This article was originally written for www.gapersblock.com. You can see the article there also.

So I was at the post office the other day, mailing something to my special lady friend. It’s long distance so you really have to send letters and what not to keep points on the scoreboard, so to speak. I had tried FedEx and UPS, but their prices were astronomical – $60 bucks when USPS was $10 – $20.

There I was, putting some stuff in a box and filling out all the appropriate forms, when some girl came in to ship something. It was only the two of us there at the Post Office, so I could easily hear her conversation with the USPS employee. The girl was trying to pay for her purchase with a credit card that said “See I.D.” where the signature bar is on the back. The USPS employee was not down with that. You see, their policy is that you have to sign your cards. “You can sign your card right now, but we won’t take it if it’s not signed,” the employee told the young lady – the damsel in distress, you might say.

Logic isn't in their policy.

“I work at a bank,” the girl protested. “We tell all of our customers to write ‘See I.D’ on the back of their cards because it’s more secure. Your I.D. has your signature and your picture on it. It helps protect against theft.”

“Hard to argue against that logic,” I affirmed her silently in my mind. This was, after all, the same policy that I myself practiced.

“Our policy says that you have to sign the card,” the employee persisted.

“But you can just see my I.D.” the girl continued in futility.

“Ma’am you can either sign the card now or pay with cash,” repeated the error message, reminiscent of the infuriating experiences we’ve all had with some type of electronics that malfunction despite all forms of reason. The customer yielded, her white flag waving as she handed over the cash for her purchase. Her head hung low as she marched out of the building, defeated. Read the full story

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A year ago when Kent and I decided that we needed to take the internet, grab it by the hair, and scream hilarity relentlessly into its face, we anticipated a fanfare-filled welcome and untold wealth and fame within six months. That all happened, but shortly after we did our guest spot on SNL completely strung out on black tar heroine mixed with some meth I made using our hotel’s mini-fridge, we began our downward spiral into shame and poverty.

Kent decided that he should make a foray into a different “art,” as he called it – the XTreme Roller Derby. Much like Michael Jordan’s short time with the Chicago White Sox, Kent broke both his legs and was incontinent for a month after his first race. He took a swipe at Donny “The DamageEater” Dean during the first 30 seconds, and quickly tasted the bitter soup of retribution. He walks with a limp, and I heard he still has trouble “standing up straight,” if you get my drift. Read the full story

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TTM Readers: This is an article that I wrote for www.gapersblock.com As our readerbase doesn’t really overlap very well, they allowed me the opportunity to post it on TTM as well. You can see the original article with all its comments here, on Gaper’s Block.

Hey there Chicagoans. Go ahead and pause all your Kazaa, Limewire, and BitTorrent downloads for a second. I want the page to load quickly as this is something you’re going to want to read.

If you haven’t heard yet, it’s “illegal” to download music online without “paying” for it. It’s hard to believe, but being a fan isn’t accepted as legal payment anymore. They call it “piracy,” and the consequences for it can be very, very dire. Therefore, I’ve compiled a list of other crimes that I suggest you look into before you decide to download “Sweet Child of Mine” or “Poker Face.”

First, let’s look at the fines in the only two music piracy trials that have taken place to date. The first is the case of Jammie Thomas, a single mother of four from Minnesota. She downloaded 24 songs off of Kazaa. A jury of her peers decided that she owed the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) almost $2 million for her crimes, a ruling which the Obama Administration recently told a federal judge was constitutionally sound. The second is the case of Joel Tenenbaum, a young grad student at Boston University. He downloaded 30 songs and was slapped with a fine of $675,000. If the verdicts stand both will file for bankruptcy. Read the full story

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Have you heard? Michael Jackson is dead! I go on a little vaycay to the Bermuda Triangle for a couple of weeks and then the whole world goes to hell in a hand-basket! And it’s not even my hand-basket! I just… I just can’t believe it. It seems like just yesterday he was revolutionizing pop music and quite literally dancing my face off. What are we going to do now?

That, loyal TTM readers, is what I’ve been telling people for the past two weeks. The whole world has been in mourning, and I have been loving it. Did you see all those prisoners in the Philippines that did the Thriller jig? That little diddy got more news coverage than the tsunami I used to destroy Australia. JK I didn’t do that, but for real it was a great decoy. We tried doing something like that here in hell to celebrate, but tormented souls don’t dance so well when they’re on fire and are being reminded of all of their worst nightmares at the same time. I know. Lame.

Anyway, even the Iranians stopped protesting their most recent election to mourn the loss of MJ. I’m sure they’re happy that they aren’t so distracted by all those stupid shows about “revolution” and “injustice” that were always on so that they could catch all the beautiful specials that have been on CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, Telemundo, CNBC, MSNBC, FOX, FOXNews, E!, and Lifetime. It’s just like I said to them, “Hey guys, look over there!” and when they turned to see what it was that I was pointing at, I destroyed any sign of democracy in their nation and any hope of change. And they didn’t even care! It was like I was a fat kid in a candy store, or a pedophile at the Harry Potter premiere. I was in absolute hell! Oh, that’s good for me, by the way. Read the full story

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Hello again TTM readers. As you know, occasionally I run “news” articles where I cover the latest news and various other happenings in The Talking Mirror universe. It’s about time for another one.

