I Was Only Following Orders

For the first time in my admittedly amoral life, I find myself in real danger of Hell.

My summer job concerns real estate law and property disputes. Because our client is generally the landowner, this involves representing the landlord end of the landlord-tenant relationship. This often puts me in the position of drafting letters and notices of default for failure to pay rent, letters of termination for failing to uphold the covenants of the lease, eminent domain takings, and so on.

So far I have had to terminate leases that involve old people, immigrants, and the generally destitute. It's kind of evil, I know. But someone has to be Darth Vader. And someone has to evict Darth Vader's delinquent tenants.

And then, today, karma. One of my favorite bars, it seems, is one of our tenants. And the bar has not paid its rent in months. And this morning, I sent them a letter of termination. Unless they pay their rent in two weeks, we're going to have to evict them.

It seems likely that, in two weeks, I will be extinguishing the life of a drinking establishment. It feels like the end of Old Yeller, Million Dollar Baby, and every zombie movie where the kid has to shoot the zombie-eaten dad before he actually dies all rolled into one.

As you can imagine, the moral conflict here is enormous. I've spent all day in a haze, shell-shocked, contemplating the fuzzy green wall of my cubicle in the vain hope that an answer will materialize. What am I doing here? Can I really pull the plug on someone who willingly sells me alcohol? How can I live with myself? Is this my purpose in life? How can anyone expect me to go through with actions so evil? And most importantly, where the balls am I supposed to drink now?

On the day of my judgment, when I stand before God, and He asks me why did I kill one of his true miracles, what am I supposed to tell him? That is was my job? My job?

Such is the banality of evil. The only way to overcome this evil, I'm convinced, is to stop working immediately and go get a drink at that bar now. Farewell.

Debt's All Folks!

We all know U.S. debt is kind of out of control, and that is without factoring in the universal health care package that is sure to be just a tad expensive.

But I had no idea it was this bad. Witness the U.S. Debt Clock, one of the most horrifying sites on the interwebs.

As of this posting, the U.S. National Debt is $11,435,511,645,986. And it's gaining a million dollars every few seconds or so. By the time you read this, it will probably have gained a good billion.

And then you look at the indicators for private debt, credit card debt, and all the other liabilities in the budget, and the numbers spin uncontrollably, faster than you can read them. It's moving faster than any high score in any video game I've ever seen. The Pinball Wizard himself would fall short. Thank God he can't see this.

I mean, Good Lord. How on earth can anyone fool themselves into thinking we're eventually going to pay all of this back? This amount of money does not exist. It seems a made up number, an imaginary thing, created solely in the interest of maintaining an illusion of wealth that resides in the same ethereal neighborhood as those derivatives and securities that crippled the economy, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy.

Eventually, we're going to realize that there is no way we will be able to pay the bill. And then we're going to have to wash the dishes to settle the tab for, oh, about the next thousand years. And it won't be fun when we get there but why worry? I mean, hey, this steak is damn tasty right now.

Maybe I'll have another.

Here Come the Meatsweats!

Today I am going to BBQ Fest. It is not all-you-can-eat, thank God. But my stomach is already in near-panic mode and has a white flag ready to be run up at the first sign of trouble.

This will probably come ten minutes in, when it hears my mouth say, "I'd like one of everything. Big."

Avenge me.

Yo To You Too

The new iPhone software has a bunch of new features, including copy-paste, a search function, and voice recording.

Big whoop. The most important improvement, and certainly the only one I will use, is that the wizards in the iPhone finally recognize the word, “Yo.”

Before, every time I tried to text the word, “Yo” in the manner of a greeting or a salutation, the iPhone spelling wizard would automatically correct it to “To.” Then I’d have to erase that and try to write “Yo” again. This time, the wizard -- helpfully, at least in its tiny magic wizard mind -- would correct it to “You.” I’d have to erase once again.

Then finally, on the third try, the spelling wizard would give up and let me, its nincompoop master, text a word it did not recognize into the ether, broadcasting for all to know that I was functionally illiterate.

You have no idea how many times I accidentally texted, “You. Where you at?” or “To. What you doing tonight?” to people who were no doubt appalled by my brusqueness or bewildered by my incipient dyslexia.

Now I can finally text “Yo. We’re cougar hunting at Vox,” to someone without sounding like a complete and utter moron.

What?

45,000 Is the Loneliest Number

Cornell recently lost 45,000 social security numbers when an unencrypted laptop was stolen. I have not yet been alerted that my own number was compromised, which is a good sign. The fact that so many of my classmates have been victims of this, and I alone have not, is not such a good sign. You can only be a suspect so many times before it starts to get old, so let me address the present matter forthwith:

There is no truth to the rumors that I myself am somehow implicated in this caper, in spite of the fact that social security numbers are quite the commodity for people like me, and, by extension, my very extended family. Any accusations to that effect are false and defamatory and will be dealt with immediately through legal and other avenues.

