Boof's Bergblog

There's No Way...

2010-10-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

I'm not saying that the battle is won
But on Saturday night all those kids in the sun
Wrested technology's sword from the hand of the war lords
'The Tide is Turning' Roger Waters

I'm patiently waiting for twitter updates and youtube videos to surface about the potential David Gilmour/Roger Waters reunion in St. Paul (of all places). I didn't think anything of it until this stupid news story came out and since then I've been reading twitter updates and people calling in radio shows about how they "ran into" David Gilmour at the St. Paul Hotel.

I honestly don't know what to make of all this. I can't believe out of all the tour dates that Roger Waters is embarking on that David Gilmour would pick St. Paul to perform with Waters. I think everyone figured that Gilmour would end up in London since he's old and boring now. Not to mention he wouldn't have to travel with Roger Waters and listen to fans go crazy over a tour that's not his.

Update: Apparently Gilmour did NOT play with Waters which makes me feel a bit better about not going. I was debating on buying the $100+ ticket for months now but I declined because I've had enough buying tickets to acts over 60 years old and I could use that money elsewhere.

I remember seeing Fleetwood Mac and all the 60 year olds playing the songs that have been played thousands of times before. I remember after the concert shaking my head and wondering why the hell I paid $80 for this? Roger Waters is 67, David Gilmour is a few years younger than that and to me, that's a bit cringe worthy.

A Homecoming of Sorts...maybe

2010-10-19T19:31:00.000-07:00


Lately I've been talking in my sleep

 I can't imagine what I'd have to say

Eric Clapton, "Running on Faith"

(Sigh, blogger really sucks nowadays.  Sorry for the crazy format)




I've been persuaded by a few individuals (fans if you will) about coming back and blogging since everything seems to be somewhat normalized. Normalized seems like the wrong word but whatever. 

Anyway so what have I been up to. Hmmm 

I can't remember where I left off. I know there's a Brett Favre post from some time ago but that could've been from 4 years ago knowing how much I wrote about my jealous hate for the guy. 
Well, first of all I'm actually going to marry someone. Believe it or not, someone can actually handle my down-turned mouth and my nasally voice. I proposed to “B” while taking a trip up north. No wedding date yet but 2012 seems to be a decent year. 
Second, I was laid off for about 15 months where I probably learned more about life than ever before. That whole 'debbie downer' of a post will happen someday but not right now. 
I never did get that house but I'm still in the market.

Vikings came close to a Superbowl. Twins still have not. 
Other than that it's been somewhat normal

So why have I neglected blogger for a year in a half? 
Most obvious answer: I'm lazy. 
Most non obvious answer: Ever since I met B I think about her more than my petty little differences in life. I remember before I would try and sleep at night feeling very lonely and not having anyone to talk to. That's kinda why I started blogging to begin with, just to reach out to someone and know that I'm alive. 
Along with all that I've decidedly 'lost a step' and my grammar is at an all-time low. I can only sing the "conjunction junction" song so many times and I would have to decipher it like it was the DaVinci code. Also, with as much as MLA changes, how the hell can anyone keep up. 
One space after a period now? That's bullshit. 
I'm not changing my spaces now. I've come too far.

I read some of those earlier posts and I have no idea how I could construct some of those sentences without the writing helper at the nearby community college. 

I'm also terrible at being constructive without a clean desk, sitting somewhat upright, and in a quiet place. I cannot and will not write a post while I'm melted in bed. Now that I'm back at work I can "take a break" and post something every now and then.

My posts are now old enough that someone can look back at them and question me, "Why the hell are you talking shit about me?" and I and retort with, "I'm sorry, I was in a different place back then." and that would generally work. I know in the thick of my blogging a few close friends would walk up to me and remark about how grumpy I am. This is in direct reference to my Monday Crap List that I would partake in. I was very surprised at this revelation because I've never felt that I was an overly negative person. The Crap List was just a day to vent some frustration, not to for a personality around. I still want to do more crap lists but perhaps I’ll have to have everyone sign a waiver. 

That's another thing, work is basically the main reason why I'm even considering getting back in the blogging game again. There's no one here at night and I know six years back I felt a bit lonely at night without anyone to talk to or share my feelings about whatever. Now that I'm back I can maybe continue to cry and complain through blogger. That's great news eh? I'm not going to promise greatness but with all these changes to Blogger in the last year in a half, I could be great. 

Probably not though.

Favre Talk

2009-08-18T18:35:00.001-07:00

You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom,
blown on the steel breeze

People who know me and who read this know that I hate the Packers. The fans drive me nuts from my grandma to that annoying guy in the office who paints his cubicle in mustard yellow. I can't stand them and their over-glorification of everything. That being said, I've always disliked the praise for Brett Favre and how he's touchdown Jesus and how the light glistens off his helmet and all that crap.

One of the best games of my life was against the Packers and I've mocked the guy for the duration of this blog.

I even described Favre coming here as a nightmare situation.

Since then I have loosened up and completely changed my reaction to Favre being a Vikings. I think it was listening to a couple Packer fans on the radio bitch and whine about Favre playing for the Vikings. Then I heard how much Favre wanted to 'stick it' to the Packers organization and I immediately sat down in my seat and pondered that.

If Favre hates the Packers....and I hate the Packers....doesn't that make Favre some sort of an ally? I guess it kinda does and if he want's to beat the shit out of the Packers, I'm certainly not going to get in the way of that. So therefore I was a little hurt when he decided to not join the Vikings a couple weeks ago. I felt a bit rejected and I gave the existing Viking quarterbacks a very sober look because I didn't trust them.

Then yesterday came and suddenly it felt like a dream. Packer fans were pissed off and wanting blood and Viking fans felt like it was Christmas morning. I also watched quite a bit of ESPN yesterday and listened to all the analysis of the Vikings. I also did some analysis myself.

-I enjoyed the Packer whining so much that I found myself listening to a Green Bay sports radio show and all the whining going on. Then I heard this,

"The one thing I am concerned about is if they end up winning a superbowl. I feel that if they should win the Superbowl with Favre then that would negate our Superbowl with Favre."

The host agreed and I felt my heart skip a beat and immediately transformed into dream mode.

"And Favre throws for another touchdown to put the nail in the coffin for superbowl XLII." Everyone in Wisconsin is now feeling like the Vikings fans did. bwhahahahahahah

-After listening to the huge debate of wether the Vikings are better now with Favre or not I couldn't help but shake my head. I believe it clearly makes them better not because of what Favre could potentially do but what he brings to the table. All the Vikings have needed in the past three years is an average quarterback. Not good, not great, but average. TJ, Frerrote, and all those other stiffs we've put in there are not even average. Favre at the very least makes the defense respect the air game the Vikings could have. With TJ they defense would just stack up 9 guys in the box to stop the run and make TJ cry in his diaper. Now Favre and his reputation for killing blitzing defenses can change all that for simply being under center.

-I find it amazing that a guy can simply get off a plane, sign a contract, and start practicing as if it's some kind of computer game. I thought he would at least take the first day off just to blame it on logistics.

That's all I got and I can't wait for Friday's preseason game (did I just say that?)

That Time of Year Again

2009-08-13T18:12:00.001-07:00

Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hungabout.
Strawberry Fields forever.

This weekend is my annual relative get-together and I'm just happy it's somewhere relatively close. This year we're having our Christmas in August in Lanesboro, MN which is about 2 hours away from the Twin Cities. My uncle is hosting this and he's actually done a bit of research this year. He's actually got some activities that we can participate in with our dip contest and tons of bike trails.

The one part where he failed (in my mind anyway) was the gift exchange. This year the gifts have a theme and they have to fit that theme. This years theme is farming and/or gardening.

(blink:blink)

Aren't gifts supposed to be something that you feel somewhat good about? I mean I already know I'm not going to get anything worth while which makes me want to buy something incredibly stupid to begin with. So far I'm thinking of buying a simple rake and wrapping the rake with paper so that it obviously looks like a rake. I think that would be semi-funny.

I think what I'm going to have to do is take a walk in a nearby Target in the gardening section and see what I can find. I might just wrap up a clay pot and put in a message that says (have fun with your big clay pot).

Other than that I'm drawing a blank. I could buy a load of seed but...that sounds so boring. I did think about buying a DVD of Field of Dreams but I would be willing to bet that no one would get it. No one got my Godfather and Glitter joke a couple years ago and whoever recieved it simply thought it was cool to get 2 DVD's. ugh

Kurt Rambis?

2009-08-11T14:21:00.001-07:00

I love you this hour, this hour today
and heaven will smell like the airport
but I may never get there to prove it

Apparently the Wolves found a new coach. I couldn't care less in fact I couldn't tell you the last 3 coaches they've had. Kurt Rambis is the new coach that the GM found and though I don't know much of anything about him I do have a small complaint. When the hell did he lose the glasses?

I mean when I heard that the Wolves were persuing him I expected him to have that crazy junkie/Hanson brothers look that we remember in the 80's. That look that looked kinda hipster in its' time. So ugly that you have to appreciate it kinda think.

Somewhere he went from this:

To This:

Well what the hell is that about? What happened to the mullet and the thick black specs? He should at least have glasses. It's the rule for semi-famous guys with glasses, the glasses have to stick. Like have you seen Elton John without glasses? He's like Darth Vador without the mask. I could also use the Smokey and the Bandit example where Burt Reynolds has a Cavalier instead of a Trans Am. Hell, he'd blow a head gasket just fishtailing it on the highway.

Where the hell did Kurt Rambis pull out the dignified coach look? Not that I've had any kind of NBA basketball knowledge or anything but based on NBA's corrupted nature he should automatically gain one technical ever game whenever he doesn't wear the glasses.

I mean really, how can anyone take the guy seriously anymore?

The New Busch Stadium

2009-08-06T17:22:00.001-07:00

On my feet to chase it down
The lights were spokes and rungs away
I stumbled back and hit the floor

Finally, I can start on with ballpark pictures of our road trip to Missouri. It was hot as hell and I think my *former* car took a hell of a beating because of it. I also found out that my car's radiator cap had a hole in it.

No hole=no pressure=not much effective cooling in 105 degree heat. Oh well, it's not mine anymore so it's someone else's to worry about.

Anyway I had heard a lot of praise for the New Busch Stadium. Things like it's been sold out since it's first day in 2006 and that it's a wonderful ballpark.

First things first, I need a belt.

Note to self, never get on top of the St. Louis arch when you are truly interested in the game being played down below. I was squinting to try and read that itty bitty scoreboard on the left and I couldn't make out anything. I did barely catch the third baseman making a play to first though which I was impressed with. Not with the play but the fact that I could actually see it.

The next day we actually went to the game. We got there very early because 1, I pressured my girlfriend into it and 2, I wanted to see what the scene was like before the game. It really wasn't all that exciting.

They do have some cool things outside of the ballpark like this huge Stan Musial baseball which no one wanted to really stand on.

These stone carvings were really cool too. Do you think that in 10,000 years from now there will be aliens uncovering these stones and learning about our way of life based on Busch Stadium?

This was a pretty nice tribute to Jack Buck. Too bad his son is a prissy little bitch though.

This is the Wienermoble before it smashed into that house.

When we first entered the ballpark I was immediately semi-shocked that they did not have open concourses. What the hell? And this was indeed the lower deck too. How does a ballpark get built in the 21st century without open concourses?

They do have these little tracks out in the open where you can bypass the concourse which is pretty nice but it's still not an open concourse. Also, I don't know if you can see this or not, but under that deck you can see PVC pipe going..where ever. PVC pipe? Really? Good lord that is disappointing.

I think this was the scoreboard on the last day of the former Busch Stadium. Why this is important, I have no idea.

This was the view from our seats. The view was decent and it was nice to soak in the sun. Justin Morneau hit a home run about ten rows above us.

And the scoreboard. Nothing fancy really. It seems like Budweiser really dominates it though. I guess that's why it's called Busch Stadium

I would say this is the primary reason why this ballpark gains so much praise. The view behind homeplate is simply amazing.

It's also nice that all it takes is one right turn to find one of four interstates.

Overall Busch Stadium was nice but not as good as I thought it was going to be. I remember the national media drooling about this place when it first opened and I guess I just think it's okay. The open concourses and the PVC is just stupid. I would say the only thing really unique about this place is the view behind homeplate but even that's more of a testament to the City instead of the ballpark. I mean you would have to be a complete moron to not show the city skyline as a part of the ballpark.

What's even more surprising is that I would put this ballpark on par with US Cellular field in Chicago (gasp!). US Cellular has all these complaints about angles and sitelines which I didn't see when I went there. I was even surprised to find out it wasn't even the best ballpark in Missouri. All in all if the Twins played the Cardinals in St. Louis again, I probably wouldn't go out of my way to see a game in the New Busch Stadium.

A New Dawn

2009-08-05T21:47:00.001-07:00

I'm growing tired and time stands still before me
Frozen here on the ladder of my life

I believe it was that cross country trip that gave my car symptoms of terminal cancer. The thing was on the verge of overheating many times, the check engine light would come on every 100 miles, and it was really starting to squeak. I was having recollections of the summer of 2004 when something would fall off my Regal on a weekly basis. The breaks would stick closed so after the third break job (all under warrantee) I got sick of smelling the break pads. I got a hundred dollars for trade-in value for that car and I still think I could've gotten another hundred had I cleaned it before I drove it to the dealership.

Now my Pontiac was acting up. I had a guy check the light code in Nodak and he confirmed that the transmission slipped...or so the car said. I never actually felt the transmission slip but oh well. After that diagnose the light would come on, come off, and then come on again. I immediately began looking for new/used cars again. When you look up comments on a '97 grand am, let me know what you see because all I ever see are catch words like "money pit", "worst car ever", and "frustrating". After reading each comment I found out that their problems had already happened to me and that it would only pick up in the future.

I looked at my Grand Am, looked at cars.com, and then back at my car again and figured that I really need to get rid of it.

I researched a bunch of cars online and somehow landed on the Honda Fit. It wasn't exactly a car, wasn't exactly a minivan, but it had the best of both. It had a rating of 9.3 on Edmunds and got great gas milage.

I test drove it and decided that I wanted it a couple days after getting giddy about it. The only problem was the trade-in value of my Grand Am. As far as I'm concerned the thing was worth a Saturday afternoon, a case of Summit, and a handful of sledgehammers but perhaps the dealership thought differently. The first thing was getting it to the dealership without that light being on. I figure if they find out there is something not quite right with the tranny then I might not get more than a sledgehammer for the thing. I would've been happy with $1500 but blue book values were a bit more.

I managed to take it to the dealership sweating bullets hoping to god that light wouldn't come on. I was watching the dashboard like a hawk until I finally arrived at the dealership without a "check engine" light. I talked to the salesman about how I wanted a new Honda and told him about my great grand am with nothing wrong with it... After all I just washed it and cleaned out the interior so it looked like the day I bought it. It actually looked very cool and it even glistened in the sun!

I then hand my keys to this old guy who jumps in my car and starts checking the gears, making sudden stops in the parking lot, and then takes it on the highway. I was praying the light wouldn't come on. Meanwhile me and the salesman are looking up the bluebook value and he said he'd try to get me $2000 for it. I was elated and still praying.

Guy comes back, drops of the keys, and the salesman looks at me with a sober look.

"We weren't able to get you $2000 because the tires have a small flaw so we took $200 off of that for a trade-in of $1800. Is that okay?"

Boof (on the inside): HELL YES! SUCKERS!!!!
Boof (on the outside): I suppose.

So I picked out this phat looking Honda and started the paperwork. I had to wait for the car because they had to repair the roof after a previous storm had dented the roof.
Whatever. As I drove off the lot in my Grand Am it was no more than a mile down the road when the orange "check engine" light came on again. I held my heart, took a deep breath in, and said "holy fucking shit!" as I went home.

Now I have a new vehicle and I'm kicking ass!

Boof and Brett Favre's Olive Branch

2009-07-21T18:59:00.001-07:00

Now that you're gone
I'm left all alone
All by myself
To wander and roam

I have to admit, I've been all watching all the news, reading every worthless report, and seen just about every news story on Brett Favre. I already stated last year on how Favre throwing for the Vikings is my "nightmare scenario" and how weird it would be. As for the latest news, I don't follow It so much for him being a viking quarterback as much as I love the drama involved.

For instance the Vikings went out of their way to trade for Sage Rosenfels who was a mediocre quarterback for Houston. They trade for the guy and he's now playing for the backup position? Then there's Tarvaris who played okay last year and who knows the offense as good as anyone. He was one dropped pass away from perhaps having an improved 2008 season. Now he wants to be traded (bwhahahahah)

Random NFL Exec calling the Vikings: "Hey Vikes, I'll trade you this half eaten baloney sandwich for Tarvaris Jackson!"

bwahhahaha

Throughout all this news, I've learned about Favre's alleged main reason for continuing to play football: To "stick it" to the Packers.

When I first read this I just shook it off an called him and old man under my breath. Then one day I saw this guy walk across the street with this butt ugly packers jacket and that ugly G on his cap. This just happened after I read a 5th time that Favre just wanted revenge on his former team. That's when the light bulb came on.

I hate the Packers and would love nothing more than the Vikings to beat the hell out of them 66-0...and so would Brett Favre.

hmmm

Is it right for me to hate the thought of Brett Favre playing for Minnesota? Isn't your enemy's enemy your ally? Do Brett Favre and Boof really share the same goals in life?

I thought all of those were brilliant questions. It was like a Christian in North Korea finding a Christian South Korean and both wanting to hate each other but finding out they want the same thing. Well, I don't know how many Koreans are Christian but I can assume that there's a couple...right? Probably not.

Anyway I see it like this, I'm extending an olive branch to Brett Favre only to beat the crap out of the Packers with said olive branch. It almost sounds biblical.

July Crap

2009-07-20T19:41:00.001-07:00

And now our bodies are oh so close and tight
It never felt so good, it never felt so right

Crap List

1. Check engine light = mood

After finding out that the barometer of my mood literally switches from whether my check engine light is on, I've decided to throw myself in the car market. I know people get frustrated when anyone uses the term, literally and I'm no exception.

"I literally pooped my pants when I saw my brother for the first time in 4 years!"
Really? You actually defecated in your pants? Are you a cow?

"He literally blew my mind when he played 'piano man' for an encore!"
Billy Joel did all that? Really?

But I actually mean it because I'll be driving down the highway singing some obscure Elton John song when that retched orange light will decide to come on. My mood then changes to...

'Fucking Elton John! What does he have against the name Reggie anyway? Nolan Ryan and Bernie Taupin should literally beat the piss out of him. I mean, they should physically abuse him until every last drop of urine is out of his system.'

Then one random day the light will flick off and my frown immediately turns upside down and then it's back to singing 'Tiny Dancer'.

I know I don't need this purple Pontiac to dampen my mood. I've always figured that the thing is purple and it should just shut the hell up and be a good car but I guess it thinks otherwise. Therefore I've already begun looking, test driving, and researching vehicles. I've always thought that a person's first vehicle should just be a complete piece of crap because then they can save up and buy something made in the last 20 years and it would great. That way they can progressively enjoy cars that are newer, cheaper, and overall better than the Flintstone-mobile they've been driving. I think that's how I've progressed with my cars.

First I had the '90 Regal, then I had my '97 Pontiac and now I'm looking at 2008/2009's. When I bought my Pontiac I was wowed by the cd player and the equalizer which were as standard as it gets but not for me. Now I can maybe look forward to navigation system and/or auxiliary plug-ins!

2. Sunday's Twins game

Something didn't really add up to Sunday's Twins game. The game went in to extra innings and Texas had a runner on 2nd with one out. Twins took out their reliever for their knuckle ball pitcher. The knuckleballer, R.A Dickey is a decent long relief guy but not so much with runners on which makes me wonder why he came into the game.

Could it be that Gardy wanted to simply get the game done with so they can begin their trip to Oakland? I almost want to say yes because it seemed like a game that could go deep into the night. I suppose it wouldn't be the best thing for a team to go deep into a night and use up their bullpen for a big fat loss but it damn it, what if they win? They haven't swept the Rangers in like 30 years!

Anyone here anymore?

2009-07-16T18:47:00.001-07:00

When are you gonna come down
When are you going to land
I should have stayed on the farm
I should have listened to my old man

Ah, I'm back. Hello? Anyone here?

So ah yeah, I guess I took a nice sabbatical from blogging for a bit. About two months off by my lazy calculations and I've finally pulled myself up from my bootstraps (or whatever) and decided to write again.

First I should try and explain myself. For one, the girl finished up school for the semester and I felt the need to spend as much time with her as I could. Second, I didn't really have much to write about. Nothing really that interesting was happening in my life (other than lovey dovey stuff) and I didn't have any fancy comments on current events. In fact, there really wasn't much going on in the world to really talk about. It was as if the world was going through a recession of being interesting. Finally, I've been away for most of the last month so I really hadn't had time to blog in the first place.

First things first, I'm still unemployed. There's really not much available in the Twin Cities and whatever pesky, meager cleaning job that is available is quickly being snatched up in no time and/or only offers peanuts. The local job economy is so bad that in fact my girlfriend had to move back to North Dakota in order to find anything. I don't think anyone told North Dakota that we're in a recession because after my recent visit there they seem to have jobs everywhere. I saw something there that I haven't seen in over a year here in the Twin Cities, a 'Help Wanted' sign.

So that's the other thing, the girl is now in North Dakota for the rest of the summer and I've decided to spend my summer in the Twin Cities continuing looking for work. It wasn't a happy decision and god knows it was one of the toughest things I've had to do leaving an incredible girl in the thick of the only summer love I've had. So we'll be doing the 'long distance' thing for the next 6 weeks (which sounds a bit ridiculous knowing people that have had multiple year LDR's). It sucks and it's going to be tough but we'll get through.

The last month I had been doing a bit of travel with the girl. We had a road trip to Missouri in which I got to be a male Twins groupee for about a week. We followed the Twins in St. Louis and then in Kansas City. We then came home for about 16 hours before we went to western Nodak for another 12 days. In all somehow with all 2000+ miles the car somewhat held together with a noticeable scare of the transmission going out. Now the check engine light is off and I'm not necessarily looking in to a new car but that could change.

So I have a ton to write about. I have two ballpark reviews with the New Busch Stadium and the new Kauffman Stadium, Twins added a sweet sign in their new ballpark, and I got a whole crap load of fireworks in North Dakota. So with all my sudden free time I plan on writing a bit more. Stay tuned. I promise.

God, I Hate that Song

2009-05-12T23:50:00.001-07:00

Working hard to get my fill
Everybody wants a thrill
Paying anything to roll the dice
Just one more time

And what does that verse have do with the song anyway?

I was wondering what I should write about today when a song came on the radio.

Just a small town girl...

And I immediately began to cringe. I instantly thought of all the squealing girls turning up their radio and all the guys, alone in their cars who will start to mum the words. Then the humming turns into rhythimic bobbing of the head followed by the fist pumping. Finally there's the vision of Tony Soprano sitting at the diner with his family which makes the nightmare complete.
I don't think I could possibly hate a song so much as this one.

The obvious reason is because this song was the last memory of such a great television show. The first five seasons of The Sopranos were amazing--bad-ass Italian mafia types with a chip on their shoulder over the pushy fucking bastards in New York. Leather jackets, guns, and the meat market--you can't get much more badass than that and they end it with a stupid god damn Journey song. If they would've ended the show with "Wheels in the Sky" for example then I wouldn't have a problem because "Wheels in the Sky" kicks ass and I'm not ashamed to admit that because I simply shouldn't be.

But I shouldn't kid myself though, that last season (all of season 6, both parts) was so stupid and it would've taken twice the power of Shawshank Redemption in order to fulfill any sort of satisfaction for that series. Therefore, I'm sure my frustration in wasting my time in a season of coma watching, time wasting, loose plot line hell falls on the one song that finally ended that gigantic time waster.

Another theory is that I'm a classic rock fan. I love Zeppelin, The Who, Creedence, Van Halen, and don't get me started on Pink Floyd. There's a decade full of great, great music and this has to be the song that keynote spans generations. It couldn't be American Pie or Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, or Echoes. I mean, I collect vinyl for the love of god and they couldn't pick Dazed and Confused? What is the most downloaded song in the 21st century? That's right, this stupid heart squeezing song about two strangers screwing in in some cheap hotel room after drinking their lonely fears away. At least that's how I interpret it.

I shouldn't hate a song so much because I believe that any music that makes one feel good is something great...except when it comes to this song. But when I'm at the Twins game and they start the first ten seconds of "Don't Stop Believin'" and you hear the screams of what seems to be a New Kids concert then you're invading my baseball serenity. When I'm at the bar and the song starts out and all the girls are shooshing everyone to hear and then they start belting out their best Steve Perry rendition.

But it's only this song and not "Sweet Caroline" or "Livin on a Prayer" because I like those songs. I will actually participate in the "bom bom bom" and the "whoooaaaaaaa we're half way there".

Maybe it's because the popularity of the song, to me, signifies how I try to be different then the DSB (Don't Stop Believin) lovers. Maybe it's because I think it's just a stupid fucking song and I wish that Clint Eastwood would point a gun at everyone listening to the song and say,
"Turn that shit off you stupid corporate trashbag"

Cinco De May

2009-05-05T20:58:00.001-07:00

Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.

Baaah I gotta stop playing that stupid addictinggames.com golf game and start blogging. It's tough because I don't have a set time to blog and if I don't make a point to sit down and write I never will.

Anyways I was going to give my 2009 mlb season preview but we're already a month into the season so... I predict the Twins will win it all! Seriously though, I like the Royals (as does everyone else) and I hate the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Dodgers, White Sox, Indians, and Rays. If anyone else wins it all, I'm happy.

Otherwise it's barely even May and I'm already burnt out on wedding stuff. My roommates are set to get married later this month and the planning has been a daily thing. Even if I'm in the other room munching on jojos and watching Braveheart, I still hear a little wedding planning stuff in the next room. I swear, with some women, it's like a disease and they just cannot stop watching wedding shows, chick flicky movies, and opening some lame wedding magazine. One thing I cannot understand is that people save their wedding magazines. What the hell? At least I get to hand out yamicas at the wedding.

Then I have recently been ordained.
I'll just let you absorb that last sentence while I go and grab a hamburger.

(chomp, chomp)

Yeah it's true, I can now marry people which is funny because I generally hate weddings. Now that I can marry people, I feel like making the whole process into a variety show. Maybe if I ask Hog nicely enough, we can have stupid human tricks, Yambo, and headlines. Of course I would need a musical side kick but whatever. Just the chance to play Yambo would be awesome. I mean who has ever had a bad yambo wedding experience? I haven't heard of anyone.

Now I need to look for a bicycle.

Easter in Nodak

2009-04-15T21:30:00.001-07:00

And I can see you
you brown skin shining in the sun
you got your hair combed back
sunglasses on baby

This last weekend I spent Easter weekend in Bismark with my girlfriend's family. Easter weekend is their "Christmas in July" in which everyone in the extended family get together, play cards, and talk about good times. Me, being the one who finds my own family gatherings very awkward was in for an interesting time. I mean hey, I'm unemployed and have nothing to do, might as well celebrate the rising of Jesus.

I'm a bit awkward when it comes to mingling. I remember for my Eagle Scout court of honor where me and four others invited a ton of our friends and family members. I spent half of the mingling watching NFL live in another room (because we scheduled it on a Vikings playoff game--stupid us!).

I am a terrible mingler. I can't do anything but put my hands in my pockets and pretend that I'm busy doing other things and pretending not to look at anyone. I have maybe five good minutes in me but then after that my mind wanders and I stop listening.

Relative: So I hear you're going to school in Marshall?
Boof: Nah I thought Final Fight was a damn good game. The big fat guy was my favorite.

Both me and the relative slowly take steps away from each other with frowns on our faces.

Last year at our own Christmas in July I walked back and forth at our huge Picture board about 7 times just to act like I'm being occupied. I simply am no good at walking and talking for the sake of walking and talking. I need an activity and I can only take a couple hours of mingling before I need to get out of the room. I don't know why it is but it's just my mild social anxiety glitch that I have.

This last weekend I walked into the hotel business room to find about fifty-some of my girlfriends relatives. I put on my best smile and did my best to interact and it wasn't too bad. It was actually quite nice because no one knew me and they all had legit questions. A lot of them knew me and my girlfriend helped sandbag in Fargo a couple weeks back and they were very genuine people.

I did find myself "pacing the picture board" a time or two when a voice behind me blurted out,
"So, I hear you're a cribbage player?"

I turned around and there was the grandma holding a deck of cards eagerly to talk and play a round with me.
"yes, absolutely" I said and we sat down and shuffled the deck.

Me and the Grandma played about 8 games of cribbage before a cousin whispered in my ear,
"you know, you don't have to play with her if you don't want." I laughed it off because this was indeed a blessing.

I love cribbage. Me and my old roommate played about 700 games of cribbage (in which case I think I won most :0), some of my best father/son memories are playing cribbage with my dad, and I have indeed double skunked someone in my past. I find cribbage to be the absolute best conversation game ever and me and the Grandma were engaged in a pretty interesting conversation. I asked her about the family, her travels, and the history. I loved it.

A couple games later I got text,
"Just talk about pickles and someone will come over and save you" it was my girlfriend and I just had to laugh. If I could sit down and play cribbage with everyone then everything would be so much easier for me.

A couple games later some others come around to me and say,
"Hey Tom, Don't you like pickles?"
"I enjoy pickles but not right now." haha

The next day we went to a house and I found myself in another weird mingling time. I walked around trying to look busy when the Grandma asked if I wanted to play cribbage again.

THANK GOD.

All in all, it wasn't a bad weekend. We forged our way across I-94 alright. I didn't screw anything up and I ate some awesome grilled venison sausage. I didn't get a chance to play pinuchle but next time, next time...

Squirrels are Going to be the Death of Me

2009-04-01T00:54:00.001-07:00

Cuz we belong together now
Forever united here somehow

Yesterday I was having a bitchin day for being unemployed. I found my curling nametag, I got my oil changed, and I got my unemployment insurance crap all ironed out (they like to ask very confusing questions). So on my way back from the douchebag oil changing company when I was pumping my fist violently in the air to the tune of the new Kelly Clarkson song when a squirrel came daringly close to my car.

