Funkytown, MD

Is it wrong to lie to children?In most instances, I would say yes. Kids, despite popular belief, are just smaller versions of adults and what’s more, they get to play with Legos way more than their taller counterparts. At young ages, a constant learning process is being undertaken, as the youth of today exhibit the curiosity and thirst for information that will make them the doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, and funnybringers of tomorrow. That said, the YAB staff, like every campaigning politician, is pro-education for kids.

(Just once, I would love to see this billboard – Vote Watkins – He’s Anti-Education.)

However, my pro-education platform does have one fringe group which we here at YAB would not like to support. When it comes to learning, as far as we’re concerned, they’re on their own. Yes, that’s right – it’s the “Co-worker’s Kid who is Bored at Work” demographic. Look, I understand when circumstances leave a parent with no choice but to bring their kid to work. But if that’s going to happen, please extend some professional courtesy and make sure he/she stays in your office. Bring toys, DVDs, doesn’t matter to me. I can’t get work done when being forced to play 20 questions with a 7 year-old.

Take Emily. Please.

Emily is a little girl who is in that “People think I’m cute, and I know it!” phase of childhood. She prances around our office every few weeks and disrupts productivity like a Quintin Mikell to a field goal attempt. In fact, I think on a prior visit I even threatened to put her to work. But today, I just can’t deal with the incessant questions, as I have too much to do in too little time. And since more often than not she chooses to make my cubicle her home base for the day, I feel more than obligated – it’s not just a right but a duty – to score one for the many working professionals who have to deal with similar problem children.

Young Emily, with her half-eaten breakfast, reckless demeanor, and enough Disney band-aids to patch the hole in the ozone, appeared yet again today, as she had convinced her mother that she was too sick to go to school (her mother figured out by the time she was zooming around our office that she was in fact okay and sent her back to school for the afternoon session. Hee-yah!). Today’s fixation was with her diary. As she sat across from me while I tried to do more important things (like blogging), she scribbled away, probably writing about how conniving she was, flipped to the section in the back: Address Book. I saw this out of the corner of my eye, and prepared for the big question: “Where do you live?”

Yep, it’s payback time.

“I live on 1-2-3 Main Street.” (she writes this down as absolute truth, never considering the fact that I might share this residence with every person who has ever been a sample credit card applicant, potential voter, or sample citizen at the United States Post Office. Like I said, no questions on this one.) ”What town do you live in?”

“Funkytown, Maryland.”

After some initial doubting, Emily went to others’ offices to verify my home location. While said others were not very helpful in the convincing, it gave me the time to change my address to 123 Main Street, Funkytown, MD in my Microsoft Outlook Contacts. So when she came back as a splitting image of Doubting Thomas, all I had to do was turn my monitor and show her the cold hard facts on the computer screen.

You’re a Blog: Outsmarting 7-year olds since 2004.

With or Without Shoe

Today’s blog inspired by a U2 song of a similar name.

See the stone set in your eyes

Man, had I known that what I was about to see on my Metro trip into class, I would have brought a camera. Let’s briefly set the scene. As I sat one row back from the opening near the train car’s door, said door opened at the East Falls Church stop. On came 7 college-age kids. 4 guys and 3 girls, yammering on how they are excited to be going to the 1st of 2 U2 concerts being held at the MCI Center. They sat in 3 sets of 2, with the odd man out standing between them all. And when the one girl accidentally kicked off her sandal-heel-monstrosity of a shoe, he was quick to pick it up. Shoegirl (as we’ll call her) was none too pleased.

See the thorn twist in your side

It would be one thing for the Odd Man Out to return the shoe to its rightful owner. But instead, to the mild horror of the girl, he jokes with the other guys how funny it would be if he just threw it out of the train at the next stop. Good, buddy, mock the girl. That makes a prank ALWAYS better.

