Just want to fight somebody

I always seem to have a problem w/ tech.  I don't understand a how these computers never work and when there is an update the shit seems to get worse!  I am currently in a blood feud w/ a one off tech guy and my head is about to explode.  One guy is an A-hole who is smug, lazy, and never gets anything done.  The other guy is not as smug he just never gets anything completed.  He is like me at home... starts plenty of projects but they never get finished.

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This is funny... I recently learned of a local insurance operation, I will not say which one.  I swear, this is a picture of the brokers on their website. 

Insurance guys skiing sans helmets... that is like a pregnant woman selling you condoms right? No? Maybe? Not even close?

So I was listening to Elton John's Honky Chateau and I got to thinking... is there a more underrated musician?  Sure, people know who he is and like his music and yes, there have been times when his music is absolute shit (same w/ the Stones), but when you see lists of the top bands/music artists of all time does he ever crack the top 5, or even the top 10? Rolling Stone magazine had him as the 38th all time singer and 49 on the all time artist list.  That seems criminal.  He has put out 30+ albums.  In a 5 year period he banged out 9 records that were outstanding.  The self titled album in '70 had great songs like "Your Song", "Take me to the Pilot" (which is really fantastic), and "Border Song".  Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across the Water, and Honky Chateau  are all excellent if not perfect start to finish albums. Goodbye Yellowbrick Road? Are you f*ing kidding me?  That is an outstanding record.  "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" is an all time underrated song that soars. These are just consistent good compositions that fit together and which you rarely fast forward through. Meanwhile everyone creams themselves over the Beach Boys.  The Beach Boys suck.  They had some good stuff but Pet Sounds is overrated and the product of stoned artists getting too deep in their own heads.  And Surfin' U.S.A.... that is a commercial jingle. The Ramones?  Hey, they are fun and were a phenomena, but when you are flipping through the dial and here one of their songs do you stop or keep flipping?  Don't lie.  

Here are my current top 5 albums in terms of complete start to finish excellent in no particular order

5. Appetite for Destruction - Guns N Roses.  Powerful, driven, almost every song is excellent and a few are transcendent, and it all fits together

4. Madman Across the Water - Elton. I think this, Honky and Tumbleweed Connection could be included but this one is the most complete w/ songs that everyone knows and loves. Sure you feel silly singing along to  "Tiny Dancer" but you do it anyway.

3. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco. I have been listening to this a lot lately.  Melancholic, sometimes sweet, and sweeping. It is sad but it just all fits so perfectly like a puzzle and the songs are all very good and again, like "Heavy Metal Drummer" sometimes excellent.

2. Abbey Road -Beatles.  Again, which one do you pick, they are all excellent and many of the albums could be considered "perfect".  For my money the second side of Abbey Road just hits the cover off the ball as it winds through a lovely lullaby fit for children or adults.  When "Carry That Weight" builds to crescendo I find myself sometimes quite overcome. 

1.Exile on Main Street -Rolling Stones.  Dirty, gritty, a little honky tonk and just a great album. 

Yeah yeah in terms of consistent narrative The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon are in the mix and it is hard to leave out Thriller and Kind of Blue. This is just my right now list.

Jay About Date Night?!

So my special lady and I were able to leave our kids w/ my folks and go out on a date.  Through a very generous gesture from the owners of Tourterelle in New Haven we had a nice gift certificate and excellent reason to head south for the evening on Saturday.  Now we have been in twin baby daze for a few months and I am barely a human right now.  I was worried about 2 things, one we would just stare at each other for the whole meal with no ability to converse, and secondly, that the food would not live up to our expectations as we had previously loved our eating experiences there.  Apparently I was not afraid of constructing a run on sentence. Well, both fears were unfounded.  We had a lovely meal and chat.  We started w/ freshly harvested little neck clams from Long Island baked w/ buttery bread crumbs.  They were a little gritty but the flavor was excellent and they did taste quite fresh.  We also shared a delicious fall salad w/ arugula, cranberries, walnuts, and artichoke hearts.  For a main course my lady had an amazing trout that sat on sweet potato puree and some kind of hazelnut brown butter sauce.  It was really something.  I had homemade rabbit raviolis in a currant and mushroom au jus.  Also quite delicate and very tasty.  Add to that my very good Whistle Pig and lemon juice cocktail and it was a great meal.  We also were able to stay awake and talked the whole time!  Go team!!!

