Career Ambitions

**In order to appease the voracious appetites of my faithful fan base, I'd like to introduce you to my older brother, Mark. He may not be quite as funny and WARNING: he may not use quite as much toilet humor, but he's getting there. We have always talked about writing together, so we decided to finally make it happen. Here's one he wrote, and aside from the unfortunate dearth of potty talk, you can always recognize his work by his tag line. Enjoy!**

If you are anything like me, and I know I am, then you knew just what you wanted to be when you were younger. And for me that was a dictator of a third world nation. Call me strange, go ahead – you wouldn’t be the first, my shrink was – but the job of a dictator had a lot of fringe benefits that appealed to me in my youth. The lawlessness they lived by, the national holidays in their honor, the money, fame, and opportunity to see their portraits painted on every street corner made me want to jump in and lead a coup somewhere.

Then came the collapse of Saddam, the Taliban, and most of Northern Africa and I began to have second thoughts about my career aspirations. I decided I needed a profession with equal rewards but less risk. I ruled out the NBA mainly because I hate the shoes they wear and would feel awful endorsing a product I didn’t believe in, in return for only tens of millions of dollars a year. That fake lifestyle just isn’t for me…better to spend my life slaving away at a company I don’t enjoy that sells products I prefer not to purchase.

Therefore, I naturally shifted my career aspirations to becoming CEO of a fortune 500 company. They have a great retirement program. Cook a few books, scam millions of investors from their hard-earned retirement, fire my employees and replace them with slave labor overseas, con the government out of billions in owed taxes, and then get slapped with a short sentence to a five-star resort called ‘Federal Prison’ until I could live out my life as celebrity-billionaire and date girls my grand-daughters age. (You should have seen the face of my career counselor in college when I explained this career path to her—until I explained it to her, I don’t think she realized it even existed).

Unfortunately, my wife’s response was even less positive than my career counselor’s had been.

I have therefore finally settled on the next best thing: becoming an online blogger with my younger brother, Jared. The fame, money, and national holidays in my honor don’t quite measure up, but there’s something to be said about working from home in my pajamas while listening to music. Even Saddam never had it this good. Unless, of course, he ever made it to Federal Prison.

Once I settled my mind on the blogger career path, I realized that there is a lot I can do in this humble job. For example, I can make fun of other people in the name of ‘freedom of speech.’ And if they somehow track me down in my home and retaliate by punching me in the nose, I can sue. God bless this nation.

So, after great deliberation about the topic for this first column, and after consulting my lawyer regarding lawsuits, I have narrowed my choices. I have selected the most annoying, loathsome, insincere rodent known to mankind. No, I’m not talking about myself. This topic is aimed at the morning radio talk show person.

Talk about annoying, no pun intended. These disk jockeys are always announcing a song they’ll play right after another commercial break. Their humor (which I can safely say is far worse than my own) hasn’t been considered funny since the third grade…and even back then it was only ever considered funny by the weird kid who couldn’t sit still and always smelled badly. It has become so bad, I no longer listen to the radio….instead, I call random tele-marketers and start up conversations. I need help on many levels.

Therefore, I’m calling on concerned citizens of this great nation to do whatever must be done to save music on morning radio shows. Even if you didn’t vote in the last election, can’t spell your own name, or aren’t sure if you have a pulse, we could use your support. That’s right, I’m encouraging a grass-roots, radical wing to emerge and sue the pants off of any radio station that refuses to play music. If we can add frogs, owls, flowers, and O.J. Simpson to the endangered species list – saving them from certain extinction – surely we can get federal protection to keep songs on the radio.

To drum up support for this measure, I will focus on the positive: eliminating morning radio talk shows would reduce traffic accidents on our freeways. Instead of fumbling around in a dark cab of a truck, frustrated at the lack of music, while balancing a half-eaten apple and the steering wheel in one hand, and a pop tart and radio dial in the other, we will be able to keep our eyes where they belong…reading the bumper sticker on the car ahead of us.

If you know any morning radio show personalities, do the world a favor and give them this article. (And judging by the stupidity that passes as conversation on their shows, you might have to read the column to them, or at least help them with the larger words).

Please stress this part when you read it to them: “SHUT UP AND PLAY MUSIC! IF WE’RE DRIVING AT 6:30 IN THE MORNING, CHANCES ARE WE ARE TRAVELING TO JOBS AND DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU GIVING THE FIRST CALLER A FREE CD! WE CAN AFFORD TO BUY OUR OWN. HERE’S A SUGGESTION: INSTEAD OF GIVING THE CD AWAY, WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IT SO WE DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU!”

You can read in your quieter voice now. Whew. I might not be a dictator, but I have a feeling that 2011 is going to be better already. Now, we just have to do something about pulling down their stupid billboards promoting their silly morning shows. Then we’ll all be free to focus our efforts on world peace and on toppling more dictators.

Tag line: Mark Palenske is Jared’s older, less funny brother.