Friday, December 29, 2006

A Letter From Oklahoma:

I am currently in Oklahoma visiting my family for the holidays, a far cry from my home in NYC.

The following is an exact quote directed towards me from one of my darling twin nieces, eleven years old:

"The land you live on may be worth ten million dollars, but the land I live on is worth as many bullets as I can put in the air."

Cheers, little girl. You win.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Happy Holidays

"Twas the week before Christmas when all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse."


... because I smashed that bitch with my shoe right on the counter top and put it straight through the garbage disposal just to send a message to all his other mouse buddies who might have the gall to sit right in front of my face and eat out of the grease trap of my George Foreman Grill while there's a salmon steak cooking on it and I'm trying to finely chop garlic two inches away on that same counter top.

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Blowing of the Whistle

I want to draw more attention to a post I wrote a while ago. Read the link if you haven't already.

The DMA are a horrible organization that decrease the quality of life worldwide on many levels. Basically, they are solely responsible for every type of junk mail on the planet. Spam and mailbox and telephone.

I have recently received several hits on this website from NYC and Washington government agencies via google searches for "Pat Kachura" of/and the "Direct Marketing Association", (DMA).

Anyway, due to the recent rush of hits I have received from government agencies relating to this post, I can't help but think that something is stewing. Cross your fingers.

I hope the prosecution calls me as a witness in front of the grand jury or some shit.

New Features & Connecting the Dots

Yeah, ok. I haven't written in a while.

Fucking sue me.

As previously mentioned, I've been busy trying to research ways to make this site cooler.

I succeeded in taking a couple of small steps.

If you look at the address bar in your browser or browser tab, you should see the Pissed&Petty crab icon to the left. How awesome is that? It should also appear in your favorites/bookmarks list if you have me bookmarked. *ahem*

Also, I have a new comment box at the bottom of my sidebar. It's awesome. Now you guys can write whatever the hell you want at anytime on my website. Take a sec to test it out and let me know if it's too much of a hassle.

Plugging away...

Thursday, November 30, 2006

"Ice-T" & Me? We have an understanding.

Several years ago I was sharing a shoebox two-bedroom apartment with three friends on the upper-west-side of Manhattan. Two roommates had to sleep on an air mattress in the living room. They were allowed cheaper rent as they were responsible for moving furniture and inflating and deflating their mattress every night and morning. The apartment was right behind Lincoln Center at 63rd & West End Ave., NYC.

There is an ultra-luxury building right across the street from the far-less-than-luxury building I was living in at the time. The property across the street had huge windows that were always freshly Windex’ed. The people that came in and out of the building were always dressed impeccably, like senior level HR women, or investment bankers, or high priced prostitutes. There were always taxi cabs waiting outside of the building. The drivers knew that these people were loaded.

I know all this because I love to skateboard. The luxury building across the street had these amazing curbs with angle iron attached to them. For those of you that don’t speak “skateboard”, just believe me when I say that it was awesome.

On the weekends during spring and summer, I loved nothing more than to skateboard on the curbs of the luxury building across the street. The best parts of the curbs were right by the exit of the building’s parking garage. As such, I would often have to stop, pick up my skateboard and step aside as the garage door would raise and a resident would pull their car out of the garage.

There was one Saturday when I was skateboarding early in the afternoon and I heard the ‘click’ that I had come to know as the sound of the garage door beginning to open. I picked up my skateboard and stepped aside.

The garage door slowly rose to reveal a cherry red Ferrari, its engine purring in idle. I dreweled for a hot minute and then wanted the car to move so I could Skate-or-Die.

The car just sat there so I looked through the windshield to the driver’s side.

It was Ice-T.

Ice-Fucking-T.

Cop Killa.

He had his left hand on the wheel, and his right hand between the legs of a ho (literally a ho in every sense of the word, you’ll just have to trust me) that was sitting in the passenger seat. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. As he idled his Ferrari in the driveway of the garage, he seemed much more focused on his right hand than his left.

Ice looked up and seemed startled when he realized that the garage door was already open. His eyes immediately fixed on me standing there with my skateboard. I did the stoic-chin-raising-head-tilting-back gesture while I looked at him with my eyeballs as if to say, “I didn’t see nothin’ man. I can keep shit on the DL, for realz.” Ice nodded at me with stern eyes and he drove away with his ho.

I took a deep breath.

I spent the next hour nervously shifting my eyes in preparation for men in black ski masks carrying silenced oozies to come and silence me. They never came. I continued to skateboard.

Over the next year this became a regular occurrence. The only difference was that Ice had a new ho and a new car every week.

I think this is what they call “The American Dream.” A new ho and a new car every week.

So basically, here’s how I figure:

Ice-T is cool with me skateboarding on his curb as long as I’m willing to keep my mouth shut about his hoes and his cars.

Well, Mr. Ice:

I don’t live across the street from you anymore and I’m busting the lid off of this story. I’m not scared of your silenced-oozie-toting ski-mask-wearing goons anymore because I live in Washington Heights now and I just downloaded a freeware security suite for my computer so there’s no way you can find me. Not even on my myspace account.

Take that, Cop Killa!

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

No, assholes. NOW it's personal!

Another tale from Washington Heights, NYC (the land of no-speak-y-english):

My neighborhood in NYC is populated about 99% by varying degrees of immigrants from The Dominican Republic. I love my neighborhood, but I would be lying if I said that the folks in my neighborhood didn’t occasionally make me want to pull my hair out.

As I jumped in the shower this morning I realized I was running dangerously low on soap, shampoo, conditioner, and whatnot. I made due with what little I had left. Meaning, I popped the tops off of all the bottles and filled them part way with water as to dilute each substance to get a little extra mileage, you know the drill.

After my shower, I decided to head over to Rite-Aid and restock on shower supplies. I like going to Rite-Aid in my neighborhood because they are a national chain and therefore usually manage to hire employees who are not complete retards. (I know this sounds counterintuitive but trust me, in my neighborhood, when compared to their privately owned contemporaries, Rite-Aid employees come off like NASA engineers).

I ran around the store for about half an hour collecting all my items in my little basket. As I was laying everything on the checkout counter I noticed an Adidas box-set way up high behind the counter. It had body wash, deodorant, aftershave, and a little bottle of Adidas cologne. I had just collected nearly all Adidas products one-by-one around the store. I figured I could just get the box-set and save a little money. I ask the woman at the check-out counter, “How much is that Adidas Sports Package?”

The woman turns her back and looks up at the display case. I don’t think I ever saw her look directly at the product I wanted, but regardless, she turns around and says, “nine-nine-nine”.

Not, “nine-ninety-nine”, mind you. No. Just, “nine-nine-nine”.

I figure she means “$9.99” because all the products separately would come to around “$16.00” and that would be a reasonable savings.

“Cool! I’m going to go put all this stuff back and just get that box-set instead. I’ll be right back.”

I ran around the store and put all the items back on the shelves exactly where I got them. I got in the back of the line and waited to check-out again. I figured someone would have taken the time while I was putting everything back to get my Adidas Sports Package down from the top shelf behind the check-out counter, and it would be waiting there for me. Of course not. That would have been far too logical.

Instead, when I got back to the register the cashier looked at me like she’d never seen me before. This is particularly ridiculous because aside from the fact that I shop there all the time, there isn’t another long-haired-white-dude besides myself within fucking miles of this place. Anyway, I decided to hold back my rage because I was certain that someone would give me better reason to unload, shortly.

The cashier continued to stand there with this confused “Can I help you?” look on her face.

A special note to readers: I hate when people have confused looks on their faces when they should be crystal clear as to what is going on. Seriously, it makes me want to start throwing things just so they’ll change their expression from confused to terrified, at least. Call me petty.

I looked back at her with a look of utter disbelief and said,

“Uh, yeah. Didn’t we just go over this two minutes ago?”
>
She still looked confused. I hate that.

I then gestured wildly up to the top shelf behind the check-out counter and said uber-curtly, “Can you get than down for me so I can buy it, please?!” The woman then looked over to her male co-worker who then walked over and asked me what he could help me with.

I grit my teeth and tell the man what I want. He nods knowingly and quickly runs to the back of the store. I assume he’s retrieving a ladder or something.

So I wait, and wait.

Finally he comes back with a step ladder and asks, “Ok, what do you need again, boss?”

Please tell me he didn’t just ask me again.

