Back in my day…

Facebook has just made all of my dreams come true. Their latest application (or maybe not, but I just found it) is The Oregon Trail. Ahhhmazing! I remember sitting in my computer lab, plugging away on my 1993 Macintosh Apple, avoiding dysentery and hunting for oxen. But oh, Facebook can’t just leave well enough alone can they? No, no they can’t. I would like to outline some of Facebook’s additions to the game:

1. You actually have to steer while trying to ford (or caulk and float across) the river.

What the hell Facebook? Do you know how difficult that is? It was stressful enough when we just had to leave our river journey to the hands of fate, hoping that we made the best decision we could based on the information at hand. Now I have to navigate my way through rocks and treacherous waters? What the hell.

2. If you, or members of your wagon party, contract explosive diarrhea you will be sacrificed.

Sacrificed? Really Facebook? Really? Does that seem necessary? I mean, you get to stick around if you have dysentery. They don’t sacrifice you if you get the measles and those seem pretty nasty. But the minute your diarrhea becomes explosive, that’s it. Sacrifice. And I’m not even sure how that would work on the trail. Do they just leave you and roll on? Do they wait to cross the river and just heave you over board? It doesn’t seem right to get sacrificed though.

So…okay, I may have just established my role as an old grandma (I did title this post “back in my day” after all) but I happen to be a fan of tradition and I can’t condone Facebook messing with my traditional games. Will that stop me from playing? Doubtful. But I’ll be a little upset every time I lose someone to explosive diarrhea or in a freak wagon-into-rock accident.

The Sunday Update: January 27, 2008

The vid:

Not quite as fast as those Beauty and the Geek guys, but she’s got time. (Again, not in a form that wordpress will let me post as a video).

The news:

Police: Grandmother Arrested at McDonald’s Drive-Thru for Not Pulling Car Forward

CLEARWATER, Fla. — A 75-year-old woman was arrested at a Clearwater McDonald’s drive-thru, because police say she wouldn’t pull her car forward.

Authorities said Jean Merola, a grandmother of eight, was arrested for disorderly conduct after she refused an officer’s orders to move her car while she waited for the coffee and fries she ordered at the drive-through window.

Merola said the McDonald’s employees told her to wait there for her food. Merola was handcuffed behind her back and put in the cruiser. Another officer arrived and took her to the Pinellas County Jail. Merola said she was searched, photographed and fingerprinted.

Jail records show she was released about 90 minutes later on her own recognizance.

Watch me crank dat Soulja Boy

I know I owe you a Sunday Update but due to a video submission by Boo’s bro, I felt that I couldn’t postpone writing this post any longer.

I spent my Christmas at sea, cruising with the family. We were on a family-oriented cruise ship (but not one of those Sesame Street cruises, don’t worry). While enjoying a family-friendly afternoon on deck, sunning myself and listening to my iPod, I was interrupted by the cruise director announcing some event or another. Normally I would have ignored him. If it wasn’t the bellyflop competition (which, by the way, was one of the most attended events on board) I didn’t want anything to do with it. Until I heard the opening chords of Soulja Boy. Well, that seemed awkward, considering the phrase “Superman dat ho” didn’t exactly seem to fit the all-ages environment.

My interest piqued, I ventured over to the railing to check out the happenings on the lower “fun deck” (a title that is clearly not mine, fyi). And what did I find? A group of 12-15 year olds who’d all been taught the dance to Soulja Boy and were performing it on the deck. This so-called fun deck happened to be the main deck, poolside, for all of the ship to see. All of a sudden I was concerned. It didn’t seem appropriate to have tweens learning the dance to such a non-PG song. Or, in all fairness, teach them the dance–they’re at sea without cell phone reception or cable programming and they’ve most likely already learned it thanks to YouTube anyway–but don’t have them perform their new-found talent for the preschool and nursing home types.

Moral of this story? Just because you can set it to SpongeBob Squarepants doesn’t mean you should teach it to audiences too young to buy cigarettes–it does however mean you’ll get a shitload of cash and a Grammy nomination.

There was a young woman who needed a shoe

It’s Monday and I was running late for work. No one should be surprised by this. As I mentioned, it’s Monday. I’m fighting a cold so I am also fighting the grog associated with the Nyquil Hangover. Pair that with a weirdly empty subway and I feel like I’m in a parallel universe this morning.

While I’m standing on the platform, waiting for the 6, I see this girl who seems way too interested in the stairs behind us. I’m wondering if I’m missing something of crucial importance so I turn around. Nothing. Weird, but you never know, maybe I just caught her at the end of her glance. Nope. When I look back at Gawker she’s still gawking. Weird.

