Sunday, May 31, 2009

Hip Injuries


In the last year or so A-Roid, Chase Utley, Carlos Delgado, Brett Myers , Royal’s young third baseman Alex Gordon and Mike Lowell have all had a torn hip labrum injury.   Baseball has been played for 100 years and this has never been an injury that has affected baseball players and all of a sudden a number of the game’s biggest names are breaking down because of torn hip-labrums.   For years we worried about elbow injuries, pulled hamstrings and ACL tears but within the last few years the hip injury has hit the sport

Lets take a step back and make some guesses to what could be causing this.    Take a guy like Delgado who couldn’t hit himself out of a paper-bag two years ago and then his number blew up last year.   A-Rod’s already been busted, Chase Utley looks like he’s stuffed his body into Lenny Dykstra’s and Mike Lowell hung out with Manny Ramirez for years.    Then lets think of what pharmaceutical options could be out there for today’s ball player and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that there is a link.   Maybe it's time to tell these guys to start finding a new soft-spot as a launching spot for their fixes cause their bodies are would so tight that anytime a guy does something slightly out of the ordinary they pull something.  What kind of athletes are we breeding here, ones that can't even move anymore.

It wouldn’t surprise me if David Ortiz walked down the street and all of a sudden collapses into a total pile of putty as his entire hip disintegrates. 

Saturday, May 30, 2009

13 miles and all i got was this lousy tshirt


First long race of the season this morning as I pushed my fat thighs, big gut and bobble-head to the 13.1 mile distance and I finally remember why I love to run competitively.   You obviously don't do it for the crowds, prize-money or women but I love the feeling when I'm done of my entire body aches what I don't like is the fact that my ankles feel all wobbly, my nipples are totally chafed again and my fat thighs spent 13 miles rubbing against each other so they are ripped bare. 

the funny thing about any race that you run today is not so much the distance or the accolades as you don't get a medal for finishing but you get a walking advertisement for yourself with these cheap TShirts you get.    It's part of the shtick where you run a race and then brag without trying to be too obvious by wearing the shirt from the race to the bar that night.     

My buddies tell me (and I admit) that I'm a total hypocrite because i criticize things like the Metropolitan Diary for the not-so-subtle contortionism the authors often do as they try to pat themselves on the back by adding some self serving fact like “I was on my way to play by violin at a shelter for the poor” to an otherwise mundane story.

Well they are right that this is just a way for a guy who just ran a race to take a couple of bows and the only reason I justify it is that a runner has to put up with idiots who will say stuff like

“Oh you are running that race this weekend, I ran a marathon once for charity’ when you know they did a 5k walk. 

 This is not the same as a marathon you idiot, a marathon is 26 grueling miles of brutal pain, not a stroll in some park with your ‘Save the Dogs’ charity.

So until people stop being idiots about stuff like this, I’ll wear my race paraphernalia. .

If you are looking for me today, I’ll be the hypocrite rocking his Brooklyn Half Marathon shirt.

 

Friday, May 29, 2009

I can't drive.....55


So I'm sitting at the doctor's appointment for 5:30pm and it's about 6:15.. There are about 10 people waiting and the pace feels like you are driving down the highway in a Prius.

The funny thing about the Prius is that it’s just a glorified golf cart which unless you are driving up to the 18th green means you look like an absolute clown. But with the government takeover of GM, this might very well be the future of automobiles. I'm sure that this thing will eventually save the earth but hopefully it will save more trees than the amount of horse-power it offers because you can put your foot to the floor in this hooptie with three dudes in tow and will only get over the speed-limit if you happened to be going down a ski-slope in Vail

So there you go saving the universe one MPG at a time while you can't go over 45MPH without having the whole car shake like you are on the cyclone in Coney Island. I'm all for limiting greenhouse gases but is it possible to do it with some style?
They put all the energy in making the battery and spent no time in making sure this thing didn't look like a tin-can on wheels.
I'm just glad that I am not a 20 year old kid trolling for olives and stuck driving one of these sardine cans, you may as well castrate me before you give me the keys.

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Thursday, May 28, 2009

Bring 'em on!!!!!

As Obama prepares to clear out Guantanamo I have gotten a pretty sick feeling about the way this is going. First of all, he's been way to Bushy in the way he's been using 'state secrets' to avoid information from coming out and I am not happy with the fact those abuse pictures weren't released.. Although I am sure they'll be leaked to consumptionJunction at some point.

Then there are those FOX watching Hicks who are all up in arms about bringing some of the worst terrorists to the mainland. I'm not only advocating they get put into our federal prison system, I vote they put them into the general prison population amongst Schillinger Adebisi and the rest of the psychos. Let's see what kin of bad-ass Khalid Sheikh Mohammed really is.

But what's really scaring the piss out of me
are the people who they have now determined are OK to let go some of whom were apparently mistakenly swept up in various raids in Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria or Bosnia or where-ever. Well these are the guys who we tortured for 7 years and are now gonna let go on their merry ways.. I gotta imagine those dudes are pissed off and if they weren't a threat to our country before, they are now!!!!


