UNREMITTING FAILURE

We're going out on the road

With our harmonica and bongos.  So far as we know, we're the only harmonica and bongos guy on the concert circuit, which means we should soon be swimming in sweet engagements.  You know, opening for REO Speedwagon and shit.  

We started out playing free jazz, which is what you play when you have absolutely no mastery of your instrument. Then one day somebody asked us to play "I Write the Songs" and man, if that didn't sound fine.  Right then and there we were reborn us a pop act.  

We're not sure if you know this, but there aren't many songs written specifically with the harmonica and bongos in mind.  So we've been writing them.  They sound like what you'd get if you sat a couple of beatniks around a campfire with a homesick soldier from the American Civil War.  It's a unique sound, high and lonesome with a goatee. 

Right now we're playing "Home on the Range," which sounds totally righteous with its long bongo break.  And our new lyrics, which go "Where the buffalo roam, daddy-o, is DEATH!" 

 

It's Saturday

The day that the Lord did all the stuff he couldn't get done during the work week of creation.  On Saturday he mowed the lawn, went to the hardware store for a clawhammer to replace the one he broke creating the animals, bought a couple of six packs, etc.  Plus some stuff Mrs. God nagged him into picking up at the grocery store.  Like milk, which he couldn't find because he'd overlooked inventing the cow.  So he had to do that.  And he went to buy a spoiler for his AMC Gremlin.  God's the only guy in history to put a spoiler on his Gremlin.  Nobody else could pull it off.  But that spoiler on God's Gremlin looks bitchin'.

Our Mom Went to the Casino Yesterday

Won $150 on the slots.  She's going regularly these days as part of her ruthlessly methodical campaign to fritter away our inheritance.  When she wins, we swear to God, she comes home a bit grumpier than when she loses.  It must be from her that we get our love of failure.  And our ability to spend money hand over foot.

We Just Had Chicken Pot Pie for Lunch

Now we're waiting for the pot to kick in.

This Blog Has Yet to Make Us Dollar One

Obviously it's time to reevaluate our business model.  We condescended to throw our dapper hat into the blogging ring on the assumption that we'd soon be making money hand over fist.  We thought we'd be raking in the kind of dough that would allow us to buy exotic animals, like giraffes for instance, as house pets.  We also envisioned a stable of Arabian ponies, a cherry 1971 El Camino, and a Papa John's pizza franchise.

Instead we're in the red and thinking of selling advertising space to the Ku Klux Klan.  We're not fans of theirs, but they're the only people who are interested.  Well, them and the National Association of Porta Potty Owners. 

Our biggest mistake was in the area of reader projections.  We estimated that we'd have sixteen million daily readers by now.  We hoped to become a kind of Drudge Report for people who want to keep abreast of  what's not really happening.

Things wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't put thousands into giving our blog the attractive and unique look it has.  Eye-catching isn't a sport for the penny pincher.

Anyway, hope springs eternal, like a deranged slinkee, so here we are, hoping sixteen million people show up by the end of the day.  Where are they all? 

They can't all have lives.

Operator Assistance

It happens every time: we call 411 for a phone number, and a computer voice offers to assist us.  We ask for, say, the number for Joe's Deli and without fail the voice comes back and says, "Could you repeat that?"

Like we're speaking Swahili. 

So we repeat it and the voice says, "You want the number for Snow and Perillis.  Is that right?" 

"No!" we shout.  "No and again no!"

"Did you say yes?"

"No!"

"Could you repeat that?"

"We want to speak to a living breathing person!"

"Sucks to be you, doesn't it?"

Zero Bar, Milk Dud

Some candies have no self-esteem.

Fooey!

We were listening involuntarily to a Foo Fighters song in the gym and we distinctly heard the words, "Don't want to be your monkey pet."  And we thought, you know, we have never given Dave Grohl the proper credit.  Then somebody pointed out to us that he actually sings, "Don't want to be your monkeywrench," and we decided he's a wanker after all. 

