When he tries to take a picture with that phone, it comes out like a Polaroid. I want that smartphone!
I know if I turn my phone off it will obviously save the battery life. The problem is you can’t turn your fucking phone off; otherwise, people think you are dead, kidnapped, or cheating! That’s how fucked-up things have become!
“My call went straight to voicemail, I checked Google Earth looking to see if I saw an accident on your path home. I was so worried!”
Jesus! Fucking relax! This is why everyone in this country is on Xanax—these fucking awful phones!
Awful Traditions: Superstitions
Awful people are fucking stupid and they try to spread that stupidity to the rest of us. One way they do that is by imposing their awful superstitions on everyone around them.
Worrying about good luck is fucking stupid. Whatever happens will happen. Don’t blame it on black cats, open umbrellas, spilled salt, or other stupid shit like that.
If you really think about it, you cause most of the bad luck in your life. You make bad decisions. You do dumb things. People say you create your own luck, well that applies to bad luck, too.
“I’ve got such bad luck when it comes to relationships!”
“No, you don’t. You’re just picking the wrong person because you like mothering men who are walking disasters. That’s what your mom did; now you do it.”
You always being in bad relationships has everything to do with you and nothing to do with that open ladder you walked under last week.
Knock on Wood
Superstitious people live life like it’s a fucking fairy tale!
“I’ve got a great job. What can I tell you? I’m lucky, knock on wood.”
“Wait a minute, are you telling me you think you have good luck because you knocked on a piece of wood? Are you fucking brain dead?”
There’s no arguing with people like this.
“So, you think a piece of magical wood is keeping your whole life together. You don’t think it might have something to do with the company that hired you? That company makes millions of dollars and has been going strong for years and years. They make shit people buy and have customers all over the world. Don’t you think that might be the reason they had an opening at your location? Isn’t that the reason you were hired to help the company grow? No? You think it’s because you tapped your knuckles on a piece of wood?”
One time, one of my superstitious friends called me in the middle of the night. It was 3 a.m. and he sounded really upset.
“Dude, can you come pick me up? My car broke down. I’m stranded on the side of the road!”
“Oh, wow! Okay, yeah, I can do that. What happened?” I asked.
“It’s weird, man. I was at this party and I was telling someone that my Honda Accord has 250,000 miles on it. I bragged it has never broken down. But, shit! I was buzzed and I forgot to knock on wood after I said that! Now, look what’s happened.”
After hearing his explanation, I was completely silent!
“Hello? Are you still there?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m here. Let me get this right, you think the reason your Honda Accord is on the side of the road is that you forgot to knock on wood? You don’t think it has something to do with the 250,000 miles on your car? The wear and tear had nothing to do with you breaking down?”
“Man, it was working fine before tonight. It broke down because I bragged and then didn’t knock on wood!”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! So, I asked him one more time. “Look dude, we’ve been friends a long time. You really think you’re on the side of road at three o’clock in the morning because you didn’t knock on wood?”
“Yeah man, without a doubt,” he said.
“Let me ask you one more thing. I know you’re hoping I’ll come pick your ass up in the middle of the night, but did you knock on wood before you called me?”
“No! I didn’t think I needed to do that,” he said.
“Well, go find a tree motherfucker!”
CLICK!
I never talked to him again.
No-Hitters
Another place you find awful superstitions is the sports world. Baseball is one of the worst offenders. You could write a set of encyclopedias about all the stupid baseball superstitions.
Take a no-hitter game, for instance. A pitcher who pitches a no-hitter for six or seven innings is considered blessed with luck. The superstition dictates that all the other players on the pitcher’s team have to leave him alone while he’s in the dugout. The pitcher has to sit in the fucking corner alone. No one can say a word to him. If you do, you break the good luck spell and jinx him.
I can’t believe grown men believe this shit, especially in a game known for its love of statistics. If you look at the evidence, you’ll find this superstition is total bullshit. Out of 100 pitchers who pitched a no-hitter through six innings, 97 fail to get the remaining nine outs they need. In other words, only 3 percent of pitchers, in this unique situation, pitch a no-hitter. Yet, these grown-ass men treat the pitcher like he has some horrible disease when he returns to the dugout.
If I were on that team I’d go right over to the pitcher and get as close as possible and I’d have a speech ready for the occasion.
“Dude, you’ve got nine outs to go. You’re a free agent at the end of the year. If you throw this no-hitter you will get at least an extra $10 million in a new contract. Somebody’s going to overpay you because of this game. If you get the next nine outs in a row, I’m bringing two hookers to your room tonight. Is that motivation enough for you to go out there and kick some fucking ass?”
That’s what should be going on in that dugout.
At the press conference, I imagine he’d thank me.
The press would ask, “How did you win this one? It was obvious you were incredibly focused on those last three innings. Your fastball went from 92 miles per hour to 96 miles per hour and you mowed those guys down. Where did you get that extra gas in your tank?”
