Take on no WiFi on an international flight

Dan somebody explain to me how in 2024 an international flight of 14 hours does not have WiFi? This ain't new technology and there is nothing about it that makes a plane unsafe but to think they want me staring at the back of the seat for a half a day is straight insanity

Take on Asian customs

Ask anybody who has travelled internally for business and they will tell you the best feeling is arriving at the airport after a multiple week trip. Nothing compares to the weeks long experience of sleeplessness which is basic torture but add to that a steady diet of tasty and interesting food but some of which makes your stomach do backflips. After the nights of too much food and way too much alcohol, that flight home feels like you've finally jumped the gate at the prison yard.
What's less fun is that before you can board these Asian countries will make you stand in endless lines to leave the country. It's the final test of your sanity as every part of your soul wants to rip the head off of the guy standing behind Youn without Kim Jung Un haircut and fish breath.
Just get me to the guy checking passports

Take on the international reach

I travel half way around the world and when I look up, I'm still haunted by this orange treacherous f*cker. I don't know how or why he's been able to do this but he's branded his horrible name across horrible properties in many pretty far flung places and it seems to work. I'm not sure what the common sentiment but I've away heard some positive ones is but I'm sure that Trump would be the first to scream that they are eating the dogs and cats. I hate him but somehow he's got half the world under his spell.

Take on the Great Firewall

Leaving China gives you a sense of relief, a bit because you feel like your stomach gets a break but also because not being able to use most of the apps you are so used to, is really disconcerting. You are limited to the CNN in your room which plays the same three stories over and over and the Chinese daily paper. You can't get onto the NYTimes website, you can't use Instagram or Threads or Reddit. You depend on friends and family sending texts with info but those are few and far between. So when you finally land somewhere else, it feels like you have been sprung from jail. Even if that was only a five day sentence

Take on the roller coaster in my stomach.

One of the best things about traveling in China is having incredibly interesting food, drinking incredible quantities of bad alcohol and then driving incredible distances in cramped cars on cramped roads with dudes sleeping on your shoulder spewing their fish breath.   

What is even more fun is when that food and that booze and that turbulence come together and your stomach starts to do its version kung fu and when that start you pull over and you run to a bathroom and find a hole.   

I get that it's all plumbing but when you are an overweight totally inflexible six foot American, the idea of hovering your  swamp ass over a hole is, well, interesting.     

I can't eat spaghetti without spilling it on my shirt and I can't hit a dart board six beers in, so what the hell are chances of this me landing this plane on the runway and not all over the back of my pants??

Sent from my iPhone

Take on shaking hands with gloves on.

I get the idea of wearing a bib when you eat a lobster or even a red sauced pasta but here they wear gloves for anything Walking down the street, sitting in the park or even when they eat food.

I'm not totally sure what the idea is as it might be some Covid era habit but the idea of trying to pound a steak while wearing Trojans while fumbling with my chopstick seems like something I'd be doing at this stage in my life.

Take on Wuhan

You have to love looking at a flight map and seeing the city that basically shut down the world a few years ago.

I've been to Wuhan a few times, the hotel was Ok, the people were nice but the open food market was amazing. I've never found myself surrounded by quite as many delicacies, feeling like a regular Anthony Bordain.

Can't wait to go back.

Take on colon cleansers

You never know what you get when you walk into a market in central China but seeing a plate of what looked like bull dicks was a bit more than my stomach could take. I have absolutely no idea what these things were but to say they look like what you get when you drink that juice before a colonoscopy would be an understatement. I'm all for interesting food choice but ones that look like what I scoop up behind my dog isn't one of the.

Take on the smog

Nothing tells you that you are not I. Kansas anymore than looking out of your windows and seeing the smog as thick as a drape. Not only do you not get any natural sun, the soot enters your windpipes the second you get in and every time you sneeze it looks like you are a character on Stranger Things sneezing out one of those demigorgans

Lucky lungs

Take on the smog

Nothing tells you that you are not I. Kansas anymore than looking out of your windows and seeing the smog as thick as a drape. Not only do you not get any natural sun, the soot enters your windpipes the second you get in and every time you sneeze it looks like you are a character on Stranger Things sneezing out one of those demigorgans

Lucky lungs

Take on the smog

Nothing tells you that you are not I. Kansas anymore than looking out of your windows and seeing the smog as thick as a drape. Not only do you not get any natural sun, the soot enters your windpipes the second you get in and every time you sneeze it looks like you are a character on Stranger Things sneezing out one of those demigorgans

Lucky lungs

Take on the smog

Nothing tells you that you are not I. Kansas anymore than looking out of your windows and seeing the smog as thick as a drape. Not only do you not get any natural sun, the soot enters your windpipes the second you get in and every time you sneeze it looks like you are a character on Stranger Things sneezing out one of those demigorgans

Lucky lungs

Take on the horrible movie choices

Stepping onto a 14 hour flight always brings a bit of anxiety although the second I sit down, I usually feel the excitement of the trip overtake the anxiousness. That excitement doesn't last long when you realize that the movie offerings in English are limited to like 8 choices with half being kids cartoons and adult options as interesting to me as staring the front seat for the duration of the seat. Guardians of the Galaxy, a Million Miles Away, Elemental?? This is worse than Chinese water torture.

