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.

will this Tiger Woods story every end?

From the beginning the Tiger Woods story is that it's the perfect storm of celebrity, sports, sex, hookers and infidelity.  From the first sign of a crack in Tiger's armor on Thanksgiving night when he crashed his car into a fire-hydrant, the gossip rags, tabloids and around-the-clock newscycle has been almost giddy with their early Christmas gift.  The saddest thing was to see the all-sports-channels wrestle with this story over the last two weeks as they couldn't figure out if covering it would somehow diminish their credibility.   In one respect it's not a 'sports' story and the hollier-than-thou SportsPopes wouldn't stoop so low to cover a story which featured hookers,wife cheating and more hookers.   Most sports-channels and talk-show hosts tried their best to move their show's formats away from the speculation and gossip hounds and seemed almost insulted that their audiences were almost badgering them to cover it.   So when Tiger announced that he would be taking an indefinite break from Golf, it finally gave all of these self-rigeous slobs a reason to acknowledge the story the rest of the country has been talking about for 2+ weeks.nnMind you that these are the same group of idiots who host events like 'pasta-palooza', 'box-office blitz's' have countless hours of discussions on the Sopranos and cover the boring nuances of a pitch-counts but god-forbid they even acknowledge a story like this.

What gets me is not that they weren't really covering the story because as long as the story was only about a golfer cheating on his wife, it could be ignored by the sports-community but when Tiger finally did the sportswriters the favor of pulling the sport into it, they were like a kid in a candy story and the floodgates were released.   Up until that point these sports commentators act like they are the Walter Cronkite of their generation, as if they have that kind of credibility and wouldn't possibly stoop so low as to cover a celebrity sex-scandal but add to the fact that Tiger is walking out on golf and all of a sudden it's like the entire operation is taken over by PageSix. 


It's not like these guys cover anything really important..

Fringe society

Maybe it's the Christmas season and people want feel good stories but In recent days the NY Times has been featuring stories on people on fringe of civilized society.

First the story of a guy who is the unofficial guardian of Strawberry Fields, a life calling he claims came from 'the Brother' himself and he explains John Lennon's life to tourists all to continue and grow his legacy. It sounds sort of interesting until you find out the guy is some schizo homeless dude who harasses local florists for flowers to display at the Strawberry Fields emblem in central Park.

Then there was a front page expose about some dude who makes his entire living picking up used OTB tickets and scanning them in with the hopes of finding an accidentally discarded winning ticket. The amazing thing is this dude not only finds winning tickets amongst the thousands of losing ones but he does so regularly and has surprisingly made a career out of it. This dude makes $45,000 per year and employs three other guys part-time to collect garbage bags of discarded tickets from OTB's around the city.

I love the entrepreneurial spirit but when it happens on these fringe levels its borders on step from the guys who scour the streets on recycling nights and rip open garbage bags to fish out the soda cans so they trade them in for a nickel. I appreciate the can-do spirit but these guys always leave all our trash thrown all over the sidewalk and now that the NY Times basically exposed the new $0.05 soda can thing and it will bring the wolves out of the forest.

As if OTB's didn't have enough derelicts. In other words what was enough business to give one dude a (modest) income will now become a feeding ground for every homeless guy from Strawberry Fields to the infield at the Belmont Stakes.
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Let's play Piñata

  After a couple of years on roller coaster like ride the banking community seems to be coming to its knees over pressure from a increasingly skeptical public who has seen their jobs disappear in droves while the FED has propped up the banks who were the GROUND ZERO of the Fiscal Crisis.    this week Britain added a 50% tax to bank-bonuses and France -never one to lead- followed suit and while the US hasn't quiet done that the Treasury Czar did announce that the top paid execs would NOT be getting a cash payout this year, instead receiving stock compensation which would in theory reward long-term successes over the recent compensation which were all based on very short-term results with no eye on the long-term viability of any of the products or how it could affect the stability of the market as a whole

The banking world is all crying foul, as they feel the government shouldn't step into private business –unless of course its to bail out failing banks or prop up weak banks and keep them employed.    We know the Government can ruin things as anything there behemoth bureaucracy seems to touch has an anti-Midas feel to it but when they all tell you that things should stay status-quo in regards to executive compensation it avoids any responsibility any executive had to this entire financial crisis.

They will say that bonuses are just like other peoples normal salaries except they are better indications of work as they are based on performance but seem to want to leave out the performance of the company and economy as a whole.