Boof singing: I know I got issues but yo---OH CRAP! *THU-THUMP* WOAH.

I looked in my rear view mirror and I saw this little squirrel doing crazy summersaults to a nearby car. I feel bad and I'm not even an animal lover. I mean I don't make it a point to run over crap because I might get a flat tire and I'm anal when it comes to flats.

So now I'm got this crazy notion that this squirrel, that I didn't finish off, went back to it's club and now I have a hundred squirrels waiting for me with mounds and mounds of acorns ready to be thrown at me.

I'M SORRY SQUIRRELS. I WOULDN'T HAVE HIT THE DAMN THING HAD IT NOT RAN UNDER MY CAR. I WAS IN MY HAPPY PLACE AND EVERYTHING WAS COMING UP MILHOUSE BEFORE YOUR RETARDED BROTHER CAME ALONG.

Other than that I've been busy curling. This last weekend we had a bonspiel (curling tournament) for players of 5 years of experience and under. Our team consisted of my skip (leader) of my normal team with a couple others from our arch rival to form a sort of "super curling team".

We were curling at the prestigious St. Paul Curling Club which is one of the oldest curling clubs in the US. The St. Paul Curling Club which has great ice, lanes where people can sit in comfy chairs and watch with cameras over the "houses" to gain an ultimate perspective, and where the beer flows like wine through the streets (8 pitchers of Summit were included in the entrance fee, more pitchers were then only $2.50!). I now consider this place to be heaven and I plan on sleeping outside the place in a tent from now on.

The bonspiel was very competitive and the first team we played were the champions from last year which seemed a bit daunting. We played, we excelled, and we WON! We didn't know they were the champs until drinking beers with them afterwards and someone mentioned it. We were about on top of the novice curling world after hearing this bit of news.

Does that mean that we're capable of winning this bonspiel?

Evidently not because we got completely smoked the next day when we lost the next two games. The team we did beat did continue winning and came within a game of reaching the finals for the one-loss teams.

So I have huge curling fever at the moment and I'm reduced to watching crazy youtube clips of crazy shots.

The first few days

2009-03-17T23:09:00.001-07:00

I will walk out of the darkness
And I'll walk into the light
And I'll sing the song of ages
And the dawn will end the night

Day one and two of unemployment have passed and I'm already bored out of my mind. I cleaned up my room today and tomorrow I plan on doing more cleaning and working out because I don't know what else to do. The job hunt is not going so well because there just isn't much out there. I've even looked at going somewhere, anywhere but I don't want to go anywhere without my girl.

I find that I'm back to where I was in Freshmen year of high school. I remember we had to draw a four year plan to help pave our way into college and thus, a career. I agonized long and hard over this because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I have medium interests in a bunch of things but not enough to warrant them as my true passion. I'm hesitant in starting a career in the environment because I don't think I really have a passion for it. I mean I like being outside and learning about the how's and whys but not enough to want to make money off of it.

When I was laid off last week a number of my superiors and coworkers would shake my hand and say, "hopefully you'll come back sooner than later" meaning that things should pick up and I might get called back. I guess I consider that to be some sort of a time limit in that I need to find a better career before they call me back in. I didn't mind my former job but I also didn't love it either. The coworkers were nice and helpful but they weren't lifelong material. I don't know if I value coworkers more than the actual work because I've always said that the worst job in the world would be a piece of cake if you have great people working around with you.

I would love to own a business someday but what business would I own? What entity do I know thoroughly enough to be a leader in it? I figure that the internet is still going to be around in the future, so perhaps taking web design class would be a good route (maybe I could find a better template for this place). I suppose I have some soul searching in my time off and I hope I can gain some experiences and learn some more hobbies.

Cuomo Crap

2009-03-16T23:57:00.001-07:00

And even though I know
How very far apart we are
It helps to think we might be wishing
On the same bright star

Crap List

1. Mario Cuomo

I spent about a week in a half watching Ken Burns' documentary Baseball which is spectacular. It's so good that you want John Chencellor to narrate stupid parts of your own life just to make it interesting.

John Chancellor: ...and that is when, with the gleam of his bluish grey eyes and the raw durability of his worn out work gloves, he struck the alley cat with the broad side of the shovel sending it in the hated neighbors lawn.

The documentary is about 20 hours long and it gives great detail about baseball throughout the different decades. It was as close to baseball purist porn as it gets which had me constantly on the edge of my seat.

One of the most moving parts of the documentary was during the 40's when the African Americans were struggling to enter Major League Baseball and the semi success of the Negro Leagues. It gives great detail about what Jackie Robinson had to go through and how strong he was to have been through it.

The first time I started to frown was when I was watching the 40's because alongside the success of the Yankees, Dodgers, and the Negro Leagues they had about 15 minutes of Mario Cuomo playing minor league baseball.

What the hell does Mario Cuomo have to do with anything? I found myself sighing whenever he took over the documentary because I didn't really give a damn. I actually would've been slightly more interested in seeing George Bush as a Yale player than Cuomo. What really irritates me is that throughout the entire 20+ hour documentary, they only say "Twins" once and never mention "Carew", "Killebrew", or "Puckett" once. At the time Puckett was one of the most popular players and the 91' World Series was quickly glossed over. What the hell? They didn't even talk about Koufax and the '65 World Series.

WBC Bits

2009-03-11T20:31:00.001-07:00

No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside

-I must admit, I have been ass deep in watching the World Baseball Classic since it started last weekend. For those who don't care or figure it's boring, think again because I'll give you a brief rundown of WBC history

February 2006: Critics pan it before it begins while countries like Venezuela, Dominican Republic, and Cuba start salivating for world baseball dominance.

March 2006: Almost immediately after the first weekend the popularity sky rockets with ESPN frantically adding games and lazy sportswriters starting to take notice. The Domincan/Venezuela game receives more press pass requests than the Superbowl. Chipper Jones announces that the WBC is more intense than the World Series.

Late March 2006: Koreans booing Ichiro, David Ortiz cocks off to the Cubans, and the US loses to Canada to the surprise of the ignorant US sportswriters. I spontaneously explode to my delight of the whole tournament.

This year is no different. Even after the success of the first tournament, sportswriters (as worthless as they are, especially in this town) still ridicule it and would prefer watching spring training because... they're stupid. I will admit that it didn't have the best preview with numerous players announcing tennis elbow problems, bumps on the knee, and spiders being in the WBC clubhouse scaring all the players away but these teams do have really good talent.

-Speaking of the WBC how about that Dutch team?! The Dominicans were supposed to be the favorites in the tournament with all the power hitters they have. They were like the steroid poster team from 2006 and now it's like they can't get through an inning without booting the ball around the infield.

The Netherlands on the other hand were playing great baseball. The pitching specifically was impressive by keeping the Dominicans down to 3 runs in 20 innings. I can't help but to think that Bert Blyleven has something to do with it since he's the pitching coach. Remember, this is the team that had a no-hitter in 2006.

More Laid Off Crap

2009-03-09T20:39:00.001-07:00

Grasp at straws that don’t want grasping
Gaze at clouds that come down crashing
Never turn your back on mother earth

Crap List

-The Parents reaction

For the record, I'm doing pretty well for getting the pink slip at work. I've been playing out my last couple days and I'm making it a point not to burn any bridges although the thought is very satisfying.

When I told my dad the news he made sure to hold a press conference for all of his work buddies and the news went out like wildfire. My dad should've been a reporter of some sort with the amount of people that listen to him when he has some juicy dirt. I'm wondering if my dad is on Twitter or something (a thought that would blow my mind seeing as he can't maximize a window).

Anyway my parents are in full blown job hunting mode which is very nice of them...but very annoying of them in the same light. My mom has just discovered Craigslist so I'm sure she's about ready to suggest the first 20 entries to anything that comes up. I'm just very lucky to not be single because before I know I know it I'll have my dad calling me up,

"So I found this singles add on craigslist. This one is blonde, tall, pretty swell body, and she sounds like a keeper. She only wants 100 roses and I think roses are on sale at Rainbow! She could be marriage material!"

...When in fact she's a full blown whore.

I did get a phone call from my dad on whether I applied to the public works job and he had the idea where I find a job in--alright get ready for this--

Radio and TV.

(sigh)

See, the thought is that I went into college and studied radio and tv for about a year in a half while working on studio equipment which was 30 years old and this was ten years ago. We used the Amiga for computer graphics! I would give him credit for knowing my bio but the idea is so damn stupid that I would hope my future kids would send me in a home for saying something like that in the future. (future kids: if you're reading this, you will have to fight me first)

After all, if construction is the biggest victim of the recession, the media is probably coming in at number 2. Not to mention if I even did have some sort of a desire to be in the media (and I can assure you, I don't) I would've

A. Finished school
B. Taken an internship about 8 years ago
C. continued to take an interest in the media
D. Moved far, far away from my parents.

-Reactions to my laid off news

I'm finding that people are very uneasy around me at work nowadays. I have the very weird situation in that I was purposely tipped off at getting laid off two weeks before hand and everyone knows about it. What is weird is that everyone is walking on eggshells around me about the news. It's as if they think I'm going to go insane about receiving the pink slip. Like I would go insane about that gig. pfff

Whenever people call me I get the inevitable elephant-in-the-room startup with,

"Hey Tom,
Uh, so I'm sorry about the news. (insert some sort of humbling selfless comment). I'm sure you'll find your way on your feet someday, (two second pause) someday."

My mom even told me that she's "praying for me" which is nice I guess...

But I'm not dying. It's a very uneasy feeling because I'm actually passed getting laid off and I'm looking forward to learning about something new. I'm dreaming about different things that I could on a nightly basis and the thoughts are endearing. Steph even messaged me with,

"So are you going to find some really fun baseball job now that you have more time on your hands?"

Oh my god that would be sweet! See, THAT is the kind of response that wish to generate. Even a little 'well wish' is a very nice gesture which It isn't riddled with weird cancer undertones and I don't feel like I should be mourning something. I don't know, I'm a pretty optimistic person and I feel very confident that I'll find a better job at some point someday...someday.

Unemployment Crap

2009-03-01T22:41:00.001-08:00

Heal me with a smile, Darling Pretty
Heal me with a smile and a heart of gold

1. The Writing on the Wall

On Friday I got a call from my boss that he wanted me to come to his desk.

I had this same call about three weeks ago.
I remember thinking that I still had some work in my area and someone even told me a rumor that I have the most work out of anyone in my department because I was on another shift than anyone. Also, the last time I was laid off about 8 years ago I had my actual "boss" (aka: the guy who signs my checks) call me up before work started and tell me the bad news.

As it turns out my boss just wanted to know a little info on one of my current projects that I was working on. No bigs.

Last Friday I kept thinking,

My real boss would call me if I was getting the axe wouldn't they?
Probably not since there's no one with a spine who is left in our company. That worthless HR woman wouldn't even know my phone number or know what to say other than,
"Did you have to wake up for this phone call? haha" *shudders*

I stepped up to my boss' desk and he looked at me and said,
"Ah, consider this to be your unofficial two-week notice." He didn't feel good about telling me the news but he also knew that I could smell the bullshit if he were to delay the news. Right away I thought of all the fears that come with being laid off like soup lines, beards, hobos, being a loser, not having enough money, and having to tell my girlfriend was the worst one to come to mind.

It wasn't like it was out of nowhere either but I had been trying to encourage myself the last 6 months that I might avoid the whole situation because I work a different shift. Our department has dwindled from about 23 people to only 9 when me and the others pack up and leave. It's a little frustrating to think about because we're contractors and we're expendable whereas the internal people have and ironclad agreement to stay there, recession or not. I also believe that there's a lot of really good contractors that are worth much, much more than the jobs they're saving however it comes with being a contractor--we're there because we're expendable.

The first day I found out the news I didn't tell any of my workers because I didn't know how I would do it. We worked together for nearly the duration of my time there and they're great workers. They know how I run things and they understand the level of trust that comes with the job. In two weeks there will be another (higher paid) colleague who will lead them and who knows how much things change.

I really hated telling my girlfriend the news because there is always a fear that they'll leave you during rough times. There's always the fear that you'll have to handle being jobless, heartbroken, and being alone with nothing but time on your hands. It almost feels like you're less than a man suddenly being jobless especially for me because I've generally been working since my 14th birthday when it was legal to work. I need a job and I hate the idea of not working one. I hate the idea of collecting unemployment or government charity. I hate knowing that I have to put my home buying plans on hold yet again especially with the money they've giving first time home buyers.

Luckily the girlfriend was sympathetic beyond belief and gave me no doubts to my worst fears. Since her kind words I've been optimistic of leaving knowing that the options are out there and I'm not necessarily tied down anywhere by bills or leases. At least this time around I can say goodbye to everyone compared to 8 years ago when I was told that "today is my last day". Either way I'll work the last 2 weeks like I worked any other two weeks and see what happens in the future. I've heard plenty of people say that the best thing that ever happened to them was being laid off. I hope it's the second best thing for me.

SSU Bits

2009-02-26T19:04:00.001-08:00

Gonna rise up
Burning black holes in dark memories
Gonna rise up
Turning mistakes into gold

-Today I went onto the Star Tribune website which I tend to do about 3 times an hour and I found this man on the front page. I knew that guy from somewhere and it didn't take me long to figure out where it was.

I took one Bill Holm's classes at SSU (now southwest Minnesota State...or something) and he taught some early level literature class. I knew he was an author himself but I didn't know he was that renown. In fact I would actually read some of his stuff if I didn't know it would be about the prairie and life in southwest Minnesota. No offense to SW Minnesotans but I would have to be incredibly bored to read something about the prairie. You would have to enter me in a Russian roulette competition and only after the 4th successful round would I read a book like that.

Anyway I thought I should write a bit about him because I always respected him as a professor. He was one of the few profs that actually cared about his students and showed a considerable amount of passion towards his teaching. He would read various books to us and you could tell that he was having fun. He would constantly interject commentary and quips during the book and it was always enjoyable to listen to him.

One time he was talking to the class about how title doesn't dictate behavior. He proved this by taking a cigarette out and smoking it in front of the class. This was probably the norm in the 70's but in the late 90's this was a bit shocking and hilarious because he was enjoying the whole cig in front of the class. I also remember him always talking about the character of Falstaff. He was very funny and we often described him as Santa Claus

I can't help but to think that someone of his caliber teaching at a bigger university would probably only show up 25% of the time while his servant/TA would teach the other 75%.

-I met up with some old coworkers from my liquor store days the other weekend. It was really amazing how we all remembered different bits from 8 years ago. We certainly had a bunch of characters for customers such as:

The bike lady: She would show up at the liquor store on some schwinn from 1976 and buy a case of Budwieser bottles. She then would try to balance the case from her bike and it was always funny to watch her fail.
The hairy mole lady: This lady had this hairy mole on her wrist and it looked fucking nasty. There were these blond hairs coming from said mole and we couldn't stop looking at it from the register. We would constantly make barfing noises and tell how the mole nearly talked to us after she left. I know, we were really nice workers.
The dude that would pull up in his POS car: He obviously had some terrible medical conditions and so we would deliver a jug of vodka and a small bottle of whiskey to his car. He was very nice and he tipped.
The blatz and vodka guy: Basically says it all, he would buy two 12's of Blatz and a jug of cheap vodka.

-It's been about a 10 days and I'm already sick of spring training. I enjoy about one inning of spring training a year and it's always the first inning I watch just to make sure that it's really happening. After that I find myself looking for NBA basketball...hahahah just kidding, I would never watch NBA regular season basketball.

-Speaking of books, I just raced through The Kite Runner and I've never had such a run of emotions while reading a book before. It's excellent and it's the only time where I've had the urge to read something and at the same time not want to know what happens next. It's heartbreaking at times and makes you want to shake your head at times at how people think.

-I remember a year ago when I was talking to someone off of Match.com. I asked them the random question of song of the year, they didn't know but asked me in return. I answered with three songs, one of which was "Please Read the Letter" by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. Sure enough at the worthless Grammys (redundant) it received record of the year.
boo-yah

-If I'm 97 and in a nursing home, I can think of no better way than to be body slammed by Verne Gagne. After the age of 90, I don't really care how I die so the more extravagant, the better.

Shannon Crap

2009-02-23T20:56:00.001-08:00

He got feet down below his knee
Hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease
Come together right now over me

1. Molly Shannon

Does anyone, anyone in the entire universe think that she's the least bit funny? Whenever you watch a show in which she makes a "guest appearance" do you ever say,

"Woah, Molly Shannon is on The Office, I have GOT to watch this week!"

I'll answer it for you in case you're still pondering the question--NO, no one has ever liked Molly Shannon, ever. She sucks on her new show, she sucked on SNL along with that horrible armpit skit, and she sucked on Will and Grace. Well, there was that one episode where she was copying everything Grace said in which I had a smirk but I did have a whoopee cushion in my hand too so that negates Molly Shannon. Molly Shannon does nothing for TV or Movies. She wouldn't even be funny if someone threw a pie in her face or a if a giant Monty Python foot came down from the sky and smooshed her...and that's usually funny!

I'm thinking she probably gives some sort of a crazy mouth party because how else can she land guest roles and even star in her own TV show? Looking at IMDB she's had 60 roles in her entire career.

60 times someone said, "You know who I was thinking of to play that one role, that's right, Molly Shannon"

2. The hatred towards Nick Punto

Alright, I know he's probably lacking a lot of talent compared to the rest of the Twins roster and he certainly does not deserve $4M. I hate how he slides into first base and I cringe whenever I can sense that there is an affair between Ron Gardenhire and Punto HOWEVER, it's not like he's Jacque Jones swinging at every inside fastball or he played short like my mom would. I mean Punto did bat .280 last year while having a very suitable year in the field.

In fact with the recent signing of Crede you could make a case for the Twins having the best left infield in the American league this year.
Seriously.
People spend way too much time on how many homers a player hits and not on his fielding which is how I look at Punto. For years I wish the All Star game could be what everyone secretly wants it to be: two teams of the top 15 home run hitters in each league and try to find a position for them on the field. Can you imagine Manny Ramirez, Carlos Lee, and Adrian Gonzalez in the same infield. I would watch that but only for the satire of it.

doing bits

2009-02-18T19:59:00.001-08:00

Standing at the crossroads, trying to read the signs
To tell me which way I should go to find the answer,
And all the time I know,
Plant your love and let it grow.

-The writer's bloc continues as I've been hanging around the special lady friend and trying not to be a huge pig in front of her. For Valentine's day we went and had some steak (a day where I felt proud to be a pig) and we went to the Guthrie for a god awful play. For the record, don't ever see Happy Days even if it happens to be held in your backyard because it reminds me of high school grammar class...I probably should've paid more attention in that class.

-I've began my baseball fever '09 with me desperately trying to aquire Ken Burns' Baseball DVD collection from the library. Surprisingly enough I hadn't seen it since it came out in '94 because I was too busy with actually watching baseball. I caught the last ten minutes of one of the programs on the mlb channel one day and I heard an amazing version of Take Me Out to the Ball Game by (I think it was) Carly Simon. I was looking all over for the youtube clip but apparently no one else likes it as much as me.

-I still have a job but it's very much in doubt everyday. I'm way past the point of worrying about it since it only gives me a headache but it's interesting to say the least. They cut down our hours to 40 and we've had a lot of our work pulled. I haven't seen so much change on my end but days are becoming very weird with my colleagues only having 2 projects each. Usually they juggle a load of about 5-7 at a time.

I have to admit, it's kinda nice only working 8 hours because I have more time to be lazy now.

-In terms of the Twins, I've become more and more pumped for this season. I've begun not to care so much about Joe Crede because...I just don't anymore. It would be nice if they sign him but if Boras and Smith can't figure anything out, I wouldn't be surprised.

- I just bought a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch because it was on sale. The box also comes with a cool Lego car but I got the ugliest car out of the series.

So if anyone wants an orange Lego "23" car, let me know because I'm willing to sell it to ya.

Gym Crap

2009-01-26T19:27:00.001-08:00

Like to tell you 'bout my baby, you know she comes around,
Just 'bout five feet four a-from her head to the ground.

Crap List

1. The old people at the gym

Maybe it's due to the fact that I'm the youngest person in the gym at 11am on a weekday or maybe it's because old people need something to do so they head over to the gym. Either way the gym needs some sort of a cap because too many old people is a very bad thing. Maybe a cap of only one person over 90, 2 over 80, and 4 over 70 at any one given time because they're only going to hurt themselves or someone else.

Take the track for example, there's always the one elderly man with a horrible limp walking and meandering down the center of the track. Whenever I run by I have to do this crazy James Bond move in order to sneak ahead of them. Then if them walking down the center is bad enough, they throw their arm out as if they're acting like some sort of gate keeper to the open track in front of them. I did almost run over a small old woman one time when I came running around the corner and she stepped right in front of me.

I think this must be a old person thing because I remember trying to pass an elderly woman on the highway one time. She was going about 30 mph as she was merging onto the highway from the onramp while other cars screamed by her. I was the sorry ass who was going 60 when she decided to merge from the onramp and

does she look toward the road? Nope
does she look toward any mirrors? Nope
does she give any sort of hand signals to try and tell other drivers what she's doing? Nope

What she did was put on her blinker and blindly steer into traffic making everyone else slow down or speed up to avoid her ignorant Buick LeSabre.

ugh back to the gym,

So besides the slow ignorant old people on the track there's always the old people who like to pretend to lift weights. Today I walked over to the hip sled and was amazed that there was 2-five pound weights dangling on the fabricated metal arms.

Ten pounds. On the hip sled. This would actually make sense if someone weighed about...6 pounds and they wanted to try ten pounds on the hip sled but I actually know the guy who does this. He's about 72 years old and hobbles around the gym. He weights about 150 and probably lifts more with every step than the ten pounds he puts on the hip sled. Not only that but the hip sled was not even pushed up all the way so whoever was using this was pumping ten whole pounds and then couldn't even push it to the top.

I remember when I was taking weight training in high school, we were figuring out our one rep max on the different weight lifting techniques. I went to the hip sled and told the two spotters to put two-45 pound weights on per side.
Teacher: What? What the hell is this?
Tom: What?
Teacher: Guys, put another 45 on each side, come on.
Tom: WHAT?
Teacher: You guys really need to start trying.

And as it turns out I did 15 reps with 270 pounds. I kicked it in the ass so this dude should've had at least 35 pounds on either side in order to make it look like he was doing something.

For the record I did try the hip sled with only ten pounds on there and I fake winced. Sometimes I entertain myself at the gym.

January Bits

2009-01-21T20:00:00.001-08:00

I'm a dweller on the threshold
As I cross the burning ground
Let me go down to the water
Watch the great illusion drown

-Do you think this has ever happened to Barack Obama?

"Hey Barack! No not you, the other Barack."

I doubt it.

-Yesterday I had a meeting with a potential financial advisor. The meeting was at 11am so I arrived with about 30 people standing in front of the receptionists desk. It looked like they were in the middle of an important meeting so like a turtle I poked my head through and everyone was watching Biden/Obama take their oaths. I hadn't seen that kind of impromptu gathering since 9/11.

-The only name that comes close to Barack is the character of Baraka in Mortal Kombat II. Baraka was the one with these huge spears for hands and he would have the most gruesome moves ever. He had the moves that would generate the most blood. It was kinda cute that when you defeat someone you could either A: cut off their head or B: turn them into a baby and you go "aww look at the cute little baby" while playing Mortal Kombat II.

-I have always had a love of talk radio and I would actively listen to the radio since I was about 10. Tuesday one of the shows that I listened to the most was completely taken off the ticket with the host and producer fired. Chad Hartman was kind of a pompus dorky idiot but I loved the topics that he would get into. Plus he would talk some quality baseball during baseball season which is much more than you can say for the other shows on KFAN. When someone like PA tries to talk baseball you get to hear this kind of stuff,

"The Twins this year come into the season with plenty of left handed hitters so they should dominate the league-beedeep. Mauer scored about 80 points last year and they should probably move him to third yadaat. I can't believe they didn't move to sign Manny Ramirez to a long term deal because he is baseball immortality!"

I cringe whenever I hear that stuff.

-I just found out today that someone passed away who would work out routinely at the gym. I don't know anyone by name there so when I read the obituary taped up at the front desk I couldn't figure out who it was. Apparently he worked out when I did and was a dentist which doesn't really narrow things down at all.

There was the grumpy old guy who would change all three televisions to fox news and when you insist he not change one of the side tvs he'd snear at ya.

There was also the guy who wore the toupee and would always talk gopher sports with me. One day he came in completely bald and then the next day he wore his toupee.

Then there were the two fat guys who would talk non stop about baseball. These guys knew there stuff but they really didn't like when I interjected things. Still they seemed kinda nice.

I can't forget the super creepy dude who would seemingly follow me around the gym. I would go up to the track to run and he would come shortly after. I would go to lift weights and he would follow shortly after. I would even shoot some hoops and he would do that in no time. Of course he had some pretty bad teeth so I doubt it's him.

It could've been the well dressed old man who would be eating his lunch at the table right up in front. He was always very out going and would ask me how I am doing. I don't think it's him but it would certainly suck if it was.

-I remember seeing this skyway hanging out in a lot just outside the U of M east bank and I was wondering why the hell this skyway was left outside. I think it would cool to build something containing it's own skyway. It wouldn't be needed but you could have floor 5 be cut in half with the people having to go through a skyway to enter the west side of the building. Or maybe I could build a house and get to know my neighbor really well and then build this skyway to our houses.

After Years of Frustration...

2009-01-13T19:11:00.001-08:00

Sorry is the fool who trades his love for hi-rise rent.
Seems the more you make equals the loneliness you get.

Last week the owner of the Twins, Carl Pohlad passed away at the age of 94. I've saved this entry for about a week (actually for about six years if you want to be technical about it) because I wanted to show some semblance of class and not rip into a guy while his family waits for the funeral.

It's been a week so I'm just going to let it all out.

On Monday when the local media started reporting the death, they would use a headline like,

"Carl Pohlad, the man who saved the Twins, dead at 94". Nearly every outlet used some sort of that title for their front page or intro to the story. I bit my lip long and hard until it started bleeding because it was just too early to rip into the guy. Afterall, for all I know he was a great family man and a dear friend. I didn't know him personally at all except when I accidentally tried to take his seat at the metrodome when I was about 15. He sounded like a person who was decent to his staff and actually showed some sort of loyalty to his own staff. My qualms about him come as a Minnesota Twins fan.

The man who saved the Twins eh? I agree however the scope of that sentence is so misleading that I would guess that Sid Hartman was the one responsible for writing it. Actually Hartman did write such a story (two as a matter of fact) and while Pohlad probably saved the Twins in 1984 he tried his absolute hardest to rid the state of the Twins from 1997-2006. I would like to say that last sentence was drenched in hyperbole but I can honestly say it isn't.

This man was hell bent on moving this team and soaking the taxpayers out of whatever he could for so many years. Say what you want about how cheap he is as an owner, he's been considered the cheapest owner in all of sports, but as and owner he's been horrific to deal with in a fan-to-franchise type of way. For years I was honestly worried about losing my favorite baseball team because a billionaire owner couldn't squeeze enough money out of taxpayers.

Some would argue that he was the owner during both Twins World Championship seasons and he certainly was, and he deserves some credit but the love fest ended shortly after those runs. I remember in the mid 90's when the team was struggling and fan support was low (wow imagine that correlation) he tried to sell the team to Don Beaver in Charlotte. If it hadn't been for the disinterested fans in Charlotte the team would've probably moved.

Then when that didn't work he tried to up the value of the team by raising the flag for a new ballpark. He had a plan and was willing to contribute $80M (about a third) towards the cause. It was a good plan until someone noticed that in the fine print of the deal, the $80M was to be paid back to Pohlad by the State thus making it a $80M loan instead of a rightful contribution.

When that didn't work and the state of baseball was reeling from bad baseball economic times his buddy, and baseball Commissioner Bud Selig asked for two teams to contract. One team was the Montreal Expos who Major League Baseball ended up purchasing and the other was left to an owner who was to volunteer his club. Carl Pohlad apparently was the owner to volunteer to contract the Twins so he could pocket $150M. If it wasn't for a court order for the Twins to acknowledge their lease until it was up then the team and all it's 100 year history (because it is the original Senators team) would've been history.

The man who saved baseball!? Really?

If you're not fired up about those last three paragraphs then read this by Sid Hartman,

Selig recalls Pohlad as an All-Star owner

There are so many things in this column that boil my blood that I can barely contain myself. Selig, calling Pohlad the best owner in baseball is so ludicrous that I can't help but looking on to their questionable relationship. Bud Selig, whose family owned the Milwaukee Brewers and who accepted a loan from Pohlad which raises many conflict of interest exclamations, called Pohlad the best owner in baseball. Selig whose family would've benefited the most from a Twins contraction by being the closest team in the upper Midwest was wondering why his legacy was stained with bad blood from the fans. Bud Selig who would seemingly "cook the books" to show congress that Major League Baseball was losing money. He also brought up the idea of contraction just a couple years of adding two expansion teams which probably shouldn't have been added in the first place. This is the guy that said Carl Pohlad was one of the best owners in baseball.

The Metrodome is a crappy place for baseball and they averaged about 12,000 fans a game in the nineties. These are 12,000 fans who would forgo a beautiful sunny day to come inside a sterile environment and watch a game on fake grass in a state where we do whatever we can to be outside no matter what conditions are outside. These fans were watching players like Scott Stahoviak, Pat Mears, Butch Husky, and Denny Hocking. It's amazing that even 5,000 came to watch those lousy teams.

When the Pohlad and the Twins were begging for state legislature to foot most of the bill for a new ballpark I understood both sides of the argument. I am as pro ballpark as they come but I could understand taxpayers not wanting to help out a scummy billionaire who would seemingly would sell his soul for an extra dollar. The guy tried to swindle us in the past so why should we do anything for him? If he really wanted the ballpark to pass so badly then he could've foot half of the bill. The extra money would've came back to him 2 fold with the value of the team skyrocketing.

