Best Halloween Costume

This contest is already over. On my way home I saw a dachsund wearing a bun on either side of it with some "ketchup" on top of it. Case closed. It looked just like this in fact.

Oddly Enough

People at work are NOT wearing Halloween costumes. Just standard business dress. Nothing outlandish at all. Except for that one guy who's wearing white socks with black shoes...

Too much moving!

Moving apartments was a little stressful, but ultimately amazing!

Now I have to help some of my co-workers move offices. I have been moving tapes all morning. Furthermore, the moves will make things far less convenient for me at work. I feel like Jerry when he always breaks even in that Seinfeld episode.

In this case, a good move at home is counterbalanced by a bad move at work...

Old Man Richard

There are too many kids in the new apartment building. I feel like I'm 50 years old. Other than that and the million boxes lying around, the new apartment is amazing.

One of the best things is that 9 times out of 10 when I walk into the lobby, the elevator is there waiting with the door open! Brilliant. Also, one of our new doormen looks just like John Turturro.

Let's Get Serious

Check out this interview with Michael J. Fox. Opposing stem cell research is outrageous. This is a classic example of the simplistic political analysis available on Marquis. But seriously, how can you oppose stem cell research for anything other than scientific reasons? Those embryos are not people.

The Bergers are on the move!

Finally, 6 years after we were initially supposed to move in, we are taking the plunge today. Leaving the only place I've ever called home is a little bittersweet, but almost entirely SWEET! Housewarming party for all regular blog readers (the 7 of you) once everything is unpacked in a couple weeks...

A surprise

Everyone knows that big-time college sports rips off college athletes. What I didn't know was that big-time college sports also rips off the government. Amazingly, these schools enjoy an absurd tax-exempt status for many things related to athletics. That is completely outrageous!

Now if they could only free me from work...

One of the more clever Onion articles in recent memory.

Best line (emphasis mine):

"The wedding ceremony was a farce," said Doswell, who recalled he was led out from city hall in French cuffs to an awaiting limousine.

That's Funny

Gawker asks for submissions for worst magazine cover of the last 40 years. The one magazine cover they show (and deride) is the copy of Esquire that contains the story mentioning yours truly and the Trumbull poker game!

Meatloaf

To be honest, I've never understood the appeal of it. It is vile and disgusting. Eat some real meat. Meat Loaf the singer, on the other hand, is ok. Not my favorite, but great in Fight Club.

Firefox 2.0

Here is a review of this great new product. This is an interview with the Mozilla VP of Products. Here's how they plan on marketing it.

Please download it later today.

My First Sale (I hope...)

Just posted on craigslist! I am selling my Jordan Jammer. If you don't want to follow the link, here are the basics:

I am moving and need to sell my Jordan Jammer. This is a basketball hoop that is perfect for a young kid to have in his/her room. The height is adjustable from 5' to 7' and I will even include a ball with the purchase. The hoop is in good condition and has all original stickers, etc... A collector's item that you can use!

Also, does anyone have any interest in a lot of old baseball/football/basketball cards?

Update:

Now with picture! Also, some old shirts and video games are available...original PlayStation anyone?

Throw the whole lot out

Congress is so corrupt it's almost impossible to believe. If you don't believe me, read what Rolling Stone has to say (thanks Dan). They also have a nifty list of the 10 most corrupt members of Congress. A couple highlights:

Mr. Pork, Don Young of Alaska:

And during a debate on the right of native Alaskans to sell the sex organs of endangered animals as aphrodisiacs, Young whipped out the eighteen-inch penis bone of a walrus and brandished it like a sword on the House floor.

The Bribe Taker, William Jefferson of Louisiana:

Equally shameful were Jefferson's antics after Katrina struck: He commandeered a Coast Guard helicopter to gather personal effects from his home in New Orleans -- at a time when his constituents were literally drowning in their attics. Yet despite his unethical behavior, Jefferson is cruising to re-election.

Remember this?

Dan and I used to LOVE this show. Although for some reason we both incorrectly remembered part of the song to be "Slapshot, hockey puck, PRO STARS, PRO STARS."

