MattMaroon.com

I told a lot of people that I fried a turkey for Thanksgiving and almost all of them said “isn’t that dangerous?” My answer is “yes, if you’re an idiot,” because otherwise it doesn’t seem any less safe than grilling.

Every year hundreds of retards burn their houses down with a turkey fryer. I think that’s a good thing, because anyone dumb enough to do that doesn’t really deserve shelter anyway. Safely frying a turkey is one level of complexity away from making macaroni and cheese. If you can’t manage that without disaster then you belong on the side of the road with a squeegee and a bottle of Windex. I think it’s good that we finally have something that ensures that anyone who ever thought “hmm, I should fry this turkey in my living room” winds up on the business end of a soup kitchen.

I’ll make an exception for people who were the victim of hardware malfunctions. None of the many incidents I’ve heard about were anything other than sheer idiocy, but I have to assume that there had to be some cases involving faulty equipment, because nothing is perfect. Maybe a hole in the line or an improperly fitting burner caused someone some injury, and hey, bad beat. But those people are vastly outnumbered by motards who decided to use the fryer in their wooden shed.

Some people also hurt themselves by overfilling it with oil. I don’t get it. I filled mine a bit too much this year because I had left the oil in my garage and it congealed. I thought it might expand as it heated, but I never could have guessed just how much. And you know what I did when I discovered that? I poured some out. I’m a genius, aren’t I? Anyone who can’t figure that out on their own deserves a good third degree burn.

Call me elitist, but I wish there were more things in this world that hurt stupid people and provide juicy, delicious turkeys to anyone who wasn’t a moron. America would be a much better place.

I was in Panera a few days back and there was a giant sign that said “Panera supports breast cancer.” It had a big pink ribbon on it. I thought it was really odd that a restaurant would take a stance in favor of such a terrible disease, but apparently a lot of other people felt the same because there were dozens of signatures from patrons on it.

If I had to promote a disease, I’d want one that helps society. Maybe AIDS. It’s at least trying to wipe out poverty in Africa, though not in the same way as our celebrities. My second choice would be syphilis. I don’t even know what that one does, but the name sounds funny. Syphilis. That sounds like a disease I could get behind.

Mad cow disease has killed some serious French people in the last few years, so it would probably be the most patriotic disease. Maybe they should have a big sign that looks like an American flag with the words “Panera Supports Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy.” I bet lots of people would sign that while waiting for their You-Pick-Two.

What disease do you like best?

Do you ever find yourself quoting movies at bad times? Today I fried the Thanksgiving turkey and when I pulled it out everyone said “nice job”. We hadn’t tasted it yet and I was still a little anxious. As soon as everyone told me how good I did I wanted to do an imitation of The Wolf from Pulp Fiction and say “Well, let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks quite yet, gentlemen.” But I realized that it was inappropriate, partly because it was vulgar and partly because it was all women patting me on the back.

Also, someone asked me a bunch of questions about the turkey while it was frying. How long will it take? Is it hard to fry it? What temperature do you fry it at? I almost said “You ain’t got no problem, Jules. I’m on the motherfucker. Go back in there, chill them niggas out, and wait for the turkey who should be coming directly.” I guess it was a Pulp Fiction day.

Maybe I just watch a lot of highly quotable movies. Maybe I’m just subconsciously looking for a good place to apply my pilfered witticisms. Or maybe I need to drink less. Maybe all of the above.

Bob,

Can I call you Bob? I know we don’t know each other personally, but I’ve been changing the channel every time I saw your face on it since middle school. I feel like we go way back.

So, I saw you were out at The Comedy Festival in Las Vegas this past weekend. You were doing your “adult” routine, the one you did before you got on Full House. And I just want to let you know that you need to knock that shit off.

You’ve lived every comedian’s dream. You had a little bit of a standup career, and then you got your own sitcom. It was on the air for a long time and fared pretty well in the ratings. You got paid, and you got to hang out with the Olsen twins. Even if it was 15 years before they were hot, it still counts for something.

But when you did that, you cashed in all of your street cred. You stopped being vulgar Bob Saget, who didn’t have two consecutive sentences without a curse word in his entire act, and became squeaky-clean closet homosexual Danny Tanner (and whatever you call that ass-clown on America’s Funniest Home Video’s). You can’t go back.

You sold yourself, and hey, I don’t blame you. I would’ve too. The millions you must have made from that garbage are worth more than some image points. It wasn’t like you were Jerry Seinfeld anyway, you were just another hack comedian who tried to get more jokes than his mediocre material was worth by swearing a lot. And it worked alright, but wasn’t really getting you anywhere until the networks came a callin’. So you sold out and more power to you. That’s all well and good. But now you need to have the decency to live the rest of your life on a tropical island where we don’t have to look at you and quit trying to be the next Dane Cook.

