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“A pessimist? That's a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.”

“College” Scams

Permalink | Tweet This! | | December 22, 2008 by John in Career, Education, Tom Leykis

The biggest scam of all, and I hate to rain on people’s parades, after the broadcasting business, when they have these broadcasting departments at universities, and people who couldn’t make it as DJs or news people, there they go and they go to a college and teach other people how to do that for a living, and there’s people paying $25,000 or more a year to major in broadcasting at major universities, only to find out that if the person teaching them had any talent they wouldn’t waste their time at a university teaching, they’d be out there doing it for a living. So that’s the biggest scam.

And then, after that, the biggest scam is [...] culinary arts. People who study to be chefs. And the reason is, because studying to be a chef is like studying to be an NBA center, okay, there’s 30 NBA centers. And that’s it. And so what happens to the vast majority of culinary arts students is that they end up getting $9/hour to be the sous chef at El Torito. Alright? [...] You’ve got Bobby Flay, and you know you’ve got Wolfgang Puck, and then a bunch of sous chefs. And that’s a big scam.

[...]

I can’t speak for any particular institution of higher learning [, but] any college that has campuses in more than one state, or has an 800 number probably isn’t really a college. [...] Also, any college where you have to draw “Winky” to get in probably also isn’t a real college.

-Tom Leykis, The Tom Leykis Show, 12/19/2008, Hour 3

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I Voted

Permalink | Tweet This! | | November 4, 2008 by John in Penn Jillette, Politics, Tom Leykis

Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) is fond of saying the only way to waste your vote is to vote for an inferior candidate (in his opinion both Obama and McCain are inferior) or a third party candidate, since there’s no way one of them will win (interesting, since he is a self-proclaimed libertarian like myself). He basically says you shouldn’t vote as a way of demanding better candidates. Interesting, bombastic and deliciously cynical, but not very realistic.

Radio show host Tom Leykis (a libertarian who voted for Obama) is fond of saying that you shouldn’t vote if you don’t know anything about the candidates or issues. That way, he stipulates, his vote counts more because he is intelligent and informed.

John Bedard (of East Helena, MT) is fond of saying if you don’t vote, you can’t complain. So, I did my civic duty.

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(Alleged) Murderess Followup

Permalink | Tweet This! | | August 7, 2008 by John in In the News, Tom Leykis

It’s been almost two years since I posted about the woman who called in to the Tom Leykis show and confessed to murder.

Police finally have a suspect and are seeking murder charges.

Phoenix police on Thursday formally presented the Maricopa County Attorney’s office with the investigation into the death seven years ago of an Ahwatukee Foothills man whose girlfriend, they believe, called a national talk radio show and bragged that she got away with murder.

Phoenix police Sgt. Joel Tranter also officially named the girlfriend, Megan Suzanne Vice of El Mirage, as the suspect in the case. He said while police won’t arrest the 30-year-old Vice, they are seeking charges of first-degree murder and obstructing a criminal investigation for filing a false police report.

Why they don’t arrest her I’ll never understand.

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Justice

Permalink | Tweet This! | | March 6, 2008 by John in Dating/Relationships, In the News, Tom Leykis

Man to get child support back (via The Tom Leykis Show)

Judge David Roper said he felt badly for Kenneth Samuels when he learned the child he had fathered for 11 years wasn’t his.

Justice was also shortchanged, the judge said, because Mr. Samuels had been paying child support all of those years.

Last month, Judge Roper ruled that Jamie Hope, the child’s mother, and Oba Wallace, the child’s biological father, would have to repay Mr. Samuels $14,460 in child support he had paid since 1997.

Such an order is unusual, but not unique.

I doubt this would’ve been the outcome had this taken place in California or if the Judge was female. All too often the poor schlub who got stuck paying for a kid that wasn’t his, either doesn’t get the money back or, far worse, the man has to keep paying even though the kid isn’t his.

Hopefully Samuels can collect.

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Why are People Having Fewer Kids?

Permalink | Tweet This! | | February 28, 2008 by John in Dating/Relationships, Family, In the News, Tom Leykis

Why are People Having Fewer Kids? (via The Tom Leykis Show):

“Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people’s overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact,” reports Harvard psychologist and happiness researcher Daniel Gilbert. In addition, the more children a person has the less happy they are. According to Gilbert, researchers have found that people derive more satisfaction from eating, exercising, shopping, napping, or watching television than taking care of their kids. “Indeed, looking after the kids appears to be only slightly more pleasant than doing housework,” asserts Gilbert in his bestselling, Stumbling on Happiness (2006).

Of course, that’s not what most parents say when asked.

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Shaddup. Shaddup. SHADDAP!!!

Permalink | Tweet This! | | December 17, 2007 by John in Humor, Tom Leykis

What most men are thinking when their wife or girlfriend is yammering, courtesy of Mr. Leykis…

Shaddup. Shaddup. SHADDAP!!! (MP3 Format, 126kb)

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Current Podcasts

Permalink | Tweet This! | | October 23, 2007 by John in Entertainment, Freelancing, Gadgets, Kevin Smith, Ramsey, Tom Leykis, Web Design

I’m not going to add links. All of these can be found in iTunes except for The Design Show.

Current Must-Listen Audio Podcasts:

Current Audio Podcasts (as time permits):

Current Video Podcasts (as time permits):

Testing Out:

Obviously I choose podcasts mostly for entertainment purposes…

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There Should Be A Law

Permalink | Tweet This! | | August 30, 2007 by John in Adam Carolla, Entertainment, Gadgets, Tom Leykis, Video Games

Tom Leykis and Adam Carolla should not be allowed to go on vacation during the same week. It’s not right. It’s not fair. I can only take so much of Dave Ramsey and Leo Laporte. I scoured the iTunes store last night and right now I’m listening to a podcast about Halo 3 from Bungie, the company who developed the franchise.

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Libertarian Defined

Permalink | Tweet This! | | April 28, 2007 by John in Adam Carolla, Humor, In the News, Penn Jillette, Tom Leykis

Libertarian (The Devil’s Dictionary X™):

  1. a political curiosity; a person whose political view consists of knowing what’s right and then closing one’s eyes.
    compare with Democrat and Republican.
  2. a Druid; a political kamikaze; a harmlessly unelectable psychopath.

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“You’re full of shit. You’re trapped and you know it.”

Permalink | Tweet This! | | March 9, 2007 by John in Humor, Tom Leykis

best of craigslist : Vasectomy: $400. Speechless look on her face: priceless.

I’m not really mad. I’m kind of embarrassed for her. But since she won’t shut up and the neighbors can hear all of this, I ask her to step back inside and sit down. She sits on the sofa and calms down a bit. She is glaring at me with all the moral self-righteousness that only a woman can muster up. She thinks she has me trapped. She is 100% convinced her plan has worked. Oh, the tangled web of lies and deceit she has wrought around herself and I am about to hack through them with a few pieces of paper.

Via Tom Leykis.

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