First we have a little news article submitted to me by our webmaster Isaac the Conqueror:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8081829.stm

It’s about two gay penguins that raise an adopted egg. No, this isn’t a nightmare from a conservative children’s book writer. Apparently it’s news from some German zoo. I’m not sure if anyone in the world really gives a damn about the fact that this is happening or has happened, but if they do I have a couple ideas of some potential perspectives that might arise on the issue. Read the full story

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Hey guys. Good ‘ol Satan here, just broing out having a sandwich. Wanna know what I love? Besides hatred, discontent, divisiveness, the Yankees, and everything Michael Jackson has ever done (musical and otherwise), I love bacon. It’s crispy, it’s tasty, it goes with almost everything, and now it creates mass global hysteria, which is one of my favoritest things ever. Anyone got a pig? Could you hug it for me? Maybe give it a little smooch? Thanks. Now you have Swine Flu! Sucker.

Really though, I am a big fan of pork as a food. The fact that God called it “unclean” naturally made it pretty awesome in my book. What can I say? I’m a rebel without a cause, always have been. Right now my cause is swine. I figured, if people are going to go around calling pigs “unclean” for jumping around in mud and crap, they’re going to have to deal with the consequences of insulting one of my friends. Guess what the consequences are? H1N1, bitches. Read the full story

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God bless America. It’s a land where we can all believe different things, have different values, look different, speak different, smell different, be Joaquin Phoenix, and still get along and respect each other like one big happy American family. Right? That’s how we do it in the U.S. of A. Right guys? High fives? Bill O’Reilly? Keith Olbermann? We can all agree to disagree right?

Absolutely not.

I’m going to talk about a few news pieces by “lefties” and “lib’rals,” but let’s get one thing straight at the start: the right wing is not without sin. Bill O’Reilly is just as guilty of being a biased, idiotic, horrible “news” person as Keith Olbermann. Neither of them are interested in real intellectual discussions of the issues, they are both simply interested in hearing their opinions regurgitated by “authorities” that they bring on the show, who are almost never any kind of authority on anything. FoxNews deserves just as much criticism as the left networks. They’re doing a dumbass job of communicating and representing “conservatism.” Fortunately, there are plenty of people out there keeping a very watchful eye on FoxNews to make sure that they don’t get away with anything. Watch any comedian, fake news show, or news show on any other network and you will see FoxNews verbally tarred and feathered over and over again, often for damn good reasons. Get it together FoxNews. You’re making the intellectual, educated conservatives look like stupidasses. I’m tired of it. Read the full story

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Some News in Review – Bristol Palin on FoxNews from Conor McCarthy on Vimeo.

I am reviewing the following article from CNN.com:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/17/bristol.palin.interview/index.html

Again, understand that I filmed this in like 3 takes with zero editing and no directing. And it’s pretty much entirely ad-libbed. Feedback is welcome.

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2/9/2009 Well well well – an update. I decided that I’d try to get this video thing going even after running the article, just to “test the waters.” So instead of using YouTube – which apparently sucks – I decided to use Vimeo, which has been a great experience. Now understand a few things about this video before you watch it: 1. this is like the 5th take. 2. I improvised the entire thing 3. I said “ladies and gentlemen” too many times, and the video is probably a couple minutes too long. Either way, this is our first voyage into the world of video, so please join us as we explore this scary new world.

PETA Review from Conor McCarthy on Vimeo.

The following is the text from the OLD article, all antiquated and typed out…

Read the full story

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If you haven’t heard the doomsday theories about 2012, you’re living under a rock. Or you’re Kent, who also didn’t know what the hell I was talking about when I pitched this article idea. Or maybe you’re living in a beautiful fantasy world, blissfully ignorant of all of the painfully stupid people that surround us. They’re everywhere, and they’re killing me.

So what is this whole 2012 thing, besides the premise to a new apocaplyptic Roland Emmerich film? Well, you’ve heard of the Mayans, right? Yeah, those people that sacrificed people in crazy ways in order to appease their gods. I know, I thought Benny Hinn was bad. Anyway, apparently these people were real legit astronomers or something. When they got bored with disemboweling people and cutting out their hearts while they were still alive, they made up this sweet calender that has a cycle that ends on December 21, 2012. No one knows how or why, except that it has something to do with the sun coming into alignment with the center of the Milky Way. My first thought was “that’s stupid, they didn’t have Milky Ways back then.” Turns out it’s even dumber than that. No one has any real justifications about why they think that the end of this Mayan cycle signals doom, death, and destruction. Seriously. It’s just when the cycle ends, and people have interpreted that as meaning Mother Earth is finally going to get fed up with us crapping on her all the time and is just going to explode or something. I feel like I remember another ominous date that spawned lots of doomsday talk. And lots of end of the world movies? Hmmm… Seems pretty recent. What was that? Read the full story

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