More candy we don't trust

In our opinion, you would have to be insane to eat a Clark Bar.  Literally.  We were walking down the street one time and we passed a guy eating a Clark Bar and he was totally nuts.  We could tell just by looking at him.  He was wearing a suit and good shoes and all but still.  Bonkers.  He was even talking to himself, although he could have been talking to somebody with fancy bluetooth technology, which has made it impossible to tell whether somebody's crazy or not, unless of course they're wearing a garbage bag with holes in it for a dress.  And even then. 

Six-Point Quiche

We shot a deer once.  It turned out to be a spinach quiche.  This was before we got glasses and gave up hunting in the house.  Still, it was an honest mistake.  We distinctly saw the quiche nibbling at a leaf.  After we realized what we'd done we dropped the gun and vowed never to hunt quiche again.  Put us right off eating quiche too. 

In order to prevent such accidents in the future, we always give our quiche a fluorescent orange vest.  Because there are no fluorescent orange deer.  Blue ones, sure.  We saw one once.  We were hunting on acid.

Vengeance Weapons!

We've been reading about Nazi Germany's vengeance weapons, which Hitler and Company hoped to use to strike terror into Britain's citizens and thus turn the tide of the war.  We like to joke that one of them was the V8, which Hitler called a "zesty vegetable strike at the tastebuds of the English people."  But in truth our favorite was one that--unlike the V1 and V2--never got off the drawing board.  Seems that Robert Ley, Nazi Germany's labor leader, ran up to Albert Speer one day and said "We've done it! We've invented a death ray!"  Speer, dubious, looked into the matter.  He discovered that its inventor was a crackpot scientist who planned to build it out of parts that were 40 years old. 

Back to the future!

 

"Ve vill build a giant fly swatter big enough to crush London!"

It's Pearl Harbor All Over Again!

Seems North Korea is responsible for the heinous surprise hack attacks on cybertargets in the United States, including the White House.   Talk about your days that will live in infamy.  The question all Americans have to ask themselves now is, will their nefarious strike against our freedom and way of life go unanswered?

Nay!

Here at Unremitting Failure, we say to the North Koreans, "Bring it on!"  We've armed ourselves with pitchforks, steak knives, hockey sticks, spatulas, and a fungo bat, and we're ready should any North Korean hackers show up at our site.  Because we believe in the sanctity of not only America (God Bless her!) but the internet as well.

To paraphrase that great American hero Winston Churchill, we shall fight them on the beaches of the World Wide Web, we shall fight them on the blogs, we shall fight them on Amazon.com and Google and Yahoo, we shall fight them in the obscurest corners of the internet, we shall never surrender!

We Don't Think We've Ever Eaten a Zagnut Bar

There's something untrustworthy about a Zagnut. Just look at it.  That is some sinister shit.  Motherfucker looks like a chicken tender.  

Disgusting.   

Sorry Man Blues

Today marks the 87th birthday of blues musician Otis "No Arms or Legs" Spank.  Spank is best remembered for his 1952 hit, "Sorry Man Blues."  It goes:

Got my arm blowed off

Lost my leg to a hurricane

Got my other arm blowed off

Lost my other leg to a hurricane

Won’t you please call me a doctor

Cause I can’t dial the motherfucking phone with my mouth

 

Lost my job you know baby

I’m livin’ in a Jiffy John

Lost my job today baby

I’m livin’ in a Jiffy John

If I just had me a pair of legs

I’d be gone gone gone

 

Plaid the Impaler

We oppose plaid on general philosophical principles.  The way we see it, plaid is paisley's homely cousin, and fit only for farmers and grunge musicians. 

Actually, we've always kind of liked plaid, and generally had at least one plaid shirt in our sartorial repetoire.  Not anymore though.  Perhaps it's the influence of our German wife--plaid is unknown in the Deutschland; it may even be banned like the swastika--but we're plaidless.  Unplaided.  Plaid-free.

And just for today, we're okay with that.

