Why Is It That No Matter Where You Live The People In Your Neighborhood Are The Stupidest People On The Planet?

Case 1:
It has been snowing off and on for several days now.  Kind of a nuisance, as we seldom know the night before if the kids will be in school, if we'll have to go to work the next morning, if we should really make that emergency run before the snow starts to the supermarket to buy bread and milk and toilet paper and other so-called 'essentials'.  But we live on a cul-de-sac, which I guess is some ancient French name for a road that does not "go through" anywhere and, conversely, ends in a circle.  Got it?  One way in, and one way out.  And the road is not very wide, I'd say maybe about 3 car widths.  So inevitably some of my my genius neighbors park their cars on the street and leave them there before the snow storm.  And when the snow begins, and continues and continues and continues, and the snowplows come to our neighborhood to clear our road, well, they can't do such a great job.  They must slalom around the cars that the idiots decided to leave on the road.  I cannot wait, and I will truly rejoice, when a plow takes out one of these cars, and I will take a day off of work to go to court to defend the plow driver by saying that, yes indeed, the cars should not have been parked on the relatively narrow street before a snowstorm and that they should have instead been parked in the idiot's driveway (yes, we all have driveways capable of holding up to 6 cars ... yes, 6 cars).

Whoever invented button-fly jeans should be shot!

Um ... not sure what else to say, since the title sort of covers it.

Last Summer I ordered a pair of these from Amazon.com.  I unfortunately can't blame Amazon since I neglected to bother with their fine print, and I had just plain forgotten that 501s have a button-fly.  So I got them, wore them, and immediately regretted buying them.  But didn't feel like returning them.  I do think they show off my butt real good though.

Problem is ... normally taking a pee, as a guy, is simple.  Walk up, unzip, do my business, and rezip.  However having a button-fly brings that effort to an entirely new level.  No longer can I simply just unzip when I wear these things.  I have to wrangle and wriggle around so they I can unbutton 5---yes 5--- buttons on my crotch.  And if I really have to pee, well, it's just that much worse.  Then, and only then, will my god-foresaken pants allow me to relieve myself.  And then afterward I have to reverse that, buttoning all 5 back up.

Oh what a pain it can be to be a guy!

Is Christmas green?

It sure as hell is red and green, but it sure as hell isn't green.  But let me begin with an "I don't do Xmas" disclaimer.  But oughtn't that be obvious? (and is that the correct usage of the word oughtn't?) (and isn't oughtn't a wordicle?)  Yeah, we're Jewish and we don't even do that.  So we sure as hell don't do Xmas.  And this time of year (say ... mid-October through the New Year) is irritating as hell, because everyone continuously tries to cram the red and green crap down my throat, over and over again, 24 hours a day, in pretty much the same way that we just cannot escape the ridiculous political garbage come every election season (on TV, on the radio, on sight-nauseating billboards along every road ... vote for this person ... no, vote for that person ...).  But anyway ...

So for whatever reason this morning, as I was sitting down doing my daily "business", the thought of whether or not Xmas is green popped into my head.  And I immediately said to myself, "No."

Why?  Isn't it immediately apparent?  Think of what people do during the holiday season every year:

My Anti-Katie Couric rant

So back in December 2009 I wrote a rather long-ish rant about a bunch of various things, and in there somewhere I mentioned that I needed to write my Anti-Katie Couric rant.  So here goes ...

A few years ago I was listening to the radio, minding my own business, when Katie Couric really, REALLY pissed me off.

OK, to back up just a couple of minutes for some perspective ...

The math of toilets

So I took a pee today.  Interesting huh?

I was at a urinal at work.  Our facilities folks occasionally attempt to do some "green" experiments.  One of these types of experiments involves trying out different types of urinals that use less, or no, water.  The little explanatory card above my urinal today told me that it only uses a pint of water per flush.  I don't know how much water a regular urinal uses per flush, but it can't be much more than that, and I must look this up on the Web for the rest of this post.  I'll be right back ...

Hmmm ...

Huummmm ...

Hmmmmmmm ...

OK.  I am back.  And evidently I was wrong.  Looks like the newer urinals tend to use a gallon and a half of water for each flush, down from two and a half gallons in the older urinals.  That is one helluva lot more water than it appears is running down that hole.  But anyway ...

The urinal next to mine was waterless.  Yes, waterless.  That means that you pee, and then just walk away.  I have used it.  I have peed in that urinal and then walked away.  No noise.  No liquids slurshing around the bottom.  Nothing.  But the strange thing was the information posted on the card above my neighboring waterless urinal: it said that that urinal, all alone, all by itself, could save 40,000 gallons of water each year.  As I was peeing I was running some numbers quickly through my head (I am ambidextrous like that).  And these numbers went like this (but with a lot more detail and less rounding here):

40,000 gallons per year / 1 gallon per flush (I thought I was overestimating) = 40,000 flushes

40,000 flushes / 365 days per year = 110 flushes per day

But this assumes that dudes are peeing at work every day of every week, and I am sure that, although some dudes pee at work on, say weekends and holidays, most of them are peeing at home or at a ballgame or at Home Depot instead on those days.  So let's assume 200 workdays per year:

40,000 flushes / 200 work days per year = 200 flushes per day

Now let's assume a 12 hour day, because although I tend to get in to work to pee on the very early side, many other dudes get in to work to pee on the much later side, even into the early and mid-evenings.  So:

200 flushes per day / 12 hours = 16.666 flushes per hour

or a flush every 3.6 minutes.

Here's my problem with this: Dudes are not peeing in that urinal every three and a half minutes.  It's just not happening.  There are a lot of people in my building, thousands of them, and lots of them are dudes, however the bathrooms are just not used that often or regularly.  I cannot prove it.  You'll just have to trust me on this important issue.  So, to me, this is false urinal advertising.

Important?  No.  Not at all.  Not even remotely.  Why the hell are you still reading this?

Interestingly, in my urinal web search just now I came upon the same claim: that a waterless urinal can indeed save up to 40,000 gallons per year.  So perhaps in other locations that do have much more regular dude-use of the urinals this is true.  But not where I work.  Trust me.

Big bucks from old investments

I am making BIG BUCKS from some old stock investments.  See my latest in my investing blog: Big Winstar bucks