Mattress Police - The Secret Files

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Just Give Me a Nice Big Knob and I'll Be Happy
2008-05-29 01:03:00
One of the inevitable side effects of technology is that people try to improve things that are already working perfectly well.A prime example is the ventilation controls in automobiles. Remember when your car had one big lever for hot and cold and another one for the fan? Blue = cold. Red = hot. In some cars there was even a snowflake and little heat waves in case you didn?t understand colors. That design was simple, intuitive and functional. So of course carmakers have abandoned it in favor of something much more complicated.When I get into my car, I am greeted with this:The first time I got into my car when it was a hundred degrees out, I couldn?t even figure out how to turn the A/C on. I kept looking for a button that said, you know, ?A/C.? Or maybe ?ON.? There's an ?OFF? button, but no ?ON.? How is that possible? I saw the button labeled ?AUTO,? and thought, ?Well, I know it?s not that one.? Because I already had an AUTO. I just wanted to make it colder.After press...
More About: Technology , Driving , Happy , Give , Nice

Best of MP: Doctor Pepper Proves Book Larnin' is No Substitute for Common S
2008-05-27 21:33:00
I've been thinking about doing this for a while, and since I've got a lot of new readers, I figure this is probably a good time. Every other Tuesday until you get sick of it, I'm going to do a "best of the Mattress Police" post. You'll recognize some of them from my book (What? You haven't bought my book? What the hell are you waiting for? Buy it! All the proceeds go to helping a poor ditch digging kid buy an iPod!), but I'm going to throw some surprises in as well. Today's post comes to us from way back in February of aught seven. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed copying and pasting it for you. Dr Pepper Proves Book Larnin' is No Substitute for Common Sense As you know, Dr Pepper is my muse. I therefore took it particularly hard when the marketing wizards at the Dr Pepper company turned out to be no more wizards than, well, than Dr Pepper is a real doctor. From the Buffalo News:Less than a ...
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Sock Drawer
2008-05-26 20:23:00
It's probably a good thing that Santa Claus isn't a Muslim, because when you live at the North Pole, it's really hard to face east five times a day.*****I hate Vegans. I don't mind regular vegetarians so much, but there is a certain smugness about vegans that irritates me. Like, "All I ate today was peat moss and tree bark. I'm saving the planet and my colon smells like a pine forest. I hope you enjoyed your bacon double cheeseburger." I already have a plan for getting revenge. I'm going to start a farm that grows organic vegetables that are fertilized with ground up baby seals.*****Sometimes when I'm at an intersection with a four way stop, I wish that cars had a blinker for going straight. I mean, you can assume that the guy across from you is going to go straight if he isn't signaling that he's going to turn, but occasionally somebody will forget to signal and then they'll suddenly turn left in front of you. It would be nice if there was a signal for "Yes, I'm ...
More About: Drawer

Congrats to Stushie!
2008-05-23 21:54:00
Repeat winners Brad and Joel were both denied satisfaction this round, with Stushie taking the prize.Joel came in second with:All together now, kids: "Shot through the heart! And you're to blame..."And Brad landed in third with:Due to the inevitable lawsuit, Diesel Day Camp was a short lived endeavor.Congrats, guys. Stushie, send me your address and I'll get your book in the mail. Email me at diesel [at] mattresspolice.com.See you back here for a post that will unite the world in their collective hatred for me.Am I #3 on humor-blogs.com yet?

Thursday Shout-out
2008-05-22 22:16:00
I haven't done one of these for a while, but I figured it was time, considering all the people linking to me and leaving supportive comments lately. Yeah, there were some haters too, but I don't take comments too seriously when the commenter can't spell three words in a row correctly, and the best insult they can come up with is "your an asshole" [sic]. I'm tempted to set up a PayPal donation fund for my ditch digger, so that all of these commenters who are so concerned about the welfare of the kid I'm exploiting can donate to his college (or iPod) fund. I'm guessing that if I required a $1.00 donation for every time somebody calls me an asshole, they would take their lofty principles elsewhere.But the real point of this post is to thank all of you who have been so supportive of me and this blog. It's pretty cool to know that y'all have my back.So thanks first of all to Glacial Spain and everybody who Stumbled/Dugg/Reddited/whatever my post. In case you don't know what...
More About: Thursday , Shout

