This morning a headline in the Daily News screamed ‘Don’t Tax our TaTas’s’

The article went to describe a new 5% tax for all elective cosmetic surgeries. Basically some stripper gets her tits done and all of a sudden she’s giving your uncle named Sam a little extra during a lapdance to collect enough to pay off our collective Uncle Sam. I’m all for finding new government revenue and elective surgery is probably a decent enough place to start but for something that brings so much joy to the world as a set of fake-cans is like raising taxes on a Broadway show.

I am all for consistency in tax-code so I can’t quite decide whether these types of surgeries should be taxed or not without knowing the answers for the following questions.

- I can see the argument that says a chick decides to buy new cans so her boyfriend has something to play with should pay some kind of tax in the same way you would if you buy a new set of golf-clubs.



- Then I think about the chick who is looking to use her new set to hook a husband, is this that much different than going to Match.com? If you aren’t getting taxed for Match.com maybe you shouldn’t get taxed for these things either.



- How about the chick who is a stripper does she get to write off her new set as a business expense? I have no idea what the answer is but if the answer is NO than somebody better explain how a factory can write off the purchase of new machinery so they can be more efficient but a chick couldn’t do this to become more efficient under the bright (black) lights of the seedy underground.

the Buffer Seat

I’ve heard many complaints about my movie-going tendencies: some complain about my restless leg syndrome, others about my refusal to buy the extra-large popcorn with 10 pounds of butter on it but most of them find it odd that when I go to the movies with a buddy we don’t sit right next to one another. The first few complaints come from just about anybody who goes to the movies with me but the latter one comes mostly from female friends who can’t seem to grasp the concept of a little extra space to let the boys air out and allow me to adjust myself a bit


I’ll hear the following from chicks all the time

If you are going to the movies with somebody else why would you not sit next to each other, you can’t even talk. It’s totally antisocial.

Well let’s take this one by one; first of all I’m sick of hearing the complaint about not being able to talk with your friends.  This is the ultimate crap excuse since you aren’t supposed to talk while at the movies anyway. The people who complain about the buffer seat are the same ones that are probably hooting and hollering the entire way through The Nutty Professor III which is a much bigger disturbance than two dudes not cuddled up together.  Secondly I’m paying $12 to be entertained by Warner Brothers not my fantasy football league-mates.

But forget the talking aspect,
How is going to the movies any different than sitting in your own house?  
When I’m watching the Star Wars trilogy with a buddy, we don’t sit right next to each other on the couch.   He sits on one side and I sit on the other leaving a little space.

How is it any different than an airplane?
When two friends get onto an airplane and they are given the option of one sitting at the window and the other on the aisle leaving the middle seat empty nobody complains.  This is the exact same set up as the moview and nobody would claim you are homophobic for not sitting leg to leg on a flight when given an option for a little extra room to stretch your legs.

What is it about sashimi and cheap beer?

I love sushi and have often considered it the one food I could eat every single day for dinner for a week without suffering from it. I’ve had Sushi made by Korean and Italian sushi-chefs, I’ve had sushi delivered to me on a conveyer belt, I’ve had it delivered by a Chinese delivery guy and I’ve shoved it down my throat in an all-you-can-eat sushi place.

I love sushi but when you have REALLY good sushi everything changes, this is when I go from a guy who likes sushi to the equivalent of lesbians to sushi. When it’s served at the right temperature (just below room temperature), it’s cut well and it’s matched with a large Sapporo you can’t go wrong. I like sushi but actually prefer sashimi


The funny thing about sushi is that everybody thinks they can make it and the Americanization of it has taken away from the real hole-in-the-wall places which when sitting there still makes you feel like you are dining in Tokyo. I like the rolls a lot but it’s still not real sushi for me and it’s almost sad to hear people tell you that they like sushi but only eat California rolls. What they should say is that they like cucumber, rice, faux-crab and avocado but they cannot accurately claim they like sushi. The fancy rolls (spicy tuna, Godzilla, Blue Crab etc) can be absolutely fantastic but this is still not real sushi and calling it sushi is like telling me you had a great steak when you had some ground sirloin on a bun.