These people will say is that their group or division or team had nothing to do with credit-default swaps, bad-loans or complex financial instruments but that's not how it works. If one group can bring a WallStreet titan to it's knees and the Fed doesn't step in than everybody in the firm is standing on the soup-line. In the boom years the entire firm was richly compensated, in part because of the entire profitability (or perceived profitability) of the firm which I am sure was greatly aided by these 'rogue' divisions.. It's like they all embrace their firms unless it's not in their interest when they are happy to throw their brethren under the bus.

 I believe what bothers the average guy on the street though is not specifically the type of bonuses or even the total value but the fact they came back to the 2007 levels so quickly.   American people are capitalistic in nature and in general they understand that there is something very 'american' about the envy of celebrities, athletes and high-paid execs.   We are a culture that embraces shows like Cribs or Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous so you know we want to hear about the lavish parties, the big cars and the millions of dollars in jewelry. They just don't want to watch it paid for by the still warm corps of our tax money.
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umemployement vs obesity

I’ve done my fair amount of travelling in these parts of the country and have met many guys who will tell you with pride that they wouldn’t walk to the post-box in the front of their lawn and just wait till they are driving by to get out. These are the kinds of guys who laugh at somebody like me who will run a marathon and say that they get tired when they drive 26 miles. I know people take pride in all sorts of things but to take pride in your own laziness is just disgusting. Laziness and Obesity are probably related although there probably isn’t a perfect 1-1 correlation but I’m sure it’s pretty close. There aren’t many times when you see a guy whose 100 pounds overweight also busting his ass.

A regular TOR reader sent me the following chart from Gawker.com which basically compares the obesity rate vs. the unemployment rate and find that there is a striking correlation especially in the Southeast and the Rust-Belt.

This week, we highlighted a scary county-by-county map that a commenter posted to #tips showing metastasizing unemployment growth. Today, it occurred to us that we'd seen a graphic like that somewhere before: A CDC map of obesity by county.



The left map is a snapshot of county-level unemployment rates from October 2008; darker counties have higher unemployment (the time-lapse map we grabbed it from goes to October 2009, at which point the whole country is basically black). At the right is a CDC map released last month of obesity rates in 2007—it's the first county-level rendering of obesity data. (You can click the maps to see a larger version.)


With the exception of the West Coast, it looks as though Ground Zero of the employment crash aligned fairly faithfully with the Obesity Belt: Appalachia, Michigan, the Deep South and the Southeast Atlantic Coast all shared early unemployment spikes and higher rates of obesity, while Texas, the Upper Midwest, and the plains states are thinner and have better job security

Now Gawker.com only views data while TOR analyzes it and I can tell you that unemployment has hit people of all demographics but staying unemployed may very well have something to do with being too lazy to really go find other work. I know something about myself and that is if I ever find myself out of work, I’ll be the first guy ready to find a job washing dishes, cleaning gutters or doing male porn but I also consider myself the furthers thing from lazy. I know unemployment is through the roof and there aren’t a lot of good jobs out there but I also know that both my brother and sister-in-law got good jobs during the recession.

Maybe it’s not all about hard-work and drive, maybe it’s because people who are 150lbs overweight are also un-presentable, and we know people have a bias against the obese people.   I have to think that if you show up to a job interview with ketchup on your shirt and your shirt undone, chances are they'll show you to the Dunkin Donuts across the street before they show you a new office.

Work Clothes with Sneakers

The TOR piece about women wearing dresses with flats caused quite a stir (which incidentally the editorial board appreciates) with many women complaining that TOR didn't feel their plight, some men agreeing that it was a horrible look but most of them critical because TOR was talking women's shoes.


Well here we go again.

A look which became popular in the 90's was women going to work fully decked out in professional outfits but paired with sneakers instead of shoes for the commute which is a look TOR deems completely acceptable because the woman is going to work and walking up and down subway stairs etc when on route to work should be made a bit easier. The look is actually cute and we at TOR love cute chicks.

