Community Service

If dogs could vote, we'd have to run for office really fast.

Boy that Quentin Tarantino is hot these days, isn't he? Hear about his next project? He's going to remake Old Yeller. Yeah, only in this one, Timmy gets rabies and Yeller's an Irish Mafia enforcer.

Life after death. When you get my age the real question is, is there life after 7:30?

You know when life starts to go downhill? When you have to start wiping your own butt. That's why so many people refuse to do it. Always trying to get someone else to do it for 'em. If you work for a living you know exactly what I'm talking about.

I like people like I like poison - in small doses every day, or all at once and get it over with.

I almost read War and Peace, but I got distracted by a Mentos commercial.

You know what standup comedy is like in China? An army general singing karaoke on new year's eve. You gotta take your comedy where you can get it over there.

You ever tell a lie for no reason? No reason at all? You're just tired and you don't feel like talking so you just belch out a whopper? Like, someone asks you where you're from and you don't feel like explaining that your father is from Kentucky and your mother is from Massachusetts, and they met on a Naval base and you spent half your life in one little town an hour and a half drive from Boston and the other half of your life a half hour's drive from Deliverance, Kentucky, but you moved away from home into a third city, which is technically not your home, but you lived there fifteen years and you identify culturally with it, so maybe that's home, but you're thinking about moving to a new place at some point, and - oh there was that six years you spent teaching English in Shanghai, but if I said I'm from Shanghai you'd probably just want me to make you fifty copies of Batman movies in my sweatshop, and instead of going through all of this you just lie and say you're from Nigeria and you have the investment opportunity of a lifetime?

Kentucky borrowed a lot of town names from France. In France you have Versailles, in Kentucky it's called Ver-sayuhls. In France you have Paris, but Paris Kentucky is pronounced Pehrrus. Athens in Greece, Ayy-thens in Kentucky. I remember once an out-of-towner asked me how to get to Versailles, and I said "You're on Versailles road now" and he rolled his eyes and said "Uh, it's pronounced Ver-sigh" and I said, "Whelp, je connais le nom du lieu en France, mais vous êtes dans le Kentucky, et la ville est appelée Ver-sales. Et vous avez de très jolies lèvres. Which is French for, "I know the name of the place in France, but you are in Kentucky, and the city is called Ver-sales. And you've got real purdy lips." Cue banjo.

Boy how about the American roller coaster ride the past couple of years. Seems like everybody's got an idea how to fix the country. All you need is a microphone. Yeah, I know you got a PhD in economics from Harvard and have written twenty books on the economy but I'm gonna tell you my moonpie-induced visions of grandeur anyway: have you thought about giving out free donuts to voters? I'd go and vote. Every election year, you hear it, vote, vote, for pete's sake vote, who gives a crap who you vote for just get out and vote! Here, here's a free donut. No I don't think you can write in the inventor of Krispy Kreme. He's dead, isn't he? Well what's his position on Health Care? Probably pretty inflexible by now I'd imagine.

Since I'm obviously qualified, as the guy with the microphone, as it were, here's how I'd fix the country:
First I'd hire intelligent, nice teachers who force the children to be intelligent, and nice, or the students and their parents will be working side by side doing community service. And if the teachers couldn't pull it off, let them do the community service!

Then I'd take all the police forces and give them intensive training on how to treat law-abiding citizens with kindness and respect. What the hell, treat crooks with respect too; very respectfully lead them to their cells and conjugal visit trailers. From now on any cop that gives you the stinkeye is going to what? Community service. Yeah. You too, pal. Your authority is limited to maintaining and keeping the peace on behalf of law-abiding citizens. You do NOT have the authority to judge people or the way they live their lives. Your authority is professional. It is not personal. I respect cops. I do. What I don't respect is cops who expect law-abiding people to kowtow to them. A little too much time modeling your uniform in a full length mirror, there, Officer Fabuloso. I don't think the assless chaps are in the uniform code.

But that's me, I don't respect lawyers either who go around telling people they are a lawyer so back off or I'll crank up the justice machine for my own petty concerns, I mean, since I obviously have such a high respect for "THE LAW". Well let me tell you something; it's not that I don't respect the law, I do. It's that I don't respect your sanctimonious bludgeoning of other people with it. Hey, same goes for the religious. I love the bible; I just don't need you trying to shove it up my kilt. Sorry, I was taking the Lord's name in vain? By putting two words together? As opposed to sitting as judge, jury and executioner in the name of the Lord, you mean. Judge not, lest ye be ridiculed on American Idol.

