take on the New Years resolution

I gotta say that the overhearing a bunch of folks discussing their New Years resolutions over coffee at the diner today was quite depressing..  Mainly because you just know the resolutions i.e. lose weight, stop smoking etc was exactly what these four discussed last year over a double cheesburger before walking outside for a couple of buts.   Now I get that it is difficult to change people so days like New Years allows people to make the drastic changes in their lives which they know they need to but because it's such a played out event, it just becomes an empty threat which is actually more harmful than helpful because it gives people this false sense of doing something.

Somehow people have been convinced that the hardest step in a journey is the first..but when it comes to these self-improvement steps the first step when really it's the next 20 that are the hardest..  this is the reason you see a thousand people join NYSC on January 2nd  (and see people like me quit in anticipation of that on December 29th).. because joining is easy.. it just costs money...actually sustaining a workout regiment is hard and people are inherently lazy and content ..

So this year my New Year's resolution is to tell anybody they have a New Year's resolution that they are a bunch of idiots who just wasted $89 per month for a membership they'll be too embarrassed to cancel..

take on the gym membership cancellation

A few years ago when a friend had a terrible accident, I volunteered to help consolidate and close a bunch of things in her name including credit cards, payroll stuff, retailer cards, drivers license renewals etc.    It was all pretty straight forward for the most part except when it came to canceling her gym membership which was nearly impossible.    I needed doctor's letters, proof of hospitalization, report of the accident and more... it almost got to the point where I was expecting them to ask me to bring in a body.  
Fast Forward 10 years and off to another gym membership cancellation..my own.   After 7 or 8 years with NYSC, I made the conscious decision earlier this week to cancel my membership after having made the unconscious decision not to use it about 6 months earlier.    It's not that I won't work out, it's just that I hate the treadmill with a passion, I don't ever see myself pumping iron and I find all those machines completely irritating and thus prefer to work out by running on the hard pavement of NYC.  
I call up NYSC and am told that I can only cancel in person which is a complete scam designed to only prolong your membership especially in this case when I did not have a contract which I was going to break.    I'm sure if you throw enough hurdles up, it will dissuade people from canceling just to avoid the nuisance.

Well if having to physically get there wasn't a big enough pain in the ass, they then put the full court press on you.     I walk in and ask to speak to somebody about canceling and the guy at the desk tries to shoo me away by 'warning' me that it's busy and that maybe I should come back later.. now realize it's Wednesday Night at 6:30 the week between Christmas and New Years.. there isn't a soul in the place. 
Finally one of their reps meets me and the conversation goes something like this

Righetti:   I need to cancel my membership
NYSC guy:   sure no problem.. can i ask why
Righetti:    I haven't used the gym in 6 months..preferring to run outside
NYSC guy:   gotcha.   let me just get to a screen
Righetti:   thanks
NYSC guy..   so am I correct to state in this cancellation sheet that you have decided against being healthy
Righetti... well not exactly
NYSC guy..  no problem.. they just need to me to fill something out.. so I guess you are fine to by a lazy slob for the rest of your life
Righetti...  well.
NYSC guy..  gotcha.. I see here you have a family and young child... please sign here stating that you do not have any intention of seeing her grow up
Righetti..  that's not really what I'm saying
NYSC guy.. ok no problem.. we'll just say that you are happy gaining 2 to 3 pounds a year which will mean that you will be 250 pounds by the time you are 65
Righetti.. i'm not quite sure that's what I came in here to say
NYSC guy.. ok just sign here..here...here..and here.. hope your fat fingers can hold the pencil

MLIA

Take on the Video Rental Awards

There are times when I really don't get people.   Just this week the first annual Lifetime Achievement award for Video Rentals was given out and the award winner was…. Kevin James.   Now I have nothing against the Fat Man but having him win any kind of movie award is akin to having Mark Sanchez win the NFL MVP.   

My first thought was obviously who the hell is his competition, obviously these award shows are all whores for publicity and my guess is that James was the only one who returned their call so.   I guess he beat out were probably Ray Romano, Andy Dick and David Spade.   If Redbox (the host) had to be honest you'd have to think that a guy like Will Ferrell or Adam Sandberg who were probably too busy doign anything else.. although they could go the publicity stunt route and give it posthumously to Chris Farley.

The second thought is.. do we really need a Video Rental Awards show?    Nobody watches any of these crappy award-shows anymore, shit the Grammy's just eliminated about 40% of the awards nobody cared about to try to keep eye-balls on the screen and the Oscars went away from all their 'best postproduction award for a Foreign film" categories a while ago..  I am all too happy when we consolidate these kinds of things not expand them..

