Take on ConEd

My time has to worth something tangible although I have a very hard
time trying to justify exactly what it's worth. Well when I tried to
close my ConEd account yesterday, I was met with just that question.
I go through the automated menu and am told to hold for the first
available customer service rep. I wait 10 minutes and still only
getting elevator music, wait another 10 minutes and still nothing,
another 10 minutes and I start to pull my hair out, another 10 minutes
and I am ready to poke myself in the urethra with an icepick, 10 more
minutes and I start doodling monsters. 10 more minutes and I am about
to stick my he's in the oven

I hang up after waiting on hold for 59 minutes and 42 seconds having
accomplish nothing and now I know that an hour of my time is worth
about $4 which is what I 'saved' by canceling my service on Monday

Take on the strip-club tax

When Richard Lee sent around the following link
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304830704577492890714972590.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
about a new ordinance in Houston taxing strip-clubs $5 per patron I
was floored. You can tax my booze, you can take away my 64 ounce
Pepsi but when you go after my real passion, it's going to get ugly.
Forget Obamacare, this has to be the greatest threat to a communist
overthrow of our society and i predict that it may very well drag us
back into the second dip of recession proving again that Houston is
the hotbed for the great threat of a socialist movement.

This is another example of a nanny state trying to take away rights
and in this case hurting an economy alive on QE easing.
I will always walk into a strip-club with a set amount of money they
will blow, I walk in with $200 and refuse to go back to the ATM, so
every dollar you take to fuel your big government utopia is one dollar
less which goes into the g-string of some hard working east European
immigrant. We are taking away money from working people to support a
tax-binging government but forget what it does now we all know that
this kind of cash income is the best thing for an ailing economy
because every dollar spent on a motor-boat can easily multiplied by
five.

Righetti puts a single in a g-string of a 20 year old, that chick will
undoubtedly spend it that night on blow or booze, the provider of
which will spend it at a diner, where the waitress will spend it on a
(20 ounce) soda at the bodega on her way home which the bodega owner
may use to pay his overnight help

But what really gets us is that try want to use the $5 tax to offset
costs of rape test. We are all for making sure rape-victims have
every afforded right and protection but tying it directly to something
as innocent and American as a strip-club is criminal.

Take on the IPhone camera zoom

For everything the IPhone does right there are still a number of things it does not so well including some essential as some non-essential items like making phone calls or quickly finding your cellular data usage.

But one thing which irritates the hell out of me is the different zoom levels the still camera and video camera have.  If you are taking a picture of some cute dog and all of a sudden he decides to piss against your friend's leg you probably will miss it because you can't quickly switch between the two modes but even if you do the trouble is that the video camera perspective is ridiculously zoomed in vs the camera one.  So there you are, trying to capture the last seconds of the dog stream but now you are forced to gumby-arm it to have any hope of catching the action.  

Sent from my iPhone

Take on the not quite lay-flat seat

For all the ease and comfort afforded to you when you shell out
thousands of dollars on a business class ticket it is shocking that
except for some of new A380's and a handful of BritishAir flights they
never quite figured out how to make the seat lay all the way flat.
It's like a cruel joke because as you that an intercontinental flight
you turn your light off and try to sleep laughing at the poor schleps
in coach but after 20 minutes you find yourself sunk to the bottom of
your seat, your body contoured like a human pretzel. Of course this
may still be better than sitting with the goat herd in the cargo
section but at least those schmucks aren't expecting any better and
they will get off the plane having spent thousands less and quite
honestly probably able to sleep just as comfortably so in other words
you just spent $2500 on a cheap glass of champaign and the beef
tenderloin and then you realize who is laughing at who

Take on the Gay Oreo

I often read headlines of stories with no intention to read anything
but the comments written by the Internet meatheads and today was no
exception. When I read that Oreo cookies posted a rainbow picture on
their Facebook feed I had two reactions

- how the hell did anybody pick up on this, although I don't
'Facebook', I am well aware that you can be one friends with or fans
of people, celebrities and products but who in their right mind needs
to be sure that they get a regular Facebook updates from the Oreo
Cookie company?