Come to think of it, we have a pair of plaid pajamas.  But we never wear pajamas, so they just sit in a drawer and glower at us whenever we look their way.

One time we drank way too much Scotch whiskey and woke up the next morning with a plaid tongue.  True story. 

  

           we oppose the lynching of plaid shirts

Coffin Envy

The extensive coverage of Michael Jackson's funeral left us cold, except for one fascinating detail.  His gold-plated coffin, which cost in the neighborhood of 25 grand, is a model known as the Promethean.  How cool is that?  We want to be laid to rest in the Promethean.  Ain't gonna happen.  We'll probably wind up in the Pauper, which costs $250 and doesn't have a lid so they shovel the dirt right onto your face.  Or the Bankrupt, which gets seized by creditors before you can actually be buried.  We probably won't be able to afford a cemetery plot either.  They'll just bury us anyoldwhere, then put a Jiffy John on top of us. 

Careers

When our third-grade teacher used us what we wanted to be when we grew up, we said, "Canadian bong worker."  It's small consolation to us that very few people achieve their childhood dreams. 

Another dream job of ours was to be in the movies.   To be specific, WWII movies.  We wanted to be the Nazi footsoldier who gets shot and screams "Ach du lieber!" or "Gott in Himmel!" or, best of all, "Iiiiiieeeee!"  That said, we would have settled for a nonspeaking role as the tank commander who gets shot as he climbs out of the hatch of his burning King Tiger tank. 

We didn't expect our career as a bullet-riddled Nazi to be  handed to us on a silver platter.  We practiced. We practiced a lot.  And we can honestly say that nobody else in our social cohort, or anywhere in our hometown for that matter, could scream "Ach du lieber!" and fall twitching to the dirt as well as we could. 

Our sole focus on that skill is probably how we wound up a facelesss government flunky.  When your dream career doesn't pan out, you need a backup plan.  And there's no such thing as a Canadian bong worker. 

But there should be.

Please Don't Stick Your Fingers in, Or Stand Too Close to, Our Blog

Stay at least one foot away from your computer screen. 

 

Sukup Manufacturing?  Surely they jest.   No they don't.

He'll Clean Up Congress; Somebody Else Will Have to Clean Up the Bloodstains

 

Here's a new approach to campaigning; carry a big gun in your campaign posters.  What better way to decide that vote sending government pork your district's way?  Win friends and gut shoot your enemies; it's the American Way.

The Swimming Pool Killer: A Mostly True Story

Three momentous occasions took place in the summer of 1969.  America landed a man on the moon.  Woodstock ushered in the Age of Aquarius.  And on July 4th, Uncle Bob murdered his swimming pool with an axe.

Nobody could have predicted Uncle Bob would turn out to be a swimming pool killer.  He didn’t have a history of violence.  Unless you count railing at Ding-a-Ling.

Uncle Bob lived with his wife and four kids in a narrow two-story house on Hooker Street in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  Hooker Street was named after General Joseph Hooker, whose army took to calling the ladies of easy virtue who followed them about “hookers.”  Oddly enough “Fightin’ Joe” was a no-show at Gettysburg.  Why the city fathers saw fit to name a street after him is anybody’s guess.

Hooker Street was your low rent section of Gettysburg. It had negroes and everything.  Tourists avoided it.  They sure as hell hadn’t come to Gettysburg to see negroes.  What did Negroes have to do with the Civil War? Well, okay, so the war was fought to free them, but that didn’t mean you wanted to look at them from your tour bus.

I liked sleeping over at Uncle Bob’s house, because it was a sinkhole of moral rot.  From its unsalubrious living room filled with cigarette smoke to its profanity-filled kitchen, bad habits and chaos ruled.  Aunt Shirley was legendary for her lax cleaning, preferring instead to toss everything she found onto the dining room table, which tottered beneath piles of dirty clothing, old board games, stacks of tattered True Detectives, and all manner of things Brian could use to break other things.  The rooms upstairs were equally cluttered, and it was up there that I saw my first skin mags.