Uh oh - It's almost November.

And you know what that means.....

It's muthaf*ckin' NaNoWriMo Time Yo!

Yep, it's 50,000 words or bust time again.

I've have attempted this challenge 3 years in a row now and I can only seem to get to 10,000 words before I get to the WHYAMIDOINGTHISSTUPIDCRAP stage.

Ugh what is with the swearing lately?!

Anyway, so when I post nothing funny on Shamrag this month, now you know why.

And dammit, don't forget to vote. Show me some love people!

Trick or Treat!

Halloween is an interesting contradiction for me.

Millions of strangers giving candy to kids...

But somehow that seems so, so wrong.

Well whatever.

I still enjoy buying candy (the good kind - no crappy small boxes of raisins or shriveled up old apples here) and I still get a thrill when trick-or-treaters come to the door all dressed up in adorable costumes.

Especially the kids who really dress up in elaborate costumes, who still say "TRICK OR TREAT" and who say thank you. Those kids are the ones who can help themselves to as much candy as they want.

Happy Halloween pumpkins!

It started in CT

Ok ok.

I've been swearing quite a bit these days (tired, cranky, allergy-ridden) but this video made me feel miles better about pretty much everything.

Famous people swearing - SO NOT APPROPRIATE FOR WORK!!!!
(the c-word is used a few times)



NSFW

PS: The link above has a much better sound sync thing going on.....

Online Content Editor Position Open at CNN

All I can say is that if I were a cheerleader getting "creamed" at a game by players, I would NOT want it headlined on CNN.

Seriously, this is online news content at CNN? Really?

Anna Nicole was a low they never fully recovered from.

If we are a bunch of Massholes.....

Then drivers in Connecticut would be a bunch of Connectic*nts.

Driving through the little-yet-LONNNNNGGGGGGEST state last night I was amazed at the sheer as*holitude of CT drivers.

It was easier to count how many times I saw a blinker in use (twice!). Drivers use all lanes as passing/racing lanes, god help anyone getting onto the highway and into the path of a passer in the far right lane. Then there are those who will ride your bumper until they can nose their way into the tiniest gaps in traffic to get one car length ahead. Most seem to have no concept of the "zipper" theory when road construction forces lanes to merge....

I used to think it was a joke about the ferocity of the Connecticut State Police and how dogged they are in their pursuit of speeders, but now I realize that really they are just shooting
fish in a barrel.

Go Pats!

Wow I've been waiting for the Pats to crack 50!

And against the Redskins to boot.

I was down in DC this weekend and among other things, happened to be hanging out with our man Pedro who was valiantly wearing his Vrabel jersey through Redskin country.

A few times more than once I heard an anonymous "cheater!" float through the crowd. But clearly no fan was really ballsy enough to follow up on that.

Which does make me laugh in retrospect. I mean I get the whole taping scandal - but it's not steroids or betting.

And 52 to 7 is a wiiiiiiiiiiide ass margin. That's not cheating by taping, that's cheating by psychic.

Well I guess it would suck to be on the team that had to face Brady, then Cassel, and then the third string guy.....

It would have been classic if they had finally called up the quarterback from Foxboro High.

That I would have paid to see.

Ha, that's what those Redskins get for having a bunch of face touchers for fans.

Gone Baby, Gone!

The life force sucking cablebox that Con-cast jammed onto the side of my house is GONE!

Whooooo hoooo!

Not only did I whinge about it here, but then I whinged about it on someone else's blog, thanks for letting me spew on your blog Suldog! And whinged about to the Department of Telecommunications and Cable, who basically gave me the low down on exactly what kind of a scam cable television really is.

So imagine my joy when I got home and found that the box is GONE!!!! They managed to convince another neighbor to have the box stuck onto his house, the dilapidated sh*tbox that it is, but I am happy it is gone and my business with Con-cast is OVER!


Whoo hoo!

California is on FIRE!

Wow, apparently 666 square miles of California have burned up in this last round of wildfire.

To give you an idea of how much that is, it's as if all of:

Boston (90 square miles)
Cape Cod (413 sq mi)
Martha's Vineyard (100 square miles)
Nantucket (60 square miles)

literally burned completely down to the ground. All of it together.

That is some amount of burning huh.

Sad human tragedy.

Today I sat in on a murder arraignment.

Back in March a young man was shot and killed in front of a local middle school at 4pm in the afternoon by two other young men in a car.

I am not going to into the specifics of the case, you can read about that yourself and make your own opinions.

However the narrative of the events broke my heart.

In condensed form, and in my own words, it went something like this:

-----------

On March 14th just prior to 4pm the two defendants were driving in a car leased by X. They were members of X gang and looking for members of Y gang.

The victim was standing on the curb in front of the Timilty School.

Defendant A was driving and told Defendant B "just bag" him and handed him a pair of black gloves, again saying "I don't care who you get, just bag 'em".

They then rolled up and fired on the victim, firing seven rounds that hit the victim in the neck, head, and chest.

--------------

The family of the victim was sitting in the court and his poor mother was listening to this.

However you look at this, whichever angle you choose, at the end of the day the visceral reaction is similar to watching a horror movie. Listening to the narrative unfold you really have to fight the urge to yell to the victim to RUN, RUN, GET AWAY, GO, RUN!!!!

Especially when you see his mom in the court hearing how bullets pierced the neck that once probably smelled like newborn to her, that bullets crashed through a skull that held so much potential, that his life was sadly snuffed out so dangerously arbitrarily.

And while I know that this story occurs all over, all the time, on many different levels and scales, this was just my own observations of a sad event in Boston.

30, 300, 3000 - WHAT is going on around here?!

When I created this blog it was in a drunken Scrabble playing haze with a bunch of Irish folk and a pornographic thesaurus.

I figured they'd read it, and probably my mom and my sister too - bringing my total readership level to about 12.

But I inserted a stat counter anyway. My ego made me dooit.

Sometimes those original 12 readers would get another reader and my readership would bump up to 24-30 readers.

And occasionally I get a reference on Universal Hub. Which boosts those stats to about 50-80 readers.

So imagine my surprise when I checked the old stat counter yesterday afternoon and saw that the 'rag had 300 hits.

What the...??

I did a little checking and found that I had been referenced in an article on Slate.com. And then another reference on Boston.com.

Woah, well that would explain why today when I looked at the stat counter it was over 3000 hits.

Holy crapola!

That is some kind of pressure now.

Some of my favorite posts.

Occasionally I will re-read through some of old Shamrag posts and think "holy sh*t! that's funny......waaaaaaaait a minute - I wrote that!"

So here you are, in no particular order, some oldies but goodies:

The Nacho Man:
http://shamrag.blogspot.com/2005/03/this-is-why-you-make-nachos-with.html

My Hands Down Favorite Pick Up Line:
http://shamrag.blogspot.com/2005/02/pick-up-line-3.html

The Best Blankie Ever
http://shamrag.blogspot.com/2006/12/hot-tamale.html

How We Park in Boston
http://shamrag.blogspot.com/2007/05/parking-with-spirit.html

The Varmint
http://shamrag.blogspot.com/2007/02/its-varmint.html

AND AS ALWAYS.....

Thank you dear reader for reading!

Grrrrrrrr

I know I am tired in part because I have been sucked into the Sox game...

But MOSTLY I am exhausted because my neighbors have been waking me up at 4:30AM for the last three mornings in a row.

It seems that one of them is a bartender who gets home with a pigpile of friends between 4 -4:3oAM.

One of whom is a giggly, shrill girl who likes to slam doors.

I get it, they're students, they have to work to pay tuition and crap, and they're so busy working and studying that they are owed some fun time.

But please please please, SHUT THE F*CK UP AT 4:30 IN THE MORNING!

What is with the rubbing???

I am not a baseball fan. The games are usually on NESN and I don't have cable.

So the one thing I never knew about the game was how much the coaches rub to each other. It's a secret language like pig latin.

Watching Terry "the Spittah" Francona: he rubs his cheek twice, then once down the forearm, a tug on the ear, and scratches his elbow. Or something like that.

To which some other coach on the field replies with: a tug on his cap, a swipe down the leg, two taps on the forearm, and a hand squeeze under the armpit. Or something like that.

And then the catcher taps twice on his balls and the pitcher knows to throw a fastball.

Which is a universal statement that means: If you don't pitch an out, I will punch you in the nuts.

Since it worked in game 5.....

Until I posted this prayer during game five the Sox were losing...

And since every single member & player in Red Sox Nation is highly superstitious, I am posting this prayer again for them, so as not to disrupt the equilibrium.

Our Father, who art at Fenway...
Baseball be thy game.
Thy Kingdom come,
Playoffs need to be won,
On Earth, then on to the Cask 'n' Flagon.
Give us this day, a perfect Papi,
And forgive us our losses,
As we forgive those,
Like Eric Gagné.
And lead us not, into desperation,
But deliver us from any losses.
For thine is the Power,
And the Glory,
To beat the Indians,
Forever and ever....the Yankees still suck
Amen!