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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

I don't understand wine and am done with hard liquor


This probably way overdue but I’ve decided that I am just not sophisticated enough to drink wine and not cool enough to drink hard liquor.
Anybody who has met me knows that I love to drink, actually saying love to drink is probably not giving the affection I have for alcohol enough credit. But after 33 years of living and about 20 years of boozing, it’s time to reevaluate where I stand with the stuff and after a hard evaluation I have decided to give up drinking any form of wine, hard liquor or wine-coolers.
I’ll take them one at a time
First of all my palate is not sophisticated enough to enjoy wine, especially the reds. I can’t tell the difference between a $8 and $38 bottle of Merlot and find myself completely dehydrated either way the next morning with my lips stained red. When I drink a glass of wine and I’m told to look for the blackberry flavors on the front of my tongue and the oaky flavor on the back of my tongue it’s like asking a blind guy to avoid swinging at a curve-ball but swing at a Johan Santana fastball.

White wines are a bit better but honestly the sugars and the bitters in total make me get an almost instantaneous headache. I don’t care that they pair with certain dishes cause the only thing I feel like I ever pair it with is somebody beating my head with a hammer the next morning. I just don't have the tolerance for wine, it's as if my body doesn't process it correctly

Hard Liquor is another story all together but I’ve decided it’s just not worth the abuse my body takes whenever I decide to go Jack and Coke or Jack and ice or Jack and Jack.
So my goal is no more wines, no more shots, no more mixed drinks and most importantly no more misery.

So although it will mean that I’ll have to run about 30 miles per week to keep me under 200lbs, I’m a beer only guy from this day forth….well except a couple of frozen margaritas.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Take on Detroit

Can somebody explain to me what the reason is the Chrysler is going to close all these dealerships. So some guy whose family has had a Buick dealership for 65 years gets a letter saying that they are taking their dealership away, and all of a sudden he's out in the shit creek with no paddle. The funny thing is that Chrysler convinced him take 20 additional cars than they wanted about a month ago.
So thus guy who has been a staple in the community now has no cars to sell and let's his work force go. How does having less companies trying to sell your cars help your cause?

Sometimes you feel like Detroit's biggest issue is the fact that they have their blinders on with everything an they can't even see that they are taking out their units in front of the urinal but missing the bowl and pissing on their shoes. if you live in Michigan you have to own an American car, so when these execs go to the local Pizzaria or Bennigans they only see cars that look like the crap coming off their production lines an they think "this is what people want". Little do they know it's like a self fulfilling prophecy where the cars their own employees are buying are the only ones they see in the parking lot because of a fear of being ostracized which makes their idiot bosses think people actually want these hunks of junk.


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Monday, May 25, 2009

So California is about to be cast into the sea and the rest of us will be asked for a bailout


This is what I most hate about the way our government is run, we are too forgiving. It's this mentality that as long as you admit that you screwed up you will be given a life-jacket. All the American people want is to show some contrition whether it's GM, Alex Rodriguez or the state of California.
GM lobbies congress for years to stop new forms of renewable energy from hitting the market and the financial sector pushed hard to limit any regulation on the way their instruments worked.
Pete Rose denied betting on baseball for 20 years, constantly lying right to our faces, the day he started to come clean was the day we all allowed to love him again and would never ask him to face a penalty for his crime... It's gotten so bad that if OJ admitted to killing his wife, Hollywood would be promoting Naked Gun 444.4.
We are a country who believe redemption is underscored in our core values. What this does not do though is lay proper blame at the feet of the perpetrator and this is what eats at me. This is what you get when you have a country based on Christian values, we are too forgiving, feel that as long as somebody is 'genuinely sorry' their sins can be absolved.

Well Krugman writes today how the Californian voter in passing Proposition 13 thirty years ago basically set up a house of cards because taxes could not be raised to meet increased demands of state funds, so what you got is a state which wants to do everything, give its people everything, be a leader in initiatives that would shape our country but have no way to ever pay for it.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost and I get his sickening feeling that the rest of the country will be asked to pay the bill. I feel like we didn't get to enjoy the 80 degrees humidity-free weather, didn't get to watch tall blond chicks parade down our streets with big fake cans and weren't allowed to treat our careers and lives with the laissez-faire Lindsay Lohan approach, so right now I am not quite ready to give them anything just cause they admit that they screwed up.
MLIA


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Sunday, May 24, 2009

Foot Fetish

I'm not one to spend a lot of time on any male grooming in general but honestly could not find the time or care to ever properly care for my feet. I may have the world's most disgusting set of feet. I remember a few years ago I went to a get my one and only pedicure and when the lady first got a sight of my dogs, she nearly threw up. The only thing I can equate it to is the look she had was like the first time you saw the brain eating thing in Temple of Doom.

Now this wasn't some foot rookie, this was a professional. The best way for me to describe them is nails growing on top of other nails. Patches of dead dry skin. I blame it on the running I do, but then again something tells me that Paula Radcliff's' shit don't look this beaten.
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Saturday, May 23, 2009

MLIA

A few years ago when I was sitting on the bowl after having a large burrito right before a meeting and realized that there was no toilet paper. I sit there and after having to remove my boxers to use as impromptu toilet paper I come up with MLIA (my life is awful). I have use this as what I thought would be a 'clever way' to end a story.