Be Amazed

Be very amazed by these feats of video game magic.

Here are examples of Zelda and Mega Man 2 from YouTube.

Too Garlicky

I'm still waiting to say that at a restaurant (or at least have Dan or Tom say it...). Wouldn't it be even nicer to say while eating a $40 entree? I ate at Nick's Fishmarket in Chicago by myself in a t-shirt and shorts. Who knew that they had a $40.95 Dover Sole? I knew that they had delicious flatbread and an affordable Kobe Beef burger.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall

A devastating loss for the Mets, as everyone knows already. It's not worth saying much, but I'll write a few things. I was supremely confident all the way through that the Mets would win this series and I still can't believe that they did not. My hope is that this loss is like Boston's loss in the 2003 ALCS to Aaron "Fuckin'" Boone's home run (meaning that the Mets will come back and win the 2007 World Series). And also, I hope that the third Molina brother is now known as Yadier "Fuckin'" Molina. The entire series, I was in shock as he got hit after hit. Now that he got the biggest hit of all, I am even more shocked. He was arguably the worst everyday hitter in the Major Leagues this year.

Simply put, the Mets were fortunate to get a fantastic pitching performance from Oliver Perez, along with one of the greatest catches in history by Endy Chavez (as determined by the complicated formula of degree of difficulty x circumstance), but squandered it all because their excellent lineup put up a stinker of a game at the wrong time. Sounds like the Yankees.

If the Mets can pick up a starting pitcher or two, they should have a great chance to get to the World Series next year and maybe even win it. Gotta keep up the faith...which is tough to do at a time like this.

At least I don't have to watch the World Series too closely, but LET'S GO TIGERS!

If it's broke, please fix it

I agree with Sanford Levinson. How can a document written in the 1780s be considered so sacred over 200 years later? Society is so impossibly different today that it's not even worth talking about. Couldn't some modern revisions (perhaps by some non-partisan scholars? definitely not by the idiots in Congress...) improve the way that the government runs this country?

For a more in-depth look at Levinson's take on the Constitution, read this review of his book.

And thanks to Matt Yglesias for pointing me to all this.

The Best of Many

Watch this deleted scene from the Borat movie. You like. Here are the others.

The 51st Street Stench Corridor

Have you ever transferred from the downtown 6 train to the E/V trains (or vice versa) at 51st street and Lexington Avenue? If so, then you have traversed the most disgusting underpass in the Manhattan subway system (I can't vouch for all of the outer boroughs). This little walk of shame has even made me consider not bothering to transfer sometimes or taking an alternate route. It is a combination of vomit, doody, urine, and some special ingredient...maybe B.O.? I can't quite put my finger on the smell, can you?

The Ultimate Cooler

Check out this woman's bad luck.

It's the little things...

...that brighten up my work day. Earlier today someone wrote this about me:

"I don’t have a phone number but he’s pretty good about email."

I try to hard to respond to e-mails very promptly and I'm proud that someone finally noticed. Now if only some people at work would compliment me on my suits, shirts, and ties...

Power to the Bloggers

Check out The War of the Words!

Big Win!

The Mets opened the NLCS with a 2-0 victory tonight, highlighted by a beautiful performance by Tom Glavine and a bomb from Carlos Beltran. This was the scene at the start of the game:


After Beltran hit his home run, the place was practically shaking. It was almost as if a plane was flying overhead...

Two pseudo-game related comments:

1. It is appalling to me that in the playoffs, the Mets have decided to have an 8th inning sing along to "Sweet Caroline." Even if it is only a recent tradition, it is very well known these days that the fans at Fenway already sing this song during the 8th inning there! Why are we copying them?

2. The MTA really needs to give Metrocards RFID chips. Getting on the subway after the game was a nightmare. It might have only been a bad dream if RFID chips had been around to speed things up. Countless people (drunk, sober, and tourist) screwed up the often fickle Metrocard swipe and cost all the fans a lot of time. The current PayPass experiment is a step in the right direction, but let's hurry things along, okay?