I play this check, check back game a few times to see if I can figure out what the hell she’s looking at. Then I look down. She’s wearing cute silver flats. Wait–correction. She’s wearing cute silver flat. And her shoe-less foot is resting on a black 70-page spiral notebook. There is no scenario that I can come up with that would leave a person wearing only 1 shoe in the subway and being so calm about it. It’s not like she was running for the train and slipped right out of her shoe. She would have realized it if she had and turned around immediately. It’s not like she had an issue with just 1 shoe out of the pair and couldn’t wear them–she’d have realized that before she left the house and changed. Or at the very least turned around, went home, and corrected the situation.

From watching her, it was like she was waiting for someone to bring her the other shoe. Again, no scenario that I could come up with makes that an acceptable action. This girl haunted me the whole commute and even now, caffeine fully in my system, there is still absolutely no scenario that I can come up with.

NOTE: In a completely unrelated story, I took the 6 to 86th with a woman who exited the train in favor of an express. When I hopped on the N, R, or W (I didn’t bother to check which) at 59th, she followed me on to the train. It just makes me feel a little better about my commute to know that I still beat the people who try to beat the system.

The Sunday Update: January 13, 2008

The vid:

The news: New Yorkers, You May Be Excused: A Pay Toilet Opens

Published January 10, 2008, 12:41 pm

By Jennifer 8. Lee

Daniel L. Doctoroff, the outgoing deputy mayor for economic development, performed a ceremonial flush on Thursday of the city’s first permanent pay toilet. (Photo: G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times)

Few toilets — if any — have ever received the level of government and media fanfare that greeted the new public pay potty that opened today in Madison Square Park. First, the full force of New York City’s newspapers, television and radio were there to tape, record and take notes on the first flushes. Second, the toilet is the product of an on-and-off decades efforts (detailed below) by city officials to, uh, serve the needs of New Yorkers.

So it was understandable that the city officials reveled in the toilet paper roll-cutting ceremony (which, fittingly, they did with their hands) on Madison Avenue, between 23rd and 24th Streets. But they couldn’t resist the temptation of scatological humor: “No. 1!” (Janette Sadik-Khan, transportation commissioner), “in loo of” (Adrian Benepe, parks commissioner), “doesn’t block pedestrian movement” (Daniel L. Doctoroff, outgoing deputy mayor for economic development).

Officials said the 20 new toilets to be installed will be the first permanent ones in use in the city. The kiosk in Madison Square Park, made of tempered glass and stainless steel, is about the size of a newsstand, with an automatic sliding door that opens when a deposit of 25 cents is made. It will initially be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. (bad news for late-night revelers), though those hours may be adjusted.

Flushing, as on an airplane, is done at the press of a button. And men, take note: There is no toilet seat to leave up. (or for ladies to leave down) There are toilet covers available.

A user has a (generous) 15-minute period of privacy before the doors pop open — with a warning light and alarm going off when there are only three minutes left. In between is an automatic 90-second self-cleaning process, which will be one of the great mysteries of New York going forward, since it happens only when the doors were closed. The toilets are locked every night to prevent someone from camping out inside.

The pay toilets are part of a $1 billion street-furniture arrangement with Cemusa, a Spanish outdoor-advertising conglomerate to provide matching bus shelters, newsstands, bike parking racks and pay toilets. Since Cemusa makes money off the advertising on the “street furniture,” it actually pays the city: $1 billion in fees, and another $400 million in New York promotional advertising on other structures the company operates outside New York.

In 1975, the state outlawed pay toilets, on the theory coin-operated stalls in public restrooms discriminated against women. (Doesn’t bear thinking about) In 1990, a group of homeless people sued New York City and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for access to public toilets; the state granted the city an exception to the ban in 1993.

John Mack, 35, of Brooklyn staked out the toilet today, waiting for the demonstrations to end, so he could be the first to use it. He had come knowing it would be on the nightly news, but it wasn’t entirely a self-promotional gimmick. “I actually do have to use the bathroom,” he said.

Nothing dirtier than a lint licker…

I realize it’s now 2008 and I should be blogging all of my New Year’s resolutions (didn’t make any) or offering some insight into this new year. Well…I’m not gonna. All I’m going to say about the year coming to an end is that I am officially one year older (Daddy’s little tax deduction that I am).

Moving on…I recently witnessed the negative effects of dropping an expletive on someone. Sticks and stones my ass– calling someone an ass can actually be quite hurtful. So I think we should all turn to advertising when we need a really great insult…you son of a biscuit-eating bulldog, you.