Cats Rule

Most people take a serious stance when you ask them if they're a cat person. Let it be known that I love cats. The little creatures have so much style and panache. A cat can make a jump from the floor to the table look graceful and elegant. Dogs lope around and bump into stuff. Small dogs quiver and nip and growl furiously.

I was back home this weekend and had a chance to spend some quality time with my cat Ozzie. Dad wants to rename him Newton cause he's taken a liking to nosing things (and by that I mean birthday cakes) off of anywhere that's not the floor.

Cats may seem aloof, but they're sophisticated. They'll come to you when the time's right. They're always looking good. Ozzie keeps his gloves and socks on in case a random need for formal attire arises.

Here's a super rad site that'll make your day. If you hate cats, you have some soul searching to do.



SOD is Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division. Check out Jose Gonzales's cover too.




via Cute Overload

Customer Disservice: a rant

THIS IS A RANT, if you're looking for positivity, go somewhere else.

What the hell happened to customer service? Let me paint you a picture.
Back in football season of 2006, my homeboys and I decided to splurge and get fancy expanded basic cable at our residence. We called up the local cable tyrant, Comcast, and asked the fascist phone service people to schedule a technician to install the whirligig that gives you all the good sports channels.

Being somewhat cheap and indifferent to the crap that's on cable after football season, we downgraded our package to the basic local stations, Discovery Channel, and about 38 Spanish channels. As a normal customer, I thought I was good to go. Little did I know, the battle was just beginning.

We continued to receive dreary Comcast service. It wasn't until about 5 months later that I really got a taste for what I was dealing with. I received a bill for 100 bucks for our basic cable and internet for the (1) month. To say I was concerned would be a tad of an understatement. I got on the horn with the fascists to verbalize my displeasure.

As I explained my query to the troll on the other end of the line, it informed me that they would send a Comcast van stooge out to verify our current cable package. No benefit of the doubt. The customer is not right when you're dealing with a monopoly. I was the one that was suddenly on trial. And I was also moving out of state. This would be very interesting.

About three weeks later, I received a call from Comcast. I had to completely retell the whole story to the customer service troll because the previous three failed to take notes on my unique situation. to make a Long story long, I ended up with a 120 dollar credit coming my way. Or so I thought.

Fast forward to this morning. I get a call from a phone number in New Mexico. It's a collection agency asking me what my preferred method of payment would be on an incorrect prorated charge on a cable package I didn't order. Comcast had some splainin' to do.

Another long distance phone call, retelling of the tale to a new customer troll, 17 minutes of shitty hold music, and Comcast seems to have it right. They claimed they'd call off the credit agency, and mail me my check for 120 bucks. In four to six weeks.

Wasn't that easy? No, that was Comcastic.
Comcast can choke on a 12-inch ________ (insert your favorite derogatory, four-letter noun).

Space Junk

“I told you. Tom knows what the going rate is. No—tell him there’s other buyers too. Yeah I know. Bono is very interested. Yeah. I don’t care. You can tell it to his face. Look we gotta move on this, or I’ll sell to someone else. Fine.”

I placed the receiver back in its cradle. Tom Cruise’s handler seemed pretty confident that Tom would “show me the money.” In just a few short days, I’d gone from doodling in my Biochemistry Textbook at the back of a cavernous lecture hall, to selling space garbage to Tom Cruise. Not just any space garbage, though. This was bonafide organic matter found on the 2003 Mars Rover Expedition. It could possibly contain the keys to interplanetary life. This is all what Tom Cruise (and possibly Bono) thought.

Truth is, I was sick of school, and I just wanted to make a buck. I didn’t have the aptitude or attention span to actually get a degree from any accredited University, so I came up with the next best thing. I’d sell shit on eBay. So I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and invested in the biggest lufa sponge available to civilians. I had to stop at Home Depot for crazy glue, pea gravel, and brick-red spray paint to complete the project.

Not too long after I arrived home, I had the pea gravel glued into the little alcoves in the lufa. Couple coats of paint and I’d be on my way to the good life. My little con weighed a little more than a volleyball when the paint dried. That was precisely how it should have been. I wanted the mass of the spheroid to surprise the buyer.

