take on the guy walking with his headphones on..

It must be a slow newsday because I read this screaming headline that read "Walking with headphones can be dangerous, U-Md. study shows‎"

So some univerity spent good dollars to conclude that walking with head-phones on are much more likely to get hit by a bus than people who don't have head-phones on.. A similar study showed that dudes who like going bareback with chicks carrying STD's are much more likely to have a painful piss-stream a few months later than guys who practice abstinence..    Anyway, I completely realize that for example, I'm much more vulnerable to get run over while listing to The Thundering Herd podcast that I might if I didn't have my ears covered so I'll file this away as a study that proves the obvious..

 

Now I can't wait for the follow up study which will go over accidents caused by people walking while using their smartphone… I have to imagine the results will be striking   

take on the NY Times collumnists

I've said for years that the only NY Times columnist with any sense of humor is Gail Collins but that's almost like saying that the best tasting piece of dog-shit comes from a French poodle.   The NY Times Op-Ed office is probably as dull as a school library and I'd always imagined it to be something like this

Maureen Dowd comes in drinking a large double-mocca Latte, chatting away on her blueberry while eating a strawberry scone while she tosses her Burberry bag onto Nicholas Kristof's desk knocking his black coffee all over his huge map of Angola..  He gets up to protest but Dowd is already half-way down the office stroking her cocker-spaniel she keeps in her purse and nearly runs Roger Cohen carrying a huge poster of Frank Rich.       David Brooks cackles at the sight and immediately goes back to quoting some completely irrelevant Shakespeare line for his next article to ensure he gets to 2000 words.    Thomas Friedman, fresh off his 10^th trip to India in the last 8 days stands in the corner staring at a mirror while wearing a jacket with way too many zippers  trying to convince Charles Blow that the world is getting smaller and flatter while his head is in fact growing both larger and more round every-time he opens his mouth.   The bubble caption above Blow's head is pretty clear  "if somebody doesn't shoot this guy I will strangle him with a notebook full of statistics"   Joe Nocera stands nearby and his bubble reads 'Man am I good looking, I bet I'm packing more heat under these navy pinstripe pants than Blow and his clown pants'

In the corner sits Bob Herbert  in one of those chairs with the attached desk with a look on his face like the janitor is about to come in and move his desk into the hallway with him in it, he starts to speak and Brooks says 'has anybody ever told you that you could pass for Bill Cosby?"  

Gail Collins working hard at her typewriter asks the disinterested crowd if she should add an anecdote  of Mitt Romney's dog being tied to the family car in her next article but she loses her train of thought half-way through her thought to ask if maybe she should just go with 'we digress'.    The camera zooms over to Paul Krugman as he polishes his Nobel prize with a hanky from PINK with the sweat of the underclass.

Brooks turns to Ross Douthat and asks when he's going to marry Rachel again…only Bob Berhert laughs..Brooks turns to him and said 'good one right Bill?"      The William Safire memorial desks sits empty with a one of those black and white notebooks open filled with pages of grammatical corrections he's found in the pages of the Old Lady. 

take on the blackout

January 18^th will go down as the day the internet was shut down.. or at least Wikipedia shut itself down to protest legislation to stop pirating of copywritten material.   Now obviously Wikipedia is immensely popular and blacking itself out will have a real affect as kid's might actually have to visit a library to finish their history reports.  Along with Wikipedia and CraigsList which are obviously very important in the cybersphere, Google put a big black box over their logo showing exactly how much they really believed in the cause and Mark Zuckerberg posted that "The Internet is the most powerful tool we have for creating a more open and connected world.  We can't let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the Internet's development. Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the Internet.  In other words this is really bad and we don't think they should do it but we won't actually take any action on Facebook.    Although it doesn't say much for standing up for what you believe in it does show that a Dobbs Ferry education made him smart enough to realize he shouldn't upset the apple-card so close to a possible record breaking IPO.

