Wow. What a Labor Day I had. An otherwise great weekend, ruined. Lets start at the top. It was a beautiful weekend. The weather was perfect, summer ending, fall on its way in. Went to Prospect Park Saturday and some friends' wedding Sunday. Great. But Monday, Labor Day, a day which should have been amazing since it was an extra day off from work. Horrible.

I don't know why, but everyone this Labor Day besides me and my wife must've gotten a memo that said, "Be on your worst behavior. Treat your fellow man like shit whenever possible. Be a total jerk but insist you are in the right. If you can't fulfill these duties, please act as stupidly as possible. K' thnx, bai!"

A slow start to the morning, we left the apartment mid-dayish for a bike ride. I love riding my bike on the weekends. There is a path that wraps around Manhattan called the Greenway. The idea is it is a shared bike path, so at many points you are sharing it with pedestrians, roller bladers, skateboarders etc. It is basically a paved path with 2 yellow dividing lines in the middle. It resembles and acts as a miniature road. Now within the path, there is usually room for 2 people to ride side by side. However, the rules of the path, like a fast and slow lane on the highway, is to "Ride right, pass left". This practice, when it works, allows quicker moving traffic to continue moving quickly by, while slower more leisurely riders can continue on their way on the right.

Well today, that idea was out the window. The first area from our house to around Chelsea Piers was packed with people. In some spots it would open up and you could keep moving along just fine. In others, gaggles of families on rental bikes or surrey-bikes taking up the entire amount of room while slowly trying to find willing tourist passengers, kept you from moving any faster than a snails pace. You would go from moving up to 16-17 mph down to maybe 2 or 3, 21st or 26th gear down to 3rd or 6th. Now, this is why bicycle bells exist. Mine was *ringing* yesterday. Sometimes people would move, even though it'd take them a while, other times not so much.

Here's a pet peeve. People with ipod/phone earbuds that are cranked up so loud they cannot hear you. More often than you'd think, you'll come up on someone and try to alert them of your passing. Ringing the bell, saying, "on your left" everything you can try, not making a difference. "Is this guy/girl ignoring me?", you think. No, on approach you realize they are skating away to the Venga Boys or something, or having a very serious conversation with their bff about the STD they might have contracted the night before but they are too busy biking to go get checked.

I digress. Now, you can usually tell experienced riders from the less so. Experienced riders often are wearing their goofy tight lance armstrong wannabe spandex and have expensive bikes with expensive speedometers and expensive gps' etc. They ride low and fast and often have little regard for anyone around them. At pedestrian crossings or stoplights, they are the ones passing you while you're stopped and running over toddlers/puppies. They often also rove in packs of their own.

Less experienced riders on the other hand are also easily spotted. Usually riding on K-mart bikes or rentals. Rental people are especially easy to spot because they all have these yellow trimmed helmets and signs on their bikes for the rental place, advertising for more people to come rent more bikes. These people do not understand left or right. They sortof float, bob and weave like you would in a blow up raft in the ocean. There is no rhyme or reason to their movement. They cannot maintain a straight line, instead they ride on what can be compared to an s-curve. This s-curve can be shallow or severe with some people managing to actually ride across into the other lane of oncoming traffic. Easily a 5-7 foot span of space. They are the ones who will often see a pretty bird and use the time they are viewing it to smash into you or others around them.

So with that explained one of the first sore points in my mind yesterday was early on in the ride, coming up on a group of people riding slowly, and all over the place. Inexperienced. However they were being followed closely by someone who fit the criteria for more experienced. This was odd, usually that type of person hastily passes them by. However he was riding behind this group as if he were a parent or something. Since he wasn't taking the initiative to go around (which meant heading into the opposite lane and passing the group before oncoming bikes would cause me to be unable to do so) I started to do so. We were coming up quickly on one of the path's many choke-points; a spot much thinner than the others for whatever reason that often causes the amount of people fitting through to have to shrink. As soon as I did and got on his left, literally with his face within my peripheral vision, he decides its time to go around too. There are now 4 people across in a spot that can hardly fit 3. I am looking at him going, WTF.

