Greetings from Lima

So I{m taking some vacation time and I{m in Peru.  I promise this is the last that you]ll hear from me until I get back but right now I{m sitting in the Lima airport waiting on a 3 hour layover and I figured I{d hammer a little something out.  Anyway the airport is way busier at almost 2 am than any other airport Ive been to recently.  I dont have too much else to report beyond getting a new Casio calculator watch from target for the trip.  Ill put up some pictures when I get back.

 later

~palestinperu.

Picks for week the next two weeks;

Week 11~ Cleveland. Jacksonville, Philadelphia. Minnesota. Indy. Green Bay. GMEN. Atlanta. New Orleans. Cincinnati. Pittsburgh. Seattle. St. Louis. Dallas.  New England. Tennessee.

Week 12.  Detroit.  Dallas.  Indy. Seattle. GMEN. Jacksonville.  New Orleans.  Washington. Cleveland. Cincinnati. KC. Arizona. San Diego. Denver. Mew England.  Pittsburgh.

I want to see Jiri dong.

A Toronto Maple Leafs call up has made a mistake done something stupid.  Naked pictures of Leafs part time forward player Jiri Tlusty have surfaced on the Internet today.  Apparently the kid pulled a Jeff Reed and showed a little hog in the mirror.  This news is devastating for the Leafs who were really hoping that his 13  regular season OHL goals would end the Leafs 40 year Stanley Cup drought.  Not only have I not seen the pictures, but before today I didn’t even know who Jiri was.  Here’s to hoping the Leafs will be able to put this mess behind them and continue their season slide away from playoff contention.

Update:  At least he’s sorry.

Memories of my college gambling days.

First of all I should apologize for not posting note that I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve had a couple of busy weeks, deal with it.

Anyway I was recently thinking about one of my favorite college diversions, gambling. I don’t really gamble anymore, at least not in the way that I did when I was in school. It’s probably because I’m not surrounded by dozens of degenerates at all times like I was in school and has something to do with the fact that now that I have a full-time job and some disposable income of my own so the thrill of winning $50 has lost some of its luster.

Regardless of the reasons I just don’t gamble like I did while I was a student. At school I didn’t just gamble on sports I used to find excuses to gamble on everything. I remember once betting my friend $10 that it would snow the next day, or betting him 2 pitchers that he couldn’t get 10 girls phone numbers in one night. For me the trill of this gambling wasn’t in winning and money, it was more about proving that I was right or that I was somehow smarter than whoever I was betting against. Coincidentally I used this same logic to justify that it wasn’t a problem, I didn’t go through the highs and lows of an addict, rather I went through the ups and downs of a smart ass. Of all of the gambling that I did though my favorite were the bets that didn’t involve cash.

We used to bet on different things all the time and the stakes often would involve challenges of manhood and superiority. Let me explain this, the stakes for our bets would often involve things that neither of us wanted to do, thus the loser would essentially be punished more than the winner would be rewarded. For example the stakes to a game of FIFA Soccer in my dorm one time involved the loser not being allowed to wear a coat for a the rest of the day. While this may not seem to bad in my current location of sunny South Beach, in the -25 degree weather of Montreal it could probably be considered torture. The stakes would always change but like any Japanese game show worth its salt the loser would always be punished. My favorite stake of all time was to bet someone a “bar dare.” A bar dare was exactly as it sound, it was a dare that could be cashed in at any time but only while both competitors were at the bar, and as long as it was reasonable the loser could not turn it down. Bar dares were amazing. I specifically remember cashing in one that forced my friend to take 5 shots of Vodka on a night when one of my roommates was “planning on taking it easy, because his girlfriend was coming into town the next day” (didn’t end well) and another forcing a friend to come to a French Canadian bar with me that was 10 miles away so that I could meet up with a girl. While I may make it sound in the post like I always won, frankly that wasn’t the case at all.

I certainly did my share of losing. I specifically remember two of my most humiliating defeats. The first forbid to read about, watch on television or talk about my favorite sports team, the Toronto Maple Leafs for an entire week just before the playoffs started. The next forced me to eat a stick of Beef Jerky which wouldn’t normally have been much of an issue but I was at the time (and still am now) a vegetarian. I suppose that you always remember the defeats more than the victories but I think that my ultra-competitiveness hasn’t allowed me to forget that last loss, it has indeed stuck with me far longer than the salty nitrates possibly could have. Worst of all looking back on it the bet was so stupid. It was based on the short lived Fox reality show Man vs. Beast… I can’t believe I choose man.

That’s officer Shaquille to you.

