1001 Jackasses

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Abe Johnson

After years of sweating “making a difference” in the world, Abe Johnson decided to throw in the towel. He simply gave up.

“I decided I wasn’t going to try so hard anymore. It was too much work. Furthermore, I am totally exhausted!”

Apparently, so too were his friends and business associates.

“Abe is a nice guy, but, above all, he is so darn draining being around,” said one of his friends who wished to remain anonymous. A business colleague added,  “His seriousness and intensity simply sucks the life out of you!”

“Worst of all was the constant LinkedIn postings with all these banal inspirational affirmations he’d post every single day,” said a co-worker. “There’s so much of that nonsense already on social media. Plus, I’m pretty sure the job of Tony Robbins has already been taken by, yup, Tony Robbins!”

The Change

Abe recently shifted his approach to internalizing the sentiments of the NY Times bestseller, “The Fine Art of Not Giving a F*ck!” Abe said, “The book was a typical business book in that all you need to know is in the title,” adding, “Seriously, who reads anything today anyway!”

“I must admit,” said a high school friend, “I am no longer cringing when I see him coming toward me. He’s actually easy being around today. He’s a changed man!”

“His brow is no longer constantly furrowed, and I’ve actually seen him spontaneously laughing a few times recently,”  said his current manager. “Maybe it is the reduced stress from not having to come up with those LinkedIn posts or the dropping the harsh and constant judging of others he was doing to make himself feel good about himself.  Whatever it is,  he’s becoming a joy having around!”

“I’d even say he’s become an outright inspiration!” said his current fiancée who had held off saying yes to matrimony due to his constant and fatiguing heavy-handedness.

“I didn’t want to marry a heavy does it kind of guy,” she said, adding,  “his new relaxed, yet confident demeanor makes everyone around him better! Everyone loves him these days.”

The irony here is that Abe now makes a difference. Seems like, all he had to do was stop trying.

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 The Bar Room Bet

You know the triathlon was created as a barroom bet don’t you?

“Who is the best athlete, someone who swims a mile, bikes a hundred miles, or runs a marathon?” one guy asks.

‘Well, the best athlete is someone who does all three, back-to-back!” another responds, and all nod their heads.

“Well, once we stop drinking and start actually doing something with our lives, maybe we can create a contest that becomes a real competition!”

Hence, the dumbest and most ego intensive sport, ever, was created.

Before long, people were training dozens of hours every week for a “sport” without any public competitions, prize money, or the chance for gain any notoriety for being great at it. Triathletes were that weird breed, people who loved to exercise like mad just for the heck of it.

Then came the Ironman competition, cross-training shoes, their own magazine, and “The Ironman” watch from Timex. Triathlon became an Olympic sport. For a couple of minutes, triathlon became the cool thing for baby-boomer weekend warriors to start taking an interest in. Yuppies could go out and buy a bunch of stuff (something they love to do) and show up the next weekend geared-up as a triathlete!

As a result of wanting more people to take part, “amateur length” triathlons were introduced. These mini-triathlons were a far cry from the original barroom bet distances. These abridged versions sort of defeated the point of the first barroom bet – an incredible fitness challenge only for the super elite athlete. This new triathlon 2.0 was hardly challenging. The floodgates opened for the oxymoronic “out-of-shape triathlete.”

Enter The Jackass That Says, Tri-ath-a-lon

“I’d love to stay for dinner, but I am training for a tri-ath-a-lon!”

Note the four syllables.

Jackass, it’s tri-ath-lon. Three syllables.

And, hey, midlife crisis, if you are going to compete in this silly sport of wimpy distances and insist on boring all your friends with the details of how much you train and how tired and hungry you are all the time, then at the very least, can you please learn at least how to pronounce the name of the sport correctly!

Make sense?

Next week’s bar bet involves REAL-TOR versus REAL – A – TOR.

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We are all for America getting healthier. We are all for people grabbing an apple instead of a Cinnabon.
But if there has ever been a jackass move, it’s telling everyone you can that are on a diet.
First, we really don’t care – we are more concerned with what we are going to eat next, not what you’re NOT going to eat!
Second, don’t you detect in dieters a bit of a “holier than thou” attitude? Really, do you really have to make it public that you won’t be shoveling down the pop tarts anymore?
What about this?
You are at the restaurant, and everyone is ordering like it’s the last supper. Fried appetizers,  soup AND salad, and some big hunk of cow with several side orders! ) Then, your local Dr. Atkins chimes in throwing a wet blanket over the meal with, “uh, I’m on a diet, do you have a couple slices of turkey and some cottage cheese?”
Better yet these-carb quitters insist on learning how everything is prepared – as if they can influence the preparation routine with a few choice comments.
“Can you tell me how the Grand Slam Breakfast is being prepared?”
Look, dieting is misery – contrary to what any bestselling diet book says. This is because you are literally starving yourself. You are eating less that your body requires.
So Mr. Cranky, do us all a favor, keep your misery to yourself!

Smoke detector – good!
Chirping smoke detector – no so good!
Smoke detector chirping at 2:00 AM? Not good at all!
I’m sure the moral person who designed chirping smoke detectors thought, “now if the battery goes dead on this, this device won’t save any lives. I better create a way for people to know the battery is low!”
Makes sense.
“Perhaps an intermittent high-pitched chirp that would alert the homeowner that it is time to replace the battery!”
This solution includes a bit of jackassery.
The high pitch chirp, it turns out, is a bit non-directional making it very hard to zero in on which smoke detector the chirp is coming from.  When you add to that the chirp occurs for less than a second every several minutes, you have a device that can lead to an emotional breakdown especially if the chirps begin in the middle of the night.
That’s because the jackassery doesn’t end there with occasional non-directional chirps. Once you finally find your chirping detector, you then have to figure out, most likely while perched on a ladder at 3:00 AM,  how to disconnect the thing and where to put the battery.
Assuming you have a 9V battery, you’re not through the woods yet. After you disconnect the smoke detector from the ceiling, if you’re lucky as I was, you’ll first have to locate a micro screwdriver to open the battery compartment. Can somebody explain to me why all the security for a 9-volt battery on an $15 smoke detector?
Assuming you get that far, you’ll then have to screw it back into the wall. Replacing the smoke detector is harder than it sounds at 3:00 AM when accompanied with boiling blood.
So after you put the ladder away and head back to bed be very careful as you are likely to hear another one start to chirp soon afterward. Batteries usually go dead around the same time.
If you are willing to spend $200 on a smoke detector, this whole experience can now be avoided, forever, with the new Nest.