Day: March 5, 2012

The Great Quake of 2012

Posted on by Ross Gariepy
San Francisco will be in recovery mode for a long time

Dear Bay Area,

Hi, Rmurdera here.  We need to have a talk.  I think we all need to come to an agreement on when an earthquake is newsworthy.  I don’t mind that the morning news mentions every time there’s a little jolt while we’re all sleeping, but to treat these minor tremors like high priority, press-stopping news is really fucking annoying.

Here’s the deal I’m willing to make: when an earthquake causes death, serious injury or property damage over $45, we can scrap the regular news for hours upon hours of “breaking news: special earthquake coverage.”  But in return, whenever an earthquake can be best described as “a 10 second jolt that didn’t knock anything over,” we’re gonna have the news anchor come on TV and say, “this just in: a 4.0 magnitude earthquake hit just now.  It was centered in El Cerrito…no harm was done.  Let’s continue on with actual news.”  And that’s it.

Otherwise we have a situation like what I witnessed this morning.  I woke up at 5:30 to the 10 seconds of shaking.  It seemed similar to the other 200 quakes I’ve felt in six years of living in San Francisco so I thought no big deal.  I go back to sleep until about 6:45.  When I woke up and turned on the news, I thought for a second that I had slept through a history-making quake.  We’re talking breaking news, geologist experts on the phone every five minutes explaining what happened, all of the station’s reporters being sent to random towns throughout the bay area to collect stories of all the horror that residents witnessed when the shaking started (“wow, so this bottle of soda slid right off your counter?”).  My god, it was such a huge tragedy here that one poor woman lost a whole container of lemonade mix when it fell off her shelf! (I’m not even exaggerating…KRON4 spent 10 minutes where the reporter scrolled through the station’s facebook page on her phone relaying what residents were experiencing, and sure enough, the biggest incident was the lemonade falling over…oh the humanity!)

By the way, the Red Cross has setup a website for anyone who wants to help out the people who have been affected by the falling lemonade and soda: The Great Quake of 2012 Fund

Not only did this earthquake not cause any damage, but just today there have technically been 12 earthquakes in the SF Bay Area.  Check it out for yourself: earthquake list for San Francisco.  Let’s say anything under a 6.0 doesn’t get wall-to-wall news coverage anymore.  Let’s save that for the real disasters.

Speaking of the real disasters, I don’t know if other Bay Area residents feel like me, but I’m screwed when the big one comes.  All these little shakes have conditioned me to ignore an earthquake as if it’s a rain shower.  When the 9.0 hits later this year, you can find my body under a pile of rubble, iphone in hand, mid-tweeting “hahaha, another little shake to scare the masses.”

How low can the Mets go?

Posted on by friedchips

ABC News – The New York Mets’ owners must pay up to $83 million to the trustee recovering money for Bernard Madoff investors, a judge said Monday, though he expressed doubt that the trustee will succeed in proving at a trial this month that he’s entitled to as much as $300 million more.

 Another week, another installment.  This blog practically writes itself.  Hope Fred has a shit ton more of those 5 dollar bills.  I actually don’t know how to feel about this.  On the surface, it’s obviously a huge setback to a team who’s finances make the Greek economy look like it’s run by fucking Warren Buffett.  On the other hand, maybe if it keeps getting worse, Wilpon will have no choice but to sell the team.
 
PS – Great article here about how the Mets have absolutely no depth and will essentially be fielding a farm team if anyone gets hurt this year.  Good thing the Mets are great at staying healthy, ahem… Apparently their best lefty off the bench is a former pitcher with 39 major league at bats.  Couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Talking about Kox…the Tiny kind

Posted on by Ross Gariepy
Tiny Kox: the name says it all

I’m probably late to the party with this post as I heard twitter is already blowing up about it, but I can’t help myself.  I just have to blog about Tiny Kox.  No, I didn’t say “tiny cocks” because I’m not talking about particularly small penises.

I’m talking about the man named Tiny Kox.  The less observant people might have missed it while reading CNN this morning, but sure enough, there’s a very upset Tiny Kox in this article: Observers Slam Russian Vote

Now, I did some research on this Tiny Kox, and it turns out his real name isn’t “Tiny.”  As you’ll notice here on Wikipedia his name is actually Martinus Josephus Maria (Tiny) Kox.

If that’s my real name, I’m going with either Martin Kox or Joe Kox as the name people should call me.  Hell, I’d gladly have people call me Maria Kox before they’re calling me Tiny Kox.

-Thanks to BAS for the tip.

friedchips tips for successful life living: tip 1

Posted on by friedchips

If you attend a bachelor party where you don’t know most of the people, and somebody offers you a pot cookie, politely decline.

Or accept… and then spend the next two hours questioning why you were even invited to the party, when you are obviously a complete loser that nobody likes.  Spend an entire dinner sitting uncomfortably across from two dudes you don’t really know and wondering if they are totally weirded out that you haven’t said a word in what seems like hours.  Focus intently on how every move you make is unfathomably awkward and strange.  Hold in your pee for like an hour because you think it may seem weird if you get up and go to the bathroom.  Keep trying to convince yourself that this is just the pot making you paranoid, and that the other 12 people at the table aren’t all secretly laughing at you behind your back.  Pray to god that you start to feel normal before the strip club, because interacting with strippers seems like the worst possible scenario in the world at that moment.  Yup, just politely decline, even if they say it’s mild.  Trust me.  It’s not worth the risk.