Posts from December 2007

I've just realized that for the entire life of this blog on this site I have not been back to Sarasota Florida. Basically since the last grandparent died in 1994 we got out of dodge and headed down to that place. It started off when my parents made plans to visit my Dad's bauxite salesman for the materials that he used in his plant that he managed. The guy also turned out to be my Dad's best friend for some reason they had this unique bond. He was cool beyond belief, as a true Dutchman. His name was Bart Hendrix and during WW2 he survived by eating the fish he caught when the Germans occupied the Netherlands. After the war he vowed never to eat seafood again and everytime we went out to eat no one at the table could order seafood as it would cause him a vomiting reaction. Other than that he had a impressive art collection and represented his country for the Dutch water polo team for the Olympics. For the first years we spent it at a place called the Half Moon Beach Club on Lido Key since that is where we stayed for a couple of years while he still was in good health to make the trip and a couple of years after. In some ways we were just trying to relive those first couple of trips with him.

Then my sister died and we ended up looking for a place away from the other regular visitors during the holidays. Basically it boiled down to my parents not wanting to face the families of the other kids that we got to be friends with. So we had out holidays in a condo complex we rented until 2003. That was when things started to launch in terms of the Real Estate Bubble. Every old couple from the Tri-State area started buying up condos thinking that snowbirds would pay their fees, mortgage and taxes for the entire year off of a few months.

My Mom ended up moving around but still keeping in touch with her friends that she made when she hung at that condo complex before all of the old crew moved on to cheaper places to live. In the last few years she ended up renting a house from an older Gay couple and that is where we are today.

Sarasota was back then a W.A.S.P haven and also for nice corn fed Mid-Western retirees that were extremely frugal and never knew the word debt. I remember in '94 that when my Dad had a craving for Italian and we looked in the Yellow pages the only listing was Domino's. Things have changed as now it's a pretty cosmopolitan place. Although old money screams Republican, especially since it was Katherine Harris's Congressional District after that "election" in 2000 you can get any variety of cuisine.

I"m just looking forward to getting out of the cold and grabbing some vitamin D. Hanging with refined people with tons of $ and a few scattered rednecks is something that I have missed for 2.5 years. There's nothing hanging at bar close to the beach sucking down a cold one, slurping down some oysters with a guy wearing polo on one side and another dude with a bandanna.

As I get closer I think may post again about this topic.

As @theecarey said this rarely happens when the snow comes our way.
So I present to you some really bad videos of a guy plowing my driveway:



Going the other way



With how it has been blowing he may need to come back soon

Fuck, my buddy who is the Eastern European guest worker importer kingpin of Niagara County is asking me to do him a favor. Basically he wants me to "host" his love interest from last year after he is done with her when the new season begins in May. Basically I'll be the "nice guy" that comes in and consoles her after he kicks her to the curb when "next year's models" come in for the summer and he repeats process.

Don't worry this is all legal as they are guest workers brought here to work the shitty tourist jobs around the falls. The main selling point is the businesses don't have to pay the 1/2 the business pay for FICA, Medicaid, State Tax ect... So yea, he has brought outsourcing to the USA itself.

The trouble is this chick is pretty, well HOT. The catch is I know that in the grand scheme of things Eastern Euro's are playing Chess while most people in this country are playing checkers. So basically I know that although I think I may pull one on her, she'll get me in the end. I had to drop science on my Ex-Wife to get out of that whole relationship unscathed and with $ still to my name.

WTF! I'm not going to do it. Although the seeds are getting planted in the sense that I am considering it. Well it all boils down to the fact that my prospects around this area SUCK and the probability of me getting someone that looks like her physically is a BIG 0.

I just need to straighten out and think with my head between my ears and not the lower regions. I've made that mistake before, you think I would have learned my lesson in the sense that I would NEVER come close to considering it again?


Well guys, any takers?

;-)

So after an evening on Allen with @theecarey my friend and driver for the evening BB needed to get some gas for the long trek home. So he decided to stop at the Sunoco on Delaware and Delavan. For some reason I noticed that he grabed the keys and went to prepay. Then a minute later this guy that was just lingering about (although I think he came from the car on the other side of the pumps) just nonchantly walks up to the drivers side, opens the door, gets in and shuts the door. Me in my happy state of mind just says, "Dude, wrong car man." He's like, "Man, I'm so F'd up right now." I respond with the, "Yea, me too *fist shake* It's all good" The best part is when the guy that he was with that he knew or was going to go somewhere with yelled, "GET OUT OF THE MAN"S CAR!"

We just laughed at it on the way home. Lucky he took the keys and there was no threat of anything bad. Things could have turned out really bad but lucky, hopefully it was just a big misunderstanding.

This Sabres west coast road trip is making me think of the days when I was a bum. Back then in '98-01 I had NHL Center ice and was up at this hour regularly. Catching the L.A. Kings games was something I got sucked into for some strange reason.

