Poachin' at the VA
You can sniff your way through the internet like a bloodhound, poking your browser into every dirty corner like one of them google webcrawlin' robots, and you won't find anything more satisfying than PBdotC's annual "Chicken Soup for Your Mama's Ass" column. I would suggest he make it a monthly but it's his world and I am but a dark brown Stuytown squirrel, attempting to locate nourishment in the cold city winter.
What I would like to do, humbly, is add a couple life lessons of my own. Of course, mine will be long-winded and somewhat useless. But they will bring you four minutes closer to quittin' time on Friday afternoon, so quitcherbicthin.
Lesson number one regards hailin' cabs. For me, the only time I find myself hailing a cab is when I'm a 30 minute subway ride from someplace and I need to be there in 15 minutes. The problem is that I usually find myself in this situation during rush hour, when every other schmuck is looking for a cab as well. Assuming these are your general hailing conditions, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:
1) If there are no cabs in sight, and ten people waiting with their arms extended, you should first consider hopping on the subway. Don't waste time thinking about it, commit immediately and get going. It might take you ten minutes to find a cab anyway, resulting in a net time gain of only five minutes. Depending on how important your appointment is, that might not be worth it. Especially because those ten minutes of searching for a cab are going to drive your stress level through the roof.
2) If you MUST get a cab, and again there are none in sight and a bunch of zombie hosebags are standing there with their arms out like ***BIG DADDY SPOILER HERE*** Donald Sutherland at the end of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)," I can tell you this: KEEP MOVING. Some people might tell you that if you stay in one good spot and be patient, you'll luck out. Bullshit. I'm not saying you can walk to the front of a line of people who are waiting. In fact, I'd go the opposite way and try to get one on a cross street. Just keep walking in the general direction of your destination and keep your eyes open. My latest move is a good and dirty one, and Stuytown/Peter Cooper residents might want to put it to use on their next morning commute. When I get out to First avenue and there are a bunch of folks standing there waiting for cabs, I immediately head north to 23rd street. Then, like a complete scumbag, I wait by the end of the driveway of the VA Hospital. Lots of cabs are dropping people off there, and as long as I don't wait by the hospital entrance itself, I feel pretty confident I'm not swiping a cab from a one-legged war veteran. In fact, I've noticed other people using this trick and going right up to the hospital entrance, so if there are no hobblin' vets outside, I actually get right up there myself. So far I haven't had to wait more than two minutes or so (plus the three minutes to walk there).
The other thing I'd like to discuss is time. I think I have an excellent grasp of time, and I think you should develop one as well. Not to say I'm not late all the time, I am, but that's because I'm either really busy, really lazy, or I screwed up somehow. Be aware of how long a minute is. An hour. A year. Once you understand this, you'll know that there's virtually no action in the universe that can be completed in fifteen minutes. As it is now, I hear a lot of people saying, "I'll just do X real quick and be back here in 15 minutes." No you won't. Learn how long things take. Most of the time estimates are off by between 40 and 60%. Thanks.
A last word on James "That's a Lie" Frey (thanks for your kind words regarding the disclaimer, btw) and then I'll let it die. I just think it's funny that he went on Oprah today and got his ass kicked. Hell, Larry King kicked his ass as well. I wonder if when the book first came out, Frey was terrified that the other shoe would drop and he'd be exposed. And then it didn't drop. And the book started selling by the million. And somewhere in there among the accolades and the high fives and the public lovefests, he slowly began to forget that he made that shit up. And he actually became arrogantly certain that the whole thing was true. And now that everybody's unwrapping the lies like delicious fruit chews, one after another, he's getting pissed. Like that angry look on the Wizard's face at the end of the Wizard of Oz that says "Why are you ruining this? I had a good thing going." Poor guy's headed for a bad fall.
Lastly, every three months or so, the verbungle.com staff tries to get a new word or phrase to catch on with the American people. However, with a daily readership that might not be large enough to field a soccer team, the math is simply not in our favor. And even the recent small-scale triumph we scored with "kwacha" was tempered by BJL's angry rebuke. But even when unsuccessful, we feel that the word-spread exercise has merit. And so we introduce today's word: rando.
A rando, which of course is short for random, is any person who shows up in a place where he or she is not expected to be and somehow impacts the events of that day. It can also be used as an adjective to describe the behavior of a rando. Here are two examples:
"The party was slammin'* until those two randos came in and finished off all our wine coolers."(Noun)
"How rando was it when that guy walked into the theater with like five minutes left in the movie, farted, and left?" (Adjective)
Let's do it.
* Let's bring back "slammin'" -- that shit is so lame it cracks me up. And "hood" as a substitute for the overused "thug."
What I would like to do, humbly, is add a couple life lessons of my own. Of course, mine will be long-winded and somewhat useless. But they will bring you four minutes closer to quittin' time on Friday afternoon, so quitcherbicthin.
Lesson number one regards hailin' cabs. For me, the only time I find myself hailing a cab is when I'm a 30 minute subway ride from someplace and I need to be there in 15 minutes. The problem is that I usually find myself in this situation during rush hour, when every other schmuck is looking for a cab as well. Assuming these are your general hailing conditions, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:
1) If there are no cabs in sight, and ten people waiting with their arms extended, you should first consider hopping on the subway. Don't waste time thinking about it, commit immediately and get going. It might take you ten minutes to find a cab anyway, resulting in a net time gain of only five minutes. Depending on how important your appointment is, that might not be worth it. Especially because those ten minutes of searching for a cab are going to drive your stress level through the roof.
2) If you MUST get a cab, and again there are none in sight and a bunch of zombie hosebags are standing there with their arms out like ***BIG DADDY SPOILER HERE*** Donald Sutherland at the end of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)," I can tell you this: KEEP MOVING. Some people might tell you that if you stay in one good spot and be patient, you'll luck out. Bullshit. I'm not saying you can walk to the front of a line of people who are waiting. In fact, I'd go the opposite way and try to get one on a cross street. Just keep walking in the general direction of your destination and keep your eyes open. My latest move is a good and dirty one, and Stuytown/Peter Cooper residents might want to put it to use on their next morning commute. When I get out to First avenue and there are a bunch of folks standing there waiting for cabs, I immediately head north to 23rd street. Then, like a complete scumbag, I wait by the end of the driveway of the VA Hospital. Lots of cabs are dropping people off there, and as long as I don't wait by the hospital entrance itself, I feel pretty confident I'm not swiping a cab from a one-legged war veteran. In fact, I've noticed other people using this trick and going right up to the hospital entrance, so if there are no hobblin' vets outside, I actually get right up there myself. So far I haven't had to wait more than two minutes or so (plus the three minutes to walk there).
The other thing I'd like to discuss is time. I think I have an excellent grasp of time, and I think you should develop one as well. Not to say I'm not late all the time, I am, but that's because I'm either really busy, really lazy, or I screwed up somehow. Be aware of how long a minute is. An hour. A year. Once you understand this, you'll know that there's virtually no action in the universe that can be completed in fifteen minutes. As it is now, I hear a lot of people saying, "I'll just do X real quick and be back here in 15 minutes." No you won't. Learn how long things take. Most of the time estimates are off by between 40 and 60%. Thanks.
***
A last word on James "That's a Lie" Frey (thanks for your kind words regarding the disclaimer, btw) and then I'll let it die. I just think it's funny that he went on Oprah today and got his ass kicked. Hell, Larry King kicked his ass as well. I wonder if when the book first came out, Frey was terrified that the other shoe would drop and he'd be exposed. And then it didn't drop. And the book started selling by the million. And somewhere in there among the accolades and the high fives and the public lovefests, he slowly began to forget that he made that shit up. And he actually became arrogantly certain that the whole thing was true. And now that everybody's unwrapping the lies like delicious fruit chews, one after another, he's getting pissed. Like that angry look on the Wizard's face at the end of the Wizard of Oz that says "Why are you ruining this? I had a good thing going." Poor guy's headed for a bad fall.
***
Lastly, every three months or so, the verbungle.com staff tries to get a new word or phrase to catch on with the American people. However, with a daily readership that might not be large enough to field a soccer team, the math is simply not in our favor. And even the recent small-scale triumph we scored with "kwacha" was tempered by BJL's angry rebuke. But even when unsuccessful, we feel that the word-spread exercise has merit. And so we introduce today's word: rando.
A rando, which of course is short for random, is any person who shows up in a place where he or she is not expected to be and somehow impacts the events of that day. It can also be used as an adjective to describe the behavior of a rando. Here are two examples:
"The party was slammin'* until those two randos came in and finished off all our wine coolers."(Noun)
"How rando was it when that guy walked into the theater with like five minutes left in the movie, farted, and left?" (Adjective)
Let's do it.
***
I want to thank everyone for their chipwich replacement suggestions. I liked them all so much that you will each receive ten GP's as a reward. You gotta be in it to win it. PB will also get ten points for his wise advice: "You can't fuck with a chipwich."
We got a new prediction today, hosers.
We got a new prediction today, hosers.
* Let's bring back "slammin'" -- that shit is so lame it cracks me up. And "hood" as a substitute for the overused "thug."
posted by hans q. bungle at 00:46
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