Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

My resourcefulness would be an asset to any graduate school student body.

Get a sharpener, dummy

“Previous flips do not affect the outcome of the flip in question.”

If you’re reading this, and you’ve ever been in a situation where you’re at a convenience store, or waiting in a bank lobby with more than one ATM, or basically in any situation where there are multiple checkouts but no clear line-forming infrastructure, and you’ve simply walked over to the checkout with the shortest “line” (ie, the one where a single person is being helped), completely ignoring the group of people standing still in a linear fashion in a location that, perhaps because of the quirks of the location’s shelves, just so happens to be somewhat adjacent to another checkout, then please stop reading this blog. Take it out of your RSS feed. Delete it from your bookmarks. Unfriend my page on Facebook. I don’t want my blog associated with you.

Because here’s a newsflash: THERE’S ONE LINE!

It’s not hard. You get in line, and the next person goes to the next available register. We can build the pyramids, we can organize governments that serve millions of people, we can write symphonies, but we can’t stand in line properly?

King of all villains

Holy Moses in a basket, what kind of sociopolitical levels of self-unawareness are we dealing with here? Entire physics departments at our top universities must be spending CAREERS trying to develop a gauge calibrated finely enough to accurately measure the degree of jackassery in these people, and they’re failing! This is the kind of person that probably got to the store by cruising down the shoulder to bypass a traffic jam. The line-flouting, though, is the more brazen and egregious sin, because the only deterrent to this Alexander the Great of pricks is the forlorn, sunken visages of the poor plebs that he’s slapping in the face, and yet he STILL SOLDIERS ON!

Enjoy those cherry tomatoes, jerk. Don’t choke on them or anything.

So here’s the good news. Your Eagles of The Boston College won the 2011 Beanpot tournament, besting the Northeastern Huskies 7–6 in overtime. The bad news is, cheering on my beloved Eagles prevented me from watching Gossip Girl for a second week in a row. But here’s the good news. I watched the ep on my Tivo and recorded my thoughts, because you’re my readers, and I love you. For your reference, I started the recording at 8:30, and didn’t fast forward through the commercials, so as to maintain the chronology of the show. Because that’s important!

:30 :30 = :00 here, folks.

Blair is wearing a blazer that prince would wear to a job interview.

:33 Ben isn’t fit to set pins in a bowling alley. But he’s gonna wind up getting a sweet job for plot purposes.

:35 I love when people have jobs on TV shows. If Character X can achieve Unthinkable Goal Y, then Promotion Z will be theirs!

:37 “The Bass name has equity. I plan to prove that all in one night.” See my note for minute 35.

Also, we’re supposed to note than Russell Thorpe called Chuck “Bart,” right?

:43 Serena has no idea that it’s actually like, difficult for ex-cons to get jobs. So Ben has to feel ashamed for “only” getting a part-time gig at a catering service. What an idiot. Both of them.

:44 “I was copied on a report I wasn’t supposed to see.” The Captain, recipient of this episode’s deus ex memorandum.

:48 “Obviously I don’t have time to read faux-ticles by wannabe writers.” What a jerk Blair is.

Also, Dan writes a first-person narrative about living with his ex girlfriend’s current boyfriend, and he thinks he can get it into Details? Because the Dan Humphrey brand is just so damn potent.

:54 Dan advises Eric to invite Jonathan to Chuck’s party. Because this is Gossip Girl, and everyone has to end up well-dressed at the same event.

:59 Is Lily going to finally get her comeuppance? You guys know how much I love comeuppance!

:03 All of Chuck’s money-making schemes are some iteration of “So I’m planning this bacchanalia…”

:07 I get in fights with my friends sometimes. But I can’t imagine trying to ruin their lives as many times as Blair and Serena have in this show’s tenure.

:09 What did Chuck think was going to happen here, getting rid of Lily? He’s 19 years old! Russell Thorpe eats 19-year-olds for breakfast.

:16 Yes! Dan and Blair are gonna do it! In Chuck’s love chamber!

:17 Or not. Whatevs. But does Raina need a primer on what a vile scoundrel Lily is? And how she’s not deserving of Chuck’s loyalty? I’ve got some GG DVDs she can watch if that’s the case.

:23 Blair to Serena: “Go have fun with your parolee.” Even when she’s being nice, Blair knows exactly how to put people in their place.

Oh, so now Dan’s piece is going to be in Vanity Fair. Fucking wonderful.

:26 Dan and Blair, watching a movie together but separately! Also, that camera angle makes Lonely Boy look like he’s jackin’ it.