Rumors that I also hijacked a truck full of Cabbage Patch Kids and their attendant birth certificates are equally unfounded.

Warning: Graphic Baseball Content

This is a cool way to waste a few minutes at work. It's a collection of posters that are cool visualizations of baseball data. Like this one, which depicts the percentage of Native Americans in Cleveland.


Be sure to read the Box Score for the E Street Band - Wu-Tang Clan game. I like how Bruce is pitching and Patti is catching.

That Was Easy

Something happened to me at work today that blew my fragile little mind.

Today I learned that our printer is so awesome that it will print your document AND STAPLE IT TOGETHER.

OMFG! Printers that can staple shit? That is AMAZING.

I'm not kidding about being excited. This is so cool. Apparently, if you pick the appropriate settings on your computer, your printer will not only print but staple, thereby eliminating that little extra task that allowed you to spend another 10 seconds away from your desk.

I guess this is old news for most people, but I'd never seen this before, and reacted in the same way Lloyd Christmas did when he learned that we landed on the moon.

My hope, of course, is that this new technology does not turn stapler fights into archaic contests, much like firearms did away with jousting.

But seriously, this is the best news I’ve heard all week. Even though I’m pretty handy and can put together an IKEA desk with little-to-no problem, I’m surprisingly terrible at stapling. You would be amazed at the atrocities that have been visited on staples by my clumsy, awful hands. I don’t even want to mention how much I have ravaged the corners of documents, sometimes to the point where the whole thing has to be discarded so that I may attempt once again to bind it together without further loss of blood or dignity.

Few things are as awkward as screwing up a stapling job. “Sure, lunch sounds good. Hold on, let me staple this thing quickly,” you say to the cute girl who just asked if you wanted to take a break from studying and go to lunch. So both of you go to where the staplers are. And you grab a stapler and try to staple. And then the stapler jams, of course. So you smile grimly and struggle to open the stapler back up to unjam it, and can’t, and you’re grunting like a chimpanzee who just got asked to open a jar. Finally, it comes loose and opens, but does so all at once, so now staples fly everywhere. And now you and the girl have to crouch and pick up staplers. And of course, here is the perfect opportunity for one of those clichéd, oops, our hands have brushed and isn’t there electricity in the air moments, but that doesn’t happen. What happens is you bump heads. Twice. So that sucks. Finally, you get all the staples back in the stapler and try again. This time, you are able to staple, but the actual stapling sucks. Instead of a clean, tight stapling job, the staple’s all bent and askew and sprawled out akimbo like someone who just fell off a skyscraper. It is an inadequate job of stapling, a wholly useless staple that will not hold anything together. So you have to get rid of the staple, but sombitch won’t come out easily, and you fiddle with this thing with non-existing fingernails, and every movement tears up and bends your paper more and more. And it isn’t until the corner of the paper looks like it was chewed on for a couple of minutes that you see the little staple-removal-jaw-thingy that would have made this so much easier and was, of course, right there. Then you remember that, oh yeah, cute girl is waiting, so you look up and acknowledge her, and she is smiling the grim smile reserved only for those morons who fail to accomplish even the simplest of tasks within any amount of time that would be excessive for even a drunk baby. So you say, Sorry, and she says, that’s OK, and then looks at her watch. Crap. So you try again, and this time you do staple, and the staple is tight and neat, but goddamnit it’s halfway off the page, hanging there like a useless dangling chad. Tarnation. And then cute girl says something like, “Not very good with your fingers, eh?” Which is right up there with a girl calling you “bro” in that list of things girl say to you to communicate the idea that nothing will ever, ever happen between you two.

Now, however, I have learned that the machines are willing and able to perform this thankless task for me, and now I'm free to find other ways to screw up a lunch date. I anticipate having no trouble doing so.

Meanwhile, I'll be content with the knowledge that we have engineered a way to get automatic stapling. Technology these days, man. Ain't America something.

Speed-y Gonzalez

Mexico, long regarded as the land where laws go to die, is about to get rid of even more arbitrarily enforced laws. The Mexican legislature has passed a bill that will decriminalize small amounts of most drugs.

Yes, even cocaine. Yay!

Upon the President’s signature, possession of small quantities of drugs will no longer be a crime in Mexico. With that, cocaine, pot, meth and other such sundry items will join underage drinking, fraudulent speculating, shorts on 60-year-olds, and dog-fighting on the list of “Things that should be illegal but are not.”

Now, before y’all rush to Expelocity.com to book the next available flight to what, in essence, has become America’s Amsterdam, hold your horses for a second. The new laws only decriminalize possession of a small quantity of drugs – amounts deemed to be for “personal and immediate” use. So your young entrepreneur’s idea to bring crack back is whack, even if you’re bringing crack back to your crack whore(s).