Jobs I Have Sucked At
2008-05-21 17:00:00
As of this moment, my trench digging post has gotten over 70,000 hits. This is a new experience for me, and I'm not quite sure how to feel about it. It's like the carnival is in town or something. I've been linked to by EHOWA (warning: adult content) and Curmudgeonly Skeptical. I'm still getting a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon, and there's a whole mini-controversy happening over at Reddit about how big of an a$$hole I am exactly. (Ironically, the one social networking site where the post hasn't made an impact is Digg.)I still can't figure out what all the fuss is about. That post was just my attempt to make light of what was becoming a rather frustrating situation: I had hired a neighbor kid to dig a trench from Point A to Point B, and somehow I found myself not only having to micromanage the digging process, but also acting as the kid's career counselor. The exchange struck me as funny, so I decided to write it up as a sort of mock ditch-digger's handbook. I wasn't tr...
More About: Jobs , Blogging , Work

Vote!
2008-05-20 20:30:00
Alrighty, folks. Here are the captions. Choose wisely. I will post the results on Friday. Remember, the winner gets a copy of my book, Antisocial Commentary: From the Secret Files of the Mattress Police. And yes, Brad, one of these days I will mail your copy out as well.Joel Bezaire said...All together now, kids: "Shot through the heart! And you're to blame..."Brad said...Due to the inevitable lawsuit, Diesel Day Camp was a short lived endeavor.Poke said...In Narnia, no one can hear Diesel scream.Dave said...Hey, didn't I make that quiver last night?stushie said...The first time that you see a hobbit in Narnia, shoot to kill, Susan.y not i said...Your bow and arrow doesn't scare me. Look behind you. There's a giant version of myself with a gun. HA!Brad "Wombat" Randall said...This was to be the last movie job ever for the assistant who miscast the stand-in for Lucy Pevensie.Barry Nong said...Hey! Can you play the theme from Deliverance on that?Candace said...Diesel: Now ...
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Why I Am What's Wrong with the World
2008-05-19 19:38:00
Since I started this blog about a year and a half ago, I've written a lot of absurd and offensive things. For example, I've suggested the Al Gore is the world's worst dictator. I've argued that the best way to avoid drowning when traveling with a Kennedy is to travel by boat. I've conjectured that the last item on the gay agenda is probably "drinks with Steve."The funny thing is that nobody seems to get offended by these posts. The posts that people decide to get pissed off about are the ones where I say something that seems to me to be completely uncontroversial.For example, one time I mentioned that I don't like being around ugly people. That post, as you may recall, earned me the name "f--ktard dingleberry."Now am I wrong here, or is it a basic fact of nature that nobody likes being around ugly people? Saying that you don't like being around ugly people is about as controversial as saying that you don't like food that tastes bad, or that you don't enjoy Rob Schneider f...
More About: World , Blogging , Work , The World , Wrong

Caption Contest: Prince Caspian
2008-05-16 18:02:00
You know the rules. Submit your captions in the comments. Mrs. Diesel and I will pick our favorites and I will post the top 10 in a poll on Tuesday. The winner gets a copy of my book, Antisocial Commentary: From the Secret Files of the Mattress Police. Have fun!Listed on humor-blogs.com.
More About: Contest , Prince , Prince Caspian , Caspian , Caption