Now with that said, for a woman to pull this off is one thing but I've seen too many dudes start to wear running shoes to work and it's disturbing.
Now I’m NOT talking about this new chique of wearing a fullsuit with sneakers on the red-carpet which I guess is kind of hip in certain circles but I’m talking about taking the average going to work look and basically puking on your feet in the name of comfort. Just yesterday I saw some dude leaving the gym in a pair of work pants, a button down shirt and tie and paired it with a pair of Boings. This is where a man has to realize he needs to retain some self-respect instead of looking like a walking douchebag

If a guy can’t even make it through a day wearing a pair of Kenneth Coles to the point you must wear running sneakers what is the point of even getting out of bed?  Either get a new pair of work shoes that won't hurt your precious little feet or jump in front of a bus because the rest of your life will not be worth living just  don’t embarrass the entire male race with this look.

removing that one tile in your bathtub always leads to trouble

First TMZ or the National Enquirer breaks a story of Tiger cheating on his Swedish model wife and before you know it he’s crashing his car into a fire-hydrant, apologizing to everybody and anybody, ducking his own tournament and last night there are reports that a chick was rushed to the hospital from his house. How does his entire world and his squeaky clean image collapse so quickly

The funny thing with these types of stories is that it’s like trying to replace a single tile in a shower, as soon as you remove that one you notice that the back-board is rotten and that the entire shower area is being held together by some very flimsy glue. As long as nobody touched that one tile everything is good but touch that one and your Saturday Afternoon is fucked as you stand on a line at Home Depot with $90 worth of green-boards, grout and tiles.

Whenever a politician, actor or athlete has their armor kinked, it seems their fragile world collapses. I remember when Elliot Spitzer was caught banging that chick -who was hotter than any of the broads from Jersey Shore -and before you knew it there were reports of other affairs and there were quotes in the tabloid papers everyday from associates who would give reports of steamy romances and other skeletons. It’s not just the affairs that come out but his entire character got assassinated, before the first incident came to light Spitzer was a model citizen but as soon as the affair came out, you got reports of Spitzer of kicking dogs, berating underling and not recycling his Pepsi bottles.

This is what gets me: Tiger Woods’ every move has always been chronicled but somehow he was able to keep affairs with NINE different broads on the down-low. You couldn’t keep nine wise-guys quiet with the fear of broken knee-caps , how the hell did they keep nine affairs under the radar? It’s not like these are all members of high-society either: One is a porn star, another worked as some Las Vegas cocktail waitress – which incidentally is code for being a prostitute-, and another one worked at Hooters in New York City -which incidentally means that she will be a prostitute soon-..

How is it that in 15 years in the limelight, nobody found anything on Tiger but the second there is the tiniest bit of blood in the water, the floodgates open?

Copenhagen

We will find out in a few days if there will be some climate change regulation which of course will only have bite to it if the two biggest polluters (China and the US) don't commit themselves to serious steps to cut carbon emissions.


Obama’s had about ten watershed moments and this will be another one. So far on the international stage he has: tripled the troops in Afghanistan while the rest of NATO is pulling out, watched Karzai and Ahmadinejad steal elections, seen Moscow continue to bully it’s neighbors, watched China enable Iran and North Korea, continued to see Israel build-up it’s settlements, watched the poor Irish get ripped off by Henry and lost the Olympics. I figure it might be time for him to come up bigger than he has done so far since everybody seems to love him but nobody seems to fear him.

I’m all for concessions when there are reasons for it, carrots and sticks work but I’m not for regulation with no teeth. If there is one thing the Obama administration has embraced more than anything- except maybe helping out Goldman Sachs-it’s greening the planet with visions of wide prairies decked out with solar panels and windmills. One reason they like these ideas is because they claim will bring a ton of manufacturing jobs back to the economy although I honestly think that if you are going so far as calling a job of installing a solar panels on a roof ‘manufacturing’ you should do the same thing for the guy installing your cable.

But the bigger picture will be what carrots and which sticks Obama will bring to this party because every plan I’ve heard so far may sound ambitious by making the real big emissions cuts by 2050 at which time Obama will obviously be out of office and may very well be dead.

I think the US consumer can be convinced to get better at carbon emissions but I’ve been to Eastern Europe and Central China and it’s depressing to know that I carry the NY Times home with me to make sure it’s recycled properly when you see acid dumped into rivers, garbage dumped on the sides of the highways and feel the grit of burned coal in my teeth whenever I go to any of these places

The problem sometimes is that the US Plans seem big in idea but small in practice. There are so many small things the government could do but they always go for the ones that give them the most media exposure. This summer you got $4500 credit for trading in a 1990 Ford Taurus clunker but you can’t find a recycle bin in any park, public building or street corner in NYC. The government fines you if you accidently throw a bottle with your normal trash but also see fire hydrants running open for weeks at a time and park rangers drive around Prospect Park for hours burning fuel while trying to catch somebody who may drop a plastic wrapper

Rubbernecking

Most of the time I'm proud to be from New Jersey; I've seen Bruce live 8 times; have stripped to Bon Jovi at 6 weddings and gave myself an Italian nickname. Problem is when you put it all together and you base a reality television on your state it becomes a total trainwreck.

