Slice of Life

Thought I'd Share

I may have possibly came up with the worst idea ever, and it's worth sharing.

I was thinking about various entrepreneurial ventures that could possibly make it big and make a lot of money, and I came up with the idea of a professional football league, only instead of playing 16 regular season games like the NFL does, teams would play 162 regular season games like baseball.  In the same timeframe, too, and you could even have double-headers like they do in baseball.  Think about the balls it would take to play 2 fucking football games back-to-back.  And here's what got me to thinking:  there are fucking guys out there who run 50 fucking marathons in 50 days in 50 different states and actually fucking do it, so you can't tell me there aren't guys out there who could play a 162-game professional football schedule.  Everyone would probably die at the end of the season, no doubt people would get severely fucked up doing this.  But then I thought about it some more, and it's probably a really bad idea.  I mean, my hometown's professional football team continues to play only 16 regular season game and I have no interest whatsoever in going to watch those shitbags play live.

Thus, in the words of Ron Burgundy, "That's just dumb."

(at 1:05)

My Thoughts Exactly

What Goes Around

I was a bank teller one summer during my college years.  I was the only male bank teller.  The women I worked with were pretty bitchy, but I didn't care.  On Fridays I would go to a diner across the street for lunch and have a club sandwich and a coke.  This old lady came to my window one morning to cash her social security check.  I couldn't find her name in the system so I asked her for some identification, and she went ape shit bananas.  "You must be new!" she hollered as everyone in the foyer stared at my window.  "I'm Daisy Leavitt and this is ridiculous!"  I politely told her that I was only asking for identification for her protection, and when I thought about her today I smiled, because she is probably dead now.

Alternatively

This song could have been named, "Don't Do Drugs."

Taconic

Apparently the New York Yankees are going to be playing in some big important game or something soon, I hear.  This time of year has eaten my ass in regard to professional baseball for the past six years, but it's fun to have your team in the final two for a major sport and I'm genuinely psyched my Yankees are back in it.  I still get the bandwagon tag, but truthfully the next person who tries to pull that should get piss pounded as I get bored when I fire back by asking what year(s) the Jesse Barfield-Steve Balboni duo in the lineup was rockin' out K's and pop flies like you couldn't imagine, and people give me a blank stare or customarily respond with a "Go pick up your Red Wings jersey at the dry cleaners."

In any event, some thoughts:

• I hate to say it, but $1.5 billion apparently turns a pretty fervent fan base into a wine-and-cheese crowd.  If you're a Yankee fan and are immediately offended by this, clearly you need to have witnessed a game or games first-hand to be able to engage in the debate at all.  For me, I had the absolute pleasure of having my first game Sox/Yanks on a perfect Saturday evening in late-September, with CC going against Dice-K.  Took the #4 in from Grand Central, I believe, and I was probably about as maximally (definitely a word) psyched for the game as I could be.  Came in very hot.  Very, very hot.  Certainly too hot, by many measures.  Apparently this state of mind manifested itself into me launching a digital photo-taking daisycutter on the Stadium and maybe a dozen or so different videos.  When you first see it from the subway as you're coming in, it just blows you away.  First thing I remember anyone saying when we first got into the Stadium and were going to our seats, other than the usual jibber jabber between my brother and my friend, was this guy who just got his beers from the vender near our section who yelled as he headed back to his seats, "Sweet!  It's nine-dollar beer night!"  Fortunately for me I was mistakenly using our debit card instead of my personal credit card for the duration of the game, brilliant, and will be forever reminded of my "$45.50" for, drumroll please:  4 Bud Lights and a dog.  No, that's really it.  Throw on the $10.00 I spent on a program, and while you haven't used a full benjamin you've jacked one up pretty good.
• The game was low scoring and when you've come in too hot and just stayed way too hot you lose track of what's going on unless people are screaming and fighting and whatnot.  A couple in our row, probably mid to late-40s but still working like hell to make 30 work, disappeared for like 4 innings - went to some VIP or suite area or some shit - come back to their seats and each order a glass of white wine.  White fucking wine.  I do distinctly remember thinking, "White fucking wine?" but for some reason or another we started chatting them up and they were relatively cool.  As cool as you can be for drinking white wine at Yankee Stadium.  But it was quiet at times.  And the game was close, but just kind of quiet.  There were a couple guys talking near the vendors about their preference of the new Yankee Stadium and the Mets' Citi Field and they each agreed that Citi was a lot more fun.  I said something about it being on the quiet side and they agreed.
• Maybe those fans will be there during the World Series, the ones I remember cheering with from whatever spot I was in watching them on TV a decade ago, we'll see.  '96 seems like forever ago, and I remember being on my couch in my room at college, not able to move when Charlie Hayes caught the last out in foul territory along the 3rd base line, my ankle torn to shreds from a football game earlier that day.  I started a fight among my own team that day in the tunnel that leads out onto the field, weird.
• ARod is dialed in.  Which makes me more and more confused about steroid use than ever, because I just don't understand why.  He's a primadonna d-bag most of the time but can pound the living piss out of a baseball.

David Wins!

Rock Art Brewery Wins Trade Mark Dispute

Score one for the little guy.

Cornhole Burning

Still putting the pieces of my deteriorating health back together today after my sphincter waged jihad on the porcelin in our master bathroom for most of the night.  Let me tell you:  no one won.  The title of this post comes from an instant message I sent my brother this morning asking him, "Do you remember the movie Mississippi Burning?  Right now I am starring in Cornhole Burning."  Ah yes, it's good to be blogging again.

