matthearn.com

Sorry for leaving everybody hanging yesterday; my normal workday of periodically checking my tickets, answering email, not responding to voicemails, and working frantically to staunch the flow of blood from my coworker’s ravaged neck was interrupted by a nice fellow who needed to watch me work on tickets and things all afternoon. So I had postpone anything fun, like watching the exit polls, or updating this dreck, until I went home.

Then a server broke and I was stuck at the data center until 7:30pm, and by the time I got home, pork chops and beer took priority over updates. Mmmm…pork chops.

As I write this, it looks like President Bush is going to continue to be President until 2009, and I can’t say I care either way, really. Neither candidate really had anything to say that I care about, so it matters little to me which of those idiots is in office. The only thing that scares me is that 11 states banned gay marriage, but I just won’t go to those states for my gay marriage needs.

What topics DO I care about? Gee, I’m glad you asked! Although you won’t be.

• Gun Control – Statistics prove that gun control prevents crime. Unfortunately, statistics also prove that gun control causes crime. So clearly you can trust statistics about as far as you can throw them (not very far, if the book is long and thick). So if gun control can’t be proven to prevent crime, then basically it restricts a right based on the fact that many Americans, usually Democrats, are scared of guns. Many Americans, usually Republicans, are scared of gay people. We shouldn’t control either.
• Abortion – What a woman does with her body is pretty much her affair. I don’t think a handful of cells in a uterus is a child any more than I think that the large hairy growth I just burned off my ass with a soldering iron is a child.
• Morality – Anyone who feels that “morality” is the primary issue when selecting a FREAKING POLITICIAN should be prevented from voting ever again. Why? Because morals are the most subjective thing ever. Your morals may say that homosexuality is wrong, and black people should stop being so uppity. My morals seem to follow along the lines of “do whatever you want, as long as you don’t prevent me from greasing up and wearing leather gimp outfits to work.”
• Education – I’m starting to think I should homeschool. Not because I necessarily think the public schools offer a bad education; I went to public school and I learned as much there as I did in college. But unfortunately, the government schools have a slight tendency to turn people awfully liberal, and I don’t need my kids coming home and telling me “Daddy, it’s wrong that you own guns!” because the teacher browbeat it into them. True, not all teachers are like that, but it’s not as if I can pick and choose.
• Porn – Porn should be legal. And if you want to show nudity on TV, do it on HBO. And tell Paris Hilton to cover up, because girlfriend is nasty skinny. It’s foul.
• Drugs – If I’m snorting cocaine in the comfort of my own home, how exactly does that harm anyone else? And if you say, “Drug gang violence blah blah blah,” then slap yourself upside the head. Right now. There wouldn’t be any drug violence if the Drug War didn’t make drug violence so lucrative.

I think that’s enough political manifesto type stuff. Moving on. I have a bunch of pictures from the Halloween party last Saturday, but I haven’t found time to edit and put them up; I’ll try and get to that soon. In the meantime, I leave you with this bit of wisdom, courtesy of The Family Guy:

“Hey Americans, you like movies? I’ve got ‘Dude, My Car Is Not Where I Parked It But Praise Allah We Are Not Hurt!'”

Okay, lesson learned: it is far better to have excess candy on November the First, than it is to have too little candy on October the First plus Thirty.

Actually, we started out well; we had 3 big bags of candy, including the unholy trinity of Reese’s Cups^TM, Butterfingers^TM, and Kit Kats^TM. We even managed to not eat all of it ourselves in the days leading up to Halloween. And yet we still ran out. Twice.

I blame Sarah, for the following reasons:

1. At the beginning of the evening, she was deeply into the festivities, and apparently began blacking out and handing out 3 or 4 candies per child. Since we started with 3 bags, and each bag contained roughly 20 pieces of refined sugar products, we were going to run out after approximately 20 children.
2. At approximately 7pm, we realized we were going to run out, so she ran to the store to pick up more candy. While she was gone, we DID run out, and so I found myself handing out strawberry granola bars to young children. I felt like some kind of hippie dentist. Sarah returned at approximately 7:20 with one bag of Butterfingers^TM. We ran out again by 8.

In the end, we were forced to turn off all the lights and huddle under blankets in the back room of the basement, muttering incoherently to the furnace (which replied by periodically warming our home slightly), and hoping the eggs that children were throwing were reasonably fresh.

They weren’t. Oh, the horror!