- who the hell would spend their time commenting on it? Look at the
crazies here. Then again I do kind of hope that a bunch of these
hicks are serious about their boycotts because maybe it'll help fix
our country's obesity epidemic

Take on dedications

I never quite understood paying money to put your name on a brick or a
piece of lumber. I'm not against charitable giving but when it's so
obviously self-serving, I get a bit squeamish.


But if you are going to do it, do it big like a library, performing
arts center or shitter A few weeks ago while walking around the zoo
I came across the following sign dedicating a toilet to some woman who
apparently had the bladder control of an infant. It is still
ridiculous but at least it doesn't feel righteous because at least
they decided to have some fun with it. I am hoping to get a similar
plaque on YouPorn or XNXX

Take on the AC grate

There is one phenomenon which I just have not been able to figure out.
You walk down any street in Brooklyn and you see thousands of window
unit AC's sticking out of the buildings and ever single one of them is
damage in the back. I can't seem to figure out if they come
pre-damaged or if there are a bunch of idiot pigeons crashing into
these things but the are all damaged in the exact same way so unless
we blame it on the birds I am convinced it's part of an alien
invasion.

Take on the suburban Target

There are many places where I think the suburbs take a backseat to te
city. The culture, the feel, the bodegas, the diversity and the
energy are all better in the city but here the suburbs destroy the
city is in the shopping. Any store you find in the city you can now
find in the burbs but it's the convenience, the simplicity and ease of
suburban shopping with makes it worth taking on a 201 areacode.
Take Target, the one in Brooklyn on Atlantic Avenue is hell on earth.
Every piece of clothing looks used, every bag of chips is ripped open
and ever piece of furniture is damaged. It's as if people walk into
that place strictly to cause mischief. The Jersey Target on the other
and is a completely different experience. The customer service people
are doing their best to serve customers, the patrons are civil and the
merchandise may have been made in Vietnam but doesn't look like it
went through a war

take on the newsletter

At some point over the last 6 months it seems like every company I do some kind of business with has introduced a newsletter for their customers.   This is past the normal general spam emails these come across as something that somebody actually put some time and effort into.  I have literally gotten glossy magazines from some of these places which seems to me like the absolute biggest waste of money where they all just believe in this mentality of throwing as much crap onto a wall and hoping some of it sticks.    It's like getting magazine with fancy pictures and crappy articles but instead of it having any value it's literally all about the new Ford Focus or the new Samsung phone.  If you ever leafed through it you would immediately see that there is just no content in the material what soeever and it just makes its way directly into the recycling bin.

But it really begs the question about what advertisment costs and what it may be worth because there is relatively low cost to cheap hand-outs, flyers or mass emails but when you put real production into something like this the printing, mailing, content etc has to have a real cost.

Take on the conservative right-wing patriot

I usually avoid picking fights with guys who carry guns, have an
affinity for guys named Adolph or anybody who has an American Flag on
his windshield but when somebody sent me the above picture I felt it
was this newspaper's responsibility to comment
Granted we realize that the term 'foreign car' doesn't have quite the
same oomph as it did before with every major Asian carmaker basically
set up in Alabama but when I catch on of these window stickers which
reads 'don't tread on me', 'I don't bother calling 911' or
'constitutional conservative rightwing patriot' I find it more than a
bit ironic to see a Hyundai emblem below it.

