Strangely Inspired

I'm not sure why, but I usually get inspired while driving over the Queensboro Bridge.

It really doesn't make sense. It's probably the ugliest bridge in New York, on the lower roadway there is a limited view of the skyline and right now construction workers have placed a yellowed tarp over part of the bridge which looks like you're driving through a papery wasp's nest. I hate wasps, ever since I was a kid and was stung three times in 5 seconds by a sharp barbed flying menace.

But as I drive my Volvo over the disgusting span of the Queensboro (trying not to remember that scene from Escape from NY), I have a few moments alone to concentrate. It's different than laying in bed or walking down the street. Maybe it's the inebriation of a few stolen puffs, but I start dreaming. Driving forward from Queens to Manhattan is moving forward, from the low ghettoes to the flying skyscrapers. It's not unlike taking my ideas for movies, books or plays and pushing them forward from the dregs of my plotting braing into the stark dare-to-be-great reality.

That's where this post came from. Last night, while my Volvo squeeked over the bridge, I thought of listing everything I had ideas for and using it as a springboard to actually
accomplishing one or more of them. Something's been bothering me lately. I fear that I have too many ideas. Sounds stupid, I know, but I fear that I have too many projects I want to complete and that it paralyzes me into accomplishing nothing. Just look at the nouns I use to describe myself. I am truthfully a playwright, a screenwriter, a stand-up comic, a journalist, an author and a producer. My projects sometimes intersect my identities, I want to write a short film and probably produce it myself. Or I have this idea for a documentary about stand-up comedy. But I feel spread thin. I hope this list will focus my energies.

• Creation Play. This is where a lot of effort has gone lately. I have been editing and rewriting this play for over four years and I think it's ready for at least a workshop type production. I've thought to book an engagement at the Red Room but haven't had the balls to actually do it. That will change. I will have balls!
• Complete Works. This is a sci-fi play set in New York after a nuclear apocalypse. It's Mad Max meets Shakespeare in Love. I've written the 1st act, which will probably be changed. Right now there are too many characters and I need to streamline the plot. This needs to be shaped up for a reading, maybe I can set a date for that soon.
• Work. MOvie about my time at Ivoryton and the Beach club. Been finished for a while but I got some feedback from some peops and it needs to be revised. The 1st act should be completely changed and I'm thinking about deleting the voiceover.
• Untitled Freshman movie. I love this idea lately. A teen comedy set in 1992 with music by Belly, The Pixies, The Breeders and the Throwing Muses. I have the first act pretty clearly sketched out in my brain, I just need to get it down on paper.
• Gogol movie (Diary of a Madman is a bad title I think now). Mr. Savage and I wrote this a while back but it's fallen by the wayside. I started revising it again last but stopped because of personal reasons. It's too good of an idea to give up though.
• Road Trip Movie. I wrote the first act of this movie loosely based on my Brother and I driving across country in his VW bus. Needs to be finished.
• Car Service short film. I got this idea during the last film contest I did and I've been meaning to write it for a while. My Volvo makes the craziest sounds and I think it'd be funny if a guy started his own Car service in his brookyn neighborhood with a crappy car.
• Stand Up documentary. I love the stand-up scene in New York, and although there have been a few docs about the process lately (Seinfeld's comedian, The Aristocrats) I think they are ignoring the little guy, ie. me. Of all my ideas, I actually think this one has the greatest potential to make money. It's like i have the bullet point of a pitch already floating in my brain. I should move forward on this one.
• Fantasy novel(s). I've been making progress in crafting the first volume of a fantasy trilogy set in a world of my devising. After I wrote a few chapters, I relaised I needed more backstory and went back to creating more details. I think now I need to write a short story based on the world to set the page.
• Fantasy short story. I know the basic story I want to tell. It will cement a lot of details about Dwenelen. Now I just need to write it.
• Article about Penciltopia. I think my friends are doing something amazing with running programs to teach kids about stop-motion animation. It's something I think people would want to read about and it might even make me some money in the process :). I need to finish writing an informed query letter pitching the idea to good magazines.
• Articles. So far, the only money I've received from writing have been from writing about video games for online publications. I need t use the Writer's market and start coming up with ne and better ideas for articles. And then write the query letters for them.

I've written these kind of lists before. Sometimes they help keep me on pace, sometimes they serve as reminders to flog myself for not accomplishing any of them. Whatever happens, this list will remain in the internets for all time. Perhaps 100 years from now, someone will read it and wonder where that crazy Bob Jingle ended up.

Mac gamers don't exist

I found this little gem of an article over at the Mac Observer which posits that the reason there aren't any games on the Mac is because Steve Jobs hates games. According to this dolt, Jobs doesn't want to break into the billion dollar game industry for moral reasons. John Martellaro (the moron pictured here) actually wrote this:

But amongst many more senior managers, including Steve himself, I suspect there is some lingering concern about the essence of the game market. Computer games, as we've come to know them, are mostly (not always) about aggressive behavior, conflict, battle, wars of power, domination, and sometimes, in the worst cases, some very unwelcome social behavior. To put it bluntly, death and destruction. Apple's public culture appears to celebrate, on the other hand, creation and life. When you have several hundred senior managers at Apple who are most likely married and typically have children, you'll find a culture of affirmation, family, and life.

What? Is that whythe Ipod Nano ships with a cannon turret shooting game? Is that why Jobs appeared on stage in 2001 with John Carmack (founder of id, maker of Doom, Quake and the progenitor of possibly the goriest, most destructive games ever created)? Besides the article being mostly untrue, pure conjecture is an apt description, it pisses me off on an wholly other level. A debate has raged in the comments section of the article, mostly pointing out how retarded macs really are and how ignoring a huge set of customers (gamers) for moral reasons is just plain dumb. I had to add my two cents, most of which has to do with the general anti-gaming sentiment in our culture that I've ranted about incessantly before. You've heard it all before, loyal readers, but I have a moral obligation to share my latest with you. That's what you come here for, after all, right? Or am I the only one who cares about this shit and you'd rather hear about the red sox and drinking on the job.

Anyway, here is the text of a comment I left on the article somewhere around the bottom of page two:

The whole article is based on the idea that games=bad.

This is an antiquated idea, which the overwhelming statistics posted in some comments above show. The writer shows his age and his moral bias a little too much to be considered a legitimate journalist.

But this article underlines my biggest problem with Apple, the holier-than-thou attitude that nearly every single mac user adopts as soon as they buy one piece of white plastic. Just because you use a certain brand of computer, you are not a better person.

You're not even that savvy of a consumer, because it's clear that these people are easily influenced by the image that Apple projects through its advertising.

The truth is, Macs break just as often as Windows boxes. I've seen it happen, I have a lot of holier than thou friends who complain about taking their Mac to Tekserve while praising the system in the same breath. And I'll reiterate what above posters have pointed out, if Apple had a market share higher than 2%, there would be a lot more viruses for OSX. Macs are less powerful gaming machines and much less customizable, while being more expensive. I guess the white plastic tree is an endangered species, its costs a lot to manufacture anything using it.

Flame away, Macboys!

I am bad ass

That's right. Dig my shit.

This is my third or fourth article in The Escapist. I really dig everything about this magazine. I love their artwork, their take on videogames as lifestyle rather than "check this shiny new gamez!" If I read one more cock-gobbling review from Gamespot or IGN or any other so called games journalism source, I'm going to puke. The Escapist is a bright light at the end of the tunnel, showing how games should be viewed on par with books, movies or TV as an important form of media.

Just a little note from the Overmaster

I signed up for the Google ad crap a while ago. I've already talked about how little I've made in that time, mostly due to that fact I have a readership I can count on one simpsonian hand. But apparently I'm breaking some kind of rule. Observe this email that just bounced into my inbox:

Hello,

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as http://onlyzuul.blogspot.com/2005/10/selling-out.html

Publishers are not permitted to encourage users to click on Google ads or bring excessive attention to ad units. For example, your site cannot contain phrases such as “click the ads,” “support our sponsors,” “visit these recommended links,” or other similar language that could apply to the Google ads on your site. Publishers may not use arrows or other symbols to direct attention to the ads on their sites, and publishers may not label the Google ads with text other than “sponsored links” or “advertisements.”

Please make any necessary changes to your web pages in the next 72 hours. We also suggest that you take the time to review our program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) to ensure that all of your other pages are in compliance.

Once you update your site, we will automatically detect the changes and ad serving will not be affected. If you choose not to make the changes to your account within the next three days, your account will remain active but you will no longer be able to display ads on the site. Please note, however, that we may disable your account if further violations are found in the future.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

--------------------------

To avoid the risk of having your account disabled for violation of AdSense policies, we recommend that publishers also review the important guidelines found here: https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23921&ctx=en

So let me get this straight, we, the advertisers, are NOT supposed to encourage people to click the ads. I guess it's better that we merely ignore them and hope random site visitors come to my site and want to click on a link to buying red sox tickets.

I understand what Google is trying to do. They want to create a service that is devoid of fraud, where sites are paid by how much they actually contribute to an advertisers revenue. But come on, how does my little post violate anything? I'm not encouraging people to commit fraud, I just said if you're going to search, try to search from here.

Whatever, it's not like I'm really making any money with this program. I'm not going to change the post. I want to see how long it takes before they kick me out. Consider it a test of Google's merit. I'm performing due diligence as an educated consumer and you're all witnesses to it.

How does it feel to be a part of history?

Guns in the home

Read this story (Now with pics!)

It will blow your freaking mind. (Almost) literally.

NOT safe for work

Watch this.

I can't even find the words. Why can't America show commercials like that?

A lunch hour in New York

I've expounded before on the wonders of napping during lunch. And I still do grab at least 20 minutes of nap time most every day. But there are sometimes days when I have to get some errands down in the alotted hour of time in the middle of the day. These tasks range from getting my haircut at a place that always seems to play men beating up other men (Also known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship) on the tvs all day. to buying that new dork book that just came out.

Today's assignment: Buying supplies for a (very) low budget digital film shoot tomorrow.

This was a challenge. I had at least two stops to make, over twenty blocks to walk, and only an hour to do it. I left my cubicle at 12:01pm, hoping to get back by one so that my coworker could go on her lunch date with her Indian friend. I didn't actually leave the building until 12:08pm, however, because, while waiting for the elevator, I had a sudden urge to move my bowels (2nd time today!) which may or may not have been due to the mexican pizza I ordered at 10:11pm last night.

Feeling several pounds lighter, I emerged onto the Manhattan streets at Park and 50th. I had a lot of ground to travel as I had to make it to Madison and 40th. Here's my secret weapon: I walk through crowds faster than a hippy gets high on Earth day. Which is Ironic because, unbeknowst to me, Vanderbilt Ave between 47th and 42nd was closed to car traffic because of, that's right, the Green Apple Music Festival which coincides with Earth Day. Tactical error #1 on my part was to actually walk through the music performance by some chick at a piano and the countless corporate booths giving away free stuff while telling everyone how Green they are (while, of course passing out enough flyers to choke a small blue whale.) I managed to get by the meandering hippies, average new yorkers (smoking cigarettes and blowing it in the hippies faces), and the urge to wait in line for a free Google totebag. Ooh, teh shiny!

I made it to my first stop, Film Emporium at 274 Madison Ave., Suite 204. I know what you're thinking and no, much to my chagrin, it's not a nudey booth place. My mission here was to get DV tape stock and I was surprised to walk in to the premises to find, not shelves of merchandise, but miniscule cubicles with people slaving away at them. My first response when the fat, bearded, balding and pony-tailed guy (yes, comic book guy works here) looked at me was to ask, "Is this retail?" He assured me I was in the right place and I received my 5-pack of panasonic Master Mini DV tapes after he took a short trip into the back room. I can only assume what goes on in that room, but I think that's where they film the amateur porn we have all come to enjoy on the interweb. While he was charging my card, I noticed a flyer advertising the fact that this place also sells film insurance. Talk about your one stop shop. "Get all the supplies you need to insure your film is good." They would never sell malpractice insurance at a medical supplies store. Why do it here?

A timecheck after leaving the Emporium reads 12:32 (I lost 2 minutes going back up to retreive the information for my next stop which I left on comic book guy's desk.) I was doing all right, timewise, and I hoofed it over to 46th and 3rd Ave. where Tudor Electrical Supply Co. is located. This stop was more of a crapshoot. I found the address on Google maps after searching for Lighting supply stores nearest to my workplace. I had no idea if they had what I wanted or if they even existed.

I walk in to a very cluttered, but large, store littered with opened and unopened boxes of lighting bulbs, fixtures, lamps and other electrical mumbo-jumbo. 3 guys are clustered around two messy desks somewhat in the center. They are immediately friendly, which is odd, but then I notice the open bottle of Southern Comfort on the desk and the styrofoam cups around it with their names sharpied on.

"Been that kind of a day, huh?" I said to the guy with dark hair, moustache (which doesn't look creepy for some reason) and glasses.

"The funny thing is, it was that kind of day yesterday." He pauses. "And the day before that. And the day before that."

I genuinely laugh and ask the guy about what I came for. I explain that I was looking for something portable to light a subject in a car while driving. After saying he had nothing like that, I eventually track down a 6 in. battery operated flourescent tube. I buy two of those, 2 300 watt bulbs, 2 200 watt bulbs and batteries for the fluorescents.

While ringing me up, the other guy at the desk (bald, grey, looks like the sports talk guy from Frasier) mentions queitly to moustache that they should ask me for a ting. I play dumb until the happy black guy comes up and picks up the bottle of SoCo. "You down for a ting?" he asks. "Sure." So they pour four double shots into four styrofoam cups. Happy black guy hands me one, "Don't drink it yet," he warns. When everybody has their drink, they stand and hold it out, as if making a toast. They then touch everyone else's cup saying, "Ting, ting, ting," and down the shot. Happy black checks my work, "Good, he said ting." They put down the cups and continue working. I pack up my bags, bid them all good day, and hit the streets with a warm belly of Southern Comfort.

Timecheck reads 12:51pm. Just enough time to stop and grab some lunch on my way back to the office. I weave through the crowd, the hot blonde in tight pink sweat pants walking her tiny dog (also wearing pink,) the Grand Central Partnership dudes picking up trash, the middle-eastern guys selling halal meat and falafel in the lunch wagons. I'm only stumbling a little bit due to the liquor eating away the first layer of my empty stomach. But it feels good. I love New York right now.

Carrying a fresh Subway (foot long honey oat, ham, swiss cheese, onions, pickles, olives, jalapenos and Southwest sauce) sandwich, I arrive back at my cubicle at exactly 1:03pm. Not bad. One hour. Mission accomplished. Shots drained. Sandwich eaten while writing this blog. Now I just have to wash my hands, fill up my water bottle, and begin the day again.

4:20, dude!

Today is 4.20.06.

This morning I resisted a strong urge to call my boss and tell him to fuck off, I'm staying home. As I snoozed for the 7th time, I daydreamed about doing nothing but enjoying the bright sunlit day. I would make a pot of strong coffee, sit on the stoop, comtemplate the movie contest I'm doing this weekend and maybe smoke a little. There would be delicious chocolate eggs left over from Easter and maybe I'd make a home-cooked meal for once. (living in New York, it seems the only things I eat now are steak fajitas, peanut rolls, and a concoction that Rain Delay and I have perfected: Ramen made with a can of soup, including the MSG packet.)

BEEP BEEP BEEP!

The damnable alarm went off sounding like some deaf doctor's demented beeper and I stumbled into the shower at 9:11am, where I'd have to bust my ass to get to work on time. Leaving the apartment, I was millimeters from locking myself out of the house without cell phone, wallet or, duh, keys. I mean the door spring clicker thing was touching metal. I walk out of the apartment without one of the aforementioned items on a daily basis, sometimes making it all the way to the subway two blocks away before I have to go back for, say, my cellphone. But this was the first time I was about to leave the house with out ANY of them. I should have known something was up, that the gods were aligned against me. After some bad train luck and an annoyingly long ride on the 4 train which involved a family of black kids screaming goodbye to somebody, I strolled in at 10:05 realising that I also left my ID at home. Where I should have stayed this morning.

