Shut the fuck up about politics and the wars in Iraq and Afganistan. You have barely a foot to stand on, no valid points, and no idea the sacrifices that our VOLUNTEER standing military force takes on so that YOU can be crazy. Thanks for your compliance.
Sincerely, The Remaining Sanity in the World
I decided to look up these "Code Pink" looney tunes online and, once the general seething anger receded, I found something on their site that really pisses me off. (by the way, I hope I don't pegged as a commie for going to their site) They have a list of missions or goals that they are pursuing, including: impeaching our president, getting Mr. Cheney fired, blaming global warming (which isn't real) on the war in Iraq, saying that Ms. Rice has blood on her hands, and a plethora of anti-war propaganda and jargon. And towards the bottom I find this:
DARFUR: All Life is Sacred "My heart aches when I think about tragedy in the lives of so many in Darfur, and how their cries for help go unheeded, especially by the leaders in this country. Our government should do everything in its power to stop the suffering, the pain, the violence." —Medea Benjamin.
IS THIS WOMAN SERIOUS?!?! I am not a military man, but I have friends that serve/have served as well as family members, and I have discussed military history over a cigar before with qualified intelligence officials. It seems to me that this woman is calling for us to take military action in Darfur! Wouldn't that situation be violent and destructive? Would it not cost the lives of Americans and locals? Isn't that what she is bitching about in Iraq? I am not saying go or don't go, but clearly she has no idea what it would take to go into Darfur and secure the region. I am not opposed to US military action solely based on the fact that I trust the people that run our country and our military and if those people deem military action necessary than who am I to argue? But this woman is arguing that we should walk out of Iraq because she thinks its wrong, unjust and costing American lives and money. Then she has the guts to say we need to step into Darfur? Ridiculous and incongruent! Classic Communist BS!! This woman is clearly insane and is simply hellbent on hating freedom and causing unrest in our society for her own crazy reasons. Someone deport her.
I also found this on the "Code Pink" website (which I now refer to as "crazy irrational communist agitator headquarters") :
"October 4, 2007: Ann Wright, retired U.S. army colonel and former diplomat who quit in opposition to the Iraq war, and Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK and founding director of Global Exchange, tested Canada's policy towards US peace activists on Thursday. They were on their way to Toronto at the invitation of the Toronto Stop the War Coalition but were denied entry into Canada due to previous arrests for demonstrating against the Iraq War outside the White House and in the Capitol. Their names have been added to FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database that apparently dictates Canadian border policy. The border agents at the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls who barred Medea and Ann said the mere fact that they were listed on the NCIC was sufficient to bar them from entry."
I'm the first to admit that I am not the best employee in the world at my accounting firm. Hell, I'm legitimately bad at my job. However that does not mean that over the past seven or so months I haven't learned anything; far from it, I have learned how to do as little work as possible without suffering any serious consequences. Here is my handy guide to accomplishing little-to-nothing at work:
Part I-
Slacking off at work is much more complicated than simply deciding to cruise the Interweb all day; doing so would be a short-sighted, risky, and fool-hardy approach. Slacking off is a long-con (like in the end of The Sting). It needs to be set up over the course of weeks and months to be perfected. So I'm going to begin this guide with a broad overview and then get more and more specific (in the writing world, we call this approach... umm... well I'm sure its called something). Here is what you need to do to set up your life-long dream of getting paid for nothing:
1). You should have as little experience with the type of work you will be doing as possible. This is essential as it will lower everyone's expectations for you and allow you to stretch jobs that should only take about 45 minutes into entire afternoon affairs. I am a journalism and history major who took exactly zero business/economics classes in school and am working as an accountant. I have no business working here but let's just say it's not what you know, it's who you know. (For me, I know my dad, the managing partner).
