nuinca

The power of positive thought

True story. I sat staring at my screen for 12 minutes thinking of the worst possible headline for this blog. That is what I came up with.

Since the two of you who read this blog also work with me, I don’t need to explain how generally shitty work has been. Today, however, was a nice respite from the normal “do-this-because-someone-else-decided-it-made-sense” scenario.

We had to plan for our ‘08 election coverage, national, state and local. Since we’re in Florida, a lot of people will be watching, even if our county will most likely end safely red. Within 10 minutes, two of my friends/coworkers had a solid plan hammered out, we started working on it immediately and will soon be finished. Nov.4th will be our bitch.

Awesome!

A new newsroom

Just in time for the holidays, we’re again facing buyouts and layoffs. Hohoho.

But while gossiping in the newsroom today with several of my fellow “too-young-to-be-bought-out” colleagues, I realized that what we were all so concerned about might in fact be great for our industry – and not from the beancounter’s perspective, but from an editorial point of view.

Think about it. Our newsroom is currently weighed down from the top by people who have been at the paper for dozens of years. Their experience is certainly valuable, but in an industry that has to change (and how!) it’s foolish to put a group of the same old people in the same old room and expect a new product. Let’s try some mathematics.

Old + Old = Old

The people most likely to accept the buyouts and the ones close to retirement age. The people most likely to be laid off and the middle-roaders, those people who haven’t been there long enough to attract a buyout, and yet not young enough to be ignored (since we don’t make enough money).

That leaves young people. Poorly paid young people, but fresh blood and ideas nonetheless. While the average newsroom size might be much smaller in five years, those left behind are likely to be young and awesome, hopefully led by equally young and innovative people.

Will any of us be around then? Well, that’s really the main issue now, isn’t it…

Business 101

I want to begin investing, and after literally tens of minutes searching for the best way to begin, I have come up with a brilliant flow-chart to wealth:

1) invest $1,000
2) ???
3) EXTRAVAGANT WEALTH

The first (and probably last) time

There’s a very good chance that football will never again be discussed on Nuinca.com

It’s not that I don’t <3 me some SEC football GO GAMECOCKS! but games don’t sit on top of my mind very often – and really, how much could I say about USC football?

So pay attention to this, it’s historical! 

Our quarterback, Stephen Garcia, was tackled by a ref this Saturday against LSU. I don’t mean the ref got in the way, or that Garcia ran into the ref, or the ref got confused and was crying and couldn’t see and mistook Garcia for his mother, I mean tackled. 

Garcia was running with the football, passed near a ref, the ref braced himself, lowered his shoulder, hoisted up and hit Garcia, stopping him dead in his tracks. It was actually a really good hit. The ref had no pads and no momentum, and still stopped a man 30 years his junior.

But seriously, WTF. The league isn’t going to take action against the ref, and the ref is claiming self-defense (like he’s a judo master or something).

My fairness barometer for USC football is Steve Spurrier. If Spurrier calls bullshit, I call bullshit, But suprisingly enough, Spurrier didn’t fault the ref. Probably because Mike Davis later scored on that drive anyway.

Ding dong

Plenty has been said about the death of the American newspaper. In fact, it might be the most chronicled implosion in history; an industry full of writers furiously covering their own demise.

I have had an masochistic need to follow all of the buy-outs, lay-offs, convergences, bad ideas and failed attempts. However, in all of my readings, I have never encountered the following thought said exactly as I am about to put it:

This fucking sucks.

If Jesus drove a car….

…he would have driven the Nissan GT-R into Jerusalem, not some stinking donkey.

I was an over-willing participant for a trip to Publix in a brand new GT-R. Most of it overwhelmed my feeble mind, but two moments in particular permanently etched themselves into the stone wall cave that is my brain.

The first was when we were tooling past the Jaguars stadium. As the guy who was driving was telling me about the various merits of the car we wouldn’t get to experience (like the nearly 200 mph top speed), we were quickly approaching a red light and lots of cross traffic. Since I’m 2 cool 4 skool, I didn’t say anything. Once we hit the point that I would have had to emergency brake to not skid past the light into the intersection, I pulled my best James Dean and said “Hey look, a red light.” The driver said, “Yeah, I know.” Two seconds later, and 1.75 seconds after I started apologizing to the Lord for all the bad stuff I’ve done, he hit the brakes. The GT-R hunkered down from 50 to zero in 70 feet, and when we stopped, I felt like both Dan (driver) and the car were judging me for being so skittish in a car with brake discs larger than my tires.

