Everybody has a cause these days. It’s all popular to be for or against something, and I find myself sadly lacking in the area of activism. I have spent the past few days observing crap that I want to protest, and found several candidates.

First is bellsouth.com. You are supposed to be able to go to this site to look up numbers in the real yellow pages, but the number I am looking for is never there. It’s not just that the number I want to find isn’t there, but here is an un-retouched screenshot I got today whilst looking for a wing joint close to where I work- Keep in mind that I searched all of ATLANTA for a RESTAURANT.

So am I to believe that in a city of 4,000,000 folks, no one has opened a restaurant yet? Holy crap! I have an idea to make millions. Imagine if I were to corner the market! Oh, and the thing I hate most about that page is that stupid stock photo of the lady saying “oops”

If I ever see this bitch on the street I’m going to kick her in the knee and then strike the “oops” pose until she passes out from the pain, and say “Oops! I can’t find any ‘Emergency Medical Services’ in the ‘Atlanta Area’”. I enter something like restaurants in the search, it comes up empty, and this weird chick is sitting there MOCKING ME with her creepy bleached blond hair and her comical “You just can’t find the number, can you?” face grinning at me.

My conclusion- Protesting a website is pretty pointless, and I don’t know where I would picket. It still irritates me, though, and when I get bored enough, I’m launching a manhunt for whomever runs that site.

This morning I hear that the terror threat has risen to orange. That’s somewhere between “sort of afraid of some guy blowing us up” and “really afraid of some guy blowing us up”, but not quite “holy shit, some guy is coming at me wearing a C4 pullover”. The whole color-coding thing makes me feel like our government really thinks this is a nation of retards (yes, I realize that that is painfully obvious). Not only that, but it is a feeble attempt to try to measure something that can’t be quantified. Do they have a Muslim in the basement of the pentagon with five crayons being asked “how much do you want to kill Americans today”? When I drove into Peachtree City last night, I noticed that as you come into town, they even have a flag the color of whatever terror scare we are on right now, flying just underneath the American flag. Oh shit! Everybody better watch out! Peachtree City is on Defcon 5! Circle the golf carts and minivans…I seriously think that just saying something on the news like “Hey America, everyone out there with an agenda against you is even more pissed than usual right now, so watch out for explodey or potentially explodey stuff” would suffice. We probably spent a billion dollars figuring out which shade of yellow best communicates “some panic, but not blind panic.”

Conclusion- If I protest anything this closely related to the government, I’ll probably disappear and my family’s house will be burned.

I then did some soul searching. I went to the top of a nearby mountain. Actually I sat on the back of my couch, as it was raining for the eighteenth day straight and I’m not finished building the ark or harvesting my rice, so I’m not taking any chances going out to find a mountain. The couch was a good place to meditate, and I thought- You know, I really hate thank you notes. I think thank you notes were invented by women to make men go insane. Like wedding showers, baby showers, and duvet covers. So if someone gives you a tee shirt from Mexico, you get a little card and matching envelope and write “Hey, thanks for the nice tee shirt” in it and send it to them! Hee Hee! Isn’t that sweet?! Shut up. I have been around for thirty and a half years (I’m telling everyone that I am thirty and a half, because I don’t know why kids are the only ones allowed to tack on the half year to their ages), and I can proudly say that I have written only one thank you note, and it never made it to the mail. See, I found a secret. It’s called a TELEPHONE, and I can call the person who did the good deed and tell them how much I appreciate it. Then I can hear them say “hey man, no problem”, or whatever, and we both feel good. Some of you know me, and I hope I get the chance to do something nice for you someday. If I do, be assured that your crappy thank you note will go unopened unless you sent me some thank you cash. If you do something nice for me, I will call you and let you know how cool you are. Don’t wait for a card printed with flowers. I also think that people who are offended that they don’t get thank you notes are selfish pieces of crap and end up on Dr. Laura’s talk show asking if they are morally obligated to still love that person. If you want to do something for someone, do it and be happy that you did something nice. I might be missing the point of the whole thank you note thing, but I’m pretty sure I am dead on.

My conclusion- I will continue to protest and eventually abolish thank you note writing by requesting everyone whose wedding I attend NOT to send me a thank you note. I invite you to do the same. Case in point- my friend Cram is getting married to his girlfriend, Ladycram. I will go to the wedding and bring them a nice scented toilet paper holder or matching set of preserved pig fetuses, but I have already requested that they don’t send me a thank you note. I know they appreciate it and love knowing they have a friend like Pork. Good enough for me. I am also going out of my way to let everyone who attends my Bar Mitzvah, graduation, wedding, release from prison, etc. that they will not be getting a thank you note. They will get a verbal thank you and an inappropriately long hug, complete with wandering hands.

Then it came to me in a flash of light like the one I had when I was thirteen and put a voltmeter on my braces. All my life I have found Daylight Savings to be the most massive annoyance and waste of airtime ever invented. It was invented a long time ago by Benjamin Franklin so the farmers would have an extra hour of daylight in the spring, and since has become increasingly useless to everyone else. First of all, were farmers not able to tell time? So in the spring when it started getting dark earlier, they couldn’t start work an hour earlier and save everyone else the trouble? Here’s the conspiracy theory- in the fall, we set the clocks back an hour, and it gets dark at 4:30 or some nuts time like that. Coincidentally, that is also when the Television networks launch their new shows. I would think they have a vested interest in people being indoors early in the evening so they can be pumped full of situational comedy and commercials for tampons. Network television is the enemy, if you choose to subscribe to that theory. On the other hand, you can just hate it for the same reason I do- there is no use for it in today’s world. If you absolutely MUST change the hands of the clock twice a year, do it one minute a day for sixty days. That would be much easier than waking up one morning and thinking, “oh, it’s still dark, I can go back to sl- what the hell?! I’m late!” That’s not healthy. Neither is getting off work in the fall, which happens to be my favorite season, and walking into a dark parking lot at 5:30 pm, then going home to a suckathon of series TV shows that are worse than last season’s.

Take a stand- don’t change your clocks. Continue on your own schedule. Fight the man. Go to work an hour later, and stay an hour later. Losing your job is a small price to pay, and this is a much more worthwhile cause than rainforests, abortions, and whales combined.

Conclusion- I am starting a new movement- The National Association for the Abolishment of Daylight Savings, or “NAADS”. Against the whole idea of changing the clock twice a year, we shall stand proudly and chant our motto-

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