Can you dig it?
2008-05-14 16:28:00
Dear 19 year old neighbor kid whom I?m paying eight bucks an hour to dig trenches:You probably won?t read this, but I?ve noticed that you have a lot of questions regarding your position in our organization, and I wanted to write down some answers so that I would have the information you require readily available.Question 1. Why do I have to dig trenches?The short answer to this is, ?You don?t.? You choose to dig trenches because you have a maxed out credit card and a phone bill that you have no other way of paying off. Not to mention the fact that your phone is broken, so until you buy a new one, you?re paying for a phone you can?t use. These circumstances are the result of choices you made. I?m not sure where your confusion on this issue is coming from.Question 2. Why don?t you just dig them yourself?Because digging trenches pretty much blows. Surely you?ve learned that much during your tenure here. If you can pay someone to dig your trenches for you, I highly recommend it.Q...
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Does Not Compute
2008-05-12 21:20:00
At my first ?real? job, doing technical support for a software company, I worked with a guy who used to make all sorts of ill-thought-out claims. His claim to have invented a perpetual motion machine even made it into my book.One time this guy stated ? pretty much out of the blue, as I recall ? that he thought metaphors were pointless. He didn?t understand why people used metaphors rather than just coming out and saying what they meant.Now this is a stupid thing for anyone to say, but it?s particularly stupid for someone who works as a computer support technician. As confusing as technology can be, try explaining to someone how to save a document in a folder in Windows without using any metaphors (hint: you can?t use the words ?document,? ?folder,? or ?windows.?)The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that my co-worker was on to something. A big part of our job was to explain to people what was wrong with their computers, and this task is made much simpler when ...
More About: Technology , Work

Congrats (again), Brad!
2008-05-09 22:35:00
Well, Brad did it again. But if you think I'm making a 4x banner, you're kidding yourself. Maybe I'll start a caption contest hall of fame. Yeah, that sounds easier.I will send you a copy of my book if you want, Brad, though I think you might already have one. Maybe I'll send you one of Joel's books instead.Sue Wilkey came in second with:Now, Hulk, be a good boy and go put Arkansas back.And Poke came in third with an entry that makes me giggle every time I read it:I'm just a man, standing in front of a Hulk, asking it to love him.Thanks for playing, everybody. Have a great weekend. And don't forget to visit Humor-Blogs.com on your way out.Listed on humor-blogs.com.

Sock Drawer
2008-05-08 17:57:00
It must be about time for another sock drawer post. This is where I do some housecleaning of all the odd ideas that are cluttering up the corners of my mind. Enjoy.When I was a kid, there was a thing called "I.Q.", which measured one's intelligence. There was only one kind of intelligence, so everybody only got one number. These days there are a bunch of different kinds of intelligence. For example, there's emotional intelligence, spatial intelligence, musical intelligence, etc. Now I'm sure that this is a big step forward and all, but when is somebody going to get around to cataloging all of the varieties of stupidity? Because I count at least 38.In a similar vein, someone recently told me that when you get your picture taken for your passport, they ask you not to smile. The rationale is that it's easier to identify someone who isn't smiling, because there are a lot of different ways to smile. I guess that makes sense, but I don't think the bureaucrats counted on the...
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Vote!
2008-05-07 02:28:00
Ok, folks, here are the top ten. I forgot to mention it when I posted the pic, but I will be giving away a copy of my book, Antisocial Commentary to the winner. Vote wisely!And while you're in a voting mood, head over to Crummy Church Signs and vote for my comment. I'm not going to win, but if a few of you vote for me I will be spared the humiliation of coming in dead last.Also, would it kill you to click this link? I've fallen to number ten on my own blog directory. Talk about humiliating. I'm now officially below something called "Foundshit." Come on people, help me out here.The captions...Alice said...Sorry Hulk, but the frozen food gig's been filled.Brad said...Another eHarmony.com success story...Glacial Spain said...Big Green Guy - or Tiny Diesel? You be the judgeLonie Polony said..."Okay, I'll give you ten bucks for it, but that's my final offer. We're a scrap metal yard, not a charity."y not i said...Yes, yes. It's impressive that you can make a tank into th...

Saturday Morning in the Bedroom of Good and Evil
2008-05-05 16:48:00
ow the Red Vine was more tempting than any of the other candies which the parents had bought. And the Red Vine said to the girl, Yea, hath your parents said, Ye shall not eat of any candy in the pantry? And the girl said unto the Red Vine, We may eat of the candy in the pantry, but only after a healthy dinner and with parental approval. The parents have said, Ye shall not eat candy, neither shall ye touch it, before your mother and father get up on Saturday morning, lest ye die. And the Red Vine said unto the girl, Ye shall not surely die: For your parents know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the girl saw that the Red Vine was sugary and laced with artificial flavors and colors that were pleasant to the eyes and nose, and a candy to be desired to make one wise, she took of the Red Vine, and did eat, and gave also unto her brother with her; and he did eat. And they gorged themselves on Red Vines...
More About: Family , Morning , Evil , Bedroom