Oh. My. God.

Through my blinding rage, instead of smashing him, I somehow managed to make a joke that went directly over his head, of course.

“No man, not BOSS, ADIDAS!!!”

He gets up on his ladder and takes down an Axe Body Spray box-set and hands it down to the cashier, and she rings it up. I am now in complete and utter fucking disbelief. Fuse now burning dangerously short.

“No man! ADIDAS! ADIDAS! It’s right there! That big ass box that has “ADIDAS” written all the fuck over it! ADIDAS! Jesus!”

He looks back up at the display case still standing on his ladder and grabbed a really girly-like bath oil package. They oils were in a straw basket filled with hay or some shit.I gave him the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe he was moving the girly-like package so he could reach my package… although this didn’t really make sense because it wasn’t in the way.

But no. He handed the cashier the girly-like package and she rang it up.

I totally lost it.

“DUDE, JUST LOOK AT YOUR FUCKING SHOES, MAN!"

The idiot on the ladder looks down at his shoes, reads the emblem embroidered on the tongue and says,

“Oh! Adidas!”

I wanted to kick that ladder right out from under him.

Come the fuck on, people.


*After "OK", "Coke" and "Marlboro", surely "Adidas" is pretty high up on the list of most internationally recongnized words. Fuckin' seriously, man. Damn.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Three Steps Back (at least)

(this post is not funny.)

"Pissed & Petty" is growing up, folks.

I started this blog as a way to kill time from 9-5 and it has since turned into, well, a bonified monster. As such, I decided that I am going to start taking serious steps to kick this website up to the next level.

I finally bought the domain "PissedAndPetty.com". I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do with it exactly, but it's a start. I finished completing the switchover from Blogger to Blogger Beta. This was possibly a total waste of time because I'm considering switching blog servers again, so I haven't really designated my newly owned domain to anything in particular yet.

I've started studying HTML and CSS coding.

I got in a little over my head with the coding and I lost my whole blog for about two hours today. I nearly had a fucking heart attack. I've run into several seemingly insurmountable problems while messing with my code before, but this time I thought I'd really done it. I thought that my whole blog had dissapeared forever. No shit. If that had happened, I don't know if I would have rebuilt the blog at all. It seemed like too much work, what with several thousand-word-plus posts and the picture links and god knows what else (none of which is backed up anywhere). It would have truly broken my heart/spirit.

One of the worst things about the situation is that the visual aspects of my site(aka, what makes it cool) were designed by someone else. I'm not fluent in HTML or CSS. I'm not even semi-litarate. A very kind individual had taken the time to design my site for me and I somehow managed to screw the whole thing up.

Ugh.

After hours of frustration, somehow, I managed to recover almost all of my writings and get the visual components back into place... almost. My margins and header are still screwed up and I have no fucking clue how to get my "latest posts" field back to the way it was. There are about six thousand other things wrong too but it feels great to know that all is not lost... literally.

Bear with me guys and girls. I love you all and the site will be bigger and better than ever before you know it!

Monday, November 20, 2006

MySpace: Telling It Like It Is

[UPDATE: Bianca has responded in the comments section of this post.]

As some of you may have seen, I recently found it necessary to put a stop to some atrocious MySpace behavior.

My lovely friend Bianca has a little monkey on her back called “the myspace bulletin”. I swear to god that this chick posts no less than 400 myspace bulletins every single day.

I decided to post my own myspace bulletin titled: “Bianca: An Intervention”.

It read:

“Though I love Bianca with all my heart:

Bianca and I have known each other for many years and we dated briefly in the 7th grade, so I feel that I have suffiencient authority to step in
and say the following:

Bianca, sweetheart. You post entirely too many bulletins. I mean, really. It's kind of like the boy-who-cried-wolf theory, ya know? One must pick their spots carefully or one runs the risk of becoming nothing more than white noise, ambient.“


About half an hour later, Bianca fired back with a bulletin titled: “Ryan Needs More Myspace Friends”. I would post her response in its entirety, but it really doesn’t matter. You get the jist from the title.

Well, thankfully, I can address this pretty easily.

Being the open minded individual that I am, I would never immediately disregard a long-time friend’s advice as to how I could improve my life. So I went to Bianca’s myspace page and looked at some of her many many many “friends” and read what they had to say about her on her page.

Let me highlight a few particularly thoughtful entries from these “friends” that I apparently “need”:

Put on your safety goggles, readers.

In this comment, a gentleman is articulately addressing his concern regarding the quality of the comments of Bianca’s other male suitors, obviously trying to separate himself from the pack. Maybe it would have worked if it was a room full of retarded deaf mutes. But then again, some of them may be able to read lips, so that’s out. It’s on her picture with the star tattoo. This is fucking priceless.

“these fools is LAME as FUNK!!and thats all these fools about an tryin to shoot down dem stars and shoot for the stars.. as for me i am into ASTROLOGY!!soo i know my SUPA'STARS!! and uumm hmmm i see dem now... oooh eeeeeeee.. goose down blankee da best when u start gazing... hee hee hee“

This guy only confirms my position on mercy killings. If I were a doctor, I’d pull the plug on this fucktard in a heartbeat… or lack thereof.

This next comment was left on Bianca’s picture with the rabbit ears:

“HERE bunni bunni bunni!! HERE bunni bunni bunni.. shit.. what must i do to bring that bunni to smile or roll over or do a damn back flip.. and why is the bunny lookin alllllllllllll mad and shit.. HA THATS JUST TO dont have me get BUGS BUNNY ON YO ASSSSSSSSSS!! um hmmm lol“

I… I’m speechless. Really.

Last, there is a picture of my darling Bianca on her myspace page where she is donning a tasteful green sweater. I happen to think Bianca is a beautiful woman and I always have. But, regarding this last comment, all I have to say is this: With Friends Like These… (you know the rest):

“this looks like a herpes ad”


So, no Bianca. I do not think I need more MySpace “friends”. I’m perfectly happy knowing that no one in my network would tell me I look like a herpes ad.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

"Daybreak" Shmaybreak

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been looking forward to the series premiere of “Daybreak”, the new series on ABC. It’s about a top-notch-cop (Taye Diggs) who becomes entangled in an international conspiracy while for some reason, unbeknownst to us, he is living the same day over and over again. Only this day is one super shitty day.

Okay, I'm in.

“Daybreak” started with a bang. The writers wasted no time hurling the viewer straight into an action packed sequence that let you know immediately that this is going to be some wicked cool shit.

By the middle of the premiere, a few little bugs had gotten under my skin but I was definitely still enjoying my experience. It was clear that “Daybreak” wasn’t going to break any ground, but would be worth watching none the less.

Until the following happened:


There was a scene where Taye Diggs’ character is trying to explain to his girlfriend that he has been living the same day over and over again. Their conversation went something like this:

Girlfriend: Is everything okay? You look like something’s wrong.

Taye: I’m living the same day over and over.

Girfriend: What?

Taye: I’m living the same day over and over again.

Girlfriend: What?

Taye: This day is happening repeatedly. Over and over again.

Girlfriend: What?

And they went on and on like this for about 30 minutes, no shit. This is where they lost me because if this conversation had happened in the real world, I guaran-fucking-tee you it would have gone something like this:

Girlfriend: Is everything okay? You look like something’s wrong.

Taye: I’m living the same day over and over.

Girfriend: What?

Taye: I’m living the same day over and over again.

Girlfriend: What?

Taye: Damn, bitch! Haven’t you seen “Groundhog Day”?!

I mean, seriously. How funny would that have been? But instead, what they’re telling us is that “Groundhog Day” doesn’t exist in their world.

Yeah. Just for that ,“Daybreak” doesn’t exist in my world.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Adventure: North Brother Island

I have a new adventure planned.

I am going to sail my ass on a makeshift raft to North Brother Island.

What is North Brother Island? Good question.

I was playing around with Google Earth and was checking out Riker’s Island Penitentiary in detail. You can see the recreation yards and guard towers and all kinds of cool shit. In my mind I always pictured Riker’s to be one massive fortress. This is not the case. It’s a huge multi-facility compound. I didn’t know that.

Anyway, as I swung my aerial view back towards the city I came across a full blown island that I had never heard of. North Brother Island.

North Brother Island is between Riker’s Island and The Bronx sitting in the East River, NYC. It’s a thirteen acre island in the middle of the East River, and lots of New Yorkers don’t even know it exists. There is a reason for that.

