The Mountain Cat's Yule Time Rant '08

Well folks as our holiday season is upon us filled with joy, sentiment and maxed out credit cards, I want to share with you my festive thoughts and feelings as my gift to you with a big fat red bow tied on top.

Yes the Christmas carolers are out and about with jovial voices and runny nosed children chanting holy splendor. But I never get that gushy feeling when a chorus of little pre-teens get together to form a spiritual cluster of octave cheer. It is not the fact that I dislike the tone of 20 odd high pitched little brats singing off key. It is because of how these parents think I am SUPPOSE to feel about them.

‘Oh look, that’s our little Darthaniel singing ‘Oh Come All Yee Faithful’. Isn’t he just so precious and talented?’‘That’s our wholesome Fawnette; warbling the bars of ‘Silent Night’. Ain’t she just sublime? Didn’t we raise such a swell little girl?’

These parents needs to take the first space shuttle back to the planet earth. Really now folks your offspring are not that special! Yeah yeah they are somewhat cute and I guess they make me all furry inside but he is not Mickey Rooney and your daughter is not Judy Garland…unless she drinks spiked eggnog then maybe she is.

And please do not make it worse by dressing your son for school in a little suit with a five inch snare drum. Your kids version of ‘The Little Boy’ makes me cringe more than when David Bowie teamed up with Bing Crosby. Pa rum pum pum pum THIS!

Look these imps have enough pressure with school work, friends and their Wii’s. So stop getting ideas that they will be on TV as ‘America’s Next Superstar Cherub’. Let your grommets run free and don’t expect them to sing in front of Uncle Bill and Auntie Janis on Christmas day. Believe me they will hate you for it and make you pay when you are old and feeble. Don’t mess up your kids more than you were after your second divorce.

But I digress.

This Christmas time should be a period to bring together our personal finances for the greater good of gift giving. And what symbolizes that Madison Avenue icon of presents more than Santa Claus! With that Little Debbie crumbed beard and the Old Granddad breathe! What better patriotic symbol do we have in our U.S. of A? The fat man of every shopping mall in America. Well I have a message for these Ed Wood quality thespians: Act like Santa Claus and that’s it! Nothing more! Do not stretch the character! You are NOT going to win an Academy Award up there on that plywood & Styrofoam stage.

‘To Ho Ho Ho, or not to Ho Ho Ho? That is the question’. There is no way Santa Claus can pull of Shakespeare!

These children are five and six years old; they are more scared of you than entertained! Stop with the method Santa Claus ok you Robert De Niro wannabes! Now if you really are an actor and this is the only gig you can get, well then I really think you should start to reconsider another career path.And if you MUST spruce up your Kriss Kringle do it right. Stop OVERACTING! You are Saint Nicholas, not Saint NICHOLAS CAGE!

I guess I really have to except these faux Santas because they are here to stay. But what really needs to stop are those annoying bastard chipmunks!Alvin, Simon and who is the other one? I think his name is Road Kill.

Really I am in a Kmart and then I hear piercingly over the load speakers: ‘Chwismus, Chwismus, twime is near, twime fur twoys and twine for chweerrrrrrrr’. UGH!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!!! THE HORROR!! I suddenly have visions of one of these disease infested forest rats in the torture scene from ‘Reservoir Dogs’! Can’t you see Mr. Blonde cutting Alvin’s ear off? Now that would be great TV! ‘The Quentin Tarantino Christmas Special’This will be the darkest Christmas entertainment since ‘The William Shatner Christmas Album’.

But I’m no sadist.

I just think we’ve lost the holiday spirit in a gapping hole of want and need. We are bombarded by commercial ads of useless junk that I’ll forget about come January.And please ask me what I want for Christmas before you buy me something!

'Thanks Aunt Ethel! I always wanted an electric hairbrush!’‘Darling you shouldn’t have! Rambos 1, 2 AND 3. This makes my DVD collection complete!’‘Grandma. How on earth could you afford to buy me a talking alarm clock on your fixed income?’

Please I’d prefer a Chia Pet and be done with it.

