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Motivational quotes and little stupid phrases that help us keep perspective are okay, I suppose. That is, if you are a mouth-breathing chucklehead who doesn't have the gumption to pick the underwear out of your butt without some stupid daily calendar with pictures of cats saying things like "Go back a little to leap further". God knows there are enough suckers out there that the whole thing has become a cottage industry.

Whatever. I can deal with most of it. But I heard one the other day that I'd never heard before, or if I had, I managed to block it out with things like kids, and work, and sports, and the lyrics to "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Yoda" (which is a parody of "Lola", by The Kinks. Hard to say which is better, really). The phrase in question is as follows:

"I complained because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet."

GAAAAAHGHGGLACCAKCVLFKDACKAACKACK. Sorry, had to throw up in my mouth a bit. This may be the emptiest, most useless phrase since a "Mission Accomplished" banner flew on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln a few years ago.

Where to start with the debunking of this verbal chlamydia? For starters, if I want to complain, I'm going to. This country was founded on complaints, or else those whiny-a** Puritans wouldn't have left England in the first place. "Ooh, I'm so tired of religious ritual, Chauncey! Why, we should found a country with freedom of religion, and instead of those darned Catholics molesting little boys, we can instead have Protestants and Baptists stealing money and buying hookers! Fancy the notion!"

Even if I don't want to complain (which I do, trust me. I'm a big, fat, hairy man-woman who complains about every little thing), this is still a trite, stupid sentence. If I don't have any shoes, you can bet your sweet bippy I'm letting it be known how unhappy Daddy is about his feet being cold.

You know who doesn't have cold feet? The guy without any feet. Tell me how I'm better off than him, when I have severe frostbite on my toes, but his nubs are most likely safe inside of his pants. Advantage: random footless stranger.

Also, a guy without feet is probably getting disability. He gets a check (and rightfully so) that allows him to have an income, income that he is losing otherwise due to his footlessness. Meanwhile, Shoeless Joe over here, who happens to have all his feet but nothing to put them in, gets to stand barefoot running a meat-press at the Spam factory all day, just knowing that, at any time, a rogue piece of processed, not-quite-yet-a-meatless-nasty-food-product premature Spam lump could fly off the sander belt and land on his exposed metatarsals. I wouldn't want Spam on my feet even I was wearing shoes, much less barefoot.

Now, imagine you and the footless guy are both competing for a girl. She's a sweet young thing, and you both fancy her quite the catch. So what happens? You ask her to go dancing. That'll show Hop-along a thing or two! She accepts, you hit the local line-dance club, and you suddenly remember that you dance like old people fornicate: it's ugly to see, and there's a good chance someone is getting hurt. You tangle your feet trying to turn it out during the "Cha-cha Slide" and fall into a group of middle-aged women on a girl's night. Glasses break, wine gets spilled, blouses get stained, and menopausal women freak the eff right out. Even worse, your date is so embarrassed she never calls again.

So what does the footless guy do? He rows her out into the middle of the lake on a beautiful, starry night. 'Neath the romantic light of the full moon on a clear night, they share a passionate kiss, a kiss that leads to their courtship and eventual marriage, which in turn leads to children, children who grow up to be strong, handsome, athletic specimens who make straight A's and who feel sorry for your kid, a stupid, stupid child born out of wedlock to you and a truck-stop waitress with a glass eye that you hooked up with one night in a moment of desperation after drinking yourself blind over your lack of a loafer-filled existence. Advantage? I think we know.

So, the next time you want to complain about not having any shoes, go right ahead. It's a rough life. And if you should happen across a man who has no feet?

Beat him down. He deserves it.

Updated January 28th, 2012 at 12:13 AM by Chris Minton

Tags: "weird al", motivational quotes, puritans, rant, spam, stupid people

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Everything Else

You know the song I'm talking about. You've heard it somewhere, I'm sure. It's the Randy Travis country/gospel crossover song that came out around 8 years ago. It's about a farmer, a teacher, a hooker, and a preacher riding on a midnight bus that was bound for Mexico.

It's one of those songs that mentions God just enough to make people who like the song think they are good Christians, kind of like those damned Facebook posts that say "copy & paste this if you love Jesus." Well guess what, a**holes? I love Jesus. I don't show it at all, but I do. And I'll be darned if I forward that stupid post just to keep from feeling guilty. I'll feel guilty out of spite, thank you very much. Uhh, where was I?

Oh yeah, that song. Here are the lyrics:

A farmer and a teacher, a hooker and a preacher,
Ridin' on a midnight bus bound for Mexico.
One's headed for vacation, one for higher education,
And two of them were searchin' for lost souls.
That driver never ever saw the stop sign.
And eighteen wheelers can't stop on a dime.

CHORUS:
There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, Heaven only knows.
I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.

That farmer left a harvest, a home and eighty acres,
The faith and love for growing things in his young son's heart.
And that teacher left her wisdom in the minds of lots of children:
Did her best to give 'em all a better start.
And that preacher whispered: "Can't you see the Promised Land?"
As he laid his blood-stained Bible in that hooker's hand.

CHORUS

That's the story that our preacher told last Sunday.
As he held that blood-stained bible up,
For all of us to see.
He said: "Bless the farmer, and the teacher, and the preacher"
"Who gave this Bible to my mama,
"Who read it to me."

CHORUS

Sweet story, isn't it? The strumpet survives the wreck and goes on to bear a child who would eventually become a man of the cloth. Yay, ironic justice!

I heard it on the radio today, and I got reminded of how annoying the story is. Not the overall story, it's actually quite touching. I mean the details. Mainly, what kind of egg-sucking farmer goes on vacation with a harvest due? Farmers don't tend to vacate anyway, due to the neverending nature of, you know, FARMING. And if a farmer was going on vacation, it wouldn't be to Mexico. It would be to a pumpkin farm or Niagara Falls or something stupid like that. And for that matter, why wasn't the farmer's son with him? Don't farmers pride themselves on being family men? I think he had a thing going on with the hooker. I bet she was a Mexican hooker, too. They are probably cheaper. That would explain why they were going to Mexico.

But then, something else occurred to me: what the hell happened to the BUS DRIVER?

Remember, the chorus says there are three wooden crosses, then wonders why there aren't four. This is talking about the farmer, the teacher, the hooker, and the preacher. So why does the bus driver not warrant a roadside mention? Or for that matter, the driver of the semi-truck? Why can't there be five wooden crosses? Or six?

I guess the songwriters couldn't be bothered with a verse about how the bus driver left a case of genital warts with the Burger King cashier at the last pickup stop. Or how the truck driver probably had a load consisting of four hundred cases of Coors beer. Although, if the bus was bound for Mexico, they weren't likely east of Texas, so the Coors wouldn't have been a big deal.

Maybe there were no drivers. Maybe it was like that movie Maximum Overdrive, where a bunch of unmanned semi-trucks drove in a circle around a gas station, while Emilio Estevez pumped gas until he neared the point of exhaustion.

Personally, I think the Second Coming occurred during the story, and the bus driver and truck driver were the only two worthy of going on to Heaven. The farmer, teacher, hooker, and preacher were left to suffer an eternity without conviction, and no further chance at salvation.

Because they didn't copy the Facebook status about Jesus.

Updated January 28th, 2012 at 12:17 AM by Chris Minton

Tags: facebook, jesus, randy travis, rant, religion, stupid people, three wooden crosses

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