My books! My books!

You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.
What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.


What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

via Ghost of a Flea and Paul Jané

The changing face of the profane

:::Warning: foul language alert. If you're easily offended, maybe select an earlier, less offensive article. Raging Kraut is usually a PG-rated blog. But it being sweeps week we all know what sells: tawdry sex and a whole lotta potty-mouth. Regular programming will resume soon. Maybe.

New Paradigm

Next time someone tells me to "think outside the box" at work I'm going to "engage a new paradigm" by beating them to death with their own severed limbs (of course, I'll have to sever those limbs first.)

Stupid management section of the bookstore, foisting stupid buzzwords on brain-dead middle management. Bark Seals! BARK!

Guess I'll have to "de-prioritize my daily action-items" to make room for some random ultra-violence.

Random Acts of Kindness and Reprisals

So I'm in the local Costco. I've loaded up the cart with tons of supplies (little mouths at home consume supplies in BULK) and I'm headed for the line. For such an efficient operation in terms of warehousing, the Costco checkout procedure is usually a long, drawn out, painful experience.

I choose well and the line I'm in is moving better than average, but still slow. People start choosing my line and pretty soon there are about 3 or 4 people behind me. I notice the guy directly behind me has one (!) item: a digital camera.

"You're not paying by check?" I ask the guy. I hate being stuck behind a guy paying by check. This is the 21st century, you know.

He stares at me confused. English does not appear to be his first language. He doesn't appear to grasp what I'm asking him. By this time I'm 2 customers from the cashier and the conveyor belt is almost mine. I ask him again.

"No. Cash." he responds with a look on his face that is saying 'what business is it of yours?' tinged with a little bit of the 'is this some kind of trap' cringing that I've seen many recent immigrants display.

"Go ahead of me," I say. "By the time I've loaded all this crap on the conveyor, you'll be headed for the door, already. I'm only doing this 'cause you're not paying by check."

With this he understands, smiles and thanks me as he now moves in front of me and hands his membership card and cash to the cashier. He's gone before I finish unloading my shopping cart.

• Total time saved for him, a complete stranger: 5 or 6 minutes.


• Cost in extra time I waited for him to complete his transaction: 15 to 30 seconds.


• Compensatory good feeling at random act of kindness: priceless.

The guy behind the guy (wasn't that line in Swingers?) I let past me is glaring at me. He's an older guy in his 60's and he's got a full cart too.

"Everyone should wait their turn in line," he huffs loudly.

I stare at him and wonder if I should explain what Pareto optimal means.

"Pal, even if I made him wait for me" I say as I put the last box of apple juice on the conveyor- "you'd still be waiting the exact same amount of time for him to ring through his purchase after me, so you have nothing to complain about. The only one who was slightly delayed was me. And I really don't care." I turn my back and dismiss him.

My fuzzy warmth at the random act of kindness is wearing off with having to deal with this rules-is-everything Nazi...

"Those people have to learn to wait in line like everyone else." he says indignantly. Ahhhhh. I've got him sussed now. The line ain't the problem. He's pissed 'cause this little white boy just let an Asian man go ahead of him.

"'Those people'? Who do you mean? Costco customers? That applies to you and me as well." The cashier is doing his best NOT to look at either of us as he's finishing up with my stuff.

"Immigrants!" the old man spews. "They come here looking for a handout, and the liberals like you bend over for them and give them everything that hard-working Canadians like me have sweated for decades for."

don't call him a cocksucker. don't call him a cocksucker. don't call him a cocksucker.

"You're very perceptive." I'm trying to keep my voice light. "You got all that info about two guys you've never seen before in twenty seconds, just 'cause one of them let the other in front of him. What are you? some kind of de*tec*tive?" I almost sing the last word hitting each syllable harshly, but the tone is definitely mocking.

I pay for my stuff.

Walk out the door. Wrestle with pigs,get covered in shit...Wrestle with pigs, get covered in shit...

Parting shot.

"You're wrong, you know. I voted for Harris in the last 2 elections."

(For the non-Ontario readers, Mike Harris was the conservative premier of Ontario since 1995, and, like the socialist premier before him, broke form with regular Canadian politics and actually governed according to his ideological stance as promised.)

"The guy I let by me paid for his stuff with cash which he most likely earned at his job or business; or maybe he stole it - I don't know because I'm not a racist-fucking redneck who makes stupid blanket assumptions about people I don't know! And if you want to talk about hand-outs, how 'bout that nice fat Canada pension plan you're drawing that I'm paying for right now that won't be there for me because your generation NEVER PAID YOUR FAIR SHARE!?"

"Smart guy, need to call me names. Nice way to lose an argument!" he's smiling now as if I've somehow conceded. The cashier is shooting me daggers because I'm continuing the argument with this crackpot. He's looking over at the supervisors' desk. I can sense the Costco's "security measures" wheels in motion.

"It's not losing to accurately label someone. I, at least, based my assumption on evidence. It's been a real pleasure having my stereotypes confirmed. Enjoy extinction with the rest of the dinosaurs."

I turn and walk away...

"To hot for you, eh?" crows the old man. "Hope your bullshit liberal mind holds up well when that chink takes your job!"

"Shut the FUCK UP, Old man! Or I'll shut your mouth for ya quick!" This came from somewhere behind me in the line next to the one I'm wheeling my cart away from. The voice was booming and had a thick Jamaican accent.

I make it to the doors without being swarmed by burly red-shirted Costco employees.

I didn't hear the old man's voice again.

All this because I let some guy go ahead of me in the line at Costco...

Last Time on Raging Kraut...

