Something Else

Fuck it. Here’s another product review. When I don’t have anything of interest to say, I’ll tell you about some of the useful things I’ve found recently that I like. This is stuff that’s made my life easier, helped me to be more productive, or made me look like I have more money than I actually do.

Here, then, is the Moshi Concerti iPad case:

This fucker is substantial, it stands your iPad at whatever angle you want, it closes like a book, and it has a strap that keeps it shut. It’s also black, and I like black and silver shit when it comes to my technology. This makes me feel like I’m in a William Gibson novel, especially when I’m in the airport, whatever the fuck that means.

I think I’ve deluded myself into thinking it makes me look less trashy.

I’ve tried three different iPad cases. This is the only one I’ve liked. I use my iPad for damned near everything—including, in combination with the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, as a light-travel laptop—so I needed a solid case. I also didn’t want one that looked asinine or made me look like a pussy. Mission accomplished, maybe.

Get one of these. I found mine in some liberal store in San Francisco. When people root through your briefcase, your Moshi Concerti iPad case will make it look like you have important shit going on, and that’s what matters.  

Recommendation

I’m a big fucking dude. Just big, now. No longer fat. I used to be kind of fat. Even though I lifted weights and ran like a maniac, I ate like shit and drank far too much beer. This is no longer the case. I don’t drink anymore, I’ve cleaned up my diet, and I’m doing everything the right way. I still lift weights like a madman, though, so I’m still significantly larger—in both height and muscle mass—than the average American male.

Not that height has anything to do with lifting weights, mind you. I just wanted to emphasize that I’m not a little New York dickhead with a Napoleon complex. I’m too tall to have one. 

This all leads to severe complications with my laundry. My size and my activity level make managing laundry a royal pain in the schlong. I have an in-house washer and dryer now, but when I’ve used laundromats—or the laundry rooms of the buildings I’ve lived in—I’d always walk in with triple the amount of shit everyone else seemed to have.

People always want to know why I check a bag for a two-day business trip. It’s because I can’t wear clothes for more than a few hours without completely fucking them up.

Dress clothes? Fuck that, man. My shit gets ruined before I even leave for work. Especially during the summer, the simple act of putting on a shirt cancels out the money I spent to get the shit dry cleaned in the first place.

That’s why I’m convinced that Under Armour is the greatest clothing company in the history of mankind:

Every piece of workout clothing I own is made by Under Armour. So is every pair of underwear, every pair of socks (even my “dress” socks), every undershirt, and every pair of cargo shorts I wear in the summer.

The underwear, especially, is a must-have. It’s the single best shit I own. After using this stuff for the past year or so, I’ll never, ever wear anything else. If I knew about Under Armour’s socks and underwear while I was bouncing—a piece of shit job where you’re supposed to stand in one place for hours on end, then engage in periodic bursts of fighting with drug-addled Guido fuckbags who want to stab you—I probably wouldn’t have been pissed off enough to start this blog.

If you’re as abusive of your clothing as I am, get yourself two pair for every day of the week. You’ll thank me for it. 

Oblivity

When massive, earth-shattering news events happen, life still carries on in some corners of the world—and sometimes those corners happen to be smack-dab in the middle of where these earth-shattering events are taking place. To see what I mean, take a look at your Facebook news feed the next time something huge occurs.

I heard about the Boston bombings about thirty seconds after they happened, because one of my Facebook friends was standing on Boylston Street at the finish line of the marathon when the first bomb exploded. Evidently, the first action he took was to whip out his phone and post about the bombings. I was looking at the very top of my news feed when his post appeared, so I likely was among the first people outside of the immediate area to hear the news.

Once I’d seen this, I immediately turned on CNN, which hadn’t yet broken into special report mode. Their Boston coverage didn’t start until a minute or two after I started watching. For the rest of the day, I kept CNN on in the background, occasionally watching while I used a combination of Twitter and Facebook to figure out what was actually going on. This is because I don’t trust Wolf Blitzer, et al, to do this for me any longer—a feeling that would be validated repeatedly over the next week.

By 4 PM EDT, it seemed as though the entire world had heard about the Boston situation. Twitter was going ballistic, and every network was deep into coverage, showing the same video footage on a repeating loop and presenting various scenarios with regard to what they assumed was happening. My day, at this point, was shot to hell, and I wasn’t going to be doing anything other than following this story.

As evidenced by the way the media has covered the bombings for the past week—and by the way we’ve been riveted by everything to do with them—this was a massive story. And when massive stories happen of the sort where you remember precisely where you were and what you were doing when you first hear about them, we tend to assume that the world stops for everyone else, too.

And it does, except on Facebook.

My Facebook account is private, in the sense that I don’t use it for business purposes. It doesn’t have anything to do with my job, and there’s no connection to anything I’ve ever done with writing. I have over 500 friends—a relatively small number for someone who’s been using Facebook for over seven years—and I’m pretty sure I’ve met every single one of them in person. With that many friends, however, my news feed tends to get a bit jammed up at times, especially when my more post-happy connections get on a roll. I don’t care enough to hide anyone’s updates, so separating the wheat from the chaff occasionally becomes a bit frustrating.

About two hours after the bombings happened, I scrolled through my news feed to see if anyone had posted anything of note. Strangely, at least 25 percent of the posts I saw had absolutely nothing to do with the Boston story.

For every three “Thoughts and prayers for Boston” posts, you’d see one or two CrossFit memes. For every three news links, you’d see a post about the Knicks. For every three direct updates from Boston—I have several friends who live there—you’d see a guy complaining about his job, or posting a “LinkedIn’s Top Ten Networking Tips” link, or putting up a picture of his new rims, his dog, his kids, or his latest home improvement project.

I wondered if these people knew. I assumed they didn’t, but if you’re posting this sort of material on Facebook in the midst of what essentially amounts to a national emergency—at the very least, it was the biggest news story of the year—can you not see what everyone else is posting? If you didn’t see, and didn’t know, I can understand blissfully going about your business, but what does it say about you if you did know?

I’m giving people the benefit of the doubt here. Things can happen that you don’t hear about, and I’m sure the thousands of people who posted Willy Wonka memes at 3:30 PM last Monday feel ridiculous about it now. I know I would.

In fact, I’ve done something similar. Last New Year’s Eve, one of my best friends, whose life was pretty much decimated by Sandy, posted on Facebook about how he wished 2013 would be a far better year than 2012. In his comments section, I made a point of saying that 2012 was awesome for me, and that I was going to continue that momentum in 2013—conveniently forgetting that half the people reading, including my friend, were likely still homeless from the storm.

Fucking bonehead.

So, I won’t judge. I suppose there’s a lesson to be learned here—something akin to looking both ways before you cross the street. The next time you’re about to post a SomeEcards meme, an appeal to save pit bulls, or a “letter from Bill Cosby,” make sure we’re clear of natural disasters, political assassinations, and declarations of war before you publish. 

Watertown

I'm amused by all the people on Twitter right now talking about "civil liberties" with regard to the search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Watertown, MA (an area I'm very familiar with, incidentally).

Instead of blaming this on law enforcement for attempting to find the guy and protesting this supposed "suspension of the Constitution," I suggest we focus our negative energies on the assholes causing the problems in the first place.

Boston

I don’t understand why it matters whether President Obama is referring to the Boston bombings as an “act of terrorism” or not.

When explosions happen, and it’s determined that they were the result of multiple bombs detonating in concert, it’s “terrorism” by default. There’s no other description for it.

Everything else seems like a straightforward, albeit difficult, process: You find out who did it, you find out why they did it, and then you make your judgment and mete out the appropriate punishment.

Until then, what’s the point of arguing over semantics? 

Boston

Folks who talk for a living are easily confused.

The only people surprised when professionals run toward danger are narcissistic Little Lord Fauntleroy types who’ve never done anything courageous in their lives. Sure, running into the scene of an explosion without knowing whether another bomb’s about to go off is heroic beyond measure, but it’s myopic as fuck—and more than a touch offensive—for so many media professionals and celebrities to judge the rest of the world by their standards and act as though it’s a miracle such people “still” exist.

They’re everywhere. You just don’t give a shit about them until you need them. The rest of the time, you’re hoping they just stay out of your way. Thank them, pray for them, and be amazed by them—but don’t act as though their existence is a mystery and their behavior is something you thought was bred out of our society. They’re why you’re still permitted to breathe.

Otherwise, there’s no real lesson to be gleaned from this, unless we’re talking about heightened security measures every time human beings gather in crowds in places where people have rights—or maybe when we learn about some new group who considers the killing of civilians a fair exchange for an “offensive” cartoon or national requirements to pay one’s taxes and register one’s motor vehicle.

Beyond that, stop throwing around shitty words and phrases like tolerance, understanding, and “stopping the hate,” because these other assholes—no matter who did this, foreign or domestic—have no problem offending everyone else.

And yes, some people find explosions and killing more offensive than the spoken word. Shocking.