New Year's Eve

I've never had a good New Year's. Last year I was recovering from an illness and couldn't get my drink on. The year before, I was getting text stalked by the girl I'd just dumped. The year before that, I drank high lifes in State College, PA with a bunch of college students and felt very old. The year before that...you get the point.

I had a variety of options for this frigid evening but, of course, I'm feeling sick. My plan of attack? Drink a shit-ton of grapefruit juice and hope I rally. Otherwise it's going to be another sad evening of staying home and watching Dick Clark's corpse counting down to the new year. Please pray for me. I must have a good time tonight.

It's Been a While (Part Deux)

I actually survived New Orleans. Last year, I drank too much, didn't sleep enough and got sick. This year, I followed the same formula but miraculously remained healthy. All credit goes to Aaron Joachim for sharing with me his magic hangover remedy (gatorade and alka seltzer, yum!).

Following my NOLA shenanigans, I flew up to Boston to see my pregnant sister. She was due to give birth to a girl on the 23rd. The arrival of baby Alissa would make me an uncle for the first time and no longer the youngest member of my entire family tree. Understandably, I had mixed emotions about this.

Being the youngest has its perks. For example, I received many more presents from Santa than any of my other siblings due to my constant denial of his nonexistence. I also managed to parlay my status as the youngest into years of getting out of chores ("but Mom, I'm far too small and weak to mow the lawn! that's older sibling work!"). Naturally, my larger and less gifted (spoiled) older siblings resented my status as the youngest (greatest), but to the victor (youngest) goes the spoils.

On the plus side, the arrival of Alissa meant I no longer had to suffer the indignity of being introduced by my mother to anyone and everyone as "the baby of the family." For a while, people responded to that introduction with something along the lines of "Awwwww," or "he's a little large to be the baby, no?" but that soon gave way to, "is she serious?" and "does she know he's 27?" Now I can rest easy with the knowledge that when she says "isn't my baby adorable?" she's referring to the tiny girl in pink (Alissa), not the huge dude in pink (me).

When Alissa finally arrived on the 26th, I was relieved. My sister made it through like the 5'2" champion that she is and Alissa came out healthy and beautiful. I've gone from being the little brother that might to the big uncle that could. That tops anything that I could have milked out of Santa.

It's Been a While (Part One)

Finals+relief work in New Orleans+becoming an uncle= no blogging for a month. I'm back and worse than ever. My New Year's Resolution is to post at least once a month. This dramatic increase in posting will hopefully allow me to reach my 2009 goal of 12 blog views.

Over the last month, much has happened in the life of Pay the Money and Take a Shot. I took two brutal law school exams. One was fair (corporations) and the other was a disjointed piece of shit (crim pro). I then frantically assembled a sixteen page answer to my take home health care final and turned it in an hour before it was due.

Having finished three exams, I celebrated by getting absolutely smashed at a friend's party and then further smashing myself at the law school end of semester party. This resulted in more than a few drunk texts, one embarrassing drunk dial, and a carefully crafted apology email. Yaaaaa....

This still left me with a paper to write for my public corruption class. My goal had been to finish it before I took off for New Orleans for a week of relief work (drinking). After feverishly writing ten pages on Saturday (the 13th), I quickly realized my goal was going to go unmet.

I did the logical thing and flew to New Orleans the next day, met up with my friends, and further smashed myself on Bourbon Street. I then locked myself in my hotel room for the next two days and banged out 21 hopefully coherent pages (and 170 footnotes!) about the misdeeds of William Jefferson.

Unfortunately, my lockdown cost me two days of working in the lovely NOLA sun (and two drinking nights!). There was only one way to remedy this; working and drinking myself into oblivion over the final three days. The results? Hours of cleaning, drinking hurricanes, denailing, taking shots, hauling wood, slamming beers, and getting kicked out of the pool area later, mission accomplished!

I Hate the Cowgirls

NOOOOOOO!!!! The game's not over, but they're sucking the life out of the Skins by pounding Marion Barber 3 off tackle. I can't take it anymore. I'm seriously considering switching over to The Notebook so I don't have to continue to watch this hideousness. 

When the Skins beat Dallas in Dallas and then Philly in Philly, the pundits claimed the Redskins were in the driver's seat in the NFC East.  At the time, I just couldn't bring myself to agree. I feared we weren't as good as we'd been playing. Now it looks like I'm right. Beating a rival on the road means nothing if you turn around and lose to them at home. 

To make matters worse, this marks about the fifth game in a row that our offense has been generally unproductive. Only ten points and barely 300 yards isn't going to get it done in the NFC East. We'll see if Zorny can get the offense going.  Right now, though, it's not looking pretty. 

Shocking

Take a closer look at that photo. Click on it even. Yes, that's our fine nation's lame-duck President flashing the old shocker. Now, I've been known to do the same (in photos), but this isn't the sort of thing one expects from his commander in chief. Was this part of Bush's shock and awe strategy in Iraq? 

I know what you're thinking, some loser spent five hours in his mother's basement photoshopping the ring finger off of about fifty people. Wrong!  That's the real deal. 

Who knows why he chose to throw down the shocker now. It would have been nice, though, if he'd flashed it during the 2000 campaign. Maybe then we'd have known what he had in store for our mother country. Motherfucker. 

This Doggy

I wants it! The one bright spot out of the 5k was meeting this lovely wirehaired dachsund puppy. She was so sweet and lovable. When my friends and I went up to pet her, she rolled onto her back and was soooo content as she got a belly rub. If I ever escape the quagmire that is law school, my first purchase will be an equally cute puppy. I can't wait.

5k = PAIN

My nipples hurt. Seriously, they feel like someone rubbed a piece of sandpaper on them. My legs feel like lead. I smell bad. Why? Because I brilliantly made the last second decision to run a 5k.

My friends are into justice. Make that equal justice.  Unfortunately, GW Law's Equal Justice Foundation was putting on a race. I learned yesterday that most of my friends were planning on running in the race. 

I explained to them how out of shape I was, how much I enjoyed sleeping, how much I hated running. But no, they insisted I come. In classic sucker fashion, I agreed to go.

3.1 miles and a piss poor half hour of running later, I'm sitting on the couch trying to regain my bearings. I'm pretty sure I have my dignity but I might have lost it on the final hill when I decided to stop running and walked for half a mile. I used to have some pride but that took a hit when a woman from the 40-49 group blazed past me. 

I took some valuable lessons away from this experience: 1) don't eat four pieces of pizza, cake, cupcakes, and drink three beers the night before running in a 5k, 2) if you're out of shape and hate running, don't run in a 5k, 3) don't run in a 5k. 

Crazy Week

I apologize to my millions of loyal readers (Sai) for being such a lazy poster. As you may have heard, there was an election this week. I spent the day doing poll watching in southern Virginia. I promise to devote an entire post to how awesome that was. 

Anyway, my tireless devotion to the Big O cost me a day of work and I've been catching up since then. I think I'm finally up to speed, but my blogging suffered. I know, I know, my priorities are terribly out of whack. The most important election in our lifetime vs. blogging and I chose election. Stupid me. 

To make up for it, I promise to blog the fuck out of this thing over the next few days.  Prepare to be have your brains blogged out! It could get blogging bloggy up in here! Blog blog blogging blog, blog blog blog blog blog blogger! You get the point...

Friday Links

Since this is a blog, I'm required by blog statute to put up a links post. This was the best I could do to meet the requirements. Enjoy:

Clearly these sad, sad people missed the epic Filipino prison version.

Will Ferrell is the funniest USC football fan alive. That includes you, Snoop Dogg. 

I've heard rumors that Obama's planning on flying back to Chicago tonight to trick or treat with his daughters. Imagine the doorbell ringing and having Barry at the door. Beats Old Crazy showing up. 

The New York Knickerbockers are undefeated and tied for first place! I hate the Knicks, but it's hard to root against a team that's been as bad as the Knicks have been during the Isaiah era. Unfortunately, their new coach has already developed a testy relationship with the home fans. Oh, New York sports fans, you make it so easy to hate you. 

Lastly, any posting of links is not complete without some mention of lolcats.  Have you seen the lolcats bible? "Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem."  Soooo funny.

Crazy Talk

Apparently some Hillary supporting yahoo (see above) thinks that Obama wasn't born in the US and is an Indonesian citizen. He's so convinced that he filed suit in federal district court in Pennsylvania in an attempt to bar Obama from winning the presidency. The judge rejected the claim but crazy says he's appealing to the Supreme Court. Considering the current political leanings of the Supreme Court, I wouldn't be surprised if they granted cert and turned this election into a freakshow. Oh le no.

I <3 Corporations

So, as I typically do, I stumbled in late and groggy to my 9:55 Corporations class this morning. Instead of the usual monotonous discussion of fiduciary duties, agency, and mergers, we're doing prediction markets for corporate governance. You're thinking, what the hell is that and why is that better than the usual class?

Basically, my professor is doing research in this area and we're doing an exercise to illustrate how it works by applying it to this election. The classroom has turned into the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, with people buying and selling $100 shares of Obama's presidency, voter turnout percentages, the winner of the Al Franken Senate race, and number of GOP Senate seats.

If Obama wins, my $100 shares are worth their $100. If he loses, they're worth as much as Al Gore's beard. So far I've dumped all my voter turnout stock (they're worth something if turnout is over 60%) because, let's face it, Americans are lazy. I've bought up stock on Al Franken losing and the GOP winning more than 40 Senate seats. I'm holding onto my Barry stock because Barry's a winner.

We'll see what happens. Oh, and my prof is teaching the class with a Wizard hat on. Such a badass.

Tea + Bags = Humor

I will go to the ends of the earth to find ways to humiliate members of my beloved fantasy football league. Last night, I checked the scoreboard to see what was going on with my team. I happened to notice this score:  Black Santa 68 - Texas T 98

As any asshole would do, I hastily posted on the league message board something about my friend Nick getting Texas T-bagged by my friend Pat.  Now, teabagging is nothing to joke about (as shown here).  Still, I could think of no better way to capture the domination suffered by Nick at the hands of his younger brother.  In an effort to enhance Nick's pain through video illustration of teabagging, I discovered this little gem.  Enjoy! 

PS- Don't worry, it's not obscene and can be viewed at work. For those of you who are impatient, fast forward to the 1:30 mark but know that the setup is part of the fun.

Google Rocks

Check out this sweet election gadget from those badasses at google. Just be careful. If you click on states too many times, they'll turn red and we'll end up with Old Crazy as our next President. Unfortunately blogger's layout won't allow the whole country to show up, but you get the point. At least for once, the east coast has to take a backseat to the west coast. 

I'm Afraid of the State of Ohio

Actually, I'm afraid of Ohio State University's football team. I mean, I'm not worried they're going to climb through my window, drag me out to the football field, and tape me naked to the goalposts. It's just that Penn State has a chance to win the national championship. They haven't been in this position since 1994 (back when JoePa was merely 67).  Ohio State and their well-paid and underclassed players stand in the way. 

I honestly have no idea what's going to happen. Penn State hasn't beaten OSU at The Horseshoe since 1978 (back when JoePa was 51). PSU has run through their Big Eleven schedule with ease but that's about as impressive as McCain winning Nebraska. Meanwhile, the Buckeyes have looked like a juggernaut ever since they inserted Terrelle "Benedict" Pryor into the lineup following their pasting at USC. 

My hope is that Penn State stops Pryor and then sends JoePa out to pasture with another national championship. That won't happen if they don't get past Ohio State. It's going to take a lot of defense, the best of the Spread HD, and some of that JoePa spirit. I think they can do it. If they do, they'll be partying like it's 1978. 

Halloween (the movie)

For some absurd reason, Halloween is my favorite movie.  Once October rolled around, I scanned tvguide.com for upcoming screenings. The first showing was tonight. I planned my entire weekend around being in front of a TV at 8pm ET so I could be enthralled by two hours of Jamie Lee Curtis running for her life.  Those two hours are now sadly over.  

The results? Countless dead bodies, one stolen headstone, multiple false Michael Myers death alarms, and too many horny teenagers to keep track of.  Jerry Bruckheimer take note, this is the formula for horror movie gold.