Monthly Archives: January 2010

The End, As We Know It

  By Riley | January 15, 2010 - 12:05 pm | Reviews, Uncategorized
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I hate to be the bearer of bad news, I really do. But it’s time we open our eyes and realize what’s been going on in the past year. We’re five days short of the one-year anniversary of Obama’s inauguration. How wonderful it is to have a man of color who expresses such zeal and promise for hope and change. But let’s heed the downfalls, the tribulations, the just plain weird things that have occurred in the past year. No, folks, this is not a “beginning of 2010″ post – this is a “beginning of the end” post.

For the most part, things were fine for the beginning of Obama’s term. It wasn’t until this past fall that I noticed things going sour. Among the first events that made me unsure of the state of civilization was the crashing of the White House Dinner. This Northern Virginia couple (last name Salahi) somehow got through metal detectors and security screenings ad eventually made their way into the same room as Obama. Pictures on Facebook show them posing with Joe Biden and Katie Couric. I feel uneasy when there are guests I don’t know in my house, and I live in a drab apartment with holes in the wall. How did these folks get into the White House?

Salahi & Salahi

Alas, I move on. Christmas Day brought us a terrorist who carried explosives sewn into his underwear. The terrorist who tried to ignite explosives in his shoe several years ago is now aptly known as the Shoe Bomber. Did this Scrooge who tried to ruin Christmas ever think of his fate had he not succeeded with his attack? The Underwear Bomber?! And, what’s more – didn’t our friends at MTV warn us of the dangers of explosives sewn into underwear when Dallas Grimes (voice of Demi Moore) planted a virus into the lining of Beavis’ shorts, leaving him surrounded by armed secret servicemen and leaving Butthead asking, “uh, can I have a gun?”

More recently, things at NBC have been going downhill. NBC wants to move Jay Leno back to the 11:35 time slot, which would push Conan O’Brien back to 12:05. In my opinion, and the opinion of every person I’ve spoken to regarding this matter, it is idiotic. I have a lot to say about this, but allow to to succinctly quote a letter from Conan to NBC: “The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show.”

Lastly… I found something startling when I last visited Wegmans… behold!

dear god!

L'egget outta here!

Sure, it doesn’t seem like much that a few of the frozen food bins are empty, but this is lack of frozen breakfast treats is just a cog in the greater system that is our economy. It’s a scary thing when the most popular breakfast treat (aside from cereal, let’s be honest here) from age six to fourteen is the victim of national shortage. I wasn’t sure of it before, but now I know… things are bad.

Here’s to a brighter remainder of 2010.

Shit! Did I mention that earthquake in Haiti?

that ain't normal!

head for the high ground!

New Years Resolutions

  By Riley | January 12, 2010 - 4:42 pm | Rants
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I’ve finally decided what my resolutions for the remainder of the year will be. Yes, I know it’s almost the second week of 2010, but I’ve been using the last twelve days as a test run, to make sure I can sustain my intention for the next forty-nine and two-seventh’s weeks.

1. To eat inorganic

2. To not waste time

3. To clear the snow off my entire car

1. To eat inorganic. With all this hoo-ha and jibber-jabber about buying local, shopping organic and being aware of where our food comes from, I’m going the opposite direction. It’s not that i don’t care about my well-being or that I want to eat poorer quality food, it’s that I’m a college student. With the exception of some produce (organic onions cost the same as equally-delicious pesticide-sprayed onions), most organic food costs a lot more. Take this chicken I bought at Wegmans…

ba-gahh

The cost: $3.95. Wegmans also sells an organic chicken ($9.85) and an organic free-range chicken raised on an Ithaca Farm. As delicious as that sounds, the hefty price tag ($13.45) made me wonder, “how much better does this chicken taste?”

I do understand the merits of eating organic. I have yet to see Food Inc. (ignorance is bliss…) but I do know that I’m more susceptible to disease, inection, what-have-you. If it’s served to me, or on someone else’s dime, I’ll eat organic, but if it’s gonna dent my wallet, inorganic is the way I’m going.

2. To not waste time. I spend a lot of time on the internet – I won’t deny that. But I don’t think this is a waste. Allow me to break down my time spent on the internet: 50% of my time is spent on the websites you see linked on the right margin of this site. All of these sites are informative, entertaining, and hell, they provide great conversation-started topics. Another 20% of my time is spent checking, responding to or crafting humorous e-mails. Another 20% of my time is spent on Facebook, creeping on people like you, (Aaron, Erica, Alexander…) but half of my Faceboxing time is spent playing Bejewled Blitz – which, after a long day of internetting, is therapeutic. The other 10% is spent on AIM, oftentimes sending links to aforementioned sites.