“I have to give credit where credit is due. Florentine came over and said he would buy me two hookers tonight if I threw a no-hitter! I’ve never had a threesome before so I reached back those last three innings and came through!”
The Beards
Beards in baseball—that’s another superstition we should ban! Most men don’t look good with beards, but baseball players think it’s cool to grow them during the playoffs. They look like a bunch of wannabe hipsters out on the field. They might as well wear skinny jeans when they come up to the plate.
“Let’s grow beards. The whole team should do it! The rule is we can’t shave until the playoffs are over. It’ll show team unity.”
Seriously? Is that the best idea you have to show team unity? By the way why in the hell are you waiting until the end of the season to show team unity?
You just played 162 games. It’s a seven-month season. You started in the fucking middle of February with spring training and played all the way to October with only three weeks off. You played baseball for seven months and now suddenly, during the last two weeks of the season, you have the bright idea to focus on team unity?
Maybe you’ve had too much fucking unity. You fly in the same plane. You take the same bus to the games. You practice together. You even shower together. Maybe you’re getting your periods together because this is a shitty idea!
Show me the stats for a player growing a beard for the playoffs. Then, show me the stats for the two weeks before growing the beard. I want to see his batting average. If he batted .310 the last two weeks of the season and with his beard he’s batting .190, I suggest to you “playoff beards” are a fucking fairy tale!
Usually, both teams grow beards and one of them has to lose so all of this makes no fucking sense. When my team is in the playoffs, and they’re growing beards, I never think my team has the advantage. I just think after the game my team is going to drink PBRs and listen to music on vinyl.
Rally Caps
What about the “rally caps” superstition? That’s another thing we should ban from sports! Have you seen this at games? Oh, it’s so fucking fun!
If the team is down by a few runs, fans turn their baseball caps inside out, flip up the lids, and put them on backwards. Isn’t that fucking special? Who is the genius that came up with this superstition? I’d like to thank him by taking a shit in his rally cap!
Fans really get into this bullshit. If it worked don’t you think the organization would make announcements about it and encourage the fans to bring their caps to every game? You know why they don’t do that? Because that’s retarded.
My six-year-old son is starting to play baseball. Why should I lie to him about these pathetic superstitions? He’s young and susceptible to believing just about anything. If I teach him rally caps work and his team loses, he will go home bummed out. One day he’ll confront me about my stupid lie.
“Hey Dad, how come the team didn’t win? We put the hats on backwards!”
“Son, that doesn’t work. It’s a superstition people think is fun.”
“So, you lied to me?” He asks.
“Yes, like I lied to you about Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. You really think I would let a stranger called the Tooth Fairy come in your room in the middle of the night? The only way he wouldn’t molest you is if you had a rally cap on, felt bad, and thought you were retarded for wearing your hat that way.”
Bird Shit
Some people have a superstition about bird shit. They think it’s good luck when a bird shits in your hair!
NO, THAT’S BAD LUCK!
Any time you have shit in your hair that’s a bad day!
Why would anyone think that? Did you ever watch the news and see some assholes talking about how bird shit helped them win the lottery?
“Oh, you won’t believe this. I never played the lottery before but I was walking on the beach and a seagull shit in my hair! I said to myself, this is my lucky day, and I walked down to the 7-11 and bought a Powerball ticket and won $300 million dollars!”
Never happened. If a bird shit in my hair and later that day I had a one-night stand with Scarlett Johansson I still wouldn’t consider that good luck from the bird turd. I would think, I can’t believe she walked away from her drink long enough for me to Bill Cosby her.
Umbrellas
“If you open an umbrella inside, that’s bad luck.”
Have you heard this superstition? I never understood this one. So, I researched it and read the umbrella has feelings and gets pissed off if you don’t use it properly. I remember talking about it on stage one night and a woman in the audience yelled out.
“Yeah, I never open them inside!”
“Why?” I asked. “What happens if you open your umbrella inside your house?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Seriously, what do you think might happen if you do?”
“The walls fall down!”
I swear to God that is what she said!
Imagine that scene. You run over to the house and see the coroner taking a woman out in a body bag. Police tape is everywhere because the fucking house fell in on itself. The local cops are standing around scratching their heads. Everything is destroyed like a bomb went off. Then, the press arrives and asks questions.
“Officer, can you give us an update on what happened? Was it a bomb? Was it a gas leak? What happened?”
“Well, we’re not entirely sure yet. What we know so far is that the owner opened her umbrella inside the house. The next thing she knew the walls collapsed and the house imploded.”
One time, my friend Joe Howard and I went to a local Walmart and grabbed a pair of umbrellas, opened them, and walked up and down the aisles like it was raining. We just wanted to annoy the shit out of people. I’ll never forget how this woman with a basket full of clothes got pissed off and yelled at me.
“Sir, you’re going to give me bad luck with that open umbrella!”