Take on customer appreciation day

When I walked into the car-rental lot last week I was greeted with a
big sign proclaiming that day to be 'customer appreciation day' and my
immediate thought was that if there probably is no more empty token.
Please explain to me what the hell I get for being a loyal customer?
I know I'm virtually assured a grumpy attitude, a long line and and a
difficult decision about taking the insurance but I have yet to get a
real thank you for my business.
Nobody offered me an upgrade into a mustang, a free rental on the
weekend or a tank of gas. I wasn't even offered a donut or a cup of
coffee, all I got was a reusable sign tacked up against a window

Take on the good luck dollar

I walk into a new bodega yesterday at an amazed when I stare at the
wall behind his counter. This dude must have 50 different bills tacked
up each with a nice inspirational inscription wishing them luck.
There are singles, finskies, ten-spots, a couple of twenties and even
a fifty dollar bill. It made for a pretty interesting looking
backdrop with a minimum of $300 hanging there but at what point does
it just look like overkill I get framing the first dollar but to
post the first dollar you get every day you open your door is
ludicrous.

It does beg the question that what has to be the moat depressing day
in the life of a small businessman....the point he has to go to the
wall?

Take on Zimmerman's wife

I'm no George Zimmerman fan and not going to spend much time defending the guy but even we found the blazing headline in today's Daily News a bit off..    Apparantly the News got a big scoop with their report of Zimmerman telling his wife that she should probably put on a bullet proof vest, now I didn't quite find this newsworthy and honestly if I were him, I'd do the same because there are a lot of crazies out there and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that if he were to get off, there'd be some backlash.

but that isn't my issue here.. it's the fact that in typical 2012 sensational journalism they decided to flank the story with about the most gruesome picture of Mrs Zimmerman.  If this isnt a mugshot, it may as well have been because she looks like she's pissed, tired and angry.   Honestly the way the News portrays here, this woman could really benefit from a shower, a suntan and a bottle of prune juice.   Not only is the life as she knows it over after George and Trayon's altercation a few months ago because even in her best case scenario, her husband gets off and doesn't spend any hard-time but she'll have lost a couple of years off her life, countless death threats and been put through the ringer of the 24 hour news-cycle.  can somebody at least get this chick a facial and a trim because when I open the NY rags I expect to see Lindsay Lohan in a see-through or Posh Spice in thigh-highs not a chick who looked like her world just collapsed upon her.

 

  

Take on the Dirty Jobs

When my wife and daughter surprised me with a father's day gift the surprise was really on Sunny some poor Korean pedicurist in Brooklyn.   As we've chronicled repeatedly on TOR, my feet are about as bad as it gets.  Between the dead skin, red spots, ingrown nails and athletes foot it is an absolute disgrace so when I sat down and saw the chick reach for my dogs, the look on her face was that of absolute horror.    As she put on gloves, I swear I saw her contemplating putting on a second set and I am quite sure I saw her puke and swallow it.   She started with the foot soak which instantly turned her little foot bath a very cloudy grey, he then used some industrial nail file and quite honestly removed 2 inches of dead skin at some point shaving off slices as thick as Munster cheese.  She added some kind off cream which at that point felt like rubbing alcohol into an open cut.   There were times during the 45 minutes when I swear she looked like she was going to quit but everytime she made a movement to get up her pimp stated at her and she resumed the task of digging into the toxic dump 7 inches from her face, the look of death only outmatched by the smell.   I promise you that if this woman had a choice to turn in her beautician job for that of an Asian masseuse on the spot, she would have had a hard decision 

I'm sick of the argument that illegal immigrants come and take good American jobs, there is no self-respecting American would be caught dead touching these things unless they are guaranteed a reality show invite stapled to the application 

Sent from my iPhone

Take on the toilet condom

Regular TOR readers know our disdain for public bathrooms. The
smells, the puddles of piss and the swamp the seats become after a day
of heavy use. So you would think that those automatic saran wrap
dispensers which have been installed in public bathrooms at OHara
airport in Chicago would seem like the ideal answer. The concept
behind them is that like those public bathroom cloth towel dispensers,
it would be used by one person and then automatically conveyer over
exposing a new piece of plastic by the time the next one would sit
down. My problem is that I have no faith in humanity and unless I
can see the guts of this thing I have a real suspicion that the
plastic cover just rotates around an endless loop so although you are
sitting on what appears to be unused plastic when you are actually
using your ass to soak up three day old urine