That being said, the only time wasted is the non-therapeutic time spent on Facebook (a mere 10%)

d'oh!

I also spend a lot of time sleeping, too , but my doctor said it helps me grow.

3. To clear the snow of my entire car. As I was driving back from Wegmans to buy my reasonably-priced aforementioned chicken, I saw a white car with a clean windshield and rear window, but a cube of snow on the roof… Idiotic, really. What’s worse is when it flies off the car once you go more than twenty-five miles an hour – especially if it’s frozen over and it flies off in huge sheets.

eedeeott

Really, it’s not hard to run the snow-brush over the top of the car and the hood. Granted, this resolution is seasonal, but ’til spring I guarantee the Volvo will be clean on the roads.

Happy New Years to you, I know mine will be.

america’s family turns 20

  By Sarah | January 10, 2010 - 9:34 am | Findings
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Tonight on Fox the Simpsons will air their 450th episode, “The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special: In 3-D! On Ice!” I actually just set my DV-R to it. First there is an episode that makes no big deal about it, then an hour long “documentary” -if you will- by the one and only Morgan Spurlock. You know him because he chose to eat McDonalds for an entire month proving to the world that we are shit heads in the way that we eat (please, eat better.) He says that “the world may end in 2012, but this show won’t,” Spurlock seems like just the character to make this kind of film.

Officially its the longest running show in prime-time history. It first appeared on the Tracy Ullman show in 1987, pre-my-existence, as a series of shorts. The Simpsons has won 25 Emmy Awards, we all saw The Simpsons Movie in 2007 and don’t forget that the Oxford English Dictionary included D’oh! as a word. The show has, kind of, changed the world and changed television and the way we watch (write) it. Something like this only comes along every twenty years or so.

Point being is, check it out! I love cultural phenomenons- they are my favorite thing, literally. And when something is as easy to be a part of as a television show, you can’t help but watch.

Quotes, Volume 4

  By Riley | January 9, 2010 - 10:09 am | Quotes
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On Thursday I headed into New York City, relatively unchartered territory, for a job fair and networking night.

“Get outta the way, Chewbaka.” – Fed, in traffic.

“Look at your skin color. You don’t fit in around here!” – NYPD

“I’m not trying to go to this thing sober.” – Michael Sokol

“You look like Ludacris.” – myself, to Toys “R” Us Employee, Times Square

“The cat is a boy. That means you’re gay!” – Zach Sweeney, in regard to CoCo

“I could go for a drink.” – Kelley Harrison

“This chair is God.” – Brian Ivory

klosterman- the man of my dreams

  By Sarah | January 6, 2010 - 8:07 am | Reviews
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the title still remains a mystery

I am unsure of whether or not I have ever mentioned this man on this blog. I do know that I have lent his books out (and not yet gotten them back….) and recommended them to people for reading because I know certain individuals, Riley especially, would really enjoy his content, writing and overall demeanor. He has been one of my favorite writers since eighth grade and I have been seeking him out since. The summer before I went to college I had the pleasure of seeing Chuck Klosterman in person in a Philadelphia Borders Books, hearing him read, and even talked to him (but not enough.) He signed my hard copy of Killing Yourself To Live: 85% A True Story with the sentiment “Sarah, Stay Alive- Chuck Klosterman.” Hopefully he will stumble upon this and go on a book tour again so I can rightfully make lots of conversation with him.

Famous for Sex, Drugs and Coco Puffs, CK has been chronicling popular culture, media, and its history for almost a decade. Born in Minnesota and having grown up in rural North Dakota he was fired from SPIN for reasons I am still unsure of, writes occasionally for the New York Times Magazine, had a column in Esquire and contributes to ESPN. His latest book that I literally finished less than ten minutes ago is called Eating the Dinosaur. After having finished it I can still say that I still have no idea why it is called that. But I can say it is probably some of the most interesting writing of his and is creeping to become my new favorite. It is an almost-sort-of grown-up-yet immature philosophy about everything you never thought you cared about, or knew existed. Klosterman writes about why time travel is a meaningless conversation. It helped me realize that the only time I will talk about time travel in the future is to address its complete silliness, tell people about said silliness and maybe pull out some theoretical questions (which he is hilariously famous for.)

Basically is what I am trying to say is you should be reading his writing. All of it. Particularly you Riley. I will gladly lend some books out if only they are returned. As a writer and reader I know that any unconventional form of writing (like CK) is motivational. Mainly, writing is motivational, so why not share?

