Terrible grammar. PS- Who the fuck are you?

So I just received an e-mail from somebody who works at my firm, and it started off with this...

"Please be aware that if you travel domestically ( within borders) or internationally ( across borders ) anytime in the near future and pass through airports, customs or immigrations,
as a precaution you maybe considered a selectee or target for officials to interview, conduct a swab test, quarantine or other measures they deem appropriate depending on your body temperature and the outcome of the interview."

1) I like how he specified "domestically" or "internationally", as if those were two methods in a much longer list of choices I have when traveling by plane. What are my other options?

2) Run-on sentence with countless ambiguities. Retake 3rd-grade grammar, please.

3) Who IS this guy? I looked him up on the company directory and Outlook address book to find out. Apparently, he works in a department called "travel". I didn't even know there was such a position or department. And this is after we just had a review of necessary/unnecessary operating costs and decided to lay off numerous employees? Excellent accounting work there.

To the Netherlands: Hire Less Fuckups

The above picture was provided by the Associated Press, and was found on an article in Yahoo! News about the recent Dutch Parade incident. Obviously, I drew in the "FAIL".

Check out the guard/officer on the left. Slacking off much? Ummm hiiiiii, your queen's about to be killed!

Back-story, in case you don't read enough news:
Earlier today (April 30, 2009), some crazy Dutch dude in a crappy Suzuki decided to bust a crazy during a large holiday parade in the Netherlands. He pummeled his way through a crowd of horrified spectators, hurling several into the air and killing four (so far); he then proceeded to crash into a fence around a large statue. As of now, people are guessing he was targeting a bus transporting the royal family through the parade (talk about failing miserably), but if somebody knows for sure, they aren't talking.

Let's not offend the pigs

It looks like I may need to revise my previous posts...

The World Health Organization, the guys who are supposed to be on top of this whole swine flu thing, have decided to stop calling it "swine flu". Apparently, retards around the world are slaughtering pigs and avoiding pork out of fear of the disease.

According to a public statement, "swine flu" will now be referred to as "H1N1 influenza A". That's just slightly less easy to say.

Don't call me, I don't want swine flu

The more I look at it, the more I realize swine flu is a bunch of over-hyped bullshit. But apparently, Human Resources at my firm doesn't think so.

Today, in the latest effort to battle swine flu, they handed out lemon-scented phone wipes. Umm, seriously guys? I'd like to have my recently-laid-off colleagues back instead of retarded wastes of money like this. Who the fuck uses my phone but ME? I'll be sure to watch the caller ID and ignore any calls from Mexico City. Seriously, everybody needs to calm down about swine flu. Show me the monkey from Outbreak and I'll panic.

With performance reviews due in a couple weeks, I can only imagine this is some petty attempt to ease me into a "hey we're broke so no raise" talk. Weak.

Exercises Made for Women

Men have pride. The same way women have their feminist pride, men have their chauvanist, "man-power" egos. If you partake in any of the following, you are hurting the reputation and pride of the male gender.

Yoga
Yoga is, like, the gayest thing any guy could do. Just type in "yoga" in Google image searches and take a look at the results. Notice anything? All the pictures are of divorced women in tampon commercials.
The manly alternative? Stretch, as in "stretch for two minutes before the actual workout begins".

Jogging
Look, I don't care about the supposed differences between jogging and running. If you're a real man, jogging should just be called "fat-people running", or "pregnant woman running". Either way, it's a vagina version of running.
The manly alternative? Run. Like, for real

Spinning
For those of you who don't know, "spinning" refers to a bunch of sweaty (or "glow-y"?) fat women in a room on stationary cycling machines, listening to Spice Girls while trying to peddle faster than the fellow female next to them. One ultra sex-deprived female leads the "class" and provides encouragement, such as,"your breasts are perfect!", "you're a beautiful woman!", and,"you're in charge of your own life and body!" As a male, you're not welcome here
The manly alternative? Get on a real bike and tackle some hills. Give other males homoerotic high-fives at resting points if absolutely necessary.