But really for me the best part of the holiday season is snow. I love that white powder. And not because IT IS snow. I love snow because so many people despise snow.I get a kick out of people who get depressed this time of year because they hate the cold. Well guess what? You live in New York. It is December. It gets cold in New York in December!! Why are you so surprised EVERY year? I know it sucks but you make it worse on yourself by complaining about it. Move to Southern California if 30 degrees is soooo bad. My holiday experience is happier when you are cold and blue. To me this is my kind of jolly cheer. I pray for two feet of snow and 5 degrees Fahrenheit with high winds. It makes me laugh and feel better about myself when you shiver and whine. Keep it up.

So let’s accept the snow and frolic & dance in a white covered Central Park! It should be a happy time! No matter what you have or don’t have. That is the real spirit of Christmas! With chestnuts roasting and five or six or seven Brandy Alexanders. Let us all throw snow balls at the children carolers and rejoice!

Happy Holidays to everyone and a healthy 2009!

I love you all,

Vince (aka The Mountain Cat)

Drowning in a sea

Ugh! I feel like I'm drowning in a a sea of expectations. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed right now with all the changes that need to take place, both at home and work. I know I need to make a list and prioritize and put together steps but even doing that feels daunting.

So what happens? I remove myself from the situation with something mundane and fun, like shopping or reading or blogging. I procrastinate until the last minute and then it's even more stressful.

For the most part, my life is pretty good right now. Finances are slowly coming back together, tax season is over, youth are behaving themselves, spring is here. Why do I still feel this way? I think I need a vacation...oh wait, I just had one. Besides self-medicating with vodka, shopping and chocolate, does anyone else have any suggestions?

-As American as Apple Pie

This will make you mad

This is one of those stories that makes you mad just reading it:

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. - Police have arrested a motorist they say had a 24-pack of beer strapped in with a seat belt but had a 16-month-old girl unrestrained in the back seat with the toddler's mother.

Tina D. Williams was pulled over in St. Augustine on Sunday for allegedly running a red light.
A 24-pack of Busch beer was strapped in with the passenger-side seat belt, according to an arrest report. The girl was in the back seat with 20-year-old Amber Tedrick, who is the toddler's mother.

Williams, 46, said she didn't know why the child wasn't restrained.

The article goes on to state that the driver was arrested on DUI and drug charges BUT the mother whose child was un restrained was not only NOT arrested but the child was released into her care... Shameful. There is no reason whatsoever that a child shouldn't be in a child safety seat.

Sorry but I just had to post this and call these losers out. Maybe I can sic Absolutgator on them, they live the same county.

-Doc

DirecTV Tirade !!!

Direct TV needs to be drawn and quartered. These lowlife scum sucking headache inducing vermin have the worst customer service and lack of internal communication of any company I have ever seen in my entire life.

Let me tell you a story:

Last week I purchase their $200 Hi-Def DVR (that the cable company gives you for free) ahead of my TV because I knew that I had to schedule installation of a new satellite dish. I scheduled the installation for this past Monday morning between 8-12. My wife took off from work to make sure she could be here for the install. So I get a call at 7 am from Mark saying that the DVR didn't come in and could I reschedule? Sure I said but this time I want a specific time because you are now inconveniencing me... Oh Sir we will have someone there at 8 am on Wednesday. It will only take 30-45 minutes and we will have you all set to go. With that information in mind I decided to take and hour or two off from work and my wife and I sent out invitations to about 30-40 people telling them to come and see the Super Bowl this Sunday on our new Hi-Def TV.

Wednesday morning gets here and no truck at 8 am. No problem probably got stuck in traffic. Once it got to be 9:15 I gave the tech Mark a call. He acted surprised that no one was here to install and said he would call me "right back". OK I am still not mad. Things happen right?

It gets to be 10 am and no return call. I call Mark back and get his voicemail. He is screening his calls. So I call Direct TV customer service. They say that my appointment is with an outfit called MasTec an independent contractor and it is for between 8-12. NOT what I was told by Mark. So I now call MasTec and after being on hold for 15 minutes I get a supervisor named Ken. Ken apologises for Mark telling me something wrong and tells me he will call the right tech and then he will call me right back. By now it's 10:30. I hear nothing until 11:30 when the tech, Paul who is supposed to be doing my install today calls me to tell me that he does not have a DVR for me and I will have to call DirecTV to reschedule. WHAT ??? WHAT??? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? I just sat here for almost 4 hours for this? No Sir you are coming to my house and there will be HDTV here TODAY !!!

I call MasTec back and finally track down the supervisor Ken and of course he is oblivious. What? Why would anyone say that to me? Let me see if I can find a DVR for you and give you a call back. Uh Sir you are the first person who told me earlier today that you would call me back but has not. 2 questions for you Ken? First, if you have no DVRs (including the one I paid $200 for a WEEK ago) then why didn't you tell me that to begin with and second why on earth do your techs keeping re-scheduling people to sit around and wait for these non-existent DVRs on SUPER BOWL week? I explained to him in no uncertain terms that there would be no re-schedule and my house would have HDTV today. It's bought and paid for and we have sat around TWICE waiting for this to be installed and now we have 40 people coming in 4 days to watch the biggest football game of the year. There will be no reschedule as today is already shot you will be here today. He is going to "see what he can do"

I then wait around until about 12:15 and get a call from Chris who claims to be the "real" supervisor. Chris informs me that he has located the last DVR and cancelled my second tech Paul and now is going to send Greg right over. I tell him where I live and he promises that Greg will be there within the hour depending on traffic. Greg then gives me a call to say that he has a stop to make but has my equipment and will call me when he is en route from that stop to get my address.

I sit around until 1:45 waiting for Greg to call beck because I stupidly forgot to get his number but he finally calls to say that he is now en route. I ask from where. Hwy 51 in Charlotte a good hours drive from my home in Kannapolis even with a little traffic. At this point after having dealt with 3 techs, 2 supervisors, and 3 cust service people just today all to get something done that has been promised to me twice I have had it. But since Greg promises that he is coming with my DVR I don't holler at him.

Greg finally gets there about 4 pm due in part to his GPS not leading him to my house properly and in the course of putting up my new dish he cuts out my cable internet access... I am about to scream. Could this get any worse? Maybe. It turns out from my conversation with Greg that the main reason that all of this happened with the missing DVRs is that MasTec fired the "DVR Lady" who orders such things so that the techs have them to install in customer's homes. When did they fire the DVR Lady? Oh a couple of weeks ago...has anyone been hired to replace the DVR lady? Nope. When did I actually have HDTV at my house available for viewing? 6:45 pm more than 10 hours after this was promised to me. Why was Greg the one who ended up coming to do my install? Because he is apprently MasTec's version of Mariano Rivera who comes in to finish the job when the customer is heated up... I say this because Greg is from New York and is a big Yankee fan.

Here is the moral to all of this and it stinks to say this because I generally consider myself pretty easy going but the moral of this story is that you have to hollar and hollar long and loud and to many people in order for companies not to take advantage of you and give you what you paid for and they promised to begin with.

Oh and to steal a line from something Mt. Cat once told me.... I wouldn't recommend DirectTV to a stray dog.

-Doc

What kind of RUSH are you?

I work for a mortgage broker. The job of a mortgage broker company is to bring in the clients and place them with a lender that best suits their needs. We deal in very high volume and send lots of file packages to several lenders (Citibank, HSBC, Wells Fargo, etc.). More often than not we are at the mercy of the lender's own volume for a quick mortgage approval. To circumvent this problem the loan originator who brought in the business would mark the client’s file with the word RUSH with a red magic marker. Usually in big letters across the front cover of the file. This will indicate to the lender that we need them to step on it so we can get an approval quicker than a non-RUSH file. This sounds simple. However, the busier we get, the more RUSH files get sent to the already overwhelmed lender. Therefore if every file is a RUSH then NONE of the loans becomes a RUSH! The more RUSH-es we have, the word RUSH no longer has a meaning. The urgency of these files gets diluted.

To troubleshoot, we have come up with different levels of RUSH depending upon the client’s situation. Below is a matrix of these levels (Sort of a Homeland Security Advisory System for Mortgages):

- *BLANK* (No Rush. Client’s do not have a deadline to get approved, meet rate & guidelines or closing).
- RUSH (Client needs an approval in a week. And will need to close within 60 days to meet rate & guidelines).
- RUSH RUSH! (Client needs an approval within 5 days as they need it for a coop board meeting and closing within 60 days).
- MAJOR RUSH!! (Client needs an approval within 4 days as they need it for a coop board meeting and closing within 45 days).
- SUPER RUSH!!! (Without an approval in 3 days, their coop board meeting will be delayed a month and cannot close within 30 days now before their rate goes up).
- SUPER SUPER RUSH!!!! (An approval must be faxed within 2 days as the seller has already set a closing date 20 days from now and there are a lot of outstanding items that have to be cleared!).
- EXTREME RUSH!!!!! (Must have the approval by tomorrow!! The seller is threatening my client to close within 15 days!!)

