Regi's

This is the scene at Regi's yesterday (a restaurant on Light St. a very short walk from my house):



Leslie and I attempted to have lunch there a few weeks ago and they extremely rude and not at all helpful. Eventually we just left after waiting for a table in a half empty restaurant for about 20 minutes. I was pretty annoyed and probably wouldn't have eaten there as a result of there rudeness, but I also didn't really think they deserved a Honda Accord in front of the place. Leslie on the other hand had this to say: "those jerks. they had it coming." She's the best.

Softball

Yesterday may have been the single most embarrassing moment of my athletic career. I strike out, playing slow pitch softball. How is that even possible? It’s one of those leagues where you start an at-bat with a 1-1 count. I fouled the first pitch down the line, then tried to muscle up on the next pitch and swung and missed. Really how is that possible? I mean, as Brian said, the pitcher clearly reached back for a little extra. It appeared he hit at least 30 or 32 on the radar gun. And I don’t know if you can throw a splitter underhand but it definitely broke a little down and in. What I’m trying to say is that this guy was nasty. Or not, because it’s slow pitch softball for Christ’s sake. I definitely wanted to hang up the spikes after that one. I once made 5 errors in a game in college and I was less and embarrassed than striking yesterday. Are you allowed to bunt in softball? If so I’m sticking with that from now on.

I can crack my own back thank you very much

I have never used any sort of chapstick or lip balm. It seems completely unnecessary. My lips become chapped two, maybe three times each winter, and while it’s unpleasant it isn’t something so horrible that I need apply any type of salve, it goes away on its own in a few days. Also how many people do you know constantly use lip balm? I don’t think that I am some sort of statistical anomaly; I don’t have super lips that are resistant to chafing and dryness. So if my lips are only chapped a few times a year that would lead me to believe that it is the same for most people. So why the chapstick everyday? Clearly its habit forming, which is another reason I would never bother with it. The point is that it is something you never knew you needed until you used it, you would’ve been perfectly fine without it, and now you’ve formed a habit that you can’t stop because it’s almost unconscious on some levels.

I feel the same way about chiropractors. I’ve always been very skeptical of those guys. I’m sure they can provide temporary relief of certain back pain, but I doubted that they truly provided solutions to many back problems. It’s the same thing as chapstick, cracking your back feels great, but it’s not healing anything and you’re only going to have to continue, with greater frequency. My skepticism of the chiropractic industry was somewhat confirmed this week.

Leslie has been having a lot of back pain for the last few weeks and decided to make an appointment with a chiropractor to see if she could resolve the problem. Monday she went and got a few x-rays taken. While waiting in the lobby I happened to notice the receptionist seemed to know all the other patients really well. Someone would walk in the door and a receptionist would say something like, “Oh Mr. Johnson you seem to be making it in a lot earlier than usual did you find a new route?” That was sort of strange to me, I know over time you can get to know the people in a doctors office fairly well, and they know you, but should they know you well enough to notice subtle changes in your routine? That set off the radar a little bit. When her appointment was over she set up another consultation for the next day to review the x-rays. He told her that in the mean time to ice her back, don’t use any heat, that she may need to be fitted for orthotics (or something, I have no idea what that means), and a few other basic treatments. He gave that same advice to three other patients. That set off a few more blips on the radar screen. So you’re telling me that all the patients have the same problem and need to be treated in the same manner? That seems unlikely. Upon her visit the next day she received a packet with the chiropractors proposed treatment plan. I expected it to be sort of stretching regimen, maybe some kind of realignment or massage maybe. Nope, after one half an hour visit it was determined that Leslie needed to schedule 50 more appointments as a course of therapy for her aching back. So that’s why everyone knew each other so well. He said she has a subluxation*, which apparently everyone who goes to a chiropractor has, and that he recommends she come three times a week for five weeks eventually tapering down to once a week, 50 appointments in total. I don’t think victims of some sort of paralyses have that many physical therapy appointments before they can walk again**, who in their right mind would do that for a back ache. I don’t think chiropractors are in the business of hurting people, but they don’t seem to be in the business of healing people either, its seems as though the goal is to make people feel better until it gets the point where they think they can only feel better if they continue to give a chiropractor money.




*Word doesn’t even recognize subluxation as a work, and it’s spelled correctly, should this be another red flag?

