I'm Legit Afraid of Creeping on Linkedin

So I've never really been into Linkedin, I've had a profile, I get random network requests that I accept, but I've never really visited the site since I signed up for it a few years back, until recently when I started getting notifications that "someone has viewed my profile." 

"Oh, really? That's kind of convenient," I naively thought. 

Because it's not convenient, at all. Who would ever creep on someone on here if the person you're creeping on is going to be alerted to said creeping!? WHO? Like here I am trying to get my stalk on with some senior managers in my company and it just clicked..."SHIT...if I can see who's creeping on me, they can see that I'm creeping on them..." I've never deleted cookies faster, in a futile attempt to erase my path of creepage. 

I'm pretty sure it was to no avail, but it begs the bigger question...What is the point of a social network if you can't creep in private? Every other week some group of people is all up in a huff about Facebook or Google invading your privacy because all that public information you chose to share with complete strangers is now, being shared with complete strangers, and yet no one is upset about this? I didn't agree to have my stalking victims made aware of the fact that I'm absolutely an internet peeping tom, that shit is outrageous and a HUGE violation of my privacy.  Look, these people volunteered their information, they're openly listing their resume, skills, and job history online. If they didn't want me checking that stuff out they shouldn't have put it out there. Instead they're allowed to use it like a Venus freaking fly trap,  just sucking in Linkedin Novices like me. Can't wait for that conversation in the hallway this week..."Oh, hey Chris, saw that you were perusing my credentials at 12:30 am last Monday." That's all I need, thanks a lot Linkedin.

5 Year Old Finds Condom on the Playground, Blows it Up Like A Balloon

LITTLETON, Colo. -- A 5-year-old girl is getting ready to undergo a battery of tests after she found a condom on her school playground and thought it was a balloon. The condom was found in wood chips on the playground at Acres Green Elementary School in Littleton on Thursday. "One of my daughter's friends brought it over to my daughter and gave it to her as a gift," the father told 7NEWS. "At that point, my daughter attempted to blow it up." "The school went out as soon as they found out about it and went through the playground and did find a few other items, condoms, out on the playground," said Randy Barber, spokesman for the Douglas County School District.

While I hope the little girl is fine and didn't pick up the Herp or anything (that'll be hard to explain to future suitors once she hits the dating age), I can't help but laugh at the part where school officials went out and combed the playground after the fact and realized there were more condoms, GASP!

Guys, this isn't anything new...I was in 2nd grade like, 20 years ago (holy shit does that make me feel old) and this was going on.  I actually remember it clear as day, one of those random memories that sticks with you for some reason. It's like I knew that some how that goofy looking balloon like thing would some day play an important role in my life. Anyway, we were all playing Hit Spread (A form of spread where, when a player bobbles the ball on the catch, instead of trying to outrace the ball back to the wall, your opponents whip the ball as hard as they can at your back, it was by far our favorite game), and there it was...it was gross looking. My friend Jeff, who always seemed to know about these kind of things (he was allowed to watch Sweet Valley High and Saved by the Bell so he knew the most about high school stuff in our group) identified it instantly and said "Looks like someone did it last night." Me, in my 8 year old innocence had no idea what he was talking about, I chuckled and said something like "yea, right" and then we went back to playing, but I distinctly remember having no clue what he meant...Was it a dinner utensil? Why would someone be eating dinner out back of our school at night? Did what? What did they do? I honestly couldn't figure it out, didn't click for a couple more years until we started having health classes, then it was like "ohhhhh, they weren't eating back there, they were fucking!" 

Anyway,  my point is, this is nothing new really. I think more to the point the school might just want to lecture kids on not sticking anything they or their friends find on the ground, into their mouth. Even if it were a balloon that would still be wicked gross.

The Pope Just Walking Around, Offending Everyone He Can.

Doesn't look evil at all...

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday urged infertile couples to shun artificial procreation, decrying such methods as a form of arrogance. Speaking at the end of a three-day Vatican conference on diagnosing and treating infertility, Benedict also reiterated church teaching that marriage is the only permissible place to conceive children. Matrimony “constitutes the only 'place' worthy of the call to existence of a new human being" he said. The pope pressed the church ban against artificial procreation, saying infertile couples should refrain from any method to try to conceive other than sex between husband and wife. "The human and Christian dignity of procreation, in fact, doesn’t consist in a 'product,' but in its link to the conjugal act, an expression of the love of the spouses of their union, not only biological but also spiritual," Benedict said.

The Pope is...kind of a jackass. And I know that's going to offend some people, but frankly, if you're not offended by what the Pope is walking around saying then just know that I don't value your opinion on this subject, at all. 

