This the shit i'm talking about...

BLACK PEOPLE
"after looting a grocery store"

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10208301530
"A looter carries a bucket of beer"
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10908301723


WHITE PEOPLE
While these two white people "found" bread:
"after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store"
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/...shxwaoma_photo1

Come on ya'll. This little boy is carrying a case of diet pepsi. DIET PEPSI. Nobody would drink diet pepsi, unless they absolutely had to. This is pepsi i'm talking about.

Katrina

For some reason, I've been paying close attention to the tragedy that's been unfolding in the gulf coast. The devastation is definitely sobering, and a reminder of the tenuous grasp we have on life.
Definitely wishing for the safety of others....

Anyway, can you believe that people were caught trying clothes on in the middle of the street. Dayuum!! I understand needing to get some good dry outfits, but that's crazy to me. Can't you wait till you get behind clothes doors to see if they fit? But I am not mad at the folks who went to grab that beer. When in doubt, self-medicate.

"America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind." - Norman Mailer

10 Things Every Single Man Must Own: 8

8. $200+ dress shoes
Accept it: Girls are into footwear, and your feet will be one of the first things she looks at. Invest in quality black leather tie-ups — which will never go out of fashion and will match with most any jeans, pants or suit — to make a great first impression every time. If she knows her shoes, she'll be hoping to find you could afford a pair of Bruno Magli, Kenneth Cole, Steve Madden, or John Varvatos. Sure, they’re not cheap, but hey, it could be worse: We could be the ones in heels.

Guess who's back, after a brief west coast hiatus. Interestingly enough, before I took the 4.5 hour flight out to California (made bearable by the Sony PSP, Wipeout Pure, Napoleon Dynamite, Time, Newsweek, Atlantic Monthly, my Ipod, and the Economist), I had the pleasure of staying at the Westin Hotel. As you may know, number 9 on the list of "10 Things Every Single Man Must own" was 300 thread-count sheets. Now the Westin, in a clever marketing ploy has decided to put a heavenly bed in each one of its rooms. Although the thread count was only 250, i got a pretty good feeling for how a 300-thread count sheet feels, and the jury is still out. Now the down blanket, is something I can get behind. The next time I have $200 waiting around, you know what i'm about. Check for a motivation post sometime soon.

Now to the shoes. I can't really argue with this one. Nice shoes are a part of every single young professionals wardrobe. I try to keep the number of dress shoes under 5, anything more is reaching into dangerous territory. Black tie ups, black lace free, brown tie ups, brown lace free, and some wine colored shoes, should do the trick. Spending $200 dollars, I'm a little iffy on, but if you push the number to about $120, I could get behind it.

Friday Afternoon Musing

Supposedly, a wise [person] (gender neutral) once said, "You make time for all things important."

The Kid says that if you did indeed make time for it, then it has some importance, but just because it is important, that doesn't mean you have, or will have, necessarily made time for it.

Experience tells me so.

"To find it, time is real, we can't rewind it
Out of everybody I met, who told the truth? Time did." - Common

PSA

We interrupt the "10 Things Every Single Man Must Own" to bring you this Public Service Annoucement from Aristocrates and the good folks at General Musings From Generalists:

Aristocrates finally has a profile.

Aristocrates had yet to create one for some time because of 1. pure laziness and 2. the Greatest IM Conversation of All-Time. Given the content - nothing to brag about - of the profile, interestingly enough, I still think the Greatest IM Conversation of All-Time could still occur.

Links per word records, yea I'm setting 'em.

10 Things Every Single Man Must Own: 9

9. 300-thread-count cotton sheets
Let’s face it: You (and hopefully your date) will be spending a lot of quality time here. So skip the scratchy polyester blends and splurge on some 100-percent Egyptian cotton sheets with a thread count of 300—the higher the thread count, the softer the sheet. It’ll run you around $120 for a queen-size set (for a good selection, check out bedbathandbeyond.com), but anything that might keep her in bed longer is worth the expense, right?

