C’mon, DMV, admit it: this was funny. Just because you all were the ones getting punk’d don’t mean it’s not funny. It is funny, dammit.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has more, and argues that this silly joke may have done us all a serious favor .

What is it with translation services? Can just anybody get a job as a translator? On a recent trip to San Antonio, I saw T-shirts for sale in a mall that say:

Tú eres un pendejo.

(You are my friend.)

I’ll be the first to admit (as it wouldn’t be much of an admission, coming from anyone else) that my Spanish is a bit rusty these days, but I’m pretty sure that translation is off just a tad. Did the same happen to the subtitles for this TV interview? You be the judge.

UPDATE: If you haven’t watched the above-linked video, you should. It’s NSFW, but who the hell works on Festivus?

Which of the following repressive countries pursues its subjects around the world to drain them of their hard-earned income to pay for services they neither want, need nor even have access to?

1. Iran
2. Saudi Arabia
3. Afghanistan (current)
4. Afghanistan (1996-2001)
5. North Korea
6. Iraq (current)
7. Iraq (1968-2002)
8. Cuba
9. United States of America
10. Zimbabwe
11. France
12. Germany (current)
13. Germany, East (1949-90)
14. Germany (1933-45)

Answer here. H/t: Smash.

Not a grievance in itself, but if you’re interested in hearing others B&M while I’m otherwise occupied, be sure to visit Tom and Fodder. Note to Fodder and others similarly aggrieved: there is a solution to California’s retarded gun laws.

Remember, I’m like Uncle: I do this to entertain Uncle, not to entertain myself and/or you. No, wait…

Look, guys, I know you have to be Really Smart Individuals to get a job writing code for any application I’m likely to use on a regular basis, but guess what? You’re not as smart as you think you are. More specifically, you’re not smart enough to know better than I do what settings I want, or whether I really meant to type half of my password in the password field and the other half in whatever other field you just hijacked the cursor into. And you sure as hell aren’t smart enough to make a software-based on-off switch that sometimes turns the computer on, sometimes turns it off, sometimes reboots it without turning off, sometimes hangs altogether, and never does what the good, old-fashioned on-off switches did.

And you know what else you’re not? As important as you think you are. And neither is your application. So please, stop writing applications that yank themselves into the foreground while I’m trying to work on something else. If I wanted someone to distract me and say “hey, look at me!” all the time, I’d have a 2-year old kid. Oh wait, I do have a 2-year old kid, but that’s beside the point. That’s not what I bought a computer for.

Last and least, whoever told you that you’re so much better than the rest of us you can make us “agree” to insane terms as a condition of using software we’ve already paid for? And spare me that “you didn’t buy the software, we just licensed its use” malarkey. That sort of Indian-selling is precisely the crap the first sale doctrine was intended to stop. Want the benefit of copyright law? Then can this phony click-through “contract” crapola. Want a ridiculously one-sided “contract” no other industry has the chutzpah to ask for, and which provides you with more protection than the Mickey Mouse Protection Act? O-kay – but in that case you won’t be needing the benefit of copyright law, will you? Assholes.

Almost two years ago, mere weeks after I had made the mistake of signing a two-year contract with Sprint, I was dismayed to learn that they are an anti-gun-owner company. I did see a silver lining, though, as I figured any cellular phone company that is flush enough to throw money at political causes unrelated to its trade must have already taken care of everything else there is for a cell phone company to worry about. Right?

Answer: it depends. To Sprint, I guess the answer is “yes.” Every company has a niche, and with Verizon having already filled the “can you hear me now?” niche, they’d better base their business model on something else. Their business model, it seems, is “build one cell tower in every major city, or two in every state, so you can print a nifty coverage map that looks like Verizon’s, take all the money you save on other cell towers, and give it to gun-grabbers.” If that’s what you look for in a cellular phone company, I strongly recommend Sprint. If you’re interested in anything else, sprint, don’t walk, from Sprint.

This may sound like an odd complaint coming from a guy named Xrlq, but … buy a friggin’ vowel already! Any vowel will do, so get whatever is going cheapest. An “a” would spell “fax,” which is the easiest way for both of your viewers to send you suggestions that will swiftly be ignored. An “e” would result in “FEX,” which doesn’t make any sense, but then again, neither does anything you carry except the reruns from shows that originated on the real networks. An “i” would tell you what needs to be done pronto, but probably won’t be. An “o” might cause a little confusion with your flagship network, but then again, seeing as you already have a separate network called FoxNews, another called Fox Family, and another still called the Fox Movie Channel, why not add a fourth bastard child network called FoxCrap? Last and least, there’s always “u,” which pretty much sums up what you’ve done to the airwaves by broadcasting this fourth-rate garbage.

And on a related note, WTF is Nip/Tuck? I recently had the misfortune of secondhand smoking an entire episode of that dreadful show, and for the life of me I can’t tell you whether it is the world’s cheesiest, most unserious drama, or the world’s most unfunny comedy. Whatever that show is trying to accomplish, it fails miserably. Exception: if it is intended to be a parody, not of ER, General Hospital or other, better known TV shows, but of the crap that passes for programming on FX itself, then I guess it may succeed at that. Good job! Now that you’ve accomplished whatever you set out to accomplish, feel free to cancel that show post haste, along with everything else except the reruns from real networks.

Bumper stickers should be outlawed. Sure, a few of them are clever, but on balance, all the do is bugger up otherwise decent-looking cars and make idiots and moonbats easier to spot from miles away. Oh wait, I guess this isn’t really a grievance after all. It’s their own cars they are making look stupid, and being able to spot the moonbats from miles away is actually rather helpful. Still, a little more creativity would be a nice addition. We’ve heard the bit a gazillion times about an eye for an eye making the world blind. We get it. Now start harping on another part of the original saying, which was much longer than that. Try: “A tooth for a tooth makes the whole world British.” Or “A life for a life makes the whole world want to watch FX.”

I think there needs to be a limit on how many turn restrictions may exist on streets within a certain geographical distance of one another. Without any such restrictions, these guys just can’t help themselves. A forced right turn here, no left turn here, no U-turns at the next street, no turns at all at the one after that… at some point it becomes impossible to get from Point A to Point B without breaking some law somewhere (assuming, of course, that these signs ARE all legal, and were not placed there by some college frat boys as a prank – a generous assumption on my part). They might as well be more honest and save a hell of a lot more taxpayer money by putting up just ONE sign, reading “Y’all cain’t get thar from hee-yer!”