Smart me, alienate cops and lawyers. Who's next, starbucks baristas? Show me where the pickup counter is again please? I don't comprehend this strange concept of pay here where all the people are placing their orders and paying, and pick up there where there's a long line of pissed off looking people waiting for their coffees for ten minutes while Kurt Cobain behind the counter there complains about making coffee, as if that was a big surprise to him. I applied in a coffee shop, I went to Barista University where I trained to make thirty kinds of coffee with an ice cream scoop, I'm wearing a namebadge with a cup of coffee on it, and I come to work and surprise! What the hell do you got me doing again? Making coffee? What do I look like to you?

Well, you look like a coffee flunkie with one foot over a financial cliff and the other one in a big bag of Columbian beans. Get to pouring and try to hold the mouth foam, barista. Barista? What is this, Barcelona? I don't know, you look more like a "coffee jerk" to me.

And no more of this business where if you get pulled over by the police they start mining for excuses to fine you.
"Sir do you know why I pulled you over?"
"Because I was speeding?"
"No because you're driving a thirty year old POS and I thought you might have expired tags and I was right."
"Yeah, because obviously I have a lot of spare money laying around. Got a wad of thousands right here under the passenger's lawn chair. I'm driving a 1974 two-cylinder chevette with four spare donut tires and a fire dragon painted on the hood. You think I can afford all these tickets?"
"No sir, and you don't look like you can afford a lawyer, either." Well you may have taken advantage of me when I was 20, but now I'm 40 and I've got a microphone and a lawyer on speed dial, Officer Thug.

If I could fix the country I'd remove all the CCTV crap and say, you want to watch how people are living their lives, get yourself a lawn chair and sit in the rain. People don't need to give up their complete privacy in order to feel safe. Now that's a solution that's worse than the problem! How about this for a solution: for every one of us the terrorists kill with exploding sneakers, that's one more Britney Spears concert in their country. Blow up a bus? You get Celine Dion for a year. Fly a plane into a building? We're jamming all your stations with Howard Stern followed by Rush Limbaugh infomercials and replays of apologizing politicians.

McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, all those fast food empires - new rule. If it tastes good, we leave you alone. If it tastes like feet, we remove all the pictures from your cash register buttons. Call it a Stupidity Tax.

Universities - all your scholarships based on race? Out. Disability? Out. From now on if you want a scholarship you've got to earn one the old-fashioned way, by earning it with performance. And I'd make academic scholarships more available, too. Got one leg and you want to run? Fine. But your new false appendage will be limited to the performance of your other working leg. No more gazelle-leaping on the hundred yard dash!

And people who want advantages because of the color of their skin? I thought people like that were what they were complaining about in the first place. Welcome to the land of equality, babe. Not the land of entitlement. Equality doesn't mean guaranteed success. It just means we can all equally pull each other down, or lift each other up. Either we find a way to live together in mutual peace and respect, and learn to see and be beyond these artificial constructs of color and culture and border and belief, or we all meet each other's self-exploding drama queens. Oh, we'll be the most righteous mutants in the Mad Max wasteland, but at least we won't have to listen to Television any more.

And schools? No more grade inflation. Grade inflation, everybody makes A's just for showing up and not drawing a bead on the teacher. Everybody gets a trophy. There's your trophy for playing the game, Ashley. A trophy for not wussing out and filling your fat face with cheetos playing with your wii. Here's your trophy for wiping your bottom, little Dakota. See? You're just like everyone else. All the other little children have a trophy too, so I guess that makes your efforts a waste of time. I mean, if the kid who quit early crying with a Boba Fett doll up his nose gets a trophy, that's your standard too.

And when you're all grown up, sit back and wait for that big trophy to just fall out of the sky. Yeah, tell your wife that's what you're waiting for. See how long she sticks around. Good luck with that. Hey, or maybe you can manipulate some shmo with a work ethic into doing your job for you - except people who actually work for a living can recognize in a split second when some blustering management parasite tries to steal their fruits and tells 'em a printout Employee of the Moon Festival Certificate is motivational. How's this for inspiration - job security and more money and a side order of dignity. Oh God! Anything but that! Razzle-Dazzle!