Then you have to think why they are even putting this award show on.. video-rentals are a dying breed.  There isn't a videostore left in America, Netflix is imploding and even the smut shops on 42^nd street have all shut down.   I only watch movies in four places:  On an airplane, On-Demand at home, Streaming   directly from Amazon using Prime or download from the Android store for my Touchdroid..  I haven't take a survey but I have to imagine that I'm in the majority when it comes to actually ordering a video or DVD..so I'm not exactly sure who they are trying to appeal to

But the real thought I have is.. will that jackass wear that idiotic hat when he accepts the award..  I guarantee that I will NOT be watching so I'll have to catch the award show when they release it on video.

 

take on the printer cartridge racket

Forget the Gambino crime family, the biggest racket in this country is the printing business and more specifically the printer cartridge industry.     Just look at the way they run their operation.   You buy a new cartridge for about $75 which last you for a few months, they you buy a new one and they give you a UPS label and ask you to return your old cartridge back to the factory.    They put it under the guise of recycling and a greener earth but honestly it costs them about $5 in UPS Ground charges and they can refill that printer cartridge for about $2 worth of ink and then resell it back to me for another $75.  No wonder there is this huge underground market for off-market ink for these things, it's absolutely ridiculous how big a rip-off it is and now they've compounded the rip-off with them convincing us to give these cartridges back for nothing.. think about it this way..you get $0.05 for a returned glass bottle but get nothing at all back for this hump of plastic other than some environmentally feel good hue.  

Take on redemption

111.11 to 110.26. Only .85 points separate two teams after 16 weeks
of battle but for the first time the one on the losing end wasn't me.
10 years, hundreds of hours watching meaningless games to the bitter
end, thousands of hours of research and analysis, sleepless nights,
restless days, arguments with my family and so much more. Nobody
ever said we weren't capable it was just that when the games got late,
the scores got tight or the pressure high we always found a way to
find the most excruciating way to lose. Whether it was Tiki Barber
going off in a week 17 Monday night football game to stick the nail in
the coffin or the Redskin drive three years ago which stalled just a
few Fred Davis yards short of victory not to mention the years
depending on Jermaine Wiggins, Brad Hoover or The Whizzanator or
having our heart ripped out with another fumble by Sweaty Arms Ahman
Green

Because although there weren't that
many these few failures always obstructed the successes but not this
year. This year I can finally sleep knowing that finally it has all
come together for the Silly Putty Sacks who as a charter franchise in
the SecondHand Fantasy Football League was one of 3 teams who had not
had the pleasure of heaving the DCup up over our heads in victory.

Take on cheap shoes

A few months ago I got what seemed like a great deal, a pair of
standard black work shoes for $29.99 at Overstock. Three months later
I walk up the stairs at Penn Station and just about kill myself when
my foot gives out. I do some investigative work and find that the
glue that keeps the sole attached to the shoe has completely come off.
I get that a cheap pair of shoes is not going to have the comfort or
life of a better pair but to completely disintegrate is another story.
I am not saying that every pair must pass the same rigorous QC step
but at least all should pass a basic one that tells you it will last
for more than a few months

Take on the heartbreak

I am nice to old people, I donate to charity, I believe I am a good
father, I work hard, I don't overindulge yet still the fat man in the
red coat hates me. I play by the rules but sometimes it just doesn't
feel like that's enough I don't know what I need to do but whatever
I am doing isn't working.

Once again I have been Romofied, my entire fantasy season gone in the
blink of an eye (or a Jason Babin stunt) and for the second time in
two years as the Cowboys QB was carted of the field, my season was
carted off to the morgue.

I am just not very good at this game

Take on the butchered wrapping job

Some people wake up on Christmas morning looking forward to a ton of
presents, I wake up to see the wrapping job people have done and rank
the best and worst. Now I can't blame anybody as that paper has the
tensile strength of water but there is something kind of ridiculous
about spending 3 hours finding a gift, spending hard earned money on
it and then wrapping it like it looks like you threw up all over the
gift

So if you insist on force feeding me a gift at least have the decency
to not wrap it like you are wearing ray-bans

take on the gmail 2 step verification

I recently signed up for the new 2-step verification for GMAIL to give me some security.   It basically means that when you sign into a computer from a machine which you don't usually use, that you need to enter a second password which gets sent to you as a text similar to the way many people in corporate America use the toggles. It's a great concept and would give you some feeling of security knowing it would be much more difficult to hack your account but here is a scenario which I think GMAIL has overlooked . 