And, even though the police will still prosecute you now for trafficking, that is still not nearly half as terrifying as the other consequences of trying to sell drugs in direct competition with Mexican druglords. Look at it this way: It would be the same situation as if you were a deer and the Mexican cops were a mountain lion – which can be bad for you, but meh – and the cartels were a pack of huge lions with automatic machine guns that they bought from America.

There is still a chance that the bill does not pass. Mexican lawmakers last attempted to decriminalize drugs in 2006. Vicente Fox was about to sign the bill and make it a law when he changed his mind overnight the United States called and said, No way, Jose.

The point of the initiative is to help shift resources away from prosecuting Doug, the pothead next door who only poses a threat to the cats that he routinely forgets to feed, and towards prosecuting Carlos,* who lives in a nice apartment and forbids people from looking in the closet, behind the suits. I, for one, am appalled this initiative and hereby recommend that the DEA, the CIA, the FBI, state and federal agents, and other such figures of authority immediately take measures to condemn this policy and ensure that nothing like it ever happens here in the United States.

In the event that some of you out there will venture to Mexico to delight in the smorgasbord of easily available drugs, I just ask that you take to this with a discerning eye and the level-headed moderation that you are known for. Remember the dos and dont's of selling and/or purchasing drugs:

1. Do approach from the front, as drug dealers tend to be overly anxious and excitable.

2. Do pack heat.

3. Don't attempt to short-change a man with the scars on his face.

4. Don't forget to say "please" and "thank you."

5. Do shoot first and don't ask questions later.

Please enjoy your drug buffet and remember that what happens in Mexico, stays in Mexico, your one-stop destination for the impunity high.

*not his real name

Random Video of the Day LXIV

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Two Weddings and Forcible Removal

We all know how I feel about marriage. To say they are mixed feelings is an understatement. Marriage is simultaneously my worst fear and my greatest necessity.

This weekend, one of my very good friends is getting married. It's in Cape Cod, on the beach, and good friends are coming, and she's awesome, and they're a terrific couple and they're going to be tremendously happy together. Someone will cry, someone will get too drunk, and even if it rains we'll have tons of fun doing the conga line because everybody freaking congas at a wedding.

But like I said, my feelings on marriage are complex. This is why, during the wedding, one of two things will probably happen.

I could sit there during the ceremony and then realize that I'm at an age where my friends are starting to get married and have, at best, a freak-out. At worst, it'll be a full scale panic attack. I will then have to be restrained from tackling the minister, and will be forcibly removed from the proceedings kicking and screaming all the way. I will then break free of my captors and run to D.C., where I'll become one of those fringe lunatics trying to get a particular piece of legislation passed. My cause? Abolishing marriage. Failing that, at least limiting it to those who are over 35 years of age. My argument? The fact that, in Spanish, the word for wife is esposa. The word for handcuffs? Wouldn't you know it. Esposas. It makes perfect sense, Senator. Pass this bill.

Or I could sit there and realize this is a golden opportunity. Do the math. Me plus Attractive women high on hormones and the air of commitment plus Tequila plus An ordained Minister. Equals? A guaranteed stay in America, of course. If lucky, I can slip the minister a twenty dollar bill that I'll fold as if it's a hundred dollar bill, drag a cute girl in a strapless dress in front of him, and have him marry us before she realizes what the hell is going on. We'll then consummate the marriage in a small room somewhere nearby, preferably one without a window, and voila! A marriage with full legal force and effect in these United States of America.

Who knows? Maybe both things happen. It is entirely possible that I propose to someone I just noticed while being led away in handcuffs by the police. Apt, I guess.

I'll do my best not to ruin the wedding, and promise to behave.

Oh look. There's an open bar. Of course.

Say, baby, do you want to be Mrs. Charlie from Ohio? No? How about you? Oh, right, you just got married. Sorry. Well, what about her? She didn't get married today too, did she? Hey! Let's get married! Oh, you said no already. Damnation.

What the Hell Would Anyone Want With a Blind Dog?

This morning on the T, some poor woman accidentally stepped on a Seeing Eye Dog’s paw. Understandably mortified, she blurted, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry! I didn’t see it!”

The Historic Palms of Ithaca

According to the Ithaca Journal, the seedy establishment known as the Palms is under consideration to be designated as one of Collegetown’s Historic Buildings. If so designated, the Palms would become the first Historic Landmark where it is customary to pee in the sink.