North Brother Island is abandoned and off-limits to the public. As such, one might imagine that it has a fascinating history. One would be right. From around 1880 until 1960 the island was home to several hospitals which warranted the quarantining of its patients. Epidemic diseases, mental patients, drug addicts. In 1960 the island was home to what was supposed to be a cutting edge treatment facility for teenage drug addicts. However, widespread staff corruption caused withdrawal of funding and the program closed, as did the island. Aside from the occasional Riker’s Island escapee who uses the island as a temporary haven after a long swim, North Brother Island has been completely abandoned ever since.

I am going to fucking go there.

I’ve done a little research(see: I've become completely obsessed) and apparently there are all kinds of cool remnants lying around the ruins of the hospital units. Beds, old medical instruments, solitary cells, padded rooms, all kinds of awesome shit.

I am so fucking jazzed about this.

Rafts will be built. Intel will be gathered. Risks will be taken.

Being that this adventure is absurdly dangerous, I will be recruiting a few more adventurers to come along. The usual adventure crew will be invited--Warren, Sam & Mat. I also invited Tynan of BetterThanYourBoyfriend to jet out from Austin if he’s interested, as I appreciate his taste for adventure.

It’s getting cold, so this may have to wait until spring. We’ll see.

Other interesting things about North Brother Island:

  • A major nautical disaster occured in the East River in 1904 when a ship of daytrippers burned. Over 1,000 of the 1,300 passengers on board were killed. Their bodies washed up on the shore of North Brother Island, as did the ship. Photos and accounts of this are easily accessible with a google search.
  • "Typhoid Mary" spent her last years quarantined in a private cottage on North Brother Island.
  • Since it's abandonment over 45 years ago, the island and ruins are overgrown with vegetation/vines/ivy and it has become a sanctuary for rare birds.
I am going to North Brother Island.
Fuck, I just might spend the night.


Seriously, how nuts would it be to spend the night in "Typhoid Mary's" old private cottage?

Friday, October 20, 2006

Subconscious: Your Contract is Under Review

-To: My Subconscious
-Re: Last Night's Dream

Dear My Subconscious:

You are going too far.

Your latest dream made me very uncomfortable.

I understand that when I am asleep you have a specific purpose in mind when you impose a dream upon me. I understand that this is your own special way of sorting things out and that’s cool, but I really don’t see what you were getting at with your latest contribution.

Why the fuck did you have me spend my entire eight hours of sleep competing against The Cookie Monster for the affection of Mary-Kate Olsen?

I mean, what?

I… I honestly don’t know where to begin to address this.

I don’t care one iota about Mary-Kate Olsen, do I?

If I do, why is The Cookie Monster my main competition?

I’m not getting your hint, Subconscious, please clarify.

In the future, unless your directive is crystal clear, I would appreciate not dreaming about Mary-Kate Olsen or The Cookie Monster, or competing against one for the other.

Thanks in advance,

Your Conscious Counterpart

Friday, October 13, 2006

Girlfriend: Your Contract is Under Review

-To: My Girlfriend
-Re: Your repeated attempts to cuddle while watching Ultimate Fighting Championship

Dear Girlfriend:

Have you ever been to a movie theatre to watch a movie that you were totally excited about, and then the big moment of the movie came and it really hit home with you and you started to cry? Then some jerk two rows back started laughing because he thought that that part of the movie was particularly ridiculous and deserving of his dismissive laughter? Did you feel like he just spat on what was supposed to be a great experience in your life?

Think about that, please.

This letter is intended to serve as a formal notice that it is absolutely not acceptable for you to attempt any sort of cuddling while I am watching Ultimate Fighting Championship. It is expected that from the date of this notice that you will adjust your actions accordingly and that there will be no further incidents.

Thanks in advance, and I look forward to improving our working relationship.

Best regards,

Your Boyfriend

Thursday, October 12, 2006

You Just Never Know

After the badass medieval festival at Fort Tryon last weekend, my roommate brought one of his friends over to hang out at the apartment.

My roommate is awesome, so I look forward to any of his company.


I am told that the friend is a doctor, an M.D. More specifically, he is a practicing substance abuse therapist and pain management expert.

Huh, okay.

Anyone who knows me knows that having an addiction specialist tooling around my apartment could quite possibly put a little cramp in my lifestyle.

I guess I won’t be sitting in the living room drinking beer and smoking bowls tonight.

Wrong.

Out of the blue, my roommate’s doctor friend whipped out a doctor's bag full of various substances.

Huh, okay.

Long story short:

Wait, hold on. Before I tell you this, I think I should preface by saying that I very rarely do drugs. Well, since high school anyways. But, man. This guy had some serious holdings. I'm not going to go into specifics, but this situation warranted an exception to anyone's convictions.

The good doctor, the roommate and I spent the whole night partying hard out of the doctor's magic bag, drinking, and…

…wait for it…

…watching several back-to-back episodes of “Intervention” while The Good Doctor, high as a fucking kite, diagnosed and treated all the patients from my living room couch.

Fucking priceless.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

The Endeavor

(This is my first attempt at a "live blog".)

It appears that online poker will soon be shut down in the good old free U.S. of A.

I logged into my online poker account today and surprisingly found $6 sitting there.

I now have a fucking mission.




The mission:

Turn $6 into $600 in 24 hours, playing poker... online.

This is going to be grueling and will most likely end in dissapointment. For you and me both, loyal reader.

Let's get started.

__

Account balance: $6.00


4:00pm: I sit down at a $6 single table tournament. I win. Hell yeah.

5:30pm-7:00pm: I played two more $6 single table tournaments and finished 2nd in both. Hell yeahs.


Account balance: $38.00


7:00pm: I run to get beer and cigarettes.

I decide that my best chance of achieving my goal lies in the strategy of playing and winning as many small($5/$10) tournaments as it takes to be able to enter a $100 tournament and still have a couple small buy-ins left. If I pad my stack correctly and win the $100 tournament, if I ever get there, I will reach my goal. I want to have a couple small buy-ins remaining so that if I lose the big tournament I can just start all over again. We'll see.

7:15pm: I enter a $10 single table tournament.

8:15pm: I finish in 2nd place.


Account balance: $54.00

This is going well. So far.

8:30pm: I take the time to write this blog.

9:45pm: I enter another $10 tournament.

10:30pm: I just went out on the bubble, 4th place. Lost money.

Account balance: $43.00

10:40pm: Entering another $10 tournament.

11:20pm: I just lost this tournament on the bubble, again. I took two horrendous beats in a row. I hate this game.

Account balance: $33.00

11:25pm: I am seriously pissed off. I am entering another $10 tournament now.

1:25am: I finished the tournament in 2nd place after the funnest and longest heads-up battle I've ever played. Great tournament. I don't even care that I didn't win because my oppenent was awesome. We showed each other several bluffs, nuts, folds, everything. This tournament exeplified what poker should be.

Account Balance: $41.00

1:30am: Okay, it's obvious. I'm going to have to seriously step up my game if I'm going to reach the $600 mark by tomorrow afternoon, and I am getting tired.

I've been playing for almost eight hours now.

And I am very drunk.

Of course.

2:00am: I'm going to play a $20 tournament at the risk of destroying my bankroll. Starting now.

2:50am: I busted out AGAIN. I seriously fucking hate this game.

Account balance: $19.00

I still have enough for a $10 and a $5 tournament.

I am not fucking giving up on my goal.

3:00am: I am starting another $1o tournament...

3:36am: Fucking lost again.

3:40am: Buying into my final tournament. Right back where I started. Six goddamn dollars.

3:53am: I hit four of a kind and played them hard to the river. I have a lot of chips.

4:49am: I WON!

Account balance: $25.00

5:00am: Entering a $10 tournament. Growing... weary.

Still have... lots of Red Stripe to drink.

5:10am: I just hit a huge hand and I am the clear chip leader.

5:46am: I just lost to a two-outer. I want to kill someone.

Account Balance: $14.00

5:51 am: $5 tournament, here we go. What choice do I have?

6:30am: I finished in 2nd place.

Account balance: $22.00

I am piss drunk and am going to pass out now. I failed.

I will try again in a couple days and will have the sense not to live blog when everyone in their right mind is dead asleep.

Till then...

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

No, I Am Not Dead

Sorry for slacking lately, everyone.

I haven't felt like writing lately.

No reason really, just haven't felt like it.

I'll be back soon.

You can read the other blogs listed in my sidebar in the meantime.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Shhh! Don't Talk To Me.


I went to Scruffy Duffy's with my awesome ex-corrections-officer roommate to watch football and drink beer and eat wings and nachos and mozzerella sticks and jalepenos and play pool yesterday. All day. Life really doesn't get much better than that. I saw a woman that was so drunk that I literally thought she was going to keel over and die right at the bar.

After all the games were finished my roommate and I went to the closing night cast party of "Smoking Bloomberg". They had the top floor/balcony reserved of a cool joint in midtown. I got to see several people I haven't seen in years. Great people. Good fucking times.

Lots of scotch.

God, kill me.

It's 3:00pm.

I just woke up and I want to die.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Friday, September 22, 2006

Smoking Bloomberg

A mammoth-ass thanks goes out to Warren for writing the first ever guest post on Pissed & Petty yesterday.

There was a huge response and the story is going viral.

A note about Warren, if you will: and you will.


Warren, in conjunction with a few other writers, has written a stage show that is currently running in NYC in a theatre on W. 46th St. between 9th/10th. There are only two performances left, one tomorrow and one Sunday.

The show is called "Smoking Bloomberg."

The entire run of the show sold out in 48 hours due to the pre-production buzz... and with good reason. Lucky for you, there may be a few no-show-reserved tickets available a few minutes before showtime. No guarantees, though.

-(from the official website)
"Smoking Bloomberg is a musical satire about a Korean dry cleaner's quest for revenge against Mayor Bloomberg and the smoking ban that has ruined her business. However the show runs much deeper than local politics and the current mayoral administration. It is a biting, irreverent lampoon of American democracy and the individual's place within it. This ain't your mom's musical theatre--unless you had one of those cool moms who burned her bra and let the kids come over to get drunk."

-and-

-(from the writers' blog)
"During a break in rehearsal today the cast [...] got into a discussion of who this show could potentially offend. As we were listing the potential offenders – Jews, Christians, Muslims, Left-Wingers, Right-Wingers – we came to the conclusion that it would be easier to name the demographic groups that would not be offended by the show. The list we came up with is as follows: Hispanics and retarded people. And frankly, we're not all that sure about the Hispanics."

I saw the show on opening night and I can assure you it is fucking brilliant. There are several huge jokes that require massive cojones to even write down on a piece of paper bearing one's own fingerprints. Leave it to say that none of these writers will be running for office anytime in the near future... and I mean that in the best way possible. Believe me, I know the feeling.

Oh, I almost forgot. Nick Nolte AND Gary Busey are in the show. No shit.

Read the glowing review from Backstage.

Have a great weekend everyone!

"Smoking Bloomberg" graphic by emblem creative.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

The Messed Up-est Thing I've Ever Seen

At long last, Warren's guest post:

I don’t know about you, but I moved to New York to see fucked up shit.

And like most mid-westerners who moved here in the Guiliani era, I was immediately and extremely disappointed. I got over it though, and fell into a normal routine, spending my weekends drinking in the same old bland-ass bars, and, with the not-really-an-exception exception of getting lost in Hasidic Williamsburg once, seeing exactly nothing that you would classify as “fucked up shit.”

But every couple of months I would remember my original reason for being here, and with a renewed spirit I’d drag a friend down to Coney Island or Chinatown, convinced there was something fucked up, something truly, deeply, fucked up to be seen in this city. Alas, those maze-like shops in Chinatown lead not to Deerhunter-style Russian Roulette matches but only to more paper dragons and fake jade. And the freak show at Coney Island? Fuck the freak show at Coney Island!!!!

After four or five years, I had given up any hope, resigned to the fact that New York had pretty much been enema-ized completely. That is until the day my girlfriend came home from her summer job at NYU with the news that some woman was going to be sewing her vagina shut and calling it art as part of an NYU festival. And we had free passes.

Let me say that again: sewing her vagina shut.

The event was labeled a “Hemispheric” festival that would be exploring various “Religiosities.” I wasn’t entirely clear on how some chick zipping up her nethers was in any way religious—in fact, it seems pretty fucking sacrilegious to me—but that’s the kind of shit NYU does, and thank god, because that’s precisely the kind of shit I was looking to see.

Worried that we wouldn’t be able to stomach this thing sober, Girlfriend and I had a few drinks beforehand, then dutifully and excitedly, well me more than her, made our way over to the school. We were soon ushered into an empty classroom, where we were instructed to sit on the floor against the wall. I was by this time figuring the odds of seeing an actual vulvic sewing at about 20/80, as everyone in the audience seemed normal-ish, we were in a classroom, and I mean, c’mon, how could anybody actually do that? Surely we had been misinformed!

Lights dim, and in comes a nice enough looking girl from South America. Music starts, one of those projectors you watched nature movies on in elementary school in the early 80’s cast blurry images against the wall, and the girl casually removed all of her clothes. Okay, naked girl. Cool enough, but, my mind isn’t blown.

She then laid her white shirt on the ground beneath her, placed a wine glass on top of the shirt, and proceeded to insert a round red ice cube, which we were later told was some of her blood that had been drawn and frozen, into her wee-wee. Okay, no needles and thread yet, but we’re definitely getting somewhere! She then crouches over the wine glass, her body heat melts the ice cube, and she dribbles the blood from her crotch into the glass, AND THEN DRINKS IT!!!

Music stops, she leaves the room, and the lights come back up. Girlfriend and I stare in silence. Wow! Score! I win! A woman five feet in front of me just faked her period and sipped it like a pinot. Fucked! Up! Shit!

We are all then led into another classroom down the hall, where we watch a bunch of foul-mouthed marionettes masturbate for 30 minutes while getting crucified. I guess this fulfilled the festival’s “religiosities” requirement, and like most things exploring “religiosities,”—church, Kevin Smith’s Dogma—it was boring as hell.

Once the puppet sketch ended, the crowd grew noticeably more excited. Short, squat, 19-year-old lesbians with pink hair and a penchant for the postmodern started whispering and giggling like the young, normal school girls they weren’t. A professor type in his mid-fifties remarked to another group of gothy nerds, “I came here for a revelation.”

Well, me too, Doc, so bring it on.

The proctor woman led us all down the hallway and into yet another classroom, and it is instantly evident that some crazy-ass shit is about to go down. Why? Because there’s a hospital bed with stirrups at the front of the room and a video camera pointed about vagina level at the bed and displaying this image on a big TV. You know, so we wouldn’t miss anything.

Now as I said, someone was allegedly going to be “sewing their vagina shut.” You might have been asking yourself this whole time why anyone would actually want to watch that. You, querying reader, don’t know me, and therefore might assume that I’m a grade-A voyeuristic nutjob. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t have any weird fetishes. I don’t have any suicidal or homicidal tendencies, and I’ve only googled “pooping grannies” once and I didn’t click on any of the links. I’m a pretty normal dude, I swear.

So I don’t know if I can really offer a proper explanation. Maybe it has something to do with growing up and getting a job and kind of hating it and learning that life isn’t really all that magical but kind of ho-hum about two-thirds of the time. Maybe it’s because I was in my early twenties and felt like I’d pretty much seen everything. I don’t know. But if you want to judge me for it, and you don’t really want me to baby sit your kids, I’m cool with that. I understand.

In walks a forty-or-so-year old woman in a hospital gown. She slowly and methodically sits down in the inclined bed—it looks comfy and posturpedic—and slips her feet into the stirrups. Up comes the gown, revealing the vulva we had all come to see. From the looks of it, this vulva has been involved in both performance art and battering rams for many years, and I felt sort of sad for this poor, tired vulva.

The woman then pulls out a statuette of Jesus—religiosities, anyone?—and cradles it in her arms for a couple of minutes. Once she’s given it a little love, she sets the Jesus doll on a side table next to the bed.

I’m warning you: this is going to get crazy.

She then swabs her left labia with iodine, pierces it with a hollow needle—OUCH—slips a long thread through, and ties it off. The TV is giving us a very clear and close-up picture of all this.

Then: Wash, rinse, repeat on the right.

She now has a long string tied to and dangling from each side. I’m no seamstress, and I don’t have female genitals, but this doesn’t strike me as the best way to accomplish the whole sewing it shut idea. Could it be she has something else planned?