Take on terminal 1 at JFK

I've flown to Asia more than two dozen times and although I'm not nearly as antsy about it as I once was, it's still a crazy trip. The country has changed a lot and as my second time back to China since COVID, it's certainly going to be interesting. What never does change is that JFK's terminal one still feels like third world country airport. It's crowded, hot, badly laid out and offers nothing to do while you wait for hours on end. It's crazy that with the upgrades they have done to Newark and LaGuardia as well as the stuff they are doing at other terminals at JFK, that everybody seems totally fine just leaving this the hellhole it is.

Take in tax on unrealized gains.

Although sadly in nowhere near threshold of the unrealized gains tax, I do wonder what it really means. I know we are only talking about the uber wealthy, who can certainly afford it but I prefer a tax that is not somewhat progressive. Being taxed on unrealized gains would be a killer for normal Americans but if we breach it for the ultra rich, how long before they extend it to the crazy rich, the ultra rich and just the rich? the I feel like taxes need to be written with everything and everybody in mind front the start of this is ever going to work.

Take on the new wonder twins

There is no bigger blowhard than Trump....except maybe Elon Musk. The fact these two are playing in the same team now makes me hate my decision to buy a Tesla one I regret even more. I can't decide which of the two of them is more insecure because it's gotta be really close. One thing about both "billionaires" is that neither seems to have done a thing with their money to do anything for anybody other than themselves.

Take on the weird fruit.

We got some weird fruit delivered to work today and when we cut it up I could only describe it as looking like a maggot covered vulva. I don't know what the heck this thing was but it was both crunchy and slimy and tasted like fermented jock itch.

Take on Cheryl Hines

Nobody has disappointed me more than Cheryl Hines in her post Curb life. I always assumed that she was sort of normal but her marriage to RFK Jr has taken any semblance of normal from her. I don't totally get it but the entire thing is hopefully just a giant bit for season 11

Take on the panic-buying toilet paper crowd

I hate people so much. My business will have direct effects to the port strike but that isn't my biggest fear. My biggest fear is that a bunch of inbreds are going to run to every Costco and buy up all the toilet paper. Now I'm stuck having to wipe my ass with the New York Post like a homeless person.

Take on Apple's predictive text

The new IOS sucks for a million reasons but mostly I'm annoyed because somehow the predictive texting and auto correct have gotten miserably bad. I don't know what it is exactly but it's almost totally unusable which is shockingly stupid. But we also can't figure out why when things are supposed to be progressing, we somehow decided to drive ass backwards.

Take on Pete Rose

There is only one unforgivable sin in baseball. The Black Sox scandal made sure it would never appear like there were shenanigans played and every clubhouse has the expressed no gambling rule plastered on their walls. The issue is that when DraftKings sponsors every event and you are about to put the Athletics in Vegas, it all feels a bit shallow.
Induct the man into the hall, or pull out Big Fat Papi. He's a fat cheating slob.

Take on American Dream mall

Inspect a better part of my Saturday at the American Dream mall and I'm convinced that place is worse than water torture. The entire place is an attack on your senses like you walked into a casino but you can't play wheel of fortune. But unlike a casino which is stacked with old people on ventilators and wheel chairs, this place has thousands of little kids screaming like a bunch of absolute lunatics .

Take on Thibs

The Knicks title chances rose significantly with the trade for KAT and the city is getting pumped for a season only weeks away. But what we have to all realize is that the way Thibs coaches with the big men he has; he'll run them into the ground by March. We know there is talent there but OG, Mitch and KAT can't play more than 50 games in a regular season.l under normal coaching, now add the 48 minute demands of a coach who plays every game like game 7 and the wheels could come off early. Now we know the regular season in the the NBA doesn't mean much, it's just a warmup for the playoffs but if you've burned out your entire team before you get to round 1, you aren't going anywhere. This could shape up to be the kind of year Thibs always seems to have at the end of one of his runs.

Take on NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson hospitalized after an incident at a campaign event.

