Category Archives: Rant


Vatican II++ required

Totally off topic time… just how off topic? Well, I’m sitting in one of the local Starbucks again (third visit in 36 hours – a bit daft that) and I brought this trimester’s text book and I was just sitting down to work on my class plan (which I think needs much less work than I’ve planned on – a good thing) and it started raining. I know, what does that matter, right? Maybe it was the restless night of sleep following a bunch of good hours of laughing that did it… I doubt it’s the rain or the music I’m listening to… but I’ve recently realized that I’ve got a stone in my shoe… and it’s with the Church.
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Happy Labor Day

Happy belated Labor Day – a bit water logged in the Northeast US are we? Scary thing, actually. For most of Saturday, when it was cloudy (yet without rain) I was most reminded of Seattle. See, a lot of people think of Seattle as this dreary and always-wet type of place. Having been there (and been preached to by the residents of WA) I can say that yes, for three out of four seasons, it is typically cloudy… however, it’s not a simple monotonous gray – their skies actually are a mosaic of gray. Think about the skies of CT on over this past weekend… there were rolling and fast moving clouds the whole time; on Saturday there was an occasional blast of sunshine as well… Welcome to typical Seattle weather.
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The Slave Trade

This is a post-dated Rant. Well sorta, anyway. The topic that set me off is sorta dated, and there was an “Episode” that occurred but the Rants site didn’t exist yet, but it’s something that stuck with me all the same… and it still might be an active topic today, but I haven’t heard anything on it for a while. In any event, I find the issue stupid enough to rehash it, even thought it’s been few months after I first heard it on CNN. This is with regards to the Slave Trade Retribution group. What slave trade, you ask? Didn’t all that stop with the US in the mid-1800’s? Yup. So what’s the uproar? You’ll love this: there’s a group of African-Americans that are suing “historical” companies that profited from the Slave Trade in the 1800’s.
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Baseball’s Strike Out

I’m wondering if someone has the time and panache to explain the pending baseball strike to me. I mean, I understand how and why Unions are needed – to protect the rights and benefits of labourers. It made sense in the factories when they were first formed and where you still find them, in most cases they are still needed today. If there’s one constant throughout history, it’s the greediness of business owners: they never appear to have a limit in any business.
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Springsteen and the E-Street: The Rising

I’ve always been told that I have “eclectic” tastes in music. I personally believe this is a person’s way of politely saying “What the hell is the matter with you” but I’ve yet to prove it. Anyway, what it technically means is that I tend to like music from all over the spectrum – today I’m talking about Springsteen which is a notable departure from what I’ve talked about in the last review of Rush! Now before you moan and grown and start with the “he sounds like he’s tryin’ to take a crap!” and “he’s only had one album that got overplayed!” bit, let me get some myths outta the way: I was listening to him before Born in the USA. Tunnel of Love was in fact an album of ass. And he’s been around long before 1983 – he was playing music from before I was born – and he was just as surprised as everyone else was when Born in the USA took off.
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Train Etiquette – A Case Study

I’m currently on a semi-express to Stamford which makes about seven stops. I got on an earlier train because I figured it couldn’t hurt to get to work a little early – mistake one I guess, but there’s a really attractive woman that takes this train now-a-days… wears Movado and Coach – two of my favourite brands – and flip flops with a gold toe ring. It’s hard to find normal people on the train lately, much less a kindred spirit, so I figure it’s well worth the extra seven minutes of my morning, and who knows how long she’ll be on this train, so yay me – I caught the earlier train. Anyway, after the first stop, the bulk of the PTA got on board.
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Welcome to Yankee Stadium

This is a Rant that has been about three years in the making. It’s not so much a Rant, either, as it is an answer to “who designed this stadium and where are the bloody ushers?!” while sitting in the box sections of Yankee Stadium. See, this weekend was my first home game in a while (as per normal, they lost) so I was “re-introduced” to some things after about a month of not seeing the boys play live. The trip to the Bronx was per normal – I take the Merritt to the Hutch to the Cross County to the Major Deagan and *zoop* right into the Stadium parking lot. This beats the piss outta sitting in the normal five mile back up of the George Washington Bridge if you take i-95. In fact, were it not for this traffic pattern, there’s no way I would have agreed to the Saturday season ticket package that I signed on for; 12 games a season is good times but if it consistently takes three hours to get to the stadium, then it’s bollocks.
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“The Garden State” DOT can suck my left testicle

Jersey has always seemed to be the topic of many “state” related jokes. I once thought it was because those of us in the Northeast needed a state to pick on – that maybe it wasn’t as bad as everyone seemed to make it out to be. The pot shots at toxic waste, oil refineries, and other such industrial scars couldn’t all be true. The Sopranos are “from” there, after all – who doesn’t like Tony, besides the FBI? Granted the women are known some how maintaining the big Texas style, Aquanet enhanced hairstyles, but not all the jokes can be true. Having spend about ten hours in the Garden State, I’m inclined to believe anything bad, that someone says about NJ. After all, and I’ve said this before, a cliche becomes a cliche for a reason.
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Boink Boinkity Boink Boink Boink

It seems to me that one of the on going themes of this site are the Rants against stupidity. What exactly is stupidity? To me, it’s something that runs contrary to common sense. It’s one thing to break with traditional views or to “go against the grain” but I’m talking about obvious (sometimes even painfully so) stuff. For example, if you were to go into your boss’ office, declare that your job sucks ass and throw a monitor to the floor, while dancing in glee at the shower of sparks that you’ve created, this make you unique (and my hero!). However, when you later find yourself fired and possibly arrested, but you don’t know why, well that’s stupidity.
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got airport security?

Today I heard on a local radio station that there was a new policy going into effect at CT’s own Bradley International Airport; BDL was to be tested along with a few other airports as part of a new airport security process. For those of you that aren’t from the northeast, BDL is a small but international airport – nothing that’s even 1/4 as big as JFK or LGA in New York nor Logan in Boston, but it does get some traffic. For example, when a jet as large and as fast as the Concorde is diverted from the NYC or Boston airports for whatever reason, BDL will get it. Since it’s got all of the international procedures in place and the fact that jets of these speeds require longer runways, BDL is perfect – the place is surround by tobacco farms and a Honda factory building, it’s so rural. It does get all of the normal airport traffic of the major carriers and some independent, but for the most part it’s a nice small quiet airport.
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ARGH!

I hate this! I had a perfectly good Rant all in my head this morning, probably from watching Good Day NY – they tend to have a story or two a week that sets me off – and I completely for got what it was! It just popped into my head and then got washed out by a venti iced chai tea latte at Starbucks. I’m at a total loss! If I ever remember it, I’ll get it in here, but it’s probably gone forever. Anyway on non-Rant unrelated note, the last of the porn shops, Peep-o-rama on 42nd Street and Times Square is being closed. It has been there for as long as I can remember – call it a testimony to former mayor Rudy Guliani. I can’t say I’m overly thrilled with the last “landmark” going, but I also love the “new” Times Square so it’s all good, I ‘spose – besides, porn is probably cheaper online these days.

Warning: Road Rage Ahead

Let me dispel a myth straightaway: I don’t have road rage. In fact, I’m usually anti-rage when I’m behind the wheel. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I can get just as frustrated as the next driver, but I don’t suffer from this white fire of rage that burns through all reason, that causes people to hit other people with their cars, or shooting people indiscriminately, or stalking people that once tailgated me. If anything, if given the choice between “normal” living and driving, I’m more prone to have rage in the day to day issues… this is usually a good thing because if I did suffer from the typical issue of road rage, there would have been a statewide Maxima hunt already.
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Hey, can I bum a patch off ya?

I’m a logical mammal. Too much so, probably. Like right now, I’m on the train with my earphones cranked so loud it hurts, and yet I can still hear the annoyingly loud people that are sitting across the aisle from me. Logically, it would be easier to smack the offending party upside the head with a fiberglass fishbilly, resulting in a resounding and self-satisfying *thud*. Ethically, morally, and legally this is impractical. OK, well maybe just legally as the other two -ly words there are subjective; I know “legally” has some staying power with me because holding cells are no fun at all.
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iPod Saga, Part 3: The Happy Dance of Joy!

Well, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t get service from online companies. There might be a great deal of slackers out there, but PCConnection is not one of them! I gave them a call about the new news from Apple on the iPod line and the new price differences that are going on out there. I first called Apple retail, just to check to see if they had any avenues to go through. They were very polite and very sympathetic but there wasn’t anything they could do – this was expected.
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iPod Part 2: The Jolly Rogering

If Moore’s Law is something that can be proved to be correct every six months by new CPU designs and speeds, then Randy’s Law of Technology can also be proved to be correct randomly throughout the years. What’s Randy’s Law of Technology? Steve, of FurryGoat.com fame, first identified it: If there is a new or relatively successfully technological product on the market, and Randy should opt to buy it, Randy will be fucked by said purchase, within two months. No lie. It’s on going. The iPod is just the most recent, and some how more painful, proof of the Law.
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