I didn't realize this list was primarily about impressing women, but I'm starting to have my suspicions. As I have never slept on 300-thread-count cotton sheets, I can't really comment on the comfort-level of the bed sheets, and their relative level of necessary-ness for the single man. I can tell you what I do know. I do know if comfort is what you're looking for, bedbathandbeyond usually have t-shirt sheets which are very very comfortable. Honestly, if my wife didn't like t-shirt sheets I don't know if we could be married. Everything else feels like cotton/polyester torture.

I just came from the movies (Hustle & Flow). I am relatively certain that D-JAY didn't have 300-thread-count cotton sheets. And he was a pimp.

10 Things Every Single Man Must Own: 10

As both of the contributors to this site are single men, I thought it might be interesting to examine the contents of this 'list'. From the 10 things every single man must own list published on msn.com

10. The Joy of Cooking
Few things are sexier than a guy who can cook... but if toasting Pop-Tarts is the extent of your expertise? Then get Joy, the bible of all cookbooks since, unlike its trendier, more specialized alternatives like Nigella Lawson or Rocco DiSpirito, it contains recipes for just about anything you could think to make, all laid out with instructions that even an alien from another planet could figure out. So go ahead, invite her over for something simple (vegetarian chili, for instance) or exotic (Chicken Kiev, anyone?) and learn that the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach, too.

Hmm. I would blaze this book a little more, but one of my homeboy's owns a copy. Now even though i'm a budding chef, I don't know if i would feel good about enthusiastically recommending the most popular cookbook in the history of the world. Now granted, I've never even opened the book, but it's probably all meatloaf and potato salad recipes with leeks and parsnips. Between Good Eats and 30 Minute Meals you should be straight.

Freakonomics Excerpt

From the book, I just finished. The book is chock full of stuff like this (i've always wanted to say chock full). And no, it's not about porn...

"Risks that you control are much less a source of outrage than risks that are out of your control."

[This] principle might also explain why most people are more scared of flying in an airplane than driving a car. Their thinking goes like this: since I control the car, I am the one keeping myself safe; since I have no control of the airplane, I am at the mercy of myraid external factors.

So which should we actually fear more, flying or driving?

It might first help to ask a more basic question: what exactly, are we afraid of? Death presumably. But the fear of death needs to be narrowed down. Of course we all know that we are bound to die, and we might worry about it casually. But if you are told that you have a 10% chance of dying within the next year, you might worry a lot more, perhaps even choosing to live your life differently. And if you are told that you have 10% chance of dying within the next minute, you'll probably panic. So it's the imminent possibility of death that drives the fear-which means that the most sensible way to caclualate fear of death would be to think about it on a per-hour basis.

If you are taking a trip and have the choice of driving or flying, you might wish to consider the per-hour death rate of driving versus flying. It is true that many more people die in the US each year in motor vehicle accidents (40,000) than in airplane crashes (fewer than 1, 000). But it's also true that most people spend a lot more time in cars than in airplanes. The per-hour death rate of driving vversus flying, however is iabout equal. The two contraptions are equally likely (or in truth, unlikely) to lead to death.

see, nothing to worry about... =) Next up: The World is Flat by Friedman

Classic

"Tuesday the Senate voted to continue distributing a significant portion of security dollars equally among the states, rather than by likelihood of attack. [That's] good news for smaller states like Wyoming, which only has one high-risk target - the popular tourist attraction, the world's largest pile of homeland-security money."

- Jon Stewart

A Day of Maddeness

This post is two days late but given that I am currently a nomad with no "home" internet access and that work has been extremely busy for me the past two weeks...bear with me.

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge one of the most exciting days of the year. I'm talking about that second Tuesday in August that makes 1.1-1.3 million people during that week drop over $50 for the new Madden ('06). (A video game going Platinum in a week at $50 a pop! Crazy. This ain't no $9.99 CD, folks.) While some of my fellow bloggers (e.g. The Generalist, Perfectionist) have made many a gadget suggestion recently, I'll suggest that which has held me down like Alchemist for 15 years.