It's only when I got to work and saw the date on my phone. 4.20. The day when stoners are stoners, men are men and women are women. I first heard about 4:20 in college, when it meant everything about smoking pot. I made fun of those kids, the uber-hippies with beeswax in their hair and smelly pits whose parents dropped them off in an SUV. 4:20 was the police code for dudes in the act of smoking pot, it was the number of chemicals in marijuana, it was the day bob marley died, I heard various reasons for why 4:20 was synonymous with anything pot-related. It was always a joke to me, though, it was a stereotype unto itself. I'd refer to someone in tiedye as 4:20, anyone who had the munchies or was suddenly paranoid. "4:20 Dude! I'm so hungry, what's that noise, is that the cops?" Anyone who said 4:20 without irony was an idiot, perpetuating their own negative stereotype.

But here I am, stuck at work, and all I want is a big fat bowl to smoke when the clock hits the appropriate time. Which is going to be 6:37 tonight when I get home.

6:37 Dude!

Random thought

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person in my gym who's rocking out to Weird Al's "Theme from Rocky VIII."

"So today, his deli comes first.
Still he dreams of his past days of glory.
Goes in the back and beats up on the liverwurst,
All the while you can still hear him say:


It's the rye or the kaiser, it's the thrill of one bite.
Let me please be your catering advisor.
If you want substitutions, I won't put up a fight.
You can have your roast beef on the rye,
Or the kaiser."

Wise words from a man who knows how to ski.

Life After Work World

I saw this poster taped to a tree outside my apartment in Brooklyn yesterday. The pic is from the signon screen for World of Warcraft, which I've seen countless times, but the caption is something new. As far as I can tell, the artist isn't trying to sell anything. Perhaps it's some private joke amongst hipster-nerds, trying to get a few laughs from their friends who wait for the bus to Greenpoint. Or maybe it's a public service advertisement lauding the wonderfulness of WOW. But it could just be that someone was moved to make an image and tape it to a tree. I offer it up to you, the discerning internet audience, to decide. I just think it's cool that someone did it within ten feet of my front door.

The Anatomy of a Road Trip

I love to drive.

There is nothing more satisfying than cranking up whatever stupid song is on the radio (or my creative nowadays) and singing/screaming along the road. It's a therapuetic thing, spending quality time with yourself and performing for no one's sake but your own. The road offers an endless supply of entertainment for me. From checking the foliage or crazy sky formations, to people-watching, to trying to find that dream house, to determining the quickest route between two points, I enjoy it all.

The five years I lived in New York between 2000 and 2005, that was only one thing I lamented about city life. I wasn't able to afford a car. Actually, I couldn't afford the freaking insurance. I don't know why some companies charged over $4000 a year to insure a crappy car in Brooklyn. Who cares if the borough has one of the highest frequencies of grand theft auto (the crime, not the game) in the country? There's no way a sane working-class human can afford that shit.

But in December 2005, several planets aligned to let me own a vehicle. My generous brother was in the market for a new car and was fairly certain he wouldn't be able to get very much for selling his 1989 Volvo station wagon. So he let me have it. Upon checking inurance quotes, I realised 3 things which drove the price down considerably.

1. I was over 25.
2. I was married.
3. I had no moving violations in the past 5 years (this was because I hadn't owned a car, not because I was a good driver. More on that later.)

After pushing the paperwork through the annoying bureaucracy of Geico, the DMV, AAA, and the Polish guy who passed the Volvo through the NY State inspection, Sparky took up residence on the streets of Williamsburg. The name comes from the various wires poking out all over the interior, remnants of my brother's various wiring projects. He's a fiesty bastard, Sparky, but he kicks enough shit for me to love him.

With the myriad of public transportation available in NYC, I always thought that owning a car was a superfluous endeavor. I WAS DEAD WRONG. My life has dramatically changed for the better since Sparky came into it. It's easier to get around with a car. I still take the subway to work in Manhattan, but if I have to go to a basketball game, or play D&D at night I always drive in. Parking can suck, but once you master the basics of cutthroat space scanning, you're fine. I know exactly how long 10 feet from a fire hydrant looks from a block away.

And Sparky makes weekend jaunts so much easier. In order to go to the nearest beach that wasn't Coney Island, we would have to take the subway to Penn Station and then ride an hour on the LIRR to make it to Long Beach, where meatballs white hats and skanky women (not that bad of thing really) abound. The return trips were never fun, sitting on a far too heavily air conditioned train in wet shorts while rubbing aloe into your badly burned face. But now with the car, I can drive to Jones Beach, suck in the morning sun and get back to the city while hopefully avoiding the traffic on the LIE.

I like that I have a Volvo station wagon, too. I had a bunch of friends in high school with old volvos and I will always associate them with being 18 and reckless. They have so much character. Boxy but good. And they fucking last forever. When my brother gave me this one, the odometer read 289,000 miles. That's a lot of freaking miles. After almost a year and a half, it's got 298,400. I've said that all I want to do is break 300,000 and then Sparky can die a happy death. I think one good road trip might do it.

Which is what this blog is all about. This weekend, a couple of friends and I are departing on the next great road trip of our young lives, or The Death of Sparky, whichever comes first. My only plan was to go south and chase the sun. We've got a place to stay in DC on Friday night, and then it's up in the air as to where we'll end up. I see myself on a beach in VA as the sun goes down on another Saturday. Whereever it is, it will be somewhere I've never been before, and that alone is a reason to go.

This week we'll make the preparations. I bought a case of oil (Sparky's been drinking the stuff lately,) and a wiffle ball bat. I'll throw a few tee shirts in a bag and my digital camera will have all it's memory sticks clean. There will be plenty of reading material and all three of us will have our mp3 players. I'm sure somebody will bring the evergreen and the road sodas. After work on Friday, we depart for destiny.

And we're not coming
back till the 'meter reads 300k.

Reaping in the dough

Since signing up for google's adsense program over 6 months ago, I have made a whopping $1.69.

These results are staggering:

	Page impressions	Clicks	Page CTR	Page eCPM	Earnings
AdSense for content	2,421	6	0.2%	$0.66	$1.60
view all AdSense for content channels »
	Queries	Clicks	CTR	eCPM	Earnings
AdSense for search	11	3	27.3%	$8.81	$0.10
view all AdSense for search channels »
Total Earnings					$1.69

(Goes to boss and quits job to blog full time)

My ban on blogging about the Red Sox is over

Would Johnny Damon shut the fuck up?

Seriously, Every article I read about him in the last 3 months has got some jibe about the Sox management not giving him a boatload of cash. Cry your eyes out that the team wouldn't give you an extra $3 mil/year for throwing a freaking baseball like a girl (Damon's got a shitty arm for all those who haven't watched his fish arm not make the cutoff guy from center for the last 4 years.) We all know you're a Yankee now. We know you sold out. We know you have to cut your hair per Steinbrenner's rules. WE KNOW. You don't have to talk abut during every freaking interview.

You know, why can't he be like Bronson Arroyo? We traded him this week for Wily Mo Pena (which is a great move, BTW) but I could see Arroyo being pissy. He's someone who actually could have a legitimate beef with the Red Sox, having signed a "discount" contract last month in order to continue pitching with the Sox. But he's been nothing but understanding. He's hurt, sure, but he's not pointing fingers or calling bullshit. Bronson knows that baseball is a business and in business, there are no guarantees. Still, it's sad to see him go, I'll miss his crazy kick and I'll never forget him taking the slap from ARod in the ALCS. I hope the Reds appreciate that they are getting a solid starting pitcher with nuts the size of Saturn.

In related news, I've been reading Soxaholix pretty much daily the last few weeks in anticipation of Opening Day. It's a great little webcomic that simultaneously romanticizes being a Sox fan and mocks said fanhood, all while throwing down the occasionally obscure literary allusion (including links and footnotes.) And it's freaking funny. This little quote from yesterday's comic made me laugh out loud in my cubicle today:

Getting careah advice from Johnny Damon is like getting how to get along with your parents advice from the fucking Menendez Brothers.

Something Awful this way comes

I've mentioned this site before but they have a slew of parody photos this Friday which made me laugh outloud a few times today that's worth another viewing. Here's a taste:

Gotta love the Schill

I have a weird relationship with Curt Schilling. I respect the man for everything he accomplished in 2004 for the Red Sox, for beating the MFY in game six of the ALCS, for subjecting himself to possible permanent bodily harm with an experimental tendon surgery and for creating the symbol of the team, a bloody red sock. Schilling has cemented himself as a pitching legend in Boston that surpasses the likes of Cy Young and Roger Clemens. Winning the first world series after 86 years trumps everything that came before.