We’ll ignore for a second the irony of historicizing an establishment where so much is forgotten on a nightly basis. Even in the student ghetto of Collegetown, the Royal Palm Tavern – as it is more formally known – remains one of the ugliest buildings for miles. Yes, the yellow façade and small circular windows are certainly unique. But if the Palms was juuuuust a bit farther away from Cornell than its current location, it would rival the now-defunct Crooked Board for “Place Where You Are Most Likely to be Beaten to Death with a Hammer while the Bartender Smiles and Turns Up the Jukebox.”

I say this with all due respect because I love the Palms and still miss the hell out of it. The thing is, the place is an absolute dump. Like I alluded to before, it is usually impossible to use the toilet, on account of the dozens of bottles stacked inside it like a perverse Jenga tower. The pool table had potholes. The bar tables broke if you stepped on them and started stomping to “Baba O’Riley” (And really, who knew?). The layout itself was maddeningly mingle-unfriendly – every night featured people jams that rivaled the most congested roads of a Calcuttan rush hour. For small girls, the easiest way to get from Point A to Point B was to climb up the taller people and cruise around on shoulder tops. Those of us who are generously proportioned had to take a deep breath, square up, and start throwing shoulders.

See, a dive like Dunbar’s had its charms. A dump like the Palms had very little going for it. The Palms was ugly, loud, crowded, hot, and expensive. Drinks invariably cost more as the night went on. The line was always artificially inflated and was managed by the owner himself, who was clearly a graduate of the Gestapo's Course on how to run a Soviet Bread Line.

And yet, despite all these shortcomings, we always kept coming back to the Palms. Someone once called it the abusive husband of Ithaca bars. It sucked and we would probably be better off without it. Yet something about it always had Cornellians crawling back. It's inexplicable, really. I guess it hurt us because it loved us.

That, I guess, coupled with celebrated events known to have taken place there -- the epic post-Sun Banquet three-hour Flip Cup tournament and the night of the bottomless free pitchers come to mind -- earn the Palms its historic designation. Well earned.

No PDA on the MBTA

I was on a surprisingly uncrowded T this morning. Normally, this would have been cause to rejoice. However, things have a way of happening on the T that can sully even the nicest ride.

It was 8.30 on a Wednesday morning. And this 100-pound dweeb (There’s no other word for it. McLovin could have beat up this guy) and his 200-pound girlfriend (At least. She seemed to be bigger than me, though I avoided getting close enough to find out) just start making out. And I mean really going at it. Like starving animals. It’s 8.30 in the morning on the subway and these two are groping each other like they just found a secluded spot in a fraternity basement after one too many keg stands. They started at Kenmore and probably had a baby by the time they hit Government Center.

The best part is they didn't stop even when the train stopped at a station. People were behind them clearing their throats and still these lovebirds were stuck in Gropeland.

Is it too much to ask people to refrain from these activities on the train to work in the morning? Christ. I hadn't even had breakfast yet. Can we make it a slogan? May I suggest the above?

Random Video of the Day LXIII

Long Island wants to secede and they would totally kick fellow state Ireland's ass. But see? Displays of intelligence like this are why I really miss girls from Long Eye-land.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Long Island Wants to Secede
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

How I Learned to Stop Shaving and Love the Burn

One of the most vexing problems of my summer so far concerns my shaving schedule. During the school year I would generally only shave twice a week, allowing a dashingly masculine amount of stubble to creep onto my cheeks, mostly as a symbol that I have better things to do than shaving, like building gun racks out of oak, or wrestling black bears.

Now, however, I am a suit. As such, I find myself in a position where I must shave much more regularly, or else look like a hungover asshole who hasn’t showered and probably only stopped drinking two hours before he showed up to work two hours late.

The problem is, however, that while I seem to sprout hair across the entirety of the hundred-acre-woods that is my face and neck, my beard just doesn’t grow fast enough to be shaved every day. If I try to shave on back-to-back days, the hairs aren’t long enough to be shorn without having me irritate the ever-loving crap out of my face. On such days, I look like I tried to commit suicide by jumping neck-first into a garden of cacti.

And, of course, the alternative of not shaving is just as unappealing. I normally have a shadow by two o’clock. If I don’t shave on a given day, by mid-afternoon or so I start looking for a guy who just got laid off and has been at the bar so long that he has begun to contemplate the idea of opening his own bar, where no one would ever get cut off, not like at this damned place – fine, I’m leaving! Leggo!

Anyway. That’s my quandary. Either I look like I took a cheese-grater to my face, or I look like I slept on a park bench.

Buy an electric razor, someone will say, and I have tried that. But that runs into the same problem. Unlike blades, electric razors – at least the ones I’ve tried – do not get anywhere near close enough to the face to be effective at all. I'd have better luck stripping paint with a weed-whacker.

