Friday, December 29, 2006

What is wrong with Crazy Karen Feld?

Part of me wishes that Wonkette hadn't shared this:


Christmas Cards From the Rich and Famous-For-DC

Beloved DC gossip and friend-of-Wonkette Karen Feld celebrates the holidays with a terrifying Hiëronymus Bosch hellscape of sentient toy dogs building an idol of their dead companion for the purposes of some sort of pagan solstice ritual.

Feld might’ve sent Wonkette one, but when her assistant asked for our address we were concerned she was going to sue us or order a hit or something, so we’ll never know.


I'm telling you, bat-shit-crazy as a Vice President's wife this woman is.

Friday, December 22, 2006

Racing Fuel

100 Octane racing fuel in Weedsport, NY. My WRX would fucking love a glass of this.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Curly's: A Family Bar and Restaurant

A wake is really just an afternoon of shaking hands and making small talk. When all that was done, the cousins moved to Curly's for another evening of drinking.


Our tab was once again dubbed "An Auburn Christmas Miracle". For that, we can thank our bartender Jeff (pictured below with Joey):


Cousin Josh (with Joey):


Josh's girlfriend Gabby (with Joey):


And the big win of the evening was convincing my aunt and uncle to let my cousin Justin join us:


When Joey drinks, man does she take a lot of pictures.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

The Lesbian Super Collider

Joey, her brother Chris, and I were enjoying a quiet drink in Curly's bar the night before the wake. After about an hour, I witness this exchange between Joey and Chris:

Joey: Are you going to tell him about Debra?
Chris: [...] I hadn't decided yet.
Joey: [...]

Somewhere in the 2000-2002 timeframe, my cousin Chris was engaged to a lovely woman named Debra. For various reasons, Debra and Chris broke off their engagement and went their separate ways. One of those reasons was not, however, the fact that I made out with her in front of him six times on my 22nd birthday:



Well Chris has a best friend Aaron who just got divorced from his wife Debbie. Can you see where this is going...?

Debra and Debbie packed up their UHaul (on the first date) and moved to the island of Lesbos.

I am the lesbian super collider. I just am.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Travel Advice

Virginia wrote this article for Yahoo travel:
Travelers' rule book: Behavior 101
Mon Dec 11, 7:42 PM ET

There are no formal requirements to buying an airplane ticket and boarding a plane, other than coming up with some cash and passing security. But maybe flying should be more of a privilege, with its own rule book.

Virginia Flores, a human resources and technical consultant to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, among other clients, flies every week for business and has come up with a comprehensive set of basic do's and don'ts for air passengers that I think is worth sharing. Its section titles suggest the almost kindergarten-like inability of some travelers to play well with others.

Everyone knows air travel is a lot less comfortable than it once was. The trick is how to learn to live with it. Here are Flores' suggestions:


Her suggestions are worth the read, since 776 people felt the need to comment.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Mom's Appendix

My father woke me up this morning to let me know that they were at the hospital. My mother has been in pain for a couple days and it turns out her appendix needed to come out. So they are.

In the mean time, I need to study for my last final, rearrange my schedule for the funeral next week, and make all their travel arrangements.

They say bad things happen in 3s. I can hardly wait...

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Finals and Funerals

While studying for my first final of the semester, my parents called to tell me that my grandfather (father's father) died this evening.

Looks like a trip to NY is in my future (once he makes it up there from Florida).

Oh lawdy-lawd...change is a comin'!

Since moving to Blogger Beta, I've been meaning to take advantage of some new features. I found out from Susann about three months ago that my template was broken in Internet Explorer, so I took advantage of the new template designer in BB (hence the "Great Pumpkin" colors you're now seeing) and fixed it up.

Something new I've added (besides another Adsense block...not that anybody will click it) is "Great Moments in AlphaJohnness". This is a chance for me to roll around naked in the posts that you found most amusing. If you found anything memorable, please let me know in a comment to this post so I can add it.

If you need help finding something, start here.

Not that any of you fuckers remember how to comment...

Stoking the "War on Christmas" Fire

Lou Dobbs, CNN's 2nd favorite old crotch (after Jack Cafferty), decided to throw in his two cents about the War on Christmas incident at the Seattle airport:

Dobbs: A tree grows in Seattle
POSTED: 8:22 a.m. EST, December 13, 2006 By Lou Dobbs

Editor's note: Lou Dobbs' commentary appears every Wednesday on CNN.com

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Merry Christmas! That's right, Merry Christmas. Whether you're Christian, Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, pagan, barbarian or whatever, Merry Christmas!