**That is pretty insensitive to victims of paralyses, but I’m trying to make a point here.

Resumes

I hate writing resumes. It's the absolute worst. The fact that I am currently writing a blog post is evidence of how much I hate writing resumes, because it's 10:54 and I really need to be done with this resume by noon and I just can't bring myself to finish. Despite the fact that I have an entire blog devoted to talking about myself I really hate talking about myself. There is something about the bullshit you have come up with in a resume that I seem to be adverse to. I struggle mightily with the proper phrasing to make what I do sound interesting and impressive. It always result in me having the worst resume ever. Which makes me hate them even more.

Irritainment

I have a standard routine I run through every morning once I arrive in the office. I check my various email accounts, my bank account, my stat tracker (because what blogger isn’t secretly, or not so secretly, obsessed with the stats), then I look at my different fantasy leagues to set lineups and other related activities. I think that’s something pretty common to most people, no one comes into work and gets cracking immediately, it’s not possible. Don’t lie. The last part of my routine is to read washingtonpost.com and espn.com to peruse a few of the headlines, check the box scores, and see if anything else peaks my interest. Lately though there has been slight change, or addition, to the routine which can probably be blamed for my recent blog inactivity. ESPN has added a comment section to many of its articles and I’m absolutely fascinated by it. I’m not very smart as a whole but there are a few subjects I have a fair amount of expertise on and one of them is sports, baseball in particular*. Because of this knowledge these comment section leave me utterly fascinated and thoroughly entertained. I have a slight knowledge of cancer but you don’t see me on oncology message boards telling people about chemotherapy so why are there so many clueless a holes who post on these baseball message boards? It’s incredible, a solid 85% of comments are totally asinine, and I love it.

I realized this morning that I actually seek out these comments because it pisses me off how stupid most of the people are. That got me thinking about this phenomenon as a whole. It’s been called irritainment by people who are cleverer with words than me. Our society can’t seem to turn away from media sources, be it television, radio, websites, blogs, that drive us absolutely insane. It’s certainly not new but it is something that seems to have spiraled completely out of control lately. I’m really confused about what we get out of this though, it’s sort of creates a negative view of the society when we can’t just accept things we enjoy, we need to be stimulated by things we hate. People constantly complain about what despicable people Paris Hilton, or Britney Spears, or Lindsey Lohan are, but Perez Hilton gets millions of hits a day on his blog because people eat there lives up. They have to know what they done now to screw up. The sports equivalent of that would be the Yankees/Red Sox. People who aren’t fans of the teams constantly complain about this rivalries coverage and hype. They call it an east coast bias and declare that baseball is in fact played west of New York, yet the comment section of an article relating to one of these teams easily reaches 100-200 a day while most other articles rarely receive more than 10 or 15. How many people have declared how sick they are of hearing about Barry Bonds and yet and article about his older brother received over 500 comments yesterday. The point is that most people gain far more entertainment hating Bonds or the Yankees than they do rooting for their own favorite teams. If they didn’t have these things to criticize its likely their interest in the entire sport would wane quickly.

I’m fairly certain that VH1’s entire original programming strategy is based around the viewer wanting to throw up after every show they watch. Did anyone watch I Love New York for any other reason than to hate all the characters on that show? We love watching disgraceful, unintelligent, uncultured people on television. It even spills over into politics. How many liberals watch Fox News just to further develop their hatred off Sean Hannity and Bill O’Rielly? How many republications switch to MSNBC to see examples of a liberal media bias? Actually probably not many, they don’t need evidence because those aforementioned republican pundits told them so, but you see my point.

Can anyone explain irritainment to me in a way I can understand? Is there a feeling of superiority we gain from ingesting so much that makes us angry? I don’t get it, but hey, maybe if there are enough comments on this post we’ll provide some pleasure for people who hate me and all my readers!






* Although, as Matt and Jason can attest, my misinterpretation of a rule the other day was kind of embarrassing and makes me question that knowledge.

A Wile E. Coyote Production?

This has got to be the worst terrorist plot in the history of terrorism. Just a couple of guys, affiliated with no terrorist organization, sitting around masturbating to pictures of Osama Bin Laden who think it would be neat to participate in a jihad. They’ve seen some of those super cool training videos of future suicide bombers playing on jungle gyms and think it would be totally awesome to make one of their own. They’re whisked off for a romantic weekend in the Pocono’s for some firearms training. They make their awesome video, but realizing that VHS is a dying format, they decide to go to their local video store to have it converted it to DVD (it makes it easier to post it on Youtube), apparently not realize that they actually have to watch what they’re converting. Undeterred they formulate a plot. They’re going to attempt to storm a US MILITARY BASE and kill “as many soldiers as possible.” They decided on Fort Dix in southern Jersey. What was the basis of this decision? Dude, I delivered so many pizzas down there I know it like the palm of my hand. I also think Fort Dix made them giggle every time they said it, which was another determining factor. Clearly they failed to factor in that 5 guys storming a base containing thousands of soldiers using only a couple of assault rifles stand to last about 34 seconds before they’re all riddled with bullets. It’s cool though, as one of the conspirators stated, “it doesn’t matter. I’m doing it in the name of Allah.” It’s pretty hard to see the logic in this. How is shooting three or four soldiers before dying yourself further your cause in any way? I don’t get it. It’s a pretty scary scenario when 5 seemly average men who are living a relatively good life in America can still hate Americans to the point of taking this kind of action. How much more of this can we expect?