Caption Contest: The Hulk
2008-05-02 19:37:00
You have to feel a little bad for Ang Lee. He's a respected director who did his best to make a decent superhero movie. Sadly, no one told him that when you're making a movie called The Hulk , you shouldn't make the audience wait 40 minutes before they see the Hulk. Mrs. Diesel and I made the mistake of seeing The Hulk at a matinee; by the time the Hulk started doing interesting stuff like bounding through the desert and biting the heads off missiles and spitting them at helicopters, the theater had been overrun by middle-schoolers who were bored out of their minds after the seventeenth lingering shot of moss on a rock.So now they're pulling a Batman Begins and making another Hulk movie, pretending that the last one never happened. How do you think that makes Ang Lee feel? (And don't say, "anglee," because you wouldn't like him when he's anglee.) Even I Know What You Did Last Summer evidently warrants two sequels (the last one being called -- no joke -- I'll Always Know...
More About: Movies , Contest , Superheroes

Four Months in Pictures
2008-04-30 22:20:00
I haven?t posted any pics of my house or family lately, mostly because, well, I lost the little cable thingy that connects the camera to my computer. I still haven?t found it, but I bought a card reader from Best Buy, so now I can finally post some pics. I?ve got quite a backlog, so I thought I?d do a quick photo pictorial, catching you up on what?s been going on over the past few months.We went to Seaworld for Christmas. That?s a story in itself, but for now I?ll just post this pic that demonstrates once again that I have the most beautiful children on the planet. I know, you think your kids are cute, but my kids are like BAM! PYCHOW! They?re all up in your grill with their cuteness.We also went up into the mountains to play in the snow. This is what Mrs. Diesel and I look like a few minutes before I?m going to slam into her on a sled at thirty miles an hour and she doesn?t talk to me for the rest of the day.These photos prove nothing except that I?m the BEST UNCLE EVER.One t...
More About: Pictures , Family , Building , Months

Finally, a Post You Can Sink Your Teeth Into!
2008-04-28 21:09:00
One can learn a lot of interesting things working at Google.I was surprised to learn, for example, how easy it is to be turned into a werewolf.I am not at liberty to disclose the exact nature of the project I?m working on, but I don?t think that I?m spilling any state secrets by revealing to you that it?s related to lycanthropy. You might have guessed as much, yes?During the course of this project I?ve done a fair amount of research on werewolves. Most of the information I?ve come across is fairly banal: the werewolf?s vulnerability to silver, his aversion to bright light, his susceptibility to wolfsbane due to that plant?s origin as a weed that sprouted from a puddle of drool of the the demon dog Cerberus, etc.Now I know I've been a little out of touch lately, but I think I still know my readership well enough to place all of you into one of two classes: (1) Those of you who are interested in becoming a werewolf, and (2) Those of you who are interested in avoiding becoming a w...
More About: Post , Nonsense , Work , Teeth , Finally

Congrats, Joel!
2008-04-25 21:08:00
Crummy Joel took top honors this week. I think this is his third win, which ties him with Brad for most wins. Joel already has my book because he's a smart guy who know quality humor writing when he sees it, but maybe I'll send him another t-shirt. What? You didn't know there were Mattress Police t-shirts? I guess I should add that link back to my template.Here's your award, Joel.McCafferty Himself took second with:Diesel is crushed that Travolta avoids making eye contact the morning after their special night together.And newcomer EZ came in third:Double forehead and bad hair? With a package like that, she won't even notice!!Thanks for playing, everybody.I should have some time this weekend to fix all the crap that's been breaking around here and Humor-Blogs.com. And maybe, just maybe, even write an actual post or two.Have a great weekend.