Although looking back I can say it may have been the ease of living off of my parents grief. Although being a semi nihilist that experience didn't bring too much joy in and of its self at the time. The one aspect I loved was the more laid back announcers on Fox Sports West and the different commercials. Just watching a Carl's Jr. ad brought some strange joy to me. Just worrying about what game I was betting on and other weird stuff was all I worried about. The scary part is that back then I totally gave up on women. I had 0, zilch, nada or at least prospects for getting any.

Looking back I would just shake my self if I had a time machine. Especially now that I'm so much older and can actually find someone to at least hang and maybe more with ease. Oh, how things change.

The sad part is now the way scheduling is done Northeastern teams may not get out to the west coast for another 6 years. So unless a game is on Versus, which just isn't the same I will have to wait a while for some mid week late night hockey. That is unless I feel ike throwing away a few hundred bucks for the NHL Center Ice package.

Why watching the Sabres play the Ducks and Kings the last couple days brought all of this back to me? I don't know...

Holy F'n S**t!

Is all I can say after getting out of Lewiston Town Court tonight.

Got pulled over by a trooper in December on the way to work. He seemed like a smug new cop but didn't think much of it. Then as I go tonight for "trial" he offers me a "deal" that would only give me 2 points! Yea, well at this point I'm almost about to ask for counsel but I decide to take my chances with the judge. As he was asking me about what I was going to plead to a faliure to use 4 way flashers I played the "not understanding the consequences of the plea deal thing." Then the judge looks up that section and realized that it is now how they do business in the town. Body language tilts back and then he gives a, "let me see if I can do this for you..." thing. I then get offered the usual parking ticket & school deal like everyone else got throught the night. SOLD! or more like "Guilty, Your Honor"

Standing up to a Trooper in court was a Freaking scary experience as I was pretty much shaking though out the whole thing. The guy looked like he wanted to kick my ass for sort of making him look like a overzealous storm trooper. If I was going to pay up the nose for insurance I would have been better off going with a lawyer at that point. But I got the typical Lewiston deal which is all I wanted and for once I actually came though in a "Balls Check."

The funny thing is that there was this older teenager behind me with her Mom. She was just like take it and pay without putting up a stink. Yea, I just love this town where people just build McMansions and pay whatever bill comes in the mail without ever scrutinizing it.

In the end I was just reminded of my true self always being extremely skeptical of authority. Plus I have realized from my new job that just because someone has a position of authority doesn't necessarily guarantee they know what the F they are doing. I guess he learned how things work in regards to traffic violations in the town of Lewiston anyway; Since I guess he was following some crazy State guideline/procedure to raise more $ for them and not for the Town.

Moral of the story: Don't get pulled over by a State Trooper on a State Road. There are some guys that want to throw the book @ you to get all that money you are going to pay directed to Albany instead of your local municipality .

@carolinian and I went out on Saturday to the Sabres game. Obviously we have to give him credit for showing up @ HSBC in his Red & Black.



Sitting in the 200 level does open you up to many things that the regular folk do not experience. The magic of cable television.



Instead of waiting in traffic we decided to check out what Artvoice has been screaming about at the Buffalo Creek Casino.



It is scary that I could breath better given the smoking situation in the Old Pink than I could in that place. All I can say is that everything that they said about the place is true and I'll leave it at that for now.

Afterwards before I droped him off we stopped by Essex St and I basically ran into a Lewiston reunion. Low and behold I ran into an old friend of mine that is now bar tending there on Saturday nights J*. Running into that guy is like uncovering an old journal that you kept hidden or "friends only" for LJ people. It didn't hurt that 2 other people from L-ton.

Driving home was actually an interesting experience. There is nothing like feeling as if you are traveling through some inter dimensional warp. Not noticing where you are because of the blinding snow and having time vertigo due to not being where you should be given the amount of time you have been traveling in the car. It was just fortunate that the back roads were empty since the name of the game is avoiding the bad winter drivers.

If anyone is bored I'll be @ Broadway Joe's catching The Karma Police. It's been almost a year since I have caught one of their shows and supposedly they learned some new material off of the "free" album they just released.

Narrator: "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." Yea the 90's are an ancient memory, what's next Jennifer Aniston going Grey like Anderson Cooper?
I almost want to cry.

This article made me laugh my ass off. :-D Yes you can get really "Fucked Up" in Niagara Falls Ontario Canada. You need to have some sense of equilibrium. Then I guess these kids that go to UB never had to anything to prepare them from wherever they grew up. Then again we didn't have Eastern Euros selling themselves when I was a teenager. Although I never have participated in such an exchange of commerce, knowing the going market rate they are getting a bargain compared to Las Vegas.

This article made me think of this quote.




It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Gore Vidal
US author & dramatist (1925 - )

It just reminds me of how some people make a ton of money at the racetrack by betting long shots. They collect when the masses go down in flames. Or the guys that have been hoarding gold or cash for the last 5 years that are going to buy up all of the foreclosed homes stemming from the credit crunch.

We all can't prosper together. Ok, maybe we all can under some kind of socialism but still we aren't happy if we are all bunched in between 1 standard deviation. We are truly programed to keep score in this zero sum game called the world.