Say What?!

  By Riley | January 4, 2010 - 5:41 pm | Rants
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Beadhead. Jeans I was wearing last night. Sensitivity to the light creeping in from the basement windows. Episodes of Family Guy on DVD. Empty cans clank as I put my feet up on the coffee table my friends and I sat so merrily around a few hours ago.

But now it is morning, and before checking our phones and stepping outside to begin our lazy day, we let our hangovers subside with back-to-back-to-back episodes of mindless cartoons.

And in a mindless segue of Family Guy, I learned where we get the term, “what a crock!”

Or at least I thought I did. The phrase isn’t from a crocodile who stands out in a group of alligators as Seth McFarlane supposedly enlightened me. In fact, the phrase comes from a time when indoor plumbing wasn’t so prevalent. The Brits used “thunder mugs” made of crockery (glass) materials. In the middle of the night, when going to an outhouse was out of the question, they did their business in the crocks. The original phrase is, “what a crock [of $hit]!”

So I’ve been doing a lot of driving during the break. My iPod car adapter has been a savior. The other day I was listening to Neil Young’s “Turnstiles” where he sings about all the bush-league (or is it busch-league?) batters, who are left to die on the diamond. What is this bush-league he sings about?

According to the Internet, bush league literally refers to minor league baseball teams who don’t have a major league affiliate. These teams didn’t have stadiums – their fields were confined by trees and bushes in the outfields. Nowadays, bush league is used to refer to anything that is amateur, crude or inferior.

At a party, freshman year, I heard an upperclassman scoff at a light beer: “Uh, gross. Bush league.” For a while, I was under the impression that the light beer was Busch Light and the phrase spurred from there. Apparently I was wrong. Thanks for the heads-up, Internet.

And how about the phrase, “have your cake and eat it too”? Wikipedia tells me “it is most often used negatively, meaning an individual consuming, exhausting, taking advantage of or using up a particular thing and, then, after that thing is gone or no longer reasonably available, still attempting to benefit from or use it.”

Let’s contextualize: Joe Lieberman has the floor, or “his cake,” but his speaking time expired, so he “ate it.”

I never use this phrase, though. I prefer the colloquial – “hey, quit being a dick!”

Quotes, Volume 3

  By Riley | January 3, 2010 - 11:23 pm | Quotes
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Recent quotes, from New Years, PPO and such…

“Don’t think I don’t think about it.” – Darius Rucker, former singer of Hootie and the Blowfish

“If I’m paying for conversation, I’m gonna be the one doing the talking!” – Brian Manning, to his taxi driver, post New Year’s Eve Bash

“3 count downs at 12, 1 and 2. Because that’s the best part anyway” – Invitation to Thunderdome MMX: New Year’s Eve

“Please, you can call me Janice…” – a composed Janice Sokol

“It’s David. DO NOT call me Mr. Sokol!” – an irked David Sokol

Creativity, Thanks to the Internet, Self

  By Riley | January 3, 2010 - 11:17 pm | Pics & Toons
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I’d consider myself a creative person. I did after all develop, design and utilize the shopping cart grill:

The coals are supported by a series of empty beer cans, to bring the heat closer to the cooking surface, which is where you’d put your groceries if you were using this in its normal context. The rear part of the cart was taken out, to facilitate burger-flipping and wiener-rotating. The concept of using the upper section (where you’d put yer eggs or yer mom would put her purse) as a bun-toaster didn’t work out too well, but the thought was there. Best of all, the Shopping Cart Grill (patent not pending) is portable! And it cooks a damn good burger. Please, don’t knock it until – or unless – you’ve tried one.

delicious

Here’s an awesome drinking vessel I’ve seen on the Internet:

bombin'

This cup combines a shot glass and a drinking glass. Granted, having the two separate cups would allow for Jager-bombs, but this combines it into one. Got some girls over that want to take shots, and some guys looking to pour some black-and-tans? These glasses would be clutch!

Then there’s this creative thing I’ve seen. A little more utilitarian, practical, but still ingenious…

stand up!

This foot-holder allows you to sweep up yer dirt without getting on your hands and knees to do so. Simple, but helpful. Maybe I’m drawn to it because my summer ‘job’ requires me to do a lot of sweeping and I’d be glad to put this dustpan to work.

This last product here, is pretty much an emoticon at work.

ralph!

Besides the fact that it looks like a frog vomiting unholy things, I’d say it’s pretty cool!