Year of the Ox meet Son of the Surfing Doberman

Not trying to be racist, this is the first google image for "chinese new year ox dragon" since this post is about Chinese New Year, it's the year of the ox and dragons are factually awesome.

Let's review what Yahoo and Astrology.com think is going on with me horoscopically, since it's Chinese New Year time. I'm Year of the Dog,^* so I just need to click away at that, and let's see what they think:

"2009 will present the Dog with a number of challenges. Your patience will certainly be tested in more than one instance."
Already I don't like this, but I feel like that's general horoscope B.S. that you always see.

"You may not necessarily gain the notoriety you desire in your career, but certain advancement opportunities will surface throughout the year."
This is not something I wanted to hear. Also, are they talking about my current career or my dream one where I hit the big time, ghost-writing blogs for uninteresting celebrities?

"You will find comfort with your family and solidify bonds that are necessary for your well being."
OK, I still haven't heard anything about how much I'm going to get laid. BORING!!

"You may have issues juggling your family life with your work schedule, but you will make great strides in both areas by the end of the year."
What about my boning schedule? All I want to know is how much money will I make, how many times will I get laid, is anyone I care about going to die, and are the Yankees going to win the Series? That's it. As much as I'd like to know if the Wild Mountain Chicken will be back at Wendy's, I'd prefer that to remain a surprise.

"Dog Rating - 52% (5 favorable, 4 neutral and 3 unfavorable months)"
I don't have the slightest idea what this means. Also, can you tell me what my unfavorable months are going to be? I'd like to know, even if I don't know what that means.

"Dog Career - Your work will play a large role in the year of the Ox."
Interesting... a Chinese girl I work with just told me she was the year of the Ox, then we argued about what an Ox was exactly with both of us being wrong (it's just a draught bovine, oddly both more and less specific than we thought). I can't see how she could make or destroy me, so I'll need to keep looking.

"You may find yourself working long hours to achieve a promotion or to further your pursuits."
Also true: every other year

"Though you may only see minor results this year from your hard work, your ethics do not go unnoticed."
See Also: 2008, 2007, 2006... is this for people who are normally shitty at their jobs?

"Later in the year, you may be offered a step in the right direction, which will flourish sometime next year. Stay focused and be willing to listen to the advice of others and you should have a promising year with your work."
This must be about my celebrity faux-blogging, because all this stuff was more true of me LAST YEAR. I think I hate Chinese New Year.

"Dog Relationships"
Yeah, doggie style. Hot!

"Domestically, the Dog can achieve new levels in a relationship this year."
I'm sure what they mean is new levels of lady-pleasuring sexual ecstasy.

"People who know you think highly of you, as you are a well respected individual for your work ethics..."
Yes, I'm sure they will erect a great marble statue of me in the coming year. Finally, it's been a long time coming. Is this really part of relationships?

"... and your devotion to the ones you love."
Like a dog. I get it.

"Be open to communication, as you may, at times, be unwilling to change your views even when your partner has a valid point."
I may be stubborn or downright obstinate at times, but... ok, you're totally right on this one. Is this not true of everyone? I sometimes forget how reasonable people who aren't me can be.

"If you can work on this issue, then you will find your relations with family members and friends very gratifying this year."
Fuck anyone that disagrees with me. That's on the record now. That happened.

"Dog Health - Your strong work ethics leave you working long hours, sometimes denying the warning signs of the effects on your health."
Yeah, it's WORK that'll cause any health problems I might have. Certainly not any other lifestyle factors. You nailed this one. Bravo!

"Take the proper breaks and give yourself the time to recuperate from your busy work schedule or you may be out longer than you desire."
So... take more time off? I think I can do that. Does it count as time off when I spend it blogging?

"You are instinctively a very active person and exercise is not something that you need to remind yourself to do."
I love you Astrology.com partnership with Yahoo! Got it here first. I'm going to buy a segway tomorrow.

"Dog Wealth - Financially, you may not achieve the results you seek, but you are well on your way."
Fuck you.

"Keep your spending within your budget, even though there may be items that you desire to purchase to enrich your home."
Oh, now you've played your hand 'strolly (that's what I've been calling this article in my head the entire time). Clearly, you don't know me at all if you think this could possibly happen. I still have an extra Wii nunchuck that's still in the shrink-wrap. I once bought some rare artwork off eBay, paid the money, it never came and I never even tried to get my money back. I drink in Manhattan, REGULARLY. I once commissioned my father a custom oil painting of the Mona Lisa with his face painted over hers. This just isn't in the cards. Epic Fail. Also, isn't this more advise than a horoscope?

"The time will come to make the changes, just focus on the basics for now. There may be a change for the better towards the end of the year, so be patient and exercise care when it comes to spending."
Exercise care? I thought you said I didn't need to exercise? This makes me mad and want to buy Yankees season tickets.

OK, so that only took about 6 minutes to write, so let me look up my normal daily Libra horoscope for YESTERDAY to see how it did:

"Your big brain is helping you to figure out what needs to happen next and it could very well be that you're going to have to connect with someone on a new level in order to make progress."
WRONG!!!! All I did yesterday was watch 30 Rock in bed and wonder how my family would react if I quit my job and went to clown college. Wait... what if that is what needs to happen next? Do I need to connect on a new level with famed clown/instructor Barry Lubin? On a level other than stalker? Well... if I gave my two weeks notice today, I could start something else on February 10th... let's check my horoscope for then:

"Sometimes, following the rules is not the best way to get by. Make your own rules. "
Oh my sweet baby Jesus... it's like they looked right into my soul... and saw a Clown... a Clown that never cries when people on the internet beat him at Mario Kart.

^* for the record I consider this dog to be a giant Doberman riding a surfboard atop a tsunami with the ability to bark out adorable but lethally posonious mini-dragons at will. He has the spirit of a honorable samurai, and the sexual appetite of... well a normal doberman really, they're all pretty horny.

---

I'm planning on two rather lengthy volumes soon, as soon as I have time to really tear into them. One is a little more serious, about communication in the 21st century (but not in the way you think) and may even be split up into 2-parts, but the other one is what I'm hoping will be my pièce de résistance. It's about farts. Later bitches.

Barack me Amadeus

OK, I suppose it's my duty as a blog-owner to talk a little bit about what just happened. Of course, I'm not referring to the senses shattering mindfuck* that is the Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl, but the less surprising fact that we have a Commander-in-Chief with a Kenyan father. Yesterday was a historic day. Regardless of whatever else happens he will be one of the presidents that goes down with Madison, Kennedy, and the guys we see every day on our money as one of those leaders that even the kids that didn't go to college remember. Electing him was a profoundly good idea because he represents something that exists outside of himself and he is fully aware of this fact.

Whether you were pro- or anti-Democrat, you at least "get" why yesterday was a big day, and you can't be wholly against it. You get that people voted for an idea, you get that people looked at those "hope" posters and actually felt something. Everyone and their mother knew that the democratic party was going to win this election, it was inevitable. When the battle was Barack v. Hillary, we all knew that one way or another, revolutionary change was going to happen, that history would unfold. I think the reason that it had to be Barack is that in addition to his being of African descent and having a dark complexion, he is a man that is able to speak to us, he is a man that knows how to create an ideal. The spirit of this event was clear, the power of the event was felt by the masses, but we shouldn't just pat ourselves on the back, the job is not done, change needs to happen.

The problem with Barack Obama is that we all know the broad ideals he is meant to represent, but we're unclear of how specific policies will be leveraged to enact a better tomorrow for our republic. Outside of NCAA Football, we don't know his specific plans for anything, and oh, by the way, there's nothing he can really do about the NCAA without dicking over a ton of people. The biggest problem we have is the economy, that is the one thing that is going to impact us (and by us I mean people under 40) and our children the most in the long run. Right now we have a very large deficit. It was already incomprehensibly large, and now the only way to compare it is to say how much it's grown by factors of it's own former size since we're using the type of cartoonish numbers that you make up in kindergarten when estimating how many home runs you think Don Mattingly would retire with or how many men your floozy teacher had slept with. We have a serious problem in that no one thinks of this as a real thing. We're thinking of it the way you think of your student loans when you're buying a quarter from that kid you had that one class with junior year, but the thing is, eventually you're not going to be in school anymore, and guess what? You have to pay that money. The only way for us to magically pay this debt would be to circulate more money, thus devaluing every note of tender that we have. I don't think I need to explain why that's a bad idea. We've grown used to being the world's only economic super-power, but that's not a birthright, it can change. By my understanding of things, Obama is planning on ADDING to our national debt. No no no no no!!!! What we have to do (and no one wants to hear this) is increase taxes and decrease government spending. I know, no Democrat wants budget cuts and no Republican wants to pay more taxes, but unfortunately there isn't a virtuous unicorn of justice that's going to magically make our debt go away... what we're doing now is akin to living off a credit card without looking for a job or having any way to pay the bill when it comes, and personally I'd rather not see our nation in bankruptcy court.

I'm not even going to get into all this bailout stuff in too much detail, because I really don't know Obama's stance on it, and I think both situations are totally different. With banking we basically had no choice, the damage was already done and we needed to put the genie back in the bottle. Clearly, changes need to be made so that this cannot happen again and that people are held legally and financially responsible for their actions. The issue of nationalizing banking is an interesting option, but between that and talk about nationalized health-care** we'd be in serious jeopardy of looking socialist, something that traditionally been thought of as a dirty word in this country. In Detroit, I personally think we should not have given the bailout. American cars, by and large, suck; I'm sure there are a few individual models that are cool, but for the most part NO MAJOR INNOVATION in that sector has come from our country. Some people currently pay more to buy an American car, for no other reason than to buy American. WHY? When you buy wine, do you make sure it's always from America rather than France, Spain, or Italy? Do people honestly think that American cars are better even though every conceivable metric says otherwise? I say don't bail them out and the market will work itself out, survival of the fittest. I understand a lot of workers would potentially get laid off, and of course I sympathize, but automotive workers would see incresed openings at plants for foreign companies, which would expand to meet the demand, and quite frankly I would hope they would be retiring off at some point. I have no sympathy for any young man or woman that, in this day and age, gets into an occupation with the full understanding that they could be replaced by a machine at some point in the future. I also understand that some of these foreign companies may pay less as the demand curves for work are changing. Again, this is a normal fluctuation that is simply righting the fact that maybe, just maybe, these workers were making too much money to begin with, and may have been contributing to the lack of quality and innovation in American machines.

Logically, the next place to go from automotive workers is to energy. Quite simply, the regulations we have in place are insulting. The environment is another REAL problem (just like the economy) that needs to be dealt with. Trust me, I know as well as anyone that it's always easier to push back real things you don't want to deal with, but I hope everyone that's ever gone through a breakup knows: the quicker you can get it over with, the sooner the healing can begin and the sooner you can go back to being carefree. We are killing our planet. To say that you don't believe in global warming is good and fine, I disagree, but there's no way you can say that humanity is currently having a POSITIVE impact on things. In addition, there are limits to the amount of consumable fossil fuels we have available and we are in the unfortunate position of buying large quantities of it from nations that we would otherwise prefer not to have us over a barrel (pun fully intended), so why not make a change now? Why don't we demand that the auto industry have us an alternate way to power cars by a certain date? These are the things that can fuel innovation, this can be how Detroit can come back. If we saw (just a for instance, I have no idea the feasibility of this) we said that all new cars needed to be 100% electric by 2014, do you think we couldn't make that happen? Can't we at least try? Also, let's stop burning so much coal, it's totally gross. Nuclear power is not evil, and there are so many reusable power sources that haven't been tapped nearly as much as they used to be. Personally, I don't want to use my iPod or my TV less, so we need a way to make power more plentiful. I know it seems ridiculous to think of a world where all homes have their heating/air conditioning powered by solar panels, but not so long ago the paperless office seemed like a pipe dream, in college I even did a presentation about it. How many things have you printed at work this week? Do you think the same person doing your job 20 or even 10 years ago used more or less paper? Also, who do you think did their job more efficiently? All I'm saying is, we NEED to change, otherwise we will replenish the fossil fuels the same way they were created the first time... by having a mass extinction because of an ice age.

Iraq... that is one topic I'm not touching with a ten foot pole.***

Finally, I have one suggestion for Mr. Obama. Think about legalization. Don't ask legalization of what, you all know what I'm talking about. Personally, I don't really partake of the stuff that much, so don't think I'm some stoner with an agenda. The reason I'm suggesting that is that it's already clear that Obama is going to earn the title of "cool president," but if he wants to stand with the historically cool presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Kennedy, and Clinton, he's going to need to do something historically cool, and what would be cooler than the president that came out as pro-legalization? Also, there are other facts such as cigarettes and alcohol are similar and legal, everyone in the country is able to get marijuana (there, I said it) more or less consequence-free anytime they want it, and we would be able to regulate it in a way so that it would actually be harder for minors to get it. PLUS, it would be cheaper, all the supplemental crime would go away, and we could tax the living shit out of it (in case you're coming in late, we could use the money).

To close, I'd like to reiterate that we have a good thing here, we've realized we need to make the change. We've taken the first step, but there are still 11 more that we need to go through with. On the inauguration day my friend Meagan told me "we should have set our DVRs" and I agreed. Then she said, "there's always in 4 more years" to which I replied "No, not like this. There will never been an inauguration like this ever again. At least, I hope not." That's because I hope that we never need change like this again, I hope we're never in a hole like this again. We cannot forget the message, we cannot forget why this was important. This was not about an issue of race, this was about change, this was about believing that it's possible to go to sleep at night and wake up in a better world the next day, and that can happen every night if you want it enough. The only way we'll have an inauguration that we'll remember this much, have an event that we all agree is packed with this much meaning, would be if a giant sea monster attacked us and we either elect a president that vows to personally fight it with his (or her) bare hands, or we just decide to elect it president because nothing says more about hope than electing a sea monster. Did that sound racist? I should have stopped with the better tomorrow thing. Ignore these last few sentences.

* I love that spell check wants me to change that to "mind fuck," the little red squiggly reminds me of freedom

** (which I'm also against, but not for the reasons you'd think, I may get into that at a later time if and when talks about that become a little more serious)

*** and by topic I mean vagina, and by Iraq I mean (some random girl's name) from accounting.

PostScript: I now realize that the Daily Show had a segment with a similar title to the name of this post. Sorry, I swear I came up with it independently and it's too late for me to come up with another pun now.

Just sharing a link...

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Pittsburgh-mayor-Luke-Ravenstahl-is-now-Luke-Ste?urn=nfl,134346

I liked reading this. A lot of people don't understand why I love sports so much, but this really encapsulates everything I love about it. Everything that's right about sports. It's something so fleeting and worthless, yet can be so whimsical and transcendent at the same time. This article shows me that sports are worth investing in, that they're important (even though by their nature they're so unimportant). Luke Ravenstahl understands this.

Baby Aardvark Nude Pic

Look at this. This thing is so cute that this picture could make stalin's ghost want to make a snowman just so I have someone to hug. I just wanted to share that after all the negativity I unleashed a few days ago.

BTW, it's a baby aardvark, or as they call them in australia a baby clawed kangaroo rat pig.

I Don't Even Enjoy Watching Football

OK, I understand that the Giants won the Super Bowl last year in the most dramatic of fashions. That was the sports highlight of the decade for me, and I appreciate it greatly. I understand that as a result I am still in the Championship refractory grace period, so I really can't be too mad, but genetically I am mandated to complain, so I'm going to use this space to complain for a little bit, and then we will never speak of this again. Ever. After my fantasy football horrors, some of which I've written about in past entries, I needed the Giants... and they couldn't give me what I needed.

I feel like someone broke my heart. I found myself for the first hour or so just pacing in my apartment, completely unable to think about what to do with myself. Have you ever had a great relationship and then you just get dumped unexpectedly for no reason? That's never happened to me, but I'd imagine that's a pretty good analog for what I feel right now. What makes it worse is that the Eagles did not play that great a game (they were horrid in the first half) and the Giants moved away from all their strengths all year to play like a totally different team. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways:

1) John Carney: All-Pro Kicker - OK, let's just say I look past the second missed kick, conditions weren't great and it was pretty long, but how the sweet cinnamon fuck do you miss that first kick? I hate you John Carney. You know why no kickers make the hall or fame? This is why.

2) Eli Manning: Dolphin Fucker - Let me just say that I own an Eli Manning Jersey. There is an amazing story I tell about how I got it. It was October '07 and my roommates and I were cleaning up after a bitchin' Halloween party and watching some football. The Giants were playing the Dolphins in London and while it wasn't a terrifically played game the Giants were victorious and my roommate Pete and I started having a feeling that it was possible something special was going to happen this year. So I went online and ordered an Eli Manning jersey off an eBay vendor. I paid, they shipped it, and I waited... and waited... and waited. A month passed and still no Jersey. I contacted the seller, they assured me that it had shipped and that I just needed to be patient. More weeks passed and still nothing, I contacted the seller again and he arranged for me to get a refund. Whatever, it was forgotten as the Big Blue Wrecking Crew went on to make the playoffs and history. The Super Bowl came, Eli made the Great Escape, David Tyree make the Helmet Catch, and Pete and I broke our couch celebrating. The next day a package came in the mail... it was my M.I.A. Eli Manning jersey that apparently had gone through an amazing journey of it's own over those three plus months. I considered it an omen of greatness, a sign of change in the air, that Eli was the quarterback that I would cherish for the next decade. Today I ripped off that Jersey, threw it on the floor and have no intention of picking it up anytime soon. I was debating throwing it away or burning it, but that would show more emotion than I feel he's worth right now. I simply don't care enough about him to pick the jersey off the ground.

3) Third Down is Pretty Important - WTF was going up with the Giants D in the second half? I feel like they were totally unable to make any 3rd down stops. Their D was a totally juggernaut and then just let McFagg (zing!) do whatever he wanted on third down. I understand later in the game when Eli couldn't keep his squad on the field that they might have gassed out, but why at the start of the second half?

4) Illegal Blocks in the Back - doesn't that sound like the name of a movie about prison rape? This made me irate and gave me very bad feelings about the Giants even early in the game. The big difference between previous Giants teams and the one we've seen from Halloween of last year until this week was that they were extremely disciplined and didn't commit many penalties. Penalty yard differential has been one of their strongest points. So what do they do this week? They just say "fuck it" and commit retarded penalties at every possible opportunity.

5) The Freaking Challenge - What was the point of that? No one on planet earth thought that challenge would result in a Giants' first down, so what's the point? Did Coughlin decide that his strategy wasn't working so he'd take a page out of Andy Reid's book and just make a retarded challenge? Seriously, this was like me busting my ass at work all year and then on the day of my annual review deciding to call in sick with a case of Werewolf.

6) 4th & Inches - OK, Brandon Jacobs is one of the most physically intimidating running backs in the history of the game. He could give an angry look on 4th & inches and they would move the sticks. If he were running after me down a dark alley I would just drop my pants and hope he'd be gentle. So what do they do? They run a QB Sneak with the Dolphin Fucker. My jaw dropped and my testicles leaped back inside my body. Idiotic. That was the end of the game, I just saw red for the remainder.

That's it, I'm done. Football is over for me, and I'm looking forward to Mark Texiera, Inglorious Bastards, Jessica Biel playing a stripper in a major motion picture, and sampling the Angry Whopper, which I'm intrigued with mostly because it's so-awesome-it-must-have-come-from-Japan name.

Can we talk burgers for a moment here?

You know that commercial where they take the people that have never had a burger before and get them to try both a Whopper and a Big Mac as a true blind taste test? What kind of bullshit is that? First off, I don't buy for a fucking second that someone who has never had a burger before would take one bite and then make a decision; they would immediately eat both burgers and just say “oh my fucking lord, that was good,” change into a clean pair of underwear and ask for more. Also, what is this supposed to prove? Isn't the very premise that they need to go to the far reaches of the earth to find someone that hasn't had a Big Mac and a Whopper before absurd? Because what you're saying (as Burger King) is “I know that you've already had both sandwiches and have already made up your mind on them, but we'd still like to prove that our sandwich is better, even if you disagree”. Is that going to make anyone want to get a Whopper more? I feel like everyone already has a preference between BK and McDonald's and they have a strength about this. Personally, I prefer McD's a little bit, but would go to whichever place was more convenient; my mother LOVES BK but lives right near a McD's and as such goes there (literally) every day; I have one friend that GREATLY prefers one fast food place and is willing to drive 30 minutes out of his way to get what he wants: the point is, EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS WHICH (they think) IS BETTER!!!!

Also, what the fuck is "Toyoyathon of Toyatathons" supposed to mean? I should start watching sports of the DV-R so I can FF through the commercials, they're all retarded (except for the ones with Peyton Manning, which are consistently excellent).

My Shaving Woes and the Best of 2008

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