Luckily, we had blown out the candles in our Trogdor and The Cheat pumpkins, so they went unnoticed by the midnight hordes of surly teenagers and are still sitting on the porch, gathering slugs and mold like nobody’s business. I’ve already posted a picture of the Trogdor punkin, but one of The Cheat is forthcoming.

Speaking of The Cheat, she has developed yet another amusing nickname: Don Cheadle. Why? I don’t know.

And speaking of pictures, we had a riotous time at Kris Ungkasaahgaslksky’s party on Saturday night, and I have many, many disturbing photos. They shall hopefully be posted this evening, although I may decide to spread them out over the week to whet everyone’s appetite and add to the terror.

My buddy Doug sent me this earlier today and it made me giggleth, so I’m sharing it with all o’ y’alls:

Sacrilege rules.

Tonight: Game 3!
Tomorrow: I talk about why I hate fantasy football!

UPDATE: The above is not sacrilege. I know sacrilege, sir, and that is not him.

This is him:

Props to Embly for sending that over.

Okay, James Lileks better fear my wrath. Him AND his oustanding writing skeelz. I was all ready to write a nice long post about the flu, and the flu vaccine, and why the American news media is absolutely crapping its collective pants, and why this is completely retarded. Then I go through my daily reading and BOOM, good ol’ Jimmy (he hates nicknames almost as much as I hate him for scooping my column idea) has a nice Backfence about it.

So he better be glad he lives in Minnesota instead of, say, next door to me, or else his house would be SO egg’d on Mischief Night. Except that I plan to be in Hoboken on Mischief Night, causing great deals of mischief. So he better be glad he doesn’t live in Hoboken, by cracky!

Anyway, I got nothing, so I’ll just share a few high-larious links with all of y’all, starting with the AOLer translator. In short, it translates anything you might ever want to say to someone into the language a 12-year-old AOL chatter would use. Examples:

• Greetings, I am Matt! I enjoy long walks on the beach, late night Cinemax, and Resolve Carpet Cleaner Martinis!
  GRETNGS IM MAT11!!1! OMG WTF I ENJOY LONG WOKS ON TEH BACH LAET NIGHT CIENMAX AND RASOLV3 CARP3T CLEAENR MARTINIS1!1!1!! OMG WTF LOL
• Dear Sir: Please be advised that your account has been turned over to a collection agency, “Plank’s Bail Bonds, Collections, and Altamont-style Biker Security Incorporated.”
  DAAR SIR PLZ B ADVIESD TAHT UR ACOUNT HAS BEN TURNAD OVER 2 A COL3CTION AEGNCY PLANKS BALE BONDS COLECTIONS AND ALTMONT-STYLE BIEKR SECURITY INCORPORAETD!!111 OMG LOL
• Hey Jill, John is hot.
  H3Y JIL O IS HOT!11!11! OMG

My buddy Matt, who told me about it, believes that the AOL Translator is the greatest website of all times, and I tend to agree with him.

In other news, they’re doing more work on the support beams in my office building again (Long version: here. Short version: the building I’m in is 150+ years old, and many of the support beams are merely 12″ oak pilings, many of which are rotting, which they are replacing one by one with massive I-beams surrounded by drywall.), right next to my desk, so per the norm they’re installing a large drywall enclosure to keep dust in and to keep us from having to be blinded by arc welders. I’d like to share with you the following two conversations between two of the workers. Conversation 1:

Caucasian worker: “Didn’t you get my message?”
Hispanic worker: [mumbles something incoherent in a heavy spanish accent]
Caucasian worker: “You know I can’t understand a G*ddamn thing you say.”

Conversation 2:

Caucasian worker: [some kind of fake pidgin spanish, followed by] “No espanyol.”
Hispanic worker: “Si espanyol.”
Caucasian worker: [pause] “Shut the hell up.”

It’s also worth noting that one of the hispanic workers almost got decapitated about 5 seconds ago by a hanging lamp when the rolling platform on which he is standing was unexpectedly rolled down the hallway by his buddy.

Safety: always our first priority. Oh wait, no, that’s not right . . . not safety . . . what’s the word? Oh right, stupidity, that’s it, thanks.

AND THE TROGDOR COMES IN THE NIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!

First of all, we should get one thing straight. The Red Sox did not “make” history.

History already existed. In fact, for the Sawx, there’s over a century of history, large portions of it filled with it disappointment, and angst, and depression, and quite possibly scurvy. History has been with the Sox this whole season, whispering in their collective ears like a ghost,

86 years . . .

Pedro, Lionel Ritchie ca. 1984 wants his hair back . . .”

Then, at some point the ghost, or whatever, noticed that Jesus was playing for the squad, and stopped whispering so loud. Until the Sox found themselves down 3 games to naught to the Yanks.

BABE RUTH IS YOUR DADDY!
Well, I dunno if the Sox had a team meeting on Sunday or what, but they dug Babe Ruth out of the ground and took turns whaling on his ass with a pair of baseball spikes. Right now his rear end looks like a blue and black golfball.

Last night’s game 7 was supposed to be the nail in the coffin for the Sox. Come back from 0-3 and win everything? It can’t happen. It’s not possible. Oh wait . . . I forgot, the Sox have Jesus. My bad. I guess he’ll just hit a grand slam, then. Okay. That’s cool.

Then, of course, Derek Lowe finally gave up a run, and you could feel the weird gravitational effects of the entirety of New England slumping into their chairs, thinking, “Uh oh, here we go.” (Seriously serious, it was like some kind of freak earthquake. It knocked over a candlestick in our dining room. Or maybe it was a cat. I dunno. I’m not a damn earthquake-ologist.) But then Lowe gets out of the inning, and Jesus comes up and knocks another pitch into the stands to score a couple runs and make it 8-1.

I’d have to say that the Derek Lowe (©Bill Simmons) face has been permanently retired and replaced by the A-Rod face. I really enjoyed every shot of A-Job that they showed in the last 3 innings; absolute confusion would be one way to describe it; complete consternation might be another. His thought process was clearly, “Wait . . . I gave up the opportunity to be the greatest shortstop of all time for THIS? Oh wait, I forgot I’m also getting a buttload of money. Nevermind.” Classic.

Clearly I’m not much of a sportswriter, so rather than continuing to ramble incoherently, I’ll just leave you with this: I want to make sweet, sweet love to Curt Schilling.

Sweet love.

NOTE: This rules.

This gentleman is Frank Paul, aka BikerFox. I think we can all agree that he is hell of foxy, not to mention super-soxy. In lieu of a column today, I want everybody to go to his website and read all of it, including the story of his miraculous weight loss, his invention of the front flip off a mountain bike, and the many, many wonderful pictures of this gorgeous specimen of a man.

A few highlights:

• The “Oops, You Surprised Me While I Was Getting Onto My Bike (But Doesn’t My Ass Look Scrumptious?)!” shot.
• The “I Feel Pretty” shot.
• And last, but CERTAINLY not least, a shot that I like to call “MARY MOTHER OF GOD PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.”

Also: GO RED SOX. I would plan on being prepared to read something tomorrow about tonight’s game. It may be the most important thing you read this month, other than the recommended dosage on your Xanax prescription.

Okay, I think it’s time to admit it. To come clean. Despite being born and raised within 25 miles of Philadelphia, I have come down with a serious case of Red Sox Fevah.

Don’t worry; I’m still a Phillies fan. It’s just that, darn it, until the Phillies are willing to shell out the cash for a legitimate starting pitcher (the Millwood for Estrada trade is starting to look pretty disastrous at this point), I’ve got to have SOMEBODY to root for when the post-season rolls around. It’s not gonna be the Yankees, since supporting them is like supporting Al-Quäde, and it’s not going to be another National League team (I figure you can be permitted to cheer for one team in each league; whichever team is closest to your house, and whichever team in the opposite league has the most depressing history).

So the Sawx it is. Anyway, you can’t beat the Red Sawx for having the coolest cast of characters:

Bless’d be the little children and the hanging curveball.

• Pedro Martinez, who stole Eriq La Salle’s “Soul Glow” Jheri-curl from “Coming to America.”
• David “Papi” Ortiz: has anybody checked to see if he and Mo Vaughan have ever been in a room together? I’m just asking.
• Curt Schilling, whom I would like to sex up.
• Jesus. How can you fail to win a series with Jesus leading off for you? Even if he is 2 for 24?
• Terry Francona, who is an excellent driver. Excellent, excellent driver.

Compare this of course to the Yankees:

• Derek Jeter, who is a tool.
• A-Rod. The door on his closet is definitely glass. And you can see a lot of leather pants hanging in there with him, along with one pair of bright red stilettos.
• Joe Torre, who needs to come manage the Phils.
• Jorge Posada, who lacks a chin.

