Life is funny.

Really, no bullshit. Life is a fucking hilarious trip through the fun house.

Let me explain.

You buy a 12 pack of soda, say Mountain Dew Diet Code Red (completely random association with this thought. . .yeah). You open said 12 pack only to find it contains 11 full cans of soda, not 12. What the fuck? See, one of the cans is empty, albeit, sealed. What do you do? You sure as hell don't drink it. Could have a syringe just waiting to stick you in the tongue (brings back a funny story about the first of many hoax claims of tainted Diet Pepsi from about 5 years ago; the first person said she knew something was wrong when she took a sip and felt a prick in her mouth. She got nothing, and liked it) hidden in the can. So, you save it.

Great, next you go to the website for the maker of the product, say www.pepsiworld.com, for example and look for the ubiquitous "contact us" button. Only thing is, it's not there. So, you go to the parent company's site, say www.pepsico.com, looking for a contact button. Lo and behold, thar she blows! You follow the link and, wouldn't you know it, it takes you back to pepsiworld.com. Pretty fucking funny. Bastards.

So, you futz around the pepsiworld.com area for a while looking for a hidden link, only it isn't there. What is there is a link to "Ask Lisa," Pepsi's "virtual customer service representative." This little bitch asks you to type in a brief question about Pepsi products so she can spit out the pre-written, company-friendly answer. Perfect. OK, Lisa, here goes: What do I do with an empty can of Mountain Dew Diet Code Red? Hmmm? Lisa's answer: I'm not sure what you're asking, but here's a list of topics your search brought out. Funny thing is, you can't see them because the window won't expand to reveal them. That's right, it's a pop-up and it stays small.

I'm losing my fucking mind with this hilarity.

So, here I am with an empty can of soda I would dearly love to send back to Pepsi, or Pepsiworld (wherever that shithole is) so they can take their empty soda can and promptly shove it up their corporate ass.

That and they can show us Lisa's tits as a consolation.

Fuck corporate America, before it's too late.

First, I'd like to thank my good friend Dan for linking to my blog from his site, www.theartofdansilver.com. Those of you who came from there, thanks for visiting and not voicing your utter disappointment in my petty rants and tantrums. If you came here by chance, damn your luck and move on. I understand.

Now, welcome to the Useless Holiday Department. Today's special, Valentine's Day. Or is it St. Valentine's Day. Call it what you want, it's fucking useless. Call me bitter, call me jaded, call me Earl, but don't call me some hopeless romantic, yearning for love's passionate blaze to burn brightly within my breast. Biggest pussy holiday in the known universe.

In reality, Valentine's Day makes New Year's Eve and Halloween look like bona fide holidays. Think about it. Valentine's Day probably started out like Halloween; you know, some sort of weird pagan ritual day that the Catholics assimilated about 1500 years ago to give their lame ass religion some cred with the local citizenry.

Something like this: "Hey you godless heathens, why the fuck are you sacrificing a goat to some insipid love god when we've got this saint you can feast with? So, come on over to our "church," drop some of that gold in our "poor box," have some wine and we'll toast St. Valentine." To which the locals replied, "Will there be heart shaped candy, stoopid cards, and inflatable hearts? 'Cause if there are, we are so there!"

Now, thanks to Hallmark, American Greetings, and FTD, we have "Valentine's Day, the marketing event of the winter!" Think I'm off the mark here? Just try going to Target the day after Christmas. The wife and I did. Know what they had already started displaying. Yep, Valentine's Day cards, bears, candy, balloons, underwear, socks, condoms, and hair gel. The stupid fucking day was a full 45 days away and already we were being inundated with the Red Menace. I almost went berserk. Close call. I bought some mixed nuts and got the hell out.

Maybe my bitterness with this tremendous waste of time stems from being the awkward kid in school (read; really tall and fat, so I was a little imposing to my classmates, especially the girls). The popular boys all had their bags stuffed with candy, cards, and phone numbers. Me and my ilk, we got a few from the girls who appreciated us for being us (read; the ugly, unpopular girls), and maybe some crossed out cards from girls who felt sorry for us as we sat and stewed in our bitter juices until tender and ready to burst.

As time passed, the day got worse. If I had a girlfriend, she expected flowers, cards, candy, dinner. I expected sex. Stupid me. Finally, I met the perfect woman; my wife. Our first Valentine's Day together, she came to my work with a picnic basket of cheese, salami, crackers, and champagne. We went to a park; ate; drank; made out; and I was back to work in an hour. It was cool. That night, I made dinner and we had sex. Finally, a Valentine's Day I could get behind, and get some behind (hummuna, hummuna).

The reason I say she is perfect? She agrees with me and my feelings on this otherwise futile waste of time we call Valentine's Day. If we do celebrate it, we try to go out of town and gamble, drink, and have sex. It's totally cool, and it's not necessarily because of some stupid saint, or Cupid, or a druid love god.

Valentine's Day is for kids. We spend a shitload of money on candy, little toys, and DVD's for our kids and get them those crappy little cards for them to pass out at school. That's it. Other than that, I'm done with the 14th of February. Nothing special. Just another day, except you can't get a table at a decent restaurant.

Now, let's get to the real important days, like St. Patrick's Day.

The weather here in So Cal has been the shits lately. By that I mean, it sucks. People in cold weather climates will not understand this, but the weather here is too fucking hot.
Yesterday in the 90's. Today in the 80's.

It's February and it's hot. What the fuck?

See, I love summer. No, I mean, I live for summer. Long days; warm nights; cooling off with a beer or two, or three, or four. You get the idea. But, summer can't last all year. It just gets annoying when it's November and you go to Thanksgiving dinner in shorts and a T-shirt. Better yet, it's Christmas and your family is eating out on the patio.

It gets old, believe me.

Now, here it is February and I'm sweating my ass off. Stop it already. How about some goddamn rain? And another thing; this wind we've been having. Get it the fuck out of here.
I need moisture in the air, now. I do not live in the desert, nor do I want to. If I visit the desert, I want to gamble (like I will be doing this weekend) and drink. I do not want to feel like I live in the business end of a blast furnace.

So God, if your reading this, hows about directing that El Nino bad boy a little farther north and get us some storms before the entire So Cal metropolitan area is one big ashhole.

Off to the gym to cool off.