The other solution, of course, is to just say screw it and grow a beard. But beards are very uncomfortable in the summer. And then I’d have to go to work for two weeks during the beard-growth period – an awkward stage where I go from forgot-to-shave to college-student-on-a-bender to young-professor-who-is-trying-to-look-older to street-musician to serial-killer-who-kills-other-serial-killers. And then, eventually, I’ll look like George Clooney in Syriana, but by that point the summer will be over and people at school will just shake their head in disappointment at just how much I’ve let myself go.

I guess my face will eventually get used to the regular assault of the blades. Maybe it's like Everclear. Yes, the first time burns like hell. But constant use and practice will bring about positive results in the shape of utter numbness.

You Can't Sight City Hall

I was asked to go to City Hall today, or, as it is also known, as the sole challenger to the Tower of Terror in the effort to be recognized as the ugliest building ever in the city of Boston.

But to this point, I had never been inside City Hall. As a general rule, I tend to avoid ugly things. Given the Blade-Runnerish ugliness of the façade, I have avoided going near City Hall much in the same way old sailors avoided dangerous-looking caves, rocky coastlines, and the Jersey Shore.

But today I had to go to the Office of the City Clerk and find some filing papers. And so to the Belly of the Beast went I.

I tried to steel myself during the walk over. This is City Hall, after all. Just because nothing short of dynamiting can be done to the outside of the building doesn’t necessarily mean that the inside of the building has to be horrible.

Surely the public officials of the City of Boston, knowing they have to spend a third of their life there, would make an effort to dress up the insides. Make it pretty. Somehow engineer things so that public officials only have to confront the ugliness when they’re walking up to the building. So that, once nestled safely betwixt its walls, they are able walk down peaceful hallways bathed in soft lights, and be reminded all day of the peace and tranquility that is normally attendant to a mental asylum.

Per usual, I was wrong. The inside of City Hall, if you’d believe it, is even uglier than the outside. While the outside is only an affront to the sense of sight, the inside is an assault on every sensory means of input.

The inside is dark, dank, and full of shadows. The ceiling is, somehow, only about a foot over your head, and brings back the claustrophobic memories of bunk beds. The “ceiling,” in fact, is made of fluorescent bulbs, honeycombed by black steel grates. Everywhere you turn you can find unnecessary corners, stairs to nowhere, and random abutments. It seems that windows are prohibited.

Let me put it this way: If I was the set director for a post-end-of-the-world movie, and was scouting for locations, the inside of City Hall would be the evil Emperor of the Eastern Allied States’ fortress.

Either that or a futuristic dungeon patrolled by ubiquitous flying nano-robots that make your brain explode if you so much as smile.

And how do they make your brain explode? Why, by screening a slide show featuring pictures of the building, of course!

That's What She Said! IX

Talking about the salty water in the Dead Sea

Schnabel: Yeah, you can't swallow it, and it better not get in your eyes or in any open wounds.

The Longest Beer Run

I regret to inform my readers that I did not participate in this year’s beer marathon due to a lack of soldiers. As this is a team effort, groups of two or three are not recommended, given the exigencies of going to 26 bars in one day.

I urge anyone participating to avoid the mistake we made last year. Before we started in on the marathon at high noon, we decided to pregame, and quaffed Tequila Sunrises on the roof.

Of course, pregaming for a beer marathon is like running a 5K before an actual marathon. My body, which already hated me because of the stress on it that it knew was coming, now really effing loathed me because I thought it would be a good idea to drink tequila before going to over two dozen bars.

So, of course, my body took measures into its own hands. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, my body refused to comply with any more orders and summarily shut itself down, mostly for precautionary measures as a means of survival.

While this may have been the correct decision in both the long and short haul, my party center still resents everyone involved in the proceedings, and things are now really awkward in the uber-polluted ecosystem that is the inside of my body.

Sure Thing, Sport

One of my bosses looks about five years younger than me. Hell, for all I know he is five years younger than me.

So every time he gives me an assignment, I half expect he's also going to ask me to go buy him some beer.

Anyone Have Stilts I can Borrow?

I’m afraid I have terrible news.

I went to the doctor yesterday.

And, well, bad news bears.

Per the doctor’s measurements, I am 5’11’’ ½ feet tall. Yes, not six feet tall, as I have always thought and claimed.

This is, of course, devastating. My entire life goal was to be six feet tall. Given my proximity to the age of 25, the opportunity for further growth seems remote, at best.

By saying I am six feet tall, I have apparently been lying for years. Although I'm normally not under oath, untruths have been coming out of my mouth. In light of these new facts and figures, I fear nobody will ever trust me again.

I’m not sure what happened. I find it unlikely that I was once six feet tall and have now shrunk. Unless I am at the Boston dogtrack, I am not Charlie in Wonderland.

What is more likely is that I never actually was six feet tall and instead have always resided in the five-foot range. That is, I have always just been short.

Therefore, my whole life has been a lie. Despite, walking, talking, and acting like a tall man, I should have comported myself in a manner common to short people.