Anyway Chicken sucks.

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Regular drinkers are more likely to exercise

Regular drinkers are likely to do more than tone their biceps with 12-ounce curls, according to a new study. Those who imbibe -- regardless of how much -- get more exercise than teetotalers, researchers reported in the current issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion.



Surprisingly, the effect was strongest with heavier drinkers, who "were more likely to exercise than light drinkers and exercised for more minutes," said lead researcher Michael French, a professor of health economics at the University of Miami.

Now the fact that heavy-boozers are bigger exercisers than the average Joe is pretty surprising, it seems to be kind of conflicting behavior. Boozing obviously not being great for your body while exercise being pro-body. 
But as I read this study yesterday and thought to myself that I have already proven this myself. The more I booze the more I feel the need to exercise. One reason is guilt, I feel like I have to work off the extra pounds those 10 Blue Moons I had last night put on but my bigger conscious decision is that I feel the need to detoxing the booze out of my system after a hard night of drinking.  I have often thought about runnng one of those pub-races where you have to run about 10 miles stopping every mile to have a beer, this way you have no time to let the booze ruin your body but it can also be a clear subsitute for drinking that god-awful Gatorade they usually offer at the NYRR races.

I have often said that the best thing you can do when you are hung-over is a 4 mile run; now I prefer to run this outside as the stench of the hung-over Jack Daniel’s stinking dude on a treadmill with bad ventilation is really not pleasurable for anybody around. I can’t say I’ve never done the treadmill thing and exposed people to the noxious odors coming from my body but in general I try to keep it outside.

So what I do is lace up my sneakers, head outside and by the time I’m done the booze has basically evaporated through my pores.

The biggest issue is of course the old Bud-Mud which follows me after a night of unfiltered beer drinking and then I tend to have experiences like this


http://takeonrighetti.blogspot.com/2008/09/serenity-now.html

Just as Steve Jobs comes back to lead Apple, the Jobs report comes out and we are at almost 10% unemployment. The way I see it, Steve Jobs is the guy who is going to get us out of this stupid recession because he’ll “invent” the I-Book I guess which will be similar to every-other net-book except it’s got a little Apple on the casing and all of a sudden American’s will be spending their way right out of this recession.

But seriously, an unemployment level of nearly 10% that is 1 in 10 people out of work, most people have 10 friends and that means that for every 10 times they go out to the dinner with somebody they feel some obligation to pick up the check. I don’t know exactly how many more jobs would have been lost if the Stimulus package hadn’t been passed but I doubt it’s that different as most of that stimulus money has just not been spent.

From everything you read since this recession hit we have lost 6.5 million total jobs but how many new jobs are offsetting that number and how many saved jobs are keeping that number down?

What has always bothered me about the original stimulus package is that they kept talking about either creating or saving 3 million jobs. Yeah you can create 3 million jobs but if you add 6.5 million people to the jobless rate than you really have 9.5 million people who lost their jobs at some point and 3 million who have gained a job. Are these the same people?  Anyway you cut this, it is a lot different than having saved 3 million jobs in which case 'only' 6.5 million lost their job.

The net difference is the same (people working) but how it actually plays out is a bit different in my mind. Say they can claim that they have created or saved 3 million jobs there are two ways to look at that. By saving jobs (and assuming those are at roughly the same pay and hours) you don’t have those people hitting the unemployment lines and drawing against the public funds.

Being unemployed adds to the angst of people, disrupts lives and from everything I hear from people I know the jobs that people are taking are at lower pay than before. People who are unemployed become desperate and may go without healthcare to save money. When they find a new job they may take one that is further away, at lower pay or with worse benefits than they had before. So although they may be employed again the net income is less.