On the ground floor of my office is an Italian restaurant that’s pretty good.  It’s not great and it really isn’t anything too special but it’s pretty good.  Perhaps the best thing about it is that it has a patio where you can sit outside and enjoy an obstructed view of the ocean.

 Less than an hour ago I was walking by it on my way to park where I was going to eat my lunch and none other than Shaquille O’Neal was sitting outside, eating a Fettuccine Alfredo.  Shaq is a big man, he’s hard not to notice, but what I saw today leads me to believe that he wanted to be seen at least a little.  He had a black t-shirt with the giant superman logo and the word “Police” across the back… and he was carrying a gun in a holster on his hip.  I know it would have been a better story if he had the gun tucked in the back of his sweat pants, but he didn’t.

 As soon as I got back to my office I called Fruffy at work and decided that Shaq should retire at the end of the year for two reasons.  1. By that time the league will have Greg Oden who has enough personality to fill the void and 2. because at Sacs in the City we can’t wait for Shaq to start his own bounty hunter enterprise which will obviously be turned into a intriguing (though probably disappointing) reality show. Essentially what I guess I’m trying to say is that I’m ready for the next phase of Shaq’s life regardless of whether or not he is.  I’m tired of the new Tiki and Keyshawn I want the new Diesel I’m pretty sure that it’s going to be a fun trip to watch.

Blind people fear my car.

This article that I found today let me know that Blind people fear my car. Apparently the Prius is too quiet and it takes them by surprise when they are trying to J-Walk. This is the problem that I have with this; What are blind people doing J-Walking? If I were blind I think that I would take extra car to only cross on lights (which I’m not sure how I would see).

I don’t want to write too much more about this because I feel like I’m eventually going to say something inflammatory that I don’t actually mean and I’ll offend all both of our readers. accidentally inflammatory

Kid Nation what could have been.

 

When the new shows this year premiered one golden nugget stuck out at me. Kid Nation.  In case you haven’t seen or heard of the show, its premise is that 40 children between the ages of 8-15 are forced to start a civilization by themselves without any influence from adults.  I thought that this show was brilliant, call me crazy but I like the idea of seeing kids cry, it makes me feel good about my own situation.  Honestly though I thought that the show would address some of the seminal work of political philosophy that I studied in my undergrad.  I was expecting the show to be an illustration of the “vail of ignorance” that Rawl’s wrote about in his theory of Justice.  I realize that this is a lot to be asking network television and I suppose that I knew the show wouldn’t live up to this, butI guess worst case I expected the show to be like Lord of The Flies where a few bullies chased after Piggy and broke his spectacles, but it really isn’t even that.  The show is more like Survivor, and the influences of the producers are all over every episode.  About halfway through the first episode the producers segregate the children into 4 teams and the teams are forced to do battle in non-sensible competition.  These segregations are unnatural and while civilization was perhaps unproductive and boring before the teams were made at least the kids get along and the social experiment was natural.  After the kids are divided anger starts and the kids seem to associate more as members of their team then as members of the communities.

The teams that win the team oriented competitions are given more money to spend on candies and soda in the town store, and if all the teams finish the competition in a given amount of time they win the choice between two prizes, one which is instantly gratifying (like a Pizza party) and one which will help the town survive longterm (such as outhouses).  The problem with this is that the producers are again influencing the development of the society by adding money and class to a society that seemed it would have been fine without.  This commerce definately changed the development of the society.

Finally, the best kid each week is given a gold star worth $20,000.  This incentive is perhaps the worst part about the show.  It stops kids from doing things for the sake of the community and it has them doing things for the sake of the prize, most of the children see “playing a role” on the show as an investment in their own future and so the show has become just a competition rather than the social experiment the audience was promised.

I’m pretty sure that Lord of the Flies didn’t have Pizza Parties and miniature golf it had bullying and monsters.  I now realize that was expecting too much and I should learn to stop hoping that television will provide anything more than entertainment.  At least I can still enjoy the kids crying when things don’t work out for them.

Taxi Cab Confession.

I just got a cab from the airport back to my condo and my cab driver was in really bad shape. This is his story. I never got his name but we’ll call him Joe. Joe is a Haitian immigrant who came to America on his wifes visa. His wife left Haiti five years before Joe and has been here for seven years. With some quick grade school math I was able to determine that Joe has been in Miami for two years. Back in Haiti Joe was a police officer. During the three years that his wife was establishing herself in America Joe was taking care of the family’s three kids by himself. During this time Joe also had an affair with his female partner. When Joe left he Haiti he assumed that the affair was over and that he would be able to leave it behind him. That was until the day I got in the cab.

