boon's drunken experience

Last night a girl walks up to me and offers to buy me a drink. My reply is a swift "no" (pointing to my already full glass). Why? because I'm an idiot I guess. Then she asks if she can buy me a shot. I said ok....After taking the shot I ask her where she's from. Her response: Orlando. Have I ever been to Orlando? No. Do I for some reason decide to go into detail on why Orlando is the worst city in Florida? Yes. Why? I have no clue. She decides to drop me and go somewhere else....Of course I don't blame her, I would have done the same. The question is why am I such an idiot? Maybe if I was sober I would have done things differently? I don't know....

There really isn't a point to this story, I just thought it was pretty funny looking back.

Biggest Legislation of Our Generation

Obama's Stimulus Plan Passes in House

Obama's proposed stimulus plan has officially passed in the House and is moving to the Senate on an expedited schedule. Some high level details are outlined in the following link:

Stimulus 101

This blog is short, but simply pointing out that the summary of the proposed stimulus package is worth a read (if you haven't already). Another thing is to point out that contrary to the claims to "reach across the isle" and run a bi-partisan government, the stimulus package received zero (READ: NONE) Republican votes. It was opposed by 11 Democrats to end up at a vote of 244 to 188. Fear not Boski, your socialist government has arrived!!!!

The two items in the stimulus package that I most disagree with (beside the $819b being spent, $1.2 trillion interest adjusted) are:

1) 6.2% of the infrastructure investment goes to computerizing health care records. IMO, America needs investments in BUSINESSES/MANUFACTURING that have LONG-TERM economic benefits. This also applies to the renewable energy investment as well: this better apply to PROVEN renewable energy that is SUSTAINABLE with LONG TERM RETURNS. I would approve of this type of investment in proven, efficient technology. I hope its not some super bogus energy technology that will turn out to be nothing except appealing to the hippie masses. I do approve of the majority of the money going to education, though.

2) Tax breaks for small companies and companies 'affected by the downturn.' Small companies employ small amounts of workers; not going to save the US. A majority of the companies included in the 'affected by downturn' were probably poorly managed to begin with (hi auto and banks). News flash: every company is affected. The good ones just manage it better. But I guess it makes sense to reward the companies who are performing the worst!!!!!

"Increase weekly unemployment benefits by $25, and provide incentives for states to expand unemployment coverage" falls along the same lines. Lets reward states for giving money away!

Thoughts?

P.S- Cara said it was straight for you to visit Boz. Cleared it last night. Just book the flight.

H-Town???

Not really much of a blog post, but I just happened to be bored and was looking at plane ticket prices and they are helllla loooow right now. Houston trip anyone?

Boski's Inauguration Experience

Well gang Boski is back from DC after living through Obama's presidential inauguration and what a trip it was. I'm not sure if I will ever do it again but I was glad I was there and got to experience it. This post may run long and I will try to do things in chronological order. We departed VA Beach around 5:05 am. I was expecting to make it as far as Richmond before we hit stand still traffic. Boy was I shocked. The roads were wide open. I think everyone feared traffic and so headed in super early. We were getting reports in that there was already a million peeps on the mall at like 8am. We had to park at RFK and so we did a juke and got on 301 from I-95. Man did that work, we rolled in at 9am when we were thinking around 10 or 1030. They had shuttle buses going from RFK to the mall and from what we saw it looked like the line was hella long so we (our own group as everyone was on their own) decided to walk. In our group was myself, hova, debs, kathy g, and our owner. The walk was about 2 miles, oh and let me touch on the weather....fucking cold. Around 28-30 degrees and windy. Boski had one of those headband ear warmer hat things, hova joked me on it, and left it in my car so I forced to wear my old school adidas beanine. Which probably did a better job but left my hair crazy. We walk in and decide to head over to union station to get a starbucks. All I could see were people. I've never seen so many people before in my life. We got our starbucks, and headed out.

Oh and let me tell you about a VIP we had on our bus, little Joey. We did an essay contest that people could enter (partnering with the Urban League) and random peeps could enter their essay and try to win a spot on our bus. Joey is in 4th grade, and hes really into history. Basically hes really nice but a dork. Where most 4th grade boys have sports players, cars, and girls on their walls in their room little Joey has a copy of the constitution, pictures of the white house, and president bobble head figures....and yes that is the truth. He got an article in the paper about he wanted to go so bad that he decided to enter the contest. He didn't win, but we had some extra seats and so as a good publicity stunt on our part gave him and his mom a seat on our bus. We got great press from it. Well Glen Nye (one of our representatives from our area) read the story in the paper he decided to steal Deb's thunder (she organized the giving of the seats on the bus to Joey) and gave him actual tickets to get into the seating area. But little Joey still wanted a ride up. Well let me tell you this kid was a dork, and I think his mom kept him sedated cause he seemed like he was on another planet. More on Joey in a few

Another thing that we saw everywhere was headcases trying to hustle. Obama T-shirts, hats, pins, buttons, pictures, DVDs, flags, 1 for 5$ 3 for $10. Guys had raps..."Obama Ts and DVDs". It was nuts. There were only a few protesters. Some guy was walking around with a big cross. Saying he was a Muslim or something. No KKK members or anything like that though. The security was always present but never oppressive. So we start walking and come up to one of the gates were people with tickets were trying to get in. They weren't letting them in. Our owner spotted one of the Kennedy's (not Ted) who couldn't even get in. Boski folded up his little map and was yelling "I've got a ticket". I then tried to get a "LET US IN" chant going but it didn't happen. We ended up getting close to the capital on one of the side streets and didn't even make it to the mall. We couldn't really see very well but the big thing was we could not hear anything. There were no speakers in our area. We actually watched it on a TV in a bar through a window (they had the tv on closed caption so we could read what he was saying and some guy had it broadcasting on his phone). If anyone lived in Kentucky you would see Boski on the news as one of their local reporters was doing a report right in front of me. When they started doing the 21 gun salute people thought they were bombing for a minute which I found funny. After it was said and done we went back to union station, got on the metro and ended up somewhere on Pennsylvania Ave. and had to wait 40 minutes to get into a El Rodeo type mexican. It was cool because they had Margaritas by the pitcher, which we got and they gave us a shot of Tequila on the house for me and Hova. Before we got there and when we got off the metro we probably saw someone die.

Me and Hova had our backs to the guy and were standing in the street when we heard a loud "THUD" and it felt like the ground moved. It turns out this old guy had just something like a heart attack or a seizure because he fell from the curb straight onto the street and was stiff as a board and then started having convulsions. There were officers right there and radioed in for help and people started yelling for a doctor and some guy ran over and then everyone started circling around him so we just left. Dude was not in good shape.

We then heard that their was mini riot at the purple gate (the color coded gates was the areas that ticket holders got in). This was the same gate that Boski tried to get the let us in chant going. The riot was due to people not being let in. We did get some good views of snipers on the buildings and "uniformed" secret service guys inspecting union station as on of the balls was going to be held there. We'd see motorcades of black suburnas with like 6 cop cars escorting them and we're like whos in that one? We walked back to the bus and left around 5pm getting home around 9-930 which was not bad at all.

All in all I'm glad I went to experience but I don't think its anything I'll ever do again. My feet still hurt (i'm going to write puma as those shoes did not do the trick). They really should hold it in the spring when its you know above freezing. Oh and little Joey didn't make it to his seat. We found out from his mom that the reason why all the gates for ticket holders had problems was because the metal detectors started malfunctioning and they didn't have any back up ones. Joey ended up getting into Congress by calling Glen Nye and watching it in his office which is pretty cool. I'm not sure if I got everything down. I'm still thawing out.

Do the Dew...

Thought I could make a lighter blog post after the last few heated ones. The idea for this blog came from work, as this entire morning I have listened to three co-workers have a literal 30-45 minute debate over what the best fast food chain was. They literally went through every menu to evaluate them, at one point pulling out a piece of paper to put rankings down for each menu item to get a total score for each. Intense and nub, I know. But I thought it would be interesting to see what others would rank, so I made a blog. Below I have my top 5, may edit it with more thought, but here it is for now.

1) Wendys:
Strenghts: All of the chicken sandwiches, pretty solid chili for fast food, best value menu, frostys
Weaknesses: Fries (ive always rated wendys fries the worst, but nowadays it really just depends on the day whether you get good fries or not)
Overall: Not much you can hate on Wendys for, the Spicy Chicken I think I would have to rate as the best individual fast food item, and they have a pretty solid selection of other stuff.

2) Arbys:
Strenghts: Roast Beef sandwiches, chicken cordon bleu, I've heard there sandwiches are real good, but have no experience myself, best honey mustard sauce
Weaknesses: Price
Overall: The roast beef sandwich may be #2 behind the Spicy for me. Doesn't quite have the depth wendys has, but still solid.

3) Taco Bell:
Strenghts: Price - Nacho Cheese Chalupas with no tomatoes
Weaknesses: No real weaknesses, just obviously limited to mexican
Overall: Could be debateable to be above arbys. As Im writing this Im starting to think Nacho Cheese Chalupa may be the #1 individual item on any menu

4) Chic Fil A
Strengths: Breakfast, Nuggets
Weaknesses: Poor Honey Mustard Sauce, Limited Selection, Grilled Chicken Sandwich
Overall: Chic Fil A has faded for me recently. The standard chicken sandwich is good, but I still prefer wendys I think, and their grilled chicken sandwich is majorly nub.

5) Just found out we are having a nub staff meeting real quick, Ill have to come back to this as I am still debating my 5th

Kaka turns down largest transfer in futbol history

For those that don't keep up with soccer that much I'll give you a bit of background. Manchester City was recently purchased by the Abu Dhabi group. Which that basically translates into they were bought by Dubai. Which means they have more money then they know what to do with. They broke the British transfer record this year when they signed Robinho for 32 million pounds. Which converts to $46.6 million US. Dude did it just for the money as he was being lured by Chelsea and after it was all said and done he had no idea what team he had signed for. What makes this even funnier is that Manchester City are in 15th spot (out of 20). So during the January transfer month they claimed they would make BIG signings. So they approached AC Milan's Kaka. They offered him a record setting 100 MILLION POUNDS! or $145,691,115 DOLLARS! Dude would make $364k a week....a WEEK! He said he wants to grow old at Milan. I mean from a soccer aspect I would much rather play for Milan, they are much better than Man City. But the question is what would you do? And what do you think about this? For the record the most expensive soccer transfer in history is....Zidane from Juventes to Real Madrid back in 2001 for 48 million pounds or $69 million dollars.

What is your favorite soccer formation?

Quick post before my next official post. After watching Liverpool play a 4-5-1 with FUCKING KUYT AS THE LONE STRIKER and almost vomiting for hours on end, I ended up thinking about how I don't like the massive number of teams who play 4-5-1's recently. Although it seemed much more prevalent last season, I still don't like watching the slow, non-offensive 4-5-1 teams that play now.

On that same note, what is your favorite soccer formation? I think if I coached a team, I would lean to a 4-4-2, but my favorite formation that I ever played in was the 3-5-2 with 2 holding midfielders. I typically think that holding/defending through the midfield is much more important than having the 4th defender.

Opinions/thoughts?

Happy About Lower Gas Prices? INC Increased Gas Taxes.

Panel Urges 50% Gas Tax Increase

Due to the economic recession and the decrease in overall gasoline usage, gas prices are at about a 5 year low currently with the USA national average at ~$1.65/gal. This has brought much needed relief to "middle-class" America who are facing increasing debt and decreasing job security. This also has provided a relief to American companies whose sales have been dropping off (due to the recession) because they no longer have huge shipping costs for both raw materials and shipping their product to customers. Although oil companies are still pretty high on people's "I SWEAR I'D KICK THAT CEO'S ASS IF I SAW HIM AT THIS BAR" list, it has at least lowered some of the hatred.

Of course things this good cannot last long. The linked article above describes the current lobbying of The National Commission on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing to increase gas taxes for funding purposes. Said commission states that "the current 18.4 cents a gallon gas tax and 24.4 cents a gallon diesel tax fail to raise enough to keep pace with the cost of road, bridge and transit programs." The recommendation is to increase the national gasoline tax by 10 cents a gallon and to raise the diesel tax by 12 to 15 cents a gallon. This means they want to increase the gasoline tax by 54%, which would raise the current tax to be 16.2% of the total gas cost ($1.65 average + additional 10 cent a gallon basis). Additionally, "the commission will recommend tying the fuel tax rates to inflation." This means that when inflation goes up therefore hiking up crude oil and gasoline prices up, the tax could increase even more.

Now backing up from the "I hate all taxes" stance, an increase of 10 cent a gallon really isn't too much of a deal breaker. I would actually be for this tax if the money would be used efficiently to increase the quality of roads and rail transportation (the future of the American economy IMO). The two things that WOULD majorly piss me off about this kind of a tax are 1) the government spends a ridiculous amount of money on the stupidest shit. I don't need to go into too much detail on the things I believe to be retarded; everyone has their list. Most people do agree that money is being spent in retarded places. How about we take some of that stupid money and re-allocate it to transportation (and other important things LIKE SCHOOLS). The second thing that would piss me off is, the people who improve the transportation systems in America are seriously idiots. How long did it take the Virginia DOT to finish the construction on I-64 west from Norfolk to Williamsburg? There is still construction going on here in Houston from the FIRST DAY I ARRIVED HERE IN 2005. AND TRUST ME IT ISN'T HARD STUFF. My feeling is that the state governments give the construction contracts to companies who do NOT deserve them. Most of them milk the government for more and more money while the people who approve these contracts get nice dinners and "gifts" from the head of said companies.

This means that you and I pay for "improving transportation" that could be paid for by smart government investing and improving the efficiency of construction. I don't necessarily blame the commission for wanting some money to compensate for the slowing economy. They definitely are not going to get it from the upcoming administration who is promising to cut taxes and is forced to bailout the increasing number of American companies. They have to turn to increasing the tax on the one thing we are all thankful that the price is finally going down for. This should concern all of us because this could be an increasing trend of increasing prices due to the recession (hello supply and demand). The worst example of this is the increasing cost of college tuition (which I hope to write about in the future). Do you think an additional 10 cent/gallon is a big deal or not much of anything?




Aside: this blog was more of a rant than anything revolutionary and was not really well written. I just wanted to get something down to increase the traffic of the blog (like Boski mentioned) and also get some of the small beef off my chest.

Also, cool website I found of historical gas prices when I was looking for how low the current gas prices are: http://www.massachusettsgasprices.com/retail_price_chart.aspx
Interesting to see how gas prices have tracked with crude prices.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Well its 2009!!!! The blog has been slow this past month so I'm hoping it picks up some pace this year. What I want to know is what is everyones resolution this year? Do you have any? If not what are you looking forward to? I always thought New Years Resolutions were bullshit. Why pick this day to quit smoking? Why pick this day to start to work out? Shouldn't you have stopped stuffing your face with Mc Donalds 3 years ago? Shouldn't have put down that cig back in middle school? The only thing interesting I can say about 2009 is that it will be (if we have one) my 10 year high school reunion. Whats Boski say on that??? Fuck 'em. I didn't like most of them while I was in high school, I don't see or talk to 99.9% of them now, so I don't really care where they are or what they are doing now in their lives. As you know my wife is a bit older than me and last year we went to her reunion, it was really like their 12th or 13th year out of high school but they never had a 10 for some reason. When I think of a high school reunion the only reference I had was Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, boy this thing was nothing like that. It was soo boring and small and drab. The first 2 drinks were free, that was good. Then I started stealing other peoples tickets to get more free ones. The only highlight was one of my wife's friends had this boyfriend F.O.B. Italy. Dude was sooo funny. He bitched for like 45 minutes about flip flops and how Americans can wear them and how uncomfortable they were. I just talked soccer to the guy although he said his main sport was mountain climbing....go figure?