OK, so a lot more of this similar happens throughout the rest of the ride. Trying to get around people. Them riding out into me. This was the most often occurrence. Maybe about 10 times someone nearly hit me or did hit me by pulling around others when I already was, or by starting to bike without even looking who was coming up behind them. One person actually did apologize... one person. The best one of these was a guy who nearly killed Ang and myself by sitting with his friend at a dead stop blocking half the lane then deciding to go. He was looking right at us and he started to move anyway which was the equivalent of a bus sitting still at some train tracks waiting for the train to pass, but then saying, "Ah, fuck it" and driving in front of the train anyway. We both managed to brake/avoid the inevitable crash somehow, but the guy didn't offer any kind of apology or anything. Instead he just stood there with a huge dumb look on his fat face. A clear example of someone who opted for stupid over asshole.

I am glazing over this now mind you, but incidents like this made the day the worst. I could get into detail on all of them, but I will have outdone the length of War and Peace by doing so. So instead I'll skip to the straw that broke the camel's back.


Well, as luck would have it, I ended up at 17 mph coasting in directly behind some woman's ass as she and her boyfriend leisurely ride alongside each other bullshitting about god knows what at maybe 6 mph. We are represented in my picture as follows: Boyfriend - Red, Girlfriend - Yellow, Me - Blue, Ang - Pink. Despite being pissed about being in such a dumb situation of being forced to slow down so incredibly yet again, I politely rang my bell once and waited for the girl or guy to move flat so we could get around. As you can see depicted in the illustration, the other side of the lane was completely filled with people, so there was no possibility of getting around by moving briefly into that lane. I waited some more, and as their conversation continued, I rang the bell again. I waited again. And waited some more. Then I started ringing the bell repeatedly without stop. Finally the guy turns his head and says, "We hear you!". At such point, no longer giving a shit about politeness, I responded, "Well, you aren't doing anything about it." "How about waiting until you can go around?", he said. To which I responded, "This is a shared bike path. You are supposed to ride on the right and let others around you." His whopping response was "Share, share alike brother." By this point his stupid girlfriend had moved enough and there was a gap enough in the oncoming traffic for Ang and I to squeak around. Ang, passing the woman said, "You really need to stay to the right in here", to which the idiot woman responds: "I am on the right!"

Wow. Amazing. First they are both retarded, especially the guy. There was two choices for them to make in this situation. The polite response would be for him to move forward or back, and let his girlfriend get in front or behind him for 20 seconds while we, and I imagine other people behind us, would pass by. Then when it was clear nobody else wanted to pass they could move back next to each other, or at least try to finish their conversation out by talking from in front and behind. The second choice, being the "I am a douchebag for life" choice, was to ignore the people behind you trying to get by, and instead greedily carry on your conversation, then argue with us instead of still just moving out of the way.

This is the equivalent of you walking up to a doorway in which someone is standing, saying, "excuse me", and they don't even look at you or respond to you, but instead continue standing in the doorway, then start arguing with you to go find another doorway. What the hell? And then to act like we are the bad guys? Do these two take separate cars and drive down the highway talking on cell phones to each other while one is in the fast lane and the other in the regular lane both going 30 while other cars are trying to go 60? Is this reasonable behavior or am I just nuts? And then for this woman to claim she is to the right. Wow, friggen stunning! If you are to the left of your boyfriend, you are most definitely not to the right. You may be to the right of people in the opposite lane, or right of the Mississippi River, or right of the international dateline. But to the right, as the multiple signs saying "Keep Right, Pass Left" are concerned, you are not to the right.

Christ. I try to be a good person, I often stay to the right even while talking to Ang just in case anyone comes along. If the situation were reversed, I would have never thought twice about letting him and his girlfriend through. It's just common courtesy. What would it have harmed me to do so? It would have taken literally no extra energy to slide out of the way quick. And as you see in my picture, there was literally no one in front of them, but a huge pack of people behind. So not only are you blocking me, but potentially dozens of others. That's just not right.