 You and your new bride are travelling in Costa Rica spending nights in fancy hotels overlooking the cloud-forest, Volcano Arenal and the hot springs.   Everything is going swimmingly when all of a sudden you realize that you can't find your bag which included your wallet, your passport and your brand new white IPhone 4s after a night of heavy booze and marathon sex.     You need to get in touch with your friends in Staten Island to help you get back to the States but without a phone you can't call, text or email.    You search high and low and finally find an internet café, go to gmail.com and log-on.   The problem is they ask you for the 2^nd verification code which of course was sent to your brand-new white IPhone 4s and now there is no way to log onto your account and thus no-way to get in touch with your friend with too much chest-hair, too little humility and too much weight around his midsection.

take on McJesus

A buddy of mine driving through fly-over country comes across a manger in front of a McDonalds the power of which immediately forces him to take out his camera, snap a picture and send it around to all his buddies describing it as 'real america'     The beauty of it is that it combines the two great loves of America, Jesus and Big Macs and shows how inseparable the two are. 

I have spent a 100 nights in 'real america', have been in the company of some of the biggest religious fanatics who have screamed at me that this is a 'Christian country'  and have seen more crosses, mangers, Rudolph's and virgin mary's in public places than I care for so I realize the importance of the Baby Jesus to an incredible percentage of this population.     Of course I could argue that this country was founded on the concept of a separation of Religion and State but when you hear God's name invoked after every presidential address, spoken by every elementary school kid before class, during every 7^th inning stretch at Yankee Stadium and after every NFL victory you realize that there is no doubt that you can never truly separate the two especially when you see that the American Muslim program gets pulled off the air. 

But what made this so striking was that it was located on the property of a McDonalds a company which you would think would keep its nose out of anything potentially controversial, I can't imagine any 300lb American passing up a Happy Meal because there wasn't a Nativity scene in front of the double wide doors.  

taking on what the untouchable police force

know this is going to come across as somewhat tone-deaf but I'm really starting to believe it, but in very sad way the memory of 9/11 has become the worst thing that has happened to the accountability of the  average cop walking the beat because when it comes to any form of criticism they have become completely untouchable.   There are thousands of great cops out there but there are also a ton of them who see protecting the lives of the citizens of this city as secondary to killing green-pigs or playing words with friends.

 I lived through 9/11 and obviously don't mean to imply it is at all a good thing but what the memory of it has done is that these cops walk around completely untouchable when it comes to their individual personal behavior.   I've lived in NYC for 10 years but it's getting completely ridiculous how they walk around now with this air of entitlement.  Every day I walk on the street, stand on a subway platform, wait in line at a restaurant and see a cop putzing around on his cellphone.    Today I saw a guy on the corner of Times Square playing Cut-The-Rope, yesterday I was almost run over by a cop driving his patrol car while on his cell-phone and every day I see a group of them congregate on one side of a subway platform shooting the shit..    I don't know another profession where it seems completely acceptable to spend most of your working day completely distracted.   I've said it before but you don't see a girl working at McDonalds on her phone her entire shift, I never catch the postman standing around reading a magazine and I don't see an elevator operator playing angry-birds and none of these guys have the responsibility to make sure that the citizens are safe.

But even if you accept that cops are a different animal, what gets me is that you can't say anything about it because you'll come across as unappreciative or unpatriotic even if the criticism is completely acceptable.   Take that ticket-fixing scandal which broke a few months ago.   The immediately response was not that of shame but was a bunch of cops wrapping themselves in their flag to defend heroic behavior on days like 9/11 to try to diffuse the fact that they were breaking the law. 

take on the Iphone earbuds

I am often shocked with how incredibly stupid people are and even that statement shocks me.. 

 

Take today as an example, I am walking to work and see some dude standing on the sidewalk using their white earbuds thing to talk on their IPhone.  Now this in itself isn't that crazy but what is ridiculous is that this dude was still putting his phone right up to their mouth.. what exactly is the point to having to wear those earbuds if you are just going to give yourself an arm cramp by holding the phone mic right to your face.  

 

This is similar to the people you see driving using the speaker-phone option on their phone but still holding the phone in their hands.    Somebody please explain to me how anybody could consider this 'hands free'

Take on the original gift

Somebody asked me what the hardest thing was about being married or in another relationship. I have hears people say that it's money, kids, philosophical differences or life style but after being married for 5+ years (and having been together for almost 9 years) I have to say the single hardest thing is to come up with an original gift. For somebody like me who will only try to present a well thought out gift, all these holidays, anniversaries, birthdays etc are impossible. Just do the math

Just do the math and your head starts to spin
You have four gift giving days per year (Birthday, anniversary, Christmas and Valentines Day) x 8 years and before you know it you are approaching three dozen 'well though out' gifts

No wonder I have gone to the massage about 10 times already

Take on the 'never drinking again'

There are mornings when you feel like
you missed out and there are mornings you are glad you did. Years ago i made it a point to always get my money's worth at a party with open bar but when I woke up this morning and it did not feel like there was a contractor drilling in the inside of my head I felt like I wanted to drop to my knees and thank god. So many mornings I have spend vowing to never drink again but today was a morning where I had that feeling without being hungover and just glad I didn't feel like hell