How many of you feel you are above average in looks? Intelligence? Skills? You can't all be above average. Half of you are below average. Me, my place is secure. I put on my own socks today.

From now on if you're average, your average. If you're below average, your below average. Sorry about your self-esteem there, Marshall, but the herd has to move on, and you never learned to like, move that hammock you call an ass, because you get rewarded for doing nothing and penalized for making any effort. But it's more civilized, yeah, you know, like Star Trek, or that other science fiction writer, what was his name, Karl Marx. You'd learn all about him if you, you know, survived to college. Yeah, but the herd, we're all thirsty, and we saw some lions back there.... You want a trophy? I don't know, maybe you can like, hit the lion on the nose with it.

And guess what? Plant your hammock and put the flabbiest muscle you have to work! Here's a test - is Mexico in Canada or Europe? Can't find it on a map? Community service, until you figure it out!

Can't divide fractions? Community service, until you figure it out.

Think capital punishment is when someone busts a cap in your ass? Community service. Or an actual cap in your ass, you're choice.

Welfare mothers will be out their with all six children, you know, picking up KFC boxes off the side of the highway, wearing matching orange vests like the Brady Bunch on their way to a talent audition. Be out there singing in step, be a nice change of pace driving down the highway.

Because folks it ain't religious that are the problem. And it ain't the atheists. It's zealots and sheep in both camps. The people who half-bake an idea and have no idea about what the other person is saying because they're too busy proseletyzing about the ultimate nature of the universe, as if something like that could fit a human definition. Oh - not a human definition. But me, my definition, that's got to be pretty close to reality. Oh I think religion is the same thing as praying to the vending machine for a free box of goobers, and I think atheism is the same thing as kissing a gorilla's butt, and evolution? That's just Transformers meets Jurassic Park.

People who think, if they talk first and talk more, they must be as impressive as they feel! Those people are the problem, and they are everywhere. In your job, at the movies, driving your taxi. The zealots want to push you around, and as long as they can rationalize it in their own little definitions, they will. The sheep, they wanna cry victim, come up to you and sit in your lap with their hands in your pockets, and cry foul when you stand up on your own two feet and they fall their hammocks to the floor.

But they're gonna point at you and cry foul. They're gonna point at you and call you a dirty purple racist. They're gonna try to keep you down and blame you for it. They're gonna stop you from "playing with matches" by burning your house down. They're gonna call black white, white black, kind people thugs, and thugs, the salt of the earth. Yeah - you're a pillar of the community? Well now you're a pillar of salt. Deal with it.

They think, as long as I can look in a mirror and see the slim, trim good-looking guy I was twenty years ago, before all the booze and drugs and abusing, then I can feel pretty good about who I am - a sanctimonious role model who's just a little bit better than you. Well, not you, but the two-dimensional shadow I perceive in what's left of my spongebob squarepants brain that wasn't burned out by all the partying I used to do.

Well ain't that a scratched record on the juke box!

I am what I am. Sure, a jackass, but - some people can paint!

If you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, you can still lead a college girl into your van and hit her with a bat. I'm wrong! I'm wrong. Take what I say with a grain of salt, folks. A little grain of...you can't swing a bat in a van, I know! And the moving the chair bit doesn't work anymore since Silence of the Lambs. No, about all you can do is lead the horse, as it were, the old fashioned way. With a big diamond.

Ok boys? Any little boys watching this, that's the secret to women. Diamonds. The bigger diamond you can buy, the more women to choose from. Oh, and the other side of that equation - no, you can't lease diamonds. Sorry fellas. No such thing as layaway when it comes to a woman's heart. In real life, the layaway comes after the purchase. As does the markup. And the advertising. That's real life! That's real life.

Sorry boys, but someone oughtta tell ya, you know, some truth, in between your violin lessons and sunday school and one-armed biceps reps. (Yeah, I don't need to explain that joke, the males get it). Guess you gotta have a penis to really appreciate that one. Why do you think boys put posters on every wall in their rooms? To reduce neck strain. You know, keep the muscles guessing. Wouldn't wanna develop the right side of your neck and shoulder and let the puny left side shrivel up.

Ever see a guy with big muscular arms and puny legs? Can't do one-armed biceps reps with your feet. That's all I'm telling you. That's why you never see a guy with a fat johnson. Rolls hanging off of it. Sorry, hope my double chin doesn't put you off. Guy weighs four hundred pounds, but his piece looks like Conan the Barbarian waving his broad sword at an army of orcs. Sorry, was that reference too old? His member looks like, CGI Hulk, you know, trembling with rage...wearing a torn collar and waistband.... saying Hulk smash! Hulk smash! Pretty lady make Hulk angry!

They did a psychology test, once, to see if girls preferred these buff muscle men, or old doughy guys in blazers. You know who won? The old doughy guys in blazers. So men, that's the lesson for tonight. Instead of going to the gym tomorrow, get down to the JC Penny's, buy yourself a blazer. Man, I did high school all wrong. I should have been investing my grass-cutting money into an IRA, instead of buying up Plastic Man comics and Cracked magazine. Yeah, those were high school years well-spent. Driving around in circles in my friend's mother's brown Chevrolet Impala, screaming "Look Out!" to break up the monotony. But then again - screaming "Look out!" was sound financial planning, turns out.

Man, if I'd known then what I know now. You know? For instance:

Instead of going to college I would have gotten a job selling cars, worked my way up to Mercedes or BMWs. You can handle that kind of pressure when your boys haven't dropped and you've got .2 percent body fat. So what if you miss a few meals? You college boys can study your Marx and Engels, and your Aristotle and moonbeams. You know - I'll be the dumb guy with a steady paycheck and a nice car snaking the best genes for when you finally graduate and start at the bottom again.

When you're young you pine over women.

When you're old? You pine over erections.

If I'd known then what I know now...I would have gone to the prom in a trans-am, a white tuxedo and a mullet - oh wait, I did that. And I wouldn't have kissed my date goodnight like a gentleman, either. Man, did I ever buy the church youth group propaganda when I was a kid. Nobody home, and I'm kissing her at her door and leaving her confused and alone in her Scarlet O'Hara hoop skirt. I mean, the thing practically shouts "Hide under here!"

I was a naive kid. I thought spanking the monkey was how you taught a chimpanzee to wear a diaper. I thought submarine races were part of the cold war. You know. Wolverines! I thought flirting was when a girl tried to get you to do her...

- homework.

If I'd known then what I know now... I would have quit college, quit the workforce, slaving away only to have your country and economy usurped from you and leaving you middle aged with your don johnson in your hand...I would have quit college and started a rock and roll band, gotten a string of meaningless day jobs and did pretty much anything I wanted. Oh wait - I did do that! Who's laughing now, Wall Street? That's right, you are, cause I'm a comedian! That's my job! Customer service with a smile! But the best part is I don't have any complaint department. Oh occasionally some drunk guy will shout something unintelligible - insert drunken interruption here - but it's not like you can get fired for being heckled. Hey Frank, you had a good show, but - that heckler really had it in for you. I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go. What? Yeah, sorry. Well, can I stay here, have a drink and heckle the next guy that comes on? Oh that's ok? Then I'll take my act on the road. Go down to the hospital and heckle the children. "Hey, you know what? You suck. And your trucker hat is way too big. The I Have a Dream Foundation called. Yeah they want their hope back!"

Then I'd go down to Burger King and heckle a cashier. Hey buddy, you call that a paper hat? I could make a better hat out of a coffee filter and a grit magazine! Or, nice job pushing the hamburger button, fella! You know I saw a chimpanzee in college who could do the math in his head! And he got a banana every time he pushed the right button. What do you get? Sorry, didn't mean to bust your balls about the college-boy chimpanzees making more than you. Tell you what, yes I would like fries with that. Oh - there's another banana.

Then maybe I'll go down to the police station and heckle them. Hey officer, you call that unnecessary force? You hit like a girl! Oh you are a girl! Your husband let you out of the house dressed like that? Why don't - ow! Hey, this floor tastes like lemons and urine! When was the last time somebody mopped around here? Oh, here comes my sixth grade teacher with a mop! Her standardized test scores must have come in!

Hey teach, looks like you were right about me! Now quit goofing off and grab that bucket!

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