Tomorrow We Eat SanGwiches

Just wanted to drop a quick note to all nine of my readers: Tom and Eileen are on their honeymoon in the deep dark jungles of africa and they have been kind enough to blog about it, with pictures! You can follow all their travels by clicking on here.  Quick note: it sounds like a blast so far but if you have to take malaria pills for three days before going into a certain part of the world...don't really know if you could qualify it as a vacation sounds more like Survivor with room service and no cameras following you as you shit in the woods and wipe your ass with leaves. 

Posted by nelson57 at 02:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In my opinion the biggest months for breakups in relationships are October and May.   Just think back to all of the relationships you have had over the course of your life and I betcha that over half of them ended during those two months. 

There is a simple reason for this, October specifically Halloween is a big day for breakups.  My friend Kate has a theory and you can tie it in to the slutty costumes girls wear, (i.e. slutty nurse, dirty pirate hooker, slutty schoolgirl, BTW I am a HUGE fan of the slutty schoolgirl.)  Girls dress provocatively because either they are trying to keep their man or subconsciously trying to break-up with him by getting other guys interested in them thus making the jealous and thinking that they are not worth the time. Halloween falls before the big holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. That is a time where you should be with family and if you are in a relationship that is not working for you, you don't want to spend it with that person knowing that they are not going to make it to the New Year's kiss. 

Now May is right before the summer starts, I hearken back to my high school and college days where you would never want a relationship over the summer because that would "tie you down" not allowing you to hook up with other people without that real guilty feeling, so it was just easier to break up and if you made up when the school year got back into full swing all the better.

Whether or not to stay in relationships, is one of the toughest decisions we make as human beings and we stay in relationships for different reasons; money, kids, sex, lack of a better option, feel free to insert your other insane reasons here.  Sometimes you don't even know why you are in a relationship, you are in just in it for the sake of being a relationship.  I guess what I'm trying to say is relationship are tough, they are something that need to be worked on and if you enter one, you best be ready cause you never know where it will take you.

Let me also wish Godspeed to Maj. Vincent Moss who is leaving us for his third stint in the middle east since this president bush "war of terror" started.  My prayers and the prayers of my readers (all 9 of them) are with you.

  

Posted by nelson57 at 01:19 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I am remote blogging today from the jersey shore and it has been a glorious weekend so far, good weather, good food and good friends. Let me get right to it. hugo chavez = Asshole. I have blogged about Venezuelan president hugo chavez before. He gets this week award because he decided not to renew the broadcast license of the last independent television station left in Venezuela, which means all of the broacast airwaves of the most powerful medium ever invented are controlled by him and his cronies. Venezuela only had 5 T.V. stations to begin with so he just knocked out 20% of their capacity. Chavez supporters say that there are still 2 daily newspapers that are not under government control yet, but come on how many people in Venezuela actually read. BTW there was a real close second for AOTW, Lindsay Lohan. Girl, you are twenty, you got busted for a DUI and you supposedly had cocaine in the car. Shit, when I was twenty, you knew not to ever carry on you and never EVER! allow the police to search your car without a warrant, your convict dad should have told you that. Stupid

Posted by nelson57 at 03:17 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

If you ever wanted a day to come together perfectly it would be your wedding day, right?  Well last Saturday was one of those days.  My best friend Tom got married to his longtime girlfriend Eileen and I was the best man.  This is probably the one and only time I will ever be the best man at someone's wedding so I decided to make this one really special for everyone. 

Weather was a bit a bit of a factor in the beginning but mother nature was kind enough to give us a rather clear and comfortable day as it went along.  The ceremony itself was nice, nice church, the requisite tears rolling down the cheeks of both groups of parents.  We get to the party, take the wedding group pictures, I hope those came out OK. I was the only guy in the wedding party as opposed to 5 bridesmaids and the maid of honor, so I was real busy.  Walking all the girls out as introductions went along, making sure the bridesmaids were sufficiently plied with drinks to allow for any embarrassing moments that would come later. 