The kinds of jobs created has also never been made clear. What happens if the stimulus package creates a job for high-end engineers making sonar fuel cells and the people available for that kind of job are all presently employed? Yes you have created a job but you are only shuffling people around since the job that becomes vacated probably can’t easily be filled with an employee from the unemployed workforce. All those infrastructure jobs which are around the corner are great if I wear timberlands to work but not so good if I wear a button down shirt.

So whereas saved jobs keeps the unemployment numbers lower creating jobs is what helps shrink the unemployment numbers once they buldge, so what we should be looking at in the beginning of a recession is saving jobs and at the end of one is creating new ones.

the V-Neck

Am I the only one who noticed that when you buy a undershirt they always show a white dude on the packaging of a crew-neck or v-neck undershirt but always a black dude on the packaging of a tanktop undershir?.  

Then again, I'm about to start a 15k New York Road Runners race in Central Park, which is about the largest collection of white-people this side of a Hanes crew-neck convention.  And the only thing whiter than a crew-neck convention would be a GOP convention.  Except in the running case all the white-people are in that 25 to 45 age range and all love recycling, Obama and running.  

But back to the undershirt thing, when putting on a work-shirt any man will have to choice his poison, the tank-top, the crew-neck, the v-neck or no undershirt at all.
It is obvious that my options are limited since Hanes had made it abundantly clear that the tank-top is not suited for me or my fair-skinner brothers.  Since we are told not to see color, maybe the only way to tell if the dude is black, white or other is what kind of Hanes undershirts he is sporting.


Now I have some buddies who just will go sans undershirt all together but anybody who knows how sweaty I am will realize that this is not an option for me.  
This leave me with two option one of which is completely unacceptable:the crew-shirt neck underneath the dress shirt.  There isn't a worse look that seeing yourself dressed for an occassion with a nicely pressed button-down and a white ring around your neck, like you are wearing a cotton turtle neck.   If you are going to go the crew-neck route you may as well put on a purple undershirt with a dinosaur on it cause you are going to look like a dipshit either way.

So since I’ve decided that the crew-neck under the dress-shirt is the official look for a white-guy who’s given up, I'm not black enough for the tank-top and since I cannot go sans-shirt like some of my European friends I wear the v-neck.

The V-neck offers a great look, it wears comfortably and picks up like 99% of the sweat, it's almost 100% perfect except  when you have a bear-rug on your chest you can almost get strangled by your own chest hair.

stop playing with your food

Why do some people play with their food?






I'm sitting at lunch today and some slob is sitting at the local lunch place using his hands to build what looks like a snowman using his unfinished food, now i'm not talking about a 6 year old kid but rather a grown adult, basically building the statue of David using a couple of shrimp, asparagus and lettuce.

This got me to thinking why people want to combine food and fun. I have a buddy who once brought a banana cream pie into the bedroom, I knew a guy I went to college with who once told me that he got up and got himself a drink right in the middle of the act and even I had a rubber sheet back in my early 20's for some slip-and-slide fun.

But even knowing that, I don't know about you but there is probably not a more disgusting thought than covering a lucious set of jugs with a slab of ham but apparantly there are people who are into this stuff. To each their own I guess..this is what you learn from watching hours of YouPorn.
I know one thing for sure, if the FBI ever knocks on my door at 6AM, my laptop is going right out the window, god knows what is on that thing.. I've been told to wear protective clothing when I touch that thing, as it's a virtual cesspool (not the Sess Pool which is pretty filthy in its own right)

Lets go bowling

So that chick who popped out the 8 kids has been offered to star in a number of Vivid videos for $1 million dollars per year plus health care. Do we really want to promote this kind of sick behavior, even in porn?


I love porn more than just about anybody but there is nothing I’d less want to see than some chick whose vag looks and smells like that baseball glove I left in the rain a couple of years ago and has been more used than one of those automatic bowling bowl retrievers. When I think of porn stars the only bowling analogy I like to think of is 'two in the pink and one in the stink.'

