I HATE YOU BRETT FAVRE

Well, thanks to the heroic egotistical efforts of the NFL's biggest butt turd, my fantasy football team will not be competing for the championship this year, I'll be playing for 3rd place instead. Here's the scenario, about 5 or 6 weeks ago I was tied for last in the league, things just weren't going my way, 1 point losses and such. Then I start winning and climbing my way back into things, then two weeks ago I won again to secure the final playoff spot, then I make it through the first round of playoffs to lead up to this week.

I had a solid lineup, but then something interesting happened, Brett Favre was listed as out for tonights game, and the back up, Joe Webb was listed to start at QB. But in Yahoo leagues, he's eligible as a WR as well, so I grabbed him off the waivers yesterday morning not during church, and started him in place of WR Sidney Rice. All was well until this afternoon, when all of a sudden Brett Favre decides he wants to try and start, so he gets moved to Questionable, then he warms up and gets moved to starter. Now I have to sit Joe Webb and put Sidney Rice back in. 

The game rolls around, and what happens? That beat up, old, selfish, gray haired douche Brett Favre gets himself knocked out of the game, [re]enter, Joe Webb. Sidney Rice does absolutely nothing for me, and the points that Webb scored during the game would've sent me into the Championship. 

I HATE YOU BRETT FAVRE. Just go away and start selling your special footballs already. I HATE YOU!

So I lose the game by about 3 points [story of my season really], and this guy advances to the championship:

I guess that's what I get for making fantasy football moves during church.....

De-Bunking, Wannabe De-Bunkers

Alright, I should let you know first off that this post is going to be a little bit of a rant, and it deals with Apple's new iPhone, and the people that try and make it seem like it's not all that great. Ready? Let's begin!

As many of you already know, Apple recently officially released their new iPhone 4, and as of yesterday the first models started landing in the hands of consumers who had pre-ordered them, with the official launch coming today and long lines forming outside of Apple stores across the country. Don't be surprised to hear a lot of news about the phone today.

So I get to work this morning and fire up the computer, and hop online, and the first article I see on Yahoo's page is about 5 big problems the new phone has and why you shouldn't buy one. I was curious so I started reading. [Here's the article] I got about half way through the authors first "point" and felt he immediately lost any and all credit he may have once had. I encourage you to read the entire article, because I'm going to go through this point by point. Go grab a cup of nice cold water and we'll continue.

Gas Station Mishap

So the other day I stop at the gas station to fill up the tank on my way home from work the station is right around the corner from my house, so it's pretty convenient, and literally on my route home. I pull into one row of 3 pumps and go to the farthest one so people can pull in behind me. I start the pump, and while it's going, I take my time to wash all my windows to rid them of all the road spray that's out there right now. While I'm doing this a woman probably in her 50's pull in behind me in a small SUV, and she seems quite hurried. [Who would've thought, someone in a hurry, in northern Virginia?! Noooooo.]

Anyway, my pump stopped before hers did, but we got back into our cars about the same time, cause I washed my windows....and they definitely needed it. I hop back into my car and start it back up, and then pull up a nifty iPhone app I have that allows me to keep track of all my gas purchases and log them. It's a great little app, but it does run kind of slow. As I'm entering all the info from the transaction and my mileage, I can see the woman behind me starting to inch up a tad waiting for me to pull out so she can too. Well, I wasn't quite done yet and she lost her patience so she decided to pull out around me. She begins to angrily take off, when all of a sudden, BOOM! I hear a huge bang. I look up as the woman screeches to a stop right next to me trying to figure out what happened. [Can you tell where I'm going with this one??] I look up, and see none other than the gas pump hose/handle still attached to her car, and ripped off of the pump. Idiot.

She still can't figure out what was wrong and begins to back up her car back into the spot, she definitely catches me looking directly at her just shaking my head from side to side. Now, my first reaction was to see if there was any gas pouring out, and if there was I was gonna make a dash for the emergency shut off switch. Fortunately that was not the case. She gets out of her car, see's what she did and goes running into the little office to get someone. They come out and take a look and inspect the scene.....while I whip out the camera and take a picture. [C'mon, it's not everyday you see that happen!]

This lady is going bezerk at this point. She keeps smacking herself on the forehead and yelling at herself, stressed beyond belief, still in a hurry, and with higher blood pressure than any human should probably have. The clerks make sure everything is alright and that nothing is broken, and are asking her if she's alright. They take the hose out of her car and say it's alright as long as no one got hurt. She couldn't have cared less that they were making sure she was alright and that there was no damage. Her main goal was now two-fold. 1) Making sure to keep smacking herself on her head I guess as a self punishment, and 2) to get the heck out of there as fast as she could. She hopped back in her car and took off like a bandit, still in a hurry with pretty much no regard for her surroundings or safety. The clerks calmly surveyed the scene and started working on putting the pump back together.

How the heck are these people still on the road, and don't you think they'd learn their lessons?! She was in such a hurry to get around me that she yanked out the gas pump, [luckily avoiding a major fire] and yet she still peeled out of the station angrier than ever. The streets would be safer if she didn't have a license, this I promise you.

Here's the picture I managed to snap real quick. If you see a small SUV that looks like this on the road, STAY AWAY!! Chances are, that there's a disgruntled, angry, stressed out woman driving it without much driving skill.

Music: Timeless vs Lifeless

WARNING: I might as well tell you now, there's going to be some really bad excuses for music in this post, two to be exact. I just want everyone to be prepared so it doesn't catch them off guard like an obese fellow without a fast food joint in range of his motorized chair. There will be some spectacular sounding stuff as well, so it wont be all bad, but you have been warned.

WARNING #2: This is gonna be a long post, and I tend to ramble at times. With that said, I'll begin.

In addition to having some of the coolest cars this world has ever seen, the 'good ol days' as we'll refer to them [even though I was not around to experience or remember them first hand] had some of the best music ever made/recorded. For clarification I'm referring to the mid 1950's through the mid 70's. Man there was some serious musical talent in those days! Decades before frosty haired boy bands, teeny-boppers, and auto tune, there was some real music happening! I realize that a lot of folks who grew up during that time may not realize that people my age can actually recognize good music when we hear it, but trust me, those of us who can actually form our own opinion rather than blindly listen to what the DJ tells us to, do indeed posses the ability to distinguish the good from the really, really, albeit popular, bad.

I suppose a lot of this would make more sense with examples huh? Well let's get down to the dirty dirty then. This first video is a song of Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Tuesdays Gone' covered by Metallica. A lot of people argue about how well someone can cover someone else, but that's besides the point here, because it takes actual musical talent to make a recording like this. You wont hear any synthesizer or artificial sounds in this one. What you will hear is a collective group of musicians coming together and blending their talents into one memorable concoction. Songs like this [whether it be the original or a cover] will live on forever.

[Tuesday's Gone]

Pretty awesome huh? Taking a complete 180, it's time to reference that warning I handed out at the beginning of this post. I promise I will not be mad one bit if you don't make it through some of these videos either. This next one is my a girl named Ke$ha. What? How you pronounce a dollar sign in your name?? Retarded. You might also remember I referred to auto tune in a previous paragraph, and it's because that tool and others like it make possible for people with little to no singing ability to sound shall we say....interesting. Obviously it's not their real singing voice, but oddly enough I think most people would be thankful that that is the case. I don't want to get too far off track here, so click below [if you dare] to hear some over-produced, over-digitized, 'music' from an artist who's currently quite popular.

[Tik Tok]

Notice how I said 'currently popular' well it's because it won't be in a very short time, thankfully. And it is with that, that we finally get to the point of this post. [Sorry to keep you waiting] In the first song, there was no software changing the pitch or key of the singers' voices or instruments. There is no gaudy, fake music video to accompany it, and for a reason. It's real music, music that won't die or grow old. The second song clearly needs all the help it can get. Digitized voices, effects, and computerized beats doing all they can to save it. Fortunately no one will be listening to it one year from now. Lifeless.

Do I dare continue?? Yea, why the heck not.

Round two will provide more examples with basically the same principals applied. This first song has got to be one of the best rock songs of all time, by one of the most popular bands that ever played. This song has been used probably hundreds of times in movies and TV shows and for a reason, it's timeless, and it will always be around.

[Gimme Shelter]

Ready for that 180 degree turn again? Cause it's about to hit ya. The second song is another computerized monstrosity. [Seriously, I don't think there's a single note sung that hasn't been tampered with in some way] And again, the only good thing about all of that is that no one will be listening to it a year from now. If you can make it even 90 seconds into this song, well then you're a braver soul than I.