But my moment, my shining moment in the sun would come when it was time for me to give my best man speech, I wanted to make it memorable and different.  I wanted people to think when they went to any wedding from now on and hear that same blah blah blah best man's speech and would immediately think of mine and say, "you know, Nelson's was better".  Most of all I wanted Tom and Eillen to remember it, because that day must have seen like so much of a blur to them, they probably don't remember much other than that they are betrothed to each other for the REST OF THEIR LIVES!

The Speech had to be broken into 2 you tube posts, here is part one and here is part two. I really don't know how my temporary webmaster Melanie broke it up or maybe a went on for a little bit, who knows, I was at least three or four chocolate milks in at the time.

Please feel free to leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Posted by nelson57 at 03:45 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There is a movement afoot in New York City by Mayor Bloomberg to get people to quit smoking, he first raised the tax on a pack of cigarettes from $2 to about $4 making a pack in NYC about $7, probably the highest price paid for a pack of cigarettes in the country.  That didn't have much effect on smokers. He then banned smoking in indoor spaces, you name the place, you can't smoke in it. Bars, restaurants, ballparks, atriums, massage parlors; that didn't work to well either. Does Mike stop there...hell no, he offered free nicorette gum and patches basically to anyone that wanted them, guess what it really didn't matter people just keep on smoking.

Let me give you a little bit of background on Mayor Mike, he was a former pack to two pack a day smoker who quit and like almost everyone who quits, they cannot stand it when people smoke around them cause it just reminds them of how powerful a drug nicotine is. They will do anything to discourage people from smoking. 

Let me introduce you to anything, his name is Renaldo Martinez and you can here his message here.  He had a tracheotomy at 39 and has to talk through a voice box that gives him just the worst spanish accent, damn it is near incomprehensible, they have to caption what he says for fear that we would misunderstand him.  You would think that the city of new york, whom he is their spokesmodel for, could afford to get him a voice box that would allow him to speak proper new york english, well at least he doesn't have a long island accent. 

Smoking is bad kids, keep smoking and you weel wind up talkin areely bad.

 

Posted by nelson57 at 09:02 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don't worry about that; that's a temporary situation."

This quote comes directly from the mouth of the "doubletawkah new yawkah" himself al sharpton. sl is referring to Mitt Romney, who's that? Governor of Massachusetts and a republican who is running for President, worse than that he's a mormon.  That's right a holy underwear wearing, Donny and Marie loving bigamist. 

"Asshole of the Week" is a weekly entry that I have created to point out the copious amounts of assholes we have roaming our planet.  Every week I will select one person worthy of this honor and proceed to lambaste that person publicly.

This week it is the Rev. al sharpton whose exploits have been touted on this site before, shows us his short sitedness and again only takes the moral high ground when he can personally gain from it.  Short of a few articles written about it, al's comments went about unnoticed, why? Because he picked on a Mormon. They are pretty easy to pick on, hell I just did it in the last paragraph.  The only retailiation I have to worry from mormons is having two missionaries wearing  ties with short sleeves shirts (huge fashion faux pas btw)  knocking on my door asking me if I want to learn about the book of Christ.

At least they are not as a bad as those fucking Jehovah's Witnesses. But they got more money than God anyway now so I bet they won't be knocking on your door anytime soon.

Congrats al for the first and definitely not the last "Asshole of the Week" award!

 

 

Posted by nelson57 at 02:51 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

My guess is everything has to do with the price of milk.  Last week the price of a gallon of milk went up to $3.54 in New York City.  Compare that to a gallon of gas which is hovering around $3.10 a gallon in the city and you begin to see the problem. 

Over the past year the price of milk has shot up 20% to its highest price ever.  Why? Because of the price of gasoline.  What do Gas and Milk have in common? Corn. 

A few years back the government decided that in the peak summer driving months our gasoline would have an additive in it that would supposedly reduce emissions from our cars, that additive is ethanol.  Ethanol is made from corn.  About ten years ago the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was paying corn farmers not to grow corn.  That's right farmers got paid roughly the equivalent of what their harvest would bare to allow their fields to lay fallow.  There was so much Goddamn corn that we were giving it away to the Russians, it was better that letting it stay in silos to rot.