Take in church parking

Whatever happened to separating church from state? In a city where there always seem to be one parking spot for every two cars, our city still insists on kissing Christian ass with their no-parking in front of a church signs. I don't know what the reasoning is or why it's been this way for ever but there seems to be no rhyme or reason because mist churches seem to be closed most of the week. It can't be a 'religious' thing as mosques, synagogs and temples aren't afforded the same luxury but somehow thousands of perfectly good spots are eliminated all over this city to accommodate a few

Forge everything else we need a commission to find more parking spots an eliminating these no parking zones should be step 1

take on the subway flood

Is there anything less efficient than the NYC subway turnstiles?   I'm not talking about the fact that there seems to an inverse relationship with the amount of time before the train departs and the amount of swipes it takes to get through but instead talking about how ridiculous it is that during rush hour you can't get to the turnstile to enter the station because there is a flood of people coming up the stairs.   I have lost hours of my life when I missed a train because it took 5 minutes before I could even get anywhere near the turnstile because getting to the swipe spot feels like you are swimming upstream

Here is a novel ideal how about you devoted lanes for entering and exiting cause when you get to the Holland Tunnel it isn't a free-for-all with cars using the same lanes at the same time for inbound and outbound traffic

Take on the small hair

Everyone knows the TOR position on public restrooms but sometimes even we are appalled by what we find. Today in a standard NYc office building bathroom we are met with what I can only believe is an ass hair on the seat. Now I know some of the TOR readers of Slavic and Mediterranean descent will tell me that excess body hair is something they must deal with but is there really nothing you can do to not flake ones that have come out of your ahole onto my seat??

take on the mastercard gift-card

A few years ago, I received a Mastercard giftcard as a present from an aunt.    It was a nice gift but somehow it never made it out of the birthday-card it came in.   Fast-forward 3 years when I'm going through a spring-cleaning and find the birthday card with the Mastercard giftcard still sitting inside.     This felt like finding a $20 in the pocket of your jeans while doing the laundry.. so here I am sitting with essentially found money and decide to splurge by using it to go out to eat, except in this case my pocket has a huge hole in it...because the card gets declined when we decide to use it to pay for the meal.   We call the company who issued the card and are told that they charge a $2.50 monthly convenience fee..   Can somebody explain what the hell convenience it is to me to steal $2.50 from me on a monthly basis.   This card was paid for in cash at a premium (it costs more than $25 to get a $25 card), somebody collects interest on this $25.   So they are charging me 10% per month so that they can make 2.5% when they throw it in a standard savings account, how is that for 'convenience'?

Forget rallying against the 1%ers.. I'm rallying against the 10%ers

take on loud commercials

We spend about 360 days out of the year complaining about something but today we're going to commend some very brave people who complained loud enough to actually get something done.   After a couple of years, a bill finally passed Congress that would force commercials to have to lower their volume to the same level as that of the TV stations.    For years we have complained (mostly Mrs TOR) that we have to reach for my remote 3 times per half-hour so that I don't blow my eardrums out when New Girl or Fringe goes into commercials.  Now granted watching any of those shows should make me wish my eardrums were popped out by sharp but finally I can make that decision based purely on the merits of the show and not the volume of the sponsors.

Now we all know that advertisers and marketers will find someway to grab our attention and it wouldn't surprise me if they find some way to circumvent the rules although I wouldn't complain at all if instead of trumpeting volume they spliced in clips of the Lindsay Lohan playboy photoshoot.

take on the All American Muslim

I opened up CNN.com today to find out that Lowes has cut its advertising on some TLC show called All American Muslim after pressure from a bunch of radicals down in Florida who said this show was a guise for sleeper-cells..    I'm sure All American Muslim is about as entertaining as American Dad or American Chopper or American Idol so I can't imagine the entire show getting pulled will be any great loss but what it does show how the crazies are running the asylum..

This is what America is all about apparently, casting a large spell on an entire group of people, religious group or race.  Depending on where you look Muslims make up somewhere between 1/2 and 2.5% of the entire US population and I would venture to guess that the percentage of those Muslims who are nuts is probably about the same as the percentage of crazies who are card-carrying members of some Christian church.    In 225 years we're still the same bigoted group we were when we were shipping groups of Africans by boat to work our farms.    How this Florida group isn't offended by Jersey Shore, Joe and Kate plus 8 or the horrible singing on the X-Factor is the real travesty.

But this is who we are and nothing is more apparent than a conversation I had with somebody the other day about Mitt Romney, where they told me that they wouldn't trust him because he was a Mormon.   Now mind you that this was the same person who told me 4 years ago that all of this Richard Ayers-Revered Wright-secret muslim-Obama stuff was incendiary but now they throw the exact same argument against a Republican.