Because the world sure is different when you're short. I found myself racing to the store to buy stepstools. I suddenly found myself wearing more pinstripes and top hats. Perhaps I should pay attention to those clown signs saying "You must be this tall to ride the cannon" at the carnival. And at the Springsteen concert in October, I'll be the first one standing on the seats, trying to see the Boss.

I am just upset that the doors to Big & Tall are now forever closed to me. I wonder where Short & Small is.

Probably not anywhere you can find a date.

The End of the Dinosaurs

Who remembers "Dinosaurs," that show on ABC that was kind of a rip-off of the Flintstones but still had the guts to blow up little kids on science shows? ("We're going to need another Timmy.")

Yeah, that's right. Now who remembers how it ended? Here, from the vault, are the final scenes of the show:



I can't imagine a more depressing end to a TV show. Imagine the writers' room. "We'll have Earl screw up and cause nuclear winter. And they'll go into an ice age. And we'll have a shot of all of them in the living room, right? And they'll all be covered in blankets and freezing to death. And the baby will ask what's going to happen to them in a low, scared voice. And nobody will know what to say to him. And then we'll pan out and it's snowing over everything. And then Dino Rather does the most ominous sign-off ever. Isn't that the way we should end this kid's show with dino puppets? Who wants more scotch?"

I mean, I understand the desire to send a message about global warming and the environment and everything. But if this is devastating now, how would it look like to a little kid? Damn near apocalyptic, that's for sure.

And are kids' shows the best venue for these sort of messages? What if Urkel had a brain tumor? Or Uncle Phil developed alcoholism? Or Jessie Spano became a junkie?

OK. Never mind.

The Short Life and Quick Death of the iPhone Wizards

So, just like that, eight short months after its conception, my beautiful iPhone is obsolete.

I mean, I knew the wizards who live inside my phone would be replaced eventually, but I didn't know that Apple would crank out better, faster, stronger, meaner wizards within the year. Yeesh. I've had condoms live in my wallet for a longer time.

And this corrects the one thing about the iPhone that kills me, which is it's battery. I love my phone, but its battery lasts less than prom-night-first-time sex. I'll go to New York in the evening and take a bus back Saturday morning and my phone will be dead by the time I hit Hartford, leaving me without Simon and his buddy Garfunkel to soothe my troubled, throbbing head.

I'm very happy with my iPhone, but they do this every time. Remember the first generation iPhones, which were like $600 and buggy as a bog? And then new ones came out a year later and they were half as expensive and so much better? And all those poor schlubs who bought the first ones were like that guy who really wanted to nail that girl and so they asked her out and they had to date her for three months and spend so much money on her and then finally, when they were able to do it, it was a little meh? Especially when, one year later, they saw their friend buy the same girl two tequila shots and then BOOM. Victory.

So yes, sometimes life isn't fair.

The fact that it has a compass kills me. One day I came home from the bar and watched a little TV so the spins would go away. And one of those damned commercials came on where "There's an app for this and an app for that." And one of them was a compass. And I'm like, "OH MY GOD A COMPASS THAT IS THE MOST AWESOMEST THING EVER MY PHONE CAN BE A COMPASS THIS THING IS SO COOL IT CAN HAVE A COMPASS."

So I ran to my computer and, with the kind of reckless disregard only harnessed on Black Friday by the natives of Long Island, immediately purchased the compass application I saw on TV. For the low price of five dollars. And then I forgot about it.

In the morning, I noticed the new app and it was about as useless as you could expect. I'm a guy who calls "camping" the act of driving out to a campground, parking the car, picking up the cases of beer, carrying them ten yards, and saying, "here's good," before passing out three hours later on top of a log.

And now here I sit, in the middle of the the densest urban landscape in America, and I have a compass on my phone and am out five dollars. That's one beer, people. And what bugs me is that, without that beer I won't get lost. And I won't need the goddamned compass. Gar.

Of course, if I'm ever lost in the woods, the iPhone will run out of power before I can figure out how to read the compass anyway.

Damn you, Jobs. Damn you.

Flushing Money Down the Toilet

The next time you hug your toilet, please be aware that said toilet might be worth as much as a house.

Well, maybe $300,000 doesn't get you a house in Boston, but it sure as hell can get you a toilet. Just one. And barely.

Twelve years ago, Mayor Menino pledged to build 10 public toilets. Since then, six have been built, and we are closing in on the illustrious seventh.

Though this construction project is not anticipated to last as long as the Big Dig, it will come close. Although disappointed by this fact, Bostonians are quick to cheer the two-years-per-toilet rate of construction, officially recognized as the longest time to put in a toilet, ever. This ensures our status at the slowest city in America to get shit done. No pun intended.