So anyway, hopefully you all watched last night’s games, because they were OFF THE CHAIN. Gotta love 6 hour marathon games, particularly when your team ends up winning, and just in time to switch to the other game and see Jeff Kent hit a MONSTER home run to left field. Great times.

Hopefully Schilling will get a double dose of whatever they’re shooting into his ankle and he’ll come out and throw 7 scoreless innings while Ortiz and Manny go yard a couple times a piece and score Jesus and Cabrera, each of which goes 3 for 3 with a walk, 4 runs, and 2 RBI.

You gotta believe.

To quote a favorite movie, what in the Wide World of Sports is a-goin’ on outside? It’s colder than a Fairbanks February (yay for hyperbole!) outside this morning. There was frost on the cars. FROST. The crazy lady on the radio said something about it being 34 degrees outside. In October? How am I supposed to work under these conditions? I’m glad I had already turned the heat on, or else I’d still be huddled under my blankets, trying to figure out a way to shower without getting out of bed.

Other than the frigid cold, we had a nice weekend, despite the fact that we got nothing done. This was going to be the weekend we cleaned out the basement, put up Halloween decorations, maybe did some vacuuming. The only thing we did was hang a couple light-up halloween pumpkins in the front window.

Friday night we decided to try the relatively-new Japanese place in the shopping center by our house: Sake. It’s very similar to your standard “Hibachi,” except that the food is better, and there’s no bar. On the other hand, they give you free sake, or hot rice wine. It’s very similar in taste and potency to grain alcohol. We declined a second carafe because, after sharing the first one, Sarah kept trying to shave off her own eyebrows with the chopsticks, and I developed 1) a taste for human flesh and 2) the ability to speak fluent Japanese, which lasted a few hours.

As usual, Sarah had plenty of leftovers, and I had inhaled every morsel of food that came within 18 inches of my gaping maw, so we spent Friday night sitting in front of the TV watching things we had DVR’d.

Saturday morning I had to get up and decommission a remote server for work, so I did that, and played a few games of baseball on the PS2 (I overcame being down 2 games to 1 in the NLDS against the Giants, winning two games behind the hot pitching of Rick Shanley (1-1, ERA 1.45) and the rad batting of Matt Hearn (2 HR, .555BA)). I even got the spirit in me to go for a quick run, and decided to go for speed, managing to run a mile in 9:30, which is the fastest I’ve run since high school. I may have had a mild heart attack in the 7th minute, but it didn’t deter me, because I’m not very bright.

Around noon we headed over to Brandywine High for Homecoming, what with us being alumni thereof and whatnot. We watched the band march, and they looked extremely rad. The tubas could have been louder, but then, I guess I’m just used to the Tubalonic Triumvirate that was Waffy, Hobbit, and Doob, circa 1995, when we were so loud that competition judges would leave the field sobbing, blood streaming from their ears, and we would laugh at them and their children.

Our girl Amanda Tomasetti was crowned Homecoming Queen, to which I reply: w00t.

Sarah’s mom had walked over to the game from her house, so we drove her home and stopped in to see the in-laws, and then headed to the Booth’s Corner Farmer’s Market, where yet again we wished we had camera phones. Some enterprising woman was actually wandering around the place with the video camera, I assume to record the hair and clothing styles. I swear, it’s like the population of Boothwyn simply is unaware that there were advances in style after 1982.

We stopped for dinner at our favorite little restaurant, and then we bought some meat and some Halloween decorations that we expect to put up in time for next year.

Then we headed to Target, where we bought various birthday-type presents for people, and I found two totally rad shirts: a nifty multi-color vertically-striped dress shirt, and a 100% cotton white French-cuff dress shirt, for which I had been looking for a while, and which was for sale for the bargain price of $19.99. I just have to have Sarah’s mom take it in a bit, because I had to buy an XL in order to get it around my massive neck, and thusly the body of the shirt has roughly twice the amount of fabric that it really needs.

I also bought a winter hat.

Saturday night we sat around, not cleaning the basement. At one point we went out and purchased 6 junior bacon cheeseburgers from Wendy’s. I ate all of them, minus the buns. I love food so much.

