Category: General

Start Your Holiday Weekend Off Right With This Infuriating Article from CNBC

Trevor Klee, he admits, is a “terrible employee.” But he’s great at working for himself — and at taking tests.

So the 25-year-old entrepreneur started a thriving business of his own. As a test prep instructor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he brings in $100,000 a year tutoring people for the GMAT, GRE and LSAT. It’s one of those weird skills that turned out to be really monetizable,” he tells CNBC Make It.

Klee is the first to acknowledge he’s benefited from both luck and privilege: “Growing up in a family that talked a lot about money was a definite advantage,” he says. “In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m good with money, but I’m playing life on ‘Easy’ mode: I’m a single guy with no dependents and I make a pretty solid income.”

For all those people out there struggling to afford the holiday shopping, this one is for you. CNBC just dropped this downright insulting article right before we all set our out-of-office replies and head home for Christmas. I refuse to believe the person that made the above chart is serious, so let’s break this down into realistic terms.

Rent:

The Chart Says: $825

Reality Says: Unless you’re living in your parent’s basement and that’s what they are asking you to contribute, there is no way a single man who lives alone is paying $825. MAYBE if he lives in the Ozarks.

Donations:

The Chart Says: $615

Reality Says: BULLSHIT. I feel like i’m being bamboozled into giving a dollar every time I go to the grocery store to write my name on a paper star that they hang in the window.

Groceries:

The Chart Says: $400

Reality Says: If you’re living alone, there is zero chance this is true. Unless you’re eating filet mignon every single night, go screw. I had Spaghettios for lunch the other day and I have a Bachelor’s degree.

Health Insurance:

The Chart Says: $270

Reality Says: This is the first believable thing this graphic has said.

Dining Out:

The Chart Says: $250

Reality Says: What is this dude ordering? Do you know how many times i’ve been at a restaurant with friends and the check comes and the waiter gets handed 10 different Mastercards with the exact amounts written out for him to swipe?

Utilities:

The Chart Says: $195

Reality Says: Somewhat believable, but only if you’re still in that 2 year grace period with Comcast before they double the price without telling you.

Transportation:

The Chart Says: $130

Reality Says: My car payment alone is more than triple this, and I drive a fucking Chevy.

Cell Phone:

The Chart Says: $40

Reality Says: Only true if you’re on your parent’s plan or you’re still rocking that RAZR flip phone.

House Cleaner:

The Chart Says: $30

Reality Says:

Internet:

The Chart Says: $20

Reality Says: Who am I kidding, i’d pay hundreds for internet access without losing sleep.

In conclusion, don’t let any clickbait bullshit article bully you into thinking you’re not successful if you don’t make $100,000. You do you. Oh, and Merry Christmas.

CONNECT.THAT.HEADLINE! – “Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Sent Beard Shavings to Azealia Banks So She Could Make an Amulet to Protect Him from ISIS”

NME –  But while her claims largely went unmentioned, they’ve been reference in a new piece on the Twitter CEO by Vanity Fair. writer Nick Bilton says: “A source who worked with him told me Dorsey had sent a rapper his beard shavings to make him an amulet that would protect him from evildoers.”

ANDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD WE’RE BACK! Episode 2 of CONNECT.THAT.HEADLINE!

What you, the readers of The 300s critically acclaimed “CONNECT.THAT.HEADLINE” column, gloss over is the cross I bear in writing these. That burden is the fact that I would love to just sit back, as most due with such a lead, and ask “what in the actual fuck?” allowing my mind to wonder. But no, I must leave nothing to the imagination and delve deeply into the subject at hand, trying to make sense of how these ad lib-ish series of words are connected.

First and foremost if you don’t know who Jack Dorsey is, he is the CEO of Twitter. I, as you know, have sworn off actual, formal research but from what I….think? I know he is a mix of more suave, nameless tech execs that have sprouted up over the last few years and Dan Bilzerian. Basically he is formal, but likes to party.

As for Azealia Banks, she’s a tough one to describe. To sum it up,  in today’s day and age it would seem that it is not uncommon for a rapper to become a “someone”, largely based off social media, and then sort of put rap on the backburner in favor of other shit. Azealia Banks in particular would appear to have put her musical artistry on hold in lieu of being just kind of a crazy person. She picks fights with whomever and is VERY into all the mystical and astrology-type shit that a lot of people on twitter tend to be. A synopsis of Ms. Banks would be that she was an on-pause musician turned voodoo witch doctor shit stirrer. An “American Horror Story” character with #bars, if you will.

