Launch Day

Bone shattering headaches over the wknd not relieved by 600mg ibuprofen. Hair of the dog worked – ie, a single, lone, solitary cup when eyesight starts to blur. this is how it went down –

Thurs noon – The Quit Project begins

Friday – fine

Saturday – 2pm, nasty headaches. lasted hours. doing a single cup of coffee at 5pm helped. ibuprofen didnt, as far as i could tell.

Sunday – 12pm, nasty headaches. doing a single 4pm coffee helped. 800mg ibuprofen didnt seem to make a dent.

Monday (today) – preemptive single cup of the black juice, 10am. so far fine.

Friends are checking in to see if I”m ok. I am. Had a couple of eyeballs pop out with “why???” when i told them i had quit for 30 days. i’ll be ok. together we can do this people.

i admit to growing less fond of the black juice upon learning of the nasty things it does to me if i dont drink it. that’s not what friends do.

im also amazed at what to do with all this extra free time i have now that i don’t spend it peeing forty times a day.

thank you good night.

Also: Mulling a new fake band – “Dance, Greybeards”. And you know what that leads to – nothin’ but trouble and heartbreak. It’s not Thursday though so I don’t have to make any decisions.

Hours into this experiment. Sucks. Colors not as vibrant. Tired. Throat hurts. Traffic worse than usual on drive home. Not sure if all this is related.

I’m several hours into this experiment. Surprised by my stamina. Most motor functions functioning as expected.

30 days of no coffee. I predict:

1. splitting, gut wrenching headaches
2. failure by the end of the day
3. fatigue, loss of energy, loss of focus
4. bitterness and angst
5. long dark conversations of the soul in which i ponder why am i doing this

to future self, wondering “why are you doing this?”

1. i don’t know.
2. it seems like a marginally fun idea
3. see what if anything happens

additionally i predict:
1. my age old tired joke of “of all the vices if this is my worst one im doing ok” will echo around my brain

In meetings, you have distinct phases.

First, there’s the pre-meeting. This is a jokey time, vapid small talk, canned jokes. Hows it going? Oh I can’t complain, well I could but noone would care anyways, har har. Vacation, kids. Out sick, feeling better? This is where you pick your seat and fill time until:

The opening soliloquy. This is the opening speech by whoever feels is driving the meeting.

Then, there’s the secondary soliloquy, or, sometimes, the rebuttal speech. Either way, it’s another speech, by someone else. There will always be jockeying for who gets to give the secondary soliloquy.

Then the meeting will devolve into the Chaos and Circular Arguing phase. Someone will say something, then someone else will sound like they disagree, and talk for a long time, essentially saying the same thing the first guy said. This will go round and round in circles. This is the real meeting.

Eventually one of two things happen: either Time’s Up, or the meeting Runs Out Of Things To Talk About. In adroitly managed meetings, these happen concurrently. Either way, there’s some sort of grunt of consensus and the meeting adjourns for the first time.

Then there’s the After Meeting. the act of standing and slowly moving towards the exits creates a new meeting of small talk. If not controlled tightly and carefully, this can launch into another phase of Chaos and Circular Arguing. Keep it simple here folks, dumb jokes, good to see yous, etc, as you move towards the door and wrap it up. If you have a couple “real” friends in there, this is where you banter and shield each other.

Then, The Exit. Clean break, out the door, back to your hole.

Meetings, deconstructed.

This is why the internet makes my head blow up sometimes.

1. Peruse twitter feed for 10 seconds.
2. notice a Fader story on someone (ryan hemsworth). read it.
3. the person in the story mentions an japanese internet record label called Maltine.
4. check out maltine. they use soundcloud.
5. install soundcloud app.
6. follow Maltine. click a magnifying glass. notice a “#dubstep” tag. hell yes.
7. get some sort of dubstep playlist of the week. turn it up. WAY up.
8. mood elevation occurs.

this is why the internet makes my head blow up sometimes.

We in the ivory towers of launchday headquarters inc recognize there is pain and suffering in the world. And that’s fine. We’re (third person plural) not trying to minimize that. But allow us (third person plural) to counter with the notion that what better way to aleve pain and suffering than with a high quality breakfast burrito. So say hello to our newest segment, “Fight Pain and Suffering: Rate That Burrito”.

Every since my usual breakfast burrito place got shut down, i can only assume for health code violations, i’ve been as one wandering through the night, looking for someone to hold onto. a fine breakfast burrito place is a proper partner, it’s like having a good attorney, or CPA, or hedge fund manager. And they’re tough to find.

I’ve wandered through a few places over the last few months, all of them specializing in combining “meh” with big prices. More disappointing than satisfying.

Then yesterday as I was driving around aimlessly as one wondering through the night, looking for someone to hold onto, I noticed a sign. And a beacon of light from the heavens illuminating that sign. And I swear I heard chorale angels singing Handel. And this sign was – not coincidentally – directly across the street from Handel’s ice cream in my fair local district of southern california, in the rock quarry slums known as “upland.”

So let’s cut to the chase. This sign was advertising a 3.99 breakfast burrito. Afficianodos take note. So this morning I went a couple extra exits past my usual offramp so I could cruise through this place, and allow me to say – that was a quality move.

For sheer food tonnage, it would be tough to beat Connal’s breakfast burrito. I went with the “bacon” variety. It’s the kind of thing you can do arm curls with. Legitimate hashbrowns crammed in. I didn’t count the eggs but it couldn’t have been fewer than 64. And cheese. And bacon. All wrapped up in one of those monster tortillas that normal people can never find in their lame little stores. Folded masterfully by masters of burrito folding masters. All for the princely sum, after tax, of $4.31. 4.31 cents, people. You can’t even get a cup of coffee for that anymore.

Thank you Connal’s. Thank you. We applaud your art, and we reward it with the highest of praise.

The Google thingie defines “retarded” thusly:

adjective
less advanced in mental, physical, or social development than is usual for one’s age.
informal offensive
very foolish or stupid.

It is therefore the premise of this HSA (“highly scientific article”) to demonstrate that email – and nearly all practitioners thereof, including author – is indeed less advanced in development than is usual for one’s age.

Firstly: How old is email? Answer: I don’t care. Old enough to stop sucking and ruining our days. Let’s skip to the good part.

Secondly: The Good part. How does email demonstrate the general attributes of retardation? Let’s delve into specifics, corporate warriors of the keyboard.

• Stop Hitting Reply All To Say Something Retarded, like “Thanks!”
• Stop using exclamation points to sound friendly. See! It Works! (As if I’m in any danger of sounding friendly.)
• I know what – email client, let’s go “ping” “ping” “ping” “ping” “ping” every fifteen seconds with a new email of someone hitting Reply All to say “Thanks Bob!” or “Thx!” or “Got it thanks Bob!” or “Great!” (see “Thanks Corellary” below)
• Let’s keep our mail client open all the time in case we get an email we actually HAVE to deal with, so can listen to “ping” Thanks Bob! all day
• Let’s render everything in a really good order so we can keep track of important stuff. Hmm let’s see. I know! Most recent at the top! Yeah!

Great now I forgot what I started for. An email came in.

Thanks!
Andrew

ps. The “Thanks Corellary” explained in hypotentudinal form: In real life, saying “thank you” is a courtesy. Well, in most civilized societies it generally is, present day excluded. In fake “email life” however, it actually becomes a liability. “Oh Good God, one more thing to delete.” Therefore a straight graph line Q can be drawn along the X axis “Suck” correlated against the Y Axis “More Stupid Stuff To Delete” triangulated against the hidden Z axis representing “Seconds Remaining That I Am Alive” to yield the function F(Stop Now) to produce a differential of “Hit Head With Brick.”

okay peep(s) so yes i acknowledge the ongoing media blackout coming out of the ivory towered headquarters of launch day inc. whatever. today’s little topic is called: “federal income tax.” wake up! this is interesting.

because i’m usually busy lighting my cigars with hundred dollar bills, i let my cpa (yes i have a cpa, she lives out back in the stables with the chauffer and my other domestic servants) deal with my taxes every year. ignorance is bliss, eh?

but as i was kicking back today w/ my feet propped up on my crouching manservant, lighting my cuban with another benjamin (“benjies” as i like to call them), i had my nose stuck in my tax return to make sure nobody’s siphoning anything off the top of launch day inc’s bottom line. and you know what i found? i found this little treat:

Exemptions. If line 38 is $150,000 or less, multiply $3,900 by the number on line 6d. Otherwise, see instructions.

Doesn’t look like much, does it? Barely makes sense. But you know what it is? Cash money, that’s what it is. It’s one of two very convincing reasons to grow up, get married, and pump out some kids.

Let’s say you have, oh I don’t know, FIVE KIDS. And you’re married. And you’re filing jointly. You know what the number on line 6d is? Seven. It’s seven, people. So multiply 7*3900 per the little instructions, and you know what that comes to? 27,300 dollars, peeps. Why do you care?

Because you get to subtract that from your salary. And THATS what you pay uncle sam taxes on.

Are you still with me or are you still cramming that cinnabon into your face? Wake up. Let’s say you work really hard flipping tacos at Dicks Burger Barn and you pulled in, for the sake of a nice round number, a cool 50,000 last year. Well – that aint what you pay taxes on. First you subtract that nice little 27,300 per the instructions above, which leaves you with (fingers and toes, carry the one…) $22,700. As far as uncle sam is concerned – you’re only gonna pay taxes for a salary of $22,700. Not on the 50k. That’s called a “deduction” people, and it’s magic. Boom, just like that, your taxes came down. You know what the tax bracket for that 22,700 is? I know you don’t. Turn off the Friends rerun and i’ll tell you, it’s 10% for the first $17k (1,700), then its 15% after that for that money between 17k and 22,700 (727.50). So you just pocketed a bunch of money. Your tax bill’s gonna be 2512 instead of the 6607 it would have been if you were paying on the full 50,000, which you would be if you didn’t have those pains in the rear called kids. That comes out to a 5% federal tax rate for you.

You like that better?

I know I would if I were you.

Now comes the REAL magic.

The “obama tax credit” is going to take 1,000 OFF your tax bill for every – single – kid. So say you’ve got those FIVE kids? Well, here it comes. You take your little tax bill of 2,512 and subtract 5,000 from it. That’s what you owe. You like that new number? Why it goes below zero, doesn’t it.

pretty good huh.

So go find yourself a purty wife and have some future taxpayers.

Btw you want to know some other hidden gems of federal tax returns? Here’s some other pretty cool deductions you make:

* State Tax. yup, whatever you paid in state taxes, SUBTRACT IT off yo’ salary for uncle sam. Did you get that? pay attention. It’s cash money.

* gifts to charity. yup. go be generous, finance some drinking water wells in africa, come back in april, and SUBTRACT IT off your taxable salary.

There you go folks. Don’t say I never told you nuthin.

Back to my Cinnabon …

The local bikeshop recommended I get some shimano lx cranks online for my mountain bike to replace the ones that have finally (sort of) fallen off. Said they’d be a lot cheaper than the shop. While I scratch my head a little about that particular business process, I let the google thing tell me what my options for “shimano lx” cranks are. for those of you “in the know” – ie, nobody – I have a 9-speed cassette. About the only three numbers I care about when it comes to cranks are: 1) 9 speed, 2) teeth on the rings (please lord let me have a small little ring for the hills) and 3) price. Ought to be simple right? Ha ha ha. What followed was a crash course in product lines gone wild. Here are the options that come up when you google “shimano lx crankset” –

FC-M590

FC-T661

SLX M660

SLX M6601

FC-M570

FC-MC572

FC MC-M780

FC-M785

FC-M675

RACEFACE “Ride”

Do those letters mean anything to you? Me neither. Each one of those is, apparently, a viable product option. A member of the industry’s crankset product line. yeah, ok. so have fun getting the price, figuring out which ones are 9 speed and which are 10 speed, good luck finding the crank length you want. keep clicking, find info on the number of teeth on the rings. go for a cookie and cup of coffee to unwind. have a good cry. keep trying. lose your place, throw it all out, start over. begin a wiki. correlate with amazon, and ebay. have another good cry. try to figure out which will look nice. grow a beard. call in sick to work. get a pHd in Bike Cranks. Wonder if any of your 3 bottom bracket tools will work on any of these guys. Try to remember what “octalink” means. Have a good laugh over the $600 options. Enjoy reading the rich history from Shimano as it tries to explain the difference between “Deore”, “Lx”, “XT”, and “SLX” and the ways some of these sets of letters have splintered into other sets of letters. Try to care. Try to follow along. Hang your head in shame at the human race, pondering why you ever gave up the exciting sport of “Walking” and got involved in something as bizarre as this. Feel guilt over buying from faceless online megabike store then remind self that it was the local bike shop that sent you here to begin with. Find the cheapest ones. Smile. Order.