Do you ever google map someplace before you go there and look at the sat. images to see what the lay of the land is going to be like?

I do, but only because it makes me fee like I am an explorer.

Sad Kermit - Hurt

You can tell if a person is smart by the way they laugh. If you don't believe me think about where you work and how people laugh and it immediately becomes apparent. The weird thing is that it isn't not a volume, length or pitch issue, it's like a beautiful sunset. You know a sunset is beautiful when you see it.

Every man has in his life a beautiful woman who he at one point wished that he could date, who thinks that he is just a really nice guy. And the really beautiful women have 8 or 10 of these guys.

5 Things You Need TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
1. If you ever meet a guy who carries a compass, don't worry it might just be a good luck charm, but if he also carried silly string that's just weird.
2. If you own more than 2 seasons of any TV show on DVD you should probably either have them hidden or a good explanation to justify why.
3. I think it says a lot about your personality if your garbage can in your kitchen is hidden in a cabinet.
4. Wolves don't make great babysitters, unless your son or daughter is a wolf.
5. Jello can cure hunger.

Anyone who starts off something with "I am outraged" isn't really outraged, because when you are truly outraged your energies are directed at more important things than stating you are outraged.

Bill Simmons was one of the first must reads of the internet. Over the years his schtick has grown predictable but there are still flashes of Brillance such as this response to this question from one of his readers.

Q: Wondering if you could settle an argument between me and my buddies? We
were discussing how many sexual partners Jenny had in "Forrest Gump." Everyone
seems to think the over/under should be set at 250. I argued that it's got to be
at least 500. And that's conservative. Keep in mind she was a hippie, drug
addict in the '60s the time of free love. She was naked on stage playing an
acoustic guitar. She was molested by her father. I'm pretty sure she took down
that whole Black Panther rally. Am I way off here? I'm not saying she's a bad
person. But if a hot girl has sex with someone like Forrest, chances are she's
got a bad case of the "Ben Stillers" -- i.e. she can't say "no." Now that I
think about it, I'm saying a grand easy.-- Keith, Hermosa Beach, Calif.
SG:
All right, let's figure this out. According to Jenny's gravestone during the
scene when Forrest says goodbye to her and it gets overwhelmingly dusty, she was
born in 1945 and died in March of '82. We know that she went to an all-girls
college in the mid-'60s (probably not a lot of sex at that point), that she got
expelled for posing in Playboy, that she did the naked guitarist thing, and that
she eventually became a traveling hippie in the late-'60s, leading to the scene
where she spots Forrest speaking at the Washington Monument and runs across the
water to see him. At this point, she's dating the guy from Berkeley who Forrest
ends up punching in the face; you'd have to guess they'd been dating for a year
or two, and the Free Love Era had just started ... so she couldn't have topped
25-30 partners at this point. We also know that she got knocked up by Forrest in
the 1977-78 range, cooled things down and became a diner waitress to provide for
her son over the next few years -- can't imagine a lot of sex happening for her
from 1978 to 1981, and then we know that she moved back in with Forrest and
their son Haley Joel Osment, married Forrest and died a few months later.
So
Jenny's sexual prime happened from 1970 to 1978 and culminated in her turning
into a coked-up disco queen and nearly jumping off a balcony. Even if she
averaged 40-50 partners per year over that stretch -- which wouldn't have been a
Chamberlain-esque pace by any standards -- there's no way you're getting to 500.
Also, girls who sleep with hundreds and hundreds of guys inevitably start to
look weathered and worn down. As my old Boston buddy Mark Fanning used to say,
"You can usually look at a girl and SEE the number of guys she's slept with."
That's why women don't last long in the porn industry; they're aging in dog
years. So since Jenny looked relatively good even when she returned to Forrest's
house in 1978, I'm putting the over/under at 220.5 and making a guess of 205 for
her total number of partners.
(The bigger question: The movie implies that
Jenny died of AIDS ... and yet, she died in March of 1982, nine months after the
first recorded case of AIDS in the United States. So how did she get AIDS in the
1980-81 range if she was taking care of Haley Joel Osment and working in some
random diner? Could that have been a bigger plot stretch? Or was she still
throwing it around even as a single mom? On second thought, maybe we need to
bump up that over/under.)

You know what always puts a smile on my face, a woman walking to work with white socks and running shoes over her pantyhose, extra points for high hair, and a creme colored suit with shoulder pads.

