The best things in life are free...

...perhaps. But so are some of the worst.

I give you exhibit A, one of the more laughable letters I've ever received which arrived in the mailbox the other day from Provo's local newspaper, the Daily Herald. I opened the letter and unfolded the piece of paper inside which proudly proclaimed in a big, bold, fancy font:

FREE

SUNDAY

ADVERTISEMENTS

From the letter: "We are starting a special free program in your area called 'Daily Herald Deals'. Through this program you can get the Sunday Advertisements delivered to your home completely FREE!"

Whoa, whoa. Hold on. Are you telling me I can get advertisements...and not even have to PAY for them? Get right the freak out of town! Hell I'd pay upwards of $100 a month for an extra crapload of advertisements to be delivered to my house. And I thought I was living large with the 5 lbs. of rainforest-depleting ads I get stuffed into my mailbox for free everyday from the postal service. Next you're gonna tell me that Comcast is going to get rid of those annoying show segments between commercials and not even raise their rates. Weeee!

I can just imagine the meeting where this idea was initially pitched...

"Times are tough, we need out-of-the-box ideas to save money...anyone?" "I've got it! We eliminate the national news, local news, business, sports, weather, opinion, classified ad, event, movie, lifestyle, tv listing, and health sections. The cost savings will be huge!" "I like it! You think anyone will notice?" "Not a chance."

Die die die

Die die die die die die!!

May you DIE in a heinous fiery car wreck the likes of which no amount of cheap insurance could ever fix! Progressive ads make me pine for the old Geico ads...and that's sayin' something! :)

HP. Gouge. Err, Invent.

I just saw an HP commercial on TV that said "ink" and "a great bargain" in the same sentence. After I cleaned up the Diet Mtn. Dew that I spewed all over my coffee table, I couldn't fire up this blog fast enough.

HP. Ink. Bargain. Bwahahahahahahaa.

I've had the painful misfortune of dropping $35ish for one crappy little HP black ink cartridge a few times. That's JUST the black...the color cartridge is as much or more. And then it prints nicely for about 5 pages before the cartridge clogs and the dreaded missing lines begin to appear. Apparently HP puts a coagulating agent in their ink as a nice little "screw you" after the initial gouging.

I just don't print stuff anymore. It's not worth it. There's probably an 1/8" of dust on my vintage (that is, ugly) HP inkjet printer. Turns out it's less painful to just memorize pages and pages of stuff than it is to try to legibly print them.

Thanks, HP!

Dear ABC,

Because you decided to put that ginormous, I-want-to-put-my-foot-through-the-television-screen annoying red "V" logo with the equally annoying and distracting countdown timer during the entire episode of LOST tonight, I will never ever ever EVER watch V. Ever. You suck. And I liked the original V back in the 80's, too.

Love,

Lane

Lane Pollock just de-linted his bellybutton. Now he will gripe.

I'm not really a facebook guy. Mostly I find it to be a monumental time-waster filled with the the mind-numbing drivel of narcissists and trolls. But, that said, I do occasionally fire it up to see if people I actually care about have posted any interesting pictures or said something clever. Oh, and is it me or is the bubonic-caliber PLAGUE of facebook quizzes finally over? I never got to spam-blast everyone from high school, whom I haven't talked to in 15 years, which Care Bear I would be. Dangit!!

But the intent of my post is to talk about "that guy". You know the one, he (or she) is an acquaintance, you guess. Maybe you knew him from high school, an old job. You don't give two hoots in hell whether or not he is even alive, let alone what he had for breakfast, but...he requested you add him as a friend...you sort of knew him, whatever. (click) Sweet, look at my soaring friend count!

This ill-advised move comes at a price, though, my friends. MOST facebook users, in my experience, are like me. You forget how little anyone cared about your last bi-monthly status update, and so you bust off another, are quickly reminded anew of said indifference, and go do something more productive. Like, I don't know...a dozen rounds of mahjong or maybe a nap. But not "that guy".

You know how you pick up a big, gnarly, chocolate-chip-riddled cookie all in chocolatey-bliss anticipation, take a bite, start chewing, and then to your horror you realize that they are not chocolate chips at all, but nasty freaking raisins? Yeah, it sucks. Well, that guy's incessant status updates and onslaught of retardo-posts are to your facebook news feed as nasty freaking raisins are to the cookie. Shut up, SHUT UP. Oh my heck (Utah roots), for the love, SHUT THE FREAK UP!! Get out of my cookie!

There is a happy ending to this sad tale, however. The greatest creation in the history of facebook is, far and away and without question, the "hide" button. Imagine a button, the simple pressing of which instantaneously transforms all those nasty raisins into chocolatey goodness. In terms of your newsfeed, this is exactly what the hide button does. It is seriously the most amazing feeling firing up the sanitized version of your news feed the first several times. And the longer you've endured "that guy", the more amazing it feels. It's almost worth not hiding him for longer just to experience the more intense amazingness!

Hooray for the hide button! Now if I could only make heads or tails out of how facebook chooses what to actually put in my news feed...a monkey throwing darts, perhaps?