But Schilling, the man not the pitcher, is a complete douche. He is loud, cantankerous and strongly opinionated, which are not necessarily bad traits. I can respect a guy who speaks his mind. But the problem is that his opinions are often very contradictory to mine own.

It started with him stumping for Bush in the 2004 election. Again, there is nothing wrong with speaking your mind, but it left a bad taste in my mouth when Schilling invoked his recent star status so quickly after it happened to campaign for a complete fool of a President. He can have his politics, he can be as conservative as he wants, but being a hero in Boston and then campaigning against the hometown hero in Kerry was in poor taste. Plus, Bush is dumb.

But possibly more offensive than Schilling and I disagreeing on Bush v. Kerry is this recent development. Now, I've known that Schilling played EQ from various sources and at first I was impressed, even excited that a professional athlete also enjoys the same hobby that I do. It basically proves my point that all videogamers are not mindless freaks. But it's his choices that I just don't understand. Why would he play Everquest 2 instead of playing World of Warcraft?

Granted, I've never played EQ2. I can't say firsthand whether it's a well-designed game or not. But from nearly every account I've ever read in the interblogoweb, WOW beats EQ in most, if not all, categories. I never cotton to might makes right. but here the sheer numbers make sense. At it's height, EQ was the "giant" of the MMO world, garnering 500,000 subsrcribers at it's peak in 2003. Within a year, WOW had 3.5 million subscribers. Now, generous estimates of worldwide subscribers are at 6 million.

Now, illustrious pitcher and part-time dork, Curt Schilling signs on as official spokesperson for Sony Online Entertainment, effectively tying himself to a sinking ship. I don't get it. WOW works on so many levels. You can be the uber raiding geek with all the best armor. You can PVP in RTS style battlegrounds. You can grind for various rep with the factions. You can quest nearly incessantly from 1-60. You can explore the deliciously rendered fantasy setting with no reward but the scenery. It's a game that appeals to every aspect of a gamer mind, which is why it is so successful. Every gamer can find something within WOW that they like.

Except Curt Schilling. He'd rather stump for a broken game from a retarded publisher who ruins everything they touch (SWG). Way to go Schill.

Polish Mafia

I heard about this yesterday, http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/62943.htm.

Apparently, there was a huge organized crime ring in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, imaginatively called The Greenpoint Crew. 21 Polish guys were arrested for extortion, armed robbery and attempting to fence a Stradivarius violin to a federal agent.

I live just a few blocks from Greenpoint and I enjoy the occasional pierogy or two, but I'm a little amazed that these people can muster the moxie it takes to run this kind of organization. From what I can see, they're too busy screaming in Polish outside my apartment at 8am on a Saturday and stumbling down my street after one too many Zywiecs.


I've got two questions:

Why aren't people making a Polish Sopranos?
And where the fuck did they get a Stradivarius?

The jokes write themselves.

I fucking hate Valentine's Day

It's a made up holiday. It should be banned.

That is all.

Wicked Wiccans

Ok, so I've been neglecting my little blogosphere. I'll admit it. 2 times in two months is not very satisfying (just ask my wife!) and I know it.

To be honest, I haven't had anything on my mind that I wanted to rant/write about. I mean, I think about crazy ideas all the time (like why is it every time we have a mild winter, people clamor that it's global warming in action? We've only been recording temperatures with any accuracy for the last hundred years or so. I'm sure there have been milder winters than this one.) but most of them haven't been spongeworthy. Plus, work, busy, blah, blah, blah, and the general excuses one comes up with for not doing something regularly that they should. It's not just blogging, I haven't been to the gym in 3 weeks. So not only am I an ineffectual and impotent blogger, I'm a ineffectual blogger with a fat ass.

On to what I want to talk about.

I got into a philosophical/religious email debate with a friend of mine who shall remain nameless. I won't go into the sordid (and there are many) details, but he has recently been exposed to the Wiccan belief system by a self-proclaimed vegetarian (not vegan.) He says that Wiccans revere nature, that all of their rituals and holidays are associated with the changing of seasons and other natural phenomena. The vegetarian chosses to be a vegetarian because they don't want to consume something which they revere.