I wait for you

He began to talk a bigger game. As we waited to get to Ballston, he even had the girl, for a fleeting moment, believing that he was going to pull the trigger and launch it. However, the wait for the next stop (Ballston is when you first go underground), seemed a little too long for this adrenaline to last. You could see it in his eyes; he couldn’t go through with such a dastardly deed.

Slight of hand…

So instead, as we got closer to the shoe’s theoretical destination, you could see his new plan, rather than throwing the shoe out to the shock and amazement of Shoegirl, Odd Man Out concocted a new plan. He’ll wait for the doors to begin closing. He’ll then throw the shoe, hitting the newly-closed doors, and the shoe will fall to the ground with a sigh of relief, a silenced yelp, and a hearty laugh from him and his buddies.

…and twist of fate

The Metro reached Ballston. Odd Man Out got ready for the toss. No one got on at this particular stop, which opened up his window of opportunity even more. The girl was just about ready to get out of her seat and grab her shoe from his cocked-back arm, and then the doors began closing. And from what I saw, the shoe was thrown forward, targeted for the sealing doors, and it was then when everyone watching realized that Odd Man Out had jumped the gun. His throw reached the doors – EARLY.

On a bed of nails she makes me wait

Have you ever seen when someone is watching a TV show with a major climactic ending on a videotape, only to find out at the pinnacle moment that somebody else has taped over it accidentally with some commercials? Take that rage and multiply it times eleventy billion.

And I wait without you

As the door closed for good, and the Metro started its way towards Virginia Square, I was on a train with a group of 7 people headed to a U2 concert with only 13 shoes between them. And when Odd Man Out was ordered off the Metro by Shoegirl at VaSquare to go back to Ballston and GET HER SHOE, I wondered the following. When Shoegirl gets to the MCI Center, what happens when she’s stuck in the Metro station hopping on one foot while OMO catches up? Not. Good. At. All.

It was Written in Numbers

If you wanted to win, then you should have tried a little harder.

In 6th grade, I had a reading teacher named Mrs. Etue. This woman scared the hell out of me. Before her, I had always given the “Scariest Woman Ever” to the Sherriff of Notthingham’s witchy advisor Mortianna. But once I met my match in the classroom, Mortianna could go back to, well, whatever it is that recluse hags that live in castle abbeys do in their free time.

Etue, who could have been Ron Artest in an educator’s clothing, made us read “The Lottery,” a short story by Shirley Jackson. What a messed-up tale to make a 12 year-old read. I hate to spoil it for you, but the premise is simple. A town kills one person every year (reasons unknown), and the selection is made by a random lottery of all the townspeople. It’s just something they do in Weirdsville. YAB is in no way endorsing such practice, as we feel that such protocol has become highly unnecessary. Ok, unless you are the Minnesota Vikings and need something else to do this weekend.

I’m glad the word “lottery” no longer has the definition of “obscure method of population control.” Instead, the connotation of the word now reads as “popular method by which hard work and achievement are deemed irrelevant for riches, as luck and $2 will suffice.” The winner no longer gets a one-way ticket to the cemetery. They now get $340 million dollars. Yeah, that sounds like a WAY better deal.

Powerball is a national lottery that is held in 27 states, Washington DC, and the US Virgin Islands. I have no idea why some states choose to participate and others do not, but let’s make one thing clear. No one will EVER win in the US Virgin Islands. I know every ticket has an equal chance to be the winner, but the odds are stacked against you, folks. Your entire island’s population is the size of Waterbury, Connecticut’s. Save your money, convince Puerto Rico to merge with ya, and then challenge North Dakota in a knife fight, winner takes statehood. But I digress.

As I alluded to in my opening, the $340mil Powerball drawing had one lucky winner last night who had all 5 numbers and the Powerball right. The ticket was sold in Oregon (not exactly neighbors on the map with U.S.V.I., I might add.) and somebody got all 6 right. They say the odds in pulling that off was 1 in 146 million. Fair enough. But is there a way the YAB community could have come together to predict that digital sextet?

Looking at the numbers that were drawn – 7, 21, 43, 44, 49 and a PB of 29 – there’s gotta be a pattern. And it has to be simpler than calculating an NFL quarterback rating.

7 makes sense. It’s the luckiest number around. Highest probability of coming up in a dice roll. PowerBall gods also like to get people’s hopes up. Anyone should have seen this coming.

21 is also a lucky number, thanks to BlackJack. Now only gamblers would have this one. Or those who think they know how to gamble because they’ve seen Rounders and Swingers a few too many times.

43 is a holy number in the sporting world – the former car number of racing legend Richard Petty. Other than #3 (Earnhardt), no one may be more revered.

44 is a sign of the twin. Double numbers have a way of appearing in elite company. I can totally understand how one ended up in the PowerBall sequence. Twins would have seen this coming – I do only because I hang out with Nordbergs.

49 is your one place where luck is present. The 4 shows the number of leaves on a clover, and the 9 is for the lucky nature of our feline friends.

29 is really kind of a hint at humor from the PB gods. In the US Code, Title 29 is the section regarding LABOR. And if you picked this as your PowerBall, you’re never going to have to work again.

So, would the Oregonian NASCAR freak who frequents Vegas with his twin brother and 29 cats please step forward and claim thy winnings?

Misled since Infancy

Nursery rhymes are a sham.

I know, I know – it’s not every day that a blogger comes out and attacks the big picture issues, but I’m willing to do it in the name of a greater good. I know that most people have had to focus their word counts towards things like Supreme Court nominations, the NBA’s new required dress code, and the 23rd hurricane of the year, but does anyone out there realize the source of all our problems. Yep, those silly little songs you sang as a kid.

I am as much of an optimist as the next guy (assuming the next guy is also an optimist), but let’s face it: living in DC does not come easy these days. For reasons unbeknownst to even most finance professors, cost of living is through the roof in Beltwayland. People take out mortgages they have no right being able to afford, gas prices soar like they came off the bat of Albert Pujols, and even freakin’ Panera Bread has upped their prices on a Pick-Two to over seven dollars. Even the Coinstar machine seems to be too rich for my blood these days.

Well guess what, kids? The source of our collective unpreparedness for rising expenses? Nursery rhymes. The nonsense that was drilled in your head when you were 2 no longer holds true anymore. And YAB is going to show you what we mean.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe // She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.

-- Do you have any idea how much a nice two-story shoehouse goes for in Tyson’s these days? Asking price is 600k. Hey lady, I know what you should do. Sell your shoe for a sick profit and move out to a boot in Warrenton. Don’t worry about the commute, either. You’ve got more than enough passengers to qualify for HOV.

Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye // Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

-- No one sings about their money, because then the coffee bars know you are holding out on them. Replace “sixpence” with “Starbucks” and “blackbirds” with “pennies” and “baked in a pie” with “double decaf skim milk venti pumpkin spice latte”. I think I broke this rhyme’s metre. Now you know why coffee is so expensive. (Sidenote: who puts bread in their pocket?)

To market, to market to buy a fresh pig // Home again, home again, jiggety jig. // To market, to market to buy a fresh hog // Home again, home again, jiggety jog.

-- Look, home again isn’t exactly that easy. Let us assume that the pig store is inside the Beltway. I guarantee you will not be up for a jig after sitting for 40 minutes on I-66W to go 3 miles while two lanes are shut down to paint the outside of the Metro. Similarly, the hog store is really a specialty vendor in the city itself. Home again is not in your near future – carrying a hog down a metro escalator will slow you down just enough to miss that Orange Line train out to VA, and the next one’s not for another 16 minutes. (Postcript: “jiggety jog”? Who wrote this crap? L.F.O.?

This little piggy went to market // This little piggy stayed home //This little piggy had roast beef // This little piggy had none // And this little piggy cried "Wee, wee, wee." All the way home.