I can’t tell you how ISIS, or Jack Dorsey’s specific fear of ISIS fits into the mold. Islamic militants use social media heavily to recruit so one would think their ranks would be toasting the head of Twitter and pledging to save him a virgin in heaven at their annual summer outing. On the other hand, Twitter pays really well and ISIS literally has people quitting over pay , so I could see some resentment building when you are, in your mind, dying in the name of God and some pasty fuck is making literally 1000x what you are to write computer code for a blue bird.

And so good readers, to ward off the evil wishes of ISIS, Jack Dorsey did the only logical thing and sent his beard trimmings to an absolutely not stable internet personality/rapper to make him a necklace. To defend him from those terrorists. IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE.

These are fun.

-Joey B.

 

Applebees Continues Its Quest to Kill You and Everyone You Know With $1 Jolly Rancher Vodka Drinks

Pardon me for taking the lord’s name in vain, but Jesus Christ, Applebees. This could be the No. 1 reason twenty somethings across America black out on Christmas break. Are you trying to get diabetes? Because this is how you get diabetes.  Just guzzling sweet, delicious sour apple jolly ranchers infused with a liter of vodka. Come to think of it, this is just the properly branded version of one of my go to drinks in college: the Midouri Sour.

If you’ve never had a Midouri Sour, it’s essentially just drinking Puckers straight from the bottle. It tastes like a sweet, sweet mixer, but it’s riddled with vodka so it gets the job done. Pound down a few of these bad boys and you could dance the night away. Might even have to take your shoes off on the walk home.

So for anyone who wants to black out like an adult(ish) yet have nostalgia endorphins firing in their brain with the taste of Jolly Ranchers on your palate, then this is the cocktail for you. Excellent work, Applebees.

Lets Have a Good Cry with George H.W. Bush’s Service Dog, Sully

Jesus christ I was not prepared for this. I don’t know what’s sadder; a dog passing away or a dog’s owner passing away. Ya know what, I don’t even want to have this mental conversation with myself right now. I’m a little fried from sitting in the rain all day yesterday at Gillette, so just do what I did and go have yourself a good cry in the office bathroom.

My Bitcoin Empire is Now Valued at a Whopping $16 Dollars

Yahoo – Bitcoin retreated once again Monday to kick off a fresh week of losses after the cryptocurrency suffered its biggest weekly decline since January.

Historically, the roughly 80% drop from its December high also now marks the third largest decline in bitcoin’s decade-long existence. Only the 93% collapse in 2011 and the 84% decline from 2013 to 2015 in the wake of the Mt. Gox exchange hacking dwarf the pain crypto investors have suffered this year…According to Travis Kling, chief investment officer at crypto hedge fund Ikigai, between renewed pressure from the Securities and Exchange Commission and concerns stemming from the recent bitcoin cash fork, a “death spiral situation” could spill over into 2019.

Death spiral? Don’t like the sound of that.

Have no fear my fellow Bitcoin enthusiasts because as the famed Harvey Dent once put it, the night is darkest just before the dawn. I mean the value of Bitcoin has only dropped 80% in the last year, that’s not THAT bad. Right? Hey, even Amazon lost 95% of its value during the dot com bubble burst and they’re doing pretty OK these days.

Papa G came to his senses and jumped off this ship long ago, but as I’ve blogged before I feel like George Costanza after he told Jerry to hold his stock. Granted I wrote that in September when we were at $6K per Bitcoin and now here we are in November anddd things have been better.

As Tony Robbins once said “If you don’t sell, you don’t lose money,” says Robbins. “Every single bear market has turned into a bull market.”

We will come back from this and we will be paying our bills with imaginary money before you know it!

I never understood why people were scared off from Bitcoin because it’s not “real” money. I pay for things exclusively with fake money in the form of a debit card. Doesn’t matter if its a $1,200 computer or a candy bar. Swipe swipe. I haven’t touched real, physical money in months. Hell I just got a Venmo card so you can send me imaginary money that I can then immediately pay with using my physical card.

So you see, its not a matter of if, its a matter of how much should I invest when I double down on Bitcoin?

High Schools Moving Thanksgiving Day Football Games to Wednesday Because of the Cold. Wait, What?

UPDATE: Braintree has reversed field and will now play on Thanksgiving after essentially everyone in the entire town complained.

This is where we were as of last night.

Softttt. Forget the high school kids for a second, who are unsurprisingly pretty pissed off, where am I supposed to drink my hot chocolate thats been loaded up with booze now?

Not to sound like an old man with the “back in my day” stories, but this is embarrassingly soft. We literally used to have practices where we would all get shovels and clear the field of all the snow as a workout. Hell, when I was in high school we used to have pond runs in the winter, which was when it got so cold out the lake by the high school would freeze over and we would run on it. We did that every year….until the ice cracked and a couple of us fell into the water and we all had to run for our lives to avoid a cold, watery grave. Ya know looking back maybe pond runs weren’t the best idea.

It’s not like the white walkers are coming on Thursday, a little cold never hurt anybody. Not to mention won’t it be colder on Wednesday night? At least Thanksgiving day would have the benefit of, ya know, the sun.

And the people? Ohh the people are NOT happy.

Boston Traffic Tips for Thanksgiving are Here and They are USELESS

Boston.com – If your Thanksgiving plans include traveling by car, you can expect to join millions of drivers on the road this year. AAA projects that 48.5 million people will drive to their Thanksgiving destination, a 4.8 percent increase over 2017…For Boston, that means some of the “largest delays” in the country at nearly four times what’s considered typical, a distinction Boston shares with New York City and San Francisco.

According to Boston.com this Thanksgiving has the potential to be the worst traffic you’ve ever dreamt of because its “the highest anticipated travel volume since 2005.” Expect delays at nearly 4x whats considered typical! It takes me an hour to get home from work on a normal day and I live 10 miles from my office. Oh this should be fun.

The worst times to travel by car are during the early evening commuting hours, AAA officials said…For those taking I-90/the Massachusetts Turnpike, traffic in Newton was at its worst between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. on the Tuesday before the holiday and the same times the Monday afterward

Soo basically any time you could possibly be in your car is a bad time to be on the road. Got it.

For those who don’t mind getting up early, Google thinks 3 a.m. Wednesday is the best time to travel prior to the holiday, while 4 a.m. on Sunday is the best time afterward.

Imagine the balls on Google to suggest that you get up at 3 in the morning just to beat traffic? Get to your Aunt Suzie’s house at 7 am so you’ve only got like 5 hours to kill until kickoff when it becomes socially acceptable to start boozing. Pass. I’d rather just verbally assault people in traffic on the way.

Google, which put out traffic predictions for the country’s major cities, predicts the worst time to travel around Boston before the holiday is 3 p.m. Wednesday.

For anyone who plans to put in an honest day’s work on Wednesday before taking off a little early for some pre-Thanksgiving cocktails, you’ll get hosed the worst. This is essentially a permission slip from Google to just bang out of work on Wednesday.

MassDOT will pause road construction at noon on Wednesday, Nov. 21, but officials will also evaluate conditions on Tuesday, Nov. 20, and “make adjustments” to any project schedules based on traffic

And to top it all off, MassDot even promises to stop making driving in Boston the most inconvenient activity of all time…until they decide otherwise. MassDOT reserves the right to change their mind here with a vague, but deliberate middle finger to anyone trying to get in the way of those union overtime hours.

Basically just don’t leave your house at any time on any day to avoid the worst traffic in the whole goddamn country. Subway sells turkey sandwiches too ya know.

So Not to Weird Anyone Out But There Are Correct Ways to Eat a Muffin Right?

Image result for muffins seinfeld

I know your first question after reading this headline was, “Is this really blog-worthy?” Well, you see, fuck you very much.

So my office is set up funny because it is an old industrial building repurposed for use by a modern tech-centric company. There are random walls and shit everywhere because previously there were not walls in a a lot of places where you kind of need them. Like, for instance, the one between this one team’s pod (we don’t have cubes, just series of clustered desks) and the men’s shitter, on my floor.

Moving forward, I come out of the bathroom yesterday, around that wall, at which point I am basically smack dab in the middle of that pod. As I walk on through back towards where I sit, I notice the girl with her back directly toward me is eating a muffin. Our office is directly above a bakery so nothing odd about that.

What is indeed odd with that is just how this young lady is consuming said treat. To be clear, I walked past her a good ten feet, turned around, walked back to the pod, and came back around beside her to make sure I saw what I saw (her monitor blocked my view otherwise), just standing there perplexed for a second.** That is how outrageous I found her approach. To keep stringing you along, I’ll now state that I believe there are two universally acceptable ways to eat a muffin (Latin: Muffinus breakduo), with one marginal way that is also passable:

  1. The Two-sided Approach – This method of eating a muffin is probably the most “traditional” and consists of splitting the muffin in half, the top from the bottom and, usually, applying some butter on each side. Just delightful.
  2. The Pick Apart Approach – The muffin is a great on-the-go food for this reason. In this approach, you simply reach into the bag where your muffin is stored or maybe on the plate in front of you and just pick pieces off at a time. I aint mad at it.
  3. Marginal: The King Solomon Approach – This one weirds me out just a little. This is similar to the Two-sided Approach except that you cut the half in half in entirety so that there are two equal pieces with half of the top and half of the bottom as part of each. Whatever blows your hair back I suppose (you savage).

This is it. This is how this one food is consumed. Out of the three, this colleague of mine was utilizing none of them. So how was she going about it? What was her tactical battle plan for consuming her breakfast-leaning sweet?

She was eating it like a motherfucking cupcake.

That’s right. No butter, no nothing. She had peeled either down or off the wax paper on the bottom of the muffin and was just opening wide and snapping down on that thing like it was a birthday party in the 3rd grade/a cute wedding. I was fuckin shooooooooooooooooook. It brought me to two possible conclusions: Either she is an alien trying to seamlessly fit in with human society and had a giant slip up or she was simply never taught how to eat a muffin and therefore probably also tortured small animals as a child. No matter which way you shake it I am never turning my back on this (very small by the way) woman again. She is not to be trusted.

To answer my own headline, yes there are correct ways to eat a muffin. This is a society, we have rules. Jesus Christ people.

 

**(Note: I’m cool with her so walking back to her desk was not as creepy or odd as it sounds. We chat every now and again. Don’t creep on girls at work.)

 

Papa Gino’s Closed 50 Locations Out of Nowhere. My Day is Ruined.

MSN Dozens of Papa Gino’s and D’Angelo Sandwich shops in have been closed after the parent company of the pizza chain said Monday that it has an agreement to sell the company. Nearly 50 restaurants were closed around New England as part of the deal with Wynnchurch — a middle-market private equity investment firm…

“PGHC closed approximately 95 under-performing restaurants. The company regrets having to close these restaurants but believes focusing resources on a core of best-performing restaurants is the responsible approach,” the company said in a statement.

Now I know how Baltimore Colts fans felt when their team just closed up shop and left town in the middle of the night. HUGE Papa Gino’s guy and now the only two locations remotely near my house closed down, after the third right by my place in Brighton shut down a couple years back. Why must all my favorite things die? Is this my penance for all my sports teams being so great? I have to pay with my favorite foods? It’s just not right. This is why I have trust issues, guys.

It would seem Papa Gino’s employees were just as blindsided by the shutdown as I was.

A sign posted on the company’s Needham Street location in Newton said, “This location is now closed. Thank you for your patronage.”

“I showed up for my shift this morning to find that same sign on our door,” Kesley Sullivan, who worked at the Mansfield location, said. “I was told to reapply to other locations.”

I’m sure this is just a move made by the venture capital guys as they look to make Papas remotely profitable for the first time since the 90s, but closing down a third of your locations under cloak of darkness don’t exactly do wonders for brand equity. I hope the best fast casual pizza place of my time rises from the ashes like a Phoenix to take down the garbage that is Papa Johns and Dominos, but I have my doubts. This could be more SEARS than Toys R Us. Looks like I’ll have to find another place to waste far too much of my paycheck on each week.

Joey B’s Tuesday Morning Grab Bag

Tuesdays suck more than Mondays because they’re a blunt reminder that the work week continues. That’s why I do these.

-The Pats won a bizarro world version of that Rams-Titans game of yore where Kevin Dyson was tackled at the 1 to stop a possible Music City Miracle. I think the low-key story  of that game, however, is how despite this season starting off slow, it felt like an old school, “nothing to worry about” Pats game. I don’t think we have had that feeling, unless you’re just an asshole, for a few years now. Even the last two Super Bowl years. But we all remember the days of prime Brady when even if we were down 3 TDs we’d kind of shrug, thinking we’d pull it off anyway. And you know what? 77% of the time we would have been right. That Bears game felt like that. A lot of running by Trubisky. Some lackadaisical play-calling by the Pats. Then that ridiculous hail mary. I never doubted the “W” for one second.

-Going to write a full review later but I saw “Halloween” this weekend and you should too. Lots of fun.

-Before Lewis-Cormier was supposed to headline UFC 230, The UFC trotted out Valentina Schevchenko against little-know TUF alumnus Sijara Eubanks. Well, the internet absolutely DEMOLISHED that idea so the UFC made Lewis-Cormier and also matched Schevchenko up against a more known quantity, Joanna Jedrzejczyk, at a later date. Eubanks came out yesterday and said she screamed at Dana White about. When you are a 3-2 fighter and Dana White has a full on fan mutiny on his hands because he put you on a card, maybe you should just shut the fuck up and win a couple? Especially when you know you were a desperation move to begin with?

-STOKED for this world series. I actually like the Dodgers matchup better than the Brewers. Overall it will be interesting to see how Cora handles the staff as well as the JD Martinez conundrum. Mookie at 2nd I guess? Who knows. It is going to be a fun one, especially for this #baseball guy.

-Random music suggestion of the day: If you are a hip hop head in general or need some good “nod your head” music for the work day, check out Del the Funky Homosapien.

-I have tickets to Tom Segura in April and you don’t.

 

Keep it real homies,

-Joe