Do us all a favor, hang it up. You’re so unfunny that I’d be telling you the same thing even if it weren’t for the fact that you’re friends with Dave Coulier, who we all pretty much agree should be put down like a horse with a broken leg. So please, go be Danny Tanner somewhere out of sight and leave the rest of us alone.

Sincerely yours,
Matt Maroon

Am I the only one who thinks that Alaskan airlines needs to change their logo? They have an Eskimo on the tailfin of all of their planes. That isn’t a very confidence inspiring symbol, in my opinion, for someone operating jets. A spear with a rope attached to it is high tech to an Inuit, and they’re putting one on a 737. I’d just as soon trust a Neanderthal to fly me to Vegas. At least cave men had the common sense to not live where it’s fucking freezing.

And then there’s Frontier, who puts animals on their planes. Not cool animals either, at least that I’ve seen. Stuff like squirrels and rabbits. Wouldn’t an assortment of birds make more sense? It’s bad enough I have to live off of a tiny bag of peanuts and a half can of Diet Coke for four hours, but doing so in a plane with a rodent on it is just humiliating. At least give me a tiger or a rattlesnake.

I hope some day I own an airline. My logos will rule. I’ll have Chuck Norris kicking a Nazi in the throat. It might not make much sense, chronologically speaking, but it’s awesome, and I think that customers will appreciate that. I know I would. Maybe some planes will even have a picture of The Rock choke-slamming Osama Bin Laden onto a pile of dead communists. If you’re not going to have something aviation related you might as well have something that kicks ass, rather than some retarded Eskimo. Am I right?

by Paul Graham here. This should be required reading for all ultra-liberals.

I have some plumbing problems. Sunday something happened to our garbage disposal. We were in the middle of making the best meatloaf ever (little known fact: a disposal can also double as a meat grinder) when suddenly the sink started backing up. The blade still sounds like it’s running as normal, but water doesn’t drain through it anymore. Well, I take that back, it does, but it mostly comes out of the bottom of the disposal unit and into our cabinetry rather than going down the pipe where it belongs.

That’s the sort of problem that a lot of men might feel tempted to fix themselves. Uh uh man, not me. I have a toolbox and in it there is a hammer, a crescent wrench, a tape measure, a flashlight, and a can of WD-40. My philosophy is that if you can’t fix a problem by bashing it repeatedly with one of those, it’s best left to a professional.

A lot of people I know own many tools, in some cases so many that they actually have a building outside of their house or a special section of their garage to put them in. They have all sorts of crazy saws and wrenches and nail guns, and other things that I can only imagine were implements of torture during the Dark Ages until some peasant found one and figured out how to build a table with it. It makes me really wish that Nielsen would do some usage research on tools. I’d love to see the statistics. I suspect that most guys do the same thing with tools that I do with golf clubs, buy the most expensive ones known to man, use them once or twice, and then let them collect dust for years. I mean really, what the hell are you going to do with a circular saw? How often do you really need to cut something into a round shape?

Personally I don’t even know what most tools do. I just assume that if they don’t have a power cord they are for hitting things with. What you’re supposed to hit with them depends on the shape. A chisel is for hitting small, straight objects, a wrench for hitting something u-shaped. There are even tons of different sizes of wrenches so no matter how big your u-shaped object is, you can find the right one to hit it with.

I did a 2 year stint at the Home Depot so I know for a fact that there aren’t many objects that aren’t shaped like at least one tool, so whatever it is you need to bash with a hunk of metal, they have the correct tool for. Customers used to ask me questions like “I have a leaky pipe, what should I do?” I’d take them to the cheapest round tool and tell them to buy it and hit the pipe with it. None of them ever came back to the store, so I assume that always worked.

I have to say though, WD-40 is the one thing that makes me feel like a handy man. It’s the one thing I can actually use to fix stuff with. Is the elliptical machine squeaking? No problem honey, I’m on it. Can’t get the little tab on the storm window to slide in so you can close it? Here, let me spray it. I feel like a superhero with this stuff. Faster than a squeaky wheel. Able to lubricate tall buildings in a single bound. It’s WD-40 man! Is your storm door kinda sticking when you open it? WD-40 man to the rescue!

I have mad Photoshop skills too. Mouse over that picture, the caption is priceless. And now that I think about it, I didn’t try pouring any of that in the disposal. Maybe I won’t have to pay some jackoff to come fix it after all.