What we found interesting was that unlike Google and Facebook a number of other websites did follow suit and blacked out. The other websites includes something called Reddit which I have never heard of before and some blog named Boing Boing which I can only imagine is about babies.   So the question of course is…if a tree falls in the internet and nobody cares, does it make a sound?

The president of Reddit was all over CNN fawning anger against pirates..well against people who are against pirates.    If this isn't the greatest marketing scheme for Reddit because in every clip this dude makes sure to note that Reddit is some website where people go to vote for other websites and that they get millions of hits.   I swear that I've lived 36 years without ever having needed the services that Reddit offers which seem so insanely idiotic that can almost be misconstrued as clever.. 

The great irony of course is that nobody will remember Reddit tomorrow when they turn their lights back on.

Take on the NJ Transit bus driver shortstop

One of the many frustrations for the NJ transit system involves the
bus drivers. They seem to do their job well enough (they get me to
where I need to go in a reasonable amount of time) but what they
surely lack is some sense of customer service or better yet normal
civility. Like many of these unionized government jobs the NJ
Transit drivers live in a world where they feel entitled to more than
they should just look at the way they operate. I walk onto one of
the platforms a few days ago at 5:38pm to catch a 5:45pm bus. I walk
up the stairs and see the bus at the gate..well almost at the gate.
As is typical these bus drivers will park their buses about five feet
in front of the gate so they do not have to let anybody on. So there
we stand with 25 adults waiting while watching this dude pick his
teeth through the window Now there is nothing that says he has to
open his doors a second before he is suppose to but as a human
courtesy when you see two dozen people standing after a long days
work, wouldn't it be at least courteous to give them the opportunity
to sit?

Take on the educated candidate

TOR hasn't spent nearly as much time on the Presidential Race as we
should and we've been criticized for being too busy with things like
women's shoes, Kim Kardashian and bowel movements although there is a
large portion of our readership who prefers we stay out of the
Political theater.  We will take both suggestions and only do an
occasional political blog entry but only if we find the subject matter
completely outrageous like if we find Rick Perry dressed like Kate
Perry or when somebody finally unearths Obama's dead sea scrolls

Today us one of those days because it struck me how absolutely stupid
the latest attack ad is.
Newt Gingrich has released an attack ad, called "The French
Connection," showing clips of Romney speaking while the narrator
warns: "Just like John Kerry, he speaks French!"

I hate the French as much as anybody but even i'm appalled that we are
now digging so low that we're going to criticize a guy for being
educated?   We already saw what the dumb guy from the Texas can do to
a country, I'm not sure this is something to strive for.
Although i don't think Newt is dumb by any stretch, it's disturbing
when somebodies ability to speak more than one language is seen as a
detriment when aiming to become the leader of the free world!

When did we become a country where being uneducated was something to
be proud of or worse yet that being worldly is seen as a character
flaw for a potential president.   This just tells you that our biggest
issues will never be 'turning into Europe' but rather isolating
ourselves from the rest of the world.
I travel around this globe and this type of rhetoric from a 'serious'
candidate for president is downright embarrassing.



Sent from my iPhone

Sent from my iPhone

Take on the celebrity

It must have been a quite few months for Kim Kardashian since she
divorced the goody white/black dude from the Nets and the lack of
attention seems to be bothering her because today a buddy sent me the
following link http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattcherette/heres-the-photo-that-allegedly-shows-kanye-we?s=mobile
which allegedly shows Kanye taking A 'celebrity' from the backside.
Kanye hasn't denied anything but seeing the picture it's pretty
obvious who the puffer is. Kim's ass is as recognizable as Michael
Jordan's head, Ron Jeremy's dong or Chris Farley's guy.
But of course it brings another question from the masses: would you?

