Author Archives: tony

dear tony, what if this is it

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rihannaTony,

I love your blog. I haven’t been a reader for long, but I always get a chuckle out of your advice. I try to be religious but I have my doubts sometimes (a lot of times). How do you stay so positive? What if there is no afterlife? What then? – Concerned

Gentle spirit,

I suppose there could very well be no afterlife, no champagne party on the other side of the Pearly Gates, no conga line being led by Hendrix and Cobain and Marilyn Monroe.

I suppose it could be that when we die we become worm food and that’s it.

To me, spirituality is something you feel in your gut, your heart, the part of you that’s not your mind. But you asked online so let me answer you online.

When I think about things like the human body, how our lungs take oxygen and mix it with our blood and turn the whole thing into energy and life and how our blood circulates and how the antibodies in our systems work and how our skin heals and how our liver filters impurities. And yes, I think about our stomachs and intestines and how they turn that apple i ate and eventually poop it out, I think these bodies we have are the most amazing creations all by themselves – not to mention our brains which can remember things and create things and solve problems. Nor do I mention Love and all of the things that surround that unique concept.

When I put it all together I find it extremely hard to think that we are given the miracle of life to only live on this baffling crust for a blink of an eye, relatively, and then thats it.

I think theres something more. I don’t think we are sand castles on the beach that only last a few hours and then go back to the sea. I do think there are all star pants off dance offs after we die with all of your favorite people in history with truly endless shrimp.

And most importantly, bread that doesn’t make you fat.

In the meantime I think it is our duty to rock as hard as we can down here so we have something interesting to tell our heroes when we finally meet them in the buffet line, but yes I do think we will get to meet them and i think there will be something interesting to do after that.

And I think it probably involves guitars

played loudly.

anti handwashing republican with alleged KKK ties part of GOP blockage

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thom and grassley

Sen. Thom Tillis, (R-NC) – seen here with the blue tie with Sen. Charles Grassley, (R-Iowa) –  is one of the GOP lawmakers who have seemingly agreed to stop any Obama nominated judge from being confirmed until the president is out of office.

A year ago today Tillis, who was then a Freshman senator, was exposed as someone who thought it might be a good idea to let restaurants “opt out” of the requirement that its employees wash their hands after using the restroom.

“I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as the post a sign that says ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restrooms.’ The market will take care of that,” Tillis said. There’s even video of him saying it clearly on C-SPAN.

“That’s probably one where every business that did that would go out of business,” he added. “But I think it’s good to illustrate the point that that’s the sort of mentality that we need to have to reduce the regulatory burden on this country.”

handwashingThat’s correct, the senator thinks that the law requiring one to washing ones hands after taking a dump is a burden.

Just a few months ago the hacktivist group Anonymous claimed the Republican from Huntersville is involved with the KKK. Tillis was among a list of political figures that the group claimed had ties with the hate group.

While the allegation has yet to be proven, Tillis is in favor of strict North Carolina voter ID laws that have been proven to keep minorities from voting. Tillis argues that such voting laws curb “widespread” voting fraud, but the enemy of many Republicans, science, has shown that of 1 billion votes cast since 2000 just 31 cases have been proven to be fraudulent.

Regardless, Tillis is one of the GOP lawmakers who voted against the confirmation of Wilhelmina Wright, an African-American judge who was successfully confirmed as an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court; which many in the GOP says will be one of the last of the Obama-appointed judges to be confirmed this year.

“There is a point at which, traditionally, no additional judicial nominees are considered until the election,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX), said referring to the election in November.