My thought was get people (myself mainly) to tell a shitty story and end it this way so people knew when to stop cringing and were allowed to laugh

i.e. I walk into a bar, see some chick hooking up with a dude and after a few seconds realize it's my girlfriend and some dude who happens to also be drinking my beer and eating my cheese fries MLIA.
Well now that this ahole is hooking up with my chick an I step up and ask what the hell is going on, he calls me a jerk and she tells me that I'm freaking out and embarrassing her and she storms out.. I sit there despondent and when I get up the bartender gives me the bill for their food. MLIA

Well this was my idea.. I came up with it all myself, thought it was a great little saying that you could print on teeshirts, use at bars and basically hope it goes viral.

Well now. I understand there is a new IPhone App which allows you to post events that prove how terrible your life is. The kick is that you end your story with the initials (FML).
This is basically a Metropolitan Diary except the exact opposite and it's clever an all. The problem is that this FML is just my MLIA rebranded. So some dude comes up with this great idea, makes some crappy IPhone app an is now sipping frozen margaritas on some beach, while I sit on a busted beach chair in the miserable NYC humidity. MLIA
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Friday, May 22, 2009

so you think yo can bore us into submission?




I may have witnessed the most brutal incarnation of the new (not really that new) genre of reality television talent competitions.

So you Think you can Dance is about the worst piece of garbage I've ever seen. They've basically taken the American Idol formula (wacky foreign guy, no talent overly emotional chick and then a funny minority guy) and then basically have a guy take a gigantic shit on a stage and packaged it for prime-time television.

first of all.. all these talent shows are regurgitations of each other and they have to stop, this reminds me of the time when there had to be about 10 funny teen comedy’s that came out right after American Pie.


Secondly: there is not enough talent in this country to either fill the stage or more importantly the judges table. Every contestant on this show is about as talented as William Hung and the judges are all bad versions of the guy from Knight Rider who himself is a bad version of Simon


Thirdly: The dance craze has got to be pretty close to hitting its 15 minutes and unless there are 'stars' in the show, I'm not interested and I bet neither is the rest of the world
lastly: the lead guy looks like a cross between Don Imus and the Simpson's version of the bass player for Aerosmith and that is very very very distracting




Thursday, May 21, 2009

can the music in my head ever stop



Three days on the road again this week and there are three things that have become very apparent to me.

1) the rallies the stock market is making does not translate AT ALL in the manufacturing sector of the country. Quite the contrary actually, as the market has shown signs of recovery the manufacturing sector has dropped even further into the abyss


2) driving for long periods of time with a patella tendon tear makes your knee feel like your balls do when you sit at FD's for too many hours.

3) somehow morning radio is worse in Detroit, Massachusetts, Ohio etc. than New York. I could not imagine how this is possible but the "Quack Quack" Morning Zoo routine when it's a copy of a copy is 10 times more excruciating than the original.


Manufacturing is totally dead, plants are closed, parking lots are empty and fax machines are eagerly waiting for faxes that are not coming in. I'm not sure how you handle this but with the talk of the car companies going on shut-down for almost two months this summer, it could get very ugly out there. It gets so bad out there that guys I know are being sent home on a Tuesday afternoon early and told not to come back for 10 days as there is just no work for them at all. Not exactly sure when all this stimulus money will start stimulating but this country needs a lap-dance quickly and probably needs a double.

One way you can tell though that even the stock-market is still pretty unstable is that at the annual Wall Street Run (a 3 mile sprint through lower Manhattan organized by the NY Road Runners club) this year lost its title sponsor (Merrill Lynch) and instead was sponsored by Phillips. The race has always been dubbed "Running with the Bulls" which does not have nearly the same oomf to it with Phillips at the head. Truth be told you knew it was pretty bad when at the end of the race we were plain rolls when last year we got free Subway's.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Is terrible customer service as big a part of "new york" as the empire state building?

This will be a bit of a reprieve from yesterday's TOR but it's really been getting on my nerve is how terrible the customer service in the city has become..
Last night I walk into the Budget Rent a Car and am met with a "yeah, what?". I answer that I would like to have the pleasure of renting one of his fine automobiles for which I happened to have a reservation for.

Then we go into this choreographed dance where they tell me they don't have my car and I ask them why not since I have a reservation.

I felt like the Seinfeld episode when Jerry tells the rental car place that they are good at taking the reservation, just not good at keeping one.

I'm basically told that there is no car, won't be one for a bit and that if I want one I'm going to have to wait.

I get no update as I'm waiting, when a car arrives it's practically empty and of course the guy forgot to leave the keys..

Now it's not the terrible service but this attitude that these City customer reps have where asking them to do their jobs seems like you are asking for their left nut.

But this is not a 'budget' problem it's a NYC ghetto attitude where customer service reps make you feel like they are doing you a favor not doing their jobs. In Michigan last week I rented a car and the lady asked if I wanted a map, in NYC I was afraid to ask for where the men's room was.

Hey jackoff, if you are not happy at Budget get off your shit and move up in the world...