Now granted I have to imagine none on my light skinned buddies would
be able to be within 6 inches of her but I find Kim to be the Tebow of
chicks. Half the works loves her, 49.99% of the guys hate her and the
rest played for USC

Take on the subway scammer

The beauty of the unlimited metro-card is also it's biggest detractor.
Anybody who rides the trains realizes that you need about 20
minutes between subway swipes at one station and years ago there would
be guys standing at the turnstiles with a stack of unlimited
metro-cards who would swipe you through for a buck. They figured
that if they had 40 cards and swiped on person through every 30
seconds they could make $60 per hour before expenses ($90 metro cards)
working only about 4 or 5 hours per day and for some period of time
this seemed like a way for a couple of guys to make a few bucks
You don't see those guys much anymore but what you do see are a bunch
of people standing at stations like Grand Street or Canal who are
waiting on opposite sides of the gate. One will go through the
turnstile, pass the metro card through the gates and wait for twenty
minutes so the second guy can swipe through.
How terrible is your life if waiting on a subway platform for 20
minutes to save $2 sound like a good deal? And truthfully an
unlimited metro-card used twice a day comes out to less than $2 per
ride There has to be a better way cause if you ever catch me doing
this I give you permission to throw me in front of the next oncoming D
Train

Take on the Righetti Competition Wreckage Service and relationship wrecking company business model

10 years ago before I was a happily married father of one, when I was 240 pounds, had not yet won the D-Cup and still believed that the world revolved around Erasure, Asian Women and Sushi, I toyed with a number of business ideas.

 

First came DirtyDVD.com..   Remember when the DVD first came out, one of the main selling features were the multiple camera angles you could watch a scene from and I figured that there was no better way to utilize this new video recording device than for dirty DVD's.  First you'd watch a wide-screen shot, then a close up of the chick, another of the action and finally you'd go to the long shot to see the entire scene come to a crescendo.    Little did I know that XNXX, RedTube, Tube8, YouPorn would come along and basically make dirty movies a thing of the past

 

Then came RighettiGear.com.    TShirts with funny statements on it, the first problem was that except for four or five quirky statements, we didn't have much else...  For New Years I hand-wrote 'if drinking made your winkie shrink, would you quit?" on a tshirt in a sharpy.. that was the extent of it and then came 6dollarShirts.com which were funnier.

 

Well finally we had the idea for the Righetti Relationship wrecker..  I'm not really sure how this would make us any money but then again DirtyDVD's and RigehttiGear were about as succesful as pissing into the wind.

 

anyway this was the business model

 

Righetti Competition Wreckage Service and relationship wrecking company
     when you need protection from yourself and later protection from me.
 
a relationship wrecking company 
Cliffside Park, NJ 07010
hours: Sunday mornings from 8:30am till 11:00am
President: Russel Jones

FOR THE RIGHETTI EXPERIENCE
 
FAQ:

• What do I get? fat slob to come with you when your meeting some slutty chick with a long term boyfriend
• Why do I need him? to keep the L.T.B. occupied
  
• What does it do for you?: the fat slob will immediately start drinking with the long term boyfriend bringing him to an immediate drunken slob
  
• What happens now?  a drunk righetti will start becoming competitive and challenge the LTB to a whose got the bigger unit contest, leaving a sight no-one will want to remember
  
• Can this backfire?  have you ever seen a naked Righetti?
  
• I still don't get it: the long term boyfriend will be too busy in a pissing competition with our slob to pay any attention to his girlfriend, you on the other hand will be sober .
  
• What does it cost?: only the price of the drinks
  
• What is the Bump Guarantee?  a drunk righetti
  
• What happens if all goes well? You get yours
  
• What happens if I go to the men's room?  Righetti gets yours
  
• What do I do then?  start drinking
  
• Does this technique ever fail?  Depends how you identify failure, failure for you maybe, failure for our slob doubtful.
  
• How do I dress?  better then the L.T.B. but not good enough that you mind getting puked on
  
• Do You have examples of this fool proof plan working?  do you have proof it doesn't?
  