To be fair, these aren't your easily replaceable, fragile, run-of the-mill dorm room toilets. These are a-third-of-a-million dollar toilets, and have quite the list of amenities:

"They have high-pressure water jets, self-cleaning floors, sensors, emergency systems, and of course, plumbing . . . [and] weight sensors [that] detect any violations of the [one-person-at-a-time] rule -- intended to prevent the toilets from being used by drug users and prostitutes."

Fancy-schmancy toilets. But what good, I ask you, are the self-cleaning floors if you can't bring your prostitute into the public toilet in the middle of Harvard Square at 3 p.m. in the afternoon?

And I don't know what on Earth the "emergency systems" are for. (Right. But she's a Mets fan. I'm talking about normal people). You're in a bathroom, so most emergencies should be taken care of. Any emergencies that cannot be addressed by those instruments that are common to all bathrooms are those that lead you to believe that, well, maybe you shouldn't have locked yourself in a public bathroom to begin with.

The emergency button presumably summons some sort of authority figure to assist you in whatever your emergency may be. In my experience, however, any emergencies that cannot be taken care of in a bathroom are those to which you never summon the authorities.

At some point I will pay the quarter to go into one of these things, just to see what $300K worth of water closets gets you these days. After that, however, I will return to the bushes behind the building, which are free.

Random Video of the Day LXII

The video for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is bizarre enough. Splicing in literal lyrics takes it to realms of absurdity as yet untapped by man.

The Last of the Big Three is Gone

Well, today was eventful.

In what was to me and others an absolutely stunning move, the Braves released Tom Glavine today in a rather heartless manner. And then announced a HUGE trade that is very good for us, in a pretty obvious effort to get us talking about a positive instead of dwelling on the very painful Glavine situation.

But it still deserves some words. Glavine, who pitched for the Braves for 17 seasons, is just as much an icon of the Atlanta Braves as Smoltz was. He never did look right in his handful of years pitching for the Mets. Last season, he made a nostalgic and heralded return to Atlanta. It didn't really work out. And even though that season was a wash, he tried to come back this year for what would be his farewell tour.

Except he broke down in spring training. And has had to battle his way back, rehabbing, and getting in some minor league starts to hone his skills. After last night's rehab outing, Glavine was ready to return, and was set to pitch Sunday.

Except he got canned in a move that nobody really saw coming. If activated, he would have received a $1M bonus, and then $3.5M more had he stayed on the roster for two months.

So, rather than do that, the Braves cut him. Just like that.

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, Glavine has given everything he has to Atlanta. He is as much the face of the dominant Braves of the 90s as anyone out there. He came up with the team, won it a world championship, became a hall-of-famer with it, and came back to retire with it. One would think he earned the right to leave on his own terms.

On the other hand, he's kind of done. It hurts to say, but he had nothing last year. His play and stats were awful. His stuff was gone, his velocity was gone, and he was going by mainly on fumes and experience. He just wasn't a major-league pitcher anymore, at the age of 43.

Moreover, we have an absolute monster in Tommy Hanson, uber-prospect. Hanson has -- from the games I've seen him pitch -- filthy stuff. He had nothing left to prove in the minors with 90 strikeouts and 17 walks in 66-1/3 innings. If all goes to plan, he should be out unquestioned ace within two years.

Bottom line is, the Braves have a much better chance of winning with Hanson than with Glavine. There is little reason to postpone the future when the past no longer works. That -- coupled with the savings -- is the reason Glavine is gone.

And it sucks, but at some point we all must move on. I wish we had cut him some other way -- the move somehow feels like we abandoned our old hunting dog in the woods because he had glaucoma. I mean, it had to be done, but Christ, that was cold. Even Belichick, somewhere in his vampire coffin, went "damn."

It's time, but Glavine deserved better than this. I'll never forget his 8 innings of one-hit ball to win us the World Series in '95. Or his fearlessness on the mound -- never giving up the outside corner, no matter what. Or the consummate professionalism -- the man won 20 games five times, 2 Cy Youngs, and made 10 All-Star teams in 16 years.

So long, Tommy. We'll see you in Cooperstown in a few years.

The Sims of all Fears

A long time ago, before even college, my brother bought a copy of The Sims. Like most -- if not all -- computer games, it was fun for a couple of days. Then you realized that making your Sim study was even more boring than studying yourself.

And there were other things as well. For instance, you had to make your Sim poop every day. If you forgot, he'd start waving at you and dance around, and he'd have a little thought balloon that was a picture of a toilet. And if you didn't send it to the bathroom, it pooped its pants. And became sad.

It was a weird game.