Well it does get worse. We have yet to use these following terms, but maybe we may have to as this industry gets more frantic and competitive:

- SUPER SEVERE EXTREME RUSH!!!!!! (200 pages were faxed to the lender at 9:01 AM! Must get an approval no later than noon today! Must close by Friday or the clients lose their $100,000 down payment!!!)
- BLOODY SUICIDAL SUPER SEVERE EXTREME RUSH!!!!!!! (HELP!!! We stole this loan from another mortgage broker!! Needs to close in 48 hours! We just faxed you 300 pages. Need the closing set now!!! AGHHH!!!!!!).
- MAJOR SUPER EXTREME SEVERE BLOODY SUICIDAL HOMICIDAL RUSH RUSH RUSH RUSH!!!!!!!!!! (I’ve never seen this kind of RUSH before. But if I do, it will probably be the seventh sign of the apocalypse).

- The Mortgage Cat.

Wonton-gate '08!

Yo this Cat is not happy. I brought into work a whole lot of left over Chinese food from the weekend and someone in my office either ate or threw out my wonton soup! I had big Tupperware filed with wontons. Plus someone took my last fried wonton. Oh but they didn't touch the rest of my Happy Family with mixed Chinese vegetables or Barbecued Beef with rice dishes!! Not that this food was expensive but it is the doggone principle of it! I confronted a few likely culprits but no admissions. Mark my words I will get to the bottom of this.

Hell hath no fury than a Cat who has his food stolen!

- The Mountain Cat!!!

The final word on Roger Clemens and steroids

All we hear is did Clemens do it? Is he lying? Why would his trainer Brian McNamee lie? No, no, no, no, NO! Stop it please! I am tired of this back and forth as I am sure most of you are. There is one thing and one thing only to indict Roger Clemens at this point and I am surprised that this key point has not brought to attention more by sports talk radio and writers: Roger Clemens is guilty by association. Period. Sorry Roger but you are. Look I can slightly believe that you did not do steroids and HGH. But in no way do I believe that you did not know that Brian McNamee was a supplier of these illegal substances. McNamee is consider 'family' according to Clemens' own words.

Roger Clemens should have seen this one coming a long long time ago. He is a public figure and did watch his associations carefully. Sure he can argue all he wants that he did not get these injections from him. But if Brian McNamee injected other players (Andy Pettitte, et'al), the court of public opinion will always associate you with a drug dealer. It is like saying I don't steal but I hang around thieves. So wouldn't you think I was a thief too? It is all about choices you make. And this goes for all the other players wrapped up in this scandal. The problem is I don't think we will ever find the proverbial 'smoking gun' to prove that Clemens is innocent or guilty. So I predict his reputation will forever be tarnished.

But when it is all said and done, Roger Clemens is still a Hall of Fame pitcher. But people will just snicker and just link him with this scandal in their minds when they look at his Gold Plaque in Cooperstown someday.

Now how do we get final closure on this baseball steroid scandal? Maybe we need to embrace it? Sounds ironic but maybe the Baseball Hall of Fame should have a display acknowledging the steroid era? That may be unfair to those great players who did not do steroids. But lets face fact here, 100 years from now we won't remember names. Just the whole lot who played during this time period was involved in one form of the other since it was so wide spread. But we all turned a blind eye. The baseball executives, the players, and us the fan knew something had to be going on illegally. Yes, us the fan. We all enjoyed seeing the homerun records broken even though we knew some of these players looked like massive Belgium Cattle (Mark McGwire, et'al). We perpetuated the sport into riches they never dreamed of. We are all to blame for letting this manifest to the colossal imbroglio we see our beloved sport in now. So like Senator George Mitchell stated in his speech when he released his report, lets accept this and move on. Otherwise this stink will just linger indefinitely.

- The Mountain Cat

Roger Clemens is a black man

Barry Bonds had once said that this steroids scandal is a witch hunt against him because he is a black man. So according to that logic, Roger Clemens is also African American. I did not realize it. Maybe Roger is an albino like the monk in 'The Da Vinci Code'.

Then again maybe Roger Clemens is the racist since all his sons names start with K:

Koby, Kory, Kacy, Kody......hmmmm, not quite. The 'K' is for strikeout, not Klu Klux Klan.

Does this blog have a point? No. Not really.

Do I believe Roger Clemens is telling the truth that he did not take HGH? I really don't know what to thing anymore. Lets wait until he meets with Congress next Wednesday.

But his wife is still hot.

- The Mountain Cat

I heard the worst combination of four words in the history of mankind

(Let me preempt this by saying, I was given a Starbucks gift card from a client).
The woman in front of me in the line at Starbucks ordered a 'Grande Soy Chai Latte'.
WTF is in a 'Grande Soy Chai Latte'????????
I myself bought a 'Tall Americano' which is the closest thing in Starbucks to regular coffee. Or in Starbuckanese; Cafe Regulari. But I REFUSE to order a 'Tall'. I want a small one.
So I asked for a small! Then the cashier says 'One Tall Americano'. Then I snapped back, 'Yes, a Small Americano'. She is not going to control my speech!! I think Starbucks is the closest thing to modern day fascism.
- The Mountain Cat

Richard Arens deserves to be publically burned at the stake

Ever wonder why gasoline prices are so high? Well besides taxes a lot of it has to do with the futures market. It's complicated and I will not endeavor to explain it here but lets just say that gas prices are determined based on a lot of gambling by price fixers... err commodity traders.

That brings me to Mr. Richard Arens of ABS oil brokerage service. Yes I am calling you out sir. It seems that Mr. Arens decided that he wanted to become the first person in the world to pay $100 per barrel for oil last week and in the process made international headlines. OIL HITS $100 A BARREL !!!! is what we read instead of the headline we should have read. LONE A-HOLE IS CAUSING US TO PAY TOO MUCH AT THE PUMP.

Good grief. Am I the only one outraged by this? Guys like this have way too much influence on what the price of gasoline is and of course at the same time Exxon Mobil makes record profits. I am all for free enterprise it's "fixed" enterprise that makes my blood boil.

All the artificial gasoline price setting A-holes deserve to be publicly burned at the stake (with their commodity used as the accelerant) starting with you Mr. Richard Arens.

-Shane (doc)

11:55 am **Update - Mr. Arens, if you were the one Googling yourself (at the IP address linked to your company at the bank) and checking out this posting please PLEASE come in and post a comment defending yourself . We would LOVE to hear from you.... **

1:48 pm **Update - Mr. (or Ms.) Futures trader from Carr Futures Inc. Chicago, Il would you care to defend your fellow futures trader??**

-Doc

Lettuce Wait on the Line, Please?

Around the corner from my office on Madison Avenue is a salad place called Chop't. Now Chop't makes 'specialty gourmet’ salads. Every kind of salad you want or imaginable, Chop't can make for you. And they charge for the extra ingredients. So if you get a big salad with say croutons, peas and carrots with bleu cheese, it will cost about $11.00. Now normally I would shrug this off and say 'That's New York prices for you'. But the thing that sickens me is that at about 12:30 pm every day there is a very long line out the door of people waiting for A SALAD! Even in cold weather! I pass by them everyday and I do not know how I hold back my tongue.
I want to yell at these preppies on line:
'IT'S A SALAD!!!! THE LINE IS TOO LONG FOR A FRIKIN' SALAD!!! GET A LIFE WOULD YOU PLEASE! YOU ARE GOING TO BE LATE FOR WORK FOR A GODDAMN SALAD!!'
Am I missing something here? How could a salad be improved upon anymore to make Chop't Salads the salad to end all salads??
Goes to show you that with good advertising, people will fall for anything. I am just bewitched, bothered and bewildered.

- The Mountain Cat

It's a Tiger and Tigers DON'T PLAY

Ok people listen up. I was saddened to hear about the recent mauling of patrons at the San Fransisco zoo by a 300 pound Siberian tiger named Tatiana but I kept thinking to myself that something is not quite right about this story. My instincts were as usual correct.

Follow along with me here folks. Now first of all the name of this cat alone should have tipped these folks off that she was not to be messed with (my own personal philosophy is never mess with anything whose name sounds like a female Russian spy) I can understand if her name was Snuggles you may think aw how cute but dadgum folks IT'S A TIGER ! Tigers don't play.