In every office there is one person who when you are in a meeting or see an email and you see that this person is getting assigned a special assignment or project to work on, you immediately know that soon but not immediately you are going to have a lot of work to do, because not only is this person not going to do what they needed to, but in the process they are going to make things harder on themselves in getting it done. And more often than not if you offer to help them from the get-go they will brush you off. If you don't have a person like this in your office its because it's you.

One thing that is always interesting is when the conversation turns to something that you happen to know a lot about. How do you continue in the conversation without exposing your knowledge with either arrogance or creepiness.

Things of such I am thinking about:
Someone that knows too much about Jim Morrison
Someone that knows a lot about Reading Pa. and yet has never lived there.
Someone who really knows the rules to Lacrosse and never played.
Someone who knows a lot about Gilligan's Island but was born in the 80's.

Why Dracula is stupid....

If you are a vampire isn't your sole goal to bite the neck of other people. Wouldn't you change your name to something friendly, like Jeff. Nobody has ever met a Jeff they hate. Then you could walk around town and say, "Hey I am Jeff want to meet me."

The most depressing place on earth is a large warehouse wholesale place on a nice Saturday afternoon. At the same time I was amazed at the low cost of oatmeal, I knew that somewhere there was a beer, basketball and the telling of limericks going on, that I was missing out on.

After being in the business world for 9 years. Today I was rewarded with a flat screen monitor.

Awesome.

It is 6:22 at night I am about to finally go continue a meeting I started at 7:15 this morning.

The person that invented knock knocks jokes must have died before the electric doorbell was popular otherwise we would have ding-dong jokes.

4 Thoughts that are neither inspiring or depressing

No one in the world will ever appreciate Campbells soup as much as Andy Warhol did...

You will never be as interested in dinosaurs as you were when you are four, unless you are a paleontologist

Every good haircut ends when you shower and try and recreate how they styled it.

Time keeps on slipping into the future

5 ways to tell you were at a pretty lame St. Patrick's Day Party

1. The Green Bagels are a furry green
2. Music consists solely of U2's Joshua Tree.
3. The Pot of Gold is clogged
4. Non-alcoholic beer
5. Leprechaun 6'5"

I was chatting with a friend over the weekend, he now has a name here, it is called the Dump. Because by themselves dumps and lakes are find things. Dumps are functional, dumps are a perfectly normal part of society, but when you put a Dump and Lake together, they both get polluted and they both are worse off for it.

Any way to the Dump... get ready to dye Easter Eggs next month.

This whole getting really nice during the week and then getting really crappy on the weekends just isn't fun.

You know what phrase I would have loved to been at the orgin of... "Beating a dead horse".

"Where is Carlos?"
"Oh just outside punching Seabiscuit a few more times"
"Why is he beating a dead horse?"

Update: Wikipedia, of course, has the orgin of the term.

Wisconson
Kansas
Georgetown
Louisville

5 things I have wondered in the last day

1. How Tin is mined?
2. How are board of directors chosen for mutual funds?
3. The post mayoral career of Abe Beame
4. Can Georgetown win it all this year?
5. Is there a weaker part of a resume than the objective?

Not funny, but true.

Funny is that today I realized that 63% of the people I work with have the sense of humor of a tin mine.

Who the 4 Beatles would be if they were born today

1. Conor
2. Joshua
3. Andrew
4. Ringo

March 1 2007. 9:27 PM

It is snowing/freezing rain. My I-pod is dead. I have 3 twenties and 14 cents in my pocket. The last meal I ate was at lunch. The only food available is a vending machine for which I have no change. I have no book, my cell phone is almost dead. The only paper I have is two printouts with phone numbers of cab companies and my hotel reservation. I still have another two hours before I will be at my hotel. I am on a bus layover in Scranton PA, on a bus trip to Binghamton NY to go recruiting for summer interns.

This is why people want to work on Wall Street.

March 1, 2007 11:27 PM.

I arrive at the Binghamton bus terminal. It is in the middle of nowhere. Finally I get a cab that will come get me. I get to the hotel and the only place that is remotely open, is the Hess station across a major highway. In dress shoes I cross a four lane highway and get a bag of Combos and a lightsaber of Labatts. I get into my hotel room and watch Larry King on the Colbert Report and begin to wonder if this is what Self-Actualization is.

March 2, 2007 6:45 AM. Wake-up Call.
March 2,2007 7:15 AM. Third Wake-up call.

Just living the dream people. Just living the dream.

