mchale’s closed

mchale’s is gone forever.

it had the best burger in new york, i thought. i blogged about it previously, and have raved about it to many, many friends.

my work group had set a calendar date for today to go have one last lunch. last time i was there, in mid-december, the waitress told us that they’d be open through the end of january.

but no lunch for us today. last night was last call for mchale’s.

along with the second avenue deli, cbgb’s, astray cafe, and so many others, another landmark lost to the greed of new york developers.

grrrrrrr.

update: playbill.com’s story of the closing

quote of the day

from a new york daily news article on mayor bloomberg’s gun control initiatives.

“virginia is liberal in gun ownership, but our crime rate is very low,” explained jerry thompson, 41, owner of dominion shooting range inc., a richmond gun shop. “so we kind of thumb our nose at new york because gun laws are so restrictive there, but crime is higher.”

in truth, the per capita crime rate was almost three times higher in richmond than in new york city in 2004, according to the last full year of fbi data on major crimes.

ha! take that, richmond, virginia nra wingnuts! move to new york, give up your guns, and be statistically safer than you are now.

i’m sure that this is true for a lot more places other than richmond as well.

i’m number two

probably not going to be much activity here for the next few days, what with the holidays and all.

in the meantime, if you google jamie howard, i am no longer number one. i am number two, behind some swimming machine (with apologies to kurt vonnegut).

here is the number one jamie howard.

now if, swimming machine jamie howard, you (along with my other fifteen readers) would kindly link back to the queer jamie howard, i can perhaps regain my rightful number one google ranking.

not that i care or anything.

update: i’m now number three. jamie howard the professional wrestler, who has about 36 aliases, is now number one on google with his imdb page with its lousy wrestlemania “movie” credits. and jamie howard the swimming machine is number two. come on people.

not that i care or anything.

and the truth is?

another uneventful commute. i wish everyone was as lucky as i am…evidently, contrary to what i previously said about resourcefulness, it’s not getting any easier at all for a lot of people.

i’m waffling a bit on my opinion of the union. yesterday the other municipal unions held a press conference where they stated that the same law (the taylor law) that prohibits municipal workers from striking also prohibits management from bringing pension issues to the table as a bargaining chip.

the truth?
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what, me worry?

here’s a link to a very comprehensive list of all of the maintenance procedures you should regularly perform to ensure that your windows pc is safe, secure, and runs well:

windows pc tune-up guide.

it also serves as a comprehensive list of all of the things i never have to waste time doing anymore, now that i’ve switched to a mac.

i know…sometimes i’m a smart ass. but, honestly, why are you still using that pc?

new york still works

if you have money, that is.

isn’t that the new york way? well, it shouldn’t be.

if you don’t have money, or you need to go to work in an outer borough, you are pretty much out of luck this morning. that’s the big problem i have with this transit strike. it doesn’t hurt people with resources–it hurts people like the strikers themselves, or people in worse situations.

so here’s the story of my morning so far.
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the nathan lane reality bubble

nathan lane talking to katie couric about “brokeback mountain” on the “today” show:

“it’s really when [ledger] said, ‘this thing gets hold of us the wrong time, the wrong place, we’re dead.’ i thought, ‘what do you mean, like the a&p? you’re in the middle of nowhere! get a ranch with the guy! stop torturing these two poor women and get a room! what’s the problem?'”

i hereby proclaim nathan lane to be an idiot who needs to venture out beyond new york and los angeles. except for the torturing the women part, which has a modicum of truth, this is as clueless a point of view as i’ve seen uttered in quite a while.

animated singing santa hack

now this is the funniest thing i’ve seen in ages.

you know that ubiquitous 5-foot dancing talking santa they sell at wal-mart? well, this artist/hacker decided to reprogram it to, well…

let’s just say that santa has now been bent to this very creative guy’s will. at the artist’s request, i haven’t linked directly to the videos of santa in action, but the links are on the site and you have to watch them. i’m not going to spoil the fun, but they have to be seen to be believed.
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it had better work

what a night.

about 6:30pm yesterday we had firemen come into the building for some unknown reason. in a separate incident at the same time, the paramedics came for someone. and, in a third separate incident at the same time, a pipe burst in the apartment above us, sending water cascading down the living room wall.

that would be the wall where my mac mini was plugged in.

to say the least, i am not pleased.
Continue reading “it had better work”