Hello Darkness! The Official Blog of Helen Keller

Picture this: You're at BestBuy, shopping around for presents. You spy, with your little eye, that they've finally decided to drop the price of an iPad from $1,000 to $500.

*Editor's Note: Yes, I know that iPads aren't $1,000 nor $500. Math is coming up and I want to keep the numbers simple in case Sarah Palin is cruising my writing and wants to attack the concept while she guts a moose on her show.*

You decide that's a fantastic price and tuck one under your arm a la Fred Jackson and dodge tackles to the cashier. Meanwhile, you notice rookie phenom CJ Spiller has dropped 4 iPads and is crying...again. Fuck you Spiller, stop dropping whatever you catch.

When you get to the front of the line, the cashier rings in your purchase. She announces you owe $630. You gawk.

"Excuse pardon what the fuck me?" you ask.

"Would you like a gift receipt?" she replies.

"Why am I paying $630? The iPad is $500 and the HST in Ontario is 13%. I should be paying $565."

The cashier adopts a smug look. "Well, you see, other people paid $1,000 for their iPads back in January. It just wouldn't be fair to have them pay $130 for their iPads when you're buying the exact same one and paying less tax, would it?"

"Yeah, but it's on sale. I don't care what some idiot paid back in January. Fuck him and his iPad. Early adopting douche. I paid $500 for mine and I want to be taxed on $500."

"Mmmmmmm no. We're mandated to make sure people pay fair taxes. And by fair taxes we mean jacked-up fuck you taxes. Smart shopping won't save you."

"Byoooooooooooooooooorg," you say as you spike the iPad off the impulse Coca-Cola Zero display by the register.

Municipal taxes in Ontario at least, work on that principle. What other people pay for their houses are what you are assumed to have paid for your's. So, they'll tax...

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Imagine if you were standing in line at the movie theater. Picture it to be a nice multiplex with perhaps, 6 screens. The first 4 screens all have something decent on them; Harry Potter is playing on two of them, followed by MegaMind and Due Date. The kind of movies that, while perhaps representing Hollywood grist milled by faceless executives in search of a profit, are also the shit you would actually see. Screen 5 is showing something artsy, but you've heard of it. I'm not sure what's out right now, but something like The Kids are Alright.

Now, Screen 6, the last screen, is showing amateur footage of a hobo barfing in a plastic bag. In Russian. With Greek subtitles. But the hobo is from Staten Island and his barf is from a bad felafel he stole. It is CLEARLY intended to be nothing more than filler for the movie theater. The employees use it to nap or give each other STDs. The manager would really like to get involved, but his wife already doesn't trust him after he got caught writing lewd Tweets to Natalie Portman.

So, you're in line. The couple ahead of you insist on tickets to Moscow Hobo Barf. The cashier doesn't know what to do. The Screen 6 button fell off the register a long time ago and there was never any pressing need to fix it. "Uh, fuck, just go in" she says and shoots a confused "WTF?" to the ticket-taker.

I write this because there's something similar that I've seen a few times now.

Ordering the wrong shit at a restaurant. Swiss Chalet clearly put hamburgers on the menu because the CEO's kid whined and farted till his dad caved and put them on. Nobody in the kitchen knows how to cook a burger, they don't have the condiments and the best result you're going to get is a recently purchased Whopper patty squished in between two rotisseried legs. If you're lucky, they used Festive Special Stuffing as the bun.

Swiss Chalet is goddamned geared to whip chickens out of the kitchen that a menu is pretty much a formality...

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Well, folks, let's be honest. I forgot about the Comment Corner about a year and a bit ago. It's not like there's been a deluge of emails demanding it back (because there hasn't) but there have been some other topics that I've been wanting to simply put out there.

So, I'm going to relaunch the Corner. Even if it serves as my own little echo chamber that's fine. These thoughts bounce in my head and I find that writing them down and thinking them through is a catharsis that purges them and I can move on.

But I'm not planning on simply putting in new entries a la the old Corner. Reading over the previous entries, I found that the majority of the comedy seemed to flow from harsh language uniquely wound into common ideas. So, ejaculation became a dick sneeze. Alpha-male became Roided Cock-Rambo. (Note to self, last one not bad!)

You get the idea. The Corner became about, what I think, manufactured anger. Sure, some things out there really do piss me off, but that became the raison d'etre and I think quality suffered. The Corner Andrew Dice Clayed itself.

That said, I still like mean humour. I like humour that dares, but isn't necessarily something that looks like a late 90's Denis Leary cast-off.

Some of the titles that have crossed my mind instead of the Comment Corner:

Peace & Quiet: The Official Blog of Helen Keller (alternatively, Hello Darkness!)
Flyin' High: The Life and Times of John Denver
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! The Lost Blog Entries of Anne Frank
Glenn Beck: Private Detective ~ Serial Rapist (hey, might even be true)
Soaked and Disappointed: The Titanic Tour Blog

Two topics that would be covered in the first few episodes of the relaunch:

1. The Defiantly Wrong.

2. Parents who wait till their late 30's to have kids, make a bunch of bad (or weird) decisions that fuels a superiority complex vis a vis parents in their mid 20's.

The new Corner will still cover Lost updates...which will consist of "Aaaaaand...it's still over."

Folks, I'm obviously keeping a lazy timetable here with updates. I've made about as many entries here as Rhianna made phone-calls to her family after Chris Brown bit her cheek for dessert.

That said, I've got to say that the phone, your common "Hello? Who the fuck is it?" device, needn't be the mind-boggling, tits-blowing, face-raping device of mystery that it is. I'm not hinting retards shouldn't have phones, because they shouldn't, but I am saying that we don't need common mysteries.

SCENARIO 1

You call me. I'm taking a shit or saving lives in a daring shoot-out and I can't quite get to the phone before the last ring. I turtle over (hey, that word works in either shit or shoot-out, think about it) and grab it maybe 3 seconds after you've hung up and I immediately dial you back.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand...................

There's no answer. What in the fuck is going on with that? Did you throw your phone away in hateful disgust because I didn't answer it? How on Earth do you go from having the phone in your hand pressed against your head to a mere three seconds later not being anywhere fucking near enough to answer it? Did you think you didn't get through to me because you had Satan's penis in your hand pressed up against your ear? That would be awesome! Kind of creepy, but awesome.

There is no discernable reason for this. If you make outgoing calls with your cellphone, keep it the fuck around you to answer them too.

SCENARIO 2

We've been talking for 3 minutes and we've exchanged all the pleasantries and information we're going to exchange during this call. You want off the phone. Say so. Don't pull the old "Well, I should be going now" fucking hokum because it rings hollow and is a pile of steamy bullshit. It doesn't fool anybody. If I can hear a raging inferno behind...

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