Second story. Like I said, we were driving to Publix to lunch. Dan was generous enough to suggest a Publix about 8 Publix’s farther away than necessary, so we got to thrash the beast on an interstate or two. Unfortunately, it was lunch and there was a ton of traffic on the roads. Once or twice, Dan was able to punch it an I was pinned back in my Sparco with a mother-of-god grin. We were in 4th gear both times. Really.

We eventually came to the Publix exit, and had to navigate one of those 35 mph hair-pin exit turns, the sort of turn in which I’ll roll down my windows, engage my hazard lights, slow down to 12 mph and pray that my tires don’t explode and send me in a death spin out of the turn.

Dan hit the entrace at 60 mph and exited at 72. I can’t say for sure, since my eyeballs don’t function at that force, but I think I saw the in-dash G meter pass 1. It was amazing!

Fortunately, by the time we got to Publix, I was less delirious and my legs and guts had solidified enough for me to walk again. Looking back at the GT-R as we walked inside, I thought “This must be what Clint Eastwood felt that time he killed all of those Mexicans.” Like I said, I was slightly delirious.

The simple things, Part I

Jacksonville is a totally bitchin’ town and all, but it has always lacked a good local brew, and there’s little in this world more welcoming in a city than a wholly local micro-brewery. In fact, I’ve been able to replicate most of the things I liked about Columbia here in Jville, but (prepare for a bad pun) my local beer mug was never…ahem…filled.

Somebody way more exciting than me must have thought the same way, and just opened Bold City Brewery about 5 minutes away from my apt. here in Jax. *note to SC friends – Florida sells growlers! Let the half-gallon bacchanalian fun begin!*

Don’t get me wrong; it doesn’t have the atmosphere (or the food) of The Hunter Gatherer in Columbia, but it’s not trying to. Bold City makes beer, sells beer and makes more beer.

I went to Bold City’s grand-opening tour today, which mostly consisted of buying a tall beer, walking behind the bar and looking at the shiny machines that magically combine wheat, heat and fairy dust.

I like it!

*update* I just checked THG’s myspace page. They’re selling growlers now?! WTF, I move away and Jesus starts handing out free drunk cards?

A blast from the past!

I got nothing original tonight, so I’m going to copy-and-paste from my own life! Awesome!

Here’s an entry I posted from my old Blogspot page back as a new Jacksonvillian. Is it just me, or was I way funnier back then?

If you love me like I love myself (3 times a day)
Two funny short stories from my week so far, then that’s it. That’s it!

I was at Target last night doing my lonely, single-man grocery shopping. *Note to Cola residents: Targets here have an awesome grocery section. Like a Super Wal-Mart, minus the shoeless children fondling all the apples*

When I went to check out, the mushrooms didn’t have a UPC sticker on it and she asked if I knew how much they were. I most certainly did not and so she made up a price. My final item was a 12 pack of Rolling Rock. That didn’t have a price either and she asked if I knew how much it was. I most certainly did, it’s $6.64 a case, which comes out to an awesome 50c a bottle.

When she asked I basically repeated my previous sentence to her, and then the guy behind me (who I hadn’t noticed before), starting cracking up. I figured was he was laughing about and said something about not knowing how much mushrooms were but sure as hell knowing how much my beer was.

Hope that was awesome for you. Ready for part two?

It was today at work. My boss, the guy who told me I was being promoted last Friday, walked by while I was pretending to be busy. He didn’t stop, he just said “Jonathan, you’re the man,” and gave a really dorky thumbs-up.

I said “I know I am,” and gave him a return thumbs-up.

My coworkers were mortified and thought I was going to be fired. Apparently, and I really didn’t mean to, I had replied in an “eat-shit” sarcastic voice. And then they said something about that not being the correct response to the man who runs the company.

College, again

Forgive me, I’m about to go extremely immature on you. Tonight I was surfing the internets and came across two amazing videos. I immediately did what I always did in college – send the links to everyone on my AIM list. Except nobody is on AIM anymore

But take heart! I can now post (well, re-post) these videos right here. And it probably works out about the same – I had two people on my AIM list, and there’s really only two of you who read this now.

Damn

Can you recall the worst wine you’ve ever had?

I can, because I just had it. We picked up an unmarked bottle of wine from World Market a few months ago, and it rang up at the register for $1.23 

Awesome! Here’s the only review I could find of this mystery wine.

I opened the bottle for the Vice Presidential debates, because there was no way I was going to be sober through another Palin appearance. It smelled like antifreeze – sickly sweet in that artificial, petroleum way. If for some reason it did in fact contain antifreeze, I drank most of the bottle, hoping the deadly effects of the antifreeze would be balanced by the anethesizing effects of the alcohol.

In case that’s not enough of a review, the wine was terrible.  I have since finished the bottle over a couple of nights, but ever time I picked up the glass, something in the back of my brain started hurting.