Reality TV seems to be the total downfall of our civilization from the white-house crashers to the balloon boy to the newest craze....guidos

Jersey Shore is the newest MTV car crash and everybody gets to see the NJ Guido style up close and personal. When your entire state can be stereotyped into fake tits, spray tans and spike hair you now you are not winning any beauty contests. The concept is easy you put four roided-out dudes with four skanks, add some alcohol and a hot tub and hilarity ensues.
The problem here is that the dudes are all ripped and the chicks are could stand to lose 10 pounds and it's pretty obvious the guys care more about their looks than the girls do which leads to cock-sure and self depracation.
The sad thing is of course that it's not clear if these reality TV personalities realize the joke is on them or if they believe this infamy will be long lasting.
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Status Updates

When I grew up and you wanted to see how your friend was doing, you called them on the phone. I am not talking about some fancy cell-phone or even a cordless phone but a good old rotary wall-unit. I am not anti-technology and won't disparage this generation for their G-chats, text messages, email and social networking as I use all of them myself. What I do find irritating is that some people, -many in my generation- just don't get the etiquette associated with them

This includes people who take it personally when you can't have an full G-Chat conversation because you happened to be at work, people who leave voicemails which only say "call me back" or worse yet people who have a text-message conversation while at dinner.

But most importantly there isn't anything more frustrating than when some ahole sends you a facebook present or a facebook hug. This is an absolute waste of bandwidth than this crap unless you count the bad status-update.

I think we need to establish something: if your status-update is not clever, funny or interesting don't waste my time. Just trolling FB today you read stuff like

"Going to the gym" or "doing laundry".

People who leave status updates like this are the kind of adults who show up with a baseball glove in the stands of MLB game.

Let's get this straight NOBODY CARES!! The Status Update does what Twitter would love to, give people a forum for friends to 'mini blog" to friends which they see from their normal internet portal not a separate website but when people post their day-to-day activity without at least an interesting tidbit I want to take an icepick to my eye-balls.

It's funny how the people who posted the above bad FB Updates always post terrible updates. It's as if they just don't get the concept of the Status Update
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Upper East Side

Standing online earlier today at the Verizon store to replace my battery wall charger I heard the following exchange and realizes why we as a society have gotten so much dumber and I blame reality television.


A 30’s woman, fairly well to do strolls into the Verizon store, bypassing the stupid computer sign-in-screen and walks right up to the technical service desk. Although there are people waiting behind her in line, she insists that she gets helped immediately.

Woman: I came here all the way from the Upper East Side, it’s an emergency. YOUR blackberry has stopped working and now I cannot get my text messages

Verizon Tech: Thank you for coming to Verizon can you please sign in as there is a procedure and a few people have been waiting to be helped

Woman: you don’t understand this is an emergency; I haven’t gotten my text messages

Verizon Tech: I understand, but there are procedu..

Woman: (completely ignoring him) so I look down and all of a sudden your blackberry has stopped working, it seems to be broken

TECH: (a bit confused but not wanting a scene): OK let me take a look

The woman hands over a blackberry which looks like it’s been through war in both Afghanistan and then spent some time in Iraq for good measure

Woman: these are very important text messages, I haven’t been able to read them for three days.. wait for five days and today is the first time I have been able to come down from the Upper East Side

TECH: (looking at the beat up phone) it looks like you have bigger issues than text-messages, tt looks like this phone is pretty beat-up, has it been dropped?

Woman: I am not sure why that is important when you realize how important it is that I get my text messages, I need you to go on your computer thing and get them

TECH: It doesn’t really work like that

Woman: I dont' think you understand I need you to facilitate me in getting these very important text messages.

TECH: well you will probably have to replace your phone as it seems to be finished and when you get a new phone the unread text messages will come to the new phone.

Woman: But how about the other ones? They are very important

TECH: We may be able to get those, what is your access code?

Woman: my brother has it

TECH: can we get in contact with him and get it?

Woman: how do you expect to do that when my blackberry doesn’t work?