Take on timezones

Whenever a major sporting event other than the Superbowl happens, you
can know two things

- half the country will not give a crap and wouldn't even know it was
happening (even worse for hockey)
- half the country will wonder why the other half isn't glued to their TV's

You'll get a thousand explanations but one of the major themes from
the thousand sportscasters, newsmakers, talk show guys will be about
how late it starts. World Series games that end after midnight on a
school night can't possibly be the best way to attract young baseball
fans and NBA finals games which don't tip off till 9pm probably don't
have the average 9 year old in mind Even this 36 year old has a
hard time staying up for playoff game after playoff game knowing my
alarm clock (i.e. two year old) gets up at before 6AM. And although
the Superbowl starts at a reasonable time with all the commercials and
halftime flashes there are many nights that it doesn't end till 11pm
not to mention Monday and Sunday night football which routinely ends
around midnight

But the argument is always that in order to placate to the West Coast
you can't start earlier because an 8pm start would mean that some
surfer has to cut out of work a bit early. The most ridiculous part
is that California fans are notorious for showing up late, so if you
started a game at 5pm and they turned the game on at 6pm they'd feel
righty at home.

But really how many people are we doing this for? I looked up
population per time zone and found this link
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=714986 which says that
in 2004 the total population in the eastern and central time zones was
roughly 226 million people while the pacific and mountain timezones
are only 66million

So I'm grouchy for a month straight because of lack of sleep so that
AC and Zack can catch the first quarter
Those guys already get great weather, a bunch of hot chicks prancing
around and their sports fans get a great bight sleep. It is just not
fair

Take on interrupted sleep

I am not sure why I even go to sleep before an early morning flight because there is just no way I can really sleep the night before a flight.  I swear that I woke up every 10 minutes from 2:30 till 4:30 so afraid that despite having my alarm set -and triple checked- I'd oversleep.   Now I don't have a history of oversleeping and my alarm does not have a history of crapping out and with a car-service coming at 4:50AM who will call me to tell me they are outside so missing the flight is almost impossible

But still I cannot sleep, there is just no way for me to ever get into an REM phase ever.   So now I got a 17 hour day ahead of me including 150 miles of driving and will be doing it on about 2 1/2 hours of sleep

MLIA

Sent from my iPhone

Take on the Delta earlier flight

I booked myself on a 6:15AM flight to Chicago tomorrow morning which sounded like a great idea when I did it but now that I'm trying to figure out my plan for tomorrow morning sounds miserable because a 6:15 flight is that it means you have to be at the airport at 5:30 which means I have to be out of my house before 5AM and obviously means you have to be up at 4:30AM.   

 

As miserable as that sounds, it gets worse because my meeting tomorrow just got moved back an hour which means that I will now have an extra hour to kill when I land in Chicago at 7:30AM... BUT I do have a platinum medallion card with Delta for flying nearly 100,000 miles last year and that HAS to be good for something right?

 

I call up the platinum medallion line and am greated with a friendly "Hello Mr. TOR, how can we help you make your flight better"..   I ask them if I can change my flight to the 7:15AM flight which they say shouldn't be a problem..for a fee.    I'm not quite ready to spend another $100 on a $300 ticket so ask what my other options are..  She tells me that they do offer a courtesy day-of switch if there are seats available which means calling Delta 3 hours before your scheduled departure to try to switch the flight. 

Well this doesn't exactly work at 6:15AM which would mean that I'd have to call at 3:15AM to find out if I can go back to bed until 4:30 or instead wake up at 5:30AM.. Honestly with my luck there would be a delay on the 7:15 flight which means that I'd miss my meeting and honestly there is no chance i'd ever get back to sleep at 3:15 anyway.

 

 

 

take on the kiddie toucher

When I read the story of the 23 year old father who killed a man he caught molesting his 4 year old daughter we had a mixed reaction.    The father ran to the rescue of his daughter when he heard the little girl screaming and found her being molested by the other guy and proceeded to kill him using his bare hands.

 We don't have any problem with this kind of vigilante justice knowing I would do the exact same thing myself and feel very little remorse.    We also agree with what some iFriends pointed out that the father probably saved the state quite a few dollars from having to prosecute this pervert.    We don't expect the father to serve any time as there will be very little call from the masses to prosecute him.  Considering it took place in Texas, we suspect that the chances of them naming a road after the father are higher than him having to clean it in an orange jumpsuit.

 Our main issue is that without any witness other than the four year old and the guy accused of murdering the kiddy-toucher, how can you ever know that this creep was actually a creep?   He doesn't have a prior arrest record which we know doesn't prove anything either way but if he was a proven habitual offender it would put the thought of a trial-less conviction a bit easier to swallow.    We think that him lying about the molestation is very unlikely but without video-tape or witnesses it may be hard to prove if it were to go to trial for justifiable homicide.

Take on pastels

We at TOR are not exactly a slave to fashion but when we see something
do egregious that it stops us in our tracks we believe it is our duty
to address it. Now I was not exactly standing in Milan or Paris
where a little risk is expected, i was standing in the mecca of modern
fashion (Target).

I walked past a rack of shorts that ranged in pastels from soft green
to pink and honestly I was speechless. Why any heterosexual man would
willingly don pastel pink shorts is beyond me.

Taking on the morning rush

I have commuted into NYC by bus, subway, by foot and by car and honestly commuting is one of the craziest phenomenons.    Every day that I commute into the city on the subway, I feel like an absolute sardine.  There are literally days that I cannot get onto the train because it is so packed and even if I can manage to squeeze onto it, there are good chances my hands will be squeezed between two pillows

Take the exact same commute back home at 5 or 6pm and the trains are totally empty.  You are nowhere near anybody else and you usually get a seat.  

How can 10 million people commute into manhattan every day but only 5 million commute back?    I always figured it is that most people get to work at roughly the same time (8-9am) so catch trains at specific times but get out of work anywhere between 4 and 7pm and not everybody goes right home.   Seems to make sense right except this only OR maybe everybody commutes into NYC by subway from Queens or Brooklyn and then commutes into NJ or Long Island on the way home because places like Port Authority and Penn Station are much more miserably packed on the afternoons than in the mornings and that doesn't even include the bumper to bumper traffic you'll find any afternoon

Sent from my iPhone

Take on the subject portion of a text

I wake up each morning and like clockwork will check my IPhone.  I don't really know what I am looking for because there really is never that pressing on it that needs to be looked at before 6:15AM but I just look.  

There are days that I do feel like it's worth it. 

Sometimes I see an update on an app that will improve it, sometimes my buddy Jim sends me porn and sometimes I realize what the setting change I made really does

This was the case recently when all of a sudden I noticed that my text messages now include a subject line. 

I like Apple and appreciate most of their innovation but I just don't get this one    Why I need to prompt my buddy with a subject to a text message is beyond me.   It winds up being either completely redundant or breaks up an otherwise normal thought for reason

Just look

Subject: drinks tonight 

Message.: wanna get drinks

Subject: hot chicks

Message: do you like them?

Subject. Important question 

Message: Mix Master Mush or Viola?