So still this is looking like a tragic lost of human life and the hands of a wild beast, but based on the news reports that the tiger habitat had a huge wall as well as a moat and was basically inescapable I still had an uneasy feeling about this one. Then today I read THIS It turns out that they are investigating the guy that was killed may have taunted because "police found a shoe and blood in an area between the gate and the edge of the animal's 25- to 30-foot-wide moat, raising the possibility that one of the victims dangled a leg or other body part over the edge of the moat."

This little bit of information has changed my outlook on this situation. Yes I still consider it a tragedy however I think the tragedy it that Tatiana is dead. If the "victim" in this case was stupid enough to taunt a 300 pound Siberian tiger then he should not be surprised when Ms. Tatiana takes him up on his offer of a juicy leg and comes after him. You cannot blame the tiger here. It is a shame that others were hurt and that the tiger was killed but dadgum people if there is any lesson here it is this: IT'S A TIGER AND TIGERS DON'T PLAY.

-Shane (doc)

______________________

This story reminds me of an old American proverb:

'So many times, it happens too fast.

You change your passion for glory.

Don't lose your grip (or dangle your leg) on the dreams of the past.

You must fight just to keep them alive

It's the eye of the tiger, it's the cream of the fight, (yada yada yada).'

(Many thanks to Frankie Sullivan & Jim Peterik for letting me paraphrase their lyrics).

- The Mountain Tig...er...Cat

Vince's Airing of Grievances

10 people I can do without in 2007 and beyond (In no particular order):

1. New York (Tiffany Pollard) from the VH1 reality show ‘I Love New York’. Just when I thought you could not lower the intelligence scale than Flava Flav’s reality show ‘Flava of Love’, this chick New York lowers the bar even farther below sea level. I have now learned never under estimate the under estimated!

2. Anderson Cooper of ‘Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees’. Why are you popular? Are you gay? Are you not gay? Or more importantly do you have any originality other than about 50 odd other newscasters on your soap boxes???.....Oh yes… you have white hair. I forgot….never mind. Yes in that case you are different. . But let me ax ya? If Anderson Cooper sucks and you spin him around 360 degrees, doesn’t he still suck?

3. Randy & Jason Sklar from ESPN’s ‘Cheap Seats’. Identical musing twins. How adorable. You characters were also the ONLY unfunny moments in the TV show ‘Entourage’ this past season. Your shtick is shtick-less.

4. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Also known as محمود احمدی‌نژاد. You have more meaningless opinions than Curt Schilling and more of an ego than Charles Foster Kane. I don’t know what your ‘Rosebud’ was when you were a boy but seriously dude, relax and try hugging a Jew…or at the very least a gay man. You will fell better in the long run.

5. Jimmy Kimmel, late night TV host. Uh huh…ok…....hey Jimmy? …I’m waiting for you to say something remotely funny!…….Yup I guess your girlfriend Sara Silverman wears the pants in this relationship! She is at least mildly amusing when she has sex with Black God.

6. Bob Saget, reformed role model father. Bob your anti-Full House persona was funny for about 3 jokes. Seriously dude cut it out. Stop saying the word fuck for the sake of saying the word fuck. You are a nice guy. Just deal with it! And you have suddenly given Stamos and Coulier some street cred. Yikes!

7. Led Zeppelin, rock god. Yes I said Led Zeppelin! Hey fellas please go on tour or don’t go on tour. Stop keeping us on the fence! Otherwise, put silver haired Jimmy Page and his Cello bow back in his sarcophagus. It hurts to toy with my emotions.

8. Sub-Prime Mortgage Reps. R.I.P. my friends. I’m sure you can get jobs in Gaffney, South Carolina selling 135% above value loans to the locals. Best of luck.

9. McDreamy, also known at Patrick Dempsey of the TV hit drama ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. I am happy you are a sex symbol. But where were these so called ‘fans’ when you starred in the ’80 TV hit ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High: The Series’? Have some standards dude!

10. Al Gore, World Activist. I think Al Gore is the first person ever to win a Nobel Peace Prize by simply uttering the words: ‘Hey, we are really fucked!’ Congratulation Al! And please say hi to Tipper for me too.