Pilates
To be completely honest, I had to look up pilates on Wikipedia, because I wasn't exactly sure what it was. To me, pilates is "yoga for people who need to be different so they want to call it something else". After reading the Wikipedia entry, I'm still not fully sure that I know what the fuck pilates is. Some bullshit about fusion between mind and body, along with some other hardcore homosexual crazytalk. I'd like to fuse my fist with Joseph Pilates' ovaries.
The manly alternative? Yoga... Oh, wait a minute...

Cardio-Boxing, or Whatever it's Called
This whole aerobic-fighting-whatever shit is retarded. I think it started with Tae Bo, and now we have some form of lesbian kickboxing that women use to feel fit. To make it worse, the attendees of these classes leave with a sense of confidence in their "fighting" abilities. It reminds me of when I was five years old and thought I was the next Bruce Lee after having mastered my rendition of various special moves from Street Fighter.
The manly alternative? Fighting. Strangers, friends, butch lesbians, whatever. Just actually fighting.

Craigslist

By now, everybody knows about the Craigslist killer, Philip Markoff. If you don't, get educated. Philip Markoff recently met two women of less-than-respectable profession on Craigslist, then proceeded to murder them.

Just as appalling as Markoff's behavior is the response by both the founder, Craig Newmark, and the CEO, Jim Buckmaster. Both individuals fervently deny that Craigslist is used to solicit prostitution.

Are you fucking KIDDING me? Half of everything on Craigslist is illegal. Marijuana, hookers, prescription drugs, you name it. Sure, they have various "flags" where users can mark a certain post as inappropriate or prohibited, but they also have separate sections solely dedicated to "erotic services". They claim that they check posts for illegal content, and I call FUCKING BULLSHIT. When you try to sell an item twice, it automatically refuses to let you do so, using a message parser to determine if you're posting the same shit twice to get more views. Yet a cursory glance through the "adult" sections shows spam postings galore. Why? According to Buckmaster, the posters into the erotic services section need to pay a fee. So basically, these prostitutes bribe Craigslist into letting them romp around unchecked.

Craigslist is full of shit. They insist on looking the other way while their site assists in the activities of millions of vagrants and criminals daily.

If you're familiar with the recent Pirate Bay saga, you know that the four owners of the popular website, Pirate Bay, need to do time and pay roughly $1million each because their website, though supposedly intended for good purposes, allowed many users to illegally access copyrighted material. Why shouldn't the owners/founders/executives of Craiglist be held to the same standards? Lock these assholes up!

The Soloist...

When I saw the previews for The Soloist, I felt certain it would be a hit. In fact, I anticipatorily stated that it would be one of my favorite movies of all time. Uninformed, yes; but by all means confident.

What a disappointment...

Yesterday, I finally watched the movie, and I can only really state that I'm fairly underwhelmed. The movie failed my expecations by a rather wide margin, and it had me rolling my eyes during several scenes. In a nutshell, The Soloist attempts to be too many things at once. The previews had me believing that I was going to be treated to a feel-good, unexpected-growth-through-unlikely-friendship flick with a focus on being a musical showcase. The Soloist fails on both counts. First, though the movie loves to toss around the word "friend", I see little to no "friend"-like activity going on. Sure, that may be due to the aforementioned "unlikely friendship" aspect, but... well... you'll know what I mean when you see it. Second, where was all the music? What with the title and all, I was expecting like, you know, sort of a SOLO here and there. Instead, we get a couple utterly basic cello lessons played over the same OMG-Jamie-Foxx-looks-like-he's-so-deep-in-the-music scene. (Now get ready for a ton of quotation marks... Every time you see them, imagine me saying the enclosed word in a really slow and sarcastic tone while curling my index and middle fingers like a tyrannnosaurus rex...) It was clearly the "intent" of the directors to attempt to have the audience "feel" the way Foxx would feel; this is evidenced both in the screensaver-like "visual interpretation" of the music in the recital scene, and by the random insertion of voices in the film to "submerge" the audience in a "schizophrenic" experience. Now, call me stupid, but this only made me feel confused and not a bit "immersed" in the "experience". To further deviate from the expected course of the story, the film repeatedly brings up the issue of poverty in an all-but-subtle manner. I went into this movie expecting to be inspired and feel good, not to be given a slow-motion guilt trip because there is a hidden culture of neglected and suffering people tucked away in my home city.