In 2015, the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed a mere 173 total civilian nominees, according to the Congressional Research Service, about 100 fewer than were confirmed in 2007 when a Democratic Senate took over during the last two years of George W. Bush’s presidency.

i am procrastinating something super big

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kim and amberthe question is why?

most of me knows this would be a fantastic thing. most of me knows this would help people including myself and people i like. a real win-win.

and its so weird. all i have to do is write it down.

write!

ive been writing since i was in the womb! (sorry ma)

and i did start writing it a few weeks ago but now i dont even wanna read what i wrote back then. all ive gotta do is go back to it, edit it, improve on it and send it off.

the person i need to send it to likes me (i think) and respects me (i think) and would probably say oh hell yes (i think). and thats the way you should write people. make believe they cant wait to read what youre about to say.

but what if im wrong? what if its a bad idea. what if it would hurt the reputation of this person? what if it makes me look like a doo doo head. BUT I AM A DOO DOO HEAD! i am a doo doo head with a great idea. (the best kind of doo doo head.)

tonight i should really do this, but tonight i wanna see a screening of Creed. i also want to Uber because i havent Ubered successfully in a while. last night i drove around and made zero dollars. my jack in the box budget is more than zero dollars. so the plan is to uber for a few hours after work and then see this Oscar nominated film.

but then when will i have time to write this groundbreaking email? tomorrow?

fine, tomorrow.

(famouslastwords)

did you know they’re teaching the busblog in college textbooks?

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frequent blogger

hell yeah they are.

my practice of “blogging” was noted by some dude who has written a bunch of text books about “The Social World” and a few people were kind enough to let me know, the most effective being this lovely woman from Jersey who let me know today that im the posterboy of “overgeneralization” in Mr. Schutt’s mind because of this post from 2005.

bro probably overlooked the fact that this blog clearly states on top of every page that “nothing in here is true”, but whatevs

and also, MOST people i do run across hate going to jury duty. f the Harris poll! if the Harris poll was right, why is everyone – sorry MOST PEOPLE – so relieved when they dont have to go to jury duty?

also i think my comment and his question to the students are different. i think MOST PEOPLE would be thrilled with jury duty if they could show up and get right to the trial. but no, you gotta sit in that waiting room, you gotta wait all day, then maybe you get picked, then they ask you questions, then maybe you get picked for a case, then you gotta go home, then come back the next day, then wait some more, then you get to the case MAYBE

its the process thats the nightmare, not the actual hanging the bad guy.

either way the busblog is getting love from college kids EVERYWHERE and thats cool with me bro.

january 2016 in review

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legs in bathcar broke

computer broke

made good money on new years eve

brunched with ali and aj

watched hella Making a Murderer

watched even more Fargo

had sex with a pretty girl

el nino came in the beginning and end of jan and tons of stuff ended up in the river

but there were rainbows

started a thing where i watch a classic movie every week. classic meaning olde. it started with imitation of life, then it was love in the afternoon, then it was belle de jour, and tonight it was city lights

drove around the assistant for Rae Sremmurd which was probs the ride of the month

got excited that Guns n Roses will be at Coachella

sampled the new mozzarella sticks at mcdonalds for you

bowie died and it hit everyone pretty hard

had to be at work at 4am one day, a photo essay

quoted matthew 7:5 on the internet in an unusual example of thug life

wore a hat on national hat day

realized that taylor swift is going to do a surprise set at coachella this april, probs weekend one and i wont be there

solved global warming, sorry cubs

tried to write this thing but instead watched a couple of docs including The Wolfpack which was amazing like omg

she asked why do you have two tvs in your bedroom

a judge said dov cant run american apparel no more which means there wont be american apparel no more

got very upset with my former love

went to the lakers game with chris and dave and totally told the usher lady in the good seats, no it’s good

saw the martian and then the revenant and at first i thought the rev would win all the oscars, now im not sure

some of the differences between when i did college newspapering and how they do it now

got two tickets for springsteen doing all of the river but theyre in the very back row up in the sky

charlie chaplin’s “city lights”

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city lights chaplini have always been a buster keaton fan and never truly understood chaplins appeal until today when i saw City Lights (1931).

where keaton has remarkable acrobatics, chaplin has this sweet sweet sentimentality. and so many bits.  chaplins facial expressions are also not limited to just one.

i hesitate from giving away the movie – can you spoil one thats nearly 100 years old?

but the idea that a very poor guy falls in love with a blind girl and needs the help of a millionaire to help him is a bit extreme to say the least.

something ive noticed in these older movies is how often theres someone with a butler or a maid or a paid servant of some sort to help them do the most bizarre domestic dealings.

people dressed super nice back then

and women got bouquets of flowers like all the time, it seemed.

it was also nice to see one of those gutters that led to a pipe that filled a wooden barrel: who the hell thought we should get rid of those?

but the little tiny scene that i loved – other than the end –  was when charlie is working as a street sweeper and gives dirty looks at the horses before he has to pick up after them

as if the horses know what theyre doing!

four stars

one of my new years resolutions is that every week imma see a classic movie i aint never seen before, it started with imitation of life (1934) then love in the afternoon (1957) and last week was belle de jour (1967)

the good book says dont pay attention to wealth down here

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big house

it says its a fools game. that it amounts to nothing. that it fixes nothing. that our treasure is not here but in the kingdom of heaven. that if we like pools and hottubs in winchester square imagine what theyd be like on cloud 9 with marilyn sitting poolside and hendrix strumming from under the cabana

and dean martin mixing the drinks and kurt cobain plucking the mandolin

the good book says that down here we have other goals that we should work on, like helping the poor and being good to each other and reflecting light

not absorbing it.

i am a sinner in so many ways its incredible that im allowed even to walk outside without getting struck by lightning. my mind is a sewer, my heart is unpure, my writings are so filthy i have to put a disclaimer on my collected works

and worst of all i dont think ive ever fully satisfied a woman except that one time a long time ago, but that girl was on drugs and drunk and who knows if she was really telling the truth, although hips dont lie, i suppose.

but today is a new day, a blank slate, and thats what the good lord wants for us all, to know that the reason he forgives sins is so we can move on, unfettered, so we can be better, so we dont think to ourselves oh why even bother im so far behind the 8 ball who cares. well we all care. we all want everyone to do and be better because we are all monkeys in the barrel hoping to get a monkey arm in our face which pulls us up.

tonight imma drive because i gotta pay off these springsteen seats i got which are in the furthest recesses of the night, but im in the building. and id rather be in the nosebleeds in heaven than front row in hell.

millions of years ago dinosaurs rocked the earth

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daily nexusi was recently told that things are different for the kids today who get to put out the news at what once was the greatest party school in america.

and it’s true things are different than when i was there.

first of all there was no internet.

imagine that. imagine having to communicate, research, write, record, and arrange

everything

pretty much by hand

with the help of some very slow and expensive computers and photography equipment.

the phones were landlines and i dont recall there even being an answering machine in the office.

all the lines you see on that page were pasted up by hand. each one has a size.

we used rulers and pens and pencils and paper and we always got the paper out. on time. the photographers used film that they had to develop and then print, and yet if there was a large gathering on DP after a big basketball game, where couches were lit on fire and the fire was lit on fire, the story was reported, edited, and published, and the photos were too.

you bet your ass things are different today.

today, if they worked together, the college community along with the paper could take the pictures and report and opine and review and video and sneak over some tips and share it on facebook and and and

but just like the 100th monkey said, you gotta lead by example

if i was back in IV writing for the paper, id set up IV Hall Monitors. a few people on each block whose “job” it was to do simple things like take pictures of the block each week, and be available when and if anything went down of note. id have them all share a group twitter account. you wouldnt have to pay these kind souls.

if you love IV it should be an honor to simply report back on your magical block.

id also be all over periscope in a huge way.

not to mention snapchat.

saw the Martian on weds and the Revenant last night

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revenantthe Martian was pretty good. actually really good and im very happy that i saw it before i saw The Revenant because omg

Chibo and Inuerudo and Leo

and mother nature

and Tom Hardy

and that rapey bear

and wow wow wow

i was totally blown away.

i had heard mixed reviews so my expectations were low. which is a great place to be. but through lots of it my mouth was wide open

like wow look how pretty things are and woah whats happening is he gonna die? mama mia.

but when i got into work today some of the people were like me: give them all the oscars

and others were like the critics: meh

and i was like, were you in the same theater as i was? but they were. which shows to go ya: you cant please everyone.

speaking of, my laptop is on its last legs, so if i dont busblog this weekend dont fret, im alive, im just trying to figure out how to fix that bad boy.