Strap yourselves in

52 hours sober

something has to give

hide your women and show shovels

this is almost a haikuu

For all you sucker MC's perpetratin a FRAUD

You're the kind of guy that girl ignored
I'm drivin Caddy, you fixin a FORD

while waiting for parent teacher conferences..

...I saw this in the hall.

I laughed through the whole conference.

smooth criminal

Starbucks was empty ( or so I thought) today and I walked in giving the girls behind the counter the usual rash of shit, " get me my coffee...what's taking so long ?!" which is typcial of the friendly banter I have with my dealers...I mean coffee vendors.

I went back and forth with the girl at the counter until we were interrupted by some laughing. A good looking professional woman ( professional is in buisness woman...not prostitute so far as I could tell) was standing next to me laughing started chatting me up. We exchanged plesantries and out the door she went.

When I turned back around to get my coffee the girls behind the counter started howling. " SHE WAS TOTALLY TRYING TO PICK YOU UP !"

get outta here

" NO WAY MAN, AHAHAHAH, you were totally getting hit on"

So I turned back around to see the woman walking to her car and began to laugh with the girls.

Then I had an epiffany. I realized girls weren't laughing at HER...the girls were laughing at US.

Along the dividing line of "hip" there are cool young people and bungling has-beens...and I was on the wrong side of that counter.


Starbucks: The coffee is the $2. The shattered self image is free !

Don't Cry For Me Argenina

I woke my son up the this morning singing the theme to Evita in my best Ricky Riccardo voice.

" DON'T CRY FOR ME ARCH-IN-TIIIINE-JAAAA"

" ok I'm up already "


" THE TRUST IS I NEVER LEFT CHUUUU"


"cut it out !"


" ALL THROUGH MY WILD DAY AND MAD EXISTANCE "

" shut....up"

" I KEPT MY PROMISE "

" your so friggin weird "

" DON'T KEEP YOUR DEEES-TENSE "

" mooooooooommmmmmmmmmmm !"

Before my wife could yell at me for stirring up trouble or accuse me not knowing that Evita was a woman is said "Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do! " and walked out the door.

I suspect they're changing the locks right now.

Losing my grip

I played with my father and uncle over the weekend at a beautiful but difficult course in New Jersey.

10 minutes after parking my car, I realized I was in New Jersey. 4 Italians stood on the tee trying to cut and light their cigars while 45 carts full of Asians patiently waited to go off the first tee. Finally the starter came out and suggested the gentlemen consider teeing off.

The four guys, of course playing from the back tees, proceeded to boomerang four balls into the woods and spent another 10 minutes calling the starter a motherfucker and blaming their shots ( not on their horrible swings) on being rushed off the tee. And you know these are the same 4 guys who would have called the starter a motherfucker if he wasn't chasing the people ahead of THEM.

Of course they never played their balls in the woods, but instead dropped four balls in the fairway as compensation for this grave injustice. I suspect they were lawyers and or Catholics.

Using duct tape and kite string I cobbled together a 40 on the front nine and headed into the back with the hope of breaking 80 on a really challenging course.

On the par 5 12th hole I hit a great drive and was sitting at the 200 yard marker with the hope of reaching in two and going either eagle or birdie when my approach shot clipped the tip of the thinnest, barest, single branch hanging just over the edge of the fairway and the ball dropped just short of the green. OK, fine then....no worries...I'll just chip it on, one or two putt and get out of there.

The area around this particular hole looked like the front lawn of the White House. As far as you could seen in every direction was a vast ocean of perfectly groomed, emerald green grass. The entire area was unblemished except for one spot....one singular silver dollar size spot of bare dirt in the entire expanse of land between the tee and the green...and it was the spot diretly under my ball.

Now I was getting a little bit pissed off.

Between myself and the hole was a sand bunker, and behind the hole was some deep rough. I needed to pick this ball off the dirt patch, clear the bunker, but have enough loft so the ball wouldn't roll off the back and into the deep grass. Its wasn't impossible but it was going to necessitate a very good shot.