I give the Soloist a 6.5 out of 10. Also a big sigh.

Fail Product: Loud and Clear

So I was taking a shit and flipping through my latest issue of Popular Mechanics, when I came across an ad for this...

Now, stay with me here. The idea is that you need a hearing aid, but hearing aids are totally out of fashion, so you buy a Loud 'N' Clear instead. The selling point? It looks like a bluetooth headset and not a hearing aid. Right, because that's not even remotely douchebaggy. I don't think anybody, in the world, has EVER said,"Man, I feel like such a loser with my hearing aid. I really wish I could have a bluetooth headset instead..."

Even funnier is the justification. Notice the numerous mentions to how you can now enjoy church more. Thank God for this, I was just dying at church recently. Just last week, I was at church wearing my really embarrassing hearing aid, when I looked over and saw a guy wearing a bluetooth headset and nodding along to the sermon. I thought to myself,"Boy, I wish I just had a bluetooth headset or something on so that everybody would stop noticing me and leave me alone about my hearing aid..."

But in all seriousness, I'm probably going to purchase one of these for my next bingo game.

Swine Flu

Every time a new disease scare arises, I think to myself,"what... the... fuck..."

Lately is the "swine flu", some crazy flu variant that supposedly comes from pigs and spreads from person to person. Then there are other ones, like avian/bird flu, SARS, etc.

All I can think of is: I hope ebola doesn't come back. Fucking monkeys...

Fast and Furious

Okay, the Fast and Furious series is entertaining, but man does it fail hard.

In the latest installment:

1) The drug cartel needs to move a bunch of snuff over the Mexico-USA border. Clearly, the best way to go about it is to have five unique, fixed-up, teenage-boy-fantasy cars race across the border at full speed, right? Does anybody fail to see the logic behind that?

2) In the above full-speed charge, there's a secret tunnel that leads through a mountainous portion of the border. A few things to mention/complain about here... First, if the cartel is running a bunch of drugs through this mountain, and the border patrol keep getting false alarms that seem to "disappear" into this mountain area, you don't think that maybe they'd send a couple people out there to discover if there's like some massive-hidden-underground-drug-tunnel-thingy? Second, if you made this tunnel yourself, why the hell would you make it so unnecessarily difficult to navigate? Maybe you snorted some of your own cocaine before starting, then just went Scarface while blasting your way through the tunnel screaming,"SAY HELLO TO MY LI'L FRIEND!" Lastly, if this tunnel is hidden, why the fuck do the cars need to race through at full speed to the other side? You don't think that maybe it's a good idea to take it easy, cruise through, then wait for a better moment to emerge on the other side? You know, maybe when there isn't a border-patrol helicopter flying around overhead.

3) Again with the whole subtlety argument, why the fuck would you find a bunch of street racers to run your drugs? And, in doing so, why would you organize a ridiculously dangerous street race through a bunch of city streets through regular traffic? And where the fuck was law-enforcement while all these crashes were happening? Where are my fucking taxpayer dollars going if I can't be safe from drug cartel street races in my home city?

4) Do drug cartels really have GPS units that count down like everything is a race in a video game? And do they really chime in to let me know that I have exactly a "quarter mile" to the finish? Is there any way I can get that on my navigation unit?

... But seriously, the movie was fairly entertaining, once you can get over the you've-gotta-be-fucking-joking aspect of it.

