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While waiting outside in the cold for the T yesterday morning I was reaching to grab my daily Metro when I spotted another more interesting paper with a picture of a hot chick wearing a cut-off Brady jersey. As an avid sports fan I couldn’t help but pick up the week old edition of Barstoolsports. Despite being so out of date that the content didn’t yet acknowledge that the Patriots had beaten the Colts it was a fantastic find and one that I look eagerly forwards towards. It is a Boston Maxim for sports. Among the articles was probably one of the best summaries of what it’s like to be a Pats fan that grew up through tough times and how grateful we all are and should be to have

“The success the Pats have had in the last three seasons is beyond anything I could have dreamed of as a kid. It’s like my wife’s minivan with the DVD player, or Sunday liquor sales, or free abundant internet porn. I‘m living to see it, but I still can’t believe it‘s real.”

The ads in this rag are pretty entertaining too. They feature services like legal help to get out of a drunk driving offense. Call Jack Diamond 1-800-NOTDRUNK! I also had a good experience learning something new while listening to sports talk radio today. Paul Giamatti, who is in the new movie Sideways, is featured in a picture with his father during the movie. Sideways is about two guys having their last bachelor party like fling before one of them gets married. The sports radio person didn't know Paul Giamatti (famous for roles like American Splendor, Duets, and Private Parts) but he was wondering why there was a picture of former MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti, his father in this movie.

My morning started off with a clear omen that the holiday season had passed as I was stuck behind a Christmas tree destruction vehicle. It basically has a conveyor belt where discarded Christmas trees are carried to a mulch making grinder that then sends the Christmas tree in tiny bits, Fargo style, into the back of a truck. I can only imagine the little kids who fell in love with their Christmas tree looking out the window to see the careless and painful death that their beloved tree befell. I wanted to take pictures of it but I was driving and behind it at rush hour so my Brookline neighbors were mainly interested in my passing it. So my camera has a video of me passing a Christmas Tree destruction death star vehicle as a Christmas Tree begins it’s descent into it’s demise.

Today Aaron came up with a good idea for a funny little product. At first I thought it was a real product. He wanted to make a Homeland security screen saver that changes your desktop based upon the current security level. I did a write-up of it on halfbakery.com. It was then pointed out to me that there is something similar available through the government has a tool available. BTW - The current status of the HLS color warning system is yellow or elevated, probably because of the Chinese people who were trying to bring a dirty bomb or fried rice into Boston yesterday (so I was feeling a little worried). The FBI identified their names are as follows: Zengrong Lin, Wen Quin Zheng, Xiujin Chen, Guozhi Lin, Quinquan or Quiquan Lin, Liqiang Liang, Min Xiu Xie, Xiang or Xing Wei Liu, Mei Xia Dong, Xiuming Chen, Cheng Yin Liu, and Zao Yun Wang. The FBI wants us to remember that list the next time you ask an asian tourist their name.

I was trying today get Robert to download the new beta version of the software I am marketing and to collect on the breakfast that I won from him last Friday but he sent me an email to tell me that his PC is off to the doctor and that he has been mistaken for a wise man by a zit doctor’s daughter so he is otherwise occupied.

While roaming the halls at MIT today I found that building 1 is one of the harder locations to find. I should recall how to get to every building at MIT but once you are done forgetting quantum mechanics, synthetic organic chemistry, and Medieval literature you can move on to forget other important things like how to find building 1. It made me think of how useless most of my education really is. I can barely remember the names of my teachers in high-school let alone try to work through the dates, names, and roles of the emperors of Rome and other critical things I had to give oral reports on in high school.

As I was walking down the halls I couldn’t help but be drawn to all the posters. I have always had this problem of being unable to ignore text that I see beside me. As a kid once I had learned to read I used to read any sign that the car passed. So I would say things like Bill’s House of Pizza, Stop, Montrose Spa, and Boys and Girls Club, and Girls XXX. My parents taught me that it was best to read these signs to myself and not say the words out loud. So now I generally try not to point out a funny sign unless it is really weird. For example – There are signs everywhere in Massachusetts that say “remember chicken man”. So every time I pass one of these signs I have to bite my tongue to avoid telling people that I saw another one of these cryptic signs. I had been wondering what they were all about for a long time and only today while reading barstoolsports did I learn that Wade Boggs was called the fried chicken man and he was up for a hall of fame nomination for the past couple of years and only got one this year. So now I know what the signs are all about. They were to show support for Wade Boggs.

Anyways the hallways of MIT are a trap for me. My heart rate nearly goes through the roof as I scanned the many signs in the infinite corridor during my four trips back and through it while lost looking for building 1. I couldn’t help wanting to participate in the East Campus bad ideas competition, or to be involved in a research study. I wanted to know more about the lecture on becoming a science journalist. I was considering buying tickets to Musical Theatre Guild’s presentation of Tommy. I wanted to see the screening of Trouble with Tribbles at LSC during the sci-fi marathon that starts with Ghost in the Shell and includes Space Balls. The most interesting of the signs was that Roadkill Buffet, my old MIT improv comedy troupe, is still alive and performing. They have a show this upcoming week. It sparked my imagination to get Jorey, Igor, Nadia, and Ron together with them for the full Roadkill Buffet alumni reunion show. I’ll try to pitch it to all required parties when I get a chance.

Jeremy continues to send dispatches from Australia analyzing the various differences in male sexual diversions. He sent this to me among some of his trip notes recently

“I've finally figured out Australia's system of rating the dirty magazines and found that they have basically three classes of magazine. One is called unrestricted which is basically topless girls i believe and can sit out on the newsstand, the next two categories are restricted 1 and restricted 2. Most magazines come in all 3 flavors with increasing hardcoreness. What we have on the newsstands in the states is basically category 2 which includes anything you want to show. Category 1 magazines are identical to category two versions but they have re-cropped all the pictures to cut off all insertion of anything into anywhere and have airbrushed all bodily fluids from the photos. Frankly i wouldn’t mention all this but i accidentally bought a category 1 and 2 of the same magazine and found the amount of work they had to do to make the American version of hustler into the category 1 version absolutely ludicrous. In several instances they have had to airbrush so much of the photos that the girls could be said to be more cartoon than real, of course you wouldn’t notice unless you had the other version of the magazine and knew what they were airbrushing out. In other instances they will just take a tame picture from one part of the layout and replicate it in various sizes shapes and aspect ratios over
the pictures they couldn’t show from the harder version. Its all very
amusing.”

DK also has his notes about foreign sex clubs. His rare anthropological gem is that the anus is taboo in New Zealand although strip clubs are completely nude so the strippers always cover their butts. It is a big lifetime pursuit of all men, especially the ones who read magazines like barstoolsports or Maxim to understand the differences in culture with respect to pornography and strippers. Speaking of strippers… one of the good ideas that I found while poking around on halfbakery.com today was the idea of anniversaries for bachelor parties.

Anyways my phone rang silently while Sarah and I were wolfing down food at Zaftigs and it read that DK had called me. We were sitting between two pairs of people. On my right was a beady eyed half bald man that looked like the guy who is looking for food in the SUV commercial where the boyfriend decides to spend more time in the great outdoors. He kept giving me an evil look. The woman on my left had a haughty accent and was planning on going to Amelia Island. I felt bad that no matter what she says people will think she is a snob because her accent is so classically stereotypical snobby. If I could record it and do impressions of it I would have. Sarah and I were pondering why DK would call me and her theory was that he might be calling to tell me that he had gotten engaged. I was sure that couldn’t be it because he would have sent me an email to say such a thing. I told her that if he did tell me he was engaged on the phone that my first question would be whether he had knocked-up his girlfriend. When I finally checked by calling DK to see what the email at dinner was all about he told me that he just happened to have his phone in his pocket and it hit my number because he had dialed it recently.