Editorial Fail

I'm pissed.

Some intern from Texas wrote an editorial in our local paper about how Ohio sucks and how great Texas is. I know Ohio sucks, but you can't come marching into my town and shit in my coffee. So I decided to write a letter to this jerk and let him know how I feel. I made the letter really nice!

Nice, right? Almost makes you feel warm inside.

That would be all well and good, except the secret to Ohio pride is that I inserted a secret message as to how I really feel about this guy. The problem is that the editorial staff decided to edit my letter, just slightly to make it fit their format, which ruined my message. Check out the first letter of each sentence. Here's a cheat:


It spells out: TOUCHEBAI

They changed my first letter D (from Dear into To) and they changed the last sentence from a G (I started it out "Good Luck").

DOUCHBAG

That's the secret to Ohio pride, asshole. Don't come up here to go to my school and then dump on my state, douchebag. I mean, touchebai.

The Baconizer

HolyJuan Eats: Dirty Franks

I ran into Freckled Jenn at work and mentioned how I wanted to test out Dirty Franks. She had some errands to run and was itchin' for some wiener, so we hopped in her Jeep and drove over to 3rd Ave in Downtown Columbus.

Here's Jenn!


Dirty Franks looks like what would have happened if Mel's Diner were run by Hipsters in the late 1980's. The place was pretty full when we sat down. We had our drinks within a minute and we perused the menu with glee. Dirty Franks specializes in unique hot dog toppings. You might think the combinations of toppings were drawn out of a hat in a Whole Foods store. Actually, they are quite tasty!

I ordered:
Chicago (with a beef brat for .75 extra) = Fresh tomatoes, diced onions, Vienna Sport Peppers, pickle relish, dill pickle, yellow mustard, & a dash of celery salt

True Love Always = Cream cheese & green olives

Fresh cut fries (which I doused with vinegar)


Freckled Jenn ordered:
True Love Always = Cream cheese & green olives

Ohioana = Spicy corn relish (sweet corn, pickle relish & jalapeño blend) and a dash of celery salt



Wow! It was fabulous. I ordered the True Love Always because I am a big fan of cream cheese and olive. It tasted great with a hot dog. I would have liked for my olives to have pimentos, but otherwise, good stuff! The Chicago was very good, but the toppings are thick sliced and even I had trouble fitting it all in my mouth (but I did).

The fries were great and even better with the malt vinegar. I was able to chug three glasses of diet Coke while I was there.

CLEAN PLATE CLUB!


My meal with drink was around $10.

Jenn said their adult beverages are great. She suggests the 2 Tickets to Paradise = Lime Slush, Cherry Slush, pineapple, Malibu Rum & citrus rum. I saw no less than 143 Pabst Blue Ribbon advertisements in the place. They also have funnel cakes.

I highly suggest you check them out!

Does this mean the internet will be down?

Top Ten Worst Diets Ever

They say dieting is good, but not if you are on one of the following diets. I'm no doctor, but I can tell you that this list is most definitely the top ten worst diets ever.

The Cardboard and Butter Diet

This is an extremely high fiber, high saturated fat diet. The butter helps the cardboard to go down. Helpful hint: buy an extra plunger.

Tapeworm Diet
With this diet, you ingest one pill which contains a tapeworm. Over time, you lose weight. And energy. When you are at the desired weight, take a second pill which, hopefully, kills the tapeworm.

Deserted Island Diet
With this diet, you only eat foods you would find on a deserted diet: sand, shell fish, seaweed and driftwood. It works for the people on Survivor... why not you?

Salt Diet
Eat anything and everything you want, as long as it is salt. Try Salt Pancakes or Salt Soup or Crunchy Sea Salt Nuggets with Salt Sauce. In a few days, if you can still see the scale, you'll notice significant weight loss.

U-Z Diet
In this diet, you only eat foods that begin with the letters U and Z. Watch the weight disappear after eating Ziti glazed with Ugli Fruit and unleavened bread with sliced zucchini every day for a week.

Sprinting Diet
With this diet, you can only eat while doing wind sprints. As soon as you stop running, you must stop eating. NOTE: Thanksgiving stinks on this diet and gravy can cause 2nd degree burns.

Boxing Glove Diet

This diet is easy: you can eat anything you want as long as you are wearing boxing gloves. Just try and open the fridge or drive to the fast food restaurant. Corn on the cob is really tough. Pudding is not so bad if you have a big vat of it.

Burnt Diet
This is another of the "eat anything you want" diets. All you have to do is burn the food item until it is charred black, though and through. I do this already with most my cooking.

Backyard Diet
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but they also make for a great diet. Eat only what you find in your yard. Gardens do not count, but weeds do. If you live in an apartment, go out to eat at the park. No digging through the trash cans.

Overeat Diet
This diet is akin to catching your child smoking a cigar and locking them in a closet until they smoke a whole box. With the Overeat Diet, you attempt to stuff yourself with fatty and high calorie foods to make yourself sick of eating. Do this for eight or nine weeks straight and weight loss will be inevitable when you can't move to feed yourself.

