Working Stiffs Unite!

2011-07-11T12:11:00.014-04:00

Always Sunny Rules

And Charlie is the man. I came across this link and wanted to share as one Charlie enthusiast to the rest of you.

"We're Gonna Go America All Over Their Asses!" Charlie Day's 20 Best Quotes from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"

Hard to pick just 20 but there are some goodies in here! I also want to thank Netflix for bringing the shows to me one disc at a time!!

2011-07-09T16:15:00.000-04:00

Review of the latest by David Sedaris squirrel seeks chipmunk

I give it an A. I have read all of his books and have longbeen a fan. Ever since I first happenedupon a copy of Barrel Fever, I realized this guy was great. I was starting to sense a tail off—honestlythe last couple seemed to lack the energetic sarcasm that dripped from theinitial efforts.

But this—very witty and insightful. It is both funny and poignant which Sedarisused to be and apparently still can be. I highly suggest picking it up—very quick read. Just around 100 pamphlet-sized pages, the whole thing can be readin a sitting but you may want to break your reading of all of the stories outover a few days to try and absorb the new-style aphorisms he is dishing out ata better pace.

Here are a few of the choice morals he chose with the 25+ stories

Unfortunately when at work (which is most of our waking hours) our opinions are not just useless, but also counterproductive—when at work you should really use your mouth exclusively for kissing ass
Everyone’s ethnocentricity comes out when they travel but Americans seem like such assholes mostly because we are.
Although things usually work out for the best, our vanity keeps us hanging on to dramatic representations of how we feel the world wronged us. (this may have been my favorite of the stories)
We are all hypocrites yet we rarely hesitate to call someone else out on this whenever it suits us.
There is always someone worse off, and no one wants to hear your problems so shut the fuck up.

And of course, there are many more. If you ever liked a Sedaris book in the past you'll love this book.

2011-07-08T00:56:00.000-04:00

You should buy one of these and put it in the toilet

HydroRight Dual-Flush Converter

At my grandmother's house in the bathroom they used to have an old sign bought from some hokey backwoods store where the locals surely all had septic systems 'If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down'.

Crude but direct--I was typically there during some kind of large gathering and they only had one toilet on an artisian well. It was a necessity.

Today, water conversation may not be a direct necessity for all of us, but hopefully you've at least thought about simple little ways to conserve water. Maybe at some point you bought some incandescent light bulbs to replace old power hogging bulbs? Well, this is the same thing, but for your toilets.

You spend $20 or less at Home Depot (there are several manufacturers and styles of this thing, I'm just going with the one I bought), and bring home the HydroRight Dual-Flush Convertor for $19.98 at Home Depot.

It takes about 5 minutes to install. No tools or anything.

1. empty the tank up top
2. remove the old flapper and the handle
3. seat this thing where the flapper went and use a provided zip-tie to attach it to your existing tank pipe
4. install the cool-looking button where you used to have a stone-age handle.

VIOLA! You are saving money every time you take a leak. I saw a review where someone was saying unless you have an old 3 gallon flush toilet don't bother getting this, but that is idiotic as the lighter flush does a great job of clearing your bowl with much less than even the normal 1.6 gals you are probably getting now each time you press the handle. (Ok so you probably wouldn't want to take a drink out of the bowl after the light flush?...as opposed to after a full 1.6 gallon flush??)

To get the lighter flush you simply press the upper button with the single dot on it (I imagine this dot must be braille for a '#1') which engages a strong but very efficient outflow--it is brief and I think it is less than a gallon per flush with that button. When you press the lower button, it gives you the flush you normally would expect, with a normal 1.6 gallon flush. Although you can use a dial on the HydroRight to raise or lower even those settings--it depends on how complicated you want to get with it and how much of a water-saver you are!

I took the below related tips from a top 1000 contributor on the Home Depot website (thanks Wilson79!) [consequently, I looked at the list of reviews to see what it took to get his 'top 1000' contributor logo on the Home Depot website and I see he only did 4 reviews overall..so if you're looking to get some logo-age near your name as a commenter somewhere out on the web, might be nice bang-for-your-buck to review a few things on their website, ha]

Make sure your toilet meets the following requirements and you will be fine:
1) Newer style fill valve (not the old ball system where there is a ball floating on the water in your tank). If you do need a newer style fill valve, we suggest the HydroClean Toilet Fill Valve, Model 660. You must have a round overflow tube.
2) The overflow tube must have a minimum height of 6” from base to top.
3) Your flush valve opening must be 2 – 2 ½”. If you have a 3” flush valve opening, this product will not work with your current system.
4) You must have a 10” clearance in your tank from bottom to top.

Also this site points out that the toilet is over 26% of the average home's water consumption so think about it.
http://www.toiletabcs.com/toilet-water-conservation.html

15 minutes could save you 15% or more on your...water bill.

2011-06-25T08:30:00.001-04:00

DAY 26: WWW (A World Without Winter!) I finally moved to Florida. There's a lot to it, but at a basic level yeah, you bet your ass the weather had a lot to do with it.

I want to update every month or so about my little mid-life migration, as I know a lot of fellow New Englanders think about making their own 1 way flight now and again and I want to give you pros and cons to help you make a decision. ( You are probably not thinking about it so much right now..but wait and see--it will be snowing again before you know it ;) I am a pretty reasonable and cautious guy, but every now and then I get my mind set on something that is a bit outside the lines and...well if you're feeling froggy....you gotta leap.

I was raised in Massachusetts and then in my mid twenties moved a little further north to Maine where I remained for almost 10 more years. So I've been shoveling all of my life, and dealing with winter since I was a kid. I'm talking extreme temperature changes that crack driveways, mess with your car, screw with your roof, and not mention how stupid you look when you fall down walking on ice. It kept me locked in doors for about a quarter of every year since I was a kid. The pervasive artificially heated air has always wreaked havoc on my sinuses and certain regions of my skin--my hands have always been messed up (my hands as much as anything would be a mess by the time Valentine's Day rolled around each year).

Well, I'm not a kid anymore and I got sick of it. I wanted to try a place where it went from really hot down to only mildly hot. Today it was about 95 and very humid, but I only had to leave the pleasant confines of AC to dip in the pool. And anyway, they told me I'd get used to the heat. We'll see. Stay tuned.

2010-08-12T10:59:00.267-04:00

Remember Ice-T's theme song to the movie New Jack City?

"New Jack Hustler" (linked to a youtube video of this song August 2010..lyrics at the bottom of post)

I saw the movie around the time it came out and it was pretty bad ass for early 90s cinema (I IMDB'd it for the heck of it and learned that it was directed by Mario Van Peebles...huh). The movie was ok back then, but not great. The theme song however--that is solid gold.

This song can get me jacked up in two seconds. Right when I hear the first few notes--it is on par with the best Rage Against the Machine or maybe System of a Down--I'm talking 'Freedom' and 'Killing In The Name' good

Image via Wikipedia

--or if you are more of a Serj fan--'Chop Suey' and 'B.Y.O.B.' good; even though they are/were popular mainstream songs you can't help but love them like your own little secret anthem.

The beat and lyrics work perfectly together --the tempo goes from fast to faster and could be described as frantic--the switches are rushed, the piano is written to sound like the guy that is playing can't wait to get out of that neighborhood (he is definitely looking over his shoulder) and the stops are perfect because the lyrics are just so right-on--you are just waiting to hear it. He is at the edge of angry without running off the road and getting derailed.

It is rare that such intelligent lyrics can be spit out so energetically and that are so synchronized with the loop they are layed over. It is impressive that he is actually making a solid point about the cyclical and destructive nature of drug-trafficking while at the same time making you want to turn it up and jump around. Half the time I hear it, I wish I could drive to Harlem and get into a shoot-out with some dirty cops--but of course, that is exactly how I feel when I bite into a Peppermint Patty too....

Dammit, listen to it right now and tell me you don't get charged up!

Hustler, word, I pull the trigger long,

Grit my teeth, spray till every nigga's gone.

Got my block sewn, armored dope spots,

Last thing I sweat's a sucka punk cop.

Move like a king when I roll, hops,

You try to flex, bang, another nigga drops.

You gotta deal with this cause there's no way out,

Why? Cash money ain't never gonna play out.

I got nothin to lose, much to gain,

In my brain, I got a capitalist migraine.

I gotta get paid tonight, you muthafuckin right.

Pickin' my grip, check my bitch, keep my game tight.

So many hos on my jock, think I'm a movie star.

Nineteen, I got a fifty thousand dollar car.

Go to school, I ain't goin for it,

Kiss my ass, bust the cap on the Moet.

Cause I don't wanna hear that crap,

Why? I'd rather be a New Jack-----Hustler

[chorus]

Hustler

H-U-S-T-L-E-R hustler

(kid drop in)

Yo man you know what I'm sayin?

You got it goin on my man, I like how it's goin down.

You got the fly cars, the girls, the jewels.

Look at that ring right there,

I know it's real, it's gotta be real.

Man, you the flyest nigga I seen in my life!

Yo man, I just wanna roll with you man,

How can I be down?

What's up? You say you wanna be down?

Ease back, or muthafucka get beat down.

Out my face, fool I'm the illest,

Bulletproof, I die harder than Bruce Willis.

Got my crew in effect, I bought em new Jags,

So much cash, gotta keep it in Hefty bags.

All I think about is keys and Gs

Imagine that, me workin at Mickey D's (ha ha ha ha).

That's a joke cause I'm never gonna be broke,

When I die there'll be bullets and gunsmoke.

Ya don't like my lifestyle? Fuck you!

I'm rollin with the New Jack crew.

And I'm a hustler.

H-U-S-T-L-E-R hustler

New Jack, New Jack..........

Here I come, so you better break north,

As I stride, my gold chains glide back and forth.

I care nothing bout you, and that's evident.

All I love's my dope and dead presidents.

Sound crazy? Well it isn't.

The ends justifies the means, that's the system.

I learned that in school then I dropped out,

Hit the streets, checked a grip, and now I got clout.

I had nothing, and I wanted it.

You had everything, and you flaunted it.

Turned the needy into the greedy,

With cocaine, my success came speedy.

Got me twisted, jammed into a paradox.

Every dollar I get, another brother drops.

Maybe that's the plan, and I don't understand,

God damn----you got me sinkin in quicksand.

But since I don't know, and I ain't never learned,

I gotta get paid, I got money to earn.

With my posse, out on the ave,

Bump my sounds, crack a forty and laugh.

Cool out and watch my new Benz gleam,

Is this a nightmare? Or the American dream?

So think twice if you're coming down my block,

You wanna journey through hell? Well shit gets hot.

Pregnant teens, children's screams,

Life is weighed on the scales of a triple beam.

You don't come here much, and ya better not.

Wrong move (bang), ambulance cot.

I gotta get more money than you got,

So what, if some muthafucka gets shot?

That's how the game is played,

Another brother slayed, the wound is deep

BUT they're givin

My education's low but I got long dough,

Raised like a pit bull, my heart pumps nitro.

Sleep on silk, lie like a politician,

My Uzi's my best friend, cold as a mortician.

Lock me up, it's genocidal catastrophe,

There'll be another one after me!

A hustler.

Hustler.

H-U-S-T-L-E-R hustler.

New Jack, New Jack......

2010-08-10T07:54:00.039-04:00

Funny People II

I saw just the end of this movie a few weeks ago, but last night I just happened to catch it from the start.

I misjudged it; this was a great movie. The basic premise is that a superstar comedian (Adam Sandler) lives a very wealthy lonely life-been there, seen that. When he is diagnosed with a form of leukemia he reflects on the empty lousy life he has been living and bumps into a chump that is trying to get a comedy career started (Seth Rogen)--oh really, did we need this movie again? This was my initial thought without seeing the whole thing, but I have to say it fought out from the trite package it wrapped itself in with the casting. I think mixing Adam Sandler into the Apatow-pack worked great.

I don't want to ruin it for you, so that's it for plot outline, but Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman play actors that are doing whatever needs to be done to climb the B-list Hollywood ladder and the level of unspoken self-reference was great there and I laughed pretty hard at some of the back-and-forths they were in because of that. This film is a lot more substantive than the Judd Apatow flicks you might have seen and I highly recommend it.

Real life it is not--however, the dialogue and the characters seemed very natural to me and if you can suspend the need for realistic details and meet them halfway to try and relate despite the odd situations, you will enjoy it.

2010-07-23T09:39:00.009-04:00

NPR is great

Image via Wikipedia

The beautiful part is that you can take it for granted whenever you need and it will be there for you. I have sent in very little money over the years, because I don't make much and really never have made much. I did donate time for a couple of campaigns, manning the phones on a couple of their telethons. And I definitely try to sell the value of NPR to friends and family when I can.

I am not a devoted listener at the moment, but I've had long stretches where it was all I listened to. And I think that in the morning, it is the best free news out there. Just about anywhere in the country at 7:50am you can sneak a little taste of Marketplace or a little Robert Reich rant (I had the pleasure of hearing him speak about the future of the American Labor Force about 4 or 5 years ago and it was a great experience--his books are great and his vision is one of the best and most important out there).

My two favorite programs (among a handful) are:

Marketplace It is almost worth staying at work until 6:30pm so I can hop into my care hear my favorite little 1/2 hour peek into the world of business. They give you all of the relevant stats, and always feature at least one unique aspect of a business development that you won't hear anywhere else. It flows so quick and smooth, that it is a joy to listen to them give you stock market updates and tell you which boring government reports are coming out when, and why you would care (how they will affect things). Great host, excellent reporting and it is all in a slick, sleek package served up for free across your local npr stations and the web everyday.

Kai Ryssdal is the man!

Fresh Air with Terry Gross--the show went national in the mid 80s, so by the time I became a fan it was already almost 15 years old--but she does a great job; she comes off so innocuous it disarms her subjects. I don't know if it is her reputation, or merely her tone and attitude, but she seems to get great interviews from authors, actors, and just about anyone in the labor force spectrum. The interview she gets is always well framed and she comes across knowing everything about the subject that is publicly known, and often seems to have a few 'off the beaten path' tidbits as well.