“This is lighter than I thought,” they’d say. “I’ll take it.”

The whole shopping experience would exhilarate the buyer into sealing the deal. It was time to fire up the computer and post the ad. I took some grainy snapshots of the meteor on my cell phone. Now it was time to write the ad. This would be fun.

YOUR’RE BIDDING ON 100% REAL ORGANIC SPACE MATTER RECOVERED FROM 2003 MARS ROVER EXPEDITION. CONTAINS MARTIAN MATERIAL. NO ZERO FEEDBACK BUYERS. CONTACT REX FOR MORE PICS.

I started the bidding at 15 million U.S. dollars to separate the men from the boys. To provide a hassle-free shopping experience for my customers, I set my Buy It Now price at 50 million USD— If people didn’t want to deal with the stress and finagling of bidding, they could own a piece of space garbage in one click. I threw in free overnight shipping as a nod of appreciation.

Not much happened the first day. Day two, the bidding began at 20 mil by someone by the handle of Zorlog3030. No more teachers, no more books… I got on the horn and custom ordered my Porsche GT3, and had lunch with a real estate broker in Santa Monica. We talked shop over seared ginger Ahi tuna salads.

By day six, the bidding was up to 250 million bones. Word had spread like a Malibu wildfire that Cruise was bidding on my item, and Hollywood A-listers couldn’t phone their publicists fast enough to get a piece of the pie. Turns out that Tommy Boy was Zorlog3030.

The eBay CFO personally called me to say that eBay would not host auctions of such stature. Turns out PayPal could not afford to take the burden of anything over 45 million dollars. He personally connected me with the good people at Sotheby’s.

The auction officially ended a week after it began. As the price of the Mars rock shot up I noticed Tom and Katie at the rear of the auction hall. Both tried to look incognito in the back corner. It didn’t work on many levels. Primarily because Katie had Tom on her shoulders so he could see over the crowd. And because Mr. Cruise was in full MI:2 garb. The couple was actually quite fetching.

All in all, I made out quite nicely. Tom borrowed against the mortgage on his house and signed the profits of his next five movies to me to finance the deal. At the close of the auction, Katie brought Tom up to inspect the goods. Tom used a jeweler’s loupe to inspect his space junk. Would the subterfuge last? I felt like Nixon at the 1960 presidential debate as Tom viewed my 265 million dollar craft project.

“It’s the real deal,” Tom concluded. “Hey. Guy.”

“My name’s Rex.”

“Dex. Riight. Have your people box this up. Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Same.”

“Oh… and Dex. If I find out that one thing about this is not Kosher, I’ll melt your face off with my death ray.” The look on his face was a shade of unwavering seriousness that only an actor could muster. I almost snickered at the delivery from the vertically challenged, yet critically acclaimed actor. Who threatens someone by death ray?

“Let’s go, Kat.” Katie hoisted all four-feet 11 inches of Tom on her shoulders and slinked out of the auction hall.

Did Tom Cruise really have a death ray to melt my face off? I didn’t care. At this point, Tom would never find me. I was on my way to John Wayne airport to board my newly- acquired Gulfstream 550. Besides, I had to pick up my Porsche in Stuttgart.




SOD is Hustlers, ft The Game by NAS.

Come Correct with your shoes

I've made it quite clear about my infatuation with shoes. Part of that infatuation is knowing that I'm not looking like a goldbricker when I leave the house. Even if I'm running to get a Slush Puppy (mmmmm), I like to look good. Part of that look is in the shoes.

Shoes have a lifetime. But if you take care of your shoes, they'll take care of you. I recently heard of a dude named Jason Markk. Mr. Markk needed a way to keep his kicks looking fresh out' the box new, so he developed a product safe enough to use on even his most prized kicks. Scope out his site.
If you're serious about keeping a pair of your nice sneakers, or Wallies, or whatever looking good, try the stuff. Apparently it's as safe as water. Time will tell.

SOD comes off Project Pat's Can't Tell me Nothin' mixtape. Beg, buy, or steal it.