Maybe Avis is hiring?
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

the endless loop


My biggest Pet Peeve is an easy one.. It ranks above those circus tent umbrellas people carry, the fact that smokers litter their used buds without being reprimanded or fined and even above people who get into subways before other people have gotten off.
This pet-peeve trumps them all.

How often do I call some kind of 800 numbers and get thrown into a Being John Malkovich type loop of automated phone calls?
It usually goes something like this



Automated voice
Thank you for calling Time Warner Cable, the place to be, to better assist you please tell me what you are calling about today?

Righetti
my internet is down

Automated voice
I'm sorry I did not get that, please state your issue again?

Righetti
My internet is down

Automated voice
Let me get this right, you are having issues with your cable TV?

Righetti
(getting pissy)
No, my internet is down

Automated voice
I'm sorry we are having problems, can you state your problem again slowly?

Righetti
(Over annunciating every syllable)
NO IN -TER- NET

Automated Voice
I'm still not getting you.. Let's try this again, what
are you calling about

Righetti
(blood is starting to boil).
OPERATOR

Automated Voice
I understand you want to speak with a customer care
representative, in order to get you to the right place please state what you are
calling about

Righetti
(Fuming).
GIVE ME A FUCKING OPERATOR

Automated voice
we will connect you to
the next available operator, to better assist you please say or enter your
account number"


Etc. Etc.



Now I will be the first to tell you that I have no patience at all for customer service people, but I somehow have less for voice recognition customer service centers.

Even if you get through a portion of this exercise of stupidity unscathed you will inevitably be asked to give the live operator a bunch of the same information (like account number etc.) you have already put into the automated system.

I am convinced that these things are set up to frustrate the consumer to the point they just hang up... Or otherwise by the time they get a live person on the phone they are so flustered that they cannot make a decent point.


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Monday, May 18, 2009

BobbleHead Doll


I show up at Central Park a couple of times per month sometime before one of the races start (usually at some ungodly hour like 7am on a Saturday), get online with about 4990 white people and 10 Japanese ones and get ready to loop central park in a time which is hopefully a bit under an hour.

I'm decked out from head-to-toe like every other yuppy, with my new white sneakers, my running shorts and my number pinned to my shirt all waiting for the final race announcements and then finally the gun. At this point it's a free-for-all for the next 40 or 50 minutes with people bouncing off each other all huffing and puffing in some great sequence and then we all hug and kiss each other afterwards as if this is some grown-up tee-ball game where everybody wins.

I usually do OK but i'm nowhere near the course record and when I look up my time later on the internet I always finish somewhere where i'm ranked ahead of about 55% of the guys my age but obviously still behind 45% of the guys my age (which probably includes a bunch of guys who probably rolled out of bed hung-over who have to stop a few times to puke on the side of the road.)
I think I have figured it out. The problem I have is not that I don't train adequately or that I can't spend $100 on the sneakers but the amount of wind-drag I have to put up with when running with this gigantic mellon on my shoulders is a gigantic disadvantage. I feel like one of those stupid mascots at the Washington Nationals' games, trying to circle the outfield.

I have to think that my head is at least twice the diameter of anybody else's, it' s like I'm Mr. Met without the white jersey on.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

maybe it's just sympathy weight?


I'm not exactly sure how this happened as I run 20 to 25 miles per week, don't eat sweets or sugars, limit the amount of bread I take in but somehow I've put on about 10 pounds since I turned 33. I really can't explain it, as my life style hasn't changed much and my eating/beer patterns are basically the same but somewhere between my 32nd and 33rd years my metabolism has hit the skits and all of a sudden I look like I'm carrying twins again.


I noticed it first when my fat-chick thighs were rubbing against each other the other day on a hot-humid day, got a little more obvious when I put on a pair of pants and didn't need a belt but was blatant when a good buddy looked at me and asked "is this what happens?"


So i'm on a new kick. Not exactly sure if it'll be a health kick, a kick in the ass kick or a kick in the nuts kind of kick but I need to stop looking like a giant hippo and start shaping up because this pear shape I got going is not pretty in a shirt and God knows it's that much worse without one


and we all know that wedding season is right around the corner and the Jon Bon Jovi Experience needs to be ready

Saturday, May 16, 2009

No more fun..

I can't prove it and I doubt that there is any hard data but look around you.. The most successful industrial country ever and our people look like we have been working in a Chinese coal mine. Our faces are weathered, our bodies obese and our breasts fake. Everybody on every corner of NYC looks like they got kicked in the dick and then forced to watch all three Rush Hour movies in a row.
It might be that it's just so damn humid all the time or that the economy has taken it's toll or maybe it can even be blamed on the toxins we take in everyday but between the chicks in flats and their matching frowns we need a bailout for fun. I wonder where the US population ranks in happiness? Probably somewhere between Slovenia and Antarctica
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Friday, May 15, 2009

You gotta shape up sister!!!!