We miss Meshell

Meshell was in town a few weeks ago. We miss her a bunch, but a girl has to do what a girl has to do.


Check her out at: http://subwayseatfor3.blogspot.com/

Top Ten Worst Diets Ever

I did a writing assignment for a site called Associated Content. Read it and I get a penny!

Click here to read!.

Stick People Sex

WOW! really likes its customers (even the ones that are jerks)

On Monday, I wrote an article called “I played chicken with WOW! and something amazing happened” detailing how I tried to trick WOW! to lower my cable bill by threatening to cancel. Low and behold, my game of chicken failed and I ended up going through with the whole phone conversation and canceling my service. As I was too much of a chicken to go crawling back, I signed up for AT&T cable/internet and thought that was that.

The next day I got an e-mail via my holyjuan@gmail.com address from someone at WOW!, a guy named William Wright, who had read my article and wanted to see if there was anything WOW! could do to retain me as a customer. There was an 800 number for me to call. I assumed that this was a run of the mill follow up to any post on the internet and didn’t pay it much attention. I was more curious to talk to him about how they harvest information from the internet and learned about my post in the first place. I replied to his e-mail and said I would forward the AT&T information and see if they could match it.

Later that night, my wife checked the voice mail and handed me the phone, saying it was WOW! trying to get us back. We had predicted that a sales person would call and I rewound the message. It was a guy named Bill Wright looking to get us back with WOW!. Bill Wright? That seemed familiar… I went back to my e-mail. Same guy. Except this time I looked closer and saw that he was the CEO Customer Advocate! I called the 800 number, expecting to get the switchboard, but it was his personal number. He had taken the effort to track down my real name and number. I left a message, explaining that I was just one of those jerks from the internet. I left my cell phone number and hung up.

The next day William sent me an e-mail saying that Larry from the Saves Department would be giving me a call. Larry called when I was in a meeting and I called him back once I was finished. I shared my story with Larry about the canceling and the post on the internet. We talked about WOW!’s competitors and what AT&T was offering. In the end he made me a very nice offer and I took him up on it. We said our goodbyes and I e-mailed William to say Larry was awesome and thanks for the special attention.

So what have I learned? I was completely surprised by the customer service I got from WOW! I’ve always liked my service from WOW!, but was amazed at the level of attention I received. I was astonished that they took the time to track down the real me (it’s not that hard, but still). And I felt like a douche for trying to get my bill lowered, not having the balls to fess up to my real intentions and then having a bunch of attention dumped on me when I was trying to be sneaky in the first place.

I’m not really sure I learned my lesson, because in the end, for all my douchery, I did get my bill lowered. But at least, for once, I was shown that there is a company that really, really wants to keep their customers happy.

And I am happy.

Why, Thank You and Why Thank You

I hate people. Not you, of course. I like you. Just everyone else.

On the local talk radio, the topic of the day was rude people. A fired-up caller (oddly not a “long time listener/first time caller” which I thought everybody had to say on talk radio) had two stories to share. One was a general observation that people don’t say thank you anymore when you open the door for them. The second was a long winded story about how he found a wallet at a hotel, took it to the front desk, got the wallet owner’s room number, went to the room to return it and the man grabbed the wallet and shut the door without saying anything.

This is why I hate people. People should never do anything nice in life expecting to be rewarded for it. I think hard work should be rewarded. I think innovation should be rewarded. But don’t expect to get your ego massaged just because you think you are doing something nice.

Do the right thing because it is the right thing.

The caller on the radio was obviously a turd. Opening doors and expecting thanks is one thing. Going out of your way to try and weasel thanks/ a reward is ever turdier. I’m not sure why the hotel would have given the caller the wallet owner’s room number. That has got to be against some policy. What I didn’t mention was that the caller had gone through the wallet (I would have too), and was bitching because there was a lot of money in it and he wasn’t offered a reward.

You know this caller is a douche. A good person (you or me) would have dropped the wallet off at the front desk and went on their way. This guy was fishing for a thanks or a couple bucks as a reward. He should have cut out the middle man and taken the money, which I’m sure is what actually happened and the guy made the rest of the story up. No hotel would give out a room number to a total stranger.

I see these types at the four-way stop. The ones that smile and try to wave you through, when they should have gone first. I just sit there and stare right at them. They wave, franticly trying to be nicer. And I stare. Then they throw up their arms in disgust and tear through the intersection, pissed off. I love it.

Now, before you start sounding off the hypocrite alarm, I have in the past stressed that people MUST say thanks and send thank you notes. This is still true. If someone opens the door for you, say “Thanks!” If someone finds your wallet, explain that that is all the money you have in the world and that you cannot give a reward, but if there is anything you can do, you will. It is customary and polite.

But don’t ever give into these “Thank You” whores who force you into a Thank You situation. The nice guy that opens the door when you are 50 feet away. The nice guy at the four way stop. The nice guy that explains to everyone that he is doing something nice. Just use this secret code as you pass by them, “Why thank you”. No comma. You can add the question mark in your inflection when you get really good at it.