Then again it will probably sell as other freaks have become porn stars including John Bobbitt whose wife cut off his dinky and then he got a penal enlargement which made his dinky look like the alien from Alien, plus all those midgets on Howard Stern have made a decent buck doing it and of course the lovely Tonya Harding had one that seems to sell, so what the hell do I know?


But it did get me thinking, so I've compiled the Righeti list of best Celebrity Porn

1) Pamela and Tommy, just such a classic

2) The Kim Kardashian one, hoya goya!

3) One night in Paris, although the lighting sucks

4) The Pamela and Bret Michaels one, you gotta love that he wore that bandana during the entire thing

5) The one with the chick from Survivor although I have no idea who that was



Then again if MSNBC's Contessa Brewer wanted to star in “Who wants to be a Vag Millionaire” I’d watch.

My name is Righetti and I’m addicted to…..

Well this line could be finished with any of the following options and still be true

1) Beer

2) The Internet

3) Pornography

4) Coffee

5) The Good Stuff



But today I’m discussing something else, something even more powerful and something I know even less about than fermented hops, caffeine, Tube8 or anything else. Forget Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, the guys who decoded the DNA, the inventor of the electric car or the person who figured out how to make money selling dirty DVD’s online, there might not have been a bigger invention that has taken my life by storm than the guy who invented the Cheese Doodle.. I don’t even know what this thing is, it stains your hands, has zero nutritional value and makes you a little ill but somehow is deliciously addictive, and you can’t ever eat just one of these dog-doo looking things. A girl at my office bought a bag of this crap the other day and within 15 minutes I was covered from head to toe in orange food-coloring and holding my belly in misery.

Try to answer this question: what the hell is a cheese doodle and you can’t answer “delicious”.

Red-Headed Monster

Is it humanly possible for a heterosexual man (or lesbian chick cause TOR has to shout out!!!) to walk down the street, see a red-head and not immediately wonder if the rug matches the drapes..

It's not because red-heads are particularly attractive as they often have that pasty look to 'em but there is something that makes them just so intriguing. The girl could be 18 or 45 and it doesn't matter, cause even an older one is better than nothing. Songs have been written, magazines and webpages devoted, and 'movies' filmed but the holy-grail of chicks might still be proof of the curtain's tint.

See the true Red-Head is like the Loch Ness Monster.. People know of people who claim they saw one in the flesh and there might be a couple of grainy pictures. There are people who have searched high and low and publications devoted to finding proof but nobody has real first hand unequivocal proof of what is going on down there.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I Heart Sushi

Raw Fish is an interesting choice in the fact that it's one of those foods that people have a really strong opinion on; it's the kind of food somebody either loves or hates, there is no in the middle.

First of all, we have to clear up a misconceptions when it comes to sushi because a lot of people claim to like it but like something that is close to sushi but not exactly sushi.  When I’m talking about sushi I'm talking strictly about a chopstick and a piece of raw fish,  not a philadelphia, california or dragon roll.   I don't think I've ever met a person who claim that they just kind of like sushi, it's a total black or white issue, you either love it or you don’t.


The other funny thing about sushi is that people seem to fall into one of a few groups when it comes to raw fish and within those groups guys and girls are completely different. Guys are a bit more adventurous and break down into two types

1) The “I eat sushi but I’m not crazy about it” group. These guys will have had it a few times but will never suggest it on their own and when they do have it it’s only on a special occasion. I always think these dudes just eat it because they want to prove that they can but really are probably trying to impress somebody on a first date or something.

2) The second group is filled with guys who could go for raw fish five days per week, have a seat reserved at the sushi bar and know the entire menu by heart.


Chicks on the other hand seem to fall into three completely different groups when it comes to eating raw fish.

1) The first group has never had sushi or sashimi, thinks it yucky and will never have raw tuna no matter what.

2) The second group believes they’ve had Sushi cause they had a Dragon roll once in college after a few too many beers. A dragon roll is delicious but this is NOT sushi, I can see how somebody might think it’s close but it’s not.