Apparently Joe’s female partner was able to come to immigrate to America and when she got here the first thing she did was look up Joe. She wanted to find Joe so that she could introduce him to his one and a half year old son. That’s right Joe had an illegitimate child. This is where the story starts to get interesting. Apparently the woman had found out where Joe lives and brought the child to this house only Joe was working when she did this and his wife answered the door. Upon finding out about the child Joe’s wife called Joe at work and yelled at him, finishing the conversation by saying I want a divorce don’t come home.

What does all of this have to do with me? Well I was in the back seat of the cab when this call came in. Of all the cabs I could have taken the 25 min trip from the airport to my condo with I landed in Joe’s just as his wife was calling. The phone call lasted only about 10 mins so for the rest of the ride Joe told me his story. By the time I got out he was crying and asking me to prey for him, because he loves his family and didn’t want to be kicked out of America.

I got out of the cab, walked into my condo, and made myself a peanut butter sandwich… I guess some people do have it harder than I do.

Popcorn Lung

 Did you hear it? That was the sound of the medical sciences jumping the shark. If I have to worry about getting popcorn lung I’m going to be rattled.

“He had a lung condition that we know is related to something he was inhaling,” Rose said. “And I took a very complete history, including a work history and an environmental history and found nothing. And it wasn’t really until the end of his initial medical evaluation where I turned to him and asked him … was he exposed to or was he around a lot of popcorn? And his jaw dropped and he asked me how I would possibly know that about him.”

Lame.

Will Nelson’s Greatest Moments.

One of my greatest friends in the world has been traveling South East Asia for almost a year (his blog can be seen in our blog roll). This man legend makes his triumphant return to Toronto next Wednesday and in honor of the celebration we at Sacs in The City would like to give everyone the top 15 moments in the life of Will Nelson as decided by three of us in a work email conversation. You can also check out a youtube of him and his 40 Year Old Virgin Halloween costume here.

1. Rockcliffe (a bar), ’01: Nelson tries to pick up the chick that works at Godfather’s Pizza. No luck. When he gets back to camp, he spends an hour or two quietly vomiting over the log in the NorWester section.

2. Kingston, ’02: Nelson’s 19^th Birthday. After several consecutive ridiculous acts of drunken stupidity, Nelson is respectfully ejected from “the Shot”. His response was to pound on the glass while repeating: “Willie Nelson, 4-20”.

3. The Hole, ’03: Nelson goes out for a BIG night at the Cliffe after a stressful few days teaching woodcraft. 4:30 am that night, after Nelson vomited at least 3 times in our cabin, I MAC and I drag him to the staff lounge. We all spend the night there to escape the ungodly smell in our cabin perpetrated by Nelson’s voluminous puking. Oh ya. Nelson also fought Kasparian outside of cabin 3 that night on his way back to the cabin, and then yelled, repeatedly, “Trailblazers don’t wake up when you yell”.

4.Katie and Deena’s backyard, ’04: Nelson and Jack Larsen each funnel a mickey of Vodka. Then Nelson lightly tackles some random chick. The girl calls her boyfriend (a real tough guy) and he comes to ‘settle the score’. No fisticuffs ensued, but, long after the guy had left, Nelson began yelling, repeatedly, at the top of his lungs, “You f***ing P**** C**t”. Then when Katie told Will that everyone was going home, he replied “Katie, I know everyone is going home…But I AM NOT going home”.

Amendment*. The girl actually beat up Nelson, and he had a black eye and fat lip the next day.

5. Alfies, ’04: The Kerouac show…I don’t even want to discuss this one.

6. Nelson comes to a hockey game with Scott Blue, his girlfriend and I. After having only had 2 hotdogs and a snickers bar for dinner he proceeds to order 3 large beers at the game. By the end of the second period Nelson is visibly drunk after the game we go to Stones place on a guest list that I have gotten from work Nelson gets so drunk that he hits on these random girls in front of his girlfriend before deciding right before the bar is closing that he wants to smoke weed. Nelson smokes weed and then jumps in a cab to go home with his girlfriend. In the cab ride home he hallucinates and tells his girlfriend first that he thinks that they are being kidnapped and second that that he has no idea who she is. Later that night he pukes in the bed that the two of them are sleeping in.

7. Nelson comes to Montreal and drinks a boatload of beer, wine and Jack Daniels at the last bar we go to Nelson makes friends with a local / Cocaine dealer. After order both him and his new friend a shot of whiskey Nelson pukes all over himself, the bar, and the bartender. Less than five minutes later Nelson tries to order a drink and the bartender lets him know that he is cut off. He asks what for legitimately forgetting that he had puked.

8. Nelson meets nine of his friends at the Sky Dome to watch a baseball. Everyone was coming from work and dressed in business casual clothes, Nelson who had taken a “personal day” from work wears a starter jacket, short shorts, a 1994 Jays World Series commemorative hat, and a baseball glove. In the third inning a foul ball is hit directly into Nelsons glove, yet he is unable to squeeze it and the ball rolls 5 rows in front. Nelson is booed by the entire section only seconds before the foul ball replays the jumbotron and he is booed by the entire crowed, for the rest of the game we have a camera man near us, and whenever Nelson is on the screen he is booed.

9. Nelson while drunk is convinced that he can drive back to camp, but decides that he had better make two plans. The first is to sober himself up, this is accomplished by eating 9 peanut butter cookies and drinking a bottle of water. The second is to fool the police in the off chance that he is pulled over in the 2 miles between the Rockcliffe and camp. If pulled over Nelson decides that he will turn the car off throw the keys out the window and pretend he is asleep.

10. Nelson after drinking until 5 in the morning decides that he is going to go whitewater canoeing at 7:30. Within the first hour he raps a canoe, ruining it and is forced to replace it at a cost of $700

Amendment* A few of us were going to the river, and Nelson thought that after being a rockstar at BJ Palooza, he would try his hand at whitewater canoeing. After sleeping on the rocks at the river for the first hour, we were doing the last run and some people fishing woke him up. I drew the short straw, and was left with Nelson (other choices were two girls who went quick; Drunk Deena, and her friend Kelly who has never been in a canoe). Also, I was charged $850.

12. Homecoming last year where I threw an egg and it hit him in the ear so he suplexed me and then ran off because he thought he was bleeding.

13. Nelson’s Homecoming uniform (white aviators, overalls without a shirt, keg cup in one hand and the other up in the air pumping a ‘rock on’ sign)

14. Two months of treeplanting (long story)

15. Getting the second worst mark on a multiple choice test in a Greek Mythology class of 710 people at Queens…. after I gave him my answer sheet to copy.

16.When he finished exams before us in first year, then came by my rez room to tell me how drunk he was getting…. then with Sandy’s help we moved his bed into the lobby of the rez, slippers included. Nelson proceeds to drag his bedsheet into the elevator but was too slow and the doors closed and ripped/greased his sheets in half. Then in a huff he was against using the elevator so tried to drag his bed up 6 flights of stairs, falling asleep on his mattress at the base of the first set. It still reads “Will Nelson Slept Here” with a drunk arrow he drew when I was hunting around for him with a marker to draw on his face but thought that would be more suitable.

Kanye’s Quest for Cool.

In Kanye West mind he is loved by many and hated by some Bloggers. I’m not sure exactly where this came from I’ve been reading blogs for a while and I can’t say that I’ve seen many be overly hard on the Louis Vitton Don. I mean everybody gets teased a bit on the internet, that’s obviously a part of any giant anonymous canvas. Kanye is cool, and he’s good at what he does, if no one else is willing to say it I will.

What may hurt him in my mind is his “Quest for Cool.” Kanye admitted to this quest for cool a couple of months ago in a New York Time article.

“I love TV on the Radio’s production,” he said, referencing the critically acclaimed Brooklyn indie-rockers, “but man, at the end of the day, Keane and the Killers have bigger hooks.” Mr. West stops, considers, then laughs. “The last thing I need now in my quest to be cool is for somebody to think I dissed TV on the Radio.”

Since then it seems like he has been doing different things not necessarily because they are cool but so that people Hipster will view him as cool. He performed with Peter, Bjorn, and John at No Way Out, he created a Blog (Which will be immediately Blogrolled by Sacs in the City), and he showed up on Entourage (which I suppose isn’t that cool anymore). Whether he is doing these things to look cool or because he actually thinks their’s cool I’ll never know. This weekend on Saturday Night Live Kanye actually makes reference to the fact that Bloggers will tease him (00:35) after he stumbles during a freestyle(01:39, 00:55):

 

Right now I know that I still like him and I hope that he can stay genuine. I mean come on everyone knows there’s nothing more uncool than a person who is constantly asking you to stroke his ego and tell how cool he is. Someone who is truly cool does what I do and simply doesn’t listen to what other people have to say. It seems like Kanye is truly worried that everything he does will be put under a microscope which I suppose in some cases is true, but isn’t some of that by his own accord?:

 

I suppose that Kanye could just take a different approach though. I mean he’s got the number 1 album in the world he’s got to be paid right?