It's what most of us say in this country come this time of year. It's about who we are, where we are and where we've been. And all the namby-pamby, little sensitive darlings among us who can't handle this verbal assault on their delicate senses should immediately begin seeking emergency psychiatric care.

This week we were treated to the spectacle of an easily offended and highly offensive rabbi who walked into an airport, gazed upon Christmas trees all around him and suddenly was overwhelmed with an immense, and apparently irresistible, urge to sue the management of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport because nowhere among all the Christmas trees was a single menorah. Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Seattle even delivered to the airport's management a draft of a lawsuit he would file if they didn't sprinkle menorahs around the Christmas trees.

Political correctness in this country reached an entirely new level of absurdity some years ago. But occasionally, and the situation at Sea-Tac is just such an occasion, we exceed ourselves. The militant fundamentalist rabbi so flummoxed Sea-Tac management with his threat and their perceived obligation to be "politically correct" that, rather than think rationally or simply tell him to stuff it, they started hacking away at all those artificial Christmas trees and quickly descended into a public relations nightmare in which they managed to offend reason, cultural values and the vast majority of Americans.


First of all, I doubt Lou Dobbs himself posted this piece of pandering prose. Neither his opinion, nor the way he delivered it, added any value to the human race.

Who are you trying to win over, Lou? You're responsible for that faggoty website space.com, but you're calling people namby-pamby because you're wrinkled ass should stop and ask yourself, "does my Indian coworker Habib celebrate Christmas? Should one be wishing him a Merry Christmas like the idiot WASP that they are?"

You're a dolt, you're wrong, and nobody cares what you think. Go back to Money Line and read the ticker off the teleprompter, you EZ-Bake oven for prostate cancer.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

The Mystery of Socks

I have no problem wearing cotton socks.

Wool socks, though my feet usually sweat more than cotton, don't get nasty or stink.

Nylon socks make my feet sweat a little, but they smell like the monkey cage at the zoo.


Ponderous...

Robot fall down, go doom



From Autoblog:

As product demonstrations go, this is what you would call a worst case scenario. Right at the one minute mark, the Honda Asimo robot has an issue making it up the steps and takes a faceplant on the floor below, shattering his glass "face" and saying what sounds like "sleeping". We're not sure if it was nap time or too much saki, but the quick dimming of the lights and unfurling of the wheeled wall demonstrates some pretty quick thinking, and obvious preparation for such a mishap. We hope you get a laugh out of it as much as us and the folks in attendance.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Another fine evening with Virginia

I've known Virginia since early 2000 when I worked for AAAS. She was a consultant that we used, and we've become good friends over the years. She lives in Florida, but we try to get together every 6-8 weeks since she's on a long-term contract here in Northern Virginia.

With finals and everything else going on, I put tonight on the calendar almost two weeks ago to be sure we had dinner and caught up before the Chrismahanukwanzakah break.

In addition to dinner, Spawny (her nickname from her incessant SPAWNing out to another process on VMS) (1) wanted to do a little shopping for her Salvation Army adopt-a-family, and (2) a client of hers that we're both acquainted with had their Alpha VMS system go down hard on Monday morning.

I picked her up around 7:00pm, and she was still on the phone about the sick Alpha. The syntax for the command to restore the tape wasn't working, so she called in someone else while we were in the car to see what we were missing:



Saved by a Sharpee and a fast food napkin.

While we were shopping, I pulled a "George are you near a computer? Google this for me..." phone-a-friend to figure out another problem. Finally their backup started restoring.

We went shopping in Pentagon City, and I pulled into the mall on the Costco side. Always a bad move, and as we were waiting for pedestrians I may have yelled, "Now we have to wait for the gaggle of Asians who bought their 7,000 pack of paper towels MOVE!". Apparently Virginia thought that was funny, just another day in the hood for me. We did pretty well shopping, though I inform her that the Baby Jesus is confused why she uses her "Sale-finding Spinning Menorah" to get deals on Christmas gifts. She's like, "ahh...it's just my Mitzvah". She's so sweet, I have no idea why she hangs out with me.

I took her to the hotel to check in, and we went to Rock Bottom in Ballston for football, beer, and the Appetizer Sampler of Mass Destruction (which gets four stars for tasty-while-drunk).

Always good times with Virginia. =)

"Momma SAG, I like Unicorns...





...and boys. HI BOY!"

What Stereotype?