[3]

Seriously, what are 'musicians' aspiring to nowadays? Cause it doesn't seem like a whole lot to me. Unfortunately though, instead of letting this crap just make it's way to the gutter, it gets plastered all over the television and interwebz. Why though?? It's not any good.

Time for a couple clarifications. Clearly not all music made past the 70's is bad. That would be a moronic statement. I simply chose to use the good stuff, the timeless stuff to make my point. In fact, I rather like a lot of new music out there, especially the new country. I'm not sure how to best conclude this little post other than to ask you the reader, for the sake of self preservation, the next time you hear some hot new, popular 'song' ask yourself if it's truly music, and if you think it'll go down as one of the greats. If not, why torture your ears more than you have to?! Timeless or Lifeless?

Or, you know....I could be completely wrong.

I Like Pat Barry

Who is Pat Barry you ask? Good question; because before this morning I didn't know who he was either. Pat Barry is a UFC fighter....one who I'd never heard of before, who recently won a fight I guess. Anyway, I guess he was about to be evicted from his apartment, he was flat broke. Then he fought and won a total of $120,000....not too shabby. That's not why I like him though.

I like him because of his attitude towards hard work and not asking for help/bailouts/handouts etc. I don't know the whole story about how he got to the point of bankruptcy, whether it was poor money management or whatever, the point is that he realized his mistakes and wanted to turn things around and work to get HIMSELF out of trouble. He didn't collect unemployment, he didn't seek others to help him out, he didn't expect someone else to make it their problem as well. [Unlike so much of this country thinks is okay to do nowadays.] Here's a quote from an interview in which he says he never asked anyone for money or help:

"I could ask someone but then at the same time, how hard are you going to work for something if every time you get in trouble somebody catches you? I did something to put myself in this position I have to work my way out of it."

I like him for that reason. For owning up and working hard to take care of himself. It makes me sick when I hear stories of people making no effort to actually get a job because they're able to collect unemployment, food stamps, welfare, whatever. Granted there are those who truly do need it, but when people go and pick up applications with no intentions of actually applying for a job, simply so they can keep collecting money from taxpayers really pisses me off. And that is one HUGE problem with our society today.

It may sound silly, but I think a lot of it can be boiled down to child sports. Nowadays "everyone is a winner" or "you will still get a trophy even if you lose" -- STOP IT! NO, not everyone is a winner. There are winners and losers, and the sooner you start understanding that concept, the sooner you'll begin to work harder for success and not expect things to be okay even if you don't work. I don't care if it's a bunch of 5 year olds playing 'bunch ball' soccer or not! If they're taught that they don't really have to work to receive the same trophy or recognition as the team who works harder and wins, that's setting them up to be failures at more than just sports. Like I said, that may sound silly but I really do believe it's true. Wake up coaches.

You see it all to often these days, people thinking they can cruise through life without having to work, and if they make a few bad decisions that put them in a tough spot, all of a sudden they think it's someone else's job/problem to help them out. No. Man up, and get the job done yourself. Even for this reason alone, I like you Pat Barry.

Rant over.

Parking Dweebs

This past weekend I was up in PA to visit some friends. On Sunday morning we went to a diner in Pottsville before I hit the road to head home. When I pulled into the lot I parked in the middle of a row, allowing people plenty of options to choose other spots around (not next to) me. I come outside to find my car almost completely boxed in by these two morons. The truck on the left actually got as close to me as possible so he could allow himself enough room to get out of his drivers side door. How considerate. I'm pretty sure I knew who the driver of the truck was, and he and his 3 foot long rat tail haircut were not worth my trouble. I should've just deflated his tires or something. I hate PA.

Abuse of Power

Here's a prime example of blatant abuse of power. I stopped at Best Buy yesterday on my way home to pick up a new SD for my camera, and while waiting in line happened to see a Fairfax County Police officer stroll into the store, no big deal, he's probably on break. Upon completing my transaction and leaving the store, I happened to see a Fairfax County squad car parked just to my right, and not in a parking space either. Nope, right in a driving zone and along a yellow curb. I almost walked passed, but then caught myself and had to take a picture. I realize cops have a job to do, and most are probably pretty good guys. But then you see something like this and just want to slash his tires and teach him a lesson....that or leave a 'friendly' reminder on his windshield that he's parking in a no parking zone and should be ticketed. Just because you enforce the law doesn't mean you get to break the law. And cops wonder why most people hate them. I wonder if I could send this picture to the county and have that officer fined.