3) The third group is practically a dude when it comes to raw fish. They are a special breed who absolutely love and crave it. These chicks know more about the sushi than I’ll ever know. They have tried every piece on the menu, can tell you what piece of sushi is from across the room and know how to prepare it themselves. I’m not exactly sure which sushi restaurants they go to since I’m never invited to come along but these places are traditional places, they are strictly a sushi bar, they don’t serve any teriyaki or yakitori.


I like the chicks in group three cause they like what I like although they were somehow born with a lot more knowledge about the cuisine than I have.

But even the biggest sushi fan will tell you that when a piece of tuna is good, it's really good but when it's bad it makes your stomach turn. You all know the horror stories; rotten tuna has ruined sashimi for many guys (and probably a few girls too). A guy who loves sashimi for example will have eaten it hundreds of times throughout his life and he'll vaguely remember the ones that were great, mix up the ones that were average BUT he will always remember the time a bad piece of tuna touches his lips. The person who had a bad tuna experience will laugh about it with his buddies later but as he first bites down and he feels his stomach turn there is nothing more than to run out the room before he pukes all over the plate.

Honestly this is not a laughing matter as it probably means that the restaurant is selling used tuna or the sushi chef has not been hygienic. You can't be dining at shady all-you-can-eat place downtown after drinking all night. First of all you know the fish isn't fresh and secondly those kinds of places will always make you feel kind of disgusting when you walk out of the place. In my opinion you gotta find a good place and then make that your sushi joint. You get to know the chef, learn the menu, find out what you like and then go there for dinner all the time.

Ronnie James Dio, you got to be kidding me

Was hanging at a bar on Thursday Night and was sitting next to some dude who was the biggest Ronnie James Dio fan alive. That is like telling me you are a huge Sammy Hagar fan or trying to convince me that best roomate was Cindy or Terri.
This dude thought the stories that Dio told in his music made him the premier song-writer of our generation but then again I think this dude plays Everquest online, so what the hell does he know.. Looks like he hadn't gotten laid in a generation.


By the way, who knew but Dio is 66 years old and he is about 5'6" and apparently he's got a following..
The same dude told me that he equates Appetite for Destruction with Back in Black or Hotel California. Which is like saying the Bible is like the phone book just because everybody has one. Back in Black is actually pretty good but Hotel California makes me one to stick an ice-pick in my eardrum. Even if you try to tell me Back in Black is great....it doesn't compare..is AfD we are talking about..
Rock and Roll died the day Slash started that Snakepit.

The Grease Truck's of New York City

I'm not talking about the legendary Rutgers meals-on-wheels but instead the gyro carts around New York City.

There might not be a better/worse meal to get in New York City than a $4 gyro from one of the many carts which line the midtown streets but the difference in quality is so great that you can go from just a normal run of the mill bad stomach-ache to a very very bad stomach-ache by going to the wrong one.

I believe I have found the best one in the city and luckily it is right around the corner from my office, called "Mr Khan's Best Food".. this is the kind of place where you order a gyro at noon and you are still tasting it at 6pm.. And really for $4 how can you go wrong? You get about a pound of gyro meat with some iceberg lettuce a couple of soiled tomatoes.. Don't worry about any possible E-coli, all bacteria gets burned away by the liter of hot-sauce they pour over your sandwich and don't worry about your burning tongue because they douse the entire sandwich with a full pound of white sauce. Throw it all together, wrap it in tinfoil and you are off and running (to the bathroom)..

people ask why I prefer this truck to the 4 other ones within a 2 block radius and I can't really put my finger on it. I have been to at least 25 of these trucks and the quality of the food goes from terrible to fantastic. I always believe that Mr. Kahn's combination of the succulent meat and the extra flavor they get by pouring back the fat which has come off the meat.. .

The real way to know that this Mr. Khan is better than others is that this dude has a line of 10 to 15 people from noon till 2pm everyday.. He must be doing something right because he has a line of people just dying to hand over $4 for some heartburn and will stand there in rain or shine, when it's snowing or when it's 95 degrees outside.

I have a friend who refuses to hit the Trucks because she believes she'll pick up hepatitis from the meat but then again this is the same chick who once dined on raw tuna she found at some club.

How can something so bad in one state be so great in another?

For all of this country's military might, for all our manufacturing prowess, all of our grit, our heart and our greatest resource our people why when you drop $2.49 at a Supermarket which is truly Americano are you you disappointed? Why is title track of our cuisine taste like somebody scratched toe fungus into a bowl and somehow mush it together to get it stretchy. Why the hell can't we make a decent cheese? It's an embarrassment when you go to Europe and you see that the French have 60 types of cheese and the one cheese that carries our country's name gets served in single wrapped slices of totally processed yellow gunk.

This is kind of like the American people, at first taste people might be a bit disgusted but for all its detractions, a slice of American Cheese is absolutely the ONLY choice you when melted as part of an egg and cheese, melted on a grilled burger or best yet melted between two slices of bread for a grilled cheese.

So maybe Palin would be easier to swallow if we melted her?

After Yesterday, maybe God Hates Me!!!

Left for my morning run today hoping to not have a repeat of yesterday but things didn't seem like it would work as well..

I walk out of the house and I saw something I have never before seen. I take two steps out of the front door and all of a sudden BOOM. I'm shocked partly because it is 6:30 in the morning but mostly because something apparantly fell from a window or roof or something.

I don't have much time to think because the item that fell right at my feet, gets up and runs away. I guess squirels are not like cats as they don't always land on their feet. This thing basically did a belly flop right on the sidewalk. I still find them disgusting.

Gotta love/hate Palin's answer to Couric's question about the Newspapers she reads.. She comes back with "all of them".. Sorry toots, the chances of you reading even one of them all the way through on a day is hard enough to believe. I'm not sure on a Sunday morning her goatee having husband rips away the sports section for local hockey news while she digs deep through the comics.

Here's a new rule. "If your newspaper comes with a comic section on Sunday, it's probably not a very good paper to start off with"


Today, my friend Rachel hits the mound as our Relief Bitcher. She's got a record of 4-3 with a 3.84 ERA and a WHIP of 1.80, so you don't know what you are getting expect..


"Boston.Com reported the following
A majority -- 51 percent -- say she is not qualified to be president, a reversal from just after the Republican convention a month ago when 52 percent said she was qualified, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reported. Palin has lost ground among independents, and that is hurting John McCain, who made her his surprise running mate.

Is that really something to write about? Without the actual data (which actually does support the idea and is quite heartwarming to us crazy liberals), you are left thinking --- well, 49 percent now thing she's qualified, compared to 52 percent before. Ooohhh, how significant?! At least, that's what those of us can do math are thinking!"

The Righetti Count

As I've stated earlier, I'm sure I'm not the only jackass who has confused the price and calorie count on the fast food menus? The other day, I though $7.30 was pretty expensive for that quarter pounder with cheese, man was I happy when I realized it was only $4.89. This got me thinking, which got me hungry but also got me the following

A little math got me the following
730 calories/100 = 7.30
Total price : 4.89
Divide one over the other = 1.4928

This will be known as the Righetti Count

I gotta see if we can find something where the Righetti count is 2.0 (calorie count divided by 100 is more than double the price.)

I challenge all the TOR readers to send in camera phone pictures of Fast Food Menus where the Righetti Count is higher than 2.0.

The reader who comes with a picture of them EATING or DRINKING something with this highest* Righetti Count in the next 7 days wins a Righetti Bag of Crap.

*total calories must be at least 500*

All pictures will be posted on TOR.

ARod and his Madonna addiction

my opinion is coming a bit late on this issue but what are the chances that with the heightend scrutiny in MLB on Steroid and HGH use, ARod was using Madonna as way to get his fix on? Maybe they can't tell if you wind up taking in the stuff if you are getting it by swapping human fluids, looking at some recent pictures of Madonna and it looks like she is showing the after effects