Subject: LTT

Message: LTT  Kendal Hunter for Michael Crabtree

Sent from my iPhone

Take on the stat nerds

Watching the Heat Celtics series has been fantastic.  The most hated
but also one of the most talented team in history vs a bunch of old
guys who walk around like they are a dynasty when in fact they have
only one championship banner hanging from the rafters since Larry Bird
hung up his Converse
I won't insult you by dissecting the games leaving that the blowhards
over at ESPN.  What I will do is bore you with my analysis of their
analysis.   I am actually not referring to any particular game but
just the absolute minutia that follows any game.
For years I have found stats like rebounding edge, turnover ratio,
points in the paint etc to justify a win/loss ridiculous

Take an average game that ends 100-99 and watch Mike Wilbon, Stephen
A, Ric Bucker fall all over each other to find a reason for the loss.
his is the kind of lame stat cherry picking these analysts all do to
fit their own narrative.  These guys all make predictions before a
game and then try to use a few stats to justify the outcome after it's
done

Let's take a look at what might happened in game 7 this weekend 

For argument sake let's assume that the Celts beat the Heat 100-99
with Paul Pierce hitting a two at the end of regulation to get Boston
to the NBA championship.   After the entire world is done blaming Lebron

for everything from missing free-throws to causing cancer they will

immediately start dissecting the game and find four or
five random stats and harp on them to justify the outcome

They will say that the Celts outplayed them on the offensive glass,
had more steals and that their bench out scored the Heat bench   This
is fine but it really doesn't justify the outcome because at the end
of the day the only thing that matters is that one team scores more
points than another and if Pierce hits the jumper than bench scoring
or offensive boards become important and if he misses all the analysis
will be about transition points and total rebounds

Some guy will say that the Celts had more offensive boards but is that
due to them missing more shots.? If one team shoots 30-50 from the
field and another shoots 20-50, the team hitting only 20 shots will
have 10 more opportunities for an offensive board.

Another stat will be regurgitated that the Celtics scored more points
in the paint but in a one point game doesn't that just mean that the
Heat scored more points from the wings or the free-throw line

 If they tell you the Celtics had more steals then it leads you to
think they had more possessions but if those didn't translate into
points than what does it matter?

But the most ridiculous stat is bench scoring.

If in a a one point game the Celtics scored more bench points than the
Heat, then the Heat got more production out of their starters. 

There are 100 stats to call and in a close game one team will have an
edge in some and the other will have an edge in another but when all
these stats are presented in a total vacuum than what does it matter?

Sent from my iPhone

Taking on Dick

I know this is probably juvenile but I think its due time that we put some pressure on big government to give us a constitutional amendment to force all guys named Richard to go with Rick instead of Dick for short.     I call up a customer today and every time I leave him a message I snicker..  It's not a full out schoolgirl giggle but honestly it's hard to keep a straight face when you call a dude Dick to his face.   It's just ridiculous to have a guy in a professional context use some name that elicits this kind of response, you don't see some chick going around with the name of Vagina or Chocha or something.. You can't even type a name like Dick Van Dyke into a reply over at Footballguys.com, the language filter grabs it and it shows up as **** Van Dyke which is more than just a bit idiotic but understandable if you could realize how many trolls they have hanging out over there.

So F you Dick Nixon, Dick Whitman and Dick Clark I'm sick of being thrown into situations that make me look a bigger jackass than I do on my own.

Take on All the News that's Fit to be shown on your 4 inch screen

Even if you got your news from a decent crosssection including FoxNews, NPR, CNN, WSJ, NyTimes, the BBC and Al Jazeera you would better off but still limited to what they show you.    Nowhere is this more true than the NY Times app which although ridiculously convenient, fairly inexpensive as compared to the print version and much better for the envirorment it has a major drawback.. you are limited to what somebody has decided are the 10-15 most important stories and I'm not even talking about the 10 articles in their 'most emailed list'   Now their top stories is usually offer a decent cross-section but I'd have to think that there must be some techology which allows them to see what people are clicking on which they would then be able to use in a matrix of stories to feature.   What bothers me most about this is that seeing each story listed with only a title and a very brief twitter-sized description, really alters the way you read the paper.    There are probably countless articles I've decided to avoid because the headline and blurb didn't immediately grab my attention, obviously headlines are important in both virtual and actual print media but when you have an entire newspaper in front of you the pictures, graphs, bolded parts etc all help capture you.    In this a world of instant gratification and increasingly busier schedules and more distractions there just isn't time to open countless stories to glance at.  