I'd like to know who came up with the phrase, "flu-like symptoms."  I came to the conclusion at about 3 a.m. last night that the terms doesn't make any sense at all.  I suppose you can have flu-like symptoms without actually having the flu, but then it would still be more consice to say "flu symptoms."  You either have symptoms that are like the flu or they aren't like the flu.  I don't know.

I have been a walking bag of death since my visit to NYC a little over a week ago.  I entered the trip with weakened defenses, already coming down with what developed into horrible cough and fever that I needed to use a couple of sick days and a visit to the doctor to finally turn the corner, then out of nowhere last night my large intestine decided to strap itself with explosives and attempt to blow a hole in our house.  I almost puked, between the spins and the sweats and general malaise that was my night, but saved myself from cleaning up any type of mess along those lines with several safe and well-timed burps that smelled like a street meat vendor with horrendous B.O.  My body sure can be an interesting place.

Still Looking Back

I was amazed at the amount of shit I took this past weekend for not having updated my blog in the past several months.  Well, assholes, as I tried to tell you as you mocked some of my more memorable posts and just generally made me out to look like a complete fucking douchebag to anyone within earshot of the hotel bar last Friday night, there was that small task of that exam I had to study for this past summer and just generally being caught up in the hustle and bustle that is my life raising a young boy.  But we all know what they say about excuses, and quite frankly I need more and more breaks from the monotony that is my current job, so I figure it's time to bring the blog back.  We'll start with the most recent news that just a select few people know about.

I turned down a job this morning.  And I'm fucking bullshit mad about it.  Not so much that the timing of the offer was bad, which it was, or that the job wasn't my view of a dream opportunity or even a great opportunity, which it wasn't.  But it was a better opportunity, no doubt about that.  Sometimes I hate all these goddamn bullshit adult considerations that factor into stuff like this such as the "timing" of putting a house on the market, whatever the fuck that is all about.  I just want to get up and go, but as I look at this chance I just closed the doors on (or, for the anal English majors out there like me who still don't feel right about ending sentences or clauses with a preposition, "on which I just closed the doors"), it's more about the part of me that still wants to go back.  Back to the north, back to New England, just back.

Three years ago I fucked up.  I fucked my career up by changing professions on nothing more than a whim and I fucked up by blazing out of a job that while not ideal, was pretty low stress and could have given me some solid experience, vested me in a goverment pension plan after 3 years, and just generally have been a good way to do something I was content with while searching for the next thing.  I what pisses me off to no end is that all of the poor decisions were ultimately my own.  And for as pragmatic and logical as I like to think I am when it comes to making big decisions (appliances don't stand a chance of entering our home unless they are ranked in Consumer Report's top 3), I just fucked up.  There's no other way to put it.  And while it hasn't all been gloom in doom in the south, my skin absolutely crawls when I think about that month or so leading up to the big move, where I worked for a boss that was the most miserable fucking prick I've ever met in my life doing something I really didn't know much about, and being away from my family (just wife and dog, at the time) for 3 months.  It was just such a fucking waste that I haven't really forgiven myself or accepted what a dumbshit thing it was to do.  And the only reason I put the blinders on and didn't really think about what I was doing is because I was too hell bent on running away from my problems in Vermont, a place where I wasn't perfectly happy or perfectly content or perfect in my marriage so I thought if I extracted my life completely from that scene, all would be well.  I wish I had an older brother or a much bigger close friend to just beat the living piss out of me for that, because I'm not doing a good enough job of being hard on myself.  Nearly 3 years later, and I'm still looking back at that time in my life wanting to correct it somehow, wanting to make different decisions.  And so to turn down a job this morning, in Vermont, it's like all the scabs just get ripped off again.  "Ha ha, fuck face," the bad decision-maker in me is saying today.  "You can't go back."

There was a guy I met here about a year ago when I started my current job.  One of these guys who has to immediately be your best friend as soon as he meets you.  Double-handed handshake, first of all.  Big no-no if you're meeting someone for the first time.  And by double-handed handshake I'm talking about the ol' regula shake plus simultaneous left-handed wrist grab.  Seriously guy.  So if that wasn't enough this guy is all in my face wanting to know not only my life story but my life plan.  "So are you looking to join the partnership in 5 years or move on to a bigger firm?"  "Ever think you'll go back north?"  On and on and on.  I wanted to punch this guy right in the fucking mouth, it was that obnoxious.  "You know what?" I said, "I'm here now."  It was probably the most polite way I've ever told someone to go get fucked in my entire life, but I think he got the point:  I'm here now, go get fucked.  But I think about that interaction a lot because it's times like these I need to heed my own advice:  I'm here now.  I don't necessarily like it and it certainly isn't perfect, but I'm here now.  And truthfully I don't have all that much to bitch and gripe about, despite my propensity to bitch and gripe.  I'm hung up on all the time, effort, money, and stress I've had to deal with in trying to get things back on track for the better part of the last 3 years, and I'm not yet ready to just say what's in the past is in the past, move on.  All that fucking bullshit is my own fucking fault and there should be some punishment that goes along with it, and maybe this it.  And maybe I'm only adding to it in a way, applying for a job a couple of weeks ago that I knew was nothing more than a silly way of giving myself a taste of being able to go back, even though I couldn't.  And I can't.

The Player

Like Father, indeed.

Buy Green Mountain Coffee

 Green Mountain Coffee goes Solar

Burlington is Best

Burlington, Vermont best place in U.S. to raise a family

More and more, I find myself wanting to go back.

The Man Cave

Fuck.  And.  Yes.

Then and Now

'I was Putting My Seatbelt On'

Apparently this excuse works when getting pulled over and asked why you rolled through a stop sign.

Blackberry Poem

"What do I do???"

I just pooped myself.

What do I do???

It's wet

and runny

and not very funny.