In the history of mankind, there are some huge milestones, like the invention of the printing press and the time one monkey clubbed another to death with a bone. Also, agriculture was a big deal. If it weren't for agriculture, I wouldn't be typing this on an Apple computer. That isn't to say we wouldn't have ever gotten computers, there just wouldn't be a company called "Apple" because the only people who would know what an apple is are the ones who found one in the woods. Growing our own food is key to our survival and keeping our society from collapsing, but please, let's leave it to the professionals because gardening is a dumb hobby. Anytime I hear someone talk about how they're going to start a vegetable garden I laugh because they have no idea what they're getting themselves into. Their first garden will be their last. Usually, people start a garden because they think it saves money. Maybe at first it does, because all you need to get sta...

Going to a restaurant is one of those experiences that most of us are very familiar with. We know what going to one is like and we know which aspects of it we enjoy and which ones we don't. I've got a lot of feelings about this topic and seeing as this is my blog, we're going to talk about a few of them. Restaurants where the servers give you a hard time are dumb Everyone is familiar with a place like this; restaurants that are perhaps less known for the quality of their food than they are for the intentional lack of quality when it comes to customer service. People (read: rubes) flock to these places to be treated like shit by the waitstaff. Apparently, some people find this funny, but what I don't understand is that if you were treated by the staff at Chili's the same way they treat customers at Chicago's famed Wiener's Circle  you'd be appalled. What's the difference? One place told you in advance so there was time to mentally prepare, otherwise, ...

What’s the first thing you think about in the morning? Do you go through the list of things you have to do that day? Do you think, “man, I really have to take a leak?” Maybe you're like me and the first thing that pops into your head is “I still can’t believe no one has rebooted ALF yet!” ALF was a sitcom in the late eighties about an alien from the planet Melmac named Alf (which was an acronym for “Alien Life Form”) who lived with a suburban family and was always causing good-natured trouble and trying to eat the family’s cat. It’s the kind of show that seems like a prime target for television network suits to warm over for a new generation of boob tubers. We live in the golden age of lazy TV and film reboots and remakes. Why come up with anything fresh and new if the public will still throw sacks of money at a new Star Wars or Marvel movie? If a show from the 70s or 80s was remotely popular, then why not make it a screwball buddy comedy? Nothing is safe. Even The Three Stooges w...

Looking back on the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us have one shared memory. It's not of gathering supplies or the fear that came from the pandemic swallowing the earth. No; the one thing we all remember is watching a Netflix documentary series about a merry band of cat-loving lunatics called Tiger King. Tiger King told the story of zoo owner joe Exotic and the trouble he found himself in for allegedly trying to hire someone to kill the Grand Pooba of Crazy Cat Ladies, Carole Baskin, who is herself alleged by some to have killed her late husband. It was a wildly entertaining documentary series, that was the biggest thing in the world in late-March/early April of 2020. Then, like anything that starts out fun, it was run into the ground. Endless news stories and pontificating talking-heads inundated our TVs, think pieces (like this one. whoops) filled our social media feeds, and then came the death knell: the parody songs that became huge on TikTok. By the Summer of ...

Elevators are a part of our everyday life. So much so that I sometimes just wind up in the elevator without even realizing it. I'm just walking around and a minute later I'm several floors higher. That's wild because 130 years ago it was a contraption (anything new was a "contraption" back then) that awed and terrified the masses. Now, the scariest thing about elevators is getting stuck in a confining space with a stranger. The second I see someone down the hallway I start mashing that "door close" button like I'm playing Street Fighter. I hate sharing elevators with people I don't know. I'm not scared of catching an infectious disease or getting curb-stomped to death a la Drive .  I just don't want to talk. For some reason, I spent my entire childhood being lectured about the dangers of talking to strangers. I wasn't even supposed to let them give me candy or help them find their lost puppy! Now, as an adult, if I don't talk to a...

Hobby Lobby winds up in the news way more than a craft store ever should, which is never. I get that people disagree with the ownership's conservative political views and that's what usually gets them into the news cycle. That's not what bugs me. There are plenty of other reasons I don't like the place. For starters, I hate the name because it makes no sense. They went with Hobby Lobby because it rhymes. It's not a corridor or hall connected with a larger room or series of rooms and used as a passageway or waiting room, and it's definitely not a group of persons engaged in lobbying especially as representatives of a particular interest group. It's a craft store! I also don't like that boring ass Helvetica font sign of theirs. It's just so lazy from a creative point-of-view, and shouldn't creativity be a craft store's strong suit?  But the latest reason I'm not a Hobby Lobby fan is the revelation that they have enough bread coming through ...

