of the line.

The lower the stakes, the more vicious the fight.

The media thrives on conflict. That’s why if an election or some other public competition is not competitive, the media will do its best to make it at least appear competitive.

Katherine Heigl is getting the movie roles that Ashley Judd was getting five years ago.