My Dentist

Sure it’s easy to say you hate dentists. Nobody likes them. They drill holes in your teeth. They’re total assholes. But mine is a particular type of asshole and let me tell you why. Because he doesn’t speak to me. Instead, he relays information by talking to his hygienist, Margaret, while I’m in the room. “Looks like this fella hasn't been flossing as much as we asked him to, hey Margaret? I think he may have lost that floss we gave him. Hmmm, you'd think he’d want to keep his teeth his whole life. Sure would look pretty silly without them.” Margaret nods her head and says stuff like “looks that way,” but I don’t blame her. She’s just trying to earn a paycheck. I think she hates him too. All I can do is focus on the wise advice from the cat hanging from the tree limb in the poster on the ceiling and hang in there.

My Boss

Here's a breakdown of what makes for a good boss and why mine fails on every single point:

1. Praise in public. Chastise in private.
Good bosses know that praising and encouraging staff members is the key to creating a positive work atmosphere. If a correction needs to be made, it's never a good idea to call someone out in front of the group. Well, this one day I decided to play a goof on my coworker Donald. I gave him an epic atomic wedgie and made him think I was gonna dip his nards in the deep fryer. My boss saw me and completely freaked out right in front of my fellow employees! It's not like any customers saw me so I told him to chillax. I mean, earlier that week I refilled the napkins without even being asked to. Did I get so much as a thank you or a raise? Hell no.

2. Always make team spirit a priority.
In any organization, maintaining good team spirit is critical for better overall employee performance. Everybody knows that. So, during the Monday morning staff meeting I suggested we all take our clothes off and hit this righteous bag of peyote I had. My boss instantly shut me down in a very loud and hurtful manner. See point #1.

3. Share experiences and insights.
Sharing personal anecdotes can be an effective way for a boss to teach valuable lessons in a non-confrontational way. My boss told me about how this one time he ran out of cat food for his ten cats. And there was a blizzard outside, so he killed one of his cats and fed it to the other cats. He said sometimes you need to think on your feet and kill a cat to save nine cats. I'm just kidding, he didn't say any of that, but how awesome would that be if he did! I'm sure he does have a butt-load of cats, though.

4. Be open-minded and an effective listener.
Someone in the team may come up with a new and different way of looking at a problem. For instance, my boss told me to go mop the bathroom and I told him to shove the mop up his ass. Obviously, he doesn't have a very open mind about the best thing to do with the mop.

5. Don't play favorites.
It's obvious to all of us that Dale is the golden child. My boss makes very little effort to hide that fact. He got moved to the register in like two weeks and I don't remember the last time he scrubbed a toilet. Becky told me they went bowling together! Did I get an invite? No. Why don't they just go marry each other or something. Whatever. Like I care. Those guys are losers. I hope they both get herpes.

Game. Set. And match.

AARON NEVILLE'S MOLE

Kevin Jonas

Is it just me or is Kevin Jonas really phoning it in these days? This hurts to say, but he seems more concerned with collecting checks and walking down red carpets than being the true musical craftsman he was born to be. No one expects him to return to such heights as Mandy from the Zoey 101: Spring Break-Up soundtrack. Nor can we hope for a duplication of the vortex-bending riffs found on DisneyMania 4’s Yo Ho (A Pirates Life For Me), but we at least deserve to know he’s trying. Perhaps the rumor mill is right. Perhaps he’s no longer interested in pushing himself creatively.

Until this recent period of uncertainty, Kevin had never been one to shy away from austerity (the poignant Lovebug, the retro-futuristic Year 3000 and the provocative masterworks of Camp Rock2: The Final Jam). These classics provided a much-needed counterbalance to more raucous rave-ups like Set This Party Off and That’s Just The Way We Roll. Whereas 2008’s Burnin’ Up exuded the playful existentialism that planted roots in our collective unconscious, their most recent effort – LA Baby (Where Dreams Are Made) – lacks the compositional tension between innocence and impudence that has always distinguished The Jonas Brothers from their rock counterparts.

And I blame Kevin.

Pitch-perfect Nick Jonas remains at the top of his game and Joe hasn’t skipped a beat with his consistently ferocious and always uncompromising percussive attack. So, the question remains. Where is Kevin and when is he coming back? Maybe the answer lies in the second verse of Year 3000:

He took me to the future in the flux thing, and I saw everything
Boy bands, and another one and another one...and another one!
And girls there with blonde hair, like in Star Wars, they floated up on the floor.

Well, Kevin. The world is waiting for you to float again. Just like in Star Wars.

Complaining about how many emails you get

I have a theory that the more you complain about emails, the more you freakin’ love it. And by theory I mean stone-cold fact. “Argh, today is nuts. I have like 600 unread emails sitting in my inbox and it’s only 10:30.” Translation: “I am goddamn amazing. I am wanted. I am a big deal. There’s not enough of me to go around. They should clone me so ten of me could each clone me so there would be umm…many many more of me. It would be a me-posse of pure domination. If I had spare time, which I don’t, I’d turn on my webcam and stare into my eyes to try to learn something. I get so many emails I have to check them during meetings and on elevators and toilets. I am sexually irresistible. And my parents were richer than yours.”

Autoflow being removed on gas pumps

It makes you want to do this:

Jim Grey

I want Jim Grey to lie down on my lawn so I can run him over with a dull push mower. Who is more to blame for this world-class abomination in a skinsuit, the man himself or his boss for putting him in front of the camera all these years? Neither. His mother is to blame. She did not provide the necessary love and positive reinforcement required to raise a stable and kind individual. She was a very bad mother. For those who don’t know who Jim Grey is, he's that jackhole who always interviews the losing team after big games like the Superbowl. He’s amazingly astute at squeezing all the sadness he can out of his target. He has evil, wee-beady eyes and a hateful voice. If my computer weren’t running out of juice I’d track down his top five most uncomfortable interviews. Too bad, but shame on you Jim Grey. And shame on you, Jim Grey’s mother.