On Sunday, we got up and made our way to church, after which we headed over to the Corner Bistro for a goodbye lunch for Jill, who is moving to San Francisco at the end of the month to be with her hot mans, John, and work for Visa. I love the Bistro: I managed to be carb-friendly with my omelet sampler and bacon, but then they insisted I have dessert, so I ate a piece of peanut butter pie and went into a sugar coma for roughly 3 hours. Really, the only word to describe it is ::drools::.

We spent our evening not cleaning up the basement, interspersed with video gaming, a jog, Sarah studying (by which I mean she’s preparing for a test, not that I was examining her for moles or something), and the roasting of a thick sirloin steak that was ::drools::.

Next weekend: definitely cleaning out the basement.

Today’s post is gonna jump around a bit, since I have no remaining ability for coherence. You’ll see why shortly.

• The reason there was no post yesterday, and why Wednesday’s post was thrown on at roughly 6:30pm despite being ready at noon, was that at 12:01pm we had a major outage here at work that kept me at the data center until about 2am. It was bad; one of those where I literally would try something to restore data, and then spend 30 minutes praying for God to help me. Additionally, the rest of the onsite team was in Philadelphia working a disaster recovery test, so I had nobody local who could come relieve me. Tough night.

  As an added bonus, I was on duty Thursday, so I worked from home and prayed that nothing happen that would require me to go to the data center. I’m still a little thrown off by the whole thing.

• I haven’t posted a followup to the whole “How is Matt doing with his manbag?” question, so here it is. It rules. I can carry so much more stuff. For example, here is what is currently in the bag (the dreaded List Within A List!):
  • A lengthy Slim Jim. (No comments from the peanut gallery, please.)
  • A bag of Planter’s peanuts.
  • One of Sarah’s hair clips, which she threw in there at some point while we were in Boston.
  • My wallet.
  • My cellphone.
  • A pair of cheap sunglasses.
  • A box of anti-diarrheal pills. (I have issues with my colon.)
  • A disposable camera, bought in the Store 24 across from Fenway Park.
  • A receipt for gasoline purchased in Boston.
  • Multiple pamplhets from the Three Little Bakers dinner theater.
  • A copy of the “Boston Irish Emigrant,” some kind of mick newspaper.
  • A book by Rupert Everett (yes, the actor) entitled Hello Darling, Are You Working?, which I purchased in a small used book store in Boston called “Diskovery.” It is rad.

  And that’s about it. So now I always have my reading material, I always have my pills for when I eat lunch at La Tolteca, and I even have a hair clip in case I tire of my hair being all up ins my grill, which it frequently is, since it needs cut.

  UPDATE: I have eaten both the Slim Jim and the peanuts.

• I forgot to put this into the Boston posts from earlier this week, so I’ll alert you to the fact that our good friend Emily came up with this gem while drinking with us at Jillian’s last Friday afternoon: “Matt, I’m just kidding, but I’m seriously serious.” Good times.
• I ran two miles yesterday. It was really interesting; watching Doug run 13.1 miles last weekend inspired me to get in better shape, so I stretched and went out on Tuesday and did about a mile, broken up into chunks, interspersed with walking. I was out for about 20 minutes, and ran for 12 of them.

  Yesterday, I went out and figured I’d do about the same thing, so I stretched and took off at about 4:30. At the 3 minute mark, I felt fine, so I kept going. At the six minute mark, I felt very bad, but figured I’d see if I could go for an 8 minute run, so I kept going. At 8:30, I got to a location in the neighborhood at which I said to myself, “I swear it used to take me longer to get here.” (I guess dropping 40 pounds makes you faster…who knew?)

  At 12 minutes (which is usually about how long it takes my slow ass to run a mile), I said, hey, let’s go a little longer. At 16 minutes, I thought, hey, let’s go to 18, get the mile and a half. At 18 minutes, I thought, well, crap. Maybe I can go for a full 24!

  At 22 minutes I prayed to God to help me breathe long enough that I could at least make it back inside my house so I didn’t have to collapse and die on the street.

  At 24 minutes, I stopped running, and realized my calves really, really, really hurt. I also was chafing a bit in the groinial region. I got back in the house, drank a glass of water, and stretched. From the way my calves felt, I figured I wouldn’t even be able to walk today, but surprisingly they’re just a little tight.

  Much more noticeable is the pain from the massive rash I got from the chafing of the groin. It’s nasty; all these little red and blue and black dots on my inner thigh, like individual bruises caused by the head of a pin or something. I thought about taking a picture of it, but realized there was no way to do it without including a significant amount of pubic hair in the photo, so I decided better not.