I said, “Miss, you shop for your clothes at Walmart. Your life was shit before I opened this umbrella, don’t blame me!”
Sneezing
The tradition of blessing sneezers is composed of several superstitions. First, there is heart superstition. The old stories say when you sneeze your heart momentarily stops beating. So, you have to bless a person who sneezed to kick-start their frozen heart.
Who in the hell believes this shit? No one has ever died from a sneeze. A sneeze has never been the cause of death. What if you had allergies and you sneezed like thirty times in a row? Wouldn’t you need CPR?
The second superstition involves Satan. They say the devil enters your body when you sneeze. You need a blessing to exorcise the devil before he sets up shop and corrupts your soul. Well what happens when you sneeze and nobody is around? You would have to track down a stranger to say “God bless you.”
Imagine doing this while staying at a hotel and having to knock on the room next door in the middle of the night? The hotel would call the cops and get you kicked out. “But, officer, you don’t understand. No one else was around to say ‘God bless you.’”
I refuse to say “God bless you” when people sneeze. One time I was in line at the supermarket and a guy sneezed right next to me. I was totally silent and that pissed him off.
“Thank you!” He said in a snarky voice.
“I didn’t say a word,” I replied.
“I know. You’re supposed to say, ‘God bless you!’”
“I just met you. I’m not giving you the Lord’s blessing, okay? You might have molested a kid an hour ago.”
Salty Luck
“Don’t spill the salt, that’s bad luck!”
That’s another superstition involving Satan. If you spill the salt, the devil gets pissed off and comes after you. When that happens, you’re supposed to throw some of the spilled salt over your left shoulder really quick. The devil always attacks from the rear and on the left side. So, if you throw it over your left shoulder, it hits the devil in the eyes and then he can’t put a hex on you.
I’m not making this shit up! This is the explanation for the salt superstition. Ok, let’s suspend disbelief and go with this theory. Don’t you think after all these years he would switch things up? One day he would say to himself, “I’m sick of getting salt in my eyes; I’m going to attack from the right side this time!”
“You know what? Fuck it. I’m coming from the right side this time! Or better yet I’m going to wear goggles next time!”
I was on a date with this girl one time. It was our first date and during dinner, I spilled the salt on the table.
“Throw it over your left shoulder,” she said. “Because it’s going to be bad luck if you don’t!”
“I’m not doing that,” I said.
“Well, something bad is going to happen to you then.”
“No, that’s all right. I’m going to take a pass.”
She finally dropped it but I was worried I might have pissed her off. Then, she blew me in the car on the way home. The superstition is nonsense. Since I didn’t throw the salt, I was supposed to have bad luck. Getting road head on a first date is amazing luck, but she didn’t swallow. So, when she wrote down her phone number for me I threw it over my left shoulder out the car window.
Awful Traditions: New Year’s Eve
New Year’s Eve blows!
We just celebrated Christmas and all the bullshit that comes with that, you’d think it would be a good time for a real break. But, less than a week later, we have to deal with stupid New Year’s Eve. It’s a worthless tradition, which boils down to a bunch of amateurs staying out all night and drinking until they puke. What an awful way to start the year!
Also, there’s a lot of pressure because of the New Year’s Eve parties. There’s always a party where you’re forced to hang with a bunch of assholes you barely know. Or, you have to go to some douchey club. You’re dreading the evening and your girlfriend is freaked out because she doesn’t kno
w what to wear.
Even if you go to a nice restaurant, you can only get an early reservation. All the other times are booked a year in advance. Even if you get in, you can’t stay there for five hours waiting on midnight. So, you have to waste time until the fucking ball drops in Times Square. There is nothing special about a ball sliding down a fucking pole. Who gives a fuck? Besides, this same ball will drop again next year. Why does it matter if you miss it? Go on YouTube and watch it in the morning if it means that much to you.
When you’re young, it makes sense to go wild on New Year’s Eve. At that age, you don’t care about getting drunk and sleeping in a doorway, under a bush, or in the backseat of a car next to a nice steaming pile of puke! You don’t worry about wasting $300 on a hotel room. When you’re older, New Year’s Eve is a fucking pain in the ass!
The New Year’s Eve Outfit
Like I said, women stress over their New Year’s Eve outfits. It seems like every chick needs a new dress for the occasion. Even if she got four new ones for Christmas, she will still go out and buy a new one to wear one time. If you plan to attend a party for New Year’s Eve, getting dressed with a woman is maddening!
“What’s everybody else wearing at the party?”
“I guess… clothes?”
“Well, did any of your guy friends say what they’re wearing or what their girlfriends are wearing?”
“No. That would probably be the last thing I talk to them about.”
“Well, what are you going to wear?”
“I haven’t even thought about it. If we have to leave the house at 6:45 p.m. that night I’ll figure it out at about 6:35 p.m.”
Everybody Is Awful_Except You! Page 22