Another lame post
2008-04-24 20:17:00
Sorry for being so lame this week. Between hackers, work and killing gophers, I haven't had much time to blog. I promise to do better next week.In the mean time, make sure you vote in the caption contest. Remember, the winner gets a copy of my book, Antisocial Commentary: From the Secret Files of the Mattress Police.Check back tomorrow for the winners. Diesel out.
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Vote!
2008-04-23 05:38:00
Ok, folks, here are the finalists. I just got home and I'm pretty freaking exhausted, so hopefully I don't wake up tomorrow morning and realize I picked 10 lame-ass captions.Although if the other choice is not waking up, then I guess I'd go with the first option.Did I mention I'm really tired?Saint Schizophrenia said...Diesel finds out exactly how seriously Scientologists take their zero-tolerance stance on anti-depressants.Jay said..."Hey guys! Heading to the Bob Marley concert?"stushie said...Twenty five years later, Travolta's Saturday Night Fever had mutated into an interplanetary epidemic.CrummyJoel said...Diesel would later realize that this was the least weird part of the Scientology recruitment tour.Brad said..."Tom! Kirstie! We got another one!"Pablo said...The aliens from the planet Lasiks made all who wear glasses into second class citizens. Diesel just liked the attention.McCafferty Himself said...Diesel is crushed that Travolta avoids making eye contact the mor...
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...and we're back
2008-04-22 06:39:00
Well, looks like things are working again. Never did get around to posting anything today. Things have been crazy. Since we had some technical difficulties, I'll give you until noon Pacific time tomorrow (Tuesday) to get your captions in. I'll post the poll some time after that.Diesel out.
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Grrr...
2008-04-20 18:57:00
Sorry, folks. I thought I had fixed the problem, but the malicious frame code is still coming up. I had to take down the Humor-Blogs.com site and disable comments on this site. The problem isn't actually with my sites; it's with the servers my sites are hosted on. Evidently my hosting company forgot to install a few patches. They aren't telling me much, except that "this is a major issue that is a top priority" for them. Super.You can read more about the iFrame attack here.Rest assure that all the Humor-Blogs.com data is still there; nothing has been deleted. I've only taken the site down as a safeguard against infecting anybody with a virus. Hopefully it will be back up soon.If you have a caption for the caption contest, feel free to email it to me at diesel -at- mattresspolice.com.

Caption Contest: Battlefield Earth
2008-04-18 23:13:00
Ok, I think I've gotten a handle on my recent technical difficulties. Apparently the Humor-Blogs.com site and this one were both hacked. The hacker put a bit of code in a hidden frame on the site that would make a call to another website, prompting you to download some sort of executable file, which was probably a virus.I have removed the malicious code on both sites and alerted my hosting company who, 5+ hours after my initial email this morning, still have not responded. Good show, guys!I will be posting a more detailed message on Humor-Blogs.com later today.So, with that out of the way, we can get on to the caption contest for this week. Since I've already done Iron Man and Batman Begins, I was a little short on material this week. Once again, I had to go back to one of the classics. This time I picked Battlefield Earth , the 2000 sci-fi epic starring John Travolta and Forrest Whitaker. That's me with them in the pic.You know how this works. Submit your captions in the ...
More About: Movies , Contest , Caption

Technical Difficulties
2008-04-18 18:04:00
I'm having some issues this morning.First, if you're using Internet Explorer, you may get a prompt on this site or on Humor-Blogs.com asking you if you want to install some Remote Data Services Data Control plug-in. Do NOT say yes. I don't know what that is or why it's trying to install itself. I'm looking into it and will give you more information when I can.Second, if you're using Firefox, you may notice that the background turns black partway down the page, making it difficult to read the black text. Not sure why this is happening either, or if it's related to the other issue. It looks fine when I preview the template in Blogger, but when I publish it, it goes all funky.I hope to be back in a few hours with an update. I've got a caption contest pic ready to go as soon as I get all this crap worked out.If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend:Stapling your tongue to a sheet of plywood
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38? But You Seem So Immature!
2008-04-16 20:03:00
In two weeks I?ll be thirty-eight years old.I like this age. You know what?s great about being almost thirty-eight? People stop expecting you to grow up. And you can stop pretending that you?re going to some day.When you?re thirty-eight and you interrupt a meeting at work with a five minute puppet show starring a Cat5 cable and a laptop power cable, people don?t shake their heads and mutter something to each other about how immature you are. They still think you?re immature, but they accept it. They look at your receding hairline and salt-and-pepper beard and realize that this isn?t the first impromptu puppet show you?ve put on starring office equipment ? and it most likely won?t be the last. They assume you know how inappropriate you?re being, and that bringing it to your attention isn?t going to change anything. In fact, now that I think about it, being in your late thirties is a lot like being retarded.In a sense, I?ve been waiting to be thirty-eight all my life. I?ve alw...
More About: Work , Immature