:27 Can we get more of Eric’s foxy Meals on Wheels partner?

Hmm. So they’re turning Damien into an actual real bad guy. I can dig it.

The whole thing is cartoon babies pooping! In a contest! With judges! Can you believe this is on TV?

# I might have gotten a couple pieces of dust in my eyes when I read this column by local sportswriter Steve Buckley. H/t

# Here’s a collection of 10 really nifty Internet videos from 2010. I promise, they’re not all kittens jumping in boxes or kids eating shit over the handlebars of their BMXs. The first one is particularly delightful.

# Being a Supreme Court justice is obviously the pinnacle of the legal profession, but one would think that with his dual abilities to find hidden truth buried deep in the hearts of men and to bend language to his will, Antonin Scalia would be able to make a sizable fortune in the private sector.

# Here’s a nice little analysis of what folks in the American literary community are already calling Huckgate. (Note: members of the American literary community may not be saying this.) And, in typically astute and eloquent fashion, Ta-Nehisi Coates tells us what it all means.

# Finally, Joe Posnanski writes a very clever column about Baseball Hall of Fame standards. Read it all the way through! Also, I’ll go ahead and put it down for everyone to see: Any baseball writer who didn’t vote for Jeff Bagwell because of PED-use “suspicions” should have his keyboard smashed to pieces.

Like most sensitive, self-assured 21st century males, your favorite blogger kind of likes doing laundry. It dates back to my college days, when I’d do laundry in a room with a dozen washers and a dozen dryers. It was like doing chores in a submarine! So this afternoon, I got home from work, threw a load of socks and underwear in the washer, and hopped in the shower.

Upon arriving in the basement of my apartment building to put my wet clothes in the dryer, I was met with a note that informed me that, apparently, the dryer is broken, and instead of wasting coins, I should dry my clothes on my (non-existent) deck or in my (insufficiently large) bathroom. Was the note-writer the same person who discovered the dryer was broken in the first place and didn’t immediately leave a note? Who’s to say. As a man of action, I couldn’t dwell on such issues.

That’s right, a man of action. What did you think? That when I’m faced with any sort of adversity, even the most trivial kind, that I would just run away and sulk on my blog? Ha! Not likely!

Clever boy!

My first instinct was to hang my stuff on a bunch of chairs, but I don’t have nearly enough chairs for that. How best to maximize the little space and few chairs I had?

One word, six letters: brooms.

Once I made this brilliant realization, it was a cakewalk to get everything hung up. When I ran out of brooms, I grabbed the mop. When I ran out of mops, I sifted through the closet and found a curtain rod. I was on a roll!

The power of wiffle!

No more curtain rods! How about some wiffle bats? How about some novelty costume canes? (You might remember those from this Halloween costume.) And for the home stretch, I used the ironing board and Rocket Red, my old lady cart. Ding ding ding!

So, crisis averted. Instead of wasting time and money (and taking my clothes out of the building. Ew!) going to the laundromat, I used my quick wits, craftiness, and resources to construct a series of makeshift clotheslines. Now I can’t wait for those stiff, linty socks for the next two weeks.

Useless piece of lousy junk

I was at the Government Center T station this afternoon, on my way to the grocery store. It being January 2, I had to buy a new monthly pass. So I walk in, put my large regular from Dunkies on top of the fare machine, and I begin my purchase. I’ve done this dozens of times, so who knows where my head was at today, but I go through all the motions of selecting the pass I want, until I realize, with a look of horror on my face reflected in the smooth glass of the machine’s touch screen, that I had bought a Charlie Ticket, instead of putting a January pass on my Charlie Card.

For those of you from out of town, the difference between a ticket and a card is the difference between a laserjet printer and a linotype machine. It’s the difference between just walking onto the T, and standing there at the fare box for 15 seconds like a slack-jawed idiot. Paying for the T with a ticket is less than half a step up from paying with money, and regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know what I think of people who pay with money.

Oh, and I left my coffee on top of the fare machine, so I had to run up half the down escalator to go back and retrieve it, and then my pass didn’t work a second time at Government Center, so I had to walk to Park Street to get on the T. Punch me in the face.

# A miraculous solution to a problem you may not be aware that you had.

# I’ll try not to be a Matt Taibbi link whore, but this post is good at elucidating the twin problems of wealth-coddling status quo-ism and acquiescent, uncritical royal courtier journalism.

# Very rarely do you come across a video that speaks to a generation like this one does. Never have I come closer on more occasions to strangling one of my own kin with the cord of a Nintendo controller.