TECH: do you know his number

Woman: why would I know his number it’s in my blackberry!

TECH: OK let’s see what we can do

Woman: (after 30 seconds) will you be able to go any faster, I am really very busy

TECH: I’m going as fast as I can

Woman: (sighing turns away and says) this is why I don’t leave the Upper East Side

Equality Now

The NY State Senate, one of the most corrupt entities this side of Kabul, voted against Civil Rights when they voted 38-to-24 for discrimination against gay people by not allowing them to be wed. As most of you know, TOR stands on the side of the gay community especially when it comes to civil rights and the editorial board (read me) is appalled at the lack of integrity our State Senators seem to have.


Not only has this body done nothing but wrestle each other to a stalemate all session –and many previous sessions as well- but their one landmark law for this session will be discriminatory. What bothers me most is that in most cases in the last 50 years our laws have been set to avoid discrimination but one the gay-rights issues we are Kabul-Ass-Backwards.

The arguments we always hear about this issue is the tired ‘sanctity of marriage’ argument saying that the only way to uphold the sanctity of marriage is to keep it between and man and wife.

I will leave out the obvious hypocrisy that the loudest voices against Gay Marriage always seems to be the ones with the most skeletons in their closet but I will say that anybody who tries to disparage human rights through an argument that gay-marriage threatens the ‘sanctity of marriage’ should look at the 50% divorce rate in this country and tell me what ‘sanctity’ they are protecting.

What shall I do with all those metrocards with $0.05 on them

NYC's straphangers are fed up with the MTA for a myriad of reasons starting with the fact the service is putrid especially during off-hours. Add to that the inaudible announcements, the constant rerouting, the poodle sized rats who somehow get away with not paying a fare and of course the homeless people who urinate in the cars and on the platform. A lot of the issues stem from the lack of funding as the geniuses running this ponzi-scheme have often grossly underestimated the long term costs and necessary operating budgets.
One way the MTA seems to be paying for itself is through the recent adjustment on subway fares. Years ago when the token was replaced with the MetroCard the MTA came up with incentives for people who bought the cards in bulk-rides as opposed to single rides. They used to give a 20% bonus for all cards so when you bought a $10 you actually got $12 which at $2 per ride got you six trips.
Then when they redid the pricing structure they raised the fare to $2.25 and dropped the incentive bonus to 15%, a double whammy for those who depend on the MTA especially ones living on a moderate fixed incomes.
TOR's complaint isn't so much about raising the fare or even lowering the bonus level as we believe every service (government run or private) should be self-sustaining and the MTA like Amtrak and recently the PostOffice has had their hands out for government stimulus which for one year might be necessary but when your business model includes budgets which depend on one-time cash influx due to stimulus money or land sales it's bound to fail.
Our TOR Bitch is about what this combo of fare-hike and bonus level decrease means in practical terms
Today you buy a $10 card and get $11.50 after the bonus, but at $2.25 a ride you get only 5.111 rides. Explain how I can possibly take a 0.111 ride, does this mean only my sack rides while the rest of my body has to walk?
.
In practical purposes you will use $11.25 on 5 trips and are now stuck with a $0.25 metrocard which some people may lose or just throw away. You can refill it but you would have to do some pretty involved precalculus to figure out how much you need to put on the card now to get to a number divisible by 2.25.
I did the math and you would have to refill your card by adding $11.521739 which after the 15% bonus gets you to $13.25 which with the $0.25 you have left would get you to $13.50 enough for 6 rides.
Obviously it's not a stretch to think that because of all these mathematical issues that people may discard cards with small amounts on it which is a cash cow for the MTA.
Even if that is not the case I'm not sure you can add $11.521739 to your card.
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Cost of 1 life

Saw the following Poll on CNN.com today.. can't get more even that this

Do you support sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan?

Yes  50%   39906

No    50%   39143

Total votes: 79049

This is not a scientific poll

So it sounds like Obama is going to channel LBJ and keep sending good troops after bad. As long as that thug Karzai is in charge in Kabul, I don’t see any reason why we would send anything else out to Afghanistan. At this point we all have to realize that the ‘Good War’ is no longer worth fighting. I’m for sending a few crop-dusters over the Poppy fields and spray them down with rat-poison to kill any poppy crops and for any ones that survive hopefully it will kill the drug-user who will buy the heroin later on.


I don’t think we have the stomach to keep going anymore, we have spent countless money on our credit-card to pay for these wars and I don’t think anybody can reasonably tell you that we are any better off today than we were in 2003.