I've come to realize that the news I get is completely skewed.  Maybe years ago when people depended on Rather, Jennings and Brokaw it felt different but I think that anybody who keeps their eye on the big picture realize that we get a very filtered version of the news be it to appease viewers/readers, corporate entities, ratings hawks, advertisers etc.   I don't think anybody believes that there is such a thing as a news-room with complete autonomy but when the wall to unfiltered news now also includes some webmaster's decision of what to show you after the editors have already combed through what they want in the newspaper by itself you are getting further and further away from true news. 

Take on the umbrella swap

As New York embarks upon its first venture into a bike sharing program
(and the socialism it will inevitably breed), somebody asked me if I
thought it would work. I can't say I have any knowledge about the
effectiveness of bike sharing programs but I actively participate in
an umbrella sharing program which is very effective

It goes something like this:

I buy one of those crappy black umbrellas from some dude hawking them
on the street corner for $5 as I step out of the subway on a pouring
Monday morning. I walk into the office and throw my wet umbrella into
the receptacle by the door. When I walk out for lunch, I reach in and
play bobbing for apples and pull out a slightly bigger one than the one I
donated into the communal pot, this one has black one with a reddish handle.

I walk into a lunch spot and a half-hour later I walk out inevitably
forgetting the larger umbrella with reddish handle underneath my table
I walk a few steps and realize it is too wet to continue, I think
about the umbrella Ii left under my seat but don't worry at all since I belong
to a umbrella sharing program. I peek my head into the front door of
an Irish bar where I find one of those large nice corporate golf
umbrellas sitting by the door with 'Morgan Stanley' blazon across the
front. I figure that my tax dollars paid for part of that sucker and
really it is very wet. I walk back to work throw the Morgan Stanley
umbrella in the bin and upon leaving the office, I grab another
umbrella from the office umbrella receptacle, this time a nice red one
which opens automatically.   I go to a restaurant and put my wet
umbrella down by the door as I walk in. Two hours later as I leave
the restaurant I forget I ever had an umbrella and walk out to head to
a bar. There I have a bunch of drinks and when I am just toasty
enough, I walk out stopping by the door and see there are easily 10
umbrellas piled up, I wade through my options and find one of those
super compact Totes that practically collapsed into the size of a
peanut. This has to be one of the nicest umbrella I have owned
especially because it is engineered to be wind resistant so you don't
have it inverting on you as you walk down 6th avenue with a tornado
embarking  upon you. I make it to the station and walk into the subway
completely dry.

I pass out on the subway ride home waking up just before the announcer says
'77th street', scamper out the door an up the stairs out into the cold
wet night, my newest treasure still lying on the floor underneath my R train
seat

Take on Yoga

yesterday I take my two year old to some Toddler and me Yoga class, 45 minutes of basic yoga moves, nothing too crazy and probably got into 2 'real' yoga positions.  Anyway I get up this morning  and get out of bed and am stiff as a board   I just don't feel right, not because I am sick or anything just because although it although ridiculously cliche I have aches and pains in parts of my body I never knew existed.    I try to stretch but it doesn't really work because I can't remember how to get into downward fucking puppy and now my back feels like my body was used as the rope for a tug of war between Nick Mangold and a grizzly bear.  My Achilles feels like somebody took a sledge-hammer to it from kneeling with my feet outstretched underneath me and my legs feel like I carried two bowling balls up all 102 flights of the Empire State Building.  I ran the marathon twice and felt better afterwards, there was no part of my body that didn't ache.