Guilty

If you're a regular follower, you know how I feel about the American judicial system. To recap: it fails. There are times when we need to the cut the crap and say,"Look, he did it. Lock him up. Stop wasting taxpayer dollars. kthxbye."

Here's one example:

And, more recently, here's another:

In case you don't know who the second guy is, that's Philip Markoff, the dude who killed two prostitutes he met on Craigslist. And no, I refuse to call him a SUSPECT, because every person with a brain knows he did it. Just look at him, he's a creeper. Judges should have absolute authority to say,"You look like a creeper, guilty."

Case closed.

Dudemind has its own domain!!

As you may or may not have noticed, dudemind is now located at www.dudemind.com! Update your information accordingly! Haaaaaaaa...

To the guy in the next stall...

I love to sing. I sing in the shower, while driving, while walking around in public, while ordering footlong dicks at Subway. I pretty much sing in any location where doing so wouldn't necessarily be shunned upon.

I also sing while taking a shit. In fact, I was singing just before I started writing this post, as I am taking a huge dump at work right now. But then, the gayest thing happened: some guy a couple stalls over started singing along. I was singing Garth Brook's "Friends In Low Places", possibly the gayest song to sing with another man while the two of you are in one room with your pants around your ankles. I immediately shut up, but this guy is still going. To make matters worse, he's snapping. As in snapping his fingers like a stereotypical adolescent female from the "hood" when she says,"oh no you di'nt.." (notice the lack of a second "d" in that quote). What a queer.

I think I'm going to hide out in this stall until he leaves. I'd rather not make friends with a dude in a restroom.

Cars I Hate

There are at least a few cars that bring me to an unnatural level of irked-outness. Usually, this response is some function of the unexplainable lack of car's visual elegance, the market segment to which it appeals, and the various alternatives available. Here are a few...

Pontiac Solstice / Saturn Sky
These are the same car. To be fair, they're decent-looking cars, but they're not nearly as fast as the looks and styling would suggest. However, that's really not even the issue. The problem is the driver. The typical buyer of a Pontiac Solstice or a Saturn Sky is a late-30s "businessman" who never quite made it. He's the same guy who talks extra loud at the bar to try to establish that he's the man. These guys have the top down, regardless of rain or a 100-degree sun shining directly overhead. Why? Because they need attention. They've failed utterly in life, but they can't accept it. Thus, they buy these stupid little BUDGET-minded sports cars and behave like they're driving Ferraris. You're almost 40 years old and you JUST bought a $25k car! Please.

Chrysler Sebring Convertible / Toyota Solara Convertible
Cars like the Chrysler Sebring and Toyota Solora utterly destroy the point of a convertible. In fact, any convertible with more than two seats belongs in the crusher. The typical driver is a retirement-age man who realized that he's wanted a convertible all his life. Not knowing any better, he goes and buys one of the ugliest cars in existence. Lifetime fail.

Porsche Boxster
To be fair, the Boxster S is a decent car, but a regular Boxster should not qualify as a "Porsche". It's a slow, overweight, and hideous car made for the WANNA-BE car enthusiast. The buyer is an early-30s bachelor who still lives in a tiny studio by himself or with a roommate. Since most gold-digging women don't know any better, he still manages to pick up some dumb girls by showing them he drives a Porsche. This is the guy who realized at age 25 that he's nowhere close to being alpha-male, and decided to overcompensate from that point on.

Any Lifted Pickup Truck
Speaking of overcompensation, does anything say "I'm super insecure" more than a giant, slow, lifted truck with huge exhaust pipes? This is usually some skinny little fag with all sorts of stupid tattoos. He clearly has never won a fight in his life, so he overcompensates by saying,"I'm gonna be the biggest thing on the road." Remove him from his element, and he's just another poser with a big hat. And let's not even begin to pretend you use the thing for off-road duty.

