the shrewdness of apes

in perusing a story about a British bookmaker that has placed odds on the existence of god, the last paragraph caught my attention:

The French philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that although God's existence cannot be proven through reason, it makes sense to have religious faith since a person has everything to gain – an "infinitely happy life" – and nothing to lose by doing so.

i guess ol' Blaise never heard of Proposition 8. then again, he apparently called marriage "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian". zing! what a cutup. seriously, though, nothing to lose? as if religion had never deprived anyone of freedom or choice? as if no one ever committed evil deeds in the name of god? perhaps it is because i am a product of a significantly more morally-relative era, but even looking at it from a logician's point of view it would seem a hard statement to defend. and indeed, it seems there have been numerous criticisms lobbed at "Pascal's Wager" over the years. then i started reading more of his quotes, and he seems to have had a pretty bleak opinion of human nature and the prospects for happiness in this mortal coil (cf. "Nothing is surer than that the people will be weak" or "How hollow is the heart of man, and how full of excrement!").

of course, i meant this entry to be just a toss-off and it has instead started me down a path of late-night reading and existential thinking that leads to a very tangled set of intralocutions. Pascal was interested in attacking certainty, and i am finding that commodity in short supply now. in the interest of sleep and mental peace, however, i will sum it up by noting that when i saw that they were giving 4-to-1 odds on god's existence, my first thought was "yeah, that seems about right" and now i'm not sure whether that means i'm more or less predisposed to the concept and and how much hedging of my bets needs to be done to ensure that i don't lose my metaphysical shirt.

Posted by Jamie at 11:01 PM | Permalink

when one of your heroes dies, convention says you're supposed to feel sad, bereft, a bit emptier than before. life loses some luster, food doesn't taste as good, whywhywhy, etc. so why does the (self-imposed) death of David Foster Wallace last week not leave me feeling any of that? i have found his writing so completely enjoyable and fulfilling over the years - even the impenetrable stuff. there were times when i even felt like he was writing from inside my own brain, which is not something any other writer has been able to accomplish (not that they would want to). and i really admired the way he would tackle such disparate subjects as tennis, mathematics, grammar, cruises, festivals, film, and food and always find some unique truths and insight in each. if you could get through the dense prose and the myriad footnotes (which were often some of the most entertaining parts), you could feel a sense of accomplishment and that you might have been given the opportunity to gain a better understanding of the world.

sometimes death provides answers, but more than anything, his death just leaves me with questions. were there any signs of depression in his writing? did acclaim and admiration leave him feeling empty? does "genius" mean a higher likelihood of unhappiness? should i be concerned because i identify so closely with some of his work? why did he choose hanging over the other options?

i'm going to spend some time reading and re-reading his work in the coming months, and i am thankful that it exists. but i doubt that i will gain any additional insight into the mindset that led him to his fate. and i don't think that i will suddenly feel like a part of me has gone missing. come to think of it, i may have learned that from reading his work.

Posted by Jamie at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

i'm still not 100% sold on the Olympics in general (the IOC is a travesty, etc.), and I still think that China is getting off way too easy on a lot of issues (lip synching? age scandals? doesn't anyone care that there are still well over 100 Tiananmen Square protestors in jail 19 years later? didn't thousands of children die when substandard schools collapsed in an earthquake while other buildings held up fine?), but i'm not ready to start ranting in earnest yet, and i've been watching more than i thought i would be, so let's take a look at something totally mindless: medal biting.

Slate did a short piece about this back in 2006, with the explanation that this tradition serves to test whether the medals are real, but gives no history. the practice has become so prevalent that the Olympian Blog has gone so far as to create a "medal biting" label for its entries, while apparently journalists will request that winner bite their medals for photo ops. as the pictures above show, this is not a new phenomenon, and appears to transcend race, gender and national borders (and possibly sexual orientation as well). some people seem serious, while others seem to be joshing around. there are plenty more examples to study. so i guess my question comes down to, is the authenticity of the medals really in any sort of doubt? has anyone ever received a fake medal? has anyone ever chipped a tooth? is this like the kidnappee who is forced to pose with that day's newspaper to prove he is still alive? is it really so interesting to see athletes biting their medals that they need to be asked to do so? does it make me some sort of killjoy that i think this tradition is wholly lame?

OK, back to the gymnastics and the debate over how on earth anyone can believe this girl is 16.

Posted by Jamie at 11:07 PM | Permalink

warning: this space may become active with little or no additional notice. whether it ever gets re-designed is another matter.

Posted by Jamie at 01:54 PM | Permalink

after my busiest season of the year at work, i finally got some time to spend with my old friend the internet over the weekend. as usual, s/he (has the internet been assigned a preferred gender yet? i think it needs one) didn't disappoint. cf. this article from Flak about vasectomy. i'll spare you the gory details, especially of the horrifying "Scenario 2" but i will share this amusing paragraph:

The premise is simple enough. Impregnation happens when sperm travels through a pair of tubes from the testicles to the penis and hence, now carried in a viscous fluid, into a woman who loves Daddy very much. By severing each of these tubes, called a vas deferens (plural: vas deferentia), the sperm is prevented from carrying out its mission, sexual congress is decoupled from reproduction and the Pope cries in his muesli. Another victory for science and reason over nature.

that prompted me to send the link to my brother who underwent the dreaded procedure last year. (side note: his first offspring now has his own blog which can be found here and updated daily so far. proud uncle that i am, i think it's more entertaining than about 98% of what's out there, including what you are now reading.) i hadn't really talked to him about it at all, but he sent along some details. those with strong stomachs can read on after the jump. the squeamish will be better off just reading Flak's review of Domino's Brooklyn-style pizza.

Continue reading "fun with elective surgery" »

Posted by Jamie at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

here's Steve Levy on SportsCenter tonight as they show "highlights" of a fight between a Maple Leafs player and a Devils player which he described gleefully as "lasting about 3 times as long as your average hockey fight":

"this is how hockey polices itself."

now apparently this fight took place in response to a rough hit that had been made in a previous game between the teams. but do you think it would have been described in such casual terms if it had taken place in an NBA game? or if it was a black baseball player charging the mound (think Milton Bradley)? could the racism be any more obvious? white NHL players are "police" while NBA players are thugs. i suppose it might go without saying that the (mostly) white audience was cheering the whole thing.

i'm not opposed to fighting in hockey, though i don't find it hugely entertaining. nor am i trying to condone something like Ron Artest going after fans in the stands (as much as those fans might have had it coming). i just think it's distasteful that the same people who tsk tsk when black players fight become cheerleaders when it's white guys involved. this is the same mindset that puts "scrappy" white guys like David Eckstein and Darin Erstad on a pedestal despite the fact that they're simply not very good players.

Posted by Jamie at 02:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

a conversation with the wife about the Ten Commandments prompted me to crack open our version of "The Children's Living Bible". i'm sure the answer is no, but have any of you actually read this thing lately? shit is crazy. check out Leviticus 11:29-38 as Jehovah fills Moses and Aaron in on some of the "unclean" animals:

"These are the forbidden small animals which scurry about your feet or crawl upon the ground: The mole, the rat, the great lizard, the gecko, the mouse, the lizard, the snail, the chameleon. Anyone touching their dead bodies shall be defiled until evening, and anything upon which the carcass falls shall be defiled - any article of wood, or of clothing, a rug, or a sack; anything it touches must be put into water, and is defiled until evening. After that it may be used again. If it falls into a pottery bowl, anything in the bowl is defiled, and you shall smash the bowl. If the water used to cleanse the defiled article touches any food, all of it is defiled. Any drink which is in the defiled bowl is also contaminated.

"If the dead body of such an animal touches any clay oven, it is defiled and must be smashed. If the body falls into a spring or cistern where there is water, that water is not defiled; yet anyone who pulls out the carcass is defiled. And if the carcass touches grain or be sown in the field, it is not contaminated; but if the seeds are wet and the carcass falls upon it, the seed is defiled."

got that? the potential defilements go on for pages and pages and i won't even get into the passages on menstruation and childbirth (quick summary: be prepared to offer some sacrificial animals to your local priest). but fortunately for Christians, Jesus saved them from such rules. Orthodox Jews are ostensibly still bound by these laws, but have been allowed to skip the sacrifices since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E. while this was interesting to learn about, it only served to reinforce that the more i learn about religion, the more peculiar it seems.