-- Renting doesn’t exactly come cheap for a bunch of unmarried, single roommates. Everyone has to work. So the big toe goes to market, he pulls down a paycheck, puts food on the table, pays his taxes, does all that a good toe can do. Toe #2 stays home?!? And what, watches as Big toe takes a second job to support his lazy ways? And it gets worse. How does Toe #3 eat roast beef, when there’s no indication that he’s gainfully employed either. Toe #4 can be admired for not eating the hard-earned food of the Big Toe, rather that fasting, could it hurt to maybe clean up around the place? And as for what Toe #5 contributes, well. I think we know who’s at fault when the other residents start complaining to the leasing office.

I may be Brawny, but I'm no Hardy

I should be better at this.When I was younger, there was much more free time. One thing you’ll find out (if you haven’t been to college yet), is once you reach that level of education, and afterwards, the working world, leisure reading becomes scarce. You spend so much time during your day devoting ocular attention towards textbooks, e-mails, reports, and ahem, blogs, you are much rather inclined to go home at day’s end at plow through a DVD or whatever sitcom TBS is showing for the eleventy billionth time. But when you’re younger, you’ve got time. Time for the Hardy Boys.

What Frank and his brother Joe accomplished in 58 hardcover blue books over a span of 50 years of sleuthing is unparalleled. There was no place Frank and Joe wouldn’t go. Old mills, cliffs, spooky towers, caves, sinister signposts – they had they fortitude to venture to the locales where the Scooby Doo gang would call it a day (assuming they could run home without being stuck pumping their legs in mid-air.) However, while offshoots, spinoffs, and sellouts continue to be churned out by greedy publishers, the original set of 58 prove that the authentic Hardy Boys have been out of work since 1979. Hey fellas, go get Chet and his jalopy and get back on the trail. It’s time to work!

Case #59 – The Wedding Reception Artifact

This is why I need the Hardy Boys to help out. I have tried my hand at super sleuthing, and I got back to Square 1 faster than the Vikings could say “Ship’s Ahoy.” You see, shortly after the wedding, Katie and I headed into Jersey (not to escape the terror – name that lyric ref.) but to see the family. What we returned with was the center of the mystery – a digital camera that somebody left at our wedding, some three weeks earlier.

Ok – so think, Condon. You’ve got a digital camera. It’s an HP, and as the evidence lies, it was found on the head table while everyone was exiting after the Charlie Daniels Danceoff. So let’s see, let’s enter the location of head table into the evidence.

Evidence #1: Artifact found at head table.

So this, logically, should narrow the list of possible camera owners to 14. And I’ll rule out both Katie and myself, since I have factual evidence that’s not our camera. So that makes 12 – a dozen people who are missing their wedding photographic memories. Wait a minute – that’s right! There’s more evidence on the camera! Let’s just turn it on and find out what pictures there are…

Evidence #2: A 3 second accidental video.

Clearly, the photographer did not realize that they were filming at the time. But upon further review, the video does reveal some alarming clues. It’s a capture of people’s feet on the elaborate hotel carpet of the Marriott. Most notably, the photgrapher’s shoes. BLACK AND SHINY. With our rental homogeneity, it is clear to me that the suspect must be one of the groomsmen! Ah ha! Make that 6 people.

Ok, so there’s like no pictures on this camera – except one. It’s a picture of a blue sky and clouds – nothing special. EXCEPT – it’s taken through the window of an airplane!

Evidence #3: A digital picture taken through the window of an airplane!

Let’s see. Best Man Mellor lives in Virginia. So do Above-average Men Caro and Pretz. AAM Brescia came from Delaware and drove down at 88 miles an hour. AAM Reif, despite being a Tennessean, actually drove as well. That leaves one and only one suspect.

Him: Hello?
Me: Hey Nordberg, it’s Chris. Guess what! I have your digital camera you left at the wedding! Please, shower me with praise and thanks!
Him: Uhh… (pause) I don’t own a digital camera. Click.

Anyone missing a camera?