Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Your Tuesday Turkey-Tinted Triviality (and other feats of tenuous alliteration)

Well, we think we can file this story under the expansive header of "Things of Which Rickey had Heretofore Been Unaware." Since 2003, apparently there has been a wild turkey named Zelda inhabiting Manhattan's Battery Park. Rickey, on a lunch break from a meeting in the gloomy alien canyons of the financial district (seems like it rains every damned time Rickey's there) snapped a photo of the beastie in question. Behold:Park officials, being either big fans of F. Scott Fitzgerald's work or classic video games, decided to name the turkey Zelda. And we must admit, she seems pretty city-savvy, staying within the park confines and not recklessly venturing out into the busy street. Rickey would even go so far as to classify her as a jive turkey.

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Friday, March 26, 2010

Your Official 2010 Mets Preview Thread of Rock Bottom Expectations, Rogue Thyroid Glands, and RAGE RAGE RAGE

Because Rickey is wholly unable to discuss the New York Mets in commonplace prose format, we’re throwing this one up Q&A style, (now complete with superfluous cultural references!)

So Rickey, I read that Vegas has the odds of the Yankees winning the 2010 World Series at a formidable 14/5 after the line opened at 3/1. Has anyone calculated the odds for the Mets?

Uh, yeah, we’ll get Hank from accounting right on that little query… Dude’s not nearly miserable enough. Rickey heard that somebody actually tried to figure out the odds, but promptly committed seppuku when they learned that Luis “Meat Train” Castillo has another 734 games to go until he’s halfway through his contract as a New York Met.

Well what do you calculate the Mets odds of winning the World Series to be?

Haha, you’re cute. Rickey admires your doe-eyed tenacity. The odds are about as good as Mrs. Henderson successfully teaching Rickey how to correctly load the dishwasher. What? Why can’t Rickey place the dishes face down on the lower rack? The knives don’t get put in the utensil basket pointy end up? Wood objects don’t go in here? A thousand curses upon you and this infernal machine, you treacherous harpy!

But you’re still going to attend a few games at CitiField, right?

Let Rickey tell you a story. Last week, Rickey went into the office men’s room to relieve himself, opened an unlocked stall door, only to find a rather portly man (thankfully not a coworker) sitting on the john with no shirt on. Rickey bolted from the scene and has since avoided that bathroom like the plague. Why wouldn’t the door have been locked? Why did that rotund man feel the need to take his shirt off? What the hell? All Rickey knows is that there’s some seriously bad mojo going on in that bathroom and he hasn’t gone back in there since. The point of this story: Rickey feels pretty much the same way about venturing into CitiField this season. It’s like walking into what you thought was an unoccupied bathroom stall only to find a shirtless fat man sitting on the toilet.

Aren’t you at least excited about the Jason Bay acquisition?

Absolutely! And Rickey will be even more excited when he stubs his toe on opening day, blames his .198 batting average on that and sits out the second half of the 2010 season collecting millions of dollars!

But we can still expect you to blog about the Mets from time to time, right?

Uh, don’t count on it. Three years since the 2007 debacle, Rickey’s keen satirical eye has waned to tired exasperation. The challenge of mocking this team is gone. Want some amusement? You’re better off writing your own “Choose You Own Mets Adventure” book at this point. Turn to page 118 if Ike Davis gets traded for an injury plagued Orlando Hudson during the 2011 offseason! Turn to page 78 if Jose Reyes’ thyroid goes nuclear!

What is Reyes’ deal anyway? Is he better now?

Reports suggest that yes, his thyroid levels have normalized and he will be available for opening day. So that was an interesting little diversion. You know what’s fun? When a news story about the delightfully insane decision to place a shortstop with a .435 career slugging percentage third in the batting order actually gets dwarfed by an even more maddening news story about their thyroid acting up. But yes, Reyes is back, which is good, because as far as Rickey knows, the Mets’ two backup shortstops are Rey Ordonez and Corrado Soprano.

What of Carlos Beltran? How’s he doing?

More and more, his tenure as a New York Met resembles that of Rubin “The Hurricane” Carter’s jail stint. The poor guy is so terrified of the Mets’ medical staff that he had his own doctor perform knee surgery on his ailing leg. Not that Rickey doesn’t have the utmost of faith in the Civil War battlefield surgery level expertise of the Mets’ doctors… Ahem.

So it’s safe to say that the Mets’ fanbase is a little disgruntled?

Well yes, but that’s generally always the case. This year it’s just a little bit more pronounced. Also, it doesn’t help that 99.8% of Mets fans are completely out of their goddamned minds. It’s not unusual for call ins like this to transpire on Mike Francessa’s show on WFAN:

“Hey Mike, tanks fuh takin' my cawl. What do you think of trading Beltran to da Cawdnuls for Wainwright and Pujols? I think it's a slam dunk fuh da Mets, why doesn't Omah make dat trade? I'm gonna hang up and listen to youah response.”

Rickey’s always wondered, why do the WFAN callers always hang up so quickly? Those lunatics spend hours waiting on hold and then they hang up after spitting out 50 words of jibber jabber? Really?

So what’s your final prediction for the 2010 season?

If they make it over 76 wins, Rickey will be shocked. If they don't we've got the return of Bobby Valentine to look forward to. Now for that, Rickey will get excited.

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Monday, March 22, 2010

What do you mean, "They cut the power"? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals!

It was a gorgeous weekend in Rickey’s neck of the woods and he rose to the occasion by making good on his pledge to get working on his garden. Is there anything better than spending a sunny afternoon ferrying to-and-fro from Home Depot and nailing together pieces of wood in the back yard? Rickey suspects not. There’s no way you can help but to feel like an alpha male when doing this sort of thing. Behold, an engineering marvel second only to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon: What you’re looking are several 3’x6’raised beds filled with a mixture of garden soil and manure. (After spending a day watching Rickey handling cow dung, Mrs. Henderson has taken to refer to him as her “shitty husband.”) Rickey fully expects that this rich black dirt, darker than the volcanic ashes of Mt. Vesuvius, will yield a bountiful harvest this year. …Well, that’s assuming the local fauna decide to leave anything for Rickey.

See, the very first night after Rickey sowed a bed with cucumber and spinach seeds, ravenous animals descended under cover of darkness to root up Rickey’s labors.

AND SO IT BEGINS.


Sure, these critters were here well before Rickey moved in, but they don’t pay the taxes, and must therefore be subjugated to the will of man. Was the culprit the rabbit that Mrs. Henderson saw bounding under the shed out back, his hunger undeterred by her foolish Neville Chamberlainesque peace offering of baby carrots? We’re thinking yes, but other potential suspects include chipmunks, possums, and raccoons.

Rickey was considering arming himself against this menace, but purchasing a gun probably isn’t the best move here. Rickey has already bought a lot of fertilizer and is exploring the possibility of picking up high powered growlights as well. Add a firearm to that list, and well, we’ve got to believe that there’s some sort of FBI watch list that Rickey would be popping up in. So Rickey did the next best thing he could do—he installed chicken wire over the bed. Look at what Rickey hath wrought with his hands!
Now these babies are on LOCKDOWN. As impenetrable as a Russian gulag. There’s even a power outlet right next to the beds should Rickey feel the inclination to electrify them!

After this grueling work, Rickey celebrated with a BBQ. We think we’ll just let these pictures speak for themselves.

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Thursday, March 11, 2010

And Now, an Impassioned Oratory from Noted Psychotic Glenn Beck

Good evening, dear sweet America. Last night I carefully explained to you how providing health care coverage to people who are uninsured is the same as pouring gasoline on them, lighting them with a match, and then pushing them down a flight of stairs. Tonight, we discuss something even more important. Something bowel-shakingly alarming. This morning, I was enjoying my customary breakfast of lard, rum, and scrambled eggs when I happened to stumble upon something very upsetting. Look at this box of eggs. Look closely.That's right people: PROGRESSIVE pastured eggs! Deviously hiding from the hormones and antibiotics that would otherwise compel them to grow up to be proud American fowl! When I saw this, I did the only responsible thing: I induced vomiting, then wrapped myself in a blanket and cried. I cried for America. Now, you might say, “Hey, Glenn, what’s the big deal here? They’re just eggs!” But let me tell you friends, this is a very serious threat to our way of life.


We all know that the progressive movement is a cancer in America and that it is eating our Constitution before our eyes. Make no mistake, socialist revolutionaries lurk amongst us and with this stunning development, it is clear to me that they are now knocking at our very barnyard doors.

Who knows what tiny feathered menaces are incubating in these progressive eggs? Who can possibly hope to contain Komrade Kluck when he breaks free of his eggshell confines and recruits others to his insidious Marxist cause? Friends, we need a national chicken registry, and we need it now. We need to know the whereabouts and agendas of these clucking menaces before it is too late. Socialist fowl present a clear and present danger to our fragile republic. These subversive chicks threaten to make cuckolds of us all. Who will take a stand against rampant tyranny such as this? In these dangerous times, when will someone finally give a voice to the aggrieved white male?

Who exactly is behind this insidious plot? Why, none other than our old friend Margaret Hamburg, head of the shadowy and mysterious arm of government known as the FDA. For months, Mrs. Hamburg has refused to denounce the gender confusion caused by that rancorous beast, the Cadbury Bunny. And as if living in a world where deviant rabbits could lay eggs wasn’t bad enough, now she’s taking things to the next level: the widespread indoctrination of millions of our nation’s chicks! With this development, the Obama administration moves one step closer to realizing its horrific progressive agenda—a Prius in every garage and a Marxist chicken in every pot.

Sweet tropical Jesus, the mere thought of this scares me. And when I'm scared, I cry. I cry a lot.This crisis ruffles my feathers. It ruffles them to my very core. Has no one learned the lessons from the classic conservative literary masterpiece that is Chicken Little? It was written by Horatio Alger and tells the story of one brave young chicken’s struggle to alert his barnyard friends and family of the looming socialist menace. Sadly, nobody listens to him and then, of course, the Rapture happens.

This book won many awards and was even presented to Margaret Thatcher by President Reagan as a gift for emerging victorious over the puffin menace in the Falkland Islands War. I highly recommend it. But let me tell you, if these progressive eggs become commonplace, we may never see the likes of courageous Chicken Little ever again, and that scares me. And it should scare you, my sweet precious America. Little by little, our freedoms, the principles of capitalism, the idea that we control our own lives and make our own decisions are all being stripped from us. Tonight, I ask you to join me in this fight and rise up against our leftist chicken overlords.

Good night and good luck to us all.

And now, a word from our proud upstanding sponsors, Eztense Penis-Enhancing Pills, the Baconwave Bacon Cooker, and Cash4Gold.com!

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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

On Gardening and Its Discontents

[In the spirit of full disclosure, we think it’s only fair that you be aware that you are now reading a blog penned by a man who becomes abnormally excited when discussing the topic of crown molding.]

Far pithier people than Rickey have said that the two most important items in any house are a library and a garden. And while Rickey’s “library” consists of a single svelte bookcase populated by the likes of Tom Wolfe (no big surprise there) and Kazuo Ishiguro (OK, maybe a slight surprise there), we’re fairly confident that this will quickly expand over time. But what of the garden? When the world wearies and ceases to satisfy, will Rickey turn to his plowshare and till the earth? Well, that’s kind of what we’re thinking.

See, Rickey possesses a nice level back yard that receives excellent light and would he be greatly remiss in not exploiting it for agrarian purposes. The fundamentals of this garden have already been laid out in Rickey’s mind: an environmentally responsible compost bin in the backyard brimming with wriggling red worms, and several raised beds populated with heirloom tomatoes, sorrel, cucumbers, carrots, string beans, chard, and eggplants (for eggplants are truly the most playful of all the vegetables). There will be a rabbit pen in the back yard. Each night, Mrs. Henderson will wait patiently by the window for Rickey to come from work and she will cook rabbit for him upon his arrival. There will be bountiful harvests in the fall, bushels filled with produce, and tributes offered to the gods in the name of rain. A maypole may even be procured.

But before Rickey can break ground on this venture, one issue must first be addressed: the deer problem. In the area where Rickey grew up, deer were a systemic problem for Papa Henderson’s garden. A combination of the use of sonic devices and coyote urine as well of the introduction of a natural predator (an 80 pound clinically insane Samoyed) into the environment now seems to be successfully keeping them at bay. You think Rickey’s kidding about that natural predator part, but you weren’t present to witness the dog carrying a bloody dismembered deer leg home in his jaw. Did the deer die a natural death or did the dog actually take it down? We’re not sure, but either way, Rickey hasn’t been able to look his dog straight in the eyes since. That canine now has BLOODLUST in him.

The deer in Rickey’s area are much less willing to roll over and die. The Hendersons’ backyard fence was damaged by a deer that, according to a neighbor, actually ran headfirst into it. Driving home from work the other night, a deer sprang out of the woods and charged at Rickey’s driver side door before skidding to a halt—that's right, the animal almost t-boned Rickey. They’re not so much deer as they are crystal meth junkies with hooves and antlers.

How to best keep these marauding deer out of the garden? Scarecrows clearly aren’t going to work on these lunatic deer. A dog isn’t in the cards just yet, and Rickey certainly doesn’t want to venture down the slippery slope of attempting to procure coyote urine. (Where in the hell would one even look for something like that? Does anyone have a coyote urine guy?) In the meantime, Rickey has received multiple alternative suggestions. Irish Spring soap shavings placed at the base of the plants are rumored to keep deer at bay, but what of the inevitable leprechaun infestation that would be attracted by this Gaelic brand of soap? The last thing anyone wants is small mythological figures rooting about in their backyard for bottles of Bushmills Irish Whiskey.

Hair sweepings from the local barbershop are another alleged home remedy, but Rickey’s not entirely certain that the ladies at the salon where Rickey receives his $30 haircuts would take kindly to him walking out the door with a garbage bag full of human hair. Rickey used to have a blow-dart gun (because when you’re 14 and working at the local library, a blow-dart gun seems like an entirely reasonable item to spend one's first paycheck on) but sadly it is nowhere to be found. Damn that blow-dart gun was awesome and it absolutely would’ve chased off the deer.

What remedies for this do you folks with deer problems have? Any gardening tips in general?

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Sunday, March 7, 2010

It's Been a Slow Simmer...

This is where Rickey posts recommendations of noteworthy consumables, practices, and pastimes that have been deemed invaluable for the reader’s betterment. All products and pieces of advice listed herein have been Rickey tested and approved. Again, this is in no way shape or form a complete rip off of McSweeney’s (fa-la-la-la-la, lawyers, Rickey can’t hear you). Enjoy our latest installment of....

RICKEY RECOMMENDS

Night-Lights.
Being in a new house is challenging enough. But stumbling around this wholly unfamiliar place in the dark bumping into things because you don't want to wake your spouse up by turning on the lights? Now that's brutal. "Now let's see... were there six steps here or eight...? Aughh crap, I've misjudged, and down I go!" The Hendersons need night-lights, badly.

That all email clients disable the "mark unread" function on their services. There are two varieties of people that this button is designed for: serial procrastinators and husbands who like to peek at their wives' messages when they inadvertently leave their email up. What? What's the problem here? Rickey just likes to know what's going on in Mrs. Henderson's life. Screw you people for judging!

Lubriderm Intense Skin Repair Lotion. The cold winter months have taken a toll on Rickey's skin and he now has dragon scales for skin around his hips. It's either the cold weather explanation or Rickey's skin is stretching out as his hips plumpen to accommodate his nascent pear-shaped physique. Whatever. Ever gone out in public with a grown man who scratches himself constantly and glares angrily at passers by while doing so? Yeah, well Mrs. Henderson doesn't much want to either. If you or a loved one suffer from similar symptoms, we recommend some skin lotion. It doesn't have to have that weird "it puts the lotion in the basket!" connotation if you don't let it...

Williams Sonoma Chili Starter.
Look, sometimes you don't want to craft an entire chili from scratch, and that's where this jar comes in to play. You brown your meat, mix in a jar of this Texas chili sauce, and let the concoction simmer for a few hours. The results are alarmingly good. Cheating? Well, yeah, but nobody's ever got to know, right?

Chatroulette.com.
Remember when the internet was still wonderfully untamed and exciting before we made it a boring place by imposing order on it with our categorized bookmarks and regimented RSS readers? Chatroulette harkens back to those heady days. It's the sputnik of the internet world, and it's terrific. We're talking some serious wild west stuff here. To attempt to describe it would ruin all the fun. We give it about another week before it's shut down for good.

Wolfmother.
Jesus, how is it that none of you people have recommended this band to Rickey earlier? Sure, we've talked about mothers here. And we've also talked about wolves. But we have not talked about WOLFMOTHER, easily one of the best bands currently on the market. Do you enjoy Queens of the Stone Age? How about the White Stripes? If so, woo boy, do we have a band for you. If their song "Vagabond" doesn't screw your head on right then we're sorry, but there's simply no helping you and Rickey pities you for the pitiful fool that you are.

Gargling with mouthwash AFTER you brush your teeth.
We know, it's crazy talk, but bear with Rickey would you please? Mrs. Henderson has been doing this for years and she's had pretty good results thus far.

The "500 Days of Summer" Soundtrack. For those of the indie persuasion we think you'll agree that there's not a weak song in it. Just great stuff.

The cheese counter at Whole Foods.
At Rickey's nearby Whole Foods, within a space of 20 feet, there exists a gourmet olive bar, an artisinal beer section, and a fancy cheese counter. Rickey has taken to refer to this section of the supermarket as "THE HOT CORNER." In the world we inhabit, there's simply no way you can pass this area by and not purchase at least 5 items. Best of all, the cheese counter is one of those places where you can sample the goods before you buy 'em. Rickey and Ms. Henderson tasted a tangy goat cheese and a nice Italian sheep's milk cheese. The guy behind the counter called over the grocery stocker for a bite and all four of them had a nice pensive little moment together, enjoying their cheese and crackers like grown ups. Then Rickey left, purchasing a whopping 1/10th of a pound of each.

Restoration Hardware.
Pricey? Yes. But godamned if they don't craft some of the finest window treatments (for you neophytes, that's a fancy phrase for curtains and rods) on the market. When the big guy upstairs draws back the curtains to reveal rosy fingered dawn each and every morning, we imagine he's using Restoration Hardware window treatments. But he's probably paying wholesale prices we're thinking.

FIRE. The Hendersons got the basement chimney working! (By the way, every post here at RwR will revolve around home improvement from now on. Fair warning.) Does it matter that opening the flue and starting a fire is effectively sucking all the warm air up the chimney and out of the house? Absolutely not. Look, it's FIRE!

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