I reacted negatively to this hogwash. I'm not exactly sure why. At the risk of offending my friend, I had to point out what I thought was wrong with that line of thinking. I guess I have an argumentative nature when it comes to religion. I was raised catholic, I was married in the catholic church, I'll probably die an guilt-ridden, alcoholic, child-abusing catholic, but I don't really go to church on days that don't involve rabbits, candy or trees. That being said, I enjoy arguing about theology and religion. It’s part of what defines my relationship with my mother and father, that I argue with them. It’s not necessarily a lack of respect. I think they are blind to certain truths which I believe irrefutable, and vice versa. I have accepted the fact that what they have chosen for their life is the best for them. The catholic religion has been a place of solace and comfort for my mom. It is nothing but monotony and misguided faith for me.

Wiccans seem even more misguided than catholics, if that's possible. My friend tells me that the vegetarian (it's getting harder to keep names and situations vague but I'm going to plow through it so as not to offend) is "one" with nature and cast spells, lights candles, performs rituals and sacrifices small birds. I made that last one up. See how easy it is to make fun of? I'm a big fan of fantasy and Tolkien and D&D and various dork practices, but I realise that it's all fiction. Somehow, wiccans never got the memo and believe that casting spells is how you go about dealing with life.

But besides the craziness of Wiccan, I've got issues with someone choosing not to eat animals for any supposed connection they have with them. For one, the animal doesn't care if you eat them beyond a fight or flee instinct. #2, humans evolved beyond animals by killing them. Ancient humans were able to eat more protein, which led to growing larger brains. Also, the killing of animals led to clothing ourselves in skins, using the fat to burn, and countless other technologies. To extrapolate, civilization would not have existed without killing a shitload of cows, goats and horses.

The vegetarian counters that it's okay to kill an animal if you personally kill it, skin it and consume it. Like that distinction is ok for some reason. Once again, I say that's like taking a giant step backward in human civilization. Let me explain: I’m not a hunter. I don’t choose to spend time stalking a beast, slaying it, gutting it, skinning it, hanging it, then butchering it. I pay someone else to do that. When I buy meat from a store, I am paying the farmer, the truck driver who brought it to me, the butcher who prepared it, the cashier who sold it to me and everyone else along the way who put that meat into my hands. Those people choose not to answer phones for a banking executive (who incidentally is probably connected to the subsidies which keep the farms in business.) When I buy that meat, I am trading my time for all of theirs. That’s what commerce is all about. What is wrong with that? Am I supposed to kill and grow all my own food? If that were even possible, I would spend all of my time doing so. It is precisely the specialization of different professions which brought about the growth of cizilization as a whole.

And it's exactly this kind of sloppy thinking that bothers me about the whole wiccan thing. It sounds all cool and spiritual to say, hey, I'm choosing to love nature and love my fellow man and cast spells (roll the die!), but it's also like choosing to live in a hut for the rest of your life and eat bugs. Yeah, it's possible, even tantalizing in our busy world sometimes, but we as a race have evolved past these vague superstitions.

All of this made me think about what exactly it is I believe in. It's not much, but to me, we are the only gods. Humans have learned to use their intellect and industriousness to shape our lives and carve out a comfortable existence amidst a dangerous and unpredictable world. Even two hundred years ago, natural disasters such as the Tsunami or Katrina, would have caused so much more devastation and death than they did in 2005. That is a direct result of man, not any god.

We have evolved past the idea of personalizing things we can’t control, like nature, weather, inspiration, etc. There is no God, gods or anything else out there. It's just us, baby. Just this Earth. And no amount of lighting candles, praying, casting spells, meditating, prostrating will make the superstition real.

Rectal Teapot?

My goddamn rock solid ghetto shiznit name is


Rectal Teapot, Yo.


What's yours?


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Nerf Shamans!

With 5 million subscribers, you're going to get a few undesirables. Statistically, the person behind the Tauren might occasionally be a murderer or a child molestor. Hell, you could even be ganked in STV by an Orc Hunter that just happens to be Kim Jong Il, or maybe even Saddam is the Undead Rogue camping the farm in AB.

But graffittiists? Those malicious destroyers of public property? World of Warcraft is not free of them either. Here, they have marred the beauty that is an LAX bathroom stall. Those bastards! I'm ashamed to be in the same Azeroth with people like this: