July 28, 2005

• All right, if anybody knows the anwers to any of these questions in
  this post, please let me know, as I have thought about these questions
  often. In fact, they keep me up at night. Actually keep me up at night!
  No, wait, its probably the caffeine.

  You know, since I deal with people calling up all day long asking about
  billing statements they get, it got me thinking about shit. Why is a a
  bill called a bill? Where did they (whoever they is………there
  should be some sort of investigation into who they is. Everybody knows
  they, but nobody knows who they is) come up with that one? My theory is
  that years ago, some deadbeat named Bill had problems paying his
  monthly obligations (I’m trying to avoid using the b-word) and his
  creditors got sick of him not paying and instead of killing him or
  breaking his legs, you know, like what normal, mafia influenced people
  would have done, they just decided to name monthly statements after
  him. Its like they said “Bill No-name, this is Mr. Bergstrom calling
  from the Overdue Collection agency, if you don’t start making your
  monthly payments, we are going to name those monthly statements after
  you!”. And he must not have taken them seriously and probably just said
  to himself “Come on, they would never do that. Normally, when I don’t
  pay my bookie he sends somebody over to break my thumbs, so what is the
  worst they can do? What, maybe castrate me? Please, I had my balls in a
  vice after I lost that bet that had the Germans winning World War II.”
  They probably sent him a final notice with the words MONTHLY BILL in
  big, red letters. Finally, enough was enough and from that point on,
  the monthly monetary obligations were known as bills, and boy, was his
  face red. He was shunned from the community and had brought shame among
  his family name, as you know, everybody in his family was named Bill.

  Which makes me wonder about other words. Why at a resturant do we ask
  for “the check.” Its not a check. If it were a check, I would walk out
  of there with a bigger wallet, not a smaller one because of the
  over-priced appetizer. And, last I saw, they don’t deduct things from
  the resturant check, instead they add things, like taxes and gratuity.
  I don’t know about you, but I have never gotten a “check” in a
  resturant and looked at it and said “Wow, look at that. They took $3.50
  out for Social Security.” And, when I pay for a meal, none of that
  money goes towards my 401K plan. So please, lets just stop using this
  mis-nomer and call it what it really is: a bill.

  Speaking of Bill, this also makes me wonder how they come up with names
  for people. I know how they shorten names like Michael to become Mike,
  or Jonathan to become Jon, but how do they get Bill from William? Or
  Hank from Henry? Jack from John? Or my personal favorite, Dick from
  Richard. That one makes no sense at all, unless of, course, guys named
  Richard had really big dicks, so they just started calling them “Dick”,
  you sorta code, so that if you told a girl (or if you were gay and told
  another gay guy) that your name was Dick, she would get interested in
  you. Like, “see that guy over there? HIS name is Dick!”. And how did
  the penis become a Dick? Or a Johnson? And even funnier, there is a
  reporter here in Chicago that goes by the name of Dick Johnson. How can
  he be taken seriously with a name like Dick fucking Johnson? He is
  standing there talking about the mining accident in the shaft that
  killed 69 when a large rod came into the shaft and two large boulders
  came in after the rod, eventually filling the shaft with water, 
  and at the end of the report he says “My name is Dick Johnson”. How can
  the camera man and producer not just start laughing right there. If you
  ask me, he ain’t a newsman as much as he is a porn star. And you people
  that don’t live in Chicago haven’t seen the look on this guy’s face
  when he reports the news. He has this serious look on his face, with a
  crease in his foreskin……..I mean, forehead, you know, the same look
  that the male porn star has when he is really getting into it. I mean,
  when this guy was in college, did he run around campus with his frat
  brothers saying that “when I get out of school, I’m changing my name to
  Dick Johnson and becoming a reporter…………nobody will get the
  joke!” Perhaps he lost a bet and that is why he goes by that name. Or
  perahps years from now, we won’t call reporters reporters, we will call
  them Dick Johnsons, you know, just like we call monthly financial
  obligations bills.

  • 10:16 pm
  • 1 Comment