• What happens if the girl is fat and slobby?  Righetti gets his
  
• What happens if the girl is fat, slobby and ultra slutty?  You and Righetti might both get his
  
• What happens if she winds up getting drunk instead of the LTB?  once again Righetti gets his, yours and the LTB's
  
• Do you offer services for a girl looking to hook up with a guy with a LTG (long term girlfriend)?  not even a challenge, b/c a drunk girl (ltg or not) is a done chick

 

take on the subway platform ad

As a veteran of the NYC subway system, there is something that has been bothering me for years.    Do the people who handle the sales of the ads on the platforms have different pricing depending on the direction of the train on that side of the platform?

The reason I ask is, take a random platform on the R train going into Brooklyn and you'll know that you will always find people waiting on the platform for the uptown train but rarely anybody waiting to catch a downtown one.    Basically it's a city which revolves around Manhattan, so any platform that serves trains that go into Manhattan will have people on it while the platform on the other-side of the tracks is mainly used by people getting off the train and directly departing the station.   So whereas the same amount of people will go through both turnstiles, you'll get  much more captive audience on one side as people will stare at these ads as they patiently wait for their train to come barreling down the tunnel Since advertisement is all about capturing a captive audience there must be a different price for both or at least there should be.

Then I think about another aspect of it.. there probably is a lot more graffiti on the uptown advertisements as there will obviously be many more bored teenagers standing on one platform who will deface just about anything..

take on the megabyte

I’m all for the ease, convenience and sensibility, so it’s no surprise that the Metric system is a far superior concept to the old British system we use.    I’m a 36 year old man and couldn’t tell you with how many ounces there were in a pound or what the boiling temperature of water in Fahrenheit is.   If you ask me how many feet are in a mile, I’d guess about 5342 and if you ask me how many fluid ounces there were in a gallon I’d look at you like you just asked me to identify each strain in the DNA strand.

So what I don’t get is the way that we measure electronic data.   Kilobytes to Megabytes to Gigabytes has a very metric (and logical) feel to it..BUT when you actually see the conversion you are told that there are 1024 KB in a megabyte and in turn 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte, so in other words there are 1,048,576 kilobytes in a gigabyte and 1,073,741,824 kilobytes in a terabyte which sound about as random as 5280 feet in a mile (I looked it up.. and i'm disputing this because my foot is a bit smaller than 12 inches).

Take on Obama v Hernandez

On Monday the Obama administration argued that Guatemalans who were knowingly exposed to STD's without their consent cannot sue the US government.    The claims were being made when the covert operation in the 40's was exposed by some researcher at Wellesley College a few years ago.   Basically 2000 Guatemalan prisoners and mental-patients were exposed to the syphilis, gonorrhea and some other things that make it hurt when you piss.  They said that the subjects were exposed without their knowledge although they were compensated for something with a pack of butts and in case of the prisoners, were exposed by infected prostitutes.  

Forget the moral dilemma involved in something as unethical and Third Reich-esque as this is, I can't believe the CIA can legally pay for hookers.    

But how about the precedent this sets?  Granted they are using some ridiculous thing called the Federal Tort Claims Act which apparently allows you to date-rape a prisoner but you can just see where this leads.     If you can't sue Uncle Sam for giving you the Clap, does this mean some chick can't sue some dude from Long Island who knowingly gave you syphilis?   I can see it now; some chick whose cootch looks like it was taken over by bed-bugs goes into court and gets slapped down when the defense lawyer uses Obama v Rodriguez.     Before you know it they'll be using that ruling to let dudes out of jail who slipped some chick the date-rape drug, you gotta nip this thing in the bud now before all chaos breaks loose.