I read a report the other day that it costs $1,000,000 per year to keep a soldier in a war zone. Not exactly sure how you get to that number but add 30,000 troops and some quick math tells you that we will have another $30,000,000,000. Those are a lot of zeros.



Then again I can’t exactly figure how the costs get upto $1 million dollars per soldier but I figure

Soldier’s Salary $30,000

Soldier health-care: $10,000

Soldier’s Food: $15,000

Soldier’s Uniforms: $2000

Round coach trip ticket to Kabul: $1000

Phone cards: $500

Year subscription to Playboy : $120

Payoff to Karzai $100,000

“security fee’ to Blackwater: $250,000

Commission to Halliburton $200,000

Fee paid to Goldman Sachs: $391,380

So Tiger Woods does a automotive face plant into a hydrant and the rest of the country rubber-necks to work. We've all read the accounts, vague as they may be, and in the end you know that this wasn't a case of too my tryptophan for Tiger after Thanksgiving.

Tiger claims he rolled out of his driveway, passed out, hit a tree and a hydrant and his wife used a golf club to break the back window and pull his unconscious husband out of the car.

But go to TMZ and the rumors are swirling that the face lacerations were caused not my the accident but my the golf club his swedish model turned wife violently swung after the questioned him about an alleged affair he was having.

Here are the most important TOR questions

Number A
- this entire accident occurred at 2AM on Friday morning. Where the hell is Tiger Woods going on Thanksgiving Night at 2AM? Like TW, I have a young child at home and unless I am going to get pampers I am in bed, dead tired. Dude the day is set up watch the Lions get spanked, eat dinner when the Cowboys take the field and doze off before half-time of the 8pm game

Number B
- the accident happened at less than 33mph since the airbags did not deploy, how f'd up could you really get from an impact when you are pulling out of your driveway? There is no way you fall unconscious from an impact at a speed of a golf-cart

Number C
- how hot was the chick he was allegedly cheating with since we know his wife is a world-class piece of ass.

Who knows about the first two TOR questions and frankly I don't care but the last point is an important one. See it doesn't matter how hot the chick is cause you know his wife-model-Swede- is a total pain in the ass. Find me a uber hot chick and I will find you a dude who would prefer to stick his penis in a pile of mashed potatoes. You know his wife is whiny, high maintenance and probably a dead fish in the sack. It wouldn't shock me if the new chick looked and acted like Rosie Perez

There is a direct inverse correlation: the hotter and more glamorous they are the more likely it is that the guy porking her wants to shoot his brains out.
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The scam

TOR continues its expose on the scam pulled by Babies R Us... A few months ago after we kept receiving the same crib off our registry from different people we started to get skeptical. It wasn't as if a stork clerk had messed up because the cribs were bought using various methods of purchase two online and three from three different stores in three different states. 5 identical cribs later it became apparent that there was something rotten in Denmark and it didn't take much legwork to start identifying the scam. Babies R Us would sell certain items off their registry and then not take them off or show them as "sold". Of course when two women walk into a gala wearing the same dress it usually leads to some fireworks now imagine five women walk into a shower with the identical gift.

See the consultants working on the marketing schemes for Babies R Us figured out that there were a number of "big ticket" items which many people would want to buy including the crib, the stroller or the bedding and realized that most people would return the items to the store for store credit and at $150 per crib the store credit adds up quickly.
When I bitched and moaned at customer service they assured me it was a temporary glitz in the system for our specific registry but just this weekend a friend bought a "big ticket" gift from another unrelated registry and two days later the item was back on.
I knew it was a scam when I walked into a store lugging a 50lb crib and the lady at the returns desk said completely unprompted "returning because you got more than one on the registry?"
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I have become nothing more than a rodeo clown

The TOR experience comes in a few different ways: venomously over the interwebs, lamely over dinner or sloppily after the "I Do's". But as much as I would love to go into hiding I have become such a sideshow that I feel obligated to be an idiot even if nobody cares to watch.

I often think about the movie Wedding Crashers where Vince Vaughn and one of the Wilson brothers make their annual pilgrimage to the most prestigious nuptials in the area with the hope of hooking up with single horny/desperate chicks. At some point there is some scene when some drunken fool makes an ahole out of himself and everytime I see that scene I realize that in real life I am that ahole.