Bill O'Reilly walked out on his interview with her because he is a jerk-off and loves to make it seem like there is this major war between the right and left to make himself feel like some kind of freedom-fighter--so he always phrases everything in terms of that war. 'Terry, I know what this is. This is a hatchet job!'...IDIOT

If you get a chance you should listen to it, although if you're still reading this you probably already realize what an asshole 'nospin' O'Reilly is. He was mostly pissed that Al Franken had been on Fresh Air recently and he kept saying 'Were you as tough on Franken as you're being on me?'..And her response was basically 'Bill, Al Franken is a satirist and you are taking things seriously so I am asking about your work more seriously'.

Hey Bill O'Reilly if you ever land on this post on the wide world web, I hope you realize that only the very old and out-of-touch actually watch your pitiful show--and most of the ratings come from faceless convenience store TVs. Everyone knows FOX pays an assload of money to MOBIL and BP to keep their terrible network on screen in their stores.

2010-07-21T08:21:00.005-04:00

Herbie the 212 year old tree--Part II

Image via Wikipedia

In January I wrote about a 212 year old tree in Yarmouth Maine that was cut down due to having contracted a fungus..rather than letting it fall on a house, or rot to waste, it was decided by someone that it would be cut down.

Last month I was in Portland Architectural Salvage, which is a really funky store in Portland, ME that has 3 enormous floors of any type of interior or exterior fixture or furniture--tons of old scrap and antiques and just relics from earlier years. I highly recommend it.

Among the list of really interesting pieces is an old industrial table that was reconditioned by a local artist, and then fitted with a giant ring of Herbie around it--the aforementioned 212 yr old tree. If I remember correctly, it was on sale for about $5,000--can't get much more unique that that.

It was not the coolest looking table I'd ever seen; but to know that the wood of the table you would be sitting at may have been planted around the time of the Revolutionary war, and saw the Red Sox win all 7 World Series, is kind of neat.

Which reminds me of another cool wood-related story. A company up in Northern Maine called The Deadhead Lumber Company uses a unique boat equipped with highly specialized sonar to recover logs that went to the bottom of the lake during that period of time where logging companies sent their logs down rivers. The logs are recovered without divers, air-dried and then finished off in a kiln; mostly used for flooring, but it is pretty neat flooring. The wood is preserved at the bottom of Moosehead Lake from light and are in wonderful shape; plus they come from old growth forest that just isn't around anymore, so you get giant logs with unique and fabulous curly grains. The site is worth checking out!

Maine Company Uses High-Technology To Salvage Sunken Treasure

2010-07-20T00:04:00.001-04:00

Anyone Else?

I was telling my wife about a long-held habit of mine. I am not a hugely superstitious person, and I'm not sure how I picked this up, but I find myself trying to start a staircase with my left foot and hit the top of a staircase with my right foot. I have caught myself many a time counting unfamiliar staircases towards to top to ensure a nice 'right foot' landing.

2010-07-19T06:31:00.054-04:00

Zen and the Art of Yard Maintenance

There is something to be said for having the privilege to be caretaker for your own little piece of land. Putting time into something where the only benefit is getting to enjoy a job well done, and getting to appreciate the results so directly is something I have grown to appreciate over the years.

The earth that your little plot of land is comprised of follows it own set of rules. You quickly learn where the larger rocks and exposed roots are. And where the lawn is wettest latest, and where it is driest first. You learn the contours and quirks of the terrain that you need to work around which are often not visible to a passing eye. Before long, with even a little care, this is now your land--it is not the paying of the taxes alone that creates that designation; it is the taming and the care taking.

And there are many natural laws to contend with in this pursuit.
-Unmowed grass gets too tall and thins out (less stalks per square inch).
-If you mow it shorter (not too short!) it gets thicker and fuller--but it drinks more so you need to ensure it
has enough water to keep up (naturally or from you).
-Dry grass turns yellow, almost like nature's warning sign 'I'm dying; please help!'..this rings true for people as well--if any of your friends turn really pale yellow and seem to be drying out, you should at least get them some water.
-When it rains, water pools in the same places, and drains to the same places.
-If you pull the root of a weed out, it is gone.
-If you pull them all out by the root you will have no recurring weeds!
-Certain flowers like more Sun, others like to grow under those types of things.

I am not a horticulturist but these are the kinds of things running through my mind on Saturday mornings ( or Friday evenings if rain is expected) from late Spring until football intervenes in the Fall. And I am glad that they run through my mind on a regular basis. It is good to have a little 'nature time'. It feels good to have something other than work or family or anything human to have to answer to for a little while--something that has its carrot/stick system--literally; this is the actual domain of both carrots and sticks.

Image via Wikipedia

No knock on softball intended here, because I'm sure there is something to be said for joining a softball league, buying a uniform and playing a low level of America's pastime with a group of other guys (and maybe some women) one or two nights a week through the Summer--but for me, the years I have spent messing around with my 2.5 acres have helped me find peace without the need for a...bat. And I think my yard may be an important reason why I am able to enjoy my time with people so much--I have a constructive, enjoyable way of breaking away from the connectedness, even if only for a few hours a week.

2010-07-18T11:15:00.119-04:00

The Shoo Fly Algorithm

Image via Wikipedia

Each fly has a DNA sequence. You decode it, map their flight patterns, and VIOLA! You can predict exactly why and how they fly the way they do, by fly species, and therefore, once a fly comes into the vicinity you will know exactly where the fly is heading and therefore, exactly where it will be 1 second from now.

I imagine clothing layered with microchips programmed to analyze flight patterns by species . Once this smart-hat or smart-shirt identifies its subject, it zeros in on the flight pattern and as soon as it is confident that it can predict a particular placement of said subject 'PSHFT!'-a mini air cannon built into the smart clothing fires a tiny yet concentrated burst of air right at the fly. Should he be a particularly persistent pest, no bother. The smart-hat or shirt is ready round after round knowing both exactly where that fly is and where he is about to be, repeatedly barring him from his utterly annoying destiny. Even if you are dealing with the 'Lord of the Flies', he is no match for this technology and he will never be permitted to land on a smart-hat/shirt wearer.

Eventually, flies will evolve to adjust their flight patterns; but testing in the lab will stay ahead of flies and there will be updates--annual, regional, seasonal, etc. (Send in $23 to get the 2016 Norton northeastern Mosquito update for all shirts and hats [hats purchased before 2012 may require additional directx drivers)

At first you'll have a switch to select from a half dozen types of your known local aerial pest varieties, but soon there will be remote controls to switch for detection of different species 'on the fly' (no pun intended). Down the road I envision all of the apparel will come complete with auto detect functionality--the whole process will be automated with a seamless interface.

Image via Wikipedia

First you will see the prohibitively expensive, yet highly effective invention built into shirts at the Sharper Image or in Airplane in-flight magazines; then Sears will usurp the technology. It will spend a few years spreading like a virus through all manner of lesser and lesser retail chains until one day you'll find it dirt cheap while you are waiting in line at a Walgreens, or a grocery store in Canada, Sweden or even Italy.

This clothing--shirts, hats, etc..will quickly be produced for pennies as the craze sweeps the world, driving demand through the roof and production costs ever closer to zero.

(commercial being overheard on car radio) "Who wears Smart Shorts?".... "We wear Smart Shorts!"

Then finally after North Americans and Western Europeans have been utterly saturated with an endless supply of this gear that we are by this point taking for granted, someone will think to map the flight pattern of the kissing bugs that infect so many South Americans with Chagas disease and also all 23 species of the Tseste fly in Africa.

Once that has been done, the Bill Gates foundation will send a super tanker loaded with no frills solar-powered smart-hats and other chip-enabled clothing to Brazil and then Nigeria, the dissemination of which will all but wipe out Chagas, Malaria and sleeping sickness in the entire world.

It may not surprise you I had this stroke of genius out in the yard raking up some grass and working myself into a stroke swinging my big red plastic rake at the same fly for an hour but you know what they say--"Necessity is the Mother of Invention'. Don't forget, you heard it here first.

2010-07-17T10:37:00.000-04:00

Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones

This is probably one of the best Stones songs ever.

Image via Wikipedia

Recorded at the peak of the 60s rampage of sex, drugs and anti-war protesting, it encapsulates a lot of the elements of that time; it plucks a cord that draws you in, as if in listening you are somehow actually experiencing 1969 for a few minutes. The energy, the manic frenzy of youth, the anti-establishment theme and tone...everything in the song is working in tandem with our perceptions of what the times must have been like.

If you're in the right mood, the lonely slow guitar build up to the methodical twist of the ratchet can give you goose bumps.

To add to the mystique, they made a documentary by the same name and although I haven't seen it, it seems pretty wild. It is an hour and a half of really raw footage that follows Mick and Co. around at a few shows, ending with the Altamont Speedway Festival concert. This concert is famous for having had Hells Angels covering the concert security duty, who ending up knocking out Jefferson Airplane lead singer Marty Balin and an 18 yr old gun-toting concert-goer named Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by the bikers as well.

Martin Scorsese used this song in Goodfellas, Casino and The Departed.

George Lucas was at the concert as one of the filmers of the documentary, but his camera jammed very early into the concert at Altamont and he hardly shot any footage--none which made the actual movie.

The documentary was also referenced riotously by Jim Carrey as the psychotic 'Cable Guy'

2010-07-15T00:53:00.028-04:00

You Wanna Know Who Really Shot Kennedy?
It was probably a violated altar-boy trying to exact some small slice ofrevenge!

Let me ask, what is a legitimate reason for a priest to be moved to a newdistrict? I know that every time I hear about one of these moves, it isin relation to people coming forward to explain that it involved a priest beingaccused of sex abuse.

A while back, I heard that not even the Vienna BoysChoir was safe from the business end of this scandal--you can pick up anynewspaper anywhere, almost at any time and come across sex abuse allegationsagainst the Catholic church.

If you are surprised, you're full of shit, an imbecile, or in denial. Catholics that keep sending money in; you are accessories to one of the largestand most despicable crime rings ever assembled. To a certain extent, you have the right to do what you do with yourmoney, but that doesn't mean this disgusting global abuse shouldn't be thwartedby the real world. Jail time, seizure of assets, and maybe some goddamnswinging ball cranes to knock some churches down to make the point that youcan't do whatever you want in America. You want to let this shit go on in Italy, knock yourself out. But here in the US of A, we need to shut this down.

At the very least, can we stop treating them like a tax-exempt organization? I am okay with the fact that legitimate non-profits should be exempt from a variety oftaxes. How about this—you aren't allowed to be classified as a non-profit if... morethan 10 of your leadership are accused of sexual abuse of kids over a 12 monthperiod. No, that would likely shut down a lotof different organizations (none come to mind but there must be others, right?)

How about a 10 week period? No, that probably still could screw the BoyScouts (sticky pun intended!).

How about a 10 day period? Perfect, that would most likely only shut down NAMBLA and the CatholicChurch. I'm guessing about NAMBLA, but the church would not last a week!

That doesn't seem fair to you and your pedophilia-neutral sensibilities? Ok—how about thisstipulation instead: You aren't allowedto be classified a non-profit organization if...you buy more than 10,000 lbs of goldin a 12 month period. 10 week period?

...ludicrousthat this goes on in 2010. It shames me as I dream of my grandkids’ grand kids shuddering at the thought ofliving during the time their great-great-great-grandfather lived. A time where thissort of thing not only went on, but ruled the day.

2010-07-14T10:50:00.001-04:00

George Michael Steinbrenner III
(July 4, 1930 – July 13, 2010)

As a Red Sox fan, I see this man as a man that was always despised in his life. Since 1973 when he bought the team, he won 7 World Series titles. That is 7/36 (he was kicked out of the league for over a year on 2 separate occasions and he hasn't really been around for the last few years). But even without the adjustments, that puts him right around the Mendoza line--except instead of a batting average, we're talking about his percentage of winning the World Series in a given year he owned the Yankees! Bucky Dent? Screw that, I think we should be saying George BLEEPIN Steinbrenner.

In his death, even as Sox fans we need to reflect and recognize that he brought some pizazz to the Sox/Yanks rivalry. It has been very strong for the last 10 or 15 years (some will deny that the flame ever burns out, but when they both suck for a season or two, it will go back into hibernation).

Back in the late 1990s when Pedro was trying to drag Boston over the hump on his own thin wiry back, the rivalry was ugly and very heated indeed. I lived in Salem, about 20 miles or so north--close enough that during certain years, I went to Fenway quite often. One year I probably went to 20 games--we had a plan to beat the scalpers.

It was simple really--we would get in town and have a beer at the Uno's on the corner of Kenmore Square and watch the start, first inning or so.Then, you head up the street and without having to divert your path, you bump into a scalper dying to get something for whatever seats he had. Often better seats than I could have reasonably afforded a mere hour earlier were now greatly reduced by a highly motivated seller.

I saw many games from these good 'cheap seats' but when I think of that year, I think of the game we got burned doing that. It was a Martinez-Mussina matchup (both in their prime--sizzling hot) and upon leaving Uno's we saw only a handful of hapless guys pathetically walking around the park waving cardboard signs at each other reading 'need 1 ticket..anywhere' to each other. It was disappointing, but that was probably the only game that year our plan didn't work--which should say something about how strong the Yankees had become as a draw.

He was the Al Davis of baseball--THE BOSS and not a guy you wanted to piss off. He turned a sucky Yankees club into a pressure cooker with enough gusto to produce diamonds like Mr October and Jeter. Pains me to say it, but you can't argue with that. Go Sox, I will say, All The Way, but a part of me realizes that without Steinbrenner banging his drum, the rivalry is nowhere near this crazy for all these years.

George did a lot win that little team he bought for $8.8mm and a couple of NYC parking lots--he will be missed.

ps, Don't forget that BobSheppard just passed two days ago at 90--a sad month for the Yankees.

2010-07-13T14:19:00.002-04:00

Funny People

I only happened to see the last 45 min of this movie (Directed: Judd Apatow 2009). I didn't really care all that much for the movie itself; seemed disjointed and a little misguided.

But, this movie does agree at a general level with something I have long thought--comedians are miserable. Not sure if it is because it is so hard to live as a performer in such a vacuous, unrealistic framework of bullshit or if it is more related to the basic tenet of 'no one truly loves what they get paid to do'.

We all know the saying; 'Do what you love', but that is more about making your working hours comfortable. They neglect to mention that you will slowly come to resent a good portion of this thing, whatever it is, as it becomes the way you make a living. Making a living isn't easy and so what happens is you slowly build resentments. You don't want to do it EVERYDAY, but having no recourse you get up and do it every day, rain or shine and slowly build resentment.