Chevrolet Corvette
Even more overcompensation. Driving a Corvette says,"I've got a fucking tiny dong!" Admittedly though, the Corvette is a great car (the only one in this list I'd actually drive if the just-listed stigma wasn't attached to it)... It's a shame that pitiful men had to destroy it.

Toyota Corolla S
Nobody in their right minds would buy this car. Except for high-school graduates whose parents bought it for them as a good "economy car"... And high-school graduates drive like morons. In fact, I honestly feel that kids in Corollas are the biggest douchefucks on the road today. I always see some stupid little 18-year old girl flooring her little Toyota, acting like she's flying through traffic in a brand new BMW M5. Or boy, whatever. Either way, there's nothing I love more than getting in front of these kids and keeping their speeds checked at 65 miles per hour. The sheer anger/frustration/bitterness in their faces makes the potential life-threatening accident worth the risk.

I could go on forever. I'll leave it there. Buy a real car.

Allow me to reintroduce myself, my name is LEO

...and I reference rap songs in everyday verbiage like every other douche bag who's trying too hard.

Anyways, 'The D' needed some contributors for this blog and quite frankly, I'm a bit sick of reading one-way rants about who-the-fuck-cares topics like iPhones, Barack, and fat people, so here I am.

Dude Thoughts 2.0. Be enlightened.

BE A PART OF DUDEMIND

Believe it or not, this blog gets quite a few views per day. It obviously doesn't rival Gizmodo, Autoblog, and the like, but it's decent traffic.

I'm currently looking for a couple good people with similar dude-like interests to write regular posts on my blog. No, I won't pay you, but if this blog were to get more popular, you'd be part of it. Maybe we'll be the next Engadget? We can all dream, right?

Let me know: thedude@dudemind.com

Printers

If your job is anything like mine, you work in an office where a few people share a single printer. You ever notice that there's always at least one douchebag who doesn't quite understand basic printing etiquette? Not that there's a universally-accepted standard on printing rules, but GEEZ, use some FUCKING COMMON SENSE!

Rules for printing:

1) If you print something, pick it up.

2) Don't ask me if I've seen your report. Wouldn't it make sense to check the fucking printer first?! If you've already checked it, don't ask me if I've taken your damn report. I don't give a SHIT about your report, why would I steal it?

3) Don't set all your task priorities to "high" to get them printed before me. If I'm printing a lot of shit, I'm watching the damn printing queue, so I know you're doing it. Alternatively, don't delete my damn task (yes, this has happened before, and it wasn't pretty).

4) Refill the damn paper tray(s), especially after you've just printed a 400-page document that you don't intend on reading.

5) Don't stand by the printer and sigh profusely because you're waiting for a print job after the one I have currently going. Sit the fuck down and come back in a minute. I fucking hear you, and I'm not cancelling my job so you can quit bitchin' and moanin'.

Assholes.

Screw the iPhone

Everybody has their own preference in smartphones. I prefer a good Windows Mobile phone over an Android phone over a BlackBerry over an iPhone. That order may change if I start seeing better phones running Android. What WON'T change is my hatred for the Apple iPhone. It's a pathetic excuse of a phone. Here's why...

1) The iPhone can only run one application at a time. Let's say you're chatting on your favorite iPhone messaging app. Suddenly, you get the urge to play Labyrinth (the best part about the iPhone). You press the menu button and fire up the game after you find the icon in the sea of stupid demo-versions of junk you've downloaded. Meanwhile, your significant other is messaging you a million times because your iPhone doesn't even have the courtesy to sign you off. It just leads your buddies to believe you're still online, still available, and still giving a fuck what they say. I'm sure they'll understand when you mysteriously sign off ten minutes later.

2) You can't type as fast as I can on my real phone with a real keypad. Seriously, you can't. And if you do, you make retarded typing mistakes, like "ducking fat dingers". Try to figure out what that says, it's not that hard (hint, there shouldn't be any "d"s...)

