Beware incoherent political rant below.

I know, I know... don't talk about politics.  I have resisted the urge to discuss my feelings towards politicians and the political process on this blog, but hearing the following quote from Barack Obama, original told to me by Jonathon Burns made me crazy.

“If I am sitting pretty, and you’ve got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can’t — what’s the big deal for me to say, ‘I’m going to pay a little bit more.’ That is neighborliness.”

One issue I care about is the money I earn, and some that know me would think it is the only issue that matters to me.  Well that money I earn allows me to live the life, I want to.  

There are problems I have with the quote above.

1. The quote suggests that it is my civic or neighborly,  (potentially American), duty to earn money to build wealth in order to give part of it to other people that work hard too.
2. Since when does paying taxes mean that hard working waitresses will actually see the money.  To choose the other side to that I believe the money will go to the dirty politicians (of all parties), and I believe no politician is immune.  So maybe Obama is suggesting his LARGER federal government needs more money for inept and poorly run government organization such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (Yes, I understand that prior to my money bailing them out they were partially private).
3. Some of that extra money will go to Americans, but what percentage of those Americans deserve it.  Since when does being American mean you deserve anything.  Most of that money will most likely go to those that don't want jobs.  Why does one need a job when the government will guarantee that every American has a right to a cellular phone, a home apparently, and who knows what else.

I wonder a couple of things, how does Barack Obama tip?  I hope for his sake that he is dropping a cool G to each of his servers, which by the way Obama, server is the politically correct job title.  Undoubtedly he probably uses his campaign contributions rather than touching his own money.  He like every other member of the US Congress gets paid far more than they should based on their approval rating, but why should they care, since they get to give themselves raises.  Our American government is out of control.  Power needs to be returned to local governments. 

In closing, I would like to apologize for the rants above.  I just can't stand our current political situation.  If most Americans weren't educated by the government, then maybe they would realize how bad the current American government is.  I know this is still the greatest country, but change in this country is slow, so what am I worried about.  Well it seems that both Democrats and Republicans are hell bent on seizing as much power and hard-working American money as possible.  Oh wait... they just want to take money from the wealthy, because they have proven that they are not hard-working.  However, if they want to take money from wealthy Americans that are not hard-working, then they should start raising taxes on just the politicians of the Federal Government rather than giving themselves raises.

Fairtax.org

Doche

It's time for a Pep Talk...

And who better to give a rousing Pep Talk than the King of Pep Talks, Lou Holtz.  I nearly forgot how awesome it was to hear the aging coach of Notre Dame fame, give a Pep Talk to the team that was destine to lose.

Sure some would say that these Pep Talks were curses, and only jinxed the teams that received them.  I however believe that it was only a curse if spittle did not hit the camera lens, and since we all know Lou has some range, then it was only a 50-50 shot that the Pep Talk was a curse rather than a blessing.  The beauty of the talk was trying to decipher what Lou was saying.  I will say that the best thing about the Pep Talks were that I was not in the front row.  I did feel bad for the camera man, but then I remembered they were probably zoomed in.

I am hoping that Lou never gives a Pep Talk to the teams I am rooting for.  I have heard that there is a Lou Holtz Pep Talk drinking game.  It won't be this first weekend of College Football, but I think I will have to at least attempt to play the game one Saturday this 2008 season.  

Who's in?  Which is your favorite Pep Talk?  Mine was the Notre Dame Pep Talk for the Navy vs. Notre Dame game of 2007.

I'm pretty, awesome.

Doche

Comcast finally offers GED training to all employees, because they need it.

So, I am a software engineer, and overall avid user of the internet (cough,cough, for porn). I also happen to be training for my second career as couch potato, which means there is a lot of TV watching done in my apartment. Anyway, I come home Monday 8/4 to discover that both the internet and the cable television were not coming through. What to do?...

I call COMCAST (I hate them), and they ask if there were any big storms that would have knocked out the cable. I respond promptly, "NO!". They then say that there may be network outages in my area. I say, "Fine.". They then tell me, "[They] are going to send data to my cable box, and it should be up in the next 15 minutes, so just check again then.". Phone call over.

I wait all of 5 minutes and call again, because I'm pretty sure that is not the issue. I go through the same song and dance with the next COMCAST rep. I then explain what I think the problem is:

The old Comcast account was in my brother's name and was scheduled to be cancelled on the 4th of August. My new roomie, Adam Brown of Green Light Central fame, scheduled the new Comcast account to be setup on the 1st of August. The new account was setup and working fine until monday the 4th of August... the exact day that my brother's account was to be cancelled.

Finally I posed the question, "Is it possible that due to the scheduled cancellation, that all of the services were cut off for this address, despite an account still being active on the address?". The COMCAST rep replied, "No, that would not happen.".....What? You expect me to believe that flat out lie. Like that COMCAST rep had any idea. His resolution was to schedule an appointment for the 8th of August for them to come fix the issue, so for almost 4-5 days, I, the internet and television loving individual, will be without.

I hate you COMCAST, because your customer service is crap.

Simple Blog

Go check out Jonathon's blog about Tuesday night.  Watch it or Die!  I got that from Puffy Daddy.  He loves either doing something or dying, like "Vote or Die".

Puff Daddy is lame, successful, but lame.  Gosh, I'm such a hater.

Later people.

I'm pretty, awesome.

The King vs. King 3000

By the photo to the left, you could probably imagine the subject of this post.  That's right everyone this one is about the King.

I love this ad campaign, which probably says a lot about my sense of humor that I should discuss with a psychiatric professional.  I don't really know why, but the character of the King makes me laugh no matter what he is doing.  I think it may be the permanent expression on his face.  I enjoy the creepy situations that he is put in, whether he's outside of your window in the morning looking in, or if he's actually in your bedroom with a delectable breakfast.  He is a creepy guy, but I find it extremely funny.  I also enjoyed the Big Bucking Chicken, but he must have fallen out of favor with the ad gurus.  I liked that if you heard the jingle or song you could never tell if the word "bucking" was actually a similarly spelled word starting with an "f".  I miss that bucking chicken.

Now, they have been running these futuristic BK Lounge (Dane Cook reference) commercials.  I am disappointed and actually creeped out by the futuristic King, who is known as King 3000.  I mean he is still creepy, but now the King is a robot, which creeps me out more.  King 3000 floats around providing BK food stuffs.  I wish they would stick with the King.  I also was really digging the moms in the minivan who would try to take the King out.  

Anyway, which King do you prefer? Or which do you find creepier/funnier?

Peace up, A-town down,

Doche 

It's Over!!!

The ING Marathon and Half Marathon was today, and for those that did not know, I had been training for the half marathon since December. I had some late hiccups in the training what with being sick and some late nights / weekends at the office. I was kind of worried about what was going to happen, given that I didn't train properly towards the end. Well, I was pleasantly surprised that I even finished, but wait the results are in and they are below.

Bib	FName	LName	City	State	Age	Sex
15420	MCPHERSON	WHITE	ATLANTA	GA	28	M

ChipTime

ClockTime

Overall

SexPl

DivPl

AgeGrade

10K

1:48:17

1:58:36

1036

780

216

54.7%

50:43

I am ecstatic about these results and am perplexed as to how I was able to do this. Maybe it's the HGH. Anyway, if you don't believe me you can search for my bib number, 15420, at the Race Results website. The Chip Time above is the time it took me to run from the starting line to the finish line. If you do the math, that means that my average mile split was 8:17. I'm pretty sure that this means I never have to workout again. So to all those that have to be around me for awhile, I will be hanging my hat on this one that's for sure.

Oh, sorry for the light blogging, but I had been accumulating a list of blog entries in my head, which I promptly forgot. So if you remember what they were let me know.

Just one more hit, and then I'll pass it!

So it has been a while since I have been writing down my inane thoughts into the blog-o-sphere. Well since then I have not ignored the blog-o-sphere, for I have been cruising around checking out the blogs to the right as well as the ones that those blogs are linked to, and so on and so forth.

Now as I was cruising the blog-o-sphere, I kept thinking to myself that each of these blogs are getting ever so valuable hits from yours truly. ... See I use the old Google Analytics. Well I have set it up so that it emails me each week so that I can see how many hits my blog gets. I really just like to see where the hits come from which is a pretty cool feature. Someone in Australia checked out my blog. So far the most popular blog has been, ... (drum roll please) that's right Urinals II. Anyway I wanted to mention Google Analytics just to let my other blogging comrades enjoy knowing who is hitting them up. Just one more hit, baby!

Now this is a bit of an aside. As I was navigating the blog-o-sphere, I noticed that on Charlie's blog, one of her linked blogs was my blog. I thought that was extremely cool of her. So I will use this aside to tell you to go check out her blog. She has very funny blogs in general, which makes sense because well she is one of the few funny ladies I know. Anyway check it out, because she is cool and because I'm cool. Well at the very least she is cool.

Ants

Last night between my extended nap, in which I missed an important event, and going out, I thought I would capture some pictures of the new pets that have entered my life. The pictures are below, but not that good.

The ants are not house trained, and I haven't been able to teach them to role over, but we are working on it. I have to say though that I have really lucked out with these ants. I could have gotten fire ants or those gargantuan wood ants, but as luck would have it I got the benign sugar ant.


Where do my pets live while I am asleep or at work? They like the bathroom. You would think they would be in the kitchen since most things with sugar in them are in the kitchen, but no they are in my bathroom. There is nothing in my bathroom with sugar in it, I think, so maybe they like my sugar cologne, Azucar. Anyway if you have a new pet, whether by choice or not share.

Peace Up, A-town Down

Urinals and Toilets II

So begins the second and final part of the urinal and toilet discussion. Once again, this may be a little explicit.

We left off by discussing the pee pool that for some reason forms beneath urinals. The next issue that I have with the work urinals, and any urinal for that matter, is the often found lone pube. The pubic hair in general is foul, but it becomes exponentially gross when the hair has made the venture to the lip of the urinal. I actually understand that hair no matter where it is on your body is going to fall out. For the pubic hair, it would then make sense that it make its trip to the edge of the urinal at that particular time of the person's day.

SO...you must be thinking, what makes the pubic hair so grotesque? Well for me it makes it gross, because the pubic hair is typically about 2 inches long. That's right the length of the hair is what bothers me. It bothers me immensely that men, and particularly older men, do not at the very least trim the nether regions. Man or woman there is nothing sexy or good about pubes that combined could stretch a full mile. So if you are reading this and you can wrap any of your pubic hairs around your pinkie, then you need to trim it up at least. Don't tell me about it though, because I don't want to hear about your disgusting pubous. If people would trim it up down where the sun doesn't shine, then at the very least the adventurous pubic hair will be of a proper length.

So I say no more long woolly sweater pubes, for everyone. Most women have been practicing this for a long time, and it is about time that men young and old all get on board. Time to trim it up fellas.

Peace Up, A-town Down.

Urinals and Toilets

Okay, so I need to put out a disclaimer about this post.

If the discussion of urinals of genitalia bother you, then please do not read this or the future post.

Let's begin....I have been using urinals for about 20 years or so, giving a few years to actually get tall enough to use the urinal, and I have used toilets for about 25 years. The toilets and urinals have always been hit or miss as far as cleanliness.

Now, some of these dirty pissers and crappers are expected, because of their location. Those located in bars are, of course, bound to be real gems, however those that one finds at work should be close pristine.

Taking this into account, there are two distinct issues that I have had with the urinals at work. First why is there so much "spillage" that can be found almost directly below the urinal. The urinal is obviously not leaking, so you guessed it some of the urine has hit the floor. I believe there are two potential causes, poor urinal design or some people piss on the floor. The first cause alleviates the blame from the pee-er and places it squarely on the urinal designer. I don't really believe that this is the cause. I do think that the second cause is the root, and it occurs, hopefully by accident, because there is a rush to either begin or to finish peeing. I am not sure that I can be "holier than thou" on this one, but as a gentleman, I will make the effort to be more careful when entering and exiting the firing range to prevent accidental "spillage". I hope that other men can do the same. If people are deliberately peeing on the floor, then we will need to schedule a meeting on how to use a urinal properly, which might be reasonable for my company, since we have a sign next to the urinals that tells us not to put paper in them. We might want to put up the sign about not peeing on the floor.

I will get to the second cause for Urinal frustration in the next blog, in the meantime take this little nugget with you and start practicing proper urinal technique.

Later

Hit the Restart button, Man!

Like the Nintendo Entertainment System of old, I have been told by my soon to be ex-roomie, J. Burns, that I need to hit the restart button on this blog. Our tenure as roomies is coming to an end in less than a week as he will be getting ready to start his life with his special lady friend, Amanda, this summer. SO... I will try and add things to this blog more often.

Going forward (good business phrase), I'm pretty sure there will be just little tidbits from the various things I participate in and maybe even some hug 'em out session stuff. Who knows?

I found something pretty cool tonight, and think that everyone should send one to their friends.

Peyton Pep Talks

Finals are over!

Finals ended Friday around 3pm, since then I have hadd a lot of alcohol and slept for well over twenty hours. I hate school. It looks like the worst grade situation will be a B and two Cs, which means that for the spring I will have to get two As and a B. Hopefully I will be able to get back to a normal life of working out and eating right.

I still need to get a digital camera, but maybe my family will be able to provide one.

Ticket sales for the World Cup entered its 3rd and final sales phase. I still need to get tickets to the Stutgart game. I've looked at the games that I will be at and let's just say it's not all that exciting. I think one is Tunisia vs Angola(?) and Tunisia vs someone else. I'll still have fun though, and maybe the Stutgart game will be better since the Netherlands will be in that game.

I want to get out of Atlanta at some point this break, but I'm not sure that I will have the time to make a trip up the coast. I definitely need to call some people, since I haven't talked to them in a ton of months. Anyway I got nothing else for now, because it is early.

Peace Up, A-town Down

Cherry Poppin'

Yea I know. At this age, there are so few first times any more, but I found one blogging. The word sounds like a conglomeration of the sound made when yakking, and the word jogging. I have tried to avoid all of these things, but everyone has to puke at some point, and it's about time I started jogging. I'm not really sure how this will all look on the actual blog, but who knows.

I can't wait for the semester to end. I'm pretty sure that I can make it out of the semester with three Bs, but who knows it will really depend on the how good my finals are. I hate school, but I'm going to finish. Stupid Master's Degree.

Anyway, I'm sure there is more to talk about, yet I'm not sure I should share it with any of you. I do need to get a camera to take pictures though, so that I can embarass both myself and more importantly those unfortunate enough to hang around me.

Peace Up , A-town down.