 

Then consider the stink of 10 people sweating it up in some Cambodian Jungle with us all rolling around on communal mats which you just know aren't getting hung out for air.   Although I probably lost 10 pounds it was all water weight and add to that fact that I undoubtedly picked up some strain of ParkSlope athlete's foot on my guy (although I am sure it can't compete with a BayRidge strain). But between the aches, pains and likely fungus it was an unforgettable workout.  I am not complaining mind you...it was an absolutely great workout and I will absolutely going back

Need I remind you that it was a TODDLER yoga class

Sent from my iPhone

Take on the Desi News

I don't have a lot of WTF moments in my life but when I was on NYDailyNews.com a few days ago and accidentily clicked on the top bar and was brought to the DESI news platform.    We have nothing against appealing to a broader audience and obviously the Daily News has done enough market research to say that there is a need for Indian based news,... our problem is that this is the NEW YORK Daily news..  it has a news-staff covering man-hole cover thefts in Manhattan, the demise of the Yankees, firehouse closings in the Bronx, high-school basketball in Brooklyn, reviews of the latest gyro hut in Queens all held together by a witty front and back page covers but does this mean that we're all going to get cricket scores, the latest Bollywood gossip and an expose on that nasty pink crap they spit all over the walls?

it's like they decided to outsource both the content AND the customer base.

Take on the pushed Facebook status update

Apparently somewhere between screwing over investors and selling your personal information Facebook has started to get desperate.  Maybe it was because the IPO pulled back the covers to reveal that FB's earnings never justified the perceived value or maybe they finally had to admit that all those active users numbers were hyperinflated but something happened this week which caught our eye.  

This week I started getting emails from Facebook with status updates, the same kind of lame daily drivel which pulls thousands of people to the site per second.   In some lame attempt to lure me back they calculated that I may get pulled back in if only I could see the crazy fun people were having on FB.  They apparently did some market research and decided that they go to some direct marketing by bombarding people who like me have not logged in for months with the kind of crap most users find addictively irresistible 

So although I don't care that Bad Willy Styles wishes everybody a 'happy Friday' it is now funneled into my inbox meaning I am once again exposed to this daily barrage of garbage and the only way to get it to stop is probably by logging onto FB and changing the settings which by the simple act of logging in will mean some Facebot can count me as an active user.  

Sent from my iPhone

take on the super big gulp

In my early twenties I would routinely fill up a 40 ounce thermos I
bought at 7-eleven which they would allow you to refill for a buck.   I
would literally go back to 7-eleven multiple times per day to refill it
and I honestly thought it was the greatest consumer item ever
invented, I was also 245 pounds.
I have made some lifestyle changes including more exercise but the
biggest singular item I cut out of my diet was soda.   I went from
downing 2 gallons of soda per day to having three cans per year so I
can attest to the health factors involved in less soda.

When the Bloomberg administration announced their intent to ban the
sale of large sugary drinks we had mixed feelings.   While we agree
that sugary drinks are definitely a major issue in fighting

obesity especially that in young kids but when it is done on the back
of personal freedom we get more than a bit discouraged with the
overzealous reach of government.
Granted this wasn't the original plan for Bloomberg whose first
attempt to dissuade the consumption by taxing soda died in the great
political wasteland known as Albany after the powerful soda lobby bit
their rotten teeth into it.    This is our first issue, every issue seems to have
some powerful lobbying arm out there yet for stuff I care about
(clean toilet seats) state government turns a blind eye.

Although the difference is probably just semantic, the idea of a
government dissuading behavior through taxation is very different than
prohibition and we have a much easier time swallowing the first than
the second.    I am much more comfortable paying a tax for certain
behavior which has an indirect effect on public health like taxes on
booze and smokes than I do the government outlawing behavior all

together (like week) which I might consider having no real public

merit but isn't particularly vile.

one thing is that everybody says that you can just buy two smaller sodas instead of one...
so maybe in this case it is the soda industry actually supporting this because you obviously
make a bunch more money selling two small sodas than one big one.