Posted by Jamie at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

i've often said that if i were ever to enter a competitive eating event, the only conceivable food that i might be able to throw down in quantity would be chicken wings. i've probably never eaten more than 20 or 25 at once, but under the right circumstances, i could see plowing through 50 no problem. that still wouldn't get me anywhere near the record of 173 (in 30 minutes), but it also doesn't make me sick to my stomach just thinking about it they way, say, 1.5 gallons of chili, 45 conch fritters or 4 32-ounce bowls of mayonnaise does.

i bring this up because we're headed to Buffalo Wild Wings next weekend for my birthday, where they advertise that their wings are "sauce-spun". frankly that doesn't sound like my ideal mode of preparation (they're also touting a new menu and claim that "you can’t live on wings alone," which seems like soft peddling of their signature product), but they have a good reputation and i've somehow missed out on going during trips to Ohio where they are concentrated, so i'm going to give it a go. i'll start with 2 dozen and see where it goes from there. i should probably stick to the Lite beer.

quick competitive eating note: Sonya Thomas was recently deposed as the oyster-eating queen by some guy who managed to put away 53.5 dozen oysters in about 35 minutes. she does still own the "short form" record by downing 46 dozen (that's 552) in just 10 minutes, which can't possibly be human. i remember being at the Acme Oyster House in New Orleans several years ago, and staring astonished at the wall of fame where the leaders had eaten 30-odd dozen. but what progress we've made as a species since then - i can't believe no one has died during one of these contests (i suppose you could count that woman who died of water intoxication, but that seems different).

looking over the IFOCE record page is astonishing, not just for the sheer volume of food consumed, but also for the variety of categories: tiramisu, waffles, matzo balls, grapes, deep-fried okra, cow brains, something called "Horseshoe sandwiches". it almost makes you never want to eat again.

Posted by Jamie at 10:41 PM | Permalink

a blog named after our closest genetic relative would be remiss to not pass along a good piece of writing on intelligent design and where it really fits in to the debate over evolution. (which is soon to be joined by the debate over global warming in the overwhelming evidence category. ironically, the tipping point in that battle may have just been provided by the evangelical movement.) the following comes from Gregg Easterbrook's most recent NFL column, which as you could infer is not always just about football. and it allows me to once again employ the services of a quality writer to say things that would be much less eloquent coming out of my fingers.

No Higher Power Is Guiding "Intelligent Design" Politics : Yours truly thinks the "intelligent design" idea is being given the short shrift by the mainstream media. Yes, some intelligent design advocates want to use I.D. as a Trojan horse to put religious doctrine into public schools -- forbidden by the First Amendment, and wisely so in the opinion of this churchgoer. And some intelligent design advocates believe young Earth creationism, a nutty idea for which there isn't one iota of scientific evidence. But as they mock the notion of intelligent design, the mainstream media is systematically avoiding a substantial question mark in evolutionary theory: it does not explain the origin of life. That organisms evolve in response to changes in their environment is well-established -- anyone who doubts this doesn't know what he or she is talking about. But why are there living things in the first place? Darwin said he had no idea, and to this day science has little beyond wild guesses about the origin of life. Maybe life had a natural origin that one day will be discovered. Until such time, higher powers or the divine cannot be ruled out. Exactly because I think intelligent design is a more important concept than the mainstream media will admit, I really wish right-wing screwballs would stop advocating I.D. -- they're giving the idea a bad name! First, it's common to hear them say evolution can be disregarded because it's "just a theory."

This is ill-informed. In everyday usage, "theory" can mean a conjectural or unlikely claim. ("See, I have this theory why Maria Sharapova would go out with me.") In science, a theory is an idea that has well-accepted supporting principles, has been tested successfully and that no one has falsified; in science the word theory conveys high standing. For instance, first relativity was an analytical idea, then a hypothesis, then after many years of testing was acknowledged as a theory. When in 1996 Pope John Paul II called Darwinianism "more than a hypothesis," he was choosing words precisely. Many on today's anti-science right appear ignorant of such basic precepts as the definition of the word theory.

The screwball fringe keeps proposing I.D.-related legislation that shows it doesn't even understand the limits of evolutionary theory. Two years ago some science illiterates in Cobb County, Ga., got the local Board of Education to mandate stickers on biology textbooks reading, "Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things." Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of living things. The core quandary of Darwinian logic is that we can imagine how living things evolve but cannot imagine how they came into existence in the first place. Now a know-nothing Utah state representative has proposed this bill that "requires the State Board of Education to establish curriculum requirements and policies that stress that not all scientists agree on which theory regarding the origins of life … is correct." Hey, Utah state legislature, there are no theories on the origin of life. A few biologists have made wild guesses involving RNA, clay or hot ocean vents, but no scientist has offered anything nothing remotely near the level of a testable theory. (The details on that point) Given the presence of life is so mysterious, a creator God may be why we are here. But please, science illiterates, stop attempting to enact rules about intelligent design; you are ruining the idea.

Posted by Jamie at 12:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Idiotarod 2006 is officially on. January 28th, hundreds of entrants, shopping carts, costumes, decorations, sabotage, 5 miles from Brooklyn to Manhattan. if ever an event cleaved to the adage that "it's not whether you win or lose", this is it. check out some pictures of last year's event and then go on and enter.

Posted by Jamie at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

tonight's episode: car battery

the problem: the Jeep i drive for work came up lame a few weeks ago when i accidentally left the lights on for 5+ hours while playing softball. in my defense, you have to turn the lights on the start the car and it used to make a sound when you turned it off and the lights were still on. that noise has since ceased for some reason related to the fact that the car has suffered much wear and tear over the course of 113,000 miles of New York City driving.

manifestation: when i returned to the parking lot, the car would not start. a nice gentleman in a white van gave me a jump, and everything seemed to be OK (there are more details involving the process of getting the hood open due to damage caused by an accident i was in the previous week, but i don't need to incriminate myself in more boneheaded acts right now). but half a block from home, stopped at a red light, the engine just petered out and would not restart. fortunately i was on a slight downslope and was able to (very slowly) coast across the street and park. later that evening a frined came by with a car and we attempted another jumpstart. again, i was able to start things up, but this time the engine cut off seconds after the jumper calbe were disconnected. one last attempt was able to keep it running long enough for me to park it on the other side of the street t avoid alternate side penalties the next day, but that was it. clearly, a new battery was needed.

attempted solution: this was an accidental d.i.y. effort. due to work requirements, i really needed the car to be functioning that week, so i hoped that i could get a mechanic in my neighborhood (there are about 83 of them in a 10 block radius) to come by and replace it. no one was in a terribly helpful mood until i got to Midas, and i was running low on time. they couldn't do anything unless i got the car towed there, but the guy behind the counter said "why don't you just go over to Joe's, get a battery and put it in yourself?" after assuring me that i would only need a wrench to get the job done, i decided to go for it. 5 minutes later i was walking home with a 40 pound battery in tow. of course, 15 minutes of frantic searching turned up no wrench - we are a household where the wife brought more tools into the relationship than i did. a quick trip to a neighbor produced two wrenches and some dollar store work gloves rounded out the equipment list. it was time to get to work.

the setup was surprisingly simple: there was a bar holding the battery in place and two wires connected to the positive and negative terminals. once everything was removed, the old battery popped out with ease and the new one took it's place. terminals were connected, bolts were tightened and amazingly enough, the car started right up. problem solved!

well, not so fast. on the trip into Manhattan, the battery and "check engine" lights both came on after 15 minutes. the same thing happened on the way home that night, but there was no sputtering or any other signs of trouble, so i thought that maybe the car was just "getting used to" the new battery, a suspicion that seemed confirmed the next morning when the trip to work was accomplished sans warning lights. that afternoon, however as i headed home to walk the dog and make a pickup before heading back to work, the speedometer stopped working as i hurtled down the BQE. not a good sign. i made it home fine, but knew deep down that the Jeep would not start again when i got back into it. this time my instincts were correct as the only noise was the "click-click-click" that indicated that no charge was reaching the engine. two guys on the street fished out a portable battery to attempt another jump, but that only succeeded in getting me to the end of the block. after explaining that i had just replaced the battery, they nodded knowingly and said "it must the be the alternator". that didn't sound like something that i could do myself and so i resigned myself to bringing in an expert. luckily, the car was sitting idly right in front of a repair shop.

final resolution: i subsequently found out that the old battery in car was actually less than 2 years old and was likely never the problem. the mechanics needed a full day to get the new alternator in and running correctly, but things have been back to normal since - which is to say that the car still runs, yet always seems to be one pothole away from throwing a tire or having the transmission drop out the bottom. still, the battery that i installed is in there making things happen, so there is some success to celebrate.

total cost: $55 for the battery, $1 for gloves and $175 for the alternator (incl. labor). all costs reimbursed except for gloves.

upcoming episodes: ginger ale, pickles, shelves (not confirmed at air time)

Posted by Jamie at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

thanks to some mail addressed to a previous occupant, i found the perfect outlet for all that latent aggression that i've recently been wasting on the morons clogging up New York City's highways and biways: Skirmish USA's paintball in the Poconos! to quote from the brochure in all of its prosaic glory...

"For the last 10 years paintball has been the fastest growing sport in the world, because it's fun and exciting. Its become so popular because people like you play it, ejoy it and come back. You will too. The adrenaline high, running around in the woods, doo to door village assaults, hunting and being hunted, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat; it's all there and easy to do any day of the week....You arrive in the morning and are home that evening. In between you're a warrior, fighting for survival. From castles to towns to woods to forts, we have the battlefields to test you."

hello, corporate teambuilding! no, seriously. unfortunately, we've missed The Battle of Stalingrad (the Germans won), but have no fear because the D-Day re-enactment is right around the corner.

behind the scenes at Fort Skirmish

don't forget to hire their photographer to take pictures of your memorable day as well. and for those wondering "what's it like to be shot with a paintball?" the answer is apparently "[i]t's not gunna send you to the hospital, but it's NO Kiss on the cheek either!"

flex if you love paintball!

Posted by Jamie at 01:43 AM | Permalink

NYC area radio listeners should keep their ears peeled for a relatively new ad from a company called Intelligent Energy. they're guaranteeing rates for natural gas for 3 years, but that's not why the spot is interesting (in fact, that would be why the spot is deathly boring). my ears pricked up once they announced the phone number: 877-I'VEGOTGAS. while it got my attention, i'm not sure if it did so for the wrong reasons, at least as far as they're concered. call me juvenile - it wouldn't be the first time - but i about crashed the car laughing when i heard it and the convulsions only got more intense with the jingle at the end. in it, a disembodied caucasian female voice instructs you to call "1-877 I've......Got GAS!" in such a perky, unexpected way that it couldn't be any more perfect.

Posted by Jamie at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

don't want to step on Wisdom Weasel's toes with a piece of history on the weekend, but this bit isn't date specific and deals with fascism as opposed to communism, so i'll assume its different enough.

a couple weeks ago, a visiting friend saw the wife's copy of Gray's Anatomy on the shelf and made a comment regarding its possible origins in the atrocities of the Holocaust, with Jews being used as the (sometimes live) models for the drawings within. i thought it was interesting and potentially horrifying, so i decided to see what the internet might hold in the way of information, or at least wild speculation. from what I can find, Gray's Anatomy actually goes back to the 19th century and has been fairly strictly created by Brits and Americans with no apparent connection of it to the Holocaust. however, there is another anatomy book that does fit the bill, created in the 1940s by a Dr. Eduard Pernkopf of the University of Vienna, and in which some of the bodies used in its creation were almost certainly Jews who perished at the hands of Nazis. Pernkopf himself was a rabid Nazi. the story is pretty fascinating, as partially taken from this transcript of a radio show from 5 years ago:

Max Kamien: On October 1st 1998, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Vienna held a press conference to table a report about the origin of bodies used by Professor Eduard Pernkopf in the Department of Anatomy between 1938 and 1945 in the preparation of colour illustrations for his world famous anatomy atlas. The report documented a minimum of 1,377 bodies sent from the Gestapo execution chamber in Vienna to Pernkopf's Department of Anatomy and the exploitation of brains of children murdered at the Vienna psychiatric hospital.

What led this once prestigious university to confront this darkest chapter in its long history? It began with an oral surgeon in New York.

Continue reading "the, uh, anatomy of an anatomy tome" »

Posted by Jamie at 01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

"There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol...There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality...But they used to take morphia and cocaine...Two thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists were subsidized in A.P. 178...Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug...Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant...All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects...Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology...Stability was practically assured...It only remained to conquer old age...All the physiological stigmata of old age have been abolished. And along with them, of course...Along with them all the old man's mental peculiarities. Characters remain constant throughout a whole lifetime...Work, play�at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen. Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking�thinking!...Now�such is progress�the old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think�or if ever by some unlucky chance such a crevice of time should yawn in the solid substance of their distractions, there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon; returning whence they find themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour and distraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl to pneumatic girl, from Electromagnetic Golf course to �"

- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Posted by Jamie at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

what to do when you Google someone in an attempt to locate their contact info for something work related only to find out that they write JAG fanfiction? you can't exactly pick up the phone and call without giggling. i've so far resisted the urge to share this information with co-workers but i guess i'll just have to send an e-mail and pray that we never meet face-to-face.

did you know that JAG consistently pulls in ratings/shares of around 6.5/11. that means that over 6 million households are watching this show. now, the t.s.o.a. crowd tends to be a bit provincial, but do you know anyone who watches this show? it's been on for 10 years! perhaps they all keep themselves intentionally anonymous, like the Masons or the Klan or something. i guess it's popular enough for fanfiction but i couldn't even bring myself to read any of it.

Posted by Jamie at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

for a truly surreal experience, try interviewing people for your own position at work. after about the 3rd one, you have to start finding ways to entertain yourself by coming up with different ways to say the same thing and prod people into giving answers with any sort of discernible meaning beyond vague platitudes and generalizations. some people are just complete dead conversational weight. attention interviewees - if you can't even be bothered to make yourself sound interesting what chance do you think you have?

it also becomes very easy to be distracted by staring at someone's face for too long, which i think you're supposed to do in order to convey that you're listening. it's hard to pay attention when your brain keeps interrupting with questions like "wait, which of his eyes is the good one again?" and "does he realize he has that whitehead on his chin?" and "do you really want to hire someone who looks to be one bad chromosome away from the Coney Island freak show?" it seems unfair but those sorts of things certainly enter your thought process when trying to differentiate among numerous qualified candidates.

strangest experience so far: one gentleman of Haitian/Dominican descent was talking about his mother who is a lawyer. i think he was talking about some of her clients when he uttered the phrase "i'm no racist, but..." before describing the fact that he found some of them unsavory, which i guess was part of his reason for shunning the profession. set aside that those are words that should never be used in an interview setting, and instead focus on the fact that i believe he was talking about black people while he himself is black (granted of West Indian origin rather than African-American - still the histories aren't all that different). what was i to make of such a statement? race would have never entered the equation if he hadn't brought it up, but now i was left with a number of unanswered questions - none of which i could ask. i think it took me 20 or so seconds to stop trying to figure out exactly what had happened and move things in a new direction.

another guy responded to my "fun" question regarding his favorite place he's ever visited by doing everything but offering me a time share in the Caribbean. then he sent an e-mail thanking me for my time (which scored points) but added a P.S. that read: "On a side note you were deciding what to do for your vacation, and I threw the idea of the Carribean as a good choice. Well the best way for you to experience what the Carribean has to offer (since you never been there) would be a cruise. Carnival have cruises that go to several different islands in one trip. From the things I heard and pictures that I've seen from family and friends that went on a Carnival cruise trust me you will not be disappointed. Check out there website www.carnival.com". hilarious, and i'm not just talking about the questionable grammar. i guess he didn't count on "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" being among my favorite peices of writing.

two more left for tomorrow. would that they were a bit more dynamic but i'm not getting my hopes up. one guy name dropped Marist College in the first sentence of every paragraph of his cover letter. but the other guy is another Geography major who abandoned his field of study soon after leaving college so perhaps there's a chance for some interesting conversation after all.

Posted by Jamie at 06:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

two people - let's say a husband and wife - pull on opposite sides of a wishbone. each comes away with a bone segment but the middle section somehow detaches and drops to the floor, belonging to no one. assuming one party's segment was slightly larger than the other, whose wish gets granted? the longer piece? neither person? both people? the floor?

Posted by Jamie at 06:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

as we head into the shortened holiday work week and prepare to enter a Turkey coma come Thursday, please be aware of what is NOT causing said coma: tryptophan. so sorry Seinfeld fans, sorry Weasel, and sorry Royal Caribbean (their current ads claim that a cruise is the antidote to tryptophan). as usual, the folks at the Urban Legend Reference Pages set it straight:

Turkey does contain tryptophan, an amino acid which is a natural sedative. But tryptophan doesn't act on the brain unless it is taken on an empty stomach with no protein present, and the amount gobbled even during a holiday feast is generally too small to have an appreciable effect. That lazy, lethargic feeling so many are overcome by at the conclusion of a festive season meal is most likely due to the combination of drinking alcohol and overeating a carbohydrate-rich repast.

Those who still feel wary of turkey's purported sleep-inducing properties should find solace in the knowledge that many items we eat contain tryptophan. Milk, beef, and beans are among the foodstuffs which house this amino acid, and experts say chicken has higher levels of tryptophan than turkey does. If tryptophan were truly the sandman's henchman, we'd be falling asleep at the wheel on our way home from KFC.

so eat, watch football and make merry, but go easy on the wine and please make sure to brine your turkey.

Posted by Jamie at 02:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

as we get closer to the weekend, let this serve as your reminder to turn your clocks back on Saturday night as we once again take part in the process of Daylight Savings Time. i knew that Benjamin Franklin originated the idea, but didn't know that it had only been sporadically in effect (including through all of WWII) in the U.S. before 1966. i'm sort of torn. on the one hand it seems to be a fairly trivial exercise in these days when fewer than 1% of the population farms. and i really enjoyed this quote:

A writer in 1947 wrote, "I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves." (Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947, XIX, Sunday.)

but on the other hand, there is evidence that turning the clocks ahead in April leads to energy savings, less crime and fewer traffic accidents. so why don't we just keep Daylight time all year round, thereby preventing the hurtful act of watching the sun go down at 4:30pm in the winter? Congress tried this for a couple years in the early 70s but relented to opposition from farming states in 1975. let's pick a time and stick with it. more arguments against DST here.

Posted by Jamie at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

between the potentially heartbreaking Game 7 scheduled for Sunday and the potentially heartbreaking election scheduled for Tuesday, the mood at t.s.o.a. headquarters in the coming weeks is going to be highly dependent on events outside of our control. the best case scenario is unadulterated glee pushing us right through the holiday season (which has not started yet, i don't care what Ben Affleck says). the worst case scenario has the Fates piling it on with a serious case of Seasonal Affective Disorder lasting until May.

in our favor, mas over at Handwashings was kind enough to send one of the champagne corks from the Sox' ALCS victory celebration which has served as a serious good luck charm thus far.

Posted by Jamie at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

hazing has a long and troubled history, and includes such watershed events as Ben Affleck chasing freshmen witha paddle, Emilio Estevez taping Larry Lester's buns together, Homer joining the StoneCutters, the new guy having to buy Wendy's for everyone during poker night and those kids who got sexually assualted with a broomstick on Long Island last year. while every year there are a few stories about fraternity and sorority rituals that end up in trips to the hospital or the morgue, much of this type of activity tends to involve the sports world. click here for a rundown of hazing incidents since 2000 from ESPN's Outside the Lines.

so does it set a bad example when a team such as the Twins makes their rookie relievers carry a Barbie backpack stocked with gum, sunflower seeds, et. al. to and from the bullpen every day? or when the Yankees veterans take their rookies' clothes and replace them with Elvis outfits that the rookies have to wear on the way to Boston? personally i think that sort of activity is all in good fun among adults, whereas forcible broom handle sodomy or smearing people with a concoction of house paint, fish guts, and human feces (as happened during a powder-puff football game in a Chicago suburb last year) are evil perpetrated by those with low self-esteem and a lack of basic compassion and supported by those who turn a blind eye to activities that can have severe emotional and physical consequences. but where to draw the line? at what point does good-natured fun become sick torture? and wasn't Abu Ghraib simply a logical extension of a culture that thinks that forcing men to play naked Twister or branding people against their will is funny or approriate? not that this problem is unique to America, but it is interesting that we maintain this air of moral superiority despite our numerous and obvious failings in this regard [ed. note: kind of like this blog!]. but i guess in a place where we can win a war that we're losing, self-delusion is just par for the course.

***UPDATE*** Cheerleader boots help protect rookie!

A Cleveland Indians pitcher was treated and released from a Kansas City hospital Thursday, a day after being shot in the right calf when a bullet pierced the team's bus and grazed another player.

"Our trainers said the boots may have saved Kyle from further injury," Swain said.

Posted by Jamie at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

despite the name of this blog (and the resulting nicknames it has earned me), i was unable to provide a correct answer to the question "name the three species commonly known as the 'Great Apes'" during this month's Dr. Fact's Night of 50 Questions. the answer is gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees. we left off the chimps in favor of bonobos. and after reading this description of them, can you blame us?

The species is best characterized as female-centered and egalitarian and as one that substitutes sex for aggression. Whereas in most other species sexual behavior is a fairly distinct category, in the bonobo it is part and parcel of social relations--and not just between males and females. Bonobos engage in sex in virtually every partner combination (although such contact among close family members may be suppressed). And sexual interactions occur more often among bonobos than among other primates. Despite the frequency of sex, the bonobo's rate of reproduction in the wild is about the same as that of the chimpanzee. A female gives birth to a single infant at intervals of between five and six years. So bonobos share at least one very important characteristic with our own species, namely, a partial separation between sex and reproduction.

sounds pretty Great to me!

Posted by Jamie at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

the morning news linked to an mp3 of John Cage's 4'33", which consists of 273 seconds of silence. this reminded me of a funny story that's worth re-telling. a couple years ago, a group of us are sitting around in O'Connors some afternoon. the subject of this piece comes up and eventually we begin to wonder whether we could all sit there in silence for that long. the bar is virtually empty except for us meaning the lack of noise will be noticeable so we decide to give it a shot. the only problem is that none of us knew the exact length of the piece. we somehow decided that it was 14 minutes long instead of 4.5. that extra 10 minutes makes a big difference when you're sitting there staring at each other trying desperately not to laugh or make any other noise in the pursuit of performance art. about halfway through, a friend arrived food in hand. noticing that no one is talking, he simply sat down and began to eat. then with two minutes left another friend joined the fray. she was less patient, immedaitely demanding to know what was going on and declaring our exercise "stupid". as we all took turns stifling giggles and arching eyebrows the time expired and we all marveled at how anyone could take a vow of silence when those were the longest 14 minutes ever. of course, the official brother of t.s.o.a. (holding a B.A. in music) was able to set the record straight when we next talked, rendering us all a bit sheepish and wondering what conversational gems an extra 10 minutes of bar banter may have produced.

Posted by Jamie at 02:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

going to the dentist today for my first teeth cleaning in 10 years and a few (minor) fillings to boot, i figured i was in for at least a couple of hours worth of torture. instead i was headed out the door whistling only 60 minutes after i had arrived. the cleaning was a breeze and the fillings required no anaesthetic.

the only problem that arose was in being given the choice between the classic silver fillings and the newer composite (white) fillings. straight up, the composites would be an easy choice since they blend into your teeth's natural color and require less drilling, although the procedure tends to take longer. and of course, the silver amalgam fillings contain mercury which it usually pays to avoid putting into your body. but insurance doesn't cover the whole amount of the composite fillings (thanks, Aetna!), so i would have been stuck with a tab of over $240. i could tell the dentist was disappointed that i chose the el-cheapo route, but too bad. he'll have to get some other sucker to subsidize his new boat.

Posted by Jamie at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

a co-worker gave me $10 (ostensibly for lunch) for helping him to purge files off of a laptop computer that he needed to return to someone. he even went so far as to warn me that he had visited some websites that could be considered "impolite". really, there wasn't too much incriminating evidence, even in the stuff buried in the nooks and crannies of the registry and temp files. but, like virtually every computer i've come across in recent memory, there was a ton of spyware, adware and tracking cookies gumming up the works. those things are insidious and have to be responsible for about a 25% loss of computing power for the average user. i should start a consulting service devoted exclusively to eradicating these things from people's computers. the necessary software is all free (i use a combination of 4 different programs), but the time and know-how necessary have value. i think $30 an hour sounds fair.

Posted by Jamie at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

one of the biggest hidden and widely unknown evils out there today is the multi-level marketing (MLM) scam, an intricate pyramid scheme that essentially builds itself on the sale of worthless products by large teams of deluded, lowly paid salespeople for the benefit of a few "motivated" and "dedicated" people who have "succeeded" at the business. but their success comes at the expense of hundreds and thousands of peons who can not infiltrate the higher levels of the pryamid which are, by definition, limited in size. Amway is more or less an example of this type of thing that everyone is familiar with, and depsite their being the butt-end of jokes since the 1970s, they're still alive and kicking. another more recent example is Herbalife, which is ulimately responsible for many of those "work from home" and "lose 10 lbs. in 10 days" signs that you see in subway cars and on telephone poles. for an in-depth discussion of Herbalife, i highly recommend checking our the work done by Rob Cockerham of cockeyed.com. it's very long and involved, but the work he did in exposing the company and it's practices is highly worthwhile.

i bring this up because nearly everyday when i get off the subway on my way to the office, there is a morass of young men and women pulling large boxes down the stairs and into the station. they're typically dressed in shirts and ties and there are 1 or 2 people seemingly in charge who are leading them around. this has gone on for the 3 years that i've worked here though the people i see have changed constantly. given the whole demeanor of the situation, i assumed that they were likely involved in a similar type of MLM that required them to go out and sell whatever crap happened to be in those boxes. but it was only this morning that i made a note of the company stamped on the boxes - Innovage - and decided to do a little digging. as it happens, Innovage (whose website is amlost certainly intentionally vague) is tied up in someway with a company called DS-Max (Direct Selling to the Max!) which is ambiguously involved in so may different things it would take months to get it all straight. the points is that these kids ae basically being exploited by an organization that preaches about opportunity, making your own success and six figure salaries but on which most people end up losing money - only to hear themselves described as "quitters" and "lazy" by the lucky few who make it to the upper echelons - when the deck that's been stacked against them finally chews them up. but apparently there's always a few more ready to take their place.

but the truly amazing thing is the number of people who come to their defense and claim what a legitimate business it is and how much they believe in it, to the point where one post i read on a site devoted to this topic claimed that "without us there would be no Christmas" after someone posted that the quality of their products was equal to that of products sold in dollar stores (and in fact, much of the merchandise they peddle IS sold in dollar and other discount stores).

for more insight on how they operate, check out this glossary of terms which is sort of like leafing through Satan's playbook (example - Atmosphere : Happens once in the beginning of the day before the morning meeting and once at the end of the day after people come back from the field. In atmosphere people should be constantly "juiced" about the opportunity, be either practice pitching, telling a pro ds-max descendant story about how you succeeded with the marketing system, or some elses success story, be explaining the 5 and 8 to others and loud motivational music should be playing. Nothing negative about the business should be said. No new people should be allowed to be near each other or they might talk each other out of the business. An aura of excitement should pervade the room.). also check out the Rip Off Report for numerous stories of people getting sucked into this cult-like atmosphere who want to prevent others from making the same mistakes.

Posted by Jamie at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

New York City would firmly occupy the gray area on any black-to-white morality scale. and as such it allows for plenty of opportunities to indulge ones urges and predilections both high-minded and low-brow, noble and shameful. yet sometimes it leaves you scratching your head, unsure of what has just happened.

so it was that i found myself in the grocery store a few hours ago, putting together some items for lunch.

Continue reading "i guess it's enough to buy some hooch...or some crack" »

Posted by Jamie at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

in what may be quickly becoming the best 2-day period of married life by which all non-birth events shall be judged, the wife (squared) and i are moving out of the urban sticks and into urban suburbia (details on yesterday's cavalcade of free entertainment and merch is forthcoming). so look out South Slope because t.s.o.a. is readying an invasion of 22nd street! no more 90 minute trips to work; no more rushing out of work to make the long schlep home to walk the dog so we can do things in the evenings; no more cramped 1 bedroom, moldy, dusty, low-ceilinged, no-natural-light basement nightmare.

in a related note, any friends of the apes are asked to clear some space on the calendar next weekend for some light lifting and carrying. please check your insurance policies for coverage information.

Posted by Jamie at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

waking up on Saturday with wedding fun both behind and ahead of me, i was disturbed to find that my uvula had swollen overnight to epic proportions (by uvula standards). it was touching my tongue, making it feel like i needed to cough something up, while any heavy breathing caused it to flutter in the breeze. not a pleasant sensation either. the wife (squared) was grossed enough to request repeated viewings throughout the day. i thought this might be fairly rare, but the official brother of t.s.o.a. claimed to have survived a few winter episodes of said phenomenon. a quick search then led to the realization that numerous other folks had already blogged this problem out of obscurity. whatever, it's fine now.

Posted by Jamie at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

scene: early afternoon on the Uptown F/V platform at 23rd Street
proximate bystanders: ~25
subject: oldish man with a cane wearing t-shirt and gympants combo
what happened: from a distance of about 75 feet, i watch as the man sets his cane against the tiled wall. a plastic bag (likely containing a paper bag) is between him and the wall. assuming a half-bending, half-leaning posture, the man drops his pants to his knees and procceds to shit into the bag (i'm assuming that his aim was true). then, to top it off, he wipes his ass with a roll of toilet paper that had apparently been squired in the waistband of his pants. now clean - another assumption - he pulls his pants up, reclaims his cane and replaces the TP in the waistband. he conducts a brief overhead inspection of the bag and then uses the cane to push it towards a nearby trashcan, where it stays as my train mercifully pulls into the station. i depart, questioning whether i still feel like eating the hummus sandwich i just bought for lunch.

Posted by Jamie at 03:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

perhaps the reason behind the lack of substantive material on t.s.o.a. recently is that i've been subconsciously trying to retain as much brainpower as possible in anticipation of tonight's Buttermilk trivia extravaganza, where we will be attempting to break a two-month streak of 2nd place finishes. but we will be doing so without the substantial knowledge and penmanship contributions of the wife squared (who will be at the Gillian Welch show at Southpaw), so it remains to be seen how we hold up without her.

in other wife related news, we took the plunge yesterday and finally melded our CD collections into one awe-inspiring musical force, making significant improvements to the apartment atmosphere in the process. we were both surprised by how much better we felt afterwards, even if it meant that the trade off of filling in some significant gaps was having to also accept mutiple Brenda Khan records. and who the hell owns 5 Babe the Blue Ox albums? because, you know, there's no questionable items in my collection.

Posted by Jamie at 05:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

what to make of this story touting David Lee Roth training the be a volunteer EMT in New York City? if you opened your eyes after an accident and saw him, wouldn't you just assume that he's the tour guide for your trip to hell? i mean good for him, but does this look like a man interested in your well being?

"you want a little vodka in your IV?"

in a surprisingly unrelated story, New York stocks up on sex workers before the Republican Convention. this line wins the "line the writer probably giggled at as he typed" award: "Clubs have started booking private parties for delegates anxious to ogle topless beauties after a day of watching fully clothed politicians boast about family values."

Posted by Jamie at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

the standard response to a dirty car or truck is usually to scratch "Wash Me!" into the dirt, thereby creating a hilarious juxtaposition where it looks like the vehicle is aware of its plight and is begging passersby to have some compassion and run and get a sponge for godsakes. recently, the wife (squared) and i have seen a couple of cases where someone was feeling more creative resulting in the following messages on vehicles we've encountered:

* "I wish my sex life was this dirty"

* "Member of the He-Man Woman Haters club"

while the first is simple and ribald, the second one confused me until the wife (squared) informed me that it came from a Little Rascals episode. now that's a vandal with some chops! we then got into a conversation about the possibility that Bill Cosby had bought the rights to the "Our Gang" series in order to keep them off the air due to their racially biased portrayal of blacks, specifically Buckwheat. it seemed plausible considering i hadn't seen any episodes on TV in quite a few years. i even went so far as to proclaim this as fact to a few people at the wedding last weekend. should have known better, of course. that rumor is completely false as the good folks at Snopes are more than happy to point out. t.s.o.a. regrets the error.

Posted by Jamie at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

yesterday at the bus stop, a woman disrupted my perusal of the front page by saying to me "you weren't born in this country were you?" i assured her that i was, and she used that information to launch into a series of questions in which i was asked to explain why in a country such as this, people would be forced to work in sweatshops between 16th and 49th streets (i'm assuming she meant Brooklyn) and to live with 20 people crowded into a single studio apartment. she continued her monologue until her stop came, pointedly telling me how mcuh she loved America but that it was sad that criticism was frowned upon while criminals in the government and business worlds get away with so much. was she crazy? maybe. did she have a point? absolutely. was i left somewhat depressed and slack-jawed as she disembarked from the bus leaving me to contemplate how the base level of comfort i have come to expect in my life acts as an insulator against the problems that an enormous number of my fellow humans face every day? i sure was. do i have any idea what to do about it, knowing that even a Kerry victory in November will do little to alleviate these types of problems here or abroad? sadly, no.

Posted by Jamie at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

with an impending wedding and a raft of actual work that needs to be done prior to my departure, this is probably a good time to take a break from this business of blather and link regurgitation. there may be sporadic posting if the mood strikes or if the wife and i come to loggerheads about the music to be played during the reception (is a little Lionel Richie too much to ask for?).

to help you pass the time, try to watch as much TV as Phil has.

Posted by Jamie at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

for those confused by one of the posts from Monday, details and appreciation can be found here. and more pictures can be found here.

Posted by Jamie at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

since moving to NYC, i've resisted the urge to ever subscribe to or even read The New Yorker. something about seeing every neo-yuppie on the subway poring over it just seemed distasteful. even the typeface seemed a little too smug and self-assured. but now between the expose on the Abu Ghraib atrocities and this terrific article on knuckleballers from a recent issue, i may have to re-think my position.

then i look at the subscription page, and it falls apart again.

Posted by Jamie at 06:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

not exactly the subject line you want to see on a Friday afternoon, especially from your own brother. but it serves as a healthy reminder that sometimes the two-sided conversations of the real/electronic world should take precedence over the one-sided yammerings that occupy this space each and every weekday. many apologies for being remiss in my correspondence.

Posted by Jamie at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

when you have a fairly uncommon last name (at least in the US. in Canada it's everywhere, from companies to streets) you get excited when you see it on the front page of the NYTimes. and then you realize that the article is about shooting fish. for sport. and while i'm sort of morally neutral to the whole endeavor - though it does represent another ridiculous use of an AK-47 - it would have been nice to see the name attached to someone curing a disease or bettering humanity or starting a new diet craze or something. if you were wondering, i am not related to the family in the article as far as i know except in the sense that we're all related.

in a side note, Craig Paquette is stuck on 99 career home runs. can't some GM pick him up long enough for him to clear the century mark? thank you.

Posted by Jamie at 02:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

courtesy of Gothamist comes a link to something that just about everyone can appreciate: Manhattan Waiter, a blog about waiting tables featuring interviews with waiters from all over NYC. just reading a couple of entries brought back my own memories of what it's like to serve for a living, and i know there's lots of you out there in the same boat. all i can say briefly is that it's fun but not fun - some days you're walking out with a wad of cash and other days you're spilling a Diet Coke down the back of some poor unsuspecting wonk's lightly starched oxford.

Posted by Jamie at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

some people knit, some people play guitar, some people collect bizarre trinkets, some people surf and some people spend hours recreating the costumes from 22 year-old movies. warning: some people look nothing like Bruce Boxleitner.

link via fitted sweats.

Posted by Jamie at 05:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

recent developments at work and how they affect stress levels and sense of well being:

Good - free cell phone = no more sheepishly asking to borrow friends phones while out and about
Bad - no more cheap rental cars and vans = lots of rental car headaches
Ugly - trying to save money by printing wedding invitations on temperamental office printers using unusually sized paper = lots of swearing, pleading and smacking upside the CPU

Posted by Jamie at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

i was just now horribly embarrassed during a conversation here in the office about whether there was any sound in space, as i somehow convinced myself that even though space is a vacuum, there were enough stray particles around to create audible sound or something like that. anyone familiar with the "in space, no one can here you scream" tagline should immediately know that sound does not travel in space (or any other vacuum).

i consider myself to be fairly science minded, having scored a 5 on the AP Physics test way back when, so i was even more distressed with myself when i realized i was basing my argument on TV and movies. for instance, in my mind, i was using Darth Vader blowing up that planet in Star Wars, and the Enterprise gunning it to light speed as rationale for my position. that's just horrifying for so many reasons.

Posted by Jamie at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

to anyone finding themselves in the last car of the V train today: should you come across a black plastic bag containing a roast beef sandwich, some pretzels and a tangerine, please enjoy them with my compliments. at least the sun is coming out....

Posted by Jamie at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

a new guy at work was just pointed in my direction because he had a question about printing something (he's a maintenance worker and as such doesn't have his own computer). so he walks up to me holding some DVD covers that he wants to scan in and print saying he needs "at least 3 copies". i basically lie and say we don't have a working scanner because while i'm not necessarily anti-bootlegging (and those anti-piracy pleas they play as part of the previews are just terrible), where does he get off assuming that i'm going to be cool with him using our equipment for that purpose? especially when i've just met him today. i've got other things to do with my time - either offer me a cut of the proceeds from the illicit Kill Bill discs or stop bothering me.

Posted by Jamie at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

the april fool's day nonsense is getting a bit out of hand. when baseball prospectus is running multiple "funny" articles, it might be time to reassess the whole thing. besides, the best prank of all time already happened recently when that guy covered everything in his friend's apartment with aluminum foil. how can you top that?

used without permission

i was always a fan of the standard litany of childhood pranks: tacks on the seat, tying shoelaces together, leaving fake notes for your friends that were supposedly from whatever crush they had, TP-ing houses. there was a fairly serious phase of prank calling too, and some mailboxes that may have exploded (can that be considered a prank, or just wanton destructiveness?). but my downfall is that i always want to be there to see the person's reaction and revel in my own cleverness. it would kill me not to know how things transpired. this is one reason i could never be any sort of suicide bomber. even if i believed in a cause seriously enough to consider it, i wouldn't be able to take missing out on the aftermath.

one Halloween a friend and i put out a bowl of candy in front of his house with a sign saying "Please Take 1" knowing full well that the first pack of kids would likely try to empty the whole thing into their bags and take off. meanwhile we were waiting in the bushes with a hose so we could douse the selfish little bastards. a couple groups of small kids came along and abided by our sign, but finally some older kids thought they had found the motherlode. before i even had a chance to yell "now!", my friend had leapt from the bushes without the hose, instead yelling "what do you think you're doing?" they freaked out understandably, and the lead kid tried to hide behind a "we just took 1" defense. but they remained bone dry (at least on the outside of their costumes), and we never did end up soaking anyone.

better was the time a pack of us found a stray STOP sign amidst some construction equipment and dragged it into the middle of a fairly busy street. from our hidden vantage point, we howled with delight as cars actually tried to obey the signs command, despite the lack of an intersection or other reason for the sign's placement. hi-larious.

view the top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of all time, and more pranks from the folks at RE/Search.

Posted by Jamie at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

almost 10 years ago, i was part of a scheme that netted my group house a row of 3 movie theater seats. having been given the tacit approval from the film chair (now the man behind a popular personal website), we made our move under the cover of a summer night on a mostly deserted college campus. while the getaway Bronco and its driver waited three of us let ourselves into the movie theater, and quickly grabbed one of the loose sets of seats from the back of the auditorium. the lookout gave the all clear, and the two of us providing the muscle moved as quickly as we could considering we were dealing with an 120+ awkward pounds of metal, plastic and cloth. i would imagine the procedure for disposing of a body would be fairly similar.

we shoved the seats into the back of the truck and it took off. the rest of our brigade walked the 3 blocks back to the house and then helped move our plunder into the living room where they stayed for two years serving as extra seating during parties and otherwise just reminding us of how cool we were for having them. when it came time to move, i ended up with them sort of by default. i have moved 7 times since then, each time dragging them with me inflicting pain and increasing bouts of cursing from those unlucky enough to have helped me. in that time they've gone from decorative and functional to a couch stand-in to temporary garage storage to completely uncomfortable but still decorative to back in storage. at this point, they weren't something you actually wanted to use, but their service as a conversation piece was unparalleled.

the wife has been angling to get rid of them ever since we put them into storage 10 months ago (back when she was still "the fiance"), but i resisted. there was too much emotion wrapped up in them to bear giving them up. but as is wont to happen, money triumphed over emotion. as we moved my stuff in a smaller, cheaper storage space over the weekend it quickly became apparent that there would be no room for the theater seats. but what to do? we didn't have a truck to haul them away, we couldn't leave it in the hallway of the storage facility nor was there anywhere immediately outside to leave them without potentially incurring some sort of dumping fine. had we been able to lift them about 8 feet in the air, we could have tossed them onto the train tracks that may soon become a basketball arena. not knowing what else to do, we put them on a dolly and started pulling them around the block in search a suitable place for the unconsummation of our relationship (my and the chairs', not my and the wife's). after passing a couple cop cars and some people pushing a stroller, a parked SUV provided the cover we needed to unload them there on the Pacific Street sidewalk between the train tracks and the condos. our payload deposited, we hurriedly brought the dolly back and got the hell out of Dodge.

though they may have met an ignoble fate, quite frankly i don't miss them and when the day finally comes when i move my stuff out, it will be a huge relief not to feel the dread that comes from knowing they will need to be dealt with. we didn't have a camera to capture the moment, but if anyone is walking down Pacific between Carlton and 6th Ave, and they're still there, i wouldn't mind having a snapshot.

Posted by Jamie at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

the lede says it all:

Picking your nose and eating it is one of the best ways to stay healthy, according to a top Austrian doctor.

to quote Seinfeld, who among us doesn't have occasion to "clean house" every once in a while? and sometimes Kleenex just doesn't cut it for some of the serious stalactites that can grow in there. but could you imagine the pandora's box that would be opened if such a thing ever gained credence in "civilized" society?

Posted by Jamie at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

with baseball - and perhaps more importantly *fantasy* baseball - season approaching, here's a piece that i wrote last fall. the first line was written by my friend BillM and served as the jumping off point for the story. the rest speaks for itself.

[slightly edited for taste and clarity]

> just don't forget about the bullpens - you never know what might happen.

prophetic words from a man who has seen his share of fantasy league battles. allow me to indulge a bit and paint yesterday's scene from my life for you:

i have been in fantasy baseball leagues since 1989. for those scoring at home, that means this was the 15th year of my fantasy baseball existence. the rest of my fantasy life shall remain private, but suffice to say, there are over 25 teams that i have captained in that time.

and i have never won it all. not once, not even tied, nothing. i have been in first place, but never on the final day. the past few years have been littered with 2nd place finishes, five or six in all, but i still could not get my name on a trophy.

Continue reading "dead letter office #13" »

Posted by Jamie at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

reading chris larry's thoughts about his dual-apartment existence got me to thinking about what i miss the most about independent living. the somewhat obvious answer: my own space. sharing a 1BR place with the wife means i have my own spot on the couch and my own side of the bed, but the best i can do for personal space is a closet and that's jammed full of clothes and other crap. i still pay to keep some stuff in storage, but i can't just go there and hangout (and it's a violation of the lease to live there). i'm admittedly bad about keeping up with housecleaning (on the general scale; on the 20-something guy scale i'm probably right at the median level), and i think having a space i could do whatever i wanted with might help me keep the rest of the house in order. is that some hoary married guy cliche? then forget the space - i'll settle for a decently fast computer and internet connection.

Posted by Jamie at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

why do we have about half a ton of pizza in our freezer? well, Food Network was having a mini-marathon of pizza related shows. this prodded the wife to order the "special sicilian", a square pie with about 25 toppings on it. upon calling the said "i'd like to order a pie for delivery". when asked if that was it, she responded "actually, i want the special sicilian", which they took to mean in addition to the original pie. since there's only two of us and a dog with newly diagnosed thyroid problems, we ended up with enough pizza to last us the better part of the week. makes for a free lunch at least, but we're going to be very sick of pizza before all is said and done.

still, we're excited for the new brick-oven place - Franny's - that's opening on Flatbush Ave soon. the Park Slope area has somehow been designated a "good pizza-free" zone.

Posted by Jamie at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

say you find yourself at the copy machine. not an unreasonable scenario no matter what your occupation. now, as you're working on a rather large job, the copier emits a horrid, rapidfire "thud-thud-thud" sound. what to do you do?

A) note that a piece of paper has become accordioned in the output area, then continue making your copies, compounding the problem and leading to another noisy episode.
B) same as "A" only twice so that a competent person finally asks what the blue blazes is going on and steps in to fix the problem.
C) automatically decide to call a technician without seeing if you can fix the problem yourself, thereby costing the company money and time.
D) head back to your desk where you will soon create a problem on your computer that also requires the competent person's attention.
E) B, C and D

other interactions with this person in recent weeks have included:

* assisting in finding airfares, then explaining how Priceline works
* fielding 3 separate phone calls asking for directions to a destination
* attempting to fix an ancient Epson printer when a high quality networked LaserJet model was available a mere 10 feet away.

and this person somehow manages a family, and car payments, and feeding themselves. 'tis a wonderment.

Posted by Jamie at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Arlo, the official dog of t.s.o.a., took ill this morning resulting in some furrowed brows and constant reassurance that everything was "OK". after sufficiently scaring ourselves into thinking the poor thing was on his death bed (thanks, Internet!), a trip to the vet was in order. a horribly cute 4 month old Bull Mastiff was in the waiting room with us and we talked to his owner (a woman) about the joys of pet ownership. she filled us in on the dog's lineage, which she had traced back 5 generations and made it clear that he had champion bloodlines, though she was decidedly unhaughty about it. a digression about how the old people in the neighborhood reacted to dogs took a bizarre turn when she decided to tell us that little Justice didn't like Asian people. wouldn't so much as look at them. sometimes "she might try to go up to some of the Oriental kids, but the adults never. [quieter] i don't know, maybe they have some sort of smell or something. [to the dog, in full puppy-talk] you're not prejudiced are you? 'cause that would be bad!" whoa. fortunately at that point, she was called in to discuss her dog's urinalysis.

two hairy beasts

so as not to dissuade any potential dog owners out there, we'll refrain from divulging the total $$$ of the visit. as it turns out, Arlo's got some arthritis in his back legs, which we already suspected. some blood work will tell us if there's any other noteworthy problems, but otherwise he should be fine - he got two medicines to help combat the arthritis and he couldn't have been happier to leave. on the way home, the wife and i discussed whether it would behoove us to get pet insurance. looks like we could get it for $40 a month or so. certainly something to consider.

Posted by Jamie at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

yep, we lost. dr. fact got the best of us. we were sad. but in the interest of a united front, i won't be making any excuses either. we lost to the team that had come in 2nd the two previous times. and we do get to go back next month to take back what is rightfully ours.

this time around, here's questions we should have answered correctly but either changed our minds about or couldn't agree on or were just dumb:

1. How many movies did Clint Eastwood make in the Dirty Harry series?
2. What is the tallest mountain in Western Europe?
3. How long is Long Island: 200 miles, 90, 66, 35 or 110?
4. How many territories are there in Canada?
5. How many people are killed by Tigers in an average year: 5, 10, 50, or 100?
6. Who played Cyrus 'the Virus' Grissom in ConAir?
7. What was the only year (besides 1980) that the US did not win the gold medal in basketball?

click below to find out...

Continue reading "sad but true" »

Posted by Jamie at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

at around age 14, my family was at an amusement park. i forget which one, but i think it was Hershey Park. anyway, while in line for a ride my brother and i see this kid with his family. he's a bit younger than us and a lot overweight with a terrible haircut, but what we mostly notice about him is his shirt. it was a plain white shirt with a picture of the Fonz on it. his arms were out at casual right angles to his torso, giving the thumbs up and underneath the picture sat the simple caption "aaaaaayyyyyyy!" well, we couldn't contain ourselves not one bit. this was obviously the funniest, most out of place thing we had ever seen and we spent the rest of the day mimicking the pose and doing our best "aaaaaayyyyyyy"s, cracking each other up every time. we both felt kind of sorry for the kid, since we figured he didn't have any better shirts to wear, but his family had sprung for the entrance fee so how bad off could they be?

now though, i think about it and i wish i owned that shirt. the ironic humor levels are off the chart and it would fit right in with the #1 Dad/Mariners shirt (thanks Shawn!), the Born to Ump shirt (thanks, bro!) and my old Ann Taylor staff shirt. the wife decided to do an unannounced purge of my dresser recently and it was only by the slimmest of margins that i was able to rescue the Ann Taylor shirt from the scrap heap. sure the lettering has faded and the collar is frayed, but i've gotta be one of <25 men on earth who owns one and i'll be damned if i'm gonna give up a part of my identity so easily. i'm not sure exactly what message that shirt conveys about me, but whatever it is, i like it. anyway, i hope that kid still has the Fonz shirt and scores big points with his hipster friends when he wears it out.

the sad coda to this story is that Henry Winkler remains the biggest celebrity sighting i've had since moving to NYC over 4 years ago (seeing Spike Lee's brother constantly at O'Connors rates just behind eating in the same sushi restaurant as Patti Smith and watching a movie in the same theater as David Cross). he blew past me on the sidewalk outside the Virgin Megastore in Times Square one day. he was well out of earshot before i realized i should have told him to "sit on it".

Posted by Jamie at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

today is the 10th anniversary of the death of Bill Hicks, my favorite comedian - though that word doesn't seem broad enough to describe him. he was wildly funny, but he was also hyper, caustic and bitter as hell. he had no problem blowing past acceptable limits of what could be said or depicted, and while it may have been occasionally uncomfortable to watch, he was rarely boring.

Flak marks the occasion by asking what Bill might make of America today. here is Bill's posthumous website. he died of pancreatic cancer, so, umm, be good to your pancreas.

Posted by Jamie at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

have we not yet reached the saturation point yet with the penile enlargement pitches? i know this trend is lamented across the binary landscape of the internet, but do i really need to get 20+ of these things per day? is there some point after about 50,000 e-mails where eventually a person breaks down under the cross exam and cries out "you're right, i'm sorry! i've been living a lie! i am woefully inadequate!" and then sobs quietly to themselves as they order up the cream, gel, herb or pill du jour? sorry to sound like a bad stand up routine, but we all know they don't work, otherwise we'd have become a society of lumbering Ron Jeremys long ago.

i'm going to extrapolate on shawn's post from earlier this week and say that it's about time that we as a society stopped worshipping at the altar of cock size given that the individual has no control over it. perhaps it's time to rise up (heh) as one and declare "i'm comfortable with the size of my member, even if prudish social mores compel to me to refer to it as a 'member'!" that'll show 'em. after all, those breast enlargement creams from yesteryear have all disappeared and breast size is no longer a stronghold of insecurity. what's that? they haven't? oh for god sakes, people.

send your own SPAM by clicking here.

Posted by Jamie at 03:08 PM | Permalink

a few years ago, there was study that showed how early high school start times worked against the natural biorhythms of teenagers, resulting in negative educational and even societal consequences.

having once again eaten too much indian food at lunch today, i got to thinking about some related topics:

* i am a night person, and i have been since high school. it's very simple: i am not peppy in the morning, even after 8-9 hours of sleep; yet when i only get 4-5 hours, i am usually not tired by midnight or 1am. i am fortunate to have a job that allows me to be flexible with my hours so while most people get here at 8 or 9, i am almost never here before 9:30 and rarely leave before 6. i've finally gotten over feeling bad about this, though i still get the "what, did you sleep here?" jokes anytime i'm in before 9.

* "experts" say that the midday meal should be the largest one that we eat every day and that nighttime eating should be kept reasonable. which is all well and good, except that even a moderate sized lunch makes me a bit drowsy. some sort of siesta would help, but it would also lenghten the work day, and i don't live close enough to go home and come back. but siestas have been shown to increase worker productivity and happiness, so why don't more companies use them?

* what i'm really dreaming of is a job where i only have to be in the office one or two days a week for meetings, etc. really, most everything i'm doing can be done at home, with e-mail and the phone. it doesn't have the immediacy of being "in the office", but it means i get to work when i'm going to be most productive (read: after the price is right ends), i get to reclaim my ungodly amount of commuting time, and i don't have to be subjected to numerous pain-in-the-ass co-workers. also, it makes one's schedule mouch more flexible for non-work related events. doctor's appointment? matinee? meeting with parole officer? no problem.

* as long as i'm dreaming, i'd also like a world without pollution, a summer without humidity and a World Series victory for the Red Sox.

Posted by Jamie at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

1. the top story in the country revolves around the exposed breast of a 37 year old woman. Diane Keaton received accolades for exposing her breasts in a PG-13 movie, but a 1 second flash on network TV results in a tide of puritanism that seems to be driven purely by the shock and suddenness of the event and not by the fact that anyone really cared or was offended by it.

2. the bush administration now wants everyone think that they could read saddam hussein's mind, and that he had the intent to attack the US....some day. therefore our actions were justified, depsite the lack of support we had, and despite the fact that we're now looking for the UN to bail our asses out in setting up the new government.

3. Duke is #1 in men's college basketball and #2 in women's hoops (tho my boys at Utah St. are 17-1 and sitting at #24. go Aggies!).

4. Fox's new reality show - essentially "the bachelor" with little people - is being called a "celebration of diversity." ok, so it's the producer saying that but still.

5. a zoo in binghamton, ny is suggesting giving cockroaches as valentine's day gifts. a ridiculous gift for a ridiculous holiday.

6. ricin is confirmed to have been sent to the senate office building.

7. bobby knight in hot water again after yet another argument, this time with the school chancellor. actually t.s.o.a. has been in a bad mood ever since we found out that this prick was getting another job after running himself out of indiana.

8. the new federal budget calls for a 26% increase in defense and security spending, and virtually no increase in domestic spending. and if you thought the deficit was big already, peep this: the budget doesn't include any spending for the ongoing battles in Iraq or Afghanistan, so it's actually much bigger. meanwhile, average folks (like me) aren't seeing any extra $$$ in their paychecks.

9. it's raining. hard. someone else paid for my lunch, and tipped the wet delivery guy less than $1 (on a $16 total). unbelievable.

10. drew henson is leaving the yankees to play football. oh wait, that one makes me smile.

*UPDATE* (5:10pm)

11. just called home to find out that the rain has succeeded in partially flooding one of our closets. no major damage, but that's pretty much the lemon juice in the paper cut at this point.

Posted by Jamie at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

heard this morning on the V train:

"42nd street. transfer here to the F, E, B..........transfer here to the F, E.........no, not the E.............transfer here to the F, B, D and number 7 trains."

nice to know i wasn't the only one who still wanted to be in bed. now where is this deluge of snow that they've been promising for the past 3 days?

Posted by Jamie at 01:04 PM | Permalink

woke up feeling rather ill this morning, but felt happier when i remembered that i had sent myself a link to the page that allows me to create new blog entries so that i could do one from home if i called in sick. this is a troubling sign.

meantime, i invite you to check out the guys over at banterist where they have a new installment of the fun "grammar cop" series, as well as a funny "ABCs of the MTA".

Posted by Jamie at 12:18 PM | Permalink

the woman at the desk behind me has recently started playing a lot of solitaire in order to occupy her non-socializing work time (don't worry - her department is about to hire someone else to help ease the workload). t.s.o.a. lacks the necessary chutzpah to admonish her for slacking, but solitaire? there's no skill involved, as you're pretty much a slave to however the cards fall. they invented the internet so no one would ever have to play that game anymore. and the internet offers so many valuable ways to fill your time: e-mail, news, games, sex chat, shopping, blog entries. you could fill the better part of a year just Googling people.

back in 1996, at some horrible temp job and with the internet in its nascent stages, i would play some freecell (which actually employs strategy), while trying to anticipate when the higher-ups would be passing by my desk. that didn't work so well, so a new time waster was needed. i moved on to folding the sports page and putting it in my lap, but that just made it look i was staring at my crotch a lot. eventually i got jobs that didn't tie me to a desk all day, enabling work sloughing to take place unabated.

t.s.o.a.'s favorite stories of work as a temp slave:

1. locking myself in a conference room that only i had a key to and napping for a couple hours.
2. going to a friend's apartment on my lunch break and drinking a 40 of OE 800 while playing NHL '94 on Sega Genesis for an hour, then going back to the office and attempting to avoid exhaling for the next 4 hours.
3. meeting 3 other friends (also temping) in an alley one afternoon to pass the dutchie.
4. staying all night alone in an office one night to finish some important reports. i was rewarded with hours of uninterrupted porn surfing and the next day, my boss went to the ATM and gave me $100 out of his own account to thank me for my dedication. this on top of the time-and-a-half i earned for the overtime.
5. getting my own office for 2 months, while the person i worked for sat outside in a cubicle.
6. flirting with the girls in Boston who transferred callers to us so we could help them sort out their insurance problems.
7. picking up my paycheck every week while politely declining the repeated offers from clarence the receptionist to join him in the pool at his apartment complex.
8. scoring free lunches from conference rooms after meetings let out.

Posted by Jamie at 04:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

"he's a rapist!"

"no he's not!.....that's his brother."

shortly thereafter a wandering minstrel submitted two poems for our consideration. after we balked at his 50-cents-per-poem price structure, he read them again and got his $1. feeling appreciative, he then invited us to the future book release party to be held in the event that some book publisher decides that the public wants more books of poetry written by guys who haven't showered in at least a month.

Posted by Jamie at 11:22 AM | Permalink

so just what the world needed, another weblog.   thanks to marc for generously sharing his brand name with me, where i can hopefully ride the coattails of the site's ever-increasing popularity.   i have no agenda here other than to recycle bits that cross my path and purge some of the nonsense that clutters my brain.

in that vein, i'm guessing that most of you ignored the world bridge chapionships (aka "the bermuda bowl") taking place in monaco.   i'll guiltily admit that i often read the bridge column in the NYTimes, as i learned to play when i was younger and, well, a lot geekier.   but the finals between the USA and Italy actually made the front section yesterday (page A10), and it was a hugely exciting finish.   read about it here.   i wish the article had been about twice as long as they didn't even really get to go over the progression of play in the hand.

there's a picture of some of the winning team on this site.   i won't bore you with more bridge links, but i will say that i love that the points used in the scoring are called "IMPs".   if you ever feel like taking some tricks and winning some rubbers, let me know.

Posted by Jamie at 03:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)