I have decided having kids is like having a Ferrari in Vermont.  First off it is expensive.  Secondly, it requires a shit ton of maintenance and is extremely fussy.  You wonder what you were thinking until that sunny day when you take it out and have the most amazing drive and a wonderful day.  Hey, torn rag top that will cost $20K?  No problem, I just kicked out 125MPH on Bolton Flats!  Left shifter paddle needs to be replaced for $15K?  It's ok... I just ripped down 100 to Kilington and it was amazing! My kid just shit themselves requiring the 4th clothing change of the day while also pulling out my chest hair and screaming in my ear?  Hey, that's cool... did you see little bird lifting their head and making that super cute smiley face?!

I miss alot of things about being a kid.  Shitting my pants is not one of them.  Weird right?

Yes, I did drink a Guinness yesterday (or 2). No I did not get drunk and pass out.  Lame.

OOF

My kids are a pain in the ass right now.  My son likes to start the action by whimpering and grunting which wakes up my daughter who takes it up a notch by screaming at a pitch that threatens to obliterate glassware in our house and kill the dog across the street.  My wife is afraid I am going to hurt them (which I certainly will not).  I am more likely to drive my own head into the drywall which almost happened in the middle of the night when I tripped over an imaginary line in the floor and fell into the wall.  I have no sleep, sometimes cannot brush my teeth until afternoon, don't shave, got athlete's foot at the gym, eat badly and in a hurry every meal.  My special lady also does not feel so special.  Why doesn't anybody really tell you these things!!!  That said, our kids are really cute and quite amazing.  I am in no way biased when I say they are the most gifted 2 months old that have ever lived. My kid raises his head like a f*ing champ!

I just ate a "Lancy" bar a friend sent to our office.  It is some sort of chocolate confection.  It is always a little scary when you cannot actually read the contents.  It does have 6.1 grams of gorduras totais so I have that going for me.  Mucho Gusto Lancy!!!

Apparently it is the 1 year anniversary of the Burlington's mayor Miro.  I have friends who really respect him and apparently he is very business friendly but as far as I can tell he is merely a shameless self promoter who has gotten little done other than take lunches and breakfast meetings at local establishments and set up various blue ribbon informational committees. Which still makes him 1000% more competent than Bob Kiss. So far Miro has pushed a Fiscal Responsibility Bond.  Everyone realizes that a bond is a mode of debt right?  So we have essentially pushed off our fiscal responsibility for another 10-20 years. But at an excellent rate!  He also "attenuated" the BTV airport's payback period for it's ill conceived and improperly financed parking garage.  Kicked another can down the road.  Well played. In a gushing article (seriously) in Seven Days here are a few gems I enjoy.  "Can he clean up the Burlington Telecom mess? Vince Brennan, another Prog councilor, says he’s pleasantly surprised by the Weinberger administration’s handling of BT, noting that the new mayor didn’t “cut and run” by offloading the essentially bankrupt city-owned utility at a fire-sale price. But there’s still no solution in sight for BT. "  or this one, "On another key financial matter, Weinberger has made no progress toward righting the imbalance between revenues and expenditures in the pension system for city employees.", or "Weinberger’s first year in office could be characterized as long on process and short on product. ".

But what he has done is make sure a residential project hi private company has been working on gets done and build bridges between political parties.  At least he can tweet about it.  Not sure why this administration bugs me so much, I think it is because I expect more from them.  I did not expect anything from Kiss or Clavelle.  I also don't like people who make sure you know all of things they are doing even though they are not actually doing anything... self promotion... that really grinds my gears!

Are there any ads that are more ridiculous than the erectile dysfunction ones?  An honest ad would be amazing... "She has known you so long... so long she knows you have a limp wiener! CialisX".  "When a weird drunk time becomes the right time! CialisX". "She is ok with man boobs, a high fever, vomiting, maybe even a heart attack... because hey, you might have sex! CialisX".  "She loves your fat gut because the hair plugs and plastic surgery make it all ok. CialisX". "Hey, let's act like morons, then have old people sex! CialisX".  

I have nothing against CialisX, it just happens to be the ad I just saw on CNBC.  And yes, I realize the next time I attempt to have sex (4-5 months from now?) I will in no way be able to "rise to the occasion".  But who knows, maybe a quiet time will become the right time... or a fast fumbly, awkward, not terribly satisfying time.

This is why the government sucks

So we as a country are in an interesting pickle. We have become a nation of beggars willing to depend on our government to bail us out in any and all circumstance.  We have become comfortable to be the pan handler who is capable of working but prefers to accept a hand out.  OK, fine. The problem is that the people we are asking for change are broke. Worse than that we are also effectively waiting for these people to tell us how to act and think as well which is even worse.

