Gets Me Heated

I try to keep my blog from being overly car-centric in hopes of appealing to a wider audience, but this is one that I can't get over. You know when you're in a rush to get somewhere, perhaps driving a few mph over the speed limit, and you pull up behind a BMW 335 at a stoplight? First thing that goes through your mind is, "Great, this guy's gonna be flyin'." Light turns green...waiting...and instead of a bat outta hell, it's like a pig into molasses. Now contemporary automotive theory dictates that car companies should have multiple tiers for each available model. The distinctions are usually a combination of power and aesthetics, with the former accounting for most of the difference in price. This is good for people like me who have mad whip, because it allows us to choose a model that'll make it easier to get points on our licenses. The problem arises with people who drive like my grandmother (RIP) but are still under the illusion that they need abso...

When launching a new search website and attempting to gain ground in a market already dominated by a single player, it would be silly to, you know, actually develop a new search engine. A much more cost-effective solution would be to steal results from the popular, established source. Kinda like what Bing what Bing has been doing with Google . And by kinda, I mean exactly.

I just saw a commercial for the 2011 Dispatch Summer Tour at TD Bank Garden on June 25th . I went to the LAST Dispatch concert. I HAVE WITNESSES! This gets me heated.

As many of you already know, use of the phrase "no homo" has become pervasive among rap and hip hop fans (my friends included). This was mostly inspired by social justice pioneer, Lil' Wayne (please disregard current prison sentence). For those unfamiliar, it goes something like this: "I love you, man...no homo." Anyway, I think gay people need to get in on the fun. For example: "Damn girl, that top makes your boobs look great...no hetero." Why should straight people be the only ones who get to discriminate?

Below is a car that parks outside my house all the time. Actually, that's a generous use of the word "car." Crapbox is a much better description. In fact, the only reason I know it's not abandoned is that I occasionally see it parked across the street, rather than around the corner. But I digress. Like the title says, what's wrong with this picture? I know what you're thinking: "Jawann, is it the passenger's side window all sealed up with duct tape?" Nope. "Maybe the driver's side mirror that's hanging on by a thread?" Wrong again. I'll just tell you. You see that red thing peaking through the windshield? You know what that is? It's...The Club. That's right, not only is the owner delusional enough to think The Club is an effective method of deterring auto thieves, but they think someone might actually want to steal their ride. While the 1980 Volkswagen Vanagon that also parks nearby is no Maybach, I...

The last thing I would ever want to do is sound pessimistic, but I don't think that reusable bags are going to save the world. It's a good idea in theory, but as with any other consumer good, people end up buying them in excess. User error is part of the problem. I'm the owner of two reusable bags that I got as Christmas gifts last year. Unfortunately I can also count the number of times I've remembered to bring them shopping with me on no hands. A surprisingly large number of people will simply a buy a new one when this happens, adding to their already inflated inventory. I go for the paper bag, but we'll get back to that later. Since shoppers need to get their money's worth, the bags are made to last. I will make the completely unsubstantiated and yet seemingly reasonable claim that reusable bags consume between 20 and 50 times more resources during production than their disposable counterparts. That means every bag purchased must be used 20-50 times to break ...

This shit cracks me up...enough to be worthy of a post: I love New Hampshire.

Okay, not MY umbrella. I don't own one. And you couldn't pay me to carry one. But I think I'm part of the minority here. Half the people I see on the street don't seem to realize that wind + umbrella = stumbling around, getting soaked, and looking like a dummy while valiantly attempting to turn it outside in (guess that's the opposite of inside out). The other half have Gore-Tex jackets on, with hoods pulled tight, like the Wicked Witch of West doing her best to avoid another melting incident. Department of redundancy department anyone? Maybe not everyone got CC'd on the memo, but here are the cliff notes: some guy invented the raincoat.

(See the original Poor Planning post from March 13, 2009.) For the past several weeks a wood flooring company's van has been parked in close proximity to my house. As the picture shows, they do it all: dustless buffer, installation, sanding, refinishing, and staining. I'm not sure which one of my neighbors is utilizing these services, but their floors should be lookin' fly before too long. Now I'm sure these guys are fine purveyors of the wood flooring arts, but marketing geniuses they certainly are not. www.hardwoodfloors.com would have been a great URL, but the fact that it was already taken didn't make putting "my" at the beginning a good idea. On the contrary, it's probably the worst pronoun they could have chosen. Let's take another example: even if Merriam-Webster found that their first, second, third, and fourth website choices were all taken, picking www.mybigdictionary.com would still be ill-advised.

This has finally happened enough times to get me sufficiently heated for a blog post. That's a pretty low bar, I know, but today gave me the inspiration I needed. Two radio stations that sometimes get run in my car are JAM'N 94.5 and KISS 108 (which is actually 107.9, which also gets me heated, but is not the point right now). Nowadays I'm usually tuned in to NPR, but taking a break from the financial crisis and the dubious wars in various Middle Eastern countries that most people couldn't place on a map can be necessary. JAM'N used to be my favorite, but it's degraded over the past decade. KISS used to suck, but has undergone moderate improvement. The reason for this convergence? They're both owned by Clear Channel now. Their playlists are disturbingly similar, covering much of the same pop music. JAM'N leans slightly to the hip hop side, while KISS leans to the "I'm a 12 year old girl" side. An hour spent switching back and forth will ...