And how about those poor prostitutes..how did they get compensated for having to sleep with a bunch of Guatemalan prisoners?  Those guys probably all look like Hernandez from Oz, if I were those chicks I'd be suing the US Government myself cause having to sleep with that guys might be worse than syphilis  

Take on those small pictures

There are days where I feel like I'm getting baited and switched left
and right. Just last week, I open the NY Times app and click on the
''most emailed" tab and am met with the expected 10 top stories which
as usual was a mix of Maureen Dowd, latest news for an IOS based
tablet and health and fitness. Anyway as I was scrolling down the
picture accompanying the sixth article immediately grabbed my
attention and without reading as much as the headline I had clicked on
it.
Problem is that my eyesight is getting worse and instead of a picture
of some dude's huge biceps, I had interpreted it as a huge set of
cans. It as if my pervert eyes were once again playing tricks on me
except I believe the Times purposely chose a picture which could be
confused for some of the best cleavage this side of 52nd street and
Broadway
As you can imagine I was mighty disappointed when this thing was about
a different kind of looking good in a tshirt

Take on the trunk

What is wrong with people, i walk past a car like this a few times per
month. Basically some dude has an entire scrubless carwash in his
trunk. I know from my own life that I never have enough space in my
trunk and here I see some dude with two crates filled to brim with
soap, rags, jugs of that blue crap, vinyl cover and tire cleaner in
his Civic

Taking on (more) tipping etiquette

I rent an apartment which includes a bunch appliances as part of the
rent. Stuff like a washer/dryer, a microwave and a dishwasher.
Most things in the apartment are more than fine but it was pretty
obvious when we moved in that the dishwasher was on it's last legs.
The door squeaks, the cycle is about 3 hours long and after it moat of
my dishes look dirtier than before they went in there.
Anyway after complaining, my landlord graciously offered to replace it
and arranged for delivery and installation of the new one and removal
of the old one. I got a call this morning and was told to expect
delivery within a four-hour window and was happy to see two dudes show
up an hour into the window to do their work.
I immediately start to question whether this is a tippable service
being they are already walking away with a bunch of parts, some
scrap-metal and a bunch of copper wire

So I ask a couple of buddies whether I am obligated to tip and would
take the consensus as my guide

First response
"yes, unless he owns the company"

Second response
"Never. I have a hard time looking at those guys."

Third response
"Tony Romo is a homo"
(In fairness this might have been a response to something else"

So I wait for the final response to break the tie which was a
lukewarm. "I guess so" which I guess means that it is a tippable act.

Anyway, I go with the first guy's rule of tipping as i make it a point
to not tip a guy who owns the company or at the very least appears to
be in a managerial role.
Now obviously the two delivery guys are not the owners of the company
(Lowes) who sold the dishwasher, nor do they appear to be the owners
of the subcontractor who installs and removes them. So I'm out $10

But then it occurs to me since it's not my house (or my dishwasher)how
the hell did i get stuck both waiting in that four hour window and now
also the guy on the line or the ten-spot?

Buddy #1 tells me that I should look at it with a glass-half-full
optimism, I'm getting an appliance for $10, I am just waiting for
buddy #2 to suggest I drop an upper-decker in the dishwasher when I
move out

Take on the ConEd envelope

Has anybody else noticed the new ConEd envelopes? Maybe I'm the only
one but there is quite a bit of irony in them trumpeting their new
'green' initiative by printing it on the envelopes they send out their
bills in. Whereas Bank of America and other bill envelopes use the
envelope to implore the payee to sign up for paperless billing, ConEd
sees it all together differently. Obviously ConEd has a lot more
experience in customer relations than I ever do as they must cover
their asses for all those service outages but even the promotion of
green energy for a cleaner planet by a company like ConEd seems
disingenuous.
I signed up to have my portion of energy come from ultra clean wind
energy. For this, ConEd charges me a premium (which I willingly
accept) but they then use my usage to fight off charges they rely on
dirty energy sources and most probably taking advantage of tax breaks
designed for the spread of non carbon fuels
I am the one making the choice and paying the price but it is ConEd
who takes the bows
So much for saving me money

Take on the end of the month inventory

As we closed the books on 2011 and look towards 2012, something
occurred to me regarding inventory management which might or might not
have any impact to the bottom line but would surely have a lot of
inconsistent record keeping.