So I have amended the saying to read; 'Do what you like, but be careful that you don't fuck with something you love.'

I will also reach out and grab a saying that we can all relate to; 'Don't Shit Where You Eat'. I think about the life of a comedian and how hard it must be to wrap 'be funny' around 'support yourself financially' and I think I'll stick to cracking myself up when I want, and doing something I enjoy, or is at least palatable to pay the bills.

2010-07-11T02:15:00.004-04:00

Judd Apatow--having a hell of a decade

We all know this guy has been in on a bunch of real funny movies in the last half of 2000s first decade. He either produces, directs or writes (usually not more than one) them. When it comes to his 'co-conspirators' he is loyal--example: Undeclared was a funny TV show that got killed in the first season despite good acclaim. He still has all of those writers working for him. He was a roommate of Adam Sandler 10 years ago..hence Funny People and an uncredited rewrite of the Wedding Singer.

The movies all pepper repeat offenders throughout..most notably Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill but John C. Reilly and Will Farrell have gotten some of his pixie dust as well.

Judd, kudos. Anchorman was 'spit out your beer' funny, as was Talladega Nights. I give Will Farrell an A for his part, but that is an A+ comedy because it achieves a level of hilarity that is impossible to hit without strong background folk doing their parts..Year One was another example of this. Simple formula, but the preparation is important; this was an excellent meshing of a funny montage movie utilizing Jack Black and George Michael (his mother calls him Michael Cera, but I don't give a shit--he is and will always be George Michael from Arrested Development) to the fullest. Great flick Judd. I could go on and on-Stepbrothers, 40 Year Old Virgin (you know how I know you're gay? you like Coldplay)

In summation Judd, I am laughing pretty good just reading the paragraph in your wikipedia entry entitled 'Upcoming films' because you rarely miss and when you are on, it is gold baby. Can't wait to watch the rest of them. Keep up the good work.

2010-07-10T10:05:00.002-04:00

LeBron Mania!

Good for him. The kid came out of high school and took over the NBA. He'll be the reigning superstar in a few years when Kobe has to finally hang em up. LeBron may not be able to catch the leading ring-holders, but he'll get at least a couple and doing this thing in Miami is a great start towards that for him.

Basketball is the major American team sport I can think of where you can truly judge a superstar based on how many rings. There is no such thing as Dan Marino in the NBA. If you didn't even win 1, you aren't anywhere near the conversation of being great.

So I totally get LeBron hitching up with DWade and Bosh and getting in on it. Cleveland will never be that team--maybe they could put one season together and win one, but they will never be a dynasty or even a repeat champ even with James. He goes to Miami and they probably win this year, or at least will play Kobe and the Lakers for it.

Over the next five years, I am going out on a short limb to guess he will get at least 2 if not more rings, and by the time he is done playing he may end up with his 5 or 6; that is what it will take to put him in the conversation with Jordan and Kobe, and I think it was a smart and probably difficult move for him to jump ship on his home state--good for you LeBron; I think you've dealt with teen super-stardom unbelievably well and I wish you luck.

Of course, I am in Celtics country and with Shaq and Jermaine O'Neal being added to the big three (and Doc at the control panel for at least another year)..you may have to wait at least one more year King James.

2010-07-09T14:32:00.003-04:00

6 degrees of Ricky Gervais

I looked up an early 90s band because their one hit popped up on Pandora (can you believe that 1990 was 20 years ago!)

Anyhow, it turns out the lead singer of Elastica, Justine Frischmann was in a band called Suede before she led the band Elastica. Suede was managed by Ricky Gervais--we're talking late eighties or so.

I clicked on a link to him and I learned that a movie he starred in, The Invention of Lying was filmed mostly in Lowell and Haverhill MA..that is where my Dad lives!

Cover of The Invention of Lying

I saw the movie in the last couple of months and I thought it was hilarious. The premise is 'a world where people cannot comprehend dishonesty'..and Ricky 'invents' lying. Written well and the supporting cast is good and it was funny.

And the circle of life is complete.

One last interesting note is that of course I had to click on the wikipedia link to Haverhill where I found out that Rob Zombie, who I'm not a huge fan of, is also from Haverhill. Small world.

2010-07-08T07:15:00.004-04:00

2010 FIFA World Cup Brackets

Image via Wikipedia

Nothing left but the final game and the 3rd place game--I will finish in the top 10% of ESPN's bracket pool which is good for a guy that doesn't watch/care about soccer. I do love brackets though, and so here was how it worked out for me

First of the 3 group rounds I went 7-9

Notable was that I was 1-2 going against the favorites. I guessed S Korea would pummel Greece, but the other two times I went against the grain bit me in the ass. The one I remember most was the game Spain played against Switzerland where the Swiss scored a brutal 'rush the net' goal leaving several Spaniards on the ground--set the stage for me to consistently underrate Spain. Thanks Switzerland!

Next group round was even worse 6-10

Thought Germany was overrated and took Serbia--bad move. I did guess the US/Slovenia draw in this round, but then took Nigeria and Ghana who both lost. There were a few upsets so I wasn't the only one that got screwed in this round. Little consolation though

Final group round was much better 10-6 to close out group play at 23-22, which vaulted me into the top 15% of all ESPN bracket participants--I was in like 10,000th place out of apparently 75,000 or so entries. I jumped right at the end because after missing the first 3 in this round (2 were upsets) I hit 7 favorites and 3 draws including Brazil/Portugal and New Zealand/Paraguay--this would be the only time my overrating of Portugal and underrating of Paraguay would help though..

In the sweet 16 games I went 5-3

Lost taking US over Ghana..dammit! This worked out though as I picked the other 5 of first 6 games and outpaced another small chunk of those at the top. I found myself as high as like 4,000th (over 95% percentile) during this round when I was 5-1..then I went underdog
Japan over Paraguay (DOH!!) and Portugal over Spain. I was not happy. Portugal and Paraguay giveth and taketh away.

In the Quarterfinals my lack of soccer knowledge really started to come through. I only picked 1 of the 4.

Although, Argentina should have beaten Germany. That was my favorite game of the tournament--I even watched it in its entirety after finding out Argentina lost 4-1 because I love watching Messi flying around. And Maradonna you can tell just wants to get out of the suit and take a corner kick.
And I stand by the Brazil pick--the Netherlands are tough though and they duked it out. I would go so far as to say those Dutch pricks took some cheap shots and lived on the edge of decency. But hats off for beating Brazil, that was a great game.

Ghana screwed me again..I don't know that I picked them right throughout so glad to see them go..thought maybe since they were the last African team in, and it was in Africa...yeah--didn't happen.

In the semis I took Netherlands correctly, and I thought Germany was a lock. Spain still has not impressed me yet. Yes, they beat Germany 1-0 on a nice header late in the 2nd half, but Germany is older and I think that came through today.

So now we come down to the 3rd place game--Germany is going to be able to whale on Uruguay. That is simple. I think the championship game could go either way so I am torn.

The higher ranked team is winning just about every game in this tournament, but....

I am leaning towards the Dutch because they are rough and big and seem to be good at working to a set piece and then pounding on you when they are taking those shots. I don't know that Spain is going to hold up.

We'll see soon enough. One thing is for sure--this mascot 'Zakumi' answers the question: 'What would happen if the hot cartoon chick from the Thundercats had a baby with one of the Village People?'Image via Wikipedia

2010-07-07T10:48:00.012-04:00

5 Eighties Movies-Spotlight - 1987

What a year. I started it as an 11 yr old, and ended it as..a 12 yr old.

Here are 5 movies from that year that I will stop channel surfing for (unless I have absolutely anything going on at all)

1. 3 O'clock High-Casey, we are so glad you grabbed Buddy Revelle. This is one of my favorite pieces of 1987 nostalgia--loved this movie. I linked one of my favorite clips where he gives his 'racy' book report. The teacher in this movie was very hot. Like I said, I was 12 or maybe 13 when I first saw it--13 is a very horny age. I'm still waiting for that to wear off. Very quotable movie--possibly my favorite "Hey Mitchell. Tell all your little friends. There's no escape from the Duker.' No wait, I used to love my sister's rendition of 'Don't Fuck It Up Mittcheellllll'

2. Robocop-Pretty dark. Again, as a tween, I was a little intimidated by this semi-post-apocalyptic (I made that up just for this movie, but if you've seen it you know what I"m talking about..no nuclear holocaust, just somehow..sucky near future landscape). this was a pretty graphic movie--the shooting scenes were way over the top and the bad guys were...really scumbags. Anyone remember the line from the sicko TV show guy? Overall though, great special effects from 1987 and it showed us that movies need have no redeeming value to be watched 10+ times. This list is giving you a good picture of my generation vs guys that were born in the 50s and 60s. One Christmas I was asking everyone which movie they'd seen the most and how many times. Everyone my age or younger had a dozen movies they'd seen at least a dozen times. My Uncles were like 'The Getaway' with Steve McQueen--it's the only movie I've ever seen twice. haha Back to Robocop--this clip I linked was my initial introduction to hating guys in suits. Guys in suits synonymous with money-grubbing killers. They just want some coke and hookers and care about nothing else.

3. Adventures in Babysitting-Besides the fact that she was hot, again I was 11 or 12 when I saw it, Elizabeth Shue (photo is a magazine cover strictly for dog lovers) was made for the role. I will always remember her as the girl who grew up during one night of babysitting in the city. The casting was great, all staples of 1980s awesomeness and it was just far enough away from campy (for the most part), so it had enough appeal that we can all quote from it shamelessly. I don't think there is much to say--epitome of an 80s storyline, well produced (for 1987) and deserving of its spot in 1980s arcana, dug in like a tick sucking your blood.

4. Can't Buy Me Love-What a great picture. Boy I love the Internet--at 12 years old, this image has been burned in the back of my mind like resin in an overused bong bowl...yow!
Before he was McDreamy, my Maine man Patrick Dempsey was in a great romantic comedy where he is the king of the dorks and he gives a ton of money to the hottest chick in school--played by Amanda Peterson; I linked to her IMDB to show you that this was almost literally the last thing she ever did but then I found a blog post centered around what she did and what she is doing now. Interesting Great movie though, totally brings me back to my tweenage. I know I am sticking to 1987, but in 1989 McDreamy made an even better movie called 'Loverboy' where a job delivering pizzas somehow turns to his becoming a gigolo and it has one of those cheesy chase scenes where a bunch of people are adding in until a ridiculous culmination of car and party crash that is just so craptastic that I love it. I got in on the ground floor McDreamy, I hope you remember that you sonofabitch.

Before I get to 5, let me just tell you that I had a hard time coming up with just 5--apparently 1987 was a bonanza for me--Dragnet, Predator, The Princess Bride, Innerspace, Spaceballs, White Water Summer, Leonard 6 (haha)--I eventually decided I need to go a little low key and get off the mainstream tip, so here is the 5th and final film of the spotlight

5. Amazon Women on the Moon-This is the cornucopia of late 80s stars--like a petri dish for under performing box office 'almost were' stars! I have to be honest, I didn't see this in 1987. It is pretty R-rated and not mainstream enough that I would have been able to snag it on HBO, (which is hardly as old as I am). But I do remember the first time the gang and I picked this up at the video store, probably in the early 90s in high school. It is a montage movie with some really really funny stuff going on; the frame device weaves a late night movie (think Matt Helm) into seemingly endless nonsensical shit that goes on and on. Over the course of the movie the list of stars is impressive:
Arsenio Hall
Phil Hartman
Michelle Pfieffer
Peter Horton
Sybil Danning
David Alan Grier
B.B King
Rosanna Arquette
Steve Guttenberg
Archie Hahn
T.K. Carter
Rip Taylor
Slappy White
Henny Youngman
Steve Allen
Ed Begley Jr
Kelly Preston
Andrew Dice Clay
Carrie Fisher
Bela Lugosi (albeit just footage)
Ronny Cox
Huey Lewis and finally
Robert Loggia.

For the attached clip, I couldn't decide if it was going to be the Arsenio clip, or Ed Begley as 'The Invisible Man' --but then I found one of my favorite scenes with Andrew Dice Clay and I knew instantly which would be linked for all time in the blogosphere--I found a couple of the actual clips, which were a little more graphic than I thought necessary, and then I stumbled upon this sanitized version and it fights just right.
'Your cheating days are over street meat!' Enjoy and au revoir 1987, you are gone but we still have you on youtube.com and off hours cable!

2010-07-05T08:05:00.006-04:00

Recommended Reading:

Bob Marley: A Life
by Garry Steckles

This book reads well; I enjoy the format, and Steckles creates a comfortable blend of his personal history, with a very detailed look into when and where the albums and songs were recorded. The second half does a great job honoring his worldwide contribution as just a kick-ass guy of rarefied proportions. Well done Bob, and well done Mr Steckles. Bob Marley is one of those characters we should all know something about because he was a beautiful musician born to amazing poverty and difficulty. Another life that shows us asceticism can bring so much more joy to a life and that kids are capable of amazing feats if they are squeezed hard enough. Sad on the way up, but sometimes the result of such an upbringing can change the world for all of us.

One thing I will take away and that will stick with me for a while--he was typical for a man of his time and place and fathered many children: in 1972 he became a father on April 20, May 16 and May 19--to three different women! Wow.

2010-07-03T09:02:00.001-04:00

Great Article--this is the first of five parts.. Link

It essentially is discussing the disparity between what we know and don't know and how much more important what we don't know is to our lives.

The article talks about a disease called anosognosia which is when someone has a disability that they either don't know about, or refuse to accept. It was very interesting. An example of someone with this disease was used--someone was paralyzed and you put a pencil next to their hand and ask them to pick it up and they'll say 'I don't feel like it right now' or 'I am tired'. The article is really more about how you can gauge someone's actual ineptness against their ability to understand their ineptness. If you recognize you've done something stupid, then the gaff is a departure from your something smarter existence. Maybe it was caused by a minor inexperience with the subject matter, or lack of concentration, etc. But if you've done something stupid and even in retrospect are not sure what went wrong...well that is something different entirely, isn't it?

2010-07-01T23:01:00.007-04:00

Capacity For Joy

Joy is an impression of pleasures, that is, a sense of present pleasures, a recollection of past pleasures, and a hope of future ones.-Leibniz

The best thing about humanity can also be the worst thing about humanity--we are self-aware.