What was once a drunken act of unprompted stupidity is now a badly choreographed part of every wedding reception I go to like the cake cutting or some line-dance. I feel like an actor whose show was once featured on Broadway but now is played in front of small audiences of old-people who would are waiting to die.

The saddest thing is that I fully realize I suck and am nothing more than a court jester at this point. With this being the last wedding of the season, the TOR experience will try to regroup for next year but as I get older and most of my friends have walked down the aisle, I hope the TOR experience fades away like many bad memories.

I know that if I don't stop it now I'll be doing it at my daughter's wedding one day.

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The Spaniards have running with the bulls, we have running with the imbeciles

I have often thought that we as Americans see waking up at 3AM to get online at a Wallmart on Black Friday as some rite of passage. I would honestly prefer to pay more for an item than have to spend some NewYears Eve esque countdown at some suburban mall so I can play my own untelevised version of Supermarket Sweep
You know the rest of the world snickers at the videos they'll get tonight showing how pathetic an act this is. Of course we'll all laugh as some 250lb woman with an ass the size of an lifeboat gets thrown facedown to the floor until the reporter leads into the somber story. seems like every year some schmo gets trampled by a hoard of similar losers somewhere in Dover Ohio as they run through the doors to secure some chinese made plastic toy for 30% less than the marked price. What I don't get is how anybody can be convinced that any mark-down is worth this. You know the department stores just mark up their items so they can mark them down again and most people would be lucky to end up with anything other than a black eye.

At TOR we don't do Black Friday's, Red China or Pink button-downs.
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I'm thankful for the colonic I will need tomorrow

What we love about thanksgiving is that a it's a real true American holiday. It's about family, being together and slaughtered Indians. What I don't agree with is obviously the gluttony as it celebrates our infatuation with the calorie race. The other annoyances involve the forced small-talk but nothing makes me want to stab myself in the unit with the carving knife more than any conversation about tryptophan
But all of these annoyances are till 'american' and like a family member it is OK if you say they are annoying but that doesn't give anybody else the right to do so.
What I don't approve of is people who don't stick to the traditional Thanksgiving fare. Just last week I heard somebody say they would instead of turkey cook a chicken. There isn't any freedom here, you have to get stuck eating the same crap we all do. But the one that took the cake were the people I know who went the tofu route, not because they detest meat but because they prefer soy beans. I don't care if you are vegetarian, allergic to cranberries or brussell sprouts make you puke, you can't substitute the staples in a Thanksgiving feast.

To this I have only one retort
Move to Canada you unpatriotic slobs

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what exactly is an independent?

In terms of political affiliation I know what it is supposed to be but when a politician uses the term practice it always just seems like somebody who hedges their bets. The issue though comes down to the term ‘independent’ because whenever some politician or social commentator claims to be one it doesn’t seem genuine. Whether it’s Lieberman or Dobbs the terms has started to carry the definition of Hawkish on foreign policy and lame on domestic policy.

I know there are many voters who feel disenfranchised with either political party and thus associate themselves with the middle while they don’t at all have similar view-points. They get clumped together because they are neither a donkey nor an elephant but that is all they have in common. This ostensibly becomes a third party as political commentators will look to see trends in how they vote. The problem is that this ‘third party’ is more disjointed and disconnected than the mess that is either the Democrats or the Republicans

Lou Dobbs stepped down from CNN earlier this month and said he vowed to continue the fight. I can only imagine this to mean that he will setup on a perch with a rifle and shoot wetback crossing the Rio Grande. The problem with Dobbs and CNN is that he wanted to be FoxNews and they wanted to be Switzerland and the combination just didn’t mix. Now the last time Dobbs left CNN in a hiss, he went to become the head of space.com which I have never actually gone to but I can only imagine is the kind of place you can go to “have a star named after you”. The bigger problem for Dobbs is that he had to get so loud in his anti-immigration rhetoric so that he could stand out in the drone from the right but his forum is the only cable-news station that at least tries to stay away from partisan political commentary. So I’ve heard that he should go to FoxNews which I’m sure sounds like it would be a natural fit but the problem becomes time. Where exactly in the FoxNews schedule do they have time for another show unless they want to show it up against Oprah in the afternoon or up against the Honeymooners reruns overnight? Maybe they’d boot Greta (who looks like she took a boot to the face) so they can move their new prized possession Glenn Beck (who looks like a kid toucher) to 10PM and would open up the 5PM slot for Dodds (who looks like he was independently kid touched).