I took a calming breath and addressed the ball. I locked in and drew the club back slowly and.....WHIRRRRRRRRR......CLUNK....WHIRRRRRRRRRRR. Right in the middle of my back swing, the cart girl came buzzing around and evergreen tree full speed and right past me. CLUNK my ball went on a line drive over the bunker, past the hole, and disappeared off the green in 4 inches of thick rough on the other side. Furious, I spun around to say something, but she kept going by with a smile and a wave. She headed over the the next hole to sell some beer to the guys ahead of us.

The bitch was wearing a Yankees hat.

So now I"m really steaming but all is not lost. If I could somehow get the ball onto the green I could still possibly get a par and at least a bogey. And that's the torture of the game - from eagle to bogey from 10 yards out. Again I tried to calm myself and stay in the moment. My ball was sitting down in the grass and the only way to get it out of there was to make a daring play. Despite a short distance to the hole, I had to open up the face, make a full swing, and get under the ball. Anything more than that and I would go over the green. Anything less than that and the ball would only move a few inches.

I took a half dozen practice swings to build my courage, got comfortable and addressed the ball. I drew the club all the way back and coiled myself for a full swing.....WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRR.....CLUNK. Right at the apex of my swing that Derek Jeter loving bitch came flying by again. My club slammed into the ground a good half foot behind the ball and the chunck of dirt went next to the hole while my ball moved about an inch and a half.

Angrily I spun around to see her driving off into the distance. Insane with rage I lifted my wedge over my head like a tomahawk and in an act of defiance hurled it at the cart. Now I recognize that I'm crazy, but I'm not criminal. I threw the club at the girl, but she was a good 30 yards away in a cart going 10 miles per hour. I've done enough 5th grade math problems concerning trains leaving New York and Boston to know that by the time my club got to where she was, she'd be another 30 yards away oblivious to my outburst.

What they don't factor in for 5th grade is that the train leaving Boston might suddenly stop if the conductor mistakes your yelling " Bitch !" for you yelling " BEER !"

What had been an outburst of protest was turning into criminal assault at 20 yards and closing. The wedge spun end over end, implausibly on a dead trajectory for the Yankees logo. My father and my Uncle, who up to this point had simply been observers were about to become accomplices and suddenly, thankfully, they started screaming.... " GO ! GO ! GO !" and vigorously waving at the girl to get moving.

" Wha...?"

" GOOOOOOOO ! For the love of christ, GOOOOOOO !"

The girl was oblivious to her fate, but the look on my fathers face and he started waving and running across the green must have been enough because she hit the gas and started moving again.

SMASH...the club hit the back of the lunch cart portion of the vehicle with a crash. The girl paused again, look around confused, and drove off.

My hope is that she assumed it was an errant ball, but just to be safe I tipped her $6 the next time around. And I congratulated her on the Series.

Enough about Floyd

Every morning my newsfeed informs me of Floyd Landis' standing in the Tour of Southland or whatever meaningless race is going on in the southern hemisphere.

Besides the absurdity of listing the result of anyone else besides the leader, it made me consider, " who the hell is Floyd Landis ?"

He gets treated as cycling royalty and gets mentioned as a rider of the same class as Contador and Armstrong, but really, what has the guy accomplished ?

The ONLY year that they guy achieve ANYTHING is 2006...the year he got caught cheating.

Other than that his two biggest results are a win at the Tour of Algarve...booya...and a local USCF event, the Boulevard Road Race...which includes as a winner Heath Blackgrove who ironically enough is winning the our of Southland although no one outside of his mother actually knows about it.

And this is the fundamental problem with limited punishment for a cheating peice of crap like Landis. He's a guy who cheated the sport, then cheated friends and family out the their money with his bullshit legal defense fund, and who took resources away from WADA and USADA's ability to catch other dopers while the dealt with his bullshit appeal after appeal.