I have been reading some crass comments on the death of Richard Jeni and the singer from Boston (who if I was a dilligent blogger I would look up his name). What I have to say about that, is that they were so good at what they did, which in some ways was creating lowest common denomenator entertainment, that they inspired others to push the boundaries other ways.

Boston will always hold a place in my heart if for no other reason than the song Amanda. In high school, I had a killer crush on this girl Amanda and one day I was going to take her by surprise and make her realize....

That actually didn't happen, but I did on my Senior trip in the worst motel in Kissimmee, Florida share 30 minutes in the hot tub with where at the end she gave me a kiss and told me I was a sweet guy who would make someone happy someday. (In the hip movie version of that story we would have talked about some irony of the Partridge family or some obscure 80's cartoon, In the coming of age movie the conversation would have been about our hopes and dreams. in both versions we would then have gone and made out) In the reality version I remember we actually kind of talked about other people in our class who had snuck alcohol on the bus and how we weren't partaking. Me, because I was vice-president of the class and didn't want to risk my reputation, her because she was more stoned than a witch in Salem (if the metaphor fits, its been a long time since I read the Crucible about how they kill witches.) This is one of those stories that reminds me how young I really was once. Some will immediately say stupid, but I was young and at that time in my life 30 minutes in the hot tub with Amanda was better than anything else, until later in the same trip when some other girl from my class gave me the 1994 version of a lap dance and told me what she would do to me if I took her to the Prom, she ended up going with an exchange student from Spain. That all being said I saw Amanda once more the summer following my Freshman year of college at a Papa Genos in Concord NH and she was pregnant. I knew she would never be mine, or less macho-ly that there would never be an us, but whenever I hear Amanda there is more than a feeling.

5 thoughts from the weekend

1. Go see ZODAIC. It's a long movie that feels short.
2. Spring will always be my favorite season, I love fall, but fall ends badly spring ends well.
3. I made a Jello-Mold yesterday. Every bite had that odd mixture of delicious and emasculation
4. I probably haven't mentioned this here, since i haven't mentioned anything here, but I gave up meat for Lent. I actually don't miss it at all, save for yesterday afternoon where two guys a few blocks over were grilling what smelled like the best steaks to ever permeate an urban neighborhood.
5. There are people who will spend more effort on their NCAA brackets than they have at their jobs since November.

I used to write a lot more about music, than I currently do. I think I aspire to be a frustrated music critic, but then I hear Joe Jackson or Bonnie "Prince" Billy, and I wonder if there really is a reason to ever listen to any new music. In some ways I am glad I found Springsteen retroactively, because if I had been waiting for it, and then had to deal with disappointment (e.g. Tunnel of Love) it would have played with my emotions more than the cute girl who sat in front of me in 7th Grade Reading. (She used to paint her fingernails so they looked like the unit patch for the 1st Air Cav). So anyway the Rock and Roll Hall of fame has listed their 200 essential albums. I think I noted previously that these lists are only set up for people to debate. One could argue that they are intentionally ranking Pet Sounds low at number 9, but for the most part I have a no problem really arguing with the top ten, even Thriller I can accept as being in the top ten. It's hard to separate the Megan's Law opponent from the artist, but musically that album still packs a wallop. Its when I finally get to number 13 that I have to laugh. Santana Supernatural. Yes I own it. I was a sucker. This album is to music what the macerena was to dance, what the Da Vinci Code is to literature. It is water-downed (or is the term watered down?) entertainment that somehow makes you think that you enjoy it even though it is crap. I remember in high school, the Pizza Hut near our school had an all-you can eat lunch buffet. So on half days a bunch of us would roll over there and it would be greatest thing ever, but really it wasn't and after you were done you were actually less satisfied than had you just eaten cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. (as an aside to an already self admitted wandering paragraph I set up the Pizza Hut anecdote as if that something I regularly did it may have happened twice)

Look I can buy that Carlos Santana may be talented, but Supernatural is crap. and shouldn't be ranked anywhere above anything that Tom Petty, Weezer, Foo Fighter or the Wiggles have ever put out. I would rather have your local Catholic Church's choir singing "Angels We Have Heard on High" on my I-pod 1000 times than any of that Rob Thomas crap.

Over and out.

Promise to return next week... Very busy.

Have fun tales to tell... include the moment in my career thus far that made me happiest to study finance and work for a firm on Wall Street.

Until then just think really hard about Aquaman...