They found the swine flu patient zero!

MTA's Doomsday Budget - UNFARE!

Holy crap. My wife and I will go from paying $172 to a whopping $206 a month for slower service with less employees at which to bitch. Grrrr. Argh. And not only is it this a ridiculous move during a brutal financial crisis, but the New York Times reports:

Transit advocates said these would be the most sweeping service cuts since the city’s fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s. Only once before in the 105-year history of the subway have fares risen two years in a row (fares last increased in March 2008).

“This is not cutting fat, this is cutting well into the bone,” said Andrew Albert, a rider advocate on the board. “This is going to make New York a very, very different place.”

That's right, folks. Welcome back to the 70s. Finally, a chance to wear bell bottoms! I thought I missed out on that!

Okay, seriously: Don't they have a crazy load of projects they can put a hold on to save some dough? What's the lesson learned here? Let's see what would happen if Starbucks took up the MTA's Doomsday Budget business plan...

"Hello, and welcome to Starbucks. Actually I am the only employee on today... they got rid of people who are just tellers... or baristas. Yeah, I know. Your grande half-calf, skim, mochachino latte used to cost $4.50, but from now on you'll be paying $8.50... and you can't have the skim... or mocha... and it has to be no-calf because we cut out the actual coffee. But-very exciting here-we are opening several new locations for your convenience."

I'm also tired of hearing the MTA say, "It's out of our hands. It's Albany's fault." Let's quit pretending, huh?

THEY ARE A MONOPOLY! THEY CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT! NO CHECKS! NO BALANCES!

Math Hurts

Okay, I know it's important. I know that it makes our cars go, our planes fly, our machines run, our atoms split, our computers compute, and that every aspect of our life can be quantified and mathematically categorized to the world's benefit - but, ouch! Working with math for me is like poking a sharpened pencil in my eye-no, even worse- an unsharpened, splintery tipped pencil... that's on fire. I freeze up. I feel stupid. I watch others zip out a math problem from a memorized equation and I want to hurt them... maybe with that flaming, unsharpened, splintery pencil. So... not a fan of math.

I have lost an hour... where the hell did it go?

Exhaustion. Confusion. A plethora of other -tions and
-sions I can't think of because—well, I'm still asleep. I would have normally used an exclaimation point there, after asleep, but I'm too tired to reach Shift/1. Sigh. Where in the hell did that hour go? Does that 2 o'clock hour get a vacation? When it does, does the location where it goes get an extra hour of sleep? I think next year I'm going to contact that hour and invite it to stay at my place—you know, throw a big party, invite a bunch of girls, get a bunch of booze. I'll feed that hour so much junkfood, make that hour so fat, that he'll become at least two hours! I will get so much sleep next year. I will... zzzzzzzz.

The Muppet Whatnot Workshop

This is where my Muppet Ogden was born - Fao Schwarz in Manhattan. Based on the Build-a-Bear Workshop model, the Muppet Whatnot Workshop is designed for Muppet geeks like me.

When you get to the workshop you are given a book of giant colorforms (ya'll remember colorforms... don't lie).















The base of the colorforms are three bodies: a blue
short body, a round orange body, and a tall green body. The sticky parts you add to the base are several different eyes, hair styles, noses, and different outfits. You use the colorforms to design the puppet. You then give the colorform to the puppet builder and then they start building the puppet. The parts of the puppets are attached with a hotglue gun. If you have specific instruction as to how you want the facial features placed you can ask the puppet builder to follow your placement.















It takes about 30-45 minutes to build the Muppet. It's a pricy toy - when all was said and done Ogden came to about $120. They come with one arm rod, a metal rod that attaches to the hand so you can control arm, and a carrying bag.

You can also build a Muppet online. They have a program that will act like an online colorform so you can see what the puppet will look like. Because I'm a geek, I used that program to see what my in store puppet would look like. Here's the link:
http://www.fao.com/catalog/boutique.jsp?parentCategoryId=98&categoryId=793&name=Muppet+Whatnot+Workshop

More Oggy!

Here's another video of Ogden:



The wife bought him for me for my birthday. The video is for a video we made for our family for Christmas last year. I've always been a Muppet junkie and when FAO Schwarz came out with the Muppet Whatnot Workshop I had a geek-gasm. I'll post some pictures later of my trip to FAO. It was pretty cool.

It's amazing...

How little I have to say. It also amazes me how many people have something to say. There are a ridiculous amount of blogs out there and now... I'm one of them. Sigh.

I guess I could tell you what I had for breakfast. Interested? Eggs (Egg Beaters, actually), toast (wheat), and some good, strong German coffee. It was tasty. Boy, I'm a thrill a second.

I'm going to work in a half and hour. Woo. Uh... then I'll come home, watch some Idol, some Leverage on TNT (if you haven't seen it yet, do... it's fun).

I bet you can't wait for my next blog. I know I can't.