And in the end, riders like Oscar Piero, Heath Blackgrove, and countless others scrape together a living in cycling anonymity - while Landis continues to prosper and financially benefit from the exposure garnered ONLY through results and notoriety he achieved while cheating.

OK, silly picture time courtesy Marcie (thanks!)

This Is Water - DFW

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.

On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self.

Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

This Is Water, David Foster Wallace

How do you stack up ?

Remember the President Council on Physical Fitness tests you did in school as a kid ? Yeah the ones where you could just about do all the stuff except for the pull ups...and then you'd get pissed because the all the girls had to do was the flexed arm hang.

Anyway I looked those up yesterday.

Standards for 17 year old to meet the 85th percentile

Boys
55 sit-ups in 1 minute
8.7 second shuttle run
6:06 for the mile
53 push-ups ( not timed but continuous)
13 pull-ups

Those friggin pull-ups got me AGAIN !

Here the link for all the standards.

Home Run

IOZ consistantly hits it out of the park

As benedictory aphorisms go, "every vote counts" is right up there with your mother telling you that everyone is special and your coach reminding you that it doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game. Obviously some poeople are more special than others, and no one remembers the sportsmanlike conduct of Dallas in Superbowl X. The conceit of representative democracy, particularly when linked to state capitalism, is that procedural participation makes citizens into shareholders. There is a certain truth to this. But just as getting a yearly proxy statement and invitation to the annual meeting does not confer upon each small investor even marginal influence on the direction of GE, or whichever, nor yet does the franchise offer citizens much more than a semiannual opportunity to pretend that they matter, should they so desire. And, hell, that is part of the bargain. The small investor becomes a shareholder in order to gain benefit even though he holds no particular authority, has no say, exerts no influence, and bears no special responsibility. He's just along for the ride, but for the PR purposes of our so-called free markets, we are willing to entertain the ritual but un-literal truth that each shareholder is an "owner." Meanwhile, most shareholders haven't even got so direct a link as the independent investor, but simply gain by membership in some larger, institutional investment pool, some mutual fund or pension plan or what have you. Our democracy tracks similar lines via voters and affinity groups, and so long as the percieved value of our tiny shares is on the increase, we are content; when it decreases, we are not; but at no point do we have any say in the decisions made by those who actually own the joint.

and now your funny picture

funny pic of the day

There's happy...

Then there's Little Kid Happy

The kid's got skills

I'm coaching flag football. We have one kid...every team has one kid...who has no idea how to play. Somehow the kid who doesn't know how to play is the same one who raises his hand to ask 100 inappropriate questions.

me: "This that's the play we're going to run...does anyone have any questions ?"

Kid: "My Mom makes me call her new friend Uncle Jack, but he's not really my Uncle. Do you think that bothers my real Uncle ?"

me (frantic): "...ABOUT THE PLAY !!!...does anyone have any questions about THE PLAY !"

Yesterday there were no port-o-pots so we asked the kids before the game, " Does anyone have to go ?" Unanamously no one had to go.

5 minutes into the game I get a tug on my sleave, " Sir ?"...he calls everyone taller than him "Sir" like that chick who follows around Peppermint Patty. " Sir, I have to go to the bathroom."

" Can you hold it, the game just started ?"

" Ummm, yes"

We went all the way through half-time and started into the third quarter when I got another tug, " Sir I have to go to the bathroom"

" Kid we just ended halftime...why didn't you go then ? Can you hold it ?"

" Ummmm, I don't think so. I really really have to go."

So while the other coach took care of the team I ran the kid off to some bushes, " OK go here."

" Are you sure this is ok ?"

" Yeah kid hurry up", not only did I have to get back to the game, but as a general principal I don't like to find myself in the bushes with a little kid and his pants down.

" Ok sir", and the little kid pulled his tighty-whiteys down and started peeing.

I had my back turned watching the game and heard what sounded like a garden hose. I turned around a bit to see what could only be describe as a yellow version of the St. Louis Arch. The tiny little 3'6" kid was peeing OVER a 6 foot bush.

