Monthly Archives: February 2009

NYC

Insert Ethnic/Truck Joke Here

My bus has passed the same truck two mornings in a row on Flushing Avenue. It’s a gleaming blue Ford F-150 with a bunch of construction equipment in the back. It even has a huge slab of concrete with iron handles embedded in it.*

* Is there a word for this? I’ve seen these things all my life and I still have no idea what they are, or what they might be used for. Help!

A pickup truck is not an uncommon site in Brooklyn. But it is jarring when paired with a bumper sticker in Hebrew. Script Hebrew, too, which I guess implies some sort of humor is being employed.

I can neither speak nor read Hebrew, so I can only guess at its message. THE GOOD L*RD MADE THE FORD! I’D RATHER SCHLEP A FORD THAN DRIVE A DODGE!

The Funny

Messing with the Mess-With-Able

I hate to post about another thing I discovered on the Friends of Tom forum…

Wait, no I don’t. Because I’ve found some awesome things in its depths, like the Burt Reynolds and Friends Museum. My latest (third-hand) discovery (via Erik in Portland): Craigslisting, a site wherein one man jerks around the denizens of the eponymous online classified site.

I’m not big on Big Public Pranks anymore. I used to be very much into them, but now I don’t like it when more-or-less innocent folks are subject to the jackassery of random strangers. I feel like pranks should be directed at people who deserve them, not, say, Best Buy employees who are just trying to do their jobs.

But the victims of the Craigslisting pranks go so willingly into the woodchipper that you can’t help but think they deserve it. Like the guy who wants to trade an Outback gift certificate for a pack of smokes, and who actually seems to believe that Outback has their own brand of cigarettes.

I won’t spoil any of the rest. Just read and enjoy.

Baseball

The Talented Mr. Silver, You’ve Done it Again

Nate Silver’s predictions for the 2009 baseball season are here, and they predict the Mets will win 93 games and the NL East crown.

Now, I am way too superstitious and emotionally traumatized by the last three seasons to make anything remotely close to a prediction about the upcoming season. But I would like to point out that when we last heard from Mr. Silver, he predicted the outcome of the Presidential and Congressional elections spot-on.

Actually, calling it spot-on would be understating the case. More like, he came as close to calling the exact results as you can without a crystal ball.

So I’ll just say the man’s math needs to be respected, and we’ll leave it at that.