s! the outlaw torn

holy crap! we did an interview with the awesome one, and suddenly two months are gone, and yet no posts are forthcoming. shame, because lots happened in the two months and yet, nothing. in no particular order..

• Spain finally held their nerve and won a World Cup.
• BP finally put a fucking cap on the gusher. No one knows if they’ve finally gotten to the bottom of this.
• The Outlaw Torn finally got hitched.
• Summer finally came, with a heatwave and a vengeance. Who knew the Northeast could hit the 100s.
• The Buffalo Sabres finally got to the playoffs again, and got KO’ed by a mediocre Boston outfit.

had one fantastic annual trip down to NOLA with family and friends in tow, and then was in DC for July 4th weekend which was awesome too. can i complain bitterly why there are no more Nando’s in the country apart from in DC?? it is good to see the South African giant make inroads here, and if they keep making their amazing chicken and sauces (and unlimited fro-yo!) they will definitely be an unmitigated hit!

have been on an astronomy trip since watching the Hubble 3D movie – am ruminating buying a space telescope after seeing how cool Vip’s is. the downside of that skywatching escapade was finding out that mosquitoes will not be dissuaded in the dark by any amount of bugspray and insect-proof sunscreen. if i do get a telescope i will limit myself to what i can see out of the living room window. shame none of the neighbors are ogle-able though. oh well.

finally got both mountain bikes fixed and roadworthy, so we’ve been cycling a lot in the evenings. unfortunately it’s not the best time to be out in the bushes since the bugs are coming in to roost, but if you cycle fast enough you get by. we’re really lucky that the Nashua River Rail Trail begins virtually a stone’s throw away from home. scenic views, peaceful surroundings, no car traffic, all make for idyllic biking.

ok so this blog has seen a shakeup in the last couple of months. dedicated and loyal readers are feeling betrayed and confused about the changes and lack of communication. you have no idea what’s going on, where we’re headed and there’s no one reasonable to talk to. “is this what it feels like to be a young republican under the current GOP leadership?” you wonder aloud..

the hitherto flamboyant author of this blog was recently interviewed in a frank, ‘state-of-the-union’ style pow-wow over a polystyrene foam cup of office cafeteria coffee, the stark reality of the dark steaming brew swirling in the morning chill..

so there you have it, the awesome one is hale, hearty and simmering mad it appears. we await further posts with trepidation.

the Kübler-Ross model (aka the five stages of grief) doesn’t seem to have any room in it for the stage that can only be described as “so what the fuck happens now, and where do i go from here? how am i supposed to go on continuing to do the same shit each and every fucking day?”

Having complained long and loud in the past regarding the death of grammar in contemporary society as perpetrated by the media, I am not going start again.

I will however vent my feelings on how the lack of clear pronunciation has widely propagated a lot of grammatical errors. Is it just sheer laziness, or lack of understanding how words string together? After all, language is a little more than the ability to sequentially put together grunts and sounds so as to convey some sort of meaning, ever so slightly.

What’s wrong with this statement:
If I knew it was wrong, I would of not done it.

I can bet that 3 out of 4 Americans will say that it seems perfectly fine. I would wager that if I showed this following sentence the same 3 of 4 would still think both sentences hold valid.

Once again, I blame the press – grammatical errors are dime a dozen in the printed media, while it appears to no longer be a prerequisite to have half a brain or an understanding of the English language to get a job on television or radio.

Of course, I don’t get how blogs like these and that Twitting fandango and user-generated content media like Wiki stopped being communication forms and actually became sources of information – I still have people in the graduate course that I’m doing in project management cite personal blogs as references. Aaargh!

I’m taking yet another one of those corporate management classes this semester, and I love the cheat sheet we were given for some commonly used acronyms.. enjoy!

BUPPIE – Black Urban Professional
DIMP – Double Income, Money Problems
DINK - Double Income, No Kids
DINKY - Double Income, No Kids Yet
FLY - Fun Loving Youth
GRAMPIE - Grown Active Moneyed People in Excellent State
GUPPIE - Gay Urban Professional
LIPS - Low Income, Parents Supporting
OINK - One Income, No Kids
OPF - One Parent Family
POSSLQ - Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters
SELPIE - Second Life People
SINBAD - Single Income, No Boyfriend, Abso¬lutely Desperate
SKIPPY - School Kid with Purchasing Power
VIP - Very Important Person
VIPI - Very Important Person Indeed
WASP - White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
WOOPIE - Well-Off Older Person
YUPPIE - Young Urban Professional

you just knew that every news item, blog post and other media interaction that picked up on this story would title it after the Van Halen song.. of course!

what news item? ok, lean in.. this has gotta be on the down low… you know how when you were in high school there was that teacher, the really young and pretty one, who either taught an obscure class or was a student counselor, something nondescript and you would do whatever it took to walk past her and make eye contact in the corridors or be in her class as many times in the day as possible, sometimes staying back after the class and making up fictional questions just so that you could talk to her?

so now that i got you going about that hot teacher that you had the hots for, what if i kicked up the hotness factor of the story by mentioning to you, what if along with that first hot teacher was also a second hot teacher at the school! double the pleasure, double the fun! aren’t you wishing you were back in high school now? how about we take these two teachers and put them together in an empty classroom? ooof, i can barely look straight now, forget about typing!

anyways, transplant our story to Brooklyn, NY and we have these two high school teachers.. while the rest of the school was watching a talent show in the auditorium, said teachers were displaying a completely different yet unique and highly-appreciated talent of their own in private in a classroom! extra.. extra.. read all about it!

what i find really strange is that they were busted by the janitor! that has gotta be a first! almost every school janitor i have met is some bananas short of a bunch, lift not quite going to the top floor, or has some other weird and wild eccentricity. and this one? noooo, this one had to be on the straight and narrow and turned them in, bah! then again, maybe he tried to join in the party and was spurned leading to this fiasco. nothing quite like a janitor scorned eh? of course, this would never have come to light had he not tattled.

ahh well, high school, what a great time.. and now, back to reality

this Cash-for-Clunkers program is pretty interesting, and stepping on the gas now. recently the program asked the government for more money as it was really catching on.

today i saw something though, some data released on the types of vehicles being traded in and what is being bought should not be a surprise to anyone..

every single one of the top ten traded in cars is an american-built car, for the most part SUVs and soccer mom wagons. now what does this tell you how highly people view these cars now, after they were all the rage a few years ago. i think it’s a sign that the boom is over and the recession has kicked in. at least it appears people are getting fiscally responsible now.

it was too good to last. i have no idea why it came as a surprise to me that i was not invincible. that in itself should tell you how surprised i was when the doctor handed me the report.

so now, in with portion control, and reading nutrition facts,

out with the steak, and sixpacks of beer,

here comes the elliptical, and the wine rack,

and there goes the gizzards, pepperoni and salami..

the gf and i just celebrated our third anniversary

we’re not breaking any longlasting records yet, but we’re getting there!

only that mother’s day was actually mother’s fortnight.

mom made the flight up from kenya for a fortnight – i’m not sure if she was trying to get away from dad, or he was glad to be away from her, but it apparently worked out both ways. i, of course, was glad to see her as we hadn’t met since early ’05 and i was getting quite tired of my limited repertoire of indian food.

one thing – as your parents get older, jet lag hits them harder. do not make the mistake of judging how they are doing by the first glance as they walk out in the Arrivals terminal lugging cartloads of stuff they think you might need after an eighteen hour trip. needless to say, even if you are worried how they look, do not vocalize what you feel.

this was her first trip out to the States, and she took it like a trooper. no amount of restaurants we took her to would faze her – she loved Mexican food, wasn’t thrilled with Japanese sashimi, piled it on at the Chinese buffet and polished off a whole plate of homestyle Italian pasta. we walked around in Boston in the Common, and walked the two miles of the Freedom Trail.

she was never a big one for sightseeing or experimenting, but if she felt any culture shock coming here she sure didn’t show it. most of my older colleagues at work thought she was ‘just daaahling’. she wasn’t impressed by the spring New England weather either, but who could blame her, neither am i.

anyways, by the end of the two weeks she did have the restless look in her eye, like she wanted to go back home, and back to dad, i guess! it was good to see her again, (.. cue nostalgia..) and definitely made me miss being back home.