I am in the process of hiring someone at our house.  Yes, I know... I am kind of a big deal.  Well, it is much less glamorous than that as you will see.  I could pay a service to handle payroll and taxes and such but I am not so flush so I am trying to do it myself.  So I email the Vermont Department of Labor to ask how to proceed with setting myself up to employ someone in Vermont while not f*ing up my taxes and having to pay huge penalties.  They did not know and sent me to the Secretary of State.  They did not know and offered to send me to the Dpt of Labor.  Wait, hold on... I was just there!  Oh, well, maybe try the tax department.  This was where I ran into the depths of idiocy.  The moron at the Dpt of Taxes said that I should ask my tax professional about this.  I said that I had and they advised me to use a service which I thought was very expensive.  Plus what if I did not have a tax professional?  Well, she could not help me there.  The VT Dpt of taxes does not advise on how to handle Vermont tax issues.  I nearly shit my pants.  I asked how the group that determines the tax rules cannot explain them to a VT resident?  They merely collect the taxes.  Well, surely, someone must know how the tax rules are determined right?  I mean there must be an Oz behind the curtain how originally set up the tax code as I know it was not my accountant.  I went back and forth with this person for a while doing all I could not to ask her why she was so dumb.  Finally she offered to transfer me.  I asked to be transferred to anybody who knew anything about anything in the State of Vermont offices.  I was transferred to a huge bitch who was very uninterested in helping me.  To her credit I did get some information but at the end of the day if I don't use a payroll specialist I will screw it up and ultimately pay a fee to the state for my transgression.  Sure, why not.  She wanted me to file an S1 and that does not look right unless I am starting a restaurant.  Of course trying to get background information on the website is next to impossible as it is confusing and very poorly constructed.  The IRS website was pretty straight forward actually to their credit and I am pretty well set up on the Federal level.  The State of Vermont is the issue.  So again one can see why business in Vermont languishes.  You have a better chance of hooking up a major drug deal in front of Panera Bread with a stranger than setting up a sole proprietorship.  At least that is what Paul Pierce in the Starbucks told me.

Lebron Overrated? It's B-ball chat time!

So now that Lebron James has his 1 title and is running over everyone in the NBA it has become fashionable to put him in the best ever discussion.  He may be the best player in the NBA right now but I would not have  him in my top 5 all time... maybe not in the top 10.  I might start a team w/ him in the lineup as I do believe in the evolution of athletes and he is a freak but let's slow down.  He is a one time champ and has had plenty of support around him. I don't see him in the Jordan/Magic/Kareem/Russell mold.  I view him more like Shaq.  An absolute freak of nature that dominates because his physical presence is so unique.  Shaq destroyed people in his prime and refs called games differently for him.  If he go a benefit of calls like Lebron he would have shot 94848 free throws a game (and hit 12). When you think of Magic, Russell, Bird, Kareem, Jordan... it is intelligence, guile, determination as well as physical gifts.  They shot, passed, rebounded. Jordan dunked it, he shot threes, fade away, anything and everything.  When you see Lebron he hits a couple jumpers but mostly he drives the lane, runs guys over, gets away with a blatant charge and maybe goes to the free throw line.  Same as Shaq.  How about this... Lebron over his 10yrs averages 27.6ppg, .489%FG, 7.3RPG, 6.9APG, .8BLK, 1.7STL, and 3.3TO.  Shaq's first 10? 27.5PPG, .576%FG, 12RPG, 2.8APG, 2.6BLK, 0.71STL, and 2.9TO.  Huh... looks like Shaq had better more dominating numbers.  Yeah, but Lebron was a bigger winner.  No? Shaq won 3 titles in those 10 yrs.  But Shaq had better teams... Really?  Early on Kobe was not Kobe. Other than that?  How about Mark Madsen.  Robert Horry, Rick Fox.  Devean George.  Not exactly a murderer's row.  So maybe Lebron pulls a Jordan and keeps getting better, then we can talk.  For now he is statistically not even as productive as Shaquille O'Neal who very rarely gets in the top 10 all time discussion.

By year 10 Kobe had 4 rings, Magic had 5, Jordan had 3, Bird had 3, Kareem had 2, and Russell... well he had alot. Oh yeah, Shaq took his talents to South Beach nearly a decade ago and won the championship in year one. Oh yeah... they also played that season together, didn't end well.

Is this link Awesome?

YES!!!
http://www.wherethefuckshouldigofordrinks.com/

So is this... my current music obsession.