It is great in that we can tune that awareness across a broad range. When things are good, we can tune into that--when they are not good, we can tune things out.

Of course the downside is that unlike a hyena, you cannot sit back and laugh at the ugliest things you see. You recognize that in anything you don't take part in, your part is bystander--or maybe accomplice. For a bleeding-heart like me, it can sometimes weigh you down. I am afforded the luxury right now of sitting in relative comfort typing away on a laptop connected wirelessly to the Internet, listening to Cake while hapless other world citizens are climbing out of rubble, starving, or being initiated as soldiers in drug-war-fueled child armies.

Were a hyena capable of being taught English, how would you explain Prozac, self-esteem or depression to it? These things only make sense in the context of self-awareness and the human ability to 'decide' how to interpret the stimulus it is presented with. But your range is something you develop and have to work to increase. I like to think of it as your 'capacity for joy'. In a lot of ways, tuning out the bad and tuning in to the good is really what it is all about. If you want things to suck right now, it is easy to think of the world in a way that will accommodate that--and vice versa.

There is only so much joy available to you today. And we all have a limitation to absorb our daily joy possibilities--I think most of us realize this. How much you channel in a day is simply some measure of your ability to process happiness--I don't think it has much to do with externals, except for maybe the most extreme of circumstances. If you are in the right mindset for something in a moment, can you not get higher from an event/news,etc than if you received the news from a lower starting point? Think about your mindset as a stock price rising and falling throughout the day, minute by minute. As news hits, it runs through the filter of the current price and its impact will be amplified/muted by this.

So then it follows for me, if you want to be 'happier' you simply need to work towards expanding your personal capacity for joy. The world is your oyster, asshole. I believe it was Carl Weathers in the golf documentary 'Happy Gilmore' that coined the phrase 'Go to your special happy place'.

The more you work to focus on the good signals the happier you will be. If you don't believe in the power of positive thinking, do yourself a favor and work on it.

2010-06-30T00:00:00.006-04:00

Pellet Stoves are a great economical and sustainable way to beat oil prices

I live in Maine and have been using it as the main heat source for two winters now. I am heating a little over 1,000 sq ft with the one I have. It cost about $2,500 but I am figuring I will break even this winter.

I buy a ton of pellets (you can get them at Home Depot, Lowes, Aubuchon, Blue Seal and a ton of places) for about $250-280/ton. The ton is comprised of 50 bags weighing 40 lbs each. My house was impossible to heat properly with just baseboard as I have a variation of A-frame which has a ton of glass and high ceilings. This stove is very efficient, kicks off a ton of heat and has been a life-saver these last two winters. Couldn't imagine living in this house without it!

Last year I bought 4 tons--paid $235/ton delivered. Stacked them 12 high along the exterior wall of the garage so I could still park in there, and I would bring in 5 bags at a whack. Except for the really cold months of Jan and Feb, I can heat my house pretty much all day with 1 bag. The bags work out to less than $5/each, so I am heating my house for $125-150/month. And that is if I want to walk around barefoot in a t-shirt. It was a mild winter this past winter to be sure, so I have over a ton left. I'll buy three this year, probably in the next month or so, and the oil guy will deliver as much oil in January as he does in July--can't go wrong with these bad boys. The fuel pellets are compressed scrap sawdust and they burn great. Here is a great article where a guy with a lot of time on his hands compared a couple of dozen brands of pellets (price, how clean they burn, efficiency, etc)

Do yourself a favor and look into them; oil isn't going to get cheaper anytime soon..its not like it is flowing free in the sea or anything.

2010-06-28T13:41:00.006-04:00

Central Asia Institute--Greg Mortenson--Three Cups of Tea

I haven't read Three Cups of Tea, but I just listened to Stones Into Schools (10 CD Audio Book) and it was impressive. What a great idea.

The guy was a climber that failed to reach the top of K2, wandered into this high altitude village all messed up from his misadventures climbing and after a brief interlude with the locals, goes on an insane mission to build schools in the most remote locations in Pakistan and then Afghanistan. And even better, the goal of the schools is to educate girls where the Taliban wants to repress them in the most ridiculous ways you've ever heard of. The Central Asia Institute is the non-profit he started and continues to build schools with. Totally worth the time; the version I listened to was read by Atossa Leoni and I thought that was a great job of casting--if someone told me I would enjoy 10 CDs worth of audio book read by the woman that starred in 'The Kite Runner' I would've laughed, but here I am recommending it. Inspiring and it will give you a very unique look into a part of the world cameras are not capturing. You think the bottom of the oceans are Earth's only undiscovered territories at this point? Read this and you'll change your mind. Give the CAI some money--they are trying to educate women in earthquake-resistant schools in a part of the world that is in disarray.

2010-06-26T09:10:00.001-04:00

A Delicious Prank

Long ago, in my early twenties I worked at a variety of restaurants. For posterity's sake, the list is
Tammany Hall (Salem, MA)
The Sandbar (Marblehead, MA) and
The Courthouse Deli (Salem, MA)
Anyhow, at the Sandbar the sous chef was this big intimidating looking guy--for some reason the Indian dude from Predator comes to mind. Anyhow, when a new waitress would come on board, he always had some ugly and mean-spirited prank to pull. The one I remember best goes something like this...
You need an accomplice that is friendly to slip into conversation with the new person that the 'bad guy' in the prank's brother was an Olympic swimmer--depending on the locale and perceived intelligence of your victim, you may want to tone it down to 'great high school swimmer' or something like that. But the point is that you need to get the victim to approach the 'bad guy' in conversation and get them to ask about their brother. You score the most points if you can get them to ask in a group setting 'So Bob, I heard your brother was an Olympic swimmer'. If you have a good bad guy, without blowing it, the bad guy has to go totally morose and say 'Where did you hear that? My brother drowned last summer.' and then just storm off.

That's it. Likely it never gets brought up again and you've totally made someone feel terrible, but it is a hell of a prank.

2010-06-24T06:58:00.002-04:00

No More Caffeine

I for years have been a major coffee-drinker. A cup in the morning before leaving for work, then I'd buy 'a cup' when I got to work, typically 16oz. Then at lunch time I would buy another 16oz. That is a lot of coffee already, but I wasn't always done--sometimes I would have coffee in the afternoon/evening. On the weekends, no trip from home of any consequence could be started without a trip to a Dunkin Donuts.
However, about 3 weeks ago I kicked the habit and I am happy that I did.

I wake up au natural, have no ups and downs anymore; it helps keep me more even-keeled. I don't think coffee ever agreed with my stomach, but you use it to stay awake or more alert than you normally would be and you don't mind that it is burning your stomach lining away.

I think the first week or so was a little difficult and I didn't feel great, but now it is great. No desire to have caffeine (although still not 100% done with coffee--slowly weaning off with Decaf coffee) and I no longer have to live from coffee to coffee, crashing out really hard at the end of the day, and re-entering each morning with a need to get coffee to get started. It is so crazy to me that now I get up and just have a glass of water instead of hot black coffee. I guess it was getting out of hand though--the above sequence lists out about 40 oz of coffee that I was pretty much definitely having every single day. I think you can get away without being moderate in your intake in one day (say binge drinking, overeating, drinking too much coffee to name a few simple immoderate possibilities) but long term I tend to try and find my way to moderation. And I clearly had gotten away from that with all that coffee so I am quitting it for now, and hopefully I can reintroduce it as a treat. I may occasionally have a coffee now and again, or a soda, or whatever--but the days of getting up and jonesing for the java are behind me. Sorry Juan Valdez, you'll have to find some other sucker to pick up the slack on your donkey payments!

2010-06-22T23:15:00.001-04:00

2 Children's Book Reviews--my 4 1/2 yr old son loves these two if you're looking for a couple of can't miss kids books

Old Granny and the Bean Thief by Cynthia DeFelice

We have read this book going on almost 10 days straight for bedtime. Silly story about an old lady that can't get help from the authorities so she enlists the help of a snake, alligator, a talking pecan, a cactus and..a talking cow patty (which obviously a 4.5 yr old finds hilarious). Great repetition, gives you a chance as the reader to do a bunch of different voices, and he loves it. Highly recommended. Good job Cindy!

The Two Bullies by Junko Morimoto

I think the simplistic nature of this story is what wins him over--plus I get to do the voice of both the strongest man in Japan and the strongest man in China (as well as the strongest man in China's mother). The Illustration is great in this book--great color and simple yet telling pictures to engage a young boy/girl. It is a nice little parable and we get a little geography/culture lesson in the mix too (we learned, if nothing else, from our 20 or so readings of this--'When it's light in Maine, it's dark in China')

He definitely liked it a lot; we got it out of the library on more than one occasion!

2010-03-19T00:15:00.001-04:00

NCAA Football

I am not a college basketball fan at all, but I love to watch their tournament. It has always been fun for me to fill out a bracket (this year I made a $25 donation to Care Share India and I am competing against a group of about 25 other participants for the chance to win a nifty Flip cam--I think the bracket raised $2,000-$3,000 for Care Share so I feel good to be a part of that!)

I wouldn't get into something like this if there wasn't a fun tournament to watch. Which brings me to college football--why don't they do this?

I am an NFL fan and I really only watch college football games to scout what is coming down the pike in the draft. I hate the bowl game system, and the end of the season is way too subjective and tradition-laden for me. The teams that won in the past already have the advantage in recruiting--rigging the system in their favor as well creates an unfair cycle of success that is no good for the game.

Here is my solution to the football problem

I have two main suggestions for improvement--objectify the rankings and play a tournament

To fix the rankings a bit here are 2 changes I'd make
1. the preseason ranking lists the top 25 based on a point system that very simply doles out points for your final ranking plus points for victories against last year's final top 25.

2. then to get this year's final rankings there are two things that matter
-25 points for being ranked 1 at end of year, down to 1 point for being ranked 25
-plus you get same points for a victory vs final weeks rankings (25 for beating final #1, 24 for beating final #2, etc)

Best of 16 tournament

Based on 1 and 2 above, the top 16 point totals make the tournament--here is how it would have worked out last year, 2009

Here is how the seeding would have worked in 2009 based on the above.

Just look at this mini bracket below for a second and tell me you don't think this would make for some kick-ass football. Low seed gets the home game and to be the National Champion, all you have to do is win 4 games over the course of the month of December (you play each Saturday in December--maybe a two week delay for the championship game so it flows into January)

--Would guarantee best team is crowned champ.
--Would give the country 15 awesome and meaningful playoff games
--Would encourage better regular season matchups. You'd still play a couple of tune ups against Appalachian State, but really coaches would be trying to guess which teams would be top 25 by year end and try to play a handful of them.

In time, the top 25 would be stronger than it is at present because the schedulers on the top teams would try harder to play each other more often.

I for one would love to see it.

..now back to my basketball bracket...already 7 losses on day 1 and 2 games left to finish!

2010-03-11T06:15:00.011-05:00

Hotel Rwanda vs. Sometimes in April--two films made reasonably close together both about the genocide in Rwanda--I suggest watching both, but there is a major difference in them and I want to discuss it.

I actually took a 1/2 year social studies elective at my public high school, junior year, called 'Holocausts'.
The majority of the course was of course spent
discussing the Nazi Holocaust of WW II.

There was also a portion of the course about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. And we discussed more broadly how holocausts come about and what could cause societies to kill a group of people.

I graduated high school in 1993. I remember being intensely consumed by the material and the subject matter in this course, but I felt detached and at a certain level desensitized because I couldn't believe in our times and with the world as 'advanced' as it was, that this type of mass murder would/could take place again.

In April of 1994 a violent genocide began in Rwanda. Long standing tribal issues had been artificially exacerbated over the prior years to try and jumpstart a civil war. In a nutshell, the ruling ethnicity of Rwanda had long been the Tutsi tribe--the Tutsi were the closer group to the ruling colonial powers (Germany first, then Belgium) and so they had leverage when the European leaders and political backbone left. The Hutu people far outnumbered the Tutsi people, yet the Tutsis had the upper-hand economically, politically, etc. In the years preceding the genocide there were a lot of flare-ups and increasing anti-Tutsi activity.

On April 6, 1994 the plane used by the President of Rwanda was shot down (the President of Burundi was on board as well). The Tutsi army came under attack by Hutu rebels and was briefly overthrown. It took a few months for the Tutsi army to re-establish their control, during which time an all out genocide had left more than 500,000 Tutsi people in a matter of a few months. There were essentially two wars--the Tutsi army fought the Hutu rebel forces, and in the streets the majority Hutu civilians were murdering Tutsis. It was a spontaneous break out of neighbors killing their neighbors with machetes; there was rampant rape and murder in all parts of the country.

It was over by July. Some estimates stand closer to 1,000,000 deaths and 500,000 rapes of Tutsi, and many moderate Hutu women as well.(wikipedia entry) To continue the horror, after the violence was stopped and control of the country was taken back, 2 million Hutus fled to neighboring countries, especially Zaire, where they lived in poorly funded and managed refugee camps. Thousands of Hutus would starve or die of disease before organized efforts were able to bolster the camps, and return refugees to Rwanda.

So now that I've given you a little background if you didn't have it, I want to make mention of the two movies.

Hotel Rwanda (2004) is a very poignant film starring Don Cheadle (also Nick Nolte and Joaquin Phoenix). It is a good movie, capturing a lot of what happened during this period. When I saw it the first time, it was after I had already absorbed a lot of actual information about this genocide. I had also already seen Sometimes in April (2005), a made for HBO movie.

Sometimes in April was much grittier and more realistic about the outcomes and what the aftermath really looked like. I think Hotel Rwanda tried to emulate some of the characteristics of a documentary and honored the dead as best as a film could hope to do. But at some point this movie realized it was more of a Hollywood movie. It diverted from reality and retreated (in my estimation) into a more common 'good will eventually prevail' message. It created things that were not there, fabricating rays of sunshine in order to help us leave the theater with some hope in humanity. Conversely, I never got much of a sense from Sometimes In April that it cared very much whether I was watching at all, never mind wondering how I'd feel later if the story were too difficult to take in. And I appreciated that and felt like I got the perspective that best told this story.

I suggest watching both to get a clear view of the difference between (a) a film that is trying to educate the viewer--not a documentary in the truest sense, but a film that is documenting a major event nonetheless, versus (b) a movie created to entertain first, but with a need to document a major event that required a certain solemnity and respect as well. In some ways the difference was subtle or even minor; but in some other big ways it was a glaring weakness of Hotel Rwanda to have had the larger budget and bigger names like Cheadle, Nolte and Joaquin Phoenix.