I've never been much into computer games. Doom, for one, was tedious. Essentially, you walk around a labyrinth where the hallways all look the same, and occasionally shoot monsters that hide behind the next corner. Myst was like going to a museum. Yes, the pictures are pretty but you really have no clue what's going on. And when my college roommate showed me Warcraft, and we spent a good fifteen minutes watching his character walk (yes, walk -- in real time) from the Valley of Nerdz to Geeque Glen, well, that was it for me.

But at least you were something else in those games. In The Sims, you basically got to force a little digital you to do the most boring parts of the endless routine that is life.

"Oooooh, my Sim is on a treadmill. Ooooh, now my Sim is washing the dishes. Ooooh, my Sim is doing laundry and he seems to have mixed in a red sweater with his whites! (Chuckles) Will my Sim ever learn? Oh, Sim."

Because I haven't played a computer game in years, perhaps I am behind the times. So I don't know if the latest incarnation of The Sims, out today, allows you to do more exciting things. You know, things that I can't do in my every day life like running a drug ring, running over kids on skateboards, or running, period.

Otherwise, The Sims seems to me like something you would have seen satirized in the golden years of The Simpsons -- a guy sitting at a computer making his character sit at the computer. Then we zoom in and see that the character is making his own character sit at a computer. Then we zoom in more and we see the same thing. Cold horror takes hold as we notice that this cycle is endless and futile. In time, we realize that the whole thing cycles back and God himself is at His computer, killing time until the pizza delivery guy comes in. Egads.

Please don't click the X, God. My Sim still needs to shower and (sniffs) so do I.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to explore possible trades in my fantasy baseball league.

I Want You Bastards to Meet My Bastard

Starting for tonight's Phillies, Antonio Bastardo!

Yes, really. The article tactfully points out that this poor schmuck's name is actually like that of a well-known Portuguese grape used to make mediocre wine.

Apr, perhaps, particularly because he pitches for the Phillies. In my experience, however, Bastardo is what Mexicans yell at referees, bosses, and other people who generally annoy them.

In 200 years, when they see his headstone, kids are going to get the giggles. Perhaps not the most appropriate activity at the graveyard, but, well, (giggles).

Here Comes the Cops

This trailer for the new The Beatles Rock Band is just about one of the coolest things I have seen. Seriously, the animation's spectacular, particularly when they get to the latter-day acid-fueled material. Now if only it alerted you when the police are outside.

No Hugging!

First we had the swine flu epidemic. Now, the plague comes in the form of hugging.

According to the NYT, hugging has become rampant in our high schools, with millions of students pressing their chests -- and yes, sometimes even their groins -- together, while simultaneously throwing their arms around one another and squeezing.

The reporter does an extremely thorough job analyzing the mechanics and sociology of hugging, and dives into it with zeal. She explores every nuance and researches every possibility, leaving no stone unturned. It is unknown if she actually hugged someone herself, just to see what all the fuzz was about, but this kind of probing and hard-hitting journalism surely bodes well for the future of newspapers.

According to science, "Hugging" is a direct cause of AIDS and illiteracy, and may have even had a hand in 9/11. So, of course, principals are confronting the problem head-on, crossing their arms firmly lest they become the unwitting victims of an unsolicited hug.

According to principal Don Tochmee from New Jersey (of course), “Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory.” In the junior high school he runs, hugging has been banned for two years, and teen pregnancies are down half-a-percent. Perhaps this is a result of the hug ban, or perhaps it is because their sex ed teacher finally stopped giving out condoms stapled to an abstinence brochure. Whatever the case may be, the principal's principled stand against hugging surely deserves recognition.

Because, of course, we all know hugging leads to humping, which leads to f*&$ing, which leads to babies, which leads to the rise of the welfare state, which leads to the end of America, which leads to the zombie apocalypse.

I mean, think about it. If Palin's little girl and the skater guy had never hugged, they would have never had baby mama drama, resulting in a McCain presidency followed shortly by a Palin presidency -- events that would have prevented the rise of socialism we see in America today.

Wow. Hugging made us communists. Who knew?

While some will surely be absolutely devastated (what does this mean for bears?), the prohibition on hugging does spell the end of many awkward situations, including but not limited to the ass-out hug, the aborted hug, the too-long hug, the crashing of the foreheads when both of you go for the same side during the hug, the reaching too far to get a side-boob graze, the rare and mystifying hand-on-neck hug, and, of course, everyone's secret shame -- the hug chubby.

It is unknown if this prohibition extends to the common farewell signatures in letters and emails: that is, the XOXOXO. If the ban on hugging does indeed extend to this, people will have to either sign off as XXX or OOO, depending on local custom. Misunderstandings will surely follow.

I tend to get huggy on occasion. Naturally, I am both shocked and saddened by the news. How on Earth do I express affection now? A headbutt? A stroke of the hair? A kick to the rear? To the groin? Can we butt-bump? No?

This is so confusing. I guess I need a hug. Ironically, it's the one thing I can't get.