3) It makes you a filthy conformist. This is true of anybody who buys Apple products to be more hip. That's all of you, San Francisco. Don't want to admit to it? Okay, then ask yourself: why did you buy the iPhone? Right, because you heard it's super cool and everybody was getting one. Nevermind the fact that there are plenty of other phones that do everything the iPhone does and more.

4) The battery dies in a couples hours if you should happen to USE the damn thing. But why would you do that, right? After all, you only buy the iPhone to look pretty. I guess you could go through the hassle of turning off 3G and WiFi every time you're done using the phone -that's not annoying at all. Oh, and Apple doesn't let you change the battery because [insert bullshit reason here].

5) E-Mail isn't up to par with Windows Mobile or Blackberry OS. Yes, Apple tried to remedy that with MobileMe, but it's not even close. If you're a business-oriented user, this second-rate copy-cat stuff just doesn't work.

6) You can't send picture/sound/video messages. Seriously? I was sending MMS messages half a decade ago on a piece-of-crap LG TM-something-something-junk.

7) When you load music onto it, you have to live with Apple's designated layout of how your files are displayed. This is true of all products that sync with iTunes. How about just displaying the filenames by alphabetical order? Wouldn't that make FAR MORE FUCKING SENSE?! I don't give a damn what album the song was in, nor what genre Apple decides that my song is. I just want to be able to scroll to the damn filename and find it where I expect to find it.

Obama Making Cuts!

Obama has passed an 800 billion-dollar spending plan, proposed another 100+ billion dollars towards healthcare reform (note the quotation marks), another 150+ billion dollars towards building "green energy sector", etc., etc., etc... Let's do him a favor and peg the bottom line at an even 1 trillion dollars.

Today he decided to take a "stand" about cutting spending. How much will he cut? A whopping $100 million. Here's what it looks like when you look at all those zeroes...

Spend: $1,000,000,000,000.
Save: $100,000,000.

Good job, Mr. President. Now repeat this TEN THOUSAND TIMES to bring us back to even.

Oh man, I hate the President.

Torture? So what?

I just read this article about Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11/2001 attacks, being waterboarded 183 times. I'm pretty sure I've discussed waterboarding (torture by simulated drowning) in a previous post, but to recap: WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK!? This guy killed thousands of Americans, and probably would do the same to millions more if he could have his way. Why should we show him any sympathy? All these liberals cry about unethical treatment, but I ask you: if your mother had been one of the unfortunate few who died that horrific death in that ill-fated September, would you still stand for this guy's "rights"? Please. This shouldn't even qualify as news.

Elevators

There are too many ways someone can piss you off when you're dealing with elevators...

1) You arrive at your destination floor, but before you can even exit the elevator, some stupid immigrant is shoving his/her way in. It's rude, selfish, and deserving of a kick to the cunt.

2) You're on ground level. You want to go to level 10, 11, 25, 40, whatever it is. A bunch of other people are inside, and the floor selection panel is a Christmas tree of lit bubbles. Just as the doors are closing, some douchebag presses the elevator call button, causing them to open again. Amidst a sea of groans, sighs, shaking heads, and "WTF"s, the douchebag steps in, and presses floor number 2. These people seriously need to take a class in social etiquette. Un-fucking-believable.

3) You get in the elevator, and some weirdo wants to be friends. I don't want to be talked to in an elevator. I don't care that it's "another Monday" or that "at least it's almost Friday!". Quite frankly, unless you're going to hand me free money or a discreet handjob (also free), I would really rather remain strangers.

4) You're heading to your floor (let's say going up), and the elevator stops on some other floor in-between. Standing there is a confused-looking moron (moronette?) who asks,"Going up?" while pointing upward like a retard. First of all, you don't need to point up when you ask,"Are you going up?"; I know which way up is, asshole. Secondly, did you PRESS up? Did the waiting light turn off as the doors opened? Then obviously we are in fact going up, dickwad; get in the fuck in and let's go.

Hope to see you in an elevator sometime. Ass.

How to talk like a white person

If you're like me, there have been times when you've run into your company CEO (or an otherwise high-ranking individual) and then thought to yourself how foolish and minority-like you sounded. This individual is usually some middle-aged white dude with a plastic smile and a charm-all personality. Also, suave as you may be, he's got you covered almost always. Almost. Now, I present my very own guide on fighting back. With these few steps, you too can sound like the loud white guy whose every conversation everybody hears while simultaneously thinking, "douchebag" and, "dammit, I wish I could drive his Ferrari".

The Opener: "Theeeere he is!"
White people love to use this one. In fact, I've never heard anybody BUT a white person use this phrase. If they have, then they've discovered a powerful secret that you're about to learn. By greeting somebody with,"there he is!", you accomplish two things. First, you make him feel good, rendering him harmless, in case he was one of those I'm-better-than-you-because-you're-a-minority type of whites. Second, and more importantly, you've established that he's just the man you've been looking for your entire day. If you're looking for somebody, you're taking action, and if you're taking action, you're in charge. So when you see that rich white guy who always manages to ask you awkward questions, call him out first with,"THERE he is!" and point at him in a hey-we're-not-really-friends-but-let's-pretend-we-are manner.

The Cop-Out: "Sign of the times..."
White people love to state random facts to which you probably have no good response. For example, you might be stuck in an elevator, and some well-dressed white man will say,"I tell ya, these things stop on every floor!" What do you even say to that? Smile politely while thinking,"OMG OMG WTF WTF I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY!"? Well, now you know better. You always respond to such statements with "Yeah, sign of the times." This immediately reverses the scenario, and he has no option but to stand there with a fake smile, wondering what you meant by your statement. At this point, you casually whip out your phone and start looking through your calendar (you need a PDA-style phone. It makes you look more important.)

The Bluff: "The markets are insane. Did you SEE the Dow today?"
Sometimes, white people will talk to you about certain companies. For example, one might say,"Wonder what's gonna happen to the big three. GM's Wagoner resigned today..." A lot of times, you've been too busy with other petty shit to keep up with market news. But it's okay, the market is always filled with bullshit news. Instead of directly responding to his statement, you say something like,"I hear ya. The markets are just CRAZY today. Did you SEE the Dow?" Usually, this causes him to go on having a conversation with himself, saying something like,"I know! 200 points!" You see, the Dow takes swings of 200 points here and there all day. News articles love to write about these swings as entirely significant, when really they're all part of the game. Which 200 points is he referring to? The 200 point upswing after morning call? The 200 point readjustment downwards right before lunch? The 200 point upswing because some Cambodian baby in Argentina said he hates Home Depot? It doesn't matter, you simply nod your head in agreement.

The First Strike: "Oh man, did you hear about _______? Unbelievable!"
This one is easy. Sometimes, you want to turn the tables. You want to establish that you know more than your white superior does. You hit him with something like "Oh man, did you hear about the car crash in Montana? Unbelievable!" If he's heard about it, he'll have no choice but to chime in with his opinions. If he hasn't, you simply say,"Wow. I'm going to send you a link to the story." The story doesn't even have to be good. The point is to establish that he eats your scraps. Or, in this case, your regurgitation of whatever crap story you read on the Yahoo! News Odd Stuff section while not doing work a few hours ago.

The Switch
White people love to tell you shit you don't care about. Like how he's headed to his son's little league baseball game after he exits the elevator ride you guys are sharing. At this point, make an extremely vague transition to a remotely related topic in your own life. Example: "That's awesome. I love baseball. But my little girl is six and she LOVES Barbies. I tell ya, I gotta buy her one every week!" He'll usually have to comply with your story and you get to talk about your daughter and Barbies (i.e., you totally won). If he tries changing it up again, don't fall for it - change to yet another remotely related topic. Don't worry, it's not weird, it's how all white people talk to their fellow white colleagues.

Now you know.