- The Mountain Cat

The Airing of Grievances (Doc's)

Ok, in the great tradition of Seinfeld Vin and I celebrate Festivus (here is a link for those not familiar) each year. Vin has a party complete with a pole and we go through all the holiday essentials. Here we will share one of these with you. It's called the airing of grievances. Here we will list all the things that got under our skin, made us mad, or generally ticked us of this past year:

Shane's Grievances:
(the following ticked me off in 2007)

- Anna Nicole Smith and that stupid Judge in the case over her body Larry Seidlin


- The leading news story on the day my son was born was Paris Hilton being pre-maturely released from jail and then put back in the slammer.


- The worst TV commercial on earth is for a crappy website called salesgenie.com that makes it seem that the only way your daddy will spend time with you and get you a puppy is if you subscribe to their sub par product


- Nobody believed me that Michael Vick was a big ole turd of a human being until this year, and sadly some still don't.


- Why was Rodney King still in the news in 2007?


- It stinks that we all know who Richard Jewell was for the wrong reason when he died earlier this year.

- The following people really annoyed me in 2007: (in no particular order) Rachael Ray, Nancy Grace, Robb Thomas of Matchbox 20, Tom Tancredo, Lindsay Lohan, Both Don Imus and Al Sharpton, Kanye West, Dick Cheney, OJ Simpson, Miss Teen SC USA, Donald Trump, George Bush,Tim Tebow, Rudy Giuliani, Whoever invented Head On, Ann Coulter, Terrell Owens, Al Gore, Fidel Castro, Sanjaya Malakar, Mike Nifong, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bill O'Reily, Karl Rove, Rosie O'Donnell, Larry King, Ellen DeGeneres and that stupid dog named Iggy

- Even though I am sure it's good for the environment I am sick and tired of hearing about "Going Green"

- Wal - Mart (the closest thing to the Third Reich in America)

- The furnace in our house that was working just fin when we turned it off in April but somehow broke 2 expensive parts during it's period of non-use until November.

- The hype over PS3, Wii, I-Phone, and Halo 3 (BTW- the hype over Harry Potter is worth it)

- Why the heck is Survivor still on the air - No one has watched that show since they were in Australia how many years ago?

- The coverage that the media gives to individuals like the Virginia Tech shooter that encourages other unstable people like the Omaha Mall shooter to do things "to make it big" - Shameful

- MRSA staph infections and lead laced paint in toys from China

- My sports teams: NY Mets managed the biggest end of season collapse in history, The Carolina Panthers season = down the drain when Jake Delhomme had to have Tommy John surgery, Florida State continued to stroll down the avenue called mediocrity, and Jeff Gordon managed to score more points than any driver EVER has in a 36 race season and still get beaten for the championship.... Here's to a better 2008 for all of them.

- Is it just me or is there anyone else out there who wishes that the UF campus police had tasered Andrew Meyer until his hair had fallen out and skin turned black. That dude's 15 minutes should have been up a long time ago.... and now YALE has given him the quote of the year honor.... Yeesh.

- Senator Larry Craig's steadfast admission that he isn't gay... Uh buddy no one really cares if you are or aren't gay (except maybe some homosexuals whose rights you consistently vote against) just stop with the lies about what went on in that bathroom stall. Who the heck uses a nasty airport restroom like that anyway unless its an real emergency and if it's an emergency then who is taking notice of the others in the stalls around them??? No one thats who... By the way, whether you are gay or not if you are peeking into bathroom stalls at an airport you have bigger problems than keeping your senate seat.

- Teenage girls who pronounce words with that valley girl accent... example when they pronounce the word pants like they are saying the word "wants" ie. ponts... ya'll know what I mean.

- Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go. Our kids should not have to learn Spanish to live in our own country and both these cartoons express that opinion... AND I am pretty sure that the monkey boots is actually the same voice as Diego. Frauds I tell you... FRAUDS!

Vince's Yule Time Rant '07

Well folks as our holiday season is upon us filled with joy, sentiment and maxed out credit cards, I want to share with you my festive thoughts and feelings as my gift to you with a big fat red bow tied on top.

Yes the Christmas carolers are out and about with jovial voices and runny nosed children chanting holy splendor. But I never get that gushy feeling when a chorus of little pre-teens get together to form a spiritual cluster of octave cheer. It is not the fact that I dislike the tone of 20 odd high pitched little brats singing off key. It is because of how these parents think I am SUPPOSE to feel about them.

‘Oh look, that’s our little Darthaniel singing ‘Oh Come All Yee Faithful’. Isn’t he just so precious and talented?’
‘That’s our wholesome Fawnette; warbling the bars of ‘Silent Night’. Ain’t she just sublime? Didn’t we raise such a swell little girl?’