A better way to work

We should all have more free time for blogging and reading blogs and considering good ideas like some sort of DVR for radio.

Hidden Treasure

Check out the AG's Schiavo blog.

YAHTZEM WINS!

Most readers of this blog already know this, but I thought I should put it up here anyway (especially considering that I've written about so many near misses). Alex Jacob, our boy, finally won a big one! He is the U.S. Poker Champion, or something. Congrats buddy. Now go buy a couch.

The Way We Eat

A closer look at some things that you may or may not have considered before. Does this explain Tom's insane strategy of scraping plates clean of all leftover sauces?

There, I said it

Leonardo DiCaprio is a great actor. Don't believe me? Go see The Departed.

Oh yeah, that guy Nicholson is not bad either.

Let's Go Mets Go

The Cardinals are garbage, even if Pujols is the best player in baseball and Carpenter is a very good pitcher. Mets to win in 5 and head to the World Series!

And I feel very lucky to not have to face the Yankees in the World Series. They would have been the most difficult match up for the Mets because of their dominant lineup (even if they didn't show it in Detroit) against the Mets' mediocre starting pitching.

I feel that Mets-Tigers or Mets-A's would both be very closely contested World Series match ups. Both AL teams have very good starting pitching, so they will provide stiff opposition to the excellent Mets lineup.

Economics 101

When I was leaving the Giants game today, I was pretty hungry because all I had eaten for lunch was a hot dog. I remembered that people sold pretzels in the parking lot after the game, so I found and approached one of these vendors with the idea of buying 2 pretzels (my friends were hungry too). I was incredulous at the asking price of $4 per pretzel outside the stadium after the game, so I decided to try and bargain with the female vendor. Just as I walked up to her cart, she nearly burned herself...

Me (establishing friendly relations): Are you ok miss?
Vendor (mid-50s disheveled woman in front of a shopping cart full of about 75 pretzels): Yeah, yeah, I'm ok, do you want a pretzel?
Me: How much will that cost?
Vendor: $4
Me: Well, what if I offer you a deal? How about I give you $6 for 2 pretzels?
Vendor: Do you not understand math? 4+4=8.
Me (not even bothering to think about how absurdly better I am at math than she is): Yes, I understand that, but since I am buying multiple pretzels I figured that I might be able to get a discount.
Vendor: Yeah, no discount.
Me: But you have a ton of pretzels to sell and the game has been over for 30 minutes. Most people are gone already, there's no way that you are gonna be able to sell all these pretzels. If you take my $6, you will still be turning a tidy profit while also offloading some dead weight merchandise.
Vendor (without hesitation): I don't have very many pretzels.

Sad to say(?), this is why she is selling pretzels out of a shopping cart for far more than they are worth after New York Giants football games. Maybe she uses one cart for an entire season? I wonder what she does during the off-season. Sells 4 Euro bottles of water on the streets of Rome?

Legal Analysis of new gambling regulations

Check out this article.

Too Much TV...

...makes Rollen Stewart go crazy. This man has some serious issues. But I hope that too much blogging does not cause similar outlandish behavior. As long as I stay away from this stuff, I think I'll be ok though.

More about Mark Foley

Turns out that everyone's favorite IM buddy loved celebrities (doesn't everyone?) and may actually be a democrat according to Fox News.

New Blog

Check this puppy out. It's called Marhaban.

Also, the Mets are gonna beat the Dodgers and make the World Series, decimated pitching staff or not.

Finally, in a sick twist, Ariel found out about the terrible new anti-gaming legislation while having a good time at the world famous Carlos'n Charlies in Aruba. The same place where a certain van der Sloot was seen with a certain young blonde Southerner.

"I wanted to hear from an a-hole...

...I would have farted." Our President said that once and based on this article, it seems like he is a big fan of farting.

Caller?

This may or may not have been the guy who called me the other day. All I know is that he, like Tom, loves to rep the 305 area code.

Chopping Mall

If you have the time, check out this 1986 classic. The nut scenes to watch are when the robot kills the security guard while he is looking at Playboy centerfold, when the robot blows up a girl's head, and any time the robot asks someone for some identification.