I'll admit, I was a tad wary over the exclusivity granted to EA Sports/Madden regarding NFL licensing and how it might stifle ingenuity, but as is usually the case, EA has not disappointed. I didn't think I could be more excited about a video game as I was last year - mostly due to my taking a 4-year college hiatus from video games essentially (what sense did that make?) - but with the focus on improving the realism of the passing game, your boy has once again been reinvigorated with the bug.

Now if I only had somewhere to play it...

"On another note now:"

The second part of my work-group outing on Tuesday (first was a cooking class at the Institute of Culinary Education) was a trip to see Mad Hot Ballroom. This movie had three things that I truly love:

• Kids in their innocence
• Ballroom dancing (some of them anyhow)
• The use of positive kinesiology in primary education (I personally think that schools would improve significantly if every student took properly taught Martial Arts - maybe a future post)

Now yes, it would have been nice (though maybe impractical) to see in more detail what effect engaging in dance and competition had on these kids but honestly, this was one of the best movie experiences I've ever had. I definitely think you should see it.

Feelin' Presidential...

"I am a living paradox -- deeply religious, yet not as convinced of my exact beliefs as I ought to be; wanting responsibility, yet shirking it; loving the truth but often times giving way to falsity . . . I detest selfishness, but see it in the mirror every day . . . I view those [people], some of whom are very dear to me, who have never learned how to live. I desire and struggle to be different from them, but often am almost an exact likeness."

-- Bill Clinton

Moving Adventures pt. 2

Well after an excrutiatingly long hiatus, it seems that the internet (along with cable) has returned to my life. I felt like a Luddite for a while, with only old dvd's to keep me company. To cope, i've though of couple ways to make life without cable and the internet bearable....

1. Buy an expensive stereo sytem (what better way to get acquainted with all the music you forgot about).
   
2. Video games
3. I suggest as a precaution, you should buy at least 2 DVD's of your favorite sitcom/drama. For me this includes OZ, and The Simpsons (season 4-8).
   
4. Good books. I've been burning through them at a pretty good clip these days, finishing 4 last month, and I'll probably get through 2.5 this month. Freakonomics, which I've been raving about, and the new Harry Potter are both good choices.
   
5. Call folks you haven't spoken with in a while.
6. Work out.
7. Explore the immediate area around your new dwelling.
8. Think to yourself . I went through very old documents when arranging my old stuff, and I felt like Camp Lo. Black Nostaljack.
   Thinking, what a novel concept.

I did resign to stop letting media control my life so much (i'm such a sucker for information, especially the inane kind that has no relevance to anything whatsoever). So I'll let you know how it goes...

Motivation Number: 8/7/2005 1.09%

Disclaimer: This month was a bit of an anomoly, with a number of unexpected expenses. This includes a number of things that I needed to refurnish my apartment (paying for movers, shower curtain, new garbage can, tv stand, receiver, speakers, sony psp, etc.). Thus there wasn't as much movement on this number as I would have liked this month... LOL. I'm a product of reaganomics

Hell On Earth

I move out today...

...without being able to move into my next apartment for another 12 days.

The former is much worse than the latter.

Lets get algebraic for a quick moment:

[(Moving company (especially given where I reside) + Queensbridge storage (no joke) + Penske = Mad Scrills)

+

Temporary Nomadic Displacement]

= This ain't San Rafael...

"Must Be The Money"

According to Deion Sanders' tailor, David Corbitt, Deion owns 1,900 suits in a closet that is 2,500 square feet.

1,900 Suits!!!

That's a suit per day for the next 5.2 Years!

That may be the most inconceivable "stat," I have ever seen...not to mention that his closet is about 5 times larger than my current apartment.

Are there 1,900 different makes?
Has he worn even a majority of these suits?
How much money does 1,900 top-of-the-lines tailored suits cost?
1,900 suits!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe that's what it means to be "PrimeTime."

(I have to admit, I loveeeeeeee that Burgundy & Gold suit Deion wore at his Redskins press conference. Yes, I am biased.)

Currently listening to: Deion Sanders - Must Be The Money