Anyway, that was the biking adventure that left such a sour taste in my mouth I didn't want to go outside again all day. But we did to take our dog Gus to the dog park. Another place where some serious assholes reside. I am finding more and more that a dog's behavior is a mirror of its owners own behavior. I brought Gus's tennis ball. He is picky and only likes squishy tennis balls. I am sure this is because his mouth is small and its hard for him to hold the stiff kind from a tennis court. Anyway, there is this St. Charles Spaniel named Hunter who continues to chase and steal his ball lately. If Gus gets to it first the other dog will walk in front of him trying to grab it away until Gus, who is already timid, just drops it to get away. When Hunter grabs it you cannot get it back. He refuses to drop it. He instead locks onto it so hard you can pick his body off the ground by picking the ball up. He will also bite you if you try to grab it off the ground and its not already in his mouth. To date his owner has made one weak attempt at helping me, and otherwise just sits and watches. She informed me Hunter likes to hold the ball and not let go. You think? Do something about it. So poor Gus couldn't play ball.

Then this old lady that thinks she owns the dog park approaches this group of 3 little kids. Now I hadn't been paying attention to them, but they were just 3 nice kids who wanted to come in and see the dogs, they did not have a dog of their own. They were politely asking people if they could pet their dog etc. Now this woman who thinks herself the equivalent of a sheriff or something gets up, with her cane and all and walks over to the group of kids and proceeds to lecture them. "We don't allow people in here if they don't have a dog. However. Since you three are nice and have been asking nicely I have decided not to run you out of here. You see I am kind of the Manager around here" blah blah blah. What a f'ing bitch. Who died and made her boss? So as I'm sure you could probably guess, the kids who were scared/embarrassed slowly walked away and left.

Then this asshat guy who I have seen a few times, calls Gus to come sit with him then offers him treats. I have throughout time asked him repeatedly to not do so, as I want Gus to play with the other dogs, not him, and I don't want a stranger randomly feeding my dog the entire time I'm sitting there in the park. So we took Gus and left.

Ang eventually went to the local grocery store. I can't comment too much on her experiences there, but she said it was packed, people were pushing and shoving, and the employees were moving at a snails pace, only exacerbating the situation.

So after she got back we stayed in and that was that. I haven't had such a miserable day dealing with people in a long time, and I hope I don't again. Both us us were then in bad moods, not with each other but we were quietly pissed off the rest of the day/night because you couldn't help but run the events through your head over and over. The audacity of people is sickening. I spent my life trying to be overly polite, giving way to people usually at my own expense.

Just this morning on a bus down to work, an old man, and a veteran at that was trying to find a seat on the bus. I hadn't noticed him until he fell over trying to climb the stairs in the back of the bus where I was sitting. That means that the entire front of the bus, 3/4 of the people on it, would not give him a seat. The girl next to me stood immediately to give him her seat, I stood a moment after to give her my seat to replace the one she abandoned and I went and stood for the remaining 3 or 4 stops on my ride. Now what if the man came on, fell down and instead of offering my seat or her offering hers, we just sat and laughed at him. That would be the mentality I was running into all day yesterday.

I hate the human race sometimes.

UPDATE: Trixie has blocked me on twitter. And really done nothing more than prove my point even further. Supposed community leaders that block their followers when they disagree with them one time and makes it personal by making fun that I don't have a huge twitter following. Pathetic.

Twitter. Many people spend their whole day tweeting away every mundane thing they do. If you've seen the right nav bar on my site, you'll quickly realize I'm one of them. Recently if you're a member of the twitterverse, you can't help but have heard about Ashton Kutcher's (@aplusk on twitter) race to 1,000,000 followers against CNN.

Normally I wouldn't care, but when I stumbled across it, I found out that bragging rights weren't the only thing at stake, but that if Ashton won, he would donate 10,000 mosquito nets to aid in the fight against Malaria in Africa. This is a cause I know he's been an advocate of for some time.

I am no fan of Ashton Kutcher. I don't dislike him, its just that he's never done anything that I was a fan of per se. When I saw this though, I added him on my twitter, because what the heck? It doesn't cost me anything and if it helps to get needy people so help, why not? In case you didn't catch the end results, he did beat out CNN and managed to get CNN and others to donate a total of 50,000 mosquito nets. If you ask me thats great. Stupid means to make such a donation maybe? Sure, but the cause still stands, and I was happy to be a part of it.

So where is the hypocrisy I mentioned? I follow a lot of the xbox.com staff. They are an awesome group, that are super tied to their community. Something not a lot of big companies are. Makes you see that there are real faces just like yours on the other end of the ether. One member in particular, Trixie 360 (@trixie360 on twitter) always posts a lot of great and funny stuff. And all of the staff go out of their way to run free contests and giveaways to their followers. A selling point I'd be lying to say isn't a reason I continue to follow them, or followed them in the first place. Its an incentive to listen to other news and random tidbits of thoughts they want to talk about. Kindof the whole point of twitter.

But today, instead of the normal code giveaways which take place with trivia or fun contests, Trixie opted to start giving away the largest amount of codes I have ever seen given away, just for people to UN-follow Ashton. Why? I guess cause since he's a celebrity and used that to gain followers he sucks... or something.

I can't speak to intentions. But honestly this to me at least feels wrong. Even if he was just on some asinine quest to gain followers so he can twit to them about whatever dumb stuff he thinks up, it's still his prerogative. And incidentally, pretty much the point of twitter. Gain followers, yak about pointless shit. But here he was offering his "incentive" that he would give 10,000 mosquito nets that will potentially save people's lives.

So anyway a flood of "free-t-shirters" jump on the bandwagon saying they've removed him. I'm sure some did, some didn't. Whatever. But it feels wrong. I would unfollow him right now just out of lack of interest, but to do so because someone is telling me I should and paying me to do so with game giveaways feels even more dead wrong.

I once chugged a full can of Pepsi through a complete strangers 3 day dirty sock at a paintball tournament to win a prize. So I am a complete whore for free things. But this was just a childish act and I am saddened so many people jumped on it. I could start offering to send a dollar to everyone who unfollows Trixie, and tons of people would. But two things would come from that. I'd be in the poor house, and I would have gained nothing by taking away from someone else.

Of course it doesn't matter cause hes a major celeb and it is retarded. Any any amount of people she got to unfollow him wouldn't hurt him or his cause at all. But it's still wrong. So the end result after I finally got through to Trixie and she talked back and forth with me a few times, is she shut down the code give away. I'd like to say I was proud, but I'm not that egotistical, and I also have a ton of people calling me a douchebag now. Which is fine, I've got thick skin. But here is what really gets me...

Trixie says to me:
@plabrozzi if he wants to give to charity he should just do it and shut up. Followerwhoring is LAME.

To which I respond:
@trixie360 lol what are all you xbox.com people doing? same thing, getting ppl like me and all those you just gave codes to to follow you?

To which she responds:
@plabrozzi i have NEVER asked people to follow me. Not once. And never will.

To which I respond:
@trixie360 No, but you are asking people to unfollow someone else, and giving them prizes to do so. Thats worse if you ask me.

Am I wrong? Maybe. But It seems to me to be the same thing. And of course the next thing is :
"Okay the inevitable bitching and whining have now killed the code giveaway. We had a good run for a while!"

So now I'm bitching and whining? Because I have some moral standards and expressed an opinion? Trixie neither had to listen to me nor stop giving away codes based on what said. Her response could have easily have been:
"Members of the community aren't happy with the idea of this contest, so I'm switching gears and giving away the rest of the codes just because you are my fans."

I don't have anything personal against Trixie. Not even after this. Not even after all the replies from people pissed at me. I'm bigger than that. But it just frustrates me this course of events. It's hypocritical to give prizes to people to stop following someone who was trying to gain followers by giving something away as well.

The difference was Ashton's followers were helping people in Africa, Trixie's will be sitting playing free copies of Peggle over the weekend. And somehow I'm the bad guy.

Anyway, I'll pay to play Peggle if it means not having to sell out. And Trixie, honestly, I mean you no bad feelings. I just disagree with how you ran that code giveaway. It doesn't support the good or betterment of the xbox community in any way. Its an abuse of power.

I got ripped off! This is the result of a co-worker remorselessly selling me crap for their kids school fundraiser. I paid $8.00 for this jar of chocolate covered raisins out of guilt. Look at the size of it! It's not much bigger than a dixie cup!



The trend of these fundraisers throughout my lifetime has gone severely downhill. I'm sure when I was a little tyke growing up in Sag Harbor, and went around pestering my neighbors to buy similar crap to this, they were feeling some tinge of what I am now. But this is just absurd. I remember the stuff I sold being of at least a minimal amount of higher quality, or at least slightly more in proportion for less money. Even girl scout cookies etc that were sold to my family by other kids in the neighborhood were more plentiful.

Don't get me wrong, because I know adding money into the education system is a great thing, but at what cost? What kind of values do kids get out of this? Here's my situation currently. A mother whom works in my office, brings in her child's pamphlets of crap, walks over to my desk and goes "This if for my son, this is for my son", slaps it down in front of me and walks away before I can say or do anything. Ok, what the hell, I'll take  a look and see if I can help the little guy out. So I flip page by page of what can only be compared to a full sized magazine, all filled with junk. All junk. Cheap wrapping paper in one section that comes with a 3' x 3' piece for 15 dollars, poorly crafted candles on another that most likely won't burn right, if at all, in another. The safe bet when you see these things is always the candy section. There's at least soemthing there you can buy like one of, and not spend a fortune. Or so I thought!



Chocolate covered raisins were literally the cheapest thing in the whole book at $8.00. So that's what I opt for. I fill out the form, and bring it back to her. It seems the intention was for me to give it to the guy working next to me when I'm done, but since your kid isn't learning any values since you are doing the selling for them, I'll teach you some values... "Get up off your fat lazy ass and do this yourself. Not my job."

I leave this off confused as I am not sure if I'm supposed to pay now, or later or what, and since i was given no more information than "This is for my son." repeatedly trailing off as she walked away, and now is gabbing away on the phone, looks like I'm not paying now.

Time goes by. It's probably been at least a month, and I have long since forgotten about it.

"Peter, you owe me eight dollars!", was how it came to be this very morning when a tiny little jar was plopped down on my desk, and and I was awoken from my half sleeping stupor at my desk while checking the morning SPAM mail. "Ok, give me a second" I say as I start taking my wallet out, now cognizant of what's going on. But as I count out the $5 dollar bill and 3 singles, I turn to find no one there. Apparently I need to get up and go over there and drop this off now. I do so without complaint, as I'm not as lazy by a long shot, but begrudgingly so, as I just said give me a second and started taking the money out in front of her eyes while she was still standing there.



So now I have had to spoon out my hard earned $8 dollars, though it be a paltry sum, nonetheless given with hopes of a good cause, and meanwhile done in a rude manner that I certainly didn't deserve. And the little shit it benefits will never know my name or see my face, and I won't be thanked, and the principal at the school will go buy some more blow to do to deal with the fact he has to put up with this type of shit all day, every day, from hundreds of times more kids and their absurdly rude parents.

I should mention I bought from another co-worker for the same idea a few days after I bought from this one. He was much more polite, put no pressure on me, and I spent more money with him. I am still gonna be pissed if what I get is something that could easily fit in a toilet paper tube. But at least the transaction there was more classy and I feel better about it.

When it comes time for my kids, I'm going to hand them $200 bucks to take in, and sit down with them and teach them soemthing. "Son/Daughter, this $200 represents respect. It means I didn't bother my co-workers and guilt them into buying some useless cheaply made junk. It means I care about your education, and I am taking my hard earned money, which I actually did something useful to earn, and am now donating it to your education. Learn from this that you do not need to rip off other people to get ahead in this life and to treat them like human beings instead of dollar signs. And learn that there is such a thing as self-respect and dignity, and it feels better having those than whatever plastic prize you might get for selling more crap than little Timmy."

I bet these raisins taste like shit.

Update: They do.