This is the license plate I saw on the minivan of an Asian woman dropping her kids off at Tae Kwan Do:

I guess her first chose was already taken:


For the counterpoint on this issue, Rosie O'Donnell:

Good Morning, "War on Christmas"


And I was worried we might get through the whole Chrismahanukwanzakah season without the Internet(s) bringing us news from the front:

Airport's trees stoking "war on Christmas"
By Stuart Eskenazi
Seattle Times staff reporter

The departure of Christmas tree displays at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport — the Port of Seattle's response to a local rabbi's insistence that an electric menorah also be put up — is accelerating into an international spectacle in the so-called "war on Christmas." [my emphasis]

And that is not what Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky wanted.

"I am devastated, shocked and appalled at the decision that the Port of Seattle came to," he said Sunday. As news coverage about the airport's trees spread from CNN to ABC to the Paris-based International Herald Tribune, Bogomilsky on Sunday began to receive hateful messages from people holding him responsible for the removal of the trees.

Harvey Grad, the rabbi's attorney, said the vitriol against Bogomilsky is misplaced, emphasizing that the rabbi neither objected to the trees nor said he found them offensive.

"The last thing we need is anyone thinking that Jews want to end the celebration of Christmas on public property," Grad said.


bwahahaha!

Step off, Jeezax, we done-gots us a Rabbi now!

Thursday, December 07, 2006

I'm the Dr. Phil of my generation

I had lunch today with the FELD crew, and my...questionable...relationship advice was brought up. As always, Jason referred to the 2:15 Tony incident. I was discussing the whole thing with Sazara this afternoon:

theAlphaJohn: i went to lunch with old coworkers today, and they were making fun of all the (bad) relationship advice that i give
Sazara: LOL
Sazara: TECHIES SHOULD NEVER GIVE ADVICE
theAlphaJohn: one asked what other advice i could give, and i said "christine, you've know me how long? you know i think i know everything, so whatever you need advice on i've got it"
Sazara: so who's on your bad side now that you made them go back into some abusive relationship lol
theAlphaJohn: oh they're never abusive
Sazara: lol good!
theAlphaJohn: basically one of my friends does something wrong and gets in trouble (often because of me), so i advise them on how to fix their mistake
theAlphaJohn: which, if they followed my advice, would just make it worse
Sazara: what a humble man to admit his wrongs lol
theAlphaJohn: i am that guy that no woman wants her man to be friends with
Sazara: ROTFLMBO
Sazara: my poor cheeks are killing me lol
theAlphaJohn: we were remembering a time when a guy i worked with who was married lied to his wife. he said he had to work late so we could lock ourselves in a conference room with a 12 pack and play cards
theAlphaJohn: so he got caught and she was like "don't come home"
Sazara: LOL
theAlphaJohn: at that point i was like "you're already in trouble, let's go to a bar..."
Sazara: RRRRRROOOTTTTFFFLLLLMMMBBBBOOOOOOOOOOO
theAlphaJohn: so finally at 2:15 am on a wed night he goes home (hence his nickname, 2:15 tony"
Sazara: LOL
theAlphaJohn: and i had some...creative advice on how to fix the situation
Sazara: LOL
theAlphaJohn: he was smart enough to cut his losses and grovel
Sazara: what was it?
theAlphaJohn: well at lunch one of my co-conspitators was trying to get me to share the advice in mixed company. i refused
theAlphaJohn: if the FCC won't let me say it on tv or radio...
Sazara: lollllllllllllllllllll
Sazara: smart man!
theAlphaJohn: in reality, of all the things we could have been doing...playing cards in a conference room at the office is so innocent
theAlphaJohn: but he shouldn't have lied to his wife like that
theAlphaJohn: marriage is hard. my poor future ex-wife (whomever she may be)....


After lunch was over, Jason and I went to get coffee at Starbucks. I told him that I'm going to write a book on dating advice called "Buttfuck your way to a happy marriage". Fuck all you haters!

More iTunes University

I still don't think anybody is going to use this site, but how sexy is that design?

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Traneez...the hottest gift this American History X-mas

I really don't like borrowing from other people's blogs, but this is so god damned funny I must share. From Princess Sparkle Pony:



This was PSP's response to The Right Reverend Rabbi Judah's idea for "American History X-mas":

Let it never be said that won't support a fabulous cause, even if it's associated with Christmas. Pony Pal™ The Rev has come up with an idea so touching, even the gloomiest heretics will heed Santa's insistent, nagging call. [...]


My all-powerfully tranny search engine can even find humor based on a misspelling of "trannies". In the information age, not even your love of chicks-with-dicks is safe from me.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

iTunes University

LOL...I'm going to get fired:



theAlphaJohn: hey if you're wondering what to get me for my birthday
theAlphaJohn: gunston outtake pictures
Will: haha
theAlphaJohn: or even better: gunston jumping out of my cake in a thong
Will: now that is awesome
theAlphaJohn: even better is the likely hotness under the costume
Will: yeah
Will: i knew the gunston when i went here
Will: short blonde girl
Will: freaking ultra hot
theAlphaJohn: and the paradoxical possibility of thong on a muppet being worn by a human in a thong
Will: wow
theAlphaJohn: thong-on-thong paradoxes make my head hurt
theAlphaJohn: but good hurt, like icecream headache
Will: you should contact the center for quantum studies and tell them about it

Monday, December 04, 2006

Subaru's Added Bullshit Coverage


In April of 2005, I had a road hazard incident which necessitated that I replace two rims and four tires ($1200). The road hazard clause of my extended warranty covers the original four tires, so in May 2005 I submitted a claim to Subaru Added Security by mail.

I realized after several months had passed that I hadn't heard anything -- no check, no denial of my claim. Around the end of July I called Subaru Roadside (who handles their Added Security claims) and was told that they had no record of my claim. I re-submitted my paperwork.

As an aside, I bought my house March 31, 2005. Subaru Corporate and Chase were updated by the time my car payment for April was debited, and my address was updated with the dealership when I brought it in for the tire issue. When the claim was submitted, my addresses should have been updated everywhere with Subaru. Also, beyond this point I should mention that I'm a little vague on exact dates (but not on actual events). I kept records at certain points, and when I figured everything was handled I tossed the corresponding post-it note.

Again, several months passed and I heard nothing. Sometime in late spring of 2006 (probably May, around the one year anniversary) I called Roadside and was told the check has been issued and mailed to my old address in September of 2005. I informed them that I had moved before I filed this claim, that my addresses were updated everywhere including on the claim itself, and I had never received the check. The woman I spoke with had to do some research and would call me back in 24 hours. Two days passed and no call, so I called back. The woman I spoke with this time was very nice, she saw the research from the prior call and ordered the stop-payment on the check. They would need to wait "about a week" for that to go through, then they would reissue the check which took "about 4-6 weeks". This actually didn't seem all that unreasonable (I'd be surprised if they did more than one check run a month), so I thanked her and told her I'd check in next week to be sure that the stop-payment went through and the check was processed. A week or so later, I called back and the woman I spoke with told me that the stop-payment had gone through, the check was being reissued, and I should receive it "in about a month".

I checked back again in late-September 2006 and was told the check has been processed and should be issued "in the next check run". Several weeks passed and still nothing.

Having waited another 8 weeks, I just called Added Security again to check the status. The man I spoke with told me he saw no stop payment or re-issue had taken place, and the only thing that he could do was start the whole process over. He had no record of any of the calls I had made since September (though every call the rep had seen the prior call in their system).. The only thing he could do for me was another stop-payment and reissue. I asked for a reference number and he told me to reference my VIN# again, which clearly has worked all along since they lost a year of correspondence I had with them.

I did email Subaru's corporate headquarters to ask if this was typical, and I was given a person contact to call if I did not receive my check within two to three weeks:

Dear [Redacted]:

Thank you for visiting the Subaru Web site and for taking the time to e-mail us with your concerns. I have contacted Cross Country Motors on your behalf in regards to your refund. I spoke to the manager of the department. He has advised me that two checks for a $150.00 each were sent out on 09/15/06 to your old address. The manager has placed a stop payment on those checks and is going to have new checks issued and sent to your current address. You should see the checks within two to three weeks. If you do not receive them please call me immediately and I will follow up with the manager. I have every confidence that the matter is now straightened out and that you will be receiving the checks. I do apologize for the delay.

Please reply to this message with this information or call us at 1-800-SUBARU-3 (1-800-782-2783) and refer to the Case #[redacted]. Thank you and best wishes!

So they didn't lose the correspondence, they just sent the checks to the wrong address again.

I guess we'll just wait and see what happens. In other news, the balloon on the WRX is up on January 10th; my long, Fuji Heavy Industries nightmare will soon be over.

Opie and Anthony: Third Annual Egg Nog Drinking Competition / "The Baby Bird"



This morning was Opie and Anthony's third annual Egg Nog Drinking Competition. Contestants came from far and wide to drink one double-shot of egg nog every minute until they puked...then they were out. Some truly disgusting contestants this year, including future O&A intern Pat Duffy.

Pat from Moonachie, winner of ENDC#1 and the person who drank the most shots of nog in ENDC#2 (though he lost) was the clear winner this year. As he approached the record breaking 75th shot, guest judge and Fear Factor host Joe Rogan had an amazing idea: what if Pat from Moonachie were to unload his puke into the mouth of contest loser and future intern Pat Duffy? E-Rock quickly piped up and named it the baby bird!

And with that, watch the video of radio history being made!