The black Nazi is being tested for burns after a campaign event which makes you wonder if he decided to burn a few crosses. We obviously don't know what is going on yet but the chances this is an inside job to win him some sympathy has to be pretty high.

take on Melania

There can't possibly be a less interesting book than the new Melania one. For one, the chances she wrote a single word is slim to non and even if she did, we know nothing would matter. People have tried to give her a pass, they have said she has tried to fight the good fight but I don't believe an inch of that. She's a proven racist, married to a racist who has only ever been interested in moving her own racist ideology forward. Plus she's a giant piece of dog crap.

Take on Eric Adams

The biggest shock about Eric Adams getting indicted is that it wasn't shocking. The writing was on the wall for days or weeks, we knew he wasn't going to get steer clear of this as it had already wrapped up a half a dozen of his closest allies. But what bothers me is that this will likely mean we get some Bazooka Joe as our next mayor and that never works out.

Take on Brerr Favre

Brett Favre used his time trying to defend his horrid behavior by trying to win sympathy by revealing his Parkinson's diagnosis. That is a horrible disease and I wouldn't wish it upon anybody but to use it to excuse him stealing money from the poorest people in one of the poorest states is everything that is wrong with this dude.

No amount of that disease excuses that he wears crappy jeans, he drives crappy cars, he is a MAGA moron and he card only about lining his own pocket.

Plus he screwed the Jets

The on the DHT stock

Trump's stock is sinking more quickly than Puffy's which is quite a fear. Every dog knows that this stock is propped up by Russian money but the second they can get out, they will. Trump on the other hand can't let it drop below $12 as it will mean he won't be able to sell, I believe. Either way, let's hope this thing is a penny stock shortly

Take on the black Nazi.

Only in the GOP can you get away with calling yourself a black Nazi while surfing for porn and not only does it not disqualify you, you actually get a boost in the polls. I don't know what happened to the other party but the one of family values seems to have lost its way, not that they had much of a way back then either. But this is what happens when you out a soon to be thrice divorced boogie man at the top of the ticket.

Take on Cheryl

No celebrity has disappointed me more with their political leanings which seemed so out of step with her on camera persona than Cheryl Hines. I mean everybody knew Roseanne was trash, Kid Rock being a MAGA moron isn't shocking and Scott Baio was always a creep. I'm just going that we get one more season of Curb where Cheryl is caught sexting with Larry and Ted Danson runs over a bear and takes it home.

Take on vaping Trump

When the candidate for president decides to use his forum to brag about how he made vaping go bigly, we know we are in trouble. I have no idea where Trump's head is to think that vaping has been a positive to this country. Thinking this isn't a crisis is about as dumb as thinking Haitians are eating cats and dogs. Every bathroom of every high school in this country is stacked with kids vaping which -at least- they weren't doing in the 80's.

Take on the gu owner

Trump said he was going to win New York and Kamala decided to one up him and claim she could capture half the GOP vote. She was on with Oprah today and find the audience she's a gun owner and that if somebody breaks into her house they are going to get shot.


Game
Set
Match

Take on Melania

I'm almost 100% certain that the Melania Trump memoir was written using AI. I've heard the woman speak and to call her anything but a total hack would be an understatement. We know why she is where she is not on any merit There was no chance she made it as an immigrant on some fast track because of her intellect. I also am not sure the idea of her speaking out about her nudes will help her husband's campaign but it certainly got us all to Google them again.

Take on Puff Daddy

Puffy being caught with an AR15 isn't shocking. A bunch of ammunition isn't either. What I'm actually surprised about was that they haven't reported any drugs, prostitutes or stacks of unmarked bills but what really caught my attention was what he did have. I'm not sure why anybody needs 1000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant although I get people have all sorts of fetishes but this seems a bit excessive even for me. But what seems ludicrous about this is that they even confiscated it, as far as I know it's not against the law to have lube or sex this or whatever.

Not sure why it would be seized and almost as impotently why it would be made public by the US Attorney.

Take on the WFH bull

Only a few short years ago a bunch of big companies were falling over one another to convince themselves that the work from home model made people more productive. I have never believed this as I know most people will abuse anything good that they are ever offered. They are also inherently lazy and the thought that people would work more has always been laughable. So I'm not shocked most companies are calling their employees back but I am shocked it took them so long. One thing for sure this will do great things to revitalize city centers and help hundreds of thousands of small mom and pop places.

Take on the AK47 carrying guy at Trump’s golf course

I've been paying attention to politics and have never seen anything like we have seen recently. I can't even see how we get back to normalcy when there are literally assassins walking about Ma-a-Lago. I hate Trump as much as anybody but I want to beat him in the election and every time there is a movement like this, I wonder what the heck we are doing.

Let's get back to normal.


Plus this will only get him more votes.