I love the Twins, many people all over Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and even Montana love the Twins. Carl Pohlad was a man who didn't care about the fan base in my opinion. This is a man who tried to sell this team for a quick $150M and stick a big middle finger to the state and all the fans. I'm sick of hearing about how he saved the team because that does not justify holding the state and fanbase hostage.

Pinochle Crap

2009-01-05T21:07:00.001-08:00

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

Crap List

1. Learning new games.

I'm not much of a board game/card player person. I like the few games that I like because I understand them and I actually know some sort of strategy. When it comes to new games, I'm about as dumb as a my dad playing Contra. Over the break I visited my special lady friend in North Dakota and thus hung out with her family for about a week. I've never visited a special lady friend's parents before let alone had much of a special lady friend to begin with so I really didn't know what I was up against.

I wanted to, at the very least, show that I was a competent person who only drools by accident about once a month and can say three syllable words at relative ease. I mean, I don't want to come off as an idiot. I would rather they wait and find out my idiocracy in time. You see, my idiocracy is like a slow blooming flower which finally blooms after about 6 weeks.

As it turns out this family is very much into games and I tried to be as much of a sport as I could. The first game was Yahtzee which I haven't played since I played the handheld style when I was dropping a duece during someone's house party about 6 years ago. Even then I didn't really understand it then but I liked pressing buttons so I wasted some time. Now I was playing with the sisters and the mother. I know what a "yahtzee" is but other than that it takes me about two minutes to look at my paper, figure out what to cross off (and not before a bunch of head scratching), and finally I hand the cup off to the next person.

Amount of time the sisters and mom take per turn: about 4 seconds

Amount of time Boof takes per turn: about 3 minutes (and I usually get that wrong)

Then came the game that the family grew up on: Pinochle

I have never played pinochle before. My gf briefly (and I mean briefly) showed me the basics of the game but it was more of a warning than a briefing. Pinochle is one of those games that I have tried to avoid throughout most of my life in a mild protest to my dad and uncles who would sit and play cards throughout every Christmas party. They wouldn't do anything but play 500 for about 6 hours. No snowball fights, no catch with the football, no golf, nothing. My dad offered to teach me 500 once but I pretty much blew him off because the only time I would ever play cards would be at these Christmas parties....

...and evidently at the gf's parents house in front of her entire family.

Amount of time the sisters and mom take per pinochle turn: .3 sec

Amount of time Boof takes per pinochle turn: 4 minutes

It works like this, I'm dealt all 16 cards and I look at all of them with the biggest frown I can muster. As I frown I send out the dignified signals of "uh, hmm, uh, weeelll, I uh, I need bigger hands". The mother meanwhile is trying her best not to tower over me and say, "Perhaps Pinochle isn't your strong suit. Here's a ball though, perhaps you'd like to bounce it!

What was even more deflating was when the father came and helped me after many "uh's". When the father wasn't there the mother would be like,

"okay, lay your cards down and lets see what you have."

Somehow it felt like I was getting a diaper change strangely enough.

I finally started to kinda figure it out. I still have a very hard time with the "10's" being a higher card than Kings but I wont have to deal with Pinochle for awhile. That's for sure.

Tranny (no, not that kind of tranny) Crap

2008-12-22T00:59:00.001-08:00

When this worlds closing in
There's no need to pretend
Set me free - darling rescue me

Crap List

1. Stranded (nearly)

I made my yearly pilgrimage to the Mall of America on Saturday in my attempt to find gifts for my family. Usually I just wander around the Mall hoping I stumble upon something that someone in my family will like. Unfortunately these wandering events end up taking a couple hours and we were in the midst of about 4-5 inches of snow and damn cold temperatures right behind it.

After my successful pilgrimage I headed out to my car and warmed it up for about 15 minutes because I was A) lazy and B) cold. Naturally I put the car in reverse when I start to have some troubles. Car was moving but very slightly. Eventually I back out of my spot and shift to drive when nothing happens. I then get the 'deer-in-headlights/oh-shit' look on my face because this is very much a transmission-type problem complete with scary icon light on my dashboard. I sit in my car for another 10 minutes cursing and saying "bah-humbug" when I try it again. Just like Marty McFly when he head butts the wheel, my car started to move swiftly through the snow.

After a night of trying to figure out how I'm going to find $3000 in funds for a new transmission I woke up the next morning to find that my car simply wont move which was making my wallet cry. I called my dad to hear his advice and he wisely told me to check the transmission fluid. I kinda rolled my eyes when he said this because I just had my transmission fluid flushed about a week in a half ago....

A week in a half ago
desk douche: Hey Tom, we noticed that your transmission fluid was very, very dark and your air filter needs cleaning. Do you want us to fix all these problems for you and rape----er do you the favor of not having to worry about all this stuff?
Boof examining the guy with a steely eye: I actually have a K&N air filter on there which is good for the lifetime of the vehicle. There should've been a sticker that explained this...
desk douche: Oh, uh well, we didn't know

(this is a tell tale sign that they're giving you BS. Everyone knows that K&N air filters are legit and this is a ploy these stupid lube places try to bring on you.)

desk douche: What about the tranny fluid? We can give you a transmission flush right now...
Boof: Ah, hmmm...
desk douche: ...it's really, really dark.
Boof: alright might as well. Fuck it. God damn you are pushy bastards!

Anyway I top my car with tranny fluid and it works like new. The scary icon light even turned off which makes my mouth water knowing the ass chewing I'm going to give that desk douche tomorrow.

Rare Bits

2008-12-10T21:02:00.001-08:00

I don't ever wanna drink again
I just ooh I just need a friend

-The Baseball Hall of Fame veterans panel convened to select a peer into the hall of fame a couple days ago and such local names like Jack Morris, Bert Blyleven, and Tony Oliva have been sprouting up since. To me, Morris is a candidate only because of game 7 alone which has been regarded as the best pitched World Series game ever. Still, I'm not sure he should be in. Blyleven should just because of his crazy ass curve ball. I have always dreamed about facing such a curveball and missing it by about two feet. Oliva is probably the least likely out of the bunch but oh well.

After taking up a number of votes the HOF veterans committee selected.....Joe Gordon. I immediately thought Joe Gordon was a broadcaster of some sort or perhaps the nickname of Babe Ruth's jockstrap. As it turns out, he was the 2nd basemen for the Yankees in the 30's and 40's.

I mean when they talk about the early Yankees they always mention Mantle, Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Berra, Maris, and a handful of other 2nd tier players like Rizzuto and Larsen. Not once had I ever caught anyone by the name of Joe Gordon. In fact, Rizzuto being in the Hall of Fame is a bit of a joke and shows the bullshit Yankee allegiance from the voters. With that being said, I have to question the induction of Joe Gordon simply because I've never heard of the guy before.

I mean I've heard of Billy Ripken, the original Fuck Face, but not Joe Gordon.

-I've been listening to the music of Amy Winehouse (of all people) thanks to the wonderful site pandora.com. I didn't know much about Winehouse other than she's the youngest person who is about to die and that she's uglier than hell but her music is awesome.

-I'm not fired yet although things have definitely become more tense on the floor where everyone is at. It's a bit like being a kid and having all thirty of your parents fighting each other at one time. On top of that, it's like 7 of those parents are going to be axed so it's kinda like being.....in some nonsensical Michael Bay movie.

Economical Crap

2008-12-08T00:53:00.001-08:00

The look on your face yanks my neck on the chain
And I would do anything
To see you again

Crap List

1. The God Damn Economy

I come home Friday to find that I have two *TWO* letters from my company. One is my usual pay stub and the other is something different. I usually can always tell the other letters by how the accounting department misspells my name. Anyway I open it up and it reads as follows:

Hello Thomas (not my real name), I regret to inform you that we will no longer be matching your 401k investment due to the horrible economy. Thank you and have a nice day.

After reading that scroll of sunshine I murmured a couple things under my breath: The first was "Curse those baby boomers". Reason being is because I have this sneaking suspicion that all the babyboomers are going to screw everything up for us gen y'ers (or x'ers or whatever the hell we are). I'm worried that all these 60-something people will never retire and simply hold on to their job not allowing another generation (mine) to cycle through the work force. Add to that the thought of all those baby boomers in Florida and Arizona and how we're probably going to have to bail them out through social security and how we're not going to see any of it. I already get annoyed when I have to show them something on the computer.

It all makes me hate Hitler even more because if it hadn't been for him we wouldn't have WWII, which means we wouldn't have all those horny people in the 40's and 50's which means everyone wouldn't impregnate everyone which means that we wouldn't have all those baby boomers. Damn Hitler (of course a Hitler apologist would blame it on the Jews but lets not start a WWIII over the scenario).

Babyboomers isn't even what I intended to bitch about either. I originally wanted to bitch about all those people who bought way beyond their means. I remember hearing a stat from 2006 where people were buying more than they were saving which I found to be rather scary. It means that people where generally digging themselves in a financial hole and no one really cared much about it. If I were smart, I would've have the forsight to move everything into a money market account but I'm 29 and have retirement on the horizon about 35 years into the future so I'll ride this out for 35 years...Anyway I would hear about fellow classmates buying brand new cars (which is stupid in of itself) and not having a job to pay for it.

"Hey man, money is cheap nowadays. The interest is dirt cheap" he would say. So because the interest rate wasn't 17% this is a great deal? Everywhere people were doing this along with buying houses way beyond their means. I remember being approved on a $200,000 mortgage 4 years ago and after doing the math, there's no way I could afford such a mortgage despite every babyboomer telling me to buy a house.

"It's the best investment you could ever have."
"Houses NEVER go down in value."
"Go ahead, just do it"

and I just didn't feel right about it at the time. So I rented and sure enough houses went down in value and my potential financial situation would be so tight that I would be watching Ducktales for advice from Scrooge McDuck. I knew I couldn't afford a $200,000 mortgage, so what the fuck was wrong with everyone else who couldn't afford a similar mortgage? Didn't anyone ever take any sort of common sense money management course in high school?

But maybe I'm just a little fiscally conservative for most people. I hate spending more than $200 and my parents have always told me to save 10% of what I earn. Apparently everyone spends all of what they earn and would prefer to live like that. That's fine but I hate having to worry about keeping my job and having my 401k reduced because of all these stupid fucktards that did this. These stupid fucktards are also the ones being bailed out which infuriates me more because while they kept bouncing checks and pretending to be a bunch of middle class MC Hammers, I managed my money and was very careful but I'm not getting anything but a trickle down effect of poison from these idiots. Now it's me who has to suffer the consequences of a bunch of douchebags who believed other douchebags and spent like douchebags.

I swear, everyone of a credit score south of 500 should be sent to Iowa to farm and figure out how to be fiscally smart.

Can the Vikings Win?

2008-12-04T21:08:00.001-08:00

after the service when you're walking slowly to the car
and the silver in her hair shines in the cold November air
you hear the tolling bell
and touch the silk in your lapel

I remember watching Vikings football in the early 90's. I had hope every game, there were players who I loved to watch, and every year it seemed like we had a shot of making the playoffs and possibly making it to the Superbowl. We had players like Doleman, Carter, and Warren Moon and every game I would be glued to the TV. I would yell at my dad whenever he would mention the Packers and I had the Doritoes and Milk flowing.

Not much has changed since the 90's because the Vikings still have players to root for and I have hope every single game. The only way I differ is their shot in making the playoffs. I mean, they *could* make the playoffs but so what? I'm so sick of seeing Minnesota teams making the playoffs and losing right away that I would almost wait until we have a better team with a better quarterback and then waste our time watching them.

I know, I know "Trent Dilfer won the Superbowl" and Doug Johnson did this and Rudy did that. Folks, we're talking about Vikings football where all miracles come AGAINST the Vikings. The whole notion of wishing for luck when it comes to Vikings football seems like a joke and for some reason and I think of us as the Washington Generals and everyone we play in the playoffs are the Globetrotters.

Seriously, Gus Frerrote is going to lead us to the Superbowl? We're supposed to win 2 of the last 4 games without 2 Probowl defensive lineman? Brad Childress is going to win any of these games with his poor play calling?

I certainly hope so, but reality says that this is another mediocre year in a terrible division with a coach who is over his head.

All I do know is after watching 15+ years of Vikings football is that this game against the Lions is the classic game the Vikings lose. I remember in 2003 when the Vikings had two win the last two games of the year. Game 15 was against the Chiefs who were nearly unstoppable and nearly everyone wrote this game off as a loss. Game 16 was against one of the worst teams of the year in Arizona.

End result: We blew away the Chiefs and lost to the Cardinals in dramatic fashion. We don't have this same scenario this week but the Lions are really, really bad and some people would say that they're due. They also may be without the Williams duo and if that's the case, I can see Kevin Smith running all over us. ugh.

Prove me wrong guys, prove me wrong

Hag Crap

2008-11-24T21:11:00.001-08:00

The band is just fantastic,
that is really what I think.
Oh by the way, which one's Pink?

Crap List

1. Unpaid Daytime meetings

I work 2nd shift which is really tough for someone who works 1st shift to understand for some reason. I have ran into this trouble with our company lunches which our company representative (I'll call her Hag) has begged me to come. The company lunches are actually quite nice because they usually have pizza or Famous Daves and it's free food. The problem is that these lunches are at noon which is a bitch for me since I'm either at the gym at noon or doing whatever people do whenever they are not working. Attending this lunch would mean driving a half hour to work, eating for an hour, and then finding a way to waste another hour until my shift starts which sucks.

I've tried to polite and I've tried to explain my position in how these lunches are very inconvenient for me but these explanations have led to a very airheaded look by Hag. Not only that but when I do happen to attend Hag always makes a very loud comment like,

"So, sorry we had to wake you up for this meeting TOM! HAHAHA" to which I grin and look away. On the inside I'm very angry because this Hag is being very frustrating and I really want to dump an entire pizza all over her hag-ass. I have even made the tongue and cheek statement,
"Maybe next time we should have these lunches at 6pm when I'm having lunch" and that just led to a dumbfounded look on her face and the statement,

"Why would we do that?"

Argh

Anyway I received an email about how we are changing health insurance plans and that Hag really wants us to show up. Knowing full well that this insurance meeting is nothing new I call up Hag and leave the following message,

"I believe that I will not attend that insurance meeting since I wont be getting paid for said meeting. Instead I would like to sign up for the HSA account and if there are any changes to my current plan, let me know"

Sounds easy enough but I got this response from her,
"Tom, I got your message and I cannot stress to you enough how important this meeting is. I really think it would be in your best interest for you to show up."
Oh, okay. Perhaps something else is going on. Perhaps they're firing us since it's on a Friday? Perhaps they're going to award me the prize of MVP or give me a giant cake with Erin Esurance inside and she pops out giving me a smaller cake in return?

So I was compelled to go since it was in my "best interest" to attend. I showed up, was bored to tears with the presentation, and I concluded that it was absolute bullshit that I "had to be there". Just as I was leaving Hag called to me and that's when I thought they were going to wheel in the giant cake but no, she simply told me that my health insurance was going up. Apparently this new plan is taking the average age of everyone in the plan instead of taking things based on the individual. Me being 29, in relatively good health, and working with a bunch of unhealthy Carl Pohlads makes me pay more in this new health insurance plan which is to save everyone money. Hag basically told me, "hmm sorry. I guess you drew the short straw. Sorry you had to wake up for this meeting haha.

If there was a well big enough, I would say she should fall down a well.

2. Dumbasses who can't vote

I'm talking about this current Senate recount bullshit. How about instead of analyzing each incorrectly filled out ballet we burn those ballets and clean our hands of such stupid piddly bullshit. If one cannot follow directions and fill out a simply oval then they are not smart enough to vote, simple as that. If they are too stupid that they X-out the candidate or circle the candidates name, then they are too stupid to vote. Instead of giving them a "I voted" sticker they should receive the "I'm a retard" sticker instead.

We cannot be expected to make EVERYTHING retard proof in this society so lets not make it harder on ourselves. This is stupid and it glorifies idiots.

Goodbye Metrodump (part 1)

2008-11-20T20:06:00.001-08:00

Through the fish-eyed lens of tear stained eyes
I can barely define the shape of this moment in time

Saturday marks the beginning of the end to the Metrodome. The Metrodome which was the fairweather fan's lair to simply stand up and clap whenever a phenomenal play happens and to stand in the small concourse right in the middle of everyone and look around whenever they are lost. It is also the place where polo shirt wearing fathers come and take their kids and end up leaving early to beat the traffic. Also the place where Minnesota fans can have the illusion that they live in a warmer place than they do. On Saturday University of Minnesota Golden Gopher football team will play their final game at the Metrodome against the evil Iowa Hawkeyes and I couldn't be happier.

When I think of memorable games at the Metrodome I think of Kirby Puckett and game 6 in '91 and one of the best games in baseball history with game 7. There's also the World Series games in '87 where the fans reached 115 decibles which is like standing behind a plane when it takes off. Of course there's all those homer hankies waving wildly, the Super Bowl, The Final Four, and maybe the 1985 All Star Game.

These are the best memories I can come up with as a whole, not just baseball.

When it comes to Vikings football the memories become hard to come by. At least happy memories because I can remember the game where Brad Johnson caught his own touchdown pass, Randy Moss' first game where he caught two touchdowns, and maybe two decent playoff games? Perhaps that '87 playoff game where Anthony Carter was possessed would be a candidate but I was only 7 and begging my dad for attention at that time. The most memorable game would have to be that '98 Championship game which does not need any sort of mention. Then there's the playoff losses to Chicago and Washington. The heartbreaking loss to Denver when they were on fire in '96. Denny Green Taking a knee in '98 also comes to mind.

Maybe I should stop there before I jump off a bridge.

Gopher football in the dome though, my memories are as follows,

Gophers blowing a fourth quarter lead to Michigan in 2003 (Glen Mason excuse: no on campus, outdoor stadium)
Gophers losing to Northwestern in 2000 due to a Hail Mary at the end of the game(Glen mason excuse: no on campus, outdoor stadium)
Gophers losing to Iowa and having their fans storm the field (our field) and trying to take the goal posts out of the stadium (Glen mason excuse: no on campus, outdoor football stadium)
Gophers losing to Wisconsin because they botched up the punt on their own ten yard line and Wisconsin scored the game winning touchdown with a minute to go. (Glen Mason excuse: no on campus, outdoor football stadium)
Gophers losing to NDSU in 2007 (Glen Mason wasn't our coach)
Gophers beating Wisconsin in 2003 (Glen Mason took all the credit for that)
Gophers losing to Nebraska in 1988 42-0 ( I was only 8 at the time so I'm sure Glen Mason's excuse was: If I was coach they would've at least scored a meaningless field goal)

Anyone have another decent Gopher Metrodome moment? Anyone who isn't related to a player?

I guess I can tell my story of the Northwestern game since I was there, sitting in front of the Northwestern fans.

Gather 'round everyone

I went to the game with my friend C and his family. C's dad was head of the pork producers and he scored a number of tickets in the front row of the upper deck so the seats were alright. Of course there was a sea of purple sitting behind us which was surprising because I didn't know Northwestern had any fans. Anyway the Gophers were up 35-14 in the 3rd quarter. After each Gopher touchdown there would be a parade of gopher fans slowly walking up the upper deck aisle above us to cock off at the Northwestern fans. This parade would sing the rouser, point and laugh, and yell at this group of purple.

It was simply great and I nearly joined them because I kinda like being a dick like that.

Then came the fourth quarter where the Gophers never ever seem to have anything resembling a defense. It's almost as if the gopher defensive players start fading away like Marty McFly in Back to the Future.

One Touchdown
Two Touchdowns
Three Touchdowns and now we're tied.

The group behind us was now standing up and going crazy after the amazing fourth quarter comeback. Northwestern then performed and onside kick and recovered. Now with only a couple seconds left the Wildcats were on the 45 and attempting a Hail Mary to take the lead and avoid overtime. The throw went up, hit a group of players, and landed in a Northwestern receiver's hand. All of us Gopher fans sitting in the upper deck sat there wearing a Charlie Brown-type frown as the Northwestern fans paraded around us and shoved a ton of humble pie in our faces.

God dammit. That is the only way to describe the Gophers tenure in the Metrodome.

I remember when I went to the recent Gopher/Michigan game I saw a banner that read, "Celebrating 27 years of Golden Gopher football in the Metrodome". I think the University of Minnesota could've saved the money and instead made a memorial patch with Goldy Gopher running away from the Metrodome and throwing up "the bird" with a huge pissed off look.

Other than all the losing the Metrodome has brought on a generation of wimpy fans who shudder when they think of standing in 40 degree weather. This coming from people who LIVE where temperatures fall below zero and where the fishing and hunting opener are damn near a state holidays. This is coming from people who go ice fishing, skiing, and snowmobiling in any weather conditions. I expect this whining from people in Florida who view Minnesota as an arctic waste land where penguins and polar bears roam the land but not from Minnesota. I have always longed for the football game in the snowstorm where you have a flask of brandy keeping you warm and the breath of the fans coming from everywhere. I simply can't wait for the first rainy game in TCF stadium because I will be there in my rain gear drunk and and ready to beat the crap out of Indiana.

I know I'm not going to shed a tear for the Metrodome in terms of Gopher football. The Metrodome is symbol for college futility as far as I'm concerned. Blow the damn thing up and then, and only then, play that U of M rouser.

Simply Bits

2008-11-19T21:37:00.001-08:00

Ooo you make me live
Whenever this world is cruel to me
I got you to help me forgive

-Since the writing in The Office has turned rather mediocre I have been looking to find another addiction. I tried watching Entourage but I just don't care about stardom and four douchebags talking about Hollywood. I mean the only reasons I would end up watching that show would be for the women and Ari. Also my "24" addiction has now been long gone so I don't feel compelled to watch season 5 or the newest one.

I was told about It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia back in July and I decided to watch an episode sometime last month.

This show is simply fantastic. The ideas that they have with Charlie being molested and the gang finding a dumpster baby is simply phenomenal. Nearly every character is someone I'd LOVE to hang out with at a bar. I can't imagine what kind of topics I could have with someone like Charlie. Man, that would be fun.

-I also played Hog in the Presidents Cup 10 (or whatever). After losing to him by one point in October, I managed to beat the crap out of him this last weekend and I'm gaining momentum. I'm in great position to be the league spoiler since I have little hope of being in the top three. At the very least I'm happy with my team name, The Thundering Didgeradoos.

I think there should be more nicknames that have "thundering" in them. Thundering makes every team sound really cool like the Thundering Jets, Thundering Vikings, Thundering Panthers, and Thundering Thunder. It's universal because even people with severe lisps can say it.

-How in the hell could Michelle Bachmann be re-elected in the 6th district? She's seems like the type of person who will never, ever admit a mistake. Instead of admitting any type of wrong doing she would try to spin it to make herself look less wrong or neutral.

I've been around these people before and I know how they work. Back in '95 I went on a backpacking trip with the Boy Scouts and explorer group. Throughout the trail there would be tandom latrines that were either side-by-side or facing away from each other. Naturally we would call the side-by-side ones "pilot-to-co-pilot" and the facing away ones "pilot-to-bombardier". Me and S got into an argument about a certain type of latrine which was clearly pilot-to-bombardier and he was arguing that it was the co-pilot type. His theory was that this latrine was for people with wide asses and that's why this particular latrine was the bombardier type. Oh S, will he never learn?

Anyway I'm sure I would've gotten into this same argument with Bachmann had she been backpacking with me. Probably.

-Is Steve Miller really one of the most recognized alumni of Wisconsin? I suppose the U of M's Yanni isn't much better but I consider myself a 70's music buff and Steve Miller doesn't do much for me at all.

TV Theme Songs

2008-11-18T20:29:00.001-08:00

And the night got deathly quiet,
and his face lost all expression.
Said, "If you're gonna play the game,
boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

Testing (pat-pat) check one (pat-pat) check two, CHECK TWO.

So.... What have you guys been up to lately? I know I've just completed a whirlwind tour of the world and have had my share of hookers and blow from all the countries of the United Nations.

(blink:blink)

Actually I haven't had any hookers or any blow. I've simply just been ignoring this space because I haven't been compelled to write much lately. I don't know what it is because I used to love reading blogs and writing crazy things but I just haven't found much of a muse lately. I haven't even kept up with Uniwatch. I know, I know.

I mean it's not like there isn't anything to write about because I am feeling squeezed by the economy at my job (thank you everyone who "cashed in" on the free money opportunity of the early 21st century) and Minnesota football is downright pathetic and then there's the Obamagasm that everyone is having (which I can understand). It's to the point where I'm expecting another 'Miracle on Ice' soon because all the conditions are set up for another Soviet bashing. All the conditions being doom and gloom except it would be the Soviets anymore but maybe....Al qaeda? Do they have a hockey team?

I have been spending a lot of my time with a special lady friend. Now I have to be careful because this entry could take a hard left turn into a Celine Dion-type entry really quick but I'll save you all the details other than things are great. Now I could equally turn this into a Celine Dion entry knowing that she would read this and she might make me some pie and banana bread which would be amazing....

banana bread?.......bloggers integrity?

Does a blogger who has skipped the last couple months of writing even have any integrity? Did I have any integrity before that?

I do like apple pie though too....

I'll just try to save face and post this so I can have the best of both worlds.

Other than the really special lady friend, I have kept myself busy with www.televisiontunes.com which is the best website ever.

I can (and have) listened to all the different versions of the Growing Pains theme along with such 80's classics as Just the Ten of Us and Out of This World which all have very cheesy 80's songs in the last couple days. Even the A-team had a cheesy number for their theme song which I loved.

The one surprise and my favorite tune from that whole website is none other than the CBS baseball theme from 1990-1993 which I loved *LOVED*. I would hum that tune on the playground and I thought it was lost forever but no. NO!!! I finally have it and I can now take a shower to such a theme!

I think that's all I'll write about right now because I don't want to blow anyone away or anything.

Texas Cleanup Part 5: Coming Home

2008-10-16T23:31:00.001-07:00

I changed by not changing at all.
Small town predicts my fate.
Perhaps that's what no one wants to see

So it was sad to leave. I remember taking a slow jaunt back to my rental van just because I didn't think I would ever come back to Galveston again. At least not in the same way that I saw it in my 12 days of being there. I knew it was the end for my trip and that stupid dumbass reality was going to start back up in a couple days.

So despite not having Sara Evans come and take a look at our shelter and me "hitting things off" with her at registration and thus taking a walk in the moonlit beach and then making violent love on the beach with our Halloween costumes (her: slutty country singer, me: Charlie Brown) being half ripped open, the trip was an absolute blast. There was never one time where I wanted to go back home.

After out-processing with the Red Cross, which is a complete bitch of a time because they give you all these stupid interviews to make sure you're mentally stable, I was linked up with three other guys from the Red Cross. After being used to the people in Galveston and my own team these three guys seemed like aliens to me. I think they might have been aliens too because they seemed kinda nuts. All four of us were leaving out of Bush international airport (which is a really crappy airport) and we all were staying at the Paradise Motel the night before we left.

We were wondering about the Paradise Motel before we got there because it was located right next to the freeway and next to the airport. It was also located in Humble, Texas which is indeed very, very humble. Inside my room I had a black light and somewhat strong smells of weed. The door had its lock nearly pulled off the hinge and the sheets on the bed were very questionable. I flipped through the channels and sure enough the Xtasy channel was already ordered (compliments of Paradise Motel) and there was even a copy of Blazin' Hardcore 4 in the DVD player. Clearly, all I needed was a hooker with a smorgus board of STD's and I then I would be living the life of a politician.

Coming home was probably the weirdest part of the whole trip. Going from a place that was ravaged by a hurricane with 90 degree heat and junk everywhere to 55 degree weather, autumn colored leaves, and what seems like perfect neighborhoods was truly a bizarre sight. The night I came back I was still fired up and ready to do something but I didn't have anything to do. I remember driving on through my neighborhood the day after my trip and thinking how truly bizarre it was. I was completely dazed by the fact that there was no trash anywhere and no generators being run. Sleeping that night was startling because it was the first night where there were no fans or generators humming in the distance. It was just silence which I guess I had been without for 3 weeks. I woke up at least a couple times thinking that I got clients waiting for me and it took me a couple minutes to adjust to my own room.

Observations

It seems like at least half of all Red Cross workers smoke.
Everyone seems to get a Texas accent when they come home. I don't know if Oregonians or Washingtonians(?) have accents but they all seem to have strong accents after 3 weeks in Texas. Not me though, I don't have an accent :)
Galveston radio stations have an extreme love affair with John Melloncamp because there was a time where I flipped on three radio stations that all had the Cougar himself
Everyone seems very polite down south. It makes "Minnesota Nice" seem like a passive aggressive snobfest which it probably is.
Air conditioners cranked up to 11... I already covered this.
The ramps in Texas seem to all be built up and over the highways which makes for an interesting exit when you're 200 ft above the freeway on a single lane exit going to another freeway. It's like they have spaghetti in the sky
Also in Texas they don't warn you about exits until they are RIGHT THERE. It's like "Exit 45...NOW"
Those cockroaches are god damn huge in Texas. I had one in my hotel bathroom and we had a lengthy conversation about the buyout.
Texas likes football

Texas Cleanup Part 4: Registration

2008-10-16T00:17:00.001-07:00

On the way back home...
How long did it seem?
3 days or 4? snow glazed all the trees

When we arrived at the client shelter which had one tent of about 80 clients. The shelter was on the grounds of an unused elementary school and in the middle of a torn up neighborhood. The night shift Red Cross people were showing us the ropes and everything seemed manageable. The clients were the people who had their homes destroyed by the hurricane and we were there to simply help them out in anyway possible. This shelter had showers, laundry, 3 meals a day, and air conditioned tents. For some people this was better than what they had before the hurricane.

At first, 80 clients didn't seem terribly daunting but they were erecting another tent that day. Apparently there was about 500 clients from Galveston who were bused to other cities in Texas before the hurricane hit. These people were going to come back at some point. Of course this rumor took off on it's own because some people mentioned 800 people, some mentioned 1,500, and some said that there were no buses. This next tent pretty much guaranteed at least another 200 clients so we were going to be put to work.

Janet and I were mostly at the entrance of the shelter area handling registration. Registration was not my strong suit but there always seemed to be action there and the information seemed to flow through the registration desk. We had to make sure that clients signed in and out of the shelter, register new clients, handle all the weirdest questions that one could think of, be the gate keeper for any of the numerous organizations that wanted to "take a look" or "spread their word", and look for people who were sick mentally and physically.

The first few days at the registration was okay. Problems seemed to find a way to being solved and we had our very own woman who was 'all about' registration. We called her the 'registration nazi' because she was on top of everything and would work 14 hour days making sure everything was filed to her liking.

The next couple days we had more clients at our shelter and they were building another 200 person tent with yet another in the works. At this point things were starting to get crazy at registration and everywhere for that matter. Those 6 guys from Florida who everyone was worried about were damn near a god sent. These guys busted their ass making cots, unloading trailers, and doing any kind of grunt work that was asked. What was even more impressive is the interaction they had with the clients. They made everyone seem like best buddies and were not afraid to sit down and shoot the breeze with any of them. Despite being understaffed I do believe that without these guys, we would've had one hell of an uphill battle. I think back now and laugh at how worried some people were about these guys.

Eventually we housed more clients and by this time we had 3-200 man tents, police officers on the grounds at all times, and a parade of departments who all wanted to enter the shelter on a daily basis. Registration was becoming rough because of all the questions, looking for people, and registering people.

When clients came to register they would walk up to our table usually with wide eyes and somewhat stunned. They would sit and a lot of times, just start talking to you about what they lost, where they've been, and all the damage at their house. At registration we heard a ton of stories and after a couple days these stories start to eat up at you. I remember after the first couple days of registration I would get ready for bed and sit in my cot completely stunned due to some of the stories that I was told that day. Sometimes clients would sit down coughing or showing signs of an infectious disease. One guy had a huge scab over his entire left hand with one band-aid tied around his finger. Turns out it was a bite of some kind and our shelter doctor had to take him away to look at it closer.

After a typical day me and my team would find some sort of nice restaurant (whatever was open) to sit and talk about our day. The Red Cross gave us $33 a day to spend on food and with the contracting outfit already giving us good meals, we were finding it challenging to spend $33. Spending time with the team was very therapeutic for us because we were all able to laugh off whatever craziness we had that day. One day Janet had a person trying to register who was an admitted sex offender, which is enough to cause a certain level of discomfort in anyone. The four of us sitting in the restaurant at the end of the day were some of the greatest moments of the trip and we would laugh so much. I was also able to watch TV at some of the restaurants.

Now for me, sitting out the last two weeks of the Twins playoff run wasn't as maddening as I thought it was going to be. We had no news at all on Galveston Island so we couldn't tell what was going on with debates or economies crumbling, or anything. I had H and Hog both texting me scores and giving me running updates of whatever important games were going on while they were being played. I rarely ever missed a game on tv, radio, and certainly not a boxscore the whole year now I was missing the best part of the season! As it turns out the Twins and White Sox ended the season tied and in a one game playoff. This was also the day that the Red Cross put us in a hotel, so I was getting psyched to actually watch it. I ran up to my room and immediately turned on the TV to flip through the channels. As it turns out, TBS was the only channel that didn't come in due to some weird cable issues but I think it was a horrible joke from God. Janet was nice enough to let me follow the game from her fancy pants phone but as it turns out the Twins lost due to a solo shot by Jim Thome. How do I know that was a joke from God? Well we actually had a Red Cross staff member who also went by the name Jim Thome at our shelter.

Tom: Is your name really Jim Thome?
Jim: Well yes, why do you ask?
Tom: Because you killed my club the other night. I just want you to know that I'm going to be bitter towards you from now on just because of your name.

After spending all that quality time with my team I had to wish them farewell because their time in Texas was up. I was a bit sad to see them go because we created a nice family-like bond between us. I was always amazed at how someone who has traveled the world and who is very outspoken like Vicki could find a way to meet a guy like Vearl who had never been on an airplane before this trip. We all seemed to have a very good team dynamic and there wasn't any drama between us. I even had Vearl talk about "hotties" and "women with big boobs" on the last day of their trip. I was very proud of Vearl.

As it turns out, it seems like nearly half of our staff left with the rest of my team. At registration it was just me and the new supervisor, Diane, who was left. At this point registration was turning grueling because we were so incredibly busy at the desk. It wasn't just at registration either because the whole shelter was greatly understaffed at this point with as little as 5 staff people in charge of a client base of over 300. Staff became stressed, clients became stressed with the added numbers, and the workload was increasing more and more.

I talked to a bunch of people who worked with the Hurricane Katrina aftermath and they all told me that there is always one point where something gives from a mental standpoint. Either you become emotional or angry or depressed but something always makes its way through. For me it was when just me and Diane were at registration. I remember seeing these 3 bags of garbage about 40ft in front of us at the desk. These bags had flies buzzing around and it looked nasty. I would make a mental note to take these bags back to the dumpster but I would always be caught up in something. I would then make another attempt only to drop the bags and go to something more important. Finally I started to take out the trash when the wind kicked up and blew some of the registration papers off the table. I could feel that flame of frustration growing and that was when one of the clients threw a half full bottle of Gatorade in the unlined garbage container I just emptied. I simply told Diane that I had to leave for a half hour, right now. It was probably the first and only thing I demanded in months. Diane also had to take a break because she was on the verge of going insane.

(Same hotel. Notice the chunk taken out on the top corner of the hotel.)

Meanwhile the client number rose above 500 and things in the shelter were getting uglier with sickness breaking out and people getting frustrated with other people. People were drinking the hand washing water instead of using the bottled water that we provided and becoming ill. Sometimes the police would kick people out of the shelters for various reasons. Luckily we had more Red Cross volunteers who came and rescued me and Diane from the madness that we were encompassed with. Tom and Penny both came from New Jersey and we had Laurel and Brian who showed up wearing their UCLA garb. So we now had 6 people in registration and things were actually manageable at this point.

I hate to give everything a negative connotation because it wasn't like I was living in hell for a 12 days. I actually loved being down at the shelter and Galveston and simply being part of something so huge. All of the teams that we came down with fused into one large family and we would always give each other breaks throughout the day. The guys from Florida, the Seattle couple, and the UCLA twins (even though they made fun of whatever northern accent I have) were so much fun to work with that I really felt guilty for leaving when I did. When you start out a shelter that only had 80-some people and it grows to over 500, you feel like your a part of the place. There was something to be said of working at our shelter because we were so understaffed but whatever staff we had were very good.

Texas Cleanup Part 3: Galveston

2008-10-14T22:02:00.001-07:00

When the snow don't come
You can't swim in the lakes
Now it's hotter than hell
In a bed you won't make

The morning of going to Galveston we stopped by that abandoned Wal-Mart for some last minute questions and supplies. The supervisor told us to pack away three cases of bottled water since the water in Galveston was either not working or undrinkable. They also told us that we're going to need a lot of cash and insect repellant with with over 75% deet. They made it sound like we were heading into Vietnam or something.

It wasn't until we reached north Houston when we started to see large broken branches and after each mile we would see more and more damage. At this point it just looked like a powerful thunderstorm whipped around Houston which was barely notable. When we drove through downtown Houston we noticed that some windows were replaced with plywood.

I remember all those 80's shows would feature a cool looking office. Man would walk in the office and immediately a drink would be served in some cool looking bar off to the side of the office. There would be glasses and all the top line liquors around. I've always dreamed about having my redneck equivalent. It would feature all the bottom shelf liquors and have dixie cups sitting nearby. A piece of plywood in place for a window would also be ideal. I can only hope that there is some guy up there with dixie cups making the most of his wooden window.

I've been in Houston before visiting friends and I really don't care for it at all. For it being the 4th largest city it sure doesn't have much going for it. When you compare Houston to Chicago or New York, I nearly throw up because of how cool both Chi-town and NY are and how boring Houston is. I would probably rate Houston a tad bit above Gatlinberg, TN and just below Humble, TX.

Anyway, south of Houston is where we were finding more and more billboards being blown out. We all made the note that McDonalds signs seemed to fare the worst because nearly all were damaged south of Houston.

Then we'd see some very weak houses with tarps over the roof. Construction equipment was becoming more frequent and there was more and more crap on the side of the road.

About ten miles north of Galveston we began seeing boats laying on the sides of the freeway, the median, and pretty much all over the place.

When we reached Galveston Island it looked very concerning. There was piles of trash stacked up in front of all the homes and businesses were throwing away all the drywall and damaged goods into their parking lot. There was nothing open and everything smelled like a plugged drain that hadn't been pumped in two weeks. All the traffic lights were out too so defensive driving was a must. It was way too easy to have your eyes drift toward a graveyard or some strange debris and you end up rear ending someone.

Everyone in my team kept mentioning the "Galveston song" by Glen Campbell. My parents even mentioned it but I've never heard it before. I just youtubed it just now and now I wish I was never that curious. Good lord that song sucks. The Wreak of the Edmund Fitzgerald blows it out of the water...er...pardon the pun

In this picture you can see the small boat caught up in the tennis court fences but what is really interesting is the dirt on top of the chain link fence off to the right. This dirt is the high water mark for when the storm surge hit. These tennis courts were about 6 blocks away from the Gulf.

We stopped at the local chapter headquarters where we met our next supervisor who looked like she hadn't slept in 3 days. She was dealing with 30 problems seemingly all at once and the four of us were trying not to cause her to snap. She explained the shelter that we'd be helping out and that there are only 6 staff people right now. The 6 were all from Florida and were brand new to the Red Cross and she seemed worried about them. As if they were trouble or something.

We shrugged it off and went to our own shelter where we were being housed. Because there was so many different disaster relief organizations down there (EPA, Forestry, State Troopers, FEMA, Salvation Army, Southern Baptists, and more) they had a huge shelter for all the disaster relief agencies to stay in. The shelter was a tent, and air conditioned tent no less which housed about 400-some cots

On my plane trip back home I sat next to this U of M professor who made one of the funniest statements,
"I do believe that Texas summers are in fact colder than Minnesota winters."
See, in Texas they don't simply turn on the air conditioner but they have every room ready for emergency meat locker storage. It's absolutely insane how cold they make these rooms. When I started packing for my trip I briefly wondered if I should bring a stocking hat for if I should get cold at all. Then I thought,
"I'm going to southern Texas, what would I do with anything more than a t-shirt?"
I figured it was a good point but I actually could've used one. This shelter was waaay too cold at night and I would shiver my ass out the door just to warm up.

Outside the PVC meat locker we had a contracting outfit in charge of showers, washing stations, laundry, and food. Other than tents, we were not roughing it at all. The food was great and in great quantity because you almost needed two plates to hold everything.

Laundry was especially cool because you stop up to this tent, hand them your bag of laundry, and take a number. Later that day it would be cleaned AND folded. Upon learning of this I called up my mom and she thought I would never leave. Folded clothes!!!

Here's where I tease you and say, "Next, I'll talk about what it was like at the client shelter...but that will come tomorrow." So yeah, stay tuned or whatever.

Texas Cleanup Part 2: Bored

2008-10-13T23:20:00.001-07:00

May not seem exciting the way those others do
I'm emotion, my devotion
You will need some day as I need you

I arrived at the Red Cross headquarters for Hurricanes Ike and Gustav in suburban Ft. Worth. Like I mentioned before, it was an abandoned Wal-Mart with about 200 miscellaneous Red Cross workers stationed at one of the 20 stations sprawled across the floor. The place was humming and walking in was like walking into a giant office complex without the cubicles. The place had charts, graphs, maps, and easel post-its all over the walls and wires strung out all over the place.

I soon found a sheltering team which had a couple team members bow out for various reasons. I greeted everyone on the team and based on their accents I figured this was a team entirely from Texas. All four middle aged people had drawls and they all seemed very fun and happy. To my surprise no one was from Texas or even close to Texas--two of the people were from Oregon, one from Vegas, and the guy with the deepest drawl I have ever heard was only ten hours away from me in NW Missouri.

Everyone I just met got back from Texarkana where they opened and closed a shelter in about ten days. They told me all the stories and people that they met while in Texarkana. They mentioned "Big Momma" and all the sugared up kids in the shelter. They also mentioned the 2nd hurricane that came through while they were trying to fill a perscription I spent the first few days in Ft. Worth listening to my team talk about their lives and their experience in Texarcana.

Eventually one of the four people I met bowed out due to family illness and our team was down to four. We had Vegas Vicki who was very outspoken and one hell of an effective leader. Vicki scored us hotel rooms, awesome working hours, and she was one of the most effective managers I had ever seen. Coming from Oregon we had Janet who was a blast to hang out with. If she wasn't breaking her ankle on curbs and talking to sex offenders, she was helping me make fun of people which is always fun. Then there was Vearl who was a 68 year old farmer from NW Missouri. Vearl was the person who I identified the most with because he reminded me so much of my grandpa and he had a story for everything. Making fun of Vearl was especially fun too because he would look off into the distance and finally throw his cap at you.

We all quickly bonded and began waiting for a call for our assignment. We specialized in sheltering which means that we were basically being managers of a shelter until the shelter wasn't needed anymore or we had to leave. I felt relieved that they had done this before because I had that Maroon 5 scenario fresh in my mind. So we waited.

First day---no call
Second day---no call
third day---no call

We waited at this nice hotel for three days. We couldn't afford to explore Ft. Worth at all because we had to be close to our packed bags if we got a call to be somewhere fast. The Hotel was beautiful but it was in the middle of nowhere. We couldn't walk around anywhere and it was hard to get involved into anything with the threat of the phone ringing and canceling out whatever plans we would have.

After three days of waiting I was starting to get a bit concerned. I mean wasn't the Red Cross practically begging people to help out? If so, I'm here, Hello! I used the rest of my vacation to be here and now I'm being told to wait? I was starting to wonder if I would be deployed to Texas only to wait at a hotel for three weeks and not have a chance to actually do anything. If that were the case I'd be devastated and feel completely worthless.

Dad: So what kind of stuff did you do in Texas?
Tom: ugh, nothing. I just hung out in a hotel for three weeks waiting for something to do. It was the worst experience of my life.

Frustrated with the lack of doing anything, Janet and Vearl decided to go home because they didn't want to sit and wait around longer. I don't blame them because they had already opened a shelter and this was complete bullshit to make us wait around like this. Just before we were about to give hugs goodbye to Janet and Vearl, this supervisor came running in and told them that they were not allowed to go home. They had to wait until it was cleared with the supervisor before they went home. So the four of us drove back to the hotel frustrated and wondering how long we'd be staying in this hotel.

Then the phone rang, it was headquarters. Apparently we were being assigned to help start up the shelter in Galveston Island which was a bit of a shock to us. We heard rumors that they would need help in Houston or Beaumont but for some reason Galveston slipped our mind. They told us to be prepared and that the mosquitos were horrible. It was almost as if they were trying to scare us from going down.

I think my group was a bit annoyed that we would have the Galveston shelter. Janet and Vearl must've been especially annoyed because they were minutes away from going home and now they heard that they were being sent to the place that sustained the most damage. Because I was so bored and hadn't done a thing, I was pumped and excited to go to Galveston. I didn't let my team know this because I'm sure Vearl would've choked me to death but I was ready to see some weird things. I was finally going to do something.

Texas Cleanup Part 1: Arriving

2008-10-12T23:50:00.001-07:00

They're never going to make it easy
Of this you can be sure.
I greet you from the wilderness,
I'll stay inside your door

I remembering waiting at the light rail station on Monday morning. It was about 4am and I was slowly walking around my huge duffle bag wondering what the next two weeks were going to be like. I honestly didn't have any idea so I anticipated the absolute worst case scenario which involved me and a coked up Ben Stiller locked in a cell with nonstop Maroon 5 being played over some hidden speaker. Hell, even that would be an experience and give me some perspective that I was craving.

I had signed up for hurricane disaster relief through the Red Cross and I was about to be deployed for about 17 days. I volunteered to help out last year for the 35W bridge collapse and I loved the experience. I was doing very remedial work in building a database for 'in-kind donations' but I loved how everything was structured. Everyone had ideas and everyone seemed to listen and there were no power struggles. It was refreshing. They also fed us Outback Steakhouse and that was so bitchin that, like a bear that has been fed by dumbass tourists, I wanted to come back for more.

I remember laying in bed about a month ago wondering what I could do to make 2008 memorable. I was getting sick of the predictability of life and the pattern that everything was falling in. I didn't know what I was going to do. Usually I just think of Sara Evans in a vinyl suit and I fall asleep with a smile on my face but really, it's not until Sara Evans is in your bed is when you are fully satisfied...right? A week later I got a email from the Red Cross and that they were "desperately" looking for volunteers to help out in the hurricane Ike and Gustav aftermath.

I was all over this. I was going to actively try for this. After all, the Red Cross would pay for nearly everything, I could take a 3 week break from work and recharge, and I simply like the idea of helping. To me there's something very refreshing to travel in exotic places with the only task being to simply "help out". Also the pranks that me and my roommate do to each other has escalated to her flat-out punching me in the balls and me trying to flick her chest. Basically such a trip would give my testicles some time to heal. Plus I get to take a back seat on managing and instead allow myself to be managed which would be a great change of pace from work. I was all about this but getting 3 weeks off would be tough. Especially since I only have about 7 days of vacation left.

I asked my bosses and surprisingly they were very supportive. Not supportive enough to give me more vacation time but supportive enough that I could take three weeks off and come back with my job waiting for me. I really didn't care, the worst case scenario of annoying ass Ben Stiller and the primate sounds of Maroon 5 seemed like the penance that I needed to pursue.

I arrived in Ft. Worth at about noon and I called up the number that I was explicitly told to call once I got my bag. The number led me to a voice mail to which I left a message,

"uh yeah, this is Tom and I was supposed to call this number once I got in. Uh I would like to know what to do next."

I then waited a couple minutes and became very dissatisfied with my message and a little annoyed that the number they gave me led to a voice mail recording.

I called again and I got this really irritated guy who told me that I called the wrong Red Cross number and he was nice enough to give me the correct number to call. I was now playing my favorite game, telephone-go-fish in the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport no less. On the fourth try I finally was given directions and soon I was on my way to the Red Cross headquarters which was an abandoned Wal-Mart in suburban Ft. Worth. I was getting ready to do whatever it was I was that the Red Cross needed the most help in.

I know, I know I haven't gotten to any juicy parts yet. So far all I've done is fantasize about Sara Evans and talk shit about Maroon 5. So to save you guys from one endless biblical post I'm going to split it up so I can get everyone's attention. Not to mention it's 1:30am and I really need to get to bed because I have 3 weeks of email waiting for me at work. I'll have more tomorrow and maybe even a picture or two.

Malaria-less

2008-10-04T19:12:00.000-07:00

Hola,

So far Galveston has been a blast. They warned us about mosquitos on the way down here. In fact, this dude at a Houston gas station was nearly threatening me with the possible outbreak of malaria going around. After being here for 8 days I can safely say that either the mosquitos are all dead or Texans are very dramatic and whiny when it comes to mosquitos. I bought this 100% deet stuff and have only used it a couple times.

We have about 850 clients staying in our shelter on Galveston Island and it's been tough. We've been understaffed and the conditions are not the best (to say the least) but it's downright amazing what we've done. I broke my camera....but I got a newer, better one instead so I'll post some pictures when I get back.

Just wanted to say hi and that I dont have malaria and I haven't been raped yet.

Galveston It Is

2008-09-25T16:07:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Finally we're getting deployed. Tomorrow morning me and my group will be heading down to Galveston to set up a new shelter. Looks like I'm going to be down there until the 8th so I'm going to have a full plate.
They warned us that we're going to see things that we don't want to see and smell things that we don't want to smell. Also the mosquitos are supposed to be a total bitch.
I hate to say it but...bring it on.

I'm Messin With Texas

2008-09-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I arrived in Ft. Worth on Monday and haven't done much of anything since. I've been included in a group of 4 others who have just returned from Texarcana where they opened and closed a disaster shelter there. The group is a fun one--we have a couple people from Oregon, one from Vegas, a 'good ole boy' from NW Missouri, and even a girl from Minneapolis. The four not in MN are all are retired from various things in life and are fun to talk to.

Right now we are all on standby and waiting to be deployed so things are pretty boring right now. We are kooked up in this motel waiting for our phones to ring. Rumors are flying that they are going to open up a shelter in Galveston and Beaumont. If true, our group could be going out to one of those places. They also opened up a "supershelter" in Houston so that also is a possibility.

Anyway, I'm bored as all hell and saw this computer so I thought I'd give an update.
Oh and people get a bit annoyed when you say you are from the "Twin Cities". It's like Dallas/Ft. Worth came in 2nd place on the official Twin City name drawing.
Yeah, suck it Dallas/Ft. Worth.

Brady Crap

2008-09-08T00:17:00.001-07:00

Cause they ain't got the kind of law and order
That tends to keep a good man underground

Crap List

1. Football Kickoff Weekend

Well, that did it. All I needed was one bad week of football betting before I'm sick of it and can get back to reality. I get way too involved into fantasy football and I have prevented myself from participating in the past because of my fixation. I have only joined one league with my friends, one pick the game deal (which is already over--Thanks Indy), and one work deal which is only because I want to participate with people at the office a little more. I tried to get fantasy football going at work but no one was interested...(grrr oh but everyone was interested in the ultra nerdy stock brackets which was introduced by the boss...god, that's so nerdy).

Anyway I was pumped for this week. I was feeling good thoughts, I had some decent players, and I was bright eyed and bushy tailed or whatever for my TRIUMPHANT JUGGERNAUT OF A TEAM led by Tom Brady himself! I've never had an elite quarterback before and this was my first time actually drafting one, the number one rated quarterback in the draft, the guy that can move mountains, and could have me riding a patriots victory to some cash!

Brady played about a half a quarter and snapped his ACL which makes him out for the year, makes the Patriots...pretty much like the Vikings (a good team with a questionable quarterback), and my 2nd round draft pick a bust for the ages.

B-dubs 2015
Hog: Man, that's crap about Peterson. I didn't know televisions fell from the sky. I guess he'll be out for the year. God damn it, and on the third week too.
Boof: Ah don't worry man, I remember when I had Brady, you remember, after his record breaking year knocking up models and almost going undefeated. I don't think I got a quarter of playing time from his worthless ass.

Aggrrh, what happened to the 400 yard 5 touchdown games? What about the joy and tickling and giggling? What about all those 30-spots from the quarterback? This is like being the last one at the state fair on Labor Day wondering what happened to Summer... which I did. dammit.

Politics

2008-09-03T23:03:00.001-07:00

All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall

I just got into a semi-heated argument with my workers on ethics vs. morals and how it's totally wrong to legislate based on morals. Argh it was horrible, because I knew they were wrong as hell and their definitions were so incorrect that correcting them was just adding fuel to the fire. It all started with me watching the RNC and totally dismissing Sarah Palin.

I try to be as moderate as they come. I listen to both sides and I try to keep myself up to date when it comes to political issues. I have usually voted democrat but I always keep my options open just to try and remain somewhat objective. However, I think I'm still biased.

I watched the DNC and that seemed downright amazing with the stage setups and how seamlessly it all was. It seemed like they firmly believed in everything and it was almost--and I'm going to whisper this--kinda honest. It's not without my fair share of eye rolling but it seemed really great.

Even in a couple of the speeches I think I may have bought the underlining message. I hate even admitting that. After watching the DNC I have to admit, I think the Dems have this election in the bag. They just have too much going in their favor. In 2004 I firmly believe that all the Dems needed was a dignified person to run against Bush but unfortunately they couldn't do that. I mean how embarrassing is it to lose to George Bush? Obama seems to be that dignified character.

The RNC is finally getting underway and after watching the last two days I have to say, I'm not impressed. It seems very corny, very boring, and I don't believe the speakers as much. Maybe it's the numerous chants: "Drill baby, Drill!" and all the really dumb jokes about pop culture. It's like hearing my mom make a joke about pop culture. One thing that I've noticed is that everyone is pronouncing Palin differently. It seems a bit disingenuious when people can't even pronounce your name...and you're running for VP.

Obviously my bias is coming out but I can't help it. I like McCain for how different he is than any other republican. I like how he seems to follow his beliefs instead of his party's and how bi-partisan he seems to be. I think it's very important to work with both sides in order to effectively execute in this country. I really wanted McCain to select Leiberman as his VP but I knew he wouldn't do so. It would infuriate too many conservatives (just like Lieberman infuriated many liberals).

Needless to say, I'm not impressed with McCain's choice in Sarah Palin. McCain, to me, represents independence from the republican party. Sarah Palin represents republican in capital, bold letters which is enough to completely turn me off on the McCain ticket. I mean with McCain's age I think it's very important to consider his runningmate because he's going to be 76 when he will be making another speech wanting to be re-elected or giving his endorsement. Sarah Palin as President makes me shudder and I would hate her being a VP lead her to being a President--not because she's a woman but because I don't agree with her hardcore republican views.

With that being said, I can't wait for the debates. Both sides will be talking about change which seems very awkward for the republican side since the republicans are just coming off of 8 years of crap.

2008 Fantasy Foosball

2008-08-26T20:41:00.001-07:00

watchin' a stretch of road, miles of light explode.
driftin' off a thing i'd never done before

Last year was a storybook ending for team Giggity Giggity. It started with the regular season and my team completely taking a dump on the 2007 season. Every week I would go to Buffalo Wild Wings and suffer loss after loss due to my worthless team sucking the crap out of the league.

The regular season ended with Giggity Giggity finishing in last place and only five wins to show for it. It was tough losing to Hog twice and everyone was pointing and laughing at me! I only gained one high score of the season and had only $3 to show for my awful regular season.

Then the playoffs happened and guys like Laurence Maroney and Vincent Jackson actually started to play legit football instead of picking their ass. My team of idiots was starting to play like a team of champions, American champions. A couple wins later Giggity Giggity was in the Superbowl facing off against the evil terrorist team owned by Hog himself. I really wanted to beat Hog (as I always do) but I really wanted to beat him in the Superbowl because we were playing for money and a really shiny trophy too!

As it turns out Freedom won again as Giggity Giggity beat Hog's team of terrorists. God I love America!

This year I'm actually trying to keep the trophy and hopefully maintain some sort of success through the regular season. We had our draft on Sunday and I present....to you....

THE THUNDERING DIDGERIDOOS

QB: Tom Brady
QB: Jay Cutler

RB: Joseph Addai
RB: Michael Turner
RB: Thomas Jones
RB: Chester Taylor
RB: Sammy Morris

WR: Braylen Edwards
WR: Jehrico Cotchery
WR: Nate Burleson
WR: Dwayne Bowe
WR: Robert Meachem
WR: Vincent Jackson

TE: Jason Witten
TE: John Carlson

K: Josh Brown
K: Jason Hanson

Def: Chicago Bears

DUN-DUN-DAAAAAAAAAAAA

Overall I'm really excited for my team. I had the third pick in our draft (of ten people) and I picked Joseph Addai which was kinda questionable. I figured that I didn't feel safe trusting Westbrook and Jackson. I also liked having the Colts runningback. I then had to wait 14 more picks until I had to make my 2nd pick so I was eyeing up guys like Jones-Drew and Fitzgerald. As it turns out, everyone was so runningback heavy that Tom Brady was available for my 2nd pick which I couldn't believe. I actually had a small thought of taking him with my first pick but I wasn't considering that too seriously.

Then for the third pick I was lucky enough to nab Braylon Edwards whom I really wanted. With those three picks I was very satisfied.

I did get my obligatory awesome tight end this year when I didn't even plan to get one this year. I also somehow drafted Jay Cutler in the 13th round which will be awesome for whatever week that Brady doesn't play haha.

Before the draft I was eyeing up a some players which if years past have any indication, these guys will end up sucking. So here is my list

-Barber
-Braylon
-Brees
-any of the two big Bengals recievers
-Cotchery
-Berrian
-Bush (basically any player that starts out with a B apparently)
-Boss
-I really wanted Willy Parker seeing as everyone was thinking really low of him this year but he went in the 2nd round.

So now I simply can't wait until the season starts. We have another worthless week of exhibition games which sucks but didn't Apollo Creed get killed in an exhibition?

Roxette Music Video Review

2008-08-19T20:49:00.001-07:00

When she's spinning me around, kissing is a colour
Her loving is a wild dog, she's got the look

Maybe that comment was the kick in the ass I needed. Consider this entry to be a bonus because I have a headache and I still want to research more fantasy football even though I know it's useless.

I don't know why but I started searching through Roxette videos on youtube. I don't know why but no one ever talks about Roxette. It's to the point where I'm wondering if they were communists and making music to further the support of the red regime, hmm. Roxette was the prototypical late 80's early 90's music but they had an interesting makeup. There was one woman who had very short, white hair who actually looked attractive and then there was a douchey guitarist who exemplifies the early 90's dork.

I will go on the record and say that even though I don't own any Roxette albums, I do enjoy their hits. I mean 'Dangerous' and "The Look" are damn good songs. I mean the lyrics can kinda be suspect but with every Roger Waters there needs to be a....uh Roxette. Therefore, I will attempt to give a review on each of their popular videos.

The Look
This video seems to take place in one of the apartments near the U of M with the side of the apartment being completely destroyed and the framing visible throughout. A place like this would still get about $400 a month even in it's dilapidated state. They keep saying she "walks like a man..." sounds like she's got *a* look but not *the* look. I mean I wouldn't want a hottie to walk like a man.

The more I hear this song the more I start to wonder if they just threw a bunch of words at a chorus to see if they sounded good together. Hey, it worked for Def Leppard so why not Roxette. I noticed they used the same shot twice so that's pretty stupid but I suppose when you're saying "she's got the look" about 40 times then there is only so many ways to say it.

I don't mean to rag on the video but it's not helping my headache.

Listen to Your Heart
This video takes place at a castle of some sort (Slane?). I heard this song a couple weeks ago and I forgot how cool it sounds. Maybe it was that county fair in Iowa? Actually that was boring and silent.

This video has numerous helicopter shots at the crowd armed with sparklers. It also has numerous shots at the guitarist posing like I've rarely seen before. He actually gives Creed a run for their money. As I continue watching it seems that both (hottie and dorky guitarist) are posing equally bad. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised given the era of when this song came out.

I will say that it's probably one of the best concert music videos of it's time. I mean it's a beautiful song and some of the shots are very artistic.

Dangerous
This song may have been the prelude to 'Listen to Your Heart' because it's shows numerous set-up shots of the concert in the castle. So many bands in the 80's have this typical throw-away video (Genesis, Def Leppard, Metallica, Bon Jovi). It's like they take the most annoying roadie and give him a camera to shoot the sound check.

I dunno, the woman is in a hot looking black outfit but---okay I just gotta say this real quick, I weighed in at 185 today! On two different scales even! I haven't weighted this light since like ten years ago. I think I'm in prime condition to consume my heart out for the state fair!

It Must've Been Love
I simply love this song. I know, I know, I'm going to lose about ten 'man points' for saying that but I've always been a sucker for this song and video. I don't really have much of an opinion for Pretty Woman except that if I was to make a movie about a prostitute it would involve more nudity and less George Costanza. I simply love how the video has the sheets flowing in the wind with the filmstrip on top. I also like the shot with (whatsherface...Roxette?) is in that white minidress with the film clip of Julia Roberts over her dress. I've always thought it was a really cool shot. I think one of the main ways I like this video is because the guitarist's douchiness is down to about a 2 in this video. He actually looks a bit dignified if I dare say that. The warehouse is also kinda bitchin.

Joyride
I heard this song a lot when it came out and then I never heard it again. Well, that is until Sophomore year in college when, for some strange reason, I heard it on a daily basis. I think one of our college television programs used this song as a intro or something. I just saw this video in it's entirety and now I've got a really bad headache.

In conclusion, I just want to say that I will only be cherry picking my favorite Roxette songs from itunes and/or just watching their youtube clips because I appreciate their 'just-a-bit-too-highbrow-for-carney-music" taste. Also, I did lose some weight and I now I feel the need to eat a lot more.

Summer Games Crap

2008-08-17T22:41:00.001-07:00

Run, you can run,
tell my friend-boy, Willie Brown.
And I'm staying at the crossroads,
believe I'm sinking down.

Crap List

1. The Summer Games

I absolutely love *love* international competition. Simply put, I feel we get a great idea on who is the best in the planetat their respective sport. I've always wanted to compete in something and represent my country for something like the Olympics and it would be a thrill go just be there. In fact one of my dreams is to simply hang out around the Olympic Village during the Winter Games just to see if I can get me some Olympic ass. If I was lucky enough to compete I can only imagine standing on that podium and having God Bless America (I like that as an anthem better than the Star Spangled Banner) would be enough to make me cry like a little bitch.

With that being said, what I'm about to say will probably get myself hated, knocked out, and crucified by the crazy swimming fans out there. I'm just going to come right out and say it, the Summer Games are fucking boring as all god damn hell. There is really only one event that I will watch for more than 4 minutes with that being the marathon and that is only because I get to see a lot of Beijing in HD. Other than that the other events are really, really boring.

I didn't know who Michael Phelps was a week ago and I still don't give a rats ass now. I don't care if he won 20 gold medals at the Olympics, I just don't care about swimming at all. This may be shocking but I wouldn't even watch if Phelps happened to be in my backyard swimming. Instead I would probably be in the pool with the arm floaty things telling him to quit splashing and to find his own damn pool. I understand he's a great athlete and he was close on some of the races and yadda yadda yadda but I don't care. Watching swimming is worse than watching Nascar. There are many ultra marathon racers out there who do everything and they are also great athletes.

I think my biggest problem with the summer games is that I don't identify with any of the events. I've never been a fan of track and field, never even owned that nintendo game with the pad. I don't care about the javelin or the ball toss (whatever it's called), nor does watching someone lift a lot of weight really do anything for me. Gymnastics makes me think of all the pedophiles who are watching and baseball and soccer are not even that good.

Also I'm kinda pissed that this is the last year Baseball is going to be an Olympic sport. By the way, have you heard what the extra inning rules are for Olympic baseball? In the 11th inning each teams at-bat begins with runners at 1st and 2nd with a hitter of whomever the manager chooses. Every inning after starts out that way until the tie is broken. I shit you not. They somehow found a way to cheapen baseball for the last year it's held as an Olympic event.

If you haven't found out already I'm very bitter over the Summer Games. I think it's because I have a deep love for the Winter Games and I'm sick of the media and everyone shitting on the Winter Games for the events that no one understands. For every time Curling is questioned I will counter with Equestrian because if equestrian is an event then having wiener dogs catch Frisbees should be in there too. For every time the biathlon is questioned I will counter with handball, whatever the hell handball is. I was watching handball the other day and it's like basketball and soccer's "oops baby" that never should've happened. For every time the skeleton is brought up, I will counter with ping pong. I know they call it table tennis but defecating is still the same as taking a dump.

Then I'll briefly go over "the birdsnest" which looks like Paul Bunyan's bedpan. Why and how someone could design something so ugly is completely beyond me.

The summer games would be so much better if they had rugby, true baseball, and lacrosse to name a few. I just wish it was over so I don't have to listen about some news anchor going nuts over the new ping pong champion.

pfew, I feel so much better now.

dating crap

2008-08-10T23:24:00.001-07:00

If I could reach the stars I'd pull one down for you
Shine it on my heart so you could see the truth

I must admit that I'm really burnt out on dating. I had a date on Tuesday and I was on the verge of falling asleep because I was so damn bored. Usually when it comes to dating I feel like I should be the one to keep the conversation going and to at least salvage the night/dinner. Not this time though, she was a nice woman who was alright at conversation but I just wasn't interested from the get-go. I think it might have been this series of conversations.

Boof: So are you a fan of Will Ferrel at all?
date: yeah, I like some of his stuff.
Boof: Anchorman?
Date: nah, didn't really like anchorman
Boof giving a different kind of Ferrel movie: How about Stranger than Fiction?
Date: nah, didn't really care for that either. I also love --LOVE--Ben Stiller!

ugh, I'm trying really hard not to scowl at her at this point. I gave her two of my favorite Will Ferrel movies and she crapped all over them. At this point I'm a tad irritated. Then she brings up the no-no topic on first dates: politics.

Date completely out of left field: So who are you voting for this year?
Boof taken back: Oh well, I usually side to the left of things--
Date interrupts: oh good, I was afraid you were a republican--
Boof interrupting her: --but I've always kinda leaned on McCain this year because of how much of a centrist he is.

At this point I kinda know I pissed her off. I wouldn't have admitted that if I really wanted a second date but I figured I was honest and I was curious on how she would react. I could tell I was hitting a nerve because she went in her "here's why you vote democrat" routine on me. I remained calm and told her why I felt like I did and I think I did a good job of shutting her up. Then came strike three.

Date: I'm going to be one of those protesters outside of xcel arena during the RNC.

oooh, yeaaaaah

I take this info as her being completely hardcore dem which I find this unattractive for some reason. If she was leaning this far right, I would be just as irritated because I think of someone being possessed kinda like a right wing zealot. I think of the nutjobs who jump up and down with excitement on election night as if they just won a Nintendo Wii. Is it really that exciting? I've always *always* been irritated with these weird people. It's as if they were infected with some sort of disease and now all they can see is blue.

We finally parted and wished each other well. I think she's more interested than I am since I felt like I just wasted 2 hours of my life during this date. I know it wasn't so much her as it was me though. I think I'm so used to people being completely boring or crazy or unstable that I expect the date to go bad.

It wasn't always the case though. I remember when I started going on my dating frenzy when I would almost expect (and enjoy) a great date. I would be very up beat and be an MC for whomever I was dating. I had a good time, she had a good time, and we would make plans for another.

Since then I've met the complete duds, the freaks, and people who are so boring that I wonder if they even know what "fun" is. This definition of "fun" coming from a person who doesn't even drink that much.

I've met the people who answer question with one word and will not engage in conversation no matter how hard you try.
Boof: So where you work, do they treat you right?
date: yeah.
Boof: Is there anyone that annoys the crap out of you there?
date: nope.
Boof: How did you decide to get into that industry?
date: eh, I don't know.

AARRRRRRRGGGGGH! TELL ME SOMETHING! PLEASE! TALK FOR THE SAKE OF TALKING SINCE THAT'S WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO! How can one engage in conversation when the other is looking blankly at you giving one word answers or the complete bullshit "i don't know" answer. Really? You don't know?

I even wish that if they weren't interested to simply tell me right off the bat because that would be so much better.
date: I gotta tell ya, you're nice and all but this isn't going to work. I'm going to leave and wish you to best of luck in your future.

At that point I would be so amazed and refreshed that I would actually feel a bit up-beat. No beating around the bush, no fake laughter, no bullshit conversation, just an honest belief and a sincere gesture!

One date we started getting into a deeper conversation which was great. She asked me what I dream about and I started on about my future house, having a dog, and living next to some cool shops. I was completely daydreaming but it was fun and I was getting into a zone. It was very cathartic and true. I felt like we were about to take this conversation into another level, a possible connection. It was nearly complete, all I had to do was ask her that same question:

So what kind of things do you think about everyday?
date: well uh, I don't know.... Like I always hope I don't fall down the stairs before I start to step down.

(blink:blink) sigh

That's the answer you give me? That is what you think/dream about everyday? I thought we were actually getting somewhere. Like, nearly on the path of revealing a bit of ourselves. No, she tells me that she never dreams about anything. Really? How can people not dream? Do people actually live life without any kind of an imagination?

I've also dated a couple women who had this ideal of being a "successful business woman" whatever that is. It's like they didn't know what they wanted to do but they just wanted to show up at a coffee shop in the business suit and read the Wall Street Journal to make other think their shit doesn't stink. It's like the image is more important than the actual job.

I suppose I shouldn't crap on people's business woman dreams. I suppose it's just the frustration of seeing someone who has potential and then seeing the red flags pop up eventually. There always seems to be red flags and my gut just screams at me, "she is going to be very annoying, very fast."

I suppose I am doing the right thing in dating but it's so frustrating. It seems like everyone is very boring or has issues with the dumbest things. When I do find someone the least bit interesting they cheat, or just want to snuggle (ugh), or they're 2 hours away. It just seems like it's been so long since I've met someone that I've felt giddy about, someone who has inspired me to plan a date very creative and awesome. Someone who I could talk with hours on the phone. Ugh, how the hell do people find this other person?

Not Even a Rubber Arm

2008-08-04T23:49:00.001-07:00

And I know anyday, anyday,
I will see you smile.
Any way, any way,
only for a little while.

This last weekend I continued my 2008 experiment by buying scalped tickets for this last weekend's Twins games. Saturday I strolled onto scalpers corner with the non realistic hopes of hounding the scalpers for a great $20 ticket. The last two games I bought scalped tickets I twisted the despirate scalpers arm until he accepted my twenty dollar offer. It's hard to refuse when someone wants to actually pay money for a single ticket 5 minutes before the first pitch.

Last Saturday it was a little tougher. It seemed like everyone and their mom was at the game, and the were. There was an estimate crowd of about 42k at Saturday's game. I had to settle for a $30 diamond view ticket which wasn't too bad considering I got laughed at by like 3 scalpers. They were offering tickets at face value!!

Like I'm going to buy a single for $60. pfff

Sunday I was planning on doing the same. I was going to the game with Steph and we didn't have any plan for where we were going to sit. I figure we would either try the scalper routine or simply buy cheap seats. So I went to the gas station to use the cash machine. As I walked out I hear,

"Hey man, you going to the game?"
Boof: uh, yeah. you know it!
Stranger: I got some tickets if you want them.
Boof: uh yeah I'll take them. Sure.

I approached the guy thinking that he was going to sell them to me--I was in my scalper mode. I walked up and the guy simply handed me an envelope and said, "enjoy". Inside were three tickets to the days game...free!

I looked up where the seats were. I was thinking they were the neck straining tickets along the third and first baselines but they were actually in right field next to that garage. Our tickets were facing the pitchers mound!

That third ticket though, what to do, what to do. I figured I was going to scalp it since I wanted to try. I figured if I could get something for it, I could have good dome dog money! I ventured out to scalpers corner with the hopes of selling one ticket.

I wandered, I advertised and no one was interested. Finally I had one guy that asked, "You got a single?"
Boof: yeah I got this
Guy: I'll give you five bucks for it.
boof: nah, sorry, it's for ten.
Guy: alright good luck.

I started walking away when I hear, "ten bucks? alright, alright. Ten bucks"

I just netted myself ten bucks for the game! I could possibly do this for a living... if more people would give me free tickets.

Liriano pitched alright but I'm not a very good pitching scout. In fact I probably can't pitch over 60mph. I know I can throw an 8lb bowling ball 30mph but I've never had a good arm for pitching.

I remember this one time at the Minnesota State Fair they had this mlb sponsored area where they had batting cages, cut outs of various players, and an area where they had you pitch and see how fast you can throw. I waited in line behind all these short 8 year olds. They were giving their best Roger Clemons impression and hitting 50 on the gun. This kid in front of me put everything into his pitch and hit 60.

Next was my turn and the kids looked up and me in silence as they were waiting for this 6ft tall confident man getting ready to show these kids how what pitching is to the "big boys". Again, I'm not a pitcher but I was confident I would hit in the 70's since that would be a very slow change up in the majors.

All the kids were like, "woah, lets see how fast he can pitch!" as they all took steps back.

I rolled up my sleeves, loosened my neck, and spit out the crap in my mouth. I took a step back and put as much as I could into this first pitch.

58mph.

The kids looked at me like, "woah, this guy sucks...A lot!" but I just told the kids that I wasn't even trying even though I was--that was my "fastball". So I composed myself and actually thought I would put more of a concerted effort into pitch number two. I took a deep breath, put all my weight on my back foot, and threw the ball as hard as I possibly could. I nearly threw my arm out on this second pitch.

59mph.

The kids were like "woah, Billy out threw that guy!" and it was true. Lil' Billy did in fact beat me at a pitching. Actually now that I think about it, the kid was probably 8 in a half or probably 8 and three quarters.

Coincidence?

2008-07-29T23:22:00.001-07:00

So many moons that we have seen
Stumbling back next to me

Last week I had a good friend that passed away and yadda yadda yadda. I'm not going to have another heart pouring entry because I've said my peace and those entries tend to be vomit worthy anyway. Nic did throw up a lot....whatever

The wake was nice. It was actually cathartic to laugh and remember all the good times. I waited in line with my parents to talk to Nic's parents and his mom completely blindsided me by telling my parents the time when someone threw up on their carpet during a night of drinking. I suddenly took the blame while my parents looked at me like I was scum of the earth. First of all I didn't do it, and I was telling my buddy to get his ass in the bathroom. Second, why the hell are you bringing this up right now? It happened like 8 years ago!

The funeral was really not much fun either. It started out with Moby's 'Everloving'. When I first heard the notes of this song I said to myself, "oh no". Not so much because of Nic's funeral but more because this song will now be ruined because I already had a nice personal memory of this song. 'Everloving' was the song that was on when I was entering Denver for the horrible Van Halen concert I was going to see. It was a nice way of entering Denver!

Also Pink Floyd's 'On the Turning Away' was actually sung at the funeral. I'm alright with this because I always thought of Nic when it came to this song anyway. Also I'm lukewarm on the song so it's okay.

What was really interesting was the coincidences involved with songs being played at certain times throughout that week.

Now I'm not one to be paranoid by ghosts or to pay attention to weird noises or anything like that. I'm pretty ignorant and lazy so if something's amiss, I usually just keep on stuffing my mouth with chips and ignore it. Last week though, there were a couple coincidences that gave me shivers because they were so....spooky.

For one, all week I was trying to look for Nic's obituary online. Before Wednesday all there was was a "Look for the full obit on Wednesday". I finally saw the full obit on Tuesday night at around 11pm. I was listening to the radio since my laptop was dead. When I clicked on his obituary the song "Wish You Were Here" came on the radio nearly instantly. I immediately got shivers and had to take a step back from the computer. Again, Nic was the one who got me into Pink Floyd and there isn't a more appropriate song than "Wish You Were Here" for that particular moment.

The second instance came after the wake when we decided to go to Buffalo Wild Wings for some food since no one ate that day. They were setting up for karaoke so they had speakers and a host who was getting things ready. I told everyone that I sang karaoke with Nic once--we sang 'Wanted Dead or Alive' and he sang Jon Bon Jovi's stuff while I did Richie Sambora's part. Everyone nodded and soon enough the conversation switched to something else. No more than five minutes after mentioning me singing with Nic, 'Wanted, Dead or Alive' came on over the speakers at Buffalo Wild Wings and no, not one of use selected this song on the jukebox. When we heard the song, we all looked at each other like a bunch of Keanu Reeves.

It was pretty crazy.

I remember this one time I was on college radio in Marshall and I was behind the mic loading songs while I had friends putzing around the studio. I was shooting the breeze with my buddy Adam when he picked up a random cd and said,
"What's that song? You know with the Berlin Wall and it coming down and all?
"You mean The Scorpions and "Wind of Change"?
"yeah, that's it. You should play that!"
"ugh, actually it's on cue right now. It's going to be on in like one minute"

I thought that was kinda nuts. Out of all the songs, he selects the exact artist and song that I was going to play next. Crazy.

Then there was this one time I was walking by Dairy Queen when I had the hankering for a Blizzard and then five minutes later, I was eating a Oreo cookie Blizzard!

Construction madness Crap

2008-07-27T22:49:00.001-07:00

We go straight for the thunder, straight for the rain
Love leaves a mark and, life leaves a strain

Crap List

1. Road Construction

Now this isn't going to be the usual rant about road construction and how I don't understand why they do it now when it's only inconvenient for me. No, I understand why we have road construction, I understand why we have it in the middle of summer, and I agree that some of these roads need work. When 36 was downright closed for 6 months I found other ways. I didn't complain once... well maybe once but I lived through it.

Roseville, I love Roseville. Roseville is the magical suburb of suburbs because the people aren't snotty. Roseville is the center of everything you need and it's between St. Paul and Minneapolis. Roseville has a huge mall, a great big fucking Super Target, an Old Chicago, and has many different and convenient ways to get there.

Roseville is now in an island of road construction. There is no fucking way to get to Roseville without parking your car at some point, sitting in your lawn chair on the road, and pushing your car whenever the cars in front advance. Like I said, Roseville is great because there are so many convenient ways to get there but WHAT THE HELL?

Snelling is down to one lane and it's stop and go,
280 is also down to one lane and that's already clogged up because...
35W has that little bridge problem.
36 is all screwed up because I think they're building an international airport right in the god damn median.

Those are the only good ways to get there without having to wait at stop signs through residential communities.

I'm all for road construction but...let's try and plan this out a little better. Maybe take one of those projects and put the men on 280 since that's being used as a makeshift freeway right now. Then we have one clear shot to get to Roseville instead of waiting and then being stuck in Roseville.

This gives me the idea that maybe we should have metrowide holidays throughout the country. We'll have a crew of 2000 road workers who pound out the construction in all the cities around the country. We'll give these workers a good 3 or 4 day weekend to pound out all the road construction projects in the city for which they work around the clock with all the materials, machines, and tools that they need. If there isn't enough time then we throw more workers at the project. In the meantime everyone has to use the residential streets or simply not go to work...or buy a damn helicopter.

This makes me wonder if they're trying to grind all these projects out before the RNC when all the rich and powerful folks come in to see our construction free city. That way THEY can all use the roads and bridges without any wait since they're time is more valuable than the yearlong economy here...Alright I'm done ranting. I just want to go to B-dubs without having to wait behind that old guy in the LeSabre who wont drive 40mph.

Aren't all the people attending the RNC going to have their own helicopters anyway?

Comfortably Numbed

2008-07-21T21:09:00.000-07:00

June 29, 2008
Spooner, WI

Tom: You know, why didn’t you just get 2-4packs of Chicken McNuggets? Isn’t that cheaper?
Nic: yeah it usually is but not here. The Chicken McNuggets here aren’t on the dollar menu for some stupid reason.
Tom: oh really?
Nic: yeah, apparently.

The past weekend I’ve been trying to keep myself busy. I’ve been trying to keep my mind from wandering and reminiscing. I woke up on Sunday and I thought for sure that it was a dream. I nearly convinced myself that I just had a one of those strange nightmares that make you hold your head and wonder what that was all about.

I open my drawer to find a clean shirt to wear and I blindly take the first one that my hand finds. It’s my Roger Waters’ In the Flesh tour t-shirt from the 2000 tour when we (myself, Marc, and Nic) attended. At that point I need to sit down and compose myself. I then put on some music from my computer to lighten my mood and on comes a tune from Sarah McLachlan. Usually Sarah McLachlan is sad enough but Nic was nearly in love with Ms. McLachlan ten years ago whenever he saw a video on TV. I just can’t seem to think of anything else.

At this point I need to take a leak. I again try to lift myself up with the tired old question, “What’s the best nation in the world?” I then give a smile and think to myself, ‘urination’. However somewhere, I hear Nic’s ghostly voice saying another popular answer with, “Insemination?”

The first time I met Nic, I went over to Marc’s house when I was in 3rd grade. I threw a basketball at Nic's head and he retaliated by hitting me repeatedly with a hockey stick. It was really scary since he was three years older than me and I really threw that ball pretty hard. Since then we’ve been battling back and forth through more comedic, peaceful ways.

My parents still recognize him as being Marc’s brother, the alter boy. They still refer to him as the alter boy even when he’s been at least 18 from breaking the bread. I remember running across the church just so I would be in his line for communion. When I finally reached Nic he would roll his eyes and sigh.
“*sigh* oh no, body of Christ…”
“amen. amen-amen-amen-amen-ame--"
“pfff okay, gosh hehe.”

When I was a freshmen in high school, Nic was a senior. He would see me digging in my locker and tell his big, football playing friend to scare the crap out of me. The big friend would slam my locker shut and lightly push me into the locker. I wasn’t very scared because I could see Nic giggling behind him so I would often look up to the guy and say “huhuh, do you want a coupon?” which would break whatever fake tension was there and make us all laugh a bit. I always felt really good about being a freshman and joking around with seniors.

I know in high school he would carry around a card of David Gilmour in his wallet. He even sang “On the Turning Away” when he was in choir. I remember being curious and I borrowed “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” from him and I’ve been forever addicted to Pink Floyd ever since. I remember after that Roger Waters concert listening to Pink Floyd in his new apartment. He was especially fond of "Comfortably Numb" and we would compare different versions and give explicit contentions for why our favorite version was best.

It was always great to mention the famous version which included Van Morrison singing Gilmour’s parts. Nic hates….hated Van Morrison. We always get into musical wars which would always end up with both of us either running away or hitting each other. I would sing Moondance and he would respond with Loverboy’s Turn Me Loose.

After we were tired out with our personal musical distastes, we would move on to raunchier topics. I remember for about six months whenever I would see Nic he would greet me with,
“So, how was sexual intercourse with your mom?” and he would laugh at my nauseated face as I gave him a sickly frown told him to shut up. Finally one day I responded with,
“Sexual relations with my mother were really good. You should’ve seen it…” and I would go into complete explicit detail until he was the one doubled over wearing the frown.
“Okay, okay, I’ll stop. Good god that’s disgusting!”

It’s also ironic to know that the most popular comment this week has been that “it comes through in waves”. I know I’ve certainly felt that decided uncomfortable numbness in that there’s so many things that make me think of him that it’s so hard to take a simple drive, walk, and nap without trying to not think of him and all the good time we had. It feels so disingenuous to try and think of something else but it’s painful to know that we have to use past tense whenever we mention Nic now.

Nic was the first person to ask me if I took a dump in my shorts after I finished the marathon. Nic was my main competition in the illustrious White Castle eating contest. I remember playing football when he broke his collarbone. I came back to the house when I saw him sitting on a chair, four feet in front of the tv, holding his collar bone. He was watching Beavis and Butthead trying not to laugh because it hurt so much,
“hahahahah oww oww oww! oh crap! Behhahahahha oww crap!”

It’s bad on so many levels. Other than the obvious, seeing most of your friends in so much sadness and pain makes you want to do anything to make the feelings stop. I called up all my friends and made sure that I was there for them if they needed anything. After I hung up the phone I was wondering if I was the one that needed the most help because I always looked up to Nic. Nic was Marc’s cool older brother who was the human resource for music information. I always thought he was amazingly talented in music and art in general. He designed our 2nd grade yearbook cover and from that point on I felt he could’ve done anything with his drawings. Certain catch phrases like, ‘superfluous tubuoles’ and ‘mighty tighty whities’ will forever be linked to him in my mind.

Nic was the person who I would constantly refer to as “Bob Wells” in this blog. I referred to him as “Bob Wells” because he bought an authentic Bob Wells Twins jersey. Wells was a horrible set-up man for the Twins in 2000 and 2001 and certainly one of the last players that anyone should buy a jersey bearing his name. I still sit back and laugh about that. Only Nic would have me remember a struggling bullpen has-been like Bob Wells. He was there for Milwaukee and KC when we budged in front of little kids and ran the bases. He drove us to the Black Hills and Yellow stone on two separate occasions. He was there when we were very tired and loopy from a ten hour car ride coming from the Black Hills when we acted like buffalos having intercourse. He was there when we were watching Apollo 13 at the drive-in when we were in our parkas on that brisk October night. We had to roll the windows down in order to keep the windows from fogging up with our own breath.

I’ve been battling the sadness for a couple days now and I don’t know what I need. I’m going to be alright but I just need a little time. I’m dreading the wake and funeral because there’s still a piece of me that wants to believe that I’m going to wake up soon. I find it most difficult trying to explain to people about my/our loss. I waited until yesterday to call up my Mom because I honestly didn’t know if I had the strength to tell her without breaking down. Like Justin (Hog) was telling me, “We should be in our 70’s doing this, not in our 20’s”.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t necessarily feel so sad about losing Nic. I guess I just feel completely blessed that he was a large part of my life and gave me so much to laugh about. There so much that reminds me of him and it’s hard to imagine a world where he isn’t there giving sarcastic remarks while eating out of a bowl on that couch saying,“That’s too bad. Ah well, what are ya gonna do ya know?”

My last moments with Nic involved me acting like I was passing a large stuffed teddy bear through my colon and losing to him in poker. The last conversation I had with him involved chicken McNuggets which started this entry. I’ve been thinking if that was really the way I wanted our last conversation to end up. To be perfectly honest, it is. When a friendship starts out with beating one up with a hockey stick, I think it’s more than appropriate that it should end with a topic like Chicken McNuggets.

What a wonderful night for a Moondance...

It's Not Extraordinary!

2008-07-16T21:18:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time since the book of love
I can't count the tears of a life with no love
A-carry me back, carry me back, carry me back
mm-baby, where I come from

I know I've already bitched about my family reunion and that Mondays are usually days I have reserved for my complaining but I can't take it anymore. I can't take all this bullshit about the All Star Game and the stupid little games associated with it. I don't mind the competition for what it is, exhibitions. It's when noteworthy people start complaining about it, then I start to get pissed.

First of all, lets not all have an orgasm over what Josh Hamilton did. It's a great story that he's been able to revive his career after drug addiction but the home run derby is not the pinnacle of his success. They're not going to make a Disney movie and end it with him slugging out 28 homers in the god damn derby. At least I certainly hope not.

Lets get one thing straight,
Josh Hamilton being selected (by the fans) to the All-Star Game = a touching sentiment in his revival back to baseball.

Josh Hamilton hitting 28 home runs in a home run derby with a 71 year old throwing lollipops = entertainment of the night.

All night I kept on hearing about how "amazing" it was. Words like "outstanding", "incredible", and "unbelievable" were being tossed around endlessly. It was as if he carried the game of baseball on his back. I even heard Tim Kirkjian (whom I respect as a baseball writer) say how it was impossible for a guy to hit it 500ft. Ugh, it's not impossible. It's happened before and most notably in Yankee Stadium.

It's not amazing! It's not outstanding, incredible, nor is it unbelievable because it's almost expected when you think about it. It's a 71 year old man serving up complete cupcakes to this All-Star hitter in a ballpark that was made for left handed hitters. I'm actually more surprised that no one could hit more homers than they did. Think about it, the hitters know what's coming to them, they simply wait for the 60 mph cupcake and drive it out as far as possible.

That doesn't take talent! It really doesn't.

Now holding a bat at the plate with a pitcher who has a breaking curve, nasty slider, flame throwing fastball, and a very deceptive change-up is something else. That actually does take talent to try and figure out what pitch is coming and to try and catch up to the 97mph fastball after a series of change-ups and curve balls. It's always impressive when someone can identify a fastball on the fly and nail it out of the park. The cupcakes these guys were hitting though, isn't incredible. It's not even batting practice.

I may not be able to relate to hitting against a 90+mph fastball but I have had an assortments of meatballs thrown to me before. I haven't had much of a baseball career but if I was thrown 30 meatballs, I *might* be able to knock one out of a mlb park (especially with Yankee stadium with a left foul pole at 318ft) and I'm serious about that. If I could hit a home run, then I would expect mlb All-Stars to hit 20 times what I could hit. It's not that hard considering the pitches being thrown.

And lets not forget that these hitters in the derby are not the most prolific home run hitters of our time. No, they were simply the hitters that accepted an invitation to hit some dingers on a Monday evening. Morneau was the last to accept and he's only had 14 on the year.

With all that being said, I do think the derby could gain some greater meaning in terms of charity. Instead of one (or is it three) signs that say "hit it here for $$$$" lets have like twenty various signs. Lets have a large sign in the centerfield "dead area" where you hit it and $5000 gets automatically donated to the Boys and Girls club. Lets have the foul poles represent and automatic donation of $10,000 (or whatever amount) to the YMCA and perhaps a giant sign in right and left center field which would be 530ft out there to represent $3,000,000 to the charity of the hitters choice. Those are only a couple examples but it would be so much fun to see all the money going to charity and you just might convince the major power hitters to take a crack at donating money to charity. That would be an event that would excellent in so many ways.

The Reunion

2008-07-15T00:19:00.001-07:00

Now I never thought I could feel a sadness that could bring me so down
And I never thought there'd be a time where my heart had no song

This last weekend I attended another family reunion--the second in two years (thanks grandma). This is what I wrote for the last reunion we had a couple years ago. My uncle held it at his house and it was actually pretty fun. I learned that my Iowa family came from Wisconsin and I got to see a lot of old pictures of some relatives. It was actually a lot better than I was dreading.

This year I still had the dread, I was still a bit stubborn about going, and I was hopeful that it would turn out nice.

It was indeed dreadful.

It started out with my brother being an hour in a half late to pick me up which didn't bother me too much but why couldn't he call? He also refused to leave the radio on one station so I tried to ignore it but I just....couldn't. He'd flip through all the stations until he found that one song that he was looking for and then flip around some more. I think he did more flipping than not.

He'd leave it on a station with Zeppelin but it wouldn't be good enough.
He'd then switch to a station with Melloncamp--okay but that wouldn't be good enough either.
Then it was Maroon five (which I'm glad he changed it), then Carly Simon, Bob Dylan, some Rap, and finally he'd hear the most annoying punk song and he'd leave the station right there. I was not in a good mood.

We finally arrived at the Knights of Columbus hall where we all were meeting. Everyone parked in the designated parking spaces in the back of the joint except everyone who wanted to brag about their car where the handicapped were supposed to park right up in front. We drove up and saw a Lexus, Benz, Caddy, Caddy, and another Caddy all parked right up in front, right in a row. They might as well have just left a piece of paper with the size of their penises in those spaces with how blatantly obvious they were trying to be. I say this because every year it's the same thing between my dad and my uncles. They all feel this need to show off their vehicles and one-up each other. A couple years ago Suburbans were all the craze and everyone had their waaay oversized vehicles. Even if they had to travel long distances (like my dad) and they could've saved some money driving a suitable car, they would still drive their gas guzzler because they had to brag. This year it was the luxury car since gas prices are so high. It's not as if they're rich because they're not, it's more like they are hard working middle class folks who want to have the identity of being rich. That's what really irritates me.

So we head in the Knights of Columbus hall. We were a bit late and we entered with everyone sitting down and eating. I've always considered my family to be a large one but with everyone sitting in this smallish room it doesn't seem as big. Everyone was eating right away and my bro and I sat next to our parents and made small talk with everyone around. After that it was just mingling which is extremely boring for me.

I hate mingling. I need an activity. The last reunion we had horse shoes, a football, and a four wheeler to mess around with. For this one we didn't have anything but tables and chairs and being inside on a wonderful day. I need something to do while I talk so I don't have to stand and talk about stupid shit like "What I'm up to nowadays" and "if I still work at MMM". I find those questions to be elevator questions. Like, if you see a longtime acquaintance in the elevator and you ask what they're up to. You don't really care, you're just trying to make small talk to pass the time. I find it stupid and a waste of time. I know others like it and probably care but it's probably just the introvert in me. It's also why I believe these family get-together's should be every 5 years because then it's like a brand new slate and the small talk questions would seem more genuine.

Every year I attend the yearly get-together and I'm always mad that not all the cousins come. There are 14 cousins and nine ended up coming: five of which live in-town so they basically have no choice but to come. Because all the cousins never show up (or want to show up), I've wondered if these get-togethers are only for the aunts and uncles. After all, they once lived together and they have a good times to reminisce. Us cousins only hung out maybe once a year and never really established much of a bond or have much to talk about. I guess it's just a matter of a simple conversation but every year it's like starting over. Every year everyone calls me Tim and my name was even spelled wrong on the family tree. Such details usually don't faze me but this is my family. Even acquaintances at work get my name right, why can't my extended family know the obvious difference between me and my bro?

So anyway enough of the family catharsis. My brother and I then walked over to the county fair for a nice break from the old folks mingling. The county fair was great for the shocking factor.

For instance my brother and I walked towards the "midway" and we were questioning if the fair was even open. It was 4pm on a Saturday and usually this is a prime fair going time but there wasn't a soul there. There were only carneys. We walked slowly amongst the 6 small rides with the carneys leaning on their fence and eyeing us up. It was almost like walking in a zoo where the carneys were in their own little cage and begging us to let them out. There was one hot dog stand that looked deserted and a grill that had like 5 young waitresses waiting around. This was truly a bizarre scene.

My brother and I then walked to the nearby 4-H building and 4-H is something that I will never understand. Inside were a bunch of projects that various kids in the area had been working on. There were some beautiful quilts, some really good craftsmanship, and some interesting reports on various things like photosynthesis and soil horizons. Then there were projects that looked like they were bought at Ikea and simple structures made out of legos. Someone even brought in a Wii system and received a ribbon for that. I wonder if I could take a dump in a pair of shit-kickers and receive a ribbon for that?

It was pretty cool for us cityfolk seeing the animals. The 4H kids were in the pigpen and slapping the pigs with fly swatters in an effort to keep them from walking along the sides of the pen. It was good entertainment actually. Then there were the horses, sheep, and cows which are always nice to feed.

I almost wanted to stay there for the night because they were having figure 8 racing where you end up seeing car crashes in the middle of the figure 8 but I didn't because 3 hours of Iowa is too much as it is. They did have a demolition derby the night before and I remember my aunt taking me to one when I was like 6 years old.

It was a very awkward day. It's not like I dislike my relatives but I just feel uncomfortable going through the same cheap conversations every single year. It's almost like we need to take a train ride somewhere together or find some sort of common ground so we can all naturally get to know each other. Whatever, until the next family reunion.

The Nightmare Scenario

2008-07-07T21:34:00.001-07:00

I'm gonna inject your soul with
some sweet rock 'n roll
And shoot you full of rhythm and blues

I'm sorry, I don't feel like talking about the Twins today. That 1-0 game yesterday really pisses me off and I'll end up writing like 4000 words on dumbass Gardinhire.

Brian Bass?!? Okay I'm done.

I keep on getting reminded by notable NFL media types that Brett Favre going to the Vikings may not be such a dream. Peter King, of all people, even said in his "Monday Morning Quarterback" article that Favre in purple is a possibility.

After all, the Packers are now primed for Aaron Rogers at the helm and not a 70 year old Jesus even though Jesus is signed to be a Packer in 2008. So either they swallow their pride (and their 2008 season) and go with Favre or they release him or they send him a sudoku book and hope to god that he stays retired so he can "keep his legacy" (aka: doesn't screw them in the ass by playing for a division rival.)

At first when I heard the possibility of Favre going to the Vikings I stood up and immediately started 'shaking my ass' with an asshole grin and my waving my middle finger towards the east. I believe the words, "BWAHAHAHAHA SUCK ON THAT PACKER FANS!" came out of my mouth.

Then I sat down and thought about it pensively.
There was a loop of Favre highlights on TV when it eventually stopped on one image of number 4 just after he took his 3 step drop. It was a classic Favre pose right before he throws it directly at the defensive back.

My mind started taking over and I remember his yellow and green melting into a jersey of purple and white. The theme music that I had in my head went from "Mamamana" to "The Unforgiven" and my heart started beating rapidly. I then started thinking of all those Favre purple replica jerseys in the stands and how very wrong that that would be.

It was like I just woke up from a nightmare. Then I imagined my dad calling me up and telling me the "news" after two months of constant Favre going to Minnesota talk. After all Dan Patrick said it best, if Favre goes to the Vikings then ESPN would start their pregame show tomorrow for the Vikings/Packers season opener.

Dad: Did you know that the Vikings signed Brett Firve*? That's kinda neat don't you think?
Boof: no, DAD, that's not neat.
Dad: I mean you used to hate Firve and now he's on your favorite team. I suppose you have to root for him.

*My dad has trouble pronouncing last names.

Brett Favre in purple downright scares me in so many ways. I actually have a bit of panic over the scenario.

Imagine if Favre were to actually be successful. Imagine the Vikings are leading 30-0 heading into the 3rd quarter. Favre is lighting it up and with every touchdown I'm completely torn. It would be very tough to root for a guy that I've rooted against for so long. I mean it's great but it seems so wrong. I imagine this scenario at my relatives Thanksgiving,

Aunt: So, sounds like Favre's been a good quarterback for you guys eh?
Boof: It's not just Favre, I mean if it wasn't for the waterboy then Favre wouldn't have the necessary hydration in order to do...the things he does. He's still a mediocre quarterback okay! OKAY!

It would be having a dream where you're experiencing the best blow job ever. The tongue is going everywhere it's supposed to go and---oh, even that spot. It's so incredible that you don't believe it. You open your eyes and....

It's your mother.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
You look up to the ceiling in horror but it feels so good and 'a mouth is a mouth' but....it's your mother. You then weep and moan until you wake up drenched in sweat and wondering how in the hell you're going to look at your mom the same.

I'm sorry, that's what it would be like. I can imagine myself and Hog watching a Vikings game and looking at each other like we really don't know what to do. Imagine the Vikings winning the superbowl due to some sort of heavenly Favre heroics and Minnesota spooging over the guy like Wisconsin does? All those Favre highlights of him sporting the purple and ESPN acting like crazed groupies over a Minnesota player?

Of course the obvious scenario is him being a Vikings quarterback and him throwing like 5 interceptions a game and then the Packer fans would be like,

"yes! He's still actually a Packer at heart! He's killing them from the inside" ugh

I hope to god that he stays with the Packers and ends up sucking so bad

My Morning Crap

2008-07-06T23:39:00.001-07:00

We'll find a way
We'll go out
Out for a day
And I want it so bad

It's probably not a good idea to type cathartic things onto the computer while you're sitting in a bathtub in ice water but at this point I don't care. It's too damn hot and I'm sick of having a huge fan blowing on me from 3 feet away.

Also, how about those Minnesota Twins eh? They're still kicking opponent ass right now! More on this tomorrow...or the next day. Don't hold your breath.

Crap LIst

1. My Morning Jackets newest CD

I absolutely and helplessly love alternative country. Show me a band with creative ideas, some really decent writing, and slide guitar and I'll be somewhere nearby. My Morning Jacket has always been one of my alternative country mainstays and would like to keep it that way.

I was a bit late in buying their latest CD but I've always kept it in mind and finally I bought it through itunes as my first album (of many) that I bought online in its duration. I read up on the reviews of the new album online and everyone was raving on how it will be album of the year, best MMJ album ever, and continuing to push the envelope of the alt-country genre.

Before I go on, let me give you a taste of what I love about My Morning Jacket.
-One in the Same
-Lay Low
-At Dawn

Those were the best youtube clips I could find but go look up those songs on Rhapsody or whatever because they give a good example of what MMJ is all about. I think of MMJ as great road trip music when you're in the midwest. Like picture this, riding off into the sunset after a good weekend of drinking and going nuts and playing MMJ on the way home while winding down in the back seat.

After buying the new album, the first songs pops up on my itunes. Give a listen,

"Highly Suspicious"

(blink:blink)

What in the god damn hell is THAT?!? When I heard this song I looked back on the track list with a huge look of disgust, back at the song, back at the digital cover of the cd, and then nearly threw up. I really thought I picked the wrong band like My Afternoon Jacket or something like that. This could've been the most disappointed I've been from an album since... Van Halen III with Gary Cherone. When I heard VHIII, I tossed it across my room. This MMJ album was downloaded so I couldn't throw my laptop across the room even though I wanted to.

What happened to the ride in bumblefuck nowhere with the hangover in the backseat? Where's the country? What happened to my genre?

Of course one song does not make an album but...there's not much country on this album. In fact itunes gives it the "alternative" title instead of "country" like their previous albums.

Maybe another example of a bad album would be Sarah McLachlan's Afterglow when she "falls in love" and "is happy" and "everything in the world is beautiful" and all that shit. What happened to the Surfacing days when the world was hopeless and people were stalking her (Possession)?

2. The Things you hear at the baseball games
I've been continuing my habit of buying tickets from scalpers outside of the venue and for Twins games I generally just want to see how good of a ticket I can aquire. It's more the thrill than the actual game itself because I'm actually willing to hop back on the light rail, go home, and know that I tried to get an ultra cheap ticket instead of being a sucker.

The last couple Twins games I've gone to I've scored $50 tickets for $20. The last game was a thing of beauty.

Boof heading over to scalpers corner when he yells out to one guy holding tickets.

Boof: Hey, you have a single?
scalper: Ah...yeah I got one right here.
Boof checks the ticket to make sure it's legit, and then looks to see where the seat is located at.: How much do you want for it?
Scalper: $30
Boof: $20
Scalper: $25
Boof: Sorry, all I got is $20
Scalper closing his eyes and taking it like a bitch: Alright, $20

I sat in the VIP section and it's just god damn pitiful to listen to the baseball talk going on behind you. Sometimes I just can't help but to turn around and try to correct everyone on their stupid god damn knowledge of the game. I know I'm not the end-all, say-all on the subject but these people are so god damn stupid!

"I think the Twins should acquire a decent left handing bat."
"I bet they'll put on the suicide squeeze here"
"Time for a hit and run (when a guy is on third)"

ugh, when I grow up and have my own ballpark, I'm kicking these people out.

July Bits

2008-07-02T20:12:00.001-07:00

He wants to sit down and think.
He wants to pour you a drink.
And you wont feel a thing. You wont feel a thing.

-It's not like I've been terribly busy but I've been going through a bit of writers block (or bloggers block or something). At this point in time I really don't give a damn about readership, not that I've really cared but at one point maybe three years ago I kinda cared. I've used this space as a personal journal to where I can bitch about work and people in general. Lately I haven't been that bitchy lately.

But now I have some shit to finally write about so, behold.

-After watching Walk Hard for the 7th time I've come to the conclusion that I would love to have a monkey more than a big dumb dog. I figure that a monkey would be fun and if it acts up, I can throw it in the bathroom like what Tommy Gavin's dad did when he had a monkey.

-I saw one of the best movies this last weekend, "The King of Kong" is excellent. It's about how these two complete characters have been competing with each other over the world record Donkey Kong score. It's completely bizzare and the whole movie will have your jaw dropping on the floor.

I had Donkey Kong for NES and I can't imagine how anyone would play that game for more than twenty minutes. Tops. That game was so repetitive, so stupid, and so boring that I never wanted to play it for more than ten minutes. I do love how they fight, cry, and bitch over this really stupid game though.

-The big news today is that Brett Favre might come back to play for the pack. I'm actually hoping to god that he makes a comeback because of many reasons:

1) he sucks
2) he'll suck more now that he's a year older and has had an offseason of eating junk food and not keeping up in working out.
3) and probably most importantly he's on the cover of Madden '08.

Oh yes, the reason why they slapped him on the cover is because no one wants the bad luck that goes along with being a Madden cover player. Most players that ended up on the cover have been plagued with extensive injuries or bad seasons so that should mean that Jesus should be due for a bad season as well.

Not to mention that when you look at that Viking front four, they could probably perform a babality on Favre on nearly every drive.

*salivating* oh yes Favre, please come back and play. Please!

Edit: I was just watching NFL Live and they brought up the thought of Favre coming to the Vikings. This brings in very mixed emotions because the though of him being successful (somehow) for the vikings would be great ammunition to throw out against Packer fans. This would be a major con in that we'd have Favre on our team and we already have a proven interception thrower on our team.

-Try some Cox sausage

-Twins have been kicking serious ass lately and here I am claiming that I have some sort of bullshit bloggers block. Well, I do and although I love this Twins streak and I hope it goes on until...forever but this streak really doesn't do much now. I mean it's one thing if your team is hot in July but it's a completely different thing when they're hot in September. Not to mention that this team is young as hell. I think the average age of our outfield is like 23.

Perceived Weather Crap

2008-06-29T23:17:00.001-07:00

Oh my sparrow it's too late
Your body limp beneath my feet

Crap List

1. People's perception of bad weather

I was reading up on the NBA draft this year because I didn't happen to have a gun or a noose handy and I stopped on a couple mock drafts. Most analysts were predicting the Wolves to end up with O.J. Mayo with the third pick which is a great pick. The con in the scenario was that he might move out of town once his contract is up because of the awful weather. I read that in multiple mock drafts and articles. I even started hearing that on the radio and how Minnesota will be unable to attract big name free agents simply because of the "awful weather".

I was a bit puzzled because 1) basketball is played indoors and 2) these players make so much that they could easily fly down to Miami whenever they want. Also I started wondering because we've really have only had one questionable "Minnesota winter" in the last 5 years.

I also make it a point to listen to the Twins on the radio. I just love picturing the game in my head and I also don't have a TV at work so it's what I'm reduced to. I also make it a point to listen to the Twins opponent radio station because I like the different frame of reference and the Twins announcers suck ass. Nearly every announcing crew has made a comment on how outdoor baseball in Minnesota is crazy despite the fact that it was outside for twenty years before the dome.

Before I go on about actual Minnesota weather I want to examine what outsiders might think of Minnesota in terms of weather. After all, it's important to know that sports fans rarely ever see anything outdoors here on TV other than the few golf tournaments we host. The Twins, Gophers, and Vikings all play indoors. The other sports are naturally indoors anyway so I'm wondering with all these outdoor sports being played indoors, people must think we have rain, snow, sleet, wind, blood, hell on earth-type of weather every hour, on the hour, all year long.

Here's what I think people picture Minnesota in general

-A vast baron wasteland where people live in igloos and fish on top of iced over lakes for their daily ration of food. People don't really talk other than reciting their Norweigian small talk. It could be July 25 and this image of igloos and ice still fall into place. The Mississippi separates the network of igloos on the east from the igloos on the west otherwise known as the Twin Cities. The Mississippi also has giant ice bergs with polar bears and penguins floating down the river as the wind whistles over the land.

Basically I think the world south of Minnesota views Minnesota as the arctic circle and that it may get up to 35 degrees in the summertime. I bet some people actually get scared thinking about what it would be like living in Minnesota.

I asked my roommate who grew up in Boston and she pretty much agreed with my Arctic circle reference. She even said that this last winter was unbearable to her.

I replied by rubbing my two fingers together like a small violinist and called her a ginourmous wussy. I think that's what it comes down to: how much a person can take. Here in Minnesota we've all went through that crazy patch in the mid 90's when we did experience a 70 below wind chill for those couple days. We can walk outside in 30 degree weather and it's actually warm out sometimes. We do go through very humid weather and spring seasons which don't really start until May.

I think everyone else is just way too used to San Diego-like weather where its 80's and sunny and nothing ever changes. That, to me sounds nice but where is the change? Where's the perspective? What would I do without spring, fall, or winter?

I remember traveling to Houston during New Years and joggers, joggers were in tights and long sleeve T's in 60 degree weather while I was walking around in shorts and a T-shirt. I even ran the Get-in-Gear 10k in shorts while it was about 32 degrees and if I was to wear sweats, it would've been too hot.

Here's my point, bad weather for the rest of the country is simply a rainy day. Bad weather in Minnesota is 30mph winds, snow, temperatures 15 degrees below or above the normal high and all that along with normal, average Minnesota drivers on the road.

I remember walking around in April when it was 30 degrees, clear sky, and not a breath of wind. Most people would say it's too cold for baseball but those people are wussies who should probably not live in Minnesota.

A Broken Ankle-crap?

2008-06-22T23:02:00.001-07:00

He blew his mind out in a car
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared

Crap List

1. Neko Case out with a broken ankle.

This last weekend the local public station held an outdoor concert/festival deal at the Walker Arts Center. From what I hear out of the hundreds of people that were there, only about 8 of them have ever been in a genuine fist fight beyond the age of 16. Apparently you could probably steal a beer from any mid-twenties looking dude and walk away because they would retaliate with, "Hey man, UGH. Come on. It's Summit. Aww gee whiz". Actually that's what I would probably do too since I kinda fit that crowd.

Anyway the band list was Andrew Bird, Cloud Cult, some other guy who probably sings on the beach trying to impress chicks, and The New Pornographers. The New Pornographers are the big name of the festival and I'm a big fan of one of their 13 singers, Neko Case. If I was going to attend this show it would be just to see Neko Case because I love her alternative country style. Tickets for this festival were going for as much as $200 a ticket to which I wouldn't pay over $20 therefore I didn't attend. Not to mention I'm not a big fan of The New Pornographers because the music sounds too damn nerdy and it wouldn't be a good Neko fix.

If I was to attend that show though, I would've been very disappointed because Neko didn't show up. She didn't have a cold, she wasn't in labor, nor was there a death in the family. The reason why she didn't show up was because her ankle was broken.

(blink:blink)

She can't sing because she has a broken ankle.

I'm not a singer myself but if Stevie Wonder can sing being blind and Mozart can do his thing being deaf and if Dewey Cox can do his thing without the sense of smell then I would sure as shit hope Neko could find a stool at the local bar and bring that on stage so she can do her thing. I know she'd probably rather stand and do the bob-and-clap but that's not a good reason to skip out on some gigs because of a stupid broken ankle. I know there are 12 other singers and probably 6 more waiting in the wings but Neko Case is kind of a big deal and her voice does make a difference.

Like Herb Brooks would say, "What a candyass" a broken ankle is a hell of a long way from the heart. Whatever though, I didn't see the show anyway so what do I care.

NBA Crap

2008-06-15T23:28:00.001-07:00

I look at the world and I notice it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps

Crap List

1. The NBA and officiating

I used to be a genuine fan of the NBA. I used to pay attention to who gets traded, draft, and I even went to a game in the Metrodome back in the day when the T-wolves played there. Since 2004 I haven't had any kind of desire to watch a regular season NBA game in large part due to the officiating.

I remember shooting hoops with Hog one time and we were making jokes like,
-I wonder if the NBA is going to make the Finals a best of 9 series if (name your big market team) lose the deciding game of the series.
-Maybe the NBA will award the (big market team) 10 points in the 4th quarter for previous years missed calls.
-I bet the (big market team) couldn't travel if they simply carried the ball like a running back the entire game.

And big name columnists would allude to the same type of stuff. It's almost a bit of a joke sometimes in how desperate the NBA is for ratings and the showtime factor. It almost seems strange that in the last 25 years nearly every Finals had a big market team featured. A couple years ago they had Miami against Dallas and it would seem fitting that there would be an NBA exec somewhere saying, "No way we let this happen ever again".

I actually don't know if this "big market love" the NBA has is true but it does seem a bit strange. In 2004 when I watched the T-wolves religiously, there was always a couple calls that completely bewildered me--not surprised me-- and I questioned said call but completely dazed as to how the ref could miss such a call. I mean in baseball when there's a bad ump it would take a series of horrible calls and inconsistency in order for me to act bewildered. In football I get bewildered about once every forth Vikings game.

The NBA just seems so phony. NCAA basketball doesn't seem to have that hint of someone pulling the strings from up above. NCAA always has those Cinderella teams that will beat your Kentucky, Kansas, Arizona, and Notre Dame teams. The NBA just doesn't have that feeling of legitimacy.

LA Part III: Petco Park, San Diego

2008-06-11T21:35:00.001-07:00

I'd like to be
under the sea
In an octopus' garden with you

For my "job interview" weekend on Saturday I decided to rent a car and drive down to San Diego. LA allowed me to live my Big Lebowski dreams and now San Diego could whet my Anchorman fantasies so I had a series of Anchorman quotes in my head.

Before I left I had to make one very important stop.

The oh so famous In-N-Out burger. I've heard so much about this glorious place and I just had to sit down and see what all the fuss was about.

I was there at 11:30am on a Saturday and it was packed like crazy. In this picture here you can see that there's so many people that they throw out the order window and simply have a dude with a clipboard. The car that this guy is at is car number 15. It was crazy.

Inside there were a bunch of people huddled next to the front counter. The line leading to the counter was about 10 people deep. When I finally came up to the counter I ordered a double double (the other options were a hamburger and cheeseburger). I had to take my number and wait. The wait took 20 minutes and that's with about a dozen people feverishly making burgers in the back. People were ordering 6, 10, 15 burgers at a time.

When I finally got my order I tried the fries, pretty decent. I then tried the burger which was okay at best. I was a bit dissapointed with all the folklore I heard about the In-N-Out burger and I don't think it's anything to brag about. I would say that Culvers is way better, I would even venture to say that a Wendy's burger is better. My roommate told me about some secret menu but I really don't think any "secret menu" would change my mind about this joint.

After I stuffed my face I hopped in my car ('08 Dodge Avenger...it was okay but I wouldn't buy one) for my trip to San Diego. On the way there I was giving off Anchorman quotes with a smile on my face. I was super happy to finally go to San Diego.

It was only a couple weeks ago when I was looking into plane tickets to San Diego to see a Twins/Padres game. Plane tickets were $500+ and I wasn't going to spend that kind of money so I swallowed my pride. The reason I really wanted to go to San Diego is because Tony Gwynn was my favorite baseball player growing up and I grew a bit attached to the Padres. The Padres also have a new ballpark, Petco Park, which is supposed to be one of the best ballparks in the country.

When I arrived in SD I walked around the Gaslamp district which has really new high-end restaurants and lots of high class clubs. I was walking around everywhere to find a burger to eat but I had to walk a good 6 blocks away just to find a high-end burger joint. Even at 4pm the gaslamp district had a certain hum to it. The restaurants were beginning to crowd up and you could tell that there was a game to be played later in the day.

Come game time I grabbed my ticket and asked for the best ticket in the place since the tickets were very cheap (about as cheap as Twins games maybe cheaper). It was also cap day so I got a bitchin cap with my entrance to the game.

This isn't where my ticket was (it was over to the right a couple sections) but when I entered I took photos like crazy. Petco Park indeed has an aura to it and just about everything about it is top-notch. All the sight-lines are great, the amenities are impressive, and all the little things add up.

It became evident that when entering Petco Park you don't just enter a ballpark but actually a section of the city. This is the public baseball diamond just beyond left field of Petco. This is actually open to the public whenever a Padres game isn't about to start. They even have those cool dirt paths that extend from the mound to home plate!

Beyond the public diamond is a grassy area for fans to picnic and watch the game on this big screen. Fans can buy a $5 ticket and simply make a nice evening out of the game. Kids can then either play a game on the diamond or play in the huge sandbox just beyond the right field fence. I absolutely love idea and sure enough this lawn was packed when the game started.

Then they have this sweet statue of Mr. Gwynn himself. Behind him are new condos and I think that's a gym to Gwynn's back. I didn't look into what these condos are going for but I'm willing to bet that I can't afford one.

There's nothing that they overlooked in Petco. One thing that sticks out is there there's so much space even during a game. You don't feel confined to the ballpark.

The usher's were not nazi's either. They practically encouraged me to roam around and take whatever picture I want where ever I want.

Also, and get this, the seats actually face the pitchers mound! I don't know if you can tell that easily from this picture but these seats are actually slanted towards the infield.

Of course the concourses are all open and the bathroom doors are nearly facing the game. Like you could walk out and--boom-- there's the game.

They had tons of plants everywhere you go and I don't think I saw one ugly or questionable part of Petco Park. At one point I was talking to one of the ushers and he was telling me all about the ballpark. I asked him how the ballpark has affected the downtown scene in SD and told me that the downtown scene is simply because of the ballpark. From what he said there was not much of a downtown scene before Petco and it makes sense because that Gaslamp district does appear very new.

I know I'm very biased when it comes to ballparks but this new Twins ballpark should put a shot of adrenalyne to the Minneapolis scene. It might not be the effect of Petco but there has to be added residual effects to the Minneapolis downtown scene from the new Twins ballpark. That alone will generate more tax money and add to the Minneapolis experience.

To the left you can see an old brick building. This is the Western Metal Supply building. It was deemed a local landmark and could not be demolished even for Petco Park so they used it as part of their ballpark.

This is from inside the Metal Supply building. It's actually pretty cool since it's so open. I didn't get a chance to go on the upper floors but it's definitely a nice touch for the ballpark experience.

Not to far from here is a beer stand. The beer vendor yelled at me, "Hey, Twins fan! Come here a sec" I was wearing my Twins cap and I walked over. The guy was from Richfield and we were chatting along.

Guy: Oh hey, you might like this. Check it out.
And he stepped aside and showed me this cooler full of Leinenkugal Sunset Wheat. I was actually really surprised that Leinie's is way out in SD but it was a pleasant surprise.

As for the game, the Mets were in town (no, Santana wasn't pitching) and there were a ton of Met fans there. There was nearly a heckling match between all the met fans and Padre fans.

Padres won in extra innings and I was very sad to leave the ballpark. I did hear that there were a bunch of mega hotties in the Gaslamp district and it was phenomenal people watching but I had to pass. I had to go back to Los Angeles and catch my 8am flight.

Petco Park was damn near incredible. The pictures I showed you just scratches the surface of all the features it has. Everything is in HD at Petco and the scoreboard is very well organized. Also they give very good and detailed stats at the game--something that you'll never find at Metrodome.

I do hope to someday head back to Petco because it was such a great experience. It was probably the best ballpark I've been to that didn't have any novelty value. I highly recommend this place.

LA Part 2: Dodger's Stadium

2008-06-10T22:46:00.001-07:00

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round

After that "job nonsense" that I had to deal with I was dropped off at my hotel for my weekend of baseball goodness. I suppose a lot of other people would prefer to walk around Hollywood or head over to Disneyland but anywhere you go in LA takes forever to get to and it's always crowded. Not to mention that two of my main goals of my trip were to: 1) eat a dodger dog and 2) see a dodger's game in no particular order.

I headed on the 110 and 70 minutes later through rush hour traffic I managed to make it to the main entrance of Chavez Ravine (aka: dodgers stadium+parking lot). Chavez Ravine is interesting because the gates to park open two hours before gametime, so you can't park your car, do something else, and then come back when the doors to the park open. There's a long landing strip of pavement where you wait until they let you into the parking area. You have to sit by your car and wait until they start taking your parking money. It's a lot like waiting for the drive-in movie theatre to start allowing cars in. As sit there and listen to the radio there are vendors walking around selling merchandise, kids are out and about playing catch, and fans are chit-chatting around until you hear the chains of the main gates unlock and everyone hurriedly runs to their cars.

Parking costs $15 and there's really no alternative other than car pooling. I don't even know if it's possible to have a cab drop you off since there's such a huge flow of people entering the park. Parking is also very simple because you simply follow the car in front of you and a series of helpful workers tell you where to park your car.

The ballpark is surrounded by vast spaces for parking. It's funny because the last spots are right behind center field so you can always get a good idea on how crowded the game is going to be. I don't think you can tailgate since there were no bins anywhere but I think people find a way to get around that.

I entered Dodger stadium after I bought a medium priced ticket behind home plate and saw this,

As you can tell, the day was really crappy. I don't know how many updates the place had had since the 60's when it opened but I don't know if it really needed any. It was a pretty nice place to watch a baseball game.

I was stuck on the level that I was at since the Dodger Stadium ushers are nazis but the concourse was open and a bit small but not bad for a park built in the 60's. I also noticed that the Japanese media was going crazy over a couple Sumo wrestlers down on the field.

That is the Japanese media right there. Each wreastler would pose and play catch or pretend to swing a bat and you could tell that every cameraman was struggling to find some space to take a picture.

Apparently about nine of the world's top 20 sumo wrestlers were there including the number one ranked dude. They treated him like royalty practically.

Of course after seeing this nonsense I made a B-line for the hot dog stand.

This is the dodger dog that was I drooling over. This is widely considered the best hot dog in the major leagues and was probably more excited about this than the ballpark (if you can imagine that). At first I was a little hesistant seeing as a dodger dog was $5 but they were a bit bigger than a normal weenie hot dog. When I took a bite I really analyzed every pig scrap that my taste buds could recognize. At first it didn't seem like much but--oh wait, there's a subtle hint of spice which really makes the entire dog somewhat pleasant to eat. After devouring the dodger dog I found myself longing for another one during the middle of the game. After all, they had a beefier dodger dog which was really peaking my curiosity.

The Dodgers were playing the Cubs for which there were a lot of Cubs fan around. I was curious to see what LA fans were like. There's always been the notion that LA fans arrive fashionably late and leave fashionably early. It's like they only stick around to see innings 4-6 and then beat the traffic. Beating the traffic isn't such a bad idea and I'm a firm believer in staying for the duration of the game. The arrive late/leave early rumor wasn't true for the night I went. Everyone seemed to stick aroudn until the end but that could've been the complete game shutout gem by Hiroki Kuroda. Also their games start at 7:30pst which means that the 8th inning is generally starting at the ten o'clock hour so I'm sure people need to make sure they get to work.

And then a nuclear bomb went off!!!
This is just me playing with my camera after the game. Dodgers won 3-0 and it was a pretty good game. I stayed as long as I could in the ballpark and once I ventured outside it became crystal clear why people leave early. Since there's only two ways to enter Chavez Ravine there's only two ways to leave and 50,000 people leaving at the same time leads to long delays.

I think it was about 90 minutes for me to wait until the coast was clear to leave Chavez Ravine. There is this wonderful view of Los Angeles from the parking lot which looks amazing on a perfect night.

All in all Dodger's stadium was a pretty nice venue. For being a ballpark built in the 60's it was fairly impressive. I would definitely attend another game if I should ever be offered a job in LA again.

Tomorrow I will review the wonderful Petco Park in San Diego

LA Trip Part 1: Brass Tax

2008-06-09T21:11:00.001-07:00

See how they run like pigs from a gun
see how they fly
I'm crying

This last weekend I had my "job interview" in Los Angeles. The company that wants to hire me is a company I've been working in cooperation with for the past 6 years or so where I'm at now. They seem like a nice company to work for and I don't have any problems with them. If I did then I probably wouldn't work with them. The main representative from this company (S) is a salesman who decided to offer me a job.

S: Would you be interested in working for someone else?
Boof: Sure, why not.
S: Well would you be interested in working for me?
Boof: I don't know. Where would I work, what would I do, how much would I get paid?
S: Well, if I flew you down to LA and showed you the place then would that help you make a decision?
Boof: Sure, if you pay for everything I'll check you guys out.

I figured that since I like airports and I would be getting a free trip out of this then why would I turn it down?

S gave me a good indication on what this job was going to entail and some basic guidelines of the job. From this brief description and what I know about Los Angeles I determined that I was not going to take this job. I didn't tell S this but I just wanted the free trip and would milk this for as much as I can. After all, maybe I could get some more stuff out of this?

As it turns out S let me have the couple days and the entire weekend to check out LA so "I could get a better idea of LA" if I decided to move there. As far as I was concerned this was nothing more than the type of spiel where you have to sit and listen to a presentation of timeshares and then an hour later you get free tickets to Universal Studios. I just have to listen to the spiel and then I would take a rental car and watch some glorious baseball. I kept thinking to myself, 'Now if I could only get a company in Boston to be interested in me then I could check out Fenway!' because if someone flew me out to their city for a custodial job then I would totally act interested if it meant them flying me out and paying for my room. Why the hell would I not exercise that option?

Day one was going to be in Laguna Nuguel or "Laguna Beach" as everyone knows it as. S and I had dinner at some sort of beautiful joint off of the beach and it certainly seemed like he was "selling" the area to me. He seemed to have his car salesmen face on and I was just acting the part of a curious potential employer.

S: Would you mind if my step-daughter joins us in a couple minutes?
Boof: nah, that's fine with me.

So I was thinking to myself, 'I would bet ten thousand dollars that his step-daughter is hotter than hell.'

S: Oh here she is, HI B, OVER HERE.

B was about 5'9 shoulder length blond hair, beautiful facial features, slender, wearing those tight jeans that showed off her amazing ass. I was ready to award myself ten thousand dollars.

B was there as 'someone who came to LA from the Twin Cities' and she was going to tell me how much of a transition it was for her. She's also a saleswoman from the same company her step-dad, S, works at. Even though I wasn't interested in the job I was trying like mad not to oogle the hell out of her and I even secretly questioned if she was really a step daughter of S. It wouldn't be completely out of the question for S to find some hottie in LA to pose as his step daughter/saleswoman of his company to lure me into this gig.

After all, it's not hard to find an attractive female in LA. I think being ugly is illegal in Los Angeles. In fact, I would say that any woman between the ages of 18-35 would be bangable. I would probably take the odds in banging any random 18-35 year old in LA--like you could put all those names in a hat and I would bang the name that is drawn. That's how hot everyone is.

B told me about how the transition was to her. Of course she was 100% positive about the experience telling me it was "the best thing she's done" and "my friends now are so much better" which made me frown. I asked her about her commute and she responded with,

B: It's only about 40 minutes which is great.

I nearly fell out of my chair. 80 minutes a day when gas prices are about $4.50/gal!

So I was talking it up with S and hottie B for awhile when we finally got up to leave. The NBA finals was about to start soon and S wanted to watch. So B left first when me and S decided that we were going in the wrong direction to leave the restaurant. We followed about 40 feet behind B and I was mesmerized with that ass slowly moving right-side up, left side-up, right side up as she casually started chatting away on her phone. She moved in slow motion as I was studying the fine aspects of her ass. I then felt a tug to my shoulder,

S: Hey-hey, We're going this way Tom. We parked over here.

Haha, whoops. Yeah, if she really is in fact a step daughter who works for the company then I'm going to get in serious oogling trouble or worse, get too flirtatious.

S then dropped me off at the hotel at about 5:30 and I had the rest of the night to myself in Laguna Beach. I checked out my sweet room.

Everywhere in my room had this type of fluffy towel work. Even the toilet paper had this crazy fold on there which I found kinda funny. My room even had a cool whirlpool deal along with a wide screen tv which could be angled toward the whirlpool. It was the sweetest free hotel room I've ever been in.

After all my playing I ventured out to Laguna Beach to see the sights and the sounds...and to get my oogling grove on.

As you can see, it was awesome weather. This is off a portion of Laguna Beach.

This how much gas costs in Laguna Beach. This was also before the huge increase (gas in the Twin Cities is now over $4 a gallon, this was before that). The flowers almost make it tolerable right? Oh Diesel was about $5.10/gal.

The trees in So. Cal were really cool in how different they were. I don't know what kind of trees they are but I like them.

Day 2

For Friday I had to wake up early so that S could pick me up and we'd head over to the shop to check out what the working environment was all about and talk to some of the workers. The workers were nice and everyone at the place seemed cool. S seemed to act like some sort of bumbling, laughing fool as we were there. He was talking to a couple of the dock workers and they had a look on their face like, "You've never talked to me before, why are you doing this now? Who is that bald guy?".

After a couple hours of having to listen to their spiel I was nearly on the verge of falling asleep. I simply just wanted to go back to the hotel so I could take a nap, forget about this job nonsense, and watch some baseball. Sure enough, we got out of there at 11:30am. I spent a total of about 2 hours at the warehouse! On the ride back to my hotel he started talking about brass tax in terms of the job. The job would have the same vacation that I have now, same health and dental, it would be on days (of course) but with travel (uh oh), and I would be paid about $5000 more than what I get now for salaried time.

I nearly chuckled because the cost of living in LA compared to the Twin Cities is noticeably different. Gas is a dollar higher, food is also noticeably higher, and it seems to take at least 35 minutes to go anywhere in LA. Also $5000 of salaried pay is not even close enough to pry me away from the Twin Cities. Also, I remember B and S telling me how the weather is beautiful all year 'round which is not a selling point for me. I actually enjoy 4 distinct seasons.

I turned down the job outright which I could've done on Thursday but I wanted to milk a trip out of it. It was a nice trip in that I was actually looking for a plane ticket to San Diego not to long ago and now I had a discounted trip.

Some quick bits about LA:
-The freeways are always packed but everyone merges flawlessly without much of any anger. The zipper method was a thing of beauty and although the freeways were packed, they seemed to move at a decent pace. I guess there wouldn't be room for any bad drivers because the aggressive ones would simply run them off.
-Flying over LA and the Twin Cities it became perfectly clear that LA doesn't have the tree cover that the Twin Cities have. The suburbs of LA are clearly seen and you can see every house on the block. In the Twin Cities it's a bit tough to make out a city block because there is so much green over the houses and buildings.
- The time difference is really weird. I kept getting really tired at 9pm and it was hard to fathom a baseball game being played at 4pm on a weekday. All the baseball games I attended were the last games of the day.

Tomorrow I will have my pictorial of Dodger Stadium and Wednesday Petco Park in San Diego.

Boof in LA

2008-06-06T15:34:00.001-07:00

See them tumbling down
Pledging their love to the ground
Lonely but free I'll be found
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

They say Los Ang-ales is the city of angels...

It's somewhat true because remember the "cool people" in high school? Well, everyone here is in that category. I think it's illegal to be fat or ugly or to have small boobs.

That's right, I'm in Los Angeles at the moment and to avoid the crazy traffic I decided to jot down a couple things about LA. Technically I'm here for a job interview but I already knew coming in that I didn't want the job because I don't think I could stand LA. After being here for about 36 hours, I think that's a pretty accurate notion. The weather, women, and beaches are great but there's no way in hell I would come to move here.

I didn't tell the potential employer that though. I think I may have said something like, "I dunno, LA might be a great place to live. I'm excited about the opportunity!" to the potential employer knowing full well that I came here for the free vacation. I made up stories about how much I make, how what a great opportunity this could be, and I was bragging about my ideas for their company in how to improve (which I made up on the fly). More or less I whored myself out for this vacation.

This morning the Potential employer (PO) gave me the stats on the job in terms of pay. For me to even consider coming out here it would take about...$100k and full benefits. I know that's a hell of a lot but it would honestly take a hell of a lot to pry me away from Minnesota or the upper midwest and head over to LA. What he offered was $5,000 more than what I make at my current job, salary (which sucks being an hourly guy), and the same vacation benefits.

I nearly laughed in his face and I certainly didn't feel like much of a whore anymore.

Did you know that a 2 bedroom mediocre apartment in LA is about $1700? What kind of a stupid fucker does the dude take me for?

Anyway I'm only here to eat at an In 'N Out burger, see some baseball (Dodgers and Padres), eat a dodger dog, and live out my Big Lebowski dreams. I'll have plenty of pictures and and probably a sun burnt head.

Update: The In 'N Out Burger was okay but Culver's is better. They should change their name from Culver's to "Doggystyle Diner" or "sex burger".

Sex and the City Crap

2008-06-02T00:08:00.001-07:00

Time cast a spell on you
But you won't forget me

Crap List

-Sex and the City the Movie

So I played a really horrifying round of golf on Sunday. I scored two tens (one on a par 3) and I managed not to kill anyone or destroy anything. I would've felt better had I scored five shots better and dented the hell out of a biff but... oh well. I came home and plopped myself on the couch wanting any other (non-golfing) excuse to get out of the house.

Anything at all.

Female roommate stands by the door where I'm watching TV and looks at me with a grin,
"Whatcha doin?"
Boof: I'm watching the Twins and sulking.
B: Wanna do something?
Boof: yeah, I'm up for anything. I wanna just get out of here.
B: Wanna go see Sex And The City?
Boof: Fuck no, I wouldn't see it with your eyes
B: I'll pay
Boof: No
B: I'll pay and buy popcorn.
Boof thinks: ahhhh no
B: I'll pay, buy popcorn, and buy you a soda (she's from the East)
Boof thinks: ehhhhh, maybe

I figured since I wasn't paying and I was really hungry then I could maybe justify going to the ultimate chick flick of chick flicks. It was something to do, it was something I was curious about (how ugly can Sarah Jessica Parker be?), and it would be an experience. It would be like my own National Geographic study in which I study how and why women like such crap.

After all, I have seen Glitter... just for the train wreak mentality though. I have seen Mean Girls too and that was like There's something about seeing a super bad film that makes me feel better. I mean I wasn't stupid enough to write or direct such crap so that makes me feel good!

There was, however, the slim possibility that I might enjoy such a film. I mean maybe it was well written and maybe I could actually feel with the characters. I haven't seen a full episode of Sex and the City so perhaps I'm missing something. I did have horrible expectations for Transformers and I really wanted to hate that movie but I didn't. Maybe, just maybe SATC would surprise me.

We went to the theatre and I complained the entire time we waited in line to buy tickets. She bought the pop and popcorn and we entered the theatre. 90% women were in the audience and it was actually kinda scary. I was wondering if the 10% of guys in the place were gay or enjoyed the show or maybe they were dragged out there. Maybe I was the only sane male in the theatre. Maybe the movie gives a "hate all men" theme and all the women come over to me and kick me in the balls. Maybe Sarah Jessica Parker's nose comes out of the screen and stabs me between the eyes like in Terminator 2.

The movie was downright horrific. The movie should've been called "Whiny Women in the City" because they were all nuts. All the men in the movie were either gay, porn models like in the soap commercials, or they act like pussies. It was unbelievable.

This movie was the epitome of chick flicks because it contained every-single-chick-flicky-thing that only women understand.

Chick Flicky things in the SATC movie:

a group of women gathering around and squealing
All dogs were the size of footballs
A giant, ridiculously sized wedding
Valentines day
A newborn infant
A pregnant woman
Everyone (including some guys) wearing high heels
a montage featuring Sarah Jessica Ugly trying on different dresses
music that was incredibly gay or something that women enjoy
A fashion show (for crying out loud)
giddiness over handbags

And a whole lot of irrational drama seeking women. I haven't even gotten into the actual plot yet.

Imagine Rocky spending months training for his big bout and then suddenly he says, "Heya I just wanna go screw around with Adrian, ya know?" and stops training altogether. They screw and Pauly ends up continuing to make fun of Adrian. Nothing changes. The End

With all the ugly, old, and lesbian looking woman there was actually one hot looking character. Kristen Davis was the only thing that kept me from throwing up and crying at the same time...and in the movie she took a dump in her pants (I'd still tap that btw, diarrhea and all).

One subplot has to do with Miranda (the lesbian looking one) married and with kids. Her husband is frustrated because she's not giving it up (for over 6 months) and she doesn't keep herself groomed. Guy ends up cheating on her and she turns heartbroken. I'm not backing with the guy but... he gave all the signs. He begged, pleated for poon and she wouldn't give it to him.

Then the main plot has to deal with SJP and how she yearns for a wedding and to get married to a millionaire who has already divorced twice and is very weary of another marriage. Ugly knows this and decides to make their wedding into a super human steroid ultra million dollar 200 guest affair. What guy wouldn't be scared of that? Not to mention the bridal party were 25 minutes late for the wedding anyway which drives me nuts.

This movie was downright horrible. I honestly felt a little nauseous walking back to the car. The whining, the bitching, the jokes that I didn't understand at all, and the squealing-I can't take anymore girl group squealing.

All I can say is that this movie was pure hell and the big screen makes Sarah Jessica Parker's nose look like something out of a Godzilla movie. I can now say that I've seen the ultimate chick flick and now every movie I see from now on will be better because I saw this movie. I didn't gain any perspective on women and I'm still a bit bewildered by the experience.

Candy Girl Review

2008-05-28T15:08:00.001-07:00

The moon on my window casts a different light
On all these memories that keep me up tonight

I finally read a book! I really wish the "Book-it" buttons were back for adults because if I think I would read 5 books if I knew I was going to get a free pizza. Oh to be a kid again.

I finally finished Diablo Cody's "Candy Girl" and I now think I am finally over Ms. Cody. Although I'm sure she'd give the HJ in the restaurant, go down on me in a theatre, and probably eat the pickles off my double cheeseburger I just have had my fill of her. Reading the book I was led into the life of a stripper and how one gets into the business. It wasn't completely shocking to me. It was more of a book for any girls who are thinking of stripping and what to look for. As a horny ass guy this book was like putting the porno in, getting situated on top of the plastic laid out in the living room, and then finding out it's Barbara Walters in a scat film.

*shudders*

Even her tips for making men crazy shook my head. For instance she determined that white high heels makes men go crazy (Boof's opinion: eh...no. I'm not a big fan of the white ones as much as I am of the red or black high heels. Strippers-the more you know." She also found out that by posing as a blonde stripper she gains more tips (Boof's opinion: Blonde? meh, I'll tip a brunette or red head twice as much as any blonde. Mix in numerous references to her foot odor, spooge stained thongs, and sweaty tube dresses and suddenly my candy cane dreams and lollipop fantasies are now in the form of Maria Shriver in this commercial. YIKES!

She explains how she finds strippers fascinating in how they pretty much control all the men in the joint. She brings up a stark difference in how she just wants to dance for money and nothing more than that. As the weeks go by the money seems to control her to an extent and she basically turns into a prostitute in my opinion.

It was an interesting book but I'm glad I didn't buy it. And instead of having Diablo Cody dreams I will focus all my attention onto Sara Evans from now on. At least Sara Evans hasn't written a song about foot odor.

Point of interest though: Is Jason Bateman's character in Juno based off of Jonny?

Apnea Crap

2008-05-26T21:52:00.001-07:00

You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won't back down

Crap List

1. T Bone and His Snoring

I had the Ratboy wedding to attend this weekend and it wasn't the most horrible wedding I've been to. Luckily I had Sudoku to keep me company during the ceremony. The reception was okay and the cake gave me severe diarrhea but it was nearly bearable. Me, Raymond Jennings, Hog, and Babycakes followed the ceremony by going to the casino and eventually passing out in T-Bone's room. I'm a pretty fussy sleeper as it is so I wasn't expecting much for sleep. Maybe 2-3 hours or enough to keep me energized for a quick trip to Burger King and devour a biscuit sandwich before I take a ride on the thunderbucket for blissful defecation.

I had about 45 minutes of sleep and I don't even know how I got that much. T-Bone was drunk and sleeping on his back which is perfect for someone who has terrible sleep apnea like T-Bone has.

T-Bone will have a series of small squeals about 4 seconds apart in which he shakes the bed desperate for a breath of air. Finally when the pressure on his lungs is too great, he takes this enormous breath of air in which he makes a noise that is so loud and so horrible that I can't even try to make such a noise! It's rather quite amazing when you think about it while you're nice and warm in the confines of your own bed. It's frustrating as shit when you're sharing a bed with him.

I even remember when his snoring scared the crap out of me when we went camping to Glacier National park. We tented out at a public campsite--where plenty of pseudo camping come and try to "rough it" during holiday weekends. Plenty of food is left out because people just don't know any better so they were warning us of bears and not just pussy little brown bears but Grizzlies. I wasn't too scared because we didn't have any food in the tent so I slept away.

I woke up at around 2pm staring at the side of the tent. I kept hearing this violent grunting coming from somewhere

CCCCCRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUU

and I thought for sure there was a Grizzly standing a foot away from the thin sheet of nylon separating us from the bear.

CCCRRRROOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

CCCCRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I was legitimately scared and was inching my way towards the center of the tent. I slowly rolled over and looked to see if anyone else was awake when I saw T-Bone,

CCCCCRRRRRROOOOOOOOUUUU-CRR-CRR-CRR-CRR-ahem

It was simply just T-Bone snoring and I was looking at him incredulously as the fear filled sweat dripped from my face.

Perky Bits

2008-05-21T20:04:00.001-07:00

Yes, I told you that the light goes up and down.
Don't you notice how the wheel goes 'round?
And you better pick yourself up from the ground
Before they bring the curtain down.

-I worked the longest shift I've ever worked just the other night. I started work at 2:30pm and I finally stumbled home at 7am. We had an emergency main break at work and I had to stay for most of the duration. The whole thing went pretty smooth but the stages of loopiness were very apparent.

I tried not to complain too much because the excavation workers were just coming back from working a twelve hour shift from somewhere else and now they were here to work another twelve hours. I on the other hand was so loopy that I wanted to start dancing like I was Lord of the Dance. I didn't want to dance by the dig so I would head inside the building every now and then I would bounce around in the freight elevator. I was wide awake and looking for something to break while I was roaming around the building.

Then the sun started coming up and I started to wind down a bit. I simply really dislike the morning light because I have the sudden urge to try to fall asleep since I didn't get any when it was dark. As 6am rolled around I was starting to get flat-out stupid. I think I asked someone why a curb is as high as one usually is and they nearly leveled me right then and there.

-I want some wings like right now.

-Every night I come home I see the neon lights of the tatoo place which is near where I currently live. Since I haven't filled my quota of having a one-night bender I'm tentatively thinking of getting completely tanked and getting a tatoo.

One idea would be to get this on my arm. See, those are my initials!

Another Idea would be to take the T out of this and and use two of the smaller C's, turn then around and somehow turn them into a B so I'd have my own Twins/initial tatoo. I think this idea would kick so much ass especially with a good sized T

Golf Crap

2008-05-18T23:01:00.001-07:00

The sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land
Plumes of smoke rise and merge into the leaden sky

Crap LIst

1. Phalen Golf Course

Actually Phalen was a pretty nice golf course. It's just that if you're a terrible golfer or you decide to swing a club for the first time since August, it's not a great course for the renegade vengeance known as "good intentions" Golf.

Good Intentions Golf is where you place the golf ball on the tee and you hope to god you don't hit anyone or anything that will cost money. If you hit it in the rough, no big deal. If your ball drags ass across the fairway, again, no biggie. Basically it's the fun version of golf where if anything good happens, then it's a bonus because you're expecting to play like complete dog shit.

Phalen has too many holes were the parking lot is just left of center and that new Lexus seems to have that target glistening on it's passenger fender. There's also plenty of public roads that draw any shot that seems to hook like a Frisbee. It if wasn't for a few conveniently placed trees then I'd probably be paying for a couple dents.

I did manage to get a couple guys on the putting green pissed at me when I sliced something that landed on said green.

They were probably assholes anyway.

2. Bryan Adams concert: $50

Friday, when I was at the gym, I checked out the paper when my attention was glued onto the upcoming Bryan Adams concert. It was actually that night at the Pantages theater and I really wanted to go.

I thought to myself,
"This is Bryan Adams, the butt of so many Canadian wussy singers. Who would possibly want to go to his concert--except me of course?"

I figured tickets would be plentiful and around $15 since... it's Bryan Adams. I noticed that the concert was sold out according to the newspaper so I was surprised by that but I figured that I would hang out in front of the theater and ask for an extra ticket...to Bryan Adams...in public. hmmm
Well, whatever.

I did some research and found out that tickets range from $27-$80 which is fucking crazy! As much as I really wanted to go I wasn't really feeling the $30 I'd have to shell out and the public humiliation of begging for an extra ticket to see Bryan Adams.

Boof: TICKET! I NEED A TICKET!
Stranger: Ticket? What's playing?
Boof: Ah....Bryan Adams
Stranger: You gotta be seriously whipped to ask for tickets for Bryan Adams
Boof: Ah...I'm here by myself. Shut up.

Browner Bits

2008-05-14T15:28:00.001-07:00

And I dream your dream for you and now your dream is real
How can you look at me, as if I was just another one of your deals?

-I attended the Living Green Festival at the State Fairgrounds a couple weekends ago. I went because I like to collect refrigerator magnets and collect free things. This year was a poor year for collecting magnets with my one and only magnet being a crappy Warner's Stellian magnet. I did get a flashlight keychain and a tube of kid's toothpaste which was cool.

I also like going because I like to find out why half of the booths are even there. The Living Green Festival is for companies to show off their renewable and environmentally friendly inventions and innovations and too many companies find an excuse to schill their crap there. There was a company selling window panes and the reason they were there is because the panes were made of wood, a renewable resource, which is a lame reason. They had a Realtor there as well and her reasoning is that the homes were made of wood. Another great excuse for trying to be at the living green festival.

I did meet one cool guy though. I walked up to the Metro Transit exhibit outside the grandstand where a guy handed me this cardboard puzzle thing and started talking to me about the Central Corridor. The guy was about 6'5 and very polished for being a Metro Transit volunteer. I asked him some questions as to whether the Corridor project was still going to happen and how cool the Hiawatha line is and then I started to walk away.

Just before I walked away I looked at his nametag and it said,
and get ready for this,
Joey Browner! Viking Pro Bowler Joey Browner! I was going to ask him why the hell he's here instead of pounding some hot ass downtown but the magnets were calling me. I was thrilled and I'm sure all the hippies didn't watch football so no one was talking to him.

-I ventured into the cafeteria at work where I usually hang out. It's always empty and there are plenty of windows for oogling and staring out of. This one day there were two people sitting in my spot and talking softly. I set up my computer somewhat nearby and started tip-tapping away at my keyboard minding my own business. I then started playing love songs on my computer and the couple eventually got up and left because I'm sure my love songs were making them uncomfortable which I thought was pretty damn funny.

It just goes to show, never underestimate the power of sexual tension and love songs.

-Broccoli and hot sauce are a great combination.

--Picking right up with my obsession with Diablo Cody, I picked up Candy Girl from the library. It's probably the first book in 4 years I've checked out of the library and I'm ~~horny as hell~~ eager to read it.

The book looks used, like any other book at the library, but it's badly water stained and the water was red (somehow). Also when you open the book, the smell of cigarettes is so strong that I have to throw it across the room.

I usually wouldn't mind a little water damage but the cigarette smoke is hard to handle. I mean how can I think of Diablo Cody humping a pole if I have the smell of smoke billowing from her book? I could talk to the library about the horrible smelling book but I really want to ~~whack off to~~ read it.

I guess I could stuff kleenex in my nose whenever I want to pull down my pants and read it but I'm afraid that I would look ridiculous.

Marriage for Getting Laid

2008-05-13T15:18:00.001-07:00

But we're never gonna survive, unless...
We get a little crazy

I watched one of the funniest movies I have ever seen the other day. Walk Hard: The Story of Dewey Cox is right up there with Harold and Kumar in hysterical, my-side-constantly-hurts laughing. I started the movie thinking it was going to be the stupidest thing ever but after a couple jokes and finding out that Jenna Fischer was the main actress, I was simply hooked.

There was one part of the movie that had me thinking. The scene was when Jenna Fischer (or "pam" as I like to call her) was laying in Dewey's bunk and she was talking about all their sexual tension and how she yearns for a man's touch. A man's touch simply being a penis being in her vagina. The thing is they can't have sex because they're not married and only until they're married is the day they can do sex. Of course Dewey was already married and that never stopped him from marrying Pam but that's besides the point.

If I were Dewey, and Pam was telling me about her need for a man's touch, and all that marraige stuff, I'd seriously consider marriage.

I mean take my conscience for example. I have the classic Devil Boof on one shoulder and the Angel Boof on the other.

Angel Boof: Well aint that a pisser. She want's to get married and she wont even let you give her a breast exam. Move on now.

Devil Boof: MARRY HER ASS....RIGHT NOW. FOR ALL THAT IS HOLY (AND UNHOLY) MARRY HER SO SHE CAN HAVE THAT MAN'S TOUCH. OH MY GOD! Well, if you need me, I'm going to go hump that napkin holder. MARRY HER GOD DAMN IT.

Of course I wouldn't be thinking of all there is that marriage brings with the commitment, the nagging, and hosting the dinner parties. I just want to get laid by Pam! I mean how could any guy resist that ass? On behalf of guys everywhere, that's just plain evil!

It makes me wonder how many people married just because they wanted to have sex. Think of all the families, children, and horrible lives that have resulted from one impulsive thought of wanting sex. I mean I understand people who want to wait for "the one" simply for fear of disease or pregnancy or herpes or something but I find it alarming that marriage could be used at the crutch just to lure someone in. Wouldn't you know who "the one" is before you marry them?

I read about a young couple in Woodbury who were waiting until their wedding day just to kiss. The young couple were seniors in high school and I found this completely bizarre. Why would they wait to kiss? What would they do when they want to get close? What if they got married and one was a horrible kisser? If someone told me on a date that she was refusing to kiss until marriage I would walk out right there because I don't have time for that complete nonsense.

:]

2008-05-12T21:07:00.001-07:00

How hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead
I wonder as I stare up at the sky turning red

I have to admit that I've been a bit reclusive for the last couple weeks. It's not that I'm feeling terrible or depressed or sick or anything. I've actually been as happy as I can remember in the last couple years. I'm not laying awake at night and wondering about the future and how much better my life could be if I won that blasted $180M lottery. I'm actually waking up at a decent time and I'm not staying up terribly late.

I've also been going to the gym regularly again and increasing the endurance with some good runs every other day. Everything is really quite nice and air is clearer and water tastes better...and all that shit. I'm thinking that the good weather has a lot to do with things. Any day where it doesn't look like imminent gloom makes me happy. Having trees bloom (in the middle of May) is doing wonders for my well being.

I feel a bit guilty not calling people back and not being as talkative as I usually am but I suppose I'm in one of my introverted moods. The type of moods where I want nothing more than to sit in front of the TV and smell my own farts in front of the beautiful sights of Anne Hathaway. I probably should just turn my phone off but what if Anne calls?

So I didn't mean to neglect anyone and stop posting or anything I've been too busy being happy.

2K Crap

2008-05-11T23:25:00.001-07:00

Follow me, don't follow me
I've got my spine, I've got my orange crush

Crap List

1. Twins radio play-by-play

I have to admit that one of the reasons why I haven't been posting lately is that I've been distracted with the all the baseball I can watch an hear. I recently purchased the MLB.TV package and I've been watching baseball instead of being bored. I don't know why a National's and Braves matchup would gain so much of my interest but I've been watching intently. I've also been keeping a close eye on all the AL Central teams.

It's so sad that I recognize certain teams broadcasts. I know that the Kansas City Royals are now on Fox Sports Net Kansas City and that channel never existed before this year. The Tigers are not on HD nearly enough as what they should be for that market. And of course, Vin Scully is god.

I've purchased the mlb.tv package every year in the last 3 years or so and this year MLB has really decided to not suck as bad as the other years. I downloaded this "MLB Mosaic" deal and I've been watching 6 baseball games at once. It's great and all I need is to buy a pack of hot dogs and then I'll be totally pathetic.

I also get all the radio broadcasts for each team and since all Twins games are blacked out from TV, I will always follow the Twins on the radio. I will then tune into the opponents radio broadcast because I enjoy listening to someone new and I like the objective opinion they have on the Twins. After listening to the White Sox radio announcers of Ed Farmer and Steve Stone I have come to the conclusion that the Twins radio announcers are completely worthless and nearly unbearable to listen to.

For instance,

Dan: And now Punto is up and he takes a hack at the first pitch and pops it up...Punto is hitting .250 in his last five games. Next pitch...sawed off.

See, usually when someone says "...and he pops it up" that means that the hitter POPS IT UP and the ball is catchable. I'm thinking of a lazy infield fly. But no, it's a "foul ball, out of play" which is supposed to be assumed with the Gladden's "popped up" call.

Compare that to Ed Farmer and Steve Stone who were breaking down pitch counts and talking pitchers strategy whenever an odd pitching count was present. Farmer and Stone had me captivated when they were talking about how managers roll a baseball down the infield lines just to see how a ball rolls inside the line for bunting plays and how a runner on third leads off in foul territory and heads back to third base in fair territory.

Oh I laughed, I cried, and I applauded at the end.

Then there's John Gordon whom isn't much better. He's lucky if he can get the players correct. I think I heard him make this call one time,

"And it's a fly ball to DEEP right field, Carew goes back...and bounces off the wall, Markakis throws it to the cutoff and Radke is in there with a double."

(blink:blink)

Now how in the fucking hell are you supposed to visualize that?

-People and Gas Prices

We have a society of lemmings. Last week one of the gas stations around town were tardy in adding thirty cents to their gas prices because they change their prices the beginning of the next day. Therefore everyone around town lined up at that gas station to pump gas that was thirty cents per gallon cheaper.

People were waiting 90 minutes in line.
People were coming from 100 miles away.
All to save thirty cents per gallon.

Let's do the math real quick. For me, my tank is about 15 gallons. .30 times 15 is about $4.50 in savings which isn't bad. But if you're going to wait 90 minutes to save $4.50 then you're a complete loser. If you're coming from 100 miles away to wait 90 minutes to save $4.50 (or even $12 if you have a big truck) then you are a complete retarded loser because A) it suggests that an hour of your time is only worth $4.50 and you have nothing better to do and B) If you own a truck you should be making enough to support a lifestyle of owning a big truck therefore saving $12 shouldn't be that big of a deal.

I suppose I'm not terribly surprised. We still live in a society where walking/running 2K's is a major achievement.
2 Kilometers! That's just over a mile! I could walk a 2K being hungover and with the bright sunshine in my face and I would probably run another 2K's simply because I would want to break a sweat.

The No-Hitter

2008-05-06T22:04:00.001-07:00

I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity
Who uses a machete to cut through red tape
With fingernails that shine like justice
And a voice that is dark like tinted glass

The no-hitter in baseball is the equivalent of winning the pie eating contest, winning the fantasy football superbowl when your team is a load of shit, and having your boss being kicked in the nuts in some haphazard incident involving flying tile and a creatively placed pencil. The no-hitter is what I've called being "skunked" in cribbage and being 8 years old and shot while turkey hunting with your high and drunk dad in the woods. Well, maybe not that last example but according to the father that might work.

The no-hitter is the epitome of a pitcher's resume (unless you are Jack Morris or Curt Schilling). Amazing things happen when a pitcher is pitching a no-no late in the game. You'll find opposing fans rooting against their team, you'll hear the fans cheer just a bit louder as every out is recorded, and the pitcher look about as uncomfortable as Roger Clemons at anytime nowadays.

One of the biggest reasons why I attend so many Twins games is that I have always wanted to see a no-hitter. I've always wanted to frame that ticket stub and have it on my bedroom wall. There's only a couple no-hitters pitched in a season so it's almost like winning the lottery when it does happen.

I nearly attended one with Johan Santana pitching against the Brewers a couple years ago. With every out he made after that 5th inning the crowd began to cheer louder. With every two strike count the fans would gradually start to stand up and cheer. He made it to the 7th inning (I believe) and finally gave up a hit. It sucked and the entire defense was willing to do whatever it took to keep that ball from hitting the ground but it just wasn't enough.

I've always wondered what it would be like to be a catcher in that instance; you're calling the came of this pitcher's life and any wrong pitch will screw everything up. Or to be the manager and have the shortstop play closer to 2nd while the worst hitter hits a dinker in the middle of 2nd and 3rd. I've heard of stories where a pitcher gives up a lead off home run and pitches a perfect game after that which has to be funny to someone (okay, I'm laughing actually).

It would also be cool to win the lottery.

Iron Crap

2008-05-05T00:15:00.001-07:00

It doesn't mean much
it doesn't mean anything at all
the life I've left behind me
is a cold room

Crap List

1. Comic Book Movies

Iron Man was pretty good, I'll admit that right now. Tons of action, dialogue was okay, and it was entertaining. If there was a problem with the movie it's that it follows every single plot outline in every single comic book/action figure movie. There's really nothing surprising about the basic aspects of the movie.

I mean I could make up a guy, say _____man where the protagonist is very humbled in the beginning. Then there's a montage (gotta be a mon-TAGE) where they're creating their suit/uniform. Finally there's the battle at the end where it turns out the antagonist is a former friend/partner. Add a couple clever lines, explosions, sexual innuendos, and the guest appearance of Stan Lee and you pretty much have your own movie based from a comic book.

Iron Bits

2008-05-01T22:38:00.001-07:00

My life is like a picture left
Out too long in the sun
Now I'm trying to remember all
The faces of the names I've loved

-So I think I have an old man stalking me at the gym. This old man is pretty nice, overly nice, and he always seems to follow me in the locker room. One time I was in the shower and I dropped my container of soap. He stood outside the stall and asked me if I was okay. I was but that violates code 59 in the latest edition Men's Bathroom Etiquette. I mean what the hell does he care if I stubbed my toe in the shower.

Also I've been trying to change up my schedule in an effort to avoid him in the locker room. It's almost as if he's watching me work out too which gives me the creeps. I guess I could throw the guy against a wall or something seeing that I am a guy and I am bigger than him.

I guess it wouldn't be so bad if this woman were there instead.

-Kathleen Edwards is coming to town (tonight actually) and I'm hoping I can attend the concert. See, the deal is I don't have any work scheduled but that doesn't mean that no work will happen. It's usually in this scenario that if you make plans away from work, then something will come up at work.

Anyway I'm eager to go to this concert because the last time I saw her I wore my Cowboy Junkies shirt to which Edwards made note of during the concert (I know, I tried to hump her leg after that too but she resisted...dammit). I then went to a Cowboy Junkies show and met with the lead singer afterwards. I told her how Edwards was a fan of theirs.

So fast forward to this year and now Edwards is opening a couple shows for the Junkies. I would love to think that I had something to do with that since I was the glue that held their networking together even though I think they're under the same management, all Canadian, and both are in the same genre) but that's all poppycock, I know they came together with the help of me. I need this!

-I've always wanted to have an Australian accent.

-Wouldn't Steel Man be lighter, stronger, and more sleek than any Iron Man would be?

My Gameplan to Eating

2008-04-29T21:56:00.001-07:00

Everytime the snow drifts
Every way the sand shifts
Even when the night lifts she's always there

I know it's been about a month and I haven't posted a damn thing about the Twins yet but there's nothing really to write about. The hitting sucks and the pitching is like watching a dog take a poop. That being said, I kinda figured this year would be a crappy year but it's fun to watch players like Carlos Gomez--and please don't ever say "go, go, Gomez" in front of me because I will beat the ever living Christ out of you. God damn, Minnesota comes up with some dumb fucking nicknames-- and Delmon Young should also be fun to watch.

Also Nick Blackburn and Scott Baker (if he should ever get healthy again) are somewhat fun to watch if your only other option is to slice off your left hand. Then watching Ron Gardinhire continue to put some idiot infielder at the number 2 spot instead of Mauer is kinda funny in a sad-joke type of way. Then Nick Punto, oh how I wish I was Nick Punto because Ron Gardenhire has this crush on him despite him being one of the worst hitters in history. In fact H and I figured they should rename the Mendoza line the Punto line. It sounds just a bit better.

I was a bit intrigued about a promotion the Twins have going on May dubbed "all you can eat event". I honestly couldn't give a damn about the game but the thought of double fisting dome dogs is very intriguing. I could put on my State Fair gear (sweat pants, bib, and crappy t-shirt with holes) and bring my own ketchup bottle and simply 'go to town'. The point, of course, to eat my money's worth of food.

The event costs $33 and they seat you in the seats at the dome where no one ever sits. The game could have 40,000 people there and these sections will still not have a sole sitting in them. They're playing the Rangers so it's probably not even worth watching the game when you have 5 dome dogs in front of you so I'm not worried about that. Now if they have the same food that they charge for, a dome dog and a regular pop is nearly $10 so I would just need about 3 of those to get my money's worth. I'm definitely not going to get any pretzels because they fill you up and that's just stupid eating planning right there.

I know I can eat 4 hot dogs because I've already reached that plateau before. I think it was some game in 2002 when I went to the dome on dollar dog night. I ate 3 hot dogs before the 5th inning when I also happened to be sitting in the Hormel hot dog 'row of fame' and I was on jumbotron with a frown trying to think of a way to eat a 4th hot dog.

I'm also a bit skeptical on the promotion because knowing the Twins, they'll find a way to wuss their way around it. Like instead of a wheel barrel full of dome dogs I can see then having a tray of lil smokies on a dish with little buns where you can only take two. I also imagine that the pop will be served in little dixie cups where you pretty much take a shot of coke and that's it. I've thought of having rotating fireman lines to keep circulating food throughout the sections or perhaps using conveyor belts of some sort to maximize the eating potential.

I just hope the bathroom is located by these seats.

10k Crap

2008-04-27T23:33:00.001-07:00

One man caught on a barbed wire fence
One man he resist

Crap List

1. Our Company Representative

I consider myself to be a very understanding person and I really don't ask for much however if something needs to be said, I'll say it. That being said, our company representative is a worthless tool. Whenever I have a problem and I'm supposed to go to her, I get a type of response that screams "there, there, you'll eat what you'll be given" and that pisses me off.

I must admit that she never really gained any points from me with her stupid comments and her endless droning of small talk in the first place. She has always been the one to encourage me (and nearly begging me) to come to these noon lunches at work which are a pain in the ass since I live in Minneapolis where it's 20 minutes out of my way and I usually come in to work at 2:30. Then I come in for the lunch and she gives me a comment like,

So beheheheh did you have to roll out of bed to come here bweheheheh?

So after this are you going to simply hang out for a couple hours until your shift starts?

I hate *HATE* those comments. I have acted somewhat cold to those comments because it's an asshole thing to say even for an asshole. I also want to stand up and say,

You know, fat bitch, don't test me! I would like you to work nights for a month and tell me how you like it. How bout you shut your ass and help me for once.

What is worse is that I don't think she knows what she's saying. She gives me this look like she's completely clueless.

I suppose I should probably say that this fit of rage was supplied by the fact that my request for an increase in money for safety shoes was thoroughly rejected since she found shoes that redneck Jim makes from his garage in Coon Rapids for $30. She's never worn any work related shoe in her life and it would probably prevent her from an evening reading '1001 Ways to Be Smarmy' at the OCB to look into the matter more than simply going to the Cabela's website.

After all, while boots have gone up in price in the 6 years, the money we've been allocated has not changed.

Also my request for a raise has not been answered. Instead they gave me a $50 Target gift card which I'm sure was initiated from Fat Bitch herself.

-Running the Get-N-Gear 10k without much training

I usually run all the time but for the last couple weeks I've wavered on my running due to my schedule and my lazy ass not allowing me to run. I wanted to run this race because I ran it in 2005 and 2006. I didn't run it last year and as a result I felt an immense guilt for not participating in it. It's a great race and there's plenty of fit women wearing tight forming spandex-like material so there's a lot in this for the assman in me.

Oogling is usually so good that I have google eyes throughout the race.

After the race I needed an 8 hour nap and my knee hurt like a filthy son of a bitch. I'm still sore now as I type this and a 10k shouldn't hurt this much. I mean a 10k is usually child's play for me but this was a bit of a bitch.

Radioless

2008-04-22T20:07:00.001-07:00

I swear I can see you
Coming up the drive
And there ain't nothing like regret
To remind you you're alive

Sorry for the lack of a Crap List this week. I just couldn't muster any sort of bitching for this week. I could try to find something but the heart just wouldn't be there.

For the past couple months I've been aware that my car battery is about ready to retire. Instead of playing the 'lets see how long it lasts' game I figured I would replace it before any worst case scenario happens.

It usually is the case where you have that dream job interview and you get all spiffed up and you turn the ignition when, nothing. There are very few futile feelings when you turn that key and nothing is happening. You feel defeated, deflated, and you wish you would've had the foresight to changed that stupid battery when you were too busy throwing rocks at street signs.

So I figured I would save myself of any sort of worst case scenario like the one described above. Or the scenario where I meet Sara Evans at Best Buy and she wants to meet me at Anal Point in one hour. Having a dead battery at that point would break my heart and it gives my johnson a deflating feeling (complete with sound effects) just thinking about such a scenario.

So I went over to Sam's Club and had my battery replaced. I had to wait about 2 hours for the technicians to get to my car but it eventually was complete. When I turned on my car I started singing the first few notes of "La Isla Bonita" but I it was just me, and not Madonna singing. My radio was stuck in "Loc" mode which killed my Madonna moment. The theft lock deal engaged and now all I needed to do was remember the code that I entered.

Sometime in the past...over two years ago...probably after 14 hours of working

I was so worried about someone stealing my factory Delco stereo I decided I would "protect" it by inserting some crazy code. After careful consideration I landed on X since no one would ever guess X to be a code. I entered the code with a sinister laugh and threw my fist to the sky.

Last Sunday

Boof: FAAACK, what the hell was that code?

I tried to enter the mindset of Boof from 2005 but pfff who the hell knows how many Mountain Dews and pixie sticks I had that day. I tried every 4-digit code I would've used.

Nothing.

I tried googling theft lock and all I got was outdated info. I called up a buddy and he referred me to a blasted dealer which I wasn't happy with. I left a message and turned to my other options.

I went to dealer #2 and as it turns out they'll give me the override code for free just that the two guys that do that stuff wont be in until Wednesday. I then got a call back from douchebag dealer number 1 and they quoted me a price of $49.95 for the code.

A code. A fucking over ride code. A code that requires a couple phone calls. For fifty fucking dollars! God, I hate dealers.

So I had to wait until Wednesday in order to have any sort of audio entertainment in my car. For the next couple days I would have to 'enjoy the silence' being in my car. Let me tell you right now that not having a radio thoroughly sucks and it can drive a person completely crazy. Driving in silence during the day is almost bearable but night, wow, at night really sucks to drive in silence.

It's like after a minute you start to think that there's something wrong and then you look at the passenger seat and actually start to feel a bit uncomfortable even being alone. Then you hum to yourself and get even more freaked out.

Take me for example, when I was coming home this morning at 3am.

2 minutes after turning the ignition: hmmmmm, hm, huuuum, hm-hm-hm-hm-hmmmmmmmmmmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmm

4 minutes: baaaaah bap, baap, BAAAP, BAP, SHOO WAP-DE-WAP. BAAAP-BAAAP-BAAAP-BAAAP

6 minutes: Punt, shunt, glunt, zunt, front, dunt, crunt, blunt, funt, bunt, clunt, yount....*thinks* Molitor?, Catfish Hunter....

10 Minutes: Bernie Brewer, Crunch, Bluntch?

And it goes on and on.

UPDATE 3:36AM: I CRACKED THE CODE!!!!!!! Driving home from work I thought to myself, "what about 64?" and I thought about it, and thought about it, and then I burped, and then thought about it some more. I knew I was about one bad code short of screwing the whole thing up (if you insert 8 bad codes the car goes into super crackdown mode and wont let you use any codes for a day or something). With trembling hands I entered 0064, enter and I saw which was weird since I've never seen that before. I then slowly nudged the power button and, viola the radio worked! If it wern't 3:30am I'd go buy some champaign and celebrate but for right now I'm going to bed.

YES FUCKING-A I GOT A RADIO AGAIN! THAT DEALORSHIP CAN TAKE THEIR $50 AND SHOVE IT UP THEIR ASS SO BAD THAT IT'LL HURT AND THEN BITE YOUR DUM--okay I'm going to bed

I Gotta Take a Huge Bit

2008-04-16T23:29:00.001-07:00

There's those thinkin' more or less, less is more,
but if less is more, how you keepin' score?

-I have come to the conclusion that I need a serious time-out from the movies Juno and Into the Wild because I'm strangely obsessed with them for different reasons. Into the Wild is actually a movie that will give me nightmares with how that ending went and I end up getting into a huge fit over the actual story behind it. Juno drives me nuts because I keep wondering which suburb it was based in and I try to look for all the Minnesota nods in it. Also Diablo--what is it about ex-strippers that make in curious? Oh I know it's probably all the tricks they know and what they can do with a pole.

-We have a very special insurance meeting this Friday to which I'm already not looking forward too. For one thing it's one of these meetings that they schedule at noon when it's convenient to everyone else but me. I have no idea what I'm going to do from 1pm until work starts so I guess I'll bum around in a mall somewhere or pretend like I'm a bigshot at Best Buy. Maybe I'll go to the car dealership and pretend like I want to buy a car and basically waste their time.

-With that looming insurance meeting I've been wondering on what the best way to butter me up would be. I'm thinking some sort of a gift box full of Twins tickets, goofy Twins trinkets, and perhaps a couple superballs would be a decent start. Then sit me down and talk to me about old school cartoons just to get me warmed up. Then ask me about how much the Green Bay Packers suck so I can get fired up and get some adrenalin pumping. Finally show a couple clips of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. After the clip, tell me the bad news and it won't even seem as bad because I was buttered up first.

Speaking of butter, maybe an ear of corn on the cob would be an order too.

-The firewall at work is still not firewalling anything so I'm very comfortable surfing youtube goodness and being able to see the Twins ballpark being erected. I figure if they catch me and are that pissed off then I can say I enjoyed some youtube goodness.

Into the Wild Crap

2008-04-14T19:06:00.001-07:00

My god its been so long. Never dreamed you'd return.
But now here you are and here I am.
Hearts and thoughts they fade away.

Curling is getting too tiresome on my body. Two games in a row wears me out.

Crap List

1. Into the Wild, Chris McCandless, and the movie (I haven't read the book yet)

Spoiler alert!!!!!! If you want to see the movie or read the book then don't read this bitching.

A coworker said that I really, really need to see this movie and he also went on to mention that it was 'right up my ally' and I should probably see this movie as soon as possible. I know when I tell other people stuff like that, I want them to see the movie right now as in this very minute. Into the Wild seemed very interesting with the soundtrack performed by Eddie Vedder and Kaki King (whom I didn't know had anything to do with it until seeing the movie).

After seeing the movie my initial reaction that it was really good but there was something wrong. I think it was the "I've had a fulfilling life" notion that I had a problem with.

(blink:blink)

You did not have a fulfilling life. You had 2 really fun, enjoyable years which hardly a life makes. The whole damn reason you went on that mystical journey is because you weren't happy with your life. So....don't lead us to believe that you had a fulfilling life at the age of 24.

Then I started thinking more about the film and the question 'what exactly did he really do?' came to mind. He bummed around the country, met some good people, and worked odd jobs. That's all I can pretty gather. He did contribute $24,000 to Oxfam which was very noble but other than that...

He eventually made it to Alaska and lived in the wilderness for about 120 days which, to me, does not seem that impressive. In fact, had he not been lucky enough to find that bus, he would've been dead in less than 120 days.

Then I thought about it even more. He went out in the Alaskan wilderness without a compass, much of a map, and lacking supplies.

(blink:blink)

WHAT THE HELL?!? How do you have a dream of living in the Alaskan wilderness and you don't buy boots or a god damn topographical map!?! IN ALASKA OF ALL PLACES!? NEAR DANALI!? WHERE GRIZZLIES ROAM AROUND IN ABUNDANCE.

Now this whole tale sounds more of complete stupidity than heroism and individual spirituality. I mean I hate to say this but, I can attempt to live in the great northern wilderness and probably die in 120 days. I'm pretty sure I could find a sweet way to die too. But if I was going to attempt to do so, I would make god damn sure to buy a compass, buy a topo map or FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MAKE A FUCKING MAP, and bring some supplies with me so I could survive so I don't have to rely on some magic bus in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere.

This Chris McCandless is considered a hero and has his own cult and everything. Did they not understand that he was a (and I'm going to call a spade a spade here) a failed outdoorsman who was simply out of his element. I get that he was a guy who followed the road less traveled and was sick of the selfishness of society but, for the love of god, read a little more about wilderness survival before you head into the woods. A book on edible plants is a good start but apparently it wasn't enough.

Then it really burns me that he completely abandoned his family. I understand the need to break free and go off on your own with the pressures of family but let them know you're still alive. Good god! To me it shows incredible hypocrisy to go off into the wilderness because of the selfishness of society when you're showing selfishness towards your own flesh and blood. One anonymous postcard, one phone call, one picture would at least let your family know you're alright. No, he left his parents in complete agony for 2 years. I don't care how much your parents irritate you, it screws with people's minds when their son vanishes.

I don't know. This story seems like a spiritual journey to finds ones self to most people but I just find it to be someone who is running away from something and blindly goes into the Alaskan Wilderness. Nothing terribly groundbreaking for me. In fact it seems like a story of idiocy.

Random Stuff

2008-04-10T20:44:00.001-07:00

The rocking horse came
From an old oak tree
Just missed the house
When it was hit by lightning

I have to admit that posting will be a tad sporadic since the NHL Playoffs are in effect. At least that's my excuse.

Quickly though,

-I finally found that beef stick

-I did guess Kansas correctly and I have pronounced myself as King Shit I

-Garfield comics are now ruined forever thanks to the website Garfield Minus Garfield. Jon is a fucking nut!

-(insert random complaint about the weather here)

-I burnt my hand on the oven the other day.

Wussy Crap

2008-04-07T19:09:00.001-07:00

I walk for miles along the highway
Well that's just my way of saying I love you
I'm always walking after midnight searching for you

I would've had this Crap List set for Monday but two games of Curling took a lot out of me on Sunday night.

I just want to point out one thing before I begin. One time I picked the final four to a T. This year I correctly picked the championship game! Not that it was tough picking two number one seeded teams but whatever. If Kansas wins then I nominate myself as King Shit almighty.

Crap List

1. Politicians who are physically uncoordinated.

I'm getting really tired of politicians delivering the first pitch of a baseball game and end up throwing worse than my mom. I understand old, decrepit men not being able to throw a ball but sometimes these guys are in their 40's. They'll pretend to wind up (like they think they need to), throw their weight back, and throw as if they were born without an elbow. Where is that humongous can of Milwaukee's Best Light when you need it?

Then in other sports you have grown men who pretend to hunt, pretend to be catching a football, and our latest example attempting to bowl. Not that I would ever take bowling seriously but 37? A grown man bowing a 37!? Ugh I don't I've it's possible for me to bowl a 37. I even have the philosophy to throw the lightest ball down the alley as fast as possible and I still don't suck as much as 37. Little girls at least bowl a forty!

It makes me wonder if their dad ever bought them a baseball or played catch with them at all. Not even the 'good faith' game of catch just to shut up the kid for a week. Speaking of catching a football, who in the hell catches a football like this? Good fucking god. No wonder he didn't get elected.

Also, I know he's not a politician but I was looking all over for Bud Selig throwing a first pitch at some game. He is the commissioner of baseball and...he hit the ground about 30 feet in front of homeplate. The ball just barely rolled to homeplate.

Butter Field?

2008-04-03T21:05:00.001-07:00

I Got Stripes --- Stripes Around My Shoulders
I Got Chains --- Chains Around My Feet

-In the self decidedly un-nerdy Twins blogging community someone at Stick and ball nation came up with some leads for the name of the new field. It seems as if Land O' Lakes field could be in the running for the sponsorship of the new ballpark. We've all (actually just me in a padded room) discussed General Mills Field, Wheaties field (best of the blocky sponsor names), 3M Field (I don't think so), and Target field (no way). Land O' Lakes was always a suggestion that I immediately dismissed because I never really thought they'd sponsor it. At first Land O' Lakes field sounded kinda stupid but the more I thought about it.... it isn't too bad.

Let's break it down.

Whenever I hear "Land O' Lakes" I think of butter since my mom always bought the LOL butter and I'd stare and wonder about the female Indian on the cover. LOL field makes me think of butter and my mouth actually salivates when thinking about it. Since I don't put butter on anything other than corn on the cob I also think of eating blissfully, an ear of corn on the cob dripping with butter on a warm, sunny day. Butter + Corn = good times

I don't think that's a bad thing. It's better than Best Buy Park where I'd just feel guilty for spending all that damn money on the extended warrantee on a pack of batteries. I suppose General Mills makes me think of cereal but General Mills makes me think of 'IRS Burger' on the Simpson's and it sounds too industrial.

It's way to soon to assume It'll be LOL field but I'm giving my thumbs up. I want to think about butter and corn all the time. Also don't you think sweet corn would make for a fantastic baseball snack? It already makes people orgasm at the State Fair and can't be that hard to make. Dip that shit in LOL butter and there ya go. Maybe make little Twins corn holders or something. Maybe TC in a corn holder! HEY!

-I keep having weekly dreams where I have hair. They're actually very vivid and I'll wake up thinking 'oh now since I have hair, I'll grow a mohawk.' but then I look in the mirror and my Mr. T dreams have washed away. Actually I can't wait to show off my shiny cue ball in the summertime.

-I played that Slayer song on Guitar Hero III on medium and it's so horrible. There's nothing like crying like a little bitch and hearing that plucky guitar error sound at the same time.

-Wild are NORTHWEST DIVISION CHAMPIONS!!!!! Man, it's about time we get a winning club around here.

-Twins on the other hand, yuck. I'm not giving up on them yet but damn, I'm not even watching them and they're boring.

Boof's Bergblog

There's No Way...

A Homecoming of Sorts...maybe

Favre Talk

That Time of Year Again

Kurt Rambis?

The New Busch Stadium

A New Dawn

Boof and Brett Favre's Olive Branch

July Crap

Crap List

Anyone here anymore?

God, I Hate that Song

Cinco De May

Easter in Nodak

Squirrels are Going to be the Death of Me

The first few days

Cuomo Crap

Crap List

WBC Bits

More Laid Off Crap

Crap List

Unemployment Crap

SSU Bits

Shannon Crap

doing bits

Gym Crap

Crap List

January Bits

After Years of Frustration...

Selig recalls Pohlad as an All-Star owner

Pinochle Crap

Crap List

Tranny (no, not that kind of tranny) Crap

Crap List

Rare Bits

Economical Crap

Crap List

Hello Thomas (not my real name), I regret to inform you that we will no longer be matching your 401k investment due to the horrible economy. Thank you and have a nice day.

Can the Vikings Win?

Hag Crap

Crap List

Goodbye Metrodump (part 1)

Simply Bits

TV Theme Songs

Texas Cleanup Part 5: Coming Home

Observations

Texas Cleanup Part 4: Registration

Texas Cleanup Part 3: Galveston

Texas Cleanup Part 2: Bored

Texas Cleanup Part 1: Arriving

Malaria-less

Galveston It Is

I'm Messin With Texas

More Sporadic Posts to Come

Brady Crap

Crap List

Politics

2008 Fantasy Foosball

Roxette Music Video Review

Summer Games Crap

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dating crap

Not Even a Rubber Arm

Coincidence?

Construction madness Crap

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Comfortably Numbed

It's Not Extraordinary!

The Reunion

The Nightmare Scenario

My Morning Crap

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July Bits

Perceived Weather Crap

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A Broken Ankle-crap?

NBA Crap

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LA Part III: Petco Park, San Diego