2). You need to be able to work hard intermittently. A couple times a week you're usually going to have to cram 5 hours of work into 1 hour. Those are the facts. Bottom line is work needs to get done and the best way to do it while maximizing your slack off time is to work in 60-90 minute frenzies and get as much volume done as possible. (note: quantity is more important than quality here. Remember you have no experience doing these things so you're going to have some slip-ups. Your superiors expect this from you and will be able to find and correct your errors quickly and easily. It also helps if you write down your questions in detail and act genuinely interested in their answers). Also a stretch of hard work shows your boss that you can/might be valuable.
3). You need to have some sort of responsibility outside of work. This can't be a softball league or a bowling night, this has to be legit. How legit? Like elderly relative to take care of or second job big. This will keep people off your back about being tired/out-of-it and allow people to make excuses for you. Hopefully when fellow employees are talking about you at the watercooler and someone says you don't pull your weight, another employee will chime in with something like, "Yeah, but did you know so-and-so is taking care of his great uncle?" or "Yeah, but so-and-so is also working nights to (make ends meet/pursue a passion/donate money to orphans, orphans with diseases)."
I myself work three nights a week writing sports for a Web site (my latest articles are usually on the top of right-hand sidebar but somebody decided to switch up the sidebar's order and buried my stories at the bottom, not that I'm upset or anything). My night job is pretty sweet. I write from home about something I enjoy. The only thing crappy thing is that the hours suck (10 p.m. to 1 a.m.) so I don't get a ton of sleep a couple nights a week. The key for me is using my lack of sleep to my advantage. About once or twice a month I'll drop a line like this one, "Man, I'm beat. I was up late writing about this whole Clemens scandal, blah blah blah." This lets whoever I'm talking to know that A) I have a second job, B) I can be an interesting (and therefore more likable) person to have a brief conversation with, and C) I have a valid reason for being tired. This step of having a legitimate outside responsibility is very important. It also highlights the fact that slacking off is not an easy thing to do and shouldn't be pursued by the weak of heart. You've got to fully commit to it, kinda like a D-10 combo from Jade Garden. In both slacking off at work and eating vast quantities of Chinese food if you leave anything on the table: you'll get called out for not working hard enough/being a pussy for not eating that last groddy-looking piece of General Tso's and then you'll eventually get fired/stabbed with the skewers that the beef teryaki came on. (For more real-life situations being compared to combo meals from crappy Chinese restaurants please pre-order mine and Ted's upcoming book "Extra MSG, Please: What Crab Rangoons and Crispy, Fried Dumplings Can Teach Us about Life." Hint: not much).
It is my personal opinion that there is no higher form of comedy than a person in a sidecar. The person doesn't have to be doing anything other than just sit there and I am bound to crack-up. So I was positively giddy when I heard that Big Papi was cruising around in a sidecar. While these photos are great if he had been wearing a leather helmet, goggles, and a scarf than I would have seriously peed myself. I probably would have to leave work because I would be so unproductive. (top image found at barstoolsports.com)
Greetings to all our readers! (maggie, aneish, me, doug and of course, the Lord): In my profession, I need to call companies and get names of people. Most times, I do this using a handle, which is a fancy term for "I lie about my name." I need a new one and am open to suggestion. I currently use Roibeard Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh, or Bobby Sands, former IRA prisoner at Long Kesh. Please post comments with possible names and I will make a poll next week to decide the winner. I was leaning towards Donnie Vegas or Johnny Budders.
OK so I'm lazy and haven't posted anything in a long time. Boo-fucking-hoo. Eat this shit up then:
-I haven't heard much buzz about the new Rambo movie, which is really a shame. Granted I only interact with like the same 10 people for stretches of time much longer than I care to admit. Anyway I saw the movie about 2 weeks ago and it was with out a doubt one of the most enjoyable movies I have ever seen in my entire life. Let me give you a quick plot summary: Rambo works on a snake farm in French-Indo China (I don't think that phrase has been P.C. for two score years). Anyway some relief workers want to cross into Burma (you may know it as Myanmar but it will always be Burma to me) and they ask Rambo to take them. After some tremendous acting Sly takes them into Burma, which is in the midst of genocide or something like that. The trip goes relatively smooth (Rambo only had to kill 4 people) other than a whiny guy complaining about the people Rambo had to kill.
Rambo returns to his job of snake wrangling (no homo) for a couple weeks until a band of mercenaries arrive who have been hired to find the missing relief workers. They hire Sly to take them into Burma. The mercenaries are a lovable, hard-nosed bunch but their leader acts like Rambo is a tool even though he is jacked and outweighs him by 100 pounds. My favorite mercenary was the Asian (update: Tim Kang). You may know him as the smarmy jerk in the cell-phone (cingular I believe) commercials they've shown during March Madness for the past couple years; he is also in a Shell commercial right now.
So now were about 30 minutes into the flick and the mercenaries go to rescue the relief workers (who have been captured by the generic bad guy army). Rambo shows up and saves the mercenaries then they go onto the prison camp to save everyone. Just as they are fleeing with the rescued prisoners to their boat the whole freaking Burmese army shows up. This is when the movie starts.
For the next 30 minutes Rambo kills everyone. Literally everyone. I did my best to count and I have his total body count at around 70. A very, very respectable number; for a reference point Arnold killed about 85 dudes in Commando. But the body count only tells half the story. The graphic nature of this violence was unbelievable. I was seriously stunned. It was so so violent. At one point Rambo shot a guy's head off with something and the whole audience (about 25 people) gasped, myself included. I couldn't believe it. I don't even have another movie to compare it to. these weren't generic action movie deaths either. I'm talking blood-spattering, gut-spilling violence.
After that TREMENDOUS sequence the movie wraps up very quickly. I couldn't believe how short the movie was, it was seriously 75 minutes. It was a 7:30 showing, there were 15-20 minutes of previews, and then I was in my car at 9:10. No joke. Now some of you are probably saying, "Wait, Doug. Doesn't a really short movie mean you got ripped off for that $9.50 you paid for the ticket and that $6.00 Icee?" To that I have a response in two parts: First, to the latter point about refreshments: I didn't need to buy snacks because I had a pack of Fruit Stripe gum. And no I didn't need to use my time machine to travel back to 1993 to buy it either. Now onto the next/former point: I love short movies. I will watch any movie that is under 90 minutes, no questions asked, and I will undoubtedly love it. However when a bad movie stretches past 100 minutes you've lost me forever. The perfect example of this is Date Movie and Epic Movie (the Bash Brothers of 2006 satirical movies). Date Movie was great and Epic Movie was not. Not because Date Movie had superior acting/writing/directing but because it was 40 minutes shorter. Seriously, I could watch a 70 minute movie on anything short of a colonoscopy (unless it was an interesting person's colon, say Robert Redford).
Long story short: Go see Rambo if it's still in the theaters and if you can't then buy it immediately when it comes out. Simply a life altering experience.
Well that's about it for me I'll try to write about something tomo....
Fuck that. I don't want to do any more shitty tax returns. I'll keep writing.
-The Slam Dunk Contest:
I don't know about you but the Slam Dunk Contest is one of my favorite events of the year. It is awesome. And as I have written before it is very, very American. But this year's contest left me a bit disheartened. I know that there were some awesome dunks but I had some major problems.
First, Rudy Gay got hosed. I'm not saying he should have won or even advanced to the second round but a 78 on that first dunk was just plain disrespectful.
Anyway, onto the larger issue: Dwight Howard did NOT deserve to win that thing but it was pre-ordained by the NBA that he was supposed to win. (If you have any doubts just go back and listen to Kenny Smith's on-air orgasm every time Dwight Howard is on screen). Let me list the problems I had with D-Ho's contest:
1) That first dunk was Andre Iguodala's invention so he should have lost points for creativity, but he didn't. It was still a pretty sweet dunk but I couldn't understand why everyone was acting like it was the first time anyone had seen a dunk before. We saw the SAME EXACT THING two years ago.
2) The Superman Dunk: As soon as he put that cape on he was winning the whole thing, which is bullshit to begin with. And then he didn't even touch the rim on the dunk. I know a dunk is defined as throwing the ball down into the hoop (which he did) but I think that's a garbage explanation. What's to stop someone from from jumping from the top of the key and trying to throw the ball into the basket from 10 feet away. Granted it would be tricky but it could happen. So by the D-Ho Dunk definition you could conceivably dunk from anywhere on the floor as long as you are able to get the ball above the rim and throw it downward. (Again, I know this is semi-improbable but once you start blurring the line between dunk and shot everything goes to shit and the next thing you know there's money missing from the dresser and your daughter's knocked up, I've seen it a thousand times). And finally, D-Ho meant to touch the rim. If he could have touched the rim he would have, plain and simple and I think that's the best argument about it not being a dunk (although I'm not sure that it makes any sense).
3) His dunk with the mini-hoop. I don't know why this dunk was considered better than the Gerald Greene's one with the ladder and his teammate holding the ball but it was (considered better).
This was the dunk of the night:
I'm getting too upset about this. Gerald Greene should've won. I'm moving on...
Miscellaneous Ramblings:
-I'm working as an accountant (I am NOT an accountant) and since it's tax season I'm working a ton of hours (on top of writing for Newser). I don't really mind working late during the week too much (because the week sucks anyway) but it's working every Saturday for 3 months that really kills me. I only work from like 9-2 but that is more than enough time to ruin a Saturday, then consequently a weekend, then a week, then a month, then a year, then a lifetime. Working on Saturday means that I can't drown my sorrows on Friday night and then by the time I get out of work my favorite part of the week is almost over (Saturdays 11-4). So then I only get one day to sleep in. At least it has made me appreciate Sundays more (although I still think it's a fucking piece of shit day masquerading as a day off).
-I'm getting really pumped up for baseball season even more than normal which is alarming. See I'm a huge baseball fan and I didn't think I could get more excited about baseball but I was wrong. I began wondering why and, depressingly, I realized that sports in the post-college world are much more important than sports while you were in college. Yeah, I followed sports a lot in school and watched a game of some sort almost every night but now they're all the only thing to which I look forward. In school if my team lost I'd be like "Fuck it, I'm going to a party tonight, whatever." Now if my team loses I spend the whole next day reading about it while slacking off at work. And then I don't have a party to go to afterwards. This is seriously depressing to me.
Here are my quick predictions for the MLB season, individual awards only (subject to change):
AL MVP: Alex Rodriguez, NYY (Dark Horses: Manny BOS, Nick Swisher/Paul Konerko CHW)
AL Cy Young: Erik Bedard, SEA (Dark Horse: James Shields, TB)
AL Rookie of the Year: Jacoby Ellsbury, BOS (edges out Evan Longoria, TB)
NL MVP: David Wright, NYM
NY Cy Young: Brandon Webb, ARI
NL Rookie of the Year: Joey Votto, CIN (beats out Kosuke Fukudome, CHC and Jay Bruce, CIN)
(I'll have an excessively long preview sometime soon)
-I'm sick of the damned weather jerking my chain. Last Wednesday it was like 60 degrees, then on Friday a fucking foot of snow gets dropped on my ass. That's just bullshit. I didn't even get to take off from work early like most of my co-workers. Well at least it was Friday and I had the whole weekend to look for... oh wait I work on Saturday's I didn't have a full weekend. ARRGGGHHHHHH!!!
-To those of you breathlessly awaiting future installments of my world-renowned Real World: Sydney summaries (Hi Maggie!): it's been a long time since I watched an episode (I still have about 8 to go) but my notes are still kicking around so I may get to writing about it soon (and I may also cure cancer/play shortstop for the Red Sox/write that novel I've been bullshitting my self about). At least mentioning the Real World gives me an excuse to run this photo:
I hate you, special locked toilet paper dispenser in my bathroom at work. I hate you so much. Why in the name of everything holy is the TP being locked in my relativley expensive office space in Tyson's Corner, Va? Is there really an imminent threat of people stealing the one-ply sandpaper and stockpiling in at thier homes in case of a massive TP shortage? Is there and underground secondary market for poorly made TP? NO! No there is most certainly not. The real pain in the ass, haha, is the fact that you can't get more that six or eight inches before goddamn lockbox catches and rips you off. I spend more time in the bathroom screaming at the toitet paper dispenser and punching it in the face (it SO has a face) than what I originally came in there for. (obivously to fix my mascara) Se here is a note to the people that manage my building. Stop hoarding the TP and locking what TP you can part with in those god forsaken lock boxes. A lock box is not the answer. (ask Al Gore) So until this atrocity is remedied, I will continue to throw the unused scraps that break off on the floor and you can pick them up.
"A Rhode Island college couple who vanished after having Valentine's Day dinner together called a friend, but are still missing MyFOXProvidence reported. Scott is a student at Johnson and Wales University and Querzoli attends Bridgewater State College. The 2044 Honda Civic they borrowed had a Johnson and Wales University decal on the back, and was low on gas. The car's New Jersey license plate reads RUF20X."
Of course, Rick and Tina live in Providence, the question is, where the hell did they go? Narragansett Beach? Danny's? PRIMETIME?!?!?!? Lord knows they'll get there fast in that silly 2044 Honda Civic.
NEW YORK — NBC News apologized Thursday for Jane Fonda's use of the c-word on the "Today" show.
The actress used the four-letter c-word for a woman's anatomy on the show Thursday while talking about "The Vagina Monologues." Fonda is appearing in a 10th-anniversary performance.
Fonda said she was asked to perform a monologue with the offensive word as the title. She said her reply was, "I don't think so. I've got enough problems."
Click here to see video
About 10 minutes later, "Today" co-host Meredith Vieira told viewers that "Today" and Fonda apologized for the remark.
NBC News has recently apologized for comments made by Chris Matthews and David Shuster
Well, I guess all of you (meaning both of you) want to hear my reaction to this past weekend's "big game." I know most of you are carefree and happy today because my team lost and I couldn't be happier for you. No, really. If having me throw up in my mouth every 15 minutes is what it takes for all of you to be happy than I guess I'll just sack up and take it.
I was pretty confident coming into this game. When it comes down to it, I'm not a cocky fan, I get nervous as hell every game but I could swear they were going to pull it out at the end. Still when the game ended and the scoreboard read "Domincan Republic #2 2, Mexico 1 F/11" I couldn't believe my eyes. Anyway here are my post game thoughts from Game #3 of pool play in the Caribbean World Series.
-Why on earth did Homer Rojas leave Nelson Figueroa out there to pitch the 10th inning? Listen, I love Figs just as much as the next Yaquis de Obregon fan but the kid can only give you so much. He pitched a great game for nine innings then Rojas pulls a Grady Little and leaves him out there. Yes, he only gave up a Matt Tupman single and then Adrian Ramirez was able to get out of the jam but it screwed up the bullpen and eventually led to Jose Bautista's sacrifice fly in the 11th. I can't wait to hear Kornheiser and Wilbon break down Rojas' decision ad nasuem for the next two weeks.
-What happened to the Yaquis offense. These guys won the Mexican League and are now playing for the Caribbean championship, how do they only score one run when Figs was hurling b.b.'s Seriously they made Jose Mercedes look like Greg Maddux out there.
-I don't think it is acceptable for a team with as much speed as Yaquis to ground into two double plays. It seemed like every time they got something going whoever came up next would shit the bed.
Well that's enough painful memories for a while. At least it was just their second game of pool play. Hopefully my boys will bounce back against Venezuela today and get this awful taste out of my mouth.