Why? Because by the pope's logic, two teenage kids starring on an MTV reality show about teenagers getting knocked up, who decide to do the "right thing" by hosting a shotgun marriage and profiting wildly as they sign away the television rights are more worthy of procreation than any same sex couples who may be infinitely more mature and responsible, or even married couples who, though actively trying to procreate, just can't, so they turn to science...

Really Mr. Pope? That baby, the one born into trailer park trash high school parents who'll be broke as shit once this country gets over the novelty of teenage parents, who was born by MISTAKE, is better off than a couple of committed and caring parents who are trying everything they can to create a baby? That's assinine. 

And by that logic we should just stop all vaccinations, stop medical treatments altogether actually, do away with modern food processing, and all live a disease infested life of starvation...whoever God so chooses will survive though, right Pope...

Or...Or, you could get your head out of your ass, advocate against teen pregnancy, and support programs which lead to decreased rates of underage preggo's, and applaud responsible adults for creating a nurturing family, regardless of how they did it.

But that's just me, maybe I just have a little less hatred in my heart than the Pope, who knew?

The American Pie Gang is Back, it's the American Reunion!

I honestly couldn't be happier...and not just because they're back, but because it looks like they nailed this one. I mean, they even brought Stiffler back from being actually half retarded in American Wedding to just being a slightly dumb party animal again (and yes I'm pretending that slew of straight to DVD American "Fill in the Blanks", in which Jim's dad mentored a whole new generation of pervs, never happened)...In other words all is right in the world...One contention though...if the producers really wanted to go for accuracy they shouldn't have paid for Tara Reids lipo/surgery that she definitely had. This is 10 years after high school, there's always a few bloated messes who's best days are behind them, Tara was tailor made for that role and they blew it. 

But all in all, count me in for this. It's been a long time coming but I honestly don't think they could have spaced it any better for my generation. We were high school'ers when they were, we were college kids returning back at the same time they were, and now, we're a bunch of late 20-somethings with Facebook feeds blowing up with marriage proposals and baby announcements...and that one friend or two who hasn't seemed to grow up, who you know everyone else is living vicariously through their timeline photos...so it looks like this movie couldn't be more on point. 

Friday Super Blog!

In honor of my miraculous return, from my death bed, all the way three feet over to my blogging throne, I give you, The Friday Super Blog. Here we go (Yes, you are being scammed. Yes these are all topics I meant to blog this week, except I was sick. Yes I will cry about it).

Thought this was fitting for my return to the office yesterday, particularly as I chose mexican for lunch, so this nifty venn-diagram was particularly on-point. Yes, I did just share that with you, lets keep right on rolling.

My Fox Boston - Parents are trading in traditional fairy tales, like Hansel and Gretel, and Jack and the Beanstalk, for more modern stories less to likely leave their children in tears. Almost half of mothers and fathers refuse to read Rumpelstiltskin or Rapunzel to their children because parents were worried about the kidnapping theme that appears in each tale.

Fucking kids these days, they're either going to grow up soft as hell or dead because an alchemist imp with a funny sounding name has locked them up in a dungeon to spin hay into gold for sweatshop wages. And if you have no idea what I'm referring to, then you obviously didn't get down with the Brothers Grimm as a child.

BOSTON -- Boston is poised to become one of the first cities in the nation to ban satellite dishes from marring neighborhoods, Newscenter 5 has learned. Next week the Boston City Council is expected to pass a resolution, which will be signed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino, that will require satellite companies to install dishes in locations that don’t affect the aesthetics of a neighborhood. City Councilor Sal Lamattina, who wrote the ordinance, called the dishes a "blight" on city neighborhoods. "All I want them to do is make every effort to place their satellite dishes anywhere but the façade of the building," Lamattina said.

That sound you hear? Sal Lamattina and Mayor Menino wheeling their hoards of cash from Comcast down to the bank. Crooks, plain and simple.  Don't worry about any of the important stuff going on around the city, or the nightly murders in Dorchester and Mattapan, the real blight is those damned satellite dishes, not the chalk outlines. Ridiculous.

 

Ground Hog day, huh? I'm guessing when you buy a sticker like that, instead of 6 more weeks of winter it was more like 6 more years before he did it again (BAZINGA!)

A couple more serious, but equally rant-y notes: 

CNN - They may dress better than average, but they usually don't invest that way: Last year 79% of large-cap fund managers trailed the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, says Morningstar -- the worst showing since 1997. 

Absolutely astounding. 79% of fund managers, despite their outrageous pay and hours of research did worse than if the average person just parked their cash in a single S&P fund and never thought about it again for the rest of the year.  Think about that. 4/5ths of the world's "best investment professionals," with all their advantages, their Bloomberg terminals and expensive haircuts,  couldn't out pick a blind monkey flinging feces at a page of Vanguard index funds. Good work fellas. 

CNN - Rather, I found some numbers buried deep in last month's Congressional Budget Office semi-annual update that predicted a far bigger cash flow deficit for the Social Security system than the system's trustees had predicted in their 2011 report, and tried to figure out what was going on...This deterioration—call it a total of about $300 billion for this year and the next four—will become obvious when the Social Security trustees release their annual update, probably in April...However, because of higher energy prices and other inflationary fallout touched off largely by Arab Spring, the adjustment was 3.6%. 

I touched on this once before, but this really got me going again today.  So all of a sudden higher gas prices are equivalent to nationwide inflation and merit a 3.6% raise, funded by me, when just about everyone else in the private sector will be lucky to get a 1-2% inflationary raise this year? Am I reading that right? Like gas prices aren't higher for everyone? Just everyone living off social security? BULLSHIT. First off, inflation has been essentially flat for the past year...Yea gas prices have gone up, last I checked that's not the only measure of our economy...In fact, managing to stave off inflation is about the only positive thing the clowns leading this economy have succeeded at lately.  But hey, old people vote, and if they need their raises for their cars they shouldn't be driving anymore anyway, hey, lets give it to them, am I right?

Fox News - An eighth-grader suspended after pranking a classmate with a bag of oregano following a lecture on the dangers of marijuana has a civil liberties group in his corner, but officials at his North Carolina school aren't backing down. The boy was booted from his school for 55 days for the stunt at Cuthbertson Middle School in Waxhaw, N.C. School officials cite the district's policy manual, which says a student can get a 10-day suspension for "possessing illegal or counterfeit drugs and "misuse of chemical/material (organic or otherwise) that causes or is purported to cause a hallucinogenic/mind altering effect." A longer suspension can be imposed if officials determine a student's conduct "demonstrates a willful violation" of school policies.

Am I missing something here? Has oregano made the jump from a fairly mundane domestic spice to a class D drug?  Like, how did we skip right past the standard 10 day suspension (which still would have been ridiculous) go right to the 55 day, your future is fucked, sentence. For a bag of flavor enhancing herbs? What's next, kids getting detention for PDA for doing that old sex motion with their fingers?

Allright, I'll be completely honest, I just wanted to post that .gif.  For some reason that old finger-sex motion that we all used to do in middle school popped into my head the other day and I just started laughing...It was like 11:30 at night and I broke out into hysterics. And now you can all enjoy as well. 

Happy Super Blog Everyone!

50 Things I Would Rather Be Doing Than Watching the 2011-2012 Celtics (As Well as a Piece Defending Danny Ainge)

I make that face alot when watching the Celtics play these days




Well, the day of reckoning has finally arrived for the guys in green and white. The proverbial “ three year window” that Danny Ainge said he could keep open at the beginning of the Big Three Era is, in my humble opinion, finally coming to a close. Now, despite the increasing popularity of second guessing/excoriating Danny Ainge as our GM, people should realize we got 4 years of strongly competing for a title when the Celtics, when back in 2003, were stuck in Salary Cap/Basketball HELL due to the impossible mess that dumbass…I mean former GM Chris Wallace left. Ainge got rid of Antoine Walker, an overpaid inefficient volume scorer, Mark Blount who possessed a personality so toxic reporters needed haz mat suits to even speak to him, and jettisoning Raef Lafrentz when it was apparent he was beyond worthless.

As far as I am concerned, Ainge has only missed on 2 significant draft picks in his time as GM, using a first round pick on Gerald Green and J.R Giddens. Green was somewhat defensible at the time, as taking high school kids was becoming more trendy and their #1 target, Danny Granger, had just come off the boards. Additionally, despite David Lee being picked 30th overall, there was no one else of significance in that draft. The Giddens pick hurt a good deal, because Mario Chalmers (hero of the Kansas Jayhawks title run that year) was available to shore up the revolving door we have had at back up point guard as well as DeAndre Jordan, which every fan of college basketball or the Celtics believed we were going to take to complement Kendrick Perkins.