Every now and then I do a blog about a new business idea I've come up with and sometimes I second guess the thought of sharing it. Why give a million-dollar idea away to you, the unwashed masses, for free? That'd be foolish of me. But here it is anyway. A couple years ago I got hooked on the Netflix series Jailbirds   and recently saw that a new season of the show will soon be released. If you're unfamiliar, the show follows the daily lives of those in prison. Simple enough, right? What I remember the most about the first season of the show was that prison inmates have discovered uses for toilets that those of us on the outside could have never dreamed of. I only knew of two uses, but they were using their commodes as a makeshift communication system more reliable than AT&T's network. They also passed notes and even food (gross) through the toilets. The other thing I remember is how to make prison wine. This is where my new business idea comes from. You see, in pris...

Some of the most fascinating people in history have been what many would consider "eccentric." Rocket scientist and ceremonial magician Jack Parsons; billionaire and bottler of his own urine Howard Hughes; and singer, TV shooter, and man who thought he could move clouds with his mind Elvis Presley are just a few of my favorite  true eccentrics. But, conversely, some of the worst people in the world are those who go out of their way to convince people that they're eccentric when they aren't.  Do you know what kind of people don't need to convince others they're eccentric? The eccentric. The worst example of a product that people can buy to promote their faux-eccentricity I've ever seen slapped me in the face the other day when I came across this ad: Eccentric fire extinguishers: because the purpose of a fire extinguisher is to show off your extinguisher is to show how lovably kooky you are, not to, y'know, extinguish fires. Here are a few of the differe...

What do J. Balvin, Travis Scott, and Korean pop sensations BTS have in common (aside from me not having any clue who they were before typing their names just now)? All of them have been bestowed the high honor of a McDonald's signature meal. Forget being knighted by the Queen;  this is a real honor, and you don't have to let some geriatric monarch hold a sword inches from your jugular to get it. McDonald's seems to have started a trend and now Burger King, the fast-food equivalent of the kid who always copies your homework, has started offering their own celebrity meals . While these meals are meant to be nothing but a harmless publicity stunt, I submit for your approval that they reveal an underlying truth about the public at large: that fast-food corporations (correctly) think we're all total morons. Let's first take a look at McD's J. Balvin meal. What the hell is a J. Balvin? I'm not sure either so let's learn together. Per Wikipedia:  José Álvaro Os...

Aside from bullet trains, supersonic aircraft, sound, and light; is there anything that moves faster than technology? Probably; but it still moves pretty fast. In the brief period that humans have inhabited the floating, spinning rock we call Earth, technology has progressed from stone tools being the cutting edge of technology, to launching civilians into space because Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were bored. That's amazing. One of my favorite areas of technological advancement is when it comes to ways that media is delivered to the masses. Centuries ago, Guttenberg told the world to hold his beer and blew everyone's mind to pieces with the printing press. A contraption that seems archaic by today's standards but nonetheless changed the trajectory of human history and made books cheaper to produce and accessible to the masses. Then nothing worth noting happened for a long, long time until that raging douchebag Thomas Edison whipped up a wax cylinder. Now music could be capture...

I don't know what people think when they see me for the first time, but I have a guess: they probably think, "He's a shirt guy." This is because the vast majority of the time, I'm wearing a shirt. It's something I put a lot of thought into. In fact, it's often the first thing I think about when I wake up, so I check the weather to determine whether I need to opt for short sleeves or long. I don't discriminate when it comes to sleeve length (although I never go sleeveless because that doesn't make sense to me. Short sleeves are short enough for this hombre), but I do discriminate when it comes to whether or not a shirt has the misfortune of having been relegated to the "Around The House" drawer. My shirt game features a relegation system, not unlike a lot of European sports leagues. The upper echelon shirts are part of what I call the "Going Out" tier of the Matt Reigle shirt system, meaning these shirts are permissible when out...

The title is self-explanatory. Let's do this. *** Gene Roddenberry and Gene Rayburn I'll start with an easy one, this is one hundred percent because they're both named Gene and have last names that start with "R." Other than that they're completely different. Gene Rayburn was of course the skinny microphone-wielding host of The Match Game while Gene Roddenberry is the God of Nerds who created some little sci-fi franchise called Star Trek.   I'll be honest neither one of these guys come up very often in my daily life but on the off chance that one does I have to think for a second after I say "Gene." Wait. Is it Rayburn or Roddenberry? I think the game show one is Rayburn, buuuuuuut... They also have similar hair, but every guy in the 70s either had that hairdo or the Greg Brady. Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck You know that thing that people say they have where they can't identify people by their faces? Well, I think I have that but only for pe...