Bank's Blogger Silenced, Sues JP Morgan

New York Post -  A banker by day and blogger by night claims she was fired by JPMorgan Chase for her online activities.  Business analyst Marilyn Tagocon, 50, of Piscataway, NJ, was canned after telling her bosses about her spare-time blogging and self-publishing of historical fiction, a lawsuit alleges. When a coworker told her the company's code of conduct restricted employees from posting personal political speech, Tagocon went to the Human Resources Department to make sure she wasn't doing anything wrong. The department gave her a choice: her job or her writing. When Tagocon refused to take down her blog and stop marketing her novel, both of which she writes under a pen name, she was fired, she claims in a Manhattan Supreme Court suit.  

Well, now you'll know what happened if this blog ever goes dark.  Just assume that if my company ever told me I could work for them and get paid a salary, or work for my own blog and have 0 income I'd choose being able to eat and drink and have a place to sleep, just seems like common sense.  

This isn't normal right?  Like what kind of historical fiction could this woman possibly have been spouting off on that the company was legit worried about their reputation?  Had to be some seriously slanderous stuff right?  I'm guessing "Historical Fiction" is code for "Smut/Erotic History."  Probably blogging on and on about lewd and salacious revisions of hedonistic Democratic National Conventions, and 3 ways involving the Bush Boys and Palin.  

PS: I hope Marilyn wins big.  If that's the case I'll march write down to my HR and dare them to give me an ultimatum. 

NY Sanitation Dept Saves Life, Restore Standing in Community

(NewsCore) - A despondent man took a leap out of the ninth-floor window of his NYC apartment Sunday afternoon but was saved when he landed on a huge pile of garbage that had gone uncollected since New York’s devastating post-Christmas blizzard, officials said. The man apparently attempted his death leap at 12:04pm local time from West 45th street, police said. The man, in his 30s, landed on his back and was taken to the Bellevue Hospital A worker at the building said the man was a resident who lived on the ninth floor. “I can’t believe the garbage broke his fall,” said astounded neighbor Ingrid Suprock, 26, who lives next door. “I guess the trash saved the guy,” she added. Trash has been piling up around the city as sanitation workers try to catch up with snow removal that has bogged down the city since the day after Christmas.

Good for the NY City Trashmen, restoring their standing with the citizens of New York after last weeks snow storm tow truck disaster, these guys needed some good plublicity. Sure the good news came because of their perpetual slacking and lack of work ethic (seriously, the snow stopped last Monday, that's 1 week exactly, you're telling me you haven't had time to collect trash yet?).  And sure this can only lead to more jokes about NY being a dump or trash pit, but at the end of the day, a mans life was saved.

And if this guy does decide he wants to live he'll have one hell of a story to tell.  If he doesn't?  I suggested he wait until Spring when the lazy ass $70K plus paid garbage men of New York get off their asses and clean up the dump.  

Dead Birds Falling From the Sky; This Can't Be A Good Sign

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BEEBE, Ark. — Environmental service worker on Sunday finished picking up the carcasses of about 2,000 red-winged blackbirds that fell dead from the sky in a central Arkansas town.

Mike Robertson, the mayor in Beebe, told The Associated Press the last dead bird was removed about 11 a.m. in the town about 40 miles northeast of Little Rock. He said 12 to 15 workers, hired by the city to do the cleanup, wore environmental-protection suits for the task. The birds had fallen Friday night over a 1-mile area of Beebe, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds were found outside of that area. The workers from U.S. Environmental Services started the cleanup Saturday.

Look I'm guessing this town of people never saw ABC's FlashForward prior to its cancellation.  Because if they had, they be fleeing that town as quickly as possible.  Gaggle's of birds don't just drop dead from the sky unless some seriously bad shit is about to go down in your town.  Like apocalyptic type stuff.  We'd probably have a better understanding of whats to come if ABC hadn't pulled the plug prematurely on the show.  Thanks alot ABC, now not only does your programming suck, but you've ruined the only chance this world has at being saved.  Nice job.

No coincidence either that this happened in some backwoods area in Arkansas.  Those people will believe anything you tell them in those kinds of places, perfect cover up a conspiracy.  These types of things never happen modern city type areas for a reason.  That's just reason number 1,875 why I won't move too far away from any major cities.  I don't need to wake up one morning and start pissing my pants in fear over why there are a dozen dead birds just composting and fertilizing my lawn, while Betty-Jean and Billy-Bob Hillbilly from across the street perform religious services in their backyard while simultaneously defending themselves with shotguns.  I'm all set with that.

Now will someone call up the former writers of Flashforward and find out what the hell is going to happen next?

Happy New Year to All Followers of The Alt-Tab

I see many of these babies in my future tonight.

Going to be a long last day of the year at work today (hence the ass crack of dawn posting spree I'm on) so I'll get this out of the way early.  