Why Do You Do It?
2008-04-14 20:27:00
It is understandable that many of you regard me with apprehension bordering on fear.My threatening countenance over there to the right, my merciless rants against the likes of Thomas Kinkade and my position as unquestioned despot of Humor-Blogs.com -- all of these factors contribute to the perception that I am a man not to be trifled with. Or with which not to trifle, if you prefer.Be assured, however, that I am not in fact a very intimidating person. I'm tall, yes, but I also have very slender wrists. That photo of me to the right may resemble Will Smith in Bad Boys 2, but that's mostly because, well, from the neck down it's Will Smith in Bad Boys 2. Truth be told, I'm not even really black.My rants are mostly for effect. I generally can't sustain that level of anger for more than about a minute and a half. I just don't have that kind of attention span. So while I've settled on Thomas Kinkade as a nemesis, he has little to fear from me. Remember when I was running fo...
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Congrats, Kadi!
2008-04-11 20:42:00
There was a firestorm of controversy regarding this week's caption contest. Why does controversy always come in firestorms? Has there ever been a thunderstorm of controversy? A sandstorm of controversy?The controversy revolved, tornado-like, around the question of how much shameless self-promotion is appropriate when competing in this little contest. So let me clear this up, once and for all: If you win, you've done about the right amount.Kadi did about the right amount this week. Actually, she was fairly restrained this time around, which evidently got her the self-deprecation vote. Nicely played, Kadi! You win a copy of my book, Antisocial Commentary. Send me your address and I'll get it in the mail to you.You also get the coveted In Your Face Award. Again.Bee took second place, with:Trimming my fingernails with your teeth shows your loyalty to the family.And the bitterest of good sports, stushie, took third:Your first task, Luigi, will be to shoot the James Caan dwar...

Blogger of Light(R)
2008-04-10 03:52:00
I?ve decided that I need a nemesis.A commenter recently suggested that His Excellency Lord Monkeyhands could be my nemesis, but I don?t know. It feels like settling to me. Monkeyhands isn?t up to being my Joker or Lex Luthor. Maybe if he, Human Inertia, Stoner, and three of my other worst bosses got together, they could be my Sinister Six, but that?s about as much credit as I?m willing to give them.A great nemesis can?t be an idiot; he has to be brilliant but twisted ? someone who has the power to accomplish great things, but uses that power only for his own demented ends. Someone like Darth Vader or Hans Gruber from Die Hard. Or Thomas Kinkade.Yes, you heard me right. I have selected as my nemesis Thomas Kinkade, the Painter of Light ®.If you?re not familiar with this ?artist,? he?s best known as the man who has produced essentially the same painting 8,436 times over the past 20 years. Kinkade-land is a place filled with cottages almost militantly cozy, a place where it has alw...
More About: Christianity , Rants , Blogger , Pop Culture

Vote!
2008-04-09 03:15:00
Sorry for the delay in getting this posted. Minor annoyances like work continue to get in the way of my all-important blogging duties. Remember, the winner gets a copy of Antisocial Commentary, so vote wisely!Bee said...Trimming my fingernails with your teeth shows your loyalty to the family.Jami said..."You're soaking in it."Avitable said...Unfortunately, Diesel misunderstood and made the man an auger he couldn't refuse.Wendy said...With the fifth goon that week stuck to his ring, Don Diesel reconsiders his choice of bling.Sparrow said...Don Diesel took great pleasure in this final humiliation of his arch-enemy, Lord Monkeyhands.Mark said..."No," said the Don. "That's not the ring I wanted you to kiss."renalfailure said...Your lips say "yes" but your scalp says "let's just be friends."Kadi said...No disrespect, Don, but if I am to be your right hand man... perhaps you should start wiping with your left.stushie said...Your first task, Luigi, will be to shoot the James Caan dwa...
More About: Movies , Vote