I love chicks like a lesbian. Love the way they look, smile and they smell, a hot chick walking down the street can change my mood. Although I am not sure if it can be attributed only on how hot chicks are and might have something to do with how nasty dudes are. The fact that a chick would ever roll around naked with the filth that is a dude stuns me.
Earlier today some man-bear dude walked through the locker room sans towel and goes to dry his feet but refuses to bend his knees, this is a sight which will make you not want to have lunch, dinner or breakfast the next morning.
Dudes are so disgusting that I am shocked that anybody (dude, chick, whatever) can be attracted to the puddle of hairy mush most dudes are.

So please understand that I am completely in the 'chicks are hot camp'

But here is goes:
CHICKS DO NOT LOOK GOOD WEARING FLATS WITH A SKIRT.
Now I am not sure if this is country wide or just the walking cities but the skirt with flats look is just basically blasphemy. Don't give me any crap about comfort, that is a dude's excuse when he wants to wear a T-shirt and jeans on a Friday Night. Why would you put in all this energy to look good and then go and ruin it with, wearing flats and skirt is like ordering a Filet at a fine steak house and then asking they cook it well done..
If you want comfort, wear jeans but you can't go both ways. If you get dolled up go all the way, if you want style stop being a pussy and give us a little lift. The woman's body is accentuated by heels, everypart that should POP pops and every part that should TUCK tucks, when you are in a skirt and tight shirt it only makes sense to rock heels.

To help you gals in your fashion sense, we have come up with a TOR fashion tip when wearing skirts.

Nothing less than a 2 inch heel is acceptable, but it really should be a 3
inch heel and preferably a 4 incher.
If you are not even going to put this kind of effort you may as well not shave your legs and sign up for the peace corps.


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Thursday, May 14, 2009

At least the Tigers are not terrible this year..


What a crazy economy we are living in right now where the white-collar guys seem to be coming out of this thing a bit with a fairly steady northern trend in the stock markets but the blue collar guys are still sitting around waiting for something to trickle down to them.

I just spent a half a week in Detroit and the next time I want to have this much fun I’ll go to a morgue. You drive past Chrysler plants and there are two sets of parking lots. One of them is packed to the gills (with new cars) and the other one looks like somebody dropped the A-Bomb on it (the cars where the employees would otherwise park. The funny thing about the first parking lot was that it was so packed that there wasn’t even any room between the cars, if you had to get the last car out of the lot because the customer needed to have the purple Geo with the crappy rims than it would have entailed a ridiculously complicated game where you have to get all your numbers in a row with only one open spot to get it out.

It is absolutely nuts to think how far we have gone from the peak of the car market (16 million cars sold per year) to now when I think they are going to have 3 for the price of 1 deals hitting the markets soon. You know it’s bad when the average Michigonian is actually looking forward to seeing Matt Stafford. The funny thing is that Detroit is becoming like New Jersey which embraced Born to Run as its theme song not realizing it was all about trying to get out of the arm-pit of America, this is about the same thing as being that excited about the new Eminem for a Detroitian.

At the end of the day, the car companies can get new management and Obama can force them to build more fuel efficient cars and you can offer to throw in an unlimited warranty and a free oil change but it doesn’t matter when nobody is buying any cars. It’s like painting the deck of the Titanic as it is sinking, you may have the nicest looking piece of crap on the bottom of the ocean floor but you are still swimming with the fishes.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The GPS lady

My biggest issue with the GPS thing is that it's another example of how we are getting dumbed down as a people. It is not that the GPS isn't a valuable tool bit I have this nasty habit of ignoring the voice as soon as she starts speaking. I cannot tell you how many near accidents this stupid thing has caused for me already.

First of all, because you have a copilot you stop paying attention to the roads you are on, expecting her to guide you safely home.

Secondly there is the issue of looking at a tiny screen while driving which is dangerous.

Thirdly, as soon as you have to make a change you may as well drive into a tree as there is no way to type in a new address and operate a 2000lb automobile. You can tell me that you shouldn't try to operate a GPS while trying to drive a car but that like telling me that you should go to Flashdancers and not have a smile from cheek to cheek.

Lastly the voice like that of some nagging chick is one a dude is programmed to ignore until you are right up against a turn and all of a sudden you are doing one of those 3 lane frogger changes.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

I might be done with twitter

I read this interesting stat about twitter the other day, about how a large percentage of people who sign up for twitter have abandoned the service within weeks. This doesn't surprise me as generally it sucks. I have an account (as you can see by the handy application on TOR which posts my terrible tweets).

My issue is that I honestly don't care to ever check it to see what other people are tweeting. I think I've logged onto twitter twice since I signed up for the account. All my own updates are done by sending a text from my blackberry.


This might be the kind of phenomenon which will never take off for 'regular' people and the only interest may very well be for idol worship. I read about celebrities tweeting and I can see the appeal as they have a broad audience of people (13 year old girls I imagine) who would like to be intimately involved in their day to day thoughts but following a friend is more creepy than cool and definitely way more boring than cool.



These are the downfalls of twitter

Content- The issue is that the average person's thoughts are just not that interesting

People generally don't care if their friend just had a sandwich. The content depends on people to be witty, which they generally aren't. especially if they are limited to 140 characters



Access- although there are a few ways to reach your twitter account to post including text messages so this works swimingly. The issue is following people, you either set it up so that you get a text message everytime Joe finds a funny link to a cute bird which is annoying oryou have to actively log onto twitter.com and honestly who has the time or the care?



Hip Factor. Honestly if Wolf Blitzen has an account and actively posts, the hip factor is gone



Tie into Facebook- I understand there is a FB app which can be added to broadcast your tweets but facebook already has a superior system (which twitter probably ripped off) with their 'status updates' which is in such an easier and less invasive format.

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Monday, May 11, 2009

how can you possibly compete when the best players are doing it?

So how exactly can you blame some 22 year old Dominican kid trying to make the Major Leagues from doing steroids. What can you expect out of a young player when he looks at the Major League landscape and the players who are already the best in the game (ARod, Manny, Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, Giambi etc.) are doing steroids, HGH and horse pills. The young player can't compete with this guys when the playing field is level, how the hell can these guys compete with a juiced up Manny?

But this isn't about the plight of the poor latin player trying to take care of his family, it's about the fact that no young guy (white, black, hispanic, asian) can compete otherwise. I'm against steroids, I think it ruins the integrity of the game although spit balls and corked bats are not much better but my issue now is for the individual player trying to make the big leagues.
This is where the entire thing has to change. Either let them all do it or start doing everything in your power to stop them from doing it. I'll take major league baseball seriously when they run daily tests for steroids, blood tests for HGH and any implement a policy which says that any player who puts on 15 pounds gets a full cavity search.

As much as baseball tries to tell you they have cleaned up the sport, you know that this testing really isn't going to wipe steroids off the map cause it didn't deter a guy like Manny and he was already the most feared hitter in the game.
I'm not naieve enough to thnk that he started this last week and these guys all lie. When they get caught they all have the same canned first answer "my doctor gave it to me, not knowing it was roids" Then eventually they come out and say that they did it for a very limited time and we are suppose to believe them.

ARod says he never did it with the Mariners (where he made a name for himself and became the best player in the game) or with the Yankees (the team whose fans he is desperate to have embrace him) but only did it for the one organization (the Rangers) whose fans loath him anyway.

The sad thing is that when a guy gets busted now, it doesn't phase me. I saw the Manny news crawl along the bottom on Sportscenter the other night and thought "that was just matter of time" and my thought immediately went to Pujols, Dan Uggla, Hanley Ramirez and Vlad Guerrero and wondered how long it would take for those dudes to get busted.

If the top guys are going to be doing it and still only get a slap on the wrist how can you ever deter the young guy from trying to at least level the playing field?

In the meantime they should start testing David Ortiz for Big Macs

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Life is beautiful


So now that I finally have a car for the first time in 10 years it's become pretty apparent how miserable the radio station options in NYC have become. Today there must be ten top 40 stations and the sad thing is that there probably wasn't a better radio market than NYC 15 years ago. When I was a kid there were stations for every taste KRock, Q104, Z100, Power95, 97.1, WFAN, WNEW and 92.7). When I was 15 you defined yourself by the radio station you listened to. You had cutting edge stations, separate rock and classic rock stations, a great hip hop station, good R&B station, stations for pop music, ones that played soul and other only one dedicated to Top40 pop. I turn on the radio today and it's all whitewashed and boring, every station plays the same 10 crappy songs. This is the downfall of modern music, everything has become cross-over bubble gum mass marketed dribble, nothing has bite and everybody listens to everything.


This is the Coldplay effect, music which thinks of itself as cutting edge rock but it's just disguised Top 40. It doesn't move you, doesn't change you and doesn't make you want to pick up a guitar. This is what happens when a band stops having a manager and instead has an ad agency, you get pop marketed to not offend a 14 year old girl which translates to the loss of Rock & Roll's soul. It's not even commercial music it's music for commercials.
Maybe this is what happens when you are in a tough economic climate, everybody starts acting like carbon copies of the one thing that seems to work. Or maybe this is the downfall of terrestrial radio with the options offered by the basically bankrupt XM/Sirius combination but all in all good rock radio has apparently disappeared from sight.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Steroidal tendencies

So let me get this right... A steroid using ballplayer who got caught cheating on his wife, comes back and hits a three run home run in his first at bat back after hip surgery and that jackass Michael Kay calls it a "fairy-tale story". You have got to be kidding me, ARoid is a cheating insecure pretty boy who can't hit in the clutch but Michael Kay will make you believe he's a cross between Mickey Mantle and Mickey Mouse.
I went to the new Yankee stadium and these are my thoughts.
Although the place is beautiful, fan friendly and well laid out, it is not conducive to actually watching a baseball game. There are too many distractions, too many food options.. You can see the field from the concession stands but with all the distractions you might get lost as you try to find the window to place a bet for the great subway race as you would be to actually see how the defense shifts for a big power left-handed batter. What ever happened to baseball being a box of cracker jacks or a bag on peanuts and a couple of Lite Beers, now it's Sushi, Martinis and suits

What surprised me is the fancy restaurants tucked away in places where you can't even see the field. Who would want to ordering a Pesto Ravioli as Enter Sandman reverberates through the stadium?
What bothers me most is the Tommy Bahama bar, this thing is on some ramp going into the stadium. Why would you ever spend $50 for a ticket into the stadium to then stand in the tunnel walk-way drinking $12 margaritas with a bunch of ugly Yankee fans?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Friday, May 8, 2009

MTA going whose way?

I probably can't prove this but as the MTA has started some service cuts in the last week including some service announcements which stated service changes through December 31st 2009 on some lines; they have tried to fight a public outcry by making more audible platform announcements about safety and how far the next train is. This is how the MTA makes it up to its loyal customers after months of threats to raise fares and cut service.

Now don't get me wrong, I won't complain about finally being able to hear these messages but it is so ridiculous that it takes the possibility in a 30% fare increase for the MTA to start to force its service station attendants to do their job. In general you can't find a group of less motivated people than those who sit it their bunkers at subway stations but the fact that all of a sudden I’m all of a sudden told how far the next train is, is just a public relations sham to try to get away from the actual issue by painting over it with something they should be doing already anyway.

Of course the biggest commuter crisis was averted by another dirty Albany closed door meeting (the same type that crushed Bloomberg's very competent congestion pricing concept) so now we are going to get a smaller fare increase and supposedly less cuts and the TOR cynic is left to wonder if those 30-40% increases and deep service cut threats were ever necessary or just a way for the MTA to posture.

Let's hope the platform messages stay audible, the service cuts are minimal and the MTA employees start smiling since they should be happy that they all have jobs in this economy...

now if somehow they can find some way of having people stop trying to cram in before passengers have had a chance to get off the train that would be a miracle.

 
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Thursday, May 7, 2009

Reverse discrimination




So I go to the Yankee game with a buddy yesterday and as we go through the ticket collection we are told we can’t come in because he’s carrying a man purse and told us we had to go check it at the bowling alley. Now there are obviously a number of issues with this, the fact that a straight man carries a purse to a baseball game will not be one of we will take on today though.


First issue, this just proves again that the terrorist won, the fact that a straight man can’t carry in a small handbag into a stadium is ludicrous. It would be one thing if we were driving a hummer strapped with IED’s to the front gate but this is metrosexual dude carrying a small bag!!!
I’m sure that there was a chance that we were smuggling in a dirty bomb or a large Pepsi but that is why you pay those security people so they can make sure there is nothing dangerous in the bag as you bring it in.
Even checking bags seems to discretionary and just seems another way for idiot security people who have no interest in national security from being able to push around people who are smarter, richer and happier than they are.

This is just another example like the idiocy of not being able to bring a normal size tube of toothpaste onto a plan and proves again that personal freedoms in this country have been obliterated.

Second of all.. Why the hell do they let chicks carry bowling-ball size bags into the stadium with no problem but they won’t allow a guy to bring in a bag? This is absolute bullshit and feminists should be standing up in a sign of solidarity with guys at Stadiums as the sexes are not being treated equally. This is ludicrous and completely discriminatory and there should be lawyers for the ACLU standing up for Yankee fans. Actually this issue is so big that the ACLU lawyers should be flanked by lawyers for the AARP, the AAA and the UCLA out there too.


This is the same kind of crap they pull at an airport when they charge $25 to a 120 pound woman for trying to bring on a suitcase weighing 22 pounds on board but don’t charge a 250 pound woman anything when she brings on an 8 pound bag.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

It takes two to make a thing go so wrong



I'm sorry but I believe the time to retire this wretched piece of garbage is long overdue. I know it's a "classic" and people tell me that Rob Base should be heralded but honestly this song is brutal and Rob Base is a talent-less schlep and this song is about as innovative as the pizza-burger


The lyrics are childish, the beat and baseline are tired and overused and be honest with yourself when you answer the question. "Was it really ever good?"

I know it was catchy but that now that makes it annoying, I’ve been told it was clever with the whole "I like the Whopper fuck the Big Mac" but really was it that clever?

Just the other day I heard a couple of guys cruising down 5th avenue the other day blasting this crap and singing "i'm not internationally known, but i'm know to rock the microphone" part to each other. It's as if people feel they deserve a medal for having memorized these lyrics, i'd be more impressed if you could have somehow now memorized them, as you've heard them 1000 times in your life and every ahole around loves to sing along to it.

Aren't we better than this senseless dribble, in 25 years hasn't anybody been able to produce something to replace this in the loop of terrible party songs. How in God’s name does this piece of crap still get radio air-time?

At some point people realized the YMCA sucked, the Macarena sucked and now it’s time to realize that this isn't any better.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Other Blogs...






I remember some crappy comic having this shitty joke about writing a letter and then changing what you are about to write because you don’t know how to spell it. This happens to me at least once per week and it’s really embarrassing especially if you are trying to entertain 5 to 10 people per day with your crappy blog.

Well there are a couple of really well written blogs out there with many less spelling and grammatical mistakes out there which you should be reading on a regular basis.



NYCynCity.blogspot.com -
are you interested in finding out information about some crappy club in some crappy neighborhood, serving crappy drinks for a bunch of crappy people? CynCity will tell you how crappy they really are (but also let you know which ones are decent.)

SomeoneMadeMe.com
Are you interested in finding out what happened at the same crappy bars when a single dude rips through the city abusing every single female in his lobster claws. if you are not reading this blog than you are making a huge mistake, it is about as well written a blog as you will ever see.

I'mTotallyBloggingThis.blogspot.com
Are you interested in the interwebs? This one has lots a little bit of steam in recent months but usually a good spot to catch some dorky sci-fi kid playing Star Wars by himself which is a lot better than watching the same dorky kid playing with himself.

http://chrissiworld.blogspot.com/
Are you interested in Chrissy's world? It's kind of like Wayne's World expept instead of Garth she's got Diamond Dave

Monday, May 4, 2009

Pretzel Nuts

This one isn't about me for a change..


You know that mess of wires that you got all tangled together behind your TV? The ones that attach to the cable box and the one that goes to the modem are twisted together like a bird’s nest. I know that every time I’ve tried to untangle those I just tangle them worse, don’t have the patience for it and at some point just unplug them all, throw them in the trash and buy new ones. Well you can do that with TV Wires but not with everything else.

I remember there was some kid in High School who had about the worst thing ever happened to him. Now realize this is total hearsay, so take it with a grain of TOR salt.

Well apparently this poor sucker was sitting at home on a Friday night doing what 15 year old boys do when they are hanging out alone on a Friday night. I’d imagine he’s got Skinemax on the tube and this dude’s working himself .  Well this poor schmuck got himself into such a lather than apparently and started to use his nut-sack as if they were a couple of those Yin-Yang Chinese Stress balls. He must've been having some session cause before he knew it he worked them into such a mess that at some point he’s gotten his sack all tangled up into some kind of boat-knot.

I can only imagine that this has to be worse torture than waterboarding ever could be. Well since he couldn't get his yin and his yang back to their original spots and I’m sure he’s stressing out he apparently just made the situation worse as kept trying to fix the problem but kept getting them more twisted. Imagine all those wires you have behind your TV except this time they aren't attached to the HDTV but instead to your scrotum. This is when stressing out probably doesn't help.

Well in his misery this Kid calls 911 but probably not realizing that as most small American towns go, the ambulance is manned by volunteers, including a few of teenagers who he was going to HighSchool with him at the time.

The agony of having your left ball wrapped around your right one so tightly that you are in tears is terrible enough but imagine to be found lying with your junk looking like a bird nest when the ahole in your 4th period English class walks in.

This is the legend of "Pretzel Nuts"

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Running for your life

I've been told by many people that running allows them time to think, to take away distractions and just concentrate on an issue.. The funny thing is that for me it doesn't allow me to think at all, the running takes up all my mental energy and the only thoughts I have are ones like "only 2 more miles", "big hill coming up" or "this sucks"

What it does allow is my mind to clear almost entirely, it's the manic person's yoga and for all the pounding and increased heartrates I find it extremely meditating.

There I go with that huge bobble-head of mine, up the hill, down the hill, one foot in front of the next all the while I think of nothing..

I have too much energy to ever sit in a some hot stinky room stretching and becoming one with my body, this would make me nuts. Honestly you may have to put me in a strait-jacket if you ever see me doing any meditating.
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Saturday, May 2, 2009

StarSucks


I've heard every complaint, every knock and every criticism about this place

-Every drink costs at least $4
-Each drink has more calories in a cup than a Big Mac
-The men's room always has a puddle of piss which serves as a moat to separates the toilet from the front of your sneakers.
-You can't ever get a seat because of the squatting rules

But my complaint is deeper than all of this.  It has nothing to do with the atmosphere although I do think it's pompous to walk around with one of those large Starbucks paper cups and I think it preys on the stupidity of people as it convinces you to pay twice what it would cost you anywhere but my complaint is based on the fact that the coffee at Starbucks sucks.  I have a four cup a day habit and will tell you that there is no chance I'd choose a skim milk mocha double dutch latte over a cup of regular Dunkin Donuts plain unsweetened mud in a cup.   What they sell you as their dark rich blends tastes like I used my running socks as a coffee filter, what they sell as their Colombian brand tastes like it needs sewage treatment and their special Starbuck blends might as well be burned tire.


Friday, May 1, 2009

Pig Latin

I’m totally shocked by the mass hysteria that this little flu has caused this entire country.. There are about 300 cases and the entire world’s got their panties in a bunch, more people have gotten bit by an actual pig and died than from contracting this stupid thing.. It’s wall-to-wall hysteria on the cable news channels and Joe Biden isn’t helping the situation any.


Not exactly sure why all of a sudden this is making us so crazy but really this isn’t that different than anything else and there is only a single death reported in the states and that case was a Mexican kid. I see a bunch of jackasses on the subway with masks on, people cancelling trips and vacations and worst yet people washing their hands like they are a bunch of mental patients.

The US Government has put the following on their website

What should I do to keep from getting the flu?


First and most important: wash your hands. Try to stay in good general health. Get plenty of sleep, be physically active, manage your stress, drink plenty of fluids, and eat nutritious food. Try not touch surfaces that may be contaminated with the flu virus. Avoid close contact with people who are sick.

Now that is great advice, wash your hands and get plenty of sleep, I’m doing this and personally I’m avoiding eating filthy ham sandwiches as an extra precaution