Just a fun quote

What is required now is a feat of linguistic legerdemain and a degree of intrepidity.

Thank you, neighbor

Dear Manager of Building Across the Street,

I know you can't do anything about the behavior of the world's loudest garbage collectors at 8:30 on a Saturday, but did you have to throw away half of glass bottles this side of the Mississippi yesterday?

It sounds like a glass factory being rolled over by Chuck Norris out there!

See what I mean?

So much to say

So, for starters, my wish that I could have the original Star Wars trilogy (Episodes IV-VI) without all of that crappy re-release special effects, subtle scene and plot changes, and general "CGI spiffyness" (read: stuff I hated) will be granted in September, in a limited edition re-release of the Star Wars Trilogy. I will take any of you mofos on in Star Wars trivia, and you better believe I'm buying these bad boys.

Something wicked this way comes in the NYT Business section. Does anyone actually care what the captions in the print edition say? Check out the photo accompanying this article. The article is titled, "Microsoft to Put More Money Into MSN" and the byline is Bloomberg News. But the caption on the photo of M$FT CEO Steve Ballmer is "Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief, gave a speech Thursday."

Did he? How great! "Yesterday, PDO ate lunch." Wow. All the news that's fit to print, huh? What a wonderful caption. There aren't many better papers than the NYTimes, but you're slipping, fellas. I'll be watching you.

This is why the slide IS meant for adults.

Some Times you gotta Hold Em

Sometimes you just have to stick to your guns. Like, for instance, our annual reunion wknd in the north country. Someone suggested that we should use sheet plastic instead of buying 4-6 Slip'n'Slides (I for one kind of like going to the Kay-Bee Toys in the Manhattan Mall once a year).

I'm fine with that substitution. But then the TODAY Show features this segment (how I managed to not vomit on the TV each time Matt Lauer got smug, I'll never fucking know) about playground safety.

Apparently, all the yuppies this year are getting birch or cedar swing sets for the kiddies. If the swing set is hung from a beam above six feet high, watch out! Here's the quote: "We find that once you get above six feet, the accident rate doubles!" Fucking true. I stick to my 5'11" guns, man.

So, after the fucking garbage about whether to use rubber chips, bark, or good ol' fine sand, and you get the high horse patrol telling us why Slip'n'Slides are so evil.

I'll post a pic of how non-evil/totally fucking awesome they are. Especially when used by adults, and linked together (imagine two tracks of 4 slides end to end) down a steep slope in the middle of summer. If you just got very envious of me, I am not surprised. But back to ye olde high and mighty:

Lauer the Tool:We need to do this quickily, because we only have 30 seconds.
Safety Slut: OK first rule: no parents- you're liable to break something coming in at a bad angle and with that much weight. Rules for kids: Parents must be watching. One person at a time. No one goes head first.
Lauer the Tool: Even though they show a kid head first on the box? [see this]
Safety Slut: Yes.

And that was it. Personally, I trust Wham-O with my life. I have for two years now and it hasn't been a disappointment.

Safe For Work, Unless You Work in the West Wing

In case any of you missed Stephen Colbert's awesome roast of the President and the Press at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, here it is on Youtube. If you were gauging by the audience's reaction, he fell kind of flat. But those people don’t know funny. I know funny. And apparently the press is still hopelessly licking Bush's nuts. Part 1 embedded below, [Part 2] [Part 3]



PDO Salutes New Readers on this fine Wednesday.

I got free cupcakes at work...and I died a little inside

So, for one thing, the cupcakes were totally overdone. Not overcooked, overdone. It was like someone wanted to make the best looking cupcakes ever, but forgot about what made cupcakes good. I think it has probably been years, plural, since I have had a muffin, much less a cupcake.

The cupcake had this perfect little wrapper on it, and the chocolate cake was moist and tastless. But that could have been ok. What annoyed me was that the cupcake had this perfect squat cylinder shape, and the frosting looked like it was cast in a little perfect mold. What happened to the "tast good" cupcake of says of old with the Betty Crocker frosting applied by a knife, dripping slighly off of the cup and on to the wrapper? It was like someone in Teldar Paper's communications and marketing department made sure that the cupcakes were the pastry equivalent of a glossy investment brochure...all done up and primped.

Ooooh it just made me kind of mad. That, and cupcakes are a shitty way to make employees feel appreciated. But it's probably better than yelling.

Tasteless Joke

So the NYT on Sunday had yet another story about the guys from Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch recently indicted on insider trading charges. All of them are children of eastern European or Russian immigrants, or immigrants themselves. They made about $6 million by trading in options and stocks [my favorite is when they bought Reebok options on inside information about its acquisition by Adidas/Salomon- and their actions tipped off federal regulators because the trades comprised 80% of the trading in Reebok options in one day]. It's kind of fun to read about how they did things like open accounts in the names of their relatives or stripper girlfriends.

The stripper in question alleges that she is too dumb to understand what was going on. Said a relative of hers:

“To expect her to know anything about the stock market is like expecting her to fly to the moon with a pole,”

Which I thought was awfully short sighted. She flew to the moon with a Russian, not a Pole.