Happy New Year to all my current readers.  Thank you for your continued readership, lack of comments, and refusal to follow me via twitter.  Without you my self-esteem would plummet (you didn't really expect me to give a sappy thanks did you? That would be too out of character). 

Hope everyone is looking forward to a day filled with jerks and old ladies saying "see you next year" as if they're the first clever person to ever come up with that expression, and all the true assholes who gripe and complain about hearing it (I'm griping and complaining via blog, I'm not a big enough asshole to ruin some old ladies New Years Eve by calling her out).  

Equally as annoying today will be your co-workers begging you to cover for the rest of their work, as if they're the only ones with plans tonight.  News flash, everyone goes out tonight, you're not unique.  

Most of all, Happy New Year to those among us who foolishly think whatever bar or party they go to tonight will be anything but a let down.  Everyone hypes up this night so much the results can never possibly live up to the expectations.  I look forward to over hearing all my co-workers stories of disappointment and regret (or shame in some cases) on Monday, an annual tradition I treasure each year. 

And finally my New Years wish, may The Alt-Tab find some sponsorship or advertising during 2011.  This is becoming quite the time consuming hobby, a guys gotta get something out of it.  


PS: See y'all next year (what an asshole)!

UCONN Womens Basketball Team Loses---Meh.

ESPN - UConn's winning streak -- which had stretched to 90 and brought the Huskies and women's hoops an avalanche of attention -- came to an end Thursday. It will be a particularly happy New Year's celebration for the Cardinal and their faithful, after a 71-59 victory Thursday ended mighty UConn's streak.

Ho-Hum, nothing to see here. I was going to write an extended recap to the end of this historic streak, but then something happened.  I flipped on Fox 25 news and the two female anchors for the morning were discussing it and clearly had no clue how many games in a row they had won or how far back the streak reached (they mistakenly said 2006 instead of 2008).  Honestly, if your own gender doesn't care about the streak that purportedly equals that of any mens streak shouldn't these ladies care?  They're news anchors! This is news.  This isn't your average girl off the street not giving a crap about woman's athletics, this is paid news anchors whose job it is to care about and make us care about what they're reporting on. 

Sorry, this whole debacle is making me reconsider my stance that the UConn women's streak is as impressive as UCLA's from the 70's.  If you can't get your target audience to care then how important can it really be?  And more important, why should I care at that point?

PS: Stanford can relax.  Its a regular season game ladies, no need to act like you've actually won anything, I'm sure Uconn will roll you in the tournament come March so lets try and act professional here.

Man Kind Rejoice! The Ultimate Fridge Is Here!

Men, we've reached the mountain top, the pinnacle of civilization, the most momentous day in history. It seemed like every 10 seconds this guy just managed to one up himself.  

This is the kind of work we need our dorks, geeks and scientists working on, stuff that will change American History.  Because make no mistake about it, this is the kind of invention that our forefathers built this country on.  Just pure, unadulterated, slightly arrogant, American innovation.  The Beer Robot will one day undoubtedly be spoken about in the same light as Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin, or Henry Ford's invention of the assembly line and the Ford Model T.  Yea, its that big of a deal.

Don't believe me? Or can't watch at work? Let's take a look at the features:

1.  It has an air cannon, freaking awesome.

2. All beer tosses are broadcast to Twitter, for those of you who like "checking into places" this is right up your alley.

3. Controlled by your Iphone...I personally would have chosen a droid, but I'm sure that app will show up eventually, either way, you no longer have to get up or beg your lady friend to retrieve you a beer, its all at your finger tips now.

4. Offers a selection of beers that would make any non-beer snob proud (classic inclusion of PBR, this momentous occasion wouldn't be complete without the Blue Ribbon Winner). 

5. The machine has the classic vending machine sound when dropping the beer. Seemingly not that big of a deal, but definitely creates a Pavlov's Dog Type response from this blogger. 

6.  Web Cam view allows you to aim fridge before firing - Fan-fucking-tastic.  Up til this point I was afraid this was going to be one of those gimmicky things where I had to be sitting in a particular seat for this to work, thus defeating the whole purpose.  Nope, this guy thought of everything.  

7. Guy caught the cannon fired beer while maintaining video documentation, bravo sir, bravo.  

When do these puppy's go on sale?

Man Accidentally Shoots Wife During Standard Gun to the Head Sex Act

(CNN) -- Arthur Sedille was up-front with police: He would often put a gun to his wife's head during fantasy sex play at their Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, home. But Sedille said he didn't know the gun was loaded when he pressed it to his wife's head and pulled the handgun's slide back during sex on the night of December 21. Now Sedille, 23, is facing the possibility of a murder charge in Canadian County, Oklahoma, in the death of his wife, 50-year-old Rebecca Sedille -- who died when the handgun went off in their bedroom.