I’m warning you again: this is going to get really fucking crazy.

She turns her attention back to the Jesus doll. Said doll is about 10 inches long, and its arms and legs are splayed. She pulls out a condom—hey, I warned you—and rolls it over and around the doll. She then douses the condomized Jesus with an absurd amount of lube and, you guessed it, spends five very long minutes, um, doing the opposite of giving birth to the statuette.

This woman has ample storage up there I guess, because she is unbelievably able to take in the entire doll, leaving only his little feet hanging out, flanked by the two dangling strings. She then ties the right string to the right foot and the left string to the left foot, just to make sure the doll can’t go anywhere.

Over the course of the next thirty minutes, she pulls out a compact mirror and applies her make-up, brushes her hair, and puts on a big rubber suit. A crotchless rubber suit, fyi. A crotchless rubber suit with a huge cartoon-like zipper running up the insides of both legs.

She zips up her legs, slips on some six-inch heels (!) and a big string of pearls and hops on up out of bed. We watch her walk around a little, legs zipped up, Jesus statue in her hoo-hoo, make-up meticulously applied.

As if she doesn’t have every possible impediment to being able to walk, she breaks the necklace and hundreds of pearls scatter all over the stage. Oddly, this produced the only audible gasp from the crowd the whole evening, and not, you know, when she was piercing her vulva or crotch-swallowing our lord and savior. She manages not to slip on the pearls, and she then walks slowly out of the classroom.

And that’s it. Lights up, and the NYU kids head over to Dojo’s to discuss the artistic merits of the evenings festivities.

Girlfriend and I, dumbfounded, disgusted, pretty fucking all around blown away, and oddly sated, head home.

But I was pleased. After all, I moved to New York to see fucked up shit.

Mission fucking accomplished.

Parker and Stone, what?

Southpark?

Hire this guy.

I've known this guy since middle school and he is wicked goddamn funny.

For the third time, I'd like to point my readers towards Inti Tayta. This time it is about one of his theories of a practical reality.

I can't help but agree.


If you don't think that every word of his post is fucking hysterical, you need to think harder.

Dude is hilarious.

--The "best friend guest post" that I mentioned will be coming soon. He has some other priorities. Can't blame the jerk. Shit's fucked up, yo.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Craigslist Saved My Life

I got a computer!

...from a Craigslist ad.

I found a wicked awesome offer on a laptop today on Craigslist. It was a dude in my neighborhood that was trying to get rid of a nice laptop for about a third of the retail price. I called the guy and asked all of the appropriate questions (so I say now), and he was totally knowledgeable. He agreed to meet me at my apartment in 30 minutes with the laptop.

About thirty minutes later, he called me and told me he was on the corner in a black Lincoln.

Nice.

The following conversations occurred:

Him: Hey man, I'm on the corner in a black Lincoln.

Me: Great. I'll give you the building number and you can come up.

Him: Eh, just come down to the car and you can check out the laptop. It'll hold a charge.

Me: You sure you don't wanna just come up to my apartment. I just wanna check out the computer for 10 or 15 minutes. Ya know, just to make sure the specs match up and everything.

Him: Sure ok, ok. What's the building number?

I tell him and go downstairs to get him.

For any of you that think I'm stupid for letting a (seemingly)shady computer salesman from Washington Heights into my apartment, think again. One of my roommates is an ex-corrections officer from Rikers Island. I'm not worried. At all.

On the way up the stairs (my elevator is broken), we make small talk and I ask him a couple basic questions about the computer. He answers them easily and tells me he's looking to buy a new computer and needs to sell this one to do it. Seems like a really nice guy.

Anyway, we come up to the apartment. He pulls out the computer. It looks brand fucking new, not a single scratch on it. I plug it in, start it up, launch several applications, make sure it can read a CD, open several internet windows to make sure it can handle it... and the thing runs like fucking magic. It is amazing... compared to what I'm used to, anyway.

He answered all my questions easily and truthfully. At my request he showed me the system specs at the F2 startup, and everything was exactly as he'd advertised.

This thing runs like a greased Spaniard at that bull thing they do.

My computer rules.

Rest assured:

Good things do happen to happen to bad people, and Craigslist sometimes won't rip you off.

I am living proof.

Seriously, I Need a Computer

I've mentioned this before but didn't receive a single response.

I'm going to try again.

I need a fucking computer. I don't need anything too fancy. I'm looking to spend around $500. Less would be fantastic.

Laptop or desktop, I don't really care.

If anyone in the NYC area is looking to get rid of their old computer, please e-mail me.

Think of it as an extra bonus that the magic of "Pissed & Petty" will coming to you straight from your old computer, eh?

Hodge Podge

I hung out with some wicked cool bloggers last weekend. Very fun. Great people.

Speaking of friends:

My best friend is at least 1.5 times the writer that I am. He will be writing a guest post today. Check back, it's going to be good.

Hold your breath.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Rain, Rain, Go Away. Don't Come Back.

Three things I would rather deal with than rain on a Friday in NYC:


















Anyway, I'm headed down to "On The C" to have a few beers and shoot a couple games of pool if anyone wants to join me. It's at Ave. C and 8th Street... basically.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Four Brothers

Ok, here’s another “we’re wasted and leaving the bar at 4am story.”

(the crowd cheers)

Three friends and I closed down the Raccoon Lodge on the upper west side last summer, and as usual we were twelve sheets to the wind.

It was myself, a friend named Trevor (tattoo artist), a guy named Jason (pasty/dessert chef at Serendipity) and Mat. You may remember Mat from the swimming the lake in Central Park story. He was the tough guy in the bikini briefs.

We’re weaving down the sidewalk going home when Mat starts with his usual tough guy thing. He starts telling us about the time he was in on a remote Indian reservation hunting coyotes with his bare hands when he ran into a buffalo stampede. He says he puffed out his chest and stood fast like a brick wall while hundreds of buffalo traveling at full speed bounced off him like rubber balls. Then a tribe of wild Indians in full attack mode came galloping in on horses and swinging hatchets and shooting arrows. Mat wiped out the whole tribe with nothing more than a cold stare. The Indian chief was spared and recognized Mat’s warrior instinct. The chief took Mat to the top of a sacred mesa and performed a secret ritual that inducted Mat into the tribe as a true blood warrior.

Well, not really, but you get the point.

In the middle of the story Mat stops himself, turns to Trevor and I and says,

“Hey, I bet I could take both of you at the same time in a wrestling match.”

Trevor and I share a glance. We both look back at Mat.

“You’re on. Twenty bucks a man.”, I reply.

Considering how you look at it, this is probably a bad bet for me and Trevor. If Mat wins, he’ll win forty bucks, twenty from me and twenty from Trevor. If Trevor and I win, we’ll only receive ten bucks each as we would split Mat’s twenty. Whether or not this is a good or bad bet depends on how you calculate the odds that either party will win.

For it to be a good bet, I have to be certain that Trevor and I are at least twice as likely to beat Mat as he is to beat us. Do the math.

I could get into more details about the odds, but I’ll spare you.

So we find a side street that doesn’t have a lot of traffic and we discuss the rules.

Very simple, if we can pin Mat’s shoulders for three seconds, we win. If Mat can pin either one of us for three seconds, he wins. Period.

We assign Jason, who’s looking a little green in the face, to be the referee. Jason sits down on the curb and leans back against the fire hydrant.

Mat, Trevor and I all walk out into the middle of the street.

In case I haven’t mentioned this, Mat is huge. Like, 6’4”, 220 pounds, and athletic.

Trevor and I are about the same size, 5’11”, 145 pounds.

This is not going to be easy, to say the absolute least.

Mat takes his shirt off and starts pumping himself up.

Trevor and I look at each other with an eyebrow-raising head-tilting “here goes nothin’” kind of look.

Jason, our referee mumbles “Go.”

Trevor and I start circling Mat. Mat has his arms straight out to the sides turning around slowly as we circle, trying to keep us both in sight.

I shoot in and wrap up Mat’s legs and yell at Trevor to push him over from the top. Mat kicked me off like a small dog trying to hump his leg.

Ah crap, this is gonna suck.

A few more attempts at the same strategy and Trevor and I get our timing perfect and get Mat down on the street.

Trevor and I both jump on top of Mat and try to get him pinned.

Ain’t happenin’.

We were all rolling around in the middle of the street like one of those dust balls from the cartoons. You know, where an arm or leg can occasionally be seen emerging. We are all getting very tired.

Finally, I think I have Mat pinned and I yell for Jason to start the three-count.

I look down and I definitely have Mat pinned. The problem is that Mat has Trevor pinned at the same time.

We all struggle for a couple more minutes, but it’s not doing any good.

We agree to call a truce and let it go to a judge’s decision.

We slowly get to our feet while examining our bloody knees and elbows and foreheads and god knows what else. Mat’s shoulder blades looked like he’d been dragged by a car. I proudly take credit for that.

We take a moment to catch our breath.

Almost simultaneously we all look over to Jason to ask him who won.

Sure enough, Jason is passed out cold leaning up against the fire hydrant with his mouth hanging open and his eyes rolled back in his head.

Needless to say, as the three combatants, we were fairly pissed about this.

We made a deal and came to a reasonable agreement. We decided to call it a tie.

As such, Mat gave us each half of what he owed, and we each gave Mat half of what we owed. In the end, Mat was ten bucks richer. Funny thing is that ten bucks wasn’t going to come close to what he was going to have to spend to fix himself up.

Trevor and I didn’t look too pretty either. I had to wear long sleeves to work for a week in the middle of summer to cover my cuts and bruises.

Anyway, we slapped Jason in the face until he woke up and limped and hobbled home.

Wanna hang out with my friends and me this weekend?



*Aside: A rarity for me, I got through this whole post withough cursing once.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Our Nations Young(er) People

I was reading random blogs today and leaving weird/funny/chastising comments whenever applicable.

After wading through hours and pages of inane bullshit I finally found a post on a 12-year-old girl's blog that I wanted to unload on.
(no inuendo here)

Anyway, believe it or not, I'm not a total asshole so I left the poor girl alone.

It was hard.

Very hard. (seriously, you need a psychiatrist)

Here is what's happening in Abbie's World:



7th Grade Dance (and more)

Okay, heres the situation. the dance is comeing up on friday and of course i dont have a date. I didnt expect to have one but... the guy that has a locker next to me lets call him jim (not his real name) Okay i dont know if jim likes me or not but hes kinda nice to me and sencitive (he thinks puppies arae cute). Problem he has only 1.5 arms. Im not being mean but if he asks me or asks me to dance i dont know what i would say. I dont think i love him maybe im wrong i dont know. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I mean, I wouldn't even know where to start with this one.

An entire thesis could be written on this.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Low Brow Brown Cow

I’m scraping the bottom of the blog barrel today in search of the lowest common denominator.

I don’t think it gets much lower than this:

My girlfriend told me specifically not to write about this, so of course it’s the first thing I do this morning.

Oh yeah, bring it on.



So my girlfriend started on a new diet a couple days ago, Nutri-System or some shit, and last night she had some awe inspiring gas.

Hey, I warned you we were going low with this one.

We were watching TV on the bed, and even though we were on opposite sides, she was repeatedly expelling butt smoke in my general direction.

It stunk.

Badly.

Over and over again.

Now, I’m pretty much a guy’s guy. I like football, beer and tits. I scratch my ass on occasion and have been known to toot indiscriminately so normally this wouldn’t bother me.

What was going on here with my girlfriends gastro system was on another level entirely. I finally had enough.

Me: “Honey, can you please just light them on fire or something? It’ll burn off the methane and I won’t have to smell it anymore. Seriously, I can’t take it.”

Her: (shocked look) “No! Absolutely not.”

Me: “Why not? It’s only the courteous thing to do. I mean really, this is crazy.”

Her: “Are you serious?”

Me: “Yes. Or maybe just light every other one. That would at least help.”

Her: (speechless)

Me: “Hellooooo?”

Her: “I hate you.”

So anyway...

My girlfriend is so inconsiderate that she won’t even light her own farts on fire if it would mean improving my health.

I hate you too, honey.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Oh, The Humanity

I will be reading about the Seattle Craigslist debacle all day today.

It doesn't get any better than this, folks.

Some guy named Jason in Seattle put up a fake Craigslist ad posing as a woman looking for some weird sex stuff with a man.

A couple hundred guys responded to Jason's fake ad with pictures of themselves(some nude), phone numbers, places of employment, etc.

Jason then turned around and posted all of the responses, including photos, up on Craigslist. Needless to say, there are lots of incredibly embarrassed, furious, soon-to-be-divorced, fired, etc., men in Seattle today.

The backlash and fallout from this have reached epic proportions.

You can read the whole thing on Jason's site, including his IM chats with angry husbands and dejected wives. Link above.

UPDATE:Oh man, seriously. This is fucking great.

Friday, September 08, 2006

UPDATE: Pat Kachura, DMA

You have found this page because of this article I wrote involving Patrica Kachura.

Patricia (Pat) Kachura is the SVP, Ethics/Consumer Affairs for the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). This is the organization responsible for junk mail of all types; e-mail spam, telemarketing, paper junk mail mailed to your home, etc.

For starters, the terms "Ethics" and "Direct Marketing" being used together is hilarious.

Even more hilarious are some of the comments that Pat has made on record. See the above linked article.

First Response Wins

I get tons of traffic from several different users all over the country that all work for these two companies.

Travis Correll & Company

Performance Systems International

As soon as someone shoots me an e-mail and explains it to me, I'll take this post down so none of you get in trouble.

Are these companies just that big, or are you guys passing my shit around to all your coworkers all the time?

I'm not complaining, believe me. I'm just really curious.

Thanks,
Management

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Corky-1, Ryan-0


I'm walking down Third Ave. on my lunch break, heading to the bank, when I see a big guy walking towards me who is swinging one arm rather enthusiastically with each step. With the sidewalk crowded, it becomes obvious that I'm going to have to walk right by this guy, building on one side, him on the other. I don't think anything of it as we see weirder shit than this everyday in New York, enough to where a guy swinging his arm doesn't qualify in the least as weird.

The guy gets closer and I just naturally assume when we pass each other he will curtail the over-the-top arm gymnastics.

But no.

POW! Right in the face! My $80 Puma sunglasses (which I got for $25 at Century 21)break and fall to the ground and I immediately respond quite reasonably with,

"Dude, what are you fucking retarded?!"

I take my eyes off my broken sunglasses on the ground to look the guy in the face, when my question is quickly answered.

Yes. He is very much retarded.

My bad, son.

Long Way Down

I do pretty stupid shit on a regular basis.

However...

My buddy Tynan of BetterThanYourBoyfriend.com put me to shame last weekend.

He installed a swing on the balcony of his high rise apartment. It swings out over the edge and drops down 200 feet. You guys have to see this. Pictures and all.

FYI, Tynan also designed the graphic and layout for this site.

If anyones needs a web page designed or a swing installed, you know who to call.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Existence Justified

I got an invitation to sit at the cool kids table.

My new blog buddy Kate invited me to a bar crawl later this month with all the cool kids of the highly incestuous NYC blogger scene. Yeah, wicked incestuous and bordering on cultish.

When I first started this site I wanted absolutely nothing to do with that scene. It was such a turn off for me to read these people's blog posts about their own blog and stupid shit like that. All the name dropping/linking of their blog friends in every pointless post irritated the shit out of me.

I still feel this way.

But, I'm actually looking forward to this get together.

I look forward to meeting the people I read everyday, like Larry and Chris and Payj and several others.

I also look forward to meeting some people whose blogs I don't read but probably should.

Larry is one of the reasons I started a blog in the first place. Thanks to his blogroll, my third post ever was picked up by Gawker.

Speaking of Gawker, Heather seems like a doll.

Even though Chris totally blew it on Cash Cab, I'm sure he's a decent human being that I won't hate. His blog is really fun. Of course if MySpace is any indicator, we're already 'friends'.

Last but certainly not least, I am so totally excited about giving Alice a hard time in person. Pulling her pigtails over the internet has lost its charm.

I'll let everyone know how it went and who I slept with.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

C.E. O-Yeah!

I start a new freelance job tomorrow working directly for a notorious advertising CEO.

This should be interesting.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Labour Like It's $19.99

Have a good weekend everyone.

I will.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Nancy-Boy Media

I read an article on the Consumerist a few minutes ago that has my blood boiling.

In a recent story, The Washington Post addressed concerns regarding the Direct Marketing Association from an environmental angle. The DMA is responsible for unsolicited advertising such as telemarketing and junk mail. Basically The WP was asking the DMA if the millions of pounds of junk mail that they distribute, almost all of which is immediately discarded by consumers, is harmful to our environment. Forest depletion, landfill usage, etc.

When asked to address the subject, DMA rep Pat Kachura had the following to say:

(regarding paper junk mail)
"The Direct Marketing Association [is] far from harming the environment; catalogues help it, by reducing the number of cars headed to shopping malls....”
(dude, are you fucking serious?)

-and-

(regarding the imposition of possible governmental regulation on junk mail, etc.)
"We certainly wouldn't want to see a drastic and expensive and unnecessary government program created that would probably do more harm than good."
(oh jesus christ, c’mon man)

Now, I don’t really care about the environment, because I have a bizarre inability to consider anything beyond tomorrow, or make plans for the future of any sort. What I’m really pissed off about goes way deeper than the DMA and the environment on this one.

Here’s my point:

(deep breath)

I don’t understand why the media allows companies and officials to serve them a mammoth-ass load of glaring bull shit which they, the media, regularly swallow whole and pass on to us, the consumer. I mean what the hell already? Isn’t it supposedly the news media’s job to find the truth and bring it to the news consuming public?

Listen, I didn’t go to college. That being said, I would assume the reporter from the Washington Post would have a good education, and is reasonably intelligent. Fair? I think so. So if uneducated me clearly sees the transparency in Mr. Kachura’s statements, as should anyone who is not retarded, it would be safe to assume that the Washington Post reporter knows it’s bullshit too.

Why didn’t this reporter say to Ms. Kachura, “That’s bullshit. We both know it and I don’t appreciate you insulting my intelligence. Want to try again, lady?”

I mean, would that be so hard? Isn't that their job? Wouldn’t it make for a better story anyway?!

But that’s not what they do. They stick their heads in the sand and go, “Duuuuh, okay.” And that’s it. Nothing is different, nothing is fixed, nothing is better.

The DMA’s behavior in this matter is mirrored by corporations, governments and other regulatory agencies on a daily basis. I don’t understand why the media doesn’t call “bullshit” when everyone with half a brain knows its bullshit. I know its bullshit, you know its bullshit, everyone knows its bullshit but that doesn’t matter one iota because as individuals we don’t have a loud enough voice. I mean, I could write something on my blog in attempts to expose lies, but what good would it do when I’m only going to reach a hundred or so people? Not much. It’s not that I’m scared or unwilling to do it, it’s just that I know it would be a waste of time.

As the media, they have the power to make change. They choose not to.

I don’t understand it.

Grow a pair you fucking clowns.

UPDATE: Someone from the DMA just ran a google search for Pat Kachura and found this blog. Ten bucks says it's Pat herself. Hi Pat! Jerk.

Click here to read full update.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Parents: Sidewalks Are Not Toilets For Children

I’ve seen something happen twice in the past month that I don’t ever want to see again--

Parents allowing their children to urinate on public sidewalks in broad fucking daylight.



Has this been happening for a long time and I just haven’t noticed?

Last weekend I was on my way to Riverside Skatepark when I very nearly walked right through a stream of urine being expelled from a toddler. I was walking down the sidewalk staring up at the trees when I saw something out of the bottom corner of my eye(toddler). Luckily I looked down just in time to jump out of the way of this pissing little pissant’s piss. The kid was standing in the grass while pissing onto the sidewalk! And his CPS-case-in-the-making of a father was standing right there beside him. I don't mean that I almost stepped in a puddle of pee, I mean that had I not jumped out of the way, this kid would have pissed directly on me.

I mean, what the hell?

Would it really be that hard to take your kid twenty feet off the beaten path and find a tree or something? If that’s too hard, turn around 180 degrees and stand on the sidewalk and piss into the grass. I mean, what the hell is wrong with you?

Then yesterday I leave the office to head home. I’m walking down Third Ave. at 50th St. during rush hour when I see it again. There is a toddler pissing right in the middle of the goddamn sidewalk on Third Ave. At rush hour! His mother was standing right there behind him.

You can’t be fucking serious!

Maybe this kid is a reincarnation of Moses or something because he parted the traffic on a busy Manhattan sidewalk like it was nothing. People were scrambling to not only avoid trampling the kid, but more importantly to not be pissed on.

This shit has to stop, New York.

Let me be very clear--

Study the picture of my face at the top of this blog. If you see me on the street walking in your direction while your kid is pissing on the sidewalk, you’d better fucking run, motherfucker! I will drop kick your kid into the middle of the street and then grind your nose in their mess.

CLEAR?

Friday, August 25, 2006

Another New York Moment

A few friends of mine and I shut down our local bar around 4AM on a Friday night last October. As tradition dictated, we walked a few blocks over to Central Park to find our favorite spot to cause trouble. The rocks by the lake always paid dividends in this respect. It’s somewhere in the area of 72nd St. on the west side of the park.

The path we usually take to get to our spot leads to a rock cliff with about a nine foot drop to a sand bar below. One has the option of jumping down to the level below or walking around and down to get to our little spot. Since I’m a really smart guy, I know that the shortest distance between two places is a straight line. I’m in for the jump. I turn to my friend Sam, who will rarely back down from a challenge, and say,

“Hey, if you do it, I’ll do it,” and I motioned towards the cliff. Sam must have known immediately from the look in my eye what I was going to say because before I could finish an eight word sentence, literally, Sam had hurled himself off the cliff without even looking over the edge first. Wow, balls.

Okay. I had jumped off this particular cliff a few times, and I know it’s something you have to prepare for. It’s dark, it’s a long way down and there is all kinds of nasty debris on the landing.

Sam is a reasonably fit guy, able bodied and strong willed. Even so, I was pretty sure that anyone who did what Sam just did would more than likely not be okay. They would be hurt. My notion was supported by the grunting and moaning coming from the bottom of the cliff.

I crouched on the edge of the cliff, found where I wanted to land and took flight. I landed a few feet away from Sam just as he was getting to his feet. He actually seemed to be okay with only a couple complaints about an aching foot. Good for Sam. Sam is man.

Sam and I got to our spot on the rocks by the lake before the other three guys did. Pat, Warren and Matt showed up a couple minutes later because they took the dress shoe route, around and down.

At our spot we all sat or stood on rocks, talking about whatever, when Warren turns to Mat and says,

“Mat, I’ll pay you $100 to swim across this lake right now. All the way across.”

Mat’s eyes got really big and he immediately starting taking his clothes off and got down to his bikini briefs. This is particularly funny because Mat is a really big tough guy. He’s got be at least 6’4”, 220 pounds, and not fat. Yep, big scary guy standing at the edge of the lake in Central Park at four in the morning wearing bikini briefs. This may not be as uncommon as I thought, as later in life I heard that this is a very popular “cruising spot”. I don’t wanna know.

I’m sure Mat’s enthusiasm in regards to the proposition had a lot to do with the fact that he was newly unemployed. In addition, he had managed to completely botch his state unemployment claim and now receives a total of $38/week income. By comparison, it would be like someone offering me around $3,000 to swim the lake. I don’t blame him for being excited. (See: Einstein's Theory of Relativity)

Remember, this is October in New York City. It was about 43 degrees fahrenheit outside. Warren argued it was in the low-50’s, at least.

Mat took a couple deep breaths. Even though he doesn’t believe in god Matt said a quick prayer where I overheard something about dirty needles in his feet. I don’t know.

Mat literally set one foot in the water, spun right around and said there was no way in hell he was going to do it. It was way too cold. Of course everyone started goading him but he wouldn’t budge. He said it was just too cold.

At that point I immediately offered to take the bet myself. Warren, who had originally offered the bet looked at me and said,

“No. I know you’ll do it. That’s not the point.”

I had a feeling that’s what he would say. But everybody in attendance was already worked up and wanted to see someone swim the lake.

Warren’s a very bright guy and proceeded to make everyone the following offer:

Warren, Pat, Mat & Sam would each pay me $25 to swim the lake. Someone would have to cover Matt’s portion as we already know he’s broke.

Warren has a gift for working a great deal for himself in any situation. He was ready to bet Mat $100 out of his pocket to swim the lake, and all the other guys would have gotten to enjoy the spectacle on Warren’s dime. Now Warren has worked a new deal to make everyone else pay to bet someone whom they already know will swim the lake. Nice work.

Of course, I take the deal. I strip down to my boxers and approach the water. The film on the top of the water containing algae and god know what else made it impossible to see the bottom. Great. I don’t believe in god either but I think I said the same prayer Mat did. I added broken glass to the prayer.

Mat was right. It was really cold, but probably manageable. I mean, we’re not talking about immmediate hypothermia or anything. I waded slowly into the water, being extremely careful with every step. My focus was so intensely concentrated on the nerves in my feet that I think I could have read a newspaper with my toes, no brail. I could have identified Coke over Pepsi with the soles of my goddamn feet right then, I swear.

Once the water got up to mid-thigh or so, I started swimming because I couldn’t fucking wait to get my feet off the bottom of this death trap. The bottom of the lake slowly dropped out from under me and the cold began to set in much faster than I thought it would.

I swam faster.

I got to the middle of the lake and was getting kind of tired. I stopped and treaded water for a few seconds to get my wind back. Apparently it worried my friends when they stopped seeing the splashes because they all starting screaming words of encouragement,

“You’re half way there man!”

“You can do it!”

“Keep going!”

I have pretty smart friends, but to this day I’m surprised at how scripted their encouragements seemed.

“Shut up dicks! I’m just resting!” I yelled back.

They shut up.

I started swimming again.

I was wearing a really old pair of boxer shorts in which the elastic in the waist was completely worn out and stretched. While I was swimming, the drag of the water kept pulling my boxers down. Accordingly, I had to stop swimming to pull up my stupid underwear several times. This began to take up a lot of precious energy and was completely killing my momentum.

I had to let the boxer shorts go.

I hated this idea for several incredibly obvious reasons, but the job had to be done. As hard as this decision was initially, I have to admit that it was a rather liberating experience when I finally roundhouse-kicked the boxer shorts off my left ankle with an aquatic propulsion force matched only by the finest U.S. made nuclear submarine.

I gargled through the last third of my swim across the lake at Central Park completely naked. The other side started getting closer and closer and finally I felt the bottom again. Oh god. Not again. Being the genius that I am, I didn’t think about having to deal with the bottom while getting out of the lake also. To make things worse, I am now naked. (See also: Completely Exhausted)

I stay in the lake, laying motionless in the shallow water with only my head sticking out. I look around for my friends, moving only my eyes.

I feel like a naked Navy Seal.

Fuck its cold.

I started shivering pretty badly and decided I had to get out of the water. I floated up as close as I could to the bank, where the water was only a few inches deep. I stood up and made a hot-coal'esque scramble through the shallow water to the shore where I found a sadly small tree for cover.

There I was standing two feet from the main walking path, shivering violently and completely naked. More than the sole embarrassment of being naked in public, I was really concerned that a gaggle of hot twenty something chicks would walk by and think that my penis was really that small.

“No, no! It’s the cold, I swear!”

It's amazing how priorities change in extreme circumstances.

Thankfully there were no hot girls around as far as I could tell, and I could see my friends coming around the path carrying my clothes. They were still pretty far away.

I screamed at the top of my lungs,

“I WANT MY PANTS WITH MY FUCKING MONEY IN THE POCKET!”

I see my friends chuckle from a distance and continue to take their sweet ass time walking up the path. Sam seems to be limping.

Another sudden priority shift.

Let me try to explain something about being naked, cold, and alone in the middle of the night in a location where record numbers of murders and all kinds of mind-blowing violent crimes occur:

Every second seems like a fucking year. I cannot stress this enough, as the proper words do not exist in the English language.

The guys obviously didn’t understand the urgency of the matter.

“HURRY THE FUCK UP! I’M NAKED AND I AM GOING TO GET KILLED!”

This got their attention.

Speaking of getting attention, I realized that the exact words that I screamed should have been chosen more carefully. I mean, if some sicko really was lurking in the shadows of Central Park waiting for the right victim on which to pull off some crazy sex-murder, which guy would they target? Probably the one standing there screaming about being naked with money in his pants, right?

All my friends started laughing hysterically from a couple hundred feet away. I was not laughing. Warren, great guy that he is, starting jogging up the path with my clothes but he was laughing so hard that I wasn’t sure he was going to make it. It was the first time I'd seen someone almost fall down from running and laughing at the same time.

Finally he arrived to find me, sure enough, shivering and naked. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t even hand me my clothes. I had to snatch them from him and get them on as fast as possible, which isn’t easy when you’re wet.

Pat, Mat and Sam all found us a minute or so later. Sam was definitely limping.

We headed back up the path to leave the park and go home. I used the time to collect my winnings from everyone.

Warren was still laughing.

Sam wouldn't stop bitching about his stupid foot.

Pat complained that the whole thing wasn't worth his $25.
That’s Pat in a nutshell, but you gotta love Pat.

Mat had a silent defeat about him.

The sun was starting to come up.

Alas, the punchline:

We were all walking down Broadway, tired, drunk and just blocks from home. I was also getting a little queasy, and I wasn't sure why. We were passing by a group of tourists who were standing in front of thier hotel waiting for a cab with their luggage. At the exact moment that we walked by the tourists I vomited, while walking, never missing a beat. The tourists all gasped and looked shocked and a little scared.

Immediately, the tourists' shock turned to absolute confusion when I turned to them and quipped ever so matter-of-factly,

“What? It’s just lake water.”


***Later that morning, we all woke up to Sam's voice on the answering machine. He was in the hospital with a broken heel.

Read the original New York Moment.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Inti Tayta -vs.- Airport Security

I was going to write a post about a blood boiling experience I had at the bank last week, but I'm not going to do that anymore... at least not right now.

Instead, I'll point you once again to Inti Tayta: Welcome Home. Read about his most recent trip to the airport. It's way funnier than my stupid bank story I was going to write... which I still might.

Anyway, I'm glad to be back, people.

Enjoy.

And we're back...

I just started a new job today, so I now have access to a computer.

I figure that I should probably not spend my entire first day of work on the internet updating my blog, which is totally what I want to do.

Anyway, hopefully I'll find some time in the next few days to get a up a good quality post.

Word.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Ah crap.

My computer is broken for real now.

The operating system won't start.

I'm writing from a friends computer to inform everyone that posts will be very spotty until I get a new computer, which may be a while.

Maybe I can get a friend to guest post in the meantime.

Keep checking in, we'll make it work somehow.

Thanks everybody.

Oh, seriously though... if anyone in the NYC area wants to give me a good deal on a laptop, I'm interested. I don't need anything fancy.

E-mail me.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

The Ties That Bind



For some reason I woke up wicked early this morning and couldn't go back to sleep.

It's Saturday and I woke up bright eyed at 7:30am.


Unacceptable.

I went into the kitchen to retrieve my lighter that I had left on the stove the night before so I could smoke my good morning cigarette.

I heard the TV on in the living room and realized my roommate(whom I have had a couple problems with) was already awake too.

I poked my head in and the following conversation commenced.

Me: "Hey man, what are you doing up this early?"

Roommate: "I don't know. I just woke up and I couldn't go back to sleep."

Me: "Weird, me too. Hey, I'm going downstairs to grab a sixer. You want anything?"

Roommate:(laughing) "So, you're just going to drink yourself back to sleep?"

Me: "Exactly. Why, is that weird?"

Roommate: "I'll take Corona."

Friday, July 28, 2006

Irreconcilable Differences




Ever since my computer started hanging out with Limewire, I've noticed my computer has had a change in friends, is lazy and irrational, spends more time alone and has bloodshot eyes on a regular basis.

A few nights ago, my computer decided for the last time that it didn't want to do what I was asking of it, which is my computer's only job.

At that point, I may have accidentally (see: completely on purpose) beaten the ever loving shit out of my computer.

The 'Shift' key and the 'A' key popped off and I can't get them back on. There are no two worse keys to have missing. One key is a home row anchor and a very common letter. The other is a key you have to hit at the beginning of every sentence and proper nouns and crap. The keys still work, but the buttons are so small that I may as well be trying to touch the tip of my nose with my head tilted back and eyes closed.

If my computer hadn't decided to be more loyal to Limewire than it was to my commands, this whole situation could have been avoided.

It's as if someone called Child Protective Services on me for beating a child who totally deserved it.

Is anyone giving away a new laptop or a child?