Take on Springfield

The more I think about this Springfield Ohio story, the more I realize just how nuts it is. Imagine your little town which went through a horrible tragedy is being used as a political paw by a party that you would almost certainly endorse. I'm sick and tired of these guys getting away with this bull but it's not as if they are disparaging my town, yours is the one that is being used as baseless fodder

Take on Laura

The speculation of Trump sleeping with Laura Loomer was on full display today. It's pretty obvious he's tagging her as Melania has been nowhere near him for months. But what is really delicious is that her banging Trump got MTG's gym shorts in a bunch and now there is an all out cat fight. Sadly they are grossly unattractive

Take on the debate fallout.

I've been playing the debate on an endless loop in my head. It was pretty obvious that after a bit of a struggle to get her footing in the very early parts of the debate, Kamala hits a groove and just kept needling Trump to the point he was losing all composure.

I am convinced it won't make much of a difference as the sycophants who blindly follow their Dear Leader have gotten so far down their rabbit holes that when they start trying to climb out they are just digging back deeper. We know this election will be close and the fact it will come down to Harris' campaign needing to pull a few more Philadelphia voters out than Trump convincing a few in rural western Pennsylvania ones is a scary prospect.

Oh how I miss the days of Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Take on stupidly

Although i look down upon it, I'm never insulted by pure ignorance when it comes to social or political commentary but I am when it comes to stupidity. I guess the two are often seen as being interwoven but i see ignorance as lack of knowledge which isn't excusable especially when you spent time prophesying on an issue but stupidity means that the position on an issue you are defending is in itself idiotic.
Please god don't tell me that there are people in this fine country that are spending time thinking their neighbors are eating their cats.

Take on the USB charging port on my plane.

It's really time for these airlines to start adding that smaller USB port to their TV screens. I haven't bought a device with a charger that uses that old USB thing in forever and every cable I have in my bag is for this new type. It's fine at home but you get into a plane and now you are stuck throwing a hot dog down a hallway.

Take on the latest polls

Over the weekend the New York Times released their latest polls to show that the Harris bump was maybe just a bump and she's fallen back to looking up at Trump. I'm not convinced it's inevitable but I'm also not happy to see some of the momentum slowing and maybe reversing. What shocks me is that there are still people out there who claim to not have made up their mind of Trump.. to this I ask "really? Either you find him a deplorable human with no morals or you see him as the second coming of Christ. There really is not middle ground"

The on the debate

We know the debate is going to get ugly as Trump won't get into details but instead will insult Harris for a couple of hours. It's interesting the Harris team want the mic's on as they know it will likely lead to Trump craziness but also will not change anybody's mind. We know Trump and the fact that half this country is still thinking that another term is a fine idea makes me question so much.

The on the mother

The Georgia mother of the school shooter is looking to get out of her responsibility to the murders and now claims that she warned the school in advance. I'm not 100% sure what the outcome is for got be but if your husband buys a prepubescent kid a gun, you have a responsibility

Take on Tricky Dicky

saw a thread post that said that this is the part where Cheney throws Trump down the reactor shaft. I can't ever like Dick Cheney for all he's done but even I have to appreciate him taking country over party here. Liz was the first and paved the way which was amazing. But since they Dick stood up straight intent to bang through and now we just need Bush to come next.

The on the worlds worst dad

I was happy we are finally starting out some responsibility on the parents of these school shooters who for so long have avoided any culpability. I can't come up with a sane reason why a dad would gift a 13 year old at the time an AR47. When you add in the kid had already been visited at home by law enforcement in connection to none posts about school shooting, this just seems nuts. Let the dad get hanged in a public square

Take on the big story

FoxNews keeps getting its panties in a bunch trying to get that one piece of Kamala info that will make her unrelatable. The issue is that they can't seem to find anything, she's seems like a pretty down to earth woman and so far they have the fact she wears ear pods as their go to sign of aloofness

I'm sure this is breaking their heart.

The on the Truth Social stock price

Seeing the Trump stock collapse in real time is great. It was always overhyped and propped up with money from Moscow but now that Trump himself went back to Xwitter, it has made Truth Social that much less relevant.
It's a shame that his millions maybe worth many millions less.

Take on Musk.

Driving around in a Tesla is basically driving around in a. Big red hat at this point showcasing how incredibly dumb I am for falling for this guy. I read an article on Wait but Why years ago and was convinced that Musk had plans for our country and the world that were righteous, altruistic and true. That article along with just about everything he's ever done has been self serving and morally objectionable. The problem for me is that I'm stuck with this tin can which by the way just cost $12k to fix after a fender bender.

Take on JD

The JD Vance experiment is going to go down as one of the worst of all time. I have always been of the impression that the VP pick should be somebody that adds something to the ticket be it some foreign policy experience or give some impression of virtue. But JD has gotten worse the more you get of him, like leaving milk out a bit too long. It sort of sucked to start off with but every hour that milk starts getting more and more curled