Ahh, the old accident during a sex act defense, usually reserved for asphyxiation or a heart attack, but that's beside the point.  Dude, no one is going to buy this.  The jury is going to take one look at the facts of the case and convict your ass. 

They're going to see a 23 year old kid who in the haze of cougar sex realized that he'd married a woman 27 years older than him.  Everything was probably fine during the honeymoon faze but after a while everything just fizzled out.  Bored with the standard run of the mill unloaded gun to the head sex, feeling trapped and wanting something different in a passionless marriage you foolishly chose the most convenient escape, you loaded the gun.  No one is going to buy that it was loaded by accident, that was as premeditated of an act as they come.  

And I'm sure your defense to that is the "look at me I'm ugly, who else am I going to find to marry me" defense but that's bullshit.  Even if you do look like The Bearded Lady from the Circus there are always plenty of uggo's closer in age to you, someone who's sexual tendencies won't leave you bored and longing for more.   

You're going to be lucky to avoid the chair kid.

Indoor Soccer Wrap Up: A tie? That sucks.

Yep, regular season ended in a tie, which doesn't please me at all. I'll say it again, we're all adults, we can handle winning and losing.  I need a goddamn result. None of this tie crap, I need to know if we're better than you or not.  Also in a more real sense we needed a win to gain entrance into the winners bracket, but a las. 


All in all B8 (or what was left of us) played very well.  Playing so short handed we not only didn't have subs but had to recruit a replacement player I think a tie is more than we could have hoped for, especially given the early 2-0 deficit we faced. 


Using good ball movement and stalling/slow down tactics due to exhaustion we plugged our way along to net a 3-3 draw.  Scoring was led by Super Sub replacement player Kate, who coincidentally is awarded the game ball for this week.  Though there were many chances, the scoring opps were routinely stopped by the other teams keeper, including a save on a penalty kick against Mazz.  Just our luck that the one week we're short handed we face a team with an actual goalie and not some shmuck who got stuck back there because he can't play anywhere else. 

Depsite missing out on the real playoffs, B8 will now take their talents to the losers bracket (yea its B league soccer, everyone gets a playoff game, its like Tee Ball in that regard) where presumably we'll run through all remaining teams in preparation for next session.  Nothing short of complete domination will be accepted.

See you all next week...Ross send out a damn team e-mail.

Southie Snow Storm Parking Story: A Boston Media Tradition

SOUTH BOSTON (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - It’s a battle every year in Southie after a big snow storm: people shovel out a parking space and then try to save it. South Boston residents do it after every storm. They mark their parking spaces after they shovel them out and claim them with chairs, cones, trash barrels and Christmas trees. Some save spots by not shoveling at all. Mayor Menino reminded parking spot savers earlier this week that lawn chairs or other items should be removed 48 hours after a storm. But not wanting to start a battle, the city now says it will only collect those items if a complaint is called in or when trash day rolls around.

Its finally here!  I was seriously getting nervous waiting for this story to make its first appearance of the year, but in the end the Boston news outlets just couldn't help themselves, and I'm glad. I wouldn't want to live in a world where Boston's 3 annual stories aren't reported on. What are those three you ask?  Why, I'll tell you!

First, in the Spring, there is the annual coverage of the Boston Red Sox equipment truck packing up and heading south to Florida for spring training.  I have no idea how this first became a news worthy story, presumably there were a few very slow spring news days way back when, but its become Boston's unofficial first day of Spring each year. 

The second arrives in the Fall, and it is Moving Day for all the Boston colleges.  Typically in the first week of September news crews rush out to take pictures of double parked cars, students carrying futons up stoops, and moving trucks illegally parked on sidewalks.  The hard hitting coverage occasionally touches on raw human emotions as overly saddened parents weep as they drop off their freshman kids for the first time, knowing that in the first two months in school that kid is going to do everything they could never get away with while living at home. 

And finally there is the Southie Snow Storm parking story (video below).  An annual collage of various unwanted house hold items cast out into the cold, but given new life and value as they defend peoples most valued real estate after a snow storm, their shoveled out parking spot. 

I'd say its a truly sad state of affairs that people have to save a spot they've just shoveled out.  I'd like to think people would have the decency not to steal a freshly shoveled spot someone else worked for.  But then again I'd be a hypocrite.  A few times during my street parking days I'd literally barrel out of my snowed in parking spot and move up two spots into a freshly abandoned clean spot.  Sure this led to uneasy stares from neighbors and a couple of notes draw into my car in the snow but my feeling is if you didn't take the time to drop a household plant or desk chair into the spot it obviously didn't mean that much to you.  Don't bitch at me for being resourceful. 

Post-storm parking spot wars waged in Southie: MyFoxBOSTON.com