Despite these two screw ups, Ainge at least has the balls to make things happen for this team. He’s not afraid to spend money or trade players for the right deal. Wallace, Pitino, and M.L Carr were HORRENDOUS at drafting, free agency, or making sensible trades. Hell, Wallace was LUCKY Pierce fell to the Celtics at the 10th pick in the 98 draft, because if he wasn’t there, word is we would have drafted *Keith Van (false: as CW pointed out to me, Van Horn was drafted a year prior to Pierce. From what I remember, Michael Doleac was who the C's were going to take if they didn't get Pierce. I could be making that up as well, whatever. Point is 90's front office didn't do much right.) I shudder to think of what would have happened if we didn’t dodge that bullet.
The point of the matter is this: Every GM in the NBA makes great moves and horrible ones, that’s the nature of dealing with professional sports. Some make nothing but terrible moves (Otis Smith for example) while others seemingly can’t miss (Sam Presti recently) But over time, every GM gets hot and cold, much as players do. Mitch Kupchak, apparently a genius for drafting Bynum and trade raping the idiotic Grizzlies for Pau Gasol, now has Metta World Peace, Steve Blake, and Luke Walton tying up $15 million in cap space, completely handicapping the Lakers at the tradeline. So whatever failings Danny may have had (The Kendrick Perkins trade sticks out like a sore thumb,) he’s also the man that turned a bottom 5 team into a champion in one season and that, I’ll forever be grateful to him.

Now to the fun part of the piece. Despite the fact I still watch every game of the Celtics season, it’s coming to feel like watching the Titanic right after the ship has smashed into the iceberg: a slow, tortuous sink to the bottom. Here are 50 things I’d rather do that would probably be less painful

1. Get a colonoscopy from Edward Scissor Hands
2. Watch an episode of Chloe and Kim take New York
3. Try to out eat Takeru Kobayashi
4. Lick a heated waffle iron
5. Watch the Fourth Kind again (I can’t stress how much this movie sucks)
6. Smash my face into a windshield so I can FINALLY call 1-800-54GIANT
7. Get into a fight with Bruce Banner
8. Play Chess against Spock
9. Listen to any of the nonsensical garbage spewing from the sound holes of the dumb broads on “The View”
10. Play “Guitar Hero: Avril Lavigne Edition”
11. Go to a modern art museum
12. Be the donkey in a “Pin the tail on the Donkey” Competition
13. Read anything written by Frederick Nietzsche
14. Go skinny dipping in the Atlantic Ocean right now.
15. Discuss politics with Michael Moore
16. Play a game of dodgeball with wrenches instead of balls
17. Wax all the hair off of my body
18. Have a private work out session with Richard Simmons
19. Talk religion with Rick Santorum
20. Work as Chucky Cheese as a child’s birthday party
21. Be a window washer for the Empire State building
22. Sled down Mount Everest
23. Eat anything on the menu at America’s source of E-coli, Denny’s
24. Hold in my puke from #23
25. Be a security guard at a heavy metal concert
26. Try to convince people Tom Cruise isn’t secretly gay
27. Get in a sword fight with Aragorn, son of Arathorn
28. Listen nothing to but Rihanna, Katy Perry, and Pitbull (god that would suck)
29. Get in a jello wrestling match with Hillary Clinton
30. Ride to the west coast on a plastic big wheel
31. Take a dump in a hot girls house and clog the toilet (ala Harry in Dumb and Dumber)
32. Survive on a diet of hot pockets, egg nog, and hungry man tv dinners
33. Wear a Lebron James Heat Jersey in downtown Cleveland
34. Pick up a chick at a Wal Mart
35. Do the laundry at a retirement home
36. Watch any member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour do standup
37. Write a dissertation defending the merits of “The Jersey Shore” and its social effect on modern day society
38. Challenge an Irishman to a drinking contest
39. Try to do more coke than Charlie Sheen
40. Only watch The Phantom Menace and The Clone Wars
41. Drive a mini-van as my primary method of transportation
42. Try to ride a REAL bull…in the wild
43. Listen to the story of how I was created
44. Use dial-up internet connection speed for a week
45. Fit John Goodman for assless leather chaps
46. Get some sort of piercing, not on the wiener though.
47. Try to argue that bowling is a sport
48. Attend a WNBA game wearing a team’s respective apparel
49. Eat a bag of puke flavored jelly beans only
50. Meet Ron Burgundy (This one is actually awesome, I want to do this very much)

Quick State of the Blog: I'm Not Dead Yet

Not quite anyway, but I definitely feel like death warmed over. The cause of this misery? A barely two year old baby. Yea, that's right a baby. Sometimes cute, sometimes cuddly, sometimes funny, always bio-hazardous. They're like walking, crawling, babbling weapons of mass destruction. 

It is a guaranteed fact that I'll be sick within 24 hours of being in closed quarters with a child under the age of 5. First off, kids are always sick, just to varying degrees but you'll never come across a toddler who doesn't have dangling boogers on a daily basis.  And secondly, you throw me, an adult who generally spends the majority of his time around  other adults capable of washing their hands, blowing their nose, and frowning upon their peers who choose to eat non-edible things they find on the ground, and you have a volatile combination. 

And that's exactly where we're at right now, day 3 of a dastardly head cold that so far neither of the 'qyls have been able to wrangle. It's been fantastic. It's not even the kind of cold where I can enjoy calling out of work, it's just misery. I can't even nap it off because for some reason this cold has come equipped with a vicious case of the snores, just waking myself up every 3 minutes, chopping down a forest with my breathing. And try finding a cold remedy that lists snoring on its symptoms list...there's no variant of tussin for that...It's gotten so bad that a few minutes ago, while completely wide awake and watching tv, I snored. That's right, I snored while wide awake and mostly coherrent...I've never even heard of that before, has me debating whether I should be on the phone with Mass General telling them to get their best team of Doc's down here to diagnose this brand new plague that I've attained. 

But anyway, just wanted to check in and let you all know that I haven't abandoned the blog, I'm just a bedridden adult whiner who's ran out of ginger ale and saltines and still acts like he's 7 whenever he gets a cold...except they apparently don't show Flipper and Gilligan's Island on TBS during the day anymore.

Preschooler's Lunch Confiscated for Not Being As Nutritious as Chicken Nuggets...

Mom outraged after packed turkey lunch called 'unhealthy', replaced with chicken nuggets: MyFoxBOSTON.com

(NewsCore) - A North Carolina preschooler was fed cafeteria chicken nuggets after a state employee decided that her homemade lunch was not nutritious enough, the Carolina Journal reported. The West Hoke Elementary School student's lunch box -- which contained a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice -- was inspected by a state agent in the girl's classroom and deemed not to meet the nutrition guidelines set by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), according to the report Tuesday.

Real talk, I would not make it as child these days. Too much beurocracy. From kindegarten thru 8th grade, little CW ate one of three things for lunch, a bologna sandwich, a roast beef sandwich, or PB & Fluff. As a side dish I had a chewy granola bar...And I was as happy and healthy as a pig in shit. 

But today? Shit, I probably would have been suspended, my parents would have probably been featured in the police notes of the local newspaper for child abuse for repeatedly packing me "non-nutritious" lunches, and I would have rebelled. Would probably be emo or something, just lashing out against the man and wearing black eye liner, I don't know.

This kid's lunch basically sounds more healthy than anything I've put together for myself in the last couple of years, and I'm an adult. Leave the kid alone...who swaps out a turkey sandwich and banana for chicken nuggets? Talk about hypocrisy. What, does this "state agent" get a cut of every $2.15 lunch they force students to buy? And what the hell is a state agent, for that matter? States all across the country are facing budget deficits and we have schools employing special agents to inspect 8 year old Tommy and Tammy's lunch boxes? Get the fuck out. That's the biggest waste of money I've ever heard of. 

This country is going straight to hell in a hand basket, little kids can't even eat the lunches their parents packed for them, jesus. I'm looking up flights to Australia right now, just going to start a whole new civilization of common sense down there.

New Scientific Study Basically Suggests Fat People More likely to be Senile

I assume this woman is already senile.

Boston.Com - If your doctor had a crystal ball that could predict whether you’d become senile in old age, would you want to know? Perhaps, if you could actually do something to prevent it. A growing body of research indicates that certain lifestyle factors may be associated with an increased or decreased risk of developing dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease or strokes...Three new studies released by the American Academy of Neurology this week have found some surprising factors:

1. Walking slowly

2. Excess calorie consumption.

3. Interrupted sleep.

So fat people, right? Or if you want to get technical, fat people who snore, but I'm pretty sure weight is a contributing factor to snoring anyway, so let's just simplify and say fat people.  Fat people have a greater chance of senility.  I just have this scenario in my head where the lead researcher of this study had this really simple presentation all set explaining how land monsters have a greater chance of senility than non-land monsters and the board at the American Academy of Neurology was like, "you really need to beat around the bush here, people don't like being told that their fatness may be debilitating." And that's ultimately how we ended up here, with a column that reads really nice and gentile, sparing everyone's feelings, instead of just coming out and saying; "if you'd like a greater chance of retaining your memories later in life maybe stop eating so much and move around a little bit more, it can't hurt."

Well if the scientists don't want to say it, I will: A recent study suggests Heffers are more likely to be senile later in life. If you'd like a greater chance of retaining your memories later in life maybe stop eating so much and move around a little bit more, it can't hurt."

Saving lives and cognitive abilities, that's just what we do here.