Beer bad

You’d think that a nickname like “Black Superman” would mean that you were pretty much the most awesome thing ever. You’d be wrong. There’s something so sad about overcoming so much to obtain your dream, only to allow your personal demons to take it away from you.

Human element, my foot

I’m really sick of hearing the words “human element” used to excuse really crappy calls in baseball, and I’m sure that now Armando Galarraga is, too. Poor guy.

Crimes against poodle-manity

People do some very bad things in the name of pet grooming.

Wow, I’m really glad that, despite being in sincere pain, David Boreanaz is soldiering on through the tough times that he has experienced since it became common knowledge that he cheated on his wife (there have been rumors about his infidelity forever, but he had to come clean in order to head off an extortion attempt). A lot of guys wouldn’t be able to keep going. They might even miss the cut at Quail Hollow. But David, well, he’s a trooper. He’s not going to let the man (or woman) bring him down! This kind of internal fortitude must be why he was able to so convincingly play first a vampire, then an FBI agent, for all these years.

I had the hugest crush on him in high school, but I’m happy it died a natural death before this happened.

You were born in Puerto Rico. Your existence is invalid.

“Y is a fact, [so] your x is invalid,” is only funny when y = something silly and x = your argument. Then we’re talking about the meme most likely to crack me up. Infinitely less hilarious is when y = you were born in Puerto Rico and x = your birth certificate. Then we’re talking about millions of people being utterly screwed.

The problem is that Puerto Rican birth certificates are somehow extra ripe for being spoofed, forged, and otherwise used for nefarious purposes. The US State Department and Department of Homeland Security estimate that around 40% of forged US passports were obtained using birth certificates from Puerto Rico. That’s obviously a very serious and scary thing. The government’s solution, though, seems particularly ham-fisted: they’re simply going to invalidate any Puerto Rican birth certificate issued before July 1, 2010.

From my reading of the article, it seems that a large part of the problem is the way that birth certificates are passed along to and for in Puerto Rican society. From the end of the article:

Only 45,622 children were born in Puerto Rico in 2008, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. But more than 860,000 certified copies of birth certificates were issued by the Puerto Rican Office of Vital Statistics the same year, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

That is an insane discrepancy between people born and birth certificate copies issued. Over the course of a lifetime, so many people in Puerto Rico request extra copies of their own and their children’s birth certificates, and really have no idea where the extras are now. Of course unscrupulous people are using Puerto Rican birth certificates; well-meaning citizens have made things easy for them by having so many extra copies of real birth certificates floating around. If that doesn’t change, will the goverment’s new measures make any difference in the long run?

Let it go, you lost

Dear Bob McDonnell,

If you would stop bending over backwards to commemorate a violent, racist legacy that has been tirelessly whitewashed (yeah, I said it) and romanticized, you wouldn’t have to apologize for omitting any related mention of slavery.

You’re welcome.

**

I googled Confederacy links to include in this post, but many of them made me want to vomit, weep, or perhaps vomit while weeping, so I’ll just skip those today.

The post office suxxx!

So I went to the post office yesterday to mail out the blanket and booties I had knit for my friend’s baby boy. Little Archer made his appearance today, but since the package was already in the mail, I’m going to consider myself on time with this one. Happy birthday, Archer! It’s going to be interesting to have a St. Patrick’s Day birthday. That kid’s 21st is going to be epic.

I put the items in a handy box, but didn’t seal it, because I couldn’t find my packing tape. I figured that I could just use the tape at the post office. I addressed a label to Joanna, but didn’t include her zip code, because I didn’t have it. I wasn’t worried, since I’ve always gotten them from the post office in the past.

I made it to the post office and spent a couple of minutes using the free tape to eliminate any possibility that the package would open in transit. I took it to the counter and asked the gentleman for the zip code I needed. He told me that they no longer did that, and I’d have to get it on my own. He wrote down a freaking 800 number, as if I would devote that much effort to it. I just looked it up on my phone in about the time it would have taken to dial the number.

So I went back up to the counter with my newly zip-coded package. He looked at it and told me that they couldn’t accept packages sealed with Scotch tape. So why do they provide it???? He suggested that I use the Priority tape, which was on another table. I went to the other table and covered every bit of Scotch tape with the Priority tape.

Once I was finished, I took it to the counter for a third time. Thankfully, there were no more holdups. The guy scanned the package and then told me that I owed $5 for the postage. $5??? For a package to South Jersey?? At first I was confused as to why it cost so much; the contents are small pieces of fabric and couldn’t possibly cost that much to send 100 miles away. And then I realized that with the Priority tape came the Priority price. Devious! I guess that’s why the post office has done away with the plain packing tape they used to carry.

Now that I know the post office is an agent of evil, I will adjust my dealings with it accordingly.

Why did we need a rule about this?

I rarely make it to Brooklyn, but I like the few areas there that I’ve been. It’ s a nicer place than blogs make it sound (I think, judging by friends who live there and love it), but some of its residents sound pretty freaking nuts. I laughed pretty hard when I read this post on Gothamist. The Double Windsor, a Winsor Terrace bar, has banned the entry of people under 21 after 5 pm. And some parents are upset about that. Why??  That’s the whole point of bars; it’s happy fun adult time, with alcohol. I feel like the mouth of hell is about to swallow us all or something, because for once all of the Gothamist comments were 1) on topic and 2) coherent.

Why don’t I feel bad about this? Kids get everything. They get toys, they take naps, and they don’t have to pay taxes. Can’t we grown-ups have something of our own?

Jack McFadden, a man who cause an uproar in Park Slope when his restaurant, Union House, banned strollers thinks this makes perfect sense. And he’s the father of a 10-month-old baby. He even said one of the smartest things I think I’ve ever read: “If people would just use some common sense and consideration, there wouldn’t have to be rules.” I totally agree with this, as it is applicable in so many situations. Sadly though, common sense just isn’t as common as one might hope.

As is to be expected, there are some parents aren’t happy about it. I don’t get it. I never went to a bar until I was old enough to drink. It wasn’t a big deal. When my parents went out to n0-kids-allowed type places, I’d go visit with a relative or a babysitter would come over to my house. Babysitters! Remember those?? Stimulate the local teenage economy and hire a babysitter already!

Not cool

As loath as I am to agree with the New York Post on anything at all, I have to say that they got this story right. Why is Mayor Bloomberg’s technology commissioner claiming to live in Florida full time? And to save $3,000 a year in taxes? That’s insane. She makes over $200,000 a year by herself, and I’m sure her husband has income, too. There’s no excuse to be so cheap. Of course, today her husband informed the good people of Florida that she is not, in fact, a full-time resident, and hasn’t been since 2001. It’s not as though this was a case of oversight; they actively claimed that she still lived year round in Florida; she had a Florida driver’s license; and she voted in Florida elections. Seriously???

Was it worth the talk of fraud and loss of reputation? I will never understand politicians.

Paging Kim Cattrall

I’m sure that many drivers have sat alone in their cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic and looked longingly over at the cars whizzing along in the HOV lane. They probably wished for a friend or coworker to be in the car with them, both for conversational purposes, and also to get in that fast-moving lane. They maybe even thought that, in a pinch, a doll or mannequin would do. The difference between these imaginary drivers of mine and Kathleen Frascinella is that she actually went that extra step and put a mannequin in her front passenger seat so that she could use the HOV lane. I know that’s an abuse of the system, but that kind of cracks me up. Still, I hate it when people think that rules that others follow shouldn’t have to apply to them, so I think it’s awesome that she got a ticket and 2 point on her license.

Although…who’s to say that the mannequin doesn’t come to life when nobody else is watching??