I have two orders of business to take care of in this post. One markedly more serious than the other. So why put them in the same post? Because that's how I roll.

In March my friend Wendy's niece Cora was diagnosed with a Wilm's tumor. Wendy and a few other people are running marathons as a way to raise money, which will be donated to the children's hospital in which she is being treated. Check out the page Wendy set up for more details. Anything would help so I'm thanking you in advance. Plus lets be honest, you know you'd get a good feeling donating money for kids with cancer, its a win win. Do it.

On a lighter note check this out. Vote for Alexis, she's good people. Ok, I haven't actually met her, but her best friend is a good friend of mine and she good people, making Alexis good people by association. Plus if she wins I will obviously take credit as a result of all the votes pouring in from my blog and I can't see any scenario where that would be bad for me.

I'm taking applications

I feel like I need some sort of advisor. Someone to be the voice of reason when my decision making process goes astray. And let’s face it; I make a lot of bad decisions so it would be useful to have a little angel on my shoulder in certain situations. A life coach of sorts. Plus I kind of want to have an entourage. That would be awesome. This person’s job would be to say things like:

Hey you’re drinking those beers kind of fast, pace yourself, you know you have to go to work tomorrow right?

Or

No buddy, put the phone back in your pocket, you’re drunk

Or

Just because that girl is buying you a shots doesn’t mean you have to drink them

Or

Hey guy, it’s like 2:30 in the morning in you have to be up for work in a few hours, maybe you should get some sleep

Or

Eric, its 7:45 and you still appear to be pretty drunk; maybe you should go into work a little late today.

Or

Um, Eric, where’d your belt go? You might need that.

I feel like this person would be a huge asset. I can hardly think for myself so it would be nice to have someone do it for me.

A New Curse?

There is no getting around the fact that the Yankees have been horrendous to start the season; 9-14 in April, 6.5 games behind the Red Sox at the end of the first month. This has led to a lot of speculation over the weekend that Joe Torre could lose his job, which is a ridiculous idea. This story was clearly a fabrication of the New York media desperate to rattle a few cages and create a story where there isn’t one. I guess since Alex Rodriguez is smiling, hitting home runs, and not sunbathing shirtless in central park that have to talk about something. The pitching staff is decimated by injury. In the first season series with the Red Sox the team put up 6, 5, and 6 runs and were swept. With a healthy staff that type of run support is worth at least two wins. I don’t think Joe Torre should be taking the blame for Carl Pavano faking another injury (PS that guy has the heart of a jellyfish). There have been claims that he has mismanaged the bullpen also but what is a manager supposed to do when their starters can’t make it out of the 5th? Mike Myers is not a two inning pitcher. Mike Myers is good for two things: getting one lefty out a game and doing hilarious Scottish accents. I mean, when you’re forced to trot out Colter Bean in a close game you know things aren’t going well.

But wait, there’s a silver lining to all the injuries, a ray of light is peeking through the clouds, Phil Hughes is coming up to replace an injured starter. The best Yankee pitching prospect since He Who Must Not Be named (even though I can’t say his name I will because I realize not everyone is a big a fan as I am, I’m talking about Brien Taylor, I just wanted to emphasize what a disaster he was) is coming up to save the day. And at the same time Chien-Ming Wang, Mike Mussina, and Jeff Karstens are coming off the disabled list to finally fill out the rotation. Boy things are looking up. Oh wait what’s that, Jeff Karstens broke his leg on the first pitch of the game Sunday? That sucks but he’s only the 5th starter, he can be replaced. Besides Phil Hughes is throwing a gem tonight. A no hitter into the 7th and he’s absolutely carving up the Texas Rangers. SON OF A BITCH. He pulled his hamstring and is out 4 to 6 weeks. Christ. Hey Yankees training staff, what did I just say? Are we sure the Yankees aren’t the cursed team now? I’m still not convinced that Johnny Damon wasn’t some sort of secret Red Sox agent sent over to covertly ruin the Yankees.