I have one of these! At least, I used to...
Once TWWKMT see this, I'm sure she'll hide it.
TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE
Famous the Uncle Jay will explain- no...it will take too long. Uncle Jay will sum up all the weird shit happening around him. Famous!
I almost had a Lochte moment at about 4 this morning...
I pulled into a gas-food-ice-24hours to fuel up and (more urgently) get rid of some processed coffee.
I fueled, then tried to hit the head-
Locked.
I went to the security window to speak to the service attendant- a young man of ethnic origin- pointed in the vague direction of the bathroom and pantomimed unlocking & opening the door...
He shrugs his shoulders and yells through the money slot...
YMEO: "IS OUT SER-BISS"
TBG: "Huh?"
YMEO: "OUT SER-BISS. BROKE."
TBG: "Fuck."
The initial urge to urinate into the money slot/speaking tube was nigh overwhelming...
I did, however, remember the Lochte Lesson and did not vandalize the Gas&Go...
But there is a very upset ficus tree suffering from ammonia, sodium, caffine and trace elements between there and I-95...
TBG - (Relieved without criminal indictment)
P: "Hey - we gotta change all our user names and passwords on all our machines. That gonna affect your stuff?"YT: "Not a bit. What's up?"P: "Fucking social media and basic stupidity. Some moron back in the home office wrote their user name and password on a piece of tape on their keyboard.
Today, she took a picture of a cupcake on her keyboard and posted it to Facebook.
With the username and password in full view."YT: "Wow. Fired?"P: "Shoulda been, but she invoked the Hillary defense. She didn't do it with malicious intent, so she's still around."
"Make sure your driver knows the way to the stadium.Dude... Never get out of the boat.
Mine didn't, and we were totally lost in a not-very-nice area. The driver finally pulled over and found a guy with a machete, no shirt, prison tattoos, sitting by flaming oil drum full of burning chunks of old automobile tires under an overpass to ask about directions.
I was hiding under the back seat of the van. I knew we were both going to die!"
Snot-nosed Young Lad: "Dang. Those things DO work!? I thought is was just an air freshener or something. I never saw one working before now."I guess if there isn't an iPhone control app for it, it's not worth using.
Yours Truly: "What, you haven't got your chip yet?"I gave him the name of a certain Curmudgeon who hates EVERYBODY, especially the interns...
S-NYL: "My what?"
YT: "Your chip. Your RFID chip from NBC."
S-NYL: Puzzled look, like a cocker spaniel when you make a squeaky noise.
YT: "Yeah, you need to go down to Engineering and ask for your chip implant. It activates the hand driers, but the really cool stuff they do is things like giving you access to the VIP sections in different venues- really useful in the Gymnastics and the Swimming venues. It also gives you access to the motorpool to get from site to site... Just get in one of the NBC cars and wave your hand over the reader and tell the driver where you want to go.
There's a bunch of other stuff... It'll be in the brochure they give you when they implant the chip...
S-NYL: "Everybody gets them?"
YT: "Yep...If you know who to ask. Just keep it on the down-low. The less people that know, the better."
EG: "Hey- I've lost my connection."Day Two:
YT: "WHAT?!" (Frantically pinging his switch and computers. Nothing. Oh shit.)
YT: "Find your Truck Guy, trace the blue cable from your switch to the patch block, make sure it's still plugged in. Then, look in the TOC for the cable bundle labeled 'GRAPHICS" make sure #6 is in port 45 on switch 2."
EG: "Find the truck guy. Got it."
YT: "Oh shit..." I grabbed my tool back and headed out the door.
Before I got to the shuttle bus, my phone rang.
EG: "Found it. Someone moved the cable."
YT: "Who? Who did it. What moronic motherhumper in the OAS compound is going to wind up with a 4 pound hammer embedded in his forehead?"
EG: "Don't know, but it's fixed."
YT: "Find out." (click)
RJ: "Hey- I've lost my connection."Grab my bag and head to the shuttle.
YT: "WHAT?!" (Frantically pinging his switch and computers. Nothing. Oh shit.)
TM: "I know why you're here... Sorry- my fault. it's fixed now."Is it unreasonable for me to expect that while we are ON THE AIR that people don't pull out cables that they don't know what it's attached to?
YT: stunned silence
TM: "Yeah, one of the guys in the A-Truck had a problem with his internet connection. Your cable wasn't labeled and I didn't know what it was, so I pulled it."
YT: "Dude, are you fucking kidding me? There are 200 unlabeled cables in here...
You didn't pull them... Why are you pulling mine?"
TM: shrugs shoulders - "I don't know... I just thought it was in the wrong place."
Dear Uncle Jay,
You’re right that the key word for traveling to Brazil is “don’t.” Of course, that makes it sound like you shouldn’t travel there at all; in reality, (1) you shouldn’t travel to South America at all and (2) the word don’t really applies to everything related to Brazil.
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This actually is Rio. This may not be one of the Olympic sports, but that doesn’t mean you won’t see this at some venues. |
Brazil is basically all the cut-throat lunacy of a Mexican pirate town plunked helpfully in the center of a sweltering jungle, featuring a river filled with creatures that have teeth the size of your aunt and the predilection to eat something her size with them.
Another feature of Brazil is the fact you can drive about ten minutes in any direction (in theory, as there aren’t nearly enough roads) and find yourself in a stone-age culture equipped with blowguns and cell phones. They will not hesitate to use both. No, the Czar doesn’t mean “either,” he means “both”: they’ll gleefully put a dart in your neck while talking to their agent.
Brazilians, on the other hand, are great for parties. The Czar strongly recommends befriending a Brazilian if you like to eat, drink, roller skate, dance, and basically repeat this every hour until four or five in the morning. These people do not quit.
It has been decades since the Czar went to Rio, though, so let’s see what we remember. Your high school Spanish will be just as useful to you here as when you went to Cozumel, by which we mean totally useless. Brazilians, as you already know, speak Portuguese, not Spanish. Portuguese is an interesting language that’s half-Spanish and half-arrogance. It has a lot of shushing noises, which is linguistically interesting: since Brazilians spend about two-thirds of their day inebriated, they simply modified the spelling of their language to reflect drunken slurs.
Helpful phrases:Don’t worry about pronouncing the Portuguese correctly: just read it loud and in a drunk voice. They won’t understand you, but that’s because they’re too hammered themselves. “Vamos roller skating,” they’ll say in sympathy.
“These are not my drugs, therefore you can keep them.” — Não minhas drogas; portanto, você pode mantê-los.
“Waiter, my seafood is threatening me.” — Garçom, meu frutos do mar me ameaça.
“What can I drink that won’t kill me?” — O que eu posso beber que não vai me matar?
“If I drink this caipirinha, will I still have two kidneys in the morning?” — Se eu beber esta caipirinha, vai ainda tenho dois rins na parte da manhã?
“Get me on the next flight home.” — Quero que o próximo vôo do avião casa.
“No, I’m Canadian.” — Não, sou canadense
The Czar is also familiar with Brazilian cooking, being something of a grill-master himself. The Brazilian method of cooking is quite simple: subject thick cuts of meat—python?—to extremely high heat until the food is charred black on the outside and bloody raw in the middle. If you look carefully, you might find some medium-well fibers of meat between the two, but these will be utterly soaked in salt.
The heat is unbearable in Rio, but clothing is totally optional. Actually, the bigger and hairier you are, the less you want to wear. The Czar guesses for a mostly shaved Sasquatch guy your size, Jay, you should wear an eyepatch in place of a thong. Surprisingly, that won’t be the most surprising thing you’ll see someone wear.
Everyone talks about the gigantic statue of Jesus up on the hilltop, but what they don’t tell you is that, over the last 50 years or so, the statue has totally turned itself around so it looks away. It would be a Vatican-sized miracle, but no one admits it because it reflects nothing but shame on the city. Hey, if you had to gaze down on that mess, you’d at least squint.
Anywhere you go, look for the nearest exit and use it.
Fortunately, you’ll be traveling there with fiber optic cables, which is good because you can use them to strangle the hotel clerk when he arrives in the middle of the night to perform his customary turn down service and leave something minty on your pillow. Don’t worry about the body: murder is not only sanctioned there but positively encouraged. If the authorities ask, simply say what all Brazilians say and claim you thought he was a poor person. You’re off the hook, and you can just leave the body where it is. There will be no air-conditioning in your room anyway, and within moments his corpse will be swollen with bottle fly maggots, so dumping it won’t matter.
For the last 50 years or so, the Czar has become increasingly convinced that the Olympics are just a huge joke that we’re not getting…so the organizers are choosing even dumber locations each time. “Let’s pick a disease-infested pithole that’s corrupt, filthy hot, and has no transportation or clean lodging.” “How about Rio? Chicago said no.”Well...
“I wanted to come and have an interview with you as well.She recovered, got the interview back on track and aside from from snickering from the other commentators, but it wasn't any near as bad as Joe Namath and his drunken hitting on Suzy Kolber in 2003...
That’s the reason why I’m here, just to see your eyes for the first time. It’s nice so. Hopefully we can win this game and have a drink after. Don’t blush, baby.”
Police at Saginaw Valley State University say a threat posted on the social media site Yik Yak read, "I'm going to shoot every black person I can on campus. Starting tomorrow morning."Guess who: