TV LAND

I have read that on average Americans watch about 24 hours of TV per week, that means that the average American spends one full day out of every week is front of the boob-tube.




The crazy thing is that I have friends who reach that weekly milestone on a lazy weekend and I know we have moved away from a lifestyle where people talk and I have nothing against TV per-se but I wonder how people have the time to watch that much television. I am by no means the busiest person I know but between work, going to the gym, putzing around the internet, spending a few hours with my family and sleeping, I just don't have the time to spend 3+ hours in front of the tube every night. I get that in the age of a thousand channels the options are almost limitless but when I do find time to turn on the TV I have a hard time finding anything to watch on an average night. I get that 24 is supposed to be great and Parenthood is the next Family Ties but I just can't get into any of it. Maybe I've just become cynical but there has to be more to life than watching Simon and Ellen arguing how (un)talented some girl from Utah is.


I get emails from TV loving buddies who have an opinion on virtually every show in primetime on both cable and network TV and can give you a recap on 50% of their most recent episodes. They all claim that the DVR has made their TV addictions so much more efficient but even if you cut our commercials they are still watching 2 or 3 hours every night.

I won't tell you how to live your life but it probably wouldn't kill you to get some fresh air because nobody should be stuck in a dungeon for that many hours per week.



Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

FreshBalls

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

I was told a long time ago to not discuss politics or religion at the dinner table and since we aren’t serving Turkey and Roasted Potatoes I figure they are both fair game

Now you know how we at TOR feels about Health-Care, dispensation, the downfall of the Senate but today we are going to be frying a bigger fish.

The Catholic Church has been in the news a whole lot over the past few days with the revelations that Pope Benedict, then Cardinal Ratzinger didn’t just look the other way when a bunch of priests were diddling little boys but may actually have been complicit in moving said priests to other dioceses to try to protect the church. As the calls for Benedicts resignation have only gotten louder Benedict gave a deviant Palm Sunday sermon and TOR watching from afar were wondering what the hell is going on with the Catholic Church. Somewhere there is a pretty big disconnect; the Church comes out to rally to protect an unborn fetus but nobody protects a bunch of deaf boys in Wisconsin. How about they keep their dirty paws away on the US HealthCare reform and focus that energy on keeping their dirt-bag clergy from putting their dirty paws off of preteens.
I got a novel idea, how about you stop this nonsense about abstinence for your rank-and-file with hot coeds and give a crash course to your higher-ups about abstinence with altar boys.

The issue isn’t that these aren’t isolated cases, there are 1000’s of cases of priests playing peek-a-boo with little boys and I’m disgusted that it takes a NY Post type investigation for people to get up in arms. It’s about time the Catholic Church did the right thing and threw these psychopaths out on their asses and stop worrying about what the Church is supposed to look like because it’s rotten to the core. What annoys me is that people always will try to spin this and make it about homosexuality which it is not, this is about a bunch of perverts hiding behind the cloth.  Homosexuality has nothing to do with touching prepubescent teens and then covering it up.

The liberal wing of the Church is asking again if celibacy is really the best option for these guys and I have to think that celibacy is probably not a good option for anybody especially guys who are in positions of power. Yeah you got a bunch of nice buildings and a couple of holidays which most people use to get presents but you have lost your moral high-ground when you decided to look the other way.  When your entire institution is a farce because you claim you are about protecting the sick and the poor but instead only care about protecting yourself it's time to hang it up because it;s only a matter of time before the dam explodes and you know there are 1000’s of others out there who this has happened to.

The crazies thing was that I read a piece on CNN that Mehmet Ali Agca the Turkish gunman who shot Pope John Paul II is coming out demanding he should resign. I think I’ve figured out how best to handle this situation. Why not dress Ali Agca like Angus Young and then lock him in a room with a bunch of these perverts..

TOR Fashion tip

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Littering

There are a few thing I pride myself on and although some of them are for the betterment of society most of them have to do with being able to spot a chick not wearing a bra from far away.
One thing I don't do is litter and people who do infuriate me.  I have raged against people who find the need to throw trash onto streets or in parks and on the sides of highways and find it ludicrous that smokers seem to find no issue with discarding of burning butts on the streets and out of car-windows when there are ashtrays everywhere.   But as strongly as I feel that I should not litter myself I also feel equally strongly that I should not feel any responsibility to pick up random street trash.
 One issue I had recently had went as follows.

I went to throw a used coffee cup into a street trash can but in my haste I missed the cylinder and the cup rolled behind it.  I went to pick it up and noticed that I had not been the only one who had shot an airball as there was a pile of trash collected behind the can..
The issue there became, if I am going to bend down to pick up my trash then why not pick up some of the other ones, I did not.    I rationalized it as follows, there are tax-payer funded jobs out there for street cleaners and since I did not want to put them out of work during this recession I would leave the other trash for them to clean.

The second issue was a big bigger, the cup I had thrown out had blown under a railing and this is where my real dilemma hit me:  can I just pick up another piece of trash as by doing so I had not added to the overall amount of trash on the floor or was I responsible to retrieve my actual piece of garbage.   Sort of like a carbon-offset for littering.
Then a third dilemma came up.  There were four or five other soda cups identical to mine and I couldn't distinguish any of them from one another, could I then just pick any one and throw that out with good conscious?



see this is why it hard being me
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

APB

MISSING

Short Chinese Kid with big gums, receding hairline, scrawny legs and little unit.
Height 5 foot nothing
Weight one hundred and nothing
Distinguishing features: beady eyes, buck teeth and large horseshoe scar on his calf.
Resembles: Former Knick point-guard Charlie Ward
Goes my the names: Baby Stu, Little Winky, Commish and Hairless Wonder.

Considered armed (with large sword) and possibly dangerous (mostly to small Chinese girls)

Last seen: Superbowl Sunday

Please email TOR@TakeOnRighetti.blogspot.com if you have seen him because we haven't heard from him in months

No Reward
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I DON'T like this

There may not be a feature out there more worthless than the "Like" option for Facebook Status updates.
I am not exactly sure when it happened but with all the internet short-hand we have become a society addicted to :), LOL, and :shrug:. Now I'm a frequent user and do think the emoticons are invaluable as they are an extremely effective way of communication the nuance of language which is a lost art-form in today's age of email, twitter and texts. It is an effective method of conveying that a particular email contains sarcasm or another one is pure truth and in a sensitive society where we often over-analyze every word for meaning it serves a real purpose. The issue I have is that we've substituted good back-and-forth and written conversation to posts of three letters.
It also proves how desensitized we have all become when the only response to a clever email is LOL and then a few months ago Facebook one-upped even that minimal short-hand with the 'I like this' option. 'I Like This" is now short-hand for shorthand.
I have been monitoring the 'I like this' and find that we have become so jaded that a single "I like this' seems to keep most Facebook posters completely content and begging for more. It's like a high-school beauty contest to see which insecure pimple-faced 9th grader can get the most votes foe Class President.

And whatever happened to "dislike" have we become a society where we are afraid to allow people to not like something. Honestly 3/4 of the status updates are pure crap and a little feedback may help clean up the clutter.

But with all the complaints about the dumbing down of society through all this shorthand the saddest thing though is when somebody "likes" their own post, this is either a pathetic attempt to boost your poll numbers or a lame attempt to virtually pat yourself on the back.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Take on the Cocktail Waitresses at Strip Clubs

What exactly is the point if you are going to be a Cocktail Waitress at one of NYC finest gentlemen's club establishments? Now mind you I have no issue with this career path and I realize I will indirectly help pay her phone bill one day but let's be serious when you think that's all you are doing now or will be doing in short time..


Let's be serious f they say they are a cocktail waitress at a strip club they are actually grinding on dude's laps for $20 a song, somehow being a cocktail waitress has a better ring to it than being a stripper and even if these girls believe that they will never get on the pole, they are surely mistaken.

If marijuana is a 'gateway drug' then cocktail waitressing at a strip club has to be considered a 'gateway job'. I assert that the distance from a girl who works to a stripper is a much further jump than a stripper to a working girl. Cocktail waitress today leads to being a stripper tomorrow which leads to a 'tasteful photoshoot' the next day and within a week the chick is taking on the entire NY Ranger team with two in her hands, one in her mouth and a double cheeseburger in her five-hole.

But if you are going to try to stay as just a cocktail waitress what is the point? First of all there is nobody more hated at a strip-club than the waitress hawking $12 Miller Lites, they hound you the entire night and seem more desperate than the old strippers with the saggy boobs and the missing teeth who have hung around the circuit for 5 years too long.

But at the end of the day it has to be about perception. The way I see it everybody will assume you are on the pole anyway and by working in a strip club your already 90% there and since you’ve already lost the moral-high-ground because you are profiting off chicks shaking their asses go out and shake yours and make some real money.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I’m only Happy when it rains

I’m actually never happy when it rains for three main reasons. The first is that in NYC walking the streets when there is any kind of precipitation means that the sky is falling. It’s not just that you have to deal with the irritation trifecta of wet socks, slow commutes and the fact you have to dodge the people carrying those ridiculous golf-umbrellas because the combination of the three basically means the fine-oiled machine which is the NYC walker gets completely knocked off his rhythm. Now we at TOR have often complained about the fact that one gawking tourist can cause a chain-reaction pile up on any of the NYC sidewalks but you add rain into this and the average New Yorker turns into a retard which leads to the kind of sidewalk wreck NASCAR would be proud of.

I was walking down the street yesterday with the rain-drops coming down and it was as if the world had forgotten how to walk, the entire city of NY was overcome by 10 month olds. I was skillfully dodged two women who decided that standing on the corner of 45rd and 6th in a tsunami was an ideal time to catch up, I then avoided a UPS truck barreling down 44th who seemed to have forgotten his window wipers and finally I managed to tight-rope the end of the sidewalk past two dudes moving at snail's pace and seemed like I was in the clear until I got to the crosswalk until some broad decides to stop as the cross-walk light starts blinking red. In order to avoid a huge crash I spin, avoiding some kid holding his mom’s hand and land square into a puddle the size of Lake Michigan, my shoe, sock, pants and my life all soaked in a combination of sewage, used cigarettes buts and rain-water.   

What I cannot comprehend is that when the rain comes pouring down people actually slow down in their normal pace. You would guess that you would speed up to avoid getting drenched but this kind of logic is lost upon these folks. If the weather is in the low 80’s and the girls are out in skirts there seems to be reason to take your time but when your underwear is soaked why spend any longer in said situation?

So HealthCare reform is almost the law-of-the-land and still most people I know are up in arms about it.

The Liberals wanted more extensive coverage and are unhappy about the anti-abortion language, the Conservatives are unhappy with any entitlement programs so this will only feed their anger and the guys in the middle are wondering how Northern Iowa just ruined their brackets.

This is the interesting thing when it comes to this stuff, somehow Obama which the Right vilifies for being an overly-partisan free spending liberal is seen by the left as having given in too much to the conservatives and not done enough to cover all Americans, so I guess he just can’t win. I watched about 30 minutes of CNN who was doing their best CSPAN impression yesterday and I left being sure of three things

-John Boehner apparently spends a lot of time sitting a beach and not working on issues that real Americans care about because no white-man should be that tanned

-Nancy Pelosi doesn’t make a sensible argument ever but has somehow risen to the most powerful job in the House which can only be attributed to her ability to hypnotize both her constituents and her fellow Democrats with that incessant blinking.

- although this particular debate was carried on MSNBC, CNN, CNBC and FOXNews I wonder if these people go on like this even when they are only getting broadcasted over CSPAN when their own parents probably aren’t even watching or if you would find them making paper-airplanes and spit-balls if you cared to watch..which you don’t.

At the end of the day they passed a bill which will in the best case scenario slow the rising costs of healthcare, cover 30 million uninsured people and kill Mitch McConnell and in the worst case scenario it will not kill Mitch McConnell.



A few provisions TOR would like to have seen added to this already behemoth bill:

-some kind of malpractice reform, the cost of this insurance is crippling doctors

-a sin tax on junk food and soda, if you don’t give a crap about your own health and you want us to cover your obese ass than you will pay a higher tax for this. I don’t care that this disproportionally affects the poor or the fat because obesity related health problems including heart-disease and diabetes and high blood pressure can all be put under control if we stop gorging ourselves full of Double Cheeseburger Value Meals.. and if you are going to stuff yourself like a Thanksgiving Turkey than you should be forced to pay a larger portion of the cost of insuring your grotesque ass.

- Something that made sure that people receiving government subsidies for healthcare (and welfare for that matter) was tied to people actually looking for work. If you are going to give away money and healthcare, you may as well put people to work cleaning parks, gutters, subway platforms etc.

- Do something about regulating costs at hospitals and doctors for similar services. I read a report recently about how a particular treatment costs twice as much to an insurance company when done at a hell-hole like St. Vincent’s than it would be at a world-class place like Sloan Kettering or Mount Sinai. The level of service had nothing to do with the cost the insurance company was paying.

- Allow more competition from foreign made drugs. If we can get our Opium from Afghanistan and our Coke from Columbia we can surely get our Viagra from Luxembourg.

Retail EZ Pass

It is a shock to me that I haven't completely converted all my purchasing to the online variety. I will easily trade off the convenience for the fact that half the time the size isn't right and the actual item only vaguely resembles the picture. The reason is that I absolutely hate, I mean Hate with a capital H the retail store is that I hate other people. It's as if I become instantly claustrophobic once you get me into a store with a thousand other people, my breath becomes short, my skin starts to itch and I break into a full body sweat.

I walked into Toys R Us two days ago and the madness in the place is enough to make you want to pull individual hairs out of your chest.. There are thousands of prepubescent girls running around screaming at decibel levels reserved for canines. After a stressful week of work, no sleep and two beers at lunch, I cannot possibly be expected to deal with this. .

First of all, how the hell is a 34 year old dude suppose to know what his 4 year old niece would be into? I can't tell Dora the Explorer from the chick who gives my buddy happy endings at the massage parlor and I am confronted with so many pink princesses it looks like barbie puked up pepto-bismo.

But the crowds, the waits and the indecision is what really kills you. People spend so much time pulling coupons out of every pocket or searching for a rewards card to save $0.50 that I spend more time waiting on line than I did finding my $12 game of connect-four. There is something very wrong with this picture when people spend more time checking out than actually shopping.

There must be an end to this madness, I have often thought I would pay somebody in front of me to NOT use their coupon. They have to introduce an EZ Pass lane, where you aren't allowed any coupons, exchanges or returns. I would pay full retail for the convenience of not wasting my life away on some endless Toys R Us Line.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

The Gift Price Conundrum

I've often felt like I have been confronted with the following scenario: what do you do to make sure that the recipient realizes how much you spent on a gift without being tacky..

You can obviously choose a gift whose price is well publicized, you can inadvertently leave the price tag on or you can overshoot your budget to ensure proper credit but these all suck in their own right.

I for one am not a big birthday gift-giver mainly because I wouldn't want anybody to feel the need to reciprocate and buy me some piece of junk when my birthday comes around. One of the reason's I hate it is because when you buy a gift for an event there always seems to be a lot pressure to get something worthwhile and also to make sure it falls within an acceptable price point.. I have to go through the misery of shopping at some retail store and sift through a ton of junk and deal with endless crowds to try to find something meaningful within a certain price-point Then when that is done comes the perception dilemma, does the crappy gift I bought look as expensive as it is?

Now I am not the kind of Ahole who will try to find a gift which looks expensive when it is not to make me look I was being overly generous but I also don't want to look like I skimped when in fact I spent a pretty penny.

The worst spot though are places where you are expected to spend a certain amount. With weddings for example there is a pretty standard rule-of-thumb which relates your gift to the price of the plate or roughly $125-$150 per head.

Now you know the TOR rule about wedding gifts especially when you stray from the registry so I would never show up to a wedding with a toaster, fridge or a blender but I realize not everybody subscribes to my theory.

The main reason I don't give a store bought gift is because I'm well aware that the couple prefers cash but that isn't the only reason. If you go with the registry gift you will get stuck giving 6 long-stem glasses, a cheese plate and a fish bowl which seems like a gigantic waste of money and if you go off the registry you have a an entirely different issue: Try to find a gift as a couple which is both useful, within budget and looks like you spent $250 on it.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Crazy Tattoos

I’ve had a buddy date a chick who had more ink than the NY Times and I never really got it. He would brag that it was a total turn-on but I couldn’t get past the fact that she couldn’t even look normal when going to work. Now I must admit that I’m too chicken-shit to get one myself which is probably a good thing because every tattoo I ever considered is one I would be regretting till this day.

The way I see it dudes look terrible with visible tattoos about 90% of the time while chicks look terrible 99% of the time.

Now it’s not that I’m anti-tattoo, I’m anti the visible ones especially the kind of thing where you can’t see where one starts and the other one ends. I know a hidden tattoo on a chick’s ankle might be cute or mysterious and one right above her five-hole might be sexy or skanky but for the life of me I don’t get the full out tattoo arm-sleeve thing.    If you are into the art-work you have cluttered it up so you can’t tell anything apart but I guess if you are into the shock value you can rest-assured your father is turning over in his grave.

There is not just a difference in the look but there is also a big difference between the girl who gets a tattoo on her ankle with her initials and the other one who decided to recreate the Sistine Chapel on her back. I look at one and think she might be a little crazy but she was smart enough to realize it could be covered up while I look at the other one and think that you’ll find her at the Meth clinic in a month. People say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but name me the person who has an arm-sleeve tattoo who has a legit, normal, respectable job; I’ll wait on the line till you get your answer.

I am not sure where the limit is but I kind of think the maximum amount of ink on any person can’t exceed one per body part and you have to be able to cover all of them up. You can have one on your ankle, one above your crotch and maybe one in the small of your back but that is the absolute max. Anybody who starts having multiple ones, especially visible ones becomes instantly repulsive to me. I do get that dudes seem to like to have affairs with chicks with crazy tattoos because the theory is probably that the more tattoos the crazier the chick will be in the sack, but somehow that can’t be worth it. A chick’s body is awesome to start off with, there is no way a picture of a unicorn or Charlie Manson is going to make that more attractive.

Now I’m not saying that I don’t get the skanky look because I do but there has to be a limit. A hot looking broad like Megan Fox might get a bit more leeway but if you are already a 6-7 on the scale, each visible tattoo pegs you down 2 points and you weren't starting from a very high branch to begin with.

Bend Over

I understand in this time of HealthCare overhaul that every doctor, pharmacist and insurance agent is afraid for their livelihood. With competing ways of how to run the health-care industry dominating the airways it seems like the commercials are a pleasant interruption. Some say that Health Care should be run like a business allowing market forces to control costs while others believe it's the responsibility of the government to provide Heath Care and that because of it's vast purchasing power it can keep costs down.

See I agree with a little of both, I think healthcare has to be run more compassionately than the straight business model and more effectively than through governmental bureaucracy because there is nothing more frustrating than sitting at a doctor's office and having to wait for 45 minutes. Why is it that this is the only business model where the customer has no say what so ever?
You can threaten to walk out, but try getting another appointment, you can threaten to change doctors but good luck getting one to accept your insurance or you can bend over and take it. The receptionists are preoccupied, the nurses overweight and the doctor's disinterested., some REAL competition would do them some good.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

No Thank You

I’m a pretty nice guy; I try to always make it out for people’s house-warming parties, birthday parties and after-hour work outings. I’m not nearly as thorough as I was pre-fatherhood but I still do my best. For years I considered myself the glue to help keep my high-school buddies together well into our thirties and for years I’ve tried to set outings to do various things but after all of the work to keep things together I’ve decided that like everybody else I’m going to have to reprioritize.

One of the reason’s I’m reprioritizing is because people don’t appreciate the amount of time and energy it takes to make it out to various events which is a TOR bitch which will be published in 10 days so this is your warning!!!!!

Now there are other complaints I have with people who make efforts but seem to leave out some small details which irk me more than anything in the world. There is nothing worse than the Thank You note addressed only to your significant other when you trekked all the way out to the same event, crying baby in tow. This is my rule, if I show up to your party and you are going to send my wife a card, put my name on it or next time I’ll drop an upper-decker in your upstairs bathroom.

If my wife and I give you plates for a birthday gift, thank both of us, if we drop a check in the box at your wedding send us both a thank you and if we buy you a vase for a housewarming gift I’d rather you crack me over the head with it than not acknowledge my existence.

Hey, I don’t need flowers, don’t want a pat on the back and I don’t need anybody to feel sorry for me but what would like the same thank you especially when the gift was clearly paid for by two, the effort to make it out was also two-folds and I even put on a clean shirt.

Bah Humbug

Hey Pervert, stop staring at my T*TS

Facebook Stalking

There are people I know who I suspect might be exhibitionists and maybe the kinds of people who have sex on ChatRoulette.com and I have another friend who I know is so private that I suspect she shower with a bathing suit on. The funny thing about the world we live in is that they can be the best of friends in real life and both types seem to meet happily in the wide-open world of Facebook.

What both of these people have done though is opened their entire lives up for the world to see and even with some ability to block some access the truth is that most people don’t do any of this and their lives are completely exposed for the world to see. Anybody who I know on Facebook knows the limitations to your ability to stay hidden unless you just leave no footprint what so-ever



Now I feel like there should be a two-way street, if you post pictures of yourself mooning the camera at a Friend’s rehearsal dinner than you should be privy to the picture of your friend’s cans but if you leave no footprint on Facebook whatsoever you shouldn’t be able to stalk completely anonymously. Now I know this goes against the entire interwebs and by signing up to FB you have relinquished your privacy but there should still be a forum where we can flock those perverts who are peeping at pictures of my sister-in-law while they themselves are as covered up as a Saudi Arabian woman on the same site.

Let’s call a spade a spade, the guy who stalks on Facebook without leaving any footprint is probably the biggest closet pervert there is, yeah he might walk around with a goofy smile on but that goofy smile is there only because he’s stalked you in every compromising situation possible.



Yeah it’s a bitch, but I am a bitch and I don’t care if you don’t like my bitching.

who are these people

I spend about an hour at the local post office the other day and it struck me what an eclectic cross-section of humanity roamed the place. Now I am not referring to the wackos working there, all of whom looked like they were ready to brandish a fire-arm but this commentary is on the people who frequent the post-office as patrons. Every person online buying stamps was either 15 years into collecting Medicare or needed to have been institutionalized 15 years ago.




I'm not being completely fair because there were a few non crazies there. This particular Saturday crowd basically broke down two line: people getting their passports and people who have probably have been asked to surrender theirs. If you are looking for domestic terrorists your search should begin with people who have a PO Box, I am convinced they are used only by Timothy McVeigh or Unabomber types. Have you noticed that only people I know who have a PO Box also believe the government wire-taps their phones.

I'm sure there are some legit reasons to have one (although I can't think of one that doesn't involve some kind of deceit) but the vast users of the PO Box also wear those over the head transistor radios, talk to themselves and believe Obama is a secret Muslim who was planted here by the Iranian government 50 years ago to overthrow the Federal Government with both his both his communistic and fascistic ideology.

The irony is that this fringe can probably be seen spouting some kind of nonsense at some TeaParty rally while they themselves only use the huge budget-crushing post office for their own mail and a PO Box for their address.. You can't really be against government interference if you refuse to us UPS or Mail Boxes Etc. If you happened to also believe the government is spying on you, would using the US Post Office really give you peace-of-mind?

But we digress, not everybody looked like they were waiting for a mail-order delivery of fertilizer, the rest of the crowd at the post-office were dressed like they were homeless (maybe they were) and stood too close to me online. I counted 55 people who came through the post-office in that hour and there were not 10 people, I'd trust with a knife (I'm starting to sound like one of them actually)

At $0.44/letter with no expected delivery time, I wonder how long it'll be before UPS or FedEx decides to get in the game, at least then I'd never have to associate myself with this class of vermin again.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I am not religious, never have been and probably never will be and although I find the actual faith part a bit like believing in fairy-tales, I do like the rituals, the theatrics and the pomp and circumstance. I see the value in the holidays and events as it probably helps bring communities and families closer and can specifically appreciate the ones where people have to give up something like Muslim's doing a monthly day-time fast during Ramadan, Jews fasting on Yom Kippur and even Catholics giving up an indulgence during Lent.
But I feel like if you are going to do it, then do it. Of course that is easy for me to say as I am not willing to give up anything but in opinion you can't take bows if you do it half-assed.
Every year I hear about people who fast during Yom Kippur except for water or drink alcohol during Ramadan or eat meat on Friday's, and although this is ultimately a covenant between a person and the All-Mighty, TOR will point it out for the fraud of taking bows for something you didn't really do. You can do anything you want but don't make it sound like you did something you didn't.

Often times people will come up with some loophole like conveniently leaving the TV on during the Sabbath. But now I have learned about something even more egregious an official loophole for people to use during Lent: dispensation. I don't know the dirty details but dispensation apparently means you can officially cheat without even a good reason.

See if you are going to give up something like let's say chocolate during Lent, you can't then have exceptions on the days you want chocolate. Come on Man, this isn't some kind of negotiation you either do it or you don't. Not Fasting if you are traveling is permitted during Ramadan but that doesn't mean you should have a Snickers bar if you are going to the mall.

Lent is like 40 days which means 6 weekends but if you gave up drinking and use dispensation it could mean you could still drink 2 out of the 6 weekend. So 33% of the time you can get smashed

This is like running a marathon but taking the subway for miles 12 through 14 or giving up meat except for summer BBQ days.

Maybe it's religions way to help bring people into the fold because I guess I can claim that I'm doing lent this year since I've only had three beers since Ash Wednesday.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Tassimo Blackballed

So apparently the Tassimo people don't have very thick skins. A few weeks ago TOR complained (http://takeonrighetti.blogspot.com/2010/02/betamax-of-coffee-machines.html) about the fact that the single serving coffee machine has become so obsolete that you can't find the pods in any supermarket and are forced to buy them online like you are buying tax-free Indian reservation cigarettes.

Maybe they got wind of the rant because I am apparently being blacklisted.
.
At about the same time as the rant I ordered 6 or 7 boxes of coffee pods online and have yet to get a delivery and every attempt I have made to get info has been met with a big wall.

Just listen to this madness.

Two weeks ago I contact them to get info about my order and I am told that one of the items is out of stock and this is where the insanity begins

I asked them when my order will ship and they say they don't know because an item was out of stock.

I ask which item is out of sock and they say they can't tell.

I ask when it will be in stock and they can't say

I ask them to ship out a partial order and cancel the out-of-stock item but their system won't allow it

I ask to cancel the order but the system won't allow that either

BUT I am told that if the order isn't filled in 44 days it will cancel automatically

I ask what is should do and they say I can place another order and then refuse delivery on the first one which I said I could do except since they can't tell me which item is in or out of stock so if I place another order there is a good chance I will order the same out-of-stock order and get stuck in the same endless loop

This is why customer service in this country sucks because these big corporations only care about the customer forking over the original $200 for the machine up-front not realizing that the consumables is what will make them loads more throughout the years. Their ineptitude and lack of interest in their existing customers will lead to something all the advertisements and sponsorships can't offset: a galvanized base who will rant and bitch about your crappy coffee and terrible service. I get a better customer service experience at a McDonalds and the coffee is better.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

staring down the barrel of a gun

With all the bitching and moaning we all put up with everyday, maybe it’s time for a blog about the good things in life.


Well when you are battling the misery of the morning commute with inaudible announcements, rats the size of poodles running on the tracks, filthy homeless people pissing on platform and ridiculously crowed trains when you get on. Well sometimes all that doesn’t sound so bad when you consider the fate of the woman who braved the stench of homeless piss and those Rat Poodles to retrieve the bag she had dropped onto the tracks when she was struck by an oncoming train.

Now I feel for her as TOR does not advocate the death of anybody, specifically somebody just minding their business on route to work but the entire scenario has brought on some interesting office chatter. I have often looked down the train tunnel and although I am by no means Superman I tell you one thing, there is NO WAY that I would ever get struck by an ongoing train. I am completely convinced that I could jump onto the tracks, retrieve my bad, floss my teeth, kick a few rats, help pick up some trash and dodge the homeless piss puddles in enough time to still get up from the tracks.

Now I’m a 34 year old man who runs 20 miles per week so maybe I’m not the prime example but I kind of feel like any dude who wouldn’t get charged for two seats on Southwest should be able to manage this feat and if you have any doubts you should probably stay away from the platform edge and from any basic physical activity.

Census

So I got a letter in the mail yesterday from the Census telling me that they would be sending me another letter shortly with the actual census form.

For nearly a decade I have read the NY Times Editorial Board tell me that the Census2010 was severely underfunded under Bush Jr. but apparently Obama has given them the keys to the Corvette and told them to take it for a spin.  

What the hell is wrong with our country when we

- send a letter to tell you that we are going to be sending you another letter.  If this wasn't part of some Post Office Bail-out program I don't know what would be
- send a letter when you can send an email for nothing... look at the Viagara Email SPAM people who seem to be able to reach every person in shouting distance.

Now I understand that the email option isn't really an option since it would wind up under-counting people without internet access and that would be very counterproductive to finding out which parts of the country need more funding to build things like internet access, so I understand why this hasn't been implemented.    But even knowing this, I have to wonder if I will be able to fill this thing out online because if you are going to expect the average person to send this back via POST and expect anything more than a 20% return you are smoking some of the good-stuff and I'm interested in finding out where to get some.

This is where we have things ass-backwards in this country.. We are under the impression that if we send out a couple of  letters and play a few cheesy commercials on TV that people are going to follow them, I say you tap into the phone-lines over at American Idol cause everybody watches that train-wreck so apparently that's a pretty good cross-section of the country.

I'll help you guys out... you can cross Corey Haim off your list

these are not your Brad Childress Vikes

So Icelanders revolted last week in a referendum and refused to pay-out two fellow European countries who felt victimized when an IceSave Icelandic bank collapsed amidst the global financial crisis.


Basically a bunch of Viking bankers build a huge house of cards during the economic boom which earned them tremendous profits but when they got swept up by the tidal wave they brought down their entire country..


The amount this bank owed was a few hundred million which in most countries would be painful but when your entire country has less than a quarter million people the amount owed per person became astronomical, to the tune of $65,000 per person.


So although the Icelandic government said they would reimburse the Dutch and British governments, the Icelandic people said NOT SO FAST and although not paying would doom their chances of EU membership. They probably will be shunned by the entire European community but to save $65 grand that seems well worth it


TOR's guess is they had three thoughts

- the EU has a swine-flu ahead much worse than the minor strain we faced in 2009 with the P.I.I.G.S coming out and infecting the entire economy

- except for Rapa Nui, there probably isn't a more isolated place than Iceland. These guys are used to living alone and they'll survive

- in a place which has 20+ hours of darkness for months on-end, this might not be the most miserable thing they deal with. When you don't see the sun for three months, it probably doesn't bother you if you don't see a bunch of limey Brits for a few years

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Traffic sucks.

 We live in a country where our traffic jams are legendary since basically every single person drives their own two-ton car to work. I travel all across this country and except for people in NYC, nobody really uses any type of mass-transportation or participate in ride-shares and travelling around major cities from 7 to 9AM or 4 to 6:30pm is just miserable.


I have sat in such horrific traffic-jams that I’ve missed meetings and have nearly pissed myself a few times as I was stuck in a place with no men’s room in sight. Traffic is horrible but we as a country don’t care because nobody is willing to actually do anything to limit the amount of cars on the road. Obama speaks often about greening the country but unless people are willing to suck it up and share their personal space with other people in a car-pool or on a light-rail or bus, it’s not going to happened. They talk about taxing industry who are carbon-emitters but they should start taxing the guys who are driving to work and causing me such a headache (end Thomas Friedman rant)

What I realize though is that there are two types of traffic: my own traffic and other people’s traffic.

If I’m en route to a Yankee game and I’m stuck in bumper to bumper traffic fighting to get to the stadium along with 60,000 other fans, I can live with it. I know that I’m part of the cause of this traffic and I know that it’s something I should have been able to predict.

Now if I’m en route to New Haven and I get stuck in traffic to Yankee stadium, I’m stuck in other-peoples traffic and this I can’t stand. This is where I become completely livid and start huffing and puffing as my blood pressure rises like the Stock Market in about 2004. I don’t know why there is such a distinction for me but sitting in other-people’s traffic is like Chinese Water Torture for me.

The only thing that comes even close to Other-Peoples-Traffic is fender-bender traffic. If you are going to cause the West Side Highway to backup from 181st street to Chelsea Piers at least have a couple of people crippled cause when I drive by an Audi and a M3 stopped in the middle lane with no visible damage, I’m likely to join my barrage of obscenities with a loogie on the windshield of both the jackass and the other donkey.

The Art of Deception

Anybody who uses Social Networking sites has willingly given up their privacy, it's the world we live in today and I think we are all aware of the potential levels of embarrassment which is plastered across cyberspace.
Facebook offers some protection of privacy allowing it's users to show certain amounts of information only to people in various circles of closeness. I believe that FB allows for a ripple-effect where a certain circle can see everything while others may be able to see less.

This in itself is a worthwhile endeavor but it leaves one loophole: pictures which you didn't post but were tagged in.

See some guy may have taken your picture and posted it and now anybody who is in their circle can now see this (potentially) damaging picture before you have any chance to react.

I know you can un-tag but this does nothing to protect your image while it was out there between the tag and un-tag stages.

The second part which is sort of odd is when you click on a picture of a friend which was tagged by a person you don't know. You can hit the link to see the picture but now you are exposed to the new person's entire photo-album.    It's weird how it works but you can't seem to just facebook stalk just anybody but if you get a backdoor entry like having a friend tagged in a photo, you now are right in the middle of the life of a person you may not know. I like this for my own stalking but I realize other people can use this to go through my pictures.

I know there are tons of embarrassing pictures of me all over the web but then again I have gone over 500 straight days of blogging every embarrassing injury I have had so my political career is sealed anyway but I do wonder if there shouldn't be some kind of 'accept tag' function which could potentially

Plus they should offer a DESTRUCT option where you have the option to blow up a picture posted of you so that it no longer is posted at all. They have to limit this to like 5 per year since you would be removing another person's addition but I guess having your bare-ass mooning the camera is something most people would prefer to have some ability to delete.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

3G

So for a year AT&T and Verizon Wireless have battled over Mobile Supremacy. AT&T has always had the clear advantage with their phones and Verizon offers the far superior service but both seem to be stuck on the details of their vaunted 3G coverage.
Never before have two companies fought over such a crap piece of real-estate because as anybody who has some kind of internet enabled phone knows the 3G service is akin to an American Online dialup connection.. It remember when I got my first 3G phone and being amazed with how quickly I was surfing the web while now I can't even look up a street address without wanting to pull out my hair. Mobile surfing during peak-times has basically become unusable

But this isn't one of those cases where I am just not content with the same service, it has gotten much worse.

There have been many articles written about how the explosion of internet capable devices has completely overwhelmed the bandwidth with more people going online, streaming videos and using social-networking sites from their phones. Now I am a huge proponent of the Smartphone but considering I am paying the same $40 per month for 'unlimited internet" as I was two years ago, I am getting a whole lot less bang for my buck. At least the IPhone allows you to browse wirelessly

The cell phone companies need to get ahead of the curve and just forget about 4G or even 5G because that will be good for about a week and move right to like 10G. Right now at this pace the over-the-air internet technology isn't able to keep up with the demand and with less competition because of all the consolidation in mobile-services there isn't any real incentive to keep ahead of the curve. Wait till the IPad comes out to see those aholes suck up the last bit of 3G left like a bunch of warlords in Afghanistan suck up any available water as they jam the entire system when they start playing World of Warcraft or Everquest on their morning commutes. There won't be enough bandwidth left to send a text-message.
It's time to start charging for usage like we do for electricity or heat or food or prostitutes.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Microbrews

A buddy of mine proclaimed recently that he much preferred a Miller Lite to any microbrew.

There seems to be a big divide amongst beer drinkers, the one side drinks beer because they like beer, sports and chicks while the other side has tried to turn having a cold one into some opportunity for a bunch of snobs to try to top one-another with the obscurity of the beers they have had.. Basically it becomes a battle between those amongst us who can appreciate a cold beer and the bourgeois who like the whole world to know they really can dissect the complex layers of taste in beer.

Now I'm not saying all MicroBrews suck but I am saying that there is this snobby mentality around them whose defenders liken an affinity for Miller Lite as a character flaw. It's to the point that even criticizing a beer makes you feel like you've told a room full of art-historian snobs that the Mona Lisa isn't that good. God forbid you knock one of these things, you are after-all asked to pay for them.

Now I fully agree that there are some good brews and breweries but the fast majority, like the vast majority of struggling artist and local bands for example, kind of suck. There is a reason there are thousands of galleries who nobody goes to, or thousands of bands who record songs that nobody listens to. Now I realize that Guns N Roses came from the local LA scene but so did Thundormuffin and nobody wears their shirts.

I know everybody embraces microbrews for their combination of variety, texture and alcoholic content and as a person who himself works for a small company I do appreciate the entrepreneurial of these brewers to bring beers to the market but at some point I feel like their staffs are so small they forgot to add somebody to handle quality control..

As for the variety I see the appeal in Microbrews because they can offer a lot of choice whether it's a Milk Stout, a Belgian wheat or some version of an IPA. The issue isn't that you offer 6 beer types it's that you offer 6 different shitty beers.

As for the taste: nine out of ten times, I sit bellied-up at a bar and try a microbrew I find it to be a rip-off of something commercial available except very often I find the microbrews to be more flat. I know they all lay claim to the best hops and malts and yeasts but honestly a lot of them taste like you are drinking a yeast infection.

What I find is that a lot of these places can seem to have one pretty good beer, like their Belgian Wheat for example but then they have a bland pilsner or a milk-stout which tastes like somebody but out a cigarette in it. Not everyone sucks, just the vast majority of them.

And as for the alcoholic content, I feel like this is just another game of whose got the bigger dick. If I want to get sloshed, I can do it drinking Jack and not feel full. If alcohol content is so important why aren't you drinking moonshine? Probably because like the CopperKettle's IPA, Moonshine tastes like it was filtered through a homeless guy's ahole.

So I can't decide what is worse: feeling shunned when I dare speak ill of a Microbrew or feeling like somebody pumped by stomach full of unfiltered sewage when I am done with one of these things.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Is there a bigger ahole than

There are many things that irritate me but none more than the guy who has to take out his cell-phone and starts making calls the second he lands on a flight. I know many of us have a self-righteous attitude but can you get some perspective?

Just today after a 1:45 minute flight, some dude starts frantically making calls to every joe in his IPhone and having the misfortune of sitting next to him, I got to hear each one. Luckily for the receivers most of them were probably well aware of this routine and let their phones go to voicemail because they realized the absurdity of treating a 2 hour flight like a return from six weeks of deep-sea diving. I'm all for making sure your loved ones and your office are sure you are safe but a text message can serve that purpose and you don' interrupt every fellow passenger in the adjacent 10 rows especially when you are just calling to chat.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

The Mile High Experience

Although I carry a Platinum Frequent Flier card for the thousands of miles I fly annually can't claim to be a card-carrying member of the MileHigh Club. Obviously the concept is intriguing and I often keep my eyes on couples in the cabin to see if they are indulging in that very exclusive club. I don't know anybody personally who has accomplished the feat although when you read the surveys in Playboy the percentage of people who claim to have done it always floors me.
The issue though seems to logistical, I have stood in the rest-rooms in many airplanes and there isn't enough room to turn around let alone .make whoopee.
I'm 6'1" and 185lbs but I couldn't squeeze a poodle in the bathroom let alone another person.
The second issue is how the hell can you think about the sweet act of seduction when you enter a 2 by 2 room with piss on the ground, used cigarette butts in the sink and scent of feces with a hint of Lavender.
Now I realize people will find many places to do it and maybe the conditions of an airplane bathroom are amongst the cleanest when comparing it to bus-terminals, club bathrooms and park benches but I have a hard time even touching any of the fixtures with my hands let alone plant my naked ass onto any of them.

To those who lay claim to this feat, I implore you to give us some details on how logistical (and sanitarily -if that's a word) you were able to do it. Please provide pictures, diagrams and a graphic description of the events..
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

So it's been about 10 years since I got my first cell-phone which was some sponge-bob looking contraption with a little microphone which folded out marketed for the Sprint network. I've gone through 2 carriers and 5 or 6 different phones since then including some Samsung thing, to the Q, a palm TREO, a couple of BlackBerry's and another one which I seem to have erased from my memory hard-drive. All of them had some limitations but for the most part they functioned as telephones and they all had one key feature....the ability to set the ringer to vibrate.


What I don't understand is why so many people feel the need to put their ringer on decibel levels which would threaten a Metallica concert. It's a self-centered act which forces the entire world to stop on account of your text-message or voice-mail. I have been able to completely function in a 'mobile-world' without having to disturb everybody in a 25 foot radius by some obnoxious ring and don't think it's too much to ask that courtesy is reciprocated..

Although I haven't decided which is the most irritating either the jackass who uses some pop-song as their ringer or the jackass who has it set to normal ring at level 10, I think all cell-phone rings should be abolished by a Supreme Court order.  There is no better example of disturbing the peace than some chick's phone blasting some Madonna song every time she gets an email and this kind of behavior should not just be shunned but punished

Now I understand the occasional time a ringer might be necessary like if you are 90 years old or if you were born without nerve-endings but in a world where we are already asked to stop-everything when our own phone rings, we also have to stop everything when another person's phone rings.

I propose the following rules for most social settings you may find yourself in

If you are hanging out and

- somebody's phone rings at a decibel level which startles you they immediately owe you dinner even if you are not hungry

- some chick's phone plays a song which has been played on Z100 in the last three hours she owes you a BJ

- some guy's phone plays a song which has ever been played on Z100 you can immediately stab him the urethra with an ice pick because no dude should ever use a ring-tone in any situation.





Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I thought elevator protocol was fairly well defined by now but apparently not.

Scenario: I’m waiting at the elevator bank at a dealership waiting to go to the second floor where the service area is located when a second guy walks up to the elevator and the two people exchange cordial pleasantries as we walk into the elevator.

As the doors close, I notice a guy walking towards my elevator and I did what any courteous person would; I held open the door so he could get on. Now this is a small courtesy which I don't expect to be receive a medal for but I do believe it's the kind of small-act of courtesy which defines us as civilized humans and should be acknowledged with a polite 'thank you.". Well yesterday this 4-series driving douchbag thought nothing of civility because he didn't even acknowledge the act as he waltzed into the elevator without so much as a 'thanks'.

There I am halting my activity to help a fellow man AND risking life-and-limb by thrusting my hand in front of the automatic doors and I am not even afforded a 'thanks'.

Well this isn't the worst part, the worst part happened a few seconds later when we arrived at the 2nd floor where the service department is located as the doors open you walk directly into the service department. Guy #2 lets me out first knowing that I was the first at the elevator but the other guy the ‘I won’t even say thanks for holding the elevator for you” inconsiderate ahole walks right up-to the service desk like he owns the place. Now there are no other floors which this elevator services as it travels between the show-room and the service department, anybody who is waiting for the elevator is going to the service department.

Now I think you know where I’m going what bothers me is that I was clearly on the elevator first and I had waited while the elevator was called. Two people clearly understood the protocol while a third guy took out his BMW driving 3 inch winkie and pissed all over the concept of civility by cutting the line without so much as a hand wave.

I hope he slams on the brakes hard the next time he’s getting road-head and the horse delivering clamps down like a pit-bull

TOR takes on the movies

Today we review an old classic, Sleepers a Hollywood blockbuster which many people loved but TOR just did not.

The movie is set around four guys who as juveniles spend time at the Wilkinson Home for Boys a juvenile penitentiary where they were beaten, abused and sexually abused by the prison guards including the character played by Kevin Bacon. The drama is set when years later two of the boys, John and Tommy run into the Bacon character and seek vengeance by murdering him .. how is that for SIX degrees!!!!

The movie basically takes place in the courtroom as Mike one of the other kids who has grown up to become a responsible member of society and works for the DA gets himself onto the case to intentionally throw the case which would in turn set free the two of the guys who murdered the Bacon character. Their defense is handled by Dustin Hoffman, who seems to be stuck in the perpetual Rain-Man character who along with the DA guy and the fourth kid come up with a defense which depends on the testimony of the Father Bobby a local priest played by Robert DeNiro to lie under oath saying they were with him at a Knick game at the time of the murder as their alibi.
 In addition to this they bring to the witness stand a bunch of the other guards and grill them about their time as guards at the Wilkinson School for Boys and basically have them admit that they were a bunch of perverts

It’s a good movie with a ton of stars (Brad Pitt, Jason Patrick, DeNiro, Hoffman, Mini Driver and the guy from Men Behaving Badly) but it had one major flaw.

See their entire defense is based on Father Bobby saying he was with the boys the night of the murder but the entire court case revolves around the abuses that happened at the Wilkinson School for Boys. What has always bothered me is that if your claim is that you weren’t anywhere near the murders why is it important to point out to the court the fact that guy who got murdered was a pedophile? If the case had been about guys who flipped and there was a moment of ‘temporary insanity’ then all the abuses that were brought out at the trial would be evidence but when your entire alibi was that you weren’t there, bringing up the fact that the dude and his buddies were kiddy-touchers is really not relevant.  At some point the judge should have asked

Now I have no idea why this bothers me as much as it does but it’s always killed me