As anybody who works in any type of business dealing in the sale or
purchasing of widgets knows, there is a very obvious lag time from
when one company ships goods (and it this leaves their inventory) and
another company receives goods (and is thus added to theirs) so there
are a usually a number of days or weeks when neither company counts it
as inventory.
I am not sure what the real repercussions are in terms of balance
sheets, tax liabilities or profits but any salesman will tell you that
their typical busiest billing day is at the end of a billing cycle (be
it month, quarter or year). I would guess that shipping companies
like UPS or FedEx handle more shipments during this time as I'm sure
there are a lot of sales numbers which spike right around the last of
the month
What these 30th day of the month shipments do though is put a lot of
goods into virtual limbo where they are not on either the seller or
the buyers books.
Now obviously there is real value to having inventory and write offs
due to depreciation but having less of it can also allow a company to
show bigger profits on their balance sheets

I'm not asking the IRS to get involved as we have enough complications
as a manufacturing country but would guess that the total amount of
'inventory' held on shelves is grossly understated.

take on the check

When I sat down at the bar last night waiting for the rest of my
dinner party to arrive, I was appalled was the price of the beers.
The cheapest option on the menu was some Turkish Ale which tasted like
it was filtered through the Turks sweaty sock.  The price of a bottle
was $7 which even in Manhattan feels expensive but what really got me
is when it was time to pay the bill.  First of all after tax the bill
came out to $7.62 which for something that tastes like it was made
from Kafta seems outrageous.  But what really got me is that when
handed the bartender a $20 she only handed me $12 back.   I get
rounding up or down when it's about a nickel but to round up $0.38 ??
To add insult to injury, she didn't even as much as mention it just
left it sitting there.
Then she has the gall to give me a dirty look when I don't tip beyond
what she had stolen already

Take on the forward facing sneakers

There is something very disturbing about the attached picture and it
isn't just that I took a cellphone pic in the mens room. Yesterday
at some kid's birthday party at a chain playhouse, I walk in and see
the distinct view of sneakers peaking out of the bottom of the stall.
The problem is that the sneakers are facing towards the wall so there
is a very good shot that some dude is pissing all over the seat.
This isn't some Irish pub, this is a children's playhouse and unless
this dude's got a little Sandusky in him, there is a decent shot he
has a kid jumping around in the bounce-house.

Take on any given trip yo Target

Ivan convinced that like a wireless fence, Target has an electronic
barrier around each store which won't allow you to leave unless you
have committed to spend $75. Today I walk in and first stand in line
to return a GPS and get back $89.95, then I walk through the store
once, get to the register and spend $0.25 more cents than I returned.
It's like they have a algorithm set up to make sure you never walk
through the store and my see at least $150 worth of junk you do not
need. You may have willpower over $75 of those purchases but
eventually the incredible deal for paper-towels or one of those funny
shirts catches your eye and it's love. A short romance later and all
of a sudden you find yourself whipping out the old debit card and once
again throwing nearly a hundred dollars to the target gods

Kill me

take on the midnight texts

Maybe I've just gotten too old, maybe I've gotten too lame and maybe I'm too critical but I cannot explain often enough how insincere the mass New Years text message is..   This is like somebody posing 'happy new year' on Facebook and feeling like they connected to somebody.   But unlike previous years, this year I turned my ringer off so I wouldn't be woken up at 12:01, 12:04, 12:05, 12:08 and 12;09 from this lame excuse of bandwidth .   See the one thing I've learned is that when you plan to bring in the New Year dead asleep, it makes sense to turn off your phone ringer because it is the one day in the year when you get text messages from random folks that are mostly indecipherable from one another.    Now I have nothing against the personal message but like we have pointed out all too often at TOR, the mass text message is anything but considerate, for example this morning I must have woken up to 20 messages and honestly they could all have been the same one wishing 'you and your family a great 2012'  
Next time you want to wish me anything.. wish that my phone-plan gets canceled.