These parents needs to take the first space shuttle back to the planet earth. Really now folks your offspring are not that special! Yeah yeah they are somewhat cute and I guess they make me all furry inside but he is not Mickey Rooney and your daughter is not Judy Garland…unless she drinks spiked eggnog then maybe she is.

And please do not make it worse by dressing your son for school in a little suit with a five inch snare drum. Your kids version of ‘The Little Boy’ makes me cringe more than when David Bowie teamed up with Bing Crosby. Pa rum pum pum pum THIS!

Look these imps have enough pressure with school work, friends and their Wii’s. So stop getting ideas that they will be on TV as ‘America’s Next Superstar Cherub’. Let your grommets run free and don’t expect them to sing in front of Uncle Bill and Auntie Janis on Christmas day. Believe me they will hate you for it and make you pay when you are old and feeble. Don’t mess up your kids more than you were after your second divorce.

But I digress.

This Christmas time should be a period to bring together our personal finances for the greater good of gift giving. And what symbolizes that Madison Avenue icon of presents more than Santa Claus! With that Little Debbie crumbed beard and the Old Granddad breathe! What better patriotic symbol do we have in our U.S. of A? The fat man of every shopping mall in America. Well I have a message for these Ed Wood quality thespians: Act like Santa Claus and that’s it! Nothing more! Do not stretch the character! You are NOT going to win an Academy Award up there on that plywood & Styrofoam stage.

‘To Ho Ho Ho, or not to Ho Ho Ho? That is the question’. There is no way Santa Claus can pull of Shakespeare!

These children are five and six years old; they are more scared of you than entertained! Stop with the method Santa Claus ok you Robert De Niro wannabes!
Now if you really are an actor and this is the only gig you can get, well then I really think you should start to reconsider another career path.
And if you MUST spruce up your Kriss Kringle do it right. Stop OVERACTING! You are Saint Nicholas, not Saint NICHOLAS CAGE!

I guess I really have to except these faux Santas because they are here to stay. But what really needs to stop are those annoying bastard chipmunks!
Alvin, Simon and who is the other one? I think his name is Road Kill.

Really I am in a Kmart and then I hear piercingly over the load speakers: ‘Chwismus, Chwismus, twime is near, twime fur twoys and twine for chweerrrrrrrr’.
UGH!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!!! THE HORROR!!
I suddenly have visions of one of these disease infested forest rats in the torture scene from ‘Reservoir Dogs’!
Can’t you see Mr. Blonde cutting Alvin’s ear off? Now that would be great TV! ‘The Quentin Tarantino Christmas Special’
This will be the darkest Christmas entertainment since ‘The William Shatner Christmas Album’.

But I’m no sadist.

I just think we’ve lost the holiday spirit in a gapping hole of want and need. We are bombarded by commercial ads of useless junk that I’ll forget about come January.
And please ask me what I want for Christmas before you buy me something!

‘Thanks Aunt Ethel! I always wanted an electric hairbrush!’
‘Darling you shouldn’t have! Rambos 1, 2 AND 3. This makes my DVD collection complete!’
‘Grandma. How on earth could you afford to buy me a talking alarm clock on your fixed income?’

Please I’d prefer a Chia Pet and be done with it.

But really for me the best part of the holiday season is snow. I love that white powder. And not because IT IS snow. I love snow because so many people despise snow.
I get a kick out of people who get depressed this time of year because they hate the cold. Well guess what? You live in New York. It is December. It gets cold in New York in December!! Why are you so surprised EVERY year? I know it sucks but you make it worse on yourself by complaining about it. Move to Southern California if 30 degrees is soooo bad. My holiday experience is happier when you are cold and blue. To me this is my kind of jolly cheer. I pray for two feet of snow and 5 degrees Fahrenheit with high winds. It makes me laugh and feel better about myself when you shiver and whine. Keep it up.

So let’s accept the snow and frolic & dance in a white covered Central Park! It should be a happy time! No matter what you have or don’t have. That is the real spirit of Christmas! With chestnuts roasting and five or six or seven Brandy Alexanders. Let us all throw snow balls at the children carolers and rejoice!

Happy Holidays to everyone and a healthy 2008!

I love you all,

Vince