A brilliant person came up with the idea that we should add ethanol to our fuel, (todays gas is about 10% alcohol and 90% gas) and that there would be a summer months surcharge of close to 10 cents per gallon for the privilege of using this.  One problem, most American cars are not designed to run on ethanol yet so engines do not process the fuel as efficiently meaning less miles to the gallon and more trips to the gas station which means more money out of your wallet, where is the fucking efficiency there.  But hey at least they eliminated the problem of having all of that goddamn corn lying around. I not even going to start on how much energy gets used just to convert the corn to ethanol

But this is where the problem starts.  Now there is more demand for corn than ever, farmers cannot keep up with demand so the price of corn has gone up.  Dairy farmers use corn as the main ingredient in feeding their livestock so that they can produce their moo-juice.  Since the price of their feed has gone up they have to pass that cost increase onto us the almighty consumer.  Milk and Gas are two items that just about all of America can't live without, that is why when you walk into a supermarket, milk is all the way back in the corner so you have to walk through the whole store (and if the supermarketers had their way buy a few more items you would see on your way) to get the milk. 

Now if we could only figure out a way to have gasoline with our corn flakes.  

Posted by nelson57 at 11:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Had dinner with my sister last night, it was our parent's anniversary and they didn't want to hang out with us so we went to dinner without them.  Figure we would celebrate the event that helped place us on this earth.  We ate dinner at Uncle Nick's, a Greek restaurant in Hell's Kitchen.  Good eats, I recommend the swordfish kebab and the tzatziki with warmed pita.  Both of us were in the mood for dessert, I suggested we go to Kyotofu dessert bar, which has been open for about six months, but I have never had a chance to go there. 

The desserts we sampled were very good, I had the vanilla parfait and my sister had the raspberry chocolate cake finished off with some green tea. What makes Kyotofu good is the extra touches that they put on the desserts to add to textures and flavor balances, nothing is too sweet or too cloying.  The parfait had some roasted walnuts in it to add some crunch and the apricot caramel sauce gave the dessert that little extra sweetness it needed. There are a couple of items that I would go back to try, since I live in the area. 

Kyotofu is an experience best shared with a dessert freak, so that you can go ahead and order the three dessert sampler for the both of you and really experience the whole menu.

Posted by nelson57 at 01:43 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I have lived in New York City basically my whole life. I have traveled to many different places and I have always wondered to myself if I could live anywhere else full time. I used to say no, no way, New York City is in my blood, in my bones it is as much of who I am as my parents who made me.

One of the main reasons I love New York City is because of its conveniences, for instance, I walk outside my door, I see Times Square and Central Park.  I want to go to the supermarket, I walk a block.  I need a Fourbucks coffee, it is right on the corner of my block.  That is until today, The Fourbucks on my corner had a pipe burst and was closed, not so good on a Monday morning after I spent a weekend building a temporary sub-floor for my best friend Tom's wedding. BTW I never saw that job in any of the Best Man descriptions I read on the internet.

Back to Fourbucks.  I was actually upset that I had to walk an extra 2 blocks out of my way to get my venti iced coffee. Its all about convenience, My Fourbucks people know me and they have my coffee ready so I don't even have to talk to them other than the normal pleasantries that New Yorkers share with each other, "Fucking Clemens signed with the Yanks"or "Fucking Rangers lost yesterday". 

So I walk in to get my coffee in one of the other 5 Fourbucks that are within 2 blocks of my house and I fully expect the counterperson to read my mind, cause I am just used to the convenience, she doesn't and I have to go through the incantations it takes to order a coffee.  Venti iced coffee unsweetened, easy right?  My sister's daily coffee order goes something like this Grande Skim Iced Mocha no whip two pumps in a venti cup.  Only New Yorkers understand it and order it, it makes us feel special.

Getting back, If I were to ever move out of New York, it would be to move out of New York completely, not Brooklyn or Queens, that's just diet New York City I doubt I would even move to New Jersey, another wannabe New York.  I know I was raised in New York City and I turned out all right but with the ridiculously high cost of living, which I will address in my next post, can you actually raise a family here.

If I could only find a town with five fourbucks, a convenience store, a supermarket, a theatre and a park all within walking distance from my house.

Posted by nelson57 at 01:28 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)