" HOLY SMOKES KID !"

" Yeah sir, I said I really had to go"

The boy continued like that for another minute before I finally gave up, " I gotta get back to the game. When you're done, clean yourself up and come back to the sideline.

" Ok sir", and I left him standing there like the Fountain of Trevi.

kill da waaabit

Everyone around here hunts. And they all are always asking everyone else about hunting... " Did you hunt... are you going to hunt... where do you hunt..." or its " this one time at hunting camp..."

For the non-hunters, like myself its quite an awkward and annoying time, because eventually the conversation comes around to you. When you admit that you're NOT a hunter and you're amongst hunters it can only go one of two bad ways. They either think that you don't approve or hunting and they start getting argumentative and defensive. The other option is they just think your a big deer humping pussy.

Its taken about 35 years, but I've finally figured out a means to coping with this issue. As soon as I see the conversation going that way I ask..

" When you shoot something, does it give you an erection ? Because the main thing that keeps from hunting is the fear that the rush of killing something will give me a boner and I'll spend the rest of my life associating sex with killing things....and that's a long dark road that I'm not quite ready to head down at this point in my life"

No one talks about hunting with me anymore.

how bout a Fresca ?

After a brief break I decided I'd give online poker another try.

This time however, I figured I'd waste all my time for goodness instead of badness. I've decided to donate half my winning for the next year to a small girl in Africa who's name I got from the local church.

Yesterday afternoon I won the girl a goat.

After a couple of vodkas last night, that was downgraded to a pair of sandals.

Hey, to a barefooted girl a pair of sandals is as good as a goat ! Anyway, what are you doing ?!

couple of random thoughts

* Steven Wright has a joke where he says, " you know that feeling where you're leaning back in a chair...and you go a little too far and you start to tip over...and at the last minute you recover ?.....I feel like that all the time"

I just had that feeling after twice punching in the wrong security code for mac-card with one of the old ATMs where the card goes inside the machine and then eats it on the third mistake.

Of course the first millimeter where your ass was supposed to touch the toilet seat that was left up in the middle of the night always qualifies as well.

* I had a great discussion with a guy about the evolution of the nerf basketball hoops. Somehow, without the benefit of the internet, coaching, playgroups, or classroom aides, kids all across America figured out how to play basketball in their bedrooms. Amazingly enough the natural evolution of the game seemed to have occurred regardless of geographical location or economic background.

- It started with a half opened door making a space between the door itself and the wall of the closet, with any round object slightly smaller than the triangle formed would work.

- The upgrade was the coat hanger shaped in the form of a hoop, with a balled up pair of socks serving as the ball. The catch here was the attempt to affix the coat hanger to something, usually a doortop. Duct tape was the universal choice, but still then, with the weight of the socks always exceeding the tensile strength of the wire hangar, the rim needed constant attention.

- Eventually, that Christmas, someones Aunt would breakdown and you'd find yourself in the big time with a full on Nerf hoop-set. For the life of me I don't know why, but I have the guttural feeling of love for the nerf basketball that is evenly balanced by my disdain for the nerf rim. There must have been something about that rim suppressed that might necessitate hypno-therapy. Then again, maybe some things are left well enough alone.

Some people played standing up, others on knees. Acceptable forms of dribbling include both the palms up flat handed tap as well as holding the ball palms down with a simulated dribble. In either dribble case, a flinch or a pause meant that you lost your dribble and had to shoot or pass.....passing of course was achieve by throwing the ball against any wall and inciting a scrum.

There usually always was some sort of line of demarcation, sometimes officially enumerated, sometimes through loose, unspoken agreement, where the offensive player could take an uncontested shot. If Princeton funded a study of my childhood bedroom, I suspect they'd find that the universal shooting for shots taken at the far end of the second curtain rod was exactly 50% uncontested. That might go slightly up for kids over 11, but could be easily regulated by feinted punches to the groin or the random barking of incoherent insults.