I think had Don Cheadle and the stars of Hotel Rwanda been in Sometimes In April, it still could have been the more accurate document of the two, but larger stars usually are compelled to consider their own personal aftermaths when they select each role. It is sometimes not desirable to do a great job in an ultra-realistic movie about something difficult and disturbing; complex and ugly. I imagine had Don Cheadle read both scripts, he most certainly would choose Hotel Rwanda again--and it was a solid movie that remained true to the overall story it represented.

But if you are only going to see one of these movies, pick Sometimes in April; it is told from a more accurate and realistic viewpoint and maintains that tone for the whole time. You will walk away appreciative that you got the opportunity to be thoroughly entrenched in the events; the better to understand and recognize the significance of that ugly year in Rwanda.

2010-03-06T06:15:00.029-05:00

Interesting article comparing revenue generated per employee for Yahoo and Google.

The time period was Q4 2009 and
Google employees generated $336,467 each on average
Yahoo employees generated $124,000 each on average

The employees at the company I work for generated about $100,000 each on average for the same period. Not too shabby.

2010-03-05T18:15:00.002-05:00

This is nifty. This thing is made of Legos and it has a little camera, takes a handful of pictures to figure out where the Rubik's Cube is...and then it does the spinning until the Rubik's Cube is solved. Pretty neat I thought

2010-03-04T06:15:00.019-05:00

I remember reading in Freakonomics how much more dangerous it is for kids to have a pool in the house than a gun in the house. I have young kids and so I think about this type of statistic for a while longer than non-parents I guess.

Well, this seems like a cool answer to that problem--I am waiting to hear back from this company as it seems they have developed an excellent product called the Hydrofloor.

It is a slow-moving cover for a pool that slowly descends to the bottom of the pool. It would be the perfect pool cover for an indoor/covered pool, because when it is up, you can walk on the floor. You can drop the pool to a bunch of different depths, all the way down to the bottom of your pool.

At this point in time, it is probably extremely expensive (I have an email in to the company to see just how ridiculously expensive). Also they are in Belgium and seem only to be serving Western Europe for now--but once it starts gaining momentum, this type of thing will be all over.

2010-03-03T06:15:00.002-05:00

This is a test worth taking. I really felt I answered honestly and that I might not be able to take more than a half dozen baboons, so I was happy to come out with 36!

Created by Oatmeal

2010-03-01T06:15:00.005-05:00

Science gets cooler every day.

This link is to an article in the Economist about a printer of sorts that can print out various tissues--a generation of this machine not too far off will 'print' a skin graft right on to you.

The guys that developed this already have been using it to 'print' out organs. They have successfully reproduced 7 different bladders that were implanted in people.

Wow

2010-02-28T06:10:00.002-05:00

Movie Review
Religulous - Bill Maher

It was funny. Probably you aren't watching unless you are already kind of anti-organized religion anyway; that being the case, you'll find at least some of it very funny. It stars just Maher and the people he finds around the world to interview. It was directed by Larry Charles that directed Borat, and that was evident--it has a little of the guerilla-social media feel where the participants really don't know what they're signing up for when they agree to appear.

He interviews a variety of kooks that make all of their respective religions look terrible. He took care to find people that were stereotypical followers of their respective religions, while also being that type of person that embodies the well-documented underbelly of the religions too--that was my favorite aspect of course; 'the casting', if you will. Basically he found idiots that could spout doctrine. Having highly committed nitwits each defend their own religion was the easiest way to get the unflattering limitations out on the table.

There are some great edits that squeeze clips in the pause between some questions and the respondents' answers that are pretty funny. He did make a Senator from Arkansas look like the idiot that he is--that was a great scene actually. It ends with Maher jumping all over this guy regarding evolution.

Maher: Do you believe in Evolution?
Senator Dumbass: Well, there seems to be a lot of debate in the scientific community about it and..
Maher: No. Scientists agree very thoroughly on this subject.
Senator Dumbass: Wellll.....
Maher: Do you really think the story involves one man, one woman, and a snake in a garden?
Senator Dumbass: I do think it could have.
Maher: Well, this is what pisses me off. You are a Senator, and you get to make decisions about how this country is run and yet you are ok with that story.
Senator Dumbass: (laughing) Well, you don't have to pass an IQ test to be a Senator
Maher: (staring back at this imbicile, not laughing)
Senator Dumbass: (no longer laughing or smiling)
cut to next scene

That interview was 'funny--scary' because it is was probably pretty true to how the interview went and Maher probably had to do minimal editing to make that interview go that way.

It ended up being more of an attack on a dozen knuckleheads than the religions they were representing, but he has a couple of diatribes in the movie that tried to paint with a broader brush.

His final monologue was ok--worth listening to if you like Bill Maher. The one point he made I was glad he snuck in was a complaint about religious moderates: that little feeling of comfort you get for being a moderate (ie we go to church on Christmas, we don't eat pork because we're Jewish, etc) comes at a cost--it gives more legitimacy to extremists if they are extremists for a religion with millions of followers. If the moderates walked away, you'd be left with a much smaller cult that would be easier to deal with. When millions are involved, governments have more difficulty acting against these extremists.

For me, I wanted to see Catholicism and Islam taken to task harder; the one for being able to get away with thousands of known child molestations, and Islam for being so violent right now.

2010-02-15T12:35:00.002-05:00

Interesting and simple concept for a blog runningfromcamera.blogspot.com

This guy apparently lives in Rotterdam, Germany and he posts up to two posts per month of him setting his 2 second delay on his camera, and running directly away from it. What you get is a nice picture of where he isand of course, his back in mid stride about 10 feet away. A lot of the pictures are nice and it is more creative than you and your wife waving in front of all the different places you go on vacation!

2010-02-15T06:00:00.025-05:00

HOWARD ZINN 1922-2010

I have had a bumper sticker on the trunk of my car for the last couple of years that read 'Zinn/Chomsky: Your 2008 White House'. I came up with it because I wanted to make the point that it is visionary intellectuals that need to move us ahead in this world--how great would things be if these guys were put in the legitimate roles of authority in the White House.

The lawyers and related prick-like characters that fill the halls of Washington right now are evil in that they are selling away the country for their silly and inconsequential self-interests and small things like that are wasting our time and money while a lot of things remain as bad as ever.

That was the greatest truth Zinn brought to me--the realization that there are very few actual bad guys out there. The major evil comes to pass when the people in power allow a particular group to get things done to help them make money, without really looking at or caring about the consequences for the people involved. Being a Senator is so commonly a 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' situation these days, where the thing in question is 'the consequences of the pork they pass, or the bills they kill, etc) That type of ambivalence or indifference is the ugliest evil.

Howard Zinn passed away from a heart attack in Santa Monica, CA on January 27th. He was 87.
I cannot do justice to those 87 years, but I wanted to do my small part to propogate the rememberance and spread his word.

A bombadier in WWII, he got out and went on to obtain his undergraduate degree and his Ph. D. from Columbia on the GI bill. He went down to Atlanta to teach history at the predominantly black Spelman College from 1956-63--not the easiest time in America to be a radical advocate of civil rights. In 1964 he took a position at Boston University (he spend most of the rest of his life in Mass) and retired in 1988.

He was a great activist--marching, speaking and writing against everything that is unjust. Civil rights, Vietnam, Iraq, War and the military industrial complex in general, and really anything that crossed his path that had an element of class warfare or oppression of some sort--these were the things he fought tirelessly for and he was highly influential.

His greatest tangible contributions were
'A People's History of the United States', (1980) a solid look at America from the first European landing and
          the viewpoint is truthful and direct. His other great work was
'You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train' (1994), which speaks to the need for active participation in the
          processes that are being manipulated from self-interested groups that will continue to profit with the
          status quo and will work hard to maintain it.

Here is one of many great quotes that have come from all corners just in the last few weeks since his passing--this is Noam Chomsky:
"When action has been called for, one could always be confident that he would be on the front lines, an example and trustworthy guide."

Here is a link to start if you want to learn more--but really reading The People's History will do a lot more to explain Mr. Zinn to you ; it will be an eye-opening experience for sure.

2010-02-13T03:12:00.001-05:00

Super Bowl XLIV
Indianapolis v New Orleans (my stellar 3,800 word recap of the greatest game I've ever watched)

I've been a Saints fan since I was a little guy, close to 20 years so I am very happy to be talking about the Super Bowl and mentioning New Orleans not just as the venue, but as one of the participant teams WHO DAT!--to be honest, it has only been five days and the fact that they won has still not fully set in on me. But my voice is starting to come back and I am not waiting another 20 years to take me shot at two-bit post game commentary of my team in the big game. And it was a hell of a game--here is why I say that.

You had several story lines worth following--
-the Saints first Superbowl,
-Peyton Manning and the Colts could have been playing for perfection,
-the two top seeds dueling for the title
-Peyton Manning playing against his hometown team, the team his dad Archie played his whole career
for..and on and on.

For a real football fan these were all interesting sideshows, but the story line for many of us was 'can Manning put up more points than Brees despite having to do it against a much better defense?'...There seemed like 100 hours of coverage on Dwight Freeney's ankle, and no doubt that didn't help them--but let's face it: Brees gets rid of the ball so fast, defensive lines have little chance to get to him. A few plays a game he gets greedy and tries to throw really deep, but you'll notice that typically when they want to throw deep, they set him up by rolling him to his right.

Emmitt Smith flipped the coin and we won the toss!
1st Qrtr
NO gets the ball, goes 3 and out (Brees throws 50 yd incompletion on 3rd and 2)...jitters
IND marches 53 yrds and kicks a 37 yarder
NO gets a first down and almost gets to midfield before punting--Roby downs it on the IND 4.
IND marches again, second straight 11 play drive--this one is 96 yds culminating in a TD 10-0
NO gets the ball on their own 11 with :36 left in the 1st qrtr

2nd Qrtr
NO from their own 15 in 3 plays they get to IND 41
   -Reggie runs for 8
   -Reggie runs for 1 more and gets decked out of bounds, 15 yd penalty
   -9 yd dump off to Pierre Thomas

This was a huge drive. Down 10-0 with Manning on the other sideline, most teams are done. The Saints had a lot of experience playing from behind and have confidence they can score, so desperation never set in. These 3 plays covered a lot of field, brought them almost to FG range from their own 11...the jitters clearly started melting for everyone and it was a battle from here on in. You could feel the switch flip.

Colston catches a 10 yd pass, and there are a few other plays to get them to 3rd and 3 on the 22. Right where you want to be: except Bushrod got beat and Freeney got an arm on Brees and spun him to the ground back on the 29. Shit. All right, the young Garret Hartley comes out and boldly kicks a 46 yarder. 10-3. We're only a score down.

I personally had the feeling that the next time Drew touched the ball he could tie the game, so I was able to breathe again.

Now this drive again turns out to be huge.

IND gets the ball with just over 9 min left in the half, on their own 28 (I think this was their best starting field position--the kicking game was totally owned by NO all day)

Addai opens with a nice 9 yd run. Dammit! On 2nd down though, Vilma comes crashing through and catches him flat-footed for a 3 yd loss. And then a huge play 3rd and 4--Manning throws a beautiful pass to Garcon on a 6 yd slant route and he just plain drops it. Jitters on his part? We know he had relatives in Haiti and potentially they weighed heavily on him, slowing him that fraction.

Whatever the reason, he drops it and the punter comes on, giving the Saints the ball back on their own 28 with about 8 min left in the half.
Colston picked up 13 on a 3rd and 3, and then Lance Moore had a ginormous 21 yd catch and run on 3rd and 2...they were cruising, now sitting pretty 1st and 10 on the IND 23 in about 3 minutes.

The old Sean Payton reared his head for a second; he got cute and ran a reverse, despite the fact that Brees was throwing forward anywhere he liked. I distinctly remember yelling at Devery Henderson to 'throw that fucking thing!' when it became apparent that he was going to get tackled well behind the line on a terrible reverse. He didn't throw it, but he did end up running out of bounds, leaving us with a 2nd and 17 on the 30. The moment didn't last though as the next play BAM, Brees hits Colston across the middle for 27 and we're almost in the endzone. We're about to take the lead with 4 minutes to go!

A pass to the flat to Lance Moore--stonewalled. Then an offsides call on Strief (FRIG!). Pierre would get all that back on more on the next play though, pounding down to the 1. 3rd and 1, Bell trips. That really sucked--he just kind of tripped himself up, and was swarmed where he lay. 4th and 1. It was getting pretty tough to watch all of a sudden. They were going for it and they were going to run that same play--Pierre this time and he didn't trip, but the line never quite got any push and IND stuffed him behind the line.

I was relatively calm at this point thinking that the clock and field position were good, and with luck and clock management they would have a chance to get those three pts back.

IND did the smart thing and run up the gut 3 straight times--interestingly they ran Mike Hart, then Addai, and then gave the 3rd down to Mike Hart again? Anyhow, Payton was very smart and waited to use a time out until after 2nd down. Then they used #2 after 3rd down--and it was close. Hart almost got the 1/2 killing first down, but no dice--they would have to kick.

If the Colts still were coached by Dungy, I think something more imaginative would have taken place, but Caldwell, the rookie coach that almost went undefeated, was nervous and just ran up the middle bam, bam, bam.

Bush got it at his own 44 and brought it back 4 yds-- :35 seconds left. You had the feeling they needed one first down up the middle with a seam route to Shockey, or a cross to Colston, and we would get a shot to kick.

It was neither of those guys, but Devery--who I will no longer underestimate. He is open on the hash-mark for 19 yds; if you ever get a chance to see this replay, this is the part you want to see. The Saints were on a mission--they lined up and spiked the ball to save the timeout.

It was as impressive as any other play all night. The play began with :35 seconds. Devery catches a ball 19 yards downfield, gets taken down, Drew gets everyone up to the line and spikes it.....with :23 left. It was so awesome. At that point, you had to feel something was brewing.

Next play he looks deep, but doesn't see it downfield. Instead the dish is to Devery about 5 yds upfield, but he can't get out of bounds. They call the last timeout with :11 left. Enough for one more shot to the endzone--they are after all on the IND 27 at this point. But the play didn't materialize, and Drew was quick to forget his endzone shot--it was clear he didn't like what he saw right off because he dumped it to Reggie in the flat real quick; Reggie got out after a 1 yd gain, and Hartley came in to kick a 43 yarder. Half over, IND up 10-6. What a friggin half, and although NO had to kick off it was anyone's game at this point.

I would like to say so far, Manning has been the man in the first half. He had 4 possessions, got a FG and TD from the first two drives--Garcon ruined the third drive with a dropped ball and the last possession he was on his own 1 yd line inside two minutes. So at this point I am really sweating out the second half, knowing this guy is on tonight.

Obviously Payton was thinking the same thing because he made the decision to open the second half with an onside kick--they called it their phantom kick because the kicker, Morstead, put some nasty spin on it where it went more than 10 yards but clearly was curving back towards the charging left side of the Saints kick team.

If I said Hank Baskett was unlucky, I would be foolish as he recently married Kendra Wilkinson recently. Not sure how many meteors would have to crush and kill him before I will net him out to 'unlucky'. However, he was butter-fingered on this day--the kick hit him at a tough angle, but he should have pounced on it. It is the Super Bowl, and you are paid a lot of money to be on the kick team.

So the kick grazes Baskett, and sails right to Chris Reis a full-time special teamer--he doesn't get it cleanly, and before a two ton mass of humanity obscures him from the world, we see the ball head towards his nether regions. GODDAMIT, SHIT, WHO HAS IT? This was the longest 'unpiling' I have ever seen in an NFL game and in fact, I can't think of a lot of porno movies that took longer to unpile.

How long did it take to unpile? Here is a link to the video of this epic onside kick if you want to really get into this post. Finally the beautiful zebraic gesture you always want to see after such an unpiling--an arm in a black and white striped short sleeve goes up and kind of tomahawks towards the end zone you want it to be facing. SAINTS' BALL. SAINTS' BALL. SAINTS' BALL. And Reis is the guy that came out with it! I can't believe it. What a shot in the arm that was for Drew and the offense.

Drew comes out, on his own 42 and throws 4 straight darts, for 12, 9,5 and 9 yards, the last to Colston, setting up 2nd and 1 on the IND 23! Manning is reeling--and we're in the second half. When Apollo is reeling in the second half, that is the fight when Rocky finishes him off. I think we are going to win this game. There is at least a shitload of blood in the water and Drew is just slicing and dicing.

Pierre gashes the out-of-breath d-line for 7 to easily pick up the first, and on the very next play, Drew sets up a picture perfect screen to the right side. Pierre does the rest, cutting and shoving his way from the 16 into the endzone. I will long remember his totally gratuitous (and sweet) dive into the endzone from the 1 foot line with no one around him. He slams to the beautiful gold-painted endzone, the kick is tacked on and folks, the Saints are leading the Superbowl 13-10 with about 12 minutes to go in the 3rd quarter.

Like usual, cue a camera to Peyton Manning--he is throwing warm ups and getting ready to absolutely torch a defense. It had been 70 minutes in real time since Manning had attempted a pass. That pass was the 3rd down drop by Garcon, and that had come with 8:30 to go in the 2nd quarter--the Colts had since gone from being up 10-0 to down 13-10. You think he was pissed off? Oh yeah.

And true to form, he came out on fire. He got the ball on his own 24 and went 10 plays for another touchdown. He went 5 for 6, including the pass of the day, a 27 yarder to Dallas Clark. Manning rolled out at midfield on 3rd and 4, and dropped a ball in right over a linebacker, and right under the corner--hitting Clark right in stride. It was honestly a great play all around; no mistakes by anyone, just a pass and catch by a couple of hall of famers that have been practicing that play for years.

After the Clark grab, it became obvious they were going to score--inevitably it was another Clark catch and two runs--the TD was a 4 yard Addai run right up the gut. Ellis and the defensive line were no doubt gassed after the onslaught of Manning and his unique style of hurry up that consumes every second of every play clock. He is the master.

Tack on the extra point and the Colts are back up 17-13. They kick off and the Saints get it back with 6:08--on the 34 after a great run back out of the end zone by Roby. He had that great run, he made a great tackle on the first punt of the game and he also was the guy that downed the second NO punt on the IND 4. I would call that a great day for a special teamer.

Pierre runs up the middle for 5, and Reggie takes a check down for 13 to cross mid-field. He was fired up on that run, straight-arming everything that came near him.

Brees threw a rare incompletion--he was looking deep and when the pocket closed in, tried to fire off to Bush in the flat, but put too much on it. The next pass was a 12 yarder to Devery to move the chains. But then a screen to Meachem for no gain, and a 3 yard run up the middle brought us to 3rd and 7 on the IND 33.

I think on this play Drew wanted to go deep (what else is new), because it had all the trappings of a bomb but he either didn't like it, or got nervous and took the second (or maybe third) read in Shockey--it was not right on target and he had to go down to make the catch, short of the sticks. 4th and 4 on the IND 30. Enter Hartley again--and he nailed it again, a 47 yarder. 3 for 3 to bring us within 1 point, IND 17 NO 16.

What a friggin nail biter--NO kicks off and IND starts the drive on their own 11 with 1:06 left in the 3rd--no penalty either. Their kick returner was trying to spark something, but Malcom Jenkins, our stellar first round pick this year from OHIO ST came in and blew him up on the 11. That was a huge kick in Manning's ass. You could tell he was like 'Jesus..am I ever going to get it outside the 20?'...not today amigo.

Although, 2 passes and a run later and they were out to the 29 just like that. End of the 3rd quarter. IND had the ball and the lead in the 3rd quarter, and they were again building momentum.

THE BEST 4TH QUARTER OF ANYTHING, EVER

-Beer sales are officially over for the NFL season. See you next year, might as well go home.

SHIT, Manning opens the quarter with a 17 yd pass to Garcon. They're at midfield almost. GODDAMMIT
Not quite though, as we see on the next play when Vilma again bursts through his gap and gets Addai for a 2 yd loss. Just like that I'm thinking, nowhere near midfield. It is a 2nd and 12 from the IND 44. Incomplete pass to Wayne--he was going for the kill shot and it was short. Had Wayne adjusted quicker, it would have been pass interference on Porter and the game may have gotten out of hand--it was down around the 10. But he didn't. Next play-
3rd and 12--Manning is the iceman, and he picks up 10 on a pass to Wayne. In NO territory, you know they're going for it on 4th and 2. Which they convert, fairly easily--Wayne beats Porter inside on a quick slant and picks up 14! How pissed was I at Porter! PORTER YOU GODDAMNED SONOFABITCH, HAVE YOU EVER EVEN SEEN A COLTS GAME--THAT IS THEIR PLAY!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT THERE?!

All right, calm down--it is far from over. They pick up 2 on a run, and then lose 3 on a swing pass/screen to Collie--this time it is Jenkins that comes crashing through to corral him. 3rd and 11 and who is covering Collie on the goal line? Vilma, that's who--what a friggin LB this guy is; he had totally boxed Collie out like he was told what route the kid was running and if he looked up a second earlier, maybe picks it off. NICE. They aren't going for it on 4th and 11! On comes the kicker.

Stover you old prick--he missed horribly. It looked ok at first and then the air came out, or the magnets turned on, or whatever; it pulled way left and if I remember correctly, it didn't even reach--it was only a 51 yd attempt..pitiful.

NO ball, 10:39 left on their own 44--down by 1 point. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

First play, from the shotgun, Reggies takes it 12 yds off left tackle. 1st and 10 on the IND 47 just like that.

Three straight passes that were very short, controlled passes; Thomas for 5, Henderson for 6, Reggie for 8, then Colston for 8--then a broken play that Meachem tiptoed up the sideline to turn into a 6 yd gain. Everything was going right and Brees was just shredding the Colts DBs. Way too quick for any pressure to get to him, so quick that the LBs were basically spectators. Brees was just finding the open guy and firing darts.

After the nice Meachem play they are on the 14! Drew throws the next one to Dave Thomas, the auxiliary tight end who may have had 10 catches all year, but probably less--and he fights his way down to the 5.

1st and goal, for the lead.

Pierre picks up 3 and then a quick inside slant to Shockey in the slot--no chance to stop that, he just boxes out, and Drew hums it right in there on the money. TOUCHDOWN NO 22 IND 17 5:46
Stay cool, this is an obvious 2 point situation.

They run Lance Moore out to the flat and he gets a little deeper than normal (he mentions this in his comments afterwards)--he actually sets foot in the endzone as he is breaking out to the right. Drew is used to hitting him on about the 1 and having him dive in, but Moore thought he would serve himself better running the corner further back into the endzone, so he went with it--the pass is right where it always is, but Lance is three feet north, so he adjusts in on it, makes a great low grab and contorts himself to dunk the ball over the line in the same motion as the catch. Excellent concentration, presence of mind, body control, all that stuff. He makes it! But the line judge right there motions that Lance didn't have control--the corner came in late and ran right through Lance's outstretched arms, kicking the ball out. Payton tosses the challenge flag and in super slo-mo it is evident that Lance had it and it broke the plane, 2 points.

WE'RE NOW UP 24-17 with less than 6 minutes after being down 10-0. At this point, Saints fans are hoping the defense can at least help us with the clock so that after Manning scores, we have enough time to drive down for the last second FG. Ok, maybe not all of us, but I know I wasn't alone either.

IND finally gets a good return, and start on their own 29 with 5:35 to go. It's on.

Manning starts--right off, a nice gain to Garcon for 17, but then throws incomplete to Wayne--Jenkins got a great jump and almost picks it off, instead knocking it out of bounds. But then Manning goes right back to Garcon for another 10. SHIT

This time Manning connects with Wayne for 12 up the middle. They're on the NO 36. My palms would be sweating if my fists would unclench enough for air to get inside.

Another 5 yarder to Wayne to the 31, then an incompletion to Collie. I believe that one was tipped by an LB, and popped into the air harmlessly falling near no one.

Now it is 3rd and 5 and Manning needs to stay short to convert and keep it going, plenty of time (3:24 left) but he knows he needs a first down. This is when the NO defensive coordinator Gregg Williams dials up a heavy blitz to make him rush. Not sure how much the actual pressure was a direct factor, but clearly Porter expected the ball to come out quick. Wayne does a little shimmy step towards the outside to pull Porter outside--Wayne didn't do a great job of selling it, but Porter was coming inside from jumpstreet anyway--you could tell on replay he knew exactly how this play would go down.

Manning throws inside, the depth of Wayne should have made it a completion right at the sticks--but at this moment, Porter steps in front of Wayne--a full step, even outside of Wayne's reach, makes a textbook catch and starts heading upfield. The only Colt that has a snowball's chance of making the tackle--no, the only Colt that even appears onscreen as Porter is flying upfield is Manning himself. Of course, he is being ridden towards the sidelines by one of the lineman, maybe Ellis, maybe Ayodele--there is no danger of him even touching Porter. Tracy Porter will finish the play 74 yards downfield in the endzone. NO goes up 31-17 with 3:12 left. It is the Saints new greatest play ever.

I love that I can now Google 'Tracy Porter's interception' and there are a dozen pictures, all similar to this.

Best. Pick-six. Ever.

That was game. Manning would drive the Colts down to the 3 with less than a minute left, but his last pass would be dropped by Wayne on the goalline. Drew kneels it down once and that is all she wrote.

It was one of the best Super Bowls I've ever seen, it lived up to the hype and showcased two teams that executed very well. In the end, Payton had his guys tuned up a bit more and he took more risks--that onside kick obviously was the huge difference-maker. But the little things, like going for it on 4th towards halftime, and letting Williams blitz even though Manning is as close to blitz-proof as you can get--these were the little things that added up to hurrying Manning just a bit, and getting into his head to mess with that perfect delivery.

Finally it all came together--they deserved it and they went out and took it.

2010-02-12T18:15:00.080-05:00

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Have you heard of it? It is an area about 1,700 miles long about 1,000 miles off the coast of California, and about 1,000 miles N of Hawaii. How long is that? Get in your car in Boston and start driving South and West. When you've driven 1,700 miles you are in Dallas, TX. Holy shit!

Here is the wikipedia link which gives a decent description of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It has been speculated about since the late 80s, but satellite photos are not able to get it because it is not one big mass of milk cartons, but instead millions of tiny particles and small pieces--and they are in the water, not on it. Here is a quote from Miriam Goldstein, a captain of a research voyage to it:

"There’s no island, there’s no eighth continent, it doesn’t look like a garbage dump. It looks like beautiful ocean. But then when you put the nets in the water, you see all the little pieces."

It was 'discovered' in 1997 by a guy named Charles Moore in a Pacific Ocean boat race--he was so amazed he has been raising awareness ever since. In 2009 a project was undertaken by a joint US/Japanese venture trying to clean it up Project Kaisei. And this next link is for their actual site which has a handful of interesting videos about what they call the Plastic Vortex.

We're trash producers that is for sure--hell, I'm staring at a styrofoam Dunkin Donuts cup right now. I try and recycle as much as possible and tread a little lighter every year. Hopefully we'll figure out a way to clean it up--f'ing up thousands of square miles of oceans can't be a good thing.

2010-02-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

Another Valuable Article from Time Out New York

What is going on in there?

If you are ever in New York and you have to take a piss, these spots are to be avoided--I imagine the lines are long

2010-02-01T07:00:00.002-05:00

The greater part of our happiness depends on our disposition and not on our circumstances.
-Martha Washington

2010-01-31T07:45:00.006-05:00

Windham, ME--birthplace of the one and only Jeff Donnell (yes, this is a woman).

she was born in 1922 and was a regular on General Hospital when she had a heart attack in 1988 and passed away. they wrote her character out by saying she won the lottery..which in a manner of speaking was true I guess....

2010-01-29T22:42:00.004-05:00

The Queen of Jordan's website

Why did I post this?
(a) this page is one of only 43 that Bill Gates follows on twitter,
(b) the page is a neat concept
(c) she may be the world's hottest 39 yr old mother of 4

her wikipedia entry

I will let you decide...

2010-01-29T20:00:00.002-05:00

Jan 29-Feb 19, 2010--Selections from the Filmography

Infinite Jest was the greatest work of fiction ever written in my estimation.

A small but excellent part of the book is in the end notes--'the filmography of James O Incandenza', repeatedly referenced throughout the book adding to the genius and the laughs. This filmography itself is almost a standalone work as it is detailed (for a fake list of movies a character in a fictional novel made). Just reading the absurd list of synopses is worth the price of admission.
I obviously am not the only person that had that thought as someone commissioned some filmmakers to take their best shot at actually filming some of the movies from the filmography. The exhibition is on in NYC starting today through mid-Feb. Sounds interesting.

2010-01-28T06:50:00.001-05:00

Food Inc

(you can stream this to your PC for free if you subscribe to Netflix)

Very powerful film.

To have the biggest food issues in America outlined with all the hard truths and ugly facts uncovered made for a tough 94 minutes to sit through, but I suggest you do it—especially if you never heard much about big agriculture and its negative aspects.

Story of a young boy that died from E. coli seems like an isolated incident; until they point out how many large eat recalls are coming out, and they are becoming more frequent as big farming gets bigger.

Any of us could die from the lack of care the food system takes in trying to keep us from dying 5,000 people a year die from E. coli a year).

Monsanto genetically engineers soybeans—if a farmer buys them, he isn’t allowed to collect the seed from this year to plant next year. They have investigators come and check in if you are suspected, and of course, they have an idea how much you should be buying.

Food Inc explained that a farmer who doesn’t even buy their genetically modified bullshit can become a patent infringer even if he nevers buys any of it; if his neighbor’s farms genetically modified seed pollinates his crop and becomes a part of his crop, Monsanto can sue you. If they test your crop and find enough of their modified gene in it, you can no longer collect your own seed anymore..it becomes their seed.

Monsanto is an evil company, no denying it. They make chemicals that do stuff, and then they set to work sticking them up your ass, whether you like it or not—dead or alive. And they are very good at getting people that have worked for them into big FDA and USDA positions so things go their way. Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice Thomas, was actually a Monsanto lawyer for a long time.

I spent 2 years working for a dairy right near my home and Monsanto took that dairy to court while I was there—they were in court the whole time I worked there, settling just before I moved on. Monsanto sued them simply for advertising ‘No Artificial Growth Hormones’ on their milk. That’s it.

Not ‘Growth Hormones are Bad’ or

‘Monsanto would kill you and you kids in a heartbeat for $.10’

They put a little burst on the gallon to catch on with the organic crowd. They called it their ‘farmer’s pledge’.

Well, after a lot of money was spent (in many cases, continued legal expense is just a means of extortion to get people to sign otherwise nonsensical documents to shut them up and making them stop doing things) the dairy finally settled. The settlement involved them having to add verbiage to the little ‘No Artificial Growth Hormone’ burst that basically said

‘*There is nothing wrong with Artificial Growth Hormone’

They were just flexing their muscles and smacking around the little guys to send a message to milk producers everywhere. ‘you wanna get cute and make a statement? We’ll sick a pack of lawyers on you and divert every penny you make to lawyers for the next 3 years, so think twice about saying a word.’ It’s highly effective. It’s the American way!

Here is a link to a Vanity Fair story outlining the villainous ways of Monsanto.

Vanity Fair article 2008

There are 13 major slaughterhouses in America and an unbelievable percentage of all meat we eat runs through one of them. The animals and workers are both severely abused and when they are doing their part in the chain it is miserable and they have zero choice but to comply. The control in the industry is so consolidataed, no farmer or little guy has a snowball’s chance in hell.

I just get so seethingly frustrated after watching a movie like this.

I found it eye-opening—we all eat and unless you are growing everything you consume on your own property, and you live very far from anyone else, the subject matter affects you directly.

2010-01-27T08:00:00.001-05:00

FLAP (Flexible Light and Power)

This is a great idea—here are a couple of links to learn more.

Poptech-FLAP

Timbuk2-FLAP

Essentially someone came up with a very cheap way to get power to people in remote locations—FLAP is a messenger bag with a couple of solar cells on it that collect power for a light that is built into the bag, and the bag also has a USB port so you can charge a cell phone and or other small electronics.

The concept is about empowering people that live in remote areas and the bags are sold in groups to charitable Americans and then sent on to places in Africa, South America—I’m sure right now Haiti could use some of these.

There is a link to the order form—the price is somehow based on the purchasing organization’s ability to pay.

2010-01-26T18:00:00.000-05:00

The Iris Network

The Iris Network is a non-profit organization that works to help the Blind and Visually Impaired in a variety of ways (visit their website for more info).

One specific offering I like is Maine AIRS (Audio Information Reading Service)

They have volunteer readers that read the local newspapers. This is broadcast over an SCA (subsidiary channel audio) receiver. It is a great service and they are doing something that is not offered anywhere else.

Keep up the good work Les and crew.

2010-01-25T18:01:00.001-05:00

Interesting concept

Soccer Moms Playing Poker

Time Out New York article that somehow got caught in the gravity of my google reader subscription list..seems like it is adding to itself while I sleep

however, this is something worth passing on..a semi-tasteful shot of 4 soccer moms playing cards in the buff..but that is not the hook here for me--that is the link at the bottom of the article that says 'date this mom' with a link to a personals ad! great stuff

2010-01-25T06:15:00.002-05:00

Idea for a New Reality Series

'The Bucket List'

Here it is—an hour long show broken up in two distinct parts.

The first 30 minutes are 2 or 3 people making their case for the network to grant them an item on their bucket list. They go over why they deserve it, how cool it is, and why it is something important for them to do.

Then viewers vote online, or text, etc to decide which of that episodes contestants will get to do the thing they want to do.

The second half of the show will be one or more former winners doing the thing they won the chance to do.

A skier with German heritage has always wanted to ski the Alps. A single mom always wanted to bungee jump. A father of five has always wanted to introduce his nuclear family to his Australian grandparents. A college student wants to visit Africa to help him decide on his major. And of course, can you say 'HOT AIR BALLOON RIDE'?

I think there are tons of potential gems to mine here...are you paying attention FOX??

2010-01-24T21:18:00.000-05:00

Great Site

http://www.foxsearchlight.com/choke/

this is a Chuck Palahniuk movie (he also wrote Fight Club) but what I like best about this site is the fact that the soundtrack is embedded on the front page and plays automatically. There are at least half a dozen great songs!

2010-01-23T16:30:00.002-05:00

Old School Money Lending

At the turn of the century, I worked in a dairy with a group of guys from Southeast Asia. One in particular gave me some insight on a money lending deal that would allow someone who had just come to America the chance to get their hands on a good-sized sum of money without the need for real banks, etc...here's how it works--I thought it was very interesting

20 guys get together (I don't think the southeast asian culture is too progressive so I am assuming just men, but my knowledge on the subject is very limited)

The program is that each guy is going to pay $500/month for 20 months. Each month, one of the 20 guys is going to get one of the payments from everyone else in the group. The trade-off for being the first to get paid is that you don't actually get $500 from each person. You bid down the amount you'll accept from everyone for the month--when you win, everyone pays you the bid amount right then--lets say your winning bid was $450--you are going to take home $8,550 that day. But you're also committed to paying $500 each month for the next 19 months. You've gotten your money. Now you just have to make 19 monthly payments of $500

Each month another guy bids for the right to take home a lump sum until everyone is done. The last guy, theoretically, paid out something less than $500 each month, but received $500 from each person over the course of the 20 months. Say you were that last guy and you paid out 440/440/450/450/450/450/460/460/460/460/460/470/470/470/470/470/475/475/475

That totals $8,755..but you'd collect 19 payments of $500 which is $9500

I am not sure exactly how low the bids go, but basically if you go early, you can get enough money to buy a used car in cash today; and the benefit for others is to make a little money in the informal market and maybe help out a relative or friend in the process. I am sure I'm glamorizing it and there is probably an ugly aspect to it but kind of a neat concept so I wanted to share...

2010-01-22T05:45:00.000-05:00

A list of 15 cheap cars to buy, drive and maintain (over 5 years).

Interesting that the list is mostly what you'd expect (cars that look like they should be parked in a friggin bike rack) as well as the Toyota Corolla and the Nissan Sentra.

But would you have expected the Toyota Tacoma? It does well in these computations because it holds value and only has a 4cylinder engine...

2010-01-20T22:00:00.001-05:00

Herbie

I was interested in this story about an elm tree that was recently cut down. The tree is thought to be 212 years old.

That means Herbie was born around the time the US Constitution was in high school.

Think of all this tree saw in its life--it makes me stop and think about whether a tree has at least some level of consciousness--how the hell else could it just randomly stay alive for that long?

2010-01-20T21:32:00.014-05:00

NFL Playoff
Championship Weekend

-Minnesota @ New Orleans
This is the match up the Saints were hoping for. I like them big in this game--there will be scoring on both sides, but my thinking is
New Orleans 35 Minnesota 24

Brees has a quick release by nature, and Peyton calls the offense with that in mind so it makes it difficult to get any kind of pressure. That will hurt the Vikings, with the trench-monsters they have being a huge part of their strength. If Jared Allen and Ray Edwards are going to be able to do their thing, the secondary is going to have to map out perfect zones to try and make him hang on a bit longer than normal.

But I don't think the Minnesota secondary is strong enough to cover both Colston and Henderson deep, let alone Meachem or the occasional up field dart to Bush.

The Viking linebackers are a liability from what I've seen this year and they are the guys that are going to have to cover Shockey and the running backs in and, coming out of, the flat. Chad Greenway is the best they've got, but watch closely when Shockey catches his TD early on. Greenway will be just slightly behind him on his way into the endzone.

Bush and Pierre Thomas both have great hands and with Brees throwing the way he is this year, they are in stride heading up field by the time you notice they have it.
No doubt, it is going to be a long day for the Viking LBs.

Against a downhill run game like Dallas, the Vikings were able to stuff things up and force Romo to play a different type of game than he likes. Drew Brees wants to pass every single down and often they don't start running at all until they are up big.

Reggie Bush appears to be the big-game player that they were hoping for when they plucked him out of USC. Last week may have been the best game he has played as a Pro--he just seemed to be focused to an unusually high degree. I expect to see that again this week and in the biggest of games in February as well.

When Minnesota has the ball, that is when they'll shine--Favre has enough in the tank to keep throwing and Adrian Peterson is probably the best in the game right now.

And I like their receivers--Sidney Rice posters went on back order until 2011 just based on the Dallas game. However, the Saints secondary is healthy and Gregg Williams (defensive coordinator extraordinaire) has the Saints blitzing you from all angles. They have won so many games this year because they have added a secret ingredient to the pressure cooker: your QB.

Jonathan Vilma is a fun LB to watch because he can get after a QB, or he can drop back and disrupt a short pass--but he is best when he gets to put his head down, scrape off a lineman and plug up the hole Adrian Peterson is going to be looking to get through. Vilma is going to be all over Adrian Peterson on Sunday, that is money in the bank.

Keeping the other team off balance will play a big part in this game as well, and the Saints will have likely have success making Favre think blitz on every play. Their offense is particularly out-dated; the coach, Brad Childress, doesn't like Favre messing with the play calling via the audible. Brett has a little flexibility to try and protect himself from an extra blitzer by moving his RB around, but the miles of tape that Gregg Williams is watching right now as we speak will win this battle. He knows how to get his guys to 'sweep the leg Johnny'.

by the third quarter the blitz is going to 'break on through to the other side' (err, a' little know fact thea Normie: Jim Morrison was a huge Saints fan for the few years they coexisted).

And to make matters worse for Brett, he'll be in a dogfight with Brees on the scoreboard and so he'll have to pass to keep up. That is good for Favre's chiropractor but not the Viking faithful.

Here are a few Gregg Williams tidbits

-common quote of his: '[Favre] MIGHT throw a couple touchdowns, but he'll DEFINITELY get his ass knocked down all day.'

-Sean Payton took a $250,000/yr pay cut to help get Williams signed on--that says a lot right there

-In 2007 on the first play of the first game that Williams' defense (then Washington Redskins D coordinator) took the field after they lost Sean Taylor (murdered on 11.27.07), they only sent 10 men out to honor him. A few weeks later they held Adrian Peterson to 27 yds rushing, and the Cowboys as a team to 1 yd rushing in back to back weeks.

The writing is on the wall. Favre will be running and gunning. He doesn't mind taking chances, we all know that.

But when you gamble enough the house always wins!

Geaux Saints!

-Jets @ Colts
the AFC game is a hell of a lot simpler the way I see it. Peyton Manning is probably going to win his second ring this year because he was bred to be in this position, and he is the hardest working man in the business. Like clockwork he is locked in and focused year in and year out.

So we can talk about

-the Colts seeming to be amping up their run defense for the playoffs,

-and the Jets being on the road one too many games to keep it up;

-or we can talk about how Rex Ryan is a rookie coach with a rookie QB,

but whatever path you choose, this game comes down, as all Colts games have since 1998, to the man behind center.

Manning is looking as sharp as ever, and his two top targets might as well be named Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent--because they always save the day. Add in Collie up the sideline, Garcon on a slant to mix it up and Addai in the flat or right up the gut to keep you honest, and it all spells doom for Rex and the Sanchise.

Way too much for NYJ to handle, even though they have a good corner to complement the great Darrelle Revis. Lito Sheppard is good, but you really need a few greats to have a chance against these Colts. Probably the best Colts team ever--they have more receivers than the 2006 team and Manning just keeps getting smarter and smarter.

Sanchez can do alright in a game where he only has to throw 15 or so passes; when he is down 14 heading in at halftime, he is going to be asked to do more and this season is already a check he wrote that he knows he can't cash. I am impressed with the last month for the Jets, congratulations. But the ride ends here. Unbuckle the belt and step towards the EXIT signs.

The Colts secondary is ball-hawking because they are used to ,much more seasoned QBs having to take chances to keep up with Manning. Watch for Sanchez to give it up at least a couple times.

As a Saints fan, I am pulling for the Jets, but in my heart of hearts I don't see it. The score that is chasing me when I shut the lights off is Colts 38 Jets 14...

2010-01-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

Jon Stewart's Analysis on the Special Election

2010-01-20T07:05:00.002-05:00

introducing the iDon'tCare

I'm starting to agree with the idea that iPhones are expensive and limited--that is Apple's thing...and now this tablet is coming out and will likely cost $1500 or so...will it change things? I hope not..tired of having to buy so much stuff to keep up...[shaking fist] Damn you Joneses!

2010-01-20T06:20:00.002-05:00

Pot Luck Dinner
--Who Knows What Will End Up On The Table?

I think the special election held in Massachusetts yesterday was more a referendum on Martha Coakley than anything to do with Barack Obama or national health care reform--despite what Sean Hannity and the rest of the talking knuckle-heads on the national new programs are saying. What else do they have to say? 'We're spending all night covering an election in Massachusetts but it really doesn't mean a whole lot outside of Massachusetts?'..Of course they over blow it. Why? Because there are a dozen news channels that need to soak up enough advertising to pay Wolf Blitzer and the jackass who repeatedly says 'no-spin' on his foolish right-wing opinion show (can not remember his name because he is a pointless, hollow fleck of shit). But I digress.

Martha spent a good amount of money on attack ads. We all know you can get away with this these days--UNLESS YOU ARE INVOLVED IN THE ONLY ELECTION GOING AND THE ONLY THING YOU HAVE GOING FOR YOU IS THE DEMOCRATIC LEGACY OF YOUR STATE AND THE SEAT.

It was the wrong angle Martha and you never readjusted the plan even after polls clearly showed you were slipping.

There were a variety of areas to exploit Scott Brown which she neglected. For example...he is pretty slippery on the social issues that typically bring the churchies out. He is pretty obviously anti-gay marriage and pro-abortion. Why didn't she pound him there to get him to commit or get off the pot? I did hear about a few ads she ran that were grossly exaggerated and contrived; taking such a weak shot made it easy to deflect. The social issues are usually the rope with which idiot right wingers hang themselves in the eyes of 'book-readers and what such'.

Also, she was DA of a great state and was involved in some big cases--she could have spent money telling us about that
'I put that baby-shaking little British au pair behind bars because I don't tolerate baby-shaking!'.

Or even just run adds pointing out that Scott Brown is inexperienced and hasn't really done JACK-SHIT. You don't have to be Fellini to find a way to undermine a guy who has such little experience.

Perhaps the biggest miss was (and I hate to steal this from the pundits, but it is true) that she never really identified herself to the public in any big way. All Scott Brown had to do was defend himself against the attack ads and he was seen as the bigger person. He was just trying to avoid getting pushed around by an old lady with a big war chest. She did seem to hover above us, apparently expecting the seat to get handed to her.

Unfortunately, it will take some time to fix this aberration--if no one brings anything to the pot luck dinner table we all go hungry I guess.

2010-01-18T21:24:00.008-05:00

5 Question Texted Interview: Alan Smithee

this installment of the texted interview was with our friend Alan Smithee. He spent 7 years of his life on the other side of the video store counter from you and movies are his thing even when he's not working (think Jack Bauer meets Blockbuster Video)

WSU:Alan, as the internet becomes more pervasive, what do you see for the future of film/video/cable distribution?

AS: I see only limited bandwidth in the US keeping us from already having streaming ‘everything’ in most houses. The concept of TV will change to a more fluid concept.

WSU: Are we ever going to stop ‘going to the movies’?

AS: Not any time soon. Hollywood will continue to find ways to make the ‘movies’ an experience. Until we can replicate that at home—we will go to the movies.

WSU: Fair enough. If I want to see a movie after it has left theaters, at this point I can make a trip to a ‘video store’ or go with one of the newest options including ordering on demand from my TV, have a movie mailed to me, or just find a redbox @ the supermarket. In light of these new options, how much longer will the video store option be around?

AS: The last video store will close on February 19^th, 2014 at 6:17pm.

WSU: Wow, that is a precise prediction—I think a lot of other people feel video stores are in trouble as well. How does a behemoth like Blockbuster adapt and how will they make money in March 2014 and beyond?

AS: They will not. Blockbuster is like the Titanic—too large and slow to turn with technology now. Big Blue will not be the last door to close.

WSU: What comes in to fill the void? That is a lot of movie renting that will happen elsewhere if they go away. Who will pick up the slack?

AS: I think we’re seeing a lot from Netflix and redbox, but the rebellion will likely be led by the cable providers and networks themselves (hulu.com).

Only time will tell what the future holds for Blockbuster..I tend to agree that everything will be online, but I am pretty sure Sony is not going to go down without a fight..an epic fight best viewed on your home theater on....blu-ray...

2010-01-06T22:15:00.004-05:00

NFL Playoffs coming
I am a fan of the NFL and more specifically the Saints. Here are my predictions

NFC
Green Bay beats AZ (on to Minnesota)
Philly beats Dallas (on to New Orleans)
New Orleans beats Philly
Minnesota beats Green Bay (on to New Orleans)

New Orleans beats the aging Favre and is going to the Superbowl
AFC
Ravens beat Pats (on to San Diego)
Jets beat Cincinnati (on to Indianapolis)
San Diego beats Jets (on to Indianapolis)
Indianapolis finally gets over the San Diego hump and is again going to the Superbowl

Can't wait to see the Saints in the big game finally...
Final score NO 35 Ind 21 !

2010-01-05T23:26:00.007-05:00

Newsflash: American Economy Sucks

Whenever your currency is within a few cents of the Canadian dollar you know your GDP growth is remedial at best. As in 'it does not read well'.

As 2009 comes to a close, the rising tide of unemployment is flooding the basement. From coast to coast half finished houses are rotting, visited by contractors only late at night while they empty liquor bottles or weep behind the steering wheel of a $750/month truck payment.

Oil is only low for the moment because even China has taken a shot to the gut. The second they turn the lights back on over there we all know gas prices are going European for all of us (joy!) and even the most tightly belted of us will feel like their pants are sitting on their ankles. Why us? What did we ever do to deserve this? Well hmmm.

It was pointed out to me that although the US was experiencing decent GDP growth annually since the late 90s, if you factored out the equity loans we were taking out every year, we actually were totally stale—that’s right; the only black ink was created by Americans signing over the small piece of their houses they might have had a chance at hanging on to.

The global loan sharks of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase and Citi were all too happy to 'help'. Like any shitty scheme, it worked well when everything was doing well..there is money that can be ‘Madoff’ with. Housing valuations (approved by above listed loan sharks of course) were increasingly surreal starting in the mid to late 90s with no end in sight. You couldn't spend your home's estimated appreciated value fast enough! But then it slowed. And then people started noticing they couldn't sell their house in 1 day for 10% more than asking price. Then it got ugly.

People had to actually think about resale and reasonable buying prices. This caused home sales to grind to a halt. New construction became a historical concept. Plumbers, gouging us all for $90/hr and the electricians they drink with starting at 2pm on weekdays began to get grim and talk about how they were going to have to cut back on their spending.

Eavesdropping bartenders were appropriately scared shitless at this.

Mortgages that were never meant to be paid came due and went unpaid. Someone yelled out the word 'toxic' and it broke an uneasy silence into pandemonium. Bankers gouging us for 29%/year and the congressman they drink with starting at 2pm on weekdays came up with a plan to save...us.

Eavesdropping bartenders were appropriately scared shitless at this.

Congress decided to take a pile of tax money and gave it to banks to make sure that they would still get paid for the houses we were walking away from.

For a while it was like an 8th grade dance with the bankers on one side and potential post TARP borrowers on the other. Ben Bernanke was trying to get them to mingle, but there was nothing doing--both sides were aware of the boners, but no one was quite sure how to deal with them.

And so the bailout money largely remains locked up at Rupert Murdoch's summer house. The acne and braces of the ‘subprime’ image have tarnished us all. The banks see us as a teeming mass of zombies writhing on their front steps--we all have bad credit now or just need money and those are the last two groups of people you ever want to lend money to.

Of course, any good liberal will tell you it is physically impossible for one to 'pull himself up by his own bootstraps' anyway, so this TARP thing never had a snowball's chance in hell even if it were meant to help in the first place. Bottom line: We are still screwed until our middle class society, our whole culture, makes major changes in its spending habits.

It is your fault Average Joe. Put a dollar in your friggin' savings account and stay in to watch basic cable for one night in your life. Drive the same car long enough to not have a payment and then be proud of that for Christ’s sake!

When you break your credit card out to buy something ask yourself if you would still buy it on a desert island--if a mental picture of any neighbor you've ever had pops up when you get the purchasing impulse condition yourself to associate a second, related picture. It is of you and me working side by side in a giant call center answering technical support calls for the Chinese--what type of car do you think you'd be able afford in that scenario?

2010-01-02T13:03:00.001-05:00

Quarterly Resolutions

Wifey and I are contemplating quarterly resolutions that we list and review at the beginning of each new quarter with the accumulated list supposedly helping us make more progress by end of said year. We'll see how that goes..to be revisited after I open the envelope on my fridge around 4/1/10

2009-12-23T01:16:00.006-05:00

Fantasy Legislation League

I am all hopped up about this idea. Fantasy football is ubiquitous. The concept is easily absorbed and really requires minimal start up energy. There are a dozen major sites that run giant databases giving users access to impressive statistical tools and data to help maintain sometimes unhealthy obsessions with their teams; so why not turn this new medium on to subject matter more worthy of our collective energy and resources?

Why am I playing in the first place? I want to compete with a group of friends and/or coworkers in some sort of pool--for a nominal amount of money but mostly for the joy of competition and bragging rights. Once the parameters are set, we build a team, we're off collecting info and making the moves to jockey us to the top. We can trash-talk, commiserate, co-analyze and have fun. Does it matter if it is football, baseball golf or...politics?

Fantasy Legislation leagues would need to parallel what works well in the current leagues. They need to have an objective scoring system and clear, easy to follow rules. At first glance I was thinking a league of 12 teams forms and each team selects (via draft of course) about 10 players. The starting lineup would consist of a Governor, 2 Senators, 3 State Reps and a flex legislator (could be an extra Senator or Congressman)..you would then fill out a bench that would come into play as you adjust to changing conditions in the landscape.

You could have an all Dem league/all Rep league or a mix league..maybe that is part of the fun; constructing a team that has a mix forced on it--you need to have at least 3 Reps on your team--or if you pick a Blue Governor, your Reps all have to be from Red States (or have to actually be Republicans maybe).

The stat possibilities are crazy. You could work with local money raised, votes in election cycle (or winning percentage in their race more likely),performance ratings from same large-well known independent ratings groups, public approval ratings (changes) or even economic or population data pulled from their districts (nice, the population in my Rep's district is up 3% this month--suck it).

New idea that needs a lot of work but it might be worth looking into...

2009-12-21T06:17:00.005-05:00

Shipping

In the very near future I can see a world where we no longer have UPS come right to our door. There will be a 3rd party location within 5-10 miles from your house and you will go there (think like a big club-style warehouse) to pick up all the stuff you bought from ebay, and amazon and also your birthday present from your grandmother, etc. And you'll be happy to do it because it will be much cheaper to get things shipped. At this point 'free shipping' is thrown around all over the place, but let's face it--it is expensive to have a truck drive right to your door, and then to your next door neighbor, and then the next house, etc. Gas and brown shorts aren't cheap and we all pay to some extent. The localized shipping thing makes sense--as we buy more and more online per capita, this additional cost will become a bigger burden and at some point...UPS is going to be unable to keep up with the demand. 2020 or so, watch for it--local shipping distribution outlets where you go pick up most of your packages. You'll still have the option to click 'ship to my house', but it will be prohibitively expensive...you won't use it once the system changes.

2009-12-20T17:52:00.003-05:00

Screenplay

I am excited about an idea I've had for a few weeks about a screenplay. They seem easy enough to write and mine is moving along nicely. Not even a working title yet, but it is set in the not-too-distant future and the main plot line involves America's acceptance/acknowledgement of what I'm currently calling 'Virtual Sex Lairs'. Why cheat on your wife when for a nominal sum you could have virtual sex with a cutting-edge version of Madonna (actually the license on her 'profile' would probably be high)...how about your third grade teacher--back when she was still your third grade teacher; or the chick at the Pizza Shop down the road. The idea is that the technology maps out millions of things--scents, sounds and shapes of the real deal. And then you re-experience a close enough approximation that you are happy with.

It is really going to deal with the pros and cons of this type of hedonism (will it cut back on prostitution, divorce, etc...or will it just be another vice to throw on humanity's pile). I'll check back with you on this one in a couple of months. Started it the weekend of Thanksgiving and I have set a deadline to check in on the first draft around 2/1/10..we'll see how that goes

2009-11-28T06:24:00.001-05:00

A New Type of Mortgage (cont)

I have spent a lot of time looking into alternatives and talking it out with fellow mortgagees...my current thinking is that since we are all investing for retirement and we are all paying mortgages, why not combine the two and cut out all the fat so we can own our houses quicker? Wouldn't it be nice to own the place you bought in say 10 years...?

Here is my thought—it definitely needs some work but I think it has some merit already. Why not get a bunch of people to invest their retirement together (what they are now putting into a 401k tax treatment) into a big pot of money that can be used to buy their homes with 1% or even 0% loans? That big pot of money can be invested in low risk investments that will make small returns, but keep up with inflation. Then as the participants qualify, the collective buys their house and they start making monthly payments to the collective. Without monster interest rates, you could actually own the house in 8 or 9 years. At which point you’d have fully paid back the collective, and you’d still have the retirement you invested when you signed on to buy the house. Now, here you are a decade later owning the house outright. Your last 10 years of retirement savings wouldn’t have done a whole lot, but you’d certainly have a lot more money to invest for retirement over the next 20+ years without that mortgage!

I have some numbers upcoming to illustrate how the standard ‘mortgage + 401k’ program stacks up against the above proposal...stay tuned…

A New Type of Mortgage

2009-11-27T08:51:00.000-05:00

Even as a young boy I thought that 30 years is too long of a time period to have to pay for your house. Typically you don’t get out of school until 18, and very rarely do you get a mortgage at 18; but even if you did, you would be in the shadow of your 50^th birthday before you would own the place you live in—according to plan of course. After 6 years you only own 10%. Of course, if you sell it around the 6 yr mark, you and your realtors end up literally splitting that portion of the equity with you (60-40 though as they often get 6%!). It has always seemed to me that there has to be a better way—are we 300 million serfs all tenant farming five days a week? That small yet apparently life-consuming question is what I am hoping will rule the content on this blog.

Working Stiffs Unite!

"We're Gonna Go America All Over Their Asses!" Charlie Day's 20 Best Quotes from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"

Related articles

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta

A New Type of Mortgage