(Thanks AGAIN to HollyLollyPop for this.
If the Sox go.....all.....the......way...... I will post it again during the World Series)

The Power of Prayer

See the prayer below.

I swear it's why the Sox are winning 6 to 1 at the bottom of the ninth....

In Cleveland with that ANNOYING drummer.

Ben Affleck is NAWT from DAWT

No mattah what the Noo Yawk Times implies.

Seri-usly
.
He's nawt.

He was born in California and raised in the People's Republic of Cambridge.
According to IMDB his real name is Benjamin Geza Affleck-Boldt.

My gawd! The horrah!

And let me tell you, everyone on THIS side of the rivah know just what exactly is in that watah oveh THEYAH.

But whatevah. I am still gonna go see Gone Baby Gone - represent yo!

For those of you who still believe....

Our Father, who art at Fenway...
Baseball be thy game.
Thy Kingdom come,
Playoffs need to be won,
On Earth, then on to the Cask 'n' Flagon.
Give us this day, a perfect Papi,
And forgive us our losses,
As we forgive those,
Like Eric Gagné.
And lead us not, into desperation,
But deliver us from any losses.
For thine is the Power,
And the Glory,
To beat the Indians,
Forever and ever....the Yankees still suck
Amen!



(thanks to HollyLollyPop for forwarding this to me!)

Love to love you baby!

This morning I was snug as a bug in a rug when I hear this noise at about 6:45am:

"iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

love to love you bayyyyybeeee"

huh? Sounds familiar....

"iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

love to love you bayyyyybeeee"

Oh my god, AM disco. I have to say, Donna Summer is very popular in my neighborhood.

Probably because she is from here. Like why NKOTB is still popular in Dot.

Now I am going to have boogie in my step all day today....

Oh and don't forget to vote

A poll on who you'd vote for in the
2008 Presidential Election.

Vote often.

Everyone is allowed to vote.
More than once if you like.

Now, I'm just saying

Not that I really care, but seriously, it would totally rock if the Sawx pulled one out of their asses and closed the 0-7 gap.

And the sad part is I totally forgot that Manny Delcarmen was on the team!

Whoops!

Hey, at least I admit I am only a fan when they're winning in the post-season.

Happy Day of Birth Mom!

The world is a nicer place with you innit.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Go Pats Go!

Ok so after 6 wins it is gonna SUCK when they lose.

But I am not going to worry about that until they play the Colts in November.

The Pat's bye week isn't until the week after that game, so that is the only reason I am a little nervous. But probably it is only going to help them maintain their momentum.

Well, whatever, GO PATS!

Laughed, spent, ate, cooked.....

Weekend roundup:

Friday: went to see Zanna, Don't! at the Speakeasy with Brucealicious and laughed more in an hour and forty-five minutes than I did all last week. Went for affogado after and then came home and started a batch of bread.

Saturday: Got up, had brekkie with the Evil Twin, went to the farmer's market with Julibanana and spent all my money. Went to the library for a book, then home to finish bread - which turned out completely crap and was promptly turned into bird food. I think I did something else, but I forget what. Oh yeah, I made granola and I made a batch of yogurt.

Sunday: Got up and then pretty much spaced out until the Evil Twin came to get me to go get Grandpy and we all went to Upstairs on the Square for Momma's birthday brunch. I had to say I preferred the Pudding to the Square - shoddy service (slow, inefficient), lots of flies, and ungenerous amounts of coffee were hardly hallmarks at the Pudding! However, the food was good and I ate plenty.

Then I came home and started to cook. I made farmer's market veg soup with orzo and I am trying to make a non-crap batch of bread. I also made some pizza dough.

The reason I am making all this food is because I am challenging myself to eat nothing commercial for one week.

Seriously, I eat way too much processed and chemically crap. It's doing my head in.

So far I have learned that the farmer's market is expensive but the veg is astonishingly different from supermarket veg.

I kind of knew that would be true, but honestly the taste of the farm carrot compared to the market carrot is as different as the taste between cheddar cheese and a rotten anchovy.

I've also learned that finding locally grown/made is not so easy. I mean really, Boston is home to the bean and the cod, the least I could hope to find are a few local beans!

And lastly I've learned that Whole Foods and Trader Joes are now similarly priced, and in some instances Whole Foods is cheaper. Which is sort of a bummer.

We'll see how long this experiment lasts. I predict that it will last until about coffee & munchkin break on Monday.

*sigh*

Eat, Drink, Buy, Share

It's hard to keep everything I love to eat, drink, buy, visit, support, to myself.

So I am throwing them all onto Yelp to share with you all too!

Check them out here: Lily's Reviews

UN BELIEVE ABLE FINISH!!!

GO Pats!

GO Randall Gay!!

Amazing pick up with about 50 seconds on the clock to and then dodge left, dodge right and

TOUCHDOWN!!!!!!!!!!

Another 30+ finish for the Pats.

WHOO HOO!

Giant Water Claw of Doom

There is no other way to describe this terrifying wave thrown up by Typhoon Krosa than to call it a Giant Water Claw of Doom.

From CNN:


You would never ever see that kind of wave at Castle Island.

No wonder a million Chinese people are evacuating.

What the heck is Halo 3?

Yeah, I have no clue about video games. The last video game I played was Donkey Kong or maybe Campaign '84 on an Adam computer. Then at some stage the Evil Twin got a Nintendo. Or was it an Atari? And I got really good at Duckhunt.

But now I dunno.... X-Box, PSP, Wii... these aren't even words to me. Just a bunch of vowels and consonants hanging out.

Are they even called video games any more?

However, I am in love with the Halo 3 ad. I think Halo 3 is a video game but whateve, the ad is really good.

It is an examination of a battlefield diorama set to Chopin's Prelude No. 15 in D-flat "Raindrop".

Check it out:

Craigslist Free Stuff Roundup

I haven't done one of these in a while.

Don't say I never give yous anything!

@*@*@*@*@*@

To carry all your stuff around in, how about some burlap bags? You have to take 100 of them. That would be great for wrapping trees in for the winter. Or you could make them into wedding favors I guess...
If you want 'em: http://boston.craigslist.org/sob/zip/440672530.html

For the culinarily minded folk among us, how about some P-Town taffy?
Five pieces, free, garlic flavored. Did I mention it's free? Check it out: http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/zip/439283929.html

If you are hip to all crap retro, this water bed from the menopausal woman in Duxbury is a must have. Specifically it must be filled with water from a hose. As opposed to spit from a dropper. But whateve, it available, go get it at: http://boston.craigslist.org/sob/zip/437229392.html

Huh, this person is offering free BBQ. Which I think means BBQ food. Because in my mind BBQ comes from a grill. I wonder if that is a regional thing... Well anyway, the ad doesn't really specify either. You be the judge here: http://boston.craigslist.org/bmw/zip/441154832.html

T-t-t-t-t-t-hat's all folks!

Good luck and happy free stuffin'!

What the red words mean...

If you see a word in red, it's a link.

If you hover your cursor over the word, you will see that you can click on a link.

Try it, it's wikked fun!

Last thing I swear!

I know that everyone is chiming in on the anonymous city officials who claim that the autopsy reports of the two firefighters killed in West Roxbury and that my opinion is just a small drop in the ocean, but hey what's two more cents.

What makes me crazy is that there are people going on about how the "public" has the "right" to know if their firefighters are drunk or high. Puhleez!

Doctors abuse drugs & alcohol, as do EMT's, and police officers, and teachers, and airline pilots, and bus drivers, and these are people who guide us through our present daily lives.

For that matter, lots of people I encounter free admit to taking recreational drugs.

Not only that but about 90% of all the people I know have driven a car after having three or more drinks.

And it's always all fine until someone dies.

Like these two firefighters. Now people seem so determined to enjoy dragging the dead through the mud. Even if they are probably a little mud spattered themselves.

And finally, the real criminals here are the owners/operators of the restaurant as well as the city restaurant inspectors at ISD. Were the restaurant grease traps never cleaned? Did ISD ever tell them to clean it? That is a lot of grease, not just a thin coating.

For a grease fire to smolder in a ceiling for hours, while letting diners continue their meal, until it explodes and kills people, THAT'S criminal.

And how much do I hate Channel 7 news for jumping back on this story a day after they were ordered not to? A whole lot.

And how pathetic is Channel 7 for whining that they were the first with the news and they would have reported it FIRST only they were BLOCKED from breaking it by the courts and the union? Really f*cking pathetic.

It's sad that Channel 7's lead story is all about how they were SHAFTED on their scoop, especially when the breaking news should be about the 13 year-old boy who was shot and killed in Dorchester.

It would be great if lots of people stopped watching 7 news.

Ok, I am done.

I swear.

Sawx Win One

Game One goes to the Sox.

But I am still not excited.

Because in truth I am really just a Pats fan.

Because it's only Game One. It's not like it's Game 7 of the World Series.

Ahhhhhh, but I do think Jason Varitek is hawwwwt.

Even if I wouldn't recognize him in person. Not even if he walked up to me and handed me a baseball that David Ortiz hit out of the park in the bottom of the tied up ninth in Game Seven of the World Series against the Yanks.

Or something like that....

You voted!

The results are in!

Five people voted (whoo hoo!!) and two of them voted that the Best Slow Songis......

The Flamingos - I Only Have Eyes for You

News like on the police blotter

Since pretty much all news lately seems to be written by ex-Enquirer employees (Britney Loses Custody of Boys! New South End Dog Park Set to Open!) I think that it would be useful if someone could write news articles in easy-to-digest police-blotter style paragraphs.

It would be better than having to get some ding-dong reporters annoying opinion mixed up with fact.

Seriously, I am so sick of the bias, and the sensationalism, and the laziness, and the general "blergh-iness" of the news in general, I am thinking of just reading the AP wire headlines.

Like right now for example, all the major news channels are advertising the 11 o'clock news with lurid tales of the two firefighters recently killed in a restaurant fire. They are saying that one had alcohol in his system, while the other had cocaine.

What makes me so totally disgusted is that they are pretty much basing these reports on "anonymous" sources.

For crying out loud!

These are two DEAD firefighters. Killed at a fire from an smoldering, exploding ceiling. They left behind waves of family and friends and co-workers who are still trying to cope with this dreadful awful loss.

Leave them alone, have a little respect.

Just like this weekend when a young Revere police officer was fatally shot in the head. Newscasters could stop themselves from making dramatic and ultimately untruthful suggestions that perhaps the bullet came from another officer or that it was very suspect that they were hanging out after hours...

There is a reason that newscast audiences are tuning out and newspaper readers are dropping off - the quality of news is crap.

It's not news, it's an affront to everyone from 1st graders on up.

At least he's not boss of me!

Mister President - you sound like a real a**hole.

From a talk he gave in Pennsylvania:

"I delegate to good people. I always tell Condi Rice, `I want to remind you, Madam Secretary, who has the Ph.D. and who was the C student. And I want to remind you who the adviser is and who the president is."

I have worked for people like this, no - not the president, and believe me, anyone who says something like this is a really a**hole to work for.

The kind of person whose picture gets used as a dartboard target at happy hour.

En route to 38 or better

GO PATS

They are in Cincy tonight, playing the Bengals.

And holy crap them Buckeyes sure are LOUD.

That's awesome.

Two of my favorite people are Ohioans - SallyNaNa, and Karenanowrimo, so I sort of feel more generous than I normally would.

So GO PATS

And: Good Job Bengals!

Eh, that is SO 1995

Sox win the division, eh, whateve.

Now they're in the playoffs..... *yaaaaaawn*

In a month or so it's going to be either:

Whoo hoo just like three years ago!!!

or

Gawd, it's just like fuckin' Bucknah all ovah again!

Personally I think Boston and Sox fans in general are happier when there is 86 years between pennants. It's not that Sawx fans like to suffah, but it's like how they deal with chicks - no one likes the ones that put out all the time.

Take it to the edge and then dash all hopes - it keeps 'em hanging on for more.

It's the jet fuel fumes

How else can anyone explain why two smartish people do completely dumb sh*t at the airport?

First there was Sun Starship from MIT who went to Logan with a LiteBrite tee-shirt and then instead of answering any questions from the Staties like "hey, what are those wires for?" she kept walking.

She's lucky she is still alive.

And then there is Ermiyas A. Asfaw from Washington DC who really had no clue about the complete lack of any sense of "hue-mah" (humor for those of you not from here) of every airport employee and State Troopah.

Seriously, if you express any tendency towards mirth, Massport will not allow you onto airport grounds.

It seems that Asfaw made an un-funny non-joke with the intent to antagonize an airline employee.

Honestly, would Al Qaeda announce themselves and their plans in English to some numbnut from Eastie?

Like Dean would say: I DOWDIT.

But you piss off that same numbnut he is going to call over the Staties. And then you're really f*cked because they've all had their humor glands surgically removed at State Troopah School.

And Asfew has no excuse - he is from Washington DC for crying out loud! I bet he would never said that at Dulles.

So it must be the fumes. Or the water.