I'm feeling another serious entry coming on...

I'm trying my best to resist. Must. Be. Light. And. Funny...

I worry that I'm tapped out of subject matter. That the effin' war will take up the majority of the electrical impulses left between the dozen or so brain cells that are still firing in the hollowed-out cavity in the top of my skull.

I'm getting pissed off at the war coverage:

It's Private Lynch - not "Jessica" or "Jessie" or "'lil Jessie." She's not a lost little puppy who's been found: she's a soldier that has done her duty well - not well 'for a girl.' Am I the only damned feminist? Oh and she wants to be a kindergarten teacher. Very nice, but what does that have to do with anything?

Buzzphrases - how many times have the words "shock and awe" been rammed down our throats? Hell, they've even got me titling one of my entries "shock and awe"

The war coverage is so inept that they're resorting to covering the antics of their own reporters

Are we winning, are we losing? I dunno, and the TV can't tell me. I'm pretty well damn impressed considering that in less than a month the U.S. is getting close to Baghdad...But if I listened to some of the news commentary the U.S. should just give up and hand Saddam the keys to their cities. Oh, wait. Detroit's already done that...Well there's a lot about the 80's we'd like to forget.

I feel like the Grinch at Christmas (before the end of the story when they pussified him): "All the noise, the noise, the noise!"

Ahhhh, Christmas: only 265 more days to go!

I want psychic powers...

Last night I was taking out the trash when this Chevy Astro passed slowly by my house. As I watched this young guy leaned out the passenger window, stared right at me and then whipped a chunk of ice at me.

Lousy aim the little prick had; it missed me by a mile and shattered against the side of my house. My mind went back trying to figure out if I'd pissed someone off enough in the neighbourhood to warrant such an attack...

I got a partial plate and description, then went inside to report it to the cops. I told my wife about it and we came up with many intricate ways that these losers should be punished - hopefully involving some nice Police Officers who would be forced to gun the losers down as a service to society

A neighbour was walking her two beautiful golden labs (Rufus and Moonray) outside and I figured I'd warn her about the little bastards roaming the neighbourhood.

"They already got me in the leg," she yelled across the street.

"Damn punks." I muttered, hearing my father in my tone. In many ways I have become him when it comes to my opinions about little shits roaming the neighbourhood causing damage.

Then today on the radio I hear about this and wonder if I have somehow used psychic powers to nail these little bastards from a distance.

Should I feel bad about this? Turns out that this incident happened before I saw those punks so it couldn't possibly be them, but I don't think I'd be sad if it had turned out to be those little shits and that the collective psychic powers of their targets had done them in.

"But they're just boys!"
"Maybe mommy should have hugged them more!"

I don't care.

Too bad it wasn't that loser with the ice ball who fell out of the van on the 401.

Too bad...

I admit it...

Which "Saved By The Bell" Character Are You?


Yes I used to watch Saved by the Bell.

Inane show, but the hot girls kept dateless wonders such as myself tuning in and turning down the volume...

Diet Evil

Wonder what it would be if I answered truthfully...

I have fooled them all again!!! [insert evil laugh!]



How evil are you?

New Title Graphic

The little guy up top left is Baron Sam von Schamm, star of the Warner Bros cartoon The Dumb Patrol. Everyone who says the cartoon actually starred Bugs Bunny and that Sam was only the nemesis/comic relief can leave RIGHT NOW!

Still here?

Good.

This is one of my all time favourite Warner Bros. cartoons. Despite Yosemite Sam's obviously American accent he epitomized the "Raging Kraut" that lived within all of my European-born relatives - my Oma and Opa, my father and especially my mother, who while technically not born in Germany, could go from zero to foaming-at-the-mouth rage in as little as thirty seconds...Many times when I was getting the crap kicked out of me at school I was more afraid of the punishment my mother would come up with if my clothes were ripped or had blood on them (mine, the other kid's - it was all the same to her)

It was Sam that actually inspired the name of this site. He is my alter-ego, and it is he who is writing here, not his mild-mannered disguise who lives his days outside of the world wide web. Bear that in mind as you read further.

On Edge

So I'm driving (well crawling, actually) along the 401 to work, wishing that I had actually woke up the 20 minutes earlier required for me to get to the Go Train when I hear this on 680 news about the Korean subway. I ponder the fact that a determined nut-job can do that much damage in this day of tightened security and international breath-holding...Maybe because it happened in South Korea, maybe they didn't think they were targets - not that awareness would do them much good: it seems that this is a random, untargeted attack by a lunatic.

The idiot in front of me driving the black-tinted Buick Rendezvous has yet to decide what lane he actually wants to be in. I don't think he's ever seen snow before by the way he's not getting into the bare grooves on the highway between the unplowed snow.

The radio then blurbs about Toronto's Subway being closed because of a chlorine smell

My brain is already thinking that I would've been in that part of the subway if I had made the train earlier. I'm already racing ahead to the possibility of now it being "our turn" and that my oversleeping is a "lucky break" that I'll tell in the stories afterward...Then it turns out to be nothing - subway service is returned and thousands of delayed commuters make their way as best they can through the wet white snow that blankets the city...Normality restored.

Or is it? Not once was I "scared" - there wasn't any indication that this was in fact an attack, and the Canadian media has not been as relentless in their coverage of Code Orange alerts. What's bugging me is the fact that something as innocuous as a gas leak can make the equation

Subway Gas Leak = Terrorist Attack

come to my mind so quickly. It makes me think that the terrorists have in fact accomplished their goal. They wanted us to know they can get to us, any time anywhere, and it could be totally random. We are touchable. And we know it.