* That nerf/hoop conversation lead the the curious case of how "Jingle Bells Batman Smells" made it East Coast to West Coast, North and South...with consistent lyrics, in just 10 short years from the TV series inception until my first recollection of the song in the winter of 1976. But perhaps that a blog post for another time.

ABSURD

Here was the competition...

Denis Mukwege, a physician in war-torn Congo who opened a clinic to help rape victims.

Hu, a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, was sentenced last year to a three-and-a-half-year prison term for "inciting subversion of state power" ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

Cordoba, who leads Colombians for Peace, an organization whose aim is to facilitate peace negotiations between the government and the country's leftist FARC guerrillas. She has been at the forefront of efforts to peacefully end her country's half-century-old conflict, which is rooted in deep social divisions.

bin Muhammad, a philosophy professor in Jordan who advocates interfaith dialogue in the Middle East, a region shot through with sectarian violence, and Samar. She currently leads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and serves as the U.N. special envoy to Darfur.

Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China's communist system.

And the award went to OBAMA !?!?!?!...for....

"his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

REALLY ????!!!!

Listen, I voted for the guy. I was happy to have him in there instead of McCain, and would have given myself paper cuts of the scrotum if that's what it would have taken to get Bush out of office. But WTF has Obama accomplished in THIS country, let alone, in the efforts of world-wide peace ? Basically, in the 10 months the guys been if office he really hasn't done jack shit. Thats fine. But don't give the guy a cookie for it.

You think they'll present him with the award at Guantanamo, when he finally gets around to closing it ?

words of wisdom

Whenever I get asked to fix someone's computer and the error message on the screen includes the phrase "....xxxxxx.dll " I preemptively smash my balls in a desk drawer and plan on having lunch delivered.

Sore subject

I'm sore every day.

One year, almost to the day, I decided to stop being a fat bastard. For one year, I've diligently exercised, I've lost a bunch of weight, I've taken better care of myself.

And for one full year, every day, I'm sore.

And I'm pretty f-ing sick of it.

Now to make matters worse, I did a 10 mile trail run a week ago while fighting off a cold and ended up spending 4 full days in bed.

Yesterday I went and did a light 3 mile jog ( mind you in the last 2 months I've completed a half-ironman, did well in a 3+ hour adventure race, muddled through a hard 10 mile off road run, and trained average of 12 hours a week)..anyway...I did a light 3 mile jog, I was winded, and I woke up today sore as hell.

Shit, I threw darts last night with the boy and my arm is sore.

So I'm starting to wonder if perhaps there's some environmental condition in my home that's slowly poisoning me, is there really what I have to look forward to for the next 30 years (or so) I have left on this planet ?

See I like being fit, but I don't remember every being this miserable when I was a drunk fat bastard.

Tyson

I watched the Mike Tyson documentary Tyson last night. The movie is very well done and I'd recommend it to non-fight fans as well as boxing enthusiasts.

The movie is a long form interview of present day Mike Tyson interspersed with fight footage, home movies, and interviews from the past. The movie isn't really at all about boxing, but rather a look at the evolution of Tyson as a man.

I think the thing that has always made Tyson a captivating character is the contrast of him as the most vicious and deadly powerful fighter in the ring against his childlike qualities outside of the ring.

Self-admittedly, Tyson has limited capabilities in dealing with the world, but this movie shows that he's hardly stupid. If anything he's overly self-aware and honest to a fault. While much of his behavior is inexcusable, taken in full context of his life's story, its at least understandable.

At 19 years old Mike Tyson was the greatest fighter in history. Period.

By 30, he was washed up.

Now 40, he has the tired reflective tone of a 80 year old.

And all through it, he's never lost the emotional weakness and vulnerability of a 12 year old boy.

I can't help but think of the parallels between Tyson and Michael Jackson...the difference, at least as shown in this movie, being Tyson's attempts to address